Humans can be intensely competitive - there’s a reason the world of sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. If it’s possible for someone to win, we will spend hours watching the activity unfold. (It’s why we resorted to watching rock-paper-scissors tournaments during quarantine). But whether your heart races at penalty kicks, bottom-of-the-ninth ties, or drives in the red zone, we can all agree that it only matters if points get on the board. If the conversion happens. Unless all that energy and effort can be converted into the currency needed for the victory (points), it ends in a loss.

The world of marketing is no different. You may light up at the thought of a stellar social media campaign or captivating spot advertisement, but if those efforts don’t convert into the currency needed for supporting a business (money), they end in losses as well.

Enter: conversion marketing. Conversion marketing is simply the segment of marketing that helps convince customers to complete a desired action. Depending on whether your organization sells a product, provides a service, or works with B2B and SaaS, these actions can include making a purchase, signing up for an email, or simply clicking a call to action (CTA) button.

Creating a beautiful website or an incredible product isn’t enough if conversions aren’t being made. But who has time to add yet another job description to the many responsibilities marketers have? YOU do. Here’s why (and how): 

A Team, B Team

Why bother having an A team and a B team (or a Varsity and JV team) in sports? While your top team players get most of the attention, the gains are made behind the scenes with the freshmen waiting in the wings. Sports coaches can try new techniques with younger players so that they’re refined when it’s time for the spotlight. For marketing, this concept looks like A/B testing. Testing different versions of your website with different segments can reveal drop-off points in the conversion process. By tweaking this “B version” and evaluating its performance, you can present data-driven solutions to justify changes to online processes that yield real results.

Check your Playbook

In a world of ever-diminishing attention spans, every obstacle on your website or platform will convince more visitors to leave. In sports, your playbook should be easy for your entire team to understand: making a play is next to impossible if you don’t know what it is. In marketing, your website visitors are your players and your site is the playbook. Can every visitor quickly understand the purpose of your organization and your current goals from the landing page? Are they able to navigate easily to find resources most relevant to their needs? How is your website speed? Clear plays lead to consistent conversions.

Show Me the Stats

Are you even a real baseball fan if you don’t know Jackie Robinson’s career batting average or the regular season wins between the Yankees and the Red Sox? Who knows - but everybody knows serious sports fans want to see the stats. In order to make informed decisions in conversion marketing, take a look at statistics such as:

• Conversion rate: How many visitors are converting to begin with?
• Form analytics: At which points within forms (such as a billing information form) do your customers hesitate to provide information, or simply opt-out?
• Traffic sources: Where are your visitors coming from? Social media, email newsletters, search engines, elsewhere? This helps with focus improvements to specific growth areas.
• Click rates and heatmaps: What areas of your website are getting the post attention? Are these the areas where visitors find clear CTA opportunities or chances to convert? If not, it’s time to make adjustments.

Conversion marketing isn’t the most glamorous portion of a marketing professional’s job, but it is probably one of the most important parts as it relates to ROI. Sports teams prove their prowess on the practice field before walking into the stadium lights. One of the best ways for marketing professionals to prove the effectiveness of our work to our clients is through conversion marketing. Data-driven conversion marketing shows clients the ROI on marketing dollars, giving you and your team a competitive advantage.

Looking for more information on conversion marketing? Start here.