You know that having a good looking coaching website will help increase credibility with your potential clients. And you also know that capturing website leads (i.e. having an opt-in) is a thing you should think about doing.
But what you don’t realize is that there isn’t much point to building a website for your life coaching business unless you’re going to include lead capture and offer a freebie.
In this post I’m going to explain why lead capture is so important. I’m also going to give you the basic process to setting up lead capture on your coaching website, and provide some resources for optimizing it to give you the best result possible.
What exactly is lead capture?
A lead is simply the contact information for a potential client. And for you, a life coach, it’s the main point of having a website.
Why is lead capture so important?
Get this: “80% of visitors to your site that don’t buy immediately, will buy from you or a competitor in the next 12 months.” (source)
That means your relevant website visitors want to buy, but the majority of them won’t be ready to buy right this minute.
Think of it like window shopping. You’re interested in the merchandise, but you aren’t going to walk into the store and buy that high end Cuyana tote bag right now. You might consider it, but you need some time.
The problem is that once that lead is gone, once they click away from our coaching website, they’re gone.
UNLESS you’ve got their email.
If you get that lead’s contact information, then you don’t have to hope he or she will come back to your website and ask you for help. You can just offer it to them on a silver platter by emailing them instead!
As a life coach, email marketing is really key to converting clients. The voice of your email communication with them is a great way to show them why you’re the best one to help them, and helps you to provide value beforehand.
The bottom line is: you need to include lead capture on your website so you can convert its visitors into paying clients.
Setting up lead capture: the basics
So, how do you go about setting up lead capture on your coaching website?
I could get all technical on you and start talking about plugins and linking web forms with WordPress, but I’ll keep it simple for the sake of clarity.
Here are the steps:
1. Offer a free download that is highly relevant to your target market.
It could be a PDF guide, a short audio, or even a brief video clip of yourself. Make sure the topic gives your target market a quick win and taste of what it’s like to work with you.
2. Make it easy for your website visitors to get the free download.
Make it easy by offering it via an unobtrusive sign up box that’s easy to read and fill out. No need to ask for their social security and tax ID numbers here. I recommend you keep it simple by asking for first name and email only.
3. Lastly, give them their download right away.
You can either send the free download to their email so they have to go check their inbox to consume it. Or you can have the download appear directly on your website as soon as they submit their contact information.
Congratulations! Now you can capture leads!
Now those website visitors can be turned into leads because you’ve given them the chance to be added to your email list!
That lead capture will allow you to follow up with those leads and convert them into your coaching clients.
How to make your lead capture better
Explaining strategies to help you optimize the lead capture on your coaching website is beyond the scope of this blog post.
Instead, I’ve filtered through a bunch of lead capture strategy resources and narrowed down the best ones so you can bookmark and study them to make your lead capture more effective.
Here are the my top three resources for optimizing your website’s lead capture:
- Neil Patel, one of the top 10 marketers on the web, gives 7 ways to increase your lead capture rates (by up to nearly 600%!) right here.
- Go here to see 21 real examples of 2018’s best lead capture strategies.
- Last but not least, Dave Foy has an entire video series dedicated to how to create a high performing lead capture page over on YouTube. Watch the videos here.
What’s next
If you don’t know where to start building your lead capture on your coaching website, here’s my advice: just start.
When I was first starting as a web consultant, an industry mentor told me that when he first got started, his website was literally just a lead generation opt-in form and that’s it.
He’d grown a massively successful business at that point. Knowing he’d started with such humble beginnings gave me courage.
The point being: start collecting email addresses (and contact with the people behind them) as soon as possible.
Treat them well. Keep them updated and give great stuff to them.
I hope that’s helpful! If you know another coach that might benefit from this information, be a friend and share this post.
Jennie
P.S. Establish lead capture on your coaching website!
You’ve got to capture those contact details for potential clients because once they click away, they’re gone.
Set up lead capture with a free download and make it easy for them to consume it. Once you get it set up, then you can work on optimizing it.
Lastly, if you’re not sure how to start, just start.
