A big mistake many new marketers make is trying to get cold traffic to buy their product or service right away.
They run an advert or post on forums with links going to directly to their sales page.
When conversion rate are low (or at zero) they are lost at what they should do next.
In this article I’m going to explain the basic strategy successful marketers use generate leads and sales.
You can use this strategy with pretty much any product or service.
It all starts with the hook
Before I try to sell anything I need a hook to bring people to my website.
The hook is content.
It could be a video, blog post, report, infographic or anything else that offers them value.
The goal of the hook is to:
- Provide the visitor with value
- Build trust
- Raise awareness for my business/product
I don’t want them to make a transaction, I am happy enough for them consume the content and achieve any of the 4 goals above.
For example, If I am selling an affiliate product for protein, my content would be focused around why taking whey protein is good for weightlifters or people doing yoga (the article would depend on my target audience).
If I’m offering doctors a marketing service, then I’d create an article titled Why Every Doctor in Texas Must Have a Facebook Page.
The hook needs to be relevant to your target audience and tie in with the product or service you want to sell.
I don’t send them straight to my offer because they don’t know who I am, there is no trust and they will just leave.
This ends up costing me a lot of money in ads, and you’ll find 90% of the time it’s just not profitable.
On my hook page I will have setup retargeting using Facebook or Google Ads to show them my products later down the line.
Retargeting
If you’re unfamiliar with retargeting you should read my previous posts about retargeting with Facebook ads here.
Retargeting is showing adverts to someone who has visited your website before.
If my hook was strong enough, the person should have some sort of positive association with my business if I managed to provide them value.
I have now created a relationship based on trust and value.
These two emotions are crucial to selling anything online.
Now it’s time to make my pitch.
Show Them The Sales Page
After setting retargeting audiences and sending traffic to my hook page, I will slowly build an audience of warm leads (people who have consumed my hook).
To carry one with the examples above, if my goal was to sell marketing services to doctors, I would show my warm leads a free downloadable guide to setting up their Facebook business page.
In return they would need to give me their email address (goal: lead generation).
If I were affiliating whey protein, I would send my warm lead to a product page or a review page for the whey protein product I was affiliating (goal: generate a sale).
Online marketing services typically start at the low hundreds of dollars and can easily hit 4 or 5 figures depending on the client. When selling high-ticket items, it’s always better to ask for an email address than to purchase your services.
Because it’s a high-ticket item they will need further nurturing which you can do via email marketing.
For smaller priced items that cost less than $100, I have experienced good conversions by sending warm leads directly to a product page. Most protein shakes cost $30-$80 and consumers are much more likely to make an on the spot purchase than debate over it for days or weeks.
How Are You Selling?
New online businesses are popping up everyday and it becoming increasingly more difficult to know which businesses are legit and which are there to take your money.
This is why direct marketing to cold customers is becoming expensive and highly unprofitable. Instead of throwing your product in their face and expecting them to buy, create yourself a hook and though retargeting aid them in to make the action you want.
