(This is a follow up to our weekly #MagnetMarketers session with Jessika Phillips and Mike Gingerich.)
One of the most crucial parts of becoming a marketing magnet is lead capturing. The lead capture is one of the most missed areas on websites today, even though it’s one of the most important pieces! Lead capture helps you move a user from an unknown entity to a known visitor, usually by capturing their email. This helps you get in touch them in the future, and have correspondence with them.
It's not as simple as asking for email addresses anymore. You need to give something of value to your users, something they can trade their email for. Some people may be afraid to give away their “intellectual property.” But in the digital age, this is how you show that you are valuable and know what you’re talking about. This will separate you from the others and it makes you different because they trust your expertise.
So when building an inbound marketing approach the goal is to earn attention and sales by offering value. You can begin building relationships through offering value-added content via a landing page.
When developing a landing page you'll first consider who you're targeting. Who are your buyer personas? This is a semi-fictional representation of who your ideal client is. Most businesses have, at the minimum, at least three personas.
Generally, the three steps of lead capturing include:
- Step 1- The value offer
- Step 2- The trust builder
- Step 3- The hand raise
Each of these steps is placed on a landing page with a form prospects can fill out.
(Download the step-by-step guide to creating a landing page by clicking here)
You're going to begin by creating a value offer, something your willing to give out. This is exactly what you're thinking: something valuable your prospects would want to trade their email for. What would your buyer personas want?
When you know what you are giving away, you'll want to think of the questions you need answered, or what will you're going to ask for in exchange for your content.
Think simple. The value offer is the time to collect basic information. Start with at least name and email, one more question if you really need it. With this, you can begin that email communication. Plus, people don’t want to fill out lengthy forms. They don’t know you that well yet! The goal is to get them to trust you, and that’s why it’s so important to start with value-added pieces.
You need to come up with a clear concise headline for your landing page. What will clearly state what you’re offering them? They need to be able to quickly scan the page and understand what they will be getting for their name and email address. Write a couple (small) paragraphs, have three to five bullet points and add an image or a video.
Once they have filled out and submitted their form, you’ll need to have a thank you page, with directions to where they can find their download, video, or whatever gift you have decided to give them.
Consider also using this page to continue moving them down your funnel.
How can you continue to build and nurture relationships? What can you create that is educational and helps them really begin to trust you as a leader in your industry? Sweeten the deal, and give them something that is a little bit better (for example a webinar), while thinking about the next questions you want answered. You’re progressively profiling them.
The hand raise is the last piece that gets you to your goal. This could be permission to contact or a consultation, really whatever makes sense for your business.
These three steps help make sure you don’t go too far too fast, and accidentally get labeled as a spammer. With each step they are learning more about your product or business and really building that relationship, so they trust you as the expert.
Now that you know about lead capture, the next very important step is your workflow. This is how you follow up with them and continue to nurture them through drip marketing. For example, they've signed up, and you want to send to them a series of four emails over the course of seven days. Or you could send them an email with two links and depending on which link they click, they will be into a different group which is dependent on their interests.
This can be as simple or as specific as you need. You can also use workflow to filter your different personas, to funnel them into the right place, so you can strategically nurture them with the right content.
For this to work there has to be consistency! There are a lot of helpful online tools to help you create workflows and keep up that constant contact.
Check out these resources for lead capture and workflow:
Want to watch the whole conversation and learn even more about what how to generate great lead capture? Check it out by replaying this session here. Join us next Tuesday at 4 p.m. for #MagnetMarketers
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