17 Silly Missed Lead Generation Opportunities

Offers are the heart and soul of lead generation. After all, you need to put something on the other side of that lead-capture form that will motivate visitors to complete it in the first place, right? And it needs to be good. That's why you spend hours upon hours creating ebooks, perfecting webinar slides, and building up your arsenal of offers. And if that's the case, you want to pump as many leads as possible out of those offers' landing pages. 

That's where promotion comes in. Creating that awesome offer and its optimized landing page is all well and good, but if you don't give your offer any more visibility than that, you're going to be hurtin' for leads. Luckily, the promotional possibilities are numerous. Are you leveraging all of these different places to promote your offers? If not, you might want to get to work. Your lead generation goal will thank you for it.

17 Places to Promote Your Marketing Offers

1. On Every Website Page: Link to your offers on every page of your website through the use of call-to-action (CTA) buttons and images. Try to align the offer you link to with the goals of that page. For example, a visitor to your website's product pages might indicate someone who is further along in the sales cycle and readier to buy, so place CTAs for more middle-of-the-funnel offers like free trails, product demos, or free consultations that speak to the interests of a visitor who is closer to a purchasing decision. Note: The only pages on your website where you should avoid placing CTAs are your landing pages themselves, since you want to keep visitors on those pages, not distract them by leading them elsewhere.

2. In a Website Content Library: If you have quite a few different offers in your marketing toolbox, consider creating a page or a few pages on your website where you can aggregate and feature all of your various offers in something like a content or offers library. Check out HubSpot's webinar page and ebook page as examples.

3. On Your Blog: Just as every page on your website should include a CTA, so should every individual blog post you publish. Again, try to align the content of the offer with the content of the blog post as best as you can in order to increase click-throughs (see the bottom of this blog post for an example!) Furthermore, add CTAs for your best performing offers to your blog's sidebar, and create banner-sized CTAs for the top of your blog, as well.

4. Within Other Offers: It might seem odd to add CTAs within offers that have already successfully converted visitors into leads, but your inbound marketing efforts shouldn't stop at lead generation. Effective inbound marketing nurtures leads from their point of conversion through to their point of purchase, and nurturing them with content is a very effective way to do it. Keep leads engaged with your business' content by encouraging them to download more. Within ebooks, webinars, and other offers is also a great time to introduce a middle-of-the-funnel offer to help move them through the sales cycle.

5. In Anchor Text: CTA buttons don't have to be the only pathways into your landing pages. Leverage anchor text, too -- link to relevant offers using appropriate keywords on your website, in blog articles, in ebooks, etc.

6. Within News Releases: If your business utilizes news releases as a way to disseminate information about your business, don't overlook the opportunity they provide for lead generation. Just as you'd use anchor text in a blog post to point to a landing page, do the same in your news releases. Bonus: You'll likely reap some SEO benefits from this practice, as well!

7. In Guest Blog Posts: If you're using guest blogging as a link building tactic, consider building some of those inbound links to your offers' landing pages. Not only will you generate traffic to your landing pages, but you'll also generate inbound links to support your business' SEO strategy. Talk about a win-win!

8. In Dedicated Email Sends: Because most marketers spend so much time and effort developing and growing their email database, dedicated email sends for your offers can be one of the most effective ways to promote them, generate new leads, or nurture existing leads. Focus your email send around one particular offer, and create optimized emails that motivate readers to click on your offer, convert, and share it with their networks using social sharing buttons within the email.

9. In Lead Nurturing Campaigns: Companies leveraging marketing automation tools to efficiently deploy lead nurturing campaigns are known to generate awesome results. In fact, Forrester Research reports that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. Create targeted lead nurturing campaigns triggered by various website behaviors, and use your most appropriate offers as the heart of these campaigns. As we mentioned earlier, you'll want to align the offer with campaign's trigger. If your visitor downloaded an ebook on a particular topic, enter them into a nurturing campaign that gives them an offer similar to that ebook's topic, and move them along through the sales cycle from there.

10. In Your Email Signature: This will be particularly effective for your business' sales team. Encourage them to add a brief text-based call-to-action at the end of their email signature to help nurture prospects with whom they're communicating using more content they might be interested in.

11. In Social Media Status Updates: Sharing links to your offers' landing pages is the main way you can use social media for lead generation. Do this frequently, and use the space that the specific social network allows to describe the value that fans and followers will get out of the offer. Try to vary the timing of when you share certain offers so people who follow you on multiple social sites aren't hit with the same promo on each site.

12. On Social Media Profiles: Use the real estate on your social media profiles to highlight your top offers. Whether it's within your company's description, on your profile image, or in your Twitter account's background, use this space wisely and strategically to support lead gen.

13. In LinkedIn Answers: Make it a regular practice to browse the LinkedIn Answers feature for your industry to identify opportunities to share your thought leadership and industry expertise. Have an offer that addresses another user's question? Provide a thoughtful answer to their question and link back to your offer for more in-depth information.

14. On Targeted LinkedIn Company Product Tabs: Have you considered adding your offers as "products" or "services" on your LinkedIn Page's 'Products' tab? It's a great way to increase visibility for your offers on LinkedIn. LinkedIn marketers can also create targeted variations of their page's 'Products' tab to display particular products/services/offers to specific demographics of LinkedIn users to increase click-throughs and ultimately conversions! To add an offer to your 'Products' tab, visit your LinkedIn Company Page as an admin, click on your page's 'Products' tab, and click 'Add a Product or Service' under 'Admin Tools.' To create targeted variations of your 'Products' tab, check out this detailed guide.

15. On Custom Facebook Tabs: On Facebook, create custom page tabs to highlight or feature your best offers, or consider using a welcome app like HubSpot's to promote an offer and generate leads right within Facebook!

16. In PPC Campaigns: If you're using pay-per-click (PPC) as a way to complement your organic SEO efforts, think of your PPC ads as simply CTAs for your offers. Follow best practices for creating calls-to-action, and you'll enjoy better click-through rates and more leads from your PPC campaigns.

17. In QR Codes: Try using a QR code as a tactic in your mobile marketing strategy. Whether you're adding the code to print marketing materials, swag you distribute at a trade show or other event marketing materials, direct code scanners to a targeted landing page that promotes an offer related to the scanned material.

What are we missing? Where else can you promote your marketing offers to maximize lead generation?

Image Credit: thepinkpeppercorn