8 Steps to improving B2B ad conversion rates

Whether you’ve got a fantastic piece of content, product, service or event, when you’re ready to take it to market through a promotional campaign you’ll undoubtedly be considering how to optimise your response rates and get the best possible return on investment. Here are 8 steps which we believe could make all the difference to your next email or website advertising campaign:

 

We put this one first as it can be the easiest to get wrong. In all the effort to get everything else in this list right you may find yourself taking the eye off the ball and fail to see the bigger picture. Instead of worrying so much about the ad copy or design, first be sure that you are providing the right offer. Once you feel you have this covered you can move on.

 

Another simple, but important one is to ensure you are speaking to the right people. The best ad in the world will fail to achieve a respectable conversion rate if it’s not relevant to them. Take the time to investigate the audience profile of your potential media outlet. Any trusted publisher will have theses available on their site (ours are here). Once you’ve reviewed the audience profile, contact the publisher directly and ask some questions; not just about audience, but about engagement levels and interests. They may appear to have a spot-on target audience, but if they're not engaged or the publisher doesn't understand the type of content which resonates with them, then walk away.

 

Whether your landing page is a download form or registration page, or another piece of content, it must accurately reflect the offer advertised.When it comes to the initial ‘first-touch’ advert, the landing page and the end piece of content (whitepaper, webinar event, etc.,) must provide a consistent experience. If the advert suggests one thing and the landing page is different, even by a small degree, you (and your brand) will immediately fall short of the expectations of your target audience.

 

This is a classic when it comes to writing ad copy, but something which should never be too far your mind when considering your conversion rates. Whether you are talking about your product or service, or even describing a webinar on a registration page, telling the reader about the benefits to them of your proposition and not simply list the features, will help to better resonate with them and gain a more positive response.

 

There are so many aspects to getting this right that it’s worthy of a blog post entirely to itself – just as well we wrote one not so long ago then! Essentially the advice here is to make your call to action as clear, as concise, and as easy to find as you possibly can. Remember that unless it is a simple text ad, the design can also influence things – ensure it is clear, contemporary, and accessible across all devices.

 

Where possible it can be prudent to A/B test your campaigns to identify what provides the greatest response. Perhaps the wording of one call to action would perform better than another? Maybe one particular headline title will work better than another? For those with a very limited budget this may be somewhat of a luxury but, where viable, re-running ads with subtle differences and learning from the better performing approaches can pay dividends.

 

Be sure to lean on other channels at your disposal to support your campaign to provide a multi-channel, cohesive experience (and encourage your media outlet to do likewise). Perhaps email your own prospect database, feature relevant content on your website and feature related posts via your social channels. Those who see an ad may not click through at the time, but they may remember later in the day and head straight to your website or social feed. Remember that the messaging should be consistent, but the copy style, length and tone should be channel appropriate.Of course, you can put your own metrics in place to record success of your supporting channels so that you can measure where traffic came from.

 

Succumbing to the temptation of reaching the greatest volume of people possible may mean you resort to using generic ad copy so as not to alienate sections of that readership. In doing so you might end up appealing to no-one. Consider a more targeted approach where you can adopt subtly different copy and call to actions depending on the specific audience segment you are looking to engage. The campaign planning stage may be a little more complex, but the result is likely to be a greater conversion rate.

 

If you followed the advice from our previous blog post on the ways to create content gold, and you have nailed your content creation as a result, then you can apply these 8 steps to ensure your content reaches the relevant audience and drives action.