10 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Sales Page
By: Jennifer Neel
Tags: Sales, Small Business, Marketing, Website, Startup

10 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Sales Page

You can’t increase conversions if no one’s visiting your sales page

There’s a great conundrum that happens with businesses and that’s, “do I share and promote my website link or my sales page link?”

Well… if you want sales the answer is sales page link. But that doesn’t always look or feel the most appropriate in certain locations on your marketing channels. You don’t want to come across “too salesy” or put it in front of prospects who might not be ready for what you are selling.

But you’ve got sales goals to reach and no one is visiting your business’s sales page unless you’re directing them to do so.

Here’s Why

There’s a time and a place to share just the link to your website’s homepage. The problem is, most homepages don’t have one direct, clear CTA (call to action). Your homepage is a great place to welcome visitors who are brand new to your business. You’re sharing with them who you are, what you’re about and the wonderful offers you have available.

That being said, once a visitor comes to your homepage, it’s totally up to them where they end up navigating.

They might enter their email address into your lead generation pop-up, or they might skip and head straight for your About page. They might go through each of your pages listed in the menu at the top, or they might click on one service, scroll through the sales copy and leave your website altogether.

Ideally, you want your website to drive visitors to take the specific action you want them to take. If you’re promoting a sale, service, or special offer, or have a particular sales goal in mind, all of your marketing efforts should revolve around that.

Where Most Businesses Go Wrong

Unfortunately, most businesses suffer from FOMO. Yes, FOMO or the “fear of missing out”. Why?

You might be struggling for sales and hoping to take whatever you can get

You might be unclear on your target audience and trying to please (or sell) to anyone and everyone that visits your website

You might be bursting at the seams to provide tons of great value to your audience all at once

You might be trying to prove yourself or race to the top where your competition seems to be

Just a few examples.

But as a business owner, your job is to sell. Selling doesn’t happen when you’re targeting everyone, all at once, and throwing them every product or service under the sun.

If you want growth that translates into sales, be strategic with what you offer, when, to who, and how you communicate that.

Where’s My Sales Page?

Depending on what platform your business’s website is built on, you may have created your own sales funnel or there might be pre determined sales funnels where you have a specific sales page already built. Regardless, your sales page is the page that directs people to check out and buy. It’s the page where you have specific sales copy.

Sidenote: you can turn any page or piece of copy into a selling machine. Selling isn’t strictly for your sales page.

This is the link that you want to share in all your marketing efforts and drive traffic to. Put it in your social media bios, captions, mention it in your videos, place it in email campaigns and text or private message it to your network.

10 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Sales Page

Take sharing your link one step further with these 10 ways to drive traffic to your sales page.

1. Put It In Your Opt-In Email Campaign

Before anything, you want to make sure you’ve set up a lead generation form to capture leads that visit your website.

Wondering what a lead generation form is?

For example, when you visit a website and are immediately met with a pop-up that asks for your name and email address, typically in exchange for something in exchange like a discount or coupon, that’s a lead generation form.

Or, if you’ve visited what’s called a landing page that promoted a free offer, such as a downloadable e-book, video series or ticket to a free event, and entered in your contact information, that was a lead generation form. Make sure you set up an email sequence to go to those leads as soon as they enter their details.

According to RingLead (via Content Marketing Institute), 85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal. Why? Marketo shares with us that only 4% of website visitors are ready to buy.

That means you have a lot more coaxing and warming up to do with visitors before they hit purchase.

My favorite analogy when it comes to lead generation is dating. When you go out on a first date with someone, are you ready to get married?

No! At least, I hope not…

It’s the same for leads. They need to build trust in your brand, your product and suss out whether or not handing over cash to you is the right decision. This is why writing website copy that converts is so important, along with having an email campaign that is sent to leads as soon as they give over their information.

If a person fills out your lead generation form, they’ve already instilled a great deal of trust in you. You might think so with how freely we tend to give out our names and email addresses, but it takes a lot of overcoming internal objections to take that tiny, but impactful step.

In the email sequence you send to leads, make sure you are driving them to your sales page.

Do this by:

Writing only one call to action to click on your sales page link

Making your call to action clear and easy to find

Use directive language like “click here” or “find out more”

Include a clickable button in your email that links to the sales page

Continue to share that same link through multiple emails

Make sure the emails you write include content and compelling stories that persuade the reader to want to click on your call to action. Simply adding the link in your email won’t work. Going back to our dating analogy, think of it as attracting or flirting with your prospects.

2. Give Prospects An Incentive

Yes, even the simple action of coming to your sales page sometimes comes at a price. Not only are people lazy, but they are bombarded daily with CTAs and businesses asking them to do something. That doesn’t include the “asks” people get nonstop from their loved ones, family, friends, coworkers, bosses and children!

One of the best things a business can do is to always give their prospect or customer something in return for taking an action. Not only does it prove your validity as a business (that you have something to offer), but it builds trust. It’s a bit of psychological training, too.

You’re probably thinking, “how do I give an incentive for someone to just visit my sales page?”

Put the incentive on the page! Make sure you’re clear in your communication about what the incentive is and what they have to do to receive it. Examples could be:

A discount or coupon code that’s only available for a certain amount of time

A discount or coupon code that can only be found on the page

A free video demo, training or workshop they can watch

A free gift with purchase

BOGO half off or free

Or anything they’ll receive after purchasing. Don’t be afraid to get creative or offer something you don’t see your competitors doing. If your business needs to be cost-effective or you don’t have the option to give away a lot of free product (or time for your service), you could offer buyers the ability to be featured on your community page or wall, for example.

Think about something that truly would provide value to them and is an incentive your buyers want now (not tomorrow). Another example for B2B businesses would be adding customers to a public networking list that helps promote their business, or five free qualified leads.

Stuck? Make a list of all the purchases you made recently and what incentive you received for buying right now.

3. Connect To Prospects On Social Media

This might go without saying, but hey, even the best marketers in the world can overlook the obvious. Even if you don’t think your customers are on social media… trust me, they are. GlobalWebIndex showed us in 2018 54% of social browsers use social media to research products and we know that percentage has only continued to grow. This is key to recognize because it shows over half of buyers worldwide are on social media because they’re in “warm lead mode” (aka they’re wanting to buy, they just aren’t sure about it yet). This goes against what we always think about social which is people are on it to cure boredom, wash the workday away or be, well, social.

Social media is a great opportunity to meet buyers where they’re at and do research. You can easily notice your customers’ search habits, conversations they’re having, interests and what’s grabbing their attention. More and more these days we’re seeing businesses step out of the box, for example, B2B companies creating entertaining content on TikTok or YouTube.

Thanks to Lyfemarketing we know that 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family. When promoting your sales page on social media, think about what gets your buyers to take action. What are your customers doing when they’re at home, away from work and other outside distractions? What’s grabbing their attention and keeping them entertained or educated? These questions will help you determine the best way to connect with customers on social media.

Sure, your target might not be sharing their own content on TikTok or YouTube, and they’re probably not looking for your business there either (depending on your vertical), but what’re they doing when it’s 9pm on a Tuesday night and the TV’s on in the background? They’re scrolling through social media. Let’s take Pinterest, for example, where 75% of users are “very interested” in new products, which compares to only 55% of users being in the same state on other social media platforms.

Yes, there’s paid social media ads too. Make sure you don’t solely rely on these, and if you run ads, only put them on the social media platforms your prospects spend time on regularly. You need to have a robust content strategy and truly connect with your audience to build trust. Good ads may get click-throughs (ie. clicking the link to your sales page), but doesn’t guarantee sales. A true understanding of the value you have to deliver and belief in your brand will.

4. Hit The ‘Go Live’ Button

Live streaming may be something you aren’t familiar with or want to avoid like the plague, but when it comes to business, you should be willing to do what is going to work best to help achieve your sales goals. Even if your competitors aren’t doing live streams, take it into serious consideration for your business. That might help you stand out even further!

Don’t see the value in live streaming? Think about this: according to Cisco, video traffic will make up 80% of all consumer internet traffic globally by 2021. Haivison reported in 2019 that over 55% of enterprise companies used live streaming weekly. If enterprise companies are doing it, you need to be even if you’re a solopreneur or small business just getting online.

You now can do live streams on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn using in-app options or third party applications. Make sure you have a game plan with your live streams and if you aren’t sure whether or not they’ll benefit you driving traffic to your sales page, map out a three month plan to give yourself enough time and consistency to make an informed decision. Live streaming should integrate with your overarching marketing and content strategies.

If you are going to live stream, have a clear idea of what your format will look like, what topics you’ll cover, the ‘why’ behind each live stream, and only drive your audience to one CTA which would be to visit your sales page. Use the metrics you already have about other content your business produces to decide what to share live.

Do you see great results with long-form, thorough blogs on general topics? Or do you see high engagement from prospects when you share short conversation starters in email or on social media? This will tell you what content your audience enjoys and will engage with. Make sure your content has some relation to your sales page and you mention any incentives you have verbally, in the live stream, and in the description below. Reshare your live stream content across your other marketing channels.

“Give them what they want, sell them what they need.”

5. Record Or Do Live Video Demo

According to Techjury, 79% of buyers have said a business’s video convinced them to buy an app or a piece of software. Now, that may not be the industry you’re in, but the entire live stream market is going to be worth more than $70 billion in 2021 (findings from Neil Patel).

There’s so much to be said about offering prospects recorded or live demos of your product or service. Instantly, you’re answering so many of your potential customer’s questions, fears and you’re building trust.

What’s the biggest fear of a buyer? Loss. We’re constantly coming up with multiple reasons in our head to not buy something because we’re afraid of losing money or not getting our ROI. Or even worse, getting hurt. When you show your product or service on video, you’re telling your prospect that you have nothing to hide from them.

If you sell physical products, you can do a demo that shows:

How to use the product

What the product is made of

The size of the product

Where to put the product in their home

Other products yours works well with

And if you sell a service, you can do a demo that shows:

The step-by-step process of using your service

A behind the scenes look at a customer working with you and your service

All of the features and ways to use your service

The results a customer has achieved with your service

In the demo, you’ll want to mention how to visit your sales page several times. Put the link to your sales page in reminder emails for the demo (if live), on the page they visit to watch your demo, in the caption or description (if your demo goes on social media), and in follow up emails for prospects who watched, but haven’t purchased.

You might think your product or service is self-explanatory, or you don’t see demos performed very often by your competitors. But if you want to drive traffic to your sales page and make clicking ‘buy’ as easy as possible, you want to continue to educate customers on your product as much as possible. Make them feel like they already own it and be able to visualize what using this product or service will be like for them.

When prospects get as close as they can to experiencing the real thing, they’re inevitably forming a connection with that, which makes buying almost a no-brainer.

6. Add CTAs To Your Homepage

Turn your homepage into a sales traffic generating machine! There’s no reason to avoid putting your sales page link on your homepage. Again, we want to make visiting your sales page as easy and effortless as possible to visitors. If you don’t give your readers easy direction, you risk losing them from your site.

There’s statistic after statistic about how readers don’t actually read anything these days, they scan. This isn’t news, either. The oldest mention of this I could find comes back to a study from the Nielson Norman group in 1997. They performed a study using different styles of writing on a website and found the website scored 47% higher when it was scannable. It was 27% higher when written objectively rather than in a promotional style.

Do as much research as you want on this topic, but the fact of the matter is we’re constantly scanning for information and assimilating it in our brains.

“Does this deserve my time and attention?”

“Do I actually need this thing?”

“Do I want to learn more about this?”

“Is this of value to me?”

This doesn’t mean you should leave your website bare bones when it comes to your copy, however! Remember: scanning. If there isn’t anything to scan through (which is what users’ habits are now), they might trust the legitimacy of your website.

Wondering what a CTA or call-to-action is, anyways?

A call to action is any piece of copy that compels or directs the reader to take an action. They’re either instructive or directive and typically short, sweet, concise statements. Examples of call-to-actions include:

Get my free guide

Buy now

Subscribe here for 15% off

Claim your free trial

Book your consult

See what they’re saying

Buy now

Click here

Sign up today

Start now

Explore here

See how these statements are telling the reader to take an action? Whether or not that reader decides to go through with it hinges on the relationship they already have with your brand and whether or not that call-to-action is appealing to them. They obviously have to understand the value they’ll be delivered by taking that action. No one takes action for free. You always have to give them something in return.

An example of a horrible CTA that somehow, shockingly is still extremely common today is “sign up for my newsletter” or “sign up for my free newsletter and receive updates”.

You might be wondering why that’s a bad CTA when it’s giving them a clear direction (sign up). No one wants your newsletter (aka another piece of junk in their inbox) or “updates” about your business (aka promotions) that they have no relationship to. A better way to get people to sign up for your “newsletter” would be to offer them a free, downloadable guide, a free strategy call, or even be upfront about the information they’ll receive in the newsletter.

What sounds more enticing: a “newsletter” or a week’s worth of free keto-friendly recipes plus daily tips to staying keto when everyone around you is a carboholic? Dunno about you, but I’d choose the latter.

Now, how do you get someone to go to your sales page from your homepage with a CTA? Especially when visitors might be brand new to your brand, or have only gotten to your homepage after seeing one piece of social media content, or from a word of mouth referral?

Show them why they should care!

You can use some of your sales page copy on your homepage or you can identify your readers’ wants, needs, pains and struggles in the copy leading up to your CTA. Hell, put it in the headline! More than 90% of visitors who read your headline will also read your CTA copy. If you’re actively promoting something or have a sales goal in mind, why not make every single page of your website assist you in reaching that goal?

Write a headline that describes your offer or makes it sound enticing rather than a headline that just has your name. Use sales copy instead of homepage copy on the homepage (novel idea, I know). Express who you are as a business, what you do, and “if you’re an XYZ person with XYZ problems, check out my latest program that’s getting people just like you XYZ results!”

Add a CTA button beneath your text that says, “Click here to learn more” or “Get started” and you’re golden!

If I’m an XYZ person who wants XYZ results that your product or service provides, then I’m certainly going to click to find out more. Then, the sales copy can go into further detail on the sales page to entice them to actually buy. If I’m not an XYZ person who wants XYZ results, then I’m not going to click and that’s okay. If your biggest fear is not getting everyone that visits your website to buy from you, you need to go out of business.

7. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a phenomenal way to reach your target audience and leverage another business’s reputation or trust with those individuals, while giving them value. OptinMonster has found that 77% of internet users read blogs and users in the US spend 3x more time reading blogs (or, as we know now, scanning) than they do on email. Guest blogging may sound intimidating if you’re not a writer or don’t know anything about blogging, but you don’t have to be. All businesses that are online need content. If you’re knowledgeable about something their readers want to know about (that relates back to what you are selling), then writing an article for them is something they want.

If you’re still worried about guest blogging because you’re not a writer, don’t be. Listicles get 2x more shares than other types of blog posts, and the whole purpose behind your guest blog is to get more eyes on your content and back to your website, right? Listicles are short pieces of content that are easy to read (and easy to write) because you’re writing everything in a list or a bullet format. They’re a non-writers dream and readers tend to actually read them more.

You’re probably wondering now how to find places to guest blog or who’s best to blog for? The answer is any business or online publication that your target audience already reads. Are there certain publications that are popular in your industry? Does your audience hang out on certain websites quite often? Are there any well-known industry favorites? At FreeByrd, publications like Modern Salon, PBA, and certain influencers’ individual websites are popular.

Plus, there are mainstream websites like Huffington Post, Thrillest, Elephant, Entrepreneur, Allure (the list goes on) that allow guest posting or contributing writers. They tend to be a bit tougher to get published on and have their own contributing guidelines you’ll want to check first before submitting anything. You can think outside the box too. What cross-related industries would still have publications that are relevant for you to post on?

For example, if you’re a pin-up style educator, you could reach out to music publications that have an audience filled with people that love pin-up. If you sell coaching services to entrepreneurs and you know most of them are health-conscious, you could write for blogs that are about fitness and healthy eating. Those people are all interested in the knowledge you have to provide. The other benefit to this is increasing your brand authority, especially if you’re a new business owner, new to the online space or narrowing/broadening your target audience.

8. Podcasts

You may want to stay behind the scenes of your business, but what’s more important: staying hidden or driving sales? Sales. Podcasts have the potential to not only drive people to your sales page, but they can help build your brand awareness and authority, grow your audience size and help earn you strategic partnerships that may benefit you in the long run.

As of October 2020, there are around 1.5 million podcast shows with over 34 million episodes. In 2019, Podcast Insights found that 80% of listeners listened to all or most of the episode and they listen to an average of seven shows per week. That means they’re loyal to the podcasts they follow and they’re more likely to eat up any valuable information you have versus a blog or scrolling past a post on Instagram.

Struggling to get more male clients or reach your male customers? Podcast Insights also shows us that 56% of podcast listeners are men and 44% are women.

Just like with guest blogging, there are tons of blogs that are hungry to have experts like you (yes, you are an expert) on their show. Typically, when reaching out to podcast hosts, they want to know that:

You are an active listener/care about their show

You’re in alignment with their message or content

You have relevant ideas to bring to the table

Every show host is different, but a general rule of thumb when reaching out to show hosts, make sure you express why you’re interested in their show and personalize the message. They typically like to hear two or three ideas you have about what you’d like to talk about or share if they host you. Come up with ideas that are relevant, but their listeners haven’t heard before. Podcast hosts always want new and interesting content for their audience. They don’t want to keep reproducing the same info or stories. Make sure you follow up, too, just like you would for a job or cold outreach to a prospect.

If you don’t know if your audience is listening to podcasts, ask! Ask your current clients or customers (who are ideal, don’t ask the bad eggs) if they listen to podcasts, which ones and why. You can ask them what content they’d like you to share if you were on a show. This will also give you ideas of content to reproduce on your social media, in emails, or even as another product. You can ask over your marketing channels or in one-on-one conversations.

That being said, just because a certain podcast is relevant with your audience doesn’t mean it truly is the right fit for your business. Do your due diligence before reaching out to podcasts and listen to a few episodes to get an idea of how the show is run, what the show values are and what it would be like to be interviewed. If you do get on a show, ask about promoting your business. Most shows allow this and in fact encourage it, but you want to be respectful of their guidelines. If they don’t allow promotion, don’t worry! It’s still probably a good idea to be on. If a listener is intrigued enough about your story or the expertise you’re sharing, they will find you online.

9. Live Chat

You know those little, annoying chat boxes that pop up on the right hand corner of a website? Those babies are phenomenal for lead generation! This blog has primarily been about just getting eyes on your sales page, but let’s take it one step further and talk about something that tends to have a 30% conversion rate.

Whether you love or hate live chat, consumers show a 92% satisfaction rate with them. The reason is it makes customers feel like they have an immediate and intimate connection to your business. As a website visitor, what makes more sense to you: having to search around for the answer to one of your questions, or being to ask and have an answer provided ASAP?

If you don’t know much about live chats, here’s the deal: sometimes you are actually getting a response from a real, live person. At FreeByrd, when you ask a question in our live chat, it’s a real live person answering. At other companies, they may have pre-programmed the bot with artificial intelligence to answer the most common questions and have a general conversation with you. Of course, if there’s something the AI can’t answer, it will tell you and send the message to that company’s support team where a human will take over.

We’ve used AI chatbots in the past at FreeByrd, and they’re becoming more common. It allows for a human-centric experience when the real life humans behind the scenes are busy, or hell, even sleeping! We can’t all be “on” 24/7, although that’s what is pretty much expected of businesses from consumers.

So how does this help you increase sales? Again, instead of going to a sales page and subconsciously having questions answered as a reader skims the copy, they can have their questions answered directly by a “human that cares”. This eliminates the need for a consult, a demo, or attempting to regain a lead’s attention once they leave your website. SuperOffice shares a few examples of businesses increasing their revenue by 48% per chat hour and having a 40% increase in their conversion rate.

If you’re a beginning entrepreneur, small business owner or just bringing your business online, you don’t need to worry about advanced tech like chatbots and AI. Just know that they’re an option for you in the future and there are tons of integrations out there. Understand that this isn’t a bad thing. It’s a way to give your people what they want when they need it, without you (or your team) being at their beck-and-call at all times.

Having these stats should encourage you to do what you can to respond to prospects right away, such as checking your DMs, emails or Facebook Messages regularly. You can also list out your FAQs on your homepage and sales page… or any of your website pages. Handle objections and questions whenever they come up.

10. Word Of Mouth

Ah, word of mouth marketing. The marketing channel we all hate to love and love to hate. Why? It’s not as controllable or measurable as the other marketing channels out there, but it sure does beat all the others. Hey, it obviously works otherwise businesses wouldn’t have survived in the 17th, 18th, and 19th century. Nielsen’s statistics show that 83% of consumers completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family, friends and acquaintances about products and services, while HubSpot says that’s up to 90%.

When it comes to getting WOM marketing to drive traffic to your sales page, it works best online in some sort of way, whether that’s texting, email, social media shares or direct messages, etc. That way, someone can refer your sales page to another person and give them the link directly. If Vicki hears from their friend Julie about your product or service, and Julie just raves about how Vicki needs to visit, but Vicki has to go find the link on her own, the likelihood of that happening is slim.

You can encourage WOM marketing from your current and previous customers and audience by reminding them, making it easy for them and giving them incentive. Put the link to share directly in emails, social media posts, stories, underneath videos and in other forms of communication you share with them. Don’t make them go hunting for it. Also, tell them exactly who this sales page is for and who they should reach out to. Make it a triple threat by providing them exact scripts of what they can say when telling their friends and acquaintances.

This is also why having reviews on your sales page or website in general is important. BigCommerce has shared that as much as 88% of buyers trust online testimonials and reviews just as much as when a friend, coworker or family member tells them about it. So even if your WOM efforts aren’t doing much for you (you can track by the number of visits to your sales page in comparison to how much you’ve shared about it over social media vs. asked for WOM referrals), your testimonials or reviews can back you up.

Don’t be afraid to use the same testimonials on multiple website pages. The more a visitor sees that great review next to your name, product or service, the more they’ll associate it with the experience they want to have if (and when) they purchase).

There’s plenty of other tactics you can use to drive traffic to your sales page, but these are the top 10 most effective and it gives you more than enough help in your marketing efforts. It shouldn’t be hard or difficult to get traffic to your sales page if you’re utilizing at least one to three of these tactics consistently. If you are and you still aren’t seeing traffic, you’ll need to go back to the drawing table and decide if you’re targeting the wrong audience or your product and service isn’t what they find valuable.