Let’s think of your website as a sales person. Let’s also assume they are not a high performing soul delivering you a mass of leads and sales every month, but the opposite – someone struggling to make a dent in their monthly quota.

But there is hope. Just like salespeople, websites can be turned around. The first step is to pinpoint the exact areas of struggle then quickly coach the person or fix the website – to direct things back on track.

I have first hand experience in this turnaround process for both people and websites: fourteen years running Ark Advance and, before that, five years managing a sales team for an outsource mail processing company. I can assure you, the attributes of troubled salespeople and troubled websites are very similar. Here are the top six that come to mind.

1. Not seeing enough people

These were the sales people everyone in the office liked, mainly because they spent so much time in our office instead of in the offices of our prospects presenting great solutions. Just like your salespeople, your website needs visits to make it work. Now we may not require thousands per week, but there needs to enough to make it work. And if you are struggling to rank naturally within Google then it could be time to whip out your wallet and invest in some paid advertising to get the wheels turning.

2. Seeing the wrong people

Some salespeople making enough visits, but with the wrong people. For instance, they chew up hours presenting to people without the authority to make the purchase. In website marketing, this is similar to buying Google Advertising clicks on keywords that your target audience will probably never use. For instance clicks on the search phrase “business profit” for a business coaching service when most prospects arrive behind the keywords “business coach” or “business mentor”.

3. Failing to get the message across

These salespeople make it into the right office to pitch the right product to the right person – and still it turns to custard. There are a few things that can go off the rails here.

In direct sales, the first place I’d look would be the questions the salesperson is asking. But websites struggle to ask questions, so all you have is your content. Perhaps it’s the format that is failing. Perhaps it’s all a mass of text when your prospects will respond better with a mix of text, video and audio. Maybe you’ve got content written for all your prospects instead of content in different sections, each talking to the needs of specific audiences?

4. Failing to ask for the sale

And then you have the person who is great until the end when – BAM! – they don’t ask for the sale. This is similar to a website which hides its Contact Us page or fails to offer any juicy conversion choices that allows prospects to ‘raise their hand”.

5. Not following up on those who are “thinking about it”

Nearly there – we now have those who present well, ask for the sale and get the common response “let me think about it – come back to me later”. And guess what – they don’t. Nobody is followed up and prospects go cold and sales go begging. In website marketing this is about failing to deploy all the clever electronic reminder tactics available to you. Email marketing and Google’s remarketing product are great examples of tactics that neatly fit this need. Which leads me to the final hurdle.

6. Not selling to those who have bought before

Our salespeople began with a territory with customers to manage. The smart ones – wanting the easy way in life – began by selling more services to existing clients. The strugglers avoided those customers like the plague and went out to make a name for themselves quickly with new work from new clients. Very rarely did it turn out well. Think of this like avoiding your sizable email marketing list of current and ex-customers to instead embark on some Google Advertising.

There you go – six attributes that will ensure marketing failure. Do the opposite, and you will be well on the way to turning your struggling website into something that sells for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All without the hassles that come with managing their human equivalent. Contact us today if you would like to introduce us to your online marketing experience.