How to Use CRO to Protect Your Business from Tariff Turmoil
Tariffs are rewriting the rules for many businesses — and not always in their favor. While some companies may benefit, others are facing serious cost pressures and margin squeezes. This article explores how conversion rate optimization (CRO) can help offset those impacts without relying on price hikes. Learn actionable strategies to make your website work harder, keep visitors focused, and build trust with buyers — all while navigating the unpredictable world of global trade.
Tariffs — and the volatility that’s surrounded their deployment — have many business owners rattled.
For owners who make and sell goods entirely within their national borders, the news could mean unexpected advantages in pricing and competition — as well as powerful branding opportunities.
For others, the tariffs might register as anything from a pressing concern to a catastrophe.
For the worst hit — primarily those relying heavily on imports from China — it will mean huge changes to their balance sheet, and for some, a need to radically reconsider the viability of their business plans.
We are not powerless in the face of these changes — and the most powerful arrow in our quiver is Conversion Rate Optimization.
Sure: You’re reading this on the website of a CRO agency, so of course we think that. But turn that around: We’re all here because we’re convinced that CRO is often undervalued, and thus represents the single most crucial tool in the box. We’re here to show you how to wield it to your best advantage.
Here’s how to think about it:
CRO means more revenue without additional spend.
If you’ve ever played a video game (or served in the military), you know the benefit of a force multiplier.
It’s not an advantage in itself. It just takes all your strengths and makes them 5, 10, 20 times more powerful.
You hit — but hit harder. You parry — but better.
That’s CRO.
Without increasing your ad spend, your influencer spend, your content spend, your social spend, your redesign spend, you’re now earning considerably more revenue.
The math shifts: You’re spending the same — but everything’s twice as effective.
That’s why nothing in your marketing budget is as powerful as CRO. If you’re still bringing the same number of people to your website every day, but twice as many as them are buying your products — that is a transformative change.
CRO helps you understand with pinpoint accuracy how customers act when they visit your website. You understand, like never before, their motivations, aspirations, expectations, and more. And with that knowledge, you can, with some ease, double your conversion rate.
Your products aren’t the problem. Your CRO is.
If you’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that your website wasn’t as good as it should be, you’re right.
Here’s where you might be going wrong — and where CRO can help.
Without realizing it, your customers are encountering small roadblocks or obstacles that are preventing them from buying.
Maybe you have best-in-class products — but lack indicators of trust.
So your customers just buy second-rate imitations of your superior product on Amazon.
They’d happily spend their money on your product, but they don’t trust you enough to know that once they give you their credit card number, they’ll receive their product when they expect it.
Or maybe your product is backed by reams of scientific evidence. Maybe the technology you’ve developed can truly help people as never before. You have expert testimonials to share and studies to cite. And you have the budget to bring well-targeted would-be buyers to your site en masse.
But your would-be customers aren’t buying it.
They don’t care about jargon. Your messaging hasn’t met them where they are: looking for physical and emotional relief.
So instead, they stick to the same-old remedies they grew up with because your website hasn’t translated that scientific language into clear, emotive messaging around why your solution is more effective, safer, and cheaper.
Maybe some buyers see through that and go ahead with their purchase.
Maybe you’ll address the lack of revenue by spending more on ads.
But what if instead you focused on CRO?
Michael Dougherty
Head of sales
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These kinds of uplifts are one free discovery call away
Book a discovery callNow, one person buys your product because they were always going to.
Another finds new indicators of trust they value, and makes the purchase.
Another sees their story reflected in your new messaging, and follows suit.
Your conversion rate has gone from 1% to 3%. And your profit has gone up without spending a single additional dollar on advertising.
That is the power of a force multiplier.
Moving to defense to offense
These are powerful weapons, with the ability to reshape your business overnight.
It’s difficult to predict how the tariffs will finally shape up: where they’ll be fully deployed, and for how long.
But CRO is the most protective shield you can imagine. In fact, it is one of the few forces offering the ability to radically lift your revenue without raising your ad spend proportionally.
That’s the beauty of CRO: that the benefits are not proportional (like additional ad spend would be) but multiplicative.
Now imagine that with your additional revenue, you bring in even more customers.
CRO means that all those visits will still be super-charged. And thanks to the hallmark revisions of CRO, including:
- Wholly improved customer journey
- Elimination of pain points
- Clearer, more emotive messaging
- Better established sense of trust and authenticity
Your bigger ad spend will continue to convert at these higher levels. Meaning more customers, more revenue, and more ads. And on and on. The math maths, if you will.
Moving forward
We left off one additional factor: time.
Like your conversion rate, time is not neutral.
If your conversion rate is low, you’re leaving money on the table.
And if you don’t act soon, you’ll lose customers you should have had, and fail to make revenue you deserved.
Until you act. The time is now.
For next steps, consider this case study on how we earned one retailer nearly 23% additional revenue per user. Or reach out now to schedule a discovery call.
