Turning visits to your site into leads

Everyone talks about web site design, marketing, and promotions and of course hits, but how does one turn a site into profitable lead generating resource. Generating leads and making sales is why many of us have spent our time and resources into creating a presence on the Internet. Now is the time to use the resources we have created even more effectively. The visitor may not be buying or requesting direct information, but you can create potential leads, which can become future clients.

One unique tool is contests. Contests are an easy way to get people to tell you who they are. You do not need to necessarily know their life's history, but enough to create a lead, allow follow up and of course send them their prize if they are the lucky winner. A few words of advice, if you have a contest on your site, keep it simple and keep it honest. Dishonest sites receive a lot of negative response very quickly.

Make sure your visitors enjoy a very "rewarding" visit to your site and that will make them return to your site, even if it is to check out the list of winners, or to get their prize, reward or a mention of their name in your monthly newsletter. A Contest is one great idea.

If contests are not your style, then maybe you might be interested in a questions and answer forum. This can be as simple or complex, as you like. I prefer the simpler method. Simply create an email form where visitors can ask you questions. Add an auto-responder thanking them for their question (just a personal touch) and make sure to follow up and answer their question in a reasonable amount of time. Not only have you gained a new friend who may return in the future for business, but also again you have obtained information about a visitor to your site which is now a lead that may become a sale in the future. Do not forget that new friend has many other friends and you know how friends are.... they like to talk!

A final thought on forms is a registration form. Maybe you have special tool or a database full of great information that your site visitors can access. This is a great opportunity to ask them a few brief questions about who they are and once they finish they are instantly sent on to where they were going. This is their payment in exchange for your time and resources in providing that tool or database, or any information.

I want to digress for a moment and talk about email forms versus an email link. The reason I suggest creating forms is that not everyone has email access. I work with many clients, who themselves have the ability to surf the web, but do not have email. In this case, a basic email link is useless to them and you will never know who they are. However, an email form operates right from your server and they can fill it out and hit the send button right from their web browser. This ensures maximum exposure as well as tells your visitor that you care enough to ensure that everyone can contact you.

Now I know what you are going to say, I have all this information, what do I do with it. Well, some questions we always are asked are "how do I setup a mailing list?" "How do I know who is visiting my web site?" Your questions are now answered. How you use the information is up to you, some suggestions we have are use it as a mailing list for a newsletter you create and send out monthly. Maybe store the information and do a follow up mailing asking people from time to time if there is any further information that they are looking for. You can even use the list when you have press releases. Let the world know when something new has happened like a site redesign. The only thing we ask is that you use it responsibly and ethically. Do not Spam people and do not sell your lists to Spam companies.

There are so many ways to turn visitors into leads and leads into clients. Many people worry about do I get enough hits, is my site on all the search engines. These are valid concerns, but in the end, you can have a million visitors and 10 sales where as another site can have 100 visitors and 25 sales figuratively speaking. The more visitors generally means more sales, but you can not just sit back and hope they come to you, you have to do a little work. Remind them from time to time of your products, services and that you are there for them. That extra item such as a newsletter or just a simple email follow-up 3 months from now can go a long way.