marketing congruency
Are your marketing messages congruent? Is there a natural flow and connection? Or do they skip about and confuse your potential customers or clients?
Why am I asking these questions?
Simply because of a phone call from a new client.
“I’m getting a good response to my classified advert – 322 visitors to my website from the last one – but I only got one sale – will you take a look at the letter on my web page?” Anita asked. (Name changed for privacy).
Her conversion rate was an extremely disappointing 0.31%.
I took a look. The letter itself was a bit disjointed; that could soon be remedied.
But the biggest stumbling block I could see was the lack of connection between the advert and the content of the sales page on her website.
The advert offered free information about how someone had achieved a specific result. In contrast the sales letter on the website started off by talking about something entirely different; it didn’t follow on from the advert.
Now, bear in mind that of the people who had seen the classified advert, 322 decided they were interested in what was offered; took the trouble to fire up their computer; open their web browser and type in the URL to find out more.
Imagine their disappointment when the website they reached didn’t give them the information they were promised and – at first glance – didn’t seem to be connected.
There was no congruency between the advert and the content on the website the advert asked the reader to visit.
The info they were promised was there – but not until you reached what would have been page 6 if it was printed out! And I suspect the majority of the readers left long before that point.
It’s a similar situation with PPC (pay per click) advertising like Google Adwords. The experts on Google Adwords always say two things are crucial to gain a good conversion rate:
- The destination URL should never be the home page of a website… it should be the specific page that matches what is being advertised
- The headline on the destination web page should match or follow on from the wording used in the Google Adwords entry to reassure your visitor they have reached the right place
Having a magnetic; intriguing or exciting headline or classified advert that appears to have nothing to do with the content that follows may attract people… but you won’t keep their attention.
And Anita had potentially lost thousands in future sales because 321 people, who responded to the original advert, left the website without buying.
Take a minute to check the advertising messages you’re putting out – are they fully congruent throughout?
~ Carol Bentley
11th June 2009 at 11:08 am
Ah, dear old ‘congruency’ – and I thought I’d left trigonometry far behind me
Back on topic – For targeted marketing specific landing pages make the visitor feel like they’ve tracked down something worth at least checking out – rather than having to jump through hoops from a home pages to find what’s relevant.
With Craigslist this is definitely true. The more specific, the better.