One of the common mistakes of most consulting or B2B service websites (even some of the bigger and branded ones) is that they look like deserted islands – dead, boring, and even suspicious. They are not built as company assets and don’t generate any leads or sales. Especially for services focused on the financial sector – many of those are so boring and similar to each other, you could hardly remember any of them.

Think about it – a typical consulting company website would have the following sections:

• About Us – History of the company
• Our Products or Services
• Our Clients
• Our Team (maybe with CVs of the core partners and/or some videos from their conference speeches)
• “Contact Us” section

And if you ask me – this structure is the worst possible structure for any website, because it only serves one purpose – to validate that your company exists. Really??? Are your quality standards that low?

If your prospects or potential clients have already found you through referrals and met with you face-to-face and your website’s only function is to facilitate the “reality check” for your company and assure them that you exist, you have completely missed the opportunity to build a proper and stronger relationship with them. 

Think about it – your potential customers are searching for a service provider because they have a problem. They (usually) are not ready to buy yet, but something is bothering them. They have new questions all the time. They have new problems. They are unsure, which solution is the right solution for them.

You can spend only so much time with them face-to-face, trying to answer their questions, but you can spend unlimited time with them digitally, presenting them with helpful content about various problems they have, pros and cons of different strategies, anticipating and answering some of their frequently asked questions…

All this content can and must be on your website because this is how you keep the conversation going and deliver value to your prospects. Your website must look like you would want a reception of a thriving successful business to look – with a lot of traffic, ongoing activities, phones ringing and being answered, appointments being confirmed, non-stop flow of information, and lots of excitement. Your website MUST BE ALIVE AND MUST LOOK BUSY.

Most importantly – your website must offer some incredibly valuable and useful content that would compel your visitors to opt-in, raise their hand and give you their name and email in exchange for your offer to share with them helpful information, free reports, guidebooks, industry survey or something similar.

THE BEST PART OF IT – once you start providing helpful relevant content for your audience via your website, you will be discovered by people who have never heard of you and don’t even know your name, but they are struggling with the very problem that you can help them solve, and they can find you organically when they are searching for answers – requiring zero extra efforts on your end.

There are many ways how you could build your online content. You may not have an immediate strategy around the level of details or frequency of updates, or the right sequence of content so that you do not overwhelm your potential customers. At the same time, you can build trust with them and slowly steer desire and need for your service.

I understand that some service providers have doubts and concerns about free vs paid content and what if your unique content or knowhow is used by competitors…

If you feel you’d like to up-level your website game and learn what else you can do to convert your website into valuable leads generating machine, you are welcome to watch this FREE video training on how you can generate more leads and sales as a consultant or advisor for the financial sector. This free training is accompanied by a downloadable workbook with a summary of various tools that can be used to manage your email list or share content, as well as the basic principles of how to think about your email list and the pros and cons of various digital products (such as groups coaching, online courses, memberships, e-books, etc).

Hope it helps!

Yana Afanasieva

Founder of Competitive Compliance