What’s driving visitors to your site — SEO, paid advertising, social media marketing, etc. — is not necessarily what’s going to make those visitors convert into paying customers. And this is where conversion marketing comes in.

Conversion marketing is a strategy that uses certain tactics to encourage visitors to take a specific action, “converting” those window shoppers into actual purchasers of your products or services.

A conversion rate is the rate at which these visitors convert into customers. For example, if you have 10,000 website visitors in an average month, and 1,500 of those visitors actually end up buying something through your website, then your conversion rate would be 15% — ie: 15% of your website visitors end up as paying customers. Conversion rates can be used to understand your ROI on paid advertising spend, for one thing.

And websites don’t have to be selling products to have successful conversion rates; all the customer needs to do is take a specific action as detailed by you in order to count as a “conversion”. For example, they could request a quote for services, click on an advertisement, or submit a contact us form. This means that every website, no matter what it’s selling, needs to employ conversion marketing in its overall inbound marketing strategy.

Who do you target with conversion marketing?

Your target market remains the same…what you need to change is how well you guide that market to a conversion. Most of your website visitors will likely make their way to your site via PPC ads or organic search engine results, and this means they are valuable prospects since they are obviously already interested in at least some of your content. Your other visitors may come through by directly searching for your site, or because of a prior relationship, which makes them just as valuable.

As you can see from both of these cases, you’re not inventing brand new prospects from scratch and trying to convince them to make a purchase. Instead, with conversion marketing, you’re working hand in hand with inbound visitors who are already coming to you with a need. It’s not about presenting them with a decision in the first place, rather, you are helping make the decision easy by giving them a compelling reason to choose you (and your products or services).

What are some conversion “hooks” you can use?

We’ll get into these methods in detail in another post later this month, but for now, here are some standard conversion “hooks” you can employ to increase those conversion rates:

• CTAs with Benefits: replace your CTA hook-lines with ‘benefits’. For example, instead of simply saying “Learn How”, use “Yes, I want a cleaner house, faster”
• Attractive Landing Pages: here are 10 Do’s and Dont’s to follow to make sure you set up the perfect landing page from the start
• Tiny Commitments: also known as ‘micro-commitments’, these allow your prospects to test-drive your product before committing to a purchase. For example, you could promote a free 30-day trial, or a sample version before payment is required.
• Product Images: always show images next to your product listing. Another good idea is to clearly mark your top sellers, or “most popular” or sales items.
• Use Videos: a lot of customers need time to make a decision. If you only present them with BUY or DON’T BUY, then you’re not helping them out. Find other ways to engage with them right away, like having them watch a video of your product in use.
• More Info: make sure your product or services page includes all of the information the customer should need to make a decision. You wouldn’t list a dress for sale without also posting a size chart, or sell a bookshelf without listing it’s size and height dimensions. The more info, the better enabled your customer is in making their purchase decision.
• Easy-to-Use Website: intuitive page navigation or search functionality is hugely important for any website, but especially those with e-commerce. You want your customers to be able to find what they are looking for, right away. If your website is frustrating they’ll likely click away to another competitor.

Conversion marketing is all about communicating with your customers in an effective and meaningful way, and encouraging them to make a purchase decision with your business. There are many other ways to engage with your prospects and guide them in the buyer’s journey, but your process should always start with a review of your analytics data and finding your weakest links: what pages have the highest bounce rates? At what point are your shopping carts being abandoned? Conversion marketing and your website analytics need to work together as a team; the results and ongoing feedback will help you to continually develop your conversion marketing strategy.

For a review of your website’s conversion strategy and how you can make improvements to your conversion rate, sign up today for a free Inbound Assessment by one of our Certified Inbound Specialists: