028 – Figuring Out The Priorities That Move The Needle For Your Clients

00:01.46
Jeff
Hello and welcome to the WP SEO show. Today we are continuing our talk and we are going to discuss figuring out the priorities that will move the needle for your client. But first, let’s introduce ourselves. I’m Jeff and I’m with…

00:16.56
peteeveritt
Pete, hey.

00:17.37
Jeff
Oh, I should have set you up better on that one, sorry.

00:21.32
peteeveritt
It was that moment of, is he going to say my name or am I going to say my name? Who’s saying my name? Does somebody say my name?

00:29.13
Jeff
I’m trying to learn the old fancy radio and introduction, but I’m not sure I’ve got it down yet. So anyway, we’re with SEO hive and we are talking about growth strategies. It’s kind of the topic de jour or de month. I don’t know how to say that in French, but yeah, you’re right.

00:45.96
peteeveritt
Sure, I’m not I’m not sure you need to know the French for topic as well I’m trying now trying to find it

00:54.17
Jeff
You’re right.

00:56.90
Jeff
Which French for soup because isn’t it, isn’t it soup de jour is, is French is soup also.

01:00.28
peteeveritt
So yeah, the the the French for soup. I know bits of French. I do spend, I like going to France quite a lot. So I do know bits of French, but um ah yeah. So soup is the word for soup, spelled slightly differently, but that is, soup is soup. But I don’t know what the word for topic is. i

01:20.05
Jeff
Well, nobody does, which is probably why we don’t use that as a, as a euphemism.

01:23.76
peteeveritt
It’s, ah you say it’s, it’s, like subject.

01:28.39
Jeff
It doesn’t, yeah, it doesn’t work.

01:28.34
peteeveritt
suja de ju

01:30.53
Jeff
Got to stick with soup de jour or topic de jour.

01:33.32
peteeveritt
Well, not yet. Soo-jae du jour is instead of topic. Soo-jae is not soo-jae. If there’s anybody French listening to this, they’re…

01:39.91
Jeff
This is ridiculous. Can we record a podcast?

01:44.56
peteeveritt
Welcome to How to Not Learn French with Pete and Jeff.

01:47.96
Jeff
And this is why next week Pete will do the introduction, but to the topic at hand.

01:53.29
peteeveritt
and

01:56.39
Jeff
we are expanding we are expanding this topic.

01:56.32
peteeveritt
Indeed.

01:58.35
Jeff
So you know we’ve been talking for years and years now really about care plans and recurring revenue. And I mean, there’s a million different ways to to word this, but one of the things that has picked up steam lately just kind of naturally in our own topics. And then I’m seeing other people out there, other agencies and marketers and stuff talk about it. And it’s it’s the term growth plans or marketing growth. or I mean, we’ve we’ve literally spent hours trying to come up with some really cool terms for this stuff, but The fact of the matter is it’s so broad and so general, depending on what your agency does and what your clients need, that it can either one, become overwhelming or two, he’ just kind of it’s hard to define. So I was talking to Pete before the show and it’s like, you know for me, these happened kind of naturally, just getting clients that were coming for website care plans, which again, another thing we talked about, people don’t

02:49.31
Jeff
search for those terms necessarily, but you know they’re looking for help with their website.

02:52.87
peteeveritt
you.

02:53.81
Jeff
They come to you for you know maybe a technical or development issue. Maybe they come to you for SEO. I mean, I don’t know. There’s so many different reasons why the type of clients that we generally work with and our customers work with you know come to their agency or their their freelance or their marketing professional, whatever it is that they call them. And then you know from that point on, it’s like, okay, well, we can solve that now. Can we can we help you in any other areas? Can we grow your business? Can we support you in other ways? And I mean, as we’ve talked about, there’s just a billion different ways to do that. So it’s kind of like, we’re talking about today, we’re kind of thinking, how do you start figuring that out? How do you put those priorities in place, getting down on paper, however it is you work and start to figure out what your clients actually need and what you can provide for them.

03:38.39
peteeveritt
Can I just add that I kind of understand why. people freak out oh why agencies, ah be that an agency of one right up to an agency of a large team, why they freak out about this stuff. Because the vast majority of us got into doing what we do because we liked building websites or designing websites.

03:56.85
Jeff
Mmhmm.

03:58.44
peteeveritt
So actually, you know, in an ideal world for a lot of people, that is where the job would finish. We’d design a website, we’d get it live for a company, we’d shake hands and then we’d move on to the next website and round and round we’d go. However, you know this isn’t this isn’t the episode to talk about the peaks and troughs of the feast and famine cycle, that’s that’s not the point of that of this. but the ah Really, what we’re what we’re what we find here is that there’s a whole group of people that in order to build these recurring revenue streams as agencies themselves, as as you know web developers themselves, they’re possibly having to learn new skills or get involved in services that maybe weren’t their ideal choice. Maybe it’s a step away a little bit from the

04:42.12
peteeveritt
I’m the thing that they really like doing which was building websites or maintaining websites or whatever it is however whatever the thing was that got you into this in the first place i know very few people that got into this game that have been in it let’s say more than. five or six years that actually got into it because they liked de SEO.

05:00.70
Jeff
Yeah.

05:00.24
peteeveritt
You know, they, they always liked something else. And the same, same with, um I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m sure it’s the same with care plans. Very few people got into this, got into this because they liked maintaining WordPress websites. They got into it because they liked building WordPress websites. Hey, they need maintaining it. Oh, I can do that. And, um, and and it was a good fit. So. This having to have these discussions and i’ll be honest that was kind of my story i was a developer i worked in agencies i was freelance for a bit and then i had to start skilling up but what i found was actually as i started getting involved in other people’s businesses.

05:38.21
peteeveritt
I actually really enjoyed the business strategy side of things, just as much as I liked the the web development side of stuff. And that was yeah was purely by fluke. you know did it wasn’t It wasn’t an area that I was expecting to go into, but that was it was just a good fit for me. And that’s you know that that’s my story, essentially. um But I understand why… yeah I remember sitting in meetings having no idea what was going on or what to say next or what to recommend. Yet these people were sat around a table with me as the expert, um looking for my guidance and next moves. So we’ve we’ve all been there. We’ve all been there. um Yeah.

06:22.19
Jeff
yeah There was a time where sit in meetings or client calls and I’d be like, I thought we’ we’re going to talk about what colors the buttons need to be. Why are you asking me about, you know, call to actions and convert rate optimization? That is that’s above my pay grade, at least at that stage, you know, and you kind of realize, Oh, I got to learn a lot more of this stuff.

06:37.57
peteeveritt
Yeah.

06:42.43
peteeveritt
So I think i think there’s there’s an element where we start with this, which is about reading your client. I know some of these discussions get confusing because you have you have a client, i.e. the website owner, and then they normally have clients, so your client’s clients. But there’s an element to begin with which is where you need to understand, you need to be able to read your client, the website owner, to a degree to to actually understand

07:12.00
peteeveritt
Success can be different comes in different forms and different shapes and different sizes and they it’s all it’s all relative to the to the person or the people in the company that you’re dealing with. And sometimes you have to really dig down into, okay, so but what is it that you need? And then what is it that your customers need? And actually, really the job you’re trying to do is tie those two dots together almost. It’s like playing, you know, join the dots. But there may be may be a multiple of steps that you need to do to bridge that gap. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about today, I guess.

07:46.71
Jeff
that you you mentioned something and I started writing a note so I didn’t forget, but what does success look like? You were asking about success, and that is a great question to ask. at this Probably one of the first questions you need to ask, and I can’t remember which of the 1,000 onboarding documents or you know intro things that I’ve seen this, but but the first time I saw what does success look like, I was like, that’s like, it’s such a simple question, but it’s also so helpful and beneficial. And I’m the type of person that I need to either see or visualize what su success looks like in order to figure out how to get there. And like, that’s just, that’s how my brain works. And that’s because that’s just kind of a logical way to to do it. If you can’t see it, you don’t know how to get there. um Being able to ask your question your clients questions like that, you know, they’ll go right off the bat. Oh, well, we need to make $200,000 a share. Okay, so their priority is, you know, success is financial for them. Other ones might say, well, we need a stream of customers, but we need to lower our, you know, the time that our staff is spent managing them. Okay, that’s a totally different,

08:45.33
Jeff
success metric.

08:45.11
peteeveritt
Yep.

08:46.77
Jeff
But now that we know that’s what’s important to you right now, all right, how do we start working towards that? So just being able to ask that question from the start and really getting through, you know, they’re not good they’re not going to give you the blueprint of what they need and how to get there. So if you can uncover that, then you can start to build that.

09:02.28
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And for some people, it’ll be completely something that’s within their own business. Like, you know, we need, we need better financial visibility of what’s happening online. Okay, fine. Then, but there then for other people, it will come down to purely sales or, um, or inquiry levels. And that, that will be the top and the bottom peter customers. Now I’m talking about your clients, clients, your end customer here.

09:29.48
Jeff
i was going to say let’s call them customers

09:29.46
peteeveritt
They will. Yeah, let’s call them customers versus your client. that’s That’s a good distinction to make. So the end customer, they will normally only buy to either achieve gain or to avoid loss. They’re the two they’re the two reasons that people buy stuff normally. to To gain something or to avoid losing something or to avoid harm and in some way. um

09:53.94
Jeff
I was going to say, let’s call them customers.

09:53.62
peteeveritt
Whereas your client, they will potentially have bought a website from you. Well, ultimately, for the same two, one of the same two reasons. It’s very, very rare that you get both. It’s only one of the same two. But the the thing that they might might be trying to avoid could be administrative or could be um legal or could be could be a whole host of things. And and and that that obviously puts a different slant on things again.

10:19.66
Jeff
I was going to say technical is another one too that a lot of times, especially entrepreneurs tend to kind of be DIYers for whatever, you know, what I guess they just line up. So there’s a lot of like business startups and stuff that always go or they’ve said, sure, I’ve already started building my website and you know, or I’ve done this, I’ve done that. And usually you find out they’ve done it poorly or done it wrong, or they’ve spent all kinds of money on something they don’t need. So again, that’s, you know, you’re coming in now to go, all right, let’s, let’s, let’s write this ship. Let’s get it on the right track.

10:49.45
peteeveritt
Yep. Yep. And, you know, clients and customers are so switched on now that they know that websites can do stuff, you know, long gone are the days. I mean, you know, when I started working in agencies back in like 2005, 2006, people A lot of people came to get websites because that was the done thing to do. you know ah well we We have a website because, you know have you seen our website as if it was two words? I’m getting very British about this.

11:17.65
Jeff
They would like send out notifications and like letters and mail like, Hey, guess what?

11:19.67
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah absolutely, absolutely.

11:20.93
Jeff
We have a new website.

11:23.42
peteeveritt
They you know they would take take off their top hat.

11:24.68
Jeff
Great opening.

11:26.29
peteeveritt
Please see my website. um do do you get ah ah We had used to have a TV show called the IT crowd. do you Did you ever get that in the States?

11:34.50
Jeff
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’m familiar with it.

11:35.30
peteeveritt
Yeah. ah Okay. So, well, ah I won’t go into it, but there’s, there’s a, there is an episode, which is particularly funny. It’s a sitcom episode that’s particularly funny where, um, the IT manager who knows nothing about IT decides to convince her boss that the internet is in a box that is, uh, that is in his office and has a red light on it. And that is the internet. It’s very fun. Um,

12:02.06
Jeff
I feel like that show would either be one of the funniest ones I’ve ever seen or it would just traumatize me. Like I’m not sure it’s going to go either way.

12:09.76
peteeveritt
Oh, it’s it’s hilarious, I love love the IT crew. Anyway, I don’t can’t really remember why I brought that up, but just to give you a prime example of this, so I literally am working through a project at the moment with a long-standing client of ours, and what they need is they need WordPress to feed their transactions into Xero, the accounting software, um automatically. So we’ve spent the last couple of days figuring out a how a WordPress to Xero integration will work for them.

12:43.00
peteeveritt
And success for that it that, that sort of stuff isn’t going to make them any more money, but it’s going to save them money because they’re not going to have to pay pay the poor admin lady to do it. And she’s come like pulling her hair out with a number of transactions, as this website does. And they’re an events company, so they take lots of lots of transactions, even for a small number of products. And, uh, yeah, that’s, and and that’s, that’s what success is. That’s the next big thing for them. It’s not, they’ve got the throughput of customers. They’re happy with their organic position at the moment, but they, they, this is the help that they need. Um, and okay, that’s a bit more technical. It doesn’t say it’s not to do with SEO. It’s not to do with sales. It’s not to do with whatever it’s, it’s purely an efficiency type thing, but at the minute that’s their biggest challenge. So yeah, we can help you with that. We’ll figure it out.

13:30.95
Jeff
I was going to say that doesn’t quite, you know, do or cover the marketing aspect that we’re talking about. But it’s, like you said, it’s one of the big priorities. It’s important for their business. And, you know, I mean, I don’t know, are we your marketing professional? Are we your technical professional? I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like we’re the CTOs of of some of our, you know, customers businesses. But again, like, I love that stuff. It’s, you know, I’ve got a similar story coming from learning how to build websites and go, oh, I can do that for people. You know, having somebody around town that needed a favor. And next thing you know, you’re a web designer and, you know, there you go. You know, 20 years later, you you’re doing podcasts about it and and all this fun stuff. But, you know, we’ve all got into it for different ways. and

14:11.04
Jeff
it’s I’ve talked about it a few times. was the last ah The last year, we’ve switched our care plans from including just the basic like WordPress edits. like you would expect most Most companies out there, most agencies are going to say, sure, we’ll update your blog posts. We’ll you know whatever we’ll do these basic edits, unlimited as many as you want. and We did that for the longest time, but what we found out is we spent more time telling people, no, that’s not part of your plan than just solving the problems for them. And so we’ve kind of switched to an hourly retainer, which I know people are like, Oh, I don’t do hourly billing value, but we give everybody two hours a month and we will help you with whatever we can help you with.

14:37.33
peteeveritt
Yeah.

14:45.94
Jeff
And it has completely changed the the scope or not the scope, but the, um, The results we’re seeing, like just the communication has changed completely. you know It’s like, wait, these people aren’t pushing back every time. Instead, they’re helping every time. and It’s like, yeah, you see, that’s how you can really help people’s businesses when you can insert … I don’t want to say insert yourself, but when you can become a valued partner and an expert. and you know, we’re we’re talking about before your expertise, your experience may or may not always line up with what they need.

15:13.18
peteeveritt
Yep.

15:15.12
Jeff
So when that comes, you either go, well, all right, we’re not a good fit. And now I’m comfortable telling you that. Or whereas like I said, we’re talking about that’s when you can start going, can I white label this? Can I bring in a contractor? Can I, you know, how do I solve this? Do I want to solve this? Or do I want to give them a recommendation that there’s probably somebody better fit? I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to go about all of that.

15:37.47
peteeveritt
Absolutely. And there’s there’s just as many ways that, you know, it could be, do you just bring in a single consultant to guide that part of whatever it is that they need right through to, yeah, do you either get a white label company in or do you pass the that that client or that part of that project off to somebody else? And there’s there’s no right and wrong to that. That’s entirely how you want to run your agency. um I guess it sort of depends on what the request is that comes in as well, to be fair.

16:01.03
Jeff
Yeah, we’re generalizing, but you know, we’re generalizing, but I think it’s safe to assume we’ve follow we’ve probably heard the same requests a dozen times every week. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s, these aren’t, these aren’t like totally surprising or unique, but then you do get a random one.

16:12.75
peteeveritt
Yeah.

16:18.59
Jeff
We’re like, no, I can’t do that. We’re not doing that. I won’t even recommend that you do that with anybody, let alone, even if you want to throw money at me. No.

16:27.99
peteeveritt
So let’s let’s just bring then the whole marketing angle maybe back into the crosshairs a bit here and let’s let’s now sort of drill down drill down into that because you’re right we could we could go on about lots of different random stuff which is could be very entertaining I agree um but possibly possibly isn’t going to be the whole lot valuable to anybody that’s listening. so um so when you let’s Let’s, as I say, focus on the marketing piece because that’s ultimately what’s going to demonstrate ah a financial return on investment back to your client from the fee that they’re paying you. um So one thing that I do, which i I’ve always done this, but I’ve been told that this is unique

17:18.39
peteeveritt
So maybe I shouldn’t mention it on a podcast that’s going out globally, but hey, I’m going to anyway, cause that’s just a nice kind of generous guy that I am and Kyle Van Dusen will attribute them. Um, has to get a shout out in somewhere.

17:29.98
Jeff
Ding! There we go.

17:29.73
peteeveritt
So I may as well put it there. Yeah. Uh, so, so what I have, what I do is when, when I’m talking with a client, a new client, an existing client, we’re talking about retained services, I ask them.

17:32.40
Jeff
That was our Kyle counter.

17:48.69
peteeveritt
whether their biggest revenue generator is the thing that they need the help with their marketing with. Because let me put it this way. um i We work with a number of educational institutions. Now in in the UK, it’s kind of similar in the in the US, s you know, Harvard is renowned for for law and I can’t think of another one, but I don’t know my US universities that well. But in the UK, particular universities are known for particular things. In Sheffield, where I live, you know, medicine is a medicine and architecture.

18:21.17
peteeveritt
There are two big things that happen here and English language. And so what we, and yeah, well, the clues in the name.

18:26.62
Jeff
English.

18:32.00
peteeveritt
Anyway, let’s gloss over that. ah the the So, if when I’m working with those with those universities, and this is the same working with, other I’m not saying I’ve only found this in universities, this is where kind of it came from, is those universities, certain things sell themselves. Sheffield doesn’t need help selling its English language courses every year it’s oversubscribed and it’s turning students away. However, It’s policing you know master’s course for to get your sergeant whatever ship. They really struggle to fill that thing every year. So there’s absolutely no point in me or them spending the time or money or effort trying to market something that sells itself.

19:17.14
peteeveritt
so the this is This is what clients have told me is unique, is that I’ve been to them and said, so, you know, where are we on this scale? Some customers ah move it out of a university context here where you’ve maybe got a product or a service that you can scale up or down. You know, universities normally have a ah maximum capacity. But the, yeah, yeah you you go to it go to a business and you say, right, what’s your main thing? And does that make you the most money? And if they say yes, the next question is, okay, so is the purpose of this marketing plan this that we’re going to, this marketing journey we’re going to go on together, is the purpose to sell that more and more and more to get you more revenue through?

20:00.94
peteeveritt
Or is it will that take care of itself? And know is what we’re going to take care of is it this other stuff over here, which are like your fledgling products, because they’re all struggling for limelight in the shadow of this big thing that kind of sells itself over here. And that can be a product, it can be a service, it can be an inquiry, it can be whatever it is. But where are we on this journey? What’s an actually that gives you a just that way, you know, business owners often come into this thing thinking, oh, well, we just need more of everything. Well, that’s not going to help you determine any priorities. You need to you need to understand what’s the foot you’re starting on. And ultimately, where does that success line come? Because if if they’re wanting me to sell this big thing and I go and sell, you know, a hundred thousand of these things over here, they can still say that this thing’s been a failure because I didn’t sell one of those.

20:51.52
Jeff
yeah

20:52.33
peteeveritt
Um, so yeah, that that’s, i I don’t know if, as I say, i I don’t know if you find that unique, but I’ve been told it’s unique.

20:59.92
Jeff
Well, I know that’s funny.

20:59.66
peteeveritt
It just seems like it’s logic to me.

21:03.12
Jeff
Yeah. I mean, it is totally logical, but it’s funny. You know what? You started talking about that story and I was like, this is a really smart way to look at it. And it totally like reminded me of this maybe like a month ago. I was having a conversation with a client, a egg or yeah a client-client, not an agency. And they make, ah they build custom pools, you know, and hire around these, I don’t know, they take four to six weeks, they the big money. I mean, tons and tons of money. One of my friends, I met them through one of my friends that just paid them to build a pool. And it’s amazing. So I’m like, this is cool. And so we build their website this and through, you know, talking with them and stuff. And we’re learning that one, I’m not even sure they needed a website.

21:38.92
Jeff
They’re booked out a year for for pool installs and bills or whatever like that. It was over a year. I think it was 14 months, 15 months or something like that. And so you know we start talking and I go, so how many more pools do you want to you know like sell this year? And they said, oh, we don’t want to sell anymore, but we can’t. And that’s really not a problem. So kaz why are we having this conversation? And they just want to get their face out there. And I said, OK, well, that’s interesting. And so we just kind of built like a brochure style website for them. And then they gave me their list of services and we found out that they also do, they have like a whole nother division of doing pool cleaning.

22:09.13
peteeveritt
Mm hmm.

22:12.09
Jeff
And so I started talking with them in our next meeting, tell me more about the pool cleaning. Do we need like a dedicated page for that? Or is it something you just kind of only do for the pools you built? Oh, no, no, no, we, you know, we’ll clean anything. and And no, it’s actually, it’s actually great. You know, and they were telling me about their, this guy, Bob and the company that’s like, runs the whole thing. They’ve got a whole another department. They’d never mentioned really, as like a legitimate department. And it turns out it’s an infinitely scalable. They bring in contractors or they hire people.

22:35.69
peteeveritt
Yep.

22:38.53
Jeff
And obviously it’s, you know, I don’t know, a couple hundred dollars a month or something like that, but they it’s their recurring revenue.

22:44.49
peteeveritt
Well, that’s it.

22:45.75
Jeff
And we’ve just, you know, wait a second. Why aren’t we focusing on this? Yes, they still need to sell pools, but they’re going to sell pools no matter what. They have no problem selling pools. So sure, that’s a big part of the website, but we, you know, we started putting on this and it’s, I don’t know how many they’ve got. It’s only been up for like six weeks now, but they’re very happy with this new kind of interest and, you know, advertising this other service. It’s going to bring them a whole nother, you know, level of ah income for that side of things. so

23:11.34
peteeveritt
Well, that’s and and that’s that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? It’s it’s you that you you you hit the nail on the head. That’s their recurring revenue. What would you rather have a one ten thousand dollar sale now for a pool or two hundred bucks for the next goodness knows how many years, you know, it’s just it yeah, it it doesn’t make.

23:33.50
Jeff
Yeah, it’s basically i a pure profit, but there’s no you know cost or big expenses to go into it, no you know proposals and planning and budgets.

23:33.50
peteeveritt
That’s it’s their recurring revenue.

23:41.71
Jeff
and i mean you know i don’t I don’t know how they deal with that much money flowing back and forth. and you know Yeah, it’s just it’s easy easy money for them. They love it. and ah you know and I mean, I’m not going to go into all the things we were talking about, but we started talking about the trucks that they use and what kind of graphics and marketing. I’m not a brander, but you know what? Just being in this industry long enough, we started figuring out this stuff and all they needed was somebody with a little bit more experience in this side of things to have a conversation with them and you know boom, we’ve kind of uncovered their strategy for the next couple of years.

24:13.01
peteeveritt
But the other thing that you can do in that scenario is you can be the connector. So yeah, you’re not a brand, you’re not a brand guy, but I mean, we’ve worked together, but I’m not a brand guy either for that matter. So I’m not going to give branding advice on here this on here, but I know that. I know that I know enough to ask the intelligent questions so that I can then speak to a branding person or get a designer involved, relay that on, and then either make the connection, do it white label, whatever it might be, and and bring bring a solution to it, even though it might not be my solution. So it’s sometimes it’s just being able to think those two or three stages ahead of you and or ahead of the client.

24:54.89
peteeveritt
ask the intelligent questions and then come back with the intelligent solution. You only have to do that two or three times and you will have earned your role as the trusted advisor or marketing partner or whatever it is that um ah you know that that really cements you into that client’s customer lifecycle.

25:15.08
Jeff
Yeah, like for that example, that was two zoom meetings. And the first one was like an introduction call, you know, and just thinking out loud, you know, starting to think about different options.

25:19.55
peteeveritt
Yeah, there you go.

25:24.43
Jeff
And next thing you know, you’ve, you’ve kind of opened up another can of worms that can help somebody in a way that they didn’t realize it was pretty cool.

25:31.52
peteeveritt
Okay, so based on the fact that we’ve figured out what the big thing is that we’re marketing, we figured out what success is going to look like for this thing. Where do we go next? What’s the what’s the next step in identifying some priorities?

25:45.72
Jeff
Um, well, I mean, I could think of some of the way to start figuring out the results, you know, and we could we could start talking about, you know, obviously, if they need traffic, if they need customers, right, you need to, you’re going to be working SEO, you probably want to be publishing some content, you want to be doing things that get the traffic to their websites. ah You know, it’s it’s more than just kind of outside the box strategy and thinking, you know, you can start to look at what actually needs to go in in your area of expertise.

26:16.21
peteeveritt
Well, so i I put a piece in before that. That’s a bit of a leading question.

26:22.20
Jeff
to tell me more.

26:22.17
peteeveritt
ye

26:24.69
peteeveritt
So the other thing that I like to figure out, which can highlight where the, well, is to see if they’ve got problems in other in other areas. So I ask a business to explain to me what their current marketing workflow looks like. So what’s the pipeline like? How many inquiries have they had in the last three months? I don’t know, you pick a timeframe. Has that gone up or down? ah ah why you know How many orders have they had of that? Has that percentage gone up or down? um Because ultimately what you’re trying to do is figure out if there’s a problem that’s prohibiting the sale.

27:06.09
peteeveritt
That’s the, you know, if that, if they’re working in e-commerce site, they’re not getting sales. Okay. That’s probably something on the website. That’s not working. It’ll be a tech issue or a dev issue or a broken link or something. you know, payment integration not working, I don’t know, it could be anything. But you you can find out then that it’s a technical issue that, right, well, it doesn’t matter how much traffic or marketing or whatever we throw at this, if that bit doesn’t work, you’re still not going to make any sales. Maybe they’ve got a really obnoxious sales guy on the phone that starts swearing at everybody the minute that he picks up the phone. And, you know, if if they’re getting inquiries in, and actually the problem is sat and sat on the phone,

27:41.94
peteeveritt
It doesn’t matter how many, it doesn’t matter how much traffic, how many leads you give him, he’s going to just swear more because he’s got more to deal with. So, um you know, you might need to, ah that’s an extreme ex example. That’s never happened. I’m just using it as a daft example, but it’s, ideally you need to understand if there are any issues that would stop a seamless customer journey right from en inquiry all the way through to delivery. And now I’m not saying that you need to go and work in offices and like, Hey guys on the phone or this, that and the other, but normally a business owner will be able to, to, if you’re having an honest discussion with them, we’ll be able to highlight where there are potentially some flags that you might need to investigate first. And only then, only then would I then start looking at the outbound stuff.

28:30.34
Jeff
Interesting. it’s ah Again, it’s kind of like the last one. It’s-explanatory. It’s pretty obvious, but if you don’t stop and look at those things, you can completely miss them and put all your efforts in the wrong area. ah you know your you know Your example of a grumpy sales guy, I was thinking, well, it’s the perfect metaphor for a bad website too, or you know or a website that’s not functioning.

28:42.40
peteeveritt
Yep.

28:52.69
Jeff
or Again, i’m I’m like Mr. Technical, so I’m always thinking about that. right and So sometimes i’ll have these you’ll have a conversation with somebody and you’ll dig in and you’ll start reviewing your website and you go, oh, there’s this problem, there’s that problem. But is that really what’s slowing them down? And then you find out, no, it’s the grumpy sales guy.

29:07.50
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s just, I mean, you know, the answer to that, you did right. The answer to that could be, well, you know, our website’s just dated and we look, we look dated compared to our competition. Customers are going elsewhere because they just don’t trust the way that we appear on online. Okay. That’s fine. That’s still a problem that needs to be fixed. There’s absolutely no point driving traffic to your old site. If it’s going to make you look dated, let’s get your new site sorted first. Get that, get that live and then seamlessly roll into, into a traffic generation program. that that That would be the right thing to do. that That’s how you figure out the priorities, the first priorities, at least, for that client. you know so it’s The difficulty is, and I think I’ve said this on the show before, the difficulty is that clients, whether you like it or not, whether you know you might be the person that just wants to design, build the website, and do that the maintenance plan afterwards, because you’re a techie, and that’s the stuff that you like doing.

30:06.52
peteeveritt
But the difficulty you’ve got is that customers come to you and see you as the open quotes, digital marketing expert, close quotes. And they are not coming necessarily just for a website and somebody to look after their plugins, but they they might not even know that they need somebody to look after their plugins. So they’re not even just coming looking for a website. da They’re coming to this making an investment in their business to make stuff better, whatever that stuff is. And it’s kind of your job to figure out what that stuff is and how it needs fixing and in what order it needs to be fixed. And that that becomes your plan for the you know to get out the gate. And if you can have that discussion, then your you’re absolutely fine.

30:53.78
Jeff
Yeah, and if it’s your zone, like you know if it’s the website, if it’s the SEO, if it’s if it’s your zone of expertise, then you know like feel feel confident in that. Confident in your experience and your ability to put these things in place. and you know i’ve i’ve I’ve struggled at times with feeling confident going into a business and and telling them something you know or recommending something because they’re the ones with the big fancy offices. I work in my bedroom. you know like Often like you don’t always feel like you’re at the same level, so it’s tough. But the same at the same time, if they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t be calling me for a new website or for SEO or whatever it you know whatever it is to help solve this problem. So you know we are uniquely

31:36.16
Jeff
position to help with what we are qualified and experienced in and to make the connections or recommendations. or you know We’ve got more experience in this stuff than they do most of the time. You know, more often not all of your clients are completely fresh from up to all this stuff. So, you know, we have a, I guess a lot of responsibility. um You know, it’s, you’re not obviously always legally obligated or contracts, contractually obligated, but, but still when people are trusting you to come into their business at whatever level, you know, you’ve got some, you you owe them something.

31:56.53
peteeveritt
you Absolutely, absolutely. So that’s that that’s that’s where i that’s my approach to it and that’s where I start and then then from there then you can start looking at data and start figuring out okay so this is this is the this is the plan, this is where we go. So if we’re if we’re going to be looking at if we’re going to be looking at SEO

32:37.18
peteeveritt
This is where the bulk of the traffic is. These are the competition levels. These are the pages we need to create. These are the cornerstone pages or the pillar pages, which are going to take a while to rank for. But if we can get those in place, we can then start creating cluster content around them to support them. And to and and that’s, you know, that’s the pieces of the jigsaw start to emerge from emerge from that point.

32:59.84
Jeff
Yeah, and I know that, I think I can talk about a little bit, but with our with our managed plans that we’ve been we’ve been working, we’re setting 90 day quarterly kind of check-in strategy call sessions, you know whatever you want to refer to them as. and And we’re looking at those or that schedule to kind of go, all right, what is what’s the priorities for the next couple of months? What can we put in place? what can you know what’s What’s the next several months going to look like? And I think that’s a good kind of you know ah schedule to get into.

33:31.03
Jeff
some people want to have a weekly call and strategy session. You’re never going to get going. You’re never going to get the ball rolling if you’re just changing it every week. But, um, but you know, there’s a lot to be said to kind of sitting down, reviewing things and going, all right, what’s our next priority? What are we going to be tackling next? Or what are we going to improve next? Or, you know, take it to the next level. It’s not always something new or out of the blue. So, um, do you do that more frequently in your experience or sorry?

33:53.24
peteeveritt
And, and you know

33:56.40
peteeveritt
No, so I i normally, yeah in all honesty, i ah with our managed plans, that’s exactly how were exactly how we’re running it. With the clients in my agency, particularly clients that I know a bit more, I try and set kind of annual goals, but then we have quarterly check-ins. So just to see how how we are on progress to the to those goals. And that sets quite a nice rhythm rhythm to things. It also, I so find that the the advantage of setting an annual goal is, um when I say this, it’s going to sound purely selfish and I don’t really mean it to be like that.

34:33.44
Jeff
Mm-hm.

34:34.50
peteeveritt
but It helps cement the fact that I’m working with them for the next year. This is something we are doing together. Now I’m also creating a rod for my own back. Cause if we don’t hit the target, then of course they can very easily point the finger back at me, but you know, so you’ve got, you’ve got to be a bit careful about the targets that you set. They’ve got to be realistic. They should be. Um, if you googling this to Google the term stretch goals, that’s, that’s what they really should be. So. you know, take something that’s easily easily achievable and add either 10, 15 or 20%, depending on how how challenging, you know, ah what you think you can stretch to.

35:09.59
peteeveritt
But that would be that’s that’s the way I run them. And then as I say, we then have quarterly check-ins, which is also great because it means that there are the key stakeholders don’t need to attend a meeting every year every month. you know Like working with a university, life doesn’t change that quickly in a university. If we had a meeting every month, it’s exactly what you were saying about having ah a weekly call. stuff just wouldn’t Stuff had changed too frequently because not enough water has gone under the bridge in order to to demonstrate a return. So the the quarterly thing does seem to just seem to be a good rhythm for that as kind of a check-in. And then, of course, i have I have notes and reminders set so that on like the third quarter, when we’re coming up to like the annual review, we’re we’re mentioning that to say, right, so next time, this is what we need in place. And you’re almost planning the next year before you come to the end of this one. And again, it’s just ah it’s just a means of

36:05.89
peteeveritt
demonstrating that we are still working on this together. We are being proactive to you as if we were your in-house team, which is exactly what you were saying earlier.

36:13.81
Jeff
I like that and I think setting those kind of even longer term goals and expectations. this sounds this sounds kind of selfish or and ah and manipulat manipulate I don’t mean it that way at all, but it also kind of locks you in there. I mean, it’s you’re not locked in there by any means. If you don’t perform, they’re gonna kick your butt out and they should. But that does kind of say, like you you said, yeah, I’m here for the long term, we’re gonna be doing this. So you could definitely argue that there’s some kind of retention to being able to even stretch things out farther. And again, I don’t mean that from a like manipulative, let’s

36:48.88
Jeff
let’s set the goal really far away. So we never get there. That’s not the case. But you know, you the long term, long term growth strategies, I mean, that’s a term we’re always using.

36:52.24
peteeveritt
No.

36:56.91
Jeff
And the only way to do that is to be in there long term. And I was gonna say full time, but it’s not quite the quite the term. But you know what I mean, working with them ongoing.

37:05.45
peteeveritt
But the you you you kind of you you make a good point there. But it it actually helps alleviate some pressure, but particularly as you as you’re starting with the client. you know The issue that you’ve got with with a new client is that they don’t just see a monthly a monthly bill. What they see is an annual fee. So you know if you’re charging them $2,000 a month, that instantly the first couple of payments, it feels like they’re paying a $24,000 bill. And because of that, they can expect blood and it you can’t give it to them. You it can’t work that way, because if you overservice too much at that point, I’m i’m not saying that you shouldn’t overservice a client at the beginning to delight them. I’m also not saying you shouldn’t find some low hanging fruit to to

37:49.24
peteeveritt
like ah demonstrate a positive return quite quickly they’re all they’re good things to do but you’ve got to do them within reason because if you over service too much to begin with and the client gets used to that level of service then you can never back off you can never return to what you would have classed as the open quotes normal level of service. You, you know, yeah so you’ve, you’ve got to be really careful about how you manage that and actually saying right from the outset, look, this is, this is the big goal. This is the, this is the 12 months that we’re going for. and We’re going to break it down into quarters. We know that quarter three has the summer in it. So that’s always going to be a bit hit and miss. So that one’s not going to be quite an equal quarter. So we’re with, but we’re figuring it out. This is what we’re into and.

38:32.09
peteeveritt
all of a sudden you alleviate that pressure. You’re no longer talking about, okay, so what am I delivering for the next meeting? You’re talking about, right, so what’s the big thing and what are the 12, 12 like daisy hops that we need to get there with like three lily pads in the middle? And that’s, yeah, that’s the, as I say, it sounds selfish, but it is it isn’t. It’s just trying to be more effective and more efficient and take a bit of stress off you at the same time.

39:00.66
Jeff
Yeah, definitely. You mentioned low-hanging fruit, and I’m afraid that this might be slightly contradictory to some of the things you were saying. But again, from the technical side of things, I love finding those low-hanging fruits because you can show like huge wins really fast. But this is something we’ve we’ve literally had a problem with where you know we’ve gone in, and and I’m specifically referring to on-page and technical health stuff. Not to get like really into it, but we’ve gone in and like cleaned up a website and you know like taken its site health from like

39:21.87
peteeveritt
Yeah.

39:27.96
Jeff
30 to like 95% or something like that. And literally like tripled the traffic and everything in one month, just because there were so many problems.

39:33.14
peteeveritt
Yep.

39:35.18
Jeff
Like the traffic was there. It’s just, it was never able to reach the website because of all the problems. And you know, we’ve done that in like month one and two before and people are like, holy moly, that’s amazing. Thanks. Bye. And they’ve left because they’re like, we’re done. Like we just got so much. And then on the other side, like flip side of that too. So you can do all of that. And then on like month two or three, you don’t get that same bump or you know, I mean, you can’t do that every month. You can only do that from the beginning when you’ve got a steaming pile of to the work with at the beginning, you know. So so the same thing is it’s like, you know, darn, who we we like did everything in the first month. And now what do we do?

40:11.06
Jeff
that’s all That’s what the planning and the strategy and understanding what this is and communicating with the client comes into play. ah You need to be able to express and explain this and why this happened and also go, don’t expect this you know this exact metric to double next month again and the month after that.

40:18.21
peteeveritt
we we

40:28.07
Jeff
It ain’t gonna happen from just that every month. That’s why we’re gonna strategize, that’s why we’re gonna plan, that’s why we’re gonna keep growing every quarter year, however long we’re going there.

40:37.99
peteeveritt
We literally had an agency owner, a new agency owner to us reach out to us. um in the last month. ah Nick, if you’re listening, I’m not going to give you surname, obviously, but Nick, if you’re listening, it was it’s great to meet you. um we had a a He reached out to us because he wants to start offering some white label SEO. Oh, he wants to start offering SEO using us as a white label service. and he had question That was his exact question. It’s like, how do you handle the tech cleanup stuff? Because if you do all that

41:09.81
peteeveritt
Right at the start, firstly, month one does that, you know, you’re going to do so much work in month one that how do you do anything else? And, you know, once it’s done, how does that appear to the client? And ah we through some options together and basically said, look, you’ve your your options are you either. You either do the text stuff as a one-off process to begin with, so it’s it’s not part of the monthly retainer, it’s clearly not part of that monthly rhythm that you’re going to get it get into, um or you take the hit on it as an agency and deal with it in-house and, you know, take take the flack if the flack comes.

41:48.90
peteeveritt
or you slow the tech stuff down so you don’t deliver it all in one month. You actually specifically only do half of it or a third of it in month one, then a third in month two, then a third in month three to get it done. Although there’s possibly a moral issue with that because anything else you try, if that tech stuff’s not correct, anything else you try in that interim period is only going to have limited benefit because the tech health isn’t right.

42:12.15
Jeff
Yeah.

42:12.88
peteeveritt
And we worked through this together and ah e came and Nick came to the conclusion that actually having it as a one-off process is like, ah you know, they would they would do their discovery, they would then do their tech cleanup, then they would worry about getting into monthly monthly SEO marketing, content marketing.

42:31.02
Jeff
That’s ah that’s good. i I couldn’t myself honestly like stretch that out unless it was so much work that it needed to. You know what I mean? like it’s It’s going to be 40 hours of cleanup. And sure, we can do this this month, but it’s going to cost you this much money. All right, let’s stretch it over three months. But like if you’re able to go in and fix that up in one month and start getting the results, that’s ah just morally what I want to do, you know like you said. Um, so that’s probably the better way to go about it. But then at the same time, if I gotta get my train of thought here on this one, but, um,

43:09.57
Jeff
double

43:09.48
peteeveritt
Well, let let me let me just jump in with ah an example here. So I’ll bail you out so you don’t have to edit this out the show. ah the yeah the Think of it this way, if you had to stand in a court of law because you hadn’t done the text of properly or fully, But you had advised on something else, to you know, you maybe some content marketing or some link link building or whatever it might be. And you’d action that first. And then a judge said to you or a lawyer said to you in the court,

43:41.26
peteeveritt
Did you know that you were doing that and that site wasn’t fit for purpose and you had to turn around and say, yes, my lord, then actually, you know that could is is that the way you want to approach this? Because getting getting the site health right, this only really applies to site health, but getting the site health right is exactly that. You can have the best piece of content on the internet, but if you’re so about a particular so topic, but if your site health is only 35%, Google will look at it and will say, it’s a great piece of content on a website with a health of 35%.

44:17.08
peteeveritt
And everything comes with the on a website with 35%, on a website with 35%.

44:21.36
Jeff
yeah and all the competitors are at 90%, so who’s gonna win?

44:23.94
peteeveritt
Yeah, who’s going to win? So you you have to get it right first. um And as you say, there might be budget constraints. it This is where it all comes contextual to what you’ve got, what you inherit, what you’ve or what you’ve built. I mean, that there’s another thing, you know, whenever I very few people, maybe maybe again, this makes me weird. I always run health audits on sites we’ve just built. I also run health audits on sites that we’re replacing so that I know that what we’re pushing online is better than what we what the client arrived with us with.

44:58.78
peteeveritt
Because again, that comes down to the point.

44:59.48
Jeff
huh

45:01.07
peteeveritt
You are the web professional. They are coming to you for the expertise. there’s absolutely no but Their website might look like a crock of shit to begin with, but if if it’s got a site health of 98% and you go and push something that’s only got 75, They’re going to see a drop in rankings. Everybody’s going to see the Google dance. I’m not talking about that. But as it settles, they will see a drop in rankings.

45:23.84
Jeff
Mm hmm.

45:24.94
peteeveritt
And that comes down to what you have done. And I don’t want that on my conscience.

45:29.58
Jeff
I think you read my mind because you really helped circle right back to what I was trying to get at a minute ago. and you know you men We’re talking about clean doing these cleanups and stuff like that, and I think this is really huge.

45:38.67
peteeveritt
Yeah.

45:39.46
Jeff
and We’re kind of getting away from the topic, but I feel like it’s really important to mention. I see this so often that when when you yourre you as a freelancer or your agency or whatever has built a website I believe you are responsible for that ah SEO tech setup, that cleanup. If you run a site, like you mentioned, if you run an audit and the site health is 50%, I’m sorry, but that’s your fault. That’s your responsibility to get that to an acceptable level. If you’re building a website for somebody, whether or not you’ve sold them SEO or whatever, it needs to be it needs to be at least at the basic bare minimum level.

46:14.60
Jeff
And same thing you mentioned about rebuilding sites. I have seen so many times where an agency has but’ve got a client and they’ve had a website. It’s old. Yes, it definitely needs to be rebuilt, but, and they’ve maybe done a nice facelift. It looks a lot better. It’s actually worse off afterwards because they didn’t look at any of that stuff.

46:29.77
peteeveritt
Yeah.

46:31.35
Jeff
They didn’t audit anything. They didn’t bring over the content. They lost pages that the heading structure. There’s so many different things that happen. And I see this happen so frequently. So like, I’m just telling you from one agency owner is another. If you’re building websites, you need to make sure that those are up to speed or you need to prepare that when that client’s ready for SEO, you’re going to be on the hook to get that fixed up. I would, I don’t think it’s right to charge a client to fix up their SEO or to fix up their technical health if you’ve just built the website semi recently.

47:01.64
peteeveritt
You know what, i ah so a few months ago I released a course, um WordPress ah SEO Fundamentals. It’s still on the production presale, if anybody fancies it, just Google it, you’ll find it. One of the modules is about ah seo and well iss about sending site like ah site live. And I did a checklist for a site live for a site launch and it runs to nearly three sides of a four. I’ve loaded it up in Google docs. So I could say, Hey, it’s got this many boxes on it. I can’t, I can’t count them up fast enough. It’s, uh, it’s, it’s literally three sides of a four. So if you, if you want the checklist, you’ve got to buy the course. The course is over at p ever.com. And as I say, Google WordPress SEO fundamentals, you’ll find it. But, uh, yeah, people so overlook.

47:53.31
peteeveritt
And because ultimately that’s when a lot of that I’ve got the list open in front of me here, you know, a lot of it is run an SEO health check is configure your 301s, make sure that your, your SSL certificate works. Some of them are for pre-live, some of them are during live and some of them are post live granted. But yeah, make sure that, make sure that you’ve unticked the, uh, the disallow search engine box in there in the site settings.

48:15.47
Jeff
you

48:16.73
peteeveritt
All that kind of stuff. um That’s that’s all in all in there, and it’s it’s the kind of thing that, it’s not sexy kind of work. I’m not saying it’s what I get up, you know, drives me to get out of bed every morning.

48:29.09
Jeff
It’s not even brag worthy. You can’t even brag to your client. Hey, check this out.

48:31.05
peteeveritt
Oh.

48:32.13
Jeff
I fixed all your headaches.

48:32.09
peteeveritt
hey Yeah, what the hell?

48:33.05
Jeff
They’re like, what what are you talking about? I don’t care.

48:35.11
peteeveritt
but But on the same note, if the client finds out you broke all their headings, who do you think they’re going to go after?

48:40.93
Jeff
Yeah.

48:41.01
peteeveritt
Right?

48:41.86
Jeff
Yeah. And let’s, let’s, let’s be frank.

48:43.35
peteeveritt
so

48:44.70
Jeff
There are people out there that just scan websites, run SEO reports and email them go, Hey, did you know you had problems? God, you’re going to feel real stupid if you launch a new website and then, you know, what’s, what’s, what’s that one name?

48:51.02
peteeveritt
Yeah.

48:56.68
Jeff
There’s a one guy like Steve Jones or Mike, Mike Jones or something that emails everybody and says, he’s just, it’s just a bot. But you know what I mean? Hey, we’ve got an SEO report and I mean, how embarrassing are you going to or how embarssed are you going to be if all of a sudden they find out that everything just tanked because you just rebuilt their website with some fancy theme template or something like that?

49:14.25
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah, so anyhow, that’s it. But yeah, you’re dead right. it’s It’s the kind of thing I fully agree. It is our responsibility as the web professionals to make sure we’re getting that that stuff right. If you bought a car, it can look like a million dollars. But if if you can’t drive it off the forecourt because the engines broke, you wouldn’t pay for it.

49:35.76
Jeff
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even a lot of used cars, they have some sort of used warranty, you know, maybe 30 days or 90 days or something when you buy them. And, you know, does the website have a warranty? You know, it depends on kind of how you’re framing all of that and your ongoing service and stuff like that. But like, yeah, I feel bad every time I’ve had to tell somebody and I’ve told them many times, like, I think this is on you. Sorry. They’re like, oh, let me see if the client wants to pay for it.

49:58.70
peteeveritt
Yeah.

50:00.61
Jeff
I’m like, no, no, no. This is this is your fault.

50:02.03
peteeveritt
and No, no, no, no. This website’s been live two weeks and you’ve done this to it. You should probably fix it.

50:08.20
Jeff
yeah yeah Sorry, not trying to shame ya, but that’s just like get something you gotta accept.

50:09.19
peteeveritt
Yeah, I get it. I get it.

50:12.94
Jeff
you know

50:15.17
peteeveritt
So anyhow, I think, I mean, i I hope people have found that there’s a few ways to figure out the priorities for, that are going to move the needle for your client off the back of this.

50:27.61
Jeff
There’s a lot of ways.

50:27.92
peteeveritt
I hope so.

50:28.85
Jeff
Hopefully we talked about enough of them to give you enough to overload your brain for the next week until you get another chance but to listen to us. but

50:36.97
peteeveritt
Well, I mean, yeah I’m aware we’ve been talking for coming up to 51 minutes. And short of the French lesson that started, it’s kind of all been all been relatively serious this this time, I think. So it’s, um yeah, i don’t want to I don’t want to lose you, dear listener, because the other the other one might leave as well, and then there’s nobody listening to us.

50:53.19
Jeff
and

50:56.82
Jeff
coach Well, it’s a bit of a broad topic. I don’t know if it’s sexy or not, but I think these are the type of things that when you start to kind of understand and just put into your psyche or whatever, I think you start to run your business a little bit differently and you start to also work with your clients a bit differently, and for the better, obviously. um and you know i mean we just We just keep learning and growing and working with our clients. and what you you know Talking about these growth plans specifically, what you start planning in the first quarterly session with somebody is not going to be the same in a year or two or three because in this type of relationship, you’re able to continually evolve and see their problems and and you know their issues and help fix them and steer them in the right direction. and If you can keep your clients long-term like this, i mean

51:42.62
Jeff
you and I have had clients that we’ve had since before. We ever started working together almost five years ago or something like that.

51:45.01
peteeveritt
Hmm.

51:48.39
Jeff
We’ve got agencies that have the same clients with SEO High from day one, four or five years ago, and that’s what they do. They’re there and they they don’t just you know do the same thing every month. they They plan, they strategize, they’re their partner. They’re as much an employee in their business as they are. ah you know ah their own business sometimes. and And I think that’s how you can continue to support your customers, grow and ah scale both your agency and their businesses as well.

52:17.04
peteeveritt
Absolutely. So with that in mind, thank you for listening. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. You can check out the show notes at seohive.co or wherever whatever it is. And we hope to see you in the next episode.