In this episode, we talk about how to get more leads from your coaching website using blogging, social media, funnels and SEO.
We talked about…
>> Blogging to generate traffic
>> How to harvest leads
>> All the things your site needs
>> Call-to-Actions
Episode Links and Mentions:
>> FREE GUIDE: 10 Steps to Generate More Leads from Your Website
>> Blogging Tips on my website
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Welcome. Today. We talk about one of my favourite topics. Getting more leads from your website is one of the things I really love to focus on. It's one of the things that are really important for my clients, and I love to help them with this because it's one of those things that give you results right away. So let's dive right in and start from the first thing you need to have.
A lot of people think that blogging might be a thing of the past, but unless you have a blog on your website, it's going to be really hard for you to actually generate the traffic that you need, the volume that you need so that you get leads directly from your site, no matter what your lead looks like. So whether it's someone jumping on our email list, or somebody booking a discovery call with you, or maybe a free consultancy call, no matter where this lead looks like to you, you need to make sure that you have the tools on your site.
And also the marketing strategy to turn this lead into a contact and your contact into a client. So the first thing I mentioned in a blog and the main reason why you need the blogs because you need to have consistent signals. This is part of SEO search engine optimisation, and you need to have optimised content that is giving Google and other search engines, consistent signals that you have new content on your website. Now, most search engines understand text better than any other format for now.
However, you can have any format and then turn it into text, if writing blogs is not your thing. So you could start for our podcast and have show notes. You can start from a YouTube video and then transcribe it, or maybe use the script and turn that into an article. Or you can start from the blog post.
Now, of course, if you start from a blog post, your blog post is going to be stronger and is going to convert better. Just to give you an idea. Every time I post a blog post on social media, I get at least, my first two to three leads from that particular post and by leads. I mean, in my case, I measure that through discovery calls booked, once you actually start ranking those posts.
So once the post salts ranking on Google, you will see that certain posts on your site are generating leads regularly. There was a time when I actually had an SEO mini-course on my website and my goal at the time was different. My goal at the time was to get people to jump on my email list and about one out of every three people who visited my site used to actually download this training and jump on my email list.
At the time I had an email sequence because of course, you cannot just help people jump on your list. You also have to nurture them into becoming a client. If you're giving just something away for free, like a freebie a mini-course, an e-book or something of the sort. So apart from, of course, having the content to generate the traffic and that little funnel that turns them into a contact that you can get in touch with.
You also need to sort of build sort of, you have to zoom out a little bit and have a bit of a good look at the bigger picture. So the first thing you want to see is what is the most perf persuasive content you create? Are you more persuasive when you write? I mean, I can definitely say that for myself, that my blogs actually convert better than my videos.
My webinars have a pretty good conversion rate too. But I do not consider those my evergreen content because I only run those live at this particular stage. And perhaps that is the reason why they convert well, I would actually consider blogging my core content. So I would start with that. And of course, repurposing is extremely important because the content doesn't just go on your website, it's also feeding your social media.
It feeds your marketing in terms of, , if you're running Google ads, if you're running Facebook ads, it's going to feed all your marketing, , promoting a blog post having then maybe a pop up on that blog post to get people on your email list. So there are a lot of different funnels you can create, but before you go into creating funnels, the first thing you need to do is have a goal.
And one thing I always recommend to my clients, which works really well, especially with SEO. So generating traffic through search engines so that you can grow your list or get discovery calls literally while you're asleep. That's what I love most about it. It's kind of the lazy way of doing it. , you don't have to spend a lot of time in Facebook groups and you don't have to network and all that.
You can just write, write about stuff that you really love, , and, and still generate traffic and get those discovery calls booked. It's really quite something quite wonderful, I think. But the first thing then you need to think about is to really set your goal. It's really hard. I think for most marketers, especially when it's your own business. So when you're a coach or a consultant, or it's a small business, it becomes really hard because we think my goodness, there are so many people out there and we want to catch every single person that we can work with, but this tends to backfire.
So I always try to get my clients to stick to one goal. So I would like your website to have just one goal. If the most important thing for your business right now is to grow your email list, put a really strong freebie on your homepage, put a really strong freebie as the call to action to most of your blog posts.
If right now you're at the beginning of your business. And the most important thing is to have consistent cash flow you want to stay in touch with your clients. You want to learn from your clients so you can grow your business. The goal should be for everyone that comes to your site to actually book a call with you. So your blog, your pages your home, Paige, everything, even your top slider, everything has to be geared towards getting people on that call with you.
And of course, maybe it doesn't have to be so direct. You can have different types. So for instance, if you're good on video, you could have a video and then sort of direct people to booking book a call with you. And, if you're generating traffic through search engine optimisation, or maybe you're writing blogs and then sharing them on social media, you can also have videos.
If you feel you're strong on video and embed these videos on the same blog with the same topic, and then make sure that, you also have the call to action in the actual video so that you push people to do the action that you want them to do on your website. So in reality, it's all about getting everything you've got, especially the things, your strongest stat, and making sure that they're all pushing towards this one most important goal.
I know it's going to be really hard because, sometimes we want to grow our email list, but we also want the discovery call. And we also want people to join our group program because we're doing so much, but it becomes really difficult to kind of focus on your website in this case. And what happens is that when you have too many calls to actions, none of the calls-to-action is going to work, but there are ways of sort of working out different funnels on the same site so that maybe they don't get in each other's way.
So one way would be for instance to make sure that, Oh, you have certain blog posts say in a particular category where the call to action for those, that people who read, who come across that kind of article in Google because they have put in the keyword to find it, that people that find this category are going to be really ready to buy from you.
Then you want to make sure that they jump on a call. The call to action is to jump on a call. You may have maybe another section of your blog where, people who find that kind of content may be are still dipping their toe in, in your topic, and they're not really ready to buy. And you could then maybe have a different call to action to get them to jump on your email list. Alternatively, you could do it the way I do it.
Whenever I can, I will put my call to actions for people to actually book a goal. And the main reason is I really liked doing discovery calls. I love getting to know people. I think that really feeds into my marketing. I don't just do one to one. I also run a group program a couple of times a year.
And what I find is that the more people I talk to, first of all, the more people I work with and the more people I talk to, the more I get to know my audience, the more I get to know what they want and what they're looking for. And it has a really, a really nice effect on the copy of my program. When I launch it, it really has, it feeds into my business and it really helps my marketing.
So for me, that is a very important part to actually get, to get face time with my audience. So that's an important side of things. So for me, that's, that's key then, , if, if it's not such a big priority for you or maybe it is, let's say, let's say you do want people to, to actually talk to and jump on a discovery call or a consultancy call, or maybe you have free laser sessions.
You can also have paid ones, by the way, people do buy, one hour sessions, especially if they're not terribly expensive. , if you're just going for $200 or $300 people will buy it off your site. But what I like to do then maybe if you also want to grow your list, and maybe you can have a very discreet pop-up, when people are kind of leaving the site, you can have these pop-ups that just work they can detect when the person is moving the mouse away from your site to go to the back button or to go to the top of the bar.
And at that stage, they pop up this message and you can put a registration from your freebie there. So you could actually have a form where people can fill in and get your freebie.
You allow them to focus on the call to action, the main call to action that you have chosen across your site, but then maybe you have a different one in the pop-up once they have decided to leave. And I know some of you might think, Oh my goodness, I find pop-ups so annoying. I do too. I really do. But the statistics are clear.
That's a popup actually does work. And of course, if you have great content on our website and you don't tell them that you're going to send them more of that, if they jump on your email list, they're going to be more than happy to join. You want to also make it clear, of course, that you do sell stuff, so you will promote it to them. And this is something that I do in the first few emails where, , once they jump on the email list, I send them the freebie.
And then, after a few emails, they get to know me, get to know what I do. And then I would add an email that asked them to jump on a call. And then, I make it clear, as I mentioned, that I kind of sell programs because I don't want people on my list to say, yeah, this is where I get free content. And they don't sell anything because there are people who still think that way.
It's untenable, in the sense that every company or every individual, almost every individual that creates content is doing it because they are selling something. Of course, it doesn't mean that we don't enjoy doing it. It's another way of helping people who cannot afford to work with me. So I do like to post quite a lot of value in, what I write and that doesn't stop people from working with me.
So, you can really see content as something that helps you reach more people if helping people and helping them move their business forward is something you're passionate about. Okay. So one other very important point that I wanted to mention that is really important for you to get more leads from your website is to make sure that you have your website set up in a way that you can show search engines, the priority and the topics you talk about.
And okay, this might sound like something really vague because it's something that's sort of, it's a little bit deep to explain, but one of the things you would need to do is you would need to ideally work with someone professionally, get your keywords researched in your industry, and then pick those keywords. Those that are the best ones for your particular audience and make sure that your website is structured in a way and uses these keywords and categories and pages in a way that Google has absolutely no doubt.
You and Google are on the same page, Google wants to serve your audience, your content. They want them to find you because they are looking for you.
So you need to make sure that, the whole structure and the way you organise your content is helping. It's helping search engines, not confusing them. So this is something quite a lot of people don't realise that it's not just about optimising the blog post. It's not just about embedding that video and making sure that there is enough text for search engines to understand what it's about, but it's also the way you structure a new organise content.
That is also very important. Social media is also important. One thing that's a lot of search engine optimisation people, SEO, people fail to mention is that social media actually does have an impact on SEO.
, social media is going to give you a reputation or reputation that search engines can detect. They can also detect the engagement on your social media platforms, the frequency, they also detect the kind of companies and the kind of people that share your content.
And also the, of people, the kind of content you're posting and how it links back to your site. So these are all things that can actually help you generate more traffic, which in turn is going to generate more leads. Of course, it's really important to repurpose every piece of content that you put on your website.
You don't want to put it only on social media. You don't want to put it only on your website. You want to make sure that you reach as many places as possible because you're going to get organic marketing and organic leads also from your social media, also from the different platforms.
And this combined with the traffic that you get on your sites is going to convert. You could have fresh leads that come from social media specifically because they were interested in that topic that you posted. And then they go to your site and they join your email list or they both at discovery call.
So the more you spread your content, you can also use ads if you want to if you really want to speed things up, once you have proven organically that the content is actually generating discovery calls and, which of the blog posts they are. And trust me, you will know because when people jump on a discovery call with you because they were reading a blog post, that is the first thing they will tell you about. I was reading this blog post, and you said this, this and this.
And then I thought I have to book a call with this person because I need to find out if they can help me with this problem. That is something I hear practically every day when I have discovery calls. And it's one of those things people will tell you. So you will actually know really easily, which blog posts are giving you the leads and working hard at lead generation.
And then of course, what you can do is once you have even just a small budget, of, I don't know, $20 a week, you can actually just get a blog post and share it as a post on say, Facebook or on Instagram. And then you can put a budget to reach more people with that article. And what you will see is that you will get more discovery calls right away. Of course, you need to have sort of all your ducks in order, as they say, everything in its right place and everything, connected and, and clear and optimised, but it is absolutely possible.
(17:08):
And it's not that hard. I mean, it might science sound like it's a science, but it's one of those things that are as easy to replicate. Okay. So those were most of the tips that I had. There are some technical tips that I could go into, but I don't want to make this an hour-long episode. So what I have done is I have prepared a PDF. I have a freebie for you which is actually called how to get more leads from your website and blog. And in it, I go through the tips of all the tools you need to have on your website and also the optimisation from the technical side. Again, it's, you don't have to be a techie to do these.
They're just little observations, simple things that you can do on your website to make it much easier for Google and other search engines to actually find your content and serve it to the right people so that you can, of course, get more leads from your website and blogs.
So go to the show notes, go to,
Welcome. Today. We talk about one of my favorite topics. So getting you more leads from your website is one of the things I really love to focus on. It's one of the things that are really important for my clients, and I love to help them with this because it's one of those things that gives you results right away. So let's dive right in and start from the first thing you need to have. Now, a lot of people think that blogging might be a thing of the past, but unless you have a blog on your website, it's going to be really hard for you to actually generate the traffic that you need, the volume that you need so that you get leads directly from your site, no matter what your lead looks like. So whether it's someone jumping on our email list, or somebody booking a discovery call with you, or maybe a free consultancy call, no matter where this lead looks like to you, you need to make sure that you have the tools on your site.
(:And also the marketing strategy to turn this lead into a contact and your contact into a client. So the first thing I mentioned is a blog and the main reason why you need the blogs, because you need to have consistent signals. This is part of SEO search engine optimization, and you need to have optimized content that is giving Google and other search engines, consistent signals that you have new content on your website. Now, most search engines understand text better than any other format for now. However, you can have any format and then turn it into text. If writing blogs is not your thing. So you could start for our podcast and have show notes. You can start from a YouTube video and then transcribe it, or maybe use the script and turn that into an article. Or you can start from the blog post.
(:Now, of course, if you start from a blog post, your blog post is going to be stronger and is going to convert better. Just to give you an idea. Every time I post a blog post on social media, I get at least, you know, my first two to three leads from that particular post and by leads. I mean, in my case, I measure that through discovery calls booked, once you actually start ranking those posts. So once the post salts ranking on Google, you will see that certain posts on your site are generating leads regularly. There was a time when I actually had an SEO mini course on my website and my goal at the time was different. My goal at the time was to get people to jump on my email list and about one out of every three people who visited my site used to actually download this training and jump on my email list.
(:At the time I had an email sequence, because of course you cannot just help people jump on your list. You also have to nurture them into becoming a client. If you're giving just something away for free, like a freebie a mini course, you know, an e-book or something of the sort. So apart from of course, having the content to generate the traffic and that little funnel that turns them into a contact that you can get in touch with. You also need to sort of build sort of, you have to zoom out a little bit and have a bit of a good look at the bigger picture. So the first thing you want to see is what is the most perf persuasive content you create? Are you more persuasive when you write? I mean, I can definitely say that for myself, that my blogs actually convert better than my videos.
(:My webinars have a pretty good conversion rate too. But I do not consider those my evergreen content because I only run those live at this particular stage. And perhaps that is the reason why they convert well, I would actually consider blogging my core content. So I would start from that. And of course, repurposing is extremely important because the content doesn't just go on your website, it's also feeds your social media. It feeds your marketing in terms of, you know, if you're running Google ads, if you're running Facebook ads, it's going to feed all your marketing, you know, promoting a blog post having then maybe a pop up on that blog post to get people on your email list. So there are a lot of different funnels you can create, but before you go into creating funnels, the first thing you need to do is have a goal.
(:And one thing I always recommend to my clients, which works really well, especially with SEO. So generating traffic through search engines so that you can grow your list or get discovery calls literally while you're asleep. That's what I love most about it. It's kind of the lazy way of doing it. You know, you don't have to spend a lot of time in Facebook groups and you don't have to network and all that. You can just write, write about stuff that you really love, you know, and, and still generate traffic and get those discovery calls booked. It's really quite something quite wonderful, I think. But the first thing then you need to think about is to really set your goal. It's really hard. I think for most marketers, especially when it's your own business. So when you're a coach or a consultant, or it's a small business, it becomes really hard because we think my goodness, there are so many people out there and we want to catch every single person that we can work with, but this tends to backfire.
(:So I always try to get my clients to stick to one goal. So I would like your website to have just one goal. If the most important thing for your business right now is to grow your email list, put a really strong freebie on your homepage, put a really strong freebie as the call to action to most of your blog posts. If right now you're in the beginning of your business. And the most important thing is to have consistent cashflow and to do that one to one work, because you want to stay in touch with your clients. You want to learn from your clients so you can grow your business. The goal should be for everyone that comes to your site to actually book a call with you. So your blog, your pages your home, Paige, you know, everything, even your top slider, everything has to be geared towards getting people on that call with you.
(:And of course, maybe it doesn't have to be so direct. You can have different types. So for instance, if you're good on video, you could have a video and then sort of direct people to booking book a call with you. And you know, if you're generating traffic through search engine optimization, or maybe you're writing blogs and then sharing them on social media, you can also have videos. If you feel you're strong on video and embed these videos on the same blog with the same topic, and then make sure that, you know, you also have the call to action in the actual video so that, you know, you push people to do the action that you want them to do on your website. So in reality, it's all about getting everything you've got, especially the things, your strongest stat, and making sure that they're all pushing towards this one most important goal.
(:I know it's going to be really hard because, you know, sometimes we want to grow our email list, but we also want the discovery call. And we also want people to join our group program because we're doing so much, but it becomes really difficult to kind of focus your website in this case. And what happens is that when you have too many call to actions, none of the call to actions are going to work, but there are ways of sort of working out different funnels on the same site so that maybe they don't get in each other's way. So one way would be for instance to make sure that, Oh, you have certain blog posts say in a particular category where the call to action for those, you know, that people who read, who come across that kind of article in Google, because they have puts in, you know, the, the keyword to find it, you know, that people that find this category are going to be really ready to buy from you.
(:Then you want to make sure that they jump on a call. The call to action is to jump on a call. You may have maybe another section of your blog where, you know, people who find that kind of content maybe are still dipping their toe in, in your topic, and they're not really ready to buy. And you could then maybe have a different call to action to get them to jump on your email list. Alternatively, you could do it the way I do it. I, whenever I can, I will put my call to actions for people to actually book a goal. And the main reason is I really liked doing discovery calls. I love getting to know people. I think that's really feeds into my marketing. I don't just do one to one. I also run a group program a couple of times a year.
(:And what I find is that the more people I talk to, first of all, the more people I work with and the more people I talk to, the more I get to know my audience, the more I get to know what they want and what they're looking for. And it has a really, a really nice effect on the copy of my program. When I launch it, it's really has, you know, it feeds into my business and it really helps my marketing. So for me, that is a very important part to actually get, to get face time with my audience. So that's an important side of things. So for me, that's, that's key then, you know, if, if it's not such a big priority for you or maybe it is, let's say, let's say you do want people to, to actually talk to and jump on a discovery call or a consultancy call, or maybe you have free laser sessions.
(:You can also have paid ones by the way, people do buy, you know, one hour sessions, especially if they're not terribly expensive. You know, if you're just going for $200 or $300 when it's people will buy it off your site. But what I like to do then maybe if you also want to grow your list, and maybe you can have a very discreet pop-ups as maybe a pairs, when people are kind of leaving the site, you can have these pop ups that just work they can detect when the person is moving the mouse away from your site to go to the back button or to go to the top of the bar. And at that stage, they pop up this message and you can put a registration from your freebie there. So you could actually have a form where people can fill in and get your freebie.
(:So, you know, you could allow them that way. You allow them to focus on the call to action, the main call to action that you have chosen across your site, but then maybe you have a different one in the pop-up once they have decided to leave. And I know some of you might think, Oh my goodness, I find pop-ups so annoying. I do too. I really do. But the statistics are clear. That's a popup actually does work. And of course, if you have great content on our website and you aren't tell them that you're going to send them more of that, if they jump on your email list, they're going to be more than happy to join. You want to also make it clear, of course, that you do sell stuff, so you will promote it to them. And this is something that I do in the first few emails where, you know, once they jump on the email list, I send them the freebie.
(:And then, you know, they a few emails to get to know me, to get to know what I do. And then I would have maybe an email that asked them to jump on a call. And then, you know, I kind of make it clear. And I mentioned that I kind of sell programs because I don't want people on my list to kind of say, yeah, this is where I get free content. And they don't sell anything because there are people who still think that way. Although it's of course a very, it's an untenable thing in the sense that every company or every individual, almost every individual that creates content is doing it because of course they are selling something. Of course it doesn't mean that we don't enjoy doing it. It's another way of helping people who cannot afford to work with me. So I do like to post quite a lot of value in, in what I write and that doesn't stop people working with me.
(:So, you know, you can really see content as a, something that helps you reach more people if helping people and helping them move their business forward is something you're passionate about. Okay. So one other very important point that I wanted to mention that is really important for you to get more leads from your website is to make sure that you have your website set up in a way that you can show search engines, the priority and the topics you talk about. And okay, this might sound like something really vague because it's something that's sort of, it's a little bit sort of deep to, to explain, but one of the things you would need to do is you would need to ideally work with someone professionally, get your keywords researched in your industry, and then pick loose keywords. That's are the best ones for your particular audience and make sure that your website is structured in a way and uses these keywords and categories and pages in a way that Google has absolutely no doubt.
(:What do you do? Because you and Google are on the same side, Google wants to serve your audience, your content. They want them to find you because they are looking for you. So you need to make sure that, you know, the whole structure and the way you organize your content is helping. It's helping search engines, not confusing them. So this is something quite a lot of people don't realize that it's not just about optimizing the blog post. It's not just about embedding that video and making sure that there is enough text for search engines to understand what it's about, but it's also the way you structure a new organize content. That is also very important. Social media is also important. One thing that's a lot of search engine optimization people you know, SEO, people fail to mention is that social media actually does have an impact on SEO.
(:You know, social media is going to give you a reputation or reputation that search engines can detect. They can also detect the engagement on your social media platforms, the frequency, they also detect the kind of companies and the kind of people that share your content. And also the, of people, the kind of content you're posting and how it links back to your site. So these are all things that can actually help you generate more traffic, which in turn is going to generate more leads. Of course, it's really important to repurpose every piece of content that you put on your website. You don't want to put it only on social media. You don't want to put it only on your website. You want to make sure that you reach as many places as possible because you're going to get organic marketing and organic leads also from your social media, also from the different platforms.
(:And this combined with the traffic that you get on your sites is going to convert. You could have fresh leads that come from social media specifically, because they were interested in that topic that you posted. And then they go to your site and they join your email list, or they both at discovery call. So the more you spread your content, you know, you can also use ads if you want to, if you really want to speed things up, once you have proven organically that the content is actually generating discovery calls and you know, which of the blog posts they are. And trust me, you will know because when people jump on a discovery call with you, because they were reading a blog post, that is the first thing they will tell you about. I was reading this blog post, and you said this, this and this.
(:And then I thought I have to book a call with this person because I need to find out if they can help me with this problem. That is something I hear practically every day when I have discovery calls. And it's one of those things people will tell you. So you will actually know really easily, which blog posts are giving you the leads. And then of course, what you can do is once you have even just a small budget, you know, of, I don't know, $20 a week, you can actually just get a blog post and share it as a post on say, Facebook or on Instagram. And then you can put a budget to reach more people with that article. And what you will see is that you will get more discovery calls right away. Of course you need to have sort of all your ducks in order, as they say everything in its right place and everything, you know, connected and, and clear and optimized, but it is it is absolutely possible.
(:And it's not that hard. I mean, it might science sound like it's a science, but it's one of those things that's as easy to replicate. Okay. So those were most of the tips that I had. There are some technical tips that I could go into, but I don't want to make this an hour long episode. So what I have done is I have prepared a PDF. I have a freebie for you which is actually called how to get more leads from your website and blog. And in it, I go through the tips all the tools you need to have on your website and also the optimization from the technical side. Again, it's, you don't have to be a techie to do these. They're just sort of little observations, little, you know, little simple things that you can do on your website to make it really much easier for Google and other search engines to actually find your content and serve it to the right people so that you can, of course get more leads from your website and blogs.
(:So go to the show notes, go, Stephanie faetanini.com/podcast. You can find this episode, which is episode 19, and you can download the free PDF from the link in the show notes. And I look forward to hearing from you and let me know how it helped you, because this is a very good tool. I usually get really good feedback from it. And of course, you'll be then on my list and you'll be able to hear more about my podcasts and also my blogs. I still blog every week. And you know there's a lot of interesting training coming up in the next few weeks. I am, I'm doing some free training. I will be running a challenge and I will also be running some training on social media. So it's actually a very good time to go to the page on my site and download the free PDF. So thank you very much for listening and I will see you in
(:The next episode. Thank you for listening to the profitable content marketing show. Did you enjoy this episode? If you did, please share it with friends and colleagues and anyone you think is going to find this useful. If you'd like to give me some feedback or a question, leave a review on iTunes or a comment on the YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app or YouTube, whatever you do, make sure you don't miss the next episode because we have more juicy content coming your way. See you in the next episode.