One of the fundamental things that we help our clients understand and appreciate is that in the inbound marketing world, the goal isn’t merely to get traffic. That was the case several years ago when internet marketing first hit the scene, and frankly, it was the wrong metric.
Rather, the end game with inbound marketing here is to drive leads to your website – but not just any leads - we want leads comprised of individuals and/or businesses that are either marketing qualified or sales qualified. In simpler terms, these are customers who have a legitimate, realistic chance of eventually making a purchase.
The “eventually” we’re talking about here could be a matter of hours, days, weeks or months. It depends on a number of factors, including the product or service being offered and the average duration of the customer journey (for example, all else being equal, B2B sales funnels are longer than B2C sales funnels). Regardless, the key point to remember is that the goal with inbound marketing is to generate leads – not just get traffic.
With this in mind, the multi-million dollar question that you’re probably asking is: “What's the best way to drive leads to my website?”
In our experience working with clients across the country – and by leveraging inbound marketing right here in our own digital backyard at Leap Clixx – there is no “single best way” of driving leads. Rather, there are several efficient ways that all work together to generate leads and, ultimately, attempt to nurture as many of them as possible into happy customers and inspired brand ambassadors. Here’s a rundown some of the top methods and strategies that we recommend:
How to Drive Qualified Leads to Your Website:
- Blogging at least 3 times a week (5 times a week is the best practice) on topics that are relevant and interesting to your target markets (buyer personas). Of course, the blog posts should be aligned with SEO strategies and optimized for specific keywords.
- Creating professional-grade offers at all stages of the customer experience journey (more general for those starting out, more specific for those closer to the end). These offers can include eBooks, white papers, reports, Infographics and more, and they should all be gated behind strategically-crafted contact forms.
- Systemically driving content to all relevant social media channels and making it easy for community members to share it with their network. For some businesses, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube might be the only social media properties they need to incorporate into their system. Other businesses will need to add Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and so on.
- Ensuring that your website aligns with the optimal customer experience and nurtures leads towards high-impact sections and pages. For example, valuable eBooks and Infographics should never be buried on a back page that only 5 percent of leads discover (and some of them by accident!). From the moment leads arrive on your website, they should feel gently ushered towards the places that YOU want them to go.
- Use specifically-crafted landing pages for your offers so that you can drive conversions (i.e. leads downloading an eBook, Infographic, etc.) and track performance. You can also add pay-per-click campaigns that specifically drive leads to your landing pages instead of your home page (in this case, the ad itself would be for the offer).
- Obsessively tracking everything to see what’s working and why. There will be some surprises along the way and this isn’t a bad thing. For example, you may discover that customers resonate with messages and themes that, initially, you thought would be less important. You can leverage these insights to optimize current campaigns, and build better campaigns in the future.
The Bottom Line
In the end, your goal is to generate as many qualified leads as possible – because leads drive your inbound marketing and ultimately your sales - and this will make or break your website's success and ROI. The above strategies and tips will definitely point you in the right direction and help you surge ahead of your competition.
If you can't place a dedicated team on these strategies at the moment, Leap Clixx is happy to explain some of the ways we can help empower your inbound marketing to generate the qualified leads that will move your business forward. To learn more, contact us today and schedule your free, no obligation consultation.
In the meantime, be sure to check out our helpful eBook that explains more ways to turn your website into a lead-generation machine!
