Content is not King- CONVERSION is. That’s why we all must focus on how to increase conversion rates.
If you want to consistently make money that is instead of running a blog just for fun.
To be clear, to increase conversion rates I mean email subscriber opt-ins, click-throughs to affiliate sales pages and purchases.
If we all focused on this earlier in our blogging lives then we would not need to backtrack.
But we didn’t and instead, we created endless content and prioritized traffic.
What good is traffic if few people buy?
Have fun but treat your dating and relationship blog like a business.
Turn how to increase conversion rates into second nature.
In this post, we will not look at analytics, but instead strategies and techniques to increase conversion rates in your posts and emails.
Some of these occur before the click-throughs- to attract and guide the RIGHT audience to the RIGHT product.
Some of your links come in the form of buttons.
These are your call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Your call-to-action buttons must stand out from the rest of the elements on the page.
If not, they will just blend in and get passed over.
Hence, no conversion will occur- in this case, a clickthrough.
To make these buttons easy to spot by your visitors select a color that differs from its surroundings.
My subscriber opt-in pages that see the highest clickthrough conversion rates use blue, red, green, orange or purple buttons.
Just make sure they’re not too light.
You can apply other visual elements to make the button standout such as:
You can do all these elements provided your theme, landing page builder or WordPress page builder plugin can do it.
Key note: check out how these elements look in mobile view.
For example, a big button may look good in desktop mode but look like a big square with extra space above the CTA text.
Fonts set moods.
They tell stories.
Especially on dating and relationship blogs.
And thus, facilitate a conversion by earning the visitor’s trust that the content will address their concerns.
The font must match the mood of the topic of your content, whether that be videos, blog posts, eBooks.
Therefore, in the cover images, ads or in social media graphics.
For me, Pinterest is one of my favorite ways to promote my content.
So, in my Pinterest pins that promote blog posts on darker relationship topics like infidelity or catching a cheater, I prefer to use headlines with a font that creates tension.
For my uplifting blog posts, I prefer uplifting and upbeat headline fonts.
The first thing people see whether that be a blog post, eBook, email is your headline.
If the headline does not give the visitor what they want, then they will skip over it.
In order for a conversion to take place, in this case, click through to read your post, it must capture their attention and satisfy their needs.
And do it in fractions of seconds.
The simpler the main headline the better because people skim when looking for what they want.
Try out Coschedule’s Free Headline Analyzer for help on crafting the perfect eye-catching, benefit-driven headline.
This tool scores your headline by:
A visitor will decide in a split second to move to the next step whether that’s to click an ad, click your social media graphic or just to read the first line of your post.
So, the bottom line is that your headline must contain a benefit, provide a solution or answer a question in the viewer’s mind.
Attention-grabbing words that excite or agitate your visitors stand out.
They help motivate them to take action.
Some are action words, others are adjectives.
You might find these in headlines, sub-headlines, the body of a blog post or copy of an ad.
One of my favorite affiliate programs, BeIrresistible.com, creators of His Secret Obsession and What Men Secretly Want, includes lists of these kinds of words in their affiliate tools page.
And they tailor them to their products.
Check out my list of favorite power and trigger words and phrases I like:
A recurring message you will see me repeat is that people’s attention is short.
Therefore, if you want to increase your conversion rates (of any kind), then you must learn to say meaningful things in fewer words.
But also, do it in a way that grabs their attention, excites them and sounds human (not robotic) or salesy.
The calls-to-action on buttons should say more than just “Click here” or “Download”.
For most relationship bloggers like yourself, this means signing up your email subscribers.
One of my favorite teachers of successful internet marketing is Neil Patel.
In this blog post he shares his best practices for CTA buttons.
From item numbers 7-11 Neil stresses the importance of paying attention to copy on CTA buttons.
I’ve used many of these techniques myself.
3-5 words communicate your actionable message and get read at a quick glance.
Then there’s no question of what they expect to receive.
This eliminates confusion on how they access your lead magnets.
Test any of these to see how they convert for you.
You can test them two different ways.
1. Run a simultaneous split test.
Create two opt-in boxes or opt-in pages. Keep all the elements the same except the CTA button text.
Give it at least a month, or at least 100 impressions (times they’re viewed but not clicked).
See which had a higher conversion rate.
2. Change if it does meet the conversion goal.
Predetermine the conversion rate you want. In my experience in the relationship niche, anything above 20% is high.
(Although my newest conversion tricks this year have reached 50% and up!)
If it does not convert than change the text after at least 100 impressions than change the text.
The more targeted your audience the more likely you’ll match their needs, and thus get a conversion (click through, opt-in, read your whole post, buy).
In other words, the more you specify who will benefit from your content the more likely the audience who fits that description will take action.
In a relationship blog, you market to various sub-niche audiences too.
Yes, your blog might focus on relationship tips for women who are in relationships or offer dating tips for single women or both.
But each of them has very specific needs at different times.
If you want your audience to take action you must dig deeper and create content that covers these different subtopics (which we will look at next).
However, you must also clarify who you are targeting.
Single, married, in a committed relationship, divorced
Just after a break-up, single for a while, after divorce and infidelity
Dating app, at work, social circles, planned events, social get-togethers or social clubs, at the gym, clubs, business networking events
Text, body language, in-person questions or phrases
Extroverted, introverted, shy (not the same as introverted)
These are just a few ideas to get you thinking.
Build upon your laser-focused audience and create content that digs deeper into their needs.
Your content becomes the bridge between their desire for a solution and your recommended affiliate products that will solve them.
And there’s a process you must follow to convert the click and ultimately the affiliate sale.
<PUT THIS NEXT PART IN A BACKGROUND BOX>
Conversion Sale Process: from Content to Affiliate Sale
Connect with Your Audience
Show them you understand their feelings and frustrations.
Help them Identify their Problem
You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.
Get them Excited that a Solution Exists
Point out the positive results they will achieve
How great it will feel,
The pain they will avoid and
How easy they can achieve it (provided they follow the steps and take action) and
Share the results or testimonies of others who have taken advantage of the solution and found success with it (if you have access to this)
Remind them of the Cost of Waiting to Take Action
No action means staying stuck in misery.
Describe WHAT they’ll Need to Achieve these Results
List out or describe the new mindset, situations, tools they’ll need, the changes they’ll need to make…
… but do NOT SHOW THEM HOW to do it.
Recommend the Product…
…that shows them HOW TO solve their problem.
This process starts with digging deeper into their specific needs based on the conditions of the problems.
So, thinking back on the specific audiences previously discussed:
Then you combine those with the conditions of their current problem they are experiencing.
So, think about it.
A single lady may search the internet for tips on how to rekindle romance with her emotionally distant husband or boyfriend.
Let me ask you, which post is she most likely to click through to read:
Flirty Text Messages to Send Him
Flirty Text Messages to Make Him Chase AGAIN!
Obviously, Option B because it’s:
To increase the conversion of your affiliate sales, you must keep in mind what your visitor will see on the landing page you send them.
This means you must align your promise of how the affiliate product will solve their solution with the headline on the affiliate’s sales page.
And hopefully, the headline is brief, to the point and clearly specifies the target audience and their immediate need.
This is called “message matching”.
The easiest way to do this is to use the same words from the headline in your CTA.
In a review post of “Why He Disappeared” by dating coach Evan Marc Katz.
Still sick and tired of your last break up? Or two break ups?
Evan reveals the real reason a man will suddenly “disappear” from your life…
Or you can just reword with powerful trigger words or phrases.
Check out this example:
An email to your subscribers on the subject of understanding the emotional triggers that make men want to commit in a relationship.
(example email idea)
Don’t you think it’s about time to find out what men value in relationships?
Haven’t you finally considered that you do NOT know?
And you’ve already discovered that you can’t ask them.
Because most men don’t know themselves.
What if you knew what men secretly wanted on a deeper emotional level?
Dating coach James Bauer’s reveals a few of men’s deep emotional needs in his short video.
[Click here] to watch his video. (just an example, not a live link)
Another element of message matching is the images you choose to display within your content.
The images you choose create the biggest and fastest impact on your visitors’ feelings.
This is especially true in relationship blogs.
If you want them to take action or simply match the mood of the topic then choose the images the match the topic of the piece of content you’re working on.
The images help tell the story just like the color scheme, fonts, headlines and body text.
Don’t create a mismatch.
You write a post on the topic of catching a cheating husband. Then you choose a pic of a young teen couple to put in your post or social media graphic.
Your Pin’s headline is “10 Ways to Meet a High-Value Man” and then you choose an image of a guy who looks like a self-absorbed douche bag.
Your eBook lead magnet’s title is “10 Ways to Stop Arguing with Your Boyfriend and Get Along Again”.
Then you choose a pic of a couple who’s either smiling or not showing any emotion at all.
Some pics void of people can still set the right mood.
For example, after divorce or break up showing a pic of a long road that stretches out into the distance sets the matching feeling of the lonely, unknown life that comes next.
But you run a relationship blog so images of people that match:
The positioning of your CTAs matter.
One of the best ways to know this is by examining your data.
You can do this a few ways:
Ever heard of them?
These show where your visitors click, stop to read or scroll.
Here’s an example from my relationship blog InfidelityFirstAidKit.com
The tool that I use for heat maps is Clicky.com which happens to be the analytics tool I have used for years now.
I prefer it over Google Analytics mostly because I find it easier to use and cleaner to look at.
I started with the free version.
==>Click here to try Clicky.com’s free version.
Tracking links can tell you which link was clicked that made the sale.
Here’s an example of a tracking link:
https://www.(the affiliate landing page URL here).com/ ?tid=CONV_POST
If a visitor clicked this link on my 10 High Conversion Elements post and made a purchase, then in my affiliate dashboard, in this case, my Clickbank dashboard, I would see this:
?tid=CONV_POST under the TID column
I added the extension CONV_POST to remind me where the link came from.
You could get more specific as to which link on the post was clicked by adding CONV_POST-1, CONV_POST-2, CONV_POST-3, etc.
The numbers refer to the first link that appears, the second and so on.
By themselves vanity links just change the ugly, sketchy link you see above and swap it out with something prettier for the visitor to see.
I started with the free version of the WordPress plugin Pretty Link for this.
https://www.infidelityfirstaidkit.com/his_secret_obsession (this is fake I only created it to illustrate an example)
It still points to the original destination (the affiliate sales page).
But when I create the vanity link with Pretty Link I could give it a title like: Above Fold Link- Conversion Post
So, in my Pretty Link dashboard I can see how many times the Above Fold Link- Conversion Post link gets clicked.
Then I could create another link titled: Bottom of Post Link: Conversion Post and then see which one gets clicked more.
By analyzing the data over many different posts, you can see which location within your posts that your links get clicked the most.
From my experience, the top 1/3 of a post gets the most clicks.
If you focus your efforts to increase conversion rates, this is the best place to do it.
Especially located after you’ve inserted some kind of promise of a benefit.
Like in this heat map screenshot of mine:
However, if they click too soon then they most likely will NOT purchase because they have not been warmed up enough.
Unless you warmed them up from an email and then sent them to the post.
On the other hand, if they click links at the bottom of a post then they’re more likely to purchase because they’ve read enough information.
They’re interested enough in finding a solution to solve their problem that they read all the way to the end.
And by no coincidence is this one of my historically highest converting product review pages.
And from experience, I’d say shorter product review posts convert better than longer ones.
This means I should go back and edit some of my long reviews ha,ha,ha. (UGH!)
The longer you take to promise a benefit, the more likely they will lose interest and leave.
Keep your visitor or subscriber in mind when creating any kind of content.
Your role is to help them solve a problem or ease their worries.
It’s the only true benefit you offer as a relationship blogger.
People do not have patience to figure out if you can help them.
That’s why you must make it obvious for them.
Tell them how you will solve their problems.
So, if you wish for them to take action then you must apply various techniques to increase conversion rates.
Not everyone will the action that you want, but no one will if you do not pay attention to the psychology of emotional triggers.
Thank you for visiting RelationshipBrew.com
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