What gets measured, gets improved. As marketers, we know this. Business owners and executives know it. This isn’t new information. The question is: How do you know what to measure and what to improve?
Have you performed an audit on your marketing or your website lately? Do you know how your efforts convert?
If you want to drive more revenue and increase the value of your website, you’ll want to understand exactly how well your website works or how your marketing is really performing. The bottom line you need to know is how many viewers eventually convert into customers. Where does your conversion rate rock… and where does it need help?
We work with clients of all levels and in a cross-section of industries, and we help them measure the right conversion rates to hone in on what needs to be tweaked, what’s working well and what we can do to improve overall website and marketing performance.
Want to know what we measure? Let’s look at five marketing metrics a conversion report can uncover to help you dig deep into your strategy.
This metric helps you understand the earlier part of your customer’s journey. Some marketers call it the top of the funnel.
Whatever you call it, this is the early “awareness” stage of the buyer’s journey. How are your prospects feeling about your content? Are they beginning to trust you?
Visitors are great; but if they’re not taking the next step, it’s all in vain.
Ideally, we would like to see a visitor-to-lead conversion rate of 2% and above. Sometimes increasing your rate is as simple as adding calls to action (CTAs) to your homepage and blog articles. Other tips we offer include using smart content to speak directly to your ideal personas, using conversational marketing tactics like chatbots, adding video to your pages, and using a more active marketing voice.
Once your website viewers become leads, do you measure the rate at which they become ready for more marketing communications like regular emails? Do you have email nurturing workflows built into your marketing and sales strategy?
The lead-to-marketing qualified lead (MQL) rate measures how successful the lower portion of your top-of-funnel efforts are working. Are your prospects just receiving a monthly newsletter and nothing else? Or do you send truly helpful, engaging, and powerful emails to guide them through the buying journey?
Sometimes these emails may come from automation, workflows, and sequences. Sometimes they’re one-off emails. But the bottom line is the when leads become MQLs, they’re moving from awareness into consideration.
Once someone gives you their email address, they aren't always ready for more marketing touches. So what do we suggest if that’s the case? Email nurturing, retargeting in social media and other awareness tactics can help. Your goal is to stay top of mind and begin to build trust.
We coach clients to strive for a conversion rate here of 30%. Anything above 10% is on the right track, though.
Once marketing knows what qualifies a lead for sales to pick up the baton, it’s a matter of adding content to guide the prospect from that middle of the funnel to the bottom. You want to help in this consideration stage with deeper content, trust-building information, and more.
Understanding how your conversion rate from MQL to SQL performs will help you see where you need to fill your content library. You might revisit a video marketing strategy, answering the questions your sales team consistently hears. This way you’re building confidence in your MQLs so they see no reason to avoid talking to your sales team. This moves them into the SQL range, allowing for your sales team to work their magic over time.
Work for a conversion rate here of more than 25%. We love to see clients with rates above 45%.
As your sales team guides your prospects from their lead status into the opportunity stage, it’s all about measuring the signals. Are you paying attention to your prospects’ needs and their journey?
Opportunities are conversations. They are, in a way, the ideal sales qualified lead: your sales team has already conducted some initial outreach, and is beginning to nail down the details of a potential customer relationship or contract. So as you’re paying attention to those signals, you’re engaging in a conversation.
When you’re measuring - and working on - your SQL-to-opportunity conversion rate, you’re likely improving how your sales team speaks to their needs, how you communicate pricing and value, and the nurturing communication. You’re helping your prospects move from the know and like stages into trust.
At this point in the buyer’s journey, conversion rates should climb. We aim for at least 30% while really reaching for 45% and higher.
This is where the rubber meets the road, my friend. If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make cents sense. One of the most important marketing metrics a conversion report needs to cover is the opportunity-to-customer conversion rate.
Once you know how your efforts pay off with customers, you’ll see the full picture of your marketing efforts, your investment in website and social media work, and everything else.
If you’re looking to improve this rate, things like sales training, high-quality case study stories, referral/testimonials and other tools can help.
An ideal conversion rate here looks like 33% and higher.
You can begin to see how well your marketing works by simply looking at these conversion rates. It’s not rocket science, but it takes time, data, and a strategic outlook. We offer a conversion report tool to help you see how your website and marketing are currently performing, along with suggestions on how to improve your efforts.
You can plug in your numbers right now and see how it’s all working!
When you’re wondering how to improve your marketing efforts, how to implement strategies like video and conversational into your business, and where to put your efforts in this modern marketing world, Impulse Creative is here to educate, inspire, and direct brands just like yours. Whether you’re the business owner, the CEO, the CMO, the marketing manager, the marketing specialist, or an agency partner of a brand in need of more help, we believe in the nautical colloquialism that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Let’s improve the world of marketing together!
Measure photo by William Iven on Unsplash
Steps photo by Lindsay Henwood on Unsplash