The Ultimate Guide to Getting More Leads and Keeping Them Over Time

Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any sales strategy. It is the first step in building a business relationship; it is where you capture your potential customer’s attention and get their contact information. Even if they don’t turn into a prospect or paying customer in this first interaction, once you have captured their attention and obtained their contact information, you have opened the door for future engagement. However, when it comes to closing deals, simply capturing leads isn’t enough; to keep most leads and give you the best chance of converting them into paying customers, you will need to develop lead-generation strategies for each stage of the funnel.

There are three sales funnel stages:

TOFU = Top of the funnel

The top of the funnel focuses on generating awareness. TOFU is often referred to as lead capture, and it is where you get the attention of a large number of potential clients; however, not all leads are created equal, and many of these leads will not qualify to the next stage.

MOFU = Middle of the funnel

The middle of the funnel focuses on evaluating your leads. This stage is where you need to educate and nurture the sales-qualified leads. The most important thing to do in MOFU is to demonstrate value and build trust; this gives you the best chance of keeping the leads in the funnel and getting them to the next stage.

BOFU = Bottom of the funnel

The bottom of the funnel is the final stage and focuses on converting your lead to a customer. All leads that come through to BOFU should be highly qualified and ready to purchase your service or product.

The reason a sales funnel, is called a funnel, is because the aim is to attract a large number of leads, and as they progress through the stages, this number decreases. Once the leads have made it to the final stage of the funnel, they will be considered high-quality leads, and are more likely to convert into paying customers. We are going to break this article down into two sections, the first, TOFU, which focuses on how to capture a large quantity leads, and the second, look at strategies to help keep them, move them through the funnel and give your sales team the best chance of a conversion.

Lead Capture

The term lead capture refers to the process of obtaining prospective customer information in order to generate leads. Lead capture, also known as the first stage in the sales funnel, will be a vital part of your sales strategy.

The process of lead capture begins when a visitor discovers your business through your website, blog, or social media platform. The discovery prompts them to click your call to action (CTA), which entices them to provide some kind of contact details. While this process may sound simple, it is harder than you think, as often people are reluctant to give up their personal information. To effectively capture leads, you need to have compelling content; however, every business’s demographic is different; therefore, testing your process and analyzing data is the only way to determine what lead generation strategy will attract and engage your target audience. However, there are best practices for generating leads that will help you create your lead generation strategy, here are four sales tips to help you capture more leads.

Have Strong Call-To-Actions (CTA)

Having a solid call to action is the most important aspect of lead capture. If a prospective client is visiting your site, you want to make it really easy to take the next step in their customer journey. Often businesses make the mistake of simply putting their number with a “call us” at the bottom of the page; let’s face it, that’s not a very compelling CTA. Plus, if you leave the ball in the customer’s court, you have given up the opportunity to follow up and entice them with more marketing offers once they have left the site. To ensure you capture their contact details, you need to write a CTA; for example, a CTA could be a form to sign up for a trial, a calendar to book a demo, or enter their email address to obtain a newsletter. However, having too many different CTA’s on one page can confuse potential leads, you want to make the CTA easy to follow rather than overwhelming them with too many choices.

Optimize Your Landing Page

While every page of your website deserves attention, as your homepage or landing page is the first place a potential customer will see, it must be optimized for lead capture. You need to be preparing your prospect to convert, make sure the whole page is designed to capture attention, the headline, the copy, and the images need to be directing your prospect to your CTA. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes, anticipate the customer journey, and design your page with a clear route that is likely to get them from A to B. You can also measure the performance of your pages with tools like Google Analytics, this will show you if your changes are having a positive impact and help you identify strategies to increase traffic. Integrating live chat is another great way to optimize your landing page, engage your customers and capture leads. When they are on the page, you can ask them questions, be easily directed through the website, and are more likely to hand over contact information.

Make it Easy to Find Your Contact Information

While this may seem obvious, more often than you think, visitors struggle to find contact information and inevitably leave your site. Along with a CTA on every page, you should have a clear and concise contact page. A contact page should have a contact form, link to social media platforms, hours of operation, phone number, location, and any additional information you want to include, such as a map. The best practice is to make sure that your number and map are interactive and clickable.

Offer Unique Content

Content is one of the best ways to capture attention, engage your audience, and guide your users to your landing page. The best kind of content is unique, on-brand, and provides prospective customers with useful, free information. Whether you are writing a blog, recording a vlog, hosting a webinar, creating an email newsletter or eBook, you need to make sure that you include a CTA somewhere eye-catching in your content; while they are engaged, you want to provide them the option to sign up and receive more.

How to Keep Your Leads

Often businesses find that their leads may put an item in their cart, only to close the window, or that a potential customer bookmarks the page, only never to return again. If this is happening to you, you’re capturing potential leads, but for one reason or another, you are struggling to keep them and turn them into prospects or customers. We have put together some tips to help you keep your leads in the sales funnel and increase your chances of converting them to paying customers.

Engage Through Social Media

Social media is a fantastic avenue for generating leads. It is one of the most effective advertising spaces on the internet; not only can you create engaging content and clickable ads, but you can also conduct social listening. Social listening helps you understand what industry, influencers, and customers are saying about your product and helps you engage with them. For those who are providing a positive response, you can highlight them on your page, demonstrating social proof of your product, and if you find there is a negative response, you can catch it early, contact them directly and offer a solution.

Offer Value and Build Trust

Regardless of what kind of content you are producing, above everything else, you need to make sure that it demonstrates the value and creates brand awareness. There are two great ways of doing this, and that is to either educate them on the product or service or demonstrate value through storytelling. Both education and storytelling provide an added layer of value that will draw your customer in, engage them and leave them asking for more.

Along with offering value, building trust is also vital; you can do this by keeping your message consistent and delivering on your promises. Your message should be consistent across all platforms, from your website to your social media to your newsletters, with a cohesive message that offers value to your customer and makes them feel valued.

Make Them an Offer They Can’t Refuse

If you want to make sure that you keep your leads, make them an offer that they can’t resist. If your offer is great and it’s the right time, you will see an increase in conversion rates. An irresistible offer can come in many forms; it could be a discount, a limited edition, a free trial, or answers to a quiz. You can break down barriers and encourage them to buy by giving them a special offer, making them feel valued.

Use the Right Tools

The most successful businesses use tech solutions to organize, analyze and store their leads, in order to give them the best chance of moving them down the funnel. Tools such as customer relationship management systems (CRM) can help you to engage and reach out to your customers in a more organized and professional manner. They do this by providing a comprehensive view of the sales funnel and streamline processes by automating the nurturing process. A CRM can also help you to gather and analyze data, identifying challenges and equipping you with the knowledge to make the changes necessary.

Analyze the Customer Journey

If you find that your users are dropping off and don’t know why, conducting A/B testing can tell you a lot about how your campaigns are performing, what is working and what could do with some improvement. A/B testing is sending out slightly different versions of your ad or email, so you can get feedback from your audience and determine which versions do the best job of enticing users to your landing page.

No matter how good your growth strategy may seem, it should always be under review; make sure that you conduct regular testing. To do this, you can use visitor tracking tools such as heatmaps, confetti maps, scroll maps, and overlay maps. These help you track and understand your visitors’ behavior, identifying what elements of your page are catching attention and what are being ignored.

Conclusion

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential sales leads to your website and convincing them to give over their contact information. The more leads you can get, the better chance you have of making a sale. There are a number of ways you can generate sales, and every business is different, meaning that you need to customize your funnel to speak directly to your customer base. However, as a rule of thumb, if you provide significant value, optimize every page, and create unique and engaging content, you will be able to develop a healthy relationship with your prospects and entice them to your brand.