The collection of information for commercial purposes is one of the most challenging tasks in online marketing. It is an art, convincing people to take some time, fill some form that asks for their name, last name, address, age, favorite color and baseball team can drive people to fleet that part of your webpage in no time. Make the data collecting process nice and easy for customers to give to you. There are many information queries your company doesn’t need, so know what to ask.
Also design a data entry form that customers won´t feel scared of, filled with complicated and extent questions without an adequate selection to choose from. Give your customers the answers for most of the questions you are asking, for example: if you want to know the customer´s city or state, you may have the City or state with a selection to choose from. Make the process short and easy, this is where the engagement stage fails to be completed and companies loose contact with potential clients.
Now, just placing a data entry box on your webpage won´t do the trick. Give something to your visitors in exchange for their information. Be creative, find useful means of giving something back like a free quote, or something related to your line of work that they might need. This way people won’t even think of entering the info, they will just concentrate on the process of filling out and getting what they want.
What to ask?
That is probably a good question you want to make to yourself. What is the information you and your company needs from your website visitors. This may vary from one business model to another, depending on the market segment you are working on you need useful information from your visitors. The most common information required for data collecting usually is:
• Name
• Last Name
• E-mail
• Country
• State
• Gender
We can continue with a list of favorite restaurants, movies and other stuff you might not need, but others may, it depends on your business. Basically you need to cover your demographic segment: Age, gender, social class and lifestyle. But you need to focus it on your business needs; therefore you have to study your target audience thoroughly. Come up with useful, simple and effective questions to ask that are helpful with your information needs.
Once you have your database structured you need to put it to the test. Find out if it´s working its magic on your webpage. Constantly check how your data gathering is doing. This way you might change a thing or two to optimize the collecting process.
Promotion is also a good and effective way of having more people leaving their information on your website. You may start a campaign with the purpose of collecting data. Try and make the process easy and fast for people to give you the information needed. There are some companies that are millions of light years away in the process, they have advance tools and computer programs to collect info and still make small mistakes that have major consequences in the process, start small but smart.
If data collection isn’t your cup of coffee leave it to us. Bannerhero.com can help you with your e-mail marketing campaigns and data collecting strategies. Visit us online and see what we have to offer to make your webpage an online success.
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