Turn Your Website Visitors into Qualified Leads (Part I)

Last week Fire Enterprises (FEI) FEI Marketing Tribe Leader Marka showed the tribe how implementing SEO best practices can help FEI drive more targeted traffic to their Website, a crucial first step of demand generation efforts. This week, Marka begins discussing how to turn these Website visitors into qualified prospects. Remember, fire = print.

The FEI tribe had gathered in the conference room for their usual Monday marketing meeting. Marka stood at the front of the room, ready to discuss how FEI could turn its O-site visitors into qualified prospects.

“We’ve already discussed how to drive more traffic to our O-site through SEO, SEM, and social media efforts,” Marka said. “But what do we do with these prospects once they’re on our O-site?”

“Turn them into customers!” Zoot roared.

“That’s the idea!” Marka said. “When visitors first land on our O-site, some will be ready to click ‘order’ right away. But most will require more convincing, and many will require frequent nurturing—over weeks, months, or perhaps even years—before they pull the trigger.”

“In other words, a prospect’s initial visit to our O-site should be just the first step of an ongoing nurturing program designed to place an order,” Org said with understanding. “How do we find out who these prospects are and what they’re interested in so we can continue marketing to them in an intelligent way?”

“We get them to tell us this information,” Marka said.

“How?” Org asked.

“By offering them something of value in return,” Marka said. “Most interested site visitors are likely browsing our Products and Services pages. On every one of these pages we’ll place an online form that prospects can fill out to request tips or other useful information related to the product or service. For example, our Kilns page will offer a free download of a tips sheet called Eight Tips for Increasing Your Kiln Efficiency. To download these tips, prospects must fill out a short registration form with their name, company, and O-mail address.”

“I see,” Org said. “Having these prospects’ e-mail addresses will allow us to continue marketing to them after they leave our O-site.”

“Not only that,” Marka said, “We’ll now also have information about these prospects’ buying interests. If Joe Firebuyer visits our Torches page and requests ‘Ten Creative Ways Small Businesses Can Use Torches,’ we know that torches are likely the FEI product he’s thinking of buying.”

“And we can send Joe Firebuyer highly targeted communications based on what he’s shown interest in!” Zoot practically shouted.

“You bet, Zooty ol’ buddy,” Marka said with a wink. “But you’re getting a little ahead. That’s next week.”

Next week: Marka finishes telling the tribe how FEI can convert interested site visitors into highly qualified prospects.

Today’s FIRE! Point
Offer prospects browsing your Website free, useful content to get them to give you information about themselves that will allow you to continue intelligently marketing to them.

FIRE! In Action: Wine Enthusiast Uses Website Content Marketing to Increase Organic Site Traffic
The wine magazine used helpful content posted throughout its Website to help drive a 154 percent increase in organic site traffic last year.