Web Hosting for Business Consultants

The site that says everything and proves nothing

Open most consulting websites and you find the same page. Twenty years of experience. Six service lines. A promise to be a trusted partner in transformation. All of it true, none of it useful, because the consultancy down the road says exactly the same words in a slightly different typeface.

The problem is not the writing. The problem is that a prospect has nothing to read. They arrive wanting to know whether you understand their situation, and you have given them adjectives. So they close the tab and go back to asking somebody they trust for a name.

That is the real competition for a consulting website. Not other websites. A phone call between two people who know each other. Your site is not going to beat that referral, and it does not need to. What it needs to do is survive being checked afterwards, because it always gets checked.

What the checker is doing

Somebody has been given your name. They look you up before they call. They are asking three things, quickly, and mostly without noticing they are asking them.

• Is this person real, and are they still working. A site that has not moved in four years answers this badly.
• Do they understand my particular problem, or are they a generalist who will learn on my money.
• What do they actually think. Not what do they claim to be good at. What is their view.

The third question is the one a service list cannot answer, and it is the one that decides the call.

The download, and what it costs you to collect a name

The standard move is to gate a document. Write something substantial, put a form in front of it, collect the email address, follow up. It works, and for consultants it works better than for most trades, because a buyer who will download a twenty page diagnostic on a niche problem is genuinely close to needing help with that problem.

It also has a cost that gets ignored. Every gate loses most of the people who would have read the thing. If your goal is to be known for a view, gating is the wrong instrument. If your goal is a list of named prospects in a narrow market, it is the right one. Decide which you are doing before you build the form.

1. Write the thing first

   Not a teaser. Something a competent person would pay for. If the document is thin, the gate turns an interested reader into an annoyed one, and that is a worse outcome than never meeting them.

2. Keep the form to two fields

   Name and email. Every extra field costs you completions, and you do not need their company size before you have said hello. You can ask on the call.

3. Deliver it as a real page where you can

   A web page beats a PDF for reading on a phone and for being found later. If it must be a PDF, make sure the page it lives on says what is inside, in text.

4. Say what happens next, in one line

   How often you will write, and how to stop. People give an address more readily when the terms are visible, and it keeps you the right side of the rules on unsolicited email. Check the specifics with your own adviser if you send at any volume.

5. Follow up like a person

   One useful message from a name and address at your own domain does more than eight automated ones. If your address is still at a free provider, business email on your own domain is the cheapest credibility you will ever buy.

One practical warning. A form that collects names is now a small database of other people's personal information, and it needs to be somewhere you can back up and delete from. That is an argument for keeping the whole thing on your own hosting with backups you have tested, rather than scattered across three free tools.

Credentials, speaking and the proof that is actually load bearing

Consultants tend to over-invest in the credential page and under-invest in the evidence page. A certification tells a buyer you passed something. It does not tell them you have solved their problem before, and that is the thing they are anxious about.

So keep credentials, keep them short, and put your effort into proof with a shape to it. A named client who will say a sentence about outcome beats a wall of logos, and it beats a testimonial that only says you were a pleasure to work with. If you cannot name the client, describe the situation precisely and leave the name out. Precision is what carries it, not the logo.

Speaking is worth a page of its own once you do any of it. A conference talk, a webinar, a trade association panel, a podcast appearance. Each one is a third party vouching for you in public, and each one is a link and a page of real content. A page that lists where you have spoken, with dates, does two jobs at once. It reassures the person checking you, and it quietly tells search engines you are a real practitioner rather than a brochure.

If you have appeared on a podcast, embed the player but write a short summary of what you said underneath it. Audio is invisible to search and to anyone who will not put headphones on at work.

How AldoMedia helps

AldoMedia has built and looked after websites for Western New York businesses since 1999, including a fair number of independent consultants and small practices. We are an independent authorised reseller rather than the operator of the underlying platform, and the advice we give most often to consultants is to spend less on hosting and more on writing.

If you want to publish regularly and want to do it yourself, WordPress hosting is the usual sensible answer, and we will tell you honestly when a plain shared plan is already enough. Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what your site runs on.