A Guest Post by Thea Millard
Admit it, you are getting more and more overwhelmed by the number of competitors. They didn’t appear overnight as you might think. They were there before. What changed is the wider access to information. With just a simple Google search, one gets to instantly see the ever-so-dreaded list of their competitors.
But standing ahead of the game is just one solution away. Get under your client’s skin and make your brand unforgettable. Easier said than done, but there are certain tested ways to keep your customer’s loyalty, while also increasing your conversion rate. Let’s begin!
Create a Sales Funnel
Many advantages will follow: a clear view of your marketing plan, new strategies to improve your website, happy customers, and new customers. If you make an infographic with the stages a customer goes through to reach the desirable and final stage, that’s purchase. The stages are:
- Awareness: that’s the first impression a person gets about your brand. It is said that a first impression lasts forever, and that is why you should do your best to seize any advertising window you get. Hire professional designers to work on your website, logo, social media pages. Get involved in events that are related to your domain and leave a long lasting impression. Get people to know more about your product by offering it for free to experts and ask them to write their honest review, like many major brands already do. Take it a step forward and add incentives for their feedback. If all goes well, good and reliable reviews will come and so will the customers.
- Interest: this the ideal result of a well-conducted awareness plan. No, we have not reached the purchase point yet. This is the moment the prospective client shows interest in your product. They are expressing interest in an active way by asking your customer care support questions and gathering up more details about the product.
- Desire: at this point, half of the battle is won. The prospective client already has the information they want, and their mind is set on purchasing. Nevertheless, this is still a delicate stage. This is when the client is taking a look at your competition. They want to find out if others have a better offer at the same price range. So, if this is where most of your clients abort the purchasing action, you have to highlight the advantages of the product that sets it apart from others better.
- Action: the final stage when there’s little more you can do. The client has already made up his mind, and he’s excited about your product. The only things you should worry about in case some turn back at this point, are the technical-related problems. Make sure your website’s checkout is functional and user-friendly. Wasting time on unnecessary or boring purchase procedures is definitely a turn-off.
Sort Out Your Target Customers Through Market Segmentation
Globalization may have leveled up some procedures here and there, but it also highlighted how much diversity there is worldwide. As well as you want to make your company stand out from your competition, so everyone wants to be perceived as unique and special.
This is why customer segmentation is required. It’s impossible to address each of your clients differently, but you can group them up into different categories based on geography, demography, lifestyle, culture, previous purchases and others.
Gather as much data as you can about your clients through surveys, your marketing activity results, and even through your clients’ social media profiles. Spot the main features that stand out and sort your clients accordingly. The final step is to create different marketing strategies for each of the groups. This way, you will avoid some rookie mistakes. For example, you can’t just send the same newsletters to new subscribers as you send to your customers. A series of newsletters would be best in this situation to get them familiar with the advantages they get as customers.
As a result, your clients will love your personalized newsletters and the newcomers will feel welcome to your community.
When the A Test Meets the B Test
The perfect recipe for client retention is like a Holy Grail for marketers. It’s a constant, but wonderful adventure to get it, and there is no real evidence that it actually exists. Even though some lucky guy has discovered such secret, it most certainly won’t stand true for future marketing campaigns. The trends are constantly changing and so should you change your strategies.
In order to easily get the pulse of your public’s preferences, you must test, test, and test again your newsletter campaigns. A/B testing is the right way to do this. The basic formula of this strategy is simple. Take two equal numbers of emails for which you create two different kinds of newsletters. If you want to better optimize a certain point in your work (title, headline, images, offer), try making just one difference in the two versions. Decide which one is the winner through comparing the open rate, click through rate and conversation rate of the two emails.
The same process can be applied to landing pages, websites, articles, call to action buttons and more. A/B testing gives you access to facts, and you won’t have to rely on educated guesses anymore. Who said marketing is not an exact science?
There are many other tips and tricks to keep your customers’ loyalty, and increase your conversion rate at the same time, but these three are definitely necessary for your marketing strategies. While these require tedious work and research, the end results will absolutely improve your business.
