The 4 Strategies You Need for Lead Generation in WordPress

All businesses depend on attracting new customers and retaining old ones.

Before buying a product or a service, a customer goes through a series of touchpoints with the business, from the moment they become aware of their need/problem, until the buying decision.

These touchpoints can be mapped across the customer’s journey (often called a marketing funnel).

Now these maps may differ from B2B to B2C, and from company to company, and the length of their sales cycle may differ as well. But, at the end of the day, they have the same core design.

So let’s have a look at what will be discussed in this article:

Contents:

• Lead Generation
• The Lead Generation Process
• Lead Generation Strategies
• Best Lead Generation Practices
• Lead Qualification
• Importance of Lead Qualification
• How to manage Leads effectively
• Generating Leads in WordPress
• How to use forms to acquire Leads
• Building Lead Generation Magnets and Landing Pages that convert
• Do’s and Don’ts for Pop-ups
• How to Leverage Chatbots on your site for Lead Generation
• WordPress Plugins to use for Lead Generation
• Conclusion

Let’s begin.

The most simple customer journey looks like this:

Before we discuss lead generation, it would be good to understand what a lead is.

A lead is an individual or organization that’s no longer anonymous. It has an interest in what you are selling and has shared contact information with you, such as: email, phone number, or even social media profile.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of attracting and nurturing a customer’s interests in your company’s products and services.

The goal of this marketing process is to build the brand’s awareness, collect customer data, build loyalty and convert prospects into paying customers.

Lead generation is a strategy under the consideration stage. At this stage, the potential customers are already engaging with your brand via multiple channels: website, social media, events, etc.

The Lead Generation Process

Lead generation isn’t a single-step process. It is, however, a multiple-step process of attracting and converting potential clients. Let’s delve into them:

Research and Identify Your Audience

This is a vital step to take before trying to gather leads. It is important to understand your target audience profile. This includes their location, interests, budgets, social habits, typical customer needs, pain points, etc.

You can also use this stage to research your competition. Find out what they do better or why your offer stands out from theirs. Knowing all these will help you tailor your message to convince the audience.

Thankfully, with WordPress, there are plugins that can help you track these data. With a Google Analytics plugin, you will be able to track the kind of visitors that utilize your website and a whole lot more than that.

Create Great Content

This is another vital key to attracting leads. After identifying the needs of your target audience, use the information to create valuable and compelling contents. It can be in the form of blog posts, videos, eBooks or webinars. The most important thing is to add value to each piece of content in order to attract your leads.

One great plugin that helps you analyze your contents and gives suggestions on how to improve your content is the SEOPress plugin. It also comes with the necessary tools to manage and enhance your site’s seo.

Use a Lead Database

Now that you are getting leads, the next step is to create a lead database. This is an organized collection of information that stores the details of your customers. With it, business owners can keep a record of their contact information, their interest, interactions and the need for a follow-up.

The Lead Database is a handy tool that enables you to keep track of your customers and segment them based on their progress down the sales funnel. So we will recommend the OptinMonster plugin as it provides templates that enable you to create lead generation forms.

Qualify and Score Leads

This process allows you to determine which sales prospect will most likely become a paying customer. When qualifying leads, you are deciding if a client will fit the criteria of the company. Afterwards, the clients are scored based on how interested they are in the company’s product and services. A WordPress contact form plugin can help to make this process seamless.

Lead Generation Strategies

There are many ways you can generate leads. Let’s discuss some of the most common ways:

Content Marketing

This is a strategy that focuses on creating helpful and engaging information to attract your target audience. The contents can be in the form of articles, videos, blog posts, eBooks and more.

Content marketing gives you the chance to engage with your audience and gain their trust over time. As a result, they are encouraged to take action and make a purchase.

Content marketing is also a great way to build the brand’s visibility and helps to improve search engine rankings.

Email Marketing

This is a direct form of marketing as it involves sending compelling emails/campaigns to the clients. It is done with the aim of building rapport with clients, promoting products and services or updating them on news related to your business.

Email marketing also allows you to create customized contents tailored to each segment of  your targets to allow for maximum engagement. Overall, it is a cost effective means of generating leads and driving engagement and sales.

Social Media Marketing

With the popularity and versatile use of social media today, it is only fitting to search for potential leads there. This strategy involves the use of social media platforms to interact with leads, market products and services and increase brand awareness.

Further, social media allows you to create content, engage audiences and run ads to generate more leads/sales. You can also partner with social media influencers who have a large following to help promote your brand to their audience.

Online Ads

Running sponsored ads is a great way to create brand awareness and reach your target audience. Ad services such as Google Adwords can help you display your business to potential clients who are already searching for what you offer.

Referrals

This is one free form of marketing that also works great. If you’re like many people, you would always look out for reviews before going ahead with a purchase. This is because you trust the unbiased opinion of a previous buyer to help with your purchase decision.

So, encourage your existing customers to leave a review for you. You can go further and offer a discount on their order for every friend they refer to your business.

Overall, Referral marketing is one great lead generation strategy as it shows your brand in a positive light.

Best Lead Generation Practices

If you want to get the most out of your lead generation practices, here are some practices you should follow:

Use your Data

To do this, gather information on your previous high performing generation methods. This can be your blog posts or video contents with high traffic, or emails that have a high-open rate. Figure out what you did differently.

So with this information at your fingertips, you will be able to know what resonates with your audience.

Practice Consistent Messaging

As you move your prospects through the sales funnel, ensure you send clear and consistent messages. Direct them through every action they should take throughout the process and provide value.

Your messages should also reflect everything your brand offers. From the blog posts to the product you intend on selling. This is to enable you to get your lead to the next stage in the sales funnel.

Develop Mouth-Watering Offers

It is important to provide befitting offers for each phase of the sales funnel. We say befitting because leads at different stages of the sales journey want different things.

For instance, a client who is just getting to know your brand might not be interested in a free demo/trial. They may, instead, go for an eBook or guide that provides them with enough value.

On the other hand, a client who is farther into the sales funnel might be interested in a free demo offer to get a hang of your products.

Use Clean Landing Pages

Whatever important information you want your visitors to see, put it at the top of your landing page. In addition, you should make it clear where you want them to input their contact information. All of these help to optimize your page for conversion.

Make use of Partners

Two heads are better than one right? Co-marketing helps to widen your audience reach. With the collective knowledge of both business partners, you will be able to excel in areas where you lack experience.

In addition, you can tap into each other’s customer base, allowing you to attract new leads.

Lead Qualification

Lead Qualification is the process of accessing a potential customer’s readiness to purchase from your brand. During this process, the sales team works together to collect and analyze a client’s information. Afterwards, they assess if the lead meets the ideal customer profile (ICP).

There are various types of lead qualification processes:

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

Marketing Qualified Leads are customers that have shown a high level of interest in the company’s marketing efforts. They are the ones that engage your posts on social media, visit your website regularly, download resources but aren’t ready to have a sales conversation.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

The Sales Qualified Leads are contacts who are interested in making a purchase and are ready to be contacted by the sales team.  These ones are way ahead in the sales process than other leads.

Product Qualified Leads (PQL)

Product Qualified Leads are contacts who have already sampled your products via a free trial. It could also be a limited version of the company’s product with options for an upgrade.

These ones have already experienced the worth of the company’s products/services and are now interested in being customers.

Importance of Lead Qualification

We have discussed some of the different types of lead qualifications there are in a sales process. But why is it important? For the simple fact that it saves your company time, effort and resources. Here are some other reasons:

Pick out Quality Leads

When you set a standard for lead qualification, it helps you to quickly identify prospects that are interested in buying what you are selling. This makes the filtering process easier, thus, allowing you to get contacts that are a good fit for your company.

Higher Conversion Rates

Qualified leads have a better chance of turning into customers. This is because the qualification process helps to target leads that are more likely to convert. Thus, the company’s sales representatives can focus on attending to leads that have a higher chance of paying.

As a result, the company sees an increase in conversion rates and revenue.

Greater Productivity in Sales

With qualified leads as the priority, the company’s sales reps are able to elevate their productivity and effectiveness. This is because they would not be wasting their efforts on leads that are not a good fit for the company. As a result, there is an increase in sales performance.

Better Sales and Marketing Alignment

To have a successful lead qualification process, the sales and marketing teams must have “all hands on deck”. This collaboration will enable them to work together effectively to make sure their goals are aligned.

As a result, the teams are able to work towards attracting, nurturing and converting leads into paying customers.

Improved Customer Service

During the lead qualification process, you get to have constant engagement with the prospects. This will enable you to understand your customers’ needs better and provide personalized solutions for them.

As a result, you will be able to build a stronger relationship with your customers.

How to Manage Leads Effectively

To avoid losing potential customers and revenue, it is crucial to track and maintain your leads effectively. By using the right strategies, you will be able to enhance your lead management and improve your business.

So, here are some strategies you can apply to enhance lead management process in WordPress:

Segmentation of Leads

This is the first step in the lead management process. Lead Segmentation, also known as Customer/Market/Audience Segmentation is the grouping of customers into different categories.

Each segment can be based on a number of criteria such as behaviors, demographics and purchase history. This practice enables you to tailor your marketing strategies to match the client’s needs and interests of each segment.

Thankfully, the WordPress CRM provides a variety of tools that allows you to segment your leads. Some of them include custom fields, filters and tags. You can use these tools to create targeted lists of leads, depending on the criteria you chose for your business and audience.

Lead Scoring and Prioritization

With Lead Scoring and Prioritization, you will assign value (numerical) to each lead. The values are assigned based on the behavior and interest of the leads. These can be their level of engagement with your site, contents viewed or downloaded, and their level of response to your marketing messages.

After these data has been collected, you can then prioritize the leads that are most promising and increase your chances of success.

A WordPress contact form plugin can serve as a lead scoring tool. With it, you can easily automate this process. Firstly, you will have to define the factors that will determine a lead’s score. Afterwards, you can use the lead scoring tool to assign points to each lead based on their behavior.

As a result, you will be able to identify the leads that have higher chances of converting into sales.

Lead Nurturing

The next step in the lead management process is the Lead Nurturing. This strategy involves building relationships with the prospects to get them to become paying customers.

In Lead Nurturing, the sales team takes note of the needs of the prospects. Next, they provide information that addresses that need as regards the products and services offered by the business. As a result, the sales team is able to boost the chances of the customer making a payment.

With a lead generation plugin, you can get tools that will help you to implement lead nurturing. Some of the plugin features email marketing, social media integration and custom automation workflows.

So create a targeted messaging strategy that tailors to the needs and interests of each criteria. You can also provide educational resources, offer personalized product recommendations or even spotlight positive reviews from customers. The plugin can then create workflows that will deliver the messages to the leads.

Automated Lead Nurturing

As its name implies, Automated Lead Nurturing is the automation of the lead nurturing process. This strategy uses email campaigns and follow-up personalized messaging to help prospects down the sales funnel. It also helps the company save time and resources and reach potential clients at the right time.

To achieve this, you can create targeted email campaigns that are activated by specific lead behavior. So new leads can receive a welcome email, a follow-up email after a content has been downloaded and a marketing email after they’ve viewed a product.

Afterwards, the WordPress CRM’s automation tool is used to automatically activate these emails. It then delivers the appropriate message based on the lead’s behavior.

Now, we’re going to talk about how to gain leads from your WordPress website. In the end, most of your marketing efforts (paid ads, SEO optimized blog articles, social media, etc.) will drive website visitors. Some of these visitors ideally will be converted into leads, and then customers.

Let’s dig in.

Generating Leads in WordPress

Here, we outline five WordPress strategies to kickstart your B2C or B2B lead generation strategy:

• how to use forms to acquire leads
• how to build lead magnets and landing pages that convert
• do’s and don’ts for pop-ups
• how to leverage chatbots on your site
• what WordPress plugins to use for lead generation

How to Use Forms to Acquire Leads

When can you use forms? Let’s check the most popular use cases out there:

• When you want to acquire newsletter subscribers
• Or when you have gated content: case studies, ebooks, reports
• When you register people for an event: webinar, online summit, etc.
• On your “Contact us” page
• Inside pop-ups that promote your newsletter subscription or latest ebook
• When you want to schedule visitors to a product demo

Which are the main elements of a form? The form fields and a call to action (CTA). The form will need to push the collected data in a CRM or your own database.

Now, let’s examine a form to help you understand best practices:

Source: https://www.abtasty.com/blog/4-strategies-b2c-lead-generation/

There are plenty of form fields, the question is, might this discourage the visitor from signing up?

Well, if you’re in B2C, selling clothing for example, you might need only the gender and email so that you can send out your newsletter for women.

In B2B, it will be different. You must qualify your contacts before going into some other marketing and sales actions. For example, knowing the role of the visitor might be vital to the messaging.

If you know that the visitor is a decision maker in Marketing, the email sequences that will follow this submission should be personalized according to the pain points in this role.

Whatever the case, the minimum number of fields should be used to capture the details of the lead if you want more signups.

Let’s look at an example from Keap:

Source: keap.com

They want to schedule visitors to a product demo. And what do you think will be on the mind of their site visitors? Saving time and doubling revenue, right? Of course!

The approach here is going straight for scheduling the demo, no text input fields whatsoever. But, they are also offering an incentive: a free eBook copy. And the face on the left, makes the experience a bit more humane.

Now, data has proven that the conversion rate for forms decreases as the number of form fields increase. So, you should A/B test it and find out what works for you. In the end it’s a business choice – do you want to select your prospects, and qualify them from the start, or do you qualify later on?

You could also use data enrichment tools like Clearbit, or Albacross to get more data from a person based on some reverse IP engineering techniques. This means that you can eliminate form fields such as country, company, and even job title.

Ok, enough with the forms fields.

Going back to the first form above, on the left you have some social proof: stats and logos (nice touch). The purpose of the form was to acquire contacts for demo requests. This means you can show this to people who have proven some buying intent, and who need some convincing that you’re worthwhile. Social proof is something that helps bring trust and knowledge to the equation.

This is also a best practice for CTAs as well. Place some testimonials, case studies, or logos, before your CTA. It will grow your chances for a click, or form submission.

And this leads us to our next pit stop: lead magnets and their landing pages.

How to Build Lead Generation Magnets and Landing Pages that Convert

A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers offer to their website visitors or prospects in exchange for their email address (usually). Lead magnets can be also called gated content. They come in different shapes: free PDF checklist, free PowerPoint templates, reports, eBooks, case studies, etc.

You can also use quizzes to generate leads as DoFasting does. It promotes a quiz on its homepage and blog posts. When people finish taking the quizzes, it creates a unique report based on their answers and offers it in exchange for a sign-up. As it is a custom report, it can generate more leads than a generic lead magnet like an eBook.

Usually, you need a landing page to promote your lead magnet.

Now, before creating such a lead magnet, you need to really know your buyer persona, and his/her pains. Your lead magnet should come with the solution for such a pain, and should be convincing enough so that they will exchange contact information for your lead magnet. This means that quality and usefulness should be your focus.

Example of a Landing Page

Now, let’s analyze such an example from the landing page masters themselves: Unbounce. They are promoting their lookbook for e-commerce: “What’s a Great Ecomm Landing Page Look Like? You’re About to Find Out”.

Source: https://unbounce.com/ecommerce-lookbook/

First, your header should be explanatory. Here is a guideline for writing powerful headers.

Next, the form is above the fold, next to a compelling image.

The copy on the left hand side is addressing a pain point: sales conversion, and providing a solution: high converting landing page examples.

If the visitor isn’t yet convinced, there’s more below:

• Brands mentioned in the lookbook

 

• Short summary of the lead magnet

• Convincing data

• Testimonial/quote

These are the most important sections of a high converting landing page.

In B2B, you can have more types of lead magnets, that can be addressed to more buyer personas, and personalized based on the customer journey.

You can have webinars on generic topics, for brand awareness, or case studies for those prospects with high intent.

Based on the location of the visitor on your website, you can place smart CTAs to drive them to specific landing pages.

Let’s say:

• They are browsing blog articles related to fintech, why not place a CTA with your latest banking report?

Source: https://www.netguru.com/blog/fintech-startups-going-public

• They are reading an article on UX design, why not guide them with a contextual CTA to your latest case study on how you did UX design for “X”?

Personalization is key, especially in B2B, where traffic can be scarce, and you can’t afford to lose sight of your website visitor. This leads us to our next subject.

Do’s and Don’ts for Pop-ups

No, pop-ups aren’t dead. Yeah, we know most designers hate them, but they can be valuable when used wisely. Personalization and timing are again the key.

Remember the Unbounce example from above? They have created a pop-up for that in the shape of a top info bar guiding people to the landing page.

Nice and clean copy, good CTA. The only problem: they place it on the landing page as well.

Let’s check another one:

Source: keap.com

In this case, Keap is promoting an offer, and they are using a counter to induce FOMO (fear of missing out). The copy is quite convincing: “Your chance for great savings”.

Ok, so which are the good practices concerning pop-ups?

• Make sure to use timing, show them when someone scrolls long enough, or stay more than “X” seconds on a page. You wouldn’t want to ruin the user experience.
• Adjust the pop-up for desktop and mobile.
• Personalize: don’t show a pop-up for your latest eBook on AI development, when they’re browsing for React development info.

Source: netguru.com

• Personalize based on geos, returning vs new visitors, if they’ve seen your product pages or not, etc.
• Don’t forget to give visitors a way to opt out.
• A/B test! Are 15 seconds enough or you should go for exit intent pop-ups (these are our personal favorites)? Should you go for a full screen pop-up (we noticed Neil Patel was a fan)?

How to Leverage Chatbots on your Site for Lead Generation

There’s an eternal dispuse out there: forms versus bots. There’s no clear winner yet. But definitely you should give it a try, and see if this works for you.

According to Drift, before you define your chatbot strategy, you must understand:

• Who are you talking to? Is it a returning visitor?
• Where are they located on your website? Are they checking the product pricing?
• Why should you engage with the visitor? Is it to lead them to one of your sales reps or to provide them with some knowledge?

Source: Drift.com

Yes, all the roads lead to…personalization.

What can you do Inside a Chatbot?

• Offer an incentive in order to get their email address (lead generation)
• Find out what the visitor is looking for (prepare dropdown with options)
• Guide them to resources (blog, landing pages)
• Get feedback

Source: drift.com

• Send the visitor over to a human for real interaction (support, sales reps)
• Offer a discount
• Offer a lead magnet
• Find out more about the visitor with the purpose of lead scoring (ask questions such as: company size, job title…)

Drift has even made a survey and found out what people use a chatbot for:

Chatbots are becoming more popular across B2Bs with the purpose of accelerating deal cycles.
When creating your lead generation chatbot, keep the following in mind:

• Use a language that matches your buyer persona (don’t be too informal if that’s not needed)
• Have a fallback if the person wants to talk to a real human instantly
• Let users know that they are interacting with a bot
• Have a different approach for new and returning visitors. Returning visitors know you better than the new ones, you can behave more familiarly.
• Ask qualifying questions if your bot is placed on high intent pages (careful though! Things can get tricky on these pages, and you need to balance things a bit. You wouldn’t want to ruin the experience, and lose them).

• You can use a bot as a second net option on a landing page that also has a form
• Personalize (use the person’s name, or the company name)

If you need inspiration in making the copy for your chatbots, here’s a great collection of bots.

Wow, we’ve gone a long way, haven’t we?

Time to talk about some tools that can let you achieve some of the above.

WordPress Plugins to use for Lead Generation

We’ve almost reached the end of our journey. Here, we present 3 plugins (in addition to those previously mentioned) that can help you with: forms and pop-up creation, and chatbot implementation.

If you don’t know how to add a WordPress plugin, here’s a complete guide.

WordPress Forms Plugin – Forminator PRO

 

Source: https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/forminator-pro/

This plugin enables you to create and manage forms for lead generation. It is a great option as it offers:

• Pre-designed templates
• Tons of third party integrations, so you can connect it to your favorite CRM or email tool
• Conditional logic, dynamic pre-filling, and multi-step options
• You can create polls & quizzes
• You can configure email routing and conditional emails

WordPress Pop-up Plugin – Convert PRO

The Convert Pro plugin enables you to create popups in your WordPress pages. It is likewise an ideal option for this purpose.

• It has pre-designed templates
• You can create mobile friendly pop-ups
• There are type of pop-ups available, from sliders, info bar to light-boxes

• There are lots of triggers to choose from

• You can use your own code
• It has tons of third party integrations, so you can connect it to your favorite CRM or email tool
• You can do A/B tests

WordPress Chatbot Plugin – Drift for WordPress

Source: drift.com

Before installing this plugin, you will need to set up a Drift account. See the installation steps.

Drift is a great option because:

• There are a lot of targeting options
• It has if-then branches
• You can build bots by dragging and dropping specific sections
• It has great reporting
• You can identify buyers using Use Drift Intel (it provides data enrichment info)

Wrapping Up

To sum up, no matter the strategy you want to use, or the tools you employ, transparency and building trust are a must.

In B2B, where the sales cycles are long, content is still king. People are still sharing their contact details if you are willing to provide them with real value and solutions to their pains.

Figuring out how to generate leads takes time and A/B tests (if you have enough traffic). Don’t trust those saying that forms or pop-ups are dead. They can work if used wisely, and the performance varies from niche to niche.

So with all that said, happy lead generation, folks!