Webinar Transcript - How to Optimize Your Marine Website for Conversions in 2022
Speaker: Harry Casimir
All right, we’re going to be on time because we have a lot to cover today. Lots of information about to get started. Thank you so much, guys, for joining. And I don’t want to keep you waiting. So we’re going to get started exactly at 02:00 P.m.
As promised, and we’re going to dive right into it. Welcome to the how to Optimize your Marine website for conversion for 2022. My name is Harry Casimir. So what we’re going to really go over today, we have this map out for you, and we’re going to go over a lot of detail on really how to dominate your space, your business industry itself, whether to optimize your website and make sure that visitors have come to your website. How did they get there?
Right. So whether you have visitors from social media, you have visited from the network you are in, whether you have SEO being worked on local SEO or organic SEO, pay per click or retargeting, and you have all those different places conversions are coming in. Are they really converting? Is your website ready to convert those people that continue to come in and drop into your website, whether they are referred to you by another business or they just happen to stop on your website based on the search that they conduct online? So we’re going to dive into the overall digital dominance that really helped you make sure your website is fully, rarely and able to capture those leads when they come in.
Not just capture them, but actually convince the visitor, the user, that you are the business, you offer, the product that they want, so that you are the one that they need to converse with and to do business with. And to do that, your website has to be rarely for conversion, meaning that it’s really in the sense that the next time someone comes to your website, all the foundations are there to make sure that we convert that person, they become a lead, and that will become a sale for you. So we’re going to go over the detail of that. But before we do that, I want to make sure we’re all on board today. We’re not going to take a ton of time.
This presentation, workshop, webinar, however you want to call it today, it’s about anywhere from 60 minutes to about 75 minutes ish and it’s being recorded. And what I would love for you guys to do, those who are telling us today live, is just turn yourself on off, concentrate and turn social media off, if you can, for a moment and then get your questions. Really, I will be answering questions as much as I can as I go to, but ideally most questions will be answered at the end. So feel free to type up your questions and the question box right below and Zoom so that when we really I’ll just take a look at and answer them as I go or at the end of the presentation. So quickly, who am I?
My name is Harry Kazami. I’m the founder of both marketing pools. We are digital marketing agency specialize in the marine business. We work exclusively with marine businesses. I have been in the marine industry digital marketing industry for the last 15 years and I want two books.
Actually, the last one is coming up very soon. But all books right now you can find this on Amazon Ultimate Guide. You have marketing for both dealers. And the next book that’s coming out is Marine Marketing Mid East. This one is for both dealers.
Bootclops rental, yard management for any business in the marine industry can pick up this book and implement some of those Nuggets. We are member of MRA, the Carrier County, the South Florida Marine Industry and most of the Marine Industry Association. We are part of part of them. I also host a podcast called Marine Marketing Podcast where we share about 20 minutes apart. So we share some knowledge about the industry in general, how to target that also publish a few articles on both trade only and Boarding Industry magazine.
I am a US vet, former Navy forgiving almost and we have been working with marine businesses for the last ten years. So we have a team of nine of us here in Southwest Florida. But we work with clients all over the country, from all over the United States. That is. So we really want to look forward to share some knowledge with you.
And what my company does is what we do is we do website search engine optimization, pay per click, social media. We do Ada compliance and we help also when there is a need for it. We do allow implementation, integration, consulting. So if you have, for example, you have Salesforce that you struggle with or you have certain lead management system or ERP that you use in your company that you want to have help with, that’s really kind of one of my key background, although we don’t publish that on our website because that’s not the core business that we go after. But that’s something we can help you with if that’s something you need help.
So let’s dive right into it. Again, thank you so much for joining us. So like I always from these sessions when we first started is really what is the problem. So there’s no such thing as there is a solution without the problem. There has to be a problem that exists.
And really what the problem we see is conversion. And again, this webinar is very generic for the whole marine industry. So I would be talking to some degree to some business segment and the marine industry that really rely on a lot of leads, how they generate leads and how they convert leads on website. But no matter what segment you are in the main industry, you can benefit from these. So that’s what we’re going to run into so we’re going to solve the problem.
On how do you convert leads? So I know in the marine business a lot of you guys make a lot of investment, both on obviously time. Most businesses nowadays have a website one way or the other. And whether you spend the money to get someone, an agency or a freelancer to get this website built for you, it costs you or you decided technical enough to build your own website. You spend a ton of time, learn the craft, and then build a website.
Regardless how you look at it, that’s a big investment of time and marketing effort. Some of you guys spend a lot of money in marketing and those are big investment both on hiring people to build a brand and really usually spend that money. Also an SEO or PPC to get your website to be ranked on Google, search engines like Yahoo still exists, bank and other stuff that exists. And at the end, many times I find business owner get very frustrated. Right, because you spend all that money, you know, you’re getting some traffic coming in, whether it’s through pay per click or to some SEO.
But those people are not converting on your website. And you know, to some degree, you know, you get the right service, but somehow they’re not qualifying. They’re not converting to become a sellable lead for you. And maybe those leads are not qualified. If they become a lead, they not really qualify for your market.
How do you really go about solving that? And this is something that’s very hard to play with. Right? Because at the end of the day you ended up with a very low ROI. And I talked to 1015 marine business on a weekly basis.
It’s crazy. And the number one thing that I heard is we spend all that money every month, anywhere from $2,000, 5000, 10,000, $15,000. And we don’t really have a lot to show her. And part of it too is because obviously the marine industry at the moment for the last two years has been really upside down to some degree in terms of lack of inventory, lack of resources, lack of actually even people to find enough people to hire. So that can be very frustrating because the key here though is to maintain, no matter how bad things are from a production perspective, as a company, you still have to continue to grow and show a presence.
And your presence is extremely important as search engine making changes. And as such, engines continue to revert things. So this is very important for you as a business to ensure that when your website is there, you ensure that when you bring people in or when you have those boards, for example, if you are a rental business or a management business, you have to be able to be found online so that you can bring those people because it makes a big difference in terms of whether you bring people or not burning people in addition to that, obviously, if you have all these boats sitting at your dock and you have zero clientele customer coming in or book your business, that can be very hard for you as a business. And one of the biggest opportunity I have seen, which is a big problem right now, is lack of technician. Right.
Because it’s really hard to find technicians. So if you are a boat dealer, even a boat rental that we pay on sites now, you run into the issue of not only you cannot find enough people to fix those boats, but also to qualify technicians. Really hard to come by. And usually it takes time. And this is where it gets very strange, because if you have a good technician on your team, you want to keep that technician super busy, keep them pop.
And one of the ways to do that is actually to bring enough leads coming in so that you can keep those boats running. As those boats keep on running, obviously they’re going to run into issues, whether it’s it or not. And then that way you have a qualified technician. Those technicians don’t leave you because the problem is nowadays the job market, we all know how it looks like. And the second someone don’t feel like they can contribute or they don’t have enough jobs, they’re not busy enough, they get very tired.
It’s very easy to see them just run away leave. Right. Because they can get another job very easily at a different place. It’s not just about the money. Sometimes if someone is very boring, they don’t have enough things to do.
So that is why it’s so important as a business to actually continue to bring additional leads in. And I know this is an issue for some of this segment and the marine industry, but it is not. But the key here, though, is to make sure that you have a website that’s really running to ensure that it continues to deliver day in, day out, the kind of leads that you need, the qualified leads that you need to keep the business grounding and continue to be upfront. And that’s really important. So how do we really combat that?
Because the problem is, as I mentioned a moment ago, if you don’t generate leads, which means you are not making a sale. If you’re not making a sale, then it becomes very hard. And the problem is, as most of you guys know, especially depending where you are in the country, let’s take a market, for example, for Florida or Orlando, where there’s a lot of tourists that come to this section of the country. It’s very competitive to some degree for some businesses. Let’s take, for example, both rental business, which is easier to pick on.
It’s very competitive. So for you, it’s competitive for both customers that come in town and customer, local customer that want to go out anyways, as we all know we are short inventory at the moment. So a lot of people, if they cannot get their hands on their Dreamboats, they’re just going to join a club or continue to rent and one or the other going to have to give. This is why it’s so important for you to be front and center for your website to be able to convert this customer when they come to you and you want this market to deliver. So really what I want to dive into again is converting a website.
When you have your website, what does it tell people to do? I always quote this Lady, Marissa, she used to be the CEO of Yahoo. I believe she was number 10th employer from Google. Super smart lady and she was super sharp in terms of when it comes to customer and user experience, Ox on the web or whether they’re using the software. Try not to remove any obstacle, remove any ambiguity when it comes to your website, tell customer what you do, who you are, what you do and what you want them to do when they come to your website.
It’s really that simple. Make sure your website is ready to convert. So if you are a boat repair shop or if you are a management company, you bought rental company, boat club or dealer, you tell them we are number one dealer in Fort Lauderdale. We are number one, both rental business in Fort Lauderdale. We hope you enjoy the water and click here to reserve.
It’s very clear. Make sure those informations are very and we’re going to go deep into conversion today. But just how important it is to ensure that when someone comes to your website, you lead them where you want them to be. So remember, visitor comes to your website. Obviously visitor looked and you either tell them what you want them to do, how you want them to react, or they typically don’t see what to do.
Obviously, there’s no phone number or you don’t tell no call to action. You don’t tell them what to do. At the end of the day, they don’t become a leads. And if they don’t become a lead, then it will never become a sale. And sometimes you’re going to have that visitor one time ever.
So that is why it’s so critical to ensure that your website is rarely to convert. And that help you consistently convert those incoming visitors into leads in turn become.
And that’s very critical.
Your website can actually do all of that. And this is what we’re going to really go all over today in this session, really go deep into. How can we get this our website as we have more people coming in to our website, how can we get them to convert? And converting really means that turning someone that comes to your website that show interest in your product or services or company to book, to reserve, to buy or to make a phone call depending on what kind of business that you are in. So if you book rent, obviously you want someone to book online and purchase and put their credit card in there.
But if you book repair shop, you might want them to call or sometimes even book online. Because if you can simplify that process for the end user, it will probably make decisions faster anyways. So really that by having a proper website that’s set up to convert those incoming visitors, that would turn them into leads, you’re consistently having a momentum for growth. And obviously all of us in business one way or the other to grow right for you to grow. There are things that you have to put in place and I have said that and you cannot hear me say it a few times in this webinar today is your website is probably your best employee that you can have actually sometimes even more effective than you if you think about to some degree, if you think about what your website can do, if your website is properly set up, your website be able to open 24/7 and answer questions and provide information actually even allow people to book.
And depending on how you set that up, even take payment online, all of that can be done to your website. And this is why it’s so important to ensure that your website is converted, is built to convert so that you can continue to have momentum and consistent growth in your business. And when you have consistent growth and you have a website that ready to convert, it’s really equal to success. You have your phone ringing, technicians are working, and business are bombing because you’re getting appointments on the day in, day out. So really this is what success looks like.
But as I just mentioned to you, your website play. Especially nowadays, your website plays probably one of the most critical piece in your success online. No matter how big your social media is, no matter how big your following is on YouTube or how many people that you have referred to you from friends and association, at some point you cannot just build your business by order of mouth alone. You can just some extent. But at some point you’re going to have to get more people on board that’s just not hear from you from another friend.
But nowadays, even when a friend tells your friend that you are the best in town, your friends still want to go to your website and check you out. And this is why your website is the hub is the centerpiece of your online marketing and actually your marketing in general. If you think about it, when was the last time you pick up a flyer, a physical flyer that doesn’t have a website on it? Every Billboard that you drive by, there is a URL, a website address in there for you to visit that website. And there is key to that right.
Nowadays, almost every business you see to some degree if you are code somewhere, either on the chart or somewhere on the Billboard, especially if you go to webinar to workshops, all those conferences and bushes, there’s always a QR code and all those QR codes lead to the website. So this is why your website is so critical. And I know I keep on emphasizing this, but that’s why it’s so important. And here’s an example of why conversion is so important. So let’s say a website.
Scenario one, a website that’s bringing in 1500 visitors a month and they are converting. There is 5% conversion rate at the moment. That is roughly about 15 calls, 75 calls. Again, conversion is the amount of conversion. Percentage is the amount of people that come into their website.
Total people that sign up for something that either call or submit the information divided by total people that come to the website. So in this case, we have people conversion that 75% call that we get from a 1500 visitors to the website. If we are able to convert 30% of those people that we make the call to, remember, we have 1500 people come to your website, 5% of them convert, which is 75% of that 75, we have 30% conversion rate. That’s about 22 books jobs and book jobs. I call it jobs because you can be anything.
Right? Whether it’s original, people make for boat rental or boat repair or someone book you to be the captain or book you to be the management company. That’s the conversion. Obviously, for $150, it can be a very low transaction in the marine business. But you get the points.
So that’s roughly dictates to bring up to 10,125. Right? So scenario two, what can happen? The same amount of people come to the website because this website is optimized for conversion, meaning that it guides, it helps the visitor when they are on the website to convert properly or at least tell them what they need them to do. Of that 1500, you have a 15% conversion that leads to that equal to 225 calls or leads that coming in and the same early percent conversion and that’s equal to 67 books job.
And as you can see here, at the same amount per transaction, you basically triple the amount that you can wing. And this is why it’s so important to have your website conversion in place again today. Basically, that’s all we’re going to be talking about today is why conversion is so creating your website, making sure it’s optimized for conversion is so critical.
So here’s another example of how a conversion can work whenever you have your website and little things can make a big difference. So here’s an example of this website. This is actually a website that we built back in 2014. I believe that’s an old website. There is clear call to action on this website.
And the call to action can be anything that tells the user what to do. So for example, on this website you see the tilt color, it says View new inventories. And the blue one is tell them, use inventory that’s called to action. At the very top there is a phone number that’s basically tell them where to call, what number to call. And again, those are very small little call to action, but they are there.
And also right below that, there’s other things that we show the current boats that are available. So those are kind of really optimize your website to what you want to do. And every website is different, right. And depending on where you are, what the customer clientele looks like. So if you are a both rental business and we’re going to go over that in detail, your website would look a little bit different than what a boat dealer will have because a boat rental place, you want people to just constantly booking, booking, booking, booking.
So depending on how many books you have but your clear call to action should be call us or reserve now and give them the option to reserve online if possible, if you can. And what does that looks like for me? You can’t really achieve what I just showed you a moment ago without making sure that you have some way to keep track to know what’s going on. Are you converting? And if you are converting, how are those conversions are working for you?
And are they helping you getting to what you really want?
So as I’m getting some questions coming in, again, if you guys have questions, feel free to keep on pushing them to the question section. So I’m going to continue working on this. For example, here’s what we’re looking at at the moment. So we have how many leads that come in. And this is an example of what this looks like, what an Ikea KPI key performance indicator.
That’s what KPI stands for. What are the things that we are tracking, we’re keeping track of and how that works. So looking at this, for example, this company gets roughly about 400 leads, right. And the total investment is about $20,000. And that investment can be for anything, whether it’s ads, as you can see here, ads and fees, you can see on average that’s about $50 per leads.
And you can see how this breaks down and we’re going to continue to break this number down. But the reason that we show that to you is to show you how much this customer, as you’re looking at this is paying for PPC. This website is really convert whenever you have a PPC campaign running. This is a campaign that’s usually built to convert to get people to take an action. Today, we’re not talking about this right now.
We’re not talking about PPC itself or SEO specifically, but they play a big role in terms of how you build your website to convert for those type of marketing. How do you get I show you a PPC, but this is an SEO overview. You’re looking at a very similar scenario where about 421 leads coming in and the cost for it. And what does that looks like from a conversion with perspective? So by just increasing optimize the website, it helps increase what the conversion rate looks like and the unique user and what that looks like in terms of search engine.
I’m going to show you why it’s so important to ensure that not just for the user that comes to your website, but also for to satisfy search engine. Why it’s so important to have your website optimized, it makes every sense from a business perspective. Because at the end of the day we are in business to grow to scale. Whether we build that business, to leave it to our kids or sell it to the people that work with you for you or you just want to exit at some point, you want that business to continue to grow. And digital marketing nowadays is no brainer.
But also as I mentioned a moment ago, your website is the central piece for all of that. So how do you actually optimize your website to ensure that you have all the things that needed and your website to get people to convert? So I share with you if you have not done so, this is the only time you can click if you haven’t download the workbook and you can download this later. But if you want to follow along or write down as I’m going through, this would be good for you to download the workbook. You go to boatmarketingpost.
Comworkbook if you haven’t downloaded that yet and we’re going to walk through what this looks like. Okay, so here are some of the elements, very important, key elements that you have to be aware of to ensure that your website is ready to convert. And those are questions that you should be asking. And many of them, as you can see, they don’t require you to have a ton of expertise. And it’s more for you to have a basic understanding so that if you were to hire someone, whether it’s a freelancer or the marketing agency or have someone in house executing or help you with your website optimization for conversion, what are some of the things that you should be aware of, or at least by knowing these questions, or at least know how to ask them would help you ask the proper questions?
Right. Does your website speak to the avatar? Which means your ideal customer and we’re going to go over that in a second. What are some of the things that your customer wants to see or what are the things that frustrate them? Okay.
And why they should choose you, why you be real and authentic, use as much as video as you can and you’re going to go over this piece actually line by line at the end here after we go over some of the key elements. Right. So the number one element and one of the biggest factors that impact your result over a lot of online Internet marketing is to be honest, it’s really straightforward. What we’re talking about here is how you optimize your website for conversion. At the end of the day, again, when the user comes to your website or find you online and they get to your website, they have a purpose and they have a reason to come here.
They search for I don’t know yet management company in Orlando or both Rental and Detroit is because they are looking for that specific product or service or company. So when they get to your website, you should be able to make sure you guide them to the information that they’re looking for and to ensure that is to optimize your website for conversion. As I mentioned, what does conversion looks like from a website perspective? This is an example of both club website and here it’s very clear what they do. Okay, right in there it tells us they have 45 plus boots and they give me a phone number to tell me I can call and right up there is a button that’s hiding behind us that says Join now.
And if I want to learn more, I can actually click to learn more. There’s a call to actions that’s very clear to the end user and if I just heard of them, I never seen those guys before. Most likely I would click on learn more so I can learn about the programs if I never joined a club before. So obviously there are things that I might need to know. They might have questions and answer section within.
Learn More part of the Website These are the things that you want to have on your website as call to action that are clear and precise and bring the user to where you want them to be.
What does a website like this looks like? So here’s an example of this website year over year conversion when we update this website, I believe within a six month period we took this website and the unique visitor to the website increased. And that has to do with not only we optimize the website but we optimize SEO as well. We did SEO for this website and as you can see, almost everything increased from an SEO perspective and this is the same result that we had earlier at the 400 a lead. So from 400 leads, after we convert and update the website and the website itself, I think that’s what really bring the most result you can see.
We got 600 plus leads coming in.
What does the performance looks like for this website? As you can see year over year for this website, you can see how it breakdown. We have roughly about 34,000 session on this website, meaning new visitors that come to the website session. Meaning that when people access the website and new visitors, new user is the people that come to the website for the first time ever. And as you can see, how we break this down and tells you where we get those leads coming from and how long people stay on the website, how long the session lasts, and so forth.
And these are very important, critical piece to look at on your website so that you can determine where people keep on dropping off. Sometimes it’s the thing that you have on your website or the thing that you don’t have on your website. So, for example, there are more tools than just what we’re looking at to actually dictate. That helps. You know that people, when they come to their website, whenever they go to the about page, they leave, or whenever they go to the services page, they leave, whenever they go to the product page, they leave.
And if that’s the case, oftentimes you might want to apply certain tools on your website so that you can track and see when people leave at what time and what they were doing, whether they’re moving them out somewhat or the disco halfway to the web page and they leave. That can really help you determine maybe the content on that page need to be addressed a little bit. The information on that page needs to be updated. So that’s what we’re talking about in terms of when you’re looking at your website performance, you can determine what are some of the things that, what are the things that you need to do. So you might say, well, how do I get my website to convert like this?
So what we create for you is if you haven’t done so, feel free to download the bookmarketingpost.com.
So that cheat sheet actually break down some of the key elements you will need on your website to get your website to convert. So this is a quick cheat sheet that we created. You can take this, some of the key elements on our website. Obviously, you want your logo to be front and center. You want your navigation.
As I mentioned earlier, we move any ambiguity, meaning that, for example, you see a lot of website now have a navigation even when they are not in mobile device. They have three little sandwich bar, hamburger bar that you have to click to see the menu, all the different menus that looks all cute. And actually, sometimes it can be very effective. But there are times that is uncalled for, especially if you are a business that’s heavy in transaction. That’s just one obstacle, one way to get people to just say, forget this.
Because the thing is, when people come to your website nowadays, almost most websites you come to the island logo. There’s the call to action meeting, phone number. And depending on what type of business you are in, whether you want people to follow you on social media right away or you tell them. Here’s your navigation. And right below that, this is what we call the hero image.
This is what we do. We offer 100% satisfaction guarantee. Click here. So CT stands for call to action. You give people what you want them to do.
So not going to go into every piece of this, but some of the key conversion on this is making sure your website is built to conversion. So here’s how you always have to take a look at your website. And maybe that’s a way to diagnose your own website very quick even if you’re not a technical person at all. Take a look at your website right now. And if you cannot see five different ways that people can reach you within your website, that homepage.
Then there is an issue with your website. Seriously. So one, there has to be a phone number somewhere and sometimes two different places. A phone number at the very top may be a phone number at the very bottom. Right.
And then right at the hero section, tell them exactly what you want them to do. Because that’s the critical piece here. If someone already heard of you, know of you, someone referred them, they’re not going to do a deep dive. They want to do what you want them to do at the moment, right away what they need to do, book you, reserve something, call you. You want these information for the center right up here.
This is two call to action right away. So basically I offer 100% satisfaction. Click here to get your satisfaction. Oh by the way, this is what some of our clients say about us. Why don’t you submit information here as well as right in the bottom, his address, his phone number, he’s in navigation again.
Oh by the way, we have a chat on our website so that you can chat with us. So this cheat sheet, by just looking at it, you don’t have to implement every single thing here because some of us don’t have enough reviews yet. Or maybe you don’t want to show reviews on the website for whatever reason that is. That’s fine. But there’s a lot of different ways you can actually build this and take this to make sure your website is optimized the way you need it.
And if you’re not doing it, making sure at least your tech people that work for you with you know of this. So there is a saying if you can see Jones to Jorgeon’s eyes, then you can sell Georgians anything, what George want to buy. And that is really where that comes from. Really building an avatar and some people say target audience, ideal customer. So it’s all depending on what industry that you are in and the flesh methods really break this down in terms of how this works.
So those are how do you build an avatar? Meaning that what is my ideal customer looks like. So first of all, you can break this down by building a Quadrant of four different things. Right. So one first thing you can do is create a demographics.
What does your demographic customer look like? And yes, not everybody in the marine business or that want to have participate. Not every customer is the same in the marine business. So if you are a boat dealer, maybe you’re selling to a very unique particular customer. So, for example, if your boat dealer is selling really White or Boston or Pursuit, whereas there is another boat dealer that’s only selling, I don’t know any lower brand or higher brand than those two I just mentioned, then that’s a different demographics, different type of clientele.
So you keep those things in mind as you’re building this. Right. So as you build your demographics. So, for example, we just down for you in terms of what your demographics looks like are the only homeowner, what’s their age are they mostly male, female, single, married, household. And also you just break this down.
I think everybody should have an idea of what the ideal customer looks like in terms of what the makeup of demographics for your customer. And what are some of the things that pains and frustrates them. Right. So we all know what are some of the things that frustrate them? Well, yes.
Not for sale at the moment. Lack of inventory. Right. If you bought, how do you solve that? How do you create a message around that?
A lot of times I heard people complain that companies won’t answer the phone. Well, we know that. And sometimes it’s not because they don’t want because there’s a lack of people. How do you answer those questions? Right.
People cannot get their boat fixed fast enough. As you all know, there’s lack of technician in the market at the moment. So if you can answer those questions for people, you talk to the frustration you basically halfway there from converting and selling them. The other thing that you do is obviously, what are some of the fears and the implication that customer fear that their boats won’t get repaired by someone that’s certified, that know enough, they might get overcharged. Right.
All of us can relate to something like that. So all of these different things that you know, your ideal customer might go through, you want to write them down so that you can build that ideal customer portfolio profile. And then once you have that profile, really your next job is to create speak to that profile directly. And yes, you can have multiple profiles. Let me answer this now.
So you can have multiple profiles when you are creating your ideal customer profile. Maybe you serve a group of people that’s really anywhere from 22 to 30, and then you serve another group, 40 to 60 and so on. So you can have different group of people that you serve. And in that case, you create different avatar, and there’s plenty of companies that do that.
And make sure you have your message on the website that resonates with those different messages. The exercise that we just did, you our deal customer.
That message. Talk to me. Same day services or emergency. I’ll pick you up on the ocean if you get stuck. Things like that make people feel comfortable.
Straightforward pricing. Who doesn’t like that? Almost everyone likes to hear that. Straightforward pricing off what? Satisfaction guarantee.
Trustworthy technician, certified technician and certified carpenters. Those are things that make people feel comfortable, feel good. Okay, so I’m going to try to boot. I want a certified captain to be with me, whatever that means to that end user. That’s very important for you.
It might mean nothing as long as the guy can drive a boat or you may not even need one because you know how to do that. But for the end user, someone that’s flying from New York, California, wherever they’re coming from, flying to Florida, going to Miami or something, just hearing that the certified captain would try their boats, make them put them at ease, feel good. Those are little things that you can help craft your message that actually geared towards your ideal customer. And as I mentioned, always really some of the keywords priority things that really helped people feel very comfortable, always really trusted crew, professional and personal services make people feel good. Again, we’re talking about broader marketing here.
But when you narrow it down to your digital presence, your website is one and the same. You can apply this across the board for almost anything. If I feel comfortable with you and you tell me that I should feel comfortable with you and you show me how other people feel comfortable with you, it helps me remember earlier I mentioned, be authentic when you create your message. Now you have your message, you have your ideal customer. You build this, you create your website that’s really structured around those people.
Be real. Images make a big difference. And people love to deal with other human being that this guy is Tim. I can call Tim. I can ask for them.
I know what team looks like. And believe it or not, people on the Internet are tired of fitness. So the more real you can be. Show a picture of your team, show videos and using multimedia to showcase your products and services on your website that would convey the message so that the user can feel, oh, man, this is very cool. This is what this looks like.
And let me do. And nothing speaks louder than a picture or a video that illustrates your products or services. So you can never have enough pictures that represent what you do and showcase how that product help the customer. It’s very, very critical to have that. Also, what you want to do is using social proof to showcase some of the things that what other people say about you.
There are different ways you can actually bring this to your website and you can filter them. There are tools out there that you can filter. Most of the results that you see on your website are the positive ones. We all get to the point where we get the negative or two if you don’t want to show those results. There are tools out there that you can use to show all the testimonial on your website.
You can see the testimonial coming from Yelp, coming from Google, coming from Facebook, different places. But when they show on your website, most of the ones that show on your website, actually all of them are positive and you can actually create filter where I only want to see four and above on my website. And that really helps make your website much better because people can come see and prove that people actually review your website and also testimonial directly from your website, from the customer you’re going to have customer that’s willing to give you direct estimate. And if you can write those down, those are some of the best ones because they are much longer than the one people leave on Facebook and Google, although those are very important you want them. But if someone can write a loan testimonial for you, those are the ones that you also want because they play critical roles on your website.
Because they also help with long run SEO for your website. So what are some of the things that you want to get right on your website when you build this website? So a couple of things that I mentioned have your logo at the very top, right? Have all the locations and phone numbers if you have multiple locations, if you can if you need to have a search box at your website. Not all website needs a search function.
If you are a website that with 20 pages there is no need for a search function. But if you are a boot dealer that sell multiple parts and a lot of different boats, yes it makes sense. But if you are straight up both rental place, you don’t need a search for example. So know when you need the search. Now if you have a blog section that have hundreds and hundreds of blogs, you might need a search function within that blog section.
But remove anything that can be an obstacle that can really distract your user to your website. As I mentioned, make sure that message is very clear. What do you do? So on this website you can see right up there the first thing, this is the same website at the very top up here you can see it’s very clear. This is the logo, these are the locations that they serve.
And this is the navigation right in that navigation it tells you exactly inventory, servicing, parts, financing, bushes, about blogs and contacts right in there. It tells you what they tell the user to do search for newborns, search for newspapers and right below that this is the same thing and these are very hard to miss. Right? So and there isn’t a ton of text up there. You can see, I can clearly see the image and what’s the image illustrated and that is why it’s so important to have a clear call to action.
And when someone comes to your contact page, try to not have too much inside the contact page because when someone clicks on contact it’s because they want to reach out to you. So the smaller the header can be the better. And as soon as that user gets to that page, what is the priority for you? Some businesses prefer people call them. Some businesses prefer people submit a form and some businesses don’t really care as long as you contact them.
Either way, provide that information right front and center. So if you are accepting people that submitting the form to put the form right up there. If you can, you can split the screen like this one where you have the address in one side, the form is on the other side. It’s very clear, very easy and also all the information that are required. Make sure you have the little attracts next to them that make sure the industry they are required.
So also what you want to do when you create your website is I know in the marine business at the moment many businesses cannot afford to run any promotions. Makes sense because running a promotion right now doesn’t add up. But if you are for example a management business or if you are in both rental business, there might be an opportunity here to actually create special for just to attract more customers on your website. So make sure you are front and center in terms of presenting. This is our promotion, this is how we bid, this is a coupon and we move again.
We move any little gaming stuff that’s going around, just give people what you think you need to give them. If you said you got 25% off or 10% off, 5% off, just make sure it’s point and center and it’s very easy for them to find. It mobile responsiveness. So in 2018, most of you guys are very techy on this. Google really changed the game, not just Google but Google was the front.
The first one said well first we’re going to require our website to be mobile friendly first meaning that mobile first came and what that did today to almost every website. If your website is not optimized to be viewed on mobile devices, you get knocked down just for that. So make sure your website is mobile friendly. And that means that 40% of people that visit your website on mobile, if your website load very slow or has a bad experience, they cannot see the navigation, they cannot do what they want to do, what they need to do on your website, they’re going to turn to your competitors. There’s a good chance for that.
So with that, many people use mobile, especially United States, actually at the moment, at 4.8%, we’re looking at closely about 60% of the world use a mobile phone. But in the United States, especially if you’re in the US, Canada, or any of the big developed countries, you know, that percentage is way higher, probably 95. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s even higher. So if most of your audiences in the United States, there is a good chance that more than 60% of those people are going to use the mobile to access your website at some point, whether that person is looking for your address or looking for information. So make sure your website is fully mobile ready.
And this is part of getting your website ready for conversion as well. So have your website ready. Mobile ready has a few different important things that to add to it, make sure that the phone number you have on your website is technically a link that when someone click on it, it’s clickable it’s trackable as well. And one of the ways to do that, we already passed the KPI slide. But making sure you have that phone number is a trackable phone number.
So you know where people are calling from and where they click to get to that phone call with you. So in this case, if someone is on a mobile device and when they click on your phone number and they make that call, there is a system behind that phone number that we know this phone call is coming directly from the website because someone clicked on their mobile device. It’s not instant, but we know we can try that later.
Another way is that a lot of big opportunities that businesses are missing on is having a chat on your website.
Is it proving that everybody wants everything now? Just tell me what I need to do. I want it now. Whatever I ask you, you need to give it to me now. And one way you can do that is to be present on your website all the time and obviously not going to be online 24/7.
There are other tools that are out there that can make you online 24/7, so it’s not you. But chat is a proven way to increase leads. And this is including the industry, 25% of total leads that are coming in. When they chat with you, they most likely convert. So keep that in mind.
If you have 100 people coming to your website and 35 of them can become leads, that’s very high, especially if 35% is the one that contact you. And that can really make a big difference on your business. And there’s a ton of ways you can implement this. There’s even free tools out there to implement this. What you see here right now is one of our own CRM that’s built in with chat, but you can add this anywhere.
So what does that looks like in terms of conversion? What are some ideas, key ideas to take away from this? So as I mentioned earlier, be authentic image of your team. Image of real people. Yes, you need some stock images to make sure your website looks good, but also make sure that you use real image of your team to have your website.
Videos Your videos nowadays is becoming the norm. Actually people prefer videos or images. So if you can just stick some videos together, there’s tons of different ways you can get videos on your website. Maybe talk to a freelancer or someone that does images for you or early. They’ll probably be able to help you with that.
A video that explains why someone should do business with you versus your competitors. You don’t have to name your competitors, but tell them reason why you better than the guy next door or down the street. That’s fair enough. Showcasing your reviews obviously. How to make sure everything is in order.
Make sure you have your phone number at the top corner, right? Because people get used to that. And there’s tons of research that’s already done for most elements on the website that’s already done and proving that how they work and what people expect. So don’t try to create a website, whether it’s your freelancer designer agency that build it for you or you build it for yourself. Make sure you looked at what each of them looks like and don’t let fentiness get underway of practicality meaning that the user already gets used to how this works.
Click all to Action leverage coupons and offers that really help customer convert on your website. So really, as I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest elements that help your website convert is optimize your website from an SEO perspective and to help you convert. So if you were to take a look at based on all the information that we went over, if you were to pick up those three implements in the next 20 days on your website, what would it be? Would you update making sure your phone number is properly added? Would you make sure that the video on your website is able to convert?
Are you going to create different pages for the different services that you have for your website? So this would be kind of an action item for you to take so that you can create this and so you can take a look at this action item. I believe this is on the workbook as well. So making sure you take this with you. So we’re almost there.
Bear with me again. Biggest marketing Issue Talking with a lot of marine businesses from yard management to boat repairs, the issues continue to be leads that is not convert. So the problem is at the moment based on assessment from different associations within the marine industry, 50% to 60% of inbound lead goes unconverted. 90% of web form fail because the web form is not set up properly. It’s not sending to email because most people set up their web form and hopefully think that it’s going to automatically send an email to them.
Sometimes that doesn’t work because your email system gets very sophisticated. Now they look at different spam that’s coming in. Those are the elements that you have to account for. So leads that is not follow within the first 15 minutes, go call. So meaning that someone that contacts you within 15 minutes, even if it is just an automated message, make sure you get back to them.
Right. So average customer would follow up five to seven times before booking. So meaning that they’re going to go to your website, they’re going to check your social media, they’re going to check different channels, but they keep on coming back to your website sometime before they book with you, especially if there is a big ticket item that they need to look at. They will also look at your competitors. And one of the things I see in the marine industry, lot of people are afraid of using text messages.
Well, text message is here to stay. And this is one of the preferred way people interact because it doesn’t really text messages. Don’t interrupt me and don’t interrupt you. I can get back to you when I can, as soon as I can. Whereas phone call.
If I miss your phone call, I miss you. I’m not going to call you back. Whereas the text message, I can take my time, but I can get back to you. Don’t be afraid of using that. So how do you solve this?
Well, we have a few solutions and there are tons of tools that already exist out there to do that. So one is making sure you leverage marketing automation. Meaning that when the lead comes in in the first two or three minutes, you can automatically have a message go to the person that submitted the form to you, say, hey, Joe, just so you know, this is an automated message. I just want you to know you got your message. One of our team members will be in touch with you right away.
Or maybe you send a text to them, say, hey, thank you for reaching out to XY and Z boarding and we got your message. We’re going to be in touch with you. Actually, there are tools out there that can automate the whole process depending on your business. If you have a bot rental business, you can actually book people through text messages right in there. So by instruct them, tell them what they need to follow.
So all of that can be done. To be honest, it’s really a simple math, right? So for example, if you have 100 leads, you’re able to convert 30% of those 100 leads with no follow up and you book, but with that totally you book, right? So you’re looking at if the average cost is $650. So don’t mind the exact numbers.
But you’re looking at $19,500 for three books or reservations where if you follow up within this follow up, if you can convert at 70%, which we just reverse the numbers from 19,000 to 450, that’s a big difference in the business. And imagine if you can do that on a monthly basis or even weekly. Because I know some businesses can do that because of the capacity. It’s insane. It is easy math, right?
So I wonder why people just don’t automate most of their work. As you all know, you guys are very busy when you have a business like this. For example, motor rental is the easiest I can print. You’re very busy. It’s always going to be an issue.
You’re running the team. What if you could automate the whole process? So, meaning that when someone comes to your website, they are able to book reservations from that reservation. Once you get all the information, meaning the payment, you can trigger the initial liability form directly to them said hey, looking forward to seeing you. Please sign and just those basic information.
Get that people super happy. And again, make sure that they come back later.
So making sure every lead from your business from your website is more valuable than ever. So I know we’ve been going at this for a bit, so I really want you guys to if there’s anything you can take away from this is implement some of the tips on your website and with the cheat sheet you have on hand. Take a look at the cheat sheet. Take a look at your website. Also, the questions that I showed with you earlier see where some of the gaps are on your website.
What are the things that I can do to make sure my website is really optimized to the Max? So some of the things that you can do. Make sure your website is speaking to your ideal customer. Use authentic images and videos. Again, you cannot go on with videos and the more real the video is, the better.
Don’t try to overdo it. You don’t need to spend a ton of time your iPhone, your Samsung phone is more than enough. Actually, most of those phones nowadays, smartphones can shoot very good videos. So take advantage of that. Leverage social proof.
Show that you have questions. You have a customer that can give you feedback. Make sure you have your phone number information properly set up both on the top website and at the very bottom. If you are not functioning at home, you have actual physical office building. Make sure you have the address in there because those are very relevant.
Although we’re not talking about SEO in detail here, but those are very important piece, not just for your website, but also for search engines to make sure they index your business properly. So have click onto action, offer a thing or two on your website so that you can entice people to do business with you. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile. And one of the most important things we don’t talk much here about, but take advantage of that and it’s super critical. So last year, Google pushed a new updates and it’s called Call Vital.
Call Vital really looks at a few different elements, how your website structure, the different contents. But one of the big factors and that new updates they looked at is your website speed. How your website is loaded to the end user is extremely important. You have to look at it this way. Google is in the business to make money and they make their money.
When people search for something and they click on one of the results that show the end user, the end user go to that website and the end user stay on that website for a minute, or two or three or four minutes, depending on what the information looks like, which means that user is happy, find the information, they read that information. So Google wants their website to be as fast as humanly possible. That means that when they send someone to your website, they want your website to have no obstacle. And it’s nice because they know if they send someone to your website, your website is Loading Super slow. The content is not that good, and the user keeps leaving your website very quick.
Google going to realize very quick that your website doesn’t make sense because people keep on bouncing from it. So we’re not going to show you anymore, we’re going to show the other guy. And this is why it’s so critical to have your website built for speed. If anything, make sure your website is built for speed. And I’m not going to talk about how do you well, I’m going to talk about briefly, how do you get your website speed?
I would say almost 50% to 60% of the time. Your website speed has to do with the way your website is hosted. So some places can probably give you a cheap free hosting website. But you pay the price in terms of not having a speedy website, which also hurts you in the back end. So keep that in mind when you’re selecting where your website is hosted.
And if someone is going to host your website, you have the right to ask them where are they hosting your website? And also, what does the speed look like? And make sure they can answer this question for you. And if they can’t, there are tons of tools out there. Even Google itself provide tools for you to measure your website speed.
It’s called insight speed, so you can actually go to Google and find out your website what the speed looks like. Make sure you have that. Also use SMS for automation for follow up to your customers. Okay, so make sure for all we talked about here, create at least three conversion elements that you’re going to implement on your website.
I don’t want to call it homework because we don’t have homework. School is over, but there’s always room for improvement when it comes to class. So your homework for today and for the next 30 days is to create to take three conversion elements that you’re going to implement on your website. So let’s go back to those up there. Again, what are some of the ones that you’re going to create right?
You’re going to create a video, maybe start adding reviews to your website, making sure your website phone numbers at the top right corner, make sure your form you test your form on your website, make sure it works, and provide maybe a coupon if that’s something that you want to do. And making sure you test your website yourself, maybe a live chat is something that you do. That’s how you create those three action items for conversion for your website. So I know we went over tons of information here, but I also know so many of you guys that listen to this, that watching this live and those who watch the recording piece of it, you probably take this and run with it, go home and implement it yourself. Awesome.
I know some of you guys are super technical, but even if you are technical, but you don’t have the time to implement this, you don’t have the time to mess with this and you need some help. Feel free to reach out to us. We’d be more than happy to take a look at what we can help you with. So feel free on the chat here or any questions you can type help. And I’ll be more than happy to make sure we reach out to you.
Or you can go directly through our website and go to bootmarketimpose.com click on contact at the very top right and fill out your information. And if you could mention that you and the webinar here tonight, this afternoon, I will make sure we follow up and see if we have fit and if we can work with if we can collaborate with you. We would love that. So again, if you need help with all this, feel free. I know we have some questions on the question section, so I’m going to answer them right now.
And if you have additional questions, feel free to shoot them.
So someone said they avoid putting the business numbers because there are times you get quick calls. Is there any solution to that? Well, that one is a hard one because unfortunately there are people that do this. My suggestion would be to use a third party system that would take your phone number. That helps sometimes because that number is unique, but it’s also followed directly on the website.
And that’s a number you can track. And also it’s very easy to block those numbers within that system if you were to use the CRM that help with automated email. Next question I had. So I got my website optimized by someone, but I still haven’t seen achieve any significant result. Why is that now?
Typically when you work with us, what I usually ask people is what are some of the goals that you want to accomplish? What is your goal for this project? Or if you want to do a new website, you want to use SEO or VPC or social media, what is it that you want to accomplish? The reason for that is because I know if you tell me your goal is to bring I don’t know and make sure I want you to visit us to my website or convert change my conversion from 1% to 5% on my website. Those are very clear measurable goals that we all can follow.
And if the numbers don’t lie, I’m going to know and you’re going to know if I did not meet or not when you said not significant result. Maybe if you have specific goals they don’t meet, that could be a different reason for that. And depending on what is it that you really wanted to have done on the website. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s not just the website because there are factors that outside your control, but you can take measure to ensure that those items that are outside your control are taken care of. For example, your hosting it is out of your control to some degree, but what you have control of is who you want to host your website so you can select where your website is hosted.
That’s a loan can make it different than your speed and even conversion. So keep that in mind and where you want that. The other question I have here is do I recommend a specific system to build a website on? Well, not really. We use WordPress here at a company and WordPress is used by almost 60% of your web now, so it makes sense.
But there’s plenty of other system out there that you can build your website on if you’re just getting started from scratch. There are tools that are almost free, but be careful when you select those again, you get what you pay for to some degree. But WordPress is very straightforward and the beauty of WordPress is that if the agency or the freelancer you work with doesn’t work out at the end of the day, you can actually easily find someone else, another company to take care of your website for you. That’s one advantage WordPress has over multiple other platforms. So I would highly recommend WordPress if that helps.
So for a new website or existing website, what would you recommend someone do? First, what I mentioned earlier is prepared. There is a cheat sheet now that we provide earlier. Use that cheat sheet if the company you work with or the team member or someone that you work with that will provide the design to pull out your cheat sheet and take a look at all these elements that on the cheat sheet. Do they match to some degree match?
What my website looks like is the navigation clear, the click all to action throughout the website and can someone navigate and get the information they want or need on the website? So that’s how I would afford to almost any website at the moment and that’s how I would investigate an existing website. So if the website is brand new, you look at your cheat sheet and if it is an existing website, take a look at the cheat sheet to see compare the cheat sheet versus your website at the moment where it’s at and from there you can see if there are changes and if those changes need to be made. If your website has no call to action, it’s very hard to read. There’s a big email background in the back.
Are you having a hard time?
Take a look at the cheat sheet and see what you can do. Again folks, I know we went over a lot of information but at the end of the day take a look at your website. Look at your website as the central hub, one of the best employee you can have on the team that doesn’t really complain much and really can handle a lot of things for you. Take advantage of your website, get your website to do automated stuff for you so that you can concentrate on managing and running the business and if there’s anything that we can do to help you feel free, I’d be more than happy to help. So if you are interested in having us take a look at to do an analysis for you on your current website, I’d be more than happy to personally do an analysis for you.
Obviously we have a few people on this call as well as people that can watch this recording so I do want to limit this. So the first ten people that submit this or the one that will be getting it, I’ll be more than happy to do a report and show you maybe where you at and what are some of the improvements you can make and I’ll give you those information for yourself and you can take them home to do it yourself. And if you think there’s an opportunity for us to work together, if it’s a fit, maybe we help you and we collaborate together. But again that would be free information. If you are interested, feel free to head to our website boatmarketingpours.com and get the information that you want.
I hope I answer most of your questions. If you have any additional questions, feel free to drop it. Thank you so much for all of you guys that stay with me. As I mentioned, this was going to last about 1 hour or so and we use every minute of it. So if you have any questions, additional questions, feel free to drop them here in the questions section.
If not, feel free to reach out to us, email us at halo@bootmarketingpost.com or go to our website, boatmarketingpros.Com contact and we would love to help or chat with you, see how we can help again. Thank you so much again for staying for listening. Hopefully, you learn something or two you can implement and your business. It’s been a pleasure.
You guys have a great day. Good afternoon and good morning and I’ll see you soon. Thank you.
Bye Bye.
