The internet is another important distribution channel for your business that can connect you to a much wider market. It also offers you many ways to speed up business and lower your costs; these two results will help increase the competitiveness of your business.
Look for opportunities to add to your sales growth by identifying how you can change what you sell through the internet.
You could also have products that can be sold online as well as in a physical location. It’s worth investigating how you could add an online store to your website.
Driving online traffic
There are three steps to digital marketing; driving qualified traffic, generating leads and converting those leads to customers.
The best way to drive traffic to your website is to optimise your online activity to appeal to your ideal customer. Your website is the command centre of any plan for online traffic generation, and you should start with fresh, readable, and easily searchable content. This content serves two primary purposes. First, you want to appear for the most relevant search phrases at the top of people’s search results. Second, you want the people who find you to stay on your site so they can eventually become qualified leads and then customers.
Getting more prospects or leads
After step one, driving traffic to your website, you should have increased the number of prospective customers visiting your website. Now you can turn them into a lead. Not all leads will be equal. The best leads are those that become a customer quickly, buy high-margin products or services, pay immediately, and recommend your business to others.
To draw in more prospects or leads, you must understand the buyer process. What do prospects need to know about you, your products or services before they buy from you? The more expensive your product or service is, the more information they’ll need before they make a decision.
Once you know what information prospects need from you, you can create lead magnets. Lead magnets are things you offer that encourage prospects to give you their contact details, you can follow up with them and move them along the buyer process. These include free downloads, e-books, white papers, trials, samples, webinars and anything else you can put online that someone would share their contact information with you to access.
You can also automate your lead magnets so you don’t have to manage them manually, which can be time-consuming. This includes using email automation, CRM software and sales navigators that enable you to see who has visited your website, what their activity is, and follow up with them.
Set up triggers that encourage the buying process. Triggers are events that happen automatically based on an action the lead takes. For example, a box announcing a special deal might pop up whenever someone lands on your home page, or an email alert might be sent to someone who abandoned an online shopping cart letting them know their products are still available for them.
Converting online leads into customers
Not everyone who visits your website is ready to make a purchase, but there are things you can do to improve the chances that an online lead becomes a customer.
The first step is to consider what’s worked in the past. Previous sales success should paint a picture of what works for your business – and what doesn’t.
Look over your data to see what lead generators resulted in more visits to your website, where most of your online traffic came from and what triggers resulted in more purchases.
Next, assess which leads are most likely to make a purchase. If 35% of the leads who request a demo and 5% of the leads who download a free e-book buy something, the demo lead is a better qualified lead. Focus more attention on the people who book demos and see if there are ways to encourage people who get the e-book to move to the