Your potential prospect has landed on your website from a quick Google Search or paid ad, success. However, unless your website is designed to convert these visitors into leads, you won't generate new customers and instead have a website that's a quick pit-stop for potential decision-makers. This is why lead generation needs to be at the forefront of your thinking when it comes to designing & building your website.
You need to be asking crucial questions such as 'Are each of your web pages designed to take your customer through to a lead generation CTA (If you're using them at all) or a form to fill out with their contact details, or will it leave them questioning what the next step is to reach their desired outcome?'
What is lead generation?
It's attracting the interest of a potential buyer in your product or service and nurturing them to the point that they provide you with their contact details and then potentially purchase your product or service. A few examples of lead generators are blog posts, live events and online content e.g Webinars hosted via Zoom and downloadables such as eBooks and Factsheets.
If you’re a sales rep or a part of a B2B company, you may already have at least some experience generating leads.
In this blog post, we will be going through just a few of the techniques you can implement today to ensure your website is optimised for lead generation.
Capturing more leads with forms
Putting forms on your website is a fantastic way to capture more qualified leads, provided the information you're requesting is the right type and the correct amount, i.e only including the crucial data, to begin with, and further down the sales journey requesting a different subset. There are many different types of forms you can include on your website such as gated content for an eBook or a Contact Us form.
Forms become the foundation of your business lead generation efforts, they enable you to gather contact information about your site visitors and a clear signal they're interested in your product or what your business has to offer.
Utilise all channels
No two customers are identical, each of them will choose a slightly different action when they're looking into your products or solution. One customer might come from clicking on your Facebook ad, another through Instagram swipe-up links.
This is why you must direct people back to your site from multiple different channels and not take a one size fits all approach to your lead generation method. Combining several marketing channels will help ensure all bases are covered and your brand is out there on many online and offline sources and the best chance of capturing leads for your business. A few ways you can optimise your channels are via Social Media, SEO, Blogs and Email.
Gated offers on landing pages
If your goal is to generate new leads or to increase brand awareness, then gating content offers may be the best fit for you to reach your business goals. However, there are instances, when gated content isn't always the right way forward for example if you're only looking to build brand awareness. Asking a prospect to fill in their details when they're not yet ready to do can reduce downloads considerably. Offering content, in this example, that isn't gated would be the better approach.
Knowing when a customer is ready to give you their details at the right time is all about timing and where they are in the marketing funnel, you can then tailor your content to correspond with each.
Summary
In this blog post, we've covered the basics of lead generation, how important it is for your business to optimise your website and a few best practices you can implement. Remember though you'll need to continuously test and tweak your website regularly to ensure it's tailored to your audience.
