Optimizing for B2B, Customer Value Optimization, Digital Psychology, and Behavioral Design Training Review
This article is part 9 of 12 reviewing the CRO Minidegree at the CXL Institute.
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The focus of the content this week revolves around advanced optimization and digital psychology techniques that most CRO practitioners fail to include in their CRO program. This content is truly some of the real golden CRO nuggets that only the top 1% of CRO experts are privy to!
Optimizing for B2B
In the CXL course Optimizing for B2B, Bill Leake shares the blueprint for optimizing digital marketing conversions in B2B. Contrary to popular industry belief, most of the CRO strategies that apply to an e-commerce funnel do not work for the digital B2B sales funnel.
Optimization Goals for B2B websites
In this course, we learned three optimization strategies that B2B should place a strong emphasis on. One of them is leads and lead generation.
Leads
- Impressions
- Visitors
- Engagement Metric
- Form Filled (contact info)
- Sales Ready
Engagement metrics B2B companies should be tracking:
- How many pages do they visit?
- Do they spend time on your website? Do they spend a lot of time on certain areas of the content? What can we learn from that? How do we use that to possibly market based on where they were on the website and what they were doing?
- Did they engage with videos?
- What was the pathing from what they have done on the website? What can we tell?
For the other two optimization strategies, you’re gonna have to take the course…this is top-notch 1% sealed info. I may go missing 🤫for sharing this much knowledge bling (Ha, ha I just created this phrase will writing this article, so when and if it goes viral take note that it all started here 😉).
Common mistakes with optimizing for B2B
Facts to consider about B2B:
- Longer sales cycle
- More considered purchase
- Higher dollar value
- Multiple people involved
Most common mistakes and B2B optimization:
- Lexical miscommunication
- Wrong content
- Not focusing on the customer
- Treating their audience like B2C
In this course, I was also introduced to the famous test:
“We, We” Test… you know:
“We do this and we do that!”
Leake advises that B2B websites should make sure that they pass the We, We test because so many businesses fail in this area. They opt to focus on themselves instead of their customers’ needs and focus.
Another golden nugget shared in this course:
“B2B needs to tailor marketing advice to appeal to the lifetime value customer.” — Bill Leake
Customer Value Optimization
In this course Justin Rondeau shares some very solid optimization tips. He stresses to put more focus and emphasis on customer value optimization versus conversion rate optimization. We are introduced to the:
5 Steps of the Customer Optimization Model
- Identify your market
- Generate leads
- Convert lead into a buyer
- Turn the buyer into a purchaser of multiple products
- Return path
Let’s skip to step 2 from the list above, Generating leads. Some of the knowledge bling (there it goes again, picking up momentum lol!) shared here is fundamental to conversion optimization success.
In order to generate leads, online businesses should create a lead magnet.
Definition of a lead magnet
n.
A highly specific chunk of information that is highly actionable and used in exchange for an opt-in.
Lead magnets provide an excellent opportunity to segment your audience and market to them accordingly. This is very powerful!
Lead magnets must be:
- Highly actionable
- High perceived value
- High actual value
- Easy to consume
Possible lead magnets:
- Free downloads
- Checklists
- Free software trials
- Case studies
- Quizzes
- Assessments
- Tests
What is NOT a lead magnet?
- Ebooks because they take too long to consume
- Newsletter opt-ins (Duh!)
Digital Psychology and Behavioral Design Training
This course is taught by Dr. Brian Cugelman shares a plethora of very useful information pertaining to how our customers think.
After learning all we have about analytics and testing Dr. Cugelman flips all that on its head, deeming some of the metrics CRO/CO practitioners value are superficial in relation to the bigger picture. Side note: This is absolutely music to my ears because after all the math and analytical stuff I was beginning to experience complete brain overload because I just don’t think that way regardless of how great the instructor is.
Superficial indicator metrics
- Pageviews
- Signing up/subscribing
- Downloading
- Retweeting
- Voting, liking, plussing
- Marking content as offensive
- Posting/answering
- Questions
- Commenting
- Forwarding, sharing
- Tagging
- Bookmarking
Dr. Cugelman stresses the fact that we should place our focus on the following four real human impacts instead for more value:
Real human impacts
- Comprehending
- Desiring
- Deciding
- Acting
One of the jewels that we learned pertains to the chemicals in our brain that give off motivating effects.
Cortisol
(what we avoid)
- How to trigger: perceiving any internal or external threats
- Controls behavior: grabs our attention, and drives us to remove the pain or threat
- Neural impact: shapes neural pathways around threat perceptions (influencing reactions to threats)
Dopamine
(What we desire)
- How to trigger: Perceiving anything that promotes survival
- Controls behavior: Create anticipation of a reward, curiosity, driving us to pursue rewards
- Neutral impact: shapes neural pathways towards a reward (influencing good/bad habits)
At one point in the course, Dr. Cugelman states:
“We under-promise, and we over-deliver, and we make sure there’s something of value that people get at the end. We’re building long-term relationships, and if we do the opposite, there’s not really much I can do to help you.”
BOOM!👊🏾
My thoughts
Optimizing for B2B, I’m glad that this class is included in the course because oftentimes so much emphasis is placed on converting e-commerce that B2B easily gets overlooked. This course is brief and concise but it packs a punch!
Customer Value Optimization gives us more to think about than solely optimizing for conversion rates. Justin Rondeau shares a lot of really good optimization techniques that are customer-focused. I am already very familiar with his techniques because I initially received my digital marketing certification from DigitalMarketer. Rondeau is the Director of Marketing there, as a result, some of the strategies they teach were highlighted in this course.
Digital Psychology and Behavioral Design Training is one of my favorite courses in the CRO mini degree program. Dr. Cugelman is a hoot! I absolutely love his humor. I LOL’d in real life so many times. I also really enjoyed the fact that I just get the content, no extra intense studying required. After all the statistics and testing knowledge…
…this was a very easy transition for me.
I now have 10 CXL Institute certificates and I am getting that most closer to the finish line — closer to the top 1%! YAY
Would you like to join me by learning from the top 1% of digital marketers in the whole entire world?
Check out more of my in-depth reviews of CXL Institute’s CRO Minidegree courses:
- Intro to CRO and Best Practices Review
- Intro to Conversion Copywriting, Product Messaging, Psychology, and Social Proof Review
- Neuromarketing, Emotional Content Strategy, Influence, and Interactive Design Review
- Google Analytics for Beginners Review
- Landing Page Optimization, Conversion Research and Using Analytics to Find Conversions Review
- Google Tag Manager for Beginners, User Research, Fast and Rigorous User Personas Review
- Heuristics Analysis Frameworks for CO Audits, Google Analytics Audits, How to Run Tests
- Testing Strategies, Statistics for A/B Testing and A/B Testing Mastery Review
- Optimizing for B2B, Customer Value Optimization, Digital Psychology and Behavioral Design Training Review
- Advanced Experimentation Analysis and Applied Neuromarketing Review
- How to Design, Roll Out, and Scale an Optimization Program; Evangelizing for Optimization in Enterprise Review
- Building Your Optimization Technology Stack and CRO Agency Masterclass Review
