Back to articles

Capture high quality leads and fuel sales pipeline

Josh Burns
Date: December 31, 2023 | Time: 5 min to read

Ready to boost your revenue? Capture high-quality leads and watch your business grow

The demand for maximum performance with minimal resources will hit an all-time high in the coming year. As a digital marketer, this set me thinking about how challenging and exciting it is to be one right now. Digital marketers are in a great position to help achieve maximum results with minimal resources. Fine-tuning and optimizing existing experiences is a great place to start. Optimizing high traffic areas for conversion is a massive opportunity. Drive more awareness, increase conversion rates, and produce more opportunities for the business—all without extending the budget a penny.

Let's take a general view of a typical B2B asset landing page. Now these rates can vary, but we can at least take a basic high level view. For example, with 1,500 unique visitors per month and a 3% conversion rate, the landing page would capture 45 inquiries, 38.25 SQLs (85% MQL to SQL acceptance rate), and 11 Opportunities (30% SQL to Opp conversion rate). By using best practices and testing regularly we can increase this conversion rate to 5%+ and capture 75 leads white improving the quality. Based on the same formula above, we now have 64 SQLs and 19 opportunities, an increase of more than 72%. It might not seem like such a large leap, but compound this over 10 pages, and we are looking at an additional 190 opportunities per month.

Callout:
The average conversion rate for B2B landing pages varies, with some sources indicating an average of 13.28%, while others provide a range of 2.6% to 6.1%, with an average rate of 4.02%. Additionally, the average landing page conversion rate across all industries is reported to be 5.89%. These statistics highlight the variability in B2B landing page conversion rates and the importance of continuous testing and optimization to achieve the desired results.^{1, 2}

Depending on where the traffic is coming from and what we're offering, we might see superb conversion rates. For example, custom offers and giveaways tend to have extremely high conversion rates. For now, we can focus on more general asset offers. Consider a real-world scenario in which we will explore the steps taken to achieve a conversion rate greater than 7% for resource landing pages across all channels.

Let's describe the challenge

Despite driving significant traffic to our site, we were seeing relatively low numbers looking at converting website visitors into leads. Additionally, the forms on our landing pages were not performing to the degree we expected. We saw form fill rates between 2.5%-4%, but expect to see 5% minimum. Our pages needed to be optimized, as well as our forms, and we needed to capture higher-quality traffic. Lastly, we needed to put more focus on converting leads into opportunities and, ultimately, customers.

Now let's lay out the solution

After conducting thorough research and discussing the challenge at length, we implemented various best practices to optimize our landing pages, forms, and traffic quality. We focused on the following key areas:

Create Valuable Content: In order to attract and engage visitors, we created and started offering valuable content consistently on landing pages. This included white papers, e-books, video sessions, product demos, and more.
Landing Page Optimization: Our conversion rates improved when we created some continuity from various touch points back to the destination page. Additionally, adjusting the headlines, value propositions, and calls-to-action had a huge impact. Our pages were also optimized for search engines, which resulted in more traffic and higher conversions.
Lead Form Optimization: Employing an intuitive form layout and length tailored to our audience helped us continue to drive higher conversion rates. Consider short forms, or optional fields to reduce friction and increase form submissions.
A Conversational Approach: Conversational experiences work well due to their ability to increase engagement and create authentic experiences with customers and buyers. By using conversational interfaces, we can enter real-time conversations, making our visitors more likely to engage with us.
Exit Intent: Exit-intent pop-ups can be effective in retaining visitors who are about to leave a website by presenting them with a targeted message or offer. It is a great way to extend lead generation efforts and capture a percentage of leads we would otherwise miss.
Secondary Offers: After users fill out the initial offer, invite them to register for the next strategic event, or schedule a meeting with a solution architect, or an expert.

Five best practices when following up on marketing-driven leads:

Create a schedule that outlines when and how you'll reach out to leads.
Organize and group your leads into categories such as hot, warm, and cold to tailor your follow-up approach.
In the event you don't hear from a lead, don't give up too soon, and personalize your communication based on where the lead is in the sales funnel.
Maintain consistency between your emails, sales scripts, and contact formats by using templates for email and sales copy. Keeping your emails concise, relevant, and consistent is the key to success.
Use email nurtures to provide valuable and relevant content to leads to maintain engagement and build trust over time.

Finally, the results are in and ...

By optimizing our landing pages and focusing on lead generation, we saw a significant increase in conversion rates, above 7% on the landing page outlined here. The clear and compelling messaging (value), combined with an intuitive form and page layout (experience), resulted in higher quality leads (opportunity). We also boosted registrations using a secondary offer and closed more deals. The A/B testing allowed us to make data-driven decisions, further improving our lead generation efforts, and continues to this day. Rinse and repeat, it should never stop.

Concluding thoughts for the day

This use case demonstrates the opportunity created by optimizing landing pages and lead generation forms. By following best practices and continuously testing and refining our approach, we were able to achieve a substantial improvement in lead conversion rates. We maximized lead generation and drove significant growth for the business—without spending any additional budget. There are more granular tests to run on individual pages like headline, button colors, CTA text, and more. We can fine tune until we are happy with our conversion rates based on the offer type.

This is one of many cost-effective strategies that will be critical for marketers in 2024 to maximize returns with minimal resources. Welcome the strength of digital marketing to inspire, connect, and impact your audience, turning visitors into valuable, long-lasting relationships.

★ Bits & Bytes: The relevance of leads to the organization's product or service offerings can significantly influence conversion rates. Additionally, the efficiency of the sales process in converting leads into opportunities is a critical factor in determining conversion rates.

The use of marketing funnels and marketing automation can help filter out poor leads and guide the most promising ones through the sales process, ultimately impacting conversion rates.

A well-optimized website and a great user experience can positively impact B2B conversion rates. With consistent optimization, our pages will reach their full potential.

References and resources: