You’ve embraced the grind, putting in the time and effort to get your site to the point where it’s generating organic traffic. This feat alone is reason to be enthused, but the work has really only just begun. After all, traffic is simply a means to an end. What good are organic visitors if you can’t get any leads?
For an online business, the key often involves prompting your website visitor to take some sort of next step: joining a subscriber list, filling out a contact form, creating an account, or maybe even making a purchase. These goals can all be important, but it can be difficult to convince your visitor to take the next step(s).
There’s a reason why sites struggle to turn visitors into customers (i.e., convert), so we’re here to help. Here are 5 suggestions for converting your organic visitors into leads.
The Importance of Organic Traffic for Conversions
Websites that discuss content marketing often talk about the process behind getting leads. This process is easier when someone is already interested in your business.
As Hubspot explains, “When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.”
It’s much easier to push someone forward in the process if they’re already interested in what you have to offer. Organic traffic, then, is a great place to start.
How do we generate organic traffic, though? Well, content marketing is a good first step.
We can generate organic traffic when we’ve made a habit of putting out consistently high-level content that appeals to consumers.
The consistent quality approach isn’t an overnight fix, but it does have the merit of being able to attract online attention in the long term.
From this starting point, we’re reasonably well-positioned to get leads. Some even suggest that content marketing is among the most effective ways of generating leads.
Dissecting the Conversion Process
Ask yourself: How are you converting a potential customer?
Conversion optimization is one of the keys to increasing revenue! Look at your website traffic in relation to the number of customers. If there are more visitors than purchasers, ask yourself why the website visitor isn’t purchasing your product?
You can increase your conversion rate by optimizing your sales funnel. How are you funneling your organic traffic to your product? Are there links in your blogs to your products? These are all things to consider when creating content, designing a site, and searching for more leads.
A similar principle applies when we consider leads.
It’s also important to consider how visitors are getting to your site. Have you optimized your SEO strategy to create organic traffic? What are your digital marketing efforts? Are you using a Facebook ad?
Essentially, how are your marketing efforts making your site more accessible? The more accessible your site is, the more site traffic you will have.
5 Tips for Converting Organic Visitors Into Leads
While it’s wise to manage expectations, it’s also wise to avoid contenting ourselves with average. We look at the numbers and understand the reality. We then proceed by doing our utmost to rise above the pack.
Here are five strategies to consider as you try to improve your conversions.
#1) Simplify the Conversion Process
A key part of anyone’s marketing strategy ought to involve keeping things simple for the customer. We should all be following a fairly straightforward formula:
Step 1: Determine what our customers want
Step 2: Ensure it’s easy for our customers to achieve this
If you are providing a solution for your consumers, removing the roadblocks could help them acquire that solution. Perhaps this means that your business accepts PayPal for your online store, or maybe it involves accepting different credit cards.
If you want someone to fill out a form, make sure it’s easy to access the form. The onus is on the business owner to ensure the clientele can access the necessary material in a simple manner. Maybe this means having a widget in place for your opt-in form, or perhaps a snappy landing page with a clear CTA.
Regardless, the underlying principle remains the same: it’s your responsibility as a business owner to make it easy for the consumer.
Whatever the solution is, it behooves a business owner to make the end goal–getting paid by customers–easy to accomplish.
#2) Provide Value Propositions for Your Audience
How do we motivate people to take action? Well, we start by offering simplicity, thus making it convenient for them to inch toward becoming a customer. From there, we work toward offering them something valuable.
If someone is on your site, there’s a decent chance it’s because they’re interested in your product. That’s a good place to start. After that, part of the goal really needs to involve offering something valuable to your site visitor.
Want them to join a mailing list? Be sure to talk up the benefits of your emails. Maybe it’s the sole location for discount codes. Perhaps the emails are where you offer great advice or tips about your industry. Whatever you decide, ensure your customer finds it valuable.
In essence, you’re trying to find a way to motivate your reader, which is easier said than done. Giving them something they want is a good approach.
#3) Connect With Your Audience Through Relatability
It’s frustrating to read a blog post that is weighed down by dull, dense, and discombobulated information. Ensure your website does the opposite.
In fact, your blog posts must be relatable for your target audience.
Neil Patel explains: “When you resonate with your audience you sell more products, build your email list more quickly, and connect with them on a deeper level.”
Cory Davis of okwrite says, “The key to successful lead generation stems from having a deep understanding of your audience’s needs and wants as well as providing an avenue for your audience to engage in your brand.”
If your website caters to amateur gardeners, don’t offer Ph.D.-level prose about flora. The last thing you want to do is alienate your readership. Nobody likes to feel dumb. Instead, offer clear, accessible writing that partners educational value and entertainment.
Consider creating a buyer persona, outlining the characteristics of your target audience. Identifying your loyal customers and market to their needs will not only result in organic lead generation, but quality leads as well. Your data confirms that this target audience has purchased from you before, so they are likely to purchase from you again, but only if you market to them.
If readers keep going to your blog for their gardening questions, queries, and curiosities, you’ll be in a nice position to get those leads.
#4) Blog Consistently
At the very beginning of this post, I noted that getting organic traffic is a grind. Very few people get organic visitors without having first put in a lot of time and effort. If you’re getting traffic, then it’s probably safe to assume you understand that consistency is one of the most important components of successfully ranking for search engines.
That said, now isn’t the time to merely rest on your laurels.
Just as you need to consistently put forth high-end content to start ranking in Google, so too do you need to consistently work toward lead generation to be successful.
Getting leads can involve hard work. However, some of the greatest rewards in life come after we’ve put in a considerable amount of time and effort. Don’t give up on your landing page because you didn’t get amazing results over the first weekend. Don’t move on from your opt-in form simply because the first few days were lackluster.
Stay consistent and stick to the strategies that have proven to be successful.
#5) Include a Call to Action (CTA)
You may have seen sprinkled throughout this blog that whatever you use to connect with your audience, you also need to do it consistently, relatable, and with value.
One of these things is a call to action or CTA.
If you don’t know what a CTA is, know that you’ve interacted with one before. CTAs are those pop-ups that you get when you’re about to leave a website, or it’s the prompt to join a mailing list.
CTAs might seem overly salesy, but they are effective. Without a CTA, your audience has no idea why they are visiting your page other than reading a blog. CTAs like email sign-ups, pop-up blurbs, and calls for joining a group or event will provide visitors with actionable items.
Through the CTAs, you can provide valuable add-ons, relatable content and make the sign-up process simple.
Boost Your Organic Traffic and High-Quality Conversions
According to a study cited in Forbes, “93% of B2B companies say that content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing tactics.” The same Forbes article argues that “the more traffic you receive…the more leads for your business!”
For the most part, this is true; more traffic will usually involve more leads.
However, securing a lead isn’t automatic.
okwrite has addressed this topic before, noting that the majority of visitors won’t always take the next step to become a lead or conversion: “If traffic is coming through strictly organically, then you might see conversion rates around 16%. Other campaigns like social media will convert 9.21% (average across all industries) of the traffic through Facebook ads.”
Luckily, content marketing can help secure higher conversion rates and more qualified leads.
Garner Highly Qualified Leads With Content Marketing
If you want more leads, getting organic traffic is a tremendous place to start.
For this reason, working with a professional team of content marketers–one that relies on a data-driven, strategic approach–is a good way to go.
At the end of the day, the priority rests in ensuring that you continue to accomplish your business goals.
Having a great content marketing team to bring in organic traffic and secure some leads through Calls to Actions (CTAs) is one of the most effective ways for you to keep seeing business growth.
