Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this conversion optimization rate game plan, you're going to learn how to take your
CRO to the next level, by avoiding these five common CRO traps.
These are vitally important because avoiding these traps are not only going to save you
a bunch of time when optimizing your content, your ads and your funnels, but some of these
mistakes can actually wind up hurting your lead generation and sales growth rates.
So it's very important, especially number five.
So go ahead and check out the timestamp table of contents in the description to jump around
this video, along with some other helpful videos to optimizing your content, your ads,
and of course your sales funnels.
So before we dive into these five, let's go ahead and talk about what our definition of
CRO is going to be, for this particular game plan.
Anything you try to increase the leads or sales you get from your content, funnels or
ads.
And that's going to be our definition moving forward in this game plan.
So trap number one is not big split tests.
I see this a lot, especially with client funnels.
It's very easy to dive straight in and try and make all these micro adjustments like,
let's change the button color or let's change the layout, where when you're just getting
started with your conversion optimization, you want to make big changes.
So I want you to think of your ideal combination of ads and copy and messaging as the center
of this long continuum, but you don't know where the center is, so you have to start
somewhere, right?
So instead of starting at point A and point A1 and making all these micro tests trying
to get to the center, you want to start with point A and point Z.
So make the testing you do, really big.
And then when you do your first test, you're going to find out, okay, this one doesn't
work.
And then you're going to try another big test.
And then you're going to find the original one didn't work.
And then you try another big test and another big test.
And as you go through each one of these things tests, eventually you're going to find a great
winning combination.
And you're going to get to that great winning combination a lot faster than if you try to
test landing page A1 and then A2, A3, A4, you're going to make all these little micro
steps as opposed to making big, giant leaps in the beginning.
And then when your conversion rates are kind of dialed into whatever your niche or industry
is, you know, 30% to 40%, then you can go ahead and start making all those micro things
like, let's change the button color, or let's you know, move this section above that section.
But until you're at that point, you need to make big split tests, in your sales funnels
and your ads and your messaging.
So specifically testing your headlines before you start making all those micro adjustments.
Now, speaking of tests, that's actually big mistake number two is testing multiple variables.
And this is something a lot of people fall into.
Where we're making, we want to make big tests, you don't want to make all those little micro
tests.
So that's mistake number one.
And then mistake number two, is having too many tests going on at once.
So taking a look at this diagram here, you can see we have our prospects.
We have our advertising, our landing page, and then our lead magnet.
Well, the problem here, is we actually have two variables.
We're testing our messaging and our platforms and we're testing what's going on, on the
page, where actually you want to have all of your advertising, going to one page.
I know that sounds crazy, right?
But you want all of your advertising, to go to one page for each traffic source.
All your Google ads goes to the same landing page.
All your YouTube ads go to the same landing page.
All your Facebook ads go to the same landing page.
But you're not split testing those landing pages yet, because you're split testing things
inside your campaigns, with your ads, you creative, your messaging, your targeting.
And so if you're doing any split testing in your ad account, you don't want to be doing
any split testing on your landing page.
Because that would be something called a multi-variant split test.
And the problem with running multiple variables, is you need a lot more traffic, which means
you're going to either have to wait a lot longer, or you're going to have to spend a
lot more to actually get to a statistical significance with all of the different combinations
that are going on inside of your ads and your landing pages, in order to figure out which
combination works.
So what's better to do, is actually just test either your landing page split testing or
inside your campaigns.
And once you find a campaign combination that works, go ahead and make that campaign drive
to, one landing page and then split test that landing page, but keeping the campaign settings
the same.
That way, you're always only testing one variable.
Otherwise you're not going to actually know which combination of ad campaign and landing
page, is actually working.
And speaking of landing pages, mistake number three, is testing front to back.
I see a lot of especially entrepreneurs doing this, where they're diving into testing their
emails, they're diving into testing their sales messages, but really you don't need
to do a whole lot of testing on the back-end, until you've dialed in your front-end.
And there are a couple of reasons for this.
Number one, it's just practical, especially if you're just getting started, you need to
really dial in your messaging and your landing page message and offer because whatever's
going on, on the front-end is going to dictate how things go on in the back-end.
And this is where the front-end is where you learn all about your customer.
Now, if you're already at that point, you have some ads and landing pages, or maybe
you're just doing organic content to a landing page is converting beautifully.
Then you can go ahead and start working on the back-end.
And what's great about testing on the back-end is, it's not as expensive.
Now I say as expensive, it's not free.
No testing is free.
You always have a cost, but it's not as expensive.
You see when you're testing the front-end, you're spending money on traffic, right?
You're driving traffic and you really need to focus as much of your attention as possible,
because you want to maximize your return on ad spend.
And once people are on your email list, you have multiple chances to try different emails,
to try different offers, to try different sales messages.
And this is a lot less expensive to test than it is on the front-end, because here you're
paying per click, you're paying per opt-in, you're paying per impression and view.
Whereas here, the only thing you're paying is, your brand equity or the relationship
you have with your list, right?
So you don't want to send 20 different sales emails in a row, trying to figure out which
sales email works, right?
We're going to be doing some content and sales, content and sales to continue to build that
relationship.
And you might find out that it takes longer, but that's okay, because you've focused on
the front-end.
And once you know that this works, the back-end part of your testing becomes really easy and
you'll have statistical significance because you have so many people coming in your front-end,
at an effective rate.
Mistake number four is not having your own tracking system.
This is huge.
And this is something that just punched me in the gut, the first time I ran Facebook
ads.
Because the first time I ran Facebook ads, I found that Facebook was telling me, I had
five times the amount of traffic and conversions that was going on inside of my click funnels
account, which is the software I was using at the time.
And after a lot of research, some Google analytics fixing, and some work with support and talking
to other people on forums, I figured out that Facebook was actually over reporting the amount
of traffic and conversions.
And this happens with a lot of advertising platforms.
I'm not going to go into, “Oh, Facebook does this.
And Google does that.”
I'll leave that for another video in the comment section.
Whatever the problem, whatever the disconnect, whatever the reason you need to make sure
that whatever landing page software you're using, or if you're using WordPress, you have
Google analytics set up correctly with UTM parameters, so that you have your own tracking
system, that is completely independent of what's going on inside your ads accounts.
Because whatever your own tracking system says is almost always going to be lower.
And the numbers are not going to look as great as whatever's going on in your advertising
platform.
And so you want these numbers to make the decisions on not what's going on inside of
your ads account.
And finally number five is people.
And this is something that is actually arguably one of the most important things on this list,
but it's not an actionable item that you can take away.
It's actually a state of mind.
Because when it comes to conversion optimization rates, strategies, all of these strategies
and tactics are designed to help you do one thing, connect with another person.
It is so easy to be looking at your Facebook ads to be scrolling through your analytics
and just looking at numbers and forgetting that each one of those numbers, those clicks,
those views, those conversions, those opens, those purchases are actual human beings.
And your customers are the lifeblood of your business.
And so everything we've talked about, is specifically designed not to get more out of your customers
to get more out of your traffic source, but to connect more effectively with your ideal
customer.
And really that's the whole purpose of conversion optimization, is learning how to speak to
your customer and engage with them in a way that they understand, so you can be more helpful.
I know that's not an actionable item.
It's not like, okay, step number five, go do this.
It's step number five, think like this.
So just remember that all of these numbers represent real human beings, and it's so easy
to fall into the trap of being cold and calculating and not taking into account.
Headline one versus headline two, there's a reason headline two worked better.
Because it's connecting with your ideal customer on a different level, whether it's emotionally,
whether it's the result or the benefit or the feature that you're talking about in the
headline, everything that works better than something else in your funnel is representation
of how an actual human being feels.
So just remember that, this is really important and the most important frame of mind you need,
going into conversion rate optimization.
So thank you so much for watching.
I hope you got some value out of this video, if you did go ahead and hit that like button
and subscribe for more in-depth marketing tutorials and tactics, just like the ones
covered in this video.
Comment below, if you have any questions and please, please remember that conversion optimization
is all about human relationships and connections.
It's not about cold calculating numbers.
So hit that like button, subscribe.
Comment below, if you have any questions and as always keep building the business you love.