What do you want your clients to do when they visit your website? Should they buy something? Sign up for something? Read a blog post?
While this is a simple question, many career practitioners struggle to determine what they want website visitors to do once they arrive. As a result, they default to “everything,” which essentially means nothing.
Knowing the actions you want your site visitors to take is essential, because if you don’t know what you want them to do, how are they supposed to know?
Even if you position yourself as the guide with your messaging, if they struggle to understand how to engage with you, you risk losing potential leads and sales.
You need a plan
To overcome the obstacles we face in our lives/businesses, we need a couple of things. First, we need a guide. Someone who can help us get to where we want to go. Someone who understands our problems and has “been there, done that.” They know what works and what doesn’t. They have experience.
Second, we need a plan. We need to know the steps to take to get past our obstacles. A guide knows the pitfalls to avoid and the path or plan to follow to get us where we need to go quicker than we could on our own.
As the guide for your customers, you need a plan as well. A plan not only gives your clients confidence in your solution, it also gives them direction on how to engage with you.
Read more about marketing from Ryan Rhoten:
Be the guide – not the hero – in the story you tell potential clients
Your clients are on an obstacle course. You can help them get to the finish line
Is your professional website working for you?
The three-step plan
Not to be confused with your internal process, the plan I’m referring to in this post consists of the steps your clients need to take to engage with you.
Potential clients need an easy, step-by-step plan to move forward with your brand or they won’t, even if they are convinced you can help them. The best way to keep your plan simple is to limit it to three steps. (Four is ok, five is too many.)
To help structure your plan, use the following logic.
- Step 1: The action you want clients to take.
- Step 2: The process your clients will follow.
- Step 3: The success your clients will experience.
In other words, take this action, follow this process and you will overcome your obstacle.
Yes, this is an overly simplified plan, which is the point. If you were to list out your entire process on how you help clients overcome their obstacles, they would lose interest very quickly.
The three-step plan allows you to summarize your process into an easy-to-understand method. As an example, here’s the plan I use for one of my group training programs.
- Step 1: Enroll. I want them to enroll in the course.
- Step 2: Establish. They follow my process to establish a marketing strategy that works.
- Step 3: Engage. They can now confidently market to potential clients.
For my personal branding quiz, I use the following three steps.
- Step 1: Assess. Take the assessment to see how visible you are today.
- Step 2: Score. Get your score out of 100, so you know where to start.
- Step 3: Build. Use your starting point to begin building your brand online.
Simplicity eliminates confusion
When people visit your website or read your marketing materials, they want to know if you understand them, can help them and how to buy your product or service.
Breaking your process down into three simple steps helps simplify the complex. This removes doubt, encouraging potential clients to engage. Your potential client will understand your actual process will be more than three steps, but they will appreciate the simplification.
What are the three steps your clients should take to engage with you?
