Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Welcome everyone to DoingBusiness with the Servant's
Heart podcast.
Doing business in life with apurpose, serving others. Yes,
Achieving success.
I'm your host, Steve Ramona.
We created this show for youbecause we want everyone
to be motivated,inspired and educated on this
show to make an impactin your world.
And as you listen to thisincredible guest I have today,
(00:23):
one of my favorite topics,by the way,
is how will you serve today andwhat impact will you create
with that service today,having that servant's heart.
I want to thank my two sponsors,BrainShare US Drive Business
Success and sustainability withbrain Share business mentors,
where your business flourishesand your vision comes to life.
Check out the link in the showNotes and then pitchdb.com
(00:46):
Imagine being a guest on over3 million podcasts,
speak at over 18,000conferences, and much more.
Build your thought leaderplatform with incredible
opportunities to showwho you really are.
With that being said,marketing is,
and I'm going to use Brandon'sword imperative in
your business,whatever that looks like.
If you're not marketing,as I say, you're in the people
(01:08):
asset business.
If you're not bringing people toyou, you're not going to grow.
And that's why I'm excited tohave Brandon on today. Brandon,
welcome to the show.
Thank you for havingme on today.
SEO is the elephant in the room.
That's what you do.
There's so many different waysto do SEO and there's so much
confusion of people I talkto unconfuse us.
(01:29):
Yeah, that is my goal,try to simplify SEO.
And SEO is just searchengine optimization.
And that means ranking websiteson the different search engines,
which primarily Google kindof runs the show.
So when you search on Google,there's ads at the top,
right below the ads are theorganic, the free listings.
And SEO is trying to get youyour website in those
(01:50):
free listings.
There's 10 spots on thatfirst page of Google.
But it's not just websites thatappear. Images appear,
videos appear, maps appear,products appear.
So want to try to take up asmuch free real estate as
possible on that first page ofGoogle without spending
money on paid ads?
Yeah imperative is the word wetalked about in the beginning.
So ROI is what we're talkingabout. What is that? Roi.
(02:12):
Because that's always the bigelephant in the room as well.
Hey,I want to work with Brandon,
but am I going to grow?
And that is where I've learnedover the years that SEO is
not a means to an end.
SEO gets you traffic,but people don't care
about traffic.
Traffic really means nothingif it's not converting.
So I've realized over the yearsthat SEO gets people
to your website,but unfortunately half the
(02:32):
people that come to mostwebsites are going to leave
that bounce rate.
So how do you keep yourself topof mind and have multiple
touch points?
And that's where I've starteddoing remarketing ads where if
you look at a product on Amazon,you don't buy it.
Those ads follow you around.
Do the same for any website.
So like if you go to my websitefor free classes,
if you've come to my website buthaven't taken one of
(02:54):
my free classes,they'll follow you around
saying, hey, take my free class.
If you have taken one of my freeclasses but you haven't signed
up for like a free consultation,then I'm going to follow you
around with like ad saying signup for a free consultation.
And if you did sign up for aconsultation put but didn't
become a client,then I'll follow you around with
different ads with testimonialsand reviews.
So doesn't have to justbe e commerce.
(03:14):
It could work for service basedbusinesses and just trying to
get those multiple touch pointsso you can build trust up and
get those conversions.
Because ultimately we all wantthose phone calls, sales leads,
emails, whatever that conversiongoal is.
And that's why I try to take aholistic approach to it instead
of just only doing SEO.
SEO is my main focus,but trying to just make sure
(03:35):
that we close the whole loop andmake sure that we get
those conversions.
Yeah,holistic and touch points are
huge because people losesight of that.
It doesn't have to be SEO.
It's one of the many toolsthat people can use.
So let me ask you this question.
You've probably heard,I hear it well.
I don't want peoplefollowing me.
I don't want Steve Ramona'swebsite or Brandon's website
following me.
From a company's perspectivelike, oh,
(03:57):
I don't want to ruin ourbrand doing that.
They really ruining theirbrand when people.
Are followingif they follow you too much.
So you could set limits.
Sometimes you'll goon a website,
you look at a product and thenyou'll see like 50 ads that
day for that same product.
A little overboard,that's probably not the best
user experience or you mighthave bought that product and
(04:18):
then you still see thoseads falling around.
So you have to make sure you setup all the audiences properly
and all the targeting is done.
Where maybe you just show yourad once a day for
the next month.
That way it's not too intrusive.
Where it's like,why do I keep seeing
this SEO company?
I don't care aboutSEO that much.
Like I was interested in it,but I don't need to see
it 20 times a day.
(04:38):
So setting up those limits andsetting up how long you show
up for, how many days,all that stuff,
the frequency capping,then you can really set it where
it's not going to betoo obtrusive.
But some people don't put thosesettings in and it just lasts
all over the place and it'sjust a little too much.
Brandon,I love that answer because I
know a little bit someabout marketing.
I'm not an expert like you.
(04:59):
I never knew that.
If I don't know that,I'm sure other people don't know
that because that's been mythought too, is I don't.
You know,I see Steve Ramon's face all
over. I see him on podcasts.
I'm done.
So being in control controlsyour marketing.
So you don't have thatdisparaging thoughts
when they say, oh,there's another logo of that
company. I'm sick of seeing.
Exactly That's so powerful.
(05:20):
I love that an audience rememberthat you can control that how
often you're out there. And and,and I want to ask this too.
So as you ramp upand change your,
you can bring that up anddown like a slider.
Not saying that's just mythought where, you know,
I want more now, this week,maybe next week or next month
I'll do less due to marketing.
(05:41):
Maybe I got too many leadsor not enough leads.
Is that a big partof this as well?
Yeah, it's all customizable.
It's all about trial and error.
You never know what'sgoing to work.
Some people need more touchpoints if it's like a
higher ticket item.
But if you're just buyinglike socks,
you don't really need to havethat many touch points.
But if you're selling like carsor anything that's expensive,
(06:01):
then you want to have thosemultiple touch points but still
not going overboard.
Like take a step back and think,if you're looking for your
product or service,how often would you want to
see those ads? I mean,most people would say I never
want to see those ads.
But just thinking like,if I have to see these ads,
how much how many timesI want to see them?
Because at least now they'reshowing targeted ads versus
(06:21):
maybe you'll get ads that arecompletely irrelevant.
Like in the past,a lot of people will get ads
that are not targeted.
Like you might get an ad for dogfood and you don't have a dog.
You're just like,why am I getting this ad?
But if you do have a dog,then you get ads or dog food.
You're like, okay,this makes a little
bit more sense.
It aligns with what I'mlooking or what I'm,
what I have what I'mlooking for.
(06:42):
I like that.
I think it'd be more an irritantgetting something like cat food.
I don't have a cat.
I'm like, but marketing,if I got a marketing
targeting ad,that's something I'm always
interested in learning more.
17 years.
I always tell people when yougo out to find marketing's
saturated, you know,you've been 17 years.
I love that you havethe experience.
(07:02):
What have you Learned in those17 years that would be a good
tip for the audience?
Just be persistent and don't getdiscouraged if you don't see
those immediate results.
Because SEO is a long term gameand a lot of people get
discouraged when they don'tsee that traction.
But you have to keep working andbuilding and building and
building it up and eventuallyyou're going to get Google
(07:22):
to trust you.
But a lot of people just do SEOfor a couple months and then if
they're not seeing the resultsas they're looking for,
they just give up.
But SEO is a long term play andit's not immediate if you want
the immediate results.
Google Ads,great way to get immediate
traction.
SEO is that slow growth,but over time you're just going
to keep building it up andbuilding it up and eventually
(07:43):
you're just going to get to thatpoint where you're just going to
have Google bringing you trafficall day long and you don't
have to worry about it.
You're the expert.
So I like that because whenyou go long term,
like you're not spendingthousands of dollars.
I'm guessing you're buildingup your pay as you go up.
You're not going to puteverything in one thing because
you know it's goingto take a while.
That's where you come in as theexpert to go, hey Steve,
(08:04):
you're company,let's start here and grow this
way. So you have a plan, right?
Yeah.
Making a long term plan that hasyour goals in place but also has
realistic expectations ofknowing what's going to happen
in the next couple months.
Like at first maybe youdon't see much growth,
but then after month threeyou're going to see it
start shooting up.
I mean sometimes it worksreally quick.
(08:24):
I have one client that I'mworking with that they don't
have much competition.
So it all comes downto the competition.
The more competition, the more,the more time it's
going to take.
But I have one clientthat doesn't really,
really have much competition.
And within one month of workingtogether I already got them to
that first page of Google.
They're not the top yet,but they've already gone to page
one which usually does nothappen that quickly.
But every website is different.
(08:46):
So it's just working with yourwebsite and just trying to
figure out what the bestgame plan is for yours.
You take websites and do auditsand look at ways that the
website could be better for SEO.
Yep Always start offwith an audit.
So that's the first place.
And usually I'll do a freeconsultation where I look at
their website and justtrying to analyze it,
(09:06):
giving them some quickhighlights about what's working,
what's not working,versus their competition.
That way we could figure out agood strategy if they want to
proceed to get them up there.
And is SEO.
I think we talked about thisalready but I want to bring this
up. SEO is not the end all,be all for your marketing,
correct?
Yeah.
SEO is just one part ofmarketing and you want
(09:27):
to diversify.
You don't want to put all youreggs in one basket because if
something happens to your likelet's say your website gets
hacked or something,then you're just going to be out
and there's not going tobe much you can do.
But if you have emails,you have social media,
you run paid ads.
It all works to get traction.
So I try to tell people you wantto try to get traffic from as
many places as possible.
(09:48):
I just focus more on SEO becauseit's a way to get free traffic.
And I thought who doesn'twant free traffic?
But everything worksto get traffic.
Or all the methods I'vementioned work to get traffic.
The ads, social media, email,it all works.
I like that because that is thething I think people do wrong is
and, and, and to be honest,marketing companies do wrong.
(10:10):
They go, hey Steve Ramona,let's just do SEO.
And it's the creme de la cremebecause it's free.
And then you go six months andyou've never had really any
conversions. It's very little.
Well,you could have done these other
things. And Let me ask you,17 years in experience doing
this as an expert,what say they don't hire you?
What should somebody look for ina marketing company to know that
(10:31):
they're going to be successful?
I would probably say thatthey've at least been around
for a little while,have some reviews,
have testimonials,and that their website looks
pretty good from anSEO point of view,
which most business ownersprobably wouldn't know how to
evaluate if a marketing agencyhas done good SEO.
But if you are able to look at,like,
the coding and see if they putkeywords in the coding,
(10:53):
or if you have tools thatwill show you backlinks,
you could check to see thatthese agencies have
some backlinks.
Because if they're not doing SEOon their own website, then,
I mean,sometimes you get too busy,
like.
But they should at least havesome SEO that they've done
to their website.
But I have a lot of friends thatdo marketing and they just kind
of neglect their website andfocus on their clients,
which happens all the time.
(11:13):
I even did that atthe beginning.
But you have to work on yourwebsite and the clients,
and that's probably a goodindication if they're able
to help you out.
If they've done rank,if they're able to rank their
website for keywords,then they could probably
do the same for you.
It's interesting because you'reright. Every industry does that.
If you're a plumber,you don't fix your own pipes,
but you fix everybody else'spipes, no problem.
So in regards to aservant's heart,
(11:35):
this is doing business witha servant's heart.
And I know marketing can becomplex, like you talked about,
but sometimes not heartfelt,where people aren't really
caring about the customer.
It's like,just do this and this.
It's kind of a shotgun effect.
Talk about being a servant'sheart in marketing.
Well, yeah,you have to care about the
customer because ifyou neglect them,
(11:56):
then they're probably not goingto want to keep working with you
and they're not going to want towork with somebody that doesn't
really show that they care.
And you have to have some vestedinterest in that business and
that website and trying to helpthem succeed because you're
working together as a teamand collaborating.
Because I can't do it alone.
I have to have the website orthe business owners help
me out with some stuff.
And if I'm just not doingwhat I'm supposed to do.
(12:18):
They're not going toget those rankings,
and they're gonna not wantto work with me and
use a different.
A different company oravoid SEO saying, oh,
I've been ripped off by this SEOcompany now I can't trust
any SEO company.
Which I get that a lot as well.
Where a lot of people work withSEO companies and go for the
ones that are reallycost effective,
like fifty dollars or a hundreddollars a month.
And I'm just like not sure whatthey could really do
(12:40):
for that price.
Because SEO is a lot of contentmarketing and getting you on
building backlinks and backlinksuntil you're getting published
on other websites.
And usually that means that youhave to pay writers to write
content and most writers wouldcharge about $50 just
for one article.
So if you're paying like100 bucks for SEO,
not sure what you're reallygetting out of it.
And a lot of times peoplecome to me saying,
(13:01):
I wish I knew ahead of time thatgoing on Fiverr or something
like that isn't going to reallyget me the results
that I expected.
Yeah, then that's. I,I'm glad you made that point
because people will go toFiverr, WeWorks, all the others,
I can't think of all thedifferent names and expect more
than they're going to get.
You pay what you get, correct?
So price point is somethingbecause I mentor businesses
(13:24):
and you know,if you charge 100 an hour,
you're good,but if you charge 500,
a thousand dollars an hour,there's that expectation that
you bring in value.
Is that the same thingwith marketing?
For the most part, yeah,because you have to. For myself,
like I'm spending a couplehundred dollars out of my own
pocket each month for my clientsfor building backlinks,
writing articles,getting content,
doing press releases.
(13:45):
So automatically I'm already outa couple hundred dollars that I
included in the fees because Idon't want them to have
all these extra costs.
But if anything is less than acouple hundred dollars and
they're probably doing some SEO,but they're not doing the,
the real portion thatreally matters,
which is building backlinks.
Backlinks are whatranks websites.
And without backlinks it'salmost impossible to
(14:07):
rank on Google.
What are some of the variablesof price point?
And you just mentioned like thatone company had no very little
competition, so move up fast.
Would they pay a little lessbecause there's less work to get
them up there than a businesscoach, which, you know,
there's 10 million businesscoaches, you know,
a lot of competition.
Does that kind of work thatway with the price point?
(14:27):
Yeah, for the most part.
The more competition,the more time it's going to take
me to get you up there.
Also the more like if you're Ecommerce website selling a
thousand products versus a Ecommerce website selling
five products,it's a little bit easier with
five products versus onehundred or a thousand.
So the more pages you have,the more SEO we have to do
for each individual page,the more keywords you're going
(14:49):
to have to rank for.
And it just takes a lotmore time that way.
But it's kind of nice to justkind of pick and choose.
Like, all right,these are my top products I
really want to focus on.
Let's push all the effort intothese and then eventually we'll
trickle down to the otherproducts and services
that you offer.
Yeah, I like that.
That's it's the unknownwith marketing is
(15:13):
social media and all this stuff.
You meant newslettersand emails?
Is that stuff that you do orpartner out or you know,
something like that?
Because I love partnerships.
Yeah I mean I help out withsome of it, but email,
I usually tell people it'sbetter if they write the emails
because authenticity and voiceis really important to
(15:33):
keep consistent.
And if you're having someone goin there and write for you
these emails, it's okay,but it's not going to have
the authenticity.
And I'm not a subject matterexpert in everything,
so it's best usually to let thebusiness owners write
those emails out.
I would help guide them onhow to like write them,
when to send them out,how to collect emails,
stuff like that,but actually writing them,
that's where I'd say sometimesit's best to just let the
(15:56):
business owner takecare of that.
How important is theauthenticity?
When you do SEO and you havingthese people that I'm
paying for to.
Write content,it's important to make sure that
they are experts or at leastknowledgeable in that area.
You don't want just some personthat has no idea what they're
writing about.
Write about like some medicaldevice and things like that.
(16:16):
Because that could require,I mean you could research it,
but there's always those nuancesthat you're not going to be able
to get just by researchingsome content online.
So you have to have some subjectmatter expertise.
Yeah, that. And that's good.
Let's jump back into emailsbecause I hear a lot of people
tell me emails that I totallydisagree because it's grown my
business talk about emailsand marketing.
(16:37):
Email probably is the mosteffective form of online
marketing by far because youget full control of it.
You send out an email.
If you have a thousandpeople on your list,
all thousand people will see it.
Whereas like social mediapost on Facebook,
only 5% of the people that likeyou will ever see what you post
that you have to spend moneyto boost that post,
essentially advertise it.
(16:57):
So email is goingto be the best.
Well for the time being it'sgoing to be the best.
You never know what'sgoing to happen.
But right now it's a reallypowerful form of marketing.
It's just that you haveto collect the emails.
A lot of people buy email listsand that's where they
do it wrong.
You have to collect those emailswhich is not easy.
Like how do you get peopleto give you an email?
If you just ask for an emailit's never going to happen.
Like I first started doing SEO,I'd have on my website
(17:20):
join my newsletter.
No one ever joinedmy newsletter.
Few years ago I started,well like maybe 8 years ago I
did the ebook that I give outfor free that got me some
people signing up.
Not as many as I had hoped,but got me a few people.
But once I started offering freeclasses that's got me a lot more
people that sign upto my email list.
So thought about just trying togive out something of value.
(17:42):
Like if you're E commerceit's really easy.
E commerce websites you justgive out a coupon saying like
first time purchasers get 10%off easy enough to
get those emails.
But for service based businessesit's a little bit more tricky.
Like yeah,offer something that's
like for a plumber,like what are you going
to give away?
If you're a plumber it's alittle bit more tricky.
So yeah, yeah,I'll give you a monkey wrench.
(18:04):
Here's a monkey wrench with ourcompany name. I'm kidding.
Well that's a good point thatyou made is a funnel.
You're talking about a funnelwhere they click the ebook.
Because I want peopleto understand this.
And then you put yourname and email,
like I just signed up for awebinar this morning and
took my name email.
They're collecting my data tofunnel through to an
email newsletter.
Is that what you'retalking about?
(18:25):
Yeah that's the bestway to do it.
So you mentioned ebooks,free classes, any other ways to.
Because I think emails arepowerful and collecting data is,
I've been told $8 pername per email,
depending on what yousell of course.
But there's a lotof money there.
Is there any other ways tocollect emails that you like?
I mean,those are the more popular ways,
(18:46):
but I would look atyour competition.
So if you have any competition,you could look at them and see
what they're offeringfor free and.
Or it doesn't even haveto be competitors.
You could just look at bigcorporate websites and see what
they're offering in terms ofhow they're getting emails.
Maybe white papers,but that's kind of similar
to an ebook or.
But yeah those are kind ofthe more popular ways.
(19:08):
What is in 17 year?
I keep saying you look so young.
I'm 62,but I keep saying 17 years.
Like he's so young.
You probably started at 12.
No, I'm kidding. Half kidding.
What is the challenge or whatis the tip that you can give
somebody that they do wrongon their website?
There's millions of websitesout there. Well,
what have you Learnedover the 17 years?
(19:28):
That is kind of a glaringmistake a lot of the time.
I mean,big one would probably be not
having text on your website.
So each page on your website,Google feeds off content and
each page needs text on it.
The more text you haveon each page,
the easier it is for the searchengines to read, understand,
and know what thatpage is about.
And most of the times youprobably want to put a couple
(19:51):
hundred words of text.
The more text,the more the search engines
are going to reward you.
But a lot of people,especially E commerce websites,
this have a bunch of productslisted there.
And Google strugglesto read images.
They're getting much better atit, but they still struggle.
All they could really read onan image is a file name,
which doesn't really give youthat much text or room to
(20:11):
put words in there.
So having text that surrounds itgives that relevancy aspect
of it and helps out a lot.
Yeah. 200 words.
Is that through the wholewebsite or per page?
Oh,no a few hundred words per page.
Like 400 words? Yeah, yeah.
Or more per page.
I want to clarify that.
Yeah, because somebody goes,hey, Steve, I did 200 words like
Brandon said,and my whole website's
(20:31):
got 12 pages.
I want to make sure I clarifythat. People do that. Right.
More you put in, the better.
So if you could write a thousandwords, even better.
But it has to be originalcontent.
You can't copy it fromone page to another,
so makes it a little tricky.
But it really is important toadd at least some text
on your pages.
Yeah,we're coming to the end here.
I want to ask some personalquestions.
(20:52):
I like people to know my guestsa little more personally.
So it's a Friday night,you're off work. What is,
what does Brandon do?
Like to out with friends,maybe go to comedy shows or just
disconnect from the computer.
Get away.
I live close to the beach,so usually go down to the beach.
Maybe not at night,but during the day.
I'll take little breakshere and there.
(21:14):
And that's the nice part abouthaving my own company is I could
pick and choose when I work,even though I work much more
than I normally did at a 9 to 5.
But at least I'm able to set myschedule and go out there and
just try to disconnect and getaway from the computer and get
away from all those screens.
Go hiking,hang out with friends and
things like that.
My wife will be smiling when shehears this. She loves the beach.
(21:36):
Just loves it. So that's good.
She's got a cohort.
How about your favorite book?
I say maybe like the Power ofNow is pretty good where it just
like tries to keep you in themoment and not thinking too much
about the past or getting stuckon what's going to happen in the
future and just tryto be present,
which is tough most of the time.
We're always thinking aboutthe past or the future,
(21:58):
but just trying to be presentin that moment.
Yeah.
Last but not leastto get motivated.
What song would you listen to?
Yeah I mean I usually listen topodcasts, but if there's a song,
maybe like Eye the Tiger is apretty good motivating song
right there. But usually, yeah,I just,
just try to listen to anything.
(22:19):
It's that way I'm not juststuck with my thoughts,
thinking about the future orthinking about past and just
kind of mellows you out.
But usually some,like jazz is always nice to just
relax too and helps you justkeep powering through that day.
Entrepreneurs, you heard?
He said relax a couple times.
The beach and songs.
I appreciate issues.
That's why I love askingthose questions.
(22:39):
Because that's a great tip.
We've got to step away.
I have to do that.
I can work 12 hours a day andlook up. It's 5 o'clock.
What did I just. What happened?
Got it. We gotta step away.
Brandon,this has been incredible.
I've learned so much about SEO.
My notepad's full of notes.
But people want to reach out toyou. How can they find you?
So I actually created a gift foreverybody if they go to my
(23:02):
website at SEO Optimizers.
That's S E O-P-T-I I Z E-R-S.comforward slash gift.
They can find that there alongwith my contact information and
a bunch of classes I'vedone over the years.
I've done it for free so theycould see step by step how to do
a lot of stuff thatwe talked about.
And also if they want to booksome time on my calendar for
(23:23):
a free website analysis,I'm happy to check out their
website for free and give themsome feedback about what's
working and what's not working.
It's powerful.
I'm going to go there rightafter this show. I love it.
I love. I'm a free stuff guy.
Especially if it's We'realways learning.
Entrepreneurs always need to belearning. Again, thanks again,
Brandon, for being on.
I want to make a note here.
(23:44):
As I always say on podcasts,there's a forward reverse
button on there.
There's so many tips thatBrandon gave to you.
Powerful tips and from a guywho's been doing it 17 years.
He just didn't start last week.
But take those and listen tothem over and over again.
Brandon,I would love for you to watch
or listen to the whole show,but if five or six minutes
change your life or make adifference in your business,
(24:04):
we're going to be extremelyhappy. Also,
don't forget about my TV show.
Together we serve.
It's every Friday at 2pmPacific, 5pm Eastern. Also too,
where business with doingbusiness with a surface heart on
your chest and on your hat.
I've got swag hats andshirts and hoodies.
There'll be a link in the chatas well and also a link to
(24:24):
Brandon's website for thatgift jump. On it.
He's given to you free.
And that's what servant heartsdo. People like Brandon,
who are great people,they're going to give you
something to help you out.
And as always,I want to thank all of
you for listening.
Me and Brian are so excited thatyou listen or watch this show
and I look forward to seeing youon the next episode of Doing
Business with a Servant's Heart.
See y'all.