As we all know, your website is your shop window. In this day and age your website’s look and feel along with its functionality can really turn your customers on or off, there is hardly anything worse than a dated website that gives you a sense of the early 2000s. Nostalgia is a no-go when it comes to your inbound marketing and B2B lead generation. Your website is the tool which lets you attract, engage, convert, close and delight. Obviously, the conversion part is fundamental to this process, but how do you get there? The answer is simple; you need to be creating high-quality, sales-ready leads. And while this sounds like a piece of cake, it can be the exact opposite when handled poorly and inefficiently. But fear not, we have compiled 5 effective tricks that can really help you up your inbound marketing ante, stand out from the crowd and generate leads, leads, leads.
1. Understand who you are selling to
Understanding your buyer persona is vital in order to create a successful inbound marketing campaign with high lead conversion. Only by knowing your customers, can you properly target potential buyers and tailor your marketing strategy and your website towards them. In order to really nail this, you want to sit down with your team and think about who your buyer persona is:
- What fields do they work in?
- What are their roles, titles and responsibilities?
- Are they self-employed?
- What sources do they turn to for information?
- What are their pain points and problems
- How can not solving the problems impact their business goals?
- What motivates them to purchase your product?
- Personal background: age, education etc
You need to be fully aware of who you are selling to in order to create an online strategy that works and generates high-quality leads.
2. Keep it simple
Think on a human level, attraction starts with the visual so why not apply that to your website? Make it visually pleasing, yet easy to navigate and understand. Once a visitor lands on your website you have about 3 to 6 seconds to tickle their fancy. Your homepage needs to capture them and reveal the following information within the timeframe of a click:
- What services do you provide?
- How can you help solve your visitor’s problems?
- Why do they want to work with YOU, what sets your business apart?
A website that forces potential clients to dig through and decipher information is unlikely to convert and close. As a matter of fact, you will lose visitors in seconds if you don’t please them fast, so don’t overcomplicate things.
3. Generate outstanding, relevant content
You now know who your buyers are and what they are looking for, you know how to engage them on your homepage for a little while. So how do you keep them coming back? Let me throw another seemingly simple answer at you here, you need to offer them more! They have come to you for a reason; they have a problem and they are looking to solve it, maybe even with your help, so now is your time to shine! Show these potential customers that you have the answer to their prayers and are ready to help. Be sure to offer them a mix of high-quality gated and non-gated content that educates them on how to solve their problem and eventually leads them to your products as the ultimate solution. Lead your lead, be their guide along the buyer’s journey, and use your content to establish yourself as their mentor along the way. By instilling a sense of trust you can really set yourself apart and win the lead generation race.
4. The power of landing pages
I am certain, you know what landing pages are and you are using them, but if you’re failing to convert visitors into leads you’re probably not using them enough or effectively. As mentioned under point 3, you want to offer your website visitors a mix of gated and non-gated content. Your blog is a form of non-gated content, the CTA on the bottom – which every single blog post needs to feature – directs your visitors to landing pages offering gated e-books, whitepapers and other forms of high-quality content that your buyer persona will want and will happily hand over their contact details for. This then turns your visitor into a known lead, who you can reach out to and nurture along the way.
In order to increase your visitor-to-lead conversion rate, you need to think about how you can optimise your landing page strategy. How do you get a visitor to fill in a contact form without turning them off by the tedious process itself? Again, keep it simple, only ever ask visitors to fill in lengthy contact forms when the gated content is really worth it. Tailor your landing pages to the content they are gating, the more relevant it is, the more likely you are to get information from your potential customer.
So while you want to be creating outstanding blog posts, you need to keep the best for the rest. Lengthier, interesting core content pieces behind easy-to-navigate and quick-to-fill-in landing pages are at the heart of your lead generation and conversion.
5. Check and track
So you’ve identified where you have been going wrong and filled the gaps, you see first results and you are happy. That's fabolous but whatever you do, don’t get complacent. Like every good, functional relationship, the one with your inbound marketing strategy needs a lot of work, nurturing and improving. While it feels very satisfying to know what is working and driving results, it is more important to find out what isn’t, because that’s exactly where you need to place your focus. You need to analyse and track your progress and really get into the nitty-gritty of your stats. Only realising what isn’t working, will let you elevate and improve your business above and beyond. Don’t ever be afraid to make mistakes, trial and error is the only way to establish how your business can profitably progress from its status quo.
Of course there is much more you can do to improve your lead generation but implementing the above 5 steps can already get you a head start with making a difference to your business’ success. To read more on quality lead generation, download our ebook below.
