Lead Conversion Techniques

More ArticlesCopyright © 2007-2010 Wayne Davies Bookmark and Share

Getting a person to fill out a form and give you their personal information isn't easy. You're asking somebody to hand over their contact information to a complete stranger (i.e. you).

The only time anyone is going to do that is when s/he...

  • Trusts you to handle his/her information responsibly
  • Believes you have something to offer him/her
  • Is ready to find out more (i.e. the time is right)

As lead generation experts, you and I can take nothing for granted. It's essential that we set up our websites to ensure we deal with all 3 items listed above (trust, offer and timing). This article looks at ways you can deal with these lead generation essentials on your site...

Trust

When a human being meets another person, one thing we immediately do is make a value judgement. In particular, we want to know whether or not we can trust the other person. The more that's at stake, the more effort we'll expend in finding out.

When faced with your web site, visitors don't have all the usual interpersonal clues to work from. So they'll make a decision based on other factors. For example...

  • Does the site look professional?
  • Does the site have a lot of content?
  • Is the content useful?
  • Is the content easy to read/understand?
  • Is there something I can download for free (try before I buy)?
  • What do other people say about the site (testimonial)?

One way to greatly improve your odds of establishing trust, is to provide those missing interpersonal cues. The best way to do that, is to provide at least one video of you. This gives visitors both visual and audio information about you. It personalises your site, and puts a face to the name. It helps build rapport.

Including 4 or 5 video testimonials is an excellent way to improve your credibility with visitors. It's much easier to spot a fake video testimonial, than it is a written one. As a result, video testimonials help build trust.

In addition to trust, potential leads will want to know whether or not you're credible. This is where an active blog can help. A visitor can take a look through your blog, and note all the information you've provided over a number of years. This achieves two things...

  1. Shows you're in it for the long haul
  2. Shows you know what you're talking about

For an example, take a look at my lead generation blog.

The Offer

The offer has a very important role in lead generation. There's too much to go into here, so I recommend you take a look at the following articles...

Right time

Once in a while, you get lucky. You make your offer at the exact moment the prospect is ready to buy. Of course, most of the time the prospect is not ready to buy. S/he isn't even ready to become a lead!

Faced with such a situation, a good lead generation expert attempts to motivate the prospect to act. S/he looks to overcome human inertia.

There are plenty of different strategies you can employ. For example, this article explains how to use numbers to help stimulate response. And this article introduces you to 7 magic words designed to generate action. Here's 7 more magic words that help you convert visitors into leads.

It's usually a useful tactic to inject urgency as often as possible. Urgency is the key to successful lead generation. Even relatively conservative sites can make subtle use of urgency. Have a look at this Pension Cash landing page. There are several appeals to urgency embedded throughout the text.