Conversion points debunked….

Maybe you have a pricing request button, maybe you have a million ebooks, IMO, no matter what I think every brand should have multiple conversion points.

So what is a conversion point? It’s the point in which someone says, “I want that” or…. “I have to do X to get Y” — the latter I think is inferior.

Some known examples would be:

1. You go to a conference, there’s a wheel to spin which could give you a free cruise.  But first, you have to put in your information.
2. An ROI calculator, website grader, etc,  on the website where you fill it out, then put in your information to receive the results
3. An ebook download, where you have to put in your email to read the content

All of these conversion points are, to get the offer, you have to give up your information.  These can be prone to fake information, just to get what you want.  

People tend to be happy to give up their information, when they’re really interested in potentially being the software — example, many demo requests are real people.  If you were to go the ebook route, there are far more fake ones.

These points are make or break for pipeline, leads, and general intelligence.

However, in most examples, it’s everything else that comes before the ask for information that’s so important.

All the good content read, the ad, the likability of a brand, etc.

All of this is to say, you need to provide many good experiences before getting high quality conversions and often times, that’s where emphasis of a marketing program should start.  However, for the sake of this blog, I wanted to debunk traditionally “bad” conversion points…

I think more companies should offer more conversion points and do rigorous testing to see what works.

Some people say ebook leads suck (and there is a lot of evidence here), others say ebooks with a button that says “I want a demo” improve quality by 10X, others say always ungate content.

No one says, experiment.  Here’s a starting point of basic conversion points which I think MOST B2B SaaS companies should try to test.

1. Pricing — some people want to know the price to see if it’s even worth exploring.  Imagine if X company has a budget of X for the year — this is way lower than what your software costs.  If there’s 0% chance they could buy this year, but would be interested in the future, that would be good intel to have.  Interest in product, but not enough buying power, all without a sales conversation.  I think the other piece that could work is “how much budget do you have for fixing X” or an ROI type calculator here.  
2. Product tour// Product video: — how can people go deeper than just reading and seeing a screenshot of your product? How can they learn more and share those learnings, without a call where they get hounded with questions.  Take the perspective “I want to learn more, is this right for me, what does it really do” — how could you answers those questions, without talking to someone or simply reading blocks of text? Another way to do it would be process-oriented, as many software solutions essentially enable an entirely new way of doing X, Y or Z.
3. Product evaluation workbook — The prospect thinks they want to buy, but again, they’ve been on too many discovery calls.  Create a downloadable workbook, positioning your solution in a better light than other solutions, with a workbook where features, ways of operating, etc can all be comparable to the languaging and positioning you use.  I’ve seen this work EXTREMELY well and if there’s one ebook to promote it’s this one.  Only a buyer or a competitor would ever download this.
4. Interactive quiz — I’ve always wanted to create “what ice cream flavor is your _____” vanilla would be status quo, mint would be out of the ordinary, the Sunday could be the way you’re promoting.   I think relating back to something simple that everyone gets and could use would be such a great way to help people think through what they’re doing now vs. later.  This doesn’t even have to be a capturable conversion point…

Note: Most companies selling high $$  software should have a demo option.  Now, demo vs. free-trail, or pilot will not be dived into here.  All are good options, pilots can be absolutely game changing. This is not the discussion for those here.  

With this information you could:

• Go the account scoring route — let’s say the product tour is for X use case, you could say this department within this company is looking to evaluate the way they do Y.  That’s helpful to know.  At scale, you could even understand what your entire market wants from you, before a demo request.
• Go the SDR pass over route — directly reaching out for 1:1 conversations.  This is where SDRs thrive, highly personal, 1:1.  That’s how some of the best companies in the world generate big pipeline numbers.  That is, with a core brand.  Definitely more tricky to do right, and if done wrong could hurt your brand (think continuous hounding to the point that the person would say “I’ll never buy from that company”, or completely irrelevant/incompetent — “that company doesn’t know anything)
• Go the email automation route — what other relevant information would this person LOVE to have? Not just emailing for the sake of emailing.  Again, a dangerous path to go down, but this in fact can work very very well.
• Do nothing — this is not the worst route, BECAUSE you can track what happens later down.  Let’s say you have 100 pricing requests.  You pass over pricing information obviously (maybe on a thank you page), and you see in 6 months, 50% of those people have requested demos.  Those demos close 20% faster than others.  THATS A GREAT DATA POINT WHICH WOULD TOTALLY BE WORTH IT.

This is very much from the “measurable marketer” which is not always the play.  In my opinion, one of the best conversion points would be all the information, but optional email/ info capture.  This has worked extremely well.  “On mobile? This experience is much better on desktop… put in your email to send this to yourself and view on desktop”…. Low friction, easy, etc.

Think it through, go further than the typical scoring, SDR pass over, and email automation.  Test hyper aggressive outreach vs. doing nothing.  Test, test, test.  Make more conversion points, create hypothes

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