7 Tips for Generating Online Leads Part 1

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Generating a lead may be the sole purpose of your site or a small piece of your marketing mix. Either way, it is always about answering a prospect's unspoken questions and communicating the value of doing business with you.

Folks do their research online precisely so they don't have to interact with someone - think of your visitors as the most introverted people you ever knew. They come to you with curiosity, expecting you to understand what they need and to lead them along a comfortable path of enlightenment and delight. Every click represents an unspoken question they hope you will answer.

Can the design, architecture and content of your Web site convince visitors you're valuable to them, so they give something of value to you in return by becoming leads? Here are seven suggestions to get you started.

The Persuasive Process

It doesn't matter whether your business is B2B or B2C, whether your sales process is simple or complex - these may influence the details of your tactics, but they won't change the fact that every ebusiness is about persuasion. Framing a persuasive process always begins with answering the same basic questions:

Who do you need to persuade?

What are you persuading them to do?

When the goal is generating leads, you usually want to persuade your visitors to fill in a contact form, download a white paper or demo, register, opt in to a newsletter or e-mail list, or forward your content to a friend.

Once you have created the personas, constructions that represent your "who"s, and identified the action you want them to take, you then turn to designing an online experience that incorporates your answer to the third basic question: How can you most effectively persuade them?

1. The Message Must be Relevant

Identify what really matters to your visitors. What motivates them to seek you out? What problems do you solve for them? What friction points do you reduce for them? Identify the benefits and value your products or services confer. Find your visitors' buttons, then push them by serving up a nice, juicy, relevant message.

2. No Jargon

Unless you're marketing to a select audience that absolutely requires you to communicate credibility via insiderspeak (jargon), stay away from the stuff. Jargon convinces folks you aren't really interested in talking to them, so they're far less likely to pay attention. If you must include specific terminology, give it a low profile. Those wanting to know if you can really talk the talk will look to find it (and yes, you should have a place for this on your site).

If you're not sure how folks talk or think about your products or services, conduct online consumer research and speak with the people who interact directly with your customers. Using your customers' language on your Web site not only helps them feel as though you are speaking to them, it also boosts your chances with the search engines.

3. Don't "We" All Over Yourself

The first rule of online success is it's never about you. Brilliant as you and your business may be, focus on visitors. Let them know you understand their needs and what matters to them. Put them center stage. Want a thumbnail view of how customer-focused the language on your site is? Try the Customer Focus Calculator on our Web site. It identifies how often your copy brags about things like, "We are the best, we are the original."

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