15 Most Efficient Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates

Background:
A common question asked from Internet Marketers on a day to day basis is that “How do you generate leads?” to which most of them answer by saying “Placing an attractive and high-converting lead generation form on the landing page”. Well, they are quite correct as lead generation through eye-catching forms has become quite a commonplace these days. It has become so famous, that according to a SalesForce study, “companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost”. This makes your lead generation form quite simply a gateway between your site and your visitors.
BUT, is it possible for you to ensure that your lead generation form is accurately optimized for your visitors?

Introduction:
Well, increasing your form conversion is absolutely essential, as a good conversion rate is basically the foundation of a volume of high sales. Therefore, this big challenge of ensuring the accurate optimization of lead generation form is faced by each and every Internet marketer. “61 percent of B2B marketers struggle to generate high-quality leads”, as according to the B2B Technology Marketing Community. Lead generation is probably the second most important goal of B2B companies, and they employ a number of strategies to achieve this goal. But no matter what strategy they use, it will also have a lead generation form incorporated, which brings us again to the importance of lead generation forms and how they should be optimized to increase the form conversion rates.

List:
Well, to educate our readers on this matter, we have compiled a list of “15 Most Efficient Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates”.

1- Have a Persuasive Call-to-Action

Call-to-Action, CTA for short are among the essentials one should have on their landing pages. It is basically what draws in the prospect, i.e. a prospective lead, into filling up your lead generation form. But surprisingly enough, about 72% of B2B marketers don’t have any CTAs on their pages. So, if you have a CTA make it as attractive as possible without compromising on its uniqueness. An amazing example of the perfect CTA that attracts visitors without compromising on its value is Brian Dean’s landing page, where he clearly instructs his visitors to quite simply click on the “Download” button after providing your email address and instantly receive his e-book.

2- Cut the Jargon

Understandably, the clearer you would be in your words, the more persuasive they would sound to your prospects. It is better not to try to convince people by using complicated business language as it would ultimately bring disappointment to you in return. Moreover, it is the people you are going to address to, therefore, it is better to write for them in clear and simple language instead of complicated business language which is used to communicate with businesses. Many marketers struggle with this point as they lack the ability to write with clarity. The tip for improving this weakness is to simply write a few sentences and ask yourself, would you rather use these sentences in a conversation with your friend? If yes, then good enough, but if the answer you come up with is no, then you need to re-word it.

3- Form Placement Should Always Be Above the Fold

The motivation behind having a landing page is simply to increase engagement and build people’s trusts. So, it is important to place crucial elements of the landing page such as forms and CTA should always be above-the-fold. Because as it is quite intuitive that engagement is initiated above-the-fold whereas below-the-fold builds on it.
An example of this is Unbounce’s homepage. Which saw a 41% increase in conversions after placing CTA button next to the plans they offer. Once the prospects click the CTA button, they are redirected to the form above-the-fold.

4- Incorporation of Privacy Policy Builds Trust

A privacy policy that has the potential to build trust, does not need to be too-good-to-be-true. The reason is that prospects aren’t fools that they can’t read the thoughts of marketer by just going through the privacy policy. Therefore, ignoring a long and tedious privacy policy might just be a better idea. Instead, consider incorporating a minimal privacy policy, which is both reader-friendly and trustworthy. An example of such minimal privacy policy is Shopify’s simple yet trustworthy privacy policy which reads as “No charge. Unsubscribe anytime.”

5- Minimalism is the Way to Go!

Minimalism means less distraction for your prospects and fewer distractions mean that they will focus on the single most important action to you, that is, fill your lead generation form. So, it is wise to ask yourself, are there any items on your page that will divert your visitors away from your goal? If yes, then get rid of them. This is a trick which even most hard working marketers and small business owners miss, as about 33% of small business owners work 40 to 49 hours per week, they just work too hard and get no reasonable results. Therefore, avoid working the long hours and allow plenty of white spaces instead of distractions.

6- Align the Form with the Copy of Landing Page

A simple rule of thumb for all marketers is to remember, if you want to generate leads through your landing page then it is necessary to ensure that both your form and CTA are in agreement with page copy. Suppose, if you are selling an e-book as part of your marketing campaign, then the CTA, landing page copy and form should all say the same thing. Little things such as this, drive traffic and ultimately increase your form conversion rates. An example of the landing page title, the offer and CTA, all being in agreement is given here.

7- More is Not Always Better

More is definitely not always better, this goes for the form fields. More form fields do not ensure an increase in conversion rates, whereas, fewer form fields surely do. Because ImageScape has seen an increase in its conversion rate by 120%, once it reduced its 11 form fields to only 4. For reducing the fields as an Internet Marketer, it is good to note the importance of each form field separately. Like, the email field would most usually be always required, whereas, the residential address field depend on what business you are in and which business model you follow.

8- Make Your Form Fields ‘Smart’

Incorporating ‘Smartness’ in your forms bring a unique perspective to them. This is a common lead generation tactic for inbound marketers which is also known as progressive profiling technology. The technology works as, suppose, if you have a contact already stored in your database, then instead of making the contact reenter their information, the form will prompt the respective information for each field, making your prospects job much easier. This will prove to be an important factor to decrease friction of your visitor and provide them a personalized experience.

9- Communicate Value

To make a prospect fill out your form and buy your product will first always require from you to communicate value. For which, all successful Internet Marketers add as much information about their products on a number of pages as is possible. To make the information unique and understand, they also incorporate videos and pictures because a majority of people prefer graphical information over the textual one. Moreover, according to a global research company, IDC, almost 50% of prospective sales are lost due to lack of information.

10- Build a Sales Funnel

No matter how expensive or cheap is the product you are marketing, you should always remember that the more expensive a product is, the more time people require to make up their mind to buy it. Therefore, it is important for all Internet Marketers to build and incorporate a sales funnel. Sales funnels work on three tiers, namely, Awareness, Interest, and Sale.
Starting with awareness, it is important to first create awareness of your product so that it develops an interest or attracts the interest of prospects. Once prospects feel interested, still not all of them will be willing to buy from you. So finally, a small percentage of the interested prospects will then proceed to buy your product. Sales funnels work automatically when most of the ways mentioned in this list are followed.

11- Make Buying from You Easy

The goal of every marketer should be to make doing business with them, as easy as possible for the prospects. Therefore, as an internet marketer, you should clearly leave clues for your users on what they should do next. As mentioned earlier, minimalism is important which should again be incorporated here by giving the prospects as fewer options as possible, making it easy for them to choose.
Also, keep the form fields minimal, do not force them to sign up to buy from you and finally, if possible, then try to offer free shipping. When followed appropriately, these little things have the potential to revolutionize your conversion rates.

12- Determine the Best Lead Generation CTA Positioning with a Split Test

Among the many lead generation strategies, the three most common ones are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%) and content marketing (67%). But to make any of these strategies work in your favor, you need to ensure if your CTA is very well positioned. To check this, you need to perform a little experiment called the Split Testing. An example of this tweaking experiment, where marketers have to test placing the lead generation form and CTA right or left, above-the-fold or below-the-fold, is of Marketo who conducted this test on form field length. They reduced their cost per lead by $10.66 at the end of the experiment.

13- Address Prospects’ Objections

When the prospects will read your offer, there will definitely be friction. They will have conscious and subconscious objections and hesitations about whatever you are telling about your product. So, it is a good idea to view your product and whatever you have written about it with a neutral eye and try to address whatever objections you feel you might have.
When you would do this, you would feel that you need to first explain whatever problems your product solves. Then to build further trust, show off your experience and credentials. Finally to seal the deal, have testimonials of a variety of users that have benefited from the product you are offering. These three pointers are quite general, Internet Marketers need to be more thorough and address even the slightest of their prospects’ objections.

14- Offer Proofs

Whether you are including a study in your CTA or making big claims, you need to back them all up with proofs. Because prospects are skeptical of whether the claim you are making is even true or not, they are not fools, instead they are fully aware of the specifications of the product they are buying and even a little bit about Internet marketing. Therefore, the proofs you need to provide include:

- Case Studies: Because time and time again, they prove to be immensely effective.
- Customer Testimonials: This is mentioned in the previous point as they improve the value and trust of both you and your product.
- Social Media Presence: If you have a big number of customers with most of them following you on social media, then it is a gem of a proof right there.
- Reviews from Third-Party: Has your product been reviewed by a blog or a trade magazine? Well then, show it off!
- Incorporate Videos: The best way to win the trust of any prospect is to show the working demo of your product. Nothing beats showcasing your product with amazing videos.

15- Make a Comparison with Your Competitors

Well, people are most definitely going to compare a product that collides with the area of interest that is same as of your product. To argue that a product is more valuable, they will highlight it with comparisons without even giving a lot of thought. So before anyone does that, make the comparisons yourself. Comparing totally depends on your product. If your product is sort of tech related then it is more complex, which means that you need to write a more descriptive comparison. Or else, the tradition way is to use tables like this or come up with more creative, better ways.

Conclusion:
Sending traffic to a landing page that is simply not ready for the target audience is a waste of money and time, which is why with these 15 most efficient ways, you are going to make people think more clearly and also help them to make the right decision.
So, here you have the all the 15 Most Efficient Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates one last time, as a checklist:

- Have a Persuasive Call-to-Action
- Cut the Jargon
- Form Placement Should Always Be Above the Fold
- Incorporation of Privacy Policy Builds Trust
- Minimalism is the Way to Go!
- Align the Form with the Copy of Landing Page
- More is Not Always Better
- Make Your Form Fields ‘Smart’
- Communicate Value
- Build a Sales Funnel
- Make Buying from You Easy
- Determine the Best Lead Generation CTA Positioning with a Split Test
- Address Prospects’ Objections
- Offer Proofs
- Make a Comparison with Your Competitors