Lead Conversion Strategies: 11 Ways to Sell More Faster

Focusing on increasing website traffic is important. But it’s only one part of the equation. If your website traffic isn’t turning into sales for your business, it’s time to rethink your strategy. You need to focus on converting more leads. Luckily, there’s a clear solution.

A solid lead conversion strategy can help you convert more leads into paying customers. In this guide, we’re sharing essential strategies to convert more leads, including improving your tracking, personalizing your outreach, using social proof, and so much more.

Contents

• What is lead conversion?
• 11 proven lead conversion strategies
  • Improve your lead tracking
  • Have a clear value proposition
  • Try an email nurture campaign
  • Personalize your outreach
  • Follow up fast
  • Create a referral program
  • Use remarketing campaigns
  • Include social proof
  • Make your website conversion-friendly
  • Align sales and marketing
  • Continue to optimize your marketing

What is lead conversion?

Lead conversion is the process of turning your engaged prospective customers into paying customers. Leads are any people who have engaged with your business with the potential to become customers. These might include website visitors, people who completed a form to download a resource, newsletter subscribers, or social media followers.

The process of conversion is going to be unique to your business, but it’s going to include touchpoints between your lead and your brand. This might be emails with discount offers, value-based incentives, product follow-ups, or a phone call from your team.

There’s also your lead conversion rate, which measures the rate at which you’re converting leads into paying customers. The higher the lead conversion rate, the better job you’re doing at bringing money into your business. And the better return you’re getting on your ad spend.

You can find your lead conversion rate using this simple formula: (Total leads/total visitors) x 100% = lead conversion rate. Your lead conversion rate is a good metric to pay attention to while you’re focusing on turning more contacts into customers.

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11 proven lead conversion strategies

Boosting your lead conversion rate is easier said than done, which is where a lead conversion strategy comes into play.

It’s worth pointing out that not all lead conversion strategies work for all business types. It’s important to tailor your strategy to what works best to move marketing leads down your specific sales funnel to conversion. That being said, most of these strategies we’re breaking down below are applicable to lots of different kinds of businesses.

Let’s get into the strategies.

1. Improve your lead tracking

The first, and perhaps most important, strategy for converting more leads is to improve—or start—tracking them. If you’re already using a customer relationship management software, or CRM, for your existing customers, you can use most options to track your leads, too. Capturing their information—contact and demographic, if you have it—and activity in one central, automated location is ideal.

Visual, automated systems like Dash by LocaliQ make tracking leads a breeze.

Lead scoring is also a core part of lead management, and it involves assigning your leads a score based on their actions.

Typically, a lead scoring system assigns a numerical value, giving leads greater weight for certain actions and less for others.

For example, a lead that simply clicks a paid ad to visit a landing page may only get five points in your system. A lead who fills out the form on the page and claims the download might get 20-30 points in your system because you’ve found that those actions more often lead to a sale.

Using lead scoring, you can then set a threshold that determines when a lead should move onto your sales team versus being added to a simple email nurture campaign (more on those in a bit). This ensures your team is focusing on the most engaged leads, rather than anyone who simply gets into your funnel.

2. Have a clear value proposition

Confusion is never good for conversions. When people can quickly understand what your offer is, what problem it solves, and what outcome they can expect, they can recognize whether or not it could be right for them.

That’s where a clear and compelling value proposition comes in. Your value proposition is part promise to your customer and part differentiator from your competitors. It tells potential buyers what they’ll get when they buy from you that they won’t get from other offers.

For example, this plumber states that there’s “No clog we can’t unclog” in its Google Ad.

That simple statement reassures people in a plumbing predicament that they’re in good hands if they hire these pros.

A strong value proposition helps convert high-intent shoppers into leads by signalling confidence and credibility that your solution is the perfect one for your customer’s specific needs.

And by communicating exactly what your lead can expect and delivering it, you build trust, which is huge. 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before considering a purchase.

Plus, this trust won’t just help with converting your leads; it’ll also help with happy, returning customers.

3. Try an email nurture campaign

Nurture campaigns are a series of communications, typically emails, that keep prospects who aren’t ready to buy interested in your brand and solutions. They’re effective for keeping your brand top of mind with your leads, building brand affinity, and delivering pre-purchase value.

A nurture campaign helps move people from interest in your offerings to confidence that they’re a good choice, a step closer to purchase.

A nurture campaign can be informational or promotional, like sending updates on new products.

According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. That’s some serious savings.

If you don’t have a nurture campaign already, consider setting up a flow of 5-7 emails to automatically send to interested leads. Reconfirm the value for your lead. Acknowledge the problem your solution solves, or the gap it fills. Pre-empt any common myths or hesitations for the purchase. Share a customer story.

4. Personalize your outreach

Your leads aren’t thinking in terms of funnels or campaigns. They’re thinking of the specific problem or desire they’re working with. Or they’re thinking of the word-of-mouth recommendation for your brand. Or they’re thinking of the ad that made them click to your website and sign up for more content. When your messaging meets your leads where they are, it immediately feels more relevant, and your brand more trustworthy.

That’s why personalizing your outreach is so effective in converting leads.

Segmented outreach, for example, lets you designate which content your leads receive. These segments could be based on activity (which piece of content they engaged with, the events they signed up for, etc.), or demographics (industry, location, etc.). This allows you to tailor your messaging for segments of your audience.

While this is time and work upfront, it’s worth it. According to HubSpot, Segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs than unsegmented ones.

When a lead feels understood, they’re far more likely to open emails, click links, and move toward a conversation.

After your email outreach includes messaging tailored to each segment, review your landing pages, social posts, ads, and more to ensure you’re being as personal as possible.

I was targeted with this ad from Anabei after searching for couches that are easy to keep clean with pets and kids. Super specific! 

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5. Follow up fast

Trapped inside during a snowstorm over the weekend, I stopped scrolling when I saw an ad on Instagram for an outdoor shed. The backyard was lush and green, the flower pots in front of the door colorful, the shed aspirationally organized (and definitely way too big for my own backyard). Still, I immediately filled out the form for more information and started planning for the spring. But I never received an email with the brochure, and I could not tell you what the shed looked like or the brand name. Gone forever.

The point? Follow up fast. I’m not saying I would have converted (reader, I wouldn’t have), but I bet if I read the brand name in my inbox, I could share that now. And if I had been looking at something that was a more realistic purchase at a different pricepoint, like, let’s say, a sweater, I may have bought it.

If you’re in a service business, the need to follow up can be even more important. Imagine someone needing HVAC service. They’re not waiting a day for a callback. That’s where using some version of an AI-powered platform that can answer quick questions and get people into your lead funnel while you’re in the field is super helpful.

6. Create a referral program

Generating higher-quality leads will help with converting more of them into customers. And referrals are one of the highest-quality leads you can get because they show up already trusting your business.

You don’t want to wait for the occasional referral. Instead, build a customer referral program that constantly motivates happy customers to share their experience with their family, friends, and coworkers.

Libro.fm lays out why people should refer their service and offers an incentive, a free audiobook, to do it.

Another cool thing about referrals is that the prospects they connect you to are similar to your existing customers. Which means you have the marketing assets to convert them effectively—and you know your solutions work for them.

Plus, there’s a network effect that happens. Research found that referred customers generate up to 57% more referrals than non-referred customers.

7. Use remarketing campaigns

Whether a lead is warm or cold, you can turn them into a customer with a smart remarketing campaign.

Remarketing is the practice of showing ads to someone who has engaged with your brand in some way—often by clicking on an ad or visiting a product page on your website.

Remarketing ads look identical to other types of display ads. The big clue that it’s remarketing is that it’s promoting something you’ve recently engaged with online.

For example, if you’ve been reading about how to lower blood pressure on the Tylenol website, you may see a banner ad like this.

8. Include social proof

Using social proof is powerful when it comes to building trust. Social proof, like a case study or customer success story, helps show that your solution works for people with needs similar to those of your prospective buyer.

Social proof comes in all sorts of forms. It can be reviews on Google, video customer testimonials, or simply a statement saying you’ve served 10,000 customers.

There’s a lot of evidence backing the results of using social proof. 93% of consumers claim online reviews influence their decision to purchase, while 94% say positive reviews increase their chances of going with a business.

The most important step is making sure you use it. A single good review can be great fodder for social media posts, product pages on your website, and your nurture campaigns.

9. Make your website conversion-friendly

You can convert more leads by making it easy for your leads to convert on your website. In fact, a study surveying 6,000 consumers in the US and Europe revealed that 60% of consumers abandon purchases after a bad website experience. That’s a lot of lost conversions.

There’s a lot to consider, but some of the ways to make your website conversion-friendly include:

• Improving page speed
• Making contact information easy to find
• Having helpful assets like a scheduling or quote request link
• Making all of your call-to-action buttons bright, bold, and easy to understand

Here’s an example of why those elements are critical. This example from a handyman, Beard and Boards LLC, does a lot of things well. It features illustrative videos, customer testimonials, keywords that answer specific questions from prospective customers, and a variety of photos showing the high-quality work.

But—and this is important—the website doesn’t have a contact form, visible contact details on the front page, or an easy way to request a quote.

That’s why it’s important to view your website as if you were a customer who needs something now. How many clicks does it take to place an order or book an appointment? Can a new visitor figure out how to do these things in a few seconds?

For any business, when everything is running smoothly, the process should feel easy and professional for the user. This will increase confidence, which in turn increases your conversions.

10. Align sales and marketing

If you’re tracking and scoring leads, the next way to ensure you’re converting as many as possible is to get your sales and marketing on the same page. This is most imperative for B2B businesses and brands that are not operating in the ecommerce space. It’s also more relevant for larger businesses, but that really means any company with at least one person focused on sales and one on marketing.

Now, you might be wondering: how is team communication a lead-conversion strategy? If marketing channels are targeting potential customers who never end up paying, that’s a problem. If marketing has lists of customers-to-be that never get an outreach from sales to make a purchase, that’s another problem. And these problems are costly. While companies with teams out of sync are more likely to experience a decline in revenue, companies with aligned marketing and sales teams have 36% higher customer retention rates.

Sales and marketing need to be working with the same understanding of your buyer personas, the process for handing off leads, and the overall goals for converting those leads into customers. The best way to accomplish this is to partner on developing these assets, documenting the results, and updating as needed.

Creating buyer personas can help you identify the right places to engage or target your audience.

11. Continue to optimize your marketing

Your customers, your competitors, your industry, and all the channels you market on are always changing. To keep collecting those conversions, you’ll need to continue optimizing your marketing strategies.

The first step is scheduling time at regular intervals to review your messaging, your ad content, your email copy, your content strategy, and even your customer journey.

Also, take a look at performance analytics to see where potential customers fall out of your marketing funnel.  Review the competitive landscape, and consider whether your marketing feels fresh and current. And stay up to date with what’s new on your favored marketing platforms. For example, Facebook and Google are constantly rolling out new advertising features that could help you win more sales.

And keep in mind, this proactive work is to mitigate the urgent, reactive tasks that always seem to come at the worst possible time.

Use these strategies to convert more leads

With these strategies, you can start improving your lead management, leveling up your lead nurturing, and increasing your conversion rate—all in the name of growing your business.

Here are 11 ways to start converting more leads today:

1. Improve your lead tracking
2. Align sales and marketing
3. Clarify your messaging
4. Try nurture campaigns
5. Personalize your outreach
6. Follow up fast
7. Ask for referrals
8. Run remarketing campaigns
9. Use social proof
10. Prioritize website upkeep
11. Continue to optimize your marketing

And if you could use some help using the best conversion strategies across all your channels, contact us. We’ll show you how our digital marketing solutions support your growth.

Meet The Author

Céillie Clark-Keane

Ceillie runs content at Unstack, a no-code CMS built for marketers. Previously, she was the managing editor of the WordStream blog.

Other posts by Céillie Clark-Keane