Imagine a visitor finding your website to read an interesting article. A month later, you see a notification informing you that person bought an expensive product from your store. Best of all, you didn’t have to do much during that month; the visitor passes through an engaging marketing funnel that draws them in, builds their trust in you, and convinces them to buy.
Ingredients for Success
If you wanted to open a restaurant, what would you do to ensure you made money? Would you hire a professional waitstaff, find the world’s best chefs, source the most organic ingredients, and rent the best building downtown?
These are essential elements, but none of them ensure success. More necessary than anything else for any successful business is a hungry crowd — one that knows exactly what you sell and is ready to buy.
It may seem obvious, but too many businesses forget this simple fact; many startups focus on their ideas and trendy topics, including digital marketing and setting up an outbound call center, before they even have a product they know someone will buy. Many businesses fail when they make things nobody wants.
Growing a successful business depends on turning potential leads into actual customers, focusing on the three metrics that matter: traffic, subscribers, and conversions.
1. Traffic
Traffic is a crucial metric from an inbound marketing perspective, informing you how many people make it to your website and, therefore, have the ability to end up in the sales funnel. You can adjust plenty of variables between the visit and the sale, but it’s hard to argue that more traffic means more sales opportunities.
Rather than just creating endless content, it’s a good idea to diversify and develop consistent promotional tactics for your company website. For example, for every blog you publish, you can also:
Schedule social media posts
Post the blog to a Medium account
Send an email to your subscribers linking to the post
These three tactics can increase your traffic through referrals, email marketing, and social media platforms.
2. Subscribers
Having a million visitors doesn’t mean anything if none of them subscribe to your email list. Your subscriber list is your most powerful tool to sell to an engaged audience, even if none of them ever revisit your website.
Make opt-in impossible to miss
If you get opt-ins from one form, that’s good news; that means it’s working. Now’s the time to put in more.
The two most accessible places to add new opt-in forms are at the bottom of every post and the top of every page.
Use your best content
If you’re getting subscribers, you likely already have great content for people to read. Curate some of your best posts and put them on one resource page that you can point visitors to. Not only will this get your best material in front of them, but it also gives you a chance to push another opt-in form.
3. Conversions
Most businesses focus too much on email metrics to squeeze that extra 0.01 percent conversion increase. Instead of worrying about these diminishing returns, go for the “good enough” CTR and open rate values. According to MailChimp, these are:
CTR: 5 percent and above
Open rate: 30 percent and above
Scarcity tactics
Offering your product to a limited number of buyers encourages them to act now before they can’t later. You can even reward their quick action with exclusive material you don’t give to anyone else.
Make products that sell for life
Knowing how to build products that sell for years requires understanding why people did or didn’t buy from you. A simple survey can accomplish this, provided you know where to send it:
Buyers: Email them as soon as they buy your product; they’re at the peak of excitement, and you’ll learn what exactly pushed them over the line to make a purchase.
Non-buyers: Email them whenever the shopping cart closes; the experience is fresh in their mind, allowing them to tell you precisely what kept them from committing.
You’ve built your audience, developed a product, and launched it. By following the above strategies, you’ll put yourself in a great position to keep selling for years.
