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There’s never been a better time to be a blogger or online marketer.
Back in the day, setting up a professional-looking website would cost businesses quite a lot. We simply didn’t have access to the tools or technology we now have today.
Now, almost anyone can set up their own websites using WordPress. And the best part is, creating one costs far less than it did years ago.
However, to make your online marketing campaign wildly successful, you’ll need to have an extensive email list of highly-targeted leads. Especially if you want to bump up your audience impact and conversions.
Lead generation through landing pages
One way you can grow your email list with your site is by publishing well-designed landing pages.
A landing page should be designed with a clear and definite purpose. Every design element and word of copy should be focused on getting people to take a specific, desired action. In this case, that desired action would be for them to give you their email address via an optin form.
And everything else that doesn’t contribute to that purpose, you toss out the window.
The same principles for landing page design apply to lead capture pages. And to build a WordPress landing page that’s also a lead-generation machine, you’ll need to go through several stages:
If you’ve never created a WordPress site before, we recommend you check out our site creation guide first.
First stage: Research
If you think your landing pages need spicing up, or if you don’t even know how to start setting up your own, your first mission is to do some research.
For that, you’ll need to answer two questions:
- Which specific audience is my lead capture landing page for?
- What am I offering to them that will convince them enough to give me their details?
Ready a digital notepad (or pen and paper) and go over the email landing pages of successful bloggers and online marketers. The insight you get from studying them can prove invaluable for creating and fine-tuning your own lead generation pages.
Here are examples of great starting questions:
- How have they designed their lead-capture landing page?
- Where have they placed the signup form(s)?
- What were the channels they used to link to this lead-capture landing page? I.e. from the home page, sidebar, content CTA, etc.
Second stage: Know your tools
As the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress has amassed a huge community of plugin and theme developers.
In short, this means you always have tons of options for whatever you want to create, and when it comes to lead generation, things are no different.
Just take a look at the selection of popular, top-rated plugins in the below image:
But because we’re focusing on getting you the best lead generation results possible, let’s stick to the ones that already have a solid reputation:
- MailChimp
- OptimizePress
- Beaver Builder
Take note that these tools aren’t your run-of-the-mill WordPress plugins. They come with nifty landing page builders that can also double as lead capture pages to help you expand your email list like crazy.
MailChimp
MailChimp is a popular email marketing campaign tool that’s packed with features to help the modern marketer. They’re particularly popular for creating email campaigns while offering top-notch data analysis to help you refine your strategy.
Noteworthy features:
- Easy landing page creation
- Completely mobile-optimized pages or pop-ups
- Convenient multi-user collaboration
- Advanced reporting features
SmartTheme by OptimizePress
OptimizePress offers their latest SmartTheme tool as both a WordPress theme and plugin.
What this means is that you have access to all its fantastic design features while using it as a theme, or you could just use it as a standalone plugin with another theme — it’s all up to you.
A quick overview of features:
- Mobile responsive pages
- Fully customizable design elements
- Compatible with 19 email service providers
- Offers 100+ different Google Fonts
- Customizable blog post or page layout options
Beaver Builder
The interface of Beaver Builder makes it a convenient plugin and WordPress theme that lets you create landing pages for lead generation purposes.
There are as many as 30 premade layouts to choose from if you’d like to save time and have a landing page ready as fast as possible.
If you own or are starting a dropshipping business, for example, you’ll appreciate the fact that Beaver Builder also lets you customize landing pages that are ideal for e-commerce. It’s truly a one-stop-shop for digital marketers who aren’t afraid to invest for convenience.
Useful features:
- Drag-and-drop editing
- Can fully integrate with popular email providers
- Lets you add marketing elements easily (pricing table, contact form, CTA, etc.)
We also like the Elementor plugin for page building. Check out our Elementor tutorial here to learn more.
Third Stage: Transform Your Landing Page to a Lead Capture Page
For a landing page to be fully optimized for attracting leads, there are five essential features you need to have in order to maximize its effectiveness:
1. Headline and subheading: Think of this as your best opportunity to grab the audience’s attention. Ideally, it should convey your brand’s unique selling point so they’ll jump at the chance to give you their details.
2. Compelling call-to-action: A good CTA has three qualities: clear, clickable, and visible. By the first, we mean it should say bluntly what you want people to do. And of course, the CTA must be formatted in a way that convinces people to take action. Lastly, always make sure you don’t take attention away from the CTA, which is generally right next to your opt-in form.
3. Benefits of your product or service: As a supplement to your heading and subheading, you’ll need to add information that convinces visitors what you have to offer can be life-changing for them. It can be in a short paragraph form or a list.
4. Well-designed “hero shot”: For a lot of landing pages, the hero shot is where you display a visual representation of your product or service, something related to it. And it should look professional, while not being too overwhelming.
5. A simple and straightforward data collection form: At the end of the day, the opt-in form is the most important part of your lead capture landing page. The key thing to remember here is to ask only for relevant information — nothing else. If a form takes too long to fill out, most people simply just won’t do it.
Keeping in mind the five essential features above, you can now start using the information you’ve gathered from research and the tools we’ve shared with you in the second stage to create a kick-ass lead capture page for your WordPress business.
Sounds simple enough? It usually is.
Tying it all together
Generating quality leads may seem like rocket science for some marketers, but with the plethora of tools and services available to us today, it’s hard to imagine how things can get simpler.
Of course, a great deal of time and energy still needs to be invested to generate a nice list of leads, prospects, and customers. But doing so maximizes your business’ chance of generating more sales, which ultimately aids in the growth and expansion of your brand.
