Quick Way To Find Out Where Your Online Marketing Fails

Quickly increase sales

When a client comes to me needing help identifying why they are not getting more online sales, I take them through a very simple process.

The first step is to find out how people are interacting with your ads.

If people are not seeing or clicking on your ads, that could mean:

• Ads are not reaching the right people

• Ads are not correctly set up

• Ads are reaching the right people but with the wrong message

How do you measure if people are interacting with your online ads?

Often, you can find out industry benchmarks for ad performance on Google. This link is an example of data that will show if you are having a good click-through and conversion rate based on your industry.

• Ad performance is tracked in your ads manager

Remember that search-based ads should generally perform much better but cost a lot more than display ads. (Example, a Google search ad for people searching women’s shoes vs. Facebook newsfeed ads for women’s shoes showing to women aged 25-45).

• You can do A/B testing where multiple ads are running to determine which ad performs the best

• Make sure your ads are set up to monitor conversion tracking

If the ads are working, we go on to the next step. Are potential leads filling out the contact forms, making calls, or buying from the landing page?

If they aren’t converting on the website, it could mean:

• Website copy isn’t converting

• Website isn’t user friendly

• CTA (Call to action) is missing or needs work

• Pricing may not be properly set (e-commerce)

How do you know if your website is converting?

Website analytics such as Google Analytics provide great tools to determine where potential customers drop off in the conversion process.

• Can indicate bad website copywriting if people aren’t buying

• May indicate problems filling out contact forms or problems adding products to online carts

• Website design flaws can cause website not to convert.

  • Ask customers and monitor complaints to determine if this is an issue

Be sure to look into retargeting/remarketing advertisements. These are the creepy ads that, when you go on Amazon, target you with ads on Google and Facebook.

If the second step is working, the likely problem has to be with closing the sale.

What can cause you not to close the sale:

• Phone calls and contact forms not answered promptly

• Inexperienced sales reps not able to close the sale

• Pricing not properly set

• Unnecessary hoops customers have to jump through to buy

• The product or service is not wanted

• You don’t try to follow up on abandoned e-commerce carts

How do you know when sales are not being closed:

• Keep track of the calls and e-mails you get and where they come from.

  • Track the percentage you are able to close the sale. Compare the numbers of all sales reps.

• Look at your abandoned cart rate if you have an e-commerce site.

  • Most e-commerce sites allow you to email or text people who have started to fill out a form and left items in their carts. You can remind them and even offer them discounts to come back.

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The steps above will quickly help you identify what part of the online sales process prevents you from selling more products. Most all online businesses I have advised increase sales by double digits within one month simply by looking at those three steps.