…Too Salesy.

Don’t you wish that once someone gets into your sales pipeline, closing the deal would be as easy as 1-2-3?

They inquire about your services, you send them pricing, and you get the business.

But that’s not how most customer behaviour works. There are a lot of factors why consumers don’t convert to an immediate sale.

In An Ideal World

A customer enters your funnel as a lead. Once he/she is there, your funnel qualifies the lead, whether it is a potential customer or not. As the lead moves forward, the funnel will try to convert him/her by bringing them to a sales page. The goal for a WaaS (Websites as a Service) is to get the customers to sign up for you website service.

That is the Ideal Customer Journey.

In The Real World

Real-world customers might see an ad on Facebook, visit the company website & browse the pricing page. After a few days, Facebook retargets them with another ad about a ‘FREE case study download’ in exchange for their email. After downloading the case study, they get 5 emails before checking the pricing page once more. This time, the customer signs up for a free 14-day trial (if you have one).

After trying to figure out how the product works, they schedule for a sales call to learn more about the product and how to use it. The customer decides not to sign up right away for one reason or another.

Eight onboarding emails later & watching YouTube videos about your’s and your competitors services, the customer decides to subscribe to your starter plan.

Now granted, that’s only one of the many possible situations that could happen in the WaaS customer journey.

The sad part is, sometimes, the customers will never convert to a subscriber, and that’s fine, but there’s also times that they’re just stuck in your funnel.

Why? Because some prospects are evaluating A LOT of things. It’s not just your solution. They may have checked other competitors, or they can’t carve the time to work with your free trial, or even read your emails.

So what do you do with prospects who have been in your pipeline for a long period of time without converting? Don’t give up on them.

Here are some strategies you could put in place to turn these lurkers into customers.

#1 Email Marketing

One of the most affordable ways to stay in front of your target market is to send them consistent emails. But not just any kind of email. You need to send them something valuable so they look forward to hearing from you. Then once you’ve added value, all you need to do is attach a link to your WaaS. With the increased value you’ve added, they’re more likely to consider your services once they’re ready.

#2 Content Marketing

Content will always be King. It’s still one of the most valuable strategies you can do for your business to bring in more traffic to your website. Creating content that solves the problem of your target market will help attract them to your solutions (take this article for instance 😉.)

When you couple this strategy with email marketing, you’ll have a 1-2 punch combo that’ll keep you on top of mind and converting your lurking prospects to paying customers.