As an advertiser, you are constantly being told that you need to increase your conversion rate.
You know conversions are valuable. But do you know what they are? What they aren’t? Do you know some of the most valuable types?
This is a guide on how to increase the effectiveness of your advertising through conversions.
What is an advertising conversion?
An advertising conversion is any goal action taken by a potential customer in response to an ad that is considered valuable to the campaign. Google defines a conversion as:
“An action that’s counted when someone interacts with your ad (for example, clicks a text ad or views a video ad) and then takes an action that you’ve defined as valuable to your business, such as an online purchase or a call to your business from a mobile phone.”
Step by step, these “conversions” take visitors through the buyer’s journey and become more significant as they go: prospects turn into leads, leads turn into customers, and customers turn into loyal advocates.
But generating these actions isn’t easy. To run a successful ad campaign, you need the right tools and strategy, as well as a understanding of how different types of ads fit into the campaign.
Types of advertising conversion
The term “advertising conversion” is a broad term that refers to a goal action that a visitor takes in an ad campaign. There are actually many types of advertising conversions that can occur when a potential customer is exposed to an advertisement. What you want to achieve with your campaign is mainly determined by the kind of campaign you’re running, and the kind of post-click experience required to convert your visitor. Following is a list of the most frequent types of advertising conversions and the circumstances under which they are typically employed.
Click-through
After clicking on an ad, a user arrives at a designated landing page where they can view content related to what they clicked on. The users respond positively to the content and click on the CTA button present on the page. That, in turn, takes them to another landing page. This page is designed to get people to take an action that is worth more, like signing up for a trial or buying something.
When to aim for the click-through conversions
At the beginning of the buyer’s journey, transactions between prospects and businesses are not very risky. Although they may not involve money, exchanges such as an email address for a report or a phone number for an audit still occur at the top of the funnel. As a result, you’re not likely to see click-through pages.
The bottom of the funnel, however, is different. Transactions are a higher risk. Purchasing things online can be daunting because of all the financial information that is required. With so many things to keep track of, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and click the back button to exit the page. That’s where a click-through page works its magic. Although it is not commonly discussed, clicks are only beneficial insofar as they help achieve another goal. It helps sales pages, trial pages, etc., by getting people used to the idea of giving away sensitive personal information, like a credit card number.
Leads
A lead is a prospect that expresses interest in a product or service by submitting a piece of contact information in exchange for an offer. The information you need to provide in order to receive the offer could be an email address, phone number, or social media profile. The offer itself could be a resource, such as an ebook or report, a service like an audit, or a newsletter, discount, or demo.
Key to generating a lead conversion
Bottom-funnel goals are typically difficult to achieve, while top-of-funnel goals are relatively easy. If you want to turn an anonymous prospect into a lead, you should keep it simple.
- Be brief: Keep copy to a minimum, and use a bulleted list to highlight the benefits of claiming your offer.
- Give a lot of value: Offer ebooks, tip sheets, reports, email newsletters with discounts and updates.
- Ask for little in return: At the top of the funnel, when your only concern is generating a lead to begin qualification, ask for little more than email.
- Don’t overwhelm with media: When you’re offering a lot of value for little in return, there’s minimal risk for the prospect. You don’t need countless trust badges, explainer videos, and infographics to convince them to exchange their email for an ebook. On top-of-funnel post-click pages, go minimal.
Purchase/Sale
A sales conversion happens when someone buys something. This is the most desired type of conversion, where the lead has been nurtured until they are ready and comfortable to make a purchase.
The tools for a sales conversion
A sale requires more than anything else, earning the trust of a lead. Achieving success online is not only about having a strong sales page, but also about providing visitors with a positive and consistent experience before and after they click on your page. The following are components that should be included in a post-click experience that is focused on making a sale. Here’s what they are:
- A sales page: Generally, a sales page is one that attempts to earn a sales conversion. However, the term “sales page” is used differently by marketing professionals. Sometimes it’s used to describe a click-through page that attempts to persuade visitors to buy a product or service. While the sale isn’t actually completed on this page, it’s still designed to sell a product. Other marketers, however, use the term more literally to mean a page that a sale is completed on.
How to prepare your landing pages to convert ad visitors and create ads for the best possible results.
Before You Start Creating Ads
You should not buy ads without a plan. Before you start placing ads on social networks, here are some things you need to do.
Define Your Goals
First off, you need to define your advertising goals. If you don’t set goals for yourself, how will you be able to measure your success? Some social advertising goals include the following.
- Increasing your fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
- Getting leads for a specific product or service.
- Recruiting new talent for an open position at your company.
- Increasing signups for an upcoming webinar.
- Growing your mailing list by offering an eBook, whitepaper, coupon, or other downloadable freebie.
Create Optimized Landing Pages
The best thing you can do when it comes to conversions on any advertising is to make sure that your ads match the content of the landing page that visitors will see when they click on your ad. If you want to promote a specific service, it would be best to link to a landing page about that service rather than your homepage. This would allow visitors to see more details about what you were advertising without having to search for it.
Prepare Your Website
Next, you’ll want to take steps to set up your website to be able to track your advertising goals. This is especially important if you’re using click-through landing pages. I personally prefer Google Analytics as it makes it easy to set up goals that track when visitors complete specific actions. Your goal for your website should be something that your visitor does, such as completing a purchase, submitting a form, or clicking on a button.
You will also need to track your conversions. One way to make sure you can track conversions from your advertising campaign is to create specific URL parameters. Using the URL builder, you can create a custom URL with parameters that you can use to track campaigns in Google Analytics. So if you want to direct traffic to the following URL in your ad campaigns:
http://try.domain.com/your-product/
Then you would create a URL like this.
http://try.domain.com/your-product/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fall2012&utm_campaign=ads
Now that you know how to measure the results of your advertising campaign, you can follow these tips to set up your ads for the best possible ROI.
Social Ad Platform 1 – Facebook
Facebook has more advertising options than any other social network. Promoted Posts can help to increase the number of people who see your updates. You can choose to promote your updates to either your fans or your friends. Sponsored Stories can help to increase the number of likes on your page or on individual updates that you post to your page. But this post will focus on ads that promote links to your landing pages. Below are some tips to help you get the most out of your Facebook ads.
Check Out the Competition
First off, let’s look at your competition. The Facebook Ads Manager is a great place to look for inspiration before designing your own ad. The Ads Manager shows the latest ads that are targeted to your profile, so you can get an idea of what is popular with other users.
When looking at ads, consider which ones stand out based on their images and which are appealing to you based on the title text or description. Do you find yourself more likely to look at ads if your friends like the business?
Create the Title, Description, and Image
An effective advertisement should bring to mind a problem that the customer may have and how your company can provide a solution through its products, services, eBooks, whitepapers, or webinars.
An image that stands out and is memorable is key for advertising. This image can be the product you are selling, a well-known individual related to the business, or a symbol of the issue you are solving. The best size for Facebook ad images is 100px by 72px.
If you have the option to show social activity from a related page, be sure to do so. If someone sees that a friend has liked your business on Facebook, this may make them more likely to try your business as well.
Choose Your Audience Targeting Options
Be sure to use targeting options to your advantage. Your ads should not be geared towards a large audience that will result in a lot of clicks but few conversions. You will have a more successful social advertising campaign if you focus on a specific audience rather than a large group. You may have fewer clicks and impressions, but you will have more conversions.
Social Ad Platform 2 – LinkedIn
LinkedIn has a professional audience, which is great for B2B companies that want to advertise on social media. If you want to make the most out of LinkedIn advertising, here are some things you can do:
Research Your Ideal Client
To find your ideal clients on LinkedIn, look at your current or ideal client list, and then search for them on LinkedIn Company Pages. To find out basic information about a company on Facebook, scroll down to the bottom of their page to find the stats section.
Create the Title, Description, and Image
Again, your ad should include both a problem your potential customer might face, as well as your solution to that problem.
See Who Clicked on Your Ads
LinkedIn analytics only provides data on how many times ads and variations have been clicked, while Google Analytics only shows data on how many people have visited the landing page from the ad.
Social Ad Platform 3 – Twitter
Twitter’s advertising platform is not very effective, especially for businesses with small budgets. The reasons include…
- You don’t get targeting options when it comes to your advertising campaign beyond location (for now at least).
- Your ads are either your tweets or a link to your profile.
- Between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you can figure (based on your own activity) that less people are actually on Twitter with all of the apps available to manage it like HootSuite compared to Facebook and LinkedIn. And thus far, I’ve only seen one sponsored tweet per day through my HootSuite dashboard, and those have been entertainment related.
Twitter advertising can be effective even with a small budget. Here are some tips to get the best results.
Optimize Your Bio and Tweets for Keywords
Twitter uses the keywords in your profile bio and tweets to find an audience that matches what you’re saying.
Use Your Analytics
Keeping an eye on your Google Analytics and conversion rates from different social networks will help you get the most out of your social advertising. It is essential to focus your budget on social networks that bring the best results and save money by avoiding networks that generate a lot of clicks but few conversions. You should also be careful about the UTM parameters you use in the URLs for your ads. This will help you track which ads are performing the best over time.
Have you had success with social advertising? What networks gave you the best results based on your advertising goals?
