Do you need more leads… Or simply better conversions

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From my years of being a marketing, I find many businesses focus on needing to get more leads.  And I for one would never say new leads aren’t important.

But, I want to draw your attention to what often is an overlooked part of the sales funnel process.

And that simply put is all about ‘increasing your conversion rate’.

Most likely you are already using a of lead generation tactics, where you are driving people to your website.  For example:

  • Google Ads
  • SEO
  • Social Media Marketing

But, possibly that’s where your focus may be ending.  Focusing on the leads, and not keeping the same level of attention on conversions.

Why Such Focus on Your Conversion Rate

Simply put, you’ve already put great effort in to drive people to your website, and by just increasing your conversion rate from your existing leads by just 10%, it may make a really significant difference to your overall sales turnover.

For example, if you are running a Google Ads or Social Media campaign, don’t just focus on having more budget to get more clicks.  The weakness of your campaign structure could be your landing page, and getting more and more clicks to non-performing landing page, won’t fix your core problem.

So What Can You Do to Improve Your Conversion Rate?

Sometimes it’s the small things that make all the difference.

  • Is it a visually appealing landing page, with quality content, and clear distinctive on-topic headings?
  • Have you included useful information about the benefits of your product or service?
  • Have you provided some level of social proof e.g. client testimonials, before and after photos, product reviews?
  • Have you considered what your customers ‘barriers to purchase’ could be, and have you addressed these in some way?

Tracking and Measuring Your Website Performance

One tool I find very useful for helping businesses measure their website performance, is looking at their Google Analytics stats.  With the latest Google Analytics of GA4 you can quickly and easily track and measure visits to your website and key pages viewed.  This alone provides useful information to know what your customers are most looking at, and from that you have a greater understanding of the information they are seeking.

3 key things for your marketing checklist

  1. Are you doing a conscious consideration of your main landing pages, your Home page, and any other pages you direct specific traffic to.  Give them a rating out of 10, what small things could you change or include, that may make all the difference.
  2. Get a measure of your key website visitor statistics.  Have you got Google Analytics and equally importantly GA4 set up on your website.  Are you viewing your monthly stats regarding website visitor traffic, pages viewed, and other supporting stats.
  3. Are you effectively using social proof factors, e.g. getting client testimonials and using them well.  With good use of social proof factors, it helps build trust with your prospective customers.  And don’t forget the long-standing marketing mantra that “people buy from people that they know, like and trust”.

So, don’t just singularly think of getting more leads, but also bring into the mix a stronger focus of improving your lead conversions.  Without considering your specific conversion factors, you may simply end up buying more empty leads, at a significant cost to your business.

You can waste a lot of money on non-performing marketing – so don’t!

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At Aztera Marketing in Wellington we specialise in helping small and medium-sized businesses with improving the effectiveness of their marketing activities.  We look at the total sales funnel, from lead generation tactics, through the enquiry and persuasion process, and finally the sales conversion.

 

 

Improving Your Google Ads Results – Your Landing Pages

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Like many businesses, you are wanting to maximise the return on your Google Ads spend.  Often the focus is on your Google Ads campaign set up, with a much lower focus on the ads Landing Page.  These two are highly integrated aspects, impacting on your campaign performance.

Your Google Ads campaign set up is important for optimising your promotional spend, so that ads are targeted and placed effectively.  Through using negative keywords, strong ad text, and effective use of SiteLinks, these are all key with improving the performance of your campaign.

However, most of the customer conversion activity is a result of your chosen landing page.  And first impressions count.  Three key considerations:

  1. Does it quickly and effectively communicate the benefit of your product or service.
  2. Are you maximising your marketing and promotional messages high up on the landing page.
  3. If you are including an offer is it strong and enticing.

What’s more, and if possible, have you been able to include anything like a promotion, customer testimonials, or a special price offer on that page, e.g. free consultation, download a checklist etc.

So, when developing your Google Ads campaign, take an extra moment to look critically at your chosen Landing Page, to see if it needs any simple improvements to assist with and improve your sales and conversions.

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Note: Aztera Marketing in Wellington is an approved Google Partner. We are Google certified in Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, and Google Shopping Ads. We specialise in supporting small and medium sized businesses.

Google Ads Campaign Management in 2023

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Are you now stepping back into managing your Google Ads campaigns, to ensure they’re up and running optimally. Have you noticed with the introduction of the Google Ads Performance Max campaigns, compared to the previous Smart Shopping campaigns, that you may not be getting the same desired results?

Performance Max is a significantly very different type of campaign compared to Smart Shopping. For many smaller sized ad budgets you may find reverting back to a Standard Shopping campaign may deliver a higher ROI.

The Google Ads platform has undertaken many improvements over the last few months. Some of these changes work better for larger businesses. For smaller sized businesses and budgets, there are some smart ways to optimise your ad spend and campaign set up.

  • You may find a better ROI using Standard Shopping Campaigns.
  • Consider using Search campaigns for some of your products instead of a Standard Shopping campaign.
  • Set up separate campaigns for different product segments, each with their own campaign budget, and run these as a Standard Shopping campaign.
  • If you choose to use Standard Shopping campaigns, check that you are price comparable to your competitors.  Shopping campaigns have a much greater display focus on your items’s price, compared to Search campaigns.
  • Make sure you have set up ecommerce conversion tracking in GA4, and closely monitor your campaigns performance.

There have been a number of changes to the Google Ads platform over the last 6 months.  This includes the introduction of Performance Max campaigns, new campaign level ‘Recommendations’ suggested by Google (and not all are appropriate for smaller sized businesses), change by Google in the use of Keyword ‘match types’, and the introduction of new ‘Assets’ aka Extensions.  It’s important for smaller sized businesses that you set up and manage your campaigns optimally, to avoid budget ‘waste’.

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Note: Aztera Marketing in Wellington is an approved Google Partner. We are Google certified in Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, and Google Shopping Ads. We specialise in supporting small and medium sized businesses.