What is a conversion?
As you know, one of the fundamental aspects of our job as a marketer is to capture value in the marketplace. All the efforts we go to and all of the resources we allocate and spend— to create, communicate, and deliver value—all have capturing of value as their ultimate goal. Of course, we do this by adding customers. But an individual doesn’t necessarily have to buy something from us for some level of value capture to occur. What we’re really trying to do as marketers is convince the recipients of our marketing message to do something. We’re trying to change them from being one thing in our eyes to something else. We’re trying to convert them.
In reality, we don’t typically convert complete strangers directly into customers. There are often many steps in between; many conversion points that this individual passes through. At each conversion point the fuzzy picture we have of who this person is becomes clearer until we hopefully add them as a customer.
MarketingSherpa, an online resource for digital marketers, defines a conversion as “The point at which a recipient of a marketing message performs a desired action.” A “desired action” could be just about anything. And that’s kind of the point.
Because everyone’s customer journey is different, marketers have to provide many different ways for customers to engage with the brand, help them get the information they need, provide the best route to become a customer, and then a repeat customer.
Conversions and the Customer Journey
Let’s look at the customer journey graphic that I introduced during the Content Marketing lecture. This graphic shows conversion taking place and leading directly to dollars (the purple section). This customer journey is a good example of what an online retailer might use. Where the key conversion is when a sale is actually made.
Now, let’s look at Hubspot’s version of the customer journey. Hubspot is a software company that provides online lead tracking and analytics tools. Notice how one of the stages in their overall process is called Convert. Where “visitors” become “leads”. This is typical of service-based firms or manufacturers with complex products where leads are the most important metric for digital marketers. Why? Because often in these businesses the leads are worked by sales people in offline processes where detailed questions and concerns must be addressed before a lead can convert to a customer.
Let’s look at some examples of all of this in action.
Online Retailer Example
That’s say I’m in the market for a new electric guitar. I might start at a place most people start, and that’s Google. So let me enter my search terms. I have my eye on a Fender Stratocaster Elite and now I’m taken to a search engine results page. You can see Sweetwater here is the top ad result. You can also see the Fender website is here and Sweetwater appears in the organic results. I’m going to go ahead and click this link here for Sweetwater. And the second I click that link I’ve now been converted from a stranger to a visitor to their website. And now Sweetwater is going to be tracking me while I’m on their website. Well, this blue color is nice but let’s say I actually like more of a sunburst look on my guitar. Yeah, that looks fantastic. I think I’ll put that one in my cart. So I’ll hit Add to Cart.
This is where Sweetwater really excels at an online retailer. they use every opportunity they have to add additional value to the shopper. Notice that we don’t go directly to the shopping cart, but an intermediate page that allows the shopper to customize their purchase with a variety of add-ons. Ok, let’s go to the actual shopping cart now. Notice how this page also takes the additional opportunities to provide more product and service offerings. You can add a discounted t-shirt to your order (another product). You can get special financing terms (a service) and you can even donate to a good cause. After I go through the checkout process i have been officially converted to a customer. Don’t forget a good retailer isn’t done with conversion just because the sale was made. A good retailer, or any business for that matter, strives to delight its customers and convert them into loyal customers that will keep coming back. How does Sweetwater do this? They do this in all and very big ways. From including a little bad of candy with every shopped purchase to hosting one of the largest free music gear tryout events around, Sweetwater’s GearFest.
Online Services Firm Example
So that was a great example of how a retailer might handle conversion. Let’s look at how a services business does conversion.
Again, let’s start our search on Google. Something bad has happened and you need an accident lawyer. We can see from the results that there are a number of legal firms to choose from. Huh, the law firm in the second ad slot sounds familiar. Maybe I’ll click on that.(Don’t worry, I didn’t really click the ad. No ad budgets were harmed during the making of this video).
Now that we’re on the website, we’ve been successfully converted from a stranger to a visitor. You can see from this page that it is very clearly setup to help answer questions that someone in the market for an accident lawyer might be asking. All the different types of accidents are clearly presented with a very obvious next step button below. By the way, this “Start now” button is what we call a call-to-action or CTA. Calls-to action are attention getting buttons or text links designed to get you continue on the customer journey.
Let’s click the call-to-action.
Now law firms like this are high touch, meaning they want to make sure that they personally answer all the questions a potential customer, what they would call a client, has. It’s not surprising that they would put the firm phone number front and center. In fact, their phone number appear four different times on this page. Besides the large phone number in the center on the page, it’s in the header and twice in the footer on every page. But also notice there’s a live chat feature. And finally if we scroll down the page a little, there’s a contact form we can fill out and provide more details about our accident. If someone calls the phone number, initiates a live chat, or submits the contact form they will be successfully converted into a lead. This is the point high-touch sales will take over. And make no mistake, a big part of being a successful lawyer is being a good salesperson. You’re selling yourself, your skills, and the firm. You have to be convincing if you’re going to get new clients.
From a digital marketing standpoint, the contact form is the easiest to track. Every time that form is submitted, it will trigger a series of actions, one of which is the completion of an online goal that marks the conversion of a website visitor into a lead. This firm likely has other ways of tracking interactions with leads over the phone and with the live chat system.
Now you’ve seen how conversions can be different things to different types of businesses. And that a single customer can be converted multiple times along the customer journey. All of those conversion points are important, but it’s that key conversion, when a visitor buys or becomes a lead that is most crucial.