The world of sales and marketing is a complex one. You can inject significant sums of money into the development of new customer engagement schemes and approaches and pursue the active direction of users to your products or services, only to fall at the last hurdle – making a sale. So how can current technology help you to convert visitors into customers? In this article, we look at the various tools available to help the right individuals find and use your brand.
Online Payment Systems
The ability to make payments online is something that has revolutionized industries specializing in the provision of products and services. Customers can send you the required funds in a matter of seconds, enabling you to undertake their required actions almost immediately. What you may not know is that the payment system you choose could be more or less likely to persuade potential customers to go through with a transaction. As cybercrime continues to thrive, online security is a major concern for many individuals. Your clients will be more willing to use a system that is well-protected. If you can display clear evidence that the platform you are using meets the highest standards of security, you’re more likely to sell.
Outsourcing to a big-name payment system provider is likely to pay dividends, as these established brands command a high level of trust. Security isn’t the only matter you’ll need to consider when choosing a payment system. It’s a good idea to ensure that the tool you select will support a wide range of payment methods for a start, as this widens your audience. You should also think about implementing pay after delivery and pay in installments options, as these concepts are becoming ever more popular. The first option will reassure customers that you will make every effort to get their chosen item or service delivered on time and in the best condition, while the second will make your prices more affordable for those on a tighter budget, as the costs will be spread out.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of revising and tweaking your company’s online presence to help it appear higher up the search results and therefore achieve more relevant traffic. SEO has gained an almost mystical status in the world of business marketing – but in reality, it’s easy to learn the basic techniques you need to boost your business to the top of the results. One of the key steps is keyword implementation. There are plenty of tools online to help you find the most popular search terms for your field, service or product range. All you need to do is to distribute these words and phrases organically throughout the copy on your website and any other elements of your online presence, and the pages on which they appear will become more discoverable.
However, good SEO from Granwehr.com is about more than simply driving traffic. Intent SEO is the most valuable tributary of the practice; it is a tool that directs relevant users to your product or service, making conversion even more likely. After all, it doesn’t matter how many people see your brand if none of them fall within your intended target audience. They just won’t buy anything. Your content needs to be conversion-focused, which means that the relevance of the keywords used is just as important as their popularity. You can also use tools such as Google My Business to manage how your brand appears within the search results. It’s possible to add a detailed description (which can also be keyword-optimized), pictures, videos, events, opening times, contact details and plenty more besides. This will help with local SEO as well as intent SEO, as it will attract more relevant foot traffic as well as clicks.
Social Media
The use of social media is becoming ever more vital for almost any type of business. Many consider it an additional SEO tool, as you can improve the reach of your existing optimized content by sharing it on the various social platforms available – which in turn will improve your standing within the search rankings. You should post a range of material on each platform on a regular basis. All content should stay relevant to your field and retain a strong, individual tone of voice. You can share content from other industry professionals and, as you make connections, your posts will be shared more frequently in return.
Of course, you don’t want to spend hours on end poring over your social media schedule for the day, week and month ahead – and you certainly don’t want your day to be interrupted by having to endlessly post and interact on all of your different streams. To avoid this, you can select from a huge number of social media management tools. All of your platforms can be consolidated onto a single dashboard, which then allows you to schedule posts that will be uploaded at a later date and time. You’ll also receive notifications of all interactions, so that you never miss a thing.
Improving Email Communication
There are plenty of tools available that allow you to schedule emails to those who have agreed to receive updates from you (be sure to follow the relevant data protection regulations when managing any customer communications). Using databases that you have populated with the contact details of your customers; you can target individual groups with particular preferences and interests to prevent you from sending the same information out to your entire list of newsletter recipients – some of whom might not be interested in it. There is also a range of handy design software tools available, so that your sales emails can be improved with attractive graphics and formatting and optimized with clear links and calls to action.
Data Collection
Above, we briefly mentioned the use of customer data when sending sales emails. The implementation of sophisticated data collection tools will make this process much easier, and will enable you to group together the details of clients with interests in common in order to personalize their sales emails. For example, when a customer agrees to accept your newsletter, you can program a brief questionnaire to pop up that will encourage them to fill in details of the subject matter, products or services in which they are interested. This can be used to inform recipient databases for different types of communication and will help to prevent spamming.