A guide to unstoppable growth for CEOs and founders: The hidden math behind CRO

Published: May 2025

Most CEOs and founders have some sense of how Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) might improve their business, but few truly understand the numbers and how profound the impact can be.

In this series we’re showing the hidden math at play in the world’s most successful businesses:

Part 1: Why CRO is the most important activity for your business.
Part 2: How CRO reduces cost per acquisition from paid advertising.
Part 3: A practical guide to dominating your market.
Part 4: How to do CRO for free.

If you are responsible for business growth, these articles will be among the most important you’ll ever read.

Winner takes all

At the 2024 Olympics, Noah Lyles won the 100m Gold Medal by just five milliseconds. That minuscule margin earned him glory, endorsements, and a permanent place in history.

Overhead view of sprinters crossing the finish line in a 100-meter race on a blue track, with the athlete in lane 7 narrowly leading by a small margin. — The margin between glory and mere applause. Lyles is in lane 7.

In business too, the benefit of being “ahead” can be monumental. The winner takes all (or at least most) of the sales, opportunities, attention, and profit, often creating a virtuous cycle that further widens the gap.

So how do you and your team win?

The second and less obvious implication of the Olympic 100m race is this: If you want to be twice as profitable as your competitors, you don’t have to be twice as good as them. You just have to be slightly better. Specifically, you need to have a higher profit-per-visitor than your competitors.

Even a slight edge in profit-per-visitor will profoundly increase your ability to grow profits and dominate your market, as the articles below demonstrate.

A four-part series from principle to practice

CRO doesn’t just increase your profits, it unlocks the enormous opportunities that arise when profit-per-visitor increases. The articles below cover the principles, diagnostics, opportunity, and practice of CRO, using worked examples to highlight the hidden math that powers the world’s most successful companies.

The winner takes all. This is how you win.

Part 1: Why CRO is the most important activity for your business

Before you chase more traffic, understand the math. This article breaks down the three core benefits of CRO—why it amplifies every other growth lever, and how small improvements in conversion can unlock exponential results.

Diagram of the Power Law of CRO — The Power Law of CRO explains why so many of our clients have won awards for fast growth.

For your strategic overview of the hidden math behind CRO, read: The Power Law of CRO—and why it means CRO is the most important activity for your business.

Read Part 1

Part 2: How CRO drastically reduces cost per acquisition from paid advertising

If you’re investing in paid advertising, your costs are likely rising. In this article, we walk through real PPC numbers to show how a modest improvement in conversion rate can radically change your ad economics, slash the cost of customer acquisition, and free up growth capital.

A graph showing the difference between a website that converts at 2% and 4%.

To understand the insight that has saved our clients millions of dollars, read:
How much are you overspending on paid advertising?

Read Part 2

Part 3: A practical guide to dominating your market

This article shows how companies use CRO gains to reinvest profitably into traffic—unlocking growth loops that competitors can’t match. Learn how to model dominance: lower your cost per acquisition, outbid your rivals, and predictably grow your market share.

A scatter plot showing the relationship between daily advertising spend (x-axis) and daily conversions (y-axis), with a red regression curve illustrating the trend. The curve indicates a positive but diminishing return on conversions as ad spend increases.

This application of the Power Law of CRO shows why CRO doesn’t just increase your profits, it increases your ability to further increase your profits.

To understand how second-order effects can help you dominate your PPC competitors, read: The math behind PPC dominance: a data‑driven study of “The Power Law of CRO.”

Read Part 3

Part 4: How to do CRO for free

CRO doesn’t need new budget—it needs reallocated budget. In this article, you’ll see how private equity firms shift underperforming spend into high-leverage activities like CRO. The approach is simple, scalable, and available to you today—with no increase in spend.

A bar chart showing monthly profits over 12 months, comparing a base case scenario with a scenario involving a 50% increase in conversion rate. Each month, the profit of the 50% increase scenario consistently and increasingly surpasses the base case, highlighting accelerating profitability.

If your company is constantly pressured to do more with less, read:
The Private Equity Strategy for growing profits without increasing budgets.

Read Part 4

Real world success stories

We have over 100 testimonials and success stories that validate the Power Law of CRO, but let’s look at two specific examples.

How Money.co.uk entered a virtuous cycle

When we worked with Money.co.uk (a financial comparison site), their increase in conversion rate allowed them to outbid PPC competitors and (profitably) grow their share of the market.

The results were profound. This graph shows how Money.co.uk was able to increase their ad spend over time, which increased both their sales and market share.

A line graph showing the PPC spend increases that Money.co.uk was able to make over time. — The rise in conversion rate allowed Money.co.uk to greatly increase its spend on PPC advertising—and reap huge rewards.

And as Money.co.uk’s sales machine became ever more efficient, they were able to further expand into new markets and new channels. Here’s Chris Morling, founder of the company.

“The improved conversion rate even allowed us to enter new markets and expand into high-cost advertising channels like TV. TV is very expensive, but the better we can convert visitors, the more affordable this kind of advertising becomes.”

Companies—like Money.co.uk—that combine a dedicated CRO program with PPC advertising aren’t just increasing their sales; they are increasing their ability to further increase their sales.

The conversion rate gains from CRO reduced Money.co.uk’s cost per sale, allowing them to increase their ad spend, grow their share of the pie and enter a virtuous cycle.

Read the full interview with Chris Morling, founder of Money.co.uk.

DS Smith ePack: Conversion rate more than doubled

In this testimonial from DS Smith ePack, Managing Director Fabrice Clerc-Renaud, discusses the impact of halving cost per acquisition.

“Our cost-per-acquisition has halved,” says Fabrice Clerc-Renaud, Managing Director of DS Smith ePack.

Want to see the Power Law of CRO applied to your business?

Book a free strategy session and one of our consultants will work with you to model the effect of CRO on your own numbers. No commitment, just clarity.