A conversion can be anything, from signing up for your newsletter list to making a purchase. Now, when improving conversions, you need to know what your prospects’ needs and expectations vary, depending on where they are in your sales funnel. So, instead of trying to convert your prospects immediately, you first need to optimize your sales funnel and create a series of conversion-oriented tactics for each of its stages.
Here are a few tactics that may help you.
1. Get Noticed by Audiences in the Awareness Stage
People choose to buy from brands they are familiar with. Precisely because of that, you will need to maximize brand awareness and invest in tactics that will position you as an industry leader.
✔ Start Blogging
Blogging on your site or relevant industry sites lets you validate your industry expertise. Many brands make a mistake creating keyword-rich content to boost visibility in search engines. Your ultimate goal is to build relationships with your prospects, so create content that is data-backed, informative, relevant, and authentic. When people see they can apply your tips in real-life situations, they will keep coming back and, eventually, start buying from you.
✔ Build a Presence On Social Networks
Today’s customers focus on social networks when making purchases. That’s why you need to be there, too. For starters, choose channels your customers use. Hire a skilled social media manager that would build a solid publishing strategy and share and curate the hottest industry content there. To build trust with customers, encourage social media reviews, ask customers to write testimonials, collaborate with influencers, and share user-generated content. Social media listening tools will help you track your brand mentions in real-time and participate in relevant conversations.
✔ Invest in PPC
Investing in organic digital marketing campaigns is critical for building a solid brand presence in the long-run. Still, businesses that are just starting out need to remember that SEO and other organic marketing tactics don’t deliver overnight results. Therefore, to maximize brand awareness and exposure, you should combine organic search marketing with pay-per-click campaigns.
However, just because they are investing in Google Ads doesn’t mean they will achieve amazing results. To manage AdWords campaigns and appear on Google’s top 3 spots, you need to take numerous steps, such as determining your budget, keyword research, writing and optimizing ad text, campaign planning, targeting the right audiences and locations, and so forth. Keep in mind that you are paying when someone clicks on your ad. That is why you want to get yourself noticed by the right audience groups that may convert into paying customers.
2. Convert Audiences in the Consideration Stage into Leads
Now that your prospects are aware of your brand, it is time to engage them and inspire them to give you their email address. In other words, you want to convert them to leads. There are numerous lead generation tactics to implement and offering a lead magnet is certainly one of them.
A lead magnet is a valuable incentive you will offer to a visitor in exchange for their email address. Now, this could be anything that works for your audiences – a webinar, a free tool, a valuable piece of content in PDF (ebooks, guides, cheat sheets, etc.), gated content, contests, and so forth. To put your lead magnets in front of the right people, you also need to:
✔ Optimize landing pages
A landing page is a page on your website dedicated to a specific problem. Its main goal is to inform a visitor, engage them, and encourage them to give you their contact information or make a purchase.
When creating and optimizing a landing page, emphasize your offer and make it clear. People should immediately know what you are offering to them. You should also simplify it. Choose layouts that are aesthetically pleasing and keep your content concise and informative. You want visitors to focus on your CTA button and click on it. You should also choose legible fonts, leave lots of whitespace, and optimize page speed to boost mobile experiences.
✔ Create CTA buttons
A call-to-action button tells visitors what they should do next. A landing page should have a single, well-optimized CTA button that can be placed multiple times there. A CTA button needs to be clear, engaging, and persuasive. It should tell your visitors how they can benefit from giving you their contact information.
✔ Contact Forms
Contact forms are traditional, but often overlooked opportunities to grow your customer base. Always make sure your forms are easy to fill out. Ask for only those kinds of data you really need and, above all, increase their usability for all types of screens.
3. Boost Sales in the Purchase Stage
We have now reached the bottom of the sales funnel, where you can finally ask your prospects to buy from you. This is where you need to be stubborn. Stats show that it takes 6-8 touches to generate a sales-ready lead. Here are a few effective tactics to use when boosting sales.
✔ Simplify User Experiences
Never assume that your customers will waste time trying to figure out where their desired product is or how to make a purchase. They expect you to make their journey through your website clear and intuitive.
For starters, simplify website navigation. Include the most important categories in your navigation menu and offer a search box to those users that already know what to buy.
You should also offer live chat support or chatbots. By helping your customers solve problems in real-time, you will boost their satisfaction and shorten their conversion cycle.
You should also automate email campaigns and social media promotions during popular holidays so you can repeatedly notify customers about your offers and deals and maximize sales.
✔ Personalize User Experiences
Personalization is critical for any digital campaign aimed at boosting conversions. Uniform content doesn’t resonate with online customers anymore. They expect brands to provide highly targeted offers. Studies say that customers are willing to pay more for such experiences.
Now, there are many ways to use personalization to increase sales.
First, invest in AI chatbots. For example, if you are a makeup brand, let customers upload their photos and see how different makeup products suit them. A chatbot could also recommend a perfect product to each customer and point them to the page where they can finalize the purchase.
Second, use quizzes. A quiz lets you ask customers about their needs, preferences, and problems and, based on their answers, it recommends the right products. Similarly to a chatbot, a quiz should include a convincing CTA button a customer should click to purchase the product.
Third, segment email lists. To grab customers’ attention, you want to provide them with the content they are interested in. For example, when signing up for your email newsletter, you should ask them about their content preferences, kinds of products they are interested in, as well as how frequently they would like to receive updates from you. Most importantly, emphasize why they should open your emails.
Email marketing is also perfect for retargeting customers that abandoned their shopping cart. Use automated emails to connect with those consumers and offer incentives, such as free shipping or discounts, to encourage them to visit your site and finalize the purchase. For example, when sending release notes, emphasize how your updates are relevant to users and include visual content (photos, gifs, memes, video) to engage them.
Another way of personalizing user experience is by sending release notes with an in-app widget. You can emphasize how specific updates are relevant to certain users and include visual content (photos, gifs, memes, video) and CTA to engage them.
Conclusions
What you can conclude from the examples above is that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for turning prospects into conversions. You need to invest more in customer-centered marketing practices that gain trust and build strong relationships before converting. And, the best way to do so is to use the right strategies across different stages of your sales funnel. This way, apart from maximizing conversions, you will also boost customer satisfaction and increase brand loyalty.
