In the previous post I touched on matching your prospects motivation for both your marketing channel, like an AdWords search advertisement, and the web page in which your prospect lands after clicking that ad. With this post we’re going to examine how to tap into the motivation of your prospects to increase and optimize your online conversion rates.
First let’s define motivation. From the perspective of conversion rate optimization, motivation is the glue between the click through rate of a marketing channel and the conversion rate of a landing page.
What specifically motivates your prospect is going to be unique to their needs and the problem your product or service solves for them. Always remember it’s all about them.
To get to the core of motivation you first need to start with the question. “What problem does your product solve?” Once you answer that fundamental question you can begin exploring what possible motivations your prospect might have. It is important to point out that there is a direct correlation here that begins and ends with your customers, not you or your product. This fundamental shift in thinking affects every element of your online marketing when designing for conversion.
Let’s Peal Back Another Layer of Motivation
Each individual marketing channel can give you an indication of your prospects motivation if you know how to look at them from the right perspective. For example, a visitor from a targeted keyword ad has a different motivation and is in a different mindset than a visitor from a banner ad. The banner ad visitor is arriving serendipitously and is less motivated than a visitor who has arrived at your site via a specific search term. The search visitor is focused and more likely his motivation is more specifically related to a particular task.
So How Can Your Website Focus on Motivation to Maximize Conversion?
One of the most powerful influences the web has on marketing is that it makes it very easy for marketers to target specific motivations and needs of prospects. I’m sure you’re already familiar with the secret to targeting these motivations but you probably don’t think of it as a motivation target. The secret I’m referring to is search engine advertising (SEA). By focusing on specific keywords or groups of two or three keywords through SEA marketers have a huge advantage. Based on the specific keywords or set of keywords marketers can infer what the motivation of the prospect may be.
For example if your prospects search was for the keyword “Laptops” This could infer they are in a browsing mode. They are not deep enough into the funnel to buy yet. Therefore your landing page for this generic search term needs to play more of an advisor role to convert this type of visitor. They may not know exactly what they are looking for and may need some help choosing. This type of visitor is going to think differently than a visitor who searches for “Sony Vaio Laptops”
The visitor who is in the “browser” mode (based on his inferred motivation and search term of “Laptops”) may be more persuaded based on price initially to winnow down his choice of laptops or perhaps by function, in how he plans to use it. Is this a laptop for casual use or for more serious business use?
The prospect who searches was “Sony Vaio Laptops” however, is more qualified and the more specific search term of two or more words suggests his motivation is different than the previous visitor. Not only would he expect to see a page of Sony laptops and no other models but the search term infers his motivation is different than that of a visitor who is in a “browser” mode. Your landing page must be designed to tap into different motivations in order to maximize conversions.
To tie your conversion rate optimization strategy to the motivation of the visitor, the visitor’s motivation must be matched to the specific landing page they enter. Simply put, the continuity between the search term and the landing page needs to be inline with each other in order to maximize conversions. This is why designing for conversion that starts with your prospects motivation is so important.
However, motivation as expressed on a web page is only one part of an overall method for conversion rate marketing. To fully understand the connection between the click through rate of a marketing channel and conversion rate we also have to look beyond motivation and understand how a prospect seeks information, which will be the topic of the next post. So stay tuned.
