You’ve started driving traffic to your site, but how do you turn these visitors into solid leads? What can you do to get your visitors to provide their contact information and enter your sales funnel?
One of the best ways to collect leads for your sales team is to provide premium content.
Are you making the most of this strategy? Have you created a compelling offer and excellent landing page to entice people to sign up? The following strategies will show you how to generate leads from your website.
1. Make sure your premium content is behind an opt-in form
If you’ve been creating content for awhile, you probably already have some great pieces on your website. If you have a popular whitepaper or a heavily viewed series of blog posts that you can turn into an eBook, you have the makings of great premium content.
With the advent of the Internet, social media, and the dispersal of knowledge in every direction, corporations are in the unique position to distribute the information they’ve gathered in exchange for audiences, readership, and brand loyalty.- Harvard Biz Review
The next step, if you have not already done it, is to put this content on a landing page behind a form, so that visitors to your site have to provide you with their contact information to get to your offer. An effective opt-in form is short, simple for you customers to fill out, and helps you increase your contacts database. Once you build a sufficiently large database, you may strategically decide to give away no-strings-attached premium content, but when you are first starting out, you want to capture all of the names you can.
2. Make your landing page concise and captivating
Your potential customers get bombarded with new information and requests for their details on a regular basis, so unless you make your offer compelling, your site will probably be lost in the noise. In order to get noticed you need a landing page that explains the benefits of your premium offer on a well-designed page with short, captivating copy, lots of white space, and a visual or two.
3. Be explicit about your offer
Clearly state your offer in the headline of your landing page and create an attention-getting image for your offer. Include a short, compelling call to action above your information request form. Occasionally revise your landing pages and test out different combinations of headlines, CTAs and images to see what brings the highest conversion rate. With the right offer, you might entice someone who was formerly just a browser to join your list.
4. Keep your opt-in form short
If your form looks daunting, people will not take the time to complete it. Even if your content is great, potential leads will be discouraged. Make sure customers can see at a glance that it will not take too much of their time.
If your target audience is people who are unfamiliar with your business, it may be enough just to get their name and email. This simple approach will get you the highest response rate, so it is effective when you are trying to grow your database rapidly.
At some point, you may consider adding more-targeted questions. A few additional questions about company size, marketing budget, and location can help you rate the quality of new leads and assign them among your sales reps. Just keep your form as short as possible.
5. Test your site frequently
Any time you create a new landing page or tweak an existing page or form, test your site to make sure all the data is collected correctly, and the landing page directs to your ‘thank you’ confirmation page. Technical glitches should not be an excuse for losing potential leads.
6. Customize your submit button
Aim all of the text on your landing page at promoting your offer and getting your customers to commit. One way to emphasize this is by changing the ‘submit’ button at the bottom of your form to something specific to your offer such as:
- Download Now
- Speak to an Expert
- Get Your Free Trial
These buttons provide actionable copy instead of generic text.
7. Add CTAs in multiple locations
Don’t just wait for readers to stumble across your landing page. Advertise your premium offer in multiple places on your site. Here are some of the most popular locations:
- Your site’s Homepage
- You company’s About page
- Your product description and pricing pages
- The bottom of relevant blog posts, and in your blog’s sidebar
Follow these 7 tips to help you turn the attention of your readers into viable sales leads.
Have additional tips for increasing lead generation rates? Please share your experiences.
