Whether you already have a website or plan to build one at some point, if you want it to help your business grow and thrive, then the following few words will be the most important thing you'll read today.
Why?
Because we all build websites with the hope of achieving a goal.
Sometimes the goal is to attract new customers; other times, it's about generating inquiries or getting subscribers to our newsletter.
Whatever the goal, we need to give something in exchange to achieve it.
In a free society, there is no other way…
So we offer services, products, valuable content, and software to persuade other people to give us their contact data, money, or time.
But do we maximize this activity?
Or just try to do it with minimum cost for ourselves?
If we tend not to maximize the exchange of value, then a simple strategy can help us make our websites instantly more valuable.
How exactly?
By helping it generate more than usual subscribers, inquiries, phone calls, and sales.
We can do way better than just going after the "ready-to-buy" segment of our web visitors. Various studies show that this audience is only a small part of a website's traffic.
For example, that ninety-two percent of consumers would visit a brand's website for the first time for reasons other than purchasing.
So what do we do with all these people?
We can approach them strategically…
If they aren't in the mood for a purchase, we can offer them other valuable stuff.
Basically, we can create an unlimited number of "lead magnets" like guides, cheat sheets, spreadsheets, etc. And offer them in exchange for their emails. That way, we can keep in touch up to the moment when they are ready to spend some cash.
Another slightly more expensive option for "lead generation" is to create and offer software like calculators, quizzes, and small apps.
Also, we can provide a free consultation, access to a restricted website area, webinars, online courses, and whatever comes to your mind.
The trick is to be something of value that can be reproduced at a low cost.
That way, we invest some money to create it, and from then on it costs us almost nothing to give it away as a free gift.
So that's the simple strategy I'm talking about…
Create as many as possible "reasons" to contact you. Some visitors will like your content offers; others will get attracted by your free software. Some will be happy to talk with a consultant; others prefer to subscribe and get your emails.
As long as you offer a wide variety of options, you get in contact with a more significant part of the visitors.
That's really important because you get a chance to create a meaningful relationship with them, and if that happens… if they like and trust you, they will be keener to do business with you and help you achieve your goals.
To build that relationship, we can implement all kinds of marketing automation and put to work many different services.
But it all starts by offering many reasons to contact us.
And it's one of the quickest, most reliable ways to make our website instantly more profitable because it's totally in our control. Nobody can forbid us to put online hundreds of articles, tens of guides, various funny quizzes, and more.
Also, the power of this strategy accumulates with time once you get in the flow to brainstorm new ideas for giveaways.
In some extreme cases, we can turn our website into a "giveaway basket" that impresses the visitors with so much value in advance that they just can't help but become our fans right from the beginning.
What a nice supplementary goal for building our online presence, right?
But that's not all!
I plan to publish many more articles on building profitable websites for our freelance businesses. Some will be more technical; some will be more like this one.
So if you like this puppy, you can click the subscribe button and receive future articles in your email inbox.
Be Happy,
Sashe
PS. Also, you can so I get more energy to write better and more frequently.
