In the early days of the Internet, it may have been easy to convert leads using sleazy marketing and slick campaigns. But prospective customers these days are savvy and, let’s face it, a little bit wary. Instead of hard sales tactics or smoke and mirrors, you’ll have to build trust and incorporate visibility into your lead generation ideas if you hope to clinch customers for your brand or business.
Incorporate visibility
In other words, you need an online presence that potential customers can actually see. To ensure you’re actually showing up on customers’ radars, utilize these best practices.
Make yourself visible on search engines
Post relevant CTAs
Your blog posts and other frequently updated materials are the best ways to ensure that you’re staying visible. Make sure the keywords used in your posts match the words used in your CTAs and you’ll get more relevant visitors to your site. Even better, those visitors are more likely to stick around and see what you have to offer.
Refresh old content
You hear it often: You need fresh, updated content to keep search engines happy. While that’s certainly true, you may be surprised to learn that only 15 percent of organic leads come from a particular month’s content. Nearly 60 percent of organic leads come from older offers or calls to action.
So how can you refresh older content so that it continues to find new audiences? For starters, you can use social media or guest posts on other sites to link back to those older posts. When you provide fresh exposure to stale content, you give older posts an added boost in search engine rankings.
Second: Focus on building rapport and trust
Old, slick campaigns with lots of fluff and flash don’t work anymore. Consumers are savvier these days and see right through blatant marketing. Build rapport and trust to establish a branded bond that’s likely to last.
Build rapport first
Once customers know a little bit about you, your brand, and your products or services, the next step is securing the lead. To do so:
Offer stuff for free
Offer customers something of real value that will entice them to buy. Free trials, webinars, ebooks, and reports can prove the inherent worth of your product while convincing potential customers of the need for the product in their everyday lives. Most importantly, you’ll receive customers’ contact info so that you can continue to reach out to them for future offers.
Make your landing pages count
People’s Internet attention spans are short and sweet these days. Make sure your landing page copy stays succinct as well. Make your intentions clear in the headline (without shouting), engage the audience with formatted paragraphs, and let your well written and informative post do the rest.
Then establish trust
Without trust, lead generation is tough to come by. You can establish trust – and keep it – by:
Being honest
Does your product cure bad breath, solve world peace, and cause weight loss? No? Well then don’t claim that it does. Exaggerating your product’s capabilities to potential customers, or even leads, is the quickest way to ensure first time users don’t return to your site or brand. By following through on your promises, on the other hand, you’re more likely to transform a free eBook or trial into a purchase.
Staying accessible
Make sure visitors to your site can contact you via email or social media with questions or concerns they might have. Following up with contacts consistently and remaining attentive to potential leads will ensure that potential customers trust your brand enough to keep returning.
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