Generating leads - both high in quantity and quality - is every marketer's most important objective. A successful lead generation engine is what keeps the funnel full of sales prospects while you sleep. Surprisingly, only 1 in 10 marketers feels their lead generation campaigns are effective. What gives?
There can be a lot of moving parts in any lead generation campaign and often times it’s difficult to know which parts need fine-tuning. In this guide, we will expose the top 30 techniques marketers should utilize to increase leads and revenue. These tactics have been tested over the past 7 years and have been used to generate more than a million leads.
So what goes into effective lead generation?
If you look at the principle of supply and demand, you’ll notice that when supply is limited, demand goes up. Scarcity has a psychological influence on us, making us want something even more if there isn’t enough to go around. Scarcity is great because it creates a fear of shortage, and thus a sense of urgency.
The most common ways a brand can establish scarcity is by implementing:
It’s a natural tendency for humans to copy one another, even without realizing it -- we like to be a part of tribes and social communities. So when we notice our social circle is doing one thing, we tend to follow suit. One great way to make an offer more valuable is to show that other people are participating in that offer.
When something is buzz-worthy, it creates high demand. In situations like this, you can align offers with “what’s hot.” Companies will often leverage newsjacking for this type of technique and it works very well for offers, too.
Yes - people do judge a book by it’s cover. If your offer is a piece of content, such as a whitepaper, ebook, or presentation, put effort into creating an amazing title. For an experiment, we changed the title on one of our eBooks and ran an a/b test to see which one would perform better. Not only did the improved title outperform the original by over 776% at generating leads, it resulted in more customers as well. If you’re struggling to come up with the perfect headline, try using Coschedules's Headline Analyzer Tool
The most common offer I see on most websites is “Contact Us.” Sure, you want all your prospects to talk to sales, but not everyone is ready. As you know, buyers are more likely to do their own research before even engaging with a sales rep. And, every prospect is at a different stage of exploration. Some may need more education than others. That’s why it’s important to develop different offers at different buying cycles.
For more info on Buying Stages, view our blog post Understanding the Buyer's Journey
Not all offers are created equal. Some “formats” of offers perform better than others at converting leads. For example, what’s more valuable, a whitepaper or an ebook?
Below are the type of offers, in order of performance, that generate the most amount of leads:
CTAs (Calls-to-action) are best placed “above the fold” - the space where your web page is viewable to the user without having to scroll down. According to heat map analysis, anything “below the fold” will only be viewed by 50% of people who visit your page. Doubling impressions on your CTAs can significantly increase your lead count.
Often times, marketers will put more focus on being clever than clear. Be crystal clear about what offer is in your CTA. And be specific. If you’re giving away a free guide, say “Download our FREE guide to X.” If you’re hosting a free webinar, say “Register for our FREE webinar on X.” X should clearly convey a compelling benefit of receiving the offer. This is much more effective than “Download Now” or “Get a Free Article.” These simply aren’t specific enough.
Once a visitor arrives on a landing page, it’s your job to keep them there. If there are links on the page to move about your website, it will distract the visitor and decrease the chance of them converting on the page. One of the best ways to increase your landing page conversion rates is to simply remove the main navigation from the page. That's it!
Keep your messaging consistent on both your CTA and the headline of the landing page. If people click on a link for a free offer and then find out there’s a catch on the landing page, you’ll instantly lose their trust. Similarly, if the headline reads differently than the CTA, it might lead to confusion, and the visitor might wonder if the CTA is linked to the wrong page.