A lot of experts will tell you that building a large email list is the only way to make money in an online business. But really that’s only half of the story. The way you develop a successful business is converting those email leads into buyers.
There are opportunities at every corner to convert your website visitors to buyers. It’s important you act at each and every chance. According to research done by Forrester Research, 88% of online shoppers that begin a transaction don’t complete it. That leaves a lot of missed opportunities. In this week’s letter I will tell you about four ways to convert an online lead into a buyer.
It is the utmost of importance to respond quickly to each and every lead. Research says consumers searching for goods or services online will visit an average of four websites within a 30 minute period. You have very little time before a visitor will abandon your site and move onto the next one. That’s why it’s so important to respond quickly to a lead. If you don’t have the internal man power to call or email each and every lead quickly try automating some responses. For example set up a responder or a pop-up when a lead navigates away from the order form before completely filling it out. The responder can inquire about sending them more information or sweeten the deal to entice the sale. Trial offers work especially well in those instances.
Another option is to try lead management companies. For a few bucks per lead these companies will follow up with your leads to try to convert them into buyers. If the prospect shows an interest in your businesses products or services they can try to convert the lead themselves or contact you directly. The quicker the response time the better the chances are at converting leads into sales.
Another prudent practice is to respond repeatedly to leads and customers to get sales. Follow up is a major factor in achieving high conversion rates. Leads360, an L.A. based company that sells lead management software, released a report indicating that repeated follow up can lead to more sales. They found that following up with a lead a second time via the phone increased the chance of making a sale by 87%. Repeated contact with a potential customer will build their trust in you and your business. The more times you have contact with a lead the more likely they are to believe that you can satisfy their wants and needs. Frequent follow up also keeps your name fresh in their minds. Even if a lead isn’t quite ready to buy during your initial contact any follow up with them will increase the chance that when they are ready to buy it will be from you. Follow up can be done via a myriad of methods; emails, snail mail, and phone calls. The more personalized your follow-up message the better.
It’s also important to get to know your leads. Do you know who’s visiting your website and how they are using it? Web tracking programs like Google Analytics or Adobe’s Omniture will tell you a variety of useful information about the traffic you’re getting. You can find out what visitors are clicking on, how they found your website, what pages get the most clicks, what grabs their attention, what information they refuse to give you and at what point do they lose interest. Once you find out what works best and what doesn’t you can use all this valuable information to constantly tweak your sales letters, web pages, order forms and website to increase your conversion rate.
Ultimately you want to gain prospective buyers trust. People buy repeatedly from businesses and people they trust to provide quality products and/or services from. One way to gain their trust is to give them valuable advice and information for free on a regular basis. Write articles that show off your knowledge and understanding of your niche. You want to establish yourself as a market leader so when they are ready to buy they will choose your business over the competition. This repeated contact also opens up a dialogue with potential buyers so you can gain more insight into what they are looking for. You may be able to gleam information that will help you put together new products and services to offer.
The key to turning leads into buyers is to have well timed, frequent conversations with them that allow you to figure out what they want most and offer it to them that is satisfactory to both you and them.
Until Nextime,
Ethan Warrick
