Optimizing for Taboo Products with Tracy Laranjo

[00:00:00] Tracy: With sexual wellness products, I see it all the time. Business leaders, especially on the brand marketing side, they have in their mind this vision of who their ideal customer is, but they're not really interested in pivoting. I hate the word pivoting. I hate that I just said that

I thought I was making products for women. It turns out men actually get a lot of use out of this product. ​

[00:00:40] Sani: Welcome to nohacks.show weekly podcast, dedicated to letting smart people talk to you about better online experiences. Today, we're talking about optimizing for taboo products and services. So if you need to do something like that. Stay tuned, listen to the episodes. I guarantee you, you're going to be blown away.

And my guest today is the fractional head of CRO and research. One of the most well known podcasters in the optimization experimentation space. Often opinionated, always amazing and never boring. Tracy Laranjo. Welcome to the podcast. \

[00:01:08] Tracy: That was, I was about to say, that was an amazing intro. I, I'm like, who is this person? Is that me?

[00:01:14] Sani: Yeah, I think it is you. I think it is you just to get the conversation going before we get to the taboo products and services. If your site looks better, it will perform better. How do you feel about that?

[00:01:25] Tracy: No, I, I have been very vocal about this. Uh, I, I've seen a lot of different sites in my time as an optimizer and And really, some of the most beautiful websites have been the worst in terms of performance. And that's conversion performance, profitability, and some of the ugliest looking sites, they do so well.

So disagree, hard disagree, the better your site looks, it does not mean the better it will perform.

[00:01:57] Sani: uh, so, uh, I mean, just look at Amazon, look at booking, look at, look at websites like that. And uh, you, you, you'll see exactly what, what Tracy means by that. And another thing I read as I was preparing for this, you got into optimization by failing at paid acquisition.

[00:02:14] Tracy: Yeah, so, yeah, kind of, yeah, in many ways, yes. So, I was in a growth marketer role at a pretty early stage startup, and I, as a growth marketer, as many growth marketers, you do everything, and with that is paid acquisition, CRO, uh, email marketing, and what I noticed was that paid acquisition was really hard, especially for the product I was selling, which was, Kind of actually part of what we're talking about today, it's a, kind of a stigmatized product, it was an online will generator, a lot of people don't want to talk about death, uh, so it's very hard to sell.

So I really struggled with paid acquisition, I really struggled with scaling our ads, but I did notice so much opportunity in conversion optimization and life cycle marketing. And that is why three amazing leaders who I look up to today said, Tracy, we think that you should specialize in CRO. And that was really where it started for me.

[00:03:18] Sani: That was amazing. When was that? Just curious.

[00:03:21] Tracy: this was at the, oh my gosh. So I have been a serious optimizer for about three years. This is the three year anniversary. But I would say thank you. Thank you. I'm three years old. And, um, yeah, it's, uh, I, I was kind of doing experimentation before, but poorly. I thought I was doing it before, but it was, it's really only been the last three years where I was doing it.

Properly, and yeah, ExperimentNation, the ExperimentNation community for nurturing that in me.

[00:03:57] Sani: That's a nice origin story. So we're talking about optimizing for taboo products and services, which is something I know absolutely nothing about. This is why I'm excited about this conversation. How is that different? Like, what is the, what are the main issues that you face when you optimize for taboo products and services?

Hmm. Hmm.

[00:04:20] Tracy: but the big one that comes up when I start working with a new client with a product that's relatively stigmatized or taboo is, uh, ad platforms. You can't get away with advertising as blatantly and obviously as, say, if you were just selling t shirts. It's a lot harder to sell a vacuum suction vibrator than a white t shirt.

I'm sure,

[00:04:47] Sani: I would, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:50] Tracy: Yeah, and like, same with kind of what I was saying a few minutes earlier, um, death products. Nobody wants to think about death, and also those are things that you can kind of put off, saying oh, I'm, I'm young, I don't have to worry about this. So it's a mix of ad platforms, making it really difficult to advertise, and also just this mental barrier that people have for whatever reason.

It looks different for every type of product, but yeah, those are the big ones.

[00:05:21] Sani: I'm cute. I'm curious about the, the, the will generator. Like what was, what were the things that worked in that space?

[00:05:28] Tracy: Yeah, for that particular space, and these are things that come up with all types of different products, but it's a bit more dire for this audience. They wanted to see a preview of what this experience looks like for them. For many of the willful customers, they had never written a will before. And they had no idea where to start, and they also had no idea what kind of deliverable they get at the end of the process.

So we learned a lot of that through user research. Visitors really want to see a few steps ahead and then decide, oh, is it worth dropping 300 for this document? What does it look like? So previews of documents, um, previews of the experience of writing your will showing that it's actually quite easy to do for many individuals.

[00:06:19] Sani: Right. And I mean, 300, I guess that's far less than what would pay a lawyer or, or whatever. You know, one thing about that, like, that's like the definition of lifetime value. It's one order per customer. It's, it's a very, very weird way to look at, I mean, there's just no re engagement, I

[00:06:40] Tracy: Yes, that's ultimately what I struggled with most as a growth marketer there, aside from ads. But yeah, that was definitely something that we struggled with. But this whole idea of showing the customer the next few steps ahead. That's still pervasive in a lot of the other products that I optimize for, especially stigmatized products.

So, in sexual wellness, a lot of individuals want to know, What is my, um, credit card statement gonna look like? What is my delivery, my shipment gonna look like? They really want to know a few steps ahead, what to expect, because they may, you know, a lot of millennials moved back in with their parents during the pandemic.

They don't want mom and dad to see the new toys that they bought, you know, things like that. Yes,

[00:07:34] Sani: pre addressing the concerns, basically, that's where you start. Okay, okay, uh, and like there, you sent me your notes for the episode, there are three steps. I'll just let you go through that, and I'll ask the silly questions along the way.

[00:07:48] Tracy: Yeah, so there are three really big steps that I find are important, especially when you're dealing with a stigmatized product or digital service. The first being empathetic and inclusive decision making. What I see, especially with sexual wellness products, is that business leaders will create a product with a certain customer in mind, and then it's only when you actually go and do qualitative research that you realize, Oh.

So, I am actually serving a whole group of individuals that I never even considered. So definitely a big part of, um, the process.

[00:08:25] Sani: How common is that, by the way, to, to completely overlook another segment when, when you're creating your personas? I mean, that, that's not really what people should do anymore, but how common is that?

[00:08:37] Tracy: I see it, not even just with, um, sexual wellness products, I see it all the time. I think. I think business leaders, especially on the brand marketing side, they have in their mind this vision of who their ideal customer is, but they're not really interested in pivoting. I hate the word pivoting. I hate that I just said that, but they're, they're not really interested in adapting when they see, oh, for example, um, these customers who.

I thought I was making products for women. It turns out men actually get a lot of use out of this product. Or, uh, I thought I was marketing to women, but it turns out it's a lot of women's, uh, partners or spouses who are, who are buying these products. So that's a lot of what comes up. It's. It happens all the time, but I see it a lot with stigmatized products, so it's even more important that you kind of shift, uh, when you notice that that's happening.

[00:09:37] Sani: But that conversation is not going to happen in the boardroom when the product is being planned, when the marketing campaign is being planned. Usually that's, you know, like you said, this is a product for women. Let's imagine this is a 30 to 35 year old woman, owns two cats or like whatever. Set it up like that and then, you know, go from there and realize, no, actually it's not just them buying it.

It's something completely different. So, do you have some examples you could share?

[00:10:02] Tracy: Mm hmm. So. A very progressive company will be a lot better at seeing this than a non progressive company and this is why I love working with very progressive, uh, businesses with very progressive values. So, uh, I had worked with two different types of sexual wellness businesses in the last two years. And the way that they approached marketing was totally different.

One was North American and the other was, uh, based out of India. So totally different cultural norms, but the North American business was a lot more tuned into their non binary customers. Uh, they did not really market their products as specifically for women because they just knew that their product was meant to serve groups like, uh, non binary individuals.

They don't identify as women, or they don't identify as men, but they still make great use of the product. And that was actually a brand differentiator for them, is that inclusivity. Whereas, there was my other client who, they were a bit more conservative in their approach. They were very clear on, this product is for, For women instead of saying, um, this is for a particular body.

Uh, so there was that and the imagery was usually very, um, like hetero focused. So I see a lot of cultural differences as well, but I see it in the qualitative research for my clients. A lot of individuals who are not, you know, born with the body that they, that fits with their gender identity.

[00:11:42] Sani: But you still have to address the cultural norms because if, if it's completely different, I mean, India versus North America, I will assume there are many, many differences between the cultural norms. Uh, so yeah, always know, know

[00:11:58] Tracy: absolutely, even with, um, American businesses, I had a client in the, so how do I, how do I not out them, uh, on air? So they, yeah, I'm going to be creative. So they, They had a product that was adjacent to, uh, recreational drugs. Now, it's not, they were not drug dealers, uh, but they sold, they did sell a product that, uh, was relevant to the experience of recreational drug use.

And they really struggled with advertising, and they specifically struggled with converting, uh, visitors in red states, more conservative states. We, I, it was so enlightening going into their Google Analytics and seeing how How much less each user from, uh, Texas, for example, is worth than a visitor from New York, for example.

It's, you really see the differences in the data, and I think part of this explanation is, you know, there are laws in very conservative states that you can't You can't purchase certain products, or even as it relates to sexual wellness, you can't, there's like a maximum of how many sex products you can own in some states, so,

[00:13:14] Sani: Oh, wow.

[00:13:15] Tracy: yeah, so you're gonna have a lot of um, difficult obstacles with a more conservative group.

Even in the same country, the, the one, customers don't look the same.

[00:13:28] Sani: something that I would have never thought of. I mean, I've never lived in the US and or in a state as country as polarized as us is so. Like you, you would never consider that as a non U. S. person or Canadian.

[00:13:42] Tracy: I take it for granted because, you know, with Canada, we're a lot more lax within a lot of areas, you know, cannabis is legal in Canada, so I often forget when I'm working with a client with a, you know, a product that is not, you know, always accepted across different countries or different regions, you know, the visitor expects you to do a little bit of research and understand Okay, I'm choosing to buy this product, I can't buy many of them, am I gonna choose you?

Why should I choose

[00:14:14] Sani: Wow,

[00:14:15] Tracy: And you're from Portugal, so,

[00:14:17] Sani: well I live here, I'm not from, I live here, yeah,

[00:14:20] Tracy: okay, I'm from, I'm Portuguese, I mean my family's from Portugal, but, you know, Portugal has very, um, you know, I think, have all drugs been decriminalized?

[00:14:32] Sani: asking the wrong person if I'm being honest, but

[00:14:35] Tracy: No worries.

[00:14:35] Sani: They, they, they, 20 years ago De criminalized. Yes.

[00:14:40] Tracy: Yes, so it's, you know, just from that perspective, it's, you always have to remember you're serving an international audience a lot of the times and even within one country you're going to have visitors who are like, Whoa, I am so scared to purchase this product. Show me what this is going to look like on my credit card statement.

Show me what this is going to look like when it arrives at my door. And there are going to be other individuals who, they don't care. Just charge me whatever. Send me whatever.

[00:15:09] Sani: Uh, but going back to, to you serving these types of customers, like, is this something that you want to build a career? You want to be like globally known for. Yeah.

[00:15:19] Tracy: For, oh, for specializing in like stigmatized,

[00:15:23] Sani: Yes, yes, yes.

[00:15:24] Tracy: yeah, I've thought about this a lot,

[00:15:27] Sani: Mm hmm.

[00:15:28] Tracy: there are such unique challenges with, with these types of products. I've always wanted to specialize in sexual wellness and pleasure products. Sex positivity is very important to me as a value and, um, yeah, I would love to do that.

I don't, I don't know if anyone's actually specializing in that right now. I'd love to fill the gap. But all of my favorite

[00:15:53] Sani: like this is so niche, but. The market still is, is huge.

[00:15:57] Tracy: yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The sexual wellness industry,

[00:16:01] Sani: on that.

[00:16:01] Tracy: yeah, it keeps growing and there's no, there's really very few people who serve these markets specifically and especially from the perspective of. Um, How do I put this like an inclusive perspective?

[00:16:17] Sani: Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's an opportunity right there. So, uh, you also mentioned strategic content and education. Like, how do you approach, how do you approach that? Like strategic content specifically?

[00:16:30] Tracy: Yes. So what I see is you have to find a way to combat your ads getting rejected. You can't just send a visitor to a PDP because Facebook doesn't just care about your ad content. It also cares about the landing page experience. So what I found is often it's a. So it's a lot harder to create landing pages that pass, um, your ad platform, uh, policies.

Creating content, like educational content, is a way that I've seen my clients successfully work through these problems. And you can still convert someone through education. This could be guides. This could be articles. This audience for, especially sexual wellness, they sometimes want more than just a product, sometimes they want coaching, they want education, they want to feel understood, I see this a lot with mental wellness clients, you know, mental wellness is still, I don't know why, but like when I talk about mental, mental health to my parents who are from a totally different generation, they get uncomfortable and defensive, so how do you break through to people who, um, aren't ready to talk about these issues, these stigmatized issues, you arm them with information and value and education and get them ready for a purchase that might not be comfortable for them.

[00:17:58] Sani: Right. But you know, a good thing about ads not being easy is if you have content, like you don't have the three sponsored slots in, in a Google SERP,

[00:18:07] Tracy: Yep.

[00:18:08] Sani: that's kind of a, an easier way to get in

[00:18:11] Tracy: It's very, yeah, it's very difficult. And the one reason, another reason why I love, um, Content as as a strategy so much is you can repurpose it for multiple channels and I love email and life cycle as a channel so much just because the ROI is so high on on that channel specifically and content plays really well into the nurturing of a customer at day one they might want to know A particular topic on day seven, they might want to know another totally different topic.

I saw this a lot with wills when we were working on the estate planning will writing platform. Content was everything. Visitors didn't know what to expect. So articles were a definitely a part of the conversion path.

[00:19:04] Sani: Right. Uh, and, uh, transparent and compliant marketing. I mean, it's an issue with any industry, I guess right now, any sector, but, uh, and more so every year, especially like with, with third party cookies going away soon and all that stuff. And like GDPR, obviously in all those different laws,

[00:19:24] Tracy: Yeah.

[00:19:25] Sani: different here.

Right.

[00:19:27] Tracy: Yes.

[00:19:28] Sani: Even more serious.

[00:19:30] Tracy: It's, it's like you, you don't just have to worry about GDPR and all of that fun privacy stuff. You also have to worry about being ad compliant. It's harder to advertise, like I kind of said before. How can you show what a product looks like if you're not allowed to show what the product looks like?

Can you be creative? So when I've worked with clients, oftentimes they have their own guides or guidelines as to What gets rejected by the ad platform, and what passes through. So this can come down to the visuals, the copy. Often times when I work with a customer who has a product or service that's hard to get through an ad platform, I'll ask them, what are words that we absolutely cannot use in copy?

What are some visuals that we absolutely cannot use? And they usually know through trial and error what works, but unfortunately, you can only mess it up so many times before your ad platform says you're not allowed to advertise here anymore. So, I, I really try to, anytime I come across a client who has these types of guidelines, I try to remember what's in every single one of them and use that toward other clients with similar products.

I'm not sharing the trade secret, I'm just sharing. And, you know, I've seen that, yeah, you can't get away with saying orgasms for everyone by now. Uh, you know, you have to be a little bit more subtle.

[00:21:01] Sani: Yep.

[00:21:02] Tracy: Who wouldn't buy that, but

[00:21:05] Sani: yeah, understandably that, that such an ad doesn't exist. Yeah. Um, so let's say you said you want to, you want to own this space. Let's say you're doing like three years. What do you need to do to get there? Like to be like the globally known as the taboo product road marketer.

[00:21:25] Tracy: I think about this all the time and I wish I knew the answer to this. But. But I think with anybody who is good at one particular thing, it's important to speak to this audience of professionals who own, uh, businesses with stigmatized products and knowing exactly what they're dealing with, what they're struggling with most.

Typically it's not being able to advertise, uh, so just knowing who they are, exactly what they struggle with, and then creating. Content that makes them feel like, oh my gosh, this person understands who I am. I want to work with them because they're going to solve my problem. They've seen it before and they're going to be able to help me.

So focusing on your audience, exactly what they're struggling with, speaking to those pain points, giving them solutions to those pain points, and giving them an avenue to work with you, and highlighting similar products that you've worked with and solved their problems. So it's kind of universal to

[00:22:30] Sani: That, that

[00:22:30] Tracy: Yeah,

[00:22:32] Sani: it is. That's what I was going to say. It doesn't sound too difficult or too special in any way. It's just, you know, a lot of boring work or not boring. Like it's never boring, but it's, it's doing, it's following the same path in any industry, right?

[00:22:46] Tracy: yeah, it's like being a good optimizer is knowing your audience, knowing their challenges, their anxieties, their frustrations and speaking to it. I would say, just to add to that, it's important to have values and to be upfront about your values and really only working with people who, There are businesses in certain spaces where I would say, I would work with this client because they seem to actually be driven by, uh, you know, helping the world be a better place instead of just making a profit for their board of directors.

So, So the same industry can have nefarious players and players who actually want to make a positive difference in the world. So knowing your values, being, um, having integrity and sticking, sticking to your values, not really working with anyone who, yeah, doesn't meet those values. Yeah.

[00:23:45] Sani: drawing that line is easy for someone who's been in the business for like 10, 15, 20 years. What about someone just getting started? Like what would your advice be? And you have three years, it's not 20 years of experience, but it's a lot of people have far less than this in this industry in CRO. What would your advice be to someone just getting started?

They get an offer to work with a client that they know is not the right call in some way. What would you do?

[00:24:11] Tracy: yeah, I want to say that I would not take the client on, but, you know, I have to feed myself, I have to feed my family, to put my cats through college, like, I have bills to pay, so I want to say, I would turn them down. And the, with the knowledge that there is a client out there for me, who shares my values, who is a better fit, I am always willing to turn down a client knowing that my next client will be around the corner.

Um, if you don't have that same privilege, take the client. Um, if you're not proud of the work that you produce for them, worst case scenario, you got paid. Just keep, keep at it. See it as a learning opportunity, grow from it, do what you can.

[00:25:03] Sani: or you can even try to educate the client into doing better. Usually that's not going to work. Usually that's not going to work, but you know, you can, you can try to do that. You know, one, one last question for you today is, and this is something I've been asking my guests in the last several episodes.

What is the one thing you really are not good at in, in your work?

[00:25:25] Tracy: There are a lot of things that I'm not good at, and I definitely fly by the seat of my pants, hoping no one will notice. But what, what am I not good at? I love this question. I, I struggle with communication at times, um, especially written communication. I I overthink. I, you know, I word vomit on a page and sometimes I give too much detail.

Sometimes I struggle to be concise and that's something that I really want to work on in the new year. Just being clearer, to the point, concise. I don't have to give every single detail at all times. That is, that's my big Achilles heel. I, I, I need to solve that.

[00:26:11] Sani: Shorter emails from Tracy coming. Uh, yeah, I mean, that's, that's always a challenge. That that's a, that's a struggle. That's always going to be a struggle. Like I, I guess, I don't know from trying to take away from my perspective, you just, you stop. Caring about giving it all every single second, like you give them enough and like, and, and let's talk later.

I, I, I, I don't know.

[00:26:36] Tracy: If they want to

[00:26:37] Sani: thing about CRO is it, They'll ask exactly like, yep, if they already want to work with you, a short email is going to do as, as well as a, as a super long one day. I think that they don't want to work with you. There's no novel that's going to convince them otherwise. So, uh, yeah, I guess, I mean, it's, it's a, it's an evolving, always evolving industry.

[00:26:58] Tracy: One hot tip that I found my clients love and always want more of from me. Usually, if you struggle with communication and keeping things to the point, or you struggle with written communication, videos, uh, especially with CRO, sometimes you're explaining a convoluted topic and the best way to articulate it is to show instead of telling.

So sometimes I'll just record a video, record a loom, and that just gets the point across way faster than writing a novel. Nobody wants to see it.

[00:27:31] Sani: that's good advice. That's great advice on that note. Let's, uh, I'm just going to thank you, Tracy, for, uh, talking about a taboo topic on, on this podcast for the first time ever, I guess we had a taboo topic, uh, on this podcast and to everyone listening, uh, thank you as well. Thank you for listening and please consider reviewing rating and sharing the episode with someone you care about.

And I will talk to you next week.