Attracting traffic to a website is becoming increasingly difficult. Competition is fierce.
Almost every business out there has a presence on the Internet.
Most of them actively seek to attract traffic with Google and social media ads or positioning keywords that generate organic traffic.
That’s why now it’s more important than ever to turn those visits into prospects, so they never leave your site empty-handed and without leaving an email address where to contact them.
People don’t want you to sell them anything too directly. There’s so much of everything on the Internet that people become suspicious or simply bored.
But there are ways to turn a cold audience into satisfied customers; the key is relationships.
We are human beings who need contact with other humans.
We want to see that behind a brand there are trustworthy people who have created a service or a product not only with the desire to make lots of money, but with the benefit of the customer in mind.
Only until a couple of decades ago, door-to-door salesmen used to knock at households to sell things. But they only managed to sell anything when they got the people in the house to trust what they said.
Today the figure of the door-to-door salesman is a thing from the past, but there’s the Internet.
The secret of selling resides in creating interest and trust to awaken the desire to buy. Click To TweetIt’s like when you’re on holidays in a busy town and waiters and souvenirs shops attendants come out looking for you and almost drag you inside the stores.
Nobody likes to be harassed.
You rather look at a nice shop window, and once you show some interest, the owner will just increase it by sharing interesting information about that object or dish.
The same thing happens in the online world.
Let’s see now how you can optimise the conversion with an audience as cold as ice. So your visitors never leave empty-handed and forget all about you!
1. Build a relationship based on the value you offer
If you create quality content on social media and on your blog, with practical advice and honest information, you will have many more possibilities of converting visits into customers.
Many companies are aware of the significance of content and that’s why it’s becoming more common for Google and Facebook ads to drive traffic to content that educates, rather than to a sales page directly.
People don’t want to feel harassed, they first want to know who you are, what do you know and why they should listen to you.
You will little by little build a relationship based on that value you offer to your audience so it’ll be much easier to sell later on.
2. Offer a little extra in exchange for an email address
When you are creating helpful content on your blog, insert boxes halfway in your posts with calls to action offering readers to get your lead magnet directly into their inbox.
A lead magnet offers useful information (about how to do something or how to solve a problem your target audience has) which you give for free in exchange for an email address.
The format of the lead magnet can be something as simple as a pdf, or something more elaborate like an e-book or webinar.
What matters is not so much the format as the quality of the content. It has to offer priceless information if you want the prospect to trust you.
Once your prospect’s email address is in your hands you can start sending emails to build a more personal relationship.
That person has left you her email address because she’s already interested in what you offer and therefore it’ll be easier to convince her to buy.
3. Create an excellent email sequence
Once you have obtained the email address of that person who is already interested, you need to create an email sequence that offers more value and increases trust in your product or service.
Social media is also an excellent place to get leads (email addresses of potential customers).
You can create Instagram, Facebook and Messenger ads offering your lead magnet to audiences that have already shown some interest before, and obtain a better ROI (return on investment).
Social media ads are becoming more expensive so it’s best to create more ads for those audiences that aren’t totally cold since they’ve already shown interest in your first ad.
That is, at first you are going to show the ad to your target audience, but then you are going to focus on those who have clicked at least once even though they haven’t bought anything yet.
Download the free guide here!
4. Be sociable
Get people to know you, comment on Facebook groups of topics related to your product or service, share your best posts and tips and help people by answering their questions.
Social media, and especially, the comments and questions people post, will help you to get to know your ideal customer better, and thus write copy that touches their emotions.
In short, the only way to turn more prospects into customers is to earn their trust and offer some value for free.
You’d think a brand like Netflix wouldn’t need to create a lot of content since everyone knows them, wouldn’t you?
And yet on their Facebook account you can see new fun and informative content every day.
We’ll look next at the other most important element to optimise the conversion: your website.
These are the most common blunders that are preventing you from converting more with your website. To write this section I got inspired by this Neil Patel’s video, a true SEO and conversion pro.
Blunders that you must avoid at all costs if you want to convert more with your website
1. Being stingy and trying to save money with your hosting
Speed is vital. Every thousandth of a second count.
People don’t have the patience to wait for your page to load.
If your site takes more than half a second to load people will go elsewhere, possibly to some competitor’s website that loads faster.
That business has more chances to sell than you, because they haven’t skimped on a good hosting service, and because they care about offering an excellent user experience.
2. Having a landing page that is too generic
You need to know where the traffic comes from to be able to adapt to the type of customer that lands on your site.
If the traffic comes from social media the message has to be less direct. It’s better to tell a story and use more arguments to convince that person that what you offer is worthwhile.
Because people who are on social media are not there waiting for someone to sell them something, but to spend time looking at photos of friends or reading news.
However, if the traffic comes from Google, those people are already looking for a solution to their problems. They have typed some keywords that have made them reach your page, either by organic ranking or through an ad.
In this case, your landing page can be more direct, since that person is already interested in what you can offer and wants a quick solution.
The more specific your landing page is to the type of customer that lands on it, the more conversions you will have.
3. Thousands of distractions
Sometimes you land on a website and you want to run away instantly.
Because they’re paralyzing.
Chatbots popping up to ask you all of a sudden if they can help you with something. And you think, but I just came in here and I still don’t know what is all this about!
They remind me of those souvenirs shop owners we talked about earlier…
Then there are these other pop-ups asking you to subscribe to a newsletter that you don’t even know what’s in it for you yet, questionnaires, calls to action in different colours…
Help!!!
According to Neil Patel chat increases the conversion, but you need to be very careful when using them because they can irritate people.
In my opinion, and that of many others, chats should not pop up until at least a minute has passed.
In that minute the person has been given some time to know what it’s all about and we don’t annoy them from the start.
In this case, the chatbot would be like one of those shop assistants who let you walk around the store, and when they see you interested in a product, they come nicely to talk.
It’s also better not to have too many options on the main menu of a landing page, because people’s minds tend to wander easily.
You need to get to the point and take prospects by the hand to where you really want them to go.
4. Content disconnection
Sometimes the link you clicked on your Google search has nothing to do with the content of the page you landed on.
For example, the snippet preview on Google talks about how you can double your organic traffic in 2 months and then the landing page intends to sell you an eBook about video editing.
People aren’t going to like finding something that has nothing to do with what was announced before.
It’s a waste of time and people hate to waste time.
5. A lousy mobile version
I’m sure it happened to you too, you wanted to check something quickly on your phone and the website is not adapted to the mobile version.
This happens a lot with official bodies’ websites, which you have no choice but to use because you may have to fill in a form urgently.
On these websites you need to zoom in the text to be able to read it, go from right to left, you come across lots of detachable menus that won’t work, in short, a pitiful experience.
Don’t let your website be like those of the public administration.
6. Failure to respond to objections
Everyone has objections when it comes to buying, “it’s too expensive, I don’t know if it’s going to serve me, maybe it’s not good quality”, etc.
Don’t leave those doubts in the air and make sure that your landing page responds to your customers’ most frequent objections.
To find out what kind of objections can arise in prospects’ minds, talk to your current customers, read on social media and comments on other websites what kind of concerns they might have, and what they really want from a product or service like yours.
Remember: don’t ever leave any doubt in the air, because that very same doubt will be the reason they leave without buying.
Offer a money-back guarantee or a trial period so the customer has nothing to lose.
If what you sell is a service, offer a free consultation so the customer can be sure you know your s**t.
There are many ways to clear up doubts, put yourself in prospects’ shoes and anticipate their objections with blunt answers.
Testimonials and success stories also help to clear up doubts, as well as video demonstrations of your product.
Many people believe that a landing page has to be as brief as possible for people to take out their credit card and buy quickly.
This is not always the case.
The main goal is to convince, and you only convince others by clearing up any possible doubts so the customer has no reason left not to buy.
6. Complicating people’s lives
The purchase or subscription process has to be as simple as possible.
People don’t want complications, don’t make them take a thousand steps to pay for your product, and don’t make them fill in unnecessary information in order to give you their email address.
We already have too many things to take care of in our daily lives and we want others to make everything else easier for us.
Conclusion
Receiving traffic on your site and not turning those visits into customers or leads is the saddest thing that can happen to your business.
Do everything you can for people not to leave with the feeling that visiting your site has been a waste of time.
Offer them something valuable in exchange for their email address, and to those who are closer to buying, make their lives easier in the process. Don’t forget to remind them why they won’t regret choosing you.
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
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