Want to Compel Visitors to Join Your Email List? Quick Lead Gen Tip

What a silly question – of course you want to compel visitors to join your email list. If you don’t, read more about how your email list is one of your biggest business assets.

If you want visitors to anything at all, you have to ask them to do it.

I know it’s a running theme, but your visitors are as busy as you are and have minuscule attention spans. If you’ve seen the previous lead gen tips, you’re already quickly telling visitors what you do, who you do it for, and how it can benefit them.

Now, tell them what to do next. This would be your main call to action (CTA). Calls to action can be very effective and compel visitors to join your email list.

Deciding what to ask them to do might take some experimenting. I recommend figuring out what will help visitors fastest and easiest. Depending on your audience and what you offer, you might ask them to sign up for a mailing list right away to get a free how-to-guide, or you might send them to an evaluation page, or you might need them to learn a bit, so you send them to your ultimate blog post.

Now, your home page is a landing page for undirected traffic, so most of the time, you’re not going to know much about them. Are they brand new, are they long-time visitors, or are they already customers? Because of that, you’re going to have multiple CTAs on your homepage. But, you should designate one as your main CTA and make sure it’s easily seen and understood by your audience. Catch them in that first few seconds!

But I don’t want to annoy my visitors

The objection I hear most is that people are afraid of annoying or alienating their site visitors. And I agree – you don’t want to do that! So, don’t have 42 popups asking for an opt-in before the home page even finishes loading.

No one will be irritated by a CTA. If it speaks to them, they’ll take the action. If it doesn’t speak to them, they will scroll right on past and not even notice it. Some people will see it and realize that what you offer isn’t for them and leave. Fine! That group wasn’t going to be interested ever.

What will annoy your site visitors however is leaving off the call to action. Any visitor that you’d be interested in knows that you run a business. They’re there to see if you can help them with their problems. And if they can an indication that you can, they WANT to take the next step. If you don’t have something logical for them to do next, they will be confused and frustrated.

Visitors will know what to do

Clients tell me that their site visitors will know what to do… “If they want to work with me, they’ll call me up.” Or check out my services page, or fill out my contact form on the contact page. But that takes more brain processing – your site visitors might be overwhelmed with all your menu choices or distracted by gossipy office mates. You need to make the next step obvious and easy for them.

So, give an interested visitor something to do right away. Ask them to do it. And keep testing to find the right action to ask for!