Part 3 of 3: Two cutting-edge strategies to double, triple, or even, quadruple your sales

Today, in the final part of our series, I’ll discuss how you can drive your unconverted leads back to your landing page. These methods, when done correctly, frequently double, triple and even quadruple response. Which means…if you’re not employing them, you are leaving A LOT of money on the table.

The money is in the follow-up.

Research shows that only 2% of all prospects are ready to buy “right now.” The remaining 98% need to be nurtured, especially if they find you online. That’s because when they first make contact, they don’t know you, like you or trust you. You have to prove to them that you and your product or service will actually do what you claim, and that takes time and education to accomplish.

There are a number of ways you can do this, but today we will focus on two of them.

1) Retargeting.

Retargeting (a.k.a. remarketing) works by keeping track of the people who visit your website and displaying your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online, thus keeping you top-of-mind.

Retargeting works by placing code in your website that tracks potential customers’ browsing history so when they visit your site and leave before purchasing or taking the desired action, you can follow up with them.

The data collected creates an ultra-customized audience. This information allows you to display retargeting ads to this ultra-customized audience at appropriate times. In fact, customers can be retargeted just about anywhere they might go online. Which means you’ll have additional chances to send people back to your landing page.

Retargeting is fairly quick and easy to implement and can be done on any budget. More importantly, it will keep you in front of that 98% of traffic that you are currently losing. Plus, it builds awareness and trust by putting your brand in front of this targeted group of customers much in the way Apple or Microsoft repeatedly puts their brand in front of customers. When you do this, you’ll bring back the customers, clients, or patients who were interrupted so you can increase your online sales.

2) A Drip Campaign.

A drip campaign is an email and/or direct mail program that automatically delivers emails, letters, or postcards to customers or prospects on a scheduled basis.

In the past, these campaigns would continue through the end of their predetermined schedule. Today, the developing trend of the most successful drip campaigns deploys emails and letters based on a customer’s actions.

Let me show you what I mean.

Let’s say you want to sell a personal training package. You set up a PPC campaign that drives people to your well-written and designed landing page designed to capture people’s name and email address. To entice them to input their information, you offer a free trial gym membership.

Now that you have captured their name and email, you can begin delivering your drip campaign. The drip campaign delivers messages that address and overcome your prospects objections. Within the messages, there are links that drive your prospects back to the landing page to buy.

The thing is…you’ll have a variety of responses to this campaign. Some will return to your landing page and buy. Others will return without purchasing. Others won’t open a single email.

What your prospects do (or don’t do), will dictate what action you take next.

For example, if a prospect buys after reading an email, they will be not receive any more messages driving them back to the landing page to buy. Instead they will be sent a different message… perhaps an email offering a product or service that will enhance their new purchase or congratulating them on their purchase with directions on what to do next.

If a prospect reads the whole series, returns to your landing page but still doesn’t purchase, you might offer an additional incentive to encourage them to complete the sale such as a free workout planning tool. Or maybe a short survey will be sent to try and understand the prospect better so you can make an offer that is more compelling the next time.

If a prospect never opens an email, the message may be changed into a postcard and mailed to their home address.

The level of complexity and number of triggered events should be carefully considered based on your business model, sales cycle, seasonality, revenue per sale, and so on.

And while setting up an effective drip campaign can be a complex process that takes a fair amount of time and effort, it can pay off big time. Plus, with email, once the system is in place and producing measurable results it should only require basic “care and feeding” to keep the triggers and campaign messages optimized.

Remember, your primary goal is to follow-up with your prospects to give them multiple opportunities to buy from you.

Retargeting is an effective and inexpensive way to compete with bigger brands and repeatedly stay in front of your customer so they will know and recognize you. Drip campaigns give you the opportunity to educate your prospects on what you do…how you do it…and why you’re the best solution for them.

Both are automated and consistent. This is a great complement to skilled sales people and can give them a huge advantage since it’s often impossible for sales people to provide detailed follow-up with each new lead. By looking at who is engaging in your drip campaign, you or your sales people can identify who are the best qualified leads and concentrate their efforts on them.

When you do these two things, you’ll see more leads turn into opportunities and sales will increase dramatically.