There is a tendency in marketing to focus only on the people who buy something from your business. After all, why should you care about anyone who was just window shopping through your website? Well, smart marketers know that every visitor is a potential customer, and if someone doesn’t make a purchase, there is a valuable reason somewhere in the sales chain for it. If you can find this reason, you can fix the kinks and smooth out your sales funnel, leading to decreased customer drop off, better margins, and more sales this quarter than last. Following are several reasons to pay attention to the non-buyers, and what you can do to extract value from them.
They Might Share Your Content
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Some online surfers have no intentions of buying anything online no matter what you say to them. These folks are just there for the free content, and this is not a bad thing. Think about how many times you’ve had a question or a concern and did some quick online research for quality, free information. For some people, reading articles online is a daily activity, but most aren’t involved enough to spend money on a product.
Though they are not handing over money, these visitors can still be valuable for another reason – sharing your content. By sharing your content on the social networks, your website is exposed to scores of new potential customers who might end up buying from you. Additionally, the more people that share your content, the higher your link authority rises with the search engines. High link authority is excellent for your SEO, pushing your site up in the results for searches related to your business.
You Can Study Where/Why They Leave
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People surfing for free content is definitely to be expected, but if you begin to notice that the vast majority of visitors to your website are dropping off without buying anything, it could mean that your sales funnel is buggy and confusing. Using tracking software, you can pinpoint where on your website most of your visitors are leaving. Whether it’s a perplexing order form or an unclear call to action, you can diagnose the problem and smooth it out.
Most traffic analysis software reports your visitor exit paths for this very reason. The results of this kind of analysis can be shocking. For example, you might find that 30% of your visitors are leaving your website through an unimportant link at the bottom of the page. Removing the link might increase your conversions by focusing those visitors on other elements of your website.
Perhaps You Have a Weak Message To Market Match
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What sort of people are coming to your website every day? If most of them are coming and going in short order, it could mean that you are advertising to the wrong group of web surfers. This is known as having a weak “message to market match,” ie – your website is not very well aligned with the people who should be seeing it.
Check out where your site is advertised and what is being said about it. Examine your own advertising campaigns and make sure that your search marketing or SEO optimized keywords are properly targeted to the appropriate people. Don’t try to cast a net so wide that you bring in “everyone” in your industry, as this will draw in all the lookie loos who have no interest in buying from you. Instead, take a less is more approach – Think about what sort of person desperately needs to solve a problem that your product solves and laser focus your advertising only on them.
Maybe Lack Of Interest Is Telling You Something About The Product
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Customer interest in your product is perhaps the best determinant of the value of your product. Consider setting up a small survey that asks non-buyers why they decided to leave. Of course, the majority of visitors won’t answer, but the few that do could provide value insight into problems with your product or sales process. As the creator, it can be very hard to see your product the way a neutral web surfer might. Having a small comment box for people to drop their opinions or hesitations into can shed light on glaring problems you might never have considered.
You Might Be Able To Capture a Lead
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Just because a customer may not buy from you right now doesn’t mean you can’t sell something to them down the line. Chances are, if a visitor ends up on your website, they at least have some kind of an interest in your market, which means they are potentially a valuable contact for future mailing. Create a mailing list for readers to sign up to, and include a field or two for them to specify their interests and reasons for coming to your page. This information can be used to segment your audience and hit them with targeted emails in the future.
As you develop new products or affiliate with other business to sell related content, you can send offers to those in your mailing list who mentioned being interested in such products. Understand these are all people who might have just left your page without ever coming back, which means that the bigger your list grows, the more chances you have to squeeze sales from people who may never have bought from your before.
