Why 99% of All New Websites Fail to Generate Leads

 Are you finding that your new website is underperforming in lead generation? That’s because there is more to generating leads than simply posting a site online and hoping for the best.

The good news is that implementing a few quick fixes should help kick-start your digital marketing and ramp up lead generation. Here are the top five reasons why new websites fail to generate leads:

Is your website an afterthought? Have you focused on other areas of your marketing and then thrown in a site because you needed one? This is a mistake that is negatively impacting your ability to generate leads. Your website actually needs to be the hub of your marketing, where all of your other marketing leads back to.

It’s the basis for your brand, for building trust with your clients, for generating leads and converting them to actual business, regardless of where they were sourced. As such, you need to adopt a strategy and use content marketing tools to optimize your site to address all of these goals with a web-centric marketing strategy.

Any good marketing campaign involves developing appropriate messaging that will entice potential customers and ultimately influence their purchasing decision. However, that carefully crafted message is only effective if it is directed at the right people. Have you defined your ideal client? Ideally, you should begin with understanding your ideal audience and then work backward to craft the message to appeal to them.

While it can be tempting to cast a wide net in order to generate as much traffic as possible, you dilute your message by not understanding your audience. You wouldn’t spend loads of money on print media and trade shows where you’re not certain that your target market will be reached. Why would it be any different with your website?

Your website needs to reflect the language, needs, and desired benefits that drive your ideal client. You need to be more specific than simply defining your niche. Get to know your client persona by researching habits, values, goals, likes, and dislikes. The more specific you can get, the more likely you’ll be able to reach the right person for lead conversion.

According to all the top SEO books, doing keyword research is possibly one of the most critical components of your digital marketing strategy. Think about it. How do the vast majority of people attempt to locate the information that you seek online? Keywords. In the early days of the digital landscape, it may have been enough to populate your site with general keywords here and there; placement and position didn’t matter so much.

However, with e-commerce becoming more complex and more competitive, understanding the keywords that will yield the greatest return in search engine results is crucial.

This goes back to understanding your user and their intent for their search. How would they approach their search? What words are they most likely to use to find what they need? How can you best incorporate those into your site so that you can reach your prospects most easily? That’s why you need to do some digging with keyword research.

Do you have an SEO friendly web design? If not, you are taking a large gamble that your target market will even be able to locate your site in the search rankings. And an even more compelling reason to engage in SEO best practices? Chances are, your competitors are, which is pushing them to the top of the search rankings while pushing you back down.

Google assigns a higher ranking to sites that provide greater value to clients. Take steps to legitimize your business in Google’s eyes by posting quality content, using keywords, optimizing images, embedding video and audio files, using title tags and anchor text and inserting internal links, displaying trust badges and social media. Doing this will help Google to favor your site, making you more visible to your audience, generating the possibility of leads through your website.

 

Does your site have a way to capture leads? Is there a clear conversion path for prospects? You need to have a way to obtain lead information and provide a clear call to action for your customers.

Does your site have conversion pages? These are essential to driving leads. There has to be compelling content, like e-books, whitepapers, catalogs, etc. that will move them from page visitor to converted lead.

By avoiding these common problems, your new website can generate more leads and truly benefit your business the way it was meant to when you first invested in it.