People born between 1980 and 2000 are known as millennials. Today, millennials have more purchasing power than any generation before. In recent years, a trend toward growing mobile use and decreasing use of personal computers has emerged.
Studies have shown that about 70% of digital users now access the Internet on both mobile devices and PCs. This represents just one side of the changes that have taken place in the past few years.
Advanced Purchase Funnel Optimization
Paradigm shifts have been pushed through, first by growing use of social media and then by extremely focused apps such as Instagram and Yo and broadcasting apps such as Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat.
Going forward, market personalization will be influenced by a plethora of marketing technologies. In the future, it will be possible for companies to know their customers and their preferences intimately.
In this article we will discuss advanced purchase funnel optimization for millennials.
User Experience
When you start using advanced purchase funnel optimization aimed specifically at millennials, the AIDA model (Awareness/Attention, Interest, Desire/Decision and Action) isn’t enough. It’s good to be aware of the various stages of the marketing funnel, but you may not have enough information to make a proper decision.
The AIDA model defines the various stages that users need to pass through, but it gives you no insight into how they will do it or why anyone would do it. So the information is incomplete, there’s something missing, and this missing element is feedback on the experience that visitors or customers have while interacting with your brand.
Digital media and advertising channels present you with multiple opportunities for engagement at various stages. Digital advertising creates in users a situation in which their thought processes, desires or feelings and actions are not linear, nor do they take place in different stages.
All of them are in fact connected and can occur in any order.
The practice of focusing on the web experience for a purchase funnel was promoted by researchers who were given the task of analyzing academic reports on CRM between the years 2004 and 2012. They found five factors of web experience that are essential to conversions. These are:
1. Catalyst
This is the connection between the traffic source and a user’s motivation. You have to find out the impetus that drives a user to your webpage and then design it so to cater to that motive.
2. Value
If you want to cater to your user, you have to be innovative, distinctive, precise about the value, and relevant to the user. You need to represent the value of both the company and the brand, as well as the products or services.
3. Usability
You also have to pay attention to the ease of the user experience. Keep it as simple as possible. Don’t force users to do anything complicated, time-consuming or unnecessary.
Your goal is to make their journey painless and ensure that it flows through the website without any delays and problems straight to the part where they make the purchase.
4. Persuasion
Persuasion is the key to conversion. You need to present a very clear message and value proposition, and provide the incentive to act on it. You need to guide and encourage visitors toward the action you want them to take.
5. Confidence
You need to instill confidence in your visitors about your company and its services and products. Your visitors need to be able to trust you and your products. You need to address their doubts and concerns, reduce anxiety, build up trust and establish your credibility.
Besides the five factors mentioned above, there were two more additions made by peers who reviewed the recommendations. These are:
6. Aesthetics
They suggested that the impact of the aesthetics of a website should also be studied for its influence on the decisions that visitors make while on the website.
7. Interactivity
Another thing they pointed out was the role of company response to a user’s actions and discrete needs – whether any action is taken in response to feedback received from user interactions with the website.
It has been observed that paying attention to just five of the above mentioned factors almost doubled conversion rates in more than two-thirds of cases.
The best results are achieved when these factors are combined with the AIDA model into a single framework for studying consumer behavior.
Just knowing the stage where a user is in a buying funnel isn’t sufficient. Equally important, or maybe even more important, is knowing what they are thinking as they move from one stage to another.
Once you know their thought processes, it‘s easy to overcome any doubts, concerns or objections the visitor may have regarding your company, products or services, even before they are formed.
This strategy helps to retain visitors and gets them to return to your site.
Behavioral Targeting
You need to personalize content for your various users. Each visitor to a website is there with a specific goal in mind; allow them to reach their intended goal with the lowest number of steps and amount of time.
Give them the shortest path to getting what they came to the site for, if you want to engage them and keep them coming back for more. You must track and optimize the various marketing channels and sources. Study how users respond to a variety of marketing messages, strategies and conversion processes.
When you’re advertising, you need to pay attention to the media you’re investing in. You need to build marketing and advertising campaigns that are specific to each segment of your visitors or users. You have to advertise where your customers will be able to see the advertising and be influenced enough by it to take action.
Do not be stingy about using dynamic content to make positive suggestions to your users with elements such as “recommended products,” “people also bought/viewed,” and “you might also like.” This helps make their experience with your website more personalized.
Another thing to keep in mind is having a short purchase process. Lengthy purchase experiences can tire people out and they may abandon the purchase. In order to avoid this, make sure that your purchase process is clear, simple and short. Ideally your checkout process should be restricted to a single page.
Refrain from using one-size-fits-all experiences for visitors; you must provide tailor-made, unique experiences. You should present content that is specific to the stage of the funnel where the user is at the moment, and the user’s previous interactions with the website, which could be based on sign-ups, downloads, purchase history, etc.
You must also use surveys, interviews and social media to gather information about the user. Going forward, the trend will be for highly targeted advertising, which will be more ubiquitous.
You should plan ahead for your strategy, grab the opportunity and communicate brand propositions to the right audience.
Mobile Paths in Marketing Funnel Optimization
There is a vast difference between mobile user experiences and desktop user experiences. Smartphones and tablets are now playing an increasing role in the way users access the Internet and use it for diverse activities ranging from searches to shopping.
Google updates recently started to reward websites that are optimized for mobile use and penalize those that are not. To conform Google PageRank, you must ensure that your site is responsive and mobile-friendly.
You should now start considering creating landing pages that are made specifically for mobile devices. You have to consider that mobile devices are more personal than other devices, and people use them differently and for different reasons.
All the information about your site should be easily available, especially when it comes to pricing and deals, discounts, coupons and call-to-action buttons. These should all be prominently visible and easily accessible.
An estimated 50% of search results are for locations that are within a 5-mile radius. So location is very important, and you should update your location information and pay attention to review sites.
Mobile use is a very high-conversion medium and its impact can be felt offline in your brick-and‑mortar business, too. Users are always on the lookout for good deals, so you should start to consider special discounts and deals that are available only for mobile users.
4G and 3G internet services have a strong impact on mobile browsing experiences. New technologies, such as the one-touch, in-app checkout that is now available for Apple users via Apple Pay, will help enhance conversions.
The language for mobile devices is different from that for PCs. So do keyword research, keeping mobile devices in mind, too. Use abbreviations, acronyms and numerals for mobile SEO, and bid on different keywords, as mobile SEO is very different from desktop SEO.
Mobile searches can be conducted anywhere, at home, on the move, in stores or in offices. You should conduct A/B tests for different devices and screen sizes, and then customize experiences for the various visitor scenarios.
Google introduced its mobile-friendly search ranking update on April 21, 2015. With this update, Google wants to ensure that people using mobile devices for searches will have a great experience.
So what was an added benefit has now become a necessity.
It is essential to optimize a larger range of possible entry points in order to optimize conversions. You should check out Google’s mobile-friendly checker on this link. You must also use analytical reports and follow Google’s checklist in order to make your most important pages work at the optimum for mobile users.
Closing Remarks
In the future, companies will really know their customers and their preferences. If you’re wondering how they can possibly do this, then consider using web and mobile analytics, marketing and purchase funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, predictive analytics, attribution, and adtech.
The future of digital marketing lies in the process of continual optimization and learning something from each interaction, as well as measuring every element of your sales and marketing outreach.