Your company is spending a lot on server space. In addition to domain registration and hosting, there’s also the time it takes you to write your website’s content. So if someone comes to your website, you’ve basically paid for them to be there.  What kind of return are you getting on that investment?

Increase your visitor value

Imagine having a list of the email addresses of everyone who visits your website. How valuable could it be to your business?

An email list is an effective and cheap way to increase sales. The traditional way to market a product is print advertising, but this method is very risky: you’re spending money to advertise to people who might not want anything to do with you. Contrast this with an email list, which is made up of only people who came to you first.

Show your expertise

How do you get people to give you your email address?

The best way is to be useful. They came to your site because they’re in the process of making a decision. Your job is to help them out with that decision.

As a business owner, you come from a place of authority. The information you have is valuable. Say you’re a professional roofer. Though roofing is your life, roofing is a very small part of your customer’s. They’d rather talk to an expert than try to learn about the trade themselves. It’s worth your while to start the conversation.

Show the people that come to your website a bit of the knowledge that you’ve earned from being in business. Write a helpful guide, checklist, or review. But don’t give it out for free. Give it an enticing description, then enable visitors to download it once they’ve entered their email address.

Turning expertise into sales

What happens then is that you can continue the conversation. In your emails, pick up where the guide left off. By keeping the customer engaged, they will learn all sorts of things they never knew about your product.

More importantly, they will start to trust you as an authority on the subject. That way, when it’s time to buy, they will more than likely buy from you.

What’s more is that this email education process can be very carefully tailored. You can put out as many guides as there are areas of your expertise. Someone who downloaded your guide to residential roofing won’t be inclined to open an email on commercial roofing. By observing  what your customer downloads, you can steer him towards the best solution.

It’s a way for your business to make its mark. It used to be hard to break into the world of publishing. Though getting published in a business journal would be amazing for your credibility, email marketing is a much more accessible technique to help you stay competitive.

Make it happen

Maybe you didn’t think you’d be doing any writing as part of your career. Now’s the chance to get excited about it!

Make writing that guide a project to accomplish on your weekend list. It’ll be far more rewarding than your other chores. Whatever you write, make sure to get plenty of eyes on it – for technical accuracy, longevity, and matching your business’s tone.

Businesses used to print out pamphlets to accomplish the same thing. This is a pamphlet with a promise – a longer shelf life, a fate better than its paper companions and a chance to stay in touch with the person who picked it up. Publish several and see which are the most popular, then expand on those topics for your next volume.

If that sounds like a lot of work, help is a click away.