From the moment a startup is born, it looks to the future of taking those first baby steps into a successful and scalable business that will evolve and grow. At the outset, you need to ensure that those baby steps have a strong foundation. If you’re building a real company with real customers and revenue, you need not only to invest in product development but also build a strong marketing foundation that will be ready to capture the potential leads which will later convert into customers.
First things first. What is the best way to start generating new leads and how do we convert those leads into customers?
One significant way to employ lead generation is through the use of content marketing. Content marketing focuses on building relevant and engaging content that will essentially convert your audience to sales leads for your startup. It’s not only a powerful strategy to sell your brand, but it also builds brand awareness and improves your search engine ranking, which translates into increased traffic to your website and other digital assets. Through content marketing, you build trust with prospects over time by establishing yourself as an authority in your field.
Beyond having a talented and proficient marketing team obsessed with creating compelling content, you should always ensure that your marketing team uses helpful tools and quick wins to enhance lead conversion across all fronts. You need to ensure that your marketing team knows how to improve conversion rates.
5 Quick Wins for Improving Conversion Rate for Startups
1. Add Pop-Up Forms to your website
Pop-up forms are a cost-effective way to bring in anonymous website visitors into your conversion funnel, with a potential to turn these visitors into tangible business leads. They offer a targeted, welcoming way to collect information from your website’s visitors. A well-executed popup form can help you increase your email subscribers significantly. It is highly recommended to add a dedicated pop-up form to the top 4 pages people visit on your website: homepage, blog, pricing, and product page. Essentially, we want that “subscribe” button to be clicked on by every potential customer.
2. Link your CTA (Call To Action button) to a Dedicated Landing Page
If you’ve ever clicked on a digital advertisement to find an online business, chances are that you have ended up on a landing page. A landing page is usually a standalone web page with a specific purpose; such as selling a product or collecting information from a consumer.
One of the key elements to a landing page is the CTA (Call To Action button). It’s what will turn a visitor into a lead. Keep it simple and clear to get more conversions. The key to conversion is having a clear, concise CTA. The more options you give visitors, the more likely they will get distracted and leave your ad without further engaging with your marketing asset.
In digital advertisements, don’t use CTAs to drive people to your homepage. You should always link a CTA to a dedicated landing page, as this is the first interaction your visitor will have with your brand.
3. Create an Efficient PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Strategy
Startups need to consider creating dedicated ads for their prospects, which is regarded as one of the most valuable tools in digital marketing, combined with conversion rate optimization strategies. A PPC campaign manager will create paid ads and promote assets on various platforms for several potential customer personas. These personas represent how visitors flow through your website and the steps they take from becoming a stranger to evolving into a customer. A specific content asset should be created for each persona, which they will engage with on various occasions via social media platforms and websites. The only way to know if your ads are working is to measure and keep track of key metrics. By doing this, you will better understand how well your audience is responding to your ads and what requires tweaking.
4. Create an Effective Email Nurture Strategy
Many founders and entrepreneurs have no idea about the impact of email marketing on their business. In fact, it’s often overlooked or even ignored. But if you have a growth-based mindset, you’ll want to know about different types of email campaigns that startups can utilize, as well as tips to increase click-throughs and conversions via various email sequences. The secret sauce of the “Saas” free version trial is excellent for capturing leads, however, once you have leads or free trial members, you’ll need to convert them into paying customers. How do you achieve it? Through automated email campaigns\ workflows. Nurture campaigns are automated emails that adapt and change based on how subscribers engage with emails. They’re considered to be the most effective way to move subscribers from one stage to another.
5. Invest in Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a process by which leads are assigned a numerical value to predict their likelihood of becoming customers. Leads are assigned a certain number of points based on their behavior and the frequency of that behavior. The higher the score, the more likely it is that the prospect will purchase your product.
For example, if a lead visits your website more or participates in an online chat, they would be rewarded with more points. A lead with 100 points would be considered more valuable than a lead with 50 points.
By looking at what characteristics or behaviors qualify leads, you can better tailor your content to serve your target audience.
The big question for most startups is – who should be monitoring and leading all this? The answer is- a data-driven, capable marketing executive who will keep up with the ever-changing trends to stay relevant. When it comes to developing the marketing team, one size definitely does not fit all. Hiring a professional marketing staff may be a bit of overkill as there are many great resources out there, such as dedicated B2B marketing agencies, that can help you harness the full potential of marketing solutions.
