Why aren’t you converting sales?

So you’ve got a great product.  You’re proud of your service.  You’ve reached out to the social media gods.  You’re playing along with today’s technology.  This is great!  You must be reaping the rewards of indescribable success against your competitors with an amount of business that’s keeping you busier than you can even keep up with, right?

Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy.  Although you may be doing everything right and by the book, it may not be so much WHAT you’re doing as much as HOW you’re doing it.  With that in mind, here are some pitfalls that you may have found yourself in without even realizing that you’ve found them:

• You’re Too Factual:   Sure, working with just the facts is the perfect way for an attorney or law enforcement person to get the job done.  But for most of us, giving just the cold hard facts without any feeling or emotion behind them leads to a disengaged audience.  While you may be delivering facts that could absolutely help your customers (or potential customers) or be announcing all of the great things that your products or services can do to make their lives better, the fact is that people are people need to be romanced.  They need emotional connections.

Your customers want to feel you; they want to know you.  Your customers want to be engaged and feel like they’re not only supporting a great business, a business from their hometown of Milford or a business run by people who share their values, but that they can bring you home to mom, so to speak.  If you’re too busy focusing on the technical details of a certain product, or the something-or-other service ratings that you have, you’re more than likely missing a fantastic opportunity to actually relate to your buyers.

• You’re Confusing:      Sometime, trying to keep content fresh can lead customers into confusion.  Posting social or web content that is interesting, but is not relevant to your business can lead customers away.  For some companies, posting random off-the-wall articles about the Danbury soccer team and your favorite recipe for chicken salad are seen as interesting is a great way to pique interest, but for the amateur business person that’s just trying to generate sales, it’s probably best to stay away from random irrelevance in favor of keeping your posts relatable.  Be sure to stick to what makes you great, and steer clear of steering your readers off track.
• There is No Call-To-Action:   You’ve probably read a hundred blog posts, Tweets, and Facebook updates that ask you to “like” the page if you enjoyed the content or gave you direction as to where you can go to learn more about the product or service… and you probably didn’t even notice.  This isn’t subliminal marketing; it’s just good marketing.  When you provide your readers with a clear call-to-action, you’re letting them know what they were supposed to get out of the content that they just read.  While it may seem obvious to you that you wanted them to go to your online store and shop your products or “share” the post that they just read, the truth is that without the proper guidance, many readers will walk away thinking that your post was great… and that’s it.  Giving them a call to action gives them the instruction to complete what you already thought was obvious when you wrote the article in the first place!
• You’re Not Approachable:     While you, your family, and your friends may be well aware that you’re the nicest person on the planet, you may not be coming across that way to your customers and potential buyers.  In order to convert your clicks into purchases, you need to appear approachable. If someone asks a question on your Facebook page, publicly comment and offer them a solution.  If someone leaves negative feedback about your business on Yelp!, reach out to them and try to get to the root of the problem and do what you can to remedy the situation.  The more relationships you create with your customers (publicly and privately), the more likely they are to not only come back, but the more likely they are to tell their friends, as well.
• You’re Too Flashy:    Okay, we all admit that a great YouTube can make a slow day a little brighter in the workplace.  However, when you’re talking about marketing your own business, it’s important to keep in mind that consumers these days have little patience for waiting, and we all have very little free time.  If part of your marketing strategy includes flashy content that may take a while to load (or even require additional downloads just to view), it doesn’t matter how cool the final product may be, you’re likely scaring away customers before they even get to where you want them to go.

In the end, you may be doing almost everything right, but a few of those things just need a little fine-tuning.  Nonetheless, with the right push for action and some tweaking to your current strategies, you’re sure to convert clicks into purchases if you’re willing to re-evaluate your actions and appearances.

If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also enjoy reading, “Should You Hire a Marketing Agency?”