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Lead Generation
12 Tips For An Outbound Call Campaign To Get Big Results
If you need sales now you have got to go out and hunt. You just gotta roll up your sleeves and put in the hard work on the phones.
It would feel soooo good to say, “cold calling is dead”, wouldn’t it? After all, I haven’t met too many people who get excited to jump on the phones for a few hours to a bunch of randoms on the hunt for a sale.
Cold calling, like hunting, is a survival skill.
Life today is considerably easier than it was in medieval times. Have our survival instincts dulled? We have McDonald’s and debit cards. We haven’t needed to practice life-supporting skills and that has made us rusty. This cushy existence seems to create an awkward entitlement that often doesn’t fit with the needs of employers that demand their employees to participate in prospecting efforts.
The reality is simple. If you need sales now, you don’t have the luxury to run an advertising campaign that will bear fruit 3 to 9 months from now.
If you need sales now you have got to go out and hunt. When you need sales you probably won’t have the time or money to spend on hiring it out either. You just gotta roll up your sleeves and put in the hard work. Our research has shown that your salespeople are going to make better calls than any call center will ever produce. They know your offering better, and they know the nuances of sales. Just don’t fool yourself into believing that you can throw down a call list and expect to smash out a bunch of sales. To get results in your cold call effort, you need to follow some truths:
- Be a leader. Hold your callers accountable for their actions. If there are no consequences to their inaction, there will be no action. Motivate your call team by communicating the importance and ROI of your cold call efforts, for the company, and them personally.
- Lead by walking around. The mice will play when the boss is away, so be sure to be an active participant in their success. The Hawthorne Effect demonstrated that a person will increase productivity when they know they are being observed. Your paperwork must wait. There is nothing more important than the task at hand.
- Recognize the actions of making a good call, not the outcome. Callers can not control an outcome so don’t frustrate them in this way. Steering your call team’s mindset toward best practices of a call will eventually result in your desired outcome.
- Celebrate the small wins. When they do something right, give them public praise. Ring a bell, give them a lottery ticket, give them high fives and fist bumps, or simply pay them cold hard cash. Not unlike Pavlov’s dog, humans can be conditioned to recognize reward and seek pleasure, not pain.
- Give them permission to fail. If your callers believe they will be punished or bullied for making an effort, the harder it will be to get them to pick up the phone. Regardless of how poorly they do, protect them from negativity and provide a safe environment to learn and develop their new skills.
- Have a script. When there is no consistency in the way salespeople present an opportunity, it will be impossible to improve on the delivery of the message. The very best movies, speeches, improv comedy, and songs are scripts. Done properly, your scripts are packed precisely with the psychology necessary to achieve your desired results. A well-written script allows your salespeople to maneuver at the right times, and maintain tight control when necessary.
- Coach from the script. For a caller to adjust their approach, they need clear instructions on how to improve. Be supportive of what they are doing right, and give them a reason why a change will help improve the desired outcomes.
- Keep it simple. Overcomplicated scripts and multiple ‘calls to action’ only confuse things. Have a script that works, and work the script. Just like Eminem says, “you got one chance, one opportunity”.
- Practice. The very best way to ‘not sound scripted’ is to repeat the script over and over until it sounds natural. Sidney Crosby is an exceptional hockey player because he practices every day. He didn’t stop practicing when he got good.
- Eliminate distractions. Distractions break concentration and flow. If you ever hope to get better at something, you need to give the mind the necessary time and frequency to move from the short-term electrical area of the mind to the long-term chemical area of the mind.
- Practice positive indifference. Positive indifference is when you untether yourself emotionally from the outcome. This is a coping technique, popularized by Landon Porter, to help salespeople disassociate the frustration of negative responses or missed opportunity. Following the script is a methodical process that, when done in large enough sample sizes, will get your desired results.
- Have fun! Create a boiler room atmosphere where everyone can feed off the positive energy of others. A loud room forces them to talk a little louder and listen a little harder. This energy will translate over the phone. Candy and energy drinks and some fast-paced music make an otherwise tough job much more tolerable.
Customer Journey
The #1 Best HVAC Club Membership To Attract Clients And Sell
There are literally over a million ways to build your HVAC club membership, but where do you start, and more importantly, where do you stop?
There are literally over a million ways to build your HVAC club membership, but where do you start, and more importantly, where do you stop? Having studied hundreds of the best (and worst) club memberships around North America, I have built this club membership based on sustainability, psychological implications, and consumer behavior. The best HVAC club membership is the one that easy for sellers to sell, and buyers to buy.
The goal of any club membership is to get a disproportionate share of your marketplace subscribed to your club, thereby taking them ‘out of the market’ from other HVAC companies. When prospects think of your company first, and like you the most, you have captured their heart. Once you’ve captured their heart, it’s left to your technicians and salespeople to satisfy the mind and open their wallets.
This means that your club membership is not a moneymaker, per se. At best, your club membership will cover off payroll in the shoulder seasons. When a company offers you that silly low, crazy high-value proposition to get you to become a customer, they are only hoping to cover the cost of generating you as a lead. Club memberships are kinda the same thing.
Don’t take this to mean you have to offer the empty promises of hype. Look at it as an opportunity to let your prospective customers decide if they like and trust you enough to get to know you better. A well-designed and executed club membership will give you that opportunity and then keep them happy for a long time.
Here is the best HVAC club membership model:
Preventative Maintenance Provided
- A springtime AC tune-up and cleaning
- An autumn heating tune-up and cleaning (premium only)
Club Membership Benefits
- Priority hotline
- 24-hour priority scheduling
- 2-hour arrival windows
- Schedule reminders
- 100% satisfaction guarantee
- 2-year workmanship guarantee
- 5%-10% off all parts and labor (no caps)
- $49 diagnostic fee (regularly $99)
- $50 - $100/year toward new HVAC system
- Surprise and delight factor
Pricing
- Basic club membership
- $12.95/month for 1 visit a year (auto-renews yearly) or $16.95/month
- FREE for Military, Essential Services, and Seniors
- $6.95 for each additional on-site unit, $7.95 if paid monthly
- Premium club membership
- $19.95/month for 2 visits a year (auto-renews yearly) or $23.95/month
- Military, Essential Services, and Seniors only pay the difference
- $9.95 for each additional on-site unit, $11.95 if paid monthly
Benefits, Explained
Offering 5% to 10% off of any bill is easy to manage and easy for technicians to remember. To discount more than this is just giving up unnecessary margin and makes you look like you are charging too much, to begin with. To have different discounts for different levels of membership incentivizes the premium membership, making it an easier decision for the buyer to upgrade. While there is likely inventory that you should not discount up to 10%, there are other items that you could easily discount more, balancing out the impact over your inventory mix. Don’t get bogged down in the details of each piece of inventory, simply price your products and services accordingly.
PRO TIP: NEVER discount without a really good reason.
When you apply an additional $50 to $100/year toward any new HVAC system you are demonstrating appreciation for your long-term relationships and loyalty. This is a valuable benefit to your club membership and incentivizes two things:
- Staying on the club membership to build up a juicy new unit credit.
- Choosing your company when it comes time to replace their HVAC system because they have a credit sitting on your books.
A 100% Satisfaction Guarantee is a bold message you self-impose on your technicians to get it right. Satisfaction is a completely subjective matter so it’s important to define what you mean by satisfaction, and what you provide if they are not satisfied. Refunding diagnostic fees and refunding an entire new unit sale are vastly different and clarity and transparency are key to turn an unsatisfied customer into a raving fan.
PRO TIP: Don’t invent ways to weasel out of paying up. Fewer limitations represent the greatest value and are a much stronger trust play. There is no better advertising than extreme satisfaction, particularly on the ugliest ones. Find a way to leverage the story.
Offering a 2-year workmanship guarantee on your service and maintenance demonstrates that you stand behind the work of your technicians. This guarantee also puts you back in the customer’s house instead of calling your competitor. There is little evidence to support lifetime guarantees are superior to shorter terms, as most clients are most concerned about immediate ROI. Lifetime could be perceived as a baseless claim, actually damaging your integrity and trust with the client. There is also a significant liability to properly holding a lifetime warranty on your books that can reduce your valuation when you go to sell the business. If you do wish to offer extended warranties, consider charging appropriately for them and building a proper strategy for delivering on those warranties (for example, third-party underwriters or a pooled escrow fund).
A springtime AC tune-up and outdoor coil cleaning gives your company the opportunity to improve the customer’s comfort, safety, and savings. Each visit gives your technician an opportunity to provide options for upgrades, deeper cleaning, and recommend the opportune time to start considering a new unit.
Like the springtime AC tune-up and cleaning, the autumn heating tune-up and cleaning is just another opportunity to impress your valued client.
PRO TIP: Place springtime and fall tune-ups and cleaning on separate lines – more line items, more value.
Diagnostic fees will vary in different demographic and geographic locations. The key to a good diagnostic fee is that it represents approximately two-thirds of your per call cost of running an individual call. In many states and provinces, this is approximately $150 a call. Club members should receive a 50% diagnostic fee reduction as it is a simple calculation of value in their mind, while still representing one-third of your truck cost.
You should always charge a diagnostic fee for repair work (not maintenance) and be willing to refund the diagnostic fee if the customer is not satisfied or if they opt to do the work with you, particularly if it is same-day service. Avoid trip fees or other complicated stacking fees that make it more difficult for the prospect to make an appointment.
Priority hotlines are a simple way to track your calls and demonstrate that your club members actually do take priority. 24-hour priority scheduling with a 2-hour arrival window demonstrates that you understand and believe that a client’s time is the most valuable thing you have influence over.
PRO TIP: Priority is priority. That means ALL repairs, maintenance, and installations for club members.
Schedule reminders make it easy to be your customer.
People are delighted when they are surprised. That means doing something valuable that they had no idea you were going to do. Goettl will swap out your fire alarm and CO2 detector batteries for you. Others give out generous quantities of flashlights, ice cream bars, and other interesting bits as a way of saying thanks unexpectedly.
Pricing, Explained
Offering two options, one visit or two visits a year is based on rational choice theory. When a person is given the choice between two to five options, they are inclined to choose the best of the options provided. When the person is offered the choice of taking it or leaving it, they will more often leave it. This is the primary reason why your club membership should have two options. As an additional point, this allows you to offer a free (or deeply discounted) option to our most cherished members of society.
Offering a yearly price and a slightly higher monthly price is something digital marketers have made mainstream in recent years. There is more value for your company to get money today than to have it trickle in over the next 12 months. This is known as the present value of money. To keep it really simple, money now is always better than future money when creating club membership pricing models.
There is another rising concern about monthly payments, subscription fatigue, and it’s not just streaming services that are implicated. Customers feel like they are facing financial hardships by a thousand tiny cuts, bleeding them of their cash reserves. Home service companies also get bundled into this ever-growing group of monthly payments that are slowly overwhelming North Americans. In short, if you can get paid upfront for your club membership program, take it.
In a study performed by Adaval and Monroe, there is a perceived saving when you expose the prospect to a higher number. $24.95/month acts as a decoy price to the $19.95/month when paid on an annual basis. Note that we are never saying that the price is $240/year, rather we are still providing the monthly impact so that the comparison is easy and enticing.
Given that a truck costs approximately $150/call, $12.95/month at 1 visit a year would cover the expense of one visit. You will want to eliminate renewals and set up all club memberships on annual auto-renewals. By putting your monthly service at $16.95/month (with no end date), you are creating a disincentive to pay monthly. This means you get paid now, which is ALWAYS the best option and reduces the exposure to subscription fatigue. Think of it as the reverse psychology of giving a discount for paying upfront.
Offering a FREE basic club membership for active military personnel and veterans, essential service providers, and senior citizens is a brave and bold move. Actively promoting it proudly is even more courageous. After all, you don’t make money giving things away for free, right? However, when you think of the goodwill associated with this strategy, it will more than pay for itself by many multiples. You now have the opportunity to serve those who serve us, and offer the added value of the club membership with no further discounting to each of these groups.
Strategically, the BIG discount of your club membership saves you having to offer BIG discounts on everything else you sell as well. This means eliminating the additional discount on a new unit sale, in lieu of savings you pass along by way of a free club membership. Thinking of it this way, you appear considerably more generous by offering something of real value at 100% off, than offering a large ticket sale at 10% off.
PRO TIP: Don't want your club membership to be free? Charge $1 a month instead.
Once you’ve provided your first maintenance, and established trust and rapport, go ahead and upgrade them to the premium service for the difference between the two programs. If they have multiple units, you can service those additional systems for as low as $6.95 for each additional unit (at the same address). Just like a car dealer, this is about getting the car onto the hoist. A club membership is not meant to be your big moneymaker, rather your low barrier to entry.
To upgrade to the premium package is $19.95/month for two visits a year or $23.95/month. Military and veterans, essential services, and seniors only pay the difference to get the premium package, realizing real value. Those who have multiple units only need to pay as low as $9.95 for each additional unit onsite.
Club membership is the lifeblood of your HVAC business. The more work you can do providing maintenance in the shoulder seasons, the more stable your business is for growth. A large membership base will feed your technician's hours, improving their income and yours, and allow you to improve their skills and knowledge in the field. Every successful HVAC business has a happy, healthy, and abundant membership base and you deserve one too.
Good selling!
SEO
Think Like A Guerrilla Force To Win The SEO War In Home Services
There's a fierce war happening right now on the Google Battlefield for keywords and ranking, and your home service is facing a monstrous foe.
Customers always ask me, “What about SEO?”
They say I haven’t mentioned the SEO or local SEO and our digital strategy, and they want to know whether it’s essential or not. The reason I don’t present an SEO/Content Marketing strategy to them is that you need a Metric Shit Ton of Money to win at the SEO game. Not many people are ready to tell you that, especially those trying to sell the SEO services. The business owner often replies, “What do you mean I don’t have enough money? I thought it was cheap and easy to rank up in SEO?”
Let’s take a look at what’s happened in the last five years.
Let’s choose a plumber as an example. A business owner says “I want to show up when someone is looking for a plumber. Shouldn’t we use the “near me” expression because it’s up 500%?”
Google Trends – Plumber Near Me
Yes, of course, you want to be recognized as “near me.” Those “near me” searches are up because of people’s mobile phone usage going up like crazy. You can see for yourself on Google Trends. So let’s look at what the search results page looks like for the term “plumber near me.” The first thing we see is Google’s paid advertising for Local Services_. Then we get Google AdWords(more paid advertising). Then we get Google My Business rankings. Then we get to position one and you’ll notice I’ve underlined some URLs like Yelp. And then we get Featured Snippets.
Plumbers Near Me – Mobile Search
On a mobile phone, it’s not very much different. And here you’ll see HomeAdvisor and Angie’s List showing up in the search results.
Those companies are aggregators.
They’re compilers. They bring together a whole bunch of home services. There are other aggregators out there, but we’re going to focus on the Home Services one because we chose the example of plumbing. Right now, there’s a war going on on the internet called the aggregator war. They’re all fighting it out with one another. We’ve got Google with their Google Local Services. Google with Google AdWords. Google with Google My Business. Those are all aggregation. Then you’ve got Angie’s List, Yelp, Thumbtack, HomeGuide, Houzz, and HomeAdvisor in the home services space alone. All are trying to aggregate and help you find the plumber near you.
What makes this one step worse is in May, Google updated the algorithm, and they’re favoring the aggregators.
How’s this war being fought? With money. The investor money is spent on content marketing. Content marketing is SEO marketing: build a page, get it to rank. They’re also spending the investor money on online and offline advertising. Specifically with Google AdWords online, they’re driving up the price of clicks. Now, if you do AdWords advertising and you’re up against an aggregator, you’re paying more for the same click than you were before.
Their whole goal is to dominate page one and spend as much money as they need to dominate page one.
Let’s take a look at one of these aggregators, Angie’s List. Angie also owns Angie’s Home Services, another publicly-traded company, better known as HomeAdvisor and HomeStars.
HomeAdvisor Content Marketing Search Engine Optimization
When you go to a tool like Moz.com you can put in one of these aggregator domains, and you’ll find out some interesting things like they rank 2 million keywords. That’s a crazy amount of content to be recognized for. And they’ve got 90,000 domains linking back to them. That’s a ton of backlinks.
So when your local SEO guy says, _“Yeah, we can create a little bit of content, and we can get some backlinks, and you’re going to rank up!” Nope, not against these guys.
Here are some of the keywords that they’re plugged into. You can see they own “plumbers near me,” which is why they’re my example. Here are their top search competitors. These are the people that are trying to fight for position number one with them. Angie’s List themselves. Home Guide (another aggregator). Yelp (another aggregator). And Thumbtack (another aggregator). Home Depot is a store and an aggregator because it also will help you connect with a plumber. But right now HomeAdvisor owns and ranks number one for “plumbers near me.”
Here’s a Yelp page. You can see their focus on “near me.” The aggregators are taking the clicks and the eyeballs away from the small business. It is bringing them to the aggregator with the sole purpose of getting the shopper on their site so they can sell the lead to somebody else.
That’s how the aggregator makes money: they sell leads.
You might be familiar with some other aggregators like Expedia, UberEats DoorDash, Skip The Dishes, or Airbnb. You’ll recognize, none of these companies make anything or provide any service, except for connecting you with somebody else that does. That’s an aggregator. Businesses hooked on HomeAdvisor don’t like their leads because the leads get sold to three people simultaneously and they’re driving up the click cost. It’s like a vampire comes into your industry, sucks up the leads and the money, and leaves all the small businesses wondering what happened. Others are doing it too. In the mattress space: Purple’s done it, they’ve run a content play. Casper’s done it: they’ve run content play. Leesa’s done it, they’ve run a content play.
Your little mattress store around the corner is not competing for SEO with the mattress store down the street. It’s competing with these big online behemoths that are running colossal content strategies.
Do you think you can win the SEO content war with that little toy knife?
You need tons of content and more relevant content to win that war. And more and better backlinks as a minimum to win that war. You need a content creation team dedicated to continually creating and monitoring your content. And that’s to beat your new competitor, the aggregator. The aggregator is your competitor now, not the little guy down the street. And that’s to get you to the top of the search pile for an undecided customer. An uncommitted potential prospect clicks on your website. Wow, that’s a metric shit ton of work to get a click.
Or, you can focus on becoming thought of first and liked the most.
That’s what Wizard of Ads does. We help our customers get thought of first and liked the most. We direct everybody to your website through mass media marketing. So the visitor is arriving using your branded keywords. They’re already warmed up, and they’re friendly. **You’re their plumber.**They already know a little bit about you because they’ve heard about you in mass media marketing. You can make your website convert better for them if they like you more. So you answer the warmed-up visitor’s questions. We further the relationship using the embedded “brandable chunks” that we create for you. With “we believe” statements we help you create emotional bonds. We fiercely protect your brand online. We search engine optimize for your brand keywords. We win the bid wars on AdWords for your brand keywords. We buy all the other possible domains, and we block everybody else out that may try to rip you off. And then we build competitive Google Adwords campaigns to steal clicks from your direct competitors. Examples of brand keywords would be a company name like “SPL Parts” and then “company name and a keyword” to give you an idea of what brand keywords look like.
Grab the word “reviews”
Take this tip from this post. If you’re not buying this with Google AdWords or are not optimized for this keyword, you should be. You want to leverage your social media content for social proof to show off what it is you do, and you do it well.
- You’re not afraid to show off your work: before, in progress, and after.
- You’re proud of your employees. You’re an excellent place to work.
- Your people are happy and they have personality.
- You’re hiring more like them.
- Customer testimonials/reviews.
These are great things to create social media content & social proof that gives your company emotional benefits and takes it from being a cold thing to a warm thing.
Protect your brand
Create congruence in the positive identity of businesses by embedding your “brandable chunks” and “we believes” across different elements of your marketing and customer experience. The moral of the story is, you should own your page one associated with your brand. You should have the top ad. Your social media should show up on those search results. And your business should show up with Google My Business_ at the top of any searches related to your broader marketing terms and brand identity you’ve carved out for yourself. There was a time, a long time ago, when the most accessed website — the number one website in the world — literally ran out of my apartment. But today, it’s not so easy.
Advertising
How To Use Geo-Targeting And Geo-Fencing To Connect With Your Prospects
There is a difference between Geo-Targeting and Geo-Fencing. How can you use each to the greatest advantage?
What is GeoTargeting?
To GeoTarget is to have your ads show only in a defined geography. In Google Adwords, you can target as small an area as a mile.
What happens if you DON’T GeoTarget in Adwords?
Your ads will run all over the world, and you will spend your advertising budget very quickly. Therefore most people have a location or GeoTargeted campaigns already because they only want their ads to show to people in their immediate area. All of the campaigns we run are Geo-Targeted.
What is GeoFencing?
GeoFencing leverages the GPS in cell phones or RFID tags embedded in devices like wristbands. If a person with a cell phone enters a GeoTargeted area, they have passed through the GeoFence. You can decide to target:
- People who are regularly in your targeted location (i.e., they work or live in that area)
- People searching in that area, or
- People that are just in or show interest in that area.
Mobile applications can be triggered when a device enters or exits a GeoTargeted area. They have passed through virtual GeoFence.
GeoTarget vs. GeoFence, what should I do?
Almost everyone should have Geo-Targeting setup in their campaigns to ensure their advertising budgets are spent in their service areas. For GeoFencing, you have to get good at your mobile advertising and have an excellent mobile-friendly website because you are communicating with someone on a mobile phone.
GeoFencing Example:
Burger King used GeoFencing to target Mcdonald’s customers by offering them a Whopper for only one cent. The objective of the campaign was to get the BK App installed on the phone. Only if you had the app installed could you take advantage of the one-cent deal. The BK app quickly became number one on the app charts.
What can I GeoTarget in Adwords?
You can Geo-Target: Airports, Autonomous Community, Borough, Canton, City, City Region, Congressional District, Country, County, Department, District, Governorate, Municipality, National Park, Neighborhood, Okrug, Postal Code, Prefecture, Province/State, Region, Territory, TV Region, Union Territory, University. You can also radius target. You pick a point and then extend out in miles/kilometers from that point.
Can I exclude areas with GeoTargeting in Adwords?
Yes, you can block areas using any of the targeting methods described above to exclude them. Excluding these areas ensures your ads don’t run in them, which is very popular along borders. For example, one of our customers owns a Jewelry Store that services the Detroit area. In this case, we do not want people across the border in Canada to see these ads, so we exclude Canada.
Can I combine Demographic targeting, Interest targeting with GeoTargeting?
Absolutely. You can combine any of the other targeting methods with your GeoTargeting and GeoFencing strategies.
Which advertising platforms support GeoTargeting and Geo-Fence?
Google Adwords, Facebook Ads (Instagram Ads), Twitter Ads allow you to GeoTarget and Geo-Fence.
SEO
The #1 Best Way To Win The SEO Game Against Aggregators And The Competition
Figuring out how to elevate your SEO is the same as figuring out how to be relevant, trustworthy, and different than your competition.
Feel like you’re swimming in internet acronyms? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the foundation of how you get found online. It’s also a tar pit of details that can get so overwhelming you wonder if it’s even worth it. On today’s Wizard’s Roundtable, Vi Wickam and Gary Bernier join me to help you understand the very basic of basics of SEO. Don’t know where to start? Start here
Runtime approx 20 mins
Transcription:
JOHNNY: Search Engine Optimization, that seems to be a pretty self-explanatory word. You’re trying to optimize your website so that the Search Engine Google can find you and know what’s on your site. But as is the case with so many things in internet advertising, that’s a lot easier said than done. So to help us through that, we’ve got a couple of our digital experts with us today on the Wizard’s Roundtable. In Loveland, Colorado is Vi Wickam. He is going to talk about the kind of content that you need on your website in order to help optimize it. In Toronto is Gary Bernier. He’s going to give you some Dos, Don’ts, and maybe even a couple of quick tips to help you through this as well. I’m Johnny Molson in Springfield, Illinois. These are the conversations we’re having with each other and conversations we’re having with our clients. Conversations normally you’d only hear if you were sitting around the Wizard’s Roundtable. Now I have to apologize in advance. I was having some trouble with my microphone while we were recording this interview. But you know what, you don’t need to hear from me, you need to hear from Vi Wickam right now, who’s going to tell us… What exactly is it that we’re trying to optimize?
VI: What we’re optimizing is, we want to answer the questions that are being asked on the internet. And we want to show up when somebody’s searching for that question to be answered. So, for instance, I might ask, Who is Gary Bernier? Yay. And if Gary doesn’t have a page that talks about, about Gary, you know, it’s highly likely that somebody else might, and it might not be the answer that he wants to be shown. You know, so the idea is, if, if an if a question is being asked on the internet, and I am a relevant source to that, to answer that question, I want to be the one answering that question. Yes. So there are elements of relevance. So how relevant is the content that I’m writing? And there are elements of authority? So how authoritative am I as an answer of that question? And those are the two major elements that Google’s looking for? When it comes to answering that question.
JOHNNY: So let’s take that kind of one by one. Gary, how does a business know what questions are being asked in order to answer them?
GARY: That Johnny is the $10 million question right there? Yeah. Because you have to put your customer hat on. And you have to see the world from the perspective of the customer, which we define as being outside the bottle. So you can read the label. And where most customers find themselves is inside the bottle, staring at the back of the label. There that is the biggest challenge is often the businesses answering a question nobody is asking because they’re going at it from their perspective, not from the customer’s perspective. Now. Here’s the dark side of Google. They also sell advertising. Oh, so the best answer to the question is at the top of the search engine results, kind of, but there’s also this thing that Google’s created in the mix called featured snippets, which is a piece of content that they’ve decided has the authority and the relevance to answer the question is asked. So that is one place that if you’ve search engine optimized your content you can show up for. So to answer your question directly, Johnny, the featured snippets give you good ideas of the questions customers are asking about your service.
JOHNNY: Okay, that’s, that’s an interesting insight there and that we’ve all seen those things that that seemed to get highlighted first. How can one dig for what my clients my customers are asking any recommendations you give clients by?
VI: Yeah, absolutely. So there are a number of tools out there. My favorite quick reference tool is called Google Trends. And you can find it google.com slash trends. And it doesn’t work for what’s called a longtail keyword. So a longtail keyword would be something like you know, Loveland, Colorado podiatrists, but I could search the keyword podiatrists and I could compare it to foot doctor and I could see which one of those is searched on more frequently. So it doesn’t tell you who’s searching but it’ll tell you how frequently they’re being searched and how, what the trends are. In this search, so what Gary said about putting on your customer hat, that really is the first thing if I’m looking for computer repair, you know, my computer’s broken? Am I looking for computer service? Or am I looking for computer repair? You know, if I’m a customer, and I want somebody who’s going to fix my computer, I’m going to be looking for laptop repair. I’m not looking for a computer services company, you know, because that’s, that’s industry-speak, that’s like, Oh, yes, I want an IT service company. No, who cares about that if my computer breaks, I’m looking for computer repair.
JOHNNY: What does it mean to be an authority?
VI: Being an authority means that Google recognizes you as authority? authority. So it doesn’t matter how smart I am, or how good I am within my field unless people are referencing me online, as far as Google goes. So Google’s recognition of authority is a separate thing from actual authority in the real world. So right, I could have a Ph. D. in neuroscience. And unless I’ve written a lot of content that people have referenced and linked to Google doesn’t recognize me as an authority.
JOHNNY: So explain the process for Gary to become an authority? What does one have to do?
GARY: Since a lot of our customers use mass media, whether that’s a combination of radio and television, Google actually treats those broadcast centers as authoritative sources. So if you can get those guys to link to your website as part of your advertising package, you have increased the authority of your site, by association with them.
JOHNNY: You’re saying if I can get my media provider to link to my website, that that’s going to help?
VI: Absolutely,
GARY: Yes. Because they provide the news. And in Google’s eyes, credible news, and that is an authoritative source. Google, again, back to the Prime Directive, we want to answer the question as asked. They look at those guys as putting out to the world on a daily basis the best answer to what’s going on in the world, which we call news. And so that makes them by default, an authoritative source. So as a business owner, I need to really think about content.
JOHNNY: Okay, and then what constitutes content?
VI: Content is multiple things, but the content that Google reads the best is text. So it’s articles that are written in a way that is well written in human-readable format, as well as computer reading, readable format. So when you’re writing, what I would call content marketing, which is really the direction that SEO has gone today, so content marketing is a buzzword. And what it means is writing answers to people’s questions in a way that’s well presented and that’s well written. And it’s done so in a way that both Google can read it well, and a human can read it well. So that’s the trick, if I write just for Google, a human is likely to come along and read it and say, “This is a bunch of gobbledygook. I don’t care. You know, next.”
JOHNNY: So gone are the days when you would try to keyword pack your webpage by saying in Loveland, Colorado, AC repair is done by this Loveland, Colorado company. And you can kind of sense it, Google is really into the that user experience of “Did I did I get the information that I was looking for, that the user was looking for?” So with that in mind, you need to create some stuff that is usable to the user but is also recognizable by the search engines. So Gary, where do things like keywords come into play there?
GARY: Well, Vi opened the door when he said that it has to be machine-readable, as well as human-readable and join us on it. So yes, the keyword phrase, like you said, AC repair leveling has to be embedded in the content in a particular way to make a computer-readable to give you a chance of showing up in the search engine rankings. Because if that’s not done, you don’t even stand a chance. So to Vi’s point, you need a certain amount of content, the keywords need to be placed in the content a certain way that’s that that should be open to that technique. Yeah. That just gets you in the game. But here’s the challenge Johnny that a lot of businesses have is the question The consumer might be asking is not something the business wants to answer. So how do I repair? How do I know whether I need to hire a technician to repair my AC? So are they going to provide how-to information? So one of the top searches, especially on YouTube, is by open the door number one reason people are going to YouTube today is, how do I fix this? How do I deal with this? How do I work this? So lots of how-to questions are being driven through YouTube, for example, and then maybe content that the consumer wants, but the business is uncomfortable providing because they’re like, but that’s what I do. And they haven’t yet grappled with the fact that the person that solved it for themselves wasn’t gonna pick up the phone and hire them in the first place.
JOHNNY: That’s a really interesting balancing act there. You want to provide the content that the user wants, but you don’t want to give away the store? How do you weigh those two? How should a business weigh those two, I guess is the question.
GARY: If you do give how-to information, the ones that can do it for themselves do it for themselves, and they’re happy to get the answer for you. So device boy earlier, now you started coming up 40 on that, which means your site rates up higher, that’s the second part of it is if they get stuck partway through the How to or find it’s too big of a thing for them to get into. You’re already associated in their mind with being able to solve the problem. The famous words of anybody that works with their hands. I wish they hadn’t been tinkered with it first, they made my job harder. job harder means I get to build more. Yeah, I don’t see a problem. No.
JOHNNY: So content obviously being a big factor in SEO, what other things do businesses maybe miss for the SEO for their website?
VI: I think it’s being remarkable. So if you want to establish authority, you have to get people to link to you. So that is in Google’s eyes, what authority is inbound links from other people’s websites to my site. And if I want people to link to me, I can’t be like boring and pedestrian and be saying the same things that everybody else in my interest industry is saying. I have to be remarkable. People have to remark about me because I’m doing something different. I’m saying something different. I’m doing something in a different way. That’s interesting. That’s something you know, bold, courageous, etc. to cause them to want to remark.
JOHNNY: Anything you’re thinking of, Gary, that businesses often miss with SEO?
GARY: Yeah, a couple of things. First one, often they try to optimize the long pages. So we try to optimize their homepage, for example. And that is not the page you want to optimize. We want to let the other pages be optimized and pull people into the site. So focusing on the wrong thing there. When it comes to content, Vi mentioned the content pile. If you’re already competing in a messy content space, where there’s already a lot of content around those keywords, you’re going to need that angle, something that sets you apart. But the other thing that I think the business owner underestimates is, they may have been told that SEO is free. SEO is not free, it takes time, which we know can either be time or money to produce this content. And you need to publish that content on a schedule in order to feed the algorithm in a predictable way because it likes that. And so there are people like that. Yeah, and your consumer likes that. Like whether you’re publishing the Monday Morning Memo and it goes out at the same time every day that predictability makes it very easy for Google the combined sweep up the new keywords and digested added to the pile. So all of this is to get you an impression, which may result in a click. I would say this is not a quick fix. The other thing is that SEO gets sold as a quick fix-all. Just do some SEO optimization in your business and you’ll get a bunch more leads. It’s like, “No, I’m giving you an opportunity to get a bunch more leads.” Right? Well, there’s got to be a good reason for somebody to pick your business out of the pile.
VI: Absolutely. I think that clients or businesses also miss who they’re talking to, and what they should be talking about. Too often I’ve had clients who are like, “Hey, I want you to create pages that talk about how awesome I am and how everybody should pick me because I’m the awesomest person in my business space. And they should just know that like everything I do is better because I’m the most awesome.”
JOHNNY: I think that’s a great slogan, though (laughter).
VI: But they forget that what the customer wants is, how are you going to take care of me? And how are you answering the questions that I have? And that being of service to the customer is ultimately what makes SEO work. That’s what makes content marketing work, is I am looking at the world through an empathetic lens through the eyes of my customer, and answering the questions that they are asking in a way that’s supporting and caring for them.
GARY: The other I’m gonna say trick these days Johnny is Google My Business. Very useful. Every business should have a Google My Business account. And for our Home Services, clients that take pictures of water heaters and whatever, they should upload some of that those photos into their Google My Business because Google My Business reads the data that’s inside the photograph. So when you do Water Heater Repair near me, if there’s a photo that’s been taken, very close to your geo coordinates attached to a business, you’re setting yourself up that way.
JOHNNY: And now, none of these things by themselves seem like they’re going to change the world. But when you stack them and do a little more, a little more, a little more. So I guess the but it can also feel very overwhelming for business. But that’s absolutely it. That’s the challenge for the business owner. So I’m a business owner, looking at this overwhelming list of things that I need to do, where the hell do I start?
VI: So you start by having a website that is fundamentally sound. If you look at the Internet, the website is your home. The social media is the coffee shop where you go meet people. Your Google My Business is your address book, your phone book where people can find you. But you’ve got to have a fundamentally sound website that can convert those visitors into customers. Because if you don’t have a website that can convert a visitor into a customer, I don’t care how much traffic you have, it doesn’t matter because none of those people are going to become your customer.
JOHNNY: So here if there’s step one for businesses, let’s look at the website and make sure that it is capable of doing what I need it to do. Is that fair to say?
VI: Correct. That is that’s the foundational element that you must have when I have a customer who comes to me and says, “Hey, I want you to manage Google AdWords.” I first look at their website and I decide is this a website that needs changes to be made to it before I can convert those visitors into customers? Because the last thing I want them to do is to light their money on fire by putting it into the Google machine without a website that is fundamentally sound.
JOHNNY: So Gary, how do I know if I have a fundamentally sound website? Every time we peel back a piece of the onion, there’s another layer under there.
GARY: Great question, Johnny. And it’s actually a simple answer today. Pull up your website on yourself. Ask yourself these three questions. How easy is it for me to click and call the business from the website? How easy is for me to find the address and the hours of operations, whether they’re open or closed or whatever? So that basic simple information should be easily accessible on page one. And the third question is, do you do what I’m looking for? So above the fold, it has to say you’re solving the problem that I’m looking for. Otherwise, I’m just going to bounce and go to the next thing. Because if I’ve gotten to the website, the most important question it answers is, yes, you can solve my problem.
JOHNNY: Search Engine Optimization, one of the many layers that go into making your website usable and findable. And if you have any other questions, please leave them in the comments below. And remember that Wizards Roundtable is also a podcast. You can hear the audio version of this anytime. Just subscribe to Wizard’s Roundtable wherever it is you get podcasts. And if you have any other questions you are welcome to email us.
Marketing
How Digital Marketers Continue To Dupe You And Make You Feel Like A Fool
The quest to answer the question – which of my ads is working – is noble. It is not easy. It is elusive and requires wisdom, not...
There is a famous quote from John Wanamaker,
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
That statement has driven businesses on a quest to determine “what is working.” It is the right quest. But the answer to that question was first twisted by the yellow pages. Remember them. Enter the yellow pages. They figured how to sell the answer to The Wanamaker Question. Put a different phone number in the yellow pages ad and when people call that number – BOOM – you know the ad is working. Brilliant – for yellow pages. Here is what the yellow demons of advertising knew. They knew this made them look good. Here is how. Remember back to the days of yellow pages. Did you ever do this?What was the name of the HVAC company again? It was Joe something. Grab the yellow page, flip to Heating and Air Conditioning, look up Joe – there it is – Joe and Sons Heating and Air. You then dial the magic Wanamaker number and BOOM – the yellow demon jumps up and rings the leads bell– ding, ding, ding —- I got you a lead. Reward me. I win the Wanamaker trophy. I know, I know, the Wanamaker Trophy is a golf trophy, but I couldn't resist.
What yellow pages data actually tells the business is that yellow pages was the LAST point of contact. What yellow pages wanted you to believe is that it was the ONLY point of contact. The only influence.
But here is the real question, what made the consumer lookup Joe in the yellow pages in the first place? Was the consumer trolling the yellow pages? Or was it something else? The data does not answer that question. The data does not actually tell us if the yellow pages advertising created a lead. What it did do was make yellow pages look really good. And that is what yellow pages wanted. So, you would pay your bill. Next, enter the evil genius of measuring using phone numbers – the phone companies. Sure, we can sell you 80 phone numbers so that you can track calls. Just pay the bill. Enough said. Lastly, technology monsters manned by programming geeks realized they could sell software if it could help answer the Wanamaker question. Yes, we can track all 80 phone numbers and put it in a report. This way you know what ads are working. But you actually don’t. All you know is the last point of contact. For example. The radio ad with a different phone number. Does the consumer remember the phone number or do they go to your website and look it up? Here is a clue. I bet the calls from your website phone number rose around the time you had an increase in direct traffic to the website around the time you started a radio ad. Hmmm…. Coincidence?
Listen to the story the data is telling.
The truly sophisticated companies know this. The ads that get attention, the ads that hold attention, and the ads that convert people to a customer are often different. And guess what. Without getting attention and holding attention there is no opportunity to convert. But which one gets the trophy – you got it. But which is working? Answer – all of it. It is all important. The quest to answer the question – which of my ads is working – is noble. It is not easy. It is elusive and requires wisdom.
Not 80 different phone numbers.
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