Last week’s blog we gave you some tips about avoiding common mistakes to keep more of those visitors on your website. In today’s blog we will talk about how you can close more of those leads and turn convert them into loyal paying customers.
Your digital marketing campaign is clicking. Your web traffic is increasing, and those visitors are turning into leads. But somehow, all of these successes are making little to no impact on your bottom line. How can that be?
Chances are that the reason lies in your lead nurturing efforts. Research estimates that only 25 percent of the leads that enter your contact database are actually ready to be advanced to sales. The others are not yet ready to buy, or require more attention to be convinced that your company is actually the best choice for them.
Fortunately, a number of tips can help you increase your customer conversion rates. These 5 easy steps close more leads into customers, turning a successful digital campaign and website into an actual benefit to your revenue.
1) Follow Up Immediately
When a new lead enters your database, they expect a follow up almost immediately. Between 35 and 50 percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first to an inquiry, while most new leads expect answers to their inquiry within an hour.
For your lead conversion efforts, that means acting fast. Through your marketing automation setup or CRM, set up an automated email response that acknowledges the inquiry and provides first new steps. If you made a promise in exchange for signing up, such as a free whitepaper, this can be the space where you fulfill your promise.
2) Space Out Your Messaging
After the initial inquiry response, it makes sense to follow up periodically with other, relevant information that slowly nudges your leads to become sales-ready. However, these messages absolutely need to be timed strategically.
Send too many emails, and they will have an opposite effect than intended, annoying leads and making them less likely to become customers. Send too few, and they’ll forget about you and go with a competitor instead. Most studies agree that sending between one and four emails per month to each lead is the ideal frequency for positive responses.
3) Offer Exclusive Content
The best way to make leads feel good about your brand is to make them feel like they’re part of an exclusive group. To engender that feeling, consider creating and offering content that is exclusive to your current leads and customers.
This content can include anything from whitepapers to webinars. The goal is to continue providing value, which (thanks to the reciprocity principle) will make your leads feel more compelled to return the favor and become customers.
4) Get Personal
They’ve given you their name and contact information. Now, they expect something in return. That something: personalization. If you don’t personalize your messages to current leads, you could risk a significant portion of them jumping off to a competitor who seems to care more about them.
There is a reason that personalized emails receive six times higher transaction rates than mass email blasts. A simple addition like your recipients’ first name in the first line can help you build an immediate relationship. You can even take it one step further and pick up the phone periodically to call your leads and answer any questions they might have.
5) Coordinate the Hand Off
Finally, an optimum lead to customer conversion requires timing the hand off just right. You want to move a lead from marketing messages to the sales pitch when they’re ready.
One way to accomplish that feat is through lead scoring. Give your leads points each time they perform an interaction with your website or emails. Once they’ve reached a certain threshold, they’re ready for the sales hand off. An even simpler option is to build a standardized nurturing workflow (such as 4 emails, 1 letter, and 1 phone call), after which a lead will move to the sales desk.
Your marketing and website efforts should not go to waste. If you generate a significant number of web visitors and leads, you have to make sure that they convert to customers at high rates. With the above five tips, you can accomplish just that, ensuring that your marketing efforts are well spent and your revenue begins to grow.
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