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The art of marketing for a small business is not just getting tons of leads, but also converting leads to sales. A business with lots of leads and no sales, is soon out of business. Over the years, I have discovered several very effective techniques to converting marketing leads into sales for a small business. Let me share with you a handful of these. To make them easier to digest, I have broken them into two categories: lowering barriers and increased marketing. LOWER BARRIERS. This means remove the walls that stop your clients from buying. Each business will be a little different, but here are some of the most effective ways to remove the barriers to purchasing: Give a Guarantee
Payment Plans
Testimonials
3rd Party Documentation
Competitive Pricing
Increased Expertise
Increased Value in your product
Samples INCREASED MARKETING. Compelling Call to Action. Having an offer is not enough, offer something they can not resist. Beware though, don't make it too good to be true.
Unique offering. The more unique your offering is, the harder it is to compare to others and less competition you have.
Niche marketing. When marketing to a specific group, like real estate agents, you can quickly separate yourself from all others effectively reducing your competition and making you the only option.
Effective Follow up campaigns. Most people do not buy on their first exposure. Without an effective follow up campaign you can find yourself having very low conversion of leads to clients.
Using an email campaign or postcards to follow up can drastically increase your conversion of contacts to clients.
Scripts. Using a script for incoming calls, sales calls, common questions, will standardize your business and increase your conversion. This will assure each clients gets the same treatment regardless of the person handling the client.
Consultative Selling. When talking with a contact, asking questions and understanding their pain will drastically increase your conversion. Today's consumer wants more than to just buy a service, they want a consultant to help them make good decisions. Ask questions before offering solutions.
Use more emotion. People buy emotionally and justify logically. Help your clients consider how it will feel once they have their problem solved. Use emotional words like, "Won't you be relieved once this problem is resolved?" This helps them to feel better and creates an emotional satisfaction for your client that they can look forward to once you have helped them resolve their problem.
Enroll vs Close approach. Since most customers need 5-7 exposures to your product before they are ready to buy, consider your marketing an enrollment process. Help them get educated about your process and then enroll them into purchasing, especially if it is a larger ticket item.
Sort Prospects. When talking to a contact, decide if this person is ready to purchase, needs more time / information or is not interested at all. This can be the hardest of all strategies. This comes from know what the buying signs are of your clients. When they are showing buying signs, move them to the buying phase. If they are still pondering, enroll them. If they are really not interested, give them space and time and see what happens.
To get the best conversion, start by adding a few of these strategies to your current marketing mix and monitor your marketing numbers. Track your sales and if your overall conversion of contacts to sales is increased, stays the same, or is decreased.
By using a few of these marketing ideas for your small business you can see an increase in conversion from leads to sales.
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