Saturday, June 24, 2017

Tackling Your Biggest Challenges: Increasing Website Traffic & Leads (Part 2)

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According to HubSpot's State of Inbound 2017, "marketers today find generating traffic and leads to be their biggest challenge". So we decided to put together two posts detailing some of the key levers you can pull when increasing website traffic and lead generation are at the top of your priority list. In Part 1 of this two part series we covered the how to's of increasing traffic to your website. In Part 2 we'll dive into the ways in which you can build a B2B website that converts those visitors and generate leads.

Build & Implement Conversion Paths

A conversion path is a process by which an unknown visitor becomes a lead by navigating their way through your website. They use elements like blogs, calls-to-action, landing pages, premium offers, and thank you pages. A well-designed conversion funnel should guide your visitors to the offers that are most relevant to them while eliminating any obstacles that could prevent or distract them from converting.

Let’s be honest, you’re in the process of our conversion path right now. We want you to find value in this blog post, be compelled to click on the CTA below, go to the landing page with an amazing and surprisingly relevant offer, and download it.

Create Offers for Each Stage of the Funnel

In order to build an effective conversion path, you’ll need to have offers that align to the awareness, consideration and decision phases of the inbound marketing funnel. This is what the "TOFU, MOFU, BOFU" method is all about. It stands for Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of the Funnel, and it works like this:

  • TOFU - Top of funnel offers should be focused on the awareness stage, when a buyer has identified that they have a challenge. Your job is to understand how to describe the challenge, how to provide education on the challenge and what the consequences are of not addressing it. Some common forms of a top of funnel content offer include whitepapers, ebooks, guides and tip sheets.
  • MOFU - Middle of the funnel offers should be focused on the consideration stage, when a buyer has clearly outlined their goal or challenge and have committed to addressing it. They will be evaluating the different approaches or methods available as possible solutions. Some common forms of middle of the funnel content offers include checklists, templates, comparisons, and case studies
  • BOFU - Bottom of the funnel offers should be focused on the decision stage, when a buyer has decided on the type of solution to address their challenge. At this point, a buyer will begin to evaluate specific offerings to see if they can meet their needs. Some common forms of a bottom of the funnel content offer include demos, trials, and assessments.

Download our free eBook to learn how to make your website a more effective lead generation tool.

Design Effective Calls-to-Action

A call-to-action or CTA is an image or line of text that directs website visitors towards the next step in the buyer’s journey. They are intended to elicit a response by using an urgent or imperative phrase such as “Sign Up Today”, “Download the eBook Now”, or “Claim Your Free Trial”. When designing an effective CTA for your site make sure to do the following:

  • Use an Eye-Catching Design
  • Write Copy That Makes People Want to Act
  • Set Expectations and A Clear Value Proposition
  • Direct Visitors Towards An Offer Aligned With The Page Content
  • Allow Conversion Paths to Guide your CTA Strategy

Incorporate Landing Page Best Practices

Once someone clicks on one of your CTAs they should be taken to a landing page with a relevant offer on it. A landing page is a web page that should have a single focused objective - to deliver an offer that moves someone from one lifecycle stage to the next. Most landing pages are focused on turning a visitor into a lead, but they can also turn a lead into an MQL or an MQL into an opportunity. To focus your landing page around this singular objective you should:

  • Remove navigation - Eliminate as many avenues as possible that can take someone away from the landing page.
  • Write a compelling headline - Make it clear to the visitor that this page aligns with the link or add that they clicked to get there.
  • Use directional cues - Draw a visitor’s attention towards the action you want them to perform by using arrows that point towards the form or CTA.
  • Have a single, focused message - Be clear and succinct by removing unnecessary content
    When possible, use video - Videos have been shown to improve conversion by up to 80%.
  • Add trust marks - These can include testimonials, guarantees, and co-branding.
  • Show social proof - Add indicators of your social status.
  • Use bullet points - Highlight specific points, while making your copy quick and easy to digest.

Nurture Leads with Lifecycle Marketing

The simplest way to describe lifecycle marketing tactics is to say they are one aspect of your marketing strategy that dictate the context of when you communicate with your prospects and customers, and how. Lifecycle marketing focuses on the entire customer experience, from first touch all the way through to customer acquisition and retention.

It’s designed to nurture your relationships with prospects and customers based on their progression through the marketing funnel. Use your marketing automation platform to set up workflows that automatically nurture leads throughout the funnel with content and emails. Chances are, you're marketing to hundreds or thousands of people at a time, so you can't possibly be successful with manual email blasts.

Disrupt a user’s experience with pop-up forms

This might appear to be counter to the typical approach to inbound marketing, but there is proof that pop-up forms can be highly effective. Over the past few years, they have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for promoting content, driving blog subscriptions, growing email lists, and fueling lead generation. They do this by disrupting a user’s experience and drawing their attention towards a relevant offer. You can even fit them neatly into an inbound approach by associating the pop-up form’s messaging with the page content. A common practice is to add a pop-up form to your blog pages along the lines of, “Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter. Read up on the latest in B2B marketing, sales, and growth and hear about upcoming industry events and webinars!”

Always Be Conversion Rate Optimization...ing

For marketers that want to exceed their goals, it will not be enough to simply implement and manage the tactics listed above. They will need to address areas of opportunity for continuous improvement. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes into play. CRO can be described as a way of leveraging data to identify the most impactful ways to increase lead & demand generation. It involves measuring and analyzing the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your website that drive conversions, recognizing potential gaps, and finding solutions to fill them. When done correctly, this process leads to lower customer acquisition costs by capitalizing on your existing traffic to increase lead volume and maximize profits.

 

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