Valentin Radu's Life Journey (Omniconvert)

Next, what we are building as well is an algorithm and is a platform that empowers the e commerce websites to do automatic interactions with their audience.

So I was doing a bit of research yesterday about the type of struggles and triumphs that conversion rate optimists often have. And one of the things I came across was they often don't practice what they preach.

So.

So one of the things that stuck out is that we always preach, let your audience get to know you a bit, let your company become human. And we don't do that at all. We're just a couple of guys talking about garden e commerce here and there. But you guys don't know Valentin, the CEO. You don't know his background story. And I thought it was a really cool story. So without getting too much further into it, I'll let Valentin speak for himself. Valentin, I know you're an energetic and passionate guy. Conversion rate optimization isn't necessarily necessarily a career that's known, full of energetic and passionate and not crazy, but just energetic people. So what, what about CRO attracted you? Or why did you end up making your career in conversion rate optimization?

Yeah, so first of all, I've got like 18 jobs in my whole career so far. And the principle behind conversion rate optimization, I've got it. When I was 17, I wanted to get enough money so that I can go to the seaside with my girlfriend and I couldn't afford it. So I've got to this crazy job interview where they've paid me only for what I'm able to sell. And I was supposed to sell cooking recipe books. Yeah, for one of the superstars in Romania, which was the greatest chef at that moment. And I had to carry like this amount of books in a bag with me every day. And I was supposed to stop people, you know, which were here and there, and ask them if they want to buy a recipe book. Right? And they were staying in the bus stop, in the bus station. They were going to their job. They were people everywhere. And I was alone, 17 years old, looking around, what should I do? How can I convince people to buy this? And I've started to validate a B testing, right? And that was back in 1997. And I was asking people, hey, do you want to buy this? It wasn't working. And then I started not to show the product and I was simply asking for them, hey, I'm looking for some help. Do you have one minute? And they were the old ladies, which I started to. They've started to actually tell me, yeah, yes, little boy, how Can I help you? And then I've got into a conversation with them and eventually I've got to buy ideal customer profile. So I've understood how important it is to have an ideal customer profile and how important is to change your pitch and to do a B testing. Does it gonna work like this and that? So that's ticked into my head as principles for conversions. And I've also understood that it's not about how many people you are actually asking, because you can ask the same thing to 200 people in a row and you're not gonna get anything. So after four days of not selling a book, any book, I've eventually got with my first sale, and that was. And after that I've started to validate what's working and what's not. Eventually in one week, I've got all the money, I've quit that job, of course, and I've got my money to go to the seas. But that taught me how important is conversion rate optimization. So, mainly getting the time machine very fast. I've built the first broadband Internet service provider in my neighborhood in Bucharest, because I was playing StarCraft every day and I got the broadband connection. Then my neighbors started to ask me if I can sell to them. So eventually I've sold that to them and I bought the larger subscription. So in two years we've got together, me and my friends, that we were playing StarCraft every day. We've got 4,000 customers playing €10 per month each one of them. And we were crazy rich, very fast. So after that, the first failure, an agency. Then I've got into the building the largest online car insurance website in Romania. There I've practiced what I've been learning by changing the message, adapting to who's on the website, personalizing the experience, and we've got to something like 130,000 customers in my last year when I was actually going there. So understanding the importance of conversion rate optimization and seeing the industry taking off back in 2014, I've used the software that I've got from that moment and I've built OmniConvert. Yeah, that was how I've started. Excellent.

So in watching a lot of videos, I noticed there are two types of advice videos, right? One is these are the quick and easy wins, these are the cheats, these are the hacks or whatever. And the other one is it's just about grind, it's just about waking up at 2:30 in the morning and working for 26 hours in a day and stuff like that. So as you built OmniConvert. What were the easiest wins growing the CRO agency? And what were the things that you just had to. That just took discipline that you had to hit day after day, morning after morning.

One of the things that we've done back at my other company on the car insurance was a hack, technically. We realized that our audience are drivers and the Facebook was catching up fire and we weren't there. And our product was not that appealing. Like red shoes for a woman. Right. But we've realized that, hey, our audience are drivers and they are on social media to show them off. Right? To show their thing. So we've made a funny quiz with the questions from the questionnaire that allows you to get the driver's license. And there were like 10 questions. Hey, tram comes from the left and blah, blah, blah. And we've got these automatic diplomas where we've rated them as an A class driver or a B class driver. But the ones which were getting a class driver license, the A class diploma, they've exposed them on their Facebook livestream. And that, of course, that was our logo there. So we've got like zero fans when we've started, like, I don't know, a few hundred fans, and in 10 days we've got to 2,000 300,000 fans. And that allows us to, of course, get a huge brand awareness. And the ROI was fantastic.

So how would that apply to an E commerce or a pro agency? How would that type of thinking, Is it simply use social media or is it something deeper than that?

If you look at that example, the research was made properly. What is our target audience? The channel was proper because things were catching up. They weren't that abused as they are right now. So looking for an alternative channel which is catching up, understanding your target audience, the drivers, and understanding what's their, let's say, purpose, what they want to achieve and how can you get into their lives and how can you use them as a channel to actually amplify your brand without sounding, let's say, tricky. Yeah, because that was the right moment, the right channel with the right message. So looking over and making, brainstorming and simply testing, because that's an idea. But we've got like other 40 ideas that I'm not gonna mention here, which were the failures that were the steps towards having a winning hack. So mainly it's all about testing and testing and testing and analyzing and getting along with it. Because you can't. It's like making a joke, right? You can't create a good joke, but you need to create a lot of bad jokes until you got one good, which is good. So that's something that you can't predict. But having the discipline to do testing and to do like growth hacks, that's a different story. And that's in your control. 100% in your control. How many experiments are you doing every month, week, year? That's how it works. And the successful of any a B testing process, it's about how many tests are you running and what is your win rate. You can't control your win rate, but you control the quantity of the test and the quality of your data insights. So mainly that's how it can apply to an E commerce, to an agency, to any type of company actually.

So be crystal clear on who you're pursuing and then pursue them and pursue them in a few different ways and see what works the best.

Yeah, yeah.

So what do you think the next step is for the crow world?

For the crow industry, what is certain is that machine learning is taking over. So in the crow industry the direction is clear. The algorithms will take over the art. The place where the CRO experts will stay is how to use those algorithms and how to craft the messages and how to be more persuasive and creative in messaging, not in targeting, not in doing experiments in terms of matching the profile with the product, with the offer. So next, what we are building as well is an algorithm and is a platform that empowers the e commerce websites to do automatic interactions with their audience. So that being said, CRO industries gonna evolve a lot because it's a very important part in the growth mix of any company which is selling online or, or which is generating leads online. But the direction is clear, it's towards machine learning and towards crunching up large amount of data so that you craft the best experience for each individual at the right time according to what you know about him. So that's going to be not only in the crow, it's going to be in the medicine as well. It's going to be everywhere. So algorithms are taking over and I think that's a good thing and a bad thing as well.

Yeah, it's probably a topic for the, the next conversation that I think we'll have because there's probably a lot, a lot there to unpack that I definitely want to make public. So if you guys have any questions or any experience in using AI as a part of your growth strategy or with your E commerce business, please let us know in the comments. Please feel free to ask us any questions. That we can ask Valentin, who's got some experience and learn from his failures and successes. So thanks again, Valentin. We'll see you guys soon.