• Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    In today’s digital landscape, the belief that marketing programs can always be refined is fundamental. Capturing, synthesizing and understanding all available data is crucial for identifying areas of improvement whether you are targeting consumers directly or influencing the C-suite buying committee. Marketing performance typically lags in three key areas: brand strategy, awareness and the marketing funnel.

    Why Every Marketing Program Needs Continuous Improvement

    No matter how advanced your marketing strategy is, there’s always room for improvement. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the key to analyzing the performance of your marketing tactics across the conversion funnel, helping you identify steps to boost the percentage of site visitors converting on landing pages or from one stage of the funnel to the next. By leveraging a set of tools and harnessing the vast campaign data they are already generating, marketers can significantly enhance their marketing programs’ performance.

    Before diving into your optimization efforts, it’s essential to conduct a thorough marketing strategy audit. This will help you pinpoint any gaps in your marketing programs and identify key areas for improvement. Once you’ve identified these areas, it’s time to start optimizing your marketing performance. Here are 10 conversion rate optimization best practices MatterMKTG prioritizes for clients:

    Brand Strategy: Setting the Foundation for Success

    1. Evaluate Your Competition

    To ensure your brand stands out, regularly assess your competition. Are you differentiating your message effectively? By identifying the core messaging of your competitors, you should see how you can make your messaging unique and stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

    2. Re-evaluate Your Audience

    Knowing your audience is key. Are you addressing their needs and concerns? If you aren’t speaking directly to your buyer’s most critical pain points, no mix of media and content will help improve conversions. Re-evaluate your messaging and buyer personas to ensure it resonates with what they care about. Once you are confident you know your audience and what your competition is doing, bring these insights together to develop new brand messaging that is meaningful (important to the audience) and unique (stands out from your competitors).

    3. Test Your Messaging

    Experiment with different messages to see what resonates best with your audience. This could involve split testing headlines, value propositions, or CTA buttons either on your website or through user testing tools. The audience must be intrigued by your messaging to want to learn more and be provided with enough information to know what you do and how you can help them.

    Brand Awareness: Maximizing Your Reach

    4. Media Mix Analysis

    Examine your media mix to spot weaknesses. Are you leveraging SEO, social media, PR and paid advertising effectively? Each channel plays a critical role in driving brand awareness. If you aren’t getting the impressions or website traffic you expect, you may need to rethink your media strategy.

    5. SEO Strategy

    Revisit your content and keyword strategy. Are you optimizing your product pages and campaign landing pages? Consider using SEO tools like SEMrush or Moz to identify opportunities for improvement.

    6. Paid Media Campaigns

    Many brands make the mistake of thinking their organic channels can drive new leads alone. Paid campaigns play a critical role in reaching the desired audiences directly and more frequently. Even a small paid media campaign can drive significant traffic to key landing pages. Invest strategically to boost visibility where it matters most.

    Marketing Funnel and Conversions: Driving Results

    7. Conduct a Closed-Won Audit

    Analyze your successful deals to identify which industries, job titles or media channels are driving the most business. Understanding the factors behind these wins can inform your CRO strategy. Go a step further and analyze what drives conversions in each step of your funnel. This process will uncover patterns, such as a certain piece of content that consistently converts with certain job titles or industries.

    8. Heat Mapping and Website Flow

    Utilize heat mapping tools to understand user behavior and how site visitors interact with your website. Heatmapping can reveal deeper user insights, like what information a visitor is spending time reading or which CTAs they click. This data can highlight areas for improvement helping you enhance user experience and improve conversions.

    9. A/B Testing Lower Funnel Offers

    Split testing is crucial for optimizing conversion points. Experiment with different offers and CTAs in the lower funnel, limiting your variables to one focus area at a time to see what drives higher conversion rates.

     10. Implementing CRO Best Practices

    Effective CRO requires a strategic approach, focusing on continuous testing and optimization efforts. By regularly evaluating your brand strategy, enhancing brand awareness, and fine-tuning your marketing funnel, you can achieve higher conversion rates and overall marketing success.

    Remember, every element of your marketing strategy can be optimized. By leveraging data, testing different approaches, and refining your tactics, you can elevate your brand and achieve better results. Start your CRO journey today and see the difference it can make for your website visitors and long-term growth.

    Wyatt Craig

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  • Which Social Media Platforms are Right for Your Brand?

    Which Social Media Platforms are Right for Your Brand?

    /></p> <p><span style=In the ever-changing world of social media, it can be difficult to determine which platforms make sense for your business to be active on. You’ve probably heard a lot of buzz about Snapchat recently – does that mean your brand should establish an account there? Not so fast. Before you move forward, it’s time to do some thinking.

    It’s also OK to be selective. Brands have limited resources, and it’s better to do social well on two or three key platforms then stretch yourself thin and try to take on too much content writing at once.

    Before checking out our insights below, consider your marketing goals, and pain points that you’re looking to solve by using social media. Is customer service an issue for your brand, and it would help to address comments quickly via social? Are you interested in paid social efforts to secure quality lead-gen or drive traffic online? Maybe you’re struggling with brand awareness and might want to consider a social media influencer program? Keep those thoughts in mind as we dive in.

    Facebook

    Is Facebook Right for My Brand?

    /></p> <ul> <li style=When push comes to shove, Facebook is the “must-have” social media platform for brands. Facebook has the most users total (231 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada) and much higher daily use (1.23 billion total daily active users on average for December 2016). People check Facebook more frequently than other social platforms, and its user base is also the most broadly representative of the population as a whole, so it can be impactful regardless of the industry or vertical.

  • From lead-gen to encouraging online engagement, paid social targeting is arguably the most advanced on Facebook. It’s also the most cost effective.
  • Facebook is constantly innovating, to bring marketers the best tools possible. AdWeek has noted that Facebook rolls out new targeting methods and ad formats faster than any other platform. Using trendy Facebook tools like Facebook Live enables brands to connect with users in new and exciting ways.

Twitter

Is Twitter Right for My Brand?

/></p> <ul> <li style=If your business struggles to address customer service complaints, Twitter is the place to be. It is arguably the best platform for customer service, as it moves in real time. And good social customer service is good for business overall – Twitter has shared research that demonstrates that after customers receive a positive response on the site, 77% of users feel more positively towards that business.

  • Perfect platform for live updates from events and key trade shows – or for breaking news updates that may impact your customers.
  • While Twitter targeting is less precise than Facebook, the ability to target trending hashtags to get more involved in conversations that matter to your brand is important. It enables businesses to reach a highly engaged audience by targeting consumers who mention relevant phrases.
  • Despite what you might have heard, Twitter isn’t dying. In fact, they’re bouncing back – with a healthy spurt of user activity in the first quarter of 2017 that has Wall Street buzzing.

    • Instagram

    Is Instagram Right for My Brand?

    /></p> <ul> <li style=Instagram is the ideal platform for targeting a younger audience. While this is starting to change as older users also embrace the platform, currently the most active Instagram user is between the ages of 18-29.

  • If your product or service can be cleanly and compelling portrayed through beautiful images and video, Instagram is the place to be. Strong visuals are a must for this platform, but the benefits are big for brands who have those on hand.
  • Great spot for running influencer campaigns, and that’s important given 85% of consumers trust content generated by others more than they trust the content produced by brands. Instagram is a hot spot for influencer recommendations, and it’s highly effective way to increase brand awareness and drive more sales.

    • LinkedIn

    Is LinkedIn Right for My Brand?

    /></p> <ul> <li>If you’re looking to target B2B, having a LinkedIn presence is a best practice. With more than<a href= 467 million users, LinkedIn remains the world’s largest professional network.

  • Great platform to get your executives involved in marketing the company – through tools like LinkedIn Pulse, running dynamic and impactful thought leadership campaigns is easier than ever.
  • While Facebook is a good fit for targeting B2B via paid advertising, LinkedIn has its merits as well, which you can read about on Matter’s blog here. The platform is also stepping up its game on the paid side– with a recent major announcement about matched audiences, which allows companies to target people based on proprietary company data, such as website visitors or an email list. This is a more accurate way of targeting people through social advertising, and highly impactful in terms of generating new business leads.

    • SnapChat

    Is Snapchat Right for My Brand?

    /></p> <ul> <li style=Snapchat is more relevant for B2C brands, who are able to share lots of newsworthy, sharable content.

  • The platform offers a high daily use rate (over 158 million daily users, with users checking the app an average of 18 times per day!), however users are primarily still focused on snaps from their friends. It takes a highly creative, impactful strategy to break through the noise as a brand.
  • Snapchat can be a strong platform if you’re considering influencer programs.
  • It offers many advertising options to choose from, with dynamic options like long form video and “sponsored lenses” – though advertising can be cost prohibitive.

    • Pinterest

    Is Pinterest Right for My Brand?

    /></p> <ul> <li style=Pinterest is a little bit of an oddball as it’s more of a personal tool than a social one. Consumers use Pinterest to set up boards of beautiful images related to their hobbies or passions – from cooking, to fashion to DIY tips. It’s helpful to think of it as an image repository or gallery for your brand.

  • Pinterest is a perfect fit for consumer brands who fit into Pinterest’s most trendy topics (food, wedding, fashion, home improvement). There’s buying potential on Pinterest – a 2015 study demonstrated that 93% of survey respondents who used Pinterest regularly said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases, and another 87% reported site engagement helped them decide what to purchase.
  • If your product or service especially targets females, or millennials, Pinterest is the place to be. Since it’s inception, the site has engaged women at much higher rates than men. A recent Pew Research Center study found 45% of online women use it, compared to just 17% of men. It’s also millennials that consistently favor Pinterest, with 36 percent of Pinterest users falling between the ages of 18 and 29.

    • If your brand is considering getting active on social media, and wondering which platforms to use – or if you’re considering launching a new presence – now is definitely the time. Today, social media usage is at an all-time high – seven-in-ten Americans use social media, according to the Pew Research Center. While different platforms serve different purposes, social in general is a highly effective, cost-efficient way to get more eyes on your company’s products and services.

    Matter

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  • 6 Best Practices for Creative Content Marketing in 2016

    Here at Matter Communications – and likely similar to PR agencies globally – all of our PR professionals are busy wrapping up 2016 planning with and for their respective clients. But what separates our group of PR pros from the competition is the fact that they’re able to efficiently and effectively incorporate creative content marketing into said plans because of our in-house creative services, Studio-C by Matter Communications.

    Having a written creative content marketing strategy is important, as it will inform the creative content you’re producing, and ultimately the effectiveness of the strategy overall. Here are 6 steps to ensure your business has a successful creative content strategy in 2016:

     
    1. Have a clear objective
    Direct and simple is the key. You should be able to say the objective in one sentence.

     
    2. Know your target audience
    “Consumers” or “everyone” are not your audience. You have to target your audience – hence the term. Deliberate demographics are a must.

     
    3. Know how your audience engages with content
    Facebook, right? Maybe. But with the plethora of social mediums (Instagram, Vine, YouTube, SnapChat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.), there’s likely a better way that just throwing your content up on Facebook and hoping for the best. That, and most companies have an intranet. Or they may collaborate with spokespeople and brand ambassadors. Or they might be hosting or attending an event. There’s certainly a number of ways to engage with your audience – you need to figure out what’s best.

     

    4. Have a clear call-to-action
    Why are you creating this piece or pieces of content in the first place? To gain “likes” or “comments” or “shares”? Or to “sign-up” or “call” or “join”? Going back to your objective, decide on the call-to-action at the beginning stages of the project and make the plea obvious to the audience throughout (or at least of the end) of the creative content.

     
    5. Have more than one creative tactic
    Go back to your objective and ask, is this video/infographic/microsite/mailer the best way to achieve it? Yes? Even so, it needs to be part of a larger strategy if you expect results. Having a wide birth of creative content targeted at your audience will allow you to compare/contrast results and ultimately see what’s the best tactic to move towards your objective. The average number of tactics used by B2C marketers in 2015 were 12.

     
    6. Know how to measure success
    Ultimately there isn’t an exact science for measuring creative content ROI, but at Matter we’ve created a framework to benchmark for ROI success for clients. This framework will help define what success means to your clients and how to measure it – either against the competition or against individual pieces of creative content:

    6a. Clearly define 3-5 measurable goals

    • B2B Examples: lead generation, sales, lead nurturing, brand awareness, engagement, customer retention/loyalty, customer evangelism, upsell/cross-sell
    • B2C Examples: sales, customer retention/loyalty, engagement, brand awareness, customer evangelism, lead generation, lead nurturing, upsell/cross-sell

    6b. Select Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you can track

    • General performance: traffic, new leads, reach, subscriptions
    • Channel-based: website, blog, social networks, search engines
    • Source-based: direct traffic, organic search, referrals, email, ppc
    • Campaign-based: demand gen/lead nurturing, opens, click-throughs, conversions
    • Sales funnel: new leads, opportunities, customers
    • Direct impact on sales: qualified leads handed off the sales
    • Revenue-based: cost per lead, marketing contribution to pipeline

    6c. Create and use content that’s going to move the needle

    6d. Gather data and calculate your investment

    6e. Use this data to make better decisions

    Research shows 60% of companies who have a documented strategy rate themselves highly in terms of content marketing effectiveness, compared to the 32% effectiveness of those who only have a verbal strategy. The takeaway: it’s important to have a written strategy for creative content marketing in 2016 so you can measure successes and ultimately make better decisions.

    Tim Bradley

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