Can Product Review YouTubers Become Brand Ambassadors?

Okay, maybe YouTuber is a bad word… It makes me think of tubers, as in potatoes. Inner tubers, even. Shall we agree to call them “YouTube product review queens? A bit cumbersome, maybe, but crystal clear.

I came across this fantastic product review video recently when writing up a new business proposal. I was looking to understand a product’s digital presence and reputation, and fill in the proposal with some creative ideas on how to amplify and improve it. Check it out.

When I watched the video, I thought, “How fantastic would it be if product manufacturers actually PARTICIPATED in the reviews? Not in the actual review, since that would negate the value of an unbiased third-party review – but on social media. Why not thank them? Send them a hand-written note of appreciation for the good reviews, and pick up the phone and call them if it ISN’T good. Wouldn’t that make an epic impression on consumers? It might even transform those product review queens into unshakable, unstoppable brand ambassadors.

And seriously, it would take virtually NO effort.

If it were me, I would post a comment on the YouTube video, then share it everywhere. Then, I’d start sharing that person’s other reviews that are relevant to my audience, chiming in and building a relationship. Wouldn’t it be fun? Beauty brands have such an incredible opportunity to engage, and it’s shocking how few actually do it.

Instead of burning up their budgets on advertising, it would be fantastic to see them invest in building their communities. Some are doing it, but quite a few are not.

Learn more about building a brand ambassador program by reading this fantastic blog post by Mack Collier, author of Think Like A Rock Star: Ten Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program. It’s not an area of expertise for me, but I can tell you that it is something everyone talks about yet few are able to do successfully. It sounds easy, but the reality is extremely difficult.

Five Product Review Brand Ambassador Do’s & Don’ts 

1.  Don’t offer money. They love your product and want that brand to “love them back.” How can you make them feel special and valued while harnessing their passion for your product?

2. Understand their goals – is it a product review professional looking for advertising revenue, so viewership and traffic are their most important goals? Then help them gain visibility. Is it simply a consumer sharing love for the product? Recognize them. Thinking about what you would want if you were in their shoes helps.

3. Become a part of their social community. When you love a product, it’s a thrill when its manufacturer or your favorite retailer engages with you. It costs nothing but time, but can have a powerful loyalty impact. How can you engage them?

4. Never sell. Your goal isn’t to sell them more product, your goal is to harness their passion and help it be more visible to potential buyers. Also understand that if you decide to make giving away free product to your ambassadors, it then becomes your responsibility to make sure they disclose it correctly. Instead of thinking of it as some sort of referral or commision-based program, think of it as another facet of your social media presence. Communicate with them but don’t USE them – you want to be completely genuine and authentic, helping to humanize the brand. Not promotional.

5. Realize you don’t have control. If you want to encourage and grow product reviews, don’t try to dictate what they do or say, where they post their reviews and other facets of your new program. Do create goals and structure around it, but remember execution completely belongs to them, not you.

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3 Ways to Shorten Your B2B Sales Cycle Through Personal Branding

Creating a personal brand and using social media to strengthen it can help you greatly shorten your sales cycle and ultimately achieve better results.

Accounting firm associates, agency account executives, law firm rainmakers, real estate sales representatives, pharmaceutical sales representatives, software sales professionals, and insurance producers all have one glaring thing in common - long sales cycles. In my recent discussions and interviews with professionals from all the above walks of life, it has been clear to me that the sales cycle challenge is one that needs some good resolution.

On top of the fact that these industries' sales processes are long, there is also the obstacle of saturation in digital marketing. There are literally millions of competitors locally, regionally, nationally, and globally that are all pushing to shorten their sales cycle. Some invest heavily in direct marketing, some through industry conferences, some in paid search marketing, some in meal and travel expenses and the list goes on. In that there is also one common advantage - each sales professional is a unique personality.

A properly developed and utilized online personal branding program can work to shorten your sales cycle. Learn the top three ways you can shorten your sales cycle:

1. Identify Your Winning Position and Exploit It

Your "personal brand" cannot work for you unless you first identify what it is that equals your winning formula. To do this, you need a review. Answer these questions:

• What type of clients are drawn to me and why?
• What do I know better than my colleagues, competitors?
• Where do I spend the majority of my time developing new business?
• What are my top strengths? 
• What do people love about me?
• How do I sell? Do I tell stories? Do I like to dig into facts? Am I great at uncovering the return on investment (ROI)?

From this, you will start to understand where you should focus your personal brand and develop a winning position. Exploiting this position through effective online personal branding style and communication will help to shorten the sales cycle because it will start to develop a relationship with your target, where they can see what you do without you having to push or worse, wait for them to reply.

2. Identify Your Best Online Personal Branding Machine and Make It a Daily Practice

Once you have identified such critical personal branding success metrics as your thought-leadership position, your target audience online behaviors, and your selling style, you need to identify your online selling machine. This is where social selling, social sales, or social business comes into play. You can utilize such areas as your own branded blog, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile, your Google Plus profile, and your YouTube channel to deliver a daily online personal brand. This requires a social media strategy and commitment to delivery and management.

So that you can get started in building your machine, answer these questions:

• How do you currently communicate online?
• How do you prefer to communicate?
• How does your target audience make buying decisions? What information do they need and in what frequency?
• Where do you currently network online?
• Do you need the help of a writer?
• Do you need the help of a designer?
• Do you need a video person?

Social media channels and tools provide opportunities for you to amass a targeted online audience and the potential to shorten your sales cycle by creating relationships online.

3. Identify Your Sales Location and Focus, Then Commit to Relationship Development

In the world of SEO, we know that focusing locally first can help to drive results more quickly than going global or focusing on broad terms. The same holds true in the world of driving influence and sales in a local or targeted area versus a broad approach. This is why, as I am sure the sales professionals of large sales organizations such as Eli Lilly, Oracle, IBM, Aon, Northwest Mutual, etc. structure their sales teams in local areas or by specific vertical focus.

In the practice of personal brand development and delivery, the strength of the thought-leadership position is paramount to its success. This is why you will need to identify and build a strong position relative to your location and focus. You will be able to become an expert rather than the next salesperson in your industry for your target audience. If you are in a position to call the shots in terms of where you gain new clients, then a location focus can support community build.

A great way to shorten your sales cycle with a location focus is to join and participate in LinkedIn Groups in location and by target industry focus where you can demonstrate deep experience and help to nurture a community. Other ways you can support your personal brand online and drive more sales in a shorter time frame include starting and growing a G+ community based on your focus area or running a tweet chat doing the same.

When your prospects start to visibly see that you can provide education to support their needs and answer all their questions, they will hold you in a higher regard. Once you are seen as a thought-leader as opposed to a salesperson, prospects will undoubtedly stop playing the many games we as sales trainers know as "power-shifting." Once the games are eradicated, the sales process can be shortened.

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Importance of Push notifications

Research from Localytics shows push messaging drives 88% more app launches from users who opt-in.

• 88% higher engagement on average for push-enabled users.
• Ecommerce apps exhibit the highest push engagement lift at 278%.
• Users who enable push have a retention rate three times higher than those who disable push.
• App abandonment rate for one time app use decreases from 21% to 11% for push-enabled users.
• Push-enabled users show higher retention.

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How to manage your content

One of the more underutilized methods to gain additional insight, both internally and externally, about how your content is resonating, is by soliciting feedback through surveys.

Case studies are a very useful piece of content leveraged in the B2B sales process.

Now, instead of sales folks trying to adapt long case studies into bullets, our content output is focused on this out of the gate.

Develop a short survey that you can distribute across internals teams about how they are leveraging the content you're producing, what's been most effective, and where they see gaps.

With customers and prospects, surveys can help provide texture on your audiences and buyer personas by surfacing details on demographics, preferences, and behaviors.

Surveys provide a relatively easy way to poll varying audiences in a scalable way, producing actionable insights that complement your other metrics, but there are some standard dos and don'ts: Do find ways to add shorter polls or "temperature checks" within content pieces - these could be ratings for whitepaper or reports, comment sections within blogs, or questions on event forms such as, "How did you hear about this?"

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Mobile App Metrics: Attributed Install vs. Assisted Install

To stay ahead of the curve, mobile app marketers need to be looking beyond top-level metrics. One of these top-level metrics is the install.

Looking at which marketing channels and advertising partners convert installs doesn’t give you insight into what engagement helped drive that install along the path to conversion. Mobile marketers should look at attributed installs versus assisted installs to better understand the impact of channel and campaign performance along the conversion funnel.

Before explaining more about the importance of an attributed installs versus assisted installs, let's review some terminology.

• Installs: New users that open the app for the first time.
• Attributed Installs: Publisher with the last click, within the attribution window for the publisher.
• Install Assists: Publisher(s) with a click prior to the last click, within the attribution window.
• Publisher Install Contributions: The total number of installs for which the channel was involved (Attributed Installs + Install Assists).
• Install Rate: The percentage of installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
• Assist Rate: The percentage of assisted installs occurring from the total number of unique clicks.
• Install Contribution Rate: The percentage of install contributions occurring from the total number of unique clicks.

Measuring attributed installs makes complete sense. Marketers need to know which channel and campaign converted that install. However, the assisted install metric makes it possible for marketers to measure the performance of the channels, campaigns, and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness (not only the ones that convert the last click).

This data is particularly useful for marketers that have campaigns running with a variety of channels and advertising partners simultaneously. Campaigns and advertising partners that focus on promotion and awareness – typically via banner and video ads -can re-engage users at a later time to install your app. These campaigns and advertising partners typically generate attributed installs, but generate a large number of assisted installs. If you have campaigns and advertising partners with varying business goals (for example, awareness vs. installs), then the assisted install metric gives you insight into how well each partner is achieving their goal.

Measuring assisted installs in addition to attributed installs also gives mobile app marketers insight into the duplicate (overlap) rate between campaigns and advertising partners. If an advertising partner or channel has unique traffic, then they likely have very few assisted installs. If an advertising partner or campaign has many assisted installs, then they are interacting with many users via ads that your other advertising partners are also interacting with (not unique traffic).

As a data-driven marketer, do you differentiate these metrics and measure the performance of each individually?

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4 Tips to Ease Top 4 Content Marketing Challenges

Top 4 Content Marketing Challenges

• 

  Top content marketing challenges as reported by the Content Marketing Institute

  Content Marketing Challenge #1: Time

57% of content marketers report being challenged with a lack of time. With small teams and a stacked workload time is always a concern.

• Content Marketing Challenge #2: Engagement

51% of content marketers report being challenged with producing content that will engage their audience.

• Content Marketing Challenge #3: Budget

48% of content marketers report being challenged by a lack of budget.

• Content Marketing Challenge #4: Quantity

45% of content marketers report being challenged with producing enough content to build an effective program.

Each and every one of these concerns is completely justified. I have been, and occasionally I still am, concerned with the same issues. But here’s the thing, as marketers we need to constantly search for creative out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Content marketing is no different, and UGC can help you settle some of your content marketing challenges.

The Emergence and Power of UGC

UGC is loosely defined as media produced in an open collaboration, often between a brand and its audience. Emerging onto the tech scene in 2005 with the likes of eBay and into the news cycle with the BBC, UGC has arguably become the most prominent form of content on the web. Today UGC is present on literally every ecommerce website to some degree, every news website and entire industries have been built based on user content (social networks would be nothing without UGC). Every review you read on Amazon and eBay, the t-shirts you see designed on CafePress, every video you see on YouTube and Vimeo, all of Facebook, every Tweet, all of it is UGC. Its power is undeniable.

In addition to the prominence of UGC across the Internet, the world has also begun to recognize it as a truly unbiased and authentic form of media. Similar to how brands employ PR to seek unbiased 3^rd party validation from journalists and news media, UGC is trusted as unbiased because it is created by the masses, not brands or governments. While one individual piece of UGC content may not represent the entire story or trend, in aggregate UGC can point to trends and sentiments across the globe, change opinions and provide the people with a collective voice.

What does this mean for your brand? Does it mean you should employ customer comments on your website this minute? Should you run out and ask your customers to help you design your new t-shirt? Maybe, but that isn’t the point. The point is two fold:

1. There is so much content in the digital world that you have an endless supply of relevant information, right at your finger tips, you just need to know where to look and how to use it for your business.
2. Your customers/fans love to create content, and if approached in the right way, they just may create amazing content for your brand.

Brands who recognize the power of UGC and harness it for their programs are developing the most authentic and effective marketing. Instead of preaching their story to customers (advertising), brands allow their fans to join in creating and narrating their story. At Thismoment we call it collaborative storytelling, and the best brand marketers are taking it to the next level.

How UGC Can Ease Content Marketing Challenges

If we look at the list of content marketing challenges identified above, we can quickly identify how to employ UGC to settle some concerns, quickly opening the doors to successful content marketing programs.

• Content Marketing Challenge Tip #1: Use UGC to Help With Time Challenges

When looking at a content marketing program most marketers get hung up on the time it will take to create great content. The assumption is that for a content marketing program to work you need to create 100% unique content. This simply isn’t true. With hundreds of millions of pieces of content being uploaded to the Internet everyday there are likely a few hundred YouTube videos, Tweets, blog posts and news articles that will help you with your content project. Look to existing content on the web and learn how to repurpose or curate it for your own use. And best of all, content marketing SaaS (specifically Thismoment) has taken steps to help you secure rights clearance.

• Content Marketing Challenge Tip #2: Use UGC to Help With Engagement

Marketers know that the most engaging content on the Interest is genuine, entertaining and often comes from the minds of their own customers. How many times have you laughed at a video on YouTube that was created by a clever kid with a video camera? How any times have you marveled at how amazing it is for that very video clip to receive millions of views and comments? The video works because it is genuine and came into the world without obvious commercial intent. That same video, with equal potential for engagement, can be harnessed for your marketing program (assuming it fits your business model). Or better yet, you can engage with your audience to create content on your behalf by requesting videos or other media as part of a promotion or contest. You have customers and fans, put them to work in your marketing campaigns.

• Content Marketing Challenge Tip #3: Use UGC to Help With Budget Challenges

Best of all UGC is free, or relatively inexpensive. One of the main concerns with content creation is that it is extremely expensive to create content, especially in the scale that is needed for a substantial program. By employing UGC you can tap into endless existing pieces of content across the Internet or tap into your fan/customer base to create content as needed based on campaign specifics.

• Content Marketing Challenge Tip #4: Use UGC to Help With Content Quantity Concerns

I imagine this paragraph is unnecessary. If you have been following along you know that UGC, like the universe, is ever expanding and infinite. There are zero limitations on quantity. If you need a video of a baby monkey riding backwards on a pig to promote your Monkey Kibble campaign, you’ll find it. Entice the creator to grant permission to use it by offering major exposure to their content, once granted you have an amazing piece of relevant and credible content.

No, UGC is not a magic bullet, it will not solve every content marketing challenge and I don’t intend to over simplify the issue. I do hope that considering UGC offers a new way to think about your own content marketing challenges. Remember, you do not need to create every piece of content from scratch, you do not need to pay a lot for content, and if done right it will be remarkably engaging. Better yet, today you can easily tap into amazing content marketing software specifically designed to help you blend both branded content and UGC into engaging playlists for your campaigns. It’s the best of both worlds.

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The Real World of Character Marketing and Brand Fan Fiction

Brands have the opportunity to cultivate their own fan content online, yet most have not embraced the idea of promoting their products in this fashion. Here are some tips for getting started.

Looking for a new job? Here's hoping you generate as much interest as Louis Bloom. Since posting his video résumé to YouTube a few weeks ago he's received more than 275,000 views. His Craigslist ad surely helped. Indeed, thanks to digital media, Louis is in good position to find work.

The stunt is a viral marketing effort to promote Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal. It isn't the first of its kind. Back in 2010, pop singer Katy Perry's alter ego Kathy Beth Terry had her own Facebook page. Two years earlier several of the characters from Sony's apocalyptic blockbuster 2012 were on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The New Yorker even once ran a contest inviting readers to create Facebook status updates in the style of their favorite literary characters.

This week it was reported that TripAdvisor has created a page for the Grand Budapest Hotel, the fictional locale from the Wes Anderson film by the same name released early this year. While the page comes with a disclaimer ("...Have fun reading these reviews - go on, add your own! Just don't try to book a visit here, because this fictional place doesn't really exist"), the devotion with which fans have thrown themselves into crafting unique user-generated content is very real.

To date, more than 120 TripAdvisor users from all over the world have taken the time to review their fictional experience at the fictional hotel, peppering their posts with inside jokes only those who have seen the film would understand. The response demonstrates an interest in the movie that goes beyond the standard consumer reaction to entertainment content. In the literary world, this behavior is most closely related to fan fiction - short stories and books based on characters created by other authors. "The culture talks to them," novelist Lev Grossman has written of the trend, "and they talk back to the culture in its own language."

These days fan fiction runs rampant, in large part due to the reach and scalability that digital media affords. Brands have at their disposal the opportunity to cultivate their own fan content online, and community-based sites like Craigslist and TripAdvisor - not to mention the standard social media fare - are a great place to start. While the entertainment industry continues to play with digital platforms, keeping consumers on their toes by blurring the lines between fiction and fact, most brands have yet to embrace the idea of promoting their products in this fashion. Here are some strategies for those eager to get into the game.

Be Consistent

Character marketing only works if the content doesn't appear forced. In relaying your message, it's important to be true to the character or mascot consumers have come to know. That's how Flo, the insurance clerk from the Progressive commercials, racked up more than 5.4 million Likes on Facebook, 26,000 followers on Twitter, and 3,700 followers on Instagram. In keeping with the quick wit and sparkle displayed on TV, Flo's non sequitur posts share jokes, poke fun at pop culture trends, and lament the loss of gluten (#ripgluten, #imissyou). Because they almost always include a photo of Flo in her Progressive apron, the posts reinforce the brand while entertaining fans.

Provide Value

Fans of The Hunger Games know Panem (aka "The Capital") as the post-apocalyptic nation where the books and films take place. Online, it has its own website, Facebook page, Twitter handle, Instagram page, and hashtag (#onepanem). Each platform is used for the common purpose of underscoring the nation's control over the characters in anticipation of the release of the third film this fall. Teaser videos designed to appear as though they aired on "Capital TV" feature the story's fictional president and hint at what's to come in the next installment. This kind of exclusive content gives consumers a reason to follow, while generating excitement and buzz.

Be Discriminating About How and Where You Seed Your Content

Viral marketing efforts often have the most impact when consumers feel as though they've come across them organically. If your goal is stealth, as in the case of the Nightcrawler ad and video, avoid posting to your existing brand and product social media accounts. Instead, send media releases to influencers, bloggers, and entertainment reporters who are likely to pick up your story. If your content stands up, they'll handle the distribution for you.

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14 Top-Notch Resources to Help You Become a CRO Expert

Even those considered to be CRO (conversion rate optimization) experts had to start somewhere. Nobody knows right away how to optimize websites as soon as they walk into the digital marketing world; we've all had to learn some aspects.

Thankfully, mastering the art of CRO is considerably easier now than it was several years ago, and for a very good reason: more learning resources are now available online.

Over the past few years in particular, we've seen an explosion in the number of CRO guides and tutorials. Many of them are helpful, while others were created by inexperienced CROs claiming to be veterans just trying to make a fast buck.

To help you know which ones are helpful and which ones aren't, we've collected a list of 14 CRO resources that are sure to help you become a conversion rate expert. Study up on a few of these, and you'll be up to speed with the rest of the industry in no time at all.

1. The Beginner's Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (Qualaroo)

This lengthy 12-chapter monster is a great guide to kick off our list. Qualaroo, a premium vendor of a CRO tool that's been used by Yahoo, Vimeo, and Intuit, provides a basic yet comprehensive overview of what CRO is really all about.

In the early chapters, you'll get definitions for some CRO jargon (if you haven't yet figured out what MVT, CTA, or A/B testing means). Chapter 4 – my personal favorite – teaches you how to create an optimization plan.

At the end of each chapter, you're also given links to 3-5 complementary blog posts on other websites that are sure to help you as well.

2. Conversion Rate Experts Blog

The resoundingly obvious domain name aside, Conversion Rate Experts is one of the top CRO service providers. Work with them, and you'll be working with the guys who helped Apple, Google, Sony, and Facebook increase their website revenue.

Their blog, although infrequently updated, has numerous advanced conversion rate tips and case studies, besides more general digital marketing advice.

KISSmetrics and CRE teamed up to create this infographic on nine steps to better conversions. The graphic itself nearly merits a sole spot on this list. You can't go wrong about checking out the resources available from Conversion Rate Experts.

3. ConversionXL Blog

Two and a half years ago, Peep Laja started blogging about practical conversion advice. But his blog was different from almost every other "mainstream" digital marketing blogs. Peep gave specific instruction and direction for marketers and CROs, backed up by both his own testing experiences and the results of his extensive research.

Today, Peep is one of the most respected bloggers in the industry. On his YouTube channel, Peep does detailed reviews of the optimization levels of his readers' websites every week. Advice from an experienced consultant for 100 percent free? Sign us up for that.

4. The Definitive Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (QuickSprout)

If there's one thing Neil Patel's QuickSprout blog is known for, it's the series of 30,000+ word guides he produces on a regular basis. Neil's already covered SEO, content marketing, growth hacking, and consumer psychology – one of his more recent guides is on CRO.

Neil and I teamed up to create a thorough, eight-chapter guide to increasing conversions. It's one of the most thorough out there, but I'll let you be the judge of how helpful it is since I'm obviously biased.

Not only is the content helpful, but the format is also aesthetically pleasing, with tons of visuals and custom graphics to help you digest the info.

5. Which Test Won

Which Test Won releases a summary of an A/B test every week. On the homepage, readers can test their conversion optimization knowledge by voting on whether the control or the variable had a better performance.

For an additional $25/90 days, you can get access to their library of 453 conversion case studies.

6. Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization (SEO Gadget)

SEO Gadget created a beautiful infographic detailing both the good way and the bad way to get started with conversion optimization.

The infographic can currently only be viewed on Moz, as SEO Gadget is rebranding to Built Visible and hasn't yet had an opportunity to post the infographic on their website.

7. The Small Business Guide to Conversion Rate Optimisation (Simply Business)

This Simply Business resource presents a step-by-step guide to CRO in unique fashion. Tailored for small businesses, the guide provides an in-depth introduction to the technical aspects of optimization testing: the basic tools required, and how to use them.

8. 100 Conversion Optimization Case Studies (KISSmetrics)

They say that the best way to learn is by example. While that isn't always true in conversion optimization (you need to test everything before blindly applying the tactics that worked for one website to your website in a different industry), there is a good deal of information to be gleaned from CRO case studies.

In this KISSmetrics blog post, 100 case studies (yes, that many) are listed with accompanying pictures and key takeaways for each.

9. Visual Website Optimizer Case Studies

One of the most popular A/B and multivariate testing tools around, Visual Website Optimizer has a huge archive of case studies run by VWO customers.

What's more, the case studies listed can be filtered by the business's industry and the element that was tested, so you can get advice tailored to your business.

10. Unbounce Blog

Unbounce is a popular distributor of landing page optimization software. Their blog is a priceless resource, with literally hundreds of CRO-specific posts that help you boost your digital marketing ROI.

One of my favorite blog posts on Unbounce is their curation of 666 conversion rate optimization tips. Oli Gardner, the brain behind the post, went out of his way to read each tip listed. What's more, you can be sure that the advice is relevant to you today, as almost all of the curated posts were written within the last year.

11. WiderFunnel Blog

WiderFunnel is a popular marketing optimization service provider. And they know what they're doing.

Their blog – although very rarely updated (think less than once a month) – is a must read for anyone serious about CRO. The blogger, Chris Goward, brings a wealth of digital marketing expertise to the table and has done landing page optimization for several Fortune 500 companies.

He raises controversial points like your conversion rate doesn't matter and why too much segmentation is bad for your marketing.

Whenever they publish a new post, rest assured that you'll be hanging onto every word.

12. Content Verve

The Content Verve blog is especially helpful for learning how to write better-optimized copy. Again, posts are few and far between, but each is so well-written that you won't be able to refrain from signing up for email updates.

13. LeadPages Blog

LeadPages is a provider of landing page templates of all varieties: you can pick up sales pages, launching soon pages, squeeze pages, upsell pages, and much more.

Their blog is consistently updated with split testing case studies for their customers.

14. Optimizely Blog

Optimizely's blog is one of the greats in the A/B testing and CRO niches. Between blog posts written by the guy who made Obama $60 million in the 2007 elections (Dan Siroker) and controversial items that spark extended comment threads, you'll fall in love with the "conversion rate optimism blog you'll actually read."

Wrapping Up

Two metrics ultimately define your marketing success: the cost to deliver visitors to your website, or cost per click (CPC), and your conversion rate. Improving these metrics will obviously improve sales, cost per acquisition, cost per lead, and most KPIs that matter to marketers and business owners. You don't always have control over the CPC, but you're 100 percent responsible for your conversion rate.

Bottom line: it's becoming increasingly expensive to drive traffic to your website. The only way to maintain or improve results is to increase your conversion rate. There is a huge opportunity to help companies improve conversion rates and position yourself as a CRO expert.

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