A Guide to B2B Conversion Rate Optimization
While conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies are common for e-commerce, many B2B companies haven’t tapped into their potential for nurturing leads or driving revenue.
CRO expert Michael Aagaard, in a recent session for the Attributed Podcast, shared his seasoned insights on why B2B marketers need a new playbook.
Michael offers a roadmap for companies to improve their conversion rates and optimize user journeys in thoughtful, data-driven ways.
Here’s a look at his top strategies for CRO, built around three essential pillars: Research, Experimentation, and Validation.
Listen to the entire conversation here.
Where to Begin with CRO
Michael starts by defining CRO as:
A process for making better business decisions through research, experimentation, and validation.
If you’re new to CRO, he suggests focusing first on the basics:
Evaluate your entire customer journey, from ad to landing page, through each stage of the conversion funnel. Look for misalignments in tone, messaging, or functionality.
Engage with your internal teams. Ask sales and customer support what customers often ask about or where they see users getting confused. This quick step can often reveal “low-hanging fruit” issues with minimal effort.
Assess usability across devices. Many conversion issues can be traced back to device-specific problems, such as buttons that don’t work on mobile. Simple fixes here can have an outsized impact on CRO.
The common misconception about CRO
Michael addresses the most common CRO myth: that it's all about running endless AB tests.
There can be a lot of misunderstandings...that it's synonymous with A/B testing and all you do is just run a bunch of A/B tests...I think that's a very, very limited version of it.
While AB testing can validate specific hypotheses if there’s enough traffic, Michael cautions that it’s not the core of a CRO strategy. Instead, effective CRO is about deeply understanding your users and making informed changes that truly address their needs.
For B2B companies, especially those without the high traffic volumes needed to run meaningful AB tests, Michael suggests that other methods like qualitative research, user interviews, or even talking to internal teams like sales can provide a wealth of insights.
Use research as your guiding light
Successful CRO starts with understanding your user’s perspective.
For B2B companies, this means digging into the motivations, pain points, and decision-making processes of potential clients.
Whether qualitative (e.g., user interviews and surveys) or quantitative (e.g., heat maps and session recordings), research allows companies to make data-driven decisions that go beyond guesswork.
For companies with smaller budgets or lower traffic, Michael recommends gathering insights through feedback polls, speaking with sales, and monitoring session recordings to gain a better understanding of user behavior without expensive AB tests.
Understand your customer’s journey through research
Use research to understand the user’s perspective.
For B2B companies, this means getting familiar with customers’ motivations and pain points by conducting user interviews and engaging with frontline sales and customer success teams.
Sales and customer support are invaluable sources of insights into what customers actually need and want.
I always say talk to the people who talk to the people who pay you money.
Each user journey stage needs to meet a potential client’s expectations because often, there’s a disconnect between a company’s messaging and what the customer actually wants or understands.
Fine-tune messaging by asking specific questions like:
Are there any unanswered questions you have?
Was there anything that almost stopped you from signing up?
These queries can help surface misalignments in content and highlight information gaps that may be causing potential leads to slip through the cracks.
Embrace the Experimentation Mindset
Because CRO is a process of continuous learning and refinement, Michael advises B2B marketers to avoid the “test everything” approach and instead adopt an experimentation mindset.
This means approaching every change with a hypothesis and a clear understanding of what you're trying to achieve.
The quick test is to say why… if the person proposing the change can't really formulate why then you're probably not going to learn from it and it's probably not a worthwhile test.
Michael urges marketers to see experimentation not as a checklist but as a commitment to refining the user experience through iterative learning and improvement.
For more on embracing experimentation, check out this conversation with Timi Olotu.
Validation: Building trust and avoiding disappointment
The final pillar of Michael’s CRO philosophy is validation.
For him, CRO goes further than getting users to click “Buy” or “Request a Demo”, and includes ensuring that every part of the journey meets their expectations and delivers on promises.
We have a tendency as salespeople to oversell and under-deliver because we want to close the deal, but that's very short term thinking.
Michael’s approach to validation focuses on aligning messaging, providing clarity, and managing expectations.
Managing disappointment
Unmet expectations can damage user trust and lead to lost customers.
When a user’s experience falls short of what they expected, it creates a form of emotional friction that lingers, often costing the business more in the long run.
For instance, if a user clicks on an ad with a soft, informative tone, they shouldn’t land on a high-pressure sales page. This incongruity, can be jarring and ultimately undermine trust in the brand.
So monitor your messaging closely.
Michael suggests using surveys, session recordings, and even App Store optimization (if relevant) to validate that messaging is clear, direct, and aligned with user needs.
Finally, be sure to address potential disappointments. Consider each stage of the journey from the user’s perspective. Explicitly clarifying critical details, like pricing, cancellation policies, and trial conditions, to avoid frustrating surprises later on.
By managing expectations well, companies can avoid user disappointment, a factor Michael considers critical for long-term CRO success.
Conclusion
Michael’s approach is clear: CRO is not about quick wins or surface-level tweaks, but about understanding user behavior, setting realistic expectations, and building trust.
For marketers, this means committing to research, establishing a feedback loop with internal teams, and testing in a way that respects the user’s journey.
Ultimately, CRO is about making better business decisions through data and experimentation, decisions that build stronger customer relationships and, over time, drive sustained growth.
About the Speaker
Michael Aagaard is a globally recognized expert in Conversion Rate Optimization with nearly two decades of experience in growth marketing and experimentation. Known for his research-driven, user-focused approach, Michael is a frequent keynote speaker and CRO consultant who believes in the power of data and behavioral insights to create meaningful customer experiences.
