That question was posed to me by an old friend of mine, who is currently the Global VP of Corporate Affairs and Communication for a big company. Well, I thought that’s easy – my website is supposed to get me work.
But how do you do that? Actually how does it do that? Say your a visitor to a photographer’s website and you like his photos and you have work that fits his style and ability, what do you do then? Hunt for an email on the website? Fill out a contact form and wait for him to get back to you? When a person submits that form, or sends that email – you are the closest to the time that Google calls: M.O.R. – the Moment of Relevance.
This is the time, when your company is on their mind.
This is the time, when your service is something they need.
This is the time, when you have the best chance to make your presentation.
It is not a post card, that gets lost in the mail.
It is not an email, that gets caught in a spam filter.
It is not a mailer, that gets forgotten when the next guys mailer shows up.
It’s here, it’s now, it’s you.
So HOW do we leverage this moment?
As the photographer how do you handle this inquiry? When do you get the email? Or where does the data of your contact form end up? Is it the same for all visitors to your website? What if I am looking for a specific portion of your photography (say, only your jewelry images)? What if I am someone that is interested in working with you as part of your crew (say, a model)? What if I want to know, if you can do more than just create a pretty photo, but handle a complete production (say, a catalogue client)?
First of all you need to determine, who needs immediate attention. The model that wants to work with you can wait until the evening, when you get back to your studio. The large company is more than likely looking at a bidding process that’s gonna take a few days, but there is that customer that wants his quote and he wants it yesterday.
Enter Landing Pages. A landing page is a page in your website that is a gateway, a portal to a specific visitor, coming from a specific website or email campaign that is looking for a specific action to take.
Is all that data handled in the same way? At the same time? Does it get lost in your website?
I have recently created landing pages that have a few responsibilities. They all welcome a specific visitor to my site, they all make a specific offer to that visitor, they all showcase specific details of my company to the visitor and most importantly they all send data form that visitor to my CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database – which in turn send an email to my phone.
Now I have …
• made an offer to a prospective client, that is relevant to the need they currently have
• captured the data of the interested person in my database automatically
• been notified, that someone is looking for me NOW
• the opportunity to decide, when I want to act
