Episode 145: Digital Mastery from the Agency Trenches with Matt “Matty” Lutes

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And this is a very special podcast because the guest that we have today has knowledge beyond knowledge and something that is very much in play in today's business world and the personal world, if you will. I am honored and excited to welcome to the podcast Matty Lutz. Matty, how are you doing?

I am doing wonderful. How are you?

Fantastic. Even better now that you are here. So in our UPP circles, in our UPP Platinum and elite coaching circles, we encounter high achieving agents who are doing phenomenal things. And because of who Matt, also known as Matty, and who he's become, he went through a training and now has very specialized knowledge and experience that they've implemented in their agency business. And I know Matt is very entrepreneurial in other things that he does. And that was identified. And so we heard about that. We said we got to get Matt on the podcast and share. So, Matt, thanks for being here today.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited.

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. So before we get started today, share a little bit about who you are, where you're from. You're also part of an agency leadership team. Anything you're willing to share with your audience?

Yeah, I'm currently in Georgia. I work with Kimberly and Lisa Dickerson at the Dickerson Agency. I'm their kind of digital marketing guy, operations manager. You know, throw whatever you can at me and I'll try to knock it out.

And you do.

Yeah, I've kind of lived all over. I've got various backgrounds, was in Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, New York, San Francisco, Louisiana, Louisiana. So I've been around the world, so to speak, as far as continental US Goes.

Wow, I wasn't aware of that. That's good to know. Fantastic. So you landed in Georgia, and for now, y', all, that's where you're going to stay, right?

All means all.

Yeah, I know that. That's something that always gets added to those conversations, y'. All. So anyway, fantastic stuff. So how long have you been part of the Dickerson team?

This is going to my sixth year.

Yeah. So he's got a depth of experience in the insurance agency inner workings and part of the.

Expertise that he's gained is the digital marketing world. So before we dive into that, anything else to add?

I don't think so. I just, I hope that, you know, some of the little nuggets that I share today are helpful and beneficial. And I'm sure it's always like, you can include my information at the end of the podcast and if you want to reach out to me 100%, feel free.

That's very generous of you. Thank you. So, yeah, we'll pick that up from you at the end. So let's get started. You know, again, you've got a depth of experience in the insurance agency world and learning digital marketing at a level that many don't have or have not gotten to yet. So let's first talk about Google my business. And educationally speaking, you went through a, you know, an expert course. Correct. To learn more and become more.

Correct. There was an entire digital marketing certification that was presented through Georgia Tech. And I spent about six months, now, three nights a week, including weekends, about 20 hours of homework every week, going through and kind of nailing a lot of this stuff down. And there's always still more to learn. I'm constantly learning. I'm reading more, listening to podcasts and now clicking on stuff. It's an ever changing environment, but I definitely think I have a pretty solid grasp on a lot of this stuff.

Yeah. So in depth. Six months, Georgia Tech, 20 hours of homework a week, I think you said, in addition to the study. So, you know, that's awesome stuff. And now he's learned all of the inner workings formally and is implementing it in the insurance agency business. So let's see what you can pull out of Matty's. Now, Maddie said, by the way, if you've heard me say this before, I have to give public props to Matty. You know Toma, right? You may or may not have heard of Toma, which is top of mind awareness, but we were in a coaching session at one point and Maddie popped in and said, I've got something better than Tomah. Do you remember that moment?

Top of heart. Is that the.

Yeah, that's exactly what you said. He goes, there's something that's kind of a companion partner to Toma. And I said, what is it? He goes, it's Toha. And I said, what's Toha? And you said, top of heart awareness. So public praise and recognition to Mattie. He's the one that authored that originally. So great. Add on. By the way, uh, with your permission, I've been sharing that in a lot of circles, so.

Oh, absolutely. I don't even know if I can credit myself with coming, coming up with that. I think I've, I've just, I've heard that and I've learned that through my studies in social media and in marketing in general. It's like you. You always. What? You know, top of mind is one thing, but top of heart, man, that gets them every time.

That's right. That's right. And a recent podcast guest, Selah Hirsch, I don't know if you had a chance to check that one out. A brand strategist and expert, if you will, said it's now six, six to one. Get my numbers right here. Six to one, right? We've got one mouth, two eyes, two ears, one mind. It used to be five to one and she picked up very much like you. She goes, mike, there's a sixth. And I said, what is it? She goes, it's heart. I said, aha. So great minds, rare finds. You and Saylor are kind of connected at the hip and you guys should connect. She's an incredible personality. Back to the matter at hand. So you've had the formal study and now you're implementing an insurance agency business. Let's see, we can pull out. So if an insurance agency entrepreneur or any entrepreneur is listening to this podcast right now, talk to them about why Google my business is important and what are they missing if they don't make sure that they take the action to keep everything up to date. And we'll start with the basic info.

Sure. Well, as you know, 99% of people probably use Google to research and define things at this point. So that's kind of just your first impression on people is when they Google you, they kind of find out who you are. Like your info is right there. That's the first chance you have to make an impression on them. So making sure all of your basic info is up to date. Office hours, website info. If you're open for walk in business, are you taking Covid precautions? All of that stuff can be entered in on that main about page. So they see you kind of see what's going on. You want that to be up to date. You don't want them to be like, oh, other right down the street, I'm going to stop in. And they get to your office and your office is closed. Bye bye business.

The chance of them returning the next day isn't likely. So making sure that that's up to date. One of the things I do at the beginning of each year is log into Google My business and I go ahead and map out all the holidays for the year, make sure that it has the hours up to date that we're closed on. These days, Even days where we might leave early, I put on there and you can go in throughout the year if you know you're going to take a spontaneous Friday off. It's like, oh, let me log in and make sure that you have that updated. It's very important for your business and people who are searching and researching you.

Yeah. So, yeah. And I know that you know from listening to our marketing teams and collaborating that Google's pretty sensitive about security. Right. So what do people need to be thinking about if they're going to jump in and update their Google my business page or anything in that particular realm? Don't they have to be aware that they might mail something out to an address and that kind of thing?

Yes, and I guess depending on which.

How you're, how you're approaching it. So like, you do want your address and everything to be up to date. If people are going to be.

Sending you and mailing you documents and things like that, you want to make sure your mailing address is definitely up to date.

But Google, whatever information you put in there, that's what Google's going to abide by. They can only, they can't make stuff up for you or you just block stuff out. They rely on your input as far as that stuff goes.

Yeah, but what made me think of the question was, you know, there's agencies that want to position themselves in maybe a different geographical area.

And so they want to build their Google my business platforms in different areas, but they don't have a physical address there. And some of the frustrations that I've heard in that particular realm is that Google, to verify addresses, wants to send them something and they can't receive it, therefore they can't get their platform where they want to be.

Yes. And that is an issue. So I think there's several workarounds that you can do for stuff like that. For instance, say you have an office in San Francisco, but you also have another kind of office in la, and you want to be able to do that too. If you don't have a mailing address in la, but you kind of still service that area, you can add that area to the services that you offer. But you can also in your keywords and on your website and in your blogs and then stuff like that, you can mention those keywords in those areas, like serving Los Angeles, California or serving with services in this area, and Google will pick up on that as well. So there's workarounds that you can do in order to kind of surpass that. But Google wants to verify that you are who you are, that you say where you are, and so that they're providing the most relevant information to the people who are doing the search.

Right. Aha. Got it. So, you know, be aware of all of these things as you go to build out your platform. And we're going to jump into website and blog optimization in just a minute. But talk about photos. You feel that photos are uber important.

Photos are very important. And that's because you always say, you know, people do business with people they, like, know and trust. And, you know, people don't trust a robot. People want to see that you're human. They want to see that you're interacting. If you say that you're hugely involved in your community, back that up with photos. So on Google, you can add photos, add photos of your team members, add photos of their dogs, your staff, outings, birthdays, anything that's going to relate to the client, that you're human, that you guys are participating in these things, that you're saying that you're doing, that you're real, that they're not dealing with some sort of stock photo of a girl with a headset on.

That helps with your credibility a lot. And making sure that, you know, you have that visible presence online. You know, people don't. Don't think about this a lot, but there's some photos on our Google My business page of stuff like we didn't even think of when we were posting it. Like a picture of a birthday cake. And it has 8,000 views. Like 8,000 views for just a picture of a birthday cake. So you don't know who's looking at your stuff and how often they're looking at it, but make sure you have it out there for them to at least look at.

If you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you got to use 100% of the ways, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So what about the companion to photos or videos? I mean, same thing, right? Videos are important.

Videos are great. Make sure they're not too long, though.

Okay, so talk about length for just a minute. I know what I've learned, but what have you learned about length of videos?

Really, anything between two and five minutes is kind of the sweet spot. You don't want anything really long unless, you know, we're doing, like, a podcast where people are going to be sitting and intently listening to something to gain this knowledge and information, but for the basics, like an introduction to your team or an introduction to your agency, things like that. Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it sweet, keep it engaging. You don't want to necessarily have a video where you're just sitting there being like, hi, welcome to my agency. Here at my agency, we offer blah, blah, blah. It would be better off to film it from your camera, shaky as you're walking around your office, to add that interest and to keep people engaged.

Right. They want to do business with authentic people as well, real people, not just. I love that aspect. Absolutely agree with you there. So what about. We're going to get to blogs in a minute because you also feel that uploading blogs to your Google My business page is important. So we'll get into the inner workings of that in just a minute. But why are uploading blogs and things that are relevant to customers important on your Google My business platform?

Well, like I said, when people Google you, that's their first impression of you, their first introduction. So when they see your photos, they see your reviews, they see your about me. Directly under that about me is where you can post any offers that you have, any specials that are going on. So a lot of places will be like, oh, here's where we put our coupons, or here's where we put our buy one, get one free. Stuff like that. I utilize it and people should be utilizing it to post their blogs. Because if people are looking for specific information, for instance, one of our blog posts is about insurance audits and it has thousands of views. But what I did is I don't just leave that sitting on our webpage. I put that in our about section. So when people Google us and they see us, they'll have those little things at the bottom that they'll see your top five blog posts that you put on there recently, and they can scroll through and see the information that you're putting out there and providing. So if you put important information that people are looking for that they're searching for, that's relevant to them on there, that also builds your credibility. And it makes you think like, hey, I want to do business with these people. They know what they're talking about.

Credibility, Credibility, credibility. That is a, if you will, Matt, a gold nugget. I hope everybody caught that. You haven't seen these yet. It's probably your first view. But in addition to people's acre of diamonds, which we should always be building, that was a huge gold nugget. Thank you for that. So that's just another way that you position the expertise of your business is through putting your blogs and videos and photos and everything else on your Google my business page. So I mean this has been going through my mind for about the last five to 10 minutes already. How much time should a business invest? Let's just say on a monthly basis in inspecting what they expect, you know, updating their Google my business page and all of that, time wise hour, two hours.

I would imagine it wouldn't take more than two hours a month to get on there and just to go and review. Just make sure it doesn't look like there's anything coming up or something that you've overlooked or forgotten. Like I said, the spontaneous day off that you know you're taking, make sure that you go on and you update that stuff. But Google will prompt you a lot of times too, as you log in. It'll say, hey, have you updated this? You know that we have these new things you can update. One was Covid restrictions, like are you practicing Covid safety? Are you required to wear a mask in your office? You know, things, things like that that will prompt you to fill out. But yeah, I mean anytime you post a new blog on your website, and I think I mentioned this kind of later on in this discussion, is that you want to post that blog everywhere, like you said, in all the arenas. So if you write a blog, it's on your website, you put it on your LinkedIn, you put it on your Facebook, you put it on your Instagram, you link it in all these areas and you may divide it up differently based on the platform you're using, but you're still using that same information and utilizing it across many platforms.

Absolutely. Great information. Another gold nugget. So let's talk about responding to Google reviews before we move to website and blog optimization. What should people be doing in a specific way when they respond to reviews and any other tips and tricks?

Always respond to your Google reviews. Respond to them, authentically respond to them and mention people by name. People like to feel like they're being heard. So if Amber writes you a five star review, you get on there and you say, Amber, oh my gosh, thank you so much for that five star review. That was amazing. That totally made our day. You know, be as positive and uplifting as you can in your responses and make sure you include names because Google wants to know that there's not a robot sending a canned response out. I actually saw a review yesterday or the day before on a website that I was doing some research on to help them with their kind of the SEO audit. And one of the responses came from one of the employees there, like a manager or something, and there was a negative review and their response was, well, let me tell you something first, and blah, blah, blah. And it went into this higher, like, paragraph long thing. And I was like, go on there and delete that right now. Like, please take that off your website. What are you doing? Anytime you get a negative review, it's. It's great to have almost like a canned response ready for you to send back if at possible. You want to make sure that you take the conversation offline to where it's not back and forth, where people can read a conversation that may be going south, if you will. But it's great to always, always treat people with kindness, kill them with kindness. If they have a negative review, you still want to respond to it and say, oh, my gosh, Amber, I'm so sorry that you went through this experience. Here is my phone number at the office. Please give me a call right now so I can help you resolve this. You know, you want to make sure that you're paying attention to these people because Google reviews, you know, I think everybody at this point, you go and you look up a restaurant. What do you look for? The reviews. You go and you have a new place to go while you're on travel. Oh, what's this, you know, ATV place over here? I wonder if they're any good. You look at the reviews. So reviews are extremely important.

Absolutely. And 100% agree with you. I've done the same thing for many, many years. If that ever comes in. I remember we carried a 5.0 rating for a long, long time. And I was inspecting what I expect, inspecting what I expect one time, and we went down to 4.9, and I was like, devastated. I ran back and talking to Andrea, who, you know, and said, what happened? We got a negative review. So I immediately called the guy and said, hey, I noticed you left a review. I just wanted to find out what more can we do to serve you in a better way. And I want to find out what happened because no one cares how much you know until they know you care. Right. We actually turned it around. And it's a longer story on the strategy, but turned it around. He actually updated his review and, you know, took it back up. But here's the other key thing that Andrea told me at that point. She goes, you know, you're actually. We're actually probably better off by being 4.9 because we're more human. Yep, I get that. So we're not going to go down that rabbit trail. Great information. In addition to that, when you leave, when you're replying to a review, you also want to add in the type of insurance. Right. So in addition to using their name, you know, Susie, thank you so much for your kind words. It's our honor to serve and protect you for your auto, home and umbrella insurance or your liability workers comp. Commercial auto type thing because that helps your juice as well. Right?

You can pro. You can throw your keywords into your responses and yeah, it does help. I'm not saying it's going to make you rank from, you know, you know, 50 to number one, but every bit helps get you there.

Singles, not home runs.

Exactly.

Yeah, we just want to keep hitting singles. Great stuff. Let's talk about website and blog optimization. So traffic traffic on the Internet, digital traffic on the Internet leading to you. What do people need to be thinking about with Organic Reach and people searching for insurance in your particular area?

Well, most of your traffic is going to come from organic search. It's going to come for Organic Reach. If you have your Google My business updated, your address is correct and all your information is there, that's the first step. But on your website, making sure that you have relevant information that people can get to easily and quickly, make sure that you have call to actions that are visible in the forefront. There's not a ton of navigation to do. Google would rather see, you know, a menu load that says insurance and it says auto home life, this not insurance, auto over here. Then you have to go down another page and find the link that goes to here. You know, the more succinct you can have it, the more kind of basic you can have it, if that makes sense, really help. But you want people to get to.

The information that they're searching. If they're searching for auto insurance and they click on a link that takes them to your page, you don't want to have them read three pages of information to get to a link at the bottom that says click here for a quote.

Right. You want to keep it simple. Yeah, because people online are impatient and if they don't find what they want, what are they going to do? They're going to leave your page. Right?

Yep.

So you said make sure they can get to what they want quickly and easily. 100% agree. You talk about not over utilizing keywords.

Tell us more about that.

Keyword stuffing, Google. Google is not just a little bot that crawls your website to make sure you have information. Google's pretty smart. It's a smart AI. So keyword stuffing is when you have something like our auto insurance rates are the best auto insurance rates around. So if you need auto insurance, the whole, you know, you throw auto insurance in there a hundred times. Google is going to see that and be like, like someone. They're going to assume that someone is keyword stuffing or that you hired a company that is purposely trying to target, like, keywords extensively. They want to make sure that your content is authentic, that it reads like it's authentic. They have bots that will, like, scan your pages to make sure that it seems like the syntax is there and that the, the words are there. That's not overutilized. So Google is actually kind of smart like that. And they can actually take your rank and shift your rank when they're searching for that information. To say, this website's not nearly as reliable as this one. We're going to go with this one.

So the only thing you should ever overstuff is your turkey.

Not your keywords.

Exactly. Keyword stuffing is, again, it goes back to being authentic. Like you're having a conversation with this customer. You would never say things in that manner as you would if you were talking to someone. So make it readable. Short paragraphs, things broken down to where they're easily readable, easy to digest, and you'll get there. You don't have to try to throw the keyword in every two seconds.

Yeah. And we learned years ago in the marketing education arena that make it so simple and easy. A kindergartner can do it.

Yes.

And we used to have the daughter of our director of welcome a number of years ago, who would be coming into the office every afternoon because she'd get dropped off after school and we started using her name. It was Katie. We need to make things so simple, Katie could do it. And it became the forefront of our internal conversations.

Websites are really, you know, I get it, people want to make them pretty. People want them to, you know, be like images and attractive and stuff. But, you know, that only goes so far. You know, like, you don't want them scrolling through nine images before they get to what they came there for. So there's a way to incorporate both. There's a way to make sure that, you know, your website does look nice, but the information that they need is also there.

For instance, and I'll just throw this out there, one of the websites I was doing an audit on was a parasailing place on the Beach. And their main headline on the page, I have this huge picture of a boat parasailing. And the main headline was like, Steve Blank, beach from the sky. And then something else like blah, blah, blah down here. Not once was the word parasailing mentioned at all. Like, I was like, google, do you think Google and say, see this beach from the sky? What, what is that? If someone googled parasailing, they're not going to connect the dots there. Yeah.

You have to make sure, like, the website was pretty.

The pictures were fantastic. But it was, they weren't utilizing the right keyword strategy and like headlines in order to get Google where it needs to go and their clients where they need to go.

Aha. Another gold nugget. So ultimately, the end of the day, pretty does not always bring results.

And you need to understand exactly what strategies you need to be employing without overstuffing it like the turkey to make sure that it's effective in reaching the target marketplace that you want to reach. And all of that is a whole nother conversation. Great stuff. Now thank you for sharing this wisdom and gold nuggets. So let's talk about blogs and you mentioned utilizing them in all avenues and all arenas. Tell us more about that.

Well, I kind of touched on this earlier, like utilizing on your Google my business page. But.

Google, Google likes blogs. It likes content that's relevant. It also likes listicles. It likes things that are listed. So if you can have top, top 10 reasons you need a life insurance policy, now Google's like, that's great information. Let's start doing that. But at the same time, a blog like that, it's great for your website, it's great for Google My business, but it's also great for breaking it down into those 10 tips are 10 days worth of social media posts. So each day you post a different tip, like tip number 2 of 10 of why you need a life insurance. Tip number 3 of 10 of why you need life insurance. So you can really stretch one blog out across many platforms to get the information out there, but at the same time, you don't want to. You want to know your audience and know what platform you're using. So Facebook is kind of, you want a combination of pictures and words. Instagram is all about photos. You want the photos and then you just want to link to the blog underneath with just a few words, maybe a couple hashtags thrown in LinkedIn. You want it to be professional, you want it to look professional, you want to let others know how your business is going to help Them and their business grow. It's very B2B. So you want to make sure that if you're going to take that blog and break it down into 10 things that hey, this, we're going to break it down. But tip number one is going to be really fun for this platform. And we're going to change the wording, we're going to use it this way for this platform and change the wording, make it business for LinkedIn, you know, make sure that you're looking at the audience you're presenting it to.

Yeah. And speaking of linking, you also mentioned to link to authoritative sites like dot org and govs.

Tell us more dot org sites and dot gov sites have higher ranking and higher domain authority automatically through Google. So like government websites, it automatically knows they're like a high authority on certain information.orgs and like charity type organizations and stuff like that, or nonprofits. It also links very high and rates those domains very high. So if you write a blog about, let's say insurance rates going up and why they're going up and then you link to an article about the statistics on recs in your state from your government website, that's going to be a strong link that gives you a lot of good search juice coming back to you and vice versa. If you know a local government site where you want to write an article for them and you reach out and you say, oh, do this like hey, I want to write this article, I want to link to you guys. And vice versa. Can you like link this? That gives you a ton of juice. Like you're getting that search engine juice to just build your domain authority and make you become the authority of that information.

Awesome. So let's talk about making all this happen. Nuts and bolts. Inner workings in a business, insurance agency, business or otherwise.

An ongoing SEO. We talked about investing one to two hours a month as an example to make all this happen.

And somebody who might be listening or watching this podcast that says I don't have the time or I can't afford a full time marketing person or even a part time marketing person, what would you say to them?

Baby steps man. Like every. Everything that you can do, whether it be like you only have time to write one blog a month, great. It's better than nothing. There are people out there doing absolutely nothing. Their websites sit stale, their social media sits down. They haven't had posts or updates for two to three years. So don't beat yourself up over it.

Just keep pressing forward. But there's so much out there to do that can be done.

That if you have the opportunity to hire a full time marketing person.

There'S a list of endless things that they could be doing to help you and your business. You can use things like Fiverr. There's people on there that you know pay 8 bucks an hour to write a couple blogs for you. There's some cheap ways to get what you need and get the information you need and get it done and taken care of. But I would not ignore it. I wouldn't sit on it so long to where you're inactive and you don't do anything except write one blog a month. There's important things out there that need.

To be done right. So you feel that blogs are super important to your online organic presence, correct?

Yes. Yes. You're giving them information. I'm sorry, you're getting. That's your chance and opportunity to get and give them information that they may be searching for. So.

I don't know if I had mentioned this already, but you know, when you're thinking about what people are searching for, Google's your best friend. Google is your best friend because you go to Google and you type in home insurance and Google tells you the top 10 things that people search for with home insurance. It automatically pre fills what people are searching for. So if you Google home insurance and it says home insurance in flood zone, you're like, I need to write a blog about home insurance in a flood zone. And then you can make that. And then if you know people are searching for that, it leads them to you. So I use Google all the time. It does the predictive searches for you. You scroll down to the bottom if you don't like that and it says other people are also searching for and it tells you exactly what people are looking for. So you want to answer those questions, you answer those questions, you're driving organic.

Traffic to your site, enter the conversation that's already going on in their minds. Right. And become their best friend by giving them the information through your blog and so forth and so on. So another question that I've been thinking about for a few minutes is should people also be using the blog to just build relationships with people online, to become their best friend, in other words, not sharing stuff about insurance as an example, but other things relationally and like relationally in life, or should they stick to insurance and insurance only?

You can you what's your brand?

Inspiring happiness.

If you're. If your brand is about more than just insurance, then absolutely, if your brand is. We also help the community. We help Rescue animals. You're going to have blog. You want blogs about that. You want blogs about what you're doing in the community? You want blogs that don't have any suggestion at all about. Click here for a quote or get this. You want blogs that be like, we work with this nonprofit, blah, blah, go check them out here and link to them. Like you. You want to create those connections around the people and communities around you as well.

Aha. More gold nuggets. Thank you so much. So the other thing came to my mind. If you have core values, you know, that's something you could blog about. You know what your core values are. You know, it's more than business and you know, it's about the, the clients and the communities and all of that stuff. It's about the teamwork. So great stuff. Thank you so much. So SEO, also known as search engine optimization, is not a one size fits all thing. There's so much to do, right?

Yep.

Okay, so as we begin to move to wrap shortly, you know, Google Ads, Facebook ads, and to add something on, to be helpful to everybody, Remember, the mind works in images. And so think about, picture this, imagine that. And that's where the mind is always going. So that's why that face. Oh yeah, Facebook, right. Started with just a bunch of college kids posting pictures and videos.

Right.

And look at it now. So talk about Google Ads, Facebook ads, briefly, what you've learned about that and maybe one or two helpful tips for people.

Well, as far as those ads work, people ask all the time, do they work? They do work, and they can work if they are set up properly. So when you are creating Google Ads and Facebook ads, you don't want to just throw it out there to see what's going to stick. You don't just create an ad and say, this is an ad for home insurance, blah, blah, blah. If you've done your research and you know what your core client looks like, what your client avatar is, you can actually go into those ads and cater those ads to only reach those people that you want to reach. So you can go in and say, I want men and women from 30 to 50 who make over $75,000 a year, who have kids, who have a boat, who went to school here. Like, you can get very, very specific and detailed, but then you can cater those ads where they're only going to that audience.

And that's very, very helpful. And a lot of people, I don't think really that.

If you're ever going to do it, I would do that. And also Utilize negative keywords in your ads. You can take out people who are searching for free, cheap, discount. You know, if you don't want that type of client, you know, googling you and trying to find the cheapest auto insurance, they can take those words out and they will never see that ad.

Absolutely. That's another gold nugget. That's a key moment. Don't put the words in there for your that are not in what your ideal client or prospect looks like. Right?

Yep.

You only want to use the ones that are going to be reaching them. And one of the other things I was thinking about is Google Ads versus Facebook ads. So Google does ads as well. Is that the same as pay per click or something else?

No, it's Google Ads. You know, they have different ads. You can do, you can do display ads, you can do search ads, you can, you can do video ads that will go on YouTube.

They're both the same, but they're both very detailed in the amount of the precision that you can get of who is going to see those ads. So, yeah, if you know that people are in the market and they've been looking for insurance, you can hone in on those people and say, these people need to see my ad.

Yeah, yeah.

But make sure your ad is good, though. I listen to your, your podcast, your last podcast of the marketplace message and media, the three M's.

Yeah.

Got to make sure that you're hunting in the right marketplace, that you're sending the right message and you've got the right media to go with it.

Absolutely, absolutely. It all blends together and it's all so very important. Wow, Mattie. Gold nugget after gold nugget, if you will. Thank you so much. Have some gold nuggets coming your way. But we could go on about this for hours. I know, but let me just ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up here. You have invested significant time in formal education, Georgia Tech, over six months. And learning, learning, learning all about Google, all about SEO and everything related to it. 20 hours of homework a week. Can you sit back and think about based on what you've learned so far, and then you went back and implemented it in the insurance agency business. And these, by the way, these business principles apply to any business. So if you have commercial lines, customers, help them grow their business, guess what's going to happen? They're going to grow and their premiums go up, AKA commission. Back to the matter at hand. So, man, if you sit back and think about the top three things that You've learned and implemented in the insurance agency business. For somebody who's either watching or listening to these podcasts, what should be the top three things on their list to start with?

Well, number one, like I said, would be Google my business, period. Like, getting that up to date, making sure your information is valid.

That would, hands down, be the number one. Just basics to start on.

Other than that, I would take a look at your website, do an audit of your website, go to every page. Does it make sense? Are people able to find the information that they need immediately? Is there a strong call to action on each page that leads them to want to contact you?

That's super important. And then, like I said, probably even don't even think about the Google or the Facebook ad yet. Do all the stuff you can to reach the organic first. And then once, once you start building up that organic search and reach, that's when you could start diving into the marketplace, message and media. Start looking at the niche categories you can go after, start catering to those, start answering those questions and do that. But the basics need to be what you're currently have and what you're currently working on to make sure that you can optimize and make sure that it's telling people the message that you want them to hear.

Yeah. And so the basics of that organic search and reaching the marketplaces that you want to reach organically really and truly begins with a blog and that associated outreach, correct?

Yep. Blog and utilizing your social media pages, like I said, those are part of your organic search. So if you write that blog, break it down, start throwing those little tidbits of information out there on your Twitter and your Instagram and your Facebook and just try to get as much information as you can out there to the people.

Yeah, fantastic. Quick recap for everybody. Make sure your Google My business page is up to date. Do an audit of your website. How often should people be doing an audit of their website? Matt?

Honestly, like, I learned something new every day. Where I go in, I'm like, oh, do I have this on there? Is this updated?

So monthly or monthly or quarterly, once.

A month on your Google My business, like I said, just in case something comes up that's unexpected that you need to go in there and update. And I would probably say quarterly on your website.

Fantastic. So Google My business, make sure you get that monthly, couple hours a month, audit your website quarterly. Always have your teammates talking to people about your website as well. And then make sure that you have strategies in place that are in action regarding your organic search. And the best place to start with that is blog. And there's other ways you can do that. If you don't have a full time or even a part time marketing person, that can become reality in your business. Correct, Matt?

Correct.

Matt Lutz. Wow. What a plethora of valuable gold nugget information. Thank you for your willingness to share today with everybody out there in Unstoppable Nation and beyond. Super grateful for you. Thank you.

Absolutely, My pleasure.

All right, thank you, Matt. Hey, if you know anybody else that would like to get this valuable information, get some of these gold nuggets into their hands to implement in their business, please share this podcast link with them. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stompso. I'm also known as the Unstoppable Profit Producer. I'm widely recognized as the leading authority, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com if you're interested in a virtual or a live event to continue to grow your business, create wealth so you can have more freedom to live life on your own terms, please visit us. Our virtual event page is upfaststart.com and if you're interested in one of our live events, please go to Be Unstoppable Bootcamp. That's be unstoppable bootcamp.com Both events are designed to share some of our best money making strategies developed over 36 years of research in your industry. Again, to grow your business, create wealth and have more business so you too can live life on your own terms. And if this is your first time on the podcast, please go to the top and subscribe to the podcast so you can have it automatically delivered every week to help you grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom. And please, you can find us out there on multiple channels as well, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and of course our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer, Click Videos and they are all there for you. Thank you for joining us. Matt Lutz, thank you for sharing your wisdom and expertise with everybody out there.

Awesome. My pleasure. Maybe we'll have a 2.0.

Exactly. I was thinking the same thing. Great minds, rare finds. All right, Matt, thank you. Thank you everybody. And until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets. We believe in you. You got this. See you next time, everybody. Thanks, Matt.

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