Lead Generation 101: Converting Visitors into Leads

If you’ve ever ventured into the world of online advertising, whether be as a provider of the service or as a customer, I will bet my house that you’ve come across someone complaining that their conversion rates are low (and of course, it’s never their fault).

Whether that conversion is watching a video, filling in a form, or even making a purchase, there will always be advertisers who will place the blame on anyone and everyone before they turn to their own marketing/site/advert as the source of the problem.

I’m not saying that all advertisers are stubborn and try and shaft blame, however, if you’re reading this and you’re currently running a campaign with low conversion rates (and of course, it’s not your fault), I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s probably your fault.

Typical conversion rates range from 5-25% and provided you’ve thought logically about where you’re advertising, there’s nothing stopping you from reaching this. (Well actually, yes there are things stopping you from reaching this, but nothing that can’t be tweaked.)

Landing Page Design

Generally speaking you will always be directing potential visitors to a particular page, whether that’s a specific landing page or just an existing page of your site. For arguments sake I’ll refer to these collectively as just a landing page.

I believe that a well designed landing page is the key to success when it comes to conversions. You could write the best ad copy in the world, get tonnes of clicks, and thousands of visitors to your site, but if your landing page is of poor quality what motivation do your visitors have to stay on the site let alone carry out an action?

The trick to landing pages is to convince your visitor to become the conversion you want. If you want them to fill in a form with their details on then explain why, what will they get out of it? Why is it worth their time? If you’ve promoted a deal in an ad then take them straight to it, highlight the offer, and make it easy for them to purchase your product.

I won’t go into the details of actually designing a great landing page, although there are loads of tips that can help you out; you can read our post about that here: 6 Steps to an Effective Landing Page.

Website Design & Navigation

I guess this could also come under the landing page point above but I wanted to make a separate point of it because while simple navigation on your landing page will help you out, site wide navigation can serve a greater purpose.

If you’ve chosen not to use a landing page then you’ll be relying on the design and navigation of your site as a whole to direct your visitors to the right place. Deciding on the flow of your navigation may seem like a really basic task but a lot more thought needs to go into it than you’d think. (People even make careers out of it now; look at User Interface (UI) designers.)

In order to convert visitors into leads and sales you need them to complete an action, right? So if I land on your homepage, what is it about your site that’s directing me to complete that action? If you want me to fill in a form, is there a link on the homepage? Is it even visible on the homepage? How many clicks until I reach it?

Obviously an element of subtlety is required with this, and if a ‘lead’ for you could be a number of things (not just a form) then you’ll need to think even harder about which one takes priority and how you can display all options without intimidating your visitors.

Call to Action

READ THIS PARAGRAPH! Okay, so maybe don’t caps everything, but always include a call to action on your site. If you’re a dab hand at SEM, particularly writing ad copy, then this topic won’t be anything new to you. If you’ve never picked up your ad copy pen, then read this first: How to Write Ad Copy that Works.

It’s important for your website to display a clear call to action and even more important for your landing page to. Your call to action will usually be a link, so you need to make sure the link is taking visitors to whichever thing will turn them into a conversion. If your call to action says “Make a purchase now!” then you better be taking me to a product or a checkout.

Your call to action will differ on every page as you’ll have to cater to visitors in different stages of the buying process. So your homepage will obviously need a different call to action than a product page will.

Content & Authority

Another, more longwinded, way of converting your visitors into leads is to create authority for yourself. Visitors will be much more likely to do what you ask of them if they know your name, have visited before, and see you as a knowledgeable source of information.

Content is usually the way to achieve all theses things. Try to create content relevant to your industry that is interesting and educational, that way your visitors will see you as a point of reference and start respecting you as an industry expert.

Of course, this all takes time and while it’s by no means a quick fix to getting leads, it’s something that can serve as a very healthy foundation of your marketing campaign.

Tracking

Finally, you need to put all of these elements together and keep a close eye on them. It’s one thing to make the changes but if you don’t keep track of whether or not they work you may as well have not bothered.

If you know that using a certain image on your homepage increases your conversions by 1%, or that a certain call to action increases click throughs to a contact form, then you’ll know not to change it.