Five strategies to convert more prospects into loyal customers

Enhance your Conversion Marketing by using these five strategies from The Yorkshire Marketing Agency.

The frustration of losing a lead to a competitor after working so hard to attract them in the first place, is something we all understand. It’s a common problem in business and it may seem like there’s no way around it. You may feel like you’ve used all the tricks of the trade to keep leads engaged throughout the entire buyer journey, only to lose touch with them somewhere along the way. Worse still when you’ve captured a prospect’s attention right until the end, but somehow you miss the mark when it comes to closing the deal.

Is it simply a matter of bad luck? Or is there a way to convert a greater number of prospects into loyal customers with the right strategies in place? The secret is to foster prospective relationships, keep customers involved and informed, be mindful of your approach to marketing and sales, and make sure your prospects know that if they decide to become loyal customer, you’ll always have their best interests at the heart of everything you do. Easy! Right?

Here at The Yorkshire Marketing Agency, we get it – that’s all easier said than done. So, here we offer advice on how to improve your marketing and sales campaigns to drive greater sales conversions. These strategies will help you convert prospects into loyal customers, so you can make that frustration a thing of the past. 

1.    Plan your strategy thoroughly before making a start

Casting your net wide and hoping for the best is a strategy that no longer hits the mark in today’s competitive markets. To achieve greater conversion rates, you need a measured strategy that clearly sets out how you plan to attract your customers, what it will take to keep them engaged, and what your short- and long-term goals are along the way.

In developing your strategy, consider your customer personas and how they will benefit from doing business with you.

Source: PresentationLoad

Identify the products and features your prospect will find most appealing and use suitable outreach methods to deliver those messages. Using this information, build a strategy that outlines how you plan to engage your prospects at every stage of the buying journey. For example, depending on your offering, targeting your customers by industry may be as a good a place to start as any. Identify how these prospects are most likely to consume information and focus on these channels to deliver appropriate messaging and content that match their industry language and common pain points.

2.    Engage prospects throughout their entire journey

Not everyone is ready to buy from you right now. Engaging with prospects before they become active buyers, opens the door to a wealth of opportunities to nurture relationships and build trust, which will eventually lead to more business when your prospect is ready to buy. 

Implementing a personalised, multi-channel approach that considers your prospect’s interests, buyer stage, and pain points is the best way to achieve this. Using your usual marketing channels, deliver appropriate content to your users that points to you as a leader in your industry, builds trust in what you do, and, ultimately, helps your customers make a decision in your favour.

Source: SmartInsights

Increase your chances of success by nurturing potential relationships and try sending out targeted automatic nurture campaigns which will help to drive traffic more consistently to your website. Once there, your prospects will be met with a personalised web experience. A good website personalisation tool can build personalised search and discovery experiences to deliver intelligent content that matches your prospect’s current position in the buyer journey, eliminating the need for your customer to spend hours searching for the information they need.

Use a wide variety of channels to deliver relevant content and personalise this to reflect your customer’s position in their journey. It is essential to keep customers engaged throughout the entire sales cycle - this will ensure that they remember who you are and will enable you to build solid foundations for a long-lasting working relationship. It will also furnish them with all the resources they need to make the final purchasing decision.

3.    Look to your past data and insights to optimise your future efforts

Do you feel like you are continuously launching new marketing campaigns, but not seeing your engagement rates rise? Have a look at your past data and insights to optimise your future efforts. Reviewing your previous campaigns and identifying those which were successful, and those which missed the target, can help you to optimise your marketing strategy going forward.

Invest some time in some simple A/B testing. Looking at past variables such as call to actions (CTAs), subject lines, and the performance of certain content pieces over others, will allow you to significantly enhance your marketing yield and drive better results every time.

4.    A great content strategy is key to attracting the right prospects

We’ve talked about delivering the right content, but what does the right content look like? Creating quality content takes time and effort, and delays in releasing content to your audience leave you vulnerable to losing leads to competitors who are ready to deliver the right content at the right time. Having a library of targeted, pre-approved campaigns will save you from lengthy delays, which will ultimately save you from potential losses.  

Creating a robust content bank that accounts for multiple product, service, and feature lines at every stage of the sales process can help you prepare to strike while the iron is hot. When creating content to help customers make a buying decision, consider each of your customer personas and their stage in the buying process, then create a variety of resources that address their pain points and interests.

Source: austinwilliams

Should you already have some content ready to go, be proactive by working with your team to identify any gaps that need to be filled. Long-term, work to address these needs, so you’re prepared with the right content to engage your future prospects at all times. 

5.    Call on current customers to act as advocates of your brand

Your future customers will be attracted by your amazing content, ads and messaging, but they will also want to know that your company has their best interests at heart, and they will want that fact to be confirmed by your current customers. 

Success stories, customer referrals and testimonials from extremely satisfied customers who have experienced success through using your services or products, can speak to your prospects on your behalf. Extract direct quotes from interviews and use them to write stories for your website. There may be prospects who have more complex questions, but your sales and marketing team should be on hand to answer these, and consider approaching some current customers to provide ‘references’ to new prospects, if required:

”Simple strategies like these will do wonders for your client engagement and will keep you on the right path towards your goals of greater prospect conversion.”

Sarah Lindley, Managing Director, The Yorkshire Marketing Agency