If you’re already generating traffic to your website, then your best opportunity to increase your sales is conversion.
In this article, I’m walking you through the 3-part conversion system we recommend no matter what business you’re in.
The conversion system has 3 key components:
Paid Offer
Lead Magnet
Follow-Up
1. Improve Your Paid Offer
Your paid offer is the thing you’re selling. This might be a product, a service, or a combination of both. After reviewing hundreds of small business websites, I have some great news for you. Your competition is most likely doing a lousy job presenting a compelling offer. This is a huge opportunity for you!
Take a look at your website with fresh eyes. Or even better find someone else to review your website who doesn’t know exactly what you do yet. Here are the questions that need to be answered on your website in order to compel visitors to do business with you:
What makes you different than everyone else who sells your thing?
Why does anyone even need your thing in the first place?
Do you reduce risk in buying your thing? Do you have any guarantee?
Has anyone else purchased your thing and was happy? If so, display their comments as testimonials or endorsements.
How much time and/or money will I save using your thing?
What do I need to do right now to buy your thing?
Does your website answer those questions? If not, then you could certainly improve your paid offer. But even if you answer every question on your prospect’s mind, she still most likely will not do business with you right away. The timing may not be right or your prospect may want to do a little research before pulling the trigger.
That’s why you need the next component in the conversion system…
2. Offer a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a free offer on your website that you use to collect contact information from prospects. For example, on our homepage and you’ll see we offer the Internet Survival Guide on our homepage. The purpose of that guide is to generate leads who we can then follow up with via email (we’ll talk about that next).
One of the added benefits of a lead magnet is the ability to segment your prospects. For example, on the form to get the free offer you can include a very simple question to get more information about your prospect. One of our clients is in the dating industry so some of the information we try to collect is geographic via zip codes and whether the prospect is looking for men or women. Those are two important facts that will help us follow up with a more relevant message.
3. Multi-Channel Follow Up
OK, at this point in the conversion system I’m going to focus on following up with prospects. However, these same tactics should be used for following up with customers as well to encourage repeat purchases.
I recommend you use multiple channels to follow up with prospects, so they are more likely to see and respond to your messages. Here are some major channels to include:
Email: I already mentioned above that email is a critical tool for follow-up. I recommend every business set up a weekly (or at least monthly) email newsletter to stay in touch with prospects. If you do nothing else, then at least set this up in your business. Then layer in email promotions and automated email follow-up.
Retargeting: Next, I recommend following up using retargeting ads. This is a low cost, high ROI ad tactic that just about every business can use to bring back lost prospects and improve overall conversion rates.
Social Media: Also, I recommend connecting with prospects on social media and following up via those platforms.
Offline: I also recommend including offline methods like phone calls and direct mail, especially for higher-ticket products and services.
Alright, that’s it! You now have the blueprint to increase your conversions. Make sure you have a compelling paid offer with a clear call to action, at least one lead magnet, and a multi-channel follow-up system.
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