30 Ways to Convert Visitors into Leads
(Lead Generation Technique)
More ArticlesCopyright © 2007-2010 Wayne Davies
Online lead generation is about getting 2 things from a person...
- Permission to make contact and talk about your product or service
- The contact data necessary to do so
Until a person has both permission to talk, and the means to do so, s/he doesn't have a lead.
Fast-talking marketing 'gurus' often claim to have all kinds of secret methods for getting people to give up their contact details, and they're usually willing to share them with you – for a fee. It's possible some of their methods might even work.
But it's important to understand that this isn't lead generation.
Sharp practices are about obtaining data. They're not about obtaining permission. Calling a person who hasn't given permission to talk about your product or service is essentially a cold call. The lead has still to be generated.
It's also worth noting a business that first obtains permission to call about their product or service doesn't have to trick anybody person into giving their contact data. The fast-talking 'gurus' have it all backwards – as usual.
So the real question is not how do you generate leads? It's how do you get permission to call? And the key to answering that question lies in the reasons you give a person to become a lead in the first place. Because those reasons generate a genuine desire to talk about your product or service.
It's essential that you see the following 28 ways in that light. They're about giving people a reason to talk to you, and then following up.
- Offer to solve a problem
- Offer an in-depth hand-written custom report
- Offer a free download or information
- Offer a newsletter or ezine subscription
- Offer a free consultation
- Offer money-saving tips/tricks
- Provide discount and/or promotional codes
- Offer to improve something (e.g. I can double your sales)
- Use better targeted traffic generators (e.g. article marketing)
- Use a video sales pitch
- Improve your sales copy
- Work on building trust/removing doubt
- Personally invite people to the site (e.g. via business networking)
- Ask others to personally invite people to the site (e.g. referral marketing)
- Include video testimonials
- Include scans of written testimonials
- Give genuine value and invite reciprocation
- Make your site interactive and use that interaction to increase relevance (e.g. find out visitor has problem F and talk about your solution to it)
- Match a teaser ad with a landing page designed specifically to receive those visitors
- Make an offer designed to appeal to a specific group of people
- Insert a testimonial that reinforces a selling point/benefit at the appropriate place in the sales copy
- Insert an authority statement (e.g. results of a scientific study) that reinforces a selling point/benefit at the appropriate place in the sales copy
- Get the visitor to take a position and generate subsequent actions consistent with that position
- Create scarcity (i.e. pressure to act now), such as offering only a set number at a special price
- Remove road blocks to becoming a lead, such as simplifying your sign up form
- Ask the visitor for his/her opinion about some aspect of your product/service
- Pre-qualify appropriate leads before asking visitor to become a lead
- Test copy variations and go with the one that generates the best results
- Test different offers and go with the one that generates the best results
- Test different visitor sources and go with the one that generates the best results