#customer conversions

[businessdevelopmentinstitute]

Turning Readers into Customers

You've done the hard part - you've gotten people to your website. But that doesn't mean your work is done. In fact, you still have to overcome one of the biggest hurdles of advertising online. You need to convert the people who are visiting your site from having a casual interest to actually purchasing your products or services. The question is, what makes people buy? For every person it's different, but research tells us that certain elements can play a major role.

Recommendations have always gotten results. If you hear from a real person that a product does everything it claims to, aren't you more inclined to buy? Encourage your existing customers to give you reviews. Even a bad review can help you if you take the time to address the reviewer problems. Communication between you and your customers will be noticed and appreciated. The more connected you are with the people you're trying to sell to the better your long-term results will be.

Knowing the psychology of consumers is important. For instance, people are more inclined to buy a product that's $0.99 rather than a dollar. And there's a reason that people are also attracted to sales. Your customers want to know that they're getting the most for their money. Are you doing what you can to make this happen? Figure out what you can reasonably afford to charge while still making a profit.

A poorly designed or confusing website will turn your customers off. How are they going to buy your products if they don't know how to get to the purchase screen? Why should they continue to read your content if it's rambling or irrelevant? Taking the time to design your site properly will pay off.

You need to know your customers. You need to understand their behaviors and figure out exactly what they want from you, so you can make sure they get it. Getting prospects to your website is not enough. If you want your business to thrive you need to get people interested and keep them interested. Make a conscious effort to give your customers a good online experience and your brand can prosper.

[growthhackeram]

High-converting landing pages, an ultimate guide to

Do you know that persuasive design and psychological triggers are devices to increase conversions?

Conversion Centered Design (CCD) is a discipline targeted specifically at designing experiences that achieve a single business goal. It seeks to guide the visitor towards completing that one specific action, using persuasive design and psychological triggers as devices to increase conversions.

Landing pages sit at the heart of CCD. A landing page being a standalone page that uses congruent design – working toward a single collective purpose – to usher your visitors toward the finish line, be it the collection of personal data or educating them about your product/service before passing the baton to the next phase of your conversion funnel.

Typically used for promotion based marketing, the landing page takes an interested party — who clicked on an email link, display banner or paid search ad — and convince them to convert right here and now, as opposed to the self-guided exploration facilitated on a full website.

The effectiveness of a landing page compared to a homepage, uses the principle of ‘less is more’ which can be illustrated by comparing the number of links (leaks) on each type of page. As we’ll see below. Less links being the optimal scenario for a high converting page.

Oli Gardner, Co-Founder & Creative Director at Unbounce, explains in this PDF the seven principles of Conversion Centered Design and shows how to increase your conversions enormously by the correct landing page. Armed with a comprehensive understanding, you can now start tweaking and testing your page for maximum conversions.

Get the PDF guide:

http://unbounce.com/docs/conversion-centered-design-guide.pdf

[growthhackeram]

How Inbound Marketing Aligns With the New Purchase Loop

In 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis developed the Purchase Funnel, the now familiar pathway customers travel from consideration to purchase. There are four steps in the process that have always been integral to every CMO's approach to marketing: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action.

The Purchase Funnel

Awareness - A person becomes aware of the product either through advertising or the recommendation of a friend.

Interest - After having been made aware of the product or service and determining its relevance, the person expresses interest.

Desire - This step is an exponential progression from the Interest stage. The person moves from a "nice to have" mentality to a "must have" mentality.

Action - The person puts desire into action and makes a purchase decision.

While this purchase funnel has served marketers well over the years, a recent study conducted by Latitude found 87% of consumers now travel a less linear, more complex pathway to final purchase. The study identified six behavioral or mental states a buyer experiences when considering a purchase.

The 6 Behavioral and Mental States Involved in the New Purchase Loop

1) Openness - Consumers experience a receptiveness to new or better experiences, which results from pre-existing interest in or curiosity about a category or topic area. At this stage, it can be a conscious or unconscious desire for a brand.

2) Realized Want or Need - A piece of information, a news story, an article, or a friend's recommendation acts as a catalyst, giving the consumer a reason to start looking into things the person wants or needs.

3) Learning and Education - At this stage, the consumer moves from initial interest to a research mentality to gain an understanding of the broad fundamentals in order to make a purchase the consumer can feel good about.

4) Seeking Ideas and Inspiration - Here, the consumer seeks a solid reason to look for, notice, and keep track of examples, thought-starters, and motivators surrounding the product in question in order to take the next step.

5) Research and Vetting - Here the consumers gathers information to support feelings of purchase intent. Options are compared, deals are sought, prices are compared, and reviews are read all to determine personal associations with the brand.

6) Post-Purchase Evaluation and Expansion - Following purchase, the consumer uses and experiences the purchase to decide how he or she feels. At this stage, they might post a product review or share their experience with friends.

This new purchase consideration track takes into consideration a person's emotions, and understands the process isn't linear -- that a person can bounce from one stage to another as they make their way to final purchase.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34158/How-Inbound-Marketing-Aligns-With-the-New-Purchase.

[growthhackeram]

How to Increase Customer Conversions: Sales + Inbound Marketing

Historically marketing and sales have functioned completely separately. However, with the adoption of inbound marketing principles, sales and marketing have begun to work together to gain and close leads.

The following is how to create a seamless sales and marketing process.

Determine Buyer Personas

Think of this stage as the warm up and stretching phase of the race. Sales and Marketing should discuss and agree on who their buyer persona(s) is and what it is that makes them a qualified lead.This will give the marketing team a clear vision of the content and tone they need to create in order to attract appropriate leads. 

Generate Content

You are off to the races! Now marketing is ready to begin creating content and offers in order to generate leads. They should be creating:

Blog posts

Advanced content

Examples: eBooks, whitepapers, webinars, infographics

Offers

Examples: free demos, free consultations, quotes

Close your Leads

Marketing has now handed the baton off to Sales. It is now sales responsibility to follow-up with the sales ready leads and close the sale. The sales team can use all the available data within your CRM to make closing the sale easier. Use the lead’s online behavior to your advantage. 

Analyze the Process

Are you happy with the results from this past month and/or quarter? If so, look at what contributed to that success and repeat it in the upcoming efforts for both departments. If you are not happy with the results, both teams should work together to tweak your process. Keep in mind that both departments want the same thing – more closed leads. Work together to find what was good and what was bad. Start from the beginning by analyzing if the buyer persona and criteria for a sales qualified lead are correct. Then move along the entire process.

[ongthdaniel-blog]

How to Use Search Engine Marketing Successfully

There are seven practical tips which can help you get started on Search Engine Marketing and achieve better results:

1. Knowing your target audience – Precision is the key to search engine marketing with programs like Google Adwords. You want to reach the right audiences. Take a good look at the product and services you are selling as well as the customers who are buying.

2. Identifying Your Goals – Stay focused on how to reach your customers. You will need to know your ultimate goal, be it increased traffic, customer conversions or brand awareness, so that you can measure your success accordingly.

3. Selecting Powerful Keywords – Selecting keywords is both an art and a science. You need to think like your buyers, brainstorm your list of keywords and then narrow down your focus to reach the most targeted audiences possible. By understanding which keywords work best for you, carefully selecting the right keywords, and regular reviews of resulting conversions will yield results which can be highly measurable.

4. Creating “must-click” Ads – It’s crucial to write ads which users will see when they search on your keywords or the ads that will make them feel they must click in order to learn more. To get your ad right, you need to include your keywords in your ad title and descriptions, convey your product benefits by getting straight to the point and including a strong call-to-action which will ultimately direct users to the landing page that most relates to your ad.

5. Hit the right users with the right ads – Once you identify your potential customers, you can target individual campaigns to reach your audiences.It is best to write and target ads that are specific to a particular area. Once the campaign goes live, results need to be regularly measured and tracked. Make necessary changes to your advertising strategies and rectify mistakes from time to time until you achieve better results.

6. Test, Adapt and Thrive – You can use free web tools such as Google Analytics to better understand customer intent, what products and services do customers want and to gauge the mindset of your visitor when they land on your website.