2020 has been a tumultuous year, especially for businesses of all sizes. However, with people quarantining at home, online business has skyrocketed. This is the year where it’s time for your business to focus on your digital marketing tactics to convert leads and create a new pool of lifelong customers.

Lead generation isn’t as easy as it may sound. After all, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it! Whether you’re a small mom and pop shop or a growing enterprise, it’s important you know the best practices for converting visitors on your website.

Top marketing tactics for lead generation

Take a look at our top five marketing tactics to better convert leads into customers below.

1. Develop an SEO strategy

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of organic traffic that comes to your site from a search engine results page (SERP), such as Google or Bing. Making your website more visible on search engines, especially Google considering it has about 92% of the global search engine market share, is imperative. 

There are numerous ways you can develop an SEO strategy for your website to bring in more organic traffic that can eventually convert into customers. The tricky thing about SEO is that it’s always changing, and there is never a definitive right or wrong way to improve SEO because search engine’s algorithms are constantly changing. However, there are plenty of tried-and-true SEO tactics that can help improve your site’s ranking, such as:

• Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
• Optimize images with appropriate file formats, sizes, and alt text
• Improve page speed
• Use internal links in your copy
• Improve user experience
• Focus on keywords
• Secure backlinks from credible sites
• Consistently publish longer content
• Start a company blog

Although it might not seem necessary, for whatever industry you are in, a blog is extremely crucial in helping aid your SEO strategy.

WhiteRock Locators Example

Here is an example from WhiteRock Locators, a real estate site that helps you find apartments. Their blog not only helps give users more information about real estate and useful information about areas they serve, but also aids in their SEO strategy by providing additional copy, links, and photos for Google to index.

With these SEO tips, you can bring your site from the bottom of the SERP to the top. However, this SEO is a long-term approach, so be patient and continue to optimize your website.

2. Design calls to action

A call to action (CTA) is just what it sounds like—calling a visitor to your page to take a certain action. This action is intended to further direct the visitor down the sales funnel to make a conversion. CTAs are typically clickable buttons or links that will navigate the visitor to a new page where they can take an action, such as signing up for a newsletter, downloading an app on their mobile phone, subscribing to an email list, or starting a demo trial. 

American Casino Example

Let’s look at an example. On the image of one of American Casino Guide Book’s pages below, you’ll see the main content on the page is promoting their mobile apps for Android and iPhone. The CTAs on their page are the two buttons for Google Play and the App Store, where visitors will be redirected to each online app store to download their app.

3. Start an email marketing campaign

Believe it or not, email campaigns are still stronger than ever. While this tactic has been around for decades, the power it yields can greatly boost your conversion rates. There are many different ways you can go about drafting email campaigns. Some template ideas include:

• Birthday promotions with a special discount
• Holiday sales
• End of season sales
• Exclusive membership discounts

Creating eye-catching email templates for different email campaigns is a great way to build brand trust and keep your customers coming back for more. Additionally, email marketing is a great way to convert leads. For example, you can offer new subscribers to your email list a 15% discount code for signing up. This can encourage them to use that code to make a purchase, and even recommend your company to their friends and family.

4. Harness the power of social media

Social media has changed the way companies market themselves. Through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, you’re now able to post content, interact with customers, and increase customer engagement. 

There are plenty of avenues you can take to harness the power of social media. Some options include:

• Giveaways: To reach new customers and boost excitement, create your very own giveaway where you raffle off any products or services your business sells. Giveaways are relatively simple—just ask your followers to post a comment, then once the deadline arrives, pick a commenter at random and mail them their prize.

• Contests: Contests are similar to giveaways, but take it one step further. By creating your own social media contest, you can have your followers post a picture with a hashtag of your company’s name or promote one of your products. Or, you can do a caption contest and pick the funniest or more appropriate caption. As long as your contest is creative, you’re sure to convert leads and boost engagement.

• Respond: Responding to comments is crucial. Depending on your following, you may get hundreds, or even thousands, of comments on each post. Replying to a few can show you care about your customers and increase trust and transparency. And don’t forget to respond to any negative comments. Doing so can help you better your products and services and get insightful feedback to improve.

With over 71% of US-based 18-24-year-olds using Instagram and 78% of US-based 30-49-year-olds using Facebook (Pew Research Center), social media is perfect for reaching a broader audience.

5. Create compelling content

“Content is king” is the new digital marketing mantra that every business owner should take note of. Content is what helps your website get noticed by search engines. If your company doesn’t have a blog, or you have a blog but post inconsistently, it’s time to revamp your strategy. 

Quality content is one of the best ways for Google and other search engines to find your site. Through engaging blog articles, you can use keywords, images, and title tags to build relevancy and create an authoritative website. Some tips for creating compelling content include:

• Conducting keyword research to find relevant keywords that relate to your business
• Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions to provide a succinct overview of each blog post
• Improving user experience with headers and sub-headers to make content readable
• Inputting images and videos to break up content and engage readers
• Make your content shareable to reach a broader audience
• Add internal and external links to give your readers more resources and build credibility
• Use keywords in your uniform resource locator (URL)
• Make sure content is long (approximately 1500 words for blog posts, approximately 2,500-3,000 for long-form articles)

With these tips on creating compelling content, you’ll bring your blog to the next level and improve the SEO value of your website, which can help bring in more leads.

Wrapping up

There are numerous marketing tactics you can take advantage of to help you better convert leads. From optimizing your website to bring in organic traffic to email marketing campaigns, these are just some of the ways you can bring your company to the next level. While these marketing tactics merely scratch the surface of ways to convert leads, they serve as a great starting point to bringing in new customers.