B2B SaaS conversion optimization works best when marketers build trust, match messaging to multiple stakeholders, and track signals that reveal purchase intent. Nadia Suanzes shares practical ways to reduce funnel leaks, choose the right conversion path, and test meaningful changes that turn more website users into qualified buyers.
Growth Marketing & AI Consultant
Nadia Suanzes is a growth marketing and AI consultant who helps B2B SaaS companies improve conversions, strengthen positioning, and create measurable revenue impact. Her expertise spans conversion rate optimization, buyer journey strategy, website analytics, and experimentation. Drawing on CRM data, A/B testing, and micro-conversion insights, Nadia helps brands refine their messaging, build trust with technical audiences, and turn website traffic into qualified demand.
Attracting website visitors is only part of the challenge for cybersecurity marketers. Buyers need credible evidence, relevant messaging, and clear reasons to take the next step before interest becomes intent. How can marketing teams convert more users into buyers without relying on pressure, vague claims, or fear?
The answer lies in building trust and optimizing each stage of the buyer journey, according to growth marketing and revenue optimization expert Nadia Suanzes. She recommends supporting claims with case studies, reviews, certifications, open documentation, and opportunities to experience the product firsthand. Nadia also explains how layered messaging can address both technical practitioners and decision-makers. Meanwhile, micro-conversions, repeat visits, pricing-page activity, and CRM data can reveal which prospects are moving closer to a purchase. By testing meaningful changes and prioritizing measurable outcomes, marketers can create a conversion strategy grounded in evidence rather than assumptions.
In this episode of Cyber Funnel, Thorn Compton talks with Nadia Suanzes, a growth marketing and AI consultant, about converting users into buyers through smarter, evidence-led marketing. Nadia explains how to build trust, tailor messaging for technical and executive audiences, and track the signals that reveal buying intent. She also touches on product trials, fear-based copy, and practical A/B testing for lower-traffic websites.
This episode is brought to you by Amplifyed.
Amplifyed is a specialized SEO agency, and we partner with in-house marketing teams to boost search visibility, drive qualified traffic, and turn organic search into real pipeline growth.
From technical SEO to content strategy, Amplifyed handles the heavy lifting so your team can stay focused on building and selling. If you want to show up when your buyers are searching, Amplifyed helps you get there.
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Intro: 00:02
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, brought to you by Amplifyed. Where we feature the top minds in cyber security.
Thorn Compton: 00:14
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, where we're lifting up the people behind the brands across the cyber security industry. I'm your host, Thorn Compton, and some of my great past chats include amazing people like corporate communications leader and GEO guru Clinton Karr. Check out that talk. It was a fantastic talk about everything. GEO.
Today I have the pleasure to welcome growth marketing and revenue optimization expert Nadia Suanzes into the cyber funnel. How are you today, Nadia?
Nadia Suanzes: 00:40
I'm good. I'm pretty nervous because we are going to play against France in the semifinals now in about an hour. But I'm excited to be here.
Thorn Compton: 00:50
I will take nerves over the semi-final of the World Cup, more than nerves over being on this podcast, because this is just going to be fun and you're going to be able to be like, yeah, you know, that was a good luck for us. And we got into the final, so.
Nadia Suanzes: 01:02
Okay. Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 01:03
I love it. All right, before we really get started, of course, this episode is brought to you by Amplifyed. The SEO and agency for cybersecurity companies. Amplifyed serves cybersecurity marketing teams by driving more leads from Google and AI search. We handle all the heavy lifting and know the exact levers to pull to get you to get you more skills.
And more importantly, we speak the language of cybersecurity. Learn more@amplifyed.io. That's amplifyed.io. You know, I said skills and that's a fantastic segue into pretty much what we're going to be talking about today. I've got Nadia Suanzes.
Yeah. And yeah. Are you excited to talk about how to get real conversions?
Nadia Suanzes: 01:47
Yeah, sure. My favorite topic.
Thorn Compton: 01:50
It should be everybody's favorite topic. Though I, I, I say that as a teaser. We're going to get into that for a second because we got to start off getting to know you a little bit more. And your lightning round first question today is what was your first concert?
Nadia Suanzes: 02:07
Well, my first concert was actually pretty recent. It was 2024. The band is like a legendary Spanish pop rock band from the 80s. Basically, according to me, a national institution like everybody in my generation grew up listening to their songs. So I started late, but big.
Thorn Compton: 02:33
Of all of the things too. It's like, I like, I love going to see somebody that's like from your childhood that early. I mean, it must have just brought everything back for you.
Nadia Suanzes: 02:42
Oh yeah. Especially my teen years.
Thorn Compton: 02:47
Some people don't want to remember those. And I love that you're just like, no, bring those on. So. That's fantastic, I love it. Hey, we're going to segue that hard into building trust.
I actually think when, when we're talking about cybersecurity buyers, they're often really naturally skeptical. How do you build trust on a website with content for cybersecurity buyers, like without making them suspicious and like using tricks?
Nadia Suanzes: 03:20
Well, I honestly think that all users are pretty much skeptical now. Like we have all been burned by fake discounts and like to only have days left in stock, you know, but I think in cybersecurity, yeah, like you're selling to people whose literal job is to not trust things. So anything that smells like a trick, like fake urgency or inflated claims doesn't just fail. It completely disqualifies you. So I guess what I see is I will prove like real case studies with numbers or third party reviews, certifications, things that people can actually check, you know.
And also ideally, let them see the value themselves, like maybe a free trial or a sandbox. Yeah. Like for a skeptical buyer, I would say that trying the product is worth more than any headline you could, you can write because they're going to do their own research. Like they're going to investigate anyway on Reddit or on review sites. So better if the most honest source they find is your own website, like with open documentation or comparison pages.
Thorn Compton: 04:50
I completely agree. I, I, I couldn't agree more with all that. It's so funny. You mean an industry where zero trust is a really important thing, has a hard time trusting things whenever it comes to. Yeah.
No, it makes total sense that they, that you have to, you have to really be transparent. You have to really like to give real data. And if you're not, then you're probably not going to be having your message go home, you know?
Nadia Suanzes: 05:18
Right.
Nadia Suanzes: 05:18
And especially from a CRO side, you see that data like which promises convert and which ones make people bounce.
Thorn Compton: 05:29
Yeah. What do you actually see from your experience there? Is it, is it more of the value proposition, things that are going to actually bring things through rather than maybe a little more vague?
Nadia Suanzes: 05:43
Definitely. The value proposition is the winner. What they are going to get with you instead of maybe the fear is.
Thorn Compton: 05:53
Yeah, exactly. Like why, why, what's the benefit rather than being scared? I love that. And, you know, actually it leads me into obviously two types of buyers. Too often there's two different people involved.
You've got the technical expert and then you've got like the manager of the whole situation. How do you design messaging that kind of speaks to both ends?
Nadia Suanzes: 06:15
Well, I get this from writing for B2B SaaS. You're always writing for two. These two people at once, the person that uses the tool every day and the person that signs off on the budget. For example, imagine a project management tool that I'm in love with, the team member that is evaluating it wants to know, like, is it fast? Does it integrate with my stack?
Will it make my day easier? And their manager wants to know, okay, but how many hours does the team actually save? How much does it cost per seat? So in cybersecurity, it's basically the same logic. The security engineer wants to know does it actually work?
Does it fit or stack? And the CISO or whoever, whoever holds the budget asks, what risks does this remove and how can I justify this spend? So I would say how is let's say you have one landing page. The trick for me would be layering the copy like one business income headline. Like what business outcome headline at the top.
And so the decision maker gets their answer in five seconds. And maybe the technical depths like the integration, the documentation, everything related to the person that is going to really run the tool want to scroll away or one click away. So that each person can find their own path down the page. And if you have more resources, well, you split your content by persona like especially with lead magnets. Take one page or webinar.
Nadia Suanzes: 08:08
For this.
Thorn Compton: 08:08
There. I like it.
Nadia Suanzes: 08:10
For the engineer. Maybe you would run something like a webinar called how to detect threats or how to detect movements ex in environments. Why something that is super hands on. And for the decision maker, you might have one pager like what a data breach really costs something like numbers that they can take straight to the board. So it would be like the same funnel, but two doors in.
Thorn Compton: 08:41
I, I, I have, I have so many thoughts about what you think and everything, everything you said is, is, is so very true. That's it's I the persona targeting specifically with specific content is it's so important now more than ever to with the way that people are interacting with the AI. I love that you mentioned like the, the, the integration stack because like, that's the, it feels like that's the specific, the golden goose there because everybody wants it cares about that. The CISO wants to make sure that it fits in with the integration. So they don't have to spend more money on something that they don't have to buy to be able to use you.
And then same thing with the practitioner. They're just like, I want to make sure that you're actually going to be useful to me and I don't have to learn something new with that. So that's, I love that thought there. Also, I'm gonna do at some point in this podcast, we're going to have a little like thing that goes, Thorn's going to talk about journalism, but just as a former journalist, that inverted pyramid style of get the really important information out there first and what's the important information to the CISO? Why is this valuable to you?
Get that up there early and then start to build your content, like kind of down from that. Nadia. You got it. That's fantastic. Okay, so we're going to move on big security deals.
Like they take a long time. And like, speaking of that, the buyer journey, obviously, it's, it's, it takes sometimes months, multiple touch bases, multiple touches on your site or like through other things for somebody to find you, you know, what are some of the smaller actions that you do to track along the way on that buyer journey to make sure people are moving down the path that you want them to?
Nadia Suanzes: 10:25
Yeah, completely. Like B2B funnels are much longer than B2C.
Thorn Compton: 10:30
So.
Nadia Suanzes: 10:30
Long. And you can, yeah, you can really optimize for the sale. Yeah. You have to optimize for these small steps that may predict the sale. Like in an e-commerce, the funnel can be 20 minutes, like as, as quick as a user, see an Instagram ad Lands on a product page and then buys.
But in B2B and especially security, it can be six, nine, 12 months with maybe 5 or 6 people involved. Yeah. So the only thing that I see, if the only thing that you are measuring is closed deals, you will have to wait an entire year to find out if what you did actually worked. And that's a really slow way to learn anything. So like you said, maybe break the journey into smaller signals.
Like for example, early on in the funnel, maybe downloading a guide, signing up for a webinar, subscribing to our newsletter, these smaller, these smaller steps by, by stage of the funnel or even in the funnel where the first intent signals start showing, like maybe someone comes back three times in a week.
Thorn Compton: 11:47
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 11:48
Or visit the pricing page or request a demo. All of those are like strong intent signals that you can also optimize. And even in the late stages where you get the really strong ones, like activating the trial or requesting security documentation, several people from the same company suddenly visit your page, like that's, that means that they are discussing that internally. So I would say that the key is connecting your analytics to your CRM and checking which of those actions are that your actual customers did before buying. Like maybe you find that the number of e-book downloads predict almost nothing but the number of companies, the number of the visits that companies visited, your pricing.
For example, twice a week that number converts ten times more. So that's where you want. That's what you want to optimize for. And that also tells you when to alert sales.
Thorn Compton: 13:05
Yeah. I mean that's why it's so important to have a handle on your conversions to like what you even have coming through as conversions on your site. You know, like, I don't care what you're using GA4, HubSpot, you know, whatever your, your, your CRM you're using is regularly audit that because like stuff gets out of whack and you gotta make sure that the content like so that, you know, all right, fine, you had this many demos, you had this many newsletter signups, which I love that you, the newsletter sign up is such an easy CTA that I feel like so many people miss out. It's so soft, but like it gets you in their funnel, you know?
Nadia Suanzes: 13:43
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, completely.
Thorn Compton: 13:47
You know, some companies like, they, they like to not give away anything. They want to gate everything. And then some of them, they want to give away the product for free, you know, a little bit, you know, get the free trial. How do you decide? And then obviously then there's the live demo.
There's actually somebody on the call. How do you decide which of that is better and is it? Does each of them maybe serve a different user?
Nadia Suanzes: 14:19
Which is better, like a free trial or a live demo?
Thorn Compton: 14:22
Yeah. And I even like giving nothing away, just totally gating everything. Because, you know, that is another approach obviously to that is just like, hey, if you want anything from us, give us your information and then you can have it.
Nadia Suanzes: 14:35
Yeah. Well, I don't think there's really a universal winner here. Like each one is good at a different job. It depends really on how fast your product shows value or how complex the deal is. Like I'm thinking about the advantages of free trials, for example.
The biggest one would be that it replaces the promises that you are selling to them with proof, right? And for a skeptical buyer that we were talking about earlier, that's gold. They don't, they don't have to believe your website. They can see it working themselves. And it also puts the buyer in control.
Like there's no sales pressure. They explore at their own pace. There's tons of other advantages, but it only works if the product shows its value fast. You know, like if someone can set it up on their own.
Thorn Compton: 15:34
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 15:35
If it takes like three weeks. Yeah. And an engineer to configure, then what your trial becomes. Exactly. Yeah.
It's like a graveyard of abandoned accounts. It doesn't really work for your product.
Thorn Compton: 15:50
Just sitting in the cart. Right? Absolutely.
Nadia Suanzes: 15:52
Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 15:53
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 15:53
But the demo, the demo, for example, it's a win for a product that is complex. Or if the deal is big, a good sales person will tell you the story in the right order. It will tailor it to your actual environment, and it can even get up to five stakeholders in the same room, like maybe the engineer, the manager, whoever signs the budget. And you learn things also with this demo, with this live demo, you learn things that you wouldn't learn with a free trial because they're talking to you. They tell you their objections, their timeline, and you can tell who actually decides.
But of course, the downside is friction. Like booking a call with sales scares a lot of people away.
Thorn Compton: 16:49
They don't have time. They think, oh, I don't have time to go on a live demo. Though, the free trial might take longer than the demo does, but that's a dirty little secret they don't want to think about, right?
Nadia Suanzes: 16:59
Right.
Thorn Compton: 17:02
And funny that you mentioned the sales because like, and you kind of brought it up earlier, a lot of sales messaging, a lot of messaging as a whole that people have or in cybersecurity is based around fear. It's, it's, this is going to happen to you. What are you going to do about it? Does that work? And do you feel like there is another way to go around that, you know.
Nadia Suanzes: 17:26
Professionals live with these threats every single day. And generic hackers are coming to you. That feels like marketing to them. They have seen a thousand of those already, and it can even feel a little condescending. Condescending like for them, I guess.
Maybe where fear can work is when it's specific and maybe backed by evidence, like a real incident data that happened recently, or if there's something relevant to their industry. Like it's a big doom. No, but if it's a concrete risk and relevant, maybe. Yeah, it could work. But what I've seen convert better is what we were talking about earlier is the confidence framing like what you gain?
Yes. The value proposition, right. The visibility that you're going to get to control the time back, like with proof behind it, you know. And yeah, instead of maybe amplifying the fear of threats, maybe you can use some kind of reduction of the fear by them choosing you, like with trust signals. Like we have here.
Or customers reviews or awards or industry recognition case studies with real numbers or hey, listen, we have 24 over seven support or you can get your money back or any exit exit terms if you have them. But this is also like a classic AV test, by the way, like, yeah, fear framing versus outcome framing.
Thorn Compton: 19:09
Yeah, I, I, it's a relationship. You're building a relationship. And where do you want to start your relationship? Do you want to start your relationship with fear? Or do you want to just start your relationship on mutual benefit, you know?
Nadia Suanzes: 19:21
Exactly.
Nadia Suanzes: 19:21
Yeah. And I think that with technical audiences, the outcome frame copies the message that version tends to, to win.
Thorn Compton: 19:31
Yeah, exactly. What can you do for me? And then let's work together and yeah, a b testing. I love it. You know, you it's like, it's like, you know what I'm going to ask you.
We did prep. Oh, no.
Nadia Suanzes: 19:45
No, it's what I do.
Thorn Compton: 19:46
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 19:48
It's what I do. I have.
Nadia Suanzes: 19:49
To, I have to conduct the conversation to what I do, to what I.
Thorn Compton: 19:53
Know. It's fantastic. We got to prep stuff. And so it feels like a B testing is really important in all kinds of marketing and probably something that people don't think about on the CRO side of things. Give me your thoughts on a B testing and figuring out with data what actually works.
Nadia Suanzes: 20:13
Well, sorry, what do you mean?
Thorn Compton: 20:15
How do you run tests, like with small amounts of data, like on a CRO side?
Nadia Suanzes: 20:22
That's a real issue that I have faced several times because with an AB test, what you need is like a minimum sample size to reach statistical confidence. And that number is much bigger than people think. Like, let me give you an example with rough numbers. Yeah. Say like your page gets 5000 visits a month and converts at 2% for whatever conversion it is, as if it's a small or big conversion converts at 2%.
If you want to detect a 20% improvement or lift, which is already a big win, you would need somewhere around 80 to 10,000 visitors per variation. It's like a four month test for your current traffic, and if the real uplift that you're going to get is smaller, which normally is, say, 10%, now you have like months and months, months and months more like realistically that test never finishes. Yeah. So you're not running an experiment at that point. You're just getting a lot of information and you're missing out a lot of good information from the actual.
The actual page and the actual buyers.
Thorn Compton: 21:43
Yeah, absolutely.
Nadia Suanzes: 21:44
And you can.
Nadia Suanzes: 21:45
And you can just go.
Nadia Suanzes: 21:47
And say client, I will run it for a year because whatever. No, like a loan test. But when you're running a test for that long, something breaks in their own way. Like people might delete cookies or switch devices. There's a seasonality that comes in, like the visitor that you get in December is not the same one that you get in February.
So the longer the test run, the dirtier the data gets. Yes. So I would say that the tempting shortcut here is to forget the test. I will just ship and do the change and implement the variation that I want you to do. And I will just compare versus before or after.
And that might feel reasonable, but it doesn't really hold up because when you change things, like the world keeps changing as well. Like maybe there was a campaign that you launched, maybe it's high season or maybe something happened with your competitor. So if you do like a redesign on your page and you see a huge uplift, was it really the redesign or was it because it was November? You just can't tell. You need to isolate the variables.
And that's exactly why we do the B tests. So low traffic we're conducting. So with low traffic you can either maybe I would say try and test big changes. Right. Because like a completely different value proposition a complete restructure page.
A different offer, like big changes, normally produces big effects that we were talking about earlier, like the expected uplift.
Thorn Compton: 23:50
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 23:52
And that's what you need with much smaller samples. Also, you can try to gather more traffic into one test. So instead of maybe testing in one single product page, maybe try and run the same test across every page that shares the same template. Like if ten pages have 500 visits and you have. Suddenly, if you combine all of the pages with the same template, suddenly you have 5000 visits and that gives you a lot more traffic to run your AB test and get enough sample size.
Also, you could just try and test by other metrics in your funnel, like the micro conversions that we were talking about earlier, that you have much more conversion of much higher conversion or something that we have also done in the past, except maybe directional results.
Thorn Compton: 24:57
Yeah.
Nadia Suanzes: 24:57
You know, like.
Thorn Compton: 24:59
You have had to dig on this.
Nadia Suanzes: 25:02
Okay. So you say, I will run this test for six weeks. And if a variant is ahead at 80 or 80% confidence, I will treat it as directional evidence. Like I will implement it and keep it monitoring after launch. Keep it.
You have risks of false positives, but at least you're making a smarter bet than you would have done if you didn't have the data.
Thorn Compton: 25:29
Yeah, it's an educated guess at that point.
Nadia Suanzes: 25:32
It's an educated guess at 80, 85% confidence.
Thorn Compton: 25:36
Exactly. You know what I'll take? I always love to say don't. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. Could it potentially not work?
No. And that's why you monitor it. You don't just put it in and just think it's not going to. And then and think it's done, you know.
Nadia Suanzes: 25:51
Right. Yeah.
Thorn Compton: 25:52
I love that. Okay. So you got me thinking about seasonality. So we're going to pivot away and I'm going to ask you another personal question because I'm very curious as a woman from Madrid, where do you like to go on vacation?
Nadia Suanzes: 26:06
Well, I actually enjoy a good staycation, but I love traveling. So as long as there's a balance, I'm happy. Like my latest trips were around the US. Actually I did in October. Road trip from Minnesota to Wyoming and the mountains.
Oh my God, it's so beautiful. And in March I went to Texas. In Austin. I was there for the South by Southwest side events and I met a lot of interesting people. I also wanted to go to the rodeo.
I'm not going to lie. I chose March because of the rodeo, and I wanted to also learn to dance two steps. So for next year.
Thorn Compton: 26:51
As a Houstonian who has been to so many rodeos and actually, funnily enough, the best rodeos I ever went to were in Wyoming. Wyoming has a really great rodeo. So fun.
Nadia Suanzes: 27:01
I wanted to.
Nadia Suanzes: 27:02
But it was November. Everything was closed.
Thorn Compton: 27:04
Everything's closed because in Wyoming it's yeah, it's it's it was wild. As a Houstonian, I lived in Wyoming for a year and going from, you know, very hot to it didn't get over zero degrees for two months was very different.
Nadia Suanzes: 27:19
Yes, yes, it was cold. It was cold on November 2nd.
Nadia Suanzes: 27:22
Even in November.
Thorn Compton: 27:24
Right? Yes. Like, come on, it was freezing. We it's the United States. We get hot.
We get you cold. We're just going to just kill you both ways. So. No, Nadia, this has been fantastic. And I, and I, I love I've loved this conversation.
Before I have one last question for you. But before I do that, talk to the people, tell them where to find you and kind of anything you have going on.
Nadia Suanzes: 27:50
Where to find me, where I'm always on LinkedIn. I don't know, maybe you can link to LinkedIn somewhere, but I think they can always find me on LinkedIn.
Thorn Compton: 28:01
Fantastic. And look her up. She's fantastic. And my last question for you is, in your experience, what is one of the biggest mistakes cybersecurity teams make when it comes to like conversion rate and like, maybe thinking about the wrong thing on conversions?
Nadia Suanzes: 28:21
Well, good question. I would say maybe spending 90% of the budget on getting the traffic and only 5%. I'm converting it. Companies like to celebrate the visits and rankings. Well, while their final leaks everywhere.
It's like paying for the water and not fixing the pipes. I would say that would be the biggest mistake that I see in companies making regarding conversion.
Thorn Compton: 28:51
Put it, put it, set it in stone because I couldn't agree with you more. That is, it's a great way to finish there. Nadia, thank you so much for coming on. And hey, get the flag out. Let's go Spain and take France out.
Let's go. As I say, I'm weirdly wearing a French looking shirt. Have to, as I say on a podcast. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. And thank you so much, Nadia.
Nadia Suanzes: 29:15
Thank you.
Outro: 29:17
Thank you for listening to the Cyber Funnel podcast. Tune in next time for more tips and insights, and be sure to click subscribe for future episode updates.
