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With all the chaos of running a business, it's tempting to slap together a quick website and call it a day. But, that will only get you so far.
While we completely understand why people might think they just need a website that lists their contact information and maybe their pricing or a couple of other important details, a “basic” website like this doesn’t help you make sales or set you up for success in the long term.
In fact, creating a “basic” website rather than a strategically built site that leads prospects through your brand story will only waste your small business’s time and money—and greatly limit what should be the foundation of your marketing efforts.
In this week’s episode, Kelly and Victoria explain why having a website isn’t enough to grow your small business by breaking down the six things your website needs to be able to do to generate business growth.
1. Invite Prospects into a Story that Results in Their Success
One of the most important things that your website needs to be able to do is to invite prospects into a story so they feel comfortable and know that you will help them successfully solve their problem.
Now, we’ve talked about the power of story in past episodes, but as a reminder, the average attention span of a human is about eight seconds, and studies show that you only have five seconds to capture a website visitor’s attention. The best way to do this is to create clear messaging that invites potential customers into a story—because humans love and remember stories.
While very few of us can retain lists of facts and statistics, research shows that using a story-based marketing format makes people at least 20 times more likely to remember your offer or brand. This is because stories have the unique ability to bypass the analytical part of the brain and resonate with our emotions—making them far more memorable than a plain list of features or benefits.
And, your website is arguably the best place to invite prospects into what marketers call your “BrandScript.”
The fact of the matter is that “basic” websites don’t tell a story.
When you build a non-strategic, rudimentary site that only talks about how great your company is and just lists your services and contact information, website visitors likely won’t be engaged enough to stay on your website or even remember your business the next time they need something. As a result, you miss out on business.
When you develop your brand’s story and then tell your story on your website, we can almost promise you will get more qualified leads—especially if your competitors aren’t using story in their marketing.
We could talk about the power of story in marketing for hours—if not longer—but if you have more questions about this, please go back and listen to “Episode 107: How to Write Website Copy for Your Small Business: How to Write Your Home, Service, & About Pages.”
2. Drive Prospects to Take Action
If you want your website to be a lead-generating, sale-making machine, it has to encourage your prospects to do more than browse; it has to drive potential customers to take action.
In order to do this, your website needs to include a direct call to action, or CTA for short. In other words, you need to clearly invite your website visitors to do whatever it is that you ultimately want them to do—such as “buy now” or “schedule a discovery call.”
Then, you want to use your CTA to drive prospects to take action by doing three things on your website:
1. Make your CTA stand out and actionable by putting it on colored buttons.
Your CTA should be as concise as possible—preferably no more than four words—and fit nicely on a website button. As you build your website (or have a designer build your site), put your CTA on buttons, use color to help those buttons stand out, and make them link to a page where site visitors can take action.
For example, if your CTA is “Schedule a Discovery Call,” make the buttons take prospects to a page where they can schedule a call with you or your team.
2. Include CTA buttons in the top right corner of your menu and throughout your website.
As prospective customers peruse your website, they will be ready to take action at different times. For example, some will need to read testimonials before deciding to work with you, while others will need to see pricing.
By placing CTA buttons strategically throughout your website, you can ensure that your website visitors can easily take action whenever they’re ready—making them much more likely to inquire or purchase before you lose their attention.
3. Use the same CTA.
Remember, your website needs to give visitors clarity. If every button gives your website visitors a different instruction and takes them to a different web page, you’ll only cause confusion and increase your chances of losing a prospect. Instead, use the same CTA over and over again so that website visitors know exactly what they need to do.
If you’d like to see an example of how to use CTA buttons, visit treefrogmarketing.com. Our CTA is “Schedule a Discovery Call,” and if you go to our website, you’ll quickly notice CTA buttons all over our site telling prospective customers to do exactly that.
Now, you may be thinking something like, “That isn’t necessary. If I just have a simple, basic website, people will know they need to contact me.”
While we completely understand this thought process, we want to kindly tell you that you’re wrong. You see, if you’re leaving room for uncertainty on your website by not clearly telling website visitors what they need to do, you’re drastically increasing the likelihood that people will leave your site before taking action.
In other words, unless your website tells prospective customers exactly what to do, you’re missing out on business.
And, if you still don’t believe us, we want to encourage you to think about your relationship with your spouse or whomever you’re closest to in life. It’s more than likely in your time together one of you has been frustrated with the other because someone has failed to do something “obvious.”
Similarly, if you can’t know and understand what the people closest to you want, how can you expect prospects to do what you want them to do without having a clear CTA that you repeat again and again?
3. Serve Your Customers Well by Including the Information Prospects Need
Something else that your website needs to do is include the information your prospects actually need—not necessarily the things you think they should know.
Now, you might be thinking, “I’ll just give them that information when they contact me through my website.” But, here’s the thing. If your website doesn’t provide the information your prospects are looking for, they will more than likely leave your site without ever contacting you simply because it requires too much work on their part to learn about your products or services.
With that in mind, determine what information is important to your ideal customer and make sure that information is clearly stated on your website and easy to find.
For example, is price important to them? If so, make sure your pricing is available. Are your prospects looking for a widget with a specific feature? If so, make sure that’s highlighted. Are they more than likely comparing your packages to your competitors’? If so, detail your package options.
We want to encourage you to check out our free guide “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers” We can promise you that your website will help you make more sales and generate more leads when it simply answers prospective customers’ questions.
Plus, when your website is written using a story-based format, it will better filter leads for you—meaning you and your team won’t need to spend as much time communicating with inquiries who aren’t a good fit because your site will better help your website visitors pre-qualify themselves.
4. Establish Your Business as an Expert in Your Field
Another thing a strategically built website can do but a basic website can’t is help establish your business as an expert or authority in your field.
To help potential customers trust that you know what you’re doing, we recommend adding authority to your website by including testimonials from happy customers, links to publications where your business has been featured, awards your business has received, client logos if you work with businesses that are recognizable, a portfolio that showcases your work, and/or case studies that show the results you deliver for your customers.
Now, we’re by no means saying you need to include all of these items. Use what makes sense for your ideal client. However, in order to invite prospects into your brand story, you have to establish yourself as the “guide.”
Don’t make your business the “hero” in this story.
For the record, your small business does a lot, and you should be proud of your achievements. However, you can’t go around telling potential customers how great your products, services, and accomplishments are. Because, when you only talk about your business, what you offer, and how you know what you’re doing, you come across as pompous and salesy. And, nobody likes that.
For example, we all dread running into that person who only ever talks about themselves and thinks they have all the answers.
Essentially, when we put ourselves and what we have to offer at the forefront of our marketing messaging, we make ourselves the “hero” of the story. However, in order for your marketing to work, your customer needs to be the hero and you need to be the “guide” by giving the hero (the customer) a plan they can use to reach success.
And, again, you can establish yourself as the wise guide on your website by including testimonials from happy customers, links to publications where your business has been featured, awards your business has received, client logos, your portfolio, and/or case studies.
Remember, people don’t buy from businesses. They buy from people or brands that they know, like, and trust—and your website is one of the best places to foster connections with prospects and show them that you can help them.
5. Put Prospects in Your Sale Funnel
There are two more reasons we want to encourage you to have more than just a basic website, and the next one is that your website can drive prospects into your sales funnel.
Now, we’ve talked about sales funnels in past episodes, but a sales funnel is simply a content marketing framework that turns potential customers into paying customers. Essentially, it allows you to serve your prospects, build trust with them, and help them see that your product or service is the answer to the problem they’re facing.
Building an effective sales funnel is the third step of the flywheel marketing method, which if you’re a regular listener, you know is the marketing strategy we recommend for nearly all small businesses.
What is the flywheel marketing method?
If you aren’t familiar with the flywheel marketing method, please go back and listen to “Episode 103,” where we explain the flywheel marketing strategy and why we use it for all of our agency clients.
In the flywheel marketing system, your website and online marketing efforts work in sync to continually produce results. This method includes four steps:
- Understanding your audience and creating clear messaging
- Building a strong foundation with a strategically built, SEO-optimized website
- Creating content and a sales funnel that serve your ideal client well
- Promoting your products, services, and content
Again, creating a sales funnel is step number three. You can learn more about sales funnels in “Episode 114;” however, for the sake of this conversation, we just want to make it clear that you need a sales funnel on your website.
How will having a sales funnel on your website help you increase sales?
98% of website visitors don’t make a purchase the very first time they visit a website. As a result, you need a means of keeping the conversation with prospects going, and a sales funnel will allow you to do exactly that.
An effective sales funnel allows you to build relationships with your ideal audience and guide them through the natural phases of a relationship so that they want to do business with you.
As we’ve discussed in past episodes of Priority Pursuit, nobody likes to be sold to. In fact, going straight for the sale is the equivalent of laying eyes on someone for the first time ever, walking up to them, getting down on one knee, and asking them to marry you. It’s uncomfortable, not appropriate, and not likely to end well.
However, a sales funnel is more like dating. Essentially, by providing your prospects with the content and information they need to get to know you and to see how your product or service can make their life better, they’ll naturally want to purchase from you.
Long story short, having an effective sales funnel will help you both increase sales and build a loyal customer base long term.
6. Be Optimized for Search Engines
Lastly, you need to make sure your website can be found on Google.
If you aren’t familiar with SEO—which stands for “search engine optimization”—it’s simply a process that helps your website rank well on Google (or other search engines) when users conduct searches related to your products, services, or content.
In other words, SEO helps Google users find your website or content when they’re in need of products or services you offer. It also helps them find your content when you have a blog post or another form of content that answers their questions or solves their problem.
For small businesses, SEO is a particularly valuable marketing tactic because when people want to intentionally look for a product or service, they use Google. In fact, 97% of people use Google when they’re in need of a local product or service. This means that when most people need to purchase something or invest in a service, they go to Google.
As a result, if your website doesn’t appear among the first Google search results, you’re missing out on business—not because you aren’t great at what you do and not because you don’t serve your customers well, but simply because your ideal clients can’t find your website.
If your website isn’t optimized, you’re drastically limiting the reach and effectiveness of your most powerful marketing tool.
We want to make something clear. It isn’t enough just to have a website or even to have a website that contains everything we’ve discussed so far. Assuming your ideal clients are looking for your products or services on Google, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for search engines so that potential customers can find it.
Yes, you can share links to your website and content on social media, via email, and in countless other places. But, when your website ranks well on Google, people can literally find your business while you’re sleeping. In other words, SEO can result in consistent business that requires little work on your part—assuming your website serves your ideal customers well and leads to conversions.
Now, the problem with just having a basic website from an SEO perspective is the fact that a basic site probably isn’t very helpful. Google’s goal is to help its users find relevant, helpful information as quickly as possible. And, if your website is little more than a contact form, it likely won’t rank well for searches related to your products or services.
On the other hand, if your website answers your ideal clients' questions, offers valuable content (such as blog posts, videos, or other media), and serves your ideal clients well, your site and your content will be much more likely to rank well on Google and to be found by prospective customers who are actively looking for products, services, and content like yours and likely ready to invest.
What if a small business already has “enough” business?
After explaining why having a website isn’t enough to grow your small business—owners and leaders often ask us, “If a small business is already receiving enough business, do they still need a strategic website?”
Even if a small business currently has all of the business they need or can handle, we would still encourage them to invest in a strategic, lead-generating website for two reasons.
1. You will likely eventually need more business or want to experience more growth.
For example, if the economy shifts, a new competitor enters the market, one of your competitors levels up their marketing, or for countless other reasons, you may lose business.
Or, you may just get to a point where you want to grow your business so you can work less, make more money, make a bigger impact, or for any other reason. And, that is going to require more business coming in. Basically, to give your business security long-term, we would still recommend investing in or building a strategic website that does everything we discussed.
2. You’re likely going to pay a similar amount of money whether you invest in a basic website or a strategically built website.
Most marketing agencies, copywriters, SEO specialists, and web designers that build non-strategic basic websites have starting-at prices. And, those prices are going to be very high for a website that doesn’t help you connect with prospects, convert site visitors into paying customers, generate new leads, help your small business get found on Google, or help your business grow.
So, to set your business up for long-term success and to get the most out of your marketing budget, we highly recommend investing in a strategic website from the start.
As we wrap up this episode, we want to remind everyone that your website is your small business’s most powerful marketing tool. In fact, after identifying your ideal client and clarifying your message, website development is the FIRST thing we recommend that small businesses invest in from a marketing perspective.
We hope you found this episode helpful, and if you want to make your website even more powerful, check out our free guide “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers.”
There’s nothing we want more than to see your small business succeed, and the truth is, you need a website that converts. Because, without one, you’re limiting your company’s growth.
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Discover the “8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers” With Our Free Guide
- Listen to “Episode 103: The Best Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: The Flywheel Marketing Method”
- Listen to “Episode 114: How to Build a Sales Funnel as a Small Business”
- Learn About Developing Your Brand Story With Building a StoryBrand
- Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook
- Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services
- Join the Priority Pursuit Facebook Community
- Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
- Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
- Follow or DM Victoria Rayburn on Instagram
The Priority Pursuit Podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
You can find The Priority Pursuit Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Stitcher, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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