Internet Marketing- It's Still Marketing

How Can Conversion Optimization Help Your Business?

 

Recently, I heard a salesman say that his CEO is telling his sales team that they are going to have to work for 20% more business just to generate the same amount of revenue as last year. And he is most likely completely correct.

The question then becomes, where will your extra 20% of business come from? Can you afford to spend additional advertising dollars that do not give you the measurable impact you need to generate 20% more sales leads, 20% more requests for information, or 20% more sold online (or in your store)? How will you know that your hard work is giving you the 20% more you will need to be able to survive the winter ahead?

How does the Golden rule help you and your business? As Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now said recently in a webinar focused on conversion optimization, the Golden Rule is simply that the person with the gold, makes the rules. That has never been more true than in this tight economic atmosphere! Your customers are in control, creating a customer focused website will increase your online conversion rates, giving you that extra 20% you need to survive the tough economic times ahead.

 

Why Some Internet Marketing Strategies Are Losing Lead Conversions

 

"Conversion optimization, what is that and what is the point?" was a question recently posed to me. I love it when people want to get down to the basics and find out not just the what, but the why. A simple question deserves a simple answer. So first, lets answer the what.

All businesses have a sales funnel. A sales funnel is simply a graphical representation of the process of acquiring interest in your product/service and then ‘funneling' those interested people into actual customers.

The funnel has steps in it to represent your business selling process. At each step it can be expected that a certain percentage of those who were first interested will drop off. Not everyone is going to be your customer.

What this funnel, and most sales funnels like it, does not show you is why your potential customers are falling out, or jumping out, of the sales process.

Imagine instead the colander, and that is closer to what most sales funnel actually ACT like. Somewhere in this funnel people have dropped off- where and why? The goal of conversion optimization is to identify those places where people are falling out of the funnel (or colander) and not making it to the bottom, the part where they become loyal paying customers. (The part that matters the most to any business of any size.) Knowing where they drop off is half the battle, figuring out why is where you can start plugging up the holes to retain more of your potential customers.  Conversion optimization should be able to identify your customer's buying processes and match that to your selling process.

So back to the second part of the question, "Conversion optimization, what is that and what is the point?" The what is turning more interested people into actual customers. The why is just as simple.

You have 2 basic choices to increase your sales; you can either pump more money into acquiring that initial interest and therefore increase your chances of acquiring more customers. In other words, pouring more water into the colander in hopes that more of the water (customers) will end up at the bottom and not spilled out somewhere else.

OR...

Plug up the holes in the colander and ensure that you will get more water where you want it. Conservation is becoming more and more popular, and in business it can apply to those sparse marketing dollars turning more people into customers.

Still need help turning traffic into customers?

 

 

How an Internet Marketing Plan will Keep You Sane

 

A house is being built across the street from me, and it does not cease to amaze me how quickly a structure with so many internal systems can be put together. Trees are cut, big heavy (and expensive) equipment wakes you up in the morning, and within a matter of days a structure is there that just simply did not exist before.

Being the social person I am, I walk across the street after my morning coffee and chat with one of the builders. (Ok, I admit, my real motivation was to tell him not to park on my lawn- but I was at least nice about it!)

What does this all have to do with websites or internet marketing? I promise, there is point to my story.

So as I am chatting with Bob the Builder, he relates his frustration to me that the house has so many mistakes and do-overs (wasted resources) because he was never given a blueprint. (!) He is winging it as he goes, and as a result is spending too much time and money on a project that no one will be happy with and who knows if it will sell? His workers are frustrated and confused, and there is nothing he can do. He simply can not understand why anyone who spend this kind of money and not invest a little bit extra to make hire an architect. In his words, "a blueprint is worth 10 times the amount you would pay in what you will save in time and money." I relay my condolences and sympathy to him, but I can not help wondering...

Does this sound like any website (or PPC campaigns, email broadcasts) projects you know of (or are working on)?

Why indeed, would you spend a single dime on a building project that you did not sit down and calculate a plan for? Who clears an entire forest of trees to only put a house 20 feet from the road? Why would you spend 5, 10, or 15 thousand dollars on a website and not plan scenarios on how your customers will want to interact with your website? Why would you not set goals and then measure against those goals to determine your success? If it is worth doing, isn't it worth doing right?

In the rush to get your website renovated, or the campaign launched, are you cutting corners and missing the mark?

In today's competitive landscape and tight budgets, it not only makes sense to have a marketing plan, it is essential to growth (and survival!). More specifically, a marketing plan not only details what your company's goals are, it should take into account what your customer's goals,objectives, and preferences are. After all, if your customers can reach their goals through you, that adds to your bottom line.

It still comes down to those 3 seemingly basic questions:

1. WHO are you trying to persuade?
2. WHAT are you trying to persuade them to do?
3. HOW will they feel confident in taking that action (with you)?

It is, and will always be, all about the customer.

 

One small step for search engine marketing, one huge step for your customers...

 

It is always refreshing to know that you are not alone in the world, that there are others like you who think (and act) like you. This was how I felt after returning from NYC to attend Future Now's Persuasive Online Copywriting and Call to Action seminars.

Years ago when I decided to pursue a career in marketing, I was driven by the concept of motivation and persuasion. Why do people do what they do, why is it that given the same circumstances and environment people can have completely different perspectives (tomato- tamato anyone?), why do people make the decisions that they make? Why, why, why, why....

And so I studied marketing plans, demographics, customer segmentation versus mass marketing, and sales processes. I even dabbled in philosophy and psychology and consumer behavior and still the question nagged at me- but why? All of the traditional methods of marketing told me the what or the how, not the why.

And then came search engine marketing- now we are getting somewhere, or so I initially thought. I soon learned that a lot of SEO and SEM experts were merely playing the same numbers game as traditional marketing mediums. Find out what the most searched terms are and use those for the website to get better rankings and more visibility. In other words, lets dump more traffic into a sales funnel that is full of holes. But I was determined, there had to be a better way, I still wanted to know why.

What was the intent of the person who typed in that search term, what questions are they looking to answer, and how can I best answer that for them?

The methodology that I have learned so far from the great people at Future Now answered the why. The why is answered when you consider, plan for, test, optimize, and refine the marketing to align with a person's decision making preferences.

And just how do you do that you ask? Start with these three questions:

1. Who are you trying to persuade?
2. What are you trying to persuade them to do?
3. What does that person need in order to feel comfortable and confident taking that action?

The first two are not new questions to most marketers, the third brings to light the missing link.

Our personality traits shape how we see and interact with the world (and make our decisions). Your customers have a preference for how they interact with you, and it just might not be what you expect. People will easily do what they want to do, the job for marketing should be to figure out what it is that they want, how they want it, and deliver it in a way that is appealing to them.

So the small step for search engine and internet marketing? Empathize with your customers, after all, it is all about them is it not? Don't talk at them, talk with them, in their language, in a way that they are comfortable with. If you have traffic coming to your website, then you have potential customers coming to you with questions. Do you know what questions they are asking? Does your site answer those questions, or frustrate them (and they leave to visit your competition)? All that polished, clever, and pretty copy writing will not mean anything to your customer if it does not answer their questions.

I know what you are thinking- of course I empathize and listen to my customers- but are you really listening? All the focus groups and surveys in the world will not give you your customers natural reaction to your company, product, or service.

But here is the good part, with the internet as a marketing medium, we now have the opportunity to really find out what customers think. Web analytics can tell you how they found you and how they interact with your website. Online forums, blogs, and customer reviews can tell you what they really think. With every click on your website, your customers are telling you what they like, and what they don't. Your customers are in control of the message online, are you listening, or are you making your decision based on actual behavior, or speculations?

So here is the start, the small step marketers need to take to shift the thinking back to the customer. Because it is all about the customer...

Answer that third question, and you have taken that small step.