Simple Tips to Make the Most of Inbound Marketing Posted on January 19, 2016May 27, 2016 by Nicci Troiani In the fast-paced and competitive small business environment, every second counts. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs spend way too much time worrying about ineffective marketing schemes instead of focusing on day-to-day business concerns. With an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can let prospective clients and customers come to you, instead of spending all of your time attempting to attract the attention of uninterested parties. If implemented incorrectly, inbound marketing can be every bit as inefficient as other marketing approaches; however, with a carefully-crafted strategy, it is possible to expedite the process and significantly grow your customer base — all with minimal effort. The following simple inbound marketing tips will make business generation easier than you ever imagined. Optimize Your Site Inbound marketing is all about search engine optimization, which is used to improve a site’s ranking on Google and other prominent search engines. The higher your site lands on Google’s front page, the more visitors it will attract. Carefully-researched keywords should be used in your site’s URL, in any content featured on the page, and in image names. Avoid the temptation to stuff your page with keywords; this could actually harm your search engine ranking. Instead, create relevant content that solves a problem for your ideal customer. Help Prospects Convert Your website is more than just an attractive brochure – it’s a handshake with new visitors that helps you to begin the sales conversation. As SEO drives traffic to your site, you should be able to capture qualified prospects with forms. Helpful resources can connect you with top-of-the-funnel leads, while a sales form can capture prospects who are interested now. Small businesses don’t need a super fancy website. Instead, focus on building a clean website that is simple to navigate and has a main objective of connecting with your ideal customer. Harness the Power of Social Media Inbound marketing efforts should not end with your company’s website. In today’s connected world, businesses can benefit from a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Depending on where your ideal customer hangs out online,, your business could also benefit from maintaining an active Instagram or Pinterest account; however, the pursuit of a social media presence need not hog all of your time and resources. A strong presence on a select group of networks will allow you to better connect with existing clients and customers while also attracting the attention of new consumers. Publish Testimonials and Reviews If you’ve managed to build up a small, but very enthusiastic customer base, consider asking these satisfied individuals for feedback. They will be all too happy to have their input featured on your website or social media pages. A few favorable testimonials can go a long way toward establishing confidence among those unfamiliar with your brand. Nurture New Leads As you connect with visitors coming to your website through SEO, social media and other channels, you can keep the conversation going through email nurturing. Not everyone is ready to enter thesales process today, but they will be down the road. With email campaigns, you can automatically stay in touch with prospects to become a trusted resource, and eventually their first choice when they are ready to buy. Track Metrics Inbound marketing often involves some element of trial and error, as it is impossible to know exactly what works until you test it. Once these initial steps have been achieved, it is important to keep an eye on website analytics, which will tell you how visitors find your website, how long they stay there, and whether their browsing sessions result in conversions. You can also track lead source in your CRM to report on which channels are actually converting into customers. The best inbound marketing strategy is simple and straightforward. A good website and strong social media presence will help you to attract new leads. Email nurturing continues the conversation, turning more of your leads into customers, and tracking metrics ensures you’re focusing on the right inbound strategies for your business. When customers come to you through inbound marketing, you can avoid time-consuming marketing initiatives and instead focus on the activities that matter most to you.
Getting Started with Marketing Automation in 5 Easy Steps Posted on November 3, 2015June 18, 2018 by jmiller If you are moving from an email marketing strategy to a marketing automation strategy, it can be overwhelming the first time you see how it all works. Once someone sees the level of sophistication of a marketing automation tool, it can cause spontaneous paralysis and a quick retreat into the old way of doing things. Don’t give in! Be ready to make a change…and…EVOLVE. I speak with customers every day about how to get started with marketing automation and how to avoid getting lost in the details. Marketing is not an exact science. You have to test, try new things, learn what works and improve. A solid foundation is the best starting point. Here are 5 steps to get started: Make an Offer Capture Leads Engage your Audience Stay in Touch Keep customers up to date Make an Offer The best way to attract a new client? Offer something that you have that they don’t have and want to have. Identify what that offer is and give them a taste of it. Come up with an enticing incentive, or lead magnet, to offer people in exchange for their contact information: Your offer could be something like: White paper Case study Report Free sample Free 30 minute consultation Leveraging existing content/expertise is the most efficient way to go. If you have multiple offerings, use them all. Test out different offers to see what works best to attract the right audience. Protip: Don’t give more than two offers on a single webpage, or more than one offer on a landing page. Capture Leads Putting a white paper on a website for instant download can limit perceived value. Don’t give away valuable content for free; require information in exchange for the offer. Design and embed a lead capture form on your website or landing page. The more value you offer, the more information you can request. For example, require an email address to sign-up for your blog, but request more information if you are offering someone 30 minutes of your time for a consultation. Protip: Make sure the information you request matches the offer. Engage your Audience Now that your contact has requested information, send them a little more information. An engagement campaign is a short term campaign that ultimately leads to a specific call to action, like request a meeting, signing-up, or downloading information. This type of campaign can be 3-7 steps over a 2-3 week period (this can vary depending on content available). Emails within an engagement campaign can include, but are not limited to: An introduction to your company A case study A testimonial Educational material The goal of the engagement campaign is to drive the contact into your sales process. Protip: A simple engagement campaign can have 2 emails and 1 phone call to follow up. Stay in Touch Not everyone is ready to buy right away, but it doesn’t mean that they never will. Build out a long term nurturing campaign to stay in touch will all of your contacts on an ongoing basis. A nurture campaign may include an email every 30 – 60 days. The goal of a nurture campaign is to educate your audience, offer validation as to why they should do business with you (case studies, testimonials) and simply to stay top of mind. The nurture campaign may have calls to action or offers that can pull someone into an engagement campaign or directly into the sales process. And, with marketing automation, you can track engagement activity; if someone starts to engage, a good marketing automation tool will trigger actions that can pull contacts into your sales process over time. One tip to help build out nurture campaigns is to use a resource like www.alltop.com, where you can leverage 3rd party articles and recommend them to your audience. Protip: 1 email sent every 60 days means that you only have to build 6 emails to stay in touch with your contacts for a year! Keep Customers Up to Date Don’t forget to share your blog, a newsletter or a deal of the month. “Just in Time” communications offer you the freedom to communicate when the mood strikes you. The objective here is the same as a nurture campaign but includes timely information; a new product offer, PR updates, recent newspaper articles, upcoming events. “Just in Time” communications can also be influenced by the season or time of year. Protip: Returning customers spend 20% more than first time buyers, so staying in touch with your customers is just as important as staying in touch with prospects. Getting started with marketing automation can seem like an enormous task. But, by taking a step-by-step approach, you can easily tackle attracting new leads, nurturing prospects, and staying in touch with customers.
Four Things You Didn’t Know About Marketing Automation Posted on October 27, 2015June 18, 2018 by Jessica Lunk Running a small business requires being ultra resourceful when it comes to managing your time and your budget. We know you’ve got limited bandwidth, but we also know that neglected leads result in a dry profit pool down the road. No worries – marketing automation is here to help. Here are four important things you might not realize about marketing automation and how it can boost productivity for your small business. 1. ROI May Take Time – But, Your Patience will be Rewarded! Focus Research found that 75% of companies using marketing automation see ROI within 12 months and see positive results even sooner. This is both a very quick and very slow period of time to wait to see your investment bring about profit. Too often, when a new tool is implemented, companies are impatient to see immediate results. It is important to realize that the ROI is measurable and real, but it may take time to create the kind of impact that moves your audience towards purchase decisions. In the long run, this is a short-term investment that will pay out in a great way for the company if implemented correctly. 2. Your Leads are Segmented While 61% of B2B marketers send all of their leads straight to sales, only 27% were found to be qualified, according to MarketingSherpa. This is why it is so important to analyze the position of leads and then nurture them accordingly. Yet, gathering the right data to sort and segment leads would require exorbitant amounts of time and energy from your marketing team that they just don’t have. Instead, marketing automation systems gather information and do all the sorting for you, putting your leads in the right buckets. And once you’re leads are segmented, you’re on your way to nurturing them with personalized content to achieve a 20% higher level of sales, according to a report by DemandGen. 3. Your Leads are Nurtured Marketing automation tracks your leads’ activity and determines their sales potential every step of the way. With leads properly segmented, you can meet each lead where they are in the sales funnel and take the right steps to direct them toward conversion. Marketing automation software automatically nurtures your leads by sending them personalized content they value, instead of slamming them with sales tactics and generic taglines. This lead nurturing approach is exactly why most companies see excellent results within several months of implementing their system. 4. Your Costs are Lowered When companies implement a nurturing strategy and automate mundane processes, they save money. Employees don’t have to do the mindless work of sorting through lead behavior, they can focus on answering questions and cultivating relationships. Allowing the work to be done automatically means a faster and more efficient process for everyone. Forrester Research found companies that excelled at marketing automation were able to generate 50% more leads ready for sales at a 33% lower cost. When a software system can do the busywork, your employees are freed up to work on tougher tasks that have a bigger impact on your business. Are you ready to move towards solid and sustainable growth? Marketing automation is an important next step. Get on board now and ride the wave of marketing automation’s newest trends for successful brands.
6 Sticky Lead Magnets to Create for Your Website Posted on May 26, 2015February 25, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Want to attract more leads for your business? Solving a problem for your ideal customer makes your business irresistible to new leads. What is a Lead Magnet? A lead magnet is an enticing incentive for a prospective customer to leave you with their information. A good lead magnet attracts not just anyone in your market, but your ideal customer. It does this by addressing a specific problem that your ideal customer commonly needs to address. Why Include a Lead Magnet on Your Website? Whether we’re making a small decision like choosing a spot for happy hour, or making a major purchase like buying a car, we all do a hefty amount of research online before we’re ready to make a purchase. The same is true of your audience. A great fit for your product or service may visit your website to do preliminary research. But, they may not be ready to buy. Offering up a resource they can use now, without making a commitment to buy, is a great way to capture their contact info. For example, Less Accounting is accounting software for business owners. One of their lead magnets is to sign up to receive a weekly article about becoming a less stressed business owner. So, while Less Accounting’s ideal customer – a business owner – may not be interested in buying accounting software right now, they can always use tips on reducing the stress that comes with running a business. With this lead magnet, Less Accounting can capture potential prospect information and stay in touch with them until they’re ready to take a closer look at accounting software. Hooking a new prospect early in the buying journey gives you advantages like: Follow-up Opportunity. A lead magnet allows you to capture the name and email address of the contact, so you can send a follow-up email and stay top-of-mind until they’re ready to buy. Trust. If you can deliver value early in the sales process, you’ve indicated that you’ll be just as helpful after the sale. Prospect’s Interest. The type of resource your prospect downloads indicates their area of interest and helps you send more targeted messaging to them in the future. So, if you’re an insurance agent and a prospect downloads a guide on choosing the right auto coverage, you know to follow-up with more information on auto insurance – not homeowners or life insurance. 6 Lead Magnets to Try Ready to create a lead magnet for your site to start hooking more great prospects? Try one of these: Email Opt-In: Entice visitors to your website to subscribe to your email list. Offer an example of your latest email newsletter so that subscribers know what they’re signing up for. Checklist: Help your ideal buyer stay organized and tackle a problem with a helpful checklist. This can work well whether your business is B2B or B2C and both for top of funnel awareness and bottom of the funnel conversion. White paper: A white paper explores a major pain-point for your ideal customer. A good white paper should explain the challenge, and provide a solution. Guide: A guide is a step-by-step, in depth how-to for your ideal buyer. A good guide should give actionable steps that your ideal customer can complete to reach a specific goal. Video: It always makes a greater impact to show rather than tell. Do a video series of thought leaders in your industry, a video how-to course, a video testimonial from one of your best customers, or an animated “explainer” video of your product or service. Podcast: Not everyone is interested in reading a lengthy white paper or guide. Interview a thought leader in your industry for a podcast your audience can download or subscribe to and listen to on the go. There are a lot of distractions online, and just because the perfect prospect hits your website now doesn’t mean that he’ll be back when he’s ready to buy. Don’t let potential customers hit your website just to bounce. Even just one great resource on your website can help you attract and hook new leads, helping your list to grow.
5 Sure-Fire Lead Generation Tips for Your Blog Posted on January 23, 2015September 8, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Blogging leads to small business success. In fact, small businesses that blog gain 126% more leads than businesses that don’t. When it comes to building business, blogging is a no-brainer. But, is your business blog working as hard as you do to generate fresh leads for your company? Here are 5 fool-proof lead generation strategies that can turn your blog traffic into revenue for your business: 1. Add a Blog Subscription Sign-Up There are over 78.5 million WordPress blogs across the globe. That doesn’t even include the millions of blogs on Tumblr, Blogger, Technorati and more. People love blog content, but there is so much info online. It can be tough to build a loyal following of visitors. Adding a form to your blog so that visitors can easily subscribe to new posts helps you stay top of mind, instead of getting lost in a sea of millions of other blogs. To make sure you don’t miss out on sign-ups: Include a clear call to action to sign-up on your blog Indicate how often you’ll be emailing blog updates to avoid spam complaints Losing out on connecting with ideal prospects who are visiting your blog is scary. Instead, capitalize on the excitement visitors feel when they’ve hit your blog. Capture prospect info by offering a subscription to your awesome content so that you can stay in touch. 2. Tap Into Evergreen Content for Conversions Some content never goes out of style. Those blog posts or articles that light up your prospects and customers long after they’ve been written are pillars of content that bolster your brand and messaging. Evergreen content strikes a harmonious chord with your ideal buyer independently of time or place. Evergreen content is powerful, because your audience will continue to share it with their social networks regardless of when you published the content. In addition, pillar content also appears in coveted top-of-the-page search results, driving valuable organic traffic to your site. You can turn organic visitors that come to your website via social and search engines into a wealth of opportunity for your business. So how do you make the most of evergreen content? Here are a few places to start: Spruce Up Evergreen Content: Give your evergreen content a refresh from time to time. As your business evolves, update evergreen content so it remains appealing and relevant to your audience. This includes making sure that evergreen content falls in line with your keyword strategy as search terms and phrases change. You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to help generate keyword ideas. Drive Visitors More Deeply into Your Site: Don’t let potential buyers bounce from your site once they’ve hit your evergreen content. Add links to relevant pages on your site, like a related blog post or article. This will keep them engaged with your brand, raising awareness of who you are, what you do, and the problems you can solve. Capture New Leads: For top-of-the-funnel evergreen content, add an enticing call to action to gather contact details from new visitors to your site. For example, encourage visitors to subscribe for more great blog posts, or to download a game-changing resource or guide. The key to turning these captured leads into new customers is not just to capture their information and let it sit on the sidelines, but to keep your business top of mind by nurturing them with relevant content over time. Drive Opportunities: For bottom-of-the-funnel evergreen content, drive opportunities and customers by adding a call to action to learn more about your products or services. For example, ask visitors to schedule a consultation, take a demo, or request a meeting. Here’s an example from the Leadpages.net blog. At the end of the post, they include a call to action to sign-up for a resource. This helps to capture information from strong prospects who have hit their blog from social media or organic search: Evergreen content is fertile ground for tapping into a rich channel of prospects. Optimizing evergreen content can help fill your pipeline with both top-of-the-funnel leads that are just looking, as well as bottom-of-the-funnel opportunities that are ready to buy. 3. Syndicate Your Blog Content Consistent blogging is more than an awareness exercise – it can add to your bottom line. The key is to get your riveting, targeted blog content in front of the right audience. Email marketing and social media are both avenues that can increase traffic to your blog. But if you want to extend your reach to an even larger audience, there are lots of sites that will push out your content by syndicating your blog’s RSS feed. Where to start syndication? Check out these sites: Alltop shows readers what’s trending in the topics they’re interested in. By syndicating your feed here, you can reach an audience that is enthusiastic about thought leadership and news in specific categories. Business 2 Community is a reputable content aggregator for business professionals. They manually screen contributors, maintaining a high quality of content that attracts a large number of readers. The site’s content is also picked up by third parties including Yahoo Small Business Advisor and Google News. Scoop.It lets you curate content on the topics that apply to your interests and industry, but you can also share your content there. Sign-up for the free personal account to share up to 10 links a day, and get your content in front of a new audience. Social Media Today is a community of PR, marketing, advertising and other professionals that require a social media background. If your content has a social media spin to it, this is a great place to become a contributor and submit individual blog posts or submit your RSS feed. Syndicating your blog content can help a brand new audience gain awareness of your brand. For syndication to really work for your business, choose sites that align closely with your ideal buyer to generate quality leads for your business. 4. Gate Your Best Blog Content Repurpose your best blog content and recycle it into downloadable bundles. Offer these blog bundles as resources to your audience, giving you another tool for generating new leads for your business. Pull together related posts to put everything you have to say about a popular topic at your audience’s fingertips. Or, bundle together all of your posts so your audience can download your blog as a whole. Gating blog content is a great strategy because the content already exists, so you don’t have to create anything new. In addition, your original, individual posts stay live on your website so they can continue to do their job to boost organic search traffic. Turn your blog posts into lead generators by bundling them up in exchange for the contact details of prospects in your audience that fit the profile of your ideal buyer. For example, here is a bundle of our most popular blog posts on lead nurturing: 5. Feature Your Team Members When it comes to generating new leads, a little transparency can go a long way. We do so much business online, so giving your audience a glimpse behind the scenes of your company generates trust in your brand and opens the door to create new, fruitful relationships. Feature your team members on your blog to put your talent and expertise on display. Introducing team members to your audience also drives home how your business’s mission and values are aligned with your team members and the culture they’ve created. J/E Bearing & Machine does a nice job of highlighting their employees and also adding social links, making it super simple for potential prospects to reach out to team members. While you’re highlighting team members and your awesome company culture, take the opportunity to attract great talent your way. Mention job openings, emphasize opportunities for growth, outline employee perks, and let interested job candidates know how they can get it touch. Not only does an open call for talent attract potential team members, but it also sends a positive message to your audience – your business is growing. No one wants to work with a business that is going to disappear the next day. Calling attention to opportunities within your company sends the message that you’re not going anywhere and are here to stay. Providing that sneak peak into your company’s culture and talent pool not only attracts the right employees, but attracts the right type of customer. With a few improvements, your business can be wildly successful at generating quality leads from your blog.
Cultivating Ripe Sales Leads: Lead Nurturing Strategies for Small Business Posted on July 31, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Maybe you’ve over-watered a perfectly good tomato plant and watched it shrivel up and drown. Or maybe an overdose of fertilizer has burnt up your yard. Whether it’s water or plant food, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad. See, in nature (and in sales), there’s a fine line between nurturing and smothering. A little TLC can create a flourishing environment, while too much fuss can stifle growth. Not all of your sales leads are ripe enough to convert to customers right now – but someday, a lot of them will be ready to be harvested (according to Gleanster Research, that number is around 50%) Will your business be poised to reap the benefits? With a balanced lead nurturing strategy, you can. Lead nurturing engages contacts with relevant, personalized content over a period of time until they are ready to buy. By sending digestible nuggets of information that strike a chord with their needs, you’ll build credibility over time. But just like too much fertilizer will burn up a plant, dumping too much knowledge on your contacts can cause information overload, spurring potential leads to pull the plug on your relationship. The Old School Sales Process – A Lead Landfill In a lot of businesses, marketing acquires leads from sources like list rentals, pay-per-click campaigns, tradeshows and other sources, then tosses them right over the fence to sales. Sales picks out the choice leads to try to close. Though many leads will be well qualified to buy, a good portion of them might not be educated about the product or service, or the timing may not be right. Sales will be able to close some of these leads, but for the rest, it’s like scorching a delicate begonia in the sun – it’s too much of a pitch too soon in the buying journey. The leads that don’t close just become waste, and marketing starts from scratch to deliver a fresh batch of leads again. It’s an inefficient cycle that uses a lot of unnecessary energy: Leads that aren’t ready to buy get tossed Marketing is always starting from zero to generate the next batch of leads Sales experiences volatility as they churn up leads Modern Sales and Marketing – A Greener Approach In lead nurturing, marketing consistently cultivates new sales-ready leads, turning sales volatility into systematic, predictable revenue. Instead of tossing every lead over fence to sales, marketing acquires leads, then nurtures them with a series of touchpoints until the leads indicate that they are ready to make a purchase. There are lots of advantages to this evergreen approach: Forming Relationships: By connecting with leads over time, they get to know you. You earn their trust along the way and when it’s time to buy, your business is already on their short list. Optimizing the Sales Cycle: As you keep in touch with your contacts, you can educate them along the way. Instead of waiting for leads to discover their pain-points and search for your solution, you have the power to inform them, shortening the sales cycle. Reduces Waste: With lead nurturing, you aren’t burning up your lead list every month. Hot prospects are handed off to sales while marketing cultivates the next batch into sales ready leads. Encourages Growth: As you nurture contacts through email and social touchpoints, your list actually grows organically through peer-to-peer referrals and brand awareness. Lead Nurturing Strategies Leads need the right mix of attention and education to grow into hot prospects. Lead Scoring: The purpose of each touch point with a lead is to move them closer to the sale. As you email your contacts, make sure they can take an action to indicate their level of interest. Actions such as visiting a link, watching a video, or filling out a form impact lead score so that marketing can systematically determine when a lead is ripe to send to the sales team. Timing: How often you should connect with contacts depends on the length of your sales cycle and their level of interest in your brand. If your sales cycle is 6 months, it’s probably more appropriate to send an email every two weeks, rather than twice a week. Also, contacts who engage with your emails are telling you, “we want more!” and can be communicated to more often. Segmentation: Create unique nurturing campaigns that deliver content based on your leads’ unique interests to maximize your yield of sales-ready leads. Lead nurturing is all about showing your leads the proper care and attention they need to become ripe for sales.
Be a Door Opener: Lead Generation Basics for Small Business Posted on June 26, 2014November 21, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Do you hold the elevator door open, or frantically push the close button as you see others approach? As Hatchbuckers, we try to be door-openers – not door closers. You’re probably a door-opener, too. But when small business build websites, they don’t always think about opening their virtual door for leads that visit their site. You work hard to get the word out about your brand and to drive traffic to your website through: Social Media Online Ads Direct Mail Print Ads Blogging Networking Events So the next time you think about website optimization or redesign, ask yourself: How can we hold the door open for online leads? Letting web traffic bounce from your site and leave without a trace is like slamming the door shut on a window shopper. You’ll never know who they are, or what challenges your business could help them solve. If you don’t have a way to identify interested site visitors, you’re missing a big opportunity to generate new leads. Lead Generation Forms One mistake we see a lot of business websites make is an absence of lead generation forms. Lead generation forms invite prospects to learn more by offering something of value in exchange for a few contact details so that you can assist them down the line. For example, if you sell eco-friendly cleaning products, your best customer might be interested in eliminating toxins from their environment. You can offer a report, like “10 Shocking Toxic Chemicals Haunting Your Home.” When a visitor to your website downloads the report, two things happen to help your sales and marketing team: 1. Segmentation: You know what the lead is interested in. In this case, it’s creating a healthy environment for their family. 2. Identification: You have the lead’s contact details. Now you can reach out to them down the road with a related article on healthy homes, or with an offer to try your latest product line. Timing is Everything Do you have a catch-all “Contact Us” form on your site? While effective at attracting spammers, the generic contact form does little to generate new leads. Contact form submissions are usually well into the sales process, prepared with questions and looking to make a decision soon. Lead generation forms, on the other hand, capture prospects early in the buying process, during their online research phase. By interacting with them earlier, you gain more control of the whole sales process: 1. Education: You can educate them on the issue they face, making it less likely that they seek information elsewhere, like from your competitors. 2. Optimization: You can shorten the sales cycle. When your contact fills out a lead generation form, they essentially raise their hand and say, “Here’s my problem.” Now you’re equipped to help them reach a solution much faster. 3. Awareness: You’ve positioned your brand as the go-to expert. When the time comes to make a decision, they’ll deliberately reach out to you first. By offering resources that speak to the needs of your prospects, you open the door to better leads early in the sales cycle, giving you the opportunity to close business sooner and more often.
How to Stock Your CRM with Fresh Leads Posted on February 10, 2014October 2, 2020 by Jessica Lunk Catch and release is great for conservation, but when it comes to business, you’re playing for keeps. Don’t let great prospects slip by. Keep your small business CRM from going stale by capturing leads in person and online. 1. Convert Casual Site Visitors into Nurtured Leads If your website feels more like a static brochure than a lead generation machine, it’s time for an upgrade. Feed your CRM by placing forms throughout your site to convert the casual website visitor into a nurtured lead. Try one (or all) of these: The Contact Form If you have a web presence, chances are that you have a generic contact form. That’s a great place to start. Contact form leads are actually nice and warm. Someone has actively hunted down a way to reach out to you. They are aware of your business and your product or service offering, have done some research already, and are likely in a buying state of mind. But don’t stop here. A contact form only captures a fraction of the people who come to your site. What about those visitors who are just browsing, but aren’t ready to commit? They could be great opportunities down the road. Capture their info now so you can nurture them until they’re ready to buy. Newsletter Sign-Up Most businesses send out some form of correspondence on a weekly or monthly basis, whether in digital or physical form. So why not leverage that content to stay in touch with prospects? A newsletter sign-up form can capture leads on your site who are interested in your products and services as well as the expertise you share. To increase retention and conversion of your newsletter sign-ups, segment your leads by the type of content they’d like to receive, like: Updates on the latest deals and discounts. “Let me know when your resume-writing services go on sale.” Industry tips and tricks. “Send me the latest blog posts on sustainable urban living.” Specific product or service updates. “Share the availability of your seasonal beer.” Gated Content Use your expertise to generate helpful, informative, in-depth content. Then give it away in exchange for contact information. You’re producing content everyday, so re-package it in an enticing way: Bundle your best blog posts into an ebook or guide Share recorded webinars Create a whitepaper based on your most frequently asked questions Online Ads Whether you’re using banner or text ads, don’t simply direct visitors to your homepage. Instead, create a custom lead generation form with content optimized to convert visitors into leads. As a rule of thumb: Address how you can relieve the pain-points your customers face Outline the key benefits of your product/service Create trust through testimonials, reviews, accreditation, certification, etc. Provide a strong call-to-action that compels prospects to act now Product Information Don’t forget to ask for what you really want – a sale. Capture hot leads by making it simple to get the product or service information that opportunities need to make a buying decision, such as: Demonstration Product trial or sample Consultation session Quote Social Networks Remember that you don’t own the followers on your social media platforms. Promote your lead gen forms to your social media followers. Once they opt-in through your form, you can keep them engaged with your brand no matter what new social network craze comes next. 2. Follow Visitors Out the Door Leads aren’t just captured in the digital sphere. You’re fielding inquiries and connecting with prospects in real life everyday. Don’t let them leave without collecting their calling card. Take advantage of touchpoints at your brick and mortar location(s) to capture: Business cards Newsletter sign-ups New customer emails 3. Keep in Touch with Attendees Whether you’re sponsoring a networking session, attending a trade show, or hosting a webinar, you can leverage events to convert attendees into leads. Capture attendee information through: Registration forms (online and onsite) Giveaways and door prizes Networking exchanges Your CRM should be more than just a storage bin for customer data. Don’t let the big fish get away. Turn your website, store front, and events into consistent lead generators that keep the top of your sales pipeline stocked with fresh leads. Flickr Creative Commons Image by Agustin Rafael Reyes