When it comes to digital marketing, connecting with audiences is a clear goal. But that’s only step one. When you’re ready to make an impact and convert those people into customers, conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes into play.
Lead generation gives you the customer base that will sustain your business for the long run. But it’s CRO that powers lead generation, by increasing the amount of users who do more than make an initial connection with your business. While you’re probably aware of this, you may or may not see its impact on your marketing strategy. Either way, rest assured that when it comes to marketing, CRO does matter.
That said, what makes for truly effective conversion rate optimization? The answer brings things full circle, back to connecting with audiences. The best CRO deeply considers the user journey—drivers and pain points alike—and uses that to offer compelling user entry points. Along the way, it can do a great deal to build and optimize a brand’s online presence.
Our team put this approach into practice when we partnered with Antidote Health, a healthcare and health insurance startup. Here’s a look behind the curtain of our CRO marketing strategy.
Creative and Strategic Considerations
Antidote Health’s main goal for this partnership was optimizing their paid advertising campaigns for special enrollment periods. That work was the basis for eventually developing a powerful sitemap and content model, which will lead to a more authentic online presence across digital platforms as both an insurance provider and telehealth company. These steps will ultimately support Antidote Health’s ability to capture leads and boost conversions, which over time will build a strong, consistent base of members.
Our CRO marketing strategy used a landing page as the key conversion point of the acquisition funnel, which is a best practice for paid advertising campaigns. Our ensuing competitive research on paid advertising opportunities allowed us to create compelling creative assets that would more effectively draw audiences toward this landing page, and strengthen its impact. Between this strategic approach, and upcoming work focused on open enrollment in November, this partnership will enable Antidote Health to stand out and generate robust engagement.
Conversion Rate Optimization and Attracting Audiences
Designing ad creative along with the new landing page allowed our team to focus on establishing a more holistic digital presence for Antidote Health as well as capturing leads. Identifying personas, integrating the company’s vision and goals, and establishing a means of testing effectiveness were all major steps in this process.
The personas were based upon different user needs that we discovered in our research, and focused on different sets of core themes for each group, so they greatly informed both the messaging and the strategy behind targeted advertisements. Providing clarity on what Antidote Health offers, and why it is unique than what’s available from other companies, was crucial to differentiating the brand and capturing leads. These personas were integral to creating targeted advertising that would appeal to different groups, concisely share this information, and drive users to the landing page. Our team implemented this primarily through Meta and PPC ads.
Auditing the Antidote Health website allowed our team to further solidify the path to conversion. We examined the website from a best practices perspective as well as an accessibility lens, and noted that its UX/UI were challenging to navigate, blocking a significant pathway to generating leads. That led our team to implement design and UX/UI updates that improved both messaging and accessibility. Significantly, we pared down the content in the enrollment portal, which made its user experience less confusing—a change that will improve conversion rates and promote more time spent on-page.
Since Antidote Health’s coverage is currently limited to select counties in the state of Ohio, gathering information through form submissions was another important goal, mainly because it’s a low barrier to entry that is highly targeted and allows for long-term encouragement of enrollment and engagement. By promoting quick and easy registration, we were able to set the stage for a long-term nurture of customers, which enables Antidote Health to continue sending information about healthcare plans and enrollment, and build customer relationships over time.
Continuous Engagement Builds Long-Term Relationships
Why choose this longer-term strategy for CRO? Generally speaking, some projects simply require it; for others, it’s less of a logistical hurdle to enacting effective marketing. Both of these were the case with Antidote Health. It was an approach that worked particularly well for the brand’s industry, because health insurance and healthcare tend to involve prolonged exploration, weighing options, and seeking out more personalized needs.
In that sense, this partnership was a powerful reminder of how CRO marketing is a continuous process. While long-term relationships and constant growth are part of our team’s ethos in general, it’s particularly potent when it comes to CRO. There is strategy and foresight that goes into building out different campaigns and creative, and those considerations ultimately are what optimize conversions.
Why? Because with that perspective in play, users can tell that Antidote Health is a business that has their concerns in mind, and can meet their needs. Rather than reaching for any audience, the brand comes across as highly considered in which audiences it pursues. And when users see that they, specifically, are valued in this way, retention tends to ensue.
That’s why our team’s CRO marketing strategies take UI and UX into account, and put users first—rather than create campaigns for the sake of creating campaigns. Data-based insights are invaluable, but good CRO and powerful UI and UX apply people-focused research to discover effective solutions and improvements. That’s exactly what we did with Antidote Health.
People-First Marketing is Powerful
This focus on strategy, and on what’s most compelling to users across industries, is why an agency like ours is an excellent match for CRO marketing. True, our approach is not as granular as some might expect. But taking a different path works in our partners’ favor. We apply our deep knowledge of user experience design to find what resonates most with people, and meet users’ needs before they even realize what they are. That people-first approach has the power to have a lasting impact, and build business and brand loyalty for our partners—which in turn, meets their needs, and gives them just as lasting confidence in their connection with us, too.