This month, I begin a three-part series of posts on which I’ve collaborated with long-time colleague Scott Hornstein. (We owe a tip of the hat to Wayne Cerullo and Phil Shelp, as well.) If you’re wondering why you’re not seeing the results you expect from your website – the engagement, lead generation, and sales – you’ll want to pay close attention.
A Smarter Website Matters
In our experience, companies that implement the ideas we will outline below have seen a 10% – 20% improvement in results – engagement, leads, and sales – within the first 6 months.
Get a Grip
Your website is your core digital asset, the hub of your digital presence. It can be a much smarter, more powerful sales tool that will generate higher engagement, proactively move prospects along their consideration journey, and give conversion a big boot in the butt.
Or, it can lay there like a lox.
Is Your B2B Website a Library or a Cocktail Party?
Websites have become passive, where stuff resides instead of where relationships blossom.
Take a look at your website, and ask yourself whether it is engaging prospects and encouraging them to take action, or more passively providing resources and materials without any real guidance as to how to use them and why they’re important.
The Billboard of Me
Is your website doing what your B2B prospects want and need it to do to move them through their unique consideration journeys? How do you know?
Here’s a quick challenge that will reveal the prospect orientation of your website – go to your website and under the Edit menu, go to Find. Enter a first-person pronoun, such as “we.” How many times does it come up? My guess is, a lot. Now try searching for a third-person pronoun, like “you.” as in a prospect.
If there’s a lot more “we” than “you” your website is a Billboard of Me. That means you’re leaving money on the table.
Self-Assessment
There’s hope for correcting these issues. You can start by taking our self-assessment to get a better handle on how prospect-centric your website really is.
Website Self-Assessment: Looking with Your Prospect’s Eyes
We’ll be back next month to talk about the unrealized potential of your site.
