Most of the information about digital marketing is focused on tactics to drive more prospects to your website. It makes sense because if you don’t have any traffic, then there is no way your website is going to generate any sales.
But traffic is really just one aspect of digital marketing, and you’ll never be successful if all you focus on is driving more traffic to your site. To be successful with digital marketing you need all four of what we call the 4 Pillars of Digital Marketing. These pillars are:
- Website Traffic: There’s no question you need traffic.
- Website Conversion: Once prospects are on your site, then you need to convert them into leads and customers.
- High Customer Value: The higher your customer value, the more you can afford to invest to generate sales. Typically, the business with the higher customer value from up-sells, cross-sells, and repeat purchases will dominate your industry.
- Tracking ROI: Tracking the return on investment (ROI) from each marketing channel will clearly tell you where to invest your budget each month.
In this article, I’m going to tackle the 2nd pillar – Website Conversions. If you already have prospects visiting your website, but you’re not getting leads and sales, then this article is for you. Below are 4 proven tactics to get more leads and sales from your website…
Tactic #1: Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is simply something you offer for free on your website in exchange for prospects’ contact information. Typically a lead magnet is a free report, white paper, coupon, video, or a tool that your ideal prospect would be interested in. Go to www.mainstreetroi.com and you’ll see we offer the Internet Marketing Survival Guide right on the homepage a lead magnet.
Why is this important? Well, on average, nearly 98% of all the visitors to your website are not ready to make a purchase. They are clearly interested (why else would they be reading your website), but they aren’t ready or don’t have time at that moment to pull the trigger. So they’ll leave and likely never return to your website when they are ready.
The solution? Add a lead magnet on your site to collect contact information like name and email address so you can follow up and nurture prospects. That leads us to tactic #2…
Tactic #2: Email Follow-Up
We all know the importance of follow up. As mentioned above, the vast majority of prospects visiting your website are not ready to make a purchase, which means we need systems to follow up and nurture prospects until the timing is right.
The 2 systems you need are:
- Autoresponders
- Valuable Email Newsletters
An autoresponder is a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to prospects after they request your lead magnet. You set this up once and then it runs on autopilot in the background like a 24/7 salesperson. If you’ve ever requested one of our many lead magnets, then you’ve experienced our autoresponders. They look like regular emails that you send to friends. We’re not talking about fancy designs and graphics. In most cases, an autoresponder will appear as a plain old text email that a salesperson would send to follow up with a prospect.
You’ll notice the 2nd system is a valuable email newsletter. The only way this will work is if you send valuable information. But trust me, it does work and it’s well worth your time to set this up. As more and more prospects request your lead magnet, your email newsletter list will snowball. Eventually you’ll have hundreds, even thousands of prospects that on any given day could be ready to make a purchase (or a repeat purchase).
What’s the easiest way to stay in touch with all of these prospects? You got, a valuable email newsletter!
Tactic #3: Multi-Step Checkout
If you have an e-commerce website, then this tactic alone will immediately increase sales. If you don’t have an e-commerce site, then skip to tactic #4.
Every e-commerce website has what’s called shopping cart abandonment. That means prospects add products to their shopping cart, start the ordering process, but then leave without completing their order. And guess what, if you don’t have their contact information, then they are likely never coming back!
This is basically the same problem we already discussed, but now we’re talking about the absolute best prospects. These are folks who may have made it to the final order form. They may have even entered all of their info, got distracted, and then forgot. Whatever the reason, they didn’t complete the order and you’re out of luck unless you can follow up.
The solution? Use a multi-step checkout process where you collect basic information like name and email first. Then if the prospect abandons, you’ll be able to follow up via email using an autoresponder we talked about in tactic #2.
Tactic #4: Retargeting Advertising
Up to this point, I’ve focused on different ways to collect email addresses and follow up via email. Email is by far the best tactic to convert more of the prospects who are not quite ready to make a purchase.
But just because you don’t collect the prospect’s email address, doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t follow up. Sure, you obviously can’t email, but there is a way to follow up via online banner ads. This is called retargeting advertising.
For example, with retargeting advertising, you can show banner ads to anyone who visits your website, but does not request your lead magnet or complete a contact form. These ads are laser-targeted and are cheaper than traditional banner ads. Plus, you don’t need a huge budget because you’re only targeting people who already visited your website. This also works well for bringing back all of those prospects who abandoned their shopping cart.
Take Action!
Don’t just sit there, take action on this today. I guarantee if you apply one or more of these tactics you will significantly increase the number of sales you’re currently generating from your website. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, then just start with the first tactic and work your way down the list. Good luck, and let me know how it goes for you!
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