243. How to Rank #1 in Your City's Search Results

0:00Ryan Atkinson:Amber Farrell grew up watching her father dig ditches as a master plumber for 40 years. That upbringing gave her something most marketers don't have, a genuine respect for blue-collar business owners and a frustration watching them get sold marketing they didn't really need and really couldn't measure. So she built Far Beyond Marketing, an agency that helps trades and home service businesses cut the waste and actually grow. Today, she's breaking down exactly where small businesses should spend their marketing dollars, what they should stop paying for immediately, how to protect yourself from dealing with agencies, and why getting your message right matters more than any other ad campaign you'll ever run.

0:40Ryan Atkinson:I'm Ryan Atkinson, and you're listening to Help Flip Podcast, where we interview entrepreneurs to hear their advice on how you can start a business too. So with that, I am so excited to welcome Amber to the show today. Amber, thank you so much for being here. So excited to have you on. Hey, Ryan, thrilled to be here. How's it going? It is going good. I'm so excited to talk about all things marketing with you. And I know our audience loves talking about marketing. So before we do that, let's dive in at a high, high level. What do you do? What does Far Beyond Marketing do? So Far Beyond Marketing exists to do just that, to be far beyond traditional marketing.

1:11We want to empower business owners without the huff, the fluff, and the crap that a lot of them get sold. So we do marketing consultation. We have a marketing membership for business owners who cannot afford a marketing agency. And then of course, we have the standard deliverables of an agency, but we would much rather educate and empower busy entrepreneurs to do and control their own marketing and business growth.

1:32Ryan Atkinson:So good. And I'm excited to talk about like setting up small businesses for success when it comes to marketing. Before we do that, I want to hear like your intro or like origin story. Like what made you decide against like video marketing? Like, did you come out of the womb like, Oh, I'm gonna be a marketing agency. Like, how did you get into it? No, not at all. I fell into it from the school of hard knots, right? You already mentioned that my dad was a plumber. My mom had three business degrees. My dad has a master plumbing license and works with the state of Texas a lot for the State Board of Plumbing Examiners.

2:00I grew up wanting to sing opera. So I was all into music, all into music competitions until I realized that as a lovely soprano, I wasn't going to get paid crap. So in typical fashion, went to school for a performing arts degree that wasn't going to pay me and then decided, hey, it made more sense to have a steady paycheck and worked in the family business. I ran a call center. I wrote scripts. I did dispatching. And then one day my mom brought me all the yellow pages because that's how old I am and said, you're going to manage our marketing from now on. And I went, I guess I better figure out what's working and what's not working.

2:36So from the school of hard knocks was born my passion for creativity and analytics and And ultimately ended up creating my own marketing agency in 2013, which was a lead generation business where I had business owners in three states that needed lead generation through print marketing. Sold that to private equity in 2018.

2:57Ryan Atkinson:Heck yeah. Played in private equity, learned how to do enterprise level marketing for national brands, and then decided that I wanted to help entrepreneurs because they are the backbone of our American economy. And then realized that entrepreneurs did not have the skills that they needed. to win. They did not get into business to be marketing experts. They did not know what experts to trust or what platforms to buy. And so my team and I created the YG3 platform, which is basically the first kind of marketing that allows all of your marketing needs to be put online and completely automated and managed by AI.

3:35Ryan Atkinson:So cool. And just not any entrepreneurs. I mean, you're focused on like blue collar, like home services. Like why did you decide on like that niche in particular? And then we're going to dive into all things marketing. Well, because those are my people. I mean, nobody works harder than someone that spends their day digging ditches and sweating and doing all the jobs that most people don't want to do. And we also have a massive shortage of construction workers and the skilled trades in Texas and in the United States. So if we can help blue collars do their job better, then we're not only supporting business owners, we're supporting whole communities.

4:06And again, those are my people. My dad's a plumber, my brothers are plumbers. I understand that business.

4:11Ryan Atkinson:Okay, let's get into it then. So let's just say someone's listening right now. And they're like, okay, I'm launching a business, or I'm just at like the very early stages. I don't have like a huge marketing budget, Amber, but I need to get a few clients. What's like the first step that they should take to get like their first like 10 clients of all the expertise that you know now? Okay, so the first two things that they need to do is of equal importance, Ryan. So number one, you need to think about your elevator pitch, you need to think about the unique selling position that your company or your services are going to offer.

4:39So get online, download Claude and tell it this. I want to story brand my business. My business specializes in X and I want you to follow the Donald Miller principle of story branding my business. I'm one of only a few hundred people certified in the world as a Donald Miller story brand coach. And the most overlooked aspect of someone starting their business is learning how to talk about their business in a way that people will listen. tip number one.

5:09Ryan Atkinson:What's the importance of that? Is that like, so everything marketing like comes back like to that or talk to us a little bit more about like the importance of it. Just to someone's like, I don't really want to do that. I know kind of what to say, but sometimes you really don't know what to say. So tell us the importance of that. Yeah. So picture yourself in a networking event because tip number two is you're going to go shake hands and kiss babies. You're not going to have typically a lot of money to spend on marketing when you're first starting a business. So guess where you start your personal network.

5:35So you're talking to people at school, at work, at church, your friends of your spouses, the people you go hang out with happy hour. If you can't accurately describe what your business or product is or does, you've already lost them. So number one, learn how to talk about your business. Number two, use your network to grow your business and commit to 30 coffees in 30 days. Hey, this is what I'm doing now. Can I just have 30 minutes of your time? You go through a very casual meeting and then here's the kicker. Who do you know that would benefit from the product or service that I'm offering? No one wants to be sold to, but everybody wants to help someone that they know, like, and trust.

6:10So step number one, you have to know how to effectively and compellingly talk about your business because people have to hear about your business at least 11 times when they take a single action. Tip number two, once you're talking to someone about your business, don't sell them. Ask them who would benefit from the product or service that you offer.

6:26Ryan Atkinson:Okay. Let's just say you do get those first two clients. You now have$1 ,000 a month to spend on marketing. Where are you putting those dollars? Is it going to ads? Is it going to SEO? You got $1 ,000 a month, Amber, what are you doing to get some more clients? First thing you need to do is, again, spin up your website. Make sure you have a digital footprint. Get yourself a Google My Business profile. Because again, if you're going to rank online and you're going to be a legitimate business, then you need to have a digital presence. You don't have to have a massive website. You don't have to have a fancy website.

6:53You need to have an SEO-optimized, accurate website late to a Google Business profile. So that's where you put that first$1 ,000, Ryan.

7:00Ryan Atkinson:What are some of the best tools for developing a website right now? Are you saying, hey, go to Squarespace, develop it on like Claude code or something that's like not technical where like some of the best resources to get started for actual websites? The best way for you to start with an actual website. I like Claude. I like Claude code. I think you can accomplish so much by just telling it what you want it to do. Again, when you're telling it what to do, tell it to story brand it because yes, there is a formula for doing your website correctly and optimizing it for conversion. That's another good tip.

7:30Optimize my website build for conversion. number one. And then what you do is you take that completed HTML code and you find someone that can build it out for you if you're not savvy to do it yourself. So spend that thousand dollars, build it yourself, get it the way you want it, and then just pay someone a nominal fee to get it live. I'm not a Squarespace fan. That's just my personal opinion. I still believe that WordPress is the ultimate platform for integrations. Or you could do something like a go high level where you're putting your website on an actual CRM and tying all of your funnels, your social media and stuff like that together.

8:04Ryan Atkinson:Are you ready to launch, grow and scale a business? Inside the Uplip Academy, you'll get a complete roadmap to shortcut your success with 25 plus step by step programs taught by active business owners, not gurus who share their step by step blueprints, plus ongoing live workshops, skills training, a business idea database, and community to share resources and celebrate your wins. Click the link in the description below to join the Elphab Academy today and start surrounding yourself with the people and tools that can change everything for your business. I'll talk about optimize for conversion. What does like that look like at like a high level?

8:43Ryan Atkinson:Because I just feel like I see like so many like websites out there and like some of them I'm like, Oh, wow, that looks like super good. But it's like, Oh, like, where's like book a call, like how to actually like talk to somebody. So it is like a balance of like design, but like actually like, you know, getting someone to do something. So what are some of the foundations you have for like actually optimizing for conversion? Yeah, the bottom line is you have 2.5 seconds or less to get someone's attention when they bounce on your website or they're gone. So the hero section of your website needs to say what's in it for them immediately.

9:11What do you do? What's in it for them? First thing they need to see. And then like you just said, call the action, call to action, call to action. Do they need to call you? Do they need to book an appointment? Do they need to fill out a form? What is it? Upper right-hand corner, middle, underneath the hero section, and then follow you down the line as you scroll, scroll, scroll. And then of course, story branding, what's in it for them, oversee the objections, overcome the objections, and then so on and so forth from there. Don't give a lot of fluff. Don't give a lot of junk. What's in it for them?

9:42Tell them how to do business with you.

9:44Ryan Atkinson:And what I love about your website is when I was on here, like in the top right corner has build my growth engine. It'll like shake and like grab your attention. Have you like seen like results from that or like anything from there? I think that like, it looks so good. I'd encourage you to go on the farbeyondmarketing.com. But yeah, tell us about like the button there. Yeah, I mean, you want it to be interactive, right? I mean, you're all about visual and your company as well. Like video sells. People don't want to read a lot. So you need to make it interactive. You need to make it compelling.

10:10You need to help people to draw the eye where you want it to go.

10:14Ryan Atkinson:Okay. So we optimize for conversions. We got like the story brand down. We got a website up. A piece that stood out to me that you said was the local SEO. Foundational base here. Like what are some of the best practices that go into like local SEO to like actually stand out in a market? So number one, make sure all of your other stuff is connected to your website. You would not believe how many times we do a search engine optimization audit and people have multiple addresses, multiple phone numbers, multiple company names. Wow. Yeah, across the Google business profile, a social media profile, a website, and then maybe a Yelp directory because they're trying to figure out their marketing as they're going to launch, right?

10:50No, figure it out and be consistent because if you have inconsistent address, phone number, names across online, you're going to get dinged for that. So number one, keep your information consistent. Number two, connect your Google business profile, connect your social media, connect your website all together. Yes, there are widgets for this. Yes, there are pixels for this because you're not going to get the 33 different factors that Google looks at for optimized SEO unless everything is connected together. And then lastly, when your website is being built, ask the person that's building it. Are you going to do my H1 and H2 titles?

11:27Are you going to use local search engine optimization keywords? How are you going to make sure that I'm findable in my markets?

11:35Ryan Atkinson:Yeah, I feel like a lot of people can use like cloud codes because I'm thinking of like someone that's like a blue collar, like person of like, what I know is like, they might not even know what an H1 or H2 is. So like, how do they even like know what questions asked? Should they just like go to Claude code and like, Hey, I'm hiring someone for SEO. What questions should they ask? Or like any best practices there for you? Yeah. I mean, I tell Claude what to pretend to be. So when we're doing with Claude or Gemini or anything else, I say, Hey, you are a local SEO expert pretending to be, or as a local SEO expert, I want you to optimize the HTML code for my website.

12:09My website does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you tell it what you want it to be.

12:14Ryan Atkinson:Nice. That's great. Okay. So we got some, we did 30 coffee dates in 30 days. We have like our website up now. We got some like local SEO running. What do you do next for marketing? Is it ads? Is it something else? Is it yard signs? Like what are some of your best practices? Again, I'm trying to like grow this from like really like step zero to like website. Now what, what do we do? How do I continue to like pour money on the engine here. So this is the intersection where it really does depend on your business goals and your business industry. So if you are a retail or an e-commerce store, you're going to look completely different on your next steps than if you are a blue collar worker or even a professional service providers.

12:51I mean, in our agency, we work with churches, we work with daycares, we work with blue collar, we work with attorneys. The strategy has to be different based upon the business goals. So the first thing you do is you ask yourself, who's paying for my services now? What's driving the most revenue to my business? Who's that unique customer? How do I go get more of them? So for a blue collar, if you're actually making money by going to people's homes, then maybe you're ready to optimize on some localized ads, or maybe you're ready to optimize on some hyper-local branding within your chamber of commerce.

13:22You have to figure out where that ideal client lies. If you're an e-commerce provider, then it isn't going to do you any good to really advertise your services in your own backyard, I mean, you can start there. But you're going to want to have more of a embedded imprint online so that people are finding you. So maybe you invest in retargeting ads. So again, think about who that unique customer is, where do they live, what are their buying habits, and how do you go and position yourselves at the top of the sales file? Because people don't even know that they want to buy from you until they know that they have a problem that you can solve.

13:56So number one, they have to be problem aware. Number two, they have to be solution aware. And then number three, they have to be you aware or brand aware. So you got to meet that unique customer where they're at.

14:06Ryan Atkinson:How do you identify the people that are problem aware, more like intent based marketing? Is there a way to do that? And let's only stick to like blue collar, like home services types of work. So for home services, you know, someone only uses a plumber every couple of years. Someone uses an electrician every like four years, right? So you're going to want to lead with the problem that you offer. So, hey, do you have a light bulb that's flickering or do you have a sink that's dripping, then here's how you fix it. Maybe you go online and you're doing a one minute video on Facebook or Instagram to talk about what the problems are that people are experiencing.

14:36And then you're tagging local companies, your name, your chamber of commerce, your city in your post. So you're going to talk about the problems that you solve that people are experiencing so that when they come across you, they go, oh my gosh, they see me. They don't even know I exist, but they see me. So you always leave with the problem that you solve, regardless of the platform, whether that's social media, whether that's a paid ad, a television commercial, a radio ad, you're always going to lead with the problem.

15:00Ryan Atkinson:We've talked a lot about like ads, local SEO, like website and stuff. I'm just curious that like all the clients you've worked with, what's been like the best, like, like the highest ROI activity that someone like does? It will always be word of mouth, no matter what, no matter what marketing you invest in, word of mouth, your reputation, your brand awareness, your clarity, all of it's going to come down to localized reputation, which is why you had to put so much emphasis on your reviews and making sure that you're creating that buzz around your brand from day one. Word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth.

15:31Ryan Atkinson:Well, let's talk about the reviews because that is like so, so important when it comes to like marketing and like local SEO. I know getting clients just like that social proof is like so, so important. What's the playbook for reviews? You just simply ask, is it really that easy or like, well, like how do you get like good reviews. In the beginning, you need to have some kind of easy methodology for people to give you a review. And it's okay for you to ask friends and family, hey, can you give me a review? There's something wrong with that. So get your Google business profile set up. There's going to be a button that says share, go to Clyde, get a QR code set up that people can scan with their phone and say, hey, can you leave me a review?

16:06Then as you're getting busier and your company is scaling, you can put tools or automations in place so that at the end of every service call, they're automatically getting a text message or an email saying leave me a review and that's linked to your google business profile which we've already covered is also linked to your website so you're golden but in the beginning get that link get that qr code ask people to scan it it

16:27Ryan Atkinson:is that simple yeah it's uh it is like truly like the hack i feel like when it comes to marketing we've heard it so much on this podcast like you need customer reviews and there's some these like great tools out there and i absolutely like love the word of mouth play but obviously say at some point, like you do have to get out of word of mouth and like actually use like digital experiences to reach your clients, I presume at some point. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because you I mean, you're only one person, right? And so the brand awareness is what we call the wind in the sails of the rest of your marketing.

16:55You have a healthy, sexy brand that people really love. I mean, kids are going to point out the truck on the side of the road. Look at that cool brand, mom. I mean, Roto-Rooter, Gorilla Plumbing. I mean, some of the most powerful brands, it's because they're catchy. So branding is what drives awareness. which was drives people to your business. So you do have to invest in branding. You do have to invest in ads. You do have to get out there digitally. It's the world we live in. You're not going to live underneath a rock. Good luck.