7 Steps to Conversion Gains, Part 1 of 2

While multichannel merchants shouldn’t overlook the value of customer acquisition, particularly search and affiliate marketing, they should heed the real measure of a campaign’s success — its conversion rate. In a recent whitepaper from the online business optimization software provider Omniture, Best Practices for Conversion: The New Engagement Funnel in 7 Steps, the conversion process is broken down into seven steps, all with one common objective — to increase relevancy.

This week in part one of a two-part series chronicling the whitepaper’s seven-step process, we offer up steps one through four. Next week, we’ll examine steps five through seven.

1. Identify conversion goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Measure three conversion-related KPIs, the whitepaper says: leads or customers; sales; and costs. Apply each of these metrics to specific parts of the engagement funnel — ad impressions, unique visitor or ad clicks, cart entrants — to measure each step as it relates to overall conversion. This allows you to determine the KPI for whichever metric you choose by simply adding the leads (customers), sales and costs together and dividing by the metric you wish to determine, be it KPI per ad impression, KPI per shopping cart entry, KPI per lead, etc.

2. Develop profile funnels and apply a 40/40/20 rule. Use demographic (name, age, gender, address, occupation), psychographic (personality, values, attitudes, interests, lifestyles) and behavioral (actions, activities) data to develop profile funnels of your customers.

Response-oriented marketing success depends 40 percent on audience targeting, 40 percent on the offer or proposition, and 20 percent on creative execution, the whitepaper notes. Determine what motivates your prospects to click on your ads and what prompts them to visit your Web site and ultimately become customers or leads by providing contact and other qualifying information.

Consumer offers include giveaways, free trials, no-risk or money-back guarantees, discounts, sales, and other types of promotions. B-to-B offers include how-to guides, reports, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, among others.