Digital Marketing Insights

Having a website is amazing… when you can actually see your return on investment. Here are 7 ways to help make your website work for you to capture more leads online.

1 Compelling Content

Content is great.

Content generates traffic and interest in your business. Content is everywhere including on your social media networks, in your website, and throughout your blog. Content comes in a variety of formats including infographics, videos, meme, guides, reviews, how-to, lists, webinars… the list goes on.

Content that captures leads is even better.

Create content that is SO useful and SO helpful for your target audience. Highlight the content in an offer so compelling that the traffic cannot refuse to leave their contact information with you to access this exclusive resource. Let us now take a look at exactly how to capture the website visitors information.

2 Landing Pages

Landing pages are designed specifically to capture a website visitor’s contact information.

Most of the compelling content you create will be gated, that is, requires the website visitor to input information into a landing page form before they are able to view it. Be sure the form contains ONLY the information you need about the visitor because longer forms are barriers to submissions. The form is an efficient way to capture leads by identifying visitors and adding them into automation workflows to nurture them into qualified, sales-ready leads.

For more information on landing pages and how to optimize them, please visit How to Increase Landing Page Conversions

3 Social Media

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn work great to capture leads because of the vast reach of these platforms. In addition to sharing content that drives interested prospects to your landing page or offering exclusive incentives for signing up for your newsletter, here are 3 other ways that you can capture leads through social media:

#1 Using contests and offers with real, awesome prizes and ask entrants to submit email address for prize or use contests with voters and ask voters to register to vote and in exchange for chance to win prize

#2 Add tabs to (Facebook) pages to collect information, whether it be to Contact Now, Book Now, Subscribe Today.

#3 Twitter Cards give users the opportunity to pass their information on (within Twitter) to businesses in exchange for an offer. You can place a CTA (Call-to-Action) within the Tweet, allowing users to share their information with you all without having to leave Twitter.

4 Live Chat

Having a live chat on your website instantly engages your visitors. In this digitally dominated world, there is something great about being able to enter a bit of contact information to ask a real, live person specific questions. Not only that but if people actually, regularly use the live chat feature, they’ll end up sticking around on your website for a longer period of time (which Google loves!!)

However, sometimes the chat users are not required to enter any information to begin the chat. Rather in these cases, you can offer to send the website visitor a transcript of the chat via email, thus capturing their email. A more obvious option to capture leads with live chat is to present the visitor with the option to receive newsletters from you.

5 Videos

One new and very interesting way to capture leads is through video. An example of lead capture on the fly through video is via Wistia’s Turnstile. These forms are a great way to identify high-quality leads. You can control when these Turnstile’s appear on your video, at the start, in the middle, or at the end. Another similar option is adding YouTube annotations to videos to prompt visitors to take actions, such as subscribe to your channel, or direct them to another landing page.

There are other options to gate video content, such as putting the video access behind a landing page. Here, the visitor would be required to enter their information into the landing page before being able to watch the video. The great thing about having tracking on videos, and other content in general, is the fact that you can track which of your leads have seen specific content and how far along their journey they are.

6 Pop-Up Offers

The truth is that most people find pop-up offers intrusive and annoying. However, strategically placed pop-up offers often succeed at capturing leads. Instead of popping up immediately, effective pop-up offers often appear after the website visitor has spent a certain amount of time on the site, showing interest in the business, or they can appear when a site visitor is showing signs of departure, again, after spending a certain amount of time on the site.

A less intrusive way to collect information from visitors is through presenting a pop-up once they have reached the end of the content, showing extensive interest in your content and increasing the chances that they will leave their information. Another type of pop-up that is often successful is the survey. Create an interesting and relevant survey and present it to your website visitors in a pop-up. They can leave their information with you to participate in the survey.

7 Events / Workshops / Webinars

Some of the best ways to capture leads are from events. Not only is contact information gathered upon registering for the event, you can also gather additional information during the event to further segment your leads. For example, you could create a survey for the event and have people fill it out on the spot. Or during webinars, you can generate social buzz by creating event hashtags, having attendees follow you on social media and having them share exclusive content on their channels–ultimately spreading your reach and your opportunity to make more meaningful connections.

Another fun way to capture leads at events is through contests or giveaways. You can drive traffic to specific landing pages to claim a free offer or prize, or if you’re feeling adventurous you could have a text-to-win competition. There are also apps out there that instantly digitize business cards, gathering the contacts information for you and inputting the information into a database. From there, these contacts can be added to your choice of automated email responders.

But wait… there’s more!

Regardless of HOW you capture leads online, you must remember that this is only the beginning of their journey with you. There are three very key things to remember:

#1 Nurture.

You must not let the contact information that you gather decay. After you have captured your leads information, add them to a nurturing workflow to convert them into a sale, or your equivalent of a conversion.

#2 Don’t SPAM.

You don’t like it and neither does anyone else. If you’re in Canada, be sure to obtain implied or express consent for emails  and always give the recipient the chance to unsubscribe.

#3 Track, Test, and Optimize.

The only way to tell if your lead capturing efforts are effective is to track how many leads you’ve generated from each campaign type. If you haven’t received many leads, perhaps it is time to A/B test your campaign to optimize it.

Please feel free to leave us a comment below telling us your best way to capture leads online. And don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to take your online presence to the next level.

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Mouneeb is an experienced digital marketing strategist with a passion for helping clients achieve their goals online. With over 15 years of experience in designing, developing, and managing a team that develops top-notch web projects, he brings a wealth of information to the teams that he leads and the leaders that he follows.
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