When it comes to finding buyers, it’s about connecting with people you already know while putting your time and effort into the prospects that have a high propensity to buy. Imagine the consultative salesperson who is continually working their pipeline to fill the funnel while they also nurture relationships and turn customers into referrers. How the sales rep communicates with each person at each stage of their lifecycle is critical to moving them along the path to conversion. In the end, having deep, highly relevant insights about their prospects is what enables them to target their messaging and close deals.
Efficient selling requires more information about people than what they typically tell you via stated preferences. You need to understand what makes them “tick,” and how to respond in the most relevant way. This will drastically improve sales and marketing effectiveness.
Monitor Visitor Habits and Behaviors
When a visitor first comes into your “store” or in this case, your website, they are typically anonymous, but they are also possible prospects. Based on their web behavior, you can determine where they came from, how engaged they are, and what they’re interested in — in order to qualify, captivate and convert them.
- Did they happen upon your site as a result of a search, did they come from a social network like Pinterest, or are they an international shopper?
- Do they stay for a while or leave within ten seconds?
- Are they interested in product information, executive bios, or customer testimonials?
- Which blog posts do they read?
- Are they focused in a certain category of product or content area or do they browse broadly across areas?
A Warm and Relevant Welcome
All of this is important information to use as you adapt your website to respond to new visitors. Greet them with a warm and relevant welcome that will engage them with a special offer or a message based on where they came from. Based on the pages they’ve visited within your site, make a relevant call-to-action like offering them a relevant discount, a product demo, or access to an exclusive case study. Or, if they’re about to leave your site, help them take another look by drawing their attention to another piece of content they may be interested in and ask for their email address to reconnect with them once they leave your site.
Dive Deeper
For returning visitors, there’s other important information to glean in order to better connect with them.
- Are they still anonymous or can you attach named data to them, such as email response data or purchase history?
- Is this their 2nd visit or 5th?
- Are they looking at the same item they’ve perused several times before or are they browsing a whole new category?
In many cases, this repeat visit likely indicates a strong interest in your product or service, and you can treat them like a qualified lead: someone with whom you’d like to begin building a lasting business relationship.
Keep It Fresh
Whether this time they came from an article you published on another blog or from some of your Slideshare, be careful your website doesn’t say the exact same thing it said to them during their last visit. If they already downloaded that white paper or registered for that webinar, don’t ask them to do it again.
Use progressive calls-to-action. A new piece of content prompted them to come back to your site, so offer them a more in-depth paper on that topic. Or maybe their interest level shows that it’s time to approach them about a free assessment or free trial. Showing that you know who they are, why they came and what they may be looking for at this stage of the game will help build trust over time so you can strike while the iron is hot and convince them to convert.
Get To Know Them Better Over Time
Once a good sales rep has moved a prospect into a free trial or paying customer, they don’t disengage and neither should you. Continue watching each customer’s web behavior to see if they’re active, inactive, still looking for information or reading your blog? Use that information to offer relevant training videos, educate with features and benefits information, or encourage account activation or product usage. Or if they’re very active customers, ask them if they would refer your product or service to others, leave a positive comment, provide some referral contact information, or tweet one of your articles or promotions.
The Power of One-to-One Marketing
So just like a consultative sales person would watch and listen to a prospect’s behavior, your website can help you watch your visitors’ click behavior. Consider these your first conversions. Targeting visitors by industry is not enough anymore; the market is shifting to one-to-one targeting. You must know and understand your customer so well that your product or service fits him and sells itself. But don’t wait to send him your next triggered email. Act immediately, with relevant responses, right in the channel where he is at that time: your website. This will be critical to your future success.
Karl Wirth is co-founder and CEO of Evergage, specializing in real-time web personalization to increase conversion rates and drive customer success.
Photo credit: Littlefoot littlefoot
