If you’re designing or updating your website, or even just thinking about how to make it better, it’s critical to develop a strong offer strategy. Setting up a visual hierarchy on each page that will guide the visitor to take a specific action will help realize the lead generation goals you set for your website. Check out the five steps below to walk through the process of developing a successful offer strategy.
1. Find Out What Your Audience is Looking For
We’ve all heard the saying “knowing is half the battle.” When it comes to online marketing, knowing what your audience is looking for is one arrow you need in your quiver. Once you have a good idea of what people coming to your site are looking for, you can map out an offer strategy that will lead them to what they want and the action you want them to take.
Some people will be coming to your website ready to buy your services, but there will also be those who are not ready to buy yet and instead are looking for information and educational content. Do some serious research on what your audience wants to learn and what services they are looking for, and make sure you are providing them. Offers on your website should communicate to your entire audience, people who are ready to get started and also those who are still early stage leads.
2. Content Marketing: Give Them a Reason to Come Back
If you are interested in generating leads online, you should seriously consider developing educational content for both SEO and as a lead generating campaign. For more detailed information on content marketing, I would recommend checking out our Content Marketing Guide.
Educational content can be used for offers that will appeal to those visitors that are not ready to buy yet, but may be willing to exchange an email address in order to learn more. Collecting email addresses through content offers will enable you to nurture these early stage leads and establish trust with your brand, so when they are ready to buy they will think of your firm first.
Offers that can come out of a content marketing strategy include a newsletter or blog subscription, a piece of premium content to download, or signing up for a webinar, for example. Producing high quality educational content will allow you to offer more on your website that appeals to a wider audience.
3. Take Advantage of Your Site Architecture to Strategically Place Offers
Each page of your website should feature messaging that specifically communicates about a product or service. Firms will often organize their website pages and messaging to focus on the industries they serve or focus on their services.
Developing an offer strategy that compliments each page on your website is the best way to increase your conversion rates. Each offer should be as specific to the page that it will be featured on as possible. For instance, having an offer to download a case study on an industry-specific firm will interest a potential lead that’s visiting the page. When deciding which offer to put on a webpage, keep in mind what the page is about and what someone visiting that page will be interested in. Having a clear focus on this will undoubtedly help you increase conversion rates.
4. Design Offers to Catch the Eye of the Viewer
Establishing a visual hierarchy on your website will help guide the visitor to the right information as well as your offers. Offers should draw the viewer’s eye so that they will be enticed to either contact you or enter their email address. Your offers or calls to action should be visually pleasing, brief, and very clear.
No one visiting a website is going to want to fill out a long form, or be interested in clicking on an offer that is difficult to read. Make sure your offers communicate their value clearly and concisely – never confuse your audience about what an offer is for.
5. Analyze and Continue Testing
Every offer strategy should include tracking and analysis. Once you set up conversion tracking, it is important to monitor your conversions for each offer. This way you will be able to analyze the data and discover which calls to action are converting at the highest rates, and which ones need to be redesigned or removed.
Using A/B testing can be a great way to analyze a specific aspect of an offer, like color or messaging. Changing content offers is a great practice because it will help keep pages fresh by showcasing your newest and best content. Continuing to optimize your offer strategy will ensure that your website continues to drive conversions and bring in new business leads.
For more details on creating an offer strategy, check out our free Lead Generating Website Guide.
