How to generate qualified business leads from your freelance website.
In a previous article I wrote about how most freelancers create websites and e-newsletters which don’t attract qualified business leads.
All too often, our readers are other freelancers, online marketers and casual, one-time visitors. Out of all the people who come to your freelance website and sign up for your e-newsletter, maybe only 5% or 10% could be classified as genuine business prospects.
So how can you shift that balance and get a real return from the time you put into your website, blog and e-newsletter?
The key is to target your messaging to your prospects alone.
Let me illustrate that point by choosing two home page headlines from two different freelance websites.
Homepage headline #1: Freelance Copywriter for Websites & More.
That headline simply states that the site owner is a copywriter. If she is a good copywriter, she’ll probably have plenty of other freelancers and marketers reading through her site and signing up for her newsletter.
As for business prospects, they haven’t learned much from that headline. If I am a clothes retailer and I need some copywriting work done, all I have learned is that this person is, indeed, a copywriter. But that’s all.
Homepage headline #2: Transform Your Clean Water Website Into A Lead Generation Turbine, With A Proven 3-Step Process.
This headline is focused with laser-like clarity on marketers within a very specific niche. It also makes a very specific and attractive promise.
Like copywriter number one, this writer also has a newsletter. Who do you think his subscribers will be? My guess is that a big proportion of them will be genuine business prospects. Copywriters and marketers outside of the clean water industry will be unlikely to sign up.
His list may grow slowly, and the number of visitors to his site may not be as high as with the first example. But...the time he spends will be of real value to his business, because he is talking to business prospects.
How can you learn from this?
There is no doubt that the more tightly focused your website is on a particular industry niche, the more likely you are to attract qualified readers, subscribers and leads.
If you don’t want to target your services to such a specific niche, you should certainly move away from messaging that simply states that you are a “copywriter”.
In today’s competitive landscape, being a “copywriter” is not enough. You need to differentiate yourself. You need to be a specialist.
That means focusing more clearly on a group of prospects who are ready to buy, and who will be relieved to find a copywriter who has expertise in their particular industry.
Once you have taken that step, write your content directly to their specific needs. Everything. Your home page, your articles, your blog, your newsletter.
If you focus on the specific needs of a known and targeted audience, you are far more likely to generate qualified leads and new clients from your website.
To summarise...
As freelancers our time is a crucial asset. We can’t afford to waste it. But if you write your website, blog or e-newsletters to a general interest audience, you are doing exactly that – wasting your time.
Far better to identify your best audience of prospects, and then write everything for them alone.
That way the time you spend on writing will be time invested in securing new leads.
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