Marketing Digest

Boost Your Website’s Lead Generation with Effective Calls-to-Action

Marketing Digest Writing Team

Turn Your Website into a Powerful Lead Generation Tool by Employing Effective CTAs

It takes time and effort to drive traffic to your website. Once they’ve arrived, you’ll want your site visitors to do more than just scroll—you’ll want them to perform a particular action. To kick start your website lead generation campaign, you’ll need to add effective calls-to-action (CTAs) on your landing pages.

CTAs should directly communicate to visitors what action(s) you’d like them to take upon arriving at your landing page. Do you want visitors to send you an email, click on a link to take advantage of a special offer, call your office, or subscribe to your newsletter? To fulfill these objectives, you’ll need to plan and execute the proper CTAs.

The Majority of B2B Websites Lack CTAs

If you value CTAs so much that you’ve added them to your home pages, then give yourself a pat on the back. You’re way ahead of approximately 70% of B2B businesses that don’t have a clear call-to-action on their home pages.

Upon reviewing 200 small business websites, Online Marketing Coach (@mikeonlinecoach) published its Small Business B2B Call to Action Study in 2013. The study found that 70% of the respondents don’t display clear CTAs for conversion opportunities on their sites, thus failing to acquire leads and convert prospects. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: Online Marketing Coach’s “Small Business B2B Call to Action Study”)

Why You Need CTAs on Your Website

After investing time and money in building your website (and using social media and other promotional tools to drive traffic to your site), you’ll want to establish a strong connection with your site visitors and convert them into leads.

Today, there are tons of websites that may offer the same kind of services as yours. Will your visitors ever find you again when they look you up on search engines? What measures have you employed in order to stay in contact with them?

If you still don’t have strong CTAs on your website, you need to implement one or you’ll eventually get left behind by your business competitors. Get started with some of these call-to-action examples from marketing automation software provider Marketo (@Marketo):

While 87% of B2B small business websites don’t do anything to make their “Contact Us” button stand out, Marketo is doubling its effort to make its “Contact Us” button stand out.

“If a lead wants to contact your company directly, make it as easy as possible,” Marketo noted in their Website and SEO for Lead Generation report. “There is nothing more frustrating than failing to find a company’s contact information or contact form.”

Apart from displaying the contact number in the header, the company also embeds a “Contact Sales” form for inquiries about its products, and a standard “Contact Us” button on every page of the site to ensure that interested visitors can reach representatives easily. [See Figure 2]

Figure 2 (Source: Marketo’s “Website and SEO for Lead Generation”)

Companies with existing content marketing strategies that go along with their lead generation efforts may make the most out of their content by enabling visitors to download assets. Offering asset downloads to leads benefits both parties, as companies may also ask for lead information in exchange for content. Content used as assets may include research reports and studies, guidelines, etc.

Another way to drive leads to your site is by using a chat service. “Like a ‘Contact Us’ CTA, chats are great for leads who have a question, but don’t want to pick up the phone,” Marketo explained. “Chat services (like LivePerson) enable a lead to enter his or her contact information and chat with an educated representative.” [See Figure 3]

Figure 3 (Source: Marketo’s “Website and SEO for Lead Generation”)

Why does it work? A chat service is one of the best options you have when your goal is to form initial bond with leads, as this can be viewed as a bit more personal than calling your company or sending you an email. Also, this assures an immediate response from your company representative, thus speeding up the information-gathering process done by leads.

Providing leads with content that can help them enhance their own services is also one way to gain lead information. Such value-add can be in the form of a benchmark, grader, or survey tool that prompts visitors to input their lead information afterwards. See Figure 4 below for Marketo’s sample survey.

Figure 4 (Source: Marketo’s “Website and SEO for Lead Generation”)

Offering a subscription to your newsletter, blog, or resource center in exchange for your visitors’ email address is also one of the most effective CTAs you can use to generate leads.

You can also host a contest on your homepage in order to drive leads to your site and “entice” them to share information.

We at Marketing Digest (@mktgdigest) understand the importance of adding effective CTAs on our site. Some of the CTAs we employ are our “Contact Us” button, our newsletter subscription offer, and the opportunity to become an author at Marketing Digest through the Marketing Digest Authorship program, among others.

We hope these tips will help you determine which types of CTAs your website needs. If you have other tips and examples concerning CTAs that may be of help to other businesses, let us know in the Comments.

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