Sharp Innovations Blog

Hello, there. You’re likely here because the following probably sounds all-too familiar: 

• Leads aren’t panning out as expected from that wild-wild west gold rush called “The Internet” 
• Your market is more competitive  
• Your margins are tighter 
• Your bosses want answers because the stakeholders are looking for someone to blame 
• You wanted your burger medium-rare, and this is well-done 

Nope. Sorry. That last one is me. But like me looking at this burger on my plate, you’re hungry for answers and everything’s looking way-too gray.  

So, you threw down the gauntlet to your marketing team.  

“We need Leads! Leads! Is this thing on?” 

They came back with: 

• “The website is old & slow.” 
• “The information is outdated.” 
• “The code is bulky and needs updating.” 
• “You never approve our ideas.” 
• “Dogs and Cats, living together. Mass Hysteria!” 
• (Nope. Sorry. That last one is Ghostbusters.) 

But like the following scene in Ghostbusters where all the ghosts are freed from containment, your head is now swirling in alphabet soup acronyms and buzzwords.  

You want leads. They want leads. 

You want results now. They want a website first, and that requires a website design. 

Are they right? Do you need a new website?  

Maybe. But what if I told you there is a way to conduct successful lead generation campaigns as a way to build your website? Not only that, but a way to work with data-driven, proof-positive results to show that the content would put you in a place to get a positive return on investment on your new website? 

This way, everybody wins. 

We start with one page. It’s called a Landing page. 

What is a Landing Page? 

Landing Page. One of my favorite tools.  

A landing page is a simple, efficient page that gives you the chance to:  

• test your pitch,  
• put your best foot forward,  
• and give potential clients & customers a no-nonsense way to contact you about your service, or to purchase your product. 

Image. Offer. Call to Action. Capture the information on a simple form (or phone number). Boom. 

• (And yes. Privacy Policy and contact information, too) 

“But don’t landing pages involve a lot of design?” 

That’s the beauty of it. Landing pages can be created rather efficiently in a few ways: 

• You can make a landing page from your website CMS, and season it to taste.  
• Landing Pages can be created with third-party software tools that offer clean, smooth, cost-effective alternatives with efficient, minimalist designs that let your content do the heavy lifting – which is perfect since mobile phones is where about 70% of your traffic is likely coming from. 

They can be posted and hosted by your website domain or another domain.  

My favorite: a lot of companies set up landing pages on a subdomain. Like “try.sharpinnovations.com.” “Try” being the subdomain. 

Now, anything about your company’s offering is free to test: 

• The 4 Ps: product, price, place, promotion 
• Branding concepts 
• Color schemes 
• The color of the button, the Call -to-Action button 
• If you run a lot of brick & mortar locations, landing pages can be syndicated rather easily with proper physical addresses 

Warning: Familiarity with landing pages can lead to a constant craving to test ideas.  

But don’t worry. If you get down to testing the granular difference in price-points ending in .99, .95, and .44, and breaking it down to regions of the country, it doesn’t mean you need help. It just means you’re getting awesome at A/B testing with landing pages. 

“How do we send people to the landing page?” 

Some of the most effective online methods, traditionally, are: 

• Email marketing to your client or prospect email list 
  • Marketing to your customer list assuming you have enough customers who do NOT have the product / service you want to test 
• Social media posts
  • Paid and organic
• PPC / Paid Search Engine Marketing from Google Ads  
  • And, of course, Microsoft Advertising search ads  

“This sounds easy enough, but how can I prove the value of a website to the stakeholders?” 

If you need an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or proof of concept before you try landing pages, start with the emails themselves. They can be tested just like landing pages. It’s not quite as effective without landing pages, but they get the job done. You can split your list and test that way.  

If you don’t want to send traffic to a website, test emails or phone numbers for calls to action.  For even more accurate tracking, a custom email (like an alias or a group) or surprisingly inexpensive 800 numbers from a third-party provider like GoTo VOIP Phones will likely give you the most accurate results.  

And if you have a CRM, you can track all the touch points: Email, phone, website, and Sales team interactions. Now we’re grilling burgers with applewood. 

“But most of my email lists are customers.” 

The good news is that it’s much easier to sell to an existing customer. Preaching to the converted, so to speak. 

The trick from there is to find a product / service most don’t have or develop a new product / service – or simply an upsell – to test. The choice(s) are yours, my friends. 

For an even simpler proof of concept, one can evenly split up the customer email list, send a newsletter A/B testing style with two different email styles designed for testing, and track the engagement. 

“What about a Facebook or LinkedIn page…” 

No. 

Sorry. That’s a knee jerk reaction. 

In honestly, sure, you can use Facebook & LinkedIn pages to a point.  

To give credit where credit’s due, LinkedIn Ads and Meta Business Suite are much improved, most notably as traffic generators and traffic sources. Especially those LinkedIn tools for B2B markets. 

Both platforms should be in your arsenals. 

But as homes for your content, your primary content sources should be your website and your email. Why? because in your website and your email, you have primary control of your content and data. That’s not the case with a Facebook or LinkedIn page. If either changes their rules yet again, your content rights can go further by the wayside.  

Please don’t put your business in those situations. 

In the end, Marketing is still about finding that need and filling it.  

Testing is required to find and fill. 

Landing pages & emails are those primary finders and fillers. 

They say to eat the whale (or in my case, my burger here) one bite at a time.  

Each test is like a bite of that whale. When you get those favorable landing page & email testing results, you can savor those bites (or bytes, in this case) and make a meal out of your next website. One that will feed your company for business cycles to come.   

To learn how to generate leads and feast on your next website, or just generate leads, contact us today. We’re happy and hungry to lend decades of experience to help. 

Please let us know if you have any questions. 

(PS – The next time you see our VP of Marketing, Rodney Hoover, please tell him to watch Ghostbusters. Thank you for the time). 

If you’re looking for support to build a new website, the Sharp Innovations team offers web design a site that tells your brand story and is optimized to help you grow. Contact us today to set up a complimentary consultation.