What Is a Conversion in Marketing?
Conversion is pretty simple to grasp. Any action someone takes that gets them closer to the transition from potential customer to actual customer is a type of conversion. The ultimate conversion is the moment someone makes a purchase, but micro conversions include things like signing up for newsletters or adding products or services to their cart. Fortunately, the conversion process isn’t down to mere luck. Successful small business owners guide potential customers through a series of conversion steps, warming them up over time until they’re ready to hand over their hard-earned money in exchange for your goods or services, completing the conversion process. That series of steps is called a conversion funnel.
A Higher ROI with Conversion Tracking
Tracking marketing conversions is the first and most important step. It gives small business owners the insights they need for building the strongest conversion funnels possible. This is critical because conversion funnels are sometimes expensive, whether in time, money, or both. Your ROI depends not only on creating the most effective conversion possible but also on spending as little as you can while doing so. Without tracking, you can’t be sure what’s working and what’s not, which means you’ll probably end up throwing money at ineffective efforts. It’s like heading to an unfamiliar destination with no directions. Instead, you want to turn generalized marketing plans into results you can measure.
How Do I Know If My Marketing Is Working?
This common question has one answer: tracking data at every step of the conversion funnel. Many people default to tracking purchases only. Though that’s a necessity, it’s insufficient. Those numbers tell you very little unless you understand how they came about. That requires data collection regarding all the steps of your conversion funnel, allowing you to assess which steps inspire people to move forward and which put potential customers off. Consider this list of a few tools and signals for conversion tracking:
- Google Analytics Goals
- Form submissions
- Software for tracking calls
- Email sign-ups
- Visits to pricing pages
Though extensive tracking is great, even the most basic tracking is better than nothing.
The Big Picture
Though each conversion might seem like an isolated event, tracking those conversions can turn into a highly effective lead generation strategy. Until somebody enters the conversion funnel, you have very little useful information about them. Some might not even have a use for the kind of product or service you sell, but they show up in the visitor count anyway. Once they jump into the funnel by filling out a form, downloading a resource, or calling your business, they become so much more than an anonymous visitor. They become a lead. How does that add up to a strategy, though? Simple—it tells you which pages get you the most conversions and which ones lead people to exit the funnel. The more data you have, the easier it is to construct web pages that create leads even while you sleep.
