Some websites are purely informational and are not purpose-built to generate business. This in itself can be a business model for some, but for most businesses they are expecting their website to produce some tangible form of revenue-related results. The most common of these being:
1) Inquiries
2) Contact forms
3) Free estimates forms
4) Request info forms
5) Calls
6) Newsletter signups
Looking over the above list, one sees that these are pretty significant steps for the consumer to take in the ‘sales funnel’. To actually reach out to the business is very far along in the sales cycle, and to expect people will just do that without any nurturing is indeed foolish.
According to a study done by Kiss Metrics, 94% of people who visit a website are not ready to buy. In light of that, most of those people are also not ready to fill out a ‘free request’ or ‘more info’ form.
The result is websites which generate very few leads, simply because they are jumping the gun; asking for too much commitment too soon in the customer/buyer relationship.
How should it be done?
It should be done with a micro-commitment.
If you had just met an attractive man or woman you wouldn’t ask them to marry you, wouldn’t you? No, that would be too much and just not natural. And so it is in businesses. The buyer relationship also follows the same rules of human relationships (which should not be surprising as both relationships are based on humans communicating together).
What this means is for sales is that, you should not do anything that you would not do when trying to close someone for a date. More specifically you should take gradient steps, and not go all in for the close and ask for marriage/the sale.
What is the first step?
If you want your website visitors to convert and contact you, then you need to first give them something of value. You need to enhance them. This would basically be some valuable free content, a series of video guides, an e-book, a checklist. Something which caters to a specific need, and helps handle a problem they are having.
If you do this then you are leading with value, and not leading with ‘buy buy buy’. You are showing the potential customer that you care, and are willing to give them something useful at no cost, to help them.
This establishes you as an authority in their mind, as well as makes them inclined to check out your paid services and products, since they have benefited from you at no cost. The only cost it should be is their email address, which they should be required to give you when they download said free content. This is the micro-commitment, and it helps you build a database for email marketing in the future.
What is next?
You need to create that free piece of excellent content for your customers. PDFs are best. You must survey your customers to find out what pain points they are experiencing. Once you have this data you can tailor make a PDF which shows customers how to tackle and over-come those pain points.
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