There are hundreds of millions of blogs cluttering the internet. The companies you are up against are not just the ones from two blocks away. Now, the competition is global. More importantly, a workforce from all over the globe aids it. While you sit here reading this post, your competitors are hiring writers from Australia, New Zealand, India or Hong Kong to write a post for them. In all this war of marketing, the only way to survive is by optimizing your leads and maximizing the profit out of them.
Following the invaluable rules below will help you convert your leads into (actual) sales.
Don’t cast pearls before swine:
Almost one-fifth of the marketers bemoan that they don’t have good sales data to use for converting leads into sales, and more than 60% say they don’t know where to start or how to consolidate their marketing channels. It’s a sorry state of affairs, and without sounding condescending in the least bit, here’s a bit of advice for all the struggling marketers: don’t cast pearls before swine.
There was a time when the biggest online advertising medium, Google Adwords, was all about getting your words out. Those days are gone for good. You can no longer relax in your chair, satisfied that you have gotten more clicks than your competitors. Now you have to put your ads before the most relevant prospects. If you are offering student loans, but your ads are showing up for people searching university job offers, your money is just going down the drain.
Getting in front of the best prospects takes a bit of work and costs slightly more but is necessary if you want to be successful. First, offering free trials and demos are a great point to start. Make sure the trial is offered to the most relevant customer and attains maximum client satisfaction.  Offering free trial subscriptions of finance magazine to literature majors is a waste of time and resources, so make sure your campaigns are targeted correctly. Also, try to drive up positive word-of-mouth about you on the internet. A few good reviews at a relevant forum praising your product can generate more sales than a thousand-dollar marketing campaign.
Drill your message into the minds of your target audience:
After you’ve spotted the most relevant market for your product, try to engrave your presence in the minds of the audience in that market. Some marketers follow the Rule of Seven, which says that the amount of sales you are able to generate from a relevant market is directly proportional to the amount of exposure you enjoy with the audience. In simple words, the more they listen about you, the more likely they are to buy from you. The rule goes even further and states that a prospect needs to hear your message at least seven times before they’ll take action to buy. Seven times! Think about it.
Shout to two quarters, not one:
Now, how do you get the loudest shout? There are two segments you should target: the average prospect browsing through the Internet as well as the Internet itself.
It gets slightly tricky here.
First, don’t follow the same approach for both targets. Google search’s comprehension level is completely different from the average Internet user’s. For the former, you need to optimize your web pages so that they show up in the most relevant sections. Remove dead links from your website and follow a clear road-map. This will let Google reach to each and every single feature on your website and show it in its results.
Understandably, targeting human beings is different from targeting search engine bots. Human beings are sentient and get attracted to the stimulus they receive from their senses. To cash in on this, use psychological triggers. Make your ads subtle, and don’t stick your sales pitch in the face of the visitor. Try to make your posts more interactive. See here how BiznessApps interacts with our prospects as an example. Notice how they make their posts more interactive in order to draw the visitor in.
Sell, don’t hammer:
It’s important to have the loudest shout in the town but there comes a point when you should stop shouting and start talking gently. This point arrives when your target listener is listening to you. Always remember, you shout at the top of your lungs to attract the prospect’s attention, never to turn an attentive prospect into a client. You’ll lose them if you don’t stop shouting now.
Herein lies an important lesson for all marketers: always keep your product dangling before the prospect. Never pitch it in a way that makes you seem desperate. Simply pique the prospect’s curiosity and keep arousing it.
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by ANDREW GAZDECKI
source: Entrepreneur