This is lead gen 101. But while I was looking for live examples of this to show you (check out the one at the close of this post), it stunned me how many marketers and companies are not employing this tactic.
As always, the bad news here is how much business is being lost. The good news is it’s an easy fix: Get some gate-worthy content together ASAP, and add those lead gen boxes.
On the other hand, don’t go too crazy with gating your content.
Sometimes you’ll get more leads if you don’t require people to fill out a form. Your content (particularly your high-value content) may get more shares if you skip the lead gen form and let the content be accessed freely.
In fact, there’s evidence that not gating content sometimes creates more leads, or higher quality leads. But you have to do it just right. Balance is the key.
4. Make sure your tracking works.
“What gets measured, improves.” If you haven’t yet set up tracking on your website, the time is now. You need to know which pages are generating the most leads, and which pages aren’t performing well enough.
If you’ve got a nice CRM system set up already, great. But even a free Google Analytics account has a good basic tracking feature. Just set up a “goal” for each lead generation page you’ve got. Within a week, you’ll be amazed with the information. If you weren’t doing any tracking before, finding out your results is kind of like turning on the lights in a dark room.
Take note: This will show you which of your marketing efforts are working best. That alone can be extremely helpful. Once you’ve got the information on what’s actually driving your leads, do more of that … and consider backing off from the marketing efforts that aren’t actually working.
5. Archive your webinars for play on demand.
Webinars are a great way to generate leads. Every time you do another one, you get the contact information of hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people.
That’s a good start, but don’t stop there. Post your webinars on your website, too. Gate them … or consider not gating a few of the ones that are more introductory.
This will give your visitors a couple of webinars they can view without having to fill out a form (thus getting those webinars far more views than they’d otherwise get), but it still saves you some content to use for lead generation.
It’s a nice combo – you get great content to share with visitors, but you also get to do some lead generation. And you’ve got a way to balance the cost of all those webinars you’re doing.
Want to see an example of this in action? We have a whole page of webinars on demand.
6. Maximize “forward to a friend.”
Referral marketing, aka word of mouth marketing, is one of the most effective marketing strategies ever. It works because when a real person recommends your company to another person, that recommendation carries with it more trust than your marketing ever will. (Sorry…)
You can use this for lead generation, too. For instance, at the close of a blog post, instead of offering a content upgrade or a gated white paper, what if you showed a simple form with a call to action that says something like this:
“We hope you found this article helpful. If you know someone who needs this information, please send it to them via the form below.”
Often these are used for “Send to a friend” shares, where someone forwards an article to a colleague via email. Interestingly enough, that’s the most common way for executives to share content. And all that sharing, inevitably, can lead to … well, more leads.
You may want to run a couple of tests to see which copy gets the most referrals. It’s absolutely worth a try. This is an excellent sleeper tactic that can drive quite a bit of leads when it works.
7. Demonstrate how you’ve helped people.
Got a testimonials page on your site? If you don’t, you should. It might not result in leads directly from that page (unless you put a lead gen form on that page), but demonstrating how happy your past customers are is a great way to give your website visitors confidence. That confidence can translate into leads.
Testimonials aren’t the only way to show how you’ve helped your customers. Case studies are excellent, too. These “customer stories” don’t have to be much longer than a page or two. But that brevity packs a punch – case studies are one of the most effective content marketing formats.
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