EP96 How To Get More Online Painting Leads in 2023 with ClikWiz Mike
INTRODUCTION:
On this episode of DYB Podcast, Steve Burnett interviews ClikWiz Mike who shares the latest tips and strategies for painting businesses looking to utilize Google Local Service Ads and SEO services to increase their online presence and generate leads. Topics covered include the importance of positive reviews, the benefits and drawbacks of Google Ads and SEO, the use of an automated feedback system, the new focus on E-E-A-T, strategies for optimizing website content, the importance of learning AI, and the effectiveness of funnels and calls to action. Tune in for valuable insights and practical advice to improve your online presence and Double Your Business.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Steve Burnett
00:00
What happened?
ClikWiz Mike
00:02
Yeah. So this client, it was one of my local clients who had been with us for years and they, they wanted to move on and hire a, it wasn’t a painting customer, it was eye doctor. And so they, they want, they found an agency that specialized in eye doctors and this one wasn’t all that special. So, so yeah, she, she called me up and said, oh, we’re, we’re moving away from you. She was really heartbroken about it, cuz she, we had a good relationship. But two weeks later, she calls me back in tears because this woman had basically just launched a, a terrible site for her and she was just completely devastated and was wondering if I could could take them back. And, and I, I said, of course. Yeah. I had a backup of the site. So within just a few hours, we had her, her website back up and she fired the, the new agency and yeah, so was, it was, it was a nightmare, but, but it, it came out, man. Good. In the end.
Steve Burnett
01:10
Oh. Oh, good. I’m glad to hear that. Glad you had a backup. Oh my goodness. I’ve heard some stories about that and maybe we’ll share those when we get into ’em. But first, let’s welcome everybody. So hello and welcome back to the d y B podcast. Our mission is to help you to double your business so that you can have financial freedom, time for your family, and make an impact in your community. Today, please join me in welcoming DB’s Premier, online Lead Generating Rockstar. That’s right. Click Wizz Mike of click Wizz Painter Marketing magic. Mike, how you doing today?
ClikWiz Mike
01:44
I’m awesome. Thank you for having me on. This is great.
Steve Burnett
01:46
Hey, my pleasure. Back to your story before we get into it. They’re, we’ve, we’ve had examples of clients and we recommend them to you. And they say, well, Steve, I’ve got this person in my b and i and they can do it cheaper, but, and it’s not just that they can do it cheaper, but they feel the pressure of passing referrals. And it happens. And a couple of ’em come to mind. I’m not gonna say their name, but, and, and they’ll spend, you know, say $800 to have their b and I friend build a website, and then a a year later they say, gosh, what a, what a pain this has been. We made a bunch of mistakes. Can you, you know, put me in touch with Mike? I said, yeah, no problem. Absolutely. And we understand, you know, it’s, if you’re in bni, there’s that draw and there’s that accountability and that pressure, we gotta pass business around. But it’s, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot more to just build a website, kinda like in a painting industry. Not everybody’s a painter. And if we’ve been in the business for more than three days, we, we realize that. And so there are a lot of those stories. I, I get that now. Yeah, I could
ClikWiz Mike
02:45
Probably, I could probably give you three or four more stories, just like that one where a customer left for their b and I group and had said exactly what you said, I, I feel like I have to, I I have to hire the, the B and I partner because, you know, that’s what b and i is about. You know, you refer each other to each other and, and I get it. And, but yeah, it won’t, it never fails. It’s almost every time they come back to me within a year,
Steve Burnett
03:12
You know, and then you feel doubly bad because they’ve just wasted this money and now they’ve gotta pay to, you know, fix it, redo it, build it out correctly, whatever it might be, you know? Yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
03:22
Yeah.
Steve Burnett
03:22
And, and so that’s hard. So to put it in, paint your context, you know, it’s like guys, when, when somebody goes with their friend or hires their in-laws or, you know, to paint or whatever, and then they call you back, say, I’m sorry, I need you to come fix it. You, you charge ’em to do it. Right. Sometimes they cost more. So be warned, I’m glad you brought, we opened up with that story so that everybody is at least warned upfront, still do what you feel like you need to do, but we hope that you, you do it right the first time. Now, Mike, before you share all of your Juicy Ninja online lead generating strategies, what I wanna do is unpack the fundamentals. What, what are the fundamentals that somebody needs to have in place before we get to the advanced juicy ninja stuff?
ClikWiz Mike
04:07
Yeah, so I mean, the fundamentals are your website, gotta have a great website, it’s gotta look professional, you know, you don’t necessarily have to spend a ton of money on it. There are some, some lower, some less expensive ways to get something decent out there. Even some of the do-it-yourself sites like, like Weebly and what’s the other one? Squarespace, things like that. For somebody who’s just getting started in the painting industry and can’t afford to hire an agency like us, those are some great options. Or maybe your local b and i guy,
Steve Burnett
04:46
You
ClikWiz Mike
04:46
Know, everybody starts somewhere and we’re kind of like the, the, the, you know, the middle of the road agency, you know, for a lot of patrons are starting up, can’t quite afford our level of service, but there are plenty of ways to to, to still do that and do it well. What second thing is Google business profile. Mm. That’s, that’s probably one of the most important things that you could do even before the website these days, get that profile and start getting reviews.
Steve Burnett
05:15
So, hold on, I’m gonna come at it like, like a novice in case somebody’s never done this. So when you say Google profile, how do you mean? Just your, your online, the profile, the address, the phone number, right? The, yep, yep. Okay.
ClikWiz Mike
05:30
Yeah, you just go to business google com.
ClikWiz Mike
05:34
Yep. Yep. And I can give you some good pointers on, on that specifically is, you know, because if you, if you just do one thing, if you master that, it’ll make a big difference. Biggest thing, reviews, reviews, reviews, your reviews. Every job you do, try to ask for that review or don’t try, just do it. It’s, it’s so important. And with painters, it’s really hard to get a lot of reviews because you’re only doing what one or two jobs a week. And so it’s not like you’re getting a hundred customers through your store a day. You know, where, where you can generate a ton of reviews. Now you get only a few, a few opportunities a week. And, and so you have to try to get it every, every single opportunity. Yeah. And so only like maybe 10% of your customers are going to, you know, take the time to do that. And so if you’re, if you’re, if you do a hundred jobs and only get 10 reviews, it, it’s just takes time. So start now and, and be relentless at it.
Steve Burnett
06:39
Other thing is here you have, you have a program, I’d like you to mention this. You have a program to help with that process, don’t you?
ClikWiz Mike
06:46
Yes, yes, we do. We, we, it’s, it’s not our software, but we’re, we’re partner with grade do us, and if you get it through us, you actually get it a little bit cheaper than what they charge directly. So, and plus you get our support, which is much better than theirs. So, but basically what that does is it automates the process. It’s at its basic level, all you have to do is enter your customer’s name and the email address into the system, and it sets off an email sequence to, to request that feedback. And couple of different ways you can do it. We used to do it, you know, where it would send an email requesting a rating like one to five stars, just like you do, you do on Google. The d y b system has kind of shifted to, to more of, what’s it called, the
Steve Burnett
07:41
Net Promoter.
ClikWiz Mike
07:43
Net Promoter Score. Yeah. And where it’s, it’s more of a question that really kind of gets down to the customer’s sentiment on how they feel about you and your business. And that is, on a scale of one to 10, would you refer us to your friends and family? And, and so that can give you a huge amount of feedback just, just with that one question. And if it’s a seven or above, then it will ask for a Google review or a Facebook or whatever, whatever sites you’re trying to get more reviews on. So right on. And if they don’t respond the first time, then it’ll send a couple of follow up emails. So
Steve Burnett
08:22
There we go. Then some direct mail, and then we send somebody a beat on their door.
ClikWiz Mike
08:26
Yeah,
Steve Burnett
08:27
Just kidding.
ClikWiz Mike
08:29
Yeah, and if you’re, and if you’ve got your other tech set up like a crm, you can connect it to that through Zapier to where when the project’s over, it’ll automatically send out that request.
Steve Burnett
08:40
Awesome. Very cool. Okay. Thank you. Sorry for that. A little dog lady there back. So, back to the fundamentals, Google reviews and just a, a comment on that. Google reviews, our social proof. Social proof is one of the six laws of influence in the number one book on sales and marketing influence by Dr. Robert Cini. He unpacks exactly how important social proof is. And so, yeah, Google reviews are not only important for helping to convince, but also to help you to rank if, if I hear you correctly, Mike.
ClikWiz Mike
09:11
Yes, yes. Yeah. And, and Google doesn’t care as much about how high your rating is. They don’t, they don’t need to see a perfect five 5.0 score. In fact, you’re people who come across your, your Google business profile, if they see a hundred reviews and they’re all five stars, that starts to get a little suspicious, then they think, well, you’re only getting those reviews from your best customers. And, and the the ones that maybe aren’t too happy aren’t, are being discouraged. And so if you, if you get a negative review here and there, it’s not the end of the world. It actually looks more natural. Yeah. But in Google’s eyes, as far as ranking goes, they just wanna see that activity, you know, that that’s what’s important to them. So,
Steve Burnett
09:58
So one part of our system and our coaching is when you get a negative review, usually guys freak out, which is understandable by say, no, this is a great opportunity because it’s an opportunity for everybody to see your character and how you reply or respond to that review.
ClikWiz Mike
10:13
Yep, yep. And yeah, I get the, I get those questions a lot when, when someone gets a negative review, they, they really do. They feel like it’s the end of the world at that moment, you know? And, and you know, if you only have two or three other reviews, well, yeah, it’s bad, but it’s gonna be delete. Yeah. But if you’ve got 50 other positive reviews, it, it’s a, it’s actually a good thing because that gives you an opportunity to say, Hey, we screwed up. This is why this is what we did to fix it. And, and, you know, just show the, the world that, hey, you know, we’re human, but we make it
Steve Burnett
10:48
And we own it. Yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
10:50
Yeah, yeah. Right
Steve Burnett
10:51
On. Awesome. Thank you. So we’ve got reviews. What, what are some of the other fundamental items?
ClikWiz Mike
10:58
The other things are to make sure your profile is completely filled out. Use every possible section that Google gives you and, and just make sure it’s filled out. You know, things like services, hours of operation, what kind of payments do you accept? Things like that. You know, you, even with like services, you can actually not just put the label interior painting, exterior painting, but you can add a little bit more content to that and give kind of a description of, of why your, your interior painting services are, are better than, than your competitor. Okay. Sh one thi one little ninja hack that I could give you that a lot of painting companies really push back on is showing your address. You know, so many painting companies run out of their homes, their homes, and that is kind of scary for them to put their home address out for the world to see. But in all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve heard of maybe only a handful, maybe two clients where, where someone showed up at their house Yeah. And, and it wasn’t a big deal, you know, but I’ve found in our testing, you’re gonna rank better if you show your address. Mm.
ClikWiz Mike
12:19
Google won’t admit that they, they prof, in fact, they’ve kind of relaxed their rules on service area businesses. It used to be like if you ran outta your house, you had to be a service area business, and they would actually suspend your account if you didn’t set it up that way. And so for a few years there, we had to do that, even though we knew that if you show your address, you ranked better. But they’ve, they’ve relaxed that. And in some cases, I’ve even had Google support recommend it. So,
Steve Burnett
12:53
All right, now, the little dog lake here, back in the day, used to try to, let’s say, maximize the listing opportunities. And I don’t know, there was somebody down in Venices, Florida who would go around and get street addresses at all of the local city u p s boxes. And in fact, I think I even admitted this or talk about it in the book, these, the profiles, the Google profiles in local nearby towns, communities and cities aren’t needed anymore. Is that correct?
ClikWiz Mike
13:27
In rare cases, will I recommend setting up a second location? It’s really hard to do. And Google does not, like, you can’t use a PO box. You can’t use a u p s store. Any of those pack and ship places that offer mailbox services, they, you, those won’t even work. You basically have to have an office or warehouse or something where you can get mail in order to set up that second location. And so it, to do it and do it effectively, it’s pretty expensive. You know, you, you have to rent office space or something like that. Even the virtual offices, sometimes they’ll work, sometimes they’ll get you suspended.
Steve Burnett
14:14
Wow. No kidding. So I’ve heard that you have to send pictures in confirming, verifying
ClikWiz Mike
14:18
Sometimes, yeah. They’ll, they’ll make you take pictures and videos and send letterhead with the address on it, things like that. So it’s, they’re, they’ve gotten pretty smart about it.
Steve Burnett
14:28
Okay. So along these lines, what, what does somebody do then? That they have another market or they’re expanding into a neighboring city? How can they list there as well?
ClikWiz Mike
14:38
Some of our customers have used, you know, other businesses. So if they, if another business has maybe a warehouse space or something that maybe you could partner up with them and, you know, print a, a, a magnetic sign that you can stick on their door or something like that to, to take your pictures when, when Google wants to verify it and just, it has to be able to get mail. But it, it, that’s, that’s the key. It has to be a physical location that doesn’t look like a virtual office or Okay. Mailbox type thing.
Steve Burnett
15:14
All right. Now owning the first page of Google step three in the D y B system and a couple of the components that we encourage our maps and blogs, how relevant are they for the fundamentals these days?
ClikWiz Mike
15:28
Yeah, so naps, uhs, or name, address and phone numbers, what that stands for. They’re, they, they’re not effective as far as ranking goes. A a at least as, not, not as much as they used to be, but they are still kind of like the baseline, Hey, I need to get this done. Because it, it speaks to kind of the trust and authority side of things. Google has put a lot of emphasis on what’s called eat, and it’s E E A T and it’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness trustworthiness. And so that’s, that’s really what they’re looking for when they’re deciding who to rank in the top, you know, on page one or the top three. And so if all you have is a Google business profile, well, you might rank if you don’t have any other competition, but I guarantee you if, if the other 10 painters or a hundred painters in your area are are, are doing more than you while they’re gonna beat you out.
ClikWiz Mike
16:39
So APS is kind of the baseline, easiest way to do that is go to a place like Yext, just get their minimum basic package. I think it’s like 35 bucks a month. It, it just kinda blasts all of your information out there on the web. It locks your profiles down so they can’t change. And the nice thing about it is that if you have to move and change your address, it makes it so much easier to, to update those. You just change it in their system and within a week, all of your, all the other directories are updated.
Steve Burnett
17:15
Okay. Note to self update, DAB B system, step three, scratch out naps, add E E A T.
ClikWiz Mike
17:22
Yes. Yep. Got it. What
Steve Burnett
17:23
About blogs?
ClikWiz Mike
17:25
Blogs? So blogs are definitely still effective. And that’s where kind of the E E A T comes in is the, the content on your site. Basically when you, when you write a blog post, you want to come across as experienced and the expert and the, the authority in your market. And so that’s really how you kind of pick topics is, you know, what are, what are people searching for when they look for painters, do it yourself type articles, things like that. Other blog content opportunities might be, if you’re doing, if you finish up a job, do like a video walkthrough or before and after pictures and kind of do a little post about, about the actual job and you know, what went well, what was, what was great about it, maybe what was your challenges on that job, that, that speaks to the expertise and experience because hey, we’re actually out in the field doing this stuff. So Google likes to see that and it’s just an easy content idea, you know, and if it’s a, if it’s a showcase worthy project, then why not put it on your site and talk about it?
Steve Burnett
18:44
Yep. Right on.
ClikWiz Mike
18:47
And then, yeah, so experience, other opportunities for experience would be like your portfolio, you know, before and after pictures, just constantly be updating that, that portfolio with, with new photos. And, and those can also be posted on your Google business profile. So if you got a job that you’re showcasing, put those on on Google business profile. That’s one thing that Google really likes to see is activity on that.
Steve Burnett
19:17
Well, that’s, so you can cross post those and without being penalized.
ClikWiz Mike
19:22
Yeah, it’s a different format. So it’s, it’s a much shorter, so you know what you, you know, if you write 500 words for your blog post on your Google business profile, you would write maybe a hundred, 200 word summary. Okay. So it’s, it’s, it’s really quick. I, I recommend Google Business profile posts once a week. If you can do it, it just generates that activity and Google likes to see that.
Steve Burnett
19:49
Awesome. Okay. That’s good to know. We’re done. Yeah. What, let’s, let’s,
ClikWiz Mike
19:54
So of the things you can do on your, oh,
Steve Burnett
19:57
Sorry, go ahead.
ClikWiz Mike
20:02
To, to generate the experience in, in Google’s eyes is your team page. I highly recommend building that out and, and just, you know, putting short bios of each of your team members on there, things like that. And let’s see, oh, also on your website, get those reviews on there. They’re not as trustworthy as the Google reviews because, you know, people know that you can put whatever on whatever you want on your website, but you can also just, you know, that you can embed some of your Google reviews on your website as well. So.
Steve Burnett
20:42
Awesome. Well, speaking of website, what are some other key elements to consider when designing a website funnel?
ClikWiz Mike
20:51
Great question. So when, yeah, when a funnel, a lot of people don’t know what a funnel is, so I’ll kind of explain that real quick. But, you know, when you, when you have a, a, a physical funnel, like when you change your oil or something like that, you know, it’s wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, right? And that’s kind of how your website is. Everybody that goes to your website isn’t necessarily a, a lead. And so the job of your website is to kind of weed out all of the, the tire kickers or, or people who are just not, not really qualified and narrow them down into qualified leads that need and want your service, right? So ways to do that with your website are, you know, the, well, first of all, you wanna get your, your, your visitors to know, like, and trust you, right? That’s, that’s the whole purpose of your funnel. And so first thing they need to learn on your site is, does this company do what I’m looking for? I’m looking for a painter. Are you a painter? Well, that’s pretty easy. Second of all, why should I do business with this customer or this, this company? And you establish that by establishing trust and social proof, right?
ClikWiz Mike
22:17
And so, testimonials, portfolios, things like that are, are important. And then, oh, call to action. Call to action is the probably one of the most important. What do you want your visitors to do? How do, how do they, how do they do business with you? Most of our painting customers in the d y B group as well, they, the, the, their best, absolute best call to action is to schedule an estimate. And we use, you know, you can book me or Acuity scheduling, it’s embedded on the website. They can connect to your calendar and just schedule estimates right there. And those are the best.
Steve Burnett
22:57
I got comment to that. Some of my favorite sales that I made back out when I was running print painting, I, after everyone, I’d say, thank you. You could have went with somebody else. Why’d you choose us? And and the guy goes, he was from Georgia, you know, we’re in a real nice condo down in Punta, go right on the water. And he goes, man, he says, my wife’s been on me for weeks to find a painter and get this painted. I was sitting in my lazyboy. And so finally I pulled up the Google and, and looked, said your website was first. So I clicked through and I saw that you had that, that calendar booking thing on there, and I scheduled you and I didn’t have to call, in fact, I didn’t even call anybody else. You had the job free came out here, you know,
Speaker: 3
23:34
So
Steve Burnett
23:34
I said, how much was that quote?
Speaker: 3
23:38
Is there room to negotiate that up? Yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
23:41
Yeah. Make it easy for them. That’s, yeah.
Steve Burnett
23:44
He loved, he just in his lazy chair, right? And all he had to do was do this, put the phone down and said, you gotta take care of darling. You know?
ClikWiz Mike
23:51
Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna have some people who are price shoppers and that’s fine, but you know, some people, they just want as less friction as possible. You know, they want to know that you’re gonna do a good job and that they don’t have to do a lot of work to, to make it happen. So, so make it easy for ’em, you know, other ways to, you know, we, there’s usually multiple ways to, to do business with you. You know, you put the phone number on there, of course you’re gonna put your maybe a contact form, but typically the, the, the ones that schedule an estimate, those are gonna give you the highest close rate every time.
Steve Burnett
24:28
Right on. Right on. Awesome. Okay.
ClikWiz Mike
24:32
I also recommend putting your address on the website that kind of syncs up with the, the Google business profile and your other directories that you’ve got yours out on that, that confirms with Google that hey, this, this site is for this Google business profile and for this business, and everything’s cohesive. So you just put it in the footer or on the contact page. So
Steve Burnett
24:58
Right on.
ClikWiz Mike
25:02
Yeah. So that would, how about the
Steve Burnett
25:06
Ku Mowan seo?
ClikWiz Mike
25:08
Yeah, yeah, let’s
Steve Burnett
25:09
Do it. Okay. Before we do quick story, and I apologize, I, I didn’t, I didn’t ask you if I could share this. I’m going to go out on a limb here and of, of course, we’ve been referring all d i b members to you for, for years now. You’ve built, I don’t know, I’m gonna guess maybe a hundred d i b website conversion funnel websites. It’s gotta be close. If it’s not more, I lost count, I lost track. I used to have a list of like, yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
25:34
We recently broke a hundred.
Steve Burnett
25:36
Did you? Right. Heard on congrats. I’ve had feeling it was real close. Okay, that’s awesome. Yeah. And so I refer to you, and one of the reasons why I tell everybody I refer to you is cuz you two things. One is, I mean, two, lemme just say two practical ones is you get things done. A lot of agencies don’t. They will line somebody up with a bunch of to-dos to get them, and they’ll never follow up with ’em. They’ll just leave. They’ll overwhelm them and leave it on their lap. Painting contractors are busy, way too busy to have somebody just dump a great, you know, a bunch on them and then never follow up. You’ve got a system lead out for ’em and you follow up and you say, let’s get this done. In fact, you, you turn these sites around in as fast as, you know, three or four weeks even, which is unheard of in this industry.
Steve Burnett
26:18
The other thing is, you’re honest, and I have a story to back this up because this is, it’s not, it’s not an honest industry. I’m not sure that’s the most polite way I can put it. It reminds me of sending your wife to the mechanic in the eighties, right? Because it’s so technical and so foreign to most people that they just have to take the agency’s word for it, whatever they’re saying. However, excuse me, I had, here’s a story I had as as comment, Seth Peak said, you know, hey, maybe we were looking at ramping up lead sources a little bit, things are going really well. And I said, you know, he says, what about, you know, online, what about some seo? And I said, Hey, why don’t you reach out to Mike, click with Mike and, and talk to him about it. See what it looks like, see what it costs. So he did, he reached out to you and then Seth forwarded me the email that you sent him something along the lines and correct me, Hey Seth, thank you for reaching out. I did some research and checked out your market and I checked out everything you’re doing on your website. And while I’d love to have your business, it’s not worth it for you to invest in seo.
ClikWiz Mike
27:21
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s pretty much how it went. You know, in some cases you, you, they’re already crushing it, you know? Yeah. And, and so it, it doesn’t make sense to, you know, put a, you go out and buy a, a piece of equipment for your business that you’ve, you just don’t, don’t need, you know? So same, same with seo. So
Steve Burnett
27:45
Here’s the point I’d like to make jump,
ClikWiz Mike
27:46
It’s gonna get you a huge ROI then. Yeah. I’m not gonna sell it to you.
Steve Burnett
27:50
So here’s the point I’d like to make for everybody. Listen, watching that is unheard of in the agency space. Unheard of in the agency space. And this is, you know, another big reason why we recommend Mike. And so I appreciate you for that, Mike. Thank you. So let’s go ahead and get into some seo. How do you approach SEO on a website?
ClikWiz Mike
28:11
Yeah, I mean, so we’ve already kind of been discussing the, the E E A T. So that’s, that’s huge content is is everything on a website. So, you know, at minimum you want to have, you know, your, your service pages, you know, breakdown or do you do interior, exterior, commercial, cabinet painting, whatever specific services you do, build out a a a a separate page for that. It’s
Steve Burnett
28:42
A unique page for each service. One outlining cabinets, one outlining exteriors, one outlining interiors, concrete floors, condo buildings. Yep. Whatever their, whatever their niche is. HOAs. Okay.
ClikWiz Mike
28:55
Yeah. And I recommend, you know, at least 500,000 words of content on those pages. So that’s, you know, that, that seems like a lot, but it’s, you know, Google’s looking for authority and the more content bottom line is more content ranks better than less content. So, and then the, let’s see. So if you’re in a city or area where there are multiple cities that you’re targeting, you might have what’s called a location page. And these aren’t quite as effective as ranking factors as they used to be, but they do still have an effect. And so I still, I still recommend that we still do them for our clients because they, it establishes your service area, you know, and they don’t have to be super long pages, but I still try to get at least 500 words of content on there. And, you know, you might include your, you know, photos from jobs that were in that area, maybe a Google map of that area, things like that. And so that just kind of establishes that, that local authority there. Okay. Let’s see. We, we talked about team page already blogging. That’s, that’s definitely important. Let’s see, the, the biggest thing is content, you know, and I think the, the biggest thing that people so content struggle with. Yeah. The biggest thing people struggle with is, you know, getting content ideas. And I think the d YB cafe has a great article on that or thing on that. Of course. On, yeah. Thank you. Of
Steve Burnett
30:51
Course. I think that was all April too, just to give credit where it’s due.
ClikWiz Mike
30:54
Yeah, yeah. Start there. There’s so many good ideas for content and that it’s like at least a year’s worth of content on there. So, but, but you know, you’re basically answering questions that other people would ask about your industry. You know, what kind of paint is should I use for my bedroom walls? What, what sheen should I use? Things like that. It doesn’t,
Steve Burnett
31:16
How much does it cost? Yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
31:17
Yeah, yeah. Yep. Pricing is a big one.
Steve Burnett
31:20
So now keywords are still important. How do you pick the right keywords?
ClikWiz Mike
31:26
Great question. So since we’ve been doing this for so many painting companies for so long, we’ve, you know, keyword research, we almost don’t do any anymore because they’re, you know, we’ve, we know what the, the main keywords are. The only difference is maybe in, in this area of the country, it might, you know, out in California, they might search for house painters more than painting contractors or, or in, but in Philadelphia, they might search for painting companies more than painting contractors, you know, so
Steve Burnett
32:00
Interesting. Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
32:01
The way I approach that is I take, you know, the, the top, I think it’s around five keywords. So painters in Philadelphia house, painters in Philadelphia, painting contractors in Philadelphia, painting companies in Philadelphia. I think those are the, the big ones. Run those through Google’s keyword tool and, and just look at the search volume. And then I’ll give you kind of the order of importance. Now you still want to use all of ’em and you still want to use relevant or related keywords like interior painting, exterior painting, you know, things like that. Mix it up. Don’t just repeat the same words throughout the site, but if you know what the top keyword search is in your area, then you might use that like in your titles and your, your headings and things like that.
ClikWiz Mike
32:53
If you live in an area that maybe you don’t live in a big city, then Google’s accuracy on that keyword tool goes way down. And so it, it might just show 10 or less search volume for your keywords. So what I do in that case is I’ll go to the nearest metro area and, and, and use, you know, like let’s say you’re in a, a small town in Texas, well, I’ll go, you know, I’ll use Dallas or Fort Worth or something like that and, and get the search volume so I know what order there of importance to use and then switch Dallas out with my city.
Steve Burnett
33:31
Oh, that’s cool. Okay. Right. Here’s some ninja juice. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Hold on. Yeah, yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
33:38
But you don’t really have to overthink it, you know, you know what your, what keywords are, are relevant in your industry.
Steve Burnett
33:45
Okay. I would kinda mentioned other agencies, I, I’d like to, so I wanna address this, but, but do it as gracefully as possible. And I imagine that this is kind of a hassle for you because you hear about it when they come back to you. It’s very common that agencies will reach out to all of us. Like, I’d imagine they reach out to you too, just not knowing. Like a lot of times they’ll re you know, reach out to me and all the painters and they’ll say, Hey Steve, you’re, you’re not ranking in Venice, Florida for painting business coach, for painting contractors. I’m like, well, I don’t care. I’m, you know, personally, I’m not trying to rank in Venice, but for everybody else, for painting contractors, it is important. And so it’s very common cuz I hear it. They’ll reach out to me first say, Hey, you know, I’m using Mike, he’s a great guy, but these guys just called me and they said, I’m not ranking for these. They sent me this great big report with all these colors on it and numbers and, and I don’t know what any of it means, but they, they told me that whoever my guys, he’s not doing a great job and I’m missing out on all these opportunities. What’s y you know, what’s going on here? Right.
Steve Burnett
34:46
Yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
34:47
That’s a really good question. Because they, yeah, they, they reach out to me all the time. They reach out to our clients all the time.
Steve Burnett
34:55
Do they reach out to you and say, Mike, you’re not ranking Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
35:00
For just random keywords. Like, I don’t even care about that keyword, but, you know, and, and the thing is, with seo, there’s always more to do. You’re, you’re never really done. That’s why we don’t sell SEO as just a one, you know, one project. Yeah. It’s never just one project because, you know, you, so it’s
Steve Burnett
35:22
Evergreen.
ClikWiz Mike
35:23
Everybody’s constantly working to improve their rankings and you know, they’re knocking each other off the top. So it’s, it’s a never ending process. And so there’s always things to improve and some of those things aren’t necessarily what’s gonna move the, the, the goalpost. Right. You know, or the move the ball forward and, but it’s easy for someone who’s just sending out these cold emails to produce one of these reports to say, look at all these things that you’re not doing on your site. And nine times out of 10, the, the person doesn’t know what the person’s talking about. So it’s easy to say, oh my gosh, my, my SEO guy’s not doing what, what I’m supposed to be doing or, or you know, I need to get this fixed and I need to pay this guy thousands of dollars to fix this. When chances are they’re probably scammers, you know, or at least not very honest.
Steve Burnett
36:20
Yeah. Cuz if they were worth their weight and salt, they wouldn’t need all this cold outreach. Right,
ClikWiz Mike
36:25
Right, right. Yeah. And you know, not to say every agency that does cold outreach is, is bad. There’s a lot of good ones out there, but unfortunately 90% of ’em are Yeah. Dishonest.
Steve Burnett
36:38
Because I mean, if, if they were, if they did well and knew what they were doing, wouldn’t their own sites be ranking and generating their own leads online?
ClikWiz Mike
36:47
Yes and no. So a lot of times, you know, it’s like the contractor’s house that’s falling apart.
Steve Burnett
36:54
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Got it.
ClikWiz Mike
36:57
You know, my website personally is, is the last one to get my attention. I know it’s bad, but just because an agency’s website isn’t, isn’t ranking well okay. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a bad agency, it just means they’re putting more effort into their clients or getting clients than they are their own site. Sometimes there’s, there’s quicker ways to do it than
Steve Burnett
37:21
I think in all fairness. Yeah. You, you get a ton of referrals and so you don’t need, where I think in their situation they need leads. Yes. Where, you know, they should be optimizing their own website first to generate leads where you, you get a ton of referrals. So it’s kinda like, eh, you know, I, you know, I can relate cuz we don’t stay on top of our website as much as we should either for the same reason. Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
37:44
For me, just because I’m pretty established in the industry, Google leads are my worst leads. Interesting. They don’t, they don’t know me, you know, and so those are the, the hardest ones to close. And usually they are customers or prospects that maybe aren’t ready for our services yet, you know, they’re not ready for the price point and we’re, we’re mid-range price point. We’re not even the most expensive, but even a long shot.
Steve Burnett
38:12
No, you’re not. And I’d like to address that real quick. So there’s, there’s a, another agency out of Texas and another, they’re getting nine to $11,000 to build a website where in contrast you’re building out full d y b website conversion funnels, which means it has all of my marketing psychology in there that does two things for everybody. It helps them to pre-sell qualified leads and it helps them to detour unqualified leads, saving them time and hassle so they can focus on high quality leads and your building. Those are for like 3,900, you know, versus the, you know, the others are like nine and 11,000, which is very reasonable and they almost pay for themselves within, you know, first couple months and then it’s just a pure gravy moving forward. So, appreciate that. Thank you.
ClikWiz Mike
38:57
Yeah. We’ve had many customers who even without increasing rankings, when we launch one of the, one of their sites with a D Y B funnel, their conversions go up and conversion as the percentage of leads versus visitors. So if, you know, if you were getting a 5% conversion before and now you’re getting 10%, that’s, that’s five more leads per hundred visitors. So
Steve Burnett
39:22
Yeah. Makes
ClikWiz Mike
39:23
A huge difference.
Steve Burnett
39:24
Awesome. Thank you. Speaking of leads, there was, now I heard about this cuz we get busy and we don’t connect as often as we should. And I’m, I’m guilty, I heard about this one from one of our clients and it was Jim Bailey and, and one of the mastermind groups. He’s like, yeah, Mike’s got me doing this something about $35 Google leads and it’s different from anything else. And so would you, would you unpack that for us? What, what exactly is going on there? Because Jim was pretty excited about it. I’m like, what, you know why I’m like, Mike, why are you telling me about that?
ClikWiz Mike
39:55
Yeah. So Google finally opened up local service ads for painting companies a while back and Jim’s kind of a unicorn because he is just his market, he’s just crushing it out there. I don’t know what the difference is in his marketing. It must be just terrible competition because he is,
Steve Burnett
40:14
Oh, he’s got some stiff competi. So he’s in, he’s in, you know, the greater Phoenix, is it Phoenix, Phoenix area. And he’s, I mean maybe, but, but I know of some really s stiff competitors he has out there. So, you know,
ClikWiz Mike
40:29
And I, I say that because the volume of leads that he gets is a lot more than what we typically see on other clients. But local service ads is, it’s a no-brainer. It’s easy to set up, you can set it up in about 30 minutes. Okay. And it, you, the leads are typically yeah, between 30 and 40 bucks and they’re qualified leads. And if it’s not a, a qualified lead, meaning there’s somebody looking for a job or maybe a service that you don’t actually provide that’s not in your profile, then you can actually dispute it and they’ll refund you the, the money. And so they’re typically, you know, with Google ads, we struggle with a lot of unqualified leads in especially the last six months to a year. But with local service ads, the the leads are, are quality leads and cheap. I mean, 35 bucks a lead, you can, you can make money on that all day,
Steve Burnett
41:32
So. Awesome. Okay. And you can help, you help folks set that up as well?
ClikWiz Mike
41:36
Yeah, yeah. We help set ’em up. We typically do it as kind of a, a freebie, whatever we’re doing local service ads or SEO for somebody because it’s one of those things for on our end, once we set it up, it doesn’t require much effort on, on our end. Okay. Now it does require some management on your end. So by that I mean you need to make sure that you are constantly getting reviews from your jobs and you need to manage your, your leads in their system. So when you go into their system, they have like a little dashboard and they’ll show you all of the leads. Some of them were charged, some of ’em were not. You can actually listen to the calls, they record ’em, and you can put in the customer’s name and email phone number while the phone number’s already in because they called.
ClikWiz Mike
42:30
But you can put in notes and then you can mark the lead as whether it was booked or not. So I highly, highly, highly recommend you doing that because what happens is Google wants to show the businesses that are getting, that are, that are closing those leads. You know, they want to make sure that the people who are using their service that are searching for painters and clicking on these ads, they wanna make sure that they’re getting the good service. Right. And so by you giving that feedback to Google, they will show you an ad higher in the list. Reviews is the most important thing, constantly getting good reviews. All else being equal, the, the company with the most positive reviews is going to be the first ad. And that one is probably where Jim Bailey is crushing it is because he’s got, he’s in a big market, it’s Phoenix and he’s, he’s showing up first every time. Okay. And so that’s, that’s gonna make a big difference. Okay. If you’re not first, you know, the, the leads depending on your market and how big it is, you know, it may only be one or two leads a week, but hey, that’s one or two leads you didn’t have. Yeah.
Steve Burnett
43:47
Yeah. So if you feel like you wanna throw money at something, we’re always a hard no unpaid leads for Angie’s Angie, something or other. And what are some of the other ones that, I’m trying not to give the full names of the rack. They were really bad rack. I just wanna come back and sue my pants off. But personally I hate ’em because they cause nothing but harm and issues for, for our clients and push their, push their site down the ERPs, you know, every time they Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
44:16
A lot of people getting started, you know, those kind, those services are kind of a necessary evil, you know, but you know, they B leads
Steve Burnett
44:25
Join bni. Yeah, yeah,
ClikWiz Mike
44:27
Yeah. There’s, there’s other ways to get better leads. Yeah. Unfortunately, the local service ads, if you’re just getting started and you have no reviews, you’re gonna have a hard time getting your ads shown. That’s
Steve Burnett
44:38
True.
ClikWiz Mike
44:39
One thing I can recommend too, to, to boost your chances, set your budget much higher than what you think you’re willing to, to spend. Okay. It will hardly ever spend it. And, and if it does, then you can just adjust it back down. But the, it, some customers, I could set their budget to a thousand a week and they’re still only gonna get one lead a week. You know, it just depends on your market
Steve Burnett
45:04
For the $35 or so.
ClikWiz Mike
45:06
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t really change the price of the lead.
Steve Burnett
45:09
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Right on. So we had a couple questions in, in the d y B community I posted yesterday, I said, Hey, got Klu Quizz, Mike coming back on the show. It’s been long overdue and a couple here, do you mind if I run these by you? Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
45:25
Absolut one absolutely.
Steve Burnett
45:25
From Thank you. One was from Cory Gardner, he said, if you can invest in paid ads versus SEO over the course of one year or more, what do you think would be a better long-term investment?
ClikWiz Mike
45:38
SEO all day. Yeah. SEO is going to generate the biggest ROI long term. Now, short term, it takes time. It’s a, it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. The nice thing about Google Ads is you can have an ad campaign set up in a, you know, a week or so and, and you know, as soon as you launch that campaign, you can be getting calls. The downside to Google ads, those calls can be very expensive. They’ve, the past six months to a year, it’s gotten really expensive. Mm. We’ve seen lead costs jump from, you know, 60 to a hundred dollars a lead up to a hundred, $200 a lead. Oh. And so they start to get prohibitive for a lot of our clients. And I also find that the smaller the budget, the harder it is to get your cost per lead down. Okay.
ClikWiz Mike
46:31
So SEO over time, you know, it’s, it’s an investment that takes, takes time. But you know, the, right now our, our kind of secret sauce is the local service ads combined with seo. Okay. So you can start to get some leads that’ll kind of pay for your seo. So you can hopefully not just be putting money out of pocket, assuming you hire an agency and not doing it yourself, but the, if you combine those two, at least you’ve got some of that cost offset with, with some new business coming in while you’re waiting for your rankings to, to climb up.
Steve Burnett
47:10
So, oh, that’s great. Okay. Thank you. That’s really good to to hear. The other one is from Buddy, I call him Slim Jim cuz you joined d y B. He started using the d I B scoreboard and there are a lot of KPIs and with leading and lagging indicators that we track on there. And one of ’em was health and he dropped, I think by tracking it, he dropped like 70 pounds out of the gate. Wow.
ClikWiz Mike
47:30
That’s
Steve Burnett
47:30
Awesome. Also, James Miller out of Canada, he says, question is SEO and WordPress versus custom coded? Is there a difference benefit to one or the other? And then I would just add, are there other options besides WordPress as well? So he’s, you know, he’s saying WordPress versus custom coded and that’d add in there. Are there other solutions besides WordPress these days regarding seo?
ClikWiz Mike
47:56
Yeah. So as far as SEO goes, you know, if you’re willing to put in the work, there’s really no difference as far as the outcome between WordPress and, you know, custom coded site. But these days, I don’t see any reason to do a custom coded site whatsoever. The time investment that’s involved in that is just, it doesn’t make any sense. So I guess
Steve Burnett
48:23
It be like going to put your own car together, order all the parts and put your own car together, or just go to the lot and buy one.
ClikWiz Mike
48:29
Right. Right. And by the time you, yeah, maybe you’ll save five or $10,000 on that, that car, but you’re gonna put a lot of hours into it.
Steve Burnett
48:39
So that comes back to principal, pardon me, of the hourly, hourly responsibility value. And I’ve got a, you know, video on YouTube about it, unpacking it. But basically if you’re building a half million dollar business and you do the math and you break that down $2,000 a year, then you’re responsible for $250 an hour. Or if you’re on your way to, to break the million, then you’re responsible, your hourly responsibility rate is $500 an hour. So then it comes back to like, can you really afford to be focusing your time, the driver of the business on some of these technical projects? Yeah. Or is it much cheaper just to hire it out?
ClikWiz Mike
49:12
Yeah. And like back to the, the car reference, you know, it’d be like every time you go to put gas in the car, you have to rebuild the gas tank and install a new new gas tank. Oh, right. Because now every time you add content to your site, well you gotta rebuild that page from scratch. And so with WordPress, you just copy and paste your, your text in and add a couple pictures and you know, the, the writing is, is the only part that takes time. The rest, you know, posting it takes five, 10 minutes. So,
Steve Burnett
49:43
And even the writing can be delegated to a content writer.
ClikWiz Mike
49:45
Exactly. Yeah. And so there’s really no reason, you know, a few years ago, WordPress themes were having a lot of speed issues. They were very bloated, so it was really hard to get them to, to load fast. And so that was maybe the only benefit that a hard coded site had versus WordPress. But even then I would, it, it didn’t, that was just one benefit, the time investment in it Okay. Still negated any benefit at all. So, but now the themes and, and and templates are, are much faster. They’ve gotten so much better now.
Steve Burnett
50:23
Right on. All right. Now I think this is my last question that I had teed up for you anyway, and this is what I’m most excited about, and that is, what are some trends or emerging technologies in digital marketing today?
ClikWiz Mike
50:40
Yeah, so I mean, the biggest one, biggest one all day hands down is ai.
Steve Burnett
50:46
There it is. I was waiting for it. I
ClikWiz Mike
50:47
Mean, I, I mean that’s, that’s the elephant in the room. Yeah. It’s,
Steve Burnett
50:53
Yeah. So what’s up with AI and how can we use it?
ClikWiz Mike
50:57
Gosh. And, and the, that’s such a big question because there’s, we’re so early in it that we have, we only begun to conceive what the possibilities are for it. Mm. But it, I can tell you right now that AI is going to change every industry and every aspect of our lives over the next 10 years. This is like, this is like 1995, you know, where internet we’re just getting into, you know, where the internet broke out. I
Steve Burnett
51:28
Remember, I’m olding up. I was there. Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
51:30
That was the year I graduated high school. So, so, you know, and now, now I’m at, you know, my dad’s age when, when that came out. And so, so now this AI stuff’s coming out and, and it’s, you know, I, I can see why my dad just kind of said, ah, I don’t wanna have anything to do with that stuff. Yeah, that’s, yeah. You kids, you, you guys do that stuff. And, and even now, like, you know, I can get him to email and he has a Facebook just to kind of see what his kids are up to, but he, he just, technology has left him. And, and it’s my choice, you know, he’s, he’s chosen not to get on the bandwagon. And so I’m having to, you know, now that I’m his age at that time, I’m having to force myself into, you know, learning AI and gosh, it just blows my mind every day.
ClikWiz Mike
52:22
Hmm. Every time I go to use it, it is like, wow, that just saved me. I just got done in 10 seconds. What would’ve taken me five hours before, you know? Hmm. I, I’ve been working on just some, you know, overall brand messaging for our business lately. And, you know, I can write, but I’m not great at it. And, and so just taking and, and writing something out and then plugging it into chat G p t and say, Hey, rewrite this in a more colorful tone and in seconds it’s like, bam. Wow, man, why didn’t I think of that? Yeah. And, and so it’s, it’s, it’s mind blowing. And so I, I highly recommend just as an overall personal and business strategy, learn it, go and use it every day. Go just, just go play with it. You know, do things like, you know, content creation is, is the big one that’s disrupting my industry right now. You know, AI is just, it, it’s, it’s complete, our industry as far as content generation goes, was the first, first one to disrupt. Sure. But it’s gonna disrupt every industry.
Steve Burnett
53:32
Any thoughts about Google responding, recognizing AI content, responding
ClikWiz Mike
53:39
Regards? Yeah, so they had, they came out and said that they, there, there’s no penalty for using AI content, but the caveat to that is, as long as your content is helpful, so back to their E E A T acronym, the expertise, or sorry, experience, expertise, authoritativeness trustworthiness, you know, your content has to be good, has to be helpful. And so sometimes the AI content, sometimes right outta the box, it might be incredible, but usually it’s gonna take some tweaking, you know, and so you can use it to streamline the content generation process, but just don’t, don’t go to chat g p T and say, write a blog post about interior painting and then just copy and paste it into your blog. That’s probably not gonna have much effect. But go to go to chat g p t and say, you know, give me 10 blog post ideas for a painting company in Dallas, Texas, and boom, you know, so, so just taking those ideas that’ll, that, you know, sometimes that’s the hardest part of writing a blog is what that write
Steve Burnett
54:58
About. Yeah. What am I gonna write about and still familiar to us? I’ll give you. Right. Or like what nobody wants to know about that. But the truth is, yes, they do. You know? Yeah.
ClikWiz Mike
55:06
They do, they do personal knowledge, you know. Yeah. What are the, what are the top searches about cabinet painting? You know, what, what do people wanna know? You know, so, and you could talk to it like a human and you know, usually it might take some massaging to, to get the answers that you’re looking for, but, you know, just start using it and get, get familiar with it. The other things that you wanna do is that you could try is, you know, posting. So give me a 500 word article about the best cabinet painter or cabinet painting processes, something like that. And, you know, it may not spit out a great article, but it’s something to start with. Some
Steve Burnett
56:00
Inspiration, some guidelines to work on. Take it, massage it, make it your own.
ClikWiz Mike
56:04
Yeah. Yeah. And if you have, if you’re decent at writing and you could, you have the time to just, you know, spend 15 minutes editing those articles, you know, and go to the d y b cafe, take some of those topics out of there, paste them into chat g p t and start from there. But don’t just copy and paste the articles word for word. Right on. Okay. But it’s, it’s a great tool. I highly recommend just as a, you know, on a personal and a business level, just get to know it cuz it’s coming and it’s coming fast.
Steve Burnett
56:37
Okay. Right on. Thank you. Well, I know you’re a real busy guy. I don’t want to keep you at much longer. However, is there a question I should have asked or any final comments that you’d like to make before we roll out?
ClikWiz Mike
56:48
Oh gosh, I can’t think of any questions that we didn’t cover that. I think we, we provided quite a bit of value here. I tried to thank you
Steve Burnett
57:00
For that. Appreciate it.
ClikWiz Mike
57:00
Tried to, tried to cover as much value. But, you know, final comments is, you know, if, you know, follow some of these tips that I’ve given you today, if you’re wanting to, you know, do it yourself, reach out to me if you have questions or just need, need some guidance or clarification on anything, happy to help. If you, if you really wanna accelerate your growth, then, then give us a call. We can schedule a strategy call. I can, I’m happy to walk through your site and your market and, you know, I’ll give you the, I’ll give you the honest truth and, and if it, if it makes sense for us to work together, I’ll, I’ll tell you. And if I know I can provide a good ROI for you, I’ll tell you if I can’t, I’ll tell you that too.
Steve Burnett
57:42
Right on. How, what’s the best way for them to reach out?
ClikWiz Mike
57:46
Go to our website, click quizz.com. C L I K W I z.com and, and there’s, you could schedule a strategy call right there.
Steve Burnett
57:56
Awesome. Mike, thank you so much. Thank you for being an awesome asset and partner to D Y B and a friend as well. Appreciate you and the service you provide. Thank you again for coming back on the show.
ClikWiz Mike
58:10
Yeah, thanks for having me, and appreciate you as well. Thank you.