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Tips to increase conversion rate: III

1. Create urgency through scarcity:

You can employ a number of techniques in order to achieve a high conversion rate. Creating urgency through scarcity is an efficacious tactic of doing so. You can create scarcity in the following two ways:

i) quantity-related scarcity:

This type of scarcity is created by telling visitors that a particular number of seats are left at a mentioned price.

ii) time-related scarcity:

In this type of scarcity, there is a time constraint for buying a particular item, such as the ones titled as ” One day left” and more.

In case of endless product supply, you can give out time-sensitive bonuses, a free gift to first a particular number of buyers or a discount if they complete the purchase within a specified time frame. So, these are the ways of creating urgency through scarcity. All you need to keep in mind is that the reason for scarcity has to be authentic. People will know if it’s a fake scarcity. This can prove to be harmful your reputation.

Creating urgency
Creating urgency

2. Make your call to action prominently visible:

Call to action refers to something that asks users to convert. It may vary from a landing page for your product to a form for users to use to sign up for an email list. Your call to action can be present in any form but the only condition for its success is that it should be prominently visible. You need to make it stand out with an enticing design or use it as a relevant and engaging pop up after a user sits idle on your site. You may actually include it near the top of every page, or link to a call to action on nearly every page of your site.

Call to action
Call to action

3. Minimize everything that is irrelevant:

Once you have made your call to action prominent, you would want people to focus on a single action and not be distracted from it. As a matter of fact, the more visual inputs and action options your visitors has to process, the less likely they tend to convert. Therefore, you should consider minimizing distractions like unnecessary product options, links and extraneous information will increase the conversion rate.

 

Remove distractions
Remove distractions

 

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Tips to increase conversion rate: II

1. Provide transparency:

Today’s consumers know when you’re being transparent and when you’re covering up for a defect with colorful or manipulative language. So, if you wish to increase your conversion rate, instead of trying to sugar coat things to sell your product, be straightforward about it. Mention precise, honest bullet points about the uniqueness and advantages of your product. The more honest and upfront you are, the better the transparency that you provide to your customers and higher the level of their trust in you.

Transparency
Transparency

2. Develop trust:

Once you provide transparency to your customers you have already developed some amount trust in your customers. Another means of increasing website credibility is by providing third-party support which includes citations, testimonials, articles in well-known publications, source material etc for the information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. This is a way of showing confidence in your material. Further listing a physical address, posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce, making your contact information clear are some other techniques of increasing website credibility. Moreover, you can make your site easy to use by avoiding ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Also, try to keep your site fast, up and running.

Building trust
Building trust

3. Keep it simple and enticing at the same time:

Researchers have proved that sight is the strongest sense, so, instead of writing about your product, include a video or image-based demonstration of what it is and how it works. Visuals always make it easier to sell, so, leverage the power of visuals to increase your sales. But you need to avoid aggressive popup ads, flashing lights, or tons of exclamation points to make a good case for conversion. These things may drive the users away. You need to know that the simpler your design and offers are, the more likely your customers will be willing to convert.

Visual demonstration
Visual demonstration

 

 

 

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Tips to increase conversion rate: I

In our previous post, we shared the importance of conversion rate optimization and how it affects your value for your partners and affiliates. So, now you know how beneficial CRO is for any business or site. So, here we are with some tips and tricks that can prove to be helpful in increasing your conversion rate:

1. Competitor analysis:

You need to literally monitor your competitors and every time you go to your competitors and you notice something different, memorize it. Simply explore what your competitors are doing that you are not, what strategies they are using that you are missing out. Consistent monitoring will give you some ideas that you can test on your site. In the most favorable condition, it might help you spot a weakness in their product or approach that you can capitalize on.

Competitor analysis
Competitor analysis

2. Target the right keywords:

It becomes quite annoying if people are searching for something and they land on a page that has got nothing to do with their search term. In order to avoid this, you need to make sure you are using support keywords within your content as well that help the search engines to be sure of what your content is about. You can utilize Google keyword tool for this. By setting up the right keywords at the top of your funnel, you ensure the success of your conversion rate optimization technique.

Keywords
Keywords

3. Employ A/B testing:

A/B testing refers to the process of comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. In order to determine the tests, you should be doing, consider the potential revenue each test may bring, and rank tests accordingly. It’s important to test one hypothesis at a time in order to know which change made the difference. Main things to test include headlines, page layout, navigation, radical change and more. You can use tools such as Google Content Experiments, Optimizely etc for this purpose.

AB-Testing
AB-Testing
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Tips for growing your personal brand: II

It takes time and effort to build and grow your personal brand but it’s worth it. It’s something that can follow you throughout your career. Moreover, it lets people know who you are and what you stand for. Here are some more tips to create a strong personal brand that you can always refer to when it comes to creating materials that support your brand:

1. Strive for perfection:

Once you are done with the identification of your uniqueness and strengths, strive for perfection. Never stop learning about your area of interest, not even if you become the expert in that area. So, all you need to do is read, absorb, and teach.

Learning
Learning

1. Share your knowledge with others:

Other than carrying on the process of learning, teach it and share your knowledge. You can do this through videos, social media, and also by writing both online and offline. This not only convinces people that you know your stuff but also provides exposure to your business.

Sharing knowledge
Sharing knowledge

2. Have a clear picture of your goals:

Prioritize your goals and use your values and priorities as an asset. These priorities and values will guide you both in action and your decision-making process and ensure that you stay on track.

Setting priorities
Setting priorities

3. Design your personal brand persona:

 Your persona can be created by:

i) Identifying your emotional appeal: 

It refers to identifying your personality features and other factors due to which people are attracted to your brand.

ii) Self-description:

It indicates telling who you are and why people enjoy working with you.

iii) Identifying your specialty:

It refers to the nature of your work such as what you do and how you stand out of the crowd. Moreover, what people want you to do also matters a lot in this case.

Creating your persona
Creating your persona

 

 

 

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Tips for growing your personal brand: I

Building and growing your personal brand requires a lot of hard work and dedication. a strong personal brand is a valuable asset to every entrepreneur. Although brands and businesses might be built around ideas, they’re still ultimately represented by people.

1. Research:

This should be the first step of your personal brand building process. The basic idea is to figure out who you are as an individual, as well as a professional. It includes discovering things that inspire who you are as an individual and finding out what others think of you when they hear your name. Make a list of words that best describe your personality, values, and worth ethic. Now, narrow this list down into the words you want to be recognized by. Create a list of your likes and dislikes regarding your brand.  Pay close attention to what people say about your brand on social media platforms.

Research
Research

2. Identify and leverage your strengths:

Identify the characteristics that make you stand out of the crowd and then convince people why you are better than your counterparts. Know the areas of your expertise and leverage them to build your brand. You can even ask others for their views. They can help you discover that one thing which according to them you rock at.

 

Strengths
Strengths

3. Create a virtual platform:

Creating a virtual platform includes creating a website. You will also require social media accounts that represent your brand as these platforms will help you share your voice.

Building a platform
Building a platform

4. Do not fake your identity:

While building your personal brand you strictly need to avoid sugarcoating. Leverage your style and uniqueness to attract the jobs and clientele that you desire. Instead of faking your identity, discover your own style and create a new set of footprints for others to follow in.

Be yourself
Be yourself

 

 

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Outbound marketing strategies to grow your business: II

1.Web syndication:

Web syndication is one of the many, highly effective outbound marketing strategies. It involves a website providing content to an arbitrary number of subscribing websites in order to redistribute it.  In case of subscribing sites, syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to their pages, making them more enticing and knowledgeable to users. On the other hand, for the providing site, syndication widens exposure, thus,  generating new traffic for the providing site. It further makes syndication an easy and reasonable form of advertisement. Web syndication is a highly efficacious outbound marketing tactic for promoting your product. as the prospective buyers won’t necessarily arrive at your website at the beginning of their buying journey.

Web syndication
Web syndication

2. Display advertising:

Display advertising refers to advertising on websites. This outbound marketing strategy involves many different formats and contains items such as text, images, flash, video, and audio. It can be leveraged to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors. When you want to target different demographic or behavioral actions, display advertising can prove to be extremely helpful. All you have to do is, select where you want the ads to be seen by identifying and selecting an online publication where your leads spend time. They are also effective at every stage of the funnel.

Example of display advertisement
Example of display advertisement

3. Re- targeting ads:

Retargeting is a term used for a cookie-based technology that uses a simple  Javascript code to anonymously follow your audience all over the web. Since it focuses your advertising spend on people who are already familiar with your brand and have recently demonstrated interest, so it exempts any sort of extra expense of advertising. Whenever a new visitor comes to your site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie and when the same visitor browses the web, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads. Also, it ensures that your ads are served only to people who have previously visited your site.

Re- targeting ads
Re- targeting ads
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Outbound marketing strategies to grow your business: I

Outbound marketing is a marketing methodology that tries to reach consumers through general media advertising as well as through in-person contact. Outbound marketing can be carried out in the form of TV advertising, face-to-face meetings, or cold- calling. Through each of these outbound methods, sales leads are generated and then followed up by internal sales representatives.

Outbound marketing
Outbound marketing

Some of the best outbound marketing strategies to grow your business are:

1. PPC ad campaigns:

PPC is a short form for pay per click that further refers to a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of driving traffic and buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to earn those visits organically. Your ads will appear as sponsored results at side or top of organic search rankings with PPC on search engines. PPC is the most efficacious way of drawing attention to the latest content or service offerings. Moreover, PPC ads are highly targeted, so, they can generate very high-quality leads.

Pay per click
Pay per click

2. Direct mail:

Direct mail consists of a wide variety of marketing materials, including brochures, catalogs, postcards, newsletters and sales letters. Direct-mail advertising is one of the most effective and profitable ways to reach out to new and existing clients. Direct mail is very effective when it comes to growing a business because it aims at targeted communications. You can actually grab the attention of your desired prospects by leveraging your creativity and the power of your message and presentation. Thus, direct mail is a very direct and powerful way to share your content asset.

Direct mail
Direct mail

3. Tradeshows and webinars:

Events such as tradeshows and webinars provide an opportunity to introduce and define your brand, clarify the solutions you provide and make personal connections with participants. Whether it’s an international trade show or an executive-level webinar, the two-way channel of interaction between customers, prospects, and your company is knowledgeable to them and beneficial for the businesses.

Tradeshow
Tradeshow
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Inbound marketing strategies to grow your business: III

1. Content marketing:

Content marketing is one of the many beneficial inbound marketing strategies that will help you build your business and grow it further in the long run. It is described as the form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to expand and diversify their user base. It is also used to create an online community of users, increase brand awareness and online sales. For this purpose, first, you need to start a blog. Blogging helps you to attract new visitors, gain returning visitors, convince warmer leads and helps keep your users updated. You can even include case studies and customer testimonials into your content marketing plan as it will help convince leads that are further down the funnel. Moreover, creating a content calendar will ensure that you stay on top of publishing updated content consistently.

Content marketing
Content marketing

2. Remarketing:

Remarketing defines the action taken on by companies to reintroduce a product or service to the market in response to declining sales. The company remarkets the product as an advanced version of an existing product or something that has been improved in order to reignite interest and boost sales. Remarketing can be implemented in a variety of ways such as:

i) you can remarket to anyone who visited your site

ii) show specific ad to visitors who went to a certain page

iv) show an ad to someone who has placed items in a shopping cart, but hasn’t yet converted

Remarketing
Remarketing

3. Top- notch landing page:

A top- notch landing page consists of videos or images, testimonials, and trust signals that help improve the conversion rates. Landing page can further be described as a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single focused objective. So, you need to make sure that the landing page is relevant to the call-to-action, such that, whether it be a product page, a form fill-out to download a whitepaper, or a subscription service page, it provides the maximum possible conversion rate.

Landing page
Landing page
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Inbound marketing strategies to grow your business: II

1. Email opt-ins:

An email list is an important aspect of inbound marketing and one of the most crucial factors in building a business and growing it thereafter. Opt-in email is a term used when someone is given the option to receive email and is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising. Without obtaining permission before sending email, the email is spam. Email opt-ins are categorized as:

i) Unconfirmed / single opt-ins:

Someone first gives an email address to the list software, but no steps are taken to confirm that this address belongs to the person submitting it.

ii) Confirmed opt-ins:

A new subscriber asks to be subscribed to the mailing list, but in this type of opt- in steps are taken to confirm that the address provided belongs to the person submitting it.

Opt- ins
Opt- ins

2. Personal branding:

Personal branding refers to the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. Personal branding is essentially the process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual, group, or organization and often involves the application of one’s name to various products. When someone starts a business, it’s virtually impossible to separate oneself from that business. So, a personal brand can actually be used to build that business. Brands such as Tim Ferriss’s and Ramit Sethi’s depend almost exclusively on the power of their personal brand.

Personal branding
Personal branding

3. Free guides and reports:

You can actually create advanced guides and give them away for free. You just need to make sure that the guide is relevant to your business. So, you are required to keep your guide as specific as possible, because you are using it to gain a certain type of visitors such as the ones who will convert to become your customers. These guides can actually be used to showcase your expertise in your work and to provide other marketers with valuable information that can help them in growing their business.

Free guides and reports
Free guides and reports

 

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Inbound marketing strategies to grow your business: I

Inbound marketing refers to the technique of drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization. Inbound marketing provides information, an improved customer experience and builds trust by offering potential customers the valuable information they desire via company sponsored newsletters, blogs, and entries on social media platforms.

Inbound marketing

We have mentioned a number of inbound marketing strategies to grow your business:

1. Leverage the power of keywords:

In order to rank higher in SERPs you need to identify the most relevant keywords and optimize your content accordingly. This will help you to successfully gain traffic for relevant keywords if you use those keywords on your site. So, you need to focus on keywords, specifically long tail keywords that are important. Having a quality website and content optimized for SEO ensures that Google’s web-crawling technology is able to identify and index your site’s content to have it appear for free to people searching and rank higher in the search results.

Keyword optimization
Keyword optimization

2. Social media interaction:

This is an era driven by social media. These days, potential customers find companies, follow those companies, and interact with those companies.Since there are real people behind every like and share, so, in order to connect with those people, you need to ask questions, answer questions, respond to tweets, and be a presence. Each of these social mentions provide an opportunity for your business to interact with the mention, thereby increasing its brand image and its reach into other social networks as well.

Social media engagement
Social media engagement

3. Use guest blogging:

Guest blogging is a new way to promote your web blog or website. In this strategy you may post your article or blog on others blog by getting their permission. Guest Blogging is used by bloggers to increase traffic for their blog by posting published blog on other blogger’s blog.

Guest blogging
Guest blogging
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Lead magnets for an efficient conversion: III

1. Demonstration:

In case of marketing, a product demonstration refers to a promotion where a product is demonstrated to potential customers. The sole purpose of such a demonstration is to introduce customers to the product to make them familiar with it in hopes of getting them to purchase that item. The products offered as samples during these demonstrations may be new products, new versions of existing products or products that have been recently introduced to a new commercial marketplace. Basically, the idea is to introduce your offerings, utilize them as lead magnets and demonstrate their capabilities.

Product demos
Product demos

2. Creative contact forms:

Creative contact forms are a better version of contact forms that you offer to customers. They are used to enhance the effectiveness of simple contact forms by using them to showcase your company’s personality. You need to be conversational and inviting to your audience.

Creative contact forms
Creative contact forms

3. Out of the box deals:

You may offer free two-day shipping or deals such as buy-one, get-one-free and much more in order to lessen the purchase anxiety that every customer experiences while purchasing. Since, it adds value to the transaction so it is an effective lead magnet.

Bonus
Bonus

4. Forms gating charges:

Consider gating price and other information if your goal is to target hot leads. Hiding your pricing behind a form can be an effective tactic as this particular form will help filter out unqualified leads, and capturing their information will help you follow up with targeted prospects.

Gating price
Gating price

5. Tests:

Tests or quizzes encourage prospects to measure themselves against your expertise or industry standards. This will give you an opportunity to give feedback and ideas. Also, the prospects will determine their need for your product or service.

Test
Test

6. Limited-time free trial:

Give prospects the opportunity to experience the benefits of your product or service, including a deadline to the offer at the same time. This will make them realize they can’t go another day without it.

Limited time free trail
Limited time free trail

7. Cheat sheets:

They are generally very short and cut straight to an ultra-specific point and can be delivered as checklists, mind maps, or blueprints. Mostly, they are just a page long in length.

Cheat sheet
Cheat sheet

8. Resource list:

A toolkit or a resource list is an easy to consume lead magnet. Depending on your niche, toolkits can be a good introduction for your target audience making them familiar with your products and in most favorable cases increasing sales and building long-term relationships.

Toolkit
Toolkit

 

 

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Lead magnets for an efficient conversion: II

1. Coupons and offers:

Discounts on the existing prices can prove to be the most effective lead magnets because consumers can easily price-shop for products. You can offer coupons and enticing discounts on your products and services so as to generate leads.

Coupons
Coupons

2. Loyalty programs:

Loyalty programs are structured marketing strategies designed by merchants to encourage customers to become long term customers and to continue using the services of businesses associated with each program. These programs cover most types of business, each one having varying features and rewards schemes. In marketing a loyalty card, rewards card, points card, advantage card, or club card is a plastic or paper card, visually similar to a credit card, debit card, or digital card that identifies the card holder as a member in a loyalty program.

Loyalty card
Loyalty card

3. Free reports:

Free reports include whitepapers, e-books, articles, and guides in the form of lead magnets. Your aim should be to provide compelling information to make a valid value exchange between your prospect and your business.

Whitepapers
Whitepapers

4. Webinars:

Webinars are educational, informative or instructional presentations that are made available online, usually as either videos or audios with slides. Since webinar attendees connect online, they can use Internet-based technologies to like communicating through instant messaging, file sharing, using a whiteboard collaboratively and interacting through social media sites in order to enhance the experience.

Webinars
Webinars

5. Podcast:

Podcast refers to an episodic series of digital media files which a user can set up so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web partnership to the user’s local computer or portable media player. The distributor of a podcast maintains a central list of the files on a server in the form of a web feed that can be accessed through the Internet. Files are stored locally on the user’s device such that it can be used even if he/she is offline.

Podcast
Podcast 2

 

 

 

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Lead magnets for an efficient conversion: I

As mentioned in our earlier posts, a lead magnet is an incentive in the form of free e-books, webinars, whitepapers or something of that sort given away to someone in exchange for their email address. It can even be considered as a bribe that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, or other contact information.

There are a number of lead magnets that you can employ to capture traffic and convert efficiently. Some of them have been mentioned below:

1. Drip marketing:

Drip marketing refers to a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. Drip marketing is carried out in various forms such as:

i) email: This the most commonly used form of drip marketing is email marketing due to its low cost and high efficiency.

ii) direct mail: This technology relies on digital printing, where low-volume print runs are cost efficient and the variable data can be merged to personalize each drip message.

iii) social media: Various social media marketing tools employ the principle of drip marketing to schedule a series of updates.

 

Drip marketing
Drip marketing

2. RSS feed:

RSS refers to rich site summary and uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information like blog entries, news headlines, audio, video and much more. An RSS document includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author’s name. Once a user subscribes to a website, RSS removes the need for the him/her to manually check the website for fresh, updated content. This is because the browser constantly monitors the site, informs the user of any updates and can also download the new data for the user.

RSS feed
RSS feed

3. Membership:

People loved to be treated specially. So, all you need to do is invite them into your VIP group, and give them free information so they feel a part of your club. You need to know that loyal fans and followers have the power to convert others as well.

Membership
Membership
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How to leverage PPC for lead generation: II

1. Ensure relevance between your PPC ad and landing page content:

When online users have queries related to a particular topic or want to know more about a product or service, they search the required information using specific keywords. Also, if your ad is focused on the desired certain keyword or topic, it is expected that your landing page would provide more information about that particular keyword or topic. The users would definitely be turned off if your landing page content talks about everything else except what’s mentioned in your PPC ad. Therefore, your content should be optimized in such a way that it entices landing page visitors to become a lead or a customer.

PPC ads in accordance with content
PPC ads in accordance with content

2. Employ convincing tools to support your ad claims:

For effective lead generation support your PPC advertising campaigns with evidence. This will help you gain the trust of your target audience. You may employ convincing tools such as customer testimonial, slideshows, white papers, and eBooks. these tools could support your claim as a reputable product or service. You can also feature prominently trusted seals from organizations or agencies that will increase your credibility, gain your targeted audiences’ trust, and convert them into long-term customers.

ebooks
ebooks

3. Entice your visitors with giveaways:

You may entice your visitors by including rewards and offers that you would give them in exchange for their sign-up information to a blog or newsletter. These giveaways may include webinars, ebooks, videos, presentations and more. Make sure that these rewards and offers are well-designed to give your web visitors something of value that will tempt them to know more about your brand, product or service. Also, it is suggested that you place your offers near your lead generation form, with customized graphics and text that will convince people to make a response to a particular call-to-action.

Free webinar
Free webinar
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How to leverage PPC for lead generation: I

Pay-per-click marketing refers to the way of using search engine advertising to generate clicks to your website, rather than earning those clicks organically. The basic idea is, every time your ad is clicked, sending a visitor to your website, you pay the search engine a pre-decided fee.When your PPC campaign is well-designed and running smoothly, the visit is worth more to your business than what you pay for it. PPC has the strongest potential of helping you achieve your goals, so, you need to know the tactics that’ll help you leverage PPC for your business:

1. Landing page is the way to go:

Firstly, what actually is a landing page? It is a single web page that appears whenever a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement is clicked. You should direct your prospects to a well-designed landing page instead of your homepage. The landing page usually displays directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement, search result or link. The actions that a visitor takes on a landing page is what determines an advertiser’s conversion rate. You can actually leverage your landing page to generate a direct action from a website visitor that will convert them either as a business lead or a paying customer. The key here is to directly go to the point and focus everything there in your landing pages with the only goal of lead generation in mind.

Landing page
Landing page

2. Put up relevant fields in your contact forms:

Your forms should be focused only on the most important items that you need to know and avoid form fields that would ask a bunch of questions that are really not that relevant enough for your purposes. Since, lead generation forms are created for an important purpose, and that is to collect important information about a web page visitor and convert them into valuable leads. Therefore it becomes very important to have your forms designed with lead generation as its primary focus.

Lead generation form
Lead generation form

 

 

 

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Tips for an effective online chat: II

1. Transfer chat sessions when required:

Since individual agents may have different areas of expertise, so, provide them with a list of other agents and their levels of expertise. This helps in cases where a chat agent is involved in a conversation that has got to do nothing with his current level of expertise. Such that, without much ado, he quickly transfers the chat to another agent ensuring that the customer is aware of the transfer.

Chat transfer
Chat transfer

2. Make use of typing indicators:

Your live chat software should include typing indicators. It should enable the agents to see a customer’s words as they type, and issue an alert when the customer has hit the “send” button. This feature gives the agents insight to what the customers are thinking as they type and also allows the respective chat agent to respond quickly without making the customer wait for long time periods. The alert should be audible, visible, or both such that it lets the agent know that a customer is awaiting a response.

Typing indicator
Typing indicator

3. Program targetted pages to raise chat offer:

As a matter of fact, just raising the offer to chat is enough to convey a sense of goodwill. Allow customers to browse on your site for a time before raising the offer to chat. Identify a list of target pages where you want to increase the conversion rate, and program them to automatically raise the chat offer after a period of 30 – 60 seconds such that the customers get enough time to be oriented for the chat.

Targeted chat
Targeted chat

4. Create a set of professionally designed canned messages:

Customers should be greeted professionally when they arrive within a live chat conversation. Professionally designed canned messages can be employed for this purpose. Carefully worded standardized canned messages can be used to automate parts of the conversation and augment your professional profile in order to greet the customers with courtesy.

Canned message
Canned message

5. Employ CRM tool along with online chat:

All your chat agents should have access to customer sales records. Integrating online chat with CRM tool allows them to update the CRM records at the end of a chat session.

CRM tool
CRM tool

 

 

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Tips for an effective online chat: I

These days customers are increasingly using live chat as a communication channel to interact with websites to get instant help in case of any queries. Here are some tips to leverage online chat in order to reassure lead nurturing:

1. Offer a copy of the transcript to the customers:

Customers contact the live chat agents so that their queries are resolved instantly. The whole chat process provides them with valuable information. But, most people don’t record every conversation so this information can get lost or can be rendered futile. So, provide your customers with transcripts at the end of live chat sessions.

Transcripts
Transcripts

2. Include chat button in email campaigns:

This feature allows your customers to provide direct feedback on questions they may have regarding the email they’ve received from you. Emails could be anything from periodic newsletters or follow-ups to individual questions or grievances and embedded chat button along with it provides an ease of instant query resolution.

Embedded chat button
Embedded chat button

3. Provide chat agents with previous chat transcripts:

Providing your chat agents with a chat history for returning visitors allows the agents to come up to speed on issues that the customer discussed previously, and to proactively follow up with any questions. This will hasten up the live chat process and customers will appreciate the fact that they don’t have to repeat their previous problems to newly assigned chat agents.

Chat history
Chat history

4. Initiate an automatic response:

The only way to guarantee a quick response is to accept all incoming chats immediately. Once a customer initiates a chat session, the system should accept the chat automatically and convince the customer that a chat agent will respond shortly. Pre-canned messages can be used to welcome the customer and let him know that action is taking place immediately.

Auto accept chats
Auto accept chats

5. Inculcate pre-chat survey forms:

Pre- chat survey forms allow customers to set the direction of the conversation. They include questions that allow your chat agents the necessary background so they can provide a quick and courteous answer.  The pre-chat survey forms also allow you to quickly route the chat session to the agents who are most qualified to handle the respective conversations.

Pre-chat survey
Pre-chat survey
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Tips to enhance the performance of your support agents: III

1. Arrange weekly meetings:

Arrange regular meetings for knowledge sharing. The basic idea is to discuss and understand the overall experience of your support agents with your clients. Try to understand what obstacles they face while they carry out a live chat with the website visitors, what kind of tricky questions customers may ask and how to resolve their queries. Agents can uncover important techniques of live chat support in this knowledge sharing process. This can aid in improving their overall performance.

Meetings
Meetings

2. Club videos with training sessions:

As a matter of fact, humans are visual learners. They tend to learn things more effectively if taught through graphics and videos. You don’t need to spend extra bucks on video tutorials. There are thousands of useful videos available on YouTube which can be utilized for this purpose. This is one of the best customer service training ideas that gives tremendous results.

Videos clubbed with training session
Videos clubbed with training session

3. Help them know their actual roles:

Yet another concept of your training should be to help your chat agents understand the actual role they need to play in building customer relationships. Educate them about the lifetime value of a customer as well as the consequences of a bad customer interaction. Let them know how the quality of customer support impacts on sales conversion, customer retention, and brand image. Once the support agents have this basic understanding, they will be more efficient in providing top-notch service.

Knowing respective roles
Knowing respective roles

4. Train them practically:

Practicing something practically helps you learn it better. Team up all of your agents and assign them different chat scenarios. Encourage them to try their best to deal with those given situations. Give them enough time to understand the whole support process, your products/services and most importantly, how to manage the live chat software. These practical sessions are very important to cultivate a capable workforce.

LIve chat tutorial
Live chat tutorial
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Tips to enhance the performance of your support agents: II

1. Review your live chat agents’ performance:

Make it a point to review your live chat agents. Their training should include mock chats, secret evaluation and much more. Apart from that, distribute customer success manuals amongst your agents where all important tips and techniques of online customer support have been mentioned in written format. This will help them to go through the important tips whenever they have any doubts.

Customer support training
Customer support training

2. Inculcate tech support along with live chat:

In order to create a power-packed support environment make use of live chat features such as canned messages and links, the ability to push files and screen sharing and co-browsing. Also, train your agents to go slow and ask short, simple questions to get to the root of problems and to make solving them easier and faster. More important than training your agents to provide tech support is ensuring they have the resources they need readily available. Ensure your tech support agents are provided with canned links for knowledge based articles, how-to tutorials, videos and other resources they need to help customers resolve issues or problems instantly. Make sure the agents know how to find the resources quickly and then send them to the respective customers whenever they need them.

 

Tech Support
Tech Support

3. Help them to be platform experts:

LIve chat agents need to have thorough knowledge of the platform they are working on and the tools they are dealing in. When chat agents are familiar with the tools they are utilizing while assisting customers, they perform tasks with a higher level of confidence. Task your agents providing both a customer and organization friendly experience when chatting. It’s important to be fully trained on all customer and agent facing platform features. For this purpose,  customers might be presented with a pre-chat survey while initiating a chat request, which gives the ability to choose the reason for wanting to communicate.

 

Platform skills
Platform skills