Why is a website important?
In my mastermind group, we go through 5 key phases. The first phase is the foundation. In the foundation, we want to make sure that we get some key elements in place.
For example, if I showed you how to get 10,000 visits to your website in the next month, at the moment, would they go into an automated follow-up sequence? Would they be able to nurture them? Would they be able to book into your diary? Would they be able to actually become clients or candidates? Probably not. 99.9% of websites I look at in Recruitment are absolutely crap. It’s really poor.
Often I get told when I ask people when they apply what automation they have, what inbound systems they have. They say, “Look, I’ve got my website, I’ve got …” That’s not automation. That’s one of your key foundations.
You want to view your website as, for example, imagine you’ve got a house on top of a hill, and there are 10, 20, 30 different roads to get to this beautiful house on top of the hill. The house is your website, the roads are all the content coming to your website. If that house is derelict at the top of the hill, or that house is falling to pieces, or the house is 300 years old when they get to the top of the hill what are they going to do? They’re going to turn around and go back down the hill.
Most website I look at are like a derelict old hotel, or they have a brand spanking new hotel they spent a lot of money on, but guess what? There’s no functionality inside it, there are no beds, there’s no kitchen. Your website needs to be set up as an inbound funnel.
Strategy Underneath The Water
You may have frustrations around, “Well, I’ve heard all these things about inbound funnels and websites and getting leads and waking up and getting leads.”
You may have seen a video we did with Ken Zwerdling from Foreignstaffing.com, a few years ago now. Ken’s a great guy, he came to us, he said, “Listen, I’m not sure where we’re going to be, whether the business is going to be open in the next few months.” Fast forward now, I think it was 15, 16 different divisions now doing awesomely. The first thing we did was set up his website in a certain way, and it’s almost like the iceberg effect. We get people say to us, “Can we go and check out your clients’ websites, or go and see what funnels you’re using, or go and look at the different strategies you use?”
Yeah, go and look. It’s like an iceberg effect. You only see the tip – the top of the iceberg. What’s really going on underneath it is the strategy, it’s underneath the water. That’s what really drives it.
What I’m going to give you now is that strategy underneath the water. I’ll be giving you an insight into what you need to be doing for your website. Whether you’re frustrated because you haven’t got inbound leads, whether Dave knows who’s coming to your website or whether maybe you’re really stuck in the old ways. You’re doing the outbound and your website. It’s not getting any inbound leads.
A quick diagnostic check-in with you, how many inbound leads do you get a week for your website?
10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, none?
You know yourself. You know what the answer is – whether it’s working for you or not. What most recruiters want is they want to be waking up to this glorious inbound thing, and there’s so much bullshit out there around what inbound means.
“You can put an opt-in page, and you can create a lead magnet.” Okay, go and do that, then go and market it on Facebook, come back to me in 3 months. Tell me how many clients you got, how many candidates you got.
In fact, if you’ve got any hesitation around what I’m saying, and you think, “Oh, I’ve read that somewhere else,” I recommend you do this. Go and create a landing page. Go and create a lead magnet. G¬o and drive traffic through Facebook and spend, I don’t know maybe $500 or $1,000, or use LinkedIn Ads – then go and see how many clients or candidates you get from doing that.
We had an application for someone to join our mastermind group and the guy was 100% certain he wanted to use Facebook because he read somewhere about Facebook Ads. Facebook can be great. It’s something we do use, but we use it in a really cool retargeting way. You can get clients and candidates in the database built extremely quickly. You don’t need to be worrying about all the bullshit which is out there around using these different channels and landing pages, and all this stuff.
The same with the website, you often see these, “Gurus,” say, “You need to do this for the website.” You go and look at their website, well, where are your inbound funnels? Where’s your automation? Where’s your strategy? What are you actually doing here? You’re giving me advice, but you’re not walking the walk on this.
What I’m going to give you is an insight into what your website can look like, and what it should be doing. You can wake up to leads in your inbox, you can wake up to clients, candidates in your inbox, and your website is just one component of it. The reality is, we always work to what we call projects and campaigns. Projects are the infrastructure in your business.
Long after we finish working together, although most of our clients stay with us 3, 4, 5 years, and that’s what we’re going to keep doing. Long after you’ve finished working together, you’ve got this infrastructure in place, an automated machine that works while you sleep. We call it Jungle Test, so you go on holiday for 4 weeks, 5, weeks, 6 weeks, whatever it’s going to be and you’re still getting leads coming in. Your website is a core component, but it’s a project, it’s a piece of infrastructure. Campaigns actually get the clients and candidates. Campaigns actually get you the clients saying, “Can we speak on Monday at 2:00?” It gives you the candidates coming to you.
Recruitment Authority Website
I want to focus on the website bit of it right now. What are we talking about here, then?
Number 1, we talk about your website as being an authority website, so most people come to me because they’re looking to either break through that magic half million, or the “magic million” barrier.
Some of them are already moving. Their business is up and running. They’re doing 100k, 200k, 300k a year. Some of them doing 7 figures, and they want to scale a bit more. One of our clients has got 30, 40, 50 consultants in the business, but on the whole, most of our clients are one-person businesses up to maybe 2, 3, 4, 5.
When they join us, they want to get a website built, which is cool. Some of them need to improve the website, so they might go and look at some of our existing clients and try and copy it, and that’s also completely cool. I wanted to show you what it actually looks like underneath. When we get into implementation mode, we want to get you moving quickly. We do, what we call website 1.0 and website 2.0.
What’s website 1.0? This is what we mean. If we think we’re a good fit and we move forward, I want you getting candidates, clients really quickly.
Website 2.0 is where we’ve got all these inbound funnels, all the automation happening. There’s a bit going on there. Again, it’s all laid out step by step. The first thing is, I want to make sure you’re getting clients, candidates.
This is what’s going to happen. If you use one of our strategies and suddenly you’ve got, say 500 clients and they suddenly start looking at you. If they see your content, or if they use RRRR, the first thing they’re going to do is go and look at your website and see who you are.
The second thing they’ll do is look at your LinkedIn. These are 2 components we have to get in place in the foundational phase.
We talk about website 1.0 really simply as about the language and the text on your website. If I went and looked at 100 websites right now, and looked at your website, it might be saying things like, “We’ve been in business 17 years, we understand that you’ve got blah blah blah.” The same old garbage that virtually every recruitment business talks about.
We’re talking about yourselves, your clients don’t give 2 hoots about you. Your clients don’t give a damn about you, nor do your candidates. I know it’s really harsh, and at the moment we’ve not become friends. You don’t really care too much about me. All you care about is, “Right, Andy, I’ve heard about you. Can you show me how to double, treble, quadruple, 10x my business using inbound and automation? You don’t really care about me”… yet.
What you do care about is, can I solve your problem? When a client comes to your website, the first thing we need to do is make sure you understand their problem. We don’t talk about the fact that “I’ve been in business 17 years”, we don’t talk about the fact that we are awesome, we don’t talk about the fact that we are whatever it might be.
What we focus on is the problem for your client. The problem for your candidate. Your clients can have 3 key problems, it could be there’s a low retention rate in Java development. It could be there’s a lack of Java Bing’s technology on Wall Street, or whatever it might be.
There’ll be 3 key problems for your client. That’s what we need to talk about, that’s step 1. There’s actually 6 steps to what we actually detail in terms of the content and position ourselves as the experts just with the text. Website 1.0 is getting your website built, normally a new website, on the right platform. It’s usually in the right language. That can be up within a few days.
We show our developers, and that’s normally done for about $200, which is awesome. We’ve had people come to us, spend £5000, so if you cross the pond, about $8000.
Almost in tears when we show them how to have a website built for this sort of amount, we give them the actual template, the language, the developers, everything. They’re almost in tears about they’ve wasted so much money. That’s website 1.0. You can have it up in a few days. We want to get it up in a few days because we want you moving quickly. We want you getting clients and candidates in very quickly.
Website 2.0 is where the magic happens. This is where we’ve got an automated beast, this is where we’ve got all the cool functionality happening in the background. For you to think about your website, if you really wanted to break it down into key elements, you might want to take a quick note of this.
We’ve got some authority elements on our website, and that breaks down to the following pages:
- The Home
- The About
- The Client/Candidate content.
Those are the 3 key elements when we talk about authority on the website. Now how do we get leads? People actually giving us their contact details, they’re going to an automated nurturing system. We do that with lead magnets and opportunities to opt in.
Different Types of Prospects
What do we do with prospects? We have prospects coming in different mindsets. We’ve got cold, we’ve got warm, and we’ve got hot but the thank you pages, the pages around your content, we need to take our prospects through a set of steps. It might be your prospect’s come to you in a really, really hot state. 9 out of 10 prospects will come to you, they’re not going to be ready to move forward, but some will be. If you’ve done the right nurturing content, when they’re ready to move, they’re going to come to you. You might have them booked already into your diary, inbound straight into your diary.
I get people say, “Andy, I’ve been following you now for 2 years, and I’ve been listening to your webinars and I’ve done this and done this and done this, or I’ve looked at what your clients have been earning.” It’s what goes on underneath the hood that’s important. It’s what goes on underneath the actual outer layer of the website that’s important.
What you want to be thinking about is really focusing on how to break down your funnels on your website. When someone comes to your website, they’ve got 3 key areas or mindsets they’re going to be in. They’re going to come to the website and they’re going to be either warm, which is most of them if you’ve done the right nurturing or they’re going to be really cold or really hot.
What we’re going to do is break your funnels down into the following. If you can visualize this. Imagine your website’s up, and suddenly you’ve got 10,000 people coming to the website. They’re going to break down into 3 key areas. You can write this down:
Those who are top of the funnel, those who are middle of the funnel, and those who are the bottom of the funnel. If you actually drew this out as a matrix, you’d have 3 columns – top, middle, and bottom. On the left-hand side, what you’ve got is the following. You’ve got the temperature, so the first row underneath those column headings is going to be temperature. When someone comes to your website, they’re going to be either cold, that’s at the top of the funnel, or they’re going to be warm, that’s the middle of the funnel, or they’re going to be hot, the bottom of the funnel. They’re ready to move forward. It’s a client who’s got open roles and he trusts you. He’s a candidate who’s heard about you and he wants you to represent them. That’s temperature.
How Are They Going To Actually Come To The Website?
Secondly, do they trust you? So they trust you. When it comes to the website, do they trust you? Those at the top of the funnel are going to be skeptical, they’re going to think you’re full of S-H-I-T. If you’ve watched any of our videos and you go, “That Andy Whitehead sounds like bullshit. He’s saying that Keith Southern got 94% reply rate? That sounds like BS to me, that doesn’t sound real. I’m going back to hitting the phones, or going back to what I know.” You’re skeptical. The first time you heard from me, you go, “This guy, he’s full of it.” You’re skeptical, so you’re top of the funnel. You’re thinking, “These strategies, they can’t work.”
The next phase, middle of the funnel, is, “Right, I’ve heard about this Andy Whitehead guy and I’ve heard about Recruitment Marketing International. Do you know what? I’ve seen now, there are too many success stories out there, there’s just too many. I’ve now seen 10, 20, 30, 40. I’ve seen another webinar, I’ve seen another video, and I’ve seen people speak. I’m curious now, maybe this stuff could work, and maybe this digital stuff can work for me. Rachel was just a one person recruiter, now look what she’s doing. Brandt was a one person recruiting, now look what he’s doing, Casey was going to shut his business down, now look what he’s doing. I’m curious.” Now you’re in the middle of the funnel, you’re curious. When people come to your website, they’re in the middle state, they’re now curious about what you’re going to be doing. What are you doing? How are you doing these things? Those at the bottom of the funnel, “Right, I’ve heard about you now, Andy, for the last 6 months, 2 years, and things has got to change. I thought this year would be the year, I had a really good start, but you know what, I’m back in the same place where I was, I need to change this. I’ve now seen 20 videos of you. I’ve seen you on YouTube. I’ve seen your webinars. I’ve heard your podcast. I know the people who are referencing you, I’m hungry for it.” The bottom of the funnel, your clients and candidates are being at exactly the same space.
Either they’re skeptical, they think, “Yeah, you can’t source anything, you’re a generalist, I work in a real tight niche,” or they might be curious because they’ve seen really good content from you or they’re hungry. They’ve come to your website and they’ve seen your content and they want you to represent them as a candidate, or maybe they want you to source for them. You’ve got the actual where the real head space is. That’s the trust. What do you do next?
How Can You Take Them Forward?
Next, you actually start drilling down into “What do we actually do to take this lead on our website? What do you actually do to take them forward?” Now we move into how to actually qualify a lead. What content do we need to give them to move them from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel? They come in a certain place. The cold, the warm, the hot. They’re either going to trust you and go through one of those 3 funnels, as I mentioned above – skeptical, curious or hungry. And then we want to qualify them. The content we give them will be focused on what I want them to do next. If your client comes to the website and they don’t know you, you need to give them problem-promise solutions, you need to understand that I get your problem.
For some of you, you may have now listened to my podcast, videos or webinars for a long time, and the on the first time, you’d gone, “This guy really gets my problem, he really understands where I’m at.” You’ve gone from being skeptical into, “He gets me.” The next phase is you’re in the “curious” phase, “Can this Andy Whitehead guy really show me how to double my business? Has he really got these tools and strategies that can 10x a business, a one-man business doing a million? How can you have a remote team of recruiters, how is this possible?”
Now, you might have looked at case studies. You might have been seeing videos of our clients. You might have been looking at YouTube. Now you’re seeing proof. It could be you’re in the position where, “Listen, I’ve heard about this in the mastermind program. I want this guy. I need to have him help me.”
Now you might book into my diary. You might book a one to one because you’re at the bottom of the funnel. Exactly the same with your candidates and with your clients. When we set up websites for our clients, you can see there’s a lot going on underneath it. Although you might go to one of our clients’ websites and you try to “copy” it, underneath it each one of these different sections drills down into an automated process, the content drills down into another set of templates. You can see there’s a lot going on.
Again, there’re 3 types of visitor to your website – cold, warm and hot. Cold being skeptical, warm being curious and hot being the hungry. You’ve given 3 different types of content, and then what happens in the background? The third part – the automation, the nurturing. Again, that then breaks down into a set of templates, a set of structures. Everything links together.
When you create your website, don’t just create a website because someone said, “Your website sucks, we’ll do it for 2000 pounds.” You must have a strategy to it otherwise you’re going to be coming back in a year’s time or 6 months’ time and doing it all over again, and you won’t have any inbound leads. You can see the strategy behind what you create. There’s strategy behind what you do.
It’s All About Strategies
I’ve lived and breathed digital strategy now since 1996. My first job was in the city in London for Nomura, at the time the biggest Japanese investment bank in the world, in its digital system testing. When I was relatively young (the mid-20s), I managed a team of 75 people for the largest CRM implementation in Europe. I came into recruitment 7 years ago (that sort of time) and the strategies that I’ve always been using, I’ve been applying them, creating them and now, every single month we create 2 new strategies a month, minimum.
It’s all about strategies as you can see. It’s not a case of looking at the outside world and trying to pick away, it’s about actually what goes on underneath the water, as in the iceberg. That’s going to get you the inbound leads, it’s not just having a sexy website with a great logo, that’s absolute garbage.
It’s about the strategy that goes underneath it. We create the strategy, and for you to create your own strategy, think about this:
- Understand who’s top of your funnel, who’s cold.
- Secondly, understand who’s in the middle of your funnel, who’s warm.
- Thirdly, understand who’s hot, which clients are coming to you, and they’ve seen your content, they’ve seen your strategies, and they want you. Which candidates now trust you?
From there, it would dictate the functionality on your website, and it will also dictate how you create the content and what content you create. It will also dictate what automated procedures you use.
You can see there’s a lot going on in the website. Simple if you’ve spent a lot of time creating it. For you to do that, to simply take a piece of paper, spec out your matrix as I’ve laid out. Spec it out and draw out your own matrix.
You can go to my website, go to recruitmentmarketinginternational.com, and look at some of the funnels on our website. Of course, it’s not a recruitment website, but you’ll get some ideas of what I’m talking about. If you want me to look at your website and give you a diagnostic check-in and remove the risk of hiring someone to build your website with actually knowing strategy underneath it, then cool. Again, go to my website and schedule a call, or you can go to rmi.acuityscheduling.com, and schedule a 15-minute call.
Your website is key for you. Just saying, what inbound system do you have? Most websites are built like a business card, but again, we have clients and we go through website 1.0, website 2.0, and it cost $200. We didn’t do that overnight, it’s taken us years to get to the point whereby the strategy’s being put together and it can be done for that. That’s what’s possible nowadays. Just know, we live in an environment where digital is king.
With that said, I have been going on about a website now for a long time. It’s key for you to understand that it’s a key part of your business.
Again, visualize this. You’ve got the hotel at the top of the hill. You’ve got all the roads coming up to the hotel. When they get to the hotel, what happens? Have you got a derelict old hotel or has someone built you a website for £5,000, but what’s inside it? Nothing, there’s nothing actually happening. The business isn’t growing, people aren’t staying there. Visualize your website as this hotel, at the top of a massive hill with all the roads coming up. If you’ve got no roads, you haven’t got the inbound. Think about where you are now.
If you want to remove that derelict hotel or get that new hotel filled up, you need to change the functionality.
Check This Out:
We’ve got a podcast on “How To Get A 94% Reply Rate From Your Emails”, “The 5 Phases Of A Million Dollar Recruiter” and, again, this is coming from case studies of our mastermind group.
Go chase it down and make it happen.
