Unless you’re among the minority in the manufacturing sector, up in the top right-hand corner of your website sits one of the most misused pieces of communication in Marketing and Sales:
Yep, the “Contact Us” button.
On the surface, this button makes sense. You want to make it easy for a prospect to get in touch with you — and for you, in turn, to generate a lead.
But here’s the problem. More often than not, your website visitors aren’t interested in a sales conversation. At least not yet.
In fact, only 4% of all people who visit your site are sales-ready. And yet, there it is. A big, ugly button that might as well read like this:
Let’s put this into context
Imagine you’ve set up shop at a big industry trade show. You’ve invested in a fancy booth and staffed it with a team of experts. But every time someone approaches your table without a purchase order in hand, you greet him by asking, “Are you prepared to spend a boatload of money today? If not, here’s a business card. Call me when that changes!”.
Now back to reality. How would that scenario actually play out?
You would probably introduce yourself, shake his hand and engage in conversation. You’d ask smart questions, trying to uncover his key issues and learn what’s most important to him. Once you’d unearthed those issues, you might reference a success story from a past customer where you tackled a similar challenge.
All the while, you’re demonstrating your expertise and problem-solving chops. And he’s thinking to himself “These guys have seen my problem before and they’ve solved it for companies that look like mine”.
Before he leaves, you’d hand him a piece of literature most relevant his situation. And if you sense a potential fit, you’d offer a consultation to help him take the next step in his buying process.
But unless he was truly sales-ready at that moment in time, the one thing you wouldn’t do that day is swipe his credit card.
Yet, there it is…
So can’t your website behave more like a real person?
After all, your visitors are real people, right?
They’re the same people who show up at your trade show booths. They’re trying to solve the same problems and gather the same bits of information they’d gather if they were standing in front of you at that table. Just because they’re not sales-ready doesn’t mean that they’re not sales-qualified.
So let’s start thinking a little bit differently about how your website interacts with those individuals. Here are some examples:
- How about using your site as a platform for objectively answering the 5 or 10 or 100 most commonly-asked questions in the form of insightful blog posts?
- And on those pages, instead of passively asking your visitors to “Contact Us”, you ask them to subscribe to your newsletter to get insights like those in their inboxes twice per month?
- What if you prompt those website visitors to download PDF white papers that cover those topics in more depth in exchange for their names and email addresses?
- Or you offer a buyers guide that objectively compares solutions, weighing the trade-offs between fast, inexpensive solves and more-costly, but longer-term, sustainable options?
- Maybe you even deploy a live chat or chatbot software that actively engages your visitors in conversation right there on key pages.
All of a sudden you’re generating leads that almost certainly would have left as anonymous visitors before their eyes even moved toward the top right corner of your website.
You’re building a list of engaged contacts that are primed for nurturing.
And because you’ve already captured their attention and started earning their trust, chances are you’ll be the first one they call when they are sales ready.
