30 Ways to Convert Visitors into Leads
(Lead Generation Technique)

More ArticlesCopyright © 2007-2012 Wayne Davies Bookmark and Share

Online lead generation is about getting 2 things from a person...

  1. Permission to make contact and talk about your product or service
  2. 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.

  1. Offer to solve a problem
  2. Offer an in-depth hand-written custom report
  3. Offer a free download or information
  4. Offer a newsletter or ezine subscription
  5. Offer a free consultation
  6. Offer money-saving tips/tricks
  7. Provide discount and/or promotional codes
  8. Offer to improve something (e.g. I can double your sales)
  9. Use better targeted traffic generators (e.g. article marketing)
  10. Use a video sales pitch
  11. Improve your sales copy
  12. Work on building trust/removing doubt
  13. Personally invite people to the site (e.g. via business networking)
  14. Ask others to personally invite people to the site (e.g. referral marketing)
  15. Include video testimonials
  16. Include scans of written testimonials
  17. Give genuine value and invite reciprocation
  18. 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)
  19. Match a teaser ad with a landing page designed specifically to receive those visitors
  20. Make an offer designed to appeal to a specific group of people
  21. Insert a testimonial that reinforces a selling point/benefit at the appropriate place in the sales copy
  22. 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
  23. Get the visitor to take a position and generate subsequent actions consistent with that position
  24. Create scarcity (i.e. pressure to act now), such as offering only a set number at a special price
  25. Remove road blocks to becoming a lead, such as simplifying your sign up form
  26. Ask the visitor for his/her opinion about some aspect of your product/service
  27. Pre-qualify appropriate leads before asking visitor to become a lead
  28. Test copy variations and go with the one that generates the best results
  29. Test different offers and go with the one that generates the best results
  30. Test different visitor sources and go with the one that generates the best results