Tag Archives: lead generation

How to Optimize your Website for Lead Generation

How to Optimize your Website for Lead Generation
Your site is the most important tool in your toolbox for generating leads. Getting all the traffic in the world or writing engaging content doesn’t matter if traffic isn’t converting to leads. To optimize your website for lead generation, you have to know what elements of your site convert and how much they’re converting. Here are 4 places where your site can be improved to get more conversions.

Boost Lead Capture With Forms

Forms are usually at the front line of capturing leads and optimizing your forms can boost lead conversions. However, forms won’t work if they don’t attract visitors or are cumbersome. Here are 5 ways you can improve your forms to convert.

  • Reduce Fields

    In many cases, having too many unnecessary fields is a deterrent for users who may not have patience.This is especially true for mobile users trying to filling out forms on a small screen.

  • Include a Privacy Policy Link

    Wi yourth spam and scams prevalent on the Internet, visitors are often hesitant to give too much information. Adding a privacy policy, allows them to feel comfortable and presents you as trustworthy.

Optimize Landing Pages

In combination with forms, landing pages drive visitors to convert. On their own, landing pages give visitors more information, presents offers, and can be used in conjunction with other marketing channels (such as social media). Because they are multi-functional and important to lead generation, optimizing landing pages has an impact on overall site optimization.

  • Work on Your Value Proposition

    Highlight the value of your business and convince visitors on why they should leave their information or make a buy. Be upfront with the benefits of your free (emphasis on free) ebook or your white paper.

  • Thank You pages

    When a lead leaves their information on a landing page, they should be sent a “Thank You” page. Thank You pages can display testimonials and links to other pages and offerings, and provide encouragement to explore the site more.  This solidifies their trust in the company, and they’re much likelier to return.

  • SEO

    Much of the time, landing pages are found through search engines. You can optimize a landing page for SEO by:

    • Speeding up page loading times
    • Including keywords
    • Use engaging, short, relevant headlines
    • Make content shareable with social media share buttons

Don’t redesign your entire website to get more leads. By improving the more important lead conversion elements of your website (landing pages and forms), you can optimize your site for lead generation, gain more conversions, and build trust in converts and visitors.

Website Best Practices for Lead Generation

Website Best Practices for Lead Generation

The ultimate goal of an inbound marketing campaign is lead generation. Your site can attract a lot of visitors, but if all they do is browse and leave, then your efforts have failed.

To be successful, think of your website as a series of pages with elements that work together to turn a visitor into a potential customer. Lead generation follows a pattern which begins with a blog post, followed by the homepage, ‘about’ section, contact form, and a ‘thank you’ page. Every page corresponds to a step in the marketing funnel, starting with searching for info and ending with a submission of contact details. Let’s take a look at each one:

Blog Post

The blog post is the front liner of your website. It’s what people most often see first when looking for information on search engines. Traffic can come from a link posted on social media. The job of a blog post is to make people aware of your business. It should contain relevant information your target audience finds useful. It should be optimized with the right keywords to rank on the search engine and shared on social media.

Homepage

If your blog post generates interest, visitors will be curious about your business. They’ll go to the home page to learn more about your business and what it does. Make sure your homepage clearly explains what you do and how you do it to make visitors stay on your site and explore more pages. But what kind of details?

Visitors don’t necessarily know what you do. Provide a clear explanation of what your business does and how they help people. So on this page, share testimonials from satisfied customers and site any media attention you’ve gotten. Visitors will find it easy to see the value your business offers from people who have experienced it firsthand.

‘About’ Section

At this point, visitors already know what the business is, but not why it exists and who’s behind it. They want to know your objectives, your values, your vision, and mission. This should be included in your ‘About’ section. This your opportunity to earn visitors’ trust. Humanize your business by introducing yourself and your staff, talking about how the business started and share your vision for the future. People are careful about who they align themselves with. So if a business seems shady, they won’t trust it. Be transparent and open.

Contact Form

If you’ve filled out the first three pages, then it’s a quick step for your visitors to take action like filling out the contact form and leave their contact details. Once you have these, congratulations, you got yourself a lead. You can nurture your leads through email marketing and convert them into paying customers.

‘Thank You’ Page

Although the process of lead generation ends after the submission of a completed contact form, a new process begins right away — nurturing leads. You can start right away by showing heartfelt gratitude beyond the generic “thank you.” On this page, write a personalized message and offer additional value such as an Ebook download and links to more resources.

Do all leads follow this simple flow? Not necessarily, but it should give you a general idea of how visitors behave on websites.

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Why People Open Emails

Why People Open Emails Though email is a product of the modern digital age, it’s almost old-fashioned compared to social media. And yet, email looks like it will stick around for a long time. According to the Q4 2016 Email Benchmark Report by global information services group Experian, 56% of total email opens happened on smartphones or tablets in Q4 2016. This illustrates the fact that email has made the transition from desktop to mobile use.

The same report also states that quarter-to-quarter revenue per email increased from 6 cents in Q3 2016 to 8 cents in Q4 2016. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering emails can be sent out to a whole subscriber list with only one click, a jump in revenue is a per subscriber stat.

For entrepreneurs, this is an opportunity you can’t miss. When you have a subscriber list, you have the ability to reach out to people quickly and easily via email. And if you do it right, your messages will be read.

But what makes people open emails? Several factors are influential here:

Timing

Emails are likely to be read within the first hour of being delivered. In the following hours, the chances are lower. After 24 hours, the odds are no longer in your favor

The day you choose to send an email has a direct impact. If you want to have a higher success rate, pick Tuesdays or Saturdays. Tuesday has an average open rate of 18%, the highest among all weekdays. But among all days of the week, Saturday has the highest open rate at 18.3%. Evenings after 8 pm fare the best, followed by afternoons from 4 pm to 8 pm.

Reputation

Who you are and what your business does plays a key role in your emails getting opened and read. So building an image as a trusted authority in your niche is critical. If your previous emails didn’t offer much, or if your website and social media pages lack substance, people will think your emails follow suit. It takes a while to establish a good reputation, but it’s well worth the effort.

After sender name, the subject line, offer, intro paragraph, and expected length (in that order) influence the chances of getting your email read.

Personalization

Let’s say your name is Alex and your email handle is alex101. You receive 2 emails, one with “Alex, here are great deals for you!” or “alex101, here are some great deals for you!” The chances are that you will regard the second email as spam and send it to trash without even a glance. An email handle used as a greeting is a dead giveaway that the email is auto-generated. Most people suspect that emails are auto-generated, but it helps if it doesn’t look like one.

Most online marketers currently want to focus on social media and other forms of digital marketing, but email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so step up your email game.

Using Social Proof to Get More Leads

Using Social Proof to Get More Leads There are many strategies for lead generation with digital marketing: blog content extras, social media advertising, lead magnets, etc. One particular strategy that is extremely powerful to get more leads is social proof.

What is social proof?

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.

In layman’s terms, people are more likely to buy something when they see others doing the same. Here are a few examples where you’ve probably seen social proof in action:

  • When you go out to eat on a Friday or Saturday night, it’s likely that you’ll have to wait. Most restaurants tend to have a smaller lobby so that patrons have to wait outside, making it appear that this is a popular restaurant, and therefore a good place to eat.
  • Similarly, if you go out to a nightclub, the most popular clubs always have a line out the door, regardless of whether the club is full. This makes others want to get in line to check the club out as well.
  • Several years ago, Dropbox put out the Mailbox App and required new users to sign up to be put on a waiting list. This made people want to get in on the action because an app with a waiting list must be pretty awesome.

How can you use social proof to generate leads and increase the buzz about your business?

1. Customer testimonials

The most common forms of social proof are your business reviews and customer testimonials. Use these to your advantage by adding a testimonials section to your website or create branded graphics with testimonials to share on your social media profiles.

2. Influencer marketing

Using celebrity endorsements or getting well-known bloggers and social influencers to use and endorse your product is a great form of social proof. This can be an ad or offering of a free product to share with their followers.

3. Follower/social share count

Include your social media follower count or the number of social shares on your blog posts to increase the likelihood that others will share your posts. You can use plugins on your website that show these numbers automatically. Social Warfare is a great plugin for WordPress, and it adds a count to the social share buttons.

4. Mentions in the media

Has your business been written about on influential websites, magazines, or blogs? Create a separate page for all of your media mentions. Share links to the articles about your business so potential customers can read them and decide if they want to work with you.

5. Industry certifications, accreditations, or badges

If your business has certifications or accreditations from your industry, you should share these on your website. Some industries have required certifications, while others have badges that help your business stand out. Regardless if the certification is required or not, it’s a great idea to share your additional education, licensing and credentials with potential customers.

6. Number of customers

McDonald’s has the slogan “Billions and billions served” because it shows that they have a huge customer base. Share how many orders you’ve received, customers you’ve had, or clients you’ve worked with.

Social proof is a highly powerful method for getting new leads and new customers. Start implementing a few of these strategies to start bringing in more business.

Segment your Email List for More Conversions

Segment your Email List for More Conversions Have you heard, the money is in the list? The email list, in this case.

Did you know you may be leaving money on the table if you mail the same message to your entire list? Send the most relevant messages to their inboxes, not just any message. This in an efficient and scalable solution with segmentation.

What is Email Segmentation?

Email segmentation divides your email list based on custom factors. You can split up your list with some of the most common methods being by geographic location, age, income and job title.

The specific factors you choose depends on your type of business. Add a behavioral tag to categorize a user. Have they ordered from your store recently, did they buy something last year, or are they a new purchaser? Nurture each list segment with the offers and content that they need to increase your conversion rate and lifetime value of the customer.

If you provide services, look at where the subscriber is in your marketing funnel, any actions they’ve taken on your website and whether they’ve been in contact with your team.

The sky’s the limit on the segmentation you choose for your subscriber. So there’s no reason to take one-size fits all approach to your list.

How to Segment Your List

Most email marketing and marketing automation services allow you to sort readers into different groups based on the information they provide. You can automatically do this by sorting users on the subscription form.

For example, if you offer several products segment your list by the product purchased. Progressive profiling allows you to capture more information every time a person goes through one of your forms. You might ask for an email and name on the first interaction. Then expand to their company size, income and questions about their pain points in the next.

The second way to segment is by links clicked.  Start with a general list. Send out an email with 3 key, unique links to different areas of service your company offers. You can segment your audiences by those who clicked service link 1, the second list for service link 2 that was clicked, and the same for the service link 3.  Furthermore, you ow have three lists with people who were interested enough to click a specific area.  You can then send each follow-up emails specifically related to the area of service they clicked on in the first email! That’s segmentation.

Get the most out of your email list by providing a custom experience that’s valuable to your readers. You’ll see more leads, conversions, and revenue for your efforts.

How to Capture the Elusive Lead – Part 3 Capture

How to Capture the Elusive Lead - Part 3 Capture
You’ve attracted new prospects and engaged with them several different ways. Now it’s time to seal the deal and capture the elusive lead. You can accomplish this with lead magnets that give your leads something of value in exchange for their email addresses and other information. Here are a few options for lead magnets to implement for your lead generation campaigns.

Ebooks

An ebook is a long-form piece of content that positions you as the authority on a particular topic or market segment. The information given to your visitors should solve one of their pain points immediately. That way they’re likely to give you their email address in exchange for the offer. One way to create an ebook is to rework a series of 4-5 blog posts into one cohesive “mini-digital book”.  This can work well for business-to-business, and business-to-consumer.

Coupons

People love discounts and couponing, so this is an easy way for to get immediate value in exchange for their email address. Offer free shipping, a set percentage off their purchase or a buy one, get one type of promotion.   This is, of course, a great option for business to consumer-focused sites.

Email Courses

Need to get a lot of information across in a structured manner? An email course delivers lessons over a set time period, “dripping” the information into the visitor’s inbox. You have the advantage of increasing your touchpoints with your lead while giving them valuable information.

In-depth Tutorials

Answer the pressing questions that your audience has or simply make their lives easier with an informative tutorial. Tackle anything related to your product or industry, but be strategic. Create a foundation and educating future buyers with the info they need to make a purchase decision at the end of the funnel.

Buyer’s Guide

A buyer’s guide is another lead magnet that revolves around educating potential customers on their options. Create the most exhaustive guide possible that covers all important considerations when making a purchase.

Don’t just cover the features and considerations that make your product come out on top. Not every lead is an ideal buyer for you, and people will remember if you help them out with the process, even if they don’t buy directly from you at the time.

Free Webinar

A short beginner webinar is a great way to gather email addresses. Start with short live trainings on the basics of your product or industry. Record the training and send the training to your whole list. Or record several short trainings on several topics and bundle them together for a pay to view training series.

Simple Sign-Up

Some companies try to ask for as much information as possible when they’re capturing a lead. They have long forms or even a multiple part process. Prospects don’t have a long attention span before they go to another website so keep it simple. All you need to start your relationship building process is a name and an email.

You can use progressive profiling throughout your future relationship to find out more information. In the beginning, it’s better to treat lead capture as a slow and deliberate “getting to know you” phase.

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

Create an Email Series for Lead Generation

In the past, one tried-and-true marketing method always included email, which was sent to the most people possible, in case some of that huge audience would buy. This strategy isn’t very effective. The overwhelming majority of recipients had no interest and either deleted the email or unsubscribed.  It was a scattershot approach. In effect, shoot broad and hopefully hit something. Today a narrow or more targeted approach is needed and is possible.

The more focused approach is to send out a series of emails.  Sent your emails based on an event or trigger. A recipient will appreciate a personalized birthday note. Or a ‘thank you’ note when someone registers for a particular event or makes a purchase. The important element of this strategy is that the emails are focused and purposeful, rather than broad, generic, and hopeful.

How to optimize your campaign

  • Establish goals and objectives – This is essential for planning your campaign, and coordinating team effort to achieve the desired outcome. Decide what the email message should be, whether it’s a new promotion, a suggestion to buyers about similar products, a friendly greeting to a new subscriber, coupons or discounts on products, or an announcement about your event or activity.
  • Categorize your email lists – Don’t use the same list for every email. Not all recipients will be interested in every type of email. Thus categorize your email lists by interest type, geographic location, birthday month, purchased products, or follow-up. Categorization should occur at the moment a new subscriber signs up, so they are placed in the most relevant group. By mailing to specific groups of individuals, you’ll get a much better ROI on your automated emails.
  • Make effective use of email software – There are lots of automated email service providers. Therefore, you should use the one best suited to the strategies you use in your marketing efforts. All of them track the open rate of your emails, gather demographic information about recipients, and monitor link clicks. Many of these email software companies have free versions.

Planning your campaigns

  • Plan for the long term – Many recipients won’t respond to the initial email. Plan follow-up messages and schedule them at regular intervals to achieve the results you want. These will serve as reminders and reinforcements of your original message.
  • Prepare emails in advance – Write your emails ahead of time. They need to have a consistent tone and language. Your subject line should grab their attention. Hence, your email content should clearly communicate that only your products can solve their problem and make their life better.
  • Be persistent – Nurturing email leads is not a one-time deal. You’ll need multiple emails, and each one should be better than the last. Now you have more specific information about your recipients so you can zoom right in on their pain points. Don’t be afraid to tinker with the subject and the message to see what works best and gets you the responses you want.

That’s a wrap on improving your online sales through a more strategic email lead generation series.  Remember first capture, then segment, based on actions they take to give them relevant emails.  Email works, make it specific and personalized.

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

How Lead Capture fits within Social Media Lead Generation

Many business owners believe that social media marketing is only about brand awareness or updates to let followers know what’s going on with the business. What they don’t realize is that social media has some serious lead generation power.

To get started generating leads, think about your opt-in freebie or lead magnet. This is something you create and offer to potential customers for free to get them to sign up for your email list. This can be anything from an ebook or white paper or video education series to a free consultation or a discount/free shipping.

Once you’ve decided how you’re going to lure potential customers onto your email list, you can set up your lead captures on social media.

Step 1: Landing Page

Your landing page should include a brief bit of information about the lead magnet, graphic, and a signup form. Plain, and simple. On a lead capture landing page, you don’t want to distract the customer from what they’re there to do: sign up for your email list. You can include a First Name field, but you should only have your Email field required to make signing up quick and easy.

Step 2: Facebook Ads

There are 2 types of Facebook ads you can use for lead generation. The first is the basic lead generation ad that gathers emails directly in Facebook. When your ad is finished running (or every week or so if you have your ad running continuously), go into your lead ads library to download the most recent signups and upload them to your own email marketing platform.

The other option is conversion tracking. You’ll set up a conversion tracking ad that leads to your landing page. You’ll need to insert a pixel on your website’s home page, your landing page, and your thank you page to track conversions.

When setting up your Facebook ads, create a caption that makes your targeted audience want what you’re giving them (in exchange for their email address).

Step 3: Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards are interactive tweets that give more info on a link, app, or video. Twitter also has a lead generation card for ads. To get access to the Twitter Cards, you’ll need to create an ad account and run an ad.

Create your lead generation Twitter Card in the same manner, you would create your Facebook ad. Twitter Cards also allow you to collect email addresses directly through Twitter, without the customer navigating to another website. The cool thing about Twitter Cards is that you can promote them, but you can also organically tweet out a lead generation Twitter Card. Pin it to the top of your Twitter profile to increase views. This is a great way to organically collect new leads.

Step 4: Promoted Pins

Design a Pinterest graphic that leads to your landing page. Create a Promoted Pin campaign with the traffic objective, so you pay for clickthroughs. If you don’t have graphic design skills, outsource this project. Pinterest relies heavily on visual aesthetics, so your pin graphic is important.

These are the top 3 ways to capture leads on social media. Want to move potential customers through your sales funnel? Try using these 3 lead capture methods.

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5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

5 Ways Non-profits Can Grow Their Email List

Time and again, it’s been proven that email lists are effective marketing tools. A targeted list can get people back on your website, share news, and grow your volunteer and donor base. It’s a way to stay in touch, stay top-of-mind, and build trust. If you’re still wondering how you can start building or grow a non-profit email list, read on!

We’ve got 5 simple, actionable steps you can take to grow your email list!

1. Put a Form on Every Web Page

Make it as simple as possible for people to sign up for your email list. Place your signup forms high on your page, above the fold if possible, and put one on every page. The goal is to make them as easy as possible to find because most visitors won’t search for them.  One great way to do this is with a pop-up box or widget, using a tool like Waftio.

2. Create a Great Offer

Sometimes, just receiving your newsletter is not enough of an incentive. If your subscriptions are falling, creating a free download to entice people to sign up can make all the difference. A report, short e-book or even a free learning series can encourage people to sign up. Figure out what that incentive is and use it!

3. Encourage Sharing

If you’re like most non-profits, you already have a network of volunteers and employees. Ask them to sign up for your newsletter, and share your emails with their network. There’s a reason why networking is such a powerful marketing tool. Even if you have a small group of followers now and each of them shares your message with 10 friends, you could reach hundreds or even thousands of people!

4. Market Your Newsletter Everywhere

Don’t stop at a subscription form on your website. Mention your newsletter on your email signature and letterhead. Share it on your social channels, and advertise it at real world events. The more you talk about your newsletter, the more subscriptions you’ll get.

5. Send Great Newsletters

The final step is also the most important: make sure that once you have all those email addresses, you use them wisely. Send out regular (but not super frequent), interesting and valuable newsletters that your list will look forward too. That will increase their engagement with your cause.

Your non-profit email list can be a great asset to your organization. If you don’t already make the most of it, we hope these tips will help you. And to help your non-profit be successful with lead generation we’re offering a discount on Waftio. Use the code 50offplans and you’ll receive 50% off either plan for 3 months.

New Mobile Feature for Waftio

New Mobile Feature for Waftio

Early next year, Google will roll out an update to build upon the overall mobile-first use of the Internet by daily web users. Since over half of Google’s searches come from mobile devices, the focus on improving the mobile search is unsurprising. One of the things the upcoming change focuses on is reducing intrusive interstitials (especially pop-ups) that hamper the mobile experience and frustrate users by blocking access to content unless users take action. The following examples of pop-ups violate Google’s new mobile search rules:

  • Interstitials that make content inaccessible immediately after visitors come to the page from the search results
  • Pop-ups users have to dismiss before continuing on the site
  • Pop-ups that mimic the above-the-fold part of the page but the original content is inlined under the fold

Websites that don’t meet Google’s new standards will be penalized. If the content you have worked so hard to produce is visually obstructed by a pop-up (in a way that violates Google’s criteria), the site’s mobile rankings may go down.

In response to this new update, we’ve made a few changes to our Waftio app.

To be helpful to all users of Waftio, we’ve altered the way pop-ups can be used so you have more control.

What does this mean for your website?

We’ve added a feature to Waftio that puts you in control of your site’s mobile user experience with Waftio. Our new update includes the option to disable pop-ups only on mobile devices. This way your site won’t hinder mobile visitors view of your content. Hence, your visitors will have a more pleasant time navigating the site.

This is an optional item to turn on in the Waftio settings area.  We keep you in control and give you the power to continue to grow leads with your website!