Is Your Lead Generation Strategy Helping Your Brand, or Hurting it?

The internet can be an annoying place.

Web surfers have to constantly fight off pop-ups, spam mail, obstructive banner ads, and notifications throughout each search experience. It’s like a game of Mario, and the website or service you’re trying to reach is poor, kidnapped Princess Peach.

Then, once you’ve finally beat all those little koopas, the boss comes along. No, not Bowser. It’s a subscribe form. You have to jump through this hoop to access gated information.

For many website visitors, this is a deal breaker. Sorry Peach, but there’s easier access to unrestricted content somewhere else.

Lead Generation

While you’re trying to gain leads, you may want to consider how your strategy could be pushing consumers away. Too many emails can be annoying. And if you’re pushing gated content, you’re relying on subscriptions for your lead generation.

There are better ways to generate traffic while also enhancing visitor experience.

A lead is someone who shows interest in your business. The last thing you want to do is cross that imaginary line between helpful and hurtful and end up pushing your lead away like a clingy romantic. You need to know your boundaries.

Customer acquisition is the act of transforming leads into customers. Oftentimes, marketers forget that their purpose is to attract customers to their business and instead get caught up trying desperately to convert leads into sales. Lead generation is a process. You need to build a relationship, or else make your product or service so attractive and accessible that your potential customers can’t resist.

Email Edicate & SEO

Digitization has improved how we communicate and exchange payments and information. With today’s technology, cold calling is basically phased out (bless). But that doesn’t mean that harassment is also dead, it’s just transformed. As a business, your online presence is necessary. Businesses need to generate leads one way or another. Unfortunately, lead generation can often borderline spam.

Don’t get me wrong, emails are extremely useful for gathering leads. However, you should use the power of emailing responsibly.

Your emails should be purposeful, otherwise, it’s “the boy who cried wolf.” Sending too many emails can result in potential customers thinking all of your emails are unnecessary.

The internet is a place for self-promotion. You want to tell consumers who you are, what you do, and how you do it all better than anyone else. In this case, you should work on search engine optimization (SEO). Whether your business uses a blog or posts any kind of text (duh), you should invest some time in researching popular keywords.

Gated vs. Nongated Content

Gated content is a product, service, or information that is only made accessible once a user subscribes or signs up to your website. The purpose is to generate more leads. You’re collecting contact information and higher numbers of interactions. One way to use gated content is to make visitors feel exclusive by having them sign up for content use, which allows you to gain website traffic and also track it.

Nongated content is accessible without making any commitments. The information or service is available regardless of whether the user signs up or not.

Although it’s meant to motivate users to sign up, gated content can hurt. It can deter people, and fewer people end up accessing the content. Gated content is harder for users to locate, as Google’s spiders don’t crawl gated content. Visitors to your site may also see through your strategy. Plus, a signup form is unattractive or unappealing to those who are in a hurry to find what they are looking for.

Best of Both Worlds

There’s a way to combine both gated and non-gated content to keep everyone happy.

Offer the basics of your service for free (ungated), without any commitments to sign up or subscribe. You could allow visitors to create a free account and that way you have their information. But you should make guarantees that spamming isn’t your intention and suggest that cancellation is simple. Don’t corner your lead.

Next, promote a “pro plan” or something more exclusive in which an offer is made. This way, you don’t have to harass potential clients for business. Instead, leave them wanting more. It’s proven to work. Look at Amazon Prime, Soundcloud Go and GO+, Spotify Premium, and WordPress. Companies that offer different pricing options seem to go further.

For those visitors who access your website for free, continue to remind them of their options by using a call-to-action (CTA). This will give visitors their space while also promoting a sale or membership, which can be done with a small banner or crosslink to further information and your signup form. One day, they may decide to take that next step, especially when they’re continually seeing small snippets about the perks of upgrading. These reminders should be unobtrusive and subtle but also interesting. It may sound like an oxymoron, but it’s possible.

The point is for visitors to crave more of what your business is offering. To do this, you’ll need to show them what they’re missing.