We spend absurd amounts of time and resources creating content and planning campaigns. For many of us, the end goal is to generate new leads that will become paying customers.
Here are some proven and actionable ideas to energize your lead generation efforts.
Landing Page OPTIMIZIng for Lead Generation
1. Create a product video
65% of us are visual learners. Why not explain your offering in a way that speaks to the majority?
According to this case study, product explainer videos can generate leads at a rate of up to 33%. When done right, videos keep us engaged and can inspire us to take action.
Product videos don’t need to be long or complex, and with tools like Animoto, they’re increasingly easy to make.
65% of us are visual learners. Why not explain your offering in a way that speaks to the majority?
TWEET THIS
2. Avoid to mention ‘spam’
A test run by Michael Aagard showed that including the phrase “100% privacy – we will never spam you!” on a signup form reduced conversions by a full 18%.
It’s okay to reassure privacy, but try doing it in a fun way that doesn’t include the word “spam.”
When in doubt, run A/B tests to be sure your signup forms are optimized for conversion.
3. Give fewer choices
Hick’s Law carries the principle that fewer choices means less confusion – and less confusion means more leads. This is why you should limit confusion by having a single CTA.
MySiteAuditor decreased the options on a free trial signup page from six to one and saw a 25% jump in their conversion rate.
Content Marketing for Lead Generation
4. Use gated videos on Landing page
Wistia’s Turnstile allows you to add email opt-in forms to your videos. You can even set the form to appear in time with a verbal CTA.
When Wistia purchased Facebook ads to send traffic to their video campaigns (bought at $1-2 per click), they saw an 11% increase in free trial conversions. Check out the full case study here.
6. Make excellent posts downloadable in exchange for an email
Quoteroller created a list of SEO directories in Australia, which was receiving 800+ visits per month but wasn’t generating leads.
After adding an option to download the post in a PDF format in return for an email address, the post peaked at five new leads per day and has resulted in 200 new email subscribers so far.
7. Optimize your About page on website
Whatever you may call it, your “about” or “team” page is very important to your business. This is where people see who you are and what you’re about. It’s also a great place to have a call to action.
About us page for Brelion
Jen Havice wrote this whopper of a post on how to generate leads on your About page.
She suggests including a solid value proposition in your headline and breaking up copy into manageable chunks, as well as having a clear idea of where you’d like visitors to go next so you can guide them with a compelling CTA.
8. Blog consistently. Actually do it!
This one’s old – we know by now that blogging is effective for generating leads. In spite of this, not many companies have strong and consistent content calendars (many give up when no results come in the first month or two).
Goodbye Crutches is an online shop for knee scooters and other accessories to help eliminate the need for crutches. They were struggling to drive traffic and sales through traditional advertising.
They put together a content schedule for six months, blogging every single day. Six months later, organic traffic had doubled.
But remember that once you’ve built up the traffic to your blog, your job isn’t done. Your readers have self-selected as being interested in what you have to offer, but they’re not yet on your list.
Make the next step easy for them by adding relevant CTAs to your blog posts. Unbounce does this well, with CTAs targeted to each of their blog categories. If a reader is interested in a PPC blog post, chances are they’ll be interested in the ebook as well – and willing to enter their email address in exchange for it.
If you’re looking for ways to leverage your blogging efforts to drive leads, this article is a great place to start.
9. Create and optimize content
Super in-depth posts take long to write but can pay off over time. If you frame them correctly, they can turn into content pillars that continue to draw traffic long after their publish date.
With a steady flow of traffic comes opportunities for lead generation.
In a recent post about optimizing old blog content for conversion, David Cheng shares how to identify and optimize evergreen content on your blog. After doing a content audit to determine which posts continue to draw traffic, he suggests updating popular posts with CTAs that point to relevant lead generation campaigns.
Using Social Media for Lead Generation
10. Promote your tweets
Krave cereal ran a test and found that customers exposed to multiple promoted tweets are 12% more likely to have an intent to purchase.
While promoted tweets are a form of sponsored content, they should resemble typical tweets you see in your feed. Yes, you’re paying to be in front of an audience, but you still need to keep the tweets fun and valuable to your audience. Steamfeed put together a list of the types of tweets brands should focus on to remain relevant.
To maximize the potential of promoted tweets, link to a landing page that is on the same subject as the tweet. For your lead generation campaigns, this will help continue the conversation and ultimately increase conversions.
