As a business owner, you know that turning website visitors into customers is crucial to your success. But, most companies fail to do so because they rush into asking for a sale too quickly.The key to successful online marketing is to guide your visitors through a sales funnel, educating and warming them up to a sale, rather than relying on impulse buying. This is especially critical for B2B companies, but also crucial for B2C and e-commerce websites.

Think of the process for a sales team. They typically need to make multiple touchpoints with each prospect before getting the “yes,” right? Your marketing has a similar process, and your website lives near the top of your sales funnel. Marketing strategy looks to your website as a way to act as one of the many touch points that need to happen in order to convert cold to warm and warm to lead. 

Is your website underperforming?

According to statistics, a whopping 92% of website visitors aren’t ready to buy during their first visit, meaning only about 8% of visitors are ready to buy when they load your site. On top of that, most websites have a conversion rate of only 2% to 5%. But what if you could branch out into the 92% of traffic you’re loosing? 

Note: If you aren’t sure what your website’s monthly traffic is, I highly recommend reading my blogpost “The 3 foundational data sources every company should have set up”. If you plug your numbers into the statistics above, this can give you an answer on whether or not your website is performing as it should. For some quick math, out of every 100 visitors, only 2-5 of them will will click on your “contact” or “buy now” button. And if you’re not hitting that mark, you likely have other issues at play. In which case I recommend checking out my other blogpost “How to build a high-converting website” to help you dial that in.

Why your website may not be converting to your expectations likely falls onto the fact that most businesses haven’t clearly defined what their conversion strategy even is. Before we can really go further on this, I have to point out some industry terms so we can be on the same page. 

In order for a conversion to take place on your site, a user first needs to click on a call to action (CTA). A CTA is a marketing term that refers to the next step or the action that the marketer wants the consumer to take. Some of the most common ones that you’re used to seeing are buttons like “contact us” or “subscribe”. CTA’s can be either a direct CTA or atransitional CTA.

What is a Direct CTA?

A direct CTA is a button marketers want users to click on, except it is directly tied to sales. These always lead to a direct sale, quote, or contact. It’s an action your customer can take to immediately initiate business with you. Buttons with text such as “Buy now” or “get a quote” are some of the most common examples.

What is a Transitional CTA?

This comes after the direct call to action and offers people a path to getting started with you, without feeling locked in to a purchase agreement. It gives you the opportunity to collect their information and deepen the relationship first. Once you have their contact info you can use tactics like drip emails, advertising, or other marketing initiatives. Transitional CTA’s almost always lead to a subscription of some kind. Think of “sign up for text alerts for 20% off” or “download our free guide” which results in subscribing to your email list. 

Tapping into the other 92%

Businesses’ impulse to convert with adirect CTA upfront isn’t 100% off base. For the 8% of visitors who are ready to buy, we don’t want them searching for that button.But the users who live in that 92% statistic that aren’t ready to buy simply won’t click on your “Contact” button. That’s why it’s essential to focus on getting to know your visitors, collecting their contact information with other means, and nurturing them into warm leads. Keep in mind that your users are in the shopping phase at this point. They’re looking at your site and your competitors’ sites, trying to understand the value difference. What if instead of asking for a sale, you focused on giving them value up-front? This is where transitional CTA’s come in to save the day.

Using transitional CTA’s to boost website performance

Your website should act as the top of your sales funnel. This is where potential buyers are scooped up and guided through a sales process until a sale is made. All of this can be done with a transitional CTA. To achieve this, you need to focus on giving your users value upfront. All you need is their name and email. Some ways websites do this are with lead magnets, questionnaires, quizzes, deals, or complimentary products and services.

The next step in this process is creating a strategy of what to do with these leads once you capture them, which I’m happy to say the more contacts you build, the more use you can make with them.

How you can make use of transitional leads

So, what do you do with these contacts lists once collected? Well, the shortcut approach is to reach out to them. But they gave you their contact information with trust, so a direct reach out from the start might be coming on a bit strong, yeah? Just like in the dating world, you are still getting to know each other. Instead, put them on your email list and have a rotation of content lined up to educate them about your industry. This will help them understand why you’re the obvious choice over their competitors, and how easy it is to get started.

After you’ve warmed your contact up as a solid lead, they may reach out independently. But the sky is the limit here; work closely with your sales team to nurture your audience. This will typically take at minimum three emails inside of a drip campaign. But you’ll gain more traction if you add other advertising to your mix. The good news is you can use this email list for many different advertising tactics, such as retargeting, or look-alike targeting. Bonus if you have a CRM, and can track their journey throughout your funnel.

I hope you find this information useful. There are many other examples of ways to implement sales tools on your website. But to keep things simple, I recommend starting here. Any business could benefit from collecting contacts for nurturing campaigns. And there’s a lot you can do with those contacts, from marketing to retargeting for your advertising campaigns.

Dustin Keeslar, 

Marketing Strategist + Operations | CreativeCat.Co