Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 17, 2016.
Imagine you’re a homeowner looking for replacement window installation.
You’ve heard of a few contractors in your area, so you search Google to find out more about them.
When you do, here is the results page you see for each company:
Contractor A: Dozens of 5-star ratings across multiple review websites
Contractor B: Two one-star ratings on a single review website
Now, be honest: Which of these companies are you going to be more likely to research further?
Contractor A… by a country mile.
And you’re not alone. Everyone who compares the search results of these two companies is going to choose Contractor A.
Every. Single. Time.
Here’s why: In today’s always-online world, internet reviews are the definitive form of social proof.
People don’t buy anything anymore without first consulting online reviews.
They don’t decide which restaurant to eat at… the television they’ll buy… the brand of toothbrush they’ll stick in their mouth… until they read online reviews.
You better believe 99.9% of prospects scope out your online reputation before they even consider contacting you.
And if your search-results page looks more like Contractor B’s than Contractor A’s, you’re doomed.
The reason?
Well, the stat geeks at Harvard performed a study. They found that online reviews play an ENORMOUS role in deciding whether a prospect will buy.
Online reviews have so much influence that just a one-star increase on review websites like Yelp can increase profits by 5% to 9%.
That means if you have a four-star rating on Yelp, you’re making 5% to 9% less than the contractor across town with the five-star average. If you have a three-star average, you’re making 10% to 18% less. And so on.
And if you have no online reviews at all?
Brother, I don’t even want to think about how much money you’re leaving on the table. It’s too depressing.
What I do know is your competitor with a ton of glowing online reviews is snatching up your business.
And lots of it.
Want to know how much money your online reviews are leaving on the table? Let us perform a free, no-strings audit of your online reputation.
We’ll provide you with a comprehensive report that shows you EXACTLY where you need to improve your online reputation to start bringing in more money.
No games. No cost. No obligation. It’s our way of saying “thanks” for being an awesome email subscriber. (We’re nice like that.)
You have to act fast, though. This offer expires 6/31/16. If you don’t take advantage of the offer by then, wave bye-bye to it forever.
Call us at (817) 416-4333 or shoot us an email to get set up with your free online reputation audit.
Consider this: Even if you have a respectable four-star rating on a review website, you’re losing out on up to 9% of business to the guy with the five-star average. This online reputation audit is the key to beefing up your online ratings to even the playing field.
Talk to you soon!
-Rich
P.S. Remember, to get your free online reputation audit, you have to respond by 6/31/16. Otherwise, your online reputation may continue to hemorrhage money. Get to it!
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 17, 2016.
We hate to do it, but sometimes we have to “fire” our clients.
It’s a last resort, of course, but here’s the deal: If a client can’t/won’t/doesn’t do the minimum requirements it takes to be successful with our services—even after multiple attempts to course correct—then we have to move on.
When it comes to PPC, the #1 requirement we have for our clients is…
ANSWER YOUR PHONE!
That’s because PPC leads are ready to go right now. If you don’t answer your phone within the first four rings 90% of the time (or follow up with them rigorously), you’re losing those leads and burning money. Plain and simple.
Just this week we had to pull the plug on a PPC campaign for a Midwest window contractor who couldn’t meet our requirements.
The first month of the campaign, we generated 40 phone calls for the company… but they only answered 23 of them. To make matters worse, the client wasn’t following up on those missed leads.
We immediately hopped on the phone with the client to discuss how to fix their problem. One of the solutions we recommended was that unanswered office calls get transferred directly to the owner’s cell.
The client obliged. The situation got a little better. But after a few weeks, the missed calls started piling up again.
It went on like this until it was clear our recommendations were falling on deaf ears. Things just weren’t working out.
So we jumped on the phone with the client one more time. We told them that since they weren’t getting better at answering the phone, they were wasting their money. It would be best if we stopped their PPC campaign altogether.
The client agreed, and we parted ways amicably.
You might think, “If the client isn’t complaining, who cares? You’re still getting your money.”
Well, we care. We work with only one company per industry per area. If somebody isn’t going to maximize the leads in that area, we will find someone who will. It’s that simple.
Not following our PPC requirements is like ordering food at a restaurant and not eating it. Or buying a plane ticket and not showing up for the flight. You’re spending your money and getting nothing in return.
We don’t want you to do that. And we won’t let you.
Here’s the reality: 100% of our clients who follow our requirements make money from our PPC services. All of ‘em. Read the numerous case studies in our blog for hard proof.
If you’re good at answering your phone, you could join them. Contact us to see if you qualify for our PPC services. We’re looking for long-term growth partners who are serious about boosting business.
Thanks!
-Rich
P.S. Want to see a ridiculously simple trick to increase profits by 5% to 9%? I’ll show you in tomorrow’s email.
Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 17, 2016.
Meet Jennifer:
Jennifer
When you work with Jennifer, she’s the first person to talk to prospects who visit your website.
She “breaks the ice.” Gets the prospect to lower their defenses. Puts them in a buying mood.
Then, when the prospect is all happy, relaxed, and ready to buy, Jennifer is going to patch them directly to your phone line.
That’s because Jennifer is an online-chat operator.
MYM’s online chat box
Here’s the deal…
If you’re currently running a PPC campaign and do not have online chat on your website, just shut the whole thing down right now.
You’re losing out on so many leads, you’d probably have a heart attack if I told you the number.
You have ZERO idea how much cash in the bank you’re missing out on by foregoing online chat.
Let me explain…
For every client we do PPC for, we install a chat service on their website. It’s a little box that scrolls down the screen and plunks into a lower corner when prospects visit the website.
Our online chat box in the lower left-hand corner
We started using online chat on our PPC clients’ websites about a year and a half ago.
And the results have been astonishing.
Seriously. I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years. It takes a lot to shock me.
But when I saw the amount of online leads this tiny little box was pulling in, it blew my mind. This one-inch box in the corner of the screen had the lead-pulling power of a thousand salesmen on their “A” games.
Get a load of these results (numbers in the “Chat” column are leads generated from chat. Numbers in the “Leads” column are total amount of leads):
Contractor A: 86% of PPC leads come via online chat
Contractor B: 79% of PPC leads come via online chat
Contractor C: 81% of PPC leads come via online chat
Contractor D: 75% of PPC leads come via online chat
Contractor E: 82% of PPC leads come via online chat
I’ve got amazing online chat results for every letter of the alphabet. And then some. But you get the picture.
Here’s why online chat is freakily effective:
- Warms Up Prospects – It breaks the ice. It’s less stressful for a prospect than talking on the phone because they’re more in control of the conversation and don’t have to worry about a sales pitch. When the chat operator offers to connect the prospect to a call with you, the prospect is 100 times more likely to say yes.
- Immediately Answers Questions – Most people clicking on your website are at least considering a project. Whether they’re in the information-gathering stage or ready to remodel right now, they’re going to have questions. Online chat gives them immediate answers. And if the online-chat operator can’t provide an answer, they patch the prospect to you (setting you up nicely to schedule an appointment).
- Sets You Apart – Almost no contractors utilize chat on their websites. You instantly stand out by offering a unique, highly convenient way for prospects to get the information they want.
Bottom line: Online chat turbo-charges your lead generation. And your prospects love it.
Win-win.
If you’re not on board the online-chat train, you’re losing out on a ton of high-quality, easy-to-close leads. Simple as that.
Visit our PPC page to learn more.
Have a great day!
-Rich
P.S. Have you tried that super-simple (and no-cost) Facebook marketing technique I told you about? To my knowledge, no contractors are doing this. You’ll have a massive secret weapon against your competitors for pulling in extra business. Get to it!
Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 10, 2016.
Warning: Email contains multiple references to romantic-comedies (a.k.a. “chick flicks”).
Proceed at your own risk.
—
Last night was movie night at Casa De Harshaw, and it was my wife’s turn to pick what we were going to watch.
I plunk down on the couch with my (extra) buttery popcorn, while my wife rifles through our DVD collection.
After a few minutes, she pulls a movie from the rack: She’s All That.
Ugh.
If you haven’t seen this cinematic gem, you’ve probably watched one of the 157 movies just like it.
It’s about an unpopular nerdy high school girl who transforms into the attractive prom queen without sacrificing her character and personality.
Yeah, it’s pretty original.
Anyway, as I’m watching the main character morph from Zero to Hero, it reminded me of a current client. (I don’t always daydream about work when watching a movie—only when it’s my wife’s pick!)
The client is a Washington state-based gutter company called Leafless in Seattle (yeah, it’s wordplay on Sleepless in Seattle—these romantic comedies are haunting me).
When they joined MYM in 2015, their online marketing needed a Hollywood movie-worthy makeover from head to toe:
- Their website was “meh.”
- They had never run a PPC campaign in their life.
- The highest they were ranking for SEO was on the 12th page (no, not the 12th result on the first page—the 12th PAGE).
Over the course of the next year, we radically overhauled Leafless in Seattle’s online marketing, performing a complete “She’s All That” on the contractor’s website, PPC, and SEO.
Here’s a breakdown of what we did… and the results:
Website
Leafless in Seattle’s pre-MYM website wasn’t bad. But it definitely didn’t demand prom-queen amounts of attention.
Take a look…
Leafless in Seattle homepage circa 2014 (above the fold)
Like I said, not an abomination like some contractor websites. But it looked a little dated and lacked a strong identity.
Using our Identity Discovery process, we created a powerful message that conveys what makes Leafless in Seattle unique, special, and worth choosing. Then we wrapped the message in contemporary, world-class website design.
Here’s a gander at the finished product…
Leafless in Seattle MYM-built homepage (above the fold)
Bang—a certified, 10-out-of-10 knockout.
But there’s no point in getting a makeover if no one’s going to see it. This was only step one of our grand plan for Leafless’ online marketing transformation.
PPC
Now that we’d built the client a killer website, we needed to drive traffic to it.
Since SEO can take months to promulgate, we created a PPC campaign to get Leafless in Seattle some high-quality leads immediately.
As the client had never tried PPC before and was a little skeptical of its effectiveness, we started them off at the minimum monthly ad spend for their service and market.
The campaign launched in August 2015. Since then, Leafless has generated 165 quality leads at an ultra-low cost of $121.16 per lead:
Circled amounts are total leads and total cost per lead.
Cha-ching.
SEO
The third step in our online marketing makeover was SEO.
Prior to joining MYM, Leafless in Seattle’s search-engine results were bottom-of-the-barrel awful. They weren’t even ranking for 98% of their keywords!
Here’s a look at the first SEO report we generated for them in July 2015 (prior to us starting SEO):
Before we took over their SEO, the client was not listed for 98% of their keywords.
To get their rankings up to MYM standards, we performed an all-out SEO onslaught: social media, blogs, case studies, service-area pages, business citation creation and management, weekly reporting. The works.
Less than a year later, their rankings have skyrocketed:
As of 6/4/2016, we have the client ranking in the top 10 for over 80% of their keywords.
They’re in the top 10 for 80% of their keywords and in the top 20 for all of them. That’s phenomenal.
Since their SEO is just now entering the proper “optimizing” period (usually 6 to 12 months), these rankings are only going to continue to improve.
Transformation Complete
In a span of only 11 months, we performed a total “She’s All That” on Leafless in Seattle’s online marketing.
Their website is compelling and looks amazing. Their SEO is driving loads of organic traffic. And their PPC is raking in leads left and right.
Fast-forward to the 2:07 mark of this quick video to see why you need a great website and SEO and PPC to create a powerful online marketing presence that demands attention and propels sales.
If you don’t have all three, you’re toast. Watch the video for more information.
Until next time,
-Rich
P.S. Next email, I’ll tell you about an incredibly powerful marketing tool that made this hardened marketing vet’s eyes bug out of his head when he saw the results. Almost NOTHING shocks me in marketing anymore. But this did.
Stay tuned.
