Persuading Visitors to Become Leads
Generating a lead may be the sole purpose of your website or a small piece of your marketing mix. Either way, lead generation is always about answering a persona's unspoken questions and communicating the value of doing business with you. It doesn't matter whether your business is B2B or B2C, whether your sales process is simple or complex — these factors may influence the details of your tactics, but they won't change the fact that every lead generation process is about persuasion. You want to persuade visitors to:
- fill in a contact form
- download a white paper
- register for a demo
- opt in to a newsletter or e-mail list
- forward your content to a friend
Once you have created personas that represent your audiences, and identified the action you want them to take, it's time to review your website. Can the design, architecture and content of your Web site convince visitors to become leads? Here are seven persuasive tips to guide your thinking:
1. Make Your Message Relevant
Identify what really 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 or services provide.
2. Eliminate Jargon
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. For those people wanting to know if you can really talk the talk, provide a place for this on your site.
If you're not sure how folks talk or think about your products or services, conduct online consumer research and speak with the people who interact directly with your customers. Using your customers' language on your Web site not only helps them feel as though you are speaking to them, it also enhances your search engine strategy.
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. Instead of telling them about what you offer, tell them how you solve their problems.
4. Ask For as Little as Possible
When it comes to forms, ask for as little information as possible. The more information you ask for, the less likely folks are to fill it in. Conversion rates are generally proportional to the amount of information requested. This holds especially true for lead-generating conversions.
Lead generation is a value exchange. Your visitors expect to get something of value from you in exchange for their information. If you want more information, provide more value in proportion to the request.
5. Help Them See It
No two ways about it, if visitors can't quickly make visual heads or tails of your content, they won't stick around and you won't generate a lead. Good clean design counts. Evaluate your copy for scannability and skimmability. Make sure your information is where visitors expect to find it.
6. Help Them Qualify Themselves
It is your job to help your visitors qualify their needs as soon as they land on your site. So help them find what they want quickly. Build rapport quickly on your home page (or a well-designed landing page). Of course, not all visitors know exactly what they want. But if you let visitors know briefly who you are, what you do, and what you offer, you're more likely to persuade them to become a lead.
7. Test, Measure, and Optimize
Improving lead generation means evaluating 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 e-mail 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 ratio: Is there a connection between perception and satisfaction?
People do their research online precisely so they don't have to interact with someone. Think of your visitors as the most introverted people you ever knew. They come to you with curiosity, expecting you to understand what they need and to lead them along a comfortable path of enlightenment. If you follow these suggestions, your chances of capturing these people will increase dramatically.