One of the first mistakes companies make when venturing into Internet marketing on the local level is not designing their sales funnel in a way that allows for maximum lead capture. The sales funnel by definition is a process by which a potential customer follows from initial contact all the way through to the sale and then on to retention. As an example, consider the following sales funnel I recently uncovered for a local flooring company doing Internet marketing in St. Louis
This flooring company has created a sales funnel that stars with a very easy to promote service: “Free In Home Measure” This entry into the sales funnel is extremely powerful on many levels. First, the consumer who is in the market for flooring needs to know exactly how much floor they need to cover. Since most homeowners don’t know how to measure correctly, it’s a great free service that this flooring company is providing to allow homeowners to know exactly how much flooring they need to buy. This “first contact” by the flooring company when they do the measurement is a perfect opportunity to show the potential client how professional and knowledgeable they are. They also happen to use this opportunity to drop off several carpet samples for the home owner to look at over the next few days.
Looking at this from a marketing point of view, the customers initial contact to get a free in home measure has resulted in the flooring company not only getting a hot prospects name, address and email but also the ability to enter the home and drop off samples of their products. Now, moving further down the sales funnel, the flooring company will call back with the measurements and request a time they can come back to pick up the samples. This allows them a second opportunity to get access to the customer and try to close a sale,
There are a few lessons to be learned from this when designing your own sales funnel.
Lesson #1:
- Make entry into your sales funnel extremely easy for the potential client.
For example, the flooring company could have just promoted their products on their website along with their pricing and service details. But instead, they opted to provide a free and valuable service that prompted potential customers to contact them and thus enter their sales funnel.
Lesson #2:
- Keep your customer moving in the sales funnel.
At the bottom of your sales funnel is the actual sales you are trying to get. But to get there, you need to move the customer from initial contact to the sale. To do this, the flooring company got to meet the customer face to face, drop off samples, and then come back to pick them up. This entire process requires many points of contact which gives the perfect opportunity to close more sales.
If you need help designing your sales funnel, leave a comment on this blog call me and lets see what we can create.
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jul 13th, 2010. Comment. 
For local businesses, the goal is get more customers. This may mean more walk-ins, more phone calls or more website form submits. Its amazing to me how many local businesses here in the St. Louis region, and nationwide, that have spent big money on website design that completely disregards the actual goal of the website and that is to drive more business. Many of these sites make it almost impossible to be contacted with hidden contact forms, confusing design and phone numbers buried on the contact page.
Unfortunately, most local business websites are not optimized to convert visitors to leads. Here is a simple check list you need to follow to ensure your website is converting as many visitors as possible into customers.
- Include your phone number at the top and bottom of every page in LARGE font.
- Put a contact form on every page, some people just don’t want to call you the moment they are on your website. This allows you to build a lead database too.
- Use a navigation features like a navigation bar so people can get around your site easily. Confused visitors will leave your site quickly.
- Provide free content such as video and consumer reports to prompt visitors to enter their contact details.
- Provide coupons via email to build your customer database.
If you have a business website and would like to get a free Website Evaluation worth $495 please visit http://leveragelocal.com/website_tuneup.html and one of our professional website analysts will conduct a thorough evaluation of your website. This way you can be confident that you will get most bang for the buck if and when you advertise your business online.
Here is a video review I did for a local Creve Cour, MO Chiropractor.
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jun 14th, 2010. Comment.
Welcome to this first post for LeverageLocal.com. This blog will be dedicated to updating you on the current happenings at Leverage Local as well as to educating you on the most effective methods for marketing your local business online. While the Leverage Local team is based in St. Louis, we provide Internet marketing services to local business across the globe.
This blog is going to focus on strategies that we employ to get our customers top rankings, ready to buy visitors and websites that turn visitors into buyers. If you follow this blog and implement our advanced strategies, you will surely develop a winning Internet based marketing program that will result in more customers for your business.
If you feel that these strategies will require too much of your resources and you wish for us to implement them for you, rest assured that we only work with 1 business category per geographic location. The geographic limitation is defined per business as some businesses are more localized than others. For example, a Dentist would be localized down to a particular suburb within a city while a hardwood flooring company would encompass the entire metro region.
The next post on this blog will be a valuable tutorial on how you can use Google Places to get on the first page of Google within 30 days and drive phone calls and clicks your way.
Filed under Leverage Local News by on Jun 1st, 2010. Comment.
