Core Concepts: Conversion

Conversion is a frequently misunderstood term. Most people know what it means, but front-line staff and even experienced managers tend to define it much too narrowly. In this article, I present an expanded definition that will change the way you think about what a conversion is, and give some quick thoughts about how to use the expanded definition to improve your operations. 

Most often, people in the home improvement industry tend to view conversion in terms of their own goals:

• Digital marketing people often look at a conversion as a form fill, 
• call center staff look at a conversion as setting an appointment,
• salespeople look at conversions as homeowners agreeing to spend money for a project.

All of these ways of looking at a conversion are totally fair. However there are far more, and as we begin to expand the meaning of conversion, a whole new world of possibilities opens up.

Defining Conversion

Lots of thought leaders have defined conversion differently, and sometimes in unbelievably complicated ways. Let’s make it super simple and relatable: 

A conversion is any observable (or measurable) prospect behavior that leads to a specific desired business outcome. 

Put differently, you want someone to DO something that is useful for you. 

That’s pretty vague, right? Well, it’s vague on purpose in part because “conversions” can happen in lots of different ways, in virtually any part of the buyer’s journey. 

Usually, but not always, a conversion follows a call to action (CTA). A CTA is simply us requesting that the prospect DO something: like, share, follow, click, schedule, subscribe, buy, etc. 

CTAs can appear on your website, in a social media post, on a direct mail piece, or can be delivered in person like asking for someone to sign up for an estimate at a home show. In each case, we are asking someone to take a specific action which has value to us. When they do that the thing we’ve asked them to do, that’s a conversion. 

Let me give you some specific examples to make this a little more concrete. 

Conversion Examples

A Sale: 

This is pretty obvious. As someone converts from a non-customer to a customer, you can see their purchase decision and clearly the act of purchasing something moves you toward a business goal. This can happen in-home, online, via email, etc. The way they convert doesn’t matter, only that their decision to buy is observable and ties to your business goals. 

Clicking On A “Learn More” Button On Your Homepage: 

This is a little more subtle, but a button on your website with a command, like “Learn More,” is a CTA. Our specific business goal is to convert this person from a passive visitor, who would just otherwise bounce off our site and keep surfing, into an engaged visitor. You can’t buy if you never engage.  

Their action to click deeper into the site is observable, and we know that engaged visitors are more likely to take the next step of setting an appointment. Appointments lead to sales, and so that first humble click is often a necessary first conversion. 

Signing Up For Your Email List: 

 In this case, we can observe a form fill or face-to-face request to receive more information. The business outcome we’re trying to drive is growing our marketing audience. We move someone from being a non-subscriber to being a subscriber, and we’ve got a conversion. 

“Like Us” on Facebook

Our goal here is to grow an audience we can market to, in the hope that they will engage with our brand and ultimately buy or refer us down the line. We invite them to like us. The behavior of clicking the button converts them from a non-liker to a liker. 

I’d bet today whoever handles your HR and hiring doesn’t really think of recruiting as a marketing function, complete with “leads” and conversions to an appointment. But I can hope that you can see that it is, and this is one place where expanding your thinking about how to drive conversions can be extremely helpful.

Bake A Cake And Post The Result

Here’s an example from a different industry.

Let’s say you have a Youtube Channel that focuses on teaching people how to bake specialty cakes. You call them to action to try using your recipe themselves, and to post a picture of the results.

The act of doing the task and posting the picture moves them from non-bakers to bakers, which means they are more engaged and therefore more likely to stick as subscribers. Less turnover in subscribers means the channel is more likely to command higher ad revenues, which is the business outcome.

I include this example only to illustrate that a conversion can be just about any behavior that moves you toward your goals. It’s not just about sales and marketing.

How To Use An Expanded Definition Of Conversion

Conversion is, by its’ very nature, a really big concept because it can be used to describe any meaningful, observable movement along a prospect’s – or applicant’s – journey.

Canvassing teams can convert homeowners from non-talkers to talkers.

Homeshow and events teams can convert people from passersby to engaged prospects.

A great reputation management program can convert people from non-recommenders, to brand advocates. The options are endless.

Here are three quick ideas about how to use this expanded definition to improve your business today.

1) Measure, Test, Improve, Repeat:

The most powerful implication of this approach is that every part the customer’s journey can, by definition, be measured. What can be measured can be tested and improved on.

This is an important insight because instead of looking at leads or sales alone as conversions, you can look at appointment-keepers, call-returners, email-forwarders, survey-completers, project-repurchasers, and so much more. Which of these folks are the most likely to deliver profitable projects?

If you need more money popping out the bottom of the funnel, maybe you just need to focus some effort on improving a specific small conversion further up the funnel.

2) Plugging The Holes In Your Funnel

Looking at conversions this way implies that every journey can be broken down into a number of smaller, more manageable pieces or steps. This “mapping” process will immediately help your team see where customers fall out of the journey, and connect teams in different silos to each other’s goals.

3) Better Internal Conversations

Don’t underestimate the importance of this last one. I’ve shown that there are many potential conversion points along a customer’s journey. When your team is planning and problem-solving, it is much easier to talk about how to move someone from point X to point Y than accomplishing a nebulous goal such as “improving close rate.” Looking at a journey as a series of conversions focuses their creativity right on the place where you need it most.

What parts of your operations could be defined as conversions that maybe are going unnoticed today? What would happen if you looked at those conversion rates in a very granular way, and focused your team on improving them?