B2B Marketing Professionals Advice on CRO

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is one of the hottest terms in the marketing world today, however what does it mean and why does it matter? That’s the question many are asking when evaluating techniques and methods for their marketing campaigns.

CRO techniques require you to examine your website’s sales funnel to identify ways to improve the number of people who convert. The process first begins with you developing a hypothesis to test and a version of your website which matches the target design/layout. By running A/B tests, you can identify the designs that perform best.

It might come as a surprise, but conversion rates are affected by an infinite number of factors such as your layout, copy, and design. Although getting started might seem daunting, below are a few helpful tips from industry experts on how you can get the most of your campaigns.

Number One:  Prioritize recurring campaigns

One of the most important considerations for marketing professionals is that they need to prioritize testing elements and campaigns that are recurring.

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The return on those is multiplied as you can use the results time and time again.

There are over 150 things you can test in your email. But, for instance, have enough volume on your abandoned shopping cart campaigns, or paid acquisition that is an awesome process to test copy, sign-up, email and landing pages.

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue.

Number Two:  Be data informed yet customer driven

In order to become a better marketing and optimization professional in 2017 it’s imperative that you become more customer-centric.

You need to step away from running meaningless A/B tests and instead implement a more in-depth process. While data shows you where the leak is, it doesn’t tell you why the leak exists (the story) or how to solve the problem.

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In order to understand the problem and solve it, you need to know your customer’s intent, needs, and challenges. From there you evaluate your customer journey and sales funnel for answers. It’s only when you build a better experience for your customers based on their intentions and challenges is you see true growth and conversion uplifts from your CRO program.

About Talia: Talia helps businesses plan and execute conversion optimization programs. She runs thousands of A/B tests using emotional targeting and persuasive design to grow their business.

She is a frequent keynote speaker at marketing conferences and was recently listed as one of the most influential experts in conversion optimization.

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Number Three:  Remove process barriers and complex steps

Complexity is often mistaken for sophistication. For instance, a follow up on a whitepaper download doesn’t (really) require the lead to have read it. You cannot assume they are or aren’t interested based on the initial request. Don’t push them to read the whitepaper with a bunch of reminders. The worst thing marketers can do is make prospects feel bad about not consuming their content or even worse, creating a dependency. It’s best to pick up on the profile data the request provides, and then focus on the next step.

Jordie Van Rijn has more than 13 years of hands-on experience as an independent email marketing consultant. Next to helping companies improve their email marketing results, he gives email marketing training and is a writer and speaker in the field of online marketing

Making sense of it all

Ultimately conversion rate optimization is an ongoing process which never ends. In the past, you might have gotten away with the spray and pray methodology of testing, however, today that’s no longer the case. While guesses and hunches are great starting places, data is king and you can’t let opinions get in the way of facts. When you’re running your tests, remember to test everything in manageable stages rather than all at once.