Plain and simple: Your website’s main goal should be capturing leads. Yes, your website should inform visitors, but that too is a means by which you capture leads.
If you’re not already using your website to capture leads, you might have a lot of work ahead of you, but in the end the work will pay off.
Step 1: Make a plan
Who are your best customers? What do your best customers want? The answers to these questions will help you formulate a plan for capturing leads. If your best customers are those who register for your fall classes every year, then they likely want a fall class catalog. If your best customers are looking for corporate training solutions, they might want information on pricing or best practices.
It is likely that you have more than one kind of best customer and if that is the case, start at the top of the list and answer these questions for each type of customer. Once you’ve identified your best customer or customers and identified what they want, you can start thinking about ways to deliver on those wants.
Step 2: Create offers (also known as content) that fulfill your best customers’ wants
This includes everything from the class catalog to the whitepaper or eBook on corporate training pricing. Creating these offers or content items doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start by using what you’ve got and build new offers as you can.
Some examples of offers or content items: Whitepapers, tip sheets, course catalogs or brochures, slideshows, infographics, checklists, free trials, guest passes or anything else that you are giving away.
Step 3: Create calls-to-action and landing pages for each offer
Calls-to-Action are buttons or images that people can click on in order to download your offers. They should include action words such as Download, Get or Subscribe. Free is always good, too. You can use simple button-like images for your calls-to-action, or images, such as the cover of the brochure or catalog you are giving away.
The calls-to-action should link to a landing page. This might be the most important part of capturing leads because without it, you won’t get any of that important contact information. The landing page should include a brief, benefits-focused description of the content or offer. The description should be written in the “You” format: Download this whitepaper and you will learn X, discover Y and master Z. Bulleted lists are great for landing pages, too.
The second piece of the landing page is the form in which you will capture the contact’s information. It is up to you to determine how much information you want to ask for, but keep in mind that people like short forms that are quick and easy to fill out. At a minimum, you want (and need) to ask for the contact’s email address, and first and last name.
The offer should appear on a separate page only after someone has hit the submit button on the form.
Step 4: Say thank you
Whether you do it once the download of the offer is complete or by automated email, you need to say thank you to the contact for taking the time to fill out your form and access your content.
You can keep this short and simple. “Thank you for downloading our tip sheet,” along with your organization’s contact information is sufficient.
Lead capturing takes time but the work will pay off when you have those valuable new contacts in your list and a batch of great offers in your marketing arsenal.
Once you’ve started capturing leads through different offers on your website, you can determine which offers or content formats get the most response and focus your efforts on those.