A long-established business management SaaS provider serving the pool and spa industry needed help with their website conversion strategy. For nearly nine years, &Marketing has served as their strategic marketing leadership partner, supporting both day-to-day marketing execution and higher-level growth strategy.
The company’s platform was built specifically for pool and spa retailers, service companies, and construction businesses that manage multiple operational functions at once — inventory, point of sale, scheduling, CRM, marketing, employee management, mobile field access, water lab syncing, online bill pay, project management, and web services.
In plain English: this is not a simple app or single-use tool. It is a centralized software system designed to help pool and spa businesses stop managing their operations through a patchwork of disconnected tools, spreadsheets, workarounds, and vendor-specific systems.
Business Challenge Summary
The client had a strong software platform, a well-defined niche, and steady website traffic from ongoing marketing efforts, including Google Ads, SEO, and other digital campaigns. The issue was getting the right people to take the next step once they were on the site. Prospects were showing interest, but too many were dropping off before booking a live demo.
That created a clear conversion problem. The company’s software is highly customizable and feature-rich, which is a strength once prospects understand the platform. However, the full live demo took approximately two hours, and for many buyers, that was too much commitment too early in the process. Our client was essentially asking for a marriage proposal instead of a second date.
The company had already tested videos, e-books, gated resources, and other website conversion tools, but none were consistently strong enough to move interested prospects closer to a sales conversation.
Through customer journey mapping, &Marketing identified the deeper issue: prospects were often researching new software while dealing with real operational frustration. They were trying to solve problems like disconnected systems, poor support from current providers, limited software functionality, staffing challenges, and the daily chaos of managing sales, service, inventory, billing, and customer data in separate places.
These buyers needed to understand the platform’s value before they were ready for a full demo. The client needed an intermediate conversion step: something more substantial than a blog or downloadable resource, but less demanding than a full live demo.
&Marketing’s Approach
During an annual on-site planning session, &Marketing led the client through a strategic planning process that included a SWOT analysis, customer journey mapping, and additional marketing frameworks.
The customer journey mapping process helped the team step outside the company’s internal view and look at the buying process from the prospect’s perspective. Together, &Marketing and the client mapped the steps a pool and spa business owner might take when searching for new software, including:
- Calling their current provider’s support team
- Asking industry peers for recommendations
- Attending trade shows
- Searching online
- Reading reviews
- Exploring vendor websites
- Comparing software options
- Deciding whether to request a demo
That process revealed a clear gap in the conversion path. The website had educational content and it had a demo request, but it did not have a strong middle step for prospects who were interested but not yet ready to commit significant time to a sales conversation.
To close that gap, &Marketing recommended creating a gated virtual software tour. Instead of asking prospects to immediately commit to a two-hour live demo, the virtual tour gave them a lower-pressure way to explore a mock walkthrough of the software on their own time. It allowed prospects to see the platform in action, understand key capabilities, and better determine whether the solution matched their needs before speaking with sales.
The tour also created a more useful lead capture point. Rather than treating every website visitor as either “ready for a demo” or “not ready,” the new offer gave our client a way to engage prospects earlier, capture interest, and build a more realistic path from awareness to sales conversation.
Results
The virtual tour became one of the client’s strongest website conversion assets. In the first full year the tour was live on the site, it generated:
- 247 submissions
- 146 leads
- 89 marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
- 10 closed won deals
Almost 40% of the submissions to view the tour have come from existing contacts—an indication that this asset is valuable for contacts both at the top (awareness) and mid (engagement) stages of the marketing funnel.
The result was a smarter conversion pathway built around how buyers were actually behaving. By replacing a high-friction demo-first approach with a more accessible virtual tour, the client was able to better meet prospects where they were in the buying journey and turn existing traffic into more qualified leads.
Most importantly, the project helped close the gap between marketing activity and sales readiness. The website was already attracting interest. &Marketing helped identify why that interest was not converting, create a more appropriate next step, and build a stronger bridge from website engagement to meaningful sales conversations.
&Marketing’s work with long-term clients often lives in moments like this: when the traffic is there, the offer is strong, but the path to conversion needs to be rebuilt around how buyers actually make decisions.
Dealing with strong website traffic that still isn’t turning into qualified leads? Let’s talk about how a Fractional CMO can help identify the real conversion gaps, sharpen your buyer journey, and turn existing marketing activity into measurable growth.
