Slip Away Boat Transport: a digital marketing case study
Client location: Campbelltown, Sydney NSW
- More than $30,000 saved in cancelled contracts and reduced ad spend
- 800 new leads generated, not counting Google Business Profile or Facebook referrals
- 89% reduction in bounce rate
- 101% increase in pageviews, with 2,700+ visitors
- The previous agency’s $18,000 Yellow Sensis contract cancelled outright
Peter Marneros, director of Slip Away Boat Transport, had already spent more than $30,000 over 12 months on website development, SEO and Google Ads before I was engaged in August 2019, and was still struggling to get bookings. Within the first six weeks of taking over his marketing, I delivered more leads than the previous six months combined, and uncovered exactly why the previous spend hadn’t worked.
What Peter had been sold
A Melbourne agency had built Peter a new website, taken on his SEO, and advised him to run two separate websites targeting different states and keywords. Trusting that advice, he paid for both. With very few phone calls and only a handful of quote requests coming through, Peter suspected something was wrong, but didn’t have the expertise to prove it. His response was to spend a further $15,000+ on Google Ads, which still didn’t deliver the results he needed.
That’s when I was brought in, to answer some direct questions: did Slip Away actually need two websites, was the Google Ads spend justified, why wasn’t the site converting, and was an $18,000 Yellow Sensis contract, the same company I’ve separately reviewed in detail elsewhere, actually a smart decision.
What I actually found
Once I had access to Slip Away’s accounts, the picture was clear:
- No organic traffic growth, despite paying monthly for SEO
- Geographic data hidden in the agency’s monthly reports, with country and city data cut off entirely, and Australian visitors sitting below 70% of total traffic
- Keyword targeting with no relevance to what Slip Away’s actual customers were searching for
- A bounce rate over 60%, driven by poor grammar, repeated phrases, and content structured to game search algorithms rather than help a real visitor
- No content updates in over 12 months
- Services listed that Slip Away didn’t even offer
- The wrong phone number displayed, with leftover template elements still visible
- An unoptimised Google Business Profile
- Toxic backlinks, alongside a disproportionately high share of “direct” traffic consistent with private link farms manufacturing fake traffic
- Google Ads conversion rates under 1%, not targeting the right locations or services at all
- No consolidated reporting, and no tracking set up to capture what visitors actually did
- A hidden fee: the Yellow Sensis proposal for $3,000 of advertising didn’t disclose that close to 30% of it was a management fee
In just over 12 months, Peter had spent more than $30,000 for almost nothing to show for it.
What I actually did
- Negotiated the cancellation of the Yellow Sensis contract
- Documented exactly where the previous agency hadn’t delivered what was agreed
- Rebuilt the website, including new content and structure
- Ran proper keyword research and competitor analysis
- Developed a real brand story and point of difference
- Set up Google Business Profile, Bing, Yelp and other relevant listings properly
- Connected Google Analytics and Search Console for genuine tracking
- Rebuilt the Google Ads campaigns from scratch with the right targeting
The results
- Over 2,700 visitors, a 101% increase in pageviews
- An 89% reduction in bounce rate
- A 32% reduction in Google Ads spend, with click-through rate up to 6% and a 79% share rate
- 800 new leads, not counting Google Business Profile or Facebook referrals
- Search click-through rate improved 17%, up to 2%
- Organic search clicks up 41%, to 1,050
- Organic search impressions up 17%, past 51,000
- Rankings improved 11% across 37 boat transport-related keywords
- The $18,000 Yellow Sensis contract cancelled
- A $400+ a month SEO service cancelled
- The second website closed entirely, saving over $5,000 a year
- A 90% reduction in spam email reaching the business
What Peter actually said
“Paul helped our business with new website, Google My Business page and saved me thousands on Google Ads being wasted and even cancelled a dodgy Yellow Pages contract. I got more leads and enquiries in 6 weeks than I got in the previous 6 months, I was blown away, he works fast and just knew what I needed to get done.
I cancelled my previous SEO agency who were ripping me off, and he proved they were doing nothing. I don’t have time to look at all the stuff, but he sends all the data and proves everything to then get more results (he is a pain in the bum like that).
If you are sick of dodgy SEO people, try this guy.”
Peter Marneros, Director, Slip Away Boat Transport
An update, April 2022 to July 2026
- Since Google Analytics Version 4 reporting began in April 2022, the site has recorded 53,795 visitors
- 43% of it from organic search.
- Lead tracking goes back further still: 6,451 enquiries submitted through the website’s contact form since March 2021.
- Despite paid ads running on and off across that entire period, over 75% of all leads have come through organic search, real evidence of where the durable value actually sits, even with an active ads budget alongside it.
- Being straightforward about the more recent picture too: for non-branded search terms specifically, organic clicks are down from 266 in the three months to August 2025 to 157 in the same period this year, a real decline. No content on the site has been changed or updated in years and that’s very likely doing a lot of the work here alongside the broader shift in search itself.
- It’s the same combination now showing up across Passion Built and Nu-Trend, a genuine change in how AI-driven search treats older, static content, compounded by a site simply not having been revisited. Three independent clients showing the same pattern is a stronger signal than any one of them alone: a website built well once still needs real, ongoing content investment to keep holding ground, particularly now.
If your business has been sold a contract that doesn’t add up, or a second website you’re not sure you actually need, get in touch and I’ll review it the same way.
I check exactly what a previous agency delivered against what was promised, in writing, with real data, before recommending anything new. If you suspect you’re paying for marketing that isn’t actually working, see how I could help.
