Conversions: Turn Leads into Bookings

By Dave Westfall

Welcome to the fourth and final part in our Elopement Vendor Internet Marketing Resources series. Previously, we have covered Traffic, Demand and Supply. This time, the area that we will be focusing on is Sales Conversions. This might actually be the most important of the four parts, or at the very least the one that ties the other three together. You can have the most spectacular elopement package ever and plenty of traffic, but if you are not getting those all-important conversions (aka bookings) then it is all for nothing.

As we already know from previous articles, it all begins with getting good qualified traffic to your website. As you’ll recall, there are only 3 ways to get traffic: you can buy it, you can borrow it, or you can build it! Once you have that traffic, it needs to be directed into your sales funnel to convert those leads into bookings.

Keywords Can Help Conversion

Choosing the right keywords can help increase your conversion rates. You should be using a selection of short-tail, long-tail, geotargeted and trigger keywords. Trigger keywords in particular can really help to motivate consumers to make a purchase.

Converting Leads into Sales

Once your website visitor traffic lands on your web page, the next step is to capture those leads and convert them into sales aka bookings! Your website visitors have come in search of answers, so make sure that you are offering them plenty of solutions. Even if they do not immediately make a booking, you can prompt them to sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog allowing you to follow up on your leads and increase your chances of making the sale.

You should also be monitoring your social media closely. Respond to comments and reviews, interact with your audience and share new content to keep driving visitor traffic to your website via your social media platforms.

Bait Your Hook

One of the best ways to boost your conversion rates is to put some bait on the hook. Your hooks can be a variety of things including a newsletter sign up, a sales page or a Blog subscription. In order to encourage visitors to sign up you can offer ‘bait’ such as free stuff, special midweek offers or special events. Some good examples of bait include free eBooks, special offers, guides or maps, discounts and coupons.

Follow-up with Email Marketing

One mantra that every elopement vendor needs to keep in mind is ‘the money is in the list’. Email Marketing is a sure-fire way to increase your Conversions. It works for several different reasons:

It allows targeting
It is data driven
It will help drive direct sales
It will help you to build relationships
It will help grow your know, like and trust factors
It can support sales through various other channels

Important Sales Conversion Don’ts

There are a number of things that should be avoided at all costs when it comes to converting your leads into sales:

Don’t put calls to action below the fold – 90% of Visitors won’t scroll below the fold.
Don’t ask visitors to click multiple times – with each click you lose 90% of your audience.
Don’t use ‘I’ in your content – write in second person use “you” and “your”
Don’t forget your Unique Selling Proposition – consumers need to be told why they should choose you, over all other options, including doing nothing.
Don’t use keywords that have no searches.
Don’t copy and paste content – Google Penguin will penalize your website heavily.