How to turn your website into a lead generator

We’ve all heard the adage ‘in the right place at the right time’ – but as the majority of sales people, marketers or small business owners aren’t mind readers, it’s often hard to predict the best time to make a call, send an email or invest valuable budget in sending a piece of direct mail.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways to ensure your communications with prospective customers coincide with the exact moment they are looking to buy.

Today, people search online before making personal or business purchases – millions of us do it every day. Googling the answer to questions that require solutions, comparing products and prices, reading reviews, blogs or articles is routine. All of the information we digest online in the lead up to buying is powerful stuff, influencing and motivating us to take the next step.

The very essence of a good content marketing strategy is making sure there’s enough of the right information about your product or service online to act as prompt. So, what is the right content? It could be short snappy vine, a video, an advice based article or a ‘top 10 tips’ blog – as long as it’s impartial, interesting and well executed, your prospect will be happy to step over your virtual doorstep and engage with you.

Your website should be linked to a marketing automation platform to help you track a prospect or existing customer as they browse your site and download or view content.

It is essential that your website is content friendly, providing a layer of thought provoking material, like case studies, business intelligence reports, infographics and videos. Ideally, your website should be linked to a marketing automation platform to help you track a prospect or existing customer as they browse your site and download or view content. This activity triggers automated lead nurture emails containing relevant content and deeper information relating to their interest or need.

And, if your online content and nurture programme is doing its job, you’ll soon have a steady stream of qualified leads eager to hear from you. The great thing about content marketing is that it just keeps on generating new leads – often the most successful content carries on delivering high quality leads for months, or even years, after it was first posted online, needing only minimal maintenance to keep it relevant.