Marketing Funnel: Convert Your Customers
You have probably heard the phrase, “They’re squeezing me out of the picture.” It’s a timeless phrase that tells someone the pressure is on to perform or get out of a business venture. For a marketing funnel, getting squeezed a bit is not a bad thing because the time has come to close a sale.
At the start of the marketing funnel, we worked hard to reach our target audience. Plenty of tactics were used to accomplish the first step of the marketing funnel process. Then, we spent considerable time cultivating our target audience by engaging them in a wide variety of ways, with social media networks playing a huge role in maintaining the interest of our target audience.
Now, the time has come to squeeze the marketing funnel further. We are entering the make it or break phase of the funnel that involves learning how to convert potential customers into lifelong patrons of your business.
In other words, we are about to learn how to close a sale.
In 2020, there are three digital marketing methods to use for closing a sale, with one representing an old school way, another one taking word of mouth advertising to a higher digital level, and a third one leveraging advanced technology.
Email Marketing: Close a Sale Sending FCM Emails
We come across a seemingly infinite number of acronyms in the world of online marketing. One digital marketing acronym has just come on the digital marketing scene. It is called FCM, and it refers to one of the oldest, yet most successful Internet marketing tools available for your business.
FCM marketing: Frequent, consistent, and meaningful emails sent to your target audience.
Email marketing was one of the first online marketing tactics used by small and medium size business operators. The primary reason why it still carries a significant amount of relevance is because the digital marketing strategy allows businesses to measure results within a short period. When you make FCM the most important component of your email marketing strategy, it can deliver the highest rate of return on your marketing dollars.
Developing a powerful email marketing campaign does not require a doctorate in Internet marketing. The process involves building a list of email subscribers, and then writing content that motivates your target audience to take action.
Sounds simple, but what are the steps required to get this done correctly to move your customers through the sales funnel?
Attention Grabbing Headline
You cannot expect to close a sale, if your emails use soft language in the headline section of the electronic messages. When you drive along a busy highway, you notice a large number of billboards that promote a wide variety of products and services. What attracts your attention to certain billboards? Of course, it is the word, the phrase, or the image that stands out among the other information printed on the side of the billboard.
Getting your target audience to read your emails starts with a headline that makes them want to click the link taking them to your email content.
Your Target Audience is in, Now What?
The first thing your customer prospects see after opening your email is the header section, which should comprise of the following parts:
Your business contact information
Subject line
Preview of email content
Sending an email from a business that has a familiar name will gain the trust of your target audience. The subject line should be short, yet personable enough to pique the interest of anyone that opened the electronic message. According to a study conducted by Return Path, email subject lines containing fewer than 50 characters have more open and click through rates than email headers exceeding 50 characters. The preview section should explain in just a couple of sentences what your email content is all about.
The Heart of the Matter
The heart of any business email you send to your customers must include three things.
Company logo
Useful content
A call to action
Adding your company logo is an effective branding tool, as it immediately associates your business with an attention grabbing image. The content you present should be concise, but enough information that helps your readers solve a problem. For example, if you operate a home improvement store, you can send an email to subscribers that discusses how to optimize the benefits of using a power saw. At the end of every email should be a call to action (CTA), whether you invite your subscribers to a sales event or motivate them to purchase a discounted product online.
Don’t Forget the Footer
Signing off on a business email might seem to require just your electronic signal. However, to close a sale, you have to include other important pieces of information. Your social media networking links should sit just below your electronic signature. Social media links bring us back to the second phase of the marketing funnel: Engaging your customers. Once again, add your business contact information, as well as your name to personalize the email. Possibly the most important thing to include in every footer is for you to follow CAN-SPAM compliance guidelines by giving your subscribers the option to unsubscribe from the email list.
Are you ready to run a customer converting email marketing program? If you answered yes, the next step is to work with a highly rated digital marketing specialist, such as the online marketing pros at Bryan Caplan Marketing that know how to close a sale. We have used tools like Constant Contact and Active Campaign to get our clients deeper into the sales funnel by closing a sale through email marketing.
Digital Word of Mouth Advertising: An Introduction to Online Reviews
Word of mouth advertising still rules when it comes to learning how to close a sale. After all, how do you base many of your buying decisions? The answer is, especially for the most important buying decisions, to get the input from the people you trust.
In 2020, word of mouth advertising is not coming out of anyone’s mouth. It is coming from online reviews. More than 85% of consumers trust online reviews enough to base much of the buying decision process on the digital recommendations. The key is to know which sites provide the most trusted reviews, and then motivating your satisfied customers to post favorable reviews about your business on those sites.
Three Review Site to Close a Sale
When you sift through the information posted on the Internet that discusses the credibility and performance of a business, what three sites pop into your mind? If you are like most consumers the answer would be the following sites:
Yelp
Google
Facebook
Yelp is a highly respected review site because it filters reviews to post authentic customer feedback. This strategy leaves out reviews from spammers, as well as disgruntled former and current employees. Facebook reviews give your business what is called in the digital world social proof. The leader in social media networking is the perfect place for visitors to see the reviews posted by friends, family members, and professional colleagues. Google reviews carry the most clout, as the search engine giant receives the most traffic of any other customer review site.
Let’s see how we can make Google customer reviews work for your business.
Get Listed in Google My Business
Do you remember a time when you went to see what you thought was going to be a scary movie? An adult was with you, and he or she held your hand to offer comfort. Google My Business is what holds your hand and hence, keeps you relaxed when the time has come to close a sale within the marketing funnel.
The first thing you have to do is claim your Google My Business listing. It is a free service provided by Google for any brick and mortar business. You then verify your listing, before completing every section of the page that includes your business contact information. Google My Business offers a section for collecting and presenting customer reviews.
Here are a few tips for establishing your presence with a Google My Business page:
All contact information must correct and consistent
Make sure to add your suite or office number, if applicable
Never use a post office box number
Display between five and 10 visually appealing images of your business
Describe your most popular products and/or services
In about a week after uploading your Google My Business information, you should receive a postcard that verifies Google has everything it needs to get your business noticed online. Every time a customer leaves a review, you will receive an alert sent to your Gmail account.
How to Get More Customer Reviews
“If you don’t ask, you’ll never know the answer.” You have heard this throughout your life, and it has special meaning for business owners that need to have more customer reviews online to build credibility for their brands. Simply asking your customers to provide feedback about your business online should be more than enough for your business to increase the number of customer reviews. You can also provide incentives, such as offering a discounted product or service. The one thing you never want to do is to tell your customers how to craft their reviews.
Let the high quality of your products and customer service do the writing for you.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
If you haven’t noticed, most of your customers are interacting with your business via mobile communication devices. The rapid increase in mobile phone interactions has created a new way for customers to purchase products and services.
It’s called buying stuff on the fly.
Think about when you start to feel hungry. You probably take out your mobile device and call your favorite restaurant to place a to go order.
Your customers do the same thing by using a cell phone or a Smartphone to access the mobile version of your business website. According to a post presented in Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, the search engine giant has moved towards relying on the SEO-friendly attributes of a mobile website when it ranks businesses operating in the same niche. In other words, building a mobile-friendly business website is just as important, if not more important than building a standard business website that customers access by using laptop and desktop computers.
Here is how you can develop and maintain a mobile device friendly business website:
Upload just a few images
Make sure the images are smaller than the size of the images on your standard website
Minimize the use of tables
Line up items on the page vertically, not horizontally
Use navigation menus instead of sidebars
Eliminate optional features
Focusing on these six tips not only makes your mobile website content easier to read, it also uploads every page faster for mobile devices. Nothing will turn off your target audience more than a mobile website that takes too much time to upload content. In fact, 40% of mobile device users leave a web page that does not upload within three seconds.
Most of the most popular website building platforms understand the importance of using responsive design principles when it comes to developing mobile-friendly websites. WordPress requires webmasters to integrate responsive themes that are small and not too complicated to upload. Squarespace offers templates that require use of the same type of mobile-friendly website techniques. Every Squarespace template allows you to customize themes and content to fit a small screen.
The Bottom Line: Convert Customers and Grow Your Business
Learning how to close a sale traditionally involved using highly personable communication skills. Business operators interacted with customers at brick and mortar stores to convert customer prospects into loyal customers.
Now, knowing how to close a sale involves leveraging digital marketing tactics.
Running an email marketing campaign, obtaining more customer reviews, and creating a mobile-friendly website are not things you should do individually. When you work with the online marketing experts at Bryan Caplan Marketing, you will be able to implement all three digital marketing practices as a bundled package. Each of the three online marketing tactics will work seamlessly with the other two tactics to help you convert customers and grow your business.
Have a marketing question? Contact us today.