In this episode of our marketing podcast we discuss how to get your website producing leads or sales, and give actionable advice anyone can apply right away.
One of our best podcasts yet, in this one we go over the subject of lead generation for a website. How to ensure your website is well written, well SEO’d and converts prospects into leads!
Matt:
Hello. Hello. Welcome to Worry Free Marketing, a podcast. I am your co-host Matt D’Rion, CEO of Worry
Free Marketing. And I have with me today, Chad Lane, co-founder of Worry Free Marketing. And how
you doing, Chad?
Chad:
Doing good. Doing great.
Matt:
Today, we are going to be talking about lead generation, specifically as it relates to a website and getting
your website to produce leads for you so that your users become prospects, your website visitors
become prospects. I should note that this is the fourth or fifth in a series of podcasts that we did all less
than 20 minutes long and all on the topic of making a website effective.
Chad:
Yeah. Making websites effective and sought. This is really closely related to what we were talking about
last time regarding design and user experience. I think the first and primary thing is make it easy for
people. You mentioned last time, “Hey, by the way, yes, your phone number does have to go at the top
and the bottom of your website.” That’s like the basis of lead generation. “Okay, do you have a contact
form? You want people to contact you? You make sure you have a contact form and make sure it’s easily
located.” Right. People only have so much patience for that kind of stuff before they just figure out,
“Nah, you don’t want to contact them.” Right?
Matt:
Such a good point.
Chad:
Yeah. You know, it starts really basically. Anyone can look at their site and go, “Okay, can I easily contact
myself?” And, actually, does the contact form work? You’d be surprised how often you go, “Okay, well,
let’s plug in this contact form,” and then it disappears into the ether and maybe they’re going
somewhere else. I mean, these are very…
Matt:
Right. Or for the visitor, they fill it out and then the contact form goes away. But it doesn’t say to you,
“Okay, hey, that worked.”
Chad:
“We got it.”
Matt:
“We got the contact form.” Let alone is the form going to the right email address and is the person
getting it filling it out, and this brings up a good point, which is that for… There’s a myth surrounding
websites. So if you have an e-commerce website, your goal is to make a sale on the website, typically
without a human needing to be involved. If you don’t have an e-commerce website, your goal is not to
make a sale. That’s not the goal. The goal is to make contacts, get the person to reach out to you by
phone or by filling out a form. And if they’re not ready to reach out, if you have kind of a long sales cycle
industry, where the best thing you can do is really inform people, then it is to get an email address so
that you’re allowed to communicate with them.
Matt:
And oftentimes you can get that by offering something of value. So you have get a sale on e-commerce
and there’s different ways to get that. And, they have these things called… They have value ladders and
how you move someone up it and getting someone through. But it’s really a matter of making contact in
a service-based industry. And then when in a product based industry, it’s making a sale. And I think a
common myth, I love to cover these myths and misconceptions. The common myth is that you’re going
to get it right the first time.
Chad:
Sure.
Matt:
That you’re going to launch your website yeah, and put the product for sale. And everyone’s just going
to buy it the first time. Typically it takes some tweaking and some figure, figure, and looking at your
offers. And, so how do you do that tweak?
Matt:
And I thought we could talk about some of the things that we make sure. How do we know that a
website is generating leads? We can cover how to get it to generate leads. And then how do you know
that it’s actually… How could you incrementally know whether or not it’s going to work and how do you
get feedback so you can make changes? What do you base those changes on? You know how many
clients don’t have Google Analytics on their website that I come across? You know, there’s just things
like that where it’s like, yeah.
Chad:
Yeah. Okay. Those are good points. Yeah. So get Google Analytics on your site, so you can see how many
people are visiting versus how many people are contacting you.
Matt:
Right. And which pages they leave at. So there’s like a few things you could focus on, because there’s so
much stuff in Google Analytics, you could spend days and days down a data rabbit hole, but which pages
do they tend to come to? Which pages do they tend to leave from? And then which pages do they tend
to contact you from? So if not a lot of people make it to the pages they contact you from, but there are a
lot of people making it to pages they leave you from, then you can look at how you can get them to the
contact pages or how you can make it easier for them to contact you on the pages they do find
themselves on, the ones they seem to be most interested in.
Chad:
That’s pretty deep on the analysis. I’m wondering how many, did… Boy. Yeah.
Matt:
So, they should just hire us.
Chad:
Yeah, they should just hire us. Don’t worry about that.
Matt:
Well, that’s the kind of stuff we do. Yeah. That’s the kind of stuff we do. This is how deep we go. So, if
we’re not going to talk about analyzing, fine, but if a person has a machine going and they want to
generate leads and they’re paying someone to do it, this stuff should be in place. So then, let’s get more
basic then on… You’re right. We need try to keep it pretty actionable for anyone who owns a website.
Chad:
Let me go with a couple of things that I look at, just kind of like right off the bat on a site. One, is there a
link to a contact form on every page? There should be, right? A lot of times there aren’t, or they’re
hidden. That’s bad, right? Because someone might make the decision to contact you at any point on any
page of the site. Maybe they were looking for a specific answer, they found it and now they want to
contact you. Well, if they have to then search through the menu to figure out how to do that, you’ve just
lost a certain amount of people who are more interested in watching YouTube videos and concerts.
Don’t do that. You’ve got a nice buzz in the background, there.
Matt:
Oh, I can move my mic.
Chad:
Okay. So, and then as you mentioned, the phone number and making that clickable, because 60% of all
website traffic is on mobile devices now. So you got to make that super easy for people to click that. And
then another thing I look at, and that we look at pretty frequently, is on the contact form. Is there
anything that demonstrates any sort of expertise or actual interest in the person contacting you or does
it just say name required, phone number required, message required? I think that’s one of these points
that is just horrific, especially if you’re in an industry that requires your expertise and your interest, a
counselor of some kind, like a lawyer, et cetera, a financial advisor, any of these sorts of things where
it’s your knowledge and expertise that’s on display. If you’ve just got name, phone number, message, A)
it shows that you don’t care about the person and B) it doesn’t allow you to demonstrate or to accrue
any buy-in from the person contacting them.
Matt:
This is an interesting point because it will fly in the teeth of what some internet marketers try to push
down the throats in their online courses and whatnot. They say that you should have as few fields to fill
out as possible. So they say, “Just get their name and their number, just get their name and their email
address, or you should have as few fields as possible,”
Chad:
I think that’s dead wrong.
Matt:
Well, I do too. I do too. Go ahead.
Chad:
Yeah. I mean one, okay. How are you going to parse out the endless spams, right? If it’s that easy to
contact you, you’re going to get loaded up with spam. And then you’ve got your salesperson grinding
through these “leads” that are actually just spam bullshit. And pretty soon they’re going to get mad and
not want to contact the people. And so you’re losing money in that sense. And in another sense, if
someone takes the time to fill out some interesting questions about what it is that they’re really looking
to achieve, and the dance studio comes to mind on this. But anyway, we might want to talk about that
or not, but they are going to be interested in hearing back what you have to say, and you’re giving your
salesperson a little bit better of a softball pitch there. You’ve given them information that they can then
use in the call on a warm lead rather than a name, phone number.
Matt:
So, this goes back, it’s actually a part of our salesmanship training and experience and expertise, where
you hear people talk about qualifying a prospect. You walk into buy a car, they’re going to qualify you.
You walk in… My wife and I are looking at mattresses right now and they have a whole section that is for
value mattresses. And then they have the more expensive stuff. And the guy was sure to let us know,
“Here’s the way our store is broken up. We have these kinds here and we have these, and then our
value mattresses are over there,” and he watches, where do we go first? Do we go look at the value
mattresses first? Or do we go over and look at the expensive mattresses first? Where do we tend to
hover? Because then he knows we’re going to kind of know the pricing. They start about this, then they
go down to that.
Matt:
And he kind of watches and he knows, are they actually qualified or not? Might actually look at the kind
of car you drive, too. Who knows? Right. So they’re qualifying. But what we like to do is what I call prequalifying.
And that term tends to get used a lot in the real estate market, but I really think it applies to
all marketing. So we have attorney clients, for example, where the leads they get, the person says, “My
name is blah. I want this, the area of law and you help with is this. Here’s a bit about my specific case.
Yes, I have this.” And so all those leads when the person calls, they’re going to say, “Hi, this is so-and-so
calling for Bob regarding the will you want to get made for you and your wife to help take care of your
two daughters.”
Matt:
Bam. It’s like a very warm thing. Some would say, “Oh, well, you just want to get as many identities as
possible and then just blah, blah, blah.” And they look at it as a really big funnel. I think for larger
organizations, it’s fine to identify, to get as many identities as you can and have email marketing going
out to them and see what you can develop over time and so on. But when we’re talking about the
difference between talking to five people in a day and having three book with you or talking to 20
people in a day and having three book with you. We’d rather have someone talk to five and have three
book with them. And so we do tend to go in that direction, I think.
Chad:
Yeah, kind of the higher value clients, higher value services. What comes to mind is in medieval times,
are your salespeople the highly trained knights sitting on the horse with all of the armor or are your
salespeople the peasants in potato sacks and pitchforks. And if they’re your shock troops okay, fine. But,
if you spend as much time and money on training salespeople as we do, you may want to go for the
quality lead.
Matt:
So then there’s this thing where a person is really interested and they know they’re going to want
something at some point, but they’re not really ready to buy yet. They might not be ready to have a
conversation, or they’re not ready to fill out that contact form that asks for all these details, because
that does mean you’re going to call them. They’re kind of tire kicking right now. So I know what I always
recommend, but I can ask you just so we keep it conversational, how do we take the prospect to…
They’re interested, not interested enough to talk to you, but they’re going to make a decision at some
point in the next one week to six months, and what do we do with that? They’re qualified. They’re just
at the beginning of their journey.
Chad:
That, Matt, is what we call an identity capture, right? And that is the thing of value that you know that
your prospects are looking for, that is valuable enough that they’re willing to exchange their nonidentity
with an actual identity. And it might just be an email address. But you know, part of the value of
being online is that you can tire-kick and look at cars without having annoying salespeople chase you
around and ask you about whatever, pepper you with questions and try to get you sold. I know some
people are terribly uncomfortable with that and they don’t want to be bothered. So an identity capture
device then is something that it’s worth exchanging an email address for. And then, as marketers, we
then follow up and provide further marketing assets, further emails, further offers of downloads, et
cetera, to prepare the prospect for a sale.
Matt:
I have a company that I gave my identity two years ago. It took two years before I bought from them.
Chad:
Oh, yeah?
Matt:
Emails kept coming in. Every few months I’d actually open one. They weren’t so often that I was like, “I
need to delete this,” but it was often enough that I saw it. And when I was ready, their brand was right
there, it was like, “Oh, that’s where I’ll go.” It was like real to me. I didn’t even price shop. And it was like
an online service. So my own attitude on this, and I wonder your attitude on it. So the person’s not
ready to buy. So you say, “Look, that’s fine. You are interested in, let’s see, you’re interested in ways to
save energy in your home.” That’s a little picky, but you’re interested in what you really need to know to
prepare yourself to write a will.
Matt:
You’re not even up to the point of writing a will. We’re going to assume that you don’t even know what
the derivative of the word will. Where does the word will come from? Why is it called a will? Do you
need a trust? Let’s give you some information so you can get all prepped, everything you should know
before you meet with your lawyer about a will. So you say, “Look, give us your email address and we’ll
send that to you. We’ll give you the information for free.” At that point my own attitude, because email
is so inexpensive, is keep emailing them until they buy from you, or until they unsubscribe. Not every
day, don’t get annoying. We’re talking like… And then what do the emails consist of? Well, of course you
should test that, but these emails are not, “Buy from me, buy from me, buy from me, buy from me,”
every day-
Chad:
Over information.
Matt:
… constantly. Yeah. Instead it’s information, information, information, information, really expressing
knowledge and continuing to do that.
Chad:
Yep. Yep. Very true. That’s a fantastic point.
Matt:
Yeah. So it’s like, you can have someone who for two years you’re on the email list. You know how much
it costs that company to keep you on their email list for two years, like a penny.
Chad:
Yeah, if that.
Matt:
It costs pennies. Yeah. It’s like, they got these tiers on how many email addresses do you have? And so
how much does it cost? So if you can keep turning out content, you capture that identity and then you
can get sophisticated, can’t you? Because you can just say, “Well, we’re just going to… All my customers
are the same. So we’re just going to send the same email,” but we can get pretty sophisticated for
clients where we break them into, “Okay, you’re in this field or that field, or you were interested in this
service or that service,” and you can have various email chains going, but being able to communicate
with someone who gave you their email address and doing it consistently, if you’re planning on being in
business five years from now, growing your email list and emailing people is a pretty smart thing to do.
Chad:
Yeah. I’m going to give a recommendation regarding this. If you want to see how this works, how
identity capture works, sign up for Seth Godin’s email list. Not only will you gain some valuable
information, but you’re going to see this in action. You’re going to see various offers of free information,
free advice. And, you’re going to start to get to know stuff pretty well, and what he believes in and that
sort of thing. And, it’s not too long until you might buy a book or whatever else, but anyway, that’s a
great way to see how this identity capture works. The other one I’d recommend is Perry Marshall. Perry
Marshall has an-
Matt:
We got to repeat both of those, because I want to make sure we tell them where to do it. The first one
you said was Seth Godin, G-O-D-I-N.
Chad:
He’s a brilliant guy and well worth the time, anyway, but this will give you an idea of how identity
capture works. You just go to sethgodin.com, S-E-T-H-G-O-D-I-N.com and sign up for the email list. And
then go over to Perry Marshall. I think it’s just perrymarshall.com. Yeah. Perrymarshall.com, and he will
have some download there that you’ll be interested in. And then you will be in the identity capture
funnel of your life. He’s really got that nailed down. So, check those out, just to see kind of what we’re
talking about. And then the thing is we can help you figure out how to create an identity capture device
that works in your industry. And that’s the key. We’ve done them for dance studios. We’ve done them
for lawyers and everyone’s a little bit different.
Matt:
Well, we’ve done it for fertility clinics, biotech. So really it’s like healthcare, hospitality, business services,
home services, anything that is done in the home, any services that are offered for a business, the
hospitality industry, the healthcare industry, the technology industry. We’ve done it for all those
industries. And we’re talking, you know we have one client, we took them from… They thought they
were pretty hot stuff. And they were, 90,000 monthly visitors to their website. They’re over 300,000
monthly visitors to their website now in a few years with us. So when you’re talking about adding a
tremendous amount of value over time.
Matt:
And one of the key questions we asked them when we started was, “Are you going to still own this
business in five to 10 years? Are you still going to be in business?” And that changes things, because in
the era of running a temporary campaign, or just doing a little thing that you do out in the world, what
you’re doing on the internet you can really build value over time. You can get leads now and you can
also build up so that the work you’re doing today is bringing leads for you years from now, as well. And it
really compounds. It’s like compound interest. Internet marketing can be like compound interest.
Chad:
Yep, yep. Good times. So we’re at about the 20 minute mark.
Matt:
All right. And anyone who actually listens to all of our podcasts will notice that we say that every time.
“Okay, we’re at about the 20 minute mark,” and the deal is we really want to keep it under 20. So for
anyone that needs us, Chad gives us calls to action. We are going to sign off, please tune in a week from
now and we’ll keep helping you out.