Sometimes you choose a hobby, sometimes a passion chooses you. And thats exactly what happened when Peter Letts discovered scuba diving.
He first dipped his toes as a diver in 1992, but soon took to the deep end and became addicted to the sport. Almost 10 years later, he left a successful corporate career to turn his passion for the oceans into a business. I had a midlife crisis, chucked the corporate world aside, and decided to open up a dive shop, he explains.
Peter is now retired. His daughter, Rachael, has taken over the reins at Abyss Scuba Diving. Hes still involved in the businessin charge of their marketing effortsand theyre doing way more than just staying afloat.
In fact, Peter is churning out PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns and landing pages that see an average conversion rate of 35%.
And he doesnt even break a sweat doing it. Why? Because hes found a smarter way to build landing pages to turn traffic into conversions. Way more conversions.
Inspiring marketing results AND a happy retirement? Easy.
Abyss Scuba Diving, By the Numbers
Business size: | 11 to 20 full-time and part-time employees |
Industry: | Tourism |
Location: | Sydney, Australia |
Marketing goals: | Increased bookings |
Conversion goal: | Click-through to booking page |
The company: | Diving training and experiences (shark cage diving, free diving, etc.) |

Myself, my daughter, and the first person Id ever taught to divethe three of us opened up Abyss Scuba, and weve grown it over the last 20 years to be the second-biggest dive shop in Australia. Today we do a whole range of things. We teach people how to dive, we take them out every weekend, and we organize trips up the coast every few weeks. Peter Letts, founder, Abyss Scuba Diving (now retired)
Psst Wanna go straight to Peters landing page strategy? Click here, or start off with a peek at this snapshot of some of his results:

From Chemist, to Founder, to Marketing Trailblazer
Throughout his career in the corporate world as a food chemist, Peter Letts always thought he knew how to do the marketing side better than the pros. Shortly before he opened his own business, it was time to find out if he was correct.
As a hobby, Peter set up the website for a local dive shop. In those days, Google hadnt come alive yet, and AltaVista was the main search engine. If you searched for anything in Sydney, you only found this shop, which tripled their business in six months. I thought I could do the same thing when I opened up my own business. And that was how I ended up running our marketing.
Keeping the Business Afloat After Challenging Times
Abysss digital marketing efforts evolved alongside the web. By 2020, the business was the second-largest dive shop in Australia. Customers that started visiting the company 20 years ago flew into Australia and other exotic locations every year to dive with the Abyss crew, and fresh faces from all over the world regularly joined them on new adventures.
As 2020 kicked off, the team prepped for another bumper season. But they had no idea of the difficulties the next couple of years would have in store.
Its an understatement to say that the pandemic years have been challenging. People, economies, and businesses have suffered all over the world. Small businesses have been hit particularly hard, especially in the travel and tourism sector.
Australias borders were closed for the better part of 2020 and 2021. With Abyss Scuba relying predominantly on international visitors, its been tough. The team also felt the impact from environmental disasters in Australia.

Sydney has been belted by a series of problems. Three or four months before COVID, we had bushfires around the area, which blackened the water, which meant no dives. Then we had multiple lockdowns, shrinking our customer base to only our council area. Now weve just had floods, which have blackened the water again. Its been two and a half years of struggling, and were still in that struggle stage. Were finally about to come out of the dirty water, and then were heading into winter, which naturally reduces the number of people.
Abyss Scubas unique business model predominantly relies on returning customers rather than looking for a steady stream of new ones. Ideally, were looking for six to 12 new customers a month, Peter explains. Because most of their returning customers come from abroad, and local restrictions severely closed their pool of domestic prospects, theyve been operating at about 40% capacity for the last two years.
Now, with the hope of the world returning to normal, Peter is readying his marketing funnels to welcome new customers back to the shopand thats where landing pages have come into the game.

Its been tough for the business. When I set up the landing pages, the main goal was to have them there so that as soon as restrictions were lifted, we could turn the situation around and get as many people back diving as possible.
Marketing Smarter with a Smarter Landing Page Builder
Peters marketing strategy revolves mainly around targeting new customers about their offerings through digital advertising campaigns. Over the years, Peter has learned that pinpoint targeting hits a sweet spot for his campaigns. For example, hes currently focused on targeting people applying for the 90-day Australian visa program to reach a high-intent international audience coming to the country for travel purposes.
We really get our best results through PPC, he explains. And just like the ads are targeted to specific people, so are his landing pages tied to specific experiences and excursions Abyss has on offer. Getting the right people through to the landing pages is only the start of Peters story, however. After all, were not talking about click-through rates, were talking about *conversions*. And for Peter, that means qualified leads that are clicking through to the companys booking system. From here, leads either book (and pay for) an experience directly or request more information about a specific outing.
And theyre most definitely getting those qualified leads. Abyss Scubas average conversion rate across its live landing pages is 35%. (The median conversion rate for the travel industry is 5.2%.) Keeping in mind that Abyss is only looking for six to 12 *new* customers a month, thats amazing!

Peters great landing page strategy? Smarter marketing with Unbounce Smart Builder. Fueled by millions of insights and data pointsthis next-gen landing page builder takes the guesswork out of figuring out what gets people converting. Smart Builder can accurately predict which landing page layouts and headlines will work best for each target audience. And that means Peter spends less time building and optimizing his landing pages and more time enjoying his retirement.

Just getting people to look at a page in the first place is hard enough. Once youve got them there, you want to maximize the number of those people who will then go on and book something with us.
Smart Builder, Smart Traffic, Smart Copy? Oh My!
When were talking about smarter marketing, Peter really goes all-out. Not only does he use Smart Builder to *build* high-converting landing pages, but he also uses Smart Copy and Smart Traffic to *optimize* themall with the simple click of a button.
Thats really what I was attracted to in the first placethe fact that its smart. It makes decisions that are based scientifically, rather than on someones gut feeling, he says. While Smart Builder offers a guided building experience directly related to his industry, Smart Copy takes care of the wordsmithing. And then finally, Smart Traffic steps in to direct visitors to the variants where theyre most likely to convert.

Spending hours crafting the perfect landing page? Waiting weeks for A/B tests to run just to get a tiny insight? Ugh, thats *so* 2020.

With A/B testing, you think youve got the right answer, and everyone comes up and says youve got the right answer, and then three or four months down the track, the results have just tapered down again. Whereas [Smart Builder and Smart Traffic] make decisions much quicker and lets you look at how they are going in real-time and adjust things accordingly.
And it really is as easy as that. In fact, our data shows that pages built with Smart Builder take less than half the time to build as a drag and drop systemaaaaannd it gives you increased conversions.
Top tip: Smarter marketing is not just for PPC campaigns. Peter is actually using some of these smart tools to do some heavy-lifting marketing maintenance work. For example, on the Abyss Scuba website, hes been using Smart Copy to help write blog postsand these are currently some of the best-performing SEO drivers to the site!
Work Smarter With a Landing Page Builder That Gets You More with LessJust Like Peter and Abyss Scuba Diving
Smart Builder, Smart Traffic, and Smart Copy are all part of the Unbounce Conversion Intelligence™ Platform. Like Peter, we believe in the value of working smarter, not harder. Weve analyzed millions of landing pages and conversions, and we know what works.
These tools each offer a guided experiencewhether you want to build landing pages, optimize traffic flows, or create content so you can get more from your marketing efforts.

If you want to improve your marketing, reduce your effort but improve the results, thats the best way to go because it puts together the whole packageand it works.
Looking to exceed your expectations just like Peter? Simply turn on the smartsand see what happens for yourself.
