Lead-Generating Tips for Your Websites and Landing Pages

We’re always recommending to our HRmarketer.com members valuable tips on how to enhance the lead-generating capacity of their websites and landing pages (e.g., splash pages) – specific call-to-action links, testimonials, news links and postings, special offers, appealing graphics, marketing PR releases optimized for search engines, and so much more.

A recent case study posted on MarketingSherpa.com entitled 5 Best Practices to Create a High-impact Sales Lead Generation Web Site validates some of the best website lead-generation tips with real-world results.

Here are some paraphrased best practice highlights from the MarketingSherpa case study:

Best Practice #1. Home "Hero spot" Links for Both Kinds of Prospects

Web sites that try to serve two different target audiences often fail, especially for search-results clickers who want to see content that applies directly to their needs within seconds without poking around for it.

A solution is to place two big links in the "hero spot" of the home page below the logo – one that appeals to each target audience.

Best Practice #2. Building Trust with Loads of Client-Peer Mentions

Prospective buyers always want to know who else is using your products and/or services before they buy, and if those companies are similar to their own.

So, it’s vital to relay this information to buyers via your website, whether that be with testimonials, case studies or customer-focused news pages.

Best Practice #3. Multiple-Offer Options to Garner Leads

Multiple offers and campaigns throughout the year are great lead-generation vehicles. For example, why not offer:
Keep in mind that if you promote your site via both paid and optimized search marketing, incoming traffic might easily bypass your home page and enter on a completely different page. So, it’s a good idea to create list of the various offer links as a permanent part of the top right-hand column on every single page of your site. No matter where you entered or surfed, you could respond in one quick click to get the offer of your choice.

Best Practice #4. Personal Touch with Zip Code Search & Rep Photos

Whether you have a large or small outside sales force, why not flaunt it? Take their photos and create a "Meet Your Local Support Team" interactive tool. Visitors simply type in their zip code and/or region, click and then see smiling faces and contact info for the reps in their local area.

This type functionality can also raise your site's search engine visibility because now your site has a page for every zip code and/or region in North America. And the more pages you have, in general the more likely it is you'll be found and indexed under more terms by search engine spiders.

Best Practice #5. Watching Live Visits to Determine Final Tweaks

Although you may have developed your website with a Web analytics package, you may not want to wait for reports to find out how you are doing and determine what to tweak to improve results. So you could jerry-rig an informal focus group to see how real-life visitors interact with your site in real time.

How? Turns out if you install some (very) low-cost chat messaging software on your site, you can use its real-time reporting function to view exactly what search engine page the visitor found your link on, and how that visitor then moves through your site. And you don’t have to actually use the software to chat with anyone, or to even visibly offer people the option to chat. Instead, you can just use it for this nifty, easy-to-view, reporting function.