What is Conversion Rate Optimization
You may not realize it, but CRO is everywhere in your marketing. Whether you are a marketing powerhouse or a small chiropractic business, your conversion rate optimization is not only a key performance asset but a profit-building technique!
As a chiropractor, using the Marketing Health Academy strategic chiropractic marketing plan sets you up to define what your final results should be, as well as creating marketing funnels for a more clearly defined pathway to help get you there.
So, what exactly is CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization is the percentage of online visitors that complete the desired action, such as requesting more information or clicking the FAQ section. Each action (or inaction) creates data, and that data can be utilized to calculate the conversion rate. The goal of the CRO is to optimize this data into best practice- what works best to generate the greatest return on investment (ROI) with your marketing budget.
Any desired action you want to track can have a CRO applied to it. The concept of CRO is too broad to be relevant to overall strategy - it requires details to determine a more focused definition. For instance, CRO can be implemented to track the number of incoming phone calls from a specific marketing campaign. For social media marketing, it can be used to track the number of Facebook users that check in. When developing a Chiropractic Marketing Plan, it helps to break it down:
First, there is an equation for CRO used with relevant KPIs (Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the critical (key) indicators of progress toward an intended result). If you're fully aware of your KPI's and where they need to improve, you're on the right track. Take the total number of conversions (things you are measuring) and divide it by the number of successful actions (visits, hits, views, calls, etc.) that you have. Multiply this by 100 to get a percentage figure. This is the conversion rate. The higher your conversion rate, the better your funnel is built (more on this later).
When broken down into conversion points included in the marketing funnels, the results reveal relevant information such as: how many people signed up for a newsletter, how many downloaded a file or an ebook, etc. Perhaps one of the best conversion rates to look at is how many client leads have been generated from a paid ad or social media campaign.
In another example, a multi-step marketing funnel may include a blog supported by paid ads styled to fit a product brand. Each ad would have a unique CRO, indicative of the success of the target. Paid ad conversion is crucial to determine where to get the best ROI. Google offers at least 5 ad types to choose from. How can you know which type works best for your demographic? Website traffic must be tracked to determine how many people actually found a blog and if it performed well enough to take customers to the next step. Remember, this is all just information, not a new customer-generator. Potential customers who make it this far need to take one more step to become a paying customer: The financial conversion! Financial conversion is the ultimate goal of business success and development. It doesn't happen with just one step of a funnel- this is an ongoing process. Understanding the process can help you determine if the entire funnel is optimized, or if adjustments are needed within the funnel for optimal results.
Why Do You Need CRO?
A well-defined marketing funnel can result in a higher conversion rate. The higher the conversion rate, the better your marketing plan works in your favor. The typical CRO figure lands anywhere between 1% and 5%. Higher conversion rates are usually indicative of a more well-designed plan. If your conversion rate drops, consider making adjustments to either the marketing funnel itself or the layout/content of the landing pages on your website before stopping the whole plan. Making updates to your landing pages are often simple fixes that may make the difference to everything along the pathway.
Benefits of CRO
The benefits of conversion rates are as simple as looking at the number of readers who found value in your blog. The number of people who clicked through to your landing page and then chose to click to read the blog is the "call to action" that leads to a new client. Here, a blog converts information into education and ultimately, into followers and leads. Leads are then converted into long-term clients.
A "call to action button" converts into downloads, newsletter sign-ups. These actions, in turn, create mailing lists for ongoing information, which in the end creates new leads.
Marketing funnels have any number of input methods and can travel down multiple pathways before arriving at their final destination. The goal is to define the conversion points, the value of the points, and the rate at which they arrive. CRO's allow you to evaluate the success of your efforts and necessary areas to improve.
