Darren Jamieson: So, the sad reality is, the vast majority of people’s websites never generate any leads or inquiries, or very few. And in the next 10 to 15 minutes, I’m going to tell you exactly why that is and what you personally can do about it yourself, so you don’t have to use someone else.
[00:57]
Darren Jamieson: So first off, why are you listening to me? Why am I standing here, talking to you? My name is Darren. I run a digital marketing agency called Engage Web. Next month, we will be 16 years old, and I’ve been in this industry since 1998, which is the last century. I know, I don’t look old enough, do I? Thank you for saying that. I know you were thinking it. I started as the very first in-house web designer for GAME, the high street retailer. And our largest client right now pays us just over £30,000 a month to run their digital marketing for them.
[01:35]
Darren Jamieson: Now, that might sound like a lot, but they do that because in the first year of working with them, we 10x’d their inquiries. For those of you who don’t speak marketing waffle, that means we increased their inquiries by a factor of 10, or 1,000%. That’s why they’re still with us now, and they pay us over 30 grand a month to do that. But it’s okay, there are a lot of businesses involved there. They’re in four separate countries, and there are about 6 to 700 different franchises that we work for. So, we do put the effort in.
[02:07]
Darren Jamieson: Now, I’m going to show you why most businesses don’t get anything through their website. I warn you before I do this: I’ve been to art school, so if this looks a little bit weird, it’s because I’m being artistic, not crap. Okay? Important you get that.
[02:45]
Darren Jamieson: So, you get a website. There it is. That’s your website. Does that look like your website? Yeah? Agree? Yep. Horizontal, horizontal, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s scrolling, it’s scrolling, it’s on the phone, it’s on the phone. So that’s your website, that’s what it looks like.
[03:22]
Darren Jamieson: Most websites have a logo, either there or in the middle. They might have a menu across the top. They maybe have some sort of navigation down there. They have a bit of content here, a bit here, here, here. That’s a website. You get your website. Do you get business through it? No. Doesn’t tend to happen like that.
[03:39]
Darren Jamieson: Many websites will have, say, an “About Us” page, maybe a “Meet the Team” page. Perhaps they’ve got a “Services” page and a “Contact Us” page. Do you get business through it just because you’ve got those pages? No. So, what do you do?
[03:54]
Darren Jamieson: You think, “Ah, I need to get some business through my website.” How do you generate business? What are the things people usually do? Well, they’ll do PPC, pay-per-click, Google Ads, or they’ll go Facebook Ads. That’s really easy. You post something on Facebook, and Facebook’s going to say, “Oh, you can reach an extra 10,000 people if you pay five quid and boost this post. Oh, that’s going to send traffic to my website. That’s going to work!” Or maybe you’ll do SEO, search engine optimization. That can be quite expensive, depending on who you use. It could be a couple of grand a month. As I said, we charge one client over £30,000 a month to do it. That can be really expensive. Or maybe you do some PPC, or you do some SEO, or you do newsletters, or email marketing.
[04:39]
Darren Jamieson: And all that sends traffic to your website. Does that generate inquiries? Does it? Some can, but by and large, no. By and large, no. Why? Because the websites tend not to convert very well.
[04:54]
Darren Jamieson: What can I do about this? What can I do about this? So, you write some blogs. I’ve heard that works. I’ll write some blogs for my website. People are always talking about writing blogs for the website. So let’s pick an industry… Daisy, isn’t it? Property. Property. So, let’s say you could write a blog. I’m not going to write this down because I’m crap at writing, as I said. You could write a blog on “How do I sell my house quickly?” or “How do I maximize my rental investment?” or “How do I get rid of problem tenants?” And people may Google those blogs and come through.
[05:16]
Darren Jamieson: These are blogs, by the way, down here. They create separate pages on the website, and they get people coming through on those blogs. You might get more inquiries from that, but chances are, you probably won’t. Why? Because you want to be ranking in Google for things like, let’s see, “Investor finance” or “Selling a house fast,” or “Selling a house above market value.” You mentioned construction… what kind of construction? Development. Retail development. So, retail development, like developing flats or shops into flats, that kind of thing. We’ve got a couple of finance people in the room. It could be invoice factoring or invoice finance.
[06:02]
Darren Jamieson: You might write a blog on “What’s the difference between invoice factoring and invoice finance?” because they’re very similar, but they’re different. People don’t know the difference. You write the blog. People will come in on it, writing about the difference between invoice factoring and invoice finance. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to get inquiries.
[06:35]
Darren Jamieson: So, what you need to do is create, rather than just a services page—like most businesses will do—you need to have a separate page for each service. And I’m going to put, for example, “Invoice factoring,” and now I realize I’m going to write one for “Invoice finance.” These are separate pages. Whatever service you have should have its own page. They are called pillar pages, content pillars.
[07:15]
Darren Jamieson: If you don’t have those pages, you’re not going to rank in Google for them. Google is not going to rank a services page that might have all of your services listed out. A page can only really be optimized for one thing, one phrase, one service, one product.
[07:51]
Darren Jamieson: So, you’d have a separate page for each. But it would link off to these separate pages. Only when you have these separate pages do you stand a chance of actually ranking for them.
[08:23]
Darren Jamieson: So, let’s say that’s invoice finance and that’s invoice factoring. You then have a blog here on “What’s the difference between invoice finance and invoice factoring?” When you mention invoice finance in that blog, you link to the invoice finance page. When you mention invoice factoring in that blog, you link to the invoice factoring page. Every blog you write creates a new page on your website, but by cross-linking it with your pillar pages—the pages you want to rank—you’re telling Google, “These are the important pages on my website. These are the services I want to promote. These are the products I want to promote.”
[08:54]
Darren Jamieson: The blogs by themselves are just blogs. You don’t really want people coming in on those pages if you can avoid it, because a lot of clients ask us, “What’s the point of blogs? What’s the point of writing blogs if you’re not doing this?” The answer is: there isn’t any.
[09:11]
Darren Jamieson: Every blog you write that creates a link back to your pillar page creates a separate link within your own website to that page, to the service page, the pillar page. The more links you have to the pillar page, the stronger they are, the more likely they are to rank in Google.
[09:26]
Darren Jamieson: So, if you did a blog on LinkedIn, for example… Let’s say this is a blog on LinkedIn. Could you do that as a newsletter or a post on LinkedIn, writing about personal branding?
[09:40]
Darren Jamieson: That’s a great point, and I’m glad you asked that. Yes, you can go to LinkedIn and write a newsletter or an article, and you can link that to your pillar page on your website. However, there’s one problem with doing that: you don’t own LinkedIn. You don’t own it.
[10:08]
Darren Jamieson: I was at a seminar years ago with the marketing manager of Budweiser UK, and he gave a talk about how they invested millions in the UK to promote their Facebook page for Budweiser UK. Millions and millions invested to get more people to like the page. He said, “Had we known what Facebook was going to do, we wouldn’t have bothered.” Because back then, if you posted on your Facebook page, most of your followers would see it. But Facebook reduced the reach from 100% down to 50%, down to 40%, down to 30%, and where it stands today, it’s about 4%. 4% of your followers will see what you post on Facebook.
[10:40]
Darren Jamieson: You don’t own it. You don’t control it. Facebook wants you to spend money on ads to get any kind of reach. So if you waste money trying to build up your social media, it’s not yours. LinkedIn could pull you like that. Google could pull you like that. Facebook? Twitter? They can pull you quicker than that. In fact, Twitter got taken down the other day with a DDoS attack, a distributed denial of service attack, that brought the whole service down across the world. Everybody had tears for Elon Musk. What a shame.
[11:11]
Darren Jamieson: So you shouldn’t be spending time on that. You want to be doing it on your website. Because people do Google for things, even if they don’t Google, “What are the benefits of personal branding?” They will Google things like, “How can I take a good photograph of myself?” or “How can I make myself look better in pictures?” or “What are the best poses for a branding photo?” They will Google that. And that’s the kind of thing you can write content on, which will link back to your personal branding page, which is the service you provide.
[11:41]
Darren Jamieson: But even with that, people coming in on the blogs, coming in on your page… are you going to get loads and loads of inquiries? No, probably not. Because most people don’t want you phoning them up. They don’t want somebody that does invoice factoring giving them a call. Who’d want that? They don’t want an accountant phoning them up. They don’t want Pete calling them about a sudden-death party.
[12:20]
Darren Jamieson: Has anyone seen the film The Matrix with Keanu Reeves? So, Keanu Reeves plays Neo, and Carrie-Anne Moss plays Trinity. They go into a virtual world where they’ve got almost godlike superpowers. They’re amazing. And there’s a scene where they rescue Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, from being tortured. They’re on top of a skyscraper, and they see a helicopter. They want to escape, so Trinity gets on the comms to Tank, who’s in the real world, and says, “I need a pilot’s license for whatever that helicopter model is.” He says, “One second,” presses a few buttons, and downloads the pilot’s license into Trinity’s head. Suddenly, she can fly that helicopter.
[12:42]
Darren Jamieson: That is what your website visitors want when they come to your website. They expect to be able to immediately solve the problem that you say you can solve for them—just like that, without doing any work. And that’s what you need to do.
[13:22]
Darren Jamieson: The solution, quite simply, is for you to create what’s called a lead magnet. A lead magnet could be a PDF, a video, an online portal, a one-to-one consultation call with you—something of perceived value that they will give their details for. It could be “50 poses you can use for corporate photography or branding photography.” It could be “17 ways you can maximize the value of your home without spending any money.” It could be “Ways you can increase revenue within your business.” It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s something your target client wants.
[13:58]
Darren Jamieson: So, when they’re on your corporate photography page, they are offered corporate photography poses as a lead magnet. Important point: A lead magnet is only a lead magnet if you get the lead. They have to give you contact details for it, which would be name and email at a bare minimum, possibly name, email, and phone number. Don’t ask for the phone number unless you’re going to use it. Don’t ask for the phone number unless you justify why you want it. Otherwise, you’ll put people off.
[14:21]
Darren Jamieson: For example, you could say, “I’ll send you the link via WhatsApp, so we need your phone number for that.” Or, “We’ll put you into a WhatsApp group, or here’s some reason why you want it.” If the phone number is important for you, you need to give them a reason why. I suspect, with finance, commercial accounting, the phone number is going to be important. With photography, it might be less so, and the email may be sufficient.
[14:50]
Darren Jamieson: That email would then go into your database. And there are loads of database providers you can use—things like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft (which is now called Keep), Mailgun. There are hundreds of them. They all do a similar thing, and they all have escalating costs depending on how much you actually use them. But you own it. It’s your data. If you’ve got 5,000 followers on Twitter, that ain’t yours. That’s useless to you. You need to get them off social media and into your database that you control. And the only way you can do that is with things like a lead magnet.
[15:26]
Darren Jamieson: You can promote it again. You can use video. I do this quite effectively. I have videos on YouTube promoting specific services, specific products, things that you can solve. The descriptions of the video and the call-to-actions within the video link through to a landing page here, which tells them how they can solve it. When they’re on there, they want to know how to do it straight away. They’re offered a lead magnet and how they can solve it. Which, they expect to be able to do just like that.
[15:57]
Darren Jamieson: Spoiler alert: they’re never going to do it. In fact, they’re probably not going to read your lead magnet. Most businesses I speak to about it spend days, weeks, months crafting their lead magnet, like they’re writing their magnum opus. Nobody’s going to read the thing. Don’t waste your time. It doesn’t really matter what’s in it. What’s important is the cover, the title, and what you say it’s going to do for them. The reality is, probably nothing. But what it’s actually going to do for them is give their details to you so that you can solve the problem for them, because that’s what they want.
[16:33]
Darren Jamieson: 15% off your first purchase—that’s a lead magnet. That is the perfect lead magnet. You’ll go on to sites like John Lewis or Marks & Spencer, or even Papa John’s, Domino’s, and they’ll give you 5%, 10%, or 15% off your first purchase if you join their mailing list. That’s a perfect lead magnet.
[16:44]
Darren Jamieson: So, for anyone in e-commerce, that’s a great way to do it. If you’re not in e-commerce, you have to be a bit more creative. You have to create something of value that they’re going to want. And once you have that, promote it through the blogs. Google will send you traffic here, through to here, through to here, and put people into your database.
[17:04]
Darren Jamieson: If you want to run PPC, if you want to run SEO, if you want to run email campaigns, fire them through to here, into here, into your database. Simple. Do not do any of that without that, because it’s not going to work.
[17:30]
Darren Jamieson: As a final point—am I alright on time? I usually go over—one of our clients, a company called Chester.com, they advertise restaurants, hotels, and venues around Chester, as you’d expect. Chester.com had a box on the front of their website that said, “Subscribe to our newsletter.” This is not 2002. Nobody subscribes to your newsletter because nobody wants your spam. They had 151 people on that newsletter list after about two years. That’s rubbish.
[18:09]
Darren Jamieson: Just before Christmas, mid-November, we put up a lead magnet on the site, which was a calendar event of all the Christmas activities in Chester. Some of you may well have downloaded it. It involved things like when the Christmas markets open, when they close, when the Christmas lights switch on. It was a simple two-page piece of paper with all of the events.
[18:44]
Darren Jamieson: After five weeks, they had over 7,000 people on their mailing list—7,000! And all of those people were interested in what goes on in Chester. They sell advertising to places like this, which they can then use to charge them to send emails out about offers to those 7,000 people in Chester. It’s that simple. Do that, and you’ll get the business. Don’t do that, and you won’t. And that’s something you can do yourself.
[19:18]
Darren Jamieson: Any questions?
[19:25]
Audience Member: So you’re saying newsletters are old-fashioned?
[19:30]
Darren Jamieson: Absolutely not. Because I was just going to say, what are you going to do with the 7,000 emails? Do you know what? I’m really glad you asked that as well. Brilliant question.
[19:48]
Darren Jamieson: If you build up 7,000 people on your database because of this and you sit on it and do nothing, you’re wasting it. If you email them six months later and go, “Oh, I’ve got an offer on,” they’ll be like, “Who the hell are you? I don’t remember signing up for this.” Unsubscribe. You need to keep that list warm.
[20:23]
Darren Jamieson: You need an automation sequence welcoming them. First, the email comes out straight away. Maybe they get another one three days later: “How did you find our calendar that you downloaded, or our guide on portrait poses, or whatever it may be?” Then another one a week later. Send out regular emails. Keep in regular contact with them. If you don’t, it goes cold. They’ll unsubscribe from you. You have to do that.
[20:42]
Darren Jamieson: But the really fast thing you can do that will get you leads—and so few people do this—is to phone them up almost immediately, or the following day, or within two days, and ask them a very simple question: “How did you find our document on doing portrait poses?” or “How did you find our guide to increasing value within your property?” And almost every single person will say, “I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.” Because they haven’t. And they have no intention of looking at it.
[21:04]
Darren Jamieson: They downloaded it and thought, “That’s going to solve my problem just like that.” That is your opportunity then to tell them what prompted them to download it in the first place. They will then proceed to tell you what their problem is, which coincidentally is exactly what you solve.
[21:35]
Darren Jamieson: So, any more questions?
[21:38]
Darren Jamieson: Okay, thank you very much! Perfect. Thank you!
