Your web content doesn’t exist just to prove that you do.
When done well, your digital content can serve as a marketer that never sleeps, and a salesperson that never stops selling. When you’ve engineered your content to move your target prospects down a funnel, leads will come in regularly and build up over time.
That’s how it works in a perfect world. In reality, business owners and content marketers are busy. You may feel lucky to get a blog post published every week, let alone get new customers pouring in through site form submissions. It’s difficult to know exactly where to focus your efforts: long-form content? Short, newsy blogs? Fancy tools like calculators and quote generators?
Here are several steps you can take right now, in any order, to get more leads coming in from your web content.
Test your forms.
It may seem obvious, but if a technical hitch is keeping form entries from flowing through your inbox, now is the time to fix it. Check that your forms are synced with your CRM, or directing to the correct email address, before you do anything else.
Spiff up your “Contact” page.
If you want more leads, it’s best to start with the low-hanging fruit – meaning the prospects who are already very likely to want to talk to you. These prospects are probably hanging around your “Contact” page, so make sure the information on this page is accurate and easy to read across multiple devices – desktop, tablets, and mobile. Put a link to this page in your main navigation to make it easy to find.
And get creative: if your offering involves a custom quote, why not build a custom quote tool on your “Contact” page that doubles as a lead generation form?
Check every page for a CTA.
You never know which page of your site will be the one that turns a warm lead to a hot one, so every page should have a clear call to action. This could be a statement at the end of a blog post, a button at the top of a page, a popup, a sidebar, a callout box, or some combination of these things.
Use high-value, middle- and bottom-funnel content pieces as lead magnets.
If you have brochures, case studies, whitepapers, eBooks, and other highly valuable content, try offering these assets as a download (in exchange for a name, email, and other lead information) rather than providing them for free. While it makes sense to give top-funnel leads unlimited access to content like blog posts without asking them to fill out a form, your warmer leads are likely ready to hand over their contact info – and a lead magnet is just the tool to get them there.
Use a chat tool to fill in the gaps in your content.
Chat tools and chatbots are all the rage, as data keeps cropping up to show that users appreciate the ability to communicate directly with businesses through chat. If you have sales staff that can respond to live chat queries, try it out and see if it keeps leads from falling through the cracks. If you’re a small operation, a chatbot can serve a similar purpose – answering frequently asked questions about pricing, hours, or how your product or service works.
Try a popup.
A perfectly-timed popup can work wonders when it comes to gathering lead data, but the keyword is “perfectly-timed.” A warm lead might not respond well to an intrusive “Subscribe now!” while they’re trying to read your blog post – but a hot lead on your pricing page may click a popup that reads “Get a custom quote now.”
Use a reliable CRM.
Leads aren’t worth much if they’re sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere, or dispersed across email threads or Slack channels at your organization. Keep your leads in one central location and sync it with your web forms to prevent leads from slipping through the cracks.
Audit your content for quality.
If you’ve employed all of these tips and you’re still struggling to capture leads from your content, it may be time for a content overhaul. Look at search data to get an overall picture of how people view your content. High impressions and low CTR indicate you’re ranking for your desired keywords, but your content just isn’t helpful or enticing enough for people to click.
If that’s the case, get a second opinion on your posts and your site copy from a trusted colleague or client. If you prefer a more scientific approach, study the top results for your desired search term. Your content may be too short to be truly helpful, it may lack valuable graphics, or it may have a major technical problem like an inability to be viewed on mobile.
Look at any other metrics you have access to. If you’re promoting your content using a social tool like Buffer or Hootsuite, look at the posts that get the most engagement – how are they different from your other content? At the end of the day, your content won’t generate the leads you want if it isn’t excellent on its own.