well hello hello everyone welcome this is so exciting we are on Prepon 2024 day two you all thanks for being here super excited to get this rolling a I love the smiley faces popping up I love it you guys this is one of my favorite events of all year and it is for you too I’m sure we are on day two yesterday we had some amazing material if you missed it you can catch the recording we did uiu yes we did we also did a session on performance we did live SEO optimization can you believe it and today you’re here now this is the moment 20124 this is the day you are here we’ve got a lot for you today evolving demand generation approach so that’s going to be the first one let me just tell you about that and we also have live LinkedIn profile makeovers super exciting get your LinkedIn ready for that we have preparing your e-commerce store for the holiday season oh don’t we know about the holiday season it’s a coming folks seems like it’s only September but it’s a coming I know you know that so we’re going to get started today I’m super excited glad to be with you all again this is so great we have the most amazing panel coming up I have to say you guys it is wonderful to run panels it is wonderful to be talking about our industry but today is extra special because I know all three of these people and you’re going to know them soon these people have a special place in our heart they’re special to cloudways they are special to this industry these are leaders of our industry today we have Aaron Carpenter coming in with a million years of experience more like 15 but let’s you know it’s a lot right Aon cender is a phenomenal human being not only is he calm and kind he’s ridiculously intelligent y’all he runs a digital Agency for mental health and he’s a phenomenal phenomenal person and Mentor at uguru so Aaron thank you for being here so glad to have you yay oh I love all the Clapping hands going up thank you audience love that love that um we ALS o have the brilliant Abby wood she’s the founder of the content lab and she works with digital agencies to produce content that yes brings in demand and converts demand and also is just beautifully written and enjoy enjoyable to read so Abby thank you for being here thank you for all of your service to digital agencies um through you gurus and otherwise glad to have you thank you so much for having me Jen looking forward to this yay wonderful and last but definitely not least with 20 4 years of experience you’re not going to be able to tell because he looks quite young we have Jeff KET Jeff KET comes from New Orleans or at least lives in New Orleans which is a very cool place to live folks he is a SEO specialist and also a phenomenal human wonderful father I’ve got I’ve been with him in Costco y’all see this is what’s so special about cloudways and preath on is we are bringing together experts who have been in this industry a very long time to help you all to move forward so we’re going to be taking some questions in the chat but mostly we’ve got a lot of stuff prepared for you all today so thank you all for being here thank you for your service to digital agencies you’re all mentors at your gurus which is huge thank you very much and um let’s get started y’all ready sounds good let’s go all right all right I’m so excited let me I want to look at the chat I want to see is every oh yes we got chat yay I love it thank you for all those beautiful comments it’s like fuel fuel to um the excitement yay thank you thank you thank you there we go love it okay so let’s get started you guys demand generation approach that’s what we’re talking about today we know this world is Shifting it’s just what humans do it’s what the world does and our industry is a newer industry right we have not been around for thousands of years yes communicating with other human beings has been and yes this is a version of that um but want to talk about this rethinking this traffic solution myth right I want to get into this idea of um addressing Core Business issues looking at traffic and um here we go you ready traffic loan doesn’t guarantee Revenue growth right we know that you can have all the traffic in the world and still be uh sitting on your hands wondering what’s going on uh how can business shift their focus from merely traffic driving traffic from merely driving the traffic to addressing the underlying issues that impact Revenue right Aon I’m going to throw this one to you first yeah sure sure um well one of the the primary things that we’ve found at mental health marketing um has really changed the bottom line without it having anything to do with traffic is by working on support assets for our clients um and when I talk with other agencies about how to improve customer retention um if you’re on a reciprocal model like you charge them month-to month for services imagine if your average liftime uh span of a client is six months and you have 100 active clients uh you could increase that 6 months to 12 you’ve just doubled your bottom line and that might come from an asset like um here’s how we recommend uh client that you uh follow up through email with leads or um here’s how we recommend that you uh close like in sales close those leads after we’ve warmed them up in marketing for you so if you can Empower your clients to do that and they love that from you and want to stick around for twice as long you’ve effectively doubled your business and uh in the amount of time it takes to make that one asset so that that can have a huge impact on your bottom line yeah I love that phenomenal right like I would love to jump in on this one 100% yes so yeah I think traffic is great it’s absolutely great but uh there’s no use in getting traffic if it’s not converting and as as a copywrited by trade you know kind of I’m All About conversion copy and positioning and differentiation so you know kind of it does all come back to that you know what what makes you stand out what makes you unique are you um are you living and breathing that through every single aspect of your brand you know kind of does your website sell your brand experience um and if it doesn’t uh clients will end up coming to you yes maybe but will they stay if they’ve been sold a uh an experience that doesn’t really line up with expectations and so yeah definitely uh yeah make sure that your communication is uh consistent to say the least I love it I love it Jeff thoughts on this yeah I you know unfortunately there have been some situations where we have lost clients because you know even though we have increased their traffic significantly to their website um that traffic doesn’t always convert and turn into leads and sales so if we can’t figure out both sides of that equation um you know it’s a problem right so um back in the day we used to focus primarily on getting the clients more traffic but we’ve realized that that’s just not enough so do need to help them figure out um how to convert those leads and more importantly turn those into um you know new new customers for them I love this you guys so that’s really really brilliant so traffic is one thing yes and you know we do find in working with digital agencies daily um that there is this huge focus on lead generation lead generation you know demand generation like everybody feels that’s the Golden Goose and what the three of you have just said is really beautiful um if if what you are bringing them in on is isn’t their experience throughout right it’s no good if what you’re bringing them in on and the experience doesn’t last more than two months then we’re just chasing our tail all the time right Aaron and then this idea Jeff specifically the fact that you do SEO for agencies and others like your company can’t last if they don’t do something with the traffic you generate yeah you guys this is this is good does any do you guys have an example um I mean that’s kind of an example right there but do you guys have any examples of this like changing that mindset what that might look like yeah AB absolutely um I can give you an example of a a company that we were helping with uh their brand positioning and uh their their General brand messaging and stuff um so it was a a a fantastic construction company and their whole approach was white glove service and so the entire website sold this luxurious um experience of you know kind of going above and beyond for customers so we were managing to convert the actual website traffic into sales inquiries um and uh didn’t result in more sales it was kind like okay what’s what’s going on there okay there’s obviously something not connecting right there and turns out that uh sometimes they just weren’t answering their phones and sometimes when they were answering the phones the uh the the admin staff were incredibly rude and weren’t giving the um the same level of service that people had bought into they were expecting someone friendly and very kind of you know uh very approachable um but what they got instead was kind of a standoffish very cold approach um so yeah I I think you know getting the traffic to you is one thing um ensuring that you are you know delivering on service and we’ll make sure that we can avoid those feast and famine cycles of okay yeah I have this new client they’re going to stick with me for one project um and then I have to just continually get new clients because they just not sticking around love it and you guys and we’re going to go on to this next thought but I I have forgot to tell everybody what’s coming up today so I just want to make sure I let you guys know um oh I did tell everybody but I do want to make sure you guys make sure you get ready for that LinkedIn right that’s coming and we do have some other presentation so next question you guys um demand generation and demand capture right so generating awareness right so de demand generating demand in the world right in your market right and then there’s the concept of demand capture of the demand is already there right how do we capture it and turn it into clients right so I want to talk about that because there’s a balance and there’s a time for one there’s a time for the other and there’s a time for the combination right um but how does balancing demand generation and demand capture directly influence a company’s Revenue growth what strategies are you guys finding most effective not only for yourselves but for your clients be specific specificity and quality over everything else hands down down all the time all day every day non-stop um most of the problem uh with this right now that I find when I work with other agencies is that they um like a knee-jerk reaction I think of an entrepreneur is to kind of use the the analogy like shotgun blast or wide net like I just want I want to show everybody who I can help and the way I articulate this typically is all right well let’s assume you do that let’s assume that you do that with that strategy and you get in front of a thousand people and you convert one versus being way more specific and only getting in front of 50 people yeah but converting five for your time it’s more efficient for your messaging it’s more efficient it resonates more with that person um there are so many people in the world you guys that like if you’re even just targeting a uh City uh there’s probably sufficient demand for you to grow your agency um not saying that you should Target a specific City I’m just saying that’s just one place to start then who in that city are you targeting the more specific you can get as long as there’s still a market for it the easier your messaging is going to be aby’s gonna be like oh my God if you came to me as a client you were like I work with these people on this issue and I solve it this way she’d be like amazing let me get you that copy because we just skipped Discovery right um so so yeah specificity over everything um anecdotally there’s a YouTuber that I really like this person maybe shares a video once every three months but I watch every single one of them from start to finish and there are other YouTubers that release videos daily and they’re like I need to do content and this is the same thing with blog posts I need to post I need to post I need to post what’s the point if no one reads it right and I would much rather spend 10 hours on an excellent piece than a half hour on a bunch of crappy ones so that’s my two cents wait does it because I know that she’s probably got thoughts on that right yeah 100% yeah 100% H you know kind of the days of pumping out content non-stop are over you know kind of yeah it’s it’s great to produce content but quality over quantity 100% um I will say this for me a big thing was Authority building so really getting known in that specific Niche or industry that you’re working with um so that will really help both demand generation and demand capture um so as you are building authority you get known is a go-to expert in that Niche it makes the sales process a hell of a lot shorter um and it’s just you the inbound leads definitely increase and the quality is higher um whereas you know if if you’re consistently having to prove yourself over and over again um sales process longer more difficult um and uh kind of as clients see you work with you know kind of industry I hate the word influencers but Champions influencers whatever you want to call them um you know they get a little bit more trust in you as well so they’ll keep coming back for more and more love it yeah um one thing I wanted to mention and really good thoughts there um just just more specifically on the on the balance angle so people hire us and agencies hire us for SEO to help them deliver SEO to their clients right so SEO is great right generating more and more traffic but what what we found in a couple of cases where we were again we were helping them get traffic but that that traffic wasn’t necessarily converting um in certain cases so we actually had to U put their entire monthly budget toward conversion rate optimization now conversion rate optimization isn’t what people would traditionally think of as SEO but I know if we can’t help them figure out their leads and sales issue with this stuff we’re we’re going to end up losing the clients so we you know so yeah we we will do conversion rate optimization which I think is more of a a demand capture thing um where where like traditional SEO would probably be more of a um a demand generation thing so that’s kind of how we’re we’re balancing things in certain cases so just I think you you got to have that that good balance one one you can’t have one without the other so and and on that like this how businesses can Safeguard their revenue streams while optimizing both right what I think that I’m hearing um and what I think that I would advise is you got to be paying attention like none of this is uh you push the button and it goes like all of this requires human attention intelligence um this is where you know a lot of us prefer to go to the specialist right Abby you’re talking about building authority you become the specialist you know that market you know that industry right we go to Specialists like Jeff to to get to a very like this is one part of what our business is going to be doing to be bringing people in and we go to the specialist because this is where I I think for safeguarding yall I’m I’m guessing you all will agree um and back to that kind of that shotgun concept of like just we’re not going we’re going to be specific and we’re going to be watching and intelligent at all times and I think that’s when especially when it comes to revenue streams and budget right we really want our budget to go uh well to be worth it right we want the ROI there we want it to be evident um any other thoughts on that how you Safeguard just be careful just be careful and and be aware and yeah don’t put don’t put your head in the sand be aware of you know and keep an eye on your numbers I think that helps a lot I would say um if you’re interested in this topic right now it’s highly likely that you’re thinking about how you’re going to really push for demand or for conversion and one of the things that I typically advise businesses to do in general is to Pilot test something so set aside resources time coin whatever it is uh to do the thing but then take like 25% of that and prototype out what you’re doing prove the results first on a paid campaign that can look like as low as 3500 bucks a month something like that whatever that number is for you um and then once you’ve proved that it works and you’ve and you know how you’re going to optimize it then ratchet it up but dumping everything um real quick is a is a recipe for disaster because you need to learn and know which direction you’re going first before you actually multiply that outcome o I love it so don’t take your eye off the ball nor off of the end result the end result is not just to create um a whole bunch of demand the end results we want to be able to answer that Demand profitably right um love that all right you guys so this is this is some good um some good material for everybody uh watching to be thinking about um and and again I just want to emphasize this idea of none of this is is kind of press and play like this is all we are all here all of us all the audience everybody we’re here because we’re thinkers right we’re here because we want to do better right um and that it fuels the continual iteration of any sort of campaign and any sort of business right I want to look at exploring the impact and consideration on marketing strategies right so if you guys can shift with me there over to like pricing strategies yeah all right so pricing strategies um and we just touched on this so Erin you you got your mind reader here um price strategies can can make or break Demand right efforts and make or break a company right how do you align your PR pricing approach with your demand generation goals to drive Revenue growth oh man what do you guys want to start with that one yeah that’s a topic we could start all day on that one I I personally think um it really depends if it’s high ticket or low ticket so okay um yeah so if it’s high ticket you probably want to hide that pricing until later on in the sales funnel because it’s not really a selling something really expensive isn’t really a selling point so um if it’s high ticket probably I I don’t know how much a high ticket pricing would would would play into demand Generation Um but that’s probably more of a demand capture on that side now if it’s low ticket and the price is a selling point I would say it’s earlier which maybe you want to mention it during the the demand generation very early in the in the relationship so that’s that’s probably the biggest consideration uh whether it’s high ticket or low ticket in my opinion got it good point good point man like um usually in discussions around that so mental health marketing uh for context I I very open with people that I talk with uh other agencies when I’m working with them that we our thing is that we’re a cost leader and we’re low ticket high volume um and the reason for that the reason I’ve always uh even with legendary like our um our creative agency that works outside of the mental health marketing space um I’ve always always liked that approach as a business approach because the Stress and Anxiety as a um entrepreneur and an agency owner is vastly reduced when you have a hundred clients all paying your bills versus two because if you lose one that’s a nightmare right and you got to solve that problem tomorrow to keep revenue rolling so for me I enjoy it because I get more hours of sleep every night um but it also has this intrinsic benefit of I’m working with more people more constantly so the ability to soundboard off of those clients and get multiple same uh sort of thematic feedback from them in order to evolve what we’re delivering also is an advantage the disadvantage is things are it’s tight like your your sop has got to be smooth uh because the second thing start to go off the rails um with a really tight budget and uh smaller margins across many accounts in order to get the profits that you’re looking for um that that is the trade-off so you got to keep your eye on the ball on that um so pricing strategies in terms of low ticket I can say um it’s all about your sop and figuring out how to deliver and solve real problems that produce value to your clients with a minimum amount of overhead so for teams like mine you’ll see very tight small highly efficient teams um whereas for higher ticket stuff um you tend to see like you can see also tight small teams but you tend to see larger teams that provide higher Firepower AC across a broader spectrum and more custom types of work and that has its own challenges like I said I totally stay on this subject like all day but basically I I feel like those are the primary differences between the two and high ticket is a viable way to scale an agency low ticket’s a viable way to scale an agency there’s no Silver Bullet just depends on like what type of agency you want to build really yeah I I would definitely agree with Aaron on this one so there’s so many different agency models out there um there’s there’s no kind of one fits all um so my business model would be kind of similar to aon’s as in you know kind of we have a lot of different clients that send us a lot of work and but it’s not high ticket so obviously we’re we’re white label copywriters and content marketers you know the idea is is that our services are resold by other agencies so they’ll go out and sell the work and we’ll deliver it and which is great for me because you know I just have to bring on more agencies then they sell it um but I think there’s definitely a focus on Revenue growth um and just general turnover but I’m a a big fan of uh profit so you know profit is more important to me than you know kind of being like Oh you know I I’ve I know so many agencies that you know are kind of multi-million turnovers and yet their profit margins are awful and they’re super stressed and you know all of this kind of stuff whereas I know plenty of smaller agencies that you know although from the outside they’re making less their profit mark margins are so good that they’re a lot less stressed a lot more comfortable um and they’re not as Under Pressure uh as as kind of larger larger agencies but there’s definitely it’s definitely personal choices to what you prefer um you know kind of I’ve worked with some clients that will literally sell one website a quarter but because it’s such a high value ticket and you know there’s plenty of profit there and then I have some that are literally kind of templating it out and just need to get it out as quick as possible um but yeah it absolutely kind of depends on if you want to go down the recurring Revenue model or if you want to you know kind of really position yourself as as kind of a higher higher value um ticket agency yeah yeah definitely and in the chat we’ve got fans of profit also yes yes that’s why we uh that’s one of the main reasons we do this is to feel really good about um what we the influence we can have in the world and one of the currencies is definitely money um so love that uh in competitive markets right so so you’re out there and you’ve got uh there’s new competitors popping up all the time you’ve got the competitors you’ve had um since you started right um how does this consideration phase influence your pricing strategy and what impact does this have on overall Revenue these questions are like high level business questions basically good stuff I love this stuff I eat it up um we’ve started selling differently I I’ll try to describe it to inly but I’ve been um advocating for other agencies to start trying to sell this way because I feel like it’s highly effective um and I feel like it’s relevant to this because we don’t really price or sell the same way that traditional agencies do the the traditional way is to basically like do Discovery right figure out what your client needs put together project plan for them put it on a timeline and give it a budget whatever that budget structure looks like for you what I found uh was not great about that is that um I often kind of felt like I was uh playing darts blindfolded I didn’t know what the client had for a budget or what they really had in mind and they were really KY and I’m sure if you’ve ever done a sales call you know exactly what I’m talking about so we changed our whole sales process into helping them identify what a reasonable marketing budget per month would be and then once we dialed in that number which usually looks like you know depending on if if they’re B2B or B Toc like five or 10% of annual revenue per month um once we dialed in that number then for our position in their marketing so if they’re a big business they may have lots of marketing concerns and the website’s part of it or if they’re small this is going to be everything this year we would put a project plan together based on our costs and we would play with time instead so if you’re if your monthly marketing Budget on the low end of starting business is like $500 a month fine but the Project’s going to take six months or 12 months right and if you want to put a down payment on that then you can that’s up to you and we can accelerate the timeline um so that’s how we sell now and again it’s all about process especially with like where um my agency spends time so now we’ve got uh logo website um content all that stuff down to one month time four weeks so if they want to Fast Track all of their setup within the first month they can do that and that’s coin we get upfront and then we go into monthly reciprocal for paid ads if they don’t want to do that that’s fine but we just work up to the retainer in small uh doses throughout those months until we finally get the setup done in three months six months whatever that is and then do that and that’s a good fit for some people too the brilliant thing about that is that the pricing works for everybody like suddenly that’s you youve you’ve you’ve controlled for that you’ve eliminated that out of the equation so now it’s just a question of how much coin they have to accelerate what it is that you’re doing and most agencies don’t sell that way so if a client’s looking at that then they’re going to compare that against oh well this Project’s going to take six months and cost $10,000 and that’s just flat ites I don’t have any any control over that at all and then they’ll look at how you’re doing it and they’ll be like well I want to go with those guys because I can get it done faster and get the same thing or obviously there’s your own unique spin on what you do and they can only get it from you but it’s big big topic for me right now so I’ll try to put a pin in it there but um hopefully that makes sense guys and I don’t know if you guys are playing with um any types of different sales things like that also that that kind of you know dovetail into that and I smile because um you know we get the the privilege of working with Aaron on The Daily so I’ve heard this and Aon you’ve taught us classes on this at yugur and I’m just I’m so grateful and I’m so grateful that you can bring it here to this large audience of cloudways so I love to hear it um Abby what are you thinking about can I hop in real quick um just a real quick and and Abby you can follow me up but I just wanted to I was doing some research on on on preath and I feel like we’re kind of answering these questions from a digital marketing agency owner perspective and and for digital marketing agency owners so people who are watching can you can you say in chat what kind of business you have because I saw they were also marketing this event to e-commerce business owners and like General business owners so I just kind of want to get a get a Vibe for like what kind of business owners we have here just so we can answer the questions in a way that would help you guys most I love that fantastic design agency we gotta see we have some B2B ecommer yeah cool yeah white label WordPress agency bdb e-commerce okay web design okay estate software there we go design okay perfect yeah I can jump in on this one as well um yeah thanks for that Jeff that’s really helpful now I can kind of ta tailor the old answers um so for me I’m going to go back to Authority building um for during the consideration phase for me I find that pricing isn’t a question so because kind of established as the go-to content Agency for um web designers digital agencies um I tend not to it’s not really an issue like they’re not like oh that’s really expensive or oh that’s really cheap or you know it’s it’s just like that is what it is I’m going to resell it to my clients um I have had a couple of agencies that approached me and kind of we were outside of their budget and instead they just referred their clients directly to us because they knew that we would do a fantastic job so you know kind of I think once you’re known for doing great work and you’re known for um you know kind of being the go-to then it’s not so much um you’re not competing on pricing anymore you’re competing on who’s going to be best at the work um which really helps in competitive markets because you’re it’s it’s no longer the race to the bottom it’s not who’s the cheapest it’s who’s the best um which is obviously going to help revenue and profit margins yeah and and we have all experienced this that you know everybody talks about return on investment and I’ve been we’ve been talking a lot about value on investment for years now of what’s the value on this um this in the the investment on the money somebody’s going to put into the promise that they’re buying right and what’s the value and as as we all know because we’re human uh if you could buy the same you know cup of of rice milk from somebody who’s really mean to you and it’s hot and it’s not good versus somebody who’s really nice to you and here’s the milk and a good temperature like this it matters um the the brand matters the people matter and to aby’s point of becoming an authority and the go-to people um you really can’t do that if you don’t have some great value on investment strategy right so um and we all do know that if if this cup of rice milk is 70 times more expensive than this one we’re still going to go for the bad one because money does matter right um so thank you all for that uh are we are we ready to are we good on this topic for this moment we thinking we’re ready yeah okay sure I think so okay okay um frequency the role of frequency and how do we optimize it when we’re talking about demand generation efforts all right so we’re working on creating demand generating Demand right um in the context of Revenue growth right so growing your company growing the revenue of your company right how do you determine how do you determine the um optimal frequency for demand generation campaign pains to maximize impact without diminishing returns and I think we’ve kind of touched on this already but I’d love to hear what you guys have to say Jeff do you want to kick us off on this one uh yeah you know um I think this is where being a specialist really comes into play because you know like hey I’ve worked with this type of company you know non-stop for the last x amount of years I know exactly how much frequency they need of SEO of paid you know Google ads Facebook ads whatever you know that you know that frequency and you can really help them and that’s why it also if you’re you know an e-commerce business owner or something like that that’s why it makes sense to hire a specialist who has helped companies just like yours because they’ll be able to help you with that uh you know figuring out that that frequency that’s extremely important because you don’t want any in the especially in the early days you don’t want any wasted budget you can’t really afford to have any wasted budget you and you have to be super efficient so that’s why you know I think I think it really points to being being both being a specialist as a digital marketing agency and for all you web designers and digital marketing agencies this is just another reason why you want to Niche Niche down and become a specialist so you can help so you can help your clients that much more yeah it depends Ain I just makes your life easier man like I’ve I’ve done it all you know in terms of like taking any project I think most agencies you know when you start you take any work that you can get right that’s kind of how a lot of people start it’s really rare to hear an origin story of a digital AG and like oh yeah I just had a doctor in the family and then I did another doctor project and I never took any other work like you definitely did a bunch of different stuff and one of the main things that you learn along the way is oh man like I need to relearn this whole new client learn their problems learn that my clients’s clients problems so that I can like make something for them um and so I I think that the more you can you can dial that in uh the easier your life will be like you just learn one client one time and then you just kind of stay on top of that and it’s way easier uh again I get more hours of sleep at night because I focus on the mental health space andan it’s really that simple but Abby any thoughts on this yeah I I’d agree to be honest with you you know kind of I know that H getting started there’s a lot of uh trial and error and I think kind of if if it’s a possibility to just skip that stage I know that’s that’s why you know a lot of agencies join you know ugurus um you know to kind of skip out the errors while setting up an agency um and to learn from others and that’s kind of going back to what what Jeff and Aaron said you know kind of if you can hire a specialist who knows exactly you know what the best frequency is then lean on them you know kind of take that off your plate and uh kind of take the the guest workout yeah I I would like to yesand that just a little bit more too because I realized as Jeff pointed out we have like some e-commerce in here too and so maybe kind of playing it to the to the corner of that um if I had another agency come to me and be like Aaron how frequently should I reach out to my audience like for whatever insert whatever platform here I would be like when are they expecting to hear from you how often would they expect to hear from you like you got a reverse engineer it from who you’re selling to right so if you’re running an e-commerce store for instance the typically retail is incredibly uh cyclical uh especially if what you’re selling has anything to do with holidays and stuff like that so so working with a specialist who has worked in that space who knows what works will allow you to shortcut through that type of thing um but what you could do is uh what everybody in marketing does when they want to know more uh you AB test it right so run two campaigns at the same time maybe run one that’s a little more frequent to one half of your list and one that’s a little less frequent to the other half of your list um same tent pole content something like that see which one resonates more zeroing on that then try it again and you can kind of experiment and um often when we’re talking about activities like this I know uh a lot of agency owners kind of describe it as like putting on their you know goggles and lab coat and they go in there and they kind of like experiment with stuff and see what works and that’s useful information so that would be my advice to agencies and e-commerce both it’s like don’t be afraid to AB test you don’t need to be a specialist even to do that you just need to set up like control all the variables and set up two different ways to go at it see which one performs better and just to like in thinking about this the reality of uh like the the best Cadence and frequency and whatnot if you back to the very first concept of like not just focusing on leads if your company can’t handle the leads stop generating them deliver on what you’ve already sold generate them more slowly go to a go to a frequence that’s you you it’s got to talk to the rest of your business is basically what I’m saying because we see that a lot we’ve got all the stuff coming in and now they’re like oh I need to Triple my team tripling your team will break your company if you try to do it three days yes yeah I I I agree but with SEO we can’t really turn turn off the we can’t really turn it off so here’s what I recommend when somebody tells me can’t do SEO like how we GNA handle the leads I was like what a perfect time to raise your prices what what a perfect time to start a waiting list a wait list and become that in demand company like that’s that’s amazing like what a what a what a great thing to what a great problem to have you know what I mean to have too much too many leads I yeah absolutely absolutely um especially you guys if any of you out there are funded we want to listen to All want to pay attention because I I have found that one of the the quickest ways to to ending a company is when you are funded and you go full fledged into demand generation and you’re nobody can handle the leads and nobody can handle the business so um keeping in mind uh you know growth um we want to be wise about it so love that any of you guys have any specific case studies around this where adjusting some frequency really did boost overall Revenue I I don’t know we have company go ahead Aon go ahead well I I was just gonna say uh uh and I’ll toss it right back to I don’t know about that specifically but on the note that you were just saying Jen I think it’s really important for people to consider um bottlenecks in the Fulfillment pipeline of whatever they’re delivering so what I’ll often do is uh check in with Team I have a weekly team meeting on Mondays that we all uh and and I love when I can keep them under 10 minutes and then I have uh a check-in with each head of department on Thursdays call them delegation Thursdays why am I telling you this well I check in with them frequently to see like hey how you doing on workload and I get a feel for how much each chair head can process at any given time so that when I’m giving instruction to my sales team or the marketing team which leads into sales that I’m kind of keeping an eye on that that flow um and and it’s important to realize that like there’s a there’s a timetable to that flow too right so if you start the marketing it takes a while for that to turn into sales and the sales takes a while to turn into billables and the billables take a while to actually come in and hit the bank and so you kind of want to just be cognizant of the fact of what does your timetable look like like from start to finish um Soup To Nuts as I’ve heard some people put it where does that start and where does that end so that when you make decisions that affect that flow you’re you’re being aware of that and as genen put it if you frontload too much of it there’s a Time associated with head hunting new team members getting them properly positioned getting them properly trained so you want to get in front of that and that looks like your quarterly planning right that looks like oh I want to up my sales by 10% all right at that level that means my people need to handle X number of projects or my e-commerce store needs to fulfill X number of orders which means I need y number of people because I’ve checked in and I know how much I need to fulfill that and now you can plan for that start the hiring process in the first month of the quarter and stick The Landing by the end of the quarter anyway that’s my two cents what were youing Jeff uh I was just going to give just a couple of examples of where where we have had our clients uh increase their their demand generation effort so again we we do the SEO and we had an uh an HVAC company out in Illinois double their investment they didn’t do it they didn’t do it right away we we you know we talked together uh okay when when do you kind of want to see that uptick uh you know for the for the summer season when everybody’s AC is going out all right let’s let’s increase in like January February because you know there’s a long lag time with SEO so we can kind of get ahead of the game right we don’t want to be increasing your SEO in in July when Summer’s halfway over you’re not going to see the fruit of that efforts until everybody’s uh heater going out in the middle of December and January right so um let’s let’s start that and and the same thing for a uh a B2B e-commerce company who also wanted to double their SEO invest um just to kind of get ahead of that busy season we got to do it a couple months in advance right we can’t we can’t be doing it at the time you know we just don’t wait till the last minute when it comes to SEO that’s that’s the biggest thing so just want to throw those examples out there love it love it I we do have some really good questions I’m gonna um open up to a couple questions here if you guys don’t mind um Jamie great Jamie’s asking how much do you rely on Google my business for local SEO Google my business is roughly 25% of the puzzle when it comes to local SEO um we we we have a four-pillar approach website arit for a second Sor I love that your answer was so specific I feel like so many times we ask questions and it’s like well you know and and you’re like 25% so sorry to sorry to slow your roll but I just really loved that keep going Jeff keep going 25% folks yeah well well we have a we have a four-pillar approach and and that’s one of the four pillars so you know each of the pillars I think is about 25% of the puzzle when it comes to SEO so the first pillar website architecture and user experience um Authority content inbound link landscape and then the local signals G GBP is probably the most significant portion of that love it love it along along with citations and location pages and stuff like that I mean I I would I would yes and that and just say um like I agree with Jeff it’s a piece it’s it’s like I’ve never heard of a business that’s like Google my business it drives everything like we’re you know that’s not real but um but but like restaurants like any place that I mean think about your own buyer experience when you’re out doing stuff when are you looking at Google my business for me it’s usually restaurants I want to see the food I want to know your hours oh man it’s Labor Day are you open what are the reviews by the way by the way guys if you’ve never done it one of my favorite things to do is pull up Google my business and look at like local fast food joints and like some like Mom and Pop restaurants and then just click the one stars to read like what those reviews are they are comedy goal I love that fantastic absolutely um we’ve got another question here on how do you search for potential clients oops let me I lost it I lost it um how do you search for potential clients or are they more inbound I got lots of questions coming in this beginner questions is saying um via which by the way Irene is a web developer I scrolled up to so we can answer that based on that thank you Jeff yes so for me it entirely depends on target audience so if I was absolutely getting started and I didn’t have any kinds at all on the books um I’m not going to be getting inbound leads so I need to start being proactive I need to be networking I need to be looking at local businesses any people that I know that own businesses can they give me introductions to other people that also own businesses that need websites and then kind of as you’re building up your portfolio as you’re building up your expertise as you’re building up you know kind of your Authority again it’s like my tag word of this session um you know you will eventually end up in more inbound leads so you’re going to end up with more word of mouth um which is great but also we can’t just rely on Word of Mouth so we really want to be making sure that we are you know writing Authority content that we’re you know kind of getting featured in Publications yeah and this is very long term but for the minute 100% uh it’s proactive and it’s doing proactive Outreach so making calls sending emails you know kind of visiting businesses whatever it needs see if there’s a BNI chapter in your local area BNI is amazing you can go in for free for your first one or two visits you’ll meet business Professionals in the area that are serious about networking and I promise even if you don’t want to go out shake some people’s hands and meet some people it is a great way to get your business off the ground you’ll get more business that way than really anything that you try to do when you’re first getting started online people will do business with people that they’ve met and they trust far more quickly than uh blog post they saw shareed on social for like a business that has like no reputation or anything like that um it’s it’s just more bang for your buck for your time both are important but actually going and meeting people and creating like a local referral Network sort of uh ground sort of sourcing uh that and creating those opportunities is going to be one of your best ways to get off the ground um when you get bigger then yes absolutely your brand is everything Authority is everything you know you you want to be an industry thought Leader by the way is like how I typically call it because I don’t like the influencer thing either um so they they’re a thought leader you know they come up with a lot of stuff in the space um yeah that would be my answer to that one I would say as well business accelerator if you have any local business accelerator programs join them you know kind of you might learn a thing or two but also you’re going to be surrounded by businesses that are ready to grow and ready to invest as well um and there might even be grants available as well um so I’ve I’ve worked with a lot of agencies who have really kind of Lent into that lent into it leaned into that H who knows I can’t speak English today um but yeah it’s it’s a great way and just kind of really think outside the box as well for sure of just like okay you know there may be business accelerator programs there may be um you know kind of University programs that are you know kind of they have a lot of businesses that are getting set up just anywhere and everywhere but Aaron is 100% right in person much shorter sales cycle yeah one handshake I’ve always said this one handshake is equivalent to like five or 10 Zoom meetings or phone calls so if you every every hand you can shake is like a really really good thing for your bottom line I’ve noticed personally awesome um so we definitely have some questions in the question and answer which I apologize you guys I was looking just at the chat so we’ve got a lot of questions and we only have about 13 more minutes um so you know I do want to ask you guys like all these strategies that we’re talking about right um do you believe that what do you believe is like the most crucial right business adjustment you can make when looking at your or you know all the audience when they’re looking at their demand generation approach in order to sustain accelerated growth like what are some of the crucial business adjustments I I can jump on in yeah I would say put put dedicated time to this so you I often hear of people that are just like oh I’m not getting sales I’m not not growing I’m not doing this but how many hours every single day are you spending on growing how many hours every single day are you spending on sales are you are you spending all your time in delivery are you spending it on project management or are you actually giving dedicated good solid hours to to growing and scaling your your business yeah um again specificity specificity is everything right now like as far as I’m concerned it’s going to be one of my tenpole like talking points for a while because um everybody is kind of in their own Echo chamber of content they found places they like to read stuff they um have algorithms on Facebook insta YouTube all serving up stuff that they like and so when you come across as broad or generic everybody’s immediately bored and disinterested if you have a store do you really know who you’re selling to I mean do you really know them you know I had a client that was a ski shop up in Michigan uh where I’m originally from and I feel like they came to mind while we were talking about this uh to me because they spent they’re experts at ski equipment and they spent all their time in that space but they didn’t really know who they were selling to and if they did um you know that’s kind of like one of the superpowers that Abby can provide in terms of content writing she would drill down with them to figure that out so that the messaging resonates with them and every hour spent on that and you getting more specific with knowing who you’re selling to it informs everything else that you do and so there’s a there’s a multiplier effect of what happens the more you dial that in same with Jeff I’m sure like he’s going to have a process to figure out what keywords you should be focused on and part of that is figuring out who what are your people searching for right um so that that’s the number one thing just get specific you might already think you’re specific and if your answer to me is I’m specific enough I can tell you for a fact you need to go back and hit the books because it it never ends you’re always working on it you know I’m always learning more about the mental health space and I’ve been here for over a decade so you don’t know it yet would be my response to that go back and hit your books see where you can sharpen up on it it’s a best use of your time yeah I I have a really good thoughts there y’all um one thing I want to bring up I learned this from uh a guy in the chat Brent Weaver the organizer the great Brent Weaver uh leading versus lagging indicators right so just knowing your numbers not just for you but also for your client right so a leading indicator is something like you know a visit to how many visitors to a website or where you rank on Google or something like that and then the lagging indicators all the way down you know how many leads you generate how many sales you close right so really really dialing in and and adjusting those things like like an equalizer on a mixer or something like that and you know everything’s good except for this one thing hey you fix that one thing and your your Revenue goes to the next level so just really knowing your numbers on your leading and lag lagging indicators I think is something that could be really helpful all right guys we got so many questions here this is so exciting um so many so many I mean we do we have five more hours y’all I don’t know but let me ask this you know when when looking at um you know where we are today given given all the beauty and all the not so beauty that is human life um and in specifically um buying patterns demand generation and all of that uh what emerging Trends do you believe will be most influential right when it comes to demand generation strategy strategies in the next few years AI B question AI I was gonna jump in on AI yeah go for it yeah sure H anyone that knows me knows that I’m very anti- aai in terms of content generation it’s great for other things but uh yeah I think with the proliferation of so much content it’s everywhere there’s billions of blog posts being published like every single year now you know kind of in order to stand out you really have to make it special and you really have to be able to talk directly to your reader kind of you know anybody and everybody can spin up a 10,000w blog post with absolute garbage and just generic stuff as Aron said thought leader in order to stand out you want to become a thought leader in your industry and part of that is sharing ing unique insights unique ideas and that is how you stand out um aside from AI stuff you know I I think it’s going to be that’s the that’s the big movement I see going forward people are people are already getting tired of unleash your superpowers and you know kind of the very AI specific uh buzzword that have come out um so yeah quantity of quality 100% of the time AES yeah I I think uh I I think AI if you use AI to create a piece of content it’s it’s almost the same thing as hiring like a non-specialist writer off of one of those writing platforms and saying hey can you write me an article about X all they’re gonna do is they’re gonna go out there yeah they’re gonna go out there and they’re gonna rephrase what’s already out there right so I really push my clients to bring some kind of unique perspective add a story you know like some kind of case study without that it’s just it’s just filler in my opinion love it yeah sorry Erin don’t want to interrupt but we are going to be ending in a couple minutes um and I just wanted to say for everybody who is watching and I know there’s a lot of questions in the question answer so thank you for those um if there are questions around followup or what’s coming next um cloudways will be answering those just possibly not this minute so you will get an answer just wanted to throw that out there um lots of questions on how do you follow up with these companies that are presenting today with these amazing mentors love these mentors um and so I did pop some uh Linked In in there somewhere I don’t know where it went but it’s in there somewhere um but we’ve got I’ve got a lot of questions one of the questions I wanted to focus on is just big picture y’all um we’ve thrown out a lot of Concepts and a lot of uh advice and a lot of um you know watch for this look for that think about this um going back to that initial concept of of mindset and and everybody here um is either a marketing manager or business owner um how have you guys managed being founders of companies and managing all these elements coming towards you on the daily all the excitement all of the boy I can’t believe this happened how do you guys manage that I’d love to I’d love to wrap on that Google [Laughter] Calendar calendars for each thing I mean it’s funny but also accurate like uh you know I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow uh a lot of different days and that might sound weird but um you know I I’m getting things booked right now and so it’s it’s one of the things that I feel like uh I’ll just be brief on this I guess as a closing note one of the things that I feel like most entrepreneurs can do to improve how they feel at the end of the day is to track their time so they know what they did every day and they can look back and make informed decisions on that um and avoid context switching which your calendar is going to be your best friend for so if you as Abby said earlier want to commit right now you know what that’s a great idea I love what Abby said I’m going to spend one hour on marketing activities every week where’s that hour play placed and then don’t compromise it not because a client fire came up or you checked your email and there’s something that feels kind of important it is the most important time because no one else at your business can do that if you’re the one assigned to it so um use your calendar track your time and then revisit that once a quarter to see what you’ve been doing what worked what didn’t work and stay organized in your calendar yeah other thoughts yeah delegation yep that’s what I was gonna say get it off your get it off get it off your plate delegate and Elevate go ahead Abby yeah I and and when when you have delegated don’t jump back in don’t don’t be like oh I can just fix this it’ll take me two minutes don’t do it just honor your time on your time and spend it doing what you want to do because we only get one life so we might as well doing it spend it doing stuff that we enjoy you know kind of building an agency is difficult can’t be lonely can be stressful but we’re making this decision to do what we do let’s enjoy it let’s and we are going to wrap on that concept enjoy it y all we choose this we get to be here we wish for this to be our reality and we made the decision and now we’re gonna make it right also a Brent Weaver quote thank you all so very much for being here audience thank you so much Jeff Abby and Aaron for being here for coming in your busy schedule we got it on your calendar Aaron we got it on your calendar and you’re here you all are beautiful humans um and this is this is a good life so thank you all for being here prepa on is rolling on we’ve got more coming up for you and some exciting talks and whatnot so thank you all very much have a spectacular rest of your Prepon day and we had this is just day two of three all so stay tuned stay tuned have a great great rest of your day all thanks so much everyone have a great day bye see you everybody bye