Digital marketing strategies change every year, which means that increasing your conversions in 2018 might require a change of approach. We’ve compiled a list of 5 tips to help boost your conversion rates.
What is a conversion rate?
Conversion is when people that visit your site take action based on what you ask them to do. Therefore, a conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that complete the desired action.
So, if 200 people come to your site and 100 sign up to download the free e-book you offer, then your conversion rate is 50%. That’s awesome.
But in reality, numbers are very, very different. Average conversion rates move somewhere in the range from 2% and 5%. High conversion rates, on the other hand, can go as high 11% but these astonishing numbers are reserved for the top 10% of AdWords players!
If this has thrown you in a depressing state of mind, snap out of it! Instead of regarding these numbers as an unachievable goal, look at them as an opportunity to increase conversions.
The question is, how do you improve your conversion rates? There are some standard digital marketing strategies such as great copywriting that accompanies your offer, or a killer landing page. There are also a great number of tools you can use to help you convince people to complete the desired action.
But as mentioned before, you need to keep up with the newest trends. Here’s how to leverage the most relevant digital marketing strategies to enhance your conversion rates in 2018.
Image credit: Rapid Boost Marketing
Digital Marketing Strategy #1 – Implement AI
According to Adobe, “47% of the organizations that have advanced digital practices, said they have a defined AI strategy.”
This comes as no surprise, considering the users’ opinions on AI – 61% of people surveyed stated they think AI will make the world better. In fact, people use AI-enabled devices and services more than they realize; while only 33% believe they use AI-powered technology, the percentage of people actually using AI is 77%!
Even though so far it is mostly used in games, this is about to change very soon. Digital marketing is just one of the fields where the possibilities of AI are virtually boundless. The idea is to use AI technologies to stimulate customer conversions and generate revenues at a faster pace.
For now, AI is used for automated research and data collection. Customers appreciate finding what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Big players like Facebook and Netflix have realized this and started using AI to improve UX by showing suggestions or serve more relevant content based on collected customer data. Just think of Facebook’s “People You May Know” or Netflix’s “Other Movies You May Enjoy”.
Simply put, offering a more personalized customer experience increases your ability to convert customers.
One of the best ways to offer a personalized experience is the use of chatbots. These bots can interact with users based on previously collected data. In the near future, we can expect chatbots to offer sensory experiences, including touch and voice. This will give users the impression they’re communicating with real people.
Other AI-powered technologies include:
Personalized product recommendations. AI recommendation engines filter out information, including the user’s past purchases, as well as the style and color from similar products. Then, these engines make predictions whether the user would like a certain product and serve relevant suggestions, thus minimizing the time spent searching.
Image credit: Shopify E-commerce University
Voice search is best suited to the modern users’ fast-paced lives. Today, there are about 45 million voice-assisted devices in the States, and this number is expected to rise to more than 65 million by next year. Google and Amazon are indisputable leaders in this field, leading the way to a future where users will be able to talk to their fridges and cars!
Augmented reality is a technology that allows consumers to experience the product in an interactive way. Many of these experiences are available through smartphone apps. For instance, these apps allow you to take a 360 view tour around a hotel and see all its facilities. Then, if you like what you see, you can use the app to make a reservation right away.
Image recognition fulfills two main demands of modern users – accuracy and speed. Mobile device users wait for maximum three seconds for (accurate) results. Shopping apps are a great example of how image recognition is deployed to scan products and get search results based on similar product categories or availability.
Digital Marketing Strategy #2 – Design a User-Friendly Website
When you build a website for your business, forget your own preferences and think about users first. If your website fails to engage users, they’ll leave and never come back. So, you can forget about conversions. What makes a user-friendly website? Here are the top three features you should focus on this year:
Minimalistic design. Visitors want simple sites where they can easily find what they want. Remove all unnecessary elements that may distract users from taking the desired action. This is especially important for your landing pages and homepage.
Facilitate navigation. Sites that are easy to navigate have higher conversion rates. The simplest way to make your website less confusing and improve UX is to add a sitemap. For this purpose, you can use tools such as xml-sitemaps.com. All you need to do enter your site URL!
Prioritize the mobile version. You do know that most people use mobile devices to search and buy stuff, right? That’s why you need to make sure that all elements of your site are optimized for mobile before you optimize them for desktop.
Digital Marketing Strategy #3 – Create Original, High-Quality Content
Users want useful, relevant, high-quality content. Even though it takes a great deal of time and patience, creating valuable content is a great way to build credibility and authority. This, in turn, will drive traffic and engagement. So, what makes content ‘valuable and unique’ in 2018?
Personalized content. If we needed to summarize the 2018 content trends in a word or two, it would be – personalized content. Marketers use tools to collect and analyze customer data and user behavior in order to produce content that is relevant and useful to different audience segments.
Social media posts. With 92% of B2B marketers and almost 90% of B2C marketers stating it’s their most utilized channel, social media remains THE place to post content. But in 2018 simply posting won’t do the trick. You also need to measure. Social media monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite and TweetReach, enable you to track trends and join conversations, i.e. engage with users directly. This, in the long run, will lead to higher conversion.
Video and live streaming. When it comes to the type of posts that do best at the moment, video and live streaming are the undisputed winners. So, if you want to stay ahead of the competition, make sure that Facebook video and YouTube are a part of your digital marketing strategies plan.
Written content remains relevant, with the average length of blog posts constantly increasing. Four years ago, an average article contained about 800 words. Today, even though the attention span of online users has decreased, the most successful articles are those with 2000+ words.
Digital Marketing Strategy #4 – Create Killer Landing Pages
If there’s a page on your site that has a purpose to convert customers, it’s the landing page.
You can have (and should have) a different landing page for each marketing campaign. Landing pages convert customers by urging them to take a certain action, such as:
- Download a free e-Book
- Buy an online course
- Participate in a survey
- Sign up for a newsletter
The two most important parts of landing pages are the headline and the CTAs.
The headline lets your potential customers know what to expect from the offer. That’s why it needs to be:
- unique and compelling
- specific and concise
- focus on one thing that you provide that your prospects need
Calls-to-action. CTAs’ function is to direct potential customers exactly where you want them to go. There are several standard CTA practices that work when it comes to increasing conversion rates.
First, you need to place your call to action in the most effective place on the landing page. According to many marketers, that place is at the top of the page so that users don’t have to go to the bottom of the page.
Second, one CTA on the landing page is enough. You can add another one at the bottom of the page as long as it refers to the same offer. If you overwhelm people with options, the choice will seem too complicated and they’ll give up.
Other than these standard landing page ‘rules’, here are some examples of killer landing pages for 2018 taken from real websites.
- Make sure the CTA button clearly stands out from the other colors on the page and invites the visitor to click.
- Add an explanatory video of the product/service you’re offering that answers the most basic questions
- Add a live chat bubble where visitors can direct their questions in case they’re indecisive
- Add a social proof to reassure visitors about the service’s/product’s popularity
- Offer a “free trial” option to reassure visitors in your product’s usefulness
- Offer free resources such as videos, guides, forums, podcasts, etc.
- Ask visitors a direct and simple question and get straight to the point
Finally, you can always improve your landing pages by conducting an A/B testing. Since the needs of potential customers are constantly changing, regular testing will enable you to track these changes and adjust elements on your landing page accordingly.
Make sure to test one element at the time and that your criteria are related to conversion rates.
There’s a number of great tools you can use for this purpose, such as:
Digital Marketing Strategy #5 – Ask Customers for Feedback
One of the simplest ways to improve your conversion rates is to simply talk to customers. You can learn so much about your prospects by conducting a simple survey instead of investing in different marketing campaigns.
Ask questions such as:
- How can we improve our website?
- What kind of offers would you like to get in the future?
- What would you like to learn from our blog?
Once you get the answers, you’ll be able to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly, all with the purpose to increase conversions.
Another way to get feedback is through customers’ testimonials and reviews. They not only give valuable insight but can also add social value if showcased on the landing page. They show that other people have bought your product and benefited from it. This reduced the fear in potential customers and increases your credibility.
Videos are the best form of testimonials but you can always turn to the good old written ones. Just make sure to ask customers to add their full names and photos, if possible.
When it comes to reviews, don’t be afraid of the negative ones. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect product or service. A few negative reviews are expected.
Finally, conduct case studies from time to time. While it is true that case studies require a considerable amount of time and efforts (no wonder you’ve been avoiding them), they can do wonders for your conversion rates.
Case studies have a highly persuasive effect on potential customers because they demonstrate you’re not afraid to test your product, while at the same time stressing its benefits.
Conclusion on Digital Marketing Strategies
Increasing your conversion rates is not a simple process, but it can be done with a few small tweaks to your website and your digital marketing strategies.
- Start by removing the clutter from your website and adjusting the landing pages to better suit your potential customer needs
- Offer personalized, high-quality content that is useful to prospects
- Add reviews and testimonials to reassure people in your service’s value
- Keep your site up to date by deploying the hottest AI technologies
These are just a few things you can do to boost conversion rates in 2018.
What digital marketing strategies do you use to increase your conversion rates?