You’re spending all of that money on PPC but is it translating into on-site conversions?
You’re not the only one finding it harder to generate a higher quantity of quality conversions. It’s a common problem in this ever changing digital world – even we’ve been pulling our hair out at times!
One key challenge is the fact that traffic generation is getting harder (and more expensive). Search engines and social media are all becoming pay-to-play. So you need to keep throwing cash at your PPC budget to keep the traffic coming.
Basically, the same quantity of conversions comes at a higher cost. Like most things these days.
So are you doing something to put this traffic to good use? Possibly…but you’re probably splashing the cash and only converting 2% of visitors into leads.
Your website is leaking valuable prospects as you read this (but don’t go just yet, we’ve got a couple of tricks up our sleeves).
Why is the average conversion rate so low? There are three all too familiar reasons for a leaky site:
- Buyers don’t have enough information to convert
- Buyers don’t have enough confidence to convert
- Buyers aren’t fully engaged
The solution? Live chat. No, we’re not crazy…we’ve got a doctor’s note to prove it. That little chat window can solve a lot of the issues that you’re having with PPC conversion.
Here’s why live chat is so awesome – and three ways you can use it to increase your PPC conversion rate.
1. Stand out from the competition
Potential leads have come to your website to solve a problem. Does your website copy solve it? Or does it at least make it clear that your product/service can solve it?
Hopefully your PPC is targeting these buyers (i.e. buyers that have questions). Even if the questions are quite top-level, research based inquiries are typically much cheaper than high-intent keywords.
Search queries appended with question words are indicative of someone shopping around; they’re going to visit a handful of sites in a given niche before making a decision.
But this is the perfect chance for showing some initiative with your live chat. Jump the gun a little and show how helpful you are in comparison to the competition.
When they hit your site, have live chat chomping at the bit. Maybe “chomping” is a little strong. The point is stand out from the competition and provide prospects with helpful support through live chat. Provide visitors with the information needed to answer their question (and needed to convert). Don’t be pushy, be helpful.
Provide reactive live chat as an option for anyone that needs a little more guidance.
Go one step further and use proactive live chat when it’s clear visitors haven’t found what they were looking for. Beat visitors to the punch, basically. It’s a great experience having someone reach out with the right information at the right time (the right time = just when the visitor has realised a web page doesn’t give the perfect personalised answer).
How do you engage at the right time? Well it’s not easy; we needed to devote a whole programme to it (enter live chat strategy). But we can provide a few tips to get you started.
A clear sign of a visitor requiring more information is when they’re spending too long on your landing page. Look at your website analytics data and segment it to see the average time on page for those that convert (X seconds). Anyone taking longer than this might not have found the information they need to convert. Invite them to chat after X seconds…so that you can provide the right information.
You can adopt a similar approach if visitors navigate to a different part of your website. They haven’t found the right information on your landing page and they’re going in search for it – interact and fill the information gaps to turn their experience around.
And if you’ve got the coding skills, you can use a custom piece of JavaScript to create an exit intent proactive (like we’ve done). This tracks the visitor’s rapid mouse movement up to the top taskbar – so you have time to help before they leave for a competitor.
It takes time to refine and optimise your strategy; you don’t want invite everyone to chat because you would disrupt visitors that already have everything they need. It’s about interacting with the right people at the right time.
2. Break down barriers to conversion
It’s pretty difficult to do business with a faceless organisation. That’s why eCommerce blogs are constantly banging on about trust signals.
With a faceless organisation you can’t be sure that you’re going to get what you’ve been promised…and you usually can’t be as enthusiastic about the product/service.
Website copy can never be as exciting and enthusiastic as a real person can.
The best way to build trust, enthusiasm and buyer confidence is to put a face to your company name, and allow buyers to connect with a real person.
Once a potential buyer has clicked a PPC advert, they should reach a landing page that does more than just focus on getting clicks. When creating landing pages, the click to the next step isn’t the only thing you should care about. What often gets overlooked is the fact that behind every button click is a person.
Your landing page should be personalised for the current visitor and, even better, should include live chat. Landing pages manned by live chat experts have that little extra something.
Chat can be used to break down many barriers to conversion, not just information barriers.
Live chat is about being there for your visitors. The ability to connect with a person instantly. The ability to build confidence for the next steps.
The most important thing to remember? You need agents that can actually chat like real people. They need perfect spelling and grammar, naturally. But they also need to be able to understand tone of voice in text based communication – and be able to express their personality.
There’s no point in having robotic conversations – it just does not compute. If your website copy doesn’t break down confidence barriers, how will a robotic script manage it?
Here’s a few ways in which we hire the right live chat agents and make sure they have the freedom to have real conversations.
- During the recruitment process we use a live chat interview to test how applicants’ personalities come across in text based communication
- A live chat interview tests whether new agents can ask questions as well as answering ours.
- We conduct a phone interview to get a better feel of whether they’ll fit our culture (if they are friendly and want to help customers).
- We don’t force our agents to follow scripts, we just suggest a framework of where they want to point a conversation.
- Finally we review chats weekly (against 20 quantitative and qualitative metrics) to check that chats are conversational and reach our customer’s goals.
3. Transform buyers’ experiences
You can’t go thinking that information and confidence is the only thing needed to convert visitors from PPC adverts.
You also need to STAND OUT.
Your landing page has to catch visitors’ eyes. As well adhering to the latest thinking on how we read (left to right personally), it needs to show that you can offer something different.
Live chat can help you to grab attention with a great experience (we all understand the value of first impressions) and can get the conversation going between you and the prospect.
Your landing page is currently geared towards interested buyers contacting you. So if you don’t stand out from the competition, you may never actually speak to 98% of your visitors.
Buyers complete 57% of the purchase process before making direct contact.
Yep, you write all of that content and website copy to convince them to choose you…but they’ll often go to everyone else before they even speak to you.
They’ll most definitely go to a handful of competitors before making their final purchase decision.
With live chat you can deliver an experience that stands out from the competition. You can help buyers over information or conversion barriers; you can transform buyers’ research experiences.
Live chat allows you to connect with buyers before they reach sales. You may see this as an obvious feature but don’t underestimate the benefit of impressing buyers from their very first website visit.
Being there for your future customers from the start shows that you care and encourages them to convert. We like to call it sales through service.
It also allows you to warm leads from that first contact. You can build relationships with buyers, before your competitors have even had a chance to speak with them.
When do you engage? Engage when a visitor has visited a couple of pages – when they’re stumbling around your site looking for something to peak their interest.
What do you do once you’ve started a conversation? Well, deliver an outstanding experience. One that will make your brand more memorable.
To do this your live chat agents need to be genuinely helpful. That means having a vast knowledge base of information at hand and providing buyers with honest advice. Don’t go for the hard sale – try to help the buyer make the right decision for them.
Conclusion
Traffic generation is getting harder for everyone. Instead of just throwing more at your PPC budget though, start making better use of that budget.
If you want more PPC conversions, don’t just pay for more PPC traffic. Think about how you are going to convert that traffic once it arrives on your website.
You’ve probably tried the usual little CTA tweaks and copy updates but have they made any real impact?
Live chat isn’t another service channel for you to manage. But a platform for real conversations with your future customers. Real conversations that build relationships and trust.
This blog post was originally published on The Chat Shop blog.
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