The 3 Keys to Boosting Your Lead Conversion
Inbound Marketing isn’t just about attracting leads to your business, it’s about converting them. Here’s how you can attract, nurture and convert Inbound leads into your new customers.
As lead generators, we want to nurture our prospects through The Buyer’s Journey.
1) At the Awareness Stage, a prospect may know there is something that could be improved with their business, but they have not yet defined the specific problem. They are likely to be looking online for answers. It is your job to draw them towards your company and using Inbound Marketing, to attract, nurture and convert them is a powerful approach.
One of the fundamentals of Inbound Marketing is having an established presence on Social Media as a source of reliable information. As of July 2015, there were 2.3 billion social media users so this is something you should embrace.
If you are not sure where to start with social media, there are several tools that can help. Hootsuite and Buffer, are both commonly used, but as well as re-posting content relevant to your prospects from other sources, you need to be creating your own content for your website and blog.
Creating your own content can be overwhelming when you first start, so it is helpful to look around for inspiration and guides, to get you underway. It is also worth looking at sites like Content Marketing Institute for helpful tips and advice
Content is not just important for the Awareness Stage, but is critical for the Consideration and Decision Stage. It is also useful once you have a customer on board, as you want to still be seen as a reliable, helpful source of information.
Remember, content doesn’t just have to be written, it can be visual or audio too. You can use infographics, images, videos and podcasts to get your message across. If you are unsure what tools are available to help, have a look at our previous post 11 Free Web-Based Inbound Marketing Tools to Get You Started.
2) At the Consideration Stage your prospect has moved from thinking they may have a problem, to knowing clearly what that problem is and trying to find the best solution. This is where the conversion process really begins as the stranger to your company becomes a visitor to your site and ultimately a lead. The content you prepared for the Awareness Stage comes into its own as a way of demonstrating your expertise and willingness to help.
Content, such as demonstration videos or eBooks are really useful as the prospect begins to take a more in-depth approach to their research. Calls-to-Action, such as "Sign up for a free workbook to boost your lead generation," help to convert visitors to leads.
Asking for contact details at this point, helps to remove visitors to your site who will never become customers or who are not yet far enough along the Buyers Journey to convert to leads. This leaves you and your team with the time and energy to focus on potential future customers.
If a prospect does like your product, then providing you with minimal details, such as their name, company name and email should not be too onerous for them. This allows you to provide more in-depth content, suitable for this stage of the Buyers Journey, such as e-books as discussed above.
The prospect has now become a lead.
3) At the Decision Stage your prospect has decided on the route they want to take to solve their problem. This could be in the form of a strategy, or they could be looking for a very specific solution.
Your lead will be making direct comparisons across different companies including yours. They will be looking for data and documentation, to support their decision. It is up to you to provide them with this through the content on your website and blog.
At this stage, you could also offer a trial download of your product, a case study, or a free webinar. You may also want to offer a mini-consultation with a rate to match.
It is still important to keep publishing on social media and to keep writing / preparing, new, fresh content. Aside from attracting other visitors, you want the lead/leads that you are nurturing to see that you are committed to being a reliable source of information and an expert in your field.
By now, you should be having some live interaction with your leads via email and pre-arranged calls. It is important that they can see the individuals behind the brand; these interactions are very important for that reason, not just for exploring options and prices.
Your lead is now your customer, success! However, this is not the end of the conversion process. You now want your new customer to become an ambassador for your brand. One way of doing this is by keeping your content new and fresh as discussed above and another is to survey your customers. Are they happy with what you are providing? Is there room for improvement? This will help to ensure that your customers continue to feel wanted and appreciated and not just another source of income for your business.
Interested in supercharging your lead generation with Inbound? Register here for our FREE Webinar Series, learn how to build an Inbound lead generation engine, and talk directly to our experts about your business.