When it comes to website design, creating a page that is visually appealing, aligned with your brand, and optimized for lead generation is no easy task. After all, there are a lot of mistakes you can make in the process.
That’s why — for almost two years now — my team here at IMPACT Branding & Design has been hosting a monthly live website critique called Website Throwdown.
For many businesses, the key to making sales is to first generate leads.
Leads are valuable because they’re the people who have indicated organic interest in your content and your business by giving you their information in some way, whether it’s by filling out a form to download an ebook, completing an online survey, or something else.
From blog posts to landing pages to job postings, your website may be made up of tens, hundreds; even thousands of individual pages.
But regardless how many pages you have on your site, you’ll find that the vast majority of your traffic comes in to a few, very specific pages — often your homepage, your “About” page, your “Contact Us” page, and maybe one or two of your most popular blog posts.
As inbound marketers, we care about creating lovable experiences for our website visitors — but we also want to generate as many leads as we can for our sales teams. Most of the time we can do both without any problem. But when it comes to pop-up forms, conflict does emerge.
You’ve done it. You provided valuable content to your readers and they’ve converted into leads. Now, it’s time to nurture these leads into opportunities for your sales team.
Trouble is, cutting through the inbox clutter isn’t an easy feat. And many of these folks just aren’t ready to buy yet.
If you’re new to the world of email marketing, you might be unfamiliar with the importance of segmenting your email lists. But it’s a big deal: According to DMA, 77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns in 2015.
The best part about email segmentation? There are a ton of creative ways you can segment your email list to run innovative and effective campaigns that leads and customers will enjoy, from geography and industry to content format and topic.
Most marketers have one goal in common: increasing the amount of traffic to their website. There are various tactics for accomplishing this goal including search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), blogging, social media marketing, etc. The problem is that SEO takes times, PPC is expensive, Google is becoming oversaturated with blog content, and social media has always had a problem proving ROI.
Not all keywords are created equal. Some, like “marketing,” draw in huge crowds of searchers each month. Others, like “marketing tips for small shoe store companies,” might squeak out a couple hits.
Most marketers know by now that Facebook is an important business tool for companies of every size and industry. With a daily active user base of 1.13 billion (1.03 billion on mobile alone), you know it can help you reach new audiences you may not have been able to reach otherwise. It can also help you get found more easily in search, create a community around your business, promote the content you create, and develop a strong brand identity.
![5 Email Campaign Ideas to Help Increase Conversion Rates [Infographic]](http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/53/email-drip-campaign-ideas.jpeg)
As businesses adopt inbound marketing and generate more and more leads, the need for an effective lead nurturing strategy becomes clear very quickly.
After all, 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy at the time of first conversion, so lead nurturing — especially through email — is the smartest way for marketers like us to reach them.
When it comes to establishing trust, it doesn’t matter how compelling your calls-to-action are, how engaging your content is, or how quickly your pages load on mobile screens. If visitors to your site have any doubts about how trustworthy you are, they’ll bounce right out and never come back.
![6 Conversion Experts Answer 20 of Your Most Important CRO Questions [Live Google Hangout]](http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/53/CRO_Hangout_blog_header.png)
Whether you’re new to marketing or decades into your career, conversion rate optimization is an ever-changing topic and necessary asset in your marketing playbook.
Looking to learn more about your audience? Want to manipulate your existing resources to improve their performance? How about growing your business by improving lead flow? Wouldn’t that be nice?
It’s the beginning of the quarter. You just set your team’s new lead goals, and you’re starting to think about what steps you’re going to have to take to achieve them.
While whipping up some compelling content and placing lead generation forms in all the right places sounds like a feasible strategy, rest assure that there’s more to be considered.
Want to earn money for your business? Want to generate leads for your sales team? Want to accelerate sales for your online store? Want to do anything for your business that actually matters?
Well then you need calls-to-action. Without them, we wouldn’t be converting our website visitors or social media fans into actual leads for our sales team.
