This is a real challenge, even if they have been attracted to your shore by an advertising campaign.
The website is often neglected in companies’ marketing strategies, which tend to focus too much on managing advertising campaigns to the detriment of the user experience, which is just as essential. The result is a sub-optimal conversion rate.
On-site marketing helps to correct this shortcoming. In this article, we will introduce you to some on-site marketing techniques that can boost your ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend).
Paid advertising and on-site marketing: the winning combination
Let's start by understanding these two concepts: on-site marketing and ROAS.
On-site marketing is a strategy to convert as many website visitors as possible into customers, using marketing tools deployed on the website itself: pop-ups, notifications, banners, promotional bars, registration forms, e-books, etc. On-site marketing builds on the classic approach to online promotion, but makes it more targeted, contextual and conversion-oriented. One option is to add promotional content at the locations on the site where visitors are most likely to buy, without touching the code.
Example:
A off-the-peg brand that makes its own pieces posts brief notifications of pre-orders on its website.
Let's move on.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a way of measuring the return on investment of a particular campaign or advertisement. ROAS is expressed as a percentage (and sometimes as a value) and represents what you earn for every Euro spent on advertising.
And why should we care about ROAS? It’s simple, really: it determines the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. For example, a campaign can be a flop despite the revenue and new customers it has generated, if it required a disproportionate investment. You may think that a key indicator such as ROAS must be complicated to calculate. Well, the formula is actually very simple. All you have to do is divide the revenue of an advertising campaign by its cost.
For example: if you spend €500 on an advertising campaign that brings in €1000, your ROAS is 200% (or simply 2, expressed in value).
Used properly, on-site marketing can significantly improve your ROAS by maximizing the conversion rate on your site. For example, you could create targeted campaigns for visitors who clicked on your ads, and provide them with tailored offers.
However, such a strategy requires investment in advertising campaigns, which can be quite expensive. To cover their advertising costs, many companies opt for non-equity financing. For example, Silvr offers Revenue-Based Financing (RBF) to finance your campaigns, with repayment based on the revenue attained.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let's take a closer look at the best on-site marketing techniques.
Optimizing ROAS through on-site marketing
Let's say potential customers clicked on your ad and it led them to your site. Here are some on-site marketing techniques to help you convert them.
1. Offer pop-ups with free delivery
Free delivery is the most compelling reason to buy for over 50% of online customers. This is simply because people would rather have free delivery at home than go and check out the products in a physical store.
With this in mind, here's an idea to explore: Add a pop-up offering free shipping on product pages.
This way, customers directed to your online store by clicking on your ads will inevitably see the free delivery offer when they view your products. Even better: by offering free delivery from a minimum purchase, you can increase the average amount of the cart.
Here’s an example of a free delivery pop-up in the Jimmy Jazz store:
To take advantage of the offer, visitors simply enter their email address and click on “Activate Offer” in the pop-up window. They will then receive a code for free delivery at checkout. This simple trick gives the brand a new lead and an increased chance of converting them into a customer.
This on-site marketing technique involves the following steps:
- Integration of a pop-up tool in the online store;
- Creation and addition of free delivery pop-up campaign;
- Launch of an advertising campaign.
Pop-up applications offer options for targeting people who are redirected to your site via advertising campaigns. For example, you can add special pop-ups to specific web pages to better meet the needs of your visitors and make it more likely they will be converted into customers. A free shipping campaign might be particularly suitable for customers who return to your site after viewing certain products, indicating their interest.
Needless to say, pop-up software also includes comprehensive analytics features (views, clicks and of course emails collected), to better track the performance of your strategy.
2. Display promotions in a bar
Let's say you click on an advertisement for a new collection of boots.
Once on the website, you will see a range of products to check out and at the top of the screen, a message offering free delivery, exchanges and returns for all orders over €50.
Well, that's exactly the strategy of the Helm Boots brand:
By integrating this bar on its site, the brand is able to convey an essential message about its promotional offer. The choice of the bar is particularly judicious, as it does not hide the content of the site, as a banner would.
To increase the impact of your advertising campaigns, consider promo bars, which are universally used in on-site marketing to generate leads. Bars can also help convey important information, from discounts to free shipping offers to sales promotions or late delivery notifications.
Unique benefits of the promo bars:
- Completely non-intrusive.
- Can be added to any web page.
- Creates leads and disseminates information.
Not to mention that the bars can be integrated at the top or bottom of your online store page, making it twice as likely that visitors will be drawn to your promotional offers.
3. Gain trust with photos taken by customers
This may not come as a surprise, but the figure is still impressive: 98% of customers read online reviews. So the more positive reviews you have on your online shop, the more likely you are to sell, even with paid advertising campaigns. This is why it is essential to make customer reviews visible to visitors.
But don't stop at written reviews, because a picture always speaks louder than words. Images of products in context, taken by their users, reassure potential customers and encourage them to buy. Take the example of U-Turn Audio: the brand displays user-generated content (Instagram posts) on its product pages.
With this simple method, the brand can inspire confidence in visitors to its store, especially those who have come to the site via paid advertising: perfect for boosting sales. For this on-site marketing strategy, all you need is an application like Instafeed for Shopify or Fera.ai. These all-in-one solutions collect, publish and manage customer reviews on websites.
4. Highlight limited stocks
The scarcity strategy is well known and used by many e-tailers to generate orders. It can speed up the conversion process for customers and reduce the time they spend thinking about buying a product. When used correctly, this technique can significantly improve the average ROAS of your campaigns and, more broadly, the profitability of your advertising investments across all media.
Pop-ups that create a sense of scarcity or FOMO (fear of missing out) are an effective tool.
For example, a limited stock notification can be programmed for visitors who arrive on the site by clicking on an ad. This way, they are encouraged to take a look at the much sought-after product before stocks run out.
Here is an example of a limited stock pop-up:
This pop-up window sends customers a clear message about limited stock and enables them to access the relevant product collection with one click. As a result, traffic is better directed to specific product pages.
To implement an on-site marketing strategy like this, you will again need a pop-up creation tool.
5. Get email addresses via newsletter sign-ups
Even after clicking on a site's ad, most visitors leave without buying anything. But there is still a chance to convert them into customers. How can you do this? By asking them, in a non-intrusive banner, to leave their e-mail address. You can then try to attract them again with an e-mail campaign and hope to reduce your customer acquisition cost by maintaining a link with them.
The Jellig Craig estate agency offers a good example of this strategy. They have opted for a banner that is highlighted to better draw the visitor's eye to the offer.
We can see that the format of the pop-up window and the blurring of the background make the message more visually striking. However, the pop-up remains rather discreet; it only hides a small part of the screen so as not to disturb the visitor.
To obtain e-mail addresses via a newsletter subscription request:
- Describe the benefits of signing up.
- You may want to add a benefit, such as a discount.
- Choose the background image carefully, for a high-quality rendering.
In summary
On-site marketing focuses on promotional offers that fit anywhere on your site, helping to improve your conversion rate of visitors who have clicked on a paid ad. There are various tools available for this: banners, pop-ups, integrated forms, e-books and many others.
Onsite marketing tools include analytics and targeting features to better track progress and assess the impact on your ROAS. With a little time and practice, you’ll soon learn effective techniques that can be applied to your website and other marketing projects.
