Turning customer nibbles into bites

Direct mail, its online sibling, e-campaigns and advertising are favourite tools for spreading messages to large potential audiences. Increasingly businesses of all sizes are dipping their toes into social media - attracting attention through Twitter, Facebook business pages, and - soon to come - Google business pages.

While these messages reach a wide audience, that doesn’t automatically mean they’ll convert to large volumes of sales. You can raise the rate of your success by making sure you have thought of everything.

If you're mailing a list or placing an ad, does the product or service you're promoting match your target audience?

Why will people read what you have to say? Are you fulfilling a need or making a tempting offer?

Are you able to turn what you’re offering into strong reasons for people to want to buy? Your products and services may be full to the brim of bells and whistles, but are you making it clear how your those features will benefit your customers?

Don't forget to make it easy for people to take the next step. Lead them through the chain from first bite to more information to call/fill in the form/click to buy clearly and easily.

Making your promotions work harder

When you're advertising, leafleting, sending out direct mail - what do you suggest the reader does next? They could just give you a call, or you could give them a web site address for further information. That could be your general web site, or you could put together a special page - a landing page - that relates to your promotional campaign. How helpful would that be to encouraging sales?

Say you are offering special prices for your products or services for a limited time. You could:

• Add a page to your web site called www.xxxx.com/specialoffer or something similar
• Put this URL on your promotional materials as a "call to action" for more information
  

Use this special page to:

• Give extra details about the offer and prices (very important that you expand on you said in your direct mail or advertising - don't just repeat yourself)
• Clearly and obviously explain how to book or buy
• Provide a link to your main web site to explain more about your business
• Include any relevant approved comments from current customers
  
• Provide links to any other relevant sites - perhaps product suppliers, good review sites or anything else that gives your customers a fuller picture about your offer
• Gather together any data sheets, case studies and more that you can provide as downloads in pdf format
• Provide a Frequently Asked Questions section
  

By focusing on a particular offer and giving your potential customers answers to their likely questions you'll raise customer satisfaction and the likelihood of making a sale, as well as doing no harm at all to your professional credibility.