Is your website generating the high-quality leads you need?
Are you attracting organic traffic to your site but have a low visitor conversion rate of 5% or less?
While individual tactics and approaches vary by industry and audience—effective websites generate more high-quality leads using inbound marketing strategies.
Properly executed inbound marketing is 10x more effective for lead conversion than outbound. (Source)
Inbound marketing leverages a range of nuanced strategies and technical components to carefully align visitor “intent” to the value you provide—thus increasing website traffic and high-quality leads. We offer a reasonably comprehensive overview of these strategies and tactics in our article: The Essential Guide To Lead Generation Websites.
In this article, we’ll assume you have the necessary infrastructure in place and are already generating a sizable volume of organic traffic but are struggling to convert that traffic into actionable leads.
While we can’t offer you a “one size fits all,” “hack,” or “cheat code,”—we can provide you with some common fixes and perspectives to help you increase your website lead generation.
The Truth About Website Traffic
Not all website traffic is equal, but it all does have value—excluding the bots and crawlers, of course.
Inbound marketing strategies draw in prospects by generating valuable content that speaks to a specific issue or problem. Your potential customers are out there with challenges they are trying to solve and are actively searching the internet for solutions. By offering insights and knowledge for free, you draw prospects to your website and introduce them to your brand and expertise.
Ideally, once on your site and engaged with your brand, they are funneled into conversions that offer additional information and access in exchange for contact details.
But not all visitors are ready to buy. Just because someone is visiting your site for knowledge, doesn’t mean they are ready to make a decision. If your conversions are only speaking to those customers that are ready to buy, this may explain why your website isn’t producing a larger number of leads.
General rules for website traffic:
- 71–89% of the traffic visiting your website is merely looking for answers and isn’t ready to buy and may never be.
- 11–29% of your traffic is in the market and actively shopping around and evaluating but isn’t ready to buy yet.
- Up to 18% are actively ready to buy and are comparing offerings.
General rules for website leads:
- Only 25% of the leads you generate from your website traffic are ready to buy in the next 1 to 2 years.
- 75% of leads generated require nurturing to even be in the market.
Effectively generating leads from a website requires multiple conversions that account for the dynamic buying journey. In other words, stop trying to sell people on your solutions right as they walk through the door and seek to nurture and educate them.
Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12%. (Source)
The Secret To High-Quality Leads Lies Within The Buyer Journey
To draw in high-quality traffic and convert visitors into leads—you’ll need to offer content and conversion opportunities designed specifically for each stage of the buying journey. As we stated, not all customers are ready to buy just because they are on your site. The majority of visitors require additional insights, information, and nurturing before they’re prepared to make a decision.
Providing the information prospects need to make an effective decision enables you to ushers them through the buyer journey while also building trust in your expertise. Offering content and conversions that speak to buyers’ needs at every stage of their journey enables you to gather prospect contact information and nurture them much earlier in the buying process.
What Is The Buyer Journey?
The buying journey is a series of stages that “prospects” go through on the path to becoming a “customer.” At each stage, customers have different needs and objectives that need to be met before they progress.
To better understand these changing needs and objectives, we’ll look at the buying journey in three broad stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.
While this approach to the buying journey is a loose framework, it enables you to consider what your prospects are trying to achieve and tailor your messaging to speak directly to their needs.
Adapting your messaging and value to each stage of the buyer journey will help you create content and conversions that capture wider audiences and generate more leads. The ultimate goal is to create passive funnels for each step of the buyer journey that attracts good fit prospects, guides them to conversions, then nurtures them to a decision.
Creating Content For The Entire Buyer Journey
Your potential prospects are searching for insights and knowledge about their problem throughout their buying journey. Even as they start to narrow down solutions, they are still consulting the great Google for insights.
Savvy organizations create content for each of these stages that answers specific questions and speaks to their potential customers’ emotional, technical, and practical issues.
Getting in front of your customers early in the journey (i.e., “Awareness”) is vital—but having content that speaks to later “Consideration” and “Decision” offers compounding value.
- First, it helps nurture prospects that you attracted early.
- Second, sales teams can leverage this content to guide customers through the buying journey.
- Lastly, it has the potential to attract customers who are nearing a final decision and pull them into your funnel.
Just remember, attracting customers to your brand does not only happen at the beginning of a prospect’s journey.
80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement. (Source)
High-Quality Leads For Every Stage of The Buyer Journey
Conversions are how your website generates leads. Often, websites only have calls to action (CTAs) and conversions that speak to the “final” buying decision.
CTAs such as: “Schedule a Consult,” “Contact Us,” or “Schedule a Demo”—while necessary, do little to nothing for prospects who are early in their journey.
Likely they’re not ready to speak to anyone and probably want/need more information before they’re prepared to discuss any solution.
Ensure that among your conversions—you have some that offer insights and information that seek to educate and inform—and don’t just push for the sale. Some good examples are workbooks, tools, and thought leadership.
Asking for a sale at the first meeting is a recipe for disaster. Your website shouldn’t take this tactic either.
Don’t dress your website in a tweed jacket.
Expand your conversions to address every stage of the buying journey, and your leads will increase.
Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices. (Source)
Nurturing High-Quality Leads Through The Buyer Journey
Quality salespeople know that prospects need multiple touchpoints and interactions before they are ready to buy. Your website experience should mimic this same tactic.
Your goal should be to identify where prospects are in the buying journey based on their interactions with your content. With this information, you can automate nurturing efforts and engage sales teams only when a lead has shown strong buying signals.
By nurturing and qualifying leads on your site—you’ll be able to grow your funnel of valuable prospects while not wasting sales resources chasing leads that aren’t ready to be engaged.
Globally, 41% of marketers confirm inbound produces measurable ROI, and 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing.
(Source)
High-Quality Lead Generation Websites Create Funnels
A great lead generation website draws in prospects, expands their knowledge and awareness, nurtures them throughout the buying journey, and converts them. While each website has its own digital experience and guides customers to unique offerings, lead generation websites all work on these fundamental premises.
When executed well, your website becomes your greatest marketing and sales asset for growth.
If your website struggles to generate high-quality leads from visitors, try mapping your buying journey and auditing your content, conversions, and nurturing efforts. You’re likely missing a crucial opportunity to grow your business.
Let’s Get Growing!
