Among senior marketers, a common question I’ve heard dozens of times over the years is… “if you were building a marketing department from scratch, who would be your first hire?”.

The most common answers is always a… “content marketer, demand gen person, marketing manager, growth hacker, and et cetera“.

Bu you know what… I’ve never heard anyone say a conversion rate optimization (CRO) expert… which I contend, is the most valuable skill in the entire marketing department. Because CRO can organically increase leads and revenue month-over-month, unlike anyone other marketing skill.

How can CRO increases leads & revenue

Say for example you inherited a website that generates 5,000 website visitors from SEO, paid search, social, and email channels. And combined, the conversion rate from those 5,000 visitors is 1% (which is common).

A CRO expert can work each month to strategically increase the conversion from 1%, to 1.5%, to 2%, to 3%, to 4% and on and on. You get the point.

Overtime, CRO can double, triple, quadruple or more a company’s online leads and revenue. Which is what marketers are responsible for… increasing leads and revenue.

Boom!… you just saved your job because you made the right first hire.

And now that conversion rate is healthy and growing… the next step is to scale the traffic from 5,000, to 6k, to 8k, to 10k, or more.

See how that works… you’re on your way to promotion my friend.

Here’s who I learned CRO from and how:

➜ Conversion Rate Experts coined the term Conversion Rate Optimization in 2007. In my opinion, they are the best in the world at it. I recommend you visit and study their website.

➜ Free Resources from Conversion Rate Experts are available online. You can download their best-selling book for free (or buy it on Amazon) and other free eBooks. These are gold, not platinum resources for any marketer.