What is CRO? 3 Letters That Will Double Your Lead Generation

Turning visitors into leads and leads into sales is a major challenge for businesses.  

Conversion rates are an indicator of the success of efforts and resources employed in this challenge.  

Despite creating and tracking strategies aimed at results, only 45% of professionals are satisfied with their conversion rates (Ascend2, 2020).  

If you understand this challenge well and are part of the group looking to improve conversion rates, you need to understand what CRO is to apply this optimization methodology to your strategies.  

Luckily, we’ve written this article with everything you need to get started. Check it out!

What is Conversion in Marketing?

Simply put, the conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your conversion pages who actually convert—and in each case, it depends on what you consider a conversion within that action or material.  

A conversion is a measurable action you expect from your visitor.  

It could be filling out a form, triggering your online chat, signing up for a discount coupon, completing a purchase, starting a free trial, upgrading a plan…  

The definition of what counts as a conversion directly impacts its calculation.  

So, we understand that conversion can be anything, not just a sale or lead conversion, right?  

Now, we also need to discuss how you’ll determine these goals and figure out the best way to define these conversions.  

This is important because CRO works both at the micro and macro level.  

In other words, you need to set conversion goals both for your business as a whole and for each specific action you define.  

Below, you’ll find out how to do this, with a bonus: how to determine conversion goals for paid media.  

Follow along:

Understanding Conversion at the Macro Level  

We need to understand that as a major business goal, conversion should be seen as a sale.  

Every business operates on sales. While conversion can be anything, that’s on an individual level, looking at each campaign separately.  

When you analyze your company’s CRO as a whole, the main metric is how many sales you’re generating.  

In fact, any digital marketing KPI will focus mainly on this at the macro level: the number of sales.  

Therefore, there are several macro-level analyses you can perform with sales as the main goal. And CRO plays a role in all of them.  

Here’s how exactly:  

  • Website performance: What on the site is causing issues for sales?  
  • Ease of finding CTAs: Are they available throughout the site?  
  • Sales team: Is the script suitable?  
  • Sales-marketing integration: Do the two teams communicate well?  
  • Inbound marketing efforts: Are the steps in the Marketing and Sales Funnel being strictly followed?  

These are the main questions CRO brings to a macro analysis, looking at the various aspects of your sales machine.  

But you can also conduct a micro analysis, campaign by campaign. Let’s talk about that now:  

Understanding Conversion at the Micro Level  

If sales are at the macro level, other types of conversions are gathered at the micro level.  

In fact, these conversions will generate more sales, as part of the digital marketing methodology you employ.  

Marketing campaigns are quite broad and can have completely different objectives from sales. In fact, they may be far from them.  

For example, a Social Ads campaign aimed at gaining new followers. In this case, we’re not thinking about sales, and neither is anyone else—just new followers.  

In this case, the CRO performed at the micro level will consider gaining each new follower as a conversion.  

Or a focus on organic traffic aimed at generating leads: each new lead generated is also considered a conversion.  

The thing is, this CRO at the micro level informs the CRO at the macro level. One of the tips we bring throughout the article is precisely to “improve your lead generation”—in other words, hit a specific goal to also achieve the overall goal.  

With this, we understand: CRO is a very broad term, a real umbrella of possibilities.  

But before we dive into the practical part of the article, just a quick addendum, this time talking about paid media.  

Understanding Conversion in Paid Media  

When we think of CRO for paid media, we’re still thinking at the micro level.  

That’s because in almost any paid media—Google Ads and Social Ads—you’ll determine the conversion goals.  

That’s exactly why each campaign has its own goal, which may or may not be the sale of a product.  

In Google Ads, there are two main types of conversions:  

  • CPC (Cost per Click): Every time someone clicks on your ad, you’re charged by Google. In this case, each click is a conversion goal, but the overall campaign goal is determined by you.  
  • CPA (Cost per Acquisition): The click itself is less important; what matters are the conversion goals you’ve set for your campaign.  

There’s also CPM (Cost per Mille), where you’re charged for ad impressions—every thousand impressions, you pay according to the price of the chosen keywords.  

In the case of CPM, ad views are harder to consider since they’re the main purpose. You should focus on other business metrics—why did you choose to run this ad? That’s your goal.  

For Social Ads, each platform has different types of ad options.  

On Instagram, for example, you can run ads focused on the reach of your post, website registrations, engagement, new followers, etc.  

We have some articles to help you better understand these goals. Check them out:  

➡️ Paid Traffic on Instagram in 2024: Complete Guide  

➡️ How to Generate Leads via Google Ads with Custom Chatbots

How to Calculate Your Website’s Conversion Rate?

To calculate your website’s conversion rate, you need to track the number of visitors and the leads generated from it.  

With this data in hand, the calculation is quite simple:  

Let’s say your website is optimized for conversion and achieves good results.  

In one week, you attract 800 qualified visitors, who convert into 120 leads.  

So, following our example:  

The conversion rate for the fictitious site, for the period analyzed, was 15%.  

What is CRO in Marketing?

CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is the strategy for optimizing conversion rates.  

If you want to improve your brand’s rates, you should pay attention to CRO, which aims to use the existing structure, enhance it, and adjust it to improve conversion rates, increase results, and consequently, boost sales.  

Why is it Important to Optimize Your Conversion Rates?

Conversion rate is one of the best ways to measure the performance of your advertising campaigns and marketing efforts.  

In general, the better your conversion rate, the better your results, and the better the strategies you’re applying to achieve them.  

Any small change that optimizes the conversion rate has the potential to increase sales and revenue results.  

Increasing a rate from 1% to 2% may seem small, but in terms of conversion rate, this small variation is enormous.  

If you double your site’s conversion rate (even if it’s from 1% to 2%), you will automatically double the conversion rate of all your internet traffic generation efforts, as well as create significant potential to improve sales and revenue outcomes.  

To Increase Sales and Revenue

One of the possibilities with CRO is to improve your results without new investments, by “only” optimizing the structure your brand already has to improve outcomes.  

Investing in CRO increases your company’s ROI, boosting sales or contracts and the revenue generated from them.  

To Improve Results Across All Traffic Generation Channels

All communication and marketing channels in your company benefit from the application of conversion optimization methodology.  

If you direct social media links to your website, increasing conversion rates with CRO will yield better results for that channel.  

In another example, if you invest in paid media and have better conversion results on your landing page, it means you’ll need to invest less to meet your set goals, or you can set higher goals with the same planned investment.  

To Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)  

As your conversion rate increases, your Customer Acquisition Cost decreases.

And reducing the CAC means working to your competitive advantage against competitors, stimulating rapid company growth, and improving your business health.

Read also: 8 Sales and Marketing KPIs Leaders Want to See on Their Dashboard

To Increase the Average Order Value

CRO also suggests improvements in the purchasing process by eliminating difficulties or creating space for enhancements. 

Moreover, it provides a lot of information to better understand the needs of the consumer you aim to reach, allowing your company to offer the best purchasing experience to them.

Thus, the trend is for the consumer to buy more, increasing the average order value and the brand’s profits.

Is Growth Hacking the same as CRO?

Growth Hacking is brand and company growth based on metrics, learnings, and experiences.

The goal is to find “hacks,” meaning bottlenecks, problems, and triggers, to turn them into opportunities and growth.

The truth is that Growth Hacking includes CRO, which is more focused on customer acquisition, while Growth encompasses more than just that.

According to a diagram created by Growth Tribe, a company specialized in the subject, Growth is a compilation of knowledge in technical marketing, UX improvements, CRO, and marketing learning.

Growth Hacking focuses on the growth and scaling of a company, involving all strategies, processes, and departments of a business.

It is a different way of thinking about growth, where the main objective is to use all resources, strategies, and learnings with a focus on results.

And not just any result.

Growth Hacking aims to generate disproportionate growth compared to the investment made.

What are the Steps of a CRO Strategy?

Now that you understand how Growth Hacking and CRO relate, let’s dive a little deeper into conversion optimization.

1. Analysis / Diagnosis

The first step in a good CRO strategy is to analyze and diagnose the current state of all investments and processes. 

This is where insights and information will come from, and the better they are, the better the strategies implemented afterward.

This involves gathering data, conducting quantitative and qualitative research, which will help in the second step: hypothesis development.

2. Gathering Hypotheses

Hypotheses about bottlenecks and points for improvement cannot be made based on guesses. 

That’s why the previous step is so important to ensure your CRO efforts are not misguided.

For example, in the case of an e-commerce site, if the analysis shows a high cart abandonment rate, your hypotheses need to focus on that issue. 

It could be that the system is slow to load, or the shipping cost is too high, causing people to abandon their purchase.

List hypotheses based on the identified problems to move on to the next phase.

3. Conducting Tests

Put your ideas into action, test your hypotheses! 

Only then will you know which ones actually work.

One way to test hypotheses is through A/B testing, where two versions are presented with minor modifications. 

Both versions are shown to the audience during a test period, and the one with the best performance becomes the fixed version. 

This strategy helps understand what is better accepted by your target audience.

You can analyze the conversion rates from your tests and invest in the one that yields the best results.

Prioritize tests with the most significant impact (use the ICE Score, a methodology to facilitate decision-making), implement the changes listed, and monitor the process.

4. Analyzing Results

Go back to the data and hypotheses gathered at the start of the process, compare the results of actions, changes, and new campaigns, and critically analyze them based on data to inform future decisions.

Every test should provide new insights for new hypotheses, or they are not useful.

5. Implementation

Create campaigns, strategies, and tactics that align with the objectives and hypotheses defined.

Remember that CRO is a cyclical process, as there are always improvements to be made.

Can anyone do CRO?

We want to demystify the idea that CRO is too complex and can only be executed by large companies.

This is absolutely not true!

CRO actions can be applied by companies of all sizes and industries, and we will show you why.

Applying the methodology can be as simple as testing a new article headline on the website or replacing a form with a chatbot.

Where to start with CRO? What can you test first?

When applying CRO, you can test and improve nearly every stage of the purchasing journey.

You can create hypotheses and optimize processes and materials, such as ads, conversion points on your website, account creation/login/onboarding processes, communication flows via email/phone/WhatsApp, site speed optimization, design and usability (UX/UI) improvements, content accessibility, etc.

Here are some optimization points that can be worked on:

Value Proposition

What determines if a consumer will choose your brand among many in the market?

When a consumer encounters a solution offered by your company or any communication created for its promotion, the value proposition reinforces that this option and no other is the best one to solve what the consumer is seeking.

Therefore, it should be clear, strong, and consumer-focused.

The value proposition needs to answer three questions:

You can optimize this aspect of your website by creating a value proposition, testing different forms and placements for displaying it, or even rewording it.

Headline

Although the visual appeal of the website is very important, we cannot deny the value of a good headline to grab and hold the consumer’s attention, as well as spark interest for conversion.

Your website’s main headline has twice as much impact on conversion as images, which serve more as support and context.

Here, focus on short phrases, up to 50 characters, using numbers to substantiate your value proposition, and making sure it resonates with the pain points of your visitors.

Offer

When visitors land on your site, what do they identify as an offer for conversion?

Do you offer comprehensive content on a topic of interest?

Do you provide a virtual assistant or chatbot to quickly answer questions?

Or a free trial for your product?

The more appealing the offer is to the visitor, the better the chances of conversion.

Likewise, the offer is always tied to the amount and quality of information your lead will provide and needs to align with the stage of the marketing funnel the visitor is in.

CTAs

Call to Action is a prompt to action.

If your goal is for your reader or visitor to take some action after engaging with your company’s material, you need to make that clear.

To improve your CTAs, use words that connect with your audience’s needs, be direct and focus on a single action, offer a benefit, and avoid asking for a complex action.

Friction

Friction is anything that unnecessarily complicates conversion by placing obstacles between the visitor and the action you want them to take.

Static forms—especially those that ask for a long list of information about the visitor—can cause what is called friction in the visitor’s interaction.

People will only fill out a form and wait for a response if they are convinced that the benefit is truly worthwhile.

Therefore, reducing the amount of information requested initially can encourage conversion.

After defining your qualification criteria, remove all non-essential information from the forms at this first stage, especially in top-of-funnel forms.

Another good option to reduce this problem is to replace the form with a chatbot.

The conversion rate of a chatbot designed according to conversational marketing techniques consistently outperforms the Whatsapp button and static contact forms, for example.

Being customizable and interactive, this method creates less friction between the consumer’s interest and the brand’s interest.

Moreover, it is less intrusive and assists the user in the decision-making process. 

Price

Another point that may need attention regarding optimization is the price of your products or services.

Is it aligned with other solutions offered in the market?

Is it in line with your customer’s purchasing power?

Is it a point of differentiation for your company?

These questions should be taken into account when creating hypotheses related to this aspect of your business.

CRO Tools

There are several tools to assist in all steps of CRO.

They are divided into tools for data analysis, conducting tests, and implementing optimization actions.

  • Data analysis tools: some options to track your website metrics and view heatmaps include Google Analytics, Google Page Speed, Hotjar, Crazy Egg, and Clicktale.
  • A/B testing tools: to create and analyze tests, we recommend exploring Crazy Egg, Google Optimize, or Clicktale.
  • Optimization tools: to speed up your page load times, use WP Rocket. To test different content combinations on your website and optimize these aspects, we recommend Google Optimize.

Optimize your Conversions with Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing is one of the most modern approaches when it comes to generating and optimizing marketing leads.

Conversational marketing tools can provide personalized experiences through message boxes and interactive conversations to generate engagement and conversion with website visitors, blogs, and landing pages.

The conversational marketing tool offered by Leadster can assist companies of any size with various stages of CRO: analyzing data, identifying improvement opportunities, conducting tests, and optimizing website conversion.

Want to learn more about how the tool can help with your challenges?

Explore the free demo now and start applying true CRO today!

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