The Customer Value Journey is a powerful tool to help you take your business to the next level by ultimately creating raving fans of your business. If you’ve been following the journey with us through our series of blogs, hopefully you’ve already discovered the benefits of Step 1 (generating awareness), Step 2 (driving engagement), and Step 3 (building subscribers or followers). Now it’s time to really start ramping up your sales by moving on to Step 4: increasing conversions.
What is a conversion?
Before we can go any further with this topic, it’s important that you understand what a conversion is. The basic definition of a conversion is the point at which a prospect (or person/company receiving your marketing messages) completes an action you desire. While following your social media pages or subscribing to your newsletter could be considered a transaction, what we’re really looking for in this step is for your prospect to invest some time or money in your products or services.
In most cases, you don’t want your ask to be that big in this stage. You could ask your prospects to watch a webinar, buy a small ticket item (like a sampler package or your intro service), or agree to a product demo. The goal is to make the ask very manageable for the majority of your prospects.
In the first three stages of the CVJ, your relationship with your prospects has been relatively passive. What you’re trying to do in this stage is increase the connection and incite some base-level action, which leads you to increasing conversions.
Ways to increase conversions
Now that you know what conversions are and how this stage differs from the first three stages of the journey, let’s look at some ways to increase conversions.
Ask for a small sale
If you haven’t been running ads on Google or your social media profiles before, now is the time to start. In general, your social media postings will be focused on giving value rather than asking for a sale. If you’ve been keeping up on these engaging posts, you’ve earned the right to run some ads with an ask. Remember, don’t shoot for the moon here.
A low-cost intro product, an RSVP to a free webinar, or booking a consultation or estimate are excellent asks at this stage of the game. Remember there are two different types of ads: awareness ads and conversion ads. While awareness ads are perfect in the previous steps of the CVJ, you’ll want to start using conversion ads at this point to start seeing some sales action.
Schedule some one-to-one meetings
Networking and attending groups are perfect for the first three steps of the CVJ if most of your prospects are local. Once you’ve solidified your brand and have shown those you network with that you’re all about providing value to them, you can take the next step to begin increasing conversions, and schedule some meetings. Use the majority of the meeting to get to know your prospects’ needs and pain points more thoroughly, then conclude with a small ask such as connecting you with people who may be interested in your product or service or by leaving them with a brochure with an offer attached.
Make an ask on your website
Now is the time to put in some pop-up offers on your website if you did not do this in the previous step. The pop-up could request the visitor to schedule a demo, offer a coupon for one of your products, or RSVP to a low (or no) cost webinar. Don’t be skittish about pop-ups at this point. If you’ve completed the previous stages of the CVJ, your prospects will be more than ready to take the next step to support your business.
Once the first conversion is made, it will be seamless and relatively easy to begin stepping up the ask and building momentum with your customers. Need help with any of the first four steps of the CVJ, or want to learn more about how to start increasing conversions? The team at Pixel Fire would love to assist you!
