5 Elements Of Successful Online Lead Generation Campaign

It’s not uncommon, data suggests as few as 2% of Chief Marketing Officers are happy with their lead generation programs.

Any successful lead generation program has these 5 core elements:

1. Landing Page

If you are going to convert website traffic into leads, you need to have a landing page for them to land on and learn about what you are offering.  Ideally, this is a dedicated landing page that is specific to the campaign you are running.

Don’t make the mistake of using a page on your website that was never designed as a landing page to try and convert leads.  We see this frequently and your visitors will often get distracted by other elements around the page such as the menu bar and leave your conversion path.

There are lots of great landing page tools out there.  Unbounce and Hubspot are a few of those tools but you can always start by creating a dedicated page in your existing content management system.

Here are the top 3 elements to include in your landing page to get you started:

• Pay close attention to every headline on your page. You should have a main headline, a supporting headline, and a closing argument. Be sure to test these headlines and make sure the copy goes above and beyond to get across your unique selling point. Your copy should talk about the pain and problem that exists without your value proposition and how it can offer pleasure and benefit.

• Include social proof to increase your value proposition. Use testimonials, reviews, awards, and client logos to convince your visitors

•  Be mindful of the graphics. The picture is essential, especially if you can portray life with your service or product in a positive light – as it should be. Make sure the photo is high quality, relevant and needs to tell a story when paired with your copy. It’ll help your prospects empathize with your service or product and understand its potential.

2. Forms

Next, you have to have a trackable form that helps you capture their contact information.  Too often, we talk to people who are missing on hundreds of leads every month because they just put an email address or phone number on their landing page and it’s not unique to their lead generation campaign.

As a result, they have no idea when their landing page or campaign is working!

3 Tips to creating an effective form:

• Explain any format or input requirements. As your prospects may use different date forms or have concerns over privacy and security, clearly explain what is required of them and why. Bonus tip: avoid asking for phone numbers.

• Order the form logically in one column and visually group labels and fields. Order your form from easier to hardest, all in one column. Doing so eases your prospects into the process and enables them to fill in the form 4 seconds faster. Group details when possible, for example, First and Last Name fields into one, or enabling a date picker instead of 3 dropdowns.

• Avoid optional fields and only ask what’s necessary at this stage in the customer journey. Adding unnecessary fields will only make your forms lengthier and make your prospects feel reluctant to finish filling them in. As a result, it will inflate your cost per lead and make you lose money.

3. Offer

You need to give potential leads a reason to fill out your form.  It has to be something of value so that they feel compelled enough to complete the form.

You will want to have a different offer at every stage of the funnel. Here are some good examples:

• Top of funnel offer: A blog post or white paper
• Middle of funnel offer: A complete guide, e-book, or case study unlocked after filling in a form
• Bottom of funnel offer: A free consultation or discount on the first appointment

4. Call-To-Action

The number one issue with most marketing, let alone lead generation, is an ineffective or even missing call-to-action.  That’s right, we see lead generation campaigns, advertising and marketing campaigns that have NO call-to-action.

Even if you have a landing page, a form and an offer, the lack of a clear call-to-action and one that speaks directly to your offer you will find that you aren’t getting a decent conversion rate because your traffic isn’t being given a clear direction on what you want them to do.

What does a good call-to-action look like? It should be highly relevant to your goal.

• For sales: “I want to grow my traffic”, “Book Your Appointment”
• For thought-leadership: “Our Work”, “What We Do”
• For e-commerce: “Treat yourself to 10% off”
• For newsletter of community: “Join the Cyan Club”

5. Conversion Tracking

It sounds obvious at this point, but if you don’t have any way to track how your lead generation campaign is working then you will never be able to improve on it.  We’ve spoken to potential customers who have almost every other element of their program in place but they failed to implement a way to track their success.

The best part is that you don’t even have to spend too much money implementing this, if any at all.  Google Analytics is free and in a few minutes, you can set up goals and start tracking the success of your lead generation campaign.

Examples of relevant and meaningful conversions:

• E-book downloads
• Event signups
• Visiting a landing page on your website

Cyan is both a certified Hubspot Partner, and a certified Google Partner.  Find out how we can get these powerful platforms working for you!

Conclusion

Lead generation is often the single most frustrating, yet important element of any marketing strategy.

Both B2B and B2C brands struggle but if you break it down and look at a landing page, an offer, the form, the call to action and the conversion tracking then you can start to see what’s working and not working for you.

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