You've spent several months and too many pounds to mention having your website redesigned. It looks great - even your kids think so - but it's been a couple of months since it went live and you've yet to have someone complete your contact us page form.
What's going on?
Everyone's raving about the leads their website generates.
Why aren't you seeing the same impact?
Well, in my experience, there are number of reasons this could be the case. But the good news is, that they're all reversible and if you apply my tips on fixing them, you're sure to see those leads coming in.
Let's get to it.
Why You're Not Generating Leads from Your Website and How to Change It
1. You're Not Buyer Persona Focused
An immediate sign that you're not focused on your buyer persona is that your website copy and content is either completely product or feature-driven, or so generic in an effort to capture widespread attention that it's not resonating with anyone in particular. Certainly not the people you're looking to do business with.
In order to remedy this, it's imperative to research, profile and understand your buyer persona(s). A buyer persona is a semi-fictional character, representative of your ideal customer. You develop a profile for them by thoroughly researching your ideal customers, taking care to detail their:
- Demographics
- Business and personal roles
- Goals
- Challenges
- Objections
- Interests
- Preferences
Create a story for them and give them a name like Salesman Stan, IT Ian or Receptionist Rose. For added impact find a photo of someone that represents your buyer persona.
In doing this, you create a person that you and your team (in fact, your entire staff) should get to know - and get to know well. Now the trick is to turn all that corporate mumbo-jumbo of product features or list of services on it's head, and write content and copy that addresses your buyer persona's needs, challenges and issues. This helps build trust, credibility and a relationship with these potential buyers.
2. You're Not Blogging Effectively
There are a few potential situations here. Firstly, if you don't have a blog, then this is definitely a reason your leads, and quite likely your traffic, volume is in the toilet. If you're blogging, but still not generating leads, chances are that you're not publishing frequently enough to make any significant impact. Another possibility is that you're blogging consistently, but you're not optimising your blog post for keywords and terms you're buyer personas are looking for, and as such, search engines aren't indexing (or ranking) your blog posts accordingly.
a. You're Not Blogging at All
Let's tackle the non-blogging first. Simply put, you've got to blog! Blogging is a primary driver of traffic to your website, and you need traffic in order to convert leads. For each blog post you publish you're essentially adding a new page to your website, and in doing so, giving it another opportunity to rank in search engines.
b. You're Not Blogging Consistently
Right, now that you're blogging, you're going to have to commit to it, and ensure that you're blogging frequently and consistently. A blog post every 2 months or when ever you get around to it, isn't going to help much. We recommend a minimum of 2 posts a week to start seeing some traction, ramping up to as many as you or your team can manage in a month. Search engine spiders take note of your publishing, or more correctly, updating frequency and will match its crawling accordingly. Search engines prefer to serve content to users from sites they know to be active rather than dormant.
c. You're Not Optimising Your Blog Posts
Lastly, let's address optimisation. While your blog posts need to read well for your visitor, there are a few on-page search engine optimisation techniques to apply that can aid your quest for search engine page rankings, and hence attract traffic (who convert as leads). Ensure you're blogging around key topics and terms your buyer persona is interested in, or needing to be educated about, and most importantly - searching for. Include keywords and terms naturally throughout your blog post copy and specifically in these areas:
- Page title
- Meta description
- Headings (especially H1)
- Subheadings
- As alt-text and titles for images
3. You're Not Active on Social Media
This is another relatively straight forward reason you're not generating leads online. Without actively promoting your fantastic blog posts to your target audiences, they risk never being found or read. This isn't to say, however, that you're free to broadcast your content however and to whoever you please, whenever you feel like it. No, there should be a clear strategy to your social media sharing schedule as well as active, objective participation too. Content 'spammers' stick out like sore thumbs within the realms of social media and as soon as you're identified as such, you can forget about potential leads finding their way to your website.
The HubSpot Social Inbox tool allows you to set up streams in order to 'listen in' on social media conversations for particular keywords. These could be mentions of your business name, products or services, terms relevant to your industry, and competitors name. You'll be alerted to relevant conversations or questions and you'll be able to respond offering advice or providing comment, preferably with a link to a page on your website or a blog post on the topic for further investigation.
An important point to note at this juncture is that while focusing on your buyer persona, blogging consistently with optimisation, and strategically participating in social media will help to drive traffic to your website, it won't necessarily equate to lead generation. On their own that is. So if can check the boxes on the above, and still not generating leads from your site, chances are high that you'll fall into one of the next two categories.
4. You're Not Offering Premium Content
If all you're offering in the way of content is your website copy and your blog posts, there's no incentive or opportunity for your potential buyers to engage with you further. Sure, they may come visit your blog a few more times, but you'd never know it as they remain anonymous visitors to you.
Premium content, or marketing offers as we call them, encourages visitors to take the next step and exchange their contact details for educational material. This will help them to learn more about the issues or challenges they are experiencing and empower them to make a decision regarding a solution. As an initial conversion tool, for the awareness stage of the buyer journey, this content will generally take the form of an eBook, how-to guide or checklist. And you place them behind a form, on a landing page.
Which brings us to the last possible scenario as to why you're not generating leads.
5. You're Not Providing a Clear Conversion Path
Marketing offers are worthless if they're hidden away on your website. An effective conversion path clearly highlights premium content, leads visitors to the offer, and then delivers the material they have requested. There are 3 core elements to a clear conversion path:
- Call-to-action
- Landing page, with a form
- Thank you page
Calls-to-action should be strategically placed alongside, within or below content that is related to the premium content on offer. For example, this blog post pertains to lead generation. Therefore, I've included a call-to-action at the bottom that offers an eBook on 30 Great Lead Generation Tips, Tricks and Ideas. It wouldn't have made sense for me to offer you an eBook on website design as it's not related to the main focus of the post.
The call-to-action will lead you to a landing page that goes into more detail about the eBook on offer, highlighting what you can expect to learn from it and presents you with the form to complete in order to download the offer. (Go on, test it out if you don't believe me!)
Once a visitor has submitted the form, they are automatically included in my contacts database and I've successfully generated a lead. Woohoo, go me!
That wraps up the primary reasons that you're possibly not generating leads from your website.
As every Inbound Marketer knows, conversions are a pivotal part of any successful campaign. Every marketing activity you undertake exists with the sole purpose of converting visitors to leads and leads to customers. If your marketing isn't generating conversions, something is clearly amiss and it's time to have a look at how you can turn the situation around.
6 Top Tips for Boosting Your Conversion Rate
1. Simplify Your Forms
All too often, businesses get a little greedy when it comes to form fields and deciding what to request from prospects when offering content in return. Naturally it's understandable – you want to gain as much information from your prospects as possible. After all, this information is valuable. It helps you gain deeper insight into who your target audience is, where are they coming from, what demographic or geographic details can they offer you, and so on. But bombarding prospects with reams of form fields to fill in is the fastest way to have a visitor say "Sayonara" to filling in your form, and further engaging with your company.
Your forms need to limit their fields in direct relation to the value of the offer you're pitching to your visitors. If they aren't, your visitors will simply end their engagement with you due to the perceived value of your offer not being worth the time it takes them to fill in your forms, or the information they are expected to give you. Also remember to factor in the nature of the information you're asking – people are inherently suspicious of giving out details like phone numbers, so choose your fields wisely.
2. Revisit Your CTAs
We talked quite a bit about this before, but your CTAs need to be on point. And it's not a once off creation process either – it takes testing, testing and then (you guessed it) more testing to continually ensure the CTAs you're putting out there are the best they can be. There are many elements that define a compelling CTA that converts well, from the sizing and colour of your text, to its placement and your choice of wording. The only way to narrow down the list is by conducting continual A/B testing on them to see which CTAs perform best when making small changes here or there. Another key point to remember is to highlight the value of your offer in your CTA, as opposed to telling your visitor what they'll have to do to get it.
3. Make Your Mobile Optimisation a Priority
It's not exactly breaking news – website optimisation for mobile devices is something you should at least of heard of by now, and put into action. An enormous amount of people worldwide browse via mobile devices, and if your site isn't mobile-optimised, you're missing out on a whole lot of conversion opportunity. Make sure your forms and offers are easily viewed via mobile devices, and you may be pleasantly surprised at the turn your conversion rates take.
4. Step Out and Offer Some Reassurance
We've all experienced twinges of doubt or suspicion when downloading offers or content before. After all, we've just given our details to a virtual stranger in the form of a company, and we're wondering whether or not what we're preparing to download is in fact worth it. A great tip for helping mitigate this doubt and hesitancy is by using click triggers to nudge visitors and prospects into taking action.
These can be as simple as including product ratings, testimonials, additional benefits or secure payment icons to areas where your visitors may be readying to convert. Perhaps a sentence of reassurance, or transparent information about the next steps they can expect or take. A good example is the reassurance that you won't share their details. For these to be effective, they have to be included at the critical moment when a prospect is on the cusp of converting.
5. Offer Great Content
Not too difficult to see why this is important, offering relevant content in keeping with the current and trending pain points of your target audience's industry or field is critical to securing more conversions. All too often businesses forget to update their campaigns and offers, and it shows in a lack of conversions. Your target audience isn't going to want to give you their details and convert when the offer is outdated and addresses a problem they're no longer facing, or an obsolete topic. Remember, fresh content is key!
6. Reach Out to Your Prospects
When it comes to converting leads to customers, it's important to go hands on and ask your prospects questions regarding their doubts, any reticence they may be feeling and the problems they're facing. If need be, you can give them call and engage with them, approaching their unique problem and explaining how your product/service provides a solution. It's also an opportunity to gain insight that will stand you in good stead when it comes to tailoring your product or solution for improved conversions going forward.
Have any other conversion-enhancing tips you think we missed out on that work for you? Please let us know, we'd love to hear from you!
