A guide for consultants, coaches & freelancers
Let me tell you about something that happens to me all the time.
I come across cool consultants on LinkedIn. Then I check out their site. And the gulf between the person and their site is vast.
We’re talking savvy consultants, skilled at what they do. People with so much value to offer. With sites that are at best bore fests. And at worst personal brand liabilities.
How are they getting it so wrong?
This happens because people still underrate the importance of their website.
Let me lay it out for you.
These days, most clients meet your website before they meet you. And if your site lets you down, you’ve lost a potential client. Just like that.
The funny thing about this is that consultants with crappy sites don’t think, “Hmn, my site’s not delivering the goods. I should do something about that.”
They think, “Websites don’t work because I don’t get any leads from my site.”
Dude! Good websites work. It’s just that yours is terrible. So, let’s make your website really work for you, starting at the beginning, with your homepage.
The most important page on your site is your homepage
Unless you’re generating significant organic traffic through your blog, most people are entering your site via your homepage. So, it’s the most important page on your site, because it influences whether people dig deeper to find out more about you, and whether they return.
The most important metric when it comes to web pages isn’t page views, it’s the time people spend on the page. The more interested they are in what you have to offer, the longer they’ll spend exploring your content. And the longer you hold their attention, the more likely they are to return.
When someone arrives on your homepage, they decide in seconds whether you’re relevant to them. If you’re not, they’re out of there. Web specialists talk about the 15 second rule, which is the average time people spend on your site deciding if you’re for them. Personally, I think those specialists are dreaming, and you’ve got three-five seconds tops to grab someone’s attention.
So, your homepage needs to work hard, because it’s your front of house, shop window and salesperson all rolled into one.
What does your homepage need to cover?
Your prospective clients have four questions when they come to your site.
What does this person/ business do?
What’s in it for me?
Can I trust them?
How do I get what they offer?
You want to answer all four of those questions on your homepage, and to do that, your homepage needs to achieve five things:
Make it immediately clear to people what you do.
Prove that you deliver the goods.
Give people a feel for who you are.
Help your ideal clients fix the problem you fix for them for free.
Make it easy to work with you.
In this guide, we’ll get up close and personal with each of these five success factors and give you some actionable tips for upping your homepage game.
1. Is it immediately clear what you do?
When people hit your site can they tell what you do straightaway?
Is it instantly clear who you help, what you help them to do, and how you deliver the goods?
If not, get those facts at the top of your homepage fast.
It’s frankly astonishing the number of consultants who make potential clients work hard to understand what they can do for them. I even met one business owner who tried to convince me his ambiguity was a deliberate business development tactic to create intrigue. Mate, you’re not that interesting or relevant to people. All you’re doing is frustrating folks and turning them off.
I know that sounds harsh. But it’s true.
Strangers only care what we can do for them. If we make it hard for folks to uncover those benefits, they’re going to get the hell out of dodge, and you won’t see them again.
So, let’s take a quick gander at your website and make sure you’re not suffering from whatthefeckdotheydoitis.
Here’s how you do it.
Have a business name or a tagline that says what you do.
In your intro, say who you help, what you help them do, and how you do that.
Get both of those nuggets at the top of your homepage.
You might hear developers talk about putting that critical info above the fold. This is a term for the valuable real estate at the very top of your page. It’s a concept that originates from direct mail when you had to grab peoples’ attention in the first section of a letter. In our mobile-first age you want to make sure you cover your bases in the first section of your homepage showing on a smart phone.
Your tagline
Taaaaaaaaaaaaglines. Tricky little feckers. Do you need one?
Well, it depends.
If the name of your business makes it clear what you do, then probably not.
Very Good Copy
Jacobs & Munro Architects
Kiwifruit Processing Company Ltd
Marilyn Wo Unlimited Graphic Design
Pretty crystal clear what’s going on there. You might still use a tagline to say who you work with, or the services you deliver. But you don’t need one because architecture, copywriting, kiwifruit processing and design are all professions that are well enough understood to not require clarification. Well … maybe not kiwifruit processing.
However, if your business name’s more ambiguous, then a tagline tells potential clients need to know what you do.
But keep it simple.
A good tagline covers what you do and who you serve
Marketing for consultants
Legal copywriting
Websites for musicians
Leadership coaching for principals
You can also work in the most valuable thing you deliver. But this only works within the context of what you do and who you serve. If you focus a tagline on value alone, it risks becoming too broad. An excellent rule of thumb is that if you can take your tagline and use it for another type of business, it’s too generic.
But Lizzie, I hear you say, what about the great taglines of our age?
Just do it
Taste the feeling
Think different
Yeah. Well. Money. If you have millions of dollars to pump into global marketing to burn your tagline into the minds of the masses, you can have any tagline you want. For the rest of us, specific works better.
Your homepage intro
It’s worth giving your homepage intro extra time and energy, because this is where you really hook your ideal clients in. People need to know:
Who you help. This is your market niche.
What you help them do. These are the benefits you deliver.
How you deliver the goods. This is the service you offer.
And you need to convey that in a few short lines.
The real clincher here is the benefits you deliver. Ideally those benefits solve a problem your ideal client is experiencing, and they should resonate both emotionally and logically.
ACTION. Check your tagline and your homepage intro. Can people work out in a couple of seconds who you help, what you help them to do, and how you deliver the goods?
Can people trust you?
Nobody’s going to hand over their dollars if they don’t believe you can deliver. So how do you convince people that you’re the real deal?
Humans are collaborative social animals, so we’re very influenced by what other humans do. Showing potential clients that lots of other people like them trust you makes them more likely to trust you. This is called social proof, and it’s the key to establishing trust on your website.
Social proof can include:
Client logos.
Testimonials.
Case studies.
A portfolio of your work.
Recommendations on LinkedIn.
Google My Business reviews.
Facebook reviews.
Interviews with clients.
Numbers that prove success, e.g., number of clients worked with, percentage of revenue growth delivered, money saved etc.
Awards.
Publication credits.
Blowing your own trumpet will never count for as much as social proof. So, whenever you finish a project, don’t forget to ask for a testimonial and / or a review.
ACTION. Check your homepage. Does it have enough social proof? Are your client logos current? Are your testimonials strong enough? Do they reflect your best work? Could you include more social proof in the form of case studies, award logos, or publication credits.
3. Can people get a feel for who you are?
There are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of consultants out there doing what you do. Most of them use similar processes. Many of them deliver similar results.
So why do people choose you?
Because you’ve delivered results for people like them.
And because they like the cut of your jib.
People work with people. So, they choose you as a consultant because they dig your vibe. But remember that most clients meet your website before they meet you, so your homepage needs to give people a feel for who you are.
You can help people build a relationship with you by:
Showing your face in candid images and video of you and your clients.
Using your own conversational voice in your website copy.
Sharing stories that show who you are.
This is often the thing consultants struggle with most. This is partly because it can feel exposing to share yourself with the world. People hide behind a corporate look and voice because it feels safer. But what this does is make you feel bland, a generic corporate drone, just like all the other generic corporate drones. And it stops potential clients building a personal relationship with you.
People also default to corporate blah because there’s a fallacy that it’s more professional. This is based on the misconception that there’s a difference between the professional and the personal. As if we morph into different people when we cross the threshold of our hallowed workplace.
Obviously, that’s complete codswallop. There is no difference between the personal and the professional. It’s all life. We’re all the same people all the time, whether we’re at home or at work.
So be real. Show your face. Talk like you do to your friends. Share stories from your life.
Don’t be afraid that this will turn some people off. It will. And that’s what you want. Because just as your website’s job is to attract your ideal clients, its role is also to put off people who aren’t the right fit for you. And if someone doesn’t dig your voice or your style, why would you want to work with them? So, show up as unapologetically, and enthusiastically you.
ACTION. Check your homepage. Do you have up-to-date quality pictures and video of yourself and your clients? Does your copy sound like you talking? Do you have an about section on your homepage where you tease your personal story?
4. Do you help your ideal clients fix their problem for free?
Do you add value and prove you know your stuff by offering content that helps people solve the problem you fix for them for free?
The most effective way to promote your business is to add value to your clients. And a great way to add value is to create and share content that teaches people to do what you do for free.
You might think people won’t hire you if you share your knowledge and processes for free. But there’s a vast difference between knowing how to do something and doing it. So, in fact, giving everything you know away increases the likelihood someone will work with you because it shows you know your stuff, and you’re a good sort who gives great advice.
Content that helps your ideal client fix their problems for free includes:
How to guides (like this one).
Free webinars and e-courses.
Detailed resources like whitepapers and e-books.
Tools like checklists.
If you’re hunting inspiration for topics to create free resources on:
Share the processes you use to solve problems for your clients.
Answer your clients’ FAQs.
And address common objections to your services.
On lead magnets
To gate or not to gate your free content. That is the question.
Actually, it isn’t really a question anymore because gated content, aka lead magnets, is pretty outdated. It’s overused and it’s questionable whether it delivers high quality leads.
For Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs and guru of demand marketing for SAAS companies, gating content is a hard no. He asks why you’d spend time and money creating high quality content, and then put it behind a barrier that discourages people from engaging with it. He also notes that downloading gated content isn’t a solid signal of buying intent because all it means is that someone wants to get their mitts on that particular piece of content. When he and his team move businesses away from a lead magnet lead generation model to a more prolific content marketing model, revenue always rises.
If you’re keen to use content to grow your email list, simply include calls to action to sign up for emails throughout your content. Or adopt the content upgrade tactic, which is a more sophisticated evolution of the old lead magnet model, where you allow people to access content for free, but offer gated upgrades in the form of resources to help them implement the advice you’ve shared.
If you blog regularly, look at your most popular blog posts and ask yourself how you can add content upgrades to theses posts in the form of resources.
ACTION. Check your homepage. Are you featuring free resources for your ideal clients? Are those free resources aligned with your most popular topics? Do those resources encourage people to join your community by following you on social or signing up for your e-news?
5. Do you make it easy for people to work with you?
Your website has three jobs:
Attract your ideal clients.
Grow a relationship with them so they trust you and dig your vibe.
Generate high quality leads.
Make it easy for people to work with you by providing enough information for them to make an informed decision about whether your services are right for them.
This also generates higher quality leads.
By the time people reach out to you they know what you can do for them, how you do it, and how much it costs. This makes it more likely that sales enquiries will convert.
There are two schools of thought on sales.
Old school. Get people talking to you as early as you can in the sales process so you can build a relationship with them. This makes it more likely they’ll buy from you.
Pragmatic. People don’t want to talk to you or your salespeople before they’re ready. Give them the information they need upfront. If you don’t do that, they’re simply going to find a competitor who does, because that’s what people expect in a digital first world.
No prizes for guessing I fall firmly in the pragmatic, digital first sales camp.
The more information you provide on your homepage, the higher quality enquiries you’ll attract. You’ll get fewer enquiries of course, because some people will decide you’re not for them, but that’s great because you waste less time on unnecessary proposals.
I just crunched my conversion rate for 2021 and I had an 88% close rate on new business enquiries, because I provide plenty of information about my services online and make it easy for people to work with me.
So, on your homepage, make it easy for people to find out about your services by doing the following:
Intro your services high on your homepage.
Make them clear and easy to understand. Use your clients’ language.
Explain how each service will help solve your client’s problems.
Streamline your services. You don’t want to baffle people with too much choice.
Include a clear call to action at te end of your homepage. Tell people what to do next.
ACTION. Check your homepage. Are you ticking these five boxes? Is it easy for people to understand what you do, and find out more information about your services?
Four common mistakes consultants make on their homepage
People don’t stick around on your homepage for a number of reasons. The first reason is nothing to be afraid of. Your site isn’t relevant to a bunch of people because they’re not your target market. Wave goodbye and smile.
But there are four common homepage mistakes consultants make that cost them money.
Your site isn’t relevant to them because they can’t work out what you do. This is way more common than you think. Make sure that when people hit your site, it’s immediately clear what you do, who you do it for, and why they should work with you.
Your site isn’t relevant to them because your content doesn’t answer their questions, fix their problems, or help them achieve their goals. Better fix that.
Your website design makes them weep. Design style is subjective, but all sites should tick a few boxes, including simple conventional navigation, legible fonts, authentic imagery, and good information hierarchy with the most important things first.
Your site loads slower than a wet weekend in lockdown. Nobody’s got patience for that. If your site’s making Googles page speed claxon sound, get your friendly web developer on the case.
Your homepage needs to achieve five things
Make it immediately clear to people what you do.
Prove that you deliver the goods.
Give people a feel for who you are.
Help your ideal clients fix the problem you fix for them for free.
Make it easy to work with you.
If your homepage isn’t covering these basic bases, it’s holding your business back. Fix it fast. You don’t need a full website reboot. Just a content refresh. Don’t be leaving money on the table because your homepage is letting you down.
And if you need help making your homepage irresistible to your ideal clients, hit me up.