Optimize Your Lead Generation in the Wix Marketplace

Nope. And I think we're live. Thank you so much for joining me, everyone. Welcome. Happy Thursday. Welcome to my living room kitchen. My name is Chris. I am the head of account management here at wix. I do a lot of work with partners like you. I hope. I do a lot of work with our E commerce users. I work with all the account managers in our New York office and I do a ton of work in the marketplace. And today we're going to be talking about a full workshop with two of our Marketplace partners today on ways that hopefully you can optimize your performance in the marketplace. You can learn some new tips and tricks from some of your peers today and we'll go through some of the ways that you can work to again, improve your performance and hopefully generate more business through the Marketplace. Joining me today is Dave and Mark. I'd love to let you guys introduce yourselves. Dave, let's turn it over to you. Tell us who you are, I guess and then we'll go from there.

Sure. My name is Dave Place. I'm an entrepreneur from the Boston area and yeah, I started on wix by creating websites for my own projects, you know, like a house flipping, you know, small company I have and things like that and got good at it. And then you signed on as a WIX partner maybe a year and a half, two years ago and just kind of took my experience from lead generation and, you know, sales from other industries that I've been in and brought it here and yeah, just been growing ever since. Welcome.

Thanks for joining us and Mark.

Hi, my name is Mark. I'm the business development manager at Tencom Web Development based in Chicago, Illinois. We are a full service web design and digital marketing agency. And my role within the agency, you know, as a business development manager is multifaceted. My key role is to drive the growth of this company and that's what I'm good at, is improving sales processes.

I love it. Thank you both for joining. I'm excited to dig into the subject matter today. I'd also like to point out too, if you're just joining, we have a live chat open. Make sure to send it in to everyone. We're gonna go through all the chats. We have some of our crew members that are gonna gather everything at the end of the conversation today. We should leave at least 10 to 15 minutes to answer everyone's questions. So it's not just us three talking here. We'd love to hear what you think and if you have any questions, fire them in. I'd like to Also, just address quickly what we're gonna cover today. First, we wanna start talking about communication. Whether you're new to the Marketplace or you've been in the Marketplace since its inception when it was the WIX arena, I think communication is the first thing that we're gonna wanna cover is how to optimize your connection rate and your conversion rate with Marketplace leads. David and Mike are here to give you their experience on how it's been successful for them. We're also gonna be talking about driving revenue from services where we see a lot of users raise their hand within the product. We have over three dozen different entry points, from support articles to the header when you're in the editor, to different moments in the digital marketing tools like the SEO wizard, where users can raise their hand and ask for help. But we're seeing guys like David and Mark actually parlay those initial requests into added services as well. So consider them upsells. And we're going to talk a ton about that and how you can do this as well. We're also going to be looking at how to generate more qualified leads to refine your profile, refine the way that you're pulling briefs in from the Marketplace and just how to represent yourself well, which kind of segues nicely to the last point. It's just building your credibility, not just with your Marketplace profile and your portfolio, but in everything you do. Right. So let's jump right into it. I'd also like to point out too, this is the first conversation that I've had in the last three months where everybody has a collared shirt on. So we're making. We're making history today, fellas. Used to dealing with T shirts, sweatpants, and everybody's working from home. So we'll kill the screen share for now and we can just get into it. I'd love to first start with the idea of customer communication. I think first, I'd love to hear from you, Dave. I guess let's walk through. From the beginning of the user journey, somebody sends in a brief to the Marketplace, it just hits your inbox for the first time. What happens next? I guess, what's your process like?

Yeah, so I. First thing look for is there's a phone number attached to it or not. I feel like maybe half, third the time there's a phone number and the other parts, there's not. When there is a phone number, I don't know if it's my own mindset or what, but I feel like they're just a little bit more invested, you know, if they're willing to type in the phone number, it might mean they want a little bit more. But either way, when you have a phone number, I just call it and I just speak like I'm speaking to you now. You know, hey, this is Dave from Less Designer street. And the number one thing I have to say in the first sentence is I got your inquiry from wix. Because what that is telling them is you, you came to me, I'm responding to you, not I'm some random telemarketer. And that goes a long way because right away the conversation starts easily, simply warm, you know, most of the time. Oh, thanks. And yeah, and so I try to call those numbers, you know, that day as quickly as possible because that's when they need the help.

Yeah, I think it's interesting too. I find that I spoke with a few people in the marketplace where it sometimes sounds like we don't want to call, we don't want to sound like too telemarkety. If they want to talk to us, they'll certainly reach out or book a call. But if they're leaving their phone number, they're kind of inviting you to call them. Right, Mark, I guess walk us through your process. New brief hits your inbox. What happens in the world of tedcom?

Yeah, you know, Dave, really hit it on the head. We're looking, you know, the, those leads that leave their phone number, they're a lower hanging fruit because it's easier to establish a connection with them and to really discover their needs through a phone conversation at the same time, you know, set the expectations and manage the expectations moving forward while having a real conversation based around their needs where it's a little bit more difficult through email. I mean there's some value in emails because everything's documented. But people purchase from those who they know like and trust. So if you can reach out to them quickly and establish a connection with them and they understand that you're listening to them and you're providing solutions based off their need, you know, the sale should be the inevitability.

I think you said something that's important there too is the connection. Right. Is like that first conversation I hear a lot in the marketplace and this is like my favorite thing to hear is if I can get them on the phone or if I can make that first connection. I'm usually converting them a lot. It's just getting to that first point of making that first connection. Dave, I guess walk us through. I mean do you guys use any tools to increase your connection rate? From an email perspective, on top of the fact that, you know, you're obviously calling them when you have their phone number too.

Yep. So I spent, you know, days crafting an email that works. In the psychology, sales, communication ends that there's not too many words. There's just amount of Right. Of words. It feels warm, comfortable. It's, you know, it's a template, but it feels like it's coming for me genuinely. And I spent a long time getting that email. Right. Because what I do is I send that out to everybody as soon as I can. When I get an inquiry whether it is a phone number or no phone number, that email goes out anyway. Because some people just, they'd rather email back. And I want to respect the way everyone wants to communicate. And so, you know, someone answers the phone, oh, by the way, I sent you an email as well. Leave a voicemail, send you an email as well. And if there's no phone number, they get an email first thing first. And that starts the process because maybe, I don't know, 5, 10, 15% respond to that email, like, oh, great, I'm glad. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. And the other 85%, if I don't hear from them, send them another email in three, four days. You know, it's kind of like a

drip that you're saying. It's funny you mentioned that too. I have friends that, like, I'll call them, it'll go to voicemail, I'll hang up, and then they'll text me right back and say, what's up?

What do you want?

It's just like, yeah, there's preferences, I think, you know, especially younger generations, I feel like they prefer to communicate email, text over instead of answering a random phone call. That's kind of scary for some people.

Exactly. And when they don't have a voicemail, I'll just text them. You know, I'll just go, hey, you know, sorry to text, but my name's Dave. Got your inquiry. Your voicemail box is full. Just want to let you know, here's who this phone number is. All bases, without being redundant, without being too bothersome.

What are you guys marking in Chicago?

I guess.

What are you guys doing in terms of a drip? Is it like an email cadence or something that you guys have set up? How does that work for you?

Yeah, we believe that, you know, to think that we're able to get every client on the phone, even if they leave their phone number, is not going to be realistic. You know, they. A lot of people, they it's kind of like the scenario, you know, you call and then they text right back, what's up? Well, they don't know who's calling. They want to make, you know, guard themselves against the telemarketer. So following up with an email right after the call really helps let them know you know who's calling and invite them to schedule a call would be our next action. And then from there we put them. And yeah, it would be like a drip campaign, but we believe in having multiple touch points. So we want to make sure that we're following up with the clients and we're doing that at the right frequencies. Where we me in my background, prior to taking on this position, I worked as a sales trainer. So when salespeople approach the follow up, they either get on one side of the ditch or the other. They won't follow up at all, which they're ultimately losing sales. Or they follow up too much and they're just too aggressive. So you have to have the right cadence there. But follow up is key. If we were to look back over our client history and see the ones that we followed up with after a phone call, after that initial email, and reach back out a couple more times, we'll see that as a result, we're probably capturing 15 to 30% of the sales coming from a follow up.

Yeah, and just a bit of housekeeping too. As a reminder to everybody, if you could send all of your. We're getting a ton of chats into. If you could send all of your chats to the all panelists and attendees, this way everyone can see everything. I wanted to follow up on two of the points that Mark, you just made. First is when it comes to like following up with somebody, right. Like if whether you're giving them a phone call or an email, it's all designed to make that initial connection. But I feel like it's a formula to play with if you find that you're not making a healthy connection rate with your customers. It kind of goes back to the old adage, right. If nothing changes, nothing changes. How did you guys kind of land on the formula that you're using now? And do you guys see it changing in the future?

Yeah, we're about constant improvement. So from everything from a web design perspective, it's all about efficiency. So having multiple monitors, high speed Internet, it all plays to the bottom line. And the same thing when it comes to sales, you know, follow up is just basic 101. And I think that's one thing that we always have to Go back to is the fundamentals. When you start the football season, they start with the fundamentals and they build upon that. And we always have to coach our team and to, you know, use utilizing those best practices. And to keep things short, you know, we're constantly improving. And if you're not constant taking a real, if you're a freelancer and you're not taking a realistic look at your eff and your results and you're not making improvements from there or finding ways to continue to improve, then something's broken. You know, we have to really be honest with ourselves in this line of work and understand if this approach isn't netting the results that we're looking for, what can we do to fine tune that?

Yeah, and I'm glad you used a sports reference to remind me that there's no football or any sports happening right now.

Right.

Well, there's definitely. Other than that, there's no football. But I appreciate the reference.

We got mma. Thank God for that.

There's fights this weekend and there's a box. Other than that, there's no big sports happening. But I guess, Dave, how does it work for you guys? I guess, how did you land on what you're doing today?

I know what you mean. I think Mark obviously comes from a sales background. I come from a sales background and I think the average web designer, I don't want to speak for all of us, but a lot of us are more introverted. You know what I mean? It's like we do design work, we do it in front of a computer. And so not all of us are used to like picking up that phone and calling a stranger. And, you know, I'm hard pressed to get my designers to do it. I'm realizing, you know, it's, it takes, it takes practice, it takes experience, and it takes just like sucking up and going, okay, here we go. Because it's scary for people who haven't been in that sales role before. And I see any business, any size as really three parts. A lot of people think, oh, if you, if you're a mechanic, what you do is work on cars. Sure. But you forget that you need cars to work on. You need people to get you to be a mechanic. And so it's like, yeah, sure, we design websites, but a third of the battle is getting people to say yes and allowing us to design the website. Then does that, then the operations of designing website and then more admin, finance and everything in between. And so I think that. And then I think, you know, I saw some, some Chat questions about, you know, with drip campaign, how often do you send an email out? You know, when is it being bothersome? I just take a look at it like, hey, you know, we do this for a living, but we're all consumers in every other aspect. And so if you signed up for, who knows, you know, a cooking class online or something like that, and you said, I need, you know, I want help cooking, how often would would it be that you would want someone to get back to you until you actually, you set the tone? I want help if people are trying to get a hold of you, that seems fair in real life, you know what I mean? And we've all been on the other side of it. Comcast, Internet, whatever. My WI fi isn't working right, I want them to call me, you know, and so if it's wix, hey, I don't know how to get to the next step. I want someone to call me, I want someone to email. And you know, we're all lazy as consumers too and so we don't get back right away. And so I always put myself in the head of them and say, as long as I follow through comfortably, you know what I mean? It's like a dance, it's a nuance. It's every three days, then every week, then every other week. And you know, I don't find it pushy at all because they asked for it, they said I need help. We're just trying to get a hold of them to help them.

I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this because I was supposed to wait until the end to answer questions, but there's so many coming in, it's hard to ignore them. I want to point out you just mentioned like, yeah, there's, you know, about setting up a drip campaign. Mark, walk us through it. If you've never done this, if you've never set up any marketing automation or email marketing campaigns before, what does Dave mean by that? Setting up a drip.

So what does it mean? It's utilizing technology or automations to continue to reach out to a person, to keep yourself or your agency top of mind. You can add in the drip campaign, you know, not just marketing or sales related, it could be providing really great content, which is great too because you want to position yourself as the leader within that niche. So if you're focusing on SEO and you're creating really great SEO content, it makes sense to integrate that into your drip campaign as well so that you're answering those questions and you're positioning yourself ahead of the competition. Because we all have competition. Usually a lead will shop multiple points first. So we need to do everything that we can to put a, our best foot forward and to win that business.

Yeah. And I think the importance, like when we think about like a drip, the idea is it's not one drip.

Right.

Like when it inbox. Of course, there's the first initial inquiry. Dave, I think you said it best where WIX is kind of the common ground here. And it's, hey, I'm Dave, I'm following up from your inquiry on wix. I'd love to help you. Here's an email CTA to book a consultation. That's the first step, but certainly not the last one for you guys.

That's correct.

Where you go, Mark?

No, you go, okay.

Whether it's email, phone call, you know, if you can get their attention. I find removing as much uncertainty as possible is an amazing thought throughout everything you do when talking to them. So for example, in my initial email, I put a couple screenshots of really nice designs, you know, websites we've done before, to show in a nice way, here's what yours could look like. And just, you know, people don't buy uncertainty, they buy certainty and understanding and comfortability. And so we always try to focus on that through the calls, voicemails, emails, all that.

Awesome. And I want to give a shout out to Stephen, who has pointed a good question out too. There was a ton of questions about like phone numbers and stuff like that. We're going to answer everything at the end. Shout out to Stephen, though. If you're looking for someone's phone number, you have the Internet. It's not that difficult to find today, especially when you get somebody's business name, their, like their location, their website. The last piece isn't, isn't that difficult to find.

Or if the email bounces back and you have the business name that, that email that's associated with the WIX account, don't just stop there. You could do what he was saying and do a little investigative work because what happens is, let's say if it goes out to a couple other of the partners, you know, chances are statistically a couple of them are just gonna quit when that email bounces back. But if they do their discovery, they might be the only one to hit that email box and have that conversation with that client. And at the same time, the lead doesn't feel abandoned because nobody's reaching out to them. They don't understand what the problem is.

And I'm always looking out for wix as a platform because I think all of us love it. I mean able to gain free exposure and inquiries. So I want to get to people and say how can we help? So yeah, I think it's really important for all of us to remember we're not bothering anyone and that this is half of the job of an agency. Is this.

Yeah, I like to think of it too. Like, I mean I've done paid like customer acquisition campaigns for other like software as a service startups that I've worked for. If you're buying the traffic, imagine if you were buying traffic from like, you know, from the marketplace or doing any customer acquisition campaign. You're acquiring traffic from Google, doing PPC or doing Facebook ads. You're constantly working to optimize, right? Like you're making a healthy connection rate, a healthy conversion rate to justify the investment. With wix, it's amazing because it's all free. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't apply the same business tactics that you guys just described because again, it results in stronger connection rates and hopefully more business for your agency.

Other industries and we know like I revere these leads because they any other industry, they're not free. You pay $50 per, $100 per and it's the same success rate. Yeah, probably. It's like you don't get free leads in life. It's amazing.

Yeah, I agree, it is amazing. And you know, one thing that I think it's important to point out is when we're getting these leads, that's I look at the Facebook community a lot and usually when we start talking about this subject, that's where people will start making excuses. We really have to look at our excuses. If others are having success with the same amount of leads, we can have, we or me as a freelancer, I could have the same amount of success. It's just what am I doing differently? How can I improve that process?

If you listen to one of my quotes is always have the finger pointed in, not out. Right? Is what can you do differently? And again it goes back to maybe tweaking the recipe right in your communication, in your drip and your follow up. And it leads nicely into the next subject that I wanted to get into is when do you feel like you're reaching a point of diminishing returns? Right. We've talked about all the good side of it, right? Of setting follow up emails, phone calls, again in an effort to increase your connection rate. At what point do you guys get to the point where you're either rejecting leads or you're pulling back on your efforts because, again, you're crossing the threshold, you know, for diminishing returns, I guess. Dave, let's maybe start with you.

Yeah, I mean, every now and then I'll experiment. I'll call back months, you know, and just recently, I got a conversion from October of last year that said, oh, thanks. You know what I mean? It's like, I've been kind of waiting on this, but I think I should. I should start. And so the percentages are gonna go down, but to me, there's. I don't know. I mean, I just. I don't ever think it's dead, you know, unless they tell me, hey, I've been helped by someone else, or I figured it out on my own, they're

out saying, like, no, thanks, but, like, it's not like, you know, you haven't got in touch with them and you have to kind of keep the chase going. They just change my mind, or I

want to hear them tell me in an email or phone number, like, oh, I figured it out. I'm all set. I found someone else. And they almost always do it politely, but that's my goal. And, yeah, I think whether it was months ago last year, I don't see them as dead until I hear from them that they want to be dead and from, you know, a dead lead. And. And also, what was going to say? I don't know. I just. I think this long list. And we use Excel sheets, you know, I mean, off of the WIX platform, we'll take all the information put on Excel sheets. So I just scroll through this, you know, hundreds of rows and just say, you know, every now and then, experiment, can I call back? Who answers? And, yeah, we still get leads. You know, it's a smaller percentage, but there's waiting, which is, I guess, how

does it work in your role?

You know, I just seen a comment from Jan, and that was really good. I was actually something I was going to touch, touch on. So great job, Jan. So just, you always have to think on your feet. So if somebody says that they're good or they found somebody else, always be upbeat, you know, and say, you know, that's great, but I encourage you to bookmark my information, keep my information handy. So if you need anything in the future, I'm always here to assist you. And then list the services that they might need in the future that you specialize in. If you specialize in everything, be redundant because they don't know what you specialize in. And you. You want to position yourself to be their person that go to guy for their marketing needs or for their SEO needs or for the web design needs or their content writing needs, whatever that is. And that's one way to. And we've seen it happen time and time again where, you know, our employees will do this and then that lead will come out a year, maybe two years later and reach out and start that conversation and then, you know, we move into other services. So never see that as just a loss there. Look at it as, you know, an opportunity to sow a seed.

Yeah, for me, I think there's two buckets when it comes to like, I guess call it the end of the road. Right. There's the non responsive bucket and then there's the no bucket. The no bucket is what it sounds like. It's a no bucket, but the non responsive one. Again, I look at that as a more opportunistic bucket where I think, Dave, you said it best, like somebody's writing you back since October. There's like nine month delay there.

Right.

So I think we're going to see examples like that. I want to jump into the next subject just because we're already at the 20 minute mark and I want to leave time for questions. It seems our roundtable of three is now roundtables of 100 based off of the questions that we've got. Let's turn. I wanted to talk about this one because I think you both have experience with this and this is something that's especially relevant to everybody on the call now is how to generate more revenue from the leads that you're getting from the marketplace. Two weeks ago from today, our cmo Omer joined us and we talked about the explosion in demand with logo maker leads. I think this is kind of partly as a result of the coronavirus, where more new businesses are at the inception point. Creating a logo comes first developing a brand, then comes website, then comes digital marketing. So we're seeing that big influx right now at the top end of that user journey of people creating and wanting to create logos. And I guess how have you guys fared with that service specifically and how has it worked being able to A, convert those and B, maybe parlay them into other services. Mark, I guess let's maybe start with you.

Yeah, it's been going great for us. You know, we look at it as an opportunity, a starting point. Usually it's a starting point for a business. It could be somebody that's got a job and they're looking for that side hustle and they need to think what they can do to better provide for their family or the coronavirus put them in a hard place. Now it's time to get this thing going. And I think the first thing that we have to look at is not assuming that it's just a logo design and selling ourself, or worse yet, the client short, but looking at things from a big picture. So what we like to do with every person is have a conversation. We love to get them on the phone, have a conversation with them, discover their needs. If they have a website, we want to look at the website. You know, it's going to give us an idea of the branding that they like and where they're at and where there's opportunities for improvement. You know, if we're looking at the website and they're saying they need a logo and we're looking at the website and they're saying that they, you know, they have a lot of people are visiting the site, but nobody's staying on the site, well, that tells me there's areas of opportunity there and we can just tailor a pitch to them. So to kind of give you an idea of our success as an agency, we really look at the numbers. The data never lies. So when we're receiving these. These logo leads, we're seeing that over the last two weeks, 43.8% of those leads have been upsold into other services. And it's a wide range of services that are tailored to their needs, from web design, copywriting, producing a slogan or a tagline for them, video animation that's complementary to, you know, a logo design. And there's a lot more that I can't even think about. And then over the last two months, you know, we're looking at 50, what was it, 52% of those logo leads have converted or been upsold into other products and services. And 20% of those that started with a logo have moved into a website as well. So there's huge opportunity there.

I think it's important to note, too, right. I think a lot of times folks in the marketplace, someone says, hey, I need a classic website or I need help with ads or SEO or a logo, it doesn't mean that's all you need. Right. Remember, the user can only select one service type when they're going through. So when they're raising their hand, I think that's not them saying, this is all I need.

Right.

By your own admission, Mark, we're seeing other services. Dave, how is that for you? With some of the leads that you've Got as well. Are you guys seeing different patterns? Similar patterns, yeah.

Well, I'll first bow down to Mark with his data. I mean, I think all of us as designers, we crave that. We crave the knowledge of 50% conversion above and beyond what you already have. That's amazing stuff. And that's what we all should get to. We all should thrive to get to a point where we know the back end, where we just came from. Hindsight data. But yeah, I think with logos, with smaller tasks, one, I'm always thinking long term, to me, this is someone who needs a logo or needs, you know, little help on the, on the start of the website they built. But if I can get in touch with them and this is a real conversation. Okay, what? There's probably a good 30, 50% chance they're coming back later on for something else. If we treated them well and we're nice to them. Yeah, I get where if I know I'm gonna be on the phone with this person for five or ten minutes, I'm like, crap, let's just throw up wix. Let's do this right now. You know what I mean? If I'll play tech support for five minutes and get this done for you and then just give me a nice review and come back to me when you're ready. I mean, whatever it takes. I see it as. I mean, I don't look at the categories like they're set in stone. I almost try to ignore them. I'll take a look at them, make sure I understand. But from there, I want them to speak to me. Like you said, they only get to pick one. And they don't do this for a living either. So they don't even know sometimes what they're trying to tell us. So I really want to give them the stage via email or phone call and let me know exactly what they're needing, what they're hoping for. And I'm willing to pick up the small tasks, you know, for a couple hundred because I know that not only it's free promotion later on too. If you help this person and they give you a review later on, who knows, a year or two from now it's like, oh, yeah, my sister wants a website. So I'm like, this is all part of growth and you have to think long term for every lead. And no lead's too small. No lead, you know, doesn't matter. Sometimes there's really weird names and I call them up and they're a wonderful person. It's like, I never heard of that name, is this a typo? And they're just awesome.

And so you mentioned something that I thought was helpful too is the idea of like, you know, maybe it's just you need help with something very small and sometimes it feels like, well, maybe they should just go to wix's support. I think it's important to note again, we have over three dozen different entry points within the product where users can raise their hand and say, I need to hire a partner to do this. Do you know what one of the most successful entry points that we have in the product is? It's actually in the support article where after going through support, the user says, you know what, I can't do this myself. I actually do need a partner. So I know sometimes a partner says you need support, but sometimes they're coming to you from support. Right. So we're going to do our part to give them the tools they need to help themselves. But sometimes they want somebody to do

it for them or VIP support. Yeah, we give them the white glove treatment. They don't have to do it themselves. We do it for them.

Exactly. And yeah, props to Mark for the data king. You put my dog to sleep with your data. But it was very impressive. I'm just kidding. So I wanted to get in. I know we have what, 30 minute mark. So I want to at least leave 15 minutes. And I also want to show if you haven't seen the new marketplace overview tab where you can actually measure your performance. I think one of the hotly debated discussions in the community today is what's a healthy conversion rate? And also what's my conversion rate? Right. This is now in your dashboard. We're going to do a live session so I can show everyone that. But I wanted to first get into like I guess how you guys are generating qualified leads, how you're making connections. I think there's some obvious points of be available, be responsive. Right. Don't let your leads expire. I hope everybody in the marketplace knows this, but I guess walk me through your guys process. When somebody is reaching out, do you wait a certain period of time before you pick up the phone? Are you guys available all week and weekend? I guess. How does it work for you to balance the load and maintain a healthy performance rate?

Yeah, I mean, so it's cool. That's a good question because Mark and I are coming from different points too. You know, Mark is a very established company and I'm more of the scrappy startup type. And so for me it's a matter of you Know how I can do that day? You know what I mean? I don't have that policy in place. I just look for if it comes in, if I, if I'm available to call right now, let's do it. Because once again, if I'm inquiring on some platform, you know, I inquire on chipotle.com, hey, I couldn't order, right? If someone calls me right away, I'm like, oh, that's awesome.

The best case scenario that you're Already still on chipotle.com and your phone rings. What better scenario could you have?

And so it's the same with wix. It's like, I really do need help. And of course too, when you call that that quickly, they assume you work at wix too, which is an easy introduction as well. It's like, oh, you're wix. Well, it's crazy. Well, I'm a third party partnered with wix. But yeah, you know, we love wix. We help them out all the time. So I really try to get them as soon as they need the help because it's, that's how consumers work. You know, you, you need a belt when your pants don't fit. Not, not a week after your pants don't fit. So, so yeah, so I see it as timing is everything. And then when you can't get it that day or the next day, I try to get to it as soon as I can. I mean, these are very valuable, you know, worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. And if I'm just staring at them on an Excel sheet, I'm going, geez, what are you waiting for?

Right? My first job out of college, I was a sales development rep. I basically just cold called a physically printed piece of paper. Businesses sell applicant tracking system software to HR professionals. If I'm cold calling people like I cold called Nike once, I'm not cold calling Nike. Maybe first thing in the morning on Monday, I might wait for that one. But you better believe if Nike reaches out to me and says, hey, we'd like to talk, I'm not waiting for anything. I'm picking up the phone immediately because you raised your hands. I'm not proactively pinging you. I'm just responding to your inquiry. I think a good point is no real reason to delay. I think that was one of the questions we had. So we can cross that one off for now. Mark, I guess walk us through your process. I mean, you guys seem to be available all the time. How are you handling it? And I guess what's been your process, like to be available and obviously handle the responsiveness that you need to have in the marketplace.

Yeah, you know, it really comes down to how big is our want to. So, you know, there might be differences in size of organization, but it always comes down to, you know, the great thing about being a freelancer is you're in control of your schedule, but at the same time, you're in control. We're in control of how much money we make. And, you know, we as a organization, as a firm, we want to be growing as much as possible. We have ambitious goals. We want to make the world a beautiful place. We want to dominate. So we're available all the time. At the same time, you know, it goes back to data too. We really had to do some thinking as a leadership what our strategy is and is it still working the way it used to? We've been with WIX for years now, and for most of the time we were available across the world. So every globe, every service, everything was turned on. And what we've seen is if we're getting so we can look back, I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the amount of leads that you're getting in a month and then compare those with the last three months and you'll see your average leads.

Right.

So if I'm getting X amount of leads per day and X amount of those leads are coming from places that we know just don't convert well, for us, we're not the good fit for them. Maybe it could be our price point or maybe they would prefer to, you know, do business locally. We just had to eliminate those places. We had to eliminate, you know, the demographics that just weren't putting meat on the table. So we got highly focused on the areas that we're serving as well as the services that we're serving for us. Some of the services it just doesn't make sense to receive leads from in the week. WIX Marketplace because we're adding them as solutions down the road. Yeah, we really want to be focused on. Everything that we do is very intentional and we're always refining that process. So, you know, to go off of what Dave said, you know, getting them on the phone, that's important. Contacting them right away is very important. Not letting your leads expire. If you let your leads expire, that's horrible. You know, I don't know exactly how it works in terms of the rules.

I will come for you. If you let your leads expire, Chris

will come for you, and I Think you might, you know, have mastered a rear naked stroke.

Yeah.

So you let your leads expire, you're really hurting your business. So the best thing to do is turn. If you're not available for the weekend, turn it off for the weekend. If you're available for the weekend, don't look at it as a drag, look at it as opportunity. Because there's a lot of freelancers I'm willing to bet that they're just not willing to work the weekend. Where, if you're willing to put in the hustle, put in the hard work today, who, who's to say where you can grow to Tomorrow, next year, 10 years down the road?

I like what you said too, about, like, refining your profile. We get a lot of questions about that. Where it's like, hey, I'm getting leads from this geo, you guys. Everybody controls that, right? You can moderate what GEOs you're operating in, what main service types you're operating, what subservice types you're operating, language, everything. We're going to jump right into that too. But Dave, I want to hear from you about that as well. I know that you guys made some changes and, you know, I think, Mark, you've been maybe been in the marketplace since it was the arena and a really long time ago, Dave, relatively new, within the last, like, what, year and a half?

Yeah.

What's been your transition?

Yeah. So, I mean, of course, with that marketplace and, you know, your own profile settings, my first thought is like, ooh, don't touch anything. But, you know, after being able to talk with liaison from wix, Joe, you know, he said, he said, feel free to give it a try, you know, so we had worldwide before thinking, oh, you know, the more people in the world, you know, we have a 7 billion people net compared to, you know, US, 330 million net to catch leads. And he said, I don't know if it works like that. I mean, and I said, what happens if it does? He goes, well, what happens if you take it off and just do us for, you know, a week? You know, it takes experimenting. And as Mark keeps on pounding, it's like the Toyota way of like, precision, consistent improvement, continuous improvement. And so we took it off and just kept it to us, Canada, Mexico. And then we saw the same amount of leads, but just from, you know, the States and then Mexico, I realized my phone can't dial Mexico, but it can dial Canada. So I took off Mexico, and now I get the same amount of leads from US and Canada. And so, yeah, that was Extremely helpful. And then also dialing down the services you provide. You know, this new rollout you guys did with the profile and seeing how each, how you do with each service in terms of getting project is amazing because now I can take a look internally at myself and at our team and say, geez, you know, are we lying to ourselves if we have, you know, never have been able to help these people, you know, even with a small amount, you know, oh, like hundreds of thousands have asked about classic websites over the course of time. Only 30 to 100 have asked about something else. But if I have zero on there, am I, should I just take it off? Because obviously it's not working for wix, it's not working for me, it's not working for the lead. So yeah, I'm trying to constantly dial back and just dialing just the geo alone was extremely helpful because once again about this phone numbers, now we have more phone numbers in the US so it's much easier to call. And then, and then I think on the works marketplace, more people in France as designers get the French people. Yeah, I mean I'm not taking from other people who know the language better, who have the currency better and all that. So yeah, it's a win, win for everyone that way.

I think that's probably a good time to call up the dashboard that you're talking about too, because in both of your cases. Right, I think you both have. And that's why I wanted to ask you here today too, you have a similar journey line where it's just like when you're starting on the marketplace, it's commonsensical, it makes sense, cast a wide net, all geos, all services, give me more leads, I'll make, you know, I'll generate more business. But when it comes down to it, the number one, and I've echoed this on other webinars, so if you're just joining, this is the good part. The number one thing that matters in the marketplace is completion rate. The number of completed projects that you've got out of the number of leads that we've given you. So if you're saying you're going to take leads in the Ukraine and Russia and Japan, you should be able to service those leads. If you're taking services that you're not converting for, taking GEOs that you're not converting for, and you find yourself rejecting or just flat out not completing those leads, you're going to start to see a decline. And in your cases you recognize that the value wasn't there because it's costing your time to do that. Then you made the adjustments in your profile, but you're not seeing a shrinkage in the amount of leads that you're getting. You're now just getting more qualified leads that you want because I think those are the ones that you guys do well in. I think everybody's different, right? You might do better with logo, you might do better with marketing and promotion stuff. You might be better with E Commerce. It's just about finding your forte. And I think the dashboard now kind of gives you full clarity into what you're good at and what. Maybe you should focus on 30 word for it too.

And it's the, it's the metaphor of like we all can see too. You can sign up for multiple languages, but it's like, if I don't speak Italian or Spanish or French, why would I sign that up for myself? You know, so it's the same thing if I know South Africa is, you know, in a time zone that I'm basically sleeping when they're awake or, you know, wherever, Indonesia, why would I sign up for that? And so it made more sense pragmatically over a while. Thinking through it and then trying it out and seeing success and getting it down in scope.

I think, yeah, it's never a perfect science. And it goes back. Mark, you said this before like, or maybe it was you, Dave. It was, it was smart. Whoever said it was a smart thing to say like go for 50%, go for 30%. Right? Everybody's different. You might be a one person freelancer or a full service agency. Boutique digital marketing versus creative and brand management. Everybody's different, right? So everyone's gonna have different marks of where you would start to, you know, begin to tip and achieve success. I don't think it's about, oh, just hit this number in the marketplace and everything's great. It's just about being a little bit better than you were last month and better than you were in the month before that. Right. So I think the only person that you're really competing against is yourself, right? Is keep trying to work on improving what your completion rate is. And speaking of completion rate, we can see it here. This is our new overview. And I hope I'm sharing my screen. You guys can see it, right? Yeah. Okay, good. And hopefully the other few hundred people that are watching can see it too. This is the Marketplace home tab. If you haven't gone here, it's in your partner dashboard under the Marketplace. And the first thing that you're going to see is the overview. And you'll be able to see the project completion rate is what dictates. And this is one of my producers, fake accounts. So we're not actually showing anybody's real performance or going to dig into your actual leads. But, Mark, I guess you guys look at this often to be able to measure your performance. How do you guys use this page? And is it something that you guys are checking out daily to check your performance, say, in the last, like 30 days versus the last 90?

Yeah, we do check it. We love data. Data is our friend. So it gives us an honest opinion because they're. I mean, quite frankly, there's some metrics that we see a huge percentage of completions, and there's other metrics that I would just assume that we'd see a very high percentage. And we really have to. Those are things that we have to figure out. How can we get that up? You know what. What's the issue here? Because those are metrics that we really want to be over performing in.

Yeah, and this is a good point. Or a good time to also point out. I hear a lot of questions and I see a lot of tickets writing in, like, hey, I'm looking at the last 90 days. I just submitted a completed project, but it's not showing up on my report. Right. It's important to note this is a cohort. Analysis. Cohort, meaning it's. We're looking at a period of time in the last 90 days. In this hypothetical example, you got 21 leads, and out of those 21, you completed four. This is, I think, how everybody should think, I guess. Dave is. Or. Dave, is this how you process it as well as you're constantly looking back and looking in segments in time and maybe focusing on new ones, the most hot ones, I guess. How do you processize and prioritize?

I see it like there's two battles to be fought in a given day, and one is the battle of cash flow and actually, you know, helping people solve their problem, designing sites and, you know, sending out the invoice and actually making a living. Living. And then the other one is, you know, with the. With the knowledge we have now of seeing this new way to look at it is how do I up my rate? You know what I mean? Because knowing as you're saying, you know, this is how this is. This is the way that WIX sees our performance as designers. Okay, Now I'm looking at that like this is a new scorecard on my end. It's not just, you know, making a living on the, you know, end of complete projects, design websites, get paid now, it's okay. How can we do make sure we're doing well now on the leads now? Because like I was saying, I used to spend more time back, you know, four or six months looking at leads back then. Now knowing and acknowledging that, you know, WIX wants to see performance within the next 30, 60, 90 days, that tells me, okay, so I got to get these leads, you know, I mean, like double back on them.

First recency thing too. I don't want to make it sound like it's a big Brother, you thing like WIX is monitoring your performance. This is a tool to, I think, to help you manage your business better. Right. And I think recency becomes like an important thing. I think a lead that just hit your inbox right now is probably going to have a higher probability of converting whether it's tomorrow or three months from now than a lead that you got last year. Right. I think that's probably obvious, but I think this helps you kind of look at your performance over time. And I think it does really just boil down to your total completion rate. When we look at it and anybody asks like, hey, what's my completion rate? It's going to be looking at you in your dashboard. And again, there's no magic number here.

Right.

I think it's just about improving performance. And if you see like Mark, I think you said there's examples where you guys see strong conversion and then there's probably some services where, you know, you're looking at goose eggs. That's where you can begin to optimize. And I think again, you guys can control all of this in your settings.

Yeah. And I don't think of it as Big Brother. I'm like, I'm very glad to see it. I think most designers are to see real numbers on us that are just automated for us, you know, we don't have to do the hard work that Mark does in terms of grabbing data from third party, you know what I mean? Getting third party sources to, to wash out the data. It's here for us now. I love that. Yeah.

We are almost exactly at the time where I'm gonna stop sharing my screen and we're gonna go right back to looking at our faces and we'll turn it over to some Q and a. We have 14 minutes. So since we got so many, I'm gonna try to get as many of these as we can. And we will be recording this and sharing it, so we'll try to get as many answers Questions answered as we can. Here's a good one for Mark. Dave, you guys can ping pong this one from Celine. How do you convert, like lowball budgets in your call or email communications? I guess when you're getting somebody with seemingly low budgets, what do you guys do there? How are you handling those?

I forget about the budget. I could care less if the budget is in the form or the field and I don't want my agents to think about it because if we're focused on the budget, that's going to be, the whole conversation is going to be based around that. Let's have a conversation. Let's figure out where they're at. We'll find a way to organically find where, put our finger on our pulse in terms of number so that we can offer a creative solution. So if we're hearing that it's a $2,000 project and we know that the client's got a $310 budget at that point, after the conversation, we've already started developing a relationship with them. Conn them proved our value to them. So now it's about coming up with a creative way to work within that budget and come up with a plan for the future.

Nath, anything to add?

I love that. I, a while back came up with a kind of a templated scope of work to give people because, you know, at the end of the day when you're building a website, they don't know what goes into it. And so it's a long bullet point, maybe 15 points. Everything from building up the header to the homepage to the footer, you know, SEO mobile app optimization, the functionality, implementing a WIX blog, WIX store. So that way I can show them this is what $700 is giving you. Not just, you know, I mean, so they know there's real line items here. And so I utilize that and I leverage that because I agree completely with Mark. There's, there's no such thing as a budget too low. The whole point of WIX is you can technically do this yourself. So I tell people all the time, hey, I know if you spent 40 hours of your time, you could build this thing out. You know what I mean? You're resourceful enough and that's what WIX is for. But I also know you don't want to do that. So how can we come to that balance? You know, if that's all you have, 300 bucks, let us give you, you know, three, four or five hours of our time and put you in the best foot forward. And so I really do try to say, like, yeah, exactly as Mark said, you know, there's. There's no budget too small, as I said earlier. I mean, I'll give someone 10 minutes for free. Just how can we help? Because, you know, they're always going to potentially come back or they're going to bring someone later on. So if we can be the nice, comforting, guiding source to them, great. Come back around when you're ready with a bigger budget.

There's a few other ones that are kind of connected to this one. Gabriel asked for Mark and for Dave. You know how you deal with leads that kind of don't fit the minimum. I think you guys just answered that well. So thank you, Gabriel, for sending this one in. Tony, you also asked about what regions you pick. I think we covered that one. About how you can kind of select regions and look at your performance. To quote Mark here, the data doesn't lie. Here's a good one from Marissa. Do you ever discuss pricing in the first email with prospective clients? I think there's a lot of questions about pricing and budgets. We just kind of hit on one. But do you guys ever discuss costs in, like, your first email or when is it okay to open that door?

You know, I mean, a lot to

say about this one, Mark. You kick it off.

Well, yeah, it's a dance, right, Mark?

Really? So it's almost comes down to trade secret. So this is what I would say, if you're. The one thing that I always wonder about is when a client that we talked to got all these different budgets and they never had a real conversation. So where are you getting that number from? Are you just pitching off the hip? Because that's not a good experience. So we want to. You know, what you're hearing from me is sales, sales, sales, sales, sales, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. But the other thing that has to be balanced with that is managing expectations. And that's a big part of you talking with a client is to make sure that they're a good fit for us. Because if they come off as abusive, then it's probably not a good fit, you know, because we want to be selective with the clients that we're taking on for the sake of our employees. Or if you're a freelancer, you don't want to. You don't want to be 28 years old and all your hair go gray. You know, at the same time, we want to be able to manage those expectations from the front to back. And that comes with that conversation. So would we discuss pricing in the first email. It really depends on the server. Probably not. It would depend on the services. I would say do this. Do an AB test for one week, discuss pricing in the first email. The second week, change it up and see which one performs better for you. And, you know, what works better for your niche, your demographic and for your agency.

If you know anything about wix, we love a good a B test. That's. I couldn't have said it better. Dave, I'm actually going to skip you on this one because I want to take the next one to you so we can get through as many as possible. This is a good one, too, from the WIX webmaster. Do you have a different process for those clients who see your portfolio in the marketplace and contact you directly? So we've talked a lot about the indirect matches. Do you do anything different when someone just reaches out to Dave directly?

I'm just more excited. I mean, not really a different workflow by any means, but just, I know that they're coming to me and so everything else, most conversations still the same. Yep. Very cool.

I think it's also, it's. If you look at, in terms of like the numbers, again, I'm speaking holistically in the marketplace, I'm sure some people get more direct inquiries than indirect inquiries, but it is like heavily, heavily weighted towards the indirect route. So I would say don't reinvent the wheel if it's only going to be like, you know, one or two out of 100. Right.

I'm not going to structure for that. I mean, if it comes, great, give them a call too. You know what I mean? And no, that's gonna be probably an easier conversation. So.

No, no, I'm gonna jumble. My producers are gonna be mad. I'm gonna jumble two questions together from Aaron and from. Yeah, from. I'll start with Aaron's at least. But there's two of them that are very similar. What email tools are you. There it is. Okay. What email tools are you guys using to talk to your customers and maybe do any of those drips? And then also, are you guys using any of wix's tools, like the Invoice for Quote feature when it's time to actually, you know, open the door to what the cost is gonna be?

So for us, one thing that I found free is like a Google Chrome tool that you can, when you send out emails, find out when they read them, which is pretty cool. And so, you know, so.

And you've called me big brother before, right?

We know when you're Reading our emails, Chris.

So I think a lot of people are using that today. That's great.

Sometimes flip it off sometimes, but it just helps, you know, if I'm sending out a bunch of emails, if someone reads it and I have their phone number or you know what I mean, I can send them one, you know, an hour later being like, at least I know that they opened it, there's a better chance. So I do that. And then also I look every now and then for good CRM systems automations. You know, I used to invoice through. I used to do it by hands like I, you know, originally just PDF emailed and then I started doing DocuSign and then I moved over to a program called Dubsado. And so I'm always willing to maybe every couple months check in of, you know, what could be more automated, what can be delegated better. Because Mark, Mark's time is valuable, my time is almost as valuable. And so we want to look for what can we do best and then what we. What can we automate elsewhere. So yeah, so I look for programs every now and then it's, it still doesn't, it doesn't fix anything though, you know, I mean it's still about the special sauce and the nuances of communication. But yeah, I'll look for any way to streamline what I do every now and then.

Very cool. And it also just a quick WIX update too, right? So if you're looking at like the question was about like wixes like Quote and Invoice tool, if you're using like the workflow and some of the tools that we have in a send to me, like I think the real advantage, especially if you're a newer agency and you don't have a ton of infrastructure in the world of like a customer relationship management tool or a client billing tool, we have those tools. You can use WIX to manage your leads, you can use shoutouts to set up an email campaign, you can rate, you can create automations to send emails to them automatically. And we do have the ability to actually build them as well using wix Payments, which now also has the ability to do subscriptions. This is something Omer mentioned two weeks ago on the AMA session that we did with. I think it was the same community, you can bill customers on a recurring basis. So if you guys operate on a retainer, you can use WIX Payments to set up like a monthly installment, whether it's for recurring SEO, for site maintenance. So we have those tools work. Use what works for you. But Wix has those as well.

I saw for the email campaign to be able to, you know, we purchased a send and then was able to just drop in, you know, these contacts or, and just send out these email. And we're selling that to others too, you know, I mean to other businesses. So it's nice to use it ourselves as often as possible.

Yeah, and I'm trying to get through as many as possible. If your questions aren't answered, my personal email is Christopher regular spellingix.com if you have questions about the marketplace and they're not answered, we're just trying to get through as much as possible. I'll turn to Monique who had a good one about. I'm hearing about designers, current rates in the marketplace and then the number of leads that are converted versus submitted projects. It has been said that in the marketplace you can remove designers if they don't reach 1%. And you know, is this true? What's a good conversion rate? Was another question. What happens is again, it's a performance based system, so it's not about removing you if you don't meet some threshold. But if over time we're seeing that you're not completing projects that other partners are completing, the algorithm will rebalance the traffic where if you're completing projects, you're getting more leads. If you're not completing projects, you'll get less leads over time. If you're completing zero projects, there's a chance that you can get to a point where you're not getting any leads for either that service type or for that geo. If anyone has any questions about like how the marketplace works, we want to unpack any of that, contact me directly. Christopheratwicks.com I will have a personal consultation with you.

You're gonna be a busy man. I see a lot of people contacted you.

I hate getting my email out.

I don't mind.

I like talking about stuff like this. Here's another question and I think we might have covered this. How do you guys deal with leads from other countries? You said you received a lead from Spain and there's a big time difference. And you guys work in other time zones, uk, Australia. Okay.

I used to try not to anymore. Try to stick to U.S. and Canada. But you know, it wouldn't stop me if someone made a mistake on their inquiry sheet. I'd still do what I could.

Right. They're from America and they're in Russia. You know, on work or whatever. Yeah, it can be a little more challenging but you know, we're familiar with it

and that's where an Excel sheet or some type of just simple, all in one place visual helps because you can write in their time zone as a little column yourself and just check out the time zones of all these places. I can't express enough that I need to take these inquiries out from the card that we get and just put them in an Excel sheet so I can see them all line by line. It's just easier for me to be able to see variables like that and take note of them.

I would say if somebody's contacting, if the Lee comes in from another country, from Spain and that example, and it comes in at 10:59am so right now, Central Standard Time, then we're gonna call them at that time they're awake, they need. And you know, there might be a situation where they're like, ah, you know, don't you know, it's, it's one o' clock in the morning here. I apologize. You know, there's an easy professional way to handle that and then get off the phone if it, if it's not a good time. But I wouldn't let that deter you from reaching out when they need you. Who knows, maybe they might be working a different shift and this is their prime time.

Speaking of that too, there was questions about like phone numbers. I feel like we get this on every question, like why do we, why do some leads not have phone numbers? I think there's two points here. One, we address the fact that if you're looking for a phone number, it isn't that difficult to get one. Some users don't provide their phone numbers. I think wix, one of the things we care most about is creating the best user experience, not only for you guys, but for our users as well. So we don't want to force them to put a phone number in. And while we have already tested this again, WIX loves a good A B test. We A B tested it. Not only did we see a 60% reduction in all briefs where you're getting more than less than half the leads that you were getting before, but we didn't see a high correlation, if any correlation between leads with phone numbers versus without them. The completion rates across multiple services are nearly identical. It really, it doesn't come down to like the quality of the brief or like what Mark said, the budget that they wrote in. Because most people, they don't know what their budget should be. I mean they're hiring a professional. So from that standard, I don't think they know what the right budget should be. So it really isn't about the inputs of what's on the brief and what it says there. I think it's really about your activity, your actions, your approach, your methodology and how you communicate. Again, I would look to point the finger inward.

Yeah, you can't play a victim because we're all consumers too. So it's like, why are you allowing them to not put your phone number in? Well, when you need help on something and there's an optional phone number thing, do you always put your phone number in? No, I don't. We're done. That's the answer. And so when WIX is sending us people for free that need help, if they don't have their phone number in, I don't judge them, I don't judge myself, I don't judge wix. I go, okay, how do we get a hold of them, period? You know, so, yeah, I think, I mean, WIX has just set up a beautiful situation for us and they're always going to improve. In the meantime, you know, we can just continue to grow on our own and work on our own processes.

Well said. We're over time here, so I'm gonna wrap up. I want to first thank everyone for joining. I hope this was helpful. We look to do a lot more of these. If you have an account manager, reach out to them directly. If you want to have a chat about this and if you have questions that weren't answered here today, contact me directly. I'm not hard to find then Also, I wanted to thank you guys. Mark, Dave, this was a pleasure. I really appreciate you carving out some time to top it up with us next time. Hopefully we can do it in person with a beer or something once we're able to physically be in the same room with each other. Right, Right.

That sounds good.

Thank you again, everyone. We'll sign off on our end. Have a great day and a great rest of your week and we will talk to you again soon.

Thanks.

Take care, everyone.