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Want To Boost Site Conversion? Increase Your Font Size
Sometimes the simplest website changes can produce the most rapid Return On Effort. One of the easiest ways to make your site convert better is to make it easier for users to read.
In fact, a whole category of website conversion heuristics is based around making your content easier for website visitors to digest.
Here are seven ways you can increase your website conversion right now:
- Increase font size. For example, change 10 or 11px body text fonts to 13px. Some people find these larger fonts “childlike”, but our tests have conclusively shown that larger fonts can increase conversion significantly (especially where the original font size was very small to start with). Graphic designers often specify smaller, “cute” fonts, but you should remember that text content is primarily a means to convey your selling message, NOT a design element.
- Avoid large line widths. The human eye just isn’t designed evolved that well for reading text on a screen. One of the things that tends to slow people down when reading is moving they eyes from line to line. And the longer the line width, the more difficult it is for the eye and the brain to hook up with the next line. That’s why shorter line widths of 600px or less generally help conversion. Test 600px vs 900px and you’ll see what I mean.
- Increase colour contrast. Another thing graphic designers seem to love are font colour choices based on design sensibilities rather than communication and legibility. Light grey text on a mid-grey background appears to be a designers’ favourite. On the web, as in print, poor colour contrast = decreased legibility = decreased sales. By increasing colour contrast (good ol’ black text on white background is my boring-but-effective favourite) you will boost sales.
- Shorten paragraphs. Long paragaphs make it harder for the eye to navigate text. Anything much longer than 7 lines and you’ll start to put readers off. Where your paragraphs are longer than this, break them into two or more pieces. The occasional one line paragraph can also work well.
- Give “texture” to long copy. Many of these tips are centred around breaking the monotony of long, “blocky” tracts of text. One way to do this is by adding “texture” — creating varying areas of white space around lines and paragraphs. For example, you should always leave a “ragged right” edge on paragraphs (i.e not fully justified). The ragged edge helps the eye navigate. Indenting the occasional paragraph with a <blockquote>, or placing content in a centred box achieves the same effect.
- Break the monotony. White space is one way to break the monotony of dense text content — another is to use headlines, sub headlines, colour, “callouts”, bullet lists, numbered lists and text effects (bold, italics, underlines, strikethroughs etc.). These elements help to focus the user’s attention on key selling points and create variety that keeps the brain engaged.
- Add diagrams, graphs and images. I believe that copy is the main tool in your persuasive toolset on the web. But other types of visual content can be a very useful way to augment your central sales argument. Use images, graphs and diagrams appropriately when they make your point better than text.
This Is NOT A Long Copy vs Short Copy Debate
Please note that this has nothing to do with the long/short copy debate (if you could still call it a debate – the long copy folks won that a decade ago online, and a century ago in print).
This is about recognising that text content can be daunting when presented the wrong way. By making your text content as legible and digestible as possible, you’ll get higher readership and more leads and sales. And isn’t that what we all want?
How To Use Prospect “Filters” To Improve Sales Lead Quality
When I started out in business and started to prospect for new clients, I needed leads. Any leads would do. Even if those leads weren’t highly qualified and ready-to-go, it feels better to be talking to prospects, writing proposals and “keeping busy” than it does doing nothing toward getting new clients.
Pretty soon, lead volume picked up substantially, thanks to the Education-Based Marketing approaches that I have written about on many occasions.
But “mindset-wise”, I was still in the “More Leads = Good” space. I started to get busier and busier, not only performing work for the clients that came in, but also processing and selling to new prospects.
This was when I realised that I needed more efficient ways to deliver hot, ready-to-buy leads to my doorstep to drive up conversion rates and spend LESS time selling to non-clients.
One of the strategies for doing this is the use of “Filters” to pick off UN-qualified leads before they enquire. Here are some examples of the kind of filters I tested:
- Price: “your investment will be in the $7,000 – $10,000 range”
- Aspiration: “if you’re just looking to maintain your current operation, this is not for you. Typical clients aim to increase their business by 50 to 100% within 12 months and have the capacity to do so.”
- Service Exclusions: “this service is designed to generate highly-qualified incoming sales leads via your website. We do not make outgoing cold calls, although your own outbound calling operations can fit into this solution seamlessly.”
An example from the finance industry
Several years later, a client in the finance industry was having a small problem with people who were financially unqualified applying for a specific range of products.
Despite clearly stating the main qualifying conditions on the sales page, a number of visitors were applying directly through the contact form. It was starting to occupy a significant portion of the salespeople’s time just to reply to these people.
The solution was to clearly state just above the contact form that the product was only available to customers who already hold equity in their own home. We even highlighted the relevant phrases with the famous yellow highlighter.
It did the trick.
Overnight, the unqualified leads stopped, leaving the client to focus on qualified enquiries.
One more important thing to keep in mind: occasionally when you employ this strategy, you overdo it and qualified leads get cut out of your funnel prematurely. Obviously you need to keep an eye on your metrics to ensure that this strategy had the desired effect.
Lead Volume vs Opportunity Volume
For several years now I’ve been asking subscribers and clients to visualise their online sales process as a funnel with knowable metrics. You’re no doubt familiar with the analogy:
1000 visitors hit your website (“Visits”) –>
100 opt in to your Free Special Report (“Opt Ins”) –>
20 enquire (“Leads”) –>
5 become clients (“Sales”)
Whatever the exact number or specific conversion steps are in your business, you get the idea.
But I recently came across a very useful distinction on a Marketing Experiments webinar that dovetailed with a recent experience working with a client.
That is the distinction between Lead Volume and Opportunity Volume.
Lead Volume is the number of people filling out your enquiry form, but Opportunity Volume is the number of viable sales opportunities available to your sales team (or you, if you’re the only salesperson at your company).
Lead Volume is very often a measure of activity. Opportunity Volume is a measure of results and future expected revenues.
I recently dealt with a client whose only metric was Lead Volume: “Just get us more contact form submissions”.
“More contact form submissions is a brief that is relatively easy to fulfil. For starters, you can make the form easier to complete. Second, remove “strings” from the offer or add a guarantee.
When you do this, will the leads be more qualified? Will you create more viable Sales Opportunities? Not necessarily. In fact, you can very often clog up your sales pipeline with unqualified leads that do nothing more than take up your salespeople’s time and detract from closing genuine sales opportunities.
That’s why I’ve now included Opportunity Volume as one of the key lead generation metrics to track. It is a more reliable indicator of the success of your pre-sales marketing activities.
The Essence Of Lead Generation In One Question
In one of Perry Marshall’s recent newsletters, this gem leapt out at me:
What series of actions is your prospect going to be taken through so that by the time they’re ready to buy, they know you, like you and trust you more than anyone else they are considering?”
That is the essence of lead generation.
Most companies only start to sell when the prospect is ready to buy – by then it’s too late. Ideally, you need to be there well before your prospect is ready to buy.
Most companies provide too little information and education between initial interest from the prospect and closing the sale. The result is that most prospects are not sufficiently educated about what you do and how you’re different to choose you.
Most companies don’t understand what other options their prospects might be considering, and have a pre-emptive strategy to “unsell” their competitors’ offerings before the prospect has even considered them.
Most companies are too impersonal in their communications. There’s too many “we”s in their communications and not enough “you”s.
Don’t be like most companies – be like the 1 to 5% of successful companies who do what their competitors don’t and educate and inform prospects prior to, during and after the sale.
Lead Generation Survey Of 324 Australian Small Business Owners Released
Earlier this year I conducted a survey focused on Australian Online Lead Generation practices, in collaboration with Dr Marc Dussault of Platinum Programs. The results were telling but not particularly surprising – most Australian SMEs don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to generating leads over the Internet.
And that’s understandable. I don’t know how to perform brain surgery, build a house or prepare a company tax return because that’s not my core business. But if I want to do any of those things, I find someone who can do it and outsource it to them.
The Survey:
324 Australian Small to Medium sized businesses from a diverse range of industries were dissected, scrutinised and thoroughly examined via an online survey of 28 questions. 81% of the study participants came from organisations with less than $1 million in annual revenue.
Key Findings:
The findings expose the fundamental reasons why a deadly ‘heart attack’ is almost assured for the majority of Australian small business websites and what needs to be done to stop the bloodshed.
- SMEs understand the importance of online marketing – 77% assess their website as being moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales at the present time. A WHOPPING 98% predict that their online channel will be moderately to critically important for generating enquiries and influencing sales within two years’ time.
- 82% suffer from marketing blindness because they don’t track any KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for their website. 65% aren’t tracking ANY conversion rates such as newsletter opt-in rates or shopping cart checkout rates.
- 83% suffer from acute traffic depression and are either moderately dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the traffic volume their website receives.
- 86% admit they have no clue about their Search Engine Optimisation results and can only estimate their Return On Investment in ballpark figures
- A staggering 83% suffer from major cellular damage, running with online promotions that are actually eating their profits. They never realise the consequences of their actions because they don’t TEST to optimise results when they introduce new website features or content.
- 58% suffer form an embarrassing memory loss that’s costing them tens of thousands of dollars in lost profits, as they hardly ever or never send email broadcasts to their suspects, prospects or clients, thus missing out on a major revenue opportunity that could boost their constitution in a matter of days.
- 96% of respondents assess their website as being only minimally to moderately effective at achieving their revenue generation goals.
Dissection of the answers obtained from this extensive survey lead to the conclusion that one of the main problems lies in the lack of systems, strategies and processes that can create and sustain a profitable online lead or sales generation pipeline.
Most Australian SMEs are not doing the basics right (testing and tracking, keep-in-touch marketing, optin-and-followup), let alone the advanced strategies required to get outstanding results.
From a therapeutic standpoint, we recommend that Australian businesses begin taking a much keener interest in the health of their Internet marketing. Prevention is better than cure and as the saying goes, “An ounce of perspiration is worth a gallon of blood”.
A diet high in well-targeted online advertising with attention-grabbing headlines and clear calls to action that leverage proven Internet marketing strategies such as opt-in email marketing, information and education, testimonials, “proof” elements and sales process automation will ensure a long, healthy and prosperous life for any small business.
The full internet marketing survey diagnoses the source of the ailments and proposes several potential cures, providing that the unsuspecting victims are warned in time and take proactive action to protect themselves.
Download the Full Lead Generation Survey Report Here (PDF)
The BIG Conversion Rate Difference Between New and Returning Website Visitors
“The average website visitor makes at least 7 visits before making a purchase or enquiry”.
It’s one of those oft-quoted phrases on online marketing that doesn’t seem to have any definite source. While I’m not sure about the number 7 (it will in fact be lower or higher, depending on the industry and conversion strategy), I do know that returning website visitors enquire and buy much more readily than new visitors.
So you need a strategy to keep the conversation going with new visitors; to engage them and get them coming back for more. I almost always mention this in reports or presentations, yet a quick show-of-hands at a recent 3-day Exponential Marketing Bootcamp revealed that fewer than 3% of the 150 business owners present had a strategy for turning repeat visitors into returning visitors.
The difference between new and repeat website visitors
Google Analytics provides a useful “New vs Returning” report that allows you to segment a bunch of variables (e.g. conversion rate, average visitor value) by visitor type.
I recently ran this report did this for one of my ebook websites, with surprising results….
Exhibit A – Percentage New vs Returning Visitors
Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Visits for my ebook website
Exhibit B – Conversion Rate of New vs Returning Visitors
Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Visitor Conversion Rates
Exhibit C – Purchase Volume of New vs Returning Visitors
Google Analytics: New vs Repeat Contribution to Purchase Volume
As you can see from the screenshots above, Returning Visitors punch well above their weight, contributing nearly half of all sales on only 11% visitor volume.
But why are repeat visitors really buying?
Are they buying merely because of repeat exposure(s) to the same marketing message, or does the fact that they were interested enough to come back in the first place (i.e pre-qualified) make them a far easier prospect to convert?
In this case, I believe the second factor is more responsible for the conversion leap.
On the other hand, particularly for complex online lead generation scenarios (e.g. B2B, high-end or technical products or services), repeated exposures not to the “same” marketing message but the multiple dimensions of the benefits you offer is the surest way of increasing throughput of qualified, ready-to-buy sales leads.
What this means is: if you want to generate leads online for higher priced / complex / intangible products or services, you MUST have a strategy to get users back to your website again and again (even if your offering is simpler, it is still a very good idea).
In other words, you need an opt in strategy. It may sound like I’m flogging a dead horse, but remember, fewer than 3% of otherwise very switched on business owners in my mini-survey above had an opt-in strategy in place.
After you’ve enticed prospects to opt in, your next job is to provide value to your list, while “dimensionalising” the value of what you offer over multiple communications. The “hot button” that triggers one client (e.g. speedy delivery) may not be important to another – so you need to cover all bases.
The mechanics and “heavy lifting” of this process can be automated using an autoresponder service such as Aweber. But you also need the right strategy, copy and implementation to make the pieces fit together properly.
One of the keys to successful autoresponder sequences is a balance between information and education (content) and compelling reasons to enquire or buy (salesmanship). Most sequences fail to find this balance by being either too “stingy” with usable information or giving too much away without tying the content into the sales process.
Designing an effective repeat visitor strategy is one of the things we can help you with (although a waiting period may apply). But whatever you do, don’t do nothing — get those visitors coming back to your website where they’re 6+ times easier to convert into qualified prospects and clients.
About Marketing Results
As Australia’s leading internet lead generation experts, Marketing Results uses sophisticated web analytics to precisely understand how visitors are interacting with your website, then leverage proven traffic and conversion strategies to cut marketing waste, expand your reach and effectiveness and boost website profits by 2 to 21 times based on over 5 years of documented client results.
Top 10 Ways To Boost The Credibility And Persuasive Power Of Your Website
Credibility is one of the most important factors in converting website visitors into enquirers. It’s the nature of marketing pitches to make claims or promises about what you do and the results you can achieve. But getting website visitors to believe what you say is the key to generating more leads and expanding your online sales pipeline.
Here are 10 ways to boost the credibility of your marketing message so you can convert more clicks into cash:
Strategy #1: State the rationale (the Reasons Why)
Persuasion expert Robert Cialdini of Influence fame reports that detailing the reasons why your claims are true adds significantly to the believability of your message.
e.g. If you pitch yourself as “The Lowest Priced Luggage Retailer in Australia”, explain the reasons why this is so.
- You buy container loads at a time and take advantage of bulk discounts (show photos of the containers)
- Your warehouse is located in the suburbs, where you have a much lower rent and therefore lower overhead
- Your strategy is to sell more volume at lower margins in order to build a loyal base of repeat customers
- Most of your business comes via the Internet, avoiding the big media costs of your big-end-of-town competitors
Start explaining the rationale behind what you do and watch your credibility and conversions climb. Remember that it’s also important to explain the rationale behind a particular OFFER (especially discounts or sales). A Jay Abraham marketing aphorism that has always stuck with me is “You can’t discount your way out of a marketing problem — you need to educate your way out”.
Strategy #2: Case Studies and Testimonials
If I could only use ONE credibility-boosting strategy, Case Studies / Testimonials would have to be it.
Case Studies can be extremely powerful because they are at once specific, concrete and demonstrable examples of the RESULTS you have produced for customers, patients or clients. Rembember that your clients don’t buy products and services. They buy RESULTS.
It goes without saying that your testimonials need to be genuine. Some sites feature testimonials that sound, well, fake. They use too many superlatives and read like they’ve been ripped from the pages of a Hollywood B-movie script.
One of the best ways to accumulate a file of Case Studies is to provide your clients with a few guiding questions and have them respon in their own words. This will produce testimonials that sound authentic and “ring tue” to the reader.
You should also remember that Testimonials and Case Studies have become a standard feature on many websites. They can be easily ignored by website visitors UNLESS you go to the trouble of “exponentialising” them.
You can “Exponentialise” a Testimonial or Case Study by:
- Adding a headline
- Placing it in a Johnson Box
- Highlighting key phrases and results with bold or another form of graphical emphasis
- Adding a photo, audio stream or video stream from the testimonial provider
- Adding the client’s logo (especially if they are a well-known brand)
- Showing graphs, scanned documents, screenshots or other visual representations of results.
Strategy #3: Association Marks, Qualifications and Certifications
If you’re a member of any professional associations or other groups, place their logo on your website. This implies some kind of standing in your industry and can even constiture a 3rd party endorsement of your company.
Some qualifications and certifications will be well know to your audience (e.g. ISO 9001). Others will be more obscure, so the onus is on you to EDUCATE prospects and clients about the certification. Here are some ideas to do that:
- Explain why you decided to pursue the certification
- Explain the process or what you had to go through to be certified
- Explain the context of the certification (e.g. “Marketing Results is one of only 16 Google Adwords Qualified Companies in Australia)
- Explain the benefit to the customer
Certifications and qualifications are great, because they not only increase your ability to deliver for customers and clients, but they also start to flesh out a “360 degree” view of your company from multiple third-party perspectives that can serve to shorten the trust cycle.
Strategy #4: Awards
Industry Awards can also boost your standing in the eyes of prospects and clients, but don’t go too over the top patting yourself on the back – try to tie the award into how you produce a better outcome for clients.
Here’s a good example of this in practice. Combo IT’s “Awards” page provides details of the awards they have won (including inclusion on the prestigious BRW Fast 100 list). Not ony the prestige of the awards, but the fact that Combo is a multi-award winning company, helps to build an impression of legitimacy and competence — enough, certainly, to shortlist them as a prospective supplier.
Strategy #5: 3rd Party Verification Services
3rd party verification services such as Verisign, the Better Business Bureau and HackerSafe can also reassure visitors that your site is legitimate and that your business practices and customer service policies are sound. The key here is to refer to “industry standard” sources as much as possible – you don’t want to rely on little-known verification services that don’t have enough recognition to reflect favourably on you (although having said that, “official-looking” logos would probably help — that would be an interesting thing to test.)
Strategy #6: Photos, Audio and Video
Good sales copy is one of the most powerful persuasive elements on any sales page, and there are a few high-converting sites (www.doubleyourdating.com comes to mind) that rely almost exclusively on text content to convert visitors, rather than text or fancy multimedia effects.
Nevertheless, in most cases photos, audio and video can certainly add value and boost your credibility. And with broadband speeds getting faster all the time [yes, even in sleepy old Australia 
], there is no excuse to limit rich content for bandwidth reasons.
HOWEVER, coming from the direct response school of marketing as I do, my only proviso is that audo-visual content should be used to enhance and reinforce your selling message.
The following types of photos work well: product images (especially with relevant close-ups), author images, team photos, photos of your premises, plant or equipment, graphs and charts. Wherever possible, you should add effective captions — they invariably attract the eye and have been tested to increase response, both in the direct mail world and online.
Audio and video content can also provide a conversion boost. Audio testimonials work well, and audio programs are easy to record and publish online (the open source Audacity recorder is a good place to start for PC users and I hear that Garage Band rocks for the Mac people out there).
Direct response video can also drive increased conversions – though not always, so you have to test – and Camtasia screencaptures area great way to deliver visual content.
Strategy #7: Reprints PR Articles and Media Comments
Press releases and media comments can produce enormous traffic spikes in a short period of time (one article in the Brisbane Courier Mail drove over 1,000 opt-ins in a few days to one of our clients, an independent real estate agent.) But the buzz tends to die down just as soon as it began.
You can make it last longer by “reprinting” articles as images or PDF documents, and either placing them on your website in an “As Seen On TV” kinda way, or sending key articles to clients in the form of an email autoresponer message. “Official” information coming from 3rd party sources persuades better than anything coming from yourself.
Strategy #8: Avoid Exaggeration and Hype
This is something that’s going to get more important as people everywhere yearn for a bit of authenticity from the companies they do business with. You should check your copy for exaggerated claims that we’ve all indulged in before. If you’ve ever seen one of uber-copywriter Michel Fortin’s video copy critiques, one of the things you’ll notice is that he often tones down over-the-top statements — one exaggerated claim can break your audience’s connection with what you have to say, even if your product or service is very good.
Strategy #9: Speak the same language as your prospects
Use the same words, phrases, grammar, slang and turns of phrase as your target audience. If you don’t know what those words are, you need to hang out more with your customers. The best copywriters really know how to crawl inside the minds of their prospects and talk on the same level but anyone can do the same if listen to their customers and ask the right questions.
Strategy #10: Include “we are a real business” factors
Your website should always include contact details and a phone number that works. Photos of your premises or operations can also help to “tangiblise” your business. In some industries this is more important than others and if you’re selling something more “intangible” such as information, the need to appear “real” to prospects is even greater.
How To Know When Subscribers Unsubscribe From Your Autoresponder Email Sequences
Lead generation on the internet, like all direct marketing, is a constant interplay between you (the marketer) and your prospects and clients. By understanding how suspects and prospects and clients are responding to your marketing message, you can tweak and optimise your approach accordingly – and the faster you tweak, the faster your results improve.
A client in the B2B consulting area recently asked me what a “typical” unsubscribe rate is for an email or autoresponder list. Here’s how I replied (paraphrased of course — I don’t actually speak in numbered points).
1. Unsubscribe rates can vary enormously. The main factor that influences your unsubscribe rate is the VALUE you offer your list on an ongoing basis. There is a delicate balance between education, value and selling – and the general rule is it’s much more effective to demonstrate value first before selling.
2. You’ll notice I didn’t actually answer the question above 
. If I had to give a figure, I would say that typical unsubscribe rates for “Special Report/White Paper + followup” sequences are in the 5% to 30% range.
3. Your unsubscribe rate is cumulative — it will tend to climb over time so in order to maintain a robust list size, you have to add new members faster than they unsubscribe.
4. Some messages in your autoresponder series will trigger many more unsubscribes than others. If you know which message(s) are the main culprits, you can edit accordingly. Take a look at the Followup Status – Unsubscribed report from within the Aweber autoresponder system (highly recommended, by the way):
As you can see, message 7 is the main offender — responsible for a massive proportion of unsubscribes!
A quick check of message 7 confirmed that the subject matter switched from good information and education to a “buy now” pitch, with some fairly clear-cut “disqualification” criteria. In other words, “buy now or go away”. Many subscribers obviously “took the hint” and hit the “unsubscribe” button.
Should you really care if list subscribers unsubscribe?
Making your unsubcribe rate as low as possible is NOT optimal in most circumstances. If your unsubscribe rate is very low, that MAY indicate your offers are too weak or you are not qualifying clients and/or setting appropriate buying criteria.
Autoresponder series are not only a powerful education tool but also a powerful QUALIFCICATION tool. Let me give you an example:
One of our clients is involved in property development project management in Brisbane. Their marketing had been quite effective at generating enquires, but of a very low quality. The result was that the sales team was forced to pick through the pile of low-quality leads to get to the hot prospects.
They solved this problem by publishing a targeted Special Report on their website, backed up by a series of autoresponders, educating prospective property investors about new property development options and how to put a deal together. One of the main purposes of the sequence is to DIS-qualify “non-buyers” BEFORE they call and start consuming salespeoples’ time like hyper-absorbant sponges.
So in this case, a certain number of unsubscribes from the list are a good thing.
Although not all unsubscribe patterns are as pronounced as the one in the image above, if you at least know how users are responding to each stage of your lead generation process, you can test new approaches to get improved results within only a few iterations.
Here’s to YOUR success!
Will
Autoresponder Marketer
P.S. I highly endorse the Aweber Autoresponder system because of it’s very reasonable cost and raft of useful features, including the ability to SPLIT TEST multiple emails to the same list and track the results — that’s instant leverage.
Alternatives to “Submit” and (UGH!) “Reset” Buttons In Online Forms
Something that really raises my hackles is the use of the default buttons “Submit” and “Reset” on web forms.
For starters, the “Reset” button should be banned altogether. Why on earth would you want a perfectly good prospect or client to reset an entire form? Although this seems self-evident, I’m amazed the the number of companies (even big, reputable companies) that still feature “reset” buttons on their forms. (In one case, tweaking form design including removing the dreaded “Reset” button doubled conversion for that page.)
Then there’s the trusty “Submit” button. Remembering that EVERY element of a form can potentially influence response and that the button is the last thing the user sees before taking the desired action, wording is critical.
Some good alternatives to “Submit” are…
- “Free Instant Access” (very good for opt-ins and digital information)
- “Yes! Count Me In!” (good for event and seminar registrations
- “Yes! Reserve My Place”
- “Yes, Fast-track My Application”
- “Contact a Website Conversion Expert Now”
You get the idea.
You won’t always significantly boost response with a custom button name, but it is one of the many conversion levers you have at your disposal, so why not use it?
Do You Nurture Leads, Or Do You Just ‘Follow Up’?
Brian Carroll recently made an interesting post on his B2B Lead Generation Blog that draws an important distinction between nurturing leads and merely “following up” with periodic, are-you-ready-to-buy-yet? calls.
My company’s focus is on improving the profitability of our clients’ online sales channels, but I’m becoming increasingly aware of the need to ensure that lead gen efforts are tightly integrated into the sales process as a whole.
Front-end lead generation activities tend to receive a lot of the marketing “glory” and can be a source of great leverage (especially online, where you can test, track and optimise everything in real time), but it’s just as important to pay attention to what happens after the lead has been generated.
“Lead Nurturing” vs “Following Up”
The more complex (read: expensive) your product or service, the more lead nurturing has to be done, especially in a B2B environment.
Nurturing needs to go beyond your CRM-system reminding you to make an are-you-ready-to-buy-yet call. While followup calls are better than nothing, complex sales processes demand more subtle solutions.
How To Nurture Leads More Effectively
1) Timely response
The best time to convert a lead into a sale is as soon as possible (assuming that a lead has been properly qualified). In more complex sales situations or when dealing with large organisations, sales cannot necessarily be closed in days, but quick response times (e.g 4-hours) to initial calls and subsequent followup enquiries create an excellent impression and are unlikely to be matched by competitors.
Timely response is even more powerful for cheaper and/or less complex products, where “convenience” forms a larger part of the purchase decision.
2) Regular, value-added communication
Keeping in touch with prospects on a regular basis with relevant, value-added information is critical. This may include newsletters, white papers, technical updates, audio interviews or video presentations, invitations to events and so on. The key is to stay on message with high-quality information that is offered as a service to prospects.
3) Strategic conversion process
Your methodology for converting prospects into clients is another key levearage point. The 80/20 principle tells us that certain steps in your conversion process will produce a far greater effect than others.
One client was who was selling six and seven figure software systems for an international software company in a past career made the very interesting discovery that ALL new clients had at some point attended a 2-hour evening workshop. Getting bums on seats in those seminars thus became the focus of lead generation activities, yielding exponential results.
What step or steps of your conversion process are responsible for most of your completed sales? What could you add to boost your conversion rates and speed up your sales cycle? What could you take out without any loss of results?
4) Multi-modal contact
If leads are of sufficient value, experiment with varying your contact methods. Go beyond a monthly newsletter to include phone calls, hard mailings, webinars and face-to-face events.
Although newsletter lists and autoresponders provide huge automation benefits, they do have limitations – not the least of which is the sheer volume of emails that are competing for your prospects’ inboxes and mental bandwidth.
There is just one word you need to keep in mind: VALUE. Most DM communications that I critique are professional-looking but ultimately self-serving. By focusing on providing value your communications will be enthusiastically received.
5) Appeal to different VAK Learning Styles
Different people process information in different ways according to their VAK (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic) profiles.
Some people are “visual” – they learn best by seeing.
Others are “auditory” – they learn best by hearing.
Others are “kinaesthetic” – they learn best by doing.
Varying your communications to appeal to different learning styles is another way to increase the overall effectiveness of your lead generation activities.
Use diagrams, charts, powerpoints and video to appeal to Visual types.
Use audio programs, video (with audio) and live presentations to appeal to Auditory types.
Use interactive webinars, surveys and live workshops to appeal to Kinaesthetic types.
In the past, my own lead nurturing activities have been mainly print-based (specifically, wordy newsletters and articles). While these have produced good results, there’s no excuse in this day and age not to offer other delivery formats including audio and video, which is what I’m doing now.
Where to start
In a sense, “lead nurturing” covers a good proportion of the entire sales and marketing process. If you know you could be nurturing leads a lot more effectively, but are not quite sure where to start, here are some ideas:
1) Do you have a functional CRM system that integrates your sales and marketing efforts?
Without this, you can’t begin to nurture leads effectively. We use and work with Salesforce.com which offers a range of pay-per-seat solutions to suit all sizes of organisation. Many other industrial-strength CRM systems will do the same thing.
2) Have you instituted “closed loop tracking”?
That is, are you able to track your marketing progress right from the lead through to the sale and lifetime value of each client? Depending on the size of your organisation, this can either be relatively easy to set up or a major IT project, but the value that this provides is enormous – it allows you to concentrate on the lead generation activities that lead to the greatest number of sales conversions.
3) Do you have a organisation-wide lead definition that everyone in sales and marketing understands and uses?
Unqualified leads frustrate salespeople and waste your time, money and energy. Defining exactly what a qualified lead looks like is a great first step toward knowing exactly whom you should be nurturing.
4) Have you identified where your leverage points are?
If you know the key drivers for qualifying and closing sales (e.g. a seminar, an onsite demonstration, a product trial), you can focus your marketing efforts on driving these high-yield activities.
5) Do you have all your prospects’ contact details?
Do you know all your prospects’ email addresses and physical addresses? If you don’t, start a database-cleaning exercise (e.g. handled by well-trained telemarketers). By making some kind of offer at the same time as cleaning the database, you can turn this into a self-liquidating exercise or even turn a profit.
6) Do you have a documented lead nurturing system?
Even if your sales nurturing system is one 6-monthly followup call, that’s a starting point. Which one or two things could you do to add the most value to the customer experience?
Here are some suggestions:
- Send a white paper in print or electronic form.
- Send or stream a video of a relevant presentation by your CEO or other executive.
- Conduct an industry survey and report back on the results.
- Hold an event or seminar.
7) If you do have a documented followup system, are your salespeople following it?
Compliance with a documented followup system is just as important of having the system in the first place. Many CRM systems have “compliance” functions built-in, but ultimately having a system that works effectively is the surest way to get salespeople to stick to the system.
Will Swayne from Marketing Results specialises in lead generation and online sales funnel optimisation. He can be contacted via this contact page.
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