Digital marketing authority Eagan Heath is the founder of both Get Found Madison and Caravan Digital. Get Found Madison helps local, ecommerce, and B2B businesses rank on Google, while Caravan Digital aims to help ecommerce brands in the 7-8 figure category grow their sales and profits.
Known for his expertise in using SEO, PPC and email marketing to attract high-value and pre-qualified leads, Eagan is able to effectively help businesses find new prospects and grow. On this installment of Agency Gurus, he discusses Google and Facebook ads, the viability of email marketing, how to grow your agency, and more.
Cloudways: Great to have you with us Eagan! So you own the digital marketing agencies Caravan Digital and Get Found Madison. How did you come to start these two agencies, and what gap were you looking to fill with them?
Eagan: I started Get Found Madison in June 2016 to help local businesses in my area get found on Google using SEO and Google Ads. A lot of businesses wanted more online leads, but didn’t know how to effectively optimize their site or ads for search engines or measure the leads they were getting.
I just launched Caravan Digital this year to specifically serve ecommerce businesses. At Get Found Madison, we developed some great repeatable processes that grew our ecommerce client’s revenue quickly.
Cloudways: You’re the go-to person when it comes to growing online businesses. In your opinion, why can it be so difficult to scale agencies? What can agencies do in order to balance growth with stability?
Eagan: I think the challenge in a service business is making your processes plug and play. We often fall into customized consulting based on client industry or their tools. Part of the reason we’re niching into serving ecommerce clients is to standardize our processes and the tools we interact with (such as WooCommerce and Shopify).
Cloudways: Get Found Madison made a name for itself with Google ads, Facebook ads and analytics. How did you decide to focus on using and growing through these platforms and tools?
Eagan: We really watched for what brought clients results. In some cases, we set up Google Ads for local businesses and they were booked within a few months and had to turn the ads off. I read Lean Startup before starting the company, so I was an alert to find where the value was for clients.
Source: getfoundmadison.com
Cloudways: If it comes down to a choice, what factors should agencies as they decide whether to run campaigns through Google ads or Facebook ads? What do you see as the unique advantages of each service?
Eagan: Google captures existing demand and has a more mature ad platform.
Facebook can generate new demand, especially B2C, and the clicks are usually much cheaper, which means the leads and sales are often cheaper.
Cloudways: What kind of results should businesses expect when using Google ads?
Eagan: I just published a post showing what kind of cost per lead some local businesses see.
In general, local businesses can see increased traffic and leads in 3-4 months or less when setting up proper Google Ad campaigns.
Ecommerce Google Ads get a little more complicated, because usually Google Shopping, Google Display and YouTube ads are all in the mix with classic Search ads.
Cloudways: What are the biggest challenges agencies face when it comes to generating leads? As an SEO expert, what would you like agencies to understand about lead generation through SEO?
Eagan: I think building trust is the hardest part because there are so many charlatans out there. We often have to do some therapy when we come in, talking a client through what went wrong with the last agency.
Part of the reason we’ve moved more to PPC ads is because SEO just takes so long to bring in leads. It’s getting more competitive all the time and organic results are getting fewer clicks than they used to with all the ads on the top of the search engine results.
Source: caravandigital.com/
Cloudways: Email marketing – is it a dead horse or still viable for agencies in the 2020s? What benchmarks and metrics do agency owners need to pay attention to in order to improve the performance of their email campaigns?
Eagan: I still love email as a channel and believe in it. I follow the funnel process, so create valuable lead magnets to give away for free, then nurture your leads through automation where possible and newsletters to give periodic updates and stay top of mind.
Cloudways: You’ve spoken about how a lot of work that goes into securing conversions through a website is wasted effort, especially given how website conversion rates typically tend to be quite low. How do agency and business owners go about developing well-converting marketing funnels that result in visitors actually taking the desired action?
Eagan: We’ve become big believers in custom landing pages for ad campaigns. These have no menu navigation at the top and only one action for the user to take: convert! Videos really help on these pages, too.
Cloudways: How do your agencies go about creating buyer personas and client profiles? And in what ways do you use these to further inform your digital marketing strategy?
Eagan: Glad you asked! We’ve developed questionnaires we go through with clients to understand their buyers and their psychology. Demographics are important, but more often, psychographics are the most important. I believe this is where we really shine because I’ve read a lot of the classics of ad copywriting and direct response marketing. You can often improve your results greatly by practicing what I call marketing fundamentals.
Learn to Build an Ideal Client Profile
Cloudways: And finally, who would you recommend we interview next for this series?
Eagan: Andrew Foxwell from Foxwell Digital.
Thanks for sharing your expertise with us, Eagan!
You can follow Eagan on LinkedIn and Twitter, or get in touch on either one of his websites.
Also, check out the Cloudways webinar on creating a successful lead magnet in 60 mins.
Arsalan Sajid
Arsalan, a Digital Marketer by profession, works as a Startups and Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves all things entrepreneurial and wakes up every day with the desire to enable the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs through his work!
