7 Steps to Marketing Conversions

But, Marketing Conversions Seem Simple…

Rooted in basic math, marketing conversions seem so simple. But don’t be fooled.

You are tasked with getting more leads for your business, but the old marketing tactics do not seem to work as well. Let’s face it–marketing is getting more complicated by the day.

It doesn’t help that industry acronyms are thrown around in your marketing meetings as freely as candy on Halloween–and really, who wants to raise their hand and say they do not understand?

The following steps will help you get through the dark and grey areas and navigate to a place where you can start making decisions.

Step 1: Define success

Figure out what success looks like from your marketing plan. Too often people want to concentrate on the deliverable and not the strategy. If you are thinking “this deliverable or that deliverable,” back-up and figure out what success actually looks like to you.

You might be saying to yourself right now “I just need more leads because if I can get the leads I will sell them.” Yes, I would hope so, but you need to think much deeper than that. I want you to become a data-driven decision maker.

Step 2: Establish where you are

How you get to your goal is by knowing where you are. At the end of the day, you are not trying to just build tactics, you are trying to develop an overall solution. And to do this you have to ask yourself a lot of questions.

Here are a few thought starters:

1. What is my company’s’ secret sauce?
2. What is my average sale?
3. How many leads per month do I currently have?
4. How much traffic do I have coming to my site?
5. What is my current website traffic conversion ratio to a lead?
6. What is my closing percentage of my overall leads?
7. How many leads do I need based on my current closing ratio?
8. How much more traffic do I need to my site in order to reach my goals?
9. How long will it take?
10. How fast do I want to get to the dance? (Conversion goal)

Step 3: Lead score your traffic

You now know how much traffic it will take and what your conversion ratio is against your closing percentage. But, you still don’t know how you get the right kind of traffic to maintain your baseline percentages.

The fact of the matter is not all traffic is created equal.

In order to get the right kind of traffic, you have to understand what your ideal customer profile is and what they look like. You want to identify your customers and put names to them.

Example: Business Bob vs. Suzy Homeowner

Most of the time the visitors coming to your site have different purposes. Even if you only sell one product (hand soap, for example) your audience will have different needs for that one product. Business Bob might be looking at soap for large-scale, corporate stock; whereas Suzy Homeowner wants it to be safe for the kids and have an easy-access pump.

You want to know everything you can about the individual personas and their needs in order to market directly to them.

Choose up to three different target audiences and research their needs in order to see how you can help them. Keep in mind, you can’t talk to Business Bob the same way you talk to Suzy Homeowner.

The priorities of each are different and therefore the message to them should be different.

Step 4: Find who does not fit

Now you know your goals, your conversion metrics, and who you are going after, but you need to also need to know who you are NOT going after. Just as it is important to know who does fit your business, it’s equally important to know who does not fit your business. You don’t want to waste your time and money targeting people who would not be a good fit for your business.

These are called negative personas and should act as a filtering system of leads that come in that do not fit your ideal customer profile.

They might not fit for a number of reasons–maybe they don’t have the budget needed for your services, or they don’t like hygiene, so why would they invest in your hand soap?

Having these traits in mind will help you become more efficient in bringing in quality leads. If they don’t fit don’t waste your time.

Step 5:  Be a data-driven decision maker

If you follow the first four steps, the assumption is that you now know your budget and the costs of implications and/or inaction. You have to be sure at this point you qualified the risks of each side.

The cost to not do anything (inaction) is typically higher than doing something (implication).

The tactics you begin to develop from this point forward will be actionable. With data-driven decision-making, you will know what works and what doesn’t.

The purpose of this is step is to be sure you don’t set it and forget it because the seed of strategy doesn’t grow without work.

Step 6: Develop your strategy

Developing your strategy can be scary because you don’t know what you don’t know. The thing you do know is that you are on the line to perform.

There are several tactics you can take to stimulate leads and conversions. Remember though, most of these tactics can’t operate in a silo of activity if you want to reach your goals.

You need several things working together in order to effect change.

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – This is a broad term that is basically the delivery method of your messaging. SEM includes paid advertising on search engines and on social media platforms.
• User Experience (UX) Audit – This is where you evaluate your website and how people interact with it. The purpose of a User Experience audit is to get the site to convert your traffic to a lead. The goal of any marketing effort is to move your conversion percentage up from where it is currently to a higher level. If you can both drive new traffic from search engine marketing AND get the site to convert on a higher level, then you are a lot closer to reaching your goals.
• Lead Generation – There is a lot that goes into this, but overall, this is where you drive qualified relevant traffic to your site through an inbound methodology.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is a necessary step to make sure all the technical SEO is where it needs to be and your organic traffic is growing month-over-month. You want to balance strong Search Engine Marketing with strong Search Engine Optimization.
• Traditional Marketing – If your business model calls for an external stimulus on the traditional side of the world you’re going to want to be involved in several activities including, but not limited to: television, radio, newspapers, and billboards.

Step 7: If you need to pivot, pivot

Yes, you have a developed a very strong strategy using the steps above, but never be too proud to pivot.

Being data-driven means that you are following the data, even if it proves you wrong. As marketers, we are scientists. We have to look at all the data in front of us. If your experiment didn’t perform how you expected, make a change and see if you have improved results.

You need to test your tactics, understand mistakes, and have a plan for change. Take risks in order to effect change (but, of course, minimize risk). The more due diligence you do and information you have ahead of time, the smaller the risk.

I hope this was helpful in setting up your marketing strategy. For more information or guidance on any of the steps above, click here to schedule a free strategy session with one of our marketing masterminds.

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