Not Enough Leads?
Let’s assume you provide an excellent service or top-notch products. But somehow, even with all your marketing efforts, you still experience a great number of leads leaving your website without purchasing anything or contacting your company. What can you do to increase conversions? In fact, what are you doing that is driving these people away?
Here we give you a few ideas that can reveal why you are not getting the leads you need for your business.
Image via David Castillo Dominici/ Freedigitalphotos.net
1) Your Phone Number is Hidden on Your Website
You may be under the mistaken impression that because you have a website, people will not be interested in calling you. But many potential customers need to speak to you, and when speaking to you will make up their minds to purchase. If you make your phone number difficult to find, for example hiding it on the Contact page, you risk driving people away. Put the phone number in the header bar, invite people to call, and keep the phone number visible when people are scrolling so they always have access to the number should they need it. It’s one of the first things you should check in your sales funnel.
2) You Don’t Have a Call to Action
Even if you have your phone number highly visible on every page, if you do not have a call to action (CTA) you will receive fewer contacts. Your call to action lets your customers know what they should do. Give people a good reason to call you or to sign up for an email newsletter. Give additional reasons for someone to make a call, so you can speak to them and make a conversion more easily.
3) Your Contact Form is Too Complicated
On the other hand, many potential clients want to contact you via email or through a form. But if your form is too long then people are less likely to fill it in for a callback. Reduce the form by several fields so it contains only the fields you need. You possibly need just two, or even one – the phone number. You don’t necessarily need all that extra information at this stage and it dramatically boosts your chance of getting a conversion.
Image via NicholeKelly/ Flickr
4) Your Phone System is Too Complicated
Of course, when people do call, they want to get through to the relevant person as soon as possible. When you have a menu with many different options you are more likely the potential customer will hang up before they have reached their destination. If the first contact the customer has is with an inefficient and confusing phone menu, they are unlikely to hang around to find out more. If you can, make sure that the phone number on your landing page connects directly with your sales team or your customer service team. Save the telephone menu for other numbers that are not dealing with prospective customers. At least, if you can’t get rid of the system, make the sales team the first option people can choose from.
5) Always on Hold
When people call you, can they actually get through? It sounds simple, but keeping people on hold for half an hour is not likely to win you any leads. These people need to be treated with care and attention. Putting them on hold will drive them away. You cannot afford to drive away leads like this. People are not willing to wait so set up a service that can cope with the number of calls you expect.
6) Mistakes Made in Callbacks
If someone has filled out the form on your website asking for a callback they are interested. If you let them wait two days for the call, they are not going to be interested any more. Don’t make mistakes with your callbacks. These are extremely important for your lead generation efforts and your sales funnel. You ruin the conversion if your customer has to wait for you to get back to them. Make sure you set up systems that ensure no requests for callbacks are ignored and they are dealt with in a timely manner.
Your sales funnel is extremely important for lead generation. Take a look at all aspects of the funnel to see where you are potentially turning people away. When you clean up your sales funnel you automatically generate more leads – leads you cannot afford to lose.
