Unlocking Website Conversion Secrets Through Data-Driven Testing | Khalid Saleh from Invesp

Pathmunk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don't convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Passmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos and much more, Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add PathMonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com welcome to today's episode. Let's talk about today's guest. We have Khaled from Invest. How you doing today Khaled?

I am doing well, staying warm as much as I can, definitely.

Right. Well let's give our listeners what they came in for. You know, they heard invesp, so I'm sure they're curious what that's all about. So let's kick it off with that. In your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

So invesp is a highly specialized conversion rate optimization agency. All we do is help companies, clients, all sizes, all industries, convert more of their website visitors into actual either leads if they're a lead gen type website, or to actual sales if they're an E commerce website. We are the second company or agency in the US to work in conversion rate optimization. Started back in 2006. Fell into it unintentionally. In all honesty, I wish there was a grand plan, but there wasn't. So I always joke and I tell people I'm a recovery software developer, fell into marketing unintentionally and I've been doing it for the last 16 years, 17 years. At this point I feel a little old, but I'm loving every minute of it.

Definitely. I mean for 17 years you must love it. So definitely glad that you were able to jump in and conversion. Right. I think that's, that's a huge thing for everybody. You know we do kind of something here similar in Pathmon, but definitely something to, to look into. But let's focus on Invest and our listeners so that way they could get a good understanding of it. What would you say is then a key problem that you solve for clients?

So most companies come to us and they say, hey, our website conversion rate is really not that great. They usually are frustrated with it and it's Funny, because I have seen companies with a half a percent conversion rate or frustrated with that conversion rate, rightly so. But we've worked with companies. We worked with one company with a 28% conversion rate, and the CEO there was frustrated by that. He's like, you know what? I've been trying to improve it. We've worked on it for months, and it's stuck there. And I joked with him and I told him, you know what, Most of our clients would die to have a 28% conversion rate. In reality, most of the companies that we work with basically are bringing traffic to their site and they're trying. And the biggest problem that they hire us for and that they work with us for is to say, hey, how can we become more effective in getting more leads, more sales, more conversions from that traffic? Because most companies we work with are spending a ton of money either on Facebook ads, Google Ads, and it's getting more and more expensive. So how do we actually increase our ROAS? How do we reduce our CPLs or CPAs? That's really. When we come in and we say, you know, it's okay as long as you're bringing the traffic, we will help you figure out how to convert more of that traffic into the dollar signs in your bank account.

Definitely. That's great to hear. So then, talking about some clients, then, is there a vertical segment? Is there an ideal ICP for you guys?

In all honesty, and it's funny because you have a certain impression of which companies you work with, and then you look at data and it's a completely different, different look. So one thing that I do annually is look at the last three years of sales that we've done and try and segment those by company size. Vertical industry. Who's. Who are the decision makers? I would say, at this point, because I was looking, I was looking at that in the last couple of days, I'm like, oh, there's some interesting things. So we work with companies as little as companies that are doing two, $3 million of online sales and as large as $1.5 billion. So really wide spectrum of companies. Usually most of the companies that we work with at least would generate about 2,000 conversions a month, whatever the conversion might be. Correct. So if you're an e commerce website, it's 2000 orders. If you're on lead gen, you're generating 2000 leads or more than that. Retail and E commerce accounts for about 60% of the companies I work with. Lead gen is about 40% of the companies that we work with. Definitely.

All right, well, that's amazing, man. And so then the E commerce and retail, how do they usually find out about invesp? Is there a certain or is there a top client acquisition channel that you have?

Callie? So it's been kind of interesting. So marketing, especially if you've been doing well, you know, the thing that we've been doing for so long, it's kind of marketing is a flywheel. Correct. It's extremely difficult to get it going. But the minute you get it going, it's just, you know, kind of, it's self sustaining. So definitely existing clients are really great way to get new clients. Nothing better than your own clients. Talk to other people and tell them, hey, you know, those guys have done absolutely amazing for us. The other thing, we've started blogging back in 2006, so we get almost 100,000 visitors to our websites. If you Google anything about conversion optimization, about AB testing, our company probably is going to pop up there somewhere with an article so people recognize us in the industry, which makes life tremendously easier. Correct. It's like, okay, there is this constant flow of inbound leads that are coming to us. The challenge for the most part is really making sure that you're working with the right company. Because everybody might be interested in hiring us, but if we're not working with the right company, they'll get frustrated, we'll get frustrated and it's just not, not pretty.

Definitely that would agree with that. And so I mean, talking about the website, right. I am here on Invest and for our listeners to check them out, it's invest CRO.com what role does a website play for client acquisition?

Khaled it's critical, I think every client who ends up signing up with us onto our website probably looked at some of our case studies. I've looked at some of our blog posts as funny at some point and I think this may be seven, eight years ago, I'm like, is there really value from the blogs that we're writing? And if you look at our website, I mean each blog post is 2, 3, 4,000, sometimes 10,000 words. I mean, very well researched blog posts. I mean, the team spends quite a bit of time and there's about three people just working on that. So I was wondering at some point I'm like, oh, that's, that's a lot of money that we're spending on like, you know, and then like, you know, kind of the review process and the publishing. And I still remember maybe a couple months later I was talking to a client and they're like, oh, I've checked out the blog, love the article that you wrote about this. I'm like, well, I guess I got my answer. So that's, you know, that, that's. So I would say like, you know, for us as, as an agency, the website is critical being making sure that's updated with the latest information. Having case studies is very powerful in converting those prospects into actual potential leads and potential clients.

Definitely. All right, so then would you recommend people to have a blog as a tool method to get more leads on the website or is there another tip tool that you could recommend?

Yeah, so we got lucky because we started and again we fell onto this unintentionally. We've been doing this for 16 years and the competition back then was hardly anything. I remember there was a couple of other people blogging about what we do. Nowadays there are hundreds of blogs, if not even thousands talking about the same thing that we do. Blogging is great and whether it's content marketing or SEO, whatever you want to call it, but it's a long term play and you have to understand it's a rough battle to be able to convert most of those visitors into actual business. So I always tell people I was talking to somebody recently and they're like, oh, I'm going to start blogging. I'm like, okay, you just need to know what you're walking into. Don't expect you're going to start blogging and then all of a sudden you're going to get business. Really? Why not? I'm like, well, it's just a little bit harder. It can work. And I've started another company. Think by that relies on blogging, relies on content. But the minute we started blogging and creating content, we knew that's going to be about two years before we start seeing any ROI that we can actually say, you know what? Yeah, because of content, you know, we are generating that business. I say you figure out kind of somebody who asked me, I would tell them, figure out your ideal icp, your ideal target market, figure out where they hang out. They might be hanging out on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, I don't know. Like, you know, different people hang out different places. Sometimes they're looking at private groups that they hang out online and figure out how you become useful in those and active in those groups and business will follow.

Definitely some great, great tips there and methods. Well, Khaled, let's switch gears a little bit and let's talk about you as a leader, you being the CEO there for invesp, what are some key tasks you focus on your day to day work?

Oh, man. So I do a whole bunch of things whenever I try and focus most of my time on the important but not very urgent. We have a team members right now. We have a COO who runs and sure that everything is handled on day to day. I spend quite a bit of time more on strategy, more working with the marketing team and the sales team just to understand what problems that they are dealing with. Bouncing ideas off of each other to say, okay, well here's the target account that we're going after. How do we actually get to them? What is the right messaging? What is the right proposal that we need to send them? There are some aspects of what I do in marketing for invest that relies on me tremendously. So I do quite a bit of video recording. I love video because it allows people to see you correct and get a feel for you as opposed to the written, written word. Each has its place, but I think I find video to be a lot, a lot more powerful. And then the boring side of running a company, financials, you know, spending some time with our cfo, making sure that all the numbers are good and the cash flow is looking good and you know, if there's any issues that we need to pay close attention to.

Okay, awesome, great. Sounds like you have a full plate on your hands. But after so much years of experience, it looks like you have it already organized. So that's, that's great to hear.

You know, I'll have to tell you something. You assume at some point in your life that you know what, the minute the company is going to become larger, it's going to be less problems. And I say like, there will always be problems. They just get a lot more complicated as the company grows. So it seems like you're always. And it's fun though. You're always trying to solve a problem. You're always trying to optimize a process, whether for your clients or internally for your. For your company.

Me that, I mean. All right, awesome to hear that. Well, let's jump into our next section. Khaled. It's a rapid fire question round. So you ready for them?

I think I am. Let's see.

Perfect. Awesome. First off, what is the last book that you read?

The last book that I read. Interesting. So the Road Less Stupid, which is one of the better books that I always recommend and I go back to again and again. So basically Keith Cunningham, that's the author, and he basically says most businesses fail because they make stupid decisions, not because they're not making enough smart decisions. So he said, you know what? If you make less stupid decisions, you're probably going to survive. And he divides this book to about 50 different chapters. Each chapter is about three pages. And if he will mention a business problem and he will ask you lots of questions that you can take and ask yourself, sit one on one with yourself, answer those questions, and figure out what you need to do in terms of those problems and how they appear in your business. All right, great.

Great read there. Next up is what is one single thing that your company's focused on at the moment the most?

Oh, man, I would say our marketing and trying to get our video content out there. There is a big focus on that, and that falls on me, which means I have to dedicate quite a few hours every week to recording more and more videos.

All right, perfect. Now, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Oh, man. You know, it's funny, but I'll talk about technology. So one of the monthly bills that I look at that just absolutely kills me is our AWS bill investing thousands of dollars. You know, everybody knows, like at the end of the month, I look at it and I'm always annoyed if I can fix that problem. I think, you know, with the right developers, you can fix any marketing problem. It's just the cost that is prohibitive.

All right, awesome. Now, if there is one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

We do generate ROI reports for our clients. And as funny, just before this call, I was just looking at one of the reports and there's so many formulas in it because it calculates so many different things. And it's funny because one of the formulas broke and I was one of one of our team members looking at it, he's like, how did you created this report a few years ago? Do you remember? And I'm like, oh, I don't remember. So I'd love to figure out a way to generate those reports automatically without having to think through them. And we're starting to think through how to do that. It's not easy because there's just a lot of inputs.

Definitely. All right, awesome. And lastly, definitely want to ask him, like you mentioned over 17 years within the marketing world, but what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

I think lots of times there are activities that we see and we delay jumping into those activities because we think they're. It's going to take too long. It's going to be too hard. I think start on those activities. The earlier you start, you will see the benefits. We were just talking about content marketing. When I started my other company, I delayed starting on content marketing. Every year I look at it and I'm like, oh, we're going to start the next year. And it took us almost four years before we started content marketing. I'm like, okay, that was stupid. Because if I we started right away, we've probably seen the fruits of it, you know, within two years. You start in 2020. Guess what? You don't see the fruits until 2022. So start. You know, just focus. Sometimes people do. And that's something. I do a million things. I'm like, you know what, Pick a couple of things, bet on them, do them really well. And I think that's a secret to success in marketing.

That's funny. All right, awesome. Great. Some great advice there from Khaled. Well, Khaled, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about invesp?

The one rule that we always apply, don't make assumptions. Always test, test. Always be testing, testing those assumptions and let the data guide you. You got to put your ego, you know, check out your ego at the door and walk in and really test and see what people were your customers like and what they don't like.

Definitely. Thank you so much for that. K. Well, as you could, like I mentioned, you could always check them out@invest CRO.com Khed, thank you so much for being on today with in our episode. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at Pathmon Presents. Thanks a lot, Khaled.

Thank you, thank you. Thank you for having me.