Do you remember the first time you ever put a webpage or offer online? The first time you ever sent out a promotional email? And then you sat… waited… watched. Sometimes nothing happened at first. Sometimes it took two… three… or even four attempts. Then something happened. It first began with you getting clicks. Then you got your first lead! And you will probably long remember the very first time someone clicked your buy button and money showed up in your account.

I often speak of this moment as the defining moment in every internet marketer’s life. Because once you do it once… once you earn even just that first $1. You know the dream is possibility. You know the reality of marketing money marketing online is a reality. And if you made $1 then you can make $2. And if you can make $2, then you can make $2000… The whole game of adding zero’s to the end of your sales numbers all comes down to boosting your conversion rate.

In this brief article, I am going to share with you some of the newest trends we are seeing to boosting your conversion rates to all-time highs. Now, to keep things simple for you, when I am talking about conversion rates, I am talking about a visitor hitting your page and then that visitor becoming a customer. Yes, we could also talk about optin rate versus sales page conversion rate. For our purposes here, it will be most valuable to you for us to keep things simple.

So here is what we are seeing that is boosting our online conversion rate.

Behavioral Based Offers

A handful of years back, “one-click” upsells were all the craze. I remember the first time I wired up my first one and discovered that if I can just get some of my new buyers to click that “Yes, this to my order” button, I could dramatically increase my average transaction value.

Offer sequences, up to this point, have been very linear. Meaning, you generate a buyer. Then you show that buyer offer A… offer B… and offer C.

What we are seeing now, is more and more the savviest marketers are not following a “linear” progression of offers. Instead what they are doing is basing the followup offers they show you on your previous buying behavior.

Now, we’re all familiar with this, when the typical e-commerce store, like Amazon, suggests you buy wool socks when you add those new boots to your cart. From an internet marketing perspective, what we’re talking about is building sort of a decision tree that looks at each of your new customers buying decisions and then bases the followup offer on their previous decision.

Here is an example. Lets say you are selling a $1,000 product. On your sales page, you offer a full-pay option or a $297 4-pay plan. Well, if someone buys the $1,000 product, then maybe the first upsell is an exclusive add-on for an additional $397. Makes sense, right? Yes, for that buyer. But for the buyer that chose a pay plan, either because they are cash strapped or still a bit skeptical, hitting them with an upsell whose price is higher than their original payment plan is not going to result in the highest conversions. Instead you want to base your offer on what logically makes sense from their previous decision.

You can take this in some many directions even beyond price. If you see that a customer chose an option to pay extra for “1-on-1 assistance” from you, well then offer them an upsell with more of a live component. But if a buyer passed on 1-on-1 assistance, maybe that is not hot button for them. You aren’t going to see many conversions offering the same “type” of add-on a second time, especially at a higher price.

The key takeaway for you here is to stop thinking linearly when it comes to your offers. Start boosting your conversion rates instead by using behavioral based offers.

Target Specific Split Testing & Optimization

Any internet marketer worth their weight knows that testing and optimization is the heart and soul of this business. And frankly for most, myself included, it’s one of the things I love most about marketing online. You can test and tweak things almost instantly. And if you’re getting a decent amount of traffic you can see results and find winners fast… sometimes even within a handful of days… or even hours!

In the exciting marketing world we now live, there are more and more options out there to drive paid traffic to your sales pages and offers. Facebook, Adwords, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, GDN (Google Display Netowrk)…

Every single one of these traffic platforms have their nuances. The type of traffic they can provide you. And studies show the user behavior of someone coming from Facebook is very different than someone coming from LinkedIn.

What’s this have to do with you as a savvy internet marketer who loves split testing and optimizing to achieve your highest possible conversion rates?

Well, old school split testing said this. Run a test of A vs B. Dump all your traffic in. Then pick a winner.

“New” school split testing is saying this. Run a test of A vs B. Dump all your traffic in. THEN segment each of your traffic sources to see how each key part of your marketing campaign is performing BASED on the traffic source of origin!

Lets say you run a split test on your optin page. Variation A has a 10% conversion rate. Variation B has a 12% conversion rate. Great, right? Yes, but…

Now you want to go a layer deeper. Just like any good statistical spread, when you view this split test by traffic source you will find that Variation B doesn’t get exactly 12% for all your traffic sources. In fact, you may find that for some odd reason, Variation A actually is outperforming Variation B on LinkedIn traffic.

Previously, you would never realize this. You would just pick Variation B, which would get you some gains. But not maximum gains (because you’re painting with a broad brush, ignoring the nuances of various traffic sources).

The optimal marketing approach being used today is to analyze every split test based on traffic source. Then, only apply winning variations to the specific traffic sources where they are in fact showing increases in conversion rates.

At ConversionFly, we refer to this as “Targeted Traffic Testing”. It’s easy, you can grab a free trial to ConversionFly and see how it works here.

Nothing is more valuable to your business then new clicks and visitors. So when it comes to optimizing make sure to go the extra mile and make sure you are optimizing based on each and every traffic source that matters to your business.

Prospect Survey Segmentation

Surveys have been around a really long time online. In fact, they have rightfully earned a terrible reputation.

Fill out this survey and get paid $20! Yeah, right. Thanks. And get spammed for the rest of my life. NO THANK YOU!

This isn’t the type of survey we’re talking about here…

What we’re talking about is increasing your conversion rates by using strategic questions at the start of your marketing campaigns to help dump your prospects into “buckets”.

This is probably best explained with a quick example.

Lets say you have a business that sells fitness supplements. There are probably a dozen or so reasons someone may want to use your supplements. However, using an 80/20 rule the majority of your prospects will fall into one of four categories (and this 4 category approach applies to just about every product or offer).

What is your #1 goal in using supplement X?

– Lose weight
– Increase athletic performance
– Increase energy
– Improve health

By asking a simple question like this early on in your marketing, you can then segment your prospects into those buckets I mentioned.

Once they are in buckets, the savviest marketers today and making sure they taylor their follow up messages based on what their prospect identified as their #1 hot button!

So if you said your top goal for using my supplement is: Lose Weight…

well then I am not going to send you followup emails trying to get you to buy my supplement by talking all about how you will have more energy. Because that is not the reason you said you are considering buying.

Instead, I will focus my marketing messages on talking directly to your hot button issue. Yes, the one you told me about, thank you 🙂

Prospect survey segmentation can be extremely complex and complicated. It doesn’t have to. Even doing a very simple 4-question survey at the start of your marketing campaigns can make a huge difference in the conversion rates you’re seeing.

What’s Coming Next?

The typical thing to do is hear what’s working in the market, nod your head and then feel overwhelmed and do nothing. If I am honest, I do that lot. I think we all do.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Be excited. Because this stuff is really working and making a difference. Just pick ONE approach. Pick the one your most excited about that you feel can make the biggest difference.

Then give yourself a few days, set a due date and make it happen.

And make sure, like every good marketer, that you are tracking all your conversion rates and watching your numbers closely. That’s the beauty of online marketer, you don’t need to guess or wonder if what you did worked. You can get reporting you need that will tell you – this WON, this LOST. And then you can string together victory after victory.

If you want or need help getting your numbers and tracking in place, ConversionFly is the top solution for serious marketers. And we’d be happy to help you. Grab your free instant demo here now.