Conversion Strategies to Establish Relationship

Any viable internet strategy needs to include conversion concepts. Sometimes that might be economic, as in sales.

But it can also be non-economic; for instance, you may want to get people to move or migrate to pages, to opt-in to your email list, or to take whatever action you desire them to take. This conversion is the kind that creates steps in building relationships with potential customers.

Imagine if a customer walked into your store and you grabbed something off the shelf, shoved it into their hands, and said “Hi – you want to buy? Let me ring that up.” You would be rebuffed!

You need to realize relationship development and conversions that will move people through your website. You need to recognize strategies that will move the relationship orientation to your business.

I have a client whose sole online conversion goal is to generate phone calls into their office from 8-5 Monday-Friday. They’ve refined a specific strategy to deal with this, and they’ve built a very successful sales model off the concept.

It doesn’t need to be bells, gadgets and gizmos! What might work with your strategic planning? Here are some unique ideas on generating conversions in an article posted at the Wall Street Journal, Three Best Ways to Convert Web Traffic Into Sales – Read more…

No Dissing On the Bus

One season, we ran a tour with two bands on a tour bus, living on the road together for a month at a time over 9 months. It is typical for folks to chide one another, and it can get pretty tough when they are living on a “land submarine” 12 hours a day!

I realized as we pulled into venues for shows that the band members would often be wise cracking on each other, and the folks we encountered would step back in surprise at how cutting some of the remarks were. Even said in jest they had some truth and no edification.

We made a policy of “no dissing on the bus.” It was incredible to see how this small conscious effort changed the relationship of everyone on the tour, not to mention those with whom we came in contact. We also found other things to humor ourselves with and often ended up laughing together. I still think of those times as some of my fondest memories, even though we were also working our rear ends off!

Any group of people can fall into this apparently innocent practice. But it runs right up there with gossip, and it can certainly breed a very bad environment.

Many times on turn around assignments, I have found that this was one of the first cultural elements we needed to deal with to get the ship back on track. How we interact with others in the course of our day-to-day business will not only change how they feel, but it will also change how productive they are and how willing they are to work with you.

I recently read about a book written by Donald O. Clifton and Tom Rath that gives some great strategies to help influence our workplace by building relationships instead of tearing them down. Read more… How Full Is Your Workforce Bucket?

No More Fish In A Bucket

It used to be that everyone marketed and bought ads on an age-based demographic. When we were coordinating millions of dollars in radio and TV buys, this was the only way to do it, because that is what Arbitron and Nielson provided.

Fast forward and everyone today says that the internet has changed our behaviors. I am not sure that is entirely true; however, one thing is for certain – the internet is giving us the ability to directly connect and “see” the folks we connect with.

You can see this on Social Network sites like Facebook, MySpace or… insert your favorite here.

It was always a frustration when working in the music business where reliance on age-based demographics were still the driving force. The only age groups that were certain were the youth groups, because they had a tendency to congregate. But you had to work harder to coalesce age groups beyond that because they were more fragmented and dispersed.

The internet has given us the ability to talk directly with the audience and see what they look like. In working with one artist, we were able to identify several groups of people, none of which were age-based. This allowed us to build out a relationship based program that connected with the audience based on personal preferences.

Rohit Bhargava has a good article that provides some interesting insight. Read more… 5 Reasons Your Customer’s Age Doesn’t Matter

Email Campaigns for Success

Emails. Some businesses cringe at the thought of sending emails to their customer list. They’re afraid that their customers, like themselves, are so inundated with inbox messages that they’ll annoy the people they want to attract.

But emails are an effective means of building relationships with your current clients, adding to your potential client list, and offering information that will help the people you can serve.

To get you started with an easy method for building your email list, sending regular emails, and tracking the performance of each email, try Constant Contact. They have a 60-day free trial account so you can try it out with no obligation.

Small Biz Trends has some good tips for email campaigns: “Though it may sit in the shadows of today’s shiner marketing techniques, email marketing continues to be an effective, low-cost way for SMB owners to reach out to, inform and retain current customers. In fact,…” read article…