How Oliver Meakings Made $300k Roasting Landing Pages With SPP.co

This is a case study about Oliver Meaking’s Roast My Landing Page, a service that helps founders improve their landing page, and turn more visitors into leads. Oliver decided to turn his years of conversion rate experience into a service. Read below how the service started, how he came across SPP, and decided to use it to scale Roast My Landing Page.

How did you come up with the idea of roasting landing pages as a service?

One of my freelance marketing clients told me I was an expert at roasting, and should start a podcast with teardowns of startups. I liked the idea, but wanted to turn it into a service.

I made a basic landing page in Notion one afternoon and posted it to Twitter. That’s how it started.

Before you got your first clients, what did you use as social proof?

I had some testimonials from my marketing clients and combined it with my personal story on the landing page. I only charged £49 and immediately started collecting testimonials and stories from my first customers.

Were you afraid that the negative wording might scare potential customers off?

No. I knew curiosity and word of mouth over the unique name would outweigh any negative. I also knew the tone of the “roast” would be tongue in cheek and wanted the name to reflect it. 

How did you decide on pricing, and how did that evolve over time?

I set the price at £49 to reflect time-based pricing, i.e. what I thought 20 minutes of my time was worth when I started. This was also a point of low risk for potential customers, and helped me collect loads of testimonials.

Once I had case studies and proven outcomes, I moved to charging for value, which is $349. I also switched to dollar pricing, as U.S. customers convert better. 

What was your strategy to find new leads?

It has always been word of mouth and SEO. Nothing works better than blowing your customer away with the quality of your service. The speed, passion and insights I offer are all critical.

I work incredibly hard to deliver a high-quality service and never, ever clock watch. I roast until I believe I have covered all the critical points that need addressing.

Filming roasts to this standard is fun, but also draining. I liken it to presenting a TV program because you have to be constantly thinking ahead and focused on clarity. For this reason I can normally only film a couple a day.

Can you tell us more about the order process and what it looks like?

The customer fills in a simple form and pays for their roast. They are then directed to a collection form where I collect more information from them to set the scene. I get an email when they’re booked and pick up the roast in SPP. I then film the roast, and send it back using a templated-email I setup in SPP. This email asks them for a testimonial using my Senja form.

I also have an automated email 15 days later asking them what they thought of the roast, which often opens up sales conversations.

Are you upselling clients, and if so to what service?

I have a landing page copywriting service and a full-funnel (sign up flow) roast. I don’t upsell these at checkout. Instead I mention them in the roast video itself, if I think the customer is a very good fit.

I never, ever do a hard sell and instead say, “I’ve given you the info to do it yourself, but if you want me to do it, let me know.” This makes up about 30% of my revenue, and I would say one in four I mention it to go on to book.

What mistakes have you seen agencies make with their landing pages?

The critical thing is to know what your potential customer values most—you can find out by asking them or reviewing their testimonials.

In the agency space it’s often trust, (they’ve been burned before) so you need to demonstrate trust with social proof like testimonials and case studies, and reduce risk by offering a free audit or money-back guarantee.

You should also consider common objections, like “can I see myself working with these people?” Your potential customer is going to spend a lot of time working directly with you, but a lot of agency landing pages don’t feel human.

I’d suggest adding a section on the landing page introducing the team, and humanizing the demo—by offering to book a call with a real human rather than the company. Here’s an example of how it’s done:

Are you a SaaS founder looking to get expert input on your landing page? Head to roastmylandingpage.com and book Oliver’s personalized roast.