Stop Redesigning. Start Diagnosing. The CRO Method That Actually Works
Perpetual Traffic
Tier 11
4.7 • 867 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The conversion problem is not in your ad account. It's in the gaps between your ads, landing pages, data, and unit economics.
Sign up for our free CRO audit and close the gaps today: https://www.tiereleven.com/cro
If your CRO agency is leading with design opinions instead of data, you're not optimizing. You're guessing. There's a critical difference between CRO that looks smart and CRO that actually moves revenue, and most businesses have never seen the real thing.
In this episode, I sit down with Ned MacPherson, the Director of CRO at Tier 11. Ned built and scaled his CRO and analytics agency to 30+ people before a successful private equity acquisition in late 2023, working with brands from early-stage DTC all the way up to Fortune 50 companies. He breaks down exactly why the industry's default CRO approach is not just ineffective but can actively hurt your conversion rate.
By the end of this three-part series, you'll know what the "metric on fire" framework looks like and why checkout funnel drop-off data means completely different things depending on where it happens. You’ll also discover how improving your on-site conversion rate creates a compounding halo effect in your Meta and Google ad performance.
In this Episode:
- How to identify the right funnel metrics to drive change and maximize ROI
- Real-world examples of how CRO strategies lead to huge revenue growth
- Why testing different approaches is critical to uncovering what's driving conversions
- Practical tips on conducting a CRO audit and interpreting website data
- Incremental vs. giant leaps with CRO strategies
- How integrating CRO with media buying improves ad performance
- The power of qualitative direct feedback from customers
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Connect with Ned MacPherson:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nedmacpherson/
Connect with Ralph Burns:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
Hire Tier11 - https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Mentioned in this episode:
https://perpetualtraffic.com/advertise-with-us/
https://perpetualtraffic.com/advertise-with-us/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, real quick, before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs, and agency owners. So head on over to PerpetualTraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show. If anything, you are so not the customer. You've looked at the website 100,000 times. You've built that you are not the customer. Like, where do you start in a project? Somebody says, I want to increase my conversion rate on my site. We're getting 1,000 visits. Every week, there's a 0.03 conversion rate. Where do you guys begin? It always starts with, and I've done this from day one, I've never changed this, |
| 0:38.5 | as I always do. |
| 0:40.6 | You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. |
| 0:44.7 | Hey, quick heads up. |
| 0:46.1 | If you're marketing to marketers, this is where you want to be. |
| 0:49.7 | Sponsor Perpetual Traffic and get seen and heard by thousands of season marketers, |
| 0:54.0 | CMOs, and agency owners. |
| 0:55.7 | We get hundreds of thousands and downloads every single month, all to marketers. |
| 1:01.2 | So go to perpetual traffic.com to apply for a spot on the show in Q1 or Q2 of 2026. |
| 1:08.2 | Welcome to the perpetual traffic podcast. |
| 1:10.2 | This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and |
| 1:11.8 | CEO of Tier 11, and very excited to have what I consider the best conversion rate optimization |
| 1:20.3 | dude on planet Earth, unbelievably great. And to have them here on the show. I don't know why it's taken us two, |
| 1:30.3 | three years to do this. We've known each other for quite some time, but we have none other |
| 1:34.1 | than Ned McPherson, who, like I said, he's got an interesting story to tell and he does all |
| 1:41.0 | the CRO here at Tier 11. And we're going to do a three-part series on how CRO really should work in the AI era, obviously, |
| 1:49.9 | but also how CRO is not just design changes and button colors, |
| 1:55.9 | and it's actually data. |
| 1:58.2 | And Ned with his background and statistics and one of the smartest guy and fast |
| 2:02.7 | talking guys I've ever met is going to discuss exactly how he looks at CRO and give you some |
| 2:08.4 | tips and pointers and input as a director of marketing, VP of marketing or a CEO to help |
| 2:13.7 | clients and customers convert better on your site. So welcome to perpetual traffic, |
... |
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