Capture Your Human Customers

We often write about the impact that an effective online presence can have on your business. And after a decade of developing websites for our clients, we’ve realized that there is only a small percentage of businesses that capitalize on their investment.

What are you doing to move your customers through the sales cycle?
The number one thing you’re trying to accomplish with your online marketing initiatives is to sell your product or services, right? Aside from people immediately buying these “items” from your website, you should be focusing on lead generation.  It seems obvious, but the collection of information about qualified prospects so you can convert them later into paying customers is overlooked all the time.

What is the first step?
Start by realizing some key ingredients to the process. First you need to CAPTURE their information. Let’s focus on the CCQ or the Contact Capture Quotient of your online marketing. This is the measure of your website’s success in capturing visitors’ contact data. Businesses find it useful to determine where they want to be when using their site to its full potential. A website’s CCQ will fall into one of four categories:

• List Grower – This type of site requires only one or two pieces of information about the visitor, such as their name and email. Sometimes this works because people don’t want to give up too much about themselves early in the sales cycle.
• CCQ Beginner – Websites that ask for more, but don’t require the information from the visitor. This approach may lead to more information
• CCQ Leader – A site that excels at capturing a high percentage of visitor data and information about them by using multiple methods of collection in multiple places. This will place a visitor/prospect well into the sales cycle by defining if that person is a decision maker, when are they planning on purchasing, etc.
• Serious Qualifier – Sites that gain specific info from the most qualified prospects fall into this category.

Then what?
Once you visualize how you intend to implement CCQ in your online marketing, you’ll be able to define ways to accomplish your goal. Some effective ways to capture information from your visitors are live chat, autoresponders, incentives and giveaways. Once you start getting more information from your visitors – be sure to analyze the data so you can maximize your CCQ.