You’ve done it! You’ve worked tirelessly to update your website, and now it’s receiving more traffic and visitors are staying longer. There’s only one problem… hardly anyone is making purchases or booking your services. You can tell from your analytics that a lot of people have been making it to the very last step in the buying process before abandoning your site. What in the name of WordPress is going on?
Your site’s main issue could be that it’s not optimized to convert casual visitors into leads and ultimately customers. In other words, potential customers might find their way to your company’s site, but may not be fully convinced that your products or services are worth buying. What’s a wise website manager to do? Use your website to build relationships with visitors via a sales funnel approach.
The Sales Funnel
Unlike a lot of cryptic marketing terms, a sales funnel is pretty straightforward. It’s a way of drawing in potential customers through a broad approach (the top of the funnel) that increasingly narrows as they progress on their buyer’s journey toward their ultimate destination — making a purchase. Although a portion of them will become uninterested along the way, those that end up purchasing from you are likely to return for more of what you’re offering. Let’s break down the sales funnel process so you can see why it’s so effective:
Stages of the Sales Funnel
- Someone visits your site via a link on one of your social media posts, a Google search, or maybe the internet gods are on your side
- Your visitor browses through blog posts and products
- They sign up for your newsletter
- They receive emails from your company with special offers and interesting info
- They’re drawn back to your site and make the decision to buy from you
- They become a regular customer! ????
- Create Your Own Sales Funnel
The key to developing an effective sales funnel is to steadily lead prospective customers down the road to making a purchase without being too pushy or focusing too heavily on promotional materials. When someone lands on your website, they should find information about what you’re selling, but they should also come across blogs and resources offering free and useful information. Resource pages shouldn’t aggressively market your product, but establish your brand as a helpful expert and trusted authority in the eyes of readers. That being said, the call to action on resource pages should center around building a relationship with potential customers by encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter or interest list. In addition to providing helpful resources, it’s also wise to have an immaculate FAQs page so that viewers can find quick answers to their questions and feel confident that you are anticipating their needs.
Nurture Growing Relationships
Once visitors have signed up for one of your resources, you can now be more targeted in building an ongoing relationship with them by sending them messages about special offers, blog posts, videos, or interesting news about your company or industry. Make sure that whatever you send to them is something they will find interesting, funny, or helpful. That way, your outreach will be too valuable for them to unsubscribe.
Keep ‘em Coming
In order to outsmart competitors, who are likely also reaching out to your prospects and customers, draw people back to your site by offering a limited-time deal that is too good for them to pass up — like free shipping, a free product or service, or an invitation to an exclusive event.
Express Gratitude
Once a customer has completed a transaction, make sure to extend your gratitude via a thank you email, text, or personal note. It’s also important to demonstrate that you value customer relationships by being available for support in case they have questions or experience issues. Maintaining a steady approach of reaching out to people in incremental ways is a fantastic means of generating sales while building trust between customers and your brand so that they are more likely to buy from you again and again.
We hope that this article gave you some solid ideas on how to convert browsers into buyers. If you’d like to learn more of the ins and outs of digital marketing, we invite you to slide down the Get Community funnel and sign up for our newsletter! See what we did there. ????