CRO Certification: Should You Get One?

If you’re thinking about a career in digital marketing or planning to launch and promote your personal brand, a CRO certification course could be right for you. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is all about optimizing websites, microsites, and landing pages to maximize on-page conversion rates. There are many CRO certification programs available online where aspiring digital marketing professionals can learn the basics of CRO, start using CRO software tools, and build their confidence in CRO while gaining practical experience. 

These certification courses can prove tremendously valuable to the right person, but the hardest part is deciding whether they’re really the best option for you.

To help you decide, we’ve put together this quick guide to determining whether you should get a CRO certification.

What is a CRO Certification?

A CRO certification represents the completion of a specialized training program in conversion rate optimization for digital marketers.

The best training programs for CRO will:

• Introduce you to the basic concepts and principles of conversion rate optimization.
• Provide instructions for setting up powerful CRO software tools.
• Teach you how to test variations of your landing pages and other high-intent pages on your website by optimizing sales copy, calls-to-action (CTAs), design elements, lead generation forms, and leveraging social proof marketing.
• Teach you how to perform content experiments and evaluate their results to find high-performing page variants that drive on-page conversions.
• Offer case studies and practical examples so you can see the impact of effective CRO and start gaining your own experience.

Upon completing a CRO program, candidates will usually be awarded a certificate that can be saved in a digital format or printed for inclusion in your resume or professional portfolio. Your certificate of completion is an acknowledgment of your participation in the course and serves as evidence of your knowledge and qualifications in CRO.

Why is a CRO Certification Useful for Digital Marketers?

Some marketers are generalists with a fair bit of expertise across multiple digital channels, while other marketers choose to specialize and focus their knowledge and skill development on just one or two channels. 

With that being the case, there’s a strong argument that every digital marketer can benefit from knowing more about CRO.

Here’s why:

Let’s imagine you’re a digital marketer whose website gets 1,000 unique visitors per day. Your product sells for $10 and you have a 1% conversion rate, so you sell an average of 10 products daily and earn $100. In this extremely simplified model, you have three basic ways to increase revenue:

1. Increase prices
2. Increase traffic
3. Increase conversions

Let’s think about what it takes to execute each of these three solutions.

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Increasing prices is the easiest thing to do. If you double your prices and have the same number of transactions, you’ll make twice as much money! The problem with increasing prices is that your customers don’t like it and you’re more likely to see a drop in sales and an overall drop in revenue.

Increasing traffic is probably the most expensive way to increase revenue. If your website is getting paid traffic, you’ll need to at least double your costs to get twice as much. If you’re generating traffic organically, you’ll need to invest significant time and resources up-front to see any long-term growth in traffic.

The final option – and the best option – is to increase your conversion rate with CRO. In just a few hours, you can set up content experiments to help discover high-performing variations of your landing pages that convert even more visitors. Content experiments can take 7-14 days to complete, but they run automatically and take minimal time to configure.

In this example, increasing your conversion rate from 1% to just 2% would double your yearly revenue – and you won’t have to increase your advertising budget or launch a major SEO campaign to do it.

The best thing about CRO is that the same principles and concepts can be applied to every digital campaign that uses landing pages. 

Digital marketers can maximize the value of their traffic from email marketing, paid search and display advertising campaigns, organic search, social media, and just about any other source using CRO. This makes CRO one of the most versatile and valuable skill sets that can benefit digital marketers and the organizations that employ them.

5 Ways You’ll Benefit from CRO Certification

Improve Your Skills & Discover Your Passion

If you’ve never practiced conversion rate optimization in the past, getting your CRO certification will help you develop new skills to improve bottom-of-funnel conversion rates for any campaign. You may even discover a hidden passion for CRO and the rewarding feeling you get when you design a really high-performing landing page. 

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The most dedicated conversion experts love the multidisciplinary nature of CRO that enables them to regularly practice and develop their writing and visual design skills while leveraging knowledge about marketing and user experience optimization.

Learn to Leverage Cutting-Edge CRO Tools

As part of your CRO certification course, you’ll be introduced to the latest conversion rate optimization software tools that significantly streamline the process of experimenting with content on your landing pages.

In the past, web developers were in charge of CRO because even the most minor changes had to be coded by hand. Today, software developers have created web-based CRO software tools that make it easy to edit design elements, sales copy, and other aspects of your website with just a minimal knowledge of code. 

These tools have made it easier for the average person to start implementing successful CRO experiments that drive conversion success.

Build Confidence and Validate Your Knowledge of CRO

We’ve met thousands of aspiring digital marketers who have read everything about CRO but still have yet to experiment with their own campaigns.

If you’re one of those people, earning your CRO certification could give you the confidence boost that you need to finally take the leap and work towards your goal of becoming a digital marketer – either as a solo entrepreneur promoting your own product or service or in a professional environment. 

Successfully completing a CRO course helps increase your confidence and our CRO course at the Directive Institute will provide you with a repeatable process for optimizing landing pages that you can replicate for your own campaigns. 

Enhance Your Marketing Results

Successfully completing a CRO program and obtaining your certification will empower you to achieve better results on your future marketing campaigns. You’ll learn how to build compelling landing pages that convert, and you’ll be able to convert traffic from a variety of sources with greater success.

Uncover New Career Opportunities

If your long-term goal involves working for a marketing agency, collaborating with other marketers to execute on larger projects, or joining an in-house marketing team, obtaining your CRO certification can help you unlock valuable new career opportunities.

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On the entrepreneurial side, being a CRO expert sets you up to become a valued team member for B2B, B2C, eCommerce, and many other kinds of digital marketing projects. If you’re thinking about corporate careers in digital marketing, obtaining your CRO certification demonstrates initiative and a commitment to personal skill development – both traits that are valued by employers.

Summary

Obtaining your CRO certification isn’t necessarily the right career move for everyone, but if you’re planning a career move into the world of digital marketing or using personal branding to sell your own products and services online, a CRO certification can give you the skills and confidence you need to achieve success.

At Directive, we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional results for our clients through our proprietary Customer Generation approach—and our tech marketing specialists are the driving force behind our success.

If you’re interested in becoming a part of our team and embarking on a journey of professional growth and development, we invite you to check out our careers page. Our team is committed to providing exciting opportunities for growth and learning, and we look forward to welcoming you aboard as we navigate the ever-changing tides of the tech marketing world. Join us today!