One of the biggest frustrations I hear all the time from small business owners is how can I generate more leads and sales from my website.
Having a website today is definitely a MUST HAVE. But, if your website isn’t generating steady leads and sales it can easily become a cost center rather than a profit center.
With so many new things going on with digital marketing as the business owner it can be hard to keep up with what’s working the best. So, this week I thought I’d share what is working now from some of the top bloggers today.
You don’t have to be a blogger to benefit from these strategies. These same tips will help your business generate more leads and sales from your website.
#1. Start by considering the end-goal first.
In Sherice Jacob’s article on The Ten Commandments of an Awesome Lead-Generating Website
Sherice shares … when it comes to lead generation, begin with the end in mind. What exactly does a “lead” mean to you? Defining this will make your testing and analytics goals even clearer, and help you determine exactly what actions you want the user to take as they progress through each stage of your sales funnel. Is a lead considered someone who fills out a form? Someone who signs up for a newsletter? Requests a callback? Clearly define your starting point and you’ll have a much easier time adjusting your conversion goals accordingly.
#2. Have a dedicated landing page for every marketing campaign.
Richard Santos shares this tip on How to Generate More Leads from Your Website
Landing pages are a must for lead-generation websites as they provide prospects the opportunity to convert into customers. Most times, they are website pages allowing you to get visitor information through a web form.
Just sending your email or advertising traffic to your homepage is a lot less effective, because you fail to convert traffic into leads. No matter how great your homepage is, it will be just a dead end if you don’t enable your visitors to take action.
Not sure if you should go through the trouble of designing a landing page for your website? Check the most important facts about landing pages and decide for yourself.
#3. Interview influencers in your industry.
One of the tips Jeff Bullas gives in his article on 20 Smart Ways to Generate More Leads for Your Business
Is to reach out to influencers who your customers respect and interview them for your blog or social channels.
Keep it as simple as possible by asking short/sharp questions, and then ask them to share the final product.
Your potential customers will see this as proof of your credibility and increase your chance of attracting new leads.
#4. Add Share Triggers on Your Blog
Brian Dean in his article entitled, Want to Increase Website Traffic? Follow These 4 Steps…
In my experience, content largely succeeds or fails based on one factor: Whether or not the content has Share Triggers.
What are Share Triggers?
They’re scientifically-backed psychological principles that — when embedded in your content — encourage people to share and link.
Also, Share Triggers give your content that “WOW!” factor that turns cold traffic into leads and customers.
A lot of these principles were first discovered by behavioral scientists like Dr. Jonah Berger, Dr. Katherine Milkman and Jure Leskovec.
#5. Personalize Your Call to Actions
5 Simple Ways to Hubspot writer, Katherine Boyarsky shares her tip to Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation.
Dynamic content lets you cater the experience of visiting your website to each, unique web visitor. People who land on your site will see images, buttons, and product options that are specifically tailored to their interests, the pages they’ve viewed, or items they’ve purchased before. Better yet, personalized calls-to-action convert 42% more visitors than basic calls-to-action. In other words, dynamic content and on-page personalization helps you generate more leads.
#6. Analyze Your Google Analytics Data.
In 10 Hacks to Help Your Website Generate More Leads, Sales and Revenue, Jonathan Long shares the importance of analyzing your Google Analytics data.
When you know what traffic sources aren’t producing conversions and what your traffic is doing prior to converting it allows you to make significant changes. Imagine if you were able to identify that the majority of your social media traffic didn’t convert? You could then allocate your social media budget into the channels that were producing results.
Using LinkedIn. “Our customer research showed that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate (2.74 percent), almost three times higher than Twitter (.69 percent) and Facebook (.77 percent),” says Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, a provider of inbound marketing software. So what makes LinkedIn a good source of leads for IT companies and professional services organizations?
#7. Use LinkedIn to Drive More Targeted Traffic to Your Website.
Jennifer Lonoff Schiff explains the benefits of using LinkedIn to generate more leads and sales from your website.
“First and foremost, LinkedIn has a high percentage of professionals, so the likelihood, especially for B2B marketers, that you’re dealing with people in your target audience is higher than some other channels,” he says. “Moreover, LinkedIn Groups are organized around the concerns and challenges faced by many buyers and/or their geographic location and profession, so LinkedIn makes it easy to view and contextualize what your potential buyers are talking about and tailor content on your LinkedIn Company pages accordingly.”
#8. Use SlideShare to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website.
Josh Haynam points out with more than 60 million monthly visitors, you’ve likely heard of (and used) SlideShare. But did you know that with a pro plan you can collect leads right on the platform?
If you’re not willing to pay, SlideShare is still a great way to generate leads. As Ana Hoffman suggests in her epic SlideShare traffic case study, you can link to a landing page in the presentation, description and in your profile.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. You now have 8 favorite ways from top bloggers on how they generate more leads and sales from their websites and how you can to.
Use this is your checklist and start implementing one of these tips each week.
Track your growth over the next 8 weeks and watch how many more visitors and more leads you’re getting to your website.
QUESTION: Where do you get stuck in any of these 8 tips? Share your comments and questions below.
