Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

Is marketing on the internet any different from your other marketing? We do have to jump through a few different loops, but marketing remains the same, so what are you doing with your content?

There seems to be buzz around the concept of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), but I wonder why now. My point is: have we not always tried to convert potential clients into clients? Maybe we arebetter understanding the tools that will help us achieve this goal. I set up various goals for my website that I found to be pretty standardfor many sites. If someone is reading more than four pages, I know that they are engaged, and they could be a potential client (or they may be searching for a certain article with better information). If they stay on the site for more than thirty minutes, I may have a client (or did they walk away from the computer to deal with the children while leaving my site open). If they follow a certain path, ending up on the page to contact me for my services, they could become a client (or is that a competitor scoping out what I have done). As you can see, there may be a flip side to the metric that you are studying, but we have to discover how a user is moving through our site, and can we determine behavior that is indicative to a user becoming a client. I am speaking of a service site, but we could transfer the service request page for a checkout page. What we need to be sure of is our content working?

    I belong to an industry association that is not my profession, but that I need to be an associate member to obtain a piece of equipment that is administered by them. To me, this association is useless, and if I could obtain this equipment elsewhere, I would not belong. One thing that this group does is sell my name, phone number, address, and email to any company that wants it. This is annoying, because I obtain a huge amount of advertising which has nothing to do with me. My inbox is cluttered every day with twenty or more messages from these advertisers. I try to opt out of receiving emails, but this does not always work. There was one company that I found to be more spam site than others. I click on the link to opt out, which brings me not to an opt out page, but to a landing page for the sales pitch before heading to the check out. To reach the opt out page, I have to hunt amongst the fine print in the footer. Once I enter my information to opt out, I obtain a message that they will continue to send me emails for at least a week, before the opt out is official.  I am sure that company will have a lot of hits on that funnel page, but they probably are not going to gain many clients or conversions.
    That same day I find a simple flyer in my mailbox. They are offering a service that I need, but I am happy with the firm that is providing me with that service already. I do open the flyer to take a look. The back of the flyer states clearly what their service is about. Open this up, and you find bullet points answering what would be frequently asked questions. Inside is a run down of service, price, and four methods to contract this service (one method being a registration form that is printed on this side). Lastly, they did send it to my name, but the interior of the flyer used my name again (personalization). After checking them out, I was impressed, and I went with them. I did need the service; however, I did not need it from them, so why did the flyer work?
    Breaking down what went right, I think that I could say that the first step is the targeted me well. In the first example, we had email marketing, which was not well targeted. The next factor was the providing the information that I needed to make a decision, without the hype. I think that this is a good lesson for content writers on a website. We are writing catalogs when the user is looking for a flyer. Most users who have committed to possibly becoming a client do not want to wade through the hype. A person who does not want to be a client will only strengthen that determination if they have to wade through the hype to opt out of an email. Look, spam tactics do work; otherwise, we would not be obtaining so much spam in our inboxes, and spam sites do convert users to buyers. If you know the value of a customer over your lifetime, then you will not want to spam them, because you are turning away future earnings. I did not go through with the purchase on the first site, but looking at the flyer, there is one more lesson in the content provided: options. They opened up the door to acquiring their service through four different methods. As a service provider, I know that some clients like to contact me through email, some through a form on my site, and some like to call me (due to my business none would show up at my office). I make these options clear. I see some sites where the focus is on one contact method, and I see that as a failure. You have created an impression that you are not accessible by their proffered method. One client did not want me to call her, because she was at work, but she could answer emails. Another client wanted to sound me out, so she did not like the idea of doing everything by email. Others like the convenience of the form. Maybe in your business they would like to mail you or fax you.
    Looking at targeting further, I would suggest that this would be the same as finding your audience. Different users will come to your site, and the majority of them will be staying on your site, as long as the content you provide is what they want. This means that the content should be written for an audience of users who could also be potential clients. Here we have to be careful. There could be a broad section of people who may be your clients, but are they looking for your service? I read a suggestion that a local service provider should discuss community events to bring in people from that community to their site. Yes, that does bring in people to your site, but if they are not interested in your service, will they remember your site. Well, I have seen some service providers do well with gaining name recognition with this tactic, but most sites attempting this trick do not succeed. Another suggestion that I would make is that any user landing on your conversion page has defined themselves as a potential client (your target audience). At this point, hype is not what they are interested in; they want to know either how to obtain the service, or they may want a bit more information (FAQ).  What you should look at is that the content on your site helps define your service, to find that target audience.
    A website is capable of so much more than your other forms of advertising. You can provide that catalog of information for those who want it. When thinking conversions, you have to think what has worked for your business in the past, and what has worked on you. I think at that point, you may find the flyer analogy for a web page as being more effective. By keeping the focus of your content tight, like you would in a flyer, you give the user an easier path to conversion.

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