Hi, welcome to SEO Tactics. In this series of the podcasts, we’re working on a theme called starting over. In this episode, we’re going to start you on a journey where we’re going to describe the steps it’s going to take to basically start over. So whether you’ve been in business for a while or you’re just starting out, we’re going to play out a scenario about a laid off cabinet maker. We’ll just call him Jack.
Who’s been making custom cabinets for probably 10 years now. He got laid off and he lives in a city called Egan and Egan is a suburb of Minneapolis. So it’s just excuse me. It’s just South of Minneapolis. Oh, I don’t know about 2018 to 20 miles.
And it’s a growing market, ah plenty busy, and Jasks, you know, started his own business. So we’re going to go through the steps that it’s going to take for him to get going. So just to set the stage here, Minneapolis is a city of the Minneapolis metro area, if you will. It’s a city of about 1.9 million. um So that’s a seven county area.
Egan is a suburb of that with probably 67,000 in terms of population. So Minneapolis technically is the 16th largest market in the US. So we’re hoping to take Jack’s business from zero to a million dollars over the course of three to four years, ah given that the market, as long as the market stays steady and and nothing goes sideways, so to speak.
We’re familiar with this journey, if you will, because um we’ve helped dozens and dozens of customers ah in this area, usually in service-based businesses, and in some instances, more industrial commercial type businesses. So in the podcast, we’re going to be talking about what kind of budget to set up for digital marketing, what action steps you need to take yourself, what things you should probably outsource, and then what action steps are critical to your success, and how to measure and monitor performance of your of your site. We’ll have ah In between episodes, if you will, where the Intrycks team members will explain how to do certain things um yourself or what you should look for if you hire those services out to someone else. We’ll also have longtime guests to share their journey, where they’ve come from and where they are now, so to speak. um We’re also going to share some exciting tools that we’ve provided to help you monitor your SEO efforts
So you can make make sure you’re getting the best ROI from your digital marketing dollar. These two tools include exciting website site ranking tools to see where you your site sits in the general area, in the local area there. um And then also, yeah obviously, outline areas. We’ll also discuss call tracking and call recording ah to make sure that you understand what pages might be working better than others. And so by hal having call tracking in addition to other typical digital tracking tools, it validates you know where you’re getting cool calls from. And in some cases, you can do a little bit of, let’s say, tweaking with the page to try to elicit calls better. So we’ll be ah taking a look at those tools as well.
Let’s just go through an overview of what the different episodes are going to cover. And these episodes will take place over the next couple of months. But basically, the first episode is going to be talking about mapping out the name of your company to reflect, ah let’s say, the market you want to serve. i We’ll explain in this episode why it’s very important. And it really plays out in episode three as you begin to build out your website.
Episode two Ben Williams will come in and he’ll explain to you how to set up your GBP profile um How to optimize it if you can’t do that or don’t want to do that higher to someone hire it out to someone who? Can get you in what we call the three-pack which we see right here in this Page that I have open. So this is the three-pack if you will when you type in um custom cabinets, Egan. Now, we have a tool that shows you as if you were inside of Egan, and this is what comes up. So the opportunity in this case is is pretty good, and we’ll get into that here in a little bit. Episode three, we’ll have Taylor Horn. Ian, she’ll talk about design and planning ah for building your own website, um why you but you want to use certain platforms, certain platforms you want to stay away from.
You can build a website really inexpensive with certain platforms and you can actually do it yourself, which is great. This is not a good platform for SEO ah later on is as we’ll we’ll go through. Episode four, we’ll talk about SEO tips from TJ. He’s our senior SEO manager, so he can come in and again talk about,
you know, basics, some things you should get going, some tools you can use to monitor your SEO status, if you will. Episode five, we’ll get into more advanced marketing strategies. ah Once your website has reached the top of your local market, in this case, we’re talking about Egan. um Introducing conversion tools like chat, um chat AI, so somebody lands on your site at 9 o’clock at night. ah They want a question answered. Chat AI can usually do that, if done correctly. And then there’s voice AI as well. So somebody is inclined to call at 9 o’clock at night for a cabinet maker. Voice AI can hopefully answer a lot of questions and gather their information. So you’re ideally capturing more clients. And then episode six, we’re going to talk about scaling your business.
What we want to do at this point, and you’re probably 18 months into this, is um we want to start reaching out into other nearby markets. I mean, we’re always working on this, but for sure a bigger focus on nearby markets. um And then also develop, let’s say, niches within your service, what you offer. So cabinet makers, custom cabinet makers, can also transfer, let’s say, to custom closets or ah custom private offices or custom private office build outs. They’re kind of the same, but although different. um But um they’re both in demand. And so if you just kind of pigeon you whole pigeonhole yourself into to one um one type of business, you know might you might be stuck there. So you’re kind of expanding your, not only your geographic area, but your service offerings to make sure that um that you got everything covered. So what I want to do is circle back into the first this first chapter of of Jack’s situation here. So Jack’s cabinet maker, in he doesn’t have a lot of money.
But he is going to have to invest some some money in the digital marketing. And the first thing I would do is um research a name. So as we look at this area and what he does, um he could use a name like Egan Cabinet Makers, and that’s what we call an exact keyword match in terms of a ah name. And one would argue that doesn’t really matter anymore. and to some degree, they’re right. But you do get some juice by having an exact um keyword match. So if I were in Jack’s situation, knowing what I know, I’d have greater aspirations for the whole Twin Cities market, if you will. So I would use or look up within the state of Minnesota, for instance, I’d go to the I believe it’s is an Attorney General. It’s either Attorney General or Department of Commerce, but I’m pretty sure it’s Attorney General you can do a a name search for um For the name that you want to make sure it’s not taken so in this case I would just go after Twin Cities custom cabinets trying to find that um Trying to find that name is what I would go after or something similar. If that name is available, I’d go ahead and get it, register it. ah You’ll have to work with your attorney and accountant to figure out what kind of business you’re going to register under, whether it’s a DBA or LLC. Those are all things that you’ll have to take counsel on. So once you have that name, i’d in conjunction with that, I would look up to see if the domain name is taken. So in this case hypothetically, we’re saying Twin Cities custom cabinets dot.com It’s available great grab it and then um What I would do next is get my GBP registered. So by registering my GBP um I’m going to get going on getting the first goal is to get in this three-pack here. So if you can get in the the three-pack, um that’s where a high percentage of your initial calls are going to happen. So um so in this case, to give you some reference, and this could be the exception of the rule. you’re Your market you’re in could be very competitive. So it might be a little more difficult. In this case, um the three pack is occupied by one business that actually resides in Egan. That’s this cabinet guy. So he’s he’s in Egan. The rest of them, excuse me, are located over in Minneapolis.
Both of these are Minneapolis and then the fourth position is in in Woodbury. So as you’re getting your GVP established, what I would advise Jack to do is um no doubt over 10 years he’s done side jobs and or has relationships with certain customers.
I would go ahead and get reviews and be in that process. So the reason you want to do that is if we’re going to help him get into this three-pack here, um there is there’s really, you know, there’s a handful of competitors. It’s going to be difficult for him to get a lot of reviews, but even if he could get I don’t know, 10, you know, 10, 15 reviews, that’s going to be helpful. So we would get him in there. The idea is to show that he’s local within Egan and it doesn’t do any good if you get in the three pack and you have no reviews. You’re going to be the last person they call. And when they do call you, there’s a reason you’re the last person they call. It’s because one or two things, ah they have no money or two.
They want cabinets made out of a wood that you can only get in Wakanda, and you’re not going to be able to to help them out. So what we want to be is in the three-pack with a lot of reviews, and that’s that that’s the heavy lifting part that that Jack’s going to have to do. So um what could he set up for a budget for this? To some degree degree, he could do it himself.
He’s gonna spend a lot of time, probably 20 plus hours trying to figure it out. While we do in our podcast give you tips to do it, there’s just a lot of work that you’re gonna have to do to do it. um I would hire an agency that can you know confirm that they can get you in the three pack. In this case, we charge around $500 to make sure that happens and it usually takes us between 30 and 60 days to get you in what we call the three pack for that, excuse me, for that tight region of vegan. And then over time, we can do more, we’ll reach out to try to get into other markets with that three pack. um But ultimately,
That GBP is going to kickstart Jack’s business. So for that money that he’s investing, he should more than get enough to cover the expense of that plus, you know, some good profit. Um, I would assume your average set of cabinets is probably between six and $12,000. And I think a good amount of that is is profit. So he should, he should be well on his way. Um, so I would do that for three to six months, six months on the outside. I would save up enough money to have a um agency build you a very nice site on WordPress. I wouldn’t mess around with Wix or any other, um let’s say, inexpensive do-it-yourself um website. The reason being is WordPress is really geared for um it’s really great geared for SEO.
It’s just a lot more robust to work on, and it’s really the right platform to build your build your website. So, excuse me, right around that three to six month, I would engage ah engage in having the website built and engage in SEL. So then what we’re going to go after here is this, what we call the organics down here and He needs to show up in the organics for a lot of reasons. I mean, that’s his, his home turf as it relates to Egan, but ultimately organics will be where he can really expand into the greater twin cities market. Um, and start to draw in business outside of vegan, um, throughout this process. So what kind of budget would you set up for this? So we have $500 set up for the GBP piece that is going to be the best money he can spend in my opinion to, to, um, cashflow his business. And then as his businesses got enough jobs, I would reinvest back into a website and SEO for that. And you’re going to be spending, it depends how you do it, but basically you’re going to be spending about 1500 for a good SEO program, and then another $500 a month, or let’s say 12 to 24 months, depending on how aggressive or how big the website is. So you know you need a budget around $2,000 a month. Most people that build websites, if it’s a if it’s a pretty big number, they’ll build it into a monthly monthly payment as long as that’s built into SEO.
It’s kind of interesting because the two are tied together. And if one doesn’t perform, uh, typically the customer is going to quit paying. So, um, you’re kind of forcing the agency is forcing the fact that they have to perform by, by bundling, let’s say the price of the the website in there. So that’s something to think about. So that’s about it. Um, if, if I were Jack or if I was starting over, or even if I was heading an existing business.
That’s kind of the strategy I would work towards or the budget I’d work towards for yeah know a regional metro area, let’s say like Minneapolis. Now, if you’re in the middle of nowhere and your town is 6,000 people, um you still need to do the three-pack, so to speak. But the website is probably a little different theory um or a little different ah process. I don’t know that it has to be super robust.
And I think your SEO for that should be a lot less, just given that there should be a lot less competition. So I don’t follow that makes sense. um But keep following us as we take Jack, so to speak, down this this journey. See how the pieces are put together. And then if there’s anything we can do, reach out to us. We do free SEO audits. We’d love to help you out with your website or your digital strategy. um And you can reach us at intrycks.com or local SEO tactics. Thanks.
