You don't need to have X-ray vision to see how well your lead generation system could be doing. Instead, you're gonna have to do some A/B testing. A/B testing is easy to design, implement, and interpret. If you're not doing it on your webpages, then now is a good time to start. But WHERE to start? Well...
Before you start testing different parts of your lead generation system, you need to understand what your goal is. Do you want to increase your clickthrough rate? Well then you'd better test out different incentives to get people to click. Are you just looking for impressions and exposure? Then you'll be trying out different advertising mediums. Are you trying to build your social media following? That might require trying giveaways, contests, or premium content. And if you're looking for more conversions, that depends on the content on your own site.
Some great tools, plugins or service options that can help you with increasing your leads and conversions are:
Ultimately, when you're A/B testing each part of your lead generation system, you're looking for any source of friction, or anything that is slowing down your prospects' buyer journey. Try each of these areas and see if you can find any friction:
The landing page is the king of the A/B test, because if there is any spot on your webpage where customers should feel welcome and persuaded, it's here. Nowhere is more important to work out a better conversion rate than on the page where prospective customers turn into leads. So what can you test on these pages?
The most noticeable test would be changing your images around. It's easy enough to throw stock images onto a landing page, and maybe they do alright, but swapping out your background for other ideas is worth investigating. Gender swap your stock photos, make it a group instead of a person, or make it no people at all. Add more images, take away others.
Besides changing around the images, try altering your copy slightly. Maybe it's as simple as adding "pleases" and "thank you's." Maybe it's changing your banner, or your Call-to-Action's (which we'll cover in just a bit.) See how WhichTestWon, one of the largest collections of A/B tests on the web, has altered landing pages in the past.
The images will be the first thing your readers notice, but it's the headline that's gonna grab their attention. It's definitely important to make sure your readers are pulled in right away. What are your headlines doing now? Making claims? Asking questions? Think back to freshman year of high school. What did your English teacher tell you about starting an essay and grabbing peoples' attention? People are going to be interested in surprising facts, important questions, and dramatic statements. Take a look at About.com's section on engaging readers to get a handful of good ideas. Here is a free headline generator. You can also use this tool to analyze the headlines you already have.
It's hard to go from click to conversion, but if you're driving traffic to your site and it's not turning into leads, maybe it's your CTA that's broken. You can try changing their color (red vs. green is a popular test), text, placement, or size. See if having your CTA above the fold changes your results. See if making it larger, more colorful, and more noticeable has any impact. Don't just make it plain text - use large images to show people where to go on your site. CTA's are a huge factor on whether your readers are just around for the article or if they really want to know what you have to say.
Some people put forms at the bottom of their pages, in hopes that people will be persuaded by their words to fill it out. Others put it right at the top, to make sure it's seen by every reader. Each has its own pros and cons, but generally, it's best to have these forms above the fold. After all, if nobody sees your form, how are they going to fill it out? Try moving your lead submission forms around to see what works best for your company. Perhaps your words are compelling enough to drive traffic to the bottom of the page, and if that works for you, it's going to work well.
You can apply these tests to almost any part of your sales funnel. Some great examples are: