Always be closing is a value that should be at the centre of the business. Even if you’re not actively telling people to go and buy your services, you should be building a business that is better at closing leads. This goes for the online world, too. Ensuring you’re always closing is about realising the different stages of the process and preparing for each and every one of them.
Visibility
It’s the most crucial thing that a business needs to develop from the very get-go. People need to be able to find the business. Online, the best way to make that a reality is by keeping a constant eye on how easily found you are. Through pay-per-click advertising and the expertise of an SEO agency, you build brand visibility both through interruptive and organic marketing. But it’s good to get others spreading the word of the business, too. Influencer marketing and pairing up with similar businesses on social media to boost your signal can help you create a lot more buzz.
Curiosity
Once they know you exist, how do they form an interest in the business? It’s all about creating a brand that communicates the value to the potential customer first and foremost. Your content, your advertisements and the like should lead in with the proposition to them, not an introduction of who you are. Calls-to-action need to be concise and to the point.
Interest
By the stage that they have developed an interest, they will be on your site gauging whether or not they should pay for your goods or services. Here, you need to make sure you have content that’s going to best sell the values you propose. Figuring out the right media for the product is a key. For instance, online video content might be a lot more effective than written content in product demonstrations or selling products with a lot of visual appeal.
The buy
When they’ve decided they want what you have to offer, how easy is it for them to get from where they are? Do your landing pages lead directly to where they want to go or are there more steps between them and actually getting what they’re after? Is navigation easy to follow, with just the right amount of options, or do they spend their time getting lost on the way to closing the deal? People will abandon a purchase if you waste their time with barriers. This isn’t the time to throw pop-ups at them urging to subscribe or offer input. Let them get business out of the way first.
Post-purchase
Closing doesn’t end with closing one deal, either. That might sound counter-intuitive, but the fact is you want more than a deal. You want a loyal customer that contributes to a brand and leads to further closing. Make sure you follow up and turn your customers into regulars. Creating a social media community, offering deals for repeat customers, getting subscribers on a newsletter. These are all effective methods of building your roster of regulars.
An online strategy needs to be comprehensive. We named a lot of tools and techniques that are going to help you form that strategy, but no one of them is going to be the most important. They have to work in tandem or they won’t work at all.
