Colin Scotland cut his marketing teeth watching his dad hawking wares in the market stalls of Liverpool, by earning a master’s degree and by starting an accidental £4 million business in e-commerce. But that was just the beginning. Up ahead was his passion for helping brick and mortar businesses succeed online, and something relatively unheard of in the “real-world” he’d grown accustomed to: marketing for conversions across every step of the customer journey.
“I’d always struggle to reconcile what a book says you should be doing, with what techniques a host of digital marketers say you should be doing, with what will really work to meet the unique needs of my customers.”
By now, many market stall traders had progressed to running store-based retail shops. And Colin thought that if he could build a highly successful e-commerce website, why couldn’t he help these brick-and-mortar businesses get their act together and be even more successful with digital marketing?
It didn’t take long, however, for Colin to wrestle with trying to apply all the academic knowledge of marketing he had to how he saw things working in the real world. Not only that, being a lifelong learner and genuinely curious person, he was also attempting to figure out how to apply the techniques for online marketing he was seeing all the prominent digital marketers doing to get leads, traffic, and to drive sales.
“I spent a lot of time on a lot of different courses, learning this, that, and the other, and trying to apply it in my business...I got to the point where I was so confused by the amount of stuff hitting me, that I felt like my head was going to explode!”
Can you relate to Colin’s dilemma? You learn one technique from one course, or one person, then another technique from another source. You then try and put it all together (with what you already know and have experienced in the world) so it makes sense and it works, but it flat out doesn’t.
“My head,” said Colin, felt like a whirlwind of information, and none of it seemed to add up. And this is why I turned to Leadpages and the Conversion Marketing Certification program.”
“I was in a state of confusion and frustration, and I was hoping, at the end, to have clarity on the whole digital marketing space. Not just clarity, but to have some kind of blueprint that I could apply.”
Colin, seeking to alleviate his state of confusion, find clarity and a digital marketing plan he could embrace, enrolled in the Leadpages Conversion Marketing Certification course: “When I joined the course it was almost like, it was a breath of fresh air really, because the confusion and the frustration and the hair pulling (I’ve got a little less hair now) went away. And in its place, all of a sudden, I’ve got a roadmap to success.”
Guided by Leadpages subject matter experts in conversion marketing, Colin saw, lesson after lesson, how to address the entire conversion marketing lifecycle with action-oriented techniques. The same techniques that had worked for how Leadpages itself built its business.
“That structure and that roadmap approach to learning really helped me, because I could see and understand the different sections in the big picture, along with what and how to do things every step of the way.”
“I now understood,” said Colin, “how defining my avatar, or whatever the exercise we were doing at the time, fit into the big picture. That was the stuff I was struggling with before.” Not only that, he also shared part of the missing link was in understanding how everything he knew and was learning could be applied to the different kinds of brick and mortar businesses he was beginning to help.
Local businesses asked: “Colin, I run an optician’s business struggling to grow my client base, or, I’m head of a secondary school needing to increase student enrollment, what can you do for me?” “I now had answers for them,” said Colin, “I knew what to do, and I had the confidence to apply a proven method of conversion marketing to their unique situations.”
And so, by combining the spirit of a Del Boy Trotter, with his marketing academics and degrees, a taste of e-commerce success and now, a proven blueprint involving a value-based conversion marketing approach, Colin went confidently after the brick and mortar business he was so passionate about helping succeed.
He began getting some traction, and the results started to play out a little bit here, a little bit there. And before long Colin knew there’d be no turning back: “Wow, now I know this stuff works!”
Result 1
About halfway through the conversion marketing course, Colin, as a result of implementing the techniques for marketing his own Logical Fox business website, began to realize significant improvements, especially in a couple of key areas:
“First, my list growth as a result of the lead generation actions I implemented grew to over 50%.” Plus, Colin’s website bounce rate, the rate at which people visit a page and leave without visiting another page came down to the low teens, which is quite remarkable given a bounce rate around 50% is considered good.
Result 2
Applying the principles of an avatar-centric, value-based approach with conversion marketing techniques learned in the Conversion Marketing Certification course, Colin helped fill the enrollment goals of secondary schools. Something prior to this was literally unheard of and untried.
Historically, secondary schools would market themselves by throwing a chunk of money at local print advertising. Rarely did this method reach or meet the unique needs of the 16-18 year-olds being targeted. “It’s like throwing money down the drain,” said Colin.
With the objectives of generating awareness among the target community, of boosting attendance at informational events, and to ultimately encourage completion of the application process to meet enrollment goals, Colin had the educational institution instead turn to the principles of online conversion marketing.
Identifying their ideal avatars’ needs and pain points, he orchestrated a multi-faceted conversion marketing campaign involving lead magnets, Facebook ads, landing pages, lead nurturing, live events and more to successfully convert browsers into leads and leads into students. Thereby meeting the enrollment goal of his secondary school client.
To date, Colin has worked successfully with 4 secondary schools to meet, and exceed student enrollment goals.
“There’s massive potential just to translate [conversion marketing] concepts and this way of thinking into the educational world - the likes of which have not been done before, but schools are now beginning to believe - anything is possible.”
“I lead very much with a value-driven approach, based on what the customers needs and problems are. I also have what I consider to be a tried and tested roadmap for success. And that came from the Leadpages Conversion Marketing Certification program.”
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