Complete Guide To Building A Lead Generation Website

We all know the feeling when you don’t get enough (or any for that matter) quality leads and the frustration starts creeping in.

Then the anxiety…

…when will I get leads?

No business is going to be sustainable without leads.

This means you need a website that’s optimized to get leads (not just look pretty) — it needs to offer some free stuff that your target market can acquire by giving you their contact information. 

An online form to request roof inspections is one example (just saw an advert about it, ‘book a free roof condition inspection now’ and a web address –- simple and effective), and another is using something like a free ebook to capture email addresses.

In this guide, I’ll explain how you can build a website that generates leads like clockwork… à la a ClickFunnels free trial. 

Driving Traffic

You came here to learn how to generate leads, so I don’t want to spend a ton of time talking about how to drive high-quality traffic to your website. 

But it’d be a mistake to talk about building a lead-gen website without mentioning traffic. 

Why? 

Because if you don’t have high-quality traffic… you’ll never generate high-quality leads. 

Here are some common ways to drive website traffic (and thus leads)…

• SEO — Optimizing your website and its content for search engines can drive free traffic to your website every month. This is called Search Engine Optimization (or SEO).
• Ads — Facebook Ads, Pinterest Ads, and Google Ads are all easy ways to drive traffic and leads to your website.
• Sponsorships — Know which newsletters or podcasts your dream customers engage with? Sponsor those and get your business mentioned in them. 
• Influencers — There’s a big group of people who already have direct access to your target market. Work with them to get your message and product in front of their audience. 
• Affiliates — At ClickFunnels, we’re huge advocates of driving traffic and leads through our affiliates… because it WORKS. Why promote your own products when you could pay influencers a commission to do it for you? 

To learn the nitty-gritty details behind those strategies, get a free copy of Russell Brunson’s book, Traffic Secrets, by clicking here. It’s one of the most game-changing marketing books I’ve ever read…

…and I’ve read a LOT of marketing books.

Building Trust and Rapport

When you find yourself on someone’s website, what do you first look for?

You might not know it…

… but subconsciously, you’re looking for signals that you can trust the site you’re on. 

The usual ‘Featured in’ and ‘As seen on’ have a strong effect of taking the visitors’ suspicions away and leaving them with a lot more trust than they came in with.

This is very useful for anyone wanting an increase in lead generation, from local plumbers to book authors and eCommerce sites alike, everyone wants the visitors to trust them before trying to present an offer to them.

Trust seals work well…

It has been surveyed that more than 60% of abandoned shopping carts and negative purchase decisions when interested have been directly related to a lack of trust badges on the site.

Funny how these tiny little badges can double your sales, isn’t it?

Testimonials and case studies also have a big impact. 

One thing’s for sure — people aren’t going to convert on your website if they feel like they can’t trust you. 

Creating Your First Lead-Gen Funnel

Here’s a bit of advice when you start driving traffic. 

DON’T just drive traffic straight to the homepage of your website and hope to generate leads. 

Drive that traffic to a lead-gen sales funnel that’s built to convert traffic into leads. 

The difference is between this (our homepage — notice main menu navigation)…

And this (a lead-gen sales funnel we often use — notice no main menu navigation and no scroll. Just a single focus)… 

We’re not saying you shouldn’t have a homepage (in fact, you can build your entire online presence using ClickFunnels)… we’re just saying that when you are driving traffic with the intent of generating leads, you should be driving that traffic to a lead-gen sales funnel. 

Get yourself a free ClickFunnels account here and I’ll walk you through creating your first lead-gen funnel!

On the left, click on “Site & Funnels”…

Then click on “Funnels”…

In the upper right, click “Create Funnel”…

Then give your funnel a name and choose the URL path…

After you click “Create Funnel”, you’ll be taken to our funnel flow editor where you can add steps and visualize your entire lead-gen funnel. 

Click on the + button to add your first step and choose “page”. 

Now comes the fun part. 

You’ll get immediate access to our massive library of high-converting templates — these are all templates the ClickFunnels community has had success with!

On the left side, you can select your goal which, in this case, is “Opt-In”. 

Choose the template that best fits your business and offer (don’t overthink it, you’ll be able to make big customizations here soon!) and click it. 

Give it a name and create it!

Then click to edit it. 

You can then use our patent-pending ultra-powerful drag-and-drop editor to customize your lead-gen funnel however you like!

The rest is pretty straightforward. 

And the best part is… you don’t need any third-party tools. 

You can generate leads with our sales funnels, manage those leads in our CRM, build an email list and stay in touch with your leads, and tons more. 

We give you everything you need to run your business online. 

Follow Up or Flop

Look — it would be remiss of me to talk about generating leads without mentioning follow-up. 

I’m no mathematician, but the below formula is virtually always true…

More Follow-Up = More Sales

You can’t just contact your leads once after they opt-in… you need to stay in touch with them over the long haul. 

The two easiest ways to follow up are through… 

1. Following up by email
2. Following up by advertisement retargeting

The first one is very obvious and simple.

Just send emails to your audience consistently. We recommend our Seinfeld Emails process, which you can learn about in the video below…

The other method, using ad retargeting to reach those missed opportunities and turn them into viable leads again, is a bit more complex but still something that you should invest a little time and money into.

The idea is to have a Facebook advertisement follow the visitor after they leave your site without signing up for anything, which means that they’ll already possess knowledge about your services or products, making them an easier target for your advertisement.

After all, they’ve already shown interest once, so why wouldn’t they be interested again if you just offer it to them?

Facebook offers an excellent way to put this retargeting idea into practice with their custom audience feature.

By the way — if you’re managing a high-ticket business that requires more one-on-one follow-up with leads, you can use our CRM and custom workflows! 

Using Media and Assets

A good landing page that excels in lead generation will usually have great content. Media, especially videos, are the type of content that captures attention very effectively.

As you can see, we LOVE including video content on our sales and lead-gen pages…

The saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ works with lead generation websites as well because media allows you to beautifully present your points and make your visitors thirst for more. If your content is interesting and engaging, customers won’t become distracted.

But…

Maybe you’re not a pro videographer. 

The easiest way we know of to create awesome video content without any design or videographer experience is through Doodly — it’s like Canva, but for whiteboard animation videos. 

The Offer

We haven’t talked about this yet but it’s super important. 

Why the heck would someone give you their contact information??? 

How good your answer to that question is will determine how effective your lead-gen strategy is — because the answer to that question is your offer. 

In other words, what are you offering to your target market that they will happily trade for their contact info?

The best advice I’ve heard for coming up with an idea for a lead magnet is as follows: Think of the MOST IMMEDIATE problem your target market has. Then solve that for them with a simple resource.

That’s your lead magnet. 

A great example of this is SmartBlogger’s Headline Hacks lead magnets — their audience is bloggers… so this makes perfect sense. 

You could create a PDF, ebook, masterclass, webinar, or something else. 

Whatever it is, make sure it’s solving your target market’s most immediate problem… and you’ll have yourself a high-converting lead magnet. 

All The Tools You Need To Generate Leads (In One Place)

Generating leads consistently really isn’t that complicated. 

You need…

• A source of Traffic — check out Traffic Secrets
• A lead-gen funnel — get a free ClickFunnels Trial
• A way to follow up and turn your leads into customers (you can use ClickFunnel’s CRM, workflows, and email marketing tools!)

That’s really all there is to it. 

The rest is just a matter of consistency, testing different offers, and seeing what works for your business. 

If you stick with it, you’ll find that generating leads really isn’t rocket science, it’s just a matter of persistent effort and creativity.