It seems like there are always more customers to win online. A new year can bring a new focus on earning and keeping the right customers for your business – and that makes sense. But, while it may be clear to everyone that increasing sales and revenue is important, not everyone is sure where to start. It may be time to consider how your digital marketing is supporting your business and sales goals.
Now, it seems obvious when you look at new direct to consumer brands that winning customers online is possible. These brands seem to be everywhere you look – and legacy businesses are trying to figure out how to sell more online. Before you set out to make a whole digital marketing plan, consider these tips on how to generate more leads online.
Focus on Call to Actions
Think about it, what are the key, top actions you want your customers to make? If you take some time and write a few of these actions out and focus on them, you can use those actions to update your website and your digital ads.
Your call-to-actions are key when it comes to earning more clicks and sales while keeping the cost of your ads down. Take Google Ads for example – there are three key predictors for your ad’s quality score, or a ranking for the quality of your ads from 1-10 which factor into the cost and placement of your ads.
Google Ad’s Quality Score Factors
- Expected Clickthrough Rate
- Ad Relevance
- Landing Page Experience
Google Ad’s signals to you if your ad is prepared correctly by these three predictive factors, expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It's not that easy though, quality score is not the only thing considered at auction. Some other factors that are taken into account at auction - device, language, location, time, search terms, other ads, and organic search results.
Focusing on your call-to-actions means focusing everywhere online. It means looking at your Google CPC Ads, website and landing pages, email marketing and social media CPC ads to make sure that your call-to-actions are relevant, that they get to the action that you want and are exciting for your users to do. While it is vital to have clear call-to-actions, before your users take an action you must provide value.
Demonstrate Value Online
Telling your story online is important, and telling a story that helps your customers is even more important because it will attract more attention. Imagine this, you find an article online that seems to find you just at the right time. The article seems find you at this serendipitous moment, right when you need it and gives you a few suggestions that are immediately useful, right now. That is the feeling you want your customers to have – that you are on their team and you don’t even know them yet.
To do this, be specific with your information, show your customers you care about them by offering them something truly useful. First demonstrate value – and then invite them to learn more by contacting you, signing up for a free-trial or another valuable asset you can provide. You have worked on your call-to-actions and because you demonstrated value online, your customers are ready to hear more.
Use Social Signals to Invite Trust
Think about walking through a summer festival with hundreds of booths and vendors trying to sell you a souvenir or food. Most of them look the same, white-top tent with a banner and a table and one or two people standing underneath waiting for you to ask them questions. But wait, there is one tent that has a line that loops around the festival. You can’t even see what they are selling in the tent – but you are intrigued, and you want to know more – click.
Social proof is when we allow the behavior of others to guide our own decisions – and it happens all the time. Social proof happens on social media with vanity metrics – likes, shares and comments. When you see that thousands of people have shared a video on Facebook, it makes it easier for you to share it too.
You can use social proof on your website by embedding customer reviews from Google, Facebook or other important referral sites in your industry. You can show how many people have shared your article or make your inventory sortable to show your most popular products. These social proofs are another way of demonstrating value – through your relationships with others rather than what you have to say about yourself.
Anticipate Questions with Online Answers
Of course, it is easier than ever to make an informed decision before buying now – but it can still be difficult to know that you are going to get exactly what you want. To help put your customers at ease you can take the time to answer questions before they even get to you. Start with questions that help differentiate your product from others and go from there.
After you have provided answers to questions you can anticipate, you can start tracking the questions you are asked in real life. If questions comes up often – you should take the time to answer it online for everyone to see. Transparency and helpfulness are two ways that you can provide upfront value to your customers.
Think about the last example of a line for a tent at the fair – we never did find out what everyone was waiting for, did we? You can start asking the people in line waiting what they are doing, but you might not be sure if it is for you still. Imagine it is a delicious pastry that is only available once a year at the summer festival, you may have a lot of questions.
- What are the pastry ingredients?
- Are there multiple options?
- Do the ingredients include dairy?
- Is it gluten free?
- How long is the wait?
- How many can you order at one time?
- What does it cost?
These questions may seem simple but stacked together they leave room for insecurity and indecision. There is a social proof, but the answers are not always there to the questions that exist. Showing that you are focused on your customer by helping them before they even begin can go a long way in building trust and expressing expertise.There are many actions to take, and starting with Call-to-Actions, providing value and demonstrating social proof while answering questions are a great place to start. Even these tasks can seem overwhelming. You can tackle them one at a time – see the results and then iterate again to perform even better and generate more leads online.
Have an idea and want to talk about it? Email info@97switch.com or call us (312) 212.0968.
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