If you manage consumable products such as bottled coffee drinks, digital cameras or dry cleaning services, then promotional tools are proven to generate cost-effective sales conversions. Products that are in highly competitive categories or are high-impulse items benefit greatly from the visibility that promotion creates. Business-to-business promotional offers are almost universally effective in generating qualified leads into your sales channel(s).
Method #4: Branding
New and established companies alike need to build the bond of TRUST when planning to convert website traffic into revenue. One study by the Harvard School of Business shows that a consumer needs three to seven brand repetitions before the bond of trust is high enough to generate a transaction. Some trust-building methods may be as simple as repeat visits to your website, regularly scheduled email communications, search engine exposures or targeted ad banner repetition on well-respected websites. The messages to reinforce through your communications could include:
 | Superior customer service (Nordstrom’s) |
| Reliability – spend more now and save money over the long haul (John Deere) |
| Exceptional Quality or Image (Prada, Gucci, Estée Lauder, Armani, Calvin Klein) |
Conversion Marketing
Now, with an understanding of the online marketing fundamentals, we can start our exploration of Conversion Marketing. Once someone starts interacting with your products/services, your opportunity to close the sale is within your grasp. Remember that your eCommerce conversion rates are the key to success. To calculate the ratio of Visitors to Buyers, divide the number of visitors to your site by the number of transactions to get your Conversion rate, as shown below:
Measuring this ratio regularly and tracking your promotional activities are the fundamental building block of your success as a Conversion Marketer.
For a copy of the conversion tracking tool used with my consulting clients, visit the URL below to download an Excel document designed to capture conversion data in an organized fashion.
http://www.conversionmarketingbook.com/resources.html
Abandonment Rate:
Have you ever watched someone standing in a long line at the grocery store? Picture the well-dressed young man I saw last week walk up to the Express Line with his three items – a bunch of bananas, a jar of chocolate sauce, and a half-gallon of Rocky Road ice cream. He’s juggling his load because he didn’t think to grab a hand cart, but he’s sure the line’s going to be quick. Five minutes later, his line hasn’t budged.
The freezing cold ice cream carton is making his hands tingle as he shifts it from one hand to the other. A banana falls off the bunch and lands on the floor. The grumbling starts, the sighing, the craning of the neck, looking for the obstruction at the front of the line. “What is the hold up? I mean, I’ve just got a few – >>CRASH<<! There goes the jar of chocolate sauce, splattering all over the floor. He looks around, wide-eyed and mouth open, everyone staring at him. What do you think he’ll do next? He’ll head for the nearest exit as fast as possible! He’s embarrassed about the scene he caused, mad about the slow checkout lane and is disappointed that he didn’t get to enjoy his dessert. This is an illustration of “Shopping Cart Abandonment”, where shoppers enter your Shopping Cart and leave without making a purchase.
Minimizing the number of clicks between the product pages and checkout in your ecommerce catalog is as important as a fast checkout line at the grocery store.
Minimizing the number of clicks between the product pages and checkout in your ecommerce catalog is as important as a fast checkout line at the grocery store. The standard rule of thumb is to expect a 50% drop-off rate each time a Buyer is required to view an additional page while checking out of your shopping cart. The Abandonment Rate is the rate at which people leave your website in the middle of the transaction. Experienced Conversion Marketers will track the Abandonment Rate of their shopping cart and work to minimize the number of clicks in the checkout process. To illustrate how, let’s run some math.
Suppose it costs roughly $2.00 to get a Visitor to your website. This number factors in all the costs associated with driving traffic – your time, design costs, advertising, promotion, and anything else related to bringing people to your site. Let’s assume you have twelve Visitors who come to your site. If you have two clicks between your product landing page and your checkout, and there’s a 50% drop-out rate between each click, then six of twelve visitors will drop out on the first click, while three of the remaining six will drop out on click number two. This leaves three buyers prior to the entering of payment information. The true cost per Visitor is $8.00, as 75% of interested buyers were lost in the checkout process if your Shopping Cart requires 2 clicks from product to order completion.
This illustration assumes the cost per Visitor is $2.00
When you are able to reduce the number of clicks in your Shopping Cart from 2 to 1 clicks, then the Cost per Buyer drops to $4.00, dramatically reducing your acquisition costs.
THE CONVERSION LOOP THE SIMPLICITY OF AUTOMATION
Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals on how to think about the online economy and how goods are promoted online, let’s explore converting visitors into buyers, in terms of the Conversions Loop methodology. To illustrate the conversions process, let’s take a look at conversions in terms of planning a glamorous party hosted to raise investment for a start-up company.
CELEBRATE
Let’s say you wanted to throw a party. The process of bringing people together for a celebration is a lot like the process of bringing traffic to your website and converting those casual visitors into customers – what we call the Conversion Loop. Whether we’re talking about a dinner party for a few friends or a grand fund-raising dinner, both involve a four-step process to bring people closer and closer to the goal you have in mind.
An ophthalmologist friend of mine organized an informal gathering at his home to tell his friends about an opportunity to invest in a technology start-up for doctors. Guests were greeted at the door of his elegant waterfront home by a Spanish guitarist to set the mood. A serving staff was busy in the kitchen, rolling-out a tantalizing stream of gourmet appetizers to accompany the fine wine served to guests. Mid-party, a group of executives gave an overview of the investment opportunity in the company, accompanied by the “call-to-action” of reviewing an investment prospectus. The process of putting together this fund-raiser party is no different than operating a Conversion Marketing campaign. A four-step formula for guiding people through a buying decision closely aligns with the process of planning a party. When it all comes together, everybody wins.
Step 1) The first thing to do when you throw a party is decide whom you want to come and send invitations. This is similar to identifying the Target audience for your marketing campaigns.
Step 2) Once you send out your invitations, the next step is to see who is interested and get their RSVP.
Step 3) As