3 Keys to Improving Your Lead Conversion Rate

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Conversions are the ultimate goal to any business — it’s where the money comes from, after all. What’s the point in spending your marketing dollars if they don’t convert?

With the right strategy in place, you’ll be generating quality leads in no time. Follow these tips to increase your lead conversion rate and set your business up for success.

1. Finesse Your Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is a helpful way to visualize your customer’s journey, from lead to prospect to customer:

• Leads enter your brand’s sales funnel at the Awareness stage. They learn what you have to offer.
• From there, they develop Interest in your product and become Prospects. They might follow you on social media, sign up for your newsletter, or read one of your case studies.
• Finally, they Decide to convert into a sale and become a Customer.

Just as a funnel narrows, you lose leads at each step of the funnel. People drop out of a sales funnel for a variety of reasons: they may decide they no longer need your services, they found a more compelling competitor, or they’re simply not ready to convert.

To determine whether your marketing funnel is a successful one, you’ll need to make a few calculations. Start with predicting the number of leads who will eventually convert into customers. From there, you can assess whether your conversion rate is over- or under-performing, and adjust accordingly.

Typically, most brands determine their conversion rates are underperforming. There are always more prospects to reach! Find out where you’re losing potential customers. At what stages are people leaking out of the funnel? Then develop a strategy to keep them in-funnel and massage them along the way.

• Your conversion rate can only perform as well as the amount of leads you enter into the funnel. If you’re not attracting enough customers at the top, build out your awareness marketing through paid advertising on Google and Facebook, blog content, and press.
• If you’re losing people after they enter the funnel, spin up channels to convince them to stay in, such as email nurturing campaigns or remarketing ads.

2. Establish Credibility

Nothing scares a customer off more than a business they can’t trust.

Making customers trust your brand is essential for a high lead conversion rate. To build trust and establish credibility, adopt the following strategies:

• Leverage social proof. Has your product improved the lives of your customers? Of course it has. Connect with happy customers to develop customer testimonials and case studies to feature on your website. You might turn one of these into a brand video to humanize your brand even further.
• Work with influencers. Deserving of their own category of powerful social proof, influencers are prominent individuals whom your customers look up to and admire. Customers are increasingly losing trust in brands, but they trust the opinions of influencers. Partner with them to inspire confidence in your product or service.
• Add trust signals to your website. Trust signals include customer reviews and star ratings, verified payment badges, industry awards, high-profile press mentions, and more. Work these into your landing pages, ads, and case studies to persuade leads to submit their information.

Build your business credibility, and the sales will follow.

3. A/B Test Your Landing Pages

Sick of leaking leads? Test your landing pages. Experimentation is the best way to reduce risk and discover your missed conversion opportunities.

A/B testing is a conversion rate optimization strategy where you have two versions of something (e.g. a landing page, email, or advertisement) which are exactly the same, save for one element. Perhaps the CTA text is different, or the header image at the top of the page. You can even get as granular as testing the color of your CTA buttons.

Set up an A/B test for each of your landing pages. See which version encourages more people to take action. The one that converts more customers is your winner. From there, you can move on to testing other variables to further boost the conversion rate.  

To speed up your testing efforts, start by implementing these quick wins on your landing pages:

• Include social proof, such as a review from a satisfied customer or your 5-star rating on Yelp.
• Use a modern design and a mobile-friendly format that establishes you as a professional, forward-thinking brand.
• Ease friction by making it as easy as possible for customers to convert. Minimize the number of fields in your lead form and place it high up on the page.

Don’t limit your tests to landing pages. Test all of your digital marketing strategies, including your paid search campaigns, email marketing, and CTAs throughout your website.

Ready to Improve Your Conversion Rate?

Improving your conversion rates starts with building trust. Your goal is to erase any concerns a potential customer may have with your business. Inspire confidence, and consumers can’t help but take action.

If you are struggling to improve your conversion rates, contact us! We can perform an initial audit – just sign up here.