We’ve all been there, hitting our heads against the wall and wondering if there is a secret way to ramp up the sales and get more clients or customers. The truth is – there isn’t one way, there are many, but each of one is sweaty.
What do we mean by sweaty?
Well, let’s just say that lead-attracting websites all have one thing in common – in fact, a lot of things in common. If you are struggling to deliver hot leads into your lap and make them worth your time, something is missing. Only by attracting leads, you will be able to grow your brand, increase your revenues and collect customer feedback while establishing yourself as a credible and authoritative thought leader in the industry.
Today, we are listing each and every one of the things that can open your doors to a lot more leads.
And the best part?
Even if your website doesn’t have what it takes to attract leads, it can become one of that kind – only after you put these things to practices.
1. Lead Generation Forms
It all starts and ends with leads in the first – and last place. And the only way to attract them and make them contact you is the lead generation form you will be using.
It’s true that leads love easy contact. You can give it to them via a simple and non-aggressive form that only gets their email and gives them something in return. Yes, leads love rewards and love to get informed about practically anything that tailors to their needs.
So if you, for example, sell shoes for a living, giving them a PDF collection with the newest models will definitely make them click and leave their email. And whenever someone fills out your 2-step form, they are actively showing interest in your business.
If the technical aspect of forms is the one that worries you, we have some good news. Now, you can design forms in programs like Contact Form 7, JetPack or even Google Forms, collecting every bit of information from every potential customer/client.
Check out the screenshot below and see how the guys at OfficeVibe, an innovative digital workplace tool, use their homepage as a lead generation form itself. Amazing, isn’t it?
2. Call-To-Action
Not only it is the most vital thing in a lead generation form, call-to-action is something you should have on every single page of your website. After all, how do you even expect to get your customers’ email?
See, there are a lot of websites which are neat, clean and amazingly responsive – but fail when it comes to writing convincing CTA. As we said above, the CTAs should be different on each page of your website and educate your visitors about how and why they should engage with your business.
Without a clear call to action, your website is nothing but an informer.
Below, we are sharing one example of a killer call-to-action by Evernote, the world’s leading to-do app.
3. A Blog
If you don’t know the value a blog can bring to your website in 2016, you are way back in time – so back that you might even hear the sounds of dinosaurs near you.
It’s true that a blog is a fundamental part of every website for interaction and all the generic ‘blah-blah’s’ the digital world is preaching. But in a nutshell, a blog does not only inform and educate your visitors – it shows them the other side of your business. More precisely, the side that cares for them and gives them value into every single blog post.
Have you wondered why all the top digital marketing agencies and marketing automation tools have amazing blogs?
It’s because they care for you, and share every bit of value with you even if you are not their customer, and they want you to know that. A great example is HubSpot’s blog.
4. Mobile-Friendly Support
Let’s just put it this way. If a customer or client of yours can’t reach you in a convenient way over their smartphone or tablet, you deserve to lose him.
Google released a mobile-friendliness algorithm that ranks and favors mobile-friendly websites over others. But that’s just the news of 2 years ago. Not having a page that is optimized for mobile devices nowadays equals to total failure and loss of traffic. Now seriously, do you want that?
Oh, and let’s once again remind you that your search engine ratings will be gone, hiding behind the 10th or 11th page, just because of the lack of mobile-friendliness on your website.
Google’s Developers certainly know how to put this rule to practice with a visual that demonstrates what makes a website mobile-friendly, and a great step-by-step content guide accompanying it.
5. Convincing Product (And Landing) Pages
We know we already mentioned call-to-action, but this point is quite different. The difference between CTA and having convincing pages is mainly the aspect in which they are designed.
Design plays a vital role in the way your leads react to your website – believe it or not. If you have an eCommerce store and your aim is to sell products online, the only way to succeed in that is to test, experiment and track – but always have your product pages as clean as a water pipe.
In other words, every page of your website must be neat and feature elements that are n the right place. It should also be responsive and quick in loading. Only that way it would fulfill our meaning of ‘convincing’ on this point.
Just take UNIQLO, the apparel brand as an example of how cool, effortless and sales-inviting your product pages can be.
6. Pop-Up Forms
Pop-ups are definitely a ‘dirty’ word nowadays, knowing that they are used by most of the spammy websites that keep on showing them to you in an aggressive manner. However, in this point we are not referring to pop-up ads, but pop-up forms – which are two different things.
If you ever landed on a marketing blog, you’ll notice great placement of forms and calls-to-action. However, there is a great chance that you will start reading an article until the very end (and articles on marketing blogs can be long…really long). During that time, you will forget about the form you need to fill on the top of the blog.
But hey – marketers are far from stupid, and pop-up forms are how they solve this problem. Basically, all that a pop-up form does is remind you of the call-to-action you missed and get you to click on it and eventually leave your email address, subscribing to the website.
The secret to success with pop-ups is to make sure they are:
- offering something valuable and relevant
- showing once or twice maximum (readers don’t like to get disturbed)
- showing between intervals (make sure your reader forgets about it before you show it again)
- not ruining the mobile experience
Here is an example of a great pop-up form that is user-friendly, non-aggressive and in overall nice to look at.
7. Fresh Content
Whether it’s your blog, your social media page or your email newsletter, fresh content is the last but not least ingredient you must always add to the recipe – and never forget about it.
The truth is, without fresh content, your leads have no interest at all to visit your website. Also, the lack of fresh content makes your brand authority lower and makes people not care about you or your posts.
Your website should be designed to be a portal of information and a window to value. As long as you keep addressing the fears, wants and needs of your leads and do that constantly over a longer period, you will be comfortable to say that you made it.
The graph below (all credits to Neil Patel) shows what has been important to Google over the past few years. Just look at that ‘Freshness of Content’ exponential.
A Final Word
A lead catching website is a website that is different, unique, convincing, informative, valuable and responsive. We know, these may be too many ways to define it. But only with those qualities, it can come close to the best ones out there.
If you think you are still far away from putting these things to practice or that they would cost you a lot, you are definitely wrong. Only when you start improving it step-by-step – you will find the true value and difference it makes to your potential leads.
From your search rankings to your leads – your website will be able to impress everyone and show them you are the new boss in your industry. So, if attracting leads has been an impossible mission so far for you, it’s time to address the problems and start implementing some new strategies in your game plan.
We hope that the ones we showed above will be worth your time!
And if you think we missed out on one or a few things, we’d love to hear from you in the comments!