The 4 big reasons why your ideal client doesn’t buy from you

Whether your problem is a lack of visitors to your website or app, or a low conversion rate on your website, then the following 4 marketing pillars can help you get more from your digital marketing and improve your conversion rate.

Read these 4 very simple but highly important points and think about how you can apply them to what you are doing. What can you learn and apply to improve your own digital marketing and lead generation?

Marketing is highly complicated with an abundance of nuances in each and every industry, yet it is founded on simple and rigid principles that have not changed over hundreds of years. It is easy to get blinded by the shiny, new ideas and thinking and new technology that promises the earth. But these only work if they are built on solid foundations.

So, take a step back, clear your mind and go back to basics. Read the following and at each stage, think about how this applies to your own marketing activity. How can you apply what you have just read and learnt? And then you can implement to improve your own lead generation.

Knowing who your ideal client is a pre-requisite

For any of the following to make sense and be useful, you first need to have a clear idea of who you are targeting. Your ideal customer, client. You need to have a buyer persona for your ideal client.

The more accurate and detailed this persona can be – the less money you’ll spend to attract them. I.e. you can be more targeted and have a laser-guided focus on getting in front of potential clients.

Now, you may have more than 1 ideal client? Maybe you target different people in different job titles or roles? Maybe you target different industries, with differing needs? Whatever it may be, choose a persona and apply that to your thinking when reading and learning about how to increase leads and sales from your ideal customers.

To find out more about personas read our article about creating personas and why they are important

1. You don’t exist

You can have the best solution. The best price or the greatest customer service, but that means nothing if no one knows you exist. You need to be visible out there – online. Either through search engine rankings, social media followings or paying for adverts on Facebook and Google. Or a combination of all 3.

If your ideal customer has never heard of you or even come across you. You are invisible. You’re dead in the water at the first hurdle.

So, think about your ideal customer, put yourself in their shoes and think about how you can grab their attention online. What will make them stop, notice and click?

Your ads, social media posts, and search engine results need to grab your audience’s attention. They need to stand above the average, above your competitors. They need to speak to your audience and demonstrate you really understand them.

Think about the lat time you wanted to make a significant purchase. Think about the research and searching you did online and how many pages you saw in the search results. The adverts you probably as and the social media posts came in your feeds. What do you remember about them? Which ones stood out? And why?

It was the ones that meant something to you. That connected with you and solved your problem. This can be done through facts, stats beautiful imagery, the promise of better things or even fun. All these ideas are ways of connecting with your audience. Understanding their needs allows you to come up with ideas in each of these categories. Be creative, be relevant, but always try and be memorable.

Market yourself on the right social media channels

If you have a good understanding of your target audience, then will have a good idea of where to find them on the different social media channels. They could be on 1 or they could be several, it all depends on your product or service and your ideal customer. Put yourself in their shoes and think where would you look? Where would you go and find out answers to your needs?

More insights into the different social media platforms and the people that use them can be found in a sprout social article.

2. Your offer is un-remarkable

You’ve got over the first step. You have an interesting advert. You produce attention-grabbing social media posts and you are attracting people to your website or app. But how do you keep them there? Engage with them and educate them as to why you are the best to deliver the results they are after.

If people don’t think they are in the right place they will leave, go back to the next result and try them. You need to keep their attention and convince them that they should spend time looking, reading, and watching your website to learn about you and your services/products and why you are the right answer for them.

Your potential customer is limited in time. You need to earn that time from them. Think about why they should care about your services or products. What do you do that makes you special?

Your value proposition

Put yourself in your ideal personas position and ask “so what?” Think about each point of your value proposition and answer “so what?”. This will give you a deep understanding of what you need to discuss, offer and educate your ideal customer on.

Showcase your ideal client on your website or app. Allow people to see people like themselves and now they are in the right place. Think about when you may have wandered in to a restaurant and realised you have entered a place that is not for you. This is the same with your website. Make sure your brand, graphics and style is what your target customer expects.

Be remarkable

Seth Godin wrote a fantastic book about this called Purple Cow, which we can highly recommend. It talks about not being like everyone else and standing out. It talks about being remarkable. Whatever you do, your product your service as well as your marketing, be remarkable. Produce something that is noticeable, and memorable and sets you apart from your competitors and the rest of the market.

This takes time to develop. It takes feedback from your existing customers and also those who are not customers to understand what in your offering is not hitting the mark. Take time to talk to your customers and ask for feedback no your website from non-customers to learn more. The more data you collect the more gold nuggets of insights you can use to develop your unique offering. Your purple cow.

Marketing disruption from AirBNB & UBER

If you consider Airbnb and UBER, both are disrupters. They both use modern technology in a new innovative way to deliver an age-old service. They looked at the problem from a customer’s point of view. they understood the problems customers had with the old model and used technology to solve those problems. The service they provide is nothing new. Airbnb – Accommodation across the world, which hotels had been providing for many years before. UBER – A taxi service across the world, which many taxi firms had been providing for many years before. Yet they made the product the swerve remarkable. They made it memorable and desirable.

What can you do to your service or product to stand out from the others around you?

3. You’re too expensive

How many times have we seen a great solution to our problem or a great product that would work brilliantly for us, but the cost is just too prohibitive? It just cannot be justified. How many times have you spoken with potential customers on the phone or in questionnaire feedbacks, where “too expensive” is a common response as to why they did not buy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, some of this will be because they are not your ideal customer. They are not in your persona, but it is not always as clear-cut as this.

Think about your product and service and how you can make it more affordable. Not reducing the cost, but maybe spreading the cost. Depending on what you sell, the cost can be split in more than 1 way.

Monthly payments

Rather than 1 large payment upfront or at the end, think about maybe introducing monthly payments. Buy now pay later is a popular methodology of selling in the modern world. Services such as Klarna allow potential customers to spread the cost and make it more affordable.

Service levels

Maybe you can offer different levels of service or products. Not just the complete, all singing all dancing solution. Different costing levels can allow a customer to sample your product or service at a lower rate, then move up to the full service and full payment when they are happy with the solution.

Free trials

Help you draw potential customers in. Let them try it for a few days or a few weeks to prove that your service or product is the right solution for them. That the money may be more than they were willing to spend, but it does deliver and is well worth the money.

4. They don’t trust you

Great. You’ve attracted them with some clear ads, and interesting social media posts and kept them coming back to engage and educate them about your products or services. BUT… can you really deliver everything you say you can? Can you keep your promises? How can a prospective customer truly believe you and trust you?

Be consistent

Well, the first thing is you need to be consistent. don’t keep changing your messages, your prices, your offering. This erodes trust. Trust is built on a strong foundation, not shifting sand. Changing your messages creates a shifting sand foundation which makes potential customers nervous. You say one thing 1 week, and something different the next. This smells of not understanding your customer at all.

Leverage social proof

Showcase your knowledge and your expertise. Have confidence in your business offering and abilities. Showcase other people, other current customers who have received great service from you and a fantastic solution. Make sure you collect social proof from them to reuse on your website to convince other clients. Read our complete guide to levering social proof on your website to find out more

Guarantees

Guarantees can help you to reduce the risk to the customer. Money-back guarantees or a guarantee that you will not stop until the solution works can help reduce the risk to the client. They know you are serious about your solution because you will suffer if it is not what you have said it is.