How your website can help you find consistency in your business

Tips

Jun 26

Do you have an area of your business that feels solid and consistent? Is there a service that is almost always booked out that runs smoothly? Do you have new leads finding your website organically? Does your inquiry process run without daily effort?

It’s a helpful thing to recognize because it either means you can dig deeper into why that area of your business is successful and learn from it, or you may realize that you’re lacking an area of consistency and that makes you feel unsure or unstable. If it feels as though nothing is consistent and it’s always a juggling act, I’d recommend focusing your efforts in one area until it becomes more solid. Having a strong leg to stand on will improve your confidence, your business model, and your bottom line.

Your website can be an extremely useful tool to help you find consistency, because beyond being a beautiful representation of your brand, it also has powerful functionality. Here are three areas that your website can help you find consistency in:

Lead generation
This can feel like a labour intensive task if you’re manually reaching out to people, networking, and asking for referrals. While those can be successful methods of generating leads, you can also use things like blog posts and freebies on your website to bring in leads passively while you’re working on other things. If you focus on writing blog posts that answer questions that your ideal client could be Googling, you can lead people to your website and build awareness for months and years after you post it. If you want to take that concept even further, you can create a free guide or resource that people have to opt in with their email to receive, and then you can track your leads and add them to your email list to help them get to know your brand even better. If you want to learn more about freebies, check out The Ultimate Freebie Guide here. While it may seem intimidating or time consuming to get started with blog posts or freebies, remember that once they’re published they continue doing the work for you in the background! It takes some upfront work, but they operate passively and can help you more consistently generate leads in your business.
Lead capture
Now maybe you’re generating leads pretty consistently but you still have people emailing or DMing you to ask what to do next or asking how you can work together. You can capture those leads and start the inquiry process on your website without the messages happening in between in a few different ways. Instead of telling people to email you to inquire, set up an inquiry form. On Squarespace you can do this with their built in form functionality, which will collect whatever information you need and email it to you when someone submits the form. Then you would manually reach back out to those inquiries yourself. If you want to take the automation one step further, you can embed a form from a CRM like Dubsado or Honeybook and setup a workflow to automatically email new inquiries with a link to book a call. If you want to skip the inquiry form all together and have someone book a discovery or consultation call right away, you can create buttons to book a call using a scheduling software like Acuity (which is built into Squarespace) or Calendly. And for those leads who aren’t ready to book with you yet but want to stay in the loop or keep you in mind for the future, you can offer them the opportunity to sign up for your newsletter and provide them with useful information about your business, resources and exclusive access to bookings or sales.
Service bookings
How many times are you explaining your services to people or answering their questions manually instead of pointing them to your website? I recently had an experience where I was looking to hire a copywriter and her website allowed you to book the service without having a consultation call first. At Lerue Creative, we always require a consultation call to ensure we’re the right fit, so I wondered if I should reach out to her before booking. But, when I went to email her, I realized that the questions I had were already answered on her website and that it was just me second guessing myself— she actually left me with no questions and I decided to book the service. When we were on the call I asked how that process works for her and she said that they made sure the page on her website was as clear as possible, and that she trusted that people who were willing to pay for the service before meeting her meant they were confident that she had the solution to their problem. Now she can consistently book this service passively because her website clearly explains her services, what problems they solve and what next steps to take to book them. So if your service marketing and booking process feels labour intensive - it’s time to look at the service pages on your website!

Finding consistency in one area at a time will help you feel more at ease in your business and will make your clients feel organized, guided and confident that they picked the right service provider. Don’t try to tackle everything at once, aim for consistency in one area at a time, and then keep building. Your website is a powerful tool that should absolutely be utilized!