Welcome back for the third and final installment of our blog on conversion funnels! If you haven’t read the first 2 parts of this blog, here are Part 1 and Part 2.
Last week, we discussed the capabilities of a few of the most common platforms and how to determine which one is right to find your ideal audience more accurately. This week, we will discuss creating post-conversion funnels to develop social proof assets, encourage repeat business and brand advocacy, and nurture lifetime relationships with your audience. So, let’s jump right in!
Congratulations, You’ve Converted a User! …Now What?
After you’ve developed a lead into a client, made a sale or otherwise achieved a goal that you’ve set for user activity, you’re probably pretty happy. And you should be, you’ve succeeded!
Many advertisers make the mistake of considering their job done – nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, unless they sell caskets, chances are that they’re leaving most of their potential revenue on the table. Arguably worse, they have also almost certainly hindered their potential for growth by not extending that customer or client’s journey past the sale. Let’s look at some of the many ways in which marketers can continue to develop these relationships.
Maximizing the Value of Your Wins
In truth, what we call a conversion funnel is shaped more like an hourglass, with the conversion being the skinny part. The conversion may bring revenue, but what comes after is usually more valuable.
Here are the steps of the bottom part of the conversion funnel:
Social Proof
When a user makes a transaction with your business, it’s always important to follow up to find out how they feel about their experience. Companies often use email for this purpose, but if your business is such that you can reach out to each customer or client over the phone and listen to them tell you about their experience, it can often have a greater impact.
If the customer’s experience was great, then you can ask them to like your social media pages and leave a review on whatever platform is most common for your audience. If they do, potential customers or clients will see their great experience and view your business more favorably. Reaching out shows that you care about your customer service, even after the transaction. This can have a big influence on their decision to do business with you in the future. Win-win, right?
If you’ve ever read online reviews, you might have noticed that people are far more likely to post reviews about negative experiences than about positive ones, if they aren’t asked for a review in either case. This is because people who feel like their expectations weren’t met want to be listened to. They want to know that you care about more than just their wallet. Reaching out and showing that your company still cares about them after the sale can often pre-empt a negative review.
In addition, you now have more information that you can use to improve your sales process or customer service, so that future customers don’t experience the same issues. This reduces the number of negative experiences, which reduces the number of negative reviews.
Repeat Business
Since we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the strategic growth your business. In most cases, customers and clients will have need of your goods and services on more than one occasion in their lives. If your product or service has a shorter buying cycle, you should always build an audience of your customer database and bid higher for PPC ads for users that audience, as previous customers convert at a much higher rate than new customers.
By also keeping in contact with customers through email, social media posts or (ideally) both, you help keep your brand fresh in their mind. This is part of the reason that companies commonly send emails with special discounts or offers on a customer’s birthday. Not only is this a thoughtful gesture, it also serves as a yearly reminder of your brand, particularly at a time when the user is more likely to be in a good mood.
When successful, the customer will attach that good mood to your kind gesture and feel good about your brand as a result. This positive experience can help encourage them to choose to do business with you again the next time they need a product or service that you offer. Together with reaching out to make sure they felt good about their experience, a regular social media presence and an automated email program can go a long way toward developing…
Lifetime Relationships & Brand Advocacy
What’s better than a happy customer? A happy, vocal customer, that’s what!
Word of mouth is still the most tried and true way of growing your business. Most people ask friends, family and coworkers for recommendations when they want a product or service they’ve never bought before. This is also where all those great experiences that you turned into stellar reviews in the Social Proof section come into play.
Think about it: If you were looking for a plumber, you might ask around or post on social media to see whom the people around you might recommend. You get 3 recommendations, go home and start reading reviews online. Two of the businesses have few reviews and high ratings. One has 50 times as many as the others combined, and a very high rating.
Assuming their fees are similar, which are you most likely to choose?
If you then hired that plumbing service and you also had a really great experience, would you ever call anyone else when you needed plumbing work done?
The Wrap-Up
With a little digital elbow grease, you can grow your business more quickly and cost-effectively by reaching out to determine customer satisfaction, optimizing your user experience, increasing bids when serving ads to previous customers and maintaining an appropriate level of regular communication with your audience. If you’re patient and willing to do the work, you can start to turn single transactions into lifetime relationships with customers that can yield many transactions, as well as new sales opportunities as they write reviews and recommend your business to their social circles.
So, there you have it. We want to extend a special thank you to those of you who have taken the time to read this piece. We hope that this information can help your business become more successful and grow your good reputation. We also understand that a lot of work goes into developing conversion funnels – we do it all the time!
*** Shameless Plug ***
If you’d like to learn more about how the team at blr | further can help, please call or email Brandy Davis (office: 205-380-2584 / email: bdavis@blrfurther.com) for more information on our free, 2-week marketing audit program. Tell us what your needs are, give us two weeks and we’ll show you how our team can provide effective, data-driven solutions.
