Lead conversion is a marketing process of turning leads into paying customers. Converting a lead into an account, contact, or opportunity is the aim of marketers, sales representatives, and decision-makers. Leads are typically generated from marketing events, such as trade shows or mailing campaigns. Once enough information is gathered about a lead to qualify that lead as a potential opportunity, the lead can be automatically converted to an account or contact SourceTap. CRM allows you to convert leads on a case by case basis or to convert a whole list of leads to paying customers at the same time.
Content marketing helps improve conversions because it allows you to connect with and educate your leads and customers. Not only are you working to build trust and relationships, but you are also encouraged conversions by giving consumers the information they need to make an educated purchasing decision.
To optimize your content for conversions, be sure to include a clear call-to-action. Your CTA tells the reader what they need to do next, guiding them to the next step in the conversion process. Whether converting means making a purchase, getting more information, or contacting your sales team, it's essential to make it clear to the reader within the content what you want them to do next.
Engaging your visitors/customers through content marketing can help you build relationships with your customers, resulting in return customers. It is an integral part of building trust and establishing a positive brand reputation. This can help you grow your audience and reach new leads.
Repeat customers are the bread and butter of many small businesses, and they contribute immensely to the direction a business takes.
If repeat sales make up a significant portion of your company's revenue, then you'll need to find ways to strengthen your relationships with current customers. This is where content marketing comes in. Providing great content doesn't stop after a lead becomes a customer. Content that provides value for your customer base helps increase brand loyalty by strengthening your relationships with customers. This can encourage repeat sales and help you establish powerful brand advocates.
80% of business professionals consider email marketing their primary customer retention channel.
Email marketing was one of the very few internet marketing media firms used in the early 21st century. It performed well, and the medium was ultimately 'hijacked' by the offline spam mailers. However, the effectiveness of the spam filters has renewed faith in email marketing. It is not going anywhere soon as it is an efficient way of reaching your target audience.
Getting a great conversion rate through email promoting isn't just a straightforward case of sending an email and holding up for money to roll in. Although much work goes into conversion rate optimization, gathering an audience, market research, layout, A/B testing, and more.
However, if you're aiming mostly for high-converting emails, here are a few types you should consider.
One of the best ways to improve your conversion rates is to keep your emails simple. Overwhelming the customer with too many options leads to indecision and inactivity, causing people to navigate away from your site. This, of course, damages your conversion rate.
Personalizing emails is about more than just drawing from a database of names; it's about sending emails your customers want to receive. Whether you're an eCommerce store, a B2B company or an independent blogger, you're not going to sell anything to your audience that they don't want. The trick is figuring out what they want and directing them to it.
Following up with customers is a form of personalized email worth a category of its own. An individual follow-up email doesn't necessarily have a high conversion rate itself, but the right email can – and the campaign as a whole will – certainly increase your conversions overall.
One of the simplest ways to increase conversions is by using your email marketing to send out coupons, deals and special offers. Becoming well known for sending out deals in an email is also a great way of building your email list and increasing conversions through a combination of campaigns.
Drip-email campaigns are a series of emails that follow one another, leading the customer along a particular path. They're often used by bloggers and usually require sign-up. As with follow-up emails, a single email won't normally have high conversion rates, but the series will.
It's also worth remembering that quality and testing count. A well-made, complex, batch email that's built on research can still outpace a poor attempt at personalization. The most important factors in improving your conversion rates are making sure that you focus on quality and learning from your campaigns.-process flow: how to nurture and convert leads
When you hear the term lead generation, social media probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind... but maybe it should be.
According to IDC, with 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level/Vice President (VP) executives incorporating social media as a crucial part of their decision-making process, social channels are becoming essential to building relationships with prospects and customers throughout every stage of the customer lifecycle.
Companies employing lead generation strategies on social media can achieve better results throughout the funnel—building brand awareness and generating conversions, achieving better sales productivity, producing higher revenue growth, and creating a sense of community for advocates and followers. And according to a recent study by LinkedIn Pulse, B2B buyers who feel a "high brand connection" are 60% more likely to consider, purchase, and even pay a premium than "low brand connection" competitors.
Hashtags are an integral part of the entire social media marketing that decides your posts' fate on social media platforms.
When it comes to promoting your brand on social media, hashtags are fundamental to attaining success. Once known as the pound sign, the hashtag is a way to make your content discoverable, at least when used correctly.
Hashtags were first widely used on Twitter, but they have become standard on other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. Mastering the hashtag gives you a powerful way to engage your audience and increase your social impact at no cost other than the time it takes to learn each platform and pay attention to trends.
When a hashtag is used correctly, it helps people interested in your topic find what you are writing about and expand your influence and followers.
2021 will no doubt accelerate the role that social media has in lead conversion. The latest studies show that social media is the first touchpoint customers have with your brand.
More and more businesses across many industries now understand the importance of social media and are using it as a platform to promote their key messages and products.
When you're looking at measuring the effectiveness of your agency's approach to social media, try to focus on data that helps you understand whether your efforts influenced action.
Most mainstream social media platforms have some amount of usage and performance data available to profile administrators.
Data collected can help to show your agency's conversion rate. The rate refers to the percentage of fans that convert to action. If your social media conversion rate for a campaign encourages fans to opt into a department's email list is 0.05%, you might want to rework your messaging and strategy.
User-generated content (UGC) is quickly becoming the most popular marketing tool ahead of online influencer campaigns.
An authoritative report suggests that UGC is the most effective form of content on the internet.
Since the rise of the Insta-marketer, the Advertising Standards Authority has prescribed new rules for promoting products and services through social media platforms and online blogs, where a paid promotion must be 'identifiable' as an advertisement. This is usually achieved by using "#ad" on influencer posts.
However, since the creation of this rule in 2018, authentic marketing's public perception has increased. Recognizing that their favorite celebrities do not ritually promote only the products they use and believe in has been a harsh reality for social media users.
Authenticity sells – the Consumer Content Report suggests that about 86 percent of people think authenticity is a deciding factor when choosing which brands to support. Furthermore, 57 percent of people believe that less than half of all brands create authentic content.
The future of authentic marketing lies with the consumer, allowing them to create the content that sells and appears genuine by creating an opportunity to share their quality experience and use of your product.
The first step is to make your product or service something worth talking about to drive positive UGC. The work starts with a good customer experience. A 2016 report found that 75 percent of customers share their positive experiences with a brand.
75% of people consider paid ads to help find what they need. If you're like many marketing professionals today, you must incorporate Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising strategy to drive targeted prospects to your company's website, ultimately converting them to sales lead through an offer or call the action.
Significant Pay Per Click management is key to web success. You have to spend money to get web traffic, It is impossible to ignore PPC because it can guarantee you web traffic, and it can bring you those visitors almost immediately. Many a business has burned a hole in the pocket because the PPC campaign was not managed well. And then are those who have made a fortune with this.
It takes nearly 0.05 seconds for a visitor to form an opinion about your brand and decide whether or not they'll stay on your site. Capturing these micro-moments is what can convert your visitors into leads and customers. Below mentioned are eight effective strategies that you must use and implement to improve your lead conversion rate.
To capture the right leads, understand the market you're operating in and your target audience's behavior. Use demographics (age, gender, education level, employment), geographic (location, address, region, country), and socio-economic (life-style, social class, personality, attitude) data of your target audience to show them relevant content and even incentivize them to convert into leads.
As a business, you may generate tens and hundreds of leads every month. But, not all of them may qualify as good quality leads. So, as a practice, filter out all the leads that you think would be truly useful for your business and are interested in buying your products or services basis your business context.
Conduct thorough research on these leads, study their intention and interaction with your platform, check their last sales activities, and establish contact with them. This action is important because if your sales team attends to every lead, your business gets, much time and effort will go to waste.
The lead scoring feature enables you to determine the value and importance of a lead. The higher the lead score, the better it is. Moreso, lead quality means shortlisting leads based on their ideal profile to become a long-time converted customer for your business.
Leads are a fresh commodity to your business, which means you must nurture them immediately. Even a day's delay can make them lose interest in your brand and probably shake hands with your competitor.
If you're contacting them through a phone call, then be humble. Address all their concerns and queries, and ensure they leave satisfied. Ask them whether they'd be interested in receiving regular updates about your brand's offerings, a demo call to understand your product(s) or service(s), and any other related thing. Show them that you care and are willing to do everything to get them aboard.
Dive deep into channels that are used by your prospects to engage with your brand. To communicate with them, try marketing channels like emails, cold calling, social media platforms, etc. For example, if your goal is to increase your brand's awareness in the market, use channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin. These are the best channels to increase brand awareness and generating leads. Pinterest and YouTube are two more marketing channels that can prove beneficial here.
Follow-ups are necessary to stay connected with your target audience. This gives them a sense that you care about their needs and are willing to provide them with all the necessary services they want.
Don't stop after sending one or two emails to your target audience or after that one-time demo call. Continuously follow up with them. Make them aware of your business's offerings and highlight what makes you stand out.
It is always good to divide your sales teams into two divisions – one that handles all your existing customers and the other that takes care of all the new leads your business generates.
With all the benefits described above, it's easy to see why lead conversion strategies will continue to be an integral part of business marketing for small and medium scale businesses. Not only does online digital marketing help boost your visibility, but it can also help you build stronger relationships with your leads and customers.
You can then be on your way to creating valuable content that helps boost conversions and improve customer retention.
Rukham is the Content Lead at Mailmunch. He believes trust should be the basis for all marketing communications.
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