Many business owners are too much focused on lead generation – attracting more prospects, calculating cost per lead (CPL), tracking and managing lead sources, and so forth.
However, generating leads is not enough. When a new lead comes in, it doesn’t mean you gain a new customer. Your business needs an effective and streamlined lead conversion process to survive the cut-throat competition and thrive.
Therefore, your prospects are only valuable if you can turn them into paying customers or advocates of your brand.
Increasing customer conversion rate is the secret sauce to skyrocketing your business growth.
Are you looking for ways to create a sales funnel that converts like crazy? Then read this post till the end! You’ll learn the most effective ways to improve your conversion rate and achieve profitable revenue growth.
Table of contents:
- Create high-converting content
- Build massive trust with your prospects
- Qualify your sales leads
- Offer a freebie or discount
- Make time to follow up
1. Create High-Converting Content
Adding top-tier content to your website significantly increases the chances of nurturing your prospects. Lead nurturing keeps you engaged with your prospects until they are ready to make a purchase.
That’s why you need to add valuable and persuasive content to your blog to generate hot traffic and convert more visitors into leads and customers.
Here are the strategies you can apply to your content marketing right now to turn your content into your secret weapon for converting online leads and closing more deals:
- Find unique content ideas that are proven to convert
- Optimise your content for SEO
- Offer clear-cut benefits (always remember that your prospects’ main question is, “What’s in it for me?”)
- Write the way you speak and avoid formal language
- Make your content readable
- Write irresistible headlines
Also, make sure you use an effective content management system (CMS) to upload and edit your website content yourself without involving your developers in the process of managing content.
2. Build Massive Trust With Your Prospects
Before getting down to the nitty-gritty and take a more in-depth look at the ways to build trust with your prospects, let me share a great quote from master copywriter Ray Edwards:
“Prospects never read anything at first; they never believe anything at first; and they never buy anything at first.”
People tend to be automatically suspicious of anyone trying to sell them something.
When prospects start trusting you, barriers are eliminated. Only then can leads be turned into loyal customers.
Here are some effective ways to build trust with your prospects:
- Educate and inform (for example, quality content helps you build trust with your prospects)
- Build an impeccable business reputation (if you’re running a remote business, the greatest way to build trust is to get a virtual office that includes a professional business address)
- Be genuine and friendly
- Start a conversation in a natural way that doesn’t sound like a sales pitch to your potential customer
- Understand your prospects’ needs and goals
- Get 24/7 live phone coverage from an answering service such as a virtual receptionist (many prospects are looking for answers to FAQs before making a purchase, so make sure you never miss a business phone call)
3. Qualify Your Sales Leads
Qualifying a lead is the process of determining whether or not a lead meets the requirements to make a purchase.
Not every lead is a good fit for your product or service, so qualifying leads helps you avoid investing time and money in pursuing prospects who do not have much potential and allows you to focus on the right prospects.
Here are the actionable steps you can take to qualify your sales leads:
- Identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to know what attributes you’re looking for in a prospect
- Use a lead scoring model (the process of assigning a numerical value to each lead based on factors such as the level of interest in your product or the industry they work in to identify people who are most likely to make a purchase)
- Use the BANT (Budget, Authority, Needs, Timeline) technique by asking yourself the following questions:
➢ Do my products or services fit the prospect’s budget?
➢ Is the prospect in a position to make the final decision around whether to go forward with a purchase?
➢ What is the prospect looking for? What are they hoping my products or services can do to help them?
➢ When is the prospect looking to make a purchase?
Outside of the BANT technique (one of the most popular lead qualification techniques), there are many other strategies to help you qualify your sales leads.
Typically, the lead qualification technique you need to choose depends on factors such as your business model, type of products or services you sell, target audience, etc.
4. Offer A Freebie Or Discount
Getting something for free always feels exciting.
Freebies and discounts can turn your random website visitors into customers that will continue to buy your products or services.
Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist at Duke University, explained to The Atlantic why freebies are such a powerful marketing tool: “Reciprocity is a very, very strong instinct. If somebody does something for you – such as giving you a quarter of a ravioli on a piece of wax paper – you really feel a rather surprisingly strong obligation to do something back for them.”
Here are the steps you need to take to use freebies and discounts to improve your conversion rates and gain a competitive advantage:
- Determine profit margin: You must know exactly the discount you need to apply to your products or services or the type of freebies you can offer your audience without falling into unprofitable sales margins.
- Create a compelling offer: To create a compelling offer, you need to have extensive knowledge of your target audience. Offer something your prospects want, not something you think they would like or items you give away just to liquidate old and surplus inventory.
- Promote your offer: There are many ways to promote your irresistible offer. For example, you can use your Google My Business profile, write email newsletters, run a social media contest, host an event, run Facebook ads, etc.
5. Make Time To Follow Up
It goes without saying, following up with your prospects is critical to encouraging them to take action.
After generating valuable leads, you can’t sit back and do nothing.
Here is how to master the art of the follow-up and make more sales (without pestering your prospects):
- Send your prospects an email (use a compelling preheader text and subject line to attract their attention) or call them (make sure you improve your cold calling strategy as some prospects find call calls intrusive and obnoxious).
- Use less formal channels to follow up with prospects, such as text messages or social media.
- Provide your prospects with valuable information when following up (e.g., focus on their pain points and needs) rather than making your follow-up sound like a sales pitch.
- Make sure the call to action is clear at the end of each conversation.
- Don’t follow up too often and avoid scenarios where you could come off as desperate (e.g., begging for the sale, talking way too much, being too available, hurrying prospects into a decision, etc.)
Conclusion: Focusing your attention on generating more leads is important, but you must not neglect the sales process.
Turning an opportunity into a sale is a process that requires careful steps to produce the conversion. Use the expert tips shared in this post to convert your prospects prom promising leads into loyal customers and skyrocket your sales!
Want to improve your lead conversion process and close more leads? You’d be surprised how a virtual office can positively impact your conversion rates! B2B HQ would be happy to help you build a 5-star business reputation to earn and inspire customer trust and turn more opportunities into sales!
