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THE CONVERSION LOOP THE SIMPLICITY OF AUTOMATION

Now that we’ve covered the fundamentals on how to think about the online economy and how goods are promoted online, let’s explore converting visitors into buyers, in terms of the Conversions Loop methodology. To illustrate the conversions process, let’s take a look at conversions in terms of planning a glamorous party hosted to raise investment for a start-up company.

CELEBRATE

Let’s say you wanted to throw a party. The process of bringing people together for a celebration is a lot like the process of bringing traffic to your website and converting those casual visitors into customers – what we call the Conversion Loop. Whether we’re talking about a dinner party for a few friends or a grand fund-raising dinner, both involve a four-step process to bring people closer and closer to the goal you have in mind.

An ophthalmologist friend of mine organized an informal gathering at his home to tell his friends about an opportunity to invest in a technology start-up for doctors. Guests were greeted at the door of his elegant waterfront home by a Spanish guitarist to set the mood. A serving staff was busy in the kitchen, rolling-out a tantalizing stream of gourmet appetizers to accompany the fine wine served to guests. Mid-party, a group of executives gave an overview of the investment opportunity in the company, accompanied by the “call-to-action” of reviewing an investment prospectus. The process of putting together this fund-raiser party is no different than operating a Conversion Marketing campaign. A four-step formula for guiding people through a buying decision closely aligns with the process of planning a party. When it all comes together, everybody wins.

Step 1) The first thing to do when you throw a party is decide whom you want to come and send invitations. This is similar to identifying the Target audience for your marketing campaigns.

Step 2) Once you send out your invitations, the next step is to see who is interested and get their RSVP.

Step 3) As the date gets closer, you remind the people on your guest list how great your event will be, communicate directions and confirm that they’ll be there.

Step 4) Finally the day arrives and so do the folks you invited. Open the door and let them in. That list of people you started out with is converted into a roomful of guests, and everyone has a great time!

Here’s how that process looks in the online world, using the Conversion Loop method.

Conversion Loop Step 1 – Invitation

In the Conversion process, your Announcement Mechanism is like your party invitation. You have to decide on the type of people you want to attract to your website and speak to them in a way that gets their attention. You have to create interest. We live in an age of information overload, and never before have peoples’ lives been so hectic and complex.

Your invitation has to reach out to the people you care about, and it must uniquely capture their attention above the din of all the other things going on in their busy lives. This is true with your Announcement Mechanism as well.

In order to let people know about your goods and bring traffic to your site, you’ve got to let people know you have what they need. You have to excite their desire for your product. Here is a resource of 9 methods to create AWARENESS for your website:

1. Website Content – having a compelling and attractive website is a great way to attract visitors. Use of free content, relevant information, articles or great prices are excellent methods of attracting Visitors to your website. We will cover a few more ideas in Chapter 7.

2. Search Engine marketing strategy - this method can produce massive traffic if you are able to use keyword phrases that get your website listed in the top 10-20 listings on major search engines. Historically, the largest and most significant search engine in terms of traffic is Google, but this trend changes rapidly with the onset of hungry competitors. Also be on the lookout for search engines that are relevant to your industry as these may be more conducive to your success. Getting top placement of a certain keyword phrase is often quite difficult with keywords commonly searched like “real estate” or “new cars”. Massive traffic waits when you use keyword terms with low competition. What makes a website rank high in search listings tends to change dramatically month to month based on how the search engines determine which websites are relevant.

When I work with companies on website traffic, a keyword study is conducted called a Blue Ocean Index Study. This term was inspired by the book Blue Ocean Strategy which explores companies with business models designed to circumvent highly competitive marketplaces and establishing a beachhead in uncontested waters. When running a Blue Ocean Index Study, we look for unique and clever high-traffic keyword phrases that are currently being searched online, which have relatively low competition. CASE STUDY: A first-time author I work with, Dawn Jones, achieved the #1 Best Seller position on iTunes for her audiobook using this simple method for getting traffic using this keyword optimized title: The Top 7 Personality Challenges.

Public Relations - Public Relations is typically in the form of a newsworthy press release published on your website and posted to news outlets. Pubic Relations, often called PR, can be a very economical form of driving traffic, especially if your release is picked-up by a major news outlet, journal or magazine. A good press release will be timely, newsworthy and will contain links back to your website for more information. Publishers daily pick-up relevant press releases with breaking news on an industry and provide valuable exposure and traffic to your website.

One success story is from a professional speaker named Keith Harrell, who had an extraordinary PR experience. One day, Keith was contacted by a reporter writing a story on “A Day in the Life” of a professional speaker. The reporter contacted six speakers with a request to be interviewed. Keith was the only speaker who responded to her call, therefore the reporter ran a full-page article featuring one speaker, Keith Harrell. As it turns out, the reporter was working on this article for the Wall Street Journal. Through this one event, this speaker went from virtual obscurity to fame overnight, which led to his success with a New York Times best selling book and a multi-million dollar speaking business.

Media - Buying targeted media is an efficient method to drive traffic to your website, and is very popular with marketers. The key to large scale media buying is managing efficiencies. To make media buying profitable requires an excellent Branding strategy, great creative and a well thought through Conversion strategy. There are many forms of media including television, outdoor, print and paid placement. A few popular forms of online media are illustrated below, which often can be targeted effectively and measured efficiently:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising – A company called Overture, which was purchased by Yahoo!, pioneered the PPC business. Companies like Google and Facebook have dominated this industry with their advertising inventory which allows amazing audience targeting capabilities. These advertising tools are helpful to small business and mega-advertisers alike. A pay-per-click ad only costs the advertiser when an individual clicks the ad and visits the advertiser’s website. It is a very efficient form of advertising because you only pay for people interested enough to click on your advertisement. The commercialization of this form of advertising has revolutionized the advertising industry as we know it, since even small advertisers can reach a global audience with their advertisements.

Ad Banners – online advertising started with the simple ad banner, which appears on webpages typically with animated graphics. Ad banners are traditionally sold on a Cost Per Thousand basis (which the industry refers to as CPM). Advertisers pay for the ads whether a consumer clicks on the banner or not.

Email List Rental – web publishers are skilled at getting people to opt-in to receive email. Publishers will rent-out their lists to advertisers who can send advertisements to subscribers in the form of a solo email or a newsletter ad.

Co-registration – Email publishers will promote an incentive to people in exchange for signing-up for various email newsletters. The email list publisher benefits by grouping their offer to join a newsletter with other newsletter publishers, as the costs to attract Visitors is shared among several advertisers. Incentives typically offered by co-registration companies include free downloads, sweepstakes or valuable information. The quality of email lists created by co-registration marketing can be a bit suspect as the people signing up are primarily motivated by free goods or a chance to win a big prize which often can be completely unrelated to your product/service.

Incentive Offers - Luring Visitors to your website with a compelling and targeted incentive is a proven method for attracting traffic to your website. The more targeted your incentive, the more targeted your traffic. The incentive serves the dual purpose of also capturing information in exchange for the incentive. When planning incentive offers for a marketing campaign, spend time picking the perfect incentive to stimulate desire with your audience versus a need. An example of a targeted incentive is giving away a popular video game when seeking a target audience of young males 18-25 years old. The young man may need a tank of gas, but he desires the value of the entertainment experience.

Social media sites – User generated content has taken the web by storm. Several significant historical events in the social media scene include News Corp’s $580 million purchase of MySpace.com, Google’s $1.6 billion purchase of YouTube.com and Facebook’s multi-billion dollar IPO (Initial Public Offering). Social media sites enable consumers to publish personal information and build communities around special interests. A few interesting companies in the social media space include Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and YouTube. Marketers can take advantage of social media trends by getting involved in relevant ways with your audience. To see how talented marketers are using social media, spend some time looking at how big marketing companies like Nike and Coca-Cola are using this form of media.

Blogs – coming from the term web log, a blog is a website published using easy self-service tools featuring text, graphics and videos on subject-matter important to the blog creator. Blogs typically include short commentary or news on a particular subject and are extremely important in engaging your audience. Blogging is also a great method to generate traffic from search engines.

Offline Marketing – an economical and often overlooked method of driving traffic to a website is publishing your website address in strategic locations offline. Traditional retailers have a strong advantage in converting store traffic into online traffic via signage, register receipts and shopping bags. Where can you publish your website to drive traffic offline to online?

Word of Mouth – referrals from friends, colleagues and relatives serve as the single, most-influential source of traffic to a website. Some marketers call this “Viral Marketing” as the word about your website can spread like a virus. This is a good thing! Respected referrals are the most effective method of driving sales conversions.

Conversion Loop Step 2 – RSVP

Once visitors become aware of what you do and the goods you offer on your site, you can confirm their desire – or get their RSVP. In the Conversion Loop, this is called Data Capture and Permission to Engage. People who opt-in to get email from your company have elected to receive information from your company.

Getting email permissions or Fans/Follows/Likes is key.

In Conversion Marketing, we call these people Interested Visitors. This process weeds out those who aren’t interested or aren’t able to come to the party. It gives you a pool of resources to work with and a way to maximize your focus. It gives you an audience to tell your story to.

Once you’ve acquired Permission to Engage, you’ll need to apply certain techniques when collecting your visitors’ data. You want to ask your visitors for enough information to target your marketing, but not so much that it intimidates them.

“Data acquisition increases only up to a point.”

People are often glad to give you their first name and email address. Asking for personal or lifestyle information can sometimes have the opposite effect of what you want to achieve. When the questions you’re asking become too invasive, participation drops off, and there’s a sharp decline in traffic. By asking non-personal questions, you can get more data from Visitors and a stronger likelihood that they’ll come back to you. Here are a few questions that are okay to ask in an online survey:

	First Name
	Email address
	Zip code
	Gender
	Preference questions, such as likes and dislikes.

Once you’ve captured data from your Visitors, you can segment your email list into groups, enabling you to send the most pertinent information possible to the interests of each group. For instance, if you operate a sporting goods store, you may not want to send weight lifting product offers to the golfers in your email database. The goal is to maximize the rate that your emails are opened to get return visits to your website. Targeting your audience with relevant information or product offerings will move people to pay attention to your messages.

Conversion Loop Step 3 – Confirmation

You’ve attracted people to your website. You’ve narrowed down your prospects to include only Interested Visitors, and you have their permission to engage. Next comes the engagement, or confirmation. In the Conversion Loop, it’s called Repetition. Less than two percent of first-time visitors purchase on the first visit to an unfamiliar website.

Less than 2% of first-time visitors purchase on the first visit to an unfamiliar website.

Establishing a bond of trust takes Repetition or a series of repeated exposures to your messages, brand or products. Your Interested Visitors have to get used to the idea of owning your product. It has to become comfortable. In fact, it has to be downright cozy before they’ll part with their hard-earned cash. Traditional branding studies show that it takes several branding exposures to achieve trust. This means that in order to trust you enough to buy from your company, your Interested Visitors must have repeated exposures to your message to build that relationship. Odds are they won’t do purchase on their own. You need to confirm with your visitors, using repetition, to stimulate purchase intent. You need to engage them again and again.

You have their permission and your audience wants to hear from you – they gave it to you back in Step 2. If you invest the effort in your Interested Visitors, they become repeat visitors to your website through the Repetition process. That means the two of you get acquainted, and they get comfortable with the idea of owning your goods (or coming to your party).

Here are some effective tools used in the Repetition process to create a positive response from your Interested Visitors and convert them into customers.

	Email newsletter with reminders of who you are
	Social Media messages keep your message in front of consumers
	Special offers to entice repeat visits
	Compelling content relevant to their lifestyle or profession. Consider using articles, industry research, videos or audios recordings.

Only a few people will buy the first time they visit a website – but they do buy! One key to creating a profitable website is to create an emotional attachment or a relationship with your company. Have you ever tried to create an emotional response from someone when face-to-face? What kind of things would you do to create an emotional response? Creating an emotional attachment can be a challenge face-to-face but how can you create emotion, like excitement or fear, in an impersonal online environment? Let’s explore 3 ideas used to create DESIRE online.

1. Emotional attachment

Testimonials – show pictures and statements from people who are delighted customers. People will gravitate to images or titles of people to whom they feel they can relate. Use imagery of people representative of your target audience who have had a need fulfilled by your product or service.

Security – you can help people feel rest assured with their purchase decision by providing these assurances:

	100% satisfaction guarantee
	Money-back policy
	30-day return policy, no questions asked

Credit card logos – surprising studies have proven that products sell 25% more, in terms of the dollar value, when a credit-card logo is displayed near the point of purchase. People understand that if they’re not satisfied, they can use their credit-card issuer as leverage to get purchases refunded which do not meet expectations.

2. Relevance

Your website can be equipped with simple, yet effective tools which help your Visitors to see your product in a relevant situation:

	Les Schwab features a tool on their website which allows visitors to see the make/model of your vehicle with a new set of high-margin chrome rims.
	Clothing or cosmetics matched with the visitor’s color palette are offered by various department stores. An example is a woman with autumn skin and hair coloring can expect to see good results with certain cosmetics and clothing choices.
	Video of your product in-use can be very effective. I recently viewed an effective use of video from a manufacture of locking mailboxes. The video shows a hard-working identity thief, struggling to unsuccessfully pry open a secure-locking mailbox with a crowbar.

These are excellent methods of driving conversion by stimulating a relevant experience using tools unique to the Internet.

3. Relationship

Creating rapport and a relationship with your visitors can be achieved using these proven methods:

	Capture email addresses and communicate on a regular basis with your Interested Visitors.
	In addition to capturing email addresses, capture a small amount of non-personal data so you can send personalized and relevant offers. Capturing this data can be accomplished in online surveys.
	Segment your email lists into groupings so you can focus the content of your newsletters to the DESIRES of your audience.

Conversion Loop Step 4 – Let’s Party!

Finally the day arrives. The folks you invited/engaged/confirmed have been converted into a roomful of guests. Everyone is having a great time at your swanky soirée. It’s the same experience with your Interested Visitors on your website. If you’ve successfully handled the first three steps in a methodical fashion, Conversion falls into place naturally. Through your Announcement Mechanism, potential buyers became interested. By getting their Permission to Engage, they establish a relationship with you. Through tempting offers and repetition, their interest is ignited into desire. Voila! Your visitors have been converted to Customers.

Here are 8 powerful techniques that move the conversion process to completion:

The fear of loss is often a more powerful purchase incentive than the positive benefit of ownership.

1. Limited time offers - This is a proven conversion tactic to create the motivation to buy today. If you put a time limit on the availability of your product, it creates fear of loss. Take a page from the eBay playbook where products have a fixed time limit before the deal is gone for good. The fear of loss is often a more powerful purchase incentive than the positive benefit of ownership.