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No Strategic Capture of Prospect Data
A “Contact Us” form is not strategic. How are you obtaining the sales leads that drive your
business? No Solid Plan for Incubation of Leads
The form feeds to the secretary, who is too busy to pass them on to the sales manager, who
is too busy to distribute them to the salespeople. Nobody gets back to a lead that came
looking for you and is willing to give his or her information to you. Misconceptions Based on Self-Focus-Group
You, the CEO and the secretary are not a representative sampling of visitors to the site.
Besides, are you going to overrule the CEO? Lack of Ongoing Activity Analysis
Now that it is built, is it justifying the expenditure and how do you know? How many people in
your sales pipeline came from the site and how many have been closed or incubated? No Content Management System
Surely somebody in your company has the time and knowledge to use an FTP program and
knows HTML. Let’s give that “hat” to somebody who has the time to learn it. Overall Lack of Attention
Out of sight, out of mind ...just like your taxes. Rule #1: Define the goals of the interested parties
Who is involved?
For a B2B marketing web site, there are two complementary parties who are involved in the
site: the users and your company. The needs of both must be met in order for the site to be
effective. Every journey starts with a first step, and it is here that you must begin yours. At first glance
this Rule can be overlooked; but in reality, it is the foundation upon which everything else is
built. This Rule encompasses both your goals AND the goals of the users who are to enter.
Fail in either area, and so too shall your site. It bears stating the very obvious here: if your site cannot meet the needs/goals of the users
who visit – or worse, they can’t find the information – you won’t get them as sales leads.
They will simply disappear to your competitor’s domain to find what they need. If you don’t
meet their needs, your goals are doomed. The Internet is full of sites, some of very wellknown
companies, which failed in this area. To be successful, you must know the needs of your client. It sounds very obvious, but many a
site has ignored this first Rule and doomed itself to fail. Users:
Why are users going to come to your site? What are they seeking? Who are they? These
are all very important questions that have to be answered. If you don’t know those answers,
you will be the proud owner of an ineffective web site. << previous | next >>
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