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Conversion Rate By Channel

Reports
Conversion Rate By Channel 1

Last updated: January 24, 2024

This report presents conversion rate data from our agency’s clients collected between 2016 and 2021. Together with our other quantitative reports on customer acquisition costs, lead-to-MQL conversion rates, lead generation channels, SEO ROI, and LinkedIn organic benchmarks & ROI, this information is meant to elucidate the effectiveness of various campaigns, both online and offline.

We calculate conversion rate by dividing the number of leads that resulted from a marketing channel by the total number of visitors sent through that channel in a one year period. Because we work with both B2B and B2C companies and audiences can be quite different, we segment our conversion rate data by target audience in the table below.

After the table, we offer guidance on improving conversion rates on the channels for which we have the most data.

Average Conversion Rate by Channel

ChannelB2C Conversion RateB2B Conversion Rate
Organic Channels
Thought Leadership SEO2.1%2.6%
Organic Social2.4%1.7%
Email Marketing2.8%2.4%
Webinars1.3%2.3%
Public Speaking1.7%2.9%
Video Marketing.8%1.3%
Inorganic Channels
PPC/SEM1.2%1.5%
PR.4%.3%
Account Based Marketing (ABM)N/A3.8%
Direct Mail<.1%.3%
Outdoor Advertising.4%.6%
Paid Social2.1%0.9%
Trade Shows.4%.7%

Inorganic Conversion Rate By Channel (2)Optimizing Your Conversion Rates

In this section, we’ve compiled the most actionable qualitative takeaways for improving conversion rate on each channel. The information below comes from our agency’s Lessons Learned documentation, created at the conclusion of each campaign.

  • SEO campaign conversions are highest when adopting a hub and spoke strategy that organizes keywords into the most commercially-valuable categories and carefully considering the search intent of the keyword targeted on each page.
  • PPC campaign conversion is optimized by paying close attention to keyword selection (focusing primarily on transactional keywords), and creating specific, highly-targeted landing pages in volume, each with a thoroughly-tested UX.
  • Email conversion rates are highest when sent at the right frequency—on average, every 2 weeks for B2C campaigns and every 4 weeks for B2B campaigns.
  • Trade show conversion is highest when you have a unique product to showcase; your signage attracts attention from passersby; the product has a solid use case for many of the businesses in attendance; and the person manning the booth is an effective communicator.
  • Direct mail campaigns that incorporate useful infographics, tables, and other immediately useful information see high conversion rates resulting from recipients saving the correspondence.
  • Organic social media conversion rates are best when posts feel original and/or rich with unique data, and feel like they are endemic to the medium in which you’re posting (e.g. unique, channel-aware status updates on each medium).
  • Webinars convert at the highest rate when the presenters are experienced experts currently working in the field and the webinar series has earned a reputation for clear, actionable takeaways, generating word-of-mouth referrals.
  • Video marketing converts highest when the topics or keywords targeted are part of a thoughtful strategy that targets the areas of highest interest and/or timeliness; and if the speaker is interesting (and interesting to look at), clear-voiced, and well-lit.

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Evan Bailyn

Evan Bailyn is a best-selling author and award-winning speaker on the subjects of SEO and thought leadership. Contact Evan here.

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