Sick of wasting time on the wrong prospects? These vital website elements will help you level up your inbound marketing, qualify more leads, and become the hero of your business.
We’ll cover:
Why are these must-haves? You’re about to find out.
Before we dive too deep into tools, let’s talk strategy.
A big part of inbound is mastering your messaging. Say you’re opening a brick-and-mortar shop and need a custom sign. Which of these main website headlines would catch your eye?
“We make signs and have been in business for 40 years.”
Or…
“Grab the attention you deserve with our expertly crafted signs.”
I’d bet the second one. Why? Because it states what you should expect to get. You’re looking for a solution, not a history lesson about someone else’s company.
Now, look at your website's home page. Does it state the benefits for your visitor? Can they trust you to give them what they’re looking for?
We won’t get into messaging much here. But if you want to nail it, read this.
In the meantime, let’s look at other factors that can make or break your website conversions.
Imagine you walk into a restaurant. It’s been a long day, and you’re parched. You could use a drink.
So, you sit and wait. And wait. And…wait. It’s been almost 10 minutes, and nobody has stopped by your table.
Frustrated? That’s how your customers feel when they try to visit your site and it won’t load.
According to a 2019 study, a site that loads in 1 second has a conversion rate 3x higher than a site that loads in 5 seconds.
And the highest e-commerce conversion rates occur on pages with load times between 0-2 seconds. Wow. You don’t have much time to make a first impression.
Speaking of speed, HubSpot found that 90% of customers rate an "immediate" response as important or very important when they have a customer service question, and 60% of customers define "immediate" as 10 minutes or less.
How can you guarantee such fast response times?
Try a chatbot. No human should try to work 24/7, so let a bot do the heavy lifting here. Use logic to design conversations and help point your customers in the right direction.
Let’s jump back to the restaurant analogy. You’re seated at your table and ask for a menu. The host tells you the restaurant doesn’t use menus, but they can have the waiter walk you through the options.
You glance around the dining area and notice the waiter. He’s running from table to table, talking to each demanding guest and trying to answer all their questions. As your stomach grumbles and he rushes past to cater to another party, you realize you may have a while. You watch the steam from the kitchen rise along with your blood pressure.
Date night turned nightmare.
Is your sales team fighting to answer every visitor’s question? Or are you empowering your audience to educate themselves?
Make it easy for them to find answers with a dedicated resource center. Blogs and tools like HubSpot’s Knowledge Base are ripe for this.
Now pretend you’re in this restaurant (geez, why do you keep going back there??), and you’re looking for the bathroom. You see a sign that says “whizz palace”. Unless you’re Leslie Knope, you might not assume that’s the room you’re looking for.
Keep your website nav language clear and make things easy to find.
You wouldn’t go out, meet someone super cute, and then leave without bothering to get their number, right?
In the same way, you wouldn’t want your website visitors to exit before you have a chance to grab their info. That’s what forms are for. Use them to start building a relationship.
Pro tip: Start simple. Asking for a first name and email is enough.
Once you have that coveted contact info, where will you keep it?
Ted Mosby’s big mistake in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother happened at a Halloween party. He struck up a conversation with someone he thought was the girl of his dreams (referred to from then on as The Slutty Pumpkin). While he was bold enough to get her number, he wrote it on a Kit Kat wrapper and lost it. Should have put it in his phone. Oops.
Think of your CRM like your phone: a safe place to store and organize contact info. And, if your CRM integrates with your website, you never have to worry about losing your prospect’s digits. Once they fill out a form, the system imports their name and email. No more manual entries (yay)!
Say you’re more on top of things than Ted and put The Slutty Pumpkin’s number in a safe place. SWEEEET. What are you gonna do now? Send a series of flirty texts and hope that you win a date?
It’s not that different in the land of marketing except we use email and call it lead nurturing.
A good CRM will let you connect your email sending domain and send emails directly from the platform. No need to copy and paste those addresses. And, the integration will make your email more likely to land in your prospect’s primary inbox.
But timing is everything, so don’t wait too long. If a month goes by and you reach out with, “Hey, remember me from that Halloween party?”, she might be like, “mmm no…now it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m with family. Please leave me alone. You missed your chance.”
Automated workflows are a game-changer when it comes to timing emails. In HubSpot, you can trigger an email based on a contact’s behavior or other factors. After all, who likes spending more time than they need to in their inbox? (Name me one person who LOVES their email inbox, I dare you).
Even scheduled emails can be personal. You can insert dynamic elements (like first name properties) to speak to each reader. Yeah, they might know deep down that it’s a mass email. But it’s the thought that counts…right?
Got these features on your site? If not, why not?
Uplevel your website today with our free 3-part guide.
And be ready for high-fives all around the office. :)