You put in so much effort building a business: all the planning, the hard work, the hours, the money! You build a solution to the target audience and try to fulfill their need. But, what is in it for you? The returns. You need more sales and more ROI. That is your bread and butter. But before you can even think of selling to someone, they first have to become a lead. That is what this article is all about. How to excel at lead capture!
Sources of Lead Capture:
Gone are those good old days when you just lay back in your chair and wait for the leads to come to you. You now have to get off that chair and go urge the leads to come to you. And, mind you, they won’t come so easily unless you give them solid reasons to. You need to figure out your game plan, and the unique value that you are going to offering your clients.
But much, much before that, you need to first figure out where you are going to get your leads from. To do that, you can adopt the ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) Framework. For example, if I am planning to sell affordable home decor, then the best target audience would be young earning professionals between the ages of 25-30. Then you can figure out the best means of reaching out to them. Social media would be a good bet. So would email marketing.
So what are the different sources from which you can capture new leads? Let’s take a look.
Paid campaigns
When Google started, no one imagined that it would become the information-rich resource that it is today. Did you know the daily number of searches on Google alone 3.5 billion, which equates to 1.2 trillion searches worldwide (Source: SmartInsights)? There’s the potential right there. People are searching for things and Google can help you bring your business to the forefront when they search for things you offer. That is why Google’s own paid ads platform AdWords is a must platform for lead capture.
They have an amazing myriad of options that allow you to target your leads using text and display campaigns. You can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns as well and modify it better to reach a wider and a more qualified audience.
Other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo! offers options to run paid campaigns as well. Which you can use to your advantage and run campaigns on them on as well.
Social Media:
As in the example, social media plays an important role in modern consumer consumption. There are now different platforms available catering to different social needs. Find the ones that make the most sense for you. You can then create pages/accounts on these sites and start sharing promotional or educational content. Most platforms allow you to have CTAs on your page, which you can use to encourage your visitors to take an action. You can even link them to lead capture landing pages.
Remember those intrusive ads you see on your social media feeds? You can run such paid campaigns in addition to your organic efforts. Social media is a mine of information about your target audiences, such as their interests, their work profile, their income range, their location, and demography. They offer specific targeting options which you can use to send them super meaningful and relevant ads.
Search engine marketing:
Whenever I write an article, I have two goals in mind: a) write to educate and connect with my readers b) write so that I rank on Google. SEO and SEM always rule, because having an article rank for a keyword that is important to you bring in a load of leads. And, relevant ones at that. Which is why people invest heavily in organic search.
The key to increasing your ROI on search engines is to identify the best keyword for your business. For example, if you sell toys for pets online, an obvious keyword choice would be ‘pet toys online’. If you manage to rank for this in the top 5, the rest assured that you would see a significant increase in the amount you sell.
Website:
For an online business or any business for that matter, a website is your online address. It is where your visitors or leads stop by to get information on you and what you sell. A good website experience will ensure that your visitors stay on the site and spend more time on it. In fact, 48% of all consumers have left a business’ website and made a purchase elsewhere because the experience was poorly curated (Source: Accenture).
Quick response time, easy navigation, attractive CTAs, and good design are all key elements that you need to keep in mind while designing your website. A lower bounce rate = more conversions. Now, how do you capture leads that visit your website?
1. Landing pages:
A landing page is basically where your users ‘land’ after they click on an ad or a CTA in an email. Usually, they visit the landing page with some expectations. For example, if you are looking to sell a tour package to Thailand, then your page should talk about the itinerary and cost of the package. Landing pages help your visitors to understand the product or service they are looking for, eventually allowing them to convert. Remember to have a good form with a relevant CTA.
2. Widgets:
You can have lead capture forms embedded on the side of your web page. Sometimes while going through your website, they might be interested, but might not have the means to let you know of that interest. That is when having an actionable widget such as signing up for a related webinar or downloading an e-book or even adding their names to your newsletter list, helps a lot. They can then simply sign up and you will be able to capture leads seamlessly.
3. Exit popup:
This is a tactic that many websites are using quite effectively. Sometimes your visitor may find your website not engaging enough or may just exit for other reasons. When they start navigating towards the exit button, you can then have a popup which prompts them to fill a form. Again, you can ask them to share their contact details in exchange for a discount code, or an e-book, or a newsletter subscription
Third party websites:
There are many aggregator websites or marketplaces where people go to find the things they want or need. And most of them offer you the option to capture leads. Software tools also have review platforms like G2Crowd, Capterra, Software Suggest etc, where people come to read up on reviews and ratings before making a purchase.
You can use this to your advantage by getting your customers to give you a good rating and then using the same to encourage your leads to sign up with you.
Events:
Despite the many online methods to capture leads, a good event still has a very good potential for getting new leads for your business. You can find out the latest events that are happening in and around your business locations and attend the same. You can even set up a booth exhibiting your business and offerings for more impact.
Events are also a good place to build lasting relationships with people you meet and make a super good impression on them. If you have a tool that helps you capture leads on the spot, then you can use such events to generate good leads.
Things to keep in mind while designing a lead capture page:
Now we spoke about the various sources from which you can collect leads. But almost all of the sources will redirect your leads to a lead capture page. These pages are designed with the intention of cajoling your visitor to voluntarily give up their contact information, hence becoming your lead. But, before that, you need to understand how your lead capture page should look for it to work the way you want.
Headline:
This is literally the very first thing that a visitor will see upon landing on your page. You need to ensure that your headline is concise and clear. More than that, you need to ensure that it is easily understandable and does not confuse your visitor. Using actionable verbs has been proven effective in terms of choosing a headline for your landing page.
Form:
The form is where your visitor is going to enter his contact details. You should make it easy for him to fill. A shorter form usually works best, as it saves the visitor time in terms of filling it out. If the person is already a lead, you can add autofill options that ensure quick form submission. Use a good form headline on top to give them a little more reason to fill up the form.
Image:
Imagine yourself seeing a plain boring text lead capture page. I’d be thoroughly put off, simply because the page does not appeal to me. But, a page with colorful or informative images which compliment the context of the landing page, I’d be super tempted to fill it out. So, use images to your advantage.
CTA:
Your CTA is the final button that your visitor is going to click to become a lead. Instead of using generic buttons that say ‘submit’ or ‘sign-up’, you can try and add button such as ‘Get your free e-book’ or ‘Avail your free pass’. This has much more impact than generic CTAs and will give you a higher conversion rate. You can even use multiple CTAs or create multiple offers within one lead capture page
Length:
Did you know that longer landing pages generate 220% more leads than shorter ones (Source: marketingexperiments.com). Long form landing pages are gaining more traction as it increases the quality of your leads as well. You can add multiple CTAs along the page to ensure that conversion happens at any point in the page.
Finally.. test and keep testing!
But to ensure proper success, it is not enough to just invest everywhere. You need to keep testing and finding out which source works best. Then, you can invest in the lead sources that gives you more ROI and the high-quality leads. Not just sources, you can test individual elements of the landing page as well, such as the headline, CTA, and design. You can keep experimenting to find the perfect combination for your business.
To make this a reality, get yourself a tool that will ensure lead capture automation and allow you to create beautiful and responsive landing pages. If you are on the lookout for one, why not give LeadSquared a try?
