According to the State of Inbound Marketing Report, the cost-per-lead of inbound leads are 61% lower than outbound leads.

Businesses are recognizing this trend and reallocating resources towards their online presence, while simultaneously cutting outbound budgets for tactics like cold-calling, direct mail, and billboards.

Lots of companies are improving at getting traffic to their website, but are struggling to leverage the value of that traffic and generate leads from their website.

How To Generate Leads From Your Website

If you’re struggling with generating leads from your website, these 5 tricks will give you a jump-start.

1. Get The Right People To Your Website

It’s pointless to generate unqualified leads – and it’s pretty tough to turn the wrong people into qualified leads. Getting the right audience to your website is the first step in successfully generating leads from your website.

How do you actually get the right traffic?

Website traffic comes from three sources:

1. Search – According to Conductor, over 50% of website traffic comes from search engines, either organically (~47%) or via paid (PPC ~6%) search results.
2. Referral – Through social media, email, or other websites, referrals are a big source of traffic – and can be a great source for qualified visitors.
3. Direct – The quantity varies significantly by industry, but direct traffic (users directly coming to your site by typing in your website’s URL) can be another significant source of traffic – especially for well-known brands or platforms (think Amazon, Facebook, Google, ESPN, etc.)

The best source, and combination of these sources, is unique to each industry and business, but all three sources have significant potential.

Just because you think your company is well-known, don’t ignore search engine optimization or social media marketing. Likewise, if you rank well in Google, don’t be afraid to consider Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook as outposts for driving better-converting traffic. It’s all about a holistic strategy that produces the best ROI.

2. Make Your Website Stand Out

Don’t fall into the trap of using a cookie-cutter template for your website and putting up the same old “About Us,” “Our Products,” and “Contact” pages.

At the same time, don’t get caught up in flashy animations and every distraction you can imagine.

Focus on the user experience – what do they need and what do they want?
If you can provide the most helpful, most convenient content, you’ll start earning trust and stick out from the competitors.

3. Use Forms To Generate Leads

You got visitors through search, social, and direct traffic. They stuck around because your website stood out. What will it take to convert those interested prospects and generate real leads from your website?

Forms are a big part of the answer.

The vast majority of visitors aren’t ready to purchase, but many are ready to exchange value. They’re willing to trade some personal information (value to you) for in-depth, helpful content (value to them).

Offer premium content (see step 4) behind forms. Those free resources serve as lead magnets to start building out your marketing database.

4. Create Content That People Value

Premium content is an incredibly effective way to generate leads from your website with consistency. Think eBooks, webinars, videos, white papers, checklists, spec sheets, etc. Any information you have that contributes to the educational buying process – give it away in exchange for information.

People love the ability to download helpful content – there’s something about seeing it on a hard drive instead of on the Internet that is psychologically comforting to users. It’s crazy, but it works to our advantage as we’re trying to start generating leads for your business.

5. Repurpose Existing Content To Grow Faster

Don’t get stuck thinking that you have to create every bit of that premium content. It’s tough to create enough intellectual property (especially when you’re starting) to get the conversions you need.

Repurpose existing print materials, create product or service comparisons, or aggregate and curate great content from others and turn it into a premium content piece.

Industrial Training International repurposed tons of content and they parlayed that into 2x average annual revenue growth.

Bonus: Test, Test, and…Test

How do you know what traffic source produces the most revenue?

How do you know what type of premium content converts the most leads?

How do you know which website colors boost visitor engagement?

It’s all about testing.

You can avoid a lot of mistakes by learning from others and choosing strategically, but there’s also an element of trial-and-error to everything.

Pay attention to the numbers, measure everything, make adjustments, and never stop improving.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

How Are Other Businesses Generating Leads?

Generating leads is groovy, but you need to close those leads as customers. Learn more about driving traffic, generating leads, and closing sales from 8 companies who are doing it better than ever.