Did you know that if you establish a solid, healthy relationship with your target audience, you can improve your conversion rate?

It is vital to build a great connection with your customers and prospects so they feel valued and believe your brand is the right one to help them live their best lives. When you engage them with relevant stories, provide solutions and added value, ask for their feedback, and acknowledge them in everything you do, you create deeper connections that help prospects convert into customers.

What Is Audience Relations?

Audience relations is a strategy that businesses use to build a robust customer base and enhance growth. It’s the continuous nurturing of positive connections, interactions, and experiences with and for your audience that’s integral to building successful organizations.

While the benefits of positive audience relations include customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty, the strong connections it builds make customer acquisition a sought-after and enjoyable business benefit as well.

Building Blocks of Great Audience Relations

• Understand Your Customer

Authentic relationships are made by understanding the needs of those you serve and how to meet them.

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people have five needs that motivate their behavior: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The Elements of Value Pyramid identifies four areas where businesses can meet these needs through an audience relations strategy: functional, emotional, life-changing, and social impact. All of this is to say you’ll have a better chance of creating value for your customers and converting your prospects if you build deeper connections with them by understanding their needs.

• Prioritize Consistency

McKinsey & Company says it this way: “Consistency is the secret ingredient to making customers happy.” When businesses build consistent customer experiences in all the ways that they interact with their audience, they can develop the strong connections needed for growth.

• Invest in Emotional Connections

It’s long been theorized that customers who are emotionally attached to a brand are 25 to 100% more impactful than highly satisfied customers in terms of revenue growth. When your audience feels good about your business consistently and over time, you will improve conversions consistently and over time as well.

8 Practical Ways to Make Audience Connections for Better Conversions

1. Know how people navigate your website in real life.

When you understand how visitors interact with you online, you’ll become more sensitive to what works for them. Use screen recordings and other analysis tools to track their movements on your website. What do they click on? What do they ignore? Heat maps of your site will show what elements draw attention and what needs to be improved. Would a live chat do the trick? Getting quick answers to their questions or concerns right when they’re browsing could satisfy wavering prospects with a human touch. And that could make the difference in a sale.

2. Highlight customer reviews and testimonials.

Social proof is pretty important to today’s consumers. Surveys show that 89% will check what others have to say about your brand before they make a purchase. About half consider positive reviews one of the three top reasons to go ahead and buy. Including testimonials on your website makes your online presence - and your credibility - all shiny and new, with social proof every time a prospect visits you online. And that could convince them to convert.

3. Spend time crafting killer landing pages.

Landing pages are incredibly effective helpers for you to improve conversion rates right at the source. You want to connect with your target audience using the content. Let them know that you understand their pain points, what is meaningful to them, and how you can help. Make sure they come away with the real benefits of your brand over others and how you solve their problems. Include pictures and videos of your product or service in action, plus graphs, charts, and video testimonials so they can imagine life with your brand. Write an equally compelling call-to-action (CTA) that is a no-brainer for your prospects to click on. Leverage the concept of visual hierarchy to get rid of any clutter on the page that distracts from the main thing you want prospects to do. And that will support more conversions.

4. Follow through on promises made.

Let audience expectations be your guide here. Whatever you say you’re providing - in your website copy, search engine descriptions, social media posts, and more - always deliver what the audience expects when they make the click. And that’s a surefire way to improve conversion rates.

5. Shorten the time it takes to fill out forms.

Lots of people won’t want to provide their contact information if the process is too cumbersome. Simple, fast, and easy will nip any hesitation in the bud. You’ll get what you need, while prospects will appreciate you looking out for them. And that leads to trust.

6. Test, test, test.

There’s nothing redundant about checking what you’ve put online, especially if conversion rates are wimpy when you’ve got strong copy, great social proof, and optimized forms. Test your content offers to see if they make sense for your audience. Do they offer tangible value? Consider A/B testing if you’re not sure if the current headlines, colors, copy, layout, and calls-to-action work for your audience. Get creative with little nudges to buy. And that could be all your prospects need to convert.

7. Realize your website should have different user experiences.

Visiting your website on a mobile device rather than a desktop should provide that same experience, only different. Your audience needs different things to enhance their experience of your site when viewing it on different devices. It will positively impact conversions if your site provides a great mobile experience to mobile users and a great desktop experience to desktop users. Typically, mobile has simplified navigation, shorter forms, if any, different types of CTAs, and fewer distractions. And that could turn lookers into buyers.

7. Prioritize mobile.

These days, search engines have switched to mobile-first indexing, which could affect not only your conversion rates but also your search ranking. Conversions on mobile rely on fast page speed, fast everything for that matter. These days, just a one-second delay in page response can cause a 7% reduction in conversions. You want to test your mobile page speed. If it’s not up to snuff, aim for a responsive website design that uses smaller, compressed images and is optimized for mobile. You also need a simple, easy process to make a purchase on a phone. Fast checkout as a guest is a must, with options to use preferred payment methods. Make it easy for mobile users to find out quickly where you’re located. Localizing means including location pages on your website with contact information, directions, and even a way to see reviews. Make sure you have a listing on an online directory for your brand and create other types of local content so you perform better in local searches.

11outof11 Knows Website Performance

When you’re ready to upgrade your website to improve your conversion rate, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.