Sales leads for your E-commerce businessE-commerce success depends on attracting more visitors to your site, converting more of them to leads and nurturing them to become customers.

Converting a visitor into a lead is actually a very simple process referred to as lead generation, and although that sounds like a fancy term, it’s really just to referring to the process of obtaining contact information or marketing information from those visitors. The more leads that you generate, the more that your additional marketing efforts are going to contribute to increased revenue and success.

Let’s look at a few separate examples of strategies to generate – and convert – more sales leads for your e-commerce site:

  • Coupon or Special Offer Giveaway – You have probably been on an e-commerce website before browsing through products and noticed a small window that says something like “Sign up for our email updates to receive a coupon for FREE shipping on your first order.” This is not just a generous gift to the consumers given by the company, but instead a way of getting a visitor’s contact info in exchange for a small gift.

g .png      g.png

  • Social Media Promotions – Businesses are starting to realize more and more how much they can benefit from an effective social media campaign, but, what a lot of people don’t realize is that social media is a perfect platform to generate leads. The fact that people’s personal information is automatically in their social media profiles means that when someone likes a post, or follows your account then you have effectively secured a lead (of sorts). By posting promotions on social, you foster engagement and also secure more sales leads from a different channel then the website.

s.png

  • Google Adwords and Pay-Per-Click Ads – PPC ads are another strategy that you can use to generate more leads. But instead of letting the leads come to you, like with a coupon on your website does, PPC ads allow you to go after leads. It allows you to target the exact audience for your product, and assures that people will see the link to whatever landing page you advertis PPC ads can generate a lot of traffic quickly and easily, where as SEO and ranking for keywords is a longer and more detailed process.

 

Untitled.png

These are just three examples of ways to generate sales leads but in reality there are many ways to generate leads, and the businesses that are constantly evolving their lead generation strategies are the ones that succeed most often. (is this a true stat with data behind it. Can we put some numbers in here – see if Hubspot has any data??)

The more traffic that your site receives, then the more leads you can convert, and eventually, the more customers you will have.

Your lead generation strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, either. Look at other successful e-commerce companies and think about why they are successful. One example is a company called Hoot & Co, they are an e-commerce business that specializes in apparel for dogs. They have everything from bandanas to leashes and collars. You can get a dog leash or bandanna anywhere. But Hoot&Co. has built a brand of hipster bandannas and accessories because of their success with both their web site and social media.

When you break it down, you can attribute their success to a few different things:

  • They have a very neat, easy to navigate, well-optimized website.
  • They have an effective social media marketing plan
  • They target their ideal consumers
  • They have cultivated relationships with their customers and their brand influencers on social media

 

Social media allows Hoot & Co to directly target people who love dogs and they can use affiliate accounts to promote their products. There are thousands of dog profiles on Instagram (people who make accounts for their dogs and post pictures of them), and some of these profiles have 100,000 followers or more. Hoot & Co can go to some of those dog owners and offer a free bandana in return for them promoting the product with their dog on their Instagram page. They regularly hold contests for new dogs to join as models, which helps them reach even more influencers – and their target audience.

Successfully generating sales leads for e-commerce takes a mixed approach of different paid and organic activities, ranging from social media marketing, to coupons and pay-per-click advertising. Campaigns that invite the customer to sign up and provide some contact information in order to receive a free coupon or discount, work effectively to convert visitors into leads.

Download