Are you wasting contacts?

I recently met with a client who wanted to hire me to get them more traffic (visitors) to their website.  I've done this in the past for a variety of different companies in different industries.  For one client back in 2010 I managed to get them 550 new online sales in three months which was great for them since prior to that they only had 600 customers for the entire year in 2009.  They were thrilled at the growth and so was I.  I have continued to consult with them and they have continued to grow pretty dramatically every year since.  

When the new client said they need more traffic, I knew I could handle that job and we met, set out a plan and got them started.  I'm happy to say that by combining better SEO, some display and PPC ads and even a few local newspaper ads, we increased sales by 22% the first six months of 2015 as compared to the entire year of 2014.  So that's great, right?  Well, no, not to me.  I was not completely satisfied with those results and honestly expected more.  So I started digging, analyzing every source, every website click and every sale and what I found shocked me a bit.  They had told me that they were sure they closed 30 - 50% of their sales opportunities, that they had great sales people and one division actually closed 85% of their appointments.  However, it turns out they weren't tracking any data so their belief on their numbers was just a 'hunch'.  I set up programs to monitor everything and found out that their closing on actual quotes was 30 - 40%.  Not bad, but only 1.4% of all their website traffic ever asked for a quote!  Now I knew the real problem.  

Don't Waste Contacts!

Do you have any idea how many people visit your website every day or every week or every month or every year? How many of them give you their contact information?  If you're not getting any information when they visit then you cannot keep in touch with them (obviously).  Every person who visits your website is a potential customer.  You want to keep in touch with them.  In the long run it will be easier and cheaper to sell to people who already know you and like you than to keep finding new people to attract to your website.  

How Do I Get Their Information?

Most people are not simply going to fill out a form for no reason to give you their personal information. However, people will trade their information for something of value, especially if you make it really easy for them.  Don't ask for all of their information on the "first date", especially when they don't know much about you.  Ask for a name and email address in exchange for something valuable to them.  Offer them something; coupons, a white paper, a free download or recipe, something that makes sense for your business.  If your clientele are men, contests work really well.  They know that once they give you their information that you will email them but if the offer is fair, they'll take it.  


Have questions about how this might work for your business?  Use the form to the right to submit your question and let us know if you want a private (free) consultation or you want us to answer your question in the blog.