Many business decision-makers that are relatively new to marketing or know marketing really well but aren’t strong on the technical side finally figure out they need a CRO expert.
If you happen to spend time online (especially in small business forums), you might land on the idea that a CRO campaign expert basically writes a ton of emails and deploys pop-ups all over your website that will magically make more sales happen.
Nuisance marketing can help certain companies increase sales slightly and will actually decrease sales for many serious companies, especially luxury brands and B2B companies.
In this article, we’ll explore conversion rate optimization and what CRO experts actually do.
Professor’s Note:
CRO Meaning:
1) Conversion Rate Optimization. What we’re talking about in this article. The practice of getting sales funnels unclogged and flowing faster.
2) Chief Revenue Officer – A C-Suite position that is the head of sales.
Table of Contents
What Would Certain Software Companies Like You to Think CRO Is?
Who Does Nuisance Marketing Work On?
What Do CRO Experts Do that Drives Much Larger Gains in Sales Funnel Throughput?
What’s the Difference Between CRO for SaaS or Services Companies and Giant E-Commerce Companies?
How Do You Measure the Impact of a CRO Expert’s Recommendations?
There’s a lot of confusion in the market about conversion rate optimization and the role of a CRO expert. More specifically, there are lots of gimmick-based software companies and “coaches” that can help with tiny improvements.
What you want from a CRO expert is to multiply the throughput of your sales funnels.
What Would Certain Software Companies Like You to Think CRO Is?
There’s an unfortunate trend of companies that offer either sales or marketing automation drowning out rational thought about how to move someone who needs something from one end of a sales funnel to the other as fast as possible. If you need help explaining sales funnels to your staff or students, try our free sales funnel illustrations.
Sales automation (programmed outbound emails, LinkedIn messages, etc.) can provide a small percentage point gain in sales in certain scenarios. When I say small, I mean really small.
But picture a company that has a sloppy website, unclear value proposition, offers a decent service, but currently has no sales.
For a tiny amount of prospects, various forms of SPAM may successfully get someone to squint at something hard enough and enough times to “get it” and then make a purchase.
Small business forums are full of people hawking email automation or even calling it “Click Funnels” and saying they are CRO experts. Post-pivot from list provider, SalesLoft was built on making it easy for a sales person to send 100s of outbound emails in a day and long series of emails over weeks that look they are individually written.
Professor’s Note:
Did you know that we offer HubSpot configuration and training to MULTIPLY the effectiveness of your sales, marketing, support, and other efforts?
Sales automation is now a common feature in many platforms. For example, Hubspot automated emails are a sub-feature that replaces SalesLoft and Apollo for outbound emailing and Click Funnels for inbound email marketing (lead magnet and then lots of automated follow-up emails).
Who Does Nuisance Marketing Work On?
So who are these people that respond to nuisance marketing?
Busy consumers that don’t already receive an unbelievable amount of solicitations per day are where tiny lifts can be gained. Certain really small businesses have owners that behave similarly because their digital footprint is so small that they don’t get their contact info sold on lists hundreds of times a day. Think fitness coaches and other types of solopreneurs.
For business decision-makers, they’ve seen all the gimmicks a million times. You sent me a stalker video with Vidyard? Delete!
I can tell you’ve opted me into useless email automation…Unsub! Or worse, I’m marking you as SPAM and hoping I’ll help get your email server blacklisted.
There are better ways to get your extra touches on business people.
What Do CRO Experts Do that Drives Much Larger Gains in Sales Funnel Throughput?
There are so many factors that can be adjusted to win much larger gains in overall sales funnel efficiency, but often, the biggest CRO gains come from fixing a brand itself. The story and messaging are confusing, underdeveloped, or not even present at all.
With all the noise about AI and automation, purchasing decisions are still made by humans. The larger the purchase, the more likely there’s a committee involved. Can you give you those people a reason to care about your company and what you offer? That’s really powerful.
Can you then build instantaneous trust?
Solve those issues and you’ll multiply your revenue.
At Sales Funnel Professor, we provide CRO expertise in the form of a sales funnel audit, and then for companies that need our recommendations deployed, we build funnels as well via fractional CMO services or if you need us to assist your closers as well, our Head of Growth services.
Some of the bigger gains often come from moving from a no-story, kitchen-sinking approach to speaking to the transformational value your product or service provides. That falls into the “Story” section of our audits.
Many websites truly look like a child built them. A terrible first impression is horrible for conversion rates, so we make recommendations on style guides as well. Additionally, integrating a strategic “keyword multiplier” approach into your website’s content and design can significantly enhance its effectiveness in driving conversions and optimizing the sales funnel.
Many websites don’t tell you what to do next. CTAs or calls-to-action get their own section in our audits.
Have you ignored your mobile experience? Yikes! Android is the biggest operating system on earth and the majority of web traffic is mobile. A CRO expert will help with this, too.
For more info on all the lenses, please see our Conversion Rate Optimization report details.
What’s the Difference Between CRO for SaaS or Services Companies and Giant E-Commerce Companies?
So there is a critical difference between single product or service companies and e-commerce companies that sells thousands of products that others produce.
For companies that sell their own SaaS product or professional services, they have 100% control of their story and paradigm.
For online retailers such as dropshippers, they’re contractually bound to not change the story or alter the branding of any of their products.
Our conversion rate optimization service is for companies that control their own brand and can make any marketing changes needed.
Companies that are essentially the digital equivalent of Walmart need conversion rate optimization that centers almost entirely on product placement in relation to other products in the site, which relies heavily on large data sets and statistical models.
How Do You Measure the Impact of a CRO Expert’s Recommendations?
Conversion rate optimization is primarily a middle-of-funnel exercise. Remember that nothing happens in the middle of the funnel if nothing is coming into the top of the funnel.
That said, for companies with even minimal site visits, the impact of conversion rate optimization can be strongly felt within 1-2 weeks.
If “doing Click Funnels” or a pop up might give a lift of 2-5%, getting messaging, story, design and CTA’s working correctly can 2-5x conversions (and revenue!) or take companies with no conversions to their first revenue.
What Does “Winning” Look Like at Sales Funnel Professor?
We call it a “phase shift.”
A company with a great product or service might even start second-guessing what they offer…why? Because there is a wall between the actual product and prospects, and many of those walls have very small doors.
You know you have your branding, messaging, and overall CRO right when you start to see consistent touch-1 conversions: Whether they are coming from an ABM funnel, PPC funnel, SEO funnel, or any other top of funnel, your prospect takes your primary call to action the first time you touch them.
The wall is really the “presentation layer” and when done correctly, it doesn’t look like a wall. It looks a tractor beam that extends into outer space.
For us, the transformational value of this work is really exciting!
Keep in mind that The Professor just turned 1 in late 2023. Yes, we know he looks older, but he’s young at heart. Have you seen him doing Yoga on LinkedIn?
Here are some results so far:
Real Results from Working with Us
Post Rebrand, Relaunch of Website, Google Ads & SEO Revamp…
400% Increase in Gross Revenue & 30% Higher Average Deal Size…In Less than 6 Months
Established B2B SaaS Suite
Post Rebrand, Relaunch of Website & Google Ads Buildout…
Every $1 of Ad Spend Results in $350 of Qualified Business… Usually Touch-1 Conversions
Luxury Home Services
Post Brand, Website & CRM Buildout, Launch of ABM…
$350k in Qualified Pipeline Built in 2 Months… with No Existing Reputation in Target Market
B2B SaaS Startup
What Happens if Only Some Conversion Rate Optimization Recommendations Are Taken?
The classic “Know-It-All Founder” can wreak havoc on conversions by insisting that their approach to marketing/sales/messaging/product has to be used.
Generally founders who can’t get past their egos want to clog up their sales funnels with word vomit.
Individual conversion rate optimization recommendations have lots of inter-dependency on the other steps being taken.
Another way to think about conversion rate optimization is removing show-stoppers.
A show-stopper is an individual issue that is so concerning that your prospect can’t be tipped back into the trust zone by all the other amazing conversion rate optimization tasks that you did deploy.
What Are Some Good Questions to Ask a CRO Expert?
If you’re looking for someone to help you with your conversions, ask them questions. They should be happy to talk you through their approach.
Good Vetting Questions to Ask:
- What types of businesses do you like to work with?
- What types of resources are required to act on your recommendations?
- Can you share testimonials?
- What format are your recommendations delivered in?
- How fast can you provide your recommendations?
- What systems will you need to do your work?
- Do you only provide recommendations or can you deploy them or help us hire the right people to deploy them?
What Can CRO Experts Not Impact?
Similar to how ignoring some more severe conversion rate optimization recommendations can make a huge difference in the results of the whole exercise, show-stoppers can exist in other parts of your funnel.
At the top of your funnel, you have to be willing to get people into your sales funnel. If we’re talking an ABM approach, you have to have someone willing to do quality, cold outreach. Learn more about an ABM approach here.
If we’re talking about PPC, you have to have a budget for Google Ads.
At the bottom of the funnel, no amount of conversion rate optimization can make up for a shit product or service. Obviously-defective or “BETA” software is actually part of the funnel. If you’re unwilling or unable to fix obvious and persistent bugs, your funnel will not work.
If you sell a consulting service, that consultant had better not be a jerk. Conversion rate experts focus on increasing funnel throughput, but they can’t make a bad service good or a software platform work if it doesn’t.
Is It Time to Hire a CRO Expert?
If you and your team are feeling like you’re leaving revenue on the table at any stage of your sales funnel, and your internal ideas haven’t solved the problems, it’s time to bring in a CRO expert.
If you’d like to evaluate Sales Funnel Professor’s CRO services, we provide free consultations. Just ask. We’ll even give you actionable advice on the call. Talk soon!
For Further Reading: HubSpot and Shopify: A Comprehensive Guide
