Converting Your Leads into Sales: 8 Tips You Need to Implement

While generating leads is crucial, turning leads into paying customers is what will help you grow a business. However, many companies forget to nurture the sales process and only focus on increasing leads. Due to this, their sales and marketing efforts may not bring optimal results. 

In this article, we’ll share eight tips on how to convert your leads into sales and build a lead conversion funnel. Let’s get started!

Building a Lead Conversion Funnel #

Before understanding how to convert leads to sales, it’s crucial to build a solid lead conversion funnel. This refers to the buyer’s journey in various stages, from first coming into contact with your products to becoming paying customers. A clear buyer’s journey will help the marketing and sales team better understand the target audience and establish more effective campaigns. 

For example, building a website is one of the first steps to raising awareness of your products online. When creating a business site, knowing how to buy a domain name that best represents your company is important to help you establish brand credibility.

Once you have the website sorted, here are the main steps to build a successful lead conversion funnel:

1. Define your buyer persona. Identify your ideal customer based on market data and research to help you focus on qualified leads. It also enables you to develop the right products for your target market.
2. Determine goals in each stage of the funnel. Be specific about what you want to achieve. For example, you want to boost website traffic in the first stage and increase purchase rates at the end of the funnel.
3. Create high-quality content. Adding quality content to your website helps generate leads. Ensure it provides valuable information for your audience, such as tutorial articles on your products. 
4. Make compelling landing pages. Creating a landing page is one of the best ways to get more leads to your website. Use a solid headline with a concise copy to make a high-converting landing page.
5. Use email marketing. Sending newsletters and offers via email can be an effective way to engage your audience, helping you convert leads into customers.

8 Tips to Convert Leads into Sales#

Even if you have obtained many leads, it may take time to convert these into sales. Various factors can cause this, from a flawed sales process to misalignment between the sales and marketing teams.

To help you optimize this process, this section will share eight tips to convert leads into sales.

1. Optimize Website Performance#

A high-performing website will help you improve the user experience, leading to more sales opportunities. It gives an excellent first impression to potential customers and enables you to establish a reliable brand image.

Furthermore, your website ranking can increase on Google, allowing visitors to find it easily. To optimize your website performance, choose a hosting provider with a good reputation, like Hostinger, BlueHost, and Hostgator.

Converting leads into sales - Hostinger

In addition, don’t forget to implement a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to help you convert online leads. For example, include relevant and popular keywords to attract potential buyers. 

2. Provide Discounts#

Offering discounts or giveaways are an excellent way to grab customers' attention and influence their buying decisions. It also encourages leads to explore other products, increasing the chances of them purchasing more. 

For example, if you provide discounts for your older collections, customers will likely search for these discount items. However, they might also look at other products, such as your newest or seasonal releases.

You can also give a free item for each customer’s first transaction to encourage repeat purchases. Choose a product that is functional and valuable to your customers, such as an umbrella or a tote bag, to leave a positive lasting impression.

3. Include Storytelling#

Storytelling is a vital part of commerce that can bring various benefits, such as improving customer loyalty, building consumer trust, and increasing sales. It is a powerful marketing strategy that helps businesses connect with customers.

Besides identifying your audience's needs and interests, here are some critical aspects of excellent storytelling:

• Create a deeper emotional connection. Ensure your story is genuine and authentic and incorporates your products well.
• Make it readable. Your story should be easy to understand from start to finish. It will help you deliver the right message to your audience.
• Let customers tell their stories. Ask your existing customers to participate in the storytelling process through testimonials. This will help convince your sales leads to become consumers.
• Share your stories. Sharing your brand stories across different channels, including social media, can help you reach more prospects.

4. Obtain the Customer’s Contact Information#

Since you can’t rely solely on a business website to generate sales, we recommend reaching out to leads via phone call or email to follow up. Although it can be time-consuming, personalized follow-ups can help capture your leads’ attention.Before sending a follow-up, consider your business and product type to determine the best communication channel.

For example, phone calls may be appropriate for B2B companies, while cart abandonment emails are more suitable for eCommerce stores. For businesses using direct mail, leveraging targeted mailing leads through platforms like Postalytics can help ensure that follow-ups reach the right audience, improving engagement and conversion rates. Additionally, keeping follow-ups brief and focusing on product value will make them more effective.

5. Add Calls-to-Action#

Including a call-to-action (CTA) in your marketing materials will encourage leads to take the desired action, giving them a clear direction. As a result, your leads can move on to the next stage of the sales process. 

Some examples of CTA buttons are Download Now, Claim Your Discount, and Subscribe For Free. When creating a CTA, consider using copy that delivers a clear message and adds a sense of urgency. Furthermore, ensure to design your CTA buttons using proper color contrast to make them stand out.

6. Use Social Media#

Besides having a website, creating social media accounts will increase your online presence. It helps you keep up with trends and reach a broader market, giving your business a better chance to attract qualified leads.

You can also share promotional and informative content to target audiences through social media. Doing so will help you build brand loyalty and improve engagement with leads and existing customers.

To optimize conversions, you’ll need to find the right social channel based on your target audience. For example, if you’re targeting millennials, choosing Instagram might be the best option since the majority of Instagram users are aged between 18 to 34 years old.

7. Score Your Leads#

To properly identify your sales opportunities, we recommend implementing lead scoring to find good-quality leads. 

This approach helps you identify which leads are valuable for your business based on specific criteria, such as engagement, purchase intent, and demographic. As a result, your sales teams can reduce acquisition costs and invest more time in leads who are interested in the products.

Lead scoring also helps you to deliver the right message at each stage of the sales funnel, giving your audience a better experience. To qualify your leads, implement these best practices:

• Determine sales-qualified leads. Find which factors will lead to conversions. Note that every company has different lead scoring models.
• Set points to every action and criteria. Assign higher points for actions closer to conversions. For example, leads who ask for a product pricelist should get higher scores than those who only subscribe to the newsletter. 
• Use negative scoring. Reducing points for specific actions allows you to separate high-quality leads from those least likely to convert. This includes leads who unsubscribe from your email list.
• Evaluate scores. Since the customer journey is likely to change over time, you’ll need to adjust your scoring models.

8. Utilize CRM Tools#

Another way to help you convert leads into sales is by using customer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Pipedrive. With such tools, businesses can automate and streamline their sales processes. 

Converting leads into sales - Pipedrive

For example, you can track your prospects’ activities. It will help you to create personalized campaigns based on where they are in the sales pipeline. When looking for the right tool, check whether the system can easily integrate with other business applications and offers customization options.

Conclusion#

When converting leads into customers, creating a conversion funnel is crucial to help you nurture leads properly. As a result, you can build the right strategy to generate sales. 

In this article, we shared eight tips to convert your leads into sales. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Optimize site performance.
2. Offer discounts.
3. Add storytelling.
4. Get the customer’s contact information.
5. Include calls-to-action.
6. Utilize social media channels.
7. Use lead scoring.
8. Leverage CRM tools.

We hope this article helps you optimize conversions and generate more revenue. Good luck!