Your website is the most powerful tool at your disposal for getting more customers. You need a good website because customers expect it, and you need to be able to drive traffic to get them there.
But most importantly, you need to have a mechanism in place to collect contact information from that traffic and reach out to them again.
Simply put: You need to make your website into a lead generating machine.
Generating leads from your website is more than just slapping a form on your homepage along with some cool buttons with a call to action. Truthfully, forms aren’t even the best way to get leads to sign up. If there isn’t something of value in exchange for completing that form, they’ll skip it all together.
Your website is the first stop on your new customer’s value journey, and it’s your job to make sure you get them past the stage of being just aware of your brand and engaging with your content so they can actually subscribe and become leads.
It’s an essential step in the process of how to generate more leads through your website…because leads become customers who could potentially grow into evangelists for your brand.
How Lead Generation Works
First, let’s take a look at how lead generation works. What are leads, who are these people, and where do they actually come from?
Lead generation starts when people visit your website and click on a call to action button on your homepage or on another page. The button delivers them to a landing page where they can request a lead magnet—something of value like a guide or a checklist that can be consumed and put to use within 5 minutes.
The key is to make it worth their while. The fact is, these potential leads know that you are going to follow up with them through email marketing, but if you present them with an offer that is irresistible enough, you’ll be able to overcome that resistance.
Once they request the lead magnet in exchange for contact information, a thank you page will load, which presents them with a tripwire offer, a low-dollar offer that will, if they purchase, convert them into an actual customer.
But beyond knowing how lead generation works, the process of how to generate more leads from your website all starts with making sure you create the right journey for your visitors.
How To Generate More Leads Through Your Website’s Value Journey
The place to start with determining how to generate more leads through your website is making sure the site reflects the journey of your ideal customer.
This all starts with considering the end goal you want to accomplish and how different parts of the website can service customers at each stop on their way to that goal.
Remember—good marketing has to follow the natural course of human relationships. You wouldn’t walk up to someone you just met at a bar and start talking about getting married, would you?
Skipping the early stages of the Customer Value Journey and jumping straight to trying to sell total strangers your core offer is just as absurd.
That’s why, in learning how to generate more leads through your website, it’s critical to think about how your lead generation strategy will move them further down the road toward becoming customers.
A big part of assessing how well your website does this is by thinking about the experience of your visitors. First of all, what does “lead generation” mean to your business? Are you trying to get them to sign up for a newsletter? Request a guide? Schedule a free phone call?
If you clearly define what that means in terms of actions on the lead’s end, you’ll have an easier time determining how to structure your lead magnet offer.
Creating value and relevance for leads also relates to how you position your information on the homepage. One crucial error many business owners make is filling their homepage with the things that are most important to them.
However, don’t forget that when it comes to telling a story on your website, you are not the hero. Your customer is. Your website, especially the homepage, should be focused on what they most need to know or what action you want them to take once they arrive there.
Your homepage is their first step to becoming aware of who you are and what you’re about. Once they look at it, they should immediately see the mission of your company and what product or service you promote.
Since it’s your primary tool for gathering leads in the first place, making sure they can quickly see it and access it is vital to how to generate more leads from your website.
The main thing is to keep in mind what your visitors most need in order to reach the stage of subscribing to your site and becoming leads.
Create Strong Calls to Action
Organizing your homepage is a key part of how to generate more leads from your website, but it’s not enough on its own. You have to tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do.
Your visitors can’t read minds. If you want them to sign up for a lead magnet, schedule a consultation or take a survey, you need a clearly visible call to action instructing them to do it.
The key is to keep your call to action buttons simple, yet still have them pop off the page. Use colors that contrast from your site, but don’t clash with your brand, along with a forceful, specific phrase that tells them what action you want them to take.
Your call to action should use language that emphasizes the benefit of taking the desired action. For example, in one study, the phrase “Get information” resulted in 38% more conversions than the call to action “Order information.”
Why? Because “Get” emphasizes that leads will receive something instantly in exchange for signing up. “Order” is a less powerful word that points to a delay in receiving that benefit.
Along this same line, urgency is also critical. Lead magnets are about instant gratification and your call to action should point to this.
Some good examples include:
* Claim Your Free Trial
* I Want One
* Get My Free Guide
* Download It Now
* Get Instant Access
* Get Yours Now
Again—telling visitors what you want them to do is vital in the process of how to generate more leads from your website.
You can also make the most of your visitors’ attention by using exit pop-ups. After all, driving traffic to your site isn’t cheap. Rather than just letting visitors slip away, a pop-up offering your lead magnet can give them once last chance to engage and subscribe.
Plus, the numbers don’t lie: exit pop-ups have high conversion rates, which means they’re worth putting into place.
How to Generate More Leads From Your Website With Videos
In a previous post, we talked about how video marketing is a virtual necessity for creating awareness of your product or service. Video is everywhere, from your Facebook newsfeed to YouTube to Google searches, and because of that, it’s also crucial for how to generate more leads from your website.
Why? Because Internet users get hit with so many pop-ups and download offers that they quickly become immune to them, no matter how powerful the call to action may be. Therefore, getting creative with your delivery often can pay off, and a great method of how to generate more leads from your website is with explainer videos.
Explainer videos are just that—brief videos that explain an offer to customers and clearly demonstrate the benefit they’ll receive from it.
Good explainer videos educate customers about your offer and persuade them to take the leap, but they are also entertaining. Many of our social media video content ideas can be adapted to show your potential leads how your offer can benefit them.
If you decide to use video content, the main thing is to make sure the video is of good quality. Poor video content can have the opposite effect of making your offer look less attractive and beneficial. All video content should be on-brand and be something that you are proud to have represent you.
Generate More Leads With Trust Signals: Guarantees, Testimonials and More
A key point in how to generate more leads from your website is that social proof works. When it comes down to it, the words of other people and the tested success of an offer are powerful tools for persuading them to take the leap.
Even with a lead magnet, including testimonials is a must for demonstrating your offer’s previous success. They help paint the story for your customers of how it can impact their lives by giving them the desired end result or solution they need.
Beyond testimonials, though, you need to showcase other trust signals that will give your brand authority. Remember, most visitors will be reluctant to fork over their email addresses right out of the gate. You need to show them that you have authority in your space and as a trusted brand.
This can come in the form of awards, recognitions your brand has received or any other distinguishing traits that can help build credibility with your website’s public.
Chatbots
With the rise of Facebook Messenger, chatbots have become a popular way to engage with website visitors. For one thing, chatbots outperform website forms for lead generation over and over again.
They’re conversational, easy to use and ultimately faster and less invasive than completing a long list of questions—so much so that studies have shown an increase in leads of up to 33% using bots over forms.
They can also be used to qualify leads. By presenting visitors with a list of questions, you can easily see who is the best fit for different products and services, as well as who has the highest intent to interact and purchase.
Another reason chatbots help in terms of how to generate more leads from your website is that they work for you 24/7. Program the bot with a script for interacting with leads and literally expand your list while you’re asleep.
Don’t Forget To Test And Optimize
Ultimately, you won’t know exactly what’s working for your website until you test and analyze what you have in place. The results can point to what is working and what you need to do to get more out of how to generate more leads from your website.
For example, heat maps can indicate how effective your homepage and landing pages are at getting the attention of traffic, including how well your call to action buttons and messages are working. Based on these results, you can then split test different buttons, including the color, size, location and text.
If you’re looking for ways to optimize your website so you can generate more leads from your website, we have the perfect template to help you do it. The One Size Fits All Website Template will show you how to build a website that not only generates leads, but showcases what your brand is and what you stand for.