Traffic Times Conversion Equals Customers With Irwin Hau

Join us for a special episode hosted by Geoff Campbell who is standing in for Matt Bertram, we focus on the part of marketing most teams ignore: turning existing traffic into real phone calls, form fills, and sales. We break down a simple conversion framework, why dynamic website messaging works, and how to think about proof, positioning, and AI search as buyer behavior changes. 

• traffic times conversion rate equals customers as the core lens for SEO and CRO 
• treating an agency website as proof of competence and a trust signal 
• the “practice what you preach” mistake that costs agencies better clients 
• the reality of wearing every hat and why teams and cash flow matter 
• productizing a service into SaaS by solving our own lead generation problem 
• fixing the “blocked toilet” problem before buying more traffic 
• answering four questions fast: who you are, what you do, why choose you, how to contact you 
• using dynamic messaging by time, intent, and customer situation to lift conversions 
• adding specials, testimonials, video, and clear calls to action without clutter 
• building attribution with codes and tracking to learn what really drives leads 
• scaling SaaS with proof first, then outbound, ads, and partner channels 
• narrowing the ICP to high-traffic, lead-driven, high-value businesses 
• using design and presuasion to match the buyer you want 
• simplifying pages like a movie teaser so skimmers become readers 
• watching AI search emerge as a new visibility layer on top of SEO 

Guest Contact Information: 

Website: irwinhau.com

LinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/in/irwinhau

Instagram: instagram.com/haudoyoudo

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crunch the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello, everyone, 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 Erwin Howe, who runs an agency down in Melbourne, Australia.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Hey, how are you going from Melbourne, Australia? How's things?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Excellent, excellent.

What Award Winning Really Means

SPEAKER_01 0:39

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 does award-mitting award-winning actually mean in for a digital agency in terms of your ability? Is this reflective of your ability to deliver results for your clients?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah, 100%. Uh well, it's actually been uh 17. I actually just did the, I was talking to someone. Um, 17. I didn't realize, no, no, we you said 12 plus, so 17 because it's the spot.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, 12, yeah, yeah, exactly, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Um, 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, from what we do, because we specialize in that and really understanding human behavior and human psychology. Because uh, yeah, if you can't make this one maths formula work, what are you doing? And that formula is traffic times conversion rate equals customers. And let's be honest, uh, people don't wake up going, oh, I want new rankings. They wake up going, hey, I want more sales, uh, I want more phone calls, uh, more leads. Yeah, that's all we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Results, results is uh the objective, that's the business goal. 100%. Yeah, uh, 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 um, EWR, uh, our previous name of our company was eWeb results, and that as a customer really appealed to me. Like I'm I'm here to get results, that's why I'm hiring a marketing company. Um you said there's no manual, you said in your your comments there's no manual for running

The Agency Owner Mistake To Avoid

SPEAKER_01 2:22

a business. What's the one mistake you see that agency owners make that you had to learn the hard way yourself?

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Oh man, I there are so many uh angles, but uh to me, if you don't practice what you preach, so the the thing I heard the web agencies say is that I've got a bad website. Oh, don't look at my website, but I'm gonna 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, seeing is believing, and so just make sure you get yourself right, make sure you're presenting yourself well, make sure you spend your time investing into your, you know, your your first impression, as we say.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, I absolutely I've seen how important that is uh with with the changes that we've been through as an agency, uh, 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? As somebody who takes all the the inbound leads and and all the phone calls coming in, uh 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. Yeah, so to prior prior to um having your own agency, you worked uh inside other ad

Wearing Every Hat And Cash Flow

SPEAKER_01 3:47

agencies. Uh, what what broke your brain the first when you uh getting into the client work uh on the business side?

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah, 100%. So I used to work for Kleminger uh BBDO uh down here in Melbourne, Australia, and George Hurst and Why Now, so the Y Night Group, uh which everyone knows of the two agencies, Bob White. Uh rather than work for the man, I thought I'd be the man. Uh, but mate, uh 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 I'm on the same guy who has to empty the bins, uh, 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 gonna understand marketing and so well, that mind uh blown moment was a utilization so no no regrets though, having made that move.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

It was probably harder than you thought it was gonna be. And you probably and you probably thought it was gonna be hard. And did it end up being more difficult than you thought it would be?

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Well, actually, actually, for me, I think my naivety of 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 and how much pain I'd have to go through, uh in the school hard knocks itself, I think I would have tapped out. But I think I was like, oh, it can't be that bad, you know, just make a website, sell website. That's about it and stuff like that. Yeah, and I think that naivety goes, like, yeah, that's that's simple, right? And so uh, like I said, my hair started here when I first started the agency. So I think this is a demonstration of just how much uh hard work one swept and tears, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So yeah, absolutely. So so the we'll meet reality eventually, but the uh the unfounded optimism is not a bad foundation to start off with because you need 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 um, you've done it, you built it, so that's that's amazing.

Why Build A SaaS From An Agency

SPEAKER_01 5:47

That's um uh you're launching a SaaS while running an established agency. How do you think about productizing services versus building software? And why why are you getting into that right now?

SPEAKER_02 5:58

Yeah, I think I think if you actually look at all the I mean, I was actually reading something about um uh Mailchip. Uh well no mailchip for the email uh SaaS that it is. Um did you know that other agency back in the day and stuff like that? And then I that kind of got me thinking, oh, but what's the backstory of all these different SaaSes and stuff? And I realized that everyone used to be a website shop shop somewhere in the in their lives, starting with websites. That then turns into some digital marketing, or you know, maybe be a specialist or journalist. But then everyone realizes maybe the grass is green on the other side, maybe it's not just running a service business. Oh, what about product guys? And then you know, SaaS kind of blew up, everyone loves SAS. Let's get into SAS, you know, recurring revenue sounds wonderful, and then away they go they they go uh into SaaS land. But we actually started the SAS not because uh of that smart 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, oh sorry, I don't want uh traffic, I want phone calls. Um, I don't want people to sort of look at my website. I mean, you can give you 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 three two different variations across our website and client websites, and we decided and found one method on converting people faster and quicker. Um, and we decided to productize it, and that's how Conversion Cal came about. So it was actually a product for myself, copy selfish, but I just thought, hey, I want to help me and get that from Regan. Then we did, and now we've actually turned it into a product that anyone can use for less than a couple of days and stuff like that. I don't have a cup here, um, but we have a cup that says milk your website and beef up your website for more leads, and that's a heart. Um, add our software to your to your website, and it's uh a nice, quick, easy way to jack up those conversion weights. True.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

So is is that a product that you use with active clients who come on in your agency? Are you oh 100%? Yeah, adopt that as well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah, so so now we've we've uh taken to the point where number one's on our website, number two, it's actually on the conversion cow website, conversion cow is on conversion cow. 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? Um, and and everyone for 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 two million people coming through. Yeah, 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

Fix Conversions Before Buying More Traffic

SPEAKER_02 8:58

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 gonna spend more. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. These AdWords, I mean, Google's really rich because they make lots of money from AdWords. Yeah, SEO agencies are uh 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 shouldn't be making uh 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 of 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?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

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?

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually not as tricky as you think. So let's play a game and stuff.

The Four Questions Every Website Must Answer

SPEAKER_02 10:04

If I was to engage with you, or actually think of it not like a website, think of it 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? Uh why should we go out and can I have your phone number? They're exactly the same questions people will ask on a in particular, service-based business, so professional services, trade services, allied health services, right? 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? Um, you know, with all this kind of testimonials, you know, logos, all the usuals. And then can I just have your phone number, like the details at the end, uh, like that date. But how many people miss these uh basics and stuff like that? Who are you? What do you do? Why choose you? How do you 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 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 Jess, uh, if uh Jeff, if you're an extrovert and you want to pick up the call, but I'm a bit of an introvert, I just want to 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 can't even miss it on a website. That's actually how simple it is.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah, 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 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?

Dynamic Messaging Based On Visitor Signals

SPEAKER_02 12:22

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 the 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 ad, you go to the website. I get it, you know, you send them 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 and what? No, actually, so conversion count, what makes it so magical is the message changes depending on how the customer interacts with the website. So, say for example, we have one client who's a plumber. After hours, after 5:30 p.m., the message on his website changes from go to general inquiry, give us a call, and then here's 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 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 Golden 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, CR is good for once-off static, you've done an A-B test, but what if you could change the message every time?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

No, that's that that's great. Uh, so you give you mentioned kind of one vector and one situation, uh, 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 the different ads that you're running, the different language that's in the ads? What else?

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah, uh, another way to change it is uh we have another client, uh actually, the same client, actually, the same client, they realize that during the day, not everyone has a um just wants to know uh the bottom of the final message, which is his defendant. How do we get 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, I'd say, three discounts. One's for the first time, one's for repeating customer, and one is actually for a referring customer. So your customer but referring to 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. 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 it into action of sorts and stuff. So we use um uh sometimes it's 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, answer the problem, value of your company, um, discounts and specials, yeah, it's a bit of everything.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Yeah, so all those discounts and special offers are built into the platform, is that right? Is that how it works?

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah, well, well, you need to create the offer firstly, but we can display the message of that offer. Sure. Um, and let's be honest, if you have some sort of you know, tracking internally, when everyone calls up and says, hey, you know, use Jeff 123 as the code, then you can also attribute or attribute where that came from as well. So attribution is also another one. Uh, where do you

Proving SaaS Value And Finding ICP

SPEAKER_02 16:13

that's so important?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah, yeah, very valuable, very valuable. Always something that we're looking for is 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? Let's tell me a little bit now about uh 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. Uh, tell me about that growth journey and how you were able to build up your customer base for your product.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Yeah, I mean, 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 of people to trust you to love you. It just so happens we have an agency and a SAS, so we kind of feed uh 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 of that to get more customers and stuff. So at the start, it's your inner circle and people who 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 can do that kind of call stuff. So call email, call calling, um, 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 SAS, you need to nail, absolutely nail the crap out of your ICP who is that absolute perfect profile person. Because I'm not gonna lie, I used to be be the guy who did what I said I shouldn't do. Everyone's my customer, no, yes, not everyone's your customer. No, yeah, some people are just more fruitful or more profitable uh than others, and some people actually get more um uh banger bang bang for their buck out of the 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 have a very high traffic website, then hey, you've already got the people coming in, we just need to get them through, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

You potentially high traffic, low conversion, though, like high traffic, not getting the results that you want. That sounds like a real pain point for yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

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 uh Instagram account or something. You can pull people in, but that's all it is. It's uh 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 um that's financially beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

So yeah, so you you 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 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.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Correct. So we actually did a couple of tests and stuff, and we actually just uh we got nominated for a award here uh recently. Um, 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 ourselves. Did it actually uh impact uh 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 you're like website leads, we'll call, right? Uh 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 would also affect that number. So we then had to do another test where we kind of kept the traffic number as as even as possible. So don't spend more money on AdWords or warn SEO or other channels. But could you tell with conversion count and without conversion count that there was a jump? And so we ran it on uh 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,

Pricing Power With High Value Leads

SPEAKER_02 20:48

that's all we needed, and it was actually doing the same period within what we'll call it a Jan 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, um uh feedback, you start building case studies, and then you 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 yes, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

That's so you you you mentioned kind of the the ideal customer being high traffic, low conversions, because that's a problem that you can help fix. That's one of three. Yep. Yeah, that's okay, okay. What the other two?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

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 front ring, like we're fine, you know. You actually have to care about lead generation. So we found trade businesses, uh sorry, trade services, health services like Allied Health, like you know, um opt on physio, all the usuals, um, professional services, uh, and also what I call family entertainment services. Services are like you know, escape rooms to you know, you know, golf places, right? All these services, they have high traffic because they need lots of people. They care about region, that's why they're spending money on marketing, and they can't um they're not re you just want a lot of a lot of repeat. I think that's the other one. Yeah, um, one, two, and the third one as the absolute golden if you get all three, if they're high value clients, so uh 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. Um, I can't really say what they do, let's just say they're in the they're in the tech industry, they're a manufacturer. One sale for them is 10 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 pot. Our software's less than a coffee a day, you know. I think it's like three, five grand, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. One and that's annually, so it's a once off annual, it's 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.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

It's already paid for itself, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

He he closes one, he's already paid for my software in spades 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 so the service, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, so I mean those those those high ticket, those high-ticket businesses, absolutely uh excellent.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Well, you'd actually look at yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Sorry. Some of the some of the ones you mentioned, the um uh kind of the family entertainment ones are ones where you know you mentioned like uh escape rooms, things like that. They have you know a set number of bookings that they're trying to fill,

Trust Design And Persuasion Principles

SPEAKER_01 24:08

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 flow of demand?

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Love it, love it. Okay, you're right. Escape rooms, cinemas, pop, you know, axe 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 skating rink here. I'm thinking to myself, no one's skating in the morning from seven to nine, right? Or I might not be skating uh you know really late or really early or some after lunch or before lunch and something. So I talked about those discount offers and specials. We're calling happy hours, right? Yeah, why don't you push different ideas, try A-B test with the software as well, and try to fill all the dead times. So don't give discounts to the times that are nice and happy, you know, and fruitful. Fill 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 get those Mondays to Thursdays really backed up and booked up. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, it's interesting in different different industries, the things that drive demands. One of the projects that uh EWR helped me out with when I was sitting on the client side of the table was uh uh marketing industrial generators uh for backup power. Mult 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 uh the people on the ground who 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 uh 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 uh in an unpredictable situation. That that was kind of an interesting uh thing that uh Matt and the team had come up with when I was working on the other side of the table. Yeah, it was really interesting. Let's let's jump in now to um 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?

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah, I think it's just really, I mean, we just did a website for a uh company. Uh unfortunately, in the age, I can't say the exact name, but they're in property, they do high-year luxury property. Um, one build could be like two million dollars plus, right? That kind of stuff, right? Yeah, so it's not small. You see, we all uh say if I have three cars, a Mazda, a Mercedes, a Maserati, they're all forwards 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

Magic Tricks As A Marketing Lesson

SPEAKER_02 27:45

design our websites actually uh it's like this the bait, right? The different 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 want 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 uh persuade or presuade someone, and persuasion is the word from uh Dr. Robert Chaudini uh from his book. Uh persuasion, yeah, absolutely. Yep. You can actually influence someone, yeah. You can actually influence someone prior to engagement, and so if I look high-end, if I look uh um established, then I kind of know that I'm gonna 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 double 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, so you kind of just need to make sure that everything aligns, so yeah, we we attract uh whatever we put out.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

So yeah, the the look of a website is the look of a website is absolutely a trust factor. I I've got uh friends in in business who who are you know selling a very high-end product, but their website is something they built themselves. And I'm I'm like, guys, you you you are really doing yourself a disservice, you know, they've got some kind of uh 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.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

We we did this fun test, actually. Um, 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, so 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've got a number, okay. Whatever number you have in your head that represents your business, throw it in the bin. It doesn't matter what you think, it's what the customer thinks. So, and the only way your customer is gonna tell what your business or how good your business is, is they're just gonna 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, whatever, which I'm not gonna do, by the way, because I have no idea who you are first. I'm just gonna do my due diligence first. And it's gonna be your website. That's gonna be the first point of call. So if you said, and you're listening to this podcast, and you gave your own business an eight and a half out of ten, but I'd 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, is it 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 gonna ask you and challenge you right now, open your website and show

Websites As Teasers Not Encyclopedias

SPEAKER_02 31:15

uh a potential customer and say, How would you rate the business or 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 uh are actually the same in the customer's mind, and so we're dealing with customers all the time who 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 four out of ten, you say you're eight out of ten. How's the customer meant to go? You're actually paying people off yourself, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

And then and then and then like 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 uh customer service excellent excellence. I'm like, what is that? 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 we see so much 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.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

And I think you even hit on the head there with the messaging. Uh, how many people use the word uh you know, we are effective, successful, we like what do these words even mean? You know, like like let's 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 uh da da da, you know, too long did not read. Um, we just want to make it short and steady.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

So yeah, absolutely. So on your site, you say that you've been involved in uh 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?

SPEAKER_02 33:11

No, no, I absolutely absolutely I think the other the 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, as an example, right now, if I was to make a say a pen dis uh 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 like if I turn my hand 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 um 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?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:31

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 you, you know, take a card or make a little bunny appear. I want you to look here because that's the

Underused Channels And AI Search Visibility

SPEAKER_02 34:48

call to action, 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 it's kind of magic thinking in websites.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

So not not not trickery, not not trying to fill people, but directing attention, creating focus on the thing that is the most critical to help people make a decision.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

100% solve their problem. Yeah, and I think it just it just helped me to realize it uh to another level, and it was able to demonstrate in front of an interesting way as well.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, you had this quote that uh you like to make the complex simple and the simple beautiful. Where do you see people, clients, customers, uh overcomplicating things in their approach to their marketing?

SPEAKER_02 35:35

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. I'm not gonna 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 gonna watch the trailer. And what's the trailer? The trailer is actually the salesperson who does the pitch because they're gonna take the basics and they've got to elaborate a little bit more, but they're not gonna 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 on the dollar line, bang, let's give you the full service, and that's the movie, that's the full two hours. So try to shove that all at the start, no one cares.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, the teaser

Advice For Young Builders And Real Feedback

SPEAKER_01 37:12

is uh, you know, the job of the teaser is often to to pique curiosity, it's 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 gonna set the expectation. This is gonna be amazing, it's gonna be entertaining, it's gonna be worth the watch, kind of thing. Uh, you know, some trailers seem to go overboard where you're 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?

SPEAKER_02 37:41

I I pick I picture my my daughters uh at Costco. Uh they love going to Costco. Why? Because of the days where they do the samples, all right? But do 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, a full drink, but here's a little sip, right? They're not gonna serve the whole drink, and they serve the whole drink, you'll never buy the thing. That's what our website needs to be 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 home page. No, no, let's just put it on the home page, but at the very top, because not everyone's gonna go through the whole website, top to bottom. They're just gonna hit that first frame, make a couple of quick decisions, they're either in or they're out. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah, and then I think about um, 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 you know, I'm sure the product great group'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 and 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 gonna 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%.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

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 that's that's the golden, that's a golden goose right there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

So 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?

SPEAKER_02 40:00

Oh, it depends where you are in your business. So that's a that's a that's uh 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 your intent to buy is I mean, you're not gonna type in you know web design in, you know, wherever you are, if you're not looking for web designer, 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 quick instant ones. I find a lot of people aren't really investing into um the what I call AI search side of things. Uh 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. Um, you do know that AI doesn't think for itself, it just takes information that's up in the world to summarise it for you. Yeah, um, but I find that people aren't investing as much into that side of things as much as they really should. Um, still doing SEO, that's important, but doing this is actually still, in my eyes, just SEO, but just more of it. Um yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

We we we are very much um, you know, I'm always asking people when they come in on a sales call, you know, first question, how did you find us? Because we want to know what channels are working. And more and more we're hearing uh, you know, we found you on cloud, we found you on ChatGPT, 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 uh that Matt is uh absolutely uh pursuing aggressively. We've got uh something we call the LLM visibility stack, which is uh 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, uh, to get indexed by these LLMs. There, 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. 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 surge can come into it. And certainly on the B2B side, uh the that deep research is part of you know, those longer bind cycles, that those, you know, that deep uh research process. So absolutely uh 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 for opening in AI search. Yeah, it's it's the it's the core for sure. Um, you also have a thing of uh 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? What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_02 43:13

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, Chip T, 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 uh for their company. Um, literally was like, make me a mascot, that's a da da da enter. Like, yeah, you don't need those skills anymore. We used to be, oh, how do I find the graphics designer? Uh how much I it's just enter, done, it's and it's so simple. So give it a crack. You have nothing 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 uh 30 years ago and stuff like that. So it's really give it a go, build up as much experience as you can, uh, keep it a crack and stuff, and all in. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the 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 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 niches that are just full of uh 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.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

So I've been saying to some people, stop consuming, start creating, right? So stop being the consumer, be the creator. Second, put in your 10,000 hours, so putting the effort, just give a crap. Number three, you don't count the first 100 hours, you know, sort of like whatever you do, stop judging yourself. I'm gonna tell you right now, if you want to see the future, you're gonna be crap at whatever you start. You're gonna be horrible at it. So I've just started uh playing golf, I'm horrible at it, and I'm not gonna judge myself because I'm not gonna be Tiger Woods in overnight. Even Tiger Woods himself took time to get to where he was and stuff like that. Though he's 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.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

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, and let the market tell you if it's a great idea or not. The market's pretty ruthless with its feedback. Well, actually, that's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

You know, well, feedback. Let me just talk about that one because that's something we learned in conversion card. Feedback is not I created so I I created this, right? Feedback is not, hey Jeff, is this good? And you say yes or no. That's not feedback. That's especially if it's especially if it's nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Yeah, especially especially your friends and family, they're gonna tell you, yeah, that's great, it'll work, do it because they're trying to support you.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

Yeah, 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, Erwin, 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 pitches really fast, and if they go, yep, I want to take one, I think you're onto something, and then just scale that. But if you because I had people who are like, Oh, what do you think of this? They're like, Oh, it's the best thing, wonderful, yeah, love it. When we developed our products, we then said, Okay, well, 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, now I have to pay for it. Okay, no, no, no, really, no, what was it that you do again? Let me and I was like, You're just giving me lip service. No, I'm not saying that in a rude way, I'm just saying that I 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 a sound, I'm not saying sell a million of them, just get that off for the MVP.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Absolutely, I think that's that's great advice because the market, you know, is not sentimental, it'll just tell you. No, it's brutal. Absolutely brutal. 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 gonna, I've gotta be convinced that me spending money on your thing is gonna make my situation better substantially before I follow that credit card.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

And can I just put it out there? Just you just remind me of another conversation I had with another youth. There is a time to tap out as well. It's not bad, you 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, uh mate, I'd 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 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 are going to grow you. Because if you asked me, and I went, I'm gonna 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 why 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.

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

That is more important because right now that I'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 it a go, trying is so important, and like compound interest, um, you just have to compound that experience early, and that's why I said before just start now. And you've got all the resources. If you don't know how you use Chat 2D, YouTube is fantastic. You don't have YouTube, YouTube, Google it. If you don't know how to use those three, I think you're in deeper trouble than any.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

So these tools, these tools will teach you how to use them. Claude has taught me how to use Claude, you know. It it's correct. Uh there's so much uh in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

And it's free, free and free. That's how insane the site is.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

Yeah, absolutely. So everything, uh, opportunity everywhere. Um, that's that's fantastic. Uh Erwin, it's been great uh speaking with you. How can people connect with you online? Where can they find you? What websites do you want people to

Where To Find Erwin And Final Mindset

SPEAKER_01 51:16

check out?

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Yeah, fantastic. Um, if if anyone wants to connect with me, there's a couple of ways. Uh, LinkedIn, of course, always works. So Irwin Howe, uh Irwin I-R-W-I-N, how is in how do you do, but h-a-u. Um, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can go to IrwinHowe.com uh to connect me as well. But my two agencies or one agency, chromatics, chronat i x.com.au, because we are in Australia, or conversion cows uh SAS software is conversioncalco.com, uh milk your website or beef up your website uh for more leads. Uh, those four ways uh how you can actually get in touch.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

So look forward, excellent. Uh thank you so much. Before I let you go, uh I'm gonna ask you what is the one mind shift that will help clients get more out of their marketing that you'd love to see people make.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

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 said before. Traffic times conversion rate equals customers. If you want more customers, you need more people to come to you, and you actually need to convert. And that conversion is not just a once-off point, there's website conversion, there's telephone, you know, the picking up and a book that a point about the phone conversion, there's conversion of 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? One percenters make a big difference. So it's not just I'm running ads, that's it. Or my sales guys are 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 affected. 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 to do that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

So build 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 an 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. Uh, check out Chromatics if you're uh in Australia, you're looking for marketing. If you're in the States and you want to get a hold of us, we're at ewrdigital.com. You can uh uh find us there, and we'd love to have a conversation. Check out everyone's software again. The website for the uh semus for conversion rate optimization is conversioncal.com. Conversioncal.com. Excellent. Sounds like a great tool. We're gonna check it out ourselves. Uh thanks again, everyone, for your time. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

Beautiful. Thanks for having me. Take care.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Cheers. See you.