Deciding on the best marketing tactics and strategies to grow your business is hard.
Ads. Content. Conversions. Email capture. Newsletters. Social media.
It can all become a huge, disorganized jumble of unfinished experiments that leave you confused with no end goal in sight.
Yet you try to juggle it all anyway because you NEED marketing tactics to grow your business.
You zone in on ads, write stunning content, use gorgeous product images, run campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and…
Nothing. Not even a blip on the radar.
I’ve felt the same pain too. At my last startup building a CRM for job seekers, we had to grow our user base with zero marketing budget. So, I focused all my effort on content, not realizing that my single-track growth strategy approach was stifling our success.
It’s a frustrating feeling. Growing a business is hard.
Sound business growth strategy requires more than just hitting “Run” on a campaign and watching new leads roll in. It takes patience, time, data, flexibility, and effort.
Finding the right growth marketing tactics means considering your full business funnel from top to bottom rather than zoning in on a single approach (P.S. Ladderexcels at turning full-funnel audits into tactical growth opportunities).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The terms “marketing strategy,” “growth strategy,” and “marketing tactic” are often used synonymously, and they can sometimes overlap. But there are a few key differences between them which you should understand as you read through this post.
Generally, a marketing strategy refers to the top-level direction of your marketing. It helps you decide where you should allocate your resources and how you’ll gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. More importantly, a marketing strategy helps you lay out exactly how you’ll achieve your long-term marketing objectives.
Some long-term marketing goals and objectives may include:
Regardless of which type of marketing objective you pursue, your business goals should be specific.
For example, what business doesn’t want to increase sales? But unless you have a specific number to work toward, you’ll have no way to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. Instead of setting an objective like “increase sales,” a better objective might be “increase sales by 15% in the next six months.”
The same logic applies to other types of business objectives. For example, you could try to reduce churn by a certain percentage or gain a specific amount of marketing penetration when entering a new market.
Your main marketing strategy will also determine which channels you should pursue. You could have a different strategy for each channel depending on your objective, or you could house multiple channels under a single strategy.
Depending on your market, you may want to use a mix of online and offline channels:
A few of the most popular marketing channels include:
You’re probably already familiar with these channels. But as we mentioned before, you can’t just set up a campaign on one of them, hit “Run,” and hope for the best. If you’re lucky, you might see some positive metrics, but doing this just won’t lead to sustainable business growth.
And this is where it’s important to understand how a marketing strategy fits into your overall business growth strategy. There’s a difference between the two terms (and businesses have varying opinions about how to define both).
As mentioned before, your marketing strategy determines the direction of your marketing in relation to specific goals. It will also help you determine how you’re going to spend your marketing budget and how you’ll incorporate variables like messaging, creative, production, and distribution.
Your growth strategy goes far beyond marketing, although marketing is an important part of it. The marketing side determines how you’ll gain and retain new business and revenue, which will give you the capacity to grow. But your growth strategy encompasses all the methods you’ll use to grow your company as a whole and what steps you’ll take to accommodate for that growth.
Your growth strategy accounts for revenue size, the number of employees and teams you have, your employee diversity, talent retention, cash flow, financing, and even your R&D efforts in addition to your ability to grow your market share. It should answer a question like, “When we penetrate this new market, what teams do we need in place to provide support to our new customers?” Even company mergers and acquisitions can become a part of your successful growth strategy.
While your marketing strategy helps you set long-term goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your marketing, your growth strategy helps you determine what you want your business to look like months and years from now.
Marketing tactics are smaller-scale activities you can use to gain a better ROI from your marketing strategies. Similarly, a “growth tactic” is a type of activity you engage in to grow the scope and effectiveness of your marketing strategy.
For example, if you look at the “Conversion” section in our list of growth tactics at the bottom of the page, you’ll see that the first tactic in the section suggests you eliminate links on your landing pages. This is because if you have too many links on a landing page, it encourages your visitors to navigate away.
This is a pretty small action to take in the grand scheme of things. But, as cited, it usually produces an increased return on investment (ROI) of about +38%.
There are hundreds of other tactics you can use to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns. The best marketing tactics are developed through experience, experimentation, and analysis of data and your marketing results.
Just because marketing tactics tend to be smaller actions doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to your overall business growth. As you can see below, we segment our tactics into 6 strategic categories, each of which relates to how you can increase your customer base and grow your market share:
Acquisition tactics typically draw potential customers to your website, your landing pages, and your other online assets. Most marketers would say acquisition tactics help you increase your traffic. The best acquisition tactics help you attract your target audience more effectively, develop more personalized creative assets, and improve your SEO.
Activation tactics are those that encourage your visitors to take action once you’ve drawn them in. All marketers love to see their traffic go up, but if none of that traffic is leading to action, it isn’t driving growth. Activation tactics usually pertain to your calls to action (CTAs), your email and social media strategies, and the usability of your website.
Conversion tactics come into play once you’re getting potential customers on your site and generating new leads. People are giving you their info — now comes the hard part:You need to convince them to buy something.
To boost your ROI in this category, you’ll need to use tactics which target your landing pages, your discount offers, as well as the social proof you display on your website and elsewhere. If you rely on a sales team to close deals, you can also develop sales tactics to improve in this area.
Retention tactics help you retain customers once they convert. If you’ve ever seen someone complain online that they’ve abandoned a company due to horrible customer service, they’re referring to this category.
You can improve your retention by targeting your onboarding and customer support efforts, your user experience (UX) and user interface (UI), and by winning back customers you’ve lost (reactivation).
Referral tactics typically apply to your referral program, but they can also apply to the way you use influencers. Social media influencers, professional bloggers, and thought leaders can all be viable sources of referrals.
Once you’ve developed a solid base of customers and dazzled them with your amazing products and customer service, you can start encouraging them to bring in new business through referrals. To do this, you need a formal referral program — a strategy you can replicate and repeat as needed.
Finally, revenue tactics help you drive revenue growth.
That’s what it’s all about, right? Unfortunately, you can’t go straight to revenue growth without tackling the other categories on this list first. You might get some quick wins if you do, but you won’t be able to develop a sustainable revenue strategy.
Most revenue tactics apply to your product pricing, your retargeting efforts, and your affiliate programs and partnerships.
Businesses used to have to make an educated guess based on their understanding of their audience, then use their imaginations to come up with new marketing tactics. They could then test the tactic, record the results, and improve the tactic based on their findings.
For example, here’s an example of how A/B testing is used to validate a new marketing tactic. In this case, it’s as simple as changing the color and layout of a button on a CTA:
While this model still works (who doesn’t use A/B testing?), you should not just ‘throw spaghetti at a wall’ and randomly test whatever ideas are top of mind.
The best way to develop a new business growth/marketing tactic is to use past experimentation data and recent insights to double-down on what’s working or to answer a specific question.
For example, you might want to test various value propositions to see which resonates best. To start, you’ll want to have distinct landing pages and ads crafted to speak holistically to each value proposition – where the copy, images, and ad message all align with one value prop. Then, once you’ve identified a best-performer, you’ll want to double down and test smaller facets of the experience. Eventually, you’ll have worked from an unknown to a highly optimized understanding of what works best. We’ve used this approach with all our clients, which is why we’re able to provide you with so many examples below.
*NOTE:There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Marketers have been trying new tactics for decades, and you can find all sorts of new ideas if you do some research. We built a database of over 800+ marketing tactics that you can explore for free.
Tactics can only be considered successful if they improve your return on investment (ROI) for a particular strategy – and they are generally more narrowly focused on improving some specific key performance indicator (KPI). In other words, they must produce a better return for every dollar you spend on a marketing strategy.
For example, let’s say a customer signs up for your email list. They’ll expect to receive emails that are relevant to them. But you could improve your retention rate by sending them a series of customized emails reminding them that they opted in.
After all, most people don’t keep tabs on all the email lists they’ve signed up for. They’ll be less likely to unsubscribe if you remind them why they signed up in the first place. By improving the retention rate of your email list, you can indirectly improve sales and revenue. This tactic typically has a success rate of +20%.
By refining your marketing tactics at every stage of your funnel and in every category listed above, you’ll be able to drive more business growth.
Eventually, every small tactical win will compound to improve your understanding and your marketing strategy. As mentioned above, your tactics and strategies should be geared toward answering questions about your business model, your target personas, your product/service offerings, or the market as a whole. And as you begin to ship tactics that fill in these answers you’ll want to refine your strategy and minimize resource waste be continuously compounding insights and doubling down on what you’ve learned to be driving performance.
Today, the number of marketing strategies you can try are as wide and varied as the number of products available to the average consumer. We’ve come a long way from traditional marketing, which revolved around “the 4 P’s”:
The strategies you choose depend on a lot of factors, such as which channels your customers frequent and what your budget looks like. Organic (or inbound) strategies like content marketing are cheaper, but they take a lot of time to execute and show results. Digital ads can help you generate results quickly, but they require you to spend some money to be effective.
Most businesses use a mix of paid marketing strategies and organic marketing strategies to grow. Naturally, organic strategies still cost money because you must pay someone to execute them. They’re just more sustainable: You just don’t have to invest a per-dollar amount into each initiative as you do with a paid campaign.
Successful paid marketing strategies include:
Meanwhile, successful organic marketing strategies to consider are:
While most businesses don’t use all these strategies at once, they may rely on a mix of them in order to grow. For example, it’s not uncommon for a business to maintain a blog (content marketing) and promote their new blog posts using social media ads. And, although it may not be the answer you want to hear – the reality is that every business is so different that there’s no way to truthfully say which strategies are best without understanding your own funnel economics.
*NOTE: Since understanding your current benchmarks and funnel economics are so critical to prioritizing growth strategies and marketing tactics, we’ve codified our proven framework into an interactive growth blueprint template that you can access for free. Just fill in the inputs and see your own funnel economics highlight the strategies you should focus on.
While the ultimate goal of any successful marketing strategy is to help you grow your business, getting there can be a challenge.
It’s difficult to measure a metric like “brand awareness,” for example. Everyone wants it, but you don’t always know you’ve achieved it until you can see the results in other, more quantitative areas, such as in your revenue and lead generation metrics.
Nonetheless, the simplest way to determine if a marketing strategy is contributing to business growth is to measure its ROI. If the revenue you’re receiving from the strategy is greater than the revenue you’re putting in, you can call it a successful strategy.
Here’s a basic marketing ROI calculation from Harvard Business Review:
Naturally, some strategies will be more successful than others when it comes to ROI. The one downside to using this method is that it doesn’t always account for the long-term implications of a marketing strategy.
For example, if you launch a series of Facebook “likes” campaigns, you may not see much return on investment until months, even years down the line. You don’t earn revenue when people follow your Facebook page. But that new influx of followers could provide a huge return later when you’re promoting your hot new product through Facebook.
It’s up to you to determine which KPIs are indicators of success for each marketing strategy. To do this, set specific goals for each strategy before you execute them. And how do you set those goals in the first place? Well, you’ll need to audit your current business funnels to identify where your strengths and weakness are.
*NOTE: We wrote a comprehensive marketing funnel growth guide which you should leverage.
Too many businesses pick a strategy from a list and run with it, only to learn later that it wasn’t the best strategy for their audience. To develop a new growth/marketing strategy, you need to do research and collect data first.
To build a new marketing strategy, do the following:
Surprisingly, almost half (45%) of companies don’t have a documented digital marketing strategy.
The final piece, your marketing plan, is one of the most important parts of your strategy. It’s also a piece that too many businesses leave out.
Your marketing plan should be more like a schedule, dictating what you will execute and when as your strategy unfolds. It also describes how you will spend every dollar of your marketing budget. It’s important to bake some flexibility into your marketing plan, as the market may change while you are executing it. You may also need to adjust your plan at certain times to take advantage of new opportunities or avoid unforeseen risks.
Altogether, your marketing strategy, marketing plan, and any marketing tactics you use therein should support your business growth strategy.
Developing growth tactics should never happen in isolation. When we develop our own tactics, we don’t just try new things and hope for the best. We use a process of experimentation and analysis to pin down which tactics provide the best ROI. Then, we document those tactics and try to improve them.
We’ve conducted over 8,000 experiments this way, which is why we manage to drive a 300% higher success rate on marketing tests than the market average.
Being data-driven means making strategic decisions based on evidence, data analysis, and the interpretation of previously attained results. (It’s also why we’re not fan’s of the ICE tactic scoring framework made popular by GrowthHackers.com). Our goal is to remove as much guesswork from your decision-making process as possible, reducing the risk that your new initiatives will fail.
A data-driven growth strategy is like other data-driven initiatives, but it applies to the whole company rather than any singular department. Building a data-driven growth strategy can be a challenge mainly because it is a company-wide initiative. It also requires the company to develop new capabilities.
For example, harvesting data from a single source such as CRM isn’t enough to build a company-wide strategy. First, you must be able to identify and manage multiple sources of data, both internal and external. These data sources may come from your internal analytics tools in various departments or from other sources, such as your advertising, social media, and content management platforms.
Second, you must be able to draw insights and build predictive models based on the data you collect. This way, you can optimize your future business outcomes, predict challenges, and plan how you intend to grow.
Finally, you must be able to manage change within your organization and act based on your models and data insights. This is the most critical piece of a data-driven growth strategy. Unless you can turn data into insights and insights into action, your data collection activities don’t truly provide value.
If you don’t already have a data-driven growth strategy, take incremental steps to get there. You can start by refining your capabilities and identifying your most important sources of data.
Data-driven marketing is the process of gaining insights through the analysis of numbers or raw data. Strategies and tactics are then built upon these insights to enhance the chances of successful marketing efforts in the future.
Data may be collected from a variety of marketing sources, such as digital ad performance, content performance, and information collected through customer interactions.
Larger companies who have the capability to collect and analyze massive amounts of data may use big data analytics to produce insights. But the primary goal of data-driven marketing is to enhance the customer experience through more personalized, contextually accurate marketing strategies.
Over 40% of brands plan to expand their data-driven marketing budgets in the future, and most companies have already incorporated some type of data analysis into their marketing apparatus.
Put simply, data-driven decisions are better for growth because they are decisions which are based on evidence.
In the past, both marketing and business growth strategies were wholly reliant on past models and speculation to build their growth strategies. This introduced a great deal of risk. Using data-driven insights reduces that risk because it enables you to identify real opportunities and better predict risks.
Below you’ll find the highest-performing business growth tactics Ladder has used over the last 4 years to drive growth for our 200+ clients – from startups like Monzo Bank and 8tracks, to big brands like Booking.com and Nestle.
Here’s what you get with each data-driven growth tactic:
Some are free, some require a media budget (marked with $). Some take time, others are easy. Some are for SaaS companies, others for eCommerce, blogs, etc…
But they’re all designed to be adaptable and run as small-scale tests, collecting data anddoubling down on what workswhile dumping those that don’t.
*NOTE:Check out the Ladder Playbook (a searchable database of over 800+ tactics), run tests with some of our favorite business growth strategies, and replace all those marketing consultants with a single agile growth team.
Acquisition
Activation
Conversion
Keep scrolling to see each tactic one-by-one.
Ad Targeting
Ad Creative
SEO/Content
Acquisition is the most important yet most expensive aspect of growth strategies for business, in terms of both budget and time.
Ads aren’t cheap and ad platforms are abundant. Targeting the right audience in the right place with the right budget seems like an impossible task to start with, much less actually designing the ad.
Content marketing, on the other hand, takes a lot of time and effort. Should you do it? Is it worth your time? How long should articles be? When should you post? Post on Medium or on your own blog?
All these questions can be answered through small, systematic, and flexible tests.
Start with these…
Success Rate +18%
Narrowing down your target keywords by creating ad-specific groups will help you reach a more targeted audience.
Create specific groups for high-intent niche search terms. Cater your ad copy and imagery to match each group.
This lets you serve unique ads with targeted copy and creative to each segment of your audience.
*BONUS: See An Expert’s Thoughts on How to Scale Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs)
Success rate +12%
Target audiences with keywords that complement your product category.
If what you sell is a luxury product, try targeting other luxury products – i.e. people interested in Porsche are likely to be interested in expensive watches.
Success Rate +11%
What better way to beat your competitors than to target the keywords they use in their marketing and advertising efforts?
Access the audience of your competitors by looking at the keywords they use in their ad campaigns. You’ll discover highly effective keywords you may not be using.
Optimize your ad spending and reach your target audience more effectively by taking a page from your competitors’ books.
Success rate +188%
When you want to reach your current audience of fans with ads on Facebook, target them by choosing “People who like your Page” in the Targeting section of Facebook’s ad creation.
You can go a step further by targeting the friends of your fans to further expand your reach.
Success Rate +32%
Targeting audiences based on their likes and interests related to your product category.
A luxury bag retailer can target people who like ‘fashion’. A hotel aggregation site can target people who like ‘travel’. A drip email software company can target people interested in ‘CRM’.
*Note: This is a separate tactic from targeting people interested in your product (‘black bags’, ‘rome hotels’, ‘drip emails’) or targeting specific competitors (‘gucci bags’, ‘rome hilton’, ‘hubspot crm’).
Success Rate +282%
Fans/followers of your business on social media are a strong indicator of the audience you should target.
Create a lookalike audience of your social media following by setting your ad to target people similar to them.
If you have fans who aren’t part of your ideal audience, you can narrow down further with demographic targeting.
Success Rate +32%
Once you have a solid lead list, you’ll be able to build an audience for your advertising based on what those leads “look like.”
Say you find that a majority of your leads are startups in the New York City area – you’ll be able to build and target an audience of other NYC startups, founders, and their employees.
With this approach you’ll drive qualified traffic to your site – businesses and individuals similar to ones that have already displayed interest in your product.
MORE AUDIENCE TARGETING STRATEGIES
Success Rate +103% – $
Try rephrasing your ad copy as a leading question. i.e. “Want more customers?”; “Need higher conversion rates?”
This gives your customers something to respond to. The answer should indicate why your service is valuable to them!
BONUS: See 50+ Ad Copy Examples Guaranteed To Increase Clicks
Success Rate +280% – $
Best practice is typically to write short form ad copy as that’s what sells. Conversely, sometimes the opposite works – users are less likely to dismiss longform copy as an ‘ad’ and there can be space to really tell a personalized editorial story.
Success Rate +12% – $
Pointing to a potential loss of not buying your product can be an effective way to drive clicks. Ad copy like “Only X items left!” or “Sale ends in X minutes!” drives a sense of urgency for a customer.
They’ll want to avoid losing out on an item they’re interested in or a money-saving opportunity.
Psychologically, people are naturally risk averse and would prefer to avoid losing out on an opportunity to get a better deal.
Success Rate +11% – $
If you offer multiple products, or a broad category of products, test honing in on just one specific product or aspect of your product offering.
You can target a different product or category to each audience. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, target men who love watches with ads that showcase men’s watches.
Success Rate +22% – $
An appealing bold color in the background of an image can attract attention to your ad.
If the image stands out from the rest of the page of a social network or site where the ad is served, it will draw eyes directly to it and your ad will be more likely to be seen.
This can improve ad performance and help you better reach your audience.
Success Rate +15% – $
High-quality photography or screenshots in an ad for your product can be an effective way to drive sales.
Showing the product up close and in high detail in advertising helps interested consumers to properly visualize the product and how it might look in their use.
Often, this visual cue is what’s needed to garner interest in a product and land a sale.
Success Rate +7% – $
Showing an image overlaid with brand name and a translucent layer can increase social media ad campaign performance.
Try ad creative where your brand logo and a translucent layer are overlaid on top of an image of your choice.
A semi-transparent dark layer will provide a strong contrast between the image and your logo and ad copy, making it stand out for your audience on social networks.
Success Rate +7% – $
Try selling the image of the lifestyle your product promotes rather than just the product itself.
Help your audience imagine what the product would be like in their hands and in their lives. They’ll be able to better relate to the product and want to buy it.
Success Rate +17% – $
Google Shopping allows you to show a price and image of the product in your ad. This often dramatically increases performance as people are more likely to click on an ad when they know the price up front.
The clear display helps you set expectations for an item’s price immediately rather than allowing the ad viewer to assume your product is too expensive.
Learn More via Search Engine Land
Success Rate +23% – $
Compared to single-link ads, Carousel Ads drive 30-50% lower cost per conversion and 20-30% lower cost per click.
Their format inspires ad creativity and user engagement. Use carousel to show the breadth of your product offering in one ad. This can increase the likelihood of getting someone to click/convert.
BONUS: See 22 Creative Facebook Ad Design Tactics to A/B Test
Success Rate +15% – $
Create a lead ad without using Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards, just using a photo instead. It feels less like an ad, so user will be less prone to skimming over it.
Twitter lead cards are fancy and feature-rich, but they look like ads. The result? They often perform worse.
Instead promote a Tweet with an image and copy that you’ve found performed well in the past.
Success Rate +72% – $
Different advertising platforms take different approaches to the way they reach audiences. Targeting the same audience with the same creative across multiple platforms can be a good way to determine relative volume and efficiency.
Try using a high-performing ad on another platform. You’ll be able to see how your audience on each network responds to your creative and adjust your ad spending and copy.
Success Rate +13%
The page title is the first thing a person sees when they visit your website: make sure it is optimized to create conversions. A title should be accurate, exciting, and succinct.
Ideally you will want to optimize your title for search and social, but never do this at the expense of having it sound clunky. A/B test any new title ideas and measure the impact on your conversion rate.
Success Rate +7%
Adding alt tags on all your images allows Google to understand what each image is and how to index it. Keep your alt tags relevant to the content on the site and the image itself.
Ensure that it both explains what’s going on in the image and what the content is that surrounds it.
Success Rate +8%
Get in touch with relevant sites/publications that have previously covered material or products similar to yours and ask them to link back to your site.
Make sure to give them a specific reason that benefits them in some way. i.e. if your content can replace a dead link on their site, or if your site is more relevant than a link they previous had.
Success Rate +11%
Change around your landing page’s navigation bar to only feature relevant verticals based on search terms. This can be based on search terms used to get to your site and ones that users employ in your native search bar.
Use your navigation bar to point to the most important pages on your site, such as your highest-selling product categories.
Success Rate +12%
There are usually people searching for ‘competitor alternative’ or ‘product vs competitor’ – these are incredibly high value searches because these users are actively searching for a solution.
Create a page full of content comparing the relative advantages of your product over that solution.
As well as helping you rank on the more niche ‘you vs competitor’ search terms, you may also find you start ranking on the competitor’s search terms.
Success Rate +12%
Try checking whether you’re hosting your site on a spammy IP.
If you’re hosted on the same IP as sites that are known to spam or have a bad reputation, your own site’s reputation can be damaged and your search engine rankings might take a blow.
Success Rate +12% – $
Post your product – or pay to have it posted – in relevant directories that list similar products in your space.
When people search for products like yours on those sites, your product will come up as an option.
This can give you relevant traffic and potential backlinks to your site, boosting SEO authority.
Success Rate +9%
Content around interesting data you have on your users or industry is a great way to get attention and PR for your business.
You collect a lot of data and insights about your customers that can shine a revealing light on different parts of your industry and your own business’ performance.
Sharing that data with the world as content is sure to grab the attention of journalists and others in your industry.
Success Rate +15%
A good way to build relationships with influencers is to offer to interview them for your blog. Ask them questions on their expertise and background and have them give tips and advice to your readers.
This content provides value for your readers while giving exposure to both your blog/business and the influencer. Typically they’ll also provide a backlink (for SEO) and share on social.
Success Rate +12%
Your long-form pieces of content don’t have to just sit on your blog – they can also be converted into shareable and easily digestible SlideShare presentations.
Summarize the main points of your long-form writing and use the most salient parts to create a slide deck. This gives different content consumer types different options when engaging with your content.
Success Rate +12%
Be open to accepting guest articles from relevant authors for publishing on your blog.
You can manually recruit these people by offering a quid-pro-quo (offer to write for their blog) or just as a way for them to increase their exposure.
You get free content without having to write it yourself, and the credibility of the influencer who published on your site.
Success Rate +9%
Get your name out in front of your audience by guest-writing articles and sharing your expertise.
Figure out the top blogs and writers in your space. Ask if you can contribute a guest post on their blogs – they’re almost always looking for new content to push to their readers.
Provide high quality guest posts to establish yourself as an industry leader and organically push your product.
Success Rate +11%
By grouping your content into thematic collections, you can republish old content to your audience in a new way, targeting specific personas with your themes.
When you have enough content, start dividing articles up into different collections based on the various themes they fit into. Publish these collections as new articles to drive your audience to relevant pieces of content.
MORE SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING STRATEGIES
Calls to Action
Product Tweaks
Email/Social
Your acquisition efforts are drawing people to your site – now it’s time to guide them to what you want them to do – give you their email address, register for an account, click your CTA, sign up for a webinar, etc…
When no one’s clicking, giving up their contact info, or signing up, chances are your site isn’t doing enough to direct them to the right spot on your page.
Try out this collection of business growth strategies for activation, taken straight from the Ladder Playbook, starting with…
Success Rate +11%
Try changing the call to action of the landing page to improve conversion. Test out different colors, button copy, sign-up forms, and placement on the page to see what works best.
Use Optimizely to track which CTA approach results in the highest conversion rate for your landing page. Keep testing and iterating as you learn more about how your audience responds to different copy, colors, etc…
Success Rate +7%
Using social proof as a part of your CTA adds legitimacy/authority, and people are more likely to follow a crowd. Find a strong and applicable quote about your product from a client or influencer and include it with a CTA button.
This tactic can be effective for listbuilding, app installs, lead collection, etc.
Success Rate +8%
Adding ‘>>’ to the end of your CTA button copy is a quick and easy way to drive more clicks and conversions.
It’s a small psychological trick that gets users thinking that it’s a next step. Simply take your current CTA button copy – “Sign Up” – and add ‘>>’ to the end – “Sign Up >>”. You can A/B test your original CTA button copy and the >>’ copy to see which one has a higher click rate.
Success Rate +17%
Place your call to action form or button on the right side of your landing page to increase activation.
Focusing on the right side of your landing page rather than the center, especially when the form remains visible while scrolling down the page, keeps registration forms and CTA buttons above the fold and easily accessible for visitors.
This reduces friction between reading your marketing copy and signing up for a demo or free account.
Success Rate +10%
Putting a large call to action button in the center of your page can increase activation. The positioning will immediately draw attention to the CTA when someone lands on your page. Make sure the CTA stands out distinctly away from dense copy or complex images.
Success Rate +9%
People are more driven to finish a task as it nears completion. This is known as the Goal Gradient Effect.
An example of this working in real-time is a sandwich shop giving away a punch card that offers a free sandwich after your tenth purchase, but with the first two holes punched.
People consistently prefer completing eight tasks with two done for them over eight tasks with none done for them. Giving your customers the feeling of making progress will have a positive effect on their experience.
Success Rate +12%
Using informal, conversational, or friendly language on a popup can be a good way of collecting more email addresses.
Informal language lets your popups convey a more exciting message about your product or offering, catching the attention of visitors and driving them to sign up for your email list.
Success Rate +16%
Removing unnecessary steps from registration can improve signup rate. Asking a user for their last name may not necessary to register, so leave it until the onboarding phase post-registration.
Remove any steps that might slow down a person’s registration process and gather the information for fields you’ve removed after they’ve already signed up for an account.
Success Rate +54%
Gain insights into audience preferences by sending traffic to a page where visitors must make a choice about which section of the site to visit. Offering choices can also increase conversion.
MORE PRODUCT OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES
At Ladder, we build software and offer services to help high-potential businesses accelerate their growth. Is that something you need?
Success Rate +13%
You can put a static signup form on the sidebar of your blog or website. Because this is unobtrusive but still noticeable, it’s one of the most appealing ways to drive activations from your blog content.
The design of this box and the copy you use is of the utmost importance, and you’ll want to test it multiple times to find the best combination.
Success Rate +39%
Provide premium content in exchange for an email address as a great way to fill your funnel with new qualified leads.
Hide an enticing piece of content behind a simple requirement for an email address to encourage visitors to give you their contact information.
Later you’ll be able to reach out to them in a sales email, pointing back to the piece of content you gave away as a starting point for the conversation.
Success Rate +14%
Gate your content behind a contact information capture form, whether it’s an email field, a full blown contact info form, or a landing page.
It’s a great way to collect the information you need from someone before you give them the information they want. You can give something away up front and hide the rest of the content or entirely gate the content.
Success Rate +14%
Add an email capture form (or checkbox) during your checkout process.
Most users are already pretty happy with your brand if they’re ready to buy from you, so adding a (checked) email opt in box as part of purchase rarely interrupts the flow. In fact this is so common that many users would be confused to buy something from you and NOT get your emails!
Success Rate +30%
Rather than the default ‘exit intent’ popup, you can try showing your email popup at a certain number of seconds after the user hits your site.
A time-delay list builder popup is typically shown to many more people than an exit intent popup so it can be a good way to improve number of activations.
You should also experiment with how many seconds to wait, as it can make a big difference to activations and the quality of the leads you get.
Success Rate +14%
Sincerity in an email subject line can activate users and customers that have been loyal or have dropped off your service. i.e. “We can’t thank you enough”, “You’re what makes us great”, “Because we’ve missed you. Enjoy 15% off”
Success Rate +13%
Use strong, impactful statements. i.e. “Weekend plans? We’ve got you covered.”, “Don’t underestimate your impact!” to grab attention and increase open rates.
Success Rate +10%
Try testing a stronger call to action within emails to see if you can focus your reader’s attention. Treat the email as a landing page and include an obvious, eye-catching CTA.
This can improve click-through rate of your emails and result in higher conversion.
Success Rate +12%
If you’re tracking the types of products a user is purchasing or looking at, you should be able to recommend to a high degree of accuracy other products that user might be interested in. This type of email can be an excellent way to increase LTV and drive repeat purchases.
Success Rate +20%
Send new leads a customized message series after they sign up for your email list to remind them that they opted in.
Each message should include useful content to reward readers and serve as a guideline for what they can expect out of your newsletter. Include information on the timing of email messages, regularity, and content plans.
Success Rate +14% – $
When someone retweets your content, you can respond using Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards to immediately prompt them to sign up.
These users are already primed for your content and show interest in your writing, so they’re highly likely to want more of what you’re giving. By providing a personalized thank you and a frictionless one-click sign-up, you can drive more leads / email sign-ups for your blog.
Success Rate +11%
At registration or email collection, offer an incentive for a user to connect via Facebook, Twitter, etc… The incentive can be anything from early access to new products to a larger discount coupon.
This gives you more information on that user, such as their friends list, likes/interests, and birthday. You can use that to better tailor offers and communication further down the line.
Success Rate +14%
Rewrite the copy for a single piece of reposted social content so it’s perceived as a unique piece of content for each post.
Examples:
– Re-styling: “Did you read our recent post on…?”
– Quote an interesting or controversial line from the post.
– “Our hottest read from last month: ”
– Show numbers and figures: “How we gained X customers.”
Success Rate +9%
Sharing new content on social channels has limited reach because of varying presence of a social audience when content is posted (ex: timezone differences).
Schedule content to re-post at varying times optimized for each active social channel. Tools like Buffer can help you space these posts out automatically based on the best times for engagement.
Success Rate +8%
Your audience will react wildly differently to different pieces of content at different times of day.
To maximize your engagement you need to test what time of day is best to post what type of content. You can also use Buffer’s ‘Optimal Timing Tool’ to schedule social posts during the most engaged times of day.
MORE EMAIL & SOCIAL STRATEGIES
Landing Pages
Offers/Discounts
Social Proof
So your ads are working, your content’s drawing new leads, and your SEO is getting traffic to your site. Visitors are signing up for accounts, you’re building a big email list, and your funnel is packed with leads. Awesome!
Except… now you’ve got another problem. No one’s buying anything.
So what do you do? It’s time to optimize your site to better convert visitors. And no, that doesn’t just mean using prettier product pictures on your site (though that does help!).
Here’s how Ladder does it with our best business growth strategies for conversion, including…
Success Rate +38%
Too many links that navigate away from your landing page can result in the splitting and distraction of a user’s actions. Try removing most or all outbound links from your landing page to increase conversion by having users focus exclusively on your primary CTA.
This will target user attention on what you want them to look at – your convincing landing page copy and imagery – and prevent them from bouncing too early.
Success Rate +77%
Increase conversion rate on your landing page with a better, more visual hero image.
Pick an image that catches visitors’ eyes without distracting from or clashing with your CTA/landing page copy. Use the image as a framing and focus device for your CTA to get users engaged and increase conversion.
Success Rate +12%
A page getting directly to the point with a roundup of your all time best products can drive an increase in conversion rate. Those products already perform well with your target audience and promoting them clearly is a great way to draw more attention to them and increase sales.
Select your top 5 or 10 best-selling or most demanded products and list them prominently on your landing page to get the attention of interested visitors.
Success Rate +15%
Give leads the opportunity to immediately reserve a calendar slot for a sales call. Use the Thanks for Signing Up page or email post-email capture to do so.
This removes the steps of opening an email and clicking through to the calendar, thus taking away an opportunity for them to change their minds about the call.
Success Rate +15%
Try making your search bar larger and more visible to visitors on your site. This will allow them to more easily get to the page or product they’re searching for. The more prominent a search bar is, the more likely a user will see it as a recommended way to find products.
Success Rate +19%
Taking a precision approach to targeting your audience can be very rewarding. Sometimes if you’re targeting everyone, you’re targeting no one.
With that in mind, one option is to tell your audience exactly who your product is intended for.
This can be a risk/reward play: on one hand, you will immediately disqualify a segment of your potential customers, but on the other hand, you might create a more personal connection with customers who do fall into the categories you’ve targeted.
Success Rate +15%
Try reaffirming freedom instead of implying it.
When providing a potential customer with a choice (such as in a pricing page), simply telling them that they have that choice can drive them to action. For example, saying “You’re free to buy any time” may state the obvious but it can improve conversion. It’s a weird psychological trick, but it works!
Success Rate +14%
Make sure your landing page’s copy/messaging matches the copy/messaging used in the ad that directed visitors there. Consistent & synchronised messaging reassures visitors, increases conversion rate, AND increase the quality/relevance score of your ads.
Success Rate +8%
Fear of missing out (FOMO) can be a strong driving point to inspire action in an individual.
Showing a visitor to your site that they’re missing out on something that everyone else is buying into is an effective way to get them to buy in. Adding a deadline to the sign-up or purchase process is an additional consequence that people will want to avoid by acting.
Success Rate +8%
By showing users how recently someone bought a product, you can increase trust and therefore increase conversion rate. Have a notification pop up for visitors whenever a purchase is made on your site to make them more likely to buy.
Success Rate +12%
When creating sign-up forms, having too many fields can actually decrease sign-up rate. Optimize your forms to only ask for information necessary to the registration process.
This decreases the amount of effort and attention a user has to invest into signing up and will result in increased sign-ups and form submissions. Remember that you can also ask for the information in the fields you remove during onboarding or at a later stage in your relationship with that user/client.
Success Rate +15%
Keeping focus on a specific area will push more users through the funnel, rather than them getting lost or distracted by other links.
Avoid too many distractions in the form of links, large and bold text, and secondary CTAs and instead highlight your primary CTA on your page.
Removing these distractions will help visitors focus better on what you actually want them to do – follow your primary CTA to sign up, make a purchase, or register for an account.
Success Rate +14%
Instead of asking users to opt-in when signing up, make it the default choice while making opting out the secondary choice. Say you want new users to sign up for a newsletter alongside your product – make the newsletter sign-up checkbox ticked off by default.
Most users will choose the default choice without thinking, so it’s always better to make opting in default and opting out secondary.
Success Rate +11%
Paralysis of choice is a major problem to consider when designing a landing page. Providing too many choices can lead visitors to overanalyze the services you’re providing.
A recommended choice decreases the chance that the user will be paralyzed with too much choice.
Try highlighting the choice you recommend or your most popular choice to potential customers while also listing other available choices. This will direct them straight to the best option for their needs.
Success Rate +10%
Give a visitor less choice, instead of too many options. Too much choice can limit conversions: The more options you give a potential customer, the harder their decision-making process becomes.
Barry Schwartz’s famous Ted Talk on the Paradox of Choice gives a great overview of how too much choice can lead to over-analysis and buyer’s remorse.
There is an argument to be made that giving the customer a lot of choice can be freeing for them, but as with all solutions, the best approach is probably to rigorously test each hypothesis.
MORE LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES
Success Rate +12.5%
Try offering a discount to purchases within a specific season / holiday. This tactic is often paired with the “Seasonal Email” tactic, as seasonally themed promotions, events, new items, etc. are an easy way to reconnect/engage your subscriber list to keep your brand top-of-mind.
Success Rate +6%
Extend a discount or offer to a person visiting your site for the first time to provide the push needed to turn that visitor into a paying customer. This will help form a consumer-friendly first impression of your brand and increase the likelihood that first time visitors return to your site.
Success Rate +8%
Send your product out in a daily deal promotion on sites like AppSumo and offer a discount to members. This can drive thousands of relevant customers from app promotion sites that have a wide distribution.
Success Rate +12%
Implementing a simple flat per user pricing model can remove complexity around purchasing your product.
Providing too many pricing choices for various business sizes and account types can lead to confusion and paralysis of choice for users. By offering this simple pricing structure, you can remove the friction of pricing complexity from your sales process.
Success Rate +7%
Upsell a visitor that is interested in a product/service by showing a similar product. Buyers/shoppers are more likely to be repeat buyers/shoppers, AND the famed 80/20 rule tells us that 20% of customers will spend much more – making up 80% of the revenue
MORE OFFERS/PRICING STRATEGIES
Success Rate +13%
Adding a video testimonial can make your page look more professional and make it more engaging, increasing conversion rate.
The content of the video is very important – take care not to make the testimonial look too staged or scripted. It should be as natural and honest as possible (even if that means the customer isn’t being 100% deferential to your product).
Success Rate +13%
Try adding a longform story testimonial to your site. Have current and former happy customers tell their story of their time before and after they started using your product.
Let them focus on their pain points beforehand and highlight how your product made their lives easier This can be an engaging way to improve trust and tell the story of your product.
Success Rate +9%
Try adding testimonials from industry influencers to your page. Reach out to influencers that use your product or that you have a close relationship with and ask them to give a brief testimonial. People who know and value the opinions of the influencer will come to see you as more trustworthy. This increases social proof and therefore conversion.
Success Rate +10%
Listing all the tools you integrate or partner with on your site is an easy way to show social proof for your product.
If your platform works with major and highly known products, including them in an integrations section on your landing page will help your product gain credibility. Further, showing you’re integrated with major players in the industry helps display the value and ease of use of your product.
Success Rate +10%
Try adding customer ratings and reviews on your site. This is one of the most credible ways to build trust. The perfect place to put these reviews is just below the buy button.
Don’t make the mistake of faking reviews – users typically go to great lengths to validate the reviews are real and will quickly abandon the purchase if that trust is broken.
Onboarding/Support
Reactivation
UX/UI Design
Now comes the hard part. You thought drawing people to your site and getting them to convert to paying customers was difficult? Just try retaining them!
Whether it’s to keep your monthly active users high and growing, maintain and increase monthly recurring revenue, or get customers to become repeat purchasers, there are business growth strategies you can implement to retain them.
Start with our…
Success Rate +11%
When a user first registers, send them a welcome email explaining the first action they should take. This prompts them to immediately return to your platform and start using it in a guided manner.
You can combine this with a mandatory onboarding process for your platform to properly teach new users how to best use the service.
Success Rate +6%
Guiding new users through the onboarding process for your app is a crucial tactic to increase retention and ensure users are effectively using your platform.
Creating an onboarding process that has the user run through each part of the app with descriptive and interactive elements ensures that they’re not frustrated by lack of guidance and unclear UX/UI.
Further, a guided onboarding tutorial will enable you to learn information about your user that you weren’t able to during registration.
Success Rate +13%
Block all other actions in your UI until a new user has gone through your onboarding tutorial. You’ll be able to guide them through the proper usage of each part of your platform with a tour and demo.
Mandating the process while blocking other actions ensures that every new user goes through the onboarding tutorial.
Success Rate +12%
Leave the password creation until the user has already given an email and filled in other info.
Once they’re already within the platform, a modal or prompt can pop up asking them to create a password. They’ve already been guided into the platform, removing the small but critical bit of friction of password creation from the registration process entirely.
Success Rate +14%
Add live chat to your site and talk directly to potential purchasers.
An ATG global consumer trend study found that 90% of consumers consider live chat helpful, 62% are more likely to purchase again from a site that has live chat, and 38% made their purchase due to the live chat itself.
Ensure that every person who visits your site and wants to buy your product is able to do so by keeping a person on hand to answer questions and help confused customers.
Success Rate +13%
Providing premium product support to your best customers keeps them happy and have them raving about your product. Investing the extra support effort for high value customers keeps them engaged with your product, reduces frustration, prevents churn, and can lead to positive feedback and new client referrals.
Success Rate +13%
If a user enters their password wrong 3 times, you should automatically send them a password reset email to make it easier on them.
This will make the password reset process a lot simpler and ensure that you don’t lose users because they can’t remember their passwords. The simpler the reset process, the more active users on your platform.
Success Rate +15%
Start with data analysis on what leads to churn on your platform. Once done, automatically tag users ‘at risk’ of churning and target them with increased customer support, incentives, etc…
By getting ahead of the problems that a user at risk of churning is experiencing, you’ll be more likely to retain them and alleviate their issues with your service.
Success Rate +15%
Whenever a customer requests a feature, make a note directly in that feature’s Trello card / Asana task. When that feature is released, email those people personally to let them know the new feature they requested has been launched.
This will massively improve retention for those users, even bringing them back from dormant / churned status. It really doesn’t take very long, but you can automate this process with your CRM if needed.
MORE ONBOARDING & SUPPORT STRATEGIES
Success Rate +5%
When trying to bring back customers that haven’t made a purchase in a while or were formerly subscribed to your service, offering a discount – % off next order, discounted first-month rate – can bring them back into the fold. Send an email to your deactivated users with a welcome back offer to get them to shop or sign up again.
Success Rate +10%
When a user wants to end their subscription to your product or remove items from their cart, chances are it’s because of price or how much of your product they need.
Try a downsell during the cancellation process to get them to sign on for a cheaper subscription that provides less of what you offer or provides them with a discount. This can keep price-conscious users retained.
Success Rate +15%
Send an email or series of emails when a customer purchases a product from a specific category. Personalize your emails knowing which product category – and segment – these customers belong to.
Get customers to purchase more of the products they’re interested while your brand is still fresh in their mind.
Success Rate +5%
Send an email or series of emails when a customer purchases a specific product. Personalize your emails knowing the specific product this customer – and segment – is interested in.
Increase repeat purchase rates and LTV by maximizing engagement from customers who recently purchased from you.
Success Rate +15%
In your UI, don’t count on a user just being able to intuit exactly what is needed.
What might seem obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to the user — so don’t be afraid to explain and give context for actions the user is being prompted to take.
Give users a reason for what they’re doing and an explanation as to what their actions mean.
Success Rate +15%
In your design, use recognition instead of recall. People might tend to think better when given cues or hints, as opposed to being asked to free associate.
Imagine you’re being asked to make a list of your favorite movies: Is it easier to grab movies willy-nilly from your memory, or for you to pick from a list of movies? Guide a user with things they recognize, instead of making them pull ideas out of their own brains.
Success Rate +15%
Instant changes in your UI can be jarring to users. Try animated transitions, such as a sidebar that slides into view instead of displaying instantly, to give them a sense of logical change in your app.
Keep transitions visible but short to avoid wasting users’ time with long delays.
Success Rate +15%
To ensure high retention numbers, have your app or platform automatically renew a subscription by default. Make the ending of a subscription an opt-out action by the user and retain their payment information for regular monthly service.
This prevents users who want to remain subscribers from being dropped off the service while retaining uncertain users as customers until they decide to commit to unsubscribing or remaining.
Success Rate +13%
In your UI design, try anticipating the intent of your users to ensure that their experience is smooth and free of frustration.
For example, if they’ve opened a hover-over menu, moving their mouse slightly off the menu by accident shouldn’t automatically close it. Instead, anticipate intent by inserting short delays and interactions to keep them happy with your UI.
Success Rate +13%
When designing your UI, you’ll be confronted with zero data states where users will have nothing input in your interface.
The most common appearance of this is in brand new users.
Designing for this state – creating a system where the very first data entry is guided – gives context and helps onboard users. It helps them get past the learning curve of your product while ensuring they don’t drop off due to confusion.
At Ladder, we build software and offer services to help high-potential businesses accelerate their growth. Is that something you need?
Referral Programs
Influencer Referrals
So you’ve grown your customer base and they’re passionate about your products. They love you!
What are you doing with that love?
Hopefully, you’re thanking them and providing great customer service. But hopefully you’re also leveraging their passion in your business growth strategies.
Want to drive real buzz and viral sharing for your products? Build a referral system.
Your happy and active customers will want their friends on board. Give them the opportunity to earn something in return for bringing you new customers.
Kick off your referral efforts with these…
Success Rate +12%
Offering incentives to users to refer you to their friends or as a thank you for signing up is a great way to drive conversion for your products and an easy way to drive people to share you with their friends.
Try offering either or both forms of one-sided referrals in the form of X% off a next order or next invoice for a referral or as a signup reward to get access to new users and increase user loyalty.
Success Rate +14%
Try offering an incentive to users to refer you and for new users to join. This gives incentives to the person who shares (who benefits directly) and decreases anxiety for the person they share with (they also benefit, so they aren’t worried about the person who shares getting an incentive).
Success Rate +5%
Limiting the functionality of your product or the amount of content you display for those users that haven’t shared it with others is a great way to drive up sharing and increase reach.
Give away a bit up front, whether it’s content or product functionality, and then limit how much a user can see until they hit share.
Success Rate +13%
Click to tweet is a call to action in which you prepopulate a box with a key quote or idea from one of your posts that users can then tweet out at the click of a button.
Prompting your readers with a quick and easy way to share a main message from your post is a simple way for users to share your content and spread awareness of your brand among people who are more likely to engage with it.
Success Rate +7%
Offer a giveaway at the end of a blog post or piece of content as a simple but effective CTA for readers. Have the giveaway require sharing the article to increase the amount of shares the post will get. It’s also a great way to capture email addresses and fill your funnel.
Success Rate +7%
As you’re gearing up for a big launch, send an email in the week leading up to it informing your users or waiting list subscribers of the launch. This gets them excited about what’s to come and reminds them about your product.
Success Rate +13%
When the friends of a user join your platform, send an email to the user informing them that they missed out on referring a friend for credit. It reminds your users that they have friends who would also enjoy your product.
Further, it creates a sense of urgency that they don’t miss out on money or rewards for referrals. That sense of urgency will drive them to act in the future and will increase the number of referrals you receive.
Success Rate +11%
Add an easter egg to your site to engage users and increase word of mouth. An easter egg is a secret feature, message or inside joke that is hidden within a website.
Easter eggs engage users in a unique and dynamic way while also increasing word of mouth around your site and showing your brand to be exciting and fun.
Success Rate +10%
Emailing a subset of your top users to inform them they’ve won some form of competition can drive referral behavior.
Create some sort of competition among your users, such as a rating of the highest level of activity or the most shared content and send out an email letting them know about their success.
This can be made into a weekly or monthly email that includes sharing functions and a referral link encouraging top users to invite their friends.
Success Rate +7%
Providing a referral promotion link for users who need to pay their next bill can incentivize them to share your product and cut the cost of their next bill. It’s an easy way to build a viral loop around your product while gaining access to the qualified leads of your current customer base.
Simply add a link to your referral program with a bit of information about the potential benefits to the user at the bottom of the invoice for their latest payment.
MORE REFERRAL PROGRAM STRATEGIES
Success Rate +7%
Reach out to an influencer with a similar-sized audience and offer to do a share exchange – you promote their product to your audience and vice-versa.
This typically only works if you have a similar level of audience size and an overlap in audience interests (note this can be a complementary audience, for example an audience into high end watches overlaps with an audience who stay in high end hotels).
Success Rate +10%
When sharing a piece of content that mentions an influencer on social media, make sure you copy them into the post. They might share it with their audience, increasing the reach of your post.
Success Rate +15%
Only allowing contributors by invite can keep quality high and increase referral. Restricting who can be a contributor will often lead to higher engagement from contributors as it’s more of an honor to hold that title and they don’t want to lose it.
Friends of existing contributors are likely to be high quality and share in the same ethos, so restricting it to invite only is likely to drive very high quality influencers.
Success Rate +9%
Offer a free premium version of your product in return for a review to amplify the voice of your supporters and spread the use of your brand.
Social Tools found that many people were using the free version of their product, but very few were converting to the premium version. They also noticed that many of the free users were writing blog posts about how great their product experience was without being prompted.
Social Tools leveraged the support of these influencers by offering a free six month premium subscription to their platform to anyone who completed a YouTube review of their service. Within a few months, they grew their user base by over 500%.
Success Rate +14%
Restrict your product beta to invite-only users to keep the quality of users high in the beginning. Then provide referral rewards for users who share your beta with others, allowing them to jump the queue and get to the front of the line.
This is an easy way to drive virality for your beta while increasing registrations and allowing excited registrants to remain a vital part of the process.
MORE INFLUENCER REFERRAL STRATEGIES
Product Pricing
Retargeting
Affiliate Partnerships
And now it’s time to talk money. To drive revenue growth, you’ll have to explore business growth strategies around how you price your product, when to use promotions and discounts, and how to retarget visitors that bounced or haven’t engaged with or bought your products.
So if you want to increase your average revenue per user, try starting with…
Success Rate +14%
You could try just increasing the price of your product. As per social scientist Robert Cialdini, in “markets in which people are not completely sure of how to assess quality, they use price as a stand-in for quality.”
Raising prices could help you be seen as a leader in quality in the market. It is also possible that you may be undervaluing your product due to a misreading of the market.
Success Rate +14%
Try emailing users who looked at a product but didn’t buy it to let them know that its price dropped. Often, potential customers fail to convert because they perceive an item as too expensive or don’t have the money to buy it. Letting them know that the price is lower than when they first saw the item can regain their interest and drive them to make a purchase.
Success Rate +12%
Instead of simply providing a price up front, use an anchoring price to make potential customers think that they’re getting a better deal on an item.
For example, having a slashed suggested retail price alongside a lower “Current” price can drive visitors to buy while they think that an item is going for a lower than normal price. This can often lead people to pay for a higher priced product.
Success Rate +12%
Try running a flash sale! Offering a limited time discount or promotion can give on the fence consumers a sense of urgency to buy your product. Heavily advertise your flash sale in advance to attract new customers and increase loyalty to your brand from existing customers.
Success Rate +12%
Try offering a discount, free shipping promotion, or free returns to customers who make purchases over a certain price threshold.
This encourages them to spend more to get perks and will result in larger purchases more regularly.
Success Rate +12%
By making the option you want people to take the default plan, you can encourage the behavior you want users to exhibit, increasing revenue.
Studies have shown that people are less likely to opt-in AND less likely to opt-out, thus “presumed-consent” is a more effective way to direct behavior.
Success Rate +12%
Send an email to users who add a product to their shopping cart, but don’t buy.
As per the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 68.63%. That may seem like an extremely high number but you can get those users to follow through on the purchasing process.
Put simply, follow-up with users who abandon their cart has to be an integral part of marketing strategy, due to how often it occurs.
Success Rate +9%
Be sure to send an email on the last day of an offer. People respond differently to a situation when urgency is introduced: we suspend normal thought patterns and react to the urgent need.
A reminder that the offer they have the opportunity to take is expiring creates a scenario where they are forced to make a decision immediately.
Success Rate +8%
Upgrade emails drive users to switch from free to paid accounts, or from lower-tier to higher-tier accounts.
This works via the psychology of loss aversion. Basically, people feel a sense of ownership over something they possess, even if it was given to them for free.
People are naturally disinclined to give up something they possess, and will pay to keep it– and so, upselling on a product they already use can be very effective.
Success Rate +7%
Send an email when a product someone looked at comes back in stock.
Great news! Your products are being bought so quickly that you haven’t been able to restock.
Bad news! A customer getting an “out of stock” notification when they try to buy your product might look elsewhere.
Obviously you don’t want a customer looking elsewhere for your product, so making sure that they know when it’s available is crucial. MarketingSherpa’s case study showed a 22.45% conversion rate via Back in Stock emails.
Success Rate +10% – $
When retargeting users who have visited your site in the past, try using a dynamic creative that’s based on the products they’ve browsed through.
Doing so directly reminds them of the awesome products they saw and encourages them to return. Each ad impression will be relevant to the individual that sees it based on prior interest rather than generic for all viewers.
Success Rate +7%
You will have many subscribers to your email list that haven’t yet purchased from you. These people potentially have high intent and definitely have high brand recognition – by using custom audiences on Facebook and Twitter you can target these people and convince them to purchase your product.
Success Rate +6%
Try retargeting paying customers who haven’t made a second purchase. Retarget them with ads that show products similar to the ones they bought. This helps to reactivate customers who liked what they purchased but haven’t thought to return yet.
Success Rate +5%
Target an audience that has been on your site but not activated and get them to activate. This is one of the most popular tactics in our database because it almost always works.
People get distracted easily when browsing the web – if someone left your site it’s highly likely they were just distracted and won’t remember how to come back. A small banner ad prompt can be all you need to get them back to your site.
Success Rate +9% – $
Retarget users that have fallen dormant. Using paid ads or email to retarget dormant subscribers with a new offer can be exceptionally effective.
As per 500.co, between 60-75% of subscribers on the average email list are dormant– they haven’t opened an email from that list in at least six months.
An AdRoll survey showed that 90% of marketers said that “retargeted ads are as good or better than the gold standard in digital marketing.”
Success Rate +5%
Retarget former frequent users/visitors who haven’t been back recently (30-90 days).
Retaining your VIPs can have a large impact on sales, engagement, community, referrals, etc. PLUS, reactivating a former VIP is often easier/more cost-effective than acquiring new prospects.
Success Rate +10%
Set up partnerships with affiliate members to generate sales charged on commission.
Have your affiliates – merchants, users, etc… – sell items on your platform while providing them with promotion, taking a cut of the revenue they generate.
You can set the commission yourself and control the process to verify sales. You benefit from increased revenue from commissions while merchants benefit from a platform that amplifies their reach.
Success Rate +10%
Once a user has purchased something on another site, they’ll be looking for something else to do. This is the perfect opportunity for you to drive a customer that you already know is valuable and able to purchase to your website.
This would normally be done through an affiliate relationship with the website’s owner and would be paid for as a sponsorship (monthly charge) or as a % of sales driven by the link.
Success Rate +10%
A good way to monetize users that don’t qualify for your product is to pass them on to an affiliate.
This lets you make money off users you wouldn’t otherwise be able to due to limiting factors in your product. Build relationships with companies that are logical pass-throughs for disqualified users to create an effective network of affiliates.
MORE AFFILIATE PARTNERSHIP STRATEGIES
You can use a Qualaroo website survey to turn web traffic into real leads for your business. The survey can be as simple as a prompt to enter your email and sign up for a newsletter.
Or if you want to get more sophisticated with qualifying the leads, have an actual survey asking users segmenting questions with an email signup CTA at the end. This survey integrates well with Salesforce.
Sometimes your traffic doesn’t convert. Wanna know why? An exit intent-prompted survey can give you the answers you need.
Use Qualaroo to set up a survey that pops when users are about to abandon your page. In your survey, ask questions like “What was your biggest concern about making a purchase today?” to learn why your users aren’t converting.
Want to understand your relationship with your customers and have a constant pulse on their satisfaction? You can figure out how likely your customers are to recommend you to friends and colleagues with a Qualaroo NPS Survey.
This lets you ask direct traffic and return visitors about their opinion of your business and whether they’d be willing to promote it. From there, ask for the reason for their score, and you’ll get feedback gold.
Users that stick around on your page for a long time but don’t convert likely have a valid reason for it. Ask why with a survey.
Maybe your landing page is unclear. Maybe your pricing structure is confusing. Use a Qualaroo time-delayed survey asking for reasons preventing a user from signing up to learn how you can better conversion-optimize your landing page.
If your pricing structure is confusing or your price is driving away customers, you may find a high bounce rate on your pricing page.
An on-page Qualaroo survey tell you exactly why people aren’t signing up. Maybe they want a free trial. Maybe they have no idea which pricing tier to pick. Survey results will help you guide conversion-focused changes to your pricing page.
A survey gives you data that enables you to send follow-up surveys with unique questions based on how a user responded in your original survey.
For example, if a user made a purchase, you can ask them why they picked that item. Their response can be used to guide a follow-up question, such as “Was there another store that didn’t stock that item?”
Users visiting your site on mobile may have different wants/needs than desktop users. A mobile user may just be there to learn about your product, while a desktop user wants to reach your pricing page.
A survey asking mobile and desktop users what they wanted to accomplish on your site at their time of visit can give you insights into whether your landing page serves them properly.
You can use surveys to provide the “why” in A/B testing at each stage of your funnel.
For example, you can test user activation by changing the size of a CTA button, and then proceed to ask survey questions about why users did/did not convert.
Once you know the “why” behind a winning variant, you can double down on the factors that drove success. A step-by-step approach will help you optimize your entire funnel to boost conversion.
Launched a product but not sure if you’ve found product-market fit? Try sending a post-NPS survey follow-up of your users asking whether they would be negatively impacted by the loss of your product.
If a large portion of your users think your product is essential in their lives, chances are you’ve found product-market fit.
You can create surveys with branching paths based on how users respond. If a user says they don’t like parts of your product, you can ask them for deeper feedback.
You can get clever with branching surveys – a user that shows great interest in your content, for example, can receive an email capture prompt to sign up for a newsletter based on their answers.
This tactic doesn’t require a media budget
You can set up a deep link that carries context all the way through the app store download. This lets you create full user journeys that are contextualized for the user in question.
So for example, if a user clicks on a web banner and it takes them to the app store, you can still send them to the same content they were viewing on the mobile web after the app downloads.
Difficulty:IntermediateTime Required:
2hrs
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
You can use banners, interstitials, and links to send mobile web traffic directly to your mobile app. Try setting up links in your mobile site that deep link to the specific pages and products people want in your app.
You can also create a full user journey from end to end that involves an app install. The biggest advantage here is that on mobile apps, users tend to convert and spend at a higher rate.
Difficulty:IntermediateTime Required:
1hr
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Most email links send users to the mobile web version for a website. Deep linked emails, on the other hand, link directly to content inside of a mobile app, if that mobile app is installed on a user’s device.
This provides a superior end user experience, as mobile apps are typically faster and better-optimized than mobile websites. It also gives users the full feature set of a dedicated mobile app over the limited features of a responsive mobile site.
Difficulty:IntermediateTime Required:
1hr
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
You can create deep links that transmit data from one app to another. This can be really useful for retaining context between your app and another app that a user opens via a link.
This lets you create things like personalized onboarding, feeding data from your app to a partner app, or customized shopping carts, letting users add items to a shopping cart in another app based on the items they’re searching for in your app.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 2hrs
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Take users to the exact app content that is featured in an ad. Use deep links with your ads to make the user’s journey from seeing your ad to clicking on it and arriving at a product page destination seamlessly.
You can use this tactic with any ad platform, from search to social. The ad’s landing page is as important as its copy, so getting users to the right page will help increase conversions.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 2hrs
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Deep linking off of social sites can be difficult – Instagram, for example, makes it near impossible to do so because they don’t hyperlink anything but the profile link.
Luckily there are ways to successfully take your users straight from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to your app. Adding deep linked profile links to app install pages, for example, or ones that lead to a product page in-app, is a great way to take advantage of social.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 1hr
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Share app content via SMS or email with links that take users directly to a desired piece of content. When you allow users to share links to your site in mobile, generating deep links straight to the app is a great way to increase user engagement.
You can also pass data through the install process for new users to get to the right page from a share.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 1hr
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
When creating a social referral system for your users, make sure the links you send for referral promotions are deep linked with an app install journey.
You can seamlessly get app installs and reward both referrers and new users for referral activity. Use deep linking tools like Branch.io to set up referral links straight into your app.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 1hr
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
You can index your app so that you can deep link to any page in the app straight from a Google search. Google’s App Indexing project lets you set up app indexing with development resources.
On the other hand, you can also use services like Branch.io to have that implemented for you. Then you can get people straight to your app from an AdWords ad or Google Search.
Difficulty: Advanced
Time Required: 4hrs (Dev & Marketing)
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Use deep links to customize the onboarding experience. Your deep links can collect data from the unique source that led a user to install your app.
For example, if a friend referred a new user, the user should be able to see that in a personalized onboarding flow. One way you can create personalization is by including an image of the friend that referred your new user to your app through Facebook.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Time Required: 2hrs
Retaining users as a SaaS business is equally as important as growing your new user numbers. To keep your monthly recurring revenue numbers high and growing up and to the right, you’ll need to make sure you’re not churning customers.
Part of getting that right is proper onboarding and email / CRM growth strategies. Here are 31 tactics that focus in on SaaS retention via email.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
When onboarding new users, sending an educational email that explains how others have used and found success with your app is a great way to get them engaged with your product.
This can be targeted specifically at users that have bounced early in their use of your app. It can help get them past a “how/why would I use this?” dilemma.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Many people who sign up to use your product will not be fully aware of the value it can provide. Ensure these people do not become lapsed users simply because they don’t understand what your product can do for them. Nip that problem in the bud by sending a tutorial email.
A great example of this: Asana designed their tutorial email to teach users how to use their product for their projects and maximize their productivity. While you should include multiple resources that display the full power of your product, focus on the one thing users must do to understand the value of your product.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
For new subscribers, it’s important to let them know what they can expect out of you in terms of frequency of contact, speed of response for support requests, what time to expect emails, and what content to expect.
Setting these expectations in a welcome email builds anticipation for your future contact efforts while ensuring that they’ll know to expect your emails in their inbox.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
If your welcome email comes immediately after someone signs up for your app, you’re automatically drawing them away from it and distracting them from taking their first actions.
Instead, delay your welcome email by an hour or two. They’re already in your app – they just signed up! – so give them the time to go through onboarding and their first few use cases before giving them the official welcome.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Provide a list of your top content for new users who have just joined your list.
This type of ‘start here’ email gives them a good idea of what you’re about and what your content can help them with. This should increase engagement with your content and help long term retention by providing more value up front.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
In general, welcome emails result in 320% more revenue per email than normal bulk marketing emails. Make sure to get the most out of this first email by asking for feedback with an open-ended question from a founder.
This will both let your new subscriber know you care enough to engage with them one on one and also allow you to discover if and how your product or service fits the subscriber’s need, increasing the potential of starting the sales cycle.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Send a welcome email with top tips for getting the most out of the product.
This type of email can educate your customer right at the time they need it most and can help them reach that ‘aha’ moment which makes them stick around.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try sending an email that is less sales-y and more editorial.
Give your customers relevant content they look forward to reading and view as less promotional. Increase open rates + reduce unsubscribe rates!
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Set up an email drip campaign to regularly share top tips for your industry. This typically works best as a 10 part series with one tip per week, or a five part series with one per day.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Sending out emails with exclusive content to your business’ VIPs is a great way to reward them for their patronage with discounts and gifts. It helps build loyalty to your brand and will make VIPs more likely to talk about you to their friends and family.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Personalize your email subject line based on user info. Experian, MailerMailer and Mailchimp have done studies showing that personalised a subject lines results in a 22.3 percent increase in open rate over emails without personalization. Many companies choose not to collect any personal data with email addresses to keep their sign up forms as frictionless as possible. If you want to send emails with personalized subject lines while keeping your sign up forms simple, you should at least collect first names with email addresses.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
If you have a really popular piece of content that you sent in a newsletter a while ago, consider re-sending it to your email list again. Most of your users, especially ones you’ve attracted since you sent the newsletter, have probably never seen it. Since the content already worked so well in the past, it’s likely to perform again, driving up click and open rates on your email.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Many subscribers to your email list have never seen the best content you’ve produced. Therefore it makes sense to send out an email showcasing your top content, with links to each individual piece. This should drive retention as you show your best side to people who haven’t seen it, and even those who have seen the content get reminded of your value.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Provide an email course on a relevant topic over a series of days.
Include high quality content each day in separate lessons, teaching best practices and imparting expertise while building interest for your product. At the end, add an upsell for your product to sell to a qualified audience of readers who went through the course.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Send an email explaining all the tools that you use to do your job – it will be relevant and helpful to some of your user base.
People are always interested in what type of tech allows you to do your job, and therefore this type of email has a high open rate. It also positions you as innovative, forward thinking, and productive.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Send an email asking your subscribers for help on what to write next. Ask them about challenges they’ve faced, recent successes they’ve had, or what they think of specific topics.
Use the responses you get to guide your writing and tackle new topics. You can even use direct quotes from their replies to add extra meat to your content.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Improve your retention and LTV by sending an email or series of emails to acknowledge and reward your best customers.
Bonus: include a “special” offer to reward them.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try offering webinars to paying customers only. This has the effect of increasing retention from existing paying customers by providing extra value for free, and helping them learn how to use your product better.
You can also email the invite to all of your users, including free users / those who haven’t paid yet. This can prompt large volumes of upgrades.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try emailing to set up a call with your best customers to ask for feedback. You only need around 15 minutes per call and you can do it via Skype.
The feedback you get through talking to multiple customers will make an enormous difference to your trajectory, and you’ll see a huge retention boost purely because you’re showing you care. Make sure you use a block meeting system like Calendly to schedule.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Write an email asking your customers for a friend referral. A study by Goethe University Frankfurt and University of Pennsylvania found that referred customers had 25% higher profit margins and were 18% less likely to leave the company. Successful referral programs not only give you more customers, they also give you better customers.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Inactive users and users who signed up but never used your app may want to come back but have no idea where to start. Sending them a step by step reactivation email where you guide them through the process of using your app can get them to come back and give you another try.
You can leverage existing content – blog posts, FAQs, product documentation – to create a workflow for them.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try sending an email to existing users who haven’t used a particular feature. The vast majority of your users probably aren’t even aware you have that feature, so showcasing it can solve a problem for them and keep them using your product for longer.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Give your subscribers a free gift unexpectedly to increase engagement. It doesn’t have to be anything too costly – an industry report, discount on complementary products or the chance to win a prize all work well without costing too much.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try sending a seasonally themed email to your list. Seasonally themed promotions, events, new items, etc. are an easy way to reconnect/engage your subscriber list to keep your brand top-of-mind.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
When you launch a new feature for your platform, send out an email to your users to inform them of the news.
This will reactivate many users whose use of your platform may have dropped off while informing your current active users of what they can expect when they log in next.
Highlight user-requested features to show responsiveness in development and attract users that may have dropped off due to a missing or broken feature.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Send an email with a testimonial from one of your clients to remind everyone how useful your product is. You’d be surprised how few of your user base is even aware of all of your product features or use cases. These types of emails can open up a whole new world of functionality for them and therefore improve retention rates.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Automatically notify users if their credit card has expired or can’t be charged. Rather than allow them to churn, sending a notification via email or in-app that their payment method has failed will help to retain users that want to remain subscribed. Allowing their subscription to end without notifying them of payment errors can result in a permanently lost subscriber.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
When you send emails at 3pm, you aren’t really hitting your users at that time – for some people on earlier timezones it’s early morning, and late evening for others. Using something like Mailchimp’s Timewarp or Intercom’s advanced timezone feature, you can make sure it hits them at the right time.
Use the following actionable revenue growth strategies to positively impact your bottom line:
This tactic requires a media budget
Retarget different audiences based on how far they got into your product. If they only saw an item, you can retarget them with image and copy referencing that item. If they got deeper and added an item to the cart, you can target them with the item and a prompt to come back to their cart. If they still haven’t returned, you can give a discount. This can go as deep as a post-purchase follow-up with a related second item.
This tactic requires a media budget
Retargeting people who have watched your video is a powerful way to turn brand awareness into traffic. A user that’s seen your video is much more likely to engage with your ad and will be less annoyed with a harder sell. Some platforms like Facebook allow you to target based on how much of the video was watched, so make sure you experiment with that.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Set up partnerships with affiliate members to generate sales charged on commission. Have your affiliates – merchants, users, etc… – sell items on your platform while providing them with promotion, taking a cut of the revenue they generate. You can set the commission yourself and control the process to verify sales. You benefit from increased revenue from commissions while merchants benefit from a platform that amplifies their reach.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Syndication means taking content published on your site and allowing one or more other parties to post that content on their site. Syndicate to sites with audiences similar to your own and give yourself exposure in front of people who are more likely to enjoy your content.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try working out an affiliate deal with a search engine in your industry. For example, if you’re running a job search advice blog, you can provide users with in-site access to Indeed’s job search engine as an affiliate partner. You’ll be able to further monetize your traffic through a pay-per-click model via a relevant and useful service for your visitors.
This tactic requires a media budget
Promote the products you sell on Amazon.com with keyword targeted ads. Setting up this type of campaign can be time consuming, but once live you can reach a highly primed audience who are ready to purchase and are very likely to convert. This platform works just like Google Shopping ads – you can set your CPC by product or campaign and adjust it whenever needed.
Using tools like Unbounce you can now easily and quickly create, test, and optimize high-quality landing pages for your business. Need ideas on what landing page tests to try? Here are a few:
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Making the landing page shorter by removing unnecessary elements and keeping as much as possible “above-the-fold” can increase conversion rate. Brevity is less distracting, and therefore leverages impulse behavior.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
A longer, more scrollable landing page might end up giving visitors more of a reason to convert. Short landing pages give less information by design, so a longer page will let you better space out and elaborate on your product copy. Test a longer landing page against a shorter one to see which works best.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Putting a large call to action button in the center of your page can increase activation. The positioning will immediately draw attention to the CTA when someone lands on your page. Make sure the CTA stands out distinctly away from dense copy or complex images.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Place your call to action form or button on the right side of your landing page to increase activation. Focusing on the right side of your landing page rather than the center, especially when the form remains visible while scrolling down the page, keeps registration forms and CTA buttons above the fold and easily accessible for visitors. This reduces friction between reading your marketing copy and signing up for a demo or free account.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try placing your call to action on the left side of the landing page to increase activation. This will keep the CTA above the fold for all screen sizes and catch the attention of visitors. It makes the CTA more prominent and easily accessible, potentially resulting in a higher likelihood of conversion.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
There are usually people searching for ‘competitor alternative’ or ‘product vs competitor’ – these are incredibly high value searches because these users are actively searching for a solution. Create a page full of content comparing the relative advantages of your product over that solution. As well as helping you rank on the more niche ‘you vs competitor’ search terms, you may find you start ranking on the competitor’s search terms also.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Your landing page offer should be appealing to your visitors. If the offer isn’t totally clear, try adding some explanation of the benefits of this offer.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Landing a potential customer on a landing page offering deals attached to time can create an urgency that can ultimately be a profitable way to improve conversion.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Offering a free trial of your product can be a smoother entry and more enticing offer than scheduling a demo. Try offering a free trial, and guiding those users into a paid account.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Design a landing page specifically promoting your app – Especially useful when there are 2 apps on both the App Store and the Play Store.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Landing a potential customer on a “beginner’s” guide content piece may be a less forceful but ultimately more profitable way to improve conversion.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Putting content behind a gate – email capture, social sharing, lead gen form – is a great way to entice visitors to leave their contact information. Create a separate landing page for high value content and gate it behind some form of wall. Try giving away a description or excerpt of the content for free in the landing page to further drive interest.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Increase conversion rate by sending traffic to a specific landing page that matches the ad messaging/creative. There are very few instances when you should send someone to your homepage, generally you want people to take an action and homepages are full of distractions, AND they have too many variables that won’t match your ad copy/creative. Best practice is always to match the ads messaging/creative with the landing pages messaging/creative: this increases the relevancy and the quality score of the ad, which often increases CVR while decreasing CPC. Win-win!
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
When a user shares your app with a friend, try creating a personalized landing page for that friend. This can include a social profile of the person who referred them, a special promo code, or some other incentive to sign up. This can greatly increase your chance to activate that new user and get them to sign up.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Increase conversion by sending traffic to a more relevant page. Engagement rises when landing page content more directly matches ad content. A page that’s more personalized for the audience that you’re driving to it is more likely to relate to the call to action and the message you’re trying to convey. Rather than directing to your landing page, for example, link to a contextual page based on the ad copy. I.e. webinar ad leads to webinar signup page.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Try isolating by device (mobile vs desktop) if the data shows that one device is outperforming the other. This will allow you to invest more into the more efficient device, and spend less on the underperformer, thereby maximizing the efficiency of the campaign.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Incorporating / adjusting a landing page’s design to showcase a video (~1 minute at most) can increase conversion with minimal content. This approach maintains focus on two elements: the video itself and the form submission. No other information or copy gets in the way of your visitors and the CTA.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Add more visuals to your landing page in order to maintain user interest. Display your products with high quality images and photos rather than just letting marketing copy do the talking. A visual approach is more appealing to visitors who want to understand what a product looks like and how it functions. Combine short, impactful copy with images and photos on your landing page to increase conversion.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Use surveys of your current customers to determine what your landing page copy should be. Ask customers what words and phrases they would use to describe your product. You can either adapt the answers into your own versions or directly insert them as social proof quotes in your landing page.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Your Email Service Provider (ESP) often provides a signup page for your email list. Rather than investing the resource to build a whole landing page on your own, why not just use their mechanism first? That way with a simple hyperlink you can test whether people actually want to sign up to a list before you commit too much resource to it.
This tactic doesn’t require media budget
Using Welcome Mat’s ‘Instant Landing Page’ feature you can lock the signup page in place so users can’t scroll down without signing up. A full screen minimalist landing page like this works wonders for activation rates. In some cases we’ve seen 10%-30% conversion to email signup! Be sure to test different variations of design and copy as it can make a big difference to performance. If you find this too intrusive for the first visit, it can still be very effective if shown on visit 2 or on the 2nd page visited.
At Ladder, we build software and offer services to help high-potential businesses accelerate their growth. Is that something you need? Talk to a strategist today about how we can help.
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