Looking for the best marketing books? You’re in the right place!

In the early 2000s, PepsiCo ran blind taste tests that showed most people preferred Pepsi over Coke. Confident in the data, they launched a bold campaign but it backfired. Sales didn’t spike. In fact, Coke pulled ahead.

Why? Because marketing isn’t just about the product. It’s about memory, identity, emotions—things you can’t always measure.

That’s why the best marketing books don’t just teach tactics. They teach you how people think. And in 2025, as AI tools flood the landscape and automation handles the busywork, your edge comes from knowing what still can’t be outsourced: human insight, strategy, and brand intuition.

This list brings together some of the best marketing books for today’s post-SEO world. 

We’ve organized the 31 best marketing books into clear, purposeful categories, so you can jump straight to what matters most for your role, goals, or curiosity.

• Marketing Classics & Timeless Strategy: Essential reads on brand positioning, copywriting, and the fundamentals that never go out of style.
• Consumer Behavior & Persuasion: Understand the psychological drivers behind buying decisions and how to influence them ethically.
• Content Marketing & Storytelling: Books to help you craft stories that build trust, spark action, and grow your brand.
• Social Media & Direct Response Marketing: High-impact strategies for engagement, ROI, and platform-specific growth.
• Strategy, Innovation & Category Design: Forward-looking reads on long-term growth, market disruption, and owning your niche.
• Marketing in the Age of AI: Navigate automation, generative tools, and the future of marketing in an AI-driven world.

Each book in this list will sharpen your thinking, upgrade your strategy, and help you stand out—whether you’re a beginner, a brand builder, or a digital native navigating the noise.

TL;DR: The Best Marketing Books of 2025—What to Read and Why

• Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout -> For mastering brand perception and competitive messaging

• Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy -> For persuasive copy and ad fundamentals that still work today

• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt -> For building clear, focused marketing plans

• Influence by Robert Cialdini -> For using psychology to make your campaigns more persuasive

• Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi -> For creating value-first content that converts

• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley -> For improving your writing across all channels

• Marketing Artificial Intelligence by Paul Roetzer -> For using AI tools without losing the human touch

• Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh -> For turning traffic into actual sales through better UX and copy

• Contagious by Jonah Berger -> For designing content and offers, people naturally share

• The Age of Invisible Machines by Robb Wilson -> For building AI-powered customer experiences

I. Marketing Classics & Timeless Strategy

These are the books that shaped modern marketing. Whether you’re launching a brand or repositioning one, these timeless titles will help you build strategy, find your competitive edge, and make your message stick.

1. Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout is a groundbreaking classic that introduced the concept of “positioning” — a strategy to help brands claim a distinct place in the customer’s mind. And now it seems almost prophetic when there’s so much noise in the marketing industry and positioning is one way to cut through the clutter with focused messaging and strategic perception.

Instead of trying to introduce something completely new, the book shows you how to link your message to something your audience already understands, making it easier for them to remember and trust your brand. You’ll learn how to simplify your messaging, avoid over-promising, and take a clear stand in your category.

Who It’s For: Marketers, brand strategists, founders, or anyone looking to differentiate their product in a crowded market.

What You’ll Learn: 

• How to create a “position” in your customer’s mind that reflects your strengths.
• Why simple, consistent messaging always outperforms clever or complicated branding.
  
• The dangers of repositioning and why it’s easier (and smarter) to carve out a new space rather than shift an existing perception. 
  
• The importance of timing and being first in a category. 
  
• Real-world examples of how brands like Avis, IBM, and VW succeeded (or failed) based on how they were perceived. 

One Smart Takeaway: “Marketing is not a battle of products. It’s a battle of perceptions.”

2. Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh & Ayat Shukairy

If your website gets traffic but few sales, Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy will show you exactly how to fix that. Written by the founders of Invesp (one of the first conversion rate optimization agencies), Conversion Optimization is packed with step-by-step advice on how to turn visitors into buyers without guessing.

It doesn’t just tell you to “test everything.” 

It shows you: 

• What to test
• How to understand user behavior
• And why small changes like button text, page layout, or offer framing can double your conversions.

This book is ideal if you want to grow revenue without spending more on ads—by making the most of the traffic you already have.

Who It’s For: Ecommerce teams, DTC founders, SaaS marketers, growth hackers, and anyone running paid traffic or managing landing pages.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to identify where and why users drop off on your site
• How to structure a high-converting landing page, from headline to CTA
• What kinds of A/B tests actually move the needle (hint: not button colors)
• Why understanding user intent is more important than demographics
• How to use psychology, urgency, and social proof to reduce hesitation and build trust

One Smart Takeaway: “Conversion optimization isn’t about fixing your website. It’s about fixing your customer’s journey.”

3. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy, often called the “father of advertising,” built one of the world’s most iconic agencies and changed how brands speak to people. This book distills decades of his real-world experience into a surprisingly readable, even entertaining, guide for creating ads that actually drive results.

Ogilvy believed great advertising isn’t about being clever or flashy but more about selling honestly. His book teaches how you should always back your message with research, speak to real customer needs, and never underestimate your audience’s intelligence.

Even though this book was written in 1983, his lessons are still useful today:

• Keep your message clear and focused
• Use clean visuals that guide attention
• Write copy that informs, not confuses

This book is a powerful reminder that substance and clarity win over hype.

Who It’s For: Ad writers, performance marketers, founders building brand language, content strategists, and anyone who wants to write with persuasion and clarity.

What You’ll Learn:

• The anatomy of an ad that sells—from headlines and visuals to copy structure
• Why rigorous consumer research must precede any creative work.
• The lasting value of brand personality and tone of voice.
• How to advertise everything from luxury goods to charities.
• Lessons from classic campaigns by Rolls-Royce, Dove, and Hathaway shirts and why they worked.
  

One Smart Takeaway: “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.”

4. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout

This book is like a cheat sheet for understanding how marketing really works (not just in theory, but in the minds of customers). Ries and Trout lay out 22 simple, no-nonsense laws that explain why some brands win and others quietly fade.

Each chapter is short and sharp, giving you one powerful principle—for example, why being first matters more than being better, or why trying to please everyone almost always fails.

If you’re launching something new, repositioning, or just trying to stand out, this book helps you avoid classic mistakes.

Who It’s For: Startup founders, product marketers, brand strategists, solo entrepreneurs, and anyone building go-to-market plans

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why customers remember the first in a category, not the best

• Why perception beats reality (and how to shape it)

• Why narrowing your focus often strengthens your brand

• How being bold and consistent gives you long-term power

• What not to do when you’re the #2 or #3 in a crowded space

One Smart Takeaway: “It’s better to be first in the mind than first in the marketplace.”

5. Marketing Management by Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller

This book teaches you how to think like a real marketer, not just someone who runs ads or social media, but someone who understands how marketing drives the entire business.

It covers everything: how to find the right audience, how to price your product, how to position your brand, and how to build long-term customer relationships.

It’s not light reading, but if you apply even a few chapters, you’ll make smarter decisions, create better campaigns, and understand what actually grows a business.

Who It’s For: Aspiring CMOs, business students, generalists moving into marketing, and marketers who want to build strong strategic thinking

What You’ll Learn: 

• How to craft a full marketing strategy — not just isolated campaigns

• How to segment and target the right customers

• How pricing, promotion, and product work together (the 4Ps — and beyond)

• How to manage and grow a brand across its lifecycle

• How marketing connects with finance, operations, and overall business growth

One Smart Takeaway: “Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value.”

6. Purple Cow by Seth Godin

This book teaches one core idea: being “good” is no longer enough. In a crowded market, you have to be remarkable—like a purple cow in a field of regular cows. Something people notice, talk about, and remember.

Seth Godin shows you why most products fail, not because they’re bad, but because they’re boring. And why playing it safe actually puts you at more risk than standing out.

If you’re building a new product, launching a brand, or trying to grow faster, this book will shift how you think: instead of asking “How do I sell this?”, you’ll start asking, “Is this even worth talking about?”

Who It’s For: Founders, DTC brands, content creators, product marketers, and anyone struggling to get attention.

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why safe, average ideas get ignored

• How to build products and services that stand out on their own

• Why marketing is baked into the product, not just what comes after

• How to find early adopters who spread your message

• Why word-of-mouth always beats paid ads in the long run

One Smart Takeaway: “If it’s not remarkable, it’s invisible.”

II. Best Marketing Books on Consumer Behavior, Psychology & Persuasion

Great marketing starts with understanding people. These books decode how customers think, what drives them to act, and how brands can influence decisions ethically, using proven psychological principles that work across industries.

7. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

This is one of the most practical books ever written on how to ethically influence people’s behavior in marketing, sales, or everyday life. Backed by 35+ years of research, Cialdini breaks down six principles that explain why people say yes (or no) and how you can use them to improve conversions, messaging, and trust.

If you’ve ever wondered why testimonials work, why urgency drives action, or why people follow social trends, this book gives you the science behind it all.

Who It’s For: Marketers, copywriters, founders, sales teams — anyone who needs to persuade or drive action.

What You’ll Learn: 

• How to use social proof to build instant trust (e.g., reviews, case studies)

• Why scarcity (limited-time offers, low stock) makes people act faster

• How authority and even simple visual cues (like uniforms or titles) increase credibility

• Why people stick to their choices (and how to make your offer the first commitment)

• How reciprocity—giving value first—boosts response rates

One Smart Takeaway: “People say yes more often when they feel like they owe you something — even something small.”

8. Buy.logy by Martin Lindstrom

What if customers don’t actually know why they buy? Buy.logy dives into the subconscious triggers that shape purchasing decisions—many of which happen before logic even kicks in.

Lindstrom led a $7 million neuromarketing study (with brain scans) to understand how branding, emotions, visuals, and sensory cues influence what people buy and why. You’ll walk away understanding how the brain really responds to ads, logos, packaging, and messaging.

It’s especially useful if you’re working on visual branding, in-store marketing, or storytelling that needs to make an emotional impact.

Who It’s For: Brand strategists, product marketers, retail marketers, and anyone shaping customer experience.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why emotional branding works better than logic

• How visuals, smells, and sounds affect buyer decisions

• Why some ads backfire — even when they test well

• How mirror neurons, rituals, and symbolism play into brand loyalty

• Why logos and product placement succeed or fail at a brain level

One Smart Takeaway: “People don’t buy with logic. They buy with emotion and justify it with logic later.”

9. Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

This book explains why some ideas catch on and others don’t even when the “bad” ideas seem to spread faster. Made to Stick gives you a clear formula for making your messages unforgettable, whether you’re writing an ad, pitching a product, or giving a talk.

If you’ve ever had a great message fall flat, this book will show you how to package your ideas so people actually remember and repeat them.

Who It’s For: Content creators, brand storytellers, marketers, educators, and anyone crafting messages that need to land. 

What You’ll Learn

• The 6 principles of sticky ideas: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories (SUCCESs model)

• How to turn abstract ideas into visuals and stories people understand instantly

• Why “surprise” and “curiosity gaps” are powerful tools for engagement

• How to use real-life examples to increase believability and retention

• How to test if your message will actually stick

One Smart Takeaway: “If you say three things, you’ve said nothing. Find the core of your message and stick to it.”

10. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

This book is a crash course in how to build a brand people truly connect with not just a logo or color palette. Neumeier explains that a brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what your customers believe it is. The gap between your business strategy and how people feel about your brand? That’s the “brand gap.”

This book helps you close that gap through clear messaging, smart design, and a unified customer experience.

Who It’s For: Brand strategists, early-stage founders, designers, creative leads, and product marketers.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why branding is about gut feeling, not logos

• The five disciplines of great branding: Differentiate, Collaborate, Innovate, Validate, and Cultivate

• How to create a meaningful, consistent brand personality

• How to align your internal culture with your external image

• How to design brand touchpoints that leave a lasting impression

One Smart Takeaway: “A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

11. The Brand Flip by Marty Neumeier

In The Brand Flip, Neumeier builds on his earlier ideas by showing how branding has changed in the age of empowered customers and social media. He argues that the power has flipped, from businesses to consumers.

Your audience now defines your brand through what they share, say, and expect. This book helps you stay relevant by focusing on customer values, community, and co-creation.

Who It’s For: Marketing teams, brand consultants, DTC founders, and anyone navigating modern customer relationships. 

What You’ll Learn:

• Why traditional top-down branding no longer works

• How to build a tribe around shared values

• Why customer experience is the new marketing

• How to turn your best customers into evangelists

• How to align culture, mission, and business goals into one clear brand story

One Smart Takeaway: “Today’s customers don’t buy brands. They join them.”

12. Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands by Marty Neumeier

If your brand feels like it’s getting lost in the crowd, Zag shows you how to stand out. Neumeier argues that in a world where everyone is zigging (doing the expected), your best move is to zag—that is, to go in a completely different, focused, and bold direction.

This book helps you sharpen your positioning, clarify your brand purpose, and make strategic choices that separate you from everyone else instead of blending in.

It’s short, practical, and feels more like a workshop than a lecture. Great for when you’re stuck or want a reset.

Who It’s For: Founders, brand strategists, creatives, and product teams building something from scratch or trying to rethink their market position.

What You’ll Learn: 

• Why true brand strength comes from being different, not just better

• How to find your “onliness statement” (what your brand does that no one else can)

• How to build your brand around a clear idea, not just features

• Why narrowing your focus can actually widen your impact

• How to spot the right trends — and avoid jumping on the wrong ones

One Smart Takeaway: “When everyone zigs, zag. It’s the only way to stand out.”

III. Best Marketing Books Content Marketing, Storytelling & Messaging

Forget empty content and keyword stuffing. These books teach you how to create marketing that actually informs, entertains, and builds trust, so customers come to you, not the other way around.

13. Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi is one of the best content marketing books of all time.

Joe Pulizzi founded the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), one of the leading educational resources for enterprise brands in content marketing.

It is safe to assume that Pullizzi knows a thing or two about content marketing, and in this book, he gives plenty of great advice about how to do it right.

In this book, Pulizzi lays out a full content strategy, from finding your niche to publishing consistently across channels.

If you’re tired of chasing traffic or constantly pushing ads, Epic Content Marketing helps you shift from interrupting people to becoming their go-to source of value.

Who It’s For: Content marketers, solopreneurs, brand builders, and anyone creating blogs, newsletters, or video content.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to find your unique content angle (your “sweet spot”)

• How to build trust through consistent, useful content

• Why content should educate or entertain — not push sales

• How to distribute content across channels without burning out

• How to measure success and adjust based on results

One Smart Takeaway: “Customers don’t care about your products. They care about their problems. Create content that helps them solve those.”

14. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content by Ann Handley

Ann Handley’s “Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content” is indispensable for anyone looking to succeed through content marketing or simply wanting to create good content.

It’s your go-to guide for writing better marketing content, whether it’s a homepage, a product description, a blog post, or even a LinkedIn update. Ann Handley makes writing feel approachable and gives you practical rules to write clearly, confidently, and in your own voice.

No fluff, no jargon—just simple, direct writing that actually works.

Who It’s For: Writers, marketers, founders, creators (or anyone who communicates online). 

What You’ll Learn:

• How to write clear, useful content that people actually read

• Why every piece of content should start with empathy and purpose

• Easy rules for grammar, tone, and formatting that make a big difference

• How to write for different channels without losing your brand voice

• How to edit like a pro (even if you’re not one)

One Smart Takeaway: “Your words are your web presence. Make them count.”

15. Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller

This book gives you a repeatable framework to clarify your brand message using storytelling. Donald Miller shows you how to stop talking about your product features and start making your customer the hero of the story.

If your website or pitch ever leaves people confused, this book will help you fix it fast. It’s especially helpful for writing homepages, product pages, emails, and sales decks.

Who It’s For: Founders, brand leads, copywriters, marketers, and anyone struggling to explain what they do clearly.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to simplify your message so customers actually get it

• Why your customer is the hero and you’re just the guide

• How to structure messaging like a story (problem -> solution -> success)

• What to include on your homepage to drive more conversions

• How to build a clear call-to-action that moves people forward

One Smart Takeaway: “If you confuse, you lose. People don’t buy the best product, they buy the one they understand fastest.”

16. Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina

This is a how-to manual for content marketing that combines strategy, SEO, analytics, and writing—all in one place. Andy Crestodina breaks everything down into digestible, visual chapters with tons of templates, examples, and checklists you can apply right away.

It’s perfect if you’re doing content marketing and want it to rank, convert, and support your business goals.

Who It’s For: Content marketers, B2B brands, inbound marketers, SEO-focused teams, and anyone who wants content that performs.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to align content with keyword strategy and search intent

• How to write blog posts that get found and convert

• How to promote and repurpose content across channels

• What analytics to track (and how to improve based on them)

• How to use visuals, structure, and formatting to improve readability

One Smart Takeaway: “Great content doesn’t just attract, it answers questions, builds trust, and moves people to act.”

17. The Copywriter’s Handbook by Robert Bly

This is a classic, no-fluff guide to writing copy that sells. Whether you’re working on ads, landing pages, emails, or brochures, Bly gives you the structure, psychology, and tactics that top copywriters use. 

Think of it as a practical reference manual: clear headlines, persuasive body copy, irresistible offers, and strong calls-to-action. If you want your words to make people click, sign up, or buy, this is your guide.

Who It’s For: Copywriters, email marketers, content writers, small business owners, and anyone writing to drive action.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to write attention-grabbing headlines and leads

• The AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

• How to write for clarity, not cleverness

• What makes a call-to-action actually work

• Tips for writing long-form vs. short-form copy

One Smart Takeaway: “The purpose of a headline is to get the reader to read the first sentence. That’s it. Do that well, and you’re winning.”

18. Contagious: How to Build Word of Mouth in the Digital Age by Jonah Berger

Ever wonder why some products or ideas go viral while others flop? Berger unpacks the science of sharing—why people talk, post, and recommend certain things. He also discusses how you can design content, campaigns, or even products that people want to spread.

It’s not about luck, it’s about psychology and structure. Berger gives you the STEPPS framework (Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, Stories) to help your marketing become naturally shareable.

Who It’s For: Social media marketers, product teams, growth strategists, brand storytellers and anyone trying to create buzz or referrals.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why people share content (and how to engineer that sharing)

• How to use emotion and relatability to drive engagement

• What makes something “talkable,” from headlines to packaging

• Why context and timing matter more than you think

• How storytelling builds memory and word-of-mouth

One Smart Takeaway: “People don’t share ads. They share stories, feelings, and things that make them look good.”

IV. Best Marketing Books on Social Media and Direct Response Marketing

This section focuses on results, not just reach. These books help you move beyond vanity metrics (likes, views, follows) and focus on strategies that generate real leads, sales, and business growth from social and direct marketing channels.

19. Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard

This book answers the big question most marketers avoid:

“Is social media actually driving business results?”

Blanchard takes you past fluffy engagement metrics and shows you how to plan, execute, and measure a social media strategy that supports real business goals, like leads, conversions, and customer retention.

If your social content feels busy but not effective, this book gives you a clear roadmap for tying social media back to revenue.

Who It’s For: Social media managers, digital marketers, CMOs, agency teams, and small business owners who want to prove ROI.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to align social media with your company’s business objectives

• How to create social KPIs that matter (not just “likes”)

• How to track performance across channels with real metrics

• How to justify your budget — with numbers, not just engagement screenshots

• How to build internal support and get buy-in for your strategy

One Smart Takeaway: “Social media is not free. It takes time, effort, and money. ROI isn’t optional, it’s essential.”

20. No B.S. Guide To Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy & Kim Walsh-Phillips

This book is a wake-up call for anyone too focused on likes and impressions. Kennedy and Walsh-Phillips show you how to use direct response marketing—content that gets leads, builds a list, and converts without wasting time on vanity metrics.

It’s straight-talking, aggressive, and full of real-world examples. Whether you’re running ads, sending emails, or building landing pages, this book helps you focus on what actually works.

Who It’s For
Email marketers, lead gen teams, solopreneurs, sales funnels pros, and anyone tired of vague marketing results.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to craft offers that people actually respond to

• Why likes don’t matter if they don’t lead to money

• How to write copy that sells — not just entertains

• How to build high-converting campaigns across email, landing pages, and social ads

• How to track real ROI from every campaign you run

One Smart Takeaway: “You can’t take likes to the bank. Direct response marketing is about cash flow not applause.”

21. The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen

Before influencer marketing had a name, Rosen studied how word-of-mouth really spreads and how some products become “talkable” from day one. The Anatomy of Buzz breaks down the mechanics behind organic growth: how messages travel, who amplifies them, and how to engineer marketing that spreads without big budgets.

After interviewing over 150 executives, marketing leaders, and researchers who have successfully built buzz for major brands, Rosen describes the ins and outs of attracting the attention of influential first users and “big-mouth” movers and shakers.

It’s a timeless guide to earning attention instead of buying it.

Who It’s For: Early-stage founders, growth marketers, PR teams, and product marketers focused on organic reach.

What You’ll Learn:

• What makes people talk about a product or brand

• How to identify and engage “influencers” before social media existed

• How to design marketing that travels by itself

• Why trust and early adopters are key to launching with momentum

• How customer experiences fuel referrals (or kill them)

One Smart Takeaway: “People don’t spread products. They spread stories, excitement, and value—in a way that makes them look smart.”

V. Best Marketing Books on Strategy, Innovation & Category Creation

These books go beyond day-to-day marketing. They help you think like a strategist, whether you’re defining a new market, building a long-term competitive edge, or designing products people can’t ignore. If you’re in growth, leadership, or product strategy, this section is your playbook.

22. Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney

Most companies compete in existing markets. The best ones create new categories and dominate them. Play Bigger introduces the idea of “category design”: the process of inventing a problem only you can solve, then positioning your brand as the leader in that space.

If you’re building something disruptive or struggling to stand out, this book will completely reframe how you think about product positioning and market leadership.

Who It’s For: Startup founders, product marketers, CMOs, and innovation teams building or launching something new.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to define a new category instead of competing in an old one

• Why category leaders capture the most value (not just market share)

• How to craft a powerful “point of view” that shifts customer perception

• How to align product, brand, and company strategy around that POV

• Why timing your launch and messaging matters more than you think

One Smart Takeaway: “The company that designs the category is the company that owns it.”

23. Competing Against Luck by Dr. Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, & David Duncan

Why do people buy what they buy? It’s not random, they’re hiring products to do a job. This book introduces the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) theory—a way to understand your customer’s true needs so you can design products and marketing that match.

Instead of guessing what features will work, JTBD helps you build around real, useful customer goals. If you’re launching or refining a product, this book gives you a research-backed lens for smarter decisions.

Who It’s For: Product teams, marketers, founders, UX designers, and anyone doing customer interviews or building roadmaps.

What You’ll Learn: 

• How to uncover the hidden “job” your product is hired to do

• Why demographics don’t explain customer behavior

• How to avoid building features no one uses

• How to structure interviews that reveal useful insights

• How to link innovation to predictable growth

One Smart Takeaway: “Customers don’t buy products, they hire them to get a job done.”

24. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt

What goes into developing a marketing strategy? What’s the difference between a good and bad marketing strategy? Richard P. Rumelt’s book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy answers all these questions sufficiently.

Most business plans are filled with buzzwords and vague goals like “become the market leader” or “drive innovation.” This book shows you how to recognize empty strategy and replace it with one that’s actually executable.

Rumelt gives you a clear framework: a real strategy starts with diagnosing the core problem, choosing a guiding policy, and focusing on a few coordinated actions that address it.

Although he doesn’t specifically discuss marketing, the core principles in the book can also apply to marketing.

Who It’s For: CMOs, marketing strategists, founders, consultants, and teams creating annual plans, go-to-market strategies, or business pivots.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why vague goals like “grow market share” aren’t strategy and what to say instead

• How to define a “kernel of strategy”: a challenge, a policy, and a set of actions

• How to focus resources on a single point of leverage

• Why trying to please everyone leads to weak results

• Real-world breakdowns of strategy at companies like Apple, Nvidia, and General Motors (what they did right and where they went wrong) 

One Smart Takeaway: “The first natural advantage of good strategy is clarity: it forces you to stop lying to yourself about what really needs to be solved.”

VI. Best Marketing Books on AI, Automation & the Future

AI is changing how marketing works, from how we write and automate campaigns to how we generate leads and build customer loyalty. These are the best marketing books to understand what works now, what’s coming next, and how to stay effective in an AI-first world.

25. Marketing Artificial Intelligence by Paul Roetzer & Mike Kaput

This is the most practical, marketing-first guide to using AI in real work not just theory. It shows how tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and predictive analytics can help you write faster, build better campaigns, automate targeting, and generate more qualified leads.

It also helps you avoid the hype and focus on what’s actually useful for marketers right now.

Who It’s For: Digital marketers, content teams, growth leads, marketing ops professionals.

What You’ll Learn:

• Where AI fits into your marketing workflow, from planning to performance

• How to use AI to scale content, personalize outreach, and reduce time on manual tasks

• Which tools are worth adopting now, and what to watch out for

• Why marketing teams need to upskill, not panic

• How to think ethically about AI and data usage

One Smart Takeaway: “AI won’t replace marketers. But marketers who use AI will replace those who don’t.”

26. The Age of Invisible Machines by Robb Wilson

This book looks at how AI and automation are quietly changing how customers experience brands—through chatbots, voice assistants, personalized flows, and backend logic we don’t even see.

It’s especially helpful if you’re building customer journeys or thinking about how to make your brand feel smooth, fast, and smart in a world of digital noise.

Who It’s For: CX designers, UX leads, marketers working on automation, product marketing teams. 

What You’ll Learn: 

• What “invisible UX” is and how AI powers it

• How to design customer experiences that feel natural, not robotic

• How to apply conversational AI to sales, onboarding, and support

• How backend automation affects front-end brand experience

• Why this shift isn’t about tools, it’s about user flow

One Smart Takeaway: “The best interface is no interface. AI-powered systems should serve without being seen.”

27. This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

In an age of AI-generated everything, this book is a grounding force. It reminds you that marketing still comes down to empathy, positioning, and trust, not hacks or volume.

It’s not about algorithms. It’s about knowing who you serve, what they need, and how to connect with them clearly and honestly. If you want your AI-assisted marketing to actually land, this gives you the human foundation to build on.

Who It’s For: Anyone building a brand, writing copy, or creating content, with or without AI tools.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why trying to reach everyone leads to weak results

• How to create something people genuinely want

• How to build trust, not just traffic

• How to speak to your smallest viable audience

• How to stay human while everyone else automates

One Smart Takeaway: “People don’t buy products. They buy stories, belonging, and connection.”

28. The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Written by the co-founder of DeepMind, this book gives you the big picture of what’s coming: not just AI tools, but a total shift in how work, power, and industries operate. It helps you think long-term: how to build resilient marketing strategies in a world that’s speeding up, getting smarter, and becoming harder to predict.

It’s not a “how-to”—it’s a strategic lens for leaders who want to stay relevant.

Who It’s For: Founders, CMOs, product strategists, brand thinkers who want a long-view perspective

What You’ll Learn: 

• How AI (and synthetic tech) will reshape every business function

• Why speed and adaptiveness are now survival skills

• The risks of unregulated AI and how to market ethically

• Why trust and transparency will be a competitive edge

• How to lead in a world where disruption is constant

One Smart Takeaway: “In the AI age, your edge won’t come from tools, it’ll come from how fast you can adapt.”

29. AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor

Most marketers are being sold AI tools they barely understand, with promises like “automated copywriting,” “personalized at scale,” or “predictive magic.”

This book helps you separate real AI from marketing fluff.

Written by two Princeton researchers, AI Snake Oil breaks down the difference between what AI can do well (e.g. generating content, recognizing patterns) and what it struggles with (e.g. understanding meaning, making decisions). If you’re evaluating AI vendors or tools, this book gives you the mental filter to avoid wasting time and budget.

Who It’s For: CMOs, marketing leads, consultants, growth teams, and anyone investing in AI-powered marketing tools or agencies.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why many “AI-powered” tools are overhyped or misleading

• The difference between narrow, useful AI and “general intelligence” hype

• How to ask the right questions before buying or implementing AI tools

• Where AI adds value in marketing workflows and where it doesn’t

• Ethical red flags to look for when using customer data in AI systems

One Smart Takeaway: “You don’t need to fear AI. But you do need to question what it claims to do, especially when it comes with a subscription fee.”

30. The AI Marketing Canvas by Raj Venkatesan & Jim Lecinski 

This is a strategic and practical guide written by a marketing professor and a former Google VP. It lays out a five-stage framework to integrate AI into marketing: from data collection to personalized experiences and predictive insights. It’s clear, credible, and made for marketing leaders.

Who It’s For: CMOs, growth marketers, brand strategists, and senior marketers building AI-ready teams.

What You’ll Learn:

• A step-by-step model for AI integration across the customer journey

• How to personalize campaigns using customer behavior data

• How to identify quick wins with AI before full transformation

• Use cases for content, media, pricing, and loyalty

• How to align AI with brand strategy and ROI goals

One Smart Takeaway: “The marketers who will win with AI are the ones who treat it as a partner, not just a tool.”

31. Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear

In the era of AI and ongoing algorithmic updates, speed and adaptability are crucial. This book teaches you how to build agile marketing teams that can test faster, respond to insights in real-time, and evolve messaging on the fly—something tools like ChatGPT and Claude make easier, but only if your team is structured right.

Who It’s For: Marketing ops leaders, in-house teams, startup CMOs, agency managers.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to implement agile workflows tailored for marketing (not borrowed from software dev)

• How to prioritize quickly without drowning in tasks

• How to create feedback loops that adapt messaging in near real time

• How to balance experimentation with long-term brand strategy

• Tools, templates, and rituals for keeping teams aligned and fast

One Smart Takeaway: “AI makes speed possible. Agility makes it valuable.”

How to Apply What You Learn From the Best Marketing Books: 5 Proven Marketing Moves for 2025

Reading great marketing books is valuable, but applying what they teach is what drives real results. Based on the key insights from this list of best marketing books, here are five high-impact marketing strategies you can use to achieve your marketing goals in 2025:

1. Set Measurable Goals and Build Strategy Backward

Books like “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy” and “Marketing Management” emphasize that effective marketing starts with clarity.

That means setting measurable goals (not vague aspirations), identifying the biggest obstacle in your way, and creating a focused plan to address it.

For example, instead of saying “We want to grow brand awareness,” define a measurable goal tied to business impact. Something like, “We want to increase demo requests from qualified leads by 30% in Q3.”

Once the goal is clear, define the challenge, like “Our current landing page converts at just 1.2% and traffic quality is inconsistent.”

Now build a strategy that addresses it:

• Focus the media budget on high-intent search terms

• A/B test new landing page layouts

• Update CTAs based on scroll and click behavior

This is the difference between random activity and strategic marketing.

2. Make Your Brand Easy to Understand and Easy to Share

In Contagious, The Brand Flip, and Ogilvy on Advertising, a consistent message emerges: people don’t just buy products, they spread stories that reflect who they are.

To stand out, stop describing your product in features. Instead, craft a simple message that resonates with the customer’s self-image and inspires them to share it.

For example, instead of “We offer scalable CRM integrations,” say “We help fast-moving sales teams close faster with tools that feel like second nature.”

Create messages that are:

• Emotionally relevant

• Socially shareable (makes them look smart or helpful)

• Instantly clear

Then bake those into your homepage headline, email intros, and product explainer.

3. Create Content That Solves Specific Problems

Books like Epic Content Marketing, Everybody Writes, and Made to Stick all highlight that content isn’t just filler; it builds trust, solves real problems, and nudges people toward action.

For example, instead of “5 Social Media Tips,” write “How B2B Brands Can Get Leads from LinkedIn Without Paid Ads.” Then break it down with steps, visuals, and a soft CTA to your demo or resource.

What works:

• Narrow focus

• Clear structure

• Immediate value

• A useful next step

4. Leverage AI Tools But Keep Your Strategy Human

As explored in Marketing Artificial Intelligence, The Age of Invisible Machines, and This Is Marketing, the future belongs to marketers who use AI to amplify—not replace—their voice.

For example, this could mean: 

• Using ChatGPT to draft three email variations per segment, but review and rewrite them based on tone, industry, and context.
• Or, using predictive scoring to prioritize warm leads, while allowing sales to use their judgment when reaching out.

For example, when we’re updating an old article, I start by using SurferSEO to analyze what the top-ranking pages are covering. It helps me identify content gaps—subtopics we’ve missed, outdated angles, or questions people are searching for that we haven’t addressed.

Based on that, I sketch a revised outline. Then I feed the outdated version and the new outline into ChatGPT or Grok with a clear prompt: make it relevant for 2025, plug the gaps, and optimize for both Google and AI tools like Perplexity.

The exact AI prompt I use to turn outdated blog posts into top-ranking, AI-citable content. 

Once the outline feels solid, I take over. I bring our own test results, fresh examples, and real insights to ensure the content is genuinely helpful and original.

And it works like a wonder! 

We used this exact approach to approach a blog post that had been dead for months. And after the updated outline and data from 2025, it started picking up traffic within just 3-4 days. It’s clear: AI can help you smartly shape the structure, while your own human insights and data will make it actually work!

5. Optimize Every Step with Real Data, Not Assumptions

In Conversion Optimization by Khalid Saleh and Ayat Shukairy, the message is clear: testing isn’t optional. Understand how users behave on your site.

Run A/B tests.

Refine your offer and layout based on real-world behavior, not internal opinions.

Small changes in messaging, layout, or offer framing can significantly improve conversions over time.

For example, we ran an A/B test on an eTextbook product page to reduce user confusion around rental durations. The control version displayed rental options as “90 Days,” “120 Days,” and so on.

In Variant 1, we replaced these durations with exact expiration dates—e.g., “Access Until May 20, 2024.” In Variant 2, we combined both: duration + expiration date.

The results were clear:

• Variant 1 outperformed the control with a 14.35% increase in conversion rate and a $2.65 lift in revenue per visitor.

• Variant 2 showed no significant improvement, suggesting that clarity beats complexity, and that adding too much information (even if helpful) can overwhelm users.

This experiment reinforced the core principle: even small changes in microcopy or layout, when based on actual user behavior, can significantly improve performance.

Here are some other elements you can test:

• Record scroll depth to see if people even reach your CTA

• Test testimonials vs. feature blocks above the fold

• Track micro-conversions (e.g., clicks on FAQ links) to measure interest

Wrapping Up: Key Takeaways from the Best Marketing Books!

So, there you have it! Diving into some of the best marketing books is like giving yourself a masterclass in cutting-edge marketing strategies. Some even help you hone your business strategy in everyday life.

Whether it’s gaining deeper insights into consumer behavior, mastering content creation, or leveraging social media, each book packs a powerful punch of knowledge that can help grow your business with a winning and successful marketing strategy.

And remember the marketing tips for 2025! These strategies are fresh and geared to keep you ahead of the curve. So, pick up some marketing books based on your industry and interest, use what you learn, do market research, and watch your business grow.

Resources You’ll Love.

1. What are the 4 Ps of Marketing? Understanding the Basics

2. How to Manage a Remote Team in a Way that Drives Business Growth

3. How To Build Thought Leadership From Scratch For Your Business

4. 12 Entrepreneurship Lessons Every Entrepreneur Must Know

5. 13 Best Product Marketing Books in 2023

Best Marketing Books FAQs

The post The 31 Best Marketing Books to Read in the Age of AI (2025) appeared first on Invesp.

Everywhere you look, you see ads. Amid this chaos, word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) helps you cut through the noise by doing what algorithms can’t—building trust. 

Whether it’s a quick recommendation in a WhatsApp group, a 15-second TikTok from a micro-influencer, or a glowing review in a niche subreddit, WOMM drives more credible, more lasting influence than traditional media ever could.

This article breaks down the importance of word-of-mouth marketing in 2025, the channels where it’s most active, and the latest data that proves why it’s still your most valuable growth driver. You’ll also find actionable strategies—backed by examples and tools—to help you scale WOMM for your brand.

What Is Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)?

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) occurs when customers organically promote a brand, product, or experience through conversations, posts, reviews, or recommendations. It can be spontaneous or sparked by a strategy (like a referral program or community campaign).

In 2025, it will not be just friends chatting that moves the needle. Every time you see referrals in private messages, niche forums, shared user-generated content (UGC), and everyday micro-influencer posts, you can safely say that it’s a part of WOMM. 

Key channels for WOMM in 2025

In 2025, word-of-mouth marketing will spread through more nuanced and fragmented channels than ever before. It’s no longer just face-to-face chats or viral tweets—it’s happening across invisible networks, niche communities, and personal-feeling content formats.

Here are the key channels where WOMM is most active today:

• Dark Social: Think WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Slack, and email—places where people share product links privately. This is where most recommendations happen, but they’re hard to track. (More on this later.)
  
• Online Communities: Reddit threads, Discord servers, and closed Facebook groups often host authentic, high-intent conversations about brands, especially in niches like skincare, productivity, or sustainability.
  
• User-Generated Content (UGC): Organic posts, videos, and reviews from real customers serve as modern-day word-of-mouth, especially in DTC and creator-led spaces.
  
• Micro-Influencers: Smaller creators with strong community ties outperform larger influencers in trust and engagement. They often act as super-referrers.
  
• Reviews & Testimonials: From product pages to Trustpilot, customer reviews influence discovery and reinforce purchase decisions. It’s one of the most scalable forms of WOM.
  
• Offline Triggers: Thoughtful packaging, real-world experiences, and physical brand moments (like events or pop-ups) help spark conversations, both in person and online.

Word of Mouth Marketing Statistics to Know in 2025

Here are some statistics that prove the power of word-of-mouth in 2025: 

People Trust People More Than Ads—By a Long Shot

A massive 88% of consumers say they trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other type of advertising. 

Think about it: when someone you know says, “This worked for me,” you don’t question it like a paid ad or influencer post. You believe them. You might even go look the product up immediately.

That’s what makes word-of-mouth marketing so powerful. It moves people to act because it feels personal. Brands that focus on creating genuinely great experiences and then make it easy for people to talk about them get the kind of exposure money can’t replicate.

Word of Mouth is Still the #1 Way People Discover New Brands

A 2023 survey found that 36% of U.S. internet users said word of mouth was their leading source of brand discovery, beating out social media ads (32%) and mobile app ads (21%).

This means that, despite the rise of paid performance channels, people still trust people more than algorithms. 

For marketers, this is a reminder: while paid reach gets you in front of people, trust gets them to act. If people aren’t discussing your product on group chats, dinner tables, or Slack threads, you’re missing the channel that drives the highest-intent traffic of all.

Referred Customers Don’t Just Convert—They Multiply

Word-of-mouth becomes a growth loop, not just a one-time win.

A Harvard Business Review study analyzing data from over 41 million customers of a cashback app found that customers who joined through a referral not only purchased more. They also went on to refer 30% to 57% more new customers than users acquired through other channels.

This turns word-of-mouth into a compounding asset. That’s the kind of retention plus acquisition combo most ad campaigns can’t touch.

Referred Customers Stick Around Longer and Spend More

According to multiple studies, customers who come through referrals stay 37% longer and deliver 16% more lifetime value than those acquired through paid ads or cold outreach. 

In other words, they don’t just buy once and bounce. They buy again, engage more often, and are more likely to refer others.

This happens because they enter your brand ecosystem with built-in trust. Someone they know already gave you a vote of confidence, and that shortcut to credibility pays off long after the first purchase.

The takeaway? If you want higher-value customers, don’t just spend more on ads. Build systems that encourage your best customers to bring in more people like them.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing in 2025: Key Trends and How to Capitalize on Them

In 2025, word-of-mouth marketing is unfolding quietly across DMs, Discords, and creator-driven content. 

As consumer trust in polished ads declines, brands are finding smarter ways to spark organic advocacy in the spaces people pay attention to. 

Here are the key trends shaping modern WOMM and how to emulate them to make your business more successful and inspire customer loyalty. 

Micro-Influencers and Nano Communities Are More Trusted Than Celebrities

In 2025, the most influential voices are small, specific, and deeply embedded in their communities. There’s a reason micro-influencers (10K–50K followers) and nano-influencers (<10K followers) are outperforming traditional celebrity endorsements across every primary metric: trust, engagement, conversion, and ROI.

The numbers tell a clear story.

87.7% of all TikTok creators are nano-influencers, and they generate an average engagement rate of 10.3%, nearly triple that of megastars.

Engagement rates decline across all influencer tiers (2021–2024), but nano (1K–10K) and micro (10K–50K) creators consistently outperform larger accounts, maintaining the highest average engagement through 2024. 

63% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy a product if it’s recommended by a social media influencer they trust. 

But how do you capitalize on micro-inflencer WOMM in 2025? 

Working with micro-influencers shouldn’t feel vague or hard to measure. Here’s how to turn it into a focused, repeatable channel that drives both reach and revenue.

1. Use Modash to shortlist 20–30 creators who already post about your category

Instead of working with whoever slides into your DMs, start with a focused shortlist. 

Use a tool like Modash to filter for creators with 5K–50K followers, at least 3% engagement, and existing content related to your niche—like “mineral sunscreen” if you’re in skincare, for example. 

Finding nano influencers in your niche and based on other filters (Source)

This approach helps you find creators whose audience already trusts them on the topic you’re trying to sell. 

2. Send 10 of them your best product, no strings attached

Reach out with a simple note offering to send them your hero product. Don’t attach any posting requirements or approval steps. Just ship the product, include a handwritten message that reflects your brand tone, and trust the quality to speak for itself.

You’ll often find that 4–5 of those 10 will post something anyway, and organic, unsolicited content performs better than most paid collaborations.

This kind of no-ask gifting is called product seeding—you send your product to creators without asking them to post. It’s personal, low-pressure, and often more effective than paid campaigns. 

Graza, a DTC olive oil brand, did precisely this. They shipped bottles to food creators they genuinely liked and thought aligned with their brand values, added handwritten notes, and didn’t ask for anything. 

The posts came anyway. Small content creators who received the product shared their experiences, generating authentic user-generated content (UGC).

The result? Graza sold out during their first week in business, bringing in $100,000 in revenue. Within three months, they surpassed $500,000 in revenue, all without spending on traditional advertising.

3. Give each creator a trackable URL to measure real impact

The biggest mistake in micro-influencer marketing is not tracking correctly. Every creator should get a unique, UTM-tagged link using Bitly or Switchy. It can look like:

brand.com/lip-oil?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=jenna

This link shows how many clicks each person made, whether they shared it via DMs, Stories, or in a private group.

Without this, all your traffic shows up as “direct,” and you’ll never know which creators helped you grab more eyeballs. 

Most Shares Happen in Dark Social, Not Public Feeds

Word-of-mouth in 2025 will live in private, untrackable channels: DMs, text messages, WhatsApp, Slack, and even Discord. Beyond exchanging messages, these platforms are your customers’ most-used sharing surfaces, and they don’t leave visible traces in traditional analytics.

Analytics expert Steve Lamar recently ran a deep attribution experiment to understand how platforms pass referral data.

By redirecting clicks through uniquely structured subdomains, he managed to track what GA4 misses. Here’s what he found:

• 100% of clicks from TikTok profiles and apps like WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, and Mastodon were attributed as “direct” traffic—completely untrackable via default Google Analytics.
  
• 75% of clicks from Facebook Messenger were also misattributed.
  
• Even mainstream platforms like Instagram (70%), LinkedIn (86%), and Pinterest (88%) mostly passed incomplete or no attribution data.

Dark traffic on major social networks (Source)

This means that even if people actively share your brand, you won’t see it in your dashboards unless you track differently.

But despite its untraceability, dark social is modern-day word-of-mouth. When a friend DMs a product link, shares a TikTok, or mentions your brand in a private Slack channel, they recommend it and influence purchase decisions.

But since it shows up as “direct traffic,” most brands don’t realize what’s working.

So, since you can’t see every share, how do you capitalize on dark social WOMM? Here are some quick tips that can help: 

1. Track smarter with share-optimized URLs. 

Many brands lose visibility because all shared links look the same in their analytics (“direct traffic”). 

The fix? Use custom links with tags. Create trackable URLs using UTM parameters (small bits of info added to the end of a URL) so you know where the click came from.

For example, instead of sharing website.com/product-a, use website.com/product-a?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_campaign=drop1.

This helps you see if someone clicked the link from WhatsApp, email, or Instagram bio, even if it was shared privately.

Pro tip: You can use Bitly for branded, shortened links or Switchy for link retargeting and deeper analytics. 

2. Make it easy to share products via WhatsApp, Messenger, or DMs 

After someone buys a product, gets a discount code, or finishes a quiz, they’re in a high-emotion state. This is when they’re most open to sharing something they love (or just scored) with a friend.

To make the most of this, brands need to remove friction. The best way to do this is by adding “Send to a friend” or “Share on WhatsApp” buttons on post-purchase confirmation pages, wishlists, and quiz result screens.

A great example of this in action: Fashionette, a luxury fashion retailer in Europe, integrated WhatsApp sharing directly into a giveaway flow.

They launched a giveaway campaign where users could click a Facebook ad and join a sunglasses giveaway by clicking “Chat with us” on WhatsApp. 

Once in the chat, users get real-time responses and can easily share the offer with friends, creating a conversational entry point for word-of-mouth.

Users click “Chat with us” on the ad to enter the giveaway via WhatsApp, making it easy to join and share the offer with friends in just a few taps (Source)

This shift to real-time, one-on-one messaging paid off. Fashionette’s WhatsApp flows converted 7.4 times higher than their most engaged email segments, driving a 25% increase in average order value.

3. Watch for sudden traffic spikes—then trace the source

Not all dark social traffic is invisible. Sometimes, the signal is a sharp rise in direct traffic to a specific product or blog page, primarily when you haven’t run paid campaigns or sent emails.

This often means someone shared your link in a WhatsApp group, Discord server, or Slack workspace. But instead of showing up as a referral, it shows up as “direct traffic.”

Here’s what to do: 

• Set up daily traffic alerts in your analytics platform. For example, in Google Analytics 4, you can use “Custom Insights” to trigger alerts when a page’s traffic exceeds a certain threshold—say, 200% of its weekly average. (This guide helps you set up custom insights in GA4.)

Setting up custom metrics in GA4 to track a sudden traffic spike (Source)

• Cross-check those spikes with your marketing activity. Identify this by asking yourself:
  • Did you publish a TikTok, YouTube Short, or Instagram Story in the past 24 hours?
  • Was your product linked in a newsletter, Substack issue, or X thread?
  • Did someone post about you in a Reddit community (search via site:reddit.com yourbrand)?
  • Did a micro-influencer quietly tag or mention you in a private story or channel?

• Correlate timestamped events. Once you notice a traffic spike, dig into the timestamps in your analytics and compare them to when your content—or any third-party content—went live. Let’s say your product page for a “hydrating mist” usually gets around 120 visits daily. On May 5th, you notice 670 visits to that page within two hours, all showing up as “direct traffic.” That’s a red flag for dark social. You check TikTok and discover that a creator with 18,000 followers posted a GRWM (get ready with me) video that morning featuring your mist. That’s likely your referral source—just hidden from plain view in your analytics.

Private Communities Are Becoming Brand Powerhouses

In 2025, brands are seeing more word-of-mouth action inside closed groups than they do on open platforms. Think, Slack channels, Discord servers, subscription-based Substacks, even private Facebook or Geneva groups.

According to a 2024 report by TINT, 40.9% of consumers said they planned to increase their participation in online communities, marking a 9% year-over-year growth. 

But more importantly, it’s working:

• 73.6% of consumers say they purchase more frequently because of a brand’s online community
  
• 75% agree that communities improve the customer experience
  
• 57% report better brand SEO tied to community discussions
  
• 90% of community managers say user suggestions directly inform product improvements
  
• And in some cases, over 30% of total revenue can be traced back to the influence of a brand’s community

So, how do you tap into this in 2025? Here are some quick, actionable tips: 

• Find where your customers already gather. Instead of building your community from scratch, start by identifying where high-intent conversations are already happening. You can use platforms like Common Room to surface mentions of your brand or product across Slack groups, Discord servers, or Reddit threads you care about. 

• Don’t show up to promote, show up to participate. Community members can spot a sales pitch from a mile away. Join as a peer instead of leading with a CTA or product link. Offer value: answer questions, host an AMA (Ask Me Anything), or share honest behind-the-scenes updates from your product or team.
  
• Seed early access or limited drops inside these groups. When members feel they’ve discovered something first, they share it naturally.

If you enter these groups thoughtfully, participate sincerely, and offer value early, the word-of-mouth that follows is more powerful and longer-lasting than any shoutout on a public feed.

Short-Form UGC Is the Most Believable Form of Marketing

Short-form UGC (think 10 to 60-second videos shared by real users) is now one of the most trusted and influential content types in marketing.

Whether it’s a quick “unboxing” on Instagram Stories, a GRWM (get ready with me) TikTok, or a 15-second “before and after” reel, short-form UGC feels real, spontaneous, and relatable. And that’s precisely why people believe it.

And the numbers back this up.

• 73% of consumers say they prefer short-form videos when researching products or services, because they feel more to-the-point and trustworthy.
• Short-form videos generate 2.5x more engagement than long-form, making them more likely to be liked, shared, or saved.
• And when brands use short-form UGC in paid ads, the results are hard to ignore: 4× higher click-through rates and 50% lower cost-per-click compared to traditional branded content.

As we mentioned earlier, a low-pressure seeding campaign is one of the most effective ways to spark this kind of UGC. You send your product to a curated list of creators without any obligations to them and simply trust that those who genuinely love it will talk about it.

Conclusion: Why Word of Mouth Marketing Should Be a Priority in 2025

At a time when paid ads are getting more expensive and less effective, WOMM gives you scalable, high-intent growth without burning budget. It turns your best customers into your best marketers. And in 2025, it’s happening where brands aren’t looking: inside DMs, private Discords, WhatsApp groups, and short-form creator videos.

If you’re serious about scaling WOMM in 2025, here’s where to focus:

• Track private sharing behavior through better attribution (UTMs, GA4 custom insights, link tagging)
  
• Encourage advocacy with smart referral, loyalty, and creator seeding programs
  
• Optimize your site for post-purchase sharing, especially on mobile and messaging-first channels
  
• Test how user-generated content impacts CRO on PDPs, review sections, and post-purchase flows
  

At Invesp, we help brands turn passive word-of-mouth into measurable conversion lifts by testing how, where, and why your best customers are talking.

Want to see how CRO and WOMM overlap on your site? Start a conversation with our team.

The post The Importance of Word Of Mouth Marketing – Statistics and Trends 2025 appeared first on Invesp.

Imagine a chessboard where each move reveals an opportunity or threat. Without studying your opponent’s strategy, you are likely to get outmaneuvered. The same applies in business—competitive analysis is your playbook for success.

By assessing competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and strategies, you can uncover opportunities, refine your plans, and stay ahead of industry trends.

This article breaks down the essentials of competitive analysis with real-world examples and actionable steps to help you outsmart the competition.

What Exactly is Competitive Analysis?

Competitive analysis involves analyzing your competitors’ successes and losses to identify their strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and market positioning. This helps you identify opportunities, mitigate risks, and make informed decisions to gain a competitive edge. 

Think of it as doing homework before playing a high-stakes game—you can’t win if you don’t know your opponent’s moves.

Why is Competitive Analysis so Important?

Imagine running a race without knowing who else is competing, their speed, or their strategies. That’s what it’s like for a business without competitive analysis.

In the early 2010s, Nokia dominated the mobile phone market. Yet, they failed to recognize the shift toward smartphones driven by Apple and Android. Without a solid competitive analysis of these emerging players, Nokia stuck to outdated strategies and missed the touch-screen revolution. The result? A dramatic fall from being a market leader to an industry afterthought.

Here’s a quick overview of why competitive analysis is so integral to a business:

• Understand Market Gaps: Identify untapped opportunities your competitors are missing.
• Refine Your Strategy: Adjust your pricing, marketing, or customer experience based on competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Stay Relevant: Predict industry trends and customer preferences before others do.

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Define goals and objectives

Defining your goals and objectives is the first and most critical step in conducting a competitive analysis. Think of it as creating a map before you start a journey—you need to know where you’re going and why you’re going there.

Without clear goals, your analysis risks becoming a pile of data without direction or purpose.

Here are some types of goals for competitive analysis:

• Understand market position: Where do you stand compared to competitors? What gaps or opportunities exist in your industry?
• Improve customer experience: What do competitors do better? How can you adapt their strengths to meet your customers’ needs?
• Refine marketing strategy: What messaging resonates with your audience? How can you differentiate your branding?
• Identify innovation opportunities: What new features or trends are gaining traction? How can your business stay ahead?

Now that you know the goals you can set for your company, how will you define your goals? Here’s a step-by-step approach to help you determine your goals effectively: 
Start with your business objectives. Every competitive analysis should tie back to your company’s larger goals. For example, if your company wants to expand into a new market, your analysis should focus on local competitors and customer behavior. For example, when Starbucks expanded into China, it aimed to understand local tea culture and how competitors catered to it. The competitive analysis helped them integrate tea-based beverages into their menu, establishing a strong presence in a tea-dominated market.

• Identify your target audience. Define whose needs you want to meet. Your goals might focus on understanding why competitors attract a specific customer segment. In fact, a study by Epsilon revealed that 80% of customers are more likely to engage with brands that offer a personalized experience. And knowing your competitors’ audience can help you deliver personalization better.

• Ask key questions. Frame questions in a way that answers shape actionable goals.
  • “What do customers love about my competitors?”
  • “How do competitors use pricing, promotions, or products to win?”

• Use data-driven insights. Back your goals with data. You can use tools like Google Trends, SEMrush, and social media analytics to get insights into what works for competitors.

Pro tip: Use the SMART framework for goal-setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). For example, “Increase market share by 10% within six months by targeting Gen Z customers through Instagram ads.”

Gather competitor data, including strengths and weaknesses

When conducting a competitive analysis, the next important step is to gather accurate, actionable data about your competitors. This data helps you identify their strengths, weaknesses, and ways you can differentiate yourself from them.

Here’s how to do it effectively:

• Start by defining what data you want to collect. Start by identifying the key aspects of your competitors you want to analyze. These typically include:
  • Product or service offerings: Features, quality, and pricing
  • Market positioning: Where they stand in the industry
  • Marketing and branding: Channels, tone, and customer reach
  • Customer experience: Support, reviews, and engagement

• Use reliable tools for data collection. To gather valuable and actionable competitor data, you’ll need the right tools to save time and provide deeper insights. These tools analyze everything from website traffic to customer engagement, clearly showing how your competitors operate and where they excel or fall short.

• SEMrush or Ahrefs: Analyze competitors’ SEO performance, keywords, and backlinks.
• SimilarWeb: Understand their website traffic, audience demographics, and referral sources.
• Sprout Social or Brandwatch: Monitor their social media strategies and audience engagement.
• Glassdoor or Indeed: Learn about internal strengths and weaknesses through employee reviews.

• Gather qualitative data. In addition to using tools, you need qualitative methods to gain deeper insights into what competitors are doing and how customers feel about them. These methods focus on understanding the why behind the data and provide actionable details that numbers alone can’t offer. Here’s how you can do it:
  • Competitor websites and reports: Look for annual reports, press releases, and blog content. Use these reports to determine their pricing details, product features, and unique selling points. Their blog content, whitepapers, and press releases will help you understand their brand’s messaging and priorities.
  • Customer reviews and forums: Use Yelp or Reddit to uncover customer sentiments about competitors.
  • Mystery shopping: It involves experiencing the products or services firsthand.

• Apply a framework to analyze strengths and weaknesses. To break down data, use a framework like SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) framework to break down data.
  • Strengths: Look for their competitive edges, like superior technology or loyal customer bases.
  • Weaknesses: Identify gaps such as high prices or limited product diversity.

Companies that fail to identify their weaknesses and those of their competitors often lose the market to a new contender. One of the most prominent examples is when Kodak failed to recognize its weakness—reluctance to embrace digital photography—and lost its competitive edge to companies like Sony and Canon.

• Combine insights from multiple sources. Cross-reference findings from tools and methods to build a holistic picture. For example:
  • If SEMrush shows high traffic for a competitor’s blog, use social media tools to check how they promote it.
  • If customer reviews indicate poor service, check Glassdoor for potential internal issues.

Pro tip: Competitors evolve constantly, so don’t forget to update your data regularly to stay informed—for instance, track product launches, partnerships, or rebranding efforts. You can also set up Google Alerts or subscribe to competitor newsletters to keep yourself updated.

Evaluate key metrics

The next step is to evaluate key metrics—which involves analyzing measurable data points that reveal your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and market performance.

Tangible metrics will show you where your business stands compared to others and what to improve or focus on to succeed in the market.

Start by understanding the key metrics to evaluate:

To get a complete picture, focus on these critical areas:

• Market share and reach: How much of the market do competitors control?
• Customer sentiment and engagement: What do customers say about their products and services?
• Product or service quality: Are their offerings superior or lagging?
• Pricing strategies: Are they underpricing, premium pricing, or bundling effectively?
• Operational efficiency: How quickly do they deliver, and what’s their supply chain like?

For example, Tesla disrupted the automobile market by evaluating its competitors’ reliance on internal combustion engines. Focusing on electric vehicles and assessing gaps in innovation, the company managed to carve out a dominant niche.

Leverage metrics to measure marketing effectiveness:

Use marketing metrics to see how competitors connect with their audience.

Here’s a list of metrics and elements to consider:

• Website traffic and SEO performance: Use tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush to reveal traffic volume, top-performing keywords, and backlinks.
• Social media engagement: Leverage tools like Sprout Social to determine likes, shares, comments, and audience demographics.
• Content marketing impact: Look at the frequency of blogs and videos and how they resonate with the audience.

Evaluate financial metrics:

Assessing competitors’ financial performance is essential to see whether their efforts are paying off. Financial metrics will give you a clear picture of their stability and growth.

Key metrics include:

• Revenue growth: Indicates market demand and business health.
• Profit margins: Reflects operational efficiency.
• Investment trends: Look at R&D spending or acquisitions to gauge innovation.

Track industry-specific metrics:

Depending on your industry, metrics may vary. Examples include:

• Churn rate: It’s especially critical in SaaS to measure how many customers cancel their subscriptions.
• Foot traffic: Important for retail and hospitality businesses.
• App downloads and ratings: Crucial for tech and mobile-first businesses.

For instance, Netflix tracks user churn to understand when and why subscribers leave. It uses this insight to adjust pricing, add new features, and prioritize trending content, keeping churn at competitive levels.

Finally, use collected data to compare competitors’ metrics against your own performance.

You can do this by identifying areas where you excel, and double down on those strengths. Secondly, spot gaps where competitors are ahead, and develop strategies to close them.

Create actionable strategies

Once you’ve gathered data and evaluated key metrics, the next step in a competitive analysis is to use your uncovered insights than turn them into actionable strategies.

This ensures your findings drive tangible changes to improve your position in the market and get an edge over the competition.

Your first step is to align findings with your business objectives. Ask yourself:

• What gaps can we exploit in the market?
• Where can we differentiate our offerings?
• How can we strengthen our weaknesses against competitors?

Once you have an answer to these questions, it’s time to develop strategies to get a competitive edge.

Your strategies can fall into two categories:

Offensive Strategies: Playing to Your Strengths

Offensive strategies are about staying ahead of your competitors by using your strengths or targeting areas they’re missing. They involve focusing on:

• Building on your strengths: Use what you do best to create an advantage.
• Filling market gaps: Look for unmet customer needs or underserved groups and step in.
• Innovating boldly: Introduce unique products or features competitors don’t offer.

For example, Airbnb expanded globally by addressing gaps in affordable and unique accommodations. Instead of competing directly with hotels, it targeted travelers seeking home-like stays or unconventional options, like treehouses or houseboats.

Defensive Strategies: Protecting What’s Yours

Defensive strategies are about holding onto what you already have—your customers, market share, and position. The goal is to address any weaknesses and prevent competitors from taking over your space.

It involves focusing on:

• Improving customer experience: Look at where competitors excel (e.g., faster delivery, better support) and close the gap.
• Matching competitive pricing and promotions: Keep an eye on competitor pricing—if they lower prices or run promotions, respond quickly. Offer added value like loyalty rewards or free shipping to stay ahead.
• Strengthening brand loyalty: Reward loyal customers with exclusive perks, early access, or personalized offers. Create emotional connections through strong branding and consistent messaging.
• Enhancing product and service quality: Focus on fixing weaknesses competitors could exploit. Improve durability, ease of use, or features in your offerings

One of the biggest examples of defensive strategy in the competitive market is between Walmart and Amazon.

When Walmart noticed Amazon’s dominance in convenience and delivery, it overhauled its e-commerce platform, launched same-day delivery services, and introduced grocery pickup options. 

The result? Walmart’s shopping app is now more popular in the US than even Amazon’s app. Addressing these operational gaps helped Walmart maintain its position as a major retail force.

Your Turn to Gain an Edge Using Competitive Analysis!

Competitive analysis is a powerful tool to stay ahead in business. By studying your competitors, you can spot opportunities, fix weaknesses, and improve your strategies. This helps you stay relevant, offer better experiences, and outsmart the competition.

Use the steps in this article to guide your analysis. By understanding what your competitors are doing, you can make smarter decisions and keep moving forward. Competitive analysis isn’t just about keeping up—it’s about leading the way. Stay proactive, and let this strategy help you win.

Competitive Analysis FAQs

The post What is a Competitive Analysis (With Examples) [2025] appeared first on Invesp.

Imagine walking into your favorite coffee shop, and before you even reach the counter, the barista greets you with your go-to order. It’s not just the coffee that keeps you returning—it’s the feeling of being understood and valued.

Now, compare this coffee shop experience to that of companies like Apple or Amazon. They’ve mastered the art of delivering seamless, personalized experiences that keep customers returning for more. How? Through Customer Value Optimization (CVO), a method that transforms casual shoppers into lifelong brand advocates.

It’s no longer enough to simply sell a product. You need to consistently deliver value across every stage of the customer journey. Whether offering an irresistible first impression or keeping loyal customers engaged through loyalty programs, CVO is the secret that sets thriving businesses apart from the rest.

In this article, learn how CVO works and actionable tips to create unforgettable experiences that make your customers feel like VIPs.

What Exactly is Customer Value Optimization

Customer Value Optimization (CVO) is a strategic approach to maximize customers’ lifetime value. The idea is simple: It’s about giving customers as much value as possible at every stage of their journey with your brand. 

RELATED ARTICLE: CRO VS. CVO – WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

CVO helps create loyal customers who are more likely to return and act as brand advocates, telling their friends and family about your products and services.

At its core, CVO focuses on building long-term relationships with customers rather than just pushing for a one-off sale. It’s about understanding their needs, continuously enhancing their experiences, and ensuring they get value from every interaction with your brand.

Core Principles of CVO

Here’s a brief overview of the core principles of CVO: 

• Customer-centric approach:

The first step in optimizing customer value is truly understanding your customers—what are their pain points, desires, and motivations? This is where data-driven insights come in.

By collecting and analyzing customer data (through surveys, social media, website interactions, etc.), you can deeply understand what your customers want.

• Delivering personalized user experiences:

When you provide a tailored experience that resonates with each individual, you show that you care about their needs—and they aren’t merely dollar signs for you. Personalization can range from custom product recommendations to personalized email campaigns.

YouTube’s recommendation engine is a perfect example of CVO in action. By analyzing your viewing history, search behavior, and interactions (likes, comments, and subscriptions), YouTube curates a personalized homepage with videos it predicts you’ll enjoy.

This keeps users engaged, encourages longer watch times, and drives repeat visits. YouTube reports that its algorithm recommends over 70% of the videos people watch, showing how effective personalization can be and how it drives user satisfaction and platform growth.

• Delivering continuous value:

CVO isn’t just about making a sale once and then taking the customer for granted. Delivering value over time is an integral part of CVO.

You want to ensure that your customers continue to feel that they are getting something meaningful from your brand, whether it’s through loyalty programs, educational content, or after-sales service.

For example, Apple doesn’t just sell products. It offers ongoing value through its devices, software, and services ecosystem.

Their customers often feel they’re part of something bigger, driving substantial brand loyalty and repeat business.

How Does CVO Work in Practice?

Let’s break down the steps to make CVO actionable for your business.

Identify Customer Touchpoints.

The customer journey doesn’t start and end with the purchase. Touchpoints are the moments that form the customer experience—from discovering your brand to purchasing a product and even beyond the sale.

Identifying and optimizing every customer touchpoint is essential to ensuring that every customer interaction delivers maximum value while building trust, loyalty, and long-term relationships.

Here’s a quick overview of all stages and quick tips to optimize those stages:

The awareness stage:

In the awareness stage, customers first discover your brand through ads, social media, search engines, or word of mouth. This is the moment to grab their attention and communicate your unique value.

Nike excels at this stage. Its “Just Do It” campaigns continue to inspire people worldwide, connecting emotionally with its audience while highlighting the value of its products.

For example, during the 2020 pandemic, Nike’s “Play for the World” campaign encouraged people to stay active at home, creating immense brand goodwill.

Here are some quick tips to optimize the awareness stage:

• Create compelling content: Publish blogs, videos, or infographics that address customer pain points or interests.
• Use data-driven ads: Use platforms like Google Ads or Meta (Facebook) to target specific customer segments with personalized ads.
• SEO and social media: Optimize your website for search engines by inserting relevant keywords, adding meta descriptions and images, and making web pages fast loading. At the same time, maintain an active social media presence to attract your ideal audience.

The consideration stage:

Once customers know your brand, they’ll evaluate whether your product or service meets their needs. This is a critical stage where you need to take steps that will help you build trust with your audience and address potential objections.

Here are the touchpoints to focus on during the consideration stage:

• Product or service pages: Ensure your website clearly explains your offer, using compelling copy, visuals, and user-friendly design.
• Social proof: Include customer testimonials, case studies, and user reviews.
• Customer support: Have a live chat service or a responsive email team ready to answer questions.

Airbnb optimizes this stage by offering detailed listings with reviews, transparent pricing, and customer support.

For example, they launched an “Enhanced Clean” program during COVID-19 to address safety concerns and reassure travelers during uncertain times. This focus on customer safety helped Airbnb build trust and recover quickly from the 2020 travel downturn.

The purchase stage:

The purchase is the most crucial touchpoint—where many businesses fall short. At this stage, customers expect an effortless, frictionless buying experience. Any hiccup here could lead to cart abandonment.

Here are some tips to help you optimize the purchase stage and avoid cart abandonment:

• Simplify checkout: Reduce the number of steps in your checkout process. Offer multiple payment options, including digital wallets like Apple Pay or PayPal.
• Clear pricing: Be transparent about costs, including taxes and shipping fees, to avoid unpleasant surprises.
• Mobile optimization: Ensure your website or app works seamlessly on all devices.

A great example that comes to mind here is Amazon. The retail giant has mastered the purchase touchpoint with its “One-Click Purchase” option.

By simplifying the checkout process, Amazon reduces friction and encourages impulse purchases, generating billions in revenue annually.

The post-purchase stage:

The customer journey doesn’t end with the purchase. In fact, the post-purchase experience often determines whether a customer becomes loyal or moves to a competitor. This stage is your opportunity to retain your customers by delivering on your promises and exceeding expectations.

Here are some tips to optimize the post-purchase stage and keep your existing customers happy:

• Order fulfillment and delivery: Customers value speed and accuracy. Offer tracking updates and ensure timely delivery.
• Follow-up communication: Send thank-you emails, request feedback, or provide tips on how to use the product.
• Loyalty programs: Incentivize repeat purchases with discounts, rewards, or exclusive offers.

Data Collection and Analysis.

Data collection and analysis are at the heart of Customer Value Optimization (CVO). Without understanding customer behavior, preferences, and pain points, optimizing their experience is nearly impossible.

Data helps you identify which decision is wrong and right, helping you improve touchpoints, personalize offerings, and ultimately increase customer lifetime value (CLV).

Before we get into the tips and ways to collect and analyze data, here are the types of data to focus on:

• Behavioral data: Tracks customers’ interactions with your website, app, or product. Examples include clicks, session duration, and pages visited.
• Transactional data: Includes purchase history, order frequency, and average spending.
• Demographic data: Age, gender, location, and income level to segment customers effectively.
• Feedback and sentiment data: Surveys, reviews, and social media mentions reveal customer opinions and emotions.

So, how do you collect the above data types? Here are some quick tips: 
Use tools like Google Analytics 4 and FigPii to track customer behavior. GA4 provides insights into website traffic, user demographics, and behavior, helping businesses track performance and identify drop-off points. FigPii complements this by offering heatmaps, session replays, and A/B testing to visually understand user behavior and optimize conversions.

• Collect feedback at key touchpoints, such as post-purchase surveys or live chat interactions.
• Respect privacy and follow regulations like GDPR or CCPA by being transparent about how data is collected and used.

Once you’ve collected the data, it’s time to analyze it to improve improvements to the customer journey. In fact, data is only valuable when you transform it into actionable insights. This involves identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies to better understand your customers.

Here’s a quick breakdown of steps to analyze your data:

• Use predictive analytics: Use AI and machine learning technology to forecast future customer behavior. It will help you anticipate customer needs and reduce churn.
• Identify bottlenecks: Analyze touchpoints where customers drop off, such as abandoned carts or bounce rates on landing pages.
• Monitor customer trends: Track social media trends and mentions using tools like Brandwatch or Hootsuite. You can also use Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to gauge ongoing customer satisfaction.

Finally, Optimize Customer Experiences

Once you’ve collected and analyzed data, the next step is to act on it. Data-driven decision-making will help you implement changes and test their impact on customer experience and value.

First and foremost, use your customer data to drive personalization. Customers naturally want experiences tailored to their preferences, behaviors, and needs. According to McKinsey, companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those efforts than average players.

Here are three valuable ways to personalize customer experiences:

• Segment your customers: Group them by shared characteristics, including purchase behavior, location, or interests. This will help you create targeted marketing campaigns and personalized experiences catering to their needs and preferences.
• Personalized offers and recommendations: Use AI tools like Dynamic Yield or Shopify’s personalization apps to suggest products based on browsing history.
• Timely communication: Send emails or notifications at the right time, such as a reminder about an abandoned cart or a personalized birthday discount.

Aside from personalizing the customer experience, focus on:

• Creating brand consistency. Whether a customer is browsing your Instagram or shopping in-store, the messaging, tone, and visual identity should remain consistent.
• Offering streamlined customer service: Offer support across all channels, including chatbots, live agents, and self-service FAQs.
• Optimize your website for speed.​​ Your website and mobile app should load in under 3 seconds. Google reports that even a one-second delay can reduce conversions by 7%.
• Create loyalty programs to retain customers and turn them into brand advocates. Create programs that recognize and reward loyal customers with perks like exclusive discounts, early access to products, or VIP experiences.

Remember to continuously test and improve your strategies. Customer expectations evolve constantly, so your optimization efforts should, too.

This includes running A/B tests to compare the performance of different versions of your website, ads, or emails.

Pro tip: Don’t neglect to collect feedback directly from your customers. You can leverage surveys, reviews, or social listening tools to understand what customers love and where you can improve.

Building Lifelong Customer Relationships Through CVO

Customer value optimization is about creating meaningful, long-term customer relationships. By understanding customers’ needs, delivering personalized experiences, and consistently offering value, you can turn one-time buyers into loyal advocates.

Consider CVO as nurturing a tree—it takes time, but the rewards of trust and loyalty are worth it. By optimizing each touchpoint, you’re not just boosting sales but building a community of loyal customers.

Start evaluating your touchpoints, gathering insights, and optimizing for customer value. The results will follow!

The post What is Customer Value Optimization appeared first on Invesp.

Retail therapy plays a significant role in impulse buying, as individuals often make purchases to improve their mood, especially during rough days. This emotional aspect of shopping can trigger a dopamine release, similar to other pleasurable activities, and marketers exploit these emotions to encourage consumer spending.

Impulsive personas are the apple of the eye of marketers and business owners.

The credit-card-in-hand shoppers get undivided attention in copy, design, and layout of websites, landing pages, and ads, as well as in brick-and-mortar displays and services.

So much is carefully crafted to address impulsive buying: scarcity and emergency elements, benefits displayed in bullet points, big and bright CTAs, smooth and fast check-out processes.

But who are the impulsive buyers shaking up online and offline commerce? Are they mostly married or single? Do they usually act impulsively while online shopping or in-store browsing? Do they really regret their purchases? Do they spend more on unplanned shopping trips? How much do they generally spend in each impulsive purchase? What is the state of mind they normally experience during impulsive buying?

Let’s get to know this darling persona better with our infographic. You will be able to identify trends and general traits to address impulsive prospects in your business.

What Is Impulse Buying?

Impulse buying refers to the act of making unplanned and spontaneous purchases, often driven by emotions, desires, or a sudden urge. It involves buying items without careful consideration or prior intention, and the decision to make the purchase is typically made on the spot.

Impulse buying, also known as impulse purchasing, is characterized by a lack of premeditation, with individuals succumbing to the immediate desire for a product or service. This behavior is often associated with the psychological concept of instant gratification, where individuals seek immediate satisfaction or pleasure without considering the long-term consequences.

84% of all shoppers have made impulse purchases

This high percentage suggests a significant influence of emotional and psychological factors on spending habits, as consumers often prioritize immediate satisfaction over rational decision-making.

It also sheds light on the prevalent phenomenon of impulse buying in today’s consumer culture. Common examples of impulse purchases include clothing and groceries, with trends showing increased impulse buying during occasions like the holiday season. This data underscores the pervasive nature of impulse buying behavior, where individuals make unplanned and spontaneous purchases.

The prevalence of impulse buying in the market emphasizes the need for retailers to understand and capitalize on these tendencies, while consumers may benefit from recognizing and managing their own impulses to make more mindful purchasing decisions.

40% of all the money spent on e-commerce is attributed to impulse purchases

The data highlights the substantial impact of impulsive behavior in shaping the financial dynamics of e-commerce, emphasizing the role of immediate desires and spur-of-the-moment choices in driving online sales. Managing impulse buying is crucial to save money and make more mindful purchasing decisions. Businesses in the digital marketplace can leverage this information to tailor their strategies and capitalize on the prevalence of impulse buying in the online shopping experience.

54% of U.S shoppers acknowledge spending $100 or more on impulse buys

More than half of U.S. shoppers—54 percent—have admitted to spending $100 or more on an impulse buy, including 20 percent who have spent at least $1,000. By understanding the extent to which consumers are willing to spend impulsively, businesses can optimize their approaches to capitalize on this behavior, whether through strategic promotions, targeted advertising, or creating a shopping environment that encourages spontaneous purchases.

Compulsive shopping, however, is a dangerous progression from impulse buying, with detrimental impacts on finances and personal well-being.

8 out of 10 impulse buys are made in a brick-and-mortar store

This indicates the continued significance of physical retail spaces in driving spontaneous consumer purchases. Optimizing in-store experiences and strategically placing products can be pivotal in capitalizing on impulsive buying behavior. Creating visually appealing displays, offering limited-time promotions, and ensuring an easily navigable layout can enhance the likelihood of impulse purchases.

Impulsive shopping, often driven by emotional spending, is a common behavior where people buy things to reward themselves or cope with negative feelings. Strategies to manage this behavior include undertaking a no-spend challenge.

While e-commerce continues to grow, the tangible and immediate nature of brick-and-mortar environments provides a unique opportunity for businesses to leverage human psychology and boost spontaneous buying, emphasizing the need for a well-crafted in-store strategy to complement online efforts.

Single shoppers make 45% more impulse buys compared to married shoppers.

Marketing strategies and product placements targeting single individuals may yield higher returns in terms of impulsive purchases. Understanding the distinct consumer buying behavior of single shoppers versus married ones enables businesses to tailor their promotional efforts accordingly.

Only 13% of buyers engage in planned impulse buying on a shopping trip.

While a majority of buyers may adhere to predetermined shopping lists during planned trips, the 13% engagement in impulse buying suggests that there is still room to influence purchasing decisions through targeted marketing, appealing displays, and strategic product placements.

Recognizing and capitalizing on this minority’s openness to spontaneity becomes crucial, urging businesses to craft nuanced approaches that balance the predictability of planned trips with opportunities to stimulate impulse purchases and enhance overall sales.

46% of men regret impulse buys compared to 52% of women.

Understanding the varying degrees of post-purchase regret can inform targeted interventions, such as personalized post-purchase communication or specialized return policies, aimed at mitigating buyer’s remorse. By recognizing and responding to these gender-specific tendencies, businesses can refine their customer engagement strategies, enhance customer satisfaction, and potentially influence brand loyalty based on distinct consumer behaviors among men and women in the aftermath of impulse purchases.

52% of millennials were more likely to make impulse purchases

The revelation that 52% of millennials exhibit a higher propensity for impulse shopping than any other generation underscores the distinct impulse-buying behavior prevalent among this demographic. For businesses, understanding and catering to the preferences of millennial impulse buyers is paramount.

Crafting marketing strategies that resonate with the spontaneity of their impulse spending tendencies, providing visually engaging displays, and promoting limited-time offers can be instrumental in capturing their attention during unplanned purchases.

Recognizing the unique dynamics of millennial impulse buyers allows businesses to tailor their product offerings and promotional efforts effectively, capitalizing on the spontaneity inherent in their purchasing behavior to drive increased sales and engagement.

The average shopper will make an average of 3 unplanned purchases out of every 10 store visits they make.

All this highlights the prevalence of impulsive spending habits and impulsive buying behavior among consumers. Understanding this aspect of shopping behavior is crucial in developing effective strategies to capitalize on unplanned purchases.

Creating an in-store environment conducive to spontaneous buying, strategically placing enticing products, and leveraging promotional tactics can harness the impulse buying tendencies of customers.

Acknowledging and adapting to the frequency of unplanned purchases in the design of marketing campaigns and store layouts allows businesses to optimize their overall sales strategy, tapping into the dynamics of impulsive spending to enhance customer satisfaction and drive increased revenue.

The Psychology of Impulse Purchases

A combination of mental and emotional triggers often drives impulse purchases. Research suggests that the brain’s reward system is activated when a consumer sees a product or receives a promotional message, releasing feel-good chemicals such as dopamine. This can lead to a sense of instant gratification and pleasure, making it more likely for the consumer to make an impulse purchase.

Additionally, emotional states such as stress, anxiety, and boredom can also contribute to impulse buying. Consumers may use shopping as a coping mechanism to relieve negative emotions or to satisfy their temptation to buy. Understanding these mental and emotional triggers can help individuals develop strategies to resist impulse purchases and make more intentional purchasing decisions.

Understanding the mental and emotional triggers

Why We Engage in Impulse Shopping

Impulse shopping is a multifaceted behavior influenced by various factors. One primary reason is the thrill of the hunt. The excitement of discovering a new product or snagging a limited-time offer can be exhilarating, leading to spontaneous purchases. Social and cultural factors also play a significant role. For instance, societal norms and peer pressure can drive individuals to make unplanned purchases to fit in or keep up with trends.

Marketing tactics are another powerful influence. Retailers use strategies like scarcity, urgency, and visually appealing displays to entice consumers into making impulse buys. The combination of these elements creates an environment where impulse shopping thrives, making it essential for consumers to be aware of these influences to manage their spending habits better.

Types of Impulse Purchases

Impulse purchases can be categorized into several types, each with its own characteristics and triggers:

1. Pure Impulse Buying: This is the most spontaneous form of impulse buying, where a consumer makes an unplanned purchase without any prior intention. An example could be grabbing a candy bar at the checkout counter.
2. Reminder Impulse Buying: This occurs when a consumer is reminded of a need or desire upon seeing a product. For instance, seeing a display of sunscreen might remind someone to buy it for an upcoming beach trip.
3. Suggestion Impulse Buying: In this type, a consumer makes a purchase based on a suggestion or recommendation, often influenced by marketing tactics. An example could be buying a new gadget after seeing an influencer’s review.
4. Planned Impulse Buying: This involves a consumer planning to make a purchase but not deciding on the specific product until they see it. For example, someone might plan to buy a gift but only choose the actual item when they find something appealing in the store.

Understanding these types of impulse purchases can help consumers recognize their buying patterns and make more informed decisions, ultimately aiding in saving money and reducing unplanned expenditures.

States of Mind When Making an Impulsive Purchase

When making an unplanned purchase, 50% of females express greater excitement, whereas only 47% of males share the same level of enthusiasm.

When intoxicated, 13% of males exhibit impulse buying behavior, while only 5% of females engage in impulse purchases under the same circumstances.

Infographic by- Invesp Conversion Optimization Services

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84% of all shoppers have made impulse purchases

Impulse purchases represent almost 40% of all the money spent on e-commerce

More than half of U.S. shoppers—54 percent—have admitted to spending $100 or more on an impulse buy, including 20 percent who have spent at least $1,000

8 out of 10 impulse buys are made in a brick-and-mortar store

Single shoppers make 45% more impulse buys than married shoppers

Buyers are 13% less likely to make impulse buys on a planned shopping trip. They are 23% more likely to impulse buy on an unplanned shipping trip

Only 46% of men said they regretted an impulse purchase compared to 52% of women

52% of millennials were more likely to make impulse purchases than any other generation.

The average shopper will make an average of 3 unplanned purchases in 4 out of every 10 store visits they make.

States of Mind When Making an Impulsive Purchase

Khalid Saleh

Khalid Saleh is CEO and co-founder of Invesp. He is the co-author of Amazon.com bestselling book: “Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Visitors into Customers.” Khalid is an in-demand speaker who has presented at such industry events as SMX, SES, PubCon, Emetrics, ACCM and DMA, among others.

The post The State of Impulse Buying (Statistics & Trends 2025) appeared first on Invesp.

Conducting usability studies and watching users navigate through the site had its own pros and it yielded an enormous value that ultimately helped UX designers and marketers deliver a superb user experience. 

When it was time to jump into conclusions, some users had trouble explaining the difficulties they faced and some could just give false positives by saying what the moderator wanted to hear.

But this doesn’t diminish the importance of usability testing in the Conversion Rate Optimization program —most optimizers still swear by it even to this day. However, technology has been evolving and there are tons of different tools that can be used to identify conversion problems on a page.  

Nowadays, without having to ask users, we can get glimpses of answers (but not full answers) to questions like, where are users getting confused on our site? Why are the users not converting? Which content should be placed above the fold? How are visitors reacting to the content on our site?

And that my dear friends, has been made possible by Session Replay Videos. 

What is a session replay video   

Session replay videos are recordings that show you how your web users interact and engage with your site. They are the window in which you can see real user activities such as mouse movement, scrolling on pages, taps, clicks on the page, navigating between pages, and total session durations.

Theresa Baiocco Farr, the co-founder of ConversionMax, says this about session replays: 

When used effectively, session replay tools offer specific qualitative insight into user behavior, which highlights conversion problems. This is essential for formulating meaningful hypotheses that will have a real impact on the bottom line, rather than just testing button colors.

Also known as visitor recordings, session replay videos offer that virtual power to look over the shoulder of users as they interact with the site.

Knowing what users do, and how they do it makes it easy to improve their experience on the site. 

Watching these video recordings leads to identifying unexpected opportunities and gaining insights that may help increase the website conversion rate. As Hans Hoogenboom, a Senior CRO Strategist from iCrossing UK, puts it: 

Session replays can show you what users do, how they do it, where they struggle and what blocks them from converting.  Although session replays require some analysis, they can show you very vital information that a user can’t always voice. You can also see the behavior of many users, making it an efficient method of research.

Identifying conversion problems using session videos 

Invesp has analyzed a considerable amount of session replays over the years, and from that experience, it’s safe to say that each analysis comes with its own set of objectives. However, the ultimate goal in every session replay analysis is always the same: fishing out conversion roadblocks. 

A brief background: A few weeks ago, I watched some session recordings (with two of my colleagues) of one of the Invesp clients in the e-commerce space. Our goal was to improve the mobile customer journey from category pages to product pages. 

In any project handled by Invesp, FigPii is our reliable go-to-tool for session recordings.  

So, as we analyzed the client’s recordings, we were aiming to answer a few questions:

• Are users seeing the CTA?
• Are users running into any errors? 
• Are there any bugs on the site? 
• Is the UI not confusing the users? 

Oh, by the way, the idea of having different people analyze these recordings is not only to watch as many videos as possible, but it also helps keep the confirmation bias (defined in the following section) in check.

The tool had recorded thousands of sessions, so we had to narrow down the volume of videos by filtering to mobile users. But even after filtering, the recordings were still far too many to manage, over a thousand.  

We had to further filter the recordings according to date, page visits, browser and session duration —and finally, we were left with recordings that were pertinent to our goal. 

Two hours later, 70 different session recordings had been watched at 1X speed and unusual interesting observations were jotted down in the Excel Spreadsheet. 

After comparing notes, we noticed that some user behavior patterns kept on recurring. Below are some of the patterns that emerged during the analysis: 

• Aimless scrollings: users scrolled up and down, jumping from one page to the other, going back and forth. This indicated that they were not seeing the content they were looking for. 
• Low session duration on a certain page: users were immediately leaving the site without seeing some of the product features which was placed below the fold. 
• Hesitations: users were indecisive on whether to click the continue button, an indication that they do not trust the seller. 

With such observations, what recommendations can you make to the client? When analyzing session videos it is important to keep an open mind and be mindful of every mouse movement. Drawing from the same observations, here are some of the suggestions that can be made to the client.  

• Content layout: all of the important content including the call to action has to be placed above the fold so that users see it first as soon as they visit the page.
• Add trust seals: In most cases, a website without any trust seals may raise an element of doubt on website visitors. Adding trust seals is an indication that a site is verified and recognized by the relevant trusted authorities.  

As noticed from the example above, these recordings are not a replacement of GA, but the two tools can be used in unison for an effective CRO program. 

It is almost impossible to get answers to the why question without watching session replay videos. Even Chris Wallis, an Optimization Consultant from Mezzo Labs concurs: 

Session replays provide answers to both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind website performance and user behavior. The value for CRO lies in discovering the ‘why’ – this is where the best ideas for improvement come from: the ones that will make the most money, and generate the most interest within a business. 

Session replays analysis tips  

Analysis of session replays can be done right using different approaches. But the whole process of analyzing session replays can help uncover insights and identify opportunities when done correctly. The correct way for İnvesp is not just knowing what to observe, but it is making sure that all the fundamentals are followed. 

Whether you have been using session replays or you considering using them to identify conversion problems on a page, the tips below will help you get the most out of this tool. 

Define your goals for watching the recordings   

When analyzing session replay videos, there are no prizes for guessing the starting point!

Tony Robbins might not have been talking about session replays when he said “setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible,” but his statement vividly describes the first step of analyzing session replay videos.

In the context of session replay analysis, goals are answers you will be aiming to get at the end of your analysis. 

So how then do you set goals?

Data obtained from Google Analytics can save as an underlying basis that gives context to your session replay analysis.

For example, GA can tell you the number of users who have completed the desired goal of the website either by making a purchase or filling a form. As a marketer, you’d still want to know why other users exited the site without completing the desired action? You’d want to know how to further optimize your site so as to make more users convert, right? 

This is where session replays come in. 

Equipped with this GA data, your goal for analyzing these video playbacks will be to find out why users are exiting the site without making a purchase and how you can improve the site so as to increase your return on investment.      

Having clear definite goals at your fingertips makes the task a bit easier, come to think of it, it’s always easy to find something, when you know exactly what you are looking for, isn’t it?

User filters to segment your session replay videos

Once you have a clear definite goal, you can then manage the volume of the video recordings, and this helps you gain in-depth insights into what’s really going on beneath the surface. 

To help segment recordings, use the filters feature in session replays. The filters feature saves you time by narrowing down the number of videos to focus on. It leaves you with videos that are within the scope of your analysis.   

There are many ways to categorize the visitor recording using the recording filters, and these may include the operating system, browser or device type, duration, timeframes, number of pages visited, location e.t.c.  

To best use filtration, create different segments of videos using the following criteria:

1. Filter videos of users who landed on the pages

1. Start by selecting sessions that landed on the pages you are analyzing
2. Look at videos that are at least 30 seconds (or one minute) in length
3. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user groups (new vs. returning)
4. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user conversion (converted visitors vs. non-converter)
5. Optional: You can segment this group further by looking at different traffic source/mediums (google organic vs. paid or social media traffic)

2. Filter videos of users who exited the site on the pages

1. Start by selecting sessions that exited the site from to the pages you are analyzing
2. Look at videos that are at least 30 seconds (or one minute) in length
3. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user groups (new vs. returning)
4. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user conversion (converted visitors vs. non-converter)
5. Optional: You can segment this group further by looking at different traffic source/mediums (google organic vs. paid or social media traffic)

3. Filter all visits that include 

1. Start by selecting sessions that include visits to the pages you are analyzing (but did not land or exit the site)
2. Look at videos that are at least 30 seconds (or one minute) in length
3. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user groups (new vs. returning)
4. Optional: You can segment this group further by filtering user conversion (converted visitors vs. non-converter)
5. Optional: You can segment this group further by looking at different traffic source/mediums (google organic vs. paid or social media traffic)

For each of the above filters, you can also watch for different behavior based on time of day (day vs. night) or time of the week (weekday or weekend). 

If you follow the above suggestions, you will end up with anywhere from 10 to 20 different groups that you can take a look at. 

If you end up with many session replay groups, it will become an overwhelming task. So, you might want to skip the optional steps 3,4,5 to start with. Remember, when watching session replay videos, your goal is to look for actionable insights. 

Speed of the recordings  

When analyzing session replay videos, the motive is to understand why users do what they are doing on the site, and this demands one to be quite attentive of every mouse movement. 

One way of efficiently tracking the mouse movements is making sure that the speed of the videos isn’t too fast (2x or 4x) or too slow (0.5x). The Invesp team watches the session replay videos at 1.5x speed.   

Watching recordings at a faster speed may mean covering more ground, but there is a risk of missing out on some of the tiny actions of the users, on the other hand, watching videos at a snail pace may be daunting unless you have the whole day. 

Mitigate confirmation bias   

If you are like most people, then you have certain beliefs and you tend to look out for information that confirms your views. If any information goes against those beliefs, you dismiss it.  

And that folks, is what we refer to as confirmation bias. We all have it. 

But, fortunately, there is a way of diagnosing and fixing this issue.   

Before analyzing the session replay videos, we start by conducting an expert review on the page. Our team reviews the page using the conversion framework to identify possible conversion issues on it. So, the page is analyzed using the following criteria:

1. Trust and confidence
2. Engagement
3. FUDs
4. Buyer Personas
5. Buying stage
6. Incentives
7. The sale complexity

Each of these elements helps us identify possible issues on the page. The team then attempts to validate its findings by watching videos. 

So, how do we avoid falling into the confirmation bias trap?

Different team members watch the same set of videos separately. Then they come together to compare notes. Do different team members identify the same patterns and issues in the same videos? Do different team members reach different conclusions watching the same set of videos?

After this process, the team draws patterns and come up with insights by comparing observations. 

Search for patterns

Watching session replay videos can be overwhelming. Remember that your goal is to identify general patterns that emerge in different videos. 

• Are you noticing that most visitors click on dead areas of the page?
• Are you noticing that a segment of visitors clicks on a particular link on a page and then comes back to the previous page?
• Are you noticing that some of the visitors are filling forms incorrectly?
• Are you noticing that some of the visitors highlight some sections on the page?

Again, try to identify patterns in user behavior. 

What makes a good session replay tool?

What makes a good session replay tool is a question which shouldn’t be difficult to answer. I understand there are a lot of factors to consider, but which are the must-have features for Session Replay Videos?   

Do you go for the cheapest tool and hope for better functionality? Do you opt for the one that guarantees a high level of security and privacy? What really constitutes a really good session replay tool?

As subjective as this may sound, we can still work out a set of criteria that can be used for evaluating session replay tools. And it would like something like this: 

Data retention

Every session replay tool comes with different data retention. And this means that they differ in the number of videos they record, and the time period they keep videos before deleting them. Quite often, people do not know how much storage they really need. 

This issue of storage becomes an even bigger issue if the website you need the tool for has a high volume of traffic. Even if the tool has been on the market for years, don’t just assume that every tool on the market has adequate storage.

Is it valuable for your business to watch 3 months old videos? 

In most of the cases, sites change on a daily basis. That means that old videos are not very useful. In case, you do want to keep old videos, then make sure that you select a solution that offers at least 3 or 6 months of video retention. 

Site speed and performance should not be affected 

Your site speed and performance are a critical factor when it comes to Google Search Rankings. Slow sites tend to have a higher bounce rate —and this ultimately affects the site’s conversion rates.  

Be wary of session replay tools that may affect your site speed. There might be a great need for you to first check them out on the trial period before acquiring the tool. 

Suppose you have decided to use session replay tools, how then do you test for the impact of the tool on your site speed? 

One way of doing it is by using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. 

Once you have installed the session replay tool, you can then check your website’s performance by entering your URL into the bar: 

Click the “Analyze” button to have Google run a quick performance test on your website. 

This report will reveal everything you need to know about your site’s speed and performance. Even if it’s not the session replay tool plaguing the speed and performance of your site, Google’s PageSpeed Insights will let you know the exact issues. 

Using FigPii as our session replay tool, the Invesp report is an 81/100, just as indicated in the above image.  

It’s not great, neither is it bad.

Price

Session replay tools have different prices, and these prices depend on the features of the tool.  If you are to pay for any session replay tool, there should be a maximum value for the price you have paid. 

It’s wise to go for a tool that comes with other additional features — A/B testing, Polls, Heatmaps, etc. — apart from the session replay feature.

Number of videos you need to record

Different session replay tools allow you to record a different number of videos in a month. Some tools allow you to record tens of thousands of videos. Others might limit you to a few hundred videos. 

While the promise of many more videos might sound enticing – having done this myself, I would have to disagree! Let’s say that the tool allows you to record 50,000 videos, do you have the time or energy to watch a thousand of them? 

I do not think so.

In most of the cases, you might watch 200 or 300 videos. 

Combining heat map data with videos

We all don’t want our websites to be cluttered by different tools from different software companies. In today’s market, not every vendor can brag about giving a tool that neatly integrates heatmap data with video recordings.

 A side note about heatmaps: Heat maps are a two-dimensional representation of data in which values are represented by colors. In the context of a website, a heatmap is a data analysis software that uses color to display visitor movements at the same time showing the areas that get more attention on your web page. 

Khalid wrote an article on the importance of heat maps in boosting a website’s conversion rate, in the article he gave this short list of what heat maps can help you identify: 

• Elements of a website should be made clickable.
• Where should key information be placed on a page?
• What is working on a page and what isn’t.
• If the visitors easily identify CTAs.
• If the instructions are clear enough to lead a user to sales and conversion.
• Which elements of a page are distracting and should be eliminated?

Now back to the topic at hand: so, combining heat maps and session videos will help you to get an in-depth understanding of user behavior at both overall (through heatmaps) and individual (through session replay) levels. 

This also translates to 100% data ownership.  

Besides having your data in one place, integrated technological tools guarantee your data to be consistent. 

Search, Segmenting and Filtering Sessions

I had to save the best for last!

Well, I mentioned the importance of segmenting your visitors while watching different videos above. So, you will need to select a session replay tool has to have appropriate filters that will help choose the specific user sessions you need among many other video recordings. 

Remember that filters allow you to analyze your visitor recordings according to various cohorts such as device type, date, and traffic. This gives you in-depth insights into trends and patterns of user behaviors. 

To draw actionable conclusions from sessions replays, select a tool that will allow you to search, segment or filter your recordings.

Which are the session replay tools to look out for? 

Today the market is flooded with session replay tools. They vary in terms of features, level of security and privacy, functionality, and of course, prices. Before we developed FigPii in 2016, we relied on several tools that were different in analysis capabilities.

If you are interested in giving session replays a try, below is a list of some of the powerful session replay tools to look out for in the world market today:  

• FigPii
• CrazyEgg
• Dynatrace
• Freshworks
• Hotjar
• Inspectlet
• AB Tasty
• Lucky Orange
• Wisdom  
• Mouseflow
• MouseStats
• SessionCam
• Fullstory

Based on the criteria used above, here’s how these tools compare

The post Using session replay videos to identify conversion problems on a website appeared first on Invesp.

You make a few fixes and test them against the control. And BAM! You have an amazing increase in conversions.

For most websites, long gone are these days.

Sites are well designed. Most good designers understand fundamental usability principals. Most websites have the basics covered.

The good news is that we can now focus on more pressing conversion issues. The bad news is that it takes significantly longer to uncover and fix conversion issues.

Sitting in on three sales calls for conversion optimization companies

Image Source: Sean Mclean

A little background: Over the last three weeks, our largest enterprise client decided they want to bring in another CRO firm to handle optimization for their mobile application. This is an area where we are developing our experience in. While we have done hundreds of website optimization projects over the years, we conducted less than twenty conversion optimization for mobile apps.

It makes life easier to be very honest with the client as opposed to experimenting and not delivering results.

So, the client asked me to sit in on calls with three CRO firms. The goal was to listen to how they handle the project and to give the client an assessment of each firm. Fair enough. Each of the companies that presented knew who I was and the call.

One thing that caught my attention in every presentation is the focus on the low hanging fruits.

Each team that presented used the term three or our four times as a selling point. They can come in, focus on the low hanging fruits, deliver results and then focus on more complex conversion issues.

I have a major problem with that type of angel. Mind you, in no way am I judging the quality of the work these firms will do. My objection is the way a sales executive tried to oversimplify conversion optimization. I can hear each team saying: your application is full of low hanging fruit. We will come in and fix them. You will see a fantastic increase in conversions.

One firm promised over a 260% increase in conversions. The second firm promised 6x the return on investment. The third firm promised a 300% increase in conversions. And these are not fly by night operations. These are well-established conversion companies.

Making such promises might get you the contract. However, they will hurt your project and your delivery team.

Can they deliver such results? I can see with 99% confidence that they will not deliver the results they promised.

When do I stop a sales call?

It rarely fails.

A company contacts us asking for help with increasing their website conversion rate. As we go through our initial analysis of the website to determine if there is a possibility to work together, we hear the typical question: what kind of results should we expect?

“I do not know.”

It is not comforting to say it, and it is not reassuring to hear it.

Then, the prospective client follows up with another comment:” I want you to focus on the low hanging fruits in the initial stage. That should give us a good boast to start with.”

Unless the prospective client has a horrible website, my response is that the site does not have atrocious usability issues. It does not have low hanging fruits.

I have been doing CRO since 2006. I can comfortably say that clients who are searching for low hanging fruits rarely find them. And they rarely stick around to see any significant increases in conversions. Conversion optimization leaves a bad taste in their mouth. They leave a bad taste in our mouth.

So, when seeing that a prospective client is refusing to understand this point, we walk away.

When do we run away from a prospective client?

Back in 2015, I made a simple rule. If a company comes to us as a last ditch effort to save their business, then we turn them away. We can hear the desperation in the prospective client voice. Their company is about to run out of cash in six months, and CRO is their hail-mary.

It happened twice that year. A publicly traded company signed a contract with us. As we started the project, we noticed that consistent panic in the head of marketing voice. He wanted to results and he wanted them from the first day. We never promised that, but it did not matter.

Fast forward two months later, we get on a weekly status call with the client to discover that 90% of the online marketing team has been laid off. A month later, we knew it was best to walk away from the project.

For those thinking of hiring a CRO firm: how do you make sure your project will be successful?

I have written previously about questions you should ask a conversion optimization firm before hiring them. This is a good starting point to make sure that you are hiring a firm that has the capabilities to deliver the results you are expecting.

Here are a few additional things to keep in mind:

Define a clear goal and success criteria for the project: What do you want to achieve by conducting a conversion optimization project? Are you solely focused on increasing conversions? Are you looking to improve customer satisfaction and enhance the usability of your website? Is the primary goal of the project to learn how to conduct a conversion project correctly so you can grow an in-house talent to run these projects in the future? Each of these is a valid goal. Yes, you can achieve several of them at the same time. But have a clear vision that you agree on internally.

Have the right expectation: Unless you have a horribly designed website with poor usability, do not expect miracles to happen. If a firm is promising to double your conversion rates, then run away from them. Just run away. If your goal is to increase revenue, then does the project make sense if you only see a 25% increase in conversions after a year? Would that increase cover all the costs associated with the project?

Do you have the patience to run a conversion project? If you are expecting results in two or three months, then save your money and don’t do CRO. Increasing conversions requires skills, patience and time. You are attempting to unlock visitor psychology. Many have tried, and many have failed. Because CRO involves time, make sure that you trust the partner you will work with.

Understand where your website is: Not every site should be optimized for conversion. Sometimes, you are better off creating a new website altogether. If your website is outdated, you can spend months optimizing it. A better approach to through the old site and start with a fresh new design.

Can you consistently drive traffic to your website? Conversion optimization is successful when can maintain a steady flow of visitors to the website or landing page. If you are struggling to bring visitors, then start with solving that problem.

Are you buying A/B testing services instead of revenue improvement?

Image Source: dgtully

I am not going repeat the broken record of AB testing is not conversion optimization.

Increasing conversion rates is not a one-off project. It is a different way for your company to do business. It never stops.

For many conversion optimization firms, AB testing is the holy grail of CRO. They do a lot of customer research, a lot of analytics analysis, but in the end, it is all about AB testing.

We conducted a conversion rate audit for a large SEO firm a couple of years ago. Our recommendations had about ten pages. Four pages focused on the website providing detailed suggestions of what they should fix. Six pages concentrated on how they positioned their service, how new prospects were handled and how their sales team sold the engagements. The CEO of the company did not appreciate any of these recommendations. His words were,” I did not expect a CRO firm to give me anything besides what to fix on the website.” Everything else works just fine.

Fast forward two years later, they have not implemented a single recommendation we provided.

So, are you starting a project to increase conversions or are you buying a pure AB testing service? If you are looking to increase conversions, then the CRO firm should dig deep into all aspects of your business. They should advise you on brand, on messaging, on handling customers, on business process, on your website and campaign designs.

For companies offering conversion services: How do you ensure you will deliver value to your clients?

Stop promising to deliver an outrageous increase in conversion rates: Unless you are dealing with an amateurish website, you will not double conversion rates. You are just shooting yourself in the foot by promising results that you cannot deliver.

Avoid desperate clients: If the client business is about to go bankrupt and you think you can come in and save them, you are better off walking away.

Re-think your approach to you CRO: conversion optimization is beyond the web. Look at all aspects of your client business, uncover weak points and fix them. A/B testing is a tool. You should feel free to have a couple of months on a project where you are helping the client without running a single AB test.

The post How To Make Your CRO ( Conversion Rate Optimization ) Project Successful appeared first on Invesp.

• There are more than a billion websites, and this figure is increasing every day.
• The objective of every website is to attract, retain, engage, and convert visitors, but many fail here because they don’t take design functionality and aesthetics seriously.
• For your website to be able to convert site visitors to become loyal users and customers, it’s important to understand and analyze visitor intents, motivations, needs, and preferences.

How The Human Brain Interprets Design

• As humans, we are wired to want the best and move far away from anything that looks like it’ll be stressful. This attitude is carried online when we visit websites.
• There are several factors we subconsciously look out for when visiting a website or using an App for the first time. Familiarity is first on the list. We look for familiar and similar experiences to the ones we’ve had on previous websites.
• Another factor your site visitors will subconsciously look out for is safety. Safety here simply means social proof, proof of payment security, and other trust indicators.
• The 3rd factor your site visitors expect is clarity and visual appeal. For them this means you making use of visually appealing elements on your website, and also their ability to find what they’re looking for without wasting time navigating through different pages.
• The 4th factor is a sense of urgency. Except the human brain is presented with an opportunity to act, it will not. That push is necessary. In scientific terms, it’s called fight or flight.
• The sense of delight is the final factor. Just like urgency, the human brain also acts to experience a delight. ‘Delight’ is delivered or imparted through mental and emotional appeal. In the real world, not everything can be justified with logic. This holds true even for purchase behavior.

Leveraging Psychological Triggers In Persuasive Design

• Though humans tout themselves to be intellectual and rational people, our brain is affected by a number of external stimuli, visual presentation, motivations, etc. and we later use logic to rationalize the ‘why’ behind our decisions/actions. Listed below are some of the cognitive biases used by marketers to impact user decision-making.
• Choice abundance: As the name implies, when users are faced with a lot of options, they face a sort of paralysis in decision making and fail to analyze options/information. All the noise shuts down its otherwise ‘healthy’ sense of judgment.
• Anticipation: Marketers leverage curiosity and anticipation to keep users hooked and engaged with a brand. We are intrigued to completely know what we just partially know about. That is how you satisfy that old brain’s ego that says ‘I know everything. That is how to keep nudging it to know even more.
• Authority: The brain follows the hero. It has been trained by history and evolution that the herd follows the leader’s command. Chimpanzees follow the leader. Their leader is their hero. For humans as well, an authority figure is a commander. His words and actions can be trusted. This is why you often believe a celebrity endorsing a product in an advertisement.
• Buyers’ Remorse: this happens to many users after buying what they believe is expensive. Marketers, however, try to soothe and calm us down by telling us how wise our purchase is.
• Confirmation bias: users tend to recall easily what they already internally and subconsciously agree with. It’s more like ‘jumping to conclusions based on convenience, preconceived notions, and false judgments. How marketers can use this to their advantage is to research popular hypotheses and beliefs of their intended audience and position their product as the answer.
• Other biases marketers use are disposition, community herd aka bandwagon effect, and foot in the door.

6 Neuromarketing Website Design Hacks Based on Cognitive Bias

• Trust seals, reviews, and testimonials: The idea behind using social proof ‘upfront’, right on the homepage of many websites is to influence the human brain that yes they are ‘safe’. Essentially, marketers leverage ‘trust bias’ to gently persuade users about their quality of services or products. From trust seals to reviews to customer testimonials, different elements are displayed on website homepages to create a sense of security and assurance of service in people.
• Avoid ‘choice abundance’ during checkout: The human brain is averse to confusion and prefers a direct path to decision making. That is why providing limited choice, which is most preferred by users, is the best way to more conversions on checkout.
• FOMO (fear of missing out): Marketers know (Fear of Missing Out) FOMO like the back of their hand. Almost every tactic to increase sales and convince users to buy quickly is based on scarcity to create urgency and other FOMO tactics. These tactics are based on the principle of loss aversion, which we’ve explained earlier in detail in this post.
• Deploy the decoy: This tactic is based on the asymmetric dominance effect, according to which consumers will show a specific change in preference when presented with a third option that is inferior to option one completely; however, when compared to option 2 it is superior in certain respects and inferior in others.
• The power of positive reinforcement: The positive reinforcement hack is based on the cognitive bias popularly known as choice supportive bias. This psychological bias makes people remember their choices as better than they actually are. And, we as humans are naturally inclined to appreciate efforts that positively reinforce the buying experience as well as decisions.
• Emotional Appeal: The belonging bias has been leveraged by brands like Apple to create a sense of complete belonging in their customers. Apple customers vouch and stand by their choice of brand and feel a sense of pride in owning an Apple product. They don’t vouch for any other brand, ever. Such is the ‘emotional appeal’ of the brand. It makes the owner feel rich, class apart, and powerful.

Here’s A Longer And More Detailed Version Of The Article.

There are more than a billion websites and more are spawning every day. The objective of the majority of these is to attract, engage, convert, and retain visitors. Sadly, most fail. The reason is simple – they don’t take design functionality and design aesthetics seriously. The Co-Founder and CMO of Imaginovation, Michael Georgiou says:

“Users grant websites a fraction of that time: less than eight seconds. Those first impressions are about 94 percent design-related. What’s more, about 75 percent of users will judge your brand credibility based on your website design.”

Everyone knows how important making a first impression is. This is true even in the virtual, online world. Your website is the face of your business. But, it is not ‘just’ that. Apart from being able to portray your brand image to an online audience, your website must be able to persuade visitors to become users and loyal customers. For this, it is a must to understand and analyze visitors’ intents, motivation, needs, and preferences. Understanding the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind ‘what’ users are doing is the key to neuromarketing.

To understand the ‘why’ behind actions marketers, researchers, and academic experts have drilled deep into the human brain and established principles that can be put to use.

To understand the ‘how’ behind human brain, marketers use tools such as eye tracking, visitor recordings, heat maps etc. to analyze patterns that study the logic behind each on-site action that people take.

In a nutshell, the look and feel are without a doubt extremely valuable. However, it doesn’t end there; aesthetics are just the beginning, just the hook. The loop begins with persuasive design functionality.

In this blog post, we will talk about the principles that establish the ‘why’ behind people’s preferences, and how these ‘preferential biases’ can be used in crafting persuasive website design.

So, let’s dive in to figure out how the human brain perceives design and what can be considered as design good enough to win and generate conversions.

How Human Brain Deciphers Design

There are websites that most of us forget about ( or would purposely like to forget about) as soon as we hit ‘close tab’. Maybe the design is horrible, or that the menu is difficult to locate, or that the search functionality is poor. It could also be that the website takes too long to load and you don’t have the patience left to stick around for the page to display. As humans, we are wired to want to the best. And here’s how we define ‘the best’ – instant gratification, easier choices, comfort, choosing the path of least resistance – all the good things in life. So, in context to persuasive website design, what do we term as a great experience? Here are the five elements that lay out our expectations from website design.

• Familiarity – The human brain looks out for ‘familiar’, ‘tried and tested’ patterns. If it encounters something extremely different than what it has been largely exposed to, doubt quickly surfaces. If you want your website or app to attract users quickly, win their trust in no time steer clear of confusions and experimentation. Rather than displaying web elements that trigger confusions, focus on creating a reassuring experience.

Some simple tips – Use languages that your customers understand have a consistent design throughout your website, give pricing options on your page that are popular in the geographical area that you are running your business for.

• Safety – A familiar pattern instills some amount of faith and safety in users. However, the human brain craves for complete trustworthiness when it comes to buying. People purchase from a shop or brand that they feel assures quality and ingenuity. In an online world, people are even more cautious. That is why eCommerce websites focus on displaying social proof on their websites. They also promise complete safety of payment and protection from fraudsters. In the conversion framework, given by Invesp CRO, safety falls under the purview of Trust and Confidence.
• Clarity and visual appeal – It is human instinct to rely on visual stimuli. This is the reason why visually appealing elements on a website can make or break the first impression. Clarity is just as important. Ever walked into a cluttered grocery store and walked out empty-handed because it was taking forever for you to find out where would you find what you needed? Same goes for website design also. Neat, clear navigation is always welcome. And, so is a simple and clear checkout process. Under the conversion framework given by Invesp CRO, clarity and visual appeal fall under the purview of sale complexity, which says, the more complex the sale, the more difficult it is to close. According to Nate McGuire:

“Remember users want a few key things from navigation: knowledge of where they are on the site, a way to go back (or home), and directions (if your site has an unusual or more complicated interface).”

According to the graphic, 76% of users surveyed said that “it’s easy to find what I want” is the most important factor of a website’s design.

Image Source: business2community

• The sense of urgency – By nature, unless a human brain is presented with a situation to act, it will not. That push is necessary. In scientific terms, it is called ‘fight or flight’. When there is a certain sense of urgency, the human brain prepares itself to either face that situation or run away from it. In most cases, the urgency to act occurs when faced with the possibility of loss. Marketers, both digital and traditional, use the sense of urgency to nudge their users to complete a sale. You might already be familiar with ‘Up to 50% off ONLY till next week’. It’s all neuroscience! In context to conversion framework, Sense of Urgency can be related to FUDs (fears, uncertainties, and doubts).
• The sense of delight – Just like urgency, human brain also acts to experience the delight. ‘Delight’ is delivered or imparted through mental and emotional appeal. In the real world, not everything can be justified with logic. This holds true even for purchase behavior. But why delight, why not just satisfy a customer’s need? Because it does not guarantee repeat purchases. Besides competition mandates customer delight.  In website design, newer technologies such as virtual reality are making it big by being able to provide a ‘delightful’ visual experience. Similarly, easy pay mobile optimized wallets have made checkout truly delightful for online buyers.

All the above points on how the human brain perceives design have been derived from McLean’s theory about the reptilian brain.  Going by what McLean puts forth, it seems that steering marketing efforts towards the brain’s reptilian part, businesses can manipulate their consumers’ basic instincts and influence decision making. In other words, persuasion is a game of being able to use the five listed elements in the process of website design and functioning. A number of psychological triggers can be derived from the above five elements, which we will be going through in detail now.

Leveraging Psychological Triggers in Persuasive Design

As we’ve pointed above, human beings often divulge from rationality in judgment and may act in an illogical fashion if successfully manipulated by emotional appeal and persuasion. Though humans tout themselves to be intellectual and rational people, our brain is affected by a number of external stimuli, visual presentation, motivations, etc. and we later use logic to rationalize the ‘why’ behind our decisions/actions. Here are a few common cognitive biases that impact our decision making and are widely used by marketers in influencing decision making and in creating a persuasive design.

Choice abundance: When presented with too many options or too much information, our brain goes for a toss. It faces a sort of paralysis in decision making and fails to analyze options/information. All the noise shuts down its otherwise ‘healthy’ sense of judgment. That’s why you have a hard time selecting ‘just one’ from a menu loaded with a variety of pizza options and that’s why marketers have a ‘make your own’ option that simplifies your decision making. We have an excellent piece on the paradox of choice, which you can read about in detail here.

Anticipation: Thomas Hobbes has defined curiosity in the best possible manner. He says ‘Curiosity is the lust of the mind’. Marketers leverage curiosity and anticipation to keep users hooked and engaged with a brand. We are intrigued to completely know what we just partially know about. That is a how you satisfy that old brain’s ego that says ‘I know everything’. That is how to keep nudging it to know even more.

Authority: The brain follows the hero. It has been trained by history and evolution that the herd follows the leader’s command. Chimpanzees follow the leader. Their leader is their hero. For humans as well, an authority figure is a commander. His words and actions can be trusted. This is why you often believe a celebrity endorsing a product in an advertisement.

Buyer’s Remorse: It often happens that we end up regretting ‘splurging’ on expensive purchases that are driven by emotions or desires. This feeling of remorse often shows up when we purchase a car, a house, or even a certain luxury watch on an impulse. Marketers, however, try to soothe and calm us down by telling us how wise our purchase is. They explain how our expenditure is actually an investment and how that impulse watch that we just end up blowing up our entire two month’s salary on is a limited edition.

Confirmation Bias: A series of experiments conducted in the 1960s validate that people have a tendency to favor, and recall information in a manner that it confirms their preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It’s more like ‘jumping to conclusions’ based on convenience, preconceived notions, and false judgments. When people want to think in a certain manner they magically and end up believing it to be true. So, if your friend didn’t reply instantly to your message, he must be avoiding you, right? That’s a confirmation bias that you hold true without actually knowing the truth.

Community Bias: The herd sticks together and follows the norms of the community. They have an inherent need to feel like a part of a larger group and be accepted as its members. This makes them feel safe and comfortable. Being with people who have a shared agenda makes people feel important and enhances confidence.

Disposition: A bias towards making a decision that is likely to make us ‘gain’. Usually, people tend to make financial decisions based on Disposition bias. High risk-high reward investments are based on the disposition effect when the brain thinks that taking the risk is worth the hefty ‘gain’. Similarly, the idea of gaining ‘safely’ from mutual funds is also based on this bias.

Foot in the Door: Have you heard the phrase ‘ Well begun is half done’? Well, if you’ve taken the first step towards something you are almost close to completion. This goes for everything. Even while buying, if we’ve taken the first action (such as visiting a website) we are likely to take additional steps – browsing the website, adding to cart, liking its Facebook page etc. Foot in the door is like one step closer to sale for marketers!

Above we’ve cited only eight cognitive bias or psychological triggers; however, there are many more. All of these triggers literally give away top secrets on how to influence the old ‘self-centered’ brain. These secrets (or cognitive biases), now out in the open for years for marketers to make the most of, are also vital in persuasive website design. We shall now read how these neuromarketing principles can be used as hacks in website designing.

6 Neuromarketing Website Design Hacks Based on Cognitive Bias

Trust Seals, Reviews, and Testimonials

The idea behind using social proof ‘upfront’, right on the homepage of many websites is to influence the human brain that yes they are ‘safe’. Essentially, marketers leverage ‘trust bias’ to gently persuade users about their quality of services or products. From trust seals to reviews to customer testimonials, different elements are displayed on website homepages to create a sense of security and assurance of service in people.

Using images and testimonials from authority figures in the industry is also a great way of leveraging trust. A number of newer, fresher ideas keep emerging every day on how to use trust bias in persuasive design. For example, a video on product usage can instill confidence in users that they can use the product without much help from customer support. Similarly, video-based testimonials are now being widely used. They are indeed much more powerful in winning users’ trust as compared to written testimonials.

A good example of how a SaaS business leverages trust bias using video testimonials is Hubspot. In this post, they share how they’ve used a happy customer’s video testimonial about their product.

Avoid ‘Choice Abundance’ during checkout

The human brain is averse to confusion and prefers a direct path to decision making. That is why providing limited choice, which is most preferred by users, is the best way to more conversions on checkout.

The cognitive bias being exercised here is ‘choice abundance’, where when presented with a clutter of options people find it difficult to ‘act’ or make a ‘decision’ quickly. There is an extremely popular experiment that explains this phenomenon quite well and establishes that ‘more isn’t always good’. The experiment uses gourmet jams to prove that people who saw more options on display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.

Practical Tip: Provide one clear and actionable call to action on checkout. You should avoid too many offers and confusing messages. For example, instead of having many payment options – Cash on delivery, Debit Card/Visa, PayTm, Cryptocurrency – give make one or two most famous options prominent and fold the rest under ‘Check other payment options’ hyperlink.

Amazon’s checkout is one of the best examples on how to avoid the paradox of choice and remove any sort of noise that might lead to confusion, diversions, or a sort of paralysis while reaching their ‘goal’, which is to complete checkout. It simply doesn’t overwhelm users with choice and is minimalistic. That’s why we all love shopping at Amazon, right?

Scarcity for Urgency or FOMO

Marketers know (Fear of Missing Out) FOMO like the back of their hand. Almost every tactic to increase sale and convince users to buy quickly is based on scarcity to create urgency and other FOMO tactics. These tactics are based on the principle of loss aversion, which we’ve explained earlier in detail in this post.

eCommerce brands have absolutely nailed FOMO. They have used techniques such as ‘real-time countdown timers’ in website design to imbibe a sense of urgency to buy in users. Onsite push notifications have also been smartly used by website design experts and marketers to instill fear of missing out in users. Consider, ‘stock about to finish’ offers that pop-up when you visit your favorite website.  

SaaS businesses have also been using FOMO to their advantage. One way how they do it by ‘highlighting the number of happy subscribers to their product’. Obviously, for those who want to buy this is a gentle nudge that if they don’t subscribe, they will miss out being a part of this happy and satisfied user base. One such example is Sumo.me. Check the following image to know how.

Deploy the Decoy

This tactic is based on the asymmetric dominance effect, according to which consumers will show a specific change in preference when presented with a third option that is inferior to option one completely; however, when compared to option 2 it is superior in certain respects and inferior in others.

The decoy principle or tactic is widely used by SaaS businesses while designing pricing pages. The idea is to make users buy a certain/specific option. Consider PersistIQ. They have three payment options displayed on their pricing page. Their Pro Outbound option is priced way less than the third option but only $40 higher than the basic plan. Obviously, they want their users to consider the Pro Outbound option and hence have presented a third option which is extremely high priced.

The Power of Positive Reinforcement

The positive reinforcement hack is based on the cognitive bias popularly known as choice supportive bias. This psychological bias makes people remember their choices as better than they actually are. And, we as humans are naturally inclined to appreciate efforts that positively reinforce the buying experience as well as decision.

In website design, positive reinforcement is used widely on thank you pages. Using persuasive copy and design elements, you can imbibe a ‘happy experience’ in your customers’ minds. That feeling of happiness while buying from you fuels and feeds choice supportive bias. Jif, a website dedicated to nutrition for kids, does this really well.

Practical Tip for SaaS businesses: SaaS businesses can use positive reinforcement in their website design in the checkout process. While customers are making the ‘selection’ you can reassure customers about their ‘consideration’ by showing them numbers of subscriptions on that particular plan.

Emotional Appeal

The belonging bias has been leveraged by brands like Apple to create a sense of complete belonging in their customers. Apple customers vouch and stand by their choice of brand and feel a sense of pride in owning an Apple product. They don’t vouch for any other brand, ever. Such is the ‘emotional appeal’ of the brand. It makes the owner feel rich, class apart, and powerful. These are the kind of emotions that the brand associates with and so do its customers.

Practical Tip: Have a community forum page on your website that is completely handled by users. Let users generate the content for you on this section. This way they will feel a part of the business.  

Here’s how Jonathan Kennedy has built a community of loyal Shopify store users. Take his tips seriously.

From the B2C space, we have an excellent example that nails emotional appeal. Have you ever checked out Dove’s website? They have portrayed real users, real people to project the idea of true beauty. That’s how they’ve formed a connection with the audience and created an unbreakable bond with the customer.

That’s a Wrap – Neuromarketing + Design = Powerful Persuasion

Neuromarketing is not new. However, it is since the past five to six years being more creatively used in persuasive design techniques. Have you used neuromarketing in your website design yet?

The post Using Persuasive Web Design to Increase Conversion Rates appeared first on Invesp.

The greatest perk for all of these articles is that we provide you with a lead magnet to the library of screenshots we took of all these companies.

Before we jump into our analysis, I recommend reading about the different abandonment rates an e-commerce site suffers from. You can also see our detailed guide on crafting cart abandonment emails.

The first article is a comparison of shopping cart pages of 200 different e-commerce websites. We evaluated a various number of elements on these different cart pages:

1. The pricing summary
2. Checkout button(s) placement
3. Top navigation present or not
4. Sales price display
5. Alternative payment methods present or not
6. Assurance centers (secure pay and such) present or not
7. Cross-sells present or not
8. Promotional banner

Here are some interesting shopping cart pages statistics that we found and will elaborate on throughout the article:

• 88% of carts evaluated have the top navigation inside the cart page
• 35% of carts didn’t include the sale price next to the line item of the product
• 37% of carts have “trust icons” or an “assurance center.”

Pricing summary placement

The placement of the pricing summary and the primary CTA (usually proceed to checkout) is very important. We observed that the majority of the 200 companies placed the pricing summary on the right side of the page.  Other companies placed it directly below the product(s) listing. In all cases, the primary CTA was always right below the pricing summary.

47% of companies place the pricing summary under the product listing. Below are some examples: add the order summary under the product information:

Of the 200 carts evaluated, 48% place the pricing summary on the right side of the page.

Only  2.5% of carts place the pricing summary on both the top and bottom of the product listing.

Primary Call to Action

We noticed throughout our research that the majority of cart pages are simple and reduce unnecessary clutter. That’s definitely why CRO for e-commerce is becoming challenging. Usability issues on sites are mainly non-issues. So unless a CRO understands how to make a site more compelling and engaging and is involved in multiple projects for a site, there will be few improvements made to the site.

Ultimately, 2 vs. 1 primary CTA (or Proceed to checkout) on a cart page is a minor change, but definitely, something we thought was interesting. Of the 200 carts evaluated, 54.5% used just one CTA.

While 43% of carts used two CTAs:

Interestingly, 2.50% replaced the typical CTA with the login or guest checkout options. Creative!

Top Navigation

Typically, removing an element such as top navigation to limit distractions is a win-win for most of our clients. Before you go ahead and rip it off the cart page, we don’t just decide to test an element like that blindly. If we notice that visitors remain on the cart and don’t click on that navigation, it’s likely an element not worth testing. However, when we see those patterns, testing is generally positive.

Of the  200 carts we evaluated, an overwhelming 88% have the top navigation inside the cart page, and just 12% of companies do not. Here are some examples with top navigation:

Here some examples of companies with no top navigation

Sale Price

An easy one. If your item is on sale, display it. Well during our research this painstakingly obvious element isn’t always clear.

Of the 200 evaluated carts, 65% include the sale price.  Duh!

But shockingly, 35% do not include the sale price!  But why!??!?!

Alternative Payment Options

In the article we posted on the simplicity overabundance of choice, we relayed the story of Professor Sheen Iyengar of Colombia University and her grocery store experiment. She found that when she offered 24 different jam options, although 60% tasted, less actually bit and ended up buying (only 3%). When she offered 6 flavors only, just 40% tasted, but 30% stopped buying.

What does this mean? Sometimes offering multiple forms of payment (PayPal, Google, etc.) isn’t always the best thing. And if you do present it as an option, it should be easy and clear.

52.5% of the evaluated carts offered an alternative Payment, while 47.5% didn’t present that option on the cart page.

Here are some examples of sites that do not have an alternative payment option.

And here are some that do have alternative Payment

Assurance center

We actually like to take credit for coining the term: “assurance center.” In 2008 we added an assurance center with trust seals to a client cart page and saw amazing improvements in conversions. As a result of this amazing result, we wrote a lengthy post in   Internet Retailer Magazine about the case study. After that article went viral, everyone was talking about assurance centers and how they are must-haves. The funny thing is, we do not believe it is an end-all solution. We tried assurance centers with other clients, and they failed miserably!

The takeaway is any of these elements or competing sites don’t offer the golden ticket solution to your site.

Of the 200 carts evaluated, 37% have some trust icons or assurance center, while a whopping 63% don’t have anything at all.

Here are some carts with no trust icons or assurance center:

Here are some examples with either icons or more:

Cross-Sells

Cross-sells are a popular element to include on the cart page. The question always becomes, is it better to direct visitors to another product page or remove any obstacles that may distract them from moving forward in the conversion process.

• 63.5% of the 200 carts evaluated had cross-sells present on the page.
• The other 36.5% remove all distractions from the page.
• Additionally, not all carts had cross-sells on the bottom. There were different placements: a whopping 96.50% placed cross-sells along the bottom, 3% on the right side, 0.5% on the top of the cart page.

Let’s take a look:

Here some examples of placing the cross selles on the right side of the page.

Of the 200 carts evaluated,  63.5% had cross-sells present on the page, most of which directed the visitor to the PDP. Actually, 72.44% direct visitors to another product page, while 21.25% of companies directly on the cart add option. Which do you think is better for usability?

Here are some examples of cross-sells that direct visitors to the product page

And here are some examples of companies that allow the visitors to add the items directly from the cross-sells to the cart.

Promotional Banner

Of the 200 evaluated carts, 51% have some promotional banner, while 49% don’t. Also, there were different placements, of the 51% that have the banners: 88% have the banner on the top, and 11.7% on the bottom of the cart page.

Here are some examples of companies that include the promotion banner:

Conclusion

There are a lot of elements to evaluate on the cart page. In this series, we evaluated a lot of other pages and types of websites (SaaS and e-commerce), so keep a lookout for our next version, and don’t forget to download the actual screenshots!

The post Shopping Cart Best Practices – An analysis Of Top 200 E-commerce Websites appeared first on Invesp.

• Seasonality is an ever-evolving trend.. According to BigCommerce, nearly 40% of online sales are generated in the last three months of the year – October, November, and December.

What is Seasonality?

• Seasonality refers to periodic fluctuations occurring in a predictable pattern based on a particular season, quarter, or month. Any predictable change or pattern in a time series that recurs or repeats over a one-year period can be said to be seasonal.

What Does Seasonality Mean From A Marketing Standpoint?

• It’s more than just throwing a few joyful, light-hearted festive posts on your social media accounts. The reason is that each season comes with specific noteworthy holidays, events, and activities, which cause consumers to behave differently, hence, providing opportunities for businesses to thrive.

Adjusting Your Message, Budget, And Approach For Seasonality

• Seasonality has a significant influence on the strategies that organizations put in place.
• Additionally, purchasing habits tend to shift based on the activities that consumers participate in, and online businesses need to consider this well ahead of time.

Tips For A Successful Seasonal Marketing Campaign

• Don’t go with every season; pick the right one.
• Nail down the message and approach.
• Fine-tune your budget 
• Re-use or model successful campaigns.  
• Segment and treat every customer individually.
• Review and repurpose campaigns that aren’t turning out well.

Why You Must Account + Review Your Conversion Strategy For Seasonality

• Customers are typically highly motivated during peak seasons. What do you think the traffic of an online floral retailer looks like in the week leading up to Valentine’s day compared to the week or month after? Definitely up there.

Why do some companies refuse to conduct CRO during the peak seasons?

• Possible financial loss due to sending motivated traffic to variations that perform worse than the original design.
• The possibility of introducing bugs to the website during peak seasons.

Few Reasons To A/B Test During Peak Season

• Potential financial impact
•  Running tests during peak seasons can give insights into the urgency’s impact on your visitors.

Non-Test Activities To Carry Out During Peak Season

• Conduct qualitative research
• Conduct quantitative research
• Conduct competitive research
• Expert reviews, aka heuristic evaluation

Here’s A Longer And More Detailed Version Of The Article.

Image Source: quantdare

Seasonality is an ever-evolving trend.

Even if you are not in a seasonal business – your customers are reacting to a particular season in predictable ways that you can leverage.

According to BigCommerce, nearly 40% of online sales are generated in the last three months of the year – October, November, and December.

What’s more:

Every year feels like Christmas decorations go up earlier.

Black Friday emails start to arrive before Halloween, and our Social media accounts become a testament to the holidays long before it feels like we are ready.

As we just wrapped up the holiday season with most of our retail clients, we are starting to execute new plans for valentine’s day. For others, we are starting to come up with plans for mother and father days…Seems like a never-ending cycle.

In this post, we’ll explore the incredible impact of seasonality, why you must review your strategy, adjust your budget, messaging, and approach for peak seasons or holidays.

What Is Seasonality?

Seasonality refers to periodic fluctuations that regularly occur in a predictable pattern based on a particular season, quarter, or month.

Any predictable change or pattern in a time series that recurs or repeats over a one-year period can be said to be seasonal.

Seasonal opportunities are enormous, and often, they’re the most commercially critical times of the year.

Most companies [including yours] can benefit from tapping into their consumers’ holiday psyches, warm fuzzies, and spirit.

But before we go into that, let’s dig a little deeper:

What Does Seasonality Mean From A Marketing Standpoint?

In marketing, seasonality is more than just throwing a few joyful light-hearted festive posts on your social media accounts.

Why is this so?

Because each season comes specific noteworthy holidays, events and activities, which cause consumers to behave differently, hence, provide opportunities for businesses to thrive. Ritika Jha says:

“Data available with Magento Commerce shows that retailers are able to increase their customer base by 30-50% during the holiday season by investing in the right strategies every year.”

Examples of seasonal opportunities that have the power to boost your revenue and connect you with your audience include; Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year’s Eve/Day, Valentine’s Day.

Now, more on that later…

BigCommerce had an excellent article outlining discussing the topic. Here’s a summary of the main points in it:

1. Spend enough time forecasting

Sound predictions of demands and trends are no longer luxury items, but a necessity for most companies. If you’re to cope with seasonality, sudden changes in demand levels, price-cutting maneuvers of the competition, strikes, and large swings of the economy.

Forecasting can help you deal with that.

2. Keep a keen eye on search trends

Depending on your industry, your audience, your goals, and even the size of your company, it’s essential to identify and keep a keen eye on search trends.

Google Trends can be a beneficial tool to help highlight the broader search [or seasonality] habits over a given time frame.

Whatever you use, it’s important to use a variety of tools together (from Google to your CRM system to a customizable analytics template) to track your customers’ behavior, any correlations among a specific audience, and your performance.

3. Scour websites, blogs, online forums and discussion boards

Image Source: indian-ocean

It is important to analyze key trends often, statistics or research on blogs, news sites or forums that gather data and break down industry reports into a format you can easily understand and digest.

4. Use different tools and analytics systems

It is also smart to use different tools and analytics systems such as Google trends (which I also mentioned above), Google Adwords to better pinpoint exact keywords and queries and identify the direction seasonal trends and opportunities.

5. Follow prominent publications and influencers in your industry

One of the simplest things you can do is subscribe to web publications and follow prominent influencers in your industry. This can help companies understand what’s coming around the corner, and even better, evolving your company alongside those changes can keep you competitive.

Adjusting Your Message, Budget, And Approach For Seasonality

Seasonality has a significant influence on the strategies that organizations put in place.

Additionally, purchasing habits tend to shift based on the activities that consumers participate in, and online businesses need to take this into account well ahead of time.

While seasonal marketing is all about having excellent timing, unique content, and a perfect campaign execution that earns engagement, and ultimately, sales. According to Skimlinks:

“Consumers start and finish their shopping earlier than ever before, and that means publishers, advertisers and agencies alike need to be readier earlier than ever before to capitalize on the holiday season’s opportunities from an editorial and advertising standpoint.”

It’s also important to start preparing for peak season as early as possible before it’s too late and you’re left wondering what your next move should be.

Tips For A Successful Seasonal Marketing Campaign

Planning an effective seasonal campaign not only takes a significant organization, it also takes a considerable amount of time. Below are some tips designed to help you get your campaign off the ground.

1. Pick The Right Seasonal Opportunity

Every season has something different to offer, the key here is to be selective, do your research and collect data on when your customers are most likely to engage, then choose events that in some way relate to your business. Jen McKinnon says:

“The online stores who perform the best on public holidays are the ones that are most well prepared for the local calendar, tailoring their shopping events to their audience and making the most of the vacation vibe that a public holiday provides.”

Here are a few popular holidays, events and themes you can start with:

Spring:

(Holidays)

Easter

April Fools’ Day

Earth Day

Mother’s Day

Teacher’s Day

Memorial Day

Father’s Day

(Events and Themes)

Spring Weather

Spring Cleaning

Spring Sports

Green Initiatives

Bright Color Schemes

Summer:

(Holidays)

Flag Day

Independence Day

Labor Day

(Events and Themes)

Summer Weather

Barbecuing

Vacations

School’s Out

Shark Week

Fall:

(Holidays)

Halloween

Veterans Day

Thanksgiving

Black Friday

Cyber Monday

(Events and Themes)

Back to School

Fall Activities – Pumpkin Picking, Haunted Houses

Football

Winter:

(Holidays)

Hanukkah

Christmas

New Year’s Eve/Day

Valentine’s Day

Presidents Day

Chinese New Year

(Events and Themes)

Super Bowl

Snow

Staying Warm

Online Shopping

Creative marketers can make every season work, even if it’s a small amount. Whether you create season-related content (such as social media posts, blogs, and infographics), host a themed contest or promote a sale for relevant products and/or services, this list should be in mind.

2. Nail Down The Message And Approach

As with any marketing campaign, your seasonal campaign messaging is essential. To help you get started, you should be thinking of the following:

Image source:

Mapping the customer journey and the story you want to tell: A customer journey map shows the story of the customer’s experience: from initial contact through the process of engagement and into a long-term relationship.

• The emotions you want to evoke in your audience: The goal of appealing to emotion is to create a connection with your audience that makes them receptive to your message. If you can do that, your audience is more likely to understand where you’re coming from, accept your views, and take action.
• A call-to-action: The ultimate goal here is to make them take action or the desired next steps you want to encourage.     

3. Fine-tune Your Budget

The key to a successful seasonal marketing campaign is fine-tuning your budget so there are no surprises.

First things first, you’ll want to start by creating a list of your baseline costs. These are the minimum expenses required to keep the doors of your business open from month-to-month, which include; “Monthly lease or rent payments”, “Utilities (Electricity, Internet service, cellular service)”, “Taxes,” “Insurance” etc

Next, look at your existing budget and make allowances for what you’ll need to get your business ready for the season.

Things you may need to consider include:

• Bonuses or gifts for employees or customers
• Gifts for vendors or clients
• Ongoing marketing or advertising expenses
• Added payroll costs for seasonal employees
• Postage and shipping if you’re mailing out orders to customers

4. Re-use or model successful campaigns

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Have a look at some of the last few years’ most successful content campaigns for a particular occasion using tools like Ahrefs and BuzzSumo.

When evaluating existing, successful campaigns, spend some time thinking about how each piece approached content format, distribution, messaging, and emotion.

Furthermore, one of the best parts of seasonal marketing is the ability to recycle your best-performing ideas the following year, as long as you make your content as evergreen as possible.

A great example is Hershey’s “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” commercial. The brand has run the TV spot every year since 1989, making it the longest-running Hershey’s commercial of all time.

5. Segment and Treat Every Customer Individually

To treat customers as individual segments you have to think of them as such.

For seasonal marketing to be effective, your customers should be tailored to individuals, regardless of channel, and that the best way to do this is through customer profiling.

A larger segment may have several thousand customers in it, but brands still need to treat each one of those within that segment as an individual.

6. Review and Repurpose

It’s important to document your campaign results carefully. Treat them as points of reference for future campaigns.

Try to not only repurpose the successful elements but also identify the weak sides of your promotions so you can eliminate them next time.

Why You Must Account + Review Your Conversion Strategy For Seasonality

I wrote on creating a conversion optimization plan for peak seasons (including the holiday).

Customers are typically highly motivated during peak seasons.  

So consider this:

What do you think the traffic of an online floral retailer looks like in the week leading up to Valentine’s day compared to the week or month after?

I’ll give you a hint: It is way higher.

Now, think about this for a moment:

Why do some companies refuse to conduct CRO during the peak seasons?

1. Possible financial loss due to sending motivated traffic to variations that perform worse than the original design.

You run your A/B tests with several challenges against the original page. There is always a possibility that some (or all) of these challenges will perform worse compared to the original page. That means that these variations will generate less revenue for you during your peak season. And yes, your boss (CEO, CFO, or you) would not want that.

In 2007, we used to justify testing during peak seasons as an opportunity cost. Whether we conducted A/B testing during the holiday depended on how risk-averse a company is. But also meant that the larger the organization is, the less likely they are to do any type of testing during peak seasons.

Fast forward to today, and there is a reasonable solution by using a multi-arm bandit (MAB) approach. MAB is an automated testing mechanism that diverts more traffic to better performing variations.

Image source: tech.gotinder

There are different ways A/B testing software could implement a MAB:

In one approach:

• For 10% of the time, you split your traffic equally between the two versions (called the exploration phase)
• For the rest of the time (90%), you send traffic to the best performing version (called the exploitation phase)

Google optimize implement the following:

“Twice per day, we take a fresh look at your experiment to see how each of the variations has performed, and we adjust the fraction of traffic that each variation will receive going forward. A variation that appears to be doing well gets more traffic, and a variation that is clearly underperforming gets less. The adjustments we make are based on a statistical formula”

2. The possibility of introducing bugs to the website during peak seasons.

Unless you have a very well established quality assurance (QA) program,  detailed A/B testing and deployment processes, there is always a chance that your split test will introduce a new bug to your production environment.

This is perhaps one of the main reasons many established websites go into code freeze a week or two before peak seasons. Some of our e-commerce clients go into “code freeze” during the last week of October, and no new code is released until the first week of January.

Image Source: cheezburger

While I agree with the potential risk of A/B tests introducing bugs to a production environment, the potential revenue gain during the holiday can/should very much outweigh the risk. Yes, no new development should be released during a peak season, however that should not stop companies from conducting A/B testing.

The risk should be managed through a rigorous QA process to ensure that none of your variations will introduce a new bug to the system.

If you or your management team is still not comfortable with the potential risk, you should consider running more tactical split tests and avoid major ones. For example, you can test different banners, different images or different copy. These types of tests are quick to implement and are extremely difficult to cause site outages.

Why do we recommend testing during peak seasons?

1. Potential financial impact:

We recommend to start preparing for peak season as early as possible, and it’s never too late to start.

According to RJMetrics: The holiday season (i.e. November- December) drives 30% more e-commerce revenue than non-holiday months:

Image Source: RJMetrics

With this potential – testing during peak seasons and using the multi-arm bandit (MAB) approach (discussed above), you can find the best performers during the experiments, pull in 50-100% more revenue compared to shopping days throughout the rest of the year. Chemi Katz explains:

“Overall, eCommerce organizations experienced a significant rise in conversions this past holiday season – 34% higher than the previous 30 days, according to the analysis of nearly billions of consumer web sessions across top retail sites from November 23 to December 23 2018.”

2. Running tests during peak seasons can give you insights into the impact of urgency on your visitors:

The conversion framework uses incentives are a major factor that impacts conversion on a website. Incentives are elements that incentivize a visitor to act immediately. Incentives are implemented on the website in one of three different ways:

1. Price based incentives
2. Urgency based incentives
3. Scarcity based incentives

Urgency has two components: Internal (how the visitor is feeling upon arrival) and External (Influences the marketer can introduce to the visitor).

While internal urgency is generally pre-existing when the visitor arrives on the page; the tone of the presentation, offers, and deadlines can all influence External Urgency.

While incentives are great to increase conversions all year round, they play a major role during peak seasons. You can use the holiday season as your once-a-year opportunity to determine statistically significant winners on multiple tests in a limited timeframe.

What if you do want to run any type of testing during the holiday?

If you’re unsure about testing during your peak season, your other option is to focus on different aspects of running a conversion optimization project. Mainly, we would focus on the following activities:

Image source: peak-seasons 

1. Conducting qualitative research: There are many aspects to understanding what brings visitors to your website, what stops from converting, and for those who converted – what persuaded them to do so. Peak seasons are especially helpful in gaining more profound insights into the minds of your customers. They are highly motivated. So, for those who decide to walk away and not convert, what was it on your platform that caused them to leave.
2. Conducting quantitative research: time to delve deeper into your analytics. Although you should be doing this regularly, an annual analytics checkup is a good exercise to make sure that your tags are firing correctly, your funnels are capturing correct data.
3. Conducting competitive research: you should always keep an eye on competitors. That should never mean copying them. Careful analysis of what competitors do during the holidays (what campaigns, offers, etc.) can give you new ideas to implement or things to avoid.
4. Expert reviews: Whether you want to conduct heuristic analysis, PURE method, conversion framework, cognitive walkthroughs, or navigational stress tests are all good options to take a look at.

Do you have to run a test for a typical full cycle?

We typically recommend running A/B tests for a minimum of one week, a maximum of four.

The holidays are an exception.

To give you an example:

Gif source: bons-plans

Say, you’re running a Black Friday promotion and you’ve got a site-wide banner. This banner is only going to be around for a few days before you switch to the next holiday. According to Stephanie Lav:

“Cyber Monday also creates a sense of urgency in the buyer’s mind. This “one-day-only” sale happening at the height of the holiday shopping season has a timer ticking all day long. Shoppers may be enticed to spend more than they would have on gifts because they feel as though they are getting more for their money and that if they don’t make the move soon, they may lose the deal altogether. “

So, you just want to make the most of the opportunity and not think about it again until next year.

If you run A/B tests during peak seasons, Is your data valid?

1. Cleary visitors are highly motivated during peak seasons, so they might be willing to overlook some issues or concerns. That means that a winner during peak season might not generate the same uplift outside peak seasons. But for the most part, we still see uplifts.
2. Some marketers worry about testing during holidays to avoid breaking their website:

If you do that, you are avoiding high potential. We like to test to maximize impact.

Do not avoid testing, rather, make sure that you are doing proper QA. Also, start your test with a small percentage of visitors (1-5%) to see if there any bugs introduced as a result of the test.

Additionally, to maximize the surge of traffic, focus less on strategy tests and put more focus on testing your messaging, social proof and persuasion.

Is seasonal marketing for every business?

Most people think of year-end events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday when they hear seasonal marketing.

But, think about it: “Is seasonal marketing really for you?” Is it worth it?

While it perfectly fits most B2C – It gets a little trickier to apply seasonal marketing campaigns to B2B businesses.

However, the best seasonal marketing ideas go beyond sales and specials, therefore, for the large part? You don’t need to be in the e-commerce industry to reap the benefits of seasonality.

All you need is to do is be creative, and think of ways to incorporate the power of seasonality to your business.  

Now:

What do you think? Is seasonality for every business?

What are your best tips for planning a seasonal campaign?

Share them below…

We’d love to hear from you!

The post The Impact of Seasonality: 5 Tips For A Successful Seasonal Marketing Campaign appeared first on Invesp.