by Yoon Cannon | General, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts
One of the biggest frustrations I hear all the time from small business owners is how can I generate more leads and sales from my website.
Having a website today is definitely a MUST HAVE. But, if your website isn’t generating steady leads and sales it can easily become a cost center rather than a profit center.
With so many new things going on with digital marketing as the business owner it can be hard to keep up with what’s working the best. So, this week I thought I’d share what is working now from some of the top bloggers today.
You don’t have to be a blogger to benefit from these strategies. These same tips will help your business generate more leads and sales from your website.
#1. Start by considering the end-goal first.
[bctt tweet=”How to Get More Leads from Your Website @sherice says Start with Your End Goal First #leadgeneration” username=”yooncannon”]
In Sherice Jacob’s article on The Ten Commandments of an Awesome Lead-Generating Website
Sherice shares … when it comes to lead generation, begin with the end in mind. What exactly does a “lead” mean to you? Defining this will make your testing and analytics goals even clearer, and help you determine exactly what actions you want the user to take as they progress through each stage of your sales funnel. Is a lead considered someone who fills out a form? Someone who signs up for a newsletter? Requests a callback? Clearly define your starting point and you’ll have a much easier time adjusting your conversion goals accordingly.
#2. Have a dedicated landing page for every marketing campaign.
[bctt tweet=”How to Get More #Leads from Your Website @santisweb says Have a Dedicated #LandingPage for Campaigns” username=”yooncannon”]
Richard Santos shares this tip on How to Generate More Leads from Your Website
Landing pages are a must for lead-generation websites as they provide prospects the opportunity to convert into customers. Most times, they are website pages allowing you to get visitor information through a web form.
Just sending your email or advertising traffic to your homepage is a lot less effective, because you fail to convert traffic into leads. No matter how great your homepage is, it will be just a dead end if you don’t enable your visitors to take action.
Not sure if you should go through the trouble of designing a landing page for your website? Check the most important facts about landing pages and decide for yourself.

#3. Interview influencers in your industry.
[bctt tweet=”How to Get More #Leads from Your Website @jeffbullas says Interview #Influencers #sales” username=”yooncannon”]
One of the tips Jeff Bullas gives in his article on 20 Smart Ways to Generate More Leads for Your Business
Is to reach out to influencers who your customers respect and interview them for your blog or social channels.
Keep it as simple as possible by asking short/sharp questions, and then ask them to share the final product.
Your potential customers will see this as proof of your credibility and increase your chance of attracting new leads.
#4. Add Share Triggers on Your Blog
[bctt tweet=”How to Get More Leads from Your Website @Backlinko says Make Use of Share Triggers #socialmedia #smm” username=”yooncannon”]
Brian Dean in his article entitled, Want to Increase Website Traffic? Follow These 4 Steps…
In my experience, content largely succeeds or fails based on one factor: Whether or not the content has Share Triggers.
What are Share Triggers?
They’re scientifically-backed psychological principles that — when embedded in your content — encourage people to share and link.
Also, Share Triggers give your content that “WOW!” factor that turns cold traffic into leads and customers.
A lot of these principles were first discovered by behavioral scientists like Dr. Jonah Berger, Dr. Katherine Milkman and Jure Leskovec.
#5. Personalize Your Call to Actions
[bctt tweet=”How to Get More #Leads from Your Website @katboyarsky says Personalize Your #CalltoActions #b2b” username=”yooncannon”]
5 Simple Ways to Hubspot writer, Katherine Boyarsky shares her tip to Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation.
Dynamic content lets you cater the experience of visiting your website to each, unique web visitor. People who land on your site will see images, buttons, and product options that are specifically tailored to their interests, the pages they’ve viewed, or items they’ve purchased before. Better yet, personalized calls-to-action convert 42% more visitors than basic calls-to-action. In other words, dynamic content and on-page personalization helps you generate more leads.
#6. Analyze Your Google Analytics Data.
[bctt tweet=”How to #GetMoreLeads from Your Website @MDMJonathan says Analyze Your #GoogleAnalytics Data” username=”yooncannon”]
In 10 Hacks to Help Your Website Generate More Leads, Sales and Revenue, Jonathan Long shares the importance of analyzing your Google Analytics data.
When you know what traffic sources aren’t producing conversions and what your traffic is doing prior to converting it allows you to make significant changes. Imagine if you were able to identify that the majority of your social media traffic didn’t convert? You could then allocate your social media budget into the channels that were producing results.
Using LinkedIn. “Our customer research showed that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate (2.74 percent), almost three times higher than Twitter (.69 percent) and Facebook (.77 percent),” says Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, a provider of inbound marketing software. So what makes LinkedIn a good source of leads for IT companies and professional services organizations?
#7. Use LinkedIn to Drive More Targeted Traffic to Your Website.
[bctt tweet=”How to #GetMoreLeads from Your Website @JenniferLonoffSchiff says Use #LinkedIn for Targeted Traffic” username=”yooncannon”]
Jennifer Lonoff Schiff explains the benefits of using LinkedIn to generate more leads and sales from your website.
“First and foremost, LinkedIn has a high percentage of professionals, so the likelihood, especially for B2B marketers, that you’re dealing with people in your target audience is higher than some other channels,” he says. “Moreover, LinkedIn Groups are organized around the concerns and challenges faced by many buyers and/or their geographic location and profession, so LinkedIn makes it easy to view and contextualize what your potential buyers are talking about and tailor content on your LinkedIn Company pages accordingly.”
#8. Use SlideShare to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website.
[bctt tweet=”How to #GetMoreLeads from Your Website @JHaynam says Use #Slideshare to Drive #TargetedTraffic #smm” username=”yooncannon”]
Josh Haynam points out with more than 60 million monthly visitors, you’ve likely heard of (and used) SlideShare. But did you know that with a pro plan you can collect leads right on the platform?
If you’re not willing to pay, SlideShare is still a great way to generate leads. As Ana Hoffman suggests in her epic SlideShare traffic case study, you can link to a landing page in the presentation, description and in your profile.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. You now have 8 favorite ways from top bloggers on how they generate more leads and sales from their websites and how you can to.
Use this is your checklist and start implementing one of these tips each week.
Track your growth over the next 8 weeks and watch how many more visitors and more leads you’re getting to your website.
QUESTION: Where do you get stuck in any of these 8 tips? Share your comments and questions below.
by Yoon Cannon | General, Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Time Management/Productivity
In this week’s blog article I wanted to share a recent interview I gave with John Mattone, best selling author of Cultural Transformations. I was honored to have the opportunity to answer John’s questions on the importance of business coaching, especially for entrepreneurs and how to find a business coach.
After you read our interview below, please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Success & Blessings~

This blog article below is a reprint originally published here.
Expert Interview Series: Yoon Cannon on the Importance of Business Coaches

Yoon Cannon is a seasoned entrepreneur. Since 1992 she’s started, grown and sold three businesses. Her first business was in the direct sales industry where she had the opportunity to hire, train and develop managers to open and run six new branch locations and leadership coaching was a big part of being able to make that happen.
“You can’t retain people or have any kind of talent development without having a constant focus on leadership coaching,” she says.
Today Yoon is a business coach expert and the founder of Paramount Business Coach. We recently asked her for some of her professional insight on the importance of business coaching. Here’s what she had to say:
Why do you think coaching can be so beneficial to small business owners and entrepreneurs?
As a small business owner, you feel like you’re isolated on an island, trying to grow your business all alone. Whether you’re an entrepreneur flying solo or you have many employees on your payroll you still have hundreds of important decisions you need to make every day. It is dangerous to navigate through every decision by yourself. It’s like being a pilot trying to land a plane without getting any guidance from the people in the control tower who have a 360-degree view of where you are and where you want to be.
Choosing to not have a coach is like a pilot choosing to fly blindly without their control tower. That’s not to belittle an entrepreneur’s competency. Not at all. It’s just a fact that as people we all have blind spots. The right business coach can help you make timely course corrections in your business which will save you from making costly mistakes while speeding your success.
Working with a business coach also pulls you away from working “in” the business, so you can work “on” the business. This alone is worth double the return on your investment because this is a common success habit that so many small business owners skip right over.
What types of insight do business coaches offer small business owners and entrepreneurs?
That depends on the specific areas of expertise the individual business coach has.
Business coaches are similar to lawyers in that you should choose someone whose expertise (practice area) is in the area you need the most guidance.
Some business coaches have one specialty while others may have multiple areas of expertise. For me, as a business growth expert I specialize in helping entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies to:
Increase your sales (grow externally) and to increase your people assets (grow internally).
When should professionals seek the help of a business coach?
I firmly believe the sooner the better. You’re never too beginner, nor too advanced to benefit from working with a business coach.
For business growth, no matter what size business, the most important investment to make is in your people. As a small business owner that starts with investing in yourself. The decision to invest in a business coach for yourself as an entrepreneur is no different than an athlete who decides to hire a sports performance coach. For professional athletes working with a specialized coach is pretty standard practice. Similarly, working with a business coach is standard practice for entrepreneurs who are serious about their businesses.
How can business professionals make the most of their relationship with a business/leadership coach?
Like anything else, what you get out is in direct proportion to what you put in. So, the way to gain the biggest ROI from your investment in hiring a business coach is to decide you will commit to take action on those ideas and decisions you collaborated with your coach to do.
A coach can help hold you accountable, but in the end it is you who needs to actually do what you said you would do.
Also, be honest and practice direct communication with your coach. You need to be clear what specific outcome result you’d like to achieve from working with your business coach. You need to tell him or her how you like to be coached. Do you want more collaboration or more direct guidance and feedback? Some discussions you may want your business coach to just listen to you or brainstorm with you while other conversations you want to get their advice.
What are the most common mistakes business owners make when working with a coach?
The first common mistake is hiring the wrong business coach. The classic trap where I find shortcomings most apparent is hiring a business coach who may have gone through a coaching certification course, but never had firsthand experience starting and growing their own successful businesses. Textbook knowledge without proven experience just doesn’t produce the same level of insight and results.
The second biggest mistake is lack of commitment. You won’t be able to build any momentum or make significant progress if you cancel or reschedule your coaching appointments every time you have a fire to put out in your business or you’re feeling like you have too many urgent tasks you’ve got to get to. The greatest transformations that happen from working with a business coach occurs as a result of consistently working on the business together. It may seem counter intuitive, but, taking even 30 minutes to talk to your business coach is often the fastest way to resolve those fires and conquer overwhelm more effectively.
What advice do you have for business professionals on finding a reputable coach who will not only help grow business, but who’s also a good fit personality-wise?
Asking other small business owners who they liked working with is a good way to start. Searching on LinkedIn is also a great way to find business coaches. Especially, since LinkedIn makes it easy to check out their recommendations and the profiles of real people who wrote them.
Then talk to a potential candidates asking each the same list of questions. Talking to each business coach directly will be the easiest way to see who you click with.
What are some red flags that a potential coach might not have the experience or expertise necessary to help a business owner?
Ask your coach whether he or she has ever faced the same challenge(s) you are looking to overcome and/or successfully helped others overcome your specific challenge(s). If their answer is no, this is a red flag.
Share what your goals are with the coach. Ask them to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 how confident they are in knowing exactly how to help you achieve your goal(s). Of course, a low score will tell you this is a red flag.
Third, use common sense. If you’re looking to hire a business coach mainly to help you get more clients from your website, but their own website is lacking, this is a clear red flag.
Fourth, look for client testimonials on their website and LinkedIn profile. If they only have one or two or none, that is another red flag.
How long does the typical coaching relationship last?
What is typical for me is one year. But, it all depends on the nature of the goal and the gap between where you are and where you want to be. My initial free discovery session is where I can better estimate of how long it may take to achieve the result each client is looking for based on their unique business and situation.
On the short end, I recently coached another coach who simply wanted me to diagnose why her marketing wasn’t getting results. It only took three sessions for her to feel equipped to be able to take it from there.
On the longer end, another client continued to work with me for four years. He was thrilled that in those four years of having me coach him and his team their sales increased by $6 million.
What advice do you find yourself repeating to clients over and over again?
“If you want to sell more you’ve got to serve more. How can your business better serve your customers, your team, your community?”
Which type of entrepreneur are you?
1 – You’re ready to start working with a business coach, then sign up for a complimentary discovery session with me here.
2 – You’re not yet ready for a business coach, but you’d like to get plugged into a mastermind group, then learn more here.
3 – You want to keep working by yourself in isolation. What is holding you back from investing in yourself to grow your business? Please share your comments below.
Connect with Yoon on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Success Mindset, Time Management/Productivity
If you want to grow your business while working a whole lot less …. or even create a business that runs without you and increase revenues, be sure to listen to a recent interview I gave on The Parents Entrepreneur Power podcast show.
This episode is especially great for those of you who are juggling growing your business while raising young kids.
Host Mary Kathryn Johnson and I got some good chuckles as I shared my most embarrassing confession how I first approached my business as a new mom.
It was messy back then when I was trying to juggle growing my business with a new baby. As a new parent I did not want to miss out on those precious years when my kids are little, so, by the time my second son was born I started putting some systems into place that truly freed me up in my business.
That new freedom was awesome!
I eventually got it down to working only 10 hours a week. In that time, even though I was working less in my business my revenues still managed to grow by quarter a million dollars.
At one point, I remember thinking to myself, “If revenues grew by quarter a million with me working 10 hours a week, I bet if I worked 40 hours a week I could grow it by one million!”
But, then I also made another decision that no amount of money would make it worth missing out on those precious years with my three children.
If you too want to work less in your business, whether to spend more time with your kids, your grandkids or you just want to travel and golf you can grab some key nuggets in our interview.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW
The biggest reason I became a business coach in 2008 is because I really wanted to help entrepreneurs like you achieve more freedom in your business.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW
Success & Blessings~
Yoon
© Copyright 2016
by Yoon Cannon | General, Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Success Mindset
If you have friends that are christian entrepreneurs, be sure to check out a special online gift event my friend Christina Weber produced.
She has brought together 10 Christian experts who are gifting 10 different training resources in the areas of:
- Life Vision
- Business
- Relationships
- Health, Wealth and Abundance
- Spirituality
I will be providing a free mini training in the BUSINESS category for this 2016 Resource Extravaganza.
Click here to learn more on this special event.
Success & Blessings!
Yoon ~
© Copyright 2016
by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Success Mindset
With all the fan fare of New Year resolutions and everyone talking about setting goals, do you ever wonder if it’s an exercise in futility? After all, why keep setting lofty goals you don’t hit in your business?
I find if you just set goals from a place of wishful thinking it can easily set you up for failure in your business. However, understanding your past can help you discover the right goals for your future and set you up for success.
Here are 9 key questions that will help reveal a better approach to goal setting for your business this year:
1. What were the key goals in your business and life you set out to achieve this past year?
It’s important to have these answers right in front of you here to help you better answer the rest of the questions below. If you can’t rattle off this list quickly, it’s because you probably never wrote it down in the first place. If that’s you … reminder #1 — write down your goals this year 🙂
2. Looking back were these the right achievable stretch goals for you at this season in your life and business?
Donald, a new client I started coaching recently, shared a key outcome goal he wanted me to help him with. His stretch goal this year was to grow his 6 Million Dollar business to a 9 Million Dollar business. Donald shared he struggled to stay focused on his daily to-do list. He thought if he got better at focusing on finishing his projects that alone could add the additional 3 Million in growth.
I disagreed.
In my feedback I shared with Donald that it did not seem like the right goal to pursue for the season of life he was in. He already told me his wife wanted him to be home more for her and their three young daughters. Pursuing the goal of getting more tasks done was directly opposite to his family goal of being home with them more.
It was also not the right goal for the season he was in his business. Donald already had 10 employees. He had resources available to him that he was not fully leveraging. After some discussion Donald realized “getting more things done” was an unwise goal for him to pursue. The better stretch goal for Donald was to focus on teaching his 10 employees how to get Donald’s to do list done.
3. Which goals did you achieve this past year?
What were your wins this year? Celebrate those achievements no matter how small.
Think about even those seemingly “small” problems you succeeded in solving. One problem I had a few years ago was that I get way too achy sitting at my desk all day. I asked my husband Tom to rig up my treadmill, so I could ergonomically work on my laptop while I walk. Just celebrating a small win like getting on the treadmill 5 days a week has helped me start each day in a positive direction.
4. What is the biggest factor you would attribute to achieving your goals this year?
Give yourself credit for what you did right. I’m sure you know the wisdom in leveraging your strengths. So, it’s important to take the time to review the strengths you have demonstrated this year. You may even be surprised to discover new strengths that emerged in recent months.
If you can’t come up with at least five strengths ask other people to tell you what they think are your strengths. You can also take a fun strength-finder assessment.
5. What goals did you NOT achieve this year?
If you did not achieve every goal this year — welcome to the club. Make peace with the fact that almost 100% of high achieving entrepreneurs do not accomplish every goal they wrote for the year. At the same time, it’s important to note which goals you didn’t yet achieve and prioritize them higher or lower for this upcoming year.
6. Identify what was out of your control that got in the way of unachieved goals.
While you don’t want to let yourself fall into the blame game, you also don’t want to swing too far the other direction and beat yourself up when you had factors that were out of your control.
For example, a year ago I was excited to roll out plans to launch some brand new programs designed especially for my solopreneur audience. But, then I discovered I had a high toxic level of mercury poisoning. It greatly impaired my vision for five months which Ophthalmologists could not correct. As a result I had to move my launch date goals five to six months later than I originally anticipated.
What about you? What obstacles did you have this past year that were out of your control?
7. What would you do differently, knowing what you know now, to help you achieve those same goals this year?
It is easy to want to hit the ground running as fast you as you can, especially in the New Year. But, if you keep on doing what you did, you’ll keep on getting what you got. As entrepreneurs, it’s critically important to take the time to pause, reflect and evaluate the past twelve months in order to discover how you should best move forward the next twelve months.
8. What valuable lessons did you learn this year?
Here is the opportunity for you to put into practice the famous quote:
[bctt tweet=”Failure isn’t failure, if you learn from it. http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/9-questions-every-business-should-ask-when-setting-new-goals/” username=”yooncannon”]
Likewise, we can also learn from our successes. Facebook guru Amy Porterfield shared on her podcast show, that she noticed the year she decided to invest in herself through a high level mastermind group program is the year her business truly took off. She attributes the valuable lessons she learned came from being in a mastermind group.
9. What can you do now in your business that you could not do one year ago?
It’s important to measure and acknowledge the progress you’ve made. Seeing progress feeds further progress. Employee engagement experts agree that employee productivity is in direct proportion to the level of progress employees felt they were making in their work. As entrepreneurs, we should apply this same productivity principle to our own businesses.
Write down a list of all the areas you have made measurable progress. Maybe a year ago you did not know how to generate leads on LinkedIn, and now you do. Or perhaps a year ago your business did not have the cash flow to hire a marketing assistant, but now you do.
Before you start making new goals for the New Year be sure to assess the old goals you set last year. I invite you to carve out a block of time in your calendar this week or perhaps even right now to take action on answering these 9 questions thoughtfully. Abraham Lincoln once said,
[bctt tweet=”If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend four of those hours sharpening my axe. http://paramountbusinesscoach.com/blog/9-questions-every-business-should-ask-when-setting-new-goals/” username=”yooncannon”]
QUESTION: What is one“a-ha” you gleaned from these 9 questions? Please share your comments below.
© Copyright 2016
by Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts
If you want to attract more clients this year now is the time to start learning how to leverage LinkedIn to help you build a greater platform and market your business. Check out these recent statistics from BrightCove. As 2015 ended, 94 percent of organizations are using LinkedIn to distribute B2B content. This is more than Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. Of these businesses, 51 percent use LinkedIn for paid advertising as well. Furthermore, 63 percent of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is effective, compared to 55 percent for Twitter and just 30 percent for Facebook.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn remains the top social media recruitment tool, used by 87 percent of recruiters this year, compared to 55 percent who use Facebook, according to Jobvite. Some of the new tools LinkedIn has added has increased its value for both marketers and recruiters as well. With all that being said, here are a three ways your business can leverage LinkedIn’s latest tools:
1. Leverage Content Publishing on LinkedIn
I meet very few business owners who love to prospect and solicit for customers. That’s why I love LinkedIn’s content publishing because it’s such a great tool to help you quickly build your thought leadership on your area of expertise. When you have a reputation as the go to expert, you can have new clients chasing you, instead of you chasing prospects.
Since launching its content marketing platform last year, LinkedIn has made several moves to enhance the power of its publishing capabilities. This May, LinkedIn released analytics tools that let you track your views and analyze the demographics of your audience, using breakdowns by industry, job title, location and traffic source.
Following up in June, LinkedIn rolled out its “LinkedIn Pulse” app. The app delivers personalized and professionally oriented news feeds to audiences on their mobile devices, including both organic Pulse content and external content that is filtered by industry and following preferences.
Then in September, LinkedIn extended the use of its Elevate feature to all enterprises with more than 2,000 employees. Each of your employees typically has 10 times as many connections as your company has followers, so Elevate leverages this by suggesting content to users that your employees can then share with their followers on LinkedIn and across Facebook and Twitter.
Here are a few tips you can implement today to make the most of LinkedIn’s content publishing platform:
- Review your current Pulse feed to get a feel for market trends.
- Hone in on specific topics in your area of expertise where you can contribute valuable content.
- Craft your titles carefully, using good SEO and copywriting principles. Titles offering how-to information or lists perform best.
- Add visuals to grab attention.
- Publish your content on a schedule that matches the weekly rhythms of your target audience. Thursdays generally get the most views whereas you should avoid Monday mornings.
2. Consider Advertising on LinkedIn.
The big LinkedIn advertising trend of 2015 is the rise of the company’s Sponsored Updates service, which lets advertisers place blog posts on users’ home pages. During the first quarter of the year, LinkedIn advertising grew to $119 million, a 38 percent increase over the previous year’s period, reports AdAge. Forty percent of this came from Sponsored Updates, doubling the previous year’s share. In the third quarter, this trend continued with LinkedIn reporting that Sponsored Updates now constitutes 50 percent of its advertising revenue.
Using Sponsored Updates in conjunction with content publishing can maximize the outreach of your LinkedIn campaigns. Another helpful new LinkedIn advertising tool is Lead Accelerator, which lets you identify where a user is in the buying cycle and match your content accordingly.LinkedIn Network Display lets you use cookies to deliver ads to LinkedIn users while they’re on other sites.
3. Scale Your Business with LinkedIn Recruiting.
Whether you already have a few employees or you’re a solopreneur growing your business to the next level will always involve growing your team. Even if you only start with one part time team member you can use LinkedIn to help you find the best qualified candidates. It’s a great way to filter and shortlist your recruits.
LinkedIn recruiting efforts will continue to shift toward users of mobile devices, such as the Apple iPhone 6s, as recruiters seek to attract younger workers. According to Jobvite’s 2015 Job Seeker Nation Study, 47 percent of millennials now use mobile for their job search. By the first quarter of this year, 50 percent of unique visitors were accessing LinkedIn from mobile devices. By the third quarter, mobile users accounted for 55 percent of all LinkedIn traffic.LinkedIn offers a wide range of recruitment tools for enterprises. The most essential is Recruiter, which lets you match job profiles to candidates and contact prospects using InMail.
If you want to learn How to Attract More Clients Using LinkedIn I invite you to join me for a free webinar training. Click here to register.
QUESTION: What is one thing you would like to know how to do on LinkedIn? Please share your comments and questions below.
© Copyright 2017