One of the main purposes of this blog is to try to walk some of you through the fairly complex 
series of steps needed to turn your websites into money-makers. Inbound marketing is a totally new take on older marketing concepts and at times, it can seem downright unintuitive. We want to explain some of these concepts so they make sense.
One of the most important things to understand about Internet marketing is that just about everything you do will have multiple purposes. The Internet encourages people to make tools which are multi-purpose and can achieve different goals at once. Accordingly, the best Internet marketing strategies tend to be those that pay off in several different ways.
So, let's look at a fairly simple example: trying to increase website conversion rates. Everyone wants their website to be more productive, but it's interesting to look at how many different ways productivity can be achieved with the same set of tricks. Any one of these areas, alone, should be enough to justify your efforts to increase website conversion rates. Hitting all three means it's money that's truly being well-spent.
Three Ways Increasing Your Website Conversion Rate Helps You
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It leads to sales! Hey, let's start at the most basic level. You want your website to make money, and you make money by selling stuff. There's the very obvious connection here: encouraging people to click on Calls-to-Action and fill out forms on your landing pages turns them into serious sales leads. Many -although not all- of your online customers are going to go through this route, so you want to make sure as many as possible convert. Here's where you demonstrate the actual ROI on your Internet endeavors.
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You get more statistics. Statistical analysis is one of the backbones of Internet marketing. We're in a medium that is absolutely drowning in data, so make the most of it! If you increase the website conversion rate, that means more raw information for your R&D and marketing departments to draw from. You learn more about your customers, their lives, and their wants and needs. From this, you can develop better products that better address those needs, as well as discovering new ways to tell people about them. So higher site conversion rates also give you a lot of raw information to turn into building blocks for your business.
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It increases engagement. There's another element to consider here as well: you don't just want people looking at your site, you want them responding to you and sharing it with others. Higher website conversion rates lead to this as well, especially if you're smart about how you place social sharing and “talkback” areas on your website. A particularly good eBook or training video offer can take on a life of its own as people evangelize your ideas online, which in turn drives even more visitors and more sales.
(Note: There are almost certainly more benefits than this; these are just the top three that come to mind. Anyone got any others?)
So just one key goal, to increase website conversion rates, can buy you a lot of both primary- and secondary-level benefits to your company and your outreach efforts. It's even possible, for example, that if your website isn't selling enough product on its own to justify its costs it may still be gathering you enough valuable market research data to make it worth your while.
Basically, when you're working on your online marketing strategies, you should always be asking yourself: “What other goals can this help me achieve?” Twofers and Threefers aren't just nice in the world of Internet marketing; they're arguably essential.
No matter what you're trying to do with your website, from boosting conversion rates to creating viral videos, look for the most possible uses for everything you do. That's how you wring value out of Internet ventures.
