 HOW TO HIRE AN AGENCY TO MANAGE YOUR GOOGLE ADVERTISINGYou know your competitors are killing it with Google Ads, but you don't know how much to spend, or who to trust with your hard-earned money? Google Advertising accounts for more than 70% of their revenue, that facts speaks for themselves. Advertising on Google is still a highly profitable medium and tactic to generate new sales for your business. Before we dive in, I want to get a couple myths that we hear about Google Advertising from potential clients out of the way, this will put your mind at ease. First "Pay per click" doesn't mean you you pay over and over if the same person clicks your ad, which would cost Google a lot of customers and more importantly revenue. PPC advertising is not too expensive if you don't have a system in place to capture, quickly contact, and nurture the leads you get from Google Ads then you will spend way more than necessary. This is the most common issue I see companies facing when they advertise on Google. How to select the right Google AgencyWhen you go to choose an advertising agency for your company, the fastest way to failure is making your choice based on price. There is always someone willing to do it cheaper and shittier to be perfectly honest, those two go hand in hand. I can't tell you how many of my client's minds I've changed over the years, they thought they had a properly built AdWords campaign, come to find out, half of the features that Google ads offers were not even setup. Talk about BS! Imagine buying a brand new Tesla Cyber Truck and when it gets delivered it shows up and is missing tires, no steering wheel, or driver's seat. Sure, it runs but you aren't going anywhere with that truck and you'll be pretty pissed off that you spent all that money and it's not serving its purpose. You want to take it out driving and get a bunch of attention, that's the only reason anyone would even buy one, wow they're ugly! I highly recommend that you hire an agency with experience in your specific industry. Nike wouldn't hire a construction advertising agency that's never done e-commerce ads before, I don't want you to make that mistake, it can be very costly. Ask the agency you are considering to show you some ads similar to your business or industry at the very least. If you are spending money advertising locally which more small businesses and are tight on funds, you should strongly consider finding a local advertising agency nearby that understands your geographical area, consumer behaviors, and can strategically target consumers in your area. Every region has its own unique characteristics, Sacramento CA where we are based is heavily saturated with Government employees and state workers since it's the Capitol of California. The right advertising agency will know details like this and be able to craft the perfect message for that audience. Sacramento and Dallas's consumers are totally different and at the core have different belief systems. A larger agency will tend to be less locally-focused, which can be cost-prohibitive for smaller home service companies, they tend to run statewide if not nationwide campaigns. If you are going to make an educated decision, you need to know only know what questions you should ask but have a basic understanding of everything that goes into an Ad Campaign. There are 2 completely different segments to advertising on the Google Ads platform, the first being search campaigns, and the second being display. Search Ads are only on the results page for whatever keyword term you put in on the Google search tool. Display Ads are placed on a network of Google sites like YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, and over 2 million partner websites across the Internet. They are the ads you see before your youtube video plays or the text ads you see on your Gmail dashboard. The reach of this platform is massive and the more creative your messaging is the more profitable your campaign will be. Now that we have that out of the way, it's important for you to understand the basics of each segment. So let's go over the main sections that you need to know if you are going to find an agency that will perform above your expectations, that's where most agencies fail. They don't spend enough time with their prospects discussing realistic expectations.  8 questions to ask before hiring a Google advertising agency• Keywords - What are the best keywords to go after? Everything from choosing the keywords to go after and what keywords to eliminate from your campaign, it's important that you know how to structure, and bid on the keywords that drive consumers with the highest intent back to your landing page or website. • Ad Copy - What problem are you solving in the market? You need to be engaging and highly relevant to what the audience you are serving ads to. Generic boilerplate offers like "free consultation" do not give your potential client the information they want. • Ad Design - Will you be using text, video, animated, or static graphic ads? It's important that the agency you work with knows how to create compelling ads that cut through the noise. 2020 will be the biggest year for video, done right that will be your most profitable media. • Campaign setup - How will the agency structure your ad groups? By region, by service, or product category? Our most profitable campaigns have ad groups that are geographically targeted and each service is its own campaign. • Tracking - How do you track the visitor's behavior coming to my website or landing page? You need an agency that isn't guessing but can prove the landing page is working and people are getting the best information they are looking for. Google Analytics alone is not enough, you need to be able to track, page scrolls, page clicks, and actions, there are great tools agencies use to track visitor behavior. • Reporting - How often will you get updated on how the campaign is performing? If you're dealing with anyone like us they are working on the campaign at least a few times a week. You should get a performance report at once a month, it's also important that the report includes the total ad spend for the month, how many clicks, and how many conversions (inquiries) came from those clicks, this is how you will determine your customer acquisition cost. • Landing page - Are you sending traffic to a page designed specifically for the campaign or a page on the website? I always recommend creating a specific landing page for each ad group, that will increase the relevancy of the content the visitor is looking for which in turn gives you a higher quality score that lowers your overall cost per click. • Updates & Changes - How often will you be working on the campaign, and how often do you create new ads? If the agency your considering is like us they will be working on your campaign 3-5 days a week, monitoring your ad position, click costs, and quality scores. It's a never-ending process. We are always making improvements, refining our campaigns to increase performance and lower your customer acquisition cost. I think another important consideration in choosing a great agency, is that they will be 100% transparent with you, share specific detailed reports and data. An Agency who tries to control the performance data that you see or have access to is most likely not looking out for you.  Elements of a great Google Ads reportEvery good agency has developed or found its own way to explain the performance of its client's advertising campaigns. There are 3 critical components that should be in every report and they should be easy to understand for the client, the best ad agencies have a dashboard that translates all the technical jargon into a visual dashboard their client can understand. 1. Campaign performance report - This report includes basic information such as clicks, click-through rate (CTR), average ad positions, conversions, conversion rates, and conversion value. We monitor each campaign and ad group for search terms with a low cost per conversion, the goal should be to increase the quality score and lead volume over an extended period of time. 2. Search term report - This report allows you to see what search terms people are entering that are leading to your ad. The more relevant the search term is to your business the lower the cost will be and the cheaper your cost becomes to acquire a customer 3. Demographics & Geographics report - To better understand your audience and create content that is more relevant to them you have to know who they are and Google provides some valuable data on who is clicking your ads. What device they're on like desktop or mobile, also their location, gender, age, and household income. Understanding the terms of working with an Ad AgencyThe best advertising agencies that have proven success charge a setup fee to onboard you as a client, do a consultation, develop your strategy, and execute all of the copywriting and creatives involved in setting up the campaign. After the initial setup is completed, the agency will charge a monthly premium on top of your monthly ad spend ranging from 25-40%. Let's say you are committed to investing $5,000 on advertising spend per month, you can estimate a total management fee of about $2,500 to run your monthly ad campaigns. Another common structure is a flat fee (e.g., a retainer model) that may also be available. 10-15% is a red flag management fee, beware of discount providers. The best agencies are not cheap but they get results and in turn, the money you pay as a management fee is completely covered by the returns you are getting compared to an agency that just glances at your campaign a couple of times per month. You need to be realistic about your results from the beginning. If you are just starting with a small budget in a competitive region, then be aware you’ll likely have some serious competition with an established digital footprint and lots of organic search results. Initially, you're going to have to spend more to secure a top rank in search. Remember you need a place to log all of the data you are collecting from the campaign, such as calls, chats, and form entries. A customer relationship management system will help you go the most out of your campaigns and maximize the customer lifetime value of each new customer. In conclusionInvesting in Google Advertising, and letting experts that know how to maximize your returns is a smart way to go, but you need an agency that is proven, specializes in your industry. Be straight forward and realistic about your expectations when you're communicating your goals to an agency. Don’t be afraid to ask the 8 important questions above, if they dodge them or can't give you a direct answer walk away, you deserve to get the best team for the job.
I recommend starting with a month-to-month deal initially and stay in regular communication with your agency in the beginning, make sure they deliver reports you’re expecting, on-time, every time. If you are not clear about something ask for clarity on exactly what they are doing and ask them to show you their work logs and correlate efforts to improved results. Google Ads may be the agency’s expertise, but this is your business on the line, you deserve honesty. Stay firm to your terms and be open-minded to the data you collect and you will set the business up for long term success. Written by: Adrian Boysel - Digital Marketing Trainer & Speaker Digital Marketing and Advertising Strategy for 2020 There is no better business growth tool than digital marketing and advertising. While making money from home has never been easier, it can also be more overwhelming than ever if you're new to the industry. If you are relying solely on tutorial videos on YouTube then you are risking your current or future income on tactics vs strategies. So you're probably thinking to yourself, how do I know what strategies will work, and which won't? The good news is I have an answer for you! The tough news is you will have to be coachable and remind yourself that you should always be a student. Keep your mind open to new ideas as the strategies we teach are rooted in science and date back to the Greeks. If you're anything like me, you believe that there is nothing new that hasn't already been said, we each just say them in our own unique and special ways. Our team has been creating digital marketing campaigns since 2007, I've had many of those campaigns generate millions of dollars for our clients, and some of them generate nothing at all. Over the years I've learned the science of marketing and it has made a dramatic impact on our success for our clients. It's time to share the secret sauce of what we do different. I want to share the 5 keys to ensuring you have the highest chance of success possible when using any type of digital marketing platform to grow your business. These are the 5 most important questions you should ask yourself at the beginning of developing your online marketing strategy: #1. What is your objective? If you start a marketing campaign without an end goal it will never reach its potential and the chances of your success are extremely low. I'll be the first to admit that I ran marketing campaigns in my early years as a graphic designer without a clear objective. You MUST have a precise goal or what you want the campaign to produce by the end, and that does not always mean financial goals. There are other important and valuable marketing goals like social currency, market data, and brand awareness. Reaching a targeted audience with your brand can increase the value of your brand, and become a viral engine of growth for your business. This approach is more commonly used with large companies with huge marketing and advertising budgets. If you're like most small to medium-sized businesses then your goal is revenue growth. In my years in print marketing, it was not rare to see our clients double or triple their investment. In the digital age that we are living in that number has exponentially grown and that's a huge opportunity for anyone willing to take the time to learn how to harness the power of the internet. #2. Who has a problem, and how are you going to solve it? This is a two-part question and for a damn good reason! Too many business owners are marketing their services instead of solving problems, and they’re blowing money advertising to the wrong audience. 97% of people are not in the market for what you have to offer, so why are you competing for that tiny 3%? By knowing who your client or customer is you start to understand the journey that they go through to making a purchase of your product or service. For example; Let's say you own a smog shop that is struggling to get new business, you've tried digital marketing and it was a loss for you. The company you hired promised you the world, then vanished and just took your money. This is the most common problem that we see as an agency when clients come to us. They hired someone who over-promised and completely under-delivered... that person didn't communicate with them or give them the attention they deserved. Build real relationships, help people and show them you care by being in constant communication. This is why we win against our competitors that charge less than we do. #3. (Logos) Logical reasons someone should do business with you? Knowing the facts, or statistics that are relevant to your customer’s needs are essential to building a relationship with them. For example: According to (SOURCE: Dialogtech) Facebook advertising is 70% cheaper to acquire a customer than Google Search or Display Advertising. Facebook advertising spend increased to 25.56 billion dollars in 2017, more than a 107% increase from 2016. It's important that you have your facts and be sure to cite them if you are using them to persuade someone. You may also use information such as price, turnaround time, or other industry statistics that explain the logical value of your product or service. Analytical thinkers will appeal to this approach more than the environmentally friendly person who is inspired by their ethical beliefs. Logic appeals to everyone and it's important to have market data in order to separate yourself as the industry authority and show your customers that you know what you are talking about, especially in an industry like digital marketing that is clouded with amateurs and hype. #4. (Pathos) Emotional reasons someone should do business with you? Emotions prompt action and create a sense of loyalty with a brand. Inspiring love, joy, fear, anger, happiness, excitement, vanity, pride, or sadness are some of the emotions that can create a connection to you and your target customer. If you know who your target client is then you will know what the primary drivers are for their decision making. We live in a world that is becoming increasingly aware and concerned with the issues that are impacting the world we live in. Global warming, mass shootings, Cancer, and Homelessness are a few of the top issues we face as humans. What emotions has your target client or customer faced when dealing with your competitors, your industry, or even you? You may bring relief from the stress by helping someone find new customers, while at the same time bringing joy to them by helping them make more money than ever from those new customers. #5. (Ethos) Ethical reasons someone should do business with you? Ethics in business is becoming more important than ever. As it's been said, people do business with those they know, like, and trust. You need to be trustworthy no matter what business you have so that's a given but what are some of the other ethical reasons people do business with them? Social issues are awakening past and future generations to develop new and innovative ways to solve problems. Whether your non-profit or for-profit your target customer has values that drive them to buy from you or someone else. They may value speed because they been strung along and they just want to see results as quickly as possible, or for someone else, it may be price. Maybe you offer a solution that makes an impact on their health, or on the environment. These values can create a connection between you and your target customer that lead them to doing business with you instead of your competition. What ethical values does your business have that will attract people to you, people that believe what you believe? Last but not least, why should people listen to you, why are you a credible source, and what are your accomplishments? Your future clients want to work with people not just a company. They want someone that will slow down and listen to their needs, value them, and treat them right. So now it’s your turn to get to work and start helping people improve their lives by better understanding the products or services your customers need. Download the worksheet below and be sure to drop a comment if this post helped you, I want to hear your feedback and wins on how it’s helped your business. Be sure to drop a comment if this post helped you, I want to hear your feedback and wins on how it’s helped your business.  
6 reasons why you should invest in a new website in 2019
1. Your website is ugly on mobile devices I bet at least 7/10 of your website visitors come from a mobile device. The average time spent browsing the internet on mobile devices is an astounding 4.3 hours per day. This an insane fact that you should be capitalizing on. You need your website to look stunning when a visitor is on their iPhone, iPad, Galaxy, etc. Pick up your phone and type in your website address. How does it look? If the text is cut off on the screen, menus do not load properly, your site loads slow, etc. you're missing out on a chunk of leads. 2. Little to ZERO leads generated Are you upset by how many leads your website generates month after month? Your website should serve as a lead spittin' fountain that helps fill your pipeline on a daily basis. To attract leads with your website you need:
3. Unclear and irrelevant call-to-actions What is a call-to-action (CTA)? A CTA is a button or link that you place on your website to drive prospective customers to become leads by filling out a form on a landing page. Your website should lead visitors down a clear path with relevant CTA's on every page. Every time you create a new page, ask yourself "What is the purpose of this and how will I guide the visitor to take an action?" Whether you want visitors to subscribe to your blog or fill out a form to request more information, you must guide visitors. People need to be told what to do otherwise they take no action. Take a look at your site and see if you have any intriguing CTA's, such as:
4. You're embarrassed to tell your customers/clients to go on your site If you're embarrassed to have customers go on your website because it looks like it was built in the early 2000's, you might need a new website. Unfortunately, design on the internet changes fast and if your site isn't improved regularly, chances are it might look and feel clunky. 5. Video and live streaming Video and live streaming are HOT! Groupon Works has concluded that in 2017 video will take up 69% of all consumer web traffic. (the equivalent of 4x as much web browsing and time spent emailing.) Benefits of video on your website:
If you're not taking advantage of video and live stream feeds on your website, you're really missing out. Pro tip: If you hate writing, you can have all of your videos transcribed for only $1/min at rev.com 6. Your website is anti-social! Are you leveraging the power of social media on your site? Your website should be harnessing the power of social media by having it work seamlessly to promote your brand. From Facebook news feed integration to shareable buttons, your site needs social media integration. I want to share 3 techniques with you that I’ve used to create million dollar brands.
While many people think of Coca Cola, McDonalds, or Apple as the worlds most successful and recognized brands, that’s just not the truth. I believe the most powerful brand in the history of our planet is “America”. Also knows as “The United States of America”. You can go to the middle of a 3rd world country on the other side of the globe and say “America” I doubt a single person would not know what you are talking about. The point of this episode is not about just a name, but America as “The Brand” known across the world, it has an extremely high rate of familiarity worldwide but stands for “Freedom” “Prosperity” and “Opportunity”. So how did they do it, with money? Nope! Brainwashing… haha I’m just kidding… well maybe a little. Let me explain why for real, national identity, national community, and common interests are important factors in a winning brand. Let me say that again because it’s very important, national identity, national community, and common interests are important factors in a winning brand. So how can we apply these to our business create award winning brands and followings? Let’s start with National Identity… According to Google.com the definition of “national identity” is a sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language. The important keyword being cohesive distinct, and culture. Creating a winning brand requires consistency across all mediums. Visually you need to use consistent fonts, and colors, such as America’s “Red, White, and Blue” used by millions of companies today. Red representing Valour, White represents Purity, and Blue Perseverance. So when picking your logo color(s) don’t just choose blue because it’s your favorite color. Find a color that represents the qualities of your business, the industry you are in, and the culture you want to set with your brand. I can’t stress to you enough … color matters! Like color… symbols, logos, and characters are also very important. The meanings behind the American flag, Uncle Sam, Bald Eagle and Statue of Liberty run deep as visual reminders of what the American brand stands for. What does your logo convey to your customers? Strength, Creativity, Honesty, or does it say “Bare Minimum”? A logo is about more than just looking cool. National community is equally an important keyword in developing a great brand, who are your buyers, what are their hobbies, how old are they, are they men… women… kids? Knowing your dream customer or client is a critical element to developing a brand that will create what is called “Blind Loyalty”. Change your approach from talking about yourself to talking about what matters to your clients. Solve their problems, their pains, and share your beliefs on how they should be fixed. People don’t buy what you do; they buy “WHY YOU DO IT”. This is why content is so important to a brand, like the Constitution is to America. There are a thousand companies cleaning carpets, or selling real estate. They are buying you, not your service. Successful branding is done by connecting with a large group of people and uniting them with one belief, so what is it that you believe in? What problems are in your customers lives that relate to your industry? If you can find the Common Interest between you and your customers you will create branded “blind loyalty”. As long as you are true to those beliefs, and stay consistent in your all your actions. Whether it be your marketing, advertising, printing, videos, website, or content. Be authentic. How many “jingles” or “expressions” can you still recall from memory when you were a kid? The Pledge of Allegiance for example is an expression of loyalty. “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R US Kid” a memorable jingle that creates reinforcement in the minds of your customers. Express your interests, beliefs, causes, or what is important to them and you. So remember… National identity, National community, and Common interests. Four Myths of Google Advertising
1. AdWords works wonders. If it didn’t, Google wouldn’t have earned 97% of its $74.5 billion 2015 revenues from it. 2. Your competitors can click on your ad as many times as possible and you will be charged endlessly. Google has taken great steps to stop this from happening. There is even automated processes to identify if your account has been victim to click fraud. Google even has a dedicated team who manually looks at suspicious clicks and they can refund any click fraud. They will even launch an investigation if you feel there has been click fraud with your campaign. Google wants to hang tight on the 97% of their business, so you better believe they will do all they can to make their advertisers happy. 3. You don’t need to advertise on Google when SEO gets you web traffic for free. It’s true, if your site is ranked #1 on the organic listings, it is free visibility. But watch out because it takes a ton of time to get to first place and you’re not guaranteed to get there. Your ranking can change overnight or on the next Google update. We usually recommend a hybrid model of both paid advertising and SEO so that you can double the chances of getting leads on your site. 4. AdWords is too expensive and I will get little return if I invest in it. For most businesses that have their account managed by an AdWords expert, they see a significant return on investment, such as our carpet cleaner who makes up to $2,500 a day scrubbing rugs. The beauty of his campaign is he is no longer driving 3 to 4 hours from job to job, but staying close to home and able to do 2-3 more jobs per day. We're unlike other advertising and marketing agencies. Most agencies love to talk about building your identity, the percentage of your bounce rates, click-through-rates, etc.
To the average business owner, none of this matters. At the end of the day, what matters is the return on advertising spend. Our approach with clients is purely ROI driven. We want to show you the numbers and have it all make sense. For example, if you're a roofing contractor and want to bring in more revenue, all you need is to understand the numbers. What is your average roofing job? $12,000? Cool. What percentage are you willing to allocate towards advertising and marketing? 5% of your gross revenue? 10% of your gross revenue? As a rule of thumb (depending on the industry) you should feel comfortable as a business owner allocating 10% of the job towards your advertising and/or marketing. Now, if you know on average your closing rate is 25%, then it will take 4 appointments to close a roofing deal. If we run a campaign and can get appointments for $150 a piece, it effectively costs you $600 (or 5% of total job) to score a $12,000 job. This is great ROI! When you know your numbers, you can scale as big as you want to (as long as there is enough demand). At this point, you know if you want to hit $120k in revenue a month, all you need to do is land 10 jobs, which will cost you around $6,000 in advertising costs. Do you want to make $1.2 million a month? Scale your campaign even further and spend around $60k a month on advertising. The great thing about advertising is the scalability. If there is enough demand for your product or service, you can scale infinitely. It is great scaling advertising campaigns, but make sure you have the resources (usually human capital) so that you're not creating an imbalance. In 2016 you can find the best return on investment with Facebook (in most cases.) We consider Facebook to be the best advertising platform out right now. The ability to hyper-target your customers based on income, geo-location, college level, by pages liked or hundreds of other ways, it is limitless. Since Facebook advertising is newer it is still easy to have a much better return on investment than other advertising platforms. It costs a fraction of what other marketing platforms charge. Facebook is a lead generation monster, whether you're a realtor or a company selling software to businesses. You're ability to remarket to existing customers or leads is amazing with Facebook. If you do not have a database, Facebook is here to fill your database up and market over and over again to your customers without traditional email marketing. Adverting on Facebook works for tiny budgets or large. Whether you want to spend $1 a day or $100k a day. Facebook can take on your mission!  Browsing Forbes website, I noticed #23 for 2015 on Forbes list for "America's Most Promising Companies" is Yodle.
It is truly amazing how a company like Yodle can do $187 million in revenue and continue growing. Almost $16 MILLION a month in revenue is not an insignificant number. Reader discretion advised: This article might include a little bit of bashing, but that is okay. The truth needs to be exposed sometimes. Yodle does not do a single thing for business owners, except integrate some simple features into an all-in-one dashboard and charge $3,600 per year for it. Sometimes they try to squeeze in a $497 setup fee if they can suck it out of you. I actually went through their demo with a sales rep and checked out their platform, which the client interface is lame and their entire UX is dated. At the end of the presentation, I asked the Sales Rep, so basically your platform connects a few components into a singular place and there isn't any actual work on your end (all efforts are done by the customer, not Yodle)? And the shocker came, he told me "Yes." That is when it got awkward. He knew I caught on to their scheme, the rep didn't push the sale any further and we hung up. After speaking with dozens of business owners, they told me that Yodle was relentless about following up with them and pressuring them into a sales agreement for 12 months. The funny thing is he NEVER followed up with me. It has been eight months and I am still waiting for that follow-up call. After the sales presentation, I was puzzled. I started questioning myself. How can a company that offers something so little in value have over 50,000 customers and counting? You would think a company that charges thousands of dollars a year and a setup fee would help with at least one of the following:
Well, I figured out their strategy... 1. They're damn good at selling over the phone to naive small business owners. 2. It is all about presentation. Their marketing collateral is on point. They have beautiful brochures, ebooks, success stories, white papers, etc. 3. Once they promise you the world, you're tied into a contract. That is recurring revenue every month. I guess the key to success and being that big marketing name on Forbes list comes down to presentation and persistence. They're named one of America's Most Promising Companies because of their appearance. It is all about presentation and how a company is perceived from the outside, rather than their inner layers, such as the ROI they provide for customers. Bottom line... Yodle is great at three things: Cold calling, presentation and selling the dream. Is Your Website Developer Stringing You Along? The 2 Most Common Fears When Building A New Website.12/16/2015  Example before and after of website enhancement. Oh, the horror of working with web development agencies...
"I know I need to improve my online presence and I am willing to pay for it. The thing is Matthew, I am nervous due to numerous web design companies I have worked with and not getting the end-result I need." We hear the same-old-story on a daily basis. Business owners have paid a "web guru" to have a website built out and face a handful of problems in the process. The web design company usually promises the world with short turnaround times and timid prices to get the client. As a client, you think you scored a great deal on a website for $900, but in actuality (in most cases), you just ran into a wall of problems, hold-ups, and excuses for the project to be completed. The reason for the HUGE variance in quality across web development companies is simply due to the ease of barrier to entry. Anyone with a computer can call themselves a "web developer", "web guru", "marketing specialist" or any other flashy name. With web development, there isn't an industry-backed credential that certifies you as a professional web developer. With the barrier to entry being so easy, it is difficult to separate those who slap on a WordPress theme and make some generic changes with the themes settings, whereas a true professional uses their knowledge of UX and UI (User-Experience and User-Interface), clean code and the latest development languages to create a beautiful experience for your project. Common complaints we hear about other web development companies are:
Here is an ACTUAL complaint from a new customer that they told us about a web development company that they finally gave up, cut their losses and moved on from: "I spent almost 16 months with xxx company just trying to get my site live and dozens of hours trying to convey what I was looking for on my site to take my company to that next level. After being strung along, exhausted from trying to get it right and spending five-figures on design and development costs, I cut my losses and went on a journey finding a reputable company who could meet my needs." After developing more than two dozen websites over several years now, I knew as a project coordinator, I needed to identify customer pain points and what really makes them hesitate with launching a new site and building that new image for their company. So, I begin cold calling to find prospects who had lame sites in the niches I wanted to go after and there are two things I found and in 90% of the cases for fear of moving forward with a new website. (SPOILER ALERT: It was NOT money!)
The problem with giving up on finding the right web developer comes down to three things:
So, here is why you need a website that WORKS for YOU... Infinite benefits for having a new website, but we will list three primary ones: 1. The internet is the phone book for businesses. If you're not listed, you're losing out on ($$$) thousands or even millions of dollars in revenue every year. 2. Having a clean website that is best-in-industry builds a tremendous amount of authority for your company. Having an outdated site (even 3 years old) with poor user-experience often makes potential customers hesitant to work with your business. 3. Everyone is on their phone searching for the services and products they need or want. 81% of customers start their research online before calling or visiting a business (Source: adweek.com.) Having your business shine on mobile is so so so important! True professional web development companies (LIKE US!) have the following traits and ideals:
Lead Butler is the best way to turn form submissions on your website to phone calls in seconds.
If you're like most businesses, you're busy as a bee and often forget to look at any leads that have come through your forms on your website. The problem is as these leads slip through your pipeline, your potential (who WAS interested in your business!) customer leaves your site and starts shopping your competitors immediately. We know this story all too often... You're busy at work closing deals and working on projects, suddenly you check your email at the end of the day and see you have an inquiry from a hot prospect. You hop on the phone right away and they say, "Sorry, we already booked an appointment with "your competitor", but thanks for calling back. Feeling frustrated, you wish you had a solution to solve the delay in time from inquiry to phone call. Here is the thing... If you follow up with web lead within 5 minutes, you're 9 times more likely to convert them. (Source: InsideSales.com) With my business, I had this problem for too long until I decided to take charge of my leads and decided to not let them get TOSSED off to my competitors. The solution is Lead Butler. A prospect submits a web lead and Voilà, your phone rings and asks you if you want to dial out to the prospect. Our proprietary software has numerous options for customization. From call recording to call flows, we have the power to make it work well for your business. Have multiple reps answering the phone call? Call multiple phones at once and the first person to answer takes the call. Need an interactive menu to route calls? Press 1 for sales. Press 2 for support. Connect your customers to the right person every time. Want a custom greeting? Not a problem! Upload your greeting with ease and play it at any point during a call flow. Hate voicemail? Get a transcription emailed to your or sent to directly to your phone. Why us? Features are endless. Support is available 24/7. We don't talk the talk... We use our software within our business. There are two types of online lead generation: Advertising and Marketing.
Advertising is the bread and butter for companies like Google, Facebook, and Zillow. Marketing is the "free" or "organic" efforts made through writing content that search engines can find. The two strategies both work when it comes down to generating leads or sales for your product/service. What it comes down to is, do you want instant gratification via advertising or build up your foundation over time for results that pay dividends for many years? Right now you're thinking, ughhh why do I have to choose one over the other. The quick answer: You don't. Our approach: Get aggressive in both. Okay... We understand not every company can afford an aggressive approach with advertising and marketing, but at a minimum you can be aggressive with one approach and experiment with the other. Let me lay out the pros and cons between advertising and marketing for you. Advertising: Pros: -Start getting leads, calls or sales right away. -Ability to target and test ideas quickly. -Instant brand recognition. Cons: -You forever have to spend money to keep leads pouring in. -It takes a good amount of time to create, launch, test and optimize campaigns. -If you're inexperienced with setting up advertising campaigns, you can waste a lot of money. Marketing (SEO): Pros: -Efforts made over time can pay off for years. -You can get started with no cash out of your pocket (it does take time, though!) -You can receive huge boosts if you have connections in your industry. Cons: -It's not "free" like many people think unless your time is not valuable. -With all the work, your competitors could be working harder and outrank you. It's not guaranteed. -Takes extensive knowledge on great content writing skills, keyword analysis, backlink building and page optimization. -It can take several months to realize ROI. As you can see, advertising and marketing are two different beasts, but both have an end goal of getting your business more customers. Search engine optimization has come a long way in the past five years. Today, SEO is all about how well you're connecting with visitors and engaging them on your site with relevant content that is similar to what they're searching for.
Let's take a look at where SEO was like years ago and compare it today... To rise to the top of search engines five years ago, many "internet marketing experts" love doing shady practices to make the rankings jump temporarily. Black hat SEO is just putting a band-aid on one's marketing and devaluing the future of websites. Fortunately for internet marketers (like us) who believe in putting out quality for long-term results, we're finally getting rewarded big time from the search engines. 10 Years ago you could have fun throwing in a bunch of keywords all throughout your site for words you want to rank and it actually boosted your ranking quickly. Today, if you're overusing keywords, Google will flag you website, as well as penalize your site. Don't stuff your site with keywords! With the overused "content is king" phrase being thrown around by internet marketers quite a bit, it's true. The more content that is genuine and truly represents your company and what your business does, the more Google respects it and pushes your site ahead of competitors. Looking back at SEO, photos and videos weren't given much power to help increase rankings at all. Today, everything has changed. Going forward, photos and videos count towards your SEO score more than ever before. With low competition search term keywords, you can create a video and if you optimize it right, you can rank the video (YouTube) in a matter of days. We have done this for many keywords and continue to do so. In addition to video, social media is an integral part of search rankings now too. The more engagement you have on networks, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. the better your chances are for Google to pick up on that and move you ahead of your competitors. When on social media, focus on what you can consistently due to build your brand and amount of followers. You can use social media to sell, but it needs to be indirect selling. For every one "salesly" post, you should have five times more informational and engaging posts that is related to your brand, your company culture, company news, community involvement, etc. We're excited that SEO is moving in the right direction and will continue to do so. More relevant searching across the web will yield better results for businesses who do it right. Better search engine marketing is also better for consumers too! Video TranscriptionHey Everybody this is Adrian Boysel. Wanted to make this quick video, give you a little overview of who we are and what we do. We are BoySell, powered by Adrian Graphics, we're an Adrian Graphics company. We are basically the web development division of our Adrian Graphics Corporation. So I'm going to make this quick and short, and get right to the point.
BoySell.com. Powerful Website Services. We're headquartered in Granite Bay, California, so we're a local business. Again, some of our services that we offer you can find here below. Web design and development, hosting, sales automation, which means automating your sales process when somebody comes to your website for the first time, fills out a contact form, as far as setting up auto-responders of when they put the contact form in, setting reminders and then also having all that information flow into a customer relationship management tool, also known as a CRM, which is similar to SalesForce or Zoho, there's plenty of other solutions out there, but we also set that up for you as well. Marketing and advertising from Google advertising to online marketing, search engine marketing; we can take care of all that for you, and we're experts at it. Tracking and analytics, we can track all the data that we do collect from email addresses and all that type of information, phone numbers, everything that they're interested in, as well as the data that comes from Google that when people are visiting your site. So what pages are they visiting, how long they are visiting the pages on your website, where they go from each page to page, and some more detailed analytics as far as geo, like where they're located and stuff like that. We can even get as detailed as the city and the area. So it's pretty powerful. Email hosting, so if you don't have email ... If your using ABCPlumbing@gmail.com, it's probably time to upgrade and get something that actually has your website domain name, if you have a website domain. If you don't have a website domain, then you can purchase one from us, we got great deals on that, less than ten bucks. It's really simple. When did websites get so complicated?! Remember when making a website was simple, for a non coder you may have had to hire a programmer that knew html, or you could choose to make one yourself. For the most part all you needed build your own was a generic website builder, a few nice images and some basic info, there was basically no competition, but also very view consumers. Now building a website for your business is more difficult than ever, it has become extremely technical to even an early adopter such as ourselves. It's all about SEO, SEM, PPC, SMO, UXI, CSS, PHP, CRM, API's, VVM, Integrations, Analytics, automation, and more recently website security. The list goes on and on and on, enough to make a person go crazy. Are all these steps even necessary to being successful online, or is it just overkill? We believe in keeping the website building process simple, while all these tasks are factors in building the best website are important we think they are just spokes on the wheel in the internet marketing world. You can spend countless hours searching for 1 expert that knows "knows it all" and will be honest about what his strengths are, or you can avoid the nightmare of losing thousands off dollars and valuable time. Finding an expert in all things web is hard to do, and it's even harder to find one with great prices. We offer the best of both worlds, we're experts at building and maintaining an online presence but also offer prices that any business can afford no matter what the size. We are not your $500 website company, if you feel your website can be built for $500 or less you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a website really is. "Your website is an investment not an expense!"Simply put a website is an INVESTMENT not an EXPENSE, how many times have you waisted money hiring a web guru off craigslist and then after months of back and forth emails and countless hours, you end up with a sub par site that you may think looks ok but in the long runs performs terribly on search engines.
We're is the value in a website for you and your business, is it to gain credibility or gain more customers? If I were to build you a site and it for (just an example) $25,000 but it paid for itself in the first 3 months would you be excited to shell out $25k? I know I'd like to make $150k from a new website. The other side of that is the $500 website guy that builds a site for the same business and it doesn't get traffic, gets no conversions, and that business owner relies solely on only his referrals or sales guys to bring in the revenue, a website to him is now an expense. Shouldn't your website work for you? Keeping is simple is the key to our success, no tricky terminology and definitely never ever ever any false promises. Just because you build it doesn't mean they will come, you have to know and understand how people are using the web. I watch some of the ugliest websites out perform websites that are so creative they win awards. We live and breath online marketing and website development, it's the reason why 100's of companies have chosen us to build them a stunning and powerful website their clients, competitors, and community won't soon forget. It's pays to hire a professional, by the way did you know that your website is also a business write off? So If you are looking to dump that chump of a web guy and keep your business here in America, then give us a call and we'll give you a complimentary one on one business strategy session to discuss anything you'd like to share about your company and the goals you have. That's what we care about. Book our free strategy session by visiting http://www.boysell.com/business-strategy-session.html or by calling 916.905.0551 we (Matthew and Adrian) are always ready to take your call. In the first session we never discuss pricing only your needs.  If you’re reading this article, you most likely have dabbed around on your Facebook page, trying to post content that will get you more customers, leads, visitors to your site or whatever your goal may be with your business. Personally, we work with a lot of contractors who are constantly trying to fill their pipeline with leads for their salespeople. One great way, we have been able to help other companies fill their day with appointments has been through Facebook ads. Facebook is powerful. I mean REALLY powerful. I believe that within five years Facebook will overtake Google with its advertising platform. The ability to target your ideal customer is so easy and the wealth of targeting selections that are available (and being expanded upon) is simply amazing. One of our clients is a turf installation company and they had a lackluster online presence. All of their business was derived from referrals, which is great, except when you want to grow your business and add more salespeople. Helping them rank first on Google for various geographic areas was great and we are getting several calls a day, but advertising with Facebook took their business to a whole another level. Instead of scheduling a couple appointments for free estimates a day, we are now scheduling 10-15 appointments every single day. Crazy thing is, there when they’re ready to add a few more salespeople, we can get more aggressive with our campaigns and create demand. They love us! Enough of our client. Let’s focus on some strategies that will make your ads effective. We want you to have the highest return on investment as possible. Listed below are strategies that we incorporate into our own campaigns that yield great returns. 
To keep this simple as possible, conversion tracking is when you paste a code onto your website, which is given by Facebook and then add it to your Facebook ad. Once this is installed onto your site, you will be able to monitor when visitors take specific actions on your website. If your goal is getting more people to fill out your contact form, add your pixel to your website and you will be able to track every time a form is submitted in Facebook’s insights dashboard. This will allow you to figure out if your ad is performing well and give you the ability to calculate your ROI for each ad. This can be used for contact forms, shopping carts, email optins, etc.  2. Create a Compelling Facebook Offer Facebook allows you to create offers. They are super simple to setup and with the right type of promotion, they can get your phone ringing. Offers are a great way to attract new customers or even round up your existing customers. 3. Simple and Easy Call to Action With advertising, you have to lead people. Create a hand holding experience that leads them to the next step. Figure out what action you want a potential customer to take. If you own a contracting company and want them to “Schedule a Free Estimate”, you can do that. If you are selling a weight loss product, you can say “Want to Lose 5 Pounds in 10 Days?” Creating an action that leads your potential customer to the next step is mandatory if you want your ad to perform well. Facebook knows the importance of call to actions and has now incorporated built-in CTA buttons. Seven Facebook Call-to-Actions:
4. Optimal Image Size for Your Ad Type Depending on which type of ad you create, there are different sizes you want to have your image. This important, because you don’t want an ad that you're spending money on looking all funky to potential customers. Here is a link for Facebook’s Official Ads Guide to find the optimal size. 5. Use Awesome Images The first thing you see on an ad is the picture. This is hands down the most important element in your ad. Don’t just place a random picture because it looks good. Take time to think about what message you want to convey to your audience and how it should be represented with your image. We suggest using surprising, eye-catching images with women or animals. The highest click through rates are often from women smiling! 6. Test Different Versions of Your Ad Some ads will perform well, some won’t. Continuously monitoring which ads are the duds and which are the studs will allow you to make decisions on how best to allocate your advertising budget. I suggest creating a few similar ads with slight variations that include your image, ad copy, headline, call to action, and colors used. You will be astonished to see how small adjustments can make a huge effect on your ads performance. 7. Use Text in Your Ad Image: Facebook allows your ad to have 20% of the image as text. Take advantage of the 20% rule and fit as much text into your ad as possible, since the ad copy is limited. Also, the first thing users look at is typically your image. To check to see how much text you have in your image, check here. As we all know, to get found online it’s all about the content you pump out. To stand out from other businesses it’s important to not only create good content, but content that separates your business from average to exceptional content. With the hottest phrase in marketing for the last several years being “content is king”, it’s overused, but it’s so true.
More than ever the quality of content is important. Of course the amount of content you put out is important, but quality trumps volume. What we’re finding works very well is video marketing. People love seeing people (especially women) and that isn’t going away anytime soon. Having video as a part of your online marketing strategy is HUGE right now. It’s the golden opportunity to separate your business from the competition. Ironically, Google is also putting a lot of “SEO weight” for lack of a better term into videos. When Google does something, you might want to follow it. Facebook is aggressively trying to enter into the video space too. The potential to market and get in front of people is limitless. We are constantly seeing other players trying to build up serious momentum with video through live-streaming with platforms such as Periscope (a Twitter company) and Meerkat. All the players in this space know it’s the future and are trying to have video and social come together in a single platform. We’re all busy. We all don’t have enough time. We all are nervous about making a video and getting judged on how well your script is, how articulate you are and the quality of the video. My best advice is to just start today! A few ways we have seen video work well…
2. Use video through social media channels: If you don’t have much content on your website, that’s fine. I still want you to get started today by posting it to social media - Facebook and/or LinkedIn. The more eyes that see your video, the better. The more people who see the video, the more you move away from obscurity and become known in your industry. Like I mentioned earlier, people enjoy watching people (this is why ⅔ of our news feeds are filled with videos.) 3. Live-stream video and build your followers: Where do I start with live-streaming video? This is the future. This is hot! This is what it’s all about. Build up your following by talking about who you are, your mission, your company, etc. and have people know who you are. If you’re engaging and have interesting topics, people will follow you. Imagine having 10k people taking their time out to watch you live. That’s simply amazing. The power with that is endless. At this point you will become an authority in your industry. This a quick (15 min.) article that I wanted to get out without revisions or editing. The point I am trying to make is don’t be shy and just do it. Shift your mindset from perfecting a video to just getting something out there and improve. Get your momentum started today, not tomorrow and start filling your pipeline through video. It’s free, it’s hot and it’s here to stay. The foundation of any effective marketing or advertising campaign is knowing your ideal target customer also known as a niche. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of targeting a large audience (shotgun approach) and then find themselves disappointed with the results or cursing the advertising platform.Well guess what? It is not Facebook's fault if your Ads are too broad, generic, or are not speaking to your niche customer.
So what is a Niche A niche is a targeted portion of an overall potential audience for a product or service offering. A great example of a Niche: Betty Crocker In 1930 Betty Crocker had the difficult challenge of differnetiating her flour in the market. Being a baker she decided that creating a flour for bakers was her best plan of attack. After identifying this niche she was able to in those days scratch together the huge money it took to get her own radio cooking show nowadays you can setup for less than $20. While her popularity grew she took a simple idea of who to sell flour to a completely new level, when she created the very first cook book. If your a Roseville plumber for instance and create an ad "Afforadable Plumbing Service - emergency service - call for a quote" on Google, or Facebook and it performs poorly it's not their fault it's yours or your marketers. I'm a world filled with endless ads in or faces "ad blindness" is becoming more and more common everyday. This is why it is important to get as specific as you possibly can. For instance it would be better for the Roseville Plumbers ad to say "West Roseville Water Heater Repair - 1hr response - Free Second Opinion " or "Leaking Water Heater Repair - 1 hr response - Free Diagnosis" Another example for a financial advisor Is your ideal client 35 or 65? Single or Married/widowed? Amount of assets? Type of investments? Aggressive vs Conservative? Real estate or stock? Income from dividends or high gross stocks like?technology or pharmacuitcal? It's very specific details she as these that will narrow your audience and your lower overall advertising costs. The more relevant the ad is to your targeted customer the more cost effective your campaign will be overall. Lowering the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and increasing your lifetime customer value (LTV) So what are these 5 Spokes....
So what spoke is the most important? Is your business online, retail, or freelance these factors make a big difference in your online marketing approach. Wether you use 1 of the spokes or all of them your key to success is knowing who to craft your message too. To persuade someone in using your services you must first appeal to their logic, emotions, and their ethics. Practice these and you will see a huge improvement in gaining new clients for less money. We help businesses owners everyday create a pinpoint marketing plan that uses all of these spokes, which can then be automated through the best technology on the market. |
Adrian Boysel of Adrian.
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