7-minute read
There’s only so much time in the day to devote to lead generation. On the one hand, it’s important to give a personal touch to every customer. On the other hand, you need to focus on bigger tasks like growing your business and managing your team. Automation is the key to growing your business with minimal effort. Your company’s website can be the engine behind this growth. By introducing automated lead generation tools into your website, you can save time and money in your workday. You’ll also see stronger results. Lead-nurturing emails have a 10x better response rate than standalone emails, for example. You should be able to devote your time to solving big problems, relying on your website to do the time-consuming work of sorting and organizing leads.
What does it take to turn a basic website into an automatic lead generator? With a bit of investment in the right lead capturing tools, plus reusable templates, your business can have a robust website that works for you around the clock. Here’s what you need to know.
What is lead generation?
Let’s go back to basics for a moment. Lead generation is a process whereby companies generate “leads” or prospective customers. It’s a fully-fledged funnel that can include inbound and outbound lead generation. Some businesses focus more heavily on cold calling whereas others focus on content marketing. At its core, lead generation is what keeps you in business. It’s how you find new customers.
Lead generation is a fundamental part of growing your business. It should be on your mind as you write sales copy, design websites, interview new people, and create new products. As a business owner, you should know how everything will improve your lead generation.
It’s also important to find the right lead generation strategy for your unique business. For instance, not many people cold call to sell makeup but they do cold call to sell software. Consider what is standard in your industry, and then be prepared to innovate. If your customer base is digital-savvy and enjoys lead magnet content like free downloadables, this could be a great place to focus your lead generation strategy.
The role of your website in lead generation
For many business owners, websites can be a source of constant anxiety. They need to be updated frequently and there’s always some new technology that needs integration. As a result, many business owners spend far too much time working on their websites, rather than the other way around. Your website should work for you! Once you nail the workflow, your website can be your business’s most powerful lead generation tool.
You can integrate a tool like HubSpot, which can measure the success of various pages on your website. It can incorporate forms and run split testing to ensure that you’re constantly improving the site. This kind of digital tracking is an invaluable tool for discovering what resonates with your visitors. Most importantly, your website can capture visitor data and automatically populate a CRM. Now, you have a rich database of information to help you customize your outreach.
Refine your audience profiles with context
Once your website is set up to instantaneously collect visitor data, you can apply this intel to refine your audience profiles. The first thing you should do is segment them by relevant categories. For instance, you may already know that your target customers are primarily women over the age of 40. With a website that’s set up for lead generation, you’ll accumulate a database of user behavior.
You can now refine your initial audience profiles with more information. You might notice that you get more visitors from urban centers on a particular product page, or that people are subscribing to your newsletter early in the morning. Fill in the gaps and try to figure out how your website fits into your customers’ lives. Are these working women who are looking for a product to use at work? Do they only get alone time very early in the morning before their kids wake up? Segment your audience into more nuanced categories, and watch your sales success rate skyrocket thanks to increasingly personalized pitches.
Automating outreach with email templates
Automation is sometimes perceived as a dirty word in business. Many business owners believe automation takes the humanity out of customer interactions and turns people off. Others feel that automation is the future, and it’s the best way to rapidly scale a business. There is truth in both statements, and that’s why automation must be used wisely.
By pairing automated email outreach with the rich customer profiles you generated in the step above, you can guarantee that your templates will feel personable rather than mechanical. Set up your website to trigger an automatic series of emails for people who give you their email address.
These drip campaigns can be pre-written and triggered instantaneously with a hands-off algorithm. Provide something valuable in every email, and watch as your funnel sorts out uninterested parties from actual sales prospects. Even better, all of this lead generation can happen automatically with the help of a robust, integrated website.
Take the load off your overworked sales & marketing teams
Designing and managing a website is a complicated job. Many SMBs struggle to grow because they force salespeople and marketers into managing the company website. If someone hasn’t trained in website development, then it’s only natural that they will get frustrated and not perform very well. After all, you hired these people to close deals and create marketing campaigns — not code, design, or handle the nitty-gritty of managing a website.
You deserve a website that supports your sales and marketing teams rather than dragging them down. Reach out to learn more about automatic lead generation and the powerful website that we can build for you.
