Website Lead generation in UK especially has been slow to achieve its potential, but that is changing rapidly and here is why?
- Google is no longer a tool for global businesses with the very clever local business managing to drive some business from it. The change has only begun, but it will be fast and furious as it gobbles up the territory that used to belong to yellow Pages, Thompsons and the Local rags, remember them, expensive, but once upon a time they drove lots of business.
For the past few years, the concierge at my apartment building has politely binned all the directories on our behalf because nobody uses them. For god’s sake they all have phones, even May who turned 99 a few months ago a survivor of the holocaust, is on Facebook all day and orders shopping with her thumb, the only digit still obeying her.
Phones make life easy because whether they know it or not and whether they are aware of the consequences entirely or not, Google and Apple have convinced pretty much everyone outside the security services to walk around all day broadcasting their location and previous locations too, not to mention likes, dislikes, friends likes, age, job, and things their best friends don’t know.
Google use this information combined with industry categories to present a local map block and therefore save a great deal of browsing and personal effort.
It is all so easy; the 3 most popular, ranked by organic SEO and demonstrating Reviews, contact information, Phone and a map should you want to go there.
The problem is less simple for desktop and Laptop users, but this will all improve very soon and even now every user who is logged into Gmail etc plus many more are already “known to Google”. Yes that is as ominous as it sounds and often illegal, but when did that ever matter? At least grab the benefits.
Right now a new army of direct sales organisations are emerging that find leads online and provide sales people to follow up physically. As yet there are still far too many of these leads scattered far and wide as people find you from Organic listings and these firms are struggling with mileage, fuel and time costs in some instances, but this situation improves daily and very soon these challenges will be history. Another huge movement is the “RANK and Rent” brigade. These marketing sleuths set up websites in every conceivable niche, dominate SEO and then sell the leads to local businesses who have no option but pay the asking price. It’s the same model as Google really and once the gain dominance it will cost a lot to buy them out. - Marketers are finally catching on, or being briefed on the difference between selling and marketing, stuff we all knew so very well twenty years ago and now that the markets are getting tighter, widespread indiscriminate content marketing is giving way to intelligent lead generation and conversion strategies, with separate “Farming” and “Hunting” regimes.
Selling non eCommerce propositions
The old way (last year); Try to follow the browsing user everywhere she goes and bombard her with content in the hope she will find something convincing and not blacklist you in despair and then eventually buy something. This didn’t work, regardless how hard certain people tried to sell it to us. Content marketing (at last this type) RIP.
The New Way: The goal is not to sell something, but to convince her you are a good business to deal with and she should let you make her an offer. Just focus on people who are browsing to buy, leave the others alone until they are ready. Why does this work?
a. The goal is an easy one that is easy to agree to and demands much less effort and content, costs less and is less intrusive for the customer. B. The customer who is really on a buying mission just wants it done and wants to tick all the boxes. If you really are a good firm with a good offering, everyone wins. C. The saving in time and effort will allow you to add value or give a little discount. D. We all still value face to face or voice contact when making purchases.
- The return of the sales funnel and the arrival of the sophisticated user journey driven funnel based on user actions and emotions.
Understanding customer intent, judging it with a degree of accuracy and responding correctly can pay big dividends, helping you to refine the content your product, descriptions, navigation and everything that supports the customer in making that next step to engaging in a pitch of some sort with your business
Lead generation sounds great, what do I need to do to generate sales from lead generation.
- Refocus your marketing to focus on people who are buying as opposed to information seekers, that was always a bad strategy dreamed up by marketers.
- Change your goal from selling products to selling pitches but sell them in the same way. Make it attractive and rewarding and make it easy.
- Make sure your SEO and SEM strategies are highly competitive otherwise you won’t even get the engine running.
- Crete a conversion funnel and start gathering and regularly analysing the data to learn and to improve your performance.
- Treat the customer like a goddess, shut up and listen and do everything you can to make your offering delight her.
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