Converting online leads into customers

We’ve been working on making sure we understand the entire customer buying experience online. Today, we’re moving onto conversion.

We started with interest and awareness and how your customer might hear about you – and what to do once they do.

Then we moved to findability and reputation – both online and really important in potential new customers choosing your business.

Findability means searchability: how easy is your business to find on Google (or any other search engine). And reputation means just that: what’s your reputation? What are your past and present customers saying about you? And how do you manage that?

Conversion, the next step in the process, is a big part of your business success. How profitable can you be? How many times can you turn an online lead into a new customer?

There are a few ways to make the conversion process easier for your new customer. I’m going to talk about some of the ways to keep your new customer online and buying from you.

Online booking

This one works well if you’re offering a service of some kind. This allows your prospective customer to meet you (online via Zoom or Google Meet, for example) when they can’t be in the same place as you.

There are many programs to use for online booking – Acuity and Calendly are the ones I’ve recommended to my clients and they’ve worked well. These are free-mium products, meaning there’s a free version as well as a pro version you pay for.

Once you create an account, you can establish a booking button you can add to your website or Facebook page. This lets your prospective customer choose a time that works for them – and there isn’t any back and forth over email for days. Nice and simple.

Everywhere link

This one works with both service- and product-based businesses. An everywhere link is an online marketing brochure. You explain your product or service in one landing page that has a hidden URL on your website. But having it interactive and online means that you have a Buy Now button.

This everywhere link can be shared to your Instagram and Facebook profile. It can also be shared on other people’s websites and you can mention it in podcasts. It’s your everywhere link.

They’re fairly easy to set up and they’re your go-to URL.

Make the process easy to buy and deliver

This is for both product- and service-based businesses. After the sale has been made and it’s up to you to make delivery (whether a physical product or an online one), this makes it very simple.

Think back to the last time you bought something online and it didn’t go very smoothly. Maybe you couldn’t find a service phone number online or no return policy was listed. It might have taken time away from you and was way harder than it had to be. Would you buy again?

With all the online options you have, probably not.

Now think back to the last time you had an amazing experience online. Easy returns, no shipping, sizing was perfect – you will most likely buy from there again.

Be that second example. Make process around online or in-person sales so simple to buy and deliver. For example:

• How are you going to deliver the product?
• Where are the touch points with your customers?
• Who’s going to become the point person on shipping?
• How is your IT going to handle the surge in orders?

These are all things you can sit down and hash out with your team (no matter the size). And always keep in mind these goals: easy to deliver, easy to implement. That gets purchased over and over.

Now that your new customer has just purchased from you, it’s time to get them to tell everyone about you. And that’s where we finish off this series next time, with advocacy.

Donita Fowler is an online marketer who supports entrepreneurs in their quest to be the boss of their online platforms. For interview requests, click here.

The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.

© Troy Media
Troy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.