Getting visitors to your website is only the first step, and is often the easiest step. Converting visitors into leads (step 2), and eventually into paying customers (step 3) is a lot more challenging, and requires significant planning and execution. How visitors are converted into leads, and subsequently into customers, is often the easiest way to distinguish between average and great digital marketing.
In this post we will focus on converting visitors into leads (step 2); so where should you start? First, you have to understand that not everyone is in the same phase of the buying cycle, so it would be a mistake to only provide one or two ways for visitors to continue their engagement with your business.
Remember some of your visitors might be at the beginning of the buying cycle (e.g. awareness), and not ready to commit. On the other hand, some visitors will be toward the end of the cycle (e.g. evaluation or decision). So don’t put all visitors and leads in the same category. For example, if someone is early in the buying cycle, you should start with easy call-to-actions / CTAs (e.g. ask for an email address), don’t immediately push them towards engagements or CTAs which require more effort (e.g. sign-up, attend a webinar, etc.).
Don’t Make Them Think
All visitor interactions (including CTAs) have to be easy. The more a visitor has to think the more distracted they will be, and the more distracted they are, the less likely they are to follow your call-to-action. With that in mind, your CTAs have to be user-friendly, prominent, actionable, and in the right location(s).
All CTAs Have To Be Compelling
Why should a visitor be drawn to your CTA? In fact, most visitors will ask themselves 1) Why should I click? , and 2) What is in it for me? If your CTAs don’t answer those two questions well, your conversion will be disappointing.
Optimize
Your conversion can always be improved, so Optimize, Optimize, Optimize. Keep experimenting with different headlines, images, colors, and call-to-actions to improve your conversion rate. Even small improvements can have a significant impact. For example, every 1% improvement (1,000 visitors) results in 10 more leads.
