In this video, you’ll learn how to use your lead magnet to generate leads using a “bar.”
The website example used in this video is Markovitz Consulting.
[Slides]Transcript
Welcome to Consulting Website Design Episode 03: Low Hanging Fruit.
In this video, we’re looking at the website of a consultant named Daniel Markovitz of Markovitz Consulting.
First things first — Daniel has a really effective, well-designed consulting website.
He’s got everything you want to see on a consulting website homepage: relevant imagery, good copy, lots of social proof, lots of thought-leadership, and then, and the end, we have some “about me.”
He’s got all of his bases covered with books, articles, webinars, you name it, he’s got it on his homepage.
I’ve called this episode “Low Hanging Fruit” because there are some simple changes Dan could make to his website to really boost its lead-generating potential.
We’re going to look at this little bar up top which introduces his potential clients to one of his assessments, which is his lead magnet.
This bar, often called a “hello bar,” is a pretty good conversion method.
It will usually convert around 1-5%, give or take a few points depending on how strong the copy and how much it stands out.
Whenever you’re introducing a lead magnet to your potential client on your website, you want to make sure it stands out from the rest of the website using contrast.
There are many ways to create contrast. One of the most obvious ways is to use color.
This orange is one that Dan uses frequently throughout his website, and it’s not obvious that with this bar he’s saying “Hey, I have this value for you, look at this” — this orange color makes it seems as though this top section could be just a static part of the website, like an extra navigation bar.
So to make this pop-out a bit more, I’m going to change the background color to blue (from Google’s material design color guide), and use a standard light blue.
And then we’re going to change this orange color to the blue. Immediately you’ll see that this blue helps the bar stand out a bit more, and it contrasts nicely with the orange.
To take this step further, I’m going to change the download link to a light orange.
I’m going to take this download link here from white to orange.
So if we compare this to the original, you can see that the blue/orange contrast draws your attention more.
And before your potential clients actually have the chance to download your lead magnet, you have to make sure it draws their attention first.
But the more important thing here I want to get into is what happens when you click this download button.
I click it, and it goes straight to download, I don’t have to enter my name, email address, or any information.
So as far as I know, Dan isn’t notified when someone downloads his lead magnet, and he certainly doesn’t have their name or email address.
And that’s unfortunate because Dan’s clearly an expert and this assessment has the potential to be extremely valuable to his potential client.
And if we go into the lead magnet, we see the assessment, where his potential clients are not only going through his assessment to see whether or not their organization is fit, but they are also qualifying themselves to see if they are an organization that could use Dan’s help and his expertise.
When we get to the end, Dan gives some of his recommendations, and I think that he could really dig deeper into why the reader should care — and go into what of problems arise from if they score low on this assessment.
He’s offering more solutions before he digs deeper into the problems and the pain points.
And then at the end, he has the perfect opportunity to insert a big, bold headline, like “If you scored low on this assessment and would like my help fixing that so that you can achieve {primary benefit}, you can schedule a free or paid consultation with me here: LINK”
This series of changes would really help Dan draw more attention to his call-to-action, gather the names and email addresses of his potential clients, and then use his lead-magnet to foster more interaction and lead to an actual conversation with his potential client — or at least more of them.
And I think this quote from a great article by Hinge drives this point home:
Forms are the way you turn visitors into prospects. So put your most valuable, enticing stuff behind them. Gated content works because most people are willing to exchange a small amount of personal information for something they perceive as valuable.
The bottom line? If you produce great content but don’t gate any of it, you are missing the entire point of content marketing.
When you put your best content behind forms, you allow your prospects to “purchase” some content with their name and email address — and this is key to turning your consulting website from “digital brochure” to a lead-generating marketing and sales machine.
Action Step
Today’s action step is to “gate” one of your best pieces of content so you can use it to generate leads.
Of course, if you don’t have any content worthy of putting behind a form, then you’ll have to create one.