HOW TO AMP UP LEAD GEN FROM YOUR WEBSITE
Take your website from zero image to hero image
Your website is a lot like your bank account: either you check it all the time because you like what you see, or you try to avoid looking at it if possible because…well, it’s doing its thing and you’re doing yours.
The problem there is your website can and should be one of your best lead gen (and, therefore, sales) tools. With traffic flying in (optimally) from social media platforms, email, SEO and PPC efforts, and direct searches, your website should be pushing customers through the buying funnel, not away from you.
But, with all the tools and tech and priorities you’re juggling, sometimes it can be hard to know where to start. Here are five simple ways to step up your website’s lead gen game:
1. START WITH THE DATA
As with all your marketing decisions, building a website lead gen strategy needs to start with hard data. Analyze your Google Analytics for basic things like time on site, most popular pages, bounce rate, and where your visitors are coming from.
Once you’ve identified the sources of your highest traffic (your Facebook page, for instance), build out forms on those pages with special offers that lead to dedicated landing pages. Keep those landing pages and offers up-to-date with interesting and relevant offers. This is a great way to build trust in your audience and establish relevance while still driving visitors through the funnel.
2. OPTIMIZE YOUR LEAD GEN PROCESS
Once you’ve gotten your data on lockdown, make sure all the holes in your funnel are plugged. Streamline the process to cut down on buyer fatigue. Build out clear, inviting CTAs and consider pop-ups or sliders as visitors scroll your page. Create dedicated landing pages for your various products and traffic sources. According to a 2018 HubSpot survey, companies with 30+ landing pages on their sites saw more than 7x the leads than sites with 1-5 landing pages. And once a visitor clicks on your offer, they should be taken to a Thank You page with links to download the offered content or schedule a demo.
Speaking of thank-yous, make sure your email automation is set up to send an automatic Thank You email once they’ve submitted the offer form. This reinforces their decision to click and does wonders to build trust.
3. POLISH YOUR UX
Again, the name of the game here is ease-of-use. Make it as easy for your visitors to take the desired action as possible. Many times, this means cleaning up your UX design. Keep fonts simple and easy-to-read. Make hero images exciting and relevant. Or consider replacing your static hero image with an explainer video—either videography or motion graphics.
As stated above, make sure your CTAs are prominent and easy to understand. If you need to bring in a design team or web developer to help you clean up messy site architecture, do it. It’s well worth the investment.
4. EXPAND YOUR ARSENAL
When you’re ready to trick out your website even more, there is no end to the number of bells and/or whistles you can add on the back end. Here are some that will get you the best bang for your buck
- Call tracking – if you’re using multiple sources to generate phone calls (e.g., PPC ads, Facebook, and your website), a call tracking tool can help you turn those calls into usable data. You can see which sources are generating the most calls and most tools record the calls, which can help you when training your sales personnel.
- Live chat – this is a great way to get prospects to begin engaging with your company. If visitors feel like their questions are important and will be answered right away, you can begin building trust with them on the first interaction. Live chat also helps push prospects through the buying funnel by answering some of their initial questions, helping them move from awareness to consideration, or from consideration to purchase. Most live chat tools are fairly inexpensive and will prove to be a valuable addition to your site.
- Heat-mapping – when it comes to testing and optimization, heat mapping tools like crazyegg are a must. These tools show you where visitors are clicking even where their cursors are hovering. You can use this data to optimize site architecture, move CTAs around, and build a better experience for your visitors (i.e., one that leads to more sales for you).
- Website personalization – a newer tool on the scene, website personalization does exactly what it sounds like: personalizes your website to the individual visitor. This means that, based on data stored on that visitor or based on the link they clicked, they will get a different version of your site. Tools like Persosa can customize the site based on interest, segmenting your visitors by what they’re on your site for, which makes email marketing automation a breeze. We live in the future—might as well enjoy the cool tech, right?
5. ON AND ON IT GOES
Perhaps the most critical piece of this lead gen puzzle is the follow-up. And while that is another topic for another blog, there are a couple of critical factors here for your site.
First is nurturing your leads. Whether you take an old-school SDR/phone call approach (which is okay—just remember coffee is for closers) or whether you have a robust email marketing automation platform, make sure your site is set up to feed you these leads. Email automation is the preferred method mostly because you can market to your visitors over and over with their permission. You can segment your visitors based on interest (gathered from your landing pages’ analytics) and then feed them content that gets them back onto your site, giving you another shot at selling to them.
Testing and optimization is also critical. Using some of the tools mentioned here, you should be able to get an accurate picture of how your site is performing overall. In sales it’s ABC—always be closing. With your website, adopt the ABT approach—always be testing. There are AB testing tools out there that can help you optimize everything from site architecture all the way down to the color of your CTA buttons. Like an expert mechanic, keep tinkering until your website purrs. …which is obviously a metaphor for making you money. You get it.
