How to Use Your Website to Attract New Clients

How to Use Your Website to Attract New Clients

You already know that your website is often the first experience clients have with you. It’s your brochure – a representation of your business. For that reason, it needs to look professional and put together, just like you.

But websites aren’t just brochures. They are business magnets – or they can be.

Here’s what you need to do to make sure your website is doing all that it can to bring you new clients:

Update your copy. A website isn’t meant to be stagnant – to be created and then left to gather online dust. Because of the medium, websites are meant to be revised, updated, and added to as you get more experience, finish more projects, or develop new areas of expertise.

So start by taking a look at what you currently have on your website. How long has it been there? Is it still relevant to your business? Do you have anything new that should be featured? Are you describing your services, or your niche, in a different way today than you did when you created the site?

Make changes. Make your words more powerful and your images more interesting.

Start a blog. I know, I know, blogs are a big commitment. But the truth is, Google likes to see a steady stream of new content on your website. They reward sites that are constantly being added to. A blog can do that for you.

If you don’t already have one, add a blog navigation tab to your site that will bring visitors directly to your blog. Then create an editorial calendar to help you plan out the next three months of blog posts, so you’re not spending too much time each week coming up with potential topics.

Then blog, preferably on a weekly basis. Write about things your potential clients want to know. Answer their questions. Address myths that stop them from hiring you. Start some controversy.

But most importantly, keep adding new blog posts on a regular basis.

Create videos. YouTube is now the second-largest search engine online. It’s huge. There are currently 1 billion YouTube users who watch 4 billion videos per day. That’s a lot of traffic to this one site. And yet only 9% of small businesses use YouTube.

That’s a missed opportunity.

So here’s how you can use it. Create a welcome video for your website home page. Ghostwriting clients especially like to see what you look like and to hear what you sound like. So show them right up front.

You can also create mini YouTube videos that you house on your own YouTube channel to address some of the same topics you talk about in your blog. Or to share resources you’ve found that you want to share. The videos don’t need to be more than a few minutes, but since you know people are searching for them, why not create some and house them on your website.

Offer a freebie. One way to allow potential ghostwriting clients to sample your work is to offer a free special report or guide on your website’s home page. In exchange for giving you their name and email address, you can offer potential clients a downloadable pdf file to demonstrate your expertise and to help them make the decision to hire you.

The freebie could be as simple as a one-page publishing checklist, with a typical timeline for producing a book. Or it could be a list of 10 blog post ideas, if you offer ghostblogging – or a series of social media posts if that’s one of your services.

The key is to make it a top quality example of your writing skill, packed with useful information that will make prospects nervous about turning to anyone else for help.

In essence, that’s what your whole website should do for you – demonstrate your skill and expertise in a way that inspires confidence.

So take another look at your site. What can you do to make it even more effective?

What change did you make to your website that improved the results you were getting?