Investing marketing dollars into paid ads or fulfilling a robust content marketing strategy through outreach to acquire more organic traffic can be a nullified effort without these 5 basic tips for increasing your website’s conversion rate. Just as driving traffic from the wrong audience or driving traffic from informational based keyword searches, launching content without properly formatting your site with the right tools will bleed you dry.
I’m here to give you some advice in how to avoid that.
Tip #1 – Improve Your Unique Selling Proposition
Know Why You’re Different
We all started our businesses to change the world right? To do something differently, better than ever before. At least, that’s what we all hope to achieve through our crusades – and if you’re a marketing manager for one of these businesses, you want to report higher numbers month over month and year over year right? Well in order to achieve that, we need to define how and why you’re different than the rest of your market.
The competition has upped their game.
For example, our business here at C4 noticed something not too long ago. There were content creation agencies (apart of a 50b per year industry), creating content, just for the sake of creating content.
We found website after website and client after client working with content development agencies where keyword or topic research took little to no part in the research process, the first page results weren’t even considered, and the content lengths were well below the standard of first page results.
Anyone experienced in SEO, knows this is a huge missed opportunity for business owners but open season for anyone willing to commit to solving the problem.
After identifying a real problem within our industry, we sought out to create a solution which we now call the C4 Blueprint. We basically systemized a process that identifies how we should construct an article to give it the best opportunity to rank well enough on Google to drive organic sales or leads. That’s a unique selling proposition.
Another sample would be something like our emphasis on “schedule my 30-minute call” on our website. You’ll find these CTA’s everywhere because that is our primary conversion action. (more on this later.)
You’re probably thinking, “a 30-minute call doesn’t sound too unique to me.” Well, you’re right. We needed to simplify the CTA enough to not to distract our users from taking action and the depth of the value goes much deeper than that. During this call, we seek to answer questions which plug into our predictive model in determining how many more leads we can drive per month for the client or how large of an impact we can make on e-commerce sales.
In addition to detailing out complete sales funnels coming from all sources of traffic, some of the items we identify are.
10 Important CRO Questions
1) Cost per lead acquisition per marketing channel?
2) Average conversion rate?
3) What conversions are currently being tracked and what the value is behind each conversion?
4) What % of those leads are actually closed and turned into new clients?
5) What does the sales cycle look like or entail?
6) What or who do the personas look like who buy from you?
7) Current return on ad spend?
8) Where is the website losing the most money?
9) What is your form start and form completion conversion rate?
10) Revenue per visitor?
These are just 10 of the many more figures we find and once we do, it’s clear as day as to what needs the most help. Which of these questions do you feel is the most difficult to answer?
So here’s some homework.
Make a list of everything that your product or service can solve. Make an effort to conduct short interviews with your customers or people who would be willing to use your product or service and lastly, don’t copy your competition. Be honest, and ask yourself, does your USP matter to your potential customers? I once learned that the amount of value I’m able to provide is only as high as the perception of the one who receives it.
Tip #2 – Use Better Language in your Offers
Language is much more than shaping sounds with the use of our tongue, lips, vocal folds, or the air coming from the lungs. Online, through copy we rely on the story telling ability of our writer to paint the picture, to lead us safely into the unknown, and to arrive at our final destination where answers await.
While we’re still getting used to shooting, editing, and publishing video content (actually, this is our first blog/vlog combo), we all know of the importance of how language influences our actions and behaviors.
Don’t be afraid to be bold.
Changing copy on pages built for paid ads should be routine as well as revitalizing old content copy on dated blog posts which provides little to no organic value.
Remember that list you made under tip #1? Well, bring it out again. This tip specifically targets offers which aren’t truly answering the intent or reason as to why your potential customers are looking for your service in the first place.
Now’s your chance to research your competition and find FAQ pages, client or customer testimonials, Quora posts, answerthepublic.com, and more. Use these resources to find what your customers are asking about your product.
Tip #3 – Reduce Clutter and Remove Distractions From Your Website
Think about this for just a moment. What would you rather have, option 1 – you know where everything in your home is at all times or option 2 – your home is a complete mess and you waste countless hours trying to find something you urgently need. The answer seems obvious right?
That’s how you should approach your website and landing page design. Try this 4-second test we do here at C4.
Open your landing page for just four seconds then immediately close the tab for someone who hasn’t seen it before. Ask them what they saw!
What you’ll find happen is their eyes are naturally going to identify what prominently stands out to them most and they’ll make a judgement or bias as to what the page is about. Most of the time, this information appears in hero images, sliders, H1’s or headings, and visual imagery used to tell a story.
If these tests aren’t conveying the right message to your audience in just 4 or 5 seconds, you’re likely losing out on a substantial amount of traffic which could have been converted depending on where they exist within the funnel.
Tip #4 – Effectively use Social Proof and Credibility Building Language With Design
Social proof is one of our websites closest forms of trust building we can incorporate into our site designs and it’s quite easy to do!
Utilizing tools which methodically shine in the bottom left hand corner of our screen reminding us that “John from California just downloaded the free E-Book” and then redirecting us to that page upon click through show that even though we may be deeply in trance reading an article, our brain still curiously wonders what John from California could’ve been so interested with inside this E-Book?
We click through, enter our email, and now become part of an elaborate email if-this-than-that drip system.
It’s strange, I’ll have to admit, but it works. What funnel John had traveled and converted from now blends into other channels, drawing potential customers from all pages relating to gated E-Book on email capture.
This, essentially is how basics of CRO work. Without jumping into how and why we’ve determined certain hypotheses to test and just covering the basics, a strategy like implementing social proof is a good idea.
Another way to build social proof is to show off case studies, mention clients whom you’ve worked with, and subtly brag. We don’t want to be utilizing this opportunity to boast this and that, we want to leave our visitors with an impressionable taste of what we offer and a desire to experience more.
Effectively using social proof and content copy throughout your website will leave more room for data, less for opinions, and a firm grasp for your clients to grab hold of.
Tip #5 – Properly Convey a Sense of Urgency and Scarcity
The number one rule of creating or conveying a sense of urgency is to have a 100% authentic strategy. Consumers and business owners are becoming more informed on today’s marketing tactics and creating some bogus scarcity tactic likely isn’t going to cut it. Here is on of our favorite strategies for creating urgency.
Facebook Retargeting
Consumers are used to seeing items on sale, especially in retail. Sales and discounts have plagued the web since the beginning of time and there’s a right way, and wrong way to do it.
Retargeting is a great way to promote sales or special offers without soiling your website or cheating your product and reducing perceived value. For example, let’s say you’re an RV Dealer running Google PPC for bottom of the funnel keywords such as “New Class A RVs” or “Buy 5th Wheel RVs.” These keywords likely have more commercial intent than searches like “What do I need to tow an RV?” What we like to do here is set up specific Facebook pixels to gather audiences around users who have high purchasing intent and retarget them using 7, 14, and 21 day timed offers on Facebook.
For your 1-7 day video, we could use a brief introductory video promoting the dealership with trust building factors, social proof, leading the visitor to a well-optimized landing page where the user is addressed with relevant content revolving around what they were originally interested in and FAQ’s.
For the 8-14 day video, we could use a client testimonial, more trust building factors, and coupon or discount on purchase. Here is where you’ll want to drop your USP or unique selling proposition and offer a smaller discount on purchase.
For the 15-21 day video, this is where we want to go all out. Our “last” opportunity to drive these pixeled potential customers who were once very interested in purchasing from you but didn’t for whatever reason. Larger discounts, more incentives, and your strongest offer should apply here.
Mentioning how the discount you’re offering the potential customer has never before been used and is specific to only them accomplishes two things. If they were on the fence about price, or maybe needed more time to think about it, or maybe they needed to read more testimonials – you’ve covered it.
Paying top dollar on PPC for bottom of the funnel keywords is expensive, retargeting is not nearly comparative in price and will likely increase your conversions if setup correctly. If the potential client doesn’t opt in for this last discount, do not honor it there after. Your reputation is more important than one additional sale.