The impact of digitalization is so vast that most businesses have their own website and presence on social media channels, they subsequently have accounts on 3rd party review websites.

Online presence is not only about having websites and social media accounts for your business but also about how the brand’s reputation is online.

It has become immensely crucial for small businesses and white-collar professionals to manage their reputation, as it affects their business directly. Managing online reputation involves social listening, actively participating in customer interaction, and includes proactive roles.

Therefore it has become necessary to have an Online Reputation Management (ORM) strategy or an ORM agency to handle your brand reputation online.  It allows businesses to look through a digital window, which evinces the avenues to improve and grow.

How to increase the reputation of your online business?

Ask your customers to write a review

What is worse than a negative review of you or your business online? Think! It’s not having a review at all.

Negative reviews are not always bad. If your brand has all the good reviews, the customer might not believe them at all. Negative reviews can be overpowered by positive ones.

Now the main question is, how do we encourage customers to write reviews for you or your business?

There are various methods to generate user reviews, some of which are listed below. Make sure you capture the attention of users to give you a review.

1. Email
2. In-App popups
3. Feedback prompt
4. Offline

An example of how an Uber Driver is encouraging customers to rate them. A message like this ensures that a customer rates the driver.

Expand your presence

Think extensively about your business and which platform people are more likely to use to search for you on the internet. You need to find out where your target audience is present and then leverage the power of social media channels. 

Most businesses and professionals have their presence on Facebook and thinking that it is enough, is a big mistake! Users rely on all types of websites to gather reviews.

• Yelp
• Facebook
• Google
• Trip Advisor
• Better Business Bureau
• Yellow Pages

Make sure you have a presence on all these platforms because it becomes extremely difficult to judge which platforms are trusted by maximum number of people.

Let us explain it by a simple example: A doctor did not list himself on Yelp, but customers still gave feedback and reviews on the portal. The timings and the phone numbers mentioned were all incorrect. Potential customers were turning into unhappy users as they were unable to communicate with the doctor.

In this situation, it would have been better if the doctor had claimed the business page and submitted correct information. Even if you received a negative review, at least potential customers now have a way to communicate with you. That is why it is important to spread out on all the portals where your customers might be present.

Encourage customers to upload the product in use

While you may be promoting your product or profession with high-quality pictures and videos, encourage your customers to upload pictures too.

77% of people say customers’ photos influence their buying decision more than professional pictures. The customer’s picture builds trust and gives authenticity to your brand which helps in improving your online reputation.

Find ways to get your customers to review your brand with pictures. A profitable giveaway, a chance to be featured on social media, are a few ways to get the customers to post pictures along with a review.

GoPro is benefiting from this marketing technique for many years now. They encourage customers to upload pictures that they have taken from their GoPro devices. It not only encourages customers to upload pictures on social media but also helps in increasing the conversion rate.

Respond to the public on social media

Social listening is a process that brands and individuals use to monitor social media channels for mentions, competitors, products or ideas which are relevant to their niche. This information is used to analyze the information for actionable insights. The action can be anything depending on the goal, like responding to a review or strategizing marketing for the future.

Customers will be talking about your brand on social media, make sure you notice. Thank the ones who have appreciated your business and maybe provide something extra which will keep them loyal to your brand. The ones who have left a negative comment are also important as this is where your customer service enters the testing waters. It is crucial as you want to defend your brand but would not want to start an argument with the customer.

Strategically plan your reply to a negative comment, address the issue at hand and provide the customer with a reasonable solution.

A restaurant received a negative review from the customer on Facebook. The restaurant apologized for the mistake but also moved the issue to another channel so that they can resolve the matter more privately.

Start working on your blogs

The best way to improve your online reputation is to build a domain authority which can be achieved by blogging.

A huge part of lead generation depends on blogging. Publishing quality content on a regular basis will help in SEO. Thus, helping in increasing inbound and outbound links.

Diesel cafe has a website and a dedicated blog section where they update their clients on new arrivals in the menu. This way the cafe is increasing their authority on search engines. 

Take advantage of tools that monitor your online reputation

How would a business know if their reputation in the market is good? Businesses can easily monitor reviews on their website and social media, but that is not enough to assess your online reputation. 

For example, a business has mentioned you in a negative light on their blog. Will monitoring Google and Facebook help? Would you ever get to know about it?

This is why it is important to take advantage of tools like Google Alert to monitor where your business name is being mentioned. 

Reputology is one of the dedicated solutions to help you analyze reviews and comments. The tool algorithm identifies the emotion of customers and finds an appropriate reply to the same. Some other important tools are: 

1. Mention
2. Buzzsumo
3. SentiOne
4. Chatmeter
5. Social Mention

The above screenshot shows a tool called Mention. When searched for Swiggy, it shows all the results where the word Swiggy is mentioned. It also shows the influencers who are using the brand name. A must-have tool to keep track of your online reputation. 

Partner with influencers

Influencers have the power to convince people to buy a product or do business with you. Just like user-generated content, they have the power to create social proof for the business.

Brands need to find appropriate influencers according to the niche of the business.

Instead of brands promoting their own image on their own page, influencers can show the product in use. People follow and listen to influencers because of their expertise in a particular area and when they approve of a product, it highly influences the decisions of consumers.

Skinny mint collaborated with Kylie Jenner to market their brand on her social media profile. She uploaded a picture with their product on her Instagram profile with an engaging caption.

Showcase testimonials

As we have talked about it above too, encourage customers to write reviews and add pictures in their reviews. Gathering a lot of reviews is not going to help your business unless showcased on appropriate platforms. Wherever the potential customer might search for you, reviews and testimonials should be present there. Make sure you showcase the name and designation of the reviewer. The designation must be in accordance with your business functionalities. For example, for a restaurant,  a food blogger providing reviews makes it a credible source.

A local dietitian has a dedicated section of reviews on her website that showcases reviews of the customers who have benefited through her diet plans. Before and after pictures of customers make it more authentic.

Steps for fixing negative reviews:

1. Build good reviews to suppress bad reviews- While business owners can not control the feedback customers leave on your website, they can dilute negative reviews by building up positive reviews.
2. Read the review and check if you need to change something- A negative review surely does affect your brand’s reputation. Think, is there something that needs to be changed in your business? One feedback might have affected a lot of your customers. Analyze the review and your business strategically.
3. Respond to it professionally and with a solution- Only one customer leaves a review (good or bad), a lot of them read it. So respond to every review that your brand receives.
4. Dilute negative reviews in SERPs- Like mentioned above, dilute the impact of negative reviews by an overpowering positive development. What if you are not getting enough positive? Take the help of a global reputation management agency. Talk to the critic on a private channel- While you are dealing with the negative review on a 3rd party review portal, make sure that you also email or call the concerned person to apologize and give a valid explanation for the issue.
5. Turn them around- Keep in mind the people who review you online can become the most influential fans of your brand.
6.  On the whole, if you or your business reputation has been damaged, it can be reversed. Also, if you are trying to build a reputation on the internet, it can be done by following the points mentioned above. Through an efficient online reputation, you can create the utmost credibility and trust for yourself or your brand. A good online reputation can help create a good perception from existing or new customers; ultimately resulting in increased sales and revenue of your business.

Is the recent boost in sales indicative of growing customer trust? Has the recent ad campaign got the expected results? These are the kind of questions over which marketers rack their brains in an attempt to understand business trends and how they may affect them. They often look at data to connect the dots. But data is only helpful when it’s organized and presented in a way that’s easy to visualize and hence the rising demand for informative dashboards.

Define The Purpose of Your Dashboard

Dashboards are great asset to understand the overall performance of a business and pick up on early signs of potential issues. But not all dashboards are created equal. Many dashboards are ineffective simply because they are built on no clear requirements. At the very least, before building a dashboard, one has to get the answers to the following two basic questions:

• Who will use the dashboard?
• What kind of decisions will be made based on the data provided through the dashboard?

If you’re unable to answer these two questions, it’s important you probe for more clarity. Only once the objective of the dashboard is clear in your mind, should you proceed with its development.

Types of Dashboards

There are 4 types of data dashboards for business intelligence (BI) and their selection comes down to the overall goals of your analytics and data monitoring practices.

1. Strategic Dashboard

The strategic dashboard is used to monitor the long-term business strategy through key performance indicators. Its chief aim is to bring departmental performance in alignment with the overall business strategy. They are complex to create and are mainly used by senior-level management.

Strategic dashboards rely a great deal on past performances. A strategic dashboard offers a bird’s eye view of the revenue and the customer overview for the current and last period. The findings from a strategic dashboard can inform the management of the current state of business, its growth rate and how stats stack up against the long-term business goals.

2. Operational Dashboard

Operational dashboards are meant for monitoring and managing the operations within a shorter time-frame. Their administration usually rests with the junior level managers. Since these dashboards are based on real-time data, their main focus is on creating alerts about business exceptions. Operational dashboards facilitate the smooth workflow of departments and help them stay ahead of problems.

It gives crucial operational information for KPIs such as Total Impressions, Total Clicks, Total Acquisitions and Cost Per Acquisition and the total amount spent. This is very useful as any deviation from the desired course can alert the marketing department to adjust its operational activities.

3. Analytical Dashboard

As the name suggests analytical dashboard is meant for analysts to collect vast amounts of data and use that to support executives. Analytical dashboards’ effectiveness is derived from their use of historical data-usage.

Analysts study this data to find out trends and create predictions and targets, which can form part of a business intelligence strategy. The analytical dashboard can be seen as an intersection between the strategic and operational dashboards.

4. Tactical Dashboard

Tactical dashboards are used to trace the performance with the company’s goal and objectives. They help middle-level managers in the decision-making process and see how the market reacts to the company’s actions. The level of detail in tactical dashboards falls between the operational and strategic dashboards.

With a tactical dashboard, it’s vital to use proper technology to support its various functionalities. This will enable drawing deeper insights from analyzed data, identify the problems, find out their root cause and make sound decisions to improve the current scenario.

In the IT project management dashboard, one gets a complete overview of the project. All the different activities and their progress status is easily understood. Moreover, there’s a separate section for risks and the average time consumed in different tasks. Once the project is finished, a comprehensive IT report can be created to evaluate results, and enhance the efficiency of future projects.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Their Selection:

KPIs are at the core of any dashboard as it’s these metrics that display a visual representation of the insights drawn from different business processes. Once you’ve identified your target audience and established your ultimate business goal, you’ll be able to select effective and value enhancing key performance indicators for your dashboard.

Measure your KPIs against the following 6 points to validate their selection:

• Aligned – Ensure that the KPIs align with the objectives and strategic goals of your organization.
• Attainable – Whatever indicator you choose to measure should have data that’s easy to obtain.
• Acute – They should bring everyone on the same page and going in the same direction.
• Accurate – The data used for performance indicators should be reliable and accurate.
• Actionable – Each indicator should offer key insights into the business that is actionable.
• Alive – Since the business never stops, so shouldn’t your KPIs. Keep evolving them.

KPIs generally fall into the following five categories:

• Sales – E.g. average order size, gross profit, conversion rate, new customer order vs returning customer orders, shopping cart abandonment rate.
• Marketing – E.g. site traffic, new visitors vs. returning visitors, bounce rate, average session duration, traffic source, newsletter subscribers.
• Customer Service – E.g. customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, hit rate, net promoter score (NPS), first response time, average resolution time, active issues.
• Manufacturing – E.g. cycle time, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall labor effectiveness (OLE), yield, number of non-compliance events or incidents.
• Project Management – E.g. hours worked, budget, return on investment (ROI), cost variance, cost performance index (CPI).

Good Design Accentuates The Details of a Dashboard

The User interface (UI) and User experience (UX) of a dashboard are as much important as its overall functionality. Following are the six best practices for designing appealing dashboards.

1. Know Your Audience and What They Expect From Dashboard

Who is your audience? That’s the first question you need to answer. Create user personas and look to know their behavior and preferences in detail. Once you’re done with that, you’ll know what your audience expects from a dashboard. Focus on no more than 5 key takeaways that your audience will want to see. Then by applying the F and Z reading pattern, structure your page accordingly.

2. Great Dashboards Lead With Key Data

There’s something about dashboards that throw big numbers up front and clean out the clutter. In a way, they communicate confidence and decisiveness. The style of the dashboard should be right up with any modern and clean design. Presentation of this type in dashboards gives instantaneous access to the most important data and saves the end user’s time.

3. Use Information Architecture To Create Stunning Design

When designing the dashboard it’s good practice to refer to the principles of information architecture and hierarchy. They help you decide which card to display and in what position. The F and Z patterns reflect how a user’s eye scans a page. The same logic needs to be applied in structuring and ordering of elements on your dashboard. Start with the key takeaways and let your dashboard flow from there.

4. Different Views Make For a Clean Design

Dashboards that offer many views while keeping the main view as simple as possible are most desirable. The user should be able to easily filter data by date, access information about payments, and so much more while maintaining a simple and elegant look. Presenting all that information on a single screen would create a total mess.

5. Consistent Design and Color Theme

While data might be the most sought after thing on a dashboard, that doesn’t mean it can’t look appealing from the word go. In an ideal dashboard, the web designer manifests a great combination of pleasing colors with light and proportionate amount of data. The outcome is a visible, easy to navigate dashboard with an elegant look.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of a data dashboard lies in offering balance in all things. It should be appealing but visually light, edgy but straightforward, and most of all it should be tailored to help you achieve your business goals and serve your audience.

According to a study conducted by market research firm, statista, shopping cart abandonment rates are constantly increasing across different industries. Industries such as travel, finance, non-profit, retail, fashion, etc., are all being affected with very less being done to improve the shopping cart abandonment rate.

If you already own an ecommerce website and suffer from a very high shopping cart abandonment rate, then continue reading. In this blog post, we have compiled information that will help you know the factors responsible behind high shopping cart abandonment rate along with their solution.

Factors Responsible Behind Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Shipping and Delivery Charges

A lot goes on behind the scene after an order is placed. Potential buyers don’t want to go through the hassle of knowing that, when an order is placed:

1. The order detail is shared with delivery service provider
2. The item is picked up from the warehouse of the supplier
3. It is transported via land, air, and sea
4. The item is delivered at a regional warehouse
5. The ordered item is transported and dropped at buyer’s doorstep

People consider above-mentioned steps to be a part of the service and don’t want to pay an extra penny for supply chain management activities. A typical buyer’s thought process is “If I placed an order from your website, you should be sending it to me without additional charges.”.

To add fuel to the fire, the competition between ecommerce websites makes it more difficult to ask potential buyers extra charges for shipping and delivery. As a result, free shipping and delivery is a common expectation.

Solution

(Source – Apple)

According to logistics company, UPS, 3 out of 4 people add more items in their shopping cart to qualify for free shipping. A viable solution is to know the right free shipping threshold. Ideally, you don’t want the free shipping threshold to be too low or too high. The right balance will enable you to use it as a marketing tool and get more ROI.

No Checkout as Guest Option

According to a study conducted by Baymard, 35% buyers abandoned their shopping carts because the website forced them to register before placing the order. If a potential buyer wants to buy a dress and is searching for the right colour, design, and brand, the quest can lead to different ecommerce websites.

After adding prefered items to the shopping cart, registering on different ecommerce websites to place an oder can add to the misery of a buyer. Not all buyers want to register with different ecommerce websites for a single purchase.

Solution

(Source – Macy’s)

The only solution to this problem is offering a guest checkout. You can compel them to register at a later stage by offering discounts and special offers.

Long and Complex Checkout Process

After a website visitor has selected an item, multiple factors influence the buying decision. One such factor is long and complex checkout process. As per study conducted by Baymard, 28% people abandoned their shopping cart due to complexity of the checkout process.

Solution

(Source – Versace)

Brands should try to remove the complexity by streamlining the checkout process. By showing steps required to complete the checkout, one can improve the conversion rate. Furthermore, bare minimum questions should be asked in forms such as address details and billing information to enable quick checkout.

Website Crashes and Errors

About 20% people had to abandon their shopping cart due to website crash or errors. This is primarily due to following reasons:

1. Website Errors – Lack of technical knowledge and tinkering with website code
2. Website Crash – Lack of insight on increasing demand and scalability

Solution

Website Errors – If you want to make certain changes to the code, consider taking a backup of the entire website first. If you cannot undo your mistake, consider restoring the backup.

Website Crash – Sudden increase in website traffic often leads to crash. Consider selecting a hosting partner that gives you flexible server bandwidth and space. One such scalable and reliable service provider is Amazon which provides free EC2 service for first 12 months.

Tips to Increase Average Order Value
Learn More

Just Browsing

People visit an ecommerce website for different reasons. One of those reasons is price comparison. Thanks to Google, one can know the price of a product by simply typing the product name. Other reasons behind “Just Browsing” behaviour include:

1. Checking reviews of a product
2. Checking offers and discounts
3. Browsing products to kill time

Solution

Converting website visitors who fall under the category of “Just Browsing” is difficult. With different techniques, you can try to improve the conversion rate in the long-run. Such techniques are:

Remarketing – Search engines and most social media platforms provide remarketing feature to target those potential buyers who recently viewed certain product page.

Special Offers – Offers such as buy 1 get 1 free, special discounts, etc., are viable options to convert “Just Browsing” website visitors.

Conclusion

Be it shipping charges, no guest checkout option, website errors, etc., the list of factors behind high shopping cart abandonment rate is long and evolving. As more technologies are introduced to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of experience-hungry consumers, the journey ahead for an ecommerce entrepreneur will be difficult. To keep up with changing times and make an informed decision, it is ideal to consult ecommerce experts.

Last Updated: 3rd March, 2021

Sales reps are no longer the first mode of interaction between businesses and consumers. That place has been taken up by the internet, which daily attracts millions of new users. In this circumstance, it is vital for brands to understand how consumers prefer to interact with businesses online.

After analysing consumer behaviour and their interaction with web pages, we have come up with this article. It contains most effective touchpoints to engage users and assist them in completing their desired actions.

Read below to see the touchpoints and how various brands utilize them for customer interaction.

Captivating Touch Point Examples to Improve Interaction and Optimize  Customer Experience

The following touchpoints have been precisely created to increase interaction between the website and visitors. You can implement them in your website to improve the overall design and experience.

1. First Fold of the Homepage

Source: W-Tutors

The 1st fold of the homepage is the first thing your visitors see when they visit your website. It needs to be attractive, user-friendly and clutter-free. Most companies utilize their front fold by providing an “enter email” field to interact with the brand. It is an easy way to connect with customers and improves navigation.

2. Newsletter Subscription Bar

Source: Voyij

Businesses can ask visitors to sign up for email newsletters in a variety of ways. One of the most effective ways is to request the visitor via the newsletter subscription bar. It is easy to fill and does not misguide visitors. They know they’ll be signing up to receive your blogs and promotions in their inbox and can contact your brand with ease anytime they want.

3. On-Page Contact Form

Source: Visitors Guru

The main goal behind on-page contact forms is to collect appropriate details about your customers before they contact your brand. This helps businesses provide more personalized experiences and target high-quality leads. A business can add various types of fields in the contact form.

4. Free Product Demo

Source: FATbit

Consumers prefer receiving free demos of products before making a purchase. It keeps things transparent and assists in increasing conversions and trust. Brands who incur major expenses in providing free demos can limit their number to 1 free demo for each customer.

5. Testimonials from Clients and Partners

Source: Oyo Cater

Client testimonials motivate consumers to interact with the brand. They act as a trust-building element that progress the buyer’s journey towards conversion. There are several client testimonial formats that a website can use. It can also integrate a ‘Contact Us’ button with the testimonials section to use the section as a subconscious CTA.

6. Author Bio

Source: Entrepreneur

A short bio with a link to a landing page can help businesses create a distinct profile. If you plan on investing time and money to establish your presence on a third-party website, then focus on bringing value through content as well. Furthermore, you can use big data and content marketing to reach the right customer.

7. Live Chat for Answers to Questions in Real Time

Source: KoutureStudios

Consumers in every sector expect brands to provide fast and reliable customer service. They don’t want to navigate through the traditional IVR systems and want ease in finding customer support. In such a scenario, providing chat support via your websites is a very helpful option. If you cannot provide real-time support, then several AI-enabled chat integrations are also available.

8. Comments Section

Source: Wiser Community

Consumers consider comments and reviews a genuine source of information about a company or its products. They also use the comment section as a way to approach brands to clear any queries and doubts. This is especially common on blog pages. Also, consumers replying and interacting with other consumers also increases the website engagement.

9. Social Media Sharing

Source: Pendazi

Social media buttons enable visitors to share your products on their social media handles. This does marketing for your brand and helps visitors and influencers get a third-party opinion from their followers. Platforms like Facebook also provide a private message option, which is an upgrade to traditional social media sharing.

10. Pop-ups for Product Demo

Reference: Yo!Yumm

Pop-ups with a light and functional design that are timed well enhance the user experience. They assist in customer retention, and product demo pop-ups even introduce your products to visitors. There are various types of pop-ups that you can integrate into your website, such as exit-intent pop-ups and timed pop-ups.

11. Call-to-action Text – Inside Post

Source: PwC

Depending on the funnel stage a market asset belongs to, businesses can place various types of CTAs inside their blog posts. Contrasting colors, urgency, desire and preciseness in CTAs makes them most convincing and useful for business websites.

12. Push Notifications

Push notifications remind users to visit your store on an intermittent basis. eCommerce businesses have been using push notifications as a means for promotion and interaction for many years. Whether the user will click on the notification or not, it depends on the ad copy you sent. Also, push notifications can be sent on both computer web browsers and mobile phones with the later being more popular. They are a different type of CTAs with a very high chance of users reading them.

13. Email Signature

Source: WiseStamp

Email signatures signify a logical conclusion of your communication, making them noticeable to the users. A well-structured email signature amplifies brand image and can be used to convey important information just like the example shared above. This email signature has the primary contact number of the business along with the email address and the website for the receiver’s reference. Furthermore, links to the company’s social media handles advertises brand footprints and enhances brand awareness.

14. Survey Participation Request Form

Source: Adobe

To use surveys as a touchpoint, businesses can frame questions that are no hassle for their website visitors to answer. In the above example, the form is not shown upfront. Instead, it appears as a popup, asking the visitors if they would like to complete a short survey. A click on “Yes, later” will open a separate window to which the visitors can come back to at a later stage.

15. Landing Page CTAs

Source: Adobe

Many brands have configured a default contact button in the navigation bar of their website. As a touchpoint, a simple ‘contact us’ button is not so convincing and does not deliver value. Instead, brands can ramp up their landing pages by providing in-context CTAs that align with the buyer journey and assist in conversions. 

16. Refer a Friend

Source: Sprint

Rewarding consumers for referring your products to family and friends can also increase website engagement. It is good for business promotions and the reward only needs to be given incase of successful referrals, which means when a referred person actually buys your service or product.

17. Search Bar

Source: Oyo Cater

In a world, where consumers are hungry for experience, search bars should be made to bring convenience. In the above example, the search bar is the most prominent touchpoint, motivating visitors to interact with the brand. Any other type of web element or touchpoint would have taken away the convenience of finding products from consumers and resulted in poor conversions.

18. The Hover Effect

Source: Simplicity

Website design practices like hover effects use animations to improve the user experience of visitors. For example, a change in the color of an element when a visitor moves his mouse over it is an example of the hover effect. Using the combination of various animations and colors, brands can use the hover effect to increase clicks and user engagement.

19. Internal Linking

Source: Visitor Health Insurance

Internal linking has two benefits – enable a website visitor to explore the topic and improve ranking in search results. Ideally, keeping the sales funnel in mind and inserting appropriate internal links can lead visitors to the final purchase decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

20. Call-to-action Text – Side

Source: Uni Diamonds

Concealed CTAs that popup once a visitor takes an action also work as feasible touchpoints for brands. For example, in the given image, Uni Diamonds is using mail and call logos to conceal CTAs. Not only are they improving user experience, but also making the web design clutter-free.

Due to the presence of uncountable websites, consumers today have varied experiences in interacting with online businesses. In these circumstances, clear-cut digital touchpoints assist businesses in providing their consumers a direction to interact with their websites. Moreover, integrating these touchpoints not only improves a brand’s web design but also ameliorates the customer experience and encourages interaction.

Majority of the websites mentioned in this article are developed by using FATbit products. To get a website with similar UI/UX design, you can check out our wide range of products or feel free to contact us for custom development.

As an inbound marketer, optimizing websites, landing pages, content, opt-in forms, etc. is your top priority. And this is what your clients expect from you.

Improving conversions and generating sales is every business’s dream. This is the reason why 56% of marketers test their landing pages (especially the opt-in forms) to improve conversions.

Conversion rate optimization takes the guesswork out and you’re left with pure actionable data.

The important question is how to get started with conversion rate optimization? What it is, why it is important, what’s its process, best practices, tips and tricks, and more?

Well, this is what exactly you’ll find in this detailed guide.

What is conversion rate optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a systematic approach to increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action such as filling a form, creating an account, buying a product, etc.

Let’s assume, your landing page gets 500 visitors and 12 of them download the lead magnet, your conversion rate will be:

            12/500 = 0.024 x 100% = 2.4%

The conversion rate is expressed in percentage. This means your landing page converts at 2.4%. This means for every 100 visitors, you’ll (on average) get 2.4% subscribers.

In order to increase the conversion rate, you’ll use some techniques, tools, or approaches. For instance, you might end up changing the headline on the landing page. This process refers to conversion rate optimization.

Whenever a marketer tries to increase the conversion rate of a website or a landing page, he is technically involved in CRO.

Let’s take a real-life example.

Highrise Marketing tweaked their website’s design to improve conversion rate. Switching from long-form design to a personal short design increased conversion rate by a whopping 102.5%.

Changing the image had a huge impact on conversion rate.

This is what we call CRO.

CRO is directly related to leads and sales. This is what makes it a top priority for every business and this is why inbound marketers should know the ins and outs of CRO.

Conversion rate optimization process

So how you can do CRO for your clients? How to improve conversion rate?

Here is how it works.

CRO process has three stages:

1. Analysis and planning
2. Testing
3. Review

What exactly you have to do in each of these stages will be discussed in the following sections.

Stage 1: Planning and analysis

The first stage is all about data collection and it is the most crucial stage. Everything rests on the data you collect for testing.

This is why it is the most time-consuming stage in the entire CRO process because you don’t want to end up collecting irrelevant or useless data that will lead to nothing at the end of the day.

So what type of data you have to collect?

You have to collect all sorts of data from all possible sources. This includes technical analysis, analytics, user testing, surveys, mouse tracking, and more.

1. Web analytics

Google Analytics should be your starting point. It provides with a wealth of knowledge. You have tons of data available there, and practically, you cannot (and shouldn’t) analyze all of it for CRO. Here is the most crucial analytics that you should analyze:

• How much traffic does the website get from each source?
• What are the demographics of the visitors?
• Identify pages with highest and lowest bounce rates.
• Average exit rate and bounce rate analysis.
• Average page views and time on site analysis.
• Device and geographic analysis.

This data will help you identify leading traffic sources, demographics, bounce rate and page views, and how visitors and customers are actually interacting with the website.

2. Technical analysis

Is your website performing equally well across all the devices and browsers?

The data from the previous step will help you better understand if the website has any technical issues. For instance, if conversions from tablets are fairly low as compared to conversions from other devices, this surely is a red flag.

Similarly, a speed test via PageSpeed Insights will help with determining the load time which is a critical variable that is correlated with conversion rate.

3. Heat maps

Click maps or heat maps are your best friend since they show you where exactly visitors click on any given web page. This makes your life, as a CRO expert, a lot easier.

For instance, if a lot of visitors click text CTA while only a few click CTA button, this clearly means CTA button isn’t doing well.

Tools like Crazy Egg and Hotjar will help you see complete mouse movement on the entire website.

4. Surveys

Conduct surveys, focus groups, and interviews so as to understand website issues from your customer’s point of view. The purpose of every survey and interview should be to get the answer to one core question:

What’s the biggest hurdle that stops visitors from converting?

You can conduct surveys on your website via popups by using tools like Qualaroo. Better yet, use an exit intent popup that asks the visitors what makes them leave the website.

Even if you get responses from a hundred visitors, you’ll know what’s bothering them.

Also Read: How to Use Big Data in Content Marketing for Improved Results

5. User testing

This is an interesting phase. You have to analyze visitors in real-time. You have to identify several test users and assign them different tasks such as downloading a lead magnet, ordering a product, filling a form, etc.

This will help you see how they move from one step to the next and what grabs their attention.

What to test

After you have gathered all the data, you have to decide what you’ll test.

The analysis will reveal several weak areas and powerful areas. Identify what will be tested, where it will be tested, and who it will be tested for.

• What you’ll test such as headlines, CTA, button color, form size, etc.
• Who you’ll test for such as which type of traffic, visitors, or customers.
• Where you’ll test such as on which pages on the website.

This means you have to identify pages for tests, elements to be tested on these pages, and will you test for social traffic.

By the end of this stage, you’ll have several hypotheses ready for testing.

Let’s take an example.

The data analysis revealed that visitors prefer a list type headline on the landing page. You can create a hypothesis that converting headline to a list will increase conversion rate on this specific landing page for all types of traffic sources.

Similarly, you have to create several hypotheses that should be derived from the data.

Stage 2: Testing

You’re done with the hardest part, this is relatively an easy stage.

It is all about outlining and implementing your tests.

But before you do, you have to consider all of the following:

            Does making changes need any technical expertise?

            Are changes consistent with brand’s strategy and marketing?

            Are changes relevant to objectives?

If all looks good, you can proceed with the implementation.

You have to create A/B tests. You have to use one of the following tools to create A/B tests and implement your tests:

1. Optimizely
2. VWO

Make sure everything is set properly and the variations are live and complete.

Also Read: How to do A/B Testing like an Expert – A Beginner’s Guide to Improve Website Conversion

Stage 3: Review

The final stage is all about reviewing your tests. Did they work and how significantly they performed.

Check the results of the A/B test. One of the two things will happen:

1. The conversion rate will increase.
2. The conversion rate will decrease or stay the same.

When conversion rate increases, you have to check the significance as well. A testing tool will tell you if the results are significant. If conversions increase and the results are significant, you can start sending all the traffic to the winning variation.

When conversion rate decreases or stays the same, that’s where you’ll have to conduct a new test with a different variation. A decrease in conversion rate doesn’t mean the test was unsuccessful, it means that the element you tested doesn’t impact conversion rate.

In either case, it is a win-win.

The whole point of CRO process is to continuously and regularly test and implement several small changes throughout the website.

You just cannot stop once conversions increase. You can create another version of the same element with an intention to further increase conversion rate.

For instance, if the list headline started converted better, you now have a winning headline that converts better than the old one. You can now test another list type headline to see how it works. You can test an even and an odd list.

Inspect what happens when you increase or decrease the list number.

Same goes true for all the other variations.

It is a never-ending process.

CRO principles

There are certain principles without which spending resources on conversion rate optimization will be nothing but waste. The following CRO principles will make your life a lot easier. You can certainly go without these principles but it will take time and your process will be flawed.

You cannot do it well with a flawed process, right?

So let’s stick to these principles.

1. One offer per page

When it comes to CRO, less is more.

Every page should have one offer and a single CTA. You could have multiple CTAs but all of them should promote the exact same offer.

The page should have fewer options and distractions so that visitors know what this page is all about.

Whirlpool increased its CTR by replacing four CTAs with one focused CTA. Click through rate increased by 42% with a single CTA.

Conversionxl compared two different landing pages for CTAs and offers.

Intuit’s TurboTax has over 15 different CTAs including buttons and text on their landing page.

On the other hand, E-file promotes a single offer on their landing page with a couple powerful CTAs. The purpose of the entire page is to Create an Account.

If you have multiple offers to promote, use different landing pages. Refrain from putting all the offers on a single landing page hoping that one of them will sell. You can never sell anything on this type of landing page that offers too much.

Visitors lose attention and they get confused.

You can, though, use multiple CTAs but they should lead to a single offer. This will help you keep the message on the page consistent.

2. Be simple

Keep pages simple, clutter-free, and ensure that there is plenty white space.

If the purpose of a page is to get visitors to download your free guide by entering their email address, that’s what the page should be all about.

Get rid of everything else from the page. No distractions.

One rule of keeping pages simple is to remove all the distractions. When the page is complicated, you start losing visitors.

That’s what happened with Sticker Mule. This is their original landing page that offers their top products above the fold.

In order to increase conversion rate, they moved all their products on the home page.

The variation resulted in a 48% drop in revenue. Why?

Because they made it complicated for the visitors to make a choice.

Don’t do it.

3. Test one element at a time

A single A/B test should measure one and only one element. If it is measuring 2 or more elements, you won’t know which element affected the conversion rate.

For instance, testing headline and CTA button size in a single test won’t tell you whether increase/decrease in conversion rate was due to the headline or button size.

Of course, you’ll have to repeat the test individually to figure out what impacted the conversion rate.

In reality, testing multiple elements in a single test increases your work instead of reducing it.

Also Read: Colors & Conversions of a Website have a Deep Connection

Best CRO strategies and tactics

Most often, inbound marketers don’t know what they’re supposed to test that will have a significant impact on conversion rate.

If you’re new to CRO and have no clue where you should begin, following proven CRO strategies and tactics will help you get started by testing what really works.

1. Benefit-driven CTA

Call to action shouldn’t be boring. People are sick of seeing traditional CTAs like click here, sign up for a free trial, get instant access, etc.

These don’t work.

Benefit-driven CTAs that tell people what they will get work far better than any other types of CTAs.

Kaya Skin Clinic replaced their CTA to benefit driven by changing it from:

For Skin Consultation, Register Here:

…to I want an expert opinion, sign me up. And it worked.

Conversion rate increased by a whopping 137.5% with a 22% increase in sales.

Instead of telling visitors to click here, you need to provide them a strong reason as to why they should click and what benefit they will get once they will click on the button or link.

This works.

2. Best place for CTA

This is one thing that you should definitely check. There are three places on any landing page where you can put a CTA, these include:

1. Above the fold
2. Bottom of the page
3. Below the fold

There is no good or bad place for a CTA, you have to test what works for your website. This is one strategy that will definitely help you improve conversion rate by finding the best place for CTA.

3. Use contrasting colors

Contrasting CTA button color improves conversion rate. In one A/B test for Performable website, changing the button color from green to red increased conversion rate by 21%.

This doesn’t mean that red CTA button will always outperform green CTA button on all the website. No.

It means that using contrasting colors and a button color that is prominent increases conversion rate. This is another area that you should always test when dealing with CRO.

4. Get more landing pages

As discussed above, one landing page should have one offer. This means you’ll have multiple landing pages. But CRO requires you to create several landing pages for a single offer.

According to a HubSpot report, companies that use 40 or more landing pages generate maximum leads.

Creating a lot of landing pages definitely means a lot of work on your part but it pays off. It lets you check every aspect and every element. There are several benefits associated with an increase in the number of landing pages:

• More variety
• Conversion opportunities for visitors
• Multiple targeting opportunities

The best approach is to have 5 to 10 landing pages for a single offer. Test them simultaneously and run A/B tests on all of them to find a winning page – and then create its variations and move on.

5. Test videos

Videos are known to increase your landing page conversion rate significantly. There are several case studies like this and this that show that using a video in a landing page increases conversion rate.

In one test, replacing the image with video on the landing page increased conversion rate by 12.62%.

When you have multiple landing pages, you have a lot of room to test videos and images.

CRO checklist

If you just started out with conversion rate optimization, the checklist below will help you keep track of where you should begin and what to test.

Landing page

The landing page is the first thing that you should test. There are several elements on a landing page that you need to test. Some of the major ones include:

• Color scheme
• Clarity with white space
• Remove unnecessary links
• Benefit-driven headline
• Contrasting CTA button
• Includes testimonials and social proof
• Form has only necessary fields

Copy

The landing page is related to visuals while the copy is what helps with conversion. The color scheme, CTA button, or the form won’t help with conversions alone.

A visitor will read the text and will make a decision on the basis of the text whether he should proceed or exit. The copy has to be impeccable.

Here are a few tips on optimizing copy for conversions.

• Copy should be relevant to the ad or search term that sent a visitor to your landing page.
• Grab attention right from the first sentence with a powerful opening.
• The copy should be benefit driven and must fulfill visitor’s need.
• Make it easy-to-read by using bullets, short paragraphs, and lots of white space.
• No use of jargons.
• No errors whatsoever.
• Test different variations of copy with formatting, font size, font family, and more.

Offer

Offer is the crux. This is what visitors will get be it a free guide, a product, or a newsletter. The offer is the reason why a person visited a landing page in the first place.

The way how you present the offer is related to conversion rate – the offer itself has nothing to do with the conversion rate.

Because visitors get to check the offer after they has converted.

For instance, once a visitor has submitted his email address for a free eBook, the conversion has taken place. It is a different story whether eBook delivers or is useful or not.

But it doesn’t mean that you should start making false claims on your landing page just to increase conversion rate. Remember, it is the beginning – not the end.

So play fair.

Here are a few tips to tweak your offer to test it.

• The offer should be relevant to copy, headline, and the ad.
• The way how you present your offer will make all the difference.
• Clearly explain your offer above the fold as to what it is all about.

Also Read: Gamify Copywriting To Detach Buyers’ Resistance And Win Sales

User experience

Often overlooked but it is one of the most crucial elements that directly impact conversion rate. A landing page that isn’t user-friendly won’t convert no matter how hard you try.

There are several elements that you should test.

• Improve page load time.
• Make sure all the landing pages are responsive and work well on all the devices.
• Landing pages should be cross-browser compatible.
• Design and layout should be tidy.

Conclusion

Conversion rate optimization isn’t a quick fix. It is not a silver bullet. It’d be best if you don’t treat it like this. It is a complete process that never ends. It is a journey towards improvement.

I hope this guide will help you get started with CRO, analysis, and improving the conversion rate of any website or web page.

Once you’ll get started, you’ll fall in love with it because it feels awesome when one of your hypothesis is accepted.

In the current digital age, the overall notion of how you reach out to customers has changed. Digital marketing has become the core phenomenon for an online business. You cannot just launch an online business and hope the consumers will come on their own. You need to have a marketing plan for targeting your prospective consumers, building a user base and increasing sales.

Digital marketing is still at its nascent stage and most online businesses are unable to understand how to conquer it. Having helped countless startups reach their targeted userbase, FATbit Technologies surely understands how and what is required to get maximum ROI.

The fact of the matter is that the competition is fierce online and a well-planned strategy is needed in order to have an edge over the competition. This strategy takes into account five different areas that online businesses need to look at. This includes:

• Plan
• Reach
• Act
• Convert
• Engage

Plan

There have been several cases where online businesses, despite doing digital marketing, are unable to reap in the benefits. The major reason behind it is not preparing any kind of plan of action. If you have a proper plan in place, it becomes easy when it comes to execution. There are several digital marketing tools that would help you easily create an otherwise formidable plan. Moreover,good planning resonates into better returns.

What strategy you should employ?

• Build an agile and calculated approach to digital marketing.
• Select target market segments and properly define targeting approach.
• Define your online value proposition properly including review of your business as well as revenue model.

Take into account the 4Ps of marketing – Product, Price, Promotion and Place.

Content is the internet currency but most of the bloggers failed to embrace this currency efficiently, leaving them grappling with a lot of content marketing challenges:

• 66% of bloggers stated that lack of time is their biggest problem.
• 46% of bloggers couldn’t come up with content generation requirements.
• 44% of bloggers admitted that raising engagement through-out their content is their biggest obstacle.
• Budget constraint pushed back to 38% of bloggers.
• When it comes to content diversity, 33% of bloggers failed to accomplish it.

Why do Buyers have Resistance?

The attitude to resist buying something is natural. Whenever a salesperson approaches a buyer or when a buyer views a sales page online, it’s as if the buyer is instantly ‘frozen’ or becomes defensive.

The general perception is that the seller is out to rip off buyers by selling their products which the buyer may not even need. Establishing credibility is important to help your audience break this barrier and become a loyal and repeat customer.

The true value of a copywriter is in breaking through the defensive shield, reaching out to the buyer and coaxing the buyer to take an action. It doesn’t matter which medium is used to deliver the advertisement copy, buyers usually display the same kind of resistance, such as:

• The buyer doesn’t need the product right now
• The buyer doesn’t trust the seller (ad copy) – blog authority works like a charm here!
• The buyer doesn’t believe in the workability of the product
• The buyer finds it too expensive

…and so on!

If you have some copywriting experience, you will surely realize that these reasons always ring true.

The Emotional Side of Convincing Someone

Any purchase, absolutely any, is governed by two human emotions: Pleasure and Pain.

For instance, people buy different variety of smartphones because it triggers the ‘pleasure’ feeling. On the other hand, an eBook on ‘How to save your marriage from divorce’ deals with the feeling of loss and pain and he/she buys the eBook with the hope of dealing with the pain.

It isn’t that logic doesn’t play a role at all. It does but mostly it comes as an afterthought.

The emotions of pain and pleasure are further divided into eight ‘universal motivations’ that triggers a person to respond, despite the nature of product or service on offer because knowingly or unknowingly, the product or service cater to the eight universal motivations. They are:

• To be wealthy
• To be healthy
• To be popular
• To be good looking
• To have security
• To have fun
• To have free time
• To have inner peace

A knowledgeable copywriter understands the nature of the product or service, the motivation/s influencing the offer and creates the ad copy accordingly.

In other words, the advertising copy should fulfil one or more of the universal emotions.

6 Steps to Remove Buyers Resistance

There are six steps to remove buyers’ resistance. It is an amalgamation of pressing the hot emotional buttons and copywriting skills that create a stellar marketing pitch and conversions.

1. How to Capture Buyer Attention?

Offering to fulfil the eight motivations is how a copywriter is successful to remove buyers’ resistance and turn visitors into paid buyers.

Ashley Phillips from The Website Group says: “What David Ogilvy said about readers’ psychology several years ago is still alive.  The theory says that approximately 4 to 5 times as many viewers read the headline as they read the content body”.

The headline of an advertorial is the first point-of-contact with a potential buyer and thus, a lot of focus is given to crafting the most amazing headline which can grab buyer attention, prompting the potential buyer to read further and take an action.

Ogilvy further states:

“It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90% of your money…”

The headline is critical for the success of any advertising copy or newsletter. People have lower attention spans with their hands ready on the mouse to browse away from a page instantly, and the decision to move away happens when the visitor doesn’t find the headline interesting.Refer to the Copy Blogger and SITE123 guides of crafting compelling copies.

2. Identification and Aggravation of Buyers’ Problem

Here, we come to the next step of identifying and aggravating the problem of the buyer.

Humans are mostly complacent creatures. Even when we realize the existence of a problem, our inaction makes us complacent and over time, we accept the problem as a ‘given thing’, not bothered to find a solution.

A/B testing is one of those conversion optimization techniques – which on one side, has become a favorite tool for marketers with the growth-hacking mindset; but on the other hand, is still being overlooked by a good number of startups.

In its very definition, A/B testing requires testing of two or more versions of a web element/entity against each other to find out the better one. Most SMBs, with their limited resources, find creating & testing these multiple versions of their website, or webpage, or even image – an extra expenditure. They eventually feel content with going ahead without testing variations of the element/entity.

If done right, A/B testing can bring substantial ROI, enough to compensate that extra expenditure of resources. To make sure that your startup does A/B Testing right, here in this post, we will discuss how to reap the maximum benefits from this conversion optimization tactic.

But first, let us quickly go through some basics:

A Few Basics…

Image: A simple illustration explaining the purpose of A/B Testing

Today, A/B testing is extensively used for analyzing the conversion potential of different versions of landing pages & CTAs (call to action). Besides these, it is also widely used for web copies, emails, and ads (even popular ad networks, such as Google AdWords, provide the option for A/B testing ads by default).

For any startup or marketer, practicing A/B testing for the first time, the key to run more effective & efficient tests is to know which elements to include. Some of the most common A/B testing elements you should focus on are:

• Headlines
• Page layout
• Lead capture form
• Trust indicators
• Call to action
• Content copy
• Images, videos, and other media content

Pretty much all of these elements will be tested for factors like position, color, font, visibility, & length across different versions.

Now, let’s move ahead & see how experts approach A/B Testing to improve their website’s conversion rate marginally.

Run Tests during Sale Seasons

Sale/holiday seasons are a good time to run your A/B testing campaign as a huge number of customers would be visiting your website to check offers, products, deals, and make purchases. With more customers testing your web-copy’s (or offer, or CTAs, etc.) versions, you are likely to get better results.

To get a clearer picture, consider this – if I were to ask 10 Americans at random, whether they support Trump, it is quite possible that all 10 (or 8 or 9) might say yes. But as I increase the size from 10 to 100 to 10,000 to 1,000,000, I will certainly get a much better picture on people’s opinion.

Test Only Repeat Visitors

This is one way to get more relevant results out of your A/B testing endeavors. But not all might agree with this tactic, since it implicitly means leaving out the one/first-time visitors altogether.

The reason behind implementing this tactic is obvious – you would be enhancing the experience for the customer segment that brings your repeat business and has the highest customer lifetime value (which is apparently the right customer segment to focus on).

Image: Importance of focusing on regular customers during A/B Testing

Besides, you can run test for both segments separately & lead each segment to their preferred experience. This certainly would require a little bit of extra effort, but will also bring optimum results.

Run Tests for Mobile Separately

When scroll is replaced by swipe, click by tap, & navigation by hamburger menu – customer behavior is bound to vary greatly across devices. In fact, it is quite possible that a CTA button that converts a lot on desktop might also be the reason behind decline of mobile sales. Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to run test separately for the mobile platform.

Another thing web owners need to keep in mind is that conversion rate on mobile is far less than desktop. Reason being, mobile is mostly used for exploring not buying. So, the test cases for mobile should be designed focusing on engagement. Ultimately, it will help improve your overall conversion rate across devices.

Image: Conversion rates across different devices & platform (source: Monetate)

Use A/B Testing Tools

From creating test cases to analyzing their results, today, there are several tools to streamline your A/B testing endeavors & make the whole process quite efficient.

Some of the prominent names in the A/B Testing tools sector are:

• Optimizely (offers WYSIWYG editor to create A/B test cases)
• Unbounce (landing page version creator, with integrated A/B testing module)
• Google Analytics Content Experiments (free tool with many advanced features)
• Visual Website Optimizer (comes with WYSIWYG editor & advanced tracking features, such as heatmap)
• Crazy Egg (offers visual data; not free, but rather cost effective)

For simplicity’s sake, we have listed only a handful of tools with their prime use. To explain which tool is best in which case is beyond the scope of this post. So, we suggest readers to a little research on the matter.

Do Bandit Testing

A quick definition first – bandit testing is a more flexible variant of A/B testing in which instead of evenly splitting the exposure across all versions, the best version continuously gets more exposure than others. Here the image below will clarify it further:

Image: Illustration to show difference between A/B & Bandit Testing (Source: Conductrics)

Doing bandit testing is ideal in situation where you already have an inclination (logical) towards a particular version and it performs well in the initial stage. Referring to the image above, obviously, there is no point in continuing to provide equal exposure to all three options when A is continuously converting better than others.

Also read: 5 conversion rate optimization hacks that you probably didn’t know about

Conclusion

The concept of A/B testing goes much deeper than what we have covered here; plus, in practice, it will bring along much more complex scenarios that what we have illustrated in the images above. The important thing is to move in the right direction and follow smart practices (such as mentioned in the post above) that ensure improvement in conversion rate in the most efficient manner. And that’s what would make your investment on A/B testing worthwhile.

When brands devise a content marketing strategy, it is done for the masses, hoping that it would go viral. However, rather than shooting in the dark, and basing the success of the content marketing strategies on how viral the content has gone, the current scenario demands a more targeted approach.

Usually, while creating the content marketing plan, businesses hardly pay much heed to who their target audience is, what type of content they are looking for and which content will offer best results in terms of new customers.

Of course, it is not the recommended approach, but in the rush of doing more with less, brands create a diverse content marketing plan and hope that it will stick with their target audience.

Amid the rush of producing more and more content to please search engine bots for improved ranking, to some extent, this approach is inevitable. However, today, we have big data to help brands narrow down their targeting even with the aforementioned rushed approach.

But, what exactly is this big data?

Big Data is the sheer amount of information that users are generating every second online as well as offline. With each click, swipe, like or share, some amount of data is being generated that can be used by brands and businesses to make informed decisions on how users are using their services.

All this data is giving us a small bit of information on consumer behavior, their likes, their dislikes, etc., which can be used by businesses and brands to better target them. Now, rather than wasting resources and puttering randomly created content, brands should use data at their disposal to target the content more efficiently towards users who really matter.

Before we delve into use case of big data in content marketing, first let us look at the amount in terms of numbers that will allow you to understand its magnitude.

• More than 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last two years alone.
• Currently, we are outputting 2.5 quintillion (10¹² million) bytes of data every day.
• Americans use 2,657,700 GB of internet data every minute.
• Wikipedia users publish 600 new page edits every minute
• YouTube users watch 4,146,600 videos every minute in 2017.

Related Read: Various Metrics to Measure Content Marketing Success

It is estimated that just 12% of the overall data being generated is currently used by data scientists and the rest 88% is available out there to be used as valuable information.

For example, take Facebook. It has the world’s largest database of information about consumers and their likes. It uses this data so that the brands and businesses can better plan their campaigns on the social networks. So if Ford company wants to launch a campaign for their upcoming car, Facebook would allow Ford to just target users that are car enthusiasts, or looking for a car. This way the content marketing strategy will work more efficiently and will offer better ROI.

That said, here is how you can use Big Data in accomplishing three main goals of content marketing:

Finding targeted audience

If you know who is more likely to read your content or even might be interested in the product/ service that you are offering, you are more likely to get better results on your content marketing plan. You can track and monitor the progress of certain metrics which will help you offer better insights on who to target with your content marketing plan. These metrics include:

• Search for brand/business on search engines
• Followers on social media
• Mentions on social media
• Traffic sources
• Overall Visibility

By examining this data, you can analyze the behavior of your target audience, what they are talking about and which type of content will be most effective on them.

Conversion

There is no denying the fact that content marketing plays a larger role in conversion during the purchase cycle of a user. Big data helps in deducing and mapping how long a prospective customer stays in the purchase cycle and what type of content will convert them. By analyzing this information, brands can easily figure out consuming behavior of the user, allowing them to convert easily.

The main goal of any content marketing strategy when it comes to conversion is delivering value, relevance, and clarity to the users. Big Data offers crucial insights that help brands achieve those goals seamlessly.

Suggested Read: 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Hacks You Probably Didn’t Know about

Retention

You have found your targeted audience and also have a well laid plan for conversion. Now the next goal of your content marketing strategy revolves around retaining the customers. To achieve this aim you need to analyze big data metrics like:

• Number of subscribers
• Click through rate
• Average time on website
• Customer satisfaction as a whole

These metrics can also help brands in upselling as well as cross-selling. Big data can help you segregate loyal customers from disgruntled customers. This way you can push your content marketing strategy separately aimed at issues faced by a particular group of customers.

Also Read: Retargeting Ads – The Perfect Way to Optimize Your Conversion

Conclusion

The bottom line is that big data helps you make more informed decisions. Analyzing the data and performing an assertive mining surely brings prominent results when it comes to content marketing. At the end of the day, content marketing is just fishing in muddy waters, hoping you might catch a fish. Big data just clear the mud, allowing you to see clearly and aim accordingly.

Today, Facebook is definitely the best place when it comes to putting forth your brand in front of a large audience at minimum expenses. But ever since the organic reach of Facebook updates has gone down the drain, businesses are required to put extra efforts to reach their target audience.

Many studies & surveys prove that Facebook’s organic reach is still declining constantly, but thankfully, the platform also continues to equip marketers with new tools & features to reach their target audience in effective manner; but only if used optimally.

Let’s see how brands can make use of these latest tools & tactics to make their Facebook marketing campaigns more fruitful.

Share More Native Video

Have you noticed that when you open your Facebook newsfeed nowadays, it is mostly filled with video content rather than pictures or text statuses? Facebook prioritizes video content in newsfeeds, especially, the videos that have been directly uploaded to Facebook (native videos) rather than videos shared from a different source like YouTube.

A recent study by Quintly also suggests that Facebook native videos perform better than other shared videos: they get 110% more interaction and get 478% more shares. So, it is obvious that brands on Facebook should work upon making video content that trigger sharing to reap the maximum benefit of this large online community.

Some of the proven tactics in this regard include – sharing event videos, behind the scene clips, product launch videos, sharing videos DIY tips, emotional videos, challenges, etc. For example, GoPro runs a ‘Video of the Day’ campaign on Facebook, and share highly engaging videos every day, which gets thousands of shares & immense popularity; like this one:

Create Catchy Call to Action for Your Facebook Business Page

One of the coolest things about Facebook Business page is that it allows you to add a Call to Action right on the cover page. It helps followers to instantly know what you want them to do and also evokes them to take that action when they visit your page.

Facebook offers a bunch of most common CTA button options, which brands can select from as per their targeting. And it is obvious that if a brand mentions at the top what they are expecting their audience to do – for example “Contact us” or “Visit website”, etc., there is higher probability that the audience would click on the button.  You can also go a little creative with the cover image to drag visitors’ attention to your CTA (like in the image below).

Besides the cover image area, there is another way to add call to action on Facebook, which is simply through your updates. Just make your updates in such a manner that they ask users for an action; such as this one.

Related Read: How to Create Call to Actions that Generate More Sales & Leads

Make the Most of Facebook Live

Facebook Live – the live streaming service – is a powerful tool, which marketers have been using for many a purpose. Besides sharing whatever can be shared through native videos, there is much more that brands can do with live videos to connect with their Facebook followers – such as, sharing videos featuring influencers (celebrities of your field), sharing live event clips (and other places you know your audience want to be but can’t be), running reoccurring live Q&A & chat sessions, and so on.

Matchesfashion.com Facebook Live QA Session

However, when planning to go Live for the first time, there are certain things that a brand needs to keep in mind. First and foremost, they should be active during the live video session to make the experience interactive, thus, engaging for the audience. Secondly, although live videos, by nature are unscripted & casual, they shouldn’t be unplanned altogether. To make the most of this cool feature, you need to do a little bit of planning to ensure you are able to really connect with your audience whenever you go live.

Expand Your Reach with Facebook Ads

By default, the organic reach of Facebook posts is extremely poor (except for videos, as discussed earlier). That’s why most marketers have to turn to Facebook Ads to actually gain a good reach on the platform.

However, when you start advertising on Facebook, you need to first clearly outline your target audience, and also have a plan of action at hand; otherwise, your ads would only be flying blind with no clear direction amid this online community of 2 billion+ users.

The best way to achieve effective targeting with your Facebook ads is to think backward from your goal – whether you want maximum engagement on your page or maximum conversion for your product/service or anything else? After you have determined the objective, it becomes quite simple to define your target audience, and decide the budget & timings of the ads.

Apart from that, most importantly, your advertisements should be creative enough to catch attention & get some shares. For instance, I recently came across this extremely clever ad by the Dollar Shave Club. It does not showcase razors as a product for only men as depicted by other shaving companies but has rather highlighted their product to completely new audience-women.

Follow the 70-20-10 Rule

You might be confused as to what is the 70-20-10 rule in Facebook marketing. Well, it is a rule that has been widely tested and has produced great results for marketers. The rule defines content sharing strategies that brands should follow to get best results when promoting themselves on most social media channels.

Here’s how you should plan out your posting on social media channels according to this rule:

• 70% post should be about trending topic and other eye-catching posts within your niche,
• 20% should be shared content, originally published by someone else but relevant to your followers, and
• 10% should be promotional posts describing a service or product that you offer

It is proven that the best way to gather followers on social media is to share unique content which the audience would also want to share. If we analyze the 70-20-10 rule closely, it is clear the rule implicitly incorporate the practice of sharing new & unique content.

Intel has been successfully using the 70-20-10 rule on their Facebook business page. And despite Intel being a B2B company, it has more than 38 million followers on their Facebook business page.

Related Read: 6 Creative Ways to Promote Your Product on Social Media

Final Thoughts

From above discussion, it is clear that effective Facebook marketing is all about understanding the nature of the platform, recognizing the target audience’s taste, using the latest features at your disposal optimally, and being creative with the content you share. And as a matter of fact, this approach is not only applicable for Facebook, but works will with all social media platforms.

In case you feel that we have left out something important in regard to Facebook marketing, feel free to write in the comment section below. We would love to discuss that.