In today's marketing environment, an increasing amount of digital marketers are focusing their efforts on lead generation. And rightfully so: 96% of website visitors are not ready to become customers, and encouraging them to become leads first captures their information for future, more targeted brand communications.
To be successful, lead generation has to be a priority that encompasses the entirety of your website strategy. Unfortunately, especially template-based CMS platforms make that process much more difficult than it should be. A custom CMS, on the other hand, can power your lead generation ecosystem to ensure efficiency and success in filling up your database with potential customers.
Build Custom Landing Pages For Lead Generation
Oli Gardner, co-founder of Unbounce and a noted lead generation and optimization expert, builds the majority of his marketing philosophy on a simple concept: every marketing campaign should have a dedicated landing page. Lead generation depends on consistency, with a landing page that follows through on the promise your call to action or advertisement made.
Most custom CMS platforms make building this dedicated landing page within the platform itself difficult. With the help of external plugins, such as LeadPages, you can build usable landing pages for a CMS built on WordPress or Drupal that somewhat alleviates the problem. But if you truly want to build landing pages into your website to increase consistency and improve user experience, a custom CMS is a must.
Integrate Lead-Generation Flows Into Your Website
What happens after a visitor becomes a lead? In addition to providing them with the requested content, you probably want to use their indication of interest as a starting point for a relationship that eventually ends in turning them into a customer. That, in turn, requires workflows that both notify you when a new lead enters your system and sends that lead automated communication.
Building out these workflows on a template-based platform is generally impossible. Because the CMS is not directly connected to your communications platform, you can't set up a system that walks through the steps required when a new lead enters automatically. A custom CMS, on the other hand, can provide the necessary power behind your effort to automate your notifications and communications, ensuring that every lead gets consistent emails and contact from you about their interest.
Designing The CMS To Fit Your Strategy
Finally, a custom CMS offers perhaps the single most crucial advantage to powering your lead generation ecosystem: it can be built specifically to match your desired marketing and lead generation strategy. Exactly how you generate your leads matters; you may use gated content to entice users to sign up, or create an email newsletter that requires a lead subscription. Scheduling a demo of your product is another popular tactic, as is registering for a webinar.
At least one of the items discussed above probably applies to your business. The problem: all require a unique way of setting up your website, and its unique landing pages, in order to maximize success. You need a system that can adapt to your individual lead generation strategy, not one that is built as a general tool optimized for all types of online lead generation.
In the end, the key to lead generation is two-fold: prioritizing it in your marketing strategy, and integrating it into your website. The first part is a leadership decision, but the second is only possible if your website allows that seamless integration.
Too often, template-based systems allow you to generate leads, but only in ways that are generic and don't match your internal ecosystem. A custom CMS, on the other hand, allows you to customize your website and its content specifically to match your individual lead generation strategy.
