“Why am I not getting any clients through my consulting website?”
If you’re reading this article, you’re asking yourself this question.
It’s a question I get all the time. And it’s the primary problem I’m trying to solve in my business — helping
But it’s the wrong question.
We need to break this question down into chunks. Break it down into chunks, and you can turn a lofty goal into a step by step process.
In this article, I’ll take you through the exact questions — and steps — I would ask a consultant whose befuddled why they aren’t getting any clients with their website.
By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly why you aren’t getting any clients from your website — and how to turn it into a lead-generating consulting website.
QUICK LINKS
Your Goal
As a consultant, your website has a purpose — to make you more money.
But, if you don’t know how much you want to make, you’re not aiming at a desired state.
The design of your website must align with the goals you want to achieve in your consulting business.
Think about how much you you want to earn (or, the lifestyle you want — and how much money takes to live this lifestyle), and write it down.
The first question:
How much money do you want to earn per year from your consulting business?
EX: $200,000
In our example, let’s say you want to earn $200,000 per year from your consulting business.
Good. Now we can work
Your Numbers
You, as a consultant, make money by providing value to your clients.
You provide value to your clients by solving their business’s problems.
As a consultant, you’re able to solve their problems because of your expertise.
Consulting is advice (ideally, expert advice), and clients pay you for your advice.
In order to win consulting projects, you need to consult with prospective clients — and sell them on the consulting project.
Marketing is what gets you these conversations.
It’s marketing that creates interest in the minds of your prospective clients so that they want to talk to you.
Without these conversations, you cannot win more consulting projects.
Your website exists to create more of these conversations.
We’ll continue to work backward from your goal.
Think about how much you charge your clients — on average — for your consulting projects.
How much do you charge per client project, on average?
EX: $30,000
How many clients would you have to win in order to hit your income goals?
Here’s the formula for how many clients you need to hit your income goals:
Income Goal / Average Project Income
In our example, the consultant who wants to make $200,000 must work with 6.667 clients per year to hit their goal.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
But, not all sales conversations lead to project work. Only a certain percentage of them do.
How many consultations with prospects does it take to turn one into a paying client?
EX: ⅕ prospects turn into a paying client — or a 20% sales call conversion rate.
In our example, it takes our consultant 5 calls to get one consulting project. 20% of consultations turn into paid work.
Finally, take a look at your website’s conversion rate. No need to estimate it here — you should have this to the exact decimal.
What is your website conversion rate?
EX: 1%
If you aren’t tracking your website’s conversion rate, install Google Analytics and set up goal tracking for conversion events — a prospect booking a call with you.
The easiest way to do this is to watch video instructions for installation Google Analytics, using Calendly for scheduling, and integrating Calendly with Google Analytics.
This allows you to see the percentage of your website visitors that result in a consultation call with you.
If you are tracking your website conversion rate, write it down, and continue.
Now, let’s see a breakdown of the numbers:
- Annual income goal: $200,000
- Average project: $25,000
- Clients needed: 8
- Sales call conversion rate: 20%
- Consultations needed per month: 3.3333
- Consultations needed (per week): 0.8333
- Consultations needed (per day): 0.111
- Website conversion rate: 1%
- Website visitors needed (per month): 333.33
- Website visitors needed (per week): 83.333
- Website visitors needed (per day): 11.111
And that’s how you earn $200,000 per year on 11 website visitors per day.
These numbers are dependent on your goals and your consulting business.
Maybe your sales call conversion rate is 50% — but you offer a very niche service and only 0.25% of your website visitors turn into a call.
Or perhaps your sales call conversion rate is much lower — 10% — but you gain a ton of traffic to your site and your website converts at 2%.
Do the math for yourself.
It might shock you how achievable your goals when you break them down into small, bite-sized chunks.
[No need to take out a pen and paper to do this math — I created a spreadsheet that does all of this for you: the Consulting Website Income Formula. Give it a try!]Your Foundation
As a business consultant, you don’t just provide “consulting” to your clients — you provide advice.
Your advice — or even better, your expertise — solves problems. These problems are often expensive. Your clients hire you to solve these problems, improve their business, and thus, bring them closer to their desired future state.
This is the foundation of your business. You need to have clearly defined your ideal client, their problem, and what you can do for them to solve it.
If you don’t know who your ideal client is, you won’t know their problems. If you don’t solve a problem, clients won’t pay you. And if you can’t get paid, your consulting business will die.
Who is your ideal client?
Your website is a marketing tool. Marketing is all about your prospective client. Thus, it’s important for you to clearly define your ideal client to make the most of your website. A lead-generating consulting website is designed specifically for your ideal client.
If you haven’t defined your ideal client, think about your best past client. Think about the client that fit so well with you — you wish you could duplicate them so that all of your clients were like that.
That’s who your ideal client is.
Once you have defined your ideal client, move on to the next question.
What problem are they suffering from?
Your ideal client has a problem.
This problem is stopping them from reaching their desired future state.
They pay a consultant like you to solve this problem — and help them achieve their desired future state.
Forget that you’re solving a problem, and your prospective clients will forget about you.
If you haven’t articulated the problem your ideal client is suffering from, ask them.
- What keeps you up at night?
- What’s the least favorite part
about your business? - If you had a magic wand and could wave away any problem in your business, what would it be?
Ask them questions to uncover their pains, problems, and frustrations. This language will dictate the language you use your consulting website.
Once you have articulated the problem(s) your ideal client is suffering from, move on to the next question.
What are you offering them to solve this problem?
Clients don’t want “consulting” — they want to solve their problem and reach their desired future state.
Your consulting services are nothing but a vehicle to get them there.
Now that you know your client’s problem, you can tailor your messaging on your website as the solution to that problem.
If you haven’t written how you can solve this problem, write out a service, step by step, that will solve this problem for them. And just as importantly, write out how their business will look once that’s done.
Your consulting website’s services page will use this content. This page communicates how you can help your client solve their problem and reach their desired future state — leading them to booking a call with you.
Once you’ve articulated how you solve your client’s problem, move on to the next section.
The Basics
We know the exact number of clients you need to reach your income goals. We’ve worked backward from your goal to the number of daily website visitors you need to achieve it.
This section shifts focus to your consulting website.
First…
Do you have a website?
Let’s start simple. Do you even have a website? Or are you relying on your LinkedIn profile as your digital presence?
That won’t do. For complete control, you’ll need your own domain and website.
“I see more small firms skipping a website + leaving their presence to Linkedin + Facebook. Not smart. Insufficient control.”
David C. Baker
You do not NEED a website to get consultations with your clients. Good ol’ cold calling and direct outreach can set you up with plenty of conversations. And I even recommend those tactics for the early-stage consultant.
However, if you’re reading this, you’re probably the type who would rather clients come to you.
You understand the benefit of creating an asset — a machine — that generates these conversations for you. And that’s what your website is for.
If you don’t have a website, start by purchasing a domain name for your consulting website. I recommend Namecheap.
If you do have a domain name and website, move on to the next question.
Is your website a brochure website or a lead-generating consulting website?
A brochure website is a website that’s designed to inform your prospect about you or your firm. It’s primarily about you. There are no valuable takeaways from a brochure website.
A lead-generating consulting website is a website that’s designed to generate consultation with your prospects. It’s primarily about your prospect, and that’s what creates interest. Your prospect can browse through your website and find valuable insights — advice that they can use to improve their business.
Brochure websites don’t have a conversion rate (or if they do, it’s low) because they aren’t designed to solve a problem.
Lead-generation consulting websites are designed specifically to solve a problem — your lack of conversations with
If you don’t have a lead generating website, take my course on how to write and design one. And my Consultant Website Template Kit will help you build a complete lead-generating consulting website in a weekend.
If you do have a lead-generating consulting website, move on to the next question.
Do you have the marketing habits to bring prospects to your consulting website?
So you have a lead-generating website, but are you doing anything to attract prospects to it?
The number of calls you generate with interested prospects is determined by the consistency of your marketing efforts.
As a consultant or small firm, marketing and generating leads is an exercise in discipline.
It’s not about going all in on a special ad campaign — it’s about creating daily habits that systematically get you and your firm in front of your prospects.
You cannot expect your lead-generating consulting website (in the early stages) to help you generate more conversations if you aren’t bringing your prospects to it.
Later on, once you’ve developed a library of useful content, you won’t need to do this manually.
But, in the early stages, you can expect to spend a couple of months building up these habits to hit your needed website visitors.
If you don’t have the right marketing habits, read about the type of marketing that works for consultants. Build a list of a few of these tactics to practice every working day for 31 working days straight. Develop the habits, and your website traffic will increase. Aim for 500 hits per month.
If you are practicing your daily marketing habits and driving prospects to your website, move on to the next question.
Are you measuring your consulting website’s conversion rate?
Measuring your consulting website’s conversion rate is critical for understanding how your website is performing.
Your website solves a problem, and unless you are measuring how well it’s solving this problem, you don’t know if you must improve your design, copy, or content.
If you aren’t measuring your website’s conversion rate, set up goal tracking in Google Analytics. It’s very difficult to win the game when you don’t know the score. Knowing your website’s conversion rate helps you understand with confidence how many visitors you need to get the consultations you need — and the clients you need to hit your income goals.
If you are doing all of these things, chances are you are hitting your goals.
If you’re not, you’ll want to revisit your foundation. If you’re confident that your foundation is set, and you’ve built and are marketing your consulting website, move on to the final section.
The Details
You have your income goals. You’ve nailed the fundamentals of your consulting business. And you’ve got all of your basics covered.
If your website isn’t helping you get more clients yet, the good news is that you’re close.
In this section, we’ll dive a bit deeper into your consulting website and digital presence to make sure that you’re using it correctly.
Are you demonstrating your expertise through your website?
As a consultant, your expertise is your product.
Your expertise is a product of your thinking.
Thus, you demonstrate your expertise through showcasing your thinking.
In other words, you use your consulting website to share what you know.
Your consulting website must host content that teaches your prospects something valuable to them. Good content creates an itch they can’t scratch — a scratch they satisfy by booking a consultation with you.
If you aren’t demonstrating your expertise through your website, make a habit out of it. You can leverage articles, blog posts, podcasts, interviews, case studies, presentations, speeches, videos, or a mixture. These mediums help you demonstrate your expertise, attract prospects, and show them that you can solve their problem.
If you are using your website to demonstrate your expertise, move on to the next question.
Do you have a lead-magnet and an email list?
Very few of your ideal prospects are ready to work with you — or even book a call — after 1 visit to your website.
That means you must have a mechanism in place to capture those prospects who might be interested in working you in the future when their need arises.
That mechanism is your lead magnet and your email list.
Your lead magnet is a piece of content that can bring them one step closer to solving their problem. It’s valuable material to your ideal client. They’re happy to give you their email address and a bit of their time in exchange for your lead magnet.
Your email list is a database of these prospects — who’ve given you permission to market to them.
If you don’t have a lead-magnet and an email list, create your lead magnet, sign up for an email marketing software (I like ActiveCampaign or MailChimp), and implement them into your consulting website.
If you do have a lead magnet and an email list, move onto the next question.
Are you nurturing and following-up with the prospects on your list?
Top-of-mind awareness is critical to the consulting business. Clients aren’t ready to hire you until they have a need, and they won’t think of you unless you’re on the top of their mind.
You can build and maintain top of mind awareness by emailing your list (and providing value) — consistently.
If you’re not keeping top of mind awareness with prospects on your list, email them on a weekly basis. Provide value. Share what you know. Start conversations. Ask them what they’re working on. Build relationships.
If you are nurturing and following-up with your prospects, move onto the next question.
Are you prompting your most interested prospects for a consultation?
Finally, if you do not sell your prospect
If you’re providing value, your audience WANTS you to promote yourself. Your list is a tool to provide value, and move your prospects to the next step of your funnel — a consultation call with you.
If you’re not ending your emails with a “Free Consultation” call to action, at the end of your emails, include a consultation link. Make it simple for the prospect to book a call with you to learn more about how you can help. I recommend that you use Calendly as your online booking tool.
If you are prompting your list for a consultation — and all of of the above steps — and STILL not getting clients through your website, go back to the essentials. Chances are you’re missing something with your ideal client, their problem, and how you can help.
Rinse and repeat until you get it right. If you stick with it, it will work.
Action Step
Using the Consulting Website Income Formula, plug in your goal income for the quarter.
FIll in the rest of the variables and see a breakdown of your numbers.
Go back to the questions and find the stage where you’re at, and confirm your answer for each question before moving to the next.
Then, get to work!
There is no way you can’t get clients from your website if you’ve confirmed yes to all of these questions.
Are you going to do the work?