Where Have All the Clickthroughs Gone?
Written by Miro Kazakoff (contact - e-mail) -- September 2nd, 2008 |
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Marketers invest a significant amount of time and money in online marketing campaigns aimed at delivering positive post-click advertising experiences. However, less than 1% of ads get clicked on and 95% of those clicks never lead to a sale. In fact, post-click experiences vary so widely in the same market, it’s likely that one competitor is converting more than five times as many customers than other competitors in the space.
Compete looked at the post-clickthrough conversion rates among wireless carriers. Across 20 campaigns, an average of 3.4% of those who clicked through an ad and visited the carrier’s landing page purchased online from that carrier in the same quarter. In the top quartile, this jumped to 7.8% of visitors. In this instance, improving performance from the bottom quartile to average or best-in-class could translate into a 2-6x improvement in conversion. Assuming the cost of changing the landing page experience is minimal, this increase in conversion would be a direct increase to ROI.
In the credit card space, we have seen instances of campaigns with even greater disparity in conversion between competitors.
Given these kinds of disparities, and the potential for quick, direct improvements to ROI by boosting post-click through performance, we think CMOs spending money in the Online Channel should all be asking their teams some questions:
- What is the Best in Class performance in our industry for engaging and (if applicable) converting people who click on our ads?*
- Where do we stand in relation to Best In Class?
- What can we learn from all the other campaigns our competitors are running?
*According to Compete analysis, Chase and Citibank campaign conversion outperformed American Express and Capital One by 15-30x.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Compete has a few thoughts about the answers to these questions. For some immediate things you can do to improve your company’s landing page experience, visit the replay of our recent webinar.
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September 18th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I just came across your article on MediaPost this morning, and it pretty much has me dancing at my desk. You’ve honed in on what has got to be the largest untapped focal point in online marketing: creative, meaningful, targeted, and differentiated post-click landing experiences.
This isn’t about just testing for the best headline or hero shot image (which is what most people advocating “landing page optimization” have watered it down to). It’s about integrating the strategy and tactics of the post-click experience with the advertising itself.
We’ve been telling people lately, post-click experiences such as landing pages are — or should be! — more a part of the advertising than they are a part of the site. They shouldn’t just be an after-thought or a footnote, and they certainly shouldn’t be cookie-cutter.
As the co-founder of a company focused on software and services for post-click marketing, I can absolutely confirm what your research has shown: great post-click marketing can deliver a 2-6X increase in conversion rate and ROI.
It’s wonderful to have the validation of your research, especially the relative benchmarking of competitors for wireless carriers and credit card companies.
I hope agencies and CMOs are reading your words and taking them to heart!
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