Leads versus traffic. It’s an eternal battle to improve your digital numbers. Both have their pros and cons. More traffic means more exposure for your website and your business. More leads mean more business through the door. But which one is better? Let’s go through the list and talk about how to maximize reach in both categories.
More Leads
Lead conversions are essential to the survival of any business. Leads can be people interested enough to come into your store. Or those who visit your website to see if your location services what they need. It’s not necessary to completely re-do your website for leads. But there are several ways you can leverage your website in order to bring in more sales and leads.
First, take an audit of your website and other digital assets like business listings and social media. See how you’re encouraging people to come to your business. Do you have buttons and language that encourage people to call or visit you? Consider your website as a resume for your business. You want people to contact you. It’s how you show off your skills. You need to make sure your website points people to taking action and actually give you a call. Make sure your website is user friendly. And give people ample opportunity to get in contact with you.
Next, you need to install tracking points to learn where traffic goes, and where your calls come from. Call tracking can tell you if leads come from your website, Google My Business, or social media. And by having tracking software on your website, you can learn where users click and where they drop off. Then you can optimize those high traffic areas with messaging to encourage people to call or click. There are several kinds of software that can help you create a heatmap for pages on your website like crazyegg or Hotjar. Google Analytics can also give you great insights into what pages people click on the most. Then you can make sure there are several lead capture points on those pages including form fields and calls to action (CTAs).
One of the greatest ways to get more leads is by showing social proof. Today’s word of mouth is hearing from other customers that they’ve had a good experience with your business. Make sure you sprinkle social proof like testimonials, case studies, and any awards throughout your website to show potential leads that your business is reputable and can help solve their issues.
Optimizing your website for more leads comes down to a lot of testing. It means trial and error to see which form or download works best for your audience. Then trying again on every page until you know what brings in conversions.
More Traffic
More traffic to your website comes down to more exposure. With more people visiting your website, the hope is that you’ll get more leads. After all, more eyes seeing your products and your business is never a bad thing. And honestly, by getting more traffic, there is a better chance of getting more leads simply because you have more people looking.
To create more traffic, you need to create content that will speak to your target audience. This is blog articles, videos, product descriptions, and more. This is your chance to show your expertise. Pull in potential customers, and show them your expertise. Expert and optimized content creates better SEO, which in turn helps bring in more traffic.
Good content always wins out in the SEO game. Good content uses specifically chosen keywords that your customers search for. This definitely includes long-form content and expert guides that establish you as an authority. By answering specific questions, you’re increasingly your likelihood of Google picking up your blog and featuring it in position zero or with its rich snippets. Anyone can achieve the snippet. You just have to write to it.
But there are several other ways you can bring in more traffic. Encourage people to visit through your social media and email lists. By creating an awesome product video and posting it online, that will drive a lot of people to your website simply because they want to learn more. That encourages brand awareness. And while they might not need your business at the moment, they will remember it when it comes time.
The Verdict
For us, more leads wins out in this one. Traffic is meaningless if people don’t take action on what they see. A lead may not mean you’ve sold them, but they’ve either filled out a form or called your business, which means they’re one step down the funnel. That’s one step closer to a sale.
Leads are more difficult to get. But a well optimized website that both brings in the traffic, and encourages people to take action, will lead to the highest success. A higher conversion rate plus more traffic equals serious success for your business.
Need help optimizing your website or helping your clients better optimize for both leads and traffic? We can help at Boostability to either optimize your site for more traffic, or build you a new site to encourage conversions. Call us today! 800-261-1537.
