Seven Tips for Generating Leads Online

Friday, July 20, 2007

What do you expect from your Web site? Generating leads should be included in your list of expectations. Your site should be about answering a prospect's unspoken questions and communicating the value of doing business with you.

Your site visitors come to you with curiosity, expecting you to understand what they need and to lead them along a comfortable path of enlightenment and delight. Every click represents an unspoken question they hope you will answer.

The design, architecture and content of your Web site should convince visitors that you are valuable to them, so they give something of value to you in return by becoming a lead.

When the goal is generating leads, you usually want to persuade your visitors to fill in a contact form, download a white paper or demo, register, opt in to a newsletter or e-mail list or forward your content to a friend.

How can you most effectively persuade them? Here are several suggestions to get you started.

1. The Message Must be Relevant

Identify what matters to your visitors. What motivates them to seek you out? What problems do you solve for them? What friction points do you reduce for them? Identify the benefits and value your products confer. Find your visitors' buttons, then push them by serving up a nice, juicy, relevant message.

2. No Jargon

Unless you're marketing to a select audience that absolutely requires you to communicate credibility via insiderspeak (jargon), stay away from the stuff. Jargon convinces folks you aren't really interested in talking to them, so they're far less likely to pay attention. If you must include specific terminology, give it a low profile. Those wanting to know if you really talk the talk will look to find it. Using you customers' language on your Web site not only helps them feel as though you are speaking to them, it also boosts your chances with the search engines.

3. It's Not About You

Brilliant as you and your business may be, focus on visitors. Let them know you understand their needs and what matters to them. Put them center stage.

4. A Little Information Goes A Long Way

When it comes to forms, ask for as little information as possible. Traditionaly, you might want to request customer information that includes everything from name to shoe size. You can certainly ask for it. But the more information you ask for, the less likely folks are to fork it over. Conversion rates are generally proportional to the amount of information requested. A relationship can begin with a simple email address request form.

5. Layout Matters

No two ways about it, if visitors can't quickly make visual heads or tails of your content, they won't stick stick around and you won't generate a lead. Layout matters. Your copy and message should be seen with a quick scan.

6. Qualify Better

It is your job to help your visitors qualify their needs as soon as they land on your site. When you provide a means for them to find what they want and to get to it quickly, you build rapport and help your visitors feel understoon. It's a process that begins on the home page.

But not all visitors know exactly what they want. Let visitors know briefly who you are, what you do, and what you offer. Your're more likely to persuade them to become a lead.

7. Test, Measure, and Optimize

Improving lead generation means evaluating what you what you've done so you can figure out how to do it better. Web analytics to consider include:

Responses: How many folks downloaded your white paper, subscribed to your newsletter, or opted in to your email list?

Time spent on site: How long do visitors stick around?

Reject rates, especially on contact pages: Where do folks bail out of your site? Are you losing visitors just when you think you have them?

Leads-to-close ration: Is there a connection between perception and satisfaction?

Try incorporating one or two of these suggestions and see what happens. Better still, make all these the centerpiece of your site's conversion philosophy, and watch those leads roll in!