Conversion Funnel Series: Action & Advocacy

Today we've made it to the final installment of our "Marketing Planning with the Conversion Funnel" series, and we are rounding towards the finish line with Action (ie Conversion!) and Advocacy (getting your customers to tell everyone how awesome you are). Review the previous posts: Intro, Awareness, Consideration & Interest, if you'd like more background.

To set the stage one last time: the core concept is that different marketing channels reach users at different stages of their decision-making process, and therefore, you need to understand the user's mindset, the Conversion Funnel, and each marketing channel's strengths and weaknesses, in order to be successful with your marketing. 

As a reminder, in the world of the Conversion Funnel, you basically reach larger, less-targeted audiences towards the top of the funnel and smaller, more-targeted audiences towards the bottom of the funnel. Each end of the funnel comes with its benefits and its drawbacks, so you need to understand where your goals and strengths lie and optimize all of your channels to work in the ways that they are designed to, together.

Here's our nifty visualization for reference:

Sealing the Deal

In the case of Action and Advocacy, at this point your users have already arrived at your conversion location (website, brick & mortar store, etc.) at least once. Your upper funnel marketing activities, including brand awareness marketing and the digital collection and cultivation of qualified users, have primed your users to want to continue the process with you, and now it's your job to escort them seamlessly through the final conversion path, straight into the land of satisfied returning and advocating customers. 

If you have done your upper funnel activities correctly, then the experience at this stage only needs to continue the positive experience that has already been initiated. As long as you don't give them a reason to distrust you or jump out of your funnel, then you've got this part covered! That said, a disruption of the user's expectations at this point can be a fatal mistake -> they have already invested time and energy in you, so if they feel betrayed in some way, that betrayal may feel personal. 

For example, if a company set unattainable price expectations at the Consideration phase on SEM (Google ads) by saying "Up to 50% off" in their ad text when almost nothing on the site is actually 50% off, they may get the CTR and the click, but the conversion will be tougher, because the user could be annoyed that they are not getting the advertised 50% off -> it makes the company seem dishonest. "What else are they misleading me about?" the user may ask. This type of tactic can immediately change a happy potential customer into a disillusioned one, and the data on whether this is happening will only show up in the on-site metrics (because CTR will generally be higher). Only by reviewing bounce rates and conversion rates will the marketer be able to tell that this type of language is alienating customers who may have otherwise converted (check out the post on the epic battle between ROI v. CTR for more examples of this conflict and how to resolve it). 

And so, before marketers rest on their laurels, counting their qualified traffic and calling it a day, there are some final steps that must be taken if the company is to achieve the maximum value from their investment in the entire funnel, and if the marketing team is to achieve their goals for revenue and ROI (after all, without the conversion, neither of these metrics will be very good, despite amazingly ingenious marketing strategy up to this point).

Enabling and motivating your users to convert to customers

1) Make sure that the landing page from all digital Interest & Consideration pathways is ideal for the user. Examples:

• Match user specificity with landing page specificity: Generic users should go to generic pages, specific users should go to the most relevant specific pages. 
• If an email advertised a certain product category, the email should go to the most relevant page. 
• If any advertising featured a specific sale, language about that sale and how to receive the discount should be very clear on the landing page and throughout the funnel. 
• Look & feel should be highly aligned with all external marketing material -> a noticeable change in tone or sentiment can jolt the user out of the process and make them question whether you are the company they thought you would be.

2) Make sure that last-minute decision-making factors are clearly addressed. Examples:

• If you have good reviews, make sure those reviews are clearly visible. 
• If you are primarily targeting sign-ups and profile creation, make it VERY clear what the value of a sign-up/profile is and what a good one looks like. 
• Make sure that the user has all of the product/service info they need right in front of them when they are making the "add to cart" decision.
• If you feel the need to charge crazy shipping prices, set some expectation before the $80 shipping price tag slips up on the final screen (consider not doing this in today's competitive landscape, you'll be hard pressed to properly compete, but of course, there are always exceptions). 
• Does your % discount have an absolute $ maximum limit (generally, it shouldn't)? Make it VERY clear before the user puts in the 25% off coupon code for their $500 purchase only to be extremely annoyed when they only get the max $100 off instead of the 25% offered. 
• Be careful using up-sells/add-ons in the final funnel. You may make money from these, but if they annoy a certain % of users enough to bounce and never return, you need to look at the opportunity cost of this strategy as it relates to immediate conversion and LTV (Lifetime value). Use real data to get a balanced understanding of whether the add-on complexity is helping or hurting you. If you are not A/B testing, it will almost always look like it's helping you, because you are not measuring the opportunity cost of the bounces. 

3) Make the conversion AS EASY AS POSSIBLE! Examples:

• The navigation on the site should make it exceptionally easy for the user to follow the path that you've initiated through to conversion, yet it should make it possible for them to jump out of that path if they have accidentally been pushed in the wrong direction (for example, making your "home" and left nav clear). 
• Does the user need to use an app or tool to customize something before they convert? Optimize the hell out of the UX of that tool. No matter how glossy it looks, if it gets in the way of conversion, it's hurting not helping. 
• Avoid negative surprises of any kind. Higher price, longer shipping time, too much personal information required, etc. While these decisions are rarely owned by the marketing team, they have a huge impact on conversion. Marketers will need to work cross-functionally to make sure that the company is aligned on the strategy around these issues, and to make sure that if the company sees value in them, that the marketing strategy and ROI goals are adjusted accordingly. 

Transitioning Action to Advocacy

When the above rules are followed, the company has a unique and valuable opportunity in today's climate -> they can enable their newly converted customers to become their direct brand advocates. This allows the conversion funnel to become more of a cycle, with the happy customers serving as a valuable (and free!) addition to the Awareness top of the funnel. Lots and lots of studies show the impact of "word of mouth" advocacy on customer decision making, and with the state of social media today, it is easy for companies to funnel their happy customers into megaphones of brand advocacy across their entire social networks. 

However, in order for this to work, customers have to be willing and able. This means that:

• The UX of the entire funnel needs to be of such high quality to the user that they are motivated to share their new love of your brand with their networks.
• The sharing UX post-conversion needs to be easy to use and comfortable for the user's sense of privacy. Don't ask them to share the exact product that they bought. Don't ask them to say anything specific. Don't automatically share on their behalf! Do ask them to follow your brand on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest -> this will both create a headline on some platforms that they have followed your brand (the first stage of advocacy) and set them up to receive your social media content in the future (which they will then be able to share and engage with on an on-going basis). 
• Never let an external entity or partner muddle your post-conversion UX, even when you get a kickback from them. The post-conversion screen is your first opportunity to make your customer feel warm and fuzzy that they converted with you, and they should feel nothing but happy and confident that their trust was well-placed. Featuring a spammy affiliate website with "great offers" or a partner whose service is not clearly relevant could make your new customer question whether their personal info (including credit card info) will be safe with you. Your partners reflect on you, so be wise and control this UX tightly. 

Hopefully you found the Conversion Funnel series useful! Stay tuned and subscribe for more posts on many other topics near and dear to the 2014 Digital Marketer's heart!

For help customized to your business needs, contact us at: www.DigiMarketeer.com!