Back in the day, many dotcom companies burned through cash like crazy when they advertised (typically offline) to drive visitors to their website. This tended to generate a short-lived "sugar rush" of visitors who never came back or bought anything. The thinking was, "you need to keep content fresh to keep visitors interested and coming back for more".
While for certain types of websites this is absolutely true (e.g. a news portal), many people still think that fresh content is essential for ongoing website success. That ain't necessarily so
Most of the lead generation websites we build for clients are specifically for the purposes of new client acquisition. Once a prospect has found your website and becomes a client, there may not be any pressing need to keep your content "fresh" in order to drive repeat visits - your website has already done it's primary job.
While the old saying in marketing is that it takes 7 contacts (or visits in the case of a website) for a prospect to convert, this all depends. Generally speaking, the more expensive or complex the product or service you have to offer, the more visits will be needed to convert a prospect.
Lead capture methods offer an easy way to turn your visitors into customers. This lead capture could come in the form of an opt-in form for a newsletter or an offer of some sort of more detailed information (such as an e-book or a whitepaper).
This allows you to educate prospects about the value that you offer as well as stay in touch. Your followup contacts will keep prospects coming back to your site to dip back into your content.
This is a strategy we use often; not only on client's websites but on our own as well. Whether a lead capture strategy is needed or not depends largely on how difficult it is for your website to convert visitors to customers.
Just to add another layer of confusion, I'm not saying that you shouldn't add new content to your site or perform updates. Just that it isn't a necessary condition of a successful website.
Keeping your content fresh can do great things for websites, particularly niche focused websites. Adding informative, niche-driven content can help these websites to establish themselves as authoritative sources of information. If your site is one of these, then a dedicated articles section may be very helpful in getting repeat traffic.
That's a fantastic position to be in, but it does require work. You need to write the articles (or have someone write them for you) and update them on a regular basis. And there's no guaranteed payoff.
Many business owners we talk to are eager to include a "latest news" section on their sites in order to bring in repeat traffic. There are two reasons why I don't generally recommend this.
1. Unless you're a true authority, most "Latest News" tends not to be terribly newsworthy to your prospects.
2. This section will involve posting regular updates; something which is often neglected. I'm guessing you run across "latest news" pages all the time which haven't been updated in years.
I guess the moral of the story is to plan in advance. If your long-term website strategy demands weekly article updates, then you need to arrange the resources in advance to make sure it happens. If you don't feel you can commit to regular updates, then perhaps the "low maintenance" option is better.
While for certain types of websites this is absolutely true (e.g. a news portal), many people still think that fresh content is essential for ongoing website success. That ain't necessarily so
Most of the lead generation websites we build for clients are specifically for the purposes of new client acquisition. Once a prospect has found your website and becomes a client, there may not be any pressing need to keep your content "fresh" in order to drive repeat visits - your website has already done it's primary job.
While the old saying in marketing is that it takes 7 contacts (or visits in the case of a website) for a prospect to convert, this all depends. Generally speaking, the more expensive or complex the product or service you have to offer, the more visits will be needed to convert a prospect.
Lead capture methods offer an easy way to turn your visitors into customers. This lead capture could come in the form of an opt-in form for a newsletter or an offer of some sort of more detailed information (such as an e-book or a whitepaper).
This allows you to educate prospects about the value that you offer as well as stay in touch. Your followup contacts will keep prospects coming back to your site to dip back into your content.
This is a strategy we use often; not only on client's websites but on our own as well. Whether a lead capture strategy is needed or not depends largely on how difficult it is for your website to convert visitors to customers.
Just to add another layer of confusion, I'm not saying that you shouldn't add new content to your site or perform updates. Just that it isn't a necessary condition of a successful website.
Keeping your content fresh can do great things for websites, particularly niche focused websites. Adding informative, niche-driven content can help these websites to establish themselves as authoritative sources of information. If your site is one of these, then a dedicated articles section may be very helpful in getting repeat traffic.
That's a fantastic position to be in, but it does require work. You need to write the articles (or have someone write them for you) and update them on a regular basis. And there's no guaranteed payoff.
Many business owners we talk to are eager to include a "latest news" section on their sites in order to bring in repeat traffic. There are two reasons why I don't generally recommend this.
1. Unless you're a true authority, most "Latest News" tends not to be terribly newsworthy to your prospects.
2. This section will involve posting regular updates; something which is often neglected. I'm guessing you run across "latest news" pages all the time which haven't been updated in years.
I guess the moral of the story is to plan in advance. If your long-term website strategy demands weekly article updates, then you need to arrange the resources in advance to make sure it happens. If you don't feel you can commit to regular updates, then perhaps the "low maintenance" option is better.
About the Author:
About the author: David B. Ascot's knowledge is in improving sales lead generation results and your company can benefit from his profitable methods of online lead generation.
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