Podcasts about web savvy

In this Checkout episode, we dive into the habits and inspirations of Mike Rhodes, the mastermind behind Mike Rhodes Ideas and the bestselling The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. Mike discusses his admiration for brands like Frank Green and Sheet Society, his go-to tools like ChatGPT and Cursor, and the books that have shaped his journey, including The Goal and Co-Intelligence. From walking his daughters to school to crafting scripts that empower brands, Mike offers a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of a true innovator.Check out our full-length interview with Mike Rhodes here:Inside the Idea Factory: Mike Rhodes' AI-Powered Google Ads Hacks | #471This episode was brought to you by: Deliver In PersonShopify PlusAbout your guest:Mike is the Founder and Main Ideas Guy at Mike Rhodes Ideas, helping businesses and marketers stay ahead with cutting-edge strategies, tools and insights. He has built and sold four businesses, including WebSavvy, which was one of Australia's largest independent agencies for over a decade and was recognised by Google in 2018 as one of their Top 18 agencies worldwide. A sought-after speaker, Mike has delivered keynotes at over 100 events globally and co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, the world's best-selling book on the subject. These days, you're likely to find him walking his daughters to school, experimenting with AI innovations, or carving through forest trails on his mountain bike.About your host:Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading eCommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia's Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Add To Cart, we're joined by Mike Rhodes, the Founder and Main Ideas Guy at Mike Rhodes Ideas. With a career spanning four successful business exits, including WebSavvy—an agency named one of Google's Top 18 globally—Mike shares how focusing on problem-solving and innovation has driven his success. He reveals the power of his PMAX scripts, which are helping brands like UNICEF, Helly Hansen and The Body Shop uncover hidden ad spend opportunities. From reshaping ad strategies to preparing for AI's game-changing impact on search, Mike delivers insights every eCommerce professional needs to hear.This episode was brought to you by: Deliver In PersonShopify PlusAbout your guest:Mike is the Founder and Main Ideas Guy at Mike Rhodes Ideas, helping businesses and marketers stay ahead with cutting-edge strategies, tools and insights. He has built and sold four businesses, including WebSavvy, which was one of Australia's largest independent agencies for over a decade and was recognised by Google in 2018 as one of their Top 18 agencies worldwide. A sought-after speaker, Mike has delivered keynotes at over 100 events globally and co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, the world's best-selling book on the subject. These days, you're likely to find him walking his daughters to school, experimenting with AI innovations, or carving through forest trails on his mountain bike.About your host:Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading eCommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia's Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.Please contact us if you: Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart betterEmail hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trevor Henselwood started his career in Canadian Broadcasting before making the move to Australia to explore the digital space. As the head of growth at WebSavvy, Trevor has played a vital role in helping numerous eCommerce brands thrive, including some of the most beloved businesses in the nation. In this podcast Trevor explores the complexities of awareness marketing, offering valuable insights and practical advice for business owners and marketers alike. Listen in as he unpacks the challenges of measuring the impact of awareness marketing, the importance of brand messaging, the seesaw effect of investment and ROI, and the need to diversify marketing channels. Key Topics The Importance of Brand Messaging and Awareness Marketing - Creating a clear introduction to the brand - Highlighting the benefits of the product or service - Aligning the website with the brand message - Allocating a specific portion of the marketing budget for awareness (10-20%) - Importance of understanding different audience types and having benchmarks for performance Integrating Elements in Awareness Marketing - Challenges of integrating various elements in awareness marketing - Difficulty of measuring everything in awareness marketing - Importance of measuring success based on appropriate KPIs Marketing Strategies and Budgeting - Marketing budget for small businesses - Anticipating changes in the market - Knowing when to pull the marketing plug - The seesaw effect of investment and ROI Diversifying Marketing Channels - Diversifying marketing channels based on the target audience - Warning about the risk of diluting the brand message when diversifying channels - The importance of a consistent core campaign message across different channels Business ROAS and Holistic Measurement - The concept of business ROAS - Using alternate measures to show the effectiveness of awareness campaigns - How awareness marketing can help qualify more people for performance marketing Advice for Newcomers to Google Ads - Focusing on defining audiences and working on performance before venturing into awareness campaigns - Ensuring fulfillment and positive customer experiences before investing in ads Revisiting the Importance of Awareness Marketing in the Overall Marketing Mix - The importance of building an awareness strategy Timestamped overview 00:00 Started at WebSabbie, learned from Showpad, applied ideas. 04:09 Brands lack good awareness strategies, timing importance. 09:34 Measure marketing success accurately, invest in future. 11:37 Challenges in measuring marketing performance effectively. 15:38 ROI seesaw effect: Spend more, ROI drops, improves. 18:41 Explore channels, maximize audience for awareness campaigns. 23:12 Craft brand messaging strategically to engage customers. 26:10 Stay focused on future, data-driven decisions. 29:04 Focus on performance first, then build awareness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Marketing Technology Podcast, hosted by Elias Crum (digital strategist and owner of Marketing Guys). The Marketing Technology Podcast is brought to you by Marketing Guys, the #1 Martech agency in Europe.   In today's episode, we have the privilege of having Ryan Sonnenberg, Director of Marketing at SavvyMoney, with us. In this podcast episode, Ryan will be discussing why fintech is special for marketers, which channels work best for fintech marketers, the changed buyer journey, and the tools that WebSavvy uses in their martech stack.   Ryan Sonnenberg, a leader in fintech marketing, begins by sharing his insight on why fintech is special for marketers. According to Ryan, fintech is unique because it touches people's everyday lives in ways that no other technology does. Money is an emotional topic for most people, and therefore, the opportunity to make a significant impact on people's lives is very high.   When asked which channels work best for fintech marketers, Ryan emphasized that data-driven decisions should drive every marketing channel decision. However, email and paid media (especially LinkedIn ads) have always been high performers for fintech marketers. Fintech companies are heavily regulated, so it's essential to ensure that all communication with customers is compliant with regulations. .   The buyer's journey has undergone significant changes in the past years. Ryan shares that it's now essential to take a customer-centric approach to create an enjoyable and smooth journey. People are now seeking human connections when it comes to their finances. This need to personalize the journey has forced many fintech companies to pivot to a more people-centric model, which has been essential for attracting and retaining customers.   Ryan shares that SavvyMoney uses an integrated tech stack to achieve maximum ROI. SavvyMoney's martech stack is centered around its SalesForce.com platform which helps in understanding customers better. Their stack also includes Salesforce, website analytics, email automation, and CRM systems, to mention a few. SavvyMoney's stack is geared towards the best user experience, from acquiring customers to converting them to loyal clients.   We hope you found value in today's podcast and gained some insight into the world of fintech marketing. Till next time, happy marketing!   LinkedIn Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryantsonnenberg/  Website SavvyMoney: https://www.savvymoney.com/  ** Are you a Martech Enthusiast? Subscribe to our 2-weekly newsletter at clubmartech.com ** If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

Today Molly Pittman talks to one of her favorite humans in the world, who happens to be AI Enthusiast Mike Rhodes, Founder of WebSavvy. He doesn't claim to be an expert, but he does know more than most and provides some excellent background information, context, and perspective that will help you feel more able to dive into Chat GPT, Mid Journey, and whatever comes next! Listen for an optimistic take on what AI means for us, plus an overview of what's coming toward us (at Warp Speed). You'll be encouraged to dive into this rapidly evolving, game-changing technology with reverence and responsibility. “Your job is to think about how your business could use this for good. How can we use this to empower people and to make us more human? That's the job right now”. Mike Rhodes. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS  Thank you to our listeners for the 5-Star Reviews and meaningful messages! This Podcast has gone above and beyond what we expected, and we have YOU to thank for that. It makes a difference when you follow us (and leave a review) on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-smart-marketer-podcast/id1522629407) or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.  We'd also love it if you repost this episode to your social media, share your favorite episodes with friends, and be sure to tag us in your next post, #WeOutHere. Have questions? Please send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don't forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit   Links Mike Rhodes, https://au.linkedin.com/in/websavvy Web Savvy, https://www.websavvy.com.au/ Molly Pittman, https://mollypittman.com/ The Smart Marketer Agency, https://smartmarketer.com/agency/

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Mike Rhodes. With over two decades in the digital marketing industry, he established his award-winning Melbourne-based digital agency WebSavvy back in 2006, to help small businesses grow. Mike also runs AgencySavvy, training hundreds of agency owners how to 'do' Google Ads better and scale their agencies. He co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, now in its sixth edition, which is the world's best-selling book on Google Ads, with over 130,000 copies sold.   More About Mike Rhodes: Website: websavvy.com.au Take one of Mike's courses: agencysavvy.com More About The Agency Certification Intensive Training: Learn more Take The Marketing Assessment: Marketingassessment.co  This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

Trevor Henselwood is a marketing expert with over 15 years of experience. He began his career in Canadian broadcasting before migrating to Australia to try his hand in the digital space… He's the Head of Growth at WebSavvy and has helped 100s of eCommerce brands grow from strength to strength – including some of the nation's best-loved businesses. He's passionate about brand awareness and helping entrepreneurs to develop their messaging to connect with customers … and he's going to share some of those insights with us today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim and Dave speak to Mike Rhodes, a serial entrepreneur and founder of one of Australia's largest digital marketing firms, Websavvy about his book, the Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. Rhodes had immigrated to Australia from the UK and founded and exited three other businesses before founding Websavvy in 2006. He is now a conference speaker, an investor, and a father. He joins us from Melbourne Australia.Covering the latest breaking news in Google AdWords, the book's fifth edition introduces revised, expanded and new chapters covering Enhanced Campaigns, Google AdWord's Express, Google's Product Listing Ads, and the introduction to Google's Universal Analytics. Nuances in Big Data advertising are also revealed and expanded sections and necessary updates have been added throughout.Readers are given the latest information paired with current screenshots, fresh examples, and new techniques. Coached by AdWords experts Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes, and Bryan Todd advertisers learn how to build an aggressive, streamlined AdWords campaign proven to increase their search engine visibility, consistently capture clicks, double their website traffic, and increase their sales. Whether a current advertiser or new to AdWords, this guide is a necessary handbook.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

One of the quickest ways to get in front of your audience is through online adverting. Whether that is through Google or a social network. But getting this wrong can be costly and damage your brand. So what do we need to do to guarantee quality leads through online adverting? Joining me this week is Mike Rhodes, managing Director at WebSavvy. Mike and Websavvy are experts in online advertising and he talks us through how to get real value and avoid common mistakes with your adverts. #MarketingRules Support for this podcast comes from Staffing Future For a free review of your current website visit www.staffingfuture.com/Rules To connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/websavvy/ GAFcourse.com AgencySavvy.com/courses WebSavvy.com.au The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads 6th edition Learn more about James and ThinkinCircles: https://thinkincircles.com/ https://www.themarketingrules.com/

Mike is the CEO and Founder of WebSavvy, a world-leading agency based in Australia, as well as Founder of AgencySavvy, a community created specifically for agency owners who want to grow their businesses. Mike is also the author of the world's bestselling book on Google Ads: ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords' with Perry Marshall.  Mike's passion for Google Ads didn't start in the most conventional of ways - ever since he was a child he dreamt of being a helicopter pilot and that's what he pursued until later realising it wasn't quite the dream he'd been imagining. After dipping into digital marketing for a bit, it wasn't until he watched a talk with Perry Marshall in 2004 about Google Ads everything started to fall into place and his career took off from there. He founded his agency WebSavvy in 2006 and in this episode, Mike shares what led to its global success, from hiring the right people, to coming up with winning strategies to get his client's big results. We also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of manual and Smart Shopping on Google and what strategies work best for both, as well as the top things to address when facing a failing Ad account to turn it's results around. Join us on this episode for some fantastic tips to get your Google Ad accounts in the best shape possible, as well as some insights into what the future could look like for PPC.

You have to play by Google's rules to know who will convert and when - how to get an $8 return on your $1. So what is the ultimate guide to Google Ads? Founder & CEO of WebSavvy.com.au, Mike Rhodes, joins the podcast this week all the way from Melbourne, Australia. WebSavvy is an award-winning agency based in Australia named by Google as one of the Top 18 agencies worldwide. Mike gets into the nuts and bolts of Google Ads, Artificial Intelligence Learning, and Google Shopping. We also take a look at privacy concerns and how it impacts the usefulness of the information. Mike is the CEO and founder AgencySavvy and WebSavvy, and co-author of the world's best-selling book on Google Ads, ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads.'His award-winning digital marketing agency WebSavvyis based in Melbourne, Australia. Since 2006, Mike and his team have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it's one of Australia's largest independent Googleagencies. Mike's passion for the future of AI and Machine Learning has seen him invited to speak at over100 events around the world, including Traffic & ConversionSummit, Baby Bathwater, and Digital Summit Moscow. A teacher at heart, Mike is passionate about the AgencySavvy community and helping agency owners to ‘do' Google Ads better and scale their agency.Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy

In this episode we're joined by Mike Rhodes, CEO of WeSavvy and AgencySavvy. Mike is the co-author of 'The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads' and joins us to discuss some key trends that made it into the recent 6th edition of the book, in particular, Google's adoption of AI driven smart features.In this episode we discuss:Is there a gap in marketing sophistication in Australia vs the rest of the world?How Mikes's approach to identifying trends and topics has changed during the pandemicHow Mike prioritises the topics to cover when revising editions of his co-authored book 'The Ultimate Guide To Google Ads'Red flags to look out for when considering a new client-agency partnershipAre customers losing access to their data because of Google's increased adoption of AI?How Mike uses the mantra of 'trust, but verify' when approaching new Google Ads 'smart' featuresReferenced on this episode:[Book] The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads: https://amzn.to/3yae8fuhttps://www.descript.com/https://otter.ai/https://copysmith.ai/https://www.copy.ai/https://www.trypencil.com/https://writesonic.com/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-2CONNECT WITH MIKE / WEBSAVVY / AGENCYSAVVYhttps://www.websavvy.com.au/https://agencysavvy.com/https://gafcourse.comCONNECT WITH SCOTT:scott.colenutt@sitevisibility.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/scottcolenuttCONNECT WITH SITEVISIBILITY:https://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/https://www.youtube.com/user/SiteVisibilityhttps://twitter.com/sitevisibilityhttps://www.facebook.com/SiteVisibilityhttp://instagram.com/sitevisibility For all show ideas, guest recommendations and feedback email marketing@sitevisibility.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike Rhodes is the CEO and founder AgencySavvy and WebSavvy, and co-author of the world’s best-selling book on Google Ads ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads’. Since 2006, Mike and his award-winning digital marketing agency WebSavvy have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it’s now one of Australia’s largest independent Google agencies. Mike’s passion for the future of AI and Machine Learning has resulted at him speaking at over 100 events around the world. A teacher at heart, Mike is passionate about the AgencySavvy community and helping agency owners to ‘do’ Google Ads better and scale their agency.

Mike is the co-author of the world's best-selling Google Ads book – “The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads”, now in it's 6th edition, and which if you don't have it on the bookshelf, or on your kindle – you can't really call yourself a Google Ads expert in my opinion... He's also the CEO and founder of one of Australia's largest independent Google agencies – the award-wining WebSavvy, and normally speaks at events around the world including Traffic and Conversion Summit. Get all the links and resources we mention at https://keepoptimising.com/?utm_source=captivate&utm_medium=episodenotes (KeepOptimising.com) Episode sponsored by https://www.klaviyo.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=masterplan (Klaviyo) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Mike Rhodes is the CEO and founder AgencySavvy and WebSavvy, and co-author of the world's best-selling book on Google Ads ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads'. Since 2006, Mike and his team have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it's now one of Australia's largest independent Google agencies. “it ain't going to work out the way you think it will but do it anyway. There is nothing better than…I guess I am a control freak… But being in control of your own destiny of being able to take a holiday when you want to, when you want to go to the school sports day… I can't imagine anything worse than saying hey boss can I have the afternoon off to go and watch my kids in school sports and being told no you can't with got this really important thing that needs to get done and you can't take leave. That would suck more than anything I can think of. So do it, just do it, take the leap. Yes, surround yourself with smart people, keep perspective, keep getting curious, and learning more things – that never stops. know that you are going to fall on your arse a number of times and make a ton of mistakes – that's just part of the fun. But don't let that stop you from doing it, please.”…[Listen for More] Click Here for Show Notes To Listen or to Get the Show Notes go to https://wp.me/p6Tf4b-lqD

In the 23rd episode of the LAUNCH Season, Mal was joined by Mike Rhodes, Founder and CEO of WebSavvy. Since 2006, Mike and his team have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it’s now one of Australia’s largest independent Google agencies. They spoke about curiosity, flexibility and the difference a good coach can make.

In episode 56 of the Customers Who Click podcast, I had a great chat with Mike Rhodes about PPC and the Profit Curve. PPC is not the same as it was 5 years ago; it's one of those areas in digital marketing that just never stops evolving. One thing that has never changed, however, is people desperately trying to pay less and less for each lead. It would be fantastic if we could pay just one dollar per good lead but it doesn't work like that - the less you spend, the fewer people see your ad. You have the potential to unlock so much more traffic by bidding higher, and acquire customers that are just as profitable as before, but there's more of them. To help his clients see that, Mike created a methodology called the Profit Curve which visualises how much they need to be spending to achieve their business objectives.  Mike is the Founder & CEO of WebSavvy, a Google-award winning agency, internationally recognised speaker and author (most recently of "The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords"​ with Perry Marshall). Before getting into digital marketing, Mike was a helicopter pilot but realized he did not want to pursue his military career further and started looking into Google Ads when they first appeared back in 2004. You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter or head over to www.websavvy.com.au.

Becky and Michael are joined by Mike Rhodes, an Australian-based PPC expert and co-author of the world's best-selling Google Ads guide. Mike discusses his unusual journey to Melbourne and explains how automation really is the future of our industry... The Complete Guide to Google Ads Fundamentals: GAFcourse.com Join Mike's community for agency leaders: AgencySavvy.com WebSavvy.com.au

interview with Mike Rhodes – Founder of Websavvy Mike Rhodes is a serial entrepreneur. Founder of one of Aus's largest digital marketing firms, Websavvy, Rhodes had immigrated to Austrailia from the UK and founded and exited three other businesses before founding Websavvy in 2006. He is now a conference speaker, an investor, and a father. He joins us from Melbourne Austrailia. Ultimate guide to Google Ads – over 100,000 copies soldLast batch of sites going to mobile firstRand vs Danny – Zero Click Google Searches. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/zero-click-claims-are-misleading/399940/#closeNo links – No visitors.https://www.seroundtable.com/over-65-of-web-pages-have-no-links-31134.html

Have you been using Google Ads in the same way for several years? Maybe you're not even actively using Google Ads because it seems just a little bit too complicated at first glance. Perhaps you want to use Google Ads in 2021, but you're not quite sure where to start. My guest today has been running Google Ads campaigns for brands around the globe for the past 15 years. He's a speaker, an investor, a mountain biker, the co-author of the world's best-selling book on Google Ads ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads' - plus the Founder of one of Australia's largest independent Google agencies, ‘https://www.websavvy.com.au/ (WebSavvy)' – https://www.linkedin.com/in/websavvy/ (Mike Rhodes). In this episode Mike selected https://www.linkedin.com/company/descript/ (Descript) as his 'Secret Software', https://www.linkedin.com/company/searchie-io/ (Searchie) as his 'Next on the List' and https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAABg4cYBJ3sBO1QzvRgwTw2NNf5xElQwDHs (Chris "Mercer" Mercer) as his 'Magical Marketer'.

Mike Rhodes explains how to use artificial intelligence and Google Ads to move the needle on revenue and leads  Mike Rhodes is the CEO and founder AgencySavvy and WebSavvy, and co-author of the world’s best-selling book on Google Ads ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads’. His award-winning digital marketing agency WebSavvy is based in Melbourne, Australia. Since 2006, Mike and his team have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it’s now one of Australia’s largest independent Google agencies. Mike’s passion for the future of AI and Machine Learning has seen him invited to speak at over 100 events around the world, including Traffic & Conversion Summit, Baby Bathwater and Digital Summit Moscow. A teacher at heart, Mike is passionate about the AgencySavvy community and helping agency owners to ‘do’ Google Ads better and scale their agency. Contact the host Mark Fidelman at HTTP://www.fanaticsmedia.com or @markfidelman  Subscribe to the Brand Builder Podcast: https://apple.co/2QXzFnC   

Facebook may be the social media giant in today’s generation, but is pumping the Facebook Ads machine with money the best way to market your eCommerce business? In today’s episode, Mike Rhodes from Web Savvy expounds further on what makes Google Ads the best machine that you can put your money into to grow your eCom business. We talk about tracking and measuring the right data to know your ads’ effectiveness, why targeting has to be paired with creativity for your ad to perform well, what not to focus on in marketing, and more. If you want to be ad-savvy, tune in to the episode now! Episode Highlights: Marketing is either a slot machine or a vending machine [03:57] Why you need to start utilising Google Ads for your eCom business [08:44] Never put all of your marketing eggs in one basket [11:20] The ecosystem of running paid ads [12:42] What data to track and measure when running your ads [15:29] The wrong questions to ask yourself when marketing your ecom business [23:32] Targeting and creativity are the essential ingredients of a successful ad [29:33] The dichotomy of business [35:06] Setting a budget for your ads [38:44] Resource Links: Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  Download the Due Diligence Framework (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) Visit Niche Website Builders and get EXCLUSIVE OFFERS as a BOB listener (https://www.nichewebsite.builders/bob/) Alchemy by Rory Sutherland (http://amzn.to/3et7N7p) The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink (http://amzn.to/38DWUMl) Visit the Web Savvy website (https://www.websavvy.com.au) Visit Agency Savvy website (https://agencysavvy.com/) Get a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads by Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes, and Bryan Todd (http://amzn.to/3bMxu15) Check out their complete guide to Google Ads Fundamentals (gafcourse.com)   About Our Guest: In the game for 15 years, Mike Rhodes is the go-to expert on online marketing for better lead generation. He specialises in Google Ads Optimisation, Facebook Ads, Analytics, Tag Manager, and more. In November 2006, he founded Web Savvy, a company specialising in lead generation and marketing. In August 2014, he founded Agency Savvy, a company dedicated to helping agency owners scale their businesses. If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast. You may also leave us a review anywhere you listen to and share your feedback!  Connect with Jaryd Krause of Buying Online Businesses: Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JarydKrause1 Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3g6G2USlnq7EgnUsajTBw See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like everything in digital marketing, Google Ads are evolving, and they're evolving fast. So much so, Mike Rhodes had to re-write nearly 80% of his book, The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, in the recent 6th edition.  This week on the podcast, Mike, from WebSavvy, joined Tyler to discuss Google Ads' fundamentals and what businesses need to know to place ads on the platform in 2021.  Have a question for the podcast? Follow Tyler on Instagram and shoot him a DM.  Free Google Ads Mini-Course mentioned in the show: http://gafcourse.com/ Tack sponsors the Casual Fridays Podcast. Tack streamlines user-generated content management for marketing teams. Get started today at https://foundontack.com

TheNextCMO's latest podcast is with Mike Rhodes the founder and CEO of Websavvy as our guest. Mike runs a Google-award winning agency based in Australia, is an international keynote speaker, and a co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads with Perry Marshall. In this podcast we discuss how digital marketing will change in 2021, keeping up with Google's constantly changing algorithm, why companies fail when leveraging Google Ads, and how to leverage future AI trends to be more profitable.Mike Rhodes - https://www.linkedin.com/in/websavvy/Websavvy - https://www.websavvy.com.auGet the book here - The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads on Amazon Smile Interested in being on The Next CMO podcast? - https://info.plannuh.com/the-next-cmo-podcastFor more info about Plannuh, check out our website

Mike Rhodes is the CEO and founder AgencySavvy and WebSavvy, and co-author of the world’s best-selling book on Google Ads ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads’.  His award-winning digital marketing agency WebSavvy is based in Melbourne, Australia. Since 2006, Mike and his team have been running campaigns for brands around the globe, and it’s now one of Australia’s largest independent Google agencies. Mike’s passion for the future of AI and Machine Learning has seen him invited to speak at over 100 events around the world, including Traffic & Conversion Summit, Baby Bathwater and Digital Summit Moscow. A teacher at heart, Mike is passionate about the AgencySavvy community and helping agency owners to ‘do’ Google Ads better and scale their agency.

How do the world's top Google ads experts develop their Google ads strategies and budgets? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, WebSavvy founder Mike Rhodes breaks down his approach to helping his clients getting the most profit out of their Google ads strategies. Mike says it's at the margins where you make the most money from Google ads, and that means understanding how to measure incremental profits and incremental CPAs. He uses the concept of a profit curve to demonstrate this, and shares specific examples to illustrate his point that sometimes, higher CPAs are actually better for hitting your overall business goals. He also explains how to use Google Performance Planner to develop your plan. Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, for details. Resources from this episode: Read Mike's blog post about the profit curve Get free access to the Google Ads Fundamentals course by AgencySavvy (use code PODCASTFUN for 100% off) Visit the WebSavvy and AgencySavvy websites Email Mike at mike@websavvy.com  Transcript Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Mike Rhodes, who is the founder and CEO of WebSavvy. Welcome to the podcast, Mike. Mike (00:41): Thank you, Kathleen. Lovely to be here. Kathleen (00:43): I'm excited to have you, and you're coming all the way from Australia. So I am winding my day down getting ready for happy hour. And you are just waking up over there. It's awesome to have you. You are a Google expert. In fact, I think if I'm not wrong, your Twitter handle is @theGoogleguy. Is that right? Mike (01:06): It is. Yeah. All my clients used to call me that back when I actually used Twitter back near for the last decade or the decade before that. Actually I think it probably was 2007ish. So yeah, just went with that and Google haven't asked for it back yet. Kathleen (01:22): I love it. It's a great Twitter handle. So speaking of Google and, and things related to it, maybe you could tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do and also what WebSavvy is. Mike (01:35): Yeah. I've always loved the business of business. I've always loved growing businesses. I always knew I was never going to do the corporate thing. I guess, as kids we decide fairly early on we're either going to be just like our parents or the exact opposite of our parents. My dad did the corporate thing for 25 years and I think I worked out as an 11 year old, I ain't going to do that. I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, actually there's a whole tangent we could wander off down there. At six years old, I must have seen something on TV. Decided I wanted to fly helicopters. I actually went down that road. I learned to fly helicopters in Hawaii. Kathleen (02:14): That's like Magnum PI. Mike (02:16): Funnily enough, my boss was the pilot for Magnum PI. Kathleen (02:22): Stop it! No! Mike (02:22): So we would fly around Oahu and I learned to fly in the canyons of Kauai and flying around the volcanoes on Molokai. And when we would go around the Island one day, he took me to Higgins' ranch and we landed on the end of the pier. But it was in that thing where Higgins lived. I'm like, Oh my god! Kathleen (02:40): That is so Epic. I love that story. I was a big Magnum PI fan. Mike (02:46): Oh yes. For different reasons I'm guessing. I liked the helicopters. You liked the mustache. But it was, it was a good shot. Kathleen (02:51): I mean, all of it. I watched it with my brother. It was one of the shows that appealed to both of us. So that is a really cool story. Mike (03:00): I was still at uni at the time I went back to the UK. I grew up in the UK, if you haven't figured out the dodgy accent yet. And I ended up working for the most prestigious helicopter company in the UK. We had clients like, you know, the queen Bill Gates, Michael Schumacher, boy bands, all kinds of stuff. But I figured out right really quickly from talking to the guys and sadly, they were all men, all ex-military and they all could not wait to retire. And I thought, I do not want to spend the rest of my life in an industry, surrounded by people that can't wait to get out. So I left the UK, I headed for Australia. I went to New Zealand for three weeks. I stayed for three years and I started my first business there. A mate handed me two books as I was starting that business, the cashflow quadrant from Robert Kiyosaki and the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Mike (03:53): And those two books changed my life. I built that business up over 18 months. I worked in the business for 12 days of the 18 months, sold it for a chunk of change. I moved to Sydney thinking, well, I'm not sure doing the helicopter thing. I've got a chunk of change. I thought I was semi retired. I started playing lots of bad golf. And I went to a Tony Robbins seminar. Gosh, I won't give you the whole story. Cause I could really wander off on a huge tangent here. But I came out of Tony Robbins seminar hair on fire. I wrote a letter to Gerber saying, you know, your book changed my life, yada, yada yada. And I'm a bit stuck. I love helping businesses. I don't know what to do next. And I got a phone call from him six weeks later from actually from his PA saying Michael is just walking out of a meeting. Mike (04:40): He'd love a chat. I'm like, Oh, this is the Michael Gerber, a hero of mine at the time. Long story short, he invited me to go to California and train with his team. That was Friday morning. He said, if you can be in California by Tuesday, we can get going. So I said, yes. And I jumped on a plane, flew to California. This is a month after nine 11. So fairly empty plane. America was a very interesting time, obviously back then. And ended up licensing the name E-Myth, being an E-Myth coach and consultant helping businesses grow. And I sucked at it. Because I would walk into these businesses. You know, here I am, this young guy. I've sold one business. I've had one business and I thought I was going to go in and systemize all of these businesses. And I'd get there and we'd start chatting. Mike (05:37): And, and they'd say, mate I just need more customers. I just need more patients. I just need, you know, more covers in the restaurant. When do we get to more customers bit? Well, you're lucky. It's good. But it's a system, you know, there are seven modules and that's module five. Okay. When do we get the module? Is that like day five week five. I'm like, Oh, most businesses month 10. Get out, get out. Like, I just want to buy a module five. Well you can't, it's a system. I'm not allowed to sell you module five. We've got to go. Cause you had to go through a mindset and building a team and systems and all of that stuff, which in hindsight was actually genius. But it wasn't what all of these businesses wanted. Kathleen (06:21): It's sort of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, like safety and things like that first. And that's why I think when people look at you, they're like, you just need to deliver more revenue. And then we can do the rest. Mike (06:32): Most businesses. If you went into most businesses and doubled the number of leads tomorrow, they would break. Those businesses would break something. And those businesses would break. So you kind of had to prepare for that before the leads. But of course, every business thinks that's the magic solution. If you just had more leads coming in the door, the dog wouldn't have died. The wife wouldn't have left. Like they wouldn't have fallen over and failed. So I sucked at it. And then I saw this guy, Perry Marshall, speak about Google ads. This is really, really early days in Google ads, 2004, excuse me. Google had only been around a couple of years. And I was just blown away. Like, what? You mean you only show ads to people that are searching for the exact thing that you sell? And you only pay if they're interested enough to click on your little ad and come to your website? And back then, you know, all the clicks were about five or 10 cents. Mike (07:29): It didn't really, you could do it quite badly and still make a lot of money. Oh my God, this is exactly what all of these businesses that I've been talking to. This is what they want and need. Sorry, Mr. Gilbert, not paying you any more money. I'm dropping all of that. And I pretty much started the agency then and there. I started trying to teach anybody. I came across about Google ads. I went back to my mastermind group hair on fire, like telling everybody about this thing. I would meet people at conferences and tell them about this new thing. And you know what, nine out of 10 people said mate, I don't care how it bloody works. Just do it for me, would you? Just do it for me. And so, yeah, that was really the genesis of WebSavvy. So that's what we do. Mike (08:16): We do it for brands all around the world, mostly Australia and the US. We're pretty much half and half between the two. We started with Google ads and an all of those things around Google ads, like Google analytics, you know, the data that runs everything, Google shopping, YouTube ads, that's all part of the Google system. And we also do a fair amount of Facebook ads these days for our clients as well. But we've really stuck to our leader. You know, we, we don't do SEO. We don't build websites or apps. We don't create content. We've stuck to our, our lane, which is acquisition. We, solved that problem that everybody told me they had 20 years ago. I just need customers. That's what we deliver for our customers. Kathleen (08:58): I love it. Mike, I got to say, you seem like the kind of person that I would really like to sit down and have a beer with because your stories are so good. What an interesting journey. Yeah, it's great. And I mean, I think I I'm so attracted to it because in some ways it's like mine, I've had an interesting career that's, it's almost like three careers in one where I started out working in international development consulting after college. And I did that for 10 years and I loved it and I was passionate about it. But then for various reasons, it didn't make sense anymore. And so I shifted gears and I opened my own marketing agency, which I had for 11 years. And then after 11 years, I sold that and now I'm working in-house as a marketer. Like they're just completely different paths and at every juncture, you know, you get excited about the next thing. Mike (09:53): And isn't it amazing though, at the time, if you had had to draw the path forward, it would be impossible. But when you look back all the dots line up and it makes complete sense that you are where you are. It was obvious that that led to that led to that led to that, but you could never have picked it go back 20, 25 years. You could never pick where you be now and what you end up doing, but all of those things that you learn along the way, help that next jump and that next decision. And, Oh, what's this over here. That looks interesting. And it's wonderful. Kathleen (10:27): Yep. You, and you have, you have to have done all those steps to wind up in this. It's so true. So true. So again, so let's talk about Google because this is, you know, anybody who's ever listened to this podcast knows that the question I ask at the end, which I will be asking you at the end is, you know, marketers are always saying that, that trying to keep up with the changing landscape of digital marketing is like drinking from a fire hose. And I always ask people how they do it. And I just think Google is a really interesting example of this because it is constantly changing. You know, you literally can make a full-time job out of just tracking algorithm updates and changes. And you know, and I, I'm a little obsessed with it. I, I, I heard a couple of sources that I follow for information on that. Kathleen (11:24): But you know, it is, it is a very constantly changing landscape and yes, it's very easy to check the box and do Google ads and probably do them very poorly. But unlike when you first started, I feel like today you can be flushing a lot of money down the toilet. If you do that. Whereas if you know what you're doing there, isn't, there is an opportunity, but, but there's a lot of intricacy to it. It seems to me you know, when you and I first spoke, I know I told you, my audience is pretty sophisticated. So this conversation is not going to be Google ads, one Oh one. I'm going to assume that most people listening, know the basics about Google ads. What I want to understand is if you are somebody who is relatively proficient in Google ads, you know, what are some of the things that you're seeing that work well that really can help those people level up. Mike (12:15): Great. Great. I love that because the fundamentals, if you haven't got those by now, you're probably not the least bit interested in getting online. Kathleen (12:26): You get them in a 40 minute podcast. Mike (12:30): I've, I've got a three hour course that I'm more than happy to give it to the listeners. That's what they want, but I don't think that's what we want here, Kathleen (12:38): Which by the way, we, I can include the link to that in the show notes. So if you want, yeah. Multitask. Mike (12:44): Yeah. So I being a pilot, I liken it to Google ads back in the day was like the cockpit of a Cessna, which if you've never been in a Cessna is a bit like being in your car, but there's even less instruments. It's basically a car that goes up and down a bit. There's, there's maybe three or four things that you need to keep an eye on. Google ads these days is like the cockpit of a 747, which none of us have been in either, but we can picture how complicated that must be with dials on the ceiling and surrounding. There was a lot of stuff going on and it really is, as you say, that last 10%, that makes all the difference. Google ads is, is pretty easy to do the first 50, maybe even 80%, it's pretty easy to get going. Mike (13:28): And as you say, tick the box, I'm doing Google ads, but are you squeezing the most profit out of it? And it's not really your fault if you're listening and that's where you're at, because Google are making it harder and harder for you to understand where your money's going, which bits are profitable, which bits aren't, they would love you to just to focus on the average, what's the average return I'm getting from this. And I have to say we may be forced into that world, right? With the cookie pocalypse that's coming and, and our tracking isn't going to be as perfect. Not that it ever was perfect, but it isn't going to be as, as granular and detailed as it has been over the past little while, we're going to have to be marketers again, which is fabulous for us marketers. It's a little scary for the, all the people that hide behind their spreadsheets and think they can optimize absolutely everything to the nth degree and somehow be successful. Mike (14:31): So there's that what I think we can dive into is, is incremental profit, an incremental CPA, because it's at the, at the margins where you really make the most money. So I've been thinking a lot since we first chatted a week or two ago, about how best to explain this without a whiteboard, a flip chart. So you're going to keep the numbers really, really simple, but I think it does help to have some numbers to illustrate this as we go through. So luckily you've got a really sophisticated audience, so we don't have to start with the basics. We understand what a break even point is. We understand how hard maximizing profit really can be. But we also understand that the different types of business, right, there are some businesses that absolutely need to make a profit on that very first sale. They think of marketing as a cost and they, they want to maximize the profit from that initial sale, even if they have a recurring business. Mike (15:33): So they're not selling one-off products like garage doors or coffins that's a one-off product. If you sell those, you need to make a profit on that first sale. But many of us are in businesses where some of our customers, not all, but some of our customers will come back and buy again. They'll refer us to other people. We need to think about lifetime value. And I know that's such a loaded phrase. And what do you mean by lifetime is that lifetime is that three years is that 90 days? Are we talking revenue? Are we talking profit? But the point is smart. Marketers like your audience listening, understand investing in marketing. It's not a cost. We're not spending, we are investing. We are acquiring leads because we know that if we build it, they won't come. You know, I'm sure you saw this a lot too. Mike (16:25): People would spend all of their money on the letterhead and the office and making everything look perfect. And then this big shiny website, and they wouldn't leave any leftover for marketing. There wouldn't be an investment left. So we need to invest to get more customers. So the way I would explain it is to say, let's take two situations, right? You've got this agency that you went to and they got you leads for $70. And he thought that seems a bit expensive to me. I'll fire them. I'll go to this other agency and they can get me leads for 30 bucks, which is best. Well, obviously we don't have enough data. We don't have enough information to make the right call yet because we don't understand what the breakeven is yet. We don't know anything about the business. What are the businesses goals? Well, okay. Mike (17:20): If we now say that the break even point is, let's say 150 bucks. So if you're getting me leads for 70, then you're making $80. Let's just, just for the sake of argument and let's say $80 profit on each lead. And if you're getting me leads for 30 bucks, there's 120 bucks left between 30 and one 50. So now it comes down to volume. How many leads were they getting at $70? The first agency, how many leads they get you, maybe they got you 200 leads a month. And then this other month, you moved to them and said, I need it to be cheaper. I have to get my cost per lead down because I'm thinking about this as a cost, but now they can only get you 50 leads a month. They could, they, they managed to get that $30 target, but there's a lot less leads. Mike (18:09): Well, total profit, obviously, is a combination of the two, how much profit are we making per lead? And what's the volume of leads. So without throwing more numbers at you, which I know is very difficult when you're just listening to this driving and trying to picture all these numbers in your head or working out or walking the dog picture a curve, right? So that curve starts at zero, zero on our X and Y axis. We starting at zero zero. If we don't pay anything but lead, we're not going to get any leads. So there's no profit at zero. I said, our breakeven was 150 bucks. So you can picture a curve that goes up, comes down and crosses this X axis. The X axis here is the CPA that the cost we are paying for each lead. If our average CPA is the same as our breakeven, then we're not making any money. Mike (18:59): So at a CPA of 150, we go from making a little bit to losing a little bit of money. Is that sort of clear so far? Kathleen (19:08): Yes. That makes sense. Mike (19:09): Beautiful. So at some point then in between zero and 150, we must be making money. So we've got a curve. It could take any kind of shape, but let's just picture a hill in between those two points and anything higher than 150, we're losing money. It doesn't matter how many leads we get. It could be a huge volume of leads, but we're losing every money. Every time we run an ad. Now, so the game then becomes depending on what your business goals are, a smart business might choose to grow at break even because the more leads I can get through the business, the faster I can grow. You know, I get more volume of leads. Mike (19:44): My website testing speeds up my email testing speeds up. I get more referrals. The value of my business increases. Assuming of course, that your business can handle that volume of leads. But let's back it up a bit for a second. Let's say, let's assume you do need to make a little bit of profit because most businesses do. Most businesses can't keep investing. Can't keep throwing money into their marketing with the hope that they're going to get a return on that a year down the track, or even six months down the track, they need to see that it's working. Quote, unquote. Note to self, don't drink fizzy kombucha just before jumping on podcasts. Kathleen (20:23): That's so funny. Cause I'm a big kombucha drinker too. Mike (20:31): It's lovely. And it's, it's cured my addiction to the other rubbish I used to drink. But. Kathleen (20:36): Yeah. Mike (20:38): So there's a point somewhere in between zero and 150 here where we're going to maximize our profit and the reality that, that trying to find the tippy top of that curve, that the absolute top of that Hill is actually really, really hard. And we live in a messy world. It's, it's not a nice smooth curve that we can draw and stick a pin in the map and go, yep. Okay, we'll go after that. So if we, if we chop the top of that Hill off, so if you can picture that a Hill and you chop the top off, so it's nice flat on the top. It's a plateau exactly. Tabletop mountain in Cape town. And you've now got this range and anywhere within that range. And I said, break even was 150. So let's just say for the sake of argument, $80 on the low side, $120 on the high side. They're the two edges of our plateau. Love that fact. Mike (21:33): So anywhere in there, we're making a really good amount of profit. Maybe we didn't get right to the top of the Hill, but we got really, really close. Anywhere in there we're making money. Now, if you're still with me, well done, first of all. But if I now say to you, which would you rather, would you rather get leads for $80 or $120? Almost everybody, really smart marketers included, will say 80 bucks. And it's the wrong answer for two massive reasons. Now, remember this is the same total profit at 80 and 120. The first reason is your customer. Isn't your customer, your first customer, these days in the world we live in is not the human being on the other end of the screen. Your first customer is the Google algorithm or the Facebook algorithm. You need to make the algorithm like you and make the algorithm want to show more and more of your ads so that the human beings on the other side, even get a chance to see your ads. Mike (22:39): Now, if you're offering 80 bucks and people in your market are offering 120, who does the machine want to give the traffic to the machine is going to take the 120 every single time. Remember it's the same total profit to your business, 80 or 120. So you must go the 120, otherwise you're just not going to get the leads. The second one is a little, so that's a bit more obvious once you, once you think about it, the second, one's a bit more counter-intuitive. And that is that if it's the same total profit, remember total profit is that, that gap, you know, the profit per lead, the gap between what we're paying 80 and the break even point, 150 multiplied by the total number of leads. So at $80, what's that gap, 70 bucks. And at 120, the gap is 30. I must be doing at least double the number, at least double the volume at 120 to end up with the same total profit, right? Ish. Yes. Kathleen (23:46): That makes sense. I'm terrible at math, but I'm actually following. So you're doing a good job. Mike (23:51): It sound like it would be because it just feels we've been taught that, you know, low numbers are good. High numbers are bad, it doesn't feel quite right. And yet if you draw the Hill and you chop the top off, you look at that plateau and that Hill represents profit. Then two points. There are the across the top of the plateau, it's all the same total profit. So I must be doing a lot more volume at one 20. And it's that volume. That's the kicker that speeds everything up. Assuming that your business can cope with that extra volume. All those things we've mentioned before, your website, your CRO testing, your email, split testing, the volume of referrals, the case studies and the testimonials that you're going to get the training opportunities for your team. Everything now proves your business value because you've got two, two and a half times the volume coming in. You've built the machine and that's what a lot of people buy when they buy your business. They're buying the machine that can drive more and more leads into your business like clockwork. So now everything is so much better now. Okay. Got it. Mike, maximize profit, not quite. Come down a little bit, find a plateau, find a range, pick the high end of the range. Mike (25:05): Awesome. How the hell do I do that? Mike (25:09): Back in the day, the only way to do that was testing. And you'd run some ads and you'd run some campaigns and you would test different CPA amounts and see what happened to volume. And yet all the time we'll hear from new prospects mate, you know, I'm getting leads for a hundred bucks, but I need them to be cheaper. To which our first answer is well, do you? Let's think about this? Let's really understand what the goal of your marketing is. Let's understand how you think about this cost or is it an investment? Let's think about what your break even point is and where you need to be. And now let's test around that. So that was the old way. Now Google has this wonderful, hidden, hardly used tool inside the Google ads machine. Now you do need to have a Google ads account running to use this, and the more data that you have, the more campaigns that you're actually running, the better. This will work, but I'm going to assume for a minute that your listener is running some Google ads, but like many agencies out there they've never heard of this tool. Mike (26:18): It's called the performance planner. So if you go up to the there's a little wrench icon up in the top, right of Google ads. When you get back to your computer and you're going to click on tools and then under tools, you'll find a list of about 20 different things in there. One of them is called the performance planner. And this has been around for about a year for search campaigns, but they just made it available to shopping campaigns as well. It's not available for display and video yet just for search and shopping. And when you fire up this tool you'll say to the machine, basically predict what's going to happen next month for this campaign or this group of campaigns. And the machine will draw you a nice curve that goes up into the right, and it looks like the more money you spend, the better you're going to do, but what it doesn't do it doesn't talk about profit. Mike (27:08): So we've built a little tool that will pull all of that data down out of Google, stick it into a spreadsheet for you. And now you can start playing with different scenarios and you can say what would happen if my breakeven was one 50? What if my breakeven was 200? What if my breakeven was a hundred and it will draw the profit curve for you? See Google are always going to give you that cumulative curve. It always goes up into the right. And it's very, very hard to tell from that what your incremental profits going to be, what the next bit you're going to gain is going to be. You can kind of do it. I'll give you the easy way first, which is it'll put a dot on that curve. And I'll say, here's where you are right now. But obviously we suggest you spend more money. Mike (27:53): If you wiggle that little dot around, you'll be able to see what happens to your number. So it'll say, you know, right now you're spending 50 grand and you're making 5,000 sales. And if you roll that dot up to the next point on the curve, it will say, if you spend 60 grand, you'll make 5,003 sales or whatever those numbers are going to be. And if you're really good at mass, you can kind of do that quickly in your head. And you'll be amazed at what this thing shows you, because it will tell you your average CPA, your average cost per lead, or your average sale price is whatever it is. And when you move that little dot and you start spending more money, the average barely changes. I was looking at one the other day. And the average went from something like $72 to $73. Mike (28:41): You go, well, that's okay. It doesn't seem like much. And yet when you do the math, you work out that those extra leads are costing you four or 500 bucks. And that probably isn't profitable. The business is aiming at 70, $80 a lead because that's profitable for the business. Maybe we can go up to a hundred, maybe 120, the four or 500 bucks a lead. You may use this tool and go, what the hell? Where are we spending all this money? And I think the reason that Google shows it this way is that if more advertisers knew about this tool and understood what it was really showing, they'd probably back off their spend a little bit. They're probably way past that, that plateau and heading down the other side of the Hill, sliding towards the big, nasty bit at the bottom, which is you are losing money. Mike (29:33): Every time you run an ad. And Google obviously are not going to make that obvious. They don't talk about profit on this, on this tool. They don't ask you what your break even point. They just say, your average just went from 72 to 73. How bad can it be? But if you start looking at some of the points, okay, so picture a curve that sort of goes up and flattens off. Then obviously, you know, you're getting diminishing returns at this point. You're, you're getting to the point where yes, you could spend more money and the machine will happily take your money. Don't don't, you know, Google made, what was it? 135 billion last year, Meghan, to take your cash. Same as we talked about before to advertisers, one offers 120, one offers, 80 who's the machine gonna reward. But if some numpty offers the machine 250, Google's going to take their money too. And you probably have some competitors in your market like that. Mike (30:30): Hopefully they won't be around too long. Hopefully they won't be able to run those ads all day, every day. And in a couple of months, they'll realize, Oh, we're going backwards quite quickly. We should probably stop that now. So you must, must must know your numbers, obviously all smart marketers. Do we understand lifetime value? We understand breakeven, but this, this tool makes it so easy. Now, if you know where to look to start to think about that incremental cost versus the incremental gain. And I think that's something that we all have to get better at as marketers. It used to be very, very complicated maths and very, very hard to do and a whole lot of testing. But now that this tool exists and I've spoken to the the product manager of the tool at Google, and they have absolutely no plans for this data to be available via the API. Mike (31:23): Anytime soon, it is not on the roadmap for the next year, at least. So they're not going to make it easy. I want to make it easy to pull all of that data out of there, stick it in a Google sheet, visualize it in data studio, however you prefer to work, but at least understand if I spend an extra 10 grand, what do I get for that? And what's my incremental gain. Is it really worth that extra spend? Or could I find somewhere else to go spend that? Do I take that over to my Facebook ads? Do I Chuck it into the new shiny toy, whatever it is this month insert shiny object here, or do I save it and tip it into something else and tip it into a surprising and delighting by clients or, or training my teams or something else? Sorry, I've done a lot of talking Kathleen (32:13): So interesting though, because I mean, you've, you're, I have a lot of thoughts that are kind of swimming around in my head right now, the first going back to the earlier part where you talked about like, if you could do it for 80 or 120 and both had the same thing, which would you do? And of course I would, I would have said 80. But then as you started talking about the, the value of volume, that was really interesting to me. And then it also got me thinking, what does, does that volume then become a springboard for growth in other channels, like referrals and word of mouth, you know, is it, is it like a snowball effect where you get more volume through your pay-per-click ads, campaigns, and that's just more customers. And as you said, assuming you're able to handle that volume and you're able to serve it well and delight your customers. Will they then not go and tell, you know, their friends and then you have the best kind of business, which is the word of mouth business, where your cost of acquisition is very, very low seeking you out. So that, that was interesting. And I've never thought about it that way before. Mike (33:19): Well, you did right? The value of volume. I'm going to steal that phrase. Thank you. I like that. Well, it just, it sums the whole thing up. But yeah, this is just the cost of that initial lead. And when we haven't started talking about lifetime value yet, or, or 90 day return or anything like that, or even the benefit of just having all of those people on your site, I mean, the social proof of the reviews that they're going to leave, because you have a program in place to grab reviews, and whether that's on your Google, my business page, or Product Hunt, or wherever you're collecting those reviews, the testimonials, the case studies. Your remarketing lists. I mean, okay, remarketing is going to change with third party cookies going away and so on. But most businesses that we see at least a huge part of their Facebook advertising is some form of warm audience. Mike (34:11): Whether that's an email list or a remarketing audience, if you've got two and a half, three times the volume of people coming through your website, think what that does to your remarketing. Think what that does to your Facebook traffic now, to the organic reach for your YouTube videos, because now you've got all of these people that are watching, which sends that algorithm a nice message to say, Hey, all of these people are watching this. They're finding value in it. Let's put this video in front of more people. Everything starts to, to grow. I think it was, it was Dan Kennedy that said the winner is not the business that can pay the list per customer. The winner is the business that can afford to pay the most. So if you can afford to pay one 20, if you can afford to pay one 50, you're going to win because you know, your numbers, you know, what that leads to, and you know, that ultimately you are going to be much better off for it. Now, if some businesses will, will be even a loss leader, right. Kathleen (35:12): A lot of startups that are well-funded are like that. Mike (35:15): Yes. Some, some somebody told me the other day that something like 40% of VC money goes into paid at 400% Kathleen (35:22): And it was blowing my mind. I I was looking at the the SEC filings for Shopify which is, you know, a huge success story. And I think if I remember correctly, they were saying they didn't expect to be profitable anytime soon. And, and, you know its very common with startups because they're really just trying to grow as quickly as possible to, to build up a massive audience and create an ecosystem and this and that. But, you know, you do have to sort of think about at what point is trying to compete with that stop making sense. Mike (35:57): I bet. And it feels like over the last 18 months or so, we've started to see a bit of a shift there away from, yeah, Shopify have done that. Amazon very famously didn't make a profit for a very, very long time. And when they finally did, everyone was a bit amazed. Tesla didn't make a profit for a very long time. Those story stocks though seem to be sort of padding it. People seem to be a little bit more, well, hang on a minute. Don't we need to make a profit at some point? Isn't that the sustainable business that we're trying to build here and not just burning someone else's money. So, yes, I think it's becoming more important. And I am very aware that at the same time, that we're sort of detailing out all of these numbers and drawing this curve, that, that marketing is going to get more fuzzy in the future. Mike (36:43): We're not going to be able to measure things quite as perfectly as we've measured, but we can still think about the trend. We can still take those overall concepts of, as you said, 80 versus 120, I would've picked 80, but now that you pointed out, yeah, actually I'm much better off. And it's the same profit. That's the, you know, mindblowing bit is it's exactly the same profit. So I, I have to be making it up in volume. Oh, that volume is worth so much more. To me, I'd be crazy to go back to paying 80 bucks or what many businesses asked for is we're paying 80, but we need 50. Kathleen (37:20): I think putting on my hat as an in-house marketer some of that is pressure from above, you know, where you're you're, if you are working for a CEO or a board that doesn't understand this concept they're looking to consistently lower CAC. And so they're going to be saying, you know, how come, how come that cost of acquisition is not coming down over time? You know, and so there's a, there's an educational element that I think is needed there from the marketer to, to the rest of leadership within the company, to understand kind of these concepts that you're talking about. But I also think what's interesting to me about this whole conversation. Is it points to kind of what you need to think about as a marketer when you enter into a relationship with an agency to do your paid ads, because so many, so many of the marketers that I know in my network don't have, full-time, in-house people that do this. Kathleen (38:18): Cause it's, they're either at a stage of growth where they need to outsource it, or they've recognized that it's something that's pretty specialized. And so coming to that relationship with more than just, you know, I want to keep my CAC below X, or I want you to consistently bring CAC down and get me lots leads, but coming to it, understanding your pro like the overall profit margins of the business and, and understanding just those, those core financials that are maybe are not necessarily looked at as part of the paid ads strategy is super important. And then knowing to hold your outsourced team responsible for factoring that into the strategy. Mike (38:59): Yes. Well, it comes back to it's the goal, what's the goal that you're giving your agency. And I think more and more the hybrid model is, is the right model. You know, like, as you say, it's changing so fast, do you really want, unless you're spending millions a month, do you really want somebody in house who's going to leave after 18 months running all that for you? You can't obviously outsource your marketing strategy to an agency that has to come from the CNO internally, but using those external skills in a fast changing environment. But what's the objective, what's the goal that you've given to your agency. If it's just keep reducing CAC, no matter what that isn't going to work, that's going to hit a point where, well, yes, we can get you a row as a 14, or we can get CAC down to 25, but at what cost, what does that do to volume? Because we can't triple volume and reduce CAC at the same time. We're good, but we're not magicians. What's the objective Kathleen (39:55): Point about, you know, we were talking about startups and high-growth startups and, and you know, if you're a company that's looking to raise another round of venture capital funding, or if you're looking to get acquired, that volume is so important, they want to see, they want to see acquisition fast growth. They don't want to see, Oh, like at the end of the day, having a lower CAC is nice, but that is not as important as, you know, we tripled our customer base. Mike (40:25): I, I, I know very little about say something like Y Combinator, but my understanding is it's, it's all down of that growth number, you know, are you growing at 10% month on month or whatever that, that number is for your business and have you sustain that? Are you improving that growth? Yeah, I'm conflicted by that. I get it. I understand why, because you've got to make a dent. You've got to get in there. You got to become something in the market. You've got to build that awareness, but at the same time, how much are you going to burn getting to that point, right. That's a different world for us. Kathleen (40:59): I guess if you have deep VC pockets behind you, you can burn a lot. No, that's so fascinating. So, so, you know, what would your advice be to marketers if they're looking at entering into a new relationship with somebody to do their paid ads, or if they're in a relationship, but they're thinking I need to take a fresh look at this. Like, what are, what's the information that they need to gather to come into this conversation in an informed way? Mike (41:27): That's a great question. I think at a minimum asking your agency, Hey, what happen if you know, what would happen If we allowed CAC to go up 10 bucks or 20 bucks, what would happen if we doubled our budget? What would happen if we reduced CAC? What would happen, but what would happen to what, what would happen to overall profit or first 90 day revenue? And let's be really, really clear about how we're measuring what works and defining how, what, what, what works is, sorry, I butchered that sentence, but you know what I mean? What's the definition of did this work and being really clear about that and being open to sharing all of those numbers from both sides. This is what we understand about our lifetime value. This is what we understand about our referral process. Yes, we're trying to fix this, but right now each person brings in 1.2 additional people like being really clear and transparent and sharing all of that. Mike (42:25): And back to your point about education, I think that's really cool. So maybe it's I will put some pictures up on our, some pictures, some images on a, on a blog post around this concept on our blog so that your listener can, can come and steal those images, download them, stick them in the PowerPoint for the CEO, for the board and say, zero, that's this point down here. Break even. That's this point over here, this is the Hill that we're going to die on. Actually, we're not, we're going to die on this plateau up here. Which one do you want to pay? And basically do the 30 second version of what we've been talking about and get your board to say, is it 80 or 120? And then when they say 80 go, I knew you'd say that, which is why you don't get a lollipop. And here's why we're going to go after one 20. Kathleen (43:11): I love that. I love that. Well, if you do this blog, I will definitely link to it in the show notes. And it's like the convince your boss letter that, you know, conferences give out, here's the letter you should give to your boss to convince them why you should go to the conference. This is the convince your boss letter for taking a different approach to your paid ads. Yeah, that's great. Well we are now at that point in the conversation where I get to ask you my two questions and I've already previewed that a little bit. So I'll ask you the first one which is, you know, the podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or an individual that you think is really knocking it out of the park with inbound marketing these days? Mike (43:54): You know, I was thinking about this a little this morning and I, yeah, I'm going to have to say a client name, but I am I'm conflicted because I'm not meant to mention client names, but look, if you're still listening at this point, you kind of go and look and tell me who is doing it really well here. I think ButcherBox who are, have grown and grown and grown in the States over the past three, four years. They just, they care so much about their customer, but also about the farmers that they support. And that story has just resonated. We're lucky enough to help them along their journey. I know they've got a happiness, really, really smart in-house team. And then they've got, you know, external SEO agency that we chat to a bit. And we look after paid ads. So we do Facebook. I don't think we even do Facebook for them. We just did the Google side for them. And so there's lots and lots and lots of people involved, but at the core of it two guys that really, really, really care about what it is that they're doing and what it is that, that, how they're making the world a better place. And I think people are just drawn to that. I think their content is absolutely fabulous who doesn't love candied bacon, I'm Australian. I have no idea what candied bacon is, but it sounds amazing. Kathleen (45:08): It's a uniquely American thing to, to put sugar on cured meats. Mike (45:14): Pancakes and bacon doesn't even make sense to people outside of America. Kathleen (45:19): It's funny that you say that. So, little story. I lived in Barcelona for a year after college. That's the thing I missed the most was pancakes. And I remember trying to explain what pancakes were to the people that I lived with. I lived with a family. And they were like crepes? And I'm like, no, that is not the same thing. There are pancakes. It's a foreign thing. All right. So butcher box, I'm now intrigued and we'll have to check them out. Second question is the one I mentioned earlier, which is how do you personally keep up to date, stay educated and stay on top of, you know, all these things that are constantly changing? Mike (46:01): In a word, curiosity, I guess. I mean, I love the business of business. So I read all the time. I get to go to a lot of conferences. I guess I figured out really, really, really early on that that was an investment in, in me, in my education, in my team, we have a role here. So we have a learning fund. Everybody has a learning fund of five grand per head, and it's frowned upon if you don't spend that. So we also have an unlimited Amazon policy. If you want a book, then buy it. Don't ask anyone for permission to go get it. So we've got a wonderful library out here, but the deal is, if you go off to a conference, if you go into a course and learn something, you have to come back and do a lunch and learn on what you got out of it. So it's an investment and, and everybody gets better because of it. I follow some, some smart guys like Avinash Kaushik. I think he thinks about data so wonderfully. He's such a wonderful presenter too. I had the absolute privilege of sharing the stage with him in Moscow a couple of years ago, and managed to sneak back to his green room. We all had our own green room and we all had our own personal assistant. Mike (47:13): So I asked my little personal assistant, like, could you get me into his green room? And we had the most wonderful chat about data, about parenting, about all sorts of stuff for half an hour. He was so gracious. This is before he went on stage when I'm usually a bit of a mess and I don't want to talk to anybody. And he's like, come in, have some of my free snacks. Let's chat about life. And the world is just such an entertaining, brilliant thinker. So Avinash I just saw an interview with Seth Godin the other day and just bought his new book. I haven't read it yet the practice, but I was chatting to my wife last night. She, she saw it on the counter. I mean, is he still going? I'm like, Oh yeah, she used to be in marketing. And, you know, she remembers purple cow and permission marketing. That was what, 20 years ago. And he's still wonderful. Kathleen (47:59): Yeah. He, and every day he comes up with something new seven and a half thousand blog posts. Yeah. It's pretty invincible. Mike (48:06): But most of all you learn by doing, I think so I learned from the team we learned from our clients where we're always trying new things. I try and invent a big new thing around Google ads every year. So that sort of forms the bulk of my, my talks back in the day where we went to conferences and gave talks. So I'm always thinking about how businesses can, can benefit, not just from Google ads, but you know, from, from marketing in general, from what's going to happen with no cookies, how are we going to track things? How does this play with this? How does paid ads play with SEO play with Facebook? How can we make it all better? My my latest little thing has been Google data studio and getting really deep into data studio and thinking of different ways to visualize the data. Mike (48:53): So it tells a better story. So, Oh, it's, it's, it's really quite bloody annoying and fiddly in some ways, but an incredible tool and Google are tipping a lot of resources in, you know, that team is growing fast and they are pushing out improvements to that all the time. So yeah, really, it's, it's, it's by doing and just continuing to get educated every day. I probably still spend at least an hour a day on my education. And I, I love it. I love learning. And I love teaching, I guess I've discovered I'm a teacher at heart. And that for me is that the reason that you learn is so that you can teach so that you can help other people with the stuff that you learned. So it's it's fun. It's not a choice. Kathleen (49:37): I heard a quote once and I don't know who said it, and I'm going to probably get the quote wrong, but it's something along the lines of you haven't truly learned something until you have successfully taught it. And I so believe that because the act of teaching forces you to really synthesize the information that you've taken in and, and to be able to then process it and help somebody else to understand it. That's so powerful. Mike (50:00): Yeah. To process it, to sort it out in the, in the right order and to, to know which pieces come, where and the, the relative importance of those pieces, if you, if you can explain it. Yeah. Kathleen (50:13): Yeah. Well, Mike, I feel like I could talk to you forever. I have to know, do you still ever fly helicopters? Mike (50:20): You know, I have not flown in over 10 years, so I, I definitely, I'm not legal to fly anymore. Kathleen (50:28): You probably don't have those, those hours that you need to come up. Mike (50:30): I don't. And you probably wouldn't really want to sit next to me while I, while I read that I would definitely have to go back to school to learn that one, but I will I will fly again when my daughters are old enough after I do lots of training, I would love to to fly them around actually thinking about it. It would be lovely to go back to Hawaii and and fly around Molokai and Maui. Again, it was such a beautiful part of the world. Yeah. Yeah. I'll take that. Excuse me. Kathleen (50:57): Awesome. Well, I love your story. I could talk to you forever. And this was a really interesting conversation. I definitely it's, I'm thinking differently about Google ads now than I was before we started, which I love, I love talking to anybody who gets me to challenge, you know, the way I think about things. So thank you. And I suspect there are going to be people listening who are going to have questions and want to dig a little deeper on this. So I will be putting some links into the show notes, but for those who are listening what's the best way for them to find you online and to learn more about WebSavvy. Mike (51:32): The best way is probably to head to WebSavvy. So WebSavvy.com.au, because we're down here in Australia. I do have that good Twitter handle. I'm not on Twitter much, so don't try and get me there, but just send me an email. I love this stuff. I love answering questions. So, or being challenged, if you, if you think half of what I said today was garbage and you disagree. I would love to hear that too, but if you have a question, if you would like us to take a second pair of eyes over an existing Google ads account, we can do that for you too. That's Mike M I K e@websavvy.com that I, you send me an email, ask me a question would love that. Kathleen (52:09): Fantastic. Okay. That email address is going to go in the show notes. Mike (52:12): I will write the blog and I will send you the link in the show notes too. Kathleen (52:16): Love it. And you're going to give me the link to your course for those who are potentially interested in learning some of the basics. So lots and lots and lots of resources from this episode. Thank you, Mike for that. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this as much as I did I would love it. If you would head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a review, let us know what you thought. That's how others find us. And of course, if you know somebody else, who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Mike. Mike (52:52): Thank you, Kathleen. It was an absolute pleasure. I've had a lot of fun. Kathleen (52:55): Thanks. Me as well.

Mike Rhodes is the CEO and founder of AgencySavvy and WebSavvy.  Mike is an international keynote speaker, and co-author of The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads. Mike's focus has always been how to leverage the near-future to build more profitable businesses.   He’s helped thousands of people figure out what's next for their business (and how to profit from those future trends), and he is eager to share that expertise with your audience.    Now in its sixth edition, The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads is the world’s best-selling book on Ads, with over 1300,000 copies sold.   Covering the most up-to-date news in Google Ads, the sixth edition offers readers the opportunity to learn what has changed since the 2017 edition, and explains in simple terms how to squeeze the most from your marketing investment..  The Podcast Lab Is Coming Soon! Let's Build Your Podcasting Empire Step-by-Awesome-Step.  Want to get updates about when we'll launch? Register here How can Google Ads Help My Business? A few of the benefits of Google Ads include: Immediate exposure – Your ad can show in the top 5 results on a Google search results page. Reach – Show your potential customers relevant, targeted ads in a timely manner when they search Google for your products, services or business. Learn How To Easily Create and Build Your Google Ads Campaigns Like a Pro [FREE] Google Ads Video Training Workshop “The Perfect Google Ad Formula”  Get Instant Access Now! https://www.philadairtraining.com/free-google-ads-video-training-series   P.S. Please subscribe on iTunes. It really does help the podcast to grow! Drop me a note in the comments section over at PhilAdairTraining.com and let me know your thoughts. Suite 12, 5th Floor, Dymocks Building 428 George Street, Sydney 2000, NSW, Australia   W: www.PhilAdairTraining.com E: support@philadairtraining.com I’m a huge fan of connecting on social media. If you’re on these social networks, then let’s follow each other:  Facebook YouTube Pinterest Instagram My Best-Loved Online Marketing Tools: Check Them Out Now! 

Stop wasting your marketing budget and start investing in real prospects. Listen to 9 podcasts about how to attract the right leads, how to qualify them, and say no to misfits. Learn about staying on top of mind with the right leads and how to close deals faster. As a bonus, we have a toolkit that every B2B marketeer needs and we host an expert session to help you be the best B2B revenue marketer! Sign up for the full series here: https://marketingguys.com/revenue-marketing-series/ Episode 3: Trained as a helicopter pilot in the UK, Mike soon realized that being an ‘air-taxi driver’ was not going to be his future. Mike loves helping businesses grow and was one of the first people that started using Google Ads as a profitable lead generator. He now lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is the founder and CEO of WebSavvy and author of ‘The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords’. During this interview we discuss: How to get in front of the right people profitably How to choose the right channel to reach your audience How to find and get in front of the right audience for your product or service with Google Ads When not to use Google Ads Practical tips to use keywords and audiences and reach the right people How to grow your business online without the knowledge of marketing technology Mike mentions a website during the interview in which you’ll find a spreadsheet of all affinity and in-market audiences Google offers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1437qKdxMKsGa5J1CM_ynIX2svwYvMaCNDQ1Co5PuQFU/edit#gid=0 LinkedIn Mike Rhodes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/websavvy/ Website WebSavvy: https://www.websavvy.com.au/ If you want to be on this podcast or would like to know more about Marketing Technology, visit our website at marketingguys.com or contact Elias Crum at e.crum@marketingguys.nl

In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast with Bill Hartzer, Bill Hartzer spoke with Mike Rhodes from WebSavvy.com.au about Google Ads.

2020 has taught us many things. One of the biggest lessons learned is just how important it is to be Web Savvy in the Wine Industry. To that end, today Emma and Mike speak with George Christie, founder of the Wine Industry Network and purveyor of arguably the most read newsletter in the wine business, Wine Industry Advisor. The three discuss how to best utilize WIN's tools as a producer, if the hype around wine and cannabis is here to stay, and how we see the future of trade events, lectures, and seminars moving forward. It's a great conversation. Let's get ready to hit the bottle. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/htbpodcast/support

In this episode with Mike Rhodes, we’re going to geek out about AI, machine learning, and Google AdWords. If you own a website and want to leverage its advantages, this episode is a must-listen. Mike is the CEO & Founder of WebSavvy and AgencySavvy and co-author of the world's best-selling book on Adwords 'The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords'. He's in his 16th year of building and running Google Ad campaigns for businesses and brands all over the world at WebSavvy. For an episode that’s full of actionable tips for business and digital marketing, tune in! The show notes, including the transcript and checklist to this episode, are at marketingspeak.com/260  

Resource Links:Ready to Grow Your Video Business (https://videobusinessaccelerator.com/)Get a free Sales Script: (https://www.denlennie.com/Free-resources)Websavvy Website: (https://www.websavvy.com.au/)AgencySavvy Website: (http://agencysavvy.com/)Mike Rhodes is the Founder & CEO of WebSavvy and AgencySavvyAn internationally-recognised speaker and co-author of the most recent “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords” with Perry Marshall.Here's a sneak peek at what you'll hear: Two common ways small business owners lose the shirt off their back when using paid advertising. - 1:55 Mike gives a 4-minute crash course on getting started with Google ads. (Includes: what to do first, do's and don'ts, budget settings, and a clever branding trick hardly anyone does that's incredibly powerful and won't break the bank. Starts at 2:30A sneaky target trick that can drive you more highly targeted traffic to your ads. - 5:00The difference between "branding keywords" and "non-branding keywords" - and why you should care. - 7:10What house auctions and Google AdWords have in common, and... how knowing this can help your ad campaigns avoid ending up in the increasingly crowded paid advertising graveyard. - 8:00Why you should beware of Google's suggested ad bid. (If you're not careful, Google will melt your credit card at a speed and efficiency that would make even the most greedy of gold-diggers envious. - 8:20A certain "mindset" needed in order to even stand a chance of making paid advertising a profitable venture. - 10:20The "IE" method for making any paid advertising ultimately successful. - 10: 30A huge blunder most small business owners make with the paid advertising that murders the profitability of their ads. (You could do everything else perfect, but if you make this profit killing mistake, it's all for nothing. - 12:00)Two critical elements for creating high converting websites and landing pages. - 13:00A clever way to put multiple ads in front of your website visitors who clicked away. - 15:00How to use paid advertising to relentlessly follow up on people who have clicked your ads or visited your website without coming across as a creep or needy. - 16:10A sneaky way to make your business look much bigger and more professional in the eyes of your prospects. 17:00How to start using Google Adwords or any other paid advertising if you're a complete greenhorn who's on a shoestring budget. - 19:15Niching down with your marketing can be tremendously effective, but should you niche down with paid advertising? Hear Mike's answer at 28:12About Mike RhodesWebSavvy was born in 2006 with the purpose of helping businesses grow and doing great work for interesting people.The company was founded by Mike Rhodes, a legendary pioneer in the PPC industry (our words, not his. He'd be too embarrassed to read this, so let's quickly move on), and co-author of the best-selling Ultimate Guide to Google AdWordsSince then, WebSavvy has grown into a team of 18 smart, dynamic people with industry experience, ex-Google employees, ex-small business owners. Oh, and a Shark Tank winner… Support the show (https://www.denlennie.com/free-training)

Reading opens our minds to causes us to think big. Meet Mike Rhodes; he is the CEO of Web Savvy. He is a digital agency owner. He tells us how reading triggered him to start his business and enhanced his leadership style. If you are a digital agency owner wondering how best you can grow your agency, this episode is for you. Mike will be sharing with us; he grew his agency and his style of leadership that makes it easy for him to work with his team. Listen in, learn, and get inspired. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Operation Agency Freedom podcast to stay up-to-date about the best ways to own your agency: https://dudeagency.io/category/podcast/

In this episode, Mike Rhodes, the founder and CEO of WebSavvy shares insights into using a profitable Google AdWords strategy to drive your business growth. Insights he shares include: The one strategy that drives business growth for WebSavvyHow a business should decide if a Google Adwords strategy is worth investing inHow to decide the best channels to remarket to your visitorsHow to reduce the learning curve when crafting your Google AdWords strategyHow to remain profitable with your ad campaignsHow to run ad campaigns for cheaperWhat you can learn from the competition and how to create wins despite their effortsWhy you need to pay attention to machine learning and how it will affect your Google AdWords strategyWhy you should think about your business as a data business to achieve your business objectivesHow to differentiate your business when the playing field is levelled because of AI and data (irrespective of your Google AdWords Strategy)

In this episode, we go Down Under for a deep dive into the business of WebSavvy, a Melbourne-based digital marketing agency founded by Mike Rhodes. He explains why he chose agency life over being a helicopter pilot, advice for fellow agency owners, effective team training, and much more.Continue Reading → The post CWC 38: Professional development for agency owners and employees (featuring Mike Rhodes) appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

How do we grow brand awareness? By meeting your audience in the right place, at the right time.   Learn to do just that with  Mike Rhodes, Founder and CEO of Web Savvy, as he teaches you how to approach customers based on how well they know your brand. Molly and Mike discuss how to segment your audience, what search terms your website needs to rank for, and which of Google’s features to use for specific campaigns.   IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: The 5 levels of awareness on Google and how to use them to reach your customers How to combine your brand competitor and non-brand search campaigns How to bid on competitors without lowering your quality score and the 2 questions to ask before bidding Mike’s #1 recommendation for marketers looking to reach their cold traffic   LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Breakthrough Advertising Adbeat Episode 194: The Google Ad Profit Curve with Mike Rhodes, Live from T&C 2019 Episode 202: Merging the Worlds of Facebook, Google, and Amazon Advertising Episode 205: The Secret to Hooking the Right Customer Web Savvy Mike on LinkedIn   Thanks for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review. iTunes not your thing? Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or at DigitalMarketer.com.

Mike Rhodes is the Founder & CEO of WebSavvy.com.au a Google-award winning agency based in Australia that manages over $100M in ad spend. The internationally recognized speaker has spoken at places like Traffic & Conversion Summit, Synergy Digital Forum Moscow, Baby Bathwater & more. His most recent book The Ultimate Guide To Google AdWords is a bestseller with over 100,000 copies sold.   Quotes To Remember: "20% of our searches each day have never been seen by Google." "I spend 1-2 hours per day on my education." "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" -- Joe Polish    What You'll Learn: How to create profitable Google Ads The Google Ad landscape and history Google Ads VS Facebook Ads Leveraging Google Ads to grow your business Success habits    Key Links From The Episode:  Want to see how we can work together? Schedule a free strategy call here.  Web Savvy Agency Savvy Recommended Books: Content Marketing Secrets Podcast Domination The Ultimate Guide To Google AdWords The Book Of Joy The 4-Hour Chef

This week is all about Google ads, as Ralph talks to Mike Rhodes, Founder and CEO at WebSavvy, live from the 2019 Traffic & Conversion Summit. Mike explains his Google Ads Profit Curve and how you can use it to narrow down your cost per acquisition (CPA) and make sure you aren’t spending more money than you’re making. He also gives you his best ecommerce advice for selling more products, and his trick for getting Google to choose you over the competition. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: How to use the Profit Curve to find the CPA range that keeps you profitable Real examples of the Profit Curve at work How the Profit Curve helps you test 2x faster than your competitor and gets Google to choose you over them   LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Remove.bg: Remove Image Backgrounds WebSavvy Mike on LinkedIn Mike on Twitter Thanks for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to The Perpetual Traffic Podcast? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review. iTunes not your thing? Find us on Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or at DigitalMarketer.com.

At the age of 11, Rebecca Gill emancipated herself and became a ward of the state in northern Michigan. With grit and resilience inspired by her SpitFire grandmother, Rebecca now focuses on creating value and helping people to grow her web marketing company into a six-figure business in the first six months. Nine years later, her company, Web Savvy Marketing, provides e-books, Webinars, Masterminds and one-on-one guidance to help individuals and companies build an effective online marketing strategy leveraging SEO. Check out her resources at www.rebeccagill.com https://www.diyseocourses.com/sp/ 

Today I’m welcoming the owner of WebSavvy, Mike Rhodes, to The Art of Paid Traffic. WebSavvy provides services that drive performance on the channels that most directly impact digital ROI, such as Google AdWords. We’ve talked about Google AdWords on the show before and awhile back I began asking around for the go-to person when it comes to this topic to bring on the podcast. Mike Rhodes is a name I kept hearing, and you’ll he’s the perfect person to share more about the massive opportunities with Google AdWords (that I know are being overlooked by a lot of people). Mike gives some great tips on these opportunities and which businesses AdWords are for - and who maybe shouldn’t be spending money on them. He talks about the changes he’s seen in online advertising the past several years, the keys to remarketing, and he also takes us through how he would market a hypothetical business that I ask him about. You’re going to hear Mike explain why when it comes to Google AdWords, you really don’t need to make it difficult but you do need to understand your limitations and know when it is the right time to get help from a team of experts. On the Show Today You’ll Learn: How Mike got started in Google AdWords – and the two books that changed the way he thinks about business and money Why he doesn’t focus on Cost Per Click and what metric matters the most to him How to use Google to tell if people actually want what you’re selling and the many ways you can use AdWords in your marketing The importance of diversifying your advertising beyond just Facebook Why Mike feels so strongly that when it comes to advertising using Google, everything starts with tracking! What you absolutely need to be doing now if you’re an E-comm business The top questions to ask when interviewing agencies to work with

In this episode of Agency Journey, Gray interviews Mike Rhodes from Web Savvy and Agency Savvy about building his business, creating and selling info products, and how to grow your personal brand.

Watch the video of this podcast here. Have you ever noticed the same ad popping up on different sites while you’re surfing the web? That’s a form of retargeting, and it can be highly lucrative when done properly. An expert on that subject and all things pay-per-click (PPC) is Mike Rhodes. Mike is a PPC and AdWords specialist and the founder of Web Savvy, a done-for-you digital marketing services agency. He joins us to talk about the three steps to properly using Google’s display network and more on today’s edition of WP Elevation! Mike Rhodes has been in the PPC and AdWords space since 2004 and has grown from a one-man shop to a team over a dozen people. He credits that team and the culture they’ve created to the tremendous growth they’ve seen over the last decade. One of the things they’ve learned to do so well is using Google’s display network. I asked Mike to share his insights on using that network with a lead gen system that is working. He said there are two parts to Google: the search network (ads at the top and bottom) and then the display network. Only about 2% of advertisers are using the display network on purpose because it’s harder to use. Mike likens it to a game of chess, using a quote by Perry Marshall: If search is a game of checkers, then the display network is a game of chess. He says there are many more moves with the display network, but with that flexibility comes power and the ability to scale. So if you are going to use the display network, Mike has three steps you must take to ensure success. First, you need to measure. You must understand what you're going to measure and what success looks like. While you’ll often hear others tell you to measure your results, Mike says you can't leave that till last, or you will be flying blind. Instead, think about what you're going to measure first and set that up, then you can build and run from there. You've got to start with the end in mind. In fact, you'll get a lot more data by doing so which means you can move faster and spend less money to snag a good result. Your next step is targeting. This is assuming you have an offer, and you have a website of course. Once those pieces are in place, you must think about targeting and how you’re going to do it. Most people think that with the display network they can put ads on certain sites. For example, if you want to get people who are interested in sports you can put your ad on ESPN's website. While that’s true, it's just an iota of the display network game and what is really possible! There are many other ways to target traffic, and the one most of us know about it is remarketing. Remarketing has been around for six years, and Mike and his team have been using it for 5 and a half years. The form of remarketing most of us recognize is this one: someone comes to a website that uses cookies, those cookies follow the person around the web and put ads in front of the person on various sites. However, there are other types that don't involve someone having to visit your website first. Mike gives a few of those examples on this show, including retargeting based on people who visit your competitors' sites! His biggest caution with remarketing is to be sure you don’t overstep the creepy line, as long as you do that this technique can be very profitable. The final step is your message and testing it through ads. You can have the same landing page but understand which ad attracts people to your web site. Mike shares exactly what size works best for them, and he also explains why you should test different ideas and ad concepts – but you should avoid animation. He gives greater detail on that final step including how to make sure your messaging stays consistent once you know what ad works best. Also on this episode, Mike and I talk about why carefully screening incoming prospects and only working with select people has helped his agency grow and produce even better results. You’ll hear his thoughts on that and so much more on this episode of the WP Elevation Podcast!  

On this week’s episode, Brian and Lauren discuss their favorite moments and guests that have appeared on the show during Season One of StudioPress FM. In this 25-minute episode Brian Gardner and Lauren Mancke discuss: Their favorite episodes of Season One The most downloaded shows Most memorable guests and topics What they’re looking forward to in Season Two Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Brian on Twitter Follow Lauren on Twitter The Transcript The Season One Recap of StudioPress FM Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, Brian and I discuss our favorite moments of Season One of StudioPress FM. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress. Today, on this very last season episode for Season One, I am joined, as usual, with Lauren Mancke, vice president of StudioPress, mom of one, soon to be three. Looking forward to just wrapping up Season One. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Thank you for joining us again this week. We’re closing out Season One and we will be doing this week a little different. We have no guests. It’s just Brian and I talking about some of our favorite moments on the podcast so far. Brian Gardner: Typically we like to go somewhat scripted, where we prepare questions for those that we’re talking to, but Lauren and I, this morning, we’re going to just completely wing it. We have just some general idea of what we want to talk about for this closing episode. It won’t be long. It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 episodes already. I know that for you it might feel a little bit longer because you started editing the first handful of them or first half of them and then we turned that over because you have more important things to be doing, but can you believe, 16 already? Lauren Mancke: No. It’s really flown by. Brian Gardner: I remember when I did No Sidebar, it seemed like it took just forever to edit the shows. I wasn’t structured when I set it up and it felt like it was hard to find ideas and guests and things like that. I’m almost forcing us to close the season down because we have a lot of stuff we have to do before the end of the year, but I don’t want to, because I’ve been having so much fun. It’s been great talking to the members of the community. When I sit down and try to think of who do we want to talk to next or what series we want to have, I’m loaded with all of this, these ideas, these people. There are so many people. I want to do two episodes a week, which of course isn’t realistic. There’s just so many people to talk to and so many topics to cover. For me, it’s been fun so far. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’ve already got some great people lined up for next season, so it’ll be good to take a little bit of time off and get that all organized and lined up for next January. Brian Gardner: I almost feel like we have a legit show here, where we actually follow a format and we have a good audience. We get at least a few thousand listens on every show, if not more. I don’t know. I feel really good about what we’ve done. It’s our first full-time gig together, doing the podcast thing. What do you think so far? Have you felt like this has been a successful journey? Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I’ve really been happy with who we’ve gotten a chance to talk to and hearing everyone’s story. It’s really cool how so many people have that same sort of, they were doing something else and they found WordPress and then they built this whole thing. It’s great to hear everyone’s different take on that journey. Brian Gardner: The good thing about WordPress and the cool fascinating thing I find is that even though we have generally that same story, we all come from just much different backgrounds. We also are in the middle of just different types of expertise, where some people come in as designers, some people come in as marketers, some people come in with a technical or programming background. You’ve got a designer who was sitting at a bored day job and then you’ve got like a technical guy who was working for the man and wanted to do his own thing. There are so many different levels of skillset and just expertise that’s being represented within the WordPress space. It’s fun to watch just how many people from how many different avenues of life are coming together in this whole open source project. Lauren Mancke: For sure. So many different types of personalities, too. It’s not just the same type of person. You’d think all these WordPress people would be maybe slightly nerdy or whatever, but it’s not true at all. It’s so many different types of people, and they’re all really cool. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Even within the short spurt we did here at the end with the designers, even the designers that we talked to like Bill Kenney at Focus Lab and Jason Schullermega and Megan Gray, even within just one segment of that audience, you’ve got people with different personalities and flavors. Bill works and owns a creative agency and Megan’s by herself and Jason’s doing a startup. Yes, there’s a lot of resonating stories, but even within a certain sub-niche of the WordPress designer ecosystem, there’s just so many types of different people represented. That wasn’t boring because everyone brought something unique to the conversation. Hopefully, designers and people who don’t design and do other things even were able to pick up something from that as well. Lauren Mancke: In WordPress, I think, when you mentioned the guests specifically, it makes me remember all the different things that make each one of those people unique. You got Bill, who is very, very good at being efficient and I love that about him. He has so many ways of doing that and that’s his focus. He can tell other people about that. Then you got Jason, who is; he’s just a family guy. That’s his passion and you can see that with everything he does and everything he talks about. Those are just fun and unique things that everyone who works on WordPress, they can be their own person and tailor their job and their company around those skillsets that they have. The Most Downloaded Shows Brian Gardner: You know one of the things I think for me that I found for me interesting as a metrics guy and somebody who looks into that kind of thing? There were certain episodes that I thought would have been more popular than others and vice versa. When I would go in and see the analytics and the number of downloads and so on for each one, there were a few that surprised me where I was like, “Okay, this one’s probably not going to do as well, maybe because of the audience. It isn’t such a widespread thing or an ‘interesting topic.'” Then those were the ones that got the most distribution and those that were shared the most. It’s funny how you can draw up a game plan. Nine times out of 10, things go the way you want, but then once in a while you get that one where I’m like, “Wow. That was the one I almost didn’t even suggest doing and it was the one that was in the top three or whatnot of most listened to shows.” That just goes to show, you never know. Lauren Mancke: What were some of the more popular shows that we had this season? Brian Gardner: You’re going to make me look that up, so I’m going to make you talk while I go look that up. Lauren Mancke: You know, we can edit this, so we can break for a second. Brian Gardner: I know. All right, so I was able to pull up the analytics. Sadly enough, three of the bottom four episodes were the first three, which were my story, your story, and the redesign of StudioPress. I don’t know if that’s an indicator of the fact that it was new, and not as many ears were on the show, or if people were just don’t find that interesting. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. Let’s go with the first. Brian Gardner: I’m going to go with that one. Top to bottom, I’m just going to spitball these out here quickly. A Beginner’s Guide to SEO That Works is the number one show. We did that with Rebecca Gill at Web Savvy. I had a feeling that that one … SEO is a topic that a lot of people want to talk about. Lauren Mancke: I thought that was a very informative episode. Lots of good nuggets on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I actually took the show notes to that and the transcript, and wrote up my own little iteration of that. I think I talked about this back then, that I was going to try that a couple of times with these and try to use that from a curation standpoint, a re-purposing content, and so I pulled some of the best things that Rebecca had to say and wrote a blog post about that, and tried to rank for, I think it was a Beginner’s Guide to SEO or something like that. I think last time I checked, that was on page three of Google, so it kind of sort of working. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of stuff that came out of that that was good. Number two, and this does not surprise me just because I know that Matt and some of the folks at Automattic were helping with the distribution of this, and that was the show we did, How and Why It’s Okay to Make Money with WordPress, which of course we just talked about just all of the different types of people within WordPress, so that makes sense because that would appeal to everybody. The next one was How to Scale a Freelance Business. That, I believe, was the one that we did with Bill Erickson. Then How to Build an Online Education Business, now this is the one I was referring to earlier that I didn’t think was going to strike a chord as much, just because it seemed a little bit more of kind of a sliver segment specific to doing an online education because that’s not what we’re all in the deal here for. We did that with Tonya Mork. That was a good one. Great information. She’s got a ton of knowledge. She’s worked 20, 30 years in her field, so she has a ton of expertise that she brings to the table, so that was one a little bit surprising. The How to Sustain a Profitable Creative Agency came next. The Importance of Entrepreneurial Mental Health with Cory Miller. That was probably my favorite episode that we recorded just because it kind of dove a little bit more into just the personal touchy-feely stuff, which I’m a huge fan of. Again, a lot of these were within 1% to 2% of downloads, so it’s not like certain episodes crushed other episodes, but that’s a quick recap. Then of course you and I, and our whole stories, are down there at the bottom, pulling up the caboose. Lauren Mancke: Nobody cares about us. I’m just kidding. Brian Gardner: Which is why we have guests on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yes, exactly. Brian Gardner: Because they’re the ones people will want to listen to. Their Favorite Episodes of Season One Lauren Mancke: I think the Cory Miller episode was very good as far as the content. I think all three of us were tearing up on that one. Brian Gardner: Yeah. I wish I would have seen Cory’s talk at WordCamp Denver just because, and I’m sure it’s on WordPress.tv, but that is something that I think without a doubt every single person who listens to the show struggles with in some regard. Some better than others. I’ve had my seasons of even within the last six years, after we merged the company, of really struggling, especially early on. This was before we brought in the mid-level management and brought in people like you, who came in and really helped do a lot of the stuff that I do. I remember, I think it was within the first year, we came together as partners in Boulder. I had a meltdown and I was like, “Look, guys, I’m just completely fried.” I remember Brian Clark said to me … He says, “Just take the next month and a half off. Do nothing.” I was like, “What?” Like, “No, I m a creative. I can’t do nothing.” It’s one of those things where it creeps in and life gets in the way and clients get in the way. Hard work and stuff like that do pay off, but the whole entrepreneurial mental health thing is something that I think far too many people don’t discuss or don’t have an … It doesn’t even have to be talked about across the internet via a podcast. You got to have a couple of people in your life who even if it’s a Skype call … I know Cory a lot of times has tweeted things out saying, “Hey, I just got a message from a friend and it meant the world.” Just things off radar, offline. Just check in with the people, whether they are people who you work for, who work for you, or people like Jason, who are just peers within the community. That stuff matters, so I’m glad we had a chance to talk about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think when you’re working on the internet, it’s easy to get lost in that. You’re connected to everyone, but you’re also connected to no one if you’re just in your own little bubble and you’re not really able to sit down and talk with people face to face or, like you said, even on a Skype chat or something like that, so it’s an important issue. Brian Gardner: All right, so let’s talk about some of the other episodes. I’m just going to look down and just see. I know we talked, as I mentioned earlier, Brian and Jennifer, husband and wife team. They own their own agency and we talked a lot about … You weren’t on that episode because I think you had mom duty that day, but that was a good episode because it talked about work and family balance, which is in a way relevant to the mental health thing, where as creatives and those who do stuff online, we have access to the internet 24/7, and so it is difficult at times to balance work and home life. I struggle with it sometimes. There are times where I literally have to just shut my laptop and tell Shelly, “Do not let me open this because I need to go play catch with Zach because that’s important, because I don’t want him growing up thinking the computer is more important than him and so on.” For you even, you’re a mom and have two more on the way, and all of that. I mean, what’s that going to look like for you next year? Lauren Mancke: Well, I thought that episode would have been good for me to be on because I ran a creative agency with my husband, so I know a little bit about that. I even notice my son isn’t even two and a half yet and he’s already … He’ll come in and sit at my desk and say, “I’m working. I got to get on a conference call.” He picks up. He puts on the headphones and he pretends that he’s on a conference call. I’m like, “I don’t know that I want that to be my legacy with my son.” So spending more time with family is definitely a priority. Brian Gardner: Yeah. Going back to Jason and the episode that we had with Tim, that was the one thing, over the last few years, of things that I see online that I get envious about, is the ability that some people have to do that and make that so important. By all means, I don’t shun my family. Shelly is at home all day long, so we get to talk to each other. I’m home at 3:00 o’clock when Zach comes home, so we do have our time together, but Jason, of anybody I’ve ever seen online, puts more importance on his family, his wife, especially his daughter. I can’t imagine the bond that they’re going to have throughout their life because of how much importance he placed on the balance of work versus time with them. It’s fun and sometimes, like I said, I get envious of the fact that people are able to do that, maybe not so much as I wish I could, but yeah, it’s important too to balance that out because relationships, marriages, mother-daughters, father-sons, those types of things, in my eyes, big picture, matter way more than what we do for our jobs. Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that I think just everybody needs to hear, that it is important to balance work and life. All right, so another one of my favorite episodes was when we had Shay Bocks on and talked about food blogging. That also is something that I thought would have been a little bit more less heard because of the fact that it was very niche-specific. I think it resonated with a lot of people because people took things that she said out of the food blogging discussion we were having and those are the things that could have been easily applied to any other niches. So I think even thought it was a food blogging episode, a lot of the stuff that Shay talked about, things that we discussed, could have certainly been used across the sphere. Food blogging to me is interesting because it’s one of the … It sort of came out after real estate, which is sort of not really been that big a thing anymore, but the food blogging industry has exploded. You know, Will, your husband likes to cook and you like to take photography and you’ve done a couple of food-oriented themes on StudioPress. I can’t believe how popular that still is and how many people still … Foodie has regained number one status on theme sales on StudioPress. With the exception of two, maybe three months over the last almost two and a half years now, it’s been number one every single month. Shay and I talk probably at least once a month just about stuff in general and she’s always like, “I’m waiting for the ship to sink.” I’m like, “Don’t.” I’m like, “Embrace the fact that …” Shay has done something of a big lesson for all of us. If you do something that works, instead of trying to replicate that somewhere else, really hone in on that. She’s really crafted her business around the idea of food blogging and she re-branded her company, called Feast Design Company. How more relevant of a brand name than to work within the niche? That is also something I think has been fascinating for me to see, is people within our community really identify where they belong and then really attack at that point. Lauren Mancke: Shay is also just a great person. It’s really great to see her succeed and all of her success. She’s just a wonderful, wonderful human being. I think too, also, food blogging, people … We’ve talked about focus on family. I mean, that’s a trend. People are spending more time, I think, focused on their family and eating and community and all of that, so I don’t see food blogging going anywhere any time soon. Brian Gardner: Yeah. People always eat. There’s always going to be the internet and the will to make money. For people, not so much Shay, but the people who use Shay’s themes per se, that’s the dream, right? Living the dream, we talked about that with Jason, is to take your passion, something … In this case it’s something that you do at home, so you could literally be hanging out with your kids and working at the same time, and even having them help. I recently redesigned a website called Simple as That Blog with Rebecca Cooper. She’s got to a really, really big website. She’s got four kids and she’s a great photographer. She does a lot of her DIY craft and recipe type of things with her kids. She uses them as props. They get dressed up and they do things. For her, it’s a really creative way to do that work-family balance thing because she includes her kids with her work, and so therefore there’s no … I don’t know. Just disconnect between the two, and so I think food blogging is just another example of where that can be done. All right, so the episode that I actually wasn’t sure we would be able to do, mainly because I know Matt sometimes is a little bit slow on email as he should be … I’m sure he gets thousands of emails a day and from probably people way more important than me. I reached out to Matt Mullenweg to talk about WordPress and making money. He wrote back within like a day or two. I was very surprised and very pleased that he was very open to talking to us about that. It was a great episode. We talked almost an hour, I think, on that one, and probably could have kept going. The premise of that show was very obviously how to make and that it’s okay to make money with WordPress open source community. We did a couple of episodes on that. Also I remember we did one with Carrie Dils. With Matt, we talked about just the WordPress ecosystem and different ways that we can make money with WordPress, that it’s okay to make money with WordPress, and the fact that he even endorses the fact that it’s okay to make money with WordPress because I think at this point, the community as a whole has identified that WordPress is a business in a sense. Even though there’s a free version of it, even though it’s an open source piece of software, there’s a full blown ecosystem, as we talked at the beginning of the show, just all the different ways that people use WordPress and can offer WordPress as a business, either as a service or like what we do with commoditized type things with selling themes and plug-ins and so on. It was fun to talk to the guy, right? The guy who founded all of it. I was a little bit star struck, as I always am every time I talk to him. It’s a little bit difficult to … I don’t know. Feel like we were pulling our weight in that conversation, but what did you think about that show? Lauren Mancke: Oh, we’re totally BFFs now, so it’s all good. Brian Gardner: You guys on HipChat or Slack together? You just ping each other with ideas and whatnot. I like to think of Matt as like the mini Richard Branson because he’s always … At this point in his life, he’s probably got tons of money and he’s out travelling around. He’s out in Bali or in Antarctica. I forget that he’s probably 30-something now or late 20s or whatever, but to me he’s always going to be a kid. I don’t know. The whole thing is a great story. Just imagine how many people, their lives have been changed by what he’s done. Mine, yours, everybody who listens to the show, everyone in our company. It’s kind of crazy if you think about that. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. I think he’s around my age, but yeah, he’s definitely prolific and I too am a little envious of his schedule. He gets to go everywhere and do all sorts of fun, cool things. Brian Gardner: Again, I think that goes back to the point of, if you have some crazy idea, sometimes you just need to execute it. Like, what if he never decided to fork b2 back in the day. We all have that question in our life. What if I never left my job or what if I never asked people if they would buy a WordPress theme or any of that stuff? I think the moral of the story here is that sometimes you do need to take that risk and just do that thing, as George Costanza did in Seinfeld back in the day. Do the opposite, right? Because if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe the opposite will. That was a great episode, by the way. Lauren Mancke: I always get tuna on toast. Brian Gardner: Ah, there you go. Seinfeld, one of the best shows ever, if not the best show ever. What They re Looking Forward to in Season Two Brian Gardner: All right, so moving forward, we are going to take break here. We ran that through our guy in charge of the podcast network and said, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of things we’re working on.” We will not be discussing any of those here on the show because they’re just fun, internal projects that will make a big splash and a big difference next year to everyone listening to the show. What are the types of things you want to do as we probably open back up in January of next year, after the holidays? Who are the types of people we want to have? Anything specific you want to see happen? Lauren Mancke: Well, I know we have Dan from Dribbble lined up, Dan Cederholm. I’m excited about that one. He actually came up to the Northbound office a few years ago when ConvergeSE was going on. That’s a conference in Columbia, where I live. It was great to meet him and Rich, and spend time with him. It’ll be fun to have him on the show. Brian Gardner: Now one of the things I want to do and throw out there is, we would love to hear from you guys, those who are listening to the show. At the bottom of the show notes, we’re going to put mine and Lauren’s Twitter handle. If you have any ideas or suggestions or people, if you want to nominate people, we are definitely open to hearing from the community. I know you and I are both creatives and designers, and so we err a little bit more on the side of that, in terms of show. I do want to make sure that we don’t forget our nerdy friends who are developers and programmers, and bring those types of people in as well, and talk to them because I’m sure they have a ton of wisdom to share with our audience. I’m trying to think of who else I would want to have on the show. I know that we have a little Google doc where we keep track. I want to get outside a little bit of just the general WordPress space and just find some really big entrepreneur type people who happen to use WordPress, but it’s not their business. I know people like Paul Jarvis is a guy that I want to bring on the show, possibly Jeff Goins. From my perspective, those are a few of the people that I plan to hit up. Maybe we’ll see if we can get a guy like Chris Brogan on just to talk some sense into us all and whatnot. We’ll have to think about that over the coming weeks, who else we want to have on the show. Lauren Mancke: Yeah. We’d love to hear from the audience, of suggestions. That’s a great idea, Brian. Brian Gardner: Hit us up on Twitter, @laurenmancke or @bgardner. We’ll put the link in the show notes. Even if you don’t even have a suggestion for the show and just want to say, “Hi. Thanks for putting together the podcast,” we would love to hear some of that feedback as well, good or bad. Let us know. We will wrap the show up. This is our 17th episode, I believe, which still amazes me. Sorry for those who really like the show and want to hear next week. We won’t be here because that will be Thanksgiving week. Actually, you know what? This will air the day before Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, people will be out shopping. No one wants to listen to us anyway. December is really a time for that family and stuff that we talked about. We will be back in January of 2017 with Season Two of StudioPress FM. On behalf of Lauren and I and all of us within our company who touch the StudioPress brand, we thank you very much for your support as customers, as listeners and those who spread the gospel of StudioPress. Thank you very much and we will talk to you next year.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. She is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant. She s an active member of the WordPress community, participating as a WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator. Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities. The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers. In this 39-minute episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Rebecca Gill discuss: The accidental entrepreneur Empowerment in training others A holistic approach to SEO How to avoid risky black hat tactics The 3 most important elements of SEO Long-term SEO strategies Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Rebecca on Twitter RebeccaGill.com Web Savvy Marketing Web Savvy Marketing Themes SEO Consulting DIY SEO Courses SEO Bootcamp The Transcript A Beginner’s Guide to SEO that Works Jerod Morris: Hey, Jerod Morris here. If you know anything about Rainmaker Digital and Copyblogger, you may know that we produce incredible live events. Some would say that we produce incredible live events as an excuse to throw great parties, but that’s another story. We’ve got another one coming up this October in Denver. It’s called Digital Commerce Summit, and it is entirely focused on giving you the smartest ways to create and sell digital products and services. You can find out more at Rainmaker.FM/summit. That’s Rainmaker.FM/summit. We’ll be talking about Digital Commerce Summit in more detail as it gets closer, but for now, I’d like to let a few attendees from our past events speak for us. Attendee 1: For me, it s just hearing from the experts. This is my first industry event, so it s awesome to learn new stuff and also get confirmation that we’re not doing it completely wrong where I work. Attendee 2: The best part of the conference, for me, is the being able to mingle with people and realize that you have connections with everyone here. It feels like LinkedIn live. I also love the parties after each day, being able to talk to the speakers, talk to the people who are here for the first time, people who ve been here before. Attendee 3: I think the best part of the conference, for, me is understanding how I can service my customers a little more easily and seeing all the different facets and components of various enterprises then helps me pick the best tools. Jerod Morris: Hey, we agree. One of the biggest reasons we host the conference every year is so that we can learn how to service our customers — people like you — more easily. Here are just a few more words from folks who have come to our past live events. Attendee 4: It s really fun. I think it s a great mix of beginner information and advanced information. I m really learning a lot and having a lot of fun. Attendee 5: The conference is great, especially because it s a single-track conference where you don t get distracted by, Which sessions should I go to? Am I missing something?” Attendee 6: The training and everything — the speakers have been awesome — but I think the coolest aspect, for me, has been connecting with both people who are putting it on and then other attendees. Jerod Morris: That s it for now. There is a lot more to come on Digital Commerce Summit. I really hope to see you there in October. Again, to get all the details and the very best deal on tickets, head over to Rainmaker.FM/summit. That s Rainmaker.FM/summit. Voiceover: StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder, Brian Gardner, and VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke, share their expertise on web design, strategy and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On today s episode, we are talking search engine optimization with Rebeca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. We ll cover this topic from all angles, so listen in. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone, welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner. I m joined, as usual, with the VP of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. We are very excited about the show because right now we are starting a new series where we are talking to members and experts, mind you, of the Genesis Community. Lauren, what do you think about that? Lauren Mancke: Very excited to have everyone on. Brian Gardner: We could probably go 30 or 40 episodes deep easily with people that I want to talk to. We ll break them up into little compartments. But it s going to definitely be fun for us. Today we’re joined by Rebecca Gill of Web Savvy Marketing. Rebecca is a WordPress developer, an SEO consultant, and a general business consultant as well. She s an active member of the WordPress community with a variety of participation as WordCamp speaker, podcast guest, and SEO educator. Her company, Web Savvy Marketing, was founded in 2009 and is a creative agency based in Southeastern Michigan. They work with clients across the globe who range from bloggers and small businesses to large enterprises and universities. The Web Savvy online store offers more than 20 professionally designed Genesis themes, ideal for businesses, marketers, educational institutions, and bloggers. Rebecca, it s our pleasure to welcome you to the show. How are you? Rebecca Gill: I m great. Thanks so much for having me here. Brian Gardner: Yeah, it s funny. When I sat down to think of the people who I wanted to have on the show there were a few names that instantly popped up, and yours was one of them. I was kind of hoping at some point, and maybe … I know down the road we have another series that I m going to talk to Chris Cree who worked with you very closely and just recently left. We ll be able to tackle both sides of your business where he also was involved. Let s kick this off. I ve known you for a number of years. You’ve been around the WordPress space for some time. Walk us through the early years of how you got started as an online entrepreneur and how you created Web Savvy? The Accidental Entrepreneur Rebecca Gill: I didn t set out to be an entrepreneur. I was at a small company and I was their VP of Marketing. I was with them for about 10 years in total. The company dynamic shifted and it was evident that I really needed to leave, but it was the heart of the recession and there were no jobs in the Detroit area. The situation in the company got so bad that I was so distraught and distracted from it I actually mixed up my medication, put myself on the ER for eight hours, and ended up on the couch for a week recovering. It was at that point my husband and I were like, You know what? It doesn t matter what s going on with the economy, you need to leave It just it was affecting our personal life more than we could tolerate, so I quit. I was going to go into SEO consulting and I started to do that. I actually had some initial success, but I quickly realized that the companies I was working with didn t have access to their websites. Everything was in HTML and nobody could actually go in and make implementations of my SEO recommendations. I went back to my experience with Joomla and WordPress and started to work on web development. That was just a means to be able to get the SEO out there that I needed to for the small businesses. I quickly fell in love with the WordPress community and dove in. We started creating custom themes and development, and then when Genesis came out we jumped on the Genesis bandwagon and it s been a great ride ever since. Brian Gardner: It s funny how many stories start with, “How I became an entrepreneur online more out of need than want.” Not many people have the luxury of saying, I just think I m going to wake up and one day I m going to start this. It s really, “I got fired,” or “I had to leave my job,” or, “My husband lost a job and so I had to basically figure out how to make money online.” It sounds like your story is somewhat that way. Sometimes it s also health-related and things like that. thank you for sharing that. It s encouraging to other people to hear how that type of thing gets started. Rebecca Gill: I always joke that I m the accidental entrepreneur. My husband jokes that I can usually slip and fall but I always end up smelling like roses at the end, and I think this is a good example of that. Lauren Mancke: Running a small business isn t always easy, what are some of the things that you struggle with? Rebecca Gill: I think, for me, my biggest struggle is a mental struggle, because I now have an agency and I hadn t planned in having an agency. I spend a lot of time on operations and worrying about payroll and receivables and things like that, checking on projects. That s all things that I don t like. I would rather be doing SEO consulting and training and marketing and sales, because that s really what makes me happy. I think if I were to say what is my struggle, that s the biggest struggle. That I don t get to focus on what I really want to focus on and where I know I m really good. I have to focus on these other things. That can be a mental challenge that you just have to overcome and push through daily. Brian Gardner: For me in StudioPress back in the day — I think at the core that all comes down to that struggle and how it affects us mentally. It’s sometimes related to our inabilities to let go off control. When we as independent people start something and do it all on our own, obviously it comes to a point where we need to scale and get bigger. With that comes the pain of doing things that we don t want to do. For me it was support — as much as I love working with people, it just got to a point where I couldn t work 85 hours a week. You have to entrust people — as you have, and have done successfully. Start to grow the company and entrust those responsibilities to other people so that you don t become a nut case. That s what I had to do. You know what I mean? Rebecca Gill: That s so true. Brian Gardner: Genesis — let s go right into this because you were one of the big, popular, most known Genesis agencies, along with Brian and Jennifer Bourn. Talk us through how Genesis came into your picture. Rebecca Gill: I actually tried the beta version of it. When it didn t have trial themes. I created a website that is still out there today, that is using that original version. That was me going in –that was still when it was me hacking themes and customizing myself, which I shouldn t be doing. I m not allowed to do that anymore. I had a familiarity with it, but then Chris Cree, who you mentioned earlier — when you came out with the real Genesis framework and the trial themes, he said, We need to start using this. He explained to me how we can have a base trial theme of the things that I like and we can use that as our box that we are going to play in. We started with it and I quickly found that it was just such a good path for us. Not only do you all produce really good code and a great framework for us to work within, it creates a box for my team where we have a set of best practices and standards. We’re all beating at the same drum. I think that from agency owner’s perspective that s really invaluable to me. Plus, I just know that my clients — somebody has got their back besides me. If I get hit by a train — or whatever reason Web Savvy goes away — I know they have you and they ve got the Genesis community that can pick right up where we left off. That makes me really happy. We made that decision early on, jointly with me and Chris. We ve never strayed from it and I ve never regretted it. Brian Gardner: That s music to our ears, right, Lauren? Lauren Mancke: Definitely. Rebecca Gill: I m a Genesis cheerleader, I can t help it. Brian Gardner: We like those. Empowerment in Training Others Lauren Mancke: Aside from the general services you offer. I heard you ve gotten recently into training. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Rebecca Gill: I ve actually been doing group training since 1995. First it was an operational training. My first job out of college I was an Operations Manager. Then, when I worked for the ERP Software Company, I was doing training for the user base. I d go onsite for five days and walk people through the setup of the system and talk about everything from bill of materials and manufacturing production lines through the general ledger and accounting. That s been in my blood. I haven t done it for years because I ve been so busy building up the agency, just with the daily to-dos. We ve got a really good project manager now who manages all of our custom developments. That s freed me up so that I could go back to training and start really using my SEO education and sharing that. The reason I ve been doing it is because, from an SEO standpoint, it s a lot of labor. There is only so much of me to go around and I only have so many hours in the week. I don t want to be working those 85 hours that Brian mentioned. I ve been starting to do more and more training — both in the course and then with the boot camp — so we can really spread that education and empower people. Let them have that education so they can have a long-term path. Honestly, I love it. It s like Chris creating the support forum, he loves that and I love training. You just empower people and you make them happy. The light bulb goes off and they are thrilled with that. Then you know that you ve given them a foundation that they’re taking forward with them. Brian Gardner: When I started StudioPress, training was definitely not something on my radar. Only because — like I said earlier — I was so busy trying to keep up with the creation, the ideas. This even was before Genesis, back in the days of Revolution. I was just creating the product and micro-training in the sense of writing tutorials and things like that. For me it never clicked, there was never that, Hey, you should do paid training. That s basically a way to scale your time because you can create something and then charge for it and then build that out. Not until StudioPress merged into Copyblogger did I really understand. Back then, Teaching Sells was our big training thing. I realized very quickly that there was a lot of opportunity, just in general, across the Internet space for training. You see places like Lynda.com and stuff like that now. It seems like everyone’s doing training. That s interesting. On your website, you have a dedicated section to SEO consulting. As you mentioned, you like to teach, you like to do SEO, and folks can hire you to do SEO consultant. In fact, I just recommended you within the Genesis Facebook group. Someone asked about SEO. They lost their SEO person. I don t know if they contacted you or not, hopefully they did. Let s talk about what got you interested in SEO. From a web standpoint, from a design and development it’s less appealing. It s that almost taboo word where people are too afraid to even mess with it because they’re not sure what it is or how to do it. It s easy to make something pretty and put it online, but as I ve always said, a well-designed website without traffic is a well-designed website without traffic. Talk to us about SEO and how that came into your life from an important standpoint, and just a little bit about the consulting that you do. Rebecca Gill: My background with SEO was at my prior job where I was the head of marketing. We didn t have a big marketing budget, and I taught myself SEO because I was in the marketing department. I competed against people like SAP, Microsoft, and Oracle — really large organizations that had teams of marketing people and teams of SEO people. I quickly learned that that team environment was very fragmented and they didn t have a good structure. If I could just learn and apply I could beat them and get on page one. I grew the sales that we brought in from the Internet — it became our lead source and the majority of our sales. We grew the company 400% in two years. When you are selling a $100,000 product, that s a lot, that s a huge shift. To me that was empowerment. I really fell in love with SEO then, because I realized how much control you have over things and how much good you can do when you just work hard and do the right thing in the right path. That really got me set. I had SEO on our website for a while but then I pulled it back because I didn t have time to do it. I was so busy with custom work that I didn t have time to work on the projects. Again, bringing Mary back on with project management — it’s freed some of my time up so that I can do consulting projects with people. Now we do a mix of both. From an SEO project standpoint, I will work through the project with you — keyword research, sitemapping, down to optimizing your content. We also do customized boot camps on-site for SEO, blogging, and social media. Now we ve got the courses that we re offering at diyseocourses.com, as well as the seobootcamp.com, which is our new in-person training in a group setting in Dallas. We ve evolved it, and it s really my effort of trying to help as many people as I can and teach them the right way to do things. I don t want to everything for everybody because I don t think that that s good for them long term, but I want to teach and I want to train. That s the heart of our SEO. Even when we’re doing a project with somebody, I m not going to just do everything for you. I m educating you along the way with best practices and the right way to do things, so when I m gone you can take that forward and continue on your path and have good success. Brian Gardner: That s like the whole “teach a man to fish and he eats forever” type of thing. The Facebook group — when someone says, I lost my SEO, if they’re not taught good SEO or at the very least, the fundamentals of what the person that hired them to do has done, then they feel completely lost. Like this person probably says, Oh my gosh, my person fell off the radar,” or they closed their business or whatever, “What will I do? The services that you offer — it s great that you teach them at least the basics. That way, if something would happen to you, God forbid, they don t feel completely in the dark. They can at least take that and try to apply it towards the stuff that they produce there in the future. Rebecca Gill: One of the questions that I ask people — it s an onboarding question when I first get an inquiry in about SEO — I always ask them, “Have you hired an SEO consultant in the past and what did they do for you?” You would be surprised at how many people have hired somebody and it s not just one, it s two or four or five at different stages through their business, but they have no idea what the SEO company did. They don t know what they were doing behind the scenes, if they were doing anything. Every time I hear that — and it s like 80% of the time I get that response — it makes me sick to my stomach. That s like the guy in Facebook. He may not even know what his SEO person was doing, if they were doing anything. It s tainted the SEO industry and the consultants. There’s a lot of really good SEO consultants, but there’s a lot of less aboveground people that are really doing high-quality work, telling their client what they are doing, and showing them what they are doing and educating along the way, which is the way it really should be. Lauren Mancke: That s true, that there’s a lot of stereotypes in the SEO world. You say on your website that you have a more holistic approach. What does that mean? A Holistic Approach to SEO Rebecca Gill: For us, I m not going to just do for you. We’re going to take you in the process from start to finish and you’re going to learn along the way. Whether I m doing a consulting project, whether you’re taking my course — which is 8 hours and, I think, 65 lessons — or whether you are doing our boot camp. Holistic, to me, is we first start with your target market, we define who that is and who you are selling to, and what are their pain points and what solution you offer. That kind of information. We look at your competitors. You do research. From that research, now you ve got some data that you can start to plan and start to strategize. Then as you work through that, now it s under education. Then you look at analysis to see what worked and what didn t work. You go back and you rinse and you repeat. That s about keyword research and sitemapping and investigating competitors, auditing your content in your existing site, down to writing the really good content that s going to be good for the user and optimizing it. Then, off page, link building and things like that. Unfortunately, a lot of old-school SEO consultants still focus on link building. That s their primary focus because they can control that themselves and they don t need the client involved. They can do it all on their own, so they say, That s what you’re paying me for. That s the wrong approach in today s world of Google and Bing. You have to have holistic. You have to have the user, the website visitor at the forefront of your objectives and goals to make sure that they’re happy. Because if they’re happy, that makes the search engines happy, and the search engines will reward you with more traffic. When I say holistic, it s a full circle from start to finish. With, again, education along the way, because I want people empowered. Brian Gardner: Before I get to my next question, I want to go back. You ve said these phrases a couple of times now, and I want our listeners to understand. You said, keyword research and sitemapping in particular. Let s do a quick definition of a what each of those are just to give them an idea, for those who don t know. Rebecca Gill: A lot of people, when you talk to them they will write a piece of content and throw it up in the web, which is great. I wrote the rant I had the other day about SEO, but before I actually posted that I did some keyword research to see what phrases would relate to that so I could utilize that within the post and optimize it. That s one form of keyword research, and that s the shortest version. The other version is really doing a full plan to say, “What is a phrase or multiple phrases that people might search to reach my site or my blog?” What are they searching for, whether it s their pain points or it s solutions or it s people — going through analysis. You start with a seed list. You generate your seed list. You come up with all of your potential possibilities that you think. Then you look at your competitors and you learn from them. You do things like you look at Google auto-suggest and related searches and you add that. Now you go to keyword tools to see what volumes and what other variations you can have. Then you look at that and you compare that to your existing site and what your future content may hold. You start mapping one keyword or phrase to a particular piece of content. That s the sitemapping part. That part is not a quick process. It takes weeks to do it if you are doing it right, because it s data, it s analysis, and it s research. That s the part everybody skips. They just go and they jump to content, and they may or may not have a keyword for the content. Or, worse yet — and I hear this from mid-market companies, which is a dagger through my heart — they say, We look at the website as a whole. Our website is optimized for X, Y and Z. But they never actually assign it to content. What the problem with that is, is when you’re doing that you’re asking the search engines to decide which piece of content is the best one for a given phrase. That s the wrong approach. Keep a simple form, don t make them think. Make it easy for the search engines to find the exact right page or post or product for a given phrase. There is no question if they know this piece of content on your website is the best piece of content for this phrase. That s the whole purpose of keyword research and sitemapping, is to do that. Once you get yourself into that process you ll never leave it, because you ll realize it just makes common sense. You’re doing what s right for the visitor as well as the search engines and it helps you win in the end. Brian Gardner: Not only does it make common sense, it s probably something that bears fruit, too. I think the way you explained SEO probably resembles to some degree the idea of — and this is a great time for us to talk about it because the Olympics are going on — it sounds like SEO … There is a lot of training in a lot of endurance in things like that where you have to do the right steps. You can t just hop off a couch and run. You have to eat well. You have to sleep well. You have to train well. To some degree, it sounds like you can cut corners in SEO but then you just won t run as far and things like that. Rebecca Gill: Correct, and it s short-lived. The one problem that I see all the time on people s website is you ask them and they say, My focus keyword is X, Y, and Z.” You say, Okay, tell me what piece of content on your website is reflective of that. They either give you 10 or they have no idea. That s the same problem with the search engines. They are not going to know either. If you do and it s short term — you’re trying to build a long-term plan for yourself, your visitors, and the search engines. The more research and planning you put into that and more due diligence at the front of the process, the more results you have and the longer your results are going to sustain. There are still people sitting on page one of Google for highly competitive phrases that I helped optimize eight years ago. That s because they did it the right way and they had the planning before the actual execution. Brian Gardner: House built on solid rock versus house built on sand? Rebecca Gill: Yes. It s hard to get people to do that because they want to rush ahead. They want to see that end fruit and they want to just plow ahead. It’s like, No, no, no. You’re pulling the reins back and not letting them do it. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got to lock them in a cage and say, No we’re not doing that. Lauren Mancke: I had a client one time ask us to call Google. They wanted us to call them and get them on the front page. Rebecca Gill: Isn t that funny? There is consultants that promise that. That say, I know Google, I know exactly what the algorithm is. That s BS, you don t. You don t know people at Google. Just because Matt Cutts may have tweeted you five years ago doesn t mean you know people. You surely don t know the algorithms. You may suspect elements of the algorithms and what factors are, and you may have learned something through trial-and-error, but you don t know precisely every single algorithm, and you’re supposed to because the search engines don t want you to. The 3 Most Important Elements of SEO Lauren Mancke: For people that are a little bit overwhelmed when it comes to SEO — they hear the phrase and they are just like, I don t even know where to begin. Can you break it down into the three most important elements of SEO? Rebecca Gill: My three most important would be keyword research, sitemapping, and then high-quality content. Granted, there is a lot that falls underneath each of those, but those are the buckets. I ve structured my online course to have that. You start with basics, then you go to keyword research, the next segment is sitemapping, the next segment is content, and then you have the gravy that is the offsite stuff. If you skip those three blocks you are going to never succeed. Because the offsite activity that people want to do is pointing to a bunch of garbage that s gobbledygook that the search engines can t understand. The offsite that you’re doing will never help unless you ve got that core foundation set. Brian Gardner: We talked about keyword research, and you also mentioned how you got your clients on page one of Google eight years ago. It reminds me back to eight years ago — remember the shoe money days and all of that stuff? I want to be very specific , keyword research is not the same thing as keyword stuffing, which is something that back in the day — people don t even know what that is anymore because it s so archaic in a sense. This was back when Google actually cared about the keywords that you would put into the post meta that would show up in the source heading. Google finally said, People are obviously stuffing keywords by trying to cram them in and make every other word ‘jewelry,’ ‘diamonds,’ and stuff like that, to try to whatever. Even back in the day — Rebecca and Lauren, you guys probably both remember — I think I even tried this at one point, where at the bottom of your page you would write a bunch of keywords and then change the font color to white so no one would see it. Google finally got smart enough to realize that that would — and they would then penalize you. There was actually a non-benefit to doing something like that. It reminds of all of the black hat tactics that would be used by either people who didn t know any better or people who were just following like sheep the people who said, Hey, this black hat stuff works. How to Avoid Risky Black Hat Tactics Brian Gardner: You, Rebecca, you’re stand up. You certainly prefer to keep your hat white. What are the points of establishing a I guess this goes along with the three most important elements of SEO that we just talked about. The encouragement to do it the right way. To keep your hat white, which is what s called white hat SEO, which basically means you are just doing it the right way. You are not trying to trick the system. I m assuming you are an advocate of that and you would encourage anyone who is trying to really invest in SEO to do that, right? Rebecca Gill: Yes. First, your point of the hidden keywords at the bottom and the meta keywords in the source code stuffed with just a bunch of words — I still encounter that every single week with prospects or clients. You called it old school. You know it s old school, I know it s old school, but people still do it today. There’s still that philosophy that that s what works, but it doesn t. If you break down white hat SEO to this: to be successful in search you have to make the search engines happy. Let s take Google, for example. What is their goal? Their goal is to make money. They are a for-profit company. They sell ads, they have other products, but that s their goal. The only way they’re going to do that is if they keep people happy. People come to the search engines, they search for something, they get good results that take them to a good website or blog that answers their question. If you veer off from that and you don t pay attention to the actual user and the visitor to your website and keeping them happy, you are not going to be successful with the search engines because you are not helping them be successful. That s white hat. It s focusing on your visitor. Writing content for the visitor. Making sure that it s fast, it got great performance, it s designed well so it s easier to read and the site flows. Keeping that visitor happy will make the search engines happy, because that visitor will come back to the search engines and use them again. White hat is focusing on that. That s your primary goal. When you start to look at any of the cheats — any time you start to want to manipulate the search engines with quick link building or hiding that text or keyword stuffing or having five pages of the same content with just slightly varied keyword-focused phrases — none of that s going to work. That s all black hat, and the search engines are way too smart for that today. They’re putting more emphasis on bounce rates and click-through rates. That tells us that they are moving even further ahead with a focus on the user experience. Brian Gardner: One thing we didn t talk about with black hat SEO is — I m sure you ve encountered this too — some of these SEO consultants that we ll call black hat, not only are they trying to trick Google and the search engines into stuff that benefits the client. They actually go — I don t even know if it s a blacker SEO or blacker hat SEO, where they would actually go in and try to manipulate the results so that it benefits them as the SEO consultant. In other words, they are stuffing these words at the bottom of the page that may link to their website, which is even worse than trying to do it for the client. They are actually trying to mooch off of that themselves. That s just definitely not a thing that should be happening. It s obviously something that when folks hire SEO consultants like you they really should find someone that they can trust, find someone that has been referred to by them as a successful, holistic, white hat SEO type of consultant. Even if that means pay the extra money, because you do go get what you pay for at times. Let s shift this a little bit away from the technicalities of SEO. For our listeners, who many of which are just starting out on the web. Maybe we call them the DIY-types where they are just trying to get online and just start. They’re not ready yet to hire an SEO consultant in all of that. You believe that great SEO begins well before the website goes live, right? Which means you have to plan before you even just launch? Rebecca Gill: Yes. If we’re doing a custom development project with a small urban market company, for example, and the project includes both SEO and design and then the buildout in WordPress, we don t even start design until we work first on SEO. Going through research, planning and sitemapping and talking about their website personas and mapping the paths for the website that the users are going to take. Then, after we go through all of that, now is when we actually start the design process with the graphic designer. After the things are built out and content is going in, we come back and optimize again, but that design phase doesn t even start yet. I think that that s a mistake that a lot of people make. They look for a theme that makes them happy as opposed to saying, What do I need? What does my visitor need? What kind of content do I need to display? What visitor paths do they have? Then looking for a theme that matches that. They jump ahead. So you get those questions from people and email all the time, and I m sure you guys do too is, “What theme should I pick?” I don t know what theme you should pick. I don t know enough about your content and your personas and your visitor flows and your paths and your objectives to be able to pick a theme for you. That s a process. It should be a process. I think that those are the steps that you need to do before a launch, as opposed to launching a pretty site and then adding in SEO after the fact. That s the wrong path and it creates extra work and a lot of delays and a lot of frustration. Lauren Mancke: I definitely agree with the content-first mentality when it comes to design. I run into that issue all the time with people of stressing how we need to go through the content first because they think that that s just an afterthought, which is definitely not the case. What are some other common mistakes you see businesses and bloggers making? Long-term SEO Strategies Rebecca Gill: I think a big one with SEO is expecting immediate results. It doesn t happen. Can you get immediate results within a week or two for a long tail keyword? Yes. Can you get it for something that s competitive with 20,000 searches per month? No. That s going to take time to work up and build and you have to be really focused. I encourage people to have a couple of those, three to five of those high value phrases and know that it s going to take time to build up. That s definitely one mistake. Skipping the research and the planning phase is a huge mistake as well because, like I said, people want to jump ahead and they’re eager. That s just the wrong way to go. I think the last one, I would say, is outsourcing everything. Don t outsource everything, educate yourself. Read high-quality blogs. Take an online course. Educate yourself on the process and then hire someone to help you execute that. In that way, you are knowledgeable, you know who you’re hiring and whether or not they have a good approach to SEO and whether they are solid. That way you ll have success today and success five years from now. Like I said, eight years from now they are still sitting on Google, even though they may not even be doing anything. Brian Gardner: Dictionary Brian jumping back in. You mentioned a phrase that I want to go over because this is huge. I think another one of the mistakes is people focus on these keyword phrases that are just too broad. You brought up the term “long tail search.” I know what means and I ve gone into my own analytics and seen the effect of long tail search. It s changed the way I — whether it s on StudioPress or the Copyblogger stuff that I write or even my own blog — I try to change how I m trying to write and which words I m trying to write for because I see the benefit of long tail search. Can you explain to our listeners what long tail search is? Rebecca Gill: Sure. When you look at the keywords, you ve got really broad, which in our case would be design. You could be designing anything. You could be designing diapers, or a car, or a website, it s too broad. Now you go into the next category which is more focused, which is website design. Much more focused, although that is still kind of broad because it could be website design in Joomla or Drupal or small business or enterprise. Now go a little bit more focused, which is WordPress website design. Now, from a service page that s a great keyword, because it is your target market, it s what you do. It s going to drive conversions when they actually hit the website. A long tail, which would be more usually focused on a blogpost, could be a problem that someone is having and it could relate to a plugin for a specific function. That s a long tail search. It s very precise, it s very focused. Those are much easier to win on and have success with than something that s very broad like design or web design. What people usually forget is you don t want design. You don t want web design because a lot of those aren t going to convert. You want specific to what you do so the traffic you are getting is precisely focused on your offering and how you can help them. That s really going after that long tail and making sure that you’re providing very focused value to your visitors. That s what leads to success with conversions. Brian Gardner: Not that I particularly care for conversions, especially with this blogpost that I wrote. But an example of the difference between a broad term and more of a long tail search term is a post on my blog where I wrote about my experience buying a MacBook Pro — how I returned my thirteen inch MacBook Air for a Mac Book Pro with retina display. I certainly don t get traffic when people type in “MacBook Pro.” I get a ton of traffic when people search derivatives of how much does a MacBook Pro weigh, which is a much longer term. I will get zero hits. In fact, I probably won t even be on the first 100 pages of Google for something as generic as “MacBook Pro.” But when you write something, and again, there was no intention here. I had no intention of trying to capture traffic or do anything with it. It was just to share a story. When you write something that s a little bit more — maybe answers a question. When you think of writing something, write out in your mind, “What would people Google for?” When you type in, “How much does a MacBook Pro weigh?” I come out, I think I m number one in Google. I might even be in the snippet that shows up at the very top now for that particular question. Start to think about that when you write your content, unless your site is extremely authoritative and gets a lot of Google juice. You may have to bank on the fact that the long tail search type of thing will bring more traffic in the long run. Rebecca Gill: It really adds up. People always want to go after that high volume, that 20,000 searches a month. Guess what? You end up sitting on page 100 in Google and no one ever sees you. Even if you’re on page 3 people rarely see you. But if you take 10 long tail phrases that each have 50 searches per month, that adds up quickly. Now, not only do you have 500 visitors coming, they are very targeted to what you do. It s in your benefit to focus on the long tail. It s easier for you. It converts better. It s easier to win. And it overall will make everybody happy. Brian Gardner: Rebecca, you mentioned a little bit earlier in passing, SEO boot camp. It s something that you just recently that came out with. I m going to do a direct pitch for our audience. I have a question: Have you ever wondered why your online marketing efforts haven t been successful? Learn the right way to do SEO with Rebecca from Web Savvy Marketing, along with other friends of ours, Carrie Dils who will be on a future episode, as well as Coy Miller of iThemes, who is a friend of mine and also will be on a future episode here at StudioPress FM. Jumpstart your website by attending their SEO boot camp conference on January 11th through 13th, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. If you want more information on that you can check it out at seobootcamp.com. If you like what you heard on today’s show, you can find more episodes of StudioPress FM at — you guessed it — StudioPress.FM. You can also help Lauren and I hit the main stage by subscribing to our show on iTunes. It s a great way to never ever miss an episode. Thanks for listening, and we ll see you next week.

Google Adwords for ecommerce can be extremely profitable...or extremely wasteful, it just depends on what you're doing. Check out this episode with Mike Rhodes, one of the world's best Adwords experts, and improve your adwords campaigns or save a sinking ship. Mike Rhodes is the founder of WebSavvy the largest independent AdWords-only agency in Australia. They use data, not guesswork, to grow company profits, and if you qualify for an Adwords Account Audit, Websavvy guarantee a profit increase. Their sister company PPCsavvy offers AdWords training, courses & a lively interactive forum for you to learn more if you want to manage accounts for yourself or for clients. Mike is often asked by Google to talk on their behalf at events & has even consulted to them on improving AdWords! He also co-authored The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords with Perry Marshall, now in it’s 4th edition having sold over 80,000 copies! Happy clients include the likes of Forty Winks, Mercedes, Clark Rubber & hundreds more. In this episode he'll dive into the specific ways in which you can get more ROI from Google Adwords for ecommerce and how to eliminate the wasted spend.   Topics Discussed: Creating better customer experiences with Google Adwords for ecommerce Using Adwords to improve your SEO How to use TrueView video ads for bigger returns The 10 questions to ask to help you determine the right adwords partner   Links / Resources: WebSavvy's Site PPCsavvy - WebSavvy's Training Site    Subscribe & Review To get more awesome Ecommerce Influence content sent directly to your device and into your ears as they become available, you can easily subscribe by clicking here. Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes (hopefully 5-stars!) help us tremendously a we’re very grateful for them. We do read all of the reviews and we’ll answer your questions or comments on future episodes. C heers, Austin & Chad!   Follow on Twitter: Follow @chadvanags Follow @a_brawn

" ... it really is a little magic money machine sitting on your desk." That's how today's guest, Mike Rhodes, founder of WebSavvy, describes Google Adwords. Now they are very big words - but Mike honestly believes that Adwords is about as close to an advertising money tree as we're ever going to get. Thankfully, Mike backs this claim with the facts and know-how. And he shares both in this fireside chat. PLUS I tackle a question from a listener who is wanting to start a business naming business. And I have a whinge about a couple of big brands that have let me down recently through their social media activity - well, make that lack of social media activity. Enjoy! The post Google Adwords tips and tricks for 2013/14. AKA the advertising money tree episode! appeared first on Small Business Big Marketing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike Rhodes from WebSavvy joins us on this episode of Small Business Big Marketing. There's pretty much nothing he doesn't know when it comes to this highly effective local Adwords campaigns. Plus he lifts the lid on his years as a seminar junkie and working for the creator of the E Myth....Michael Gerber. He drops more names than both of us combined! But of course, the show wouldn't be complete without us sharing what's on our mind, which all starts with Timbo coming clean about his new 'lover' and fellow podcast host in James Schramko. That's right, this is the episode where Timbo finally launches Freedom Ocean - a podcast for anyone who's ever dreamt of creating a life of freedom from Internet marketing. Duration: 42 minutes Small Business Big Marketing - Links & Resources WebSavvy - Mike Rhodes business Freedom Ocean - Timbo's new podcast with James Schramko Small Business Big Marketing Facebook - Will you be our mate? The Small Business Big Marketing Academy - Unlock a monthly dose of HOW TO's. The post #44 How to master Google Adwords locally. appeared first on Small Business Big Marketing. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's patients are better informed about possible causes and treatments for their symptoms than ever before. A physician works through a challenging encounter with a patient who comes to her office demanding a particular brand name drug and will accept nothing less--or so it seems at first.

Todd "Turbo" Watson and I talk about last week's U.S. presidential inauguration and the enormous web traffic around it, the new web-savvy Whitehouse, and more.