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3 Ways to Convert New Leads Online

Google and Facebook pay per click have offered small businesses a method for competing with much larger competitors by allowing for sane advertising budgets with ads that are immediately trackable.

You can figure out your ROI from PPC ads pretty easily.

But, sometimes those figures can be depressing.

If your website or landing pages are not converting for you, stop wasting time trying to perfect your ads (you’re already getting traffic). Instead, use these three tricks to convert more of your visitors into leads:

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Hail Mary Lead Generation

If you’re paying for traffic, you want to convert as many customers as possible. You can help your efforts by putting in some last-ditch, about-to-bounce-away lead conversion tactics.

Do this by:

  • Offering a Benefit-filled Exit Pop Up – these are annoying, but you can set them to only display one time to no annoy repeat visitors. And, if someone clicked an ad to find you and they’re about to bounce away from your site, you don’t have much to lose. Some companies convert as much as 23% more traffic by using exit pop ups.
  • Use a P.S. in any web or off-line marketing materials. Some people skip right to the P.S., so make it count. This goes for email and social media marketing as well.
  • When writing a P.S., or using an exit pop up, lead with benefits and let the customer know why they’ll be losing something if they don’t buy or submit their info.
  • Back up their fear of loss by giving them something to gain
  • Utilize Online Chat – These can be effective if you are selling a product or service that will undoubtedly lead to more questions than you can anticipate or answer in your FAQ. Use live agents because customers are frustrated by dealing with computer-based chat “agents.”

Encourage Your Potential Customer to Take a Very Low-Risk

This is key if you’re selling personal services, high-end products, or anything that costs more than a few dollars. Let your customer get something for free (eBook, white paper, tip sheet, samples) in exchange for something low-risk (their first name and email address).

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Further Lessen Their Risks by Being Honest

You love your product. You could talk about it all day. You have no idea why everyone in the world wouldn’t want one!

But, let’s be honest, we’re all customers. We know when we’re on fire for a product vs when we’re on the fence, or still in the research phase.

If you’re still in the info-gathering stages, what’s the last thing you want after you’ve put your info into a website’s contact form?

  • Pushy, shark-type sales people calling your house
  • Getting spammed with multiple emails

Overcome this fear by being honest in the P.S., or under your call-to-action:

  • We promise no salesmen will call your house
  • We respect your confidentiality and never sell your information
  • You will receive only one email with the information you asked for
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How To Get Better Targeting on Your Organic Traffic

Everyone wants free traffic. Organic traffic is the best traffic. It is free and it is natural – like the food and its good for you. There is a way to further benefit from organic traffic and that is to optimize the targeting on your organic reach on social media. If the targeting is laser focused then there is a much higher chance of converting that free traffic into a paying customer and making money. Savvy marketers are increasing their organic traffic, but optimizing the targeting on their organic social media reach. Retaliate1st provides our guide to growing your organic traffic.

Targeting To Grow Your Organic Traffic

  1. Better Targeting on Organic Social Media Reach

Much like you can target your ideal audience with paid facebook ads, you are now able to do something similar with organic posts.

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This could help you reach much more of your audience through non-paid ads. It’s still not going to reach everyone, but it will expose your messages to many more people than are seeing them now.

Not everyone who follows your page will want to see every post you make, nor will the be interested in all of your news and events. But, when you target your audience for your posts, you can reach those who have:

  • Liked, shared, or commented on similar posts in the past
  • Took action on similar posts in the past
  • Have interests that match your news/event/post
  • Are in the demographic you’re targeting

While it’s important to target the best possible audience, the best part about this is that you can now leave out those who won’t be interested in what you’re saying this particular time. This increases the juice of each post, gaining more engagement with your audience.

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  1. Paid Engagement Posts

These do cost a little money to boost, but for next to noghitn you can boost yoru paid and non paid engagement. First, make sure you use this on your best posts.

Content Is Key For Organic Traffic

A little research will show you clearly that some of your posts or post types are in the top 1 – 5% of yoru best interatcions – likes, shares, clicks, etc.

Forget the stuff that gets very little recognition, stick to only our best content.

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Now, after posting your best stuff, you can reach more people by boosting post-engagement. Yes, it will cost you $5 – 20 per post. But, you help your organic reach as well because you are almost guaranteed that:

  • This top-quality post will get likes, their friends see these likes and can interact with your page
  • This post will be shared. More shares = a ton more organic views (which leads to likes, further shares, etc.), thereby boosting your organic juice for each of these posts
  1. Use More Video

The rise of video content on Youtube, Vine, Snapchat has lead to less text-based posts being viewed on Facebook.

If you want to overcome this hurdle, simply post more video content. Producing video is easier than ever, with the iPhone and top android phones shooting super high quality video. Video, quick edit, post. Use a good Call to Action and your post engagement will soar.

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3 Ways to Use Pinterest to Increase Leads and Sales

Studies show that Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites in the world. Almost 3,500 pins are posted every minute. And, not only does Pinterest have a huge, active audience, it also has consumers with a buyer’s mindset:

  • They’re 10% more likely to buy than users that come from other social media sites
  • Pinterest drives more than 300% revenue per click than Twitter, and nearly 30% more than Facebook

So, why aren’t more of use utilizing Pinterest as a lead and sale generation source? Usually it is a misunderstanding of the power of Pinterest.

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How To Use Pinterest For Lead Generation

  1. Profit from User Generated Content

Some clothing retailers are putting user generated content to great use by utilizing contests. Before and after’s, or “favorite products” for the holidays.

Users take pics, turn them into pins, and share them on their boards along with their email address.

  • One company saw a 23% increase in re-pins, and that led to an increase of 44% in revenue per click
  1. Pins as Social Proof

Your business can never build too much credibility online. Reviews, testimonials, and awards go a long way to helping your business’ reputation.

But, what’s even more powerful is user generated content.

Many companies are using pins of their customers using or wearing their favorite products. What a beautiful way to use “live action” testimonials of people just like you…

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The company then re-pins, using a “shop now” call to action. This has led to click increases of 25% or more.

Encourage your customers to pin pics or videos of themselves using your products or enjoying your services. This is powerful social proof, and allows your product to be displayed in the real world, by real people.

  1. Reward Referrals

Create custom welcome messages for traffic that you drive to your Pinterest home page.

Offer discounts, coupons, free shipping, free estimates, etc. to reward referral traffic.

This gives you a great opportunity to make that new traffic stick, and to increase opt-ins and follows.

Plus, giving things away for free is still one of the most powerful ways to create trust and loyalty in your customer base.

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3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

Running adwords, Facebook ads, or even pouring time and effort into SEO campaigns only to drive traffic to a landing page that doesn’t convert is maddening. It’s also a waste of resources. Even if you craft a fantastic ad, your landing page must walk the visitor from curious clicker to lead. This is an art and a science, and its why designers and marketers charge so much to develop high-converting landing pages.

If you have the budget for it, get a pro to build your landing page. If you don’t, learn how to do it yourself until you can raise the capital to hire someone.

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Follow these – tips and you’ll build a landing page that converts visitors into leads, and leads into sales. Even if you do have the budget to go pro, you can use these tips to evaluate what the marketer has designed for you.

3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

  1. Every Page Must Have a Clear, Powerful Headline

Many businesses make one of two mistakes when developing landing pages:

  • Their headline is weak and does nothing to inspire visitors to take the step of buying/signing up/calling.
  • Their headline is well-written, but is confusing or doesn’t mesh with the test of the ad and landing page

Writing great headlines has been the subject of countless books and sales courses, so it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain it fully, but if you lead with benefits, ask a question or create interest, you’ll be head-and-shoulders above your competition.

If you manage to create a great headline, don’t waste it by matching it to a landing page with text that doesn’t quite fit the main message. Also, keep your headline in form with your ad text. The headlines of your ad and landing page can be very similar, or at least close enough so that your visitor knows they’re in the right place.

  1. Bullets are Weapons

The current fashion is to build a great headline, then follow it up with a few bullet points worth of text, then ask for the sale or sign-up.

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Great idea. But choose your bullets wisely.

Bullet Points

In reality, bullets are just sub-headlines, and should be bursting with benefits. Not features! Don’t waste a bullet telling me your product is blue unless that somehow benefits me. Now, you can say

  • Our Widget Only Weighs .5oz, So it Fits in Your Pocket (and we now offer it in blue!)

That statement pairs benefit with feature, which is common practice on landing pages and sales letters because it’s proven to work. In this case, it’s a good idea to follow the bold benefit, and italicized parenthetical feature.

Pick your strongest 3 – 5 benefits and turn them into your bullet points. Put your strongest first and last, since your last bullet point will be just above, or to the left of the call to action.landing page

  1. Call to Action Better Call Them to Action

Your call to action is vital. Weak CTAs lose leads.

Online, most companies turn to the simple, and ineffective, “Submit” to get the customer’s info. Submit is a terrible, boring, and is loaded with subversive subtext. No one wants to submit to anything, especially when giving their info to strangers online.

Use strong CTAs on web forms:

  • Click Here (basic but proven to work)
  • Click Here + Benefit (Click Here to Get Your 10% Discount/Free E-book/Free Estimate)
  • Yes! Give Me My Benefit (discount/info/estimate)

Match the benefit in the CTA with the major benefit promised in your headline for maximum conversions. For more tips on converting using inbound methods check out our optimization page.

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How To Optimize Your Thank You Pages to Increase Sales

Every page of your business website counts. Don’t waste one of the most important pages, the ‘Thank You’ page. Many businesses do this by leading buyers to a simple, near-blank page with little more than “Thank you for your order, check your email for the receipt.” If developed properly, the Thank You page can help you increase sales. It can also help gain social media followers, and build brand awareness. Wouldn’t you do anything to increase sales, so check out the Retaliate1st guide to increase sales.

5 Ways to Optimize Your Thank You Pages to Increase Sales

  1. Link to Your Strongest Content

Adding links to blogs and articles related to their purchase is a great way to keep your customers on your site while they’re in a buying state of mind.

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If your content is informative, but pulls them toward a sale, you will increase your sales just by driving “hot” traffic to these pages.
Plus, the extra views on these pages will help with Google’s rankings, so you win even if your customer doesn’t make a second purchase.

  1. Show Off Your Testimonials

Listing your best reviews and testimonials on your thank you page helps in two ways:

  • It helps reassure your customer that they’ve made a safe purchase, so it decreases buyer’s remorse
  • It shows your customer that you’re a great company, and gets them excited to do business with you again

If you link to strong content (as in number 1) under your testimonials, you should see a spike in both page views and sales.

New Product Debut

  1. Debut a New Product

Have something new that’s not on your site yet, or hasn’t been promoted heavily? Are you thinking of coming out with a new product or service? Show it to your customers while they’re still in a buyer’s mindset. If your product or service isn’t ready for sale, this is a great opportunity to encourage customers to sign up for a special mailing list. It’s a basic pre-sell, but it plays well on your Thank You pages because you can demonstrate value to someone who’s already convinced that you’re worthy of buying from.

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  1. Make New Friends

Thank you pages are excellent places to add members to your social media tribes. List your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, and other social media accounts and encourage buyers to follow you. If you can give a discount or something free for following, you’ll dramatically increase engagement.

  1. Discounts

Upselling on a thank you page is increased when you offer a “special” discount for customers. Tie it into your other products, specifically, and you’ll see an increase in sales.

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Best Days and Times to Make Sales Calls

Does your sales team make many sales calls to leads. Do they ever wonder what the best days are to perform these sales calls? Well there is a little science behind it and the Retaliate1st sales team provide their insights on what days and times are best to make sales calls.

Best Days and Times to Make Sales Calls

Wednesday and Thursday are by far the best days to call on prospects, with Friday coming in a distant third. Tuesday is the worst.

Why mid-week?

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Perhaps because it is mid-week, and most prospects will have a lull in their responsibilities, motivation, and to-do list. A sales call that would annoy them on Monday morning may be welcome on Wednesday afternoon.

Best Time for Sales Calls

4 pm is the best time of day to call sales leads, by far. Between 8 and 9-am was second, with the rest of the day coming in all over the map.

If you have an important sale to close, wait until the afternoon. This could be because prospects are at their “Weakest” as far as energy. It could result from boredom, similar to the mid-week phenomena. Whatever the reason, batch your most important sales calls for the morning or late afternoon.

Sales Calls and the Follow-Ups

Studies show that nearly 30% of leads are never contacted.

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Many salespeople and businesses fear making too many contacts with the same prospect, but the research shows that 6 seems to be the sweet spot for number of follow ups needed before significant contact is made.

  • Making 4+ calls lead to a 70% increase in conversions.
  • 80% of sales require 5+ follow ups
  • Over 60% of customers requesting info on your company will not make a purchase for at least three months, some will take as long as a year to buy. Combine this with the fact that 35% of sales go to the company that makes the first (or most recent) contact.

 

The fact that so many leads are never followed-up with is startling. If you are hurting for sales, the first thing you should do is make sure your salespeople are following up several times. If you view sales as a long-term process, with many taking almost a year to buy, you will see that consistent follow up is vital to growing your business.

What About Becoming a Pest?

Yes, some salespeople are overly aggressive, or follow up with information that is of no value to the client. There are entire libraries dedicated to the art of the follow up. Pick a few of the best sellers and study them. You can follow up effectively without becoming that damn salesperson again!

In fact, you can learn to make multiple follow up calls and emails, stay in front of your prospect, educate and help them, then make new sales and have a constantly-full sales funnel, without bothering your prospects.

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How To Optimize Web Forms for More Leads

Leads are the life-blood of any sales driven organization. Businesses focus on ways to create more sales opportunities and that means that leads become critical. While driving traffic is important, it is also critical to make sure there is a system in place to capture those leads as they come in. This is why Retaliate1st recommends making an effort to optimize your lead generation via perfecting your web forms. Here we list our 4 ways to optimize web forms for more leads.leads-generation

4 Ways to Optimize Web Forms for More Leads

  1. Don’t Neglect Your Headline

Almost all lead forms come with a space for a headline. Most companies waste this opportunity to gain a lead. You may be super excited about your product or service, but to the stranger who just landed on your page, you are just another business trying to get their email address. What can you do to turn stranger danger into a new business relationship?

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Promise something that they want, and deliver on it. But, get to the point. Your form’s headline should promise a benefit for your visitor – an ebook, a discount, free stuff, etc. Don’t waste prime site real estate being pithy or cute. Promise something that they want, then give it to them.

  1. Don’t Ask Too Many Questions

Or, ask the bare minimum. Studies by Marketing Experiments have shown, over and over, that the more fields you add to a lead form, the lower your opt-in rate. If you’re giving away a White Paper or Discount, then you may only need their email. First Name is usually a safe bet, too. Last Name is going to lower opt-ins a bit. Do you need their phone number? If you do, ask for it. If you’re selling a high-ticket item or service, or you set leads over the phone, then get the number. If you don’t really need it, don’t ask for it.

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The Phone Number field can decrease opt-ins by more than 5%. If you do need the phone field, consider making it optional. One site doubled their opt-in rate after adding “Optional” to their phone number field. What about physical address? Again, only ask if you absolutely need it. If you are doing home improvement services or selling home-related items, address may be needed, and simply asking for it will eliminate tire-kickers.

CTAs To Close Leads

  1. Benefit-Rich CTA

Does your call to action button display only the lowly “Submit.” If so, you’re losing leads every day. “Click Here” is simple, direct, and it works. So does adding the benefit – “Click Here for Your Free Estimate,” “Click Here to Download Your Free Book.”

  1. Test Forms

Like any other aspect of marketing, you won’t know what works best on your web forms until you test them. A simple A/B test is a good start. Continue until you find the version that pulls the most. Remember, all these percentages add up quickly when you have thousands or tens of thousands of visitors on your site daily. A 5% dip for a phone number, 4% more for the address field, 2% for “Birthday,” can cost you hundreds of leads per month. This makes testing a must.

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4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

Marekting has many trends that rise and fall. The current trend that many marketers are focusing on is content marketing. Content marketing requires that a company creates content to power an inbound engine and drive leads or sales via their website. However, there is a flaw with content marketing. How do you come up with ideas for content? Especially as you start to scale the content up. Retaliate1st has pioneered content marketing for many companies, including start-ups in the pet, tech, wearable and app world. Here we make our 4 recommendations on how you can continually come up with content to power your content marketing and inbound strategy.

4 Places to Generate Ideas for Content Marketing

  1. Google Auto-Suggest

Google’s autosuggest feature is a treasure trove for content creators. Google suggests the actual phrases or questions that people are searching for, so you know that these autosuggests will make great page and blog titles.

Google makes these suggestions based on real searches. The most popular get placed in the auto-suggest categories. If you click on one, you’ll notice at the bottom of the page there are even more suggested links.

How do you use this data to your advantage?

If you have a food deliver service in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse neighborhood, start by typing in “food delivery”

You’ll see results like:

  • Food delivery near me
  • Food delivery near me open
  • Food delivery Rittenhouse
  • Food deliveries near here

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You just found at least 4 article titles that will carry a ton of SEO value if they’re written and optimized well.

Customer Centric Content Marketing

The idea is to get into the mind of your customer. Play around with questions you’ve been asked.

A basic search for “can I order food” returns these suggestions:

  • Can I order food with paypal
  • Can I order food with a check
  • Can I order food to a hotel
  • Can I order food near here

Again, you have 4 SEO-rich titles and topics that people are actually searching for.

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  1. Trade Magazines

If you’re selling B2B services or products, trade magazines are loaded with ideas. Just because something has been written about doesn’t mean that you can’t offer a fresh perspective on the issue.

Plus, every magazine has a letters to the editor section. Again, what better place to address questions than those coming directly from your potential customers.

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Check the back of the magazine. If you’ve been reading it for a few months, you’ll notice a few advertisers that are listed consistently. This is because whatever they’re selling, readers are buying. Study the ads, the products, and services they sell and address these things on your site, in your newsletter, and in your content strategy.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing

  1. Lead Forms

If your lead form has a text box with “how can we help you,” or if you have a help page on your site, the questions and concerns of your customers can not only help you create new content, but it will also help you from dealing with redundant issues.

If 15-people are writing in to ask where they can buy your widget in Green instead of red, then either make the answer clearer on your website, or address it in an FAQ. Either way, you have new content plus you won’t have to answer another 15-emails about the green vs red conundrum.

  1. Social Media

Searching hashtags, trends, or simply following brands that offer similar, or related, services to yours can help you get into the mind of potential customers. Is there a need out there not being filled? More importantly, is there a want going unsatisfied?

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Content Marketing –> SEO and Social Media

Can your business step in with the solution? Are a lot of Facebookers asking where they can find a product similar to yours? Or, are they confused about how a new app works? Find the questions, craft a response, post it to your website and social media channels. It will help your business climb in the Google rankings, and it will help your customers see why they should buy from you.

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3 Tips to Improve Your Instagram Photos

When it comes to marketing on Instagram, you can subscribe to a lot of theories on what works, but the one common thread among all marketers, and the research, is that your Instagram campaigns live and die with the quality of your Instagram photos.

Better Instagram photos = more views, more likes, more engagement and more sales.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at 3 ways to improve your marketing on Instagram, through better Instagram photos:

How To Improve Your Instagram Photos

  1. Use Your Phone’s Native Camera App

Using your phone’s camera is a better option than using Instagram’s camera. This is especially true if you have a newer version of the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, both of which come with powerful cameras.

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Why is your phone’s camera better than Instagram’s?

  • You can take photos without filters
  • You can edit photos much more easily, and much more quickly, in your phone’s native camera app and editing software
  • You can set your phone’s cam to take pics that are 640 x 640, making them perfect for Instagram without having to crop
  • Most phones have more powerful zoom, clearer pictures, and better lighting
  • The free, or near-free, photo editing apps on smart phones are actually pretty powerful, and can help you enhance lighting, focus, remove red-eye, and make your IG pictures clear and eye-catching

Interesting Instagram Photos Excel

  1. Take Pictures of Interesting Things

This should be obvious, but we’ve all unfollowed a brand (or person) that insists on posting boring photos.
No matter what your product or service, there are opportunities to post photos of really dynamic content that will engage your followers.

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  • Before and after pics work well for weight loss products, home improvements, design, graphics, and clothing stores.
  • Photos of your product being modeled are always a safe bet. Research shows that including a human face in a picture of a product increase views (and sales). Have great clothes you’re selling? Put it on a model that is a slightly idealized version of your customer and do a photo shoot. One shoot can give you a strong catalogue of content.
  • Cool places – if you are an adventure traveler, restaurant, or you sell lifestyle, pictures of nature, especially breathtaking views, always perform well on Instagram
  • Food – we all love to look at pictures of food. If the pictures are bright, clear, and the food is colorful. This should be a no-brainer for restaurants. But, next time you’re on Instagram, check out how many clothing and watch dealers use food in their photo shoots. Elegant coffee displays are the focus of a picture, but the watch on the wrist of the woman with her hand poised on the cup is the real draw.

Instagram Photos Of People Are Most Liked

  1. Use Instagram Photos of People

This can be applied to using models, or taking pictures of your staff having fun, working, or doing interesting things.

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Remember, Instagram is simply another marketing channel. No matter where you’re selling, people want to buy from people, not faceless corporations. This is why product images featuring faces do so well. It’s also why any marketer worth a damn will tell you to include pictures of your staff on your website’s About page. Put a face on your Instagram and your brand identification (and sales) will grow.

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How To Write Ad Copy To Get Clicks On Facebook and Instagram

If you’ve ever hired a top-gun copywriter, or wracked your own brain for the best possible ad copy on Facebook and Instagram, only to come up with sub-par results, it may not be your words that sunk the ship.

The visual you choose can have a huge impact on the success of your ad copy and posts.

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5 Ways To Dominate With Ad Copy

  1. Brightly colored visuals, especially those with blue as the dominant color, attract 80% more readers than darker pictures. Both Instagram and Facebook use a white background and a lot of white space. Placing bright, colorful pictures in the info stream helps draw the attention of users.
  2. A recent study showed that nearly 70% of senior marketing execs felt that visual content (pictures, infographics, video, graphics, etc.) were a major part of their branding, marketing, and social media campaigns. Graphic ads are using very short copy combined with stunning visuals to build brands and increase leads on social media.
  3. Facebook Ads: ads and posts with relevant images got nearly 95% more views than those without a relevant picture. This should tell you that you not only need great photos with your ads, but that you should also keep the “zany picture to draw attention” tactic to a minimum. A picture of a clown with bloody fangs may draw the eye, but when Facebookers see that it’s attached to an ad about wristwatches, they’re going to look away. And, they may reject your brand in the future because your ads came off as dishonest.

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Advanced Ad Copy

  1. Infographics get three-times more shares and likes on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Most of your infographics should be purely informational, with a strong call to action built in.
  2. Web users followed directions nearly 350% better when they were showed the path through a visual vs. text only. This can be applied to your Facebook and Instagram ads in an effort to grab more leads. Helping people understand the process visually could land you triple the sign-ups and follows. Instagram posts get nearly 4x’s the likes when using a picture featuring a face. No matter what your product or service is, have it featured with real people to draw more customer attention.
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