One of my biggest disappointments is a website with no business profile, people or personality and the only way to make contact is a form on the Contact Us page. Not very appealing.
The first rule of business websites is that it is all about your potential prospects – not about you. But you do need to introduce your business and staff to prospects.
Prospects want to know if your business can solve their problems – and they want to know who can solve their problems. Profiling key staff with names, direct contact details and maybe even a photo, personalizes your business.
Amazingly I have had clients who say they don’t want to profile their staff with contact details on their website because they don’t want to be bothered by spam. I say “but you do want to be bothered by prospects, right?” The key to avoiding mismatched prospects is to include relevant and meaningful content on your website – this goes a long way to weed out tyre kickers.
Imagine ……. a prospect finds your business online, identifies that you might be able to help them and contacts a staff member (because their direct contact details are actually available on your website). The prospect explains their problem to the staff member, which they solve, and hey presto (in the dream land of this blog) you have a new customer – who could buy again. Or at least in the real world…. you might have a qualified lead.
They have already qualified themselves by doing all the work – finding your website, deciding you could help and calling you – they are landing in your lap. What is that cost of this lead? No effort on your behalf – that’s the cost of this lead.
Imagine that same customer coming to your website and they come across a …….contact form. No people, no phone numbers, no listed email address – just a form, which when completed goes off into some land where all the unanswered contact forms go. I think that customer is likely to find another potential supplier.
For help with B2B marketing please contact Annabel Huskinson 021 745 663 annabel@oncallmarketing.co.nz
