In the online marketing game, it gets pretty tempting to proclaim a campaign a success as soon as a steady stream of leads comes rolling in. Leads aren't sales, though! Building a strong collection of leads is just the beginning of the sales process.
Every campaign can be tweaked and perfected to make the best possible use of the leads it generates and maximize the number of conversions it makes.
Get Comfortable With Analysis
As with many potential problems in the online marketing field, there's no "magic bullet" out there that will fix every lead conversion issue. Smart marketers understand that they'll have to carefully define their individual problem before they have a good chance at fixing it.
The answers are lurking in the records that show a campaign's effects so far. This is where a strong analytics package earns its salt; marketers need immediate access to copious amounts of data to see exactly where they're losing their leads' interest. It's only after the critical faults have been identified precisely that the marketer can start fixing them.
Study Leads And Prioritize Them
One vital aspect of data collection is to pull in plenty of demographic information about leads and customers. Good marketers will collect this information over time, balancing the "irritation factor" of asking potential customers to fill out forms against the payoff. When there's enough information available, marketers can look at their "problem" leads and determine which ones present the biggest issue.
Losing many leads in the early stages of the sales process may not be as much of a problem as losing a few leads in the final stages. Similarly, having a hard time converting major high-value leads should be considered more pressing than trouble converting low-value customers.
Target Low-Performing Conversion Steps
The sales funnel should be analyzed along with the performance of the campaign's leads. Each stage in the process will ideally be more effective than the one before it. Marketers should be on the lookout for individual steps in the process that aren't performing up to snuff. An email that's supposed to shuffle leads further down the funnel, for instance, deserves some serious attention if it's not delivering results.
Good marketers understand that they have to give their potential customers their space, but they still expect to see a positive impact from every marketing tool they bring to bear. If it proves to be impossible to fix a particular conversion tool, it may be time to retire it entirely.
Prioritize Education Above Persuasion And Selling
Most marketers are familiar with the frustration of the "fence-sitting" lead. This is the potential customer that sticks around on email lists and other marketing databases for ages without ever advancing further down the sales funnel. A robust marketing system should have automated features designed to encourage these leads to make up their minds and become customers.
Variety and low pressure are the key tactics to use here. Marketers should make sure that they deliver plenty of different information to fence-sitters. Informative and educational content is usually more effective than high-pressure sales tactics at this point.
Stretch Content Further
So, does it take a huge investment in new content to improve lead conversion and get those problem leads off their fence? Not necessarily! In most cases, marketers have a very wide tool bench to use in the conversion process. Since it's informative and useful content that makes the biggest difference, good marketers will recycle their best content from their sites, blogs, and ebooks when they design their lead conversion tools.
These serve to nurture the developing relationship with the lead and make the marketer more trustworthy. It may take time to clinch the conversion, but patience often pays off!
It's important to remember that good online marketing is a long-term proposition. It should shepherd potential customers through every step of the way from first contact to successful sale and ensure that the largest possible number of leads make it through the entire journey. That's why smart marketers take a thorough look at every part of the process and invest their time in pumping up the under-performing conversion tools.