How To Optimize Your Website for Lead Generation

The majority of marketers name lead generation as the toughest challenge of running an online business. And with the current economic climate, the task of generating relevant leads is certainly not going to get any easier.

Still, it seems that some marketers are never fazed by the challenges of attracting prospective customers online, filling up their lists with engaged subscribers who are on the brink of being ready to purchase.

Luckily, there’s no magic behind their success if you have a basic understanding of what is a lead generation process.

Your ability to generate leads on your website comes down to using the industry-best practices and optimizing your site in a way that your target audience is the most likely to respond to.

So, in this article, let’s explore some of the most useful tips and strategies for optimizing your site to maximize conversions and drive sales.

Figure Out Who You’re Targeting

Before you can start implementing specific strategies, and even before you start thinking about things like how to create a newsletter, you will need to find the answer to the most important question that every website owner must ask — “who is my ideal lead?”

Unfortunately, many marketers dive headfirst into implementing lead generation strategies on their site without having a clear understanding of who their ideal customer is and what types of leads they want opting into their list.

This approach is flawed for a number of reasons.

For one thing, when you don’t have a refined customer avatar that you can base your strategy on, you will usually end up with a generic and unfocused messaging that will not be very appealing to anyone.

When people visit your site, you need to grab their attention immediately, and trying to please everyone or not getting straight to the core of their problem will result in people leaving quickly.

Another problem with this approach is that even if you do get people to respond, the leads that you attract will be all over the place, with many of them not being an ideal fit for what you have to offer.

That will make your communications less effective, hurt your sales numbers, and waste the time of your sales team who will have to deal with unqualified leads that aren’t always a good fit.

Add Trust Elements

If you want to increase the number of leads generated by your site, one of your primary goals should be to get people to trust your business as quickly as possible.

As you can probably imagine, when someone stumbles upon your site for the first time, they don’t really know much about who you are, what your business represents, and whether you can be trusted to deliver on your promises.

Even the best pitch in the world is only as strong as it is believable. And that’s especially true online, where scams and shady business practices are still rampant to this day.

But how can you get your site’s visitors to trust you in the shortest amount of time possible?

Well, there are a few effective methods for achieving that.

First, make sure to make your business look professional. Your site has to look good, use well-crafted design and branding elements, and have a consistent theme that reflects your values and how you want to be perceived.

Make sure to prominently display ways to contact you, including a phone number and an address, as that will put your website visitors at ease, showing them that you are a real business and not just a nameless online entity.

Another crucial element of building trust is making sure that you back up your claims by proof. Anyone can say that they will do extraordinary things for their clients, but actually showing that they have done it in the past is a different story.

Success stories of past clients are probably the most effective tool for emphasizing some of your biggest strengths and achievements without having to talk about them yourself.

Make sure to use testimonials from the same groups of people that you want to attract, and help them express their experiences in different ways, exploring various aspects of your services and overcoming the common objections or fears.

If you have tangible data or results, make sure to include that, too. For instance, when you achieve an X result for a client and they are happy, that will double the impact that a testimonial can have because the prospective lead can imagine a similar outcome for themselves.

There are many ways to get more customer reviews, so just be proactive, and the testimonials that you collect will become one of your best assets for lead generation.

Make an Appealing Offer

No matter how you spin it, a strong core offer will always be an indispensable part of getting people to opt into your list or to buy from you.

As you probably know, online users usually have a specific intent when visiting a site. Because of that, if you want them to keep engaging with your company and perform the action that you want them to, you will need to put together an offer that’s at the very heart of what they want or need to solve.

For instance, when growing the list of leads that you can nurture, you will need an appealing giveaway or freebie that you can offer in exchange for their email address.

Luckily, you might not need to start from scratch, and might be able to repurpose your old content into a format that would be more appealing.

Just choose a topic that revolves around an urgent problem that your prospective leads are facing and expand on it, adding more materials, providing more specific details, or simply reformatting in a way that will be easier to digest.

Then, create a pitch for the lead magnet and watch as your list starts filling up with people who are facing the specific problem that you want to help them solve.

Test and Adjust

Most marketers dream of making a few changes in their lead-gen efforts and watching as leads start pouring in overnight. Unfortunately, that’s not how it usually works out.

Optimizing a website for lead generation is a continuous process, which consists of making small changes and adjustments that result in gradual performance improvement.

The good news is that with this approach, you are almost guaranteed to get more out of the traffic that you get each month. The bad news, however (at least for some marketers), is that you will have to put in the effort into figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

But that’s where testing and tweaking can make things easier.

Even if you just add Google Analytics to your site, you will be able to collect a ton of data about performance, which will give you plenty of insights about what you could improve or change.

And if you take the time to run split tests, you will be amazed at how big of a difference seemingly minor changes can make, and achieve a compounding effect that will get you more leads consistently.

You’ll not only get more leads but will most likely find that the leads you do attract are much more likely to convert into customers.

Remember, every situation is different, so you can’t rely on the experiences of others and expect to achieve the same results. But if you take the time to test, you will see gradual improvement and gain a significant edge over the competition who will not have the same knowledge as you.

Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/how-to-optimize-your-website-for-lead-generation/