When you are involved with any business the first thing you must do is overcome objections. Buyers will look for reasons NOT to buy from you. Any good sales person will tell you this. However to help improve sales conversion you need to overcome these objections. If you are a newly formed company you may experience trepidation from your potential buyers. Mainly because you will not have many customers, testimonials or even much of a track record. Even if you are an established business there are still a few simple things you can do to improve sales conversions.

Guarantees
Do you offer money back guarantees? Exchange or Credit polices around returns? Perhaps you have a “risk free” guarantee that is common in infomercials to put potential buyers at ease that if they want to return the product they can. If you have a new product that no one has ever heard of, this may be the route to go to establish early sales and absorb any risks your customers have of buying from you.

Low Price Guarantees are also popular to compete against other retailers. Meaning that if you find a similar item that is offered for less a retailer will usually price match or give you an extra 10-20% off the listed price.

Try before you buy (aka the Free Trial)
Services including online services are a great product to offer free trials before customers sign any contracts or agree to subscribe for a monthly or annual contract. Netflix comes to mind with a no risk, free trial of their video service. If you don’t cancel before your trial expires you will automatically be enrolled in their monthly subscription.

Extras
So assuming your buyer has found something they want to buy, but is not happy about the process. Perhaps they believe the shipping cost is too high, which is why Amazon has had free shipping over a certain order amount for many years. You will notice that smaller retailers have started copying this tactic albeit at higher order totals. If you are a jeweler you may offer a free ring resize if you are not satisfied with the way your ring fits on your finger.

Extras could also include throwing in something extra such as a free product, which is one tactic infomercials use. For example “if you call right now” we will also include a free item.

Image Credit: vectorportal (via Flickr)

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Since most companies are starting to promote that they now have a presence on Facebook, a lot of business owners will be wondering if just having a presence is enough. The truth is that without participation your Facebook pages will just look like a ghost town. You probably remember visiting an online forum and the last posts where from months or even years ago. Well if there is no content on your Facebook page and no participation the same thing can happen.

Facebook has a user-base of over 500 million active users so it is certainly a worthwhile audience to try to market in to. So how do you show your prospective customers (aka FANS) that you are serious about communicating with them on Facebook? Well the first thing to do is after registering your profile is to create a fan page. Which you can think of as a mini-website with several tabs.

If you would like to see an example of a Facebook fan page visit the Need Help Marketing Fan Page.

Here are some pointers that we have come up with after reviewing successfully implemented Fan pages. As well as researching Facebook Marketing best practices.

Steps for an engaging Fan Page:

1. Create a Welcome tab
By creating a welcome tab you can introduce your visitor to what you have available on your Facebook fan page. This way you can link to the different content. But most importantly is to tell visitors why they want to join your page by clicking the Like button. When they click on the like button their friends will also see their activity and will increase your marketing reach. However you do not have an incentive or promotion for why someone should join your Fan page most won’t.

Most recently I saw a Fan page that said when the press comes knocking to ask for a customer reference to talk to we go to our “fans” on Facebook. Using this technique might be just the incentive to get them to signup to your fan page.

2. Use Photos or Videos
This is your chance to add some multi-media and add more interest. You may want to add pictures of company events, trade shows, customer visits, or even behind the scenes at your office. For some online businesses this will show credibility and that you are the real deal. Not to mention that photos and videos are shared frequently online which will help bring more traffic and potential customers if you have interesting content to share.

3. Add a Notes tab
Using the notes tab is a great way to add content to your fan page. In our case our Notes pages reproduces content from our main blog so that anyone that uses Facebook to search for marketing help will find our content. With so many users on Facebook it is becoming a bigger resource for searching for different topics to find out what is going on.

4. Add an About Us Page
An About Us page is your opportunity to introduce yourself to someone who is not familiar with you. Unless you are major brand like Nike that people recognize you should probably add some information about your company and information on your products or services. As well as links back to your main web site for more in-depth information.

5. Post on your Wall
Posting on your wall would probably be the most obvious recommendation and for most that is all they do. However that does not create repeat visitors and followers unless what you are posting to your wall is helpful, valuable or at a minimum interesting. You may push special discounts onto your wall so that your fans will get value out of being a fan of your page. Giving back to your fan base will also help you to get more fans and of course loyal customers.

Bonus Tip: Add “Like” buttons to your website, email newsletters, blogs, etc. Anywhere you can promote your Facebook Fan Page will greatly help get more traffic to that content as well as encouraging more fans which is always a good thing.

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