Episode 6: Make + Hack = More Sales!

Online shop operators and managers often know what their homework is. Everyone has long lists of ideas and to-dos lying around – but they don’t generate any sales. And when you plan a lot and do little. Or - even worse - if you put a lot of work into the wrong things, you won't make any progress. And the competition is over. Ignite your sales rocket - conversion hacker Jörg Dennis Krüger knows how.

TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST

Welcome to the Conversion Hacking Podcast. My name is Jörg Dennis Krüger and as my gogo dancer just said correctly.

Yes, I am the conversion hacker and as a conversion hacker I am always thinking about how to really make stores more successful. For me, it's not so much about the conversion rate. Increasing conversion rates is always cool - you should do it if you can. But a good conversion rate is not always what you want.

You want more sales or a little more spun, you want more profit. And that's why I tell my customers, "Hey, not... I'm increasing your conversion rate, I'm increasing your sales." We make sure more people buy from you. And that's what conversion hacking is all about. This 360 degree approach that I don't think about how to convert users better now. That too, of course. But not in focus. It's about how do we manage to get more users to the site and then convert them and do it as cheaply as possible.

 How do we manage to better address users who are already there, so that we can still generate revenue from them, because that's where the higher potential might be. Than to go out completely fresh and try to acquire completely new users. That's why conversion hacking also involves looking at the very beginning. Are we actually tracking everything correctly, and not just tracking in the sense of knowing who is on which page, but can we also use the data for marketing for the appropriate approach on Facebook, for appropriate targeting. If we can use the data, we can use the data. 

All-something. Because there is, of course, huge potential in this. Just like looking at what e-mail addresses we have, can we perhaps do something with them, are they meaningfully generated, can we use them? 

Or is the risk manageable that we might use them even if we're not actually allowed to? I did not say that now. In any case, there is often a great potential that is not used at all. And then I very often hear this: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I already have that on the screen. Yes, I know, I know, I know, I know, we still have to do that, we still have to do that, yes, yes, I have everything on the list, I know everything." And that's also where I have to say, "Hey, conversion hacking is not knowing. It's not sitting down making a long list of what you could do and then always walking around with a guilty conscience that you didn't do it." And on the other hand, telling all the people who want to help you:

Yes, I know everything, it's all on the list. But conversion hacking also means finding priorities. Working in general means finding priorities in the super cluttery world we're in, otherwise you can't work successfully at all if I don't work properly with priorities. 

But in online marketing in particular it is very, very easy that you somehow listen to advice from Google or Facebook to address even more target groups here, to book even more keywords here, then even more budget. Or somehow gets lost in creating a thousand pages now. For the organic ranking or whatever. But you look at it far too seldom: where are the priorities? And then we come to the fact that the priority is often not to make big changes to the shop. It's better to first see what hidden reserves we can tap into from the outside, where we can simply generate more sales without having to dig deep into the shop. 

And that's why conversion hacking is a 360-degree view of everything around the store. Because these 360 degrees are: Where do the visitors come from, but also where do they somehow go? Because visitors who I have perhaps already addressed correctly at the beginning and who have already bought or not bought - I can do something with them again. And when I have won them over - first of all how do I win them over? - how do I guide them through my store? - and what do I do with the users?

That is so, so, valuable to look at this overall view, then take the store apart. Where do I have pages that are more information-driven content and where do I have pages that are more transaction-driven content. And how do users get there? And how do I address the users there. There is no need to develop a super fancy targeting personalization WooHoo strategy, but sometimes it's enough to just ask the user for his email address when he is on an information-heavy page. And not for a 70, 120-page e-book, but for something that simply brings him some benefit. 

And where I then have his email address if I can do something. Yes, now there are of course also stores that generate traffic with pages that are very peripheral to their topic. Then prioritization may also include saying: There is so much wonderful traffic here. But this is all somehow with an intention that we can't pick up at all. And then not to put any energy into converting these visitors somehow, but to say: no, we'll concentrate on those where we see a higher potential. Always, ultimately with the goal of making more sales. With in the end, yes, as little work as possible. Sounds kind of silly now, in the end clearly, there has to be work put in.

But we just have to do something. Do, do, do, and without doing we will not be successful. And then we're right back in this vicious circle. 

If I only have the long list of things I could do, but I don't do them, I've lost. If I have a long list with things I could do and I work it down from top to bottom, then I do something, that is already super, super, super great. But then I still have to prioritize properly to do the right things and not put a lot of work into it, only to somehow have no result. That demotivates everyone. You yourself, the team, it probably costs a lot of money, costs a lot of time and then you have a loose, loose, loose, loose situation. 

That doesn't do anyone any good either. So this mixture of: What can you do and how do I prioritize that, is super useful to achieve a lot but also not to proceed so according to interests. 

You notice with a lot of companies, with online marketers: They have a few things that they're super happy to do and the rest, they're dropping left and right. And then we get to these super SEO optimized pages. Or to these pages with a thousand AdWords landing pages but no SEO optimization anywhere at all. Where you just see this scaling issue. 

I have a theme here, I realize that it works and I'm scaling it up now is a great idea in principle, but in online marketing I always run up against a problem: the more I want to exploit a channel, the more expensive the channel becomes because I'm simply no longer with the low-hanging fruits because I'm no longer in the low-cost places because I'm competing more with others and so on.

So that the most successful strategy is actually to be on all channels with a certain level. So yes, holistic 360-degree bullshit bingo, I don't know. But to really be on the go on all channels in such a way that I'm efficient on every channel. And then I have the most success overall. And that's really cool when I also think about innovation.

I have a conversion hacking model that has eight levels, which starts with prioritization and then goes through many levels with product and targeting and technology and whatnot, and then all the way down to innovation. And innovation is totally exciting because you have to use innovation early on. Sonat is not innovation. For example, when I set up the conversion hacking Xing group, it was super easy and a really cool channel. 

There were 10,000 people in there, there are still just under 10,000 in there. And you could feed them really cool, you could send out cool newsletters and so on and so forth. Today, all of that is no longer possible. You can't build up the groups properly, you can't even feed them properly. 

Xing takes money for everything but also has massive spam filters or hurdles built in was, was, was. So you can no longer use. Even if you now say: Hey, we're using Xing as an innovation topic, we're building that up now. Doesn't work anymore. Because innovation growth hacking only works if you're in a market very very early to exploit exactly these things. 

For example, I now had a customer who is active in the erotic sector and I attached the big Twitter sign to him: Hey, do Twitter. Twitter is the hot shit for eroticism and in general Twitter is a completely underestimated channel. If I mean to address a very real target group somewhere, then maybe I should try to really phase out Facebook because Facebook is becoming less and less exciting. Not for advertising, but for organic content, especially those that are a bit advertising, are becoming less and less exciting for Facebook. Instead, I concentrate on other channels, such as Twitter. And we see that in many areas. Website chats Website chats were like five or ten years ago, well, five years ago, they were really hot shit. You really sold it, sometimes the customers chatted with you, saved themselves the call, it was really cool. 

Today, everyone says no, is this a bot? That's the first question that comes up quite often. Are you a bot? And then it's no longer perceived as valuable because it's probably just a bot and no idea who's answering. That's where the magic has gone. Still somehow a valuable tool you can use but the advantages you could get out of it are just not there anymore. There are now just other ways how I can better address my users.

The topic WhatsApp newsletter has now been killed by Whatsapp and Facebook was also long a very great channel and everyone who did not use it immediately just missed the chance to use it. Because now it is dead. I think now already and a few months it is dead, then you can not send newsletters, you may no longer send via WhatsApp was never allowed. But then WhatsApp goes against it. 

And that's why you can see again why such a holistic 360 degree approach is totally important and why I'm talking about hacking. Because hacking is about creativity. It's about thinking about what I can now achieve my goals with and so on. And you just have to think deeper and think about it: Man, what is my competition not doing yet? What are the new topics in which you can do something favorably and where you can simply do something where I haven't done anything yet. Because simply then the success, which is much faster to achieve and it's usually just much bigger than when I try to scale further and put more work into another topic.

And in summary, conversion hacking, conversion optimization, growth hacking more e-commerce success. Yes, you have to look at everything, you just have to do it and maybe you have to have someone who shows you the right way, who knows how to do it, who looks into many stores, who is always up to date with the latest technologies. Well, if you are looking for someone then you know where to find him. So make more sales, more conversions. Not necessarily a higher conversion rate, but rather a lower conversion rate to accept and use all traffic channels and take traffic that does not convert so well because in the end it means more money in the wallet.