Mastering Conversion Rate Optimization: Closing the Gaps in Your Funnel

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and we have another amazing episode today. And today is a special one. This is my second solo episode, so there's no introduction for a guest. You have me. So if you are new to my solo episodes, I periodically do these because as a host, it is amazing that I get to talk to so many knowledgeable cmos, CROs, and subject matter experts so that they can come to the couch and share their expertise. But that also means that you guys don't always get to hear from me. And so periodically, something will come up that I'm like, oh, I gotta talk about that.

Brandi Starr [00:01:29]:
I gotta share, share. And today is no exception. So we won't have a buzzword banishment. You've got me today. And we are talking about conversion rate optimization. And so what brings me to revenue rehab today is I finished, I guess it's been about a month now. I finished the winning by design revenue architecture course. So I am a member of Pavilion, and if you are a member of Pavilion, if you're an executive member, you have access to that course at no cost, even if you're not a member of Pavilion.

Brandi Starr [00:02:06]:
I definitely recommend the winning by design revenue architecture course. Not being paid to say that, I really enjoyed it and learned a lot and met some great people through the process. But one of the things that we talked about, and the thing that I found really awesome about this course was that there were some new concepts in the course that I was not familiar with. A lot of formulas. It's a tough, tough class, for sure, but there were certain things in the course that were things I already knew, but it presented them to me a bit differently, and I really appreciated that. And so the revenue architecture course uses the bowtie. So if you think about two funnels turned on their side. So the prospect funnel on its side, leading to a conversion point or a commitment point, and then the other side is the customer funnel.

Brandi Starr [00:03:06]:
You know, we are big on. We think about the funnel in the traditional way. Concepts are still the same. Visual is just a little bit different. And so one thing, so when we went through the data models and we talked about the different metrics, and so there's volume metrics, there's conversion metrics. There's a lot of different metrics that we talked about, and one that really hit home for me in a way of doing the math that I don't see a lot of companies doing is actually mapping those volume and conversion metrics together and understanding how they all impact getting to commitment and how much revenue that is. And then on the customer side in expansion, renewals, et cetera. And so as I think about those conversion rate metrics, that's a lot of what we do.

Brandi Starr [00:04:00]:
You hear me talk a lot, especially more recently, about the middle of the funnel and the conversion rates. And as we are approaching the end of 2024, we are all in planning mode. Many of us are a bit disappointed in what we've got in terms of budgets and resources going into 2025 and in some cases, a bit surprised at goals. You know, I've heard this over and over from cmos and others in the industry that budgets are flat or down. Very few people are seeing bigger budgets this year, but the goals are still growing. And so that is a consistent need to do better with the resources that we have. And so that, to me, is where those conversion metrics play such a key role. And so if you think about it, if we talk about our volume metrics, if our budgets are flat, we obviously can get more creative, get more effective, increase that volume.

Brandi Starr [00:05:07]:
And I think that is something that is happening all the time, especially at the top of the funnel, because there's so much money that goes into demand generation, lead generation efforts at the top of the funnel, that there is a consistent focus on optimizing that, you know, when you're spending, uh, you know, such a large portion of your budget on those efforts, there's always eyes on it. You always have your finger on the pulse in terms of how those things are performing. And so, in general, I see most companies and most leaders doing pretty well in that area. Not to say that there aren't opportunities to improve, to better personalize, to get creative with the channels and the tactics, et cetera, because there always is. However, when I really look at the impact that those conversion metrics and really focusing on the conversions can have, we don't see that as often in the middle of the funnel. And so if we think about it focusing on the conversion rate optimization, those conversion metrics in the middle of the funnel, it's not just a growth strategy at this point. It's a bit of a survival tactic, honestly, especially given the fact that we are in leaner times, we are operating more leanly and so it is a strategy. It is something we need to be doing, but it really has to be the crux of where we are focusing.

Brandi Starr [00:06:37]:
And so if we think about what happens today, and I just listened to Matt Hines on a podcast, I guess that was two ish weeks ago, where he called it the messy metal. And I absolutely loved that term. Totally going to steal Matt's term, and I don't even know if he came up with it, but it is such a great way to describe what is happening in most companies in the middle of the funnel. We, you know, as a consultant, I see what's happening across a lot of companies. You know, at any given time, we've got 40 to 60 clients that are active. And for the most part, it's a mess in everybody's middle. And, you know, in the podcast I was referring to, Matt talked about how most companies have these outdated playbooks, where it is this focus on you're doing all these things at the top and you're attracting people to you, and then you're handing them off to sales. And that's something that we talk about a lot as well.

Brandi Starr [00:07:38]:
You know, how often have you downloaded a white paper and an hour later your phone's ringing and you've got a salesperson that's like, hey, you want to set up a demo or you want to get on a call, and you're like, I haven't even had time to read the white paper, let alone get to a point where I want to talk to you. And so that's where there's this disconnect of, you know, marketers are deeming certain things as sales ready, or they have nothing in the middle. So they kind of have no choice but to actually just push things over to the sales team. And so that's kind of what's happening. And there is a really, like, the middle of the funnel plays a really, really critical role. And that is my message to, you know, that is my thing that I'm shouting from the rooftops is as we go into 2025 and beyond, we as leaders have to, have to, have to really start to focus on that middle of the funnel. You know, what's in your middle. And there's a statistic that I read that companies that focus on optimizing the middle of their funnel can drive 30% higher deal sizes while shortening the sales cycle by up to 20%.

Brandi Starr [00:08:54]:
And so, you know, that's getting into more than just conversion metrics. That's getting, you know, into some other metrics in terms of deal size and velocity. But just thinking about those two metrics alone, that is so much more revenue from the same top of funnel effort. And so if I think about what happens is, you know, when we are doing things at the top of the funnel at this stage, this is where those leads move. You know, or should I say the middle of the funnel is where those leads move from curiosity into readiness. And we've got to get that readiness because a lot of times, people aren't already in the market for what we sell. And so we get a pulse, we get some sort of interest that we are peaking at the top of the funnel, but we got to move. We got to take that curiosity, we've got to harness that curiosity and get that curiosity into a commitment to evaluating the change.

Brandi Starr [00:09:53]:
And that's really what we have to do in the middle. We aren't trying to get them to buy in the middle. That's not our role as marketers, but we are trying to get them to commit to evaluating a change. So it's going from that curiosity to that commitment to evaluate a change. And so this is why we've got to, like, really give some focus in the middle. And I think, you know, and I've said this many times before, I think the reason the middle gets so ignored is because we focus so much of our efforts and there's an expectation that we are reporting on performance of things where we are spending a lot of money and there's not as much money spent in the middle, so there is less reporting on it. Likewise, when our middle is messy or muddy, it's also really hard to report on performance because it's kind of like everybody, there's all these things happening at the top, and then they just get dumped into that one welcome nurture or that one other nurturer or a newsletter that isn't really purposeful. And so what I'm thinking about is just some of the quick wins for conversion rate optimizations.

Brandi Starr [00:11:10]:
And some of the quick wins here can be simple tweaks. So if you've got some things running. So looking at simple tweaks to your email nurtures, how can we better target? How can we better personalize? How can we use their digital body language or their online behaviors to really optimize? So for, you know, whatever you've got running, sort of the quick win is how do we just make that incrementally better? How do we make that a little bit better so that it can help our conversion rate optimization? That's just kind of like our first step, let's get some quick wins moving in the right direction. The second step, in my opinion, is this is where we all need to take a step back and ask the question, what's in our middle? And think about all the different ways that we are attracting people to us. So a lot of people have online or in person events, they're running programmatic and display ads, organic and paid social. You know, there's SEO, there's in some cases, you've got an account based strategy or referrals from current customers. There's all these different things. Depending on what they're doing, they're going to have some level of understanding of who you are and what you do.

Brandi Starr [00:12:34]:
So think about it this way. For those people that are coming to you because they attended your webinar, they are going to have a different level of understanding of who you are as a company and what you offer than someone who just downloaded a white paper that they saw on a LinkedIn ad. And so where we start them in that journey of moving them from curiosity to readiness has to be really different. And what I see so often, I just had a conversation with a client a couple weeks ago where they were like, oh, yeah, our big nurture for 2025 is going to focus on this. And I asked, why? Why that? And they're like, oh, this is going to replace that. Because that was underperforming. Okay, well, why was that underperforming? And these are the conversations that I don't see enough cmos and CROs having because it is getting a bit in the weeds and we're all stretched thin and sometimes it's hard to dig in there. And so this is an opportunity for you to have some conversations with whoever owns middle of the funnel on your team to get them to help you understand.

Brandi Starr [00:13:47]:
Once we are doing all these things at the top and we get them into our database, what are we actually doing to move them from curiosity to readiness and get an understanding for yourself around what is actually happening and put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Would you respond to this? Would this help get you closer to a decision? Is it enough communication? Another client example, they had a nurturer, their nurture. If we looked at the longest length of time that a prospect could be in this nurture, it was about 60 ish days, so two months. But when I asked them what their sales cycle was, they said their sales cycle was anywhere from twelve to 18 months. Well, it's no wonder that this nurture is underperforming, because you're giving them all the content in a couple months. But then you know that there's no chance that they're going to actually buy in that window of time. And so that's a place where the middle was not meeting the need like we've got to. And we talk about in CMO to CRO, for those watching on video, over my shoulder, for those not, the book we wrote, CMO to CRO, the revenue takeover by the next generation executive.

Brandi Starr [00:15:05]:
When we wrote that book, one of the things that we talked about is all of the measures and goals have to be connected from the top of the funnel to the middle, from the middle down to the bottom. And so all of those pieces have to be connected together in terms of the goals. And likewise, once the goals are all connected, all of the tactics have to be connected as well. And so this is that critical role of the middle of the funnel, of really all the phases of the funnel. But the middle is the connector, because we spend a bunch of money in demand generation. We, you know, our sales team is some of our most expensive resources. That middle is the connector, and it's the thing that helps make all of our money that we're spending actually work. And so this is where, so getting, you know, more tactically of how we do this is stepping back and creating a plan.

Brandi Starr [00:16:01]:
How do we focus on those really key tactics? What are the two, three things we're doing at the top that are driving the majority of our interest? I was talking to a prospect, and they said that 60% of their leads come from content syndication. So I said, okay, that's where we need to start. When they come in from content syndication, what assets are you syndicating? Let's categorize them into themes. And we discovered that their themes were the problems that they solve. They didn't plan their content that way, which, you know, they should, but that was how everything was organized. So I said, okay, we're going to bucket, you know, the last, let's say, twelve pieces of content that you syndicated. We're going to bucket them into these three problems that you solve, these three themes. Okay.

Brandi Starr [00:16:50]:
When someone responds, when they download something from theme a, where do they go? What are they likely? What is the likely product we would sell them? What else do they need to know to move them from that curiosity to readiness to have the conversation with sales? Now, let's build that middle of the funnel that speaks to that problem and that audience and within that, because there are different Personas there, b, two b, company sizes. There's all these different things. All of that personalization exists within that one campaign. And so ultimately for them, and I talk a lot about the campaign map, ultimately for them, they're gonna have three big nurtures that tie to those three buckets, those three themes that their content is under. And so moving forward, whenever they put new content into content syndication, they need to classify it into a theme. When they set things up, those people are going to feed in, they're going to then go through this nurture, and they can review and optimize. How is that particular thing working? What percentage of those people are becoming hand raisers or engaging to a point that it does make sense for sales to reach in and talk to them? And then the next step is, what happens when those people come out of that campaign and still are not at a place where they are ready? How do we stay connected with them? At a point, we kind of got to back off and, you know, get a little less salesy. But we do want to stay connected with them in a meaningful way, which does not mean just, you know, keep spamming them every week with, here's some product info.

Brandi Starr [00:18:32]:
How do we take a position of value as a business that we can stay engaged with this company so that when they do get to a point of readiness to solve whatever problem that they know, like and trust us, these, I feel, are really the basics. Like, I don't think that anything that I am saying is necessarily rocket science or super brand new. And it's kind of the same thing that I felt when I was going through the winning by design course and looking at the conversion metrics. It's like none of this is new. But sometimes it takes us taking all of the things that we already know and stepping back and reapplying them differently, or rethinking about how we are applying them. And that's really what has led us as a business to even start to use the middle of the funnel language, because we as a company had to step back and look at what have we been doing really, really well for clients. And that's when we realized we weren't calling it middle of the funnel, we were calling it email, because email is the main tactic in the middle of the funnel. But like all the things that we already know, it's important to take that time to just step back and re look at them.

Brandi Starr [00:19:50]:
And so depending on where you're starting from, there are a lot of different directions you can go in terms of how you really optimize that middle, how you get some of those quick wins but a key piece. And going back to the course and what made me start to think about this as a topic is how we have to track these things, because the data model and the data flow and what we're capturing and making it so that it's useful is really important. And something that I don't, I feel like a lot of companies see as too big of a project because when I talk to people, it's like everybody's like, oh, yeah, our data's dirty, or we're not tracking this. And it'd be great if we could, but I, I don't know that that's even possible. And you've got to really hone in and figure out how do we actually plug in the numbers of those different conversion points and then even thinking about the conversion points as not just the big buckets. Because usually I can see, like, what we look at is, you know, you do some level of effort to attract people. Let's say you run, you know, paid social, and there's some percentage of those people that actually engage and give you their email address. And then there's some percentage of those people that become a marketing qualified lead or whatever term that you use.

Brandi Starr [00:21:18]:
There's some percentage that become an opportunity, some percentage that win, that become close won. And so those are our big conversion points. And those are the things that I think most people think about. But one of the AHA moments that I had during the revenue architecture course was thinking about some of those in between conversion points that we aren't always tracking. So thinking about the middle of the funnel, we get their email address. There is a conversion point to how many of them do we just get to engage? So they click something. They, you know, I mean, it's mainly a click, but depending, because there's other channels that we can use in the middle of the funnel. But what percentage of the people that we get into the middle actually engage? Like that first engagement point once you've got them in your database, that's a key conversion metric because that percentage can tell you if your sources are bad, if the things that you're doing at the top of the funnel are not working.

Brandi Starr [00:22:21]:
We did an analysis for a client, I guess it was probably two years ago now, where they also used a lot of content syndication vendors. And when we dug in and analyzed, we found that the vendor that they thought was most effective for them, those contacts, had the lowest percentage of ever having engaged or ever engaging after they came into the database. So even though they were getting high volumes of new contacts, that conversion to initial engagement was so small. And then how do we go from the conversion from initial engagement to, let's say, meaningful engagement? And so meaningful engagement, in some cases, that is using lead scoring, in some cases, it's using other mechanisms. But maybe that is meaningful engagement that tells you that they might be headed in the direction of readiness, and that may be a place where there's that lower middle of the funnel type nurture that we have. And so how many people flow in to that? Cause a lot of times we will have people when they come in to the top part of the middle. So the top of the middle of the funnel will have more of that introductory, still a bit thought leadership, but kind of leading to the fact that we can help solve these problems, but still not getting into product specifics or service specifics. And that, you know, something that's that deep.

Brandi Starr [00:23:49]:
And so at some point they may engage with us enough that we say, okay, we need to be a bit more direct and really try to move them towards readiness. So that's another conversion point that we need to be tracking. And so if we think about at the bottom of the funnel, we have lots of conversion points. You think about all the different stages of an opportunity or stages of a lead. Generally, your, you know, head of sales CRO, those things are getting tracked. What percentage of people go from discovery to demo or demo to whatever. All companies have different sizes or different stages. And so those micro conversion points are tracked better on the sales side just because of the different opportunity stages.

Brandi Starr [00:24:38]:
They're not always used. And so that's the opportunity there. But in the middle of the funnel, we usually aren't tracking those micro conversion points. And that's a really key thing as well, because as we are optimizing our conversion rates, we need to be optimizing all of them. We can't just be looking at how many came into the database and how many became mqls. There's too many things that happen in the middle. And if we aren't tracking those micro conversion points, then it could lead us to run in the wrong direction if something's not working. And then I think the other key thing is conversion rate optimization.

Brandi Starr [00:25:19]:
It's a continuous process. And one of the other things that came up in the revenue architecture course that I'm a big believer in, but it gave me some new ideas for how to do it, is the feedback loops. We've got to make sure that when we have the data, that there are feedback loops and that we are analyzing what is happening in all of those conversion points. So looking at volume metrics, looking at conversion metrics, you know, looking at velocity of how quickly are they moving through these different phases, getting that feedback to then feed the other portions of the funnel to help inform how do we do better, what's working, what's not. So in the example that I gave earlier about the content syndication vendor, that feedback loop from the middle of the funnel told the top of the funnel, hey, stop using this syndication vendor. You're wasting your money. Lean more into this other vendor, because even though they're more expensive, people are actually engaging that conversion rate to that first engagement. And then even the conversion rate from first engagement to highly engaged is high.

Brandi Starr [00:26:31]:
And so that is that feedback loop. And it needs to be supported by data and process. And the process there is, whether it's monthly, quarterly, you know, semiannually, biannually, whatever, you know, depending on your sales cycle, can determine how, how frequently you need to have this loop. But there needs to also be conversation. We want the data to inform our strategy throughout, but you've got to also be having conversations so that those that own the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and the sales team are having conversations about what they're seeing, where things are breaking down, where the volumes are going down, where conversion metrics are low. Because if we think about if we optimize those earlier conversion points, you're moving more people to the later conversion points and thereby putting out more revenue at the end. And this is, again, with the same level of investment. It's like all other things, you know, the effort being the same.

Brandi Starr [00:27:32]:
We can get more out of it if we actually optimize this. And so this is where, you know, the, the real cost of overlooking the middle comes in, um, you know, under invest. Under investing in the middle of the funnel is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. Your efforts at the top are wasted. It's like if we think about, we got a bucket with holes in the bucket, no matter, we pour all this money in and in. You know, there's some of that that might make it to the right person, you know, right place, like some of it that we get dumped, but a lot of it is leaking out. And so if we are not really investing, and investing is time and budget, human resources, into the middle of the funnel. It's such a missed opportunity, and it is a direct hit to revenue.

Brandi Starr [00:28:26]:
And so focusing on lead generation and closing deals while ignoring the middle creates a revenue leak that weakens the entire pipeline. And that's what's happening when you overlook the middle. And so thinking about this course on conversion rate metrics just, just really, really got me to thinking differently about how we talk about this so that it resonates in a way that you see as valuable and you being our audience, because it is one of those things that the more that I have conversations, the more that I'm out networking, I see how ignored or undervalued the middle of the funnel is. And so talking about our challenges is just the first step. And nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, you know, we flip this on its head and ask me as the guest to give you some homework. And so my one thing, my first step, if what you, what I have said has resonated with you, my first recommendation is to have a conversation with whoever drives the middle.

Brandi Starr [00:29:44]:
So it could be your email marketing manager, whoever is going to know the most and ask them what's in our middle and really hear and understand, get them to walk you through and show when people come in from these different channels, what happens. You really need to have an understanding of what's happening in your middle because it plays such a critical role that you then need to be able to drive direction, strategy and focus on. But you gotta first understand what's there. And so I have enjoyed our discussion for today, but that's our time. And just so that you all know where to find me, obviously you can continue to listen to me here on revenue rehab at Revenue rehab Live. If there's anything that I've said that resonates with you and you're like, I need some help. Definitely. You know, tegrida.com, you can reach out to us, you know, we can help to talk about, give you some ideas on what's in your middle.

Brandi Starr [00:30:46]:
And I will also throw a link to our funnel impact calculator in the show notes so that you have an opportunity to test out and see what the impact of optimizing your middle could show in revenue for you. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes. There'll be a great link there. And also, if you've got any feedback, you can find me on LinkedIn all the time. And I would love to hear from you. I just threw my social channels on the screen. If you are watching this live, it has been an awesome solo episode and I am hopeful that you have found this valuable and would love to hear your feedback. Until next time, bye bye.