Your ideal client prefers searching for your products or services online rather than speaking with sales reps. In fact, 81% of consumers do their own research before making a purchase, and 68% of customers don’t want to speak to your sales team.
To target these potential clients, you’ll need to make some adjustments to your sales approach.
Rather than focusing all your efforts on cold calls and emails, it’s time to rethink how you drive conversions.
Not sure where to start? We’ve put together the ultimate cheat sheet for you. We’ve included 10 ways you can increase conversions in a world where consumers prefer not to speak to your sales department.
Let’s begin!
1. Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Both your marketing and sales departments share a critical aspect: tracking KPIs within a certain time frame.
It makes sense, then, to have them working alongside one another rather than in silos.
Your marketing team likely generates new leads and improves customer experience, while your sales team qualifies and nurtures these leads.
Considering there’s one objective in mind—turning leads into paying customers—both teams should work together to achieve your sales goals.
2. Emphasize the Value of Your Offer
The best way to sell something is not by promoting its features, but rather by emphasizing the benefits it offers to your prospects.
Here’s an example of features versus benefits. It should be clear that the marketing message on the right-hand side of the image is more effective:
In this part of the sales cycle, you can refine your offer by answering these questions:
- How do customers benefit from your product or service?
- How long does it take to see the results?
- What are the pain points your prospect is facing, and how can your product help?
Once you have these answers, you’re one step closer to closing the sale.
The next time you’re pitching your product, consider focusing on how it will improve your prospects’ quality of life, for example.
Once you can present what you’re selling from this perspective, your prospects are more likely to become paying customers. This sales strategy works regardless of your offering.
You could take this one step further and speak to your existing clients to find out what they love about your product or service. This gives you insight into how you can better market your offerings based on their benefits.
3. Reevaluate Your Calls to Action (CTAs)
The best call to action is the one the user can see without having to look for it. So, if your CTA is stuck somewhere in the middle of your landing page, you need to move it further up.
You should also ensure the clarity of your CTAs.
For example, if you want prospects to sign up for your newsletter, your CTA should clearly communicate this. You need to tell people exactly what action you want them to take.
Remember, a picture speaks a thousand words. Use eye-catching CTA banners to make your offer stand out.
Here are some useful tools to help you create highly visible CTAs:
- ButtonOptimizer helps you design free CTA buttons. Once you’re happy with the button you’ve created, you can download it as a PNG file or CSS code. Now all you need to do is place them on your website.
- With Sniply, you can shorten any URL with the added bonus of overlaying your own content on a site. Even when directing prospects to third-party content, you’re in control. Track engagement with your CTAs using Sniply to understand audience interaction.
- HubSpot’s CTA buildert is a tool that goes beyond the design of your CTAs. In addition to being able to customize everything, this solution also allows you to test, track, and optimize your calls to action.
4. Revamp Your Landing Pages
Your messaging should be consistent across all your platforms, including your landing pages.
The first thing you’ll want to do is ensure that all your links direct users to the right place. For example, if you sell different kinds of software and your prospect clicks on a link for a free trial, make sure it’s connected to the right page.
Another important element of your landing page is your contact form. Similar to your CTAs, your forms should also be clear and simple.
Ensure that your contact form’s questions align with what your sales team needs to close deals, but only request essential information.
Aside from checking your links and refining your contact form, there are some tools you can use to create a strong landing page that drives conversions. Here are our favorites:
Unbounce, as the name suggests, helps you create landing pages that keep visitors engaged.
Using their Smart Builder, Copy, and Traffic features, you can create campaigns and improve your results faster than ever.
Hyperise can help you personalize every aspect of your website—no coding required. Simply create segments based on business category, job title, or revenue, and Hyperise will display website copy and visuals relevant to each segment.
Instapage is another popular landing page creator, and it’s a good option for those on a tight budget. While its free version is limited, it offers almost all of the content-building options as Unbounce.
While Five Second Test is not designed for landing page building, it’s a useful tool for getting feedback on your landing pages.
For example, if you aren’t really sure your landing page is strong enough, simply create a test. Users will have five seconds to look at it and answer simple questions. That way, you’ll know where your page needs improvement.
5. Diversify Your Offer
If your offer doesn’t match your customers’ needs, it’s not going to compel them to convert.
Your offering shouldn’t be identical for each prospect. Every potential customer has different needs and desires. You can ensure that you meet these needs by diversifying your offerings.
Here’s how one website is selling the same offer to different customers:
If a lead has just discovered your product or service, they might be interested in an eBook. A lead that’s closer to the bottom of the sales funnel, however, may prefer a free trial.
Instead of giving your leads something they aren’t interested in, adjust your offer according to the stages of the funnel they’re in.
6. Nurture Your Email Leads the Right Way
Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for businesses.
It can help you reach new customers, generate more leads, and develop lasting relationships with your clients. For this reason, you have to make your nurture email campaigns effective.
Here’s how you can do this:
Nobody likes to be faced with a wall of text unless it’s highly useful to them. Keep this in mind next time you draft your next newsletter.
Lead nurturing emails should be very helpful to readers, whether you’re offering tips, new products, or guides.
To avoid people unsubscribing from your nurture campaign, keep your emails short and interesting.
It’s worth noting that your unsubscribe rate isn’t necessarily a good indicator for measuring the success of your lead nurturing campaigns. A lot of people won’t unsubscribe, even if they never open your emails.
To get a clearer idea of how well you’re nurturing your leads, include website links in your newsletter.
Besides landing pages, you can also link to your blog or your social media pages, as you can see in the example below:
Including links will allow you to test what works and what doesn’t, ultimately getting more lead engagement.
Lastly, your subject line will either make the leads open the email or ignore it.
You need a strong subject line to boost your open and engagement rates. Many online tools can help you create great subject lines:
ActiveCampaign’s Email Subject Line Generator works on a keyword category principle. First, you choose between Benefit, Topic, and Pain Point, and then you add a keyword. The tool then generates a list of subject lines for you to choose from.
While not meant for subject lines, HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator may also be a good source of inspiration. All you need to do is enter up to five nouns, click on a button, and wait for it to work its magic.
Google’s Headline and Subject Line Generator, available in Chrome, offers four categories: List, How To, Question, and General. Once you’ve chosen one, enter your keywords to generate your subject lines.
Sumo’s Kickass Headline Generator offers you headline formulas based on set conditions. First, you choose from a list of categories. Then, you set conditions, such as topic, desired outcome, and audience, to generate your subject lines.
Finally, if you want a catchy—or sassy—subject line, Portent’s Content Idea Generator has got you covered. Once you type in your topic, the tool will generate title ideas, complete with suggestions on how to make it even better.
7. Understand Your Competition
A crucial part of increasing your sales is knowing how your product or service differs from your competitors. This is key to helping you sell your offerings more effectively.
To gain insight into this, ask yourself these questions:
- How is your offering superior to competitors’?
- What do you offer that others don’t?
- Which key features would you highlight when describing the product to a friend?
To outperform the competition, it’s crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of who they are and what they do.
When you don’t know what other solutions are on the market, you risk not seeing the true value of your own product or service.
It’s vital to do your research so that you can determine the key factors that make you stand out from the crowd.
You can start by using search engines like Google or Bing to find more information about your competitors and identify how they are marketing their offerings.
8. Keep Your Messaging Simple
While you may understand the technical aspects of what you’re selling, it’s possible that your potential customers don’t.
Keep your language simple so that your customers know exactly what you’re selling.
This plain language should be maintained across all the platforms you use to communicate with your prospects.
9. Personalize Everything
While personalization does take more time than sticking to a one-size-fits-all template, it’s a worthwhile investment.
With automation tools available, it’s becoming easier to personalize your marketing messages.
Aside from website customization, with Hyperise, you can also deliver personalized images and videos to your prospects through the communication platforms you use.
10. Make It Easy for Prospects to Contact You
Even if you have thousands of leads ready to convert, it won’t do you any good if they can’t reach your team with their queries.
That’s why you need to make sure your marketing efforts always include a link to your website where they can speak to someone at your company. Including a phone number works well too.
If your sales representatives are in different locations, a conventional phone network might not be an option. Luckily, there is cloud-based software that can be a good alternative:
- Cloudtalk.io is call center software designed for remote sales and support teams. It integrates with some of the most popular sales tools, ensuring that your team is always on the same page. And if you want to try the software out before you buy, they offer a 14-day free trial.
- Freshdesk Contact Center is another good option with more than 50,000 users worldwide. They offer a 21-day free trial and also integrate with the tools your team is already using.
- Dialpad is another one of our favorite tools for allowing your potential clients to contact you. It provides a 14-day free trial, and offers integrations that range from customer relationship management (CRM) applications to legal software.
Drive Better Conversion Rates with Personalization
Getting sales right can be tricky, no matter the size of your business. However, using the marketing strategies outlined above, you can better position your business to stay ahead of the competition.
When it comes to the sales prospecting process, there’s always room for improvement. With some planning, you can identify the perfect prospects, nurture relationships effectively, and close deals faster than ever before.
If you’re ready to elevate your sales process, we have the perfect solution. With Hyperise, you can personalize every step of the customer journey, making your prospects more likely to convert.
With personalized images, GIFs, videos, and text, you stand a much better chance of driving engagement and conversions as you’re showing your prospects that you genuinely care.
Visit our website to claim your free Hyperise demo. We’re excited to show you just how powerful personalization can be.