Tag Archives: lead capture

How to Effectively Use Free Opt-in Offers

How to Effectively Use Free Opt-in Offers

Your small business may have an excellent website. Yet it might not be enough!

A site with great design and well-written descriptions may not get you the clients or followers you need to have a successful business.  Why?  Lead Capture is missing.

You need to market your website to get the maximum number of visitors and make sure you keep in contact, so they end up as customers, not just one time visitors on your site.

They don’t often buy the first time!

Most site visitors don’t commit to buy your product or use your services on their first visit.

Thus, it’s critical you make sure you have a way to capture their contact information when they DO visit!  With consistent interaction after the capture you may convert your visitor to a customer over time.  A well-designed opt-in offer to capture the email address and open two-way communication is an excellent way to engage your visitor. Their first visit is the best chance you’ll have to make that connection, so you need to choose your offer wisely and deploy it well.

The Offer Must have Value!

Research shows that free offers in exchange for an email address are effective.
Your visitors have a chance to try something without cost or obligation. They get to know you better and learn that you have something beneficial to offer. You’ll need to provide something of real value related to your products/services in exchange for their email address. It might be an eBook, a webinar, a product sample, a coupon or a highly informative video or newsletter. If you have a service, you can offer a free trial to “try before you buy.” It must be of enough value and compelling to motivate a sign-up.

Even if your business is not selling products or services, you need to grow your email list. Why?  It’s the simplest path forward to stay in touch with your clients and potential clients. Successful opt-in offers follow these guidelines:

  • Have an opt-in offer form which matches your site branding. Make sure the form is easy to complete (Not too many fields; best is name and email). Make it easy for a visitor to quickly opt-in.
  • Make sure the opt-in form is a prominent item on your site. Be sure it’s easy to locate. Use color, motion, or eye-catching graphics to call attention to it.
  • The offer should be really helpful. Make it nearly impossible for visitors to consider leaving without taking your offer. Your audience must see the value in the offer.
  • A well-received form might include a picture of you to make the offer more personal and humanize the business.
  • Make a strong case for the benefits your prospect will gain by accepting your offer.
  • Include success stories and testimonials to help encourage acceptance.

Conversion rates vary for opt-in offers. The more time you cultivate the contact, making sure they get the full value of the offer and keep in touch, the better the conversion rate. According to Totango research, trial offer conversions could run from under 8% up to 20% with follow-up. The key to better conversion is communication with the lead on a regular basis, and using their first name. This is part of your email nurture follow-up strategy.  Deployment of emails should be on a scheduled basis or based on the lead’s use or lack of use of the trial product. You can offer coaching or help by phone or email.

If you make a good impression, you’ll be rewarded!

These are essential keys to success on your site.  Any questions?

Why a Blog Is Essential to SEO

Why a Blog Is Essential to SEO

By now you’ve heard of blogs.  Perhaps you wonder if a blog is relevant or would be helpful fo your business.  A few common answers to why a blog is helpful for a business includes more traffic to a website, higher sales from greater traffic, and being recognized for expertise from writing regularly on a certain topic. These are right but I’ll add that another important thing to keep in mind is how a blog can impact your company’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Indexing Pages

SEO is about coming up on the first page and in the top results on a search engine when a user types in a phrase or topic your site wants to rank for.  SEO isn’t simply keyword stuffing your articles to maximize how well your site shows up in the search engines, nor is it hidden keywords on a page programmed by a developer.  In fact, this practice is penalized by all search engines (most importantly Google).

With every well-written blog post you publish, you’re building your “keyword footprint” for the search engine.  More articles, more posts, and more pages give Google (and other search engines) bots more material to scroll through and more relevant words from which to gather information for search, and thus more value coming from your website that can then result in your site ranking better in search engine results for key terms of importance.  Blogging makes your website a bigger, ever-growing, more SEO friendly structure on the web.  This can help you rank over the business that has little content and few new updates to their site content.

Backlinking

While backlinking is traditionally thought of as an inbound-only form of traffic (from other sites to yours), backlinking within your own website will help show how connected your content is from post to post.  For example, if your company is working on a campaign to drive traffic for a certain keyword, linking different blogs posts together in a tactful, subtle way shows search engine bots that the articles are relevant and related to one another.

Similar tactics can be used externally.  For example, be a thought leader by commenting on highly-trafficked blog posts from other websites.  Leave your comment (again, tactfully and strategically) along with the specific blog post you wish to drive traffic to (if the comments  allow it) and watch your own blog’s traffic increase all while giving the SEO bots some breadcrumbs linked to you.

Relevant Content to Searchers

Search engines are optimized to find the most appropriate content for their users.  High bounce rates, keyword stuffing, and lackluster backlinking will get you penalized by Google.  On the other hand, a blog with consistent information, which answers searchers questions and provokes thought can make a significant difference for your SEO.

By being the thought leader in your field and publishing relevant, useful content for people instead of merely publishing for Google, the search engine will reward you by elevating your site in search. By doing this, your site will see decreases in your website’s bounce rate and increases in the number of unique visitors and quality visits to your pages.

Lead Generation

Obviously, the most important connection between a quality blog and excellent SEO is lead generation and lead quality.  This requires you to think like your customer.  By establishing buyer personas of who your ideal customer is, understanding what type of information your buyers seek, and tailoring your content for your visitors you’ll dramatically improve traffic to your site and when combined with a lead capture strategy and tool, your lead generation and the quality of leads your website generates can increase exponentially.

Whether you want to make your blog posts more relevant or simply drive more traffic to your website, SEO and blogging go hand-in-hand. An informative blog without the necessary keyword focus, backlinking, and overall power of SEO will remain just good content hidden to those seeking the information it provides but a blog that offers content and focuses on key SEO items can be a way to really boost your business forward.  A blog is not only helpful and valuable to your SEO but an absolute necessity!

Why Website Lead Capture Matters

How is your website performing?

Is it generating leads for you?

Why Website Lead Capture Matters

Why Website Lead Capture Matters:

One of the biggest mistakes websites make today is the lack of a call-to-action or lead generator.

It’s just often times missing!

Your contact form is not a call-to-action.

Your “Products” page is not a lead generator.

You need to offer something of value that is related to your product or service that helps you move the user from visitor to a warm lead.  Online, we often define a lead as a email address.  It’s a definite communication piece by which you can reach the person again and again.

You want to grow more leads.

Your website should help you do that!

Waftio can help.

Waftio allows you to add simple lead capture form tools to your website or a specific web page that helps you obtain the key and valued email address.  Plus, it gives you the opportunity to engage with your audience.  To get them to interact with you a bit.

If it takes 7 contacts with a business before people feel comfortable buying from them, don’t you want to increase your touch points with them and move them along towards 7 positive connections with your business?

Waftio offers a simple footer form widget, a pop-up box, and a embeddable form tool to help you generate leads.  Offer a free resource that adds value to your visitors using the waftio apps, or even run a simple sweepstakes on your website with Waftio and grow that all-important email list.

Free resource ideas:

Have visitors sign-up to get a free ebook, to see a video, to download a buyer’s guide, or to get a coupon!

So take a look at your website.  Are you offering a value proposition?  Are you offering lead generators?

It’s as simple as setting up and dropping a bit of code on your site! Check out the Waftio app below to see how it works!

Website lead capture matters.  Be sure to add lead capture tools to your site today!