Did you know?
- 97% visitors do not convert on the first visit
- 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales because they're not ready to buy
- For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them
- Acquiring a new customer is 4-10 times more expensive; invest in retaining & getting referrals from your existing customers
Pretty astounding stats don't you think?
People will buy when they're ready to buy, not because you want them to. The advent of the internet and social media has made it so easy for consumers to click, compare, shop.and just as easy to click, abandon and forget!
So what can you do to stay top of (their mind), re-engage and convert your audience? Here are just a couple of tips (definitely not limited to!) to consider:
1. Have a content strategy! And make your content Remarkable!
Engagement is hard to get but it all stems from remarkable or sought out/valuable content.
Great content can help educate the buyer during their purchase cycle.
Furthermore, the more remarkable the content and experiences, the more inclined the user will share your messages to their networks, resulting in referrals and free advertising via social amplification! Consumers trust friends reviews and are much more likely to buy from a referral than a paid advertising message.
See below on how content converts visitors:
It is imperative that you have a content strategy in place. Not only does it help convert users as described above, but a great content strategy will also help with your search engine rankings as well. After all, Google ranks content! And did you know that social signals (ie. likes, retweets & shares) now influence organic rankings?
And on the topic of content marketing, re-engagement & SEO visibility, don't neglect the power of blogging!
Check out these informative stats from HubSpot:
- Sites with blogs attract 55% more visitors on average, than those that do not
- Sites with blogs attract 97% more inbound links than those that do not
- Sites with blogs have 434% more indexed page than those without
- Companies who blog experience 88% more leads (B2C) & 67% more leads (B2B)
- Blog frequency impacts customer acquisition. 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog
Make your content work for you by making it remarkable & shareable. As Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad once said, "Advertising is a tax for being unremarkable!".
2. Email Marketing
Even if you are a small business, you can still nurture your leads through email marketing. For any sized businesses out there, if you're investing in driving traffic to your website, you should also think about a lead nurturing strategy. At the basic, think of ways to entice that user to Like or become a Fan your social pages or better yet, invite them to join your eNewsletter list so that you can re-engage (for free) and nurture leads until they are ready to buy from you.
Again, engagement while rare always stems off from remarkable content. Not spam. If the content provided is not valuable, users will unsubscribe.
Email marketing is also a great way to communicate with your existing customer base. Inform them with how to's, tips & tricks, new product or service updates, sales promotions and other relevant content pieces to drive them back to your website.
Consider the 80/20 rule and Stat #4 (Acquiring a new customer is 4-10times more expensive) and don't forget to invest in your existing customer base. Coupled with a good social strategy, you could generate more business from this group as well as farm referrals!
3. Remarketing
Remarketing is a great tactic that allows you to reach people who have previously visited your site, and thus, a fantastic way to leverage your initial investment and drive ROI.
When people leave your website without completing a goal, whether that is a sale or filling out a form, remarketing can help you re-engage with that visitor by following them around with an ad as they browse other websites (that is a part of the Google Display Network). Through a compelling message or offer on these ads, we can remind & entice visitors to come back to our site to complete the purchase/goal.
Remarketing is a great branding tool (impressions are free) that helps promote return visits. To any marketer, this is a no brainer!
I am going to apply this tips on my blog to encourage the blog visitors.
Fantastic John! Create content that people seek (keyword research) and also think of ways to promote the content in different places to enjoy maximum exposure & traffic. On average users check/rely on three different web sources during their purchase cycle 🙂