Stop Neglecting Analytics in Your Customer Engagement Strategy

Customers desire experiences, not transactions.

In a world full of distractions, engaging customers beyond the typical purchasing routine is vital for SaaS success.

And B2B consumers crave unparalleled engagement. They want personalized advice, solution-oriented features, and revenue-generating products.

An IBM annual survey noted that “as many as 65% believe customer engagement will be the primary driver of growth going forward.”

Analytics is one of the few ways to gain insights to meet your customers' needs. It helps bridge the gap between providing a service to solving real challenges.

Enhance the experience between your brand and consumers. Build data into your customer engagement strategy.

It Starts With Value

Studies show that “86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations.” That's a major disconnect for SaaS companies striving to improve customer engagement.

B2B customers aren't concerned about aesthetic features. And they aren't amped to hear how your team worked around the clock to fix a bug.

Your consumers want a service dedicated to solving their problems in an efficient manner.

Natalie Chan, an expert handling customer retention at Outbrain Amplify, writes:

“Businesses that focus on customers engagement are focused on value creation, not revenue extraction. These are businesses that know how to engage their customers by providing them with real value whether it be through an exceptional end-to-end customer experience, great content or strong customer support that are about delivering more than the traditional sell.”

Offering value means addressing your customers' desires. And it's all about how they perceive what's important.

For example, if a prospect is concerned about increasing open rates in email campaigns, it's not in their best interest to discuss layout designs.

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Value requires laser-focus. And that's where analytics steps in.

Monitor usage data to assess the customer experience. Track acquisition channels to observe where customers are coming from and if they're converting.

Interview customers and ask them why they chose your product. Figure out how they expect to use your product and what business goals they want to achieve.

Create and deliver unprecedented value. Connect with the customer.

Know Your Buyer

In order for customer engagement to work effectively, your team must know your buyer. And that goes beyond the usual demographics, like annual revenue, company size, and location.

More importantly, for B2B companies, your team must not only focus on the business itself, but also on the employee of the business. Learning about the decision maker is crucial to your sales.

“Leveraging big data to better understand and act upon customer behavior, forces you to think differently not only about what data to keep (all of it!) and how long to keep it, but also which data you should begin capturing,” states Duane Edwards, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Globys.

Analyze your primary behavioral data to create in-depth customer personas. Understand the decision maker's goals and challenges. Also, know how you can provide short-term and long-term guidance.

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Bruce Swann, Sales and Marketing professional at Adobe, suggests applying predictive analytics:

“Once you've compiled data attributes to create a panoramic view of customers, you can begin to understand and predict customer behavior, which adds depth to that view. Examples include using a range of analyses, including customer value analysis, market basket analysis, customer profitability, response modeling, and churn analysis.”

Use data as an indicator of future behavior. If you know your client's customers, it may lead to helping your client differently.

For example, NoWait is an app that simplifies the process of waiting for a table at a restaurant. Instead of having a guest tote around a clunky pager with a range of 50 feet, restaurants only need the person's cell phone number.

When the table is ready, the guest receives a text. Plus, after dining, restaurants can text customers additional discount offerings.

Moreover, with the app, restaurants learn “who their patrons are, what time they come and go, which patrons come back the most frequently, who purchases more.” This data can be used to create messaging that appeals specifically to each customer.

Know your buyer and your buyer's customers.

Content That Resonates

Content is more than just blog posts. It includes everything from checklists to webinars.

Research shows that “64% of visitors who watch a video are more likely to buy a product online.” Therefore, content isn't just helpful for your brand awareness; it's a vital part of your customer engagement strategy, which leads to sales.

Examine heat map data to improve your content. It will help you learn what content is important to the consumer. Then, your team can focus on content placement and how different images and colors in your content affect your website visitors.

Pete Mehr, Principal at ZS Associates, says, “By quantifying which content the customer engages, and how frequently, it becomes straightforward to continue to provide content back to the customer. This continuing content consists of an ongoing series of messages to a customer.”

Moreover, analytics will uncover which type of content matters to your customer. Is it eBooks? Or maybe 30-second video clips?

Mention understands their audience. They produce content that resonates.

The social monitoring company creates webinars highlighting experts in the field. For instance, Mention invited Sujan Patel (who is hosting a webinar with Kissmetrics next week) to talk about ways to create content for “boring” industries.

Study your data to find content that speaks to your customer. It's an effective way to boost engagement.

Multi-Channel Customer Service

In America, “the cost of poor customer service is $41 billion per year.” That's a heavy burden for most companies.

Moreover, a report found that “retailers are not listening and responding to their audience enough. Some 89% of consumers' comments are left unanswered.”

Approach customer service differently. Think beyond phone support and Q&A forums.

Social media has presented another solution. Now, SaaS businesses can provide Twitter and Facebook support.

Under Armour created a Twitter handle solely for the purpose of answering customers questions about their products.

From your analytics reports, determine what channels of support satisfies your customers. What works for your competitor may not work for your SaaS.

“It's not about deploying on all channels, but deploying the right channels that align with your business. Only deploy on the channels that make sense for your business,” says Kate Leggett, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

In addition, you must streamline your processes when using multiple channels. For instance, phone support data for a specific customer must also be available to your Twitter service reps.

At ComputerWeekly.com, Lisa Kelly suggests that “organisations need an accurate knowledge base where companies can link information from other channels, including peer-to-peer interactions, web self-service and communities, to share with customer service agents.”

It's not enough to offer various customer service routes. Your team must work together to use data to enhance the overall customer experience on each channel.

Respect The Data

Customer engagement isn't anything new. However, your SaaS can approach it differently with the help of analytics.

Add unmatched value to the customer's experience. Use data to gain insight on your buyer's habits and preferences. And provide customer service from a multi-channel perspective.

Stop neglecting, and start respecting your data.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

How to Create a Buyer Persona Map (Even if You Have No Idea Who Your Customers Really Are)

Buyer personas. Creating potential customer profiles is often enough to make even the best marketer freeze in their tracks – and realize how little they really know about their prospects.

If this sounds like you, don't worry. And even if you've never created a buyer persona in your life, today's article will help make sense of the process by giving you a sort of “map” to follow.  Let's take a closer look.

Starting Fresh: Getting the Basics

The very first step in your map is going to be the core information about your customer. Things like:

• Gender


• Age range


• Job title


• Job responsibilities

You can likely get that much from the data stored in your CRM.

I'd also recommend “humanizing” the persona with a name and image. Doing so tends to bring out more of our emotional, empathetic side rather than looking at the potential customer as a number to slot somewhere into a sales funnel like a puzzle piece.

Learning from Example

For our example here, we've chosen to work with “Lucy”, a marketing director in her late 40s. Her job primarily entails lead generation, sales management, and gathering competitive intelligence. She organizes and prioritizes campaigns. She's a pro at gathering competitive intelligence and using it wisely to help reinforce the brand and cement customer loyalty in a very competitive marketplace.

Because of the huge growth in social media, Lucy's looking for a way to streamline the interaction process on social media without losing the “personability” of the brand. She's in the market for a system/solution and wants to make a confident decision quickly.

So with this in mind, our persona map is going to look something like this so far:

Now, to liken this back to a map concept, we've got our starting point. Next, it's time to look at the journey.

Our first stop along the map is the buyer's needs. She has the basic research to know what's out there. If we were looking at this from a traditional sales funnel point of view, she's at the “comparison shopping” stage.  She'll be looking to make a decision soon.

Understanding the Buyer's Needs

Buyers are eager to tell you what they need. All you have to do is ask. Basic lead follow-up and nurturing questions can reveal quite a bit. Simple polls and surveys can often reveal a great deal about where the buyer actually is in the process (and whether they have an urgent need for your product or service versus basic curiosity). Even if we don't know specifically what they need, we can make some blanket statements to apply them to our persona. What would someone in this job typically need from our solution?

For starters, the buyer likely needs the product to be well documented. She'll be managing dozens, perhaps hundreds of staff members – some of whom (based on age) may be more technically savvy than she is. Some of the staff may pick it up quickly, others may need more time.  We'll add the needs and the persona's place in the decision-making process (one persona can have multiple roles in the decision process - they can be a user and initiator, for example)

There's also the fact that whatever solution needs to be adaptive and flexible to accommodate existing platforms and tools. The company itself likely has certain procedures and requirements of its own that need to be added to the mix, like cloud-based access and certain security protocols. These kinds of factors can influence and even conflict with what the primary buyer wants. Never mind that decisions like these are often made by committee, which lengthens the time needed and the requested features.

Dealing with Common Objections

Like all maps, there are roadblocks that are likely preventing your customer from taking action.  There are constraints and concerns, frustrations and issues that affect their decision.  You can brainstorm these obstacles and add them to the map to ensure that sales knows how to address the most common objections before they become major pain points.

You also have to decide where this buyer falls on the scale of decision-making. Will they be using the product? Influencing the decision-maker? Initiating contact with the company? A mix of all of these? Make a note of these objections and the buyer persona's place in the decision-making cycle on your map.

Following our example, we end up with something like this:

Here, we've managed to discover (and brainstorm) the buyer's potential:

• Needs


• Concerns


• Frustrations


• Urgency/Timeframe to Buy


• Place in the buying cycle


• Requirements

All the kinds of sales-propelling information needed to acknowledge objections, concerns and frustrations while concentrating on needs, requirements and urgency.  We've not only learned core demographics about our buyer, but key information that may be preventing them from action, or details that could move a sale into the next stage.

Our buyer persona map is less of a neatly-organized, bulleted list and more like a mind-map that's always being added to and revised.  It may not be as tidy, but our map is more authentic, and closer to the actual customer experience.

Think about the last time your company made a major purchase. It's seldom a “beginning to end” one-time shot, isn't it? There's lots of details to hammer out, lots of presentations to sit through, lots of suggestions and sign-offs to gather. It's a big process and a fancy list of bullets just doesn't cut it anymore – not in today's two-way communication world.

The Bottom Line on Understanding Buyer Behavior

It might seem counter-intuitive to go through this entire process with every type of buyer your company encounters. After all, you've likely got a lot more than just one type of customer. And if you're in retail, you've got suppliers, wholesalers, resellers, and a whole avalanche of personas out there.  Don't panic, prioritize. Focus on your best customers and find the unifying threads that tie them together, and then build on that persona.

And remember that buyers are multi-faceted human beings. Sometimes they make decisions that go against the grain of even the best, most well-developed persona. It happens. But here, it pays to remember that the journey is just as important as the destination, and the easier you make that journey, the more receptive the buyer will be to taking the action you want them to take.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!

Secrets For Choosing the Right Mobile Messaging Channel

Have you ever deleted an app from your device because it sent you too many push notifications? Or wondered why your latest flight info is popping up as a text message, rather than in your digital wallet?

Bad messaging channel choices, that's why. Mobile devices offer you a huge number of different ways to connect with your users and customers. Each channel is best suited to convey different types of messages. Pick the right one for what you want to say!

If you don't have an app…

Even without an app, you have a few options for getting messages to your users on their mobile devices.

Text messaging

The original mobile channel. SMS and MMS can reach anyone who's given you their number, and your messages arrive right away. You're limited in how nice you can make your message look, and text messages aren't very interactive. But all you need is a phone number to get started.

Text is best used for simple, urgent messages, particularly transactional ones, like flight status updates. (But only if you don't have an app!) They're often used for discounts and another infrequent announcements as well, but you'll have much more success with messages sent through an installed app.

Website

Marketers often don't think of their website or web app as a communication channel. But it is. It's just passive; mostly, you have to wait for your users to come to you. This makes it difficult to provide timely updates, and you lose a lot of context, like your visitor's exact location. But you can closely track what your user is doing, and let them immediately take many different types of actions.

Your website is best used for messages that aren't urgent, and that are meant to be acted on when your user is on your site. For example, a month-long sale is useful to promote through your site, since many of your regular visitors will see it, and you can link them right to sale items. Shipping notifications are much less useful to send through your site, since your user won't see them right away. As another example, it's hard to re-engage dormant users on your site, but it's a great channel for acquiring new ones.

Digital Wallet

Apple and Google are constantly adding features to digital wallet passes. It's appropriate to think of the digital wallet as a lightweight version of an app. Passes are easy to distribute, easy for a user to add, and can have some branding that helps users recognize and remember you.

They can pop up at certain locations where they're most useful, for example, near your store. And they can be updated with new information as needed.

Use a digital wallet pass any time you would otherwise hand your user a piece of paper or plastic. Tickets, loyalty cards, payment cards, and coupons are all great uses for digital wallet passes. Specific messages about product updates, promotions, and transactional communications are not as good a fit.

If you do have an app…

If you have an app, your options broaden considerably.

Push notifications

Everyone's received a push notification. If you get a user to install your app, you can send one at any time; your user doesn't even have to be in the app to see it. They're easy to brand, and you can even specify actions for the user to take with a single tap.

Push notifications are great for delivering small amounts of real-time information (like sports scores, notifications, and news), and also for getting a user to take an action, such as learning about a special promotion. However, they only reach people who have opted-in, which is usually less than half of your users. They're also high stakes; users will notice immediately if you send irrelevant content, and they'll turn off push access off for your app, or even uninstall it.

In-app messages

In-app messages are similar to push notifications, but they're delivered to your users while they're active in your app. You can put real-time updates in them, and, unlike push notifications, they don't require opt-in in order to be received.

In-app messages are great complements to push notifications for users who haven't opted in, and can be used to send similar, highly-targeted messages, such as real-time information that's relevant within the context of your app.

Message center

This is a completely passive channel inside your app. The message center archives messages that have been sent to your users in the past, and makes them accessible later. This is a great channel for storing things that don't require immediate action and that might be most useful when a user is already in your app.

What should you send?

No matter what channel you use, your user's attention is a precious resource, and you have to make sure that what you're sending is valuable to them. Answer these questions before you use any of these channels:

What's the purpose of your message?

What action do you want the user to take when they receive it? Figuring this out will make it easier to decide on whether you need a channel with interactivity; it will also help you figure out how truly urgent your message actually is, and how to measure its success. Is there a call to action, or is this purely for brand awareness?

What context does your message matter in?

Mobile messaging is all about context: time, location, user preferences. Deciding what context is truly important will help you pick the right channel. For example, if something matters in real-time, you'll want to use push. If it matters when the user gets to it, you could try an in-app message.

Will your user care?

Worry about whether what you're sending is useful. If you're Twitter, it might be OK to send 20 push notifications a day, if your user wants to keep a close eye on their followers. If you're Candy Crush, maybe you shouldn't even send one push notification a week, because your user is a casual gamer who doesn't care about new features. If you focus on delivering what your user wants, you'll have to worry a lot less about everything else.

Conclusion

As a mobile marketer, you've got lots of channels to choose from. We haven't even touched on emerging channels, like chatbots and wearables, which will play an increasingly large role in delivering useful content to your users. The key with any channel is to match the characteristics of the message to the medium. And don't forget to listen to your users, too - if you pay attention to their responses and preferences, they'll tell you how and what they want delivered.

About the Author: Justin Dunham is Lead, Marketing Technology and Analytics at Urban Airship, the leading mobile engagement platform. Urban Airship helps leading brands engage their mobile users and build high-value relationships from the moment customers download an app. For more, follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

5 Ways Data Improves Your SaaS Conversion Funnel

Not using data is a missed opportunity for SaaS companies.

If your team is seeking to bring in more revenue, data helps your conversion funnel. It's the difference between knowing your customer or simply taking a wild guess.

Matt Ackerson, founder of Petovera, says, “The rise of the smart sales funnel is happening now. You can expect it to become a near marketing 'requirement' as businesses adopt the strategy and new tools and tech come out around the concept.”

Whether it's acquiring more qualified leads or retaining loyal consumers, build your sales system on a foundation of analytics. This provides your team with the ability to produce informed decisions.

Make a deliberate effort to focus on the data. Here are five ways to improve your sales funnel.

1. Spark Interest With Awareness

Studies show that “72% of buyers turn to Google during awareness stage research.” Your customers are constantly searching for solutions to their problems.

That's why your team must be ready to provide solution-oriented content. Not only will it answer their most pressing issues, but great content also will engage them in learning more about your SaaS brand and products.

Grab your prospects' attention with data-driven content.

“…[D]etermine their interests and how they act upon those interests. While it may not be feasible to develop true one-to-one content at scale, you can use this data to pinpoint common characteristics and habits of individual audience segments…” writes Brad Messinger, senior vice president of marketing, Rise Interactive.

Conduct keyword research to understand your consumer's intent. Find high-performing keywords with tools such as, Google Keyword Planner and Keyword Tool.

Find out what your customer desires. Then, generate awareness around that subject.

For example, host a webinar. It will display your SaaS's expertise and provide your audience with useful information. Keep it short and engaging.

After the webinar, you can post a recap on your blog with the slides and additional details.

2. Nurture Targeted Leads

MarketingSherpa reports that “79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the most common cause of this poor performance.”

Several reasons exist for inadequate lead nurturing. Your team may be targeting the wrong people. Your lead capturing system fails to filter out unqualified leads. Or you're not providing the right service to the right client.

“Evaluate your target market and make sure you understand what B2B buyers in your sector really value. With this in mind, you can communicate the cost benefits, ROI, and affordability of your products or services in a way that will really resonate with your audience,” says Leo Patel, freelance writer and digital strategist.

Nurturing involves catering to several types of customers. Data segmentation is an effective tool for sending tailored messages to different people. Moreover, a targeted campaign can help reduce your budget costs.

Develop buyer personas based on industries, website behavior, and past purchases.

Think of nurturing as a process, not a one-time transaction. It's rare that people will make a purchase from just one interaction.

Rather, train your SaaS team to execute multiple customer touch points. Explore what excites and intrigues your customers.

3. Cultivate Trust for the Sale

Customers don't buy products from companies. They buy from their family and friends.

In other words, consumers make purchasing decisions based on recommendations from people they respect. Trust is the cornerstone of most sales transactions.

Ensure customers that your SaaS product is trustworthy. And social proof helps decrease the customer's purchasing resistance.

“The best part about social proof techniques is that they are fairly simple to implement. They don't require a lot of effort to be put up, and certainly not much investment in terms of cash,” says, Deeksha Bahl, social media manager at VWO.

Case studies provide insight into a current customer's story. They also convince prospects who need that extra push to purchase. HelpScout provides interested buyers with video case studies.

Trust is hard to earn but easy to lose. So, don't take it for granted.

Walter Rogers, CEO of CCI Global Holdings, advises to never misrepresent the benefits of your product:

“Customers don't want a product or solution that only comes close to meeting their needs, or that usually functions properly. Give them the whole, unvarnished truth, and let them decide if the proposed solution will work for them.”

4. Adjust the Onboarding Process

McKinsey found that “satisfaction on customer journeys is 30% more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness for each individual interaction.”

Just because the sale is complete doesn't mean your work is done. An effective onboarding process cements your new customer's success.

“After the initial welcome email, you have a great opportunity to keep your new customer engaged and educated by sending them a drip campaign of emails. This is your best chance of getting the customer to really use all the features of your product,” states Ed Shelley, Director of Content Marketing at ChartMogul.

Identify friction points preventing your customer from loving your product.

What's causing them to stop using your service? Are their questions being fully answered? How can you improve customer interactions?

Delivering accurate onboarding means understanding what customers value. Use multiple inputs from the customer analyses to make improvements.

One way is to collect qualitative data from in-app messaging conversations. Observe what features and functions interest customers.

On the Frontleaf blog, Rachel English also suggests analyzing various customer data streams. Monitor what your onboarding customers do:

• In the application


• In terms of results achieved


• In scheduling or attending coaching sessions


• In providing feedback on surveys


• In their interactions with support


• In their consumption of self-service resources


• In any way you can track

After the sale, go above and beyond to satisfy your customer. Your goal is to create the best user experience.

5. Retain the Right Customer

According to reports, “80% of your company's future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.”

SaaS companies normally get anxious about renewals. They want customers to renew today or else.

That's when unethical sales practices arise. Then, customers that once loved your services become skeptical and decide not to repurchase.

Develop loyalty programs that encourage relationships, rather than more sales. Give customers a reason to be a part of your brand, not just your product.

“[I]t's reducing customer effort that's the single most important factor in creating customer loyalty,” states Len Markidan, head of marketing at Groove.

Insert personalization into your customer retention strategy. Customization provides relevancy and a one-of-a-kind experience to your loyal consumers.

Carol Roth, on-air contributor for CNBC, writes:

“Many of the biggest brands have failed to do this despite having multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. Customers are all driven by different parameters, which means that you need to do a lot of listening and keeping track of the likes, dislikes and drivers of your customers' behavior.”

Luxury hoodie retailer Evy's Tree created the Who's Hoo Rewards Program. It focuses on creating engaged customers through rewards and referrals.

The Data-Driven Funnel

We all know data is important for SaaS conversions. It's one way to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Gain brand awareness with customized content. Use analytics to discover new ways to cultivate customer relationships. And adjust your process to fix any onboarding problems.

Data is here. Improve your sales funnel.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

How to Improve Your Conversion Rate By 50% in One Day

Anyone who's worked in digital marketing knows that conversions are the lifeblood of any online marketing campaign.

You run a marketing campaign to get people to do something-sign up for your services, buy your product, fill out a lead gen form, give you their email, etc.

Essentially, you market in the hopes that people will do what you want them to do and eventually produce profitable revenue for your company.

A good campaign will get a lot of people to take your conversion action.

An ineffective campaign won't.

As a result, improved conversion rates are a key goal for any decent digital marketer. Marketing costs money, so the higher your conversion rate, the more bang you get for your buck.

Improving your conversion rate is a great goal, but to do that, we need to look at your conversion tracking.

Tracking Conversions

One of the fundamental ideas behind conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the notion that you are effectively tracking conversions.

Think about it, in order to improve your conversion rates, you have to actually know what your conversion rate is to begin with!

And, to do that, you need fantastic conversion tracking in place.

Unfortunately, most marketers aren't tracking their conversions effectively. To understand how this affects conversion rate, let's take a look at how well marketers are implementing conversion tracking in AdWords.

AdWords Conversion Tracking

AdWords is an ideal medium for conversion tracking.

Google itself makes implementing conversion tracking incredibly easy and paid search is typically a direct response marketing channel, which means that most of your conversions should be directly attributable to clicks on specific campaigns.

In contrast, higher funnel marketing campaigns like social media or branding efforts can be a lot harder to effectively track.

It's doable, but it's harder.

Since conversion tracking is so easy in AdWords, you'd think that every marketer would have great conversion tracking in place, right?

Sadly, that's not the case.

Over the past 2 years, we've audited well over 2,000 AdWords accounts at Disruptive Advertising. Amongst all of those audits, perhaps one of the most common problems was a lack of effective conversion tracking.

Accounts Without Conversion Tracking

To the credit of everyone who's encouraged conversion tracking over the years, 57.7% of AdWords accounts had set up some level of conversion tracking.

But, if only 57.7% of accounts have tracking in place, then 42.3% of AdWords account managers have absolutely no idea whether or not their campaigns are working.

Not surprisingly, AdWords campaigns without tracking rarely turn a profit.

In fact, according to Hubspot's State of Inbound report, 97% of inbound marketing campaigns without tracking fail.

So, even in AdWords-one of the most trackable marketing platforms-42% of campaigns have almost no chance of success.

Accounts With Conversion Tracking

Of the 58% of AdWords accounts with conversion tracking, half were only tracking a small percentage of their actual conversions.

In other words, 29% of AdWords accounts are technically tracking conversions, but their setup is so poor that they might as well not be tracking anything at all.

For example, in the plumbing/HVAC industry, phone calls are a major source of leads.

However, most plumbing/HVAC companies only track form submissions, which are few and far between-making forms a terrible indicator of campaign effectiveness!

Plumbers aren't the only ones with this problem, either. Many companies with millions of clicks have only a handful of conversions to their name.

Are they tracking conversions?

Technically, the answer is “yes,” but their conversion tracking isn't painting an accurate picture of the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

AdWords Conversion Rates

Generally speaking, a conversion rate of 2-3% is considered “typical” for an AdWords account.

Based on our data, it's easy to see why:

Clearly, the vast majority of accounts-regardless of how many clicks they get-fall into the 0-5% conversion rate window.

Conversion Rate Benchmarks

A couple of years ago, Wordstream ran an analysis on hundreds of AdWords accounts to try and create conversion rate benchmarks for AdWords performance.

Here's what they found:

• The median AdWords account had a conversion rate of 2.35%.


• The bottom 25% of accounts had a conversion rate of 0-1%.


• The top 25% of accounts had conversion rates of 5.31% or better.

To validate their results and see if anything had changed, we used Wordstream's criteria and ran the same analysis on our audit data.

Not surprisingly, our results were very similar:

• The median conversion rate for an AdWords account is 2.18%.


• 27.5% of accounts lie in the 0-1% conversion rate range.


• The top 25% of accounts have a conversion rate better than 5.34%.

Here's how the conversion rate distribution breaks down.

As you can see, 75% of AdWords accounts have a conversion rate between 0% and 5.34%.

It's a little harder to calculate from this chart, but the top 10% of advertisers have a conversion rate of over 11.03% (in Wordstream's study, the top 10% had a conversion rate of 11.45% or better).

So, if more than 5.34% of your clicks are converting, that means your conversion rate is better than 75% of AdWords advertisers.

If your conversion rate is above 11.03%, your account is in the top 10% of all AdWords accounts.

Great news, right?

Well, maybe…

Where Wordstream Went Wrong

As we were replicating Wordstream's analysis, we realized that our results weren't representative of actual account performance.

The data was skewed by bad conversion tracking.

Remember, in our audit process, we discovered that while 58% of AdWords accounts were tracking conversions, only 29% actually had an effective setup in place.

By including all of those poorly-tracked accounts in our analysis, we were heavily underestimating the actual conversion rate of AdWords accounts.

To Wordstream's credit, they had tried to account for this by excluding accounts with less than 10 conversions, but that still left a lot of accounts that we knew from our audit process weren't tracking conversions effectively.

So, we reran our analysis. But, this time we only included the few hundred accounts we knew had good conversion tracking in place.

Here's what we found:

• The median conversion rate for a well-tracked AdWords account is 3.16%.


• Only 15.2% of these accounts have a conversion rate of 0-1%.


• The top 25% of accounts have a conversion rate of 7.82% or better.


• The top 10% of well-tracked accounts have a conversion rate of over 20%!

Here's the conversion rate distribution for well-tracked AdWords accounts:

As it turned out, well-tracked AdWords accounts have a nearly 50% higher conversion rate than the average AdWords account.

What does that mean for your company?

Well, if you are advertising on AdWords and have conversion tracking in place, it's even odds that you are only tracking two-thirds of your conversions.

If you're advertising in one of those harder-to-track channels like social media, you're probably missing out on even more conversions.

How to “Improve” Your Conversion Rate in One Day

This brings us back to improving conversion rates.

To put it simply, the easiest way to improve your conversion rate is to start effectively tracking the conversions you are already getting.

That means tracking everything-phone calls, form submissions, sales, sign-ups, online chats, in-store visits-everything!

In many cases, simply accounting for your missing conversions will increase your conversion rate by 50% or more…overnight.

This will probably make your boss very happy in the short-term, but-more importantly-it will set you up for long-term success.

Think about it, if you are only tracking some of your conversions, do you really know which campaigns are your top producers?

A campaign that drives very few form submissions may actually generate a ton of chat leads. But, if you aren't tracking chats, you might assume one of your top campaigns is a flop.

Regardless of which online marketing medium you're using, great analytics tracking is key to advertising success. Without the right data, you could be leaving a ton of money on the table.

By knowing which campaigns deserve your dollar, you can dramatically improve your conversion rate, return-on-investment and capture a lot more market share.

So, take the time to work with an analytics platform like Kissmetrics or Google Analytics, get your conversion tracking set up right and start making more money.

Conclusion

Proper conversion tracking can make a world of a difference to your conversion rate.

We've seen the short- and long-term benefits of implementing effective conversion tracking with hundreds of clients, so it's well worth the time and effort.

The data may not always be as clearcut as our AdWords findings, but regardless of how you are marketing your company, quality conversion tracking is always the key to better conversion rates.

How does conversion data affect your online marketing decisions? Did you find any of this data surprising? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

How to Craft a Data Management Plan that Pays You Back

When it comes to wrangling and taming Big Data, a data management plan is a solid first step. But what exactly is it and what does it involve? More importantly, how can you create such a plan? In this article, we'll be taking a look at how businesses large and small can create data management plans that are both smart and seamless.

The Old Problem: Silos

Silos were meant to help keep people focused on their respective tasks. Instead, they divide people, waste resources and hamper productivity. The very groups that need to be working together the most, namely sales and marketing, are shut off from each other which in turn stifles growth and innovation.

Instead, creating a more hub-and-spoke collaborative center, where each group feeds into and extracts relevant information from said Big Data, is where forward-thinking companies and organizations are headed.

Image Source: Compendian

Designate at least one person from each group to be the “representative” – and this applies to C-level executives too. These are going to be the people who essentially build and steer the Big Data ship. It's easy to get lost in the sheer volume of information. Alongside these representatives, name people from each group who will oversee the various strategies to ensure that they're continually on point and not being bogged down by minor details and technicalities.

Demonstrate What's Possible

One of the biggest sticking points with Big Data is the question “how is this really relevant to us?” Realize that different pieces of the Big Data pie are going to matter to different groups and seeing how it all comes together is like a fantastic puzzle. There's good stuff in the details, as well as the big picture.

At this point, however, it's really easy to get caught up in the sheer volume of it all. But as with every good marketing strategy, you'll need to ask yourself:

“What's going to bring us the biggest lifts?”

And make those your priority. Then gradually trickle down through lesser and lesser priority pieces until the whole thing comes together.

Organization is Just as Important as Execution

Image Source: Forrester

At this point, ideas should be coming together from all the different representatives and groups you have working together. And it's very likely that you'll want to jump right in and start getting your hands dirty with all the data.  But take the time to figure out how you'll be organizing that information first. If you don't do this at the beginning, the data will start to accumulate like a snowball rolling downhill, and eventually it will bury everyone and everything in its path.

It's also worth noting that your Data Management Plan needs to have security as its foremost priority. Kiki Burton, Senior Manager of Product Strategy at Adobe reiterates on her podcast just how crucial security is when you're formulating such a plan. In her interview, she comments that:

“The ideal [Data Management Plans] has no personally identifiable information. In order to ensure that [it] really upholds those privacy standards, there are a variety of methods to import data in an appropriate way so that it's all anonymous…It's important to really call out that a [Data Management Platform] is not going to be your CRM platform, it's not going to be your basis for all your customer information…instead, it's going to pull specific data from there, but [it needs to] be done in a very anonymous way.”

The First Building Blocks of Your Data Management Strategy

With this in mind, Kiki further advises that companies interested in building such a strategy take an inventory of all of the first party data they have. First party data includes:

• Social likes and shares


• Data from mobile devices or apps


• User subscription data


• CRM data

There's also the data collected by surveys, email marketing and other avenues – all just sitting there mostly untapped and unused. Once you have those points nailed down, then you can see about getting other information to round out your user profiles.

You may be surprised to learn what other departments in your newly cohesive group have as data. It may be something your own group never knew about or never thought to use. Here again, when we build these silos (more like giant walls) between departments, crucial information like this tends to fall through the cracks. So it's as much an organizational mission as it is a learning experience.

Decide What Information You're Going to Pull In

Now that you have all the data together, it's time to decide what's relevant. Here again, relevancy depends on your industry and what the end goal is. You could be selling an entirely digital product and be focused on subscriptions and sign ups.

Or you could be a retailer focused on in-store engagements like QR codes, co-branded credit cards and other promotional magnets. All of that information needs to be prioritized and put into the plan. This is what helps you build and “flesh out” your user personas without using any personally identifiable information.

Remember that as your users interact with your site across multiple types of media, multiple devices and different promotions, you'll be gathering information as well as providing them with a branded experience. Data management goes well beyond advertising and seeps into every interaction your customer has with you – from email to shopping in-store, to upsells, down sells and cross-sells.

The Data Economy

The bottom line when it comes to creating the kind of system that pays you back is what Kiki calls the “data economy”. In her words, “it's not just about buying data for advertising; it goes back to this larger, more cohesive personalization message and really having a platform where brands and publishers can exchange data and share data in an open marketplace.” Like it or not, the Data Economy is here to stay, and you'd better start crafting a plan now to help make sense of it. Fortunately, you've now got the starting points and a more concrete idea on what to draw upon to make it happen.

Have You Created Your Data Management Plan?

Have you built a data management plan using the strategies outlined here? How has it worked for you? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today! Follow @sherice on Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ for more articles like this!