Content Catastrophe! Why Won’t My Website Convert Leads?

Picture it: you’re a small business owner and you hire a new salesperson to promote your products and services. You give the salesperson a year to help build brand awareness and drive sales. One year goes by, and you call your salesperson into a meeting. He tells you that he’s generated zero leads and $0 for your company during that time. You would fire that salesperson, correct?

In today’s technology-drive economy, you have to treat your website as a digital version of a salesperson. Your website should be consistently working to attract leads and obtain sales. If it’s not, then you need to “fire” your website.

There are many reasons why a website fails, but a key reason could be your website’s content. In the marketing world, many people say, “content is king.” This is because a robust content marketing strategy can help a company:

Improve in search engine rankings
Attract website traffic
Introduce prospects to your brand
Nurture leads along the sales cycle
Generate inquiries for your products / services
Boost sales

Let’s go back to the notion that a website is a digital salesperson and connect this more with your content strategy. Salespeople understand that customers don’t magically appear out of thin air…oh how nice that would be! In today’s competitive environment, there is a sales funnel process. Different companies have varying definition of the sales funnel, but it basically includes the following stages:

Awareness
Consideration
Research
Purchase

Since your website is a salesperson so to speak, its content needs to help attract visitors and boost awareness for your products / services (targeting the top of the funnel), help nurture and qualify leads (hitting the middle of the funnel) and ultimately secure sales (reaching what we all want – the bottom of the funnel).

When it comes to your website, look to see if you have the following:

Content for the Top of the Sales Funnel (Awareness)

Keywords and phrases for SEO/SEM
Basic / educational info

Content for the Middle of the Sales Funnel (Consideration Research)

Info that conveys industry credibility
Intro to products / services
Ways to qualify leads such as forms and landing pages

Content for the Bottom of the Funnel (Sales)

Order forms
Requests for demos / meetings with a salesperson

Website marketing is a critical part of your sales process. Review your content and make sure that your digital salesperson is top-notch. Remember, great content leads to great sales!