Podcast Transcript
Erick (00:04):
I tried to catch it on the recording. Anyway, welcome to the next episode of Landscape Gems.
Dan (00:17):
Landscape gems, where you get all the gems about landscaping.
Erick (00:24):
Hey Dan, how are you? Hey.
Dan (00:26):
Hey, Eric.
Erick (00:28):
So are you?
Dan (00:29):
Good too. You look good.
Erick (00:32):
Thanks. Thanks, man. Yeah, I'm doing well. Appreciate that. So what are we talking about today? I think you pulled up some facts and figures for our audience.
Dan (00:48):
Yeah, so we wanted to talk about some common misconceptions with regard to digital marketing in this day and age. And I think there are a lot of misconceptions that have sort of developed. There's obviously many, many people weighing in on this subject and who want to tell you that something is working or something is not working, or this is the best way and trumps everything else. And I think it's great to be on the bleeding edge of tech and always trying new things. I also think that it's very important to do the things that have been successful in the past until they are unsuccessful. And I will say that even snail mail marketing mailers do still work and you can still get a return on investment in things like that. We saw an ad the other day that the person was saying, SEO is dead, search engine optimization is no longer relevant. Which is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And I think we looked at it and wasn't he actually selling seo? Wasn't that?
Erick (02:17):
Yeah, yeah. It's funny, a lot of these guys who put out these ads that say SEO is dead or email marketing is dead, all these kind of things, they're just doing it to attract attention. Right.
Dan (02:36):
It's a total click bait.
Erick (02:38):
Exactly. Exactly. It's their marketing strategy they want to catch you with, with SEO is dead or email marketing's dead or Facebook ads are dead. They want to catch you with that so that you call them and find out, well, what do I do? And then they go, well
Dan (03:02):
Do seo,
Erick (03:03):
Do SEO with us. Because what we meant to say was, everybody else's SEO is dead. Yeah,
Dan (03:10):
Exactly. Exactly. Well, so that being said, we just wanted to address some of those misconceptions and just give some true data. Now we have some stats, they're not, they're general, they're not industry specific. So obviously having, you're going to have different results with different types of marketing in different industries just because people are in different places. Your customers are going to be found in different places searching for the service or product. So first off, one of the things that we hear a lot when we're talking to our clients is just a huge interest in ads. Let's ads pay per click. We want to be up there at the top. And there, that's actually, and I'll let you give these because I don't have them memorized, and you may Eric, but the percentage of people that click on an ad versus the percentage of people that click on an organic search result is dramatically, dramatically different.
(04:32):
Especially if you're talking about the top organic search results. And I think the main reason for that, correct me if I'm wrong, if is that it says add. Normally if I'm searching for a product or service myself, and I'm going down through the search results, anything that says add in my mind, I go, oh, well they just paid to be there. They're not necessarily the best or the most relevant. And I scroll on the first organic search result and I typically click on that and then the stats that I'll give are obviously going to be caused by what we're talking about right now, which is a percentage of people.
Erick (05:13):
Yeah, yeah. I'll just add to that. It's about anywhere from two to 6% of people will click an ad, which is pretty low when you consider around 40% of people are going to click the first result. That isn't an ad. And part of the reason for that is we live in a time right now where there's so much advertising all everywhere you go, whether it be social media on Google, on even on certain websites, and even when you're driving around with the billboards, radio ads, everything. We live in a time where there's so much advertising happening that people start putting on blindfolds to ads and they, it's like people get sick of 'em now, it doesn't mean they don't work, they obviously do work. It just means that the rate at which people are going to respond to your ad is much less than what it used to be back in the day. Let's take the fifties for example. You put out an advertisement in the newspaper and people would take well to that. People would actually call based on the ad that you had. Whereas now it's very rare that you see something like that happening. I would say it's probably pretty rare for or far less common that people are responding to ads as they used to.
Dan (07:02):
Yeah, well totally. And so if anyone didn't catch that, it's an ad being two to 4% or wasn't it? Or was it four to six?
Erick (07:13):
It's two to six, six, but you, Jen, in total honesty. Honesty, most ads that I've reviewed, most ad campaigns I've reviewed have about a 4%.
Dan (07:27):
4%, okay. Yeah. And that's about when I, I've clicked on an ad before for service. It's probably out of 80 or a hundred tries. It probably is only three or four times in clicking on the ad. And then you said it close to 40% for the top organic result,
Erick (07:49):
Which is the person showing up at the top of Google, not that isn't actually an ad.
Dan (07:56):
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So in terms of the actual return on investment, if we're, you're saying, well, I want to do some marketing for my company, I want to get in front of my potential clients and it's very important for me to do that because I need to grow my client base and I want to grow my company. Overall, what type of marketing should you do? If you're looking at ads in terms of return on investment, typically that's going to be around 200%. So if you invest a thousand dollars into ads, you'll make $2,000 in return from the ad that you ran. And that's viable. I mean, making twice the amount of money that you invest is great. You're basically doubling your money. And I think a lot of businesses will do that and it is easier than creating an organic result in terms of the process of doing it. But when you look at a few different factors, which we'll talk about, we would lean toward SEO as a solution. SEO has an average return on the investment of 2200%. So way, way more. So if you are investing a thousand dollars, you would make $22,000 in return, which is really dramatic in terms of what you can get and chime in anytime you want. But, and a lot of people right now are looking at social media as well, and we threw that one in. There is typically 95% return on investment.
Erick (10:05):
Well, yeah, they're actually taking a loss.
Dan (10:09):
You're not actually even making money typically. Now, again, the reason I preface it with this in industry specific is because sometimes certain industries do really, really well on social media with service-based businesses, typically contractors, we have not seen success on social media in terms of the return very often at all. So that's pretty
Erick (10:38):
Accurate in fact. So I wanted to touch on all of these for a second. So just because you mentioned the social media last, what I have actually seen, I've seen like landscapers take a loss on social media ads for a few different reasons. Either they didn't have a compelling offer or they had poor quality pictures or video. That's usually going to be the top thing that results in ineffective social media ads or Facebook ads. And then the other thing is just really a lack of technical. I, I've seen them throw money at Facebook ads and not really know what they were doing and end up coming out at a loss.
(11:45):
Anyway, that's what I've observed with social media ads now with Google Ads, I have seen for landscapers, I've seen them break even. I've seen them make higher ROIs. That really comes down to technical. I've also seen them take a lot of losses. And that's just kind of same thing with the social media ads where you go in, you don't really know what you're doing and you kind of just trust Google to lead the way and you spend a few thousand on ads and end up at a loss. So I have seen that happen. Now, one thing I will mention regarding Google Ads, and Dan I'm sure you could chime in on this as well, the types of people who I've seen who are like diehard Google Ads fans are either, they're usually either a startup who doesn't have any kind of SEO or they're completely dominating their market through SEO and they're just looking for an extra way to get more leads.
Dan (13:06):
I would agree. Yeah. When your s e o is killing it, if you imagine you're the number one landscaper in your city and surrounding cities and you're getting the lion's share of the organic traffic and you want to just absolutely slaughter everyone, then the only thing left to do is Google ads. Really. So on the top end I would say that. And then you've got a ton of, obviously you're very profitable, you're getting a ton of leads and you have your flush. So you can go, where are the last bits of market that we can take? Let's take that because hey, look, if I'm number one already for landscape designer in X area, I might as well have the ad at the top that matches. So that's definitely a factor. Yeah, there was something I was going to add and now it's leaving me.
Erick (14:07):
Well, I was going to add something to that too. So regarding startups, I was going to say for a lot of people who are just getting started, that instant gratification that ads provide tends to really be there for startups where they need business right now because they don't have any and what's the best solution? And they look at SEO and they get told it could take three to six months and they go, well, I don't have three to six months, I need leads right now. So they go and purchase leads or they use Google ads because it provides, even though the higher R OI is with seo, they're really looking for something to solve an immediate problem and not so much thinking with a long-term solution that's both more economical and produces a higher r i.
Dan (15:10):
Yep, exactly what I was going to talk about was the time. And so No, it's great. It's great. And that kind of comes down to exactly what Eric just said, is that the situation that your business is, and in the place that you're in, I will say this, which is that personally you being a business owner, if I own my traffic versus I'm buying the traffic, there is that implication of, well, if I'm using Go, the Google ads can sort of be a short term or almost like become a crutch. Because if you use that as your core source of leads, literally as soon as you stop funding the leads turnoff like a faucet. Cause you don't own that traffic. Google owns that traffic. If you are doing SEO and you can afford the time and depending on the firm, it doesn't have to take a long time.
(16:22):
There's so many factors in it, and Eric can speak to this much more than I can, but sometimes a result can happen really quickly. You can get massive gains much quicker than average with S E O. Most firms don't want to make that promise because there's so many variables. It's not up to the firm how fast the results happen because it's the third party, it's Google, it's how they're reading the website, how often they read the website with the algorithm that is going to dictate the ranking. And so while it can happen very fast and there's things that a really good firm can do to expedite the SEO O results, they're going to want to prepare you for, what if it takes a while to get the result? And usually it is three months on the short end to six months to really start seeing something that's significant. And so anyway, those are things to keep in mind. But at that point, you own that traffic, it's yours, it's happening because of your website, nothing is going to switch off and you're getting a much, much higher percentage of clicks than with an ad. And the return on the investment is so much larger that it's just directly correlated. All the success. The most successful companies speci, especially landscapers, are the ones that are at the top of Google, even if they're falling down in other areas, which we talk about in a later podcast.
Erick (18:07):
Yeah, I wanted to actually mention, because you were talking about the timeline to get results with seo. You know, there are companies out there, and I'm not going to name any of 'em because I don't want to bash anybody, but there are companies out there who reel in landscapers or other types of companies with a very low price tag. And the thing that you have to know if you're shopping around for an SEO o company is mean Dan, if a random person who you've never met told you they were going to sell you a Lamborghini for $200, what comes to mind immediately?
Dan (18:56):
It's inflatable.
Erick (18:59):
And if it was me, I'd be like, well, okay, well what's wrong with it? Yeah, because you that at a price tag like that, there must be something else going on. Why does the dealership charge 200,000, 300,000 for this car? And this guy who I've never met before wants to sell it to me for $200. Exactly. So anybody who watches this, I just want to highly recommend that. Ask questions when shopping around for an SEO company and try to find out there are SEO companies, ours included, who will project your R oi. We will take a look at your market and your competition and we'll take a look at what people are searching for to give you a pretty accurate look at what your return on investment is going to be. Not all companies will do that. In fact, a lot of the cheaper companies aren't going to do that. What they'll do is they'll reel you in with a very low price tag and they'll say, these are the deliverables and they're going to list a few things out that they're going to do for you with no promise or vision of potential r o i for you. So I just want to add that to what you said.
Dan (20:39):
Yeah, and that kind of hearkens back to a previous podcast where we were talking about, well we were talking about salaries, but it correlates to the value of a service. I mean, if something really you get what you pay for is what it is. If you're buying something on price, that's what you're going to get is a price. If you're buying something on value, you're going to get value. So anyhow, there's another thing that I'll throw in there just cause I just thought of it, which is an old, I don't actually know where this came from, but it's an old sort of salesperson thing to say. But when someone is asking for a lower price, you know, have three factors involved in a service, you have fast, good, and cheap, and you can only have two if you want it to be good service and you also want it to be fast, it's not going to be cheap. If you want it to be cheap and good, it's not going to be fast. Does that make sense? Yeah. Be fast. What are the other two? Fast and cheap. If you want it to be fast and cheap, it's not going to be good, right? You're going to sacrifice good.
(22:12):
And you think about this if you want, and as a landscaper, if someone says, I want fast and I want cheap, well you're not going to be able to do a very good job for them. You're going to be able to do a fast job and you might charge 'em less because you're going to get it done really fast and not going to take you a lot of time. But it will not be nearly as good. If someone says, I want it to be the best lawn I've ever seen and I want it to be cheap, then it's probably not going to be very fast because you're going to get to it when you're done with all of your other jobs and you're not going to show up right away. You're not going to get that job, then it's going to go to the bottom of the priority list cause you're not getting paid much for it.
(22:51):
And if they want it to be good and fast, they want trophy on right now, you're going to bump 'em to the top of the list and you're going to charge 'em the most amount of money. It's not going to be cheap. It's something to think with a firm, you really do get what you pay for when you're talking to any type of marketing company, which I will also say a good firm to use is going to be an honest firm. We've analyzed marketing from other firms a number of times, and if it's good, we tell the customer, the firm you have is actually doing a really great job for you. We don't want to poach or try and take that customer away from someone that's doing a great job because we wouldn't want that to be done to us. And so in certain circumstances, we'll reinforce their decision to have chosen the marketing company they've chosen. But you know, should be able to have that is someone that's going to be honest with you and tell you if it's good or not. We've gauged many other firms many other times, and if they're good, we say they're good. If they're not good, we give exact reasons why and we're typically relatively gentle about it. But we'll just say, these are some things that are positive and these are some areas that they missed that they probably really should have addressed. Here's why those things are important, et cetera, et cetera. So
Erick (24:33):
What else? I was going to tell you a story actually, just because we were talking about a moment ago. We were talking about people who go for the low price SEO service. So Dana, I think I've told you this story before, but there was a company, I won't name any names, and this was years ago before you and I actually even started landscape marketing and seo, but this company asked me for a quote on, on SEO services. And I did a lot of research and there was so much opportunity in this market, these guys, I had it all mapped out exactly how they could have literally made hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. And the price they got was a little more than what they were currently paying an SEO company. And that s e o company they had been with for two years and saw no results. And so you were
Dan (25:47):
Quoting them in this example just slightly higher than what they were paying.
Erick (25:51):
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, and they were with one of the cheap s e o companies.
Dan (26:01):
Oh, I know. I remember this.
Erick (26:03):
And so I gave them the price and they're like, that's way too much. And I was like, well, I hear you, but you see in a matter of a few months be making significantly more than you're currently making and it's not going to cost you that much. And they're like, yeah, but these guys are cheaper. And literally they could not think with it. And I was, it was frustrating for me and that's why I don't work in sales by the way. That's why you do sales, because you're much better at communicating those things. I'm much better at the technical, nerdy stuff
Dan (26:50):
I am with you. That is just a super common issue, just price selling, working with a lot of salespeople over the years. A lot of salespeople want to just price sell. That's what they want to do. And I would have salespeople in my previous career going, I would hear them saying, well, how's X price? Does that work for you? Can you think you can manage that? Oh, okay, well what about this? And I'm like, I don't hear you describing a product at all. I just hear you saying a price. And what that's like is, that's me walking into a restaurant and sitting down and the waiter or waitress walking up and saying, how's 1599 for lunch? Is that doable for you? Can you do 1599? Is that okay? Is that acceptable? The obvious question is, well, what am I eating? Am I getting the road the roadkill special for this? What I, are you serving me for 1599? 1599? If you have, and then it's the whole other side of that that people don't see is if the person says yes, if I'm the customer and I go, yeah, 1599 is great. Well that locks me at 1599.
(28:07):
The salesperson is stuck now at 1599, which severs off all the opportunities for me to get a higher value than 1599.
(28:18):
The example I got is, well, what if this is a steakhouse and they overorder the nine ounce filet for the dinner steak and it's going to go bad, and they have 15 pounds of filets that they need to sell at the lunch hour, and it's 1899 for what normally is a $40 filet. It's the same steak. They're just serving for lunch. If I went to lunch and someone said, is 1599 good? And I said, yes, that means, or what's your budget? That's another bag. Big one. I'm down a rabbit hole now. But your budget is, it is not the most effective question because I might say, well, I usually spend like 12, 13 bucks on lunch. Well then they're going to go, okay, well I'm not going to tell him about this filet because he's not going to spend more than 12 or 13 bucks. So I lose out on the value opportunity of a nine ounce filet for 1899, not the nine ounce. If someone tells me that nine ounce is there and then it's available, which I didn't know was available, I'm going to buy that all day long because I want the nine ounce filet for 1899.
(29:26):
So the value, the price, or the value versus price subject is really, really important. And as a business owner, when you're analyzing different things, it is very important to be able to recognize a price that's too low, but also be asking a firm, well, what's the best case scenario? If price wasn't an option, what type of results are you capable of giving me? And where could we get to with this campaign? What's the most beautiful ideal scene that you could possibly produce for me as a customer? And those are going to be telling answers too. Because if a company, if the only value they have is that they're cheap, then you're going to figure that out with questions like that. Because they're not going to be talking about, well, we're going to get you to this. Ideally the perfect scenario, we're going to get you to X ranking. You're going to take X percentage of the market. Your lifetime value of a client is this multiplied by the actual traffic in your area at this percentage of the market equals X amount of return on your investment.
(30:42):
If they're not breaking, then the things down like that for you, then it's a red flag and you're actually going to be burning your money. And that's another thing that we encounter all the time is people who've tried marketing before I worked with a company, I tried that, it doesn't work. I'm not interested in doing it. I tried it, it doesn't work. I'm never doing that again. You had a bad experience. So it's not that your idea was wrong, your idea was right. Marketing works if it's done correctly. And if you don't have someone legitimately ripping you off, and unfortunately there are companies out there that do that. It's not everywhere, but it happens. Anyway. Yeah. Get me off the soapbox, Eric, get me off.
Erick (31:25):
No, I like it. Go. Keep going. We got time. Actually, I was going to say we were good time. We were going to keep this one a little shorter. It's been about half an hour, something like that. Yeah. Did you want to show our audience what that thing you were doing earlier?
Dan (31:46):
No.
Erick (31:48):
What? Okay, fine. I'm just messing with you. Alright. I
Dan (31:56):
Was flexing a muscle or something. I was doing something lewd.
Erick (32:01):
It was dumb. I'm just trying to embarrass you.
Dan (32:07):
It's good, it's good. The 11 people that are going to watch this are going to be so entertained. Watch, by the way.
Erick (32:16):
Oh, go
Dan (32:16):
Ahead. Thank you. Thank anyone watching these. Thank you guys so much for being an audience for us and we really hope we're bringing value to you. If you could like the videos and subscribe, that would be great. This is obviously sponsored by Landscape Marketing and seo. If you have marketing questions, you can call us right in the number@landscapemarketing.com and one of us is going to answer the phone most likely. And we would love to help you for real. We'd love to help guide you. And that doesn't even mean purchasing a service from us, but if you just want to bounce stuff off of us or even have us analyze your website for free or analyze someone else's website for free, we'll do things like that to help out.
Erick (33:02):
Yeah, yeah. Good point. Good point. And we're working on the growth map right now, which is going to be an exciting new release. And hey, what
Dan (33:14):
Does MAP stand for?
Erick (33:16):
Marketing Action Plan.
Dan (33:18):
Oh, that sounds really awesome. I'm so curious about what that is.
Erick (33:23):
Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll release it. And our 11 listeners are going to, they're going to be blown away. They're
Dan (33:33):
Going to grow
Erick (33:35):
With a map,
Dan (33:36):
With a map,
Erick (33:39):
All I think outro
Dan (33:41):
Music.
