SCORE Small Business Blog

You are gathering a loyal audience through Facebook Fans, Twitter followers, and an ever increasing stream of website and blog visits, but are not seeing anything really converting into new customers.  This is a comment I hear often throughout the business communities.

You may be asking – what more can be done since you are already blogging, engaging in social media and regularly creating new content for your audience?

Knowing how to push inbound leads further down the sales funnel is a common challenge for many businesses today as they attempt to work out how to improve their return on investment (ROI) from online marketing channels.

Evaluate the following before giving up:

• Am I following up on initial leads with lead nurturing campaigns that offer additional valuable content with deliverables for the target customer?
• Do I offer personalized content to leads in my sales funnel according to the target customer’s position in the buying cycle?
• Have I integrated my marketing and sales process to confirm that sales are picking up on qualified leads at the right time and maximizing a conversion process?
• Are we creating a unique experience with each target customer to create the “Wow” experience?

If you cannot answer “yes” to every question, then you’ve identified a potential weak link in your lead conversion follow up process. Continue reading to learn how you can make the lead conversion process really work for your business.

1. Keep Your Leads Engaged With Lead Nurturing Campaigns

No matter what stage of the buying cycle your target customer is at, you should cultivate a relationship of trust with every lead so that when your target customer is ready to buy, your name is the top of mind that pops up.

Develop a lead nurturing program with compelling calls-to-action with updated relevant content flowing through your blog, e-newsletters, and social media channels for creating value for your readers while not hard selling. Each interaction with your target customers should be an engaging, useful and valuable experience “for them.”

2. Grade Your Leads

Many companies measure the quantity of leads but don’t gauge the quality of leads. A more qualified lead, for example, would be someone who visits your website every week, has an RSS Feed to your blog, re-tweets your Twitter updates, and interacts with you on Facebook and is more likely to convert into a paying customer than someone who has just  filled out an online lead generation form or watched a webinar.

Adopt a scalable lead generation approach that communicates with content that is relevant to your target audience for generating leads and matches the level of their engagement with your website.

3. Grow Your Unripe Leads

It is easy to ignore leads that have not converted for months or to pass them on to the sales team for a slower follow up approach. Doing this has some risks. You may be contacting these undeveloped leads before they’ve matured enough for a sales call or missing out on the opportunity to move them down the sales funnel. Sometimes it takes time to nurture and develop these types of leads, but perseverance can pay off.

DJ Heckes – CEO & Author DJ is CEO of EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts and Full BRAIN Marketing and focuses on educating and training companies to significantly improve their small business marketing strategies. She also presents customized training programs for business marketing, social media, leadership and trade show marketing. www.exhib-it.com | Facebook | @DJHeckes | More from DJ