It is great when a marketing campaign generates a sizeable pot of new business leads and warm contacts. This achievement though presents the immediate challenge of converting that interest into sales.
And yet customer interest is notorious for waning, which is why it’s important to remember that one ”touch-point” alone with your company rarely persuades a potential customer to buy from you. It can often take several interactions to convert their interest into a sale.
Over the years we’ve helped many businesses, not only generate leads, but also convert them. Here are 3 key factors that often make the difference between success and failure.
1. Coherence and consistency across the buying journey
For many products and services, the buying process is far from instant. The more expensive the purchase, the more attention a customer will allocate to it. For example, they may embark on information gathering, discussing a specification with a sales representative, seeking out recommendations and testing or trialling a sample of the product or service before they reach their final decision.
To reassure potential customers that your business is the one to buy from, it really helps to deliver a consistent, clear and pleasant experience at each stage of the buying journey. In particular, try and make sure the customer does not:
- Receive conflicting or confusing information.
- Have to witness branding inconsistencies across your marketing and sales collateral.
- Encounter a poor or unresponsive experience from your sales team.
So keep in mind your brand consistency across the user journey.
2. Keeping the sales process personal
Customers hate to feel they’re just a number to you and love it when you tailor messages to them. So take advantage of marketing personalisation technology for your printed or digital communications.
Ensure your digital marketing can cope with the different environments your customers may be interacting with it (mobile, tablet, desktop etc).
Identify any common stage(s) where customers stall in their decision to buy your products and services.
Also consider communications, offers or sales team contact which can help move them on to the next phase.
3. Standing at the ready
When marketing and sales teams work closely together on a lead generation campaign, the results can be breath-taking. This means having sales personnel at the ready to respond to interest the minute a lead engages with your company’s marketing. Advances in marketing technology mean that online pop-ups, video, virtual presenters, dedicated emails or ‘click to dial’ phone numbers are easy to set up. These help to move potential customers into dialogue with a sales representative and enable businesses to respond quickly to interest the minute it arrives.
For this approach to work well, it’s essential to fully brief the sales team on the marketing promotion’s content and timings. There’s nothing worse than trying to enquire about a service and experiencing a lengthy delay, or a salesperson who is unfamiliar with the promotion you’ve seen.
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Either way, do get in touch and we can talk about converting leads into sales…