How to Generate Leads and Convert Them into Sales

Until leads (potential customers) convert to paying and loyal customers, the job of the marketing and sales departments of any organization is far from complete. It certainly goes beyond creating an attractive website (though that is a good strategy). Or even limiting the catchment area of your qualified leads to website visitors alone. 

How well are you ensuring that visitors to your site are convinced enough to take positive action – actually buy from you? Not just once, but again and again if you care to understand their needs? And how well are you using every communication channel available to engage potential customers and convert them from leads to buyers? 

Let’s examine a few useful steps you can take towards building an effective lead conversion process or strategy. 

5 Basic Steps Towards Having an Effective Lead Conversion Strategy

1. Optimally use your social media handles to attract customers: Social media is a hotbed of social, commercial and other forms of interaction for millions of internet users. Multi-million dollar deals are sealed there, and unending opportunities to learn, to get informed or entertained abound. Popular social media sites have an immeasurably huge audience that make use of each platform every passing day.
2. Create engaging and relevant content: Ensure that your web content as well as content created for other available communication channels are meaningful and captivating to any visitor. Email copies, web content, videos, articles, ebooks, product demos, training materials and more need to convey a sense of belonging, trust and connectivity with potential and existing customers.
3. Imbue SEO into every website element if possible. Most of the elements on your website can be optimized to rank high on search engines and give them more visibility. Therefore invest in improving the SEO standard of your website. Focus even more on critical website elements such as the web addresses of each page, hyperlinks, page titles and headers, videos, pictures and other dynamic web elements.
4. Make your website’s landing page more interactive and attractive: Be fully aware that your website’s landing page is the door to the entire company and its brand. It must be carefully designed to attract and convert leads into active buyers. Consider incorporating appealing videos and images, data input elements (such as text boxes and combo boxes), forms, and call-to-action clickable buttons and hyperlinks. Overall, the entire landing page must be welcoming, and prompt visitors to take positive action to get closer to your brand.  
5. Intensify efforts on email marketing: Email campaigns have always been, and still remain an effective lead generation tool. You can send out newsletters and, combined with attractive email templates, continually relate and communicate with your target clients. Customers get to know more about your brand, the products and services you have to offer.
   

10 Effective Strategies You can Use to Improve your Lead Conversion Rate

Identify and capture your target market through research:

You wish to get the attention of a targeted group of customers? There is no better way to do so than by carrying out research. Understand the behaviors and choices of potential customers. Gather relevant data that covers their age group, gender, social class, earnings and employment status, even personal opinions and attitudes. Then channel all these information into personalized content that addresses their needs. Personalized and relevant content can easily convince your leads to buy into your product over time.

Also Read- Marketing Trends to Watch in 2023

Filter out and work on good quality leads.

Like it or not, not every lead will convert into a buying customer, in spite of their numbers. So you need to identify the good quality needs and work on them. Who are those potential and promising buyers? More often than not, you can investigate and identify them by virtue of how well they align with your business. Or, how much interest they have shown in your product or service. Research into the behaviors and interaction of visitors to your website (and your other platforms) will reveal their willingness to convert and buy into your brand. 

Link up with your converted leads – employ optimum customer service/support.

Before and after your leads start converting into buyers, by all means maintain close communication with them. Use all available channels to offer your services and ready support to them. Take note that while some leads will respond to emails, others would prefer calls or even text messaging. Therefore endeavor to put all channels of communication to work. You can easily automate the linkup process with the use of CRM (customer relationship management) software.

However, once the leads begin to respond by requesting for your service, it is advisable to relate with them organically beyond CRM. That is, relate with them on a personal basis to satisfy them the most. This will ensure you convert them faster into buyers from then henceforth. 

Do follow-up on your leads.

You should never abandon a lead after they seem to show interest in your product. Otherwise such persons would simply forget and drift away. In fact, be ready to do a follow-up to reach out to them more than once, possibly up to four times (or more). This could be through repeated email messages or calls. It is a demonstration of how much you value that customer.

A repeated call or message – as simple as offering advice, or willingness to answer questions, will make your leads remember you. Especially when they need a similar service or product as the one you offer.  

Offers discounts or freebies.

Who doesn’t love a free gift? That indecisive customer might willingly buy your product when you entice him/her with a freebie or discount, no matter how small. That would give such customers a memorable experience with your brand. Freebies and discounts also have a way of giving information about customers’ preferences and what attracts them to your product.. So you can fashion future email messages to them to appear personalized based on that information, thereby turning more leads into sales. Offer each customer a unique coupon for better effect.

Learn to use Calls to Action.

You can trigger your leads to take a desired positive action towards buying your product – by inserting call-to-action buttons on every web page of your site. Don’t leave visitors guessing what to do next; direct them specifically to do what you expect them to do. Direct calls to action such as ‘Get yours now’ or ‘Download’ are quite good, but softer nudges such as ‘Contact Us Now’ or ‘Send Us a Message’ would sound even more friendly and encouraging to a prospect. 

Showcase the reviews and testimonials of satisfied customers on your site.

Do not hesitate to invite satisfied customers to speak about their positive experience with your brand on your website, social media (and other communication) channels. This would serve as a catalyst to encourage newer leads to trust your brand and eventually convert, boosting your sales.. 

Use the power of social media to attract leads.

You can harvest tons of leads that can potentially convert into sales from your social media handles. Because of course, thousands and millions of users regularly visit social media, and practically every minute. The level of interaction and socialization on social media platforms (such as Facebook or Instagram) is much higher and relatable to potential customers than whatever satisfaction they can get on your website.

Also you can get quick feedback and give personalized customer support to potential customers far better on social media. This would help you to nurture beneficial connections there, and eventually turn them into sales. Your new buyers would naturally draw more leads to your brand when they broadcast their happy experiences to their friends and connections.

Finally, choose the best platform(s) that resonates with your target crowd the most, from your observation (and research). The type of content your target audience enjoys the most,  and their most preferable social platform for conversations will reveal this if you care to investigate further.  

Optimize your web content.

With the aid of search engine analytics tools, research and choose high-converting keywords to draw web traffic to your website. Also make use of SEO optimized web elements on every web page, along with effective calls to action. 

Always write quality content.

We have said this before. And we cannot overemphasize the value of relevant and meaningful content. By doing so, you provide valuable information to your prospective customers and establish your brand as an authority in your professional field. You also present your brand as a dependable solution provider to prospective customers, encouraging them to come to you in times of need.

Quality content should be employed on all your communication channels – be it website content (videos, manuals, blogs, product demos, pictures etc), social media, email messages, or any other. 

About Post Author

Omolola Akinyemi

A Computer Science graduate of UNILAG, I hail from Ekiti state of Nigeria. An astute teacher, learner & admin assistant of many years experience. I love technology, innovation, and Nature. A problem solving mentality is important to me. The future is only seconds away, and I believe I can define the future now. You can also.

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