I’ve seen the numbers behind over 500 websites over the years. Everything from multi-million pound agencies to scrappy little entrepreneurs.
The ones that are doing best all have a consistent quality that turns traffic into leads, and sometimes all the way to a sale, with the reliability of a Swiss railway timetable.
That quality is focus.
Everything from the branding, to the copy to the site structure, the SEO strategy and all the email and sales follow up is all lined up.
- It turns a prospect into a lead
- It turns a lead into a customer
- It turns a customer into a testimonial
It’s not technically all that hard (ok, I guess it’s easier if you’ve done it a few times), but it does require you to stay on track with three steps of your marketing strategy.
Rather than start with cool new tactics though, we’re going to start this journey at the end with the first thing you need:
A Destination
Sure, you might have a Contact Us page, or a vague call to action about “if this is interesting, give us a call”, but that’s not the destination your client is looking for.
Their destination is what happens AFTER they work with you.
When their problem is solved and they sail off into the sunset sipping margaritas (or more likely to solve the next problem that comes up, but lets not ruin it just yet shall we).
Your website can’t give them that destination, but it can tell them what destination you’re taking people to.
Think of your website like a single train at a single platform.
The train station is the market for your services. There’s lots of people offering the same method of travel but different destinations.
Your job is to get that customer on your train, and to pick the customers who want to pay the highest price to get there at the highest speed and in the most comfort.
Stop trying to be the whole station, taking everyone in and then promising you can get them anywhere.
Stop trying to take every customer that wants to get to that destination regardless how little money they have or how much of a hurry they’re in. (Definitely don’t take the ones who are in a hurry but have no money.)
Pick one destination and build confidence that you can get them there.
Be very specific about how far you’ll take them, how quickly you’ll get them there and that you’re a “first class” experience only.
We do one thing very well, which is to pin down one destination that our clients take their clients, and take them there like they’re on rails.
When we’ve got one of those journeys right we can start building others.
What we don’t do is build 2 rail tracks that only go half way.
No-one’s buying that ticket.
A Direction
Because you’re not focussed on a single destination, your site has no direction.
If you did the hard work in the first step and picked that destination, this will be easy.
If you didn’t it’ll be like trying to ride 2 trains at once, and how many people can pull that off?
Here’s what a site looks like with no destination:
- Your blog covers too many topics.
- Your case studies talk about too many destinations.
- Your client list doesn’t do what it’s supposed to which is to give confidence that you have already solve the problem your client has (without giving away a free consultancy project in every proposal to prove it.)
- Your homepage is downright vague.
By saying you can take your client anywhere, you slash the confidence that you can take them anywhere.
Every piece of content should point towards your “platform”, which is the place you make your offer.
It doesn’t need to take them all the way there, but it has to point in the right direction.
Every piece of content should have a deliberate next step.
An email signup, a webinar invite, or a link to a sales page. If you don’t sell in a single transaction then maybe a call booking, but make it specific. A call about what? What will they be able to do at the end of the call that they can’t do now?
Take anything that doesn’t serve that direction and move it out of the way.
Kill off all those automated links to other blog posts or lead magnets.
Hand craft your journeys.
If you think it’s a lot of work, you have too many journeys. Just start with one. Get it right and then move on.
Any other strategy is like trying to ride 2 trains at once, and that never ends well.
Distribution
Here’s a harsh truth of today’s internet.
Your site has almost zero attention.
You’re not the train station, you’re one train, and there’s a train going to the same destination on the platform next to you.
You’re in your comfort zone driving the train, taking whatever passengers turn up to their destination, but this is a business.
Unless you get enough passengers onboard, and enough of them paying a high enough price, you won’t last long.
You need to show them how to make a choice that’s something other than just price and speed.
And you need to get your content out and in front of your passengers before they make a decision.
Fortunately, distribution is a lot easier and cheaper these days. Social media has given us channels where we can publish for free, and advertising that we can start on a few dollars each day.
Unfortunately distribution is a lot easier and cheaper these days. Social media has given us channels where we can publish for free, and advertising that we can start on a few dollars each day.
Cheap means crowded and so your content needs to get attention.
It needs to be good, but it also needs to be consistent on the same themes. And just like your website, it needs to have direction. You need to work out what calls to action will work on each platform.
- Following you for more content.
- Signing up for emails
- Signing up for workshops & webinars
- Making low-friction sales offers
I see a lot of sites that get the first two right, but fall down on the last one.
They have great offers (destinations), all their content & case studies line up towards that destination, but nobody sees it.
All the action is going on inside the train, not where anyone can see it.
How to fix all three problems inside a month.
Right now I’m guessing you’re torn in two.
You know that you’d do better at converting a small segment of your prospects into sales if you just focussed on one offer for a while.
But you’re also scared that you’ll alienate a bunch of other potential prospects if you don’t say you can help them as well.
Here’s how we tackle that problem.
Direct Response.
Before we worry about the rest of a client’s website and content strategy, we pick a single offer and drive relevant prospects to it through channels that the rest of your prospects won’t see.
- Targeted ads
- Social connections
- Email outreach
All these “back-door” connections are far more powerful than publishing a ton of content on a blog and hoping for. Google to anoint you with free traffic.
Yes we’ll need content and case studies to back you up, but not much.
One good case study is enough when it’s highly relevant. The more vague you are with your target, the more it takes to convince them you can do the job.
We can send people to a social connection, a case study, a piece of content or a webinar whatever’s right for your sales steps.
The best part is that your other prospects won’t even see it, so they won’t feel “left out”.
If you think this is something that would help your sales, if you think you have an offer that will work with one audience, and you already have results to back it up, we carry out the rest of the steps to get prospects in front of that offer.
Just drop us an email at info@theconversion.co and we’ll send you a short questionnaire about what you have in place already.
Then we’ll schedule a 30 minute zoom call to help you connect the dots between your perfect prospect and an irresistible offer.
That’s all there is to it.