How to build a lead generation engine - without spending much money

Dear Business Professional

98% of commercial websites fail miserably to live up to expectations when it comes to delivering significantly increased sales and profitability.

You spend good money on designers and you get fancy graphics, navigation controls, animation and so on. It all looks stunning - and then nothing much happens at all.

Or perhaps you build your own site to save yourself the cash investment (although it takes a lot time). You're really chuffed with the outcome, have a few scars from some skirmishes with technology, you won through in the end - but it's the same thing: nothing much happens. 

Your rewards are completely inadequate.

Sure, you get a few enquiries but it's all a massively frustrating disappointment and distinctly underwhelming. 

• Where are those easy sales you needed yesterday?
  

• Where's the new cash injection you were relying on to meet the payroll tomorrow?
  

• Where are those hot leads and the new prospects?

Someone tells you that you need more traffic so you pay an expert to move you up the search engine rankings and they gradually succeed.  Hell, you're even in first position for a few keywords.  You buy some advertising too but still nothing much happens.

So what's going wrong?  Damnit, why did you bother at all?

The Great Lie of Website design

Listen, it is perfectly possible to construct websites that do accelerate your sales, drive up your cashflow and allow you to concentrate on closing deals with lava hot prospects. 

It's not even complex.

But to do this you do need to understand where most people go wrong.

Here's that great lie: to say that your website needs to be expensive and glitzy is pure nonsense and vanity. It may flatter you, it may even impress your visitors but it doesn't do the business.  It usually just demonstrates the technical prowess of your designer  - and inflates the bill.

The truth is that what your website looks like is not terribly important.  What matters is whether your website Sells rather than Tells.

This is not some glib comment that has a nice ring to it, it's a hard fact of business life.  What's the point of a website that tells the whole world what you do but doesn't generate a bean?

A website that tells is usually pretty dull and passive. It's more like a brochure than an effective salesman.  You might be impressed with it, but for your customers it's a complete yawn-fest.

When Britney Spears is just one click away your website is going to have to work damn hard to get anywhere.

You're going to have to make your site grab people by the collar, shake 'em around a bit and get them engaged. It's all very American, but it damn well works.

You've GOT to think of your website as an active salesman, not just an online brochure.

Warning: Be sceptical

Now when you have had a bad experience with your website you should be pretty sceptical about anything and everything anyone tells you and I encourage you to be sceptical about what I've just said but just consider these points for a moment:

My website is doing all these things for me right now:

• generating leads

• qualifying leads

• selling products

• generating cash

• servicing enquiries 24/7/365

• keeping my marketing costs real low

• building my prospect lists steadily

• warming up my existing prospects

• tracking response rates to my promotions

• building my brand

So why shouldn't yours?

Listen. This is what you need to do.

1. Get targeted traffic coming to your site using powerful tools that most people in the UK have NEVER heard of

2. Engage with your visitors when they arrive - to keep 'em there

3. Find out exactly who they are

4. Market steadily to them over time - but do it automatically

5. Find out what they want - using ridiculously low cost techniques even the Yanks haven't woken up to yet

6. Answer the phone when it rings

7. Sell when it does

8. Pocket the cash, take a holiday, buy a new house, pay off the loans etc.  Enjoy more.

So where do you go from here?

I don't want to spend much of your time convincing you of all this. I'd rather let you be the judge.

So here's the deal: I'll tell you how I get my website to do all this and show you what you need to do to your own site.

It's your big decision