5 Ways to Get More High-Quality Leads and Improve Sales

Blog 20191113 - Five Ways to Increase Leads

They say hindsight is 20/20 and while it may be helpful to look back at 2019, it’s more productive to plan ahead. Now is a great time to create a marketing program for 2020 that will improve the quality of your leads, increase conversions and grow sales revenue.

It is accepted wisdom that the average website will convert between 2% and 3% of its visitors to leads. That means for every 100 visitors to your site, only two or three will become leads. That doesn’t even mean that they are qualified leads, just that they were willing to give you their contact information.

In many cases, your best qualified prospects won’t become a lead unless you give them something of value that compels them to do so. As you plan your marketing program for 2020, use these five steps to increase your conversion of online interactions to leads, and even more importantly, increase the quality of the leads that you do receive.

To Do in 2020

1 – Be Visible

While this might seem obvious, the foundation of marketing success is driving sufficient traffic to your site. If you haven’t implemented the basics of SEO and aren’t actively referring sites and promoting your own site, it won’t matter what you do to improve conversions.

If your site is a desert island, putting the fountain of youth on it won’t increase business if nobody even knows your site is there. So first things first: improve traffic so potential customers know you’re there!

2 – Be Relevant

Now that prospects are visiting your site, ask whether your content is relevant to your target audience. Keep in mind that customers don’t really care all that much about your product. What’s relevant to them is how you are going to help solve a problem.

Does your site articulate WHAT problems you can help them address? Does it show them HOW you will solve those problems? When your site does this, qualified visitors are likely to stay longer and dig deeper into your offering.

3 – Provide Value

Now things get tricky. Even when qualified visitors dig deeper into how you can help solve their problems, you are still only part way there. To convert interested site visitors into leads, you must offer something that provides enough value that they are willing to give you their contact information.

Think about your own experience on websites. How many times have you been on a site and found something of interest, only to be asked for your contact information before you can download it? Your first thought is probably, shoot. If I give them my contact information, they are going to call me and bug me. Is it really worth it?

One way to overcome this resistance in 2020 is to use interactive tools that allow users to configure customized content based on their specific situation. Examples include an assessment tools and value calculators. Once a visitor spends time interacting with the tool, they will likely want to see the personalized content that follows. That is where you gate a piece of content that is highly valuable to them, one that is worth the hassle of giving up their contact details.

Importantly, visitors who invest time and energy into interacting with the tools and downloading content are likely to be highly qualified. ROI Selling’s customers using these types of tools experience conversion rates of 10% to 20% and often even higher. Better yet, the quality of these leads is much higher than those acquired using other types of marketing assets.

4 – Evangelize

Once your site has content relevant to your target audience and interactive tools that will convert them to leads, it’s time to promote your new message to drive even more traffic to your site in 2020.

It’s like that desert island we spoke about earlier. If prospects don’t know about the tools and helpful content on your site, they have no reason to visit. This is where you create and implement campaigns to targeted audiences promoting the value of using your assessment tool or value calculator.

5 – Learn and Repeat

As site traffic and lead conversions begin to increase, it’s time to use advanced analytics to evaluate your success and continue refining your message. Who is actually using the tool? Which of those types of users is actually downloading the personalized content? How can you refine your message and tools to better serve that audience?

Once you have these insights, close the loop and start all over again to continue building on your success.

Conclusion

Now is the time to develop a 2020 marketing strategy that uses our five steps to focus your efforts and improve online lead-gen performance. Start planning now to improve your SEO strategy, enhance your site content and messaging, refine your interactive tools, and update your campaigns to drive even more site visitors and more importantly, more qualified leads to your site.