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 that 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 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, helpful 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 into leads. Collecting visitor contact information through a form is the method most associated with Inbound Marketing, but today there are more options than ever. Chatbots and conversational marketing tools can engage visitors in real time and collect lead information in a more dynamic, personalized way. No matter the method, the principle is the same — to get someone to share their information, you need to offer something of value in return.
Do you offer a free consultation? Collect visitor information from those interested in getting that advice. Do you have worksheets, guides, or tools that could help visitors? You've built your business on expertise. By giving people helpful information, they can see for themselves that you know what you are doing.
It's all about helping people. Offer content that helps them in exchange for information from them. This process is often referred to as "gating" your content. The key is to be selective about what you gate — reserving it for truly high-value offers. Gating too much too early can discourage visitors who are still in the early stages of their journey. Save your best resources behind the gate, and make sure what they get in return is genuinely worth the trade.
You Don't Have to Gate Everything
Pillar pages are a great example of ungated content that still converts. They are informative and accessible, but also give you opportunities to capture leads.
A pillar page is a centralized page that acts as a hub for a particular topic. All the information is there and freely accessible. A typical pillar page will have lots of information about that topic, with links throughout guiding visitors to sub-topic pages. These sub-topic pages dive deeper into their subject but also link back to the pillar page.
Pillar pages, when done right, are highly valued in search results. For the same reason that humans value a central resource on a topic, search engines do too — and Google's continued push toward topical authority makes pillar pages more important than ever.
Conversions on pillar pages can come from offering a downloadable PDF version of the page, giving visitors an offline resource they can reference later. High-value offers related to the topic can also serve as calls-to-action throughout the page.
Content is the Key to Conversion
Content accessible to 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 or conversational tools to collect lead information in exchange for that offer. It's a simple concept. The trick to making it work is to always be in the mindset of helping your visitors learn.
Thank you pages wrap the process up and provide a jumping-off point for people to learn more about what you can do to help them. In 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 who have already converted once are even more likely to engage again in exchange for content that continues to help them. See how that works?
In Part 3, we'll dive deeper into leads and how to nurture them to become customers.