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Know your buyers

To generate leads, marketers must first understand their buyers. Today buyers are the ones who orchestrate the entire selling/buying process. Buyers research the products they desire, and from there they form opinions and carefully make their decisions. Creating buyer personas from research can grant some insight on possible buying patterns, which ultimately guides marketing strategies. With this knowledge in mind, marketers can strategize accordingly to buyers wants and needs in a way that will attract them.

Website Optimization

We are living in and experiencing the age of technology. In the last 30 years or so the world has made astonishing advances in technology that have changed everything. Today I am willing to bet it is hard to find a great number of people who use maps rather than a GPS, and not too many people are reading books for facts, but rather just Google them. Technology has become apart of this world, totally embedded in everyday life, and it did not take long to adjust. Therefore, not only having a website will do. The Internet world is constantly evolving, advancing, and becoming easier to navigate.  Businesses need to be on their game when it comes to their website, because it is now a major key to success. If you really think about it, the generations to come won’t even be able to imagine life without Internet, just think how the internet will impact business in years to come? Now is the time to learn and become technology savvy, and build an online presence people enjoy.

A website has to be optimized to make it in today’s market.  The idea is to be one of the top ranked results on search engines. To optimize your website you need to use effective keywords, attractive CTAs (calls-to action), desirable downloads, and so much more, but these are the basics to get you started.  Keywords will really help you gain traffic to your website when used properly. If you use long tail keywords with low search traffic that correlate with your business, you are likely to be top ranked and found easier. Traffic isn’t enough though; you need buyers to really be interested, and to see how interested they are you need CTA’s that actually work. A CTA is designed to offer a service, and when clicked on, it directs a web user to a landing page that asks for contact information in a form and will convert that visitor into a lead. The better the CTA’s you have on your page, the more likely you are to gain leads. If the offer is good enough they will click on it. Downloads are great, especially when they are educational, because today’s buyers prefer to be educated rather than sold. Who doesn’t want information that will benefit them?

Great Content

Your website is one of the main ways for buyers to get familiar with your brand. A good impression must be made. The content on your website, blog, social media, email, etc. has to be relevant content to your buyer. Who is your buyer, what are they interested in, what type of problems do they face, and how can you help them? With the answers to these questions marketers can decipher how to create content that will matter and have a purpose. Do not shove your product or service in their faces, but instead consider where they are in their buying journeys as you market your product or service. If the correct information is given at the right time you are more likely to get a lead. On your blog write about things you know your buyer wants to read about and will benefit from. Post content on social media your buyer persona would be interested in. Always make sure your content is good and relevant.  Your content is how you are going to attract leads. First visitors find your top ranked website (or blog post), next they land on your page with great content, then they discover your alluring CTA, and finally become a lead by providing their contact information on a landing page all because of your website’s great content. If everything you post online is meaningful content, you will generate more traffic and create an opportunity to turn more web visitors into leads. The goal in creating effective content is to know the buyer and what content they want.

Analyze data

Throughout this entire process there should be analyzing going on. There are many tools that help marketers track all progress, but my personal favorite marketing automation software is Hubspot. This software allows you to analyze all of your data from how many website views, CTA’s opened, click rates, leads, keyword strength, etc. If you analyze this data it can also not only help generate leads, but save money. Knowing what did and didn’t work helps create guidelines and strategies in less time, because there is less research to do. The good part is that data shows all fact, and not opinion. These insights genuinely help marketers understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Overall, the main ways to generate leads is to understand the new buyers today, optimize your website with effective keywords, create CTA’s that generate interest, create relevant content, and, of course, track and analyze your data. These key points are the building blocks to generating leads, as you go along the lead generation process becomes more complicated and in depth, but the first steps comes in understanding the basic principles, and then building upon it.