High-Converting Best Practices for Sales, Engagement & Retention
7 min read
In this digital marketing era, getting someone to click on your ad or visit your site is just the beginning. You need to be able to keep them. And not just keep them, but engage and convert them into loyal advocates.
For many business owners, it can feel like you’re doing all the right things, but the results just don’t show up the way you expect. This blog post will guide you to discover some best practices that you can try in your digital marketing efforts to potentially boost the sales and rapport you have with your target audience. We will cover each of these individually, and how you can track your success in the implementation of these strategies.
But to truly understand the essence of these best practices, you may need to understand your customer journey.
Customer Journey?
Every business has an onboarding process whether they know it or not. Your customers, who were once strangers, become aware of their predicament and that they need help, and they get to know your brand, learn a bit more about it, they check if it’s the right fit for them before they make a purchase. Then they stay with your brand or they move on. This process varies from industry to industry and sometimes from person to person. The customer’s transition from the awareness to the end is what is referred to as their customer journey.
It is important to know which journey your target audience tends to use because you can help guide them through it. This way, they become a lot more likely to complete the sale and stay loyal to your business. This is why so many savvy businesses spend a lot of time optimizing their sales funnel.
Many conversion problems businesses face can be identified and regulated with a regularly optimized sales funnel.
Best Practices For Increasing Sales Conversions
Personalization
It can be very off-putting to be treated like a number. Treating your customers like this will likely be reciprocated. Customers like to feel special — the more exclusive it feels, the more remembered you’ll likely be. So, adding personal touches can be invaluable especially when you have many competitors around you. This means;
abandoning that generic, robotic-sounding tone that corporations used to use in the past
learning about your customer avatar and what triggers them
segmenting your audience so that you can speak to them on a more personal level that they can relate to
But this can be hard to do when you have a business to run and a million other things to handle. There are many ways you can handle this without overburdening yourself.
Quality, Valuable Content
Content alone won’t move the needle especially now that there’s a lot of it readily available anywhere online. The way you talk, the value you give, the impact it makes matters. Even though there’s a lot of content out there, a lot of it gets erased from the back of your lead’s mind because it offers very little value to them. Many businesses’ content only revolves around them — usually promotional content or why they are the best. But your audience is mostly focused on what’s in it for them. To put out content that’s perceived as more valuable;
Join the conversation in their heads. Think about where they are in their customer journey and answer the questions they may have at that point
Put in work to have some pillar pieces of content that are value-packed. Promotions are also great, but make sure the value you give surpasses the number of asks
Put out lots of quality content. Quantity matters too — just not at the expense of quality
Being Intentional With Your Approach Channels
If you google search for the best platform you ought to use as a business, you’ll likely find several contrasting answers. It’s because there’s usually no single platform that is guaranteed to work best for everyone. Some businesses may do well using a platform like Pinterest but that same platform might be less impactful to another. To get more out of your chosen platform, ask the following questions:
Where does my audience naturally spend time?
What touchpoints feel organic rather than forced?
What kind of content resonates most with them?
You might not need to be on every single platform especially if you’re a small team, have a bootstrapped marketing budget, or haven’t found significant success in the platform(s) you’re currently using.
It may be best to tie in the main point you’re making in each piece of content on each platform (if you use multiple channels). For example, make sure your ad matches with your retargeting email. And your Video Shorts can be in line with your new blog post or long-form video.
Implementing Automation Tools
As I mentioned earlier, doing all of these can be a lot for a business owner with a small team. That’s why automation can be extremely beneficial to integrate into your marketing. How else do you personalize your content, attract leads, engage those leads, find time to measure those metrics — all of which are outside of your business’s actual operations? Automation, done right, can help you scale and still meet your engagement targets. And many of these tools aren’t wildly expensive or complex— there’s often something that can help your business grow regardless of where you are and what you’re trying to do.
Engagement Strategies to Enhance Customer Interaction
Build a Community
Whether it’s on Facebook Groups or a forum, having a space where your followers can gather to discuss or exchange value can be incredibly rewarding to your business. For some businesses, the community might be like an exclusive online club where its members can discuss their issues, engage with each other, and get direct insights from the expertise your business provides. For some, their community is more of a review forum type of thing. Although creating an online community isn’t an absolute necessity, it can be immensely beneficial because it can make your audience feel a sense of belonging — a much deeper way to build engagement with them. To do this:
Take a look at your business’s audience and where they hang out. Would Discord or Clubhouse be a good fit? How about LinkedIn Groups, Facebook? Reddit? Get clear on who you want and what you want out of this community
Once you decide what your goals are for this community, set guidelines for it
Create exclusive content for your community. Live streaming sessions, short webinars, live Q and A sessions, educational content, and behind-the-scenes content can be great for your community. You can also get them to weigh in on your next products. For example, you can get your community to name the new item on your menu. Or you can get them to vote on what they would like to see at your next launch
Get them to talk. It helps a lot when they are doing a lot of the talking so, encourage them to. Get them to start talking with discussion starters — ask questions, throw challenges, hold competitions, share memes they can relate to. You can run polls and surveys to get feedback as well. You can also ask for testimonials and reshares from those who had a great experience working with you. This would help make them even more loyal and connected to your brand
It would also be a good idea to have loyalty programs, special discounts, expert guest interviews, beta testing, and recognition of top fans within your community
Communicate Effectively
Whichever platform you choose, make sure that your messaging reflects who you are and considers what they want. Also consider:
Mixing your content styles. eg. promotional, inspirational, educative, testimonial, announcements, etc.
Getting (and sticking to) a defined content calendar
Using more unexpected, engaging, or relatable subject lines to hook them in
Make sure to ALWAYS add your Call-To-Action (and make it clear)
Let them feel invited to talk. Eg. comments, feedback, reviews, etc.
Remember to group your audience for easy personalization
Use Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) to get them more interested
You can use limited-time offers to pique their interest and get them to take action more quickly. Make sure, however, that you aren’t just creating a fake sense of urgency or leaving the “limited offer” open longer than it’s supposed to be. Creating a false sense of urgency or scarcity can be irritating and at times, lose you points on their scale of trustworthiness. (You’ve probably seen this happen a lot in e-commerce where a brand that claims to have a limited-time offer has this offer open for weeks, months, or more after the said deadline).
Retention Strategies Tailored for Small Businesses
It is often easier (and cheaper) to get a lead to buy from you a second time than the first. To get them to stay with your business longer, you may want to:
Nurture Customer Relationships
Thank-you emails, personalized follow-up messages, loyalty programs, anniversary celebrations, and exclusive content can be a small but powerful way to keep communication going from time to time
Use cross-selling and upselling
You can sell upgrades, exclusive deals, bundles, and personalized suggestions (based on their purchase history). These are great ways to get them to repurchase from your business
Implement their feedback
Don’t just collect their thoughts and opinions —implement the ones that resonate, and let them know about it. When there are apologies to be made or credit to be given to somebody, do it promptly.
Measure Your Success
To be able to grow your sales, engagement, and retention, you need to know which metrics move the needle and which ones are just hyped but add no real value. Understanding which Key Performance Indicators to look out for and how each metric can be tweaked — this can be a superpower for your business.
Use Tools To Track The Right Metrics
Analytics tools like Google Analytics, HotJar, Crazy Egg, Meta Insights can help you gather the insights you need to make the right call for your business. Specialized CRM or email software like Zoho and ConvertKit can be helpful for metrics from your other forms of messaging.
Conclusion
Crossing your fingers and hoping to get found isn’t much of a strategy. And even if you had tons of traffic coming to your site, you still need to lead them through their customer journey and get them to stay even after they buy from you. This blog post highlights some key actionable strategies you can implement in your business to boost the conversions you see and the retention you get so that you can increase the number of qualified leads you attract and the percentage of those leads you retain.