DIGITAL MARKETING FOR A BOAT TRANSPORT COMPANY
I took over the marketing management and website development for this boat transport company who were struggling to get bookings even after spending more than $30,000 on website development, SEO and Google Ads. The project began in August 2019 and has continued since.
Within the first 6 weeks I delivered more leads than they had received in the previous six months, discovered questionable work done by the previous agency and led discussions to cancel over $20,000 in upcoming agency contracts about to kick off.
Peter had been in the boat transport industry for a number of years and engaged a Melbourne agency to create a new website, develop his seo efforts and try and build the brand. They also advised that Peter should have two websites and pay to have them ranking for different states and keywords.
Thinking he could trust the agency, Peter went with their advice paying to have two websites running. Although with very few phone calls coming through and only a handful of website quote requests he knew something wasn’t quite right, but didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to prove it. Peter’s solution was to turn to Google Ads & he spent over $15,000 on ads that still weren’t getting him the results he needed.
At this point we were brought on board to review the situation and come up with an action plan;
- Did Slip Away need two websites?
- Was the $2,000-$3,000 Google Ads spend worth it?
- Why wasn’t the website generating more leads?
- Was a $18,000 Yellow Sensis contract a smart decision?
- Should he engage with a different seo agency?
- How could he tell if what the current agency had done was working or not.
- How could Slip Away sell transport services and mobile slip cradle hire and reach more people?
WHAT DID I DISCOVER?
Slip Away wasn't being GIVEN THE COMPLETE PICTURE
We quickly secured access to all of Slip Away’s online properties to conduct a full review to understand what was happening. We looked at consumer behaviour before people arrived to his site, what they were doing on the website, how his Google Ads were performing and also reviewed things like Facebook and Google My Business.
- No organic traffic growth – the website wasn’t getting consistent organic traffic even though they paid for monthly for seo optimisation.
- Geographic data hidden – The monthly summary shared by the other seo agency didn’t disclose the location of visitors with City or Country cut off the reports with Australian visitors below 70%.
- Poor keyword optimisation – it had been performed without context provided to what Consumers were actually looking for in relation to Slip Away’s core services.
- Poor bounce rate – The website had a bounce rate over 60%, most people left as soon as they arrived driven by a litany of poor grammar, paragraphs or sentences that didn’t make sense, repetition of words & a general structure that was built to try and game Google’s search algorithms rather than deliver value to visitors.
- No content changes – The website hadn’t received any updates, changes or content for over 12 months.
- Incorrect information – There were services displayed on the website that Slip Away didn’t even provide.
- Wrong phone number – The wrong phone number was displayed on the website and template elements were still visible.
- No optimisation – The Google My Business profile wasn’t optimised, crucial to aid seo performance.
- Toxic backlinks – There a number of toxic backlinks going to the site with a dis-proportionally high % of direct traffic that suggested private link farms or networks were being used to make it look like genuine traffic.
- Less than 1% CTR – Google Ads were not targeting the right people, locations or services that Slip Away serviced & conversion rates were below 1%
- No reporting – There was no standard reporting to pull all this information together and no tracking set up on the website to capture visitor interactions.
- Hidden terms – Yellow Sensis had provided a proposal for $3,000 of Google Advertising that didn’t disclose nearly 30% of that would go to management fees.
So, in short it was a poor situation that saw Peter spend more than $30,000 in just over 12 months to get little to no tangible results.
WHAT WAS MY MARKETING SCOPE OF WORK?
WEBSITE DESIGN AND MARKETING MANAGEMENT
From our assessment Peter charged us with rectifying all the issues, effectively being responsible for his marketing management. So our scope of work was more than just website design, leveraging our experience we quickly helped in a number of different areas.
- Negotiate the cancellation of the Yellow Sensis contract.
- Develop proof the existing agency was not delivering agreed services.
- New website design, development & content creation.
- Keyword research and analysis.
- Competitor analysis and comparisons.
- Brand story and unique selling proposition development.
- Online profile development for Google My Business, Bing, Yelp etc
- Integration of Google Analytics & Google Search Console data.
- Online profile set ups across Bing, Yelp, Sydney.com & other leading sites.
- Google AdWords revised campaigns and advertising set ups.
WHAT MARKETING OUTCOMES DID I DELIVER?
$30,000+ saved & record results in 6 weeks.
I got more leads & 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 & 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"
The new website delivered clear, simple and concise information that began converting visitors to leads with a high conversion rate close to 30%. Very quickly we could compare the old website to the new one and the difference was night and day, proving what the other agency had done was poor. We also successfully cancelled a number of service contracts and reduced Peter’s GoogleAds spend saving more than $30,000.
Take a look at the website and Google My Business profile we helped develop & the 6 month comparison between old and websites (timing of the new site includes Dec/Jan quiet periods)
High quality traffic that converts.
As you will see we managed to deliver incredible results that completely transformed the quantity and quality of leads Slip Away was receiving. Evidence is the bounce rate that has consistently remained below 10% and the number of ‘contact types’ made vs qty of visitors to the site which is above 20% on average.
- Over 2,700 visitors with a 101% increase in pageviews.
- A 89% reduction in bounce rate.
- A 32% reduction in Google AdSpend and CTR at 6% with 79% share rate.
- 800 leads not included Google My Business or Facebook referrals.
- 17% improvement in Google Search CTR moving to 2%
- 41% increase in organic search clicks to 1,050
- 17% increase in organic search impressions to 51K+
- 11% improvement in 37 boat transport keyword rankings
- Cancellation of the $18,000 Yellow Sensis contract.
- Cancellation of the $400+ per month seo service.
- Closure of the second website saving over $5,000 in annual fees.
- A 90% reduction in spam email.
