Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

This is part 4 of my series of articles to help small businesses increase the number of sales leads they generate through their online marketing efforts. You can find all my lead generation articles here if you missed them.

I’m not foolish enough to think that people are going to land on my website management services page and just hire me straight away. Perhaps if I was one of those pushy American copywriters I could do it, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook) I’m not that good.

My lack of writing talent aside, it’s important to me to make sure that I don’t lose visitors once they get to my site. I want to start conversations with people. That’s why I write articles and do what I do. The more conversations I can start, the more likely people are to respond, especially if I can do it without spamming people.

So I’m giving people options to talk to me from the first moment they realize they might need someone to manage their website for them.

Option 1 - Email updates

I hate the term ‘email newsletter’. The moment I see it, I assume that I’m going to get overloaded with junk mail. And generally I do. So I’ve decided that rather than sending out a newsletter that nobody wants, I’m going to simply send an email update once a month with a summary of my blog posts. You get quality information. I get the opportunity to strike up a conversation with you. Everyone wins.

Option 2 - RSS subscription

While I’m not focusing on RSS as a means of keeping in touch with people, I’ve noticed a decrease in the number of people subscribing to my blog since I changed my RSS signup to email. You can read why I added email to my marketing mix for more insight on why I did this.

So I’ve taken corrective action, and added an RSS button back into my website’s design. Cast your eyes up to the top right of my header and you’ll see it displayed in all it’s glory.

Clearly there is a case for RSS, and I don’t want to alienate people who want to use RSS as a tool to listen to what I have to say.

Option 3 - Contact form

My contact form is my favourite way to start a conversation. People who take the time to type out an email to me clearly want to know how I can help them straight away. I’ve opted to keep my form simple, asking for the bare minimum of information when people want to get in touch. And I try to make a habit of getting back to people within an hour or two of their enquiry.

So now I’ve got 3 simple methods to help me keep in touch with people who show interest in what I do. And the best part of all is that the amount of work to look after these contacts is minimal.

But most importantly, by giving visitors to thinkdave.com the option to start a conversation with me, I don’t need to spam anyone to continue the conversation when I’ve got something interesting to say.

To recap…

So far I’ve made 4 fundamental changes to my marketing to help me attract the right kind of visitor to my website.

1. I’ve figured out who my target market is (hopefully it’s you).
2. I’ve established a marketing budget.
3. I’ve identified alternative, free methods of marketing to support my paid advertising campaign.
4. I’ve changed my website to help people start a conversation with me.

I’m happy that once these ideas gather some momentum, I’m going to be attracting enough leads to achieve my goals. I’m already seeing an increase in the number of people visiting thinkdave.com, and I’ve received more enquiries in the past week than I did in May.

What’s next?

My next job is to figure out how to make your job - hiring me - easier. Sales leads are great, but converting those leads to paying customers without inconveniencing them is far more important to me.

I’d hate you to miss out on the rest of this series, so why don’t you subscribe to my RSS feed or to my email updates to make sure you don’t?