How to Get More Leads, More Customers, and More Profit Online

It is the end of the month and you are trying to figure out how the numbers on your bills are greater than the number in your bank account.You take a deep breath.The deep exhale seems to last forever as you come to terms with the fact that you don't have enough money to pay your bills this month.You feel like you're doing everything you need to be doing, but things are just not working out. Customers are not buying your product, competition is outperforming you, and things just don't seem to be going your way. You feel as if the easy thing to do is sulk, blame other people, and be miserable.You know that the hard thing to do is to get your face out of your hands, stick your shoulders back and figure out how to get more leads, get more customers, and get more profit.At the Green Festival, the largest and longest-running sustainable and green living expo, there are Business-to-Business Power Sessions that are available for free to the vendors of the show. Run by Expert DOJO, these morning sessions give quick and effective business strategy secrets that work. I had the pleasure of teaching one of the sessions that helped startups learn how to get more leads, more customers, and more profit.Since not everyone could be at the Business-to-Business Power Sessions, I wanted to share the main take-aways from my talk.More LeadsBefore you worry about getting more leads, you need to focus on three core elements of your business to ensure that you are going to be getting the right type of leads. Hundreds or even thousands of the wrong type of leads do you no good. On the contrary, a handful of highly specific leads can lead to the cash register sound of sales. In order to help you understand what type of lead is right for your green business, there are three core elements that you must address.1. Clear branding - Does your website match your business card? Does your Facebook page match the message and style of your website? Does your Twitter background match the theme on your business card? It is crucial that your customers are seeing the same branding on all of your platforms and printed material. Divergence from one brand can confuse your customer and they might not identify you as the same company at various touchpoints where they find your information.2. Clear messaging - Do your clients recognize your brand on the various platforms in which your business image lives? Do you carry your message consistently across different platforms? Are they all the same? Similar but distinctly different than branding, your message is the problem you solve and how you solve it. This needs to be clear and consistent so that customers know exactly what you do for them. It is no secret that consumers’ attention is short at best, therefore you need to maximize your impact in the shortest amount of time, and this same message needs to be found wherever you are found.3. Clear call to action - Does your website have a clear call to action? Have you enabled the feature on Facebook for people to book your business directly off of your main background image? When Tweeting or Instagramming, are you pointing people to instructions so that they can purchase if they choose to do so? Too often businesses focus on aesthetics but forget to focus on driving clicks, or prompting people to pick up the phone. Don’t have your call to action hidden below the fold. Make your information, your address, your number, and your social media easily accessible and visible whenever possible. Help to direct your clients by leading them to the actions you want them to take. If your website is not converting, make sure you have a clear and easily accessible call to action for your customers to click.If you don’t ask your customer to fill out a form to request more information, they won’t. If you don’t have an action to ask them to sign up for your newsletter, they won’t.Make clear calls to action on all platforms in order to gain the most leads possible.More customersConvert leads into customers by building a traffic trap. A traffic trap is a specific and strategic way of linking together various platforms and accounts so that each leads to another.For example if you have a blog, the blog should also point to your website. Then your website should include links to your social media. Your social media should link back to your YouTube channel, which also has links back to your blogs. This way, when individuals are looking for information about your company on one platform or another, you give them the ability to learn more by viewing your content on multiple platforms. Someone who reads your blog might want to check out your website to learn more about you, and while they’re there, take advantage of the opportunity to direct them towards Facebook, or Pinterest, or Instagram.When individuals can easily research and see information about your business on various platforms, it gives them the feeling that they are doing due diligence on your company, which helps to increase the legitimacy of your company. That increases the chances that they will take a jump and try your product or service and become a customer.More ProfitMore customers lead to more profit, and it is a well researched fact that it is much cheaper to maintain and upsell an existing client than it is to secure a new client.To restate; the easiest way to get more profit is to get your existing customers to buy more.One way of increasing your existing customer purchases is to communicate with them on a regular basis, like through a monthly newsletter. If you don’t have a monthly newsletter, there’s a chance that some of your customers will go months, if not years, without hearing from you. If they don’t hear from you, they don’t think about you. If they don’t think about you, they’re not going to buy from you.If you don’t have a mailing list, you should start one today.If you don’t have a newsletter, start one tomorrow.It doesn’t have to be a long and intense newsletter; it can be as easy as updates of your business within the last month or exciting news that would be fun to share with your clients.Think it costs too much money? You are wrong. You can get an awesome free start through Benchmark email, an innovative email management company that is very supportive for early stage entrepreneurs who are starting newsletters for the first time.In each newsletter, you need a clear call to action for people to buy new or improved products, or offer them special coupons to entice them to come back into the store or buy more products online. The trick to creating more profit is consistent communication with your existing customers in order to help give them an opportunity to buy more of your products and services.Don't wait until you don't have enough money in the bank to pay your bills to get motivated.Take action now