Visibility

Search keywords. Display ads. Email marketing. Affiliates. You pay significant money for clicks, but then what? Companies spend thousands of dollars driving traffic to their site, but many times don’t spend a fraction of that converting that traffic into sales-qualified leads, or even understanding the wants and needs of their visitors. Without a proper conversion strategy, the effort for more clicks is almost pointless.

100% Increase in ROI with 1% Increase in Conversion

Many companies are perfectly happy to have web conversion rates of less than 1%. But simple math will show you that a 1% increase in conversion rate can generate the same revenue as a 100% increase in traffic.  It becomes fairly obvious that the ultimate goal should be creating sales qualified leads in addition to web traffic.  This means concentrating more on your website conversion rate.  You want as many of those clicks as possible to convert into qualified leads, online transactions, new registrations – any metric by which you measure real online marketing success.  The higher the conversion rate, the greater the ROI.  It’s that simple.  See, the economics of online marketing pivot almost entirely on conversion rate.  If you can acquire more conversions from your same advertising and email marketing spend you win.  You increase your net business and you also lower you cost per acquisition.

Paid clicks are expensive, and the idea that search engine optimization is free is false. Instead of continually having to bid higher or build more links to increase your net results – pouring more effort into the top of your marketing funnel – it’s time to turn more and more of your existing clicks into real business. It’s time to widen the funnel at the next stage forward.

Matching Your Call to Action to Customer Buying Stage

The first step in widening the funnel is understanding who your website visitors are and where they are at in their buying process.  It’s no coincidence that most “good” websites have a conversion rate of about 3%.  That is because at any given time only 3% of your market is buying. They are the companies calling for proposals, requesting demos, and engaging your sales staff.  These active buyers are in the sales funnel and willing to commit within the next 90 days. But what about the rest? The remaining 97%?

The remaining 97% represent those people who maybe are not buying today, but will be buying shortly and if not from you, then from your competitors. Therefore, how do you convert these website visitors into qualified leads?  Well, it all starts with a strategy that encourages visitors to “raise their hands” and let you know where they are in their buying process.  Once you know where they are, then you can match your offer or call to action.

Typically, there are four different types of visitors who are on your website; and each represents a different stage in the buying process:

1.    General Browsers
These visitors haven’t identified a business need yet, but they are curious to “see what’s going on.”  Looking for as much knowledge gain as anything else, they are trying to keep up to date on all the positional technologies or solutions that can help their business be successful. They are always on alert to keep their company developing or advancing their own knowledge and abilities.  Maybe they know that they should do a better job of optimizing their website for search engine traffic, but nothing has caused that to be a pressing business need at this time.

For these people, you will need to offer them a short educational piece, such as a newsletter.  Have a short (just email address) form with a privacy statement to encourage them to educate themselves via your content.  Don’t ask for too much information. These individuals will not see the value in providing a lot of personal information, as they don’t have a pressing need at the moment.  In the content you share with them, make sure to include points that raise problem awareness.  That way when they’re ready to take the next step in their sales process. Hopefully the valuable content and education you provided will encourage them to seek you out.  And you have accomplished that without selling them at all, just providing relevant content.

2.    Researchers
These are people who are early in their buying process.  They have identified their business goals and disparities and are starting to look for solutions. Maybe they have heard of your company or arrived at your site via keyword research.  These people most likely have a business issue they need to solve, but they aren’t ready to “pull the trigger” on a solution just yet. They’re still trying to identify the right solution from the right company.

An offer to subscribe to your newsletter may seem too basic and not a quick answer to their problem.  For this group you are better to target an e-book or guide that educates them on how to solve their problem.  They don’t want a “why pick you” message, but rather some best practices in how to manage and/or solve their problem.  With subsequent communication, you can nurture them through their buying process and share relevant success stories of how you help solve other clients’ problems that are similar to theirs.

In terms of offers, the best content to provide these visitors are case studies. Place some teaser text next to the offer, such as “Learn how ABC Company, a global manufacturing company, saved $XX via our services.” Or you could provide a short summary of the case study. Require the visitor to complete a short form to access the entire case study. For these visitors, you should feel comfortable asking for more information than what you asked of the visitors described in “awareness” category, because the content you’re providing is valuable and specific to their needs.

This is also the best time to show them how your solution differs from others out there.  I am not talking about you vs. your competitors, but rather your field vs. alternative solutions.  For example, if you are a company that provides conversational digital characters to engage website visitors, you may compare your solution with having a live chat option on their website.

3.    Recommenders
These are visitors who have done the research, know what they need, but aren’t ready to talk to a salesperson just yet.  These visitors are looking for more information about your services or product and are often building a short list of vendors to contact.

If you sell products, an online demo or free trial will appeal to this type of visitor. They are working on narrowing down their list to a short group, so showing them how your solution works will appeal to them. They want to see the user interface or get an idea of how easy the product is to install or use.  If you sell services, provide details about your services.  What value do you provide? How do your services – and you – differ from other providers?  I often call this the “brochure-ware” portion of your website that many company websites only focus on.  While still very important, it should just be a part of the overall needs of your website. Creating landing pages for these particular visitors is a good idea as well, as many times they will come to your site through a very targeted search. Instead of wasting their time with having to navigate through your entire site, they can get the information they are looking for on this highly focused page.

4.    Buyers
While this is the holy grail of website traffic, if you have not tackled the areas of the other three visitors effectively, the majority of your prospects will never make it this far.  Offer these folks a short form that says something like “Got a Question?” or “Please Contact Me”.  Don’t make the mistake of trying to have this form do too much.  Many people make the mistake of having long forms, thinking that the form rather than the salesperson should do the qualifying.  Remember that web visitors are generally very impatient, so don’t ask for too much information. Let the salesperson take it the last mile.  If the form is too long, resulting in higher exit rate, then you’ve lost out on the opportunity to speak with a qualified lead. This is a devastating situation because if you lose them, then you are quite certain that a competitor got them.

The vast majority of the marketplace and your traffic will be in the first two personas of this list. Many websites only target the prospects that are in the last two stages.  The problem is if you do not engage your prospects in the early stages, you may not even be considered at the end.  You need to target your audience early in their buying stages, and then using marketing automation tools such as Net-Results nurture your prospects methodically so that you are the top-of-mind vendor they consider when they reach the later stages.

Always remember that visitors to your website are in different stages of the buying cycle. You cannot treat all of them the same. To prevent leads from falling through the cracks, make sure you have offers that appeal to all of them.  Adjust your strategy and pages to appeal to each stage.  That does not mean you should have multiple calls to action on each and every page; what it means is to look at who is viewing a particular page and identify where they are at in their buying process, and have an applicable call to action. Tying your content to your visiting audience will provide you with the winning foundation to a much higher conversion rate, and turn greater revenue and ROI on your marketing investment.