How to Win Business with your Blog – part 6: Conversion
Conversion: really turning website visitors into paying clients is where the rubber hits the road.
I’m sure you know the ancient saying: Turnover is pride, Profit is sanity.
It’s the same business for websites: Visitors are pride, Conversions are sanity.
Now, if you’re a consultant or coach wanting to exchange visitors to clients – you need to reckon of two stages of conversion.
You see, you’re never going to exchange a first time visitor into a paying client in one visit. Not for the kind of intangible, high value, high impact services you deliver.
Even if they come to your website desperate for help, they’ll need to build up confidence in your capabilities and entrust that they can work with you. That’s not going to happen instantly – they’ll need to interact with you repeatedly.
Unfortunately, the chances are that even if your content is brilliant, most visitors won’t be back. They’ll make a mental note to come back. Maybe even bookmark your site. But then the real world will take over and they’ll forget you.
If you want to be successful, you must take this process of regular interaction into your own hands.
You must get them to “connect” with you in some way. Give you permission to proactively communicate with them.
Then you can keep in touch, build credibility and establish your trustworthiness without relying on them remembering to come back to your site.
Connecting on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin can help with this.
But by far the best way for someone writing a blog is to get visitors to subscribe to hear regular communications from you via email.
People still pay more attention to emails (as long as they’re not considered spam) than social media. You might chat to a friend on Facebook or tweet some gossip. But if you want a serious 1-1 discussion online, you want to send an vital document, or make a complex point: you use email.
Many businesses have an email newsletter. But usually it’s dreadful. Full of me, me, me information about them, what they’re doing, their products. Nothing of value to the subscriber.
In fact “newsletter” is a terrible name for it. You shouldn’t be sharing news. You should be sending information of value. Like the blog posts, but even better. Personally, I refer to mine as an “Insider Strategies email”.
So although your long term goal should be to exchange visitors to clients. Your interim goal should be to exchange visitors to subscribers.
Because subscribers are the people who are more likely than any others to eventually become clients.
You’ll see on this site that I give many opportunities for people to sign up to my regular communications. There’s a box in the header, in the sidebar and at the end of every post.
And I have a “bribe” to encourage people to sign up. Subscribers get free access to my Client Breakthrough training videos and meticulous report on how to attract and win more clients.
But the key is that I stay in contact with weekly emails that to the best of my ability are both entertaining and provide valuable information. So that over time my credibility and likeability grows.
Only a small percentage will ever become clients, of course. To all else the emails and blog posts are a gift.
But get sufficient subscribers, keep in touch with fantastic content, and your client base will grow.
Next time…some advanced conversion tips from online marketing expert Derek Halpern as he reviews my site live on video (gulp)…
If you’d like to learn a simple, step-by-step process for building your own Client Attracting Websites, then I have an online course available which shows you the exact strategies I use to make my site and get my clients online. You can get access to the course here:
Get Instant Access To The Client Attracting Websites Online Training
Similar Posts:
- Conversion Optimization: Derek Halpern Reviews ianbrodie.com
- How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 7: From Subscribers to Clients
- How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 1
- How to Win Business with your Blog – Part 8: Where I get my Traffic from
- How To Get More Clients Online: Part 2 – Build Relationships
How to Win Business with your Blog – part 6: Conversion is a post from: Get More Clients in Less Time: Practical Strategies, Proven Results