How To Optimise Conversion Rates In Digital Marketing

How To Optimise Conversion Rates In Digital Marketing

Changing Consumer Behaviour and The Growth of eCommerce

In the old days (like two long years ago), a customer would walk into your shiny flagship store, peruse the products that they were interested in, maybe speak to a sales person for advice, phone a friend for reassurance and then, if all was satisfactory, purchase something that they liked.

As businesses we were all safe in the knowledge that as long as we had a decent well-priced product, an appealing store, convincing salespeople and excellent after-sales-service, things were going to be okay. The business model worked.

But that seems so long ago. In the space of two years and an unplanned global virus, the business world as we know it has been turned upside down. People don’t visit our stores like they used to, our traditional marketing strategies have ceased to work, and customers have vanished into the cyber space. Suddenly we also have to contend with a host of new upstart competitors, selling to our previously loyal customer base, from the other side of the world.

Sounds dramatic, but unfortunately it is the real situation faced by so many businesses the world over. In short, the traditional business models that we relied on to attract and convert customers, have mostly ceased to be effective.

Sales conversion has become a critical point of focus and the online space is the new environment where it needs to be addressed.    

Table of Contents

What is Conversion in Digital Marketing?

Persuading potential customers to form a relationship with a brand, become brand advocates and hopefully, a loyal long-term customer, is basically what conversion is all about. So, when someone visits your website, likes what they see, performs a desired action, and purchases a product or service – then you have achieved a sales conversion. The percentage of people from amongst all visitors to your site, who have purchased something, makes up the conversion rate.

Why Should We be Measuring Conversion?

Any digital marketing strategy will have a variety of short to medium term objectives, including the likes of increasing brand awareness, improving brand image, increasing share of business, increasing requests for quotations, increasing product sales and the like. But surely the overarching long-term goal of any digital marketing strategy, should be the conversion of potential customers into loyal ones.

Positive ROI and increased profitability, remain the most important criteria for the growth and success of any business. And indirectly, the route to achieving both, remains the customer – the single most important factor in the life and success of any business.

With this in mind, it makes sense to measure how well we are progressing with our efforts to convert potential customers and that we are achieving our conversion objectives. Most importantly, it gives us a benchmark, against which we can measure customer retention over time.    

What is a Conversion Strategy?

We all need a plan to follow, that guides and rationalises our online marketing efforts and that takes us in a logical direction. Having a plan, with specific key performance indicators (KPIs), is one way of measuring success or failure. It also allows us to monitor the effect of every online marketing Euro that we spend.

A conversion strategy is really a way of formally approaching the business of converting online traffic into customers. We certainly don’t want to fire off a shotgun, hoping that we hit something along the way. A targeted and logical approach is required, that aims at the right audience, on the right media channels, and that features the right messaging and online content.    

A good conversion strategy requires a logical thought process, that takes advantage of distinct consumer habits and behaviour, and that is designed to appeal to specific personal tastes and traits. It’s a scientific process, that needs to be developed by experts in digital marketing strategy, like Sonuos Digital. That is, if you want to be competitive and to achieve growth online.

How to Create a Conversion Process

As mentioned earlier, having a focused and strategically driven approach towards building conversion rates, is the prerequisite to commercial success online. Here are a few tips for improving your conversion process:

  • Create high quality content – content is king when it comes to creating trust and loyalty, amongst consumers. Populate your website and social media sites with good quality, interesting, relevant, and up-to-date posts that appeal to your target audience, and you’re well on the way to achieving both a loyal following and a high rate of sharing online.
  • Have an SEO strategy – having a professionally developed SEO strategy in place will ensure that your content is appropriately optimised, to be recognised by search engines and highly ranked in search results. Being seen and noticed is the key to success.
  • Maximise social media channels – “all roads lead to Rome” and in the case of achieving conversion, this entails ensuring that the content on your social media sites is designed to attract visitors and to lead them to your website, where they can browse and make a purchase.
  • Landing page design – landing pages are a representation of your brand and should be part of a positive brand experience for consumers. Ensure that they are well designed and reflect the brand personality and image. All links should be live and call-to-action buttons well designed and highlighted.
  • Targeted email campaigns – if you have a credible list of potential and existing customers, then make use of personalised e mailers to draw attention to products and services and to drive customers to your website for possible conversion.

Ways to Improve Conversion Rates

  • Clearly define your target market – to avoid a “shotgun approach”, make sure that you have clearly identified and quantified your target audience. If you do this correctly, you will ensure the most effective use of the budget, on the right channels, with the appropriate message.
  • Encourage dialog with customers – make sure to create relationships on all platforms, by answering queries and even complaints timeously and honestly. Encourage interaction through the use of blog posts, forums and the like and consciously drive people towards your website for further interaction. Don’t forget to communicate after you have successfully converted a customer.
  • Rope in your sales team – ensure that you have dedicated sales people, who are clearly briefed on the strategy and are focused on backing up your online marketing effort. Follow up leads as quickly as possible, because nothing turns a potential customer off more, than being ignored.
  • Understand channel behaviour – research consumer behaviour on the different online channels and the profile of visitors for each. Learn to understand why your target audience visits particular channels and how they interact on these. With this knowledge you can target your marketing messages more accurately and effectively.
  • Leverage positive testimonials – nothing creates trust more than the positive experiences of others. Help build brand credibility by featuring positive testimonials of happy customers on your website and Facebook pages.
  • Monitor your KPIs – having clear and measurable key performance indicators, will help you to measure progress and achieve conversion goals. Conversion rate for instance, can be easily measure by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors. A small, but important discipline to follow if you want to keep the focus on conversion marketing.

Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Partner

Hopefully, having read this article, you’ll now be in a position to judge whether you have the expertise to adequately address the important issue of sales conversion. If not, then there are companies who can assist, like Sonuos Digital, Irelands leading digital marketing and website design experts.

Sonuos Digital will work closely with you to analyse your specific online marketing needs, with target market selection, setting of objectives and with the development of an online strategy that is designed to maximise sales conversions and business growth.

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