Bernard May is the CEO of National Positions, a 5-time Inc. 500 company, award-winning marketing agency and Google Premier Partner.
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Over the past decade, the metrics of traffic growth, impressions and click volume have largely been replaced by sales conversions, profit growth and return on ad spend (ROAS). Because results and expertise are what matter in the digital marketing world—not effort (unfortunately) and endless deliverables.
After all, what is an additional $20,000 in website traffic worth if this traffic is not converting into tangible profits and ROAS? If you said nothing, you get a gold star. If your paid media campaigns are getting 300% more clicks, but your return on ad spend is barely breaking even, you are not gaining any (profitable) ground.
So, why is focusing on conversion strategies difficult for most businesses to grasp? Because this means looking in the mirror to see where follow-through may be falling short when it comes to executing the opportunities their marketing teams provide.
It’s time to get real and look beyond the vanity metrics and focus on where your conversion funnel is bleeding.
Website Traffic And SEO
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You have spent countless hours on content, layouts and generally appeasing the Google algorithms to drive traffic to your website. Great. Now what?
What brought your customers through your digital doors? And how will you drive them to your desired conversion action? This could be clicking through to a specific page, filling out a form or making a purchase. Even micro-conversions like watching a video or downloading an e-book count, but it’s important to set a goal for every page and track it.
In short, if you are driving traffic to your site, you need to be delivering on what attracted prospects in the first place. This is where the data comes into play. Here are a few things to know before you can improve your conversion rates:
• Current conversion rate: How much traffic is converting now?
• Best conversion sources: For the traffic that is converting, where is that traffic coming from? Google searches? Social media?
• Pages with the highest traffic numbers and bounce rates: Which pages on your site are the majority of your visitors landing on, and which pages have the highest bounce rates?
If 90% of your traffic is coming to your home page and 90% is immediately bouncing off your site, you have uncovered an opportunity for improving conversion. Putting tools in place like heatmaps, session recordings and Google Tag Manager to track page “events” can give insights into what is causing your traffic to bail from your site.
Google Ads And Paid Media
When “paying to play,” think beyond the clicks. Instead, consider what happens after that click.
Where are you sending click traffic? Are your landing pages inspiring customers to continue their buying journey? Is your team effectively able to keep up with the influx of call traffic from your paid ads?
Much like an iceberg, the clicks you are paying for are only the tip visible above the surface. The real work, the conversion work, exists far deeper.
Agencies claiming to guarantee lower cost per click (CPC) overnight are likely obfuscating the reality that the true value of a paid media campaign comes from better conversion and ROAS. Why? Because investing time, effort and testing from a conversion standpoint takes a more extensive understanding of consumer psychology, and that is not easily “teased out” and applied to paid media strategies.
While paid media algorithms will continue to prescribe “quality scores” to the advertiser, giving them the shot of dopamine needed (from the likes of Google) to continue their paid media efforts, Google clouds the conversion metrics via limited attribution models that often default success to its ad platform.
It is time to home in on the conversion activities hidden deep in the iceberg (an inverted marketing funnel) and improve your post-click conversion strategies within the paid media ecosystem.
Scaling Lifetime Value Conversions
With such an abundance of effort placed on the aforementioned areas of site traffic and paid traffic, often an underwhelming amount of effort is paid to those customers who have already converted.
Marketing types like myself may cluster these “types” as customers or past purchasers—those who have already converted into paying (and hopefully loyal) customers whom you can reengage with additional products and solutions down the road.
This customer base should be treated as a completely separate entity, as the inspiration they need to convert again will be different from those who are completely unaware of your brand’s existence.
In short, they have already bought into your message, values and differentiation over the competition. And if they converted once, they are far more likely to convert again.
Remarketing via Google Ads or social media ads should take on a different tone. Make sure your email promotions are specific to the tastes and needs of the customer and their past purchases. And give returning website visitors a slightly different experience that reminds them that they are already “in the club.”
Just as you don’t address new acquaintances like you do your inner circle, the same should be applied to your reengagement (or reconversion) strategies. Have the courage to treat past purchasers with a velvet glove and open arms.
The Conversion-First Mindset
As you dive deeper into the holiday season and start planning for 2023, it is time to see conversion optimization as a strategy in and of itself. In this emerging era of data privacy and cookie elimination, focusing on conversion metrics over vanity metrics may be the only true way forward.
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Author: Bernard May, Forbes Councils Member
