The benefits of having a strong online store are endless. It is now possible to reach more customers than ever before. However, this can also be a challenge. You have to understand how to effectively market your online store in the right ways.
One of the best things that can help your business stand out above the rest is to use a sales funnel. A sales funnel can help you convert website traffic into paying customers. It is a proven and reliable tool, used by successful businesses worldwide.
What type of sales funnel should you use? This depends entirely on you and your business. Nevertheless, there are some standard best practices that you should follow. These tips will help you determine which type of sales funnel is best suited for your business.
Set Achievable Goals
The first step to creating an effective sales funnel is to set measurable goals. You can use a tool like SurveyMonkey to track the progress of your funnel. Setting measurable goals will help you track the success of your funnel, and give you a clear indication of whether or not you’re on the right track.
A website with no clear goals is similar to a house without a plan. You might have a great looking website with incredible content and an amazing selection of products. However, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, how can you be sure that you’ll find it?
Measurable goals will also allow you to determine if your marketing efforts are paying off or not. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of seeing a steady stream of traffic coming in from multiple sources. However, if you’re not converting this traffic into paying customers, then what’s the point of all this effort?
Use Conversions Rather Than Traffic
One of the biggest mistakes that new businesses make is focusing too much on just getting the website loaded with as much traffic as possible. The goal should always be to gain and retain loyal paying customers. This is why you need to focus on conversions rather than traffic.
You might get a lot of traffic from a Google search, or you might even get a ton of blog comments. But unless these leads are converting into paying customers, then what’s the point of all this effort?
A/B testing is an essential tool for determining the right approach. You can randomly change the messaging in your campaigns, and see which variations work best. You can’t control how many people will see your campaigns, so you have to be prepared to test a lot of variations to see which one performs best.
Use Micro-Moments To Capture Attention
A big problem that smaller businesses have is getting noticed in a crowded marketplace. You have to develop a strategy to effectively cut through the noise and get your message across to the right audience. One tactic that can help is micro-moments. Micro-moments are those small moments when your customer has an interest in your product and is in the right place at the right time.
If you sell household goods and your customer is browsing a store that sells furniture, that is entirely likely that one of the items on their wish list is a coffee table. So, when they are in the middle of looking at items for their home, you can put in front of them a pitch for coffee tables.
You want to try and take advantage of these small moments. These are the moments when people have the most interest in what you have to say. If you can manage to capture the attention of your customer at these times, you can establish a connection and gain them as a lead.
Develop A Long-Term Perspective
If you’re looking to build a sustainable business, then you need to develop a long-term perspective.
You’re going to put in a lot of effort in the first few months, however, you have to be prepared to continue to invest in your business, even when there are no signs of the market moving in your direction. An effective sales funnel will help you establish a regular income, even when the business is going through a lull.
If you want to make sure that you’re not wasting your time and effort, you need to have a clear idea of what is going on, and where you are currently, both financially and in terms of your customer base. Developing a long-term perspective will help you establish the right goals, and more importantly, it will help you have the right metrics to measure your progress.
Use Tracking Tools
The final step to creating an effective sales funnel is to use tracking tools. You know, those little applications that track your website’s performance, and record all the relevant metrics?
Use tools like Google Analytics to track the progress of your funnel. This type of tool will allow you to see all the traffic coming into your website, as well as how many of these leads are converting into paying customers.
What really makes this tool unique, is that it allows you to create different dashboards, showing you all the relevant data in no fuss, no muss. Plus, you can get daily, weekly, and monthly reports, which you can use to analyze the performance of your funnel.
Use Google Analytics to track the performance of your website, and use these reports to establish benchmarks for comparison. If you see that one specific campaign is performing well, you can use this as a reference and roll out more of the same. However, if this particular campaign is not performing as well as you hoped, you can pull it out and try something new.
A/B testing is one of the best tools that Google Analytics has to offer. With A/B testing, you can assign different messages to different groups of visitors, and see which one performs best. This allows you to establish exact figures for your website’s marketing efforts, and see if everything is going according to plan.
The Ultimate Guide to Online Marketing
To put it simply, marketing is the practice of attracting potential customers to your business. Once these customers show interest and begin to engage with your brand, you can continue to build on this relationship and offer them value.
However, attracting customers is only the first step. You also need to be able to convert these first-time buyers into paying customers who will continually engage with your business.
To ensure that you are meeting the right people, and encouraging them to become paying customers, you need to use a sales funnel. A sales funnel will help you identify these potential customers, and allow you to continue to build a relationship with them.
Every business is different. Some prefer to start with a bang and see what happens. They will often run campaigns on social media platforms, like Facebook or Twitter, to attract as much attention as they can. These businesses will then follow up with a massive email blast, hoping to catch the attention of as many people as possible.
Other businesses, prefer to create a good online store, and then use this as a platform to engage with customers. They will often run email campaigns, where they will try to persuade existing or potential customers to buy their products. Sometimes, these customers will be offered a discount, or given free shipping to entice them into making a purchase. In effect, the goal is to have as many people as possible, browsing and eventually buying the products online. This type of business will often rely on SEO (search engine optimization) and building a good reputation.
Regardless of the method that you choose, the most important thing is that you are choosing a method, and that you are following through with it. You can find many guides and blogs that can give you tips on various platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter. Ultimately, you need to figure out what works best for your business.