The whole point of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to organically boost your website’s traffic. However, your entire strategy quickly falls apart if you aren’t converting the visitors to your business website into full-fledged customers.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the technical process of optimizing your site for traffic, but it’s vitally important to pay attention to converting potential customers into solid leads too. Focusing on where visitors enter the ‘sales funnel’ is a key concept for both content marketing and customer conversions.
In this post, we’ll go over what a sales funnel is, then follow up with three simple ways to increase the number of leads you can generate using your existing traffic. Let’s get started!
A sales funnel is when a business leads a customer through a specific process that ends with a sale. This often consists of several steps that differ depending on your specific sales model.
All content marketing on your website is part of your sales funnel, and its overall goal should be to attract lots of visitors to your site. In turn, you hope to turn them into leads.
Your content leads readers through a journey that prepares them to make a purchase. It means for your content to do its job, it must become a strong part of the sales funnel. Let’s take a look at how to optimize your site to turn those visitors into leads.
How do you turn your content marketing strategy into a strong part of your sales funnel? While there are many potential ways, here are three strategies we’ve seen our clients succeed with.
Opt-in offers have a simple premise—they’re deals in exchange for the visitor taking action, such as subscribing to a newsletter, making a phone call, or completing a sale. However, it takes more than a simple call to action for this to happen. A good opt-in offer, also known as a ‘lead magnet’, sweetens the pot to encourage visitors to follow through.
An effective opt-in offer should:
Over time, you may find you need to create many lead magnets before landing on the right one. It could be a coupon, a free t-shirt, a digital download, or any number of other examples. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s relevant to your business and valuable for the reader.
Southwest Airlines sends travel deals if you subscribe to their newsletter.
Here are a few ways to settle on the right opt-in offer:
You’ve given people an incentive to take an action with an opt-in offer, but that isn’t always enough. They also want to hear from trustworthy, reliable sources that you’re a company worth doing business with.
The answer is testimonials. They build social trust – which can be a powerful sales tool – and you should use them to your advantage.
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However, creating a dedicated page on your site isn’t the only way to incorporate testimonials. You can also integrate them into your posts and pages, weaving a tapestry of customer success stories into the essence of your business:
However, obtaining these testimonials can be tricky. A solid testimonial won’t appear from thin air, no matter how amazing your business is. Keep these tips in mind when gathering testimonials:
At this point, it’s time to lock in the remaining visitors who still feel hesitant about taking action. If your business has high-ticket sales, the gap between blog reader and paying customer may be too wide.
To help ease in new customers, you can offer a low-barrier product. By creating a product that appeals to low-budget customers, you enable them to build a relationship with you without breaking the bank. In addition, a low-barrier product can introduce your business to new markets, helping you to begin new customer relationships to boot.
Here’s some basic requirements to consider for choosing your low-barrier product:
Start by looking at your current offers, and try to distinguish a single element that would be useful independently. This could be educational material, a sub-service, or even selling a particular tool—don’t be afraid to think simply. A few real-world examples of this are:
Once you’ve settled on something, look around and make sure you price competitively with your chosen market.
Now that you’re converting more visitors into qualified leads, you can boost profits with tasteful, relevant upsells. Think about them as a win-win situation:
Meanwhile, an upsell can significantly increase the lifetime value of a customer. To get your gears turning, here are a few simple ways other companies incorporate upselling to boost profits:
Bringing in search traffic by optimizing your site is only useful if those visitors turn into qualified business leads. By failing to expand your sales funnel, you risk losing potential customers.
There are many ways to optimize your site for building business leads, including:
What’s more, once you’re finished implementing these, by working on upselling your high-ticket products you can also boost your profits and build customer loyalty.
Did any of these ideas get you thinking about improving your own sales funnels? Let us know in the comments section below!