Boosting your conversion rate isn’t as easy as simply running some A/B tests or changing the copy on your landing page, hoping for a bump in conversions. Sure, that’s easy to do now, with web design tools for all experience levels and testing tools that empower marketers to dive into every aspect of their analytics.
Maximizing your conversion rate is, however, as easy as a simple lesson in reciprocity. No, I’m not talking about which color button users are most likely to click on. I’m talking about the power of great offers, the principle of influence stating that when someone does something for you, you feel obliged to give back. For marketers, this means offering something truly valuable for site visitors, that will compel them to complete whatever lead generation action is in place.
You can lay the groundwork for this two-way street with a few key steps.
Know your audience
Making a valuable lead magnet requires a firm handle on what kind of information your audience is seeking. After all, they’re visiting your site with some purpose in mind, whether that’s to gather advice or make a purchase.
Luckily, the online behavior of your audience can provide this direction. Using tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, you can see the volume for keyword phrases that people are searching for and find related suggestions. Other tools like Buzzsumo allow you to search specific topics and find corresponding social shares, enabling you to tap into popular content that could point the way to your perfect lead magnet. Don’t forget your Google Analytics account, either — this reveals your most clickable content.
Another way to learn more about your audience is to go straight to the source. Q&A sites, forums and groups in your industry reveal precisely what people are talking about. Reviews on Yelp and similar sites provide another goldmine of insights.
Offer a useful resource
Once you know what information your audience is seeking, it’s time to create a lead-gen resource that matches their needs. This could be a webinar, research report, tip sheet, tool, or something different, depending on your business. It could be something you already have in your content bank, or a project you start new. And yes, it’s often helpful for this resource to be free, so people are more likely to use it and begin seeing you as an expert.
First and foremost, your resource must offer clear value to prospects. It helps to make it as specific and relevant as possible, so users know what they’re getting by clicking or downloading. The landing page where it lives should not only match what users are expecting to see, but it should be free of any elements that produce anxiety or distract the viewer, potentially causing them to click away or become confused. This might sound obvious, until you can consider that the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35 percent, yet the top 25 percent are converting at 5.31 percent or higher. This signals a huge opportunity to increase content downloads by focusing on landing page optimization.
Finally — and hopefully, obviously — the offer must deliver on its promises, without requiring too much time or investment on the user’s end.
Sell your offer
After making the perfect lead magnet, it’s time to set the stage for your offer so it can steal the show.
Facebook ads, mentioned earlier, are a great way to reach your target audience and pique their interest. After all, 79 percent of today’s online adults use Facebook, most logging in multiple times per day.
Whether you’re using a traditional lead capture form or Facebook lead ads, crafting a good offer to inspire prospects to give you permission to contact them is key to decreasing your cost per acquisition. A persuasive case study in Facebook Ads is demonstrated by real estate broker Tristan Ahumada (disclosure: client). When he employed ads for his team of real estate experts in Southern California, he saw more than 300 leads in a single month.
Other helpful ways to promote your offer on social media are mentioning it on your profile page or in your cover photo. If you’re an active YouTuber, you can even insert the offer into a free, ungated video on your channel, around the halfway point or end of the video.
Guest blog posts are another fun way to amplify your offering. You can touch on the lead magnet in your post and even drop a link in your author bio.
The offer can also be leveraged through a content upgrade on your own blog. This is meant to capture email addresses from a blog reader by offering an additional free asset somewhere in the post.
Now that you’ve provided something to your audience, it’s time to sit back and wait to see what they generate in return!
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