Marketing your company’s services is only effective if it converts to actual sales, in other words, visitor inquiries becoming solid leads. Unfortunately, precious time and money is often wasted on visitors that are just stopping by or are not truly interested in your product. So, how does a business build up their subscribers and ensure they become customers?

Step One: Build up an Email List

The best way to quickly build up an email list is through pop-ups. Though notorious for deterring potential site visitors due to their overwhelming, distracting, and annoying nature, pop-ups have evolved to provide reminders, incentives, and clear direction to users. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make, and that I find myself most frustrated with, is when potential customers are unable to continue to a site before surrendering their email or other information. This not only turns customers away, but also furthers the divide between effective marketing and sales.

Here are a few essentials from Kissmetrics as well as a few of our own:

  • Prompt visitors at the end of your content
  • Don’t require more than 3-5 fields of information
  • Add exit-intent pop-ups to prompt visitors a final time (maybe offer an incentive/subscription rewards!)
  • Mention that you will not spam.
  • If you’re at a company where you could potentially ask for a credit card, don’t ask for one, and make it known that singing up won’t require one.
  • Add a sticky bar that will stay at the top of the page regardless of scrolling, that way your visitors will continuously be prompted free of annoyance
  • An appealing homepage with some kind of hook deeming your services necessary
  • Similar to a sticky bar, a side bar can offer a constant reminder to subscribe to your site, while not diminishing your content and frustrating your visitors
  • A landing page (different than a homepage) offers client testimonials to prove credibility and trustworthiness, as well as insights into your business highlighting its usefulness and effectiveness
  • Create a survey for visitors to complete to get honest, constructive feedback
  • According to Unbounce, pop-ups and other subscribing materials shouldn’t appear before 60 seconds has passed.
  • Try asking for a “work email” as opposed to just an email. Run A/B tests to see if this trick works for your visitors.

Below is a great example of the Small Business Administration strategically placing the right messages to get the conversion process started:

Step Two: Narrow Your Focus

Once you have a solid foundation of names, emails, and phone numbers you can start sifting through them to determine which of the site’s visitors will turn into paying customers. You can do this by nurturing your relationship with these subscribers. This is only the first or second date; you’re not sure if this person is the one, but you want to make sure you are giving off all of the right signals.

Send them relevant content, news, and updates that they will be interested in based on their initial inquiry. According to Marketing Insider Group, conversions can come in the form of subscriptions, shares on social media, content downloaded, seminar sign-ups, and just the length of time of your website. This can be misleading if you don’t take the time to truly narrow your focus and find out who is serious.

This gets into the idea of personalization at the later stages of the sales cycle. The infographic to the left from High Road Solution gives you a little bit of insight into the impact of personalization, which you can also learn about here.

 

Step Three: Find Out Who is Serious

This relationship has gone from casual dating to meeting the parents, and you want to make sure you’re both committed. Your inquiry had become a lead because it is now an official business opportunity. Follow up with the lead by asking if they have questions or concerns regarding any of the following: budgeting, time, authority, and need. Can they afford your services? Can they make a commitment? Are they qualified? What are there specific needs, and can you provide the proper solution? Once you have these questions answered, both sides will know if the relationship is meant to be.

Extra Tip: Usually this will come with a face-to-face meeting or a phone call, but if that doesn’t work, live chat is a great way to feel out those who spend a lot of time on your website but never actually make a purchase. LiveChatInc (shown below) is a great option for live chat:

Overall, the less time your company spends chasing after inquiries that won’t become leads, the better. You want your conversion rates from leads to sale to be receiving the most attention. This minds that gap between marketing and sales previously discussed, and ensures your business is not pursuing unqualified prospects. Captivate visitors in with your content, seek out subscribers, nurture your relationship, and begin the buying process.

How do you convert your website traffic? What has worked for you in the past? Let us know your experiences and your thoughts in the comment section below.