Generating leads can be one of the best ways for small and medium businesses to increase sales volume and grow. However, leads aren’t worth anything if they can’t be effectively turned into actual sales.
In essence, lead conversion is a marketing exercise, and it needs to be treated that way to get the most out of it. Learning the basics of converting leads will likely become one of your business’s key attributes of success if you can get it right.
Because it is essentially a marketing strategy, it is essential to remember that the sales and marketing teams are vital to producing results. Once the marketing team has generated many leads, it is up to the sales team to convert them; they are the two most essential parts.
In an ideal world, in converting leads, your sales team will also be building up personal relationships with the customers, which can lead to repeat business and even word-of- mouth promotion. We all know that it is one of the most powerful forms of marketing around.
Optimize Your Website For Sales
Marketing, SEO, keywords, link building and lead generation are all excellent tools for getting the eyes you want on your business and products. Still, they don’t make you any money directly. You need to pay strict attention to your website’s content and understand how a potential visitor to your site’s journey will go.
Say you have generated a lead, and your excellent sales staff have converted it into a sale. Now all the customer has to do is head over to your website to add the product to an online shopping cart.
If your website is a mess of information and SEO heavy content that makes it challenging to navigate and find where to pay, you will lose that sale faster than you can say “web design”.
It is a tricky balancing act, though, because you also want people to visit your site for more than just when they want to make a purchase. After all, that can lead to repeat business and organic sales. Keep an eye on the metrics of your site. If the bounce rate is high, the session duration is low, or the average number of pages visited is only one or two, there is probably some work needed to make it more entertaining or engaging.
Offer sign up discounts, gifts and coupons
People love getting things for free, they always have, and they always will. People also really like paying less for something than they initially thought they might need to. Discounts, freebies, coupons and gifts have been used for many years to drive business growth.
It is a win-win situation because you get to get your product out into the market, and potential customers get to engage with your products with the positive feeling that they are getting a good deal. Not only does this help convert leads, but it also helps your sales team build those all-important relationships with clients.
It’s a strategy used throughout the business in kinds of different industries, all to significant effect. In entertainment, for example, streaming service Hulu offers a first- month free discount because they are so confident people will like the product.
In the retail space, H&M use coupons to promote new products or move old ones off the shelves. This can also be seen in iGaming, and there are many casino bonus offers such as free spins and welcome bonuses that brands like Casumo and Betfair Casino include among their offerings.
Do Your Research
This might seem like a superfluous point because a ton of research would have gone into generating the leads in the first place. Well, it should have anyway. However, the need for that very same research does not stop once the leads have been found. You need to understand your potential new customers, their needs and wants, and tailor an offer that will entice them.
“Oftentimes, when I see entrepreneurs having a hard time converting strangers into leads or leads into customers, it all comes down to the quality of their offers. If you have a bad offer, what that tells me is that you don’t know your ideal client well enough,” explains Pedro Campos, founder of PedroConverts.
You’ve already done the research to generate the leads, so, assuming you have done that part correctly, it is such a missed opportunity not to continue using it to give your sales team the best possible chance of converting the lead.
Follow Up
This is another point that should fall in the “goes without saying” category but is still seen far too often and causes far too much damage for it to be left off this list. Do not, under any circumstances, leave a potential customer hanging.
Once the marketing has been done, and the leads generated, if one of those leads tries to contact the company, whether it be by phone or over email, or via linkedin. Do not assume that they will try again to contact you because they are interested in your product. Linkedin outreach solutions, for example, you can help to automate the process of answering to your leads.
Most people shop around for things and find multiple options before making a purchase. Nothing will turn a potential customer away from a company faster than the feeling that they are being ignored. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming a generated lead is automatically a sale. That is simply the point when the hard work begins.