Ever since my career took a turn towards what people were calling ‘conversion rate optimization‘, I’ve disliked the inclusion of the word ‘rate’ in the label of what I do. And when I discovered some people pronounced the acronym CRO as ‘crow‘, my dislike reached a level of epic proportions.
The main problem with CRO? It can lead people to focus on the wrong thing.
After all, who really cares what your conversion rate is? What’s a good conversion rate anyway? Isn’t it more important that you maximize your profit? That your most profitable customers return repeatedly and buy more? That you’re taking action to grow your business?
In the same way that ‘bounce rate’ is a misused vanity metric and ‘last click’ attribution dismisses the value of upper-funnel touchpoints, you miss the bigger picture by focusing on ‘conversion rate’.
You can end up chasing only the small group of visitors who are most likely to convert immediately, or you start promoting only your discounted products, or you’ll start quickly removing landing pages that don’t hit your most stringent targets.
All of these are ways that a focus on ‘conversion rate‘ can accelerate the race to the bottom.
Indeed, one of our most recent client testimonials ended: “…ultimately, they’ve improved our customer experience and, as a result, achieved significant, measurable business growth.”
The use of ‘customer experience’ and ‘measurable business growth’ shows the client understands we’ve delivered much more than just conversion rate optimization (CRO).
But if not CRO, what?
We’re not the only ones to think the movement away from CRO is building momentum.
Among others, VWO now refers to itself as an ‘experience optimization platform‘, industry-leading specialist Speero has rebranded itself as a ‘customer experience optimization agency‘ and at the heart of the privacy-first, cookie-less tracking developments, Google talks of ‘optimizing customer experiences‘.
It’s pretty obvious why elevating the principles of conversion optimization up to a broader, more strategic level, can have a far greater impact.
Widen the funnel. Instead of focusing on improving the performance of a segment of traffic, find ways to improve the journey for a wider audience.
Strategy, not tactics. Instead of gathering customer feedback to generate a compelling landing page headline, use the feedback to help steer strategic decisions (product development, value proposition, pricing).
Quality, not quantity. Instead of running a/b tests with the goal of selling more units, run them to generate more profit.
Acquisition and retention. Instead of thinking the journey ends at the point of acquiring a customer, ensure insights are used to improve the experience as a customer too.
All of the principles mentioned here are transferable to any sector, business model or market. In fact, if you work in a business that has an international presence, delivering a fantastic, joined-up customer experience becomes arguably even more important.
Despite its drawbacks, a positive consequence of the label ‘conversion rate optimization‘ has been a focus on data. Whether a small UK business or a large international business, in order to apply these principles, you’re going to need to be confident in and understand your data.
Understanding your audience data will allow you to widen your funnel. Confidence in your user feedback data will enable you to apply it to strategy, not just tactics. Analysis and modelling of your customer data will allow you to take quality, rather than quantity, based decisions. Connecting your customer journey data, along the full lifecycle, will allow you to improve the experience for all.
So, whether you think it’s CRO, conversion optimization, UX, CX or something else, we should be able to agree that, in each case, a focus on data is key.
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“We’re really pleased with not only the end product but also the entire process of working with JMPUK. The team led by Joe clearly understand our industry and demonstrated why they are regarded as industry leaders throughout the journey. The final videos have gone down really well with clubs and fans alike, and deliver on all of our initial objectives and beyond.”
– Ben Rigby, iFollow Marketing Manager
“As football league fans, we were absolutely honoured to be approached by the EFL to produce this piece of content. We feel it shows the good work we have done within the football world to be recognised by such a huge organisation within the sport. With this project, there were challenges in regards to what we were and weren’t allowed to shoot, but we were really pleased with the emotive narrative of the piece – it’s always a joy to collaborate with Ian Holloway. Every member of the JMP team played a part in this successful production and it’s truly rewarding to see the capacity and skills that our agency has to offer.”
– Joe Meredith, Managing Director at JMPUK
“JMP is a true partner for us at Sky Bet. They have embraced our ambition and are able to offer us a full service right through from research to pre and post-production. In a world where brands are looking more and more to fast turnaround ‘premium social’ output that is affordable, JMP could not be better placed.”
– Kevin Brain, Head of Social & Content at Sky Bet
“On The Inside is a really exciting series for us to work on, because it requires us to be reactive to the day’s events. Whereas a series such as Football Real’s Stories will focus on a particular narrative or storyline, On The Inside is much more unpredictable as it typically depicts a real day in the life of a football club. While we always start shooting with a schedule and structure in place, the nature of professional sport is that these things can change as the day progresses. The access we get is fantastic, as is the opportunity to show the inner workings of a professional football club,”
– Steve Cotton, Director of Communications
Clubhouse, an invite-only audio-chat iPhone app with a reported US$1 billion valuation, is quickly becoming the talk of the marketing world.
The company describes itself as “a new type of social product based on voice [that] allows people everywhere to talk, tell stories, develop ideas, deepen friendships, and meet interesting new people around the world.”
Picture the app as much like going along to a networking cocktail party. You can wander in at your leisure, jump in and out of different chat bubbles, you can choose to simply listen and take in the conversation, or you can add your own thoughts into the mix. In a nutshell, the app is a live, free-flowing podcast that you can engage with in real-time.
So, can the Clubhouse app benefit your business? Should you be adding this platform to your brand marketing strategy?
In this blog, you’ll learn why brands of all industries should consider having an active presence on Clubhouse and those all-important tips for growing a following on Clubhouse.
So, if you want to tap into the app’s community and use it to grow your brand and influence, keep reading!
Clubhouse gives brands a huge opportunity for brands to engage with consumers in a way like never before. The app has an open, conversational feel which enables marketers to develop a more ‘personal’ relationship with their audience. It’s much like the intimate space that podcasts offer, but on another level as the audience can actively engage with the conversations on the Clubhouse platform.
Brands can really establish themselves as thought leaders within their industry, creating rooms on various subjects where you can provide valuable insights and start interesting conversations.
Brands should leverage Clubhouse much like they would a podcast by hosting interesting conversations, interviews and discussions relevant to the key target audience. It’s a simple and no-cost way to provide value to your community, building trust with a new audience who may ultimately become customers.
As well as engaging with your audience of potential customers, Clubhouse gives you the opportunity to build relationships with other business owners and influencers. Social media platforms are often used to make company announcements and push sales messaging. Yet, if we go back to the initial use of these networks – to connect and collaborate – we can get much more out of them.
From exchanging industry tips and tricks, to simply building great friendships with people you share common ground with; the app offers a fresh and exciting way to make new connections.
All marketers know the value of social listening: the act of following online conversations within your industry to uncover invaluable insights. The incredible power of Clubhouse lies within the ability for brands to listen in to industry conversations and engage with consumers in real-time, without encroaching on privacy.
Savvy marketers and business owners will leverage the app to listen to the topics that are important to their consumers. Clubhouse provides a huge learning opportunity and provides insight directly into the topics that are on the radar of your audience. These insights could be used to influence important business processes from service offerings to marketing strategy.
The social listening opportunities of Clubhouse also give businesses an incredible opportunity to stay on top of all the latest trends within your industry. The key to doing this is to follow key influencers of the industry, make sure you’re following all the categories associated with your business niche, and also keep tabs on your competitors.
By doing all of the above, you’ll soon curate a tailored timeline of relevant industry content and interests, which will give you a daily stream of information on trends to keep an eye on, news and updates within the industry, and consumer sentiment. Simply choose a chat that takes your fancy, listen, take notes and learn!
Do you often find yourself with a bunch of business ideas that you’re dying to get a second opinion on? Clubhouse provides the perfect set up to throw out feelers for any business ideas that might be floating around inside your head. Simply set up a room and ask for feedback from your audience who are likely to have some useful insights and solutions to help take your idea forward (or tell you it’s a terrible idea and reasons why it won’t work…).
Aside from using Clubhouse to gather feedback early on in the process of new business ideas, you’ll also want to collect feedback at all of the major milestones in the development of the product or service. Gaining customer insight on how users are liking the new additions to the product and what they’d like to see in the future can help guide your product roadmap and create a stronger product in the end.
Clubhouse can also be a great platform to connect with investors. You can start a room to discuss your business and get feedback from investors about how to improve your pitch, product or service to appeal to other investors. You can also join other rooms and discussions to talk about what you do and help provide solutions to problems with your industry knowledge, all while promoting your business.
The newness and exclusive nature of Clubhouse means that at the moment, it is not too saturated. This makes it the optimum time to create an account (if you’re lucky enough to get an invite, if not, be sure to download the app and join the waiting list) and start building a community to propel your brand marketing to new heights of success.
Want to learn more about how to incorporate Clubhouse into your marketing strategy? Get in touch today.
eCommerce sales in the UK have continued to rise over the years, growing from a market value of £513.5 billion in 2014 to £693 billion in 2019. The pandemic forcing more Britons to stay home has massively accelerated this growth, pushing retail eCommerce sales past 30% of total retail sales in 2020.
In the uncertain world that we all live in today, to say that promoting your online store is important would be an understatement. Capturing the attention of a digital audience, however, requires digital marketing know-how, and when it comes to getting a foothold in the search engine results pages (SERPs) there really are only two main marketing channels to explore: organic SEO and paid search or pay-per-click (PPC).
In this mini-guide, we’ll briefly explore the main tools at your disposal to help push your eCommerce sales and grow your brand online.
eCommerce SEO is the practice of improving the search rankings of your online store for a whole host of related search terms so that potential customers are more likely to find you whenever they use a search engine to look for relevant products. It includes tactics such as creating intuitive, navigable site architecture and using well-researched keywords in product and product category pages, as well as creating a whole host of informative supplementary content and guides to really demonstrate your industry expertise.
Whether it’s your home page or any of your product pages, all have a better chance of ranking high in the SERPs of search engines like Google if you apply eCommerce SEO.
eCommerce SEO is vital for any business with an online store, as it drives organic search traffic and is an investment in building a brand’s digital presence.
Google Ads is Google’s advertising platform which allows you to display advertisements on their platforms, including Google Search Network. You have to pay Google for every action users take such as clicking on your ad (hence pay-per-click), but only then and not before.
As with eCommerce SEO, your online store will benefit from Google Ads by appearing high on the SERPs, specifically in Google Search, with increased site traffic and potentially improved conversions and sales. The key difference is that paid ads are shown before organic search results, so they can get more immediate attention from people who use Google Search.
You get what you pay for with Google Ads, and you have to keep investing money into it if you want your ads to stay up. In this way, the ROI is very transient as it’s entirely dependent on you maintaining your click budget (unlike organic SEO where the investment takes longer to materialise but will give you longer-lasting results).
Google Shopping shows ads of products for sale on various Google channels, including Google Search, from online stores that take advantage of the service. People who click on a Google Shopping ad are directed to the product page of the seller’s online store where they can complete the purchase.
Convenience is one of Google Shopping’s major benefits, as you only have to submit product info and a picture for your ad. Google will take what you’ve provided and show your ad to the most relevant audience.
A Google Shopping ad shows the product’s price and aggregate user rating for products with reviews. Such info is useful for qualifying leads, as those who click on Google Shopping ads already have set expectations and are more willing to make purchases.
Google Shopping falls under Google Ads, so it’s PPC that you also have to budget for to keep your Shopping ads running.
SEO and PPC are good on their own, but when they are both done together, the results can be outstanding.
You can use Google Ads to test out keywords that you’re thinking of targeting for your eCommerce SEO efforts. Paid ads can quickly drive significant traffic to your site, which you can then check if that same traffic results in conversions for the keywords you targeted. Depending on the results, you can choose to use those keywords for your SEO or not.
Conversely, you can use the data from your eCommerce SEO keyword research to bolster your PPC campaigns by targeting keywords that you already know perform well.
There are other ways to synergise SEO and PPC, but the core principle when using both is to use the data gathered from one method to inform and optimise the strategies for the other.
For eCommerce SEO, the top three metrics to consider are the following:
All of these are available in Google Search Console.
Meanwhile, PPC campaigns measure:
Google Analytics lets you track all these metrics for your Google Ads campaigns.
Apart from on-site SEO and PPC campaigns, online businesses can also greatly benefit from being connected to a network of blogs and influencers within their industries.
There is the broad benefit of building awareness for your brand when other websites and thought leaders mention your company on their platforms. It also has a more specific and material benefit of getting links back to your eCommerce store, which is important to improve your ranking.
You can start by researching blogs and influencers that cover the kind of products you sell and talk to your target audience. Build a rapport with them by commenting on their posts and interacting with their social media accounts genuinely.
Over time and with an established professional relationship, you can then ask to contribute to their websites with a guest post and get a link back to your online store in return.
Bitcade is a Bristol-based retro arcade machine manufacturer that was lagging behind its competitors in online search before Superb Digital implemented PPC and SEO campaigns.
Superb Digital, an SEO agency in Bristol, started with a Google Ads campaign, putting up both text and shopping ads. Sales shot up by 181% at the end of the first month and another 30% after two more months with further improvements to the campaign such as reducing their CPA.
With the initial sales boost and confidence in their digital marketing, Bitcade greenlit a full eCommerce SEO campaign.
We implemented on-site optimisation based on thorough competitor and keyword research, created a blog with rich, insightful content, building links with lifestyle and gaming bloggers, and overhauled the site design to make it more visually appealing and easier to use.
There were consistent increases in rankings and revenue for the first six months. This groundwork prepared Bitcade for the rise of digital purchases during the pandemic, resulting in a massive 297% increase in leads and a 370% upturn in revenue 12 months into the campaign. Suffice to say, Bitcade’s founder, Jack England, has been over the moon about the results and is continuing to invest in his digital marketing with us.
If you’re hitting a brick wall with your search rankings or have seen a recent drop then it could be time you engage with a reputable and trusted SEO agency. At Superb Digital we can help with your organic SEO and PPC campaigns, as well as other elements of your digital strategy.
Get in touch with us today and we’ll be more than happy to look into your online store (or any type of website for that matter) and put together a no-strings-attached quote.
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