Category: Marketing Automation

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It can be intimidating to create your own infographic when you don’t have a design background. You could always commission an agency or hire a designer — but that can get pricey fast. To create professional-looking infographics and captivate your audience, you can benefit from learning how to create your own infographics in PowerPoint.
PowerPoint can be a marketer’s best friend when it comes to visual content creation. In fact, Infographics are the fourth most used type of content marketing. And it’s plain to see why, marketers who align the topic, content, and style of their infographics with the needs and preferences of their target audiences are still finding success among their audience.

So you may be thinking, where do I start? We’ll guide you through how to create your own infographics and even give you examples of different types you can work with using our 15 fabulous infographic templates for free within PowerPoint.

For better comprehension, we’ll walk through how to make a simple timeline infographic in PowerPoint.
1. In the Design Tab, adjust the Slide Size to best fit your infographic.
To begin making an infographic from scratch, you have to readjust the size of the PowerPoint Slide to give you more space to work with.
Begin by opening a new PowerPoint, in the top navigation bar, click on Design and select Slide Size.

Then in the drop-down menu, select either one of the predetermined sizes or click Page Setup.

Input your preferred width and height dimensions and click OK.

2. Select SmartArt from the PowerPoint navigation bar.
To make a timeline graphic in PowerPoint, suitable for any infographic, open PowerPoint and click Insert from the top navigation bar, then select the SmartArt icon beneath the navigation bar, where you’ll find several categories of graphics to choose from.

3. Find a graphic that fits your data from the Process or Picture menu.
There are two categories of graphics that make effective timelines. The first is the Process category. Click this option to expand the graphics menu shown below. 
Creating Graphics for Timelines
If you’re working to create a timeline infographic, we’ve highlighted in red a few of the most fitting timeline-related graphics.

Aside from the Process menu of graphics, you’ll also find a viable timeline graphic in the Picture category. Select this category and you’ll find the Alternating Picture Circles option near the center of the graphics menu. We’ve highlighted it in red, below.

4. Add or remove data points, time stamps, or other key information.
For the sake of these instructions, we’ll use the Alternating Picture Circles graphic from the Picture menu. Once you’ve inserted this graphic into your first PowerPoint slide, you can add or remove circular icons to match the types of data and inputs you’re presenting.

5. Insert your data into the graphic.
At this point, the size of your timeline graphic should match the amount of data you have. Begin to fill your timeline with the information you plan to report on using this timeline and explore PowerPoint’s excellent drag and drop features to help arrange graphics as necessary.
6. Edit the text and imagery of your SmartArt graphic.
As with the other graphics available in PowerPoint’s SmartArt, you can edit the text and the images associated with your timeline to your liking. As you can see below, we’ve edited the years and the images to better represent what happened at each point in time.
To insert images into your timeline graphic, right-click the square landscape icon, select a graphic From File and upload an image from your computer onto your PowerPoint slide.

To tell your story you can update the time periods in the center circles, replace the placeholder text, and adjust the visuals and colors to your liking. For those latter adjustments, you can choose Insert > Shape in PowerPoint to add in different visuals and use the paint bucket (a.k.a. Color Fill) icon to change the colors of different elements.
You can choose to create the infographic of your liking, adding background colors, more imagery, or other visual elements as you please, but for the sake of guiding you through the basic way to create your own infographic, the example stops here.
But if you’re looking for something more convenient, you can download some of our infographic templates that open directly in PowerPoint so you can get to creating faster.
PowerPoint Infographic Examples
1. Data-Centric Infographic Example
Infographics and data visualization are the peanut butter and jelly of the visual content world.
When you have new data to reveal to the world, you can use an infographic to display that data as part of a cohesive, visual narrative. And that’s exactly what the Data Geek template is for.

We’ve loaded this template with a variety of different charts and graphs, which you can easily update with your own data. (Just right-click on a graph, choose Edit Data, and you’ll be able to customize the values in an Excel spreadsheet.)
What to Add to a Data-Centric Infographic

Column chart: Use for comparing different categories or for showing changes over time (from left to right).
Pie chart: Use for making part-to-whole comparisons. (Note: They work best with small data sets.)
Line graph: Use for showing data that changes continuously over time. Ideal for displaying volatility, trends, acceleration, or deceleration.
Doughnut chart: Use a pie chart. This stylistic variation allows you to put a number, graphic, or other visual in the center of the chart.
Bar chart: Use a column chart. (The horizontal bars make it easier to display long category names.)

2. Timeline Infographic
Telling the history of a particular industry, product, brand, trend, or tactic can be a great topic for an infographic. And while there are a variety of different ways that you can visualize time — including in a circle, which is what we did with our Google algorithm updates infographic — the timeline is by far the most common and easiest design method to use.

Timeline Infographic Best Practices

Research. Research. Research. The best timeline infographics aren’t just beautifully designed — they also tell a great story based on extensive research. So before you start the design phase of your infographic, put in the time to surface the best information possible.
Narrow the scope: Timelines that cover hundreds or thousands of years can certainly be interesting, but they can also require weeks or months of research. To keep your sanity, stick with shorter time periods.
Keep your copy concise: Infographics are supposed to be visual. If you find yourself writing 100+ words for each date on your timeline, a blog post may be the better content format.

3. Modern Design Infographic
For this infographic template, we wanted to do something that reflected modern design trends, including using banners and arrows.
In terms of content, we provided plenty of space for both stats and copy. There’s also a column chart at the bottom. But remember, you can always add different charts and graphs to the template wherever you see fit. Just select Insert > Chart … and you’ll have several options to choose from.

Modern Design Infographic Best Practices

Experiment with new color palettes. There are tons of free color palettes online. Don’t believe me? Do a Google image search of “Color Palette”. When you find a palette you like, drag the image directly into your PowerPoint presentation. Next, select the Color Fill bucket, choose More Colors … and click on the eyedropper icon. With the eyedropper tool, you can select colors from your palette and use them for elements in your infographic.

Take the time to manipulate shapes. PowerPoint has an extensive library of shapes — including banners, ribbons, and arrows — that you can use in your infographic design. By clicking and dragging on the little yellow diamonds that appear on these shapes, you can customize them. For example, you can make the pointy ends of a ribbon longer or shorter, or make the body of an arrow thinner or thicker.

 4. Flowchart Infographic
While on the surface a flowchart infographic may appear simple and fun, a lot of thought and planning needs to go into making sure the different sections logically flow into each other.
In our flowchart PowerPoint template, we created a basic flowchart structure, with positive responses guiding viewers to a conclusion at the bottom left of the infographic and negative responses guiding viewers to a separate conclusion at the bottom right of the infographic.

Flowchart Infographic Best Practices

Draw out the branches beforehand. Before you dive into PowerPoint, get out a pen and paper and do a rough outline of your flowchart. Test for weaknesses in your logic by answering questions in every possible combination and seeing where you end up. For best results, have a friend or coworker run through the flowchart, too.
The smaller the scope, the easier the execution. The more questions or stages you add to your flowchart, the more difficult it will be to create (and the harder it will likely be for viewers to understand). So try to narrow the focus of your flowchart.

5. Image-Heavy Infographic
So far, the infographic templates we’ve looked at have relied primarily on illustrations that you can create within PowerPoint. But of course, there’s no reason why you can’t bring external photos and other images into your infographic design.
We’ve created this image-heavy infographic template for that exact purpose. It’s great for comparing different categories, ideas, or results, and since you don’t need to create or customize a lot of shapes, it’s a lot less work.

Image-Heavy Infographic Best Practices

Use high-quality images. It’s better to scale down a big image (e.g. 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels) than to scale up a small image (e.g. 20 pixels by 20 pixels) to fit a particular space. The latter approach will result in images appearing pixelated and grainy.
Use borders. Adding borders to your images will help make them feel like their part of a cohesive design. In PowerPoint, you can control the size, style, and color of borders under the Format Picture tab.
Save your infographic as a PNG file. This is a best practice for all infographics but is particularly relevant when publishing an infographic that contains photographs. The PNG extension offers better quality than other options. To save your finished infographic as a PNG file, you simply need to choose File > Save As … and select PNG from the dropdown.

Make an Eye-Catching Infographic Today
The possibilities are endless when you discover how to start creating infographics. You’ll be able to expand your skills as a marketer and create more elaborate content that your audience will be intrigued by and engage with. We hope you found this article useful and that you’ll take the initiative to build your own infographics in PowerPoint.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Public relations is the practice of creating mutually-beneficial relationships by providing relevant and timely information to an audience that already exists. Content marketing, meanwhile, is all about creating content that attracts and retains new audience members.
While these concepts may seem like opposite ends of the communication spectrum, combining content marketing and PR offers a new approach to lead generation for your organization.

Current Challenges in Lead Generation
Customer acquisition costs (CAC) are on the rise. About 60% of marketers say that their CAC has increased over the past three years, making it more important than ever for companies to both identify potential leads and increase the chances that these leads are quickly converted into paying customers.
Content marketing excels at the second part of this equation. As a result, companies are earmarking more of their marketing budgets for content-based campaigns; as noted by the Marketing Insider Group, the most successful companies now spend up to 40% of their total marketing budget on content-driven campaigns. PR budgets are also growing as companies look to keep existing connections strong — in the U.S. alone, businesses now spend more than 6 billion per year on public relations efforts.
The result? Spending to keep current customers and drive conversions is on the rise. However, for many companies, lead generation is hampered by content nets that are too wide to capture the ideal audience, and PR approaches that focus too much on maintaining the status quo.

On its own, PR is designed to keep current audiences interested and disseminate key information about business operations to relevant news and industry outlets.
By integrating techniques that content marketers use to drive engagement (quizzes, questionnaires or user generated content), it’s possible for PR teams to generate new leads that have existing connections with current audiences in order to capture more of the target market.
How Content Marketing and PR can Work Together
PR and content marketing are two sides of the same coin. Both focus on creating and communicating valuable information — just for two different audiences.
When it comes to PR, the goal is to educate existing audiences, such as loyal customers, stakeholders, and social media followers, about topics of interest. Assets created by public relations teams — such as press releases, white papers, or eBooks — are often posted on news sites or shared with industry publications to reach an audience that’s already listening.
Content marketing teams, meanwhile, focus on consistently creating high-value content that’s both timely and relevant and then sharing this content in hopes of generating new customer interest and expanding the overall audience. Content marketing teams are often responsible for email campaigns that encourage users to click through on new products or download reports; they may also create newsletters and social media posts and coordinate marketing partnerships such as those with social media influencers.
Combining these two approaches makes it possible to find and generate leads that are likely to become loyal customers.
Not sure where to get started with lead generation under a content marketing/PR model? We’ve got you covered with seven strategy options.

1. Find new channels
News travels fast. So fast, in fact, that even digital news outlets often can’t keep up. For businesses, this means that it remains important to submit PR pieces to familiar news sources and industry publications. It’s also worth finding accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that offer similar news coverage at speed.
By using a combination of familiar and fast-moving options for content distribution, companies can increase their reach and their impact.
2. Combine science and art
While PR’s focus has long been on written content— press releases and white papers that contain the science of data collection and statistical interpretation — there’s a growing demand for visual content that offers a lower bar to entry.
The result? Marrying the in-depth content created by PR teams with more broadly-applicable infographic art developed by content marketing experts will help your content reach the widest audience possible.
3. Repurpose content
When it comes to content marketing and PR combined, there’s nothing wrong with copying yourself, so long as you do it the right way.
Here’s what it looks like in practice: You create a white paper or eBook about a new product, then repurpose this content to create multiple, shorter blog posts. The result? You capture both PR and content markets with similar — but not identical — content.
4. Talk up your accomplishments
Don’t be shy about awards you’ve won or honors you’ve received. Often listed on press releases, companies may be reluctant to mention awards in content marketing efforts for fear of veering too far away from social conversation into sales.
In reality, it’s worth highlighting what you’re good at, both on your website and in any content marketing campaign efforts. While there’s a balance to strike here between self-love and self-awareness, the evolving nature of consumer expectations has customers seeking out brands who have the credentials to back up big claims.
5. Create a reciprocal content framework
Your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Consider a white paper used by PR teams and then reposted as a blog and social media link by content marketers. If content teams can prompt engagement from potential customers, such as giving feedback or leaving comments, this can help inform the focus of the next piece of PR content, which in turn gives rise to the next content campaign.
6. Lean on established connections
Both what you know and who you know matters in marketing. It’s worth leveraging PR connections to help drive content strategies. These could be social media influencers, industry experts, or even long-term customers who are willing to share your content.
For influencers, this could mean an ongoing freelancer arrangement that requires a specific number of posts. For long-term clients, discounts or other offers could pave the way for content sharing.
7. Keep communications open
Last but never least in the fast-moving world of consumer purchasing trends? PR and content marketing teams need to stay in constant communication. This both reduces the risk of redundant or outdated content making it to news outlets or onto social media sites and helps ensure that new campaigns are coordinated for maximum effect.
Examples of Content Marketing and PR Lead Generation Strategies
So what does this combination of PR and content marketing look like in practice? Let’s take a look at four real-world examples.
1. Wells Fargo
PR is about digging into the details, while content marketing focuses on the outcome. Both work in favor of Wells Fargo, which donates up to 1.5% of its total revenue to charitable causes every year.
As a press release this is good information, but as part of a larger content marketing campaign, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, it’s a great way for the company to show themselves doing some good and connect with new customers.
2. Ford
Ford is focusing on sustainability and has committed $22 billion for vehicle electrification efforts to help achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an ambitious goal with a substantial timeline — but it also fits neatly with the current public focus on green initiatives.
By creating a narrative around this sustainable approach, Ford has the potential to reach environmentally-conscious consumers who would have otherwise avoided the popular vehicle maker.
3. Google
Google is also committed to energy reduction but has had more impact on the social side of corporate social responsibility (CSR) thanks to its outspoken CEO, Sundar Pichai, who is willing to engage both industry and world leaders in areas of social responsibility and equality.
As a result, Google is not only able to leverage its massive data resources to deliver relevant PR statistics but can back it up with socially-conscious action that makes for compelling content.
4. Netflix
Streaming giant Netflix offers paid parental leave for parents — most take between four and eight months but they can take up to a year — putting them well ahead of most corporations.
While the parental leave itself is a great talking point, combining information about this program with details about the ongoing success of the company at scale creates a great content narrative, one that could pay significant dividends over time as companies grapple with the ongoing impact of The Great Resignation.
PR and Content Marketing: Making the Most of this Dynamic Duo
PR and content marketing together can bring lead generation opportunities to the table. Public relations offers relevant information for interested parties to help create reciprocal relationships, while content marketing makes it possible to streamline the process of lead-to-customer conversion.
By combining forces, these disparate delivery methods become a dynamic duo, capable of generating leads that are more likely to convert — and more likely to share their experiences with other potential customers.
Want to make the most of this practical pairing? Use PR to establish and reinforce relationships with industry insiders and influencers, then lean on their connections to distribute purpose-built content that helps generate high-quality leads across your target audience.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When it comes to building effective social media ad campaigns, the biggest question isn’t “how much should I spend?”
It’s “for every dollar I spend, how much do I get back?”
In other words, it’s all about return on investment (ROI) — how are ad spending and customer conversion linked? Understanding this connection makes it less important how much you spend, and instead lets you focus on the impact of your social ads. In this piece, we’re taking a look at how to measure social media marketing ROI and offering a look at eight tools to help streamline the process.

ROI is a measure of spend versus value: If I spend “X” amount, how much do I get back? The best-case scenario is an ROI greater than one, where companies get back more than they spent on an investment.
Consider a manufacturing company buying a new piece of production line equipment that costs $10,000 but brings in $20,000 worth of revenue each year. The result is a positive ROI and a worthwhile investment. While measuring social media ROI isn’t quite as straightforward since companies need to account for the reach and impact of specific ad campaigns, the underlying concept is the same: Over time, the goal is to get back more than you spend.
While specific measurement timelines and media metrics will differ, the role of ROI remains the same.
How to Measure Social Media Marketing ROI
One of the most popular and data-driven ways to measure social media marketing ROI is through paid advertising. The problem arises, though, when there isn’t a sound strategy in place to yield a positive return on investment.
How does this happen? Typically, social media marketers build an AdWords campaign to rank for important search terms. The campaign drives clicks, traffic, and leads, but ultimately the ad spend outweighs the impact of the ads which is bad news for ROI.
These marketers end up learning a really expensive lesson, one that could be easily prevented by following these simple steps:
1. Develop a Budget.
Ads aren’t right for everyone. Some industries have extremely high competition with astronomical CPCs. Some products have too low of an average sales price for the economics to work.
To determine if ads are worth your time, start by building a budget. This isn’t always an easy task, especially considering the hit many marketing budgets have taken over the past two years. According to Tequia Burt, Editor in Chief of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog, market knowledge is a key component of this process. “As marketing leaders evaluate their budgets and organize their plans for the year ahead,” she says, “a bit of context and clarity can lend helpful structure.”
Consider that 76% of companies plan to boost spending across areas such as branded influencer content, ads in social media stories and ads in social media feeds. Knowing where and when this spending makes the most sense is critical to drive ROI.
Featured Resource: Budget Templates To Manage Your 2022 Spend

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2. Continually Evaluate Ad Performance.
Try not to look at ads as a shortcut. It’s possible to get to a place with ads where they become a recurring source of profit, but typically that’s not how things start.
Don’t be surprised when a week after your campaign launches your ads aren’t generating tons of profit. “Around 80% of businesses online feel that they deliver great assistance via social media, but only 8 percent of their customers agreed,” says John Kopanakis, professor of Business Intelligence at Hellenic Mediterranean University. “Despite putting in a lot of effort, many marketers hardly reach their targeted sales. It is because they struggle to measure the impact of their social media efforts on their sales.”
As a result, incremental improvements in clickthrough rates and conversion rates can have a huge impact on profit. Use the ads calculator to explore the impact these changes could have. Watch your ads like a hawk for the first month and you’ll avoid big mistakes.
3. Make Sure You’re Amplifying the Right Message
Ads act like a megaphone to amplify your marketing campaigns and content. The more complete and well-developed your campaigns are, the better your ads will perform.
As noted by Samuel Bu, Marketing Director at FortuneNote Chinese Business Magazine in a recent LinkedIn Pulse post, it’s also critical to find the right channel for your business. While he highlights LinkedIn as a great way to generate leads and calls out Facebook’s huge impact on the social market, he also highlights challenges with platforms such as Instagram. Why? Bu says “Most likely, Instagram falls short of producing strong ROI due to its more intangible metrics — such as brand awareness, reputation, loyalty, and consumer engagement.”
Think about it: Which ads do you think perform better? Those promoting your homepage or those promoting a remarkable piece of content that helps someone?
Bingo. Those promoting awesome content.
Campaigns that use ads should be treated like other campaigns. Establish your goals first, build great content, focus your message and optimize your landing pages, then figure out how ads can help amplify your message. Taking this combined approach and only using ads as a strategic component of your marketing campaigns will pay off.
How Much Should You Spend on Ads?
Assuming you’ve run the numbers and now know what you can expect in terms of profit and ROI, it’s time to launch a campaign. To do this you’ll have to make two budget decisions, regardless of where you are advertising:

Total campaign budget or duration: How much do you plan to spend in total? How long will the ads run for? Be aware that if you don’t set a limit there will be no maximum or end date.
Daily budget: How much do you want to spend a day?

There are two ways most marketers use ads, short-term and long-term. Let’s take a look at both …
Short-term ads. Budget = at least a few hundred dollars over a month.
When marketers use ads for a short-term goal, it’s usually to jump-start a campaign or boost content that needs a bump. These ad spends are generally smaller and shorter, but can be large.
If you have a few hundred dollars to spend, spend it this way. Create a social post that promotes a piece of content and then use your ads to boost the post. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have good solutions for this. Make sure you use the social network that gives you the best targeting for your persona and returns the most valuable leads. Measure this by assessing the quality of the leads generated after the campaign.
Long-term ads. Budget = at least a few thousand dollars over a quarter.
Ads can be a great solution in a pinch but if you really want to use ads strategically build them into your overall marketing strategy. This means more consistent, quarterly ad spends.
Consider how potential customers make purchase decisions and use ads to influence them. This may mean always relying on search ads or retargeting to make sure prospects find you when they are ready to buy. You’re more likely to accumulate better data taking this approach, which will allow you to get more sophisticated in how you optimize your ad spend.
Given the quickly-changing nature of social media platforms and posts, it’s worth considering social media ROI tools to help stay on top of spend and revenue measurements. Here’s a look at eight great options.

1. HubSpot

The HubSpot Advertising ROI Calculator makes it easy to narrow down when and where it’s worth spending on social ads.
Start by inputting your projected monthly budget, then your expected cost-per-click (CPC), target conversion rate, average sale price and lead to customer rate to get a general idea of your ROI on advertising spend. Use the calculator regularly to reevaluate your campaigns and make sure they’re delivering on key metrics.
2. Hootsuite

Hootsuite also offers a free Social ROI Calculator that lets you input ad spend data to determine potential ROI. While it uses slightly different metrics and has a different setup than the HubSpot version, the general function is the same: Input your data to see where it makes sense to spend on ads and where the return may not justify the investment.
While both offer a solid starting point for ROI, we’re naturally biased toward the HubSpot version.
3. Sprout Social

Next up is Sprout Social. Unlike HubSpot and Hootsuite, you’ll need to sign up for a free trial to access Sprout Social’s ROI calculator. After 30 days, it’s $99 per month if you want to keep using the tool.
Depending on your current ad campaign and ROI goals, however, the cost may be worth it. Sprout’s tool offers message-level insights to see which posts are proving their worth along with follower, engagement, and keyword analytics that cover the entire publishing process from draft to queue to posting.
4. Cyfe

Cyfe provides a set of all-in-one business dashboards that provide insights across key social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Easily monitor what ads are being posted, how they’re performing, and how users are interacting with your campaign efforts.
Cyfe comes with a 14-day free trial. After that, it’s $19 per month for two dashboards and one user.
5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is familiar, free, and functional. While it doesn’t have the same laser-focus on social media as some other offerings on our list, it comes with the advantage of access to massive data sets, and also helps inform social advertising SEO, which is critical to any effective campaign.
To see how your social ads are performing at a high level, first log into your Google Analytics dashboard. From there, select Acquisition, then All Traffic, then Channels. This will bring up a list of your traffic sources, including those from social sites, in turn helping you get a general sense of how social ads are working to drive revenue.
Featured Resource: The Ultimate Google Ads PPC Kit

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6. Buffer

Buffer is an all-in-one social media marketing and ROI tool that’s designed to simplify the process of measuring and managing ads. The tool streamlines the creation of social ad content and lets you measure impact in just a few clicks to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to improve.
If you’re just getting started with social media ads, Buffer has a free plan that lets you manage up to three channels with basic tools. From there, plans start at $5 per month for “Essentials”, $10 per month for “Team” and $100 per month for “Agency”.
7. Keyhole

Keyhole lets you accomplish two key tasks: Listen to what people are saying about your brand in real-time and monitor the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns.
The first is critical because customer sentiment is a solid bellwether when it comes to ad effectiveness. If the number of people talking about your brand is going up — and if most of what they have to say is positive, you’re on the right track.
Influencer marketing reports, meanwhile, help keep tabs on influencer partners who exist outside your business ecosystem but offer potential benefits for your brand, as long as they’re posting consistently and in line with your messaging.
8. Social Mention

The simplest tool on our list, Social Mention lets you search any keyword or key phrase for recent social mentions.
In practice, companies can use Social Mention to see what’s currently trending and what opportunities exist to target specific keywords, and can then follow up after ads have gone live to see how campaigns are performing.
Getting the Biggest Social Impact for Your Spend
Bottom line? There’s no single way to spend your social marketing budget. Some companies may prefer to keep spending low and handle most of their ads through free platforms and word of mouth, while others are willing to spend top dollar for on-demand results.
Whatever budget you choose and whichever approach you take, however, there’s a common rule of thumb: Ask lots of questions about your ad spend, and make sure ads are performing as intended.
Why? Because even targeting the right market with the right approach, it’s easy to burn through money fast. Safeguard yourself by knowing what to expect, having clear expectations, and using the right tools to measure social ad ROI.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

 

In one of our earlier insights, we showed how the rise of the CLV-ROI approach is changing eCommerce business models. But let’s get right to the point of this marketing insight: Turning your customers into loyal fans requires you to first convert visitors into customers.

This is why we understand conversion rate (CR) as the most fundamental metric in eCommerce. Without a honed CR, you just run a website. Here’s why.

 

What is the Conversion Rate?

 

In an increasingly competitive eCommerce world, there are some dos and don’ts when it comes to encouraging customers to buy items from your business. This act is called a conversion, and it’s just about the most important metric you’ll need to watch as you plan on building your business and increasing revenue.

CR is the percentage of visitors landing on your website who complete a desired action.

In eCommerce, conversion means the percentage of website visitors who purchased something from your online store in a set period of time.

Next, we are going to explain why this metric is so important, though with this definition we have probably spoiled the surprise. Isn’t it obvious why we are talking about the foundation of an actual, working eCommerce business rather than…just a website?

 

Traffic into Sales: Why CR Is a Crucial Metric in eCommerce

 

Actually, no, there is one situation in which you can ignore CR, just set up an online store, start sending visitors to the site with paid advertising, and call it a day: It is when you have budget orders of a magnitude greater than even the worse possible costs—and it will be that way for the rest of your eCommerce life—and your wares are extremely expensive.

In this scenario, you are able to draw millions of visitors to your website. Even with awful CR, some visitors will turn into customers, buying your obnoxiously overpriced product. 

The question is: Why do you even start an ineffective eCommerce business if you have such massive amounts of money at your disposal?

Any rational business model must work efficiently. Unless you can convert those visitors—lead them to take the next step along the path from prospective to happy customer—then you’ve wasted your time and your money building traffic. Any page on the internet can buy traffic, but a conversion-optimized website turns that traffic into sales and a poorly-performing website fails to capitalize on the opportunity.

 

The Tremendous Effect of CR on ROI

 

Let’s get to the numbers.

Suppose your eCommerce is currently converting visitors at the rate of 2%. Two out of every one hundred people who visit your site end up purchasing something within the timeframe of your measure.

Your average monthly traffic is 500K unique visitors, and your average order value (AOV) is $150.

With these numbers, you’re realizing $1.5M in monthly revenue. Then you apply the proven principles of conversion rate optimization (CRO) to coax your CR up by 2%, and you’ve doubled your monthly revenue to $3M.

CRO not only converts more of your visitors into buyers, but it also draws more sales and pushes your AOV up. If your 2% improvement of the CR also results in the AOV rising to $200, your new monthly revenue will climb to $4M.

You’ve gone from $1.5M to $4M in monthly revenue simply by boosting your CR and AVO.

 

Good eCommerce CR: What Does It Mean?

 

Average eCommerce CRs are 1%–2%. Even if you are doing everything right, you can still expect to win the sale around 2% of the time.

A 2%+ CR should be the baseline goal for your online store. The best websites have CRs of 11% or even more.

But is 2%+ really good for you, specifically? How does it compare with the CR of your competition? You might get frustrated by spending money to draw traffic to your site then seeing those visitors leave without making a purchase. Is your paltry CR normal? Or have others found ways to get more and better-targeted traffic?

To understand which CR is good at a specific moment for your business, you must understand one very important thing: Your most important competitor is you. To properly assess your progress, always compare it to your own previous achievements.

It is all about the small steps you make on the road of CRO.

 

What Is CRO?

 

Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of optimizing the experience of your site or landing page based on visitor behavior, with the aim of improving the probability of the visitors taking desired actions—namely conversions.

Since the introduction of tools like SALESmanago’s Customer Preference Center, optimization efforts can be undertaken not only on the basis of first-party data, like behavior, but also on the basis of zero-party data, preferences revealed explicitly by the customers. 

 

The Importance of Continuous CRO

 

It’s not uncommon for eCommerce businesses to focus on achieving ambitious, long-term goals throughout the year. While long-term goal setting is an important part of running an eCommerce business, you shouldn’t overlook the value of setting marginal, short-term goals along the way. 

Very often we see eCommerce managers overemphasize the importance of one central goal while overlooking the significance of making marginal improvements every day. We recommend focusing on making incremental improvements to your CR by a small percentage each day. CRO is an ongoing process that sometimes uncovers areas where big gains can be made quickly. Such an effect can be obtained, for example, by incorporating zero-party data into your marketing toolset and utilizing it to hyperpersonalize your website. But most often you’ll be working to make incremental improvements over time. 

Is your current CR high enough? Probably not. You may not be able to double revenue overnight, but you can certainly do more with what you have. That is the goal of CRO. 

 

To Sum Up

 

There are many methods for achieving effective CRO, and this is something we will tackle in our next insight. As all of them may be summarized as ways of showing what customers want to see and what they will react to, the recent revolution in eCommerce technology has exponentially increased the means at your disposal. This is especially true in the case of actionable zero-party data. Because “what customers want to see and what they will react to” can, in turn, be translated into just one word: hyperpersonalization.

 

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