Transcription:
The guru on top of the mountain is all-knowing a person who’s experienced life probably more
than others. And what happens is, people journey to a guru to get the answers to their
questions. And that is the exact opposite, mentality, we have to have for a website. If we build a
website and we’re putting knowledge out there, we have to make it an easy way for people to
find us.
And so, by posting on your social media regularly, we’ll link back to your website. It’s probably
one of the easiest ways to obtain traffic and new leads because social media is the newspaper
of today. Except it’s free and it’s to the masses and it’s really easy to connect.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Digital Marketing Shop Talk or DM Shop Talk. I’m
Mike, the Valorous Circle Production Media Specialist, and here with me as always is…
I’m Jeremy.
I’m the Senior Marketing Director at Valorous Circle.
Jeremy, we’ve had a lot of great conversations regarding some marketing topics, but I know in our industry we get a lot of misunderstandings, or as you said before the podcast, you said myth understandings. Which is a good play on words, but Just a lot of things where people might get a little mixed up on or might just have a misunderstanding. Or might believe a myth that they see here and there. We had a podcast last time where we talked about the do’s and don’ts. And just with how saturated content is getting, it can be very easy just to see like headlines of things that you should and shouldn’t be doing for your website and your social media and all this jazz.
And so it’s very easy to just, blindly fall into this, some of these things, or just start
understanding or following these things that you might not know everything about. And so I
know we can discuss, we’re going to do a new series about these myth understandings and do
an episode.
So really, dissecting what might be a concept that home service business owners might be
following isn’t necessarily the best thing that they should be doing. Or maybe there’s just a
myth or a misunderstanding that they might be, held up on. And we just want to help them, give
them the best advice or encouragement that we can.
I guess Jeremy, since this was your, idea what’s your heart behind helping home service
businesses with these myths or misunderstandings?
Yeah. So it all comes down to really trying to communicate with the people we might be serving, the opportunity for them to get ahead ofproblems before maybe they’re even talking to us.
And so as we go down this list please keep an open mind on. These are things that we hear from other people and we have stats and experience to explain where we’re coming from to help you understand the true need behind these myths that are either true or are not true or what they’re based upon.
I’m excited about the series, to be honest with you. I think it’s going to be good for our listeners,
and our viewers, and be able to help them with their business and grow it. Nope. I agree. And.
Since this is your idea, you want to kick us off, what’s our first myth, understanding that we’re
going to dissect today?
Yeah. So there was a movie in the 1980s starting with Kevin Costner it’s called Field of Dreams.
And then that field of dreams here’s this voice says, and I think that gets, that, that goes for
your digital marketing presence and your, on your website. If you have a website, people are
automatically going to be able to find you.
And that’s a big myth. It’s a really big myth because there’s a lot of work that goes into getting
that website out to the public. So my pop quiz… And I know you don’t know when this is
coming. What is the percentage of websites that don’t get any traffic? Do you know, do you
remember this number?
I think it’s, isn’t it like 99 percent or something? It’s, I remember you’ve told me this before and
it’s a wild statistic. It’s huge. It’s the high 90s. Now, that varies every year. The last stat I saw was that 96 percent of websites don’t get traffic. So if you look at all the websites that are out there that Google can’t index.
96%. So if your website is 4 percent from the stats that we’re talking about during the filming
here. So, with that when we put together a website, we try to build it correctly. And then we
also do some digital marketing behind that. Some things that you can do to make sure people
come to your website.
And I think the first one’s going to be. Update your social media profiles and Mike, I’m going to
lean back on you a little bit because this is your territory as a social media, as a social media
production specialist on our team. Why is it important to have a website on your social media
profiles?
I still, to this day, word of mouth marketing is one of the number one keys to getting your name
out there, getting your bread out there. And today in 2023, word of marketing or word of mouth
marketing is different than it used to be. We are now a world, a digital world where everybody’s
scrolling through their social media daily.
And so that’s how people are communicating. They’re not just going on social media for the
sake of going on social media. This is how people are communicating. This is how things are, or
businesses need to be no. On social media. So if you were a home service business, if you’re a
plumber, you’re an electrician and you’re not updating your social media profiles, you’re missing
out on, I don’t even want to say an opportunity.
You’re just missing out completely on the ability to grow your business. Because that is how
people are getting to know about things. Just think about it. If there’s an event in your town,
people are creating an event on Facebook. If there’s a new opening, people are doing it on
Facebook. They’re doing it on Instagram.
They’re doing it on TikTok. It is how people are communicating now. And so I can’t stress it
enough. If you’re not updating your profiles, then you’re just completely missing out. And you’re
relying on the old-fashioned way of just through referrals. And through, which is still a good
way, but people are referring to people on social media as well, like pointing them back to your
social media profile and your profile is going to be connecting to your website and Google’s
looking through your social media profile.
So it is more important. Now than ever if you believe in word-of-mouth marketing, then you
need to believe in social media marketing as well 100 percent okay scenario number two. I think
we saw we’ve seen these comics or we’ve watched these videos or even read these stories of
the guru on top of the mountain Did you know do you know about the guru on top of the
mountain Mike?
I don’t think I ever heard this one, though. Okay, the guru on top of the mountain is a knowing
person who has experienced life probably more than others. And what happens is people
journey to this guru to get the answers to their questions. And that is the exact opposite
mentality we have to have for a website.
If we build a website and we’re putting knowledge out there, we have to make it an easy way
for people to find us. And so posting on your social media regularly with links back into your
website, it’s probably one of the easiest ways to obtain traffic and new leads, is because social
media is the newspaper of today except it’s free and it’s to the masses and it’s really easy to
connect.
Also, it should be easy for people to find things on your website. So having a search bar there
makes sure that Google can index your site easily, and not have to guess where things are
placed, having some organization in the backend is going to help people be able to find those
answers without that long tedious journey that people just don’t have the mentality or the time
for nowadays.
So being top of mind is also gonna be easy to answer the questions that are out there as well. I
have a question for you. Do you know what passive attraction is? I can probably guess from just, the title, but why don’t you fill me in? So just, this is the first thing that jumps to my mind when, say, when you’re saying all these things that we need to be doing too.
Bring people into your business. But this idea of passive attraction is if you build a business and
you just provide great services and you do your job well, that is going to be enough to bring in
new clients. And unfortunately, that might have been the way a hundred years ago when the
economy wasn’t as competitive as it is now, but you can’t get by with just being able to do your
job well.
It’s awesome. It’s a great way to start. You want to be running a respectful business, but just by
doing a great job, you’re still just going to be missing out. People will not be able to find you.
And if you’re not doing these things that Jeremy is saying, like you mentioned, putting a search
bar, making your website easy to be easy to navigate in all these things, or going back to what
we were just talking about with social media.
Then no one’s going to be able to know that you do such a great job. If you’re not promoting
yourself on social media, showing your pictures of before and afters, showing your testimonials,
or doing this word of mouth through social media, then people will have no idea who you are.
So you can be the best roofer east or west of the Mississippi, but no one will be able to know if
you’re not promoting yourself online and doing these things.
So I know we’re talking to, our target audience is these home service business owners. We
know you spend your whole life becoming an expert at what you do, and that’s why we were
here to discuss how we can get people to see how good of a job you do. Because if people don’t see how good of a job that you do, then they don’t know how good of a job that you do.
It’s time to toot your own horn, Morales, right? Oh, that’s exactly what you should be doing,
tooting your own horn. Because if you’re not showing those, as I said, the testimonials are
getting those to promote, and whatnot are the five we’ve expressed. How often do we express
ourselves? Five-star Google reviews, then no one will see you.
No one will see you. And talking about it, we’ve even touched on the word visibility. You’re
being invisible to everybody. It’s all about creating that visibility online, Jeremy. And I know
that’s what you were talking about a bit ago. Another thing I want the home service people that
were, helping out is that if you’re getting a website for cheap, meaning you get a flat rate for a
website.
It’s considered done. You have to understand that the job of promotion is the other half of that.
And probably even more important than that, because the time it takes to build a website and
the time you take promoting that website are going to be pretty unequal, it’s 80, the 20 rule,
right?
20 percent of your time that we’d be building it 80 percent of your time is going to be
promoting it. And you can’t let up on that at all after website launches, because the competition
out there is so massive nowadays. There are so many people with so much data coming out
regularly that if you let your website set, it’s going to be stale.
It’s not going to be indexed and it will disappear from any search rankings that you hope to be
for, except when people Google your name directly. And that’s just out of a coincidence if they
can find you or they heard about you through word of mouth. Yeah, I was gonna say Google,
we’ve talked about before when we’re talking about SEO tips and whatnot, Google favors the
active businesses.
It’s not just about creating that website and letting it sit. Cause as you said, it would get still and
stagnant. But your competition will be beating you out or will be favored in Google’s eyes if. If
they’re posting pictures if they’re, updating regularly, posting on their Google business profile,
posting blogs on their website, updating new things putting frequently asked questions on their
website, Google is going to, and this isn’t just speculating.
This is the truth. Google will favor those businesses that are more active than you. So if you are
if there’s two plumbers in your town, you’re one of them and you’re looking at another one and
you’re worried about this one beating you out. Then guess what? You need to be posting, you
need to be doing everything that we’re talking about, or Google is going to be favoring them.
You don’t want to sit there and be stagnant and let, and fall behind because you will be losing
your competition.
I know that’s ours, but that’s probably the thing we get the most from people who reach out to
us to talk about how to beat out my local competition and be omnipresent. That’s, our goal for
people that we work with is to be omnipresent. Yeah, it’s all of this. All of this is what we’re
talking about.
It’s like one, one machine, one body working together. That’s what we keep bouncing around.
We, Jeremy, started with social media, then we’re talking about updating the website. Then I
was talking about Google reviews, all these things. It’s very hard for us to say which is more
important than the other, just because they are all working together in Google’s eyes.
We’re all playing Google’s game. This is Google’s game, but fortunately, that is the digital world
that it is. Yeah. And we just gotta, we just gotta play by the rules and do what they want us to
- And that’s how we get seen in Google’s favor. And that’s how we get ranked better.
That’s pretty much a mic drop there in my opinion. It’s tough because I know a lot of people
we’ve had a lot of clients like the black hat tricks or like how do we work around Google or.
Man, Google’s doing this to me, or I’m not ranking well on Google, and it’s, in reality, it’s like, as
much as I would like to have just like this answer of oh, we can get you to be number one, on
Google’s ranking tomorrow.
That’s not how it is. This is Google’s game, and we’re playing. We have to play Google’s game
just because Google is the supreme search engine that most people go to when they’re
searching for things at least, nationally, at least in America, that is. We’re playing Google’s game
and we have to outcompete our competitors like we have to outplay ’em regularly.
So any, other thoughts on the statement if they, if you build it, they will come? Mike? I think a
lot of it is true because as I was talking about, just being able to build your business and then
maybe build a website and then expecting people to come to that. If you do good work, that’s
awesome.
But by promoting it, you have to understand your target audience. If you don’t understand your
target audience, then you’re going to have a problem. Because I know a lot of business owners
take great pride in, what they’ve built and what they do. But if you’re not, if you’re not targeting
yourself you’re the expert, which is awesome.
You’re like, if you’re a roofer, you’re not going to be targeting another roofer. To do your
business with, because they can do their room. You’re trying to target homeowners that they
don’t want to do it. They don’t have the time to do it, or they don’t know how to do it. They
don’t have the expertise to do it.
So you have to understand your target audience. And when you’re doing your, social media,
when you’re doing your marketing efforts to bring people to your website to do business with as
I said, if you’re doing, as Jeremy said, posting on social media, if you’re updating your, articles,
your FAQs, you want to have your target audience in mind when you’re doing all of your
marketing efforts.
Because if you’re not, you’re going to miss that opportunity. To, as we keep talking about, bring
them into this opportunity to work with you. Yup. I love it. Look forward to having this series
kick off, Mike. Appreciate you working with me to make sure that this can get in front of people.
What do people have to look forward to in this series? If you want to tell people what’s on the
pipeline. Yeah. So we have quite a few coming in. This one, we’re focusing on. The myth that
builds and they will come, coming up, next is, which is funny because this is some of the stuff
we’re talking about tonight, but another myth understanding is SEO is a one-time task.
So it’s always updating where are we talking about? So we’re having a good one talking about
that next. And then. A myth understanding another one you need to be on every social media
platform and then just a lot of these myth understandings that we hear a lot in our industry that
as soon as we hear it, it’s like a pain or a trigger plates.
No, that’s not true. And we wanted to get out in front of all those and it helped. You are the
owners as well. , every time we hear ’em we develop a tick. We’re like oh no. Oh no. Nope.
’cause it’s like, they gotta be great of their mind. You’re like no. Let me try to, lemme try to help
you out here.
