Local Marketing - When the results are not happening, what do you do?

It's not uncommon as a business owner that I get the call when somebody says, hey, what I've been doing, I'm not sure it's working because we really can't figure out where the traffic came. Is it really working? Am I really getting what I paid for? Well, today I want to show you an example of somebody I was speaking to on the phone. And I just wanted to show you how we could connect the dots. And if you're not doing this, it may be something you want to discuss with whoever you have your marketing with, because there is a way to tie it all together. So when you say, hey, the phone rings, where did it come from? How did it get to you? Or if somebody walks in your, your place of business, you have a brick and mortar. How do you know for sure your marketing is working? So let's get into it. So what I did is I was talking to a gentleman on the phone and he owns a company that cleans solar panels. And so we did is I said, hey, let me take a look at your website. So the first thing I did is, and by the way, we're doing this at, in August, in the middle of August. And it's important to understand that AI is coming for your business. So when I say that, what I mean by it is AI is now starting to be a search engine. Not starting to be. It is a search engine, but it doesn't read your website the same way Google does. So what happens is if it can't read your site, guess what? It won't show up. And I'll show you what I'm talking about. It won't show up properly. And even though you might have been around 10, 15, 20 years, but if it's not ready for that type of search, you will fall off and not be even listed. And so what will happen is people think if you're not there, I don't even know you exist. Especially if they've not heard of your business before. So let's talk about this. So the first thing I did is I looked at his website and said, okay, what is it? Yeah, solar panel cleaning, golf ball production, pigeon proofing, Those are probably three things. Where we live in the Coachella Valley, a lot of golf course homes. So, you know, you get a loose or, you know, stray slice or hook, probably a slice, and it hits your solar panels, it could cause some damage. And those things are not cheap. They have this pigeon proofing. They love making homes under those because it's great shelter, right? It's knocking down the heat keeping, keeping their, their young warm and it's not a bad place to hang out. Well, what I wanted to do is say, well let me ask a question. They do solar, commercial solar and they do golf ball production and then schedule visit. So that's, what is it? Why do I need cleaning? How often should I clean my panels? How long does it cleaning take? So there are some questions on there. I'm just going to pull one of these up and I'm going to see. Now this is a really, really short answer. It's not enough to say, oh they're an authority in this. It's very, very short. So I would say in this situation he's probably not getting benefit of having that answer. In other words, it's not something that if I went out on the Internet that I'm going to be able to be search worthy for that. Let me give you an example. So if I go to this and say, how often should I clean my solar panels? Okay, so that's one of those. So there's a very short question.

Right here is how often should I clean my solar panels? Well, you can see that what happens is there's article up here. This is what's called the AI overview. Remember I said AI is coming for your business. So what it does, it goes out and looks at all the articles and it puts together a result. And you can see that's a whole lot more than just that two lines that he had on his website. But it says at least once or twice a year you should have this done potentially every three to six months. Conversely, and then it talks about location, panel angle, local climate. In other words, you can really give a lot more information that then AI says hey, this is really the source. Well, here's the cool thing. These people on Quora and also Squeegee Squad and Energy Saving Trust, this is pretty new. Somebody here has figured this out. But Squeegee Squad, they were back in 2019. The core was 2019. This is the coolest thing about content is if you write good content, not one or two lines, but in depth and really create a good piece of content, it can work for you over and over and over. It's like having a great employee that no matter what, they show up on time, they take care of the customers, they do the work, they deliver good product and that's the way it should work is good content. Now the other thing I want to, I want to be fair because I'm gonna look down and say, okay, well AI didn't See them on there. But what about the other, the Google search results? No, Reddit. Solar Energy world. Remember, the name of the company is Suntech. Okay, Suntech Solar Panels. All right, so we're, we're here. Let's see, there's some videos here. Solar panel cleaning. Nope, nope, nope. So he's not on the first page. So my point is, is he doesn't have enough content. In fact, he has no content on his website. Beyond these short answers, if you have something like this, I would very much have you do this. Look at those 10 questions. In your industry, don't have to be solar, but look it up in your industry. And I'm going to show you. What I did is I went to ChatGPT and it says, hey, you're a genius marketer. You're a genius at marketing with 25 years experience marketing. And put in the name of the name of the company. In my situation, I said solar panel cleaning. I said, please give me the top 10 to 15 most commonly asked questions that solar panels would customers say, or excuse me, ask questions that solar panel customers say, residential customers ask, that would you would recommend. And then it listed those. It gave me 15 questions. Well, now what I would do is in your situation, I would go back, Let me just change this real quick. I would go back and I would say, well, what I want to do is I want to share the screen real quick.

So here's my questions so you can see, you know, here's my prompt that I basically put in there. And, and then here's my answers. How often should I clean my solar panel? This is number one. That's the first question people ask. Now, ironically, I'm getting solar installed at my house this week. So that's a question. How often should I clean my solar panels? In this case, if I don't have that in depth answer, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to Google and I'm going to say, okay, how often should I have it done? I'm going to, I'm going to look at this article and I'm going to say, what are the key components of that? And I'm going to rewrite another article, only it's from my company, because there's a chance then that I'm going to optimize the search to find me and put me at the top of Google and maybe even give me an AI answer that's really powerful. So that's what I would do is I'd say I'd take those 10 to 15 questions that we had there. And, and I would go back and say, okay, here's my 15 questions. It doesn't matter what industry. It could be H vac, it could be gardening, it could be window cleaning, whatever. And then it talks about why these questions are for AI Search conversational phrasing. People type into AI tools like they talk, not just keywords. See, for years and years and years we've been optimizing a website for keywords. We've been optimizing for Google. Now we have to optimize for AI. It doesn't just give you front page stuff because you say solar panel cleaning. It's the question is, hey, how often should I have my solar panel clean? Solar panels clean. That's more conversational, right? The intent, how often should I have my solar panels cleaned in Palm Springs? So by adding that, it's called it location based modifier. That is key for you to show up. Otherwise you don't want somebody calling you. If you're in Palm Springs from Manhattan, New York and say, hey, do you do cleaning on solar panels? That's not your clients. But by putting that in the title, it actually is what they call a location based modifier key and then authority signals. If you dominate these FAQs with strong, well structured content. These are blogs, videos, schema markups and I'll talk about that later, maybe in another, another one GEO optimized answers. AI engines are more likely to cite your business in generated responses. Now here's a tip. FA FAQ Style content clusters. One Master Solar panel cleaning FAQ guide. Now what does that mean? That means if I take all of those, those questions and I create a, it could be one page, right? The most commonly asked questions. Now it's not an faq, by the way. It's like you're creating a downloadable guide with all these answers. So now they're not hunting all over the Internet. They may have come to your website for, you know, how often should I clean my panels? But then you have 14 more questions that you answer for them. What do you think that does for your customer? Well, it, it elicits this feeling of hey, they know what they're doing, they're an authority. This is not, I'm not their first rodeo. And also now you're more trustworthy because you have a lot of this information in there. So this is about content. Now when I make this content, let's go back to, as an example, if I go back to this website and let's say I had an article out there. That was how often should I my solar panels clean. Someone clicks on, brings them back to my website. They read that and I noticed through using Google Analytics that says hey, that website article or that article on my website is getting a lot of traffic. It's getting about 150 to 200 specific views. It could be more than that, but let's say it's getting the most out of any traffic on your website. This is what I call a clue on that page and this is where we kind of connect the dots on that page. I would recommend putting some offer on there, some call to action. You know, schedule your cleaning and get a 25% discount or get a 10% discount or first, you know, new customer incentive. In other words, what that does is now since they're there, do you think that customer is interested in having their solar panels cleaned? Absolutely. They're not there just to spend, just to waste time. They're there because they have intent. Their intent was hey, how often should I have my solar panels clean? Right? And when they find that answer and then they happen to find something that offers them some value, if they take action, then there's a chance they can call you. But you as the business owner, here's the cool part in my opinion. Now when somebody calls you, you can say how did you find out about me? Well, I saw your article and I saw that you have 10, 10% off for first time cleaner special and I wanted to call you, I saw it on your article. Oh, you can connect the dot. You say oh, my content is working. That particular marketing strategy is working. That's really important. So that's closing the loop on one thing that's on getting you found on Google and artificial intelligence. Real important. It's changing the next one I want to talk about. And this is, this is interesting. So in this, this situation I looked and said okay, solar panel cleaning company near me. And so it's finding solar panel companies near me. Now I'm going to discount the, the top and because it's a paid but the first one is called top tier solar panel cleaning. And in this situation I look and say what's the first thing it talks about how many five star reviews it has? 120. And then there's a little example. It tells me when it's open, opens at 7, it open and it closes 7pm and it gives me a phone number, real easy to get a hold of. But then it takes one of those reviews and, and tells me about it. Now I can look at more of their reviews, but it's 120. I go to the next one and I see the company called Suntech Solar Panel Cleaning. They only have two in the minds of the people shopping. If somebody has two reviews and another company has 120 reviews, which one are you more likely to feel comfortable moving forward with? Of course, the higher number. So in this situation, since we're talking about Suntech panel solar panel cleaning, I would then go back and say owner of that business. Do you have a database of past customers? And they say yeah, we've got thousands. Great. That is your best source to improve your Google reviews. And I would then send out weekly review or weekly emails with ideas of keeping their solar panel better, you know, solar panel clean and more efficient. All kinds of things in that particular genre that they would be interested in. And then I'd also ask, hey, would you mind? A lot of our customers come from Google and one of the most compelling factors is when they see how many 5 star reviews we have. If you could do me a favor, click the link below which will take you directly to Google and then talk about things. The last time we were out cleaning that you liked, maybe we were there on time, we were efficient, we cleaned up after we worked. And then also you saw an improvement in the efficiency and we answered your phone call on the first ring. Things like that. That will help those people who make a decision that will call us. We'd really appreciate it. Have a great day. And I would do that every week because here's the thing, not 100% of your email database, even on our best day, we didn't get a hundred percent opening. We have one customer is getting almost 60% on a consistent basis open rate. But typically you're somewhere between 40 and 45%. Yes, I know some of you think, well, email, the marketing is dead. It's not. It's a place where you can I, you can I have a private conversation and I don't have to worry about Google's permission. I don't have to worry about Meta's or Facebook's permission. I can go right to you and make an offer and it's not broadcast to anybody, it's to my private database. So use that in that way. Now what that'll do is it'll prop up your Google reviews and it'll prop up your Google listing to, to say hey, he's number two on there. But the discount is he doesn't have quite enough of those Google reviews that I'm going to pass and I'm going to go to number, let's say I'm going to go to the next one that has glossy window and solar cleaning and it has 22. He has 10 times more five star reviews than I do. I want to make sure that I go with somebody that has a lot of reviews. So these are the two things that, as we talk about this, that could help you what I'm saying kind of close the loop because the last thing you want to do is somebody says hey, we got all this stuff and you know, the phone is ringing but nobody really. When I say how'd you find me? Oh, you know, I just looked through the yellow pages. It's not true, but I thought I would just call. Well, we want to make sure that you can trace it back to whoever you have your, your marketing done with. Whether it's you, somebody in house or somebody like myself at Swing Point Media doing your marketing, we want to make sure to close that loop. The best thing to do is create that content that your ideal customers are looking for. They all have questions. No matter what industry in trust me, I know you're thinking, hey, my business is different. Every customer or every business out there, if you ask your customers, hey, what, what questions need to be answered before you say yes, that's the content you need to make. And then you use your Google Analytics to say which ones are getting the high traffic. The ones that are getting high traffic. Make sure you have some kind of call to action on there. There's an offer that says, you know, if you do, if you take action now, there's a, there's a savings for you and it could be a buy one, get one free. Whatever it is depends on your business that's closing that loop. And then the second piece is Google is still the king right now, but AI is coming for it. More and more of us and I want to point this out real quick. More and more of us when we go to these reviews and we see this little, this little thing, right? Well let's. Oops. And we see this right here and it answers our questions. We're moving on. Google calls that zero click. I didn't click on a website. I got my answer. I moved on. Like this one is, does cleaning solar panels really improve efficiency? Yes, cleaning solar panels can improve your efficiency. And some of this is up to 15%. Again, look at when this was made, March of 2022. This article's been working its tail off for over three years, sending new business to MIT News about that particular article. If I were in that business. What I would do is I'd say, let me go to MIT News because they're obviously not solar panel cleaning company, but because they get so much of the traffic, guess what? I want to know if I can put an ad on that particular article. That's a whole nother story. All right? So if you have questions, please put them in the comments and I hope to see you next time.