Want a Bigger Marketing Budget? Optimize Your LTV to CAC Ratio

Almost every head of marketing, whether they are a CMO, VP, or Director of Marketing is thirsty for a larger marketing budget. With more money to spend, marketing can (theoretically) drive more growth.

But all too often marketing budgets are set without much rhyme or reason – there tends to be a huge correlation to how many sales were made in the previous month or quarter, or worse yet they are set as a percentage of the company’s revenue. This is particularly common in product driven SaaS organizations. But for growth-oriented companies, these means of setting marketing budgets are simply not serving your growth agenda appropriately.

How much do SaaS Companies invest sales and marketing?

Take the chart below as an example. Based on a sampling of 300+ SaaS companies with greater than $2.5mm in revenue, the median sales and marketing spending as a percentage of revenue is 32%.

Image Source

Does this mean all SaaS companies should simply set their sales and marketing budgets at 32% of their revenue? Absolutely not. There are a number of companies spending as much as 43% of their revenues on sales and marketing, with these companies achieving growth rates of 80%+.

While some of these companies may be spending so aggressively because they are heavily funded and are looking to capture market share, the companies that are the true darlings of the SaaS space are those that have such a strong ratio between the Lifetime Value (LTV) of their customers and their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) that they’ve built a compelling case to pour more dollars into their customer acquisition engines. They’ve built Ferraris and have a valid reason to believe that additional sales and marketing spending will keep their growth rates accelerating.

In your quest to obtain access to more financial resources, it’s the marketing leader’s job to educate the rest of the organization. And simply put, the idea of a “marketing budget” is outdated if growth is truly what you are after.

The Formulas Your SaaS Company Needs

Instead, you have two levers at your disposal – both of which can be optimized, and both of which are not typically considered areas of your business that marketing alone should own. The Lifetime Value (LTV) of your customer is impacted by many factors, including but not limited to:

• Sales selling to buyer personas that have the best chance of being successful with your product
• Product organizations delivering truly valuable features that make the product “sticky”
• Customer success teams working with your clients to make them successful after purchase
• Marketing developing pricing and packaging that pushes longer term contracts over month-to-month agreements.

The formulas:

Lifetime Value (LTV) = Average Customer Lifetime X Average Revenue Per Account

Average Customer Lifetime = 1/churn rate (expressed in months or years)
Ex: 1 / 5% monthly churn = 20 month average customer lifetime

Average Revenue Per Account (in a given period) = Total revenue /total customers added

So for example, if last month you made $200,000 in revenue from 25 customers, your calculation would be $200,000/25 = $8,000.

And if customers stay with you for an average of 20 months, you multiply 20 x $8,000 and reach the lifetime value of $160,000. So the cost to acquire a customer (CAC) should be no more than $53k. ARPA = $200,000/25 = $8,000

In this example 20 months X $8,000 = $160,000 LTV

Just as there are many ways to extend your customers’ LTV, there are also a number of different strategies that you can employ to lower your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Marketing can focus on more cost effective lead generation strategies like organic search, conversion optimization, and developing customer advocates. Sales teams can learn to more efficiently move prospects through the customer acquisition funnel and can do away with expensive events and client dinners in lieu of more cost effective inside sales techniques.

To calculate the cost it takes to acquire a customer, you simply divide the total sales & marketing spend by the number of customers added in a given period. So if you spent $100,000 in a year and acquired 10 customers during that time frame, your CAC would be $10,000.

As a general rule of thumb, a SaaS business with a LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 is considered healthy – meaning you get $3 in customer revenue for every $1 you spend to acquire them. If you have this ratio or better, you have a customer acquisition engine that is performing well. It is important to mention that this is simply a benchmark – not a magic bullet. This ratio had held up well and provided a valid target at a number of companies I’ve worked with, but every company’s unique situation in terms of funding, growth rate, burn rate, and business goals should be considered. Never put all of your eggs in one basket by looking at any SaaS metric in isolation.

3:1 Ratio is Your Benchmark for a Higher Marketing Budget

With a ratio of better than 3:1, you have a strong argument for investing more money in customer acquisition programs if maxing out your growth potential is your objective. You can make a simple argument to the CEO by saying, “we know that for every $1 we spend to acquire a customer, we get $3 back in revenue.”

So it’s the job of the marketing leader to relentlessly look for ways, across the organization, to lower customer acquisition costs and extended the lifetime value of the customer. If you’re able to do so, you’re making a compelling case for marketing to be given access to whatever financial resources are available, whether you’re a funded or bootstrapped company.

In fact, a strong LTV:CAC ratio is one of the most important metrics you can show if you are trying to raise funding. In my opinion, perhaps the most valid reason a SaaS company should raise funding is if they have a very healthy LTV:CAC ratio and their growth is only limited by access to capital.

Gone are the days of marketing leaders waiting until after a big sales month to nervously ask for an increase in marketing budget. And gone are the days of the marketing leader advocating for marketing spending to represent a larger percentage of the company’s revenues. Relentless focus on increasing customer lifetime value and decreasing customer acquisition costs will blow the top off or your marketing budget (as it should!) indefinitely.

About the Author: Geoff Roberts is the Vice President of Marketing at Bizness Apps. Bizness apps is an app building platform used by small marketing and design agencies to build mobile apps for small business clients.

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The Undeniable Mobile Effect On Holiday Shoppers

Today is June 30. Summer only officially launched 8 days ago yet here I am talking about holiday shoppers. No, I am not crazy from the heat. Retailers across the land are either knee-deep in their holiday plans for the coming season or about to start or are somewhere in between.

And based on results of a survey conducted by Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research it would be wise for the same retailers to not just talk mobile but to actually be mobile - literally and figuratively. 

A little backstory to the research before we get mobile. 

In 2014, Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research embarked on an initial exploration of the holiday shopper, by looking at their planned behavior prior to the 2014 holiday season, and then by examining what those consumers actually did by conducting similar research immediately following the 2014 holiday season.

We learned a great many things about consumers— particularly that their best-laid plans often go awry.

For this year, we revisited that research in order to determine which behaviors are trending, whether mobile is continuing to grow, how online shopping is impacting offline shopping, and other important shopping behaviors. 

Since mobile affects pretty much everything today, it should come as no surprise that it has a profound impact on holiday shoppers and how they shop, as witnessed by the following.

First a series of video interviews of consumers on their thoughts when it comes to mobile and holiday shopping, which is part of our qualitative part of the research. 

And the following findings which are based on the quantitative part of the research. 

The truth is none of the above should come as any surprise to ANY marketer, retail, B2C, B2B - whatever. The world is mobile. Period. 

However, one of the biggest increases from our 2014 post-holiday study to the 2015 post-holiday study was the percentage of holiday shoppers who told us that they had ever used an app to make a purchase. For the 2014 holiday season, 25% of consumers indicated they had used an app to make a holiday purchase—in itself a significant number—but in 2015 that number jumped markedly to 40%. This is nearly the percentage who indicated that they had made a mobile purchase in the 2015 holiday season using a website.

Clearly, the app has become a very important part of the transactional holiday shopping economy. 

Julie Lyle, the current Chairman of the Board for the Global Retail Marketing Association and former CMO of hgregg, Prudential Corporation Asia, and Walmart has a very direct message for marketers when it comes to mobile: 

"In today’s highly mobile environment, retailers who do not adopt a “mobile-first” roadmap do so at their own risk. In addition to the feature usage outlined above, consumers now use their smartphones to check availability or source out of stocks from other sellers, compare loyalty program rewards for purchases, confirm/compare warranty or return policies, seek inspiration/ help for product usage and more!"

The Happiest of Holidays 

Regardless of where you are in your 2016 retail holiday planning you can benefit from all the findings from this extensive research. Download Making Spirits Bright: Increase Holiday Results With Retail Shopping Research and enjoy your own version of a winter wonderland. 

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Content Pros Podcast: Reap the Strategies and Secrets of the Best in the Business

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear from the best content marketers in the world in the comfort of your home or office, without having to make preparations to sit down with them? You’re in luck! Randy Frisch, COO at Uberflip, and I prepare the questions and reveal the strategies and secrets of these content marketers every Thursday at ContentProsPodcast.com. All you need is a pair of headphones, and you get access to the learn the pros’ successful approaches to strategy, operations, measurement, staffing, and more.

Is thus your first time listening in? We've gathered the last month's worth of shows here in one place for you.

We dive into some hot content marketing topics including the emergence of social video, the rise of experience optimization, a revolutionary approach to free content marketing, and the importance of prioritizing analysis for content strategies.

Content Attribution and Positive

Proving ROI for content marketing is difficult for even the most seasoned of marketers. The numbers bear this out as 79% of content marketers confess to being unsuccessful at proving ROI. It seems impossible to know how somebody gets from Point A to Point B when they have 50 paths to choose from. So how do you measure the unmeasurable?

We start with Dave Rigotti, the Head of Marketing at Bizible. He is one of the 21% that have figured out how to measure and then apply learnings from content ROI.

His ahead-of-the-curve approach to content ROI will help you measure your marketing plan’s effectiveness and grow your B2B brand organically through content.

Just released, hear Dave talk about:

• Why making every marketing dollar count means measuring content
• How educational content leads customers down the funnel
• Why proving ROI means content attribution
• How mapping your content leads to a profitable content team
• Why compounding returns on your marketing means owning your community

Acquire and Nurture With Social Video

For a seasoned marketer the thought of unscripted, uncontrolled, and unpredictable consumer engagement can be a terrifying prospect. Brian Fanzo, CEO of iSocialFanz LLC, understands those fears but is here to put them to rest—because social video is here to stay. It’s definitely not a passing fancy and the stat of the week outlines just how important mobile video will become in the next five years.

For Brian, succeeding in this medium is about embracing the cultural shift to casual, trusting your employees, and thinking like a fan.

It’s not too late to hear from Brian about:

• Why an evolving culture means a more casual, humanistic approach to content
• How a growing variety of social video platforms leads to social marketing segmentation
• Why a successful social engagement strategy means thinking like a fan
• How building a community doesn’t mean building a following
• Why live video needs its own strategy

The Fall of Keywords and the Rise of Experience Optimization

Mike Templeman, Founder and CEO of Foxtail Marketing, joins the Content Pros Podcast to discuss the advantage of experience optimization and tailoring content to fit the reality of your customer’s behavior.

To sum it up nicely, data rules everything around.

Mike is a strong believer that everything is quantitative and data can measure anything. Even something as theoretical as customer experience can, and should, be analyzed and used to build organic growth. The days of SEO are over and we now sit squarely in the era of customer experience.

Here are 5 lessons you can learn by listening to Mike now:

• Why a perfectly optimized keyword doesn’t automatically mean a huge increase in sales
• How a close review of your lead sources can lead to a complete reframing of your website focus
• The necessary disappearance of your marketing secret sauce
• Why quantifying experience means following the actions of your customers
• How looking at bounce rate and pages per session leads to vital data for optimizing experience

Why Gated Content and Lead Forms Are Killing Sales

Imagine a world where all marketing content was free. Nobody had to fill out long lead sheets and gates to content were a thing of the past.

Does that make your skin crawl? Give you a tight feeling in your chest? Have you already pushed back on the idea based on the fact that it’s simply just not done?

Dave Gerhardt, Marketing Lead at Drift.com, is here to crash a Drift wrecking ball right through your notions of traditional marketing. Drift has truly turned the process upside down by making all of their content free and accessible to all.

Go to ContentProsPodcast.com or click here for more on Dave’s revolutionary approach:

• How gated content leads to lost sales from the modern consumer
• Why succeeding in marketing means remembering what it’s like to be a consumer
• How simplifying metrics leads to clearer and more obtainable marketing goals
• Why using product qualified leads (as opposed to the standard MQLs) means more organic growth
• How a change in email tone and appearance can lead to more appealing content on a human level

How to Energize Customers With Effective Content Planning

As a marketer, it can feel a little like digging in a sand dune to keep on top of what’s hot, what’s not, and how to continually engage an evolving client base. Every time you make progress, more sand trickles in and fills the space you just made.

In my last appearance as guest, as I transition to becoming the new co-host, I share my approach to balancing strategy with action. This will help guide you to finding the right content methodology for your field. It also pulls back the curtain a bit on the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

Listen in to hear as I goes over the following content insights:

• Why good content strategy means higher-level focus
• How repurposing old successful content leads to increased customer engagement
• Why planning for next year means working in a state of constant analysis and evaluation
• How MQLs indicate content plan effectiveness
• Why gated content isn’t the only way to capture a prospect’s information

Once you are done listening to all of these great podcasts and you want to settle in and do some reading, take a look at the Future of Content Marketing. Econsultancy also interviewed a whole bunch of experts and practitioners to where this every changing world of content is going.

 

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How to Turn Undervalued Content into Content Marketing Gold (The Trick is Repurposing)

Have you ever lost hours watching Antiques Roadshow marathons? Or do you lead a substantially more exciting life than I do?

I can’t help it; there’s something so compelling about finding treasures in your attic. That ashtray is really a Civil War-era candy dish! That punch bowl is really a 12^th-Century chamber pot (we sincerely hope you washed it first)! Even though the most exciting thing I ever found in my attic is a dead squirrel, it’s fun to dream.

Think of your existing content library as one big, overstuffed attic. All the great stuff your team has written is still there. It may occasionally attract a visitor or two, but for the most part it’s just collecting virtual dust. So why are we in a constant mad dash to create new content? For most organizations, there is plenty of value left in the old stuff. With the right repurposing, content that proved valuable to your audience once can attract a new wave of traffic.

Repurposing your old content isn’t a lazy or cheap move. Odds are your audience has grown since you first posted it. And many might have missed your first round of amplification. Still others didn’t read the blog post, but would be eager to consume the content in another format.

In short, if a post is still relevant and valuable to your audience, it’s just as much a treasure as that ancient chamber pot/punch bowl. Here are five ways to take your treasures out of the attic and on to the roadshow.

#1 – Repost Evergreen Content

Every once in a while, we marketers get a lightning-strike of a post. Sometimes we even do it on purpose. We write something so useful, so comprehensive, so definitive that it stays relevant and attracts traffic for years. That’s evergreen content, and it couldn’t be easier to repurpose it: just post it again on all of your social media channels.

Many marketers feel guilty about reposting, or worry about boring their audience with reruns. But the hard truth of social media is you only reach a fraction of your audience with any given post. And the hard truth about your audience is they most likely haven’t read every post on your blog. So there’s a vast untapped market of people who have no idea this great resource existed and would be happy to hear about it. Pull a few stats and quotes from the piece, make some eye-catching social media images in Canva, and share away.

#2 – Freshen up Previous Top Performers

Just below the evergreen content in ease-of-repurposing are posts that were popular when first posted, but have lost relevance over the months and years since. They may have old statistics, broken links, or embarrassingly outdated pop culture references (Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake videos, etc).

Still, it’s far simpler to refresh these pieces than create something from scratch. Add new visuals. Get up-to-date stats. Add a section on new developments. Remove the Ice Bucket Challenge reference. When you’re done, you will have a like-new piece with a fraction of the work, all ready to provide value to a new audience.

#3 – Combine Thin or Repetitive Content

Let’s face it: Most organizations got into some shady business when SEO-driven content first became a thing. Back when it was all about quantity, we might have put out five shallow 300-word posts instead of a deep 1500-word one. Or we might have posted the exact same ten tips in three different posts, with slightly different keyword stuffing.

It’s okay. We all have our embarrassing phases. But it’s time to polish up that thin and repetitive content. Google is watching, and the quality of content on your site will affect your ranking, for better or for worse. So get rid of repetitive content, making sure to 301 redirect to the one version you plan to keep.

Then take your thin content and combine it, Voltron-style, into one strong Power Page. This is a good opportunity to polish and refresh, too. Not only will you avoid taking a hit for thin content, your new page can be a powerful force to pull you up in the rankings.

#4 – Change the Format

Have you heard that nobody reads anything anymore? Okay, that may be an overstatement. You’re still reading, right? At least, you’ve read this far. Thanks for that. Anyway, while people haven’t entirely given up on the printed word, turning text into visuals is a surefire way to earn attention from a new audience.

There are plenty of ways to go visual with old content. You can create a SlideShare that delivers your key points with well-designed flair. Pull out a few key paragraphs and make a short video out of them. Turn a how-to article into an infographic or a flow chart. Use the post as a jumping-off point for a podcast. Whichever way you go, you’ll be reaching out to an audience that might not have engaged with plain old text.

#5 – Start a Series

When the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, it was just called “Star Wars.” It wasn’t until it made roughly seven hojillion dollars (adjusted for inflation) that it became “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” There’s a lesson in that for marketers, and it’s not just to be mindful of the living Force when you create content.

Say you wrote an article on Civil War candy dishes that your audience really enjoyed. After a few months, when the traffic to that article has slowed, write a new piece on Revolutionary War candy dishes, using the same basic format as the first piece. Add an editor’s note to each post explaining they’re part of your Candy Dishes of Conflict series, and link to the first post from the new one. You can drive new traffic to the old post, and encourage people to spend more time on your site by making sure each post links to the entire series.

Save Your Great Content from the Attic

There’s a good chance that content your audience found valuable in the past still has value for you and your readers. Some pieces may be good-to-go as-is; some will require varying degrees of dusting and polishing to show their worth. Whether you’re reposting, refurbishing, or transforming it, repurposed content can fill holes in your editorial calendar and keep your audience engaged.

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How to Create a Core Message

How to Create a Core Message written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

In this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I’m going to talk to you about Creating a Core message for your company. I’m not interviewing anyone – it’s just me talking to you and providing you with valuable advice on how to successfully navigate through your Customer Journey.

Using my own best practices as a consultant, speaker and author, I’ll teach you how to craft a message of differentiation. You’ll dig deeper into why you do what you do, what makes you different and how you’re uniquely suited to serve an ideal client.

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• What “themes of value” are and how can they help you constitute a focused core message
• How a “talking logo” will set you apart from your competition
• Three inspirational books that will help make you a stronger writer and have you thinking critically as you glide through your own customer journey

Want to find out more about Duct Tape Marketing and the multitude of resources we offer? Check out the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, the Duct Tape Marketing System and our entire library of free eBooks.

This week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by our friends at Hover. Do you need a great domain name for your great business idea? Hover makes this quick and easy. Go to hover.com and use the promo code JohnDTM for 10% off of your first purchase.

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5 Steps to Recovering from Low Landing Page Conversions

Landing pages are intended to be simple and straightforward – a single page designed to get a specific audience to take an action.
Marketers use landing pages to get people to:

• Make a product purchase
• Opt-in to get a promotional product like an ebook or report
• Request more information or a consult
• Urge an audience to subscribe

You’d think that creating a page for such simple tasks would be easy, especially when you consider the wealth of tools at our disposal for building out landing pages.

And, in fact, the act of producing landing pages is actually not complicated – at least, until you factor in the human component of your audience.

People, the ones you want to get to take a specific action, muck up the entire process and make landing pages much more difficult.

There’s no specific way to design or configure a landing page to ensure it’s going to perform a certain way or deliver favorable conversions.

All you have is your research and whatever knowledge you may have picked up about copy and landing page best practices, so you go on intuition.

You’re not alone in that. Over 60% of marketers optimize sites based on intuition alone.

Then the testing starts. And despite everything you feel you’ve done correctly, you go through what many others experience: lackluster conversion rates.

There are a lot of changes and tweaks you can make, but don’t approach your landing page like a master control panel where you start pulling levers and pushing buttons blindly.

There are 5 key areas where you can start making small challenges to positively influence your conversion rates.

1. Trust Signals

Simply put, if you don’t have trust, then you don’t have sales. You may have been funneling traffic to your landing pages as a result of lead nurturing, but chances are you’ve got some fresh landing page traffic made up of people who have no idea who you are.

Even if you’ve been nurturing your leads via email and building a relationship, you still need strong trust signals to boost the confidence of your audience and help tip them over into a conversion.

Social proof

Social proof tells your audience that you can be trusted because other people have trusted you and made an investment of time and/or money. If you’ve got the attention and business of these other people, then you must be credible to some degree.

Some of the most common ways of adding social proof to a landing page include highlighting social shares, number of purchases, subscriber counts, or social followers.

Supplier/manufacturer affiliation

If you partner with any brand, be it a major organization or an influencer, getting their name or logo on your landing page creates an affiliation in the mind of the audience.

The audience will perceive you as more trustworthy and credible because you’re working with X brand, which must mean that X brand trusts you.

You’ll see this a lot with brand mentions that include “As seen on” logo placements.

Third-party certifications

They may not seem like much, but certifications can put a lot of people at ease, especially if you’re asking them to give you money or personal information. Using third-party certifications such as the Better Business Bureau and VeriSign create a perception of authority around your landing page and brand.

Testimonials

Testimonials are another form of social proof, and are one of the strongest trust symbols. According to Nielsen, 83% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, and 66% trust consumer opinions posted online.

If you can, share the full details from customers, including their name and city if they’re comfortable with it. Because it’s easy to fake testimonials (and many online consumers know it) it pays to be as transparent as possible.

2. Fix Your Call to Action and Make it Obvious

Remember what I said above: your landing page has a single goal. The only way you’re going to get your audience to take action is if you make that goal 100% clear to the people landing on your page.

If you don’t have your call to action where it’s visible, above the fold, then it’s virtually impossible to direct people to take action.

The reason for this is because most people spend less than 15 seconds on any given web page, which means most won’t even bother scrolling. They’ll glance, their brain will decide whether you’re relevant or not, and they’ll bounce.

If you hide your call to action below the fold, bury it in clutter, or don’t make it stand out, then you’ll lose a considerable amount of conversions.

Eric Ries’ Lean Startup keeps the call to action above the fold and clearly visible.

Everything your audience needs to make a decision should be above the fold, but don’t necessarily try to put all of your content above the fold.

Likewise, it takes more than the placement of the call to action to make it effective. It also needs to be compelling.

Use power words

Avoid using corporate babble and industry jargon. Stick with practical language and power words that are proven to compel people to take action.

Use active language

Remember that your call to action is telling your audience to do something. Use verbs that inspire that action, such as “Join,” “Subscribe,” “Download,” etc.

Make it stand out

You want your call to action to stand out from everything else on the page, but you also want it to be consistent with the design and theme.

Tim Ferriss uses a great CTA design that clearly shows his audience where to begin.

I also want to point out the trust signals he uses on his landing page.

Use brevity

The best CTAs say the most in the fewest words, so limit them to around 90-150 characters. That’s about 5-7 words. If your call to action is too long, then you lose the hook, and if it’s too short, it may not clearly convey what step visitors should take (or why.)

Make it personal

Avoid using broad calls to action like “Start today.” Instead, personalize it to the user so it reads more like “Start your trial today.”

3. Remove the Ability to go Elsewhere

Clear navigation and links are great to use in your content marketing and on your website to help you expand on concepts and help the audience get to a destination, but they don’t belong on your landing page.

Your landing page is the destination.

You never want to give visitors the ability to click out of this endpoint in your funnel. Remove the navigation from your landing page, and avoid adding links to your content at all costs.

I also recommend adding in an exit pop-up that will appear based on user behavior, such as if the user moves their mouse toward the top of the browser. This pop-up should encourage them to stay and focus their attention on the main call to action.

4. Add Visual Engagement

If you’re getting great traffic but the conversions are low, try to incorporate visual elements as a way to improve engagement and keep the attention of your audience.

People who view video are almost 2x as likely to make a purchase, and, according to another study, the addition of video to a landing page can increase conversions by as much as 80%.

Even if you can’t create high-quality video content, you can still use relevant images to seal the deal with your audience. Include high-definition product photos, illustrations, or quality screenshots for digital services that show some behind-the-scenes product/service use.

Think like a shopper – people often want to pick up, look at, and handle a product before they purchase it. Visuals make the audience feel like they’re doing just that. This is why e-commerce sites rely on detailed and numerous product photos to help sell their goods.

5. Improve the Copy

Your copy consists of every written element on your page, especially the headlines. It should be compelling, free of errors, and written in a way that makes an emotional and psychological connection with your target audience.

It also needs to be presented in a way that’s easily scannable, with the most critical points standing out with formatting and design elements like bullets and callouts.

I can’t tell you what you should say – that’s going to be based entirely on your audience and what they need to hear, so that’s where your own research comes into play.

Test Everything You Do

Every change you make is going to have some kind of an impact on your conversions. Hopefully you’ll see a lift in conversions, but it’s possible for a change to cause them to drop.

That’s why testing is so important. There are two ways to test the work you’re doing.

A/B testing lets you pit two elements against each other so you can test one or two updates, such as a headline or call to action. Once you have a winner, you can test again or move on to another element.

Multivariate testing lets you evaluate a larger number of changes across your page at the same time, helping you find the best combination. It’s more complex to do, and many marketers prefer A/B testing over this method, but it can get you through testing a lot of changes more quickly.

If you’re getting low conversion rates, you don’t need to scrub it and start over. Make small, strategic changes to your copy and calls to action, and monitor your performance using the recommendations above. With the right approach, you should begin seeing substantial lifts in your conversion rates.

What kind of changes tend to bring you the best results with your landing pages? Share your success with me in the comments.

About the Author: Aaron Agius is an experienced search, content and social marketer. He has worked with some of the world’s largest and most recognized brands to build their online presence. See more from Aaron at Louder Online, their Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

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