About six weeks ago, one of my blog readers told me something that really pissed me off: “you don’t put your actions were your mouth is. You write all these great articles on how to create effective websites but your own site doesn’t follow the advice you give.”
She was right. We’ve been so busy helping clients grow their companies that for the last 5 years we didn’t update our website at all. Most of our clients come from word-of-mouth anyway, so I figured it didn’t really matter. But Tanya (my blog reader) was right. We needed a website that reflects all the marketing principles we preach. That’s exactly what we did.
Last week we launched our new site and I want to share with you all the marketing tactics we’re using so you can get an idea or two for your own business.
We Re-Wrote Our Copy
This is what we did:
- We made our headlines bigger and red to attract people’s attention.
- We showed our prospects that we understand their problem and we have a solution for them.
- We made our text easy to read by using short sentences, short paragraphs, bold subheads and bullets.
We Included Case Studies
We asked ourselves, “how can we show our prospects we’re really good at what we do?” The answer was obvious. We added case studies to the website so we could show our prospects the results we got for our clients. There’s no stronger selling point than evidence showing that you are as good as you say you are.
We Included Testimonials
Testimonials are extremely powerful. Pay attention to the way we formatted them. We put the testimonials right next to our contact forms to encourage people to write us with their questions.
We Included a List of Some of Our Clients
This is another way to show prospects that we are very experienced and other companies just like them trust us with their business.
We Used Effective Contact Forms
This is why our contact forms are effective:
- We kept them short. We didn’t ask for unnecessary information.
- We used a checkmark and a very attractive call to action (take a look at the first sentence in the image).
- We used an animated arrow that shows people where they need to click. This is a great attention-grabber.
- We included a privacy policy “in plain English”.
We Added Links to My Social Media Profiles
When prospects aren’t ready to buy but they want to learn more about me, they can follow me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
We Added Our “Google Certified” Logo
Last year I got certified by Google AdWords. We always include this logo in our proposals but there was no reason not to put it on our website too.
“As Seen On”
I’ve been featured as an Internet Marketing expert on several websites and I wanted to use this as a major selling point.
Free Reports
I wrote five reports on different Internet marketing topics. I put a lot of time into these and I think they’re a must-read for any business owner who’s serious about using the Internet to grow their businesses.
Blog Subscription
We made subscribing to our blog much easier. Our subscription rate tripled since last week!
“Have Questions?”
A lot of people have online marketing questions but they’re a little shy. We added this form to every page of our blog to encourage people to ask us their questions.
Multiple Calls to Action
We added forms at the end of each blog post and a slide-up script to encourage people to ask their questions. This way, communicating with us is a lot easier.
Funnels
We used InfusionSoft to create automatic email follow-up sequences. These are the funnels we set up:
- People fill out a quote request form > Prospect gets assigned to online marketing expert > If the prospect isn’t ready to move forward we send them case studies and testimonials and we invite them to schedule a phone call with an online marketing specialist > If the prospect isn’t interested, we invite them to subscribe to our blog.
- People get one of our free reports > We send them the report > We ask them if they have questions > If we don’t get an answer, we send them some case studies and testimonials > We invite them to schedule a phone call with an online marketing specialist > If the prospect isn’t interested, we invite them to subscribe to our blog.
I hope you learned a thing or two from this blog post. If you have questions, let me know and I’ll be happy to help you.
