Ask an MSP Expert: How to convert website visitors into leads
In a recent webinar with Barracuda MSP, Kendra Lee, president and founder of KLA Group, shared 5 steps that can help convert website visitors into leads. During the webinar, Kendra highlighted strategies that MSPs can leverage to generate traffic to their website, including paid advertisements, backlinks via SEO, speaking engagements, email campaigns, and much more.
Kendra mentioned a key step to converting visitors is to add high value assets on the website. These assets should target different stages of the buyer’s cycle and gated by a registration page. Visitors who are interested in learning more will happily share their contact information to access the assets.
After the informative webinar, MSPs asked many questions. Here are the top questions with answers to help MSPs gain clarity:
Q: Should I update my website constantly?
A: Yes, absolutely, especially if you want to maintain a high score for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Since search engine’s algorithm changes constantly, and penalizes those with a stale website, you should continually monitor the placement of your site and where you are ranked. There are tools you can utilize to help keep your site fresh. However, if website optimization isn’t your wheelhouse, there are marketing providers available that can help you monitor the health of your site, your rank, and provide ways to help improve your site.
Q: How do you decide which step to take first for better conversion rates?
A: This depends on what is available on your website. If you have assets on your website and people are downloading them, the first thing is to make sure you have a follow-up plan in place. You want to convert the visitors you have into opportunities before they go elsewhere.
If you currently don’t have any assets on your website, I would recommend starting with this step. Having assets on your website gives interested parties the opportunity to raise their hand before they commit to filling out the “contact us” form. Many buyers are reluctant to click the ‘contact us’ call to action button until they have fully researched the company and have made up their mind.
For those of you who already have assets on your website and a follow-up plan, the next step to take is evaluating how you are directing your target audience to your website and assets. Are the assets visible? Is there enough call to action buttons available for visitors to raise their hand? It’s about stepping back and looking at the results you are getting, then going backwards in the flow of a lead to identify where you can enhance the process and create a bigger impact.
Q: Can you get leads from your website without SEO?
A: Yes, you can. You can still generate awareness for your website through pay methods such as Pay Per Click (PPC), email marketing, and many other. However, these are paid methods. SEO, while it’s an on-going process, it’s free of charge. As a long-term marketing professional, I’d always recommend SEO to be one of the first things we work on with our clients.
Some SEO best practices to get you started if you don’t have a plan in place already are:
- Include creating an internal linking strategy,
- Optimizing your website for faster load times and optimizing your images
- Improve your technical SEO, such as ensuring your website address has an SSL certificate and eliminating any duplicate content which may appear on your site
Want to learn more about the 5 steps to convert website visitors into leads, what kinds of assets you should have available, where in the buyer’s journey they fit in, and more? Watch ‘5 Steps to Convert Website Visitors into Leads’ webinar.
Photo: Andrey_Popov / Shutterstock