A website creates those first few precious impressions on potential customers. It’s at the heart of any digital marketing activity and a key touch-point for a business to start a conversation with its audience. Many marketers struggle to get leads from this essential online marketing channel.
In a dynamic business environment, it’s critical to work on implementing the latest lead generation tools and strategies on your business website.
Wondering how it all works? Here are some unique and productive ways to turn your website into a lead generation powerhouse.
1. Integrate a Personalized Chatbot
An automated live-chat system, a Chatbot interacts with site visitors and answers their queries. The AI-based system comes with several features to convert visitors into leads:
- It’s available to interact with users 24/7
- Creates audience segments based on user data
- Provides personalized experiences to visitors by tracking their preferences
- Offers quick solutions to queries and does away with waiting time
- Replaces lead forms and engages site-visitors in real-time
For example, RapidMiner got 10,000 new leads by replacing website lead forms with a Chatbot. The system helps boost sales team performance by managing first level site interactions.
It’s easy to implement a website Chatbot using a tool like Botsify or Drift.
2. Setup a Callback System
About 70% of the consumers surveyed about their customer service preferences said they would rather speak to a human customer representative. – Retail Dive
According to New Voice Media, 75% of consumers say a phone call is the quickest way to get a response.
A call-back system provides users with an opportunity to get into a call with the company’s sales representative. Marketers can implement a tool like Limecall, to integrate a call-back system. The tool shows a call widget to visitors who’re most likely to convert. It’s a unique way to add a personal touch to your site’s user experience and generate more leads.
Another useful strategy is to add a click-to-call button on your site. The button allows users a quick and easy way to call up and speak to your company’s representative. Here’s a useful guide on how to create links to telephone numbers and put in place a click-to-call button.
3. Implement an Automated Lead Generation System
An automated lead generation system tracks a site visitor’s company and contact details. Businesses can implement a system like Albacross to keep tabs on first-time and repeat visitors. The tool integrates with your CRM-system and keeps populating it with new contacts. An intelligent next step is to do a bulk outreach to understand more about site visitors and add them to your qualified lead pipeline. Here are some useful tips:
- Send out a survey to understand a prospect’s current set of challenges and preferences.
- Offer a newsletter subscription with a clear option to unsubscribe.
- 5th, 7th, and 12th of the month are the top days to schedule your campaign; the best days are Tuesdays and Thursdays.
- Keep your subject lines simple – a good approach is to be consultative and not hard-sell your products/services.
4. Recover Abandoned Carts Through Text Messages
The lead generation technique can work well for eCommerce stores. You can implement a simple text messaging system like SlickText to recover abandoned carts on your eCommerce website. The innovative strategy helped several of SlickText’s clients to benefit from text message campaigns reminding site visitors to come back and complete their purchase:
- A client recovered $156,915 in 30 days
- Another client achieved 792 extra sales in 30 days. Almost two-thirds of visitors who left the site came back and made the purchase.
Here are useful tips to run SMS campaigns to retrieve abandoned carts:
- Send a quick follow-up message after the cart has been abandoned.
- Use a powerful and relevant call-to-action that encourages users to sign up.
- Add a link to help them complete the purchase.
- Send a series of reminder messages at regular intervals.
5. Run Interactive Content Campaigns
70 percent of marketers say that interactive content is effective at converting site visitors. -DemandGen Report
Marketers can explore a variety of interactive content formats including quizzes, games, contests, polls, interactive tools, and assessments. For example, Fit Father Project, a healthcare company, targeting middle-aged men, created a quiz called “Are you a Fit Father?”
The quiz helped the audience understand their current fitness levels and health. It then suggested a personalized solution based on users’ answers and encouraged them to sign-up for a compelling offer. The healthcare company was able to generate 15000 new leads from the campaign.
Here is another inspiring example of an interactive content piece by Earth Day:
The plastic pollution calculator helps users to understand their current plastic consumption and how they can reduce it. The purpose is to help the audience feel good about working towards saving the environment.
6. Optimize your Landing Pages
Several optimization techniques can help you improve website signups. For instance, in this example, Highrise was able to achieve a 102 percent increase in lead-collection by showing a human image while displaying lesser information about the company on its landing-page.
Besides making a landing page visually appealing and human, marketers can work on making it easy for visitors to sign-up for a service or a newsletter subscription. Airbnb, for instance, makes use of social media signups to simplify user experience and expedite the registration process.
They have kept the landing page layout clean – a user sees the full contact form only after she chooses to sign-up with email.
Marketers need to keep testing and optimizing their landing pages. A good way to understand visitor-activity and preferences is to implement a heatmap tool. The software enables marketers to get a visual representation of clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements on a page or a unique section on it. These insights give a clear direction about how to improve a web page. For example, Bannersnack, an online design tool, conducted a heatmap analysis for its website. The team at Bannersnack was able to improve website sign-ups by 25% by doing a small tweak – a bigger call-to-action with more contrast.
7. Publish Audience-Centric Content
According to this study by Databox, content marketing is the most reliable channel for B2B lead generation. Publishing audience-centric content is one of the best ways to generate leads from your business website. The strategy can help marketers build a loyal audience for their content leading to repetitive site visits and recurring leads.
For instance, SecureWorks, a cybersecurity company consistently produced educational content to get a 50% higher conversion rate.
8. Share your content on social media
Social media is inevitable.
With nearly 3 BILLION users worldwide, you can bet that your target audience is on social media.
Using a social listening tool like Mention, you can:
- Listen to your market and identify on which social media platforms you should focus: you shouldn’t post on all social media platforms. It would be time-consuming and most-likely inefficient. Instead, we recommend focusing on 2 to 3 social media platforms.
- Schedule your social media posts well in advance to maximize their impact. The idea is to take 1 – 2 hours a week, tops, to schedule all your social media communications, from one place, instead of having to log in individually to each platform each time you need to post something.
9. Invest in an Introductory Video
On average, people stay 2 minutes longer on sites with videos than they do on sites without them. An introductory video is a great way to tell your brand story and get the users hooked. The best place to add such a video is the home page of your website. Most intro videos tell the audience about the larger purpose of a business. Such videos can talk about how the company came into being, who all are behind it and what are some of their key achievements.
An introductory video builds brand trust among site visitors helping them to take action. It helps humanize your branding building a strong emotional connection with first-time visitors.
Take a look at this example of a brand video from Casper. The video brings out the mattress company’s purpose of providing quality sleep to its customers. It also talks about Casper’s product – its key features and advantages.
Final Thoughts
A company’s online presence plays a critical role in helping fetch new prospects and customers. Online users have the power to do ample research before they can make an informed purchase decision – they have become far more active at finding the most suitable products and services. Businesses are, therefore, switching from traditional lead-generation methods such as advertising, cold calling, and referrals to connect with the evolved online buyer of today. A website is an essential channel to get prospects to find your business and provide them with some great experiences and information.
