Once upon a time, your website was the hottest thing on the digital block. It looked great and was effective at lead generation. You and your digital marketing team couldn’t have been happier.
But lately, that spark just isn’t what it used to be. You’ve started to take notice that your competitors’ sites look more streamlined and up-to-date. And all those leads that used to pour in? Your website isn’t capturing those either.
So, you spend several months making it over. You update the content, refresh the look and implement trendy technology to make your organization look more competitive. After weeks of reviews, approvals, and testing, it’s finally done.
But after all the work you’ve done, you realize that nothing has changed. There still aren’t many new leads coming from the site. You’re not sure what to do. Have you lost that ‘loving feeling’ with your website?
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry. Lots of other marketers have been in the same boat. The good news is that there is a way to get that spark back. Here’s how to turn your site into a lead generation machine for your business.
Your Website Is a Two-Way Channel
Today’s digital marketing landscape is packed with interaction, user-generated content, dynamic search results and more. It’s no wonder that the competition for leads grows ever more fierce. How is it possible to cut through all the noise?
To answer this question, you’ll need to put yourself in the mind of your website visitor. What would she be thinking? Most likely, she will be searching for something that offers value, and if she doesn’t find it quickly, she’ll move on. Considering your visitor’s viewpoint more carefully is the first step to creating a two-way channel of communication.
It seems simple, but it’s surprising how often marketers can miss the mark. If your website isn’t equipped to offer real value to the visitors, your leads are likely to leave. According to one study, 84% of 25 to 34 year-olds have clicked out of a website because of an irrelevant or intrusive ad. Consumers know when companies aren’t thinking of their needs.
So to generate more leads, you’ll need to create a dynamic website. A dynamic website interacts with and adapts to visitors based on their individual actions and needs. It’s a website that works for your organization 24/7 by engaging qualified leads. It’s a website that’s a two-way street.
Marketing automation opens up that two-way channel of communication. Here are the features that can make it happen.
Visitor Identification
Certainly, your site is a way for visitors to learn about you, but it should also be a way for you to gain key insights into your visitors to turn them into leads.
Did you know that 98% of web visitors remain anonymous because they don’t fill out forms? It seems impossible to capture that 98% without form fill outs, but it’s actually easy if you use anonymous site visitor identification.
Visitor identification, typically included in a marketing automation platform, uses reverse IP lookup to identify your site visitors. It provides you with contact info, including names, emails, phone numbers and social media links – effectively doubling or tripling the number of leads that can be harvested from your existing web traffic.
You can use this information to personalize your messaging based on your prospect’s organization, titles, social media content, etc. Visitor identification allows you to guide your messaging, design and more to be more effective as your market.
Dynamic Content
Once you’ve implemented visitor tracking on your website, your site identifies visitors, you can personalize your site for each visitor with dynamic content.
Dynamic content allows you to engage visitors by creating a landing page or a series of landing pages where the content changes based on the visit number, or even each visitor’s past behavior. Dynamic content can also be used in an automated email.
For example, a first visit may offer an introductory video, a second visit may offer an educational white paper, and a third visit may offer a discount code. This series of landing pages effectively nurture a lead until they’re ready to convert, and the dynamic content doesn’t stop after the click.
Email Automation
Did you know that email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social? And email automation takes traditional email marketing one step further.
Email automation allows marketers to send relevant, personalized emails based on a lead’s specific interests, website engagement, and personal traits. And the emails can be triggered at exactly the right time.
If you segment your contacts with marketing automation, you can automatically send emails to these groups based on any specific attribute, including age, location, industry, professional role, visit number and more.
In essence, marketing automation working in tandem with automated email offers these essential advantages:
• Discover a lead’s interests, simply based on web page clicks.
• Communicate with those leads 1-to-1 based on their interests.
• Automatically notify a salesperson when a lead is ready to convert.
Have you ever tried to hold water in your hand? You can’t get the water to stay there long, and you’re likely to make a big puddle on the floor. It’s better to pour water into a cup or container.
Trying to capture and nurture leads from your website without email follow up is like trying to pour into your hand. It’s likely that all those leads will eventually slip through your fingers. Email automation acts as the container to catch all those leads. It opens the door for personalized communication between you and your prospects so that you can guide them through their buyer’s journey, all the way through to conversion.
To actually understand how effective marketing automation can be, go ahead and check out this lead gen “magic trick” from SharpSpring. Prepare to be amazed by automation!
Don’t Get Left Behind
It’s simply not enough for your website to look pretty and sit passively on the sidelines. To generate leads, it requires strategy, listening, and the right tech.
Two-way websites that leverage marketing automation have become an exciting new tool for marketers to create one-to-one, two-way conversations that can dramatically boost lead generation. Consider this: 63% of companies that are outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation. Marketing automation is designed to help marketers drive more leads, convert leads to sales and optimize marketing spend. So it’s no wonder that marketing automation helps companies grow past their competition.
If you haven’t already started using marketing automation, I challenge you to try it out. Don’t let your website get left behind. Start using marketing automation today.
If you wish to discuss how marketing automation can enhance your existing lead generation strategy, book a consultation with a WSI Digital Marketing Consultant today.
