All You Need to Know About Lead Generation with WordPress
WordPress lead generation, or the technique of turning visitors into customers and subscribers using your WordPress website, is a key to earning money online. Thus, it is unsurprisingly a top priority for businesses of all kinds. If you've wanted to learn how to generate leads and boost sales from your website, then you are in just the right place.
In this article, I have described everything you need to know about efficient lead generation in WordPress. Let us begin by understanding what exactly lead generation is all about.
What exactly is lead generation?
Basically, lead generation refers to getting “leads” or potential customers interested in your services and products and gaining their contact information. It is important to mention here that over 75% of your website visitors are going to leave and likely never return.
However, if you have strong lead generation in place, then you can gain their contact information, continue to engage with them, and turn them into satisfied customers.
There are plenty of ways for you to encourage your visitors to share their contact information, depending on the kind of website you run. Some of these include:
- Signing up for an upcoming webinar
- Entering a viral gateway run by you
- Using an online calculator with results delivered via email
- Joining your email newsletter
- Submitting an inquiry or contact form like this on your website
Thus, you can see that lead generation is pretty much all about creating a communication channel between you and your visitors.
After you successfully get a visitor to do something that opens up a communication channel, you can start sending them quality content, free goodies, special offers, and so on to bring them back to your website and turn them into customers.
Who should consider starting lead generation?
It doesn't matter whether you are a new blogger, part-time blogger, or business owner; you have a lot to gain by generating leads.
Non-profit owners can get more donations and support with the help of lead generation as well. And of course, if you are interested in getting more traffic to your website and growing your audience, then you should start generating leads right away.
Several successful bloggers and online marketers will tell you that they greatly regret not starting an email list to generate leads sooner. You should learn from their mistakes now and do the needful as soon as possible.
When should one start generating leads?
Generating leads isn't instantaneous; it takes time and patience. Don't forget that every moment you don't have lead generation in place, you're losing out on potential customers. Even if you're just created a new blog and are getting very little traffic, you can generate leads over time.
If you are a business owner who hasn't launched an official website yet, you can still gain from lead generation by putting up a “coming soon” page to create hype and anticipation among your potential customers before the actual launch.
Let us now proceed to understand the actual process of lead generation in WordPress.
How to generate leads in WordPress?
Before you can get started with lead generation, you must ensure that you're using the correct WordPress platform. This is because, in case you didn't know, there are two different types of WordPress out there – WordPress.com and WordPress.org.
A full discussion about these two kinds of WordPress is beyond the scope of this article. However, I will always recommend using the self-hosted version, WordPress.org, because it allows you to use all the features of WordPress sans any restrictions. Using it, you can put together a quality website for generating leads.
To start building a WordPress website for lead generation, you will require the following:
- WordPress hosting
- A domain name
- WordPress lead generation tools and plugins
First of all, you need to subscribe to a web hosting service and get a domain name. I suggest going for Bluehost as far as web hosting is concerned because WordPress officially recommends their hosting plans. You can then build your website and get started with lead generation. Other WordPress hosting options include:
Best plugins and tools for lead generation
There are certain tools and plugins I recommend you to use for generating leads. You must first sign up with an email marketing service provider in order to collect email addresses on your website. You can then build your email list and send emails in a user-friendly interface.
Good services for this purpose include:
Also see: Best WordPress Email Marketing Plugins in 2024
After that, you must get a popup tool such as OptinMonster. Used by more than 1.2 million websites today, it is widely regarded as one of the best popup plugins and lead generation tools available in the market. You can use it to create popups, scroll boxes, floating bars, and various other elements to generate leads on your website.
Also, you need to get a WordPress form builder. I recommend going for WPForms – one of the leading lead generation plugins and form builders presently available. It is used by more than five million websites all across the world. With its help, you can create signup forms, lead generation forms, and much more.
I will talk more about lead generation using forms in the next section.
Lead generation using forms in WordPress
Using WordPress forms is a highly efficient way of generating leads on your site. It can be a simple contact form, general interest form, request-a-quote form, and so on.
I recommend using the aforementioned WPForms plugin to add forms to your website. It is a great choice for beginners and allows you to conveniently create almost any kind of form using the drag-and-drop builder.
The WPForms plugin comes with more than 300 form templates and readily integrates with all major email marketing providers. Thus, you can easily direct your leads to your tool of choice. It also includes inbuilt settings that allow you to view and manage all your form submissions directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Moreover, you can use WPForms to create simple email newsletter opt-in forms to add to various areas of your site.
Lead generation using dynamic opt-ins and popups in WordPress
When working on generating leads, you must have different types of lead generation in place. For example, even if your website visitors miss a simple sidebar email opt-in box, you can grab their attention with the help of engaging popups.
For this purpose, I recommend going for OptinMonster – a truly excellent email capture tool for WordPress.
Using this tool, you can create high-converting opt-in forms for your WordPress website without having to hire a developer. You can use it to create personalized opt-ins based on user behavior, allowing you to send them the right message at the right time. For example, you can create customized opt-ins that will turn up based on:
- The user's physical location
- The device being used by them to browse your website
- The post, page, or category they are viewing
- Where your visitors are coming to your website from (for example, Facebook or Google Search)
- Any previous interactions they have taken on your website
Along with these targeting options, dynamic opt-in forms are the most effective tools that a marketer can use.
You can generate more leads using OptinMonster in several ways, such as:
- Capturing your visitors' attention using welcome mats
- Using exit-intent lightbox popups for email signups
- Offering users incentives to join your email list
- Locking your content to improve lead generation
Lead generation using custom WordPress pages
When you're building your website, you may consider creating custom pages for lead generation. For example, you can put up a landing page that only visitors coming to your site from social media will arrive at. Such pages are designed for a very specific purpose and, because of the presence of less distraction, tend to have higher conversion rates than other pages.
You can easily build these custom pages with the help of SeedProd.
Used by more than a million websites today, it is arguably one of the best drag-and-drop WordPress page builders in the contemporary market. You can use it to create any type of landing page without having to write any code at all. It features several professional templates that are readily customizable using the drag-and-drop builder.
Many of them are useful for lead generation, such as sales funnel landing pages, opt-in pages, webinar registration pages, and much more. You can also connect SeedProd with major email marketing tools and other lead generation plugins such as WPForms. Each template here is fully customizable in order to help you start generating leads as soon as possible.
There are also numerous blocks designed to make your landing pages better and improve conversions, such as CTA buttons, countdown timers, rotating testimonials, and much more. If you are looking for more landing page builders like SeedProd, see this list.
Lead generation in WordPress using simple online calculators
A lot of leading blogs prefer to use online calculators for generating leads. These calculators help your visitors answer a question or solve a problem. However, in order to get the results from the calculator, they will have to enter their email addresses. You can readily use these calculators in any popular blogging niche such as travel, fitness, finance, and so on.
I recommend using the Formidable Forms plugin to add online calculators to your website. It is one of the best WordPress calculator + forms plugins available and allows you to build advanced online calculators without involving any code. It readily integrates with all major email marketing providers and small business CRMs. Thus, you can directly send your new leads to your provider of choice.
Moreover, Formidable Forms comes with various different templates such as paycheck calculators, BMI calculators, mortgage calculators, and more. You can also use Forminator and Gravityforms to create such calculators along with other forms.
Lead generation in WordPress using viral giveaways
Giveaways are an excellent way of getting more traffic and growing your email list and brand recognition. By running a giveaway, you will gain control over the final result; you can choose whether you want to get more social media followers, email subscribers, and so on. To enter the contest, your visitors must complete the action of your choice.
The best WordPress giveaway and contest tool presently available is RafflePress. It comes with inbuilt 1-click fraud protection and verification to help you ensure that all the leads you're generating are genuine. You can quickly create your giveaways and contests using the drag-and-drop content builder and the viral template library. One good alternative to RafflePress is KingSumo.
Lead generation in WordPress by improving comments
You can potentially build a lot of user engagement with the help of comments. Users who regularly post comments and interact on your site are more likely to become customers or join your email list. Unfortunately, WordPress' default comment system is rather inefficient when it comes to bringing back users who post comments.
There are two better ways to capture leads from your comment forms and get visitors to return to your website:
- Add a comment redirect such as a special offer page or a thank you page. You can use the Yoast Comment Hacks plugin for this purpose.
- Add a comment subscription option to allow users to get notifications about new comments. The Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin is a good choice in this regard.
How to optimize your WordPress lead generation ventures
Generating leads requires constant, dedicated effort on your part. You must regularly monitor what strategy is yielding the best results and work to improve it. You can optimize your lead generation efforts over time by following the tips given below:
- Improve opt-ins using an A/B testing tool such as Google Optimize
- Track your form conversions to decrease chances of abandonment
- Maximize your efforts by using multiple opt-in locations
- Create and use several lead magnets in different areas of your website
- Try experimenting with different images, videos, colors, and so on
- Finally, don't go overboard and annoy your users with too many distractions
Also, keep in mind that lead generation isn't everything. You must think about what will happen after a visitor actually becomes a lead. Make sure you have an effective follow-up strategy in place and consider your long-term sources of leads.
In this regard, keep the following additional tips in mind:
- Collect leads and boost conversions using an AI chatbot platform or a live chat service
- Use a professional business phone service when dealing with phone leads
- Add a CRM to WordPress for tracking and following up with leads more efficiently
- Use a push notification software as an alternative platform to communicate with your visitors
- Setup WordPress conversion tracking to observe how visitors use your website
- Optimize your WordPress SEO for search engine traffic in the long term
Conclusion
Generating leads in WordPress takes time to learn, master, and implement successfully. However, it's certainly worth the effort when you consider how rewarding it is. I hope this article helps you develop the skill of lead generation in WordPress like a true professional.
