Every credible business has a website, but that doesn't mean all websites generate leads. If all you've done is create a five-page site that never grows and that you never promote, that's almost the same as not having a website at all. Search engines may not find it due to thin static content and if they don't find it, chances are, not many web surfers will find it either. Here are ideas on how you can optimize your site for lead conversion.
How Leads Originate
Traditional media can still be effective for some businesses to gather leads, but the digital age is upon us and inbound marketing is much more reliable and cost efficient at reaching a target audience.
But even in the digital age the best place to find leads is actually offline, especially if you run a brick and mortar store that already brings in customers. The strongest leads usually come from word-of-mouth referrals.
The key to offline referrals has always been to provide excellent service to existing customers so that they can spread the word to others. Furthermore, as much as email, messaging and social media increasingly become more popular forms of communication for business interaction, the phone is still effective for closing deals.
When it comes to the internet, the strongest leads also come from referrals, except from cyberspace engagement. They may be completely new followers who found out about your site from friends, perhaps on social media or through email conversations. Providing links on your site to your email address and social media profiles can increase interaction with leads.
How SEO Can Help Generate Leads
You have many options for methods to capture leads, as every business must explore the possibilities and choose the most suitable strategies that take into account sales efficiency and productivity. Some companies do well handing out business cards at trade shows that lead to further interaction with prospects. Other firms have better luck with conversion by creating a newsletter that is syndicated to permissioned email subscribers.
One of the most reliable ways to capture online leads is through search engine optimization. The combination of SEO and quality content creation can be a very powerful low cost way to stimulate new business.
Adding a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign can help even further. It all starts with deciding on a unique niche that allows you to corner a market in cyberspace.
Regardless of how generic a product or service might be, it needs to be treated as very unique online so that your keywords connect with web surfers looking for what you're selling.
The foundation of your site needs to be the mindset that you are an expert in your niche and that you can provide valuable content to your target market. While copycat marketing may have worked last century that allowed small players to profit from mirroring the moves of industry leaders, the internet doesn't work that way this century. Originality and creativity do matter these days, as generic websites get lost in the shuffle.
So make the site as attractive as possible, easy to navigate, mobile-friendly and full of deep content that cannot be found anywhere else online. The more you follow this model, the better your chances will be to get visible search rankings.
Creating Content That Attracts Leads
Leads usually don't just spring out of nowhere accidentally. They tend to result from someone finding out about your business or website from a friend or a search engine. Google will become your best online friend if you structure and create content based on what the search giant's robots are looking for. They want to send users to credible, reliable and useful sites, not to useless pages written by spammers or scammers. So avoid trying to game the system with fluff and concentrate on content creation that is meaningful both to search bots and humans, with a heavy emphasis on humans.
Google favors experts, especially if you create a blog series that answers questions about your industry. Be a thought leader so that followers will keep coming back to your site to check out fresh content. The more you interact with your followers and answer their questions, the more they will consider you to be a resource and will rely on your knowledge.
Once you've built a crowd of loyal followers, you can convert leads more easily. By selling people on your expertise, you will gain trust and loyalty that can lead to long-term business relationships that trigger repeat business and referrals.
Multiple Lead Conversion Strategies
The secret to conversion is really not a mystery or just getting lucky. As people send you messages through email, social media and other channels, it's important to add them to your email marketing list. Using a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is very helpful in organizing your leads, so that you can access them easily.
It's important to test out several lead conversion strategies so that you can learn from analytics what works best for your company. One thing all firms should have in common is lead scoring. Whether you use letter grades or a numbering system, you should rank your leads in categories such as "hot," "warm" and "cold" so that you can prioritize them, which will help sales productivity.
Here are further ideas to help convert leads:
- Offer online coupons and discounts
- Present special webinars to showcase your business
- Create outlines and scripts for sales representatives
- Constantly stay in touch with warm and hot leads
- Make online videos to demonstrate your products and services.
Online lead conversion begins with SEO, which is fueled by content that showcases your expertise. High quality CRM software allows you to create blogs and newsletters that seamlessly integrate with your email list so that you can build a steady relationship with prospects and customers. It becomes your hub that makes life easier for many other aspects of lead conversion. From there you can use various online strategies to attract, nurture and convert leads.
