Hey, small businesses can use all the sales and marketing help they can get. Am I right, or am I right?!
The typical small business doesn’t have the means to hire the team they need to bring in the business. This is a big problem that typically forces the small business owner to try to go it alone, becoming the so-called “Chief Cook & Bottle-Washer.”
Now where there’s a will, there’s a way, and there are ways around this dilemma. We’ll discuss here how to empower your website to become a virtual salesperson. How? Here are five tips to transform your website into your best salesperson!
① Provide Lead Generation
It’s simple. Everyone loves free stuff. So the idea here is to offer something for free on your website that your ideal prospect would love to get their hands on. All you ask for is their contact information and the right to market to them going forward. So essentially, you are dangling a carrot in front of them, a carrot in the form of a free special report, a free newsletter, a free eBook, tips and tricks, a free discount coupon, or a free whatever.
If they’re interested enough to sign up at your website, they may be interested in what you offer at some point.
Remember that you should be trying to build or solidify a relationship with your prospects, not sell them, so this free giveaway must be value-driven, not sales pitch-driven.
② Establish or Further Your Credibility and Brand
Since people most often buy from people they know, like, and trust, your website can be a great tool in helping build the comfort level needed to influence your prospects to buy from you.
Some great ways of doing this are by providing references, case studies, and testimonials of satisfied customers. These forms of unbiased third-party justifications are powerful at removing the fears of doing business with you!
③ Provide Pre-sales and Post-sales Support
The possibilities here are endless. Tactics can go from as simple as a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on your website to more interactive methods such as blogs, forums, online chatting, and more. These tactics are great to help convert those prospects who are either “sitting on the fence” or can’t seem to get enough information to make a decision.
④ Allow Prospects to Buy Your Products and Services Directly From Your Website
Hey, if your prospect is ready to buy, they’re ready to buy. So why stand in their way? Instead, please give them the ability to buy whichever products or services you see fit from your website using either their credit card or some other immediate means such as PayPal.
The bottom line is that people buy first with emotion and then justify their purchase afterward with logic. So capitalize on that emotion. Get them while they’re hot, and help them justify their purchase afterward with your stellar post-sales support.
⑤ Provide Full Contact Information
This final tip may seem like common sense, but I guess it’s not because I come across websites that either do not provide complete contact information or hide it so well that it’s almost impossible to find.
The idea here is to make it easy for prospects to find you online and offline. Provide complete contact information that, at a minimum, includes a phone number, a fax number, an email address, and a physical mailing address. The lack of providing one can make a prospect question whether or not you are a real business.
The best-case scenario is to provide this information on every page of your website. This way, your prospect has it at their fingertips if they want it.
So in closing, the key lesson here is leverage. If you got a website, make it work overtime for you. Give it a chance to earn its keep. Why not? It costs you money to create it and even more to maintain it. So milk it for all its worth!
Great review of the basics Dean, thanks. We often seem to get side tracked or distracted from our core intentions for our web sites on occasion. Great to see a solid basics refresher like this once and awhile. Thank You!
Mark Bullock
You’re very welcome Mark! It is our excellent execution of fundamentals such as these that helps one make the leap from good to great… don’t you think?
Dean Mercado
The “Motivational Marketer”