Conversion optimization is a term near and dear to any stellar marketer’s heart. Watching a conversion rate soar can make your heart feel light as air. Watching a conversion rate plummet can lead to sleepless nights.
As you put together your conversion optimization plan for 2012, I offer these five tips for high soaring conversion rates:
- Don’t rely solely on ads.It’s easy to think that paid acquisition is the easiest/quickest way to increase your number of leads and sales – but that may not be true.In Q1 and Q2 of this year, take a portion of your ad budget and dedicate it to content marketing, social marketing or some other strategy you’ve been afraid to try. The payoff could be huge both in terms of leads and sales – but also from a branding perspective.
Your company has the ability to create deeper, more meaningful relationships with your constituencies when you engage in more personable forms of marketing.
- Create a landing page for each traffic source.You probably know you should be creating landing pages for all of your ads – but what about the other type of marketing you engage in? Do you create blog posts? Videos? White papers? Webinars?Assuming you include a call to action for every piece of content you create – where are you sending that traffic?
If it’s not a message-matched, optimized landing page you’re leaving conversions on the table.
- Test your landing pages religiously.Testing your landing pages is not optional. When you create a landing page and let it sit there collecting dust, you miss out on high quality leads and new sales. If you’re not sure how to test your landing pages, check out the L.I.F.T framework by WiderFunnel:
Here are the questions you MUST consider when testing any landing page:
- Value proposition – How strongly does your value proposition come across to your visitors?
- Relevance – How closely does the content on your page match what your visitors are expecting to see?
- Clarity – How obvious is your main call to action?
- Anxiety – How much does your copy, design or layout alarm or agitate your visitors?
- Distraction – How many conflicting calls to action do your visitors see on your page?
- Urgency – Why should your visitors take action now instead of later?
Following this framework will get you off to a great start testing your landing pages!
- Get a little wild with your messaging.Are you talking to your audience the way they like? Make this year the year you test new messaging. Try testing new: calls to action, headlines, body copy, value propositions and more!Before you start any new and costly campaign, test the messaging on a small portion of your traffic to ensure you’re using words that resonate with your audience!
Don’t be afraid to try messaging outside of your corporate comfort zone. Your customers, whether they are B2B or B2C, are real people who want to feel a connection with your company. Toss out the jargon and try something personable!
- Don’t be afraid to steal.Okay, okay, this piece of advice only works when it comes to online conversion optimization. Don’t hold me responsible if you end up in jail for stealing a new car!Look at the elements of competitor landing pages that you like – and steal their ideas. Are they using messaging that you like? Test it on your own audience. Using pictures that you like? Test similar images. Love that headline? Grab it for your own test.
To kickstart your search for landing page ideas to steal, try playing the new ConversionSkills game.
In this fun online game you are presented with different variations of a single landing page. You then guess which version you think had the highest conversion rate. Whether you’re right or wrong, you have the option to download the full case study for the test for tons of actionable insight.
If you’re right a lot, you’ll also pick up some awesome bragging rights and a shiny new ConversionSkills badge. Trust me, your digital marketing friends will be jealous. Everyone else will probably just think you’re a nerd – which is awesome.
What are you waiting for? Play the ConversionSkills game now and steal those high-converting ideas!
These five tips should have your conversion rates rockin in 2012. If you have any questions tweet me @allenkristina!
