by seller_bot | Nov 11, 2017 | Our Blog
Do you need more customers?
Are you sick of people visiting your website or business and not buying?
Well keep reading as we will show you How To Attract Customers To Your Business Who Are Ready To Buy.
Much worse than having no visitors to your website or business premises is actually getting visitors, but no sales. That is so frustrating.
If that has happened to you, don’t despair. We have worked with a number of existing and start-up businesses and know a few tricks to help you attract not only new customers to your website but ones who are ready to buy from you.
Identify your target audience – don’t try to reach out to everybody
The first and most important step for any business is to identify your target customers. Do it right, and you will have a much easier time converting visitors into buyers. Do it wrong, and you risk creating a product/service that nobody (or not enough people) wants.
It is well known customers want to interact with brands they can connect with.
To do this, you need to know what kind of company and image you want to portray and then adapt your marketing to directly appeal to the ideal brand of customer you want to attract to your business. This is done by creating ideal buyer persona (an image or profile of your ideal customer) based on their buying habits and lifestyle.
So instead of searching for customers, help them to find you. Go to the sites and places they go to – put yourself in the places they want to be and invite them to come and see you. If you have a clear image of who you want to serve, you are going to be in a better position to give them what they want.
A lot of companies make the mistake of thinking that everybody is a potential customer. They are not! You need to focus on the dreams and desires of your top customers, then pay them special attention by treating them well.
Don’t try to rent your audience, build your own instead
Some businesses we have worked with have tried to take a short cut by renting eyeballs or clicks. They buy and rent email mailing lists in order to get extra customers. Sometimes the gamble can pay off but if you want customers who are looking for a business and services like yours, it is far more profitable to grow your own list instead.
This is not hard to do. For example, on your Facebook page you could provide shareable, inspirational and humorous content – images and quotes to encourage visitors to engage with you.
The people who enjoy the content on your site are generally the ones who will respond to your specific offers and products and you can quickly attract a lot of eager new fans and customers.
Word of mouth marketing
The best way to attract new customers to your site is by word of mouth, and social media marketing, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc, makes this easier to do than ever before. It is fast, free and easy.
Ditch the large scale marketing campaigns
What? Is this really a recommendation from a marketing company? Yes!
In the old days, marketing used to be large scale isolated advertising and media events but things have changed. Your customers don’t live on a campaign schedule. They are always on the move and are constantly being bombarded with new information and offers wherever they go. As a result they have become more discerning and advert aware.
So instead of investing a large amount of money on a big campaign it is better to drip feed your offers through continuous engagement with them.
Social media makes it easy to follow a customer from their first visit to your site, to the point that they become a lead and eventually through the sales process.
The relationship doesn’t end there as your constant engagement and relationship building with them continues long after the initial sale. You can easily get repeat business and referrals from them if you handle it right.
Copy your competition
Do a bit of research.
Find out how your competition is attracting customers:
Do they advertize on the Internet or is it mainly offline?
Do they buy advertizements in local media like newspapers and radio or do they have a large social media following online?
If they are doing something that clearly works for them and are getting customers (your potential customers), you need to try and adopt similar measures so that you don’t continue losing customers to them.
Attract new customers who are actively searching for your product or service
Purchasing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising using Google Adwords is a very effective way to instantly connect with new customers who are not only eager to buy but have got their credit card at the ready to buy there and then.
Unlike traditional forms of advertising, like the Yellow Pages or ads in a local newspaper, with PPC you are not handing over money and paying for an empty promise of perhaps getting new visitors to see your site. You are paying for an actual result, a click.
With PPC, you don’t pay if nobody sees your ad; you don’t even pay if someone does see it but doesn’t click. You only pay when someone literally clicks on your ad.
This is generally called buying clicks because that’s just what you are doing. You’re paying a PPC company each time someone clicks on the link that is pointing back to your Website.
These ads are highly targeted.
So, for example, when a person does a search for a Wedding Planner in your town or area, Google will bring up a list of targeted adverts that wedding planners and related companies have paid to advertize when a customer types those key words into the search engine. In most cases these are customers who are very eager to buy, and you can see how this works over the page.
This is basically how it works:
• You join a search engine’s PPC program (for example Adwords by Google) and add some funds to the account. You set a limit on the maximum amount you want to pay so you don’t go over budget.
• You create a small text ad (in some cases, PPC can include images).
• You specify exactly what words or phrases a customer should type into the search engine before they would even see your advertizement, which will ensure the ads are targeted.
• You specify how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad.
• You are now ready. You wait for the next person to arrive at the search engine, enter one of the keywords or keyword phrases you specified, and click the Search button.
• The search engine finds the matching ads (including yours) and places them on the results page.
• If the searcher clicks the ad, he is taken to your Website, and you will be charged for that click.
• Once the budget limit you set for your advertising campaign has been reached, your ad will no longer be shown until you add more funds to your account. By this time you should have received some targeted customers who have bought from you.
Attend industry specific conferences and exhibitions
We are big fans of attending conferences, exhibitions and networking events. It is a great way to make new connections and spread the word about your business to new targeted clients.
People buy from people they have met, so if you are seen and active at events, people will be more inclined to buy from you.
This type of event is also perfect for showing potential clients how caring you are and that you strive to make your customers happy. Exceptional customer service plus excellent products or services will always ensure that you have a thriving business.
Use these events to get people to visit your website and join your mailing list so you can stay in constant contact with them using the engagement tips mentioned above.
By using some or all of these methods you will be able to attract brand new, eager to buy customers easily.
The internet has made it a level playing field for small to medium sized businesses. You can reach thousands of new customers every week from all around the world or locally, by having a well thought out online presence.
It is an exciting time for small businesses and you don’t want to miss out on the revolution that is happening at the moment. Old marketing methods no longer work. The way that consumers buy is changing and you need to change with them, knowing who they are, where they are and why they buy.
by seller_bot | Nov 7, 2017 | Our Blog
So you’ve got your business up and running, whether that means freelance consulting, promoting affiliate products, or running a monetized online community, things are on the up and up. However, you know there’s lots of other, more established competitors in your space… so how do you stand out and convince customers that switching to you is a no-brainer? Well, here are a few proven ways to overdeliver in the digital age.
1. Collect feedback. With the amount of survey tools out there, or the ability to, you know, send an email message, it’s incredibly important that you start listening to what your customers are saying. Early on, this can be as simple as asking them in a post-sale or ideally post-service email what they thought of your service, and if they have anything they would improve.
This serves two purposes: First, it’s going to help you identify people who are really keen on your brand or product, and who might be good candidates to become your affiliates, etc. Starting out, you might just let them know that if they enjoyed working with you, you’d love to send some kind of reward their way if they find a few people to refer to you. These gifts don’t have to be anything expensive, but the gesture is often appreciated and the potential to help you grow is huge.
2. Have a personality. Seriously, for the same reason people vote for political candidates based on how they look, or how they generally “feel” about them, interactions and perception go a long way in purchase decisions. Plus, this is actually something you have a huge advantage at over your larger rivals: When a company has 37 different support agents to help with their massive customerbase, they can’t offer the same kind of repeat interactions or treatment that you can as an individual. Smart companies on the rise use the technique of overdelivering in the personalization and customer support department to win clients from their competitors. It’s not a bad strategy for entrepreneurs and online marketers, etiher.
3. Connect with them via social media as a person, not a brand. This is an interesting one. Now more than ever, people like to know who they’re doing business with, because they can. Social media has greatly raised expectations of interaction and transparency, to the point that even massive brands make sure they have a presence actively chat with those who mention them.
As an individual entrepreneur, you have the unique opportunity to let people know the person who wants to do business with them. This goes hand in hand with point number two about having a personality. Let people Snapchat with you in your off-hours, post Instagram pictures of your work days as they progress. The Facebook page for your freelancing or brand can be a place that people not only get to know you better through written posts, but when you can foster community through asking discussion questions and special offers.
Remember that your biggest weakness, being small and up against long-standing competition, is also your biggest asset, because it makes you more agile than anyone else (and your clients will remember that).
by seller_bot | Oct 12, 2017 | Our Blog
Do you have a landing page that is under-performing or not converting at all? If so, consider the fact that many landing pages out there follow three extremely flawed approaches for content creation. If your landing page falls into one of these three categories, it’s likely that any promotions, ads or other monetary boosters you try will fail as well, sinking more of your hard-earned money into a failing endeavor. Similarly, it’s unlikely that changing the design or aesthetics of your landing page will help.
Three Bad Landing Page Copy Strategies
So what are these three horribly horrible approaches to creating landing page copy?
1. Guessing at What Your Lead Wants to Read. This is how many landing pages are done: simply trying out random messages that might or might not have worked on other landing pages, to see the results. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time and ultimately, costs you a lot of money in sales. Sure, guessing right the first time can be extremely easy and lucrative, but what are the odds you’ll guess right? Do you really know what you consumer wants to read, or are you too close to the sales aspect of the product to listen to the true consumer needs? Remember, guesswork is costly and most of the time, flat out wrong. If this is how you created your landing page, it’s time to reevaluate your under-performing copy.
2. Looking to the Competition. Okay, so every online marketer looks at what their competition does in order to keep their finger on pulse of the industry, but some of us use the competition as our basis for research. Figuring that the competition has done their marketing homework, we “borrow” from their landing pages and rewrite copy in the same vein as their copy. We figure, “They must know what they’re doing, so I’ll just do the same, we have the same demographic, after all.” But what if they are just guessing? Or what if they are dead wrong? You just anchored yourself to your competition’s success and furthermore, there’s now nothing to truly differentiate your two landing pages. Why should customers go to you instead?
3. Cliché Ad Copy. Finally, many marketers will turn to tired, old, boring and used cliché messages that they think sound good, they don’t. These messages don’t scream, “Buy me now!” They scream, “Help! I was written by a lazy marketer who might also be extremely corny!” Your message and copy need to mean something. If you aren’t the best-selling product, don’t call yourself that. Empty copy leaves prospects guessing. Be specific in the problems your product solves, it’ll be that much more impressive.
What’s the Right Way to Approach Landing Page Copy?
Now that you know the wrong way to approach writing copy for your landing page, what’s the best way? A little technique called Voice of Customer, or VOC. VOC is a marketing technique that relies on knowing your customer demographic in order to create viable copy that speaks directly to them in a language they prefer. VOC writing relies heavily on your understanding of your prospect’s problems and pain points, in other words, what do they need solved and what problems do they have with the solution you’re presenting.
When you know this, you can market the product or service in a manner that speaks directly to the lead, thereby eliminating friction. When you know their wants and needs, you can prioritize them accordingly, deconstructing each bit of friction with every line of copy on your landing page. This brings greater satisfaction to the lead as they read down the landing page and ultimately, all but guarantees the sale.
by seller_bot | Oct 11, 2017 | Our Blog
Most marketers are serious do-it-yourselfers. They’re learning constantly about all kinds of different facets of marketing and trying to put what they learn into practice all with just one pair of hands. Most internet marketing guides will tell you to begin outsourcing and managing as early as possible, to help grow your business at the fastest rate possible, but this kind of management role isn’t always feasible if you aren’t entering into your entrepreneurship journey with some startup capital.
Oftentimes, you’ll have to make something work all on your own, and copywriting is no different. There’s a reason that there’s an entire industry dedicated to having someone else write your web copy, sales letters, email series, and more – but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a bang-up job yourself with a little bit of know-how. Today, we’re going to go over the “foot in the door” copywriting technique; it’s a classic copywriting move that can help you to increase responsiveness by easing into your propositions (purchases, sign ups, referrals, or whatever constitutes a successful conversion for your business).
The foot in the door principle is based upon the fact that people are naturally resistant to taking large steps out of the blue. This is, for example, why telephone salespeople have to work through such a large volume of number registries to keep sales at an acceptable level. That said, this resistance tends to lessen when the ‘ask’ becomes less and less of a hassle or monetary obligation for someone. Obviously, you would be more likely to try a new type of shampoo if it cost $5 per bottle than if it were $15.
Those studying (anecdotally) copywriting psychology posited that perhaps these smaller actions could be used to build trust, and thus, over time, increase the chances that someone would agree to a larger ask. As luck would have it, for you, they were right.
The first time I learned of the technique, it was written something like this: If someone came to your door and asked you to put a large political yard sign out endorsing a certain candidate, you would likely be resistant (even if it came from a party you identified with). But let’s say, instead, campaigners ask you to take just an “I support [candidate name]!” button. You’ll never wear it, but the ask is small and you agree; there doesn’t seem to be any harm in doing so. Let’s say that a week or two later, the same people come by and this time they are asking about the yard sign. You may have said no before, but you already agreed with them once, and the button spurred you into doing a bit of research on the candidate, and now maybe you’re more open to a public endorsement. Without a doubt, the second strategy will end up with more lawn signs in more yards.
No matter what your business is, you can use this same technique. In your own business, think of how you can get someone to agree to something small before you ask them for something big. In sales letters, you’ll notice that copywriters often pose questions with seemingly obvious answers.
“Do you want to cure your acne this week?”
“Do you agree that acne creates an unattractive, juvenile appearance?”
The purpose of these questions is to bait readers into mentally agreeing and nodding along; if they’ve already agreed with you on one thing, they’re more likely to agree with you on the next thing as well. In your own businesses, think about how you can use this technique to ‘soften’ any ask you have – you might just be surprised at how dramatically conversion rates change when correctly implementing it.
by seller_bot | Sep 15, 2017 | Our Blog
When entrepreneurs and small businesses are starting out, they’re relying almost completely on the quality of their product and word of mouth. In the beginning, most people simply don’t have the monetary backing to bring in massive, scalable social media and search PPC campaigns. For some, this is discouraging. For others, however, this tiny, tiny scale is actually their greatest strength.
Today’s let’s take a look at how you can scale using, well, the unscalable. Specifically, the strategies that aren’t practical when your audience or customer base reaches into the tens of thousands are exactly the types of tasks that can help you reach that volume. Let’s take a closer look:
If you ordered something from a website online, say, a competitor to Amazon but who had a certain product you wanted that Amazon didn’t, you’d probably expect that that interaction ended when you pressed the confirmation button. You expect to receive a package with your item in it, and then, aside from perhaps a marketing communication or two, you’ll likely never hear from that company again.
Imagine for a second, however, that two weeks after receiving your item and having some time to use it, you get a letter in the mail with the same return address. It’s from the company you previously bought from, and it’s a handwritten card. In it, the CEO personally has written you a note saying how much it means that you ordered from them, and asking that you get in touch any time if you need help with your order, or have any questions, free of charge.
Doesn’t that make some impression? If you had to order something similar again, don’t you think at that point you’d know exactly where you were going to order it from? Might you even tell a friend or two about the experience?
These types of above and beyond actions may not be standard, but the companies who end up getting ahead often understand the value of ‘scaling the unscalable’. In your own business, whether it’s with 4 employees, 40 employees, or just you, make sure you are taking so-called unscalable tasks to their breaking point. The average person will get lazy, which means outsourcing a task as soon as they’re able to, or automating a process that used to be done manually and in a personal fashion. The brands that people truly remember, however, will work longer hours and put in the extra mile until there is literally not enough time in the day before they give up on an action that puts a smile on customers’ faces and turns them into brand ambassadors.
You don’t have to handwrite thank you cards, you don’t have to mail anything at all, but find your own special unscalable actions and make them a part of your routine. while everyone else if trying to offload tasks and take the easy way out as soon as they have the cash to do so, be the one who makes so much of an effort that working with you or buying from you simply becomes a given for your customers.
