7 Proven Ways To Generate New Leads FAST!
As the classic internet marketing adage goes: traffic is vanity, conversions are sanity. And it’s true. Especially when it comes to ecommerce. You can have as many people as you like visiting your ecommerce store but if you fail to entice your visitors to hit the checkout, to convert into customers, then your have soem work to do. And it’s true. Especially when it comes to ecommerce. You can have as many people as you like visiting your ecommerce store but if you fail to entice your visitors to hit the checkout, to convert into customers, then your have soem work to do.
To generate that conversion it’s important to understand that between their status of passive ‘visitor’ and profitable ‘customer’ there is an important transition stage – ‘lead’.
A marketing lead is someone who has visited your ecommerce store having shown an interest in your products or services by taking a specific action. They might have clicked an ad, followed your brand through social media, downloaded an ebook or subscribed to a newsletter.
The more we can engage your ‘top of funnel’ visitors and turn them into marketing leads (leads whose contact information you have acquired) , the more we can entice them through your funnel and convert them into customers.
Your leads might take months to nurture. That’s common in B2B purchases where buyers need to do more research, assess competitors, and seek buying permission. Or they may take seconds to buy. Like those B2C purchases driven by a momentary desire and the need for a quick fix. Months or seconds, it doesn’t matter. Here are 7 Proven Ways To Generate New Ecommerce Leads FAST!
Firstly, do you know who your ideal customer really is?
Because there’s little point in charging ahead and creating lead generation strategies and assets if you’re unclear exactly who they are aimed at.
Age, education, pain points – creating a buyer persona is important. As is understanding where your ideal prospects spend their time online.
What social media platforms do they use, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram? What blogs do they read? What sites do they visit? Which forums do they contribute to?
Remember that traffic itself isn’t your most important metric. It’s responsive traffic that matters. People who respond positively to the value you offer and the ways you represent that value. They are your customers.
Know who they are? Good – then let’s look at lead generation.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
We talk on the Darwin Digital SEO Page about how ‘93% of all online interactions, from information requests to online purchases, begin with a search engine query.’
The implications are clear. If you’re not ranking for phrases searched by your prospects, there’s little chance they’ll find your site and self-qualify as a lead. The fewer leads the fewer opportunities for you to convert them into customers.
That’s why it’s essential to work with a team skilled in both identifying the language of your audience and in implementing an overall SEO and digital marketing strategy.
A team with the research, coding, content, link building and strategic insights to identify, target and serve search queries
Consider how your potential customers shop for the products they want online. In most cases, they begin by searching for the items they want on search engines like Google.
Full disclosure: This actually ISN’T the fastest way to generate leads, but it’s definitely the most cost effective and most sustainable in the long run, which means it’s crucial to get your SEO strategy up and running first – before you head after those quick wins.
Tip* Make sure that your product pages are optimised for product titles, colours and sizes.
2. Paid Social and Search Advertising
Get instant results with Paid Marketing, a rapid, high impact and laser-guided way to generate leads.
By using the search language of your prospects and the signifiers of their social interactions, your ads can be displayed across search engines and social media platforms to who you want, when you want and where you want.
Spend as little or as much on paid search and paid social media marketing as you want.
Tip* Use ad extensions to include extra links to specific pages on your website.
A core component of any digital marketing strategy aimed at generating leads quickly, paid search marketing (SEM) – in the form of Pay Per Click and social media ads – helps you:
- Turbocharge your lead generation
- Target prospects in any country, city or town you choose
- Choose how much you pay for each click-through
- Manage overall spend exactly
Beware though.
Unless your paid social and search advertising is carefully strategised and expertly managed, you WILL quickly burn through your budget.
That’s why it’s so important to use an agency that properly understands your business, your market, your objectives and very importantly, your prospects.
An agency with a clear and strategic approach as well as a creative input.
An agency with the video and digital marketing skills to craft compelling ads and high conversion lead generation landing pages.
The rewards are out there. Sometimes huge rewards. It’s why so many businesses now turn to paid social and search marketing to kick start campaigns and build quick critical mass.
3. Social Media
Creative use of your organic social media is also a great way to turn casual social media observers into leads.
There’s nothing that gets people discovering your brand quicker than a choice giveaway or cool competition, especially if they revolve around user generated content – something creative, something that makes them the star.
As much as people love to win free stuff and walk away with a prize, they also love to look good online.
Tip* Use social media to take the temperature of your customers on positive and negative impressions of your products and services.
For B2B, social media is the perfect platform to lay out your industry credentials with fresh, well written, well designed and genuinely useful insight. It’s also great to share insight from others that you’ve discovered and respect – other organisations’ content that adds weight to your positioning and profile.
Your social channel shouldn’t be a 24/7 broadcast about how great you are – it should position you as an authority, a curator, someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about.
4. Great Site Content & Content Marketing
Many buyers will spend time researching potential purchases – especially high ticket and B2B clients. According to Hubspot, 89% of B2B researchers begin their search online.
The better you are at enriching that research experience with targeted landing pages and engaging, high quality product information, the more likely your prospect will choose you.
Feed the hunger for meaningful information, and your prospects will make decisions in your favour.
Tip* Use voice of customer (VOC) research across forums, support tickets, reviews and other customer touch points to quickly reveal relevant problems and queries that prospects want solving.
Content marketing options are almost endless: opinion pieces, blog posts, buying guides, FAQs, case studies, use cases, testimonials, referrals.
All are individually effective at converting a passive visitor into a lead but when combined they paint a compelling picture of value, proof and persuasion.
And you can also use your content as lead magnets – an opportunity to inspire your readers and collect email addresses in exchange for premium content. An exchange that means you can keep feeding them valuable information and continually build trust.
Some quick and relatively simple ways to create lead magnets:
- Bundle your best performing blogs – ideally themed
- Make it a quiz or a test
- Offer an email course – a multi-part email ‘how to’
- Create checklists
- Share presentations
5. Email Drip Campaigns and Personalisation
Once you have your prospect’s email address, you‘ll want to warm them to the point of purchase.
An ongoing front of mind drip email relationship can prove extremely powerful.
New products, new offers, new value (a free shipping offer or coupon code for example) landing regularly in your prospect’s inbox.
TIP* Use cookies to both retarget ads and as a way of generating personalised content through your CRM.
Email drip campaigns are especially powerful if your CRM is able to record prospect interaction with both emails and your website. This allows you to build a lead score profile of each prospect. You can then add personalisation to serve unique user experiences, tailored content and offers specific to your individual prospect requirements.
Nurturing yields 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost according to research by Hubspot.
6. Time Based or Limited Availability Offers
They work every time. Why? Because people HATE feeling like they’re going to miss out. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a powerful motivator. You see this concept applied everywhere.
Ideal as a middle of the funnel boost, time based and limited availability offers are also great at nudging passive observers into actual engagement.
You need to think carefully about your offer and craft it with skill. Here are some tips:
- Make your offer appealing in its own right
- Be clear about expiry times and dates
- Load your call to action with benefit
- Be brief – don’t oversell
Tip* Be honest – if you say your offer finishes at midnight, make sure it finishes at midnight. If you say you only have 5 left, don’t magically pull another 25 from the hat.
7. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The beautiful thing about digital marketing is that every click, every visitor action on your website can be monitored and measured. And because you have total visibility on user behaviour you can quickly see the degree to which they are fulfilling your objectives. Or not.
Conversion rate optimization lets you test and measure every aspect of your ecommerce campaign.
You’ll soon discover that your success is largely reliant on the quality of your CRO.
Tip* A talented CRO team is worth its weight in gold.
From page layouts to Call to Action (CTA) buttons, product descriptions to font size, menu systems to cart displays – everything on your ecommerce site impacts on performance.
CRO is your way to properly understand how best to help your visitors stay on your site longer, enjoy a better experience, and convert more often and more profitably into customers.
Only 7 Guaranteed Ways To Generate New Leads?
Of course there are many other effective ways to generate new leads for your ecommerce website. Ways that can deliver even greater returns over even longer periods. Ways that will take more than a few paragraphs in a blog post to explain fully.
Talk to us today about how we can help you generate high quality new traffic, and more importantly, convert that extra footfall into more online business. Contact Us…
I'll keep this in mind. Thank you