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Steps: 1. Know who comes and why 2. Greet them with a smile 3. Give them what they want 4. Make it easy for them 5. Follow through |
Business works essentially the same way on online as it does in the "real" world — converting your existing customers into sales brings you more bang for your buck than trying to generate new customers. That’s according to Daniel Rothamel, who led Wednesday’s Inman News webinar — "Internet Marketing for Brokers: Converting Online Traffic Into Sales."
Rothamel is a real estate agent and author of the Real Estate Zebra blog. Whether online or offline, he said, spending money on advertising runs the risk of potential customers simply filtering out your message as one of the other thousands of ads they are bombarded with every day.
On the other hand, there are already people coming into your "store" (i.e. your site) that you can turn into actual sales.
"It costs far less to retain current customers than it does to acquire new ones. They’ll go out and do your job for you and tell their friends. Real estate in many ways is a referral-based business. (That’s) a lot cheaper than spending a lot of money trying to attract new clients all the time," he said.
Rothamel outlined five easy steps to convert Web traffic into sales:
1. Know who comes and why: This boils down to using website analytics to know who is coming to your site, why they are visiting, how long they stay, and where they are coming from. What time of day are they coming? What are the most popular pages on the site? What is the site’s bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave immediately after seeing the site)? How long do visitors stay on the site? On average, how many pages do they view? What keywords are bringing them to your site?
Knowing that information will help concentrate your efforts and adjust your content accordingly, Rothamel said.
"It doesn’t do any good to fish in a pond if there are no fish in it. Or if you know where the fish are, if they aren’t biting," he said.
He recommended using Google Analytics, Woopra, Sitemeter, and 4Q Online Survey — all of which are free or have free basic versions.
2. Greet them with a smile. "The way you do this on the Internet is by having really solid website design," Rothamel said. "Your website doesn’t throw up all over their desktop and throw links at them that they don’t understand." …CONTINUED
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