How to Actually Get New Customers Online. Predictable, Consistent Business Growth with Kris Reid: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Against the Grain. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to actually get new customers online, predictable, consistent business growth. To drop these value bombs, I brought Chris Reed into EO Fire Studios. Chris helps to change people's business and lives at Ardor SEO and has designed and implemented this simple system for people like world-renowned business author Michael McCallowetz, Avery Carl, and our very own EO Fire website.

0:38Chris is so confident in his revolutionary system that he guarantees the results. Today's value bombs, Fire Nation, are if people understood the power of websites, they would have done this years ago, that is add this awesome intel. And the number one reason your content doesn't get traffic is it doesn't have any backlinks, Fire Nation, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Chris and our sponsors. Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point.

1:13Join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts. Chris, say what's up to Fire Nation and what's something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Yeah, I think a lot of things that stop people becoming entrepreneurs is they feel that they need to be, you know, some sort of creative genius and be first to market with something. But, you know, if you think, you know, Google wasn't the first search engine, Apple didn't invent the first phone or the first MP3 player, like you don't have to be the first at anything.

1:57You just have to take action and get at it. I'm all about taking action. specifically imperfect action, Fire Nation. I hate when people use the word perfectionism, like, oh, I'm a perfectionist. I can't do this. I can't do that. Stop being a coward, hiding behind a wall of perfectionism. You just got to get it out there. We all do things really bad when we start and then step by step, we get a little bit better. And I love this first thing we're going to talk about because it's so true. Most websites, Chris, are a waste of money. Everybody's like, oh my God, I want this website. It's going to be this.

2:30It's going to be that. I'm going to have this here and that there. And they are just a waste of money. So I have my thoughts on this. But first, you go forth. Expound. For sure. Like, I mean, we have people come to us all the time that have spent like 20 grand on a website that generates no business and no customers. And you're like, why did you bother? Like, if you're not going to have a website that actually ranks or converts customers, then just build a Facebook page. Who gives a crap? You know, a website's just like a business card. If business cards are sitting in your desk drawer, they're not doing you any good.

3:01You need to be out there handing them out. And the same with the website. It needs to be in front of the people that are searching for you. It doesn't have to look beautiful and look amazing. It needs to be functional and say exactly what you do, but get in front of your potential customers. Are your ideal clients actually going to your websites? That's a question you have to ask yourself, Fire Nation. I mean, the reality is this. Back in the day, websites were a thing that people actually went to on a consistent basis, but then things happened. Things called social media, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Clubhouse, all these other things that are now drawing people.

3:39And that's where people are spending their time now, not like looking and searching specifically for just random websites. There has to be a draw. There has to be a pull. Otherwise, you are just wasting time. You are just wasting money. And I've seen a lot of people do that for a long, long time. So let's talk specifics, Chris. What makes a profitable website? Yeah, well, you make a real good point. The first thing is understanding who the hell your customer is and what they're looking for. In fact, I am a huge advocate of Don Miller's book, Storybrand. And I was just on a sales call just before this, and I was buying the service.

4:15And the guy started waffling about his company. He's like, oh, we've been in business for 10 years, and we've got 5 ,000 operators and all this crap. And I'm like, why do I give a shit? That doesn't help me at all. You're not addressing my problems. And that is exactly what a website needs to be doing. It's just like a sales call. It needs to say clearly what the problem is that you solve because that's generally what someone's searching for, right? They go to Google and they type in, I've got a headache. And your website comes up. It needs to clearly state, I solve headaches. Awesome. So you know you're in the right place.

4:48Then it needs to build a bit of credibility, show here's some other people that I've solved that problem for and then make it really easy for people to do business with you. Generally, asking someone to jump on the phone or book a call is too aggressive because they don't really know who you are. And that's where you have a lead magnet. It's download our guide on how we can fix headaches. And if you can show people that you can help them by actually helping them, now they actually trust you and want to book in a call. And man, half the sale's already made. I want to even take that one step further because people aren't just looking for a solution.

5:24They're looking for the best solution, not the second best, not the 10th best. They want the best solution to their problem. You know, that's why people don't necessarily go to the store to find bug spray. They want to find actual solutions to their real problem. If it's an ant problem, they want ant killer. If it's a wasp problem, they want a wasp killer. They want to know that what they're getting is the specific and best solution to their real problem. Like, why do you think ratings and reviews are so key, especially when it comes to Amazon? Like people want to see those 17 ,000 five-star reviews.

6:00That gives them that feeling that, okay, this is likely the best solution because the other one that has 23 three-star reviews, like that's obviously not the best solution. So what is the best solution that you are going to provide? How can you be so clear and use that story brand concept of Donald Miller that's so critical? So let's get even more specific here. I like continuing to drill down. How do we get our message in front of where our customers are actually looking? What do we do, Chris, to do that? So the first thing you need to do is what's called keyword research to understand exactly what your customers are searching for.

6:39I don't want to bore people with technicalities, but there's a few different ways you can do that. Google's AdWords tool is a great one, Ahrefs or SEMrush pretty much, but that gets a little bit technical. But work out what they're searching for. I mean, search it yourself. See who your competitors are. You probably know who they are. But what you were talking about before is like being really granular. And a good example of that is one of our customers who's a painter. So he does residential painting. and on his website on the front page it was like indoor painting, outdoor painting and fence painting.

7:16And so if someone's searching for fence painting and they land on that page, the first thing was about indoor painting and then there's outdoor painting. And they might just leave because it doesn't say anything about fence painting. Where if you have a specific page that they land on, so they're like fence painter near me and they land on that page and it's all just about fence painting and they're like, oh, fabulous, this is exactly what I need. So the more granular you can get with your website, then the better it's going to convert as well It's going to rank for the the right keywords and and convert because the message is exactly what that person's searching for So a couple things here SEM rush when chris said sem rush sem rush is something to check out google adwords You can learn a lot through that as well And really at the end there the key thing that i've seen people have a lot of success with is long tail keywords Not just like one broad, vague word, but how can you be the best solution for like an entire sentence, an entire long tail keyword stretch?

8:13Because if you can win that, you're going to win all of those customers all of the time. And so that can be very key. And I love that example, Chris. So every time you want to bring in more specific examples like that, please do. Because we got a lot that we're going to be talking about as far as Fire Nation, how to get your customers to actually take action, how to build authority so your customers will listen to you, they'll believe you, they'll trust you, they'll know you, they'll like you. And of course, we're going to end with a bang, building predictable, stable growth. When we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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9:18HubSpot for Startups helps you do it all. Not sure if you can handle implementing a CRM at this stage in your business? Don't worry. HubSpot's 24-7 customer support has your back. to see if you're eligible to join HubSpot for Startups program and take your growth to the next level. Visit hubspot.com slash startups. So Chris, we're back. And as we kind of teased before the break, we're going to have you tell us how to get our customers to actually take action. Like those people that just browse and then go somewhere else and never come back. That's not the type of people we're looking for. We want to get people on our site for the right reasons, our ideal clients, and have them take the action we want them to take?

9:59How do we do this? Sure. And so like if you think about e-commerce websites, right? Amazon converts so much better than any other e-commerce website on the planet because everyone knows and trusts Amazon. So if you're searching for any kind of widget and through Google and Amazon comes up, you'll click on it and you trust it. You know that if you buy it from Amazon, the thing's gonna turn up and you're gonna have a good user experience. Where if you go to some other random website, you give me credit card information who knows they might just run away with that and you you end up with well a whole bunch of debt that you don't want bad things happen on the internet and so when you're at just a general e-commerce website with no brand recognition it's really important that you build that trust so a better way than going straight in for the sale is to again use a lead magnet show people that can that you know you can help them by helping them like one of our clients who sells dog products right they sell like you know everything from up to like five thousand dollar dog necklaces and you're like man who the hell's spending that much money on their dog you know some some people but uh one of the lead magnets we made for them is like five things your dogs think about at the dog park you know it's just a fun little lead magnet for people that are interested in buying you know luxury items for their dogs and so they download the lead magnet they you know now you have their email address they think you're a cool brand and then you can send them you know not just offers but you know different things that are useful for their dogs and so now they trust your brand you know and that's really what you need to do the whole point of your website it should be grabbing that person's contact details giving them some value ideally if it's not going to cost you anything like like a downloadable guide, that's the best thing to do.

11:44But don't try and sell people straight away because they don't know who you are. And even if it's a tripwire product, it's hard to get a couple of dollars out of someone before they know who you are. If you can just trade some contact details for some useful information, that's the best way to get someone to take action. Fire Nation, I hope you're thinking about your specific situation right now and how you can apply what Chris and I are talking about to your business. Because listen, you want your customers to take action, you've got to build up that know, like, and trust. You've got to build up that reciprocity before they will.

12:17And I want to talk specifically about building authority so your customers will listen. I've built Podcasters Paradise to the level it's at over the years because I've built real authority in the podcasting space. So people say, okay, I've heard of John Lee Dumas. I've listened to his podcast. Boom. I want to learn how to do my own podcast. His course is probably the best. The authority's there. How can you do that in your space with your products, with your services. So Chris, how have you seen people build authority in their specific niche? So customers actually listen. Well, one, I mean, there's different ways you think about authority, but one thing is really important is, well, how Google's algorithm works, right?

12:55Cause anyone can write any crap they want on the internet and you know, how does Google know if it's true or not? They, they can't really implicitly trust what you say. And the way that they do it is by what I call backlinks. And so a backlink is linked back from one website to another. And they're really the secret how Google works. And because, you know, building up backlinks takes time, like, you know, I'm on your podcast right now, I'm going to get a backlink from your website, that takes a lot of time and effort. It's really hard to, to, well, BS, you know. And so over the years, as you build up your reputation, and the links coming from other websites to your website, the more trust that Google has for you and the easier you can rank because you have that trusted authority.

13:42In fact, one of the tools that I mentioned earlier, Ahrefs, that's the actual hyperlink for a backlink in HTML. So it's a bit of geek humor there, but it's probably the number one SEO tool. And they did a fabulous research article a while back where they analyzed 2 billion pieces of content. And just the headline is blows me away. It's 90.63 % of content gets no traffic from Google. Wow. So over 90 % of content gets no traffic from Google. They break it down even further that only 0.21 % of content gets over a thousand visitors a month. So almost nothing. Yeah. The article's really long and if you're a super geek, it's awesome.

14:25But if you're not, then I'll, spoiler alert, the number one reason that the content doesn't get traffic is that it doesn't have any backlinks. If no one's linking to your content, then Google's just not going to trust you and they're not going to care about you. You can think about it from Google's perspective of like, if no one else cares about this, why should I? So the Googlebot's not going to look at it. That's how important building up your trust and authority is. Backlinks from one website to another. And Fire Nation, that was one of the bigger things that I did when I was working with Ardo or SEO was we're saying, hey, how can we improve this?

15:01How can we have other websites that know, like, and trust me? So they're willing to do this actually link to the content I want them to link to. And we went through all of my back episodes, all of the guests who I've been, all the podcasts that I've been a guest on and reached out to them with a specific request. And did we bat a thousand? Of course not. But did we really do well and get a ton of backlinks? Absolutely. And it's not easy to do, which is why it's important to do because the higher the barrier, the lower the competition. It's really hard to get links. So when you do as meaningful and nobody else can just easily replicate or copy that.

15:35Whereas when something simple to do, frankly, everybody does it. Let's end with a bang, Chris, predictable, stable growth. How do we build this? That is the beauty of digital marketing. Any form of digital marketing is it's so predictable. Like whether you're using Facebook ads or Google ads or YouTube ads or SEO, it's all really predictable. You can grow at the rate that you want, which is just magnificent. But one thing that SEO has over every other form of marketing is the other forms you stop spending, you stop getting instantly. The work that you do for SEO, the work that you did last month, you get this month, the next month and the month after.

16:15And if you want to stop doing it, you still keep getting traffic. You know, it just, it's compounding. And so that's the beauty of all digital marketing is that you can really build predictability into your, into your business. You know, how many leads do I need this month to close this many deals? Like, you know, that just takes all the stress out of business. Like I'm certainly not the best businessman in the world. I've screwed up all sorts of things, but like when you, when you got enough leads coming in and new customers coming in, like it just, just makes it everything else a breeze. I think it was Larry Page actually from Google that said revenue cures all problems and, you know, predictability to business.

16:51Well, it cures a hell of a lot of problems. So Chris, you've helped a lot of people. You've helped a lot of people improve their business, improve their predictable, stable growth, you know, how to improve with their long tail keywords, how to actually have a profitable website, how to have their customers take action, how to build authority. What do you want to end with here? Let's end with a bang. Like here's Fire Nation, they've learned a lot thus far. What do you really want to make sure we get from everything that we've talked about here before we say goodbye? That if people actually understood the power of a website, like, holy crap, you'll be wishing you had it done years ago.

17:26Like I, I did take a long time to eat our own dog food and like how out through COVID, right? COVID has been pretty crap for most businesses. 2020 was our best year ever by a long shot. This quarter, we've even kicked the crap out of last quarter like it's awesome i i am such an advocate of what we what we do because man it really works and you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't do it earlier like i i highly cannot uh say it enough where do you want fire nation to find out more about you we've got a special landing page set up at our website which is ardorseo.com slash fire and if you go there you'll see uh my pretty little face and if you put in your details i'll personally and do a video review of your website and your market.

18:11So I'll show you exactly how many people are searching for your products and services each and every month and show you some simple things that you can change yourself on your website to get it in front of those people and help you to predictably grow your business. Fire Nation, you are action takers. So Chris is going to actually have to, at some point, probably pull this off because there's going to be a lot of you who want this action. And I can tell you, he did this for me back in the day, back before I even knew who he was and before I worked with Ardor SEO. And I was blown away with the results that I got from just this video.

18:42Just the video alone was priceless. So you want to check out Ardor, A-R-D-O-R-S-E-O.com slash fire. A-R-D-O-R-S-E-O.com slash fire. Because Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with K-R and J-L-D today. So keep up that heat and head over to eofire.com type Chris. That's Chris with a K-K-R-I-S in the search bar. Show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about today. Best show notes in the biz. And one more time, that was ardorseo.com slash fire. Chris, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value bombs today.

19:21For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Chris. And if you've had your big idea, you'd be ready to ignite. My free training will get you to your big idea in less than an hour. Visit yourbigidea.io today and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Imperfect Action hosted by Steph Taylor is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners who want to get straight to the point.

19:56Join Steph Taylor as She answers all your business marketing questions. Recent episodes include five must-knows to sell your online course, program, or membership, and four steps to grow your email list for your next launch. Listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.