Lately I have seen some pretty bad landing pages online. Especially on Google PPC for companies trying to generate debt leads. The issues range from poor design, bad content, too much content to poor quality images. All items that will decrease your conversion rates dramatically.

Here are some great tips to creating a debt lead landing page that converts.

1. Most important part of a landing page design for debt settlement is to understand where you are marketing. A landing page for social media, PPC and email are all going to have different characterstics. Understand that someone searching specifically on Google.com or even the content network for Google is more likely to like a site with more information. These online prospects are seeking out or researching debt help options. More information, articles, how to guides and content may steer them to filling out your form. Web traffic from social media or email can contain less information because these are “impulse” leads.

2. Focus on what is important. If you want online prospects to fill out your form then focus on the form. Design the landing page with plenty of call to action phrases like “Fill out our short form now” and it is also good to use arrows with nice colors to point to your form. If you want more call ins then strategically placing the phone number in three to four places on your landing will net more calls. Put the phone number at the top of the site above the form or in the right hand corner of your website header. Then at the end of every section or paragraph drop in another call to action like “Call us now for immediate information - 1-888-555-5555″. Be sure not to over do it with the phone number. You want to have it in three to four places depending on the size of your landing page. If calls are very important then test out some click to call buttons, those sometimes work well. It is highly recommened that you put a different phone number on your thank you or exit pages, this will allow you to track where your calls are coming from.

3. Keep your lead capture form as short as possible. Even an additional two fields can create lost leads or abandoned forms. If you are a lead generation company then you are forced to capture as much data as the client demands, however; there are concepts that can help you minimize your number of form fields. If you use a lead management system it may have functions that can append the city and state based on the zip code, this alone would eliminate two uneeded fields. If you are generating leads in house then you have much more room to wiggle. Let’s be honest if you are generating leads in house for your debt settlement company then why do you need so much information. If you paid $4 just to get that visitor to your site then you need them to fill out the form. Stop acting like this is the application process. Focus on getting the contact info and get the details on the phone, more leads equals more sales.

4. Always use people on your website. Happy people feeling good about your services projects well to prospects. Overall use clear high quality images that load fast. Your website should load very fast because everyone does not use high speed internet. Make sure that your main message and lead capture form are designed in the top fold or upper 300 pixels of your website. Do not force your online prospect to scroll down in order to see what you are offering. It is also good to use trust elements such as SSL seals, BBB logos and logos for any organizations in which you are a member.

5. Lastly you need to always review your site over and over for errors. Mispelled words, missing images, browser compatibility or errors are going to cost you leads. Check it often and test your forms often to assure you are not missing leads. Another tip is to always have your leads sent to two places. Post one into your lead management system or CRM and have the lead emailed to you for back up. Lost leads are not a good thing for your bottom line.

Keep an eye out for more upcoming tips for landing page design. Remember you do not always need to recreate the wheel, see what other companies are doing. If it is working for them it may work for you.

Your spoiled lazy sales team is destroying your lead campaigns. Well maybe it is not all their fault.

A branch manager or owner knows that keeping a sales team happy with good leads is important. Bad sales leads will turn a  team of educated grown sales people into a daycare full of babies. It is the sole resposibility of the manager or owner to provide their sales staff with good leads. However; a good sales lead is not going to close itself. The life cycle of your sales leads needs to be outlined and put into a standard operating procedure. When this is done each member of your sales team needs to be trained on the life cycle of your sales leads.

The outline of your leads life cycle needs to provide a clear picture of how each lead is handled from the time it is originated until it is a dead lead. In reality a lead should never be dead until your prospect opts out of your markeing campaign. Defining this process is going to allow you to maximize your media buys and hold your sales team accountable.

We were very interested to see how hard a sales lead generated on the Internet is worked.  We applied on 6 debt settlement websites over the last 2 months and analyized the life cycle of the lead. To say the least we were very shocked.

Out of 6 websites we applied on we found that only 2 out of the 6 worked the lead adequately. The 4 that did not work the lead well only emailed us 1 time and called us 1 time. Are you serious! On top of that everyone of these sites were found on Google PPC, probably paying $4 to &6 per click. I know I am sorry we clicked on your ads but that is not your problem. The problem is that someone paid good money to generate this lead and you have emailed and called the lead once. The company websites we applied on also did not respond to our inquiry until an hour after they received it.

The 2 companies that followed up well seem to understand how to work a lead. Here are some keypoints they followed and you need to start following today.

1. Send out an autoresponder email for each lead when it hits your system in real time. Thank them for applying, tell them who you are and tell them you are calling them right now.

2. Call the lead immediately. Not in 10 minutes but right now. A prospect that is on their pc or maybe even still on your website is going to pick up the phone. If you give them the chance to leave that space then your contact rate drops by 30% or more.

3. Use a lead management system to assure your leads are called up to 5 times over a course of 3 days. These numbers may be different for your company but the point is follow up and keep following up.

4. After 5 days put the lead into a automatted system that will email them ever 2 days and continue to call them once daily.

5. Verify the address on the lead to be valid and mail the client a letter asking them to call you immediately.

6. If after 10 days your prospect does not respond you need to continue to email the client until they opt out of your marketing campaign. Set up a new series of autoresponders to be sent to a prospect reaching this phase.

Managing your sales leads correctly, defining your leads life cycle and training your sales team on the process can increase your closing percentage by 3-5%. That increase is the difference between a good company and a great company.

We talk about lead management systems in our post each month. This month we are going to go into greater detail and explain why you need a lead management system.

The bottom line is a company with a lead management system is going to close sales leads at a higher rate than a company without a lead management system. No matter how good you are at managing your leads manually your sales team needs to have an organized system to receive, track and respond to leads.

Here are the top 5 reasons you need a good lead management system:

1. A good lead management system is going to allow you to send leads in real time to your sales team and this is done automatically. You can spend time doing other things like finding ways to increase revenues.

2. You are able to see how fast and how well your costly sales leads are being worked by your sales team. No more “I am working the leads they are just no good”.

3. You are able to hold your lead providers accountable for low closing ratios and of course praise the ones that are doing good.

4.  Increase in contact and closing ratio. The faster you get your leads to your sales team the higher your contact ratio will be, this results in more closings.

5.  Reporting - Reporting - Reporting. Stop guessing at how good your leads are performing and know the facts.

We invite providers of lead managements systems to comment on this post and provide other feedback that can help anyone looking into a lead management system. The choices over the years have grown and it takes a lot of research.

Put your comments here and we will approve them immediately.

The debate over what makes a good debt lead can be discussed for hours. The fact is a good debt lead is a hot commodity, if you can generate good debt leads then you are in business. Traditionally debt leads generated over the Internet have a lower contact rate which hurts overall conversions. Debt leads generated from PPC, Social Media or Display Ads all have this issue. Contact rate is a major issue and it does not matter how good your debt leads are if they can not be reached then they are labeled as bad debt leads.

To combat low contact rates there are several options. First if you are interested in Internet debt leads only then you need to make sure you have a debt lead provider with a good return policy and you are buying debt leads at the right price. Debt leads should be priced based on the conversion rate. It does not matter if a lead is $50 if you are closing over 20% then they are worth it.

Other options include debt live transfers, TV or radio leads or direct calls from online media. Which type of debt lead is best for you?

Debt Live Transfers

Debt live transfers are great in theory and if they lived up to their hype then we would all be in the debt settlement industry. Issue is that most debt live transfer providers can not meet the demand in the industry. This creates pressure on the lead provider to provide more volume. In the end lower quality leads are pushed over to meet the needs of debt live transfer buyers. If you find a good debt live transfer company then you need to hang on to them and be happy with the volume you are receiving. Finding the perfect match between a consumer meeting your filters and having time to speak to you live is hard to produce.

TV & Radio Leads

These leads are good but do not work for every debt settlement company. Why? Well not every call is an interested or qualified consumer. Most of these campaigns produce raw calls and the consumer on the other end of the phone just may want to know if you can save their home from foreclosure. Right, you do debt settlement. Well too bad you probably got charged for that call. A TV or Radio lead that is qualified then transferred to you live should do very well but the added cost of being qualified prior to coming to you is pretty high.

Direct Calls from Websites or Online Ads

These leads have the same concept as TV or Radio Leads but are usually less expensive. A debt lead provider will drive traffic to their website and push direct call ins. These calls come directly to you like a TV lead. This type of debt lead is actually considered by some to be better than a TV lead. The online visitor is not solicited but finds the website through organic or paid search. If they like what they see on the website then they call the toll-free number.

In the end a good debt lead is all about pricing, conversions, delivery and return policy. If you can find each of these in a debt lead provider then you have a good source.