Digital marketing is changing every single day. That said, small business marketers always look for ways to attract their online customers.
This includes tweaking online marketing strategies and monitoring their competitors. That way, they can quickly figure out what tactics work and what does not.
For instance, many marketers have turned to paid marketing in trying to get new customers to convert. But aside from paid ads, there are other ways you can get traction for your brand and business.
Here are the 17 conversion-driven online strategies that can help drive customers to your business:
1. Use Marketing Automation
Modern-day technology offers lots of opportunities to improve your conversion rates through automation and personalization. Marketing automation software often includes:
- Smart email sequences reaching your customers at the right moment
- On-site promotional campaigns targeting deals and coupons to each particular user
- Smart chatbox helping your customers in real time
vcita is a comprehensive small business management platform that offers quite a few smart customer relationship optimization options, including:
- Lead capture from live digital events, Google My Business and a customizable customer portal
- SMS nurture marketing and service appointment reminders
- Beautiful email marketing campaigns and smart segmentation
- CRM-driven cross-channel marketing campaigns
2. Boost Your Website’s Page Speed
Page speed is critical because faster loading pages make your website efficient. And an efficient website can deliver a great user experience.
In fact, if it takes longer than 3 seconds for your page to load, a quarter of users will simply click away.
Users on mobile are expecting speed as well. In the same way, page speed can also significantly impact your conversion rates.
A Walmart.com report revealed that their conversion increases every time they boost their website page speed.
More so, page speed and on-page experience is also known to be one of the most important ranking factors of Google. The same thing goes to your mobile page speed, as well. Here’s a detailed guide on speeding up your website.
3. Offer a Free Trial
Offering a free trial is one way to win over more customers. Most people wouldn’t know a particular product or service is right for them until they try it out.
If you think that your product or service does not fit this pricing structure, you can provide people with a low introductory cost. That way, they will be more comfortable with making an initial investment.
It will also make them less likely to question the quality of your product or service.
4. Create a Compelling Marketing Video
Marketers have also been using videos as a useful tool to promote their products and services. Videos allow you to introduce your brand to your prospects and build long-lasting relationships with them.
Videos can also help boost your SEO. A high-quality video will enhance viewer engagement, pique their interest, and drive traffic to your site. This is important because quality traffic and click-through rates are one of the major ranking factors of Google.
The more traffic and clicks your site gets, the higher it will rank on SERPs or Search Engine Results pages.
5. Take Advantage of Facebook Marketing
Facebook has become one of the go-to social media platforms on the internet, and many advantages come with it.
People aren’t just using it personally to connect with family and friends, but it can also be a handy tool to promote a business.
This platform is excellent for entrepreneurs who are looking for a cost-effective way to promote their business. Facebook also provides them with a platform to draw in prospective customers.
Here are the benefits of Facebook marketing:
- It provides a low-cost marketing strategy
- It’s an excellent platform for sharing business information
- It offers two-way communication between entrepreneurs and customers
- It’s a cost-effective way to build brand awareness
- It allows you to quick test your marketing funnel and collect customer data
6. Set Up Live Chat
Live chat is another tool that you should add to your arsenal. When you provide users with quick solutions to your queries, it will boost your conversion rates and increase your revenue.
A lot of customers prefer a live chat option over more traditional channels such as phone and email. No one wants to wait for a reply, and it becomes even more irritating if you get automated chat responses.
Live chat will offer your customers quick and personalized customer assistance. It also provides them with a smooth and customer-friendly shopping experience.
By providing quick, real-time solutions, you’ll help speed up your customer’s buying decisions.
People like to feel listened to, and that’s what live chat precisely brings. There are quite a few live chat solutions for you to experiment with.
By resolving issues in a more personalized way, it will be easier to achieve customer satisfaction. And this can have a positive impact on their purchase decision.
7. Start Your Own Blog
If you are doing guest posting and leverage various social media platforms, you might wonder if blogging is still valid.
You need to think of your blog as the primary hub for all the valuable content you put out on the internet.
If you want to be a thought leader or a trusted influencer in your industry, then starting a blog will put you in the right direction.
To keep your business separate, consider starting a blog on a new domain. This way you will have more freedom to experiment with topics and angles. Namify can help generate a cool blog name for your to get things started:
8. Convert Customers to Brand Ambassadors
Brand ambassadors are people who know and love the products and services that you offer. They can also be your customers who are pleased with your service.
Mind you, these kinds of customers are more than willing to share their experiences with their friends and followers on social media.
Millennials are likely to show their purchases online. But this is either to praise you or to rant about you.
When customers are satisfied with your products or service, they will share it with their friends and family. They will recommend you to the people they know, which helps increase brand awareness.
These days, people don’t trust brands. What they do believe is their customers. Positive recommendations from other people are likely to be taken more seriously than the brand itself.
9. Include Clear Calls to Action
Your site should include a call to action or the response that you want your users to complete.
How do you encourage them to act? You can, with a compelling call-to-action in place.
So, always include a call to actions in your product pages, website, and social media posts. They’ll never act if you don’t ask for it in the first place.
More importantly, provide clear directions, and mind your readability.
10. Utilize Data-Driven Marketing
Often, marketers will go with their gut when it comes to providing content for their audience. They think that they already ‘know’ what their customers want. But often, they’re wrong.
It’s essential to gather data on what users want first, as it is one of the best ways to satisfy them.
Let’s say that you want to advertise your business. Are you utilizing an ad template that has effectively performed throughout the years, or do you go with an ad that you like? You can run A/B tests to help determine the content that performs best.
Additionally, quiz marketing is another method of generating leads while understanding your customers better.
11. Prioritize Your Customers’ Needs
Ideally, it would be best if you adapted your business based on your customers’ needs. If you fail to do this, you may lose your customers, as well as your business.
So, what are your business goals? What are the goals of your customers when using your products or services? Ideally, you should align these goals to help satisfy your customers.
Additionally, you should also use personalization to attract and convert more customers. When people believe that your product is more tailored to your needs, they’re more open in doing business or making a purchase from you.
For your existing customers, you can recommend to them products based on their buying patterns. Companies such as eBay and Amazon use this to satisfy their customers.
12. Add Testimonials and Reviews
Most people want to minimize risks as much as possible. That’s precisely why you need to convince them with the reviews of other users and through testimonials.
Your prospective buyers want to see how the past and present users of your products think about it.
The key to handling reviews is honesty. If you get negative and unfavorable reviews, always receive it with an open mind. Just having positive reviews of your products can be suspicious of others.
Reviews and testimonials show your prospects that you have satisfied a lot of users in the past.
13. Host Webinars and Online Events
A webinar is just like a seminar; only that it is hosted online. After the workshop, there will be an interactive session where the host and attendees can communicate via live chat.
Note that when hosting a webinar, you’re asking for about 45 minutes to 2 hours of your customers’ time. You need to pick a topic that your customers are struggling with and think of how you can solve them.
Engage with your audience regularly so that they’ll feel that it will be a two-way conversation. Moreover, when hosting a webinar, make sure that you have a copy of it so that attendees could rewatch it anytime.
14. Use a Countdown Timer
Creating a sense of urgency is a great way to compel customers to buy. That’s because it makes them excited, and it taps into their fear of missing out.
There are many ways you can employ this kind of tactic, and one way is by using countdown timers.
Countdown timers provide customers a clear, visual cue that they need to take immediate action. Moreso, if they do not want to miss out on the fun.
This provides information to your customers that the offer isn’t forever, and it will end soon. Having these offers for a limited time is all about creating urgency and scarcity.
15. Run a Win-back Campaign
Although marketing is meant to help you garner customers, you shouldn’t forget about your existing customers. Moreso, if it has been a while since their last purchase.
Identify who these inactive shoppers are. And then try to win them over with an enticing marketing campaign. A great tactic would be to remind them that they are missing something, such as a new line of products.
16. Focus on SEO
Traffic that you get from search engines can also provide you with good-paying customers.
However, the drawback of Search Engine Optimization is that it can be challenging to rank for competitive search terms. By “competitive search terms,” we mean generic keywords and queries that a lot of businesses aim to rank for.
Chances are, you’ll be facing a tough time when it comes to ranking for particular search terms in your niche.
So, how do you generate leads and traffic despite your competitors? One way is to tap into long-tail keywords. Rather than ranking for a generic keyword like “SEO tools,” you can use “SEO tools for e-commerce” instead.
The cool thing about ranking for long-tail keywords is that it has a specific intent. And that means you can easily convert a site visitor into a customer.
17. Release an Ecommerce App
With the rise of smartphones and other mobile devices, more and more people have done some form of a mobile e-commerce transaction.
Note that they’re not just doing it online. 8% prefer using a mobile app.
Mobile apps have the lowest cart abandonment rate at 20% compared to desktop sites (68%) and mobile sites (98%.)
Mobile apps are a lot easier to use than mobile sites, they load quicker, and when people open an app, they’re already ready to buy.
You can make suggestions to the customer based on the information they’ve provided the app. You can also send push notifications about promos, new products, and other information that will be relevant to your customers.
Over to You
Acquiring e-commerce customers can be challenging, especially if you’re a small business owner. But applying just a tactic or two from this list can do wonders for your online business.
By testing things initially, and analyzing results, you’ll soon know what strategies will work well for your brand. Good luck!