How to Get More Leads Without Spending More Money

Conversion Optimization: How to Get More Leads Without Spending More Money

by Susan Tatum

What is conversion optimization and how will your company benefit from it?

If you're like most business owners or marketers, you're probably working hard to increase your lead generation while at the same time lowering your marketing costs. And chances are good you're missing the very best ways to do this: Conversion Optimization.

Salespeople are naturally focused on this because they are regularly judged on how well they turn qualified opportunities into sales (the closing ratio). But marketing people tend to focus solely on driving more website traffic or generating more leads, and they miss the tremendous opportunities that come from creating a better process.Simply put, "conversion optimization" means converting more website visitors to prospects, and more prospects to sales-ready leads or customers. It requires paying attention to the points in your marketing process where you want your prospects to take action and tweaking those points to get a greater percentage of visitors to do that.

Let's look at the whole picture instead of just the front-end of lead or traffic generation. Between the first visit to your website and the decision to buy your product or service, your prospects actually make a number of decisions to keep moving forward toward a purchase - or not.

Each of these decision points generally involve some type of action and can be tweaked to be more effective at keeping prospects engaged and moving them forward toward the buying decision.

Here are a few common examples:

• Your homepage - does the visitor stick around or leave immediately?
• Newsletter and other subscriptions- what percentage subscribe?
• Product demos - what could you do to get more visitors to take a look at your demo?
• Free trials - how can you get more people to sign up and actually use the free trial?
• Trial-to-customer conversions - what happens after they start the trial?
• Landing pages
• Contact Us forms
• Download whitepapers or reports
• Event registrations

You get the point.

Compounding Interest.

Increasing the number of people who take any one of these actions will ultimately increase your sales or sales opportunities. Over time, even the slightest increases compound into big numbers. It's the same "power of compounding interest" argument the Motley Fools and other investment advisors use to convince us to invest early and often.

Let's look at product demos as an example.

Suppose that currently 50% of prospects who experience your product demo become customers and suppose that each new customer is worth $2500 a year. By increase your demo-to-customer ratio just 5% a month, you can nearly double your revenue in one year.

Imagine how much your revenue can grow if you optimize multiple conversion points. It's surprisingly easy and immensely rewarding. And the best part may be that you can get more leads without spending more money on lead generation.

If you're new to conversion optimization, you're not alone; and if you act fast you can get a real jump on your competition - especially those who are cutting back on spending and watching their pipelines deteriorate.

Finding The Best Professional SEO Service

Finding The Best Professional SEO Service: The search engine optimization boom in recent years has led to the formation of hundreds of firms offering professional SEO service. It's no surprise, really – SEO is the buzzword (or buzz-acronym, in any case) in the world of Internet marketing these days. The options for professional search engine optimization are varied. There are all kinds of different services for a variety of prices… it's important to know exactly what you're looking before you sign up for professional SEO service.
If the world of Internet marketing is known for one things, it's for being fast-paced and highly competitive. There are thousands of talented people who can give you the kind of service you need, so long as you know what you're looking for. As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. You simply can't expect top quality search engine optimization work if you're not ready to pay for it.
Finding a professional search engine optimization service isn't really that hard. Just search for SEO service on Google or any other search engine. The real trick is finding an SEO service that's going to work for you, and within your budget. That will require some research.
One of the best ways to choose professional SEO service that's right for you is to investigate previous clients of that service. If that information is available, it can provide a great preview of the kind of results you can expect. If you look at the client of a service and their website is on the 10th page of a main keyword search, you should stay away. However, if multiple keywords are showing that site on the front page, you may have yourself a winner.
Different SEO services operate differently. Some of them simply provide consultation services, letting you know the best ways to optimize your site. They leave the actual work to you. Other services provide a full package: they'll perform all the necessary modifications to your site so you don't need to. Of course, the prices for each service will vary. Some basic plans can be just a couple hundred dollars, while the highest quality services can cost thousands per month!
One thing to watch out for in your search for a professional SEO service is services that employ “black hat” SEO techniques. These techniques involve things like spamming a keyword all over a website, or forming “link farms.” These types of tactics frustrate and annoy users, and search engine operators actively seek to remove them from search engine rankings. They might be good for a short-term boost, but they'll eventually bring your website down.
Search engine optimization is a vital part of any business' marketing plan, especially online businesses. Avoiding search engine optimization is just throwing away potential customers. No matter your product or service or traffic needs, hiring a professional SEO service can pay for itself. The extra traffic you'll bring in thanks to solid SEO will be a great boost to your website.