As a business owner, your goal is to get more sales from your website. However, in most cases, when we try to sell more, the first thing we try to do is to get more visitors on our site. After all, the more visitors we receive, the more customers we get, right?
But did you know that 70% of visitors who leave your website will never return?
In most cases, this means that 95% – 98% of your marketing efforts are going to waste, not to mention that you are losing more money trying to get new customers than you need to.
As a business owner, the time and money you put into your marketing efforts is extremely valuable.
So why let it all go to waste?
Instead of spend time and money trying to get more traffic to your website, it makes better sense trying to make your site convert visitors into paying customers instead.
The key is not to focus on traffic numbers. Instead focus on conversions.
If you can double the number of visitors who come to your site who actually purchase something, you can basically quadruple the effectiveness of any increase in your visitor numbers. And that increased customer base and revenue opens up more marketing opportunities for you.
Let’s look at 10 ways to convert your abandoning website visitors and turn them into paying customers
- Google Loves Quality Content
Creating high quality information and content for your website should be a priority because that’s one of the main things that you can do to hook visitors and please Google at the same time.
Your website visitors and the search engines will expect to see something absolutely unique, valuable and interesting when they visit your site.
If you have good quality, unique content on your site, not only will Google reward you lots of organic search traffic so potential customers can find you, but you will also convert many visitors into paying customers. (If you don’t know what kind of content you should have on your site, contact us and we can give you some good advice).
- Say Something Different
Internet users are very savvy. An average customer is bombarded with hundreds of marketing pitches when they go online. They learn to distinguish between what is just ‘noise’ and what is information that they actually want to read. Nobody wants to hear the same marketing pitches again and again.
You have to say and do something unique to “stand apart” from your competitors and spark interest in your content. The key is to be able to do it without sounding like you are advertising or giving them a sales pitch. Give your visitors information that engages with them and information that they value. Which brings us to point number three.
- Get the balance between content that educates & content that sells
More often than not, when it comes to online marketing, business owners seem oblivious to the fact that there’s a huge between creating content that educates and entertains readers & content that sells to customers.
As a result, their content becomes clumsy and is neither informative or sells. This affects the overall content strategy and fails to serve purpose at all. The message is lost on the visitor, so they leave the site without buying anything.
- Publish Your Content In a Variety of Ways
The Internet is very visual and we all like to absorb our information in different ways. So, for example, not everybody is a reader and they may prefer to watch a video. Or somebody else may not have time to sit and watch a video and they prefer to listen to a podcast.
The Internet makes it easy to share a wide range of formats to promote your business. It is a good thing to plan your content strategy and implement it in such a way that it turns out to be successful in covering a wide range of different content types and in different forms to appeal to a larger audience.
Here, are 6 popular types of web content that you can create to cover all your online marketing needs while boosting conversions as well.
Content Type 1: Infographics
An infographic is a fun and quick way to learn about a topic without heavy reading.
Ideally, an infographic should be visually engaging, contain a subject matter that is appealing to your target audience, and be supported by other engaging content across your website and social channels.
The ultimate goal of an infographic is to be shared.
There are lots of free and premium tools that will help you to create infographics. This is something that we can help with too.
Content Type 2: Meme
Meme is a witty yet humorous piece of information that speaks your brand message in a logical way using a tagline written on the top/bottom of an image. Memes are most popular on social media. To create one, you can use websites like Meme Generator and Quick Meme.
Content Type 3: Videos
Getting a beautifully animated short video (~2-3 minutes) that spreads awareness about your products/ services or simply “take a tour” type is a great way to communicate your message to your audience and persuade them to take actions. You can also share your video on YouTube and Vimeo. All you need is a smartphone and there are a whole host of great apps that will enable you to edit it, add text and music very easily without any technical skills.
Content Type 4: Case study
A case study guides customers as to how your product or service has helped your previous clients who have bought from you or used your services. This is a great way to help your clients see how your product or services is going to benefit their lives. Writing a case study is easy. Just start with an overview of your product or service and explain briefly the challenges your customer was facing and how your service/product helped them in overcoming those problems. In the end, you can provide a conclusion and a call to action. You will find that lots of people will relate to this kind of information and will be motivated to buy from you.
Content Type 5: Blogs
A blog, short for ‘web log’ is a kind of online diary and is a powerful marketing tool for your business. It is great way to start a conversation with your followers and is also the perfect content tool, which is vital for your marketing activities. It can also be a hub for your social media activity that will help spread the word about your business.
Content Type 6: Press Releases and News
Releasing press releases from time to time about the latest contracts you’ve signed up, or news about any latest activity or mergers etc. is a great way to keep your customers informed about what’s happening in your business & popularize yourself in the process. There are lots of websites where you can submit your press release.
- Identify problems and solve them through your content
Don’t sit on the fence. You have to voice your opinions and earn a position of authority within your industry if you want to monetize your content. One of the best ways to do this is to identify which problems are concerning customers in your industry and how you can solve these problems with your content.
- Use the Right Social Media Platforms For Your Business
There is a huge choice of social media platforms that you could use to spread the work about your business. However, you don’t need to be active on them all. In fact, you may find that only a few will be a right match for your business. Choose the ones that will appeal more to your target audience. For example, if you offer business-to-business services, you may want to ignore Instagram and use LinkedIn instead to reach your ideal customer.
- Reach Out…and Start conversations
Just like you’re reaching out to the audience with your content, your target niche should also be keen to interact with you. A blog, social media and review sites are perfect platforms to do this. The content that you publish should be shareable, capable of triggering discussions, encourage your customers to comment and must add value to both your target audience as well as search engines. It has never been so easy to communicate directly with your target audience. You can communicate instantly with potential customers all around the world.
- Create a content strategy for each social network
Each social media platform works in a unique way and has it’s own characteristic, posting rules and targets demographics in a different way, so it is a good idea to plan a separate content strategy for each social channel. Understanding the need to create and implement a distinct content strategy for each channel is just as important as the content you post. It will pay dividends in the long run and will deliver a lot more sales.
- Optimize your content for search engines.
How many times have you looked for something on Google today? How many other people out there are searching right now for products or services exactly like the ones you offer? How many of them will find your website? Getting a high placement on page one of Google is critical to driving traffic to your site. If your site is not optimized correctly and doesn’t have engaging and informative content, Google will penalize your site and not send traffic your way. This means that you lose sales. If this is happening to you, contact us immediately. We can make sure that your website is found and show you what kind of information you need to put on your site.
- Engage with your customers
By allowing customers to post comments, share valuable insights and vote for interesting news or stories about your brand on your website, you will significantly improve engagement and sales. The more likes, shares or comments you get through your content, the more it is likely to pull-in huge profits for you. Also, acknowledge the comments that you receive by replying and appreciation, even if it is just a short “thank you” message. Never ignore comments if people have taken the time to communication with you.
