The Single Best Way to Turn Engagement into Conversion

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The Single Best Way to Turn Engagement into Conversion

May 3, 2012 at 3:09 pm | Posted in Digital Marketing, Engagement, Relevant Content | Leave a comment
Tags: bounce rates, content marketing, content optimization, conversions, digital marketing, emarketing, engagement, imarketing, internet marketing, marketing, online marketing, relevancy, relevant content, SEO, web content, web marketing

Can You Measure Engagement? No, But You Can Try!

In my last blog post, I talked about the intangible nature of engagement and alluded to the fact that it’s not something that can really be measured to any accurate degree. If you found this discouraging, there’s good news. Although you will ever really know how interesting your visitors find your web content (unless you develop some mind-reading software in which case you can just go ahead and retire), there are some techniques you can use to make educated guesses about your visitors’ level of engagement.

For instance, click-throughs are definitely indications that the visitor found the call-to-action compelling whereas bounces may indicate a certain degree of apathy toward your messaging. There is even eye-tracking software available now that can allow you to perform studies to determine where visitors’ eyes are diverted on the page as well as the amount of time they spent reading or watching specific content. Such research can provide you with invaluable data to inform your design and content strategies.

Engagement—The Single Most Important Indicator of Conversion

Although attempting to measure your visitors’ level of engagement can be challenging to say the least, it’s an important aspect of web marketing- maybe even the most important. Although having a solid product or service to offer and using SEO and lead generation techniques to drive quality traffic to your website is no doubt vital, the content your visitors find once they land on your website is equally important. Unless you want all of your web marketing efforts to do little more than contribute to your bounce rate, you’ll need to take steps to ensure that your content passes the scan-test—those few seconds when your prospect determines whether your site is worth his time.

This means doing the dirty work of discovering whether or not the content on your site is appealing to anyone other than yourself, and in particular, whether it’s relevant and compelling in the eyes of your target market. In the process, you’ll likely find yourself where most web marketers do—somewhere in the middle. There’s a pretty good chance that some of the content on your site is engaging enough to convert and some is just downright boring, or worse, completely off-putting.

Then there’s the issue of market segmentation. Not all visitors are alike and while some will be drawn to one form of content or marketing approach, others will have a different opinion. This can make it difficult to decide which content to keep and which to scrap, unless of course, your site is equipped with a content optimization tool.

Make Your Guesses Count
A content optimization tool can help you make those educated guesses we talked about really count. No, you’ll never know with absolute certainty how exciting a visitor finds your clever new video or carefully crafted call to action, but as we discussed, you can use some tools to help you make a fairly accurate guess.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to put your content optimization service to good use by displaying the most engaging content available on your site to those segments of your target audience that are most likely to find it irresistible. If you’ve been throwing a ton on content on your visitors in hopes that something will stick, it’s time to change that strategy. While you may think more is more when it comes to web content, it’s the carefully targeted, engaging content served up in moderation that is more likely to turn your prospects into paying customers.

Efi Rodik

Co-Founder & CEO
Relevantor LLC

www.relevantor.com

Ready to heighten your relevancy? Learn more about how a content optimization service can funnel your content to the right audience at the right time, sign up for our free service, or request a demo to see it in action.