Successful lead generation results in more sales pipeline, a bigger customer base, and increased revenue.
This is why generating leads is one of the key goals for marketers in 2022, behind increasing brand awareness and website traffic (SEMrush). But for 41% of marketers, attracting quality leads is a top marketing challenge.
The good news is lead generation can be easy. Your website provides ample opportunities to convert traffic into qualified contacts. And in this article, we’ll walk you through nine ways you can turn your website into a proper lead-generating machine.
We’ll talk on-page optimization, social proof, and advanced tactics like visitor activity tracking.
1. Improve User Experience
If your visitors don’t stay on your site long enough, you can’t turn them into leads. Improving your website’s User Experience (UX) is, therefore, crucial for lead generation.
To achieve this, you need to make your site easy to access, use, navigate, and interact with. The easier it is for your visitors to get the information they need and move around your site, the more likely it is that they’ll sign up for your offers.
Ensuring fast site and page load times is one way to improve your UX. Most internet users don’t wait around for slow sites, instead moving on to others. Faster load times equals more pages viewed and a higher chance of generating leads.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to see how fast your speed is. This free tool will also show you the changes you need to make to attain desirable load times.
Besides speed, it’s also important to make your website mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly website is easy to access and navigate on mobile devices, unlike a site only designed for desktops.
With 59.4% of web traffic now coming from mobile, it’s important to cater to visitors using mobile devices. You can check your site’s responsiveness using Google’s Mobile Friendly Test.
Improve the UX by making your page content skimmable. Use headlines, bullet points, short sentences, and small paragraphs for your blogs. Make it more engaging by adding photos, videos, or animations.
2. Optimise Your Landing Pages
Source: Megaphone
Your landing page is where you convert your visitors to leads by collecting their contact information in exchange for an offer.
To optimise your landing pages for lead generation, first, keep your forms short. Only ask for basic contact information, for example, a first name and email. Asking too much can create hesitation, reducing your lead conversion rate.
Second, keep the page clutter-free. There should be no distracting content unrelated to the offer you’re making. For example, offering a free ebook?
Talk about its contents. One offer to a page; that’s it. Avoid adding links and calls-to-action (CTAs) to other offers or content on your site. This could take users’ attention elsewhere and knock them off-course.
Third, add a visually contrasting CTA. It should stand out from the rest of the text or images on the page, preferably with a different font, colour, or format. Getting creative with the anchor text (explain briefly here what this means) can also make it more attractive (more on CTAs below).
Fourth but very crucial, provide a valuable offer to your visitors. You could have an arsenal of offers from ebooks to courses and free consultations, but which one suits each specific visitor?
Keep this in mind and structure your website accordingly. Make sure landing pages have a connection to the ads that bring people to your site. Connect similar pages built around one offer to each other to create smooth user experiences.
3. Track Visitor Activity
Source: Smartlook
One of the best ways to figure out how to turn your site visitors into leads is by studying their behaviour on your site.
Using website visitor tracking tools like Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, or Smartlook, you can find out the following:
- The pages they visit.
- How long they stay on a page.
- Where they came from, for example, from social media or through search engine results.
- The actions they take on your site, for instance, clicking on links or share buttons.
These tools also provide details on the bounce rate, audience demographics, the number of page views, and the geographic location of your visitors.
Studying visitor behaviour lets you know what you’re doing right or wrong and how it affects your lead generation.
For example, if most of your visitors leave a landing page immediately, it may take too long or have a weak headline. If people only read halfway down the page and then leave, that’s also a sign you need to change something.
4. Create High-Quality Blog Content
Source:Bug catchers
Through high-quality blog content, you can help your target customers fulfil their search intent. Sounds complicated, but it’s really simple; if someone looks for “best running shoes”, you can give them an answer.
As you’re answering questions with your content, you can introduce people to valuable offers. This works both ways. If you don’t provide this information in your content, you’ll miss out on opportunities to generate leads.
For example, suppose a visitor with a pest problem searches ‘how to prevent pests in the home’ on Google. Your site comes up because you sell pesticides. But on clicking, they only find an inventory of your products.
They leave your site and click on a competitor with an article about preventing pests in the house. At the end of the blog, they invite the visitor to sign up for a free ebook on house pest management.
If the visitor found the article informative, there’s a high chance they’ll sign up for the ebook. This will net your competitor a new lead.
The more quality content you have on your website, the easier it is to generate leads. To make your content more compelling, have a mix of text, videos, infographics, and images.
Don’t forget; your articles must be authoritative, credible, and well-researched. Otherwise, your visitors will not care!
5. Strategic CTA Placement
Source: In da surf
Call-to-action buttons are crucial to website lead generation. If you don’t actively ask your visitors to take action to receive an offer, there’s a high chance they won’t.
Besides having attention-grabbing CTAs, it’s important to place them strategically. Proper placement ensures that you present your offer at a point when your visitors are most likely to consider taking further action while browsing your site.
Besides landing pages, you can add CTA buttons in the middle or end of blog posts, on the sidebar, on the navigation bar, and at the website footer.
As we’ve mentioned, the CTA should match the page content. This could be different for CTAs in general areas like the navigation bar or the website footer, which target a wider audience than those found within blog posts.
6. Integrate Live Chat
Source: Surf society
Live chat is a feature that allows site visitors to search for extra information while browsing your site. This could range from looking for articles related to a particular topic to asking questions about your business, services, and products.
41% of consumers prefer live chat to phone, email, or social media because it’s more convenient and provides instant resolution. They don’t have to leave the website to make a call or send an email, plus it costs them nothing.
Live chats can be operated by a chatbot or a customer support team member. Chatbots are a quick way to guide visitors to resources such as answers to frequently asked questions or help articles. If they need more help, they can engage a customer service agent.
Reliable live chat software makes it easier to convert visitors to leads because it provides quick resolutions to any obstacle they encounter while browsing your site. Otherwise, if visitors have to make a phone call to receive assistance, many would rather move on to another site.
7. Use Testimonials and Case Studies
Source: Surf Connect
Most internet users are sceptical about trusting brands they’ve never used, meaning they are less likely to leave behind contact information. Social proof on your website is a great way to overcome this hurdle.
Testimonials show the experience other consumers had with your brand, while case studies demonstrate how your products or services work and the kind of outcomes they drive.
Both testimonials and case studies build brand trust in your new audience, giving them confidence in your offers. They also encourage users to take further action, such as staying in contact with your brand for future communication.
When displaying testimonials and case studies…
- Give as many details as possible to boost credibility. Include client names, business names, and their experience with your brand.
- Attach real photos or videos to testimonials.
- Display your social proof on the homepage or landing pages to eliminate any doubts visitors could have.
- Display your certifications, awards, features, and celebrity endorsements as powerful social proof.
8. Utilise Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO increases a website’s visibility on search engines. A high ranking on Google ensures wide exposure and hence, more traffic. More organic traffic means more prospective leads on your website.
Begin by conducting keyword research to find the right phrases to bring high-quality leads to your site.
With keyword research, you can discover the popular phrases among your target audience and the ones your competitors use on their sites. With these keywords, you can identify the right topics to include on your website to attract leads.
Incorporate the chosen keywords into your landing page headers, blog posts, and other copy all over your website. Relevancy is key – your keywords should be consistent with the content.
Another SEO tactic to use is by publishing content to your site regularly. The more content you create, the higher the chances of gaining visibility on search engines. Also, having a lot of authoritative content on your site builds trust among your visitors, making them easier to convert to leads.
Increase your lead generation chances through internal linking. Internal linking connects related posts, helping visitors find more useful information. It also keeps them browsing longer on your site, increasing the chances of turning them into leads.
9. Test, Test, Test
While optimising your website in various ways, testing allows you to see what works for lead generation and what doesn’t.
Simple tweaks to certain elements of your site, for example, using a different page header or changing the colour of a CTA button, can significantly improve your lead generation rate.
To find out which changes to make, use A/B testing. A/B testing pits the original web page design against a new one. You can then monitor performance to see which of the two attracts more leads.
Test one element at a time to tell what makes a difference.
Before running your tests, outline your goals. Goals related to lead generation include getting your visitors to spend more time on your site, increasing conversion rates on landing pages, and lowering your site bounce rate.
With clear goals, you’ll be able to measure your results and decide whether you’re getting closer to your desired outcome. Google Analytics and Hubspot software are some tools you can use for A/B testing on your website.
Ready To Get More Leads?
A website needs to be optimised for lead generation to live up to its full potential for your business. We hope these nine tips help you bring yours up to speed.
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