Why B2B Companies Need Conversion Rate Optimization

First impressions are everything, and that goes for your business’s website. Your website is a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week sales associate and the nucleus of your SEO and PPC programs. Your digital marketing is that first impression for many of your prospective customers. 

How do you make the most of it? Data is the answer to most things in marketing, and in this case, CRO data specifically can answer that important question.

What is CRO? It’s Conversion Rate Optimization, and here, we’ll discuss how CRO can help your B2B marketing. Acronyms aside, we’ll spell out how strategic testing and adjustments to your website can boost visitor engagement, your online presence, and your conversions.

We’ll cover:

• What is conversion rate optimization?
• Why do B2Bs need CRO?
• How does CRO work?
• What are some common CRO Strategies?
• What’s your takeaway?

Get to know CRO and how it can impact your B2B marketing, plus learn about the proven methodologies that help boost conversions and user experiences, specifically those of B2B customers.

What is conversion rate optimization?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) analyzes user behavior on your website to create a strategy for improved engagement and conversions based on the data collected. This method identifies potential hurdles stopping users from becoming leads.

The goal of CRO is simple—boost your conversion rate. Website modifications, improvements, and testing are all done to increase the likelihood of website visitors filling out a lead form or making a purchase. Desired actions like these are called conversions, and we track them in Google Analytics 4 and via our proprietary tool, LOOP Analytics. The benefits of effective CRO go beyond conversion results; it can also improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value via improved user experiences.

Why do B2Bs need CRO?

B2B companies have longer, more technical sales cycles. Therefore, CRO is important to make those interactions count over that extended buyer’s journey. Your prospective customers must convert, but to do so, they need a pleasant experience. Plus, B2B purchases typically have multiple stakeholders, so you also want to create a consistent experience for all those users.

It’s about building trust and relationships, so your well-optimized site should be as credible and trustworthy as your sales team. Learning user behavior via CRO aids B2B companies in making those all-important data-driven decisions. In a crowded market, differentiating your company from competitors with your online experience is critical because it creates a user journey with easy navigation—that could make a difference when a final selection is made.

How does CRO work?

CRO focuses on improving areas like user experience and content personalization utilizing industry expertise and testing. When CRO is at work, it resembles the scientific method.

Step 1: What is the Status Quo?

We start by auditing your digital marketing machine on Google Analytics and your current user experience. We then make observations to locate conversion hurdles.

Step 2: Form a Hypothesis

Based on the data collected in Step 1 and our expertise, we can see what’s working and what improvements are needed. We’ll form hypotheses about why certain elements on your website aren’t effective, which will inform the next step—testing.

Step 3: Testing

Our team tackles this in a few different ways:

• A/B Testing: Test two versions of an element of your site to see what performs the best. You can test headlines, images, CTA’s, copy, forms, and more.
• Multivariate Testing: More complex tests that look at multiple variables simultaneously to see how they interact with each other and how user behavior is affected.
• User Testing: Get direct feedback from users via testing sessions or surveys.

Step 4: Review and Implementation

We review and discuss results with you, then more forward with the necessary implementations and continue to monitor progress. This process is cyclical. Continuous testing and optimization are needed to keep up with changes in your users, industry, and the market, so your website keeps performing well.

What are some common CRO Strategies?

As part of the process, CRO experts examine page load speeds, mobile experiences, and your site’s navigation. It’s about a smooth buyer’s journey, so any hurdles like wait time or the inability to find something are eliminated. 

Then, ideas on how to meet customer needs and preferences are presented via content personalization. This can make your website more relevant to a user at a specific point in their journey, increasing conversion. It’s thinking through possible pathways and how they align with their journey’s phase, whether research, discussion, or decision.

As part of the CRO scientific method, we might employ segmentation to divide users based on behavior patterns or journey progress, such as frequent visitors or first-time buyers. Then, messaging per segment can be created to fit.

Another tactic is predictive analytics, which uses advanced algorithms to forecast behavior based on past engagement so that you anticipate the next steps and present appropriate messaging. Dynamic content display is another option based on past interactions, where you can present content not previously there to anticipate a user’s need via an ad banner based on what they search for.

What’s your takeaway?

Marketing is a science, which is why busy B2B companies need experts to test and implement effective strategies that increase engagement and conversion. OuterBox has experts specializing in effective CRO strategies who can work with your team to align CRO efforts with your other digital marketing and business goals. 

If you are a TopSpot or OuterBox customer and have questions about CRO, contact your account team. If new to us, contact us to learn more.