Inbound marketing is all about bringing in leads. Right? The whole purpose is to drive demand and begin communication with prospective buyers of your product(s) or services(s). In discussions of inbound marketing best practices, a lot of attention and strategy is aimed at driving more traffic to your website. Get more outreach, appeal to a broader audience and get the right people to come to you! Everybody wants to get more traffic to their content and website, but a critical focus that is often overlooked is converting those people once they DO come to you. What is the point of opening the flood gates and having crowds of people stand in your lobby if all they do is mill around and refuse to enter your offices and talk to you? The goal of lead generation is conversion—getting people to take action and reach out to you. Driving loads of new visitors via inbound marketing is necessary, but the most important prospects are those who are already on your site!

So, if you think of new traffic as your gold currency, then the people currently browsing the website are your diamonds. I would much rather see my “unique visitors” statistics stay consistent and watch as my form fills and conversion ratios skyrocket than see daily traffic numbers go up even as nobody takes action on the site. How can we increase user engagement? How can website conversion be factored into inbound marketing? Industry averages suggest that a conversion ratio of 5% to 10% is a good target goal. If your average visitor-to-prospect ratio is below that, things need to change. Let’s take a look at some tips to for getting—and keeping—a dialogue going between you and your potential buyers or clients:

Make sure your messaging speaks to the needs of the client. First impressions are everything. Data has shown that your website has 10 seconds or less to capture a visitor’s attention before they consider leaving. In the world of inbound marketing, there is so much syndicated content and so many social media and website properties out there, the average person floats through a sea of data and imagery every day. As a result, your audience’s attention span and their tolerance for processing information is extremely limited. Getting through in seconds with the right message that speaks to users’ needs and addresses their questions is imperative:

* Use “human speak.” Avoid getting too technical with public pages. It is fine to relay the inner workings of your technology product or software and provide IT or engineering details, but save all that for the inner pages where more technically minded people will navigate to. Keep the main pages of the website on a conversational level, relaying use cases and easy-to-understand reasoning and marketing language. Think of the scenario of the average consumer buying a new car: Talk about the driving experience, not the schematic of the engine. If your messaging and written content can be quickly understood and feels like the beginning of a conversation, prospects will be more likely to continue poking around.

* Tell users how you can make their life better. Focus on the consumer benefits of your offering; don’t focus solely on product features or service processes. Tell website visitors WHAT your offerings can do for them instead of focusing on HOW you do it. People have an inherent need to solve their problems. In the B2B environment, the customer’s goal is to find the vendor—whether through outbound or inbound marketing campaigns—that will solve a pain point or increase profitability. If you can capture attention right away by having website content...