Conversion Strategy for High-ticket Products and Services with Loredana Principessa

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[00:00:15] Sani: Welcome to no hacks show a weekly podcast in which smart people talk to you about better online experiences My guest today is a conversion strategist for high ticket products and services. In January, 2023, she launched Marco, a conversion consulting company, primarily working with real estate, investment, and e commerce clients.

Lordana Principessa, congratulations on the one year anniversary with Marco and welcome to No Hacks show.

[00:00:39] Loredana: Thank you. It's so great to be here.

[00:00:42] Sani: Great to talk to you. So you also love to run. I have to bring that up. This is why we're talking today. After all, maybe you don't love it, but you do it a lot. Like no one really loves. The, the step by step thing, they love the process of, of just going through that.

How does running affect everything else in your life and especially your work?

[00:01:00] Loredana: Yeah, it's been so fascinating actually, because I got into running a sort of a parallel moment of when I was launching my business. So the same year that I was launching my business, I was training for the London Marathon and at the time I didn't, I thought there were two completely isolated things that I was doing in my life that were quite big, but actually each one of them impacted the other.

So. The training that you do for a marathon, like how You have to keep going even on the difficult days, even when you feel like there's no chance in hell that I'm going to actually be able to run a marathon is very similar to when you're launching a business and you have the days of this is really tough.

Like, is anything going to happen soon? Is anything going to keep moving? So, and then also just for mental clarity, like I'm sure you have the same, but how many ideas come to you when you are away from your desk, away from your phone and you're just out in nature and you're running? I'm running for quite a long period of time and it's just you and your thoughts and my creativity comes to life then.

So yeah, it's been, it's been amazing. And we did connect through a new

[00:02:06] Sani: therapeutical, exactly. And I have, uh, I mean, here they are, my, my, my earbuds that I use when I run. And the triple tap on the right one is Siri. And Siri, take note. That's what I do most when I, when I go on solo runs. Like this is the best work productivity strategy. Like when you're out and alone and your brain.

It just doesn't work normally. I mean, after one hour of running, your brain is different. Basically it works in a different way. So taking notes while running and not even stopping that, that is the best productivity tool that I've ever had in my life. So yeah, it definitely bleeds out to everything else.

So, uh, you, uh, in the intro, I mentioned, uh, you work with high ticket products and services. How is the strategy for conversion different for those products and services?

[00:02:52] Loredana: Yeah, great question. I mean, it's looking at starting from who these types of customers are and what their buying journey is. And because typically big life decisions, whether you know, a client that I have is in the real estate investment space and they are like looking to invest a significant amount, their customers are looking to invest a significant amount of money.

We have to think about what their buyer journey is for their customers. So they, you know, Want to make sure that their investment is secure. They want to make sure that their work dealing with a reputable company And the buying journey is actually a lot longer. So There might be multiple touch points before they actually convert but Why it's different is that we just need to make sure that the messaging that we're putting across on When we're doing testing is really focused on that biojourney What matters to them at each point in their biojourney and how we can?

Capture them showing them that we care about we know about what the emotions are that they're going through

[00:03:57] Sani: So the emotional side is it plays a really huge role in it and there are a lot more touch points before the conversion, obviously with a decision so big. So you focus, did you have like a, what does the funnel look like there? Is it awareness, consideration, conversion, or I'm guessing there's more phases.

[00:04:17] Loredana: Yeah, I mean the The broader sort of funnel is still like that awareness phase where you know somebody First wakes up, and they decide that they're going to purchase a property for example, then it's about awareness about different brands that are in market and Interest phase might start to browse online, uh, you might be see in certain advertising campaigns like on Google that there's keyword search terms might be quite broad, for example, um.

Social media posts starting to generate interest from different brands. But when we're actually, when we're actually focused on the lead gen side of things, and this is the space that I play in the most. Um, I, I play in the lead conversion space, like from that moment where they're actually interested in making an inquiry.

We're looking at how we can target them in the spaces that they play on online. So it might be Google, LinkedIn. On, on Facebook or Meta. And then we want to drive them to a conversion focused landing page where we can then capture their inquiry and pass them onto the sales team. And this is the thing for these types of inquiries, we need to make sure that we're generating leads with a strong conversion rate.

And that's our metric that we want to focus on. But we also want to focus on the fact that these leads need to be high quality because you know, we could. We could be a campaign that was running. They needed to find investors that had like a minimum of 100 grand to invest. So I'm sure I could have easily generated loads of leads for them and said, Oh, look, we've got a 20 percent conversion rate.

But then actually, when the sales team contact them, none of them can actually afford the product, whereas it's about finding that fine balance between making sure there's some key qualifiers on there and then also working to keep that conversion rate high.

[00:06:09] Sani: And that's not easy. That's a process, right?

[00:06:11] Loredana: Here's a process.

[00:06:13] Sani: What you mentioned is we're preparing CRO goes way beyond what's happening on your website and it can be used for a lot more Informed decisions than just you know, how the product page should look and stuff like that. So How does that happen? How do you and your team and Marco?

How do you use CRO? To to use those insights elsewhere

[00:06:33] Loredana: Yeah, it's such a good question, both before you launch a CRE program and also ongoing. I mean, from the initial phases, we're looking at I think especially people that are brand new to CRO and in some of these industries, CRO is quite new to the way that they do their marketing and the way that they do their digital marketing.

So the mistake can be that CRO is literally just focused on what's happening on the website or on their landing pages. But actually it's impacted not just looking at the digital ad campaigns or where the traffic's coming from. It starts from that big customer research piece and understanding who the customers are, what motivates them to inquire, what their objections are.

But then you follow it right the way through the process until you get to the sales team as well. And the sales team can be super valuable because they are the people that are dealing with these inquiries every single day. And If they, you know, if you're generating leads for them, but actually when they're having the conversation I'll actually give a perfect example about this.

It's just easier to explain Again client in the investment space they we were generating leads for their sales team conversion rate was great The connection rate was great feedback from the sales team that there was just no urgency on the leads So they were really struggling to convert them So then we use that insight back into the landing page to drive some really clear urgency message about what the benefit is about actually Inquiring but then also becoming a customer today as opposed to holding off But then it goes even beyond that business cycle it goes on like Outside of what's happening in the world as well, like what's happening, what the market conditions, what's happening, what time of year it is, um, it goes way beyond just inside the business or inside the digital campaign.

[00:08:28] Sani: But for that all to work really well together all of the teams need to be Have the same information and basically work on this entire process together. So does that always happen with organizations or are there basically silos

[00:08:43] Loredana: Yeah.

[00:08:44] Sani: and, and for the, for the conversion team and for the lead gen team and why, why isn't it better

[00:08:50] Loredana: I know. Yeah, it's still in an ideal world, there would be a nice conversation loop between teams because every every team has valuable feedback that can actually impact the process and improve the process and improve the customer journey. But unfortunately, it is still fragmented. I would say, especially in these industries that are a bit more old school, I would say as well, sales and marketing in particular can be quite separate.

Um, so that's why it's really important to. Get the sales team in particular, get their buy in in the process, like speak to them about what the feedback is for all leads that have been generated, um, ask them for what their feedback can be based on conversation, because I think the more that we are including teams in conversations, that's how we can start to make change and get people involved in making optimizations.

[00:09:48] Sani: Right. So, so talking to your sales team is probably the best first step when you want to, uh, yeah.

[00:09:54] Loredana: Especially with these types of biojourneys and with these types of leads, I would say so regular feedback from the sales team to understand what the quality of the leads are that are coming through and also what the, if there's any feedback, what are the common objections? How can we use that feedback back into our landing page and then back into where we're sending the traffic from like back into our ads?

[00:10:19] Sani: Right. And this is in the traditional industries like investment and real estate. I guess for e commerce, you could say customer support and talk to a customer support and find out what the, what the struggles are with, with the products so we can address them in a product page. So, uh, start with the sales team.

I, I, I'm hard to disagree with that. No one in the world would disagree with that, uh, that saying that more information is better. Uh, so. Let's say you do that and then you do some testing on the website and, and you learn something from that, from your CRO efforts, onsite CRO efforts, how can you use that in, for example, ad campaigns, or should you implement that, those findings in the ad campaigns?

[00:10:57] Loredana: Yeah, I would say so. It's a continuous loop. It's I like to call it a big ecosystem like feedback from each department can actually really help and influence each other. So say feedback. Let's use that example feedback from the sales team. Leads are good. They're answering the phones, but there's no urgency.

So we then implemented a test on the landing page which focuses on driving urgency and reasons why it's a good time to invest. That landing page converted higher than just your regular message, so then we feed back to our advertising team to say we've had this feedback from the sales team, we've proved on the landing page that the conversion that it does convert.

So now let's also see if we can get interest even further up the funnel by driving that urgency throughout and likewise the other way if there's anything from the advertising insights. You know, finding that gap if they see that there's a particular ad or creative that has a really high click through rate, but a really low conversion rate, then that's an insight that they can provide that actually we can implement on the landing page and then feed that insight back to the sales team.

[00:12:16] Sani: And what is the role that Marco has working on project leaders with a client? Do you work on the ads mostly or, uh, onsite optimization?

[00:12:24] Loredana: Yeah, on site optimization and overall conversion strategy. So we're looking at that whole piece of what the process is. I mean, we do have some clients where we manage that whole process, but so we run the ads, run the landing page and work directly with them to hear the feedback. Um, but for the majority, it is on site testing and overall conversion strategy.

[00:12:46] Sani: Okay. And maybe a controversial question. What is easier working with the client's team or just owning the entire process yourself?

[00:12:54] Loredana: It's such a good question. Um, Do you know I've actually had really with the with working with the client's team so far I mean we're a year in so the I've had the pleasure of working with some really awesome Advertising people and a lot of the time it's actually not within their internal team. It might be another partner that they have And I found that they are actually really open to collaborating for testing and a great doing a great feedback loop I think also in the advertising space People are super keen for CRO because it helps at the end of the day, it helps the work that they're doing and it helps their campaign performance, but that's not their area of expertise.

So they've not moved into the CRO space. So, so far I've had a really great experience with the people that have worked in, in that space, but it is also definitely beneficial where I have had the opportunity to manage the entire conversion process because you are then literally responsible for seeing.

Insights to the landing page. I'm able to manage that ecosystem internally.

[00:13:57] Sani: Absolutely. And another thing that can be influenced is the offline marketing efforts. Just something you mentioned as well. Uh, so what kind of offline marketing efforts are you able to, to help basically you doing the onsite conversion optimization?

[00:14:12] Loredana: Yeah, I think this one's super interesting and really overlooked actually, because we're very focused on the inside digital campaign results and metrics that happen online, but actually take those insights and share them with your wider marketing team brand team. If the perfect example is message testing or image testing, um, If you're getting insights online that prove that you are generating conversions from a particular style of message, then use that to your advantage and use it in your, um, start with email campaigns, offline, in your brochure.

This was a really cool example actually. This was back when I was working for an agency in Australia. Had clients in the property development space and this literally happened first hand and it was super cool. We We're able to see that there was a particular image of a home development that had high click through rates, used it on the page, increased the conversion rates.

So then the client actually used that image as like the main billboard on the highway to promote their housing development. So instead of typically on that offline marketing, it's done a lot by just, we think that this would work because we know our customers, it's using the insights. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:46] Sani: even measure if a brochure works or if a billboard works? I know nothing about this. I really would like to learn.

[00:15:52] Loredana: Yeah. I mean, I don't know the honest answer to that either because I've always been in digital. Like, how, how do you measure it other than having conversations with customers potentially and seeing what, how they feel about having brochures? And I guess, you Yeah, I actually don't know the answer to that one, even myself, because I've always been in digital.

And the reason why I love digital is because you can prove results and insights. And you can start with ideas, of course, and workshop and brainstorm, but you're always throwing your ideas into testing to actually find out if your theory or hypothesis is correct or not. So, yeah, I mean, it's a great one. I

[00:16:35] Sani: anyone ever split tested a brochure? Like, you have two different brochures that you're giving out at a conference or something. I guess this could be done,

[00:16:45] Loredana: Yeah, I'm sure it could be, especially a large scale conference where there's like thousands of people like on entry, they wouldn't

[00:16:53] Sani: It could even

[00:16:54] Loredana: meet two people.

[00:16:55] Sani: Right. So putting all of this together, uh, at Marco, what is your process of working with the customers?

[00:17:00] Loredana: Yeah, um, good question. Well, for me. My goal at Marco isn't to sort of come in as a one fixed solution. I like working with our clients To then hopefully work with them for a long time. So the process when in the onboarding process is Always having a kickoff meeting where I'm understanding. This is what I actually always say CRO goes way beyond what's happening on your website So we always start with a kickoff meeting that we're really understanding Who because who your customers are?

What are their, what triggers them to buy, what are their pain points and then I also want to understand what the business process is. So not only what's happening when Typically when a lead comes to your website or to your landing page, what's that follow up process like? Are they receiving an email straight away?

Are they receiving an SMS? How quick do your sales team call them? Because these are all factors that are super important. Um, and then it depends which, which program we're working on. If it's, uh, an A B testing program, then it'll be running a audit to be able to pull out insights based on research, um, and pull together a full implementation plan so we can do testing based on.

What the audit has said, um, and if it's that full lead gen process, then it's ads landing page. Um, but I think the key thing, regardless of what it is that we're working on, for me, it's very important to have constant communication. So. I make sure we have like a weekly or a fortnightly meeting so that we're keeping on top of the results.

We're sharing insights, but also we're looking at opportunities where else could be important to help grow the business. Um, and I think that's super key. Like, communication for me is one of the most important things. I love going above and beyond for the clients that I work with.

[00:18:57] Sani: That, that's a great answer. Uh, and I'm sure there's not a single consultant who didn't at least entertain the thought of going solo, starting their own agency at some point. So what was it that led you into doing something like that?

[00:19:11] Loredana: I know it's, uh, yeah, sometimes I ask myself the same thing. No, I'm loving the journey. I'm loving it. Um, so I worked in digital for about eight years here in the UK and then over in Australia, and I've worked across lots of different areas of digital, different industries, different areas from, um, advertising, email marketing, but.

Where I actually fell in love with two things was the role that I had out in Australia, went for an awesome agency out there, ended up heading up their team in Sydney. And these were all clients that were in the property development space. So long considered high ticket purchase journeys. Um, and also they did lots of areas of marketing, but where I really loved was this testing and optimization.

And the fact that you can actually Improve the efforts of what's happening on your marketing based on testing on the destination that they go to. So that was all going great, but it was in Australia and the pandemic hit and Sydney was actually a wonderful. Place to be it wasn't as difficult as some of the areas of Australia in my experience.

I'm sure not for everyone and Nora's like my family at home in the UK So I was there for two years But the problem was that I didn't see any family or friends for two years and it was so tough And I came back one Christmas It's actually I've got a funny video somewhere. I came back and surprised everyone dressed as the Grinch, which is quite

[00:20:41] Sani: Oh, wow. Okay.

[00:20:43] Loredana: I didn't tell anyone.

Um, and I was like, right, family is so important to me and I've been away for two years. I've got a decision to make. I'm going to come back to the UK. Okay. Do I now go and work for another agency in the UK? Do I go in house? Or do I take these two passions that I've developed, which is longer, Purchase journeys, testing and optimization to show genuine genuine insights and also added onto that.

I really feel like in the digital marketing space here in the UK. Um, there's lots of focus still on driving traffic. and ads and content, which is amazing because it's important to have the experts in that space. But I really noticed there was a gap to educate on the testing and optimization process and how you can actually generate more from the marketing and advertising that you're doing by really focusing on testing the experience once they receive, once they get to the destination.

So that was the decision to launch and Marco was born.

[00:21:46] Sani: sure it was a great one. Uh, one quick question for the end, one pro and one con of running your own show.

[00:21:53] Loredana: Oh, putting me on the spot there. I love it. One pro. Well, the pro definitely has to be freedom, flexibility, um, Autonomy to do things like how you believe you want to show the most value to your clients. Like there is nothing better than the feeling of owning your own show and receiving a testimonial or feedback from a client that you know has literally come from the work that you've been putting in as a solo business.

Um, that is just an amazing feeling. The cons is The stress, the, I tell you actually, the biggest con for me is that I love being around people and working with people and I love the agency life. So especially in the first six months to a year, which we're on now, really tough working solo and bouncing ideas off myself and my head and the walls.

[00:22:53] Sani: And chat GPT, come on, be honest, be honest.

[00:22:56] Loredana: Yeah, yeah. I'll chat to you BT. What do you think about that? Yeah, honestly. And so, that was really tough. So, for me, um, very important for me to, as soon as I could, come into an office environment. So, that's what I did in December. Just to be around people. And, um, but yeah, one of the toughest things ever. I think no one really prepares you for how lonely it actually is.

[00:23:19] Sani: uh, absolutely. Uh, what a journey and to everyone considering doing something like. Ignore the con. Go back to the pro. Listen to the pro again. Just rewind and listen to the pro again. And it's worth it. Like taking some risks and taking some chances in life is usually worth it. It's better to regret trying than not trying something.

So I think everyone should consider a path like the one you're on. And with that said, I just need to thank you for being a guest on the Nohack Show. I'm going to wish you luck at the Rome Marathon. Eight weeks out or something like that. I, this is the hardest part of the training schedule. This is when you're thinking about quitting, when everyone's thinking about quitting and why am I doing this to myself?

You can do this. You're going to beat your personal best. You're going to get your medal at the Coliseum. It's going to be amazing. And I'm looking forward to reading about it on LinkedIn. So thank you. And to everyone listening, please consider rating, reviewing and sharing the show, and I'll talk to you next week.

[00:24:14] Loredana: Thanks so much for having me, Sani.