What is Bounce Rate? (And How Can I Fix Mine?)

Outside of the marketing context, the word "bounce" is actually kind of fun. It reminds us of childhood hours passed in an inflated bounce house, of a basketball game, or maybe even a game of jacks.

But when it comes to your website's analytics, it's part of a metric that can be really confusing when you first stumble upon it: The bounce rate.

A lot of questions pop into your head. Is a bounce rate close to 100% good, or bad? Is it at all like a bounced email? Is it a fluffy metric that I should ignore? And if I want to fix it, what should I do? 

Luckily, you're not alone. Many marketers have asked those questions and might not have found a solid answer yet. We're here to shed some light on the elusive bounce rate. We've put together a quick overview of what constitutes a bounce rate -- and what doesn't -- and help you find some ways to fix it.

What is Bounce Rate?

To answer what is perhaps the most important of these questions: No, your website bounce rate is not the same as your email bounce rate. Your website's bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a page on your website, then leave. They don't click on anything else. They just get to one of your pages, hang out for a bit, then leave.

Keep in mind that bounce rate is different than an exit rate. Bounce rates only measure "one-and-done" visits -- the ones in which people arrive and leave your website without navigating away from a single page. Here's what they look like in your HubSpot Web Analytics Dashboard, for example:

Exit rates, on the other hand, are a little more complicated. They include the percentage of people who leave your website from a certain page -- but, that's not necessarily the only page they've visited on your website. The page from which they exited could be the last in a long sequence of page visits. That's why the exit rate isn't always as troubling as bounce rates.

Comparing Bounce Rates and Exit Rates

Let's say you were comparing bounce rates and exit rates for a thank-you page. A high bounce rate on that page would be kind of alarming, because that means people are only viewing that page alone, then clicking away. Even worse, they didn't fill out a form to get to it, which means you're losing out on conversions.

But a high exit rate, on the other hand, wouldn't be cause for concern. It would mean that this page was the last in a chain of visits -- people exiting from that page probably arrived from its preceding landing page, downloaded the offer on the thank-you page, and left to go make use of the content they just downloaded.

Keep in mind that this scenario is hypothetical, and these takeaways can differ based on other page metrics -- but it serves as a simple illustration of the difference between bounce and exit rates.

How to Reduce High Bounce Rates

Now you know what a bounce rate is. But what can you actually do about it?

In general, high bounce rates might indicate that the page is irrelevant or confusing to site visitors. But don't jump into drastic actions like deleting a page or undertaking a redesign right away. There are some important steps you need to take before you figure out which action to take.

Remember: Bounce rates really only tell you that someone landed on a web page and left it without visiting any other page on your website. It doesn't tell you how someone interacted with your page. That's why it's important, says HubSpot's Principal Product Marketing Manager Jeffrey Vocell, to take "practical steps" to examine other metrics and pieces of your web presence to see what might be behind the bounce rates. We've outlined these steps below.

1) Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.

There are now more searches and traffic coming from mobile devices than desktops. That makes it crucial, says Vocell, "to not only provide a mobile-ready experience," but to make sure that experience is engaging. How annoying is it when you arrive at a mobile site, only to have to zoom-in to read its content? Having a responsive site is no longer enough -- engagement with the mobile version has to be user-friendly and interactive.

Video is one particularly engaging type of content. It can often explain complex topics more concisely than text, which might be why 4X as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. But when it comes to mobile usage, long videos require a significant amount of data and might therefore slow the user experience -- causing the visitor to bounce. For that reason, Vocell suggests eliminating these longer videos from your mobile site, or creating more concise versions that still address the most important points.

This kind of improvement, however, isn't limited to video. Take a holistic approach to evaluating your mobile experience, and consider how you'll address contingencies like these.

2) Look at your bounce rate based on different sources.

Sometimes, the sources directing traffic to a given page might have something to do with its bounce rate. That's why the HubSpot Web Analytics Dashboard allows you to break down the bounce rate according to source:

Let's say your bounce rate is particularly high for visitors coming from social media -- take a close look at the message you're using to accompany the content you're distributing.

"Does it truly match what the content is about?" Vocell challenges marketers to ask. "Would a visitor clicking on that link in Twitter, or Facebook expect to see the headline, and initial image?" If the answer to either of those questions is "no," your promotion strategy might need some work.

When you're distributing your website's content, make sure the messaging actually matches the page to which you're directing visitors. You have to clearly meet the expectations of the visitor -- regardless of source.

3) Avoid other disruptions that might hurt the user experience.

We've already discussed the importance of a good mobile user experience -- but that actually goes for all platforms. Things like full-screen pop-ups, for example, are not only annoying, but given Google's recent algorithm update, they can also result in search penalties.

But the key thing to consider is the user. "You want visitors to be drawn into your page and stay for as long as needed to convert," says Vocell, and while "some pop-ups are good," -- like well-crafted inbound messages that add context to a site -- avoid any that significantly disrupt the user experience in a way that might cause visitors to leave.

4) Determine which keywords this page ranks for -- and if your content sufficiently covers those topics.

Remember how we cautioned against misleading visitors about your site's content in social distribution? The same goes for keyword rankings. "Matching keyword intent to your content is important to ensure organic visitors get the content they expect," explains Vocell.

Let's say someone is searching for "marketing automation software solutions" -- it's likely that this person is looking for software to help nurture leads into customers. But if someone is using the query, "What is marketing automation?", she's probably not at a stage where she's looking to buy a product. Rather, this person is looking for content that's more informative than anything else.

So when you evaluate the keywords for which you're page is ranking, make sure they're aligned with the actual content. Once you've done that, try looking at a topic-cluster framework -- the kind that groups your site's pages into clusters according to subject -- to help attract organic traffic to the right pages.

Let's Bounce

When you're investigating bounce rates, make sure you're looking at the full picture. Take a look at the time people spend on your site, where they're coming from, and what device they're using -- and if your content and experience are aligned with all of those factors. You might uncover patterns that show how you can fix the bounce rate problem.

Think of bounce rates like your car's "check engine" light. When it goes on, you know there might be a problem -- but you need to check all of the car's systems to accurately diagnose the issue. There's no one-size-fits-all fix for bounce rates, but knowing what they are and how they can inform your marketing strategy can help ensure your website's success.

What have you done to address your bounce rates? Let us know in the comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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Live Video: Tips and Techniques for Creating Great Content

Do you broadcast live video? Want to learn how to create an engaged following? To discover what he’s learned from broadcasting over 1,000 live streams over the last two years, I interview Alex Khan. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed [...]

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- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

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The Facebook Ad Types: How to Choose the Best Ad Type for Your Goals

Did you know that people in the U.S. spend 20% of their mobile time on Facebook or Instagram? And there are over 1.8 billion people using Facebook every month?

With so many active users, Facebook Ads are a no-brainer for any marketer looking to reach new audiences in a place where people are already spending a significant amount of time.

Facebook's business platform has grown to be more and more sophisticated, giving advertisers more options to reach new audiences and retarget previous site visitors back to their brand. However, with so many different options, it can be difficult for advertisers to figure out which Facebook Ad type is best for any given campaign objective.

In this post, we'll walk through each of the different Facebook Ad types and help you figure out which ads you should run for different campaign goals.

Special note: One ad type, Facebook Lead Ads, is increasingly useful for inbound marketers because it allows Facebook users to fill out lead generation forms directly within the Facebook app. 

Want to dive deeper into Facebook lead generation ads? We've put together a comprehensive guide on the Facebook lead ads type and how to use them. 

The Facebook Ad Types: What Are You Options?

App Engagement

App engagement ads are meant to generate activity within an app among your current users, or highlight app features before asking a new user to download. Here's an example of an engagement ad below:

While this ad example could be targeted towards new and existing users, the ad's copy and call-to-action focus on specific features, which encourages activity within the app -- rather than just a download or install.

App Installs

While app engagement ads are intended to highlight specific features to drive in-app engagements, app install ads are focused on generating new users. Instead of calling out specific features, app install ads are more likely to showcase the app's core purpose and main functionality. 

Brand Awareness

At some point, you may want to use Facebook ads to expose as many people as possible to your brand's name and products. If that's the case, use the brand awareness Facebook ad objective.

Facebook's brand awareness ad type could technically be used for any campaign. But it's meant to be used for remarkable content that drives brand awareness by enticing Facebook users who are scrolling on their news feed. For brand awareness campaigns, don't just think about what you want to get out of it. Instead, focus on creating remarkable content that makes users who view it want to know more about your brand.

In the example above, Spotify's ad uses a creative, colorful video that focuses on finding new music and playlists for users to enjoy. While a user might see the add and decide to sign up for Spotify immediately, Spotify used the brand awareness approach to create compelling content to draw the user's attention.

Store Visits

While some brand awareness campaigns are meant for wide-ranging audiences, other businesses might be focused on acquiring customers in a specific location.

Store visit ads allow you to create campaigns that target users in a specific geographic location. If you have multiple locations, you can use the same creative template and target Facebook users who are spending time in each of your localities, too.

To use the store visits ad type most effectively, Facebook requires you to set up a locations structure on your business's Facebook page. 

Local Awareness

Whether you have a new store opening or just want to boost awareness for one of your store's exisiting locations, use the local awareness ad type to drive brand awareness in specific geographic regions. This ad type is largely the same as brand awareness ads, but will be more oriented and targeted via location than larger overarching audiences. 

For example, Cold Stone Creamery used a local awareness ad to target people in a geographic area when their store in Bangladesh opened. Notice how in this ad Cold Stone chose to use a video as the creative asset featured in the ad. This is a great way to engage users and entice them to stop scrolling down their newsfeed. 

Website Conversions

While brand awareness campaigns might be more high-level and goaled with long-term attribution, website conversion campaigns are meant to encourage users to click on ads and convert on your website immediately. 

Website conversion ads are meant to drive specific actions on a specific page on your website, so make sure to use them correctly. Instead of simply encouraging the user to click on your website to "learn more," use website conversion ads to drive sign ups to a newsletter, start a free trial, or download an offer. 

For example, Lyft used a website conversion ad to encourage users to become a Lyft driver with a special offer. The add encourages conversions by using a specific "Apply Now" call-to-action and creates a sense of urgency by showcasing the offer as being for a "Limited Time" only.

Clicks to Website

Many of your campaigns will be goaled on getting users to take specific actions, like filling out a lead generation form, while other ad campaigns might be goaled on generating traffic to your website.

For traffic-oriented campaigns, use the clicks to website ad type. This ad type allows you to send users to specific blog posts, site pages, or product offers in a variety of creative formats. For example, Wikibuy used a website clicks ad to drive traffic to one of their blog posts hosted on Medium:

With the click to website ad type, you also have a variety of creative options. You can include a carousel of images to send users to different links, or canvas mobile ad feature to tell a story with your ad.

Event Ads

Have an important event coming up that you want to generate some buzz and attendance for? Use the event ads type to promote a Facebook event and get more responses.

 

The event ads type is relatively straight forward. If you are already using Facebook's event feature to generate attendance, this ad type is a great addition to your campaign strategy.

However, if you want to drive event sign-ups on solely on your website's sign-up page, it might be better to use a different ad type, like website conversion ads, to meet your on-page goal. 

Offer Claim Ads

During the website conversion ads section, we touched on the fact that you could use conversion-focused offers as a landing point for your Facebook ad. That said, Facebook also allows you to set off-site offer downloads as a campaign objective. 

Whether you have discounts, holiday deals, or content-specific offers to promote via Facebook ads, the offer claim objective allows you to customize your ads with calls-to-action specific to the offer. For example, you might use a "Learn More" call-to-action if you're offering something that's good only for the first 500 sign-ups, like in the ad example below:

As you can see, the offer claim Facebook Ad type should lead your users directly to a sign-up page on your website where they can claim the offer you promoted.

Lead Generation (Full Form) Ads

In a traditional lead generation conversion path, users are driven to a landing page where they fill out a form. For example, you might use a Facebook offer claim ad (like we discussed in the previous section) to drive users to your website and have them fill out a form there.

The downside to this conversion path is that users are required to leave Facebook altogether once they've clicked on the ad to actually claim what you're promoting. Luckily, Facebook offers the lead generation objective, which allows you to collect lead information without forcing your audience to ever leave the Facebook app. 

Here's an example that shows the conversion path the user goes through on a Facebook lead ad: 

First, the user see a traditional conversion-focused ad:

Once the user clicks on the add and/or call-to-action (in this case, Sign-Up), they see this pop up within the Facebook app:

Next, the user can click the register button and see an form (of your choosing) with their information auto-filled.

Once the user submits the form on the lead ad, they can click out of the ad and go back to browsing on Facebook. It's a great user experience and Facebook will sync with your CRM so your leads are right where you want them. 

Want more information on how to set up and successful target Facebook lead ads to the right users? Check out this comprehensive guide. 

Page Likes

In some cases, you may want to use Facebook Ads to expand your organic reach. When this is your campaign goal, you should use the page like ad type to encourage new users to "like" your page. Once they do, they'll be able to see your organic content when you post it.

Page like campaigns are best for advertisers who put lots of effort into their social media presence and produce content specifically for their Facebook users to drive engagement.

Keep in mind, you can also ad a "like page" call-to-action option to other ad types if you want to accomplish two goals with one ad. 

Post Engagements

If you regularly post content on your Facebook page, you probably know that some content performs better than others. With Facebook post engagement ads, you can drive more engagement on individual posts and expand its original reach. This helps you generate more activity on your posts and helps you get more organic followers quickly by offering them the kinds of posts they'll see more of if they follow you.

In the example below, the ad is promotes an update this company made to their Facebook photos. Notice that the add displays the post engagement (likes, comments, shares) along with the post to encourage viewers to also engage with it.

The ad also features a "like page" button which allows the advertiser to generate both page likes and post engagements all in one post. 

 

How to Choose which Facebook Ad Type to Use

We've covered all of the different Facebook Ad types campaign objectives you can use to meet your specific ads goals. But is that all encompassing? Not really. 

In reality, many of the Facebook Ad type campaign objectives overlap, and you could use multiple ad types to accomplish the same objective. Additionally, Facebook has many different options for you to choose from once you pick a campaign objective, which means choosing an ad type isn't even half of the battle. 

So how do you decide which ad type to use?

1) Define your campaign goal.

Before you begin any ad campaign, you first need to determine what the goal of your campaign is. Are you trying to drive conversions on your website? Drive attendance for an upcoming event? Simply get more customers to your local store?

Don't just come up with a campaign around which ad type you want to use. Instead, start with your own marketing needs and build your ad around it. 

2) Choose relevant types you could use.

Once you've defined the goal of your ad campaign, take a look at the different Facebook Ad types available to you. Luckily, you already know what each of the ad types are. 

Choose the type most relevant to your goals. You probably noticed Facebook has multiple ad types you could use for a single objective. If your goal is to drive downloads for an ebook, for example, you could use any one of the following options: 

1. Clicks to Website
2. Website Conversions
3. Lead Generation
4. Offer Claims

3) Narrow down your options.

Once you've chosen which ad types are most applicable to your needs, choose the one you think will work best for you campaign. Or, use the same creative, copy, and targeting options to set up a campaign test using different ad types and see if one performs better than the other. 

4) Write copy and create assets.

One great feature of Facebook's Ads Manager tool is the wide range of creative and layout options you have available to you. Not only can you choose between image, video, photo grid, and carousel layouts,  you can also customize your ads for mobile and desktop audiences. 

Facebook also has lots of different calls-to-action you can use on your ads, or you can choose not to use one at all! As you run different ad campaigns, make sure to test and analyze what works best for your audience. 

6) Use different ad types for different campaign goals.

Don't just stick to one ad type for all of your campaigns. Instead, make sure you're optimizing your ads for the right campaign objectives. Try out different Facebook Ad types and different ad campaigns to optimize your ad strategy for your audience. 

7) Target the right audience.

Creating the draft of your ad is only half the battle. The other half is figuring out how to target the right audience for your ads campaign. 

Luckily, our free guide to Facebook Lead Ads has an in-depth section on how to set up your targeting strategy for any ad campaign you run. 

8) Test, analyze, and repeat.

Once you've defined your campaign objective, selected your ad type, created your ad, and targeted the right audience, it's time to analyze your results. 

Remember: digital advertising is all about testing, analyzing, and optimizing future ad campaigns over time. Make sure you follow this important final important step, and you'll be on your way to implementing a high-ROI ads strategy in no time. 

You may be wondering, "Okay, which Facebook Ad type should I definitely try right away? 

We just put together this in-depth guide on Facebook Lead Ads. It'll help you learn everything you need to know about optimizing lead generation ads that allow users to submit forms to you without ever leaving Facebook. Check it out here or click the banner below.

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The Beginner's Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Today, most marketing teams are structured to drive traffic towards websites, which then converts into leads for the sales team to close. Once this process starts to deliver results, marketers then seek to generate even more traffic, and hopefully even more success.

An oversimplification, but that’s the standard marketing playbook. Few marketing teams focus on getting more from existing traffic. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.

In this blog post, we’ll teach you all about CRO -- what it achieves, why you should do it, and how your team can execute it. We’ll explain how you can drive more results from your existing traffic so your content can work smarter, and not harder, for you.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

I’m glad you asked. Many websites are designed to convert website visitors into customers. These conversions occur all over the website -- on the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages -- and all of these can be optimized for a higher number of conversions. The process of optimizing those conversions is exactly what CRO entails.

CRO is a huge, often untapped opportunity for marketing teams, and you might be surprised by the oversized impact you could deliver by fine-tuning your website for conversions.

When Is Conversation Rate Optimization (CRO) Right for Your Business?

Once your sales and marketing engine attracts website visitors who consistently convert into leads for your sales team, you should start thinking about CRO.

Most businesses have a finite demand for products and services, so it's imperative that you make the most out of your existing website traffic. Tools like Google's Global Market Finder can show you online search volume to give you an idea of your potential customer demand. Once you determine the threshold of your customer demand, it’s time to nail down how to get more out of your existing website traffic.

Below are three formulas to help you figure out how to tackle CRO at your company, and what goals to set:

1. New revenue goal ÷ average sales price = # of new customers
2. # of new customers ÷ lead to customer close rate % = lead goal
3. Leads generated ÷ website traffic X100 = % conversion rate

To help you understand the impact CRO could have on your business, here's an example of the formulas in action.

If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads and subsequently, 10 customers each month, the website visitor to lead conversion rate would be 1%.

But what if you wanted to generate 20 customers each month? You could try to get 20,000 visitors to your website and hope that the quality of traffic doesn’t decrease. Or, you could get more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate.

If you increased the conversion rate from 1% to 2%, you’d double your leads and your customers.

The table below shows the impact of increasing your website’s conversion rate:

	Company A	Company B	Company C
Monthly website traffic	10,000	10,000	10,000
% conversion rate	1%	2%	3%
Leads generated	100	200	300
# of new customers	10	20	30

The key point here? Trying to generate more website traffic isn’t necessarily the right approach. Think of it like a leaky bucket. Pouring more water into a leaky bucket won’t fix the root cause -- you'll just end up with a lot of waste. Conversion rate optimization is about getting more from what you have and making it work even better for you.

Ready to take the first steps towards CRO at your company? Check out the strategies below, and start testing.

8 Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies to Try

1) Create text-based CTAs within blog posts.

While it’s good practice to include a call-to-action (CTA) in your blog post, these sometimes fail to entice people to take the desired course of action. Banner blindness is a very real phenomenon as people become accustomed to ignoring banner-like information on websites. This lack of attention, coupled with the fact that website visitors don’t always read to the bottom of a blog post as they “snack” on content, means a new approach is required.

That’s where the text-based CTA comes in handy. Here at HubSpot, we ran a test with text-based CTAs -- a standalone line of text linked to a landing page and styled as an H3 or an H4 -- to see if they would convert more traffic into leads than regular CTAs at the bottom of a web page. Here’s one of ours below:

In HubSpot's limited test of 10 blog posts, regular end-of-post banner CTAs contributed an average of just 6% of leads that the blog posts generated, whereas up to 93% of a post's leads came from the anchor text CTA alone.

2) Include lead flows on your blog.

Another test you should consider is including lead flows on your blog. Essentially, these are high-converting pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value. You can select from a slide-in box, drop-down banner or pop-up box, depending on your offer. We experimented with the slide-in box on the HubSpot blog, and it achieved a 192% higher clickthrough rate, and 27% more submissions than a regular CTA at the bottom of a blog post.

Head over to the HubSpot Academy to learn how to add lead flows to your blog posts. They can dramatically increase conversions on your website.

3) Run tests on your landing pages.

Landing pages are an important part of the modern marketer's toolkit. A landing page is where a website visitor becomes a lead, or an existing lead engages more deeply with your brand. These pages play an important role on your website, so you should run A/B tests to get the most from them.

But what should you A/B test? We know that a high performing landing page can have a tremendous impact on a business, so at HubSpot, we make it easy to test variants and eke out more conversions. You can quickly and easily test website copy, content offer, image, form questions, and page design. Check out these tips for effective A/B testing and our A/B testing calculator.

4) Help leads to immediately become a marketing-qualified lead (MQL).

Sometimes, your website visitors want to get straight down to business and speak with a sales rep, rather than be nurtured by marketing offers. You can make it easy for them to take this action (and immediately become a marketing qualified lead) with a combination of thoughtful design and smart CTAs.

Compelling, clear copy has the ability to drive action and increase conversions for your business. But which actions do you want to encourage so visitors can become MQLs?

Here at HubSpot, we discovered that visitors who sign up for product demos convert at higher rates than visitors who sign up for free product trials, so we optimized our website and conversion paths for people booking a demo or a meeting with a sales rep. Admittedly, this depends on your product and sales process, but our best advice is to run a series of tests to find out what generates the most customers. Then, optimize for that process.

The key takeaway is to look for ways to remove friction from the sales process. That being said, if you make it easy for people to book a meeting with sales reps, we do recommend further qualification before the call takes place, so the sales rep can tailor the conversation.

5) Build workflows to enable your sales team.

There are a number of automated workflows you can create that your colleagues in sales will thank you for. For instance, did you know it’s possible to send emails on behalf of sales reps, so leads can book a meeting with them at the click of a button? Or that sales reps can receive an email notification when a lead takes a high intent action, such as viewing the pricing page on your website? And if you work in ecommerce, you can send an email to people who abandon their shopping cart.

All of this is possible with marketing automation. Want to learn more? Master marketing automation with our helpful guide.

6) Add messages to high-converting web pages.

With HubSpot’s messages tool, it’s now possible to chat with website visitors in real-time. To increase conversions, you should add messaging capabilities to high-performing web pages, such as pricing or product pages, so leads convert rather than leave.

You can also make chatting action-based. For example, if someone has spent more than a minute on the page, you may want to automatically offer to help and answer any questions they may have.

HubSpot’s messages tool is coming in the spring of 2017, but you can apply to join the beta program here.

7) Optimize high-performing blog posts.

If you’ve been blogging for more than a year, it’s likely you’ll have some blog posts that outperform others.

The same is true at HubSpot -- in fact, the majority of our monthly blog views and leads come from posts published more than a month ago. Blog posts are a big opportunity for conversion rate optimization.

To get started, identify the blog posts with high levels of web traffic, but low conversion rates. It may be that the content offer you’re promoting isn’t aligned with the blog post’s content, or your CTA could be unclear.

In one instance, we added a press release content offer to a blog post about press releases and saw conversions for that post increase by 240%.

Additionally, you should look at blog posts with high conversion rates. You want to drive more qualified website traffic to those posts, and you can do that by optimizing the content for search engines or updating the content to ensure that it’s fresh and relevant. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can drive traffic to these pages from LinkedIn and Facebook using the ads add-on.

8) Leverage retargeting to re-engage website visitors.

It doesn’t matter what your key conversion metric is: The cold, hard truth is that most people on your website don’t take the action you want them to. By leveraging retargeting (sometimes known as remarketing), you can re-engage people who’ve left your website.

Retargeting works by tracking visitors to your website and serving them online ads as they visit other sites around the web. This is particularly impactful when you retarget people who visit high-converting web pages.

The normal inbound rules still apply -- you need well-crafted copy, an engaging image and a compelling offer for retargeting to work. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you should take a look at how the AdRoll integration can improve your conversion efforts.

How to Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

We’ve shared a ton of information in this post, and at this point, you may be thinking, “where should I start?”

Here’s where the PIE framework comes in. Before starting a CRO project, we recommend prioritizing through the lens of PIE -- rank each project based on its potential, importance, and ease. We used this framework at HubSpot with great results.

You should use this framework to answer the following questions for every strategy outlined in the previous section. Assign to each strategy a score between one and 10 (with one being the lowest and 10 being the highest):

1. How much total improvement can this project offer?
2. How valuable will this improvement be?
3. How complicated or difficult will it be to implement this improvement?

Once you’ve assigned a score for each strategy, add up the numbers and then divide it by three -- this gives a score which shows what project will have the greatest impact. Then, work on the projects with the highest scores first. The framework isn’t perfect, but it’s easy to understand, systematic, and a great way to communicate to the rest of your colleagues which CRO projects are being selected and why.

Want to learn more about the PIE framework? Take a look at this explanation from WiderFunnel.

What’s next?

There are a lot of “best practices” out there, but ultimately, you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business. Here are three follow-up actions to get started with CRO today:

1. Use the three formulas to start the CRO conversation.
2. Leverage the PIE framework to help prioritize your strategy.
3. Make CRO someone’s responsibility.

What CRO strategies does your business leverage? Share with us in the comments below.

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How to Assess Your LinkedIn Company Page Performance

Is your LinkedIn marketing working? Are you examining what works for your competitors? Using key metrics to benchmark your LinkedIn company page performance against your competitors’ pages will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. In this article, you’ll discover how to analyze your LinkedIn efforts and find out what’s working for your competition. Create [...]

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6 New LinkedIn Features You May Have Missed

If you’ve logged into LinkedIn over the past few weeks, you may have noticed something different. Actually, everything is different, because LinkedIn completely overhauled its desktop site.

After Microsoft acquired the job search and networking website in 2016, LinkedIn announced it would redesign its desktop website to more closely mirror its mobile apps.

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with more than 467 million members worldwide. However, LinkedIn members aren’t actually spending much time on the site. In fact, only 23% of LinkedIn users visited the site every month at the end of 2016. That’s not a great monthly active user number, and the website redesign was meant to “create more value” for LinkedIn members -- and, hopefully, make them want to spend more time on the site.

For example, the LinkedIn desktop homepage used to look something like this:

Source: LinkedIn

And this is what my LinkedIn homepage looked like when I wrote this article:

There’s a lot behind this slick interface. Let’s dive into some of the biggest changes to the site since the redesign and how marketers and users might take advantage of them going forward.

6 Changes to LinkedIn You May Have Missed

1) A new homepage feed

Using a combination of human editors and new algorithms, LinkedIn will start surfacing more content and fewer status updates. The homepage feed will start suggesting organic, sponsored, and native advertising content users might be interested in reading. The feed will also help users follow trending stories … sound familiar? If LinkedIn is trying to make its user base engage more on the platform, modeling a feed in the style of Facebook is a safe bet.

2) More analytics

LinkedIn now provides more analytics about how other users interact with the content you share -- not just who views your profile or who likes one of your posts. Now, users can see not only who likes their content, but which companies they come from and what roles they’re in.

Here are analytics from an article I posted recently on LinkedIn:

The platform also suggests other articles I might share with my network for even more engagement.

3) New (and missing) search features

LinkedIn refined its search capabilities so users can search all of LinkedIn with a single, unified search experience based on certain keywords. Now, users can easily toggle between different categories related to search terms without having to move between different categories of the site.

Check out what the results look like when I search for “content marketing:”

Whereas previously, LinkedIn users had to go into each of these sections (“People,” “Jobs,” “Companies”) in order to conduct searches, now users can search from one place to get all of the results they’re looking for.

Notably, LinkedIn removed some of the Advanced Search filters that were previously available on LinkedIn Premium and are now only available for the more expensive Sales Navigator tier of LinkedIn Premium. These filters include “years of experience,” “function,” and “seniority level.” 

4) Chat-like messaging

Soon, LinkedIn will roll out messaging that allows users to send InMail like a chat instead of an email. Users won’t have to navigate to another pane to send a private message -- instead, they’ll be able to send a direct chat without leaving the LinkedIn homepage feed, as shown in the image below:

Source: TechCrunch

In another nod to Facebook’s Messenger layout, this change helps users easily spend more time clicking around the site. Plus, users might be less likely to send the dreaded default InMail message if they know it will appear like a chat instead of an email.

5) Calendar chatbot

Next, LinkedIn is introducing a chatbot. It will look at two connections’ calendars and find and set times for them to meet directly within LinkedIn’s messenger platform. It hasn’t been rolled out as of the time of this posting, but in another nod to Facebook Messenger and other bots, this is an addition designed to keep users spending time on the site. Stay tuned for more news when the bot launches fully.

6) New blogging interface

LinkedIn also now features a slick new publishing platform. Before, publishers had to navigate to LinkedIn Pulse to write an original blog post. Now, users are one click away from a slick, easy-to-use blog publishing platform.

Check it out:

Blogging on LinkedIn could garner more attention to your brand’s site if LinkedIn grows in popularity. In fact, content consumption on LinkedIn has increased over the last few years, so marketers should consider LinkedIn as a platform for reproducing or creating original content.

What's Next For LinkedIn?

Amidst these changes, marketers should keep an eye on where their audience is spending time. If LinkedIn’s number of monthly active users increases in its next quarterly report, it might be worthwhile to invest more resources in running campaigns and creating content for the site.

We’ll keep you posted on more changes to the platform and its usage as that news unfolds. In the meantime, click around the new website and experiment with the new analytics capabilities to see if your audience wants to spend time on LinkedIn with you. And if you need guidance for running a strong LinkedIn ad campaign, download our guide here.

Do you publish original content on LinkedIn? Share with us in the comments below.

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The Most Searched Agency Services, According to the Time of Year [New Data]

According to the latest Top Agency Trends Report from Agency Spotter, marketers and brands search for different services depending on the time of the year. Knowing which services to offer and emphasize at different times of the year could help your agency stand above your competition. These search trends, based on seasonality, come down to a couple of different factors based on what companies are looking to accomplish at different times of the year.

The report covers marketing services trends based on data from more than 120,000 unique users and three years, data on service seasonality, the top 25 agency services being searched, and the rise of project-based engagements.

Let's dig in.

Marketing Services Searched More in the First Half of the Year

As companies begin the new year, they are looking to establish initiatives that are relatively quick fixes and do not take as much time to implement. Business leaders often take a look at their marketing data from the past year and see which areas need more attention or may have fallen down the to-do list.

Looking at the Trends Report, we can see that services like content marketing, PR, SEO, data analytics, shopper marketing, and events all perform better in the first half of the year. From the top 25 agency services for 2016, content marketing took the 7th spot as the most searched service from marketers all year. Interestingly, if you divide the list into H1 and H2, you can see that content marketing was 9th in H1 but did not even make the Top 25 in H2.

Content marketing is becoming increasingly important for all companies to utilize because it helps attract and inform customers and potential customers. But if you think about it, companies don’t generally set a content calendar at the end of the year -- they tend to do that at the beginning of the year. Same thing goes for SEO and PR.

Check out the list below to see which keywords fall off or perform better at a certain time of year, and then optimize your site accordingly.

Agency Services Perform Better in H2

Taking a look at the data, services like ecommerce, branding, UX design, email marketing, and CRM automation all perform better in the second half of the year. These align with initiatives that take more planning and are services that many companies want to have ready before the start of a new year.

Design-based services like ecommerce, branding, and UX all have to do with experiences that directly interact with customers. A website redesign or branding makeover are usually planned in the middle of the year so that companies are ready to debut their new look in the new year.

As you can see in the report, ecommerce went from 18th most searched in H1 to 5th in H2, branding from 12th to 6th, and UX took the 9th spot despite not even appearing on the H1 list.

Services Shopped Consistently Year Round

There are also agency services whose demand remains stable throughout the year.

The big services like advertising, web design, digital, social media, and marketing perform all year. Use this data to better understand the behavior of your customers and when they are searching.

Finally, here are the biggest shifts from 2015 to 2016:

Knowing what services perform better throughout the year can help your agency strategically position business development, staffing, and other factors to help your agency rise above the competition. For more information about the marketing service industry, download the free Agency Spotter Agency Trends Report.

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