Conversions? What Does That Even Mean

“Look, 15 conversions this week! We are crushing it!”

“Conversions grew 227% this past month! Woohoo!”

Does this sound familiar? Every agency and marketing professional spits this out during every weekly or monthly reporting meeting like they are leading a holiday parade and tossing candy to the kids. 

But what does this even mean?

Now, if we were talking about e-commerce and conversions were purchases with a dollar amount attached to them, then we would have an entirely different conversation. $$ can be directly attributed to marketing efforts and these defined “conversions,” but in that case, I hope your team is defining conversions as purchases.

Here, we are attempting to define a conversion in a non-e-commerce setting, where a lead contacting your business in one way or another is what you desire, also defined as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Think of a conversion as someone contacting you, but at the surface, you cannot define if they are a good lead quite yet. You must wait to gather enough data to define whether you want them as a customer or not.

It is incredibly easy to set up conversion tracking for phone calls, form fills, email starts, button clicks, etc., and pump a bunch of advertising at an audience, racking up conversions for all these actions, making one’s strategy look like one that should be put in a museum to be admired for centuries. 

But, as a business why in the world would you give a damn if your phone is ringing off the hook but everyone on the other end is either trying to sell you something, is a scam, or a robot?

You want good leads coming in, ones you want to do business with, that actually turn into revenue, helping your business grow and build on its success.

Here are some simple steps to ensure you are driving the conversions you desire:

1. Define what a conversion is to you and your business. Meaning, how do you want them to contact you? 

• Is this a phone call? Form fill? Email?

• The first layer of defining a good conversion is at the surface. What action do you want your customers to take to contact you?

2. Define what a good lead is. 

• Are they your ideal customers? Are they looking for your top services or products?

• Do they fit all the criteria to move them into the Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) category?

• Bad: Are they even a real person? Are they trying to sell you something? Are they a scammer? Are they looking for a different product or service that you do not have? 

• It is crucially important to define what a good lead is to your business. Simply, they are just like your past customers who keep coming back to you. Build a list of characteristics around these users. This will help you target your marketing to get the right leads to convert, but also give you a clear divide between a good lead and a bad one.

3. Have a CRM or some other system to keep an account of good and bad leads.

• I get it, CRMs are expensive, but it will save you a ton of time and money from filling out endless spreadsheets that require a ton of manual labor

• Keep a detailed record of your conversions coming in:

• Name

• Number

• Email

• Location

• Product/Service they are looking for

• Good or Bad Lead

• And whatever else you can collect

• This will not only allow you to manage your business more efficiently but will allow you to improve your market efforts to improve conversion quality and increase your good leads coming in while reducing the bad ones.

4. Share this CRM/Lead data with whoever is running your marketing.

• Every marketer should be licking their chops for quality 1st party data. Share the CRM with them or the lead tracking system you are using. They should be able to plug this right into whatever platform they are using to optimize their strategy, leveraging AI.

• Let us not also forget 3rd party is slowly going away, and at some point will be completely gone. If you do not prepare now, you will someday be flying completely blind.

• Utilize this data to improve all of your marketing efforts around good leads that are converting into actual dollars, who they are, where they are, and what they value.

• Do not forget about the bad leads. A list of bad leads can also be used to optimize around, both by uploading as “Exclusions” into the advertising platforms or by changing targeting, copy, and platforms to remove them from the equation.

This seems like a lot but it is simple. When you first begin your marketing everything you are doing is built around your target audience, from targeting to ad copy, to how they engage with your website, and how they contact you. Collecting data on conversions coming in to qualify them as leads provides data to improve everything you are doing, and ultimately help you grow your business.

With today’s technology, your advertising efforts become incredibly efficient by providing the platform's AI to identify good conversions for you by utilizing data you are collecting on leads coming into your business.