Fail Your Tail Off with Justin Christianson of Conversion Fanatics (CFFL) 0009
Fail Your Tail Off with Justin Christianson of Conversion Fanatics
Jack Butala: Justin is a self proclaimed numbers junkie and best selling author on the subject of conversion optimization. A 13 year veteran of digital marketing. He has a unique ability to find holes in marketing plans, and quickly plug them for a better return on investment. After several online successes and a successful private consulting practice, Justin along with [Manish Punjambi 00:00:22]. Is that the correct pronunciation, Justin?
Justin: That is, Manish Punjambi.
Jack Butala: Excellent. Co-founded conversion phonetics. A boutique-style all in one conversion rate optimization company that serves mid to large scale clients. Effectively increasing the effectiveness of their online marketing campaigns and website conversions.
Justin, before we start, I got to tell you. Jill and I, we talked about hiring you as a consultant. We figure we just have you on the show instead.
Justin: That works too.
Jack Butala: Excellent. Jilly, you’re with us right?
Jill DeWit: Yep. I’m here.
Jack Butala: First question, how did you get started in this business, and what’s your background?
Justin: Well, I actually started out in network marketing back in 2002. Figured out the whole belly-to-belly prospecting, trying to convince my family and friends into joining my next pills, thrills, and lotions company wasn’t out for me. I found internet marketing, and quickly moved into affiliate marketing. Sold a publishing company, an information marketing company back in my business partners in 2009.
Kept getting asked about implementation and optimization, so I went into private consulting. Then, we decided to formalize it a couple of years ago.
Jack Butala: Great.
Jill DeWit: Nice.
Jack Butala: You’ve just figured it all out now? There’s no where else to go for you? You figured it out?
Justin: Yeah. I’m constantly learning.
Jack Butala: When did you realize this profession was for you? Did the profession choose you or did you choose it?
Justin: It kind of chose me.
Jack Butala: Good.
Justin: Figured out that I was good at a lot of the implementation things. I’m just kind of a implementer by nature. I just kind of fell where it is now, I guess.
Jack Butala: That’s great. Just for fun, what’s your revenue ballpark?
Justin: A little over a million.
Jack Butala: That’s great. What was the worst professional experience you’ve had? What’d you learn? Let’s say the biggest failure.
Justin: Biggest failure was probably taking on the wrong type of people to work with.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Justin: My lesson is choose who I get to work with.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool. Have you ever had a product, or a business, or an industry that totally stumped you?
Justin: No.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Justin: I really haven’t. Between myself and my business partner, there isn’t anything we’ve haven’t seen or done. We’re constantly evolving and learning every single day. We really haven’t had anything that we haven’t been able to increase the conversions on, at least in some fashion.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: You can really increase the conversion rate for a guy who sells Chinese water heaters?
Justin: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: How about dating?
Justin: Most of the water heaters come from China anyway.
Jack Butala: How about dating, Jill?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It’s … sorry. That was just a little side thing. Sorry.
Justin: In fact, I met with somebody today that they sell small appliances like that. Window air conditioners, air filters, and a bunch of different home type appliances. It doesn’t really matter what you’re selling.
Jack Butala: That’s great.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: Every time we talk about filling up our pipeline from acquisition standpoint, or a sales standpoint, Jill always brings up this anecdotal story about upping your numbers.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:04:10].
Jack Butala: Making sure that you review several people before you choose the one you really want to date.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Justin: Yep.
Jack Butala: I guess it’s a numbers game, right?
Justin: It is a numbers game. If you have a better handle on your tracking, and that’s one thing we help clients do too. Is it’s predictable numbers game.
Jack Butala: You taking the mystery out of it, I guess.
Justin: Taking a lot of the mystery out of it, yeah. You can put x number of people in the top, and you get x result that comes out the bottom.
Jack Butala: Right. What was the best professional experience you’ve had, you know the flip side here. The best experience you’ve had, and what’d you learn? Biggest success.
Justin: Our biggest success to date was probably 1650% growth for a company in about 10 months.
Jack Butala: Wow. What did they sell if you don’t mind me asking?
Justin: It was beauty products.
Jill DeWit: Whoa.
Jack Butala: Is that one of the most typical questions you get? What do they sell? What is the most typical question you get? I should just say it that way.
Justin: Why are you different?
Jack Butala: Okay.
Justin: Because there’s so many people out there that are claiming to help companies increase their results, but it’s really setting yourself. The differentiator that brings us out.
Jack Butala: How do you guys do that?
Justin: We’re very proactive in our communication. Very thorough. We provide a lot of extra bandwidth that companies desperately need. Even companies that have 100 people on their marketing teams. We just are very thorough. We pride ourselves on not having the customer, or clients come to us first with a problem. We want to be the ones that take it to them, or any communication. That’s really what sets ourselves apart. The fact that we just flat out get results.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don’t want to get too detailed or mechanical if you don’t. Is it intensely reviewing Google ad words, or do you have a one size fits all for no matter what the product type or the company type is like. What’s your basic approach?
Justin: We have a 5 point process that we follow. Every company is different. You’re going to find different things. We always analyze the existing data. The existing information there. We survey the customers if we can. We do competitive analysis, so find out what your competitors are doing. All right, hear me?
Jack Butala: Yeah, can you hear me?
Justin: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Gotcha.
Jack Butala: Jill, are you there?
Jill DeWit: Yep, I’m here.
Jack Butala: Usually I blame that stuff on my kids, but they’re not around anywhere at all right now.
Justin: Mine aren’t either.
Jack Butala: Anyway, you were saying, there’s a 5 point system that you use and not every customer’s the same.
Justin: Not every companies the same exactly, but there are a lot of elements that transfer from industry to industry. We typically will analyze existing conversion rates. We will survey customers where we can survey the market. We’ll do competitive analysis to find out what the nearest competitors are doing right, what they’re doing wrong. For leverage points. Then, we’ll look for leverage points within the existing business. Looking at the existing sales funnel, the lead generation process. Then we’ll deploy our test hypothesis.
Jack Butala: Okay. How long does the process take, usually?
Justin: Our initial analysis, if we’re doing a project with a customer or client, we’re usually up and testing within a couple weeks.
Jack Butala: Wow, that’s great.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: Man, that business has to just be constantly changing, right? I mean you’re researching and looking for the next new thing all the time probably, right?
Justin: Yeah. It kind of stumbles down to basics. It’s the next best thing is going to be, the core things are always going to work. They’re time tested. They worked 10 years ago, they’re going to work 10 years for now. The way the application of it changes. You just have to constantly stay up on the latest trends. We’re constantly reading, reviewing, and researching. Then the more clients we work with, the better we get. It helps us evolve there too.
Jack Butala: Is there a profile of a typical client that you’re really, that you would choose to work with over someone else? Maybe said another way. Is there someone that you know you can help more than someone else?
Justin: We primarily focus on software as a service, and eCommerce businesses now. Typically, 20 million plus in revenue. The biggest company we’ve worked with to date is just shy of 200 million in revenue.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.
Jack Butala: Are these companies that are eCommerce companies where customers who are purchasing their products or services are checking themselves out on a website.
Justin: Yeah. It could be a supplement store, or a clothing store, leather goods to beauty products. It really, if they have multiple product skews in their store, that’s what we typically consider a eCommerce platform.
Jack Butala: Hey, have you ever had a customer who is trying to increase the downloads for an application that they have?
Justin: We typically don’t work in the mobile market.
Jack Butala: Okay.
Justin: We have done, my business partner actually had an app company for awhile.
Jill DeWit: Oh, wow.
Justin: We typically stick to … We do take into account the mobile experience for visitors for a company. We typically don’t go straight after app companies.
Jack Butala: Okay. What’s the biggest obstacle or I guess what I should say, is there anything specific that you’re trying to overcome right now?
Justin: Nothing really specific. We have a motto at our company that we’re continuously improving daily. We try to be better than we were yesterday. With that, it kind of doesn’t really leave us with a ton of obstacles. We just look for 1 foot in front of the other. Small wins to make us better. Biggest obstacle is really educating companies on why conversion optimization is important.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just the raw education of why you need it. You didn’t even know you needed it kind of thing, but you need it.
Justin: Yeah.
Jack Butala: See how organized these guys are, Jill. Our whole company’s all taped together. We don’t know what we’re going to do one minute from the next.
Justin: Sometimes we don’t either.
Jack Butala: Like we don’t have a motto or anything. If I had to do a motto, my motto would be buy low, sell high.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Justin: Well that’s everybody’s model.
Jack Butala: Try not to step on somebody while you’re doing it.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: What’s been your biggest obstacle to success?
Justin: Standing out of my own way.
Jack Butala: There’s got to be a story there.
Justin: It is, I came up if it’s going to be done right, it’s going to be done by me.
Jack Butala: Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Justin: Leveraging the expertise where I lack of others. Just hiring the right people. Just letting go of some of the control is been my biggest. I mean I would say to a sense I’m kind of a micro-manager. I really try hard not to be. I just let them shine where they shine.
Jack Butala: We speak with a lot of entrepreneurs like you, and that seems to be a common theme. It’s a personality trait, I think that seems to be very prevalent. I have that too. I shook myself up probably a lot of years ago. It seems to be that entrepreneurs have the flip side, that where they just think that everybody should be doing everything for them. All they’re going to work on is the big picture stuff. I think it’s hard to find that happy medium.
Justin: Very much so.
Jack Butala: What events convince you to quit your regular job?
Justin: When I actually quit my job to take my marketing full time was 2 months before my wedding in 2005.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: You like to complicate your life.
Justin: Yep. Business was going okay. It had pretty much replaced my low income at the time, so it just made the logical sense to focus. I was only working on it a couple hours in the evenings. At the time, I was working as an electrician.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Justin: I actually toured in a band too, at the time.
Jill DeWit: What? Cool.
Justin: It just made sense. I was working 12 plus hour days, and then gone on weekends playing in the band. I just decided if I was going to put all this effort in, I was making that much money doing it part time. What could I do full time?
Jack Butala: Was there a switch, I got to ask. Jill and I just did a podcast before this, and we talked about a switch flipping in your head. You know when something’s going to happen. Was there a switch that flipped in your head that said, I got to stop doing this and start this other thing. Take this other thing to where it needs to go?
Justin: I don’t know if it was an exact switch, but I just knew that I was on to something. I knew that I needed to control it, rather than working for somebody else. They were controlling where I went, when I had to be there. It just didn’t make sense for me.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know, in real-estate, we all live or die by our acquisition pipeline. You know? The new stuff that’s coming in. Is there some magic to getting new customers that work for you? Make sure that the pipeline where you can pick and choose new customers works?
Justin: Go out and get them. It is. I actually recorded a video for a group I’m in on Facebook recently about this. We figured out that 63% of our revenue this year came from not the latest marketing funnel, the latest webinar technique. It came from picking who we wanted to work with and reaching out and grabbing them.
Jack Butala: Yep. I mean we do a version of that too. We do direct mail campaigns to people who own property that are showing signs of the fact that they want to …
Jack Butala: Justin is a self proclaimed numbers junkie and best selling author on the subject of conversion optimization. A 13 year veteran of digital marketing. He has a unique ability to find holes in marketing plans, and quickly plug them for a better return on investment. After several online successes and a successful private consulting practice, Justin along with [Manish Punjambi 00:00:22]. Is that the correct pronunciation, Justin?
Justin: That is, Manish Punjambi.
Jack Butala: Excellent. Co-founded conversion phonetics. A boutique-style all in one conversion rate optimization company that serves mid to large scale clients. Effectively increasing the effectiveness of their online marketing campaigns and website conversions.
Justin, before we start, I got to tell you. Jill and I, we talked about hiring you as a consultant. We figure we just have you on the show instead.
Justin: That works too.
Jack Butala: Excellent. Jilly, you’re with us right?
Jill DeWit: Yep. I’m here.
Jack Butala: First question, how did you get started in this business, and what’s your background?
Justin: Well, I actually started out in network marketing back in 2002. Figured out the whole belly-to-belly prospecting, trying to convince my family and friends into joining my next pills, thrills, and lotions company wasn’t out for me. I found internet marketing, and quickly moved into affiliate marketing. Sold a publishing company, an information marketing company back in my business partners in 2009.
Kept getting asked about implementation and optimization, so I went into private consulting. Then, we decided to formalize it a couple of years ago.
Jack Butala: Great.
Jill DeWit: Nice.
Jack Butala: You’ve just figured it all out now? There’s no where else to go for you? You figured it out?
Justin: Yeah. I’m constantly learning.
Jack Butala: When did you realize this profession was for you? Did the profession choose you or did you choose it?
Justin: It kind of chose me.
Jack Butala: Good.
Justin: Figured out that I was good at a lot of the implementation things. I’m just kind of a implementer by nature. I just kind of fell where it is now, I guess.
Jack Butala: That’s great. Just for fun, what’s your revenue ballpark?
Justin: A little over a million.
Jack Butala: That’s great. What was the worst professional experience you’ve had? What’d you learn? Let’s say the biggest failure.
Justin: Biggest failure was probably taking on the wrong type of people to work with.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Justin: My lesson is choose who I get to work with.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool. Have you ever had a product, or a business, or an industry that totally stumped you?
Justin: No.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Justin: I really haven’t. Between myself and my business partner, there isn’t anything we’ve haven’t seen or done. We’re constantly evolving and learning every single day. We really haven’t had anything that we haven’t been able to increase the conversions on, at least in some fashion.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: You can really increase the conversion rate for a guy who sells Chinese water heaters?
Justin: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: How about dating?
Justin: Most of the water heaters come from China anyway.
Jack Butala: How about dating, Jill?
Jill DeWit: Yeah. It’s … sorry. That was just a little side thing. Sorry.
Justin: In fact, I met with somebody today that they sell small appliances like that. Window air conditioners, air filters, and a bunch of different home type appliances. It doesn’t really matter what you’re selling.
Jack Butala: That’s great.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: Every time we talk about filling up our pipeline from acquisition standpoint, or a sales standpoint, Jill always brings up this anecdotal story about upping your numbers.
Jill DeWit: [inaudible 00:04:10].
Jack Butala: Making sure that you review several people before you choose the one you really want to date.
Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Justin: Yep.
Jack Butala: I guess it’s a numbers game, right?
Justin: It is a numbers game. If you have a better handle on your tracking, and that’s one thing we help clients do too. Is it’s predictable numbers game.
Jack Butala: You taking the mystery out of it, I guess.
Justin: Taking a lot of the mystery out of it, yeah. You can put x number of people in the top, and you get x result that comes out the bottom.
Jack Butala: Right. What was the best professional experience you’ve had, you know the flip side here. The best experience you’ve had, and what’d you learn? Biggest success.
Justin: Our biggest success to date was probably 1650% growth for a company in about 10 months.
Jack Butala: Wow. What did they sell if you don’t mind me asking?
Justin: It was beauty products.
Jill DeWit: Whoa.
Jack Butala: Is that one of the most typical questions you get? What do they sell? What is the most typical question you get? I should just say it that way.
Justin: Why are you different?
Jack Butala: Okay.
Justin: Because there’s so many people out there that are claiming to help companies increase their results, but it’s really setting yourself. The differentiator that brings us out.
Jack Butala: How do you guys do that?
Justin: We’re very proactive in our communication. Very thorough. We provide a lot of extra bandwidth that companies desperately need. Even companies that have 100 people on their marketing teams. We just are very thorough. We pride ourselves on not having the customer, or clients come to us first with a problem. We want to be the ones that take it to them, or any communication. That’s really what sets ourselves apart. The fact that we just flat out get results.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I don’t want to get too detailed or mechanical if you don’t. Is it intensely reviewing Google ad words, or do you have a one size fits all for no matter what the product type or the company type is like. What’s your basic approach?
Justin: We have a 5 point process that we follow. Every company is different. You’re going to find different things. We always analyze the existing data. The existing information there. We survey the customers if we can. We do competitive analysis, so find out what your competitors are doing. All right, hear me?
Jack Butala: Yeah, can you hear me?
Justin: Yep.
Jill DeWit: Gotcha.
Jack Butala: Jill, are you there?
Jill DeWit: Yep, I’m here.
Jack Butala: Usually I blame that stuff on my kids, but they’re not around anywhere at all right now.
Justin: Mine aren’t either.
Jack Butala: Anyway, you were saying, there’s a 5 point system that you use and not every customer’s the same.
Justin: Not every companies the same exactly, but there are a lot of elements that transfer from industry to industry. We typically will analyze existing conversion rates. We will survey customers where we can survey the market. We’ll do competitive analysis to find out what the nearest competitors are doing right, what they’re doing wrong. For leverage points. Then, we’ll look for leverage points within the existing business. Looking at the existing sales funnel, the lead generation process. Then we’ll deploy our test hypothesis.
Jack Butala: Okay. How long does the process take, usually?
Justin: Our initial analysis, if we’re doing a project with a customer or client, we’re usually up and testing within a couple weeks.
Jack Butala: Wow, that’s great.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool.
Jack Butala: Man, that business has to just be constantly changing, right? I mean you’re researching and looking for the next new thing all the time probably, right?
Justin: Yeah. It kind of stumbles down to basics. It’s the next best thing is going to be, the core things are always going to work. They’re time tested. They worked 10 years ago, they’re going to work 10 years for now. The way the application of it changes. You just have to constantly stay up on the latest trends. We’re constantly reading, reviewing, and researching. Then the more clients we work with, the better we get. It helps us evolve there too.
Jack Butala: Is there a profile of a typical client that you’re really, that you would choose to work with over someone else? Maybe said another way. Is there someone that you know you can help more than someone else?
Justin: We primarily focus on software as a service, and eCommerce businesses now. Typically, 20 million plus in revenue. The biggest company we’ve worked with to date is just shy of 200 million in revenue.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jill DeWit: That’s awesome.
Jack Butala: Are these companies that are eCommerce companies where customers who are purchasing their products or services are checking themselves out on a website.
Justin: Yeah. It could be a supplement store, or a clothing store, leather goods to beauty products. It really, if they have multiple product skews in their store, that’s what we typically consider a eCommerce platform.
Jack Butala: Hey, have you ever had a customer who is trying to increase the downloads for an application that they have?
Justin: We typically don’t work in the mobile market.
Jack Butala: Okay.
Justin: We have done, my business partner actually had an app company for awhile.
Jill DeWit: Oh, wow.
Justin: We typically stick to … We do take into account the mobile experience for visitors for a company. We typically don’t go straight after app companies.
Jack Butala: Okay. What’s the biggest obstacle or I guess what I should say, is there anything specific that you’re trying to overcome right now?
Justin: Nothing really specific. We have a motto at our company that we’re continuously improving daily. We try to be better than we were yesterday. With that, it kind of doesn’t really leave us with a ton of obstacles. We just look for 1 foot in front of the other. Small wins to make us better. Biggest obstacle is really educating companies on why conversion optimization is important.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just the raw education of why you need it. You didn’t even know you needed it kind of thing, but you need it.
Justin: Yeah.
Jack Butala: See how organized these guys are, Jill. Our whole company’s all taped together. We don’t know what we’re going to do one minute from the next.
Justin: Sometimes we don’t either.
Jack Butala: Like we don’t have a motto or anything. If I had to do a motto, my motto would be buy low, sell high.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Justin: Well that’s everybody’s model.
Jack Butala: Try not to step on somebody while you’re doing it.
Jill DeWit: Love it.
Jack Butala: What’s been your biggest obstacle to success?
Justin: Standing out of my own way.
Jack Butala: There’s got to be a story there.
Justin: It is, I came up if it’s going to be done right, it’s going to be done by me.
Jack Butala: Oh yeah.
Jill DeWit: Oh.
Justin: Leveraging the expertise where I lack of others. Just hiring the right people. Just letting go of some of the control is been my biggest. I mean I would say to a sense I’m kind of a micro-manager. I really try hard not to be. I just let them shine where they shine.
Jack Butala: We speak with a lot of entrepreneurs like you, and that seems to be a common theme. It’s a personality trait, I think that seems to be very prevalent. I have that too. I shook myself up probably a lot of years ago. It seems to be that entrepreneurs have the flip side, that where they just think that everybody should be doing everything for them. All they’re going to work on is the big picture stuff. I think it’s hard to find that happy medium.
Justin: Very much so.
Jack Butala: What events convince you to quit your regular job?
Justin: When I actually quit my job to take my marketing full time was 2 months before my wedding in 2005.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: You like to complicate your life.
Justin: Yep. Business was going okay. It had pretty much replaced my low income at the time, so it just made the logical sense to focus. I was only working on it a couple hours in the evenings. At the time, I was working as an electrician.
Jill DeWit: Wow.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Justin: I actually toured in a band too, at the time.
Jill DeWit: What? Cool.
Justin: It just made sense. I was working 12 plus hour days, and then gone on weekends playing in the band. I just decided if I was going to put all this effort in, I was making that much money doing it part time. What could I do full time?
Jack Butala: Was there a switch, I got to ask. Jill and I just did a podcast before this, and we talked about a switch flipping in your head. You know when something’s going to happen. Was there a switch that flipped in your head that said, I got to stop doing this and start this other thing. Take this other thing to where it needs to go?
Justin: I don’t know if it was an exact switch, but I just knew that I was on to something. I knew that I needed to control it, rather than working for somebody else. They were controlling where I went, when I had to be there. It just didn’t make sense for me.
Jack Butala: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know, in real-estate, we all live or die by our acquisition pipeline. You know? The new stuff that’s coming in. Is there some magic to getting new customers that work for you? Make sure that the pipeline where you can pick and choose new customers works?
Justin: Go out and get them. It is. I actually recorded a video for a group I’m in on Facebook recently about this. We figured out that 63% of our revenue this year came from not the latest marketing funnel, the latest webinar technique. It came from picking who we wanted to work with and reaching out and grabbing them.
Jack Butala: Yep. I mean we do a version of that too. We do direct mail campaigns to people who own property that are showing signs of the fact that they want to …
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