Using Your Website to Generate Leads

Pretty much every business owner I’ve ever talked to about their website has said that phrase. Or something close to it.

But how does that work? Because it seems a lot like magic whenever it successful companies discuss it.

“We put up a website and poof. We got hundreds of qualified leads overnight!”

At least that’s how they tend to present it.

There are a few key stages to getting leads with your website. First, you have to get people to your website. Then you have to get them to do something on your website. Then you have to keep communicating with the people who didn’t buy in the first time but are still interested in your products or services.

Let’s talk about those in the context of some elements we often build on websites.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are direct methods of generating leads. A landing page is page on a website dedicated to a specific topic. The goal of a landing page is to have a place specifically designed to correspond to an advertisement or promotion. As such, each landing page should be tied to only one campaign for tracking and offering customized offerings. When connected to a campaign, a landing page takes people who click on the ad to a page that tries to sell the solution, or collect information to further the conversation.

For service businesses, a landing page may focus on a specific service you are promoting. For construction companies, you may have a landing page to focus on a specific material you want to promote. In either case, you will need to have specific page, with discount codes or other tracking info, so you can see that the campaigns is working.

Product Pages

Product pages can generate leads by informing potential customers about a product while calling them to either buy the product or request additional information. Far too often product pages get treated like a place to dump all the information regarding your product.

It’s not bad to inform your audience about what your product (or service) includes. But every product or service page can also be used to gather leads. A simple way to do this is to include a form (or a link to a form) on the page to request additional info regarding the product.

Call-to-Actions

One of the most overlooked areas for having a website that can generate leads is having buttons that people can click to take them to the next step. We call these “calls to action.” Many companies overlook having a call to action on their pages altogether, and some of the people who do have them, don’t have them easily visible.

Imagine walking into a restaurant that had descriptions of the food items on big signs for you to look at. But as you look around the store, you don’t see any place to order the item you want. There’s no cashier or cash register, and all you can see are the menus. You’d probably walk out.

The same thing goes for your website. If all people can see on your site is the information on your products but not a way to get them, they will leave and never turn into leads.

Newsletter Sign-ups, Blog Articles and Lead Magnets

Campaigns and ads drive people to your website. Landing pages, product pages, and your home page all try to get people to click on the “calls to action.” But what happens when the person isn’t ready to commit yet. How can you turn that person into a lead. You need to get their email address to send them more information.

A common strategy is to use newsletters and lead magnets to generate email lists, which you can send blog articles and emails to in order to generate leads. A lead magnet is a document with helpful and useful information that is otherwise challenging to acquire which you have put together to help inform and convince potential leads. They are always given in exchange for an email address.

For example, a catering company might create a lead magnet about what a client needs to know to order the right amount of food. A construction company might create a lead magnet about the proper way to use certain products and how to tell if they were installed properly on your project. Each lead magnet gives helpful information that is designed to build trust with potential clients while sharing useful information.

In Conclusion

Your website was meant to help you generate leads. It’s a form of advertising that costs you money every year.

If your website is not helping you generate leads, you should take a look at whether you have campaigns that lead to landing pages, product pages that are designed to draw your potential client’s interest, calls to action that are easy to follow, and a way to follow up with people who are not yet ready to buy. There are other areas that could be keeping your website from working as well.

Want to know how your website fits into a lead generation system?

Download the “Ultimate Guide to Generating Leads” e-book we’ve included below.

If you want to know why your website isn’t generating leads, schedule a free consultation with one of our marketing experts to get some answers and figure out where to get started.