Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Few Thoughts Re: Converting Online Marketing to a Phone Call…

How many of you have asked yourself the question, “How does online marketing result in a phone call to my business?”. 

As one who is continually learning the whole online media phenomenon, I still ask myself this question each and every day.  I believe a substantial majority of us believe that all the online marketing we do for your businesses (search engine optimization (SEO), social media, content marketing, link building and so forth) are all designed to direct targeted traffic to our respective sites – with an end result of revenue conversion.

Conversion means different things for different sites – for some, a conversion rate may be the measurement by how many leads we obtain; and perhaps for others, our conversion rated may be based upon how many people sign up for the company newsletter; download links, notes, documents, etc…

No matter how we are hoping to convert traffic, I have listed a few proactive suggestions below that each one of us can do to potentially increase our conversion rate.  Please keep in mind, there are merely suggestions – again, I will remind all who read this I am just a small business owner who tends to ask the simplistic of questions that I have, let alone, my inquires and questions of my clients.  Some of these suggestions may work, some may not.  More to the point is specificity as to how each us can at least try to generate calls to our offices…

Add Your Phone Number 

Add your phone number to additional pages supplementing the “Contact Us” page.  Remember, if the goal of each of our sites is to generate phone calls, why not remind our visitors of our phone number?  We have to make it easy for our visitors to act, and listing our phone number instills trust. It conveys that we have legitimate businesses and minimizes fears a visitor might have that you are trying to rip them off.

Lead Form On Each Page 

We need to lead our visitors to act and lead them down a predetermined path of conversion. The addition of a lead form to every page will logically encourage visitors and traffic to convert. Giving your visitors easy access without having to think or search about it will make them just a simple mouse click away.

Integration Through Navigation 

Incorporate footer menus supplementing a side or top level navigation menu.  If we provide our visitors multiple ways to find the information they are looking for, we enhance the overall customer experience. The less time it takes a visitor to where they want to be on your site, the less likely they are to get lost along the way.

Social Media Buttons 

If it makes sense for your company, build a Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, or other feed into your website. Clearly, many of us have already done this.  Include share buttons to allow the content of our sites shareable – visitors can publish your content without having to leave your site. By giving your visitors access to social media, we are encouraging them to get more involved with our business. The more someone knows about your business and the more connected they are to it, the better chance of conversion.

More Call-To-Actions 

We need to incorporate strong and consistent call-to-actions into our content – a random single link here and there is not enough.  We need to remind our visitors in every step of the sales process so our visitors do not forget what you want them to do.

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