How to Generate Leads from your Website
This article is a deep dive into all the sections of my How To Turn Your Website Into A Lead Generation Checklist.
After reading, you can use this checklist to keep track of where you are.
Introduction (Leads, Leads… No Leads?)
Businesses live and die by how they generate (or fail to generate) leads.
When I speak with business owners, and they tell me about their business, I get nervous. They say things like:
We do not actively generate leads
or
We have a good business but the referrals are starting to dry up…
This is scary to me. Because why would you actively ignore new business? Nobody would make that decision if they thought about it.
And the biggest sin as it relates to “ignoring” lead generation is how people treat their websites. They treat their website like a business card instead of a cash generating asset.
Business cards do not generate leads. And a lead (at least, a good lead) is worth money.
So.. let’s be honest… more leads is better.
But… what is a lead?
There are many definitions of a lead online. There are entire books on the topic.
We do not need this many words, let’s get straight to the point:
A lead is a person or a person within an organisation who expressed interest in WHAT you do through a specific action - Kevin Izevbigie
Please read that again.
(And yes, I just quoted myself!)
It’s important because it also tells us what a lead is NOT.
A lead is not: - your LinkedIn connections - the list you bought from a data broker - your family (unless they actually want to buy from you)
The important parts of this are “specific action” and “expressed interest in what you do”.
Expressing interest in what you do does not mean they called you to ask how much your service costs. That is not a lead.
If, however, they called, asked how much your service costs, engaged in conversation, you told them the price, and booked another call (maybe they were not 100% yet)… that is a lead. A very, very hot lead.
But do you know what else is a lead?
The person who visited your website and downloaded a free guide/book/webinar or other piece of content that you created for free.
In both of these cases, the person took an action.
Your goal, as a business owner on the internet, is to maximise your “list” of people that have taken a trackable action so that you can follow up with them later.
The heart of lead generation
At this stage you might be wondering what this has to do with your website.
These five things are something we call ‘Lead Gen Vitals’.
A lead gen vital is a major element that contributes to your ability to generate leads from your website.
The unfortunate truth is that, online, the common advice for generating leads is to generate traffic to your website (like Facebook ads) and then sell something or generate a lead.
This advice is only half correct. It ignores all the other things that are critical to the consistent generation of leads.
To take a deep dive into the Lead Gen Vitals, check out the blog What Is A Marketing Website?.
For now, I will cover them briefly:
There are five main factors which turn your website into a lead generation machine. Each area represents a section of the checklist.
If you use this checklist and improve your website, you will create a platform for massive scale.
Here are the five areas:
- Website Speed - Without a blazing fast website, you will lose visitors to frustration. On average, we have observed that slow websites cost business owners up to £10,000 per week.
- Website Messaging and Positioning - Make sure the content on your website clearly communicates solutions to specific problems.
- Value in Advance - A “free offer” is something you can give away for free in exchange for an email signup.
- Email Marketing - If you have an email list, sending emails with a good strategy is a good replacement for Facebook or Google advertising. It’s also free.
- Respecting Google - Before we can even talk about SEO (Most SEO “experts” are scammers anyway…), we need to talk about NOT getting
You can download the checklist of all the Lead Gen Vital steps here
“Sounds great, but what about online traffic?”
Okay, so now you know what a “good” lead is. You know that more leads are better. And you know the five Lead Gen Vitals required to turn your website into a lead generation machine.
… Now what?
That is a great question.
Now, you need to send more (and more and more) traffic to your “lead generation machine” so that you can grow your email list. And, by doing so, create a free traffic source of ideal leads that you can communicate to again and again.
This is the holy grail of marketing. The ability to grow, email and make more sales from people who are a perfect fit… with no incremental cost.
I know what you’re thinking…
“Sounds great, but how do I get traffic and where from?”
This question seems to hold people back. But traffic is the easy part. Because traffic is everywhere. You can pay for it (like Facebook ads). Or you can work for it (like social media content). Or do both.
But, and this is the important part, if you do not have the Lead Gen Vitals in place FIRST, your traffic generation will not yield the best results.
Putting it all together - The Customer Ecosystem
So let’s put this all together:
- You need more leads if you want to grow
- A lead is someone who took a trackable action on your website that proves interest
- Your website must have all five Lead Gen Vitals perfectly implemented so that you can capture as many leads as possible (and prepare them to buy)
- And, finally, send traffic to your website and put people through your lead generation experience.
Growing online is as simple as that.
If you are interested to learn more about the Lead Gen Vitals, I have a free checklist that takes you through each step. Download it here.