Landing Page Optimization
5 Helpful Tips to Generate More Leads with Your Website
A website redesign project should include ways to not only make it more appealing, but foremost, how to attract more qualified visitors which may turn into leads and eventually into clients. In my humble opinion, people will spend too much time on the “pretty” side of thing and miss the point. Redesigning your website should include most, if not all these great “lead generation” tips, and generate more paying customers out of your website.
First, you need to understand the mechanics of generating leads on your website. This is the infrastructure that an Inbound Marketing Agency would build a campaign on:
- The Offer
This is the hook, the high perceived value content, such as an eBook, Free Trial, Coupons or Special Offfers - Call-To-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) can be text or a button that will take someone to a landing page. The CTA should be stratigically placed on the website. - Landing Page
A landing page is very specific to a product or an offer. It only contains information relating to the offer and all other distraction has been removed. - Form
This is how you capture leads. Now the trick is to ask for the basics: name, email & phone. Stay away from too many fields asking too many questions.
Now that you have the structure of a proper internet marketing campaign, let’s look at the lead generation tips:
1. Avoid Corporate Marketing Speak (aka BS)
Using corporate jargon or overly marketing speak is a big turn off for most people. Also referred as “gobbledygook”, those catchy terms are a recipe to get your website visitors to pull a muscle while rolling their eyes. Avoid these following terms/words like the plague:
- next generation
- cutting edge
- flexible
- ground breaking
- robust
- best of breed
- scalable
- mission critical
- easy to use
- Read “Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy” (opens in a new page)
2. Use High Perceived Value Offers
Have you ever noticed that your “Contact Us” form is getting less and less traffic nowadays. Well, it’s not very enticing….not really. What is interesting to your ideal prospect is content perceived as “high value” such as:
- eBooks & Guides
- Templates & Presentations
- Research & Reports
- Whitepapers
- Kits
- Live Webinars
- On-demand videos
- Blogs
- Demo request, RFP, etc
- Read “8 trends to consider before redesigning your website” (opens in a new page)
3. Effective Calls-to-Actions (CTA)
If you don’t have any CTA’s or if they are not effective at capturing your visitor’s attention, then it makes the offer useless. Here are the few rules about CTA’s:
- Place them where people can see them, which is above the fold, no scrolling required.
- Make the button specific & compelling. For ex “Download eBook” is much more compelling than “Click Here”
- The CTA should be in a color that contrast from the rest of the page. Make it stand out.
- The CTA should lead to the actual landing page, not your home page or a generic page.
- Have CTA’s as “text only”, small buttons, large buttons and banners. People will respond differently to various format.
- Read “Why are Calls-to-Action so important” (opens in a new page)
4. Create Landing Pages that Convert
Landing pages are probably the most important element of lead generation. A landing page’s job is to direct a visitor to one particular offer or service without all the distractions of everything else you have to offer. We refer to it as the “Bull’s eye” technique vs. “Buck Shot”. Here are the few elements of an effective landing page:
- The Headline should be consistent with the Offer. If its about “Widgits”, then the Page Title should be “Widgit Special Offer”. There is nothing more confusing than landing on a pge that has a different title than the CTA was promoting.
- A brief description of the offer. Resist the temptation of jargon here, re-read bullet #1, write the way you speak. 200 words or less would be ideal here.
- Include one (yes only one) compelling image supporting the offer. If it’s a landing page about a special offer on a Book, then the book cover is the image you should use. Avoid using multiple images, it will only add distraction.
- You may use an embedded video instead of a picture, this may be very effective too.
- Include a small form to capture the information
- Remove the main navigation. No distractions here, it’s only about the offer on the landing page.
- Less is more. Resist the temptation of adding too much stuff on a landing page. The ideal format is half a page.
- Emphazise the benefits with few bullets. “Here is what you are going to receive….bullet, bullet, bullet”
- Include Social Media sharing with “quick share” links.
- Optimize your landing page with your target keywords
- Click here to view a great landing page sample (opens in a new page)
5. Multiple-Channel Approach
Your website isn’t a silo. You need to use multiple channels to bring people to your website. Here are the few channels that will help you generate more leads:
- A blog will generate leads. Companies that blog (relevant & optimized content) 6-8 times a month will double their lead volume. This makes blogging a no-brainer.
- Email Marketing isn’t dead, far from it. But the days of email blasting to 1000’s of un-qualified email addresses are over. Email your current client & active prospect database access to valuable & informative content (ebooks, guides, reports, etc)
- Social Media isn’t just for young people. It’s a channel to increase your exposure to people you wouldn’t normally have access to with traditional marketing. It may only be 5% of your lead generation, but its still a great source to engage in a dialogue with your audience.
- Organic Search is how people find you naturally using a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo. If your website is not optimized organically, then people have no chance of finding you. You are, in essence, one out of billions of other websites. Organic optimization will help you generate “qualified” traffic to your site.
Generating leads should be the main focus of your website redesign project. Remember than your internet marketing strategy will never be whole & complete, it will be a work in progress for the rest of the years to come.
Redesigning your website is not like creating a brochure, a website should always continue to expand & grow. If you don’t, your competition will eventually do it and take business away from you. Use those few tips and see the leads starting to pour in.
To find out more on lead generation check out our Top 10 Landing Page Optimization Software report. You can also browse the top landing page optimization platforms and other digital marketing solutions on our Marketing Software resource center page.
[This post originally appeared on the Admin eSolutions blog and is republished permission.]
- Consultant
Antoine Dupont
Web Solutions & Digital Marketing Provider
