How To Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

Every business wants to maximize their marketing investments by generating more revenue. Whether you can or you can't sell directly online, you have to have a strategy to convert website visitors into leads.

There are some prerequisites if you want to convert website visitors into leads...

Know Your Buyer Personas and Their Buyer's Journeys

Everything Inbound starts with your buyer persona and the buyer's journey. If you haven't defined them, you're not marketing as efficiently and effectively as you should be. If you are going to put time and money into getting new business, it should be highly targeted to your best buyers.

Attract High Quality Traffic To Your Website

If your website is on a desolate island, with little to no high quality traffic, you need to address that issue before you focus too heavily on how to convert website visitors into leads. You can address the quality of your traffic by defining your buyer persona(s), and their buyer's journey.

You can increase the volume of traffic to your website by creating excellent content that speaks to your best buyers at each stage of their buyer's journey. This content should include the pages on your website, but also your blog. Blogging is the best way to add great content to your website.

Options To Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

Basic Contact Form

A basic contact form should be on every website. It's quick and easy for website visitors to fill out an online form and let's them contact you without picking up the phone or emailing. A basic contact form is usually found on the contact page where visitors can find your address, phone number, etc....

This form isn't really considered a workhorse to convert website visitors into leads. It's more of a passive conversion opportunity. Also, keep in mind that someone filling out your contact form isn't usually expecting to receive email marketing messages from you. If you plan to send them email marketing, make sure you make that clear on the contact form.

Sample/Catalog/Brochure Request Form

Nearly every business has a brochure or informative packet that they can send to a prospect. Some can even send samples. This is a great way to connect with prospects that are further down the buyer's journey, and closer to the decision stage.

When a prospect requests any of the above, you must quickly fulfill their request and have a follow-up workflow in place to make sure you don't get forgotten while the lead gets closer to a buying decision. Your follow-up should include educational information and personal contact. Make their decision as easy as possible and build the case that your solution is the right one.

Quote Request Form

It doesn't get any closer to the decision stage than this. When a lead is directly asking you to give them a price, they're getting ready to pull the trigger with you or your competition.

Like the form above, time is of the essence. Get them a quote as quickly as possible. Make sure you are staying in contact with them and providing educational content where appropriate.

This stage will be much more effective and have a higher closing rate if you have done your job in the earlier stages of the buyer's journey. If you haven't and your competitors have, be ready to concede the sale.

Coupon/Special Offer Signup Form

Everyone loves a good deal. If you are in an industry where promotions can be used, make them available online in exchange for some contact information. Anyone that signs up is a potential customer! You obviously have to deliver with coupons or special offers.

When you convert these website visitors, there's a pretty good chance that you've identified a sales-qualified lead. You should have your follow-up workflows defined to nurture these leads into sales.

E-Newsletter Signup Form

This conversion opportunity is on almost every website. It's the standard, "Hey, let us send you email marketing messages..." form. Anyone willing to sign up is giving you permission to make them a lead and start marketing to them.

Understand that these leads need to be better qualified before you start calling them. Keep an eye on their activity and triggers for when they move beyond a passive listener.

Content Marketing Download Form

If you want to convert website visitors into leads in higher volumes and higher quality, you want to use content marketing. Remember, your buyer persona and buyer's journey play a huge part in making content marketing work effectively.

With content marketing, you can speak to leads much earlier in their buyer's journey by producing high quality content that appears when they are trying to identify their problem or potential solutions to their problem.

By providing this educational content, you are building rapport and trust with these early stage prospects, and exposing them to your solutions. By using calls-to-actions for higher value, premium content, you can get these website visitors to convert into leads.

The way it works is, you provide high value content in exchange for the website visitor's email address. You deliver the content and have converted the website visitor into a lead.

Like the other conversion opportunities outlined above, the process can't stop here. You must gauge their interests and send them high quality follow-up until they are sales-qualified. At that point, you want to use a mix of educational content and personal contact.

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Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

The bottom line is that you want to maximize the traffic to your website by converting as many high quality visitors into leads as possible. The forms outlined above a great starting place for conversion opportunities on your website. Just be sure that you think through and plan your follow-up procedures too.