Hosted by:

Katya Allison

Director of Marketing
Content at GRIN

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About GRIN Gets Real

Welcome to the GRIN gets real podcast, the show for people who want to maximize their marketing potential. From influencer marketing to eCommerce strategy and everything in between, each episode will feature industry experts that share their insights and provide actionable tips to help you achieve your marketing goals. Subscribe and stay tuned!

How to leverage data to create authentic relationships

In this episode:

AJ Davis

CRO Specialist

AJ Davis started out conducting user research for her UX job at Google Optimize. She loved the work, but found herself getting jealous of the users she was researching! This led her to jump the fence into the world of Conversion Rate Optimization, aka CRO, where she gets to “nerd out on data all the time” and connect the dots between data and the customer experience. In 2017 AJ launched her own company, Experience Optimization, where she works with clients to increase conversion rates and get more revenue from their websites.

Full episode details

“How do we picture the person on the other side of the computer? How many computers are there? How do they connect to each other… Moving beyond just thinking about clicks.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist

The world of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is all about making a brand’s website more potent, turning website visitors into long term customers. But an effective CRO strategy goes beyond simply collecting data and research, and figures out the story the data is telling about the customer, helping companies understand their customers better and make changes that will build lasting, highly valuable relationships. CRO experts don’t just look at the goal KPI during A/B testing, rather they measure all the key touch points along the customer’s journey on a website. This approach helps brands understand which design, positioning, and messaging elements are having the greatest impact on their customer’s decisions, and more importantly, why they are having an impact. CRO melds data, research, copy, and design in order to understand the full picture of how customers are making decisions and what will ultimately lead to more conversions.

“It’s not just about, did it win or not, but what can we take away from what we saw in the data? What might that mean for the way we brand ourselves or position what we do, what might that mean for our sales conversations?” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist

Breakdown of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast Season 2 Episode 8

“I have a very unique position in this space because I come from the product development world… It was really about having empathy and understanding for your customer and building an understanding and then a relationship with them. CRO is then saying, of all those learnings, which had the biggest impact and how much did it impact and who did it impact?” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist

In this episode of the GRIN Gets Real Podcast, Katya from GRIN speaks with AJ about her unique approach to Conversion Rate Optimization and how companies should navigate this field in order to find the greatest success. AJ explains why conversion rate optimization is so much more than simply changing the color of a button! Her focus on building relationships with customers, helps companies make strategic changes to their messaging and design that increase their overall profitability. You’ll get a look behind the scenes of CRO and hear AJ explain specifics such as:

What KPIs to track, and where companies fall short in their A/B testing.
What secrets CRO unveils, even when the results of your testing turn out negatively.
The differences in CRO strategy when dealing with B2B versus D2C.

AJ also gives more broad explanations of how CRO works to help companies:

Build relationships and trust with your customers.
Capture the different types of customers that come to your website.
Deal with the flux and change of the post-pandemic world.

“We’re about to see a bunch of things stick and a bunch of things unstick, and it’s gonna be really chaotic and very fun.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist

AJ breaks down the three pillars of conversion rate optimization and what skills are needed to build an effective CRO strategy. She gives examples from her own work showing how companies have benefited from her relationship based, customer-centric outlook, improving their design, messaging and in one case changing their entire merchandising strategy! Whether you have never heard of CRO before, or you are a CRO pro, this podcast will give you insight into why and how CRO can move the needle for your online brand. You’re bound to learn at least one, more likely a handful, of new perspectives and actionable tips to help you increase conversions and build lasting relationships with your customers. Put on your scientist lab coat, pack a little creative thinking, and listen to the podcast now!

Quotes from this Episode

“And as soon as we can shift from the, ‘learn all about our products and what we’re doing for you” [to] ‘We hear who you are, we hear what you need, and we’re here to help”… it shortcuts the path to conversion. More importantly, it builds trust quickly, and can build lifetime value with that customer because you’re not as transactional.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist “I think the most important thing with human connection is to feel heard.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist “In general we want to test things and then if we have belief that it might have been impacted by time, we wanna test it again to make sure it holds.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist “One principle of research is you have to ask about behaviors that have already happened as opposed to predicting how someone will behave.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist “You may have a hypothesis of what’s gonna move the needle, but if you look at the bigger picture, you begin to see other factors that are impacting your overall goals.” – AJ Davis, CRO Specialist