Brands spend thousands of dollars acquiring customers. Whether that be through traditional above-the-line advertising, or through carefully crafted and executed digital campaigns - that investment is all designed to win the hearts and souls of prospective customers. Yet so often, the simplest things are then often missed to extend that brand experience into the 'first-touch' comms that engage and build trust.

Once a potential customer shows interest, it's not the time to back off; instead, through precise strategies and proper nurturing of a new relationship, an interested consumer can be seamlessly transitioned into a first-time buyer.

Today, with many brands using sophisticated Marketing Automation techniques, this can be the key difference between a customer continuing their purchase journey with you, or saying farewell after the first touch.

Keep customers interested

Once a potential customer signs up for your email list or puts an item in the cart, that's enough, right? Wrong. Unless you want to lose out on sales, a proactive approach is a much better strategy.

When a relationship is initiated between an individual and a company, it can take time and effort to transition interest into sales. Putting the till in front of them too soon can also be incredibly off-putting.

Marketing automation software coupled with a carefully crafted inbound marketing strategy will help analyse prospective customer activity and identify appropriate nurturing opportunities to build trust.

And this can be incredibly powerful, particularly for ecommerce.

For example, providing an email with more information about a product abandoned in a cart or a tempting promo code related to pages viewed can often convert a hesitant buyer into a willing one. By reading the signs right, your automated sales tools can handle stalled conversion based on buyer persona and customer trends with little effort on your part.

Are your landing pages converting?

Getting customers to your web page only brings them to the door of your offer; to get them to open that door, you need to convert them before they jump the fence to your competitors. Bear in mind that a significant determining factor in whether site visitors stay or go is what they see when they first arrive.

Make sure your landing pages reflect the quality of your offer as the page your customer visits can be the only differentiating factor between a sale and missed opportunity. If too many customers are abandoning your landing pages, it may be time to take a look at what you're doing wrong.

Landing pages that are too wordy, require too much information, or aren't getting at the heart of what your prospects are looking for will almost always fail to convert. By looking at analytics and the shopping habits of those who do convert, you can identify what's missing and target your buyer personas around filling the gap

Personalise communications

Once you've improved your landing pages and lured prospects back in with relevant, targeted emails, there's still more that can be done to nurture your budding relationships with new customers.

When prospects make the decision to take advantage of what you have to offer, it becomes extremely important to provide the information necessary to ensure a first-time buyer becomes a regular customer. Personalised communications can be a big part of this, solidifying the idea that what you have to offer is exactly what first-time buyers need.

Take advantage of opportunities to collect facts regarding the preferences and interests of your new customers so that future email blasts can be personalised based on the information you have available, giving members of your distribution lists an increased incentive to return.

In summary

Converting unaware consumers into prospects and prospects into first-time customers may not always be easy, but the right approach to going the distance with your audience can set a framework for long-term success. Automated marketing can be very helpful in these instances, creating a way to prompt interested users into buying and ensuring that existing customers keep coming back for more.