November 22, 2021 • 37 mins
In episode 106, host Eric Dickmann interviews Steve Wiideman. Steve is an SEM & SEO expert, writer, educator, and business consultant. For over 22 years, he has been helping startups, SMBs, and Fortune 5000 companies develop creative growth strategies to ensure sustainable growth.
With his passion for SEO and growing businesses, Steve started Wiideman Consulting Group where he advises clients on SEO, link-earning, multi-location ranking factors, and PPC advertising.
His current projects include experiments to better understand the impacts of voice search, featured snippets, and structured data have on search results. Steve also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of California San Diego and California State University Fullerton.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/measuring-inbound-marketing-success-s7ep6/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:02):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Steve.
Welcome to The Virtual CMOpodcast.
I'm so glad you could join ustoday.
Steve Wiideman (00:23):
Thanks, Eric.
Glad to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
I'm glad to have you on the show because you know
one of the topics that we coverhere, an awful lot is talking
about things like inboundmarketing, organic search, and
the kinds of things that you canreally do to drive people to
your website without necessarilyhaving to spend a ton of money.
But really creating that greatcontent that's going to drive
people in.
But one of the things that wedon't get as much opportunity to
(00:46):
talk about is really how youmeasure the success of those
efforts.
And so I know we're going to getinto that a little bit today,
but to kind of kick things off,I would love it.
If you could just share with thelittle, with the audience a
little bit about yourbackground.
Steve Wiideman (00:59):
Sure.
I'm kind of a serialentrepreneur, I suppose.
I've been in the digitalmarketing industry now for about
22 years.
I spent my corporate daysworking for IBM global services,
Disney parks and resorts where Imanage Disneyland and
Adventurous by Disney paid andorganic search.
(01:19):
Jumped into the small businessworld as as a sole proprietor in
around 2010.
Hence, we incorporated asWiideman Consulting group in
2013.
My goal 10 years ago was to sortof pivot from being a
practitioner of digitalmarketing to teaching and doing
other things that I've reallywanted to do in my career.
(01:39):
So a couple of years ago Istarted teaching as an adjunct
professor at a few colleges.
Now I'm teaching nine classesbetween UC San Diego, where I'm
teaching SEO tools andanalytics, at Cal State
Fullerton.
You know where as you mentioned,there's so many different ways
to do marketing.
One of my classes is DigitalMarketing Landscape, so we go
through everything from inboundmarketing and media buying and,
(02:01):
you know, display, and we getinto affiliate marketing and so
forth.
And then I also teach astrategic SEO course.
All that teaching culminatedinto the opportunity to write a
textbook.
So recently I published atextbook which includes
courseware and lecture slides,and everything for those
teachers who teach or want toteach digital marketing.
(02:22):
Um, it was about a year in the,uh, in the making and my
coauthor Scott Kelly wasabsolutely incredible at really
helping keep the scholarly partof my writing.
Cause sometimes it's so hard togo off on a tangent and say, oh,
all these things and casestudies and lessons.
And so he really helped kind ofstructure it down.
So that's kind of where I'm atright now.
I'm teaching.
(02:42):
As I mentioned, I'm working onthis courseware that we have to
update every year.
And I have 19 members here thatare supporting a few restaurant
chains and other smallerbusinesses around search engine
marketing.
So they'll come to us andthey're like, Hey, I've got some
people doing some things, but Idon't feel like we really have a
strategy.
(03:02):
You know, what should we bedoing?
How should we be measuring it?
Where are we right now comparedto our competition?
What's the full ray of what wecould be doing to maximize
everything around search anddisplay, and email.
And so we help connect the dotsfor them so they know at least
what their roadmap should looklike, whether they have the
resources at the time to work onit or not yet.
Eric Dickmann (03:24):
Yeah, I'm such a big believer in creating that
marketing strategy so that youreally know what your objectives
are.
What are you trying toaccomplish?
And then what are the tacticsthat you need to employ to make
that happen?
And I think it would be helpful.
You know this podcast is reallygeared toward small and
mid-sized businesses, but maybelet's just start with some
definitions just to make sureeverybody's on the same page.
(03:45):
So you know, when we talk aboutthings like inbound marketing,
when we talk about SEO and SEMand SMM, Just give us your sort
of a base level definitions ofwhat these terms mean.
Just so we've got that as we goforward.
Steve Wiideman (03:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
So obviously the one everyonehears about every day is SEO,
search engine optimization.
The goal there is just to appearas high and as often as possible
for keywords that, that arespecific to what we do.
Not broad definition terms,right?
Leave those to Wikipedia andMerriam dictionary.
But those that describe ourservice, our product, and our
(04:21):
service and product details.
The SEM side, everyone's kind ofgot their own definition in our
industry.
SEM used to be search enginemarketing, which encompassed
everything, organic search, paidsearch ads.
You know in other ways that weutilize search in different
networks.
But over time, it's somehowbecame known as the paid search
(04:45):
side, SEO and SEM.
SEO was organic as SEM is paid.
I don't know why it happened,but it happened.
And what we're talking aboutthere is when you perform a
search and you see those firstthree ads at the top, that's
paid search.
You pay per click.Then there'syou mentioned, SMM social media
marketing.
So that's us creating a strategyaround what are our recurring
(05:05):
themes are going to be that ourcustomers and potential
customers would subscribe tothat they find interesting or
engaging, what are the differentvehicles we can use to do that
from quizzes, polls.
You know, features, research.
You know we come up with whatthose things are, we build some
campaigns and objectives, andwe've got ourselves a social
(05:26):
media strategy.
Mentioned something if I heardit right, but I thought I
might've heard something likeCRO conversion rate
optimization.
This is you know, if you'regetting a thousand visits to
your website, and you're getting5% of them to become customers,
our goal is to try to get thatto 10% or 15%.
So conversion rate optimizationis the activity of trying to get
(05:49):
your page to convert more ofyour visitors into customers.
Then there is email marketing,right?
That's where you're collectingemails of your customers may be
potential customers.
And then you know, building astrategy to retain those folks
as subscribers and to encouragethem to get other people to
subscribe as well.
Eric Dickmann (06:09):
And this is where it gets confusing for a lot of
businesses, right?
Because we're talking about anumber of different things each
which has a very specific workeffort associated with it.
Some of them have bigger budgetsthan others because you know on
the paid side, obviously you seta budget.
That budget gets spent as thoseads run.
On the organic side, you'rereally creating content that
could have a pretty long shelflife, but it also takes some
(06:31):
time to be found and discovered.
So I know one of the things youknow, we're huge believers here
on this podcast about inboundmarketing, about creating great
content, content of value thatpeople can find.
And that you know does have thislong shelf life.
When you think about inboundmarketing, One of the challenges
is of course measuring thesuccess of that, right?
(06:52):
Because it does take time.
So when you work with clientsand you set up sort of an
inbound strategy to create sortof organic search results, what
do you tell them?
Like in terms of what theirexpectations should be?
You create a great piece ofcontent, very keyword focused
you've got it out there.
You've got a nice landing pagewhere people can find it.
What do you tell people in termsof how long they should expect
(07:13):
to wait before some of thoseresults get noted?
Steve Wiideman (07:15):
Right.
Well, I think it varies based onthe brand.
But I think I always start withyou know, buckle your seatbelt
because it's going to be a wildride.
The way that I'm explaining itto some of the students in my
classes, because they get askedthis all the time, how long is
it going to take me to rank?
And if you're dealing with anexisting brand that's been
around for a while that's doingother types of marketing, people
(07:37):
search for them by name, they'reknown, people might recognize
them in the search results.
And your goal is say, I want torank for this new keyword.
So you've got this page that youhave to create to address that
search term and it'sderivatives.
So the goal is you know, scrapethis page first, let's look at
the keywords.
We want to tie in for Google todo that initial crawl of our
sites, that page and sort ofindex those words and say, Hey,
(08:01):
I'm going to try this page forthese words and see how it
performs.
That content task is somethingthat usually takes, I would say,
three to four months before youreally start to see it show up
somewhere on the second page ofthe search results.
And then as, as other websitesare mentioning your name and
those keywords on theirwebsites, maybe even linking
(08:22):
back to your page or to at leastto your homepage so they can
crawl to that page, then you'vesatisfied sort of that off page
SEO signal.
I mean PageRank is somethingLarry Page at Google came up
with in what, 1997, before theGoogle search engine even was
created.
And the goal was to use linksand external signals to rank
webpages instead of justtrusting that the webmaster knew
(08:45):
what they were doing.
So those off page signals again,another three to six months.
So we're, we're already using.
You know, six to nine months nowbetween our content and our off
page SEO to get right on thefirst page of the search
results.
And you'll see yourself there atnumber nine.
Going, God, I got to get thatnumber one spot and I'm stuck
there at the number nineposition.
My content's great, my links andoff page visibility is
(09:09):
consistent.
What do I have to do?
That's where the user behaviorsignals come in and that's where
you could almost remove all thecontent and just put a big image
if you want it to.
Just to test to see howirrelevant keywords really are
at that point, and how links hitthis sort of what's the law of
(09:30):
diminishing return, right?
It really comes to that place.
So you've got more links andbetter links in your
competition.
You've got better content you'relike, but I'm stuck there at
number nine.
It's normally because users have10 choices and they're not
choosing you, right?
Our goal is to make sure thatwhen Google does display our
results, when we are a numbernine, maybe you were even number
(09:50):
five, you know one out of athousand times that were
displayed, they want to see thatpeople are choosing us more
often.
So that's going to be reallytesting.
better and improving bettertitles, descriptions, maybe
doing some work with our webdeveloper to provide more rich
results, maybe star ratings,maybe a few questions and
answers, maybe a video or animage thumbnail next to our
(10:11):
results, some sort of a call toaction or value proposition
along with that keyword that wewant to appear for.
Maybe looking at the resultsthat are at the top or in the
first page to see what types ofrich results Google's already
displaying and then go to thedeveloper, I want this.
Right?
And then they'll go to a sitecalled schema.org, and they'll
find that markup, they'll addthat code to your page.
(10:33):
And now you'll stand out in thesearch results more.
And as long as we're we'reproviding, like you said, the
best content possible, rightaround that year point, again
somewhere in that middle rangeyou know well enough, but you
know, not a brand new website.
You should see yourself in thetop few positions.
You know again, there's, there'sspecial circumstances, such as
words like credit card ormortgage, you know, we've got
(10:56):
these companies that have beenreally building a brick house
for the last two decades, youknow, to own those positions.
They're not going to go awayquickly.
So if you want to beat them, ifyou want it to be better than
with them, it's probably goingto take a few years, you know,
to rank for those reallycompetitive keywords.
So we encourage our clients tostart with some of those upper
funnel questions that peopleask.
(11:17):
Go to a site, like, um, answerthe public and come up with that
answer.
So, so anyway, when we get withour clients, that's how we
answer the question.
How long does it take to rank?
Um, You know, basically three orso or so months until we're on
the second page, it's going tobe about six to nine months
until we're on the first pageand a year or more until we see
ourselves in the top position.
(11:38):
I think that's setting a goodexpectation.
But in terms of how do youmeasure?
I think the first question toask is you know, do you already
have an existing SEO suite whereyou're tracking all your
rankings andand your traffic.
If you're an enterprise brand,you might be using Conductor
Searchlight, you might lose useSearch Metrics, you might use
(12:00):
BrightEdge.
If you're a small business, youprobably do just fine with a
tool like SEMrush or AHRefs,ahrefs.com.
You could probably use Moz, MOZ.
There's a lot of those toolsthat are available, for the most
part, about a 100, 150 bucks amonth.
And they really help give you away to measure everything in one
(12:21):
place from your keyword rankingsyou want to track to your web
traffic statistics.
I like to use this new tool aswell called What a Graph,
Eric Dickmann (12:31):
Oh, I haven't heard of that one before.
Yeah.
Steve Wiideman (12:33):
It's as if you're from you know, somewhere
in Texas or in the East Coast,you might heard of What a
Burger, It always reminds ofthat.
And just because of the name.
So if that helps you rememberit's called What a Graph.
And what it allows you to dobeyond just having better data
to look at from GoogleAnalytics, from SEMRush from
(12:54):
Google Search Console, it putsall that into one place for you,
but has a much prettierinterface, but it also allows
you to create KPIs and no othertool that I know of allows you
to do that.
There's no you know, what's yourgoal and here's how close you
are to hitting that goal.
Nothing exists that can get youthere.
So What a Graph does have thatfunctionality.
(13:14):
So when we're on a call withwhether it's Applebee's or IHop
or whoever, we can say, Hey, ourgoal for the year, you know, was
to increase search revenue fromsearch by 10%.
And based on that KPI goal andwhere we are right now, you
know, we're going to hit orwe're not going to hit that
goal.
And it's just great to be ableto see that in one place, but
then we can hold all thestakeholders accountable and
(13:37):
say, guys we as a team agreethat we're going to do these
things, and we've hit someroadblocks.
There's three months left in theyear, let's see what we can do
to knock those out so we can hitthat 10% KPI goal.
And your goals are going to bedifferent based on your business
model.
For e-commerce websites, if yousell products online, your KPIs
are going to be revenue,Transactions, average, ordinary
(13:59):
value, you know, and the growthof those attributes.
If you're a local business,you're going to be paying
attention to you know, youraverage position in Google Maps,
you're going to pay attention tohow much traffic you're driving
from the website and appointmentlinks within your Google maps
profile, or your Google MyBusiness account.
If you are sort of a leadgeneration company and you're
(14:21):
bringing in leads and you don'thave a brick and mortar
location, and you're not doinge-commerce then your goal is
going to be probably how manyleads was I able to drive from
organic?
Is that a primary KPI?
And if you want to get a littlebit more granular, you could
break it into a couple differentgroups.
The first group might betechnical, looking at things
like accessibility, security,privacy, core web vitals, right?
(14:43):
All of those things can bemeasured and improved and use
these KPIs for the internalteams.
I don't know if I would talkabout those with the key
stakeholders of the business forsay, if you're a small business,
maybe.
But a lot of times it feelsoverwhelming and technical.
So I would just say, Hey,webmaster, fix these things over
(15:03):
the next 12 months, you know,and, and you'll have a job.
Eric Dickmann (15:07):
Well I do think it's interesting because what
you're saying, there is a lot ofcomplexity to this and you know,
we talk about SEO all the timeon here, and there's a reason
there are so many companies outthere offering SEO services.
Not that they're all great, butit is a complex thing to
implement correctly and I thinkfor many smaller businesses that
don't have large marketingteams, there are really lots of
(15:29):
factors that you can consider.
You rattled off a number oftools, which many small
businesses might not even haveaccess to.
So there is real value inbringing in experts who
understand how all this stuffworks and what you need to do to
really get the best rankings outof your content.
Steve Wiideman (15:44):
At least to create the roadmap for you.
I'm going to get a lot of like alot of hate emails from saying
this, but for small businesses,you really can.
In-house SEO yourself.
You can absolutely do ityourself.
You can bring in a collegeintern, college marketing
students, for a reasonablepart-time salary and that person
(16:06):
can be responsible for makingsure that those different SEO
focal points are paid attentionto the technical, the content,
and the off page.
They don't have to do the work,but they can be the person
responsible for it.
And then what you could do withthat person is you can use tools
like, Writer access, you know toprovision new content for the
website.
(16:26):
You could use freelance sitessuch as guru.com and Freelancer,
or codeable.io as a resource toget periodic coding needs that
you need.
You can, you can use some folksthat are really good at digital
PR, we like to use Otter PR,they're fantastic.
And they'll do some outreach toget us, to be able to contribute
(16:49):
to articles and features, andthings that really help us to
build links organically.
So that being said, I don'tthink you need to spend 200 to a
thousand dollars a month withsome tool, some company that's
going to basically take overyour digital marketing and maybe
threaten you to not give it backwhen you try to leave with them
(17:10):
and instead bring it in house,spring that part turn prime
person in, maybe your front deskperson has an hour, a day free,
and you can parse out an hour aday for them to do some of that
work to help you with some ofyour local SEO, to make sure
that you're appearing locally.
And you know, we can talkthrough what some of those
strategies look like.
But honestly, the big picture isif you're a small business, I
(17:31):
would stay away from using a lotof agencies and third parties, I
haven't seen the longevity orsustainability with it.
And we have to remember a lot ofthem are also doing the same
work for your competitor.
So
Eric Dickmann (17:45):
Well, true.
Steve Wiideman (17:46):
You can bring it in house, give somebody some
training, because it's notrocket science.
Eric Dickmann (17:52):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(18:13):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(18:36):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's interestingtoo, because there are real pros
and cons, right?
I think that sometimes when youbring something in-house, you've
got to sort of give people therunway to start to see the
success of their efforts there.
And if you're bringing a juniorlevel person in, there's
(18:56):
obviously some education thatneeds to happen, there are
obviously some tools that youneed to bring in order to do
that, so you've got to bewilling to make the commitment
to do it.
But you're right, onceespecially for some businesses,
this doesn't have to be a hugeeffort.
It can just be a part-timeeffort for somebody that's on
the team.
I'd like to switch gears alittle bit and start to talk
about the paid side of things alittle bit.
So let's talk about going outand purchasing keywords.
(19:19):
I mean that's so important formany businesses to drive that
traffic to be up in those toprankings on Google, but don't
want to wait a year to startmeasuring that, right?
Like you would maybe with someorganic results.
How do you advise people to sortof engage in a paid strategy and
then measure and monitor that tosee if it's being effective?
Steve Wiideman (19:38):
And a lot of small businesses are jaded
because they'd spent money onads without having the right
education to be able to do itthemselves.
They didn't go through theGoogle ads training program,
they just jumped in, create anew account, try to follow the
wizard, right?
And the wizard says, you usethese broad search terms.
And then they see, Hey, wow, Ispent a thousand dollars this
(19:59):
week.And if they figured out howto go into the search term
report to see what actual searchterms triggered their ads when
they're bidding on these broadkeywords, they go, oh my God,
these search terms have nothingto do with me.
And they feel like they justwasted a thousand dollars, and
they're jaded, or more.
I've seen businesses waste a lotmore.
So you're right..
The best place to start with apaid ad strategy is to get with
(20:21):
someone with some experience andhave them put together a plan
for you.
Put it into a Word doc or aGoogle sheet, Google doc.
Here's the campaign, here arethe ad groups.
Here are the keywords.
Here are the extensions.
Here's everything that we wantto recommend that you create.
That way you've got a roadmapand if you want to do it
(20:41):
yourself still using thatroadmap, great.
If you want them to deploy itfor you and then show you how to
manage it, because of all theway that you can automate bid
management and bid strategy now.
You've really, I hate to say it,but a lot of the paid search
vendors that you're going to usearen't doing a lot of monthly
work, because Google's AI doesall that stuff for you.
The bid automation isautomatically bidding up or down
(21:05):
based on what you're willing tospend per sale, per lead, per
action, or even ROI.
If you get down into some of thee-commerce things that you could
do, it's doing it automaticallyfor you.
Yeah, there's some nurturingthat they could be doing to test
new ads, test new campaigns,test new audiences.
But unfortunately, when you're,when you're outsourcing, you
really don't get much of thatteam's time and energy.
(21:27):
So I would say to start, ifyou're a small business, get
somebody to help you set it up,teach you how to monitor and
manage it and show you somethings you could do.
And then if you've got thebudget for it and it's working,
there's some of the revenue thatyou gained from search back into
those resources to continuechipping away.
But make sure that they tell youbefore the month, what their
plan is to optimize.
(21:48):
Otherwise, if you put them onautopilot, they might go a few
months without doing any work.
And you won't even know unlessyou go into Google ads and go to
the specific log files.
So if you are an e-commercewebsite, you might set up
campaigns based on your productcategories and the product
detail pages might be where youput your ad groups.
(22:09):
If you have lead generation, youmay base your campaigns off the
navigation.
You know, one of the things Iremember doing with some of the
e-commerce brands we'd workedwith was looking at our budget
allocation and saying, Hey,we've only got$10,000 a month
and we've got you know, 20campaigns.
How should we do our budgetallocation?
(22:30):
What I've seen be the mosteffective is starting with the
business name and campaignfirst, because it helps your
account score, your superrelevant, your cost per clicks,
really low, and you'reprotecting your name.
The next would be the productname.
So let's just say you're, Idon't know you're selling
Sketchers, and one of yourproducts is Shape-ups, so
Sketchers is the company namecampaign, and the product name
campaign is Shape-ups.
(22:51):
Those also convert really well,they're your names, you own
them.
You're not going to pay verymuch per click and your ad score
is going to be really high.
The next campaign I would createwould be product type running
shoes, walking shoes, casualshoes, work shoes, right?
So I create a campaign for eachproduct type.
And then this is by budgetallocation, right?
(23:12):
First company name, then productname, then product type, then
product benefits.
So maybe you're going aftersomething like exercise clothes,
fitness clothes, fitness,apparel, and shoes are part of
that, even though it's notnecessarily you know somebody
looking for socks or for runningshoes.
And the last campaign that Iwould do, if I'm doing well
(23:34):
across all of those, and then myquality scores are great,
they're performing amazing, youmight test during some
competitor conquesting where youbid on some of your competitor
names.
Just keep in mind that your costper click is going to be higher,
your score is going to be lowerbecause you're not as relevant
as they are to those searchterms, but in some industries,
competitor keywords tend to workreally well, especially if you
(23:56):
don't have a lot of brandrecognition already.
So that's how I would organizean ad campaign for search.
Then you can get into display,you can get into remarketing,
and bring them back into asequence of seeing different ads
until they convert.
You can import data from yourcustomer database and target
(24:17):
people who've already purchasedfrom you in the past.
You can use affinity audiencesor people who Google themes is
having an interest in thatparticular product or category.
Or you could even do in-marketwhere they've already looked at
competitors and they've donesearches and gone to
competitors, but they haven'tgone to you yet.
So it's almost like doingremarketing, but instead of them
(24:38):
visiting your website first,they're visiting your competitor
first, and that can be reallyfun.
So one trick is you are settingthese things is create separate
campaigns for each of them whenyou start testing.
That way, they don't cannibalizeeach other in terms of budget.
So if you're testing in marketand affinity in the same
campaign, and you've got a$10 aday budget, you know, you're,
you're not really giving thesystem enough, um, enough
(25:02):
resources to work with.
So again, I would break eachcampaign down and into a really
small target, um, or oneaudience.
You see what works and what'sonce you've got a few months,
maybe even a year or two,depending on your budget of
data, then you can take the topperforming keywords, the top
performing ads, the topperforming placements and
audiences, and move them intotheir own campaigns called top
(25:25):
performing, reduce the budget onall the old ones.
So they keep going, just at aslower speed so new
opportunities can come in andkeep getting moved over.
When you do that, now you'rebuilding an account architecture
that's inclusive of only ads,keywords, and placements that
have evidence of performing wellfor you in terms of conversion.
(25:45):
So that's how I would approach apaid search strategy if were
doing that.
Eric Dickmann (25:51):
No, I think that's great advice,.
I like the way you laid thatout.
I think that's very actionable.
And you know, sort of whenyou're talking about a keyword
program, right?
You're talking about these wordsthat you go after, where you
think that people are going tobe searching for your products
or services, and then you moveover to the social media side
and there it's much more aboutaudiences and interests,
Steve Wiideman (26:11):
All audiences, Eric.
Eric Dickmann (26:12):
Yeah, it's a very sort of different way of
approaching it, but it's alsphugely popular and successful
because these social mediaplatforms are collecting so much
information about the clientswho are using them.
So as you sort of look at thatside, the social side, you have
to wear a little bit of adifferent hat, right?
And one of the problems that Isee oftentimes with smaller
businesses is that we all usesocial media, we're all on these
(26:36):
platforms, but being a user ofthe platform doesn't necessarily
make you an expert for marketingon the platform.
So talk to me a little bit abouthow you talk to clients about
how they can use social media,both kind of from an organic,
just posting things for free aswell as for paid ads.
Steve Wiideman (26:53):
Sure.
And you know what Eric, I'mgoing to give you some links
after the can share with theaudience.
The first will be that KPItemplate.
It's the same one I share withmy students who, you know, are
going to go off into the jobworld and they're going to be
asked, how are you going totrack KPIs?
So I'll give you that so thateverybody can see that framework
of what you could track and themeasurements, ability for you to
be able to do that and delegateit.
(27:14):
Social media, I have somethingon Bitly.
I think it'sbitly/contentmarketingtemplates,
content-marketing-template.
And I'll send it to you againafter the meeting.
But it really breaks down whatwe talked about earlier in
regards to creating specificthemes, right?
And I think the example in thatsheet is like underwater basket
(27:36):
weaving or something, right?
Eric Dickmann (27:37):
Right.
The old classic underwaterbasket weaving.
Steve Wiideman (27:41):
Why not?
So you look at different thingsthat you can do to see how users
respond in different industriesand different businesses are
going to do, or have differentresults.
So ideas include doing likeresearch and study.
If Apple put up a page up thatsaid, Hey, do you know what app
that 95% of all iPhone userslike to use?
(28:03):
Would you be interested infinding that out?
So doing research and coming upwith proprietary data that only
you know about from yourstudies, from research, from
focus groups, from your owndatabase of what you know about
your customers is a huge clickfor you, in terms of content for
social media, other other thingscould include you know, doing
things like a comedy thing,right?
(28:25):
Where you're doing somethingfunny or engaging, or you're
creating sort of a voice or apersonality for the people who
work at the company.
Another one could be conferencehighlights, right?
So there's a lot of differentideas in there that you can kind
of pick and choose from thatallows you to create campaigns.
It also has columns for what youdo once you've actually got
(28:48):
those campaigns queued up,right?
And then you're going to youknow either set a cadence of
Hey, every Tuesday I'm going todo this theme, every Wednesday,
this theme, every Thursday, thistheme.
We'll take Friday off and you'llfind what and when is the best
time to post.
then once you've got thatcalendar going and you know what
those themes are, then it's justsort of building out the next
(29:09):
few months of content, having itready to go, getting other
influencers and names involvedin some way or another so that
they can help share it.
So it's not just throwing stuffout there and hearing crickets,
but instead throwing shots upout there and then following up
with people who would be engagedin that content to help you to
share it and to promote it.
So there's that part of it.
(29:31):
Hey phase one, we did theresearch, we know what we're
going to do.
Phase two.
We wrote up some really coolstuff and got some really great
graphics and video.
Phase three, we got other peopleinvolved who we hope will share
it, experts, industry,authorities, whatever, book
authors, it's a good one.
And now we know after we'velaunched, so we've launched now.
We're going to do the fastfollow to get those people to
(29:53):
help engage with it.
And then you just rinse andrepeat.
Week after week after week.
That's an organic strategy.
And I would remember that socialmedia isn't a place for you to
reach out and say, me, me, me,us, us, us, right?
It's the place to say you, you,you, and what do you like?
And here's something you know,that you might enjoy that's
helpful, here's questions thatpeople ask about this product,
(30:14):
or here's a funny meme that wecreated that you might relate to
because we know that you're intothis type of thing.
You know it's really creatingcontent that is fun, engaging,
humorous, maybe borderlinecontroversial, you know, or
teaser controversial when youactually read it, you're like-
(30:35):
Oh, this isn't controversial,but it got my attention.
I think that's a good organicapproach.
And then you augment that withthe paid side, right?
You build your audience with thefocus of trying to get them to
subscribe.
So you take all that greatcontent and where you see your
engagement's really high, andpeople really interacting with
that content, boost those,promote those.
(30:56):
Don't put too much money into ituntil you've really learned what
works and what doesn't, butboost those posts because you
know people already engaged withthem well, and the audience
you'll be targeting are those ofyour competitors, which is easy
to do.
You know, the demographics andinterests that you think your
audience have, and then it feelsa little wasteful, but for the
(31:16):
first, I don't know, three tosix months and paid search and
paid social, it's a little bitof an investment with very
little return.
The advantage of doing it is nowyou've got six months of data,
you can take what works, thedemographics that worked, the
ads that worked, you know, andthen you can start to mold a
campaign that, you know, will beeffective and use your budget a
(31:39):
little bit more efficiently.
So it is an investment in thebeginning because you're
learning, you're letting thesystem learn, and the people
interact.
And then you know, you take allthe data from what worked and
then you create a brand newcampaign based on what you know
already works.
And then you just keep rinsingand repeating.
But the great thing about doingpaid and social is that like you
(31:59):
said, there's so much audiencedemographic data.
And remember these searchengines and social sites have
algorithms.
So once you do finally start toget it dialed in, it's going to
work on its own.
It's just automatic money allday long.
If you have the patience toinvest, to collect the data, to
create campaigns that are goingto be effective, then you set
(32:20):
your cost per acquisition, yourcost per sale, and then you just
let it run.
Eric Dickmann (32:25):
Yeah.
Well what I love about that too,is if you've done a good job
with your marketing strategy,you've built out your buyer
persona.
You really understand who thattarget customer is, that ideal
customer is.
It's a little bit easier tocreate an audience around that.
Then it might be to figure out,well, what are they searching
for?
Because sometimes your businessor product, like you said, you
(32:47):
could be going after somethingin the banking world where
there's so many people goingafter banking terms and whatnot.
It can be very hard to say, whatare they specifically searching
for that would lead them to mywebsite?
But if you understand who theyare, what their interests might
be, you can understand thataudience and you can put some
ads up that are likely to hitthe mark.
Steve Wiideman (33:06):
Absolutely.
Eric Dickmann (33:07):
I love the way you lay this, some of this out.
I can tell you're an author anda professor because you lay
things out very systematicallythat people can follow.
Steve Wiideman (33:13):
I have my moments.
But still, I'm learning everyday, we all are.
Digital Marketing is notplumbing and electricity.
It is this dynamic world thatrequires a lot of patience.
You know, it requires a lot ofbeing open-minded to change.
It's math, art, science,creativity, it's all those
(33:35):
things.
And for small businesses,sometimes all those character
traits have to be held by oneperson who has to be analytical
and be able to do research andlook at spreadsheets and
numbers, while at the same time,write really compelling,
persuasive content for thatlower funnel or write really
casual, helpful, engagingcontent for that upper funnel to
(33:55):
build your brand or becharismatic enough to pick up
the phone and say, Hey, I'mworking on this cool thing, I'd
love to work together because Iwant to earn a link, you know?
And it takes the introvertedextrovert and sometimes the
extroverted introvert, you knowto carry the role of SEO
specialist.
So I can see why it feels sooverwhelming for a lot of small
businesses.
But I'm telling you, I've metthese marketing students, and in
(34:17):
every class there's at leastthree that are really
passionate, that want to learn,that want to try.
And a lot of them will work foryou for free to get the
experience.
So reach out to the colleges andsay, do you have any digital
marketing students that want tovolunteer and do some free work
to help me get going?
And by the way, this Wiidemanncharacter, right has this free
course that you could take thatthey could reference to have
(34:40):
their templates and to buildtheir roadmap and you know, and
then they reach out to us or toany other industry expert for
advice.
We help students as you know, asan industry, more than anyone,
because trying to build the nextgeneration of ethical SEOs.
Eric Dickmann (34:54):
Well, that's actually a great segue as we
reach the end of our show heretoday.
Where can people find out moreinformation about the free
course, about you, about yourcompany?
I'd just love it if you could dothat and we'll make sure to have
all this linked up in the shownotes as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
So right now we're building outacademyofsearch.com.
It's a brand new kind of programwe've created to try to help
share a lot of knowledge of whatwe learned in 22 years of doing
(35:17):
this stuff.
Your listeners can get freeaccess by using code- SEO Steve.
So feel free to go to Academy ofSearch, choose that SEO program.
It's like 600 bucks orsomething, but use SEO steve,
you'll get it for free.
I'm everywhere online.
I use SEO Steve as a handle.
But if you want to hit up anyoneon the team here, there's nine
(35:38):
of us, look for Wiideman, W I ID E M A N, across every social
channel.
We love to help smallbusinesses, we're not in a place
where we're looking to grow ouragency again.
We're moving over to more of theeducation side.
So any help we provide will beat no cost.
So we're happy to help them seewhat we can do to move along
(36:00):
your digital marketing.
You know, for a guy who has twoends at the last name, part of
his last name.
You've got 2 I's in there,spellcheckers most love you too.
Steve Wiideman (36:09):
You know it's actually funny as a few times
that I've been declined thingslike getting pictures developed
because it has two eyes and thename of the photographer, but
two I's on it.
And it's like, well that's, We,that's you know, in the NES game
system and its trademarks, youcan't use it.
I couldn't get my license plateto say Wiideman, because it
looks like I'm trying to selldrugs or something.
(36:31):
So in my last name, it'sinteresting, but it's definitely
had its downfalls.
Eric Dickmann (36:37):
I I can sympathize with you on that.
I really can..
Steve, this has been great.
I've really enjoyed having youon the show today.
Thanks so much for sharing allof this.
I'll make sure to put all of thethings that you've mentioned
today in the show notes, so thatpeople can find you.
But I've really enjoyed ourconversation.
Steve Wiideman (36:51):
Likewise, thanks again for the opportunity.
Eric Dickmann (36:55):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Steve.
Welcome to The Virtual CMOpodcast.
I'm so glad you could join ustoday.
Steve Wiideman (00:23):
Thanks, Eric.
Glad to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:25):
I'm glad to have you on the show because you know
one of the topics that we coverhere, an awful lot is talking
about things like inboundmarketing, organic search, and
the kinds of things that you canreally do to drive people to
your website without necessarilyhaving to spend a ton of money.
But really creating that greatcontent that's going to drive
people in.
But one of the things that wedon't get as much opportunity to
(00:46):
talk about is really how youmeasure the success of those
efforts.
And so I know we're going to getinto that a little bit today,
but to kind of kick things off,I would love it.
If you could just share with thelittle, with the audience a
little bit about yourbackground.
Steve Wiideman (00:59):
Sure.
I'm kind of a serialentrepreneur, I suppose.
I've been in the digitalmarketing industry now for about
22 years.
I spent my corporate daysworking for IBM global services,
Disney parks and resorts where Imanage Disneyland and
Adventurous by Disney paid andorganic search.
(01:19):
Jumped into the small businessworld as as a sole proprietor in
around 2010.
Hence, we incorporated asWiideman Consulting group in
2013.
My goal 10 years ago was to sortof pivot from being a
practitioner of digitalmarketing to teaching and doing
other things that I've reallywanted to do in my career.
(01:39):
So a couple of years ago Istarted teaching as an adjunct
professor at a few colleges.
Now I'm teaching nine classesbetween UC San Diego, where I'm
teaching SEO tools andanalytics, at Cal State
Fullerton.
You know where as you mentioned,there's so many different ways
to do marketing.
One of my classes is DigitalMarketing Landscape, so we go
through everything from inboundmarketing and media buying and,
(02:01):
you know, display, and we getinto affiliate marketing and so
forth.
And then I also teach astrategic SEO course.
All that teaching culminatedinto the opportunity to write a
textbook.
So recently I published atextbook which includes
courseware and lecture slides,and everything for those
teachers who teach or want toteach digital marketing.
(02:22):
Um, it was about a year in the,uh, in the making and my
coauthor Scott Kelly wasabsolutely incredible at really
helping keep the scholarly partof my writing.
Cause sometimes it's so hard togo off on a tangent and say, oh,
all these things and casestudies and lessons.
And so he really helped kind ofstructure it down.
So that's kind of where I'm atright now.
I'm teaching.
(02:42):
As I mentioned, I'm working onthis courseware that we have to
update every year.
And I have 19 members here thatare supporting a few restaurant
chains and other smallerbusinesses around search engine
marketing.
So they'll come to us andthey're like, Hey, I've got some
people doing some things, but Idon't feel like we really have a
strategy.
(03:02):
You know, what should we bedoing?
How should we be measuring it?
Where are we right now comparedto our competition?
What's the full ray of what wecould be doing to maximize
everything around search anddisplay, and email.
And so we help connect the dotsfor them so they know at least
what their roadmap should looklike, whether they have the
resources at the time to work onit or not yet.
Eric Dickmann (03:24):
Yeah, I'm such a big believer in creating that
marketing strategy so that youreally know what your objectives
are.
What are you trying toaccomplish?
And then what are the tacticsthat you need to employ to make
that happen?
And I think it would be helpful.
You know this podcast is reallygeared toward small and
mid-sized businesses, but maybelet's just start with some
definitions just to make sureeverybody's on the same page.
(03:45):
So you know, when we talk aboutthings like inbound marketing,
when we talk about SEO and SEMand SMM, Just give us your sort
of a base level definitions ofwhat these terms mean.
Just so we've got that as we goforward.
Steve Wiideman (03:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
So obviously the one everyonehears about every day is SEO,
search engine optimization.
The goal there is just to appearas high and as often as possible
for keywords that, that arespecific to what we do.
Not broad definition terms,right?
Leave those to Wikipedia andMerriam dictionary.
But those that describe ourservice, our product, and our
(04:21):
service and product details.
The SEM side, everyone's kind ofgot their own definition in our
industry.
SEM used to be search enginemarketing, which encompassed
everything, organic search, paidsearch ads.
You know in other ways that weutilize search in different
networks.
But over time, it's somehowbecame known as the paid search
(04:45):
side, SEO and SEM.
SEO was organic as SEM is paid.
I don't know why it happened,but it happened.
And what we're talking aboutthere is when you perform a
search and you see those firstthree ads at the top, that's
paid search.
You pay per click.Then there'syou mentioned, SMM social media
marketing.
So that's us creating a strategyaround what are our recurring
(05:05):
themes are going to be that ourcustomers and potential
customers would subscribe tothat they find interesting or
engaging, what are the differentvehicles we can use to do that
from quizzes, polls.
You know, features, research.
You know we come up with whatthose things are, we build some
campaigns and objectives, andwe've got ourselves a social
(05:26):
media strategy.
Mentioned something if I heardit right, but I thought I
might've heard something likeCRO conversion rate
optimization.
This is you know, if you'regetting a thousand visits to
your website, and you're getting5% of them to become customers,
our goal is to try to get thatto 10% or 15%.
So conversion rate optimizationis the activity of trying to get
(05:49):
your page to convert more ofyour visitors into customers.
Then there is email marketing,right?
That's where you're collectingemails of your customers may be
potential customers.
And then you know, building astrategy to retain those folks
as subscribers and to encouragethem to get other people to
subscribe as well.
Eric Dickmann (06:09):
And this is where it gets confusing for a lot of
businesses, right?
Because we're talking about anumber of different things each
which has a very specific workeffort associated with it.
Some of them have bigger budgetsthan others because you know on
the paid side, obviously you seta budget.
That budget gets spent as thoseads run.
On the organic side, you'rereally creating content that
could have a pretty long shelflife, but it also takes some
(06:31):
time to be found and discovered.
So I know one of the things youknow, we're huge believers here
on this podcast about inboundmarketing, about creating great
content, content of value thatpeople can find.
And that you know does have thislong shelf life.
When you think about inboundmarketing, One of the challenges
is of course measuring thesuccess of that, right?
(06:52):
Because it does take time.
So when you work with clientsand you set up sort of an
inbound strategy to create sortof organic search results, what
do you tell them?
Like in terms of what theirexpectations should be?
You create a great piece ofcontent, very keyword focused
you've got it out there.
You've got a nice landing pagewhere people can find it.
What do you tell people in termsof how long they should expect
(07:13):
to wait before some of thoseresults get noted?
Steve Wiideman (07:15):
Right.
Well, I think it varies based onthe brand.
But I think I always start withyou know, buckle your seatbelt
because it's going to be a wildride.
The way that I'm explaining itto some of the students in my
classes, because they get askedthis all the time, how long is
it going to take me to rank?
And if you're dealing with anexisting brand that's been
around for a while that's doingother types of marketing, people
(07:37):
search for them by name, they'reknown, people might recognize
them in the search results.
And your goal is say, I want torank for this new keyword.
So you've got this page that youhave to create to address that
search term and it'sderivatives.
So the goal is you know, scrapethis page first, let's look at
the keywords.
We want to tie in for Google todo that initial crawl of our
sites, that page and sort ofindex those words and say, Hey,
(08:01):
I'm going to try this page forthese words and see how it
performs.
That content task is somethingthat usually takes, I would say,
three to four months before youreally start to see it show up
somewhere on the second page ofthe search results.
And then as, as other websitesare mentioning your name and
those keywords on theirwebsites, maybe even linking
(08:22):
back to your page or to at leastto your homepage so they can
crawl to that page, then you'vesatisfied sort of that off page
SEO signal.
I mean PageRank is somethingLarry Page at Google came up
with in what, 1997, before theGoogle search engine even was
created.
And the goal was to use linksand external signals to rank
webpages instead of justtrusting that the webmaster knew
(08:45):
what they were doing.
So those off page signals again,another three to six months.
So we're, we're already using.
You know, six to nine months nowbetween our content and our off
page SEO to get right on thefirst page of the search
results.
And you'll see yourself there atnumber nine.
Going, God, I got to get thatnumber one spot and I'm stuck
there at the number nineposition.
My content's great, my links andoff page visibility is
(09:09):
consistent.
What do I have to do?
That's where the user behaviorsignals come in and that's where
you could almost remove all thecontent and just put a big image
if you want it to.
Just to test to see howirrelevant keywords really are
at that point, and how links hitthis sort of what's the law of
(09:30):
diminishing return, right?
It really comes to that place.
So you've got more links andbetter links in your
competition.
You've got better content you'relike, but I'm stuck there at
number nine.
It's normally because users have10 choices and they're not
choosing you, right?
Our goal is to make sure thatwhen Google does display our
results, when we are a numbernine, maybe you were even number
(09:50):
five, you know one out of athousand times that were
displayed, they want to see thatpeople are choosing us more
often.
So that's going to be reallytesting.
better and improving bettertitles, descriptions, maybe
doing some work with our webdeveloper to provide more rich
results, maybe star ratings,maybe a few questions and
answers, maybe a video or animage thumbnail next to our
(10:11):
results, some sort of a call toaction or value proposition
along with that keyword that wewant to appear for.
Maybe looking at the resultsthat are at the top or in the
first page to see what types ofrich results Google's already
displaying and then go to thedeveloper, I want this.
Right?
And then they'll go to a sitecalled schema.org, and they'll
find that markup, they'll addthat code to your page.
(10:33):
And now you'll stand out in thesearch results more.
And as long as we're we'reproviding, like you said, the
best content possible, rightaround that year point, again
somewhere in that middle rangeyou know well enough, but you
know, not a brand new website.
You should see yourself in thetop few positions.
You know again, there's, there'sspecial circumstances, such as
words like credit card ormortgage, you know, we've got
(10:56):
these companies that have beenreally building a brick house
for the last two decades, youknow, to own those positions.
They're not going to go awayquickly.
So if you want to beat them, ifyou want it to be better than
with them, it's probably goingto take a few years, you know,
to rank for those reallycompetitive keywords.
So we encourage our clients tostart with some of those upper
funnel questions that peopleask.
(11:17):
Go to a site, like, um, answerthe public and come up with that
answer.
So, so anyway, when we get withour clients, that's how we
answer the question.
How long does it take to rank?
Um, You know, basically three orso or so months until we're on
the second page, it's going tobe about six to nine months
until we're on the first pageand a year or more until we see
ourselves in the top position.
(11:38):
I think that's setting a goodexpectation.
But in terms of how do youmeasure?
I think the first question toask is you know, do you already
have an existing SEO suite whereyou're tracking all your
rankings andand your traffic.
If you're an enterprise brand,you might be using Conductor
Searchlight, you might lose useSearch Metrics, you might use
(12:00):
BrightEdge.
If you're a small business, youprobably do just fine with a
tool like SEMrush or AHRefs,ahrefs.com.
You could probably use Moz, MOZ.
There's a lot of those toolsthat are available, for the most
part, about a 100, 150 bucks amonth.
And they really help give you away to measure everything in one
(12:21):
place from your keyword rankingsyou want to track to your web
traffic statistics.
I like to use this new tool aswell called What a Graph,
Eric Dickmann (12:31):
Oh, I haven't heard of that one before.
Yeah.
Steve Wiideman (12:33):
It's as if you're from you know, somewhere
in Texas or in the East Coast,you might heard of What a
Burger, It always reminds ofthat.
And just because of the name.
So if that helps you rememberit's called What a Graph.
And what it allows you to dobeyond just having better data
to look at from GoogleAnalytics, from SEMRush from
(12:54):
Google Search Console, it putsall that into one place for you,
but has a much prettierinterface, but it also allows
you to create KPIs and no othertool that I know of allows you
to do that.
There's no you know, what's yourgoal and here's how close you
are to hitting that goal.
Nothing exists that can get youthere.
So What a Graph does have thatfunctionality.
(13:14):
So when we're on a call withwhether it's Applebee's or IHop
or whoever, we can say, Hey, ourgoal for the year, you know, was
to increase search revenue fromsearch by 10%.
And based on that KPI goal andwhere we are right now, you
know, we're going to hit orwe're not going to hit that
goal.
And it's just great to be ableto see that in one place, but
then we can hold all thestakeholders accountable and
(13:37):
say, guys we as a team agreethat we're going to do these
things, and we've hit someroadblocks.
There's three months left in theyear, let's see what we can do
to knock those out so we can hitthat 10% KPI goal.
And your goals are going to bedifferent based on your business
model.
For e-commerce websites, if yousell products online, your KPIs
are going to be revenue,Transactions, average, ordinary
(13:59):
value, you know, and the growthof those attributes.
If you're a local business,you're going to be paying
attention to you know, youraverage position in Google Maps,
you're going to pay attention tohow much traffic you're driving
from the website and appointmentlinks within your Google maps
profile, or your Google MyBusiness account.
If you are sort of a leadgeneration company and you're
(14:21):
bringing in leads and you don'thave a brick and mortar
location, and you're not doinge-commerce then your goal is
going to be probably how manyleads was I able to drive from
organic?
Is that a primary KPI?
And if you want to get a littlebit more granular, you could
break it into a couple differentgroups.
The first group might betechnical, looking at things
like accessibility, security,privacy, core web vitals, right?
(14:43):
All of those things can bemeasured and improved and use
these KPIs for the internalteams.
I don't know if I would talkabout those with the key
stakeholders of the business forsay, if you're a small business,
maybe.
But a lot of times it feelsoverwhelming and technical.
So I would just say, Hey,webmaster, fix these things over
(15:03):
the next 12 months, you know,and, and you'll have a job.
Eric Dickmann (15:07):
Well I do think it's interesting because what
you're saying, there is a lot ofcomplexity to this and you know,
we talk about SEO all the timeon here, and there's a reason
there are so many companies outthere offering SEO services.
Not that they're all great, butit is a complex thing to
implement correctly and I thinkfor many smaller businesses that
don't have large marketingteams, there are really lots of
(15:29):
factors that you can consider.
You rattled off a number oftools, which many small
businesses might not even haveaccess to.
So there is real value inbringing in experts who
understand how all this stuffworks and what you need to do to
really get the best rankings outof your content.
Steve Wiideman (15:44):
At least to create the roadmap for you.
I'm going to get a lot of like alot of hate emails from saying
this, but for small businesses,you really can.
In-house SEO yourself.
You can absolutely do ityourself.
You can bring in a collegeintern, college marketing
students, for a reasonablepart-time salary and that person
(16:06):
can be responsible for makingsure that those different SEO
focal points are paid attentionto the technical, the content,
and the off page.
They don't have to do the work,but they can be the person
responsible for it.
And then what you could do withthat person is you can use tools
like, Writer access, you know toprovision new content for the
website.
(16:26):
You could use freelance sitessuch as guru.com and Freelancer,
or codeable.io as a resource toget periodic coding needs that
you need.
You can, you can use some folksthat are really good at digital
PR, we like to use Otter PR,they're fantastic.
And they'll do some outreach toget us, to be able to contribute
(16:49):
to articles and features, andthings that really help us to
build links organically.
So that being said, I don'tthink you need to spend 200 to a
thousand dollars a month withsome tool, some company that's
going to basically take overyour digital marketing and maybe
threaten you to not give it backwhen you try to leave with them
(17:10):
and instead bring it in house,spring that part turn prime
person in, maybe your front deskperson has an hour, a day free,
and you can parse out an hour aday for them to do some of that
work to help you with some ofyour local SEO, to make sure
that you're appearing locally.
And you know, we can talkthrough what some of those
strategies look like.
But honestly, the big picture isif you're a small business, I
(17:31):
would stay away from using a lotof agencies and third parties, I
haven't seen the longevity orsustainability with it.
And we have to remember a lot ofthem are also doing the same
work for your competitor.
So
Eric Dickmann (17:45):
Well, true.
Steve Wiideman (17:46):
You can bring it in house, give somebody some
training, because it's notrocket science.
Eric Dickmann (17:52):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(18:13):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(18:36):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's interestingtoo, because there are real pros
and cons, right?
I think that sometimes when youbring something in-house, you've
got to sort of give people therunway to start to see the
success of their efforts there.
And if you're bringing a juniorlevel person in, there's
(18:56):
obviously some education thatneeds to happen, there are
obviously some tools that youneed to bring in order to do
that, so you've got to bewilling to make the commitment
to do it.
But you're right, onceespecially for some businesses,
this doesn't have to be a hugeeffort.
It can just be a part-timeeffort for somebody that's on
the team.
I'd like to switch gears alittle bit and start to talk
about the paid side of things alittle bit.
So let's talk about going outand purchasing keywords.
(19:19):
I mean that's so important formany businesses to drive that
traffic to be up in those toprankings on Google, but don't
want to wait a year to startmeasuring that, right?
Like you would maybe with someorganic results.
How do you advise people to sortof engage in a paid strategy and
then measure and monitor that tosee if it's being effective?
Steve Wiideman (19:38):
And a lot of small businesses are jaded
because they'd spent money onads without having the right
education to be able to do itthemselves.
They didn't go through theGoogle ads training program,
they just jumped in, create anew account, try to follow the
wizard, right?
And the wizard says, you usethese broad search terms.
And then they see, Hey, wow, Ispent a thousand dollars this
(19:59):
week.And if they figured out howto go into the search term
report to see what actual searchterms triggered their ads when
they're bidding on these broadkeywords, they go, oh my God,
these search terms have nothingto do with me.
And they feel like they justwasted a thousand dollars, and
they're jaded, or more.
I've seen businesses waste a lotmore.
So you're right..
The best place to start with apaid ad strategy is to get with
(20:21):
someone with some experience andhave them put together a plan
for you.
Put it into a Word doc or aGoogle sheet, Google doc.
Here's the campaign, here arethe ad groups.
Here are the keywords.
Here are the extensions.
Here's everything that we wantto recommend that you create.
That way you've got a roadmapand if you want to do it
(20:41):
yourself still using thatroadmap, great.
If you want them to deploy itfor you and then show you how to
manage it, because of all theway that you can automate bid
management and bid strategy now.
You've really, I hate to say it,but a lot of the paid search
vendors that you're going to usearen't doing a lot of monthly
work, because Google's AI doesall that stuff for you.
The bid automation isautomatically bidding up or down
(21:05):
based on what you're willing tospend per sale, per lead, per
action, or even ROI.
If you get down into some of thee-commerce things that you could
do, it's doing it automaticallyfor you.
Yeah, there's some nurturingthat they could be doing to test
new ads, test new campaigns,test new audiences.
But unfortunately, when you're,when you're outsourcing, you
really don't get much of thatteam's time and energy.
(21:27):
So I would say to start, ifyou're a small business, get
somebody to help you set it up,teach you how to monitor and
manage it and show you somethings you could do.
And then if you've got thebudget for it and it's working,
there's some of the revenue thatyou gained from search back into
those resources to continuechipping away.
But make sure that they tell youbefore the month, what their
plan is to optimize.
(21:48):
Otherwise, if you put them onautopilot, they might go a few
months without doing any work.
And you won't even know unlessyou go into Google ads and go to
the specific log files.
So if you are an e-commercewebsite, you might set up
campaigns based on your productcategories and the product
detail pages might be where youput your ad groups.
(22:09):
If you have lead generation, youmay base your campaigns off the
navigation.
You know, one of the things Iremember doing with some of the
e-commerce brands we'd workedwith was looking at our budget
allocation and saying, Hey,we've only got$10,000 a month
and we've got you know, 20campaigns.
How should we do our budgetallocation?
(22:30):
What I've seen be the mosteffective is starting with the
business name and campaignfirst, because it helps your
account score, your superrelevant, your cost per clicks,
really low, and you'reprotecting your name.
The next would be the productname.
So let's just say you're, Idon't know you're selling
Sketchers, and one of yourproducts is Shape-ups, so
Sketchers is the company namecampaign, and the product name
campaign is Shape-ups.
(22:51):
Those also convert really well,they're your names, you own
them.
You're not going to pay verymuch per click and your ad score
is going to be really high.
The next campaign I would createwould be product type running
shoes, walking shoes, casualshoes, work shoes, right?
So I create a campaign for eachproduct type.
And then this is by budgetallocation, right?
(23:12):
First company name, then productname, then product type, then
product benefits.
So maybe you're going aftersomething like exercise clothes,
fitness clothes, fitness,apparel, and shoes are part of
that, even though it's notnecessarily you know somebody
looking for socks or for runningshoes.
And the last campaign that Iwould do, if I'm doing well
(23:34):
across all of those, and then myquality scores are great,
they're performing amazing, youmight test during some
competitor conquesting where youbid on some of your competitor
names.
Just keep in mind that your costper click is going to be higher,
your score is going to be lowerbecause you're not as relevant
as they are to those searchterms, but in some industries,
competitor keywords tend to workreally well, especially if you
(23:56):
don't have a lot of brandrecognition already.
So that's how I would organizean ad campaign for search.
Then you can get into display,you can get into remarketing,
and bring them back into asequence of seeing different ads
until they convert.
You can import data from yourcustomer database and target
(24:17):
people who've already purchasedfrom you in the past.
You can use affinity audiencesor people who Google themes is
having an interest in thatparticular product or category.
Or you could even do in-marketwhere they've already looked at
competitors and they've donesearches and gone to
competitors, but they haven'tgone to you yet.
So it's almost like doingremarketing, but instead of them
(24:38):
visiting your website first,they're visiting your competitor
first, and that can be reallyfun.
So one trick is you are settingthese things is create separate
campaigns for each of them whenyou start testing.
That way, they don't cannibalizeeach other in terms of budget.
So if you're testing in marketand affinity in the same
campaign, and you've got a$10 aday budget, you know, you're,
you're not really giving thesystem enough, um, enough
(25:02):
resources to work with.
So again, I would break eachcampaign down and into a really
small target, um, or oneaudience.
You see what works and what'sonce you've got a few months,
maybe even a year or two,depending on your budget of
data, then you can take the topperforming keywords, the top
performing ads, the topperforming placements and
audiences, and move them intotheir own campaigns called top
(25:25):
performing, reduce the budget onall the old ones.
So they keep going, just at aslower speed so new
opportunities can come in andkeep getting moved over.
When you do that, now you'rebuilding an account architecture
that's inclusive of only ads,keywords, and placements that
have evidence of performing wellfor you in terms of conversion.
(25:45):
So that's how I would approach apaid search strategy if were
doing that.
Eric Dickmann (25:51):
No, I think that's great advice,.
I like the way you laid thatout.
I think that's very actionable.
And you know, sort of whenyou're talking about a keyword
program, right?
You're talking about these wordsthat you go after, where you
think that people are going tobe searching for your products
or services, and then you moveover to the social media side
and there it's much more aboutaudiences and interests,
Steve Wiideman (26:11):
All audiences, Eric.
Eric Dickmann (26:12):
Yeah, it's a very sort of different way of
approaching it, but it's alsphugely popular and successful
because these social mediaplatforms are collecting so much
information about the clientswho are using them.
So as you sort of look at thatside, the social side, you have
to wear a little bit of adifferent hat, right?
And one of the problems that Isee oftentimes with smaller
businesses is that we all usesocial media, we're all on these
(26:36):
platforms, but being a user ofthe platform doesn't necessarily
make you an expert for marketingon the platform.
So talk to me a little bit abouthow you talk to clients about
how they can use social media,both kind of from an organic,
just posting things for free aswell as for paid ads.
Steve Wiideman (26:53):
Sure.
And you know what Eric, I'mgoing to give you some links
after the can share with theaudience.
The first will be that KPItemplate.
It's the same one I share withmy students who, you know, are
going to go off into the jobworld and they're going to be
asked, how are you going totrack KPIs?
So I'll give you that so thateverybody can see that framework
of what you could track and themeasurements, ability for you to
be able to do that and delegateit.
(27:14):
Social media, I have somethingon Bitly.
I think it'sbitly/contentmarketingtemplates,
content-marketing-template.
And I'll send it to you againafter the meeting.
But it really breaks down whatwe talked about earlier in
regards to creating specificthemes, right?
And I think the example in thatsheet is like underwater basket
(27:36):
weaving or something, right?
Eric Dickmann (27:37):
Right.
The old classic underwaterbasket weaving.
Steve Wiideman (27:41):
Why not?
So you look at different thingsthat you can do to see how users
respond in different industriesand different businesses are
going to do, or have differentresults.
So ideas include doing likeresearch and study.
If Apple put up a page up thatsaid, Hey, do you know what app
that 95% of all iPhone userslike to use?
(28:03):
Would you be interested infinding that out?
So doing research and coming upwith proprietary data that only
you know about from yourstudies, from research, from
focus groups, from your owndatabase of what you know about
your customers is a huge clickfor you, in terms of content for
social media, other other thingscould include you know, doing
things like a comedy thing,right?
(28:25):
Where you're doing somethingfunny or engaging, or you're
creating sort of a voice or apersonality for the people who
work at the company.
Another one could be conferencehighlights, right?
So there's a lot of differentideas in there that you can kind
of pick and choose from thatallows you to create campaigns.
It also has columns for what youdo once you've actually got
(28:48):
those campaigns queued up,right?
And then you're going to youknow either set a cadence of
Hey, every Tuesday I'm going todo this theme, every Wednesday,
this theme, every Thursday, thistheme.
We'll take Friday off and you'llfind what and when is the best
time to post.
then once you've got thatcalendar going and you know what
those themes are, then it's justsort of building out the next
(29:09):
few months of content, having itready to go, getting other
influencers and names involvedin some way or another so that
they can help share it.
So it's not just throwing stuffout there and hearing crickets,
but instead throwing shots upout there and then following up
with people who would be engagedin that content to help you to
share it and to promote it.
So there's that part of it.
(29:31):
Hey phase one, we did theresearch, we know what we're
going to do.
Phase two.
We wrote up some really coolstuff and got some really great
graphics and video.
Phase three, we got other peopleinvolved who we hope will share
it, experts, industry,authorities, whatever, book
authors, it's a good one.
And now we know after we'velaunched, so we've launched now.
We're going to do the fastfollow to get those people to
(29:53):
help engage with it.
And then you just rinse andrepeat.
Week after week after week.
That's an organic strategy.
And I would remember that socialmedia isn't a place for you to
reach out and say, me, me, me,us, us, us, right?
It's the place to say you, you,you, and what do you like?
And here's something you know,that you might enjoy that's
helpful, here's questions thatpeople ask about this product,
(30:14):
or here's a funny meme that wecreated that you might relate to
because we know that you're intothis type of thing.
You know it's really creatingcontent that is fun, engaging,
humorous, maybe borderlinecontroversial, you know, or
teaser controversial when youactually read it, you're like-
(30:35):
Oh, this isn't controversial,but it got my attention.
I think that's a good organicapproach.
And then you augment that withthe paid side, right?
You build your audience with thefocus of trying to get them to
subscribe.
So you take all that greatcontent and where you see your
engagement's really high, andpeople really interacting with
that content, boost those,promote those.
(30:56):
Don't put too much money into ituntil you've really learned what
works and what doesn't, butboost those posts because you
know people already engaged withthem well, and the audience
you'll be targeting are those ofyour competitors, which is easy
to do.
You know, the demographics andinterests that you think your
audience have, and then it feelsa little wasteful, but for the
(31:16):
first, I don't know, three tosix months and paid search and
paid social, it's a little bitof an investment with very
little return.
The advantage of doing it is nowyou've got six months of data,
you can take what works, thedemographics that worked, the
ads that worked, you know, andthen you can start to mold a
campaign that, you know, will beeffective and use your budget a
(31:39):
little bit more efficiently.
So it is an investment in thebeginning because you're
learning, you're letting thesystem learn, and the people
interact.
And then you know, you take allthe data from what worked and
then you create a brand newcampaign based on what you know
already works.
And then you just keep rinsingand repeating.
But the great thing about doingpaid and social is that like you
(31:59):
said, there's so much audiencedemographic data.
And remember these searchengines and social sites have
algorithms.
So once you do finally start toget it dialed in, it's going to
work on its own.
It's just automatic money allday long.
If you have the patience toinvest, to collect the data, to
create campaigns that are goingto be effective, then you set
(32:20):
your cost per acquisition, yourcost per sale, and then you just
let it run.
Eric Dickmann (32:25):
Yeah.
Well what I love about that too,is if you've done a good job
with your marketing strategy,you've built out your buyer
persona.
You really understand who thattarget customer is, that ideal
customer is.
It's a little bit easier tocreate an audience around that.
Then it might be to figure out,well, what are they searching
for?
Because sometimes your businessor product, like you said, you
(32:47):
could be going after somethingin the banking world where
there's so many people goingafter banking terms and whatnot.
It can be very hard to say, whatare they specifically searching
for that would lead them to mywebsite?
But if you understand who theyare, what their interests might
be, you can understand thataudience and you can put some
ads up that are likely to hitthe mark.
Steve Wiideman (33:06):
Absolutely.
Eric Dickmann (33:07):
I love the way you lay this, some of this out.
I can tell you're an author anda professor because you lay
things out very systematicallythat people can follow.
Steve Wiideman (33:13):
I have my moments.
But still, I'm learning everyday, we all are.
Digital Marketing is notplumbing and electricity.
It is this dynamic world thatrequires a lot of patience.
You know, it requires a lot ofbeing open-minded to change.
It's math, art, science,creativity, it's all those
(33:35):
things.
And for small businesses,sometimes all those character
traits have to be held by oneperson who has to be analytical
and be able to do research andlook at spreadsheets and
numbers, while at the same time,write really compelling,
persuasive content for thatlower funnel or write really
casual, helpful, engagingcontent for that upper funnel to
(33:55):
build your brand or becharismatic enough to pick up
the phone and say, Hey, I'mworking on this cool thing, I'd
love to work together because Iwant to earn a link, you know?
And it takes the introvertedextrovert and sometimes the
extroverted introvert, you knowto carry the role of SEO
specialist.
So I can see why it feels sooverwhelming for a lot of small
businesses.
But I'm telling you, I've metthese marketing students, and in
(34:17):
every class there's at leastthree that are really
passionate, that want to learn,that want to try.
And a lot of them will work foryou for free to get the
experience.
So reach out to the colleges andsay, do you have any digital
marketing students that want tovolunteer and do some free work
to help me get going?
And by the way, this Wiidemanncharacter, right has this free
course that you could take thatthey could reference to have
(34:40):
their templates and to buildtheir roadmap and you know, and
then they reach out to us or toany other industry expert for
advice.
We help students as you know, asan industry, more than anyone,
because trying to build the nextgeneration of ethical SEOs.
Eric Dickmann (34:54):
Well, that's actually a great segue as we
reach the end of our show heretoday.
Where can people find out moreinformation about the free
course, about you, about yourcompany?
I'd just love it if you could dothat and we'll make sure to have
all this linked up in the shownotes as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
So right now we're building outacademyofsearch.com.
It's a brand new kind of programwe've created to try to help
share a lot of knowledge of whatwe learned in 22 years of doing
(35:17):
this stuff.
Your listeners can get freeaccess by using code- SEO Steve.
So feel free to go to Academy ofSearch, choose that SEO program.
It's like 600 bucks orsomething, but use SEO steve,
you'll get it for free.
I'm everywhere online.
I use SEO Steve as a handle.
But if you want to hit up anyoneon the team here, there's nine
(35:38):
of us, look for Wiideman, W I ID E M A N, across every social
channel.
We love to help smallbusinesses, we're not in a place
where we're looking to grow ouragency again.
We're moving over to more of theeducation side.
So any help we provide will beat no cost.
So we're happy to help them seewhat we can do to move along
(36:00):
your digital marketing.
You know, for a guy who has twoends at the last name, part of
his last name.
You've got 2 I's in there,spellcheckers most love you too.
Steve Wiideman (36:09):
You know it's actually funny as a few times
that I've been declined thingslike getting pictures developed
because it has two eyes and thename of the photographer, but
two I's on it.
And it's like, well that's, We,that's you know, in the NES game
system and its trademarks, youcan't use it.
I couldn't get my license plateto say Wiideman, because it
looks like I'm trying to selldrugs or something.
(36:31):
So in my last name, it'sinteresting, but it's definitely
had its downfalls.
Eric Dickmann (36:37):
I I can sympathize with you on that.
I really can..
Steve, this has been great.
I've really enjoyed having youon the show today.
Thanks so much for sharing allof this.
I'll make sure to put all of thethings that you've mentioned
today in the show notes, so thatpeople can find you.
But I've really enjoyed ourconversation.
Steve Wiideman (36:51):
Likewise, thanks again for the opportunity.
Eric Dickmann (36:55):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.