We're now at the most critical point of the conversion funnel: the transition to action. At this point, your leads have shown an intention to buy, so they're potentially waiting for your offer. They still have to decide to become a customer with you, your competitors, or no one. As long as they're on your site, help them make that decision! ⚖
Develop the Right Sales Pitch
At this stage, your role as a marketer is to help the lead with their decision. Your sales pitch must convince or persuade the potential client to choose (and buy) your offer rather than your competitors'.
Convince and persuade? It's not the same thing?
Not exactly, no. The difference is subtle, but it matters:
To convince appeals to reason, using rational and explicit arguments.
To persuade appeals to feelings, using affective and implicit arguments.
Depending on the problem your product solves, some leads will be more receptive to rational arguments, while others will resonate more with emotional ones.
Consider two examples:
Let's say that you sell software to IT people and developers. They will be easier to convince than to persuade. You'll present your product's technical characteristics explicitly and quantitatively.
By contrast, let's say you sell armored doors in an area where there is little crime. The rational approach would be to explain to your lead that the probability of being robbed this year is less than 0.01%. Not very convincing, right? On the other hand, if you talk about the safety of their family and property, you'll be much more likely to persuade them.
To decide whether to convince or to persuade, you'll need to anticipate and answer any questions or objections that the lead might have before they ask. If you have enough human resources to have a customer service department, you can invite your leads to contact you directly. To be prepared to answer their questions, identify the barriers to purchase, and get them to buy.
Practicing digital marketing does not require you to automate 100% of your actions. You can have direct lines of communication with your leads if it's appropriate and profitable.
Make It Easy to Take Action on Your Site
I have presented my offer perfectly and tailored the pitch to my lead type - what else can I do?
Encourage the lead to act by guiding their gaze and cursor toward the call-to-action (CTA) button. This button and its message must be visible and highlighted.
One way to make it stand out is with strong contrast. The greater the contrast, the more the button will stand out.
There will be cases where the user can choose between several "following actions" on the same page. It's up to you to prioritize these actions and highlight the one you deem most important, based on your conversion goals.
Beware though of offering too many options - too much choice can kill the choice!
Reduce Friction Before the Purchase
If the call-to-action button is not visible, or poorly visible, your lead will have to make an effort to find it. In marketing jargon, it's called friction, which means an experience that is not smooth and decreases conversion chances. The more time your users lose, the less likely it is you'll convert them into customers.
So be careful to make their decision as easy as possible!
One of the most common sticking points in the conversion process is completing a form. Typing information on the keyboard takes more effort than clicking a link. That said, at some point you will have to ask your lead for information (their name, email address, or other information).
Some browsers and websites can save internet users' information so they can avoid retyping it every time.
Get Closure More Quickly With These Techniques
Beyond a compelling or persuasive pitch and a frictionless user journey, there are other techniques you can use to close faster.
The promotional offer: sometimes, making a gesture, such as a price reduction, is enough to encourage a purchase. "Free" is also a compelling argument. A gift (free delivery, additional product, etc.) can influence the purchase decision.
Urgency: It may be more effective if your offer is time-sensitive (or low product availability).
Confidence: You must remove the trust obstacle. Before becoming a customer and making a financial commitment, a lead will need to be reassured. If you have a strong brand image, the lead will have heard about you. If not, you can include testimonials from satisfied customers on your landing page. The more these testimonials inspire confidence, the more they will reassure your prospect, and they will take action.
Measure the Conversion of Your Leads Into Customers
How can I measure the conversion of leads into customers?
You can modify the conversion rate:
Conversion rate into customers = (number of customers ÷ number of leads) × 100
Assuming that Mimine converts 160 new customers per month, its conversion rate will be 1%:
Conversion rate into customers = (160 ÷ 16,000) × 100 = 1%
Optimize Your Conversion Strategies With A/B Testing
From experience, I can tell you that your first marketing choices will rarely be the best. You'll need to try different options and compare them to see if your changes have positively or negatively impacted your conversion goal.
Testing and iterations that seek to measure this impact are called: A/B testing.
There are several ways to do A/B testing. The most arduous consists of:
Observing the performance of the first version of your page (we'll call it version A).
Directly modifying your page to create version B.
Comparing the performance of version A and version B.
Keeping the one that best serves your conversion goals.
You don't have to rule this way of doing things out entirely, but it's much slower, less flexible, and less reliable. A more efficient approach is to use a specialized tool like Optimizely, VWO, etc. For more information about A/B Testing, check out the course Apply Metrics to Design Decisions on OpenClassrooms!
You can use their site to practice and look for marketing techniques.
On the Optimizely site, try to identify:
The copywriting.
The branding.
The CTA.
The marketing videos.
The preview of the offer.
The testimonials.
Let's Recap!
In this chapter, you've learned:
That you must convince by appealing to reason or persuade by appealing to feelings.
That it's necessary to facilitate the transition to action by reducing any possible friction along the user journey. You could also use promotional offers, create a sense of urgency with the product's limited nature, or generate confidence with testimonials.
How to measure your conversion rate between leads and customers: (number of customers/number of leads) × 100
A/B testing can help you succeed in making more sales by optimizing your sites and the calls to action.
At this stage, you have certainly realized the importance of tests to improve your marketing activity's performance. By testing your hypotheses, you should continually improve your conversion. While acquiring new customers is one of the marketer's primary objectives, it's not the only one.
Once someone becomes a customer, your role will be to retain them and turn them into loyal customers or even ambassadors for your organization. We'll look at that in the next chapter.
