Is your website designed to attract or engage new prospects?
This may seem like a small question, but there's a big difference between attracting and engaging.
When we speak about attracting visitors we usually mean an increase in the number of each month's new website visitors. To attract these new prospects the main focus should be on search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and PPC (advertising) campaigns. The purpose of these techniques is to drive as many new visitors as possible to your website from the search engines' results pages – where they may view all the other results or just yours – or from other websites that have linked to you via a resource box.
Engaging Prospects Who Are Already Visiting Your Website
Even though this seems like an entirely different task that's taking place after the visitors have already arrived, it's actually not. The fact is that when you engage your new prospects (online or in-person), they'll turn into repeat customers time and again. If you're able to deliver beyond their expectations, they will become brand ambassadors for your company. Here are some ideas on how to engage your prospects:
Get involved in Social Media - Developing relationships with other people is the best way to get their attention (and keep it). It's also known as building social currency because when you help other people they're more inclined to help you. This is very clear if you're following people like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, and Mari Smith. These are some of the best-known Social Media experts, but you can find more via Twitter or your favorite search engine.
Approach your prospects - We all know that nothing happens until somebody makes a first move (no matter how small it may be). This is why you need to be an initiator and approach your prospects before they contact you. If they receive no reply, it's very likely that they'll assume you're not interested in what they have to say; this will make them turn their attention elsewhere.
Be personal - People like it when other people take the time to connect with them (in fact it makes them feel important too). This means that your e-mails should be personal and not written in a robotic tone, regardless of the fact that people are receiving dozens if not hundreds of these automated messages every day. The same goes for any other type of communication you may be using, so make sure you're using the right tone when engaging your prospects.
Just make sure you're focusing on engaging your prospects, and not only attracting new customers.
In the end, it all boils down to knowing what's going on in their heads and that means getting inside of their heads. This is a very effective way of finding out how they think and, more importantly, what they're looking for when doing a search.
Getting Inside of Your Prospect's Heads
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that people are looking for something when they type words in the search engine. But you need to know what these things are so you can be the first one to come upon the results page. This is no different from walking into a crowded store and knowing exactly what your prospects are looking for. Once you know that, the road to success will be much easier to walk on.
There are several ways of getting inside your prospect's heads, but these two stand out:
Become an active listener - People like to tell their stories and they love it even more when you're really listening. This doesn't mean that you should be nodding or any other type of physical affirmation; simply showing that you're listening is enough for people to feel that they're truly being heard.
Be interested in what your prospects are saying - This is very similar to becoming an active listener because it shows them you're not just trying to make a sale, but are truly interested in what they have to say. Not only will this give you the opportunity to find out what people are looking for, but it will also put you in a much better position to create engagement.
The above is just scratching the surface of what you need to know if you want to engage your prospects, so make sure to do more research on this subject. If you take the time needed for making the right connections, the rest will simply happen by itself.
How to attract prospects to your website?
The first thing you need to do is find out which are your prospects' needs and how can you solve them. Once this is done it will be quite easy for you to attract new customers by being in the right place at the right time. This means knowing where your prospects hang out and coming up with an attractive offer to bring that crowd to offer.
Your main focus should be on getting the attention of new customers by being visible in places where they hang out regularly. This may require quite an investment on your part, but the return you'll get will be more than worth it.
However, there are still some additional things you can do to make it easier for new prospects to find you.
First of all, make sure you have a good website that explains what problem your product or service is solving and how they can get in touch with you.
Also, make sure the site is easy to navigate and that all of your contact information is clearly visible on each page.
As soon as people start visiting your website they'll most likely want to know more about what's going on so make sure you have a blog or at least a regularly updated news section to keep them in the loop. You can also send newsletters so you can let your customers know about any upcoming sales or promotions you might have.
