7 Easy Ways to Turn Impressions into Conversations
We're sharing how inbound SMS offers a more controlled and desired conversation for prospects, and can generate much higher responses for businesses.
Do you spend a significant amount of time or money advertising your business in the hopes that prospects will contact you to discuss your product/service? If so, then you understand just how important it is to cost effectively improve the rate in which you convert advertising impressions into quality conversations. Here are seven tried and true methods to get more conversations out of your marketing budget.
- Use different phone numbers to track campaigns.
Ever heard the quote: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Don’t believe it. Each marketing campaign should have a unique phone number for tracking purposes. Doing so will allow you to see which advertising campaigns are driving qualified conversations and which aren’t. Then you can optimize your budget around what’s working. - Stop hiding your phone number.
If calling or texting your phone number is your primary call to action (CTA), then don’t make it so hard to find. Make it one of the first things people see. It shouldn't be an Easter egg hunt! - Use local numbers.
People feel more comfortable calling a business that has a phone number with a local area code. Perceived proximity increases liking. - Use text message enabled numbers.
Quite frankly, more and more people hate calling. They would rather communicate via text. And some people are already texting your business numbers assuming you’ll reply, the question is whether you are seeing and replying to them or not. Did you know you can even get your existing business phone numbers text enabled? With the right provider, it’s really pretty easy. - Use text message keywords.
Ever see marketing campaigns that say something like “Text “Menu” to 555-5555 to see our menu and business hours.” and then automatically send you a text message back with a hello message that includes a link to their website for more info? Well these campaigns are increasing in popularity because they work really well. You can get your own running in minutes. Text message keywords are one of the best ways to convert an offline interaction into a digital one. It can also reduce the time demands and disruptions to your staff. Preventing them from having to spend time answering simple frequently asked questions. When done right, it also gives you permission to have ongoing conversations with customers! - Have them contact you immediately.
Offer them a reason to contact you immediately. Like if you are offering legal services, don’t just say “Call me when you get in an accident”. You want them to contact you ASAP so they retain your contact info in their phones. That way they don’t need to remember your phone number in a high stress situation like an accident. Instead, they just need to look for your last conversation or contact on their phone. So try saying something like “Text “wreck” to 555-5555 for a guide on what steps to take if you or someone you know gets in an accident.” - Give them good options to contact you.
Some customers might prefer to call, others text, some email, etc. It is good to cater to your customer’s preferred channel of communication. However, only do this if 1) you are actually staffed to respond back to those channels in a timely manner and 2) if your customers respond back. Some customers might say they want to communicate with you via email, but if you notice the response rates are really low with email, it might actually be losing you more businesses by offering it. In other words, more isn’t always better. The customer’s preferred channel isn’t always better for them or you; so be sure to test to see the impact of offering new communication channels.
These are all really easy and cost effective ways to improve your impression to conversation conversion rates. And if you aren’t doing them, your competitors will! Contact us today and learn how Ytel can help you get started today!
