Capturing leads and converting them to revenue are two of the most critical, yet elusive goals of virtually every business. Small businesses, major corporations, retailers, bloggers and digital marketers everywhere, all understand how important it is to their success. Further complicating matters is the fact that this challenge is in a perpetual state of change.
Expert marketers keep their finger on the pulse, while applying years of experience, talent and instinct to engage and convert consumers. But that doesn’t mean it’s expensive or difficult to replicate!
Six Easy, Expert Tactics
The following six tactics are used by expert marketers to turn their traffic into subscribers, leads and sales. These tried and true methods have been proven to boost leads and grow revenue through powerful conversion optimization.
“We got a 300% improvement on our email conversion rates, which translated into significant revenue,” says Ian Cleary, Founder of RazorSocial.
You’ll recognize some of these tactics from your favourite websites, and may even have signed up or bought something because of them. Now you can use the same methods.
1. Optimize the Call to Action Button
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Split testing the button copy or colour can astound you with drastically different results.
The most effective ‘call to action’ text on your button is easier to predict than which colour works best, but testing both will improve results.
Your button copy should be short, direct and a bit personal. Let the visitor own the action by using “my” or “I”, such as “Send My Whitepaper” or “I Want to Join”. Sometimes, changing the perspective by using “my” or “I” instead of generic wording or the more common “you”, can result in considerably more success.
“When I tested live on the website, it turned out that the treatment with “Your” performed significantly worse than the control copy that made use of “My” – 24.95% worse to be more precise,” concludes an Unbounce case study.
It has been proven that different colours effect humans in different ways. Certain colours can make us more trusting, change our moods, or even increase our appetite.
Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions
The impact of colour has also been studied as it relates directly to consumer packaging and marketing.
“It found that when the background colour was red, people formed more favorable evaluations of products when its ad featured specific product details as opposed to evocative, creative messaging,” a UBC study, Colour Boosts Brain Performance and Receptivity to Advertising concluded. “However, when the background was blue, the opposite pattern of results emerged.”
You can use colours to your advantage when designing your website or when optimizing your landing page. You can also use it to increase signups and leads, simply by changing the colour of your ‘call to action’ button. Testing will tell you the most about what works best for you.
2. Make it Fast & Easy
One of the reasons landing pages are so effective, is they focus the visitor on one choice with minimal distractions. When you have to add a call to action to other pages or articles on your website, it should be the only call to action on the page if at all possible. If not, the distractions should be minimized (such as social media icons or anything else that invites the visitor to take action).
Whether you’re capturing email addresses or offering a digital product, make it easy for the visitor to quickly decide to take you up on the offer and keep the form as short as possible. If the form asks for too much information, you’re going to lose people. For example, if all you need is an email address, only ask for an email address.
3. Exit Popups
“Exit Intent popups have doubled my email opt-in rate. When done right, you can see an instant 10% lift on driving sales,” says Neil Patel, Founder of QuickSprout.
You’ve probably encountered an exit popup as you surf the ‘net. It’s that little window that pops up just when you move your cursor towards the top of the browser. It can be a very effective way to utilize visitor behaviour to catch them before they leave your website. You can use it to grab their email address, prevent them from abandoning their shopping cart with a special offer, offer customer support, and so on.
While not everyone is a fan of popups, virtually every digital marketer agrees that they can be effective. Your visitors may not agree though, so weigh that against your decision to use them. If you use them, make sure they’re mobile-friendly or you’ll get nailed with a Google penalty. The better lead capturing tools now feature mobile-friendly popups.
Canadian company, Wild Water Adventures, used an exit popup to capture visitor contact information by offering help with their trip planning. In 2017, that exit popup alone converted 160 leads and recovered $61,600 in sales!
4. Inline Forms in Articles
You’ve successfully lured in a visitor with your article title (headline), grabbed their interest and held it until the end of the post. That’s a good sign they’re engaged, making it the perfect time to pull them through to your email list or pitch an offer. Use a link or create an inline form to insert at the end of your posts or articles.
Lilach Bulloch uses inline forms to help her convert 57% of website visitors!
“Since my main goal… is to grow my email list, I would say it’s definitely helped me achieve that – and then some. But this has had a snowball effect; for one, my traffic goes up the more people I have in my email list, and two, I’m also able to generate new quality leads on a monthly basis. Some months, I add as many as 1000 new subscribers to my list (with no paid promotions).”
5. Content Walls
You may have encountered an opt-in gate online, which is similar to a pay gate. Use these “walls” on popular posts that a reader will want to finish reading, then stop them from doing so with a sign-up form. This is another method that may frustrate visitors so put some thought into it and use the strategy sparingly. Try to make the message as positive as you can, such as “We don’t’ want to charge you to view our premium content, so all you have to do is sign up…”
6. Promote Specific Pages
Your campaign landing page is designed to gather leads or make sales. It’s where you want visitors to go, especially when they’re already engaged with your brand. Link to that promotion page everywhere you can, including social media profiles and in your email signature.
You’ll also want to direct visitors from other pages on your website and there are several creative ways top marketers use this tactic. For example, you can send visitors to your landing page automatically when they leave a comment.
There is no better time to secure a lead or sale than when your target is otherwise engaged with you, be that on your website, social media, or in their inbox.
Replicate Their Success
With the right tools, you can easily do the same thing. Everything from landing page design and execution to testing and tracking is facilitated through a user-friendly interface, requiring next to no tech skills. Affordable options include the popular OptinMonster, which actually outperforms many of the more expensive tools available and boasts plenty of famous users and brands.
“We are all in on OptinMonster. It works seamlessly for us. It has allowed us to dramatically increase our email subscribers,” says Michael Stelzner, Founder of Social Media Examiner.” In only 7 months, we added more than 95,000 names to our email list using OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent® Technology. We strongly recommend it!”
What tip or trick would you add to get more email subscribers, leads and sales conversions? Please share your experience or questions in the comments below.
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Melody McKinnon is an internet entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in a wide range of online business models, backed by a formal business education and enhanced by training and mentorship. She has owned or managed both educational and ecommerce websites. Her book, 7 Recession Proof Online Businesses to Start From Home, is available from all major ebook retailers.
Melody has worked with many businesses & brands in a multitude of capacities. She can often be found on CanadianDigitalMedia.com, CanadiansInternet.com, CanadianFamily.net, and AllNaturalPetCare.com, as well as other quality digital publications. Her content has earned reference links from highly-respected websites, magazines and university textbooks.
I’m trying to decide if I should avertise my website or my newsletter. The newsletter landing page is on my site so I guess it does both but I’d like to know how everyone else does it? for email list growth campaigns?
Your post is exceptional, and I am grateful. Reading it taught me a lot. Your observations are highly applicable and useful. Your inclusion of connections to other sites for further reading was also very helpful. I will most certainly save this post for when I need to refer back to it.
Excellent tips from those in the know. I love the internet because experts do share some great stuff. I don’t know how people did business before they had the option of going online.
Thanks!