Shownotes
Welcome to another enlightening episode of "Your Podcast Website." Today, we dive deep into why starting with a clear purpose can dramatically influence your online presence.
Joined by the talented Greg Merrilees from Studio1 Design, we'll explore effective website strategies, the critical role of design and copywriting, and how these elements combine to solve your audience's problems. This discussion is packed with actionable insights. Transform your website into a more powerful tool that resonates with your listeners.
Check out Greg at studio1design.com and go through his quiz at studio1design.com/dave
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Transcripts
I'm listening to a book right now called The Compound Effect by Darren
Speaker:Hardy, and he made a great point about how your why
Speaker:can affect what you do. Case in point, let's say
Speaker:there's a plank, and it's on the top of a rooftop, and it goes
Speaker:from this rooftop over to that building way over there. And
Speaker:somebody goes, yeah. I'll give you, you know, $300 to do that,
Speaker:and you go, yeah. No way. Then let's take the
Speaker:same scenario. And now your baby
Speaker:is on the other rooftop. Oh, and the building's on fire.
Speaker:You would be running across that plank. You wouldn't want any money. You're off to
Speaker:save your baby. Why? Because your why
Speaker:changed, and your why can affect what
Speaker:you do, whether that's pressing publish on a podcast
Speaker:or shaping your website. And so today,
Speaker:we're talking with Greg Marliese from Studio 1 Design,
Speaker:and there's some really interesting tips in here that I was like, oh,
Speaker:oh, yeah. That makes sense.
Speaker:I'm bringing in some people who build websites for a
Speaker:living because I hack my websites together.
Speaker:And in the same way that when I've made my own artwork for
Speaker:my podcast, it's looked okay. And then I'll bring
Speaker:somebody in that does that for a living, and I go, oh,
Speaker:yeah. That's that's what I was looking for. And so
Speaker:I'm bringing on Greg from studio, the number
Speaker:1, design.com, and we're gonna talk about
Speaker:strategies. Many of them you're probably already doing and how you can do them
Speaker:better. And wait till you hear Greg's story. It's an
Speaker:amazing tale of how he got to where he is today.
Speaker:When you start, I wondered, is it like a podcast?
Speaker:Do you start with your why? Where does Greg
Speaker:start with his clients? Absolutely. Like, what is the
Speaker:purpose of their website? Is it just to host a Podcast, or is
Speaker:it remote, one of their services or coaching or
Speaker:courses or whatever else it could be. Right? So that's the first
Speaker:thing because realistically, you've got to have the end goal in mind
Speaker:before you start designing. And then we have to figure out a strategy before we
Speaker:start talking about look and feel and colors and design. The most important
Speaker:thing is the strategy, and then we work from there. One example
Speaker:of this is one of Greg's clients is Jordan Harbinger,
Speaker:who does the Jordan Harbinger show. His main income source is
Speaker:advertising. Right? So is this sponsorship page that we
Speaker:had for we have on his website? And so what this is all about,
Speaker:we put a lot of effort into this because this is his number way of
Speaker:monetizing is to have advertisers sponsor the show. Right?
Speaker:And, by the way, I love one of your episodes where you're talking about having
Speaker:your audience talk about what annoys you about ads and people ranking, and you even
Speaker:said yourself that he does it really well because he reads the ads himself and
Speaker:it's different every time. Right? Yeah. It was really cool. But anyway, so we have
Speaker:this page which really talks about his audience and what
Speaker:his advertisers will get out of this audience
Speaker:essentially. Right. So he breaks it down with the demographics. So in this case, you
Speaker:know, 25, 4, 49 year old men and women and just talks a
Speaker:little bit more about, you know, their demographics essentially.
Speaker:And then he is talking up his podcast, top 1%,
Speaker:most followed and most shared Podcast on Spotify. And then
Speaker:he's got a little bit more of a a breakdown and of, you know, what's
Speaker:important to, you know, an advertiser on his show and how
Speaker:he will advertise in, like, 60 second mid roll and, you know,
Speaker:things like that. Right? So then it's just an infographic podpage, essentially,
Speaker:just really breaking down the demographics into more and more
Speaker:detail. So, yeah, it's to me, it's like this because this
Speaker:is his number way number one way of, you know, creating income, that's
Speaker:why he put put so much effort into this page. And you don't have to
Speaker:do this every time, but it is a a pretty powerful page. And then,
Speaker:obviously, there's some social proof from people like Tim Ferris, Rama
Speaker:Sethi, Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell, etcetera, and then a a call
Speaker:to action to inquire essentially. So, yeah, that's, you
Speaker:know, that was our strategy because of the fact that his number one
Speaker:way of, you know, generating income is through the advertising.
Speaker:Now as we did this interview, Greg was sharing his screen. Now
Speaker:anything that you really needed to see, I have
Speaker:removed from this interview because, well, you're listening to it.
Speaker:If you go out to your podcast website, you can
Speaker:actually see some of his amazing work and as we're looking at these
Speaker:before and after versions of some of these websites. So I just wanna let you
Speaker:know you're getting a different version than the video version. But
Speaker:on the other hand, the video version is longer. I'm doing this in a
Speaker:narrative style. So one of the things I noticed
Speaker:is before we get off Jordan Harbinger's page, Jordan has a great
Speaker:idea. All of his sponsors are on one page. If you go
Speaker:to jordanharbinger.com/deals,
Speaker:I think this is an amazing idea. Because let's say you send somebody to your
Speaker:website because BetterHelp is sponsoring your show. Well, while they're
Speaker:there, they might actually pick up some MyUndies or MeUndies or whatever
Speaker:it is and a mattress and all the other things that you have as
Speaker:sponsors. I think that's great. And your audience only has to remember
Speaker:one link. He also has a start here with kind of
Speaker:grouped episodes together. So if you're brand new to the site, he's
Speaker:got it there to get you in control. But the one thing I noticed is
Speaker:when you go to the page that Greg was talking about where you're trying to
Speaker:convince a company to sponsor your show, when you go to that
Speaker:page, the whole menu at the top, everything changes.
Speaker:You can't leave that page. Exactly right. We wanna remove
Speaker:all distractions, you know, so we remove the top navigation, you
Speaker:know, we remove the logo because obviously, we've got the logo here anyway, why
Speaker:sponsor the show. And the call to action, you always should have a call to
Speaker:action above the fold. And this will just literally anchor link down to the bottom
Speaker:where they can fill in the details. And the reason we do that is so
Speaker:that people realize, oh, I just missed all this stuff if they
Speaker:didn't scroll in the first place. Now if you're new to web
Speaker:design, the phrase above the fold actually comes from the
Speaker:newspaper industry when newspapers were folded in half,
Speaker:and everything above the fold was something that was seen without any effort.
Speaker:And on your website, the things that are really important should
Speaker:be above the scroll, I guess, in this case. But we still call it
Speaker:above the fold. Now I mentioned in a
Speaker:previous episode that often we try to use tools
Speaker:that aren't made for Podcast, and we try to shoehorn the
Speaker:podcast in there, and they have some template that's made for a hotel or who
Speaker:knows what. And so when I asked Greg, what are some of the
Speaker:common mistakes, yeah, templates came up. I just use a
Speaker:template and on various screen sizes that would chop off the
Speaker:person's, you know, the host head. So it has a a little
Speaker:rookie mistake there, but then there's no call to action here. It doesn't
Speaker:really have much clarity on what this podcast is all about. You wouldn't know
Speaker:it's a very popular podcast. And as we scroll short, they've
Speaker:got you know, listen on these things, which is fine. And, by the way,
Speaker:these things are essentially what we call a leakage point. But because they're
Speaker:going off to these platforms where people can subscribe, then that's
Speaker:going to build more trust in the brand. So that's totally fine. So a leakage
Speaker:point is something that takes people away from your site. You've got all this traffic,
Speaker:and now you're leaking it. And in this example, he was pointing at
Speaker:the Apple button, Spotify, things like that. And, obviously,
Speaker:we want followers because it helps us connect. But, yeah, then,
Speaker:literally, the rest of the home page just had a little bit of, you know,
Speaker:what this is all about, etcetera, you know, a little bit of authority boost
Speaker:in things here, which, in my opinion, quite hidden, you know, top
Speaker:5% traffic prog Podcast worldwide, etcetera.
Speaker:Watch a show, some video, and that was it. So authority boosting
Speaker:could be anything that gives you, for lack of a better phrase, street
Speaker:cred. Maybe how many total downloads you have or how
Speaker:many countries your show has been heard on or how
Speaker:many appearances you've been on other show. Whatever it is, some sort of
Speaker:stat, something that helps answer that question,
Speaker:why should I trust this person? Why should I stay on this
Speaker:site? And we'll be talking tools throughout this conversation,
Speaker:but I wanted to ask him if he had any kind of favorite tool when
Speaker:it came to the person that didn't have the budget or didn't
Speaker:wanna hire somebody to design their website, did he have
Speaker:any kind of favorite tools? Yeah. I mean, look. You
Speaker:guys use PodPage. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:Which I think is fantastic. And that's what I'd recommend if you are starting out
Speaker:for sure. I mean, they've put so much thought into this. I heard the the
Speaker:founder on your podcast being interviewed ranking about, you know,
Speaker:what they have in there. I think it's the premium plan or what whatever they
Speaker:call that plan. Yeah. The Elite plan, I think. Yeah. Elite. That's the one. Yeah.
Speaker:And I thought that was fantastic. Great interview. But, yeah, all the features that these
Speaker:guys have is incredible. I mean, you can do the same thing on WordPress, but
Speaker:this is all built into 1. I mean, there's nothing wrong with this as a,
Speaker:you know, a platform in general, even if you grow. Right? But to me, it's
Speaker:just the design feels a little bit templatty. That's my only criticism,
Speaker:but I think it's great when you're starting out for sure. So how do you
Speaker:know when it's time to have someone design a website SEO it
Speaker:looks completely unique, It's totally yours, and it doesn't look like
Speaker:anybody else's website. But I feel like once you are monetizing
Speaker:your podcast, if that is your goal, some people don't wanna monetize. It's just a
Speaker:hobby, right? But if you are monetizing it, then that's when I feel like you
Speaker:need to invest back into the look and feel and obviously even
Speaker:copywriting and, you know, photography and and yeah, all sorts of things. So
Speaker:how does a redesign work for, you know, redesign is
Speaker:we'll start with what we call a mood board. And this is literally just
Speaker:coming up with a color palette, a look and feel. Before we do this,
Speaker:though, I should say, we do have a call with the client. They answer a
Speaker:questionnaire, and we dive deep into the questionnaire on the call.
Speaker:And that's after that is where we figure out what direction to take
Speaker:the brand as far as the look and feel. And this, again, was based on
Speaker:a questionnaire. And just some keywords that come out of the questionnaire
Speaker:and the call, in this case, was loyalty, excitement, modern
Speaker:family, playful, fun, and friendly. So this color palette represents those
Speaker:words. And when we send this this bit of a color breakdown, when we send
Speaker:this to the client, we give them a walk through video from the
Speaker:brand director explaining why we did what. And you should know in
Speaker:your mind, on a notebook, whatever you wanna do before you grab a
Speaker:mouse to do anything to your website. You should have a clear idea
Speaker:of what it's going to look like, what it's going to do, and how it's
Speaker:going to work. When we present this to the client, it's really just a bunch
Speaker:of ideas. We get their feedback before we start designing because when we
Speaker:start designing, we want it to be pretty close to, you know, to what
Speaker:they have approved. And then we offer unlimited design revisions on
Speaker:everything we do, so we just wanna start with the right foot. But, yeah, just
Speaker:some background elements and colors, etcetera, tying in with the brand,
Speaker:photography direction that we give them as well SEO they can hand this to their
Speaker:photographer. And then just some various icons and
Speaker:and having the important things above the fold.
Speaker:Listen to Greg as he explains a website we're looking at and all the
Speaker:important things that are above the fold. And you'll see, you know, just
Speaker:above the fold, the Commercial Break podcast, who the hosts are,
Speaker:picture of them, obviously, pretty cool design, And then a little bit of
Speaker:a explainer. It's not much, but it's enough to let people know what this show
Speaker:is all about. And then 4,100,000 podcast downloads per month.
Speaker:You know, all these little metrics are just things that people can instantly realize
Speaker:that these guys are the real deal, and, you know, it just builds more trust
Speaker:in the brand. And having your audience's trust is
Speaker:huge. And so as we were popping around different websites and
Speaker:looking at things, of course, I wanted to know what tools are you using to
Speaker:put this stuff together? For design, we use Figma to, you know,
Speaker:for custom design. Everything's custom designed. And then for
Speaker:imagery, you know, obviously, we try not to use stock imagery if we can help
Speaker:it. We encourage clients to use our own photography. But sometimes if
Speaker:we create imagery, we'll use the baby Stalker will use, you know, mid journey for
Speaker:creating imagery. But for building the website after it's all approved, we
Speaker:build it using Elementor for, for Wordpress, essentially. And that has a
Speaker:lot of stuff built into it as well. Because like I said before, you've
Speaker:got to work out what the main purpose of the website is. And if it's
Speaker:not just all about a podcast, it might be to
Speaker:promote your services or whatever. Then if that's the case, you want the
Speaker:functionality to have everything built into it so that you can
Speaker:offer all those other little features that come with offering services or
Speaker:a SaaS business or coaching, etcetera. And as he's building this
Speaker:all in WordPress using Elementor, who was his favorite
Speaker:WordPress host? Definitely WP Engine all the way.
Speaker:Yeah. Based in the US, but they also have servers all over the world.
Speaker:So to me, like, super fast no matter where you're located,
Speaker:but it's also the world's, in my opinion, the most secure website
Speaker:hosting flat platform because they don't allow crappy plugins.
Speaker:So peep that's where a lot of hackers get in through plug ins. So
Speaker:they yeah. And they also keep plug ins updated automatically, and they warn
Speaker:you if there's a plugins on your website and, you know, yep,
Speaker:they'll remove it if it's a a threat. And they also have daily
Speaker:daily backups as well. So if you mess up something yourself, you can
Speaker:just replace it from the day before, and everything's fixed again.
Speaker:And we'll be talking about Leadpages a little later, but that requires
Speaker:some sort of email tool. So what was Greg's favorite email tool?
Speaker:Yeah. ActiveCampaign, just because we use it and we I used to use
Speaker:Infusionsoft, and it was pretty confusing, you know, and used to have to pay a
Speaker:consultant to to run the whole thing for us. But now we just had
Speaker:somebody set it up for us, copied what was in Infusionsoft, and we just run
Speaker:it ourselves quite easily. But it's really good not just for email
Speaker:marketing, but for, you know, lead flow as well and
Speaker:having, like, a sales pipeline and figuring out where every lead is
Speaker:in that pipeline and what stage they're at, and it can send automated follow ups
Speaker:and things like that. So, yeah, I find that's pretty good value. It
Speaker:does the price goes up as you have more people on your list, but I
Speaker:think it's awesome. Yeah. And if you find ActiveCampaign
Speaker:a little out of your reach or maybe just a little too much, check out
Speaker:ConvertKit or MailerLite. In just a second,
Speaker:you're gonna find out how I got really embarrassed.
Speaker:Boy, you know, when I look at your website and you go to mine, it's
Speaker:like, it's like, wow, that is a shock to the system. Like,
Speaker:oh my goodness. Oh, wow. 1 was designed by a guy
Speaker:that does it for a living. The other guy was a design that's well, the
Speaker:teacher. Yeah. So just a little bit of a difference. And, but nonetheless,
Speaker:the front page is still a, it's a landing page, but wow. That's
Speaker:a, that's a shock to the system. Oh, yeah. Go right ahead.
Speaker:Yeah. You do some things really well on here. I mean, I I think, you
Speaker:know, school of Podcast, I think it's a a great brand and says
Speaker:what's on the box. You know what I mean? So but then you're
Speaker:talking here about the problems. This is fantastic copywriting.
Speaker:Like, most people don't understand their audience, and you
Speaker:really understand your audience. I know you you obviously, you've got your podcast
Speaker:community. You ask them a lot of questions in there, but you also ask questions
Speaker:on your podcast and have people call in. Right? It's amazing. But the
Speaker:point is, yeah, you understand your audience. And when you put this on
Speaker:your website, the, you know, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed and then you're
Speaker:talking about the problems that they face essentially, then people are
Speaker:going to identify that, you know, the the correct target audience will go, oh, yeah,
Speaker:that's that's me. Right? So this is really important in copywriting to let
Speaker:people know that you have a solution to those problems. So you're doing some
Speaker:things really well. It's just the designs letting you down, but it's not
Speaker:bad. You know? You've got a lot of, You're very kind.
Speaker:I would call it bad after looking at yours, but I'm like, big giant
Speaker:join today button, and it just, yeah, it's At least it stands out. But
Speaker:yeah. And then, you know, you have some really good social proof as well.
Speaker:And, sorry, authority boosting, like the hall of fame, you know, that you mentioned
Speaker:on your podcast as well. All that stuff is fantastic for
Speaker:boosting, you know, credibility and trust in the brand. But, yeah, having
Speaker:really good testimonials as well is, you know, it's certainly
Speaker:what you wanna offer. And then you have this incredible 30 bay
Speaker:30 day money back guarantee, and that's on
Speaker:the the the monthly and the annual. Right? Like, you have a yeah. Which is
Speaker:really cool. And a big call to action. Sure. It's big, but it gets your
Speaker:attention. Yeah. Yeah. I I had a business coach because
Speaker:after I was, you know, in the hall of fame, I wasn't really saying it.
Speaker:And he goes, how many people can say that? I'm like, I don't know, 14,
Speaker:I think at that point or something like that. He goes, you need to say
Speaker:that every time you turn on the microphone, I go, but that's that
Speaker:whole impostor syndrome, you know, kinda thing. Yeah. He's
Speaker:like, look. Use it. Not everybody can say it. I was like, alright. So
Speaker:I love it. Now we did mention impostor syndrome there. I'll put some
Speaker:links out at your podcast website. If you're
Speaker:dealing with that, I've done a few episodes on that on the school of podcasting.
Speaker:But we also mentioned copywriting. And so I asked Greg, I
Speaker:go, which one's more important? Do you need copywriting or is it the
Speaker:design? It's both. Look, I have no doubt that copywriting
Speaker:is what people will read to make sure that they're in the right
Speaker:place, to make sure that they understand because people don't care what's in it
Speaker:for them. So they they just need to know that you understand their situation,
Speaker:their problems, what the implications are, if they if, you know, they don't
Speaker:address the cause of the problem and the need, which is your solution essentially.
Speaker:And so to me, the copywriting needs to say all those things, and
Speaker:that little thing that I just said is using the framework called SPIN Selling based
Speaker:on a book by, Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling. Link's in the
Speaker:description. And there's another book, Building a Story Brand by Donald
Speaker:Miller. His philosophy as a in a nutshell
Speaker:is your website needs to be the guide and your prospects
Speaker:or your clients are the hero, and they need to be the hero of your
Speaker:story. That is a great book. And when it comes down to the design
Speaker:The design needs to give copywriting wings, essentially. Right? It
Speaker:really needs to enhance the messaging to make you look as professional
Speaker:as possible to and, obviously, design in a way to appeal to your
Speaker:audience as far as color palette and imagery used and things like that. And
Speaker:remember, that design is based around knowing your
Speaker:why and directing your visitors to do your
Speaker:call to action. And sometimes those bright and shiny
Speaker:new trends come along and just, well Design
Speaker:trends, they're a pet peeve. Right? If you look at most design trends
Speaker:every year, designers come up with new trends, and I think it's just to keep
Speaker:themselves in work, essentially. But most of them are conversion
Speaker:killers. We're very conversion focused with our design. So what that
Speaker:means as far as pet peeves with pet peeves in design, the
Speaker:trends are all about movement and interaction and parallax
Speaker:effects and, you know, just all this stuff that's very distracting,
Speaker:and that's why it's a conversion killer. But if you have everything static
Speaker:and put the control in your user's hands, so even if you have an
Speaker:image slider for testimonials, let them scroll through them to
Speaker:get to the next and next. Don't just have them automatically scroll because it's just
Speaker:annoying for people. So even video backgrounds and having text
Speaker:over the top, the most important thing is the text over the top. So
Speaker:those video backgrounds are going to annoy people and not read the text, you know,
Speaker:so that's yeah. A lot of trends suck. And there are
Speaker:things we do that are okay, but there are ways we could do them
Speaker:better. Case in point, when somebody orders something from your website, they
Speaker:are sent to a success page. It's all about the strategy piece.
Speaker:So after somebody opts in for a lead magnet, they'll just have a line
Speaker:of text in the pop up that says, you know, thanks for downloading the the
Speaker:lead magnet. So the problem with that is that there's no success
Speaker:podpage. So there's no page that it goes to like a slightly
Speaker:different URL like forward slash, you know, thanks for whatever.
Speaker:And when you don't have a success page, you can't track that
Speaker:as a conversion. And so your Google Analytics, if you set that up
Speaker:properly, won't be tracking any conversions of that little, you know, download.
Speaker:Now if you do have a thank you page, once again, a mistake is
Speaker:people just have a little line of text saying thanks for downloading the thing. But
Speaker:that's a wasted opportunity because, realistically, you've just got
Speaker:somebody's email address because they're interest interested in your
Speaker:free offer, and you don't know that they don't want more.
Speaker:So to me, the perfect opportunity on the sorry. The thank you page is the
Speaker:perfect opportunity to offer the next free thing in your funnel. It
Speaker:could be a free call. It depends on your business. It could be a free
Speaker:trial. It could be a limited time offer. It could be a free sample. You
Speaker:should always offer something else on that thank you page. And we recommend having
Speaker:a face to camera video ranking them for downloading the free thing and
Speaker:then talk about the next offer in that video and then call to action
Speaker:underneath. And you can also have extra things on that page, social proof,
Speaker:other things like if you've spoken on stage, like, it's all
Speaker:about boosting your authority and building trust in your brand by just keep
Speaker:offering free things. And, obviously, you've collected an email address, so you wanna
Speaker:nurture that email because they may not be ready to purchase straight
Speaker:away. But, you know, if you if you're top of mind,
Speaker:then, obviously, at some point, if you keep offering value in those
Speaker:emails and don't just keep slamming them with, offers, like, for
Speaker:paid offers, it's like Gary Vaynerchuk says, jab, jab, jab, right
Speaker:hook. So just keep offering free stuff, and then we just say in your
Speaker:PS, offer a free call for a strategy. It depends on the business, of course,
Speaker:but that's where you you would have your offer. And so many times,
Speaker:I see people with their social media links at the very top of the
Speaker:page. Yeah. That's a leakage point, and you don't want to take people off
Speaker:your website to social media. Purpose purpose of social media is bring people to
Speaker:your website, in my opinion. But, yeah. And then the other problem is
Speaker:people will have when they click click on one of these social media little icons,
Speaker:they'll have it open in the same tab and then your website's gone forever. So
Speaker:always have any external links open in a new tab. Another
Speaker:trend that I see a lot that I go, why would you do that? And
Speaker:that is building and I'm gonna say Linktree. I don't wanna pick on Linktree,
Speaker:but Linktree type tools because, well,
Speaker:as Greg points out, why not just build one on your own
Speaker:website? No. I don't think there's any benefit in it. You're just paying Linktree.
Speaker:So, I mean, what we do instead, like, we literally just have we
Speaker:just offer this as a bonus on every website that we designed because it annoys
Speaker:us having people ranking Linktree. Most people have it. Right? But we
Speaker:just copy that, but we just go whatever the website URL is
Speaker:forward slash links, and we can put whatever we want on there, and they can
Speaker:change it to whatever they want quite easily. It links to your website or your
Speaker:latest Podcast interview or whatever you want, basically. Right? And
Speaker:the same goes for funnel pages. We have clients that have built
Speaker:a lot of funnels on lead pages or click funnels or whatever. They all
Speaker:look shit in my opinion. They're templated and they're ugly and usually a
Speaker:Frankenstein because they've grown over time and had different offers, different looks. And so
Speaker:we usually just turn all that into their own, you know, website and,
Speaker:you know, they don't need to pay click funnels or lead pages each month.
Speaker:But there's yeah. There's no you're right. There's no SEO value in that. And I
Speaker:noticed on Greg's site, studio, the number one, design.com,
Speaker:that when he had a video, it wasn't a YouTube video. It was a video
Speaker:that just kept you right there on his site. And, yeah, I would say for
Speaker:any marketing video on your website, apart from in blog posts
Speaker:and and podcast posts, etcetera, I would suggest you use
Speaker:another platform like Vimeo or Wistia because there's no leakage points.
Speaker:Like, if you if you have embedded YouTube, you can go and click on the
Speaker:little YouTube blog, you go off to YouTube, and you're gone forever. So
Speaker:that's why I prefer to use, Wistia. I also like streamable,
Speaker:but if you are gonna send people to YouTube, there's still a better way to
Speaker:do that. And when you do send people off to your YouTube channel, you can
Speaker:have some code embedded so that there's a pop up as soon as they land
Speaker:on the YouTube page that says subscribe to the show. And that's great because as
Speaker:long as you can get people to subscribe to your show, whether it's a podcast
Speaker:or YouTube or wherever you have it hosted, it's going to build more trust in
Speaker:the brand. So I think it's a good idea. Yeah. It's just especially
Speaker:for non marketing videos, let's say blog posts or, or
Speaker:podcast posts on, on your website. If they are YouTube embeds and
Speaker:you press or somebody presses play, that'll add to the YouTube
Speaker:count. So that's a good thing. So it's your choice. Would you rather have more
Speaker:views on YouTube with the chance of sending people away or keep people
Speaker:on your website and have them one step closer to doing your
Speaker:call to action. And right now, everybody is up in arms about
Speaker:transcripts. SEO the best thing ever, we vomit into a microphone. We have
Speaker:it transcribed. So are transcripts really that good?
Speaker:Because Google's looking for good words. I think it should be a
Speaker:summary instead. So we do work with other ex SEO experts as well.
Speaker:And as long as like, especially at the top of the post
Speaker:page, if you give people a summary of what it's all about, you can have
Speaker:the transcript underneath, but that's what Google is going to value
Speaker:as well. It's more the whatever's written in the top section of the of the
Speaker:page. That's what they'll value more than what's underneath. So, yeah, I would say
Speaker:do a summary and that can be done by AI these days based on the
Speaker:transcript, essentially. We got a few more strategies, but I
Speaker:always say a podcast leads to relationships,
Speaker:and those relationships lead to opportunities, which lead to more
Speaker:relationships, which lead to more opportunities. Wait till you
Speaker:hear Greg's story.
Speaker:SEO
Speaker:how did Greg get into web design? SEO, basically, we started with
Speaker:t shirt designs. Right? And that's where we started, you know,
Speaker:24 years ago. And then around, let's say 10 years
Speaker:ago roughly now, the clothing industry
Speaker:So, unfortunately SEO, unfortunately, the wholesalers were our clients, so they were
Speaker:getting squeezed out. And we tried going directly to the retailers,
Speaker:but that didn't work. They wanted to pay us in 90 days and take, you
Speaker:know, 2% off the invoice if they paid within just wasn't a good business business
Speaker:model. So then I went online and I found Podcast.
Speaker:Right? And I just absolutely loved Podcast. And there was one
Speaker:podcast in particular I think I get hosted by 2 business coaches,
Speaker:James Schramko and Ezra Firestone. He's based in New York, James Schramko in
Speaker:Sydney. And on one of their episodes, they said their logo sucked. I thought,
Speaker:oh, yeah. That's an opportunity for me to go in and design a new
Speaker:logo for them. So I did that, and they loved it. And, you know,
Speaker:Ezra, hot bang. You know, this looks like makes us look like a fancy soft
Speaker:ball team. And he loved it. And so then jumped on a call with Ezra
Speaker:and we started talking about other designs that we could do. And we started designing
Speaker:his website and then James Shramck, his website and started designing all of
Speaker:their clients website. Ezra had me on stage in San Diego.
Speaker:He's an ecommerce guru. And, yeah, and James James had me
Speaker:on stage in Sydney, and, yeah, we just grew our business. So it's thanks
Speaker:to Podcast that we made the pivot into what we're doing today. Next thing
Speaker:you know, you're, you know, you're designing a website for Sly.
Speaker:I mean, that's Yeah. That's I saw that at the bottom of your one page,
Speaker:and I was like, hey. I need a website. It was like
Speaker:SEO that was that was from speaking at Ezra's events, Blue
Speaker:Ribbon Mastermind, I think, that you called it in, San Diego.
Speaker:And somebody in the audience was the son of somebody that
Speaker:owns a marketing firm that does marketing for
Speaker:Sylvester Stallone and, you know, like, all these other people, like Tony Robbins,
Speaker:actually, Donald Trump as well. Not that we wanna mention that we designed it for
Speaker:him, but we did design his landing page for his NFTs, if you remember
Speaker:that about your house. So Jeez. Alright. Yeah.
Speaker:But we don't mention that on our website search. But, anyway, But yeah.
Speaker:So it just led to you know, like you said, one thing leads
Speaker:to another, and that's how we've designed for these awesome people. Yeah. Another
Speaker:strategy that I saw is Greg is using quizzes. How are
Speaker:those working out? Pretty good. Yeah. Exactly. Because it comes
Speaker:from like, we have a generic one on there and that's just an exit
Speaker:pop and that's another little mistake just quickly. Some people have an entry pop.
Speaker:Soon as you land on the website, they have a pop up. Thank you. Instead
Speaker:yeah. Wait. It could be a timed pop up and when they scroll to the
Speaker:bottom or they've scrolled through a few pages or it's a couple of
Speaker:minutes after they land on the podpage, but it's better to have that or when
Speaker:they leave the page and exit pop. You know, it's a side note. But, yeah,
Speaker:the quiz works quite well because it's an exit pop on our website, but then
Speaker:we do duplicate that for every podcast interview that I do, and
Speaker:that's where we get a lot of leads from. So, yeah, it works quite well.
Speaker:And we find we get a lot of feedback, you know, people going, oh, shit.
Speaker:You know, my website does that. Yeah. Well, and do
Speaker:you know what tool you're using for that? For those, again, there's always gonna be
Speaker:the guy that's like, I'm gonna do it myself. Elementor. Everything's built
Speaker:into Elementor. Yeah. Yeah. I see. Yeah. We were
Speaker:looking at one of his clients' websites who teaches music
Speaker:online, and I thought to myself, why have I never used this
Speaker:strategy? One thing that he does really well is has this section
Speaker:where it does a comparison chart of joining his sax school verse,
Speaker:getting private lessons, and then breaks it down into a cost comparison.
Speaker:Music Academy, 42,000 a year, private lessons, 2 and a half 1000, or his sax
Speaker:school online, dollar 32 a day. Plugins has a 90 day money back
Speaker:guarantee and a free trial. SEO, yeah, it's pretty powerful. And, yeah,
Speaker:he's just boosted his results like nothing else ranking this approach
Speaker:since the new website went live. It was kinda funny when we first got
Speaker:online, Greg and I hit it off, and we just started gabbing. And it dawned
Speaker:on me, like, oh, yeah. I forgot to ask him, where do we
Speaker:wanna send people when we're done with this interview?
Speaker:Yeah. I mean, look. We haven't created it yet, but we could set up a
Speaker:checklist for directly for your audience. So studioonedesign.comforward/dave,
Speaker:and we can show them, 50 things that if they
Speaker:select yes or no in 6 areas across their website, we've done this for
Speaker:other podcasters. And so basically at the end of it, they get a score right
Speaker:out of 50. And if they score anything under say 20 and most people
Speaker:don't get much over 20, right, then at least it shows
Speaker:them what to fix. And if they wanna help, then, you know, we can we
Speaker:can help them. And, yeah, as a bonus as well, I guess if
Speaker:you're happy with this, if somebody does end up buying a website from us, we
Speaker:can give them a bonus of we'll design all their social media banners
Speaker:and posts, things like that for them as well. How cool is that? Studio,
Speaker:the number 1, design.com/dave.
Speaker:Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Dave. It's been
Speaker:awesome. Awesome. Really appreciate it. And, of course, it all starts with your why. I
Speaker:know it's probably been 5 years ago. But for the longest time, my
Speaker:my website at schoolofpodcasting.com, if you went to it, it
Speaker:was a podcast that also had a business. I teach people how
Speaker:to podcast. And then it dawned on me that the reason I'm doing the podcast
Speaker:is to get people to sign up for my membership site. So now I
Speaker:changed my front page to be more of a landing page with a funnel
Speaker:because now it's a business that has a podcast,
Speaker:not a podcast that has a business. I love
Speaker:some of the things he brought up there, especially about the you know, how
Speaker:social media we're we're driving people away from our website, and we just got
Speaker:them there. And then all the things that distract us like
Speaker:automatic carousels and video backgrounds.
Speaker:And when do you invest into a major website? Well,
Speaker:when you're making some money. And that's actually what mister beast, if
Speaker:you've never heard of him. Mister beast on YouTube has, like,
Speaker:200, 250,000,000 subscribers. But for the
Speaker:1st years, in fact, he still kinda does this. He
Speaker:reinvests his profit back into his
Speaker:YouTube channel which just keeps making bigger videos which generates
Speaker:more money, which he reinvest back into his next
Speaker:video. It's kind of interesting that way, but it does help build
Speaker:your authority. I know I have gotten advertising in the past
Speaker:because I was using a podpage website and I
Speaker:did my colors and kinda had it organized. And it looked good enough
Speaker:for a sponsor to go, alright. You look like you have your act together.
Speaker:And I had the downloads to prove it and off we
Speaker:went. He also mentioned Hotjar. I like
Speaker:MouseFlow. There's a free version of that. And their paid version, It
Speaker:does the same thing as Hotjar. It's just a little cheaper. I'll have links to
Speaker:that along with Hotjar out at your podcast website.
Speaker:So thanks again to Greg. I really do appreciate your time.
Speaker:And don't forget, there is a video version of this. So if you wanna see
Speaker:the before and after things, it was I'm here to tell you.
Speaker:I'm looking at these websites that he made, and they're just stunning. And
Speaker:then we would go back to my website, and it was just like,
Speaker:It was like, oh my gosh. Don't make me look at that. SEO funny. So
Speaker:thank you so much. If you got some value out of this show and
Speaker:you know somebody else who is kind of not sure what to do with their
Speaker:website, tell them to go over to your podcast
Speaker:website. Or if you wanna
Speaker:send them to this specific episode, of course, you can just open up your phone
Speaker:and click the share button. But this one's at your podcastwebsite.com website
Speaker:because this is the 3rd episode. I'm Dave Jackson
Speaker:from the school of podcasting.com. I help Podcast.
Speaker:It's what I do, and I can't wait to see what we do
Speaker:together. Your podcast website is part of the Power of
Speaker:Podcasting Network. Find this show and all of Dave's other projects
Speaker:at powerofpodcasting.com.
