Episode 231: Brand Awareness in a Cluttered Online Space with Joe Fier and Matt Wolfe

In today's episode, we're going to talk about making your business seen everywhere on this cluttered online space that we live in and turn a profit as a result. You know who's going to teach us that? Joe Fiere and Matt Wolfay. You'll hear about that and so much more in today's episode of the Profit first podcast. Oh, wrong button.

What? Oh, did you do the X?

There it is. There it is. We're back. I did the X. Oh, now I feel.

See you later.

You know what? Should I do it again? No, I won't. We're all one takes here. One take, Kels. Now, I know.

Mike.

I'm Mike. Oh, I like. You're getting a little jacked up there. I'm Mike McCallitz, the author of many books and a person on a mission here. I am here to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. So I've done that hopefully in part with my books first and Clockwork, hopefully with our podcast. And yeah, we have a little fun doing it.

One take.

Kelsey, I'm joined studio by you.

I'm Kelsey Ayers, your co host and you can find us on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play, Spotify, profitfirstpodcast.com or YouTube. We have a new YouTube channel. It's not a new channel. It's Mike Michalowicz. He's been around for a while.

Yeah, but we're new content.

Yes. All of our podcasts are now going up there. So be sure to subscribe and leave us comments, reviews. We super appreciate it.

You got. You got a point I make there, Jay Bone.

No, yeah, just check it out on YouTube.

Yeah. J. Bone has taken over the responsibility for doing all of our video production, social media stuff. I actually got some nice feedback. I didn't tell you social media. A person that watches this on social media is like, wow, you really had a nice uptick in how you're communicating. So shout out to the Bone himself.

Kelsey, you have a really good on air voice.

No, you do.

Oh, thank you.

Oh, for God's sake. Did you guys like pass a note? Like we're going to support each other.

When we make fun of Ariel's note to him.

Oh, and it was in the card.

What was this?

So when he first started, we wrote him a card welcoming him to the family and our co worker Ariel wrote in there, welcome to the family. Just so you know, I think you have a really great voice.

And that was weird because it was only from me talking to you on the phone. I don't know how she even heard my voice.

Yeah.

It was a great compliment, though.

Oh, yeah. See, so here's a little trick we're playing on her. So, you know, I have. I wear these vests all the time. Do you see the podcast, the poster behind Kelsey's desk? It says, like, it's a huge poster that one of our listeners on the show sent, and it says, live your best life, and it's a picture of me wearing a vest. So Ariel just hates my vest. Like, literally her first day of employment, I think, here.

Yes.

She came on board, and we're like, hey, welcome. She's like, your vest isn't working. Like, that was basically a comment to me. Right? And it's so funny, the inappropriate things he says. So I wear a vest regularly for him. That's my costume for speaking. Right. So I wear it every so often. And she's always like, every other day.

Every so often.

Every other day. You think it's that frequent?

No, it's only when you're speaking.

Right. But she picks on my. My vest all the time. Well, one time I wore one vest, and she's like, oh, I like that. She goes, is that a vest? I said, no, it's a waistcoat, which is the British term for vest.

Right?

So I'm like, it's a waistcoat.

She's like, oh, I didn't realize there was a different scene. See, I like waistcoats.

She's like, I like waistcoats. I just hate vests. I'm like, I know. So anytime. I'm gonna just keep wearing different vests. Anytime she compliments, I'm like, it's a waistcoat again. And then I did the toilet paper trick this other time in Kelsey. You haven't done it yet.

I know. Because it's too obvious if I. Yes, it is.

No, it's not. For Arielle. So Ariel's office is right next to the entrance to the restroom area. So I said, callous, next time you come out, tuck toilet paper, like, in the back of your shorts or into your. Your shoe or something like that, and walk around, and she's like, I don't know if I can. So I go in there, I take. I stick it in my shoe, and I leave it on the roll. I walk out. It must have been like. Like 100 sheets long. And she. I walk by her. I don't say a word. And she's like. She goes. She said, yeah, holding her laughter. And I go, what? I go, what? She goes, your foot, Your foot. Right? So then I make a Scene. If I look up in the air, I spin around. It's all over. She goes, you have toilet paper everywhere. I'm like, I do. She's like, you didn't know? I'm like, I had no clue.

That was the second time. The first time when you had it, like, wrapped around your toe in your shoe.

Yeah.

And, like, you walked by her multiple times. Like, you had it on for the longest time. And finally. And she was like, you have toilet paper there? And she was like, wait, are you being serious right now? And of course, you're like, the best liar ever. And you're like, yeah, I can't believe that. And then, like, you go to me and you're like, kelsey, did you know about this? And I was like, yeah.

Did you play it off that well?

Yes. Yeah. So then Ariel, she wants. She's telling everyone in the office. You wouldn't believe it. Mike was walking around all day with toilet paper.

Did you, like, giggle to herself later on?

Oh, she's so entertaining. All right, so we just killed in, like, 10 minutes there. We talked about. You can find some itunes and stitcher. We also were asking for your review. So if you are a fan of the show or not, give us your honest review. You can get a free book either way. Give us your candid review. Send a screenshot to Kelsey and. And give us your mailing address. We'll send you a free book. Also, make sure you visit Mike Motorbike. That's my website, because Mike McCalla, it's too hard to spell. And there's a free. Another free book waiting for you there right on the homepage. Kelsey, real quick, before we get our guests on, I want you to pick a number between 1 and 100. This is our icebreakers. You know, people love our icebreaker questions because they're thinking about it in their own head.

Yeah.

So you can kind of answer along. And we haven't done it for, like, month or two. So give me a number. 23. Who was the worst grade school teacher you ever had? So I'll tell you mine. I don't think she was the worst. She was the hardest on us. Mrs. Freeman, third or fourth grade, just tough. And here's what she did. I was one day in class, and I wasn't really paying attention to class, and I was drawing this picture on a piece of paper, and it was my favorite picture I ever drew. And she goes, Mike. And I look up, and she goes, what are you doing? I'm like. She walks over, she looks the picture, and she Rips it up in front of me. And I was like, my favorite picture ever. That was her. That was hurtful, but she was in the right. Like, she was in the right, but it was hurtful. As a child, I never liked her again until now. Now I like her again because I was the wrongdoer, but still.

Yeah.

Who's yours?

Her name was Mrs. J. I don't actually know what her real name was.

Mrs. Freeman. She went down to your school. She had to take a new name.

She was the gym teacher, and she was just really grouchy and mean, and she smelled horrific. I don't. I've never smelt anything like it.

Really?

Yeah. But, like, if it was around the time when girls started to get their period, so they'd be like, oh, I can't do gym. And she'd be like, no, you need to do gym. Gyms are good for your cramps.

She would say that. Yeah, gym is good for your cramps.

Yeah. And then, like, shout it. So it was, like, really obvious.

All right. No.

Yes. It was the worst.

In front of, like, all the children.

In the girls side. The boys weren't there, but yeah.

Okay. That's worst teach ever. Yeah, it's the worst teacher ever.

Yeah.

She's like, ever since I started getting cramps, I never showered again.

I think that's what happened.

That's what I'm telling you.

Apparently, she thinks it's good for you.

Mrs. J. Was her name.

I want to say it was Mrs. Johnson.

Johnson.

But everybody just called her Mrs. J.

I wonder if she's still there.

No.

J Bone. You got it. You want to answer, you got it.

I mean, I. I don't really think anyone stands out as. As bad I do have. There was one teacher I had in high school. His name was Mr. Capozzi. He was hilarious. It was history class. We used to watch history movies all the time. So, like, Forrest Gump. That was, like, their number one movie we watch. And then every time people would get loud during the movie and he wanted to calm down, he'd be like, people, people, people, people. Yeah, that was his line. People, come on. Come on, people.

Connect to that number that we picked.

That's 23.

Oh, that was your way of picking out the icebreaker question. Yeah, I get it now.

Yeah. So, hey, we have a listener or shout out or anything like that.

Yeah, we sure do.

What we got.

So this one is another itunes listener who left a review. This is from D.C. speechy. Hey, D.C. they say love this podcast. Love Profit first makes Monday. Something to look forward to.

Yes, every Monday. Thanks D.C. d.C. You rock. And I want to thank our corporate partners before we get the show off the ground fully. Nextiva and presumably Receipt Bank. Yeah, Both wonderful companies. I'm not saying presumably Receipt Bank's not. I just, I lose track of who our corporate partners are and that's really a shame.

But there's only two of them.

Yeah, I know. At least I'm 50%.

I can't get them all straight.

It's too many of them being overwhelmed. His name is Joe Fear and Matt Wolf. Now I played with their names earlier because they the spellings are so unique. He said you can call me Fier, right? Yeah, but it's really Joe Fear or you can call him Matt Wolf. E as you shared. But it's Matt Wolf. Are the co founders of Evergreen Profits and absolutely love showing people how simple it is. How simple it really is to get.

Seen online gyms before.

Thank you. To seen online in competitive industries. They started in business together 12 years ago and they're still friends.

Yeah, it's amazing.

And they haven't stopped learning, testing and scaling things. They have a fast growing small business podcast called the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. We are clients of theirs. Unbeknowingly we purchased a product through them and it's had nothing short of a wonderful experience. That's actually how we learned about these folks and they started to turn us on to some cool stuff. So with no further ado, we're going to learn how to be seen when everything's so cluttered online. Welcome to the show, Joe and Matt.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. You guys are so funny.

Who's your worst third grade or not third grade teacher? Who's your worst teacher?

I was thinking about that in middle school. I forget his name. I think it's Anderson. Mr. Anderson. But the guy consistently came in with his shirt tucked into his underwear and it was.

And the undies exposed.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Tighty whities too.

So wasn't the principal Billy Madison? Wasn't his name Anderson?

Anderson could have been. So that's horrible. And who's the other teacher?

Matt?

Yeah, for me it's tough because I was not a very good kid in school. So I think all of my teachers hated me. The one that I remember hated me the most was a guy by name of Mr. Gilwee in high school. He's actually my photography teacher. But I used to go into the dark room in photography class and do stuff I wasn't supposed to do, like sleep among other things. And so he was the one who got me in trouble the most. I guess I blame it on him. It's his fault.

Right, Right. We always blame the teacher. Yeah. Yeah, I was dropping my pants and taking inappropriate pictures.

But you know what?

He was horrible.

He was an asshole.

He was a jerk. All right, Joe, let's talk about this clutter in the online space. It is overwhelming. It seems to only be getting worse.

It is. And with so many different platforms out there, so you have social media buying for your attention. You have a ton of podcasts now, which more and more are popping up, not really with a total strategy. So you see a lot of them fall off, but it kind of makes things difficult for people like us with podcasts that are really trying to break through and try to target these best viewers or listeners or whatever you're trying to get them to engage with. That's really what we love doing, and we have a kind of creative approach to do that.

And, Matt, you guys were saying, you can be seen everywhere. I mean, even in this cluttered space, you can be seen everywhere. Give me the formula, baby.

I don't know why I called you baby. That's kind of the feedback that we hear all the time, too, is. And it's interesting because Joe and I, we actually don't see it all the time because we do through advertising, and we don't target ourselves with ads, so we don't see it very often. But when we go to events and we're talking to people, people are constantly telling us, man, I'm seeing you guys everywhere. I can't get away from your videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. You know, we're. We're all over Google display networks. We're on banners on the sides of blogs and things like that. So, you know, we. We kind of got it dialed down to a pretty simple formula now. And the way we do it is we start with Google Ads, and we parlay the Google Ads into Facebook ads. So essentially, we try to find problems that people are trying to solve. We make a piece of content around the problem, and then we target them with Google Ads, Google search ads. So, for example, if somebody was searching, let's say I had a cure for heartburn or something like that. Let's say I had some sort of, like, homemade cure for heartburn, and I was gonna give you, like, a recipe book on how to solve that problem. Well, if you went to Google and typed in how to cure heartburn, I would have an ad right at the top that links to an article about some tips on curing heartburn. Once they read that article, I now know this person has the problem that my product solves. So then anybody who read that article, I then retarget them everywhere. We retarget them on Facebook, we retarget them on Google display. We retarget them on YouTube. We've experimented with Twitter and Taboola and all sorts of traffic sources. But once they've read that article. Article, initially we went. We go, okay, we know this person has the problem that we're trying to solve. And now we just put ads in front of them everywhere. And those retargeting ads are very, very small budget ads. Actually. They're, you know, we're running a dollar to $5 a day on some of these ads because we're only putting them in front of a very small audience of people who raised their hand and said, I've got this problem. So that's kind of the concept in a nutshell.

But it sounds like an ingenious idea. But, guys, the cost already sounds overbearing. I mean, how can you afford this? You have Coca Cola's budget or something and we don't.

Yeah. So it's. We run. Yeah, we have a lean and mean team. I mean, it's Matt and I and a handful of others. And, you know, our budgets are very slim for this because they can be. Our profit margins are high. That's really. If you have a good profit margin and not even that large of a profit, you can reinvest a portion of that into ad. You know, ads on Google, they vary depending on what insurance are going to be up to, like 20 bucks a click, potentially. But if you find these obscure niches or if you can target specific keywords, we're seeing about 50 cents a click in some cases.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people really shy away from Google. They assume that it's really, really expensive. But we actually get much, much cheaper clicks on Google than we do on Facebook. So. So with Google the way, we've actually got it set, so we run like $100 a day budget on our Google search ads, but we never come anywhere near spending our entire $100 a day budget. I would say on most days, we're spending $40 a day. And the reason for that is we're going after long tail keywords. So what that is is a keyword that is. It's not like heartburn. If somebody just searches the word heartburn on Google, our ad would be insanely expensive, and there'd probably be 50 other people bidding on it. If we go after how do I get rid of heartburn? With homemade remedies, we're probably the only person targeting that keyword and we could probably get it for 30 cents a click.

Gotcha.

So the key there is you try to find some long tail keywords that people that need your product would be searching for.

Now you guys are affiliates, meaning you sell other people's products. At least that's what I understand.

Yep.

Most of our listeners, I believe, are selling their own product or offering, you know, maybe there's an accountant listen, maybe there's a trucker listening. So, you know, the freight carrier. How do you do it if you're only selling one product? Because. Because you guys have the ability, I presume, to sell anything to anybody because you're affiliates.

Yeah. And we actually do sell our own products, but it is more of a secondary thing. So you're totally right. So the big thing, like I was saying is if you have a profit margin with whatever your offer is, that's the key thing is knowing what you have to work with. You know, what, what can you kind of afford out there? Because not only with ads, you are going to invest a little bit into creating content, you know, to pair up with these ads. So, you know, when it comes to a specific offer, it's, it's probably even easier to be honest because what you can do is, is do some of these things on Google where essentially you can, and Matt can explain this, where we're essentially gathering data from Google to figure out what these long tail keywords are. And that will give us ideas to create content on our blog, on our website, so we can point those ads to there. So you sort of reverse engineer. Go ahead.

You sort of reverse engineer who you're.

Going to market to. And just to come back to the original question, I'm not going to lie and say that this strategy is going to work for every single business model ever.

But what if you were to lie? Would it work for everyone then?

If I was to lie, then yes, it works for everybody. But I mean, if you've got like a $5 product and your profit and you're making $2 profit on that, you probably shouldn't be running ads, period. You know, that's going to be tough with any ad platform, much less trying to combine multiple ad platforms. But you know, what Joe was saying is we run what we call a feeder campaign on Google. And what a feeder campaign is, is Google allows you to do what they call exact match keywords, broad Match keywords.

And it's a wild card kind of.

I'm drawing a blank on all the terms. But essentially you can run ads where you have a keyword and if they put anything around that keyword, your ad will show up as well. So let's just go back to the heartburn example. Let's say that somebody went to Google. I can run an ad that says anytime somebody searches for heartburn with anything around it, show my ad. So if anybody searches, how do I cure heartburn? Home remedies for heartburn, Heartburn cures that work fast, right? If they search for any of those, if they have the keyword heartburn in them, my ad is going to show up. And then you can go into Google AdWords and you can look at the data of what people have searched for that have presented your ad. So you can actually go into the backend and see, okay, these are the hundred different keywords that people have searched for over the last month that caused people to see. And then click on my ad and then you look at those results. That's how you find your long tail keywords. And you can actually, you know, you look for exclusions also. You say, okay, this person says this, this person was searching for something totally unrelated. Maybe there's a band called Heartburn or something like that, and they typed in heartburn band, right? You want to exclude anybody who makes that search. So you start to optimize over time and find more and more of these long tail keywords. So in the beginning, you do kind of spend a little bit larger of a budget to find these keywords. But after, you know, three, four or five days, you start to collect data, you exclude some keywords, and then the keywords that do work, you break those keywords out into what we call an exact match campaign. And by putting it in an exact match campaign, meaning that if they search only that specific keyword, when you create an exact match campaign, basically your cost per click goes lower. Because Google's not trying to show your ad to every sort of variation. They're only trying to show it to that exact match. And they sort of give you the benefit of lowering your CPC on that.

All right, so here, I know this is a little bit of an off the wall question, but I think it applies. Say I was searching for the heartburn band, but actually want your product. Maybe, you know, you make a heartburn home remedy, but the whole, you know, the gigs, everyone brings heartburn medication, they throw it on stage at the band, like, that's the big haha. How do you know? Actually the term is not bringing the results you want or not.

So you can actually see who's clicking on the ads inside of Google. So you know we're going off of impressions and clicks. So on the back end Google will show me that, okay, the term heartburn banned in the last 30 days has shown your ad a thousand times. So it's had a thousand impressions. Out of those thousand times one person has clicked on it. So we'll go, okay, that's not the greatest click through ratio. I'll probably exclude that one in the future.

And can you also tell, because I'm not too familiar with ads, if someone actually goes to your site and then takes the subsequent action, gives you an email or something like that, does Google track it that far so you can see how many impressions or views you got, how many click throughs and then how many calls to action or whatever.

You can if you have access. So it's interesting. We do sell our own products and we do have affiliate products that we promote. If we're promoting an affiliate product, you basically need to be able to throw your tracking pixels on the success page. So after somebody opts in or after somebody buys, you need to be able to have your tracking pixel on the page they land in after they opt in or after they buy for it to track that conversion. So on your own products, if you're selling your own stuff 100% you can, Google will tell you when the actual conversion action happened that you were going after. If you're promoting an affiliate product, in most cases you don't have that ability. You just have to track up to the last step you do have control over, which is the click on the link sometimes, which is the case with some of the products that we promote. We have good relationships with the product creator and we'll actually get them to put our tracking pixel on the confirmation page. But that comes with the fact that we've been doing this for a long time. We've built a lot of good relationships and the people we work with know the sort of results we can generate for them. So they're very happy to do that. I wouldn't say that's going to be something that's available for everybody to do in the affiliate space.

Matt, you guys are pros at marketing other people's stuff. Maybe some people listening in want and in on this. Maybe they sell their own product, but they also want to do some affiliate stuff. What's your suggestion? Should someone that already has their own products or services are Selling consider affiliate. If so, what does it mean? What's it entail?

Yeah, so affiliate marketing could be a perfect bolt on for any business. So if you imagine Matt and I used to actually work at his parents shutter, window shutter company. And you know, if we knew this at the time, we could have had his parents or you know, Matt could have had the marketing basically come sell maybe a design guide or something else to homeowners that maybe they're cleaning products, something that's a supplement to whatever the core offer is. So a good practice for folks who do want to increase their profits without fulfilling a product or doing all the customer service on that specific thing. Affiliate marketing is a great way to look at the complementary things that your offer is already kind of lending itself to and where the gaps are that you can easily, you know, give more value through offering this affiliate product. That's pretty much how we do it. So in our case it's tools, Software tools.

Yeah, to kind of step back a little bit in our own business. We, you know, we started selling our own products. Joe actually had a service business. I had an info based business where I taught people how to build websites. That's kind of how we both started on our own paths. And over time those grew and they grew in momentum and we got more and more traffic and more and more sales and did really well with that stuff. And then we started adding affiliate products in the mix because we thought, okay, this is an easy way to boost the revenue. Well, about a year into doing that, we actually realized that our affiliate revenue overtook the revenue from our actual sales. So we're actually making more money from affiliate revenue than actually selling our own products and services. And so the first thing to go was services. We decided no more services. We don't want to do stuff four people, we're just doing stuff for ourself. And the affiliate marketing stuff just ramped up and ramped up and now it is the bigger portion of our business. So I mean, to come back to the original question, I think any business, if you can think of some complimentary products, I see no reason why you shouldn't, you know, dive into affiliate marketing a little bit because it could be just a little extra trickle of affiliate revenue, but it could end up being an even bigger revenue source than your main business model started as.

Hey guys, I wanted to ask you, for the customer, for the, for the listeners of the podcast who wanted to do organic targeting for the long tailed searches. I know that Google's changed its algorithm and search criteria. What would you Recommend being the best way to do that. No ad budget as far as like creating content to target that.

Okay, so let's see. Oh, okay. So with no ad budget.

So SEO, basically.

Yeah. So straight up SEO. So that's something we do a lot of internal SEO. So it's stuff within our control. And we use a plugin called Yoast SEO, that's a free plugin for WordPress. And there's some similar things for other platforms. I know folks use Shopify, you know, for E commerce, there's ways to do similar stuff. But if you're using that plugin on a WordPress based site, that's a lot of these sites these days, if you essentially follow that plugin, it tells you exactly what to do on that page in terms of SEO. So we always like to say turn the light green. And so it's literally following the instructions that the, that the plugin gives you. It's towards the bottom of the post, you know, after you enter in all your content. Essentially, we now we have some processes and a team member doing this for all of our content pieces. But prior to just turning the light green in Yoast, we really weren't seen on the Google charts at all organically. But we started doing that, what map? Maybe for a couple months, I would say maybe a month. And we started to see SEO kind of trickle up and then start to do a little hockey stick kind of motion there. And now it's kind of overtaken all of our traffic. Most of it is organic traffic now because of just doing that.

Yeah. And a big part of our business is our podcast as well. So, you know, we're talking about all the content that we're driving people to through advertising. Well, the podcast has sort of become what we're trying to drive most people to. And then based on what episodes they listen to, we're retargeting them with various offers that are relevant to the podcast they just listened to.

Oh, so instead of doing a blog post, you're doing a podcast. So it's effectively the same content delivered in a different format. And that's what you're doing. Okay.

Yep, yep. So we're doing audio content instead of written content. We will get the transcription so that people can find it in the search engines and stuff. But, you know, coming back to the SEO question, our big game with the podcast is let's SEO all of our guests names. So what we'll. And those are things that almost nobody goes after other than the person you're going after. Right. So, you know, we had. Well, we had Mike Michalowicz on the show. I don't know if we're ranking for you yet, but, you know, one of our game plans would be to go after the keyword Mike Michalowicz. So our podcast episode with you is on the first page of Google.

Yep.

And then anybody who clicks on to that episode ideally gets deeper into our podcast. Not every single episode. We have, you know, affiliate products that we're promoting in relation to. But ideally, people will find that episode, love it, go into other episodes, find other episodes, click around on our site, find other content, then start getting retargeted based on the content that they dove deeper on.

But presumably you don't care about Mike McCalla. You care about, say, the heartburn situation. So you would maybe have a show saying, we discussed heartburn with Mike Michalowicz, and if someone comes in there searching Harper, and they find that podcast, they click through. You now know you have a hot or hotter target or prospect.

Right.

That's true. We, you know, we obviously aren't in the heartburn niche. That was an example. But the stuff that we do is mostly software tools that we promote, like you found us with ThriveCart, you know, we promote click funnels, and we promote a handful of tools that we use in our own business. So one of our big game plans is we bring on the creators of a lot of these tools, interview them on their strategies, and then people who listen to those episodes, we retarget them as affiliates back to those people's products.

Kelsey, you gotta make sure Paul listens to this episode. We gotta start doing this.

I know.

So get him on. Paul's our internal, like, marketing guy. He's. He's doing some stuff for us. We all. Everyone listening to the show wants to do. I think it was Joe, you said you can be everywhere through this retargeting. I don't know if that term is familiar with people, and I don't even know if retargeting is the only way to be perceived as being everywhere. How do we make sure that our company, regardless of what we sell, is being noticed by everyone?

Yep. So that's a very good point. So retargeting. I'll just explain that really quick. So for folks that don't know, it's essentially a little piece of technology that a lot of these platforms, mainly social media platforms or other ad platforms like Facebook and Google, like we mentioned, they give you a little pixel, and you can install this pixel. It's essentially a cookie on your website. So anytime someone visits your website, it's tagging that person. It's not taking their information or any of that. It is, but it's containing it. We don't get access to it. But what we can do is essentially build an audience of folks who have engaged with our piece of content somewhere within something we control. So our website, from there, that's where retargeting comes into play. So the term there is. You can run these ads that essentially retarget those folks who have already seen some type of content from you. So that's kind of the concept in a nutshell there.

Yeah. And just on your question, you mentioned being seen by everybody. Well, in our business, and I think this is the case for most businesses, the goal isn't really to be seen by every person ever in the world. The goal is to be seen by the people who are most likely to buy your product and then seen by those people over and over and over again. So those specific people, it appears like you're everywhere. So this, this. This concept of omnipresence and being everywhere, when we talk about it, we're referring to being everywhere, to your ideal prospect. We're talking about it in the sense of this person is in need of the problem that we solve. They're in need of the product that. That our. Our product solves. And that person is now going to seem like they're seeing us everywhere. We're on the sidebar of people's blogs. We're in their Facebook newsfeed. We're popping up in front of them on YouTube videos. Those are the people that see us everywhere, not the entire world. And we do that through retargeting. So the people that visit our content, a little code gets dropped on their browser. Then the next time they're on one of these ad platforms, the browser knows, okay, they were on this website. Show them these ads again.

Maybe it's obvious, but what's the benefit of being seen everywhere?

So the benefit there. So let's. You can imagine a funnel. So, like, I think a lot of folks are pretty familiar with like a sales funnel or at least a process that folks kind of go through. It's kind of like a relationship you want to start kind of light. You want to get to know each other. You want to build that trust and bond with each other. So in going to the ad strategy, that's why we're always content focus first. So we're trying to just start this kind of engagement, this communication process with.

Folks that's the top of the Funnel.

That'S the very top of the funnel there. So a lot of folks running any kind of traffic just try to go for the kill shot. They want to bag it up and like they want to go for the sale right then and there. But there's no relationship prior to that point. And that's where we really focused probably a good 80, 90% of our, our efforts is that relationship building phase in the front. That's how we probably found you. I'm not sure exactly how, but that's.

Exactly how you found us because you saw next name and you reached out to us personally and then followed up with a call.

Yep. Yeah. And that was just extra bonus. But definitely we'll do that.

The real system is you actually pick up the phone call people. I'm kidding.

Well, that's the after the fact. Yeah, but we got to, you know, we got your sale prior to the fact by leading with content and educating given some form of value specifically on what you were looking for. It could have been a comparison to another tool or something. But that's how, that's how we basically lead people into the buying process is through that content.

Yeah. And then, you know, the benefit of just being everywhere is, is just the top of mind the branding element. When, you know, when, when somebody first reads your article, they may go, oh, that's, that's interesting. I could really use that. I'll put a pin in that and come back to that. Right. And then they get on Facebook the next day and they're seeing an ad. Most people aren't going to connect that ad to the fact that they just read an article yesterday. Right. So that second day, it's kind of like, oh, that's interesting. I swear I just heard about this company yesterday and now it's popping up again. Huh. And then the next day they're on somebody's blog, reading a blog, and then in the sidebar they see a banner for our product and they're like, wow, these guys must have a really big marketing budget. I'm starting to see them everywhere. This is a sign from the universe. I'm going to click that ad and finally I'm going to buy it.

Some people get used to it, though.

Usually it's not that first touch. Go ahead.

So I think some people get creeped out. My wife and I were having a conversation about getting a custom sign for the inside the house. This is fun sign. And we're just talking about that's it, just talking. And then like 10 minutes later she's on the Phone. She's like, here's an ad for custom signs. She's like, that's creepy. Like, you know, was Alexa.

Yeah, you have Alexa. I told you, stay away from. Get it, get it out.

Yeah, you're in and out too. Look at anger you're getting. So do some people get creeped out? Like, hold on, this company's gaming me or what's your guys thoughts around that?

So there is definitely a creepy factor. And then that's what, that's actually a term I think Facebook came out with officially the creepy factor. But that's where these ads are really calling people out very specifically to some action they did prior to. Right. That is pretty dang creepy. So saying, hey, Bob, you landed on this checkout page and wanted to buy, you know, that's, I mean, specific.

Facebook definitely does not want ads that say, hey, is, are you 35, have constant heartburn and live in Austin, Texas. This is for you. Right? Facebook. That's what Facebook calls the creep factor. They don't want you doing that. Your ads account will get banned. So the idea is to kind of make it look like they're not attached to each other. You know, just kind of have, hey, here's another offer. Here's another offer. Here's another offer. Now the thing where, you know, you're talking near your phone or near your Alexa or something like that, and then all of a sudden it starts popping on Facebook. I don't know how to get access to that data. If I did, I'd probably be experimenting with it.

Happenstance, right?

I don't think so. That's happened to a lot of people.

It's creepy.

Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it. It's a weird phenomenon. And I have. Either there's people out there that have access to way more data than they're letting us small time marketers have access to. Or, you know, it's just a weird phenomenon. Like, you know, when you go and buy a Tesla Model 3 and then all of a sudden you see Tesla Model Threes everywhere on the road in your brain. Yeah, you know, I've heard that it's a similar phenomenon to that, but that might just be the, you know, the NSA wanting us to think that.

Well, to j Bones point over here is this can go too far too. What if this stuff falls in the wrong hands? Maybe Facebook themselves is the wrong hands. They could blackmail us. Oh, jbone, you have a, you know, problem with your bowels. Obviously you want your friends to know about this.

Wow, thank you. Thank you for that.

Right. It made me feel uncomfortable, but I'm just saying what's true. And. Yeah, yeah.

While I'm at it, how do I stop getting targeted for male enhancement emails?

Well, you stop searching for it all the time. That's why.

Stop searching for it. Yeah.

It's based off your accents.

Maybe see her too. Right?

That's.

You guys are like.

Yeah, yeah, I missed that last question.

This could fall into the wrong hands. It's a big fear. So I think consumers really may. I don't know. I just wanted to feel what your sense is for that situation.

Yeah, no, and you're absolutely correct. And there is a. And we've definitely seen folks do the creep factor. You know, that's. That's probably a biggest creepy point right there.

I'm just gonna say, anything. Any sort of marketing tactic be used for good, for evil.

Exactly.

You know, when you're trying to raise mass awareness for anything and you're trying to get attention on anything, that could be used for both good and bad. I mean, you could say that for SEO. You could say that for just running straight Facebook ads or Google Ads or. You know, but Facebook is trying to crack down on that. You know, they do have policies in place to make it so you're not out there being malicious to people and that you're. You're not going too far into the creep factor zone. They do have policies in place to prevent that. So if people are out there using it maliciously, Facebook's probably gonna kick you off eventually.

We're starting to crunch up on time, but I want to ask about this invisible podcast funnel. I don't know, Matt, if you said in the beginning of the show or Joe, but what is the invisible podcast funnel you guys have devised?

Yeah, so we've actually already kind of covered it without you even knowing about it. But the visible podcast funnel is essentially that concept of we bring people onto our podcast, and then based on things that they talk about on the show, we then retarget it with relevant ads. So based on what they listen to, we then create sort of a funnel of ads that they're gonna see based on episodes that they listen to.

What about the concept of evergreen content? You guys were talking about that, too, off air.

Yeah. So we like to really repurpose a lot of stuff. So anything we create, so if it's written, if it's an audio form or video, we want to make sure that thing gets as much momentum as it can. So with audio, it's perfect for transcriptions. There's a lot of automated ones out there, or there's manual things like Rev.com, buck a minute or so. So we like to really extend content for what it's what we can. And, you know, if there's. If we start with audio, then there's a lot of apps you can use for creating video out of that. So to leverage other platforms, our goal there is to, again, be seen everywhere. Maybe it's organic on YouTube videos, or it's in the SEO search rankings with transcriptions. In a nutshell, it's repurpose everything you can and then piggyback these different platforms online where your audience is hanging out. Everybody has different modalities of learning, so we want to try to hit them where the least resistance is for them to get into our ecosystem.

Yeah. And just to kind of piggyback on that, to give a little bit of an example. So there's sites like SlideShare, which is owned by LinkedIn. There's a site called Medium, which is a blogging platform that's like a centralized blog for a lot of people. Platforms like that have a lot of, I don't know the right word. I'll call it link juice. As far as SEO goes, they're very prominent sites. They get a lot of traffic, so they rank really well, really fast. So what we'll do a lot of times is we'll create content for our blog. We'll take that blog content, turn it into a PDF, share it on SlideShare, and then take that content and also share it on medium.com and now maybe our original blog post won't rank, but maybe our SlideShare version will rank or our Medium version will rank. And of course, inside of our SlideShare version, instead of our Medium version, we have our affiliate links. We have links to our offers. So it doesn't really matter where they find it, as long as they consume our content and click over to our site eventually.

So a lot of stuff was over my head. It's just. It's advanced. Maybe for some of our listeners, it is, too. What do you suggest is the one way to start stepping into this space for our listeners?

So, number one, create a blog with content around your topic. You know, start. Start sort of creating yourself as the expert on your topic in blog form or podcast form, if that's your preferred medium. But just start creating a blog with content on it. Start working some of the SEO angle. There's some amazing YouTube videos on SEO. On YouTube, if you look up a guy named Brian Dean from Backlinko, he's got some great, great content on how to do real basic SEO. So that's how I would start. I would just create a blog, put some content on it, start proving yourself as the expert. Start finding some keywords you can rank for in SEO. And then when you're ready to take that next step, then start experimenting with Google Ads. Drive traffic to the content that you already created and then when you're ready to take the next step after that, then dive into retargeting.

Love it. All right, where can our listeners find out more about you? Get your help maybe?

Yeah, for sure. So this kind of piggybacks on that last question. We created a unique little link for you guys, evergreenprofits.com profit first. So if you go there, you actually will kind of see all the stuff we chatted about. There's a lot of traffic related stuff and a little free download if you want to actually explore this deeper. If you're kind of ready for the ads and running this stuff. That's a little more we do in.

Our book we break down this process as well as our content marketing process. And we have a podcast as well. So we've, you know, we've interviewed a couple hundred people now and taken all of their best traffic strategies and sort of curated them in this book as well. So it's a great resource.

Great. We will share that in the notes. Joe, Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you guys. It's been fun.

All right, so Kelsey, we got recap what we learned we got to talk about. Do we have listener mail again today? Yeah, we have a consistent stream. I love it. But first I want to thank our corporate partners. I think we need more sound than just that. Who's our corporate partners?

Our corporate partners are nextiva.

Love them.

And Receipt Bank.

Love them. So nextiva is a voiceover IP phone system. We've been using them internally for years. Highly recommend them. And Receipt bank we've been using internally for years. It's a receipt scanner organizer. It's awesome. Great efficiency tool. So check them out. All right, cows, I want to know what did you. Oh, actually let me push the button.

So what'd you learn today?

What'd you learn today?

I feel like this is super enlightening. I have been really scared of Facebook ads and Google Ads and I feel like they broke it down in a way that made sense to me. And I love the idea of sort of reverse engineering how you word your content so that you're effectively Optimizing your ads and minimizing the cost of your ads. Right. Because it can be super astronomical. We did it here for a little bit and it was so expensive.

Yeah. But we went in with a marginal to poor strategy. Oh no. Oh, you're talking about the ones for Prop First Professionals.

I'm talking about. Yeah.

Oh, we are an outside firm.

Yeah.

Yeah. It was very expensive. I think we paid 40,000amonth at the end, but it generated 45 or 50,000 and it built our list.

Yeah.

So but you have to go in this discipline. It was, it was such an extraordinary investment that we wanted to bring a firm in that would navigate us through this and I think we did successfully. We learned it wasn't a fit for us, at least how they were doing it. But now I want to dip the toe in the water again.

Yeah.

No one told me about this Google strategy of like figuring out these terms. And what I liked about it too was to send people to ads, I mean to articles, just to see their engagement. So you're not like trying to sell them right away. You're just seeing what users are responding with what. And now you have a much more refined targeted base. I think before we were doing too general, we didn't target it. We just hit anyone and their mother.

Yeah. And I will say too, because I'm on Joe and Matt's email list and their content is extraordinary. I feel like they provide so much value and they themselves are above and beyond helpful and friendly. When we set up ThriveCart, Joe got on a zoom call with me to walk me through it. He didn't have to do that.

Exactly.

And then followed with me to see how we were doing after the fact.

So here's what they don't know. How we found out about them was not an online ad. It was word of mouth. Amber Duggar. I was talking that we need a new shopping cart. Ours wasn't performing well. She's like, oh, there's one company out there. It's amazing. Actually recommended them because of their service. So the best marketing they do. I bet you they generated Amber as a client through this method. They generated us because of word of mouth. And I think that's the ultimate lesson. You need to use these techniques. This is the future. That was my takeaway. This is the future. You have to advertise, but it does not allow you, it does not give you permission to have half assed service or poor product. You still actually more than ever need to have an extraordinary product because that is the subsequent sales that will come out of it.

Yeah. And I think because there's, you know, kind of queen bee role of their company is communication and support of their customers.

Yeah.

Everything that they do is so authentic that you don't get that creep factor. And I think that's super important to differentiate from all of the other way.

To drop in the QBR Clockwork. Love it. So happy I put you in the book. You have never mentioned if your name.

Wasn'T in that book.

Okay. We want to know what you learned too. So put that in any kind of reviews you do or even email us about it. We'd love to hear what you're learning too. We got some listener mail. Right. Let me hit a funny button that you probably never heard before. You've got mail pattern baldness.

So this one is a little bit long winded, but I think that other folks will relate to it. So I kept it in here. So this comes from Julie Kenney.

Julie, sorry for you being judged by Kelsey.

No, I thought it was super valuable. And I also feel like your business is really interesting, which is the other reason why I wanted to put in here. So one area they're having trouble with is understanding what is real revenue. For example, our client may buy an advisory board from us for $60,000 where we would put our time to setting up the framework for that advisory board meeting, developing presentations for the meeting, attending the meeting to facilitate and then developing the final report from that meeting. The only out of pocket hard costs are for travel for about 2,500 to 5,000 depending on location. We typically spend about 250 to 300 hours of our employees time to service that deliverable. Our employee cost to our company is about $135 an hour. Can you help us better understand what the real revenue is in that situation? Then we would take that to divvy up the percentages.

Yeah. So I can help you big time. The real revenue is your actual revenue. $60,000. People, Kelsey, are getting stuck on this all the time. The idea of real revenue serves a singular purpose, is to adjust a business that has a substantial amount of outsourced work when they use other people or a substantial amount of resources they have that move the ink that that cause the income to look artificially high. We want to adjust the business to a real revenue that's representative of businesses so you can compare yourself to your contemporaries or other businesses not in your industry. The goal of real revenue is to get to this thing called taps, target allocation percentages. So let me give you an Extreme example, a home mint builder. I knew home builder made $50 million in revenue. The real revenue, the company ended up being about 20 million. Here's what happened with the $50 million. They would outsource about $20 million of work. They would have a plumber or an electrician. It wasn't their employees. These were other employees. Then they spent about $10 million on materials. Sheetrock, wires, lumber, stuff like that. Well, 10 plus 20 is 30 million. They were generating $50 million of income. But when they generate that income, basically they're taking from the customer and saying, oh, thank you for the money. Here. This is the money the customer has used to buy lumber. Here's the money that the customer is assigning to play to pay the plumber. So there's redirecting those funds the company itself is delivering. Then the difference, 50 -30 is 20. $20 million of their own internal services. If you are having. If you have subcontractors that do a substantial amount of your work, or you buy a huge amount of materials, you own a retailer store or something, then do this real revenue adjustment. Everyone else, which is 90% of the world, ignore real revenue. Your income is your real revenue. I hope that clarified it. Did it? You think?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So only if Jeremy's like, I have no idea.

Only if materials are over 30% or something, right?

Yeah, 20. Yeah. The rule of thumb is if your material cost is 25% or more of your income, then we're gonna make this adjustment.

Or subcontractor.

Or subcontractors. Yeah, yeah.

But since in this case it's employees.

That'S the answer. Just your. Your. Your income is your real revenue. And that's true for almost everyone. And by the way, if you've. No, if you're in doubt or you're confused still, whatever your total income is, that's your real revenue. The system still works even without making this adjustment. Oh, okay. Do anything else?

Excellent.

Before I hit the music, you got something?

Well, if that, you know, wasn't answered, send a email to ask Mike.

That's right.

Any questions you have, send them to ask mikemcalowitz.com yeah, so we're answering these.

Questions from the Ask Mike. We're doing on videos about this. So send a question to ask mikemicalicz.com.

And leave us a rating, please, on itunes. Stitch or tuning radio, profitfirstpodcast.com or YouTube. And if you just take a screenshot and send it to me, I'll send you a book.

Her email is Kelsey. That's a k e l s e y ikemicalowitz.com Good luck spelling that one. And send your screenshot there. Include your mailing address and the what book you want for free because that's our big bribe. We'll send it to you. And then the YouTube channel, you can just type in Mike McCallowitz YouTube. Give your best spelling.

McAllowitz or profit first podcast. It'll come up.

Oh, or it'll come up. We have the link in there too. Definitely check out the YouTube channel because we have these cool videos going and you can kind of see what this studio looks like. One more thing, Kelsey.

What?

I think you could hire a profit first professional. If you're listening to the show and you want to drive properly in your business, go to profit first professionals.com and click on find one. We'll hook you up with somebody. All right. All right.

Okay.

All right. Let's get out of here.

Okay. Bye, everybody.

See y' all. It.