When you’re working towards a sales goal you may be tempted to use tactics that bring in “quick” wins like paid advertising, a targeted email campaign, or even reaching back out to deals that are in limbo. While all of these tactics have their place, they won’t get your business very far in the long-term if you don’t have a strong foundation to support them. That tool? Your company’s website.

Set your company up with a foundational tool that can help you engage prospects that lead to strong customers all day, every day: your website. If aligned to your business goals and developed to attract the right audience, your website is the most effective way for keeping your sales funnel full, offering resources aligned directly to your target audience’s needs, and driving the right work to your sales team.

Just as you would hire, train, nurture and invest in a human salesperson, you should invest time, energy, and money into your website. We promise you won’t be disappointed with the return on investment. Here’s why:

Why You Should Invest in Your Website

Building and maintaining a website can be a significant investment for a business, but it’s worth every penny in returns if done the right way. While it’s tempting to do the bare minimum for your website, that effort will only yield the bare minimum in results. It’s not enough to simply have company-focused information and provide your contact information to visitors. Today’s websites need to be a revenue-producing engine, empowering visitors to find valuable resources aligned to their business pain points. Offering that, along with ways for them to continually engage, will drive the best prospects to you for solutions.

Research from Forbes shows that consumers prefer to do the majority of their research on their own before contacting a sales representative. For this reason, your website needs to be a rich resource full of valuable information to answer your leads’ questions and guide them through the sales funnel. If your website doesn’t help to inform your lead, they may never become interested enough in your product or service to give you a call in the first place.

You know your target audience better than anyone else. You are best aware of the questions they bring to the table, the hesitations they have about your product or service, and the typical steps they take to close the deal. Use this information to your advantage and design the content on your site to be as valuable as possible.

There are three key reasons you should see your website as your best sales tool and incorporate it into your larger sales plan: education, personalization, and sales activation.

User Can Self-Educate

People prefer to get as much information online as they can before talking to a sales representative for a few reasons:

• Online research is typically faster than talking with a sales rep
• Doing online research is less committal than talking to a sales rep, especially if the lead is still in the awareness or consideration stage of the sales funnel and is not ready to make a decision yet

People typically want to weigh their options between you and your competitors before committing to engaging with your sales team. This is why you need to have a website with compelling information that informs the user and shows them why your product or service stands out from the rest. Your content should be focused on prospects’ business challenges and how your offering can help solve them.

Yes, it’s important to include recent awards or company-focused news to round out the site, but the strongest driver of engagement is content people are looking for.

Can Be Personalized to Your User

Your website shouldn’t be to be a one-size-fits-all approach. With marketing tools such as HubSpot, you can offer your lead a personalized experience on your website, making your

product or service memorable and helping to create a connection with your lead. A strong website will build trust with your users, marking you as a legitimate business that has the solution they need. A personalized experience for your visitors means you can also capture more information about their journey and identify areas to maximize/mitigate in the sales cycle. For example, if your company has an extremely long sales cycle and you know it can be faster, consider how your website can help identify user activity that drives qualified leads. Think about the following ways your website can reach users without needing to burden your sales team:

• A personalized landing page that uses information like the lead’s name or where they are in the buyer’s journey. For instance, if a lead comes back to your website after downloading a content offer, you can say “Welcome back, Andrea!” and offer additional resources that build on the first.
• Personalized Call-to-Actions can be adjusted based on where the lead is in their buyer’s journey and offer appropriate next steps for nurturing your lead.
• Cross-content offerings that suggest other pages of interest to the user, keeping them engaged and on your site for longer.

(Psst! Marketri is a Platinum HubSpot Solutions partner, meaning we know HubSpot inside and out, and we know how to make it work for your sales goals.)

Helps Your Sales Team

If we had to guess, we’d say that your sales team is likely pretty busy. Sales is a fast-paced job and keeps your team on their toes. What if there was a way to guide your leads down the sales funnel all while freeing up some of your sales team’s valuable time so they can focus on closing the best fit deals?

The good news for you is that there is…here’s how your website can help out your sales team:

• It can address common questions. Are there a few simple questions about your product or service that it seems as if everybody asks, consuming a lot of your team’s time? These are likely valuable and good questions, but the point is that your sales team likely has larger priorities and your website can give them the ability to focus their energy there. 
• Your sales team can refer your leads to resources on your website like case studies, spec sheets, or testimonials which will help your lead move down the sales funnel even after their interaction with your sales rep.
• Your website is available to answer questions 24/7 so if your leads are thinking of your product or service outside of your business hours, they don’t need to wait until you open to get their question answered.
• It allows people to self-qualify, meaning that they won’t take up your sales team’s time and then realize the product isn’t for them. How many times has your sales team invested time and resources into a lead only for the lead to quickly turn them down because they aren’t a good fit? Use your website to give your leads the information they need to self-qualify rather than taking up your sales team’s precious time.

Looking to Make Your Website Work Harder for You?

Take the burden off of your sales team all while helping your leads get the information they need, tailored to their stage in the buyer’s journey! If you’re ready to invest in your website as your best sales tool and aren’t sure where to start, learn more about our proven approach to lead generation. Of course, we’re always available to talk, too. Contact our CEO Deb Andrews for a free consultation on how your website can work harder for you today!