The first of two talks (executive briefings) I did at The CEO Institute in April 2013.

2. James Spittal (Me)
• Digital marketing consultant
• Built first HTML website at age seven
• Some of the companies I’ve worked with:
– Ning, Nando’s, Pearson Australia, Deloitte,
Thomas Duryea Consulting, ANZ, Melbourne
Water, Master Builders Association of
Victoria, State Library of Victoria
– Lost count of the number of small
businesses
• I’ve spoken about digital marketing at CPA
Australia, Swinburne University, Hub
Melbourne and a few other places
• I’m the founder of digital agency Web
Marketing ROI and the co-founder of
conversion optimisation agency 2X
Conversion
• Consult/advise on digital for a number of
different businesses
• I also own and operate a number of
different eCommerce websites and online
web properties

3. James Spittal (Me)
• Most of what I’ll be talking about today is stuff
I’ve directly implemented for clients of mine
or things that I’ve used in my own business.
• There’s a lot of ‘theory’ out there about
digital or social media .. And sometimes I find
there is a bit of a gap between the theory and
the application.

5. The things we’ll be covering
• A run through of the biggest drivers and cause factors for success
with measurably growing your business with digital marketing –
what’s actually working and why?
• This research comes from what I’ve seen from the hundred or so
companies I’ve worked with around the world.
• How some companies are doubling their leads month on month
with Google AdWords [with worked examples]
• How companies are utilizing SEO to increase lead volume
• How companies are effectively utilizing conversion rate
optimisation to increase and test the success of each of their online
marketing campaigns
• A step-by-step break down on how one of my companies used
Facebook Advertising, SEO, A/B testing, landing page design and
Google AdWords to double our leads every month for the last 5
months. And how this will work in most industries.

6. How this talk is relevant to you &
outcomes
• What I’d like you all to walk away with is a clear understanding of
how you can:
– (A) Generate more leads online; and/or
– (B) Generate more sales online;
– Drive (or increase) business growth by using (A) and/or (B);
• See and understand some real examples to stimulate some ideas
for testing within your own organizations;
• Be able to walk away and begin developing a digital marketing
strategy to generate leads and drive sales online;
• Can’t teach everything in an hour, but I’m hoping it’ll still be the
best primer you’ve had in digital marketing!

7. Google AdWords [examples]
How some companies are doubling
their leads month on month with
Google AdWords

8. Google AdWords Basics

11. How to double the number of leads
you get from Google AdWords (and
then do it again)

14. Typical Example
• Monthly Google AdWords Spend $4,000
• Google AdWords Cost-Per-Click $4
• $4000 / $4 = 1000 clicks per month
• ‘Typical’ conversion rate of clicks ->
conversions: 6.8%
• 1000 clicks = 68 conversions
• Sale price in this example: $100
• 68 x $100 = $6800

15. A/B Testing

16. How could we change the original
website (‘landing page’) to increase
the conversion rate?
(The number of people signing up on
that page.)

18. A/B Testing
Google AdWords Visitors
50% visitors to the
‘original site’
50% visitors to the ‘new
test site’ (optimised)
In a scenario such as this, it’s realistic to expect a 15% - 150% increase in conversion rate
on Version B over Version A.

19. Before & After
• Monthly Google AdWords
Spend $4,000
• Google AdWords Cost-Per-
Click $4
• $4000 / $4 = 1000 clicks per
month
• ‘Typical’ conversion rate of
clicks -> conversions: 6.8%
• 1000 clicks = 68 conversions
• Sale price in this example:
$100
• 68 x $100 = $6800
• Monthly Google AdWords
Spend $4,000
• Google AdWords Cost-Per-
Click $4
• $4000 / $4 = 1000 clicks per
month
• Increased conversion rate:
13.6%
• 1000 clicks = 136
conversions
• Sale price in this example:
$100
• 136 x $100 = $13,600

20. Net result:
100% increase in sales revenue
generated via Google AdWords
without spending an extra cent on
advertising or marketing.
Best of all, in most cases – A/B
testing can be setup in a couple of
days.

21. Real examples
• Over a pool of approximately 500 A/B tests and
approximately 100 clients, I’ve seen increases in
conversion rate of 15% - 600%
• I’ve never seen an example where there wasn’t
opportunity for at least 15% improvement in
conversion rate, and the average over 100 clients
is around the 150% mark
• Average length of engagement was
approximately 12 weeks – but those that had the
highest increases tended to be closer to 12
months (diminishing returns)

22. Lessons learned
• The tests that you think are going to increase
conversion often don’t! (Consumers don’t always
behave the way we’d expect or the way we’d hope.)
• The most important thing is to test.
• If the test produces a negative result, come up with a
hypothesises why you think it did and repeat another
test.
• Continue until you see a positive result.

23. The Process: Continuous & Never-
Ending Testing Loop

24. “6 Core Conversion Principles”
• We created a framework to improve results.
• 1. Value Proposition
• 2. Increase Relevance
• 3. Amplify Desire
• 4. Build Trust
• 5. Remove Friction
• 6. Add Ethical Urgency

25. How can you get started?
• There are a lot of great A/B testing tools out there
(including Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely and
Omniture.)
• Check out http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ as a
starting point (I use it a lot)
• Start simple and start small – try with a different
headline or a different colour button
• There’s some good reading material out there.
• I’ve got a book coming out on the more advanced stuff
coming out in the next couple months

26. SEO as a tool for dramatically
increasing lead volume

28. According to research by Google –
15% of browsers click on the ads
whereas 85% click on the ‘organic’
SEO results.
Why? Because a lot of internet users are
aware that the others are paid
advertisements and there is a perception
that the organic ranked businesses are more
trustworthy or ‘better’.

29. Take-away: If you’ve got a Google
AdWords campaign that’s already
working for you and generating
revenue/profit – search engine
optimization (SEO) can (usually)
increase your volume of traffic by
100% - 560%

30. How to do SEO (101)

31. Google PageRank Formula

32. Google PageRank Formula (In Simple
English)
• 1. (Off-page SEO) The more (quality & relevant)
links there are to your website (and the pages on
your website), the better!
• 2. (On-page SEO) Your website should tell Google
exactly what it’s about and what kind of searches
are relevant to your website. It should also
contain words that are relevant to what people
are searching for.
• Combine (1) and (2) well and you’ve got the
basics of SEO right.

33. What you probably need to know
about SEO
• It’s constantly changing (Google are updating their
formula all the time, often with small updates every
month and major updates every couple months.)
• The majority of SEO agencies and SEO consultants
struggle to keep up with the rate of changes.
• Keeping your SEO agency honest can be really hard.
(I’ve had the unfortunate task of having to do it for
some of my clients.)
• There are some SEO agencies and SEO consultants out
there that are fantastic. They tend to be the ones that
are constantly reading SEO blogs and changing their
approach to SEO based on the latest formula changes.

34. How can you get started?
• In most cases, if you’re not using Google AdWords
successfully yet, I wouldn’t bother with SEO (yet).
• If Google AdWords is working for you right now, look into
SEO as a way to multiply what you’re currently doing.
• Interview a range of SEO companies – both Australia and
international.
• Ask them a lot of hard questions. (Google ‘questions to ask
before hiring an SEO agency’)
• Don’t be afraid to switch around agencies if you’re not
seeing the results you’re after.
• Understand how to measure what your SEO agency is doing
so you can keep them accountable (‘metrics’)

35. How I went from 0 leads per month
to 150+ leads per month using all of
the strategies above

36. 0 leads to 150+ leads per month in 6
months
• Step 1: Launch Google AdWords campaign and Facebook Advertising
campaign
• Step 2: Landing pages for each relevant Google AdWords campaign and
Facebook Advertising campaign
• Step 3: Turn off all the keywords that aren’t working, increase all the ones
that are.
• Step 4: A/B test the landing pages. Test the things that are most likely to
have the quickest impact in the shortest time. Start with headline, offer,
words and then move onto big stuff - dramatic changes in layout, style,
videos, complete rewrite, etc. I had two designers working part-time just
creating new landing pages to test.
• Step 5: Keep launching new A/B tests every couple days and constantly
coming up with new ‘test hypothesises’ to improve conversion rate.
• All the way through – measure, measure, measure. You need to track closely how your conversion rate is changing
and the most important thing to track is your cost-per-lead and you also want to understand/measure your lead
quality (which can be determined by asking pre-qualification questions and also indicated by measuring your sales
closing ratio.)

37. An example of a successful A/B test
(100% uplift)

38. Control (Original Home Page)

39. Variation #1 (Winner)
100% increase in leads without increasing advertising expenditure

40. • Visual Website Optimizer
screenshots, etc.

41. Where a lot of companies fall over in
implementing these strategies

42. Where a lot of companies fall over in
implementing these strategies
• Who’s responsible for
this stuff again? (Is it the
marketing manager? Is it
the digital marketing
manager? Is it the IT guy?
Is it the website guy? Is it
the agency?)
• Do we have the ‘know
how’?
• Are we getting bogged
down with other things?
Source: Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2012

43. Recap
• We’ve seen how companies are using:
– Google AdWords to generate leads and sales
online
– A/B testing and conversion optimisation to
increase their online revenue by 15% - 600% in
less than 12 months
– SEO to multiply the volume of traffic and leads
– How I used a range of these strategies to generate
150 leads per month in my own business

44. Q&A
• Questions?
Thank you!