Your website is more than just your business card on the internet, or at least it should be more. Many years have passed since the internet has shifted from favoring advertisers to favoring consumers instead. People are empowered with plenty of tools and an ocean of online content to choose their own online experiences. They choose to have conscious control over what they want to see, what they want to buy and what not. The internet is the consumer’s world; marketers are just living in it. Even ads aren’t as effective as they used to be, because of ad blocking software. So what are you to do in order to get your potential customers’ attention?
Every business uses its website differently. Some want to gain physical location visits, some want phone numbers or emails and others want to generate revenue through eCommerce. Every business website has one thing to accomplish, leveraging it to help the business grow. To make that happen, you’ll have to use smart marketing strategies instead of the old disruptive marketing strategies.
You have to work on not only getting people’s attention, but holding it so that they want to keep learning more from you or about you. This kind of lead generation strategy includes fitting your offers into the context of what people are already there to accomplish on your site. If they come across a call to action, like “sign up here for…” too early or through a pop up, they interpret it as “Let us spam you endlessly”. Tactics like this will only turn your marketing efforts into white noise, so it’s time to make a shift into smart marketing. Use calls to action that fit into the context of what the individual is there to accomplish on your site.
In this article, I’m going to go through the various ways you can generate more leads through eBooks, comprehensive guides, whitepapers and other high-quality content. I’ll also show you a lot of social media management tactics and other straight forward marketing tactics that will generate more leads for your site. So, without further ado, let’s get down to it!
Place your Calls To Action Into The Natural Scanning Path
Placing your calls to action in the right place can do miracles for your numbers. Still, not a lot of marketers spend the necessary amount of time on thinking through, testing, tweaking and optimizing their CTA placement to optimize their conversions. Most people think that as long as their CTA is above the fold, it will work well. Though, most of them fail to realize that getting it to perform well is a process of trial and error.
Start out by placing your calls to action where you know people’s eyes naturally go when they visit your website. They usually follow an F pattern, so seek to place your CTA in its path during your trials and keep it where it performs best. It usually works best in the key spots, which are usually the upper right, and upper or lower right and lower left corners of the screen.
Leverage Slide-In Forms and Pop-Ups the Right Way
Pop-ups are disruptive in nature, which is why they were vilified during the past few years. They can really get annoying, that’s for sure and too many marketers use them instead of working on enhancing their user experience.
The truth is that pop-ups do actually work, otherwise nobody would use them. The only detail that a lot of marketers miss, is that they work best if they are used in a helpful not a disruptive manner. They can make up a healthy part of your inbound marketing strategy. So, you should definitely use pop-up forms on your site, but they should offer something valuable and relevant, instead of just asking for something.
If you’re considering what kind of pop-up form you should be using, look at how users engage with your content and webpages. When they read a blog post, they usually scroll down as they read through its contents. On these pages, your best option is a slide-in box that will appear after the user has scrolled through at least 50% of your content. This ensures that your user is already engaged with your content when the pop-up appears and that the pop up will be relevant for him/her. The most important thing is to align your pop up with the webpage and the content you’re adding it into.
Create a Mini Landing Page
Internet users have no time and no attention to waste, so you can only expect them to pay attention to something for 5 to 8 seconds. You’ll have to convince them within that small window to stay longer and spend some quality time with browsing your website.
A mini-landing page will cover up your entire website until the user decides to close it. This full-screen pop-up usually appears as a consequence of a specific behavior; maybe because the user hovered through a specific paragraph or another part of your website. If you add a good micro landing page to your blog posts or your website’s homepage, it can easily increase your conversion rates.
Use Simple Flat Fonts On Your Sites Text
The easier to consume your website’s content, the better. If you look at successful landing pages that generate thousands of leads each day, the first thing you’ll notice is their simplicity. This is especially true when it comes to font use, because fancy typography rarely helps in quick and efficient communication. So, use basic fonts because they are the easiest to read and they also work well on all devices.
Add Explainer Videos
Videos are 70% more successful for explaining detailed concepts. This is why they are one of the best tools for lead generation. Users expect to get information as fast as possible and as comprehensively as possible. Clicking the play button is effortless, so they are much more likely to want to know more about your product or service after watching an explainer video.
A successful explainer video will be entertaining and educational for the viewer. If you don’t have the skills for creating a good animated video, it’s best to hire a freelancer to do it. A poorly produced explainer video will achieve the opposite of what you want and drive visitors away in no time.
Add an End Post Banner With a Call To Action
A combination with end-post CTAs and slide in CTAs is more likely to get you more leads. You should place an end post banner to each of your post. If you don’t want to place one on all of them, do it for those that have proven to perform the best.
Anchor text CTAs are responsible for most of the blog leads on the web. An anchor text call to action is a post that is linked to a landing page. It’s usually styled with H3 or H4 tags to make it stand out from the rest of the text. Placing them between two paragraphs is a good way to go about it.
Using anchor texts like this is awesome because it’s the most likely way to get readers to notice it. If they scan the page, they want to find something that satisfies their search or answers their question. If it’s an online marketing blue print, you can make it “Download our professional marketing blue print here”. The likeability of the user clicking on it is high.
Add Your Phone Number
Adding your phone number to your website might seem pretty counter intuitive, but it’s a great way to earn your new visitor’s trust. Even if he or she doesn’t call you, it’s important that they know that there is a real person behind the website.
A website that’s completely devoid of contact information can easily be perceived as a scam. So add your name and phone number, so that you add credibility to your readers. It will also be a surefire way for them to reach you if they have intent to do business.
Include Your Business Address
One of Google’s studies has revealed that every 4 in 5 customers use their search engine to find local information. About 2 or 3 of these customers who has searched for a particular product or service ends up visiting the physical business within the next 24 hours. By adding your physical address to your website doesn’t only gain your visitor’s trust but it also has the potential to drive sales.
Make Your Website Fully Responsive
In 2017, exactly 50,3% of online traffic came from smartphone users. More than 75% of American adults own a smartphone, and that number just keeps increasing every year. So it’s evident that you’ll have to have a mobile-friendly website in order to run an online business, let alone succeed at it. It’s your primary way for capturing leads in the ever growing landscape of mobile users.
Install Live Chat
There is no more direct way to have direct conversations with the visitors of your website, than installing live chat. It isn’t just good for eCommerce websites that are looking to generate more sales. In fact, every website can reap the benefits of this simple and easy to use tool.
For example, if a restaurant is trying to gain more reservations and visitors, live chat can be a very effective way for users to make those reservations. There is no annoying form to fill out, just a simple conversation with an online representative. It’s a low cost solution that can generate measurable results which could make a great difference for your business.
Add Testimonials and Other Trust Signals
You’ll want to establish trust with your visitors, because it’s the basis of business. They are much more likely to make purchases and submit their information if they trust you. Adding testimonials written by previous customers or notable influencers and industry partners is a solid way to build trust. If you have received awards or other notable form of recognition, add those as well. Anything that will make your visitors feel more comfortable with you will help. Just make sure that you don’t use fake testimonials or any other kind of fake information because people notice it from a mile away. If that happens, you’ll steadily drive visitors away and make them distrust your brand.
Use Social Media in a Strategic Manner
Social media isn’t just a great tool for building brand awareness. It is a low cost tool that can be incredibly effective for generating leads. Besides promoting your new blog posts and the rest of your content on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, be sure to post links to your landing pages as well. When you directly link to your landing page, be sure that the rest of your post lets the reader know that by clicking on the link, he will be taken to a landing page. Also, do an analysis of your blog posts and find out which one performs best for lead generation. Post those that perform better more frequently.
You can also start contests and do giveaways. They are incredibly fun for your followers but they can also be a valuable source of data as you’re trying to learn more about your audience. It can help you find out what engages them the most and grow your reach too.
Conclusion
Lead generation is essentially the art of catching attention, engaging people and getting them to act out your calls to action. By applying the above mentioned tips, you’ll be set up to generate a lot more leads. Just know that it’s a continuous process with many moving parts and it takes a bit of time until you learn what works. Always seek to add value to your pages and enhance the user’s experience instead of interrupting it.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading through the contents of article and that we’ll see you again soon in the next one!
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