In today’s business climate, business’ are increasingly expected to have an online presence.  An increasing number of business owners are incorporating online marketing when they allocate dollars for marketing efforts.  The possibilities for online marketing are constantly evolving and can be highly effective in attracting prospects and promoting a brand.  In many cases, small businesses are putting more marketing dollars towards online marketing campaigns that incorporate social media, pay-per-click campaigns and website overhauls than more traditional advertising mediums.

Make Web Marketing Efforts Count

All of the efforts and energy put towards creating an online presence is for a reason, to attract prospects and close deals.  For all of the energy and money that companies spend on online marketing they sometimes neglect to have a process in place to handle the prospects and/or online inquiries that they receive.  The end result is that online marketing efforts can yield results but the effort is futile if follow-up procedures are not in place from the beginning.

Following up is Imperitive

Following up with prospects and web inquiries is imperative in business.  Your potential customers are much more savvy and able to “shop” businesses from the comfort of their home computer now than ever before.  The web provides them the opportunity to be a passive consumer and make buying decisions without direct interaction with a sales person.  Thus you must place a high emphasis on customer service and follow up because their purchasing options are limitless on the Internet.

Key To Follow Up

The key to successful follow up and increasing your sales conversion rate is having a process in place that you are able to follow.  There are an abundance of resources available in today’s technology laden world.  Do what feels most natural to you-use Outlook, sync things up to your Blackberry or IPhone.  In some cases a good old fashioned excel spreadsheet will work if you have not invested in a database.  Create a means of tracking when the inquiry/prospect first submitted their information and what means they used to reach out to you.  Keep track of how many times and what methods you have used to follow up with them (email, phone call, snail mail).  Be AUTHENTIC!!!!!  If you are more comfortable using email then do that but step outside of that comfort zone when it is not working.  If someone provides a phone number or home address, perhaps they respond to a follow up letter in delivered via USPS or perhaps they actually want you to place a call.

Leverage Your Time

The most important thing is that you are leveraging the prospects that you generate as a result of your online marketing efforts and web presence.  Perhaps you feel as though you are too busy to allocate the time to track the leads and make sure a follow up process, there are great CRM systems that will help you automate your process. Whatever method you choose, just make it an effective and manageable one that allows you to see your prospect activity from a birds eye view.  The ultimate goal is to be able to look at conversions and compile relevant data that allows you to improve refine your marketing and improve your closing ratio.   RevenFlo assists clients in many ways to improve lead generation and create marketing campaigns to communicate effectively with prospects.