Your website may have the traffic and organic search results you are looking for, but what about leads? Businesses spend a lot of time and effort driving people to their website. B2B companies, in particular, rely on their websites to walk visitors through the first few stages of the buying process. So shouldn’t the number one goal of your website be to make those prospects visible? The answer is a resounding yes!
The one thing you need to add to your website today is a way to capture the contact information of visitors who may be interested in purchasing your products or services. Even if you have IP tracking on your website, you will have no idea which website visitors are prospects until they fill out a form. The solution is a three-part process.
1. Create forms you can leverage. The standard “Contact Us” form is not enough. A form needs to store information your sales and marketing team can use to expedite the sales process, such as lead source, company size, the area of interest, a specific challenge, or project timeline.
2. Offer quality content for free. Downloads, discounts, quotes/estimates, ePublications, the list goes on. What value can your company provide that prospects are willing to give up their contact information to receive?
3. Connect forms to a CRM. Most web form plug-ins send an email off when a form is submitted, straight into the abyss of crowded inboxes and junk folders. When forms are connected to a CRM, data is stored, easily organized, and can be assigned to team members for follow-up. The CRM technology can handle as many steps of the B2B or B2C sales process as a marketing department can – taking a prospect from inquiry and qualification to value building before handing over to a salesperson or in some cases, continuing on to close a sale.
There are many inexpensive CRM solutions available to small and medium businesses – Gravity has had great success with Zoho which starts at $12/user/month – that are easy to fire up and integrate with your website. Once a lead is created through a form submission, CRMs give marketing teams the ability to set up automated communications to follow-up, add a contact to a mailing list, or confirm interest.
One Gravity client uses a CRM to emulate the inside sales position in an automated fashion. The result has been an increase in sales conversions (especially on the weekend) and an 80 percent reduction in time, helping the inside sales position focus on other areas and responsibilities.
Another client uses a CRM with integrated web forms to offer free cost calculations, which help vet prospects by project viability and sort prospects by the internal department that can best respond to the inquiry.
Even more sophisticated CRM users can analyze how CRM contacts consume information on their website through IP tracking, which helps the marketing team score prospects prior to handing the lead over to a salesperson.
All efforts that integrate the CRM and website result in a more meaningful lead. And the more meaningful the lead a salesperson receives, the higher value the consultation can be to finalize the sales process.
Your website is set up to be a lead generation engine. Make the proper steps today to ensure the leads that come through this digital channel don’t evaporate.