Turning website visitors into qualified leads is a common
challenge for marketers. We'll show you how we used Conversion Rate
Optimization (CRO) to double our leads from organic traffic, with practical
examples you can apply to your site.
Benefits of CRO:
- Increased lead generation without more traffic
- Better insight into user behavior
- Enhanced user experience
- Higher marketing ROI
Step 1: Analyze Your Current Traffic
Ensure you have consistent organic traffic before starting CRO. Aim for at least 200 daily visitors from organic searches.
Example: One of our clients has a tech blog that was receiving 250 daily visitors from Google, making it ripe for optimization.
Step 2: Ask Key Questions
To improve conversions, answer these questions:
- Are visitors reaching your money pages? Example: We found only 10% of blog visitors were clicking through to our product pages.
- What obstacles do they face? Example: Users were leaving our signup form due to its length.
- How can you improve their experience? Example: We shortened our form from 10 fields to 5, increasing completions by 30%.
- How many landing page links exist on entry pages? Example: Our blog posts initially had just one CTA at the bottom. We added more throughout the content.
- How can you guide visitors to landing pages smoothly? Example: We added relevant product mentions within blog posts, increasing landing page visits by 40%.
Step 3: Implement Heatmaps
Use heatmaps to visualize user behavior on your site.
How to use heatmaps:
- Install a tool like Hotjar or Crazy Egg
- Collect data for 30+ days
- Analyze to find high-engagement areas
Example: Our heatmaps showed users rarely scrolled past 60% of our blog posts. We moved key CTAs higher up the page, increasing clicks by 25%.
Step 4: Optimize CTA Placements
Place CTAs strategically based on heatmap data.
How to optimize CTAs:
- Design CTAs that complement your content
- Use action-oriented language
- Make CTAs visually distinct
Example: We added a floating CTA to the right sidebar of our blog, matching our brand colors. This new CTA accounted for 35% of all blog-to-landing-page clicks.
Step 5: Track CTA Performance
Use UTM parameters to monitor CTA effectiveness.
UTM parameters are tags added to a URL to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and Call-to-Action (CTA) elements. They help you monitor where your traffic is coming from and how users interact with your links. Here's a breakdown of the main UTM parameters:
1. UTM Source (utm_source)
2. UTM Medium (utm_medium)
3. UTM Campaign (utm_campaign)
4. UTM Term (utm_term)
5. UTM Content (utm_content)
Let's explore each of these in more detail:
- UTM Source (utm_source)
· Identifies the source of your traffic
· Examples: google, newsletter, facebook, linkedin
- UTM Medium (utm_medium)
- Indicates the marketing medium
- Examples: cpc, email, social, banner
- UTM Campaign (utm_campaign)
- Names the specific campaign
- Examples: spring_sale, product_launch, webinar_promo
- UTM Term (utm_term)
- Used for paid search to identify keywords
- Example: running_shoes
- UTM Content (utm_content)
- Differentiates similar content or links within the same ad
- Example: logolink, textlink
To create a URL with UTM parameters, you would add them to your base URL like this:
https://www.example.com/page?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring_sale
By using these parameters consistently, you can track which CTAs are most effective, which channels drive the most valuable traffic, and how different campaigns perform. This data can then be analyzed in tools like Google Analytics to optimize your marketing efforts and improve CTA performance.
How to track CTAs:
- Create unique UTM codes for each CTA
- Use a URL shortener for cleaner links
- Monitor in your analytics tool
This allowed us to see that this specific CTA contributed to
40% of our blog-generated leads.
Step 6: Test and Refine
Continuously improve your CRO strategy.
Testing process:
- Implement data-driven changes
- Monitor lead generation for 30 days
- Compare results to previous periods
- Adjust strategy based on findings
Example: We A/B tested two CTA designs - a button vs. a text link. The button outperformed the text link by 15%, so we standardized button CTAs across our blog.
Bonus Tip: Implement Pop-ups and Hello Bars
Use pop-ups and hello bars to boost lead generation.
Example implementation:
- Exit-intent pop-up: "Before you go, get our free SEO checklist!" Result: 5% conversion rate on exiting visitors.
- Time-based pop-up: Appears after 2 minutes on-site with a webinar offer. Result: 3% sign-up rate, contributing 15% of total webinar registrations.
- Hello bar: "Join 10,000+ marketers getting our weekly tips. Subscribe now!" Result: Consistent 2% daily conversion rate of visitors to email subscribers.
Results: By implementing these strategies, we achieved:
- 100% increase in leads from organic traffic (from 50 to 100 weekly leads)
- 10% additional increase from pop-ups and hello bars (extra 10 weekly leads)
- 25% improvement in overall site engagement metrics
Conclusion: CRO is an ongoing process. By following these steps and continually testing, you can significantly increase your lead generation from organic traffic.
Example of Continuous Improvement: After doubling our leads, we didn't stop. We then focused on lead quality, implementing a lead scoring system. This helped us identify that leads from certain blog topics were 3x more likely to convert to customers. We then created more content on these high-converting topics, further improving our ROI.
Need help implementing these strategies? Contact us at Digital Marketing All. We can help optimize your website for better lead generation. Let's discuss how we can grow your business together.
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