What is CRO?

What is Conversion rate optimization?

Conversion Rate Optimization can no longer be ignored as part of a B2B marketing strategy, especially for brands whose website is central to driving demand and are already feeling the pain of the competitive digital advertising space. Our B2C counterparts are consistently one step ahead of us with CRO tactics that are helping them convert up to double the visitors compared to B2B.

There’s no doubt that 2023 is the year of doing more with less, B2B marketers understand that starting on a CRO journey is now a hygiene factor to prevent us from spending (and potentially wasting) more media spend on our websites. Now the question on every marketer’s lips is, what is the most effective CRO methodology in B2B? And how do I use the tools available to uncover bottlenecks and convert more buyers, as early in the buying journey as possible…

What is CRO?

Let’s take it back a few steps and explain exactly what CRO is (for those who don’t know – if you do then you can skip this bit). CRO is the process of improving your website to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired call to action on your site. This could be requesting a demo, filling in a contact form, completing a purchase, or downloading a piece of content. Here’s a reminder on how you calculate your conversion rate:

Divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors, then multiply that number by 100 to get a percentage. That percentage is the amount of website visitors that convert on your website. Once you understand what your conversion rate is, you can start to uncover the steps needed to improve it. So, if you currently get 20,000 visitors a month and 200 of them convert, your conversion rate is sitting at 1%.

Nearly 80% of business-to-business (B2B) sales interactions between buyers and sellers will take place via digital channels by 2025

Gartner

Why is CRO so important?

The truth is, only 2% of our traffic is converting. The average B2B website lets 98% of its highest intent buyers leave the website without making contact. B2B websites are a leaky bucket of opportunities. The economy is making marketing more expensive and at the same time budgets are being stripped back to basics. Marketers are working tirelessly to bring prospects onto the website, but are failing to convert enough of them. The answer isn’t to increase media spend and drive more traffic – it’s all about working smarter to engage the traffic you’ve already got through personalized, relevant messaging. Remember, even increasing your conversion rate from 1% to 2% will mean double the amount of inbound leads filtering through to your sales team.

Company	A	B	C
Monthly Site Traffic	10,000	10,000	10,000
Conversion Rate	1%	2%	3%
Leads Generated	100	200	300

Remember, whilst we should be looking over at our B2C counterparts and taking notes - we can’t carbon copy what’s working for B2C and implement it in B2B. We need to understand our websites and our buyers and build a CRO strategy that works for us.

Since 71% of B2B buyers state the company’s website is the most influential touchpoint when making a buying decision, the website has never been more important. Employing CRO will help your business convert more of your existing ICP traffic (and quicker) whilst remaining competitive by keeping your buyers on your site for longer.