Have you ever heard the phrase, “What’s old is new again?” No truer words were ever spoken when it relates to building a high-performance website to convert visitors into buyers. Whether you are talking about the hottest new style in designer jeans, auto body styles or handbags, styles come and go in predictable cycles. Much like the latest fashions, what is working on the Internet such as viral marketing, social media, sweepstakes, coupons, mail-in rebates and free shipping, has been working in the offline world for decades.
Before we get to work on your website conversion rates, let’s start with a shocking-but-true history lesson.
Back in the 1995, when the hottest fashions were influenced by TV shows like Friends, the concept of eCommerce was brand new. Believe it or not, massive debate and speculation arose as to whether or not eCommerce would take hold. At this time, the multi-billion dollar eCommerce pioneer Amazon was a start-up with its employees working on doors that had been modified into desks. Really!
In 1996, I was sitting around a mahogany boardroom table with a group of razor-sharp marketers employed by small company owned by Bill Gates; a privately-held image licensing company called Corbis. We were having a heated debate as to whether or not to spend our resources building an eCommerce store. eCommerce was so new then, we actually decided AGAINST building an online store as the group didn’t believe it was going to take-off. Really?
Being a Marketer when eCommerce was brand-new offers amazing perspective about how to structure websites for conversion given all the changing technologies used in online marketing. Currently, the leading eCommerce companies, such as Amazon, eBay, Dell, Apple iTunes and Netflix are transacting hundreds of billions of dollars in eCommerce sales each year, which is a long cry from the days debating whether the business model of eCommerce would stick.
Today, eCommerce opportunities exist like never before and these opportunities keep expanding! Companies I work with are using eCommerce to supplement their income, make a great living, or become spectacularly wealthy leveraging the techniques in this book. It is universally understood that the Internet was, and still remains, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces ever experienced in the history of the world. It is now possible to run a highly successful business virtually anywhere in the world.
Each year, I spend a month in a tropical location on a working vacation while running a publishing business. Because of a well-crafted Conversion Marketing strategy, the business never misses a beat. I am able to get online and manage my business affairs from a tablet and a laptop, while sipping an icy refreshment by the pool.
You too can pick and choose when and where you work by creating your own Conversion strategy.
The principles contained in this book include highlights of successful real-life Conversion Marketing campaigns, designed to stimulate ideas for your business. The goal of Conversion Marketing is to equip you with formulas for achieving success in converting Vistors into Buyers.
The experiences shared in this book come from running hundreds of promotional campaigns for leading companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Nissan Motors, Travelocity, CVS Pharmacy and AT&T. Timeless online promotional-marketing expertise, combined with the unique psychology of online Conversion Marketing, can be applied to any marketing organization or product strategy.
As you absorb the ideas presented in this book, you will see how various companies, like well-respected luxury brands BMW, Prada, and Gucci have successfully harnessed the selling power of automated marketing technology to leverage the Internet for their incredible profits. Business-to-business marketers will benefit from the resources, techniques and principles of Conversion Marketing as well. Small businesses equally benefit from learning these tools of influence, as a Conversion Marketing strategy can be deployed with minimal marketing budgets. The psychology of buying goods and services can be applied to your website using these easy-to-follow principles of conversion.
So let’s breakdown Conversion Marketing into the fundamental building blocks. The magic of being a successful Conversion Marketer boils down to your Conversion Rate – your ratio of Visitors to Buyers. Did you know that less than 2% of typical website visitors complete a transaction? Did you also know that millions of websites receives only ten visitors a day? When you do the math, this translates to six online transactions per month. This is hardly compelling and is precisely the purpose of this book; for businesses with hundreds of millions of visitors per month to the small just getting started.
The primary goals of the Conversion Marketer are:
1. Increase Traffic to your website
2. Increase your Rate of Conversion from Visitors to Buyers
With these two primary goals in mind, let’s explore some simple math to better understand the process.
Do you have any idea what a Visitor is worth to your website? On average, it can cost anywhere from $.30 to $275.00 to attract a first time visitor to your website. Perhaps your cost per visitor is significantly more if you sell business jets or luxury vacation homes, but stick with this example for a moment. Let’s assume a first time visitor costs $2.00 per visit. This number needs to factor-in your time, your promotional and advertising costs, design work and overhead. If you are doing a great job and getting a 2% conversion rate, then each new customer you acquire is costing $100.00 per transaction, even if this customer spends $29.97 per transaction. Here’s what that looks like:
It does not take a mathematical wizard to understand that you must do one of 3 things to fully capitalize on this fast-growing marketplace: 1) lower your cost per visitor; 2) increase your conversion rate; or, 3) increase your average purchase dollar value. By understanding the principles in this book, you will fully understand how to accomplish these goals simultaneously, using automation, so that you too can profit from your ideas and enhance your career success.
Many Internet marketers have three common weaknesses when designing their marketing strategy for higher conversions. If you already have an eCommerce website, see if any of these vulnerabilities sound familiar.
Weakness #1 - Audience Targeting: You’re attempting to sell goods to your entire audience of traffic, versus segmenting your website Visitors. With these Conversion Marketing ideas, you will learn how to cater your efforts just to the Buyers by clearly identifying what makes them tick.
Weakness #2 - Single Campaign Optimization: You’re spending your time sequentially, one marketing campaign at a time, to sell a variety of goods and services. In today’s climate, your website will need to cater to multiple audiences simultaneously, which may require launching multiple marketing campaigns with highly specific targeting.
Weakness #3 - Catch-All Philosophy: The Design of your website and promotional messaging are a catch-all for multiple audiences. Ultimately, using a catch-all philosophy only “catches” a few.
In exploring your Conversion Marketing strategy, we will discover how to profile your target audience and increase your conversion rates. The common pitfalls listed above can be remedied with a Conversion Marketing strategy that identifies and caters to the needs of your target audience.
Before we go further, it is important to understand the fundamental building blocks of the Internet economy by understanding how money flows online.
The Flow of Money
Money is made on the Internet in 4 primary methods:
Method #1: Publishing
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