Why Professional Service Providers Need to Focus on CRO
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is what most service providers should focus their marketing efforts on. Wondering why all those website visitors don’t turn into customers? You might have a CRO problem. CRO gets prospects to relate to you and buy from you. Continue reading to learn how to fix those problems.
This article covers:
What is CRO
What’s the difference between CRO & SEO
Understanding professional service provider landscape
Key CRO strategies to increase conversions
How to overcome common CRO challenges
What is CRO? Why is it important?
Technically speaking, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of people who take a desired action on your website. In layman's terms, it’s how you get website visitors to do the thing you want them to do.
The purpose of CRO is to remove as many barriers to conversion as possible. A conversion is an action you can track. It’s making a purchase, booking an appointment, signing up for email updates, or listening to your podcast.
CRO involves making small changes to your website that have a big impact. The goal is to entice website visitors to take action AND make it easy for them.
What’s The Difference Between CRO & SEO?
CRO is not the same thing as SEO. If CRO is a new concept to you, that’s not surprising. Digital marketers have a tendency to focus heavily on SEO. SEO gets you found online. CRO increases sales once your business is discovered (no matter how you were found).
CRO is making your website favorable to people.
SEO is making your website favorable to search engines.
The goal of SEO is to increase traffic.
The goal of CRO is to increase the percentage of conversions from that traffic.
Both are important, if you’re relying on organic search. Organic search is when someone types something into the search bar, and they find your website in the search results. SEO increases the number of people who find your website. CRO increases the percentage of those visitors who become customers.
Not all businesses need SEO.
If you’re a small business serving your local community, you’ll only need to implement the most basic SEO strategies to show up in searches.
If you’re in an extremely competitive online industry, it’s hard to compete in the SEO game without a huge budget. It’s not impossible, but it won’t be quick.
Pretty much all businesses benefit from CRO.
Understanding the Professional Service Provider Landscape
Small service-based businesses need to connect and build trust with their ideal clients. Successful service providers establish themselves as experts, create messaging that resonates with clients, and deliver consistent results. That’s a lot of balls to juggle.
5 Common Challenges Service Providers Face
Finding the right target audience
Establishing credibility and building trust
Standing out in a crowded market
Balancing marketing and delivering services
Developing a system of consistent lead generation
Let’s take a closer look at each of these issues, and how CRO can help.
Finding the Right Target Audience
Getting very clear on who your target audience is can be especially challenging for creatives and coaches. There is a bit of fear that comes with eliminating potential prospects. Even when you offer a service many people need, you’re not everybody’s cup of tea. There’s only a segment of that audience who are your ideal clients.
Establishing Credibility and Building Trust
Anyone providing a professional service must prove they know their stuff before meeting prospects. That’s hard to do if you’re not well known in your community or industry. Consumers are suspicious of anyone trying to sell them something these days. You have to prove you’re worthy AND earn their trust.
Standing Out in a Crowded Market
Many service providers fail to articulate the true value of what they offer. If you’re in a competitive market, getting noticed isn’t easy. Consumers are overwhelmed by options and bombarded with sales pitches. You must be unique to stand out, and you have to market yourself consistently.
Balancing Marketing and Delivering Service
Most small businesses and independent service providers don’t have a marketing team. Marketing can bring in new clients, but you don’t get paid for doing it. If your marketing efforts are successful, then your struggle with time management. Sometimes there’s not enough time to continue marketing and serve clients. It’s a lot to manage, but success depends on it.
Developing a Systems for Consistent Lead Generation
Business success relies on developing systems for doing what you do. If you’re a wellness provider, you have a system for assessing and treating clients. If you’re a consultant, you have a system for interviewing clients and analyzing their situation. Lead generation requires a system too. That’s how you create consistently. The problem: that’s not your area of expertise. So, you spend a lot of time trying things to see if they work - or you avoid it all together.
CRO Can Help Service Providers Overcome These Challenges
CRO is all about systematically establishing yourself as a trust-worthy expert and making it easy for clients to connect with you.
5 Ways CRO Solves Common Service Provider Problems
When you speak in a brand voice that resonates with ideal clients, you get their attention.
When you use social proof to bolster marketing efforts, you put skeptics at ease.
When you center your marketing around what lights a spark in the hearts and minds of your clients, you’ll be seen.
When you optimize all your marketing to increase conversions, marketing takes significantly less effort.
Using a system for getting in front of prospects, intriguing them with your know-how, and getting them to take the next step can create a steady flow of new clients.
5 Key CRO Strategies for Service Providers
Service providers can implement CRO strategies to persuade prospects to take the next step. Whatever your goal, CRO leads people toward it in a systematic way. The next step might be to book a consultation or download your free guide. Whatever it is, CRO can increase the percentage of people who take that next step.
Stop Marketing to Everybody
Finding the right target audience is essential to increasing your conversion rate. Stop marketing to everybody, and start marketing to your ideal clients. Your ideal clients are people you enjoy working with, who can afford your services, and that are excited to work with you.
Imagine your dream client. Write down as many details about this person or company as you can. Give that dream client a name. Then, direct all your marketing at that dream client. Whatever you say on your website, on social media, in emails, in ads, say it to that dream client.
This strategy instills confidence in your ideal clients when they see your messaging. It makes it clear that your services are for them. Conversions rates will increase because you’ll attract the people who are most likely to buy from you.
2. Let Other People Brag About You
Your current customers are the best marketing tool you have. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most common source of leads for service providers. There’s a reason for that. People want someone they can trust, and they don’t know you yet.
A rave review or referral is the best form of marketing there is. So, how do you leverage the positive experiences of your current clients to use in your marketing?
Here are a few ways to use social proof to increase your conversion rate:
Display social proof on your website
Ask clients for reviews and referrals
Make case studies out of your biggest success
Create a system for collecting reviews and asking for referrals. This is really easy to do and can make a huge difference in conversion rates.
3. Be Authentic
Stop worrying about selling, and start talking about what really matters. Marketing is all about connecting. Talk about the thing your prospects really care about that you’re really good at helping with.
Being authentic will get people’s attention in a crowded market place. Your business has a personality, and you get to choose it. This is called brand voice. Choose a tone and energy that your ideal clients will engage with. Use that voice in all your messaging.
Don’t mimic your competitors. Highlight your brand values, mission, things you love about your clients, and all the things that make your brand unique. That’s what will set you apart from everyone else.
4. Make It Easy
Eliminate unnecessary steps. Time is finite, and no one wants to waste it. That’s why the path from introduction to making a sale should not wander aimlessly. It should be straight, even if there are multiple benchmarks to reach before making the sale.
Think through your sales funnel. What steps do people need to take before they are ready to buy from you? The job of CRO is to lead people directly to the next step, without distracting them with other offers.
Take a look at your website. What’s the very first CTA (Call To Action) that’s displayed? Is it the action you most want website visitors to take? If it’s not, change it.
5. Create Systems
Generating consistent leads relies on having systems in place. When you’re busy serving clients, you don’t have time to engineer marketing strategies from scratch on a daily basis.
Create systems that make marketing your services effective and time-efficient. Automate what you can. Use CRO to guide prospects through your process and streamline your sales process.
Creating an effective sales funnel will require a significant time and/or financial investment upfront. After you’ve created it, it should take very little time to work the system.
Start by creating a high-value piece of content that draws prospects in.
Then, nurture the relationship by adding more ongoing value.
Make the sales process simple.
On-going Testing and Optimization is Essential
You don’t know what works until you test it. If you have nothing to compare your current strategy to, you have nothing to measure it against. Sometimes great ideas don’t turn out, and other times a marketing strategy will work surprisingly well. You won’t know unless you measure your results.
Find what works and continue to improve upon it over time. As your business grows and evolves, so will your marketing needs. Current industry trends can impact what’s working now and what’s not. There’s no finish line. The goal is to continually improve.
Overcoming Common CRO Challenges
Small service-based businesses face some common CRO challenges. The main issue is they’re not CRO experts. It takes time and money to learn and implement CRO strategies that will have a significant impact on your business.
Here are some common CRO challenges and tips for overcoming them.
Limited of Resources
Small service-based businesses often have limited budgets, time, and personnel to dedicate to CRO efforts. This can make it challenging to test and implement CRO strategies effectively.
Tip: Use the resources you do have, and focus on the most meaningful parts of your sales process. Ask an acquaintance, who is not familiar with your website, to visit your website. Watch them visit it. After 5 seconds, ask what the website is about. If they can’t answer accurately, make changes to the first things people see on the page. Watch them navigate through it and see what happens. Did they naturally get to where you wanted them to go?
You can get analytics for your website for free. Change one thing at a time, and track what happens as a result of that.
Lack of Traffic
Many small businesses struggle to generate enough traffic to perform meaningful CRO tests. It’s hard to know if your CRO strategies are effective if you don’t have enough people visiting your website. CRO works to increase the percentage of conversions. Often you need to hit a certain number of website visitors before conversions start to happen.
Tip: Here are a few ways you can increase traffic to your website: Improve your SEO, run ads, establish your brand on social media.
Lack of Clarity on Target Audience
Without a clear understanding of your target audience, you’ll struggle to create compelling website content. If you don’t know what truly inspires your people to take action, your CTAs won’t resonate with them.
Tip: First, get super specific about who your target audience is. Then, get to know them. Hang out in places they hang out. Poll your current customers. Find out what pains them and what motivates them. Talk like them. Speak to their emotions.
Complex Sales Processes
Service providers have more complex sales processes than e-commerce businesses. This can make it harder to optimize a website for conversions. It can also be more difficult to track which interactions lead to a sale.
Tip: Track everything you get analytics on, but focus on one thing at a time. Start with the first step you want someone to take. Optimize for that first. Try it more than one way and see what works better. Once you have the best performing way in the place, move on to the next step. Repeat this process all the way through your sales funnel, and eliminate any non-essential steps.
Limited Understanding of CRO
Not knowing where to start is a common problem for professional service providers. CRO is based on human behavior and psychology. Almost any human can understand the basics, but that’s not necessarily enough to know how to optimize your website.
Tip: You really only have 2 options to overcome this problem: invest time and money into learning CRO in-depth OR hire someone who understands it.
Recap & Next Steps:
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of conversions on your website. A conversion could be filling out a contact form, booking an appointment, or signing up for your newsletter. When you increase your website conversion rate, you need fewer visitors to reach our sales goals. You’ll still need a certain amount of traffic to test its effectiveness.
CRO strategies for professional services providers involve:
Directing all your marketing at your target audience.
Using social proof to build authority and gain trust
Being genuine and authentic to stand out from the crowd
Leading prospects directly to the action you want them to take
Creating systems for consistent lead generation
Effectively optimizing your website for conversions isn’t always easy or straightforward, especially for service providers. There’s a lot that goes into it, and the more complex your sales process is the more challenging it is.
The process of CRO is on-going. As your business grows, your CRO strategies will need to grow and adjust too.
If you don’t have time to invest in learning and implementing CRO, hire a professional. This can save you a lot of money and aggravation in the long run. Depending on your budget, you can hire someone to create a strategy that you can implement yourself or pay an expert to do it all for you.