One thing that can be tremendously frustrating when it comes to online marketing (e.g. inbound marketing) is the fact that no matter how many hits you get, no matter how much you get the word out about your fantastic product, if you have a bad conversion rate none of it will mean anything. This means that you absolutely can’t skimp on your conversion efforts. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and inbound marketing tricks you can utilize to make sure that the people who come to your company will be more inclined to actually buy something instead of just running off again. Many of these are brand new and make use of completely new technologies and approaches to increase your conversion rate.
Shape Your Call to Action to the Situation
The call to action is obviously indispensable, but this doesn’t mean that it’s the only important part of the post, and it also doesn’t mean that you can’t move it around however you want. It’s easy to get used to always doing this the same way with the call to action at the bottom of whatever the content is, in whatever form.
It’s often automatic to do it this way because we get used to thinking of the call to action as a logical conclusion to a long appeal in a linear way. But the world requires much more adaptation than that. Here are some common ways to use your call to action depending on your particular situation:
- Top Bar-When it comes to a blog post in particular, it often advantageous to have a call to action on the top bar. This is an effective strategy for increasing conversion if there’s a major offer that you want to show your potential customers but you’re worried about being overly pushy. After all, the “hard sell” is definitely not everyone’s favorite thing on the Internet these days, given the large number of offers many people are being given left and right everywhere they go. If your big offer isn’t working for you, then the top bar can help make it work better.
- Popups from Lightbox-Although they can irritate some people, this approach to a call to action is still highly effective for those looking to seriously improve their conversion game if you just can’t seem to get people hooked despite high traffic. After all, customers that don’t buy anything aren’t customers at all. It’s worth risking a bit of ill will sometimes in order to make sure that you have a strong possibility of converting. At least one blogger was able to increase their conversion rate to over 5% using this method, making for over 1300% more subscribers overall. This can often work if you have a high volume of viewers but a very low conversion rate. If you’re selling something at a lower cost than even a small hike in a conversion rate could mean a huge return in profits.
- Boxes-Another approach to call to action is to use boxes for your call to action. The boxes will let your potential customers put in their email address and name. This isn’t just about convenience, however. There’s psychology to it. BY having someone write their name and address inside of a contained box, they feel a sense of finality, a sense of completion. It makes it more satisfying to sign up then clicking on a floating button. This can only serve to help your conversion rate. If you need a one-time commitment from people like for small subscriptions, then this can potentially make a big difference.
Make Colors Work for You If You’re Getting Outcompeted
Colors have a subtle but very strong effect on us. They aren’t innate for the most part. Instead, they have a strong cultural component. But, this means that many marketers are already using colors to help generate responses in ways you may not even realize. You can work on getting colors to work for you with a little research into the matter.
The basics include using primary colors for your call to action for starters. This normally refers to red, blue or green. Sometimes they can also be red, yellow or blue, however, depending on the model. These colors tend to stand out more and have a strong effect on viewers, which is exactly what you need for an effective CTA.
Other possible ways a color specific approach can help is when you have the following problems:
- Trouble with Gender-based Demographic Targeting-This might seem overly simplistic, but it’s been shown that in our culture men and women really do prefer different colors even just in a CTA or other parts of a message when it comes to being convinced and converted to your point of view. Women tend to prefer blue, green, or purple when it comes to a CTA. So you should focus on these colors if you’re appealing to women and your conversion rates are suffering. Women hate the color gray the most according to some studies and men hate purple. This means that you should flip the color purple especially depending on which gender you’re targeting with a CTA.
- Trouble with Environmental Based Conversions-This may also seem intuitive, but it’s true that you should focus on green colors both for backgrounds and for a call to action when it comes to selling anything related to the environment or nature. It’s definitely worth checking since intuitive truths aren’t always correct, but this does appear to be the case for those selling eco-friendly products. A green call to action is especially useful in this area since according to something called the “Von Restorff” effect, or the effect of isolation on colors, if you have black text for the rest of the content, and green for your call to action, people are especially more likely to remember it and take it seriously.
- Poor Conversion Rates for Impulse Buys-If you have a product that’s more of a fun thing or an “impulse buy,” then you need to emphasize this through color if you want to increase your conversion rate for that item. According to some research, the ideal color for this is orange.
Other possible uses for color include using black if you want to emphasize quality or luxury. If you notice, black colors are often used in upper-end lingerie and perfume lines. It’s also used commonly when people are trying to sell cars. There’s just something about the unbroken quality of the color black that speaks boldly to people and helps convince them that an upper-end item is worth the extra added cost. It’s worth testing this on your own products to see if it works for you if this is a pain point for you.
Hiring Help
The truth is that you often will need help getting your conversion rate up since your focus should always be on your business and it helps to be as undistracted as possible when it comes to that end. The best approach is often to let another service handle the whole package including guiding you in setting goals, researching, and consolidating all of your landing page, social media and blog and email campaigns together. Having one service do this will help to ensure that the message is uniform throughout.
