Whether you’re getting a startup off the ground or trying to expand a long-time business, you’ll need lead generation. You need leads to make sales, but how are you supposed to get them? This is where many businesses struggle with their marketing efforts. They might build great product pages and landing pages, but no one is viewing them. There are tons of different lead generating strategies you could use to help your business, but these few are some tried and true methods that can get the ball rolling.

Gated Content

Inbound marketing thrives on organic leads, meaning customers will find you and then opt-in to your services. Making this opt-in more attractive is an easy way to increase your leads.

Gated content is any type of free offer on your website that you require an email or contact information for your customer to access. Think about those free guides, how-to lists or eBooks you see on your favorite blogs. All you have to do is put in your email and the download is sent directly to your inbox. That’s gated content.

The beauty of gated content is that those users’ emails are also added to your marketing list. Now you can reach out to them with newsletters, promotions, surveys, and more. You can start to gently lead them through the sales funnel until they decide they want to be your customer.

Calls to Action

You want every page on your website to have a clear call to action with either a link or button that takes the user exactly where you want them to go. In blogs this might be a link at the end of the content, or on landing pages, a button next to your product or service. The thing to keep in mind with this is that you need clear, concise messages.

Instead of going with “We’re here to help you,” try something like “Schedule a call today!” The latter is a direct request and it lets your user know what you want from them. You can include a link that takes them directly to your scheduling page, so they don’t even have to work to fulfill your request. This is a simple way to nudge leads through the awareness phase and into consideration or action.

Test Pages

A lot of design goes into creating that gated content and those calls to action, so you want to make sure your setup is working. This is where A/B testing comes into play. Plenty of website builders and CRMs like HubSpot have a testing feature you can use to see which option is the most effective.

All you have to do is create two versions of the same content. So it might be a web page with a call to action button, but on one version the button is blue and on the other it’s green. The program you’re using will randomly show users one of these versions and then keep track of the results for each. The data you gather here will show you which version of your design is the most effective and then you can use that exclusively across your site.

Optimized Copy

Finally, you want to make sure you’re optimizing all the content and copy on your website to get along with search engine parameters. After all, if people can’t find your website, they can’t become your customers. Search engine optimization relies on a few different tactics:

• Effectively using keywords to capture organic searches
• Internal linking to establish yourself as an authority
• Clearly asking and answering common questions users search for

To optimize content, it can help to have tools that assist you with keyword research and grade copy before you put it up on your site. This can ensure you’re achieving the highest level of optimization. 

Lead generation can seem tricky, but with these easy tips you’ll start to see leads increasing and have a larger pool of prospects to convert.