Thriving in a digital environment can be a time-consuming process that requires a significant amount of resources. Depending on your business’ nature, you might be limited in terms of funds or personnel, or even worse, both. You might have a Google Ads campaign sending traffic to the same landing page from two years ago, and if the cost-per-lead has stagnated, it might be time to refresh creatives…but do you know how? In other cases, attempting to scale campaigns that yield somewhat satisfactory results might put your business in a quandary, as you need to evaluate how effectively you can scale campaigns that might not prove to be profitable after a certain threshold. Fortunately, struggling campaigns can be turned around quite easily with a thorough Conversion Rate Optimization audit, which will also provide you with enough data intelligence to scale your marketing activities.
In other words, do you even test, bro?
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
Conversion Rate Optimization, also referred to as CRO, is the methodical process of increasing the percentage of users that follow through with the desired action at every step of your marketing funnel. CRO requires a thorough understanding of your website’s user flow, the actions users take throughout the site, and identifying all barriers affecting your conversion rates. Additionally, CRO specialists ensure that your campaigns are highly segmented, adjusting each strategy’s focus to reflect the niche audience targeted. s
Essentially, CRO is the systematic process of making sure you convert as many people coming to your website as possible. Bring in ‘dem leads.
Elements of Conversion Rate Optimization
There is a multitude of facets that you can put under the CRO microscope. The following is a list of items that require a thorough analysis during a conversion rate optimization audit.
Conversion Funnels
Typically beginning after a user clicks on a paid ad, low conversion rates usually spawn from poorly built conversion funnels. The shortest funnels are typically standalone landing pages, where the copy encourages users to fill out a form in exchange for a lead magnet or consultation request. For more sophisticated products, drawn-out funnels that pre-qualify users along the way tend to be several pages long. Longer conversion paths tend to include unique upsell and cross-sell offers, a staple of the ClickFunnels software.
However, the sea of coaches and marketing consultants has provided conflicting best approaches to optimizing your creatives. Most of them recommend five-page funnels for something that only needs a well-executed landing page. Building out conversion funnels doesn’t require programming skills, especially with prominent software such as Unbounce and Instapage, making it relatively simple to customize pre-made templates. A standard error, unfortunately, is not understanding which type of creatives work best in each niche. It’s essential to work with consultants who have extensive experience in building industry-specific funnels OR can diagnose issues on the spot and replicate what works best in the industry. For example, I would say that I have the most considerable experience in deploying campaigns in four different areas: e-commerce, insurance & financial services, real estate, and SaaS (software as a service). For each of those industries, I would recommend completely different landing pages and funnels, uniquely tailoring creatives to the desired result. Optimizing for purchases is far different than pre-qualifying users for an insurance quote, for example.
Split-Testing
The utter lack of split-testing mechanisms I’ve come across in my career from all the companies I’ve engaged with is downright shocking. Anything from common A/B testing to more fleshed-out Multivariate testing seems to be lacking in companies of all sizes. My data-driven approach to campaign optimization will usually result in formulating as many ad combinations as possible, sending traffic to various landing pages to ascertain the optimal path to conversion. In some cases, tweaking ad headlines or landing page fonts can significantly influence your conversion rates.
Usability
A core element often overlooked when web designers implement zany branding elements over functionality is ending up with a website that’s practically a traffic deterrent in the end. Unfortunately, I interacted with businesses that shelled out an excessive amount of money for poorly-developed sites that prioritized ostentatious design elements over core functionality because it was “edgy.” Anything that makes it difficult for your audience to decipher how to proceed to the next step in your conversion funnel is redundant and unnecessary. You’re better off sacrificing style points for increasing the lead generation capabilities of your website. The most egregious errors I have witnessed have been on the mobile front, but fortunately, the prevalence of optimized themes and new-age developers utilizing React are minimizing these issues.
Remarketing Elements: whether it’s dedicating budgets for dynamic retargeting campaigns and segmenting traffic into different baskets (TOFU-MOFU-BOFU strategy) or configuring abandoned cart email templates, there’s always an opportunity to convert lost traffic. E-commerce campaigns have a wealth of tools to recapture traffic and convert existing site users with a variety of plugins and add-ons, such as up-selling tools, live chat, and messenger bots. At the elementary level, any campaign should have an automated email sequence for users that either fill out a form or interact with your business in some shape.
Analytics & Tracking
Lost in most paid media campaigns is the added power of advanced analytics and heatmap tracking tools. My favourite tool to recommend to businesses is Hotjar, which provides a full suite of handy mechanisms, including heatmaps and session recordings. Plugging in advanced analytics tracking also gives added insight into customer behaviour and multi-channel attribution, which will make media buying programs far more efficient.
Benefits of Conversion Rate Optimization
The main goal of any marketing campaign is to generate a return on investment. Fundamentally, all of your efforts should be spent optimizing your campaigns and fine-tuning your conversion funnel along the way. Traditional advertising campaigns should also be factored into the equation because the many tracking tools permit marketers to trace back leads & sales to specific touchpoints. One issue prevalent with mass advertising campaigns is the use of a single phone number across all channels, rendering tracking completely useless. Call tracking software provides an enormous amount of data intelligence, especially when you can pinpoint your most profitable campaign segments.
Not only will CRO allow you to identify the most effective funnels and advertising techniques for your business, but they’ll allow you to acquire more customers from the same amount of traffic. By exclusively increasing your conversion rates within your funnel, you will see a significant lift in the number of customers by spending the same amount of advertising dollars on your inbound campaigns. Additionally, split-testing new concepts with paid media campaigns will provide pertinent data and insights that can guide your website updates in a new direction. Sites that rely on organic traffic to fuel their business can also tinker with creatives and make calls to action more prominent, generating more leads without investing resources into paid media or new website development.
Lastly, effective CRO strategies aim to increase the overall customer lifetime value and provide businesses with more accurate benchmarks for acquisition costs. In addition to generating more sales with the same marketing spend, specific campaigns can increase the average earnings per user through strategic upsells, remarketing campaigns, and various promotions. For e-commerce businesses, the retention rate is a quintessential metric to analyze for sustained success because the initial Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) may not provide an initial profit. However, through effective retention programs and strategic remarketing, you can increase the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and turn losing campaigns into revenue-generating goldmines. Considering the average retention rate can be anywhere from 20-40%, e-commerce stores well below that benchmark are missing out on the most straightforward path to increased profits.