Conversion Rate Optimization: Competing with Paid Referral Sites

Are you looking for ways to reduce dependency on paid referral sites – or at least reduce the fees paid to them? One way to reduce the cost is to collect the lead on your website FIRST. A prospect may be on your website first only to leave, go to an online referral site, and submit a form on their site first. This can be very costly and could be easily avoided if that prospect became a lead on your website first. Conversion rate optimization of your own website is a great place to start. 

Competing with Paid Referral Sites Part 2 (Senior Living CRO)

The best way to collect and timestamp a lead as your own is through optimizing your existing website for conversion. "CRO" or conversion rate optimization is the science of optimizing your website to collect the most and best qualified leads for your business. Conversion rate optimization is a relatively new science on the web that can make a huge difference in your bottom line. Using the following 4 tips you should be able to greatly increase the conversion rates on your website.

"Only about 22 percent of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates."

-Wordsteam

4 Senior Living CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) Tips

1. Implement Content Offer "Pop-Ups"

We all know “pop-ups” is a dirty word. However they can be an extremely effective strategy for capturing new new leads. Exit pop-ups appear the moment website visitors are about to leave your website and can offer a call to action that prompts the visitor to submit a form. In this instance just a name, email, and timestamp (auto-populated by whatever marketing automation tool you’re using) is enough to be able to claim that prospect became a lead on your website first.

*This pop up in the lower right corner is for an offer to download a guide to choosing a senior living community. These can be great offers for the adult child looking to learn more about senior living.

2. Embed inline Forms

Embedded website forms are one of the simplest and most overlooked ways to generate to leads. Often a simple sidebar form can increase the conversion of a page greatly. Embedded sidebar forms could be a contact form, a form to book a community tours, or a form used by the visitor to download a content offer. Whatever the form it’s a way to make it easier to collect a prospects name and email before they leave your site.

*This graph from Enquire leads show the trend to use web forms in senior living has been increasing steadily over the past 5 years. They now account for approximately 25% of inquiries into senior housing.

3. Install a Chatbot or Chat Feature

According to many digital marketing experts we are about to enter the age of the chatbot. Chat features have been increasing rapidly in popularity and will continue to due so over the next 5-10 years.  By installing a senior living chatbot you give prospects a direct channel to talk immediately to your sales staff. Not only that but you can collect their name, email, and timestamp over a chat messenger and register that lead as your own before a directory does. Click into our chatbots for senior living page to learn more about this easy-to-implement tool.

*Many are comparing the upcoming growth in chatbot usage to the rise of websites in the late 90's. 

4. Optimize landing pages with A/B Testing

Do you have landing pages set up on your websites? Landing pages are created to inform and convert website visitors to new leads. Reports show that landing pages generate a 27% conversion rate on average and are a crucial component to optimizing your website for conversion.  However it’s not enough to simply have a landing page. A small tweak to the text, color of a button, or form length can have a huge impact on how well that page converts.  This is why it’s important to create multiple versions of the same page and “A/B test” the page.

In an A/B test you run two version of the same landing page at the same time. You direct 50% of the traffic to one while the other 50% goes to the other. Then you see which converts better and keep that one. This is a simple version to start but you can continue to A/B test every feature on the page. From the color, to the button style on the form, to the pictures on the page. Small changes can surprisingly make a huge different when optimizing for conversion.

Now you know about these 4 ways to increase conversion rates on your website. With these 4 tactics you can make your website “stickier” and help it to gather more leads. By gathering more leads you’ll be able to timestamp and register the lead as having come through your website instead of a paid directory site.  By doing this you’ll be able to prove the lead is your should they also submit a form on a directory site that you’re currently partnered with for leads.  To learn more senior living lead generation tactics click the CTA below to download our free e-book.