Has anyone online figured out that a sales funnel to do the follow-up, will never beat a live person on the phone calling people back, the old-fashioned way? Most marketers online average 5% open rate with their emails and a dismal 1%-2% click through rate, why?
That tells me that 95% don’t really connect with what your offering, don’t care, not interested OR simply because they want to talk to somebody FIRST then make the purchase? The answer is YES.
When you connect with a cold customer on the phone they relationship changes from digital to talking to a live person, and the TRUST factor is immediately established. And if the trust factor is far better, your sales will be a reflection of that.
Let’s see what else can benefit your conversion ratio…
Imagine your trying to sell a $1000 product to someone over the internet, who has never met you, or doesn’t know you from Adam. Odds are 5% percent chance of making the sale right?
There are a few reasons for that.Which leaves me to believe there is a better way to build a business using a live person answering all of your potential customer’s questions with confidence.
Let’s what else you can do to increase conversions…through quality paid traffic sources.
Traffic Sources for the Best Leads
I’ll start from the traffic source, this is still a very important factor in conversion and sales, quality of traffic. If you’re in the sales and marketing niche selling whatever, you know that your traffic source has a pretty big impact on your bottom line, and how your message is delivered.
The sources I use are:
1. Youtube – In-display ads (1 1/2 minute short video’s).
The best source for traffic is Youtube, I find. PPC is not too expensive and the lead quality is high.
2. Tier 1 solo ads – Less quality than Youtube ads but are great for list building.
Solo ads still work well, though some of the lists tend to be burnt out. Finding a good list and a vendor is key.
3. Blog Posts – Pretty much every post I have ranked page 1 0r page 2. Endless free targeted traffic.
Search traffic still works but takes a long time to get a blog ranked, 6-8 months or longer. That’s why you keep consistent in posting and supply good original content. Once your content ages over time Google will rank your post faster and faster. Fastest I had my blog post rank was 3 minutes in the top 3.
4. Twitter – Great for connecting with influential people.
I find the engagement on Twitter is a lot better than Facebook. Building a following that engages takes time, as I have built a following of 21K over 3 years. Works well for lead generation.
5. Newspapers – 1/2 page offline remnant ad publications. Builds a remarketing list.
Mass newspaper runs are endless in traffic. The biggest advantage of this traffic source is it’s completely offline, meaning no competition, and market to people who on average read the paper 45 minutes.
Do people read your blog for 45 minutes a day? Probably not. Demographics are perfect as well, 30-50 years in age, good to high income, and most are home-owners.
Suggested run size 40-160+ newspapers in the New York, California, Florida, or Texas states are good.
Now not everyone will use the same traffic sources as I do, but they work really well. Once you have a steady supply of quality traffic, then you can move onto the next important part to your sales pipeline – the follow-up.
The Followup
There had to be a way to identify people who were interested in business opportunities or products I sell, there is. There had to be a way to bring them up to the point where they understood, got excited about the potential, and could be more easily closed. Well, there is a very simple way to increase conversions, follow up, and get more sales, right?
Well, there is, but what happens instead of sending people to your typical sales funnel as shown below, you redirect them to a form to fill out a survey based on your product, service or business opportunity.
Why?
Because sending countless people to your 5% converting VSL sales page, with a poor click through rate, is almost a waste of time and money.
A typical sales funnel is shown here:
You can click on any ad besides Facebook, go to an opt-in page to enter your email, then to the sales page, then the order page, then they get your emails, only gets 5% conversion, maybe 20% if your Neil Patel.
Once you have their information you employ a call center team to call them and close the sale OR you call them, to close the sale. The relationship changes dramatically on the phone vs a dead sales page.
That also brings them closer to being a HOT prospect than a COLD customer, and that is the idea in sales and marketing. Create customer interest, offer a product to the customer, close the sale.
Solution?
What isn’t a waste of time is, pre-qualifying your leads and closing the sale using a lead qualifying form. An example of a survey form is here. These work great at filtering out freebie seekers, and people who are really not interested in your product or service. Then you have a profile on your potential customer, and what their needs are.
** Shortcut solution is here **
E-mail Follow-up
Following up with email either by an email broadcast to your list or by each one still should be done, as people learn more about you through your marketing emails, product launches and where your traveling.
How often should you email your list? I would honestly email your list every 2nd or 3rd day to avoid list burnout. 3 times a week is plenty, although my mentor Shaqir Hussyin would disagree, he emails his list of 160K subscribers every day.
Writing your email copy:
Direct response copywriting—particularly in books written by Dan Kennedy and others who were successful marketers even before the Internet. Direct response is a technique for capturing and developing a person’s interest to the degree that they will buy.
A direct response works best when targeted at an audience that already has some degree of interest in the topic (product, service, promotional) This was a key realization: I could market to people who already understood. I wouldn’t have to explain it to them from the ground up.
Positioning yourself as an expert “gets people to come to you,” which means they are much better quality prospects and easier to close.
Action Plan
My first offline marketing campaigns was an anti-wrinkle cream, which has done very well thus far, and will continue that campaign. While I was marketing that campaign, I built a remarketing list of hot customers, to remarket other lifestyle products to them. The call center would ask them if they were interested in making money, then get added to my remarketing list.
I then targeted people who interested in making money online off my hot customer list. I offered them a membership course and some bonuses, which had a simple call to action and a membership site all setup for them. Then offered the business opportunity to make money online.
It got huge response and interest, and cross-marketed. The trick to cross marketing is asking upfront if they would be interested or not? Of course marketing to the same market usually produces good, if not, exceptional results.
There are a few reasons it received a response:
People trusted me and my brand
I asked them first
I’m positioned as the expert already
Unlike a cold call, they were already my customer.
Explained to them through an easy walk through membership course – “How to Make Money Online”
It contained a strong and definite “call to action”—the action I wanted them to take, which was to sign up with me.
I upsold them to higher ticket items
In any direct response campaign, the hottest prospects respond first, I find the more detailed the survey they fill out, the better the lead and genuine interest.
You can make sales by cold-calling, but it might take years and it’s a 99.9% rejection level. Instead, identify an audience that already has some understanding of your type of product or service and pitch to them. It’s a much easier sale to make.
If you’re not already a recognized expert in your line of business, you should be. Positioning is really important in marketing, but particularly if you’re going to market a “business opportunity” to others. That is another key factor is your customers minds is how they perceive you.
People ask why 97% of people fail at their online business, positioning is one failure.
This article is highly recommended to read: “How to Ethically Present Yourself as a Success before Making Your First Sale.”
Another fine skill that you can’t go wrong with is Copywriting. Whether it be your ads or your followup email, opt-in page, copywriting skill is a very valuable asset to ANY marketer that create the emotional response in your potential customers, to take action.
So I find the best sales funnel are to drive traffic to your opt-in page, then to wufoo form or a survey styled questionnaire works the best to get high conversions. Paying to have a team follow up with them is another way to increase sales in droves, and is a paid shortcut. The bottom line is people want to talk to a live person, not a robot before any money changes hands.