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Getting clients “in through the door” on your website

Posted byIan Brodie on January 18th, 2015.

I've been doing quite a few website reviews for members in Momentum Club recently.

One of the mistakes I see being made a lot is that the website doesn't immediately make the right impression on visitors.

A great way of thinking about visitors to your site is to see them as peeking through the doorway (your home page) and darting their head from left to right to quickly see if it's worth coming through the door and stepping fully in to your site.

Once they've stepped through, you've got 'em. They'll explore your site, they can find your great resources.

But nothing happens until they make that decision to mentally step through the door.

Whether they do that or not depends on that first impression. Whether they think it's going to be worth their while staying.

They're essentially asking the question “will I get what I want here?”

That's why the headline of your website is so important.

Your headline is the big, bold text that's the first thing they see when they come to your site.

To get the right headline you need to understand what it is your ideal clients are looking for when they come to your site.

In my case, I focus my site at people looking for information to help them with marketing and sales. My goal is to get them to sign up for my regular emails so I can build credibility and trust over time.

So my headline (depending on what I'm testing right now) is some variant of “Get access to my very best client winning shortcuts” next to a giant button to sign up.

Clear. Simple.

No need for fancy slogans or clever straplines.

For most businesses, your ideal clients will probably be coming to your site looking to see if you can help them, and to see whether they should speak to you or one of their competitors.

So your headline needs to speak to that. The simplest format is just to say what you do and who you do it with.

Not the technical details of what you do, but the problems you solve or the results you help your clients achieve.

“Teambuilding and leadership development for the creative industries”.

“Sales growth for technology startups”.

“Clear advice to help you get your next senior role”.

All these tell your visitors exactly what they'll get from you and the site.

They're not going to instantly whip out their wallet and hire you based on those headlines. That's not the point.

The goal of your headline is to tell your ideal clients they're in the right place.

Persuading them to give you a call is the next step. The rest of your site does that. But the first, most important step is to get them to mentally commit to staying on your site.

What does your headline say?

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Are your instincts letting you down?

Posted byIan Brodie on January 11th, 2015.

I like to think I know quite a bit about marketing.

I study extensively and I have nearly two decades of experience.

Yet I'm often wrong about lots of stuff.

I'm always surprised by the answer to at least one question when I run surveys. And when I've been running my recent pay-per-click advertising campaigns I've consistently guessed wrongly about which ad and which landing page will be the most successful.

My saving grace, I guess, is that I'm more interested in the truth than in proving myself right. So I'll run surveys. I'll test two different ads and pages to see which wins.

So even if my instincts let me down, the numbers tell me the right route to go down.

I see lots of people falling foul of this and relying too much on their instincts.

Because they don't like an email or an advert or a presentation, they assume no one will.

Because a web page appeals to their sense of aesthetics, they assume it will work for their business.

They're wrong again and again. But what can save them is testing.

Testing shows you what really works. And in doing so it improves your instincts for next time.

Google have a testing tool called “Content Experiments” as part of the free Google Analytics account. And for a small fee, you can get “what you see is what you get” testing from Visual Website Optimizer or Optimizely.

It can all sound a bit geeky to be honest. Not at all the big thinking and grand strategies you'd expect marketing to focus on.

But I've run plenty of tests where one variation has outperformed the other by 40% or more. So that small amount of time spent thinking about what to test and creating the test in the tool has had huge results.

How would your business change if you got 40% more web traffic? Or 40% more email subscribers. Or 25% more people clicking the buy button.

All possible without any massive strategy changes. Just regular testing and tweaking.

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The key to business freedom

Posted byIan Brodie on January 4th, 2015.

I realised today that it's been something like 3 or 4 years now since I actually made an outbound call to a potential client. Either warm or cold.

And as you probably know, I'm a great believer in not chasing, After a potential client has called me and we've spoken, I drop them a couple of follow up emails. But if they don't bite, I let it go and just continue with my regular value-added email follow up.

Now I'm absolutely certain that I could have won a bunch more business if I'd been more aggressive about outbound calling and chasing.

But you know what? I'm doing pretty well without needing to do all that.

I don't enjoy it, and one of the big advantages of having a lot of inbound leads is that I just don't need to do it.

In business, you sometimes have to go outside your comfort zone. Push yourself to do what's right and what's needed even if you don't personally enjoy it.

But how long can you keep that up?

Not very long I reckon.

One of the things about having your own business is you can shape it around what you want to do. If you're not enjoying your business, you might as well have a job really.

And the thing I've found that gives the most control and the most options is to have a steady flow of leads coming in to your business.

With a steady flow of leads (and a decent nurture system like email marketing) you can pick and choose who you work with and what you do.

If you find you're working with people you don't really want to work with, or on projects or topics you're not enjoying as much as you could my advice is that rather than trying to “fix” those relationships and projects, you should focus on bringing a lot more leads into your pipeline.

That way you can choose to work on the things you find the most fulfilling. With the people you enjoy working with. You get freedom.

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How real businesses are transformed

Posted byIan Brodie on December 21st, 2014.

You won't be surprised to hear that doing what I do, I subscribe to a lot of emails from marketing people. One I read recently made me grind my teeth.

The writer was talking about an event she'd just run for clients and she described how many of the particpants had told her, teary-eyed, just how transformative the event had been for them and their business.

Now of course, the purpose of the email was to get readers to want to be part of her next tear-inducing, business transforming event.

But in my experience, the whole “come along and be transformed” thing can be hugely counter-productive.

You see, big exciting seminars can provide intellectual and emotional stimulation. They can help you look at your business in different ways. Get new insights. Get energised.

But transform your business?

Transforming your business takes hard work. Day in, day out. It means doing things differently, not just thinking them.

It takes action. It takes persistence.

Encouraging people to believe that everything will change in the space of a seminar may help you sell a bunch of tickets. But it won't help your clients take real steps forward in their business.

Real steps forward, real transformation comes from hard work.

Never forget that.

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Sting vs Lady Gaga

Posted byIan Brodie on December 14th, 2014.

People talk a lot about being “authentic” these days, don't they?

I heard an unusual interview recently that changed the way I thought about it.

It was with Mark Ellen, a music journalist who worked on the NME in the 70s and who later edited various magazines and was one of the anchors at Live Aid.

He described a recent experience he'd had “interviewing” Lady Gaga.

What actually happened is that she and her huge entourage quizzed him to make sure he was the “right person” to do the interview and that the image presented to the world would be exactly the image they wanted to portray.

He contrasted that with when he'd interviewed Sting. This was back in the early 80s on the back of The Police's fourth number-one hit. They were the biggest band in the world, and Ellen had an interview with their lead singer.

The interview was in the house Sting had just bought in London. Ellen knocked on the door at the allotted time and Sting opened it himself. Inside, Sting was alone with only his young son to keep him company.

Ellen interviewed Sting without minders, PR men and spin doctors. He asked the questions he wanted to ask and which his readers would be interested in. And Sting answered candidly.

That was just the way they did things back then. It wasn't all about image and control.

I've previously lauded Lady Gaga for the way she interacts with her fans on social media. But although that kind of controlled interaction and managed image seems to work for many, I think a lot of us these days look for something more.

I suspect many of our clients do too.

At the risk of using what I think is becoming a cliché, they're often looking for authenticity.

Authenticity is different things to different people.

Personally I don't much go in for videos done in the back yard with your family. Or carefully scripted “outtakes”. Or telling everyone about your difficult childhood or your “rags to riches” story.

It all feels too pre-written and designed deliberately to create a certain impression. It's all still about image and control.

I like the kind of authenticity Sting showed. Here I am. What do you want to know? Here's what I really think.

I hope to be able to live up to that myself on occasions.

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Dull systems = exciting business

Posted byIan Brodie on December 7th, 2014.

I heard an interesting comment recently. One I COMPLETELY disagree with.

The comment was from someone who said they didn't like to put structure and systems into their business because it stifled spontaneity.

And that since we lived in a “dynamic and ever changing world” our client's environment and organisations apparently change daily and so being structured ties us down too much and stops us responding dynamically.

Bobbins.

Those are the words of someone who's ill-disciplined and is looking for excuses.

Now I'm pretty ill-disciplined myself, but at least I recognise it and am trying to do something about it.

We may live in a dynamic world, but our clients don't change everything in their business on a daily basis.

Establishing basic disciplines like devoting the first hour a day to marketing, making at least 5 “keep in touch” calls a week to old contacts, or making notes on all sales meetings and tracking follow-up; none of that interferes with responding quickly to changes in the business world.

And establishing systems and having discipline frees you up to be creative and spontaneous where it's valuable. It doesn't stifle you.

I've developed some simple checklists of steps to take triggered by key events in my business. Stuff like taking on new clients, finishing a client engagement, or follow-up after a sales meeting.

Every time one of those events happens I simply follow my list of steps and I know I'm going to do a decent job at that critical point.

So, for example, every new client gets a welcome letter, details of our commercial arrangement, an invoice before we start, and they get tagged on my system for client follow-up.

Because I've written those steps down I don't have to invest brainpower in recreating them every time I get a new client. So I can focus my energy on coming up with extra new stuff that will make a difference.

That's where your spontaneity and creativity are best funnelled. Into really adding value, not reinventing the wheel on the basics.

All it takes is to write down what the critical tasks you have to perform are for key events like new clients or sales meetings. Then make sure you do them consistently every time.

Simple stuff. But powerful.

Have you done it yet?