The 7 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success: Step 4 Capture

Over the past few weeks we have been taking a look at each of the steps in the 7-Step Lead Generation Process that LeadG2 uses to help clients navigate and embrace an inbound marketing culture. We hope that by detailing each step in the process it can help clarify the steps needed for inbound marketing success.

The first three steps:

1. Plan
2. Create
3. Distribute

focused on generating and distributing content so as to attract visitors to your website via organic, direct or social media traffic. These steps are extremely important as content marketing only works when you can get prospects to your site. 

Step 4: Capture

Now that you are getting some traffic to your website from your content marketing efforts, it’s important to make sure that you are capitalizing on this traffic by effectively capturing leads using various methods.

The basic mechanics for capturing leads are to have some type of “offer” or call to action on each page of your website that directs your visitor to a landing page to fill out a form or to enter their email address. Yes, you read this correctly... if you are truly looking to generate leads from your website, each page of your website should have some type of call to action or way to capture leads.

Here are four commonly used ways to capture leads: 

1. Subscribing to your blog or e-newsletters
2. Downloadable PDFs (Guides, How to’s, Whitepapers etc)
3. Signing up for a webinar 
4. Filling out a Contact Form

Remember Where a Prospect is in the Buying Cycle

It’s important to remember when creating offers and landing pages intending to capture leads that not everyone coming to your website is at the same point in the buying cycle. Visitors to your site that are in the initial stages of research might just want to subscribe to your blog to learn more (that’s Top of the Sales Funnel or TOFU) . While another visitor might have already subscribed to your blog and has done additional research and is ready to get some answers to specific questions that will be covered on one of your upcoming webinars (Middle of the Funnel or MOFU). Bottom of the Funnel offers (BOFU - you have to love that acronym) are those prospects that have already done their research, had most of their questions answers and moved through the buying cycle. They are now ready to speak to someone about specific services or pricing and are literally at the bottom of the funnel. The only place they have to go is into the customer column, lost deals or put back into the funnel for additional nurturing in order to provide them with additional information that might change their decision making process this time through the funnel. It’s not a typical situation that someone goes through your sales funnel multiple times but sometimes it does happen.

Contact Forms and Place in the Funnel

One of the areas that we are constantly optimizing for ourselves and for our clients is the questions being asked and information being captured on our conversion forms. The reason for this is because it’s extremely important to make sure that the questions you are asking are appropriate for the stage of the funnel your prospects is in. For instance, top of the funnel offers are more general in nature and should not have as many required questions or ask for very much detail. At this point, you simply want to get the person’s email address. As you move deeper into the funnel, you can require additional questions and ask for more in depth answers.

Additional Analysis

Analyzing the conversion forms being used on landing pages is just one small step in improving your conversion rates and generating additional leads, you must also look at the creative and copy being used among other things. This analysis of leads, conversion rates and your offers, takes us into Step 5: Analyze which will be covered in our next posts.