Almost all businesses now promote and sell themselves online in some shape or form. Whether you sell vintage clothes directly to consumers or you’re a charity looking at generating awareness and potential donations, your website and online activity can make a huge difference in your success. We cover some of the most important points to think about when looking to improve conversions and enquiries.
Calls to action and links
Calls to action are usually buttons or links on your website that encourage people to click through to another, more in-depth page on your website. From a user point of view they’re useful to find out more information about a product or service, and from your point of view they allow you to orchestrate the user journey throughout your website and reach the content that you want them to reach. Keep content to a minimum on your homepage, and include loads of images, links and buttons to encourage users to find information easily. Do you have a blog on your website? (If the answer is no, you probably should…) Add interesting calls to action and encourage people to find out more about your business by offering incentives to click through on your blog’s sidebar (the side section usually next to the body text), instantly making your blogs a more useful sales tool.
Are you covering ALL marketing bases?
Social media, blogging, email newsletters, Adwords, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, autoresponders etc etc etc. Are you consistently covering all bases with your marketing? Although, to cover all of those things mentioned you’d need a large marketing team or an awesome agency with a fairly hefty budget spend. Think about what expertise you have in-house when it comes to marketing, and utilise these first, then outsource areas where your strengths don’t lie. Set a monthly budget and ensure that it gets spent! Cover your key marketing areas that work the most, and as your business grows increase your marketing spend to cover more areas.
Is your website any good?
I know what you’re thinking… of course I’m going to say this! But having a good website, no matter who designs and develops it, is absolutely crucial in converting your website viewers into enquiries. Don’t overload users with information, and focus on images (preferably your own, not stock) and interactive elements. Review your website on a regular basis, and use Google Analytics to work out which pages people are dropping off from, and consider why. When doing this, think about it from their perspective. If you have never previously visited the website before, would you know what the message is? What are the products and services you’re trying to sell? We regularly see great businesses and products lost in poorly structured and designed websites, which can often be easily fixed.
Tell your story. Be approachable.
The best way to ensure that the person feels welcome when reaching your website or social media pages, is to be personal. Consumers are far more likely to invest in a product or service when they know who they’re buying into, what they get up to on a regular basis and examples of the sort of quality of work they can offer. Popstars become famous quickly and then communicate to their new audience via social media, sustaining their success and keeping people interested almost purely by social media. Sales then filter through because of that. Include plenty of images of staff, premises, products, services in action and the odd fun/quirky photos (within reason). Encourage your customers to review your business on Trustpilot/Google/Facebook to enhance the chance of a conversion due to an instant trust-factor.
Drive more traffic
Depending on your budget, you can do this a number of ways. If there’s no money available it’s up to you to drive more people to the website! Write interesting blogs that people will find real value, add them as a post on LinkedIn to get more coverage. Spend time on social media interacting with your new followers and subscribers, and send out regular newsletters to your mailing list using a free service like Mailchimp! If you have a budget to play around with, then spend it on driving targeted traffic. Google Adwords works well in selling specific products and services instantly, whilst social media ads are a great way to reach out to people who might be interested what you do, in a target area of your choice.
Overall, it’s really useful to take a step back and review your marketing every few months. Set yourself new goals and constantly look to improve what you’ve already got. Instead of copying what someone else does, try and take it a step further and invent your own unique identity. Combine this with consistent marketing techniques to drive traffic to your website and social media pages, and your enquiries will undoubtedly see an upward increase.
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