3 Ways To Grow Your Business and Reclaim Your Time: Part 1
Make It Easy For People To Do Business With You
Start by simplifying your website
This was something I struggled with for a long time. I just kept adding more and more pages to my website to show people everything I thought they might want to see.
The fact is, people don’t want to see what you offer. We are all much too self-absorbed for that.
What people want is the quickest and easiest solution to their problem.
You can’t be the quickest and easiest solution if they have to wade through too much information to determine if you even know how to solve their problem.
Here’s how you can do it
A great book that helped me understand this is Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller.
I’ve reread this book several times. It’s one of the business books I keep in my “reference regularly” collection.
I realized years ago that being a serial reader of business books or self-help books would yield no results.
When I read a book and determine that it’s a great book that can help me get where I want to be, I add it to my “reference regularly” collection.
For me, there’s no point in reading an instructional or guidance-oriented book to then only move on to another book, having implemented nothing I learned.
In other words, I learn to apply, not just for the sake of learning.
That’s why I’ve read Building a StoryBrand several times. It took those multiple readings to finally get my website to what the book says it should look like.
I’m much happier with the StoryBrand version of my website because it’s much more focused and it speaks directly to my ideal client and no one else.
Most importantly, it respects the viewer’s time by not requiring them to invest much time or energy into figuring out if I can help them or not.
The StoryBrand website methodology is very simple:
State what problem you solve, clearly and succinctly.
Provide a direct call to action. This is your “buy now” or “schedule a consultation” or other “take an action now” button.
Provide a transitional call to action. This is where you provide additional information in the form of a PDF or a web page for those who would like to do more research before clicking your direct call to action button.
That’s it.
People are either on your website to engage you for your services or they’re not.
For those there to engage you, adding more pages can cause information overload and cause you to lose opportunities.
People who were not going to engage you for your services will not be inspired to do so by you having more pages on your website.
Hidden Pages Are Your Friend
You can have as many hidden pages as you want so that you can quickly deliver specific information to anyone who requests it.
But presenting people with all those pages up front may actually work against you because when people are overwhelmed with too much information, they don’t contact you.
The goal of your website is to get people to contact you, so it’s okay to leave them needing more information. In fact, it’s desirable.
How This Helps You Reclaim Your Time
When your website is operating effectively, it is a very efficient tool for setting up discovery calls with people who are more likely to hire you.
A simple website that speaks only to your ideal client is going to turn away people who you might otherwise have had to talk to on the phone to determine that you were not going to be able to help. Those calls are a huge waste of your time.
In addition to turning away the wrong people, your highly focused website will attract more of the right people.
We all hang around people like ourselves, so when your website resonates with a specific audience, you’ve created an opportunity for people in that audience to share a helpful resource with other people they know in that same audience.
Make Word-of-Mouth Referrals Easy
Word-of-mouth is the best and cheapest form of marketing and a highly focused website that solves a specific problem for a specific audience can be a powerful tool for helping you generate a robust word-of-mouth lead source.
When you’re regularly getting word-of-mouth inquiries from your ideal clients, you’ll be spending a lot less of your time and energy and money on marketing.
Your website can be an incredible passive marketing tool for you, so it’s worth the effort to really optimize it for your specific audience.
If you need help figuring out who exactly you should be your target audience, Book Yourself Solid is a great resource.
Reclaiming Your Time Part 2: Control Your Time
In Part 2, I present the hidden danger of some of your favorite Internet-based activities.
The Internet may very well be the thing that’s keeping you from living the life you want to live.
Share this page with someone who would benefit, then use the button below to check out Part 2.
