How To Survive As Local Business For Over 20 Years By Embracing New Marketing Strategies

You know Bob Brennan as the co-host to Local SEO Tactics.  What many don’t know is Bob’s history as a successful brick-and-mortar business owner over the last 20+ years.  For episode 30 of Local SEO Tactics, Jesse interviews Bob Brennan, discussing what it takes to survive as a business for over 20 years, and how continuing to seek out and embrace new marketing technologies can help grow your small business.

Don’t miss an episode – listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and more!

YOU’LL LEARN

  • Insights into what it takes to persevere in small business with an ever changing marketing landscape
  • How inbound or “pull” marketing is so much more powerful and outbound or “push marketing
  • Contrasting the traditional marketing techniques like direct mail, versus newer digital methods
  • Focusing on SEO and digital marketing costs substantially less than cold calling, direct mail, and appointment setting
  • Business owners need to shift their marketing to become a “service based business”
  • Using digital marketing allows for very low cost test marketing to see if your ideas will fly or not
  • It’s much easier for a local small business to open an online store with today’s eCommerce technology
  • Local businesses can leverage technology to provide value and services that competitors are not
  • What are the basic inbound marketing metrics that a business owner can easily pay attention to
  • Developing a customer service script can help your team to convert more first time callers into customers
  • Make sure you are researching your competitors to see what they are offering and how they handle new customers

Here is the transcription from Episode 30 Interview of Local SEO Tactics Co-Host Bob Brennan – The Ever Changing Marketing Landscape;

Jesse: This is Local SEO Tactics, where each week we’re bringing you tips and tricks to help you
get found online, and this week, we’re going to do something a little bit different. We’re
going to put Bob under the hot lights here. Bob’s been doing local service business for
over 20 years here. We’re just gonna kinda dissect his brain, talk about local SEO, local
marketing, and things that are really important from a business owner perspective. So, I
think you guys will really enjoy this. Check it out.

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If you go to siteground.com/go/localseotactics, that’s going to bring you right to their
WordPress hosting page. They have packages that start at 3.95 per month, and I think
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They’re super, super responsive, and we’ve never been dissatisfied. I usually don’t try to
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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics. Jesse Dolan here with Bob Brennan.
And this week we’re gonna kind of change it up a little bit. I’m actually gonna interview
Bob. I don’t know if anybody has paid attention to some previous episodes. Bob still has
brick and mortar businesses that we operate here in Minneapolis, Twin Cities area.
And we’re gonna kind of dissect some of that here today, ask Bob some questions and
talk about local SEO tactics, quite frankly, and frame that up against the bigger
marketing backdrop of everything you can do for a business, and just share with you
guys some of this insight. We want you to know we’re not just some local SEO dudes, or
internet marketing dudes up here, kind of spouting out knowledge, regurgitating it. We
put this into practice every single day.

We’ll just kind of kick this off, rolling back the clock. How long have you been poking
stuff?

Bob: I’ve been in sales, pretty much one form or the other, all my life. My dad had a small
business, and that’s kind of where I picked up on a little bit of customer service. And
then throughout my life, I’ve held different jobs, and mowed lawns as a kid, just the
usual stuff to make a buck for a middle class kid, or what have you.

So, but I didn’t get into owning my own business exclusively … I had a small landscape
construction business back in the late ’80s, and didn’t get into this business until, gosh, it
was probably ’91, ’92. A friend of mine approached me and said, “Hey, what do you do
in the winter?” And I was going to school. And they said, “Hey, I got this great gig on the
side, you can go sell re-inked printer ribbons.”

Jesse: That’s old school.

Bob: Yeah, it is old school. Yeah, you would go to businesses, collect their spent ribbons.
We’d send them off to somebody. They would reverse spool them, add ink, and it was a
huge savings. And then unfortunately, the defect rate was probably off the hook. So,
over time, that kinda dried up, and then it went into toner cartridges. And then that all
evolved from there.

Jesse: Right. So back, you said early, mid ’90s, Google wasn’t exactly a big thing back then like
it is now, right?

Bob: Right. Right.

Jesse: Just spend a minute or two, real quick, what was the marketing landscape at that point
in time?

Bob: Yeah. So I mean, the big thing to do … email was a form of communication much like,
let’s say, Facebook Messenger is today, or texting even is, to some degree, the way I
looked at it. You only emailed, one, if you had an email, right? And then, from there it
wasn’t really … it was kind of the cutting edge. It wasn’t really … So we’re talking ’95. It
wasn’t a real avant-garde type thing. It was strictly for communication.

So, if you were to do any marketing, it was really knocking on doors, or it was cold
calling over the phone, and then direct mail or letters or sales letters, and you would
follow up on those, but you did it consistently. So, my goal when starting out my
business was probably getting 50 or 80 letters out a day and trying to follow up on those
three days later, or two days later, and then following up on that. And so then you had
CRM database, like Act!, and some other stuff to, to really kind of grow your business.
And that was probably the most effective way to do it. It was a grind. It wasn’t fun. But it
worked.

Jesse: You had to get in front of people, get your message across. Instead of knocking on doors
and sending out letters and following up on the phone. And that was before snail mail
was coined snail mail cause it was just straight up mail at that point cause email was just
kinda taking off. I’ve been working with Bob since, since these 90s here, so I kinda know
some of these answers, but I’ll kinda load it, right? I’ll see this a little bit to faxing, direct
faxing. Running that sucker all night long.

And so, my kinda point for asking some of those questions is, that’s a lot of labor
intensive stuff there for marketing.

Bob: And costs too.

Jesse: And costs. And it’s really, you know, 20 years ago, in some ways, not a long time ago,
some ways, I mean, generations ago, quite literally, with technology here. So I wanna
kinda step forward a little bit, obviously, at some point in time technology started
advancing, emails became more mainstream, if you will. How did the marketing kinda
evolved from there? It’s still big telemarketing bank, direct mail …

Bob: Yeah, we don’t … At this time we don’t do any telemarketing. I should say what
telemarketing we’re doing is very sniper. I mean, I, I do most of the calls and some of
the staff here call, but they make maybe 10, 20 calls a day, but it’s much more effective
call to an email response that they’ve given us, or an inquiry they’ve given us. So now
you have what we call more pull marketing where before we’re pushing. So, anybody
who wanna buy flowers, “Hey, you wanna buy flowers? You wanna buy flowers?” Well,
this is, this is different. This is, somebody’s going to the internet, and their, their
searching for florist, cause they’ve gotten to fight with their wife or, or what have you.
So, that’s, that’s really how its evolved. It’s, it’s pull marketing.

Jesse: So as, you know, sales manager and owner, and sales person kinda wearing all those
hats on any, any given year. Can you kinda contrast that, that pull marketing where,
versus the push marketing as far as, as a business owner kinda speaking our audience
out there? So, a lot of people still … We talked to a lot of people there. I don’t know. I
don’t know if internet stuff. I’m kinda out there and we’re getting plenty of business …

Bob: No, and I think, as a business owner, I’ve got an ample size ego, and so, if somebody
says, “Hey, are you making enough money or whatever? I’m ready for the other foot to
drop.” And I’m gonna say, “Yeah, I’m making enough money. That’s all word of mouth.
Everybody loves me, or whatever.” And I think that’s just a defense mechanism. Yeah,
we’re a word of mouth business. Okay, great, but really, that’s not gonna cut it, because
the next recession that comes along, your customers, probably they’ll love you, but, if
they’re not in business, or they, they can’t order as much, then what are you gonna do?
And I, as a business owner for 27 years, you’ve always got to have a plan B, just like in
life. I mean, you just … You, you don’t put all your investments in one company. Apple’s
a great company, but, somebody else comes along with something different, you’re,
you’re stuck, right? So, I mean, that’s, that’s pretty much how it’s changed. It’s, it’s one
of those things where, for the most part, you’ve gotta get out, you’ve gotta promote,
you’ve gotta begin to learn and understand Facebook, you’ve gotta understand Google,
you’ve gotta … It’s a digital age. That’s how we communicate today.

Jesse: Sure. So, so if we go back to those old days. I’m making some guesses, but what was
important? Things that, 80 letters a day going out, right? Booking X appointments a day,
you have any other like quick metrics you can kinda recall that were important on the
dashboard back then?

Bob: Yeah, I mean, you would you do A/B testing with different, different letters, but, that
would take weeks sometimes to figure out, and thousands of dollars, right? Cause
postage is postage. It’s, it’s expensive. I remember cash. We were spending $3,000 a
month on postage, right? Just different direct mail, and that’s before you get into
anything else, envelopes-

Jesse: This is local business that can do it, it’s not a national campaign.

Bob: No, no, no. No, no.

Jesse: Couple o’ suburbs, only too.

Bob: $3,000 a month and my poor wife’s like, “Yeah, we don’t … We can barely afford
groceries.” Right? But we got postage to pay for marketing.

Jesse: We gotta do what we gotta do, right? Type of the things. So, I mean, that’s, that’s some
of those dynamics. Another dynamic there is, you’re trying to do all the right things. It
costs money to experiment. And just to do A/B testing, and it’s, it’s a form of gambling,
essentially. So if you could fast forward kinda some of that, some of the important
metrics, some of the … How do you do the testing, things like that. Nowadays, it’s all
digital, right?

Yeah, I mean, we’re kind of skipping over a little bit where email really came into play,
don’t have to do as much direct mail, you can try to email people, it’s kinda, involved for
a long time. Things are … There’s all kinds of messaging nowadays. But today, running a
sales team, running a business, what’s important. Obviously, you’re not sending out tons
and tons of newsletters, tons of … I’m sorry, not saying out tons of mail pieces, making
hundreds of phone calls, seeing 85 appointments happen whenever. What are some
important metrics today as a business owner?

Bob: Well, there’s all kinds of important metrics, and, but there are some basics that I think
every business owner has to understand. And that’s, that’s just … We were into
measuring everything. And we’d literally measure our phone calls, listen to our phone
calls. It becomes more and more predictable. And we can take those measurements,
and if we wanna go into a different market, we can test that market with, with a website
that we may or may not be in that market, but, you know if you’re getting X amount of
calls a month, that will support a business location there.

So there’s, there’s the basic measurements that everybody could probably understand
and get into, but it’s becoming even more subtle now, as we get into psycho graphics,
which I think we’ll talk about in the future where you, you start to target people that
make between 230 and 240,000 or $50,000, and they have blue eyes, two kids and four
dogs. And whatever the case is … And then your approach there is much more subtle in
terms of, what you’re putting in out there on the internet, and then how they’re getting
into your funnel. And, it’s, it’s exciting. I mean, it’s, it’s a slow process, but then once you
have the process down, you’re spending what? What do you think? One-tenth the
money, if you will?

Jesse: She is … Yeah. If that even … I mean if you’re talking like the overall marketing spend,
and framing it up on outbound marketing or push marketing, where we’re contacting
people cold, it’s, it’s way less than it would be compared to, to the marketing, cold call
and beating the street, things like that. And I think you’re hitting the nail on the head as
far as why, as you can really segment down. I know back in the day when we were doing
some of these marketing campaigns, it’s all about the least you would buy, right? Is it
the certain technology group, or this certain industry group and SIC codes and stuff, and
trying to kinda filter that down, but you’re still blanketing with a very … Painting with a
very big brush here for who you’re targeting. Using things like Facebook, he’s getting
into that demographic and psychographic information. You might only be marketing to
300 people, but you know they’re all potential customers. So, there’s no guesswork in it.
If any of them responds, it’s gonna be a good thing.

Bob: Well, I think we’ve all gotten the ad that pops up in our, in our Facebook feed, or, or
somehow pops up in some website revisiting and I’m not talking about the follow-me
ads then, that, “Okay, you visited that site, and now you’re getting those ads.” We’re
talking, “How did they know I was thinking about an outdoor kitchen, before I did?”, and
it’s, it’s big data. I mean, they know their stuff, sometimes they know what you’re gonna
do next, before you do it, so to speak. And so, there’s, there’s the good and the bad of
that. There’s, there’s ways that things, people get exploited to some degree and lower
classes could potentially get exploited.

And I’m not gonna go down that road, but, but yeah, it’s all about big data, they know
everything, or where you can buy just about everything, to, to work on that, that
element, that psychographic price, you know what I mean? So, that’s, I mean, that’s
how it’s changed in a … If you would have told me all this 20 years ago, I’d be,
“Whatever. You’re nuts.”, type of a thing, but, today, as a small business person, it’s
nothing for us to do major amounts of work with China in get stuff imported. And
therefore, if we’ve had all this inventory coming in, we better have it sold before it hits
the dock.

Jesse: Speaking inventory and kind of that, that front loading, I wanna go back to what you
said just a minute ago, about, let’s say, you wanna open a new location, right? You go
back 20 years, or even five years ago, let’s say you wanted to open a new store, new
branch or whatever your business is. Pick a good spot, put up some signage, get some
kinda advertising going a little bit first. Move in grand opening, and cross your fingers
and you say, “Hey look, it’s gonna take us three to six months sort of break even.” And
that kinda ramp up, whatever, and you’re kind of alluded to, that you can test some of
that now with technology, it really turns it on its ear. Well, as a business owner to
mitigate some of that risk and try stuff out.

Bob: Yeah. Yeah, no, and it’s, it’s interesting because Main Street is changing. Its not just
Main Street businesses are affected by … They used to be affected by Walmart, right?
Coming in and Walmart would gobble up small town and gobble up the business. Well,
now Walmart’s being affected by Amazon just like all the other businesses. So as
business owners, we have to shift, and we have to market effectively, and we have to
shift towards I call a service-based business with a little bit of add-on stuff that, that we
can pull from China, or whatever to sell, or whatever the case is. So, again, not to go in
eight different directions, but the landscape of business is changing quite a bit.

Jesse: Why know, giving some specific examples. We’ve done this for our own businesses, and
we tell customers this all the time.

Let’s say, you are gonna open up that new store. If you’re gonna receive mail there,
maybe, maybe you’re two months or three months away from actually opening your
doors for business, you can get mail there. Set up your GMB. You can do so much stuff
online virtually, right? To test it out, to see even if it’ll fly or not. But then even just start
that marketing. You don’t have to wait till you throw that banner up saying, “Grand
opening, we’re here!” You can start all that ahead of time, and, and we’ve coached
plenty of people. Somebody calls like, “I’m sorry, the store’s not open yet. Here’s the
date, or maybe we can help you at the other location.”, things like that.

But, that’s kind of amazing to frame up compared to what it was a few years ago on how
to open a store, how to test market something. There’s so much you do online for
virtually no cost compared to, you don’t have to bring in all this inventory, do all this
build out, do all these things to see if anybody even cares to even try it first.

Bob: Yeah, and for us, it’s kinda somewhat reverse for us. Our next step is really to, to and
Jamie’s working on this within our business, but, but really focus on that, that online
business now. So, we’ve got … You’ve got a base of customers that are off the street,
how can you build on that with them in terms of creating a decent online presence. So,
they don’t have to go to your store, obviously, to order then just order that way, and
then somehow tie that into Amazon, or tie it through some other marketing efforts and
you can build off o’ that.

So, I mean, there’s all kinds of approaches. You can skip the brick and mortar, which in a
lot of ways makes sense, or if you already have an established brick and mortar, how do
you build on that and create a good online presence for your brick and mortar clients,
in, in, in others, obviously, to build off o’ that. So, it’s … I think the key is you’re putting
out content, you’re serving your customers anyways, you might as well, whip open a
store, so, if they, around Christmas time, wanna order your product for some of their
friends, they’re ready to go.

Jesse: If somebody sitting at home, that’s a great point. They’re gonna order something,
they’re going some shopping, it’s late at night, whatever. They’re not gonna come to
your store.

Everybody’s busy nowadays, which is why technology, A, exists at the pace it does, and
then, B, why we are it’s kind of a chicken or the egg thing there, but I’m ordering this
laptop tonight, right? Or I’m ordering these socks tonight, or whatever it is somebody’s
selling locally. I’m not gonna wait tomorrow to go into your store, right? But I know your
brand. So, if you have … If you’ve made that easy to meet, easy for me to get online
versus come into your store, that’s a great point. You can lose out on that loyal
customer just cause you don’t have that ability, and, if you’re not making it, so you can
either do ecommerce or at least take orders, like have online forums and
communication forums.

Your competitors are and you’re gonna lose some of that every year. Your example of
Walmart, being the big fish, but now Amazon being the big fish that’s eating up some
Walmart space, kinda rings true even under the local service level, because businesses
are getting innovative. Even a little boutique shop, can have some of the same features
that Amazon.com has, for their own little local store, which you would think about
before, “There’s no way. You got to go in there and just meet the person, and talk to
’em, and get your service done.” Right? Not anymore. You can buy that online, prepay,
gift card it to somebody or something.

And there’s just so many things you can do virtually, if you’re not taking advantage of
that as a business owner, or a marketing manager, or whatever, there’s definitely a slice
of business there. It’s undeniable. So-

Bob: And if I was targeting Walmart, I’d figure out a way to merge and I would target Amazon
and say, “What can we bring that’s disruptive to the market that Amazon doesn’t have?”
And, that’s either same day delivery, or some crazy unconditional guarantee, or
whatever it is, because you’re talking about a incredible company that is putting physical
what? A couple o’ years ago they only had so many warehouse distribution centers and
now they have … They’re all over and they’re competing with all these major retailers.
You better figure out a way for your very own existence and survival to either mix
services in with your retail, or do something incredibly disruptive, or you’re gonna be
gone just like Sears is just about gone.

Jesse: And I think the tie that binds all that is people are looking for ease of use and technology
related solutions, right? Whether it’s a product you wanna order, and then come in and
pick it up. I mean, this is a simple example of how to tie in technology and online type
stuff to your physical store. If Jimmy John’s delivers it to you … I mean, just like how can
you be a little bit different than your competitors. And, like you said, Ama- I’m sorry,
Walmart and Target are playing catch up to Amazon in a lot of spaces. Because Amazon
is leading that, and they’re not leading that cause they’re necessarily the best, but they
are there the first. So, they’re literally leading, right?

So, whatever, our listeners, whatever your business is, what is your competitors’ not
doing? Or what are they doing a really bad job of that you can jump out there and kinda
be leading in? It doesn’t have to be a perfect solution. You just find a need and fill it for
what your customers are doing using technology somehow, because it really levels the
playing field. No matter how big you are, if you can get out there and do a good job. It’s
gonna resonate with your customers. So, I wanna circle back. So a lot of that was kinda
focused on some outbound stuff.

Yeah, you said on the inbound the pole, I’m sorry, the pole side, people contacting you. I
think that was a pretty big paradigm shift in the company from the marketing aspect of
so much time and energy spent on contacting people, interrupting people. “Next time
you need XYZ widget, remember us. Put this postcard up on your wall there, your
cubicle, or put this magnet on your fridge.” You know what I mean? “Think of us next
time.” Or now it’s about when you go to Google and look for that thing, we want you to
find us, right. I mean, that’s a huge part of it.

Something we’ve been talking a lot with our businesses is, getting in front of people in
those outbound or push ways that aren’t so much about remember us when you need
X. Which is kinda branding, right? right. And then people can just when they Google,
they’re gonna Google ‘search for you’. That’s something interesting for all of our
listeners. If you’re using Google Analytics or any kind of analytics on your website, in
Google Search Console will probably be actually be the best spot for this, and Bing
Webmaster Tools.

The amount of surges are better for your brand, right? So, are people looking for your
brand, not just your products and services, but googling your company? Searching for
your company, pretty good indication you’re kinda doing some good branding out there.
Anyway, kind of getting off track there a little bit. What do you think for business
owners and marketers out there, marketing managers, for the inbound marketing, what
are some critical things again, looking at stats, what’s important? We’re not measuring
how many phone calls are being made today anymore, or letters going out, and
appointments being booked. Google rankings, for example, is one of them.

As a business owner, but you’re not getting into the minutia. As a business owner,
you’re looking at this thing every single day or whatever, what do you wanna know
about your company from marketing aspect, particularly on that inbound side, that
should be important to everybody out there?

Bob: Yeah, I mean, in terms of … I mean, you wanna understand daily where you are in the
Google rankings, right? And where you’re showing up, and in, we’ve gone through this
exercise below, or, before where if you show up let’s say in the sixth or seventh
position, on the first page, yes, your lead volume is gonna go down. But not only that,
your lead quality because again, the customers hunting, they’re typically hunting for
something nobody else has got, or they’re hunting for the lowest possible price type o’
deal. Gouge your eyes out type price, which-

Jesse: The first five people caught into our eyes on other column, the six person.

Bob: Yeah, and maybe the first five are actually pretty competitive within each other, within
10, 20%, or whatever the deal is, and I don’t know what they’re looking for, but they’re
looking for the deal of the century when they call you. And so then you waste all this
time and energy with that customer, or you cannot offer anything that’s really different
from then your competitors, and so, that’s why rankings is critical. You’ve gotta be in
that top three spot. And ideally in that first spot. It’s like anything else in sales. The first,
if you’re the first person they call, and you kinda have the attitude of, well, if we can
close one out of, one out of four, one out of five, that’s, that’s a good deal.

You need to ask yourself the question, what are, what are the competitors offering that
customer? And you better find that out. And then you better figure out some common
offer that, that’s a mind boggler. So, when you do call the other two, they’re like, “Oh,
forget that, I’m gonna go back to choice number one.”, or whatever the case is. So
that’s, those are the things, those are some of the metrics we look at. And then as you
know, we dial in the script of, for a couple of reasons. We wanna know, we wanna get
inside the head of the customer, and they’re saying, “What are their concerns when
they’re calling? Is it price? Is it time of repair? Is it guarantees?” What are the things
that, if you get that empathy of the customer, then you can script to that, or play to that
and, and give them something that nobody else is giving them?

And if they’re calling your competitors, and it’s somebody that’s getting paid minimum
wage that doesn’t really wanna be there, and they’re just quoting a price. And they’re
kinda like, “I don’t care if you do work with us. Have a nice day.”, type of thing. We all
have been through that. And in we’re in a day and age where labor is short. There’s a
labor shortage and even qualified labor’s even shorter that type o’ thing. So, anyway,
that’s, … My goal is to try to empathize with the customer, with the prospect, to figure
out what I have to adjust on my end, and how I have to serve them to win their
business.

Jesse: You mentioned something there a couple times, I want to kinda see if we can tease out
a little bit. So, we’ll have, we tell people, “Take our free SEO audit on our website.”,
right?

Bob: Yep.

Jesse: Top right corner, big yellow button, freelance and SEO audit, and we say, “Research your
competitors.” If somebody’s out ranking you, see what they’re doing on their page, you
mentioned a few times there, “What are your competitors offering?”

Bob: Right.

Jesse: And I know you’ve said this to our team countless times, and maybe you can speak to
the importance of it as, “You should be calling your competitors, or getting price quotes
from them, whatever, just like your customers are.”, cause you don’t wanna be basically
on an island, pitching your product or your service. Somebody calls you, “Hey, how
much for XYZ?” Just throwing out your deal, cause you even didn’t understand your
context of the call those other three people, especially if your rankings aren’t number
one, right? If you’re a number four, five or sixBob: Then you really gotta-

Jesse: They’ve made those phone calls, your competitors, right? So you need to know,
especially if you’re behind them in the rankings. What are they saying? What are they …
What’s their pitch? What’s their close? Right?

Bob: That’s even better point, right? I mean, you really need to understand if you’re further
down the pipe, you need to do your homework even better. So you know why each time
they get to you, you definitely have a shot at landing their business.

Jesse: Because if you’re not bringing something unique or different, I mean, literally just
wasting your time. Like I said, developing that script with that kind of stuff in mind. I
don’t know like you said, you challenge our team all the time, weekly, call a couple o’
competitors in just different products, different services. What’s the pricing? What’s
their turnaround time? Just any, any factor depending on your industry that’s important.
Be aware that and if you find you have an advantage somewhere, make sure that’s in
your script, right? Put on the front side, like, “Hey. Yeah, we’re not as cheap as
everybody else, but we’re faster.”, or vice versa, depending on the situation. And
incorporate that, cause even if it’s not the best lead, you’re still getting a phone call or
something else. So, find out if you can turn it into business or not, as quick as you can,
and hammering on those points. So, I think that’s important to note.

Bob: Yeah, and, I mean, it’s … I think part of the reason, we, within the Intrycks Model and
people, people click on the SEO. We talked about the lizard brain, right? And the lizard
brain is that, that fight or flight. I don’t know if this is right, so I’ll probably screw it up.
But if you wanna reference it, look up lizard brain, Seth Godin, and he kinda speaks to it
cause this is where I’m stealing this from.

Jesse: Good resource there.

Bob: Yeah. And I listen to all Seth Godin’s podcast and all his information and I try to read as
many of his books as possible, but he basically goes to the fact that back in caveman
days, anything in our peripheral vision, we’d freak out and scurry or whatever the case
is, much like animals. And since that’s not the world we live in today, no dinosaurs are
gonna eat me or whatever. That’s not even possible, dinisours and people at the same
time?

Jesse: Just on one island out in the ocean. They made a movie about that. So …
Bob: It’s that part of your brain that’s just saying, “No, no, no, don’t do that. You can’t do
that.”, or whatever the deal is and, and you and I have been talking about doing some
different things with interest. And one of the things we’re gonna take a look at is, is
literally offering free websites. We’ll build a website and we’ll market the heck and do
the SEO out of it for you in your market. And we simply get paid when the phone rings.
Which is a beautiful model, cause your lizard brain doesn’t have to take that risk. Right?
Which is, most people think small business is about risk takers, and we’re risk managers
really, at the end of the day, right?

So, we’ll be talking about that in the future, but that’s … If there’s one skill that I think
I’ve grown good at is that scramble skill of, “What do you gotta scrambled to do to stay
alive or grow?”, type-of-a-thing and trying to be creative and stuff. And, we like doing
that. I mean, we’re pretty good at it. And it’s, when we work with different customers
on the Intrycks side, it’s great hearing their story.

Jesse: That’s great.

Bob: Help them grow their business and, we’re not always successful, but the nice thing is,
when we’re not, they don’t lose any money. We lose our time and money in that
process, but we gain incredible knowledge to move on to the next level.

Jesse: Yeah, I mean, internet marketing is there’s no guarantees anywhere.

Bob: No, no.

Jesse: And so, for all our listeners, who’s anybody ever makes you a guarantee?

Bob: Yeah, probably run, as fast as you can the other directories because that’s just blatantly
impossible. Which is kind of the crux to of the pitch you’re talking about that we’re
cultivating on and trying to offer that up there to break that down and-

Jesse: Yeah and I think it definitely will help our listeners, and we can’t help everybody. So,
don’t take this the wrong way. If you do approach us for a free website, and we take a
look at it and can’t, we can’t do anything for you, we’ll let you know yet. But if, if it’s
something that we can, we can take and run with, we’ll run with it. Because we’re pretty
confident in what we’re doing.

And let’s just … we don’t have this yet. This probably premature, and if you want me to
edit this out then tell me, as we … This will never exist if it’s wrong. People won’t hear
this, but go to Intrycks.com/freesite was just … No, Intrycks.com/free. Let’s just do that.
If you’re interested, we’ll throw up a real quick form. Just give us your contact
information. We’ll roll something much more official out in the coming weeks here. This
is kinda premature and on the fly, but if you’re thinking that you need some help, and
you don’t wanna do other stuff on your own, just drop us a line there, we’ll
communicate with you and kinda get you in place for what Bob’s talking about.
Don’t have a whole lot more to share their. It’s kinda cryptic but, it’s just not ready. But
coming out in conversation, we might as well throw something out there if anybody’s
interested. So, Intrycks.com/free, and, I also wanna reference some of the stuff we’re
talking about here with a little bit of the lizard brain stuff, and some of those customer
handling. I got pulled up episode 12 as our episode on how to charge more for your
services and close more customers with improved call handling. We also talked about
just some of the, how to handle people, not just on the phone calls, but just in general. I
think some of that’s very applicable to what you were just talking about there. So,
reference that to everybody. You’ll find that in the show notes to this page, or on the
page for the show, and definitely check that out.

So one more thing for marketers and business owners, rankings are number one, right? I
mean, that’s, “Where’s your website at for these things?” That’s kinda how we were on
that topic there. Is there any other, if you could pick one more thing for them to really
be focused on?

Bob: Yeah, it’s GMB, because rankings are gonna take time, right? If you live to eat and
breathe, and stalked me and Jesse and, and, and did all the work we asked you to do on
this. And you at the very earliest, unless you’re in a very unusual market, probably
taking 90 days, 60 to 90 days. But GMB is something you can just go to town with right
away, in reviews of stuff, you can go to town with right away.

Jesse: And reviews impactor GMB ranking, it’s like crazy. So …

Bob: And I would, I would plead with some of you, get on the phone, if you’re a business to
business type service, okay. And you’ve got business clients that are businesses, and
you’ve been around for a while, call them up. Say, “Hey, Jim, I really need you to do me
a favor. I need you to leave a review for me on my GMB deal. If you could do that for
me, that would be huge. It would really help my business.” And we know what works
and, on a lot of levels, it helps with the SEO piece and it helps with just that, that
conversion piece.

Jesse: Big time. Big time.

Bob: You know, and there’s other tips we’ll give you too on how to move up the GMB listings
over time, type of a thing.

Jesse: We’ll put a few links to some … We’ve had a few episodes. We’ll put those in the show
notes here too, for you guys to help out how to get more reviews, how to optimize your
GMB, cause, I mean that, you’ve gotta have your website of course too, but really, that’s
where the rubber really meets the road. Get your GMB, get that thing ranked.
Everything else is almost secondary to that, cause that’s, that’s where we’re looking.
Especially for service businesses, local service businesses, you gotta show up on the map
pack.

Absolutely.

Bob: So, I mean if you’re dead broke, and, or you’re running outta time which is both in many
situations, and you don’t have time to do the SEO piece that we’re talking about. Get
your GMP squared away. Like you said that’s a higher priority.

Jesse: Right. There anything else you wanna add.

Bob: That’s about it. Thanks for grilling me.

Jesse: It’s fun to finally turn the tables there. So, let’s get into our five star review of the week.
Got another great one here this week. Five star review from Melissa of mine love
podcast. Melissa says, “I recommend this to my husband since he has a local business
and only knows the basics of SEO. This podcast is so helpful. He’s been able to get his
presence up and running with no help from me, which makes me also grateful. Highly
recommended.” Thanks for the awesome review, Melissa.

Bob: Thanks Mellisa.

Jesse: A lot of people are out there like we just said tons of businesses. 95% fail within the first
five years. If you’re not getting found online, SEO is a huge thing for you, especially in
the local space. A lot of people know how to put up a website, how to get the basics out
there. Hopefully week by week, we just teach a little bit more advanced tactics and
tidbits, and like episode couple back, talking about Bing, right? A lot of people ignore
Bing. These little things you can do to add 5, 10 or 20% to your bottom line for the
amount of leads in business you’re getting. Hopefully helps you guys all out. So, thanks
Melissa for the great five star review. Everybody else if you wanna leave us a review, go
to Intrycks.com/iTunes. You’ll find everything you need there to leave a review on
iTunes. I’d love to hear from you, and let us know what you think. All right everyone,
that does it for this week. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week.

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