Capturing leads is perhaps one of the most vital elements of
your web site and online business. Done properly it can increase sales, boost traffic and transform any site (including yours) into one of those fantastic Internet success stories we all read about. Yet, many business owners are unaware or ignore these crucial lead capture elements when designing their web sites.
‘Lead capture’ simply means capturing or obtaining the contact information (name and e-mail) of your site’s visitors. Obtain permission to contact these subscribers at a later date to inform them about your business updates, special events, or any other promotional material dealing with your online business. Marketers refer to this as building your ‘opt-in list’, visitors opt-in or give you permission to contact them.
Any business owner can build a loyal list of contacts, customers, or interested parties that will return again and again.
So here are Five Lead Capture Tools along with a detailed
explanation on how each one works:
1. Opt-in List – Perhaps, the most important lead capture tool that you can have on your site. It’s simply an e-mail form that will capture the name and e-mail of your visitors. Most savvy marketers and business owners put an e-mail capture form on each page of their site because visitors to your site don’t always enter through the front door i.e. your home page.
Make an irresistible offer for some great incentive, a free ebook or resource to entice visitors to ‘opt-in’ to your contact list. A pop-up with a list of free gifts works well, so does offering a sample of your ezine or newsletter.
Most web hosts will supply you with the code for these e-mail capture forms – just place this code on all your pages. Some webmasters use a more informal ‘guest book’ method but it’s basically the same thing, you capture e-mails and get permission to inform people of special events/updates relating to your site or product. See example of how you
can turn any site into a capture page with pop-up here:
2. Landing Pages. This tool is very similar to the technique described above, and is mainly used in affiliate marketing. Basically, a landing page is just that, a potential customer/visitor first lands on your landing page and is then directed to the affiliate page or product you’re
promoting. This gives them basic information about the product or service.
Why do this?
To capture your visitor’s contact information for further follow-up. It is commonly known that it takes up to six or seven e-mails before a potential customer buys a certain product. By using a landing page, you build a contact list for people interested in your product or promotion. You now have a targeted list of interested leads to promote your products.
These landing pages can be very simple, a few sentences and an e-mail capture form. Some marketers make these landing pages more elaborate offering special bonuses and offers if the potential buyer buys your featured product. See an example of this here:
3. Articles – Recently, there have been an explosion of article writing on the web. One of the reasons, besides bringing in targeted traffic to your site, articles are great lead capture tools. People read your article, and they become more interested in your site or product. They are more willing to give you their contact information – especially if you have
written a well informed helpful article that is able to solve their problem. This entices them to want to learn more.
Simply adding your site’s url or your subscribe e-mail address in the author’s resource box at the end of your article will help you capture leads. (See below for example) Then place these articles in online article directories like ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com – other webmasters will
pick up your articles and place them in their ezine and on their sites. An even faster way is to submit them to an article submitter to multiple directories that works on autopilot. One of the most effective and underrated lead capture tools you can use. Just try it!
4. RSS – Perhaps the least understood and the hardest to understand lead capture tool. RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and was first popularized by blogs because blogs use XML and RSS feeds to syndicate their content. Don’t come to us, we will deliver. People can view a site’s contents through RSS readers or an RSS equipped browser without actually going to that site!
How does it capture leads?
Many ways! Perhaps, the most simple, webmasters place an orange RSS icon on their web pages – anyone visiting can add this RSS feed to their RSS readers or aggregators. Then whenever this site is updated, the contents is syndicated or sent to those who have subscribed to the feeds. Another popular way, webmasters place ‘add to myYahoo’ or ‘add to MyMSN’ buttons on their sites and visitors can subscribe to
these RSS feeds. This method of subscribing is also known as
‘Live Bookmarks’.
Popular RSS site feeds are picked up by other webmasters and placed on their sites. Spreading these popular feeds all over the Internet, and drawing back interested visitors who are looking for more information. In essence, capturing leads for your site.
Google has put out XML powered Sitemaps and Google Blog Search. Just make sure your site, already has a blog and RSS feed(s) – you can put up a simple blog and RSS feed within minutes for free with blogger.com which is owned
by Google.
Hope you were paying attention as you read this and noticed how the author has placed examples in this article. These are actually lead capture tools the author and using to build his contact list. Not to mention, articles in itself is a great ‘lead capture tool’ – it works for me and it can work for you too. Just place it on your site along with your e-mail capture form.
And watch those leads come in for targeted lead generation.
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Any website you create should have the goal of attracting customers. So search engine optimization element is important so customers can find your website. Simple as that. Don’t just create business cards online. Create an interactive website that is user friendly and search engines can find it easily.