You’ve managed to convert those passers-by into active leads. Now what? With a sales opportunity on the horizon, it’s time to focus on lead conversion and guide that prospect through the process.
In this guide, we’ll take you through the basics of lead conversion. We’ll share some of our top lead conversion strategies and tactics, plus some key metrics to keep an eye on.
What Is Lead Conversion?
Lead conversion is when a lead becomes a paid customer. It covers everything that happens to make that a reality, and it’s a priority for both sales teams and marketing teams.
The lead conversion process is different for every business, but it often involves nurturing a lead and moving them through your sales process until they reach your goal. Marketers and salespeople are both involved in this customer journey, which is often made of different sales and marketing strategies and tactics.
Note: Lead conversion differs from lead generation. Lead generation is about trying to convert prospects and passive visitors into active leads, while lead conversion covers that next stage from active lead to new customer. While they’re both part of the sales process, they’re two distinct stages that need different strategies to be successful.
5 Powerful Lead Conversion Strategies and Tactics
Looking for new ways to increase the number of leads moving through your sales funnel? Here are some effective sales and marketing strategies to help you convert leads better.
1. Identify the Right Leads
Before you spend too long working on a lead, make sure it’s worth it. Prioritize your follow-up and engagement on sales qualified leads that are more likely to convert, and you’re more likely to be successful.
Invest in an automation tool to help you with lead scoring, and monitor engagement across various touch points using your CRM to spot quality leads that your sales team can focus on. Look for leads that click through your emails, watch your webinars, and interact with your sales team. You can also use ServiceBell to get a notification when your leads enter a high-value sales page. These are the best leads for your sales reps to contact.
2. Build Optimized Landing Pages
Your landing pages have a major goal — to convert. Whether it’s a landing page for your next webinar, an impressive white paper, or your product trial, make it highly optimized for converting leads. You want your leads to land on the page, feel like your offer is just what they need, and sign up.
Landing page optimization is a mix of art and math. You want it to be visually appealing but produce real-world results. Investing in A/B testing different templates, copy, and calls to action (CTA) is key. Hire an expert to craft impactful landing pages, or use this guide on landing page optimization to build your own.
3. Embrace Content Marketing
Content marketing can help throughout the sales and marketing process, but it’s a super effective way to generate leads so they can start travelling through the funnel. With the right content, and the right distribution, your leads can find exactly what they want at the perfect time.
Content marketing can take many forms. You may find a blog works best for your sales and SEO efforts or that your business or product suits a podcast or video series perfectly. Invest in your content marketing efforts by creating a strategy, hiring a strong creative team, and distributing your content.
4. Feature Customer Testimonials and Case Studies
Personal recommendations go a long way, and they’re especially powerful when it comes to the lead conversion process. Someone who’s comparing your product or service with a competitor might easily be swayed by a strong testimonial or a case study that features a recognizable brand.
Create a process that makes it easy for your sales reps or marketing team to collect feedback 8and testimonials, or to arrange an in-depth case study with happy customers. While this takes time, it’s one of the best ways to get valuable social proof.
5. Personalize Your Email Marketing
Your leads get so many emails every day, especially if they’re at that comparison stage and signed up for the email list for multiple tools or services. They’re inundated with content, promotions, and sales talk — this is your chance to stand out.
Personalize as many interactions as you have with your leads as possible, including throughout your email marketing campaigns with the help of automation and tools like Mailchimp. Create an email series that’s tailored to their personal needs.
4 Lead Conversion Metrics Worth Tracking
Whether your sales process is rapid or long, here are some lead conversion metrics to keep an eye on. Monitor them before, during, and after campaigns to see if your strategy is effective or if there’s room to optimize it further.
1. Website Visitors by Traffic Source
While not every visitor will become a lead, this can be a useful way to identify how your customers find you. If a high percentage are finding you through organic search, you know your content marketing campaign is working well. If they’re coming through paid ads, you can optimize your campaigns — or invest further if those visitors go on to convert.
To determine your website visitors by traffic source, use a website analytics tool like Google Analytics or Fathom Analytics. These tools help you see where visitors find you and allow you to set goals and track conversions against those goals.
2. Bounce Rate
You want your leads to browse your product pages, read your blog, and take action on your landing pages. Your bounce rate will tell you whether they’re doing that or whether they’re leaving after visiting just one page.
Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of single page visits by the total number of visits.
Bounce rates vary depending on many factors, but a good bounce rate is somewhere between 26-40%. Monitor your bounce rate, especially when you make changes to your landing pages, so you can identify what’s working and what isn’t.
3. Click-Through Rate
If you invest in content marketing, paid ads, and email marketing, you’re sharing a lot of valuable content with your leads in the hope that they’ll act on it. By monitoring your click-through rates, you can identify whether they’re engaging with your content or not.
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of people that click on a specific link or button divided by the total number of people that saw that link or button. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
Click-through rates vary depending on the medium, but organic search CTRs are around 1.91%. The click through rate for emails is higher, with average email CTRs at 2.62%. If your click-through rates are low, refine your content and landing pages so they’re better optimized for click-throughs, and therefore conversions.
4. Lead Conversion Rate
One of the most valuable metrics to track is your lead conversion rate. This identifies how many leads convert into paying customers. It’s an easy way to measure your performance over time.
Lead conversion rate is calculated by dividing the total number of conversions and by the number of leads. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
The rate of converted leads will change over time as you roll out different campaigns, strategies, and tactics. Keep an eye on your lead conversion rate, and use it as a benchmark of how effective your current strategy is.
Get Focused on Lead Conversion
To really excel at the lead conversion process, your sales reps need to be highly customer focused. You need to personalize your interactions, provide value with your content and marketing campaigns, and give your leads the right information and support at the right time. You also need to focus on following up with the leads that are interested, engaged, and high value.
A great way to do this is with ServiceBell. Our tool lets you identify opportunities for your sales reps to engage those high value leads as they browse your website. Understand how your leads navigate your website, get alerts when they land on high-value pages, and offer them the chance to speak to your sales team on a live video call — without leaving the page. To learn more about how ServiceBell can help your lead conversion process, book a demo with our team.