Got More Website Traffic? Great! Now what?
In Part 1, we talked about how Inbound Marketing generates traffic. Content becomes the net you cast into the world and when it's created with the right context, the right people find you.
Now great content is bringing new traffic to your website. So what's next? You need to convert some of those visitors into leads.
What exactly is a lead? We all know that leads are prospects and someone that we might ultimately get business from in the future. For the purposes of our Inbound Marketing discussion, we'll make our definition one step more specific. When someone gives you their information, usually from a form on your site, and they give you permission to talk to them again, they become a lead.
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Convert Visitors into Leads
Getting personal or business information from visitors requires trust. That trust comes in part from providing them with authentic content. They are getting answers to questions they searched online to find. And they are getting those answers from you.
There are lots of ways to convert visitors to leads. Collecting visitor contact information in a form online is the one most associated with Inbound Marketing. To get them to do that, you need to offer something of value in return. If they are giving you their information, they should get something that's worth the trade right?
Do you offer a free consultation? Collect visitor information from those interested in getting this advice. Do you have worksheets or guides that could help visitors? You've built your business on establishing expertise doing what you do. By giving people helpful information or tools, they can see for themselves that you know what you are doing.
It's all about helping people. So offer content that helps them in exchange for information from them. This process is often referred to as "gating" your content, but it has to be content that's worth it to them. You save the good stuff behind a gate, the form in this case, and in exchange for information they provide you trade that good content.
You don't have to gate all great content to convert visitors into leads. Pillar pages are a great example. They are informative and accessible, but also give you opportunities to convert leads.
A pillar page is a centralized page that acts as a hub for a particular topic. All the information is there so you aren't gating anything on the page. A typical pillar page will have lots of information about that topic. Links throughout will guide visitors to sub-topic pages. These sub-topic pages will have more detail about their subject but also link back to the pillar page.
Pillar pages, when done right, are becoming more valued in search results. For the same reason that humans would value a central resource on a topic, search engines do too.
Conversions to leads on pillar pages can come from offering a downloadable PDF version of the pillar page. Having an offline resource could be valuable to visitors. After all, you've put together a lot of information in one centralized place. That's helpful to visitors. High-level offers related to the topic can also act as calls-to-action on pillar pages.
Content is key to converting visitors into leads. Content accessible by everyone first establishes trust. More valuable content behind a form can then help you convert those visitors into leads. Use calls-to-action to drive traffic to landing pages where you have valuable offers and then use forms to collect lead information in exchange for the content offer. It's a simple concept. The trick to making it work is to always be in the mindset of helping your visitors learn. Your content should do that.
Thank you pages wrap the process up and provide a jump point for people to learn more about what you can do to help them. If fact, thank you pages are a great place for an additional content offer that builds upon the one a lead just downloaded or accessed. Visitors that have become leads through one conversion are even more likely to give you a bit more info in exchange for additional content that helps them again. See how that works?
In Part 3 we'll dive deeper into leads and how to nurture them to become customers.
