Insights
by Superangel

How to Increase Revenue Without Raising Ad Spend?

If someone told you the first step to increase revenue is to understand human psychology, what would be your first reaction? You’d probably think it’s vague. Alright, let’s get more specific. 95% of the decisions humans make are subconscious. Moreover, the attention span is very short:  first impressions are made within the first seconds. Now think about your first customer acquisition channel – what would you change knowing this information?

Superangel Insight session with Kristel Tuul, a data-driven growth marketing expert was all about hacking human psychology and turning it to your advantage for nailing conversion . You’d be surprised how much digging into human behaviour can change the way you want to present your acquisition channels. The original webinar or a podcast are available to follow how Kristel thoroughly analyses the website of GDPR Register and VideoCV. Be prepared for a session packed with practical information you can implement already today.

Run a 5-second test to optimise the value-proposition of your product and attract high-quality leads

When potential customers land on your page, they behave differently depending on their awareness level – they may be unaware that the problem exists in the first place or they might already know your brand. Regardless, there are effective ways to optimize the acquisition channels to ensure the conversion of high-quality leads. 

Firstly, put on your customer hat and run two tests, 5 and 30 second test, which allows you to understand how well your page communicates your messages. How does it work?

5 second test – watch the page for 5 seconds, close the screen. Ask yourself:

  • What do you remember?
  • Was it trustworthy?
  • How did it make me feel?

Following the 5 second test, you should run the same procedure but this time at least 30 seconds or as long as you’ve managed to cover the content. Now ask yourself:

  • What is the most important message?
  • What is frustrating?
  • What is confusing?

Pro tip! This practice works well as a funnel: start from your ads and continue with the landing page, product page etc. The best outcome comes when you run this exercise on a selection of people at your target group or even at a coffee shop to get a fresh opinion and input – experience shows the discoveries are 2x better with strangers.

If the customer will spend only a couple of seconds on your page, will it be enough for her to understand what is the value of your product? 

Here are some practical tips to maximise impact:

  • Bring out the value first – why should they use your product? Is it to save time or money or to increase revenue? With this in mind, have a look at what your competitors are doing. Understand how they’re positioning themselves and what’s the value they are selling. Follow it up by bringing out benefits and then functions that allow you to deliver the values.
  • People skim read and only read headlines. Put the most important messages into headlines
  • For the same reason, put the most important messages into the 50% of your page
  • Use simple language and easy to follow structure: use bullets/italic/bold to bring out the most important information and break the reading pattern for the information to be actually noticed.
  • Give the image of “easy” even if your concepts are hard – make it as easy for the customer to understand your offer as possible
  • Use social proof to build trust – what have your customers or partners said before? 
  • Find out what’s the main device the visitors land on your page from. Make sure your website is mobile friendly and the message gets over the same way as from a computer screen.

Use mere exposure effect to create familiarisation 

Have you ever clicked on an ad and realised you’ve ended up in a completely different place than you expected?

Most probably you left the page the same very moment. The same happens to your customer if you ignore the mere exposure effect – a tendency to develop preferences for things simply because we are familiar with them. In practice it means that the more you perceive a certain message, the more likely you’re to rate it positively and trustworthy. Thus, all messages in your funnel should support each other. Create familiarity through channels and avoid conflicting messages. It does not mean repeating the same message several times on the same web page

Survey your website visitors and existing customers to improve clarity

Getting live feedback from your website visitors and customers is the best way to hack what works well and what you are currently missing. Using questions like ‘what are the limitations of the current solution’ and ‘what matters the most for you in a solution’ is a great way of reaching the customers who are hard to interview. Use your customers also to optimise your tag line and value proposition: what are the 3 adjectives they use to describe your company/product and how would they persuade a friend to start using your product? It’s likely the answer is different to what you thought was important.

Do not multitask. Focus on 1-2 channels

Select active channel as first (e-mails, LinkedIn) and passive channel as second (SEO, content creation, word of mouth). Within these channels, constantly learn why something is working or not working – don’t just copy something from your competitors website that looks nice. You cannot be sure whether the conversion works or not. Instead, focus on your biggest growth opportunity by continuing visiting your prospects and customers for their input. 

If you’re keen to learn more, check out these resources:

Books & online materials mentioned:

This article is from a series of sessions between Superangel and brilliant experts & entrepreneurs on the most relevant topics for early stage startups.