May
19

Conversion in a digital world: a never ending exercise of value

Author: J-P De Clerck

A company is a group of people who together try to create or market something which other people are (or could be) interested in.

The basic criteria against which the success of a company can be measured are: profit and customers. And by "customers" we mean customers in the broadest sense of the term.

Employees are customers of the company where they work as well. And at the same time they are suppliers. Suppliers are also customers, just like journalists, distributors, in fact the entire ecosystem surrounding a company.

Virtually all of a company’s activities are focused on conversion. The product or the service has to be purchased, otherwise the company doesn’t exist.

From the logistical department, via marketing and through to sales: they are all striving for the same goal: to serve existing customers as well as possible so that they become even "better" customers and recruit new customers.

All of the steps in these processes exist as a function of the conversion whose ultimate goal is to have as many loyal and satisfied customers as possible who ensure the much-needed sales. The other tasks of a company are innovation and controlling costs, so that those sales also produce a profit.

Thanks to this profit, a company can keep its internal and indirect customers satisfied (employees, shareholders, etc.) and invest in new initiatives on the economic and social level, where once again customer satisfaction is central.

From reach to customer loyalty

The first task in this process is naturally to ensure that people know that the company exists and what products it makes or services it performs: reach and branding. 
 
The second task is to ensure that the people who know this and might be potentially interested find their way into the company’s sphere of influence and become customers: acquisition and conversion.

The following steps are well-known: retaining the new customer, making him loyal and ensuring that he in turn brings in new customers by providing him with an optimal customer experience that makes him talk to others about your company. 
 
Looking at it this way, marketing, sales and management are something very simple: a continuous process of innovation and conversion. And actually it is simple, if you succeed in having a clear and holistic vision with the same three parameters always in the back of your mind: sales, costs and customers (satisfaction).

Unfortunately, the whole conversion process isn’t so straightforward in practice, and we are living in an age where the entire communication and marketing process has changed. Moreover, many companies end up getting lost because they can no longer see the forest for the trees. 
 
Today, every step these companies take in reaching a potentially interested customer, through to having a perfect customer service to extremely loyal customers, consists of thousands of intermediate steps. Moreover, in these digital times they are much more fragmented and less predictable. And finally, companies also often simply drop the ball. After all, they are groups of fallible human beings.

Conversion and turnover: never ending cycles

In this context conversion takes on additional significance. Conversion is also optimisation of every little step which ensures that the (potential) customer takes a new step in the direction of the company’s ultimate goal. 
 
Conversion and turnover are inseparably interconnected. Each small step in the conversion process is associated with a cost and a result, and thus also a return on investment. The questions every company has to ask itself are: which steps does it have to take, and how does it measure the results of all these steps in order to achieve its ultimate goal? 
 
That all sounds highly mathematical, and often it is that as well. But many elements also play a role which are more difficult to capture in directly measurable results. Just think of the perception of your brand, the impact you have on social media, the impact of word-of-mouth and much, much more.

Yet all that too can be optimised, step by step, provided that the right parameters, planning and objectives are employed.

Conversion therefore has, roughly speaking, two meanings:

1) The conversion of a person into a loyal customer
 
2) The conversion of all the little steps we take in order to achieve those uppermost conversion objectives

These cycles never end because there are always new communication paradigms, up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, undetected needs and customers that are less satisfied and thus loyal than they once where. 
 
In the end, conversion is all about maintaining a high level of value in communication, customer experience and sales processes in order to generate value.

The author is an interactive marketing expert and writes on several marketing-related topics. You can connect with him via his blog or via Twitter.
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