Businesses need to generate leads and convert them into buying customers to succeed and grow. However, to be considered a potential customer, someone must show some interest in the products or services you offer. This can be by interacting with your brand online on social media or even visiting your business website.
photo credit: Blake Wisz / Unsplash
The good thing is that generating leads for your business isn’t difficult. There are many great social media lead generation ideas that you can use to grab the attention of prospects and pull them into your sales funnel. You need to create a conversion strategy that helps you turn your generated leads into paying customers. Here are some of the top ways to convert potential leads into buying customers:
1. Don’t Keep Leads Waiting
Leads are an asset and can’t be kept waiting. To make sales, you must take advantage of every opportunity. The prospect can lose interest in a product after a few minutes and move on to other competitors since most things are easily found on social media today. It is essential to make plans on how to handle incoming leads.
You can set up a company mail, where it is checked regularly to ensure quick responses, or even you can use customer service lines that are active and accessible. Avoid using personal mail because this can be so inconvenient for prospects if you are offline or due to email overload. This strategy can be effective also in terms of traceability and speed. Using this principle can allow you to follow up on your prospect on time, especially with customer service software.
2. Create your Marketing Process
Speed is critical when it comes to converting leads into customers. And it depends highly on the lead generation process you’ve put up. Hence, specialization and division of labor is crucial for a business to run flawlessly without misunderstanding. Each team member should be trained and know their specific roles to avoid mix up. This allows all departments in your business to work efficiently.
Your staff should be trained to know precisely how phone leads are handled, especially regarding communication, who follows up, when the right time to do so is, and how inbound leads are tracked. Using tools like SalesForce can help you stay organized and on top of the progress of your leads.
3. Qualify the Lead First
There are two common types of leads namely, marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. A marketing qualified lead may only go as far as downloading a white paper to do their research, while a sales qualified lead might request a meeting. This means they fall into different stages of the buying cycle. A qualified sales lead will need some lead nurturing to support a customer in making purchase decisions.
However, both leads qualify as potential prospects. The only difference is that one is ready to be a potential buyer, while the other is just doing research. Differentiating the two can aid you into making a good first impression.
4. Tracking and Analytics
Tracking is one of the effective strategies for knowing a potential customer. If a buyer visits your website, it shows they’re interested in what you offer or looking for information. Tracking can enable you to know the potential leads and differentiate between the leads to further personalize your sales messages. Personalizing your sales message can make it more convincing to potential leads.
Analytics makes it easier to pinpoint areas your leads are coming from, so you can tell what areas to focus on and put more effort into. This way, you can send those emails with information on their specific needs.
Endnote
Follow the above best practices to convert your leads into hassle-free paying customers. This will help you maximize your return on your advertisements and marketing investment.