You’ve Got Traffic. Now What?

You’ve done all the hard work of optimizing (SEO) your industrial website and now you have a steady stream of traffic to your site. Congratulations!

Sorry to rain on your parade but that is only half the equation. The other half is all about converting that traffic into leads and customers.

I find there is a strong but mistaken belief among industrial companies that somehow their site visitors will interrupt their online activities and pick up the phone to call their sales people. Even though this behavior is contrary to how they themselves interact online, they expect their target audience to behave differently. (See my post, “Do You Believe in Industrial Websites?”).

The reality is that the vast majority of site visitors will do nothing and leave. What they have is a website that is leaking potential leads like a sieve. Whenever I make that statement, there is silence on the other end of the phone or in a face-to-face meeting; I get a look that says, “What the heck are you talking about?”

That’s because no one has taken the time to explain to these people about the value of looking at their Google Analytics. They are oblivious to the fact that more than 80% of their site visitors spend less than 10 seconds on their site or that their Bounce Rate is close to 90%. It truly is an “a-ha moment” for them when I go over their Google Analytics and explain some of those key site statistics.

What then is the solution for converting website traffic to leads?

Before you embark on an industrial website redesign and organic SEO project, put a lot of thought into content, landing pages and calls to action. Without these important elements, all the SEO heavy lifting will go to waste. I make that recommendation based on experience from helping clients who call me after spending thousands of dollars on their websites with very little to show in return.

The content on your industrial website must strike the right balance between SEO and persuasion that will lead to conversion. Don’t assume that detailed product features are sufficient to move the needle. Neither are generic value propositions very effective because your competition is probably claiming the same thing. For example, “We have XX years of customizing solutions for the ABC industry and offer the lowest price.” Really? Prove it – are you always the lowest bidder? That’s a race to the bottom where no one wins.

A better content marketing strategy is to focus on answering the needs of your visitors and helping them frame the decision at the very early stages of their buying cycle. By the time they get to the RFQ stage, they’ll have a good idea of who you are and how you stack up against your competition. It is easier to justify the premium you charge against the total cost of ownership. Now you can talk value instead of the customer pushing back on price. (See me earlier posts, “Industrial Marketing Content that Helps Buyers” and “Creating Digital Content for Industrial Marketing”).

Good inbound marketing with content will solve the complete puzzle. Get found early and often in search engines, attract traffic that is relevant to your industrial products and services, and the content will persuade them to take action. That’s a proven marketing strategy for converting site traffic into high quality leads.