Technical and Marketing Communication: Content for a Convergent World

Inbound Marketing Certification: Study Tips from the Trenches

I used the following notes on lead conversion, back when I was studying for inbound marketing certification, last June. According to HubSpot’s Mike Volpe, of Inbound Marketing University, your offers and calls to actions can convert visits into leads, and leads into sales. This kind of lead nurturing is especially important for B2B companies, where the sales funnel is much longer.  

The HubSpot slides for Inbound Marketing University’s sessions on SlideShare, and Volpe’s excellent exam review, provide additional information on the lead conversion topics below.

Offer:

Your offer must be powerful enough to get a good number of people to part with contact information. For webinars, you give away information to get information. According to the Wake Fly blog on Online Marketing and Lead Generation Insights, your offer must speak directly to your customer’s pain points:

Case studies and whitepapers are great offers – but be sure to tell the visitors EXACTLY what they will takeaway from them, if they download and read them, and be sure to include [the offer] above the fold on the landing page, and on the left side of the page. Finally, be sure the offer you present visitors with matches what the web searchers are actually looking for. This means that if you have multiple products and services you will need multiple landing pages, tailored calls to actions, and offers that are strong enough to engage viewers and ultimately keep them on site long enough to actually become a lead.

Call to Action:

Your offer provides a button or link that goes to a landing page, with a form. The call to action is the red button that says “start your free trial now”…According to the HubSpot post, Strong Call to Action – Convert Website Visitors into Leads, “…just having a “Contact Us” form on your website is not very appealing to your website visitors and barely counts as a call to action.”

The most important key to converting website visitors into leads is to have what marketers call a “strong call to action” or a particularly convincing offer that asks people to give their contact information (so they become a lead for your business), in exchange for something. People are on your website, viewing your company information, and they are looking for clues, as to what they are supposed to do next. A strong call to action is a clear, simple, and compelling offer that persuades them to take the action you want.

Product Pages:

According to the ThinkSeer blog, informative product pages help you stand out. The post advises providing detailed information about your products, but not falling into the trap of bombarding users with too much text.

Make the information easy to digest. Make the page scannable by breaking up the text into smaller segments and using plenty of sub-headings. Add plenty of images for your products, and use the right language: don’t use jargon that your visitors might not understand.

Additional advice on product pages comes from the Multichannelmerchant. 

Make sure every page has a banana. “Banana” is…shorthand for an unmissable, primary visual element. When your landing page is a product detail page, for example, this element is the buy button. More often, however, your landing page will be a product category page. Here, an effective banana could be the lead image that draws attention to the list of products below it.

Landing Page:

According to Mike Volpe, the landing page, which has a form for contact information, is arguably the most important part of any lead generation campaign. For this reason, don’t send your visitors to a home page. Send them to a landing page. For more information, see HubSpot’s presentation on SlideShare: Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation and Conversion Webinar Slides HubSpot.

Forms:

The recommendation at IMU was to use just one form, with limited navigation. In the Landing Page presentation, HubSpot further recommends these tips:

• Don’t put the form below the fold.
• Don’t ask for really private information.
• Don’t use a Clear/Cancel button.

Leads:

A lead is someone who has taken the step of giving you information. A lead isn’t someone on your email list (that’s a prospect or email subscriber).

Lead Qualifying:

The more forms someone fills out is a good indication of how good a lead that is…You should follow-up more with those who have filled out the most forms.

Organic Leads:

These are the ranked results from Google’s index of web pages. Approximately 60-70% of visitors will click on these links. Organic search results are called “natural” or “free” listings, because there is no direct payment to Google for them.

PPC:

The post, PPC or SEO – Which Should You Choose?, describes Pay Per Click Advertising in this way:

This form of advertising brings traffic to a website through visitors clicking on an advert, every time the advert is clicked a charge is made to the advertiser. The advertiser bids on certain keywords to bring only relevant traffic to their website. Through this process, they can control the total level of their advertising budget.

Email Marketing:

According to ConstantContact, “email marketing helps you keep customers and prospects coming back—by using attractive, professional-looking email communications to stay in regular touch with them and build strong customer relationships. It’s better and more effective than regular email.”

Lead Nurturing:

Leading nurturing is providing the right content and information, at the part of the sales cycle you are in.

Related Links

• Inbound Marketing University: Converting Leads (CV101, CV201, CV301)
• Inbound Marketing University Study Guide: Notes on Getting Found
• Inbound Marketing University Exam Review: Study Tips from the Trenches