If you work in marketing, then you understand the anticipation of launching a new CTA (Call to Action) on your website or publishing a new offer to try and bring in more customers via your website.
For me anyway, the overwhelming feeling is ‘please let this be successful!’. Of course, I have run tests on the different types of CTAs for my customers and the copy that works, but it still doesn’t fill me with confidence when I push the button for it to go live.
However…
I have spent years working on improving my CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) to ensure my clients can attract customers through their website and their other online channels, and over this time I have been able to improve my CRO in a multitude of ways. In this article, I’m going to share some of these tips with you.
Contents
Use the Correct Content
Let me give you a scenario… You have spent a large amount of money putting together an awesome blog for your potential customers to get all the information they need before moving further down the marketing funnel. Sounds familiar, right? Then this will sound familiar as well…
…even though you have spent a lot of money on your blog, it ranks well, has lots of backlinks and gets a lot of readers every time you publish a new post, you don’t get many new leads or conversions from it.
If this is happening, you are probably using the wrong content model for your customer type. In our industry, blogs work really well as it shows that we know our stuff with regards to marketing, and prospects will be able to put their trust in us to get their business working better for them. However, what if you’re looking for customers who need their kitchen re-fitted? The chances are that they will not be looking for blogs, but rather case studies and photos to show the quality of work.
The moral of the story here? It is all well and good spending money on creating content to increase conversion rate, but you need to ensure that it’s the right content for your target customers.
You don’t even have to increase spend here. If you have been focussing on a blog for example, but believe you might find more success creating case studies rather than blog posts, simply change the direction of your content strategy.
Split Test
Split testing, undoubtedly, is one of the best ways to improve your CRO without having to increase spend.
Split testing, for those of you who might not know, involves creating two ads or CTAs that are designed to do the same thing, but do it in a slightly different way. Once these have been created, they are placed on your website at the same time and you can measure results. Of course, if you have software that allows you to split test within the interface then that is great. However, if you don’t there are plenty of other ways you can split test using the software you (should) already have. But this is for a separate blog post.
Using split testing, you can identify the best layouts, designs and content for your ads to ensure that your Conversion Rate Optimisation is as high as it can be for your business or your client’s business.
FOMO, FOMO, FOMO
We all know FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out, but what a lot of people don’t know is that you can use it to brilliant effect within your CTAs, ads and regular content offers to ensure that as many people convert as possible.
FOMO works extremely well as it creates a fear within the user of missing out on whatever it is you are offering. For example, if you have created an e-book for your potential customers, putting it on your website for free for a certain amount of time and implementing a timer counting down to it becoming a paid resource can work wonders! People become scared of missing out on a free piece of content and this causes them to push the button straight away, rather than waiting until they are absolutely sure.
The best thing? There are so many countdown plugins or code snippets available to create your own countdowns for your offers that you don’t need to increase your spend at all! Rather than spending money on a freelance developer, you can literally do it yourself and save the cash.
Write For Your Audience
Whilst this does link to the first point, in essence, I do also need to mention this point as well. As with ensuring you are writing the right type of content for your target audience, you also need to ensure you are writing in the right style for your audience as well. Does your audience prefer a conversational tone of voice? Or do you need to write in a more formal manner to attract potential customers?
An example here would be comparing this blog to a solicitors blog. Whilst the Einstein Marketer Blog thrives on a conversational tone drawing readers in, with a solicitor’s blog you must write in a more professional manner to ensure the blog’s readers trust what they are reading and decide to use this particular solicitor for their claim.
In short, you need to know your audience. If you are writing in the wrong tone for your target audience, you are going to see limited to no results from your content, no matter how much time you spend creating it!
The Science Behind CTAs
Developing a great CTA (call to action) is something that not everyone can do right off the bat. This takes time, research and more importantly, practice to perfect. Believe it or not, there is a whole science behind how a CTA works and why some work better than others.
A great call to action is a crucial point that can make or break a conversion, it’s one of the cornerstones of a website. You can have the best content ever, but if users can’t find your call to action, they’ll bounce and find another site. A call to action will usually have two primary elements that act as the deciding factors. These elements are design and copy. In an effective call to action, you’ll need to have both of these elements cooperating with each other.
The design of a CTA is going to affect performance massively, so do your research. Most of the time a complementary contrast in colours works well to create an eye-catching CTA. These solid, standout colours offer an easy way to draw attention to a CTA and in turn, promotes the use of a button, phone number or even a contact form.
Your CTA copy will also need to be optimised to get the best out of your buttons. It’s argued that having a somewhat assertive tone to your CTA copy works best. An instructional, direct phrase will usually be most effective. For example; “Join Now” or “Sign Up” are some of the most common buttons.
It can sometimes be just as effective to use something that doesn’t follow this traditional path, but this can be unpredictable. Spotify uses a great CTA that’s proven to be successful, their “Get Premium” button provides an instruction against a vivid colour.
Conclusion
The above tips are 5 of my best tips for improving your CRO without increasing your spend.
Over the years, myself and the team at Imaginaire Digital have performed a wide array of tests surrounding this to ensure our CRO is always at the top of its game, but it is important to remember that the digital world is constantly evolving, and soon we will have to come up with new ways to keep our audience interested., but for now, this post will do just fine!
