Marketers are investing more than ever in targeting the right people with the right campaigns. According to eMarketer, global digital ad spend surpassed $600 billion in 2023, with B2B companies increasing their investment in precision channels such as paid search, account-based marketing (ABM), and social advertising.
At the same time, Gartner reports that marketing teams are now running more campaigns across more touchpoints than ever before, with campaign personalization topping the list of priorities.
Yet despite this level of investment, conversion rates remain stubbornly low. According to Unbounce’s 2024 Benchmark Report, the median landing page converts only 6.6% of visitors. HubSpot similarly finds an average of 5.89% across industries, with anything above 10% considered strong performance.
That means well over 90% of your carefully targeted audience never takes the next step. When you think about the energy that goes into building audiences, segmenting them, and delivering highly personalized ads or emails, that number feels painfully inefficient.
So where does the disconnect happen?
Where the story breaks: the conversion gap
Most marketing stories end too soon….
And the problem isn’t the targeting, but it’s what happens after the click.
Marketers spend weeks designing the perfect campaign: the right audience, the right creative, the right message. When the click finally comes, it feels like success. But the click is not the finish line. It’s the starting line of the customer’s real journey.
And yet, for many organizations, everything falls flat after the click. Campaigns often direct buyers to dedicated landing pages, and those pages do their job, converting about 5% of visitors. But that still leaves 95% who don’t take action right away. That doesn’t mean they’re not interested; more often, it means they’re not ready to commit yet. Many of these visitors continue exploring other parts of the website, or they return later when they’re ready to learn more.
