Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Ross Davies who is the owner of Strafe Creative, a digital design agency focused on conversion-led design. We talk all about websites and how people convert via your website, along with some changes we can all make to help increase conversions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- If you are a serviced-based or online business owner, you want your website to make someone feel comfortable to get in touch with you.
- Rather than just telling people what you do – you need to answer objections and make it obvious.
- Make it really clear what you want your user to do and when.
- Give website visitors a reason to click a CTA.
- Have tailored landing pages that are contextualised to where they have come from.
- It’s not just about signposting, it is about the destination you are sending them.
- We are sometimes so busy explaining what we do and building our credibility, we don’t consider the other reasons why someone may not sign up.
- Rather than avoid talking about other competitors – why not compare with what you offer.
- Build credibility with mini case studies and testimonials. Use credible logos!
- Don’t just ask for a testimonial – tell them what you want to push and how the testimonial could include triggers for this.
- Start to collate all the frequently asked questions you receive and then have a page on your website to answer all of them.
- If you have a product-based business – add testimonials from people who have previously bought from you, sell the process and what goes into your product, show the packaging and what is included, and answer objections that people may have.
- Think about upsells and things you could do to say thank you when someone buys your product such as a personalised video.
- Collect birthday data to be able to remarket to anyone who has previously purchased.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Visually answer objections that may stop people from signing up – this will help drive conversions.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS
- An introduction to Ross Davies 07:04
- How to encourage someone to get in touch with you 20:26
- Answering objections for service-based businesses 28:11
- How to drive conversions for product-based businesses 44:47
CHECK ROSS OUT:
RESOURCES MENTIONED
The Marketing That Converts Academy
Handmade gifts – In Craft Corner
Transcript
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. So we're in December. Are you ready for, you know, the big day. I used to love, I do love Christmas stuff. I used to really go all out and ever since I had my own business, I do find myself like trimming down things that I just haven't got time and energy for and being crazy about Christmas is one of those things. So I have to say that mine is probably a lot of last minutes. Also we have a lot of birthdays in end of November, beginning of December, my daughters and my husband's and my stepdaughter's. So in our house, it's like you can't have those things you can't, uh, celebrate Christmas until those things are done.
So anyway, but anyway, I hope you are far more organized than I am, which I suspect you are, which is good. So this week we've got a really good interview. My lovely friend, Ross has come onto the podcast to talk about websites, but not websites from a building website or what you should have on it. We're specifically looking at how people convert on a website.
And we used, me as an example, and we used one of my members as an example, who has a physical product. And he just gave such good ideas, like things that maybe I hadn't thought about things that were super helpful, things that are like fairly easy to do with some changes that are more about texts or images or buttons that actually are not that difficult to do.
So I think no matter where you are in your business, whether you have someone do your website for you, like I do, or whether you're doing it yourself, I think you're going to get lots from this. Also because he's a very dear friend we have quite a laugh, which I always enjoy, like laughing. It's one of my favorite things and he was good, fun to interview.
So let me do his bio. Ross Davis is the owner of Strafe Creative, a digital design agency focused on conversion lead design. He loves to find new and innovative ways to improve processes, whether that's in way he runs his business or the design process with his clients, identifying objections and issues in any process can help streamline it and it's the systematic, did, could he have chosen like a more difficult bio for me to read, like all the big words, systematic approach, which has led him to some fantastic client results.
Ross is also the author of the Paper Plane Plan which delivers into growth hacking for service industry. And he's a proud husband and father and a huge baseball, basketball fan and loves Thai food.
There we go a little bit of the info about Ross there. So. We have such a funny story to tell you about his book. It is hilarious. And like I said, this is going to be really good. I don't want to say anything else about it. Some really good tips. You probably going to want to have a pen and paper handy. Uh, some great stuff in today's episode. So here we go.
So I am very pleased today to welcome my very dear friend Ross Davis to the podcast. Hello Ross, how are you doing?
Ross: Well hello, I'm great. Thank you so much for having me cause like we're used to senior Institute professional lemo. I loved it, it's great.
Teresa: It's normally when the times we hang out normally involves some drink somewhere, that's normally.
Ross: From a professional point. Like we'd been in event, we'd been there then, or you'd been talking about and then drink.
Teresa: Then we drink. So I start off professional and then it starts to slide as the day goes on.
Ross: Goes on to downhill.
Teresa: Oh, my bad. And she says, if I could remember Ross, I'd be confident of it. That
Ross: There's no difference. That's fine. And that's proper. That's all right.
Teresa: I love it. I love it. So Ross and I lots of time together. I think at first was it Atomicon? No, here it was.
Ross: It was Atomicon.
Teresa: The first time we hung out properly. You know, the first time this was brilliant. Right. This was so good. Didn't I have your book.
Ross: Yes.
Teresa: Right. We've got to tell that bit, right? This is brilliant. So I had never met Ross and someone had said about this book and I had got the book and I'd taken on holiday. While we were on holiday, my husband and I were having a photo shoot and I thought I'm going to do some, have some books in the, in the photo shoot. So I'm holding a Gary V book which is quite unusual because that's not really after reading it I realised, he's not necessarily for me, but anyway, and I give my husband your book to hold as a prop. Obviously I'd take there to read and we have these photos done. And then, uh, I meet Ross and Ross is very sweet to me and was like, oh my God, I get to meet you.
Ross: You're fangirling.
Teresa: Which is so, so great. And I sat there and Ross gets on stage to speak and he brings up his book and I'm like, ‘Hang on a minute. I recognize that book.' So I then sit through the rest of this talk, scrolling through my phone, trying to find.
Ross: So you wasn't listening.
Teresa: Sorry, I wasn't paying attention because the, the excitement of, oh my God, this is brilliant. And by the time he'd finished, I'd sent him a picture of my husband. And one of the pictures were holding the books in front of our faces.
So you can't even see it's us and genuinely, it could look like me and Ross.
Ross: In the light. Yeah. It just felt like we were on holiday chillin.
Teresa: You were reading your own book.
Ross: I very egotistically reading my own book. Like this is great. What a read.
Teresa: Who wrote this be, he is amazing. Honestly, it was so funny. It was like, it was a sign. We were meant to be friends and then.
Ross: Super excited as well by that.
Teresa: And we had, so that was actually MarketEd.Live I liked, that was the first time I went on, then Atomicon, and then Atomicon we ended up, you very sweetly walked me back to my hotel because I was staying somewhere from different from where we were and we had some drinks and it was great. And then, uh, the next time we met up and I had raved to my husband about you.
And you know, when, like you think, oh, I hope cause my husband came to, it was Cambridge social day. My husband came and I thought, you know, when you rave about someone and you think, I hope they see what I see. You know what I mean? Cause you just don't know sometimes.
Yeah. He thinks you're funny. You better make him laugh. Anyway, my husband just adored you.
And when I said I was interview you today, he was like, ‘No way.' So excited, so excited. So anyway, that was our little story about how Ross and I met. Ross, normally I start this podcast by asking you to introduce yourself to my audience and tell my audience. How you got to do what you're doing today.
Ross: Yeah. So I'm obviously Ross I'm the MD of a company called Strafe Creative. Where a digital design agency. Some maybe means that we're doing things between kind of branding, web and digital. So it might be platform work, UX work, or, or an app or something along those lines. That's kind of where we, where we kind of do it. And I guess we've been running for 11 years now. We started this off.
I think the big thing for us, that we were trying to create work that not only looked aesthetically beautiful, but also the converted and drove sales. And we did that for a couple of years when we first started off with it. Wasn't all of a sudden this term like appeared, could like CRO, so conversion rate optimization, and we didn't have a name that we know is layouts.
And we started reading about, and I was like, we do this. Like we never gave it a cool fancy name. This work about analyzing our traffic is moving on the site and then tweaking the site to increase the likelihood of the user doing the thing that we want to do. We've been doing that for a while. So we kind of got to get a little bit ahead of the curve on some of those things.
And I remember, yeah, we got to kind of talk about it. And I guess we were only intentionally relatively experts. And I feel because we were already doing it before we realized it was the term. And that's when you, when we met, that's kind of how I've always been talking and that's kind of where I was going. So it doesn't always need to be as technical as it was that there's obviously some really great lessons and wins that every site can possibly do. But yeah, that's kind of the main part really.
Teresa: So before, obviously 11 years, you obviously started pretty much straight out of school I imagine Ross.
Ross: I'm not that young. Sadly. Maybe I look young, but yeah, there's a couple of years typically as the industry. And then yeah, we set up about two years, two years after that.
Teresa: I think it's your maturity maybe.
Ross: Oh thanks. Yeah.
Teresa: They're going to get really, yeah, they're getting it so sad or just us laughing for this podcast but, you know, we have fun. So I hope you enjoy it. And so, yeah. Would you always been in a marketing space or a web space before that?
Ross: No. So I did science-based design engineering at university. And, um, I know that sounds super fancy. And a lot of it was to do with like basically designing progress products with ergonomics in mind. So designing it for the user and how things should be held and moved and how someone interacts with it. Um, and I guess it was, uh, taking that thought process and how people use stock book, pieing it to a digital space.
That's kind of what we started doing when we first set up in this, this makes me feel old as a kind of tell this story, but, um, This was like at the height of Dragon's den. So obviously for anyone, oh, you know, shark tank or wherever they are. Yeah. So, so our idea was I was like, I'll design the products.
And then my business partner was going to do brand. Um, the way I did our big USP was going to be, not only could you have the product, you could have everything. See if the go-to Mercury, you could go to Jack and Stan and you could try and get on it. Then we realized nobody wanted products designed by a student with no experience in the real world.
Surprisingly but they were happy to pay for branding and web and slowly over the first year or two, we dropped product and we just have these focus on what we did. And that was where I guess my learnings and lessons from when I didn't university and education supplies. We started to apply those, those learnings to digital. And that's, that's kind of where we started really. So live with it for.
Teresa: So where you learn these are?
Ross: No, no. So straight after university, um, I worked for a company called Jagex who navigate for the RuneScape. The mighty RuneScape, uh, which was this huge game that no one ever heard of in the UK, but was absolutely huge in America and China little places. And they had like 10 million active users or something back in the day before, um, online gaming was really such a thing.
So I did that for a few years, but then we always had me at Patrick Metta University. We always had this idea of setting something up. And we just said, I think you probably know this about me. I'm probably overly logical sometimes, but we have this suspicion one day in the pop obviously. And it was something along the lines of neither of us have wives.
We don't have any kids. We don't have house payments. Worse case if this goes completely tips-up. And we can just move back home and we'll be debt, but we're just, weren't even a year at Uni. So we were already in that and quite a lot of our friends really live it out. So we were like, let's just do it. Let's just set up and just see what happens.
And, and we'll go from that. Right. So incredibly, like I say, my head very logical, so like worst case, if it goes wrong, we're in that, but we're already in debt so crack on. And that's what we did. And then we have this little tiny, prominent Nottingham City Center where we did absolutely everything from. Um, and then we got our first office, which was honestly, it was an actual cupboard so much, so that.
Uh, me and Patrick sat next to each other where you couldn't open the door. Unless I moved my, my, my, uh, chair out of the way, it was very cozy, but again, it was like 150 pounds a month or so in mental with everything included only like, um, we have an office space and obviously all we did was we had a meeting room that we could take people to. They never saw the office.
Teresa: You couldn't have got three people in at once.
Ross: You could physically live on three people that we couldn't get to. It was just like a running joke that we had was like, oh, we can't physically hire people, even if we wanted to. Sit you here. And that was, that was where we all started. And, yeah. So there's now 19 of us.
Teresa: That's amazing.
Ross: So yeah, so a big difference. I still don't necessarily feel responsible enough to have those people working for us, but the team is absolutely amazing. And, uh, yeah, it's relying on those guys on this.
Teresa: They full-time employed that team?
Ross: Uh, so 16 of them are, uh, and then three of them are part-time.
Teresa: Part-time, but still employed?
Ross: Yeah. Yeah.
Teresa: So that, like I know them, come on, still let us but I find the employing people thing. In fact, I was talking to our mutual friend yesterday, lovely BizPaul and I was like, just the thought of employing someone scares the living of Jesus out of me. Like, do you not like, does it not make you sick?
Ross: No, no, but yeah, when we first did it, yeah. I remember like that was a big step. I like could be footstool and what would happen and how do we do those things? And we definitely made lots of mistakes to start with. Like, some people came in when all we kept, we belonged too long that were in right people, but just a bit like everything in life, we just had to go with the punches, figure out, learn from the mistakes and the thing, a combination of.
I think the main thing is obviously quite a lot of our people will necessarily, they will be what are called fearless. So you'll have a designer, you'll have a developer where that time is being charged out. So the benefit of that is I know that yes, there's an expense that to sound that way, but also know that they will bring in money.
So unless something were to get adjustably wronged, as long as I forecasted for the first month or two, I'm probably me over and make him money or cost to me. But after that, Um,
Teresa: They should bring that money back in.
Ross: Yeah. and obviously I put a managers worth the way in gold. Who's not, they're not being fury.
We, they're not fearless, but they pick up everything and they keep it running in that city. Amazing. And, you know, we couldn't deal without them. So, so I'd be wanting to sort of get side over time. It's always bringing something to it. It's been useful and allows me to focus on a larger things as well.
Teresa: So did you start off from a tech. Are you techy or not?
Ross: I laugh because it's just a I'm just talking to people that switch they'd pretty much to Strife. I think is that was when we first set up, I was obviously I did get involved in the design and I have a very good, I guess, a good technical knowledge from a design aspect of how to get people to convert.
And there's definitely that, but, um, I think as things grew, Patrick from my business partner which became the creative director and he looks after that side and, and I guess I do a lot more of the business planning and be overall forecasting. And I still do a lot of the sales, although we do have a Mark that now works with those as well.
Um, but yeah, I, yeah, it feels a little bit if I'm not, I'm not even sure what I bring to it sometimes I'm just, uh, I'm just can't ah yeah.
Teresa: I just know you realise or completely you started the business.
Ross: I, um, yeah, my doomsday like super valued. So sometimes I'm jumping in and helping with lots of other things or people want advice or spend the day like I said, planning out where the business is going to do and what we're going to do the following year, or I might have the whole day doing sales, or it might be doing these things.
So there's this huge variety for what I do, but yeah, my role has drastically changed. And when we first set up, that was a lot more on the tools. And then I'm rarely on the tools nowadays.
Teresa: One of the reasons I bought you on other than just to chat to you. Cause it's fun. Um, which, you know, that's part of the benefit of having a podcast open to cool people.
But I wanted you to talk about the fact that you do know a lot about converting people when they're on a website and what makes them convert and what helps those things. But just so that my audience know you creates fairly hefty tech and expensive websites. Don't you?
Ross: Um, I would argue they're expensive.
Teresa: I was going to say, it depends.
Ross: Value. It's value.
Teresa: Yeah you were right. I mean, like there's a lot in them. Hence why there's a lot of money to them. So, as an average ballpark, where would you start? What price would you start at for a website?
Ross: Yeah. So we're not probably going to say get in for us and kind of 16 to 20K. That's kind of.
Teresa: Everybody listening, ‘That's expensive.' but it's all relative. It's all relative.
Ross: So I guess it's all relative. And I think the huge advantage of this since there's so many quick wins that people are just unaware of, and a lot of it is about changing your mentality of design and how you’re looking at something in the first place. And I guess we'll, we'll kind of touch on that anyway.
Um, but, but yeah, there's definitely things that even just for now that loads of people do share away that they can sell more through the side with the same amount of lockdown spend just by tweaking their sides and serve a couple of really easy things that people just overlooked. Well, people don't consider. It's very unprofessional.
Teresa: It's fine. It's either, uh, Phil agitate, if he can, uh, or we'll just roll with it, like either way. I'm fine. Um, so. Really raging. I had a really funny episode, a few weeks back, which has already aired and so, you know, even the fact that my audience hear me talk about this with you is absolutely fine. And the person I interviewed for a slideshow, they brought up the ups on my screen and it was like, um, like I'm sat there thinking, okay, how can I make this work as an audio.
Ross: You should have said, but you should start describing it. I mean, you can't do that, right?
Teresa: Oh, well, I tried and then I asked for the uh, the screen, like the share as in, so I could at least share it in the show notes, but yeah. Believe me, I've done it all. I've done a podcast. In fact, I don't know if I've ever said this on the podcast.
I've done a podcast that has never aired because I forgot to hit record. And it was only about a third of the way through I hit record. And as it was, the episode was terrible. It wasn't a great episode, but that's the only one I've recorded that's never actually aired and I've done episodes where I've thought that wasn't great, but there's been some things I've been happy to put it out. But anyway, so yeah, they know me very well.
So don't, don't panic Ross. It's fine. All good. So, um, where was I at? Let me think. Let me think. So I was going to say to you. I can't remember, it's gone.
Ross: We were touching on the fact of, I guess what we do and I was talking about some quick wins.
Teresa: Yes. Okay. So before that, thank you. It's coming back. Um, so before we get on some of these wins, which you will do, and some of the things that you can do. Does this only work for product that you're selling direct on a site?
So obviously we've got lots of different people who, you know, listen to this. Some people will sell a physical product on a website, have a very traditional e-commerce site. Some like me will sell online, but they're selling a online product and some will have a service that you can't buy online that has to be a call or a discussion or whatever.
Ross: Well through all of them, obviously there are in theory, there are quick wins that can just be applied to product, but there's quick wins that could be applied to service and an absolutely everything. So at the end of the day, Well, we want to do is we want to make that person feel comfortable with getting in touch with you.
And I think that's what a lot of the errors that people have is they approach it in the case of, I just need to get across what I do, and they leave at that. It's in your really, really small parts of it. It's all the other potential kind of touch points in what we would call objections that we have to answer to get them to do the thing that we want to do. And we also have to make it really obvious. So what is called signposting? Um, so make it really clear what we want the user to do and when. And the idea here is you just treat the user as a complete idiot. So if they read some information and it's great and they go, ‘This is awesome.'
They feel that down them immediately, like a clear, well that users should do an extra split second decision and they either carry on reading and looking for more knowledge and you miss the opportunity and you could lose them. Or if you don't make it really clear, what they should do next is if we can get them to do that in a split second decision, that's what drives conversion. And it could be as simple as making sure that the buttons in the right place when we need them to hit it.
Teresa: So let's take an example of someone who's got a blog or a podcast or something that sits on their site that is likely to bring people in to read and engage with. So let's say someone's come to the site to look at the podcast because I tell everybody in pretty much all the podcast episodes that we link up stuff in the show notes and obviously the show notes sits properly in their entirety, on the website.
So. I don't have. This, this is why I love to do the podcast episode, because basically it shines me up as an example of where to go wrong on and what not to do. So I don't have anything, any call to action in any one of those podcast episodes. Other than there's a section with a load of links. So if I've talked about my Academy which I just did.
Lovely Becci. Exactly who listens to this. We'll put a link to the Academy in the show notes, but that's just a link along the links of Ross's website, Ross's social media, and they're just listed they're not necessarily a call to action. So is it as simple as halfway through the show notes saying, you know, ‘If you're enjoying this come and do this.'
Ross: There's a couple of bucks, you're right. So first off we want to make it really clear what we want the user to do, but just having a button there that sounds like ‘Buy now' is, is not necessarily going to lead anywhere. So contextualizing what we want our user to do and why is really, really key.
So, you know, if we want to have a reference to somebody in that could be downloaded separately, or your academy, for example, We need to make sure that we're going to give them a reference and we're going to give them a reason to press start button there. It might be rather than just, ‘Hey, did you like', rather than just going, ‘Hey, here's my notes because we've said this.'
It might be mostly along the lines of, ‘If you read a lot of what Teresa's had to say, we've got a special offer of the next two weeks, uh, access to our Academy click now, and then you can run through.' and that's obviously a really nice way of doing it. And that's your first point. And your second point is where we then send them, because for me, rather than just sending them to the same generic page that you send everyone to, I would have a page settle.
That's all about ‘Hey you've been on our podcast? Here's your special offer. Here's your special thing.' so when they land on our page, start pages, contextualize from where they've come from. And that's the difference. So when I was talk about conversion rate. So a conversion rate just for, just in case, you just want to make sure it's considered clear as the number of people that come to your website and then perform the action that we want them to do.
So if from yours, it would be to join the Academy. If a hundred people go along and one person buys, that's a 1% conversion, right? Depending on what you read and what industry you're in and industry standards. So between 1.2, 1.6%. So very, very low. So obviously we want to get that. We want to get that much higher.
So you might be already converting those sorts of numbers already. And all you're doing is sending the same generic page every time it's like, okay, well, what, what would happen if we send it to a more uh, page, it was more like, ‘Hey, you've obviously just loved our podcast. There's a little bit of information about Teresa in case it's the first time you'd read about it. Why not have a look at the Academy , here's the information about it.' And then push it to in that way, you know, it's not just about the initial signposting, that it's about a destination where you send them and making sure the two of them feel linked is what hugely drives up conversion rate.
Teresa: Yeah, I think you're right. I think. That's not something we think about enough in terms of, how they got to it. It's like, I suppose it's like, if you're doing an email campaign and you know, you have, okay, let me go back a bit. So. You can have different customers who come to you for the same reason, something different drives them.
So some people might join and we'll just keep using the example of the Academy. Some people might join the Academy because they love the coaching calls. Some people might join the Academy because they want to go through the growth path. Some people might join because they need the community. So let's say I knew, or let's say I had a something where they clicked and I, they self-identified then surely as they then go to that page. If they said, what I really need right now is community. Then that page would focus much more heavily on community or you've come up higher in the page, or the headline would read differently, like join the best community in the online world, which it is by the way, obviously.
Um, but like, That, that would be what you're talking about. Wouldn't it? So, it could be from many different places. It could be from a social media post, or it could be from, you know, to get them to go and look at something. It could be that couldn't it?
Ross: Yes, so I guess what we're talking about here is like the messaging you're putting out to that particular persona.
They shouldn't, you know, each person's different. Each reasons, someone's going to join the academy is different. So rather than sending it to the same generic signup page every time, if you will, a particular social posts that you've put out that time is about X, about the community, that what triggers for that person.
You want to send them to a page that's more dedicated around that. Yes. We still have to talk about some of the major elements within this community that really triggered them to click in the first place. Let's lead them down that avenue. Let's make it really clear on that as well. But it cannot. It's going to say that also ties in quite nicely. And this is what a lot of I guess few companies all made a mistake of is, were so busy trying to explain the, the green things that we do and trying to build as much credibility as possible that we don't consider the other reasons why so might not sign up.
So for example, in the, on your Academy, someone might really like the idea of it, but they might go, ‘Well I don't know if I've got the time to commit to it.' or they might want to have a look at all their other options that could be doing or do any particular tech and not particularly tech savvy.
How do I work around that? Oh, if it's on a one-to-one basis, do I need to have a mic and a webcam and all these additional things that can be in the background of people's sets? So the idea is that you try and answer those as visually and in such a stimulating manner that they go, ‘Oh okay that's fine. Let's crack on.'
So little things like that can make a huge difference to the likelihood of someone signing up. And that in theory has absolutely nothing to do with how good you are at what you do, but it's a reason at the back of their head that not to do it. So if we can answer those things, that's what drives conversion rate.
Teresa: So let's take, you know, and this is normally the case of most businesses especially knowledge industry like me, is that they either don't have the time on didn't have the money. So those are your two big objections. It's another thing to overwhelm them, or they don't want, or like the idea of another cost going out every single month, regardless of the value to, you know, how good it is. So let's say it's the money thing.
What sorts of things would you suggest that we could do. Like other than the fact of, if we know it's money and we somehow, how are we like dripping in those things? Is it just text? Is it copy? What is it?
Ross: Yeah. So I guess it's slightly comes down to what you're selling a little bit, but I'll try and provide a certain, a catch all. So the first one is the rule that we try and run here and what I tell to all our clients is that cost shouldn't be a thing it's more about if we not explain the value, that's why they're not paid it. Like don't pretend the cost is a things like we need to look. We need to look around that.
So instead we need to try to provide as much value as possible, rather than avoiding differences with other companies. I would, I would openly talk about them. So, for example, if you go some other Academies that are quite good with the top of you have, let's just, let's be really blatant and just have a side-by-side comparison, like this community and he has a hundred videos mine has a thousand videos, we got X number in our community this community he has this. Like, if you're really interested in the number of one-on-ones, you can get, you're going to get two hours of my time. If you get half an hour in the other one. So for me, I'll stay it in blatant, this is why we're better at this.
And if you've not better than the other ones, you need to, you need to work on it, to get where we need to be. We need to find those of us in that the next one-off mini case studies and testimonials, we sort of build as much credibility as possible. And the term that we use internally, which I'm trying to get people to catch on to simply, the term that we use is called logo poem with the logo poets who want to steal credibility from companies that we've worked with.
And so, for example, and you've got this on yours, you don't, you've got like the pictures of people that spoke on some of your events or stuff like that, podcasts, and you go, ‘Oh wow. They've had someone said.'
Teresa: Yeah. Like I have,
Ross: Use those and steal credibility from that company.
Teresa: I had my top five on my podcast. Yeah.
Ross: Yeah. So like one of our clients experience. So I'm slapping our logo. Hey, I went.
Teresa: No like huge logo.
Ross: Yeah, let's get that on that. Let's make sure that's referenced.
Teresa: That's usually the one of the reason to be featured in Forbes, you know, just to have those logos. The life for me and give you the logo. And I could just pretend.
Ross: You could pay for an advert and boom featured in Forbes. That turn, but technically featured.
Teresa: Unfortunately faulty moral are the one that just shoved these logos almost. No, I don't recommend that.
Ross: Don't do that. Don't do that. We're not lying. That's what I talk, right. It's not a case of tweaking the numbers to make them look right. If the businesses are where it needs to be to be better. Some of those competitors, that's all we would look out and have it on this sheet put on.
But yeah, we want to build credibility. Um, and, and also you trying to want those testimonials. So, and this is what's hard are the like one of the things we try on our clients do is don't just ask for testimonial, say, ‘Hey, can you write me a nice thing?' It might be a case of just ringing them up and saying, ‘You know, it'd be great if we could get testimonial, just so your wants any chance. One of the things we're really trying to push is how grand we are at X would you mind writing a testimonial around that?' Now, if you then do that with lots of your testimonials, you've got a really nice range of testimonials. The triggers certain people's personas. So some people who are incredibly stats driven that might talk about the return on investment and some people that want to sell wanna feel like they've got that community and being really handheld through it.
You can have to estimate as dedicated to that. You try and cover those different kind of options, same thing with these testimonials. Um, we want to have these many testimonials sorted it around the likelihood of someone reading a full page all of our case study about how about this is very low. So instead, what we want to do is we want to have those dotted throughout the user journey.
And I think that's also an error that happens is, you know, it's a really kind of standard old way of doing it. You'd have a testimonial page it's just reams and reams and reams of testimonials all in and you cycle through them. And the idea is it's like, ‘oh wow, look how many they've got.' Well, that means someone has to go out of their way to start reading this testimonials.
So they're probably already more interested if we just have them constantly dotted to the user journey, they'll just absorb them and read them. And then they'll slowly build credibility without realising it. Same thing with the logos dotted around and see when I start building some of that credibility. And then we want to start dropping in sort of those huge benefits and having, like I say, some of those comparisons, maybe against some of your competitors that you doing, that those are, I personally would just reference that and just try and really go above and beyond to explain the value rather than just here's the cost.
Teresa: And you've said some interesting things and it's funny, I normally. I don't, I try not to pay too much attention to competitors. Cause sometimes you can look at them and be like, how are they doing this? And how are they doing that? And, and it can be very frustrating. However, I think. I don't know the last time I looked at other people's memberships that people in which aren't mine and gone, what exactly do they offer?
And how does that match against mine? I don't know how I would feel or how let's say you were looking to join a membership, obviously comes to mind immediately, but you know, let's say, you didn't know me. Like how would you feel about coming to my page and me listing the others? Just that. Like that just makes me feel a bit eek.
Ross: You're going to see you going to do some people in that way, because they might look at us or the ones, right. And, and this is an argument that will be the will definitely be Oh, tell them about the competitors in case they didn't know them. But the argument I would make is if it's positioned in the crap way is the number of people using lose will be far less than the people that you actually gain because of that. So that would be one part.
The other thing that we do with all of our clients, that's really important, which I guess I kind of just want to wrap it up since we want to do a little bit of research and figure out. I guess what people think. So looking at forums, looking on social pages, trying to figure out what questions are constantly being asked is a really, really key one, because.
And you might find this just in a sales cycle anyway, you'll repeatedly be asked the same couple of questions that always always come up. So for me, the questions that go it's constantly asked, right? Let's create a whole area on the site, dedicated staff. Let's add a module on the home page that answers some of those questions.
And just slowly over time, you'll just start adding to site and you answer more and more and more objections to that people that have those anymore. And so that's, what's quite key. One of the examples, it was really nice since we were with this electrician, sorry. A company was teaching people to become electricians.
And they, these are like 10 grand for cools to live in a three months period or something like that for us to do. And they were really good in our old side was just all credibility. It was like, Hey, look how good we are. We can get you jobs at these places. And that was all that they spoke about. And then obviously didn't they were doing well, you know, a decent size company.
We started looking on some of the forums and trying to figure out what people actually considered important and loads of them are all discussing. Okay. Well, if I'm going to be there for the amount of time, where are the hotels? How expensive are the hotels like, do I have to go buy food every day that's really expensive? Is a cafeteria on site because that would make life way easier.
Like, okay, what about the transport is there car park there because actually I live an hour away and I don't wanna have to get chained up, that'd be great if I could drive in. None of those things were onsite. None of those things are actually hugely important to the service they're providing, were critical to their users.
So the new site, when we did it, had sections dedicated to the locations of why we chose them and the fact they had the on-site and we listed the hotels with the prices of how much they were going to be paying. And we're just answering all these potential objections that you don't necessarily consider objections because you'll just try and build credibility.
Teresa: Yeah. And that would be, does it like, and often what we like exactly. Like you said, what we think the objections are not like, who would have thought having a car park and actually, you know, no kidding. Some things that is a deal breakage, you know what I mean?
Ross: I'll not go in there for three months, have to get the train and I have to walk half an hour. But obviously from the business end, you kind of go give it and doing all these amazing things. I've got a car park on site. And we thought, just telling tell people, just tell them. So there'll be lots of random little things like that, that users now considering. And that's why try to find all these smaller objections is the huge difference between having the below average or very average conversion rate and having a sky high wall.
Teresa: Do you know what was really interesting? I spoke to someone the other day that knows me fairly well has worked with me. And this person's in someone else's membership. And I asked her why she chose that membership and not mine. And I don't think she knew me at the time. And it was interesting to hear her responses like you know, one of her responses, which is something I'm going to say, ‘No I'll never do.'
Which means you can hold me to it. Um, is that this membership did like a $1. Like come and join us for a week for $1. And I don't want to devalue myself like that. You know, I did have seriously quality stuff and therefore that wouldn't fit well with me and my brand and my values. Um, but I was like, oh, that is interesting.
You know? Cause then what happened was she went in for the dollar, saw something in there and thought, oh actually I do want to go through this and then stay. And then stayed ever since. And I was like, ‘Oh okay. That is interesting.' Because even though I don't want to do the $1 thing, it's making me think, well, is there a way I need to show people what is in there, for them to then realize and think, oh, okay.
You know, that's good. But, but I think you're not going to find that until you speak to your customers.
Ross: Yeah. A hundred percent. I think this is going to be that combination. So a really easy way around that, because we do have that, that comes up really easy way around that is no questions asked money, guaranteed refund back after the first month they don't got liked it.
So they still have to commit to the payment. So we'll have to fully commit to the payment. They still have to value the payments, give you that money in the first place. But if they decided after the first month and they don't like it, then that removes that objection. The user's going to go. If you didn't see value in it, if you can promise that you tried to do X, Y, and Z.
And if you promise that you committed 2-3 hours over the month or whatever time you want the book, and you did these things and you did the one on one that we kind of get you to start and you doesn't see the value in it. And I'll just give you money back you give to us. I can give you a hundred quid if you want. Cause you know you can't have them.
Teresa: Yeah, you're right.
Ross: That answers that question. Um, that's quite, that's fairly common. You get quite a lot of.
Teresa: Well, I don't have a guarantee. And I think the reason I don't have a guarantee is because it's membership and they can come in and they could effectively look at all the stuff they go ‘I don't like it.'
Um, but I think you're right, putting a little bit of caveat around it. Like if you join and you come on a coaching call, and take some time and the membership and you start the growth path and you realize this isn't for you, then absolutely. Because I know full well, they get one coaching call with me and they're like, ‘oh, hang on a minute.'
Like, there's no way they don't get value from it.
Ross: So we've removed that, but we've not cheap in the brand to look at you. We've not had to reduce down to a pound. You're not that mean to, you know, your cost for acquisition is completely ruined because everyone for quid that you don't know what it is committed to that.
And the likely that is, you know, that what you're delivering is awesome. And the percentage of people that will do that last. Yeah. Um, and you are going to get people, but you have to go into that, knowing that it's still about the VAR, but the refill number. Again, it comes back to what I mentioned earlier on, which is the number of people that will do it will be tiny, but the huge increase in people that will then sign up because of that will be huge.
And it just covers that cost. And that's where they're asked to do, but it's just really, really logical, like which, which one would eliminate. Um, so that, that's how I liked it. Very good. Thank you. Let's see the on the website tomorrow. Yeah. Well, I'm currently giving through a bit of a, uh, by the time this episode comes out, it might have already happened, but going through a little bit of a rebrand, uh, because I decided that my brand is not screaming.
Uh, I said something the other day and the woman said I'm Chanel. Not. And that's me, Ross. I'm Chanel, not target. Okay.
My three-year-old would say dos peel socks and love it, but just very quickly as a side, my daughter, right. She's nine, seven at the time. Now I have to say. The only thing that I own that Chanel is perfect. Right. I don't know anything Chanel at all. I'm not a big designer person. I don't have like the most, I have nice soundbites.
I have Michael call soundbites, but you know, they're not crazy money. Right. Anyway, so my daughter's watching this thing on YouTube as they do. And basically there's a game. TV program where they get to go into a shop and anything that they can physically carry. And in a certain, like the timing gets out still carrying it.
They get to keep right. If they drop it, they don't get anything or they, they lose that bit or whatever. Right. So it's a bay. Like it's a bit like. Supermarket sweet, but it's like, don't be too greedy because if you drop it, you gonna lose it all. But like what you can do, what shop would you have? Like, what shop would you go into?
If you could do that? Like what, three shots? And I was like, oh, apple, like, I'd want to get some apple stuff. Probably like I said at the time, a nice gin shot, but I didn't think about that because am I going to carry all that Jen and. And then I can't remember what I said. The last one I would have walked by.
You bearing in mind. She's about seven. She went, um, Chanel, uh, apple. So mother crazy frat, like, like if I was totally into all that, but she was like, yeah, now. What are you talking about? You said that you crazy girl .
I think I use jewelry because it's small and valuable. Oh, you say smile, you go nice. Oh my God. Like you just put all the rings on all the fingers got in that. And I thought it'd be really clever that, and everything's locked up.
I'd be like, ah, up, been donut. I can't get, right. Yeah. I'd carry all of the stuff out your mind now.
I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I'm allowed to take whatever I want. As long as I can carry it, belong to me. That's it.
Um, okay. So I'm conscious of our time because we'd be chatting for a while, but I want to ask, um, oh, I wanna get a wee bit more advice from you. What if, and I've got a couple of people who are product base. Yep. Hey, I can see how I can see some overlap obviously on what we've been saying, but obviously a lot of it works really well for like a service-y or a.
Big thing. What if like, so one of my lovely members sells, I'm going to link to in the show note actually, um, she sells handmade gifts where, um, so you've got children, Ross, I'm going to be NICU by the Christmas. I mean like on here, listen, the value is very good. So you know how, when your children go up and you buy the most cute, it's the things.
And then they last about two weeks and then you're like, oh, I don't want that anymore. So glad I spent 70 pounds. Loving cardigan. So basically what she does is she takes their clothes. She cuts them up and puts them into a memory bear. And the bears can, you can have like slots, you can have elephants, you can have giraffes, but they're flipping amazing ribeyes.
Cool, very talented this lady. So she has that and she was just things like dribble, bibs and tagged blankets and all this kind of jazz. So for her. If people are coming to her site, because it's a very traditional e-commerce site, what sort of things would you suggest that someone like her or someone else a fiscal product could do to help that?
Is it based solely around the product page? What, what's the deal with that?
So this sounds like quite an emotive purchase by people when it comes to your kids or your pets, whoever light cast, sometimes. How much is that? Where that's just me being very middle-class and this is the idea, right? So for me, I would sell probably quite heavily online though, too.
And I would probably want a couple of things in that first off kind of I would want. Uh, parents talking about what they meant to them, like little videos that, that some of them talking about that, but rather than being like, oh my God, it's so well-made, and there's all these things we've talked about. Point of view, you know, what was great that we've had this for a few years back. So I definitely have that approach. There is going to be some things down to the overall quality that I do think needs to be referenced. So maybe just talking about how that I think it's selling the process would be really good as well.
That surely. This is what we do. This is how we plan it. This is how we could have, this is how much material we need, like will kind of happen to us. So I think that makes sense. And I would also, because I'm with these sort of things, I would probably think something along the lines of, well, what if I don't send you enough material?
Like how many things do we need? So there'll be little things like that. Um, how quickly you can get them. I would talk about how they're shipped. I would also bother to show the packaging and explain what comes with it, because I guess that's part of it. You know, when you get your apple product, it's missing off of the box and the under show, that's your new watch and a new phone because I'm greedy and you're right.
Like even, and I say this to Paul as those opening, the most like it's the whole experience is so. Satisfying. Like it's so slick. It's so smart. Like I just love it.
Yeah, you're right. It's so one of those, I didn't really have to put this, but like, it's that internal thing that as you do that, if you bring ghosts like a Ray of light or not, so you bonded, right?
That is entirely what happens anyway. And again,
I haven't seen this, so I'm just, I'm just saying this, but one of the things that I probably mentioned is actually one of the things I would have by this for you. Like I imagine on the push of have people are gifting, but actually just about, is not exciting.
So I kind of want to buy a gift box that when they open it, they know what we're about to be doing. So like, Hey, you knew, yeah. You need to fill them with material to fill this little box, or it needs to do this. And then you're going to send this, this, and you're going to have that. And you know, on the piece of paper, can you cycle, so it feels like a feeling somebody's really excited out and they send it all back.
A lot for me is probably how I would sell the gift box rather than just oh, Is the voucher, put it in a card sort of deal. Very exciting. I would probably be selling a little bit of a different way, things like that, but overall credibility. Right. So we want to talk about how things can be shipped. We might want to talk about the overall quality and little things that can be really key to psych, you know, um, where they're made.
Are they all handmade? Are they all made by just a small number of people? It's nice to show. I then have dedicating information to her. Um, so there's something called, um, what's the term for it? I can't remember this all, but basically one of the things that you want to sell is you want to sell the father's so many, it takes a long time.
So for example, if you do own something, right? Yeah. You're going to complain to someone and you fill in that form. And if it just says, thanks, we'll be in touch. You get really annoyed don't you wait, this is ridiculous. I've been waiting 24 hours now. Whereas if the message that you got sad, thank you so much for filling us in.
We take this really serious. One of the things we each bear away was when any complaint comes in, we're going to get to three different departments and these three different departments that are going to do X and Y and Z. They're going to discuss internally what the best possible approaches. And then we're going to come back to you.
That's going to take five days. That's just a paragraph of text. Right. But you don't five days fan you're taking this seriously.
Exactly. And I would be tempted to sell lock. Why have they all gone? So actually she does take ages to turban round. I would sell it as a positive, not a negative. Yeah. So hang you, go up.
These are going to take two weeks. They're going to take two weeks because the handmade was any more than me. I only do X number of them per week. Yeah, you're going to get, you saw even like, Hey, I'm going to stop building on this date. That'd be quite cool to go in there. Oh, that'd be nice as well. I'm going to do it.
I'm cutting up your clothes as you state, uh, you know, and then another email we've stitched together, the outline we've driven and we're packaging it up. It's a bit. You know, again, like if I've ordered something and the world we're in now, we're so freaking impatient, which I generally am anyway. But like, I want to see that email it's shipped it's here.
I constantly track where pastors are, even if it's like Amazon next day, I still don't know what time it's coming. Like, you know, so I think I really liked the idea that once they've bought, if there's like a process thing, even there. Like it doesn't have to be manual. It can be automated and just be automated.
Right.
Because she knows. Yeah. I don't for 10 days, I'm not going to do this. Like, um, so yeah, there's, there's definitely ways that you can do that. So that, that for me would just, again, I'm not seeing the, couldn't say, right. Like some I'm making like this, but, um, those kind of things, there is what we would sell it.
So if you do get complaints. Um, try and fix the complaint or do we turn the complaint into a, into a selling point? So if it's something people are getting annoyed, a hundred to wait two, three weeks, and it missed a day when they ordered it, that becomes a main selling point. Hey, these three weeks, and this is what they take two weeks, and this is what we're going to take you to.
And I would even just have like little videos of her talking to why she started there, what it means to her, because it isn't about purchase. I would sell that on there and then I would probably have book sales. So maybe once they've made the purchase, what additional average? Well, like we want to increase the average order value.
Well, could we offer them once they've purchased or once selling a car page? So it would be nice. So easy thing. So one of the things we did, for example, with a leather goods, But as they were sewing leather jackets that was saying about like, oh, I really want to start increasing average order value. And he's like, well, people don't come on the buy two leather jackets for us.
I was like, no, obviously they'll probably buy and like, uh, like a little kit to. Like you had to buff the lever or ugly leather or something. He was very against it. I was like, let's just buy like thousands of them and get them branded with your name on. I was like, and if they don't sell, we've not lost a lot of money if they do well, happy days, I think the cost to mine, three, four quid it's only 25 quid sold out a general upset.
You real fast. Again, these are like these of me Paty everything with a, with a Bush ride, but like 10 to 20% will buy the upsell. That's just have that option as long as it's not ridiculous, as long as it's a little addition, but if you can imagine just issues, having a little additional thing that could be included, it might even be I do you want it to come into funds? Hit box.
Teresa: I was just thinking that, because I don't know, Hey, I've had, I bought stuff from her, uh, from friends who had babies, like dribble, burbs and things, and already they come in, you know, this has been her maid and, you know, there's like a little thing in it and it's really nice anyway, but that I should imagine when you do the memory bears.
And like I said, I've genuinely said to her, and I've got to stop talking about it and crack on and do it critical. I've got whole light stuff of clothes in my attic, which I don't need of these of my daughters because. She's grown up and be even at the point she's old enough to have her own children. If she wants them to share, she tells me she doesn't, she's going to adults.
She asked me once, does it hurt? I was like, does it get, we talk about that? Oh, I'm not having a baby. Um, but like, you know, she's,
I think she's not going to love them for her own child. So what am I doing with a whole load of stuff? Sat in an attic for no reason. Yeah. So I don't know how it comes, but I'd want it to be, I'd want it to come quite sermon sentimental. Now what's the word ceremony, ceremonially. That's like, you know what I mean?
Because it's a really cool thing and I am totally going to book that for her birthday for Christmas. Um, but yeah, so no, that's awesome. That's really, really helpful. I think. I think you're so right. And you do scheme me a couple of ideas. Like, could she do a thing where it comes with a little certificate and a personal note from someone like, do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, so for instance, design, getting the clothes out, and again, I'm thinking about the emotion of it. I'm going to think like, so there's this really cute pink jacket that I bought her. I got the season wrong. And basically she wore for about three times, and then that was it. It was already too small, but like, that was one of the first things I ever bought.
When I found out she was a girl, like, do you know what I mean? It's that sort of memories alongside it. So if you could offer to then have something alongside it or. Sewn into it because she can say things like words onto things as well. Like yeah, I think there's so much cool stuff.
Ross: It's just like, well, I'd probably do this at once.
They've also bought, I'd be tempted to hotline. You can even say thank you page where they just bought it could be a talking head video. She's I thank you so much for doing all this, just so you know, this is what the steps I'm going to take. And so, but then the other thing I probably try and do is I try and get the birth date of.
The child, I'd probably try to get the dad's birthday and the mom's birthday, because then my marketing is going to be around because really that's probably why people buy them. Right? Yeah. So then, then the likelihood of some more buying becomes way high. Right? So actually I might get any my buy before five years, but actually that one client now the average there by the lifetime value to.
It's way higher than just that one purchase. Um, so the students, I thought that could be taken into account, which, which could be quite easily implemented. It
Teresa: could be done so many good ideas, Ross, so many good ideas. Good. Good. Thank you. Thank you so much for being a guest. I knew it would be fun and it was educational or switch. I wasn't expecting.
Ross: My last set I'm off that. I thought that I just do it. I didn't think I was like, oh, we going to actually, are we just going to talk complete
Teresa: lovely audience would have been happy with it. I'm sure. Either way, but thank you so much now, uh, we will link up to everything in the show notes, but where do you hang out most and where do you want people to come and say hi, if they want to say hi.
Ross: Um, good question. Uh, obviously the website is strict operators.
Yeah. This is my local book. Really straight proactive. I pay that UK says straight to spell, uh, Sierra tango, Romeo, alpha Foxtrot echo. The reason I say like that is. So
Teresa: I could imagine. Yeah. I didn't even attempt to write it. If I'm honest, my
Ross: favorite wall lives, we won't, I won't slips into the story from the eighties. Philadelphia's pretty good.
Teresa: And maybe run with it that way.
Ross: It did become a bit of a term in the office for our street. Yeah. It was quite good. That one. And then, and then, yeah, I'll probably most on, on Twitter, but if I'm honest, I'm not, I'm not very social media. So. But yeah, it'll be the best wall. I'm not especially Ross on the spot Davis and you'll find me on there.
Teresa: Amazing. Thank you so much, right. You've been a fabulous
Ross: guest. Thank you so, so much for having me. It's obviously just a little bit to catch up as always and obviously, um, yeah, hopefully it was a bit of value too. I'm a nice time. So, uh, yeah, we'd love to catch up a bit more.
Teresa: Awesome. Thanks Ross. There we go. That was the lovely Ross and likes. It was, it was really helpful. I find a lot of what he said super actionable, which is what I love for you guys, so that you are able to take something away and do plus health. So that's cool. Okay. I will leave you for this week, have a fabulous week and I will be back next week with a solo episode until. Take care.
