S. 3 Ep. 18 – How A Marketer Markets Their Own Business

Intro: You know those moments when you’re doing what you love in your business, maybe it’s standing onstage or creating content, whatever it is, you’re totally immersed, and time just seems to slip by? This is called the Flow State at Speaker Flow, we’re obsessed with how to get you there more often. Each week we’re joined by a new expert where we share stories, strategies, and systems to help craft a business you love. Welcome to Technically Speaking.

Taylorr: And we are live; Michael, round two. Real glutton for punishment, coming back on Technically Speaking, huh?

Michael: Technically I do. I do have that propensity.

Austin: I respect that.

Taylorr: Starting off strong here today, folks. It’s a pleasure to have you back, man, we’re really excited to unpack this.

Austin: Totally a reason to have you back, right?

Taylorr: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, exactly. The only reason why anyone comes back. Oh, man. So, super excited to unpack the inner workings of a marketer’s business, especially through the lens of your rule of 26, which we got a chance to talk about in our last episode. So, folks, if you haven’t seen that, definitely go back and check it out. But before we dive into that, we always like to do our research, as you know, and kind of get to know you a little bit more personally when we bring folks on the show. And from what we read, you spent about a decade in the Air Force, right?

Michael: I did. I did.

Taylorr: Very cool. So, I’m curious, what did you learn in the military that you think has helped you as an entrepreneur?

Michael: Structure?

Taylorr: Oh, yeah.

Michael: And so, I played the corporate ladder game. I was actually a late bloomer in the military, relative to the most of the people there. I was 22 when I joined.

Taylorr: Wow.

Michael: And most guys aren’t, I should say people, join right out of high school or they’re very close too. They might take a year off, screw around, then join, right? Because they have nothing better to do. And I actually took a run, at a couple of different things. I had early aspirations of becoming a rockstar and all of these other things. The private sector corporate structure is very interesting and military structure is different, right? There is just as much structure in a large corporation than there is in military. But the ability to ask questions is different, right? You can disagree with your commanding officer, but at some point, you have to stop asking questions. You just have to take the order. 

Now, in the modern day service, there are ways to ask questions and times to ask questions and learning how to do that I think really helps in a lot of different facets of running a business. Because, as a leader, you have to give that space to people to ask questions, but you also have to learn how to nicely, shut them down when it’s time to just get stuff done. And if they can’t conform to that, your methodologies or your policies or your core values; man, it’s time to help them alumni to another organization that might be better suited for them.

Austin: Oh, that makes sense. And so, you feel like the structure is, sort of, the glue that holds that idea together for you? That’s the, sort of, lesson learned from that is that you have to have those, sort of, boundaries and structures in place so that things can still move in the direction they need to.

Michael: A hundred percent. My first multimillion dollar company that I built, I gave way too much latitude to my folks and gave way too many 2nd, 3rd, 10th, 20th chances, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars being embezzled from me, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars of business walking right out the door, tune to letting clients take my people because I wasn’t rigid enough in some of the core values we had, some of our policies and stuff like that. And that really lent to growing the business broke, and why I eventually just kind of shut it down, it was a multimillion dollar company, great. Got cash [Inaudible – 4:06] years, but I was miserable. I’m like, no; this is not how we’re going to do it. 

And so, now I have a meritocracy point of view when it comes to that. So, people are as good and they’re great until they’re not, right? And so, we lay down those ground rules, we lay down our core values, we lay down our methodologies. People are always welcome to question methodologies, but at that moment, 9 times out of 10, whatever’s in place today is how we’re going to do it, and we’re going to question it afterward for the next time, because we do things on an ongoing basis, right? And so, it’s like, yeah, that’s a good idea right now, the timeline doesn’t allow for that. So, let’s go ahead and get this taken care of and then afterward when we do the ARR, then we’ll decide whether or not we need to make changes, maybe do research, whatever that looks like. That’s the time for that, but not right in the middle of the project, right?

And people who can coincide with that stick around for a very long time. And so, our retention is better because we’re a hundred percent remote. Everybody’s self-reliant, right? They self-starters. I don’t have to babysit people anymore. And that means that they decide how much work they get, because if they can get the work done on time the first time, they get the next project faster, right? But if I have to babysit or my project manager has to babysit, or my operations manager has to babysit people, they get tired of that stuff really fast just as much as I do. And so, we just start looking for other options and that happens. 

And then we also, there are times where I’m like, you know what? You would be really good fit for one of my friends who runs a different type of agency and the work that you’re looking for and the work that you really are passionate about is more in line with them. And I actually find them a new home, because it’s not that they’re bad people, it’s just a bad fit. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Austin: Yeah. Man, I love that. And I think what’s good is that the basis of you being able to make that decision is the structure that you were referring to there, right? You have to have the guidelines in place so that you can judge anyone against anything. And I think a lot of people miss out on that, things can get really messy really quickly. And also, the repeatability of a business starts to slip away because even outside of the people component to this equation, right? Any business is only as successful as the repeatability of its processes. And what you’re explaining right now is like the key to making that work.

Michael: Yeah, if you keep making latitudes or leniency to your process, you don’t have a process.

Austin: That’s right

Michael: You’re bespoken what’s supposed to happen every time, then that’s not a process. And that makes you extremely inefficient. That’s why documenting your processes is so important. Right? And I had to re-document every single process, because even though, yeah, we shifted what we were doing, it’s still in marketing, but we were also going from a brick and mortar to online. We did that a year before covid. So, we had about 13 months of practice being a remote-only company before everybody got pushed to it. So, we’re very blessed with that. But that meant that everything has to be documented because I’m not always at my computer. And if I’m not at my computer, my phone’s not on, or I’m in a meeting and nobody else is there, you have to go back over to the SOPs and say, how do I do this?

Taylorr: Right. Exactly right. Well, that’s a good way to hold people accountable too. So, SOP isn’t followed to your point about structure, right? Yeah, it’s impossible to hold accountability.

Michael: And I have my people write my SOPs now.

Taylorr: Yeah, right. That’s an ideal, once they own the role.

Michael: So, once one’s written, I’m like, okay, if you see something different, you’re responsible for making that change, making sure that SOP is up to date.

Taylorr: That’s exactly right. That’s how it’s done. Yeah. I think with some people, they hear SOPs, they get the deer in the headlights. They’re like, oh, that’s not for me. I don’t want to have to update it all of the time. But it’s not the way it has to be, to your point. It’s just about having the structure in place. Now, one of the assumptions that I think a lot of people have about a marketing business, because what we really, really want to take a look at is the meta layer to how you run your business and lace the rule of 26 throughout this today. 

So, I think they would expect that, as a marketing business, marketing yourself is very easy. Has that been your experience? I can tell the answer to that question by the laugh. Or do you find yourself in the cobbler sun situation here? Are you at an advantage in marketing because you’re running a marketing business?

Michael: We are at an advantage in that we can test more things faster than most. We are at a disadvantage because everybody thinks they’re a marketer.

Taylorr: Yeah.

Michael: We have more competition, right? The barrier to entry is zero, right? So, I do some mentoring for a non-profit organization called Warrior Rising, which helps veterans transition to entrepreneurship, right? And they have a vet to CEO program, stuff like that. And so, we do these mentor sessions and this one gentleman got on there and he is like, I’m thinking of starting my own marketing firm and digital marketing firm and blah. And he starts going down the rabbit hole. And I’m like, so how long have you been marketing? Oh, I haven’t really. I helped my brother in his business and I put together a Wix site one time. I’m like, let’s talk offline and let’s find out if this is really a good lane for you to go down. 

I got on the horn with him. The guy really wasn’t an entrepreneur. His siblings were entrepreneurs and he thought that’s what he needed to do to make money. And we really found out that he had this computer programming, that’s really what he wanted to do. He wanted to build big websites. I’m like, so go do that. You want to do a side hustle and build websites for small businesses, keep doing it, that’s great, but don’t make that your whole business when you can get computer engineering. Right? But that’s what happens is that people, especially with covid, when people are looking for options, it’s really easy to be a digital marketer without a brick and mortar location because everything’s digital, right? 

And there are all these people out there who will teach you how to be, and I use air quotes for those who can’t see the video, how to be a digital marketer. If you don’t have a background in marketing, digital marketing is no different than regular marketing, it’s just the channel in which you’re exercising the practice of marketing. And so, if you’re not a natural salesperson for yourself, how can you be a natural salesperson or how can you facilitate helping other people sell themselves?

Taylorr: Yeah. For sure.

Michael: To answer your question. Yes and no. Yes, we have the tools, yes, we have the know-how. No. Because I have to find a way to be different, at least 1% different than every single marketer out there and stick out. That is the, sometimes insurmountable challenge, especially when we’re talking search engine marketing. How many SEOs do you run? It’s like walking through the forest during the fall and trying not to step on leaves. It’s just impossible.

Taylorr: Yeah. For sure. Well, it’s almost like, I think you just kind of shifted some perspective there. It’s almost more difficult in a lot of ways because let’s assume that the barrier of entry was really high, right? You’re still competing with professional marketers to stand out against, right? Whereas in other businesses, you can be a plumber, you can be a speaker and chances are a lot of the industry might not have a grip on their marketing, and so you can excel and stand out through the noise a lot quicker. But even when you’re up against other professional firms who do decent work, that’s an uphill battle.

Michael: So, my approach to marketing is to be very clear on who your best clients are. And a really good marketer is very clear on that. So, you guys work with very specific types of clients and you do a very specific thing; that makes it much easier to market your business. I was just doing a consultation yesterday and the woman; she teaches leaders how to be coaches. Okay. And leverage their leadership in the coaching, whether it’s professionally or in the corporate world. Okay? She’s been doing it for 25 years. But yet, her message is all over the place. And I’m like, why is it all over the place? And she gave me all of her reasons and all of the good stuff, right? 

And I’m like, so what is your most profitable type of client? Where does your passion lay? Is usually one in the same. And where are you the most efficient? Oh, I teach leaders how to be coaches. So, why isn’t that your one thing? People try to be everything to everyone, right? Not that she was doing that, but she was trying to be too many things, too many types of people, right? And I was like, why don’t you just do that? You have two options, they’re either corporate accounts where they’re taking one level of their management or multiple of levels of management leadership and helping them be coaches to their employees or their leaders transitioning from corporate world to becoming a professional coach. 

How much easier is it to market a company when you only have one message? I take leaders and make coaches out of them. Are you a leader? Ooh, we should talk. Do you want to be a coach or would you like to understand how to leverage coaching in being a leader? All right, I only have two questions to figure out whether you’re a client or not.

Austin: Right. Yeah, it’s so true.

Michael: It’s like the Rule of 26. The Rule of 26 basically does that with your average revenue per client, is one of the KPIs we talk about in there. And the way that we do that is getting very clear about where your most profitable clients are. Because your most profitable clients are going to have the highest average revenue per client. So, if we only focus on those types of people, yeah, we’re going to get some of the ones that are in and around it, but if we’re always focused on that one, we’re going to get more of it. And that’s where that first part of the rule really comes into play, because then you’re really just translating everything you’ve learned from your best clients and your most profitable clients, right? To your messaging and you’re getting really clear on one message.

Austin: Yeah. It’s kind of a counterintuitive thing, I think; to some degree, which is why, especially people that have no box for how marketing could or should behave, struggle with it. Because you’re saying that lower volume and a tighter grouping of who I can work with creates more revenue, shouldn’t logic dictate that the more people that you can serve with more services and more things means that you can get more money. And while, maybe there’s an argument to be made that that’s possible in some way, but that seems to be based on every expert we’ve ever talked to and through our own personal experience as entrepreneurs, that is not the case. It’s counterintuitive, I can’t think of a better word for it, but the tighter you go with who you can serve and the less things that you do, the more money you make. It’s really odd.

Michael: Well, it’s a math, okay. I used to own a creative agency. So, a creative agency does everything in-house, and when you do everything, you become very inefficient. So, yeah, we served at least 300 clients a year. We were the only agency you could walk through the front door and get service the same day. So, I was really the epitome of how you don’t do it, right? Because I became too available to too many people. Okay? And so, when you’re doing that, you’re creating all of these inefficiencies. I think one of the years we did 2.3 million, okay? Out of that 2.3 million, my salary didn’t even come close to six figures and the company lost money. 

Why? Because of all of the inefficiencies along the way, because we didn’t have any boundaries for our clients. We didn’t say no. So, if I have less people that I can give a hundred percent to, and the more I do the same thing over and over again in a systemized manner, the more efficient I am. The more efficient I am, the more profitable I am. So, that efficiency equals profitability, that profitability then turns into I don’t need to have as many clients and I can work more on the structure of what we do and making it even better so that I don’t lose clients. My attrition rate is much lower because we’re giving a hundred percent of us to that client and we’re listening to that client, because we have time to listen to them. 

When you’re trying to be bargain basement and trying to compete on price, you can have a bunch of clients and you can lose a lot of money doing it. You can bring a lot of money in, but if you don’t keep any of it, it’s all for nothing. And so, that’s where it seems counterintuitive until you dissect what you’re doing with each client really dictates how much money you get to keep at the end.

Austin: Yeah, man, I love that so much. Well, and this all, obviously, being you ties back into this Rule of 26 and we’ve referenced this a few times now. So, let’s slow down for just a second and cover this, please. I’m going to give you the brief synopsis from my perspective and then you build off of that from there and then we’ll ask some specific questions about how each of those components work for you. But 26% more traffic, 26% better conversions, 26% more revenue per client. Is that correct, those are the three areas of the Rule of 26? And that equals a hundred percent more revenue, if I understand correctly.

Taylorr: Compounded.

Austin: Okay. Is there anything you’d like to add to that?

Michael: Compounded effect. Yeah.

Austin: Okay. Okay. All right, great. Well, so then let’s dissect those a little bit and maybe you can walk us through each of them. So, for yourself, let’s start with number one, 26% more traffic. What does that look like?

Michael: Actually, let’s go the other way. Let’s go from the [Inaudible – 17:56]. Opposite day.

Austin: Okay.

Michael: I wrote it counterintuitively because people understand traffic and I don’t know why I did it that way, but that’s the way it happened. So, if I ever rewrite it, you’re going to find it going the other way around, because it’s easier to digest this way. We alluded to it earlier, when we’re talking about our perfect client, we are going to end up with a higher average revenue per client. Okay?

Taylorr: Is that natural or is that intentional? Do you have to be intentional about that or will it naturally happen? What do you have to do to get that boost? Aside from focus.

Michael: So, this is how I do it for myself every year. Okay? I look at the clients I’ve had that I’ve signed on versus the people that I’ve had for a long time. I’ve had clients for 12, 13 years now. Okay? Even through all of the roller coasters of my business, people stick with me because I do what I say and I’m going to do and I do it the way I say I’m going to do it and they get it. So, all right. Buzz, whatever you’re doing right now is what we’re doing. Boom. Done. Okay, great. Awesome. They’re great but my most loyal are actually not my most profitable. Because when I got them, I signed them on way back when, so I’ve been working on bringing them up to the new standard as far as what we charge and getting them there. 

So, they’re not my highest average revenue per client, but they are my most profitable for per dollar I bill them, because I know them, they trust me, they pay their bills on time, all of the things, right? And when people say, well, I want better clients; I’m like, well, what’s a better client? Well, somebody who pays on time. Okay, great. What else? They pay me what I’m worth. Most service-based business, coaches are notorious for this, undercharge. And I had the same. You cannot give 100% of your value if you don’t bill for a hundred percent of what you’re worth. You must discount something if you are not billing what you’re worth. That right there, I paused because I think people just need to let that sink in. You’re short-cutting something if you’re not billing all of it. 

So, people are paying me what I’m worth, they pay their bills on time and, as a coach, they listen to me. As a consultant, they listen to me. They might debate, but in the end we listen to each other and we take the advice. Had to let a client go, last day was this week on Valentine’s Day. Love you brother, had to go. Because he wouldn’t listen. I would give him great strategies and then he would blame me for nothing working, but really he wasn’t executing. I can’t do anything because, at some point, you have to do the work, from a marketer’s point of view, the client has to do something. We can’t just get the client in and sign the contract for the client, that’s not our job. 

Our job is to bring the prospects to the client and the client takes it from there through the sales process and then doing the work, retaining them, all of that good stuff, right? My job is to make sure that everything in place attracts those type of people and keeps going, right? So, my clients who pay on time, my clients who pay me what I’m worth, and the clients who listen to me are my best clients. They’re also my most profitable clients. Why? Because one, they stick around; two, they gave me great case studies because they listen to me. What I say works. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. You would think some people who have been in business for three years and they’re like, I know better. 

Oh, okay, well, then fire me and hire yourself. Get out of my way because you’re frustrating me. And when you frustrate me, even if you pay me what I’m worth, if you don’t listen to me, you’re now degrading my self-worth. And the next person I talk to, I’m now questioning myself. But if I have a client who listens to me and then we have wins on top of that, you’re taking that energy onto your next client. You’re giving better service because you have better clients. You’re not wasting time trying to collect bills; you’re not wasting time with somebody trying to nickel and dime you. Those people are the ones that I identify every year and I re-identify them every single year because marketing is a changing landscape. Coaching is a changing landscape, speaking is a changing landscape, right? 

So, our clients are going to evolve, our best types of clients are going to evolve. So, for me, I like working with seven-figure companies who are looking to transition from the growth stage to the scale stage, which is the most difficult thing to do in a business. So, why would I want to do that? Because I’m really good at it, I’m really good at what I do. And so, because I can do that and not all of my colleagues in marketing can. That’s my highest ARCP. Because I’m making my clients millions of dollars, not just a couple of tens of thousands of dollars.

Taylorr: Right. Well, it makes sense reiterating, right? You’re using the data you have to go and find more of those people. And I think we just want to set it on autopilot and forget it and just lay in our money bags as money keeps falling from the sky and.

Austin: Cheers to that.

Taylorr: It doesn’t. I’ll pay you all the money. Yeah, exactly. But it doesn’t exist, so there’s a valuable lesson in there. Okay, so great. So, we’ve established the 26% more revenue, we focus on the clients who we love working with the most, who are the most profitable, we find more of those. Okay. Now, we have to go to conversion rate.

Michael: Right.

Taylorr: And so, let’s define that for a moment, from our understanding, Austin, I’m going to group you in this. Sorry for throwing you under the bus here.

Austin: I’ll allow it.

Taylorr: So, from our understanding of conversion rate, it’s basically getting leads through the door, right? In some way or another. Calls booked; sales, if you’re selling product to some degree, but in a lot of service-based businesses, a conversation is happening first, they need need to enter the sales process to then, so I’m seeing a head nod, we’re going to take that definition of conversion rate as okay.

Michael: And so, your conversion rate, which is a percentile.

Taylorr: Which is a percentage, right? Of the traffic that’s coming through.

Michael: Yeah. Of the visitors coming to your website, versus who reaches out through anything that you consider a profitable movement toward a closed deal.

Taylorr: Toward a closed deal. That’s exactly right. So, for listeners; contact forms, people booking meetings, if you have a guide for event planners on how to pick the right speaker, those are indicators that they potentially need what you have, right?

Michael: Yes. And I look at it this way and they go, well, what’s a profitable conversion? A profitable conversion is any act that you can trace back to predictable sales.

Taylorr: Okay.

Michael: On average, so maybe it’s 2% of everybody who downloads my free checklist becomes a client. Well, then there’s a conversion, just downloading that is a conversion, right?

Taylorr: Yeah.

Michael: But if you don’t have a way to track that to a sale from click to sale, not a profitable conversion. You haven’t identified the chance of that person becoming a client. That’s just wishful thinking, not profitable. Okay?

Taylorr: Correct.

Michael: It has to be predictable, it has to be trackable. Yeah. So, if you don’t have, you guys are really good at the CRMs to where it’s like, Hey, we know if somebody does this, we can track them all of the way through the process and we know whether they took the next steps, what steps they did take, how long they took, all of that stuff right there helps you understand whether that’s a profitable conversion or just a wishful act.

Taylorr: Right. So, my question regarding this is, people hear all of this and they’re like, holy, I have no box for how to do this. And then you type in conversion tracking firm in Google, right? And now you talk to somebody and they’re talking about all of the technical crap to make every conversion count and yada, yada, which is an arm and a leg anyway.

Michael: Right.

Taylorr: What’s the simple way to figure out how we can grow our conversion by 26%, especially for the average business owner? Think about the DIY scenario here for a second, right? Then, from your own experience too, what’s the simplest way to figure out how to get that boost of 26%?

Michael: So, we’re going to go back to the ARCP. We’ve identified those people. We identified who they are, because they’re clients. You already know who they are. Guess what? Those people know or are just like other people like them. They’re not unique in the universe. They have similarities to other people like them, so you need to find out how they perceive your value. Why do they continue to use you? Why did they originally come to you? What was it that you offered? What is it that you say that brings them in? Find all of that information. Your best marketing research is your current clients who are paying you on time, paying you what you’re worth and listening to you. 

Talk to them; test your message with them. Hey, I’m thinking about changing my website to say this, this and this, what do you think? They’re going to give you their honest answer. That’s good. Because the more people you’re serving that’s like them, the better their service is going to be because of the more practice you’re going to have, the more efficiencies you’re going to have, it goes all back to that profitability. So, once we have all of the vernacular down from our current paying clients that have proven to us that that’s what they said, because that’s what they said. 

Now, we’re going to take that to the website and we’re going to structure that website, especially the homepage, to identify the pain points that your potential client has coming to your website. That’s the only thing they worry about. As a coach, you’re either helping somebody get over a problem or attain a dream, it’s the only two things you can do as a coach. Any disagreements there?

Austin: Nope.

Michael: Okay, good. All right. So, you are either going to identify a problem or a dream at the top that they identify with. Because if they don’t connect with that, they’re now questioning whether they’re in the right place. From there you can transition to solution or a roadmap to the problem or the result. Okay? Utilizing the vernacular that you’ve already collected from people who are already paying you. From there you start talking about what does it look like when we have solved this problem? What does it look like when we have a paid in this dream? It’s what we call forecasting. And so, we want to play that game and let them see that. Well, that sounds all good and dandy, but have you done it? Oh, well, yeah, we have and here are some case studies. Here are some testimonials. 

Now, you’re creating that social proof, right? Okay. Okay. All right. Have I talked about you? Have I talked about myself at any point at that point? Absolutely not. Because people don’t care what you know until they know how much you care and they only know how much you care as well as you can connect with their pain, give them a digestible solution to that pain and prove that you’ve been able to do it over and over again. You’ll increase your conversion rate by 26% minimum, if you take that mentality to your homepage alone.

Austin: Wow. I was totally expecting you to get into the technical weeds about tracking and measurements and pixels and you went straight for what, this might not be the language you would use to describe it, but essentially story brand. You’re walking them through the narrative of somebody going through the buying cycle.

Taylorr: A guide.

Austin: And it’s, yeah, you caught me off guard with that response.

Michael: Hey, Donald Miller’s a genius in how he teaches that. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I have the book behind me somewhere. I’ve read the book and I love it. I’ve been doing that since before I knew who Donald Miller was. But it sure is validating that he has a complete movement of people who learn it, get certified in it, there are agencies who just do story brand.

Taylorr: Yeah. That’s right.

Austin: And there’s nothing unique about sttory brand, it’s the hero’s journey, it’s like an archetypical wiring in our brain. It’s not about Donald Miller specifically.

Michael: Oh, no, no. Russell Brunson does the same thing in Expert Secrets.

Taylorr: Yeah, Expert Secrets?

Michael: Yeah.

Taylorr: Yeah, for sure. That’s right.

Michael: Yeah. It’s all the same stuff. I think that it’s been, the hero’s story’s been around since modern theater. So, Shakespeare.

Austin: Right. Like Homer.

Michael: That’s it.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: So, I’m actually starting to get a picture of why you flip these around. And, again, I might be a Luddite here, as I explain this, but bear with me. So, what it seems, to me, is if you get more of your ideal clients, naturally you’re going to get more revenue per client, focus on that iteration. You talk to those people to figure out what the messaging is; now you’re going to get an increase in conversion rate. And naturally, since those two things are working behind the scenes, of course with or still using some marketing tactics, SEO or social or whatever, with those adopted messages and so on and targeting, naturally we’re going to see an increase in traffic.

Michael: Actually, not necessarily. Because building a website doesn’t mean you’re going to get traffic.

Taylorr: Well, sure, but assuming you’ve already done those foundational things, you’d see a boost in traffic.

Michael: Right. But what I do then is I take that a step further. All traffic’s not good traffic. Right? So, you’re going to have a thousand of the wrong people land on your page and have a 0% conversion rate, right? And have the right message, just the wrong people, right? So, you might have to shift where you’re targeting. And so, what I say is, now that you know who you’re looking for, go find out where those people are hiding and now put your message in front of them and push them to your website that says exactly what you want to say, how you want to say it, in the order you want to say it every single time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, never takes a sick day, doesn’t ask for raises, doesn’t complain, it’s there. 

Your website is your best salesperson because it does what you do and you can track its efficiency, right? And you can give it the wrong message and it cannot convert well, you change the message until it starts converting. Just because you listened and you did all of those things on your own, if you’re not a marketer, you might put it in the wrong order, even though we told you how to put it in that order. Make sure that you have somebody who understands copywriting to make sure that the narrative is flowing correctly. Because we, as business owners, like to talk about our business and everything we like to say is not necessary on our homepage. Back to your thing, though; the traffic is where you’re getting your traffic and making sure that people like your best clients are in that pool of people that you’re pushing to your website.

Austin: Okay, so I have a question that popped up and I know we’re coming to the end of this episode, so I’m acknowledging that, there may be more that we need to unpack here first, but it seems to me like it could be difficult to determine if we have wrong people or wrong message if both of the outcomes are people coming to the website but not converting. So, if somebody has visitors hitting the site, but they’re not turning into qualified leads that are turning into sales conversations that are turning into ideal clients, how do you actually differentiate whether it’s the right traffic, but the wrong message or the right message, but the wrong traffic?

Michael: Right. That’s a great question. This is where a little bit of advertising comes in, okay? With digital advertising, you can get really specific about who you are targeting, right? So, if we know that on average we’re bringing in the type of people, at least in the psychographic, demographic and geographic, okay? Those are three great layers of targeting, okay? Psychographic is behavioral. Demographic is do they make enough money, how do they live, do dot, dot household income, stuff like that. Male, female, educated, dot, dot dot. And then geographic, where are you serving, right? 

If you can get down to those three things right there and you target that and whatever you’re having them land on is not converting, then you know it’s the message. If you start pointing in other areas that you think those people are, and it stops converting and you haven’t changed anything on your messaging; it’s that, it’s wherever you start pointing again. So, I always work backward, as far as that goes. As you’ve seen with even my own rule, I look at the search engines first. What are they asking? I just asked all of the questions of what my perfect client would ask if they were looking for a person to solve this problem. 

So, now I’m going to go to Google and say, how many people ask these questions and what other questions like it do they ask? I’m going to start answering those questions. And then I’m going to rank for those questions and I can track how many people I’m getting from those questions. And then they come to the website, they should be converting. If they’re not, then, yes, my message is missing the mark because they’re asking the right question and I thought I was saying the right thing, but nothing’s coming out at the backend.