Achieving performance and conversion has never been easier. Just think about what advertising and marketing must have been like before computers and analytics data. What took months of effort to harvest data and track conversion rates for radio, print and television advertising pale in comparison to the advantages of what online businesses can accomplish with just a few keystrokes. As we have moved from the dark ages of marketing into revolutionary new ways of conducting and managing the sales cycle, essentially, it boils down to a few fundamentals online.
Identification, Courtship, Trust & Conversion
Identification – identifying your industry market and your customer thinking the way they think, feeling the way they feel and being able to understand the psychology of your clients can assist you in identifying their needs and understanding the terms that they might use in order to find you. Identification goes beyond the scope of simple demographics, it essentially can be broken into categorization for the sake of providing a steady stream of new business. For example are your keywords targeting the right audience?
If your business is cutting edge and you are speaking to the wrong market, say for example your services are best suited for ambitious entrepreneurs operating in a hyper-competitive field like real estate or law and your keywords are attracting baby boomer’s who may not be in a position to reciprocate, then ultimately the content and copy in your website might need an overhaul.
You also have the ability to portrait your company in any light you choose, so determining how others see you in relationship to what other options or companies that are out there can also affect lead generation and conversion. Know your clients, but also know how others perceive your business. An image make-over is not always a bad thing, a smoking hot website redesign, some new optimized copy writing and a targeted SEO campaign for example can be the winning combination for a company struggling to find “the ideal client” and rank all the way to the bank from hitting the nail on the head. But with so many people playing it safe, most off-line businesses are only reaching a fragment of their potential online target audience at best.
Courtship – There’s something about the old days that you just can’t deny. The solid principles of advertising & marketing that still to this day ring true, such as “if your going to advertise, then you should really have something to say”. No cookie cutter, lackluster copy is going to woo customers to do business, you have to observe your click triggers, evaluate the pulling power of your headlines. Think about which links to optimize to affect off page factors that will drive traffic to your site from search engines (which account for 80% of all traffic for most businesses). The more specific and specialized, the better. Conversion is about providing a solution to a set of circumstances or problems for lack of better words that require a particular type of finesse. Specialization is a great thing as opposed to offering a wide selection of services to a broad market, pick your niche and carve out a piece for yourself.
What separates you from your competition? Let people know, the first minute they land on your web pages, fail to impress and “poof”, there’s one less concern and one more blip on the hit and run statistics on your website that could have been a loyal repeat customer. It’s not about attracting huge spikes of traffic, it’s about attracting the right types of visitor’s, the decision makers, so make sure your pages are speaking their language after you have identified them (in reference to the previous point).
Trust – This point is paramount. If you have guests, make them comfortable, let them know that you have assessed their needs and by all means do what you say. Providing results goes beyond wooing them to the table, your worth in business is directly related to your ability to deliver, and reputation management is by all means something which you do not wish to let spiral out of your control.
Conversion – is a by-product of having the right look, the right feel, the right message for the right time. Not everybody purchases on impulse, the information gathering phase, the evaluation phase and more importantly the purchasing cycles of each individual are different. Conversion is the key to longevity online, so by focusing on these very simple suggestions and finding the right audience to cater your services to, can put and keep your company on the vanguard or your industry for years to come.
So, by having solid off-line skills and services, you can truly capitalize online with the right message that speaks to the right audience (the decision maker’s). If you business accomplishes this feat, chances are, you may go down in history as the founder of an organization that could very well pave the path for a new era of business while providing revenue for you, your loved ones and provide real value to us all.
Sometimes internet marketer thinks that visitors get attracted to the web and the products just because the webmaster is qualified enough to draw people, but that is not the thing. Visitors only get attracted to the products that will benefit them in any way.