Lead generation is constant challenge for most businesses. But it doesn’t have to be! Fortunately, you can utilise your hardest working marketing asset – your website – and turn it into a lead generation machine that sends you leads on autopilot.
Your website is your most loyal and hardest working employee. It on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and ready to greet a client at a moments notice.
Unfortunately, most websites I see are essentially a “leaky bucket”. Potential clients visit the website, have a look around, but then leave – you don’t know who they are and you have know way of contacting them.
This is where Lead Generation comes in.
By making a few changes to your site you can transform it into a lead generation platform so you never miss a potential customer again.
Include A Phone Number to Maximise Lead Generation
“Lead Generation 101” – Don’t make it hard for clients to contact you! I come across websites everyday that don’t have their phone number on their website or it is buried on internal pages and hard to find. A phone number is more than just a contact point. It demonstrates your business is open and accessible. It gives customers the comfort they need to get in touch. Put it in the head of your website so it is easy to find and on every page. Don’t make customers go hunting for it.
Post A Contact Form On EVERY Page
Post an easy to access Contact Form on EVERY PAGE of your website. This will immediately increase your leads as opposed to having it only on your contact page. This will ensure all your visitors can easily contact you no matter which page they entered on or where they are in the website. Also keep in mind that the more information or fields you include on your form, they less conversions you will have. Clients are more likely to fill out a form if they don’t have to part with their private information.
Include A CTA for Lead Generation
Tell your potential clients what to do next. Do you want them to book a call today? The say that! “BOOK A CALL TODAY”. Provide clear directions throughout your webpage with CTAs or “call to actions”. You don’t need to be subtle either. Make them big and bold. Make sure customers know exactly what you want them to do.
Showcase Happy Clients
Add testimonials and happy clients throughout your website to establish credibility and demonstrate other clients that have had success doing business with you. Add a photo of the client adds even more authenticity. On average a customer will read ten online reviews before they trust a business. Use reviews and testimonials to highlight credibility. Show people have received the results they want with your work. Make sure you utilise testimonials that reference exceptional levels of customer service.
Use Trust Logos for Lead Generation
Incorporating trust logos will increase your lead generation and conversion rates. These logos can be industry memberships, media appearances or awards. Don’t make the mistake of believing customers don’t care about what these logos are. Logos like this add credibility and help establish a business as a trusted resource. You can also add a link to each logo to ensure customers can find more information about a particular membership or award easily.
Offer an irresistible Lead Magnet
A Lead Magnet provides something valuable to a potential client that they are willing to exchange their email for. Once you have their email, you have the ability to retarget and nurture them to becoming a client. This lead magnet should solve a problem your target audience has and be transformational. But don’t overthink it! Sometimes the simplest of solutions are the most valuable. Do you have a template, checklist or advice that could help your audience with an annoying problem they have? Discovering this sweet spot is the first step in nurturing loyal clients that keep coming back to you time and time again.
Use Videos
It is hard to develop rapport with a potential customer in the online world. Videos are the closest thing to meeting a client in person and building a relationship with them. Videos give you the opportunity show your personality and communicate the experience of becoming a client.
Videos improve the interactivity level of your business website and create transparency. Videos can show users who you are and what you can offer. They can deliver messages and information in a way that is quick and easy to understand.
Speak to them directly and make it feel like a conversation instead of a lecture or piece of promotion. Ask the questions they want to know and then provide the answers.
A video can show the individuals behind a brand. Clients want to connect with real people who they can relate to. Don’t be afraid to use video to show personality while keeping things professional.
Use Strong & Emotive Language
Don’t be boring! Get them exited. Communicate the “feeling” of what it is like to do business with you. Demonstrate the transformation you can provide. Inspire them to take action.
Use language to get users excited about what you’re offering. Avoid passive language to ensure that your content is more hard-hitting and inspires action. Give them a reason to want to call or provide their email. Get them motivated to connect with a brand that is confident, inspiring and engaging.
Make Your Content More About The Customer for Lead Generation
Stop talking about yourself! Make your content less about you and more about the customer, what you can do for them and the transformation you can provide. Speak to them, to their pain, their problems and their greatest desires. This is much more powerful than simply telling them provide services.
Don’t expect customers to see your business from your perspective, discover theirs. Understand how their view of the world and build your content around THAT. Every piece of content should tell a story. Focus on the pain points and questions they have. Introduce the solution you offer and then make it easy for them to connect.
Deliver a compelling argument they can easily understand because it’s written from their perspective. A simple yet effective way to do this is to write in the second person. Address the user directly and they will feel as though they are heard by your brand. Clients are looking for a brand to transform or improve their life. You need to show how you will do this in easy to understand terms.
Don’t Underestimate The Power Of A Strong Brand
If your website looks like a grade three art project, do you think they will to do business with you over a business that values their brand?
Customers want to connect with businesses that have a proven record of success and can solve their problem quickly. You need to kill it with the first impression. Your website design is a crucial selling point. A great web design demonstrates a business is professional and successful. It’s another way to build trust with users.
You need to use your website to create a unique identity too. Don’t save money on templates that have come out of a cookie-cutter. If you look like everyone else online, this diminishes your unique selling point. You can’t give users any evidence that they can get the same service or solution from the other guy.
Build your design to reflect your business message and your brand goals.
Use Lead Generating Landing Pages
Landing Pages are designed to be stripped back versions of your website that removes all distractions to prevent a potential customer from leave the page. With landing pages, you can quickly direct users exactly where you want them.
Landing pages are TARGETED lead generation and set up specifically to promote a key area of your website or business.
Limit the links on a landing page to create a direct funnel to a specific area of your site. You should use a landing page to remove distractions and focus on one area of your brand and business. This ensures a fast and easy sale that users can immediately connect with. With landing page designs, make sure that you add images or video to sell a product or service. Make your message and your sales pitch as clear as possible and keep things looking professional. Don’t forget to add a CTA at the start and the bottom of the landing page to ensure users can easily move forward.
Blog, Blog Blog for Lead Generation
Demonstrate why you are a leader in the market place and why they should do business with you and only you. Blogging helps provide additional value and establishes your brand as a reputable name in the industry. You can use posts to provide further context to value propositions and address the pain of users.
Make sure to add thought leadership style posts to highlight why you are the head of the industry and why they should want to connect with you. High-quality content will guarantee that you are seen as a brand with authority. The more you post, the more powerful this effect becomes. You just need to make sure you maintain the right standards.
If you start posting boring posts, bland posts or posts that are inaccurate, it will diminish your ability to generate leads.
Know Your Target Audience
Have a DEEP understanding of your target audience. Know them intimately, their goals, their pain, what keeps them up at night, where they hang out, what shows they watch, who they follow. The more you know about them, the better you can speak directly to them. They need to feel as if you are the only person that can solve their problems.
This should be reflected in every post you create and every piece of content you publish. It should be apparent across every area of your business website. Think about what they want to achieve, why they found your business and what they want you to offer.
Knowledge of your audience will give you the power to tap into who they are and what they want to see. Make sure you also explore your competition to find out the mistakes they are making so that you can correct them.
Know What You Want Customers To Do next
Don’t assume a website visitor will just automatically know to call you. Planning is key when planning lead generation. You need a strategy in place of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. Depending on your brand and your business strategy you will have different goals. You may, for instance, want to connect with your customers by email. Or you could want to hear from them on the phone.
Regardless of the goal, you need to make this obvious to the lead on every page. Don’t expect your audience to be able to guess what you want them to do. You must provide a clear path. This will guarantee that they don’t get sidetracked or lose their way.
Install a Facebook Pixel
If you haven’t already done this, go do it right now. Having a Facebook Pixel means you can “retarget” Facebook Ads to anyone who has visited your website without contacting you or opting-in to any of your lead magnets. Lead generation GOLD!
Test & Measure Your Lead Generation
There is always going to be an amount of trial and error involved in lead generation. You will need to explore different options because even small details can impact levels of success. For instance, the colour of the link could impact whether people click as could the CTA you use, A/B testing is the best way to highlight and correct issues like this. AB testing allows you to change different points of a website. One section of the audience is shown the unaltered version while the other accesses the website with small changes. You can then view the impact this has on lead generation and determine whether to add the changes to the prime site.
Website Structure
Follow the 3 click rule when mapping out the structure of your site. A user should never be more than three clicks away from what they need. The three-click rule can be established on your site by correctly placing links and adding the right CTAs. A blog will also help ensure that your users can easily find what they are searching for.
Don’t Ask For Too Much
When you are building contact forms, you should set them to ask users for the minimum info possible. Users will always be sceptical about giving too many personal details. Ideally, contact forms should ask for the email and nothing more. Don’t give them a reason to think twice about forming a connection.
Speed It Up for Lead Generation
Finally, make sure that your site runs smoothly. A website that is slow to load sends a message about brand performance and the success of the business. The rule here is that no page on your site should take more than three seconds to load. Make sure you test your website performance on different platforms and remember, the majority of users will access your business from a mobile device.
Now go forth and turn your website into a Lead Generation MACHINE!
