Converting qualified website visitors into leads is one of the biggest tasks marketers face. Inbound marketers, however, have to do more. To convert these visitors, inbound marketers have the responsibility of providing content that would convince them to voluntarily hand over to you their contact details. When that happens, they essentially turn from random visitors to leads and hopefully and eventually, customers.

Then again, how does an inbound marketer optimise his/her conversions? The answer lies in creating the right conversion paths.

What’s a conversion path?

There are a variety of definitions online for a conversion path, but the simplest is the one which says it’s a process by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead. Specifically designed to catch and convert incoming traffic from any of your online marketing campaigns, a conversion path is typically made up of a remarkable content offer, a call-to-action, a landing page, and a thank you page.

Your remarkable content should interest random visitors enough to click on the call-to-action button. Clicking that button would then take them to a landing page, where they can access that remarkable content you offered, but only after they provide their contact information by filling up a form you have put up. Once the form is filled out and submitted, they will be taken to a thank you page where they’ll finally get to access the content that they came for in the first place.

Implementing a conversion path, however, is not enough to get the conversions you’re after. Your potential customers have countless other conversion paths to follow, which makes it absolutely important that you get their attention by creating the right conversion paths, which should draw the right visitors to convert into leads and eventually, to customers and even promoters.
To create the right and effective conversion paths, here are some of the things you need to do.

Create content relevant to your personas

Your buyer personas are essential to your inbound strategy, and they are the ones you should be making content for. The Internet practically has infinite content to choose from, and you have to make sure that the content of your website is optimised to specifically appeal to your buyer personas. You have to know your buyer personas and the challenges they’re facing so you can come up with content that will help them overcome that challenge and reach any goals that they have set for themselves.

Creating buyer persona-specific content, however, is not enough to turn them into leads. There’s this thing called buyer’s journey— the active research process your personas go through leading up to purchasing something—that you have to take into consideration. You need to know where your buyer personas are in the buyer’s journey before you come up with content that’s relevant to them.

More often than not, most of your visitors are likely to still be in the dark with regards to your product or what it can do for them, and that means they’re still in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey. What they are most likely clear about is that they have a question/problem that needs an answer/a solution, and they’re looking for it online. Provide content that will educate your qualified visitors or personas, and you are more likely to convert them into leads.

Create landing pages that are tailored to your personas

Many webmasters think that landing pages are just there to collect contact information from your qualified visitors, but they are so much more. Yes, they do contain the forms that potential leads must fill out and submit before they can access the content thy came for. Landing pages also happen to be a great vehicle for presenting the benefits of your offer, especially the ones that your personas will most likely perceive to be relevant to what they’re going through and the stage they are in in the buyer’s journey previously mentioned.

Let’s say for instance that you have created an e-book about photography. If your buyer’s persona is still in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey, he or she isn’t likely to be interested in the various techniques of shooting under low light or something more advanced. However, if you discuss how you can help the visitor choose his or her first camera, you have something that speaks to that particular persona. When your landing page focuses on who your personas are as well as where they are in the buyer’s journey, you can more easily leverage your remarkable content to convert website visitors into leads.

Write calls-to-action that grab attention

Just as important as remarkable content and tailored landing pages are attention-grabbing calls-to-action or CTAs, which are buttons that announce your offers of remarkable content, ones which visitors have to click in order to reach the landing page.
To create great calls-to-action, you have to make sure that they are action-oriented. That means the language you use for it should be actionable, and that they visually stand out wherever in the website you may embed them. Also, keep in mind that you should be consistent when it comes to the content of the call-to-action message itself. It should align with what your content and your landing page says. With attention-grabbing CTAs, the chances of your visitors clicking them and reaching your landing pages would be much better.

Optimise your Thank You Pages

Thank you pages are the end of your conversion path. It’s the final stage for visitors who saw your remarkable content, clicked on your CTAs and gave you information via your landing page. Whatever remarkable content you offered them, the thank you page is where they’ll be able to access it. Then again, it may be an end, but the thank you page also offers you an opportunity to place more CTAs, all to move your visitors further along the buyer’s journey. If you have any products that complement the offer you just gave your visitors access to, the thank you page is the perfect place to offer them those products.

As long as you create the right conversion paths, random and anonymous visitors to your website are more likely to become leads and eventually, customers.