Digital marketers tend to focus on generating more traffic to a website. This is where marketing budgets are usually spent.
Yet, making the most of that traffic you acquire is a much smarter (and more effective) digital marketing strategy.
First of all, it doesn’t require huge ongoing investments (unlike building traffic). In most cases, on-site tactics are either free or much less expensive than trying to drive new clicks from outside. All you will definitely need is time.
Secondly, investing in generating and nurturing leads allows you to understand your target audience better and accumulate your own data, which will help your digital marketing strategy in the long run.
This is not to say that you should not invest in generating clicks and acquiring new visitors to your site. But doing that without optimizing your site for leads and sales means wasted money and missed opportunities.
After all, the average customer acquisition cost has seen a 222% increase in ten years, from $9 in 2013 to $29 in 2022. And with the current economic client, it shows no sign of declining. If you are not focusing on engaging and converting those clicks, you are just wasting your money.
Here are five ways to generate and nurture more leads from your traffic.
1. Start Building Sustainable Customer Relationships
This is the most fundamental step here, but it is also the one you need to handle first. Unless you have a well-defined customer relationship management system and a marketing automation platform, there’s no point in acquiring new leads.
The moment a new lead comes in, your team needs to start developing ongoing relationships with them. Otherwise, you will lose those leads that are so hard to get!
Investing in customer relationship-building software is almost always a good idea here. You may think that your sales team will be able to handle it manually, but you will really see the difference when you empower them with a solid tool.
Featured tool: HubSpot CRM is one of the best CRM solutions out there which has also integrated AI into their platform. With the help of AI, you can now manage relationships with your customers much more easily:
Process leads
Answer customer requests
Manage data
On top of that, you will have a detailed customer profile (the company they work for, their budget, their contact information, etc.)
Of course, there are more CRM solutions, including Salesflare and PipeDrive, so do your own research and pick the one that best fits your needs. There are also quite a few business phone applications that have CRM components integrated, so if you rely on customers’ calls as a lead generation tactic, choose one of those.
2. Match Your Content to Customers’ Expectations
Building a site that attracts already pre-qualified leads is key to your lead generation success, especially when it comes to organic search traffic.
Imagine someone searching for something that has a direct relation to your business. More often than not, it is pretty obvious what they need to find. And this is not just the actual answer they were looking for.
It is also about the format and the action they intend to take when finding what they need.
For example, if they are searching for [best CRM software], they are shopping for one. These searchers are very close to a sale. But if they are searching for [CRM examples], they are likely to be at the very start of their research. They need answers.
Now, if you are selling a CRM solution, you will want both of those groups of searching, but you may want to refrain from actively selling to the latter one. So, in this case, you need two types of landing pages matching both of these searchers, their expectations and their closeness to a sale.
This is the fundamental search intent optimization we have already talked about in much detail. Using your own common sense and trying to put yourself in the searcher’s shoes is the first important step to optimizing for search intent. Searching Google is another great idea as Google offers a lot of clues as to what its users are seeking.
Finally, using intent optimization tools is another great idea.
Featured tool: Text Optimizer searches Google for your target query and applies semantic analysis to identify related and underlying concepts to help you meet searchers’ expectations when creating your copy.
3. Customize Returning Users’ Experience
As SEOs, we tend to get obsessed with attracting new visitors to our sites. In many ways, our returning visitors are often neglected, which is a shame because people who choose to come back to your site are generally likelier to convert into leads or customers.
They already know your brand (and likely trust you)
They already know what they want
Unsurprisingly, historically returning visitors have always converted better. Back in 2018, Barilliance published a research study claiming the conversion rate of returning visitors was almost twice higher than that of new site visitors.
Do you know how you can make this number even higher?
Start Remarketing
On-site remarketing strategy means customizing your site users’ experience based on your users’ past interactions with the site. For example, if there was a dedicated campaign on Facebook and one of your leads came to your site twice as a result of it, it is very likely that that person came back for what they initially saw in the ad.
So, customize your CTAs to match that old campaign of yours. This increases your chances to catch their attention and finally get them to convert. Facebook and Google offer powerful remarketing tools you can use.
4. Create and Market More Videos
Videos have long been found major conversion boosters, and they are only becoming more effective:
Using a video on a landing page can increase conversions by 86%
In a survey, CharityDynamics found that 60% of millennials prefer watching videos over reading newsletters. Not to mention the younger generation, which operates almost entirely through video.
Hosting your video is also free. Both YouTube and Vimeo provide free video hosting, and I’d recommend using both. It is a good idea to repurpose your long-form video content as short videos you can market on TikTok, as well as Instagram/Facebook Reels and Youtube Shorts.
5. Create More Engaging Landing Pages
Finally, here is a super simple test that can give you a peek into your audience’s interest in your content: does it catch the eye in five seconds or less? Headlines are incredibly important in online content because they are all you have to hook your readers right away.
Email newsletters, blog posts, and even social media posts need to make an impression in those 5 seconds, or the person will just keep skimming. Just think of all the content they have to choose from, all the stimulation and distractions. Without a catchy headline, you don’t stand a chance.
Page speed is another crucial SEO and conversion factor that can actually make or break your site’s performance.
While headlines and speed are what make your landing page perform, social proof is what persuades visitors to act.
Remember that your customers’ testimonials should showcase how your customers or partners have benefited from working with you. What exactly did they love about your product or service?
Use testimonials that are descriptive enough to reveal essential benefits. Otherwise, they won’t work. Testimonial placement is also important, so experiment with different page layouts.
Social proof is important but it is not the only trust signal you should be worried about:
Sections like “Featured in” or “Trusted by” including recognizable logos will make your site look more compelling.
Ensuring your customers that your site is secure and trustworthy is another important step. With the recent rise of privacy and security concerns, consumers are now more worried about private data. As Hari Ravichandran stated, securing your assets and ensuring your customers that their data is safe is any business’s priority.
Featured tool: Try Five Second Test to see what people immediately associate your landing page with. It’s a great way to generate immediate user feedback.
Conclusion
A customer’s journey might involve multiple touchpoints before making a purchase or converting. They might visit a website for the first time for research, return later for comparisons, and then again to make a purchase.
Lead generation takes time and effort. You should always fine-tune your process and test new tactics. Hopefully, the above tips will give you new ideas and allow you to convert more of your current traffic.
The post Five Steps to Generating & Converting More Leads in 2024 and Beyond appeared first on Convince & Convert.