How to Increase Online Sales – Part 2 – As I mentioned in Part 1 of this article, I am working on the assumption that we all want to maximize online earnings. It ensures that our business is working efficiently. And an increase in sales should yield greater earnings.
#4 – Cultivate Credible Social Proof
This is an issue that most consumers these days are very sensitive to, and are aware of how much abuse takes place online.
For this reason, in order to improve your conversion rate, you need to work on cultivating some credible and genuine social proof.
Forget about the type of testimonials you see on scammy marketers’ sales letters where they obviously took a stock photo image or used artificial intelligence tools to create a fake human to provide them with feedback.
Avoid Any Semblance of Fake Testimonials
You also don’t want the same colleagues leaving testimonials for you again and again where everyone knows it’s just because you are reciprocating with each other’s offers. Instead, you want real followers and real customers who have a name and face that you can put on your content pages with their permission.
If they have a URL that you can include so that people can contact them if they have any questions or want to check to see if it is authentic, you can include that as well. You can set up a system where buyers can leave feedback with a disclaimer that it may be used in a future product launch.
Keep in mind that comments are not that common, especially in the early stages of a blog, so you may need to be alert to any opportunity to gather genuine testimonials.
Or, you can simply send an email to your list and ask them to follow a link and leave a testimonial for you that you can use. Keep in mind that social proof isn’t only made-up of testimonials for sales pages.
It can also be other things in your business which signal to new followers that you’re worthy of listening to as a niche leader.
Of course, the most powerful situation is where you go to a blog and see a thriving comments section with followers of the blog praising the site owner, and the site owner interacting with them. That’s a good sign to you that this is a worthwhile, credible site.
Social Media Profiles
The same holds true with social media profiles. If you have a lot of engagement on your content, whether it’s on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, or elsewhere, that is going to signal to the visitor that there is a community of like minded people who are attracted to that account and its messages.
One of the best ways to get this type of a social engagement is to end your content pieces with a call to action that asks people to like, share, and comment below. Or, you can simply ask a question specifically and have them give their answer in the comments section.
Nothing works better than being proactive!
This will give people the psychological push they need in order to feel comfortable with you and trust that you have a message they need to hear. It lends credibility to your account, which will automatically help increase your conversions over an account that is lacking in any type of engagement or social proof.
#5 – Employ a Multifaceted Message Strategy
Another great way to help increase your conversions is to begin using a multifaceted approach to delivering your messages. Some marketers get into this industry and stick with what they know, which is usually text.
There is nothing wrong with using text, but in today’s online marketplace, your competitors will be using a multimedia approach so that people with different preferences can also absorb the message they are sending.
If you are not competitive in that regard, they will simply abandon you and turn to someone who is willing to deliver their content in more forms than one. You want to be using a mix of text, video, audio, and images.
That doesn’t mean you just have a text blog and a video YouTube channel or an audio podcast. That means you mix them together whenever possible. For example, if you have a blog post about a certain topic, and you also have a podcast episode and YouTube video about it, you can embed the video into the blog post and provide a link to the audio episode for them to listen to.
You can also take the text of a blog post and summarize it into an infographic for those who simply want to absorb the gist of your message with a visual graphic rather than having to read through a lot of information.
It Works Both Ways
The same holds true if you are not used to using text. If you have a YouTube video, you want to create a text transcript of it that you publish on your blog and provide that link in the description so that people know they can go there and read what the video is about, and do the same thing in the show notes of your podcast.
There might be people who land on your blog and see a long block of text, and would usually click out, but because you have a video embedded in it for them to watch, your conversions will be improved because they stick around to watch the video.
It’s easy to reach the conclusion that what ever platform you prefer, is also going to be true for everyone else. Unfortunately, you can lose a lot of sales by thinking this way.
You can use a multifaceted approach on your blog, but also on your sales page, your landing page, and your social media profiles. You can post a text article on Facebook, and include the link to the video below, so it will show up in their feed.
There are many people who have a hybrid sales letter. Often, it will start with a video option, but have a link directly below for those who prefer text. Or, you could embed the video at the top of the text based sales letter so that people can choose which one to pursue on the same page.
#6 – Develop a Strong Pre-Sell Technique
The next conversion improving strategy you can attempt is to start implementing a pre sell technique with your target audience. If you are finding that the offers you are sending your list to are not converting well for you as an affiliate or even as a vendor, using a pre sell or warm up strategy can help.
When you are going to be promoting or selling something, you can begin warming up your audience through the use of emails that you send out that introduce certain concepts or solutions slowly before the promotion begins.
You can do the same with a blog. There are many people who will engage in a launch jacking campaign where they talk about a solution without naming it or going into detail about it, and then plug in that information when the launch goes live.
Teasing Your Audience
In order to use this type of strategy you have to tease the audience a little bit. You are letting them know that there’s something on the horizon that you are going to be sharing with them, and getting them excited to find out what it is.
Pre cell techniques can be used on bridge pages as well. This is a good place for you to get the audience to trust in the purchase of a product if you feel as if they may not convert well for the vendor.
This might be because the vendor is unknown to them, or because the sales ladder isn’t nearly as good as the product itself is. There are many vendors who are capable of creating courses and software, but they lack the ability to create well written sales copy.
Warming Up Your Audience
When you are warming up your audience, not only are you letting them know there’s something waiting in the wings that is going to serve as a solution for them, but you’re also going to go ahead and help them overcome any objections.
That way, by the time they are presented with the offer, they have already removed any hesitation they may feel and going forward with the purchase of the product. This is especially beneficial if you have a strong rapport with your followers and they trust what you have to say.
You might even be able to warm them up with some sort of case study or personal testimonial that you are giving showing that you received a review copy and have implemented the strategy or tool and are going to be showcasing your results.
Sometimes, using the art of pre-selling will help you secure the purchase through your link if you are operating as an affiliate marketer. If you get ahead of the launch and let people know that you have a bonus or you will be giving them access to gated content when they buy through your link, this will ensure that on the day the launch goes live, they watch for your email and don’t purchase it from someone else ahead of time.
#7 – Build a Competitive Edge with Persuasion
And lastly, if your conversions have not been improving and you need a boost, Start learning the art of persuasion in all of your marketing tactics. Too many marketers simply spit out a bunch of facts or product details, and they truly lack an understanding of what it means to persuade their readers.
Persuasion marketing should be present in every piece of content you create. It’s especially important when you are using email marketing and on your sales pages, but it can also be present in other areas of your content marketing campaigns, such as your blogs and social media.
It’s more than just typing out a call to action statement. You will be using things such as storytelling and tactics that make the reader feel as if your message really resonates with them personally.
Tapping Into the Mind of the Consumer
You will be tapping into the mind of the consumer on an emotional and personal level. By using storytelling, they are going to be more engaged and remember why they need to buy something by the time they reach the end of the sales letter.
Persuasion marketing can be one of many different things. You might be persuading people based on a story that you share that shows your own experience in the niche. Maybe you struggled with trying to make money online or with losing weight, and you now want to help them shortcut their success.
It might even be something where you are sharing a success someone else had, with their permission of course. Or you might talk about times of defeat, not just those moments when everything ended up perfect.
You can persuade people with other things we’ve already talked about, too such as social proof. Or, you might use scarcity in your message and persuade them by letting them know there are a limited number of products available or a limited amount of time to gain access.
By using one or more of these proven strategies, you will be able to tweak your current online efforts to the next level so that your conversions begin improving immediately. Don’t quit after one simple alteration.
Keep going until you run out of ideas on how to split test or alter your approach. This isn’t a selfish tactic to want to improve your conversions. These are all things that your readers and followers are looking for to help guide them and ensure you’re not wasting their time, too.
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