Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:02

I'm your host, Kevin Dieny.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:04

And today we're gonna be jumping into local digital marketing strategies.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:08

We're gonna be talking about all things, local, local marketing

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businesses, uh, marketing for local businesses, how that works.

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What's the best way to do that.

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What are some things you should look out for?

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We're gonna be focusing mostly on the digital side, but you know,

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:21

sometimes there's jump into marketing, can go all all over the place.

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So to really help me dive into this topic is someone I've contacted and

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:30

I've really sought out as, okay.

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This guy knows his stuff.

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This is a guy who really understands SEO, really understands local marketing,

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local businesses, and I thought would be a great person to have on.

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So our guests is Brandon Leibowitz.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:42

Brandon is the owner of SEO Optimizers.

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His company helps businesses generate more traffic, but not

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only that traffic that converts into sales and leads using proven.

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I love that term SEO strategies.

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So Brandon has helped thousands of small and medium sized businesses

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grow their online presence.

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He's definitely been doing this a lot and has done this for a while.

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He is passionate about seeing others' businesses succeed,

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which I think is really cool.

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And he's, uh, he's very passionate about skateboarding.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:15

So welcome, Brandon.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:16

Thanks for coming on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:17

Thanks for having me on I'm looking forward to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:19

sharing some tips about local SEO.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:21

Let's ground everyone with what we're kind of talking about.

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When we say local marketing.

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What does that mean?

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And how would let's say is that different than every other

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:30

type of marketing that exists?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:32

Well, so local will be more geotargeting, a specific

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:35

area or radius or city or region that you wanna focus on versus just

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:41

trying to just reach everybody.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:42

Now.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:43

You're like, I have a specific, maybe I have a physical location,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:46

a brick and mortar business that I want people to come to.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:49

Or I might be a service based business, like a plumber or.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:53

Dentist or something like that, where they serve a five or 10 mile radius.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:01:57

And the way Google usually works is they'll show you for your keywords or for

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:01

your, like, if someone's searching for your keywords in the general area, they'll

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:04

show you for like a 10 or 15 mile radius.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:06

But if you're trying to build out more than that, then it's about trying to get

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:09

creative, maybe having virtual offices or creating local pages on your website,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:13

or just trying to figure out other strategies to, to get up in those areas.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:17

But local kind of adds a layer of extra work because now

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:21

we're trying to also optimize.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:22

Just like, we'd optimize your website, but now you have a Google my business

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:26

getting listed in Google maps or Yelp or all these other places that we

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:30

wanna get you ranked hire as well.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:31

So it's not just ranking your website now it's ranking website, plus getting

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:02:35

on all these local directories and trying to get you that visibility.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:38

Yeah, yeah, that's really great for a business to consider, like

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:41

how much of my customers are, you know, local or geographic, even if they're

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:46

not necessarily, they don't consider themselves maybe a local business, the

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:50

local strategies of, okay, well you do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:53

If you have physical location or if you have a business they're

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:55

still that locality to consider, you're still part of that community.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:59

You're still in that area.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:00

So I think that's, I think it could definitely help a lot of businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:04

So here's something I've heard a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:06

From smaller local businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:10

And I hear this oftentimes from like a restaurant is

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:12

like, why do I need marketing?

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:14

You know, like my location is my marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:17

Why would I need more than that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:18

Why do I need a webpage?

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Why do I need SEO?

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Why do I need.

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Advertising, like sell me on why I need more marketing than just

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:26

having my physical location.

Kevin Dieny: 00:03:28

Be everything that I'm about.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:30

Mm-hmm yeah, no, the physical location is just

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:32

one aspect of it, but gotta draw attention to it and get eyeballs on it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:36

Cuz you could create a, a page on or on Google, my business or Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:41

maps, or even like you can create a listing on yellow pages, but then

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:44

like the old directory, but you're just gonna get lost in that seat.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:46

So you gotta make yourself stand out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:48

And sometimes just promote yourself a little bit more.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:50

Otherwise there's just too many options out there, especially nowadays on Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:54

There's endless supplies of websites, depending on if you're a local business

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:03:58

in like Los Angeles, like a restaurant, there's a lot of competition out there.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:02

So you gotta differentiate yourself somehow and get people to wanna

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:06

check you out versus other.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:08

Competitors or the other restaurants or whatever it is that's out there,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:10

but kinda differentiate yourself in marketing as a way to just get yourself

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:14

out there in a different way that reaches a new audience and gets new people to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:18

potentially come and check you out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:20

Wow, yeah, what a great answer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:21

Okay, so the next thing I've heard a lot is, okay, marketing sounds

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:26

good, but from what I hear, you know, without having done it, I often

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:31

hear marketing is just so expensive.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:33

Like it's it is costly.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:35

Um, do I have to hire people?

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:36

Do I have to spend a bunch of money on ads is local marketing,

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:40

especially the digital side does it...

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:42

always come with a big price tag?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:44

It just depends on the competition and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:47

how competitive your industry is.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:49

It's not really a one size fits all with SEO and digital.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:52

It really depends like how established are you?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:54

Are you a brand new business?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:56

It's gonna take a lot longer versus someone that's been around and established

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:04:59

and has gained some trust from Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:01

It'll be a lot quicker and easier, but also it comes down to really how

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:06

many websites are out there trying to compete for that first page of Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:09

of, you know, like you're a local business or a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:13

There are a lot of competition versus a restaurant, maybe in some smaller town.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:17

It'd be a little bit quicker and easier, and that would cost less

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:20

money and be less time intensive.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:22

And it really just comes to down to that really just who's the competition

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:26

and how much have they done versus you?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:28

And where's the disconnect and how can we fill that up?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:30

What's what's missing that they've done that you haven't done.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:33

And how can we get you there?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:34

There's a big competitor.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:35

They might have been around for 10 years building it up and it takes time.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:40

You wanna compete with them, you'll be able to do it, but it just, you have to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:42

be realistic that it's gonna take some time to just build that trust up of Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:46

because Google sees a website that's 10 years old versus a brand new one.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:50

They're gonna go with the older one just because they've been around for longer.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:05:53

And they trust that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:54

I mean, a business sometimes decides, you know what?

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:56

I need to focus on my.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:58

getting my business going started.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:01

I need to focus on getting the right people here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:03

I need to focus on making sure that the things, my business does, that

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:07

what it serves, what it delivers, what it sells, what it provides is going.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:12

So why is it that amidst all of this and everything, a local

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:16

business is trying to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:06:18

They will often just ignore marketing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:20

A lot of people just don't realize that

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:22

people aren't gonna find them.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:23

If they don't make themselves stand out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:25

And people think that I create this really nice website.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:28

I spend all this money building a website that people are gonna come to me.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:31

If you're not marketing it, if you're not promoting it, people

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:34

are not gonna really find it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:36

If you have the worst ugliest website, if you're in marketing, people will

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:39

find it and people will come to you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:40

You might not get as many sales if, unless you optimize that website

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:43

to look better, but you'll still be getting people that come to you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:46

Versus if you're not marketing it, it's gonna be tough to get

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:49

other people in friends and family and referrals to find you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:51

So if we're looking to get new people, The best way is by doing some marketing

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:56

and just trying to get, get that awareness, get people to find you

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:06:59

somehow, whether it's writing content on articles, doing press releases,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:04

blogging, doing videos, doing podcasts, doing social media, but whatever it is

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:09

just to get the word out there, email marketing, TV, radio, anything, but

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:14

you gotta get people aware of you gotta get, let people know that you exist.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:17

That's the one thing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:19

It's tricky and there's so much competition out there

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:22

nowadays, especially online.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:23

There's so many people have a website, so it's tough to differentiate

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:26

yourself, but you gotta get creative.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:07:28

Start doing it sooner than later that marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:30

That's a really good idea.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:31

And, and it brings up another area as a priority, right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:34

For businesses like, okay, well, yeah, you're gotta get your business going.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:37

Gotta get the foundations laid processes in place that are going to be able to

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:42

deliver your products and services to your customers, which sort of brings

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:46

me to the, you know, the next part I was kind of curious about, which was

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:50

okay, so you decide, you know, maybe I will take a look at marketing and I

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:54

was curious if a business let's say.

Kevin Dieny: 00:07:56

Decides to do this and they do have some current customers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:00

Maybe let's start there first.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:02

So what channels, what kind of marketing can a local business employee to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:08

Keep their current customers coming back.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:11

Right, tension.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:12

How can they, how can their marketing help them expand and keep, hold on tighter to

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:18

the current customers they already have?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:19

No, they should definitely be reaching out to the existing

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:22

customers are the best, as long as it's not something you just purchase one time.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:25

But.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:26

Keeping them yourself top of mind, by having an email list,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:30

somehow getting their emails.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:31

If they're past clients, you probably got their contact information, but

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:35

definitely running some email campaigns.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:37

Email marketing is definitely the most effective.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:39

By far because you have full control, you can just send out that email to any time.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:44

And if you have 10,000 people on your list, all 10,000 people will

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:48

be sent that email, but definitely gotta build that email list.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:52

I mean, that's why I always tell everyone, number one, build an email list up.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:55

You can do remarketing where you follow people around.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:08:57

If you've went to website and you don't make a purchase, or you don't do

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:01

a specific action ads can follow year around, you could also do the same thing

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:05

for people that have become a client or used your services in the past.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:09

You could say, all right, a year from now or six months from now, let's run so many

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:13

marketing ads, depending on if you're like, if you're a dentist, maybe you

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:16

say, Hey, come in for a teeth cleaning.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:18

Or if you're a doctor, you say, Hey, it's time for your annual physical

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:21

or whatever it may be, but getting creative and just trying to have.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:24

Some banner ads I could follow 'em around, or you could create some YouTube ads or

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:28

whatever platform you wanna advertise on, but just getting yourself out

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:31

there, you could upload lists of email addresses that have been to your website,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:35

or people have been to specific page.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:37

Maybe they went to the checkout page or the contact us page and filled out a form.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:41

So you knew they've.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:42

Potentially used your services.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:44

You could start remarking to them, and that's gonna be a great way

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:48

to keep yourself top of mind.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:49

And also like just setting up, follow up emails, asking them what they

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:53

thought of your product or service.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:54

If maybe they could leave your review.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:56

If you can do that, I know you can't do it on all the platforms,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:09:59

but some places you could ask for review, but you gotta be careful.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:01

You can't.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:02

Necessarily ask them to, but you could kind of comply it, things like

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:06

that, but yeah, those are all great ways to keep yourself top of mind

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:10

for people that have already used your services and find new people.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:13

Definitely just try to put yourself in the user's point of view, if you were

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:16

looking through your product or service, where would you go or you didn't go on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:19

Google are you on Facebook?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:21

Are you on Instagram?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:22

Are you on Yelp?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:23

You know, go on Craigslist Angie's list, whatever it may be, but you just gotta

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:27

try to think of, if you were looking for your services, where would you go?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:30

And that's gonna be the main thing is you need to be in front of the audience.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:33

You don't need to be everywhere.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:35

It's gonna be in front of your audience and take a step back, which is tough

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:38

as a business owner, but just try to think of like, you were looking for your

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:41

product or service, where would you go?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:10:44

And that's gonna really help you out a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:45

Yeah, the, you brought up, you bring up something right

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:47

there at the end there about like, understanding your audience.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:50

So how does a business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:51

Figure out their audience and understand them and you know, the places they may

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:55

go and the things they may be using to research, you know, let's say you're a

Kevin Dieny: 00:10:59

business owner and going, okay, well, how are my customers coming to me?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:03

You know, what channels are they using?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:04

How are they researching steps?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:06

Are they taking before they make the purchase?

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:07

I think sometimes the local business might consider well local businesses,

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:12

you know, maybe they have price tags, a varying degree, like a restaurant has.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:16

$15 lunch versus this other one is $30,000 new roof for my house.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:22

So the price tag could vary quite a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:25

There, it might mean like there's meant much more research being done.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:28

It might mean there's a certain type of demographic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:30

It might mean a certain type of customer.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:34

They may have some idea of that, but how do they kind of validate that and

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:37

really understand their customer better?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:40

There's free tools that Google gives you like Google analytics.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:43

It's a free tool that will show you everything you wanna know

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:46

about your website traffic.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:48

So if you're getting traffic to your website, you could use that

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:50

data to make statistically informed decisions about who your audience

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:54

is, where they go on your website.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:56

How long do they stay on each page on your website?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:11:59

How are they behaving?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:00

And all this stuff is really out there.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:02

It's a free tool.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:03

There's other tracking tools out there, but Google analytics

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:06

will give you one from Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:07

So I would definitely take advantage of that and try to just

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:11

learn as much as you can, because there's a wealth of information.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:15

It's a little overwhelming at times, people just get lost in the sea of data,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:18

but just slowly or just click around.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:21

You're not gonna break anything.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:22

I always tell people like, you're not gonna break anything on Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:24

analytics, you just click on everything.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:26

And you're just gonna learn a bunch of information about who

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:28

your audience is and learn.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:31

Yeah.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:31

A ton of data, but also fewer, maybe like a service based business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:36

And let's say you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:37

A dentist, you can reach out to other dentists in other states where you're not

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:41

direct competitors and ask, 'em like, Hey, can I maybe pay you a couple hundred bucks

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:46

to pick your reign for an hour or two and try to find someone that's established and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:50

maybe get them as like a mentor kind of thing, where they could give you advice?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:54

Because if you're not direct competitors, they're more than likely willing to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:12:57

help out possibly if they have time, but if you compensate them with some

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:00

money, they probably would help out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:02

So think about that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:03

If you can, that's one great way.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:05

As long as they're not direct competitors like myself, I'm an SEO company, never

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:08

get another SEO company to help each other out because we're all direct competitors.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:12

But like with localized businesses, you kind of can do that as long as

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:16

you're not competing in the same state.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:18

Whatever it might be even same cities potentially.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:20

You could reach out to other people to get some advice and get some tips

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:23

because if it's working for them, you could definitely see what's worked

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:27

and what's not worked and kind of skip that learning phase of what

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:31

mistakes they've made in the past.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:13:33

And just focus on what's gonna work.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:35

That is really helpful.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:36

I, I think sometimes too, a business owner may have some idea, but

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:40

it's more like, you know, let me just see what's working for them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:43

Let me ask, let me see what agencies or what experts are saying.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:46

Cuz marketing is a kind of a field where.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:49

Parts of it feel like they haven't changed in forever.

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:52

you know, but other parts of it feel like they're changing so quickly, so often

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:57

and figuring out, okay, what is changing?

Kevin Dieny: 00:13:59

What works now?

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:00

What is an effective way to generate business for or to grow my business online

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:04

using marketing is something that, you know, it does help to get a pulse on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:08

So Brandon, let's say an owner, a small business, a local business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:13

Wants to know, well, what's the right channel mix, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:15

Like what channels are working right now at this point in time, uh, for

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:20

businesses, what would you say about that?

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:22

You know, as it stands today?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:24

Well, it just depends on their business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:27

And I would say like step back and put yourself from point of view.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:30

And if you were looking for your services, where would you go?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:34

That's gonna be the best way to go about it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:36

But usually Google people are searching on Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:39

They're searching, they're looking, they have intent.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:41

That's usually gonna be the best.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:42

Seems like YouTube.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:43

People are searching.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:44

They're looking versus social media.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:47

People are just browsing and you're targeting them based off interest,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:50

but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to use your services or product

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:54

at that time just means they might have been interested in the past or in the

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:14:58

future, but not necessarily now where.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:00

Google, they're looking, they're showing that direct intent.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:03

So I usually tell, but Google's probably gonna be the best, but

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:06

every business is different.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:07

It's not really, that's not really one size fits all.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:10

Everyone's different, but usually people start on Google search around.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:14

Then they'll like vouch for you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:15

Checking on like social media, making sure you're real business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:18

We can reviews and things like that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:19

But.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:20

Usually people will find you on Google first or Yelp.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:23

If you're a localized business, Yelp is really big in the us, maybe

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:27

not in worldwide, but in the United States, Yelp really dominate.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:31

So having presence on there and then just trying to see where

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:34

else you could build it up.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:36

But I always tell people, YouTube is great because people want visual

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:38

content, people buy off people.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:39

So if you could start building a YouTube channel up, that will

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:42

also be really great in the long run because Google owns YouTube.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:46

So Google's gonna always give preferential like.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:49

Treatment to YouTube.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:50

So when you search on Google, sometimes you'll see video ads or

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:53

videos appear in the search results.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:15:55

So in the organic, the free listings in Google, when you search, sometimes

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:00

videos appear 90% of the time.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:01

It's gonna be a YouTube video because Google owns YouTube and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:04

Google wants to make money on Google and you don't click on an ad.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:08

Google's not making money.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:09

And there's like, all right, that didn't really help us out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:11

But if you search on Google and there's a video there, and it's a YouTube video

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:15

and you click on it, the first thing that appears, anytime you watch a video.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:19

Always an advertisement.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:20

So YouTube is making money, which is really Google making money.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:23

And I feel like Google is just gonna keep putting a bigger emphasis on that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:26

And also like, everything's really going to like video.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:29

Instagram is primarily videos.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:30

Now there's still images, but it's a lot of video content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:34

TikTok is all video.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:35

I mean, people want video, people don't wanna sit there

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:38

and read or people's attention.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:16:39

Scams are just too short nowadays.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:41

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:43

And there's implications for all that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:44

Just like you mentioned, different businesses may want different demographics

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:47

where they are comfortable reading others.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:49

You're in the TikTok world.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:51

and you need like, you know, 15 seconds to get your point across on a quick video.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:54

Show me, don't tell me, you know, so it definitely makes sense, like

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:58

depending on what the business' target is, we've talked about.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:01

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:01

You can figure that out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:02

You can look at your current customers past customers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:05

You can look at your Google analytics.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:07

Good setup like a good on paper.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:09

Here's the kind of customers, here's the kind of traffic you're getting today

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:13

and what you might expect in the future.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:15

If you keep doing what you're doing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:16

So what I was curious about was, you know, sites like Yelp, like

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:20

yellow pages, YouTube, more than that, I know, like for home service

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:24

businesses, there's a website called like Angie Angie's list for doctors,

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:28

or sometimes a website like health grades, or find a doctor or whatever.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:32

It's there's sometimes there's these listing sites.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:36

Now how important are listing sites to local businesses like being able to be

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:41

listed in there or in the, the business directory of a, you know, local, small

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:45

business, like a chapter or something.

Kevin Dieny: 00:17:47

How important are the listing sites for local businesses?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:17:51

Oh, the listing sites definitely help out a lot because

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:17:55

they help you rank higher on Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:17:56

So the more websites that talk about you or mention you, the more trust

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:00

Google's gonna give you, and the higher you're gonna be able to rank

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:02

on Google or especially Google maps, Google maps, they wanna see you listed

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:06

on all these different directories.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:07

The more directories you're on the higher you're gonna rank on Google maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:11

But the one thing with those directories, you have to have your consistency, your.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:15

Address and phone number it's called nap citation, naps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:18

Like the more places your business name, address, and phone number is listed,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:22

the more Truco Google's gonna give you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:24

And the higher they're gonna rank you on Google map.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:26

So a lot of Google maps, optimizations is just getting you

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:29

on all those different directories, even though some of them might be

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:32

really small and no one's on them.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:34

Just having your name, address, and phone number.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:36

You don't have to pay for like premium versions of these direct.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:39

Some of them will like say pay us $50 to enhance your listing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:43

Don't necessarily need to do that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:44

You just need to be listed on it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:46

And the free listings are perfectly fine, just making sure

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:49

that everything is consistent.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:50

So if you do move or change addresses, you're gonna have to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:53

change all those listing addresses because Google's gonna get confused.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:18:57

And the way it works is like I could create a listing or a Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:00

my business saying, Hey, Google, here's my address for a dentist.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:06

And Google's like, are you really a dentist?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:07

Like, we don't wanna just send people to your dental office

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:10

and find out you don't exist.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:11

So Google, let me create my page on Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:14

Where I'd say, Hey, I'm a dentist in Los Angeles, but Google's like,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:17

we're not gonna just rank you yet because we wanna make sure you

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:19

really are who you say you are.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:22

And the way they do that is by looking at other websites, talking about you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:25

Like, if I'm a dentist, it would make sense that I'm also not just only on

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:29

Google maps, but I'm on Yelp and yellow page map quest and Bing maps and health

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:35

grades and all these other sites.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:37

The more sites that you're on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:38

That list your business name.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:39

Imagine the phone number, the more trust Google's gonna give you, but

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:42

also some of the bigger ones, like if there's like a really, really big one

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:45

in an industry, maybe then you might wanna spend some money to advertise

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:48

just to get yourself to the top of it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:50

But in general, if you're just trying to get citations and just throwing your

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:53

name out there, like on the yellow pages, no one goes to the yellow pages.com,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:19:57

but Google goes there, sees those back links or sees those citations and gets

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:01

you to rank higher on Google maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:03

So it's kind of weird little strategy, but the more places that you're on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:07

That have accurate information about your business, the bit higher, you're

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:10

gonna be able to rank on Google maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:11

Yeah.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:12

And all this, all these sites, right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:14

I've often talked to some people on phone calls, doing demos.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:16

They're like, man, there's just a lot of stuff I have to do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:18

I have to work on SEO over here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:20

My social media over here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:21

I have to put ads over here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:22

I have to run campaigns here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:24

I have to remember all the sites.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:25

I have to answer my reviews.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:26

I have to run these email campaigns.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:28

There is a lot, it can be very overwhelming.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:31

So if a business is like, okay, well I'm doing all this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:35

How do I know what's working where it's working, what's working really well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:39

Maybe what's working in tandem, you know, lifting other, other types of marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:44

So how does a business, kind of get a pulse on and figure out what

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:50

marketing is working for them?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:51

If you're doing digital, then I would check Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:53

analytics because that's gonna show you everything related to digital marketing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:20:57

So Google analytics is that free tool that you sign up for it.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:01

And you put a little tracking code on your website, and once you put

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:04

that tracking code on your website, Then Google's gonna start showing

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:07

you data about your visitors, who they are, where they found you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:12

If they've done a conversion action, like calling you up or

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:14

emailing you or submitting a form or whatever that conversion goal

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:18

is signing up for your email list, downloading an ebook, whatever it is.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:22

But.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:23

All that stuff can be tracked through Google analytics.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:25

The sooner you're install Google analytics, the better it's free tool.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:28

You have to put a tracking code on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:29

And if you put the tracking code on next month, you're not gonna

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:31

get into this past month's data.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:33

It only starts tracking once you start adding that code, and it's

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:36

not that difficult to add that tracking code, it takes maybe like.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:39

30 minutes at most.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:41

And if you don't know how to do it, if you have a web developer, they can

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:43

help you or just search on Google, how to install Google analytics

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:47

on, and then you fill in the book.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:48

Like if you're on WordPress, how to install Google analytics on

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:51

WordPress, if you're on Squarespace, how to install Google analytics on

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:54

Squarespace, and they'll walk you through step by step, how to install that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:21:58

And that's probably the best place to look at digital what's working.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:01

What's not working.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:02

And even some offline you could put like tracking codes on your

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:06

URL saying, go to my website.com/.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:09

TV, and then you could track anyone that's ran and then you run a TV and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:13

add on TV saying, go to this URL.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:16

And then you could attribute anyone that went to that URL from the TV ad.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:18

So there's ways to tie digital into traditional.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:21

Google analytics is probably the best.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:23

There's tons of other tracking tools out there, but Google analytics is free.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:26

It's from Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:22:27

So I'd definitely jump on that one sooner than later to get that data.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:31

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:33

We've been saying a lot actually here, like Google analytics, Google analytics.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:37

and I love it because that's, that is where you, a website

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:40

is sort of a central place.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:41

So even a local business, who's like, man, I gotta get a website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:44

If I feel like, yeah, you kinda gotta get a website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:46

There's such a big benefit to it, to it coming in there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:49

The analytics part of it is free.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:50

Like you said, it does take some time to set up, but the benefits

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:53

of it coming off of that are huge.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:56

And being able to have those insights, what would you do if you knew.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:59

You know, a certain channel is driving growth for you and certain one isn't,

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:03

you know, I think you'd be like, well, let's, let's put more gas on

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:06

the one that's working really well and see if we can get more out of it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:08

You know, maybe $50 for a premium listing goes a long way from a site that we're

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:13

getting a lot of great quality traffic, cuz it's it's the end of the day.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:17

I don't necessarily say it's all about traffic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:19

It's like in what you do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:20

It's a lot more about quality leads, sales, revenue, bringing success for

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:25

the business that sometimes doesn't always mean dialing up traffic, but

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:31

dialing up the quality of traffic.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:33

And there's just so much going on there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:36

So there's another thing I wanted to ask you about here, which was

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:40

the Google local services ads, which are not for every industry.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:45

I don't know how.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:46

You know, you want to dive into this, but it is like a, a type of

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:49

ad that Google allows for local businesses of a certain industry type.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:55

I think there's a list of, I think it's like 20 or something types of industries.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:59

It works for dentists and plumbers and electricians and stuff like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:04

Could you explain like what Google local services ads are and what

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:08

their purposes are for businesses and who who've never heard of it?

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:11

Let's say?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:12

So there's a bunch of different ads that Google lets you run.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:15

And if you're not in that 10 list of 10 things that you mentioned, there's

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:18

ads that you can run on Google maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:20

So when you search on Google maps, there's sometimes ads that appear there.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:24

There's always three organic listings, but sometimes Google's adding a fourth

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:28

one where it's an advertisement, so you could pay to get in there and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:31

that one could be any local business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:33

It doesn't have to be a specific list and that's just running Google local ads.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:37

So you go into Google ads, create accounts, sign up.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:41

And then they're gonna give you all these different types of ads.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:43

You can run, you can run like keyword ads on Google search.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:46

You can run banner ads, you can do Gmail ads, you can do YouTube ads.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:50

You can also do like maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:51

You can do shopping.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:52

You can do a ton of different ads, which I always recommend to people.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:54

Like if you're running ads, the keyword ads are gonna be very expensive.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:24:58

But if you're running these other types of ads, banners, YouTube, Local maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:02

It's gonna be a lot cheaper and you get more visibility exposure,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:05

cuz the way the ads work is the more people that bid on keyword or

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:08

bid on whatever you're advertising on, the more expensive we become.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:12

So we're both bidding on keyword saying, I want to rank for dentist

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:16

Los Angeles, I'll pay $5 per click.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:18

You might say I'll pay $5 in 1 cent, a click, then I'll be like,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:21

all right, I'll pay $5 and 2 cents.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:23

We keep bidding each other up and it just keeps going and going.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:26

It's really easy to bid on keywords.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:28

Most people have a website where they're just like, all right, let

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:30

me drive traffic to that website by placing keywords, but not many people

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:33

do banner ADSS, which are also really effective is running those banner ads.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:38

It takes a little bit more time where you have to create the banners.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:40

So less people are bidding on those.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:41

It's less expensive, but really like YouTube too.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:44

YouTube videos are gonna be very cheap because not many people bid on them

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:48

or not many people create the videos.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:50

So there's not as much competition.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:52

And again, like going back to like the visual content, like people buy

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:54

off people like having something, a video out there is gonna be best.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:25:57

But then there's also, like you said, like the local expert guides

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:00

where Google lets you kind of be at the top saying you're an expert in.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:05

That one is, I think for, like you said, like 10 or there's like a select amount

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:09

of industries, like realtors could be in there and things like that, where

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:12

they just there's another revenue or place to try to get more visibility

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:16

and more eyeballs on your content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:17

And I always tell people with the ads, you never know what's gonna work.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:20

It's all about testing and seeing what works, push more money to that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:23

Pull money away from what's not working.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:24

So kind of just throwing everything against the wall initially and seeing

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:27

which ones are gonna get you the most leads at the lowest cost per click

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:31

or the lowest cost per lead rep cost per acquisition, trying to figure

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:34

out what's gonna get you that best return on your investment, because

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:37

it really comes down to just testing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:39

You never know what's gonna work, or what's not gonna work,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:41

or what's gonna be expensive.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:43

Like sometimes those clicks could.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:45

$50 a click on Google or a hundred dollars a click where it's like,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:49

this is gonna be really expensive.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:50

If I I'm selling a really high ticket item, I could make my money back.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:53

But if not, I'm gonna have to find something a little bit

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:26:55

more cost effective because.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:56

Yeah, wow, definitely put a punctuation on what

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:59

you just said about testing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:00

Yeah, there's lots of agencies and marketers.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:02

Who've maybe worked in a company just like yours and they can come

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:05

to you and say, this is the exact thing that's gonna work really well.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:09

Sure.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:09

And it might work pretty well, but testing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:12

Is so powerful and helps a business really narrow in because not every business is

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:18

the same, not every business has the same legacy, the same experience, the same

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:21

types of service, the way that deliver the service, something about your business

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:24

is unique and you want it to be unique.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:26

That kind of means your marketing may not work the same that

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:30

everyone else's marketing does.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:31

I think a lot of times it's like marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:32

That's just a TV commercial.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:34

No.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:34

Like there's so much more, there's so much more you can do, and there's so

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:37

much more, your business should explore.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:39

That means testing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:40

And like you said, throwing all your eggs in one big basket and spending a

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:43

ton of money to make one commercial.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:46

Sure.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:46

Maybe it'll do great, but I think there's also the avenue to try.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:50

Smaller bite size chunks, especially for a local, smaller business to, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:55

Let's throw it over here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:56

Let's see how it performs.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:58

Let's do this and that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:59

Let's see how those work together.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:00

Let's try this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:01

Let's try that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:02

Then let's try.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:03

Let's try.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:03

And even when we try, let's see if we can improve it for

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:06

a while and if we can't okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:08

Let's see what else works that sort of.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:11

Try get feedback, explore routine.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:14

That process is so critical to getting marketing that does eventually work.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:20

That that is such a big deal.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:22

And this leads me right to another great question here

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:23

when doing all of that, right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:26

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:26

It's one thing to get marketing, to figure out you need it to launch it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:30

The other part is, is optimizing it, improving it, figuring out what's

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:33

working better than something else and allocating that budget more appropriately.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:36

A lot of times.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:38

That ends up being the overwhelming part, a business, figures it out, gets an ad

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:41

going and then sort of forgets about it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:43

What does it look like if a business needs help?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:46

Right.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:46

If a business is like either I gotta hire someone or I gotta go

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:49

elsewhere to an external agency, I gotta get help for this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:52

What does that look like?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:53

Typically for a business who who's like, you know, I need some help and I don't

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:56

have the ton of resources to spend.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:58

So what does that look like for a business who does need a local business?

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:01

Who locally, who needs help with its marketing?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:03

You know, if they've just gotta figure out, do they wanna

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:05

hire a company or hire people internally or learn it themselves, but it's gonna

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:09

be different if they're overwhelmed and don't wanna do it themselves, or don't

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:14

have the time, then they should probably look for company to help them out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:17

But if they wanna hire people internally and build up a team,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:20

they could do that as well.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:21

It just depends on what route they really wanna go.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:24

Just finding someone that's appropriate and can really help

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:28

them out and align with their goals and what they're looking to do.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:31

So they're trying to get more leads, more phone calls, more emails, but just

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:34

trying to make sure that everything aligns properly with what they're doing and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:29:38

who they're gonna potentially bring on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:40

For the business that's considering.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:42

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:42

I'd like to take a look at my SEO side.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:45

So this is your bread and butter here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:47

Brandon was how much does local SEO, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:51

Trying to get organic search engine optimized website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:55

How much does the local SEO defer from?

Kevin Dieny: 00:29:57

You know, what I'd consider is typical SEO or normal SEO.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:00

So is there something special or different about, uh, local, targeted SEO?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:06

Yep, so for local, you need to have pages on your website

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:11

for each city that you wanna target.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:13

If you're a realtor and you're targeting Los Angeles, you might

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:16

wanna create a page for Los Angeles, for Santa Monica, for Venice beach,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:20

for all these different places.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:22

Because if someone's searching for real estate in Venice beach and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:26

you don't have a page about it, Google's not gonna think irrelevant.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:28

Versus if you have a page about it, then Google's gonna say, okay, This

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:32

page is about Venice beach real estate.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:35

This aligns with what you're searching for.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:36

Let's potentially show you, but you have to create local pages for all the

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:40

different places that you wanna target.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:41

That's very, very important.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:44

Also gotta get listed on Google, my business to get you on Google maps.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:48

That's really important as well.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:49

And then taking that listing.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:52

And I mean, a lot of people think they need reviews.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:54

Reviews don't really matter too much on Google or Yelp or any of those.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:30:58

It's not the number of reviews you could search for any of your keywords.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:01

You could see the first person on Google maps might have five reviews.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:05

The second one could have 200 reviews.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:07

The third one gonna have 50 reviews.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:09

It's not the reviews that matter.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:10

It's really the keywords people use in the reviews.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:12

That is so very important.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:15

If someone.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:15

Leaves your review saying great company.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:18

Brandon was so knowledgeable and helpful.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:20

He's the best.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:20

I recommend him to everyone and they gimme a five stars.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:23

That's good.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:24

But.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:24

It doesn't help me out to rank higher.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:26

If I wanna rank higher, I need someone to say I live in Los Angeles.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:30

I was looking for an SEO company.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:31

I found Brandon.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:33

He helped my business in Santa Monica, rank higher for my keyword.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:36

So hitting all these different keywords, Los Angeles, Santa Monica SEO.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:41

More keywords you put in those reviews, the, how you're gonna be able to rank

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:44

on Google and on Yelp or Amazon or any of these platforms like keywords in

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:50

reviews are one of the biggest ranking signals that not many people focus on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:54

Also consistency with your name, address, and phone number.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:31:57

So maybe your everywhere, your business name, address, and phone

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:01

number is listed is accurate.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:02

And the way to do that is just searching.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:03

Google, searching Google for your phone number and see all the places

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:07

that pull your phone number up.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:09

These are all ranking on the first page of Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:10

These are all pages that Google's put a lot of emphasis on.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:13

Make sure all the information in your name, address, and phone

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:16

number is a hundred percent consistent search for your address.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:19

See where you're listed as well.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:21

Make sure that's accurate search for your business name, search

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:24

for your business name quotation marks present in search for as.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:27

Your exact business name.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:28

So if you just put like, my company name is SEO optimizers.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:32

If I just put that to Google, it's gonna pull up all this stuff.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:34

That's related to SEO, not really related to my business, but if I put quotations

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:38

around my company name, it's gonna show me everything related to my business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:43

So quotations being, when you search in Google, that it has to be that

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:46

exact, whatever you search in those quotation marks has to be there verbatim.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:51

Can't change the order around can't change, plurals or synonyms or singulars.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:55

It's gonna show you exactly.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:56

What's.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:32:57

And that's a great way to just double check and make sure everything is

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:00

consistent, but really a big thing is filling out all the information

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:04

when you're in Google, my business or Yelp or any of these profiles,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:08

it's gonna say, write about us.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:10

Like here's 500 words to write about your business.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:13

If you only put 100 words, you're missing out on a lot of wasted space because.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:18

All these algorithms are based off content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:20

They can't really read images or videos yet they're getting

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:22

better, but they need text.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:24

The more text you put in there, the better.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:25

So fill out all that information till it's a hundred percent complete.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:29

So you can't put any more information in.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:31

Where it says about me services.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:33

Like whatever places that lets you put text, fill it out.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:37

Same with images.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:38

Fill out those images.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:39

I mean, upload images, but before you upload those images, name them with

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:42

words like don't just have file names, zero image, 0 0, 1 dot JPEG, Google

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:49

and Yelp, and all these platforms.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:50

Can't read images.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:51

So name your images with keywords.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:54

This is where you could say like Los Angeles SEO company, that could be your

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:33:59

image name, because Google really looks at the file name and puts a lot of

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:03

emphasis on whatever that file name is.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:05

And don't just upload images from your phone, save them to your

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:08

web or your desktop rename them.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:10

That's really gonna help out a lot too, as well, to get you more,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:14

to more eyeballs on your image.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:16

And those are kind of just like some of the best practices, but there's a lot

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:19

of other stuff that goes into local SEO, but that's kind of what differentiates

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:22

it from regular SEO is regular SEO.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:24

You're gonna do normal optimizations, plus you're gonna do this.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:28

So it adds an extra layer of work.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:30

So local seems easier, but it's really, it's more work, less competition

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:34

because you're not competing nationally, but it's a lot more that

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:34:37

needs to be done to get you up there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:40

Wow.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:40

I didn't know a bunch of the stuff you just said.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:43

And that's really interesting.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:44

I've heard about a lot of this, a lot of things too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:46

I think in the industry to be like, well, I've heard that, you know, if

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:50

you do, it's like a superstition.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:52

If you look up at the moon before you go to bed at night, then

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:55

your marketing will do better.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:56

Or, you know, I heard some guy say that, Hey, you know, Yelp doesn't

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:59

work or it's just a, you know, it's terrible or there's a lot of confusing

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:03

misunderstanding, misinformation around marketing stuff for businesses out there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:08

So it's tough.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:09

That's why it's great to kind of, okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:10

Let's, let's focus this episode.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:12

Let's really talk about local marketing here and all the stuff that is working

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:16

and really get this narrowed down.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:18

So at the end of the day, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:20

So I have two questions.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:21

The first one is how long should a business expect.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:24

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:25

They've decided to do, let's say they took you up Brandon on everything

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:27

you've mentioned, they've done it all.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:29

How long would they expect it to take before the lag time, before the

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:34

results start coming in for them?

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:36

And second, in terms of what should a business do?

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:41

Let's say the business is like, okay, I'll do, I'll take your advice,

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:43

Brandon, for the next 90 days.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:46

So just tell me, gimme a list of stuff you'd want me to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:48

I can get going on in the, in the next 90 days to have the best chance of success.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:52

So, first one first part of this is how long does this stuff usually take?

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:56

And the second one is, okay, the first 90 days of getting going here,

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:59

what would you give them as advice?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:00

It takes about six months to take, to really kick in with

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:04

SEO, just because google't trust you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:06

So that's the biggest thing is getting that trust.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:08

Nu Google does not trust anyone.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:10

The way to build that trust up is getting back links, getting

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:12

other websites to talk about you.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:14

That all takes time and there are shortcuts, but if Google sees that

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:17

you're doing a shortcut, they're gonna penalize you and drop you down and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:20

kick you off Google permanently, which is the last thing we wanna happen.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:23

So slow, steady growth, but over time, you're just gonna build it up and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:27

build it up and keep getting more and more traction, more and more growth.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:29

But it all does take time.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:30

Unfortunately, with SEO, there's no shortcut around that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:33

And.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:34

90 day period.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:35

I would just tell people, add more content to their website.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:37

That's gonna be the easiest, less technical aspect is just create more

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:41

content on every page on the website, create pages for all the different

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:44

locations that they wanna target.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:46

That's gonna be huge and add about 400 words of content

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:49

to each page without content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:51

Google's gonna have a tough time ranking you or understanding

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:53

what that page is about.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:54

So, I know a lot of people would be like, how do I write 400 words?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:36:57

If I'm a realtor, how do I write 400 words about real estate in

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:00

Venice beach, in Santa Monica?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:01

And for most of all these different places, it's gonna be tough, but I get

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:04

creative and just try to think of content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:06

Like most people are not gonna read this content it's for Google.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:09

So I always tell people, put the content at the very bottom of your page.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:11

Don't have it at the very top.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:12

You don't have to have 400 words.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:14

Of just content there.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:15

Nobody's gonna wanna read that, but put at the very bottom of your page,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:18

Google will see that content and that's gonna help them better understand what

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:21

that page is about, and that's gonna have a huge impact on your ranking.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:24

So, I mean, that's something that everyone can do without having to

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:26

build back links or go on their coding and make technical changes,

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:30

add more pages and add more content.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:33

And I can almost guarantee.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:34

They will see a Lyft in traffic and start seeing themselves rank for all

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:37

these different locations that they'd otherwise were weren't ranking for.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:40

Cuz if you don't have a page about it, it's gonna be really, really tough

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:37:43

to rank on Google for that service.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:45

That is some great advice.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:46

Now, Brandon, we've talked a lot, a lot of things we haven't gone super deep.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:50

Let's say, I mean, you've touched a little bit more on the SEO side, cuz

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:53

I think that was really relevant, but let's say someone has questions for you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:57

They wanna follow up.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:58

They wanna know more about your company.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:00

Wanna know more about what you do, what you offer, how it maybe could help them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:03

They wanna just learn more about local marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:06

Uh, how could a company or person get in touch with you, find out more about

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:10

you or learn more about your company?

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:12

So everyone that's checking out this podcast.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:15

If I create a special gift for them, if they go to my website, which is

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:19

seooptimizers.com/gift, they could find that there that's seooptimizers.com/gift.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:30

And, they could find all my contact information there and

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:33

also do free consultation.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:35

So you do have a website.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:36

I could kind of dive into it and give you some feedback from an SEO

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:39

point of view of what's working.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:40

What's not working and where that disconnect is with your competitors

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:43

and how you can get you up there.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:44

So someone's looking for that as well.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:46

I'm happy to dive in and give some feedback, an analysis of what's

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:38:50

working and how to get them to the level that they wanna be.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:53

That's great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:54

I, I think it's really helpful when a business is like, look,

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:58

maybe there's a part of this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:38:59

I'm willing to do myself.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:00

Maybe none of this, I wanna do myself, but at least there's

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:04

the flexibility of options.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:06

Okay.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:06

Gimme a head, start.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:07

Tell me where I need to go.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:08

And then the business can say, okay, yeah, this is gonna take a lot of resources.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:11

We may have everything down, pat, but this is gonna take maybe resources we

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:14

don't necessarily have, or it's gonna, you know, maybe I'm gonna pull out my, my pen.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:19

it hit the 400 word articles and just see what I can do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:22

See what I can come up with.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:23

And I think that flexibility allow.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:26

Businesses to really figure out themselves in a local in local market.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:30

Cause I think it is difficult to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:32

Really push when you have limited resources.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:35

So I think it means it kind of feels like man, every resource, dollar or hour I

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:40

spend is really important and critical.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:42

So thank you, Brandon.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:43

Thanks for coming on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:44

Thanks for talking about local marketing, digital marketing in the

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:47

local space for local businesses.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:49

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this with our audience.

Brandon Leibowitz: 00:39:52

No, thanks for having me on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:54

Yeah, this, this is a great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:39:55

Anyway, thanks everyone for listening to this episode, and I hope that you

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:00

are encouraged and you've got some great ideas or you've got some questions that

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:04

you're ready to, to take and help your business grow in the local, your local

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:09

business, grow with local marketing or digital marketing or however it is.

Kevin Dieny: 00:40:13

So again, thank you and, uh, have a great day.