Why have a website?
When you think about it, the key purpose of your website is to generate leads and customers. Right?
This means that your website’s content should really be stirring interest in what you do. Especially if your product or service involves a lot of outlay.
You need to present content that is relevant to the visitor and why they are there. And your visitors should ideally consist of your ideal customer.
Generating leads by targeting your ideal customer
You don’t want to be wasting your time attracting the wrong audience.
Getting clear on who your ideal customer is, and how they tick, you can create website content that appeals to them on an emotional level. You will attract the right prospects who will be happy to do business with you, and you are happy to deal with them.
You’re far better off if you have genuine prospects joining your pool of leads.
What is a lead?
In website terms, a lead is a visitor who has shown significant interest in your product. They have gone beyond reading your content and subscribing, and have continued to take interest in your information.
A lead is explained in more detail in “How To Make Your Website A Powerful Lead Generation Machine“.
Now, let’s take a look at 10 key tactics to start generating leads on your website today!
1. Blog like you are there to help
If you expect more traffic to come to your website, you really need a blog. And that blog should contain content that provides value to your reader – something worth their precious time.
I’ve found that some companies go to great lengths to pump out page after page of text for their blog. They mean well, but they are focused so much on quantity that they make the mistake of creating text book style material.
You don’t want to be writing to your peers or confusing your prospects with jargon. Your prospects don’t care about what you know. They only want to know that you care.
Once you’ve been helping them to find answers for themselves, they are more than happy to do business with you.
Source: HubSpot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010
2. Make use of your email list
Whether your list consists of existing or past customers, or new prospects, it has the potential to become a great source of new business.
Email has managed to survive the everchanging trends of internet marketing, and remains the most cost-effective form of marketing today. Your list consists of people who have made the choice to connect with you. Therefore, as a whole, they will be more welcoming to information you share with them than other online audiences would be.
You can use email for all manner of communication, such as:
- Keeping people up to date on the latest best practices
- Educating your contacts on relevant issues
- Announcing a new product or service
- Sharing your latest blog articles
- Sending a link to a new template, tool or calculator they may find useful
For more ideas on what you can email your mailing list, have a look at “10 Types of Emails You Should Send Your Email List”.
3. Make it as easy as possible to contact you
Imagine you have a website visitor, and while reading through your content on their mobile they have a pressing question. They scroll up to the menu, click on Contact Us, and arrive at the page only to find a phone number – but it’s not clickable. They then have to memorise your numbers while they jump a few times from your page to their keypad to type it in correctly. That is, if they are keen enough to go to such effort.
It shouldn’t be so hard.
A click-to-call phone number should appear at the top or bottom of each page and be included within relevant text prompting them to call.
Or you could have a popup email form at the bottom of the page. Even better is a chat box, so the user can simply start typing a text conversation with one of your team members for immediate feedback.
Some great tools for a chat box are Live Chat and Intercom. After hours, the chat boxes can operate as an email message box.
Different people prefer different methods of communication, so it is a good idea to cover all bases.
4. Cater for different stages of the Buyer’s Journey
Not all website visitors are ready to buy.
On one hand, you can offer buyers a way to make contact and to get detailed information on specific products.
On the other hand, you can offer content that is more in tune with helping visitors decide whether your service is useful to them or not. This also gives you the opportunity to add them to your email list so you can educate them further along the sales path.
The buyer’s journey consists of 3 main phases:
Awareness – when the prospect’s problem or need is realised and they start researching a variety of solutions. This phase is satisfied with blogs, checklists and quizzes.
Consideration – their research has come to the point where the solutions are clearer and the options are fewer. This is where things like product pages, fact sheets, reports and comparisons can come in handy.
Decision – the prospect is fairly close to buying at this point. They have decided on a short list, if not a specific item, and are ready to reach out. They typically do this by phone or email, or by using one of your forms to request a consultation, quote or product demo.
Cater for all buying stages, and you will find that you are guiding more prospects down the sales funnel to your sales team.
You can learn more about the Buyer’s Journey and how to manage it in “3 Steps To Convert More Visitors To Paying Customers”.
5. Tell them what to do – Calls To Action
A Call To Action (CTA) is just that. You are calling to the reader to take some kind of action.
No matter how captivating your content can be, most website visitors will simply leave and never come back unless prompted to do something more that can help them.
Calls to action can include:
- Make or book a phone call
- Click and email link
- Grab a download
- Fill a form
- Sign up for a giveaway or discount
- Answer a question
- Take a survey
- Give your opinion
- Register for an event
- Request a demo
- Access a tool (like the CrazyEgg example below)
Calls to Action can appear within your page content, slide in from the side of the page, or popup over your page. You might think that popups are usually annoying. However, if they are designed and managed properly they can be unobtrusive and actually increase conversions by 5-15%.
6. Offer Lead magnets
Simply put, lead magnets are content offers that website visitors are willing to exchange their email address for.
Lead magnets help you build your email list.
They include such things as ebooks, checklists and planning tools and they add value to the reader’s experience. Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer tool has been a great success for them in converting leads:
See more examples of lead magnets in “24 Effective Lead Magnets to Quickly Boost Web Conversions”.
7. Landing pages that convert
Landing pages are a crucial step in many conversion funnels. Particularly if you are promoting on platforms outside of your website.
When prospects click on your tiny ad or call-to-action, they should land on a dedicated page that elaborates on what the original short message said. It gives you the opportunity to promote your offering in greater depth, and the reader will be more likely to proceed with giving you their contact information.
For more tips on creating a landing page that converts, read “What Makes A High Converting Landing Page?”
8. Build your business relationships 24/7 with automations
Automations are great time savers when it comes to repetitive tasks. They can even be triggered by website activities.
ActiveCampaign, for example, can tie your website in with your email marketing software and your CRM. It is a powerful way to put your website to sales flow into autopilot until it is time for your sales team to step in.
Let me give you an example…
Someone on your email list has visited your product page twice in the last 3 days.
What happens next – they receive an email promoting a demo with a link to a landing page which contains a form to request a demo.
If the prospect fills out the form, the sales team is notified via email and the demo is arranged.
If the form isn’t filled, the prospect will receive follow up material a day later to promote further benefits such as a comparison chart with competing products.
ActiveCampaign explains automation workflows nicely here:
“Marketing automation done right”
9. Optimise your content for search engines
Search engine optimisation (SEO) starts at the planning stage of your website. Your content needs to be built around what your prospects and customers are searching for. Once you are clear on who you are writing for and the solutions you offer them, your content becomes more visible and attracts the right people to your website. More clicks on Google means more lead generating opportunities on your website.
Search Engine Land have compiled “The complete guide to optimizing content for SEO” which includes a handy checklist.
10. Brush up your About page
The purpose of your About page is to build your company’s credibility and instil a sense of confidence and trust.
When visitors are thinking of buying, even if they’ve been referred to you, they will look at your About page before considering contacting you. According to Hinge Marketing, 51.9% of referrals rule a company out before even contacting them.
Trust can be reinforced with testimonials, achievements, company values, team photos and biographies, and anything that reflects reliability and competence.
Measure and test
It’s always a good idea to test any of these tactics. Measure your site’s traffic and conversions before and after your changes. If something is not working for you, don’t give up on the tactic. Try a variation of it.
Your aim is to generate leads from your website, so it is well worth the resources to do it correctly. Don’t let those prospects slip away.
- Why websites don’t convert visitors into buyers - January 17, 2020
- 4 ways to charge up your customer conversion rate - December 15, 2019
- How Conversion Rate Optimisation Boosts Marketing ROI - November 15, 2019
