I want to cover a true story about the importance of your call to action and the steps to converting.
The story (again, true) starts with a landlord near me who is trying to rent his property. It’s a big property for the part of town it’s in, over three thousand square feet, and has been sitting vacant for over two months. I met with the landlord as part of another business in which I am the partner, 1 of 100 Property Management, and he said that in two months he had had only one showing.
Just a single phone call outside of that one showing.
Every month that passed was another mortgage payment that he was making directly out of pocket.
He had a sign out front on the fence “FOR RENT”, but no phone number. I asked him why and he said he couldn’t stand the pesky phone calls of people just wanting to hear the price.
So I asked him if it was listed online and he said, “No.” He then explained, “I had it on there for a little bit but then it expired or something and I never renewed.”
“How do people get a hold of you then?” I asked.
“There’s a box next to the sign that has some information sheets, including the asking rent price, and then my phone number. I figure the people that see the price and still call will actually be quality candidates.”
The box was empty. Not a single info sheet to be found.
“They keep disappearing,” he said “I’m not sure if it’s just neighbors walking by or what because no one is calling about the property.”
I see this type of thinking a lot in digital marketing efforts as well – how you want the lead to come in is completely one-sided to your business needs and ignores the behaviors of your target audience completely.
Or maybe even human nature if you get down to it – not just your target audience.
There isn’t a team out there that wouldn’t prefer to have every field of their CRM inputted by the prospect before they call for the first time so the initial call would be guaranteed to be productive, but that’s not how humans operate.
There isn’t a buyer out there who’s going to fill out a 30-40 field form.
Hubspot’s conversion rate estimates by number of fields on the form:
3 fields per form ==> 25% conversion rate
4 fields per form ==> 20% conversion rate
5 fields per form ==> 15% conversion rate
Other sources estimate that with every field you add to your form 10% more people abandon it.
Consider your own behavior on different sites. You started filling in your initial information.
“My full name? Here you go.
The name of my company? Sure thing.
My email address? I guess so.
My phone number? Why do you need that and my email address? This might be more than I need right now. Maybe they have chat function. They don’t. I’m outta here.”
Things like breaking a form up into separate pages or using auto-fill functions are helpful to the cause, but the human mind still questions every move and what might be on the other side of it.
The landlord’s thinking (and the thinking of so many other companies across a variety of industries) is often done under the guise of “It’s going to help me focus on the leads that matter most” when in reality it results in one showing, some print costs for pages going to the wrong audience, and another month of covering the mortgage payment.
Quality over quantity, yes, but remember you can’t divide by zero.
The facts in this case are: people looking for a house of this size are not just driving around seeing what they can find. If someone was interested, they would expect a phone number. Also, on a busy street with barely space to pull in in front of the gate many people are going to drive on by. Believing they can find it online later if they just get the address only to find no details at all.
Make it easy for the prospect to connect with you when your marketing efforts or product have done the job of getting them to your (digital) doorstep – no matter what you’re selling. Get enough information to start the conversation and then do the work through proper systems to get the deal done.
Don’t expect your prospect to do the work.
Be intentional and disciplined in where you incorporate automation knowing the average consumer can recognize a drip campaign when they see one and nothing feels more impersonal than that. Let the first two touches be something more unique, brief, and personal.
Then move to the automated drip when you haven’t gotten a response.
If you need help converting more website visitors then let’s dive into your digital marketing strategy. Check out my services here and let’s chat about how we can achieve your goals together!
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