A key to opening conversions online (part 1 of 3)
By: Jeff Giacchetti (Originally printed in the January 2007 issue of Media Magazine)
Conversion or conversion rate is a term that takes on various meanings depending on your marketing objectives. It can be the ratio of visitors to buyers, the percent of visitors who sign up for a newsletter, requests for information or general product understanding. Conversion is most useful when it applies to a specific advertising or marketing campaign where it is the ratio of visitors to the subset who complete a desired action.
While there are several keys to opening conversions, including site usability (ease of navigability) and persuasiveness (the offer), I would like to focus on a challenging and often overlooked key, relevance. Relevancy should not be a partial consideration, but a crucial necessity in unlocking doors to conversions. In many cases it is the toughest category of change to accomplish, as it requires a great deal of testing and optimization. A marketer needs to vary content on a landing page (or create several URLs) to match the expectations of different visitors groups, in order reach optimal conversion rate. For example, a person interested in locating a sporting goods store, and person looking for wholesale sporting goods, are very likely going to react differently once they land on your page. The challenge is anticipating this and delivering the appropriate content based on their pre-click expectation.
Another way conversions can suffer from a lack of relevancy can be demonstrated with the following example:
A company is using search to promote its online sweepstakes. Undeniably, sweepstakes are a great way to capture user data as a means of generating leads or immediate sales. In this hypothetical example the companys advertisement is displayed as a sponsored link and appears when a user is either actively searching for the companys product, or where it is contextually matched. The campaign objective is to catch the attention of that user, get them to click on the text link and redirect them to a landing page, where they can enter the sweepstakes. Before they can enter the sweepstakes the user is required to opt-in to the companys e-newsletter. If there is any disconnect between what the user expects based on the companys ad message, and what they are fully required to do once they land on the page, there will be a negative impact on sign-up conversions.
Relevancy also encompasses how closely aligned your advertisement is to your potential customers interests. You need to be there when your product or service is top of mind, and that includes being timely. Contextual-targeting your ad to an environment that it is congruent with, is one way to be relevant. Contextually targeted ads will always outperform un-targeted ads from a click-through standpoint, as well as conversions.
In many cases, marketers use demographic targeting solely as a means of reaching their customers online. Relying only on a publishers audience data is sure fire way to miss. Simply by adding a behaviorally targeted filter to a demographically and contextually targeted placement, you are ensuring true relevance. Behavioral targeting ads leave a longer lasting impression (no pun intended) on the user and elicit greater message recall, which again leads back to conversions. It allows another chance to speak with a potential customer even when a conversion was not recorded.
Last but not least, another filter which often times is not utilized or even considered by online markets is time-targeting. Think about the power of a message delivered at a time when you are most likely to react. For example serving an ad for a coffee brand in the early morning hours as well as mid- afternoon, will certainly be well received and appreciated by a consumer. While thats an obvious example, it does have tremendous implications to product and service sales as well as lead generation initiatives.
Relevancy equals conversions, and is guaranteed to raise your conversion rate (regardless of what you are counting as a conversion). However it cannot guarantee that you will achieve optimal acquisition cost. Why is this? Because without careful research into site selection, and appropriate buying platform (CPM, CPC, CPA), your media execution costs can potentially render your cost per acquisition inefficient. This is without even accounting for additional fees that may add to the media cost, particularly when running a rich media campaign. A flashy in-banner or in-stream video execution will certainly garner greater click-through rates than a standard static banner unit, but not necessarily greater conversions.
Relevancy between your advertising message and product as well relevancy between your advertisement and target audience, makes for a more successful campaign and better user experience. They are certainly more likely to convert, or least come back.
Jeff is a Media Supervisor at EarthQuake Media and can be reached at jeffg@earthquakemedia.com