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Too many digital marketing campaigns fail because they miss the mark on one key metric: conversions.
Tactical success in digital marketing does not always translate to business success. You can run great ads and still get nothing out of them.
“No client likes to hear, ‘We did well on our Google Ads’ when business is down,” says Brian Reese, paid media team lead for TechArk. “We always have to consider how effective our landing pages are and whether they’re providing an easy path to turn a new site user into a customer.”
Success and failure in marketing sometimes come down to how well your website takes the traffic it gets and turns that traffic into sales. In this article, we’ll show you how you can take your website and turn it into a lead-generation tool.
Work Backwards from the Conversion Event
Define what counts as a “lead” (and how many you need)
Marketers can confuse their business owners when the “conversions” they report are not tied to actual leads. We at TechArk define a lead as “someone who expresses interest in your business by taking action.”
Conversions are different actions a user takes to express this interest. They are, by definition, a relative metric because you can track almost anything as a conversion.
For lead-generating websites, it’s important to establish which website events are lead-generating events. This simplifies reporting.
Common conversions for lead-generating websites include:
- Booking an appointment
- Filling out a form
- Calling directly from an ad or the website
- Using a chatbot
Most of our clients use web forms as their primary means to collect leads. During your conversations with your agency, it’s important to explain what constitutes a lead for your business and build those requirements into your forms.
The rule of thumb is that shorter forms generate more leads, but longer forms generate quality leads. You will need to establish the right balance between the quantity and quality of your form submissions.
How Do You Want to Qualify Your Lead
Depending on the complexity of your business, you may choose to keep your forms simple so your sales team can handle the prospecting.
Or you may choose to have a more detailed form that weeds out unqualified leads.
Both are viable options. The question is how much you want to ask upfront versus leaving the questions to your sales team.
- Forms should have quality spam protection to protect your site security and reduce wasted ad spend or SEO efforts.
- Use simple, short-form fields such as dropdowns or short text.
- Open-ended questions should be saved for the end and the most essential questions only.
- Multi-step forms reduce overall form completions. Use them sparingly.
Highlight the Key Points of Sale on the LandingPage
Once you have built your ideal lead-generation form, your sales team can assist you with the most common questions a person asks before or during an initial consultation.
Use these common questions to create the content for your page. Great copy on web form pages answers the last questions prospective customers have right before they schedule an appointment or consultation. Other questions can be answered elsewhere on the site.
Skilled copywriters and ad professionals can help you simplify this language, while a design team can help you create an engaging page that leads someone to a conversion.
Another tip to drive up conversions on this page – add a whitepaper or a free guide that covers several of the key goals, which can aid the conversation with your sales team.
Download Whitepaper: Digital Marketing Demystified
Build Content for Different Customer Journeys
After a person shows interest by completing a form, they are often in the middle of the sales “funnel.”
Other actions on your website represent different steps of the buying funnel. For lead-generating websites, the focus should be on getting people from the “top” to the middle.
Understand What People Are Looking for When They Search for You
Keyword research provides valuable information when you are building your lead-generating website. One of those insights you can gather is what type of content a user wants when they type something into Google.
Free Resource: Get an Instant Custom SEO Analysis
For example, when a user phrases their search as a question, that person is typically looking for information on a topic (informational intent).
Providing answers to topics directly related to your business and linking to other key questions before the user shows a commercial intent will drive more traffic to the site and capture a larger percentage of that traffic.
Each user intent requires different types of content, each of which can lead people closer to your web form.
- Navigational intent – “Pathway” pages to route people to the content they are looking for.
- Informational intent – Blog content to answer specific questions users may have about you or your service line.
- Commercial intent – Service pages to aid users in their decision-making process
- Transactional intent – High-quality landing pages with web forms.
This research and content development pays off for your website: more traffic from search, longer engagement times, and ultimately, more leads.
Use Your Home Page as a Billboard
Your home page is your most important “pathway page” not only because of its large share of user traffic, but because people with one or more intents will start with your home page first.
This is an opportunity to capture leads directly and also to direct them along other parts of the sales journey. Frame your sales pitch here and direct people to the right spot.
Download Infographic: How to Design a Lead-Generating Home Page
Read More: Case Study – How a Website Redesign Increased Conversions by 300%
In building the home page, you will also plan the structure of the rest of the site, including your navigation pages. This will allow different people to get to your converting pages.
Drive Up Engagement With a Well-Organized Sitemap
A website sitemap is the structure of the pages on a website. The sitemap forms the information architecture of your website – where users go to get certain pieces of information.
The navigation at the top of the website is part of that sitemap – it should contain the most important pages of your website. Inside your sitemap, these pages will go above the niche pages which contain more specific pieces of information.
This allows users to get answers to their most important questions and, when they are ready, request more information.
Ten Other Content and Design Tips to Drive Customer Actions
- Eliminate unnecessary content and links from landing pages you use in ads.
- Avoid confusing “brand speak.”
- Put links to trusted external sources in your content – and ensure they open in other tabs.
- Write for skimming, not reading.
- Develop short FAQs in “accordion” navs and link to pages with more in-depth information.
- Leverage video – even if it’s from a non-competing third-party source – where appropriate.
- Get rid of confusing navigation where people go back and forth between the same pages without a clear next step.
- Prioritize speed and accessibility over animations.
- Test, and retest your forms for any errors.
- Place multiple calls to action in your blogs, both to read more and to submit a form.
Generate More Leads with a Custom Website Design
Learn more about how we create lead-generating WordPress Websites with our expertise in design, content creation, and award-winning website development. Schedule a consultation with us today!
