Lead Generation Funnel Creation – Guide to Getting Leads Online

Looking for ways to build lead generation funnel?

You came to the right “post”. This the ultimate article to create your lead generation funnel and automate the whole lead gen process.

Gone are the days when computers would make us feel like old Jurassic fossils. In this era of globalization, almost everything, ranging from schooling to business & dating has embarked on an online trend.

Indeed, hosting a website is no longer the issue these days; the issue is how visible you are online. This has led to a proliferation of website design and development services. And all of them need leads. For this reason, lead generation is a crucial service that is demanded by all those who have an online presence.

This has led to a proliferation of website design and development services. And all of them need leads. For this reason, lead generation is a crucial service that is demanded by all those who have an online presence.

Today, we are going to shed some light on how you can get more customers for your online business with lead generation funnel.

How to Build Lead Generation Funnel With Blog

Blogging has become a very popular method of making money online and providing additional information about the service you offer.

Look at Mention for example. This is a service that tracks mentions of your brands across the web.

(We have covered them here— 30+ social media tools for business).

Over at their blog, they frequently cover topics about social media, marketing, branding etc. All these posts drive a lot of organic traffic to the site. On the right-hand side, you can also see a Call to Action button surrounded by text that says what Mention does.

This enables the blog to drive leads for them every day.

Blogging creates strong connections between businesses and customers. In fact, a recent study revealed that blogs are very crucial in generating leads for both B-to-B and B-to-C businesses.

So what kind of posts do you need to write?

According to studies conducted by Quicksprout, “The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has.”

Longer pieces of content actually get more links and more social shares and that would make your lead generation funnel better.

Blogging is a form of Inbound marketing. According to Hubspot’s 2014 report there are “84% of inbound marketers – compared to only 9% of outbound marketers – cite organic sources (blogging, SEO, social media) as rising in importance.”

Also, as per the 2013 Hubspot report, “82% of marketers who blog daily acquired a customer using their blog, as opposed to 57% of marketers who blog monthly — which, by itself, is still an impressive result. “

Here’s what they say about blogging on GrooveHq.

“When we started, virtually nobody knew who Groove was.

Now, I get almost daily emails with interview and speaking requests, and bloggers asking for info about Groove that they can feature in their content.

The thought leadership we’ve built through the blog has scored us many thousands of dollars of free PR.”

Also when they started their blog, a year ago, things looked dismal;

But a year later, their weekly traffic stats will blow the lid off of you;

Source

The most important aspect of generating leads using a blog is the amount of traffic on the blog.

It is actually safe to say that the quality and quantity of traffic on your blog indicates your net worth.

For this reason, you need to publicize your blog offline using business cards, speeches, seminars and classes, to name but a few. Email signature is also of great help and do not forget about blog and RSS/Atom directories and blog search engines like blogdigger.com·

Make the navigation simple

The best lead generation funnel is actually making-it-easy for your customer.

A website that is to generate traffic needs to be simple, interactive and unique. The texts on it should read well on a clean background.

It should also have horizontal and vertical scroll bars and toolbars with working links and pull down menus that will make navigation a sweet piece of cake.

A visitor to the site should be able to download any available documents or software from the site. Briefly, the website should offer something that is not available elsewhere, so that the visitors to the site can easily get what they were looking for on the site and recommend the site to other users.

On top of a quality website, Google webmaster tools such as site map, Google keyword tool and clean site links can be used to further increase online visibility

Design Landing pages that convert

Landing pages are one of the most important elements to tackle the mystery of creating the lead generation funnel.

Landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies.

The use of good looking landing pages enables marketers to direct website visitors to targeted pages and capture leads at a much higher rate.

What’s great about landing pages is that they direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions of everything else on your website. Visitors are on a landing page for one and only purpose: to complete the lead capture form.

To create landing pages that resonate well with your visitors, get to know them first. What drives them? What are they looking for?

Most marketers have two things going hand in hand. They design landing pages and they also have display advertising on.

But the point where most of them fail is in keeping the messaging consistent. Their ad copy speaks of something while the landing page is designed in an entirely different way. 9 out of 10 times, the messaging on the landing page isn’t consistent with what was shown on the ad.

However, there’s one company that keeps it pretty consistent across all channels.

See the example.

Here’s a video discussing the same.

Calls to action that drive leads

Calls-to-action (CTA) drive people to your offers directly. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to click, then it makes the offer useless. CTAs can be used almost everywhere— landing pages, PPC ads, emails etc.

To make the best use of CTAs, make sure that you;

1. Use contrast to make them stand out from the rest of webapage.
2. Place them at a prominent place on the website.
3. Split test and see which one converts better— test the colors, button size, button copy etc.

You can also use a smart CTA. Smart CTAs  function dynamically  and enable you to automatically display different CTAs to different visitors based on behavioral targeting. Smart CTAs use the information stored in the database to vary the Calls To Action.

If a visitor has already converted and is in your list, then the CTA dynamically changes to offer them something that sends him/her to an even more segmented list.

Say you are a marketer who has signed up for Hubspot’s newsletter. A smart CTA would now gauge if you are someone who likes content marketing or email marketing better by displaying freebies in those categories.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine optimization gives sites higher ranking in the search results pages of search engines, also called the SERPs.

How do you go about it?

Google does frown upon any technique that artificially pumps up a lot of links.

But there are a lot of whitehat techniques that you can use. On-page optimization is one of the most ignored facets of SEO.

You can optimize your h1 tags, h2 tags, meta keywords, search descriptions, alt tags for better ranking.

Creating useful content that others would love to link to from their sites is another. While creating links you need go all out with guns ablaze focused on anchor texts. A few powerful links that come naturally with great content would suffice.

Offer free eBooks

If you envision generating high quality leads to your site, you must develop the knack of writing and launching books that generate leads. Creating a good eBook entails several aspects:

1. Setting clear goals

Perhaps this is the most crucial step in creating a good eBook. You must set clear, reasonable and SMART goals.

The main aim of the eBook is lead generation. But what type of leads specifically? Who is the target audience? Which issues will the book address?

2. Writing high quality content

Once you are clear on your goals you can now start writing. You must provide high quality content that will attract the readers and elicit the feeling that you are providing them with the most resourceful content available. Avoid repeating yourself or using filler words. You also need to adopt a style that will be attractive to the reader.

3. Enhancing content using hyperlinks and CTAs

As you create your content, you need to use hyperlinks and Calls-to Action that will redirect the reader to other relevant content you have created.

4. Consider adding tracking tokens.

To reap the most benefit from your content, consider adding tracking tokens. You can create unique tokens that will provide Google Analytics to track specific campaign elements, such as banner ads, newsletters, email blasts, or paid search. The Google URL builder will create the unique URL which defines the campaign, source and name. This then becomes your reference destination and is where you will choose the anchor text or image.

5. Link to social networks

Social networks are arguably the most powerful, cost-effective marketing tool you have as an internet marketer. Make sure your eBook leverages those networks at every opportunity. Include social sharing links to let readers “Tweet This” or “Share on Facebook” on every page. Use these links to direct people to the landing page for your eBook to ensure you collect those leads too. Your readers get to easily pass along the value you’ve created in your content with colleagues and co-workers; you get more free leads to convert.

6. Create a catchy title

Titles that offer “How to” information are always useful. “Tips,” “Tricks,” and “Secrets to” also do well with readers. After all, who can’t use a tip or a trick, and everybody wants to know the “secret” to just about everything. Moreover, numbers are always eye-catching, especially when part of a list, such as “44 Ways to Improve SEO.” Try to come up with several names for your eBook, then do a little test marketing with coworkers, customers, and vendors to see which people tend to gravitate to and why.

7. Market the eBook

Get the eBook in front of as many people as possible to ensure that your lead generation funnel gets fresh prospects who will end up being converted in your funnel.

Forms

Optimized forms are good for lead generation, especially when the visitors do not have the feeling that they are long and time consuming to fill.

Remember that without a form, there is no way you can build a lead generation funnel.

Without contact information, you can’t convert a visitor to your site into a lead.

This is because forms are the bridge between the site and important landing pages. They come in handy especially when you want the visitors to subscribe to your site or to download something from it. When creating forms, consider the following tips.

1. Make sure that the form is of the right length.
2. Where the form is long, make it appear shorter.

The reason why I emphasize on keeping forms short is because reducing form fields has always led to an increase in signups.

Over at at VWO blog you can read a case study where they removed three form fields.The tests showed that when you reduce the number of unnecessary fields in a form, you can increase signups.

Source

Advertising

Advertising plays a very crucial role when it comes to automating your lead generation funnel.

It is worth noting that as advertisers embrace bits and bytes to deliver their campaigns, there is a confusion regarding which channels to use.

There are several form of advertising that can lead to substantial lead generation. Pay Per Click is one of these methods. Although expensive, it delivers a great deal of leads to the website of the client.

You can also buy Cost Per Million ads. This is the amount you for generating a million impressions to your advert. For CPM,  one of the most important factors is the CPI—Conversion per Impression. Conversion per Impression is a metric that includes both Click Through’s and Conversions.

Let’s look at one example.

Ad #1 has 100 impressions and 1 conversions with 20 clicks.
Ad#2 has 200 impressions and 2 conversions with 15 clicks.

Ad #1 CTR=20% and CVR=5%
Ad#2 CTR=7.5% and CVR=16.6%

Ad #1 has a better CTR but slightly smaller conversions. The second ad is good on conversions but the CTR is bad.

Which one should you go ahead with?

Selecting one solely based on a single factor, say the one with high CTR, can result in missing out on more conversions. The first ad seems to be bringing in a lot more traffic.

This is where the CPI comes to the rescue. It is given by Conversion/Impression, so for Ad #1 CPI=1% while for Ad #2 CPI=1.25%.

Upload videos on YouTube

Getting natural likes to videos may not be easy but with persistence you can reach your goals. The key in making YouTube a soft sell is in uploading videos regularly.

The more content you have there, the better it is for organic rankings. YouTube being the world’s second largest search engine, you can’t ignore its power.

 Incentivized lead generation

This type of lead generation strategy helps to accelerate your lead generation by giving users something “juicy” when they submit their information.

This can be related to the advertiser’s product or service e.g. a free sample or unrelated such as the offer of a free prize in exchange for the consumer leaving their contact details.

Unincentivized lead generation

This type of strategy helps your lead generation funnel with complete transparency on what customer is offered and what he/she will receive.

There should be no incentive for the consumer to leave their information apart from the fact that they will be contacted by the advertiser about the product or service in question.

Networking (MLM network marketing)

This is a form of pyramid selling that allows the creation of a large network of people. In this case, an organization sets up a sales taskforce that is allowed to recruit other sales persons into the network. The salesmen are compensated for both their direct sales and those of the salespeople they brought to the network. After a while, the organization has a large network of marketers or salespeople for its products.

In this case, an organization sets up a sales taskforce that is allowed to recruit other sales persons into the network. The salesmen are compensated for both their direct sales and those of the salespeople they brought to the network. After a while, the organization has a large network of marketers or salespeople for its products.

The salesmen are compensated for both their direct sales and those of the salespeople they brought to the network. After a while, the organization has a large network of marketers or salespeople for its products.

Press release distribution.

If your business utilizes news releases as a way to disseminate information about your business, don’t overlook the opportunity they provide for lead generation. Just as you refrain from employing keyword rich anchor texts in a blog post to point to a landing page, do the same in your news releases.

This is a great way to build a lead generation funnel.

In case you’re wondering if they’d cost you an arm and a leg, don’t worry. There are tons of gigs on Fiverr that can get you lots of PR links.

You’ll likely reap some SEO benefits from this practice, as well.

Questionnaires.

Online questionnaires are great sources of data. Websites that have inbuilt questionnaires have a great chance of going viral. This is so because they can get accurate first hand information from their visitors and use this information to build on their capacities.

You can use Qualaroo to get feedback from your visitors. It’s free, and almost non-intrusive.

Google analytics tool.

This is a very powerful tool for monitoring the traffic to a website. It allows the site administrator to understand the demographics.

It opens a window into the mind of the user as it identifies both the  performing and non-performing pages. This information helps in assessing the degree of engagement on the site so that he or she can make informed decisions on how to create a lead generation funnel for the site.

Webinars.

B-2-B organizations aim to generate high quality  leads and webinars are one of the best ways to achieve that.

Webinars uniquely enable live, real-time person-to-person communication. In other words, they’re the ultimate interactive marketing opportunity. If you are able to map out various places throughout the webinar to add little bits of insight to your understanding of each participant, then you can be sure to generate high quality leads.

Now it’s your turn to build a lead generation funnel

Getting leads is one of the most important part of any company. All of your marketing efforts will be in vain if you do not have a list of leads that you can convert into customers.

The key to having a long term company that has constant profits is its efficient lead generation program. If you only focus on driving sales, it will get to be too hard to make consistent money.

When you drive traffic to your landing page to get leads, you must make sure that it is targeted traffic. In other words, focus on the right keywords to get the right kind of visitors coming in. Whether you are buying traffic by running a PPC campaign or you are optimizing your website for the search engines, you must select the right keywords to get quality leads. These keywords might bring in a little traffic, but just as long as they are targeted, that is all that matters. In order to make sure you’re creating a solid list of keywords and key phrases, use a trusted tool like the Google Keywords tool to help you out with it.

Make sure your lead capture forms ask for only a few simple details and aren’t too long. Most people don’t want to wade through an entire process with too many fields. your conversion rates and lead generation will be easily completed if you take the time to make your submission forms quick and easy for now and ask for more information later on.

Concluding thoughts!

In a nutshell, if you are struggling with lead generation bookmark this article and once you are trying to figure out how to get your lead generation funnel of the ground – run through this post.

At any given point there will be several aspects that must be put into place for your to make leads online.

In this era of globalization, lead generation is very important because soon almost every business will be running online.

Lead generation will get tougher & tougher – so let’s share the wisdom.

What’s your best hack for getting quality business leads?