What is CRO Marketing & Why is it Important?

Stop giving much thought to shortcuts and quick hacks to pull website traffic!The online traffic produced via social media, SEM, or paid search efforts do not guarantee conversions. Thus, it has always been a quest for marketers to find out ways to help generate high-quality leads that convert.This is where CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization comes into the picture.So, let’s learn more about CRO marketing and make the best move to convert leads into customers!

What is CRO Marketing?

CRO marketing is a strategic approach to increasing the percentage of website visitors who perform the 'desired action'. Here, the 'desired action' includes:− filling out a web form,− adding products to the cart,− clicking a link,− signing up for a free trial,− subscribing to the mailing list,− buying a product, etc.

User-Centric Definition of CRO

A more user-centric definition of CRO would be-CRO is the process of understanding what drives, stops, and convinces your users so that you can offer them the best possible user experience - and this, in turn, makes them convert and improves your conversion rates drastically.CRO marketing is crucial as optimizing marketing efforts enables businesses to gain a competitive edge over companies that do not practice the approach.As per research, the average ROI from investing in CRO marketing tools is 223%. That being said, CRO marketing deserves a try. Marketers can actually discover sure-fire ways of conversion using the CRO marketing strategy.

The Four Principles of CRO

Here are four basic principles of CRO that entrepreneurs and marketers use to achieve maximum conversion rates.

1. Define a Clear Value Proposition

Communicate what sets you apart from the competitors. If it’s your price, highlight pricing. If it is the service quality, dedicate a web page that explains your services. In short, make your value proposition prominent. Let customers compare your solution with that of the competitors and instantly identify the benefits your solution has to offer.

2. Incentivize Customers to take Action

Encourage customers to act with 50% discounts, a 30-day free trial, no extra charges, free installation, and others. Give away free stuff so that customers get motivated.However, only free things and half-prices may not work. So, you must focus on providing more social proof and money-back policies.Also, ensure that you have high-quality ‘FAQ’ and ‘About us’ pages, as these pages determine whether the visitor moves on to the product pages or bounces. The quality of product images, page content, and even blogs can incentivize customers to return to your website for more.

3. Reduce Roadblocks to Conversion

No matter how enticing your incentives are, customers are most likely to leave if they are faced with challenges during their conversion. So, eliminate all obstacles in the conversion process. These may include:

Slow page-load times
Navigation issues
High prices
Forceful customer registration
Hard to find CTAs or ‘buy now’ buttons
Complex product descriptions
Vague value proposition
Off-site and lengthy checkout process

4. Make Customers Feel Safe

Making customers feel safe and winning their trust comes first. Everything about your website - from the color scheme and content to the payment gateway - affects the customer’s comfort level. They notice these aspects to identify if there’s anything fishy about the company.There are a few marketing tactics that already attracts distrust from customers. For example, website popup ads. These ads (though popular for easy conversions) carry a taint that cyber thieves use such ads to access users’ confidential information. Moreover, the popups are bothersome.So, before implementing your CRO marketing tactics, weigh the pros and cons. Do not sacrifice customer trust for any shortcut to faster conversions.

Importance of CRO Marketing

Imagine yourself running an eCommerce business with 10000 monthly website visitors but only a 0.5% conversion rate.That means, only 50 out of 10000 people take the actions you want them to take. Thus, only a few sales in a month aren’t sufficient to cover your business costs.CRO marketing critically impacts the bottom-line ROI. But apart from that, there are other reasons behind its importance.

Reduces bounce rate

CRO marketing improves the overall customer experience. Your visitors engage more as they are satisfied navigating your website. Little changes as simple as;− CTA (Call to Action) button,− appealing layout,− legible font, etc.can make a huge difference in customer experience. Thus, it can reduce the bounce rate significantly.

Improves dwell time & brand affinity

Dwell time is the duration spent on your web pages after visitors find them on Google. Visitors spend more time when websites include valuable information and become easy to navigate. As engagement increases, visitors become more likely to consider a purchase and to refer your brand to family and friends.

Generates revenue

With a better customer experience, you are more likely to attract new customers and turn the existing ones into loyal customers.CRO marketing even increases the indirect conversions like content (eBooks, white paper, etc.), downloads and registering of personal information. Thus, you can see an improvement in customer engagement. This, in turn, can improve your sales and overall revenue generation.

Upgrades your website or online store

Most CRO marketing campaigns include redesigning websites to upgrade their look and feel. This helps boost the website's overall usability or an eCommerce store.These reasons are sufficient to convey that CRO marketing is important to businesses. But how do you get started? Let’s see.

How to Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

To get started with Conversion Rate Optimization, start with your website. Perform tests, and website audits and assess the elements.Here are a few quick tips that can help you get started with a proper CRO marketing strategy.

Create a website with a simple structure and clean navigation

Websites must have a clean structure with a simple UI else, it becomes a clutter of webpages. Your visitors should be able to navigate with ease and find what they are looking for seamlessly.Not only that, even google uses website structure to navigate and index your web pages.

Design interactive landing pages

Visitors notice your landing page layout as they enter your website. So, to grab their attention transform your landing page completely with interactive elements.Product recommendations, live chat widgets, calculators, and chatbot quizzes are a few elements that you can embed in your landing page. It makes the entire landing page design interesting and engaging.

Create simple and crisp website copies

A well-design website is also the one that has its content positioned at the right places. Keep the content limited to space availability. Do not clutter the web pages with too much content. Create a well-versed crisp copy to attract traffic and convert them into leads.Also, convey your message and product functions clearly to give the visitors an overview of your solution.

Improvise CTAs

Interactive CTAs work well to encourage visitors to take action. Using CTAs that prompt action like - ‘take a quiz’, ‘schedule a demo’, ‘book a meeting’, and ‘schedule a call’ can make the CTAs more interesting and actionable.

Improve page-load speed

Do you like waiting if a website takes too long to load? I don’t.Similarly, your visitors wouldn’t want to wait too long while your website loads slowly and steadily. So, speed up.Improve the page-load speed and prevent visitors from waiting. Page load time affects the user experience significantly.

How to Develop a CRO Marketing Strategy?

CRO marketing works best when you have a properly documented and structured strategy. But only 39.6% of businesses have a documented CRO marketing strategy.

To make the most out of CRO marketing, start with developing a CRO marketing strategy. Follow the steps detailed below.

1. Define your conversion marketing goals

What are the goals you want to achieve from the optimization exercise?Sit with potential stakeholders, discuss, and zero down on a set of goals.Also, identify the CRO marketing metrics or KPIs depending on the campaign you want to run. For example, page speed, cost-per-conversion, bounce rate, etc. (Get a detailed list of CRO metrics in the next section).

2. Map your buyer’s journey

Knowing and empathizing with your customers can help you create the best strategies. So, gain a good knowledge of how the buyers discovered your brand and how they interacted thereafter.

Once you understand the buyer’s journey, you can identify the touchpoints that can be further improved to drive conversions.Also, you must determine the high-potential buyers who are most likely to convert. Get their data that includes;

Interests and buying behaviors
Demographics (age, income, gender, etc.)
Geographics
Priorities
Occupations, etc.

Different tools and tech can help you with segmentation based on the collected data. You can then rank the prospects who are most likely to convert.With RevenueHero, lead qualification and prioritization can get easier. The platform can integrate with your CRM and other marketing tools to qualify and prioritize only the most potential leads. Hence, you can target only the most valuable prospects and ensure conversions.

3. Evaluate your current conversion process

Before you can plan your CRO marketing strategy, you must find out the flaws in your existing conversion process. Ask yourself and the involved teams – Why aren’t the current website visitors converting?While you assess the current process to find an answer, you may discover reasons like;

Slow-loading pages
Unclear font
Lack of reviews or customer testimonials
Images are not currently formatted
Easy-to-miss CTA buttons
Too many ads and pop-ups
No spacing, congested website layout
Troublesome navigation
Missing value content

Identify the web pages with the highest potential to boost conversions. You can do so by looking for the ones with the lowest traffic-to-conversion rate (pages with the highest traffic but lowest conversions).

4. Test

The next step is testing. Once you have identified the faulty areas, test different solutions. For example, you can try other layouts to make the website look more appealing.Testing can be of two types – A/B testing and Multi-Variate Testing (MVT).

A/B testing involves testing two versions of a page that you are optimizing. But it changes only one variable like layout or font. This helps you to identify the element that drives or reduces conversion rates.
MVT enables users to trial multiple variables for different page versions simultaneously. It is similar to conducting multiple A/B tests at a time.

But before you conduct tests, look into each page element. Find out how they can be improved. For instance, changing the CTA button placement can help you drive conversions. Also, run a content audit to ensure that the content aligns with the page context. Ensure clarity of message and reduce potential confusion.

5. Evaluate

Analyze the changes you have made. If you have changed the layout or the website font, find out if it’s working or not. Did the change increase conversions? How can you prove it?While analyzing the changes, do not let the original CRO marketing strategy KPIs slip out of your mind. If your tests fail, note down the learnings and start moving forward again.

6. Make revisions and re-evaluate

The final step is about making continuous improvements to the CRO marketing strategy. It involves tweaking the edits here and there. Also, re-evaluation of the KPIs, and resetting goals after more customer research can be essential.Regardless of how little progress you make, successful CRO marketing is all about enhancing the efforts. So, keep notes from failures and implement the changes as you progress.

How to Improve Your Conversion Rate Today?

You can adopt several ways to improve your website conversion rate. Take a look at the most effective ones.

Get a CRO planner

A CRO planner contains information on how to audit a site, identify areas to improve your conversion funnel, A/B testing and experimentation, and whatnot.Using a CRO planner helps you get started with conversion rate optimization in a simpler and easier way. It no more seems like a daunting task. The CRO planner guides you through the website analysis and assists you in developing an ideal CRO strategy.

Shorten your long forms

Friction in the conversion process does not let your visitors convert. For instance, you have a long web form that users find boring and time-consuming. Hence, they are hesitant to fill it out.Shortening your forms will let customers trust you more because the form will ask for vital information (like email addresses) only. Also, it takes lesser time to fill out. So, no more hesitant visitors.

Add a live chat widget

Your visitor may not convert because of certain doubts and queries regarding your product. A live chat on your website can help you resolve their queries instantly. With live chat, an AI bot or a customer service agent can alleviate your visitor’s concerns about your product.

Track visitor's interaction with your website

Track the visitor’s interaction with your site to understand where your visitors are facing obstacles. With website analysis tools, you can identify the areas where visitors are tripping on your website. You can see what they are clicking on, what offers they skip, and if they are filling out the form or leaving it midway.

5 Important Metrics in CRO Marketing

As of May 2022, the average eCommerce conversion rate is 1.78% which is significantly low considering the amount spent on driving traffic to the website.If the conversion rate goes up to 2.0%, eCommerce revenue will increase by 11%. Further, if the conversion rate increases to 2.8%, the revenue will increase by a whopping 55%.So, what can you do to improve CRO? Start with tracking the right metrics in CRO marketing for performance optimization. Here are the top metrics to measure CRO.

1. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and leave without taking action. The lower the bounce rate, the better.This metric helps you determine the number of visitors scrolling through the content, looking at products but never engaging.With the bounce rate, you can consider reviewing the content surrounding the page where more people are bouncing. You can run a content audit or test the navigational tools, layout, loading speed, etc. of the specific page.Bounce rate is important because it gives you the direction for improvement. It helps you identify areas that require improvement.

2. Email growth rate

Is your email list growing? If yes, then your CRO marketing strategy is working.This metric shows the growth in the number of people on your email list or the number of people signing up for future emails from the company.The more monthly subscribers, the better. A high email growth list indicates a successful CRO marketing strategy. It also indicates that the brand is winning the trust of its visitors.On the contrary, a low email list growth rate, and reducing opening rates mean that you must review the message sent out to the customers.

3. Click-through Rate

The click-through rate helps to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts across different platforms.For instance, your marketing efforts may drive users to click on your website but the webpage content may require improvement to generate sales successfully.This metric is significant because it shows how many visitors are finding your content and clicking through it. It indicates the content quality and the landing page design as well.To determine your click-through rate, you must know the number of people clicking on your content and CTA. Also, you must determine how many people leave the website without taking action.

4. Cost per Conversion (CPC)

CPC is a metric that measures the average amount spent to generate a conversion. It can vary significantly depending on the specific conversion you want to track.This metric is important to measure the returns. For instance, your CPC may be high due to the huge amounts spent on ads. But you may not get as many conversions compared to the spending. This would mean that the Return on Investment or ROI is low.Further, it may also happen that your ad expense (CPC) is high and your visitors are bouncing from the site. This will result in no conversions at all. This indicates that the investment is not generating any return.A successful CRO marketing strategy has low CPC. You can determine it by tracking the percentage of traffic that converts, the amount of content consumed by visitors, running paid ads, their budget, etc.

5. Cart Abandonment Rate

As of 2022, the cart abandonment rate ranges from 59.2% to 79.8%. This indicates a massive loss of sales.Though a 2021 study showed that more than 60% of users made a purchase eventually, it is necessary to reduce the cart abandonment rate.Track, measure, and analyze your cart abandonment rate vigorously. It is one of the most important metrics to improve your sales.Check out the following to see if changes in any one of these aspects make a noticeable difference or not:

Simplified page layouts
Customer support or real-time chats
CTA buttons
Account creation requirements
Secure payment gateways

Any of these items can affect your cart abandonment rate. So, keep evaluating these aspects to make a difference.

CRO Marketing Best Practices

Not only CRO, optimization of anything can feel overwhelming to evaluate the existing site and start making improvements.Here are a few CRO marketing best practices to make the process easier.

1. Define your goals

Did you know goal setters are 377% more successful than peers? Goal setting drives the desired marketing outcomes.Before you start making changes to the current site, get specific, measurable, and realistic goals that allow you to track your progress.For instance, an ideal goal would be – Drive 15% more traffic by (date/timeframe) with a specific strategy (like a change in font or layout).

2. Know your users

If you do not listen to your customers, they will leave. Period.You may collect data and learn about your users but understanding them is more valuable. So, dive deeper to know who visits your website. Develop buyer personas that align with the different sets of visitors.Understanding your users deeper will help you optimize your content in the right direction. Also, you can improve the visitor’s on-site experience based on their unique needs and preferences.

3. Evaluate CRO marketing strategies with A/B testing and MVT

Now that you know what A/B testing and MVT are, use both to track your CRO strategies. Both tests can help you make data-driven decisions.Though the uses of A/B testing and MVT are different, when you use them combined, you can test different elements across your website.For instance, A/B testing is great for CTA, copy, headlines, and images. It can help to yield on-page outcomes. On the other hand, MVT indicates the elements that have the largest impact on audience engagement. It can help you optimize off-page elements.

4. Organize before testing

Once you have identified the on-page and off-page elements that you want to test, keep the tools ready.Run the tests, analyze the outcomes, and find out what’s working and what’s not. It will give you a better understanding of your site elements.Further, once you identify the things that are working well, start making widescale changes across the site.

5. Conduct multiple CRO tests

It may be tempting to run a test once and call it a day. But CRO testing is not the one that gets done at once. You must run your tests multiple times to ensure accurate outcomes.Remember these three principles when conducting the tests.

Conclude your tests only when you have reached the minimum sample size to yield statistical significance.
Avoid stopping your tests mid-cycle
Run the tests for a full business cycle.

Best 3 CRO Marketing Tools in 2022

CRO marketing tools can be of different types – web analytics, behavior, CRO testing, sales platforms, etc.Here are the top 3 advanced CRO marketing tools you can consider.

1. Google Analytics

It is one of the best web analytics tools that gives you comprehensive insights into your website performance.With the help of Google Analytics, you can;

Track traffic patterns, sources, and goal conversion rate in real-time,
Measure session duration,
Identify the visitor exit areas,
Identify pages with high bounce rates, etc.

2. Algolia

Another beneficial CRO marketing tool is Algolia – an API platform that helps businesses to maximize search speed and discovery. The platform also resolves the issue of relevance through AI.With the help of Algolia, your visitors can access the right content or product on your website much faster.The best features of Algolia include;

Reporting and analytics
Heatmaps
Product search, display, recommendations
Web content management

3. RevenueHero

RevenueHero is a sales acceleration platform you can rely on to multiply your sales growth. The platform ensures a systematic lead management process.The tool facilitates real-time lead routing, qualification, prioritization, and scheduling meetings within a short time. It makes the sales process more effective, thereby increasing conversion rates.A few key features of RevenueHero include;

CRM integrations
Real-time lead assignment to the right reps
Instant lead scheduling from web forms
Quick and easy lead qualification

Get Started with CRO Marketing

The CRO marketing process is all about understanding what drives your users, what stops them, and what persuades them.It is with the help of this information that you can offer users the best possible experience. This, in turn, increases your website conversion rates.CRO marketing is not a one-time process. It does not change or interfere with other marketing strategies. Rather, it is a quest to offer users a better experience than today. It aims at enhancing the marketing efforts to convert better.

CRO Marketing FAQs

Here are a few FAQs that can instantly clear the basic questions about CRO.

What is CRO in Marketing?

CRO in marketing is Conversion Rate Optimization. CRO marketing is a strategy that focuses on increasing website visitors taking the desired action. Here the meaning of the desired action can vary depending on the company goals. It may mean signing up, subscribing to newsletters, downloading content, or purchasing the product.

What does CRO stand for in SEO?

CRO (Conversion rate Optimization) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are two strategies that should go hand in hand. While SEO focuses on boosting a website’s ranking in organic search results, CRO constantly tests the website elements to earn more sales, leads, and conversions. Therefore, CRO helps you convert the SEO-driven website traffic.

What is CRO example?

Suppose a website landing page receives 2000 visitors monthly and has a 10% conversion rate. Therefore, the page will generate 200 conversions per month. If optimizing the landing page elements (CTA, content, colors, spacing, etc.) improves the monthly conversion rate to 15%, then the generated conversions will jump to 300 per month.

What are the benefits of conversion rate optimization?

Conversion rate Optimization helps to understand customers better. It enhances your SEO efforts, converts website visitors into customers, increases the customer lifetime value, helps to generate new leads, and lowers the cost per acquisition.

What is CRO Marketing and Why is it Important?