There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to website lead capture software.
You do a lot to drive traffic to your site. You invest in SEO and other forms of advertising, only to find that no one is buying and taking action on your site.
There’s a good reason for that. About 96% of your site’s visitors aren’t ready to buy yet. You have to nurture them and create a relationship with them so when they are ready to buy, they’ll buy from you.
That’s where lead capture software comes in. Capturing leads is one of the biggest challenges that marketers face and having the right tools and strategies in place can make your site a lead capturing machine.
Read on to discover how you can find the best lead capture tools and how to create a lead generation campaign that works.
Website lead capture software has a lot of different components. Some of them can come as a suite of services, but they’re mostly sold as separate pieces of software.
Email marketing will be the most important software that you have. When you capture an email address from your website, they’ll get fed into your email marketing software.
Your email marketing software should have the ability to create pop-up forms and customize those forms to match your brand.
A customer relationship management tool will enable you to manage your leads and understand everything about them. You’ll know when you communicated with them, the context of the communication, and the next steps. CRM tools allow you to schedule follow-ups so you don’t forget about important opportunities.
Sales tools provide additional forms and templates for following up with your leads. These tools are sometimes integrated with your CRM.
What happens to a lead when they visit your website and they leave without signing up? They are unlikely to return to your site.
There are some advertising tools that will let you remarket to those site visitors who got away. That’s important because you can increase your chances of converting those leads.
When you’re shopping for the best website lead capture software, you want to keep two things in mind: integration and automation.
Automation is an important aspect because as a small business owner, you don’t have the time to email every single lead and keep track of where they are in the sales process.
You want your lead capture software to be able to automate as much as the process as possible. In a best-case scenario, you set up your campaign and let it do the heavy lifting for you.
Making sure that the software you choose can be integrated into your current systems is another important consideration. You don’t want to have to switch services because you didn’t check to make sure that your website lead capturing software can work with tools that you’re already working with.
Business owners love to rely on their gut feelings to make decisions. That can help in certain situations, but with capturing leads, you want to rely on data.
You want to know how many visitors are seeing your forms and how many sign up. You’ll know that if you have a low conversion rate, you need to dig deeper as to why. It could be your offer or people aren’t staying on your site long enough to see your form. You might need to generate more traffic to your site.
Some tools will integrate with Google Analytics. Having all of your website data at your disposal will help you uncover potential issues with your website. For example, if you have a high bounce rate, it could be because your website is slow and it’s time to change hosting plans.
Testing your lead generation campaigns has to be a top priority. Lead generation can always be improved and testing different elements of your campaign can provide an increase in the number of leads.
You’ll want to be able to test images, headlines, and calls to action. When you test, test only one element at a time. It’s easier to track what’s working and what’s not. When you test multiple elements at once, you won’t be able to pinpoint which change is having the most impact.
There is a wide variety of website lead capture tools on the market. These are some of the top ones that you want to check out.
Marketo bills itself as a complete suite of tools to generate leads from inbound and outbound sources. The software also lets you build campaigns to create a warm lead before they talk to a sales rep.
This is an interesting tool as it pulls information from multiple sources such as social media accounts and Gmail to create a leads database that you can communicate with. This could be a good tool if you use social media marketing.
Sumo is well known for its lead generation forms and integrations with various email programs. You can create slick pop-ups, inline pop-ups, and welcome mats to capture leads.
This is the most important thing to remember as you’re getting ready to invest in various lead capture tools, is that they’re just that. They’re tools.
You can invest a lot of money in these tools and see no return. You’ll be tempted to blame it on the tools but you’re missing a big part – your campaigns.
It could be that your lead generations miss the mark because you failed to work on the basic things to create a strong lead capture campaign that drives conversions.
When you’re creating a lead generation campaign, you need to remember your audience. Ask yourself what problems they’re having related to your product or service.
For example, if you’re a fitness business, you could have people visiting your website who are looking for workouts or meal plans.
You want to get to the pan of the issue they’re experiencing and illustrate how you can get them from point A to Point B, no matter what it is.
That’s going to be how you get leads. It can be a whitepaper, case study boot camp, how to guide. You want to overload it with value without giving away your business.
That will be compelling enough for someone to give you’re their email address or contact information.
In your lead capture software, you’re going to have a pop-up form or inline form to capture leads. The way you’re going to get people to sign up is through the headline. That’s what people will notice first.
It has to be strong enough and communicate why they should read further and sign up.
When people visit your website, they need to be told what to do next. Otherwise, they leave. A strong call to action tells people what to do next, whether it’s subscribe now or download now.
Your next step is to follow up with your lead. Depending on your type of business, you could follow up with an automated email campaign or with a phone call.
B2B businesses are more likely to respond to phone calls than B2C. B2C customers almost expect an automated campaign.
That’s why you need to make your campaign special. The job of your automated campaign isn’t to sell. It’s to build trust and add value.
If you can do those things, you’ll create stronger relationships with your customers. You’ll earn their trust over time because you’ve proven yourself to be a valuable source of content.
You may be tempted to go for a quick sale, but you’re likely to do long term damage to your business over time.
You could sell something for a 50% discount or sell a product for €7. That will make you money now, but if you want a customer to buy a high-ticket item, selling a €7 item out of the gate won’t cut it.
All you’re doing is training your customers to devalue your product and services. They’ll expect that you’ll have a sale on everything.
Instead, focus on making your customers’ lives better. When you do that, you’re much more likely to build trust and increase your chances of selling high-ticket items.
Generating leads from your website is a major challenge that many businesses face today. Since most of your site’s visitors aren’t ready to make a purchase, you need to continue to communicate with them throughout the buyer’s journey.
Website lead capture software can assist your business with that. The key to remember is that no matter how good your tools are, your tools are as only as good as your campaign and your website.
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