🌟 Join us for an insightful episode as we delve into the captivating world of SEO, digital marketing, and best practices with our guest, Patrick Dillon, Founder and CEO of WISE marketing.
🎯 Uncover the secret ingredients to SEO success as Patrick shares the importance of understanding your audience, having accurate data, and maintaining a top-notch website to dominate search results.
🚀 Explore Patrick's expert predictions on the evolving landscape of search and the potential impact of new search chat options from industry giants like Bing and Google.
💡 Learn the value of strong content and the potential risks of using AI-generated content in your digital marketing strategy
🛠️ Get practical tips and advice on how to adapt to the shifting landscape of search, ensuring your business stays ahead of the curve and thrives in the digital age.
🔥 Find out how a solid foundation, including a great website and accurate listings, can help you stay relevant and visible as AI engines continue to evolve.
💬 Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn for expert guidance in mastering SEO, digital marketing, and staying ahead in the rapidly changing industry.
Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
hello and welcome to theBusiness Growth Accelerator.
This is Isar Meitis, your host,and today we're going to talk
about something that isbasically the bloodline of most
businesses, which is websitetraffic.
And it doesn't matter whetheryou are a direct-to-consumer B2C
kind of website or B2B SaaScompany that drives traffic of
potential clients and prospectsinto the website in order to
(00:22):
show them what your companydoes, products or services.
Either way, the quality and thequantity of traffic that comes
to your website has a directcorrelation to the revenue
you're going to have.
And then what you have on yourwebsite has, as far as its
impact on conversion, has adirect correlation also on the
outcome, the financial outcomeof your business.
(00:43):
So having a well of.
Optimized website will lead tomore traffic and higher
conversion, or in other words,higher ROI to the resources you
put into developing yourwebsite.
And there are many reasons whyyou want to look into your web
website and reevaluate how it'sset up in its strategy.
It could be that you're justconsidering a launch of a new
(01:04):
product for a service.
In a new niche that maybe youwere not in before or maybe a
whole new direction from astrategic perspective to your
business.
A lot of businesses are doingthat right now because of all
the AI changes that areimpacting more or less any
industry, or it's justreevaluating the effectiveness
of your current website withoutchanging anything, just to
(01:25):
potentially make more moneywithout investing ongoing
resources in that.
So there's many reasons why youwould wanna look.
Redefining and better aligningyour website or recalibrating
your website.
The question becomes how do youdo that?
What are the steps you need totake in order to do this process
(01:46):
in the most effective way?
And our guest today, PatrickDillon, is an expert.
On marketing in general andspecifically within that about
how to optimize websites andtraffic that comes to the
website in order to get higherrevenue.
And in this episode, we're goingto discuss the process that he's
using with his clients in orderto help them achieve these
(02:08):
better results.
Patrick himself has been indigital marketing for many years
now.
He's been the CEO and thefounder of Wise Digital
Marketing Agency for the pastfour years, and last year in
2022, he won Entrepreneur of theYear by the CEO Review Magazine.
So he knows a lot about thetopic and he has helped multiple
(02:29):
businesses apply this.
An effective way, and he's gonnawalk us today through that
process and hence I'm reallyexcited to have him on the show
today.
MacBook Pro Microphone (03:37):
Before we dive into the fascinating
conversation with PatrickDillon, I've got an announcement
to make a very excitingannouncement on April 18th.
So if you're listening to thistoday, the podcast is coming
out, it's tomorrow, but ifyou're listening later, then.
Lucky you.
It already happened.
I'm launching a new podcastcalled Leveraging ai.
If you like this podcast, you'regonna absolutely love leveraging
(03:58):
AI because it's very similar.
I'm inviting really smart peopleto talk about different topics,
but they're all around how youcan use AI in order to be more
efficient, grow the business andadvance your career.
It's going to be very practicaltips on how to take AI tools and
how to develop processes aroundthem in order to see business
(04:21):
results.
The podcast again is calledLeveraging Ai.
It's your favorite host, myself,ISAR Meitis, and with some
really amazing guests.
and you can find it right nowand subscribe.
Right now on the platform you'relistening to all the other
podcasts.
I would love to have you as alistener there as well, and now
to the interview with Patrick.
(04:42):
patrick, welcome to the BusinessGrowth Accelerator.
Thank you, sir.
Patrick, let's start with, whendid it hit you that this is the
holy grail, right?
That, that the focus that a lotof businesses can get a lot of
value just by optimizing theirwebsite.
Yeah.
You know, and it's, I don't, Idon't want to say it's all
(05:03):
website, right?
There's so much more, especiallytoday.
I mean, even if you go back fiveor 10 years, it's, it, it, but
today certainly it's not, it'snot never just a website.
The website's, the website's theonly thing you've, you own on
the internet, right?
Right.
You don't, don't own your Googlebusiness profile or your Yelp
page or your Facebook page.
(05:24):
Those platforms own.
that They, they control thestructure of those pages.
What you're able to display, howmany characters are you able to
use, how many images you'reable, the website's, the one
place on the internet that you,you own, you, you, you
physically own that domain that,that you URL or website address
and you own anything that can goon on the site.
(05:46):
you know, I.
The, the paradigm shift for meas a business owner and I've,
I've founded 10 companies.
I, I, I built and sold a bigsoftware company.
I built a franchise digitalmarketing agency that went into
12 US markets, and it had sevenor 800, 800 clients before I
sold it.
I own two commercial janitorialcompanies on top of, you know,
my marketing agency.
(06:07):
But, you know, for me, the, theshift happened when, you know, I
started seeing the results ofour own digital marketing
efforts for my own businessesbeyond, you know, what we were
doing for clients and the, inthe digital marketing agency
model, we probably helped abouta thousand businesses now over
the last 10 years.
I saw the growth that they werehaving with their businesses.
(06:29):
I started doing the same thingfor our businesses.
Then I started doubling down andtripling down and doubling down
again.
And, you know, today themajority of our, business comes
from our, our own, you know,digital marketing efforts.
a hundred percent of thebusiness that that came into.
And, and continues to come intomy janitorial businesses come
(06:50):
from seo o for the marketingagency.
SEO is the primary driver for,you know, the majority of our
business.
All of our biggest accounts havecome from seo.
you know, we don't even need toadvertise anymore really for my,
my janitorial businesses or myagency because SEO brings in,
certainly more than we need.
we, we turn away about 80% ofthe prospective clientele that
(07:11):
come to the agency.
You know, not the right bit, notthe right budget.
They're brand new businesses.
They don't know directionthey're going and that kind of
thing.
But yeah, it's, it's somethingthat's been evolving for me to
answer your question over theyears.
and I'm, I'm a numbers guy.
I have a, a finance andmarketing background, so I, I'm,
I'm.
You know, incredibly diligentabout tracking where leads come
(07:33):
from.
The value of closed deals, theclosing cycles, and the KPIs
behind what, you know, what wesee coming from internet leads
are so much better than what weget from referrals or friends or
all that, like old schoolmentality type, you know?
Oh, I grow through referrals.
Well, yeah, so does every goodbusiness.
(07:53):
That's not a marketing strategy.
Awesome.
I, I think that's very solid,advice.
I really like the point youstarted with though, that that's
the only thing you actually ownand all the other platforms can
change their algorithmstomorrow.
And if you count on that as,I'll go back to my initial
terminology or bloodline.
You're fucked because that,that's it, it's gone overnight.
(08:14):
Like literally it could changeovernight.
And then you don't have the sametraffic.
You don't have the same money,you still have the same
overhead.
Yeah.
And you're not in a good shape.
So I, I love that as a point.
Take TikTok as an example,right?
There's so many business ownersthat invested in, you know,
local, direct to consumer brandsthat invested in TikTok s
platform.
That's all at risk.
(08:35):
They don't own that.
You just, you just owned astrategy.
you, you owned a temporarystrategy for a, a, a maybe soon
to be defunct platform in theUnited States.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I'm with you a hundredpercent.
So let's dive right in.
Let's dive to the process.
If I wanna reevaluate or evenstart from scratch, but I think
most of the people listening tothis probably have a website.
(08:57):
Yep.
And.
If I wanna reevaluate my websiteand my traffic and optimize it
in order to get more business.
And I think the situation we'rein is the holy grail, right?
You get more traffic than youcan handle and you can pick and
choose cherry pick literally thebest clients that, that you can
in order to maximize the effortsand the revenue that you're
(09:19):
bringing in.
So take me through it step bystep.
Yep.
and and good point on that, I'llstart with that is like a lot of
times business owners come to usand we talk about what we can do
and what we've done for otherbusinesses and they're sometimes
it's like, oh, I can't grow thatfast.
Well, it's not about taking onall that business.
It's about being in control.
(09:40):
And when you don't have amarketing strategy plan program
in place for your business,you're not in control.
Your clients are in control withthe crappy referrals they give
you.
We all, ha we all, you know, veseen that before.
We've gotten a referral tosomebody like, why did that guy
refer me that shit?
I gotta spend time, you know,and be polite to this person
(10:01):
when they're totally wrong formy business.
And that person should haveknown, it's not their fault.
It's your fault for, for nothaving a, a plan in place to go
and get the type of businessthat you want and be able to
pick and choose.
So I think to answer thequestion on.
Where do we get started?
It's, it's, I, I think it'salways helpful for me,
especially having started 10businesses to look back at
(10:23):
mistakes, failures, and, youknow, dumb shit I did.
And so I think there's twomistakes that most business
owners make when they first getinto digital.
they, they, they don't have anestablished budget and they hire
the wrong people.
Okay, so budget is everything,right?
Because the, the, the vastconnected of the internet and
(10:43):
digital world today means thatyou just need to play at your a
game in as many, places aspossible.
Social search, both organic andpaid or social, both organic and
paid content, newsletters,blogging your website, which.
is Strategy, seo, copy, design,development, analytics, all of
(11:08):
that's tracking, all that stuff.
You know, the, the way youhandle leads in incoming
business, you know, frome-commerce to the, the
conversion metrics totraditional business, to the
intake process, the crm, thefollow up, the sales, all that
stuff.
And I, and I think, you know,the, the mistake that most
business owners make when theyget started is they hire, you
(11:29):
know, somebody on Upwork or somefreelancer or some website
designer, right?
Those.
Those are bullshit solutionsthat, that are exist in the
marketplace because there's alot of weak players in any
field.
You've got bad dentists, you'vegot bad lawyers, you've got bad
website people, and it's hard toweed through those people
(11:51):
because you don't, in thebeginning, when you first get
into your, your first website,your first digital sort of
experience.
In a business, you know, youjust, you ask all the wrong
people for the wrong advice,which is typical of anything in
life, right?
We ask the wrong people formarriage advice.
We ask the wrong people forlegal advice.
We ask the wrong people foraccounting device.
(12:11):
Well, it's like that in, indigital cuz like everybody has
an idea of what a website is orwhatever, and most of'em are
wrong, 99 in my experience.
You go hire a jack of alltrades, master of done your,
your website designer who says,yeah, I can do all that.
Well, sure they can do all thatbecause they don't want to lose
the business to somebody else.
(12:31):
They're gonna learn on your dimetrying to get this stuff done.
And what you're gonna end upwith is a really expensive, in
most cases.
A really expensive pamphletonline.
They design all the servicesonto one page, like they would a
pamphlet in real life.
They, they set up a three orfour page website.
they don't do any SEO work.
(12:52):
They don't do any strategy.
So, you know, the, you know,what you need to consider as a
business owner is.
Before anything is touched,before any line of code is
written or design file iscreated or word of copy is
written, you need to start withstrategy.
And strategy can't be done rightif you don't have the right
(13:13):
players in the room or people onthe team.
Right?
That's why a website designer,and I use that sort of air
quotes thing, cause like there'sno such thing as a website.
there, there's no one person onearth that can.
design and code a website thatwould perform similar to a team
of experts, because in our, youknow, in our company we've got
(13:36):
seven different departments.
We've got strategy, seo, copy,design development, paid media,
and like ongoing content, socialmedia and blogging and all that
stuff.
All of those people, timeresearch and energy goes into a
website project.
So when we start out with aclient, let's say, let's say
(13:58):
it's an average size build, likea 30 page website, which is, is
kind of the, the magic mark nowfor Google to consider your
website and your domainauthoritative.
you know, you're gonna haveprobably a 16 week build there.
The first month of that is gonnabe intake and strategy.
So we, we sit down, we interviewthe business owner.
(14:19):
What are your g goals, desires,wishes, budget, timeframe.
How did you get here?
How did you start your business?
Where do you want it to be inone, three, and five years?
What products and service makeup your revenue?
How do you want that to changein the future?
What is the business of yourdreams?
Once we get all thatinformation?
Then each team, seo, copydesign, you know, go into
(14:41):
research and they come back withtheir, their needs from their
target north.
Right.
So SEO needs this to happen.
Copy needs this to happen.
Design, ux, ui, wireframes, fullcop, full design, like they need
this to happen.
Des development needs this, thathere's what integrations are,
are possible and neededanalytics.
(15:02):
Here's all the reporting dynamiccall tracking and live chat.
Like all this stuff has to beput into place because that's
what your, that's what's gonnadrive the results you're looking
for and the hitting yourbusiness goals.
And then once that strategy islaid out, then we can get going
with the, with the stages of theprocess.
I think there's an image that Ishared with you where, you know,
(15:25):
we go through a very structuredprocess site map.
We all agree based on theresearch, this is the pages,
this is the structure, here'show navigation's gonna work.
Everybody signs off on that.
We move to the next step, whichis.
the, the SEO work, then wireframes, then copy, then full
design, mocks, then development.
(15:46):
And right before we get you ontostaging, we're already putting
together the blogging andcontent strategy, the social
media strategy, and the paidmedia strategy on BA based on
any budget.
So I, I love what you're sayingon, on several different levels
and, and we'll, we're gonna diveinto some of those, to some of
those milestones.
But the first one is thateverything starts with.
(16:08):
And you know, there's the famousquote, if you don't know where
you're going, how you're gonnaget there.
Right?
It's, it's the, it's the numberone thing.
And to touch on a few things yousaid that are very critical,
sometimes you think in arguing,but like I mentioned in the
beginning, you may wanna make achange or you may want your
business in five years to be ina different place than it is
today or maybe in a year ormaybe in six months.
And in order to make thosechanges, in many cases it.
(16:31):
Having a slightly differentaudience.
Yeah.
And it could be a niche withinyour existing audience, it could
be something completelydifferent.
Yeah.
Which means now you have tocater to those people.
Yeah.
In basically everything that youdo in order to build, you know,
the trust to build relationshipsand, and to have people want to
do business with you.
And so really what you're sayingis at the very first step, and
(16:54):
now I'm, I'm putting aside for asecond, an external business,
which is obviously very helpfulbecause then people like you,
they, you know the process andyou know what to do.
But you're saying the very firststep is internal research, is to
figure out what are the goals,where are you trying to aim in
whatever timeframes.
Yeah.
And then based on that, goingthrough external research, which
(17:16):
is, you mentioned a few things.
What are the, what are therequirements that are driven
from this new audience that youneed?
Right?
Where are they in the world?
I assume.
So what things from an externalresearch perspective do I need
to look for in order to thenidentify the tactical steps that
(17:36):
I will need to take?
Yeah.
So, let, let's take, let's takea imaginary business, new
account.
Gimme, gimme a business examplethat you want to.
I'm gonna steal something fromthat Really made me laugh the
first time I heard it.
underwater basket weavingunderwater.
Perfect.
Actually, I love it.
We, we love, and I love nichespace businesses do.
(17:58):
If you have one of these, I'lltake a piece of it because we
can shit outta it.
Okay.
So, you know, fir first thingsfirst.
as a niche based business, likeunderwater basket weaving is the
fastest way to grow a businesslike that is to understand what
people search for related tothat particular business.
(18:19):
And you wanna look at highintent and low intent based
search terms, right?
So like a, a high search intentsearch term would.
How to, you know, how to dounderwater basket weaving?
Yeah.
Or underwater basket weavingcourses or underwater basket
weaving, weaving training.
Right.
Like those are lower searchvolume terms and phrases than
(18:41):
just underwater basket weaving.
Right?
Sure.
Which is a global term.
People are just trying to figureout what the hell that even
means.
Right.
It's a joke sometimes andthey're used in, you know, like
a re a, a report for school.
We're not interested maybe in.
Searchers.
We're interested in thesesearchers, right?
Yep.
Now you could of course go andresearch soho and find all the
(19:03):
affinity groups and underwaterbasket weaving.
You could go into YouTube andyou can look at all the, you
know, the, the quality lengthand content views and all that
stuff of underwater basketweaving videos and YouTube.
So we, we identify the universeof, you know, the per we, once
we know the persona of what.
Client you're going after,right?
(19:24):
Like, are you selling a coursemaybe, online and it's$19, or
are you selling a, a, a real,you know, intense, training on
how to do this for a thousanddollars?
Right?
It's a very different persona.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we wanna, wewanna understand that first, but
once we understand.
Then we go out and startdeveloping the tentacles for
(19:46):
traffic, and so where are peoplegonna come from social, from
search engines, from YouTube,from all these different places.
Once we have that all sort ofdocumented, then we can begin
the process of developing sitemap, content, design, all those
other stages, but.
You know, coming up withstrategy for traffic is always
(20:08):
first.
It's never an afterthought,right?
That's why like hiring that jackof all trades, master of none
is, is really challengingbecause like they go and build a
pamphlet cuz they don'tunderstand seo, they don't
understand YouTube, they don'tunderstand social media, they
just know how to designsomething and, and that's not
very helpful if you skip all theimportant shit.
(20:31):
So let me ask you a questionbecause you, you're saying
something that's obviously very,very true and I think the bigger
the company is, the more they'regonna go to the solution you're
saying.
And I think smaller businesses,solar entrepreneurs, new
entrepreneurs are gonna go with,okay, I'm gonna hire somebody to
develop a website for me off offiber.
How can you.
Marry the two And what is likethe budgetary line in the sand
(20:53):
Yeah.
That you need to get to, to say,okay, I'm gonna hire a
professional agency because Iunderstand all the benefits long
term.
Yep.
How much money do I need as anentry point, right.
To say, okay, to get the realdeal, I need to invest X.
Yep.
And the the reality is, it's nota small versus big thing.
(21:14):
It's.
Because, because we have, like Iremember two or three years ago,
we took on one of the largest,commercial cleaning companies in
the United States for high-endhotels.
If you think of like the FourSeasons and the PS and all
those, you know, fancy hotels.
Yeah.
These guys cleaned those typesof businesses and they've been
doing it for 37 years.
(21:34):
How did they grow over 37 years?
Referral.
The hard way.
Right.
Time, energy, effort.
Expensive salespeople.
It's, it, it's like, it's moreabout is the, is the business
owner in a place mentally wherethey understand there's a hell
of a lot more business out therethan that which they can see and
(21:56):
touch.
Yeah.
This is, this goes beyond whocan I have a lunch with or have
a phone call with or getreferred to all that nonsense.
and I came from the traditionalsales world.
I was the number one sales repfor Cutco Cutlery, in the state
of Wisconsin all throughcollege.
I mean, I know how to sell, butyou know, once things opened up
(22:18):
for me where, holy shit, there'sa big world out there and a lot
of businesses and industriesthat I don't even know about.
Yeah.
Now our clients of ours, ourlargest client is the fifth
largest accounting firm inAustralia.
Like, how the hell would've Igotten connected with that?
It's, it's a, it's a publiccompany.
(22:38):
It's massive.
Thousands of employees like,and, and, and the cell, the,
the, the c e o of that companytexts me on my cell phone daily.
Like that just doesn't, thatdoesn't happen if you're sitting
around waiting to get introducedto someone or trying to outbound
somebody.
So, It's more about, you know,is the business owner in, in a
mindset where they don't want togrow.
(23:00):
They're like, they're not happywith growing five or 10% a year
and this taking 37 years.
They want to do it in five or10.
Yeah, you could do that.
You just have to.
Understand a, it's possible.
And then go find a damn goodpartner to get it, get it done,
execute it.
So on a budget standpoint, everybusiness is different.
Every industry's different.
You've got different levels ofcompetition across industries,
(23:23):
and you've got businesses evenin those industries that are on
completely differenttrajectories.
And the foundation's reallyimportant.
So we kind of start there,right?
What's your domain authority?
A zero to a hundred point scaleon the credibility authoritative
authoritativeness of like a u ldomain.
Right?
How long have you had it?
How much have been investing init?
What SEO o do you have done toit?
(23:44):
What's linked to it?
What, which of your nap data iscorrect?
You know, do you have goodreviews?
All that stuff.
So we, we take into account thatfirst.
Yep.
Without that understanding ofand swat analysis of your
current situation.
you, you can't answer anyquestions about budget, time or
anything, or results, right?
So once we have that sort ofmapped out, that stage one, like
(24:07):
when, when we take clientsthrough this journey is where do
you sit right now?
Where are the holes?
Where, where are theopportunities?
What's good, what's bad, allthat.
Then we can start to develop aplan.
you know, what we do with ourclients is different.
I, I wanna pause you for asecond.
How do identify good and bad andgaps?
Because I think that, One of thebiggest pitfalls that people
(24:28):
are, you know, blinded by theday-to-day to actually know and
say, Hey.
Here's how I can find out what'scurrently not working well.
Like what are the cues?
What are the questions I need toask?
What tools can I use to say,okay, here are my lowest hanging
fruits, because this part of myoverall marketing and sales
(24:51):
process is broken in theseplaces.
If I solve this, this is gonnacreate just by itself a 20, 30,
40% growth.
Then I can start worrying aboutother.
Yeah.
there's, when we audit abusiness, we're auditing, you
know, 50, 60 different datapoints.
Some of that is, is, is relatedto the website, but the website,
(25:13):
it goes way beyond the websitetoday, right?
Because you've got the website,which helps Google understand if
done correctly.
The pages on your website, the,the content and ideas on each of
those pages, the subject matterof those.
So you've got u URL structures,the, the page addresses, titles,
(25:34):
which tell Google very quicklylike what's on this page,
descriptions, which help Google,and users through the snippet
that shows up in an organicresult knowing, okay, that's the
page I want to click on.
You know, headers and all thisother information.
Right.
But then you've also.
Directory listings, data, mapdata across a, a large number of
different directories that areconsistent and accurate.
(25:54):
Your name or address, your phonenumber, descriptions, hours of
operations, all that stuff.
You've got reviews, which tellGoogle that you're, you know,
trustworthy.
You're, you're somebody, theywant their users to be able to.
go to and trust they'll have agood experience with your
product or service.
Like we have to look at all thatstuff.
A d a compliance, right?
Websites have fallen under thepublic domain of, of ada a, the
(26:16):
American With Disabilities Actin the United States for, for
over 10 years now, since 2012,most small businesses don't
understand it.
There's a federal tax credit of$5,000 available to businesses
that make their website EDcompliant.
It's federal law.
You have to.
You know, and, and Google knowsthat they know you're facing a
demand letter or a lawsuit ifyou're not.
So, if all these things aretaken into consideration by
(26:36):
Google, it's known data andactivity.
We have a rough idea of themakeup, of the algorithm.
And so if we just do this stuffright, and not skip shit and try
and skip on, you know, yourbudget, save a thousand bucks
here that destroy your resultsover there, you know, and we
just do it right.
We're ahead of, you know, 99% ofyour competi.
(26:59):
So the, the game is, is aboutbeing very process oriented.
Yep.
And very long-term resultsoriented.
So it's a long-term ROI gameversus, oh, I, this is all the
budget I have.
But then you're saying, okay,I'm gonna save a thousand
dollars, which gonna cost me$150,000 a year from now from
(27:22):
lost.
And it's really like for, forme, you know, as a, as a finance
and marketing guy, like I'm, I'mboth right brain and left brain.
Like I know there's a lot of artto this messaging and copy and,
you know, that sort of,persuasiveness, right?
Th that great design and greatwords and all that stuff create,
(27:43):
but the other side.
As important or more important?
Certainly if it's skipped, it's,it's, it's the whole,
everything's a waste of time.
And so, you know what, what wedo with clients is we help
establish a, a, a basic budget,right?
which, you know, for 2000 amonth, you get this for 20,000 a
(28:06):
month, you get this for 5,000 amonth, you get this.
And, and we, you know, we, weask clients to come to us with a
realistic budget, but whateverthat budget is, we can work on
something that's gonna drivebusiness growth.
And when you see great results,Everybody's had a bad experience
with, you know, the jack of alltrades.
Everybody's had a bad experiencewith the agency.
(28:28):
I hired four agencies for myfirst business.
I got so sick of all of'em thatI created my own digital
marketing agency as a divisionor software company.
And then I bought that from ourinvestors when I sold the
software company.
And, and it's, it's becauselike, this shit works.
Yeah.
But give it proper time,attention, and educate yourself
in the process when you, whenyou wanna, when you find a
(28:48):
partner.
You really wanna find a partnerwho's gonna like pull a veil a
little bit and show you what thehell they're doing so that you
can become more and moreeducated through the process.
That's, I think one of themistakes that a lot of, you
know, business owners make whenthey're, when they're hiring an
agency, is they don't immersetheir self in the experience.
(29:11):
And I was thinking about thisthe other day, like, you know,
why do a lot of.
Agency, you know, clientrelationships don't work out.
It's because the, the, thebusiness owner isn't willing to
grow.
And, and it's like, it, this is,this is difficult.
It's, it's challenging.
It makes you, makes you veryintrospective into your
(29:32):
business, the processes you'veset up, how you've gotten here,
and more so where you reallywant to go.
It's just like walking intocollege for the first day or a
first date with that person.
You're gonna marry.
Like you, you're, you're gonnafeel some pain.
But the growth is gonna be worthit.
Got it.
So let's, I, I think we talked alot about the research side.
(29:53):
You said the next step would besite map.
What are the things that youneed to consider, like the top
things you need to consider whenyou're starting to build your
site map or redefine your sitemap?
Yeah.
Can I, can I share my screen?
sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Gimme a second.
No, most people are gonna listento this, but, yeah.
we can always create a videofrom section.
(30:14):
Yeah, I'll walk through it realquick.
So, you know, we've developed aprocess here, which is, you
know, 15 stages or whatever.
Can you see my screen?
The Nest process?
Yeah.
Yep.
So Nest is our proprietarywebsite platform.
my, my partner and I have beenworking on our own website
platform for five years.
We started building it in 2019,started launching clients in 20.
(30:37):
you know, we're really all in onthis.
Zach was the solutions architectto the largest video game in the
world, and then became thearchitect to all of e-commerce
through the largest, conclothing conglomerate in the
world.
We, we've built on everythingyou could ever imagine.
You know, the, the crappyplatforms that are like the do
it yourselfers, like Wick andSquarespace.
We've had to help and manageclients on, you know, that came
(30:59):
to us with that.
We've built a zillion websiteson WordPress, but it's a two
decade old platform.
It's really susceptible to harm.
It's very slow.
So, you know, nest has, a lotmore advantages.
It's way more modern technology.
It's faster, it's lightningfast, it's more secure.
But the process, again, alwaysit starts with a site map.
And the site map is, is mappingout.
(31:22):
This is an example for amortgage, a small mortgage
company in Chicago.
So when we sit down with theclients and we say, Hey, what's
your team makeup?
What, what types of loanproducts and services do you
focus on?
Everybody's got a differentniche in in mortgage, we've.
Mortgage was our number onevertical for quite a few years.
(31:43):
and so, you know, we've got alot of clients that have
different directions.
You know, one of our, one of ourlargest clients, all they do is
focus on investment propertiesfor short-term rentals.
We've got another client, all hedoes is focus on VA loans.
These are both.
Top 1% of 1% mortgage, agents inthe United States.
(32:04):
these guys, they wanted to gomore over like a general mix of
like jumbo conventional, F h Aand VA loans.
So we want a page for every oneof those because if you're in
Chicago where this client is,And you want to type in, you
know, jumbo loan in Chicago orVA loans, Chicago or, or just VA
loans or mortgage broker for VAloans near me or any of that
(32:27):
type of stuff.
That's the page you're gonna getinto cuz that's what we're gonna
design Google to index and, and,and get you found by.
And so, you know, a lot of timesbusiness owners.
As they work with a shittyfreelancer, they get a page for
all their services, and then allthe services are jumbled on one
page.
And Google's like, well, what doyou actually do?
I don't know what you do.
(32:48):
Everything's all on one page.
You know?
Then the, the url structure,title, description, headers,
images, all that stuff are toogeneral, and Google says, all
right, you're not, you're notgonna get.
You're not gonna get found.
Right.
And then, so really, so reallywhat you're saying is the site
map is built according, at leastthe deeper levels of it,
according to the questions thatyour potential clients are going
(33:12):
to ask per Well, that we'regonna ask the clients and
they're gonna answer.
Yep.
So it's, it's built around thebusiness that you wanna have in
the future, right.
Yes.
So like, so we're, we're sayingthe same thing.
It's not your clients, it'stheir clients.
Like what are their clients,what are the financial people,
(33:33):
what kind of financial services?
They would want to look for inorder to find your company or
like, okay, they're gonna ask meif, I'll use your example for
jumbo loans stats.
I want to be known for jumboloans.
I want to be known for,refinancing.
I want to be lo known for awhatever.
Whatever other things.
(33:54):
They're like, okay, if these arethe things you want people to
find, you buy because these arethe services or products you
wanna sell.
Each and every one of thembecomes a page.
Then you arrange the pages underwhatever categories, and that's
how you build a site map.
So it's basically going back to.
The clients, their needs, whatthey're actually searching for
on a search platform, and thentranslate back from that to the
(34:17):
structure of the website.
Absolutely.
And, and, and once you reallystart to understand this, the
business owner, the, the mine,you can, you can see people's
heads start to sort of swell andthen explode.
Like how big this can get,right.
So we've got a law firm in, inthe Colorado area.
My brother actually was a fratbrother of one of the partners,
(34:37):
so I knew him from college too.
You know, so they came to us andthey, they were with the largest
digital marketing agency in theworld for law firms.
They felt like they weren'tgetting, a, they weren't, they
didn't have a proactive, youknow, partner or approach there
anymore.
they were constantly bringingthat firm ideas.
They were pissed off, like, whydon't you bring us ideas?
How come you're not helping usgrow our business?
(34:59):
Every time they wanted morebusiness.
They just, that, that, thatmarketing agency says you gotta
spend more on ads.
It's a bullshit answer, youknow, because it's a low ROI
producing activity lower thanSEO would be because SEO you're
providing in fu you, you know,you're investing in future
content that could last foreverand traffic and so, You know,
but when you start thinkingabout was the website set up to
(35:21):
build the business of thefuture, not the business staff
today, but the business theywant later, you know, from a
locations perspective, do theyhave enough office locations?
Is there arbitrage opportunityin areas around the Denver area
where no one's dominating forthe practice areas and search
terms and phrases that thisbusiness wants clients and cases
(35:42):
for, right.
So we looked at the website andthe website was too small, it
wasn't dissected enough into allthe different practice areas.
So this is a full service lawfirm.
You've got 12 or 15 differentpractice areas.
So maybe, you know, one of thepractice areas is, is business
attorneys or business law, butdid it have pages set up for
every area of business law thatthese guys specialize in?
(36:04):
Like business dissolution,business disputes, startups, you
know, that, that m and a, allthat type of stuff.
And so you have all thesedifferent nested pages.
So the, the site map to the, tothe average user looks like it's
about 20 or 30 pages.
It's three or 400 pages.
You've got location pages,you've got, you know, nested,
case law and service pages.
(36:26):
You've got blogs, you've got allthe stuff in the hetero
navigation.
And so every page that was, youknow, strategized, seo, copy
design, dev got like six toeight hours maybe on a per page
basis.
But what did that generate?
In the first year that welaunched that new website, we
spent about four months buildingit, designing the ad programs.
(36:49):
We spent 600 grand a year on adsfor them now, all that stuff.
But the website brings in, youknow, 40% of the traffic, saving
them over a half a million bucksa year just on ads.
And it brought them 9,800 clientand case leads last year and
signed over 12 million in new,new case business.
You know, it's, it's a 20 x.
(37:10):
Because we worked on the sitemap for a fricking month, you
know, and then once we were,once everybody signed off on it,
then we went fast.
I love it.
I, I, I think, you know, it'slike, just like every building,
you gotta build the rightfoundations.
And if you have the rightfoundations, then you can
basically build whatever youwant on top of it, because it'll
(37:32):
be solid and we'll be flexibleand you'll be able to do stuff
with it.
Yep.
You touched also.
Yep.
Yeah.
And, and you also touched.
Technical side of it, the rightplatform that will give you the
flexibility and the speed andthe agility to do what you want,
like you said, for a futurebusiness.
I gotta ask you a toughquestion, that I'm sure is in
the mind of anybody who's doingseo, whether as an agency like
you or as a company doing itinternally, what do you think
(37:53):
are the implications of, youknow, the, the AI staff with,
with the chat bots coming into.
Potentially replacing thetraditional search that we know
and what impact that's gonnahave.
And I know Google are probablygoing to fight this as hard as
they can because it generatesliterally billions of dollars a
(38:15):
quarter for them.
Right.
But assuming that they can't winthis battle because I don't
think they can.
Yep.
Where do you think, and again, II, I know you don't have a
crystal ball, but where do yousee this.
We can talk about this for thenext two hours, two years
probably.
But yeah, you know, we've got alot written on our website.
(38:37):
We've been involved in AIrelated software solutions and
activities for three or fouryears now.
AI powers a lot of the chatbehind a lot of our clients
programs.
We also have human powered chat.
You know, every business isdifferent.
We, we customize everything tothe business.
Cuz even if you took twoseemingly exact same businesses,
(39:00):
two mortgage companies inChicago, well, one's been around
for three years and investedlots in their digital one's,
been around for 10 years andinvested nothing in digital.
And they have differenttrajectories and goals, right?
So you gotta have to considerall that when you're talking
about some of this stuff.
But, you know, on the, on the AIstuff, You know, AI has and will
(39:21):
continue to have implications oneverything that we do from
coding websites.
I just got a demo of a platformthat codes, designs and codes
websites, from ai.
we're not there yet.
These guys are like, oh yeah,this is great.
Like, none of this is good.
Nothing.
You know, it, it doesn't comeup.
(39:42):
You're too early.
Keep up with it.
Maybe in five years you're gonnahave something that's worth
anything.
But today it's not copy.
But, so, so let me ask youspecifically, because I, I'm,
I'm putting aside, being able tocreate copy with AI and being
able to call the website with AIand being able to design
whatever, I'm, I'm putting thataside for a second, and by the
way, you and I do not agree onhow quickly this is gonna
(40:03):
happen, but Yeah.
But that's not the case.
I'm specifically asking aboutBing already.
You know, the Bing Chat as anoption, it's being adopted at a
stupidly high rate.
Like the amount of people thatstarted using Bing, myself
included, that have nevertouched Bing, not a single day
of their life, right?
Is now in the hundreds ofmillions of people that started
(40:26):
using Bing.
Google will have to follow that,and they already said, by the
way, today, they announced.
Going to actually launch it.
Before it was kind of like moreconversations.
Today they've announced, so weare on, on April 6th, 2023.
They said, okay, we are gonnahave a chat option within our
search capabilities, which meanseventually, and it could happen
(40:49):
fast, could happen slow, it willdissolve somewhat the existing
way we search for things becausewe're not gonna search for.
Potential answers.
We're gonna search and get ananswer, which is a very, very
different scenario, which meansthe very foundation of SEO may
(41:12):
go away.
And even today, don't get mewrong, like today, I think
search is broken.
Like you open a page, there's 20different sponsored links on
top, which is ridiculous.
So even if you ranked quoteunquote number one, you're at
the bottom of page one if you'relucky and, and.
What do you think businessesshould do from a preparation
(41:32):
perspective into this new era?
If you have any tips?
So, absolutely.
what I was getting at was, youknow, it's, it's, again, it goes
back to data.
You, you need to be everywhere,that your business can and
should be.
That's different for everybusiness industry size and type.
And you need to be accuratebecause that data from that,
(41:55):
that's pulled in through the AImodels is coming from somewhere,
right?
Yeah.
Like I, I think the mostinteresting thing from a user
perspective regarding AI goingonline is, help with search
today.
It's like, help me findsomething with AI in the future.
It's helped Teach me something.
Yeah.
And gimme the.
(42:17):
It's not even gimme the answer.
It's give me, give me theoptions.
Right?
Like, so maybe I want to type inthe future, you know what, I
have a specific need.
I'm, I'm doing, I'm, I'm, I'mforming a new S corp in San
Diego.
What are the best law firms forme to talk to?
Right?
Yeah.
Well, ai, the, the AI model,whatever platform it's on,
(42:40):
right?
You know, Bing is powered bychat.
G p t.
Google's coming out with theirown whatever is gonna be next,
it's might be better, right?
Alta Vista and Netscape gotreplaced by Google.
Like, there's gonna be a, maybea better solution.
You've got really great peoplebacking chat G.
You can place your bet onwhatever you want, but again,
the data comes from somewhere.
(43:00):
So you, you still want to focuson having a great website.
Which is your salesperson, your24 hour salesperson, the
foundation you own and control.
But everything that's built intothat has to be read by the AI
engines, right?
The listings, data, the appdata, the review data, all that
stuff is gonna come into playwhen that algorithm, which,
(43:22):
which morphs and changes overretirement.
That's the difference, you know,is looking for the solutions to
answer the user's.
So, so nothing really changes,you know, I, I think the, they
use behavior changes, butultimately we're still trying to
do the same thing, which isconvince the world, the
(43:44):
universe, the journey that youare the right solution, right?
And it's, and that still comesdown to basic marketing
principles.
Like understand your audienceand, and know how to message
them.
And.
And that's what I think is likethe name of why his digital came
from.
Everything's gonna change.
Go with experts who actuallystay on top of this shit.
(44:06):
So like, the AI conversation isgreat.
We've been involved in this inthree or three or four years.
My, my head of copy is likeaddicted to everything.
Ai, she's just constantlyreading about it and putting out
great blog information on ourwebsite, on it.
you know, I think what thechallenge is, like how do we
enter into that world of ai,again, we can talk about this
for hours, but.
A lot of people are starting to,play around with like writing
(44:29):
blog copy at scale through ai,and I think there's a big danger
there.
Google's indicated big dangerthere, right?
If it can identify that this isAI written content and you keep
pumping it out and putting it onyour website, it's not
authoritative or credible,you're not a trustworthy source
for it cuz you didn't come upwith it and Google's gonna start
(44:49):
dinging your domain.
And we've seen this before in,in historical models like link
building, right?
Where you get, like, you go to alink farm and you get thousands
of links coming to your websiteand you go in and, and
investigate'em in like, half of'em are fricking, fricking porn
sites and, you know, other,other sets that are completely
unrelated to the business thatyou're in or the products and
services that you offer.
(45:11):
And then your, your SEO peoplelater on come in to discover
like, what's going on with yourtraffic and why is your business
fallen by 50%?
Like lost millions of dollars,right?
Then we have to go through thisprocess of disavowing all this
crap that, you know, you gotconned into buying.
And, and it's, it's gonna be thesame thing in ai.
And I think the danger rightnow, For people trying to, to
(45:34):
use AI to run their digitalmarketing is, is content, is is
is the blogging and stuff likethat.
I like Dolly.
I think it's, it's fun to playaround with.
I don't think it's there yet.
You know, from, from creating,you know, original illustration
and images, that stuff's gonnaget there first.
Like, copy's gonna get therefirst, then design's gonna get
there, then coding's gonna getnext.
(45:55):
but again, you know, I, I don't.
It's gonna be a reallyinteresting world when AI can
convince me to buy something allthe way through, right?
Not just the ad that's alreadyhappening, but like where do I
click?
Where do I go next?
What's the shopping cartexperience like, all of that.
When that all comes together,we're just gonna have to be good
(46:19):
at making shit.
Yeah.
Patrick, this was reallyfascinating.
I think you shared a lot ofgreat information, a lot.
I, I think it will get a lot ofpeople thinking about the
process they're doing todayversus the process they should
probably do or at least considerdoing.
I really, really appreciate youtaking the time, sharing from
your experience and, and, givingus, from your knowledge.
(46:42):
Thank you.
Yeah, you bet.
Thank you, sir.
If people wanna find you, followyou, connect with you, work with
you, what's, what's the best wayto.
Yeah.
if actually the best way is justgo to my website, why is digital
partners.com?
And from there you can, you can,you can, you know, find me on
the, team page, connect with meon LinkedIn.
if you have a business thatyou're looking to grow and
(47:03):
you're, and you're serious aboutit.
Book a call with me.
You can do it right from thecontact form.
You can go right into mycalendar and book something.
Just, I, I just ask that, youknow, if you, if you want us to
take time, evaluating yourbusiness and doing an audit and
coming up with a proposal andall that stuff come with a
realistic expectation aroundtimeframe and budget.
for most local businesses, youknow, we're kind of like between
(47:24):
two and 5,000 bucks a month,more for, you know, global,
international business.
Awesome.
Thank you again.
This was really great.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you so much.
MacBook Pro Microphone-1 (47:37):
Just a friendly reminder, go check out
Leveraging AI podcast.
It's a podcast that will teachyou everything you need to know
in order to integrate AI intoyour business, to grow the
business and advance yourcareer.
So pull up your phone right now.
Hit the search button on yourpodcasting platform and search
for leveraging ai subscribe.
I promise you, you are gonnaabsolutely love the content over
(48:00):
there.
And until next time, have anamazing week.
hello and welcome to theBusiness Growth Accelerator.
This is Isar Meitis, your host,and today we're going to talk
about something that isbasically the bloodline of most
businesses, which is websitetraffic.
And it doesn't matter whetheryou are a direct-to-consumer B2C
kind of website or B2B SaaScompany that drives traffic of
potential clients and prospectsinto the website in order to
(00:22):
show them what your companydoes, products or services.
Either way, the quality and thequantity of traffic that comes
to your website has a directcorrelation to the revenue
you're going to have.
And then what you have on yourwebsite has, as far as its
impact on conversion, has adirect correlation also on the
outcome, the financial outcomeof your business.
(00:43):
So having a well of.
Optimized website will lead tomore traffic and higher
conversion, or in other words,higher ROI to the resources you
put into developing yourwebsite.
And there are many reasons whyyou want to look into your web
website and reevaluate how it'sset up in its strategy.
It could be that you're justconsidering a launch of a new
(01:04):
product for a service.
In a new niche that maybe youwere not in before or maybe a
whole new direction from astrategic perspective to your
business.
A lot of businesses are doingthat right now because of all
the AI changes that areimpacting more or less any
industry, or it's justreevaluating the effectiveness
of your current website withoutchanging anything, just to
(01:25):
potentially make more moneywithout investing ongoing
resources in that.
So there's many reasons why youwould wanna look.
Redefining and better aligningyour website or recalibrating
your website.
The question becomes how do youdo that?
What are the steps you need totake in order to do this process
(01:46):
in the most effective way?
And our guest today, PatrickDillon, is an expert.
On marketing in general andspecifically within that about
how to optimize websites andtraffic that comes to the
website in order to get higherrevenue.
And in this episode, we're goingto discuss the process that he's
using with his clients in orderto help them achieve these
(02:08):
better results.
Patrick himself has been indigital marketing for many years
now.
He's been the CEO and thefounder of Wise Digital
Marketing Agency for the pastfour years, and last year in
2022, he won Entrepreneur of theYear by the CEO Review Magazine.
So he knows a lot about thetopic and he has helped multiple
(02:29):
businesses apply this.
An effective way, and he's gonnawalk us today through that
process and hence I'm reallyexcited to have him on the show
today.
MacBook Pro Microphone (03:37):
Before we dive into the fascinating
conversation with PatrickDillon, I've got an announcement
to make a very excitingannouncement on April 18th.
So if you're listening to thistoday, the podcast is coming
out, it's tomorrow, but ifyou're listening later, then.
Lucky you.
It already happened.
I'm launching a new podcastcalled Leveraging ai.
If you like this podcast, you'regonna absolutely love leveraging
(03:58):
AI because it's very similar.
I'm inviting really smart peopleto talk about different topics,
but they're all around how youcan use AI in order to be more
efficient, grow the business andadvance your career.
It's going to be very practicaltips on how to take AI tools and
how to develop processes aroundthem in order to see business
(04:21):
results.
The podcast again is calledLeveraging Ai.
It's your favorite host, myself,ISAR Meitis, and with some
really amazing guests.
and you can find it right nowand subscribe.
Right now on the platform you'relistening to all the other
podcasts.
I would love to have you as alistener there as well, and now
to the interview with Patrick.
(04:42):
patrick, welcome to the BusinessGrowth Accelerator.
Thank you, sir.
Patrick, let's start with, whendid it hit you that this is the
holy grail, right?
That, that the focus that a lotof businesses can get a lot of
value just by optimizing theirwebsite.
Yeah.
You know, and it's, I don't, Idon't want to say it's all
(05:03):
website, right?
There's so much more, especiallytoday.
I mean, even if you go back fiveor 10 years, it's, it, it, but
today certainly it's not, it'snot never just a website.
The website's, the website's theonly thing you've, you own on
the internet, right?
Right.
You don't, don't own your Googlebusiness profile or your Yelp
page or your Facebook page.
(05:24):
Those platforms own.
that They, they control thestructure of those pages.
What you're able to display, howmany characters are you able to
use, how many images you'reable, the website's, the one
place on the internet that you,you own, you, you, you
physically own that domain that,that you URL or website address
and you own anything that can goon on the site.
(05:46):
you know, I.
The, the paradigm shift for meas a business owner and I've,
I've founded 10 companies.
I, I, I built and sold a bigsoftware company.
I built a franchise digitalmarketing agency that went into
12 US markets, and it had sevenor 800, 800 clients before I
sold it.
I own two commercial janitorialcompanies on top of, you know,
my marketing agency.
(06:07):
But, you know, for me, the, theshift happened when, you know, I
started seeing the results ofour own digital marketing
efforts for my own businessesbeyond, you know, what we were
doing for clients and the, inthe digital marketing agency
model, we probably helped abouta thousand businesses now over
the last 10 years.
I saw the growth that they werehaving with their businesses.
(06:29):
I started doing the same thingfor our businesses.
Then I started doubling down andtripling down and doubling down
again.
And, you know, today themajority of our, business comes
from our, our own, you know,digital marketing efforts.
a hundred percent of thebusiness that that came into.
And, and continues to come intomy janitorial businesses come
(06:50):
from seo o for the marketingagency.
SEO is the primary driver for,you know, the majority of our
business.
All of our biggest accounts havecome from seo.
you know, we don't even need toadvertise anymore really for my,
my janitorial businesses or myagency because SEO brings in,
certainly more than we need.
we, we turn away about 80% ofthe prospective clientele that
(07:11):
come to the agency.
You know, not the right bit, notthe right budget.
They're brand new businesses.
They don't know directionthey're going and that kind of
thing.
But yeah, it's, it's somethingthat's been evolving for me to
answer your question over theyears.
and I'm, I'm a numbers guy.
I have a, a finance andmarketing background, so I, I'm,
I'm.
You know, incredibly diligentabout tracking where leads come
(07:33):
from.
The value of closed deals, theclosing cycles, and the KPIs
behind what, you know, what wesee coming from internet leads
are so much better than what weget from referrals or friends or
all that, like old schoolmentality type, you know?
Oh, I grow through referrals.
Well, yeah, so does every goodbusiness.
(07:53):
That's not a marketing strategy.
Awesome.
I, I think that's very solid,advice.
I really like the point youstarted with though, that that's
the only thing you actually ownand all the other platforms can
change their algorithmstomorrow.
And if you count on that as,I'll go back to my initial
terminology or bloodline.
You're fucked because that,that's it, it's gone overnight.
(08:14):
Like literally it could changeovernight.
And then you don't have the sametraffic.
You don't have the same money,you still have the same
overhead.
Yeah.
And you're not in a good shape.
So I, I love that as a point.
Take TikTok as an example,right?
There's so many business ownersthat invested in, you know,
local, direct to consumer brandsthat invested in TikTok s
platform.
That's all at risk.
(08:35):
They don't own that.
You just, you just owned astrategy.
you, you owned a temporarystrategy for a, a, a maybe soon
to be defunct platform in theUnited States.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I, I'm with you a hundredpercent.
So let's dive right in.
Let's dive to the process.
If I wanna reevaluate or evenstart from scratch, but I think
most of the people listening tothis probably have a website.
(08:57):
Yep.
And.
If I wanna reevaluate my websiteand my traffic and optimize it
in order to get more business.
And I think the situation we'rein is the holy grail, right?
You get more traffic than youcan handle and you can pick and
choose cherry pick literally thebest clients that, that you can
in order to maximize the effortsand the revenue that you're
(09:19):
bringing in.
So take me through it step bystep.
Yep.
and and good point on that, I'llstart with that is like a lot of
times business owners come to usand we talk about what we can do
and what we've done for otherbusinesses and they're sometimes
it's like, oh, I can't grow thatfast.
Well, it's not about taking onall that business.
It's about being in control.
(09:40):
And when you don't have amarketing strategy plan program
in place for your business,you're not in control.
Your clients are in control withthe crappy referrals they give
you.
We all, ha we all, you know, veseen that before.
We've gotten a referral tosomebody like, why did that guy
refer me that shit?
I gotta spend time, you know,and be polite to this person
(10:01):
when they're totally wrong formy business.
And that person should haveknown, it's not their fault.
It's your fault for, for nothaving a, a plan in place to go
and get the type of businessthat you want and be able to
pick and choose.
So I think to answer thequestion on.
Where do we get started?
It's, it's, I, I think it'salways helpful for me,
especially having started 10businesses to look back at
(10:23):
mistakes, failures, and, youknow, dumb shit I did.
And so I think there's twomistakes that most business
owners make when they first getinto digital.
they, they, they don't have anestablished budget and they hire
the wrong people.
Okay, so budget is everything,right?
Because the, the, the vastconnected of the internet and
(10:43):
digital world today means thatyou just need to play at your a
game in as many, places aspossible.
Social search, both organic andpaid or social, both organic and
paid content, newsletters,blogging your website, which.
is Strategy, seo, copy, design,development, analytics, all of
(11:08):
that's tracking, all that stuff.
You know, the, the way youhandle leads in incoming
business, you know, frome-commerce to the, the
conversion metrics totraditional business, to the
intake process, the crm, thefollow up, the sales, all that
stuff.
And I, and I think, you know,the, the mistake that most
business owners make when theyget started is they hire, you
(11:29):
know, somebody on Upwork or somefreelancer or some website
designer, right?
Those.
Those are bullshit solutionsthat, that are exist in the
marketplace because there's alot of weak players in any
field.
You've got bad dentists, you'vegot bad lawyers, you've got bad
website people, and it's hard toweed through those people
(11:51):
because you don't, in thebeginning, when you first get
into your, your first website,your first digital sort of
experience.
In a business, you know, youjust, you ask all the wrong
people for the wrong advice,which is typical of anything in
life, right?
We ask the wrong people formarriage advice.
We ask the wrong people forlegal advice.
We ask the wrong people foraccounting device.
(12:11):
Well, it's like that in, indigital cuz like everybody has
an idea of what a website is orwhatever, and most of'em are
wrong, 99 in my experience.
You go hire a jack of alltrades, master of done your,
your website designer who says,yeah, I can do all that.
Well, sure they can do all thatbecause they don't want to lose
the business to somebody else.
(12:31):
They're gonna learn on your dimetrying to get this stuff done.
And what you're gonna end upwith is a really expensive, in
most cases.
A really expensive pamphletonline.
They design all the servicesonto one page, like they would a
pamphlet in real life.
They, they set up a three orfour page website.
they don't do any SEO work.
(12:52):
They don't do any strategy.
So, you know, the, you know,what you need to consider as a
business owner is.
Before anything is touched,before any line of code is
written or design file iscreated or word of copy is
written, you need to start withstrategy.
And strategy can't be done rightif you don't have the right
(13:13):
players in the room or people onthe team.
Right?
That's why a website designer,and I use that sort of air
quotes thing, cause like there'sno such thing as a website.
there, there's no one person onearth that can.
design and code a website thatwould perform similar to a team
of experts, because in our, youknow, in our company we've got
(13:36):
seven different departments.
We've got strategy, seo, copy,design development, paid media,
and like ongoing content, socialmedia and blogging and all that
stuff.
All of those people, timeresearch and energy goes into a
website project.
So when we start out with aclient, let's say, let's say
(13:58):
it's an average size build, likea 30 page website, which is, is
kind of the, the magic mark nowfor Google to consider your
website and your domainauthoritative.
you know, you're gonna haveprobably a 16 week build there.
The first month of that is gonnabe intake and strategy.
So we, we sit down, we interviewthe business owner.
(14:19):
What are your g goals, desires,wishes, budget, timeframe.
How did you get here?
How did you start your business?
Where do you want it to be inone, three, and five years?
What products and service makeup your revenue?
How do you want that to changein the future?
What is the business of yourdreams?
Once we get all thatinformation?
Then each team, seo, copydesign, you know, go into
(14:41):
research and they come back withtheir, their needs from their
target north.
Right.
So SEO needs this to happen.
Copy needs this to happen.
Design, ux, ui, wireframes, fullcop, full design, like they need
this to happen.
Des development needs this, thathere's what integrations are,
are possible and neededanalytics.
(15:02):
Here's all the reporting dynamiccall tracking and live chat.
Like all this stuff has to beput into place because that's
what your, that's what's gonnadrive the results you're looking
for and the hitting yourbusiness goals.
And then once that strategy islaid out, then we can get going
with the, with the stages of theprocess.
I think there's an image that Ishared with you where, you know,
(15:25):
we go through a very structuredprocess site map.
We all agree based on theresearch, this is the pages,
this is the structure, here'show navigation's gonna work.
Everybody signs off on that.
We move to the next step, whichis.
the, the SEO work, then wireframes, then copy, then full
design, mocks, then development.
(15:46):
And right before we get you ontostaging, we're already putting
together the blogging andcontent strategy, the social
media strategy, and the paidmedia strategy on BA based on
any budget.
So I, I love what you're sayingon, on several different levels
and, and we'll, we're gonna diveinto some of those, to some of
those milestones.
But the first one is thateverything starts with.
(16:08):
And you know, there's the famousquote, if you don't know where
you're going, how you're gonnaget there.
Right?
It's, it's the, it's the numberone thing.
And to touch on a few things yousaid that are very critical,
sometimes you think in arguing,but like I mentioned in the
beginning, you may wanna make achange or you may want your
business in five years to be ina different place than it is
today or maybe in a year ormaybe in six months.
And in order to make thosechanges, in many cases it.
(16:31):
Having a slightly differentaudience.
Yeah.
And it could be a niche withinyour existing audience, it could
be something completelydifferent.
Yeah.
Which means now you have tocater to those people.
Yeah.
In basically everything that youdo in order to build, you know,
the trust to build relationshipsand, and to have people want to
do business with you.
And so really what you're sayingis at the very first step, and
(16:54):
now I'm, I'm putting aside for asecond, an external business,
which is obviously very helpfulbecause then people like you,
they, you know the process andyou know what to do.
But you're saying the very firststep is internal research, is to
figure out what are the goals,where are you trying to aim in
whatever timeframes.
Yeah.
And then based on that, goingthrough external research, which
(17:16):
is, you mentioned a few things.
What are the, what are therequirements that are driven
from this new audience that youneed?
Right?
Where are they in the world?
I assume.
So what things from an externalresearch perspective do I need
to look for in order to thenidentify the tactical steps that
(17:36):
I will need to take?
Yeah.
So, let, let's take, let's takea imaginary business, new
account.
Gimme, gimme a business examplethat you want to.
I'm gonna steal something fromthat Really made me laugh the
first time I heard it.
underwater basket weavingunderwater.
Perfect.
Actually, I love it.
We, we love, and I love nichespace businesses do.
(17:58):
If you have one of these, I'lltake a piece of it because we
can shit outta it.
Okay.
So, you know, fir first thingsfirst.
as a niche based business, likeunderwater basket weaving is the
fastest way to grow a businesslike that is to understand what
people search for related tothat particular business.
(18:19):
And you wanna look at highintent and low intent based
search terms, right?
So like a, a high search intentsearch term would.
How to, you know, how to dounderwater basket weaving?
Yeah.
Or underwater basket weavingcourses or underwater basket
weaving, weaving training.
Right.
Like those are lower searchvolume terms and phrases than
(18:41):
just underwater basket weaving.
Right?
Sure.
Which is a global term.
People are just trying to figureout what the hell that even
means.
Right.
It's a joke sometimes andthey're used in, you know, like
a re a, a report for school.
We're not interested maybe in.
Searchers.
We're interested in thesesearchers, right?
Yep.
Now you could of course go andresearch soho and find all the
(19:03):
affinity groups and underwaterbasket weaving.
You could go into YouTube andyou can look at all the, you
know, the, the quality lengthand content views and all that
stuff of underwater basketweaving videos and YouTube.
So we, we identify the universeof, you know, the per we, once
we know the persona of what.
Client you're going after,right?
(19:24):
Like, are you selling a coursemaybe, online and it's$19, or
are you selling a, a, a real,you know, intense, training on
how to do this for a thousanddollars?
Right?
It's a very different persona.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we wanna, wewanna understand that first, but
once we understand.
Then we go out and startdeveloping the tentacles for
(19:46):
traffic, and so where are peoplegonna come from social, from
search engines, from YouTube,from all these different places.
Once we have that all sort ofdocumented, then we can begin
the process of developing sitemap, content, design, all those
other stages, but.
You know, coming up withstrategy for traffic is always
(20:08):
first.
It's never an afterthought,right?
That's why like hiring that jackof all trades, master of none
is, is really challengingbecause like they go and build a
pamphlet cuz they don'tunderstand seo, they don't
understand YouTube, they don'tunderstand social media, they
just know how to designsomething and, and that's not
very helpful if you skip all theimportant shit.
(20:31):
So let me ask you a questionbecause you, you're saying
something that's obviously very,very true and I think the bigger
the company is, the more they'regonna go to the solution you're
saying.
And I think smaller businesses,solar entrepreneurs, new
entrepreneurs are gonna go with,okay, I'm gonna hire somebody to
develop a website for me off offiber.
How can you.
Marry the two And what is likethe budgetary line in the sand
(20:53):
Yeah.
That you need to get to, to say,okay, I'm gonna hire a
professional agency because Iunderstand all the benefits long
term.
Yep.
How much money do I need as anentry point, right.
To say, okay, to get the realdeal, I need to invest X.
Yep.
And the the reality is, it's nota small versus big thing.
(21:14):
It's.
Because, because we have, like Iremember two or three years ago,
we took on one of the largest,commercial cleaning companies in
the United States for high-endhotels.
If you think of like the FourSeasons and the PS and all
those, you know, fancy hotels.
Yeah.
These guys cleaned those typesof businesses and they've been
doing it for 37 years.
(21:34):
How did they grow over 37 years?
Referral.
The hard way.
Right.
Time, energy, effort.
Expensive salespeople.
It's, it, it's like, it's moreabout is the, is the business
owner in a place mentally wherethey understand there's a hell
of a lot more business out therethan that which they can see and
(21:56):
touch.
Yeah.
This is, this goes beyond whocan I have a lunch with or have
a phone call with or getreferred to all that nonsense.
and I came from the traditionalsales world.
I was the number one sales repfor Cutco Cutlery, in the state
of Wisconsin all throughcollege.
I mean, I know how to sell, butyou know, once things opened up
(22:18):
for me where, holy shit, there'sa big world out there and a lot
of businesses and industriesthat I don't even know about.
Yeah.
Now our clients of ours, ourlargest client is the fifth
largest accounting firm inAustralia.
Like, how the hell would've Igotten connected with that?
It's, it's a, it's a publiccompany.
(22:38):
It's massive.
Thousands of employees like,and, and, and the cell, the,
the, the c e o of that companytexts me on my cell phone daily.
Like that just doesn't, thatdoesn't happen if you're sitting
around waiting to get introducedto someone or trying to outbound
somebody.
So, It's more about, you know,is the business owner in, in a
mindset where they don't want togrow.
(23:00):
They're like, they're not happywith growing five or 10% a year
and this taking 37 years.
They want to do it in five or10.
Yeah, you could do that.
You just have to.
Understand a, it's possible.
And then go find a damn goodpartner to get it, get it done,
execute it.
So on a budget standpoint, everybusiness is different.
Every industry's different.
You've got different levels ofcompetition across industries,
(23:23):
and you've got businesses evenin those industries that are on
completely differenttrajectories.
And the foundation's reallyimportant.
So we kind of start there,right?
What's your domain authority?
A zero to a hundred point scaleon the credibility authoritative
authoritativeness of like a u ldomain.
Right?
How long have you had it?
How much have been investing init?
What SEO o do you have done toit?
(23:44):
What's linked to it?
What, which of your nap data iscorrect?
You know, do you have goodreviews?
All that stuff.
So we, we take into account thatfirst.
Yep.
Without that understanding ofand swat analysis of your
current situation.
you, you can't answer anyquestions about budget, time or
anything, or results, right?
So once we have that sort ofmapped out, that stage one, like
(24:07):
when, when we take clientsthrough this journey is where do
you sit right now?
Where are the holes?
Where, where are theopportunities?
What's good, what's bad, allthat.
Then we can start to develop aplan.
you know, what we do with ourclients is different.
I, I wanna pause you for asecond.
How do identify good and bad andgaps?
Because I think that, One of thebiggest pitfalls that people
(24:28):
are, you know, blinded by theday-to-day to actually know and
say, Hey.
Here's how I can find out what'scurrently not working well.
Like what are the cues?
What are the questions I need toask?
What tools can I use to say,okay, here are my lowest hanging
fruits, because this part of myoverall marketing and sales
(24:51):
process is broken in theseplaces.
If I solve this, this is gonnacreate just by itself a 20, 30,
40% growth.
Then I can start worrying aboutother.
Yeah.
there's, when we audit abusiness, we're auditing, you
know, 50, 60 different datapoints.
Some of that is, is, is relatedto the website, but the website,
(25:13):
it goes way beyond the websitetoday, right?
Because you've got the website,which helps Google understand if
done correctly.
The pages on your website, the,the content and ideas on each of
those pages, the subject matterof those.
So you've got u URL structures,the, the page addresses, titles,
(25:34):
which tell Google very quicklylike what's on this page,
descriptions, which help Google,and users through the snippet
that shows up in an organicresult knowing, okay, that's the
page I want to click on.
You know, headers and all thisother information.
Right.
But then you've also.
Directory listings, data, mapdata across a, a large number of
different directories that areconsistent and accurate.
(25:54):
Your name or address, your phonenumber, descriptions, hours of
operations, all that stuff.
You've got reviews, which tellGoogle that you're, you know,
trustworthy.
You're, you're somebody, theywant their users to be able to.
go to and trust they'll have agood experience with your
product or service.
Like we have to look at all thatstuff.
A d a compliance, right?
Websites have fallen under thepublic domain of, of ada a, the
(26:16):
American With Disabilities Actin the United States for, for
over 10 years now, since 2012,most small businesses don't
understand it.
There's a federal tax credit of$5,000 available to businesses
that make their website EDcompliant.
It's federal law.
You have to.
You know, and, and Google knowsthat they know you're facing a
demand letter or a lawsuit ifyou're not.
So, if all these things aretaken into consideration by
(26:36):
Google, it's known data andactivity.
We have a rough idea of themakeup, of the algorithm.
And so if we just do this stuffright, and not skip shit and try
and skip on, you know, yourbudget, save a thousand bucks
here that destroy your resultsover there, you know, and we
just do it right.
We're ahead of, you know, 99% ofyour competi.
(26:59):
So the, the game is, is aboutbeing very process oriented.
Yep.
And very long-term resultsoriented.
So it's a long-term ROI gameversus, oh, I, this is all the
budget I have.
But then you're saying, okay,I'm gonna save a thousand
dollars, which gonna cost me$150,000 a year from now from
(27:22):
lost.
And it's really like for, forme, you know, as a, as a finance
and marketing guy, like I'm, I'mboth right brain and left brain.
Like I know there's a lot of artto this messaging and copy and,
you know, that sort of,persuasiveness, right?
Th that great design and greatwords and all that stuff create,
(27:43):
but the other side.
As important or more important?
Certainly if it's skipped, it's,it's, it's the whole,
everything's a waste of time.
And so, you know what, what wedo with clients is we help
establish a, a, a basic budget,right?
which, you know, for 2000 amonth, you get this for 20,000 a
(28:06):
month, you get this for 5,000 amonth, you get this.
And, and we, you know, we, weask clients to come to us with a
realistic budget, but whateverthat budget is, we can work on
something that's gonna drivebusiness growth.
And when you see great results,Everybody's had a bad experience
with, you know, the jack of alltrades.
Everybody's had a bad experiencewith the agency.
(28:28):
I hired four agencies for myfirst business.
I got so sick of all of'em thatI created my own digital
marketing agency as a divisionor software company.
And then I bought that from ourinvestors when I sold the
software company.
And, and it's, it's becauselike, this shit works.
Yeah.
But give it proper time,attention, and educate yourself
in the process when you, whenyou wanna, when you find a
(28:48):
partner.
You really wanna find a partnerwho's gonna like pull a veil a
little bit and show you what thehell they're doing so that you
can become more and moreeducated through the process.
That's, I think one of themistakes that a lot of, you
know, business owners make whenthey're, when they're hiring an
agency, is they don't immersetheir self in the experience.
(29:11):
And I was thinking about thisthe other day, like, you know,
why do a lot of.
Agency, you know, clientrelationships don't work out.
It's because the, the, thebusiness owner isn't willing to
grow.
And, and it's like, it, this is,this is difficult.
It's, it's challenging.
It makes you, makes you veryintrospective into your
(29:32):
business, the processes you'veset up, how you've gotten here,
and more so where you reallywant to go.
It's just like walking intocollege for the first day or a
first date with that person.
You're gonna marry.
Like you, you're, you're gonnafeel some pain.
But the growth is gonna be worthit.
Got it.
So let's, I, I think we talked alot about the research side.
(29:53):
You said the next step would besite map.
What are the things that youneed to consider, like the top
things you need to consider whenyou're starting to build your
site map or redefine your sitemap?
Yeah.
Can I, can I share my screen?
sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Gimme a second.
No, most people are gonna listento this, but, yeah.
we can always create a videofrom section.
(30:14):
Yeah, I'll walk through it realquick.
So, you know, we've developed aprocess here, which is, you
know, 15 stages or whatever.
Can you see my screen?
The Nest process?
Yeah.
Yep.
So Nest is our proprietarywebsite platform.
my, my partner and I have beenworking on our own website
platform for five years.
We started building it in 2019,started launching clients in 20.
(30:37):
you know, we're really all in onthis.
Zach was the solutions architectto the largest video game in the
world, and then became thearchitect to all of e-commerce
through the largest, conclothing conglomerate in the
world.
We, we've built on everythingyou could ever imagine.
You know, the, the crappyplatforms that are like the do
it yourselfers, like Wick andSquarespace.
We've had to help and manageclients on, you know, that came
(30:59):
to us with that.
We've built a zillion websiteson WordPress, but it's a two
decade old platform.
It's really susceptible to harm.
It's very slow.
So, you know, nest has, a lotmore advantages.
It's way more modern technology.
It's faster, it's lightningfast, it's more secure.
But the process, again, alwaysit starts with a site map.
And the site map is, is mappingout.
(31:22):
This is an example for amortgage, a small mortgage
company in Chicago.
So when we sit down with theclients and we say, Hey, what's
your team makeup?
What, what types of loanproducts and services do you
focus on?
Everybody's got a differentniche in in mortgage, we've.
Mortgage was our number onevertical for quite a few years.
(31:43):
and so, you know, we've got alot of clients that have
different directions.
You know, one of our, one of ourlargest clients, all they do is
focus on investment propertiesfor short-term rentals.
We've got another client, all hedoes is focus on VA loans.
These are both.
Top 1% of 1% mortgage, agents inthe United States.
(32:04):
these guys, they wanted to gomore over like a general mix of
like jumbo conventional, F h Aand VA loans.
So we want a page for every oneof those because if you're in
Chicago where this client is,And you want to type in, you
know, jumbo loan in Chicago orVA loans, Chicago or, or just VA
loans or mortgage broker for VAloans near me or any of that
(32:27):
type of stuff.
That's the page you're gonna getinto cuz that's what we're gonna
design Google to index and, and,and get you found by.
And so, you know, a lot of timesbusiness owners.
As they work with a shittyfreelancer, they get a page for
all their services, and then allthe services are jumbled on one
page.
And Google's like, well, what doyou actually do?
I don't know what you do.
(32:48):
Everything's all on one page.
You know?
Then the, the url structure,title, description, headers,
images, all that stuff are toogeneral, and Google says, all
right, you're not, you're notgonna get.
You're not gonna get found.
Right.
And then, so really, so reallywhat you're saying is the site
map is built according, at leastthe deeper levels of it,
according to the questions thatyour potential clients are going
(33:12):
to ask per Well, that we'regonna ask the clients and
they're gonna answer.
Yep.
So it's, it's built around thebusiness that you wanna have in
the future, right.
Yes.
So like, so we're, we're sayingthe same thing.
It's not your clients, it'stheir clients.
Like what are their clients,what are the financial people,
(33:33):
what kind of financial services?
They would want to look for inorder to find your company or
like, okay, they're gonna ask meif, I'll use your example for
jumbo loans stats.
I want to be known for jumboloans.
I want to be known for,refinancing.
I want to be lo known for awhatever.
Whatever other things.
(33:54):
They're like, okay, if these arethe things you want people to
find, you buy because these arethe services or products you
wanna sell.
Each and every one of thembecomes a page.
Then you arrange the pages underwhatever categories, and that's
how you build a site map.
So it's basically going back to.
The clients, their needs, whatthey're actually searching for
on a search platform, and thentranslate back from that to the
(34:17):
structure of the website.
Absolutely.
And, and, and once you reallystart to understand this, the
business owner, the, the mine,you can, you can see people's
heads start to sort of swell andthen explode.
Like how big this can get,right.
So we've got a law firm in, inthe Colorado area.
My brother actually was a fratbrother of one of the partners,
(34:37):
so I knew him from college too.
You know, so they came to us andthey, they were with the largest
digital marketing agency in theworld for law firms.
They felt like they weren'tgetting, a, they weren't, they
didn't have a proactive, youknow, partner or approach there
anymore.
they were constantly bringingthat firm ideas.
They were pissed off, like, whydon't you bring us ideas?
How come you're not helping usgrow our business?
(34:59):
Every time they wanted morebusiness.
They just, that, that, thatmarketing agency says you gotta
spend more on ads.
It's a bullshit answer, youknow, because it's a low ROI
producing activity lower thanSEO would be because SEO you're
providing in fu you, you know,you're investing in future
content that could last foreverand traffic and so, You know,
but when you start thinkingabout was the website set up to
(35:21):
build the business of thefuture, not the business staff
today, but the business theywant later, you know, from a
locations perspective, do theyhave enough office locations?
Is there arbitrage opportunityin areas around the Denver area
where no one's dominating forthe practice areas and search
terms and phrases that thisbusiness wants clients and cases
(35:42):
for, right.
So we looked at the website andthe website was too small, it
wasn't dissected enough into allthe different practice areas.
So this is a full service lawfirm.
You've got 12 or 15 differentpractice areas.
So maybe, you know, one of thepractice areas is, is business
attorneys or business law, butdid it have pages set up for
every area of business law thatthese guys specialize in?
(36:04):
Like business dissolution,business disputes, startups, you
know, that, that m and a, allthat type of stuff.
And so you have all thesedifferent nested pages.
So the, the site map to the, tothe average user looks like it's
about 20 or 30 pages.
It's three or 400 pages.
You've got location pages,you've got, you know, nested,
case law and service pages.
(36:26):
You've got blogs, you've got allthe stuff in the hetero
navigation.
And so every page that was, youknow, strategized, seo, copy
design, dev got like six toeight hours maybe on a per page
basis.
But what did that generate?
In the first year that welaunched that new website, we
spent about four months buildingit, designing the ad programs.
(36:49):
We spent 600 grand a year on adsfor them now, all that stuff.
But the website brings in, youknow, 40% of the traffic, saving
them over a half a million bucksa year just on ads.
And it brought them 9,800 clientand case leads last year and
signed over 12 million in new,new case business.
You know, it's, it's a 20 x.
(37:10):
Because we worked on the sitemap for a fricking month, you
know, and then once we were,once everybody signed off on it,
then we went fast.
I love it.
I, I, I think, you know, it'slike, just like every building,
you gotta build the rightfoundations.
And if you have the rightfoundations, then you can
basically build whatever youwant on top of it, because it'll
(37:32):
be solid and we'll be flexibleand you'll be able to do stuff
with it.
Yep.
You touched also.
Yep.
Yeah.
And, and you also touched.
Technical side of it, the rightplatform that will give you the
flexibility and the speed andthe agility to do what you want,
like you said, for a futurebusiness.
I gotta ask you a toughquestion, that I'm sure is in
the mind of anybody who's doingseo, whether as an agency like
you or as a company doing itinternally, what do you think
(37:53):
are the implications of, youknow, the, the AI staff with,
with the chat bots coming into.
Potentially replacing thetraditional search that we know
and what impact that's gonnahave.
And I know Google are probablygoing to fight this as hard as
they can because it generatesliterally billions of dollars a
(38:15):
quarter for them.
Right.
But assuming that they can't winthis battle because I don't
think they can.
Yep.
Where do you think, and again, II, I know you don't have a
crystal ball, but where do yousee this.
We can talk about this for thenext two hours, two years
probably.
But yeah, you know, we've got alot written on our website.
(38:37):
We've been involved in AIrelated software solutions and
activities for three or fouryears now.
AI powers a lot of the chatbehind a lot of our clients
programs.
We also have human powered chat.
You know, every business isdifferent.
We, we customize everything tothe business.
Cuz even if you took twoseemingly exact same businesses,
(39:00):
two mortgage companies inChicago, well, one's been around
for three years and investedlots in their digital one's,
been around for 10 years andinvested nothing in digital.
And they have differenttrajectories and goals, right?
So you gotta have to considerall that when you're talking
about some of this stuff.
But, you know, on the, on the AIstuff, You know, AI has and will
(39:21):
continue to have implications oneverything that we do from
coding websites.
I just got a demo of a platformthat codes, designs and codes
websites, from ai.
we're not there yet.
These guys are like, oh yeah,this is great.
Like, none of this is good.
Nothing.
You know, it, it doesn't comeup.
(39:42):
You're too early.
Keep up with it.
Maybe in five years you're gonnahave something that's worth
anything.
But today it's not copy.
But, so, so let me ask youspecifically, because I, I'm,
I'm putting aside, being able tocreate copy with AI and being
able to call the website with AIand being able to design
whatever, I'm, I'm putting thataside for a second, and by the
way, you and I do not agree onhow quickly this is gonna
(40:03):
happen, but Yeah.
But that's not the case.
I'm specifically asking aboutBing already.
You know, the Bing Chat as anoption, it's being adopted at a
stupidly high rate.
Like the amount of people thatstarted using Bing, myself
included, that have nevertouched Bing, not a single day
of their life, right?
Is now in the hundreds ofmillions of people that started
(40:26):
using Bing.
Google will have to follow that,and they already said, by the
way, today, they announced.
Going to actually launch it.
Before it was kind of like moreconversations.
Today they've announced, so weare on, on April 6th, 2023.
They said, okay, we are gonnahave a chat option within our
search capabilities, which meanseventually, and it could happen
(40:49):
fast, could happen slow, it willdissolve somewhat the existing
way we search for things becausewe're not gonna search for.
Potential answers.
We're gonna search and get ananswer, which is a very, very
different scenario, which meansthe very foundation of SEO may
(41:12):
go away.
And even today, don't get mewrong, like today, I think
search is broken.
Like you open a page, there's 20different sponsored links on
top, which is ridiculous.
So even if you ranked quoteunquote number one, you're at
the bottom of page one if you'relucky and, and.
What do you think businessesshould do from a preparation
(41:32):
perspective into this new era?
If you have any tips?
So, absolutely.
what I was getting at was, youknow, it's, it's, again, it goes
back to data.
You, you need to be everywhere,that your business can and
should be.
That's different for everybusiness industry size and type.
And you need to be accuratebecause that data from that,
(41:55):
that's pulled in through the AImodels is coming from somewhere,
right?
Yeah.
Like I, I think the mostinteresting thing from a user
perspective regarding AI goingonline is, help with search
today.
It's like, help me findsomething with AI in the future.
It's helped Teach me something.
Yeah.
And gimme the.
(42:17):
It's not even gimme the answer.
It's give me, give me theoptions.
Right?
Like, so maybe I want to type inthe future, you know what, I
have a specific need.
I'm, I'm doing, I'm, I'm, I'mforming a new S corp in San
Diego.
What are the best law firms forme to talk to?
Right?
Yeah.
Well, ai, the, the AI model,whatever platform it's on,
(42:40):
right?
You know, Bing is powered bychat.
G p t.
Google's coming out with theirown whatever is gonna be next,
it's might be better, right?
Alta Vista and Netscape gotreplaced by Google.
Like, there's gonna be a, maybea better solution.
You've got really great peoplebacking chat G.
You can place your bet onwhatever you want, but again,
the data comes from somewhere.
(43:00):
So you, you still want to focuson having a great website.
Which is your salesperson, your24 hour salesperson, the
foundation you own and control.
But everything that's built intothat has to be read by the AI
engines, right?
The listings, data, the appdata, the review data, all that
stuff is gonna come into playwhen that algorithm, which,
(43:22):
which morphs and changes overretirement.
That's the difference, you know,is looking for the solutions to
answer the user's.
So, so nothing really changes,you know, I, I think the, they
use behavior changes, butultimately we're still trying to
do the same thing, which isconvince the world, the
(43:44):
universe, the journey that youare the right solution, right?
And it's, and that still comesdown to basic marketing
principles.
Like understand your audienceand, and know how to message
them.
And.
And that's what I think is likethe name of why his digital came
from.
Everything's gonna change.
Go with experts who actuallystay on top of this shit.
(44:06):
So like, the AI conversation isgreat.
We've been involved in this inthree or three or four years.
My, my head of copy is likeaddicted to everything.
Ai, she's just constantlyreading about it and putting out
great blog information on ourwebsite, on it.
you know, I think what thechallenge is, like how do we
enter into that world of ai,again, we can talk about this
for hours, but.
A lot of people are starting to,play around with like writing
(44:29):
blog copy at scale through ai,and I think there's a big danger
there.
Google's indicated big dangerthere, right?
If it can identify that this isAI written content and you keep
pumping it out and putting it onyour website, it's not
authoritative or credible,you're not a trustworthy source
for it cuz you didn't come upwith it and Google's gonna start
(44:49):
dinging your domain.
And we've seen this before in,in historical models like link
building, right?
Where you get, like, you go to alink farm and you get thousands
of links coming to your websiteand you go in and, and
investigate'em in like, half of'em are fricking, fricking porn
sites and, you know, other,other sets that are completely
unrelated to the business thatyou're in or the products and
services that you offer.
(45:11):
And then your, your SEO peoplelater on come in to discover
like, what's going on with yourtraffic and why is your business
fallen by 50%?
Like lost millions of dollars,right?
Then we have to go through thisprocess of disavowing all this
crap that, you know, you gotconned into buying.
And, and it's, it's gonna be thesame thing in ai.
And I think the danger rightnow, For people trying to, to
(45:34):
use AI to run their digitalmarketing is, is content, is is
is the blogging and stuff likethat.
I like Dolly.
I think it's, it's fun to playaround with.
I don't think it's there yet.
You know, from, from creating,you know, original illustration
and images, that stuff's gonnaget there first.
Like, copy's gonna get therefirst, then design's gonna get
there, then coding's gonna getnext.
(45:55):
but again, you know, I, I don't.
It's gonna be a reallyinteresting world when AI can
convince me to buy something allthe way through, right?
Not just the ad that's alreadyhappening, but like where do I
click?
Where do I go next?
What's the shopping cartexperience like, all of that.
When that all comes together,we're just gonna have to be good
(46:19):
at making shit.
Yeah.
Patrick, this was reallyfascinating.
I think you shared a lot ofgreat information, a lot.
I, I think it will get a lot ofpeople thinking about the
process they're doing todayversus the process they should
probably do or at least considerdoing.
I really, really appreciate youtaking the time, sharing from
your experience and, and, givingus, from your knowledge.
(46:42):
Thank you.
Yeah, you bet.
Thank you, sir.
If people wanna find you, followyou, connect with you, work with
you, what's, what's the best wayto.
Yeah.
if actually the best way is justgo to my website, why is digital
partners.com?
And from there you can, you can,you can, you know, find me on
the, team page, connect with meon LinkedIn.
if you have a business thatyou're looking to grow and
(47:03):
you're, and you're serious aboutit.
Book a call with me.
You can do it right from thecontact form.
You can go right into mycalendar and book something.
Just, I, I just ask that, youknow, if you, if you want us to
take time, evaluating yourbusiness and doing an audit and
coming up with a proposal andall that stuff come with a
realistic expectation aroundtimeframe and budget.
for most local businesses, youknow, we're kind of like between
(47:24):
two and 5,000 bucks a month,more for, you know, global,
international business.
Awesome.
Thank you again.
This was really great.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you so much.
MacBook Pro Microphone-1 (47:37):
Just a friendly reminder, go check out
Leveraging AI podcast.
It's a podcast that will teachyou everything you need to know
in order to integrate AI intoyour business, to grow the
business and advance yourcareer.
So pull up your phone right now.
Hit the search button on yourpodcasting platform and search
for leveraging ai subscribe.
I promise you, you are gonnaabsolutely love the content over
(48:00):
there.
And until next time, have anamazing week.
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