How To Generate More Leads Through Your Website

Two Simple Ways To Get New Customer Leads

Today we’re going be talking about something really important and which will help you get more customers. This is a topic close to my heart because I don’t think enough people are doing it effectively, we are talking about how to generate leads using your website.

I’m going to cover two really easy ways to do it as well as giving you some ideas of things you can use to encourage people to go from just being interested into becoming raving fans.

The first type of lead is a direct lead, these are people who have come to the site and they’re ready to buy, they want to talk to you, they want to schedule an appointment or to fill out a form. Later we’ll also go through indirect leads, which are those who need a little nurturing and are not ready to take action just yet as they are still in the discovery stage. I’ll show you how to handle this type of leads in a slightly different way.

Hot Leads Who Want To Buy Now

Let’s start talking about those direct leads – basically, these are people who are ready to go right now so the first thing you need to do is decide on the action that you want people to take on your site, what’s that big call-to-action going to be?

Do you want people to pick up the phone and call you, do you want them to fill out a form giving you their information so you can give them a callback?

I believe in making things as easy as possible while getting the best results, and in this instance, you can do both through the use of a little automation. You can allow people to schedule an appointment or a consultation call with you directly on your website eliminating all that back-and-forth of arranging a convenient time, and best of all, it’s all done on autopilot.

Automate It To Make It Easy Work

For the automation, there are many programs which can help you here, two of the most popular programs are calendly and Book Like A Boss. They are both really easy to set up and allows your customers to pick a pre-specified time that you’ve already chosen. It’s really easy to embed on your site and seamlessly syncs with your online calendars like a Google calendar or Outlook.

What’s even better is that you can even add some pre-qualification questions to let you gauge if those contacting you are qualified prospects for you or not. You can determine if they have the budget, are they the right kind of fit. You can even ask some preparatory questions if there was anything you needed to know before the call to really help you prepare for that call.

Call To Action – Make It Stand Out.

So whatever you decide that main call to action is going be, whether it is to schedule an appointment on your site or just to fill out a form or even to call you, you need a consistent call to action throughout the site. It is therefore important to make it very prominent and style it as a button not as a text link. You want to really make it stand out and one of the ways to do that is to choose a colour for that button that stands out against everything else on your site and only use that colour for that button.

Now since this is going to be the main call to action throughout the site, I definitely recommend placing it in a few key areas, basically on every page and in the main navigation on top, so ideally you’d have your other navigation elements just as text links and then your CTA is going to be styled as that button we talked about.

I’d also recommend putting it toward the bottom of all your important pages. This would be in a single column with a headline on top and the button underneath, positioned in the centre of the column. I also recommend putting it at the end of every blog post as well as on your about page.

What About Those Warm Leads?

So that covers the direct leads on the site, but what about the more long-term prospects who are not exactly ready to convert just yet?

80 to 90 % of people coming to your site today are only in research mode and only about 18 % of those people are willing to talk to you or a salesperson before they’re actually ready. For those people, you definitely want to make sure you stay top of mind for them throughout their entire decision-making process so that you end up making the shortlist when it’s time for them to actually make that decision. The way you do this is to offer them something valuable in exchange for their email address.

The typical way to do this was to offer a newsletter or ebooks, but these don’t cut it any longer, nobody cares about your newsletter, when’s the last time you signed up for one of those? You know they don’t seem very valuable and neither do books anymore.

There used to be a lot of value associated with an e-book, the problem is people have been abusing that over the past few years and people have caught on to it. People kind of expect now that it’s gonna be a three page PDF that just doesn’t go into enough detail to make it worth it for them.

We want to be different and provide value to our prospects so we’re going have to up the ante a little and come up with something a little more irresistible if you want to get those email addresses, and of course I’ve got some good ideas for you here too.

1. The first one is pretty easy to pull off and that is just the idea of a cheat sheet or a QuickStart guide – now this works great as it’s what we call a content upgrade. So let’s say you have a blog post about a certain topic, this cheat sheet or QuickStart guide is an accompanying download that basically allows people to just download it without having to take notes so that they can act on all those tips. You can have just one of these site-wide or you can have different ones that accompany different blog posts it’s totally up to you
2. Next up we have a workbook which is definitely an upgrade from an e-book because it offers really clear steps and it promises some kind of an outcome once the actions are taken within the book and all the steps have been carried out. This can be a downloadable printout or you can get a little more interactive with it using a google form where the user can fill it out online. There’s an added benefit to doing it this way because you can set it so the answers the user gives are also shared with you which may give you some valuable insights into exactly who your customers are and what kind of problems they’re facing.
3. My next suggestion is a little harder to pull off and that’s a video or audio training, now this can be a pre-recorded video or a live webinar. It’s a great way to get a little more personal and connect on a deeper level with your prospects that you couldn’t really do with any kind of written material. Now if the idea of video scares you audio can actually be pretty effective as well, Marie Forleo who’s pretty well-known marketer has her main lead magnet as audio training, people just download it and they can listen to her when driving to work, walking the dog or at the gym.As we’re talking about video or audio you can take this a step further and do a video series. Now what I really like about a video series is it establishes a bit more of a relationship over time and it also promises an outcome once you get to the end of it. This type of lead magnet is really powerful and some of the best marketers use this approach.
4. Next up, we have quizzes, people definitely love quizzes because they’re interactive and it plays on people’s curiosity, you know they want to see the results at the end. A few great ideas would be to determine if a prospect is right for your product or service or which product or service would be best for your client based on their particular situation.
5. Next we have a multi-day challenge – this is basically challenging your audience to get the desired outcome or learn a specific skill within a set amount of days, you send them one email a day with a different short assignment. People love this because it’s interactive and it definitely promises a result at the end of it.

The main thing to think about with any of these lead magnets is you want people to be saying at the end of it, wow that free content was so good I can’t wait to see what the paid stuff looks like.

Things To Note For Lead Magnet Ideas.

You want to be sure that it’s that your email that delivers the content as opposed to them having to input their email which results in them just been taken to a landing page where they download it. It’s really important to make sure they know it’s going be sent to their email as that’s how you cut down of people giving you fake email addresses.

Make this opt-in really prominent around your site, think of it as a second call to action right behind your more direct call to action. You want to make sure it has its own landing page that you can link to from social media or Facebook ads if you want to go that direction with it.

As well as giving it its own little mini section on all of your important pages and I’d even go a step further and add an exit intent pop up on all your important pages just so there’s kind of a Hail Mary for anyone who was going leave your site, you’re giving them one last opportunity to sign up.

So, in the end, you should have a call to action for those people that are ready to do business today and one for the people who need to be nurtured a little more long-term.

now I want to hear from you and I want to know in the comments below which of these lead magnet ideas are you thinking about using for your own business.