How’s Your Website Doing for Lead Generation? Is it Working?

How’s Your Website Doing for Lead Generation? Is it Working?:

How’s your website doing?

How do you think it’s doing?  Is it performing to expectations?  Do you even have expectations?  How much did you spend on it?  Measuring ROI?  Was it written by internal staff, an outsourced tech writer, or a marketer? The answer starts off with what your goals are for the website, and then determine if those goals are being met.
Are you generating leads from your website?

•  If you have goals set-up with your analytics tool, and you have a proper lead capture mechanism by offering content, webinars, demos, or trials, or even an easy way to engage with a prospect, then you can measure the conversions, which ideally should  be qualified email submissions, so that prospects enter your funnel.

•  If you have a soft-sell “contact us” page, then driving immediate leads is harder. It now becomes the job of the website itself to create a compelling story so that the prospect bookmarks the website for when he’s ready to research further, or is ready to contact sales immediately because of the relevant message that solves his business needs.

Does your website tell a compelling story?

• Landing pages and microsites are designed to generate leads.  Websites themselves tell a more complete story, with the goal to reassure a prospect that your solution is right for them.  Without a lead capture mechanism as described above, you have no way to contact a specific prospect and thus that prospect doesn’t enter the funnel.  You can certainly utilize tools that provide code on your site that identifies website visitors, but you’ll have to do some digging to find the specific prospect; and even if you do, that prospect may not be ready to engage with you.

• Do your prospects agree with your story?   If so, they are engaged; if not, they leave.  Your story has to relate to your audience’s problems, and explain simply and easily how your solution solves their needs.  Language has to be written in their language; not yours.  Avoid the marketing-speak, and explain why your prospects need your solution, and why they should buy from me.  Give them useful content so your prospects can consider your solutions when they enter the consideration phase.  Below is a matrix of what makes up good content, and a good website story:

Are you key pages being seen?

• Take a look at your analytics’ engagement measures.  How many pages per visit is your site receiving?  If your story is told best with 4-5 pages, and your pages per visit is 2-3, then there’s a problem.   Prospects are busy, and they scan. They have to be sold on your solutions early-on or else they leave and visit a competitor.

• Clues to the missing pages of the story can be found when looking at the content section of your analytics tool.  Look at the visitors of your Case Study page, your About Us page, and your Key Solutions pages, for example.  With analytics, you can study the page navigation- tracking what page prospects visit before the key page, and what page was viewed after.  By studying the page navigation as well as page exit rates, you can make note of which pages aren’t working, and make strategic changes to the page look, content, and navigation, so that the key page becomes a better, more engaged, contribution to your solution story. Below is what the navigation report looks like on Google Analytics.

Here’s an example of a good story; and a not-so-good story.

I did a search for Document Management Software.  Here are a couple of ads:

EMC is giving away something on ECM (Enterprise Content Management) for lead generation. It must be some kind if ebook- it’s not clear. But it will take me 15 minutes to read it.  However, my search is for software; so at first impression, I don’t know what this company does. It’s time to read the story.

EMC’s SEO Snippet.  I don’t sense they are a software firm for Document Management

EMC’s home page doesn’t give me much of a clue on my business need.  The first thing people see is an ad for their show.  I don’t care at this point; I have a business need I need help with.  This is a bad introduction to a story.

Here’s a page on their content management services.  There’s not much content I can browse or scan on this page.  The story is still limited.  A prospect may be confused on what to do next. The case studies help a bit, but I have to download them as PDFs.

There is indeed much content on this site, but there’s no guide for a call-to-action. Yes I can call them or email them, but not ready yet.  There’s too much to read; and as a prospect I could get lost.  The site is not doing an optimal job of storytelling and getting me to offer my email address.  The white paper offered earlier should be included here on a side bar, where there can be opportunity for lead capture in order to receive the quality content.
Now Filebound has a poor paid search ad, as it doesn’t offer any benefits or reasons to click.
Here’s the SEO snippet.  Although a little long- it’s focused, and clearly explains what they do.

Here’s where the ad clicks to:

This is a great simple story.  Benefit content is immense.  Videos are compelling. Case studies are easy to digest. Every page has a one-field web form; an email addresses to request a demo.  They need help with their paid search efforts, but I am more likely to engage with this firm for my document management software needs than EMC.  Sorry.
B2B Websites have much to learn from above.  Firms spend thousands of dollars on fancy websites written by “scientists” and not by marketers who know who to tell compelling and persuasive stories.  A website is a sales tool.  Its job is to engage prospects with education and persuasion.  It needs to attract leads into your funnel.  It needs SEO based on buyer’s needs; not yours.   Ads, website descriptions, keywords, landing pages, website content, and call-to-action all need to align for the funnel to be optimized, and make your website work.
Study your analytics; review your website goals; review the website content.  I ask again; How is Your Website Doing?