What does your SEO sales funnel look like?
SEO for businesses is a field that is continually changing and expanding the number of ways a website can help a company succeed. Where, once, a website was little more than a digital brochure, today’s business sites can act more like a member of the company’s sales force. One of the most important features in current web design is the sales funnel, which boosts a company’s success in both sales and marketing, in a number of ways.
Expanded Reach – The first stage of the sales funnel is awareness, which your website can help tremendously with, provided that your web design uses effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Strong SEO helps your page achieve high Search Engine Result Page (SERP) rankings, which means more users will find your site and learn about your brand and products. Your website landing page should lead the reader toward the second stage of the sales funnel: interest.
Lead Generation & Capture – Websites that immediately demand contact information from a visitor are not the most effective at lead capture, because they try to shortcut the process by skimming through the development of interest. If visitors don’t see something that interests them, why would they want to opt-in for further contact? Strong web design will give visitors enough information to want to learn more, and give them a good reason to opt in for newsletters, tips of the week, promotional announcements, or offers like white papers and e-books. Including content that visitors will want to share with friends or colleagues on social media helps expand your reach and the pool of leads to capture. When your web design works well, visitors will not only identify themselves as qualified prospects, but they will take an active role in marketing for you.
Comprehensive Closing – The final two stages of the sales funnel, decision and action, are obviously critical for successfully closing sales. It’s also an easy place for prospects to fall out of the funnel. Your website should be delivering qualified prospects to your sales team for closing, but if your web design is strong enough, that site can also close sales for your sales team. Well-designed sites are especially effective at moving prospects from interest to decision by helping them build a case for that decision with case studies, white papers, statistics, media coverage, and other supporting information. This can be a powerful tool on its own, and in the hands of your sales reps, when they refer prospects to the site for this case-building material.
Moving prospects from decision to action is another strong point of a well-designed site, because the site can make purchasing action fast and simple, it’s an efficient way to deliver up-sell offers, and if the prospect starts to back out of the buying action, the website can instantly offer them a down-size option to save the sale. Whether your sales reps are feeding visitors into the site or the site is feeding them into your rep’s care, that site is an active member of the team, working alongside your human reps to close more sales.
Don’t Forget to Keep Optimizing Your Sales Funnel
An effective sales funnel is one of the most critical components for business websites. When it comes to SEO for Chicago companies trust me to create a sales funnel that helps to convert more visitors and close more sales. Contact me to learn more in our first SEO strategy call.
