LEAD GENERATION

Optimising the generation of leads from your company website is one of the smartest things you can do for your business. Digital marketing is a multi-faceted and often complicated beast, but when you know how to implement quality website lead generation strategies, you’re taking an enormous step in the right direction. It can be challenging to generate leads from your website, but learning how to put in place a wide range of strategies will see you become increasingly skilled in all things marketing, confident in content creation, design, sales, human psychology, classic marketing and so much more. If you learn anything at all from reading this guide, let it be that generating leads from your website is one of the most efficient and valuable ways to grow your business.
On to the logical question now that you know how important website lead generation is: where to begin? The bad news is there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to converting leads to sales on your website, but there are an enormous range of actionable behaviours that you can try that could result in the positive impact you’re looking for. We’ve compiled more than 50 strategies that we have found to be not only the most effective, but the best value for money when it comes to your marketing budget. Some of these actions will work better for certain businesses over others, but all of them are worth investigating as you work towards building your lead generation outcomes. These strategies focus around things you can do within core areas of your business, such as your optimising your website, blog, landing pages, on-page forms, calls-to-action and lead magnets. Many of them are things that you can do or start right now, as a part of your overall lead generation improvement. Hopefully, these strategies provide the information, and the inspiration, you need to make the changes that your business has been calling out for, and make way for even more advances into the future.

Whether you’re totally unfamiliar with website lead generation, or you feel you aren’t doing enough to ensure your website’s lead generation is up to scratch, optimising your website is always the first step. Here are some concrete tips you can use to create a solid, well optimised website from which you can extend your lead generation strategies to reach new heights.

1. Focus On Your Goal First
If your business wants to create a website that serves your company well in terms of lead generation, you absolutely must know what you want you site to accomplish. Figuring out the goal at the end of the tunnel before you even start your website journey means the entire process has more direction, simplifying the behaviours you take from the very beginning. Goals should be specific and measurable, so think about what you want your site to do, whether that’s increasing sales, building your brand, or drawing attention to a particular product or service. Once you know your goal it’s much easier to map out your entire website, and build each page and section with that goal in mind.
2. Make Your Website Design Unique
Years ago, having a website was something special that could set you apart from your competition. Now it seems that everyone has one, which means it’s even more challenging to stand out from the crowd. So, in a world of website templates and ‘fill-in-the-blanks’ design, it’s even more important to prioritise individuality. Design your website to be one-of-a-kind, ensuring you aren’t just making the right impression, but also creating an online space that can be totally customised for your specific buyer journey. You might spend more money on your website design by avoiding templates, but what you’ll end up with is a site that is uniquely yours, and recognisable as such.
3. Understand Search Engines
When it comes to lead generation via your website, the one thing you absolutely need to be knowledgeable about is search engines. Along with social sharing, search engines are going to be a major driver of the traffic that contributes to your lead generation. Despite this, so many businesses have very little idea how search engines work and how to use search engine optimisation, or SEO, to the benefit of their companies. Taking the time to educate yourself not just on the power of search engine optimisation, but also how to harness it in the context of lead generation, will certainly benefit you into the future. When you’re able to understand how search engines like Google draw organic traffic to your website, you can line up that traffic to your buyer’s journey, calls-to-action and so on to convert search engine traffic into leads.
4. Make Your Website Responsive And Fast
The world we live in is fast-paced and increasingly mobile-based, and any website that is going to work effectively needs to be built with this in mind. At the moment, and likely into the future, technology is in a state of constant flux, with increasing website size, smaller screen size, and growing internet speeds. Successful lead generation comes from websites that run effectively, quickly and on all devices. Optimising your website at every step, from the code and queries to the images and design, ensures that you aren’t losing valuable leads on the cusp of converting due to an inability to easily access your website.
5. Streamline The About Page
Within the larger view of your website, with so many pages and aspects to focus on, the one page that is often neglected is your About page. In fact, many companies view the About page as window padding more than a resource for their customers, which is a serious mistake. Your About page is where your customers get to know you, and it should be a place to impress them and build trust. When there’s a feeling of trust and familiarity between you and your customer, leads are more likely to engage with you and move on the path towards conversion.
6. Include an FAQ For Skimmers
Along with the About page, another significant page on your website is the F.A.Q or Frequently Asked Questions page. The F.A.Q particularly valuable for those time-poor people who tend to ‘skim’ through website content, as it provides a great opportunity for you to collect the most important and pertinent information in one place. The biggest mistake people make when putting together an F.A.Q page is that, as experts in their field, they tackle only the most complex questions. Remember, in the buying process, even a simple question with no answer can be a roadblock to conversion! Dealing with both simple and complex user questions clearly and concisely works in building your status as a source of trustworthy information and is highly worthwhile for lead generation.
7. Draw Attention To Your Phone Number
For those businesses with the ability to answer and manage incoming calls, it pays to make your phone number as obvious and visible as possible on your website. A phone number provides credibility in an internet space where people aren’t always as they appear. In offering a number, you’re giving leads a sense of security and making it simple for them to reach out over the phone. A phone conversation is always a great opportunity to lay important lead generation groundwork that pays off into the future.
8. Track Those Calls
If you’re a business displaying their phone number on their website, make sure you’re doing something to track the calls that come in from that source. Call tracking software can be implemented that allows your company to immediately know which calls are coming in from your website, so you don’t have to ask the customer. The data can then provide valuable insight as to what sources are driving customers to call, which can in turn be integrated into PPC, SEO, offline ad campaigns and more.

9. Use An Online Chat Software
Online chat is everywhere these days, and there’s a reason for that: it works. Online chat is a powerful tool that allows you to immediately open up a conversation with potential buyers in the moment. Once you initiate a chat, buyers can ask niggling questions, interact with sales staff, and get a better feel for your business. This allows them to seek either the information, reassurance, or positive boost that they need to continue towards conversion, so it’s definitely something to investigate for your website.
10. Focus On Education Over Sales
Human beings, despite what our consumerist nature might suggest, are not looking to be aggressively sold to. In fact, studies on human psychology have shown that when it comes to the internet, people are looking for information and education. The internet is a well of knowledge about products and services, and people want a source for that information they can trust to enlighten them when they’re looking to make a purchase. As a supplier of a product or service, you’re already in a great position to be this resource, providing you know how to ease your leads from the research stage into the buying stage without them feeling like they’re just another dollar in your pocket.
11. Limit Choices
You might think that life is all about choices, but when it comes to buying it seems that the opposite might actually be true. Studies on purchasing behaviour showed that when presented with fewer choices, buyers tended to experience more satisfaction with the choices that they made. On the other hand, those presented with a wealth of choices tended to feel overwhelmed and experience buyers regret. This knowledge can be applied to a website by ensuring you’re focusing on a clear goal, and showing your leads focused and relevant calls-to-action as they navigate your website.
12. Embrace Pop Ups
So many businesses shy away from pop-ups because they’re considered to be invasive and annoying, but we’ve got news for you. They can work! In fact, if what you have on offer for website visitors can really help them, has value, and solves a problem, you need to put it right before their eyes. There aren’t too many website tools as effective at doing this as pop-ups. Yes, some of your visitors will find them annoying, but in most cases the benefits are far more persuasive than the harms for lead generation.
13. Explain With Product Videos
Video marketing has come a long way in the internet age, and we are loving seeing the creative and innovative ways that brands are using videos in their lead generation. Videos can be added to your website to tell your story, explain your product or service, or simply attract attention to a current deal. You can also add videos to forms in order to clearly outline the value of any gated offers. As well as drawing attention, videos are a fantastic tool to build brand recognition and business familiarity among your leads.
14. Don’t Rely Too Much On Stock
Stock photos are handy and convenient, but they aren’t always the best tool for the job. Visuals can be so powerful, but stock photos often aren’t showcasing your individuality, and studies have shown visitors respond better to real, and familiar faces. Put yourself, your team, your office and even your customers up there on your website to ensure you’re putting a ‘human face’ on your company. Remember, stock photos aren’t necessarily bad, but there are some instances where a generic stock photo just won’t pack the same punch as a custom image.
15. Showcase Testimonials
Testimonials and guarantees can be a powerful persuasive force in converting your leads to sales, but few businesses use them effectively on their websites. When you’re designing a website to really change your lead generation game, ensure that you’ve done the research on how to use both testimonials and guarantees. Pair client testimonials, expert quotes, article excerpts and similar to create a strong foundation for your authority, while offering a guarantee such as full or partial refund in the event of dissatisfaction. This bridges the gap of uncertainty for your leads, encouraging them to commit.
16. Visualise And Map Your Conversion Funnel
It’s easy to think about your conversion funnel, but having it in your head only is a limitation. In fact, one of the best things you can do for your lead generation is to get that conversion funnel mapped out on paper, visualising the path so you can see the specific actions that are taking your leads from cold indifference to conversion. The conversion funnel you design needs to align with your business model, and once it’s mapped out you might be surprised at how obvious weak points in the funnel become. This mapping makes it that much easier to see where conversion issues lie, and allows you to action the changes required to optimise the process for the greatest impact.

17. Organise Your Website In Line With Buyer’s Journey
Amidst the many tasks associated with building a truly effective lead generation website, the concept of the buyer’s journey can be neglected. Well, we are here to tell you that the journey your buyers undertake is everything in the lead up to them converting. Going back to our first point, having a clear goal and then working consciously to align your website design and content to that goal and the journey you want your buyers to have will make an enormous difference. Look at each page of your website and think about the buyer that you’re talking to, where their head might be at, what decisions they’re making, what information they need and so on. When buyers have the information, trust you and feel supported, they convert!
18. Avoid Boring Copy
Businesses that aren’t putting thought into quality copy might as well have a website full of blank pages, because the result is the same. Copy must capture the attention of site visitors and spark emotional responses, evoking feelings to create a sensation of multiple layers of communication. This emotional connection is important, but so too is rational language that makes your leads think and see the solutions you’re offering and why they make sense. Combining emotional and rational language gives businesses copy that is immensely compelling and has a marked effect on the effectiveness of your site as a lead generation powerhouse for your business. Also remember that in any case where it’s necessary to include long sections of copy to break that copy up with images and calls-to-action. Internet attention spans are short, and often just the sight of a long page of copy will turn people away. Opt for short copy wherever possible, and break up long copy where you can’t compact it.
19. Track User Behaviour
Sherlock Holmes had it right when he said on the importance of data: “"I can't make bricks without clay”. When it comes to businesses improving their lead generation, data is equally important, and collecting as much of it as possible is only going to be of benefit to you. For optimising your website, this means you absolutely should be tracking scrolling and clicks. The scrolling will make it clear how much of your site is actually being seen by viewers, while the clicks will tell you what is drawing interest and where you’re succeeding, making it clear if there are areas users aren’t able to navigate well in the context of your website. Websites like Crazy Egg allow this kind of tracking, paving the way for you to make the improvements needed to ensure maximum efficiency.
Using A Blog To Your Benefit
If your website doesn’t include a blog, it needs one as soon as possible. From improving customer relations to bettering SEO outcomes, there’s not much a blog can’t do. Here are some ideas to borrow as you build a successful lead generating blog on your website.
20. Be Consistent In Your Blogging
You might think that nobody is regularly reading the content you’re publishing on your blog, but the truth is that Google never stops reading your blog. In fact, it’s using your blog to learn more about your site and your business, and weighing up that data against search queries to judge relevancy. Remember, people making relevant search queries are leads waiting to enter your funnel! With that in mind it’s easy to see why it’s important to regularly post valuable content. As well as keeping you relevant to Google, quality blog content will result in your site being ranked higher. Not to mention, that content is also valuable to human readers, and it improves your reputation as an industry expert, which is really priceless.
21. Create Comprehensive Educational Articles
We already mentioned the importance of educating site visitors instead of focusing on the hard sell, and a blog is the perfect medium for that. Of particular value when it comes to educating leads is the comprehensive post, similar to this resource. Focus on an area of learning need within your industry, and create content that answers every question and focuses not just on the big picture, but the detail that visitors need to truly understand a topic. Articles like this are great for wising up your leads, but they’re also important in helping site visitors build a relationship with your brand and see you as an industry expert.
22. Build Your Content Into A Downloadable
Blog posts are fantastic, but you might be surprised just how much reach a blog post can have if you tweak the form of delivery a bit. Yes, we’re talking about a downloadable based on those comprehensive educational posts we just mentioned. The simple fact is many readers will not have seen those articles on your blog, but you can draw just as much attention and get just as much value by offering the same content packaged as a free, stand-alone, downloadable product. Think of it like a short guide or ebook. This content can be offered to your email marketing list, or on social media as a free giveaway. Downloadable items like this are a double whammy, pairing the traffic boosting value of great blog content, with the trust-building value of a free offer.

23. Be Keyword Clever
When it comes to content, it’s important to focus on it being informative and valuable to your customer, but that doesn’t mean you should forget the little details. Here we’re primarily talking about keywords, and specifically how to be clever in your use of keywords in walking the fine line between improving rankings and keyword stuffing. A good rule of thumb is to keep the keyword density fairly low, at around 2% of your overall content, and also to use the most important keyword in the first and last 100 words of the post. This helps Google to see the topic that your blog content is relevant for, but avoids you being blacklisted for the content being spammy, packed full of keywords, or impossible to read.
24. Craft and Improve Your Evergreen Content
Blog posts that are timely and immediately relevant can capture attention, but they don’t have nearly as much staying power as what the industry refers to as ‘evergreen content’. This particularly kind of content is the sort that just doesn’t lose its value, and is still useful, engaging and informative in the months and even years following publication. Considering article longevity during the writing process improves the chances of landing on content that will continue to rank and draw in traffic. Even better, when this kind of content is carefully optimised, it can be a literal beacon of light for leads, drawing them to your website to answer the questions they’ve been waiting for somebody to know.
25. Consider The Questions Your Buyers Are Asking
Ah yes, the buyer’s questions. They’re an important part of content creation, and a must to consider when you’re putting together copy for your website, particularly your blog. When you take the time to really look deeply at the questions your buyers are asking, the tough ones that perhaps aren’t as simple to tackle, you’re bettering your lead generation. The reason for this is when you know those tough questions, you can answer them, providing a valuable resource for buyers that not only solves their problem but also positions you as an expert authority, which is half the job in lead generation. So, when you’re creating lead generating content for your blog, think hard about what buyers are looking for, and where the gaps in their knowledge might be. Dig into Facebook comments, social media feedback, customer emails and any other kind of customer service and look for recurring problems, then create content that tackles them.
26. Make It Fun
There’s a lot of room to move in blogs, and one of the great things about them as a medium is how versatile they are for businesses in pretty much every industry. While you can certainly be putting out a professional persona, there’s still space for a little bit of fun in any blog, and quizzes are a great way to introduce this. Adding a quiz to your blog allows leads to interact with your brand in an enjoyable way as well as giving you an opportunity to learn more about your potential customers. With the right approach, you can get all kinds of data using quizzes, although it’s smart to provide something in return for those who take the quiz like a discount code, coupon or special offer. You can also use the quiz as an opportunity to increase email opt-in rates by making the results gated, which can be highly effective.
27. Break Up Your Copy
When we talked about designing your website and managing website copy, we mentioned the importance of breaking up long sections of copy with images or calls-to-action, and the same goes for blogs. Pages with paragraph after paragraph of content are not just boring for readers, they’re a turn off for the average time-poor internet consumer. Even if your copy is spot on, you can guarantee that not every line will be read. So, the best thing you can do for your lead generation is to make your blog copy as readable as possible by breaking up your content, using images, sub-headings and so on. The longer people read, the more engaged they are, and the better your chances are of bringing them into your funnel to be captured as leads. Focus on the skim reader, because they are definitely the majority of your blog visitors!
Landing Pages For Lead Generation
Landing pages are a great example of old school marketing that really works, but there’s more to them than meets the eye. Here are a few tips and tricks that you can apply to your landing pages to improve their efficiency for lead generation.
28. Follow A Winning Format
There are certain behaviours that, when it comes to landing pages, represent the industry best practice. Of course, if you’ve never put together landing pages (or at least successful landing pages) before than you won’t be familiar with that best practice. Allow us to lay it out for you:
- Clarity: Remember that attention spans are short online, so you need to be as clear and concise as possible on your landing pages. Get your point across quickly and in a way that makes sense.
- Minimal: Design has an enormous impact on landing pages, and studies have shown that the style you want to go with is minimalism. As above, landing pages have a minimal time to capture attention, so don’t create a messy visual landscape that’s hard to navigate. Direct the eye of your visitor towards the most important things first, and ensure the offer and call-to-action are central.
- Show Proof: Your landing page needs to be working to secure the trust of page visitors, so ensure you’re including things like testimonials and buyer comments. Social media is a great source for these! Real-life experiences from other buyers can help to push leads towards conversion.
- Format And Colour: The format and colours of your landing pages are a pretty big decider of their success, so make sure you’re spending some time on them. Format your content in a visually appealing way so it is easy to read and skim, and use contrasting colours for things that need to stand out, such as your call-to-action. Oh and make sure to always include a logo!

29. Every Page Is A Landing Page
You probably think of landing pages as very different from the ‘average’ page of your website, but there’s not really any reason to think this. In fact, the same ‘rules’ that apply to your landing pages can really be applied to any page. Your pages should be designed with a goal in mind and visitors to your site need to understand immediately what the page is offering. Put the time into making all the pages of your website, including your landing pages, focused, clear and intentional in the way they move site visitors closer to conversion, instead of just shooting content at them with no particular purpose in mind.
30. Use The Tried And Tested Format
Businesses have been using landing pages effectively for years now, and you’re in a great position to take advantage of the learning of others by embracing their format. Yes, there are definitely certain landing page formats that work better than others. Personally, we’ve found the following to be the most effective at improving lead generation, so use it as a kind of checklist for your own landing page design.
- Attention Grabbing Headlines: A headline is your chance to make it clear to visitors just what is being offered in one sentence. Everything on the table needs to be concisely communicated in your headline in a way that is punchy, attention grabbing and clear.
- Benefits: Speaking of being clear, people who make it to your landing page need to know straight away what the benefits of your offer are so get them on the page quickly. Focus on simply explaining how your product or service will improve their life or solve a problem before you even think about telling them how they can take advantage of it.
- Quality CTAs: When it comes to landing pages, calls-to-action (CTAs) are not to be taken lightly. They can really be the keystone of your entire landing page so spend the time on them. Make sure they’re clear, relevant to what you’re offering, and highly obvious for internet skimmers.
- Problem Solving: The thing that will get people interested in your product or service is its ability to solve a problem, so make sure you explain what the problem is and how you’re solving it. Using an imaginary scenario can work for this, and it also gives you a chance to really show that you fully understand the problem and the solution.
- Be Personal: There’s a lot of power in a personal story, which is why you’ll often find these kinds of stories on landing pages. If you have a personal experience with the issue or problem at hand, the landing page is the place to tell it. Of particular interest to visitors are before-and-after stories that show how your life was positively changed because the problem was able to be solved. When your visitors can see that you’ve been there too, there’s an increase in trust between you both.
- Explain Pricing: The price of your product or service will always be a big decider in leads moving to convert, which is why your landing page should not only be clear about the price, but also explain it. Make it obvious to visitors why your price is so great for the value of the product or service, and draw attention to additional extras that increase the perceived value of what you’re offering.
- End On A Guarantee: There are always risks associated with purchasing, which is why it makes so much sense to include a guarantee. Essentially, a guarantee removes the risk potential buyers feel, allowing them to ask for their money back if things don’t work out quite like they should. It helps potential buyers feel supported, and further improves trust in your brand and your product.
31. Use Images And Video
You already know that visual cues add strength to your communicated message, but we’re surprised at how often we see landing pages without a single image, let alone a video. Images can be a fantastic method for visually communicating your offer, while videos provide the perfect chance to describe what you’re offering to those who aren’t willing to read your copy. There are definitely cases where images don’t work, so A/B testing is a must. In cases where they do work, you’ll find that images increase the chances of conversion through emotional engagement. Videos accomplish the same task, while also being an explainer for visitors. In your video make sure to include all the content you have on your landing page, from headline to offer, benefits, CTAs and price.
32. Hit That Sweet Spot
Filling a sales funnel, and ensuring you have leads filtering from the top to the middle and on to the bottom, is not an easy thing. It requires businesses to have different lead captures for each stage in the funnel, from the low-pressure offers at the top as leads are building their awareness, to the consideration and decision making part of the buyer’s journey towards the bottom. Landing pages will be a part of this throughout, and so the more landing pages you have the better. Research suggests that the minimum number of landing pages for real lead generation success is 15. This allows your business to address different kinds of buyers and various perspectives on the problem as you move your leads to conversions.
33. Be Concise With Content
The rules for landing page content are not really different to the rules for website content and blog content: concise is always better. Put yourself in the shoes of a visitor to your site who is short on time and has a problem to solve. They’re going to be scanning content, and you need to write and format the content so this is easy to do. Avoid landing pages with a lot of unnecessary clutter, and make sure your offer and call-to-action is immediately obvious. Also make sure to test your landing pages, trying different layouts and formats to see what works best for the kind of user that is ending up on the page.
34. Focus On The Benefits
A great offer is a thing of beauty, but when it comes to lead generation you need to really spend some time on your landing pages bringing as much clarity to the benefits of that offer as possible. Visitors need to know what they’re getting if they take up your offer, and they need to know that they aren’t going to get a better deal or greater benefits anywhere else. Make sure you’re explaining exactly how your offer solves a relevant problem, and showcasing how the lives of your leads will be improved (be specific!) if they choose the offer. This is definitely the time you’re setting yourself apart from your competition, so focus on the benefits you’re offering that others aren’t.
35. Bring Together Emotional And Rational
We talked a little bit already about how great website content brings together the emotional and rational parts of a buyer’s brain, and landing pages are much the same. As buyers, there’s a constant fight between the impulse and the risk-adverse. Your landing pages need to address this by providing proof for both the impulsive and the reasonable side of your lead’s mind. Craft landing page copy that ignites an emotional response, and then supports that response with reason and facts. Presenting to both results in stronger landing pages and improved lead generation, so it’s really a no-lose situation.
The Power Of On-Page Forms
Website forms are far from the simple design feature they might appear to be on the surface. They can be a boon for lead generation, gathering useful information that can be used in the future. Here’s a few ways you can improve form conversion on your website.
36. Always Say Thank You
If a visitor to your site has taken time out of their day to complete an on-page form, the least you can do is thank them. Ensure that you code your forms to redirect to a thank you page following submission, and make a point to tell that visitor how much you appreciate them opting in to whatever offer they’ve chosen. This is also a good time to lay out just how safe their information is and provide further clarity on what they might receive as a part of their signing up. For those who join your mailing list, take that thank you further by sending a special offer just for them in the form of a coupon, downloadable or discount.

37. Think About What You’re Asking
There’s a fine line with forms, and many businesses struggle in figuring out where it is. Specifically, we’re talking about what your offer is worth in terms of the information visitors have to share with you. The more information you want from them, the better your offer needs to be to justify that. So, for something simple like a pdf downloadable, you’re probably not going to be able to get more than a name and email address, but for a really good offer you might find leads more willing to share other personal data like postcodes or birthdays, providing they can see why you’re asking for them. It will be fairly obvious when you’re asking for too much information, because your conversion rate for those forms will be very low, and you’ll see a lot of mid-form drop offs as leads realise how much information they’re being asked to share.
38. Be Smart With Forms
There is of course a simple way around the challenge of wanting a lot of data from your leads: progressive profiling. Basically, once you make contact with a lead, by getting them on a mailing list, you can always send out additional offers that require further data collection, and slowly build a customer profile in this manner. So initially you might ask for a name and an email address in exchange for a small downloadable guide. A week later you might send out an offer that requires the lead to answer relevant questions or share other relevant personal information. Over time, this data allows you to better target that person with more specific communication and relevant offers.
39. Add A Subscription Checkbox
While you don’t want to make things too complicated for yourself, there are certain instances where forms can serve dual purposes. One simple example of this is through adding a ‘subscribe to blog’ checkbox on your form just under the information fields. Often, once a lead has committed to signing up to an offer, they’re happy to subscribe to a blog as well. They’re seeking information after all, and the two behaviours are relevant and connected. When you make it easy for them by adding the checkbox, you might be surprised at just how many people choose it as an impulse.
Utilising Calls-To-Action (CTAs)
Calls-to-action (CTAs) are all about bringing the psychology of persuasion together with website design to maximise your lead generation. Here are a few things that all businesses should know when crafting CTAs that really work.
40. Use CTAs Everywhere
Calls-to-action are such a boon for lead generation, and it really does make sense to include them on every page of your website. This is the same line of thinking as treating all of your website’s pages as if they are landing pages. So by all means, include one (or more!) call-to-action in each page. You can put them in the content, in the headers and footers, and even inline in your copy. Work to use contrasting colours, images and icons to ensure they stand out. Remember, a call-to-action tells your visitor what you want them to do so there’s no reason to make them hard to see or understand.
41. Consider The Colours
When it comes to calls-to-action, colours make an enormous difference in how much visitors pay attention to them. While nobody wants to go back to the days of bright yellow text on a dark blue background (hello 90s) there’s definitely something to be said about the power of contrasting colours for that attention-grabbing POP. Try to select colours for your calls-to-action that are bright and clearly distinct from the rest of your website, but beware of glary or garish tones which can be quite off-putting. As always, A/B testing with different colours will help you land on the right ones.
42. Every Blog Needs CTAs
If there’s one thing that blog posts can do really well, it is to build trust in your audience. Each post that you publish works to provide your visitors with content that is valuable to them, and the more information they get the higher their trust in you is. That’s why it also makes sense to include relevant calls-to-action in as many blog posts as you can. While experts do warn against sale-focused language in your blog, there is room for it if it’s balanced with free and valuable information, so don’t shy away!
43. Pair With Images
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: images on website are powerful! Pairing images with your calls-to-action is a guaranteed way to drive conversions by vastly improving the efficiency of your communicated message. When you create a visual call-to-action, you’re drawing a viewer’s eye as soon as they land on the page, leaving no room for confusion about what you want them to do and what’s on offer. Of course not just any image will do, pick something engaging, relevant and attention-grabbing for best results.

44. Make Your CTAs Compelling
By now you almost certainly understand how powerful calls-to-action can be, but they aren’t magic. You need to take the time to ensure that the calls-to-action you’re including on your website are compelling if they’re going to make any difference to your lead generation. If your CTA is just “call us now” or “contact us today”, you’re unlikely to see the lead generation outcomes you’re looking for compared to a CTA like “Organise a FREE session with our consultant”. The latter example brings more clarity to the table, making it clear to the lead exactly what they’re getting by taking action. This is even more effective if you’ve also outlined the benefits of that action for them in previous copy.
45. Put Smart Technology On Your Side
Technology is a magnificent thing, and it can vastly improve the effectiveness of your lead generation outcomes when using calls-to-action. One of the smartest technology advancements we’ve seen in the world of calls-to-action is that of personalised CTAs. HubSpot for example offer Smart CTAs that allows you to individual target site visitors, showing them different CTAs if they’ve already opted in to your initial offer. With this tool you’re able to set up a CTA that is different the second, third or fourth time a visitor comes to the page, adding value at each visit and keeping people coming back for more.
Lead Magnets To Sweeten The Deal
Offers are fantastic in giving website visitors a chance to sample the value you’re bringing with minimal risk. Here are a few simple strategies to help you when you’re implementing these kinds of offers on your website.
46. Bring Out The Offers
Just as guarantees can help to ease the transition to conversion, offers are an ideal pathway to entice buyers with a ‘try before you buy’ mentality. When done right, offers take the pressure off the buyer, while also working to establish trust and generate valuable data that you can use into the future to target and hone your communication with that individual and others at a similar stage in the buyer’s journey. Remember, the more you learn about the people you’re selling your product or service to, the easier it becomes to successfully convert them!
47. Offers Should Be Tempting And Valuable
We talked before about getting your offers ‘right’, and there is a specific way to accomplish this. Over the years we’ve found that content marketing really only works well if the offers on the table are tempting and valuable. You can’t offer something dull or imitative and expect a good uptake. What you entice your leads with needs to be exciting, engaging and as unique to you and your business as possible. You’re the expert in your industry, so use what you know to craft an offer that not only grabs the attention, but cannot be refused.
48. Solve Problems With Offers
Leads who have any chance of converting are leads who have a problem, and the buyer’s journey follows the different stages of your leads attempting to solve that problem. The offers that you provide should work to target buyers are each stage in the journey (from awareness to consideration and then to decision) with different approaches to that problem. So in the awareness stage your offers might be guides, research, informational articles and ebooks. Then, in the consideration stage those offers become podcasts, videos, webinars, expert guides and in-depth reviews. Finally, at the decision stage you’ll can put up offers like trials, live demos and similar. At the beginning, pressure and buyer involvement is low, but this increases as they progress and that journey should be illustrated in the kinds of offers you are tempting them with.
49. Get Things Moving With A Giveaway
If you’re looking for a way to kick start your lead generation, a giveaway is definitely worth considering. After all, people love to get something for nothing. It’s built right into the part of our brain that craves a good deal. Giveaways can help businesses to generate excitement and buzz for their brand online. The same energy that people feel for your giveaway becomes linked to your brand, making your business that much more interesting for visitors. Of course, you’ll want to make sure what you’re giving away is seen as valuable and worthwhile, remembering that it should be relevant to your business and in-line with what you’re asking leads to do. So, people are unlikely to fill out a multi-page survey for a free t-shirt, but they may very well do so for something of higher value. Make sure to advertise your giveaway widely to generate as much awareness of it as possible among your current and extended networks.
50. Boost Lead Generation With Challenges
As a lead magnet, there isn’t much that speaks to the innate competitiveness of human nature more than a challenge. In so many industries, in particular fitness, challenges can be an amazing lead generation strategy. They key is to ensure that your free opt-in is better than your competition’s paid offer. Spend the time working on making any challenge offers visually impressive with lots of great imagery and avoid overwhelming people with an excess of information. Keep the aim of the challenge simple and make it easy for visitors to succeed by making the goals well within their reach and supporting them along the way, with incentives for finishers.
51. Locked Videos Add Value
Locked or gated videos have been used in lead generation for some time now. Essentially, a locked video is one that requires visitors to fill out a form to download or view it. Basically, swapping their data for your content. When you lock a video, the subtle message your visitors are getting is that the video has a greater value. It’s better than a similar video on the topic available with no gating, and accessing it is as easy as filling out a form. When you aren’t asking for too much (i.e. just an email address) the opt-in represents a fairly low-impact cost for visitors, but the perceived value of the video is is much increased.
52. Make It Interactive
Visitors to your site do not want to be passive absorbers all the time, and you might be amazed at just how much a bit of interactivity can boost your lead generation. Consider creating an interactive website tool that visitors can use in some way as a part of getting more information towards solving their problem. For example, if you’re a mortgage broker it could be a plug-and-play budget tool that allows visitors to see what their monthly repayments might be depending on house price, interest and savings. The tool should will probably need to be custom coded, and while there is a cost there it is more than worth it for the potential benefits it may bring, including sharing power.
53. Presentation Is Key
You probably already know by now that, even if you have a really stunning idea, it’s probably not an entirely unique idea. That doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed and improve your lead generation and ultimately your conversion rates, but it does mean you need to be pragmatic about your approach to marketing yourself. One thing that will definitely make or break your lead generation offers is how they are presented. Design makes an enormous difference to perceived value, and poor quality design really shows not only on your product but on uptake rates. Even if you have a fantastic offer, poor visuals can result in it being less attention-grabbing for visitors. Do yourself a favour and put time into the design of your lead generation offers, using a professional designer to ensure it really does blow your audience away.
This guide can be an amazing resource for businesses wanting to take their lead generation to the next level, and conquer goals that they may feel have been out of their reach in the past. However, it really is just the beginning. Successful lead generation is a long journey, with many varied challenges and opportunities for success, but we hope this resource provides at the least a solid foundation on which companies can build new knowledge as they work towards their lead generation aims, whatever they may be.