Last updated on August 3rd, 2023
This definitive guide shows you the strategies to boost your lead conversion rate, the best practices, and so much more.
Let’s face it, every company needs to do marketing.
Marketing brings in revenue, which is the blood that keeps your business alive.
Effective marketing fills the top of the funnel as much as possible with the right prospects, so that you can close as many qualified leads as possible.
This process is known as lead conversion or converting leads.
It may sound very simple but there are many nuances to this that 90% of business owners miss, especially nowadays…..
And it’s costing them thousands (if not more)!
So let’s make sure you aren’t losing money. And if you are, let’s get you making more.
- What is lead conversion and why is it so important
- The importance of an abundance of leads
- How to improve your lead conversion rate
- 7 Lead converting strategies
- Best practices for converting leads
- An easy way to convert more leads today
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What Is Lead Conversion And Why Is It So Important?
Simply put, lead conversion is turning your leads or interested prospects into customers that put money into your pocket.
In order for this to happen, your lead has to go through your AIDA lead funnel:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Action
You want the most amount of leads possible in your awareness stage so that you have more taking action.
The further down the funnel they go, the fewer leads there will be, it’s just the name of the game. But the further down the funnel leads are, the more likely they are to convert.
Remember that leads WON’T convert unless they see VALUE in what you’re offering (perceived value).
Essentially, what you’re offering is more valuable to them than the money in their pocket.
If your product or service doesn’t offer any value, your leads won’t convert.
Which means:
You won’t get sales, clients, or customers. This also means your revenue isn’t growing but decaying.
This makes the lead conversion very important — doesn’t it?
We’re going to break down how to increase your lead conversion rate, but first, we need to pinpoint if you’re even at that stage yet……
The Importance Of More Leads
At the end of the day it’s very simple, fill the top of your funnel as much as possible. High volume is very important before you even jump into trying to increase your lead conversion rate.
Especially if you’re selling a high-ticket product or you’re in the B2B space.
Here’s why:
If you don’t have many prospects entering your funnel and you’re trying to fix your conversion rate, you’re making two mistakes:
- You’re fixing a tool that doesn’t need fixing (your sales process or landing page) because you don’t have enough data (volume) to tell you whether or not it’s broken.
- You’re not spending time doing the activity that ACTUALLY moves the needle, i.e. prospecting, running ads, so those leads start flying in.
Having a high volume of prospects and seeing how you’re converting from there, is the actual starting point.
Once you fix the volume problem, now you can step into getting that conversion rate up. Which is our next discussion.
Your Lead Conversion Rate And How To Improve It
When it comes to improving lead conversion rate, it’s very important to calculate your conversion rate percentage and know your industry average conversion rate.
It would be unrealistic to compare your eCommerce conversion rate, let’s say it’s 5% and your industry average is 3%….
To your friend, Bob’s High-ticket sales conversion rate, which is 40%, and his industry average is 30%.
Calculating your conversion rate is easy-peasy:
Take the number of sales calls, website visits, etc., and divide it by the number of people that have converted.
Here’s an example:
If 1,500 people visited your landing page and 150 of them bought your product.
That’s a conversion rate of 10%.
From there, you’d compare it to your industry standard — which is a google search away my friend.
Think: “Is it below the average? Ok, how do I increase it?”
Or…
Think: “Is it above the average? Ok, how do I still increase it for more revenue?
Increasing lead conversion rate is all about using the right lead generation strategy (Which we will outline in this article) and positioning your services or product as the solution to the pain points of your prospects. (We’ll cover that too)
To position your product as the solution, the customer has to feel like you’re speaking DIRECTLY to them.
We can do this by understanding their buying journey.
Tip#1: Grasp the Client Journey
Look, I know you think your product/service is awesome. Maybe you even give Elon Musk’s Tesla vehicles a run for their money.
Buyers entering your funnel aren’t going to buy just because YOU say to or YOU think your product is sunshine and rainbows.
So what do you do?
Market research!
Doing this will help you understand how they buy, why they buy, their pain points, and even how they speak.
You can use:
- Yelp Reviews
- Forum posts about your niche
- Surveys
- Social Media
- Customer feedback
When you understand these things about your leads, the copy for your product speaks to them more.
When your product speaks to your customers more, there’s trust that you’re the authority, and your product is the right fit.
From there, your conversion starts going up like fireworks.
Tip#2: Make A Killer Offer
Let’s be real, if your offer is average, your audience is more likely to ignore it. They may even turn to your competitor if they have a slightly better offering.
Once you’ve grasped your client journey, you can take time to make a killer offer.
To convert more leads into customers, simply start by personalizing your offer to your audience. For that, you’ll need to really grasp your client’s interests, behaviors, and preferences.
For example, a popular beauty box company, Birchbox, offers its audience personalized products. The company leads its audience to fill out a questionnaire including questions about their appearance, problems with their skin and hair, and their favorite products. Based on the information retrieved from the questionnaire, Birchbox tailors beauty boxes individually for each customer.
Tip#3: Use Clear Calls To Action
Leads may get confused if you give them too many choices.
In fact, pages with only one, clear call-to-action get a 3% higher conversion rate compared to pages with five or more CTAs.
Tip#4: Include Customer Testimonials
A recent study published by BigCommerce shows that 92% of consumers read reviews before making a purchase.
What’s more, 88% of consumers trust testimonials as much as they would trust their friends or family’s recommendations.
Now, let’s dive into the pool of the 7 BEST lead conversion strategies.
The Top 7 Lead Conversion Strategies To Take Your Marketing From Zero To Hero
Once you’ve identified who your ideal customer is, it’s time to use the right tactics and strategies to convert them into a closed sale.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing has been around for a good minute, yet it’s still one of the best ways to boost your conversion rate.
If you’re an e-commerce store, make sure you’re following up with emails when customers abandon carts, visit your website and even buy.
B2B?
Use email for following up after a video call!
Don’t let those contacts on your CRM go to waste either. Send them emails that give value.
Let them know you’re here and they just might say to themselves, “Oh yeah, I spoke to them 2 months ago. Actually, I could really use some SEO right now.”
Did you know that for every $1 you spend on e-mail marketing, you can expect an average return of $44?
I don’t know about you, but I’d take that trade any day!
E-mail marketing is one of the most cost-effective and conversion-rich forms of digital marketing.
2. Build A Stellar Landing Page
You did the work. You set up the ad, video, or whatever awareness-building machine.
Now it’s super key to have a good converting landing page. Here’s what that consists of:
- A solid offer (it’s a no-brainer, relevant to the niche and scalable)
- Easy to take action on (Big CTA buttons, good load speed, clear and easy directions)
- Testimonials
- A solid guarantee
With this mini-system in place, your bigger system (your funnel) will start to convert more leads!
Another power of landing pages over a traditional website is that there are fewer distractions.
When customers see many different buttons and links, they’re more likely to get distracted and ditch what you wanted them to do.
Which was to buy or opt in to your lead magnet.
For that reason, The landing page is your best friend.
3. Text Message Marketing
Ahh, good old text message marketing. I’m sure you spend the bulk of your time on your phone.
And so do your customers.
If you could re-engage prospects via text, it can prove to be a powerful tool in your toolkit.
Whether it’s B2B consulting, e-com stores, webinars. Text message marketing is the real deal.
There are countless softwares that can help you do just this.
You should note that 64% of consumers think businesses should contact them via text messages more often (and 82% of Generation Z).
And:
75% of consumers want to receive texts with special offers.
Those are some key stats.
That’s why we show you how to efficiently run an SMS campaign in this guide.
4. Retargeting Ads
It’s proven that customers need to see an ad 7 times on average before converting or taking some kind of action.
This is known as the “Seven Times Factor” in marketing.
That means if you’re not retargeting your impressions, you’re leaving money on the table.
And someone else is collecting it.
Be sure to run retargeting ads for site visitors as well. Just install a Facebook pixel to your website and let the data build-up.
From then, you can set up a retargeting campaign and you’ll probably get even cheaper metrics.
Yes, I know Apple took measures to protect customer data recently. But that still doesn’t hurt the power of retargeting ads.
On top of that…
Zuckerberg might have something up his sleeve in the coming months.
5. Great Sales (B2B More-So) Skills
There’s an old adage that selling is one of the most important money-making activities you could do for your business.
You can tangibly measure your conversion rate, and it’s what drives revenue.
In the B2B space, having the ability to sell well is in direct proportion to your revenue increase.
As a business owner, this is a skill that goes a long way in the lead conversion process.
You can also hire solid closers if you prefer working in other areas of the business.
There are countless resources out there for closing deals so don’t let your “poor sales conversion rate” be an excuse.
6. Content Marketing
Last, and certainly not least is content marketing.
This is all about bringing FREE value to your audience. Content marketing helps position you as an authority.
These can be videos, articles, podcasts, eBooks, and even webinars.
On top of that:
Over time, your audience grows to know, like, and trust you.
With these 3 things in place, they will buy from you a lot quicker than cold traffic ever would.
Whether it’s YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
Take the time to bring value to your audience. It’s a great long-term approach for converting leads. Plus, it’s organic!
And if your branding is on point, these same people will likely buy again and even advocate your products or service.
From there, it’s a snowball effect, my friend.
7. Get Social
According to Hootsuite, there are 3.8 billion people using social media around the world. And no modern company should ignore this number.
Whether your business is mainly online or offline, you HAVE TO have a social media presence.
What’s best about social media is that it lets you create two-way conversations with your audience and engage them. Social media also enables you to get to know your audience better and convert more leads into customers.
Best Practices for the Lead Conversion Process To Never Forget — Ever
Let’s talk about the best practices to use along with these strategies.
Great Offers
Whichever method you’re using, be sure to give an offer that is compelling. It can have a good pricing discount, scarcity, or even a guarantee.
Saying: “50% OFF our ruby ring” is ok, but it’s kind of been said already.
How about 60% OFF our ruby ring for the next 7 customers. 3-day shipping or YOUR MONEY BACK!”
You get the gist.
Following Up
A big contributor to lackluster conversion rates is not following up.
The truth is people get busy, get tired, want to watch cat videos and so many other things.
So the last thing on their mind is replying to your consulting pitch in their LinkedIn inbox.
That’s why having a sequence of follow-up messages is key. They get notified about you again and re-read what you said prior.
And here’s another point that no marketer is going to tell you:
You’re likely catching this prospect in a different emotional state when you follow up.
Maybe they were angry that someone cut them off in traffic when they read your first message.
But in your second message, they happen to just win the lottery, so they’re “glad you reached out.”
The follow-up is king.
Speed And Automation
When it comes to converting leads to customers or clients, speed is key.
Our attention spans are abysmal nowadays, so automation is what you need to keep your lead conversion rate on point.
Doing text message marketing? Automate it.
Email? Automate it.
This topic alone is so important that we dedicated an entire article all about marketing automation.
Even things like your website load times can affect this. Do your best to make the buying journey quick and easy for your leads.
They will go from lead to conversion.
Just as you wanted them to.
Good Copywriting & Messaging
All of these great strategies become REALLY great when your copywriting is solid and convincing.
Writing good copy is all about understanding your market and writing compelling words that keep them reading more.
It’s a dance of emotional selling and logical points in written form.
Learning to write a good copy isn’t difficult….
It just takes practice.
Also, there are plenty of amazing copywriters you can hire for your business that will help all your lead conversion strategies get even better!
The Bottom Line When It Comes To Increasing Your Lead Conversion Rate
Boosting your lead conversion rate is all about understanding your numbers.
Are there enough people in your funnel?
Once the answer to that is “yes”, you can calculate your conversion rate and compare it to your industry average.
Implement a couple of the strategies I’ve listed and give them time to see what works for your business.
Don’t fall into the infamous “Shiny object syndrome.”
This is when people switch up their tactics every 3 days hoping something sticks.
Give the strategies time and you’ll get better and better.
Remember to also track EVERYTHING.
You don’t know if something works or is broken unless you’re tracking the tangible results of it. This will help you avoid emotional decision-making in your business.
That’s why we’ve created the ultimate marketing and sales platform for your business to easily track your key metrics.
Start Converting More Leads With VipeCloud Today
Vipecloud’s marketing suite and sales CRM is your best bet in really increasing your lead conversion rate and adding simplicity to your business all at once.
No need for 20 different passwords to 20 different software.
Marketers, agency owners, sales reps, and teams all over the world are using VipeCloud to grow their businesses right now.
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