The Ultimate Lead Generation Swipe File

COPY & PASTE THESE 30+ PROVEN STRATEGIES TO DOUBLE YOUR LEADS
AND SALES WITH YOUR CURRENT TRAFFIC
ULTIMATE LEAD GEN
[SWIPE FILE]

Proven lead generation ideas
For your next campaign
Optimising your landing page for lead generation
Content marketing for lead generation
Using social media for lead generation
Offline tips for lead generation
Using referrals and reviews for lead generation
Using tools for lead generation
As marketers and business owners, we spend crazy amounts of time and resources trying to attract new leads, clients
and sales.
You know that a steady stream of leads is an essential component of keeping your business afloat – but coming up
with original and effective ways to attract and convert qualified leads is easier said than done.
So how about a little inspiration?
We’ll break these strategies down for you into the following groups

Optimising your landing page
For lead generation

Create a product video
According to Forbes, 65% of us are visual learners…
If 65% of us are visual learners, why not explain your oﬀering in a
way that speaks directly to your audience?
According to studies done by Unbounce product explainer videos
can increase conversions by as much as 33%.
When videos are done right they can keep us engaged on the
page longer, and encourage us to take action.
Product videos do not need to be long or even complex to
produce these days.
Tools such as www.animoto.com make the whole video process
quick, easy and pain free, and they don’t cost the earth.
1

Don’t mention spam
At all!
A test run by Michael Aagard showed that including the phrase:
“100% privacy – we will never spam you!”
On a signup form reduced conversions by a full 18%.
It’s okay to reassure privacy, but try doing it in a fun way that
doesn’t include the word “spam.”
When in doubt, run A/B tests to be sure your signup forms are
optimized for conversion.
2
Source
h)p://contentverve.com/sign-‐up-‐privacy-‐policy-‐tests/

Try the squint test
Does it still stand out?
Squint (or take a few shots of whiskey, your choice) and then look at
your website.
Does the call to action stand out?
A travel website tested their call to action (CTA) in the left hand
column against a more contrasting CTA that passed the squint test.
The result was a whopping 591% increase in the number of
leads being generated.
Go ahead, get your squint on right now!
3
Source
h)p://contentverve.com/sign-‐up-‐privacy-‐policy-‐tests/

Give fewer choices
More choice, more confusion
Hicks Law carries the principle that fewer choices means less
confusion.
Less confusion also leads to greater action, in our case leads!
For this reason alone, you should limit confusion by having a single
CTA.
In this example MySiteAuditor decreased the option on a free trial
sign up page from 6 options to 1 and saw a 25% jump in
conversions
Incase you can’t spot the diﬀerence it is the primary navigation at the
top of the page.
4

Using social media
For lead generation

Use gated videos
If your content rocks, make them opt in!
Wistia’s Turnstile allows you to add email opt-in forms to your video's.
You can even set the form to appear in time with a verbal CTA in the
video content if you wish. This means the CTA appears in time with
the video content, helping avoid CTA blindness by visitors.
When Wistia purchased Facebook ads to send traﬃc to their video
campaigns (clicks that were costing between $1 and $2 per click)
they saw an 11% increase in free trial conversions.
5

Make posts downloadable
Of course in exchange for an email address
Quoteroller created a list of SEO directories in Australia,
which was receiving 800+ visits per month but wasn’t
generating leads.
After adding an option to download the post in PDF
format in return for an email address, the post peaked at
ﬁve new leads per day.
And has resulted in 200 new email subscribers so
far.
6

Optimise your “about us” page
Not just for boring info about your business but an opportunity to sell!
Whatever you may call it, your “about” or “team” page is very
important to your business.
This is where people see who you are and what you’re about. It’s also
a great place to have a call to action.
Jen Havice wrote how to generate leads on your about page. She
suggests including a solid value proposition in your headline and
breaking up copy into manageable chunks.
As well as having a clear idea of where you’d like visitors to go next so
you can guide them with a compelling CTA.
7

Blog consistently
(actually do it though)
Blogging is effective for generating leads. In spite of this,
not many companies have strong and consistent content
calendars (many give up after the first month).
Goodbye Crutches is an online shop for knee scooters
and other accessories to help eliminate the need for
crutches. They were struggling to drive traffic and sales
through traditional advertising.
They put together a content schedule for six months of
blogging every single day. Six months later, organic traffic
had doubled.
Once you’ve built up the traffic to your blog, your
job isn’t done. Your readers have self-selected as being
interested in what you have to offer, but they’re not yet on
your list.
Make the next step easy for them by adding relevant CTAs
to your blog posts. Unbounce does this well, with CTAs
targeted to each of their blog categories.
If a reader is interested in a PPC blog post, chances are
they’ll be interested in the ebook as well – and willing to
enter their email address in exchange for it.
8

Create and optimise “evergreen” content
If they continue to drive traffic, keep optimising the page to help increase your lead flow
Super in-depth posts take a long time to write but can pay off over time. If you frame them correctly, they can turn into content pillars that
continue to draw traffic long after their publish date. Consider the screenshot below, it shows the traffic for a post on the Interact blog entitled
“How To Make A BuzzFeed Style Quiz”
With a steady flow of traffic comes opportunities for lead generation.
David Cheng shares how to identify and optimize evergreen content on your blog. After doing a content audit to determine which posts continue
to draw traffic, he suggests updating popular posts with CTAs that point to relevant lead generation campaigns.
9

Leads on Twitter with Followerwonk
Seriously, this is a real thing…
On Twitter, you can think of leads as fruit. Some are ripe and ready to use your product, while others need some time or nurturing and
would be a waste of time for you to contact. Followerwonk helps make the distinction for you.
Use Followerwonk to identify leads, ﬁlter them and reach out to the most ripe leads to generate new customers.
10

Promote your tweets
Use twitter targeting and reach your audience
Krave cereal ran a test and found that customers exposed
to multiple promoted tweets are 12% more likely to
have an intent to purchase.
While promoted tweets are a form of sponsored content, they
should resemble typical tweets you see in your feed.
Yes, you’re paying to be in front of an audience, but you still
need to keep the tweets fun and valuable to your audience.
To maximize the potential of promoted tweets, link to a
landing page that is on the same subject as the tweet.
For your lead generation campaigns, this will help continue
the conversation and ultimately increase conversions.
11

LinkedIn content like a boss
Use LinkedIn’s new publishing platform to reach your ideal audience
A new platform has recently come alive for content
producers: LinkedIn recently opened up their publishing
platform to all users so anyone can create content.
And I’m willing to bet you should invest your time in it.
It is being rolled out slowly and has yet to hit critical velocity,
which means there is an opportunity to stand out.
According to a study by Hubspot that surveyed 5000 small
businesses, LinkedIn vastly outpaced competing social
networks for lead generation.
Remember that getting your post read on LinkedIn is just one
part of the battle. You must also have a strong oﬀer and a
paired landing page to follow through and capture leads.
12

Use Twitter cards
Free to use or pay to promote
Twitter makes it really easy to capture leads right in the
activity stream using “lead cards”
It’s the Twitter equivalent to the signup box that you see on
most blogs.
Twitter isn’t just putting on a smoke-and-mirrors show either.
Webtrends decided to put Twitter’s lead generation cards to
the test and was able to increase leads 10 fold while lowering
cost per lead 500%.
Fortunately, Twitter cards are pretty easy to set up and
lead gen cards are free to use. It’s a no brainer really.
13

Answer questions on Quora
Be useful when answering though!
This question and answer site has ballooned in popularity and
can no longer be ignored. Don’t believe me? Check out the
graph on the left.
Quora allows you to create a proﬁle with links back to
your site or landing page, so answering questions in a
useful way gets you direct exposure to leads who are asking
about your solution.
Eventbrite leveraged Quora by answering questions users
had about what they should do on New Year’s Eve.
They put in the eﬀort to make their posts useful and targeted
to the users, linking back to Eventbrite events.
You can use the same tactic – but link back to a landing page
to leverage Quora as a lead gen source.
14

Send SlideShare traffic to a landing page
Free lead gen or use the pro plan for even more leads
With more than 60 million monthly visitors, you’ve likely heard
of (and used) SlideShare.
But did you know that with a “pro plan” you can collect leads
right on the platform?
If you’re not willing to pay, SlideShare is still a great way to
generate leads. As Ana Hoffman suggests in her epic
SlideShare traffic case study, you can link to a landing page in
the presentation, description and in your profile.
Using tactics such as the one above, Ana has made
SlideShare into her second largest referral traffic source.
15

Social Listening on Twitter
Listen in to who needs your help in real time
A quick search on Twitter will give you a list of people who are
currently interested in what you are doing.
There is no other place to get this kind of real-time
information and it’s an amazing opportunity to engage with
people who are mentioning your product or have a problem
you can solve.
GNC found that many customers and potential customers
were asking questions about health and GNC products on
social channels.
By actively engaging on social, GNC was able to increase
inbound sales from social media by 25%.
Services like TweetBeep let you set up Twitter alerts which
means you don’t have to be sat in front of it all day.
16

Google+ Communities
Much like LinkedIn groups, but from the Big Daddy G
Just like LinkedIn groups, Google+ helps bring people
with common interests together.
Their communities oﬀer opportunities to become an
inﬂuencer and reach potential prospects to drive conversions.
Farfetch is a curated website which features products from
independent designers around the world.
They used Google+ to showcase new products, leading to a
116% increase in Google+ followers who converted into
paying customers at a rate of 1%
17

Oﬄine Tips
For lead generation

Flex your expertise on TV
Yep, its easier than you think!
WP Curve had their best month ever in March 2014 largely due to
appearances on Fox TV and Forbes.
The key to appearing on television is to have a unique position.
WP Curve gives people access to developers to help with their
WordPress sites (yawn), but Alex, the founder of WP Curve,
framed their companies Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as being
vital to rejuvenating an aging web (which sounds way cooler than
fixing WordPress bugs).
The connection between television appearances and new
subscribers is historically difficult to track, but WP Curve’s
television appearance significantly increased search traffic for
branded terms – and search traffic accounts for 42% of WP
Curve’s new signups. With TV as their megaphone, WP Curve saw
a 27% increase in recurring revenue in March.
18

Warm calling
No one likes cold calls, so warm ‘em up ﬁrst
If you’re going to call prospects, do your research so you know
who you are calling, what they are looking for and how you can
help.
If you’re going to ask someone to give you their time and
attention on the phone, at least have the decency to explain why
they should listen to you.
Sales Gravy created the rules for cold calling in the 21st century
and concisely sums up how cold calling should be treated today:
it should always be targeted and shouldn’t use the “spray and pray”
method
If possible, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing insists that you
should only call after you have been referred.
19
“Cold calling results in about a 1-3%
success rate for getting an initial
appointment and it’s generally
abusive to both parties. When
that same call is made with a
referral, the rate jumps up to
40% and even much higher when
that referral comes from within the
company.”
– Mahan Khalsa, co-author of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play

Speak at an event
Time to get over that fear of public speaking
Being a speaker at a physical event can yield highly qualified leads
because as a presenter, you hold a position of authority.
If the talk goes well, you’re sure to find prospects afterwards and
you can use these connections to find even more leads.
As part of the marketing plan that drove 100,000 new users in
just two years, CrazyEgg founders would speak at any and all
marketing events that would have them.
Not all the events matched up perfectly with the product, but
each one brought in new customers.
20

Using referrals & reviews
For lead generation

Strategic partnerships
Find larger companies that need what you do
Businesses often create ecosystems of companies – whether affiliates or integrations partners – with lead-sharing programs as
incentives.
The key to finding and building partnerships is to find larger companies who need what you do, then build your product into theirs
using an API or build your pitch into their sales process, in return for advertisement of the integration on their site.
In their blog post discussing how they took a SaaS startup from $0 to profitable in three months, Tint cited partnerships,
particularly with Wix as a primary reason for growth.
Partnerships may take time, but they can act as barriers to entry for competitors because your company will have a direct
connection with a larger company that potential customers already use.
And once they’re established, partnerships can drive leads for a long time.
21

Pro plans for influencers
Get thought leaders as customers
Especially in the early stages of a company, having thought
leaders as customers can drive hundreds of new signups.
Don’t be stingy. Give away all of your product features to well
respected bloggers and influencers and their communities will
follow.
All you have to ask for in return is an honest review of your
product. As long as you establish a decent relationship with the
bloggers before asking for the review, you should be safe from
getting blasted with bad reviews.
71% of B2B product purchases starts on Google If the first
thing that comes up is a positive review for your product, that’s
one point for you!
In their post about getting 100,000 new users, Crazy Egg cited
giving away free membership to bloggers as one of the top four
reasons for signups.
22

GetApp
Use these external sources to drive your lead generation
You likely understand the advantages of having a trustworthy
site review your product and list it in their inventory, but how
can you make it happen?
Syndicated with sites like Business2Community, GetApp allows
you to pay to get increased exposure across a portfolio of sites.
Mavenlink is a marketing SaaS company that thrives off of lead
generation through external sources.
With traffic coming from GetApp, they are generating tons of
qualified leads, achieving an 11.9% conversion rate from
click to trial.
23

Your email signature
Often over looked, always underutilized
If you’re anything like me, you send hundreds of emails every
week. To get the most out of these emails, consider linking back
to your site or landing page in your signature.
Like any organization, the British Red Cross must generate
revenue (donations) somehow. One way they’ve collected leads
is by adding links to donation pages in every employee’s email
signature.
Prospects who engaged with employees using the
modiﬁed signatures were 20% more likely to end up
making a donation.
Pretty impressive, right? To make the tactic more scalable, get
your customer service team use an email signature that says
“refer a friend to get 15% oﬀ.”
After all, your customer service team sends a ton of email and is
in contact with a wide variety of people, making them an
opportune group to use this method.
24

Services & Tools
For lead generation

Use AdRoll
They come to your site, they leave… now you can drag them back!
Assuming they had a positive experience, people who have already seen your website are warmer leads than those who have never
been exposed to your brand.
This is precisely why you should use AdRoll to “follow them” around the web and get them to come back and make a purchase.
Art Of Tea used AdRoll to target customers who abandoned their online shopping cart. The campaign resulted in a 5x increase in
Art of Tea’s ROI.
25

The infamous “pop-up”
Almost always increases leads and almost never increases bounce rate
As much as I hate to put this one in here, in many cases, pop-
ups have been known to increase opt-in rates.
In a case study on the Aweber blog a niche website tested a
sidebar alongside a pop-up signup form. Over the course of
seven months, the pop-up collected 1,375% more
subscribers.
If you’re going to test this out on your own site, here’s my
advice: at the very least, make your pop-up look nice and make
it easy to exit out of if the visitor isn’t interested.
26

LaunchBit
A great alternative to buying lists
I don’t like to encourage the renting or buying of email lists, but
LaunchBit oﬀers a viable alternative.
With their service, you can choose from a curated list of email
newsletters and sponsor those that share your target
customer.
Sponsoring allows you to advertise your lead generation campaigns in
email newsletters that matter to your target audience.
LaunchBit screens all lists to make sure they’re legit and handles the
transaction from sponsor to advertiser so the experience is smooth
for all.
Kinvey used LaunchBit to promote its new ebook in an eﬀort to
generate new email subscriber leads.
The campaign was so successful that they started naming LaunchBit
the $3 machine because every time they put in $3, they got a lead.
27

Social hubs
Increase the lifespan of your social posts, so they keep working day after day
You post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ all the time, but
the lifespan of those posts is just over 3 hours on average.
If you’re looking to extend the life of your posts, you may want to
consider a social hub to embed directly on your site.
These hubs work by tiling your social posts into a grid. You can then
insert CTAs within that grid to collect leads from your social
content.
Uberﬂip, maker of lead-generating social hubs, put their money where
their mouth is by converting their entire blog into a hub.
The result was a 9x lift in email subscribers in the ﬁrst month.
28

Data.com
Owned by SalesForce, but don’t let that put you oﬀ
Owned by Salesforce, Data.com is one of the largest databases of companies that exists today.
It helps you streamline your lead generation by spending less time searching for new leads, ultimately giving you more time to interface
with potential customers.
Nucleus Research used Data.com to identify and ﬁlter new sales leads quickly and precisely. This resulted in an ROI upwards of 200% and
a massive increase in annual revenue.
29

AdWords
Collect email addresses right form the Google page
AdWords allows you to place forms right inside of a search ad.
Although this works for collecting interested leads, it’s worth noting
that email addresses are put in after just a small snippet of
text (as shown here on the right).
This means that you won’t get the same qualiﬁcation as you would
from a landing page.
30

Drip
Make the most from passive traffic
Drip is a great way to generate more leads from passive
traffic.
The service provides popup technology that isn’t too
obtrusive.
Drip will collect leads from interested users and funnel them
into your email marketing program.
Temper.io, a subscription service that measures how
customers feel about your business, used Drip to simply
drive awareness about their email newsletter.
With Drip, Temper was able to generate over 1,000 new
email subscribers in two months.
These subscribers were then presented with special offers to
transition them into paying plans.
31

Quizzes
Who doesn’t like a quiz right? Quizzes are surging in popularity, but in order for them to be an
effective method for generating leads, they must be done right.
SkilledUp, is an online courses site which holds the unofficial record
for the most comprehensive Microsoft Excel guide on the internet.
This whopper of a guide sees thousands of visits each week and helps
people from all walks of life. Yet when it was first published, it wasn’t
generating leads.
Then SkilledUp implemented a quiz which tested people on their
Excel skills. The quiz, which sent leads to MailChimp generated 1,438
leads in the first 75 days!
The user interface must be fluid and simple to use. No radio buttons
allowed – they remind us of school quizzes.
The topic has to be hyper-relevant to what you do (if you’re guilty of
putting a superhero quiz on your clothing store website, just stop).
There has to be a sufficient award at the end to warrant the collection
of a lead.
32

CHRIS PERKS
07891 011 248
chris@blueethos.co.uk
www.linkedin.com/in/chrisperks
@chris_perks
WWW.BLUEETHOS.COM
As marketers, the pressure is always on us to deliver
qualiﬁed leads into the business. We all understand the
importance of lead generation – it’s coming up with fresh
and eﬀective ideas that can sometimes be tricky…
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