Maybe you’ve heard the analogy that a having a website for your business is like a having a 24 hour salesperson that works (almost) for free and never sleeps. It’s always on, always selling your products, even when the office lights are out and everyone has gone home for the night. Sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it?
So, why aren’t you making more sales?
The average customer interacts with a brand about seven times before they actually buy something. That’s right, seven separate interactions before a single sale is made. Which means that building an email list is a crucial component of turning your prospects into paying customers.
The average customer interacts with a brand about seven times before they actually buy something. Click to tweet
Any good salesperson knows this and uses that first meeting to gather as much information about a prospect as they can in order to follow up with them later. So, if you have a well designed website and a decent amount of traffic but aren’t making any sales, chances are your “electronic salesperson” isn’t doing a very good job of gathering your prospects’ information and building your list.
So, how can you turn your website into a lead generating machine?
Here are 5 tips you can use right now to start getting more leads, so your website can work smarter, not harder.
1. Create Something Valuable
It seems that free stuff is getting harder to give away these days. Most people’s inboxes are flooded with stuff that they probably forgot they even signed up for, and no one wants another “free newsletter”.
You need to give your website visitors a real reason to want to stay in touch with you. If you can give something that’s truly of value to your audience, they’ll probably be more than happy to part with their information in exchange. Incentives for signing up to your list could be anything from a free e-book to a percentage off of first time services.
2. Keep It Simple
Your opt-in form is one of the key places you want to direct your website visitors to, but you could be a making a mistake that’s driving them away instead. Typically, the more information people have to give in order to receive something, the less likely they are to part with it.
That’s why asking for a name and email only has a higher opt-in rate than asking for a name, phone number, address and email.
But, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for that information if you need it. However, whatever you provide in exchange should have a direct correlation to the amount of information you wish to collect.
3. Use A Pop-Up
The dreaded pop-up. There you are trying to soak up some knowledge when…SURPRISE! “Sign up for my free e-course…blah, blah, blah” pops up on the page, covering the very words you were just reading. How annoying is that?
And it seems that more websites are using them than ever before, including the big guys because, guess what? Annoying as they are, pop-ups work.
If you plan on using pop-ups to start driving more leads, don’t use them on every page of your site. Instead, place them strategically on high traffic pages, preferably with their own unique offer and call to action.
4. Create a Separate Landing Page for Your Opt-In
There are a number of places you can put opt-in forms on your website including your home page, blog sidebar, bottom of your blog posts and even on product pages. But, one thing a lot marketers forget to do, is to create a unique landing page just for their opt-in offer.
Creating a unique landing page for your opt-in offer has a number advantages. First, you can link to it from anywhere – a blog post, you tube video or product page. If it has good content and a little bit of link juice it might even show up in the search engines. Finally, you can create multiple opt-in form landing pages that target different segments of your customer base and increase conversions that way.
5. Combine Landing Pages With PPC
If you really want to drive targeted traffic to your email list, combine your industry-specific opt-in landing pages with PPC. Targeting terms related to specific customer profiles is often less expensive than going for big, broad terms. Although it may result in less traffic per page, you’ll get better qualified leads.
So, there you have it – 5 ways to turn your website into a lead generating machine. If you’re tired of the same old marketing tactics that don’t work and are ready to start driving results, contact us today and we’ll get your marketing into the fast lane.
