← The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™
The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™
Traffic Times Conversion Equals Customers With Irwin Hau
00:54:18
Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:05]
B
And welcome to the best SEO podcast, the Unknown secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your guest host, Jeff Campbell hosting here for the first time today as Matt is out of town traveling. He'll be back soon. I've got with me today Irwin Howell who runs an agency down in Melbourne, Australia. Erwin, how are you doing?
- [00:26]
A
Hey, how you going? From Melbourne, Australia. How's things?
- [00:29]
B
Excellent, excellent. So, Erwin, you've been running Chromatics is the name of your agency for 12 plus years. You've racked up something north of 80 awards. What is award winning, award winning actually mean for a digital agency? In terms of your ability, is this reflective of your ability to deliver results for your clients?
- [00:49]
A
Yeah, 100%. Well, it's actually been 17. I actually just did. I was talking to someone, I didn't realize. No, no, you said 12 plus. So 17.
- [00:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [01:02]
A
Right. I think award winning is on a couple levels. Number one, look and feel. I think when it comes to design, you know, there's a visual UI side of things. But I think what's more important is actually that UX and like you said, the results side of things like conversion, really at the end of the day for what we do because we specialize in that and really understanding human behavior and human psychology because yeah, if you can't make this one maths formula work, what are you doing? In that format is traffic times conversion rate equals customers. And let's be honest, people don't wake up going, oh, I want new rankings. They wake up going, hey, I want more sales, I want more phone calls, I want more leads. Yeah, that's what we're going to do.
- [01:41]
B
Results result is the objective. That's the business goal.
- [01:45]
A
100%.
- [01:47]
B
Yeah. You know, we were talking before we got on the podcast about how I was a customer of EWR and a listener to this podcast. So it's kind of cool to be hosting the podcast for the first time now. But ewr, our previous name of our company was E Web Results. And that as a customer really appealed to me. Like I'm here to get results. That's why I'm hiring a marketing company. You said there's no manual. You said in your comments there's no manual for running a business. What's the one mistake you see that agency owners make that you had to learn the hard way yourself?
- [02:21]
A
Oh, man, there are so many
- [02:25]
B
angles.
- [02:26]
A
But to me, if you don't practice what you preach. So the thing I hear the web agencies say is that I've got a bad website. Oh, don't look at my website. But I'm going to do some great work for you. Right. That doesn't make sense. You know, your website is a reflection of your own work and so if you can't even do it for yourself, I don't care what you say. You know, the thing is believing and so just make sure you get yourself right. Make sure you're presenting yourself well. Make sure you spend the time investing into your first impression as we say.
- [02:56]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I've seen how important that is with the changes that we've been through as an agency where Matt took us from kind of a local service business agency in Houston to you know, a national kind of enterprise level agency and that was all about what's on the website, the positioning, how are we presenting ourselves. And as somebody who takes all the, the inbound leads and, and all the phone calls coming in. Absolutely. Saw the, the, you know you, you get the type of clients that you're aiming for and a lot of that is, is, is what your website reflects.
- [03:31]
A
Yeah.
- [03:32]
B
So prior, prior to having your own agency you worked inside other ad agencies. What, what broke your brain the first when you getting into the client work on the business side?
- [03:47]
A
Yeah. 100 so I used to work for Clementine BBDO down here in Melbourne, Australia and George hers and YNR. So the YNI group, which everyone knows of the two agencies worldwide. Rather than work for the man, I thought I'd be the man. But mate, sometimes you realize, I know you're wearing a hat right now but mate, the number of hats you wear, you've got to do sales, you've got to do hr, you've got to do marketing. I'm the same guy who has to empty the bins as well as debt collect at the same time and hire and do sales and make a website at the end of the day and I think you just don't realize you can't do everything. That's where you need to build a great team. But you need to understand that you've got to have good cash flow as well. You're going to understand marketing and so. Well, that mind blowing moment.
- [04:32]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So no, no regrets though having made that move, it was probably harder than you thought it was going to be and you probably, and you probably thought it was going to be hard and did it end up being more difficult than you thought it was?
- [04:45]
A
Well actually for me I think my naivety of business was actually my strength and the fact that I think if I knew if you showed me what the future would be like how much pain I'd have to go through in the school of hard knocks and stuff. I think I would have tapped out. But I think I was like, oh, can't be that bad, you know, make a website, sell a website, that's about it and stuff like that. And I think that naivety goes like, yeah, that's, that's simple. Right? And so, so like I said, my hair started here when I first started the agency. So I think this is a demonstration of just how much hard work. Blood, sweat and tears. Yeah, so, yeah, absolutely.
- [05:21]
B
So, so we'll meet reality eventually. But the, the unfounded optimism is not a bad foundation to start off with because you need that kind of optimism to launch into any venture. And if we knew what we were getting into, maybe we wouldn't start. But you've done it, you built it. So that's amazing. You're launching a SaaS while running an established agency. How do you think about productizing services versus building software? And why are you getting into that right now?
- [05:50]
A
Yeah, I think, I think if you actually look at all the, I mean I was actually reading something about mailchimp. Well, we know about mailchimp or the email SAS that it is. Did you know that was an agency back in the day and stuff like that? And then that kind of got me thinking, oh, but what's the backstory of all these different sasses and stuff? And I realized that everyone used to be a website chop shop somewhere in their lives, starting with websites that then turns into some digital marketing or you know, you'd be, especially as a generalist. But then everyone realizes maybe the grass is green on the other side. Maybe it's not just running a service business or what about product guys? And then, you know, SAS kind of blew up. Everyone loves sas. Let's get into sas. You know, current revenue sounds wonderful. And then away they, they go into SAS land. But we actually started the SaaS not because of that spark to say, do what I just said. It was actually we were solving our own problem. So what had happened was we had created our own service based business. We gave lots of leads to our website. But you know what, I don't want leads. I don't want traffic, I want phone calls. I don't want people just to look at my website. I mean, you can give me a million impressions on my website or you know, I don't care what that time is. I need phone calls, I need forms filled out so I can actually follow them up. And so we were testing this thing over seven years, tried 32 different variations across our website and client websites. And we decided and found one method on converting people faster and quicker. And we decided to productize it, and that's how conversion Cal came down. So it actually was actually a product for myself. Copy selfish. But I just thought, hey, I want to help me and get that from rigging. Then we did, and now we've actually turned it into a product that anyone can use for less than a couple of days. Stuff like that. I don't have a cup here, but we have a cup that says, milk your website and beef up your website for more leads. And that's the hype. Add our software to your. To your website and a nice, quick, easy way to jack up those conversion rates.
- [07:56]
B
So is that a product that you use with active clients who come on in your agency? Are you, oh, 100% that as well?
- [08:04]
A
Yeah, yeah. So now we've taken to the point where, number one, it's on our website. Number two, it's actually on the conversion cow website. Conversion cows on conversion Cal. But because we're building websites and people go, hey, you've built me a really great website. We're getting lots of traffic. Are there any other tips and tricks? Erwin and everyone. And here's a big mistake that a lot of customers make. They think it's about spending more money on marketing. Well, let's do more SEO, more traffic, more. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you realize that if you had a million people coming to you and only like a couple of percent are getting through, your issue isn't that you need 2 million people coming through?
- [08:42]
B
Yeah.
- [08:43]
A
It's like your toilet's blocked. We need to unplug this hole to get people through to your telephone. And so that's where we really focused. It's not about spending more SEO AdWords. Because I had one client, 16,000 people per month visiting their website, and they're like, we're going to spend more. I'm like, these AdWords, I mean, Google's really rich because they make lots of money from AdWords. SEO agencies are raking it up because they're charging lots, but for this particular client, they're still not getting as many phone calls as they should be. And so all we did was working on software and let's look at the data. I think data, you know, we should be making guesses, should look at the data. And we realized, yeah, lots of people come to your website. There's no offer, no special lack of call to actions, lack of Proof, no reason why someone should get in touch. And our software did all of that in one shot like that, so why not?
- [09:39]
B
So that's a lot to do in one shot. There must be a lot of inputs needed into the software from the client when you're onboarding them. How does that look? How much information do they need to give you for that to work?
- [09:50]
A
Yeah, it's actually not as tricky as you think. So let's play a game and stuff. If I was to engage with you or actually think of it not like a website, think about like a first date, right? Think of the best first date you've ever gone on. There's only four questions you asked on that date. Who are you? What do you do? Why should we go out? And can I have your phone number? They're exactly the same questions people ask on a in particular service based business. So professional services, trade services, allied health services. Right, yeah, I know who you are, but I kind of want to know what you do in more detail. Can you prove that what you just said, you're actually really good at it? You know, all this kind of testimonials, you know, logos, all the usuals. And they. Can I just have your phone number? Like the details at the end, like that date. But how many people miss these basics and stuff like that? Who are you? What did you do? Why choose you? How to get in touch? Actually anyone who's listening, I challenge you to almost take a pause, open up a new browser if you're driving, don't, don't do that, but open a browser, flick it on, look on your mobile and just see how quickly not do you say it all over your website? People are lazy. They've got a couple of seconds. But can you. And do you say who you are, what you do? Why choose you and how to get in touch with you? So your phone number, email, short, whatever it is, and maybe a combination because let's be honest, if, just if Jeff, if you're an extrovert, you want to pick up the call, but I'm a bit of an introvert. I type a message and I've got an email because I need an email because I've got a whole brief as well. Do you actually make it easy for people to get in touch? And so the information we ask for is really, we just ask those four questions and our tool literally lets you summarize it all in one shot, one place and we make it prominent all the time. So you kind of miss on a website. That's actually how simple it is, yeah.
- [11:47]
B
So some really, some basic points of CRO that you're getting locked down there make it easy for people to connect with you, make it easy for them to take the action that you want them to take, which is reach out and connect. So what about the part of, you know, nobody wants to go on a first date where the other person talks about themselves the entire time? What about that thing about resonating with customers and their pain points and how do you think about that? How do you approach that piece of the puzzle?
- [12:13]
A
So, so love it. See, the problem is websites are static. It's the same message, same way every time. If only there was a way to make your message dynamic and relate to the person. So say, for example, if someone clicked on an AdWords ad that said, you know, I've got a problem with X and when you click on that and you go to the website, I get it, you know, you send to the right landing page or the right page without problem. But what if that page doesn't even have the exact details on it? Does that mean you have to pay 250 bucks or something per hour to some guy to fix that page? No, actually. So conversion count. What makes it so magical is the message changes depending how the customer interacts with the website. So say, for example, we have one client who's a plumber after hours. After 5:30pm the message on his website changes from go general inquiry, give us a call and it is our head office number to, oh, it's after hours. The only reason why you're looking is your toilet's busted or do you have an after hours emergency. So the message instantly now changes to got an after hour emergency problem. When you click it, it doesn't go to the head office phone number, it now goes to Gary on his mobile number and he'll come out within 24 hours. That to me is a great customer experience and I think Seth Godin said it. The right message at the right time to the right person equals a high conversion rate. And the problem with, I guess any website, I think CRO is good for once off static. You've done an A B test. But what if you could change the message?
- [13:56]
B
Yeah, no, that's. That, that's great. So you get, you mentioned kind of one vector and one situation, which is time of day for a plumber. What are the other kind of signals that you would use to change the message on the website? Would it be different ads that you're running, the different language that's in the ads?
- [14:14]
A
What else yeah. Another way to change it is we have another client. Actually the same client. Actually the same client. They realize that during the day, not everyone has a. Just wants to know the bottom of the funnel message, which is, here's the phone number. How do we keep them in the middle if they're kind of choosing between two or three people? We realize special offers and discounts help especially with trade businesses. But if you come up with one offer, so, you know, 10% off your first service. Right. Well, what if I'm coming for the second time? That doesn't qualify. And so our software allows you to put like say three discounts. One's for the first time, one's for repeating customer, and one's actually for a referring customer. So your customer, but you're referring someone else. And that message can change every month. So this month special. So exclusive discount offer for the month of June, bang. And you know what, it's winter now. Change it. Oh, it's a different month. Change it. It's seasonal. Change it changes. And so we found that offers and specials are another great way to engage someone. Because remember, we're here just to get someone's attention and get that attention and turn into action of sorts and stuff. So we use sometimes testimonials and case studies that kind of gets you. Sometimes it's a video. That's another method. Could be dot points, you know, clear messaging into the problem value of your company. Discounts and specials. Yeah, it's a bit of everything. Yeah.
- [15:39]
B
So all those discounts and special offers are built into the platform, is that right? Is that how it works?
- [15:43]
A
Yeah. Well, you need to create the offer firstly, but we can display the message of that offer.
- [15:48]
B
Sure.
- [15:49]
A
And let's be honest, if you have some sort of tracking internally, when everyone calls up and says, hey, you know, use jeff123 as the code, then you can also attribute or attribute where that came from as well. So attribution is also another one.
- [16:03]
B
Where do you.
- [16:05]
A
That's so important.
- [16:05]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's very valuable. Very valuable. Always something that we're looking for as marketers. How do we attribute, you know, which channels are doing the work for us or doing the heavy lifting are getting us the best results. Tell me a little bit now about as you built this SaaS. Obviously you've got, you know, customer inbound customers coming to your marketing agency that you can offer this product to them. How are you growing the product outside of that? Just for, you know, customers who are just SaaS, only customers. Tell me about that growth Journey and how you were able to build up your customer base for your product.
- [16:37]
A
Yeah, I mean, at, at the start, what I've actually learned is you need proof. You just need some proof. So at the start you do have to go. So pretending you're on day one with no one, well, you need a couple people to trust you, to love you. It just so happens we have an agency, nss, so we kind of feed ourselves, you know, because I am my own perfect target market and stuff like that. And you want to kind of get your first, you know, couple of clients, but you're not really trying to get the money, you're trying to get the proof, the testimonials and the results. And then you use that and then you build off that to get more customers and stuff. So at the start, it's your inner circle and people who you can feed and you might have some mates and people who run agencies. You've got to work out who your sales channels or partners can be. But then it gets to the next level after that where you kind of know people. You can either run ads, that's one side. Or you do that kind of cold stuff. So cold email, cold calling, running your own outbound teams and stuff. And that's what we're kind of slowly building out as we're just trying to perfect. Because that's the other thing when running a SaaS, you need to nail, absolutely nail the crap out of your, your icp. Who is that absolute perfect profile person? Because I'm not gonna lie, I used to say be the guy who did what I said I shouldn't do. Everyone's my customer.
- [17:52]
B
Yes.
- [17:53]
A
Not everyone's your customer.
- [17:55]
B
No. Yeah.
- [17:56]
A
Some people are just more fruitful or more profitable than others. And some people actually get more bang out, bang for their buck out of your software than others. And so why go for just everyone when you can actually just go for the absolute cream of the crop? So for us, we worked out high traffic websites. So you got a very high traffic website then. Hey, you've already got the people coming in. We just need to get them through. Right.
- [18:23]
B
Traffic, low conversion though, like high traffic, not getting the results that you want. That sounds like a real pain point for.
- [18:28]
A
Yeah, so you're running AdWords, campaigns, SEO meta, you know, all the paid ad stuff. Or you maybe you're really good with organic. You know, you might have a great podcast or a great Instagram account or something you can pull people in. But that's all it is. It's. What do they say? Likes is vanity. Sales is sanity. I don't care about you liking us and that's it. I want you to call us so we can actually turn that into to business and something that, where we can give value and you can actually see a result that's financially beneficial.
- [18:59]
B
So yeah, you had the proof before scaling. Yeah, you know, because A, you're solving your own problem and B, you're going to your network first. So you're not, you're not just building an app and then throwing a bunch of ads at it. You're building, you're proving it, you're getting feedback and you're really understanding that this is something that is going to be useful to people because people are telling us that it's useful.
- [19:22]
A
Correct. So we actually did a couple of tests and stuff and we actually just, we got nominated for award here recently and in the interview process for the award they said show us methodically how you proved it. So first one was we built it for ourself. Did it actually impact our results? So it did. Great. Now did you implement on someone else's one and did it show results? It did. But then we thought, wait a minute, I said at the very beginning this formula, traffic times conversion rate equals customers. And we realized there's an increase in customers or phone calls maybe like website leads will call. Right. Can you close it or not? That's, that's another story. But where are we getting the phone calls? But then we realized, wait a minute, if we did a little bit of conversion but we just did more traffic, it also affect that number. So we then had to do another test where we kind of kept the traffic number as even as possible. So don't spend more money on AdWords or Warn SEO or other channel. But could you tell with conversion count and without conversion count that there was a jump? And so we ran it on particular clients. This one client I'm thinking of, this was their result before, after it actually jumped up and we doubled and stuff like that. So we're like mate, that's all we did. And it was actually during the same period within we'll call it a gen to March period. We could attribute it, hey, I think we're on the right path and stuff. And so then away you go. And so you start collecting testimonials, feedback, start building case studies and then use the case studies to then sell what you do. Because remember, no one cares that you make websites or you have software or you do ads. They don't care what you do. They want to buy the result of what you do. And so.
- [21:09]
B
Yes, yes, absolutely. You mentioned kind of the, the ideal customer being high traffic, low conversions because that's a problem that you can help fix.
- [21:18]
A
That's one of three. Yep.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah. Okay. Okay. The other two.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah. So the first one was actually high traffic, low conversion. Second is you actually care about lead generation. I know it sounds funny, but some people have high traffic but they go, I don't need the phone to ring like we're fine. You know, you actually have to care about lead generation. So we found trade businesses. So trade services, health services, like allied health, like, you know, optom, physio, all the usuals, professional services and also what I call family entertainment services. I like now escape rooms to you know, you know, golf place and stuff. Right. All these services, they have high traffic because they need lots of people they care about regen. That's why they're spending money on marketing and they can't. They're not. You just want a lot, lot of repent. I think that's the other one.
- [22:12]
B
Yeah.
- [22:12]
A
One, two. And the third one as the absolute golden. If you get all three, if they're half high value clients. So dental, property, building, construction, that kind of stuff. So if you have lots of traffic, you care about those leads. And if you close one client you can suddenly like 10x, you know, whatever your spend was, away you go. And so in fact you have one client. I can't really say what they do. Let's just say they're in the tech industry. Their manufacturer, one sale for them is ten grand. Lots of traffic. They need lots of leads because they want to sell a lot of them. And one of these bits of machinery is 10 grand a pop. Our software is listed coffee a day. You know, I think it's like three, five grand, you know, that sort of thing.
- [23:05]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:06]
A
One. And that's annually. So so once off annual is like say five grand. Right. You've got my software for five for one year. He closed it, he got, he, he wrote $52,000 worth of sales in 10 days.
- [23:22]
B
It's already paid for itself.
- [23:24]
A
Yeah, he, he closes one. He's already paid for my software in Spain and stuff. And he was absolutely chuffed. I'm like, I've done my part. He felt really bad that I've already made this much money out of the whole. I'm like, that's the point of the, the service. Right?
- [23:38]
B
Yeah, I mean those, those high ticket, those high ticket businesses. Absolutely excellent.
- [23:44]
A
You can actually look it up. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:47]
B
Some of the, some of the ones you mentioned, the kind of, the family entertainment ones are ones where, you know, you mentioned like escape rooms, things like that. They have, you know, a set number of bookings that they're trying to fill and what, you know, unless they build a second room, like they're, they're booked up. Right. So their thing is just fill our calendar all throughout time. How do you handle that kind of flow of demand?
- [24:12]
A
Love it, love it. Okay, you're right. Escape rooms, cinemas, you know, ax throwing, whatever, whatever. The thing is, there's a set limit, but this is what we've worked out. There are so many dead times. So, so there's, there's time periods where people just don't go. So there's a scaling rink here. I'm thinking to myself, no one's skating in the morning from 7 to 9. Right. Or I might not be skating at, you know, really late or really early or some after lunch or before lunch and so on. So I talked about those discount offers and specials we're calling happy hours. Right?
- [24:51]
B
Yeah.
- [24:51]
A
Why don't you push different ideas. Try a B test with the software as well and, and try to fill all the dead times. So don't give discounts to the times that are nice and happy, you know, in fruitful. Feel those ones. And so it's a great method to try to fill the box. It's actually not as full as you think it is. It's only full when it's popular during, you know, after dinner, nighttime weekends, that sort of thing. But we wake up those Mondays to Thursdays really backed up and booked up. So.
- [25:22]
B
Yeah, it's interesting in different, different industries, the things that drive demands. One of the projects that EWR helped me out with when I was sitting on the client side of the table was marketing industrial generators for backup power. Multiple scenarios, but one of the scenarios in the states was, you know, a hurricane comes rolling in and all of a sudden there's new demand. You know, after the storm blows through, there's a lot of power outages, there's big demand. And what worked really nicely on that situation was that we had campaigns that we could turn on and off regionally depending on where. You know, the storms don't always hit in the same place, but in conjunction with the, the people on the ground who were, were, you know, sort of getting the equipment into the area in advance of a storm. You know, combined with the logistics, people on the ground preparing for the situation, along with our marketing, we were able to absolutely max out the entire fleet. And so much so that the competitors were coming to us. So, you know, it's interesting when you, when and those are unpredictable situations, but when you can prepare for the ups and downs of things, you know, and having something in place in advance to, you know, turn on the switch, to take, you know, take advantage of the demand when it appears in an unpredictable situation. That, that was kind of an interesting thing that Matt and the team had come up with when, when I was working on, on the other side of the table. Yeah, it was really interesting. Jump in now to the human psychology and persuasion discussion. That's something that you've expressed interest in. How does that actually show up in the way that you build websites or the way that you run campaigns? Do you have a specific example of how you leverage that type of thinking?
- [27:03]
A
Yeah, I think it's just really, I mean we just did a website for a company, unfortunately in the us I can't say the exact name, but they're in property. They do high end luxury property, property. One build could be like $2 million plus. Right. That kind of stuff. Right?
- [27:19]
B
Yeah.
- [27:19]
A
So it's not small. You see, we all say, for example, if I have three cars, a Mazda, Mercedes, a Maserati, they're all followers of the steering wheel, but each one attracts a different type of user and different type of buyer. And I think we need to realize the way we design our websites, actually it's like the bait, right. This type of bait catches a different fish. We just need to know who we're attracting and we need to also make it look in a certain way to match accordingly. Because a Mazda person isn't going to walk until, you know, to buy a Maserati. And a Maserati person doesn't want it to look like a Mazda. So it's just really making sure that you've got the right look to persuade or persuade someone. And persuasion is the word for Dr. Robert Chowdhee from his book, have you read?
- [28:09]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
- [28:12]
A
You can actually influence someone. Yeah, you can actually influence someone prior to engagement. And so if I look high end, if I look established, then I kind of know that I'm going to be spending a bit more money. But we have high end builders who look cheap and they wonder why they can't convince people to sign on the dot line because it's like, well, you're not attracting the right people because you don't look like it. Does it? Does that make sense? Yeah, you kind of just need to make sure that everything aligns. So yeah, we, we attract whatever we put Out.
- [28:47]
B
So yeah, the look of a website is, look of a website is absolutely a trust factor. I, I've got friends in, in business who, who are, you know, selling a very high end product, but their website is something they built themselves. Myself. And I'm, I'm like, guys, you, you are really doing yourself a disservice. You know, they've got some kind of software installed that shows them, you know, on the back end who's visiting their website and they're seeing, you know, some very high value customer, you know, potential customers come around, but they're not converting because they haven't taken the time to 100, create something trustworthy.
- [29:19]
A
We do this fun test actually. And so, so anyone who's listening, play along. Think about your business just for a moment, your own business, whatever it is. And how would you rate your business out of 10? Okay, so you're in terms of, you know, how professional you are, your service, your quality, your aftermarket whatever it is and stuff. Rate it out of 10. Think of a number. It's like a magic trick. Think of a number. You got a number. Okay, whatever number you have in your head that represents your business, throw in the bin. It doesn't matter what you think, it's what the customer thinks. So. And the only way your customer is going to tell what your business or how good your business is is they're just going to look at what's out there in the public, right? So unless I rock up to your office, talk to your staff, look at your show and whatever, which I'm not going to do by the way, because I have no idea who you are first, I'm just going to do my due diligence first and it's going to be your website that's going to be the first point of call. So if you said, and you're listening to this podcast and you gave your own business a 8 1/2 out of 10, but I look at your website and I read the basics like we said before, who are you? What do you do? Why should I choose you? How to get in touch. And I also look at it from what I call a heart perspective and a head perspective. So the heart is the emotional stuff. So did it look good? Is it nice? Does it make it feel whatever with the words as well, right words and pictures, did it feel right? And rationally, does it show me? And you said the keyword trust. Trust and authority. So if it felt right and it also reads right and mentally matches up and you go, yeah, actually that looks like an eight and a half as well then, well done. But my question is, you just gave your own business a number. I'm going to ask you and challenge you right now. Open your website and show a potential customer and say, how would you rate the business or the this business out of 10 just based on the website? And can I tell you, there are more websites out there that have a lower rating and a perception than what your actual business is. And perception and reality are actually the same in the customer's mind. And so we're dealing with customers all the time and go, oh, don't look at my website. It's really bad. But oh, we're really good service. And I'm like, Your website says 4 out of 10, you say you're 8 out of 10. How's the customer meant to go? You're actually off yourself.
- [31:43]
B
Yeah. And then, and then, and then don't even get into the messaging, you know, where there'll be a lot of vagueness, you know, like helping businesses scale through, you know, honing excellence. I'm like, what is it? Everybody's trying to, everybody's trying to do that. You know, that's, that doesn't tell me anything about what you do as a business. That's one thing we see so much is, is that within that seven second window that we have to tell people who we are, what we do, a lot of times the message just isn't there in a clear way.
- [32:13]
A
And I think you even hit on the head there with the messaging, how many people use the word, you know, we are effective, successful, we, like, what do these words even mean? You know, like, like, let's just get straight to the point, you know, who are you? What do you do straight away, you know, we help whoever solve this problem so you get this result. That's it, that's all people want. Not some, oh, hi, you know, too long, did not read. We just want to make it short. And so.
- [32:44]
B
Yeah, Ab. So on your site you say that you've been involved in doing some illusion work with cards. How does, tell me about that. And how does, how does what principles from that inform or carry over into the marketing realm? Anything. Yeah. Is there a connection there?
- [33:03]
A
No. No, Absolutely. I think the other thing is magic and marketing are no different. It's, it's the understanding of human psychology and how people think. And you can actually, well, in magic, it's you, you use it for entertainment purposes. In marketing, you're here to make someone do something. So, so as an example right now, if I was to make a, say, a pen appear. This pen appears out of nowhere. Right. If you actually get rid of it, it actually just disappears. Right. How did I do it? I understand how you look and where you look. I can control your attention. And so as an example, if I was to make that pen appear and I was to make it flick out, it's only because it's been here all the time. It's just that if I turn my head this way, I know you can't see it. So I can control your attention because I know my angles very well and I can actually bring it out and I can actually pull it back in slowly like this, quickly. Right. So that's just using, you know, magic and manipulation. But what I learned from doing that for 20 odd years was that I can control someone's attention and make them do something. So if I was waving my hand up here, you're looking up here, but you're not looking down here. That's magic. Right?
- [34:22]
B
Yeah.
- [34:22]
A
So let's use the same psychology. If we have this thing that's flashing on the side on your website, I know you're looking here and not here. Right. Again, I'm not here to steal your wallet. Take your, you know, take a card or make a little bunny up here. I want you to look here because that's the collection and that's just some random picture of in this case, a little cow there. Right. I want you to look here. That's how we use human psychology. And I guess that's kind of magic. Thinking in websites.
- [34:52]
B
So not.
- [34:53]
A
Not.
- [34:53]
B
Not trickery. Not, not trying to. No, but directing attention, creating focus on the thing that is the most critical to help people make a decision 100 solve their problem.
- [35:04]
A
Yeah. And I think it just, it just helped me to realize it to another level and it was able to demonstrate in front of the same way as well. So.
- [35:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You had this quote that you like to make. Com the complex simple and the simple beautiful. Where do you see people, clients, customers over complicating things in their approach to their marketing?
- [35:27]
A
Yeah. People treat their sales pitch, their proposals, but mainly their website as if it's the full movie. What do I mean? Your website is meant to be like a movie teaser. It's 15 seconds of the best bits. Because my attention span is this short. Tell me, what's the top level summary? It's like a blurb of a book. Right. I just want to know. Not going to read the whole book. I just want to find out what's it generally about People Are skimmers, not swimmers. They scan so and once you're interested, that's when you swim through it. You read everything. Websites are too convoluted. People treat them like encyclopedias and they put two hours of the, of everything into it. People don't care. Make your messages simple, put in just the best bits and treat your movie, your website like a movie teaser. Because if they like it, they're going to watch the trailer. And what's the trailer? The trailer is actually the salesperson who does the pitch because they're going to take the basics and they're going to elaborate a little bit more but they're not going to give you everything. You've got to pay for the ticket now to see the movie itself. And if you want that, that happens after I give you a proposal. You sign the dotted line bank. Let's give you the full service. And that's the movie, that's the full two hours. So don't try to shove that all at the start. No one cares.
- [37:01]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, the teaser is, you know, the job of the teaser is, is often to, to peak curiosity is to make me think, hey, what is this? This looks interesting. I don't know what it is, but I want to know more. It looks like it's got potential. And then the trailer is like, oh, it's going to set the expectation. This is going to be amazing. It's going to be entertaining, it's going to be worth the watch kind of thing. You know, some trailers tend to go overboard where you feel like, well, I watched the trailer, I feel like I've already seen the whole movie because there's so much into the trailer, right?
- [37:32]
A
I, I picture my, my daughters at Costco, they love going Costco. Why? Because of the days where they do the samples. Right. But you notice the samples are always, they're not huge pieces, they're like little bite sized, broken up sections. Why? They just want to hook you in with that little bit just to get you interested. Hey, but if you want more, you know, the full, the full bottles over there, you know, if you want to have a full, you know, full drink. But here's a little sip, right? They're not going to serve the whole drink, they sell the whole drink. You'll never, never buy the thing. That's what our website needs to be you like. So let's have simple websites. Less is more, as they say. And let's be honest, a lot of people say I'll just put it on your homepage. No, no, let's just put it on the homepage, but at the very top, because not everyone's going to go through the whole website top to bottom. They're just going to hit that first frame, make a couple of quick decisions. They're either in or they're out. That's it.
- [38:34]
B
Yeah. And then I think about, you know, word of mouth. Word of mouth being kind of, in my mind, one of the peak achievements you can have in marketing. Like, if you can get busy with just people sending their friends to you and you never need to advertise again because you get all the business you want through referrals, that's ideal state. Right? Like, that's where you want to be. I remember even being in Costco and having tried some products that I really liked and somebody was talking to the rep about it and I'm walking by and I'm like, that's really good. Buy it. Like, I, you know, like. And, you know, I'm sure the product director's like, thank you, buddy, for, you know, giving me this recommendation. But I wouldn't do that if I didn't really think it was a great product, you know, and those testimonials, what other people are saying about you online on your website, sharing, that can be such a valuable confirmation because of course we're going to say our product and service is amazing, but what are other people saying about us? Because that's, that's the real message there, 100%.
- [39:27]
A
I mean, that's, that's, that's growth hacking. If you can actually get to the point where your customers are actually sharing what you do, doing that word of mouth and stuff, I mean, that's, that's the golden. That's a golden goose right there.
- [39:38]
B
Absolutely. As far as marketing channels go, what, what's the one channel or tactic that you would say most businesses are kind of sleeping on right now that they should be looking into more deeply?
- [39:52]
A
Oh, it depends where you are in your business. That's, that's a, that's a. Let me break down what I just told a client just recently. If you're looking for instant leads right now, like, I just need my French ring, but you have to pay to play. That's the problem. It's really just AdWords. You know, we find that, you know, things like AdWords, you know, because the intent to buy is. I mean, you're not going to type in, you know, web design in, you know, wherever you are. If you're not looking for web design or not looking for lawyer, Melbourne If I'm not looking for a lawyer in Melbourne, you know, sort of thing. And so we find that AdWords is great if you want some pretty instant ones. I find a lot of people aren't really investing into the, what I call AI search side of things. AI or AI is big, this and that, but people are treating now ChatGPT and all those searches and clauds and so forth as search engines and making decisions and actually believing it as gospel. You do know that AI doesn't think for itself. It just takes information that's out there in the world to summarize it for you. Yeah, but I find that people aren't investing as much into that side of things as much as they really should. Still doing SEO, that's important, but doing this is actually still in my eyes, just SEO, but just more of it.
- [41:11]
B
Yes, absolutely. We are very much, you know, I'm always asking people when they come in on a sales call, you know, first question, how did you find us?
- [41:19]
A
Because we want to hear what channels
- [41:21]
B
are working and more and more we're hearing, you know, we found you on cloud, we found you on Chat GPT, we found you on Gemini, whatever channel they're using. And they're also interested in how do we get found on those channels, which is something that, that Matt is absolutely pursuing aggressively. We've got something we call the LLM visibility stack, which is a way of architecting your information. You know, it used to be kind of just your website and then maybe your Google business profile and a few other channels, but now it's, you know, architecting your information across a whole lot of surfaces, as we call it, to get indexed by these LLMs. There's a whole new game that's really an extension of SEO and it's an extension of, you know, providing the information that when people are in the deep research phase, you know, if, if you're looking for a restaurant, you know, the, the, the Google Stars is good enough for reviews, you know, it's got 4.7. Okay, good enough that I, I don't need to do deep research on this. If you're looking for a big ticket purchase, then there's going to be a deeper research phase and that's where the AI search can come into. And certainly on, on the B2B side, the, that deep research is part of, you know, those longer buying cycles that, those, you know, that deep research process. So absolutely, AI is kind of the new thing still, still being defined. But you know, we always say a good solid SEO foundation, you know, is the key starting point to show up in AI search. Yeah, it's, it's, it's the core for sure. You also have a thing of. You're involved in mentoring youth. What's the one thing that you would tell young people who want to build something in the digital space today day? What advice would you give them?
- [43:05]
A
Oh, give it a crack. Just, just, I mean you have every tool. I mean, imagine what I mean. The fact that you have AI, we're talking about, you know, Ch, Claude and so forth. The fact that you can almost speak into existence as such a product, that back in the day you'd have to sit there, program and, and you know, I was watching a guy today making a mascot, you know, for or design for their company. Literally was like, make me a mascot that said that. Enter. Like, yeah, you don't even need those skills anymore. We used to be, oh, how do I find the graphics designer? How much I. It's just enter done. And it's so simple. So give it a crack. You have nothing to, to lose really. And if you can have, if you can find the time to spend time on Netflix and stuff like that, you can definitely have time to start something. So I always say, just give it a go. The biggest thing for me is there's no such thing as fail. Fail stands for first attempted learning. And we are all here learning something. It just so happens that I've forgotten what it feels like to do it for the first time because that was a good 25, 30 years ago and stuff like, you know, so it's really give it a go. Build up as much experience as you can. Give it a crack and stuff and all in.
- [44:22]
B
So yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, the thing with especially young folks, a lot of times they're the consumer of different entertainment platforms and so they, they might start off thinking like, oh, let's build the next Spotify or the next, you know, entertainment based platform. Whereas, you know, getting more into the B2B world, if you have exposure to some particular industry through family, through work experience, whatever those, those are, are niches that are just full, full of opportunities. When you have a little bit more extended understanding into a specialized world of some kind, I just see a ton of opportunities there as well.
- [44:59]
A
So I've been saying to some people, stop consuming, start creating.
- [45:04]
B
Right?
- [45:04]
A
So stop being the consumer, be the creator. Second, put in your 10,000 hours. So putting the effort, just give it credit number three, you don't care. Count the first 100 hours. You know, something like whatever you do, stop Judging yourself. I'm going to tell you right now, if you want to see the future, you're going to be crap at whatever you start. You're going to be horrible at it. So I've just started playing golf. I'm horrible at it, and I'm not going to judge myself because I'm not going to be Tiger woods in overnight. Even Tiger woods himself took time to get to where he was and stuff. Like, they'll use naturally talented, and I'm not naturally talented. So don't beat yourself up. Know that everyone started in the same place, and the only regret we have is if we just don't start. So no matter how old you are, where you are, do it.
- [45:56]
B
Start, put. Put offers out there. Let the market tell you, because you might think, oh, I've got a great idea. Well, build your minimum viable product. Get it out there. Let the market tell you if it's a great idea or not. The market's pretty ruthless with its feedback.
- [46:10]
A
Very well, actually.
- [46:13]
B
That's good. That's good. Yeah.
- [46:15]
A
Well, feedback. Let me just talk about that one, because that's something we learned in conversion count. Feedback is not. I created. So say I. I created this. Right. Feedback is not. Hey, Jeff, is this good? And you saying, yes or no, that's not feedback. That's especially. Especially if it's really nice. Yeah.
- [46:32]
B
Yeah. Especially if your friends and family, they're going to tell you, yeah, that's great. It'll work. Do it, because they're trying to support you.
- [46:38]
A
Let me tell what. Tell you what feedback truly is. Feedback is. Will you give me money for this? Because you vote with your dollars. So if you will actually physically pay me for this. And you know the difference between charity, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, great. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's. That's. That's. That's the wrong feedback. Yeah, it's someone who has no idea who you are that you're able to convince in seconds with whatever your pitch is really fast. And if they go, yep, I want to take one. I think you're on to something, and then just scale that. But if you. Because I had people who were like, oh, what do you think of this? They're like, oh, it's best thing. Wonderful. Yeah. Love it. When we developed our products, we then said, okay, well, you said you love it. You get to be our first foundation clients, and it cost this. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, well, don't have to pay for it. Okay.
- [47:35]
B
Really?
- [47:35]
A
No. What was it that you do again? Let me and it was like, you're just giving me lip service now. I'm not saying that in a rude way. I'm just saying that I really am asking you to just tell me honestly, would you pay for it? And I'm gonna make you pay for it. That's how you actually work out if it's actually good or bad. So you vote with your dollars, see if you can do that. Not necessarily. I'm not saying just get that off for the mvp.
- [48:02]
B
Absolutely. I think that's. That's great advice because the market, you know, is not sentimental. It'll just tell you no.
- [48:08]
A
It's brutal. Absolutely.
- [48:10]
B
Is the thing that you created is the thing you created, like, does that make me feel better and feel like my problems are solved? Does that feel better having that thing you're offering than having the money in my pocket? Because it's gotta. I've got to be convinced that me spending money on your thing is going to make my situation better substantially.
- [48:29]
A
Before I blow that credit card and can I just put it out there? Just. You just remind me of another conversation I had with. With another youth. There is a time to tap out as well. It's not bad. You're not a failure for tapping out. Like, not every business. I mean, if I had a list of how many business ideas I've had, mate, I'd fill a whole stadium. It's. Some are actually made to fail because you didn't fail. You failed because you're mentally going, I'm not a billionaire by now. What you gained was actually experience on what not to do and yes, how to improve or you've got a network or you learn technology or it's. It's, it's that. That's what you gain. So if you always just think it's about money, then I promise you, most of us are all failures, you know, as such. But it's the journey you have to enjoy because this journey is about collecting gems and insights and things that could grow you. Because if you asked me, I'm going to take you back to when you were 28, when you first started Chromatics, your first agency. Because I'm 45 now. Right. If you went back to the start, would you want to go back? Because everyone wants to, you know, start young again. I'd say yes, I'm happy to go back, but on one condition. You can keep my money that I have now, but I want to take my experience with me. That experience, it's the journey. That experience is the journey.
- [50:05]
B
Absolutely.
- [50:05]
A
That is more important because right now they've got experience. You can't buy experience but money I'll be able to make a lot more of this stuff. So that's why that experience side giving a go trying is so important and like compound interest. You just have to compound that experience early and that's why I said before just start now you've got all the resources. If you don't have your chatgpt YouTube is fantastic. You know how YouTube, YouTube, Google it. If you don't know how to use those three I think you're in deeper trouble than.
- [50:38]
B
Yeah, yeah these tools, these tools will teach you how to use them. Claude has taught me how to use Claude. You know it.
- [50:45]
A
It's correct.
- [50:46]
B
There's so much in there.
- [50:48]
A
Y and it's free, free and free. That's how insane the sign is.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So everything opportunities everywhere. That's. That's fantastic Irwin, it's been great speaking with you. How can people connect with you online? Where can they find you? What websites do you want people to check out?
- [51:08]
A
Yeah fantastic. If, if anyone's to connect with me there's a couple of ways. LinkedIn of course always works. So Irwin Howe Owen I R W I N how as in how do you do but H A U you can connect with you on LinkedIn you can go to irwinhow.com to connect with it as well but my two agencies or one agency chromatics c h r m a t I x.com au because we are in Australia or conversion cow SAS software is conversion cow cw.com milk your website will beef up your website for more leads those four ways how you can actually get in touch.
- [51:48]
B
So excellent, excellent. Thank you so much. Before I let you go I'm going to ask you what is the one mind shift the will help clients get more out of their marketing that you'd love to see people make.
- [52:01]
A
Yeah, I think it's marketing is actually not as hard as you think it is and it's not going to a barbecue and listening to you know, Uncle Joe, just tell me something. Just doing that. It's a simple formula that we've sent before. Traffic times conversion rate equals customers. If you want more customers the more people to come to you you actually need to convert. And that conversion is not just a once off point. There's website conversion, there's telephone, you know picking up and being a book that appointment, the phone conversion, this conversion at the sales method at the proposal about meeting all the way to the end. If you methodically work out and focus not on just randomly grabbing everything but going what marketing channels do I have for the right target market and how does each conversion point work and how do I improve each one? 1 percenters make a big difference. So it's not just I'm running ads, that's it. Or my sales guy's fantastic, that's it. It's the combination of start to finish. Everything has to work. It just so happens that we've found that the website level is where most of it falls down between the marketing and the salesperson. But I'm not gonna lie, it's the whole thing that needs to be. So hopefully that just breaks it down and makes it a lot easier to understand. And if you're not sure, feel free to reach out and Happy.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah. Yeah. So build out the whole funnel but pay special attention to that conversion piece at the end because if people are coming to your site but they're not making it through to the end process where they make and establish contact with you, that's the key piece to fix. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's been great speaking with you everyone. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. Check out Chromatics. If you're in Australia, you're looking for marketing. If you're in the States and you want to get a hold of us, we're@ewr digital.com you can find us there and we'd love to have a conversation. Check out Irwin Software again, the website for the SAS for Conversion Rate Optimization is conversion cow.cominversioncal.com Excellent. Sounds like a great tool. We're going to check it out ourselves. Thanks again everyone for your time. I really appreciate it.
- [54:13]
A
Beautiful. Thanks for having me. Take care.
- [54:15]
B
Cheers.
- [54:16]
A
See you.