To grow your business, you need customers to buy your product or service. But building your customer pipeline is not as easy as it sounds.
WSI explains the challenge like this, “Potential customers can’t help your business grow if they remain indifferent towards your brand. You have to pique their interest before you can think of selling to them. This process of getting someone’s attention and converting them into a potential customer is known as lead generation.”
Your website likely captures and nurtures leads. Yet tapping the full lead generation potential of your site requires ongoing testing, measuring, and tweaking.
Follow these tips to attract and convert more quality leads.
Add forms to the pages that get the most traffic.
Start by conducting an audit of your website to identify where most of your online traffic and outreach originates—email, social media, your blog, etc. “Once you identify where your leads are coming from, you’ll want to make sure the pages they’re landing on are doing everything they can to nurture a visitor’s interest.” Do this by adding valuable content—white papers, case studies, free guides, etc.—that visitors can access through forms that solicit their contact information.
Measure the performance of each lead generator.
Use a tool like Website Grader to evaluate your lead generation sources, including landing pages and CTAs. It provides feedback on ways to improve your existing content.
Test & optimize each step of the process.
As soon as a visitor lands on your website, you can start learning about their conversion path. Use an A/B split test (two versions of a landing page, CTA, thank you message, etc.) to track which prompts visitors to engage.
Use the Kickback Email.
Once a visitor converts into a lead and their information hits your database, send them a kickback or a “thank you” email. “In a HubSpot study on engagement rates of thank-you emails versus non thank-you emails, kickback emails doubled the engagement rates (opens and click-throughs) of standard marketing emails.” Use these emails to provide a specific CTA and encourage sharing on social media.
Start with a basic CTA on your homepage.
Since consumers want their browsing experience to be as non-invasive as their buying experience, HubSpot suggests offering a free trial or newsletter signup as an engaging CTA.
Offer live chat functionality.
A live chat engages, answers questions, and moves the prospect through the conversion process, giving them what they need while allowing you to collect valuable data.
Personalize your CTAs.
Dynamic content lets you cater the experience of visiting your website to each unique web visitor—you’ve likely experienced this when you visit a website that offers you product suggestions based on your past browsing or purchase history. Bottom line, It works. Personalized content converts 42% more visitors than general copy.
Nurture your leads.
Leads are only as good as your follow-through, “Place leads into a workflow once they fill out a form on your landing page, so they don’t forget about you and deliver them valuable content that matches their interest.
“Lead nurturing should start with relevant follow-up emails that include great content. As you nurture them, learn as much as you can about them—and then tailor all future sends accordingly.”
You need to develop a strong customer pipeline to close sales and grow your brand. A strong lead generation effort is a significant contributor to building that stream of engaged customers. Use these website optimization tips and comment on our social media pages about other best practices that work for you.
