It doesn’t really take much to increase leads coming in from a website. All you need is a way of addressing the needs of your target audience via a lead magnet.
If you’ve been following our blog for a while, you’ll have noticed that there is a fair emphasis on making your website work for you, so that your investment pays off. There’s really little point in spending money on a website that is not going to generate any incoming leads. It becomes a cost centre, not an investment, so there’s little or no return.
Lead magnets
To turn things around, you’ll need to start with a lead magnet.
What is a lead magnet?
Well, it’s an important component of the concept of the marketing funnel, which Mike Killen dealt with in How you can get traffic, leads and sales almost instantly.
Lead Magnet – noun – an ethical bribe offering an incentive (a specific piece of value) to a prospect in exchange for contact information.
Essentially, a lead magnet can consist of a downloadable item (e.g. a PDF toolkit, checklist or guide), a video (e.g. a YouTube embed), or even a face-to-face session. Just about anything will work as long as it is specific.
As Ryan Deiss, an acknowledged expert in the field, says: the goal of the Lead Magnet is to maximise the number of targeted leads you are getting for an offer.
In fact, Ryan’s site, Digital Marketer, puts out a tremendous amount of really useful hints and tips on digital marketing techniques. The good news? You don’t have to be an expert to implement this! You need time, energy, and a really clear idea of who your target audience are, what their pain points are, and how you’re able to address them using your products or services.
Here are lead magnet ideas and examples from Digital Marketer to get you started.
Lead Magnets | 9 Lead Magnet Ideas with Examples
This little baby generated 35,859 leads in 60 days… It’s called a Lead Magnet, and if you don’t have one – or don’t have a good one – this article could literally change your life. Lead Magnet – noun – an irresistible bribe offering a specific chunk of value to a prospect in exchange for their contact information.
Marketing funnels
I mentioned Mike Killen earlier in the context of an article he wrote for our blog on How you can get traffic, leads and sales almost instantly. Mike’s area of expertise is in marketing and getting WordPress website owners to where they need to be with their digital marketing through the use of marketing funnels.
What is a marketing funnel?
Well, to be honest, most people would probably be a bit frightened of buzzwords like “marketing funnel”, but you don’t need to be.
To explain this concept, let’s use an analogy. The easiest one is of someone walking into a shop because it’s an everyday activity, which all of us are familiar with.
Here’s the funnel, which is essentially just a fancy name for a process:
- I walk into the shop
- I look at the products
- I pick up the item I need
- I walk to the checkout
- I purchase the product
It’s actually no different when dealing with online purchases using ecommerce stores. We do it all the time with sites such as Amazon, except that it’s a virtual shopping experience.
Of course, marketing funnels don’t have to be restricted to ecommerce. They work equally well for any type of website.
Here’s Kissmetrics on how marketing funnels work.
How Marketing Funnels Work
If you’ve spent any time learning about marketing analytics, you’ve probably come across the term “funnels.” If you’re curious about what they are and how they can help, this post is for you. You undoubtedly want visitors on your website to take certain actions.
Now you can actually build a marketing funnel with any WordPress website (I say WordPress only because that’s our platform of choice, though there are others available, too) and Mike Killen demonstrates exactly how – no mystique, no magic – in a free webinar.
How to build a marketing funnel with ANY WordPress website
If you watch the video below, you’re going to be able to build a marketing funnel for your business and for your customers, using any WordPress website. It can be a new site or you can adapt an older WordPress site. You can use this on customer websites, build it into future project or power-charge…
Marketing automation
The glue which binds all of this together is marketing automation. It’s the essential mechanism that keeps drip feeding useful content to your subscribers, who have opted in to receiving this information by providing their email addresses in exchange for your lead magnet.
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation has been around for decades, though you may not recognise or remember it. Remember those catalogues you used to receive in the post? Maybe you still do. They always come with a personalised cover letter, maybe even tailored special offers based on previous purchases.
Doing the same with email is the modern standard. It’s the same technique – personalised communication with tailored offers – brought up-to-date for the digital age.
Why do it? What are the benefits? I’ll let Christopher Ratcliff of Econsultancy explain in What is marketing automation and why do you need it? There are, to say the least, plenty of reasons why you should use marketing automation.
What is marketing automation and why do you need it? – Econsultancy
It’s as easy as switching on your computer, sitting back, relaxing and letting the software do all your work for you while you secretly read Viz behind a copy of Marketing Week. Right? Right??? Let’s take a brief look back at the recent past. Marketing automation has actually been around since the 1980s.
Email marketing vs. marketing automation
It’s important to distinguish between email marketing and marketing automation. Although they both rely on the sending of email to subscribers to achieve their goals, they differ fundamentally in how those subscribers are treated. Email marketing uses an approach that doesn’t really personalise anything beyond the recipient name. Marketing automation is able to tailor the approach using triggers that allow messages to be sent based on specific criteria, e.g. products placed in a shopping basket but not purchased.
Here’s Technology Advice on the differences between email marketing and marketing automation:
Conclusion
So, there it is in a nutshell. No hard sell. No complicated technology. Just a tried and tested approach to getting people to sign up to an email subscription list, allowing you to provide a targeted piece of content or a face-to-face session that is specific to solving a particular problem or satisfying a particular need.
Edward Solomon has over 30 years’ experience in project management, technical education, computer networking, web design and development and is a Digital Business Consultant for PENNInk Productions Ltd.
