Generating leads for your business is done through word of mouth, advertising, and so forth. But many customers do not buy on first contact. Statistics show that customers may not buy until the seventh or eight contact in many cases. Sales people have to be persistent and follow up repeatedly to convert prospects into sales.
The same principles apply to your website. If you think of your website like it is a sales person, then you can see how important it is to follow up with prospects. The problem is that most people that visit your website will never return. You cannot do follow up marketing by waiting on people to come back. You have to have a system to capture those leads and then a process of following up with them until they become customers.
Think of your website as a first touch point. It is a tool that introduces your prospects to whatever you have to offer. The objective of your website is to cause immediate interest and sell whatever you can at first contact. But what about those people that do not buy on the first visit? What can you do to create a follow up system for them?
FREE GIFTS - Offer a free gift in exchange for their contact information. The free gift can be an ebook, audio CD, or special report. Anything you can offer that makes it worth the trouble for them to provide you with their contact information. Typically the free gift helps to promote your company and products.
NEWSLETTERS - Creating a newsletter of some type is a great value. People enjoy newsletters because it helps them get to know you without really talking to you. It builds credibility and provides value to the prospect.
WEBINARS - Creating webinars is easy and is very powerful as a marketing tool. Most webinars are done one time and recorded, then simply replayed periodically. Your prospects cannot tell if they are one of thousands or if they are the only listener. You need to have someone monitor the webinar just in case there are questions asked, but you don’t have to do it from scratch every time. Replay the same webinar every week and keep inviting people to it.
CONFERENCE CALLS - The same technique works for conference calls. Create a conference call with you and someone else and have the other person interview you with some pre-selected questions. You record the whole conference call. Publish the call in CD and give that as a free gift. Rerun the call and continue to invite people to call in.
RUN YOUR OWN ADS - Advertise your own products in your own materials. Place them on your website, in your newsletters, and even embed them into your conference calls and webinars. Make sure whoever answers your phone knows how to ask additional qualifying questions to determine other products and services that may be a fit.
The more touch-points you create, the more sales you will make. There are hundreds of ways to keep your customer engaged throughout the sales process. Then, once they become customers, there are countless more ways to generate even more sales from them.
