No matter what purpose your website serves, there’s one thing you can’t do away with: getting leads. More leads mean more traffic, and that means a more opportunities of converting traffic to revenue. Not everyone in your target market will automatically become a lead, though. You need to position yourself in the market so that they will be interested in what you offer.

Lead generation varies for each company, and many businesses use a combination of the following online lead generation ideas:

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a while, but it remains one of the tried and tested ways of generating online leads. The market research firm Relevancy Group says that there’s more value to email marketing now compared to a few years ago. Email marketing works because opening and reading emails is one of the things that most consumers do with their smartphones these days. Whether your target market are young professionals or those in their forties or fifties, they most likely communicate through email.

The catch here is creating an email marketing strategy that actually gets people to open your email. One of the ways to get attention is by creating a strong, enticing subject line, like the ones below:

In the content itself, highlight promotions, include live links, and make sure your copy is typo-free. The meat of the conversation should always come first — with the short attention span of users, you can’t afford to beat around the bush and distract them from the important information you’re conveying.

Social Media Marketing

Who is not on social media? Parents even create accounts for their babies. No, those newborns do not have the means to buy your products sponsored on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, but their parents do. If they find your Facebook page compelling and interesting, they’re likely to do business with you.

Social media accounts are easy enough to create, and it’s usually free to set them up. What social media marketers need to focus on is managing these accounts. There’s a fine line between using Twitter effectively and spamming your followers with nonsensical posts filled with hashtags.

Neil Patel reminds us the importance of having organic and real interaction with your followers/subscribers. Don’t let fake followers affect your brand.

Search Engine Optimization

At the core of it all, search engine optimization remains an effective way to generate online leads. After all, when consumers want to find something, they usually use search engines like Google to find it.

Things have changed for businesses wanting to get more clicks, however. With Google’s Answer Boxes, it’s now more important to optimize your content to answer a searcher’s query to appear on that coveted box.

As you work on improving those organic clicks, improve the different elements of your site to optimize it for both desktop and mobile user experience. That means working on a better loading time, using high-quality graphics that adapt to the device used by your visitors, and using Meta and alt tags appropriately. Make sure each page in your website targets the right keyword and user intent, and that each internal page is accessible through a series of links.

It’s not enough that you have a page for each of your products or services, though. Make sure your CTAs are easy to notice and lead visitors to a dedicated landing page. Nothing is more frustrating for a site visitor than wanting to buy something but not being able to find a way to do so. That’s a signal for them not to come back, and that’s lost profit for your business.

Here are some reminders from Kissmetrics:

1. Include your company’s contact number: Providing a contact number on your website gives visitors assurance that your business is legitimate.
2. Include a contact form: The less information you ask, the more likely they’ll submit an answer through your contact form.
3. Add photos and testimonials: Show them what customers think of your business
4. Speak to users through videos: Videos are a quick way of feeding information to your visitors.
5. Use power words: Use words that will prompt visitors into taking action.
6. Create a unique website: Don’t just make a website for the sake of having one; create a website that will make visitors want to visit again.
7. Use whitespace wisely: Give breathing room for your content, photos, CTA buttons, and other website elements
8. Test your site repeatedly: Test your website to know which works to your visitors’ behaviors.

Content Marketing

As online searchers prioritize quality over everything else, no lead generation strategy will work without content marketing. This means providing quality content instead of keyword stuffed articles. You can discuss with your SEO agency which strategy will be more beneficial for your lead generating efforts – whether a blog or a microsite.

Use content marketing KPIs to determine the strength of your strategy and make improvements. Know your audience, what they want to read about, and what turns them off. At the end of the day, your lead generation efforts will be fueled by one thing: users.

Most companies use a combination, if not all, of these strategies, and you can benefit from doing the same. No one can tell you exactly which lead-generating strategies will reap the best rewards — what works for one business might not work for others. If you want to find the right lead generation formula, you need to test each step and focus on the marketing strategies that work for your company’s goals.