Does your firm’s website work as hard as you do? Or does it just sit there and consume resources?
If you have a lazy website, you need to download Hinge’s new Lead Generating Website Guide. The newly released guide will walk you through what it takes to develop a site that works as hard as the professionals in your firm.
Lead Generating Website Defined
There are two basic types of professional services websites. The first, a branding website (often referred to as a brochure website), is what most firms have. It tells your story and presents your services and people in a positive light. It may even contain thought leadership pieces and a video or blog for good measure.
A well made branding website is of great value in developing new business. But when it comes to being lead generation and nurturing tool… you can do better.
By contrast, a lead generating website is designed to generate and nurture new business leads. It is an active member of your new business team. As a matter of fact, it is the only member of your team that will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without complaining (it doesn’t have much of a life outside of work).
But remember, just because it is generating and nurturing new leads does not mean that you don't have to be concerned with your professional services brand. Quite the opposite. A professional services firm’s website must do both, and do them well.
More Than a Website
It is a bit of a misnomer to call this second type a lead generation website. It is more accurate to think of it as an integrated business development system.
You see, you will not only need to build a website that can turn visitors into qualified leads, you also need a strategy for generating and optimizing content, an approach for organizing that content, an approach to promoting it, a series of offers to convert visitors, a search engine optimization program, and the analytical tools to monitor and improve performance.
In fact, Chapter 2 of the Lead Generating Website Guide identifies 10 characteristics of a successful program.
Overview of the Guide
In addition to helping you understand what goes into a lead generating website, the guide also walks through the key elements of a successful program. You’ll learn about the roles that search engine optimization, social media, and content marketing play. My favorite part of the guide is its discussion of planning and implementing offers.
The guide also includes examples of specific program elements and a step-by-step case study with actual results.
Making the Case
Because a lead generating website is more costly to develop and requires an ongoing investment, you'll probably need to justify this additional investment to your leadership team. That, as it turns out, is relatively easy to do. The guide also contains some data from our study of online marketing in 500 professional services firms. The key finding is that firms that generate 40-60% of their leads online grow 4X faster than their peers who do not generate online leads.
As if that were not enough, we also found that the greater the percentage of leads generated online, the greater the overall profitability of the entire firm. Those firms generating the most leads online were 2X more profitable than their offline-only competitors.
If numbers like those won’t get your CFO’s heart beating faster, I don’t know what will! A full discussion of these results is available as a free ebook entitled Online Marketing for Professional Services.
Speaking of free downloads; the new Lead Generating Website Guide is also available at no cost. Enjoy and prosper.
