A lot of you have probably recently asked one of these questions:
Do I really need a whole new website to be competitive in M&A?
Do prospective clients really read my website?
Are traditional marketing methods still the easiest way to see a return on investment?
I want to spend a few moments sharing an online marketing strategy that can change the course of your M&A firm in a few weeks time.
Before we jump in – let’s get a few truths out of the way…
#1 – Your website is still important
The strategy we are going to discuss below works by circumventing your primary website, however having a good primary website is still necessary. It helps you firm control your brand, and ensures that you are viewed as contemporary and competitive online.
#2 – SEO is a very valuable long-term investment
We will never advocate your M&A firm adopt a strategy INSTEAD of SEO. Think of SEO like maintenance on your car…if you want to continue driving you need to change your oil periodically. Similarly if you want to be at all visible online, you need to frequently address your SEO strategy. However, your SEO effort alone likley wont create a huge inbound lead funnel, although over time you will increase your traffic and visitor engagement with a quality SEO strategy.
#3 – Stand alone PPC works, but there is a better way to do it
PPC (or Pay Per Click Marketing) is growing in popularity among M&A firms. A good PPC campaign should be able to drive traffic to your website, but most M&A firms have websites that are not built to covert traffic into leads – that said, a PPC campaign is not enough to generate quality lead flow.
So, how do you generate more leads than any of these stand alone options typically produce?
Use a killer online marketing combo to generate new leads at a higher rate than your competitors!
Here is how it works…
As I mentioned above, most M&A firm website are not conversion oriented – they are generally informational. Building a new conversion oriented website is expensive, takes months and still won’t generate leads unless some mechanism is driving traffic. Instead of building a new website, start by building a low cost, quick to deploy landing page.
What is a landing page you ask?
A landing page is a stand alone, single page website that lives on its own URL. Landing pages are built to convert leads by given visitors many ways to engage, like contact forms, free offerings, consultation offers etc.. If a visitor wants to know more about your firm, the landing page should make it easy for them to visit your primary website as well.
We can design, write and launch a landing page in a few weeks time for between $750 – $1000, making them a cost effective alternative to changing your website while ensuring you have a real online conversion strategy.
Many successful firms use industry or geo specific landing pages to generate very well vetted traffic.
Example: Your firm wants to sell more medical device companies, so we build a landing page on ‘www.medidevicevaluation.com’ and drive relevant traffic straight to that page where the user sees very specific messaging relevant to them and their medical device business.
Here is where PPC comes into play
Now that you have a conversion oriented landing page, you need the right type of prospects visiting it. This is where your PPC campaigns come into play. You can drive very well curated traffic based on keywords or even demographic info to your new landing page.
By driving a very specific type of traffic to a very focused landing page you can increase conversion rates exponentially. Suddenly your website content does not need to be everything to everyone and you can start speaking about your strengths to the exact audience you want to engage.
Here is the real kicker….you should not need to spend a fortune on PPC budgets. If you are hyper focused in your execution you can actually spend less and get more. A $500 monthly PPC budget, supported by a good landing page strategy should measurable impact your business almost right away.
We have seen a number of our clients successfully adopt this strategy with great results. If you would like to discuss how we can help your M&A firm generate more leads quickly, contact us today.
