Maintaining a healthy conversion rate for your campaign is key for ensuring that you get the most out of your money. For this reason alone, Conversion Rate Optimization is something you need to strategize.
There are a handful of KPIs you need to monitor while running your campaign. Your ROI indicates how profitable your campaign is (if it is profitable), but the conversion rate is more complicated. We’ll be explaining what CRO is, why it’s important, and how to improve your conversion rate.
What is Conversion Rate Optimization?
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is the strategy you use to increase the percentage of people that convert. How people convert depends on your campaign goals. If you’re running a campaign to get more email subscribers, anyone who subscribes as a result of your campaign is a conversion.
Usually, the platform you use will display the conversion rate somewhere. If not, you can calculate the rate using the following formula:
Conversion Rate (%) = (Number of Conversions / Total Clicks) x 100
You might be wondering what a good conversion rate to have is. We’ll get to this shortly, but this isn’t an easy question to answer.
Why is Conversion Rate Important?
There are a handful of reasons as to why conversion rate is important and why you should be trying to improve it. Above all, a higher conversion rate means that more people are converting and that it’s costing you less to acquire a new customer.
Let’s say you’re running a Facebook Sequential Ads campaign to get more SaaS subscriptions. To begin with, your campaign has a conversion rate of 2% and you get 10,000 clicks – 200 people converted. After doing some conversion rate optimization, the campaign has a conversion rate of 6% and another 10,000 clicks – 600 people converted.
In both cases you paid the same amount and got 10,000 clicks in return. However, in the second instance, you’re getting 3x as many conversions. The result is clearly more cost-efficient and that’s why optimization must be part of your strategy.
What is the Average Conversion Rate?
You’re not going to like this answer, but it depends. There are several important factors that have input on what a good conversion rate is. This includes:
- The platform you’re running ads on.
- Your business’s industry.
- The audience you’re targeting.
- How much your advertising budget is.
- The campaign goals you have set.
If you make a note of these things and do some research specific to them, you’ll be able to find an accurate conversion rate you should aim for. That being said, in the most general sense, having a conversion rate of around 10-12% is a worthwhile goal to set.
Tips for Conversion Rate Optimization
You now know a bit about conversion rate and why it’s important. The next thing is to start planning your strategy. Below are 7 tips to consider when defining a conversion rate optimization strategy.
1. Add a Sense of Urgency
This is a classic strategy, and it is one that gets results. Adding a sense of urgency to your ads pushes your audiences to make a decision now. It puts them in the mindset of, “If I don’t consider this offer now it’ll probably be gone when I decide that I want it”.
Not only that, but your audience are more likely to convert when there’s a sense of urgency. Since there’s the addition of a time restriction on your offer, they’ll feel more compelled to convert than if there wasn’t any urgency.
2. Always Be AB Testing
One of the most important things that can’t be forgotten is AB testing. AB testing, or split testing, is running two ads against each other to see which one performs better. Typically, this involves two similar ads. For example, the ads could be identical aside from using different colors in their ad creatives.
The reason this is an important part of conversion rate optimization is because it helps you find the best variations of your ads. Even smaller factors such as ad copy can make a huge difference. AB testing to discover how to make you ad perform better will get you more conversions in the long run.
AB testing alone isn’t enough – make sure that you use an effective AB testing strategy too. Run your tests for plenty of time so that you get enough data and be sure to switch up what you’re testing.
3. Use PPC Spy Tools
We talk about PPC spy tools a lot so we’ll keep this one brief. Spy tools give you some insight into what your competitors are doing. This means you have access to more data, specifically about their ads, and you can see what results they’re getting.
This can save you a lot of time and money that would otherwise be spent on testing. Check out our video on PPC spy tools where we explain what the best tools to use are and how they can benefit your campaign.
4. Try a Retargeting Campaign
If you run a campaign targeting a cold audience, expect your conversion rate to be low. The majority of the time this is unavoidable but running a Retargeting Campaign counters this.
A retargeting campaign is when you target people who have already seen your ads before. You might be thinking, “They didn’t click my ad the first time, why would they this time?”. Believe it or not, you’re going to get more conversions this way.
People who have some familiarity with your business and who you have “warmed up” are more likely to convert. Facebook Sequential Ads are the perfect example of why this tip works.
5. Keep the User’s Journey Simple
Making the user’s journey through your sales funnel long and tedious is asking for a low conversion rate. This begs the question; how can you make the user’s journey as simple as possible?
This is another important part of conversion rate optimization and it revolves around the user’s experience. It’s simple: the easier it is for them to take up your offer, the higher the odds that they’ll convert.
There are several ways to approach this. For your landing pages, use multi-step forms instead of long forms. If your offer is a free trial, don’t force your audience into submitting their credit card details. There are plenty of other things you can do; just put yourself in your audiences’ shoes and consider what parts of your funnel are more stressful than they need to be.
6. Offer Freebies
By this we don’t mean you should give your product/software away for free. Rather, offer your audience something valuable for free. This could be a free cheatsheet relevant to your industry or a whitepaper.
For those in the SaaS space, this can be a free trial. Remember though, your free trial shouldn’t be restrictive by any means. Give them complete access to the software but with the addition of a time limit.
7. Improve Your Landing Page Design
Lastly, your landing page design is a huge part of CRO. We’ve already created a guide on landing page design, so we’d recommend checking that out for more in-depth tips. In this guide we highlight some of the landing pages we’ve seen and their strengths, weaknesses, and how they can be improved. Take a look at our guide and use this to improve your own landing pages.
Conclusion
Conversion Rate Optimization is a necessary part of any campaign. Whether you’re running ads on Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn, securing a high conversion rate is important. This is much easier said than done, though.
When you’re trying to improve this metric without much experience, if any, you’ll be doing a lot more testing. This is one reason why a PPC agency can be valuable to any business. At KonvertLab, our years of experience make it easy to uncover what will get your business more conversions. Book a call by clicking the button below and let’s discuss the future of your business.