Any newly established company bases its business strategy on projected expenses and income, the last being in turn dependent on the size of the target audience its products addresses. Finally, the attracted potential customers have to undergo the process of conversion in order to become actual, paying customers.
Successful businesses are therefore those which not only make an excellent product that appeals to a large audience, but which also manage to transform interested visitors into paying customers. For any business, the higher the conversion rate, the higher the profit.
Attaining a high conversion rate is thus rightfully one of the most important goals of a company, irrespective of its area of activity. To do so, five simple yet overlooked steps towards creating a high-converting business strategy have to be followed.
1.   Identify the prospects
Using a supermarket as the example of a business, the prospects are the visitors, the people who cross its gates each day. They are not paying customers yet, not until they pick and choose products off the shelves of the supermarket, which in turn aims to convince them to buy as much as possible.
However, despite the fact that it usually offers a wide variety of products, even a supermarket has to identify and understand its visitors in order to convert them into customers. It does so by periodically surveying what products are being sold and to whom.
Companies that are already name brands in their field know the importance of surveying their customers the most. Converse’s consumer feedback survey, for example, can serve as a model for developing a tool which serves toward identifying the visitors with the highest chances of becoming customers.
Following the age-old law that supply follows demand, the supermarket offers its visitors the products they prefer most. Low-selling items are removed from the shelf, while high-sellers are placed where they can be most visible. Thus, by molding its offer of products on its visitors rather than trying to impose them, the supermarket successfully achieves a high conversion ratio.
2.   Value returning visitors
Taking a few concepts and strategies from psychology, a business can seek to establish a relationship with its returning clients and visitors by promoting a business identity or persona. Placing the focus on a past experience can however present a higher degree of risk, as any relationship is first and foremost personal.
Obtaining customer feedback is a large part of understanding returning visitors. Exit deals, packages and time-limited promotions can also motivate visitors into becoming paying customers.
If classical economy used to infer that consumers behave so as to maximize their utility or pleasure, recent studies show that the same consumers are more often irrational in their economic behavior. This has to be understood and well accounted for by each business.
3.   Adopt a simple approach
The usual individual is bombarded with dozens, maybe hundreds of adverts each day across all of his mediums of exchanging information. As a result, the average consumer is usually inattentive to anything that is remotely similar to an ad.
Professional marketers have attempted to solve this problem through increasingly complex media and product campaigns, both with few results to show. Instead, a business strategy that seeks to achieve a higher conversion rate should use simple and value-oriented wording.
In the online environment, where a company’s homepage is its de facto storefront, the strategy of a simple, direct approach always triumphed in the face of intricate pitches.
4.   Offer package deals and offers
Keeping the supermarket example, it is certainly safe to say that some products sell better than others. A convenient solution to the problem of lingering products is to place them together with high-sellers, forming a package deal. Convinced by a deal that is apparently too good to pass up on, the visitors of the supermarket will even shoulder a higher total cost, relieving it of its low-selling items.
The same principle functions when it comes to information. Bundled together, promotional material and discount offers have a higher chance of being accepted by the potential customer. Packaging more information in the form of a booklet may not only prompt your current clients into buying more products, but also attract more visitors.
5.   Customize the pitch
After identifying the visitors with the highest potential of becoming clients and establishing a relationship with them, a successful company moves on to the stage of personalizing the message.
Depending on gender, age, financial status and previously studied spending patterns, visitors can be convinced to purchase products with the right customized pitch. For example, if the same supermarket is placed in a residential neighborhood populated by numerous families with children, promoting baby-related products is the rightful pitch to its target audience.
By following these five steps toward creating a high-converting strategy, any business can manage to attract and retain its visitors, turning them into paying customers and the market share and profit margin will rise sharply.
