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Converting visitors into paying customers is crucial for business growth, and using effective conversion marketing strategies will help you optimize your website for sales. Whether you're a small business owner or a seasoned marketer, these tactics can increase your conversions and ultimately drive revenue.
Let’s discuss twelve proven conversion marketing strategies that marketing experts on DesignRush advocate for and turn your website visitors into loyal customers.
Table of Contents
What Is Conversion Marketing?
The most basic conversion marketing definition is that it’s a powerful digital strategy that converts website visitors into leads or paying customers. Whether it's making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up for a webinar, the end goal is to encourage specific activities that lead to conversion.
This approach focuses on optimizing existing traffic rather than attracting new visitors. Effective tactics include creating persuasive landing pages, improving website navigation and usability, testing different CTAs, and using analytics to measure and refine results.
Many digital strategy agencies use conversion marketing to boost a business’s conversion rates and ultimately drive revenue growth.
Top 12 Conversion Marketing Strategies & Tactics in 2024
These conversion marketing strategies will help your business convert new and returning visitors to your website:
- Focus on Designing Killer Calls to Action (CTAs)
- Utilize Smart Pop-Ups
- Create Convincing and Authority-Building Content
- Focus Your Social Media Strategy on Engagement and Long-Form Content
- Popularity of Videos Will Continue to Skyrocket
- Don’t Neglect the Power of Email Marketing
- Use a Sense of Urgency and Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO)
- Reward Loyal Customers To Turn Them into Brand Ambassadors
- Work on Users Revisiting Abandoned Carts
- Optimize Your Website — Especially Its Speed
- Make User Experience Your Priority
- Think Mobile-First
1. Focus on Designing Killer Calls to Action (CTAs)
Creating effective calls to action (CTAs) is crucial for on-site conversion marketing. CTAs provide a shortcut to increase conversion rates and lead directly to the bottom of the conversion funnel. An eye-catching CTA with compelling copy can motivate users to act.
Here are some trends for 2024:
- Double CTAs: Strategically placing two CTAs reinforces the user's desire to click through — place your CTA in a strategic location that's easy to find and hard to miss, such as above the fold and at the end of a product description
- Creative Copy: Write compelling CTA copy that engages the user and echos your brand voice — use clear, action-oriented language that tells users exactly what they're getting when they click your button.
- Creative Design: Create user-friendly and eye-catching CTAs that are hard to ignore — use a contrasting color that catches the user's attention and makes your CTA button pop.
2. Utilize Smart Pop-Ups
A 2024 OptiMonk survey found that the average pop-up has an 11.09% conversion rate. Pop-ups increase email lists and improve eCommerce conversion rates by offering attractive deals, discounts, and special offers.
As one of the most used conversion marketing methods, smart pop-ups are generally divided into several categories:
- Pushdown and pushup pop-ups: Pop-ups that slide from above or below, pushing the content away.
- Delayed pop-ups: These appear after a user has spent a certain period on site.
- Exit-intent pop-ups: These pop-ups appear when a user moves their mouse cursor over their X button to leave the site. They are designed to pull the user back in by letting them know about discounts, last-minute offers, and other strong incentives to keep them on the site.
- Sign-up pop-up forms: These pop-ups incentivize a user to sign up for free content such as eBooks.
It’s worth reiterating that a clear headline and CTA copy remain crucial for effective pop-ups in 2024, regardless of their positioning.
3. Create Convincing and Authority-Building Content
Content marketing is a game-changer for businesses today. As we look into 2024 and ahead to 2025, well-researched and well-written content continues to rank higher on search engines, directly impacting your organic traffic and lead pool for conversion.
Here are some other benefits of quality content:
- Generate leads
- Increase site engagement
- Decrease bounce rates
- Boost search rankings
- Drives user engagement
- Increases site dwell time
- Builds trust with your audience
- Improves conversion rates
Outsourcing to a content marketing agency can help you produce quality, relevant content in a time- and cost-effective manner, leveraging the expertise of marketing professionals.
4. Focus Your Social Media Strategy on Engagement and Long-Form Content
Another key conversion strategy in marketing is social media engagement. This is crucial for brands today; however, success depends on strategic channel choices and tactics.
Here are some key stats and trends to keep in mind for 2024:
- Only 2% of social media users make purchases, but targeting ads on Facebook can convert to 98%. (Source: LyfeMarketing)
- Over 60% of Instagram's user base is aged between 18 and 34, making it the perfect platform to target young adults and Millennials. (Source: Statista)
- Facebook's largest user demographic is men aged 25-34, accounting for 18.4% of global users. The second largest audience is men aged 18-24. (Source: Statista)
- Engagement is expected to rise on TikTok in 2024, with experts predicting the platform will amass 121.1 million users in the U.S. alone. (Source: Statista)
- Social media channels like TikTok and Pinterest will be expanding their offerings to include clean rooms and other targeting solutions, making them more accessible to B2B marketers. With TikTok surpassing Google and Bing for Gen Z searches, B2B brands should explore using TikTok for search strategies. (Source: EMarketer)
Other vital things to note when using social media for conversion marketing are:
- Communicating and engaging with your audience: The comments section on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and elsewhere is where the conversion can happen. Engagement will become even more important, as algorithms will qualify content with a lot of comments for better ranking.
- Utilizing groups and communities: Facebook groups can greatly impact your organic reach if you actively post content there.
- Use social media advertising and marketing: To make the most of social media advertising in 2024, consider partnering with an advertising agency that can help you navigate these trends and effectively reach your target audience. Local targeting and AI segmentation will be particularly important.
Don't miss out on the power of social media — consider employing professional social media marketing companies.
5. Popularity of Videos Will Continue to Skyrocket
According to Wyzowl, videos are shared twice as much as other types of content, with people being 52% more likely to share them than social posts, product pages, and blog posts. Video marketing has proven to be a useful tool for more than one stage in the marketing funnel, as it can help optimize:
- The awareness stage by inspiring a desire
- The consideration stage by providing useful information that builds trust and authority
- The conversion stage by showcasing the product or service, reinforcing the prospective customer's purchase intent
If you're thinking of adding videos to your conversion marketing strategy in 2024, these are the upcoming trends to bear in mind:
- 360-degree video experiences for a more immersive experience
- Shoppable and live videos for more authentic interactions
- Interactive videos for increased engagement
- Educational videos as a better alternative to dry sales pitches
6. Don’t Neglect the Power of Email Marketing
As one of the evergreen strategies, email marketing still delivers exceptional return on investment (ROI), with up to $45 for every dollar spent, particularly in the retail, eCommerce, and consumer goods sectors. In 2024, email marketing revenue amounted to $12.33 billion, and it's expected to surpass $17.9 billion by 2027, according to Statista.
Having said that, your business needs standout emails to maximize conversions. Here are some tips:
- Boost email engagement with personalization: In 2024, 83% of consumers prefer to get hyper-personalized emails. To meet this demand, you can add dynamic content like store maps or countdown timers, and personalized recommendations to bring subscribers back to your site.
- Increase conversions by offering incentives: This can be discounts or free samples. According to a Google and Boston Consulting Group study on data sharing, 90% of customers are willing to share their email addresses for a small incentive.
- Focus on simplistic designs to adjust to mobile devices:According to AudiencePoint, around 60% of emails in 2024 are opened using mobile devices. This means improving automatic screen adjustments, incorporating touch-friendly elements, optimizing the content and images for mobile readers, etc.
- Turn to generative AI to automate campaigns: According to Litmus Talks’ “The State of Email Trends” report for 2024, 34% of email marketers use generative AI to write email copy and automate responses and other aspects of their campaigns.
- Segment your email subscribers into smaller groups: Experts at Litmus Talks say that 90% of survey respondents have improved their performance through email segmentation.
7. Use a Sense of Urgency and Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO)
FOMO is a timeless marketing technique to accelerate user action. Terms like "limited time" and "last chance" create a sense of urgency, driving conversions.
Other FOMO techniques include highlighting stock levels, using countdowns, showing missed opportunities, offering limited free shipping, and exclusive products/offers. Exclusivity is the best way to cause FOMO — simply put, people love owning something others don't.
Here are some FOMO conversion marketing examples via email to get you started:
- Limited-time offers: To stay on top in the crowded online world, use limited-time offers (LTOs) in your marketing campaigns. LTOs, such as sales and freebies, generate buzz around your products and services.
- Back-in-stock emails: Back-in-stock emails notify customers immediately when a product is available again, creating a sense of urgency as it may sell out quickly. This example also highlights limited stock to further encourage purchases.
- Reviews and testimonials: Testimonials are powerful marketing tools that can help increase sales and add personality to your business.
- Showcasing best-selling and top-rated products: Showcase best-selling or top-rated products in your email to entice customers into purchasing them, as successful companies like Starbucks and Apple do. Customers may feel like they are missing out on the best products if they don't buy them.
8. Reward Loyal Customers To Turn Them into Brand Ambassadors
Reward brand advocates to increase conversions from existing customers by focusing on these channels in 2024:
- Social media
- Online reviews
- Affiliate
Brand ambassadors can promote your company through various techniques, including social media and word-of-mouth. The most effective process for creating a pool of brand ambassadors is starting a program devoted to just them, which includes:
- Presenting them with exclusive high-quality products
- Offering freebies and service upgrades (to make them feel they are more than customers and part of your brand)
- Asking for their feedback on special offers and products
- Replying to their comments on social media
Here are some 2024 trends from the best influencer marketing agencies:
- Niche and micro-influencers will be on the rise
- Emerging platforms for influencer/ambassador marketing, such as TikTok and LinkedIn
- Communicating values, not just products and services
9. Work on Users Revisiting Abandoned Carts
XP2 by Dynamic Yield found that cart abandonment rates from their customer base vary depending on the device being used. On average, mobile users have the highest abandonment rate at 76.06%, followed by tablet users at 67.78%, and desktop users at 65.68%.
Cart abandonment is a top cause of lost conversions. To improve your conversion rates, reach out to these shoppers and motivate them to complete the sale.
Here's how:
- Targeted marketing and remarketing: This reminds visitors of items they have been looking at and may lure them back to your website to complete the purchase.
- Cart abandonment recovery: Use tools or automation that remind shoppers that they have products in their carts.
- Recommendation and personalization engines: These can be incorporated to provide AI-infused deal-making.
10. Optimize Your Website — Especially Its Speed
An important conversion strategy in marketing is site speed. It can make or break your online business.
Based on an analysis of the top 100 webpages worldwide, ToolTester found that the average page takes 2.5 seconds to load on desktop and 8.6 on mobile. This means that optimizing your website's speed is crucial for a better user experience and higher conversions.
In 2024, site speed is more important than ever, and filling your site with too many graphics, videos, and plugins will hinder its performance.
According to Neil Patel, not only does Google penalize slow sites in search results, but 47% of people expect pages to load in just 2 seconds or less. The same amount of people will leave a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This means a one second delay can potentially cost big eCommerce sites $2.5 million in lost sales annually, for those making $100,000 per day.
11. Make User Experience Your Priority
Simplicity is key when it comes to creating a successful customer journey. The three stages of awareness, consideration, and conversion provide a solid foundation, but minimizing friction is crucial for success.
To do this, consider including appropriate content that is:
- Concise yet compelling
- Specific and easy-to-use calls to action
- Intuitive navigation without distractions
User experience plays a significant role in optimizing the customer journey, so ensure your website is well-optimized for mobile devices, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. A simple interface is more likely to convert users.
12. Think Mobile-First
According to Oberlo, global mobile web traffic has surged over the past decade, with mobile phones accounting for 59.40% of all web traffic as of March 2024, up from a mere 10.74% in 2012. Statcounter also gave similar data, reporting that mobiles take 59.57% of the worldwide market share in 2024, while desktop devices account for 38.41% and tablets only 2.02%.
For mobile app marketing, efficiency is key. This means your website should be mobile-friendly, intuitive, responsive, and easy to navigate across devices.
Bonus: Establish Presence on Ranking & Review Platforms
Establish your brand's presence on rating platforms like DesignRush and review platforms like Trustpilot or Yelp to increase your traffic, consumer trust, and consequently, conversions.
What Is Conversion Rate in Marketing?
To measure how your conversion marketing strategy is doing, you need to know about conversion rates. These key metrics show the percentage of users who have completed a desired action on your website, social media page, or email campaign. It can be anything from a product purchase to a form submission.
To calculate your conversion rate, use this formula:
The number of visitors who converted / total number of visitors x 100.
Low conversion rates can signal issues in your customer journey or lack of transparency. Nearly half of the online shoppers (48%) abandoned their shopping carts because of unexpected costs, such as high-priced shipping, additional fees, and taxes, according to a study by Baymard.
By tracking conversion rates, you can refine your marketing strategy and improve the user experience. This can lead to increased conversions and ultimately, more revenue for your business.
9 Conversion Rate Metrics You Should Track
- Conversion Rate
- Click-through Rate (CTR)
- Cost per Conversion (CPC)
- Cost per Aquisition (CPA)
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- New Visitor Conversion Rate
- Returning Visitor Conversion Rate
- Average Time on Site
- Bounce Rate
Track these nine vital conversion rate metrics to understand how your conversion marketing campaigns are performing, identify areas of improvement, and determine if your strategy needs adjusting:
1. Conversion Rate
The average conversion rate is 2%, but it can be as low as 1% or as high as 10% depending on the industry. A high conversion rate means successful persuasion of visitors to take the desired action, while a low conversion rate suggests the need to adjust your conversion marketing strategy.
2. Click-through Rate (CTR)
CTR measures the number of clicks on links that lead to your website from email or paid ads. It indicates the effectiveness of your ads and targeting. A high CTR shows relevance to your audience, while a low CTR suggests the need for revision.
3. Cost per Conversion (CPC)
The price you pay for every conversion is called cost-per-conversion (CPC).
To calculate CPC, you need to know how much money you spent on a paid search ad in the given timeframe and the number of conversions it generated in a month. Divide the ad cost by the number of conversions to get the CPC.
Knowing your CPC helps you determine the effectiveness of marketing materials by comparing the cost of ads that drive the same number of conversions.
4. Cost per Aquisition (CPA)
The price or the cost of acquiring a new customer is called cost-per-acquisition (CPA). You can calculate CPA by dividing the total marketing cost by the number of customers you receive.
CPA is a valuable metric for understanding your marketing and business's profitability. If the cost of gaining new customers exceeds the revenue, your business may be at a loss.
Conversely, if the income from new customers exceeds the CPA, your business is profitable.
5. Return on Investment (ROI)
You’ll need to calculate the return on investment (ROI) to determine how much revenue your marketing efforts bring. Simply take the revenue you generated and subtract the money you spent on the marketing campaign.
Positive ROI indicates you’re earning more money than you’re investing in conversion marketing, while negative ROI means your tactic is not paying off.
6. New Visitor Conversion Rate
The new visitor conversion rate is a metric that focuses on people visiting your website for the first time. Usually, first-time visitors don't purchase because they must first get to know your brand.
However, conversion doesn't need to be a purchase; this metric is still helpful to measure how many people are subscribing to your email list or clicking your links.
7. Returning Visitor Conversion Rate
The metric that measures the conversion rate of people who have already visited your website before is called returning visitor conversion rate. Typically, this metric will show a higher purchase conversion rate than the new visitor conversion rate. If it's low, it might indicate an issue with your website.
Separating these two types of conversion rates is essential because combining them could give you a distorted view of your overall conversion rate.
8. Average Time on Site
The metric that shows how long the average user stays on your website from the moment they arrive is called average time on site. It gives you an idea about how fast visitors are converting.
For best results, compare the average time on site with the conversion rate:
- A high conversion rate and low average time on the site means you give users enough information to convert quickly.
- A high conversion rate and a long average time on the site indicate users are researching your product or service before deciding to buy.
- Low average time on site and low conversion rate indicate users are leaving without converting. If so, you need to adjust your conversion marketing strategy.
9. Bounce Rate
In many cases, people click on one of the Google search results, scan it, conclude it’s not something they want to read, and then leave. Abandoning a website after visiting it for only a few seconds is known as a bounce rate.
A high bounce rate shows visitors quickly leave your site, probably because of unsatisfying or irrelevant content. A low bounce rate shows that visitors are engaged with the content on your website and decide to stay.
What Is a Digital Marketing Conversion Funnel?
A conversion marketing funnel is a step-by-step strategy to guide users from the first point of contact with your business — whether it is your landing page, email campaign, or social media — to the point of conversion.
The core stages of a conversion funnel are:
- Discovery (top of the funnel): A stage that contains the total pool of people who have just discovered your business and its services.
- Consideration (middle of the funnel): A stage at which the lead turns into a prospect and wants to learn more about the brand before deciding whether to convert or not. These visitors begin to associate the brand with the services it offers.
- Conversion (bottom of the funnel): At this stage, leads decide to convert into customers. They know the brand and have the potential to become loyal customers or even advocates.
Conversion Marketing Tools To Grow Your Business
Marketing analytics tools can help you troubleshoot and improve your online customer journeys, as well as optimize other elements of your conversion marketing:
1. Crazy Egg
Over 120,000 companies have used Crazy Egg to boost their conversions and improve the customer journey.
Crazy Egg is a handy tool that identifies your site’s weakest spots such as “leaks” in the conversion funnel, insufficient leads, and underused content.
Through user behavior analysis, you can pinpoint areas in your conversion marketing funnel to work on by answering key questions:
- Where are your users clicking?
- Why are users leaving the site?
- Where are they spending most of their time?
- What keeps them most engaged?
Crazy Egg features:
- Provides eye-tracking tools like heatmaps
- Tracks website operations and helps understand user interest
2. Kissmetrics
Kissmetric analyzes your website’s conversion optimization strategies. It also provides specific insights and tips to enhance engagement levels on your website —a critical factor in driving conversions. It provides data that answers questions like:
- What do visitors who convert all have in common?
- How long are they staying on the page?
- Who are the most active visitors?
- Which digital marketing activities and campaigns are bringing them to the site?
- What website content has proven more effective in retaining users and converting them?
The data this tool provides is very useful for measuring the performance of a particular campaign, a service, or a product — and is a good steppingstone to optimize the effectiveness of the entire conversion marketing plan.
Kissmetric features:
- Tracks customer’s conversion process
- Discovers areas where you’re losing customers
- Determines which adjustments are making the biggest impact
- Identifies trends that contribute to your objectives
- Understands where your most valuable customers are coming from
- Calculates how long it takes a user to convert on average
3. Unbounce
Landing pages are one of the pillars of good digital marketing companies' services that aim to convert users. Unbounce helps build and test responsive landing pages that are designed to convert.
With its pre-built templates, SEO features, and simple drag-and-drop interface, Unbounce is extremely user-friendly and provides users with insightful feedback and best conversion practices.
Unbounce shows the most potential when creating lead flows for blogs, eBooks, etc., all through dynamic landing pages that can be optimized in minutes. It is best suited for the middle of the conversion funnel stage when a user has more interest in the product.
Unbounce features:
- Creates, edits, and tests landing pages before publishing them
- Provides real-time data on page loading, campaign grouping, and more
- Offers hundreds of templates and features
4. Contentsquare
Contentsquare is a tool dedicated to analyzing user experience on your site or mobile app to reveal user behavior and intent. It offers analysis and monitoring of users’ digital experience with your site, as well as product analysis to reduce the rate of abandoned carts and increase conversions and revenue.
Contentsquare’s heatmaps visually depict elements that attract the most user attention. It practically “sees” where users click and what makes them bounce and utilizes that information to analyze their behavior.
Contentsquare features:
- Generates heatmaps to identify elements that attract users
- Detects website speed, image quality, and navigation issues
- Troubleshoots performance issues
- Analyzes A/B tests to indicate which performance is better and can bring more value.
- Provides insight behind rising bounce rates
- Anonymously tracks mouse interactions and clicks
5. Optimizely
Optimizely is a popular conversion marketing tool that enables businesses to conduct A/B tests and experiment with different variations of their website in real time.
This tool allows you to test various website elements, such as headlines, images, and CTA buttons, to see which versions bring the best results and highest conversion rates.
Optimizely also provides a visual editor that makes it easy to change your website without any coding knowledge. This tool integrates with other marketing tools, including Google Analytics, to comprehensively view your website performance.
By using Optimizely, you can determine which changes to your website lead to the highest conversion rates, allowing you to make data-driven decisions on optimizing your website for conversions.
Optimizely features:
- Conducts A/B tests and experiments in real-time
- Provides a visual editor to make changes to your website
- Integrates with many other marketing tools for a comprehensive view of website performance
- Allows you to make data-driven decisions about website optimization
Conversion Marketing Takeaways
To boost your business's conversions and success, conversion marketing should be a crucial part of your digital marketing strategy.
Tactics, such as social proof, clear CTAs, adopting a mobile-first design, and prioritizing user experience can optimize your conversion funnel. For even greater results, consider outsourcing or partnering with a digital marketing company.
Conversion marketing aims to convert visitors into customers, and consistent testing and refinement are key to achieving this. With the help of a conversion rate optimization agency, your business can drive growth and realize its full potential.
