Having a website was a good first step (in 1997).  By the mid 2000’s your web site actually had to have interesting information on it and look more attractive than your competitors’.  You may even rank well in the search engines for keywords you have chosen as important ones for your business.  If you’re at that point, congratulations!  But wouldn’t it be nice if your website was actually generating business for your company on a regular basis?  Well it can.  You just need to call it to action!

This is not as difficult as it sounds, but it will take some effort and regular attention to what is happening with your web site, your clients and in the world of social media. At ForeSite we have been following the methods below for our own business and saw a 10x increase in lead generation in the first month.

To begin you need to create some compelling offers for your site visitors.  Unfortunately an information request form is NOT a compelling offer.  There must be a reason for the visitor to take their time to fill out a simple form to get what is behind it so you have their information.  We have found that numbered lists work very well such as “10 Tips for Developing an Effective Website“.  For more tips on compelling calls to action, download 6 Best Practices for an Effective Call to Action.

Once you have a call to action for people to download, you need to create a landing page for them to download it from.  This page should have some information about what they are getting for their time as well as a SIMPLE form for them to fill out.  Collect only the information you need to get in touch with them.  Long forms are far more often abandoned than simple ones.

Now that you have a place to send people, you need to send them there.  You must PROMOTE your new content to get people to download it.  This is best done using the powers of social media and taking advantage of the connections you have and the connections those people have.

Lastly, get ready to collect your leads and work your sales magic to convert them into new business.  We’d love to hear how this works for other people using these methods as they have been working very well for ForeSite.  Ready, Set, Sell!

Tags: call to action, Effective call to action, generate business from website, inbound marketing, marketing strategy, Social media

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 3:51 pm by Michael Giuffrida and is filed under Marketing, Website Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.