Building Your CRO Brand with Tracy Laranjo

AI-Generated Summary

Tracy Laranjo shares learnings from years of growing her career with Suchita Srinivasan, here are some key takeaways: 1. CRO vs Experimentation: CRO focuses on driving performance and results, while experimentation centers around decision-making and validating ideas. 2. Agency vs In-House: Tracy’s journey highlights the benefits of agency experience for rapid skill development and exposure to diverse challenges. 3. Building Your Experimental Brand: Don’t be afraid to be yourself online, even if it’s not the typical thought leader persona. 4. Adapting to Constant Change: Focus on fundamentals and building your skills; stay curious and open to new developments, but don’t fear the future. 5. CRO is for Everyone: While AB testing requires scale, CRO encompasses qualitative research and user interviews, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes.

AI-Generated Transcript

(00:00) performance driven so you have Revenue goals in mind you have conversion goals in mind you really are focused on bringing results into your program experimentation to me is more like decision making and decision science where you want to validate ideas you want to understand okay it what is the risk involved of me trying this new

(00:24) thing and bringing out to the mass Market um is this a good decision or is this a bad [Music] decision hi try welcome to the experiment Nation Podcast hey sua I uh I’m new around here I’ve never heard of this podcast before where am I so for our listeners Tracy is usually our host but today she is my guest and

(00:54) I’ve got some um excit questions and exciting things to ask but before we get started Tracy for the few people listening that don’t know you do you want to make a quick introduction please sure uh great Intro by the way thank you uh I feel strange being interviewed on this show instead of doing the interviewing but I’m Tracy uh you might

(01:19) recognize me from other experiment Nation episodes I am a cro strategist I have been in the space for about three and a half years just doing all kinds of different things I’ve worked in-house I’ve worked agency and now I am a freelance consultant so I love it and I specifically am really excited about this episode because there

(01:44) are a lot of new entrance to the space and I remember my first year was very chaotic very anxiety inducing and if I can make that even the tiniest bit better for one person then I can sleep well at night that’s amazing and paying it forward is always a good feeling for for everyone involved and like you said

(02:07) there are a lot of people joining the space very excitedly I had a call with some students from Kani melon who are intrigued about what is cro and what is happening and they’ built out this AI tool and wanted to get it tested and wanted to know so much so there’s so much excitement and Buzz about C and

(02:27) it’s a space and it’s definitely nice to get more and more people and build a community like experiment Nation so before so without getting you know too far off topic let’s get right into it all right um so my first question for you is let’s talk about the words right there is cro there’s conversion rate

(02:50) optimization there’s just optimization there’s experimentation are these words used interchange or do we use them interchangeably but they mean different things um how would you explain this to somebody yeah I I think that people get really hung up on the words but there are some differences in my mind on cro versus

(03:15) experimentation now I’m G to start with cro I really don’t care if it’s called conversion rate optimization optimization conversion optimization I think any cro practitioner who you know is good at the craft recognizes that there’s more to cro than just conversion rate so I personally I do not care if

(03:39) it’s called C dxo like so many acronyms I don’t care I’m going to call it what my clients are searching for when they’re looking for a practitioner now between C and experimentation I am of the mindset that cro is a bit more performance driven so you have Revenue goals in mind you have conversion goals

(04:04) in mind you really are focused on bringing results into your program experimentation to me is more like decision making and decision science where you want to validate ideas you want to understand okay it what is the risk involved of me trying this new thing and bringing out to the mass Market Market um is this a good decision

(04:29) or is this a bad decision so less focused on bringing results still that’s a big part of it but uh it’s more like about making better decisions so that to me is the big distinction uh I sometimes use the terms interchangeably it depends on my audience uh as well there are some cultural differences too I’ve noticed so

(04:56) the European market is more experimentation and the uh North American Market is a bit more cro the rest of the world I don’t know what’s going on there but there’s just there’s just little differences I wouldn’t say that they’re the same thing but they do have a lot of overlap yeah that makes sense in for me

(05:17) in my head experimentation is almost a like under see I was the umbrella term and then experimentation is one of the ways you achieve optimization that as well yes yes optimization is kind of in service of better better better and experimentation is more uh about learning and yeah just really thinking

(05:38) through and questioning your assumptions yeah okay that that makes sense so after learning about these differences and some similarities how does one go about finding their first job in C and and because that’s very broad let’s talk about is agency versus an in-house role versus freelancing when you’re when you’re just starting out

(06:04) yeah this is something that you and I have talked about in quite a bit quite a bit and I love this question I get asked it a lot ultimately to get that first job it is the hardest one to get and I want to preface by saying the last time I had to seek a job like an employment uh situation was two years ago and it was

(06:31) in a much different job market so for any listeners who are struggling to find a job period right now it is a really bad time and I recognize that so it might take a bit more uh work than what it took for me to land that first job so the way that I kind of navigated that was my first cro job I was doing it

(06:54) without realizing it so I was in a growth manager job at a uh startup and cro was a part of my role now what I have done that today absolutely not uh it’s very difficult to grow a business when you’re spread so thin and today I don’t believe that cro is uh one checkbox that you add on to a job description it’s not a line in a job

(07:24) description it is a an entire function it is an entire team so that was my start it was being just doing it not realizing and then I wanted to learn more about it I got curious I uh started taking the cxl uh cro mini degree I started reading books about cro and my employers realized oh Tracy really has

(07:50) an aptitude for this and it’s where she’s currently bringing results in in her job hi this is Rommil Santiago from experiment Nation if you’d like to connect with hundreds of experimenters from around the world consider joining our slack Channel you can find the link in the description now back to the

(08:06) episode so they shifted me into a cro manager role now uh I didn’t stay in the role for long there were a lot of factors such as uh the team just didn’t really have the resources for me to be able to be effective at the role so from there I said okay I am going to do everything I can to learn from my

(08:28) network around me at that time uh Rommil Santiago the founder of experiment Nation uh hell yeah Rommil I I know Rommil’s gonna hear this he reached out to me and we just started talking and he asked if I wanted to be a part of the podcast so I started hosting this podcast uh some of the the First episodes were me in my

(08:51) first few months of cro I used it as an opport opportunity to reach out to the people in my network who were really good at the craft already so that I can ask them all the questions that I was struggling with on the job or that peers were were struggling with so taking that opportunity I was really lucky that it

(09:17) led me to get my second cro job and to also be able to advocate for the highest uh compensation in the salary band because they they saw that I was eager they saw that I was putting myself out there and that uh I am a serious person in this uh Community I’m not as serious today but we’ll get to that in a bit I’m

(09:39) sure so that second job it was great it was another in-house role but I realized I don’t think I’m cut out for in-house optimization it’s just a it didn’t satisfy my need for different types of work for variety for different challenges every day and there also weren’t the appropriate resources for the role it was very difficult to bring

(10:06) results uh especially when the broader team just didn’t really take the work seriously so from there I said okay something isn’t working for me here I think it’s that I want to eventually go into business for myself but my skills just aren’t at a place place where I feel like I’m ready to work with clients

(10:29) and do this full-time on my own so I went agency and I’m so glad I did I actually wish I did it in reverse I wish I started agency first and this is something that even you and I have talked about because you started in-house and it sounds like you have similar challenges to me as well so there’s just with agency you can learn

(10:55) really fast you are exposed to so many different types of work and challenges and it levels you up really really really fast so I did that for a bit over a year I felt like okay I like working with clients so I want to go into this on my own I started to have a lot of confidence in my skills and that’s what

(11:18) I did I went off on my own that’s not the path for everyone and that’s totally okay some people like in-house some people just don’t want to be an entrepreneur or or be on the hook for their own like job security and that’s okay I just really had to do some trial and error to figure it out and in a way

(11:39) I experimented my way through these learnings and that’s just that’s just part of it that makes a lot of sense and like you mentioned we’ve talked about this before uh I’ve started I started off my CR journey in inh house roles as well and as much as there is uh this excitement to learn and figure things

(12:01) out on your own I think that eventually there is a you reach a ceiling and you do need to work with people who’ve done this before who’ve been around in the business for longer so you can actually get real time experience there’s only so much courses can teach you they’re a good starting point but there’s nothing

(12:18) that can replace being on the job and you know doing things breaking things yes uh that’s that’s beenin huge like give having the opportunity to break things and the other thing with inhouse roles is prioritization and uh resourcing that’s that’s been my biggest struggle with uh in-house CR roles so uh if if listeners

(12:42) are just getting into this my recommendation is go down the agency path as well and I’ve heard that there’s never a dull moment and uh there’s so many different clients to work with and you really get a feel for the CR High which I’ve heard of and it’s exciting but I’m yet to experience I’ll be honest

(13:02) the C High yes it’s the yeah I’ve never heard of that but I know exactly what that is because I’ve definitely had the cro High yeah it’s it’s just you know the the the basis of cro is the constant testing failing the speed of it yes uh which is what makes a really good program so if there not enough speed uh

(13:27) it kind of falls apart so that’s a good thing to watch out for as well that that shows for an effective program it’s a good call out because that momentum is so hard to get and it does for me take a couple months to get to that momentum and I’ve only been able to get that through agency work and there are

(13:49) clients who I’ve worked with through agency where we never really hit that stride but the fact is the more uh opportunities that you have the more chance you have that you are going to have those really successful engagements so the the more experience you can get the better in the long run yeah that

(14:11) that makes sense which to get into a role of an experimental is there are there any tips on creating an experimental brand ooh yeah so I accidentally created I guess an experimental brand I don’t know what it is let’s RSE engineer yeah sure so I I would not say that I have a strong personal brand I am not

(14:39) consistent online and I just I haven’t really put all that much thought toward how I present myself as an experimenter online I’m mostly post on LinkedIn and just being out there in a small Fields brings opportunities without really having to try now that was that was my experience I today am kind of I’m

(15:05) like not a very serious person online I kind of poke fun at the LinkedIn Vibe and the people around me who just take things so seriously and I just I post crap all the time that’s not for everyone but for some people it’s really relatable and it really resonates so I think it’s important when you’re getting

(15:29) into this field you don’t have to be a thought leader in the sense of I’m smart here’s my here’s what I learned let me educate you it’s okay when you’re starting out to be like okay I’m going to be a vehicle for other people to learn with me so I did that with experiment Nations podcast I was interviewing people who have been in the

(15:55) space for like over a decade and just naturally it was building my network it was giving me exposure and I wasn’t really educating it was me giving a platform for people who can educate for the people who want that education so I do think to some extent it is really important to be out there put yourself out there be Fearless uh online

(16:23) and you don’t have to be so serious about it it’s okay to just be yourself and exist and someone will be drawn to it and that someone may be the person who lands you your next job or gives you that experience that’s gonna lead you to your dream as cheesy as that sounds that that yeah I think I’ve seen

(16:52) LinkedIn I think especially postco because there’s no a lot of people work from home full-time now the office life and the home life have pretty much Blended so your surroundings are not separate really so a lot of so people’s personalities have just bled into LinkedIn and I’m not necessarily opposed

(17:12) to that because you now you don’t need to pretend to be somebody else at work and of course there are certain things which are you know you don’t bring to work but outside of that it’s nice to not constantly have to switch in and out of these personalities right yes uh on a day-to basis because you’re at work

(17:29) maybe what 40 50 hours a week and that’s exhausting so it’s nice to just bring mostly bring your whole self totally and that also applies to your like on the job practice and Persona I in my first maybe two years of doing this I was so serious I took everything so personally and I struggled to get people

(17:52) behind my ideas I just didn’t choose the right battles and I got hung up on things that yeah didn’t matter um if someone doesn’t want to go for a specific uh piece of advice that I have it’s okay like I I told you so like if if it goes wrong like you don’t say I told you so but like I can sleep at night knowing I at least gave my best

(18:19) advice and I don’t need to get my way all the time so I kind of take that level of like I I just don’t care as much about the little things anymore I just am here to help and I show up as myself and I don’t sweat it if all these factors aren’t right or if for some reason I’m not testing exactly the way

(18:41) that the cxl course taught me or how soand so on LinkedIn says I should be testing I just it things these things don’t really matter at the end of the day uh you do your best and you get you get paid and then you go home and just hope for the best that’s that’s great advice which brings me to how do you

(19:03) keep up with the changes that take place literally every day I’m constantly feeling like I’m playing catchup and I haven’t figured this new thing out out that’s you know now on LinkedIn and I have to go research it and then again next day the same thing um so how do you do you think it’s just people trying to

(19:27) create content to stay relevant or there’s actually new developments happening at that rate how do you go about it yeah I there’s a lot of noise out there and a lot of people have their own objectives and messages and agendas and ultimately you know I can look online and see someone’s going to say cro is dead

(19:53) tomorrow and I’m going to be like okay well I’ve been hearing this for two years now so if I saw that and said okay my my job is on the line cro is dead what am I going to do then I would have missed out on so many of the great opportunities that I’ve had being in this field since so part of it is I

(20:12) think just there’s a lot of noise out there it’s hard to tell what what is serious and what you need to act on there’s a new acronym every day for cro dxo like there’s just it makes your head spin I try not to worry too much about these like flash in the pan things these these seemingly uh important changes that pop up overnight

(20:43) and then next week it’s not even a thing anymore but if I’m noticing there are things out there that are new new ways of doing new tools that are actually going to help me in my practice then I will level up on on them um things like AI I think I think AI is a bit uh overrated uh I hope that this doesn’t

(21:03) age poorly but uh you know there are parts of AI that I use every day in my practice but I am by no means like a um like master in it because I I don’t feel like I need it to move move forward with this practice the fundamentals and Foundations at the end of the day are to me the most important thing and if you

(21:28) get that right you can weather any storm and at the end of the day also if C dies tomorrow then I have bigger problems it’s not because I didn’t level up it’s because there was a huge shift in the market maybe I didn’t adapt to it accordingly but um it’s important to have confidence in your skill set and

(21:51) your expertise and be able to adapt and move on maybe that’s horrible advice I don’t know there’s probably a lot of like AI Bros who are like girl your your job is just like we’re coming for your job the robots are going to take you over and um I’m still waiting for AI to take my job because I’m doing I’m still I’m still

(22:13) working yeah that’s fine I think uh I I’m not going to keep waiting for it to happen if it has to happen it can happen I don’t think I’m going to live in fear I taking my job because then I would have lost out on living those many good days and months and years uh so if it has to happen it’s it’s going to happen right

(22:37) uh so that that’s fine um it’s it’s it’s so hard to be future proof when you don’t know what the future looks like and yeah on kind of that’s actually also a positive because your your next Talent may not exist yet so you know why are you going to freak out about it um again maybe horrible advice I don’t know but I just I I used

(23:03) to live like I need to be ahead of the curve at all times I need to be miss knowt all and I just that’s just not me anymore I just want to make sure that uh if the future does come and it doesn’t look favorable for me that I can bounce back quickly with what I’ve already picked up along the way yeah and se’s

(23:25) one of those things that makes you very adaptable because you’re constantly testing and 95% of the times you’re failing and not failing as in your tests are failing but you’re learning yes and then you have to adapt to you know next steps and so you can have a great road map but it’s constantly changing yes

(23:46) 100% I’m so glad you says that yeah so it so it had it gives you good enough skills to even if C is dead if something dies something else gets you know planted in its place and grows yes so if SI dies uh it gave us enough to you know do the next best thing that’s you know that’s available totally totally and I

(24:10) studied a dying industry uh I studied print uh I’m oh wow I don’t do print I don’t do packaging but I through that experience doing uh experiments a lab setting literally watching ink dry on paper that’s something that led me to cro so you know if you’re looking at your life uh as hopefully Decades of

(24:37) learning and new experiences cro might be this tiny little blip on on that timeline for me it could be a huge chapter it could be the whole book I don’t know but just having the confidence to say whatever happens happens is admirable in my view that makes sense everything leads to something and no experience goes um

(25:03) no weeds is a waste yes and you it’s kind of hard to always tell how something’s going to impact you yeah uh but there it’s there even if whether you see it or not see it it’s there yes for sure yes yeah um so this is a bit of a segue but do you have any resource recommendations or books uh and if they’re books or articles I

(25:32) definitely want to also list it down uh below uh so but just talk about your maybe top two top three uh you know cro specific and then maybe something else as well for sure yeah um if you had to choose one book to get started or have be like your Bible of cro it would be making sites win I forget uh both of the

(25:57) authors names but uh we we I’m sure we can drop we can List It y absolutely phenomenal book um design for impact is another one that I just picked up by Aaron Weagle uh so good so far uh just a lot of the foundational type books will go a long way especially in your first year uh in as far as tools go I still to

(26:22) this day always use the CX AB testing calculator I think it’s now owned by speo but uh they make it so easy to just understand the impacts of uh just day-to-day performance and be able to put it into context for stakeholders who need a bit more educating so that Resource as well um speo has a lot of phenomenal blueprints

(26:49) so definitely download those put them on a on your desktop for checking out later and uh experiment Nations podcast uh of course I have a bit biased but you have so many different people coming on to speak about so many different experimentation related topics that you’re going to find a gem somewhere thank you and experimentation

(27:16) honestly has been so great for me as well I met you yes uh I’ve had some incredible conversations with people uh they’re from product there from marketing it’s and everyone’s so willing to help and uh I’ve never had something like this in my professional career before where there’s a full-blown Community where I think up to almost 700

(27:38) people globally uh we meet try to meet once a week and do something called cro therapy where we hash out work related uh situations or hard times and that’s that’s so unique yes um and I mean shout out to experiment nation and roml uh for setting something up and also people who have taken on the Baton

(28:03) from him so it doesn’t feel like it’s you know everything’s on his shoulders so I really really appreciate that about the community yes the slack Community especially I like I’ve H I’ve picked up clients from the community I’ve had jobs from the community I’ve made friends from it like just so valuable and uh it

(28:22) it’s an honor to have been one of the first members of the slack group because I’ve been able to see it grow into what it is today so definitely Shameless plug for the slack group too that must have that’s so nice right to see it you’re one of the first few people and then you see we’re almost to 700 that is so that must be so nice yeah

(28:46) totally yeah uh myth busting time sure uh because there’s so much noise like we talked about people are there’s a lot of things being said about experimentation um and because there like I said there’s no formal education there’s it’s still growing so there’s a lot of trial and error even within how

(29:08) uh what a successful cro program looks like right uh so any anything that you’ve heard uh that you see people talking about a lot but actually it’s total [Music] BS o o I’m gonna need a second okay uh this one’s going to be potentially an unpopular one there’s going to be people listening to this who

(29:40) are like yes yes I’m so glad someone said it and then other people who are going to feel like a little called out um it’s not a myth per se but it’s kind of this trend of content online that’s like oh this is here’s a bunch of ab tests that made my clients millions of dollars tens of millions of dollars and the reason

(30:05) why I say it’s kind of is because first it creates this kind of atmosphere of well I did it and it worked so if you take my idea my random LinkedIn post you’re going to make your clients millions of dollars and that is just not the case it misses out on so much context like your customer is different for every program that you run

(30:32) your uh circumstances your business model it’s all different so what works for one brand doesn’t work for another necessarily and same with that I do notice that a lot of this content really ere exaggerates the results so I’ve I’ve seen behind the scenes under the hood in the actual test results for

(30:57) some tests that are featured in massive case studies as like oh we made our client hundred of thousands of dollars a month with this one test and you look at it and you’re like okay this is this is actually total this was actually a super flat result and you just kind of blew it up so I think people need to be so much more

(31:17) Discerning about the kind of like hacks that they see on LinkedIn the like download this guide download this swipe file to see what works it’s very uh good for engagement but it’s very it’s very dangerous for the junior cro who takes it as gospel that makes a lot of sense and context is key for everything yes

(31:44) different uh different clients different size of your audience are you a you know web based product where do you Market where you know there is just so many so many caveats yes um and the other one for me is just focusing on the data a lot and just you and without using human intervention yes of Common Sense yes uh

(32:10) and making decision decisions just based on what the numbers say I mean the numbers you can make the numbers say whatever you wanted to say yes uh and different people can interpret it differently and spin a story that is convenient rather than uh that’s good for the business rightt so yeah cro is a

(32:31) fantastic career path for uh con artists because you can you can tell any story that you want in in any test result but I always appreciate the optimizers who will be skeptical about the results they’ll kind of give you the dis claimers about this may not be totally conclusive and also the optimizers who

(33:02) tell you what led to the idea and what came after um just the we we like to think of the whole like cro cycle as okay the testing and the analyzing part but there’s all this other uh there’s all these other steps that go into it that are like okay well good ideas come from somewhere and the deeper you understand the end user

(33:31) usually the better the results and the better the learnings and the the longer term the program the stronger the commitment from the people who have to buy into the program so I love that you brought that up because it’s so true uh my other pet peeve is people who love to use only the terms right is this

(33:56) statistically significant um and the usually this is sometimes in a B2B context uh where we don’t have enough traffic no matter how hard we try we can run it for six months and we’re still not going to reach statistical significance um qualitative data and quantitative data can be married quite well uh to move you in a

(34:22) desired Direction so I feel like qualitative data is really underutilized in situations where uh there’s not enough quantitative data available yes 100% I’m so glad you brought that up uh okay so why do you love experimentation uh um I think about this a lot I I have ADHD so I am I’m very distracted I love to learn new things I

(34:54) get I’m I’m very good at picking up new skills I’m bad at uh committing to them but cro and experimentation are career paths that are well suited to people like me people who want to learn a lot of different things uh learn a little bit about a lot and every day has a different challenge so that satisfies my

(35:23) uh need for variety and Novelty uh it satisfies my uh hyper hyper fixations and Hyper Focus because I’ll do analyses and be so curious about what I’m seeing that I will lose hours just finding new problems to solve or learning things that my clients are like oh my God I had no idea this is what was going on and it completely changes how

(35:53) they think those things are yeah very well suited to people who have ADHD so I think that’s a huge part of it I think uh showing ADHD in a positive light uh is so huge because I know of so many people who struggle with it yeah uh and they struggle in different areas of their life and it’s on a daily basis

(36:20) right uh so you knowing that and using that to your advantage because there’s no point in fighting it that’s that’s amazing uh so thank you for sharing that with with our listeners um I meant to ask you this earlier but are there certain contexts where cro doesn’t make sense for certain uh levels of

(36:41) businesses or types or Industries anything of that sort where uh there’s a level of maturity required and what does that maturity look like mhm I I think there is some truth to that but I want to draw a distinction between cro as AB testing versus Cro as qualitative research quantitative research um you don’t need more than 10

(37:08) users in a user test that’s that’s research you don’t need uh you just need some customers to be able to run customer interviews so there’s a lot of oh like we don’t have the samp SLE sizes well do you not have the sample sizes for AB testing okay that’s fine you can still do cro I think it’s cro and

(37:33) experimentation is for everybody it’s not just for web- based businesses it’s for like on like stores really in in person I I think about uh shops near me and I’m like you could heat map foot traffic in a store you can apply those concepts of cro you can interview your customer you can just take that digitally and put

(37:58) it into an in-person experience and you don’t need to AB test so I think cro is for everyone it’s just what parts of it are you defining as cro because if it’s just through the lens of ab test then no it’s it’s it’s not necessarily for everyone um not everyone would agree with that and that’s okay there are

(38:21) people on the other end of the spectrum who say uh cro is or AB testing is only for people who or websites who have like millions of visitors in a given period which I also disagree with so yeah I mean it’s for everyone really yeah I think AB test is the most common uh term that pops up when sio is being discussed yeah so almost seems

(38:43) like that’s the that’s the biggest part of it that’s the only way to do it but clearly that’s not uh the case but that’s a whole other episode um so how can our listeners get a hold of you as we come to an end of this amazing episode because we have to keep in touch with you we have to follow you we have

(39:03) to talk to you so tell us tell us well thank you uh yeah I you can reach me on LinkedIn uh just search up Tracy Lano if you see an orange Emoji in my name that’s me that’s my last name literally means Orange in Portuguese so you can find me there or if you want to work with me uh you need a consultant or

(39:25) someone to just help you Kickstart your cro program maybe you’re an agency owner who needs a really good cro strategist you can reach me at hello trcy lan.com that’s fantastic thank you I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Tracy online and offline uh so definitely get in touch with her she’s a great person to chat

(39:47) about all things cro uh and you know nonc things as well if that’s your jam yeah thank you so much Tracy look out for another episode from us soon hi this is Rommil Santiago from experiment Nation if you’d like to connect with hundreds of experimenters from around the world consider joining our slack Channel you

(40:04) can find the link in the description now back to the episode

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