What is conversion scent and why is it important?

Computer scientists compare internet users searching for specific information with animals following the smell or scent of their prey while looking for food! However, animals will follow the ‘scent trail’ only if the smell of the prey or food is strong enough! Interestingly, something similar happens when a visitor clicks on your pay per click ad or responds to your e-mail marketing campaign.

Simply put, ‘conversion scent’ is about maintaining a consistent connection between your source ad—let it be, pay par click ad, banner ad or sidebar ad—and landing page. Strong ‘scent’ ensures that visitors to your landing page get exactly what they expect to find which in turn enhances the rate of conversion—that is, how many visitors are eventually converted to customers. In other words, close similarity between your source ad and landing page would encourage the visitor to become your customer by responding to your call to action—call to action is an instruction such as ‘sign up’, ‘contact us’, ‘call now’ and ‘buy now’ to provoke an immediate response from visitors. This simply means in order to convert a higher number of visitors to customers, you need to ensure a strong ‘scent’—that is, close proximity between your source ad and landing page, in terms of background texture, color, images, logo, headlines and message.  

When planning an online ad campaign—it can be pay par click ad, banner ad or sidebar ad—or any type of marketing strategy that requires visitors to do an ‘action’ online—for example, ‘sign up’, ‘contact us’, ‘call now’ or ‘buy now’—it makes sense to think of your prospects or possible customers as hunting dogs following the scent trail of their prey because a strong and enticing ‘scent’ can play a key role in converting visitors to customers.

In a nutshell, ‘conversion’ is the process of converting visitors of your ad campaign or website or those who respond to your e-mail campaign to your customers by encouraging them to respond to your call to action.

Successful online conversion works backwards from the desired action that potential customers should take and ensures that every link in the chain leads visitors towards your call to action and in every step in the process your message maintains the same ‘scent’ so that it would result in better conversion.

The word ‘scent’ points to what you are attempting to project and convey through your online marketing campaign and what purpose it serves for your prospects or prospective customers. This means while crafting an online conversion campaign, you need to ensure continuity from the source ad to the landing page in terms of words, graphics and colors and consistently position key elements such as logo and the call to action—whether it is ‘sign up’, ‘contact us’, ‘call now’ or ‘buy now’—at the expected spot in order to make it easy for your visitors to continue on the path you want them to take.

Also, you need to choose a pleasant, attractive and high-visibility color to depict the call to action so that it will easily catch the visitor’s attention and make sure you are not deviating from that color as the conversion process progresses.

It is also important not to introduce competing elements—images or written text—in close proximity during the process of leading your prospects to your goal—whether it is to encourage the visitor to make a purchasing decision or to turn the visitor to a ‘hot lead’ or a possible customer.

The landing page that results from clicking on the source ad must contain the same verbiage that is in the ad, especially the name of your product or service. You must also ensure that you are using the language of the customer, not industry jargon. As a marketer, you should discover what words your customers use to describe your product or service by actively listening to them. For this, you need to pay attention to the words customers use when they send an e-mail query or ask questions in support forums or talk to you directly. Using customers’ own language in your source ad and repeating the same in your landing page would result in strong and enticing ‘scent’. 

Graphics, including background texture, logos and call to action buttons must be consistent across the stages of the conversion process. If you use a picture of a rabbit or a tennis racket in source ad, use the same visual on the page that it links to and on every successive page displayed during the conversion process. It also makes sense to ensure consistency in terms of the font and formatting of headline and text across the source ad and the landing page. The idea is to ensure your landing page is delivering exactly what your source ad has promised.

Often, visitors follow a hub and spoke model while searching for specific information online. The hub can be a search engine like Google or a social site like Facebook or twitter from where they hit a trigger, for example a banner ad, and follow the trail as long as they feel confident that they are on the path to the desired outcome. If they feel they are not on the right path at any point during the search, they will return to the hub and try to track another trail till they find the desired outcome. Whether a visitor is following a particular spoke and eventually make a call to action would depend on the consistency, attractiveness and strength of the ‘scent’.

For example, if your banner ad talks about exotic chocolates and your landing page displays information on online lottery, the visitor is sure to get disgusted and drop off or go back to the initial hub to continue the search. This means, considering the limited attention span of the visitor, every stage in the conversion process should not only reinforce the ‘scent’ captured in the source ad but enhance it.

Broadly, there are two kinds of scents—these are scents related to design and benefits. While crafting and designing your landing page, it is important to ensure that all the design elements—including color, layout, font and imagery—are consistent with your source ad. Also, you need to ensure that your landing page offers the same benefits that the source ad has offered. For example, if your company runs a payments platform offering mobile wallet and your sidebar ad is offering pay back for purchases made through the wallet, your landing page too should reinforce, explain and elaborate the benefits promised in the ad. Besides, if you make an offer in an ad, maintain the ‘scent’ of that offer from the ad to the landing page. An easy way to do this is by exactly replicating the content and visuals in your source ad in your landing page.

Another key factor that would make the scent strong and effective is using specific words that capture the uniqueness and quality of your product rather than using generic descriptions to explain your offering in your source ad and landing page. It is important to note that ‘product’ or ‘service’ is too generic and translates to a weak scent. For example, if you want customers to subscribe to an online monthly expense planner, you can talk about how the tool will actually help reduce their monthly expense in a measurable way. For instance, if the planner helps customers cut expenses by 30 per cent through better control on how they spend money and the ability to monitor their cash outflow through various means through a single window, your source ad should talk about that. The 30 per cent cut in expense is more easily measurable and hence an attractive hook, translating to a strong scent, than presenting your offering as just another expense planner.

When customers click a link or source ad, they have certain ‘expectations’ in their mind. The idea is not to do anything to break or diminish those expectations—a strong scent will progressively enhance customers’ expectations at each stage of the conversion process.

Also, the scent doesn’t have to end with a single visit. E-mails, newsletters, RSS and forums, etc can provide additional ways for you to leave a scent trail by encouraging visitors to return to your landing page.

Customers search the web when there is a specific need for finding out something. Therefore, visitors clicking on your pay per click ad naturally have a desire to follow a ‘scent’. So it makes sense to reinforce and ‘spread’ the scent in order to turn a sizable number of your visitors into customers.

How landing page can help you convert visitors into customers

You must be aware that how important safe ‘landing’ is while travelling by aircraft. ‘Landing’ is equally crucial in the virtual world digital marketing as well. While as a marketer, you may not be required to create your landing page yourself, knowing what goes into making it and what makes it effective will help you reach more users and possibly convert them to your customers.

In a sense, a landing page is where a visitor ‘lands on’ or arrive at while navigating the web looking for specific information. Simply put, it is a standalone web page, different from the home page of your website and landing page is designed for a focused objective—that is, to convert your visitors into customers. The landing page is distinct in the sense that it is not linked to your main web page in order to limit the options available to your visitors and guide them toward your goal of converting them to your customers.

Typically, there are two types of landing pages—click through landing pages and lead generation landing pages. As the name suggests, a click through landing page is aimed at persuading the visitor to click through to another page where you can capture more details about the visitor or where your product or service is explained better in order to persuade the visitor to make a purchasing decision.

Often, directing inbound advertising traffic straight to a shopping cart or a registration page may lead to poor conversion—by the way, conversion is, the process of converting visitors to customers—as the ad does not provide sufficient information for the visitor to make an informed decision. As the click through landing page proves more details about your product or service, there is a higher chance of persuading the visitor to make a purchasing decision.

Lead generating landing pages, on the other hand, are designed to capture the visitor’s details such as name and e-mail ID so that the user can be contacted subsequently. Since lead generating landing pages are meant for collating user data, they usually contain a form along with a description of what the visitor will get in return for submitting his/her personal data. For example, you can offer the visitor a discount coupon, contest entry, a free product trail and a physical gift (which can be couriered to the given address) in exchange for collecting user’s personal data.

However, presenting a lengthy form and asking too much information may discourage the visitor, forcing him/her to drop off. Therefore, it makes sense to ask for the minimum amount of information that will enable you to reach out your prospects or prospective customers. For example, if you are trying to contact them via e-mail, there is no need to ask for phone number and address.

A well-designed landing page can enhance conversion—that is, the process of converting visitors to customers—for your pay per click or e-mail marketing campaign. If visitors are directed to your website, they may have a hard time finding out what they are looking for. Landing page, on the other hand, can lead them in precisely the direction you want them to take.

But crafting a landing page is different from creating a website. So what are the key features that would make a landing page effective?

Landing pages need to be really simple in terms of appearance and navigation compared with your website. It should be purely aimed at leading the visitor to the expected call to action (call to action is an instruction such as ‘sign up’, ‘contact us’, ‘call now’ and ‘buy now’ to provoke an immediate response from visitors). Complexity in design and asking for more than required information can distract your visitors and prevent you from converting them to customers.

Also, the copy on the landing page should be clear, concise and persuasive. Lack of clarity may force visitors to drop off before taking the action that you would want them to take. Since visitors’ attention is limited, it makes sense to tell your visitors what they want to know in a few words as possible, and encourage them to respond to your call to action as quickly as possible. In fact, every sentence and word on your landing page needs to be aimed at supporting your call to action.

Besides, if your landing page includes a form, ensure only the most valid information is asked for. For example, 

if you would want to get visitors to sign up for an e-mail newsletter, it is better to ask only for the e-mail ID—they may find anything more cumbersome and unnecessary. If you would want them to buy your product or service, you can make the whole process simple by asking just the billing and shipping information and providing a confirmation screen before they place the order.

The design of your landing page should also be meant to support the call to action. While a cumbersome design detracts users, a simple one enhances the chance of the user converting to a customer.

A key difference between your home page and landing page is this: unlike your website, landing pages should not have site navigation. Instead the only clickable item should be your call to action button and possibly a link to more information for those visitors who are yet to make a decision—either to provide their contact information or to purchase your product or service. Placing your logo on the landing page and linking it to your home page also can be a good idea.

However, while landing page is quite different from your home page, it should reflect the design of your website to reinforce your branding. This can be done through graphics and ensuring similarity in colors and fonts.

It also makes sense to make sure that your call to action button is located near the top of the page where visitors can click without having to scroll down. In order to make your landing page uncluttered, it is also a good idea to limit the number of images on your landing page—more than two images can distract visitors from the message and call to action.

Besides, using larger font sizes will help reduce eye strain for visitors. Effective use of typography can help minimize excessive use of visuals and graphics. Also, if your landing page is linked to an e-mail campaign, ensure that the landing page reflects the look and feel of the e-mail. If the designs of the two are hugely different, visitors may wonder if they have landed on the right page. Keeping consistency in terms of fonts, images and colors can make the landing page look similar to your e-mail campaign which will in turn enhance conversion.

Six ways to raise funds for a home-based business

Well begun is half done! This is true about most human endeavors except perhaps an entrepreneurial initiative which is a different animal altogether. Most venture capital investors would say ideation is just 1% while the remaining 99% is about execution when it comes to launching and scaling up startups.

However, a more relevant question for someone who dreams of starting up is how to make the very first move—that is, how to raise the initial amount of funding to give a broad shape to a small idea? In fact, founding a small home-based business can be daunting task for many, especially those who are already burdened with running a family and therefore have limited access to a cash reverse. However, cleverly leveraging available resources and assets can help raise the initial funding.

Here are six ways you can raise funds for a small, home-based businesses.

(1) Borrow from family and friends

The immediate and easily feasible source of funding for an entrepreneur is family and friends mainly because they would at least be ready to listen to your idea (which most VC investors don’t do) out of their linking and concern for you. While the same empathy may prevent them from looking at your idea critically and remind you about possible puddles on the way, they will be forthcoming in chipping in with whatever possible to help you find your feet as an entrepreneur. There are a few benefits: a friend or relative with spare cash will only be happy to lend that to you instead of letting it locked in his/her locker. You are actually giving him/her an opportunity to put the spare cash to work! Also, since you are borrowing from your near and dear ones, they may not bother to count the interest income they may get from you which will essentially let you avail funding with zero interest outgo!

(2) Doing a part-time work

While you would want to break away from what you have been doing to earn your bread while launching a venture (the very trigger for becoming an entrepreneur for many is to escape the monotony of the 9-5 routine at the workplace), you can leverage your expertise and experience to ensure enough cash-flows to streamline the business idea. Since your venture—like a newborn child—is going to take a lot of time, the best way is to continue to do your earlier work on a part-time basis so as to generate basic cash-flows for the venture at the same save enough time to shape up the business idea and giving it wings.

(3) Run another business as a stepping stone

If you think your business idea needs a significant amount of capital, one way to tackle the challenge is to start another business where capital is much less, run it for some time and use the returns generated from the venture to fund the bigger venture. If your original idea needs even bigger funds, you can even think of running the second venture too as a precursor to launching the original idea. So when the second venture creates enough traction, you can use the cash-flows to launch the original big idea.

(4) Selling assets

While scouting for finance from external sources such as friends, banks and angel and VC investors, you may tend to overlook an easy source of finance which is very handy.

We are talking about assets that you own but are not using very actively. For example, you can sell off your old car or used furniture to raise funds to take care of the initial capital needs of your small venture that is taking baby steps. Of course, you may find it difficult to part with a family car that you have been using for years but ensuring cash-flow for your fledgling startup should be a bigger priority—once the business picks up, you can always buy a bigger and better car which your family nay find more comforting.

(5) Pre-selling products

Product firms enjoy a few advantages over service firms and one of them is the opportunity to sell products before they are actually launched as a means to raise money for financing the business. Though often overlooked, pre-selling products can be a highly effective way to ensure cash-flow for operations of your small business at initial stages.

For example, the money raised via product re-sale can be used for paying for your inventory and also enhance your retail operations. However, coordinating the inventory delivery schedule with suppliers in order to fulfill orders on time can be a challenge.

(6) Leveraging invoice advances

If you are into a product business which has already started getting orders from customers, you can use invoice advancing as a means to raise fund for operational needs.  Through invoice advancing, a lending firm or a service provider will provide you the money on invoices that have been billed out and you are supposed to pay back the amount once the customer settles the bill. The amount raised though such advances help companies close the pay gap between billed work and payments to suppliers. This in turn will help firms take up new projects more quickly. This also ensures an uninterrupted cash-flow which can be used to hire workers and scale up the business.