Top 5 Keys to Generating Leads On Your Website

Transcription

1 Top 5 Keys to Generating Leads On Your Website

2 Top 5 Keys to Generating Leads On Your Website Online marketing is not a new concept. Businesses have long been integrating online advertising tactics into their overall marketing mix to build awareness and drive traffic to their websites. What is new, however, is the way businesses are starting to connect with their customers and prospects online. There is a palpable shift away from interruption advertising and toward inbound marketing to generate leads and grow their client base. That s because inbound tactics such as SEO, blogging, social media, content offers and lead nurturing are more cost-effective than traditional forms of outbound marketing. Marketers are shifting their budgets, and seeing results. Here, we get into 5 ways you can effectively generate leads on your website through inbound marketing. 1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 57% OF INTERNET USERS SEARCH THE WEB EVERY DAY. SOURCE: MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM, OCTOBER 2010

3 You might already know about SEO. If you do, you already know that a good SEO strategy puts your website front and centre when Internet users are looking for the types of products and services you sell. By considering what your audience is searching for, the actual keywords they re typing in, and the search engines they re using, you can optimize your site by editing the content, HTML and associated coding to increase its relevance to keywords. Worldwide, we conduct 88,000,000,000 searches per month on Google, 1 and 70% of the links users click on are organic not paid. 2 With 75% of users never scrolling past the first page of search results, good search rankings are critical to successful online marketing BLOGGING Are you blogging? If you are, are you doing it often enough, or in a way that maximizes SEO? Blogging frequently can have a significant impact on traffic and leads. According to Hubspot, for example, businesses who blogged 16 to 20 times per month got over 2 times more traffic than those who blogged less than 4 times per month. And those who blogged at least 20 times per month had 5 times more traffic than those who blogged less than 4 times per month. MEDIAN MONTHLY LEADS % < >311 # OF INDEXED PAGES SOURCE: HUBSPOT, STATE OF INBOUND MARKETING LEAD GENERATION REPORT, 2010

4 Prospects, customers and search engines all love the content generated through blogging. Prospects do because it helps them understand what your customers do. Customers appreciate it because it helps them stay up to date with your offerings and your thought leadership. Search engines like it because each post represents another page that they can index for a specific topic and feed it to others who are searching those words. 3. CONTENT OFFERS One very effective way of generating leads on your website is to incorporate prominent calls-to-action to download great content offers and asking for a Facebook like or address in return. NEARLY 2/3 OF US INTERNET USERS REGULARLY USE A SOCIAL NETWORK 52.3% 60.1% 63.7% SOURCE: EMARKETER, FEBRUARY 2011 Content offers on a website can educate your prospects, and help them get smarter about what they need. By providing them with meaningful advice, they can come to understand how your products and services might fill their current need. Your content offers, which can include articles, videos and infographics, should map to different stages of the sales process, so that you can effectively nudge them along (i.e. from discovery, to knowledge building, to decision-making, to action), and so that you can nurture your leads accordingly.

5 4. SOCIAL MEDIA Having active social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is no longer a niceto-have, it s a must-have when it comes to online lead generation. More than 70% of Canadian Internet users are on Facebook 4 that number is 93% in the U.S. Companies that actively use social media to connect with prospects and customers see great results: Marketers who spent 6 hours a week or more using social media and engaging/ sharing content on it saw 52% more leads than those who did not 5 Companies that use Twitter typically double the number of leads they collect per month, compared with those who do not 6 Both B2C and B2B companies are acquiring customers through Facebook Not only is social media an effective way to create exposure for your business online, but it is also a proven way to engage with your audience and establishing this connection will in turn generate leads for your business. 5. LEAD NURTURING Actively moving leads through your sales funnel can dramatically increase your sales opportunities. According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost per lead versus traditional marketing. By building automatically-triggered lead nurturing campaigns behind your content offers, you can further educate and build relationships with your leads, boosting your chances of turning them into a sales-ready consumer. The Internet has fundamentally changed the way people find, discover, share, shop and connect. Meeting consumers in this space and giving them the information, advice and access they need to make purchase decisions and fulfill their needs is an extremely effective way of connecting and engaging with them, and ultimately generating sales-ready leads for your business.

6 Sources: 1 Search Engine Land, February MarketingSherpa, February Marketshare.hitslink.com, October Socialbakers.com/facebookstatistics/canada 5 Social Media Examiner, Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010 More Resources: