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15 marketing optimization tips to help you improve existing campaigns
From research to execution, launching a marketing campaign takes a lot of resources. So why shouldn’t you get the most out of every opportunity?
Great marketers use marketing optimization to continuously improve their marketing performance—and their results. By identifying ways to increase conversion rates and improve the customer experience for existing marketing initiatives, you unlock a greater return on investment and insights that help every new campaign perform better than the last.
Read on to discover our top marketing optimization tips for a number of key use cases, including content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), marketing campaigns, and website user experience (UX).
Summary
Great marketers leverage user-centric insights to make optimizations that increase the ROI on existing campaigns and marketing activities. This approach helps them deliver better marketing results and achieve team- and business-wide goals like
5 marketing optimization tips to improve content and SEO
📈 The goal: improve the rankings of long-form content pages
1. Use SEO tools to track your pages’ rankings and identify opportunities
Dedicated SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush help you monitor content performance over time.
Spot opportunities by filtering pages that rank in positions three to ten on search engine results pages (SERPs). This content is already performing well (woohoo!), but a few small tweaks—like improving keyword targeting—could bump them higher up in the rankings, making them good candidates for optimization.
You can also use your already high-ranking content as the starting point for new conversion flows to make the most of the organic traffic those pages bring.
2. Use a content optimization platform to ensure you’re addressing search intent
‘Search intent’ is what a user is actually looking for when they use a search engine to find content online—it’s the underlying goal or purpose of their search. If your content is stuffed with keywords but doesn’t help readers achieve what they set out to do, a high bounce rate is inevitable. It means you’re writing for Google, not for real people (when you should be doing the opposite).
To help you deliver on your content’s promises and meet user expectations, leverage a content optimization tool (such as Clearscope) to
Track how search intent changes over time: monitor how SERP results for your keyword evolve and update your page to address these emerging user needs
Discover new keywords that users are looking for: leverage AI to spot trending keywords and related terms so you can see exactly what problems users are trying to solve
3. Understand how readers interact with your content using heatmaps
Heatmaps are visual representations of how users move, scroll, and click (or tap) on your site. They reveal which parts of your content capture people’s interest—and which parts get overlooked.
Use heatmaps to
Identify scroll depth and spot elements that might be missed below the fold. Do people read to the very end or abandon ship early on? Try shortening your content or changing your page layout to keep their attention for longer.
Check for on-page issues and identify user interface (UI) problems. Heatmaps reveal areas of frustration, such as unclickable elements or broken links. Finding and fixing these issues is a quick way to improve your UX.
Understand what works and roll it out to other content. If you discover that users hover over testimonial carousels or their interest is piqued by bullet points, use those formats in new content to improve engagement.
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Get at-a-glance insights with Engagement Zones.
The Engagement Zones heatmap combines several types of valuable user interaction data—users’ clicks, mouse movements, and scroll behavior—into one easy-to-read heatmap, giving you a well-rounded view of user engagement.
A sample Engagement Zones heatmap, with areas of substantial user interaction color-coded in darker red
4. Survey visitors to find out what content they want to see
Use embedded surveys (like Hotjar Surveys 👋) to ask readers for their feedback, learn about their content goals, and discover what they’d like to learn about.
Use this direct voice-of-the-customer feedback to spot gaps in your content library, prioritize which pieces to create next, and find ways to make existing content work harder for you.
For example, here at Hotjar, our Content Marketing team uses embedded surveys to ask readers for feedback at the end of our blog posts so we can understand how valuable our content is to real people—and how we can improve it.
An example of an embedded survey at the end of a Hotjar blog post
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Combine Surveys with Slack to surface insights and take action. The Hotjar-Slack integration automatically sends these survey responses to a dedicated Slack channel, making it easy for our team to see (and act on) user feedback as it comes in.
A survey response in our team’s dedicated Slack channel
5. Examine organic traffic to see how different user groups behave
Analyze your data by specific segments to understand how your content resonates with different user cohorts. For example, does Google Analytics show that users who come from organic traffic spend less time on your pages? This could indicate they’re not finding what they came for.
You can also use session recordings—video-like playbacks of real user actions—to go beyond the numbers and see exactly how visitors from different sources or with different user attributes behave: where they scroll to, what they click on, and what catches their interest.
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Filter your recordings by traffic source to understand how visitors who land on your site from organic search navigate your page.
Do they bounce, show more signs of frustration, or drop off, particularly when compared to users who came from other traffic sources? By watching their behavior, you can determine if your content fulfills the need that brought them to your page in the first place or if there’s a mismatch between what they wanted and what they got.
Identify opportunities. Improve your performance. Iterate on your successes.
Understand what’s working for your users—and what you can do better—to create marketing campaigns that continuously drive results.
3 marketing optimization tips to improve marketing campaigns
🛬 The goal: improve the performance of your landing pages
1. A/B test your landing pages to increase conversions
A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of a page to see which one performs better. Use tools like Optimizely or AB Tasty to run A/B tests on your landing pages, get statistical data about user preferences, and identify the winning variant. Then, use these learnings to improve your next landing page and set it up for success from day one.
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Integrate Hotjar with A/B testing tools like Optimizely or AB Tasty to get a detailed understanding of how users behave on each variant. Use Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, and Feedback to reveal exactly which elements visitors prefer.
Use the Hotjar and Optimizely integration to trigger Hotjar Surveys during A/B tests and ask users what they like (and don’t like) about each variant
2. Look for common barriers to conversion
Are you making any of these five common landing page optimization mistakes that could be impacting your conversion rates?
Stay close to the user experience—on both desktop and mobile—by using behavior analytics tools like heatmaps and recordings to surface common user issues on your landing pages. Use heatmaps to identify areas that aren’t clicked, like forlorn CTA buttons, and A/B test the elements that aren’t working to find better solutions.
📖 Want more tips to improve the performance of your landing pages? Learn how to do landing page optimization with our handy guide.
We turned to Hotjar Heatmaps and Recordings to see what’s happening—where people scroll and click. Our low conversion rate was due to a simple issue with the landing page design. We were placing the real value too far down, and the first part of the page didn't address their needs, so the people scrolling further down the page were converting more. A quick fix increased our conversion rate from 12% to 30%.
3. Conduct user research to get insights from your target audience
Run user interviews with existing customers or participants from your target market to get detailed insights. Use them to uncover feedback on your existing campaigns, understand how your current messaging resonates with prospective buyers, and troubleshoot any blockers that prevent them from converting.
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Use Hotjar Engage to effortlessly schedule, run, and analyze your user interviews.
Broaden your appeal by conducting inclusive user research and getting feedback from a range of different perspectives—all from one easy-to-use platform. Draw on our pool of over 200,000 diverse participants from around the world or invite your own, and unlock insights that ensure your campaigns speak to as many people as possible.
7 marketing optimization tips to improve website user experience
🔍 The goal: identify drop-offs in your existing conversion flows and reduce gaps in the conversion funnel
1. Use funnel analysis to identify drop-offs
Funnel analysis is the process of mapping the flow of website visitors to a set of specific funnel steps that result in conversions or signups.
Use a tool like Mixpanel or Hotjar Funnels (or both 🤝) to map out the user journey as a series of steps and quickly spot drop-offs between stages. Once you’ve identified where people drop off, you can fix the problem—and keep users flowing through your funnels.
🔥 If you’re using Hotjar
Combine Funnels with Recordings to watch playbacks of users who dropped off at each stage to understand why. Did they need more information? Was it too difficult to find clear pricing information? Maybe—eek—a bug prevented them from submitting their payment details?
You can also watch recordings of users who did convert to follow their journey and look for ways to replicate that behavior. For example, if you spot that users who converted frequently looked at customer stories first, consider including testimonials or logos on key conversion pages.
2. Visualize your data to see the big picture
Use a tool like Google Analytics or Hotjar Trends to visualize key metrics graphically and spot user behavior trends over a given period. Then, compare this data across different user segments or factors, like location, device, traffic source, or other user attributes, to identify patterns and trajectories you’d otherwise miss.
This big-picture vantage point allows you to easily track your performance against important KPIs, so you can recognize successes, challenges, and opportunities—and proactively course-correct when you see early warning signals.
3. Spot (and squash) bugs quickly by seeing things from your user’s perspective
Combine user-centric tools like heatmaps and session recordings to easily identify bugs or UX errors that sneaked past QA.
Find areas of friction with rage click maps (a type of heatmap available in Hotjar Heatmaps) that highlight where users have clicked repeatedly out of frustration, then hit the ‘View recordings’ button to jump into the associated session recordings and see what happened.
If you find an issue, like a non-clickable button or a broken link, flag it with your team to get it fixed ASAP. Watching these recordings also showcases which on-page elements to optimize to improve the user journey.
I find Hotjar gives me empathy for the user. I can see their experience directly and notice how frustrating it can be, and this gives me real empathy. You know that your registration form works. So when you get feedback that it isn’t working for a user and you then watch the recordings, it makes you think, “Well actually, the user can't do it.” They're not wrong. And we need to take it seriously. Without Hotjar, it's harder for me and the team to empathize in this way.
4. Create an open feedback channel to hear directly from your users
Use a feedback widget to enable visitors to leave feedback on any element of your page or bring your attention to specific areas. (Try it yourself: it’s the red box to the right of your screen. 👉) This lets you capture in-the-moment feedback as users engage with your site, providing timely, relevant insights.
5. Run exit intent surveys on key pages to understand why people leave
If you’re trying to understand what’s making users drop off, why not ask them?
Send an exit intent survey as someone is about to leave your site to find out the reasons why and make targeted improvements.
For example, maybe they couldn’t find what they were looking for, your product page didn’t have enough information, or they decided to go with a competitor. With this information, you can make adjustments that persuade them to stay, such as simplifying site navigation, adding more details to your product pages, or offering a discount for new customers.
Our exit-intent survey template helps you uncover the reasons why users leave your site. Set your survey up in minutes, and let Hotjar AI suggest additional questions and analyze your results.
6. Perform a conversion rate optimization audit of your website
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action on your website.
Every marketer wants to increase conversions, so it’s no surprise that quick hacks abound. But in order to make a meaningful, long-lasting impact on your conversion rates, you need to take a user-centric approach.
To do this, perform a CRO audit that focuses on understanding what drives, stops, and persuades your users, so you can give them the best user experience possible—and increase your conversions in a sustainable way.
✅ Ready to get started? Learn how to run a conversion rate optimization audit in nine steps.
7. Build continuous discovery into your workflows
Look for ways to foster a culture of continuous learning and discovery in your marketing team. Some ways you can do this include
Sharing regular updates of team wins—and lessons learned—in a dedicated Slack channel
Reviewing progress toward key metrics on a weekly cadence (try scheduling an automated weekly report from your analytics software)
Hosting team sessions where you review user insights related to a particular goal or topic (such as recordings of and feedback about your checkout process) and brainstorm improvements you could make
🎟️ You’re invited to a party: see how Spotahome uses Hotjar Watch Parties to make user-centric improvements worth celebrating.
Create marketing campaigns that just get better and better
The marketing optimization process is never-ending—but that means the opportunities are never-ending, too. By using data analysis, gathering empathetic user insights, and staying close to customer needs, you can continuously tweak your digital marketing tactics to deliver ongoing, impactful results.
Identify opportunities. Improve your performance. Iterate on your successes.
Understand what’s working for your users—and what you can do better—to create marketing campaigns that continuously drive results.
