First of all, yes, more acronyms. Just when you finish understanding SEO and PPC, CRO punches you in the face.
But it’s really not that bad. Today we’re going to cover all on conversion rate optimization (yes, CRO) and its strategies. So let’s get into it.
What is CRO in marketing?
CRO stands for conversion rate optimization.
It focuses on increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action (or conversion in marketing lingo).
That action might be purchasing a product, filling out a form, or just clicking a link. Any small step that moves people towards becoming customers is important, and it’s called a conversion.
The formula to calculate conversion rate is dividing the number of visits by the number of people converted and multiplying it by a hundred.
Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for any business. If you don’t know how many people are converting from your marketing channels, you can not optimize it for the better.
This data is generally used to track whether your marketing channels are converting people who look at your ads, landing pages, optin forms, Facebook ads, e-commerce store listing, etc.
It shows you exactly which channels are performing well and which channels need optimization. Is that headline working? Is that color good enough? Is that incentive a good lead magnet? Are we pricing our product right?
Conversion rate gives you the answers to all of the questions above.
What is CRO strategy?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies are tactics to make the best out of your existing traffic and marketing campaigns.
Compared to CRO, SEO and PPC are easier tactics of digital marketing, and that’s why they tend to receive more attention and a higher percent of the budget. However, CRO has a role in PPC and SEO as well.
Basically, if you are selling something or generating leads – you need to focus on CRO.
Imagine inviting someone to a party, and when they came, the house was empty or not prepared (CRO). They will leave, and the fancy invitation (SEO and PPC) will be worthless.
Investing time and money in CRO is crucial to actually generate profit. Once you already have people paying attention to you, it’s time you push the peddle and make them convert.
Best CRO strategies and tools
Cutting to the chase, here are the best CRO strategies plus some tools that’ll help you.
You’ll find A LOT of articles on this topic but, in the end, it all comes down to these 5 main points:
1.KNOW yourself
Or your business.
Don’t go on autopilot and follow pre-manufactured instructions. Take a moment to think about what YOU want and need.
What are your goals or your business goals? What type of action do you want people to take? Click on a button, make a purchase, read your content? These and more questions are relevant because digital marketing is ever-changing, and experimenting on your own might give you great results.
Some things you should know:
Know your USP
Your unique selling proposition (USP) is naturally what differentiates you from your competence. Being aware of what makes you special in business, just like in life, allows you to believe in your own potential and communicate it to others.
Knowing your USP and letting it shine will be the difference between users never coming back because they forget you and have an amazing and memorable impression.
Know your limitations
Of course, no one’s perfect, and as soon as you come to terms with your weaknesses, the better. You can’t know or do everything, and having experts take what you can’t handle will greatly benefit your business.
Consider hiring a UX expert or a content writer to upgrade your CRO game and have some free time too!
Use Gong.io
An effective way to know your strengths and limitations in using a tool for such a purpose. Gong.io, for example, is Aayush’s recommended tool for ROI optimization and practically for CRO as well, and not many people are talking about it. It helps you in many things.
Among them, it shines a light on your team’s sales conversions.
With Gong, you can identify deal risks and churn risks early, so you maximize customer retention. Make sure you do check them out.
2. UNDERSTAND people
Look, I’m not saying you should go and get a degree in Psychology to run your marketing campaign.
Studying dissociative disorders will hardly be of any use here. But, you know, having some idea of how the human mind works might help understand your potential client’s motivation, the human need for social acceptance, and the fear of missing out. This sort of knowledge will allow you to optimize the conversion rate.
Yeah, I get it. You want to run away back to just paying ads and thinking of keywords but stay with me on this one, okay? I’ll break it into small pieces:
Color psychology
Color influences our mood. For example, warm colors make the user feel cheerful and excited. And multiple colors like the ones in triadic color schemes are eye-catching and fun. If you were going to make a website for children’s parties, you’d want to go with bright colors.
In the same way, black is an exquisite color used to show luxury by many brands.
Recently, we rolled out our new identity, and part of the changes we made was in the color of our logo. Now it best fits how we want to be seen.
What I’m saying is know your colors.
A free tool you can use for this purpose is Adobe Color. Try different combinations of colors and see color trends according to industry. You’re welcome.
Visitor’s journey
Understand your visitor’s journey as they travel from email or a search engine to your website. Usually, people are looking for answers (aren’t we all?) or intend to spend some money. These two journeys are deeply connected to search intent, so learning a bit about it won’t harm you. That way, you can work on optimizing the journey every step of the way and making people stay.
Something you should have in mind, it’s that people’s attention span nowadays is deficient. Accordingly to the Benchmark Report, over half of users will watch a business-related video until the end of it’s under a minute long. So although videos are amazing for conversions, watch out for their duration. We get super easily bored now.
Surveys
Many people are really good at guesswork. But don’t worry, if psychology or guesstimates isn’t your thing, surveys will have you covered. It’s really usual in marketing to ask customers directly about their opinions and their experience to, you know, have some actual ~FACTS~
So go ahead and make surveys to get a proper insight.
3. OBSESS over UX
A massive part of CRO has a good user experience. We’ve already covered a bunch of strategies here, so we’re going to be brief.
UX designers use a 5 step plan while working on their projects:
- Strategy. Why are you creating this?
- Scope. What content will your site include?
- Structure. How will users interact with it?
- Skeleton. How will the info be presented?
- Surface. How will the final product look?
But besides making yourself these questions, you might want to consider some specific tactics for your website like:
Rule of congruence
Congruence is about maintaining your brand voice across channels. One, because it looks professional, and two, to avoid confusion among visitors.
Once you understand what visuals are better for your brand and apply them to your website, make sure it’s the same everywhere.
Your ads and social media should match your landing pages. The least you want is people leaving your website because they think it is another brand!
Breadcrumbs
No, I don’t mean food. Although now that I mentioned it, some crumb fried mozzarella does sound nice.
Focus.
A breadcrumb helps your website be more organized. It’s a small text path that often locates at the top of the page, and it indicates where the user is on the site. Just like Hansel and Gretel, your visitors can find their way home if they follow those breadcrumbs.
Use Right Message
It offers plenty of cool features. For example, email list subscribers are automatically identified when they visit your website instead of treated like strangers. We mention in this post the importance of remembering users that have already converted! Basically, it’s a way of keeping those conversions instead of losing them for some foolishness.
4. HOOK users
So you learned how to make the user experience smooth and know what you want your conversion to look like. It’s time you use some knowledge on people’s behaviors and reactions to hooking visitors and hit that CRO.
Use CTA anchored within the blog text.
Conversions often include email capture, and placing optin forms wisely is just one of the many ways to ensure people fill them. Anyway, whether it’s a button asking for emails or any kind of call to action, putting CTAs within the text is more effective for CRO than doing it in other places.
Part of its charm stands in the fact you’ve already shown your value, and therefore, the visitor is more willing to convert.
Resource library page
Chances are, if you create blog content, you are into affiliate marketing. You probably have articles in which you mention various affiliate offers scattered throughout your blog.
What if you compile them all on a resource library page so people can find items whenever they want, all in one place? If you’ve proven to recommend quality services, they’ll be happy to click on them, and they’ll visit the page constantly.
Clever unsubscribe page
It’s never all lost. Even when email subscribers click on that ugly “unsubscribe” link, there’s still hope. Ask them if they’ll like to receive fewer emails or if they want to change preferences. Sometimes it’s not that they don’t like you anymore but are just tired of the number of emails they are getting.
Don’t just get them to sign in, make sure they stay converted.
Don’t have an email list? Learn how to start an email list – step by step.
5. CHECK if things are working
Finally, gather data and analyze your performance. Besides using the now-classic A/B tests and Google Analytics, there are some other options you might want to consider.
Heat maps
Heat maps allow you to see where and how visitors interact with a webpage. Unlike other tracking tools, heat maps provide quality data instead of quantity data. They don’t just tell you your CTA’s isn’t working; they are showing you where people are looking instead.
So if you are interested in detailed analytics, it’s really worth the try.
MVT
Multivariate testing (MVT) is similar to A/B testing at its core. It takes traffic coming to your website and divides it between different versions of the design. However, MVT lets you compare multiple numbers of variants and find the ideal combination. A/B testing restricts you from seeing the effect of one variable.
Fathom analytics
To make everything easier, a tool we recommend is Fathom analytics. This custom analytic tool gives you everything you need on a single screen without you having to scroll through pages and pages of data. And the great thing about Fathom is they take digital privacy very seriously.
Plus, they explain everything with kittens.
Conclusion
So there you have it, CRO summed up 5 major strategies and some unconventional tools to help you along the way.
What do you think? Did we miss something? Have you tried any of the tools we mentioned?
We’ll love to know! Leave us a comment.
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