by David Hoos, Marketing Strategist at The Good, conversion rate optimization experts.
You would love to see better ROI from your marketing spend, right?
What if I told you that there’s a very straightforward strategy to do just that?
The truth is, the simplest and best way to get more from your marketing spend is to optimize your site first, and then drive traffic.
Let me explain.
Focus on your consumer experience to see results
One of the biggest places that brands waste a lot of their marketing spend is sending Adwords and other PPC advertising to pages that are not optimized to convert.
In short, they’re pouring water into a leaky bucket, but that water is your marketing budget and that bucket is your website.
And ultimately, if your consumers can’t do what they came to do, they’re likely to leave without buying, and may not come back. That’s a lost opportunity and it’s lost marketing budget.
When you invest in plugging these holes, you’re progressively increasing your overall website conversion rate, and improving the ROI of your marketing spend.
Look for your most valuable drop-off points
One of the best ways to begin this journey is to begin plugging the biggest holes in your leaky bucket.
Thankfully, it can be easy to find your sites most valuable drop-off points. It turns out that science supports what we’ve known intuitively. The best way to identify problems and solutions to your valuable drop-off points is simple: just ask your users why they make their decisions.
When you do, you might stumble upon an extra $300 million in annual revenue like Jared Spool did. Want to hear more?
In this story, the major brand he was working with used the wisdom of crowds in the form of user testing. Initially, the brand thought that their signup form caused little friction, saying:
“The team saw the form as enabling repeat customers to purchase faster. First-time purchasers wouldn’t mind the extra effort of registering because, after all, they will come back for more and they’ll appreciate the expediency in subsequent purchases. Everybody wins, right?”
However, they quickly discovered that their consumers strongly resisted registering for an account in order to complete a purchase. The consumers said:
“I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”
In the end, they replaced the register button with a continue button and removed the requirement to create an account in order to complete a purchase.
And what happened?
“The number of customers purchasing went up by 45%. The extra purchases resulted in an extra $15 million the first month. For the first year, the site saw an additional $300,000,000.”
That’s $300 million more dollars by plugging just one valuable drop-off point. Most websites have many many more.
Where are the leaks in your marketing spend?
When you focus on plugging the holes where you are losing the most customers, you can see incredible returns. As you can see from the example above, investing in optimization easily pays for itself.
Not only that, but once you are converting more of your traffic, you’ll be getting far better results from your marketing spend.
About David Hoos
David Hoos is a Marketing Strategist at The Good, a conversion agency which delivers more revenues, customers, and leads. David and the team at The Good have made a practice of advising brands on how to see online revenue double through their conversion rate optimization services.
