8 Tips to Help Kick Your Lead Generation into Gear
Catering Content
Quality content is what gets potential leads interested in your company in the first place—it is your net to consistent lead generation. Without a sturdy and consistent flow of content your whole lead generation operation will flat-line. To keep that from happening, it’s important to hold these two things in mind:
- The Circle of Quality: Quality shouldn’t only apply to the meat of your content; it should apply universally to everything that goes into getting that content exposure. For example, if you have a blog you want to make sure the title is eye catching and that the tags are SEO relevant. Likewise, you want the Tweets you sent out about it to successfully capture peoples’ attention to direct them to your blog. And finally, you want to be a positive and conductive presence in the discussion about your blog topic. That’s what it means to have quality content.
- Diversify: Leads come in all shapes and sizes, from veterans within the industry to the red-nosed newbies fresh in the game. This means your leads can all be looking for different things from the services you provide, which is why focusing on only one or the other will lose you a large chunk of your demographic. Create content advertising your services throughout all buying stages and explain how their usefulness applies to the industry across the board. The more nets you toss, the more you’ll pull in.
Directing Traffic
Now that you have people engaging with your content, it’s time to get them to actually come in for some business. While there are many methods for increasing your lead-client conversion rate, here are two that have been proven to succeed:
- Blow Your Own Horn: While it’s great to give your customers free advice, and you definitely want to keep doing it, make sure to sneak in a few pointers in your own direction. Let your customer know that you can help them with whatever problems they may have, and let them know why you’d do it better than others. If you offer rare services, then by all means talk about them. Likewise, if you have a large customer base then let potential leads know that you’re a popular company. Pushing the bandwagon and using the element of scarcity are two very powerful tools in content marketing.
- Traffic Control: Direct! Direct! Direct! Now that you’ve got their attention, lightly nudge them in the direction of your services/products page so they can get shopping and see that all of that useful advice you’ve been telling them points directly to using your company for their needs! Create a strong call to action (either in the form of an obvious and accentuated button) or with the closing sentences of your content to direct traffic to your company profile.
Landing Pages
Where once it used to be standard to just send leads to your website, the common practice today is to make use of landing pages. Landing pages are simplified directories of your website that let users know you’ve got what they’re looking for, and the best part is that they’re not complicated at all. Here’s what you need to know:
- The Layout: There’s a basic structure to almost all landing pages that has been proven to be effective in both directing leads to your main site as well as collecting information. What you’ll need is a headline, a brief description of the offer (or your service divisions), an image to spruce it up a bit, and of course a form to get client information.
- The Purpose: Though a landing page is a great convenience for visitors, it’s ultimately there to get them to fill out contact information for you. That’s why you want to make a form necessary to continue on to other parts of your site. But don’t phrase it like that! Write something like “Fill out the form to get exclusive offers” or something catchy like “Download a Sample”. The absolute ultimate purpose of a landing page is to gather contact information for your company and you need to design yours with that in mind.
Forms
This is the final step of the lead generation process. Once their information is stored in your database, you can count them as a successfully generated lead. But the form is also the trickiest because it can turn away many would-be leads, so to help you avoid these sinkholes we’ve listed two tried and true tips for creating forms:
- The Bigger the Scarier: As in nature, so too in lead generation. The bigger a form is, the greater the chance that the potential lead will be turned away. It is much better to create several small forms throughout the browsing experience than to make one giant one at the start. Better yet, those small forms can get you even more information if they’re spaced apart correctly. Usually, the rule of thumb is to make it no bigger than three fields, though adding additional ‘Optional’ fields is okay.
- Presentation is Everything: There comes a bit of tension when signing away your personal information. No one is crazy about doing it, but that’s why it’s your job to make the potential lead feels safe about it. The first trick here is a bit of a psychological one and it involves the ‘Submit’ button: Don’t label it the ‘Submit’ button. Submit brings with it negative and permanent connotations, so instead make it seem positive like ‘Get your Free Brochure Now!’ or ‘Cake and Pie this way!’ if you’re one of those progressive companies. The second tip (and it’s more of a rule than a guideline really) is to provide certification symbols on the bottom of the form or landing page. By displaying that you are Norton Secured (or otherwise) you give yourself credibility and make it easier for visitors to click the ‘Cake and Pie this way!’ button.
In the end, successful lead generation is about rounding your bases and shining the plate, because it’s a process. Making your content is a single step, so make sure you’re focusing on the whole picture when setting up your channels.
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