How do you measure the success of your online campaigns?
Profit, Revenue, Sales Numbers….

Ultimately all businesses measure their campaign success based on dollars and cents, but sometimes focusing purely on immediate ROI means you’ll miss valuable acquisition opportunities.

Remember, not everyone is going to feel comfortable buying from you straight away…so why not use a less confronting lead capture approach to get them into your buying cycle.

Here’s the top 5 ways to capture new leads through your website:

• 1. Whitepapers, Kits and Content

Free content is always appealing to potential customers. Most customers spend a lot of time researching their purchases before making a decision. By being the source of useful content, and simplifying the research process – you’ll improve your businesses profile during their decision process.

• 2. Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to ensure you’re regularly in front of your potential customers. If you pitch your newsletter as a key source of news, tips or deals, you’ll increase your chances of sign up. Once they’re on your mailing list, it gives you more opportunities to promote your services to them during the buying process.

• 3. Quotes, Appraisals or Reports

Fears around costs, what’s involved, how it works etc. are some of the biggest barriers to purchase. By offering potential customers with free appraisals, quotes or preliminary reports, you remove significant barriers to them using your services.

• 4. Social Media

Almost everyone is engaged in social media these days. So social media should is now an important lead capture strategy. By getting potential customers to follow you on Twitter or Facebook (through a good incentive), you can continue to promote your expertise or services to them via one of their most engaged communication channels.

• 5. Free tools or software

Everyone loves free tools, software or apps (assuming they’re useful). Offering these for free is a great way to capture potential leads and more importantly prove the value of your company before they spend any money, which overcomes another major barrier to purchase – “fear of an unknown business”.

So there you have it. These are the 5 approaches that we’ve found to work well. Of course this isn’t an exhaustive list, its just the strategies that have worked for our clients.

If you use different strategies on your website to capture leads, share them with your fellow readers below.

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About The Author: Rene is the marketing manager of ineedhits.com - a global search engine marketing company. He also leads the marketing for Gooruze.com - a web 2.0 style community for online and digital marketers. Rene has been in the industry since 1997 with much of that time spent helping businesses embrace the best of the internet and digital world.