Episode 4: Matt Jonza on How to Use Google Ads to Drive Business

We get tracking around how many quotes are generated through my asset domain in the State Farm world. And so you look at your total spend divided by your quotes generated and you get your cost per lead. And so when you're working with a company, you need to track those two items or at least have them track them for you. Even if you don't want to do all the math, you need to have a goal and you need to hold them accountable to that goal. Welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, where you will learn to grow your business, grow your leadership, and grow and develop your team. And now tune in to another great episode brought to you by your hosts, Bradley Hamner and Chris Ferretti.

Chris, I'm really excited about today's Today's podcast, we're joined by Matt Jones, owner of Matt Jones Estate Farm Insurance Agency and DirectClicks, a digital marketing company that helps insurance agencies grow their business through online marketing campaigns. I love this guy. He and his wife Maddie, who runs the company, are just first-class people that really know their stuff. You know, there's a lot of mystery around how Google pay-per-click works, and Matt does such a great job in this interview breaking down some of those myths and misconceptions that go along with all things Google and online marketing. Now, I also love the fact that Matt figured out digital marketing for his insurance business first and now has a digital marketing company that helps other insurance agency owners across the country grow their business through online marketing campaigns. Chris, what's some of the things that you picked up on the podcast with Matt?

Man, where do I begin? So I really love Matt as a person, super humble guy, super nice, definitely the model business owner, I would say. So that's the number one thing that I picked up from him. But to get into the technicalities that we talked about, I love how thorough he was when explaining the differences between SEO, SEM, and how in-depth he goes to give us actual examples of what each of those two very big fields are in the world of marketing. And also the fact that he teaches our listeners how to maintain a digital marketing agency accountable and also how to calculate the ROI of a marketing campaign, an actual formula that our listeners can apply today to calculate how effective their marketing efforts are doing for them. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Matt, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. We're glad to have you on.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Absolutely, man. It's a great pleasure to have the great Matt Johnson here.

So Matt, talk to us about— I mean, you're a small business owner, you own 2 businesses. We always like to go back first. So talk to us about how you became an agent and then ultimately what led to the start of DirectClicks.

Yeah, well, it was a little bit of a unique path. I started my first business when I was in college and it was called Party Putt LLC. It was a portable mini golf course rental company. So I had 18 holes. I'd bring them out on a trailer, set them up, customize scorecards, putters, golf balls, the whole nine, and then pick them up when I was done. And so that was my first venture into the business world. And I was doing that during college and then working at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Coming out of college. So I worked there for 2 years while running Party Putt. Mortgage is very up and down, so ended up applying for some jobs I didn't think I deserved. And, uh, one of them was the additional intern role with State Farm. That position doesn't exist anymore, but I was just waiting for somebody to retire unexpectedly and take over. So I did that for 2 years, and that's how I got into State Farm Agency. And I'm actually an agent in my hometown. Where I grew up, which is nice. As far as DirectClicks goes, that stemmed from Party Putt as well. At that point, I was so nervous to ever talk on the phone to anybody that I wanted to use the internet to sell my product. I kind of self-taught and made some rudimentary Google AdWords campaigns and managed to book some gigs off it and carried that fascination and passion over to insurance when I launched.

Very cool. I didn't know that we were dealing with such a serial entrepreneur today. Did you, Chris?

I did not. You know something funny? I actually have a similar background to you. So just so you know, I used to be in the mortgage business myself. I was in it for about a year and a half. And you're right, man, the mortgage industry is super cutthroat and very stressful. When it's good, it's amazing. I mean, you're making tons of money, but when it's dry, I mean, it's just super rough. And funny enough, I actually have a business called Ferretti Booth LLC, and it's actually a photo booth rental for like weddings, parties and things like that.

No way. Did you know that, Bradley? 100 spirits right there. You're probably on weddingwire.com.

So that's actually funny you mentioned WeddingWire because Devin, who works for Club Capital, actually used to work with that company. So yeah, there's some in there. So I'll tell you what, I think that you guys just got connected to be able to go to some parties throughout the country to do Party Putt and what you're doing, Chris. I like it.

Let's do it, man. Totally down for a joint venture.

Great things ahead.

You know, Matt, we were super excited just to have you on the podcast because you bring so much knowledge and expertise, and I just love the fact that you dug it out of the dirt. I mean, your company was born out of something that you saw as a need for yourself, and now you've been able to expand that into helping small business owners really around the country. So can you just talk just real high level about DirectClicks first and how you service your clients and what specifically that you do. And then obviously we're gonna really kind of dig in today. In prepping for the show, you know, you and I talked about really being able to give some tangible giveaways, best practices for people when it comes to Google AdWords. And so I'm really excited about getting into some nuts and bolts today for our listeners. But why don't you just go high-level first and talk about DirectClicks and what you do to service your clients?

Yeah, absolutely. So DirectClicks, uh, online marketing firm specifically for insurance agents. We're a one-trick pony though. We do deal exclusively with Google Ads. So the paid search portion of online marketing. So I think that'd be a key point to differentiate in a little bit here, the difference between SEO and SEM. So we'll definitely touch on that. But essentially what we do is we either generate phone calls or generate additional data leads or StateFarm.com leads in our case. For the agent.

I feel like we're speaking about Google AdWords as if everybody knows what they are, but would you mind just getting basic with us, simply just telling us what Google AdWords are and why business owners should use them?

Yeah, absolutely. So Google AdWords is the paid search result. So let's put Bradley in the driver's seat here. Let's say he just bought a new car and he's thinking about his insurance rates, and he pulls out his cell phone and He didn't like the quote he got from his current provider, so he thinks, "I'm going to shop." Well, he's probably going to Google search something related to insurance, and then what Google AdWords is, is it's a keyword bidding system that places your name and number at the top of the page. So anywhere from the first result to the top 4 are the paid search results, and they have the little ad symbol by it. Google AdWords is really a powerful, powerful tool in that sense because we're in control of what time of day our ads are showing. So if we don't want ads at midnight, they don't have to run. We're also in control of what that person is thinking about, and I think that's the most powerful thing, is it's a keyword targeting system. So I can put myself in the brain of the person shopping for insurance, speculate what they'd search, and then make my name and number appear out of thin air using my credit card. And so that's Google AdWords in a nutshell, is putting yourself in the right place at the right time.

So it really is about being targeted to the audience that you want and at the time that you want that to be. So it's not just who the audience is as a whole, but you really get it narrowed down into some pretty granular details I know you have with my business. And so I think that was one of the things that really opened my eyes that I wasn't even aware of is just how detailed you could actually dial this in.

Yeah, it's amazing. You can even target income demographics and certain age groups to a certain extent. And primarily though, the most important thing is what were they thinking before you put your ad up? It's not a billboard that you're just driving by and hopefully they like your smile. It's an actionable search. They want a result when they click search on Google, and that's where AdWords comes into play.

I think the really cool thing about Google AdWords is the fact that for your ad to show, they have to be looking for it. So I mean, when somebody sees your ad, they're already in buying mode. So if you can figure out a way to get in front of their faces and get them to call you as opposed to you having to reach out to them, I mean, come on. Beautiful.

Yeah, that's going to close a lot more often.

So we're going to continue to dial down. I do want to go back and give you the opportunity to talk about the difference between SEO and SEM.

Fantastic. Yeah, that's something that I find commonly people don't understand the difference between the two. So it's really important to draw a line and know where you're investing your money. So let's break it down. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Primarily that's in two different ways. That's either the Google Maps, so you're listing in Google Maps and if you're showing up above above the other insurance companies in town, or it's the natural organic result from Google, not the paid section at the top. So when you work with a firm on SEO, they're primarily, when it comes to an insurance agent like a State Farm agent, they're focused on getting your directories, your business listings all in line and in order so that everything matches up across the web and they see that you're referenced a lot on the internet. Which makes you more influential and therefore you are higher in the results. With Google Maps, that's primarily picture and review driven. So if you have more positive or even sometimes negative Google reviews, you tend to rank higher and be shown more often in that 3-pack, the 3 results in the map. And so as an agent, that's one free way you can always improve your online presence is saying, all right, I'm going to get one lead or one review per week, 1 to 2, and you're going to be in good shape. As far as paid search goes, that's SEM. So that's search engine marketing. That's a synonym is PPC, pay-per-click. That comes in a variety of forms as well. There's Google Ads and Bing Ads, which are the search paid ads, but then there's also display ads such as for Estate Farm Agent, Agent Tag Media. Or showing up on websites on the side or the top or inside of an app. And then there's also social media paid marketing as well. But search engine marketing covers all of those branches. At DirectClicks, we just focus on Google Ads. That's our bread and butter.

That's great. I mean, that really does help because I mean, I owned my business for a long time and I did not know the difference between those and it can just be so confusing. So many different moving parts. And just in the last 5 to 10 years, the presence of Google with all businesses and the importance of your ability to show up in both the organic search but also taking advantage of the paid marketing, it's just gotten increasingly more important over the years. Have you seen that?

Absolutely. In 2019, we wrote almost half our business related to some form of online marketing.

Wow.

And people just continually move in that direction. And I think most people out there have seen the statistics on how often people are doing Google searches. Someone should look that up, but it's an alarming amount per day, and that trend has continued to grow throughout all of the— well, now it's 2020, look at that.

So we're going to get into talking about numbers and results and accountability, things of that nature. But before we get there, Matt, I just want to say, can you give us some of the biggest misconceptions that you've seen in working with small business owners on SEM and SEO, and maybe some of the mistakes that they make because of those misconceptions between the two. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest misconception that I commonly run into is people grouping SEO and SEM together and considering that digital marketing is all one thing. Well, there's really, like we just covered, 6 to 7 offshoots of digital marketing and being intentional about where you're investing your money is extremely important. So I think that's probably the biggest misconception is that it's all the same. As far as mistakes go, I think the biggest thing I see is people not tracking effectively. So they're investing all this money and they're saying, all right, I'm willing to spend $500 a month, $6,000 a year, or maybe double that, or maybe triple that. Yet they don't know dollars going out to dollars coming in. And I think that is probably the biggest mistake I run into is people thinking, oh, it's working really well, or oh, it's not working at all when really they have nothing but gut instinct to base that opinion on. So I think it's just crucial anytime you do anything in the digital marketing space that you have your tracking in order and that you have a plan to make sure you're being effective.

Out of curiosity, when you're first talking to somebody, because I don't know, like I've just been in contact with a lot of people that are in the digital marketing space and whether It's a media company that does ads for like actual countries, campaigns for presidents and things like that. Or just people who learn from an influencer online how to actually run social media and marketing campaigns. And now they're launching their own company and they always recommend doing something like an audit for a person. Like when you first come in contact with a business owner that may or may not know you, and you definitely don't know them. Do you do something like that for business owners? Like, do you do, uh, some sort of audit to like let them know where they are today?

Somewhat, somewhat. If we encounter somebody who has an active Google AdWords campaign, we'll definitely audit that. And there's plenty of times where we'll take a look and we'll say, you're doing a great job. Not a whole lot needs to be altered here. And potentially we'll encourage them to stay with their current provider if that's the case. But we'll look at things, and that's something that I definitely want to cover today when it comes to Google Ads in particular. We'll look at things like their search term report, which is just incredibly important to know if they're spending money on quality, high-intent phrases, or if they just have 100 clicks like Martina said in the other podcast. So— claims. Yeah, exactly. Or just complete garbage that doesn't even relate to insurance. I've seen some funny stuff. For example, I'm an agent in Woodbury, Minnesota. And there are 7 State Farm agents there. Well, if it says State Farm and then another agent's name, I probably don't want to spend money to interact with that individual, right? They're probably their client or they know them. So things of that nature. So I kind of rambled on. So let's summarize. When it comes to Google Ads, in order to audit, the primary thing you look at is search terms. Search terms equal what they typed in to the Google search bar before they clicked enter and before they clicked on your ad. So you get to see into their brain and you'll even see misspellings. You'll see hilarious stuff in there sometimes as well, but you can then evaluate, well, was this money effective or was it simply some garbage click? So that's the most important thing when you're working with Google Ads.

So the first thing that comes to mind is just Obviously, we did this on my business, but you're pulling back the curtain a lot on the marketing. And so I think marketing, sometimes digital, but just marketing in general can sometimes feel ambiguous. Like you don't really know if you're getting a good return on investment. We're going to talk about marketing return on investment towards the end of the podcast, but you talked about the search term report, and I know that you have a lot of other reports out there. So can you just talk about reports in general and the ability to be able to actually measure the return that you're getting on the SEM, specifically the Google AdWords that you are helping your clients with?

So it's important to, when you start a Google Ads campaign, come up with a goal and you need to work back from your premiums of your insurance and then figure out how much you need to sell to make a positive ROI. But the number one thing you need to figure out first is, am I going after leads or am I going after inbound phone calls? Because there's going to be a different cost of acquisition for leads versus phone calls. Because like, as Chris alluded to, someone calling you in that moment needing help, that business is a lot hotter than another lead you have to chase down, right? So your cost per phone call number is going to be higher than a cost per lead. But you come up with a goal based on your premium in your market, and then you just track that effectiveness. So when it comes to a phone call campaign, there is something called the call details report within your Google AdWords, and what that will show you is the exact day and time that you got a phone call into your office. It'll show you the area code of that phone. You don't get the full caller ID, but you at least get the area code. And then the most important thing it shows you is how long you were on the phone with that individual. And then as an agent, you can know, well, sure, I'm going to get some bad phone calls here and there, but I better be able to get off the phone with a bad phone call within, I don't know, 3 minutes. And so then when I look at that report and I see 15 calls that were 10 minutes or more, well, some good stuff was happening. And that helps me evaluate my effectiveness of the campaign. On the flip side, with leads, we get tracking around how many quotes are generated through My SF Domain in the State Farm world. And so you look at your total spend divided by your quotes generated and you get your cost per lead. And so when you're working with a company, you need to track those two items or at least have them track them for you. Even if you don't want to do all the math, you need to have a goal and you need to hold them accountable to that goal.

This is great stuff. So why don't we do this? Why don't you give me an example? We'll just use say Chris is an agent, he's a business owner, okay? And he comes to you, he's not done, he's never had a Google Ads campaign whatsoever. You've had it, I'm sure, span across the gamut. Some people have had some unbelievable success. There's got to be a minimum amount of spend on a monthly basis to be able to even really get any tangible results. And so can you give us some averages? And so let's just use Chris, if he was an agent, as an average and talk to us about what that would look like specifically. What are some of the results that you've seen in general? Obviously you can just give some roundabout numbers so that people can actually say, okay, that's how that would work.

Yeah, absolutely. So first we would choose our goal, right? I'd ask Chris, hey Chris, do you want inbound phone calls or do you want State Farm back hot leads? Let's start there. So let's say he chose phone calls. With that campaign, we typically will see clients spend anywhere from $300 per month directly to Google or up to $3,000, sometimes $4,000 in our heavy spenders. Our cost per phone call goal should be sub $15 every day of the week. Outside of that, how many of those phone calls turn into actionable quotes and sales That's another number, typically in that $25 to $40 range for a cost per good phone call. And then from that, Chris just has to work back from, well, how much am I willing to invest and what percentage of the time am I going to close the business on that good phone call? So if he chooses 3 out of 10 times, oh, we can back into that number and establish, all right, here's our break-even point. For when we evaluate the campaign. If it's coming to leads, similar math, you're just using a different conversion rate. Your cost per lead is going to be lower, but your close rate is also going to be lower than a phone call. So I'm kind of repeating myself, but tracking, tracking is the most important aspect of doing anything digital.

We're definitely talking around the topic itself, but I was actually taking a look at your website and just like your background, and I did see that attention to detail is one of the core differentiators for your agency, for your marketing agency, that is. So can you just walk us through the DirectClicks process? Like if I'm a client or a prospect, I should say, what can I expect from you? Like from the conversation, once again, of what it is that we're looking to accomplish to how can I keep your company accountable for the results? Can you just walk me through the experience that you would give me if I was a prospect?

So initially we just talk about your goals, like I said. Figure out a rough budget and the way you'd want to market. Maybe you do calls, maybe you do leads, maybe you do Spanish, right? But we choose that and we set a basic parameter. Okay, Chris wants to spend $750 a month with Google. From that, we are going to use $400 for calls, $300 for leads. From there, we give you a target cost per phone call. Let's call it $15 again. Could be 10, could be 12, it depends on the market. And then we'd also have a cost per good phone call. Same thing on the lead side. We'd establish those numbers on the front end, and then when we launch the campaign, you're in control of your budget throughout. So if you decide you want to make an adjustment 2 months in because it's working great, or vice versa, you're not doing long leads, so you just want to do only calls, we can adjust those things. But then each monthly conference call, we're going to calculate those numbers for you with your help, with, through your production manager and your MyASAF domain. And from that, we'll be able to tell, are we truly doing a good job? So I think the biggest thing that sets us apart is transparency. We don't like people to feel like they're in the dark. And so making sure that they know when we're doing a bad job and know when we're doing a good job is important to us.

I have to say, I was just thinking about that term transparency, because I mean, that really holds you accountable to making sure that what you're doing, the campaign that you're delivering for the client is actually working. And that's one of the things I wanted to bring up to you and ask you about is just how to hold a digital marketing agency, whether that's DirectClicks or somebody else that people may be working with. I mean, business owners have worked with a lot of different companies and marketing as a whole, whether that's community events or SEO or obviously in some cases Google AdWords. And so can you give us some other things of how to help hold your digital marketing agency accountable?

So first piece of advice, don't go any longer than once every quarter in talking with your digital marketing agency. It's important to have review calls and make sure you're asking questions to understand your investment. Second thing, when it comes to paid search, so Google Ads, the most important report, I alluded to it earlier, is that search terms report. You need to see under the curtain, behind the curtain, whatever the saying is, and see what that traffic's mindset was when you paid to have them land on your page or call you. After that, it's the cost per call or cost per lead depending on your goal. And you have to track those numbers and just make sure that you're doing something that's economically viable. For your agency. When it comes to SEO, I always suggest, because that one's so much harder to track and it's long-term, you don't overnight rank first organically. It just doesn't happen. So you want to make sure you understand, well, if I'm spending, let's say, $5,000 a year with somebody who's an SEO firm, well, I don't know what's their service worth in my head because I'm not going to do it. $50 an hour. Okay, well, $5,000 divided by the $50 an hour means 100 hours per year. They got to work on me around 2 hours a week. And so with that, you want to know, well, what are you actually doing? What directories did you update? What reviews did you respond to? What photos did you post on my Google My Business? And then secondly, just check your Google My Business stats because that's the quickest way to know that they're being effective.

Man, that's powerful. I actually, despite being somewhat familiar with the term and the nature of SEO, I actually had no idea how to evaluate the effectiveness of a company carrying out an SEO campaign for you. So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm not an expert in SEO, but I do know that you just want to know how you're spending your money. That's the key.

I don't think that we could have this call and talk so much about Google, and specifically today is so much about the paid search, but I do think, and you've mentioned it a couple of times, I do think we need to mention it about just the importance of Google reviews. I mean, we discussed this obviously with Martina, but I'd love to just have you to give a comment or two about the importance of Google reviews to everything that you do in your digital marketing space.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll use my own experience to answer this one. When I started, I was a scratch agent, so there weren't any current clients looking me up. So anybody who looked me up was someone we generated. And so when I started my Google My Business, if anyone has access to that, it'll give you your monthly statistics on views and phone calls and map views and all those things. And I was probably averaging 500 to 1,000 in a month. And then in year 2, I really made it a focus. We need to get to 100 reviews by the end of the year. And I think we entered through the year at 28. Or something like that. And by the end of that year, I was averaging 3,000 to 5,000 views per month on my Google My Business listing. Then what happens when you think something's all set, you get away from it, and I stopped getting Google reviews. And I'm currently sitting around 1,500 to 2,000 views a month, and I'm trying to get back in the game. So it's a consistency thing when it comes to Google reviews. You want to get 1 to 2 a week, every week in perpetuity.

That is super powerful because I definitely wouldn't have even realized what you just mentioned is that you didn't cross this barrier and then your views continue to go up. I mean, they went up for a period of time because you were getting new ones, but as you stopped getting new ones, it went back down.

Yeah, you got to stick with it.

I guess to put it in like relatable terms, it's like Warren Buffett when he was saying that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 20 seconds to break it. Basically, it's the same thing, but online and tangible, doing it with Google reviews.

Very well put.

Matt, one thing I wanted to talk about today is you and I have some conversations offline just about marketing in general and marketing return on investment tracking, not just specific to SEM. So I'd like to give you the opportunity just to talk about that, because I know that you've shared with me some things that you've done that have really helped you to grow and transform your business. Outside of just Google. So can you talk about that and just what are some best practices that our listeners can get from tracking their marketing?

I'd like to start by picking on myself again. My TICA year, I lived, ate, slept State Farm, right? I was there every day working so hard. And with that, I had a good idea of what I was spending and what I was writing in terms of premium. And I made decisions off of that as I should. So then I got into the groove of things again and stopped focusing on that. And with that, I just started shooting from the hip when it came to what I spend money on and how much. And we were still doing a decent job, but I really wasn't effective in understanding the boring part of the business, which is the numbers. And this past year, I finally got back into it. And really monitored down to the penny what I spent on each item, whether that be internet leads or Google or community events or live transfers or whatever that marketing source was, and then tracked effectively what that premium was and therefore my first year commission. So the way you monitor your ROI is pretty simple. It's just your first year annual P&C commission. And if you choose, you can put financial services in there, but I don't. And then you subtract out the cost of marketing and divide that by the cost of marketing. And that's your ROI. And the way I view it in a residual income business like insurance is if I can break even in 1 year's time, why wouldn't I keep spending more? And the negative to all that is I spent almost double what I spent in 2018 in 2019, because there were certain categories I realized, wow, I'm profitable here, let's do that more. The positive of that is we had our biggest growth year yet. So it really is something that I think is boring, and so people shy away from it, but it's how you got to run the business.

Matt, I want to go back over that formula one more time for people that may have missed that. So can you repeat that back to us?

Yeah, so that's going to be your first year annual P&C commission. So you annualize all your premium Take your commission on that, subtract the cost of the marketing source, whatever you spent in that month, and then divide that by the cost of the marketing source. And if you had a positive number, you're going to have a positive ROI.

Perfect.

Boom.

That's great. That's real tangible, down to earth. I mean, that's something that for all of our listeners, you could do that today no matter what you're spending your marketing on— community events, live transfers, internet leads, obviously SEO, SEM. I think that's great. That's real tangible advice, takeaways for people to be able to have. So thank you for that.

It would be cool, just for future reference, you may or may not have this today, but either doing a blog post on your site that talks about it or simply creating like a PDF that people can just download from your website.

I love that idea.

I think that what you just said delivers so much value. It's super simple to create, and I can't stress enough how important it is for you to know whether your marketing efforts are being effective or not. And if I can go to your website, give you my email address, and right away have a formula that tells me to the dollar, to the percentage, whether I'm being effective or not, you know, it's totally worth it. So would definitely recommend that, man.

Gonna have to get right on that. That's a fantastic idea.

All right, Matt. So one of the questions that I wanted to ask you today is just also, can you talk about trends that you're seeing in the paid search and SEM world? And so specifically, marketing we know is very dynamic, it's not static. And so what are some trends that you're seeing? And then how do you help work with your clients? So that you can capture as people's search habits in Google begin to change. Obviously, sometimes the campaign needs to change as well.

From a big picture perspective, there's been quite a few changes on Google's side in 2019 and the never-ending push towards machine learning and automation, it just keeps coming up and they're coming up with new ways to let the machine of Google market for you. And that can be both effective and a train wreck at the same time, depending on how it's implemented. So in some campaigns you can use the machine learning algorithm effectively, and it does better than what your human brain could ever rationalize. But in others, it just assigns the wrong values to the wrong searches. And will go crazy and spend $90 on one click, and things can get very messed up as well. So that is a trend that's not going to stop. Google does want to get to a place where any business owner can log in, swipe their credit card, and have leads coming to them. But there's still years and years, decades maybe, away from making that effective for the end user. So you still need somebody who understands your industry and then understands your goals to match the right bidding strategy to your Google AdWords campaign.

So that goes back to one of your best practices you shared earlier is about meeting at least once a quarter so that you can measure the effectiveness based on what you set out from the beginning, which A is what your goals were, what your pay per lead or pay per call is going to be, and C, this is what we said we wanted it to be, is it actually performing that way?

Correct. And throughout the year, those goals might shift. There could be quite a few more competitors that start marketing in your region when before you were the only individual, and that can alter your goals and your campaign strategy and how it's working. So just staying in touch with your digital marketing agency and just always having a feel for if it's a good month or a bad month and what we're doing to always improve, that's critical.

I just want to say one thing, a little bit on the nerdy side, but I love machine learning. I love data science and it's something that I would say I'm a complete beginner at it, but I'm just fascinated by the technology. And before anybody, once again, even thinks about swiping their credit card rather than hiring a company to do it and to have Google basically handle the marketing campaign. Effective AI is determined by two things, and that is quality of technology. So like the algorithms, for example, are they actually well-refined models and amount of data? So I feel like right now Google is still in that data collection process. That's why they are running their own campaigns simultaneously to people like you, agencies being on the platform to give Google data essentially on what you're doing to generate positive ROI campaigns. So once again, just like you just said, we are years away from being able to really trust Google to be like, you know what, Google, handle my marketing. They should definitely, definitely go with a company before they even think about doing that because once again, Google needs data. Yes, they have great technology, but they need more data. I mean, it just takes time to gather data.

There's certain things that humans do much better than computers. Yes.

And contrary to popular belief.

Yeah. And so interpreting intent is probably the hardest thing for Google to be able to build into their algorithm. And humans can look at something and say auto insurance windshield replacement and go, well, that's garbage. That's not going to sell me a policy. Google might not realize that that's sucking away at their campaign spend.

All right, let's do this. E9, you ready, Matt?

Let's do it.

Last book you read?

From Selling to Serving, Luke Acero.

I haven't heard of that, but I want to check it out. What book would you recommend the most?

The one that business-wise probably affected my agency the most. I think a lot of people have read it, but Energy Bus.

I haven't read it. I'm going to check that one out too.

Don't be an energy vampire. Fire.

That's right. Yeah, John Gordon's a great author. I love all of his books. Favorite non-work hobby?

Probably darts. I, uh, pretty good dart player.

Dang, nice. Okay, I mean, so with your current position, you've traveled all over the country for speaking engagements, but what's one place that you haven't been to that you would love to visit?

Italy, for sure. I'm actually a little bit Italian, last name isn't, but never been over that way. Love all the food and I think it'd be a fun trip.

Who inspires you the most?

Definitely entrepreneurial types. I've always loved Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, all those different people. But I'd say primarily the person I watch the most is kind of funny, the CNBC show The Profit with Marcus Lemonis.

Yeah, you're speaking my language there. I love Marcus Lemonis. Now my wife, she listened to this podcast casters. She'll be glad to hear you say that one.

Well, man, if you hadn't gone into insurance or marketing, what do you think that you'd be doing today?

Hard to say. I probably would have stayed in the mortgage industry. I always had a desire to be in the investment world though, so financial advisor.

Favorite vacation spot?

I'm gonna say Colorado for ski trips.

Dude, I really want to go on a ski trip. I really want to go. I've never done it before, but I really want to do it. Who's your favorite sports team?

Vikings.

Skulls, of course.

Although, uh, Gophers just won a nice one yesterday against Auburn, so, you know, those are fighting words, man.

Yeah, man, I really can't believe that you actually pulled that out on this podcast. Oh my God, that's terrible.

Had to. Jay Flatt, look out for us.

All right, last question. You made it, you're Almost off the hot seat. Best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Probably just to be genuine and authentic in every interpersonal interaction you have. I sometimes have fallen into the everything's a business or everything's, I gotta move through this, move through that. But I think keeping it front and center that the other person you're working with, regardless of the situation, every situation is another human and making that a priority to treat them that way has always been a good—

That's actually one thing that I really want to work on even more this year is like to truly connect with people, to truly resonate with them and just realize that we are all humans. You know, we get so caught up in the daily, just like hustle and bustle, especially in the insurance world, in the finance world. But at the end of the day, we're all people. So I think that if we could if we can put ourselves in the other person's shoes and truly care for them, we're going to be happier and deliver that much better service, which is going to benefit everybody. So that's really beautiful, man. Thank you for sharing that.

Dropping wisdom at the end of the podcast.

That's Matt Johnson for you, man.

Yeah.

Hey Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast today. I mean, you've just given us so many different pearls of wisdom and we really appreciate your time. I know you're busy running all of your different businesses, so thank you. If somebody wants to know more about DirectClicks and speak to you guys about maybe what you could do to help them with their business, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

I'd say going on directclicksinc.com and reaching out to my wonderful wife Maddie, who runs DirectClicks. She will respond over email. You can give her a phone call, and it's definitely the best way to reach out.

Awesome.

Well, I could definitely say that working with both of you, you are both very genuine people. The transparency that you have, I think, is just fantastic. And so I think what you guys do with business owners is really awesome. So thank you again for coming on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a blast.

Chris, I thought that interview was great. Actionable, tangible ideas that you can use right away in your business. You know, a couple of things really stood out to me were, number one, you mentioned this at the beginning, but the formula for figuring out your marketing ROI, I mean, that in and of itself was worth the entire podcast. And number 2, just the importance of setting a goal for your pay-per-click campaign. And if you're working with a digital marketing company, how important it is to speak with them at least once per quarter on a consistent basis to see how your campaign's performing relative to your goals. Chris, what's a couple things you picked up?

Two things that I picked up from Matt is consistency and consciousness. You have to be very conscious of what it is exactly that you are looking to get out of your marketing campaigns. Just like you're saying, having actual goals that align not only with a certain ROI that you're looking to achieve, but how that actually impacts your overall business. So number one, be conscious of your marketing efforts. And number two, be consistent with them. So just because you have a great month, a great quarter, or a great year when it comes to marketing ROI and reaching a specific number of leads that you were trying to reach, it does not mean that you can slow down or slack off in the following quarter, month, year, et cetera. You have to be consistent with your marketing spend and with your messaging, and of course with asking people to leave you reviews and pictures and things like that on the different business directories. So once again, consciousness and consistency.

If you'd like to learn more about DirectClicks and how they can support your business, visit his website at directclicksinc.com. Again, that's directclicksinc.com. Chris, this was a good one. Until next time, lead well and stay classy.