Convert Generated Leads into Loyal Customers

source : DJ Hecks

Your social media marketing and content marketing programs are buzzing along nicely. You’re doing everything right by analyzing your web traffic and watching the new leads grow each month. So what’s the next step? What is your plan to improve lead-to-customer conversion rates? After all, you’re still on the expenditure edge of the equation until you actually convert leads into loyal customers.

Here are 5 easy steps to be sure you are on the right path for converting those leads into loyal buying customers.

1. Alignment of Marketing and Sales Messages

Make sure your team members are talking the same language and understand the value of your products and services the same way. Failure to do this leads to confusion and alienation of future customers.

2. Introduce Your Sales Team to Customer Relations Tools

Get your sales team involved in social media and blogging.  Doing so builds critical customer relationships and enhances your lead-to-customer conversion rates.

3. Build Effective Landing Pages

Understanding where your leads originated allows you to find the “sweet spots” for lead conversion. Did the leads come from Email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google or YouTube? How did they find you and what were they searching for? This information helps your sales force know how best to communicate with leads and understand their wants, needs and preferences.

Design your website and social media landing pages to achieve specific sales goals:

Marketing Segments – where do your leads come from? Who are your customers? What are your future customers looking for and how soon will they decide to buy? Design landing page forms to capture information that is important to your sales process, but don’t scare people away with too many questions. Gather your basic 4-5 questions for target segmentation and follow up for converting leads.

If your business operates online, your website landing page can do much of this work for you. Don’t let the word “landing page” intimidate you – it’s nothing more than a web page whose goal is to make someone take action. Unlike an informational site (such as Wikipedia) a landing page is purposely designed to overcome objections, establish value and ask for a sale.

4. Assess and Monitor

Determine how many potential sales are lost because someone failed to recognize an opportunity and respond immediately. A lead generation and lead strategy system must be set up to immediately notify both marketing and sales people so they can quickly assess the “warmth” of a lead and assign the lead to the appropriate sales person. Then, monitor the progress towards closing to make your marketing and sales team become more efficient and improve closing rates.

5. Feedback for Metrics