If you’re struggling to find new clients for your new or small business, it can be frustrating and scary. You need new clients to not only survive but to thrive.
You may have embarked upon thorough market research, crafted a unique value proposition, and even designed a customized solution that’s better than any of your competitors. But you’re still struggling to find new clients for your small business.
When you’ve done everything right and are still struggling to attract new clients, it can dampen the spirits. However, if you are like most small businesses, you may be missing one simple trick to build success
Did you know that less than 64 percent of small businesses have a website, yet over 81 percent of people conduct an online search before making a purchase?
If you don’t yet have a website, your business could be floundering for that reason, and that reason alone. With over 3.5 Billion Google searches conducted daily, that’s thousands of people you could be helping with your services that are not seeing you because you don’t have an online presence.
Of course, you may be wondering, how does a website help me gain more clients? Well, we have some tips for you.
How to Grow Your Business with a Website
Your website is a crucial component of your brand’s identity. It serves as not only a digital billboard for your business but also as a full-time salesperson. Your website helps your potential clients see you as an authoritative, trustworthy, and reliable person to do business with.
A small business without a website is the online equivalent of a storefront without a sign. No one will even know you exist because you haven’t taken the time to invest in a crucial part of your business.
1. Build a Fast and Mobile-Friendly Website
Sure, you can decide to use WIX or some other pre-designed website builder to create your website. They’re often cheaper than working with a web development agency but as the old adage says, you get what you pay for. Cheap prices often mean cheap results.
Often these drag-and-drop website builders are slow to load and are often not as mobile-friendly as they advertise themselves as being. And with Google prioritizing a website’s loading time on mobile devices, you will want to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly and quick to load.
This is why you need to have a custom-built website from a web development agency. When you choose to invest in your business with a bespoke website, you’ll receive a lot of long-term results.
For example, working with a web developer will help you to create a website that is unique to your business. It won’t look just like the other businesses that used the same templates, fonts, and styles as you. You’ll have a website that is unique and that will translate to increased sales.
According to studies, 46 percent of people attribute the credibility of a business to the appearance of the website. If you want people to see you as a trustworthy person to hand over their hard-earned cash to, you’ll need to make a website that looks like you put some effort into it.
2. Build Personality into Your Website
As we stated, nearly half of all people base their opinion of your credibility on your website’s appearance. If you want to ensure that your business finds its target audience, make sure that you build character into your website.
If you have chosen to build your website using a pre-built template, this will be a daunting task. However, when you work with a web developer they often have a staff of web designers that can build you custom websites that bring out your brand’s unique personality.
Building a professional but personable website can help you to attract new, paying clients. If you use a drag-and-drop website builder, you can end up with an unattractive website design but by utilizing the services of a professional you can ensure that your website is attractive. If your website is unattractive, 38 percent of visitors will leave your website.
3. Get Clients to Take Action
After you’ve created a unique, mobile responsive, user-friendly, well-designed website, you’re going to need to get potential clients to take action. While your website will attract new people, to get them to become clients, you’re going to need them to take an action.
The best way to get clients to take an action is to include calls to action or CTAs on your website. CTAs are words, phrases, or buttons that prompt your website visitor to take immediate action. Words or phrases like “buy now” and “click here” are some examples of calls to action that you can use on your site.
Using a call to action on your website with just anchor text can improve the conversion rate of your website. A conversion is when a potential client takes a specific action, like downloading a free eBook or filling out a form for more information. Conversions can also be sales if you have set up your website to accept sales.
For example, if you include anchor text CTAs you can improve the conversion rate of your website by up to 121 percent. However, if you decide to instead use buttons for your websites CTAs, you can further improve your conversions by 45 percent.
4. Show Potential Clients Your Expertise
Another way that you can gain new clients with a website is by showing off your expertise with a blog. Blogging can help you to generate up to 67 percent more leads every month over your non-blogging competitors.
Having a blog for your business is a worthy endeavor. Blogs help improve search engine optimization, show customers you are trustworthy, and keep customers up-to-date on your service offerings and how they can help them in their lives.
5. Get People Talking About Your Services and Brand
Another important aspect of having a website is it helps other people talk about your services and brand. You can do this in a number of ways but the two most frequently used ways to get people discussing you are through receiving positive press on your services or by creating sharable content on your blogs.
When you receive positive press, reporters will be able to link back to your website and a whole host of new people can learn about your services. Without a website, they would have to look for your number somewhere and hopefully find it.
Since, as we mentioned previously, most sales start with an internet search, these newsreaders will likely search for you online. If you aren’t online all the positive press in the world won’t help you.
The other way that you get people talking about your products and services is by creating shareable content on your blogs. Sharable content allows you to receive backlinks, or links on websites that aren’t owned by you, and this helps new sections of customers find out more about you through your content.
6. Provide Proof of Your Abilities
84 percent of your potential clients rely on online reviews over their friends’ recommendations. If you want to reach these customers, you will need to provide proof of your abilities.
You can do this in three ways. You can create a Google My Business account, provide a section for testimonials on your website, or create case studies to help customers see what your services have done for others.
Using Google My Business is useful because it helps with local search engine optimization, gives your business a Google listing, and can help more people find your website easily. Another great aspect of having a Google My Business listing is that your former clients can place reviews for every single Google user to see.
The second option you can use to provide proof of your abilities to your potential clients is to include a section for client testimonials on your website. By placing client testimonials on your website, you allow visitors to see the great work that you have done for other previous clients.
The final option you can use to help potential clients see your expertise is to use your website to include case studies. Case studies are useful for many reasons; however, the most useful reason is that they provide social proof to your website visitors of your expertise, abilities, and effectiveness with other clients.
7. Build Traction Using Social Media Ads
If you’re pressed for time and want to reach a bigger audience more quickly than through content marketing using blog posts and guest posts, you can use your website as a link in paid social media advertising.
There are over 3.81 Billion social media users around the world, just think how many of them live in your area. With all these social media users, if you haven’t been using social media advertising you could be missing out on sales.
You may be wondering, why you need a website if you already have a social media page. By linking your website to your social media profiles, you give potential clients the opportunity to easily connect with your business and learn more about the services they offer.
Furthermore, 27 percent of social media users state that social media ads help them find new products and services. If you want to increase awareness about your brand to new customers, you should definitely invest in social media advertising and use that to direct them to your website.
8. Answer Client Questions and Concerns
At least 70 percent of your website visitors expect that your website will help them to answer their questions. Typically, this is accomplished through the use of self-service applications or frequently asked questions (FAQ) sections.
Having a FAQ section on your website can help you to provide remarkable customer support at any time of the day or night without having to hire customer support agents to work around the clock. You can use your FAQ section to help your customers answer any questions or concerns they may have prior to doing business with you.
When you include a frequently asked questions page on your website you will not only help improve the user experience of your website but you will also help improve your rankings in the search engine results pages for many of the keywords associated with your business.
Plus, when you give customers free answers to their questions you help them to see you as an authoritative figure in their lives. When they have completed their research, they will come back to you to purchase your services.
9. Help Customers Find Your Business with Search Ads
As stated earlier, Google receives over 3.5 Billion searches per day for a variety of topics, including topics that involve your business. If you want potential clients to find you, you are well-advised to invest in Google Ads.
What is even more interesting about Google search statistics is that 60 percent of users will click on a search ad on their mobile device and with 80 percent of internet users accessing searches using a mobile device, you need a mobile responsive website.
You need a mobile responsive website because you can’t use Google Ads without a website. And while you can definitely choose to use a build it yourself website maker, there’s no guarantee that the website you build will show up appropriately on a mobile device. However, when you work with a custom web development agency, they can ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.
10. Direct People to Your Website Using Traditional Marketing
One of your first steps in developing your company’s marketing materials may have been to create business cards to give out to potential clients. However, what you may not have known is that 88 percent of all business cards are thrown out within a week.
While handing out business cards can be effective and you can boost sales by 2.5 percent with every 2000 cards you send out. A better way to target your customers is to give them a website they can bookmark in their browser.
This can be as simple as including your website’s URL on all your business cards. This way when the potential client goes to throw out your business card after having it for a week, they’ve already had a chance to place the website in their browser. Additionally, they can later when they no longer have your card, they can easily find your business by doing a quick web search.
11. Create a Newsletter to Keep Clients Interested
Another benefit of having a website is that you can use it to collect client contact information and send out email marketing newsletters. Email marketing newsletters can help you to convince clients that are still unsure that they need your services, that they do, in fact, need your services.
Email marketing is an extremely effective way to market your services. For every $1 you invest in email marketing you stand to gain up to $42 in sales. This can even include the cost that was involved in building your website.
The great thing about having a custom-built website is that it makes it easy to include email marketing forms and plug-ins into your website. You don’t have to hope that the software you choose for your email marketing works with your website, the developer can help you to choose the right one to fit your needs.
12. Offer Discounts for Starting the Sales Process Online
Your custom-built website can help you to further build your business by allowing your potential clients to easily start the sales process online. With an online portal to help clients start the sales process, you can no only save money on salespeople but you can also increase your sales.
According to studies, when you offer incentives to clients in the form of discounts, you can quickly improve sales. While most statistics focus on consumer products, Inc.com did find that people were more receptive to making a purchase with a new brand if a discount was offered.
One way that you can help attract new clients to your business is to create a website that allows them to start the sales process online. With this implemented, you can offer these clients a discount on their service when they start the sales process online.
Offering them a discount for starting the sales process online is smart because it doesn’t require you to have a salesperson make the sale, so you save some money while making money. Of course, this is only the case if you have your own website.
13. Make it Easy to Contact Your Business
Having a website can help make it easy for your clients and potential clients to contact you. Having a “Contact Us” page is one way to help clients solicit your business; however, this isn’t the only way that you can help customers.
Another way that you can help your clients get in touch with your business is to add a chatbot to your website. Qualified web developers can easily add a chatbot to your website. Using a chatbot can help you to better meet your client’s needs. 64 percent of internet users say that the 24-hour service offered by chatbots makes them useful.
But you don’t have to use chatbots alone, you can also incorporate instant messaging features into your website. With instant messaging, you can talk to clients as they peruse your website and have questions about your services. This can help you to better understand their wants and needs to offer more targeted services.
14. Create Ways to Book Services Online
As previously discussed you can help to reduce the amount of work your sales team needs to do if you include a way to book your services on your new business website. If you’re trying to figure out how to get clients for a new business, this can be an excellent way to increase your clientele.
With 76 percent of potential clients booking services on mobile devices, you’ll want to meet your client’s expectations and offer them a way to book your services on your custom-built, mobile responsive website.
When you offer your clients a way to book services online, you are showing them you care about their time and needs. The easier you make it to do business with you, the more clients you will gain, helping turn your small business into a household name.
15. Find Creative Ways to Show Off Your Services
Last, but certainly not least on our list is finding creative ways to show off your business’ services on your website. By showing your potential clients exactly what they can expect when they book your services, you can help your ideal clients to see that they should do business with you.
Using video on your website to help you describe your services can help you to boost conversions by 80 percent. Customers appreciate video because humans are visual and like to see exactly what they are getting. This is especially important for those business owners with complex service offerings that are hard to describe in words.
Another great reason for you to include videos on your custom-built website is that many times your clients will show their friends the videos you created to explain to their friends why you’re such a good option. The ability to spread the word about your service offerings with video is more than enough reason to build a custom website for your new business.
Build new business success with a custom-built website. If you’re still wondering how to get clients for a new business with a website, contact Orange County web development agency, Idea Maker to build you a website that converts, today.
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