The 10 Commandments of a Successful Lead Generation Strategy

Welcome to the Bible of all lead generation websites! The time of “buying” your audience’s attention and interest is long gone, so step into the new marketing era of “Good Things Come to Those who…Earn it!” You will find gathered here, all possible wisdom you need to know for your local business to have a successful lead generation strategy that is guaranteed to increase your site’s conversions and trust factor.

If you are not convinced yet that this is the way to go, you might enjoy learning that companies who already embraced this strategy have increased their leads per month by more than 60% than those who haven’t. So what else are you waiting for?

• Lay the Basis First with Compelling Content

The indisputable place from where to start first when it comes to a successful lead generation strategy is, of course, Content. Creating compelling content is fundamental in both establishing yourself as an authority in your field of expertise and in generating leads as well, so try to look at it as the basis of all wisdom. You can include here all the tools being used to generate traffic – this can include your blog, SEO, and social platforms.

• The Golden Rules for Lead Capture

Before jumping to those Ten Commandments of a successful lead generation strategy, what all small business owners should know first and foremost are these two golden rules of inbound marketing.

1. Give before you ask
2. Make every step of the marketing process valuable in and of itself

Whatever it is that you shall be trying to implement in your marketing strategy, remember these two golden rules of Nicholas Kusmich. As intuitive as they both sound, the truth is they still slip out of many business owners’ heads when it comes to approaching their audience – and examples are plenty, with the avalanche of information and newsletters people receive daily. Between all this invasion of privacy and the exhaustion of finding your e-mails filled with unwanted ads and offers, most people have sworn never to give that e-mail address again – and funnily enough, the avalanches are still flowing in your inbox.

As a local business owner, this is the first thing to bear in mind when creating a lead generation strategy – your audience is saturated with these “privacy extortions”, so now is the time you build your strategy around more mutually-benefiting opt-in methods for them to give their personal information. Remember, they are not all of a sudden uninterested in what you have to offer, they only want it to be presented in a mindful, considerate way. In short, give before you ask, so you set yourself apart from all those who mindlessly don’t.

That being said, here are the Ten Commandments for your lead generation strategy to bloom:

1. Give a Contact Number:

It’s not always a very intuitive aspect, but including a contact number on your website is a sure way to increase your offer’s credibility and overall trustfulness. Very few will ever pursue into actually giving a call, but the mere presence of a contact number provides a lot of comfort to your audience. It shows you are real and considerate towards their needs and inquiries.

2. Include Lead Magnets

A big time way to implement the golden rules is to make sure you provide value in exchange of your visitors contact information. A wonderful resource for you to do that is using lead magnets, such as free trials, training videos, webinars, free e-books, bonus tips or interviews with experts. Make sure to create relevant and compelling lead magnets, so that your visitors can follow through with your business even after having provided their contact information.

3. Post Forms

Include post forms on every page and make sure they look as light and less constricting as possible. The less information they ask for, the more likely your visitors are to filling them in. Make the post forms visual and try including an enticing offer to them.

4. Add Photos and Testimonials

Testimonials have a strong impact on your visitors since they attest your products and services are real and worth the money. To further emphasize this impact, add photos or even rich media such as video to back up these testimonials and make them look more trustworthy and credible.

5. Go for Some Great and Friendly Videos

With all the information and overall cold appearance an online commerce might bring, it is crucial to keep the human-friendly factor as high as possible. The surefire way to do so is to include great video content that speaks to your visitors and lets them feel closer to your business, more informed and more confident of their purchase, as opposed to only having written content.

6. Use Power Words

There’re certain words that make your visitors interest tick, which you might want to include in your offer. Focus on action-oriented words such as “feel”, “get,” “have,” as opposed to others that only suggest the actual feeling.

7. Have Some Great Whitespace

As scary as whitespace might sound, sometimes it’s best to leave a bit of a breathing room for your visitors eyes to rest upon so that they can better focus on the true essentials of your offer. Remember, sometimes less is more.

8. Consider Your End-Goal

What is it that you ultimately want to get from your visitors? For them to fill out a form, to subscribe to your mailing list, to request a callback? Defining your ultimate aim will better help you in adjusting your conversion goals accordingly, so give it some serious thought.

9. Lead Scoring

A wonderful way to assess your visitors’ level of engagement is lead scoring – a technique of quantifying the interest your prospects have with your content by assigning points for different types of interactions, such as:

• every e-book downloaded gets 5 points;
• un-subscription – 10 points deducted, ;

Lead scoring can thus provide valuable information that allows you to constantly improve your strategy according to your prospects needs and interests.

10. Testing and Analytics Software

Lead generation is all about testing and constantly analyzing what your visitors are looking for so that you can keep up. Real-time data, historical timelines, and conversion funnels will be of great use in stepping up and making your marketing strategy as effective as possible.

Are you respecting the 10 commandments of a successful lead generation strategy?