website design 30 lead generation tips

Choosing the right website software for your Automotive company

If you're planning an update of your existing website or launching a new website it's likely you'll have considered Wordpress. But, are you considering the main reason to have a website?

 

Learn the 30 greatest lead generation lessons in this guide and start reeling  in those leads...

 

I talk to a lot of business owners and I'm always surprised when they say they don't expect their website to generate leads, they just have the website as a resource for their contacts. There are no regular updates to the website, no helpful posts that answers ideal customers common questions, and no thought of a conversion path to attract website visitors and convert them into leads (blogs posts and pages --> calls to action --> landing pages and forms --> thank you pages and emails --> lead nurturing with marketing automation). When I say "would you like your website to generate leads" the answer is always "yes".

So, you should always invest in a website that's going to help grow your business. A website that's going to generate leads with your ideal customers while they're actively searching for and researching the products and services that you're selling. Companies that take this 'Inbound' approach are more successful because they focus their time on 'active' buyers.

 

A bit about Wordpress

 

Wordpress grew from a blogging platform. It's an individual solution to host content, but requires additional integrations or software to attract, convert, and close customers.

Getting a Wordpress website is fine, BUT, you will need other tools for your website to actively grow your business. What will you do about email marketing, CRM, forms, lead nurturing emails, analytics, hosting, security etc???

 

The all-in-one solution we recommend

 

Wouldn't it be better to start off with a platform that includes everything you need for your website, sales, marketing, and CRM and that's suitable for a one person company up to enterprise businesses and with free version to get you started???

Enter HubSpot's all-in-one sales, marketing, and website software that allows businesses to transform the way that they market and sell online. HubSpot includes everything marketers and sales teams need to attract, convert, and close customers.

 

Now lets compare HubSpot and Wordpress with regards to helping to grow your business

 

Creating content that attracts your ideal customers and generates leads

 

Main tool = Blog

Why = Publish content, attract your ideal customers, use calls to action to drive them to landing pages and conversion opportunities.

Creating content is fundamentally where your journey begins so that you can attract your ideal customers and convert them into leads. This is how to help your sales team focus on buyers who are actively researching the products and services that you sell.

 

Creating content that attracts your ideal customers and generates leads

 

 

Main tool = Landing pages

Why = Convert visitors into leads

This is where most companies fail. They think that a contact page, phone number, and email is all they need. And yes, that works SOME of the time. But, you'll capture a lot more leads by offering a variety of content that will interest and help your ideal customers much earlier in their buying journey. Stats show that 57% of a buyer's journey is done without contacting a sales person.

 

landing pages

 

Main tool = Website

Why = Your best salesperson, available 24/7 and scalable

Once you've generated interest from your blog and landing pages, you need to educate and nurture those leads on 'why' your product and service. This is the part that most people see as the Content Management System (CMS). It should be easy to use and help you to manage the majority of the website and updates without the need for a programmer.

 

hubspot vs wordpress - website

 

The Rest of Your Marketing tools

 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

It's no longer about picking a keyword and trying to rank number 1. Google and other search engines are much smarter these days. While some marketers using WordPress use a plugin to help manage SEO, like Yoast, these plugins help with on-page SEO and not with underlying changes, such as page speed, which are also now critical factors in SEO performance. It's important to have a system that helps you optimise your website around content 'topics' so you become an industry leader on a subject.

 

hubspot vs wordpress - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

 

Analytics

Most analytics tools are just a lot of numbers and don't get used unless you have a full time marketing department or agency (like us...). You probably have Google Analytics but that only shows you anonymous data, it will never show you where your best customers came from, what they did before arriving at your website, and the steps they took from converting as a lead to becoming a customer. Why you should be able to see if a true Return On Investment (ROI) from your website. You should have nice visual reports that clearly show (1) Website visitors, (2) leads, and (3) customers for your entire website as well as each post, page, campaign, content topic etc. Then you know the sources and content that generate the best customers and revenue.

 

hubspot vs wordpress - analytics

 

Email and Marketing Automation

Most companies know they need to be doing email marketing to keep in touch with their contacts and customers. MailChimp is a common solution, BUT, that's adding another separate system to manage and one that doesn't clearly show what emails generate the best (1) Website visitors, (2) Leads, and (3) Customers.

 

hubspot vs wordpress - Email and Marketing Automation

 

Social media

Yes. This DOES WORK for small businesses (and the Automotive market that we specialise in). Social media is a great way to publish content that gets in front of decision makers and to drive traffic to your website. LinkedIn is particularly good for Automotive and a lot of the leads we generate for our clients come from this activity. We're not just talking about publishing content on a company page but using content (blog posts and pages from your website) and publishing it from personal LinkedIn profiles as well as finding your ideal customers through search, connecting with them, then sending a number of nurturing messages with helpful content to generate a new lead in your CRM and mailing list.

 

hubspot vs wordpress - social media

 

Technical knowledge shouldn't be required

Does your website have an easy to use Content Management System that makes it easy for you to update and add pages and posts and to create conversion paths that generate leads (calls to action --> landing pages --> forms --> thank you pages and emails --> lead nurturing emails). And, edit you website navigation, page layout, and design?

PLUS - Is your website platform vulnerable to security issues?

Wordfence recently measured the number of attacks and saw 16,000 attacks per minute against various Wordpress websites. If you utilise WordPress, visit the page Hardening WordPress for more details on protecting your website.

 

Cost vs value

You should always start with "will I get a return on my investment?".

HubSpot gives you an all-in-one growth stack with everything sales and marketing people need to do their jobs. It's not just about having a website. It's about a platform that can grow as your company grows, makes it easy for you to manage all sales and marketing activity, and gives you the foundation to know the best place for you to focus and invest to attract more of your ideal customers and upsell to your existing customers.

WordPress can be downloaded for free but then you need to find/pay/manage many different solutions for hosting, security, plugins, integrations, themes, and more.

To help evaluate the cost of Wordpress vs. HubSpot and to see the benefits of using an all-in-one business growth platform for your sales, marketing, and website, I'd suggest starting with a free business growth consultation.

 

The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas...

About the author

Picture of James Walters

James Walters is the Commercial director at The Tree Group, a Business Growth agency that helps Automotive companies with at least 10 staff and a desire to grow by 15% in the next 18-months.