Web Lead Generation
Lead Generation – Optimizely
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of generating consumer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale. In online marketing this typically involves collecting a visitor’s contact information (called a “lead”) via a web form.
Lead generation is a core part of the sales funnel for many B2B companies since their products can cost thousands of dollars and web visitors are less likely to buy their product or service directly from the website. Collecting new leads allows the businesses to educate and nurture prospective customers through email marketing, before reaching out to qualified leads directly via salespeople.
Lead generation is also important for ecommerce and other businesses, as email marketing is still one of the most effective channels for marketing online, and gathering a prospective customer’s contact info allows the business to market to them later, even if they do not make a purchase immediately.
How lead generation works
There are two main components to the lead generation process: getting traffic to your site and then convincing them to share their contact information with you.
The first step of the process is finding an effective way to attract prospects to your website. Depending on your company’s goals and budgetary constraints, there are many ways to start attracting prospects to your site. The following are some of the key ways businesses use to drive traffic:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – SEM is a form of online advertising that involves paying search engines (such as Google or Bing) to display ads in their search results. Because search is the primary way people navigate the web, this can be a big source of traffic.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engine optimization is similar to SEM, in that it involves getting traffic from search engines, but rather than paying search engines for ads, SEO involves optimizing your website for search engine algorithms so that it appears higher in the organic search results.
Social Media – Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have grown to become some of the most popular sites on the web, and are beginning to rival search as major sources of traffic. You can drive traffic from social networks by posting content to social media platforms or paying for ads that run on the networks.
Display Ads – This type of advertising comes in various forms such as video, image, audio or text. These ads can be purchased on relevant websites in order to drive that traffic to your own site, usually via Pay-Per-Click (PPC) models.
Offline Events – Online marketing can often begin offline. Events such as industry conferences and meetups can be good ways to network with potential new customers, inform them about your brand, and get them to your website. These can be events that you attend as a guest, events that you sponsor or events that you host yourself.
Once visitors start arriving to your site, the next step is to convert them into leads via an online form. This can be done in using many different lead generation tactics but involves getting users interested in your product or service and getting them to submit their contact info, often through the use of an incentive (known as a “lead magnet”).
Here are common marketing strategies businesses leverage to generate leads:
Content – Providing high-quality content in exchange for contact information is a common practice in lead generation. This content can be anything from a white paper, case study or infographic to an ebook or exclusive video. The idea is to entice potential customers in your target audience with a piece of content that is relevant to your business and require them to provide their contact info before they can get access to the content.
Webinars – A webinar is a live video session that your visitors can view and participate in. Webinars typically last between half an hour to an hour and provide information and educational material about a specific topic. Because webinars are interactive and require a big investment in time, they can be a great way to not only create a lead but also to educate and convert them.
Landing Pages – The best lead generation tool of all is your product. If you have a compelling product that solves a major pain point, visitors will want to provide their contact information even without any incentives. Presenting your product in the most attractive way is often done through landing pages or sales pages, which help educate and convert prospective customers. Landing page optimization is the key to making sure you are getting the most out of these pages.
Once a lead is created, if the customer is in the target market, the lead becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and the digital marketing team will begin nurturing the lead via marketing campaigns. This nurturing process typically involves marketing automation campaigns to specific email lists to follow-up with content that helps to educate and persuade the prospects to eventually mature into sales leads.
After a lead has been nurtured, a prospect can be convinced to make an inbound purchase on the website or by reaching out to a salesperson, turning them into a sales qualified lead. In enterprise sales, it is often the sales team that reaches out to the prospect to close the deal.
How to improve your lead generation
Aside from driving more traffic to your site, there are many ways in which you can optimize your website in order to drive more leads.
Since content is often a key incentive for driving leads, experiment with different pieces of content, call-to-action placement and lead magnets to determine what type of content performs best. This typically involves identifying your key buyer personas, and creating content that would be compelling and useful to drive quality leads.
Beyond incentives, often a key part of the conversion funnel that can be optimized is the lead form. Although it is beneficial from a business standpoint to collect as much information as possible about a prospect, more form fields lead to a reduction in form submissions. Experiment with different form lengths to see what is optimal in terms of lead capture and lead information.
There are many other aspects of a site that can be optimized as well, from having a clear call-to-action to making the site distraction free and easy to navigate so that users can easily get to the content that you want them to. Exploring the data in an analytics platform can be helpful to visualize how potential leads are navigating around your site. For more lead generation inspiration, see our post on 50 B2B lead generation ideas.
How to use A/B testing to improve lead generation
Although there are many elements of your site that can be improved, you don’t want to just implement them all at once and hope for the best. That’s where A/B testing comes in.
A/B testing allows you to test out different changes on your site to segments of your traffic in order to determine whether they have a positive impact on your conversion rate on not, and what the impact will actually be. Testing allows you to make data-driven decisions about changes to your site, rather than just going with your gut.
Whether you are making changes to your lead forms or testing out different lead magnets, A/B testing software such as Optimizely makes it easy to show different versions of your site to your visitors, so that you can determine which version performs the best.
The Ten Commandments of an Awesome Lead-Generating …
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
If you want my team to just do your marketing for you, click here.
Your leads are only as good as the website that produces them. Fortunately, designing a landing page that’s built for leads doesn’t have to be overwhelming or time-consuming. By looking at examples of some of the best converting lead generation websites, you can learn precisely what works — and most importantly, why it works. The following steps are proven lead generation boosters that can not only increase conversions, but can also increase your site’s trust factor and authority.
1. Include a Contact Number
Adding a contact number to your website may seem counterintuitive, especially if you sell a digital product. Doing so however, increases consumer trust and lends credibility to your offer. Even if your customers don’t actually call, the presence of a phone number does bring them some comfort.
One lead generation site for a Los Angeles dentist actually incorporated its phone number as part of its domain name () and marketing strategy:
This lead generation page makes its phone number a large part of its branding.
2. Post Forms on Every Page
Having easy access to the actual lead generation form is paramount to increasing the number of viable leads through your website. The less information they ask for, particularly on the first step, the more likely people will be to part with their valuable personal details.
Notice how the example below for Allied Van Lines incorporates the phone number, but also asks for a minimum of information from its frequent form. Customers filling out this form are also more likely to do so because they did not have to give out personal information on the first step.
Putting lead generation forms above the fold increases the likelihood that customers will notice them and fill them out, particularly if there are visual cues such as arrows and an enticing offer such as a free quote.
3. Add Photos and Testimonials For Greater Credibility
Testimonials can be a powerful marketing tool, but adding photos or even rich media such as video or audio can take them a step further. While the rich media versions may be too bandwidth-heavy for lead generation websites, solid testimonials can have a powerful impact and lend support to your offer.
The accounting software Free Agent uses testimonials coupled with black-and-white photos, and large turnouts quotes to greet effect on its pages.
4. Make Your Videos Speak to the User
Online videos bridge the gap between online and off-line commerce, as well as greatly increasing conversion rates for a wide range of industries — particularly e-commerce websites. The highest performing videos speak to the user rather than at them, as you’ll see in the 1, 000th episode of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV below. Online users who viewed a product video were much more likely to convert over users who simply viewed an ad.
Videos help the user feel more informed and confident of their purchase.
5. Use Trust Seals – But Make Sure They’re More Than Just Eye Candy
All of the major trust seal providers claim that incorporating a trust seal on your website can increase conversion rates, but the actual statistics are hard to come by. Rather than installing a seal for pure visual security benefits, choose one that is backed up by a guarantee to the consumer, such as what did by using the BuySafe guarantee. Customers who saw the seal were 7. 6% more likely to buy than those who did not.
The BuySafe Guarantee protects customer purchases against identity theft and also guarantees delivery of items up to $500
6. Use Power Words When Describing Your Offer
Powerful action verbs such as “get”, “feel” and “have” are strong compellers because of their active tone as opposed to “imagine having”, “imagine feeling” and so on. Using action oriented words in your offer places the customer in a pivotal role as the one receiving the benefits as opposed to simply imagining them.
A lead generation page for a chronic pain course incorporates “power words” directly above the fold for maximum impact.
Notice how the graphic above the fold uses power words like feel, boost, have and overcome
7. Avoid “Cookie-Cutter” Site Templates
It should go without saying, but when it comes to quality lead generation, you should avoid any cookie cutter “all-the-work-is-done-for-you” website templates. Instead, invest in the best possible website you can afford, and make sure you make the page’s purpose clear up front so that the designer can tailor it to generating leads rather than looking nice or having all the bells and whistles. Having a well-designed site also increases trust and customer confidence levels when shopping online.
8. Consider the End-Goal First
When it comes to lead generation, begin with the end in mind. What exactly does a “lead” mean to you? Defining this will make your testing and analytics goals even clearer, and help you determine exactly what actions you want the user to take as they progress through each stage of your sales funnel. Is a lead considered someone who fills out a form? Someone who signs up for a newsletter? Requests a callback? Clearly define your starting point and you’ll have a much easier time adjusting your conversion goals accordingly.
LivingSocial cuts to the chase with focusing only on getting the user’s email address and location
9. Make Good Use of Whitespace
Whitespace (also known as negative space) is one of those ‘little things’ in web design that can make a big impact. Rather than striving to fill up every empty area on a page, give your content, photos and call to action buttons some breathing room. There’s no need to add something just to take up room – it can end up only serving as a distraction to your customers, and lowering your conversion rates as a result.
10. The Bottom Line for Best Lead Generation: Test, Test, Test
None of these tips will do you a bit of good unless you test them for yourself and determine what works for your unique situation. Number and quality of leads is a conversion factor just like any other – one which you’ll want to see increase and improve over time. Here’s a handy checklist of other things to test to help improve conversion rates.
A lead generation page is also a great way to test crucial design changes before applying them sitewide. By split testing changes from one landing page to the next, you’ll be able to see whether or not your lead gen efforts pay off. Of course, having the right testing and analytics software in place will help you determine exactly what’s working – with real-time data, historic timelines, trends and conversion funnels that let you segment down to the smallest details.
Testing is the only true way to know exactly what works for your unique needs, but when designing your lead generation pages, keeping these best practices in mind can help you work less and convert more!
About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps businesses improve website design, ranking and performance with custom blog themes and SEO copywriting. Learn how to increase conversion rates by visiting
See How My Agency Can Drive Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Website
SEO – unlock massive amounts of SEO traffic. See real results.
Content Marketing – our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
Paid Media – effective paid strategies with clear ROI.
Book a Call
B2B lead generation: 8 KPIs to consider and why they’re important
Written by
Inbound marketing
|
5 minute read
Lead generation is a crucial consideration for any marketing campaign. It’s a key metric to determine how effective your efforts are. So how do we track our lead generation success? By recording key lead generation KPIs.
So, what are these KPIs and why are they important to a B2B lead generation campaign?
The crucial KPIs for lead generation
Top tips on enhancing lead generation for inbound marketing
There are a number of important KPIs you may be tracking when it comes to lead generation with conversion rates – MQLs and cost metrics possibly being the top three. This means you may be missing out on a more accurate picture of your lead generation and lead scoring process.
There’s a wide variety of variables both sales and marketing departments can cover. Here are the ones you should look into…
Cost per lead and cost per acquisition
It should never cost more to acquire a lead or customer than the revenue you receive from them. A lead needs to be profitable from the very beginning of a business-customer relationship. Determining a cost per lead and cost per acquisition is a helpful way of more accurately identifying your overall profitability.
Track your average transaction rate and contrast this with the cost per lead and cost per acquisition.
The quality and value of your leads
Not all leads were created equal.
A key factor to consider is how valuable your leads actually are. Which leads are truly qualified? Understanding this metric allows you to set helpful and realistic cost benchmarks and pinpoint the accurate cost of your marketing campaigns.
Time on page
A variable that feeds into the quality of your leads is how long they spend on the webpage. A consumer who’s more prepared to spend time on your page reading through your content is a user more likely to spend and become a return customer.
As inbound is all about developing relationships, tracking time on page is another way to prove the methodology is working.
Organic traffic rate
Obviously, organic traffic depends on how SEO-friendly your site is which influences the cost per lead. If your rate of organic traffic is low, it’ll affect your lead generation.
Look into your SEO techniques to determine whether they’re effective enough. If you’re not targeting the right keywords or designing your copy to be SEO-friendly, you may be missing out on the chance to create leads.
The ratio of traffic to leads
Furthermore, what percentage of your traffic is converting to leads? Tracking this KPI will enable you to find any issues with your landing pages as this ratio should be growing at a proportional rate.
It’s fantastic to get 10, 000 visitors but if your lead percentage from those visitors is 0. 1%, there’s evidently some issue, be it with your digital content, site design or other variables.
In inbound terms, having a good traffic-to-lead ratio can also determine how relevant and helpful your content is. The more specifically-targeted your content is, the more leads you’re likely to generate.
Revenue and ROI
This is obviously a top-tier KPI you should track during a b2b lead generation campaign. As an inbound marketing strategy takes time to come into effect, ROI is something you should track over a long time.
If you’re working with specific clients, they’ll want to see that your marketing efforts are actually producing a return.
Engagement
The success of a B2B lead generation campaign can be reviewed by the amount of engagement you’re receiving, especially from prospects who value your content enough to return over time.
Tracking engagement can cover multiple different areas and features. You can look into bounce rate and its effect on engagement – if you have a high bounce rate on a page, your engagement is going to be low.
Similarly, engagement is crucial when running social media marketing campaigns. By tracking this KPI in terms of social media engagement, you can determine what kind of content your audiences are interacting with.
Time to close
Time to close is often forgotten about, but it’s an important KPI nonetheless. Time to close is another key factor in the overall quality of your leads. It can also help you identify any holes in your content or in the knowledge of your staff.
Combining all these with tracking MQLs, cost metrics and conversion rates will give you a great range of eleven all-important KPIs that can accurately influence your lead generation efforts. Now, let’s go over the top tips for generating leads.
Tops tips on enhancing lead generation for inbound marketing
Contextual boosts
Learning what your leads are interested in puts the sales team in a great position. No more small talk, no more scatter-gun approach to the services you offer. The sales team can have efficient and productive calls every time.
An effective CRM is the first step to gathering all this intel in one place.
CRM Automation
Whilst a CRM is great for gathering data, what’s even more useful to the sales team is email automation. By setting up template emails and triggers based on interaction with your site, you’ll be able to construct a dynamic flow of messages that educate and assist the customer at exactly the right time.
Set it up and apart from the odd tweak, you won’t need to touch it.
Getting to know the persona
As part of your inbound strategy, you need to develop buyer personas to help you create content that will be engaging. Once you’re clear on who your ideal customer is, make sure your marketing always addresses their needs and solves their problems.
Your sales teams should be consulted throughout the creation of these personas as they of all people should know the customer base better than anyone. A persona is also created from customer surveys, industry knowledge and a few educated guesses.
Tone of voice guidelines, template emails and many more time-saving tools can be built off the back of a successful persona production session.
Improve reach online
The strategies and content you create from inbound marketing will improve your reach online. Your social media messages and even your paid ads can be created to follow the inbound methodology and attract people to your site.
Promoting helpful and relevant content will help improve engagement with your ideal customers and give more leads to your sales team.
Evergreen content on your website
Good content is built to last. The beauty of creating a decent blog is that it can rank for months or even years if it’s good enough. The cost of running an ad for the same amount of time would be significant. Don’t forget that most customers (or personas) will come to your site with the same questions.
By writing blog posts or pages answering timeless questions, your content won’t age. You may want to update the content if new information comes along but information like this isn’t time sensitive. It will stay forever green.
Reciprocity in action
Reciprocity describes how certain actions can encourage a person to respond positively to you. The whole methodology of inbound marketing is based on positive social action. With inbound, you’re offering free content and from this positive gesture, customers are more likely to react positively in return to your sales team.
Authority is king
Whilst you post blogs, create eBooks and join in the conversation online – outsiders will attribute a higher level of authority to your company or brand.
Becoming a thought leader is one of the secondary effects of inbound marketing. By talking-the-talk regularly and in the correct way, you’ll carve open up the chance to walk-the-walk with your prospects.
Categorising and scoring leads
Lead scoring is a great way of determining the sales-readiness of your prospects and it’s one of the best practices for discovering ways of generating further leads.
As a prospect interacts with your company, they travel along what is known as the buyer’s journey. This journey is based on the research process we all go through before buying something. From the content people have downloaded from your website, the sales team should be able to determine what section of the buyer’s journey the potential customer is on. This is pivotal to the correct approach for sales.
Now they can send emails with helpful, timely content or reach out directly to help the prospect move onto the next segment of the journey. Using the buyer’s journey should allow sales to pick up the phone much less.
When it comes to B2B lead generation, using the inbound methodology is an impressive way to score and generate leads. The holistic way of marketing makes it easier to create and nurture relationships. So how can you maximise your inbound strategies?
Discover how to improve lead generation with inbound marketing
What is inbound? How can you expand upon its principles? What are the statistics that prove it works? How can you use it to set your business goals?
These are just some of the questions our helpful download will answer for you. By downloading ‘Inbound Marketing 2. 0, ’ you’ll see even further into the realm of inbound, discovering how to go above and beyond your current marketing efforts.
Click the link below to get started.
This blog was originally posted in 2015 by Stephanie Barnes. It was updated for 2020 by Jack Cribb.
Frequently Asked Questions about web lead generation
How do you generate web leads?
5 tips to generate more leads on your website1) Create a holistic content strategy.2) Think about the user and how s/he experiences your site.3) Publish original, quality content.4) Strategically place strong, visible calls-to-action.5) Offer value with your calls-to-action.May 23, 2018
What is a lead generation website examples?
I’m going to show you 7 awesome examples of a lead generation website homepage.Landbot. Ever scroll through a homepage, have a once over at a page full of descriptions, and still have no idea what they are selling? … Bombfell. One-liner is important. … Discord. … Mancrates. … Tumblr. … Patreon. … Basecamp.Apr 26, 2020
Which website is best for lead generation?
Here is the list of top 10 lead generation websites:HubSpot. Hubspot is one of the popular and informative lead generation websites in 2020. … AeroLeads. … B2B Lead Blog. … DeskMoz. … Traffic Generation Café … Convince and Convert. … Marketo. … Point Clear.More items…•Mar 4, 2020
