Converting existing Customers into Purchasers

Spunky Jones, Web PR for the Credit Crunch series - 4 of 5

Having solved some of the basic issues, you now need to look at how well your site solves the problems of converting existing customers into purchasers; capturing new customers, and coming into contact with potential customers.

Unless you regularly contact existing customers, they will undoubtedly forget that you exist in the noise that is their inbox, the media, and the general economic kerfuffle that all of us face.

So, you need to assess how you will build a mailing list; get people to subscribe to your RSS feed; what tools you need to use to engage your existing customers. Remember that it is far cheaper to court an existing customer than it is to sign up a new one.

Look at all the ways you keep tabs on your existing customers, and regularly contact them. Should you be employing a Customer Relationship Management Tool or autoresponders? Could you create a monthly email newsletter with unique content to capture their interest, and persuade them into a sale? Is your blog up to date and regularly refreshed with new content?

Then focus on the new visitors to your site, who may not yet have bought anything from you. It is a well-known fact that it can take 6 or 7 contacts by an experienced sales person to get a sale, so how are you approaching that? Do you harvest email details from your website visitors? Do they sign up to a 'new customers' newsletter? Can you find a way to regularly keep in touch with them to convert the sale?

Finally, there are those who have not yet been to your site. Which strategy are you going to use to bring them in? Do you need to optimize your site so they find you through the search engines? Or post to forums and blogs with your URL so you get backlinks? Post articles to niche sites? There are so many ways to bring traffic to your website, you need to start trying a few to see which are effective for you.

Hope this blog post was helpful to you, - - Converting existing Customers into Recurrent Purchasers - -

Spunky Jones.

1. Surviving in an Economic Downturn
2. Does your website work?
3. Are You Using, Website Marketing Strategy Effectively?
4. Offline and Out of the Box, Marketing Strategies
5. Your Keyword List and its Importance