Increase inquiries from potential customers
If you have a service business with a Web site, you know that being online can help you grow your business. But how can you turn your site into a tool that draws new customers?
Service providers cover a diverse range of business types, from designers, to personal trainers, accountants, carpenters, party planners, and so on. But one thing that nearly all service businesses have in common is that an increase in inquiries from potential customers usually leads to an increase in business.
This article addresses how to develop a strategy for increasing customer inquiries and how to use the tools in Microsoft Office Live Small Business to help you to accomplish that goal.
In this article
Establish a realistic, measurable goal
As with any business objective, the best way to start on a project to increase customer inquiries is to define a specific, measurable goal that has a clear business purpose.
For example, to simply say that you want to generate a lot of inquiries from your Web site is not a measurable goal because it has no basis for comparison. Instead, specify a goal such as increasing inquiries from potential customers by 15 percent over the next six months. Targeting an increase over past performance gives you a measurable goal. And, specifying a reasonable, attainable percentage makes it easy to work toward this goal as part of your overall business strategy.
The sections that follow can help you develop a strategy for connecting with potential clients and show you how to use the reports available in Office Live Small Business to measure your success.
Note You must activate the Reports feature before Office Live begins to collect the data to be reported, such as page views and keyword usage. To activate Reports, on the Office Live Small Business Home page, at the top, click More, and then click Reports. On the Reports page, click Activate for FREE.
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Invite customer contact through your Web site
If potential clients cannot find what they need on your site, are they more likely to seek you out and ask if you can help them, or to simply look elsewhere? Consider the following ways that you can encourage visitors to your site to look further and initiate contact.
- Promote inquiries from your home page or other highly visible pages. Invite customers to contact you if they don't see what they need on your site. Provide a contact form on an overview page, or link directly to a page with a Contact Us form.
- Help identify potential customers before they contact you by summarizing or linking to your list of services, rates, or other pertinent information on any pages that contain a contact form.
- Invite customers to subscribe to your newsletter at the same time that they contact you, and summarize the benefits that they will receive by subscribing.
- Include a contact form or a link to your Contact Us page on each page that references a different type of service. Consider directing each form to a unique e-mail address, so that you know what page the visitor was looking at when they decided to send the message.
The Contact Us form that is available through Office Live Small Business helps you turn inquiries into customers by giving you the option to automatically add a site visitor's information as a new lead in Contact Manager when the visitor submits the form. As you see in the Contact Us settings dialog box, you can also offer the visitor the option to subscribe to your newsletter at that time.
For help adding or editing a Contact Us module, see Add, change, or delete a Contact Us module.
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What is your Web site telling you?
You want to invite contact from potential clients. But how do you know where to focus your efforts for attracting new customers to your site or which pages on your site are the most popular? Use the site reports available in Office Live Small Business to help you find the most effective places to start. To learn about using reports to help you get started with a new online business strategy, see Use your Web site to help achieve your business goals.
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Provide site content that brings visitors back
When visitors return to your site often, you build a relationship with them before they even contact you. You give those visitors more reason to contact you instead of your competitor when they're ready to buy. Consider the following examples of content that you can use to bring visitors back often and begin building the customer relationship:
- If your business provides creative services, such as graphic design or photography, add images of new portfolio samples each time you complete a project.
- If you provide professional services, such as computer consulting or accounting services, create a page for expert tips and add a new tip each week.
- Regardless of your type of business, provide opportunities for visitors to interact with your site. For example, add a blog to your Web site where you can share news and information about your products or services and invite comments.
A Windows Live Spaces blog is one of many available modules that you can add to the site that you create with Office Live Small Business. You can also add modules that provide more information about your company, such as an event calendar.
For help adding a blog module to your site, see Add, change, or remove a blog. For help adding an event calendar to your site, see Add, change, or remove an event calendar. To learn more about strategies for developing repeat visitors, see Increase repeat visitors to your Web site.
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What else can you do to encourage customer inquiries?
In addition to providing information about your business, your Web site can be a central access point where all potential customers can reach you. In addition to providing content on your site that encourages inquiries, think about ways in which you can draw customers to your site through all of your business activities.
- Provide expert tips in a periodic e-mail newsletter and invite direct e-mail replies to your newsletter. However, as with any e-mail marketing, it's important to only send newsletters to customers who have subscribed to receive such information from your company. To learn about creating a newsletter sign-up page and get started with e-mail marketing, see Getting started with e-mail newsletters.
- Participate in online communities, such as industry forums, and link to a contact page on your site from your forum posts. When you post to public forums, linking to a page where customers can contact you can be a better solution than including a contact e-mail address directly in your message, because it may help you reduce the number of spam (junk) e-mail replies.
- Include both your Web site address and e-mail address on your business cards. Promote your site as a source of expert information at in-person events, such as trade shows.
- In most service businesses, personal referrals are an important source of new business. If you include expert tips or other valuable information on your site, let current clients know about it so that they can share your site with others.
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Determine key performance indicators
After you decide which tools to use to increase customer inquiries, you can determine how to best track the results of your efforts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are factors that provide important information about the progress of your efforts. For example, consider the following:
- Which of your contact forms generate the most inquiries?
- Which referring sources (such as a search engine or a forum), provide the most traffic? Which of those sources result in the highest number of inquiries?
- Do you see a change in the amount of site activity around specific online activities, such as the date you publish an important blog post or send an e-mail newsletter?
- Do you see an increase in page views for the pages that you link to from your e-mail marketing messages?
- Do any pages with a contact form show a high exit page count? If so, those pages may be in need of revision.
The site reports available in Office Live Small Business can tell you exactly what you need to know about most of the KPIs that you identify. For help using reports to track your progress, see Track and Analyze key performance indicators.
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Develop a long-term strategy
When you set a goal, such as a 15 percent increase in inquiries over six months, consider that goal one milestone in a long-term strategy for growing your business. Then, you can experiment with different types of efforts in support of each milestone —
such as experimenting with different Web site and newsletter designs, different types of content on your site or in your e-mail marketing messages, or different online communities.
Track your success rates across different types of efforts to determine the best tools for supporting your particular business and develop a long-term strategy of continuous improvement that supports your business goals.
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