00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;21
Unknown
We are not relying on automation to grow our business. The point of the automation and leveraging AI in the business is to capture the people that fell through the cracks. Human touch is still always going to win. I'll die on that hill for a long time. I think that the AI and the automation is great to make sure people don't fall through the cracks, but if you're relying on that and you're frustrated that your business is stagnated, that's because guess what?
00;00;22;21 - 00;00;33;14
Unknown
People love. People love people. People love humans. So be human. Connect to those people.
00;00;33;16 - 00;01;00;27
Unknown
Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast, an auditory journey through the latest in marketing, branding and advertising. Now here's your marketing expedition guide, Rhea Allen. On this episode of the Marketing Expedition podcast. I get to speak with Shawn Garner, and he's an entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and the founder of Sean Garner Consulting, a full service agency and fractional CMO partner for local service based businesses.
00;01;01;02 - 00;01;44;07
Unknown
With over a decade of hands on experience, Sean has helped health and wellness companies, medical clinics, law firms, coaches, consultants and home service providers grow with clarity, confidence and consistent lead generation. Drawing from his background as a gym owner, firefighter and faith driven family man, Sean understands the realities of running a business while juggling life's priorities. His superpower is simplifying marketing, turning confusing tactics into clear, actionable steps that drive real growth, whether it's through story, brand messaging, website design, or sales funnel strategy, Shawn empowers business owners to take control of their marketing and become the trusted go to choice in their market.
00;01;44;10 - 00;02;06;01
Unknown
We are going to talk about all kinds of things. Oh my gosh, you guys are in for such a treat. I know I learned lots of things and we got to talk. Oh my gosh. We just got to geek out about marketing and and SEO and everything. So yeah. Stay tuned for that. But first, it's time for your marketing essentials, the basics that you need to help you continue to build your brand and your bottom line.
00;02;06;08 - 00;02;32;29
Unknown
For this week's topic, I wanted to dig in a little bit more talking about universal commerce protocol on Google. So use or Universal Commerce protocol is expanding into new industries, and it's going to start with the lodging and food industry. Right now. You can join the waitlist and be a part of this, but it's going to become something that will be universal.
00;02;33;01 - 00;03;11;12
Unknown
It'll maintain ways that now will universally be able to standardize, ways that we use commerce, and empowering us to turn on AI interactions into instant sales. So thinking about how you can prepare yourself for this, and adopting the UCP or Universal Commerce Protocol to enable the agent actions on AI mode in Google search and Gemini, where people can start buying with buying direct from those results that are served in the Gemini or the search results.
00;03;11;12 - 00;03;42;00
Unknown
So thinking about how your brand in ways that you can use this to your advantage, because I'm sure more and more will be continuously rolled out as we learn more about this, as people are shopping online and being able to get results in how you as a brand can be the merchant of record to keep all your customer data and relationships in one place, in this universal merchant center that's going to be happening.
00;03;42;00 - 00;04;25;18
Unknown
And you can use the existing merchant center if you have if you are, you know, using these tools and it can do the merchant center account shopping feeds will capture those high intent customers during their discovery of what they're when they're using those AI mode and tools and modalities of being able to do that. And what you see will unlock is the access to those users on those surfaces, like the AI mode in Google search, in Gemini, in the Gemini web web application, and what is being promised to us as Google continues to evolve and announce more and more with the flexibility of the integration, we're going to be able to build shopper confidence at
00;04;25;18 - 00;04;51;17
Unknown
scale and relying on a system that's designed for trust and of course, the universal system. Right. The UCP will create a transparent accountability trail between the merchants, the credential providers, the payment services to help make sure that each transaction is secure every time it'll have made native checkout. So it'll integrate checkout logically, directly with the AI mode in Google Search and Gemini.
00;04;51;17 - 00;05;25;27
Unknown
And this default integration will truly unlock the full potential as products and services are being offered in. And as you see, expands and there's just going to have right into the the results, it'll be embedded checkout right inside of those results, and you'll have the ability to do optional and optimal customization and more specific paths for specific types of things that you want in goals that you're trying to create and and do.
00;05;25;27 - 00;05;47;17
Unknown
So it's going to be really awesome for, you know, brands that are highly bespoke and complex and, and has, you know, these complex checkout flows. But we'll have iframe based solutions right inside the results, which is going to make it even more convenient and easy for people to shop your brand and the the types of things that you can provide.
00;05;47;19 - 00;06;15;04
Unknown
So, just get ready to prepare yourselves or the people that you're working with on your sites and everything that you're doing online in a digital capacity by adopting the universal commercial or commerce protocol, universal Commerce protocol. And that way you can have this integration seamless between a generic commerce actions across all of the Google AI surfaces. So anyway, there's going to be a lot more on this.
00;06;15;04 - 00;06;39;18
Unknown
And we're just now getting, you know, kind of understanding what all of this means and how it's going to integrate what tech, you know, technology or tools and things that we want to do and what kind of tech stack and ways that will integrate with the things that our clients are already using. Anyway, lots to come on this, but I thought I would share just a little bit more about the you see universal commerce protocol.
00;06;39;24 - 00;06;49;07
Unknown
And now let's get into our interview with Sean.
00;06;49;09 - 00;07;18;29
Unknown
Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast. I'm your host, Rhea Allen. I'm the president and CEO of Peppershock Media and the founder of the Marketing Expedition community. And welcome to the show, Sean Garner. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and hopefully share some value with the audience today. Absolutely. Well, let's just get started a little bit more about you and kind of what got you to where you are now and some of the cool things you're working on and, and all of that.
00;07;19;01 - 00;07;49;06
Unknown
Tell us, tell us a little more about you, Sean. Yeah. So, Ben have had our agency, Sean Garner Consulting, for about eight years now. Started out more in like the the fitness business coach kind of realm. And the agency is, evolved into what it is now to where we're full service digital marketing agency. We do story brand messaging, we do website design, sales funnels, search engine optimization, which we now say a search everywhere optimization, Google ads, and just marketing consulting just to help those brands really grow and dominate online.
00;07;49;08 - 00;08;14;07
Unknown
My wife and I, we own several businesses. So that's always my caveat is like, I'm just not the marketing guy given marketing advice of, like, ideas that I saw off of a YouTube video or heard at a conference. We own several local service based business. We own a functional medicine practice, we own a medical spa. So a lot of these things that we do, I kind of get an unfair advantage because I get to test them on my own business before I get to start leveraging them out to clients and everything.
00;08;14;07 - 00;08;36;05
Unknown
So. Well, I've and I have been married for 22 years. We got three amazing kids. We're both serial entrepreneurs and so just love helping small businesses and specifically here at the agency, like that's my calling, is just helping them reach the right people that they're called to serve. I love that. Well, we have something in common. My husband and I also work at our agency, and we've also been married for 22 years.
00;08;36;09 - 00;09;01;01
Unknown
Love it. Congratulations. Yes. That's awesome. And yeah, there's it takes a special, unique, relationship to be able to work together and, you know, be in the business together and all of the things. So, I mean, if you make it through that, you're pretty good. Yeah. You're pretty strong. No, no, no. Right. Yeah. That's that's definitely a something that is not for everybody.
00;09;01;01 - 00;09;31;07
Unknown
But we we seem to manage it. Right Sean. Yes, yes. So Sean, tell me about the types of tactics that you have implemented in your business and then also for your clients now, because we were talking about the, the, you know, you get to try before you buy, if you will, if there's a couple things that kind of come to mind specifically that you can share of what you did, kind of what you went through, the process that you tested and then, okay, you got it solid.
00;09;31;07 - 00;09;48;27
Unknown
You've got proof of performance, and now you can take that to your client. What maybe are a couple things that kind of come to mind that you would like to share about. Yeah. So I I'll give you a few examples here. So one is like a very, very easy thing that anybody can do, but something that's called just like a missed call text back.
00;09;48;28 - 00;10;09;23
Unknown
So think about all the times that whenever you're thinking of local services speed delete is very, very key. So if somebody is looking for a plumber or a roof or an HVAC technician, they are just going to go or chat whatever they're doing and they're just starting at the top of the list and they're just dialing. And whichever one is going to answer first is going to get the lead most likely.
00;10;09;25 - 00;10;30;12
Unknown
So if you don't, maybe you're busy because business is good. That's awesome. Well, if you don't have some type of automation set up to at least engage that person in conversation, most likely you're going to lose it because by the time your person does get off the phone, handles whatever they are just handling with, and then calls the person back, they've probably already called 2 to 3 other people in that in that time.
00;10;30;15 - 00;10;45;24
Unknown
So what we did is I actually this one of those things where we took from one industry, put it into another that's very popular in the home services, but we were able to take that and put it into the med spa niche for what we own. And that was dramatically helpful with bookings, because a lot of times people are sick.
00;10;45;25 - 00;11;01;12
Unknown
They just want an IV bag or they're looking for a special, specific treatment that several people in the city own or offer. They can just sit there and as soon as they call the business and you don't pick up, it immediately fires up. A text says, hey, thank you for calling. Well, spot IV, sorry miss your call. How can I help?
00;11;01;13 - 00;11;20;17
Unknown
And so instead of the person having to wait for a call back now instead of them calling your competition, they're sitting there and they're they're texting you back. And so that just gives us more of that information. So as soon as the person is off the call, they can follow up with that person and start that conversation. That's another thing that's been really good is Google reviews.
00;11;20;19 - 00;11;36;14
Unknown
We have an amazing staff that works for us. Our nurses are amazing. I love them, but they've got a lot to go on and a lot to do. So they're not thinking about the importance of Google reviews and how we always need to be asking our customers for us, so you can have the little QR thing at your front desk, a little tap to leave a review.
00;11;36;15 - 00;12;03;15
Unknown
You can even hope that the that the staff is going to ask for a review every single time. Most likely they're not. So if we can have some type of automation to where whenever that ticket is closed, invoice complete, whatever you're triggering event is, then we want to go and we want to ask for a Google review. And this is one of the things that we tested that we found out kind of the the sweet spot for the formula, because I think at most some people are.
00;12;03;16 - 00;12;24;18
Unknown
Yeah, I've got that. I as soon as somebody checks out it sends them a Google review request. Well, what we found out with all of our testing is we actually had to ask three times, three days in part of each ask to get the majority of the the reviews. So what we what we do is whenever we ask, whenever the initial trigger happens, we ask for the review.
00;12;24;20 - 00;12;48;22
Unknown
Then if they haven't left us a review in three days, we send another variation of that message to text and email again. Then same thing. Number three days. If they haven't left, send them another variation of that text and email. What we've found is out of all of those requests that only about out of the people that left a review, only about 10% of them came from the first.
00;12;48;24 - 00;13;11;29
Unknown
The first ask the the other 90% of the reviews that we got are coming from that second or third ask. The other thing that we learned is how so really works for local service based businesses, because it's changed a lot, especially in the AI age. And so even as at our agency, we don't call it search engine optimization anymore.
00;13;12;00 - 00;13;43;19
Unknown
It's search everywhere optimization. So doing things that traditionally would only be done at bigger enterprise type businesses and seeing how they impact things like showing up in AI overviews and LLM visibility, because normally, like a local plumber is not thinking about, hey, I need to do some digital PR, but now seeing how that stuff is impacting and influencing not only just search engine result rankings, but showing up in ChatGPT in these LLM overviews and stuff.
00;13;43;20 - 00;14;05;16
Unknown
That's where they're pulling and citing this information. So being able to see how those different aspects tie in to just a completely different what would normally be a traditional SEO strategy of just keywords and blogs and maybe a little link building. Yeah, that's, that's really beneficial. And cross platforms and, and like you said SEO everything everywhere.
00;14;05;18 - 00;14;28;12
Unknown
Right. You know to show up in Gemini and show up in ChatGPT and perplexity, I mean all the places. And I think Google just announced to that they're, you know, integrating Gemini for shopping and like universally everywhere, everything will mostly be Gemini. So like, yeah, there's still a need for SEO but in a different way, right, to get to where we want to go.
00;14;28;14 - 00;14;47;04
Unknown
Yeah. What? That's why we I don't want to, like, pigeonhole anybody into thinking like, SC what SEO is. And it is not about the search engine. It's search everywhere. Because now, even like social platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, they're being indexed with their content. You know, people are going to chat to to look for service providers in their area.
00;14;47;04 - 00;15;15;14
Unknown
So if you have a good holistic SEO strategy, it's not just trying to trick or hacking algorithms. So you show up in Google, but making sure that you're being clear and you're proving it to all these customers and crawlers. So you're showing up all the places. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So when, a new client comes to you and they're like, I just need to get more leads or I just need to get more, you know, butts and seats, if you will.
00;15;15;16 - 00;15;37;20
Unknown
What's kind of the process that you start off with to get your new clients onboarded and just really kind of go through the kind of the details of what it is that they need. Yeah, great. So what we do is at our agency, we have something called the Marketing Domination Framework. And so that's what we put through all of our local service based clients to make sure that they grow their business and they dominate their industry.
00;15;37;23 - 00;15;54;22
Unknown
I preface that to say, when we tell you that you're going to dominate your industry, it doesn't mean we're going to crush the competition and beat everybody down. No. For us dominating, I, I believe that entrepreneurship is a call. And so if you're called to do something, you're called to do it with excellence. So for us, dominating means helping your marketing thrive with excellence.
00;15;54;22 - 00;16;11;12
Unknown
We don't want to just get a few more leads, like, we want you to do the best version of you. And so that's what that's what this means. So we do this with this marketing domination framework, and it all revolves around the concept of a sales funnel. We want to help you build a sales funnel, fill a sales funnel and then optimize a sales funnel.
00;16;11;14 - 00;16;33;02
Unknown
And so people need to understand what we mean by a sales funnel. So I sells funnel is not a style of landing page. It is not a software like a click funnels or high level go high level. It is a relationship journey. So in that sells funnel there's several key aspects. The first is your branding. We want to make sure that you have really clear branding, not just the visual, but with the words that you say.
00;16;33;02 - 00;16;49;27
Unknown
So I'm a certified store brand coaching guide. That is the messaging framework that we use for helping to solidify and create that brand. The next part of our sales funnel is a website, right? We want our website to be our greatest salesperson, so it should be collecting leads and making us money. And if it's not doing that, it's just a pretty digital billboard.
00;16;50;01 - 00;17;10;20
Unknown
The third thing that we want to have in our sales funnel is some type of lead capture. A lead generator you think of, like the traditional like pop up. Enter your email here for a PDF. It can be that or so much more. From quizzes to mini courses to video series to to discounts and stuff like that. Just having something to capture the information of those people that weren't quite ready to commit to buy your product or service yet.
00;17;10;24 - 00;17;28;13
Unknown
Then we want to make sure that we have some type of automated sequence that is following up with those people that didn't book. We are not relying on automation to grow our business. The point of the automation and leveraging AI in the business is to capture the people that fell through the cracks. Human touch is still always going to win.
00;17;28;15 - 00;17;43;05
Unknown
I'll die on that hill for a long time. I think that the AI and the automation is great to make sure people don't fall through the cracks, but if you're relying on that and you're frustrated that your business is stagnated, that's because guess what? People love people love people. People love humans. So be human. Connect to those people.
00;17;43;10 - 00;18;00;14
Unknown
Then the next thing that we need for our sales funnel is we need some type of a database. We need a CRM, we need some place to collect all of this information. The book calls the leads that they come in. So we're storing that information. And it's not just getting sent to an admins front desk inbox, but we're storing all of this so we can follow up with those people.
00;18;00;15 - 00;18;19;01
Unknown
And then the last part of our sales funnel we call just like your digital storefront. So it's making sure all your social profiles are built out, your your directory listings, your Google business profile and everything. That is what needs to be built. So then we can even do any type of real marketing with SEO and Google ads and stuff like that to start optimizing it.
00;18;19;01 - 00;18;41;10
Unknown
So when we get a new client, we know that we're going to run them through that. But I think that what people don't understand is whenever they are coming because like, yeah, I'm a I am an HVAC company and I'm looking for some new leads. There's two things that you really need to look at to help understand how long it's going to take to get those things to work.
00;18;41;11 - 00;19;08;24
Unknown
So first is where you're at and then where you want to go and then what the competition's doing. So a lot of businesses, they don't actually know where they're at. They have no idea, especially in the digital world. Well, how many people are going to my website? What are those people doing once they are on my website? Are they do I have a lead issue or do I have a conversion issue, which means like, do I have an issue with getting people on the website, or do I have an issue of people getting to take action once they're on the website?
00;19;08;24 - 00;19;28;00
Unknown
Because if you don't know what is working or what's not working, you don't want to have an agency just come in and just change everything because it might mess up what was working. So we need to have that baseline set of data, which I think is so important that unfortunately we found like during our onboarding process is like most of them like, wait, what's Google Analytics?
00;19;28;00 - 00;19;48;02
Unknown
I don't think I have Google Search Console. Like what? Like you need to have that stuff or how do you know what's going on? So so we need to know know that. The second thing is we need to know where you want to go. And so I have a very much dominate, grow, win type mindset. But guess what?
00;19;48;03 - 00;20;05;16
Unknown
It's not my business. So how I might want to grow and scale a business is different from the business owner. So making sure that we're really aligned with them like okay, where do you want to take this? How big do you want to make this? Do you see yourself exiting from the business? Are we trying to replace ourselves, or are we just trying to create better systems and more lead flow for for you yourself?
00;20;05;16 - 00;20;21;28
Unknown
And so really making sure that we're aligned on that strategy because that's going to be, you know, different execution on some of the stuff that we're going to be doing. And then the third one, and this is the hardest thing to just get initial data on from the get go, because you have to track it over time. But what's the competition doing?
00;20;21;29 - 00;20;53;19
Unknown
Right. So you can tell me right now where you're at from your benchmark data, you can tell me where you want to go, but we really don't know what your competition is really doing until we track it over time. So especially when it comes to things like SEO and knowing what your competition is doing is key. Because if you think about SEO, there's certain tactics and things that we need to do to to grow in those things, like adding links, citations, brand mentions, adding content to the website, new landing pages, service pages, locations page, all of those things that need to be done.
00;20;53;21 - 00;21;16;06
Unknown
Sko is about being clear and proving it. So if this is my my fitness analogy I use sometimes if we're going to run the marathon of entrepreneurship and we've been on the couch for five years and we're competing against somebody that's been running, you know, the Boston Marathon every single year and their way ahead of us. It doesn't matter what training plan we do if we can't close that gap.
00;21;16;06 - 00;21;32;21
Unknown
So part of SEO and getting to know how long it's going to work is where is your competition and what are they doing? Because if they are adding the exact same amount of content pages and the same quantity and quality of links to the your to their website as you are each month, well, that gap still always going to be there.
00;21;32;22 - 00;21;58;29
Unknown
So being able to manage and set those expectations helps us to communicate to the clients like, okay, this is what you're doing, this is what they're doing. If we want to pass them, this is what we're going to have to do to get there. The other place that I really see that is with ad speed, because if you haven't done if you're a local service business and you've never done like Google ad spend, it can kind of be a harsh reality check of what some of your competition is willing to spend to acquire those customers.
00;21;58;29 - 00;22;16;14
Unknown
And so really just making sure that we have that benchmark also to manage expectations because, listen, I think that we're pretty awesome with what we do, but we're not going to get your results the next day. Like there's not. Imagine people think that there's like this keypad back here. They're like, oh, you're paying for SEO. I'm going to push the magic button that tells everybody about your website.
00;22;16;16 - 00;22;31;06
Unknown
Now, I know it doesn't. It doesn't work that way. So having those metrics really help us to one, just make sure it's the right fit for for us for for working with them, but also just manage expectations of like, hey, here's the plan. This is what we're going to do and this how long it's going to take. Yeah.
00;22;31;13 - 00;22;53;09
Unknown
And I think that that is a very valid point that people just want instant gratification, just like, you know, the speed to lead. They want they want it now. They want everybody to start calling them right away. And you're right, it takes some time for the everything to to do the learning to understand, you know, what works, what doesn't work, what to stop, what to start, what to keep, what tweak all those things for sure.
00;22;53;11 - 00;23;15;03
Unknown
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00;23;15;03 - 00;23;44;04
Unknown
Whether you're launching your first episode or your season podcaster, we got you covered. Visit today to learn how we can help you produce, record, and share your story with the world. Your podcast deserves to be puttering. The other thing I was thinking about is the other component in there that we do a lot of is video, and with the subtitles and making videos part of the content strategy and helping to drive that traffic.
00;23;44;04 - 00;24;05;20
Unknown
Right. And then keeping people on the website longer because they're watching a video and putting those components in there as a part of the strategy. Do you do you do a lot with video as well? At our agency, no, we sub that out because I do think that that is key. Like if you I, I always push our clients to try to do one of two, one of two things, if not both.
00;24;05;20 - 00;24;27;21
Unknown
One is video content. You need that on your website. It helps dramatically because one of the, the pillars of of having a good holistic SEO strategy is something called your user experience or, or your time on page like Google knows if somebody is looking for dentist near me and they show your website, Google can tell if somebody clicks right back off because your website wasn't engaging, you didn't have clear calls to action and stuff.
00;24;27;22 - 00;24;59;17
Unknown
So by having, yeah, video content that showcases a walk through the facility, the the lead practitioner, the service providers talking about what they do, that is key, especially in the social world too, right. Being able to take that video and distribute it all over social. But the thing that I really love is when we can get, local service businesses to do a video podcast, because I think that is a key way to be able to pull, tons of their expertise out of them without having them to sit there and, like, type out lots of content and stuff like that.
00;24;59;17 - 00;25;16;26
Unknown
And I think it's one of the greatest returns of investment on their time to be able to pull out their expertise. So then my team or whatever agency you're working with can now use that for content writing on the website to have your unique perspective. So it's not just whatever we could find on Google or Claude or ChatGPT and stuff.
00;25;16;26 - 00;25;42;11
Unknown
It's your way of doing things, and I think it's one of the greatest ways to do it is with like a video podcast. It's perfect. And then you can repurpose that content and like you said, put it on blog post, do it like audio grams and little snippets or things that you can cut out. And then the other thing is, testimonials and having other people talk about the business or talk about them because now they're taking their own words and they're helping kind of accelerate that word of mouth.
00;25;42;11 - 00;26;10;07
Unknown
And so we've been doing quite a few testimonials lately, and just short little snippets of people saying how awesome and how great they are, and then rewarding those people who give testimonials. And that is definitely I mean, I hadn't thought about doing it for a dentist, like you said, or like, you know, a med spa, but that could be a little, a little piece of gold that you could use to to continue on getting other people talking about you just as much as, you know, the business owner talking about themselves.
00;26;10;08 - 00;26;26;22
Unknown
Right. And that because that's one of the things with SEO is you have to prove it. So how do Google it? Google these crawlers? They're not going to guess. Well, I wonder if that patient got good results or or how many people have they worked with. Like that's why getting reviews is so important. And if you can get video testimonials.
00;26;26;25 - 00;26;49;25
Unknown
Oh yeah, that is huge. Because think again. Think about this. Very few of your competition. If you go to their website, have video testimonials or if so, they're from five, ten years ago whenever the website first launched and they're not continually doing them. So if you're able to work with somebody that can provide with up to date fresh video testimonials, that's going to be huge.
00;26;49;26 - 00;27;14;12
Unknown
Not just for SEO, but just for conversions on your site. Well, and I was just going to share, like because Google bought YouTube, you do video testimonials and you put them on YouTube. Sometimes those YouTube results will actually show up in the Google results page. And then it has a little screenshot of the video, right? And that sometimes people will click on even more because there's an image next to the search results.
00;27;14;16 - 00;27;44;01
Unknown
And now I'll be curious how video will be incorporated into all of these. You know, ChatGPT and and Gemini, because I think that there's some value, especially if there's subtitles, because then, you know, the bots of the world or the agents can read the titles or what's being said in the videos. I think that there's huge opportunity for video and like the the words and the verbiage that's going on screen to be read and then those get served up.
00;27;44;01 - 00;28;01;14
Unknown
What do you think? Yes. And it's already happening. So if you look at like AI overviews inside of like Gemini and stuff, whenever you're looking at Google, the most common sourced place is YouTube. Because like you said, yeah, Google owns YouTube. It's the second largest search engine in the world. And so when they're looking at that, they're not just because because of how it's connected.
00;28;01;14 - 00;28;38;14
Unknown
They're not just looking at the description and the title. They're actually able to read the transcript to get context from that thing. So yeah, all of your, your that's why I love the video podcast, root cells, videos, customers testimonials. Because these AI platforms, they can actually read that and they are pulling it into citing it. So where where I think there's such a big opportunity for stuff like that with a lot of these little overviews and stuff is we have dentist office, plumbers, lawyers that are getting clients from things like ChatGPT now, and they are dramatically higher conversion rates because of the amount of the context of the referral.
00;28;38;14 - 00;29;04;27
Unknown
So you go to Google and you type in like roofer near me, right? It's going to just list the people that Matt packs, going to be the ones close to you with the most reviews. And then down the bottom is going to be some of the legacy businesses that have just done SEO for a long time. Well, inside of L like ChatGPT, there's a new, fresh opportunity because what it does is it has so much context of the person doing the chat that it is has a different referral system.
00;29;04;27 - 00;29;25;25
Unknown
So think about this. All the conversations you've had with ChatGPT from maybe like personal beliefs to favorites to your favorite recipe to restaurants in the area. So it knows so much in so many data points about you. So when you start asking it, hey, I've got this, I've got a leak in my house, it already probably kind of knows, like, hey, you're probably in this neighborhood, you value these things.
00;29;25;25 - 00;29;42;04
Unknown
And so if the business, the more this is where it ultimately comes down to being super clear and taking all of the things that are happening in the real world and putting them on your website, your random blog article about something that a local business event that you did actually helps and impacts. All that stuff feeds the LMS.
00;29;42;04 - 00;29;59;25
Unknown
So whenever that searcher is on chat, having these long chat threads, when it refers you, it has so much context because it's like, hey, you know, maybe it's maybe it's something as simple as like, hey, it sounds like it knows that you're a Christian, for example. And like, maybe this business posted something about, a church event that they sponsored.
00;29;59;25 - 00;30;19;21
Unknown
It might recommend them over the competition just because of all the context that it's given you. So whenever somebody does get that referral from chat, they are converting so much higher because it's a much more curated response than versus just traditional Google SERPs. These people have the most reviews and these people have the most like, you know, backlinks on their website.
00;30;19;24 - 00;30;48;27
Unknown
I love that so much. There's so many possibilities and all the things we could talk about this all day, right? Sean, I love it I do, yeah, yeah I guess okay. So quick, quick question. What tools would you recommend that our listeners look into if they haven't already? What are some of the kind of the tools that you've been really using or digging into or, you know, loving lately for creating this or marketing like or data like what?
00;30;48;27 - 00;31;06;09
Unknown
What specifically? Well, let's maybe just kind of in context of what we've been talking about, like you had earlier said, not necessarily go high level or Clickfunnels, but are there any kind of specific things that you subscribe to that would be like, you've got to check this out because it's so cool or, you know, something that comes to mind?
00;31;06;10 - 00;31;32;02
Unknown
Okay. So yeah, so I, we, we I always tell people I'm tool agnostic because a tool is a tool. But from an agency, in order for us to have really good systems, we're certain tools that we use. So I do really like, the platform go high level for a lot of things for clients. And this is one thing that I think that you can understand, if you haven't heard of it, go high level is like an all in one marketing suite.
00;31;32;02 - 00;31;53;20
Unknown
You can do like social posting, email marketing, phone system. You can build it websites. Yeah, to a text messaging AI agent. You can do every like almost everything you can think of in marketing. It can do, but it doesn't mean you have to do every part of it. Because I again, we work with because we own them to like we work with medical practices and like, well, there's a certain EMR that I have to use, so I don't want to jump ship.
00;31;53;24 - 00;32;13;19
Unknown
That's fine. You don't have to like a tool, as only is going to be as good as your ability to use it and leverage it anyway. And so like, I love high level for most small businesses, for their phone system, for the two way text messaging, for the email campaigns, for the Google review, automation, reputation management. I think it is an amazing platform for that.
00;32;13;21 - 00;32;32;09
Unknown
It can integrate with so many different tools, so it doesn't matter what other, you know, booking software you're on, whether it be like a service titan for the home services or like traditional EMR and stuff in the medical field or even accounting softwares, the all tie into that and you can automate and trigger things different ways. And you can have one database.
00;32;32;14 - 00;32;53;16
Unknown
Yeah, you can have one database that's maybe just like marketing. And then once somebody becomes a patient becomes a client, you can plug them into something else. I really, really love Claude. It's just as an AI platform. That's the one that we use internally the most, just because it has the.
00;32;53;18 - 00;33;16;10
Unknown
For us in our use case, we have found that it's the best results in everything. So, like, even with Claude, what we do is we've built out for our team just a second brain. So it is like a collective database that we can share from our team. So we have almost infinite memory, because if you think about things like ChatGPT and even just standard Claude, there's kind of a finite amount of memory.
00;33;16;10 - 00;33;33;01
Unknown
Even if you do things like projects and stuff like that, it can still only remember so much. But one of the things that we've done that's really, I think pretty cool is building out this second brain. So as our team is writing things, this second brain is storing all of the transcripts from our client meetings. It's storing it has access.
00;33;33;01 - 00;33;58;03
Unknown
We've got it connected to like our SEO platforms and stuff that we use. So it's got access to their first party data inside of like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. It's got access to their Google Drive and the shared files that we have. So if we even do, this is how we're able to to supercharge even just content writing for our clients when we go to write content for them, it's not just a random, hey Claude, write me a blog post for plumbing tips.
00;33;58;03 - 00;34;17;01
Unknown
It has the tone of voice because it's got every single call recording with the client. It knows little details about their business that you can't even find online. It's also got access to their first party data, so it's not guessing rankings. It is looking at how Google Search Console is currently ranking Google Analytics, page views and stuff like that.
00;34;17;02 - 00;34;37;12
Unknown
So it knows so much more context as I was writing. So I think that with using Claude, using, a go high level with all of these tools, they're only going to work as good as you implement and leverage them, because if you just use it right out of the box, you might be frustrated or you might not good, good results.
00;34;37;14 - 00;35;01;11
Unknown
But with all of these tools, what I'm starting to see is how they connect and integrate together is what's key, and your ability to feed all of them. Context gets you better results. So like the high level, the more social accounts you connect to it, the more data points that you give it, the better and the more things that you can automate and take off your play versus like even same things with like Claude and ChatGPT.
00;35;01;12 - 00;35;22;14
Unknown
The more context you can give it, the better data points and everything that you're going to get from that as well. Oh, I love that so much. Awesome, Sean, thank you for all the nuggets of wisdom and things that you shared today. I think that this will definitely be a well listened to episode. And I appreciate all, all the awesome information that you shared.
00;35;22;16 - 00;35;42;24
Unknown
Sean, how can people get a hold of you? Yeah, that's the way it would be. The website, it's Sean Garner SENGARNERCO Sean Garner. We got the Marketing Domination podcast. If you want to hear me talk about random marketing stuff like this, you can check that out there but specific for your audience. If they go to Sean Garner Marketing Expedition.
00;35;42;27 - 00;36;02;01
Unknown
We talked about this earlier, so I want to make sure that everybody gets it. But if they go to Sean Garner Marketing Expedition, we'll actually give you the template messages that we use for those Google reviews. We talked about having those three emails and those three text messages three days apart. We will give you the complete wireframes, show you how to even set up the automations and stuff yourself.
00;36;02;03 - 00;36;20;16
Unknown
Just go to that place page Sean marketing expedition. And that way you can start getting some more reviews for your business. Oh well, thank you so much for that. And I definitely I want to use that too. I think that's awesome I love it I love it. Well thank you again, Sean. Any last words of wisdom you want to share before we part ways today?
00;36;20;19 - 00;36;44;28
Unknown
Just go out there and take action. Like I said you are. If you are an entrepreneur, it is a calling on your life. So you don't want to live out your life's calling in a state of mediocrity. Go out there and take action so you can connect with and serve the people you're called to serve, because there are people that are dealing with a problem that only you can solve, or that you are on their task list, right, and that they are specific assigned to you.
00;36;44;28 - 00;37;02;15
Unknown
So go out there. Don't be afraid. Take action so you can connect with the right people and serve them. I love that. Thank you again. Sean, for joining me today. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. And for those of you listening, the best thing that you can do for Sean and I is share this with others that you know, that need to hear what he had to say.
00;37;02;17 - 00;37;24;12
Unknown
And until next time, everybody enjoy your marketing journey. Thanks for listening to the Marketing Expedition podcast. Want to continue the journey? Don't miss out on new episodes. Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00;37;24;15 - 00;37;45;16
Unknown
Wouldn't it be great if there was one place you can go to get all the latest information and tips about marketing and advertising? The marketing expedition community is that place. People like you gather in our online community to build relationships with others and find the latest marketing trends, tactics, tools and technology. We help you build your brand and your bottom line.
00;37;45;19 - 00;37;50;27
Unknown
Start your adventure today. Visit themarketingexpedition.com to find out more.
Unknown
We are not relying on automation to grow our business. The point of the automation and leveraging AI in the business is to capture the people that fell through the cracks. Human touch is still always going to win. I'll die on that hill for a long time. I think that the AI and the automation is great to make sure people don't fall through the cracks, but if you're relying on that and you're frustrated that your business is stagnated, that's because guess what?
00;00;22;21 - 00;00;33;14
Unknown
People love. People love people. People love humans. So be human. Connect to those people.
00;00;33;16 - 00;01;00;27
Unknown
Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast, an auditory journey through the latest in marketing, branding and advertising. Now here's your marketing expedition guide, Rhea Allen. On this episode of the Marketing Expedition podcast. I get to speak with Shawn Garner, and he's an entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and the founder of Sean Garner Consulting, a full service agency and fractional CMO partner for local service based businesses.
00;01;01;02 - 00;01;44;07
Unknown
With over a decade of hands on experience, Sean has helped health and wellness companies, medical clinics, law firms, coaches, consultants and home service providers grow with clarity, confidence and consistent lead generation. Drawing from his background as a gym owner, firefighter and faith driven family man, Sean understands the realities of running a business while juggling life's priorities. His superpower is simplifying marketing, turning confusing tactics into clear, actionable steps that drive real growth, whether it's through story, brand messaging, website design, or sales funnel strategy, Shawn empowers business owners to take control of their marketing and become the trusted go to choice in their market.
00;01;44;10 - 00;02;06;01
Unknown
We are going to talk about all kinds of things. Oh my gosh, you guys are in for such a treat. I know I learned lots of things and we got to talk. Oh my gosh. We just got to geek out about marketing and and SEO and everything. So yeah. Stay tuned for that. But first, it's time for your marketing essentials, the basics that you need to help you continue to build your brand and your bottom line.
00;02;06;08 - 00;02;32;29
Unknown
For this week's topic, I wanted to dig in a little bit more talking about universal commerce protocol on Google. So use or Universal Commerce protocol is expanding into new industries, and it's going to start with the lodging and food industry. Right now. You can join the waitlist and be a part of this, but it's going to become something that will be universal.
00;02;33;01 - 00;03;11;12
Unknown
It'll maintain ways that now will universally be able to standardize, ways that we use commerce, and empowering us to turn on AI interactions into instant sales. So thinking about how you can prepare yourself for this, and adopting the UCP or Universal Commerce Protocol to enable the agent actions on AI mode in Google search and Gemini, where people can start buying with buying direct from those results that are served in the Gemini or the search results.
00;03;11;12 - 00;03;42;00
Unknown
So thinking about how your brand in ways that you can use this to your advantage, because I'm sure more and more will be continuously rolled out as we learn more about this, as people are shopping online and being able to get results in how you as a brand can be the merchant of record to keep all your customer data and relationships in one place, in this universal merchant center that's going to be happening.
00;03;42;00 - 00;04;25;18
Unknown
And you can use the existing merchant center if you have if you are, you know, using these tools and it can do the merchant center account shopping feeds will capture those high intent customers during their discovery of what they're when they're using those AI mode and tools and modalities of being able to do that. And what you see will unlock is the access to those users on those surfaces, like the AI mode in Google search, in Gemini, in the Gemini web web application, and what is being promised to us as Google continues to evolve and announce more and more with the flexibility of the integration, we're going to be able to build shopper confidence at
00;04;25;18 - 00;04;51;17
Unknown
scale and relying on a system that's designed for trust and of course, the universal system. Right. The UCP will create a transparent accountability trail between the merchants, the credential providers, the payment services to help make sure that each transaction is secure every time it'll have made native checkout. So it'll integrate checkout logically, directly with the AI mode in Google Search and Gemini.
00;04;51;17 - 00;05;25;27
Unknown
And this default integration will truly unlock the full potential as products and services are being offered in. And as you see, expands and there's just going to have right into the the results, it'll be embedded checkout right inside of those results, and you'll have the ability to do optional and optimal customization and more specific paths for specific types of things that you want in goals that you're trying to create and and do.
00;05;25;27 - 00;05;47;17
Unknown
So it's going to be really awesome for, you know, brands that are highly bespoke and complex and, and has, you know, these complex checkout flows. But we'll have iframe based solutions right inside the results, which is going to make it even more convenient and easy for people to shop your brand and the the types of things that you can provide.
00;05;47;19 - 00;06;15;04
Unknown
So, just get ready to prepare yourselves or the people that you're working with on your sites and everything that you're doing online in a digital capacity by adopting the universal commercial or commerce protocol, universal Commerce protocol. And that way you can have this integration seamless between a generic commerce actions across all of the Google AI surfaces. So anyway, there's going to be a lot more on this.
00;06;15;04 - 00;06;39;18
Unknown
And we're just now getting, you know, kind of understanding what all of this means and how it's going to integrate what tech, you know, technology or tools and things that we want to do and what kind of tech stack and ways that will integrate with the things that our clients are already using. Anyway, lots to come on this, but I thought I would share just a little bit more about the you see universal commerce protocol.
00;06;39;24 - 00;06;49;07
Unknown
And now let's get into our interview with Sean.
00;06;49;09 - 00;07;18;29
Unknown
Welcome to the Marketing Expedition podcast. I'm your host, Rhea Allen. I'm the president and CEO of Peppershock Media and the founder of the Marketing Expedition community. And welcome to the show, Sean Garner. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and hopefully share some value with the audience today. Absolutely. Well, let's just get started a little bit more about you and kind of what got you to where you are now and some of the cool things you're working on and, and all of that.
00;07;19;01 - 00;07;49;06
Unknown
Tell us, tell us a little more about you, Sean. Yeah. So, Ben have had our agency, Sean Garner Consulting, for about eight years now. Started out more in like the the fitness business coach kind of realm. And the agency is, evolved into what it is now to where we're full service digital marketing agency. We do story brand messaging, we do website design, sales funnels, search engine optimization, which we now say a search everywhere optimization, Google ads, and just marketing consulting just to help those brands really grow and dominate online.
00;07;49;08 - 00;08;14;07
Unknown
My wife and I, we own several businesses. So that's always my caveat is like, I'm just not the marketing guy given marketing advice of, like, ideas that I saw off of a YouTube video or heard at a conference. We own several local service based business. We own a functional medicine practice, we own a medical spa. So a lot of these things that we do, I kind of get an unfair advantage because I get to test them on my own business before I get to start leveraging them out to clients and everything.
00;08;14;07 - 00;08;36;05
Unknown
So. Well, I've and I have been married for 22 years. We got three amazing kids. We're both serial entrepreneurs and so just love helping small businesses and specifically here at the agency, like that's my calling, is just helping them reach the right people that they're called to serve. I love that. Well, we have something in common. My husband and I also work at our agency, and we've also been married for 22 years.
00;08;36;09 - 00;09;01;01
Unknown
Love it. Congratulations. Yes. That's awesome. And yeah, there's it takes a special, unique, relationship to be able to work together and, you know, be in the business together and all of the things. So, I mean, if you make it through that, you're pretty good. Yeah. You're pretty strong. No, no, no. Right. Yeah. That's that's definitely a something that is not for everybody.
00;09;01;01 - 00;09;31;07
Unknown
But we we seem to manage it. Right Sean. Yes, yes. So Sean, tell me about the types of tactics that you have implemented in your business and then also for your clients now, because we were talking about the, the, you know, you get to try before you buy, if you will, if there's a couple things that kind of come to mind specifically that you can share of what you did, kind of what you went through, the process that you tested and then, okay, you got it solid.
00;09;31;07 - 00;09;48;27
Unknown
You've got proof of performance, and now you can take that to your client. What maybe are a couple things that kind of come to mind that you would like to share about. Yeah. So I I'll give you a few examples here. So one is like a very, very easy thing that anybody can do, but something that's called just like a missed call text back.
00;09;48;28 - 00;10;09;23
Unknown
So think about all the times that whenever you're thinking of local services speed delete is very, very key. So if somebody is looking for a plumber or a roof or an HVAC technician, they are just going to go or chat whatever they're doing and they're just starting at the top of the list and they're just dialing. And whichever one is going to answer first is going to get the lead most likely.
00;10;09;25 - 00;10;30;12
Unknown
So if you don't, maybe you're busy because business is good. That's awesome. Well, if you don't have some type of automation set up to at least engage that person in conversation, most likely you're going to lose it because by the time your person does get off the phone, handles whatever they are just handling with, and then calls the person back, they've probably already called 2 to 3 other people in that in that time.
00;10;30;15 - 00;10;45;24
Unknown
So what we did is I actually this one of those things where we took from one industry, put it into another that's very popular in the home services, but we were able to take that and put it into the med spa niche for what we own. And that was dramatically helpful with bookings, because a lot of times people are sick.
00;10;45;25 - 00;11;01;12
Unknown
They just want an IV bag or they're looking for a special, specific treatment that several people in the city own or offer. They can just sit there and as soon as they call the business and you don't pick up, it immediately fires up. A text says, hey, thank you for calling. Well, spot IV, sorry miss your call. How can I help?
00;11;01;13 - 00;11;20;17
Unknown
And so instead of the person having to wait for a call back now instead of them calling your competition, they're sitting there and they're they're texting you back. And so that just gives us more of that information. So as soon as the person is off the call, they can follow up with that person and start that conversation. That's another thing that's been really good is Google reviews.
00;11;20;19 - 00;11;36;14
Unknown
We have an amazing staff that works for us. Our nurses are amazing. I love them, but they've got a lot to go on and a lot to do. So they're not thinking about the importance of Google reviews and how we always need to be asking our customers for us, so you can have the little QR thing at your front desk, a little tap to leave a review.
00;11;36;15 - 00;12;03;15
Unknown
You can even hope that the that the staff is going to ask for a review every single time. Most likely they're not. So if we can have some type of automation to where whenever that ticket is closed, invoice complete, whatever you're triggering event is, then we want to go and we want to ask for a Google review. And this is one of the things that we tested that we found out kind of the the sweet spot for the formula, because I think at most some people are.
00;12;03;16 - 00;12;24;18
Unknown
Yeah, I've got that. I as soon as somebody checks out it sends them a Google review request. Well, what we found out with all of our testing is we actually had to ask three times, three days in part of each ask to get the majority of the the reviews. So what we what we do is whenever we ask, whenever the initial trigger happens, we ask for the review.
00;12;24;20 - 00;12;48;22
Unknown
Then if they haven't left us a review in three days, we send another variation of that message to text and email again. Then same thing. Number three days. If they haven't left, send them another variation of that text and email. What we've found is out of all of those requests that only about out of the people that left a review, only about 10% of them came from the first.
00;12;48;24 - 00;13;11;29
Unknown
The first ask the the other 90% of the reviews that we got are coming from that second or third ask. The other thing that we learned is how so really works for local service based businesses, because it's changed a lot, especially in the AI age. And so even as at our agency, we don't call it search engine optimization anymore.
00;13;12;00 - 00;13;43;19
Unknown
It's search everywhere optimization. So doing things that traditionally would only be done at bigger enterprise type businesses and seeing how they impact things like showing up in AI overviews and LLM visibility, because normally, like a local plumber is not thinking about, hey, I need to do some digital PR, but now seeing how that stuff is impacting and influencing not only just search engine result rankings, but showing up in ChatGPT in these LLM overviews and stuff.
00;13;43;20 - 00;14;05;16
Unknown
That's where they're pulling and citing this information. So being able to see how those different aspects tie in to just a completely different what would normally be a traditional SEO strategy of just keywords and blogs and maybe a little link building. Yeah, that's, that's really beneficial. And cross platforms and, and like you said SEO everything everywhere.
00;14;05;18 - 00;14;28;12
Unknown
Right. You know to show up in Gemini and show up in ChatGPT and perplexity, I mean all the places. And I think Google just announced to that they're, you know, integrating Gemini for shopping and like universally everywhere, everything will mostly be Gemini. So like, yeah, there's still a need for SEO but in a different way, right, to get to where we want to go.
00;14;28;14 - 00;14;47;04
Unknown
Yeah. What? That's why we I don't want to, like, pigeonhole anybody into thinking like, SC what SEO is. And it is not about the search engine. It's search everywhere. Because now, even like social platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram, they're being indexed with their content. You know, people are going to chat to to look for service providers in their area.
00;14;47;04 - 00;15;15;14
Unknown
So if you have a good holistic SEO strategy, it's not just trying to trick or hacking algorithms. So you show up in Google, but making sure that you're being clear and you're proving it to all these customers and crawlers. So you're showing up all the places. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So when, a new client comes to you and they're like, I just need to get more leads or I just need to get more, you know, butts and seats, if you will.
00;15;15;16 - 00;15;37;20
Unknown
What's kind of the process that you start off with to get your new clients onboarded and just really kind of go through the kind of the details of what it is that they need. Yeah, great. So what we do is at our agency, we have something called the Marketing Domination Framework. And so that's what we put through all of our local service based clients to make sure that they grow their business and they dominate their industry.
00;15;37;23 - 00;15;54;22
Unknown
I preface that to say, when we tell you that you're going to dominate your industry, it doesn't mean we're going to crush the competition and beat everybody down. No. For us dominating, I, I believe that entrepreneurship is a call. And so if you're called to do something, you're called to do it with excellence. So for us, dominating means helping your marketing thrive with excellence.
00;15;54;22 - 00;16;11;12
Unknown
We don't want to just get a few more leads, like, we want you to do the best version of you. And so that's what that's what this means. So we do this with this marketing domination framework, and it all revolves around the concept of a sales funnel. We want to help you build a sales funnel, fill a sales funnel and then optimize a sales funnel.
00;16;11;14 - 00;16;33;02
Unknown
And so people need to understand what we mean by a sales funnel. So I sells funnel is not a style of landing page. It is not a software like a click funnels or high level go high level. It is a relationship journey. So in that sells funnel there's several key aspects. The first is your branding. We want to make sure that you have really clear branding, not just the visual, but with the words that you say.
00;16;33;02 - 00;16;49;27
Unknown
So I'm a certified store brand coaching guide. That is the messaging framework that we use for helping to solidify and create that brand. The next part of our sales funnel is a website, right? We want our website to be our greatest salesperson, so it should be collecting leads and making us money. And if it's not doing that, it's just a pretty digital billboard.
00;16;50;01 - 00;17;10;20
Unknown
The third thing that we want to have in our sales funnel is some type of lead capture. A lead generator you think of, like the traditional like pop up. Enter your email here for a PDF. It can be that or so much more. From quizzes to mini courses to video series to to discounts and stuff like that. Just having something to capture the information of those people that weren't quite ready to commit to buy your product or service yet.
00;17;10;24 - 00;17;28;13
Unknown
Then we want to make sure that we have some type of automated sequence that is following up with those people that didn't book. We are not relying on automation to grow our business. The point of the automation and leveraging AI in the business is to capture the people that fell through the cracks. Human touch is still always going to win.
00;17;28;15 - 00;17;43;05
Unknown
I'll die on that hill for a long time. I think that the AI and the automation is great to make sure people don't fall through the cracks, but if you're relying on that and you're frustrated that your business is stagnated, that's because guess what? People love people love people. People love humans. So be human. Connect to those people.
00;17;43;10 - 00;18;00;14
Unknown
Then the next thing that we need for our sales funnel is we need some type of a database. We need a CRM, we need some place to collect all of this information. The book calls the leads that they come in. So we're storing that information. And it's not just getting sent to an admins front desk inbox, but we're storing all of this so we can follow up with those people.
00;18;00;15 - 00;18;19;01
Unknown
And then the last part of our sales funnel we call just like your digital storefront. So it's making sure all your social profiles are built out, your your directory listings, your Google business profile and everything. That is what needs to be built. So then we can even do any type of real marketing with SEO and Google ads and stuff like that to start optimizing it.
00;18;19;01 - 00;18;41;10
Unknown
So when we get a new client, we know that we're going to run them through that. But I think that what people don't understand is whenever they are coming because like, yeah, I'm a I am an HVAC company and I'm looking for some new leads. There's two things that you really need to look at to help understand how long it's going to take to get those things to work.
00;18;41;11 - 00;19;08;24
Unknown
So first is where you're at and then where you want to go and then what the competition's doing. So a lot of businesses, they don't actually know where they're at. They have no idea, especially in the digital world. Well, how many people are going to my website? What are those people doing once they are on my website? Are they do I have a lead issue or do I have a conversion issue, which means like, do I have an issue with getting people on the website, or do I have an issue of people getting to take action once they're on the website?
00;19;08;24 - 00;19;28;00
Unknown
Because if you don't know what is working or what's not working, you don't want to have an agency just come in and just change everything because it might mess up what was working. So we need to have that baseline set of data, which I think is so important that unfortunately we found like during our onboarding process is like most of them like, wait, what's Google Analytics?
00;19;28;00 - 00;19;48;02
Unknown
I don't think I have Google Search Console. Like what? Like you need to have that stuff or how do you know what's going on? So so we need to know know that. The second thing is we need to know where you want to go. And so I have a very much dominate, grow, win type mindset. But guess what?
00;19;48;03 - 00;20;05;16
Unknown
It's not my business. So how I might want to grow and scale a business is different from the business owner. So making sure that we're really aligned with them like okay, where do you want to take this? How big do you want to make this? Do you see yourself exiting from the business? Are we trying to replace ourselves, or are we just trying to create better systems and more lead flow for for you yourself?
00;20;05;16 - 00;20;21;28
Unknown
And so really making sure that we're aligned on that strategy because that's going to be, you know, different execution on some of the stuff that we're going to be doing. And then the third one, and this is the hardest thing to just get initial data on from the get go, because you have to track it over time. But what's the competition doing?
00;20;21;29 - 00;20;53;19
Unknown
Right. So you can tell me right now where you're at from your benchmark data, you can tell me where you want to go, but we really don't know what your competition is really doing until we track it over time. So especially when it comes to things like SEO and knowing what your competition is doing is key. Because if you think about SEO, there's certain tactics and things that we need to do to to grow in those things, like adding links, citations, brand mentions, adding content to the website, new landing pages, service pages, locations page, all of those things that need to be done.
00;20;53;21 - 00;21;16;06
Unknown
Sko is about being clear and proving it. So if this is my my fitness analogy I use sometimes if we're going to run the marathon of entrepreneurship and we've been on the couch for five years and we're competing against somebody that's been running, you know, the Boston Marathon every single year and their way ahead of us. It doesn't matter what training plan we do if we can't close that gap.
00;21;16;06 - 00;21;32;21
Unknown
So part of SEO and getting to know how long it's going to work is where is your competition and what are they doing? Because if they are adding the exact same amount of content pages and the same quantity and quality of links to the your to their website as you are each month, well, that gap still always going to be there.
00;21;32;22 - 00;21;58;29
Unknown
So being able to manage and set those expectations helps us to communicate to the clients like, okay, this is what you're doing, this is what they're doing. If we want to pass them, this is what we're going to have to do to get there. The other place that I really see that is with ad speed, because if you haven't done if you're a local service business and you've never done like Google ad spend, it can kind of be a harsh reality check of what some of your competition is willing to spend to acquire those customers.
00;21;58;29 - 00;22;16;14
Unknown
And so really just making sure that we have that benchmark also to manage expectations because, listen, I think that we're pretty awesome with what we do, but we're not going to get your results the next day. Like there's not. Imagine people think that there's like this keypad back here. They're like, oh, you're paying for SEO. I'm going to push the magic button that tells everybody about your website.
00;22;16;16 - 00;22;31;06
Unknown
Now, I know it doesn't. It doesn't work that way. So having those metrics really help us to one, just make sure it's the right fit for for us for for working with them, but also just manage expectations of like, hey, here's the plan. This is what we're going to do and this how long it's going to take. Yeah.
00;22;31;13 - 00;22;53;09
Unknown
And I think that that is a very valid point that people just want instant gratification, just like, you know, the speed to lead. They want they want it now. They want everybody to start calling them right away. And you're right, it takes some time for the everything to to do the learning to understand, you know, what works, what doesn't work, what to stop, what to start, what to keep, what tweak all those things for sure.
00;22;53;11 - 00;23;15;03
Unknown
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00;23;15;03 - 00;23;44;04
Unknown
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00;23;44;04 - 00;24;05;20
Unknown
Right. And then keeping people on the website longer because they're watching a video and putting those components in there as a part of the strategy. Do you do you do a lot with video as well? At our agency, no, we sub that out because I do think that that is key. Like if you I, I always push our clients to try to do one of two, one of two things, if not both.
00;24;05;20 - 00;24;27;21
Unknown
One is video content. You need that on your website. It helps dramatically because one of the, the pillars of of having a good holistic SEO strategy is something called your user experience or, or your time on page like Google knows if somebody is looking for dentist near me and they show your website, Google can tell if somebody clicks right back off because your website wasn't engaging, you didn't have clear calls to action and stuff.
00;24;27;22 - 00;24;59;17
Unknown
So by having, yeah, video content that showcases a walk through the facility, the the lead practitioner, the service providers talking about what they do, that is key, especially in the social world too, right. Being able to take that video and distribute it all over social. But the thing that I really love is when we can get, local service businesses to do a video podcast, because I think that is a key way to be able to pull, tons of their expertise out of them without having them to sit there and, like, type out lots of content and stuff like that.
00;24;59;17 - 00;25;16;26
Unknown
And I think it's one of the greatest returns of investment on their time to be able to pull out their expertise. So then my team or whatever agency you're working with can now use that for content writing on the website to have your unique perspective. So it's not just whatever we could find on Google or Claude or ChatGPT and stuff.
00;25;16;26 - 00;25;42;11
Unknown
It's your way of doing things, and I think it's one of the greatest ways to do it is with like a video podcast. It's perfect. And then you can repurpose that content and like you said, put it on blog post, do it like audio grams and little snippets or things that you can cut out. And then the other thing is, testimonials and having other people talk about the business or talk about them because now they're taking their own words and they're helping kind of accelerate that word of mouth.
00;25;42;11 - 00;26;10;07
Unknown
And so we've been doing quite a few testimonials lately, and just short little snippets of people saying how awesome and how great they are, and then rewarding those people who give testimonials. And that is definitely I mean, I hadn't thought about doing it for a dentist, like you said, or like, you know, a med spa, but that could be a little, a little piece of gold that you could use to to continue on getting other people talking about you just as much as, you know, the business owner talking about themselves.
00;26;10;08 - 00;26;26;22
Unknown
Right. And that because that's one of the things with SEO is you have to prove it. So how do Google it? Google these crawlers? They're not going to guess. Well, I wonder if that patient got good results or or how many people have they worked with. Like that's why getting reviews is so important. And if you can get video testimonials.
00;26;26;25 - 00;26;49;25
Unknown
Oh yeah, that is huge. Because think again. Think about this. Very few of your competition. If you go to their website, have video testimonials or if so, they're from five, ten years ago whenever the website first launched and they're not continually doing them. So if you're able to work with somebody that can provide with up to date fresh video testimonials, that's going to be huge.
00;26;49;26 - 00;27;14;12
Unknown
Not just for SEO, but just for conversions on your site. Well, and I was just going to share, like because Google bought YouTube, you do video testimonials and you put them on YouTube. Sometimes those YouTube results will actually show up in the Google results page. And then it has a little screenshot of the video, right? And that sometimes people will click on even more because there's an image next to the search results.
00;27;14;16 - 00;27;44;01
Unknown
And now I'll be curious how video will be incorporated into all of these. You know, ChatGPT and and Gemini, because I think that there's some value, especially if there's subtitles, because then, you know, the bots of the world or the agents can read the titles or what's being said in the videos. I think that there's huge opportunity for video and like the the words and the verbiage that's going on screen to be read and then those get served up.
00;27;44;01 - 00;28;01;14
Unknown
What do you think? Yes. And it's already happening. So if you look at like AI overviews inside of like Gemini and stuff, whenever you're looking at Google, the most common sourced place is YouTube. Because like you said, yeah, Google owns YouTube. It's the second largest search engine in the world. And so when they're looking at that, they're not just because because of how it's connected.
00;28;01;14 - 00;28;38;14
Unknown
They're not just looking at the description and the title. They're actually able to read the transcript to get context from that thing. So yeah, all of your, your that's why I love the video podcast, root cells, videos, customers testimonials. Because these AI platforms, they can actually read that and they are pulling it into citing it. So where where I think there's such a big opportunity for stuff like that with a lot of these little overviews and stuff is we have dentist office, plumbers, lawyers that are getting clients from things like ChatGPT now, and they are dramatically higher conversion rates because of the amount of the context of the referral.
00;28;38;14 - 00;29;04;27
Unknown
So you go to Google and you type in like roofer near me, right? It's going to just list the people that Matt packs, going to be the ones close to you with the most reviews. And then down the bottom is going to be some of the legacy businesses that have just done SEO for a long time. Well, inside of L like ChatGPT, there's a new, fresh opportunity because what it does is it has so much context of the person doing the chat that it is has a different referral system.
00;29;04;27 - 00;29;25;25
Unknown
So think about this. All the conversations you've had with ChatGPT from maybe like personal beliefs to favorites to your favorite recipe to restaurants in the area. So it knows so much in so many data points about you. So when you start asking it, hey, I've got this, I've got a leak in my house, it already probably kind of knows, like, hey, you're probably in this neighborhood, you value these things.
00;29;25;25 - 00;29;42;04
Unknown
And so if the business, the more this is where it ultimately comes down to being super clear and taking all of the things that are happening in the real world and putting them on your website, your random blog article about something that a local business event that you did actually helps and impacts. All that stuff feeds the LMS.
00;29;42;04 - 00;29;59;25
Unknown
So whenever that searcher is on chat, having these long chat threads, when it refers you, it has so much context because it's like, hey, you know, maybe it's maybe it's something as simple as like, hey, it sounds like it knows that you're a Christian, for example. And like, maybe this business posted something about, a church event that they sponsored.
00;29;59;25 - 00;30;19;21
Unknown
It might recommend them over the competition just because of all the context that it's given you. So whenever somebody does get that referral from chat, they are converting so much higher because it's a much more curated response than versus just traditional Google SERPs. These people have the most reviews and these people have the most like, you know, backlinks on their website.
00;30;19;24 - 00;30;48;27
Unknown
I love that so much. There's so many possibilities and all the things we could talk about this all day, right? Sean, I love it I do, yeah, yeah I guess okay. So quick, quick question. What tools would you recommend that our listeners look into if they haven't already? What are some of the kind of the tools that you've been really using or digging into or, you know, loving lately for creating this or marketing like or data like what?
00;30;48;27 - 00;31;06;09
Unknown
What specifically? Well, let's maybe just kind of in context of what we've been talking about, like you had earlier said, not necessarily go high level or Clickfunnels, but are there any kind of specific things that you subscribe to that would be like, you've got to check this out because it's so cool or, you know, something that comes to mind?
00;31;06;10 - 00;31;32;02
Unknown
Okay. So yeah, so I, we, we I always tell people I'm tool agnostic because a tool is a tool. But from an agency, in order for us to have really good systems, we're certain tools that we use. So I do really like, the platform go high level for a lot of things for clients. And this is one thing that I think that you can understand, if you haven't heard of it, go high level is like an all in one marketing suite.
00;31;32;02 - 00;31;53;20
Unknown
You can do like social posting, email marketing, phone system. You can build it websites. Yeah, to a text messaging AI agent. You can do every like almost everything you can think of in marketing. It can do, but it doesn't mean you have to do every part of it. Because I again, we work with because we own them to like we work with medical practices and like, well, there's a certain EMR that I have to use, so I don't want to jump ship.
00;31;53;24 - 00;32;13;19
Unknown
That's fine. You don't have to like a tool, as only is going to be as good as your ability to use it and leverage it anyway. And so like, I love high level for most small businesses, for their phone system, for the two way text messaging, for the email campaigns, for the Google review, automation, reputation management. I think it is an amazing platform for that.
00;32;13;21 - 00;32;32;09
Unknown
It can integrate with so many different tools, so it doesn't matter what other, you know, booking software you're on, whether it be like a service titan for the home services or like traditional EMR and stuff in the medical field or even accounting softwares, the all tie into that and you can automate and trigger things different ways. And you can have one database.
00;32;32;14 - 00;32;53;16
Unknown
Yeah, you can have one database that's maybe just like marketing. And then once somebody becomes a patient becomes a client, you can plug them into something else. I really, really love Claude. It's just as an AI platform. That's the one that we use internally the most, just because it has the.
00;32;53;18 - 00;33;16;10
Unknown
For us in our use case, we have found that it's the best results in everything. So, like, even with Claude, what we do is we've built out for our team just a second brain. So it is like a collective database that we can share from our team. So we have almost infinite memory, because if you think about things like ChatGPT and even just standard Claude, there's kind of a finite amount of memory.
00;33;16;10 - 00;33;33;01
Unknown
Even if you do things like projects and stuff like that, it can still only remember so much. But one of the things that we've done that's really, I think pretty cool is building out this second brain. So as our team is writing things, this second brain is storing all of the transcripts from our client meetings. It's storing it has access.
00;33;33;01 - 00;33;58;03
Unknown
We've got it connected to like our SEO platforms and stuff that we use. So it's got access to their first party data inside of like Google Search Console and Google Analytics. It's got access to their Google Drive and the shared files that we have. So if we even do, this is how we're able to to supercharge even just content writing for our clients when we go to write content for them, it's not just a random, hey Claude, write me a blog post for plumbing tips.
00;33;58;03 - 00;34;17;01
Unknown
It has the tone of voice because it's got every single call recording with the client. It knows little details about their business that you can't even find online. It's also got access to their first party data, so it's not guessing rankings. It is looking at how Google Search Console is currently ranking Google Analytics, page views and stuff like that.
00;34;17;02 - 00;34;37;12
Unknown
So it knows so much more context as I was writing. So I think that with using Claude, using, a go high level with all of these tools, they're only going to work as good as you implement and leverage them, because if you just use it right out of the box, you might be frustrated or you might not good, good results.
00;34;37;14 - 00;35;01;11
Unknown
But with all of these tools, what I'm starting to see is how they connect and integrate together is what's key, and your ability to feed all of them. Context gets you better results. So like the high level, the more social accounts you connect to it, the more data points that you give it, the better and the more things that you can automate and take off your play versus like even same things with like Claude and ChatGPT.
00;35;01;12 - 00;35;22;14
Unknown
The more context you can give it, the better data points and everything that you're going to get from that as well. Oh, I love that so much. Awesome, Sean, thank you for all the nuggets of wisdom and things that you shared today. I think that this will definitely be a well listened to episode. And I appreciate all, all the awesome information that you shared.
00;35;22;16 - 00;35;42;24
Unknown
Sean, how can people get a hold of you? Yeah, that's the way it would be. The website, it's Sean Garner SENGARNERCO Sean Garner. We got the Marketing Domination podcast. If you want to hear me talk about random marketing stuff like this, you can check that out there but specific for your audience. If they go to Sean Garner Marketing Expedition.
00;35;42;27 - 00;36;02;01
Unknown
We talked about this earlier, so I want to make sure that everybody gets it. But if they go to Sean Garner Marketing Expedition, we'll actually give you the template messages that we use for those Google reviews. We talked about having those three emails and those three text messages three days apart. We will give you the complete wireframes, show you how to even set up the automations and stuff yourself.
00;36;02;03 - 00;36;20;16
Unknown
Just go to that place page Sean marketing expedition. And that way you can start getting some more reviews for your business. Oh well, thank you so much for that. And I definitely I want to use that too. I think that's awesome I love it I love it. Well thank you again, Sean. Any last words of wisdom you want to share before we part ways today?
00;36;20;19 - 00;36;44;28
Unknown
Just go out there and take action. Like I said you are. If you are an entrepreneur, it is a calling on your life. So you don't want to live out your life's calling in a state of mediocrity. Go out there and take action so you can connect with and serve the people you're called to serve, because there are people that are dealing with a problem that only you can solve, or that you are on their task list, right, and that they are specific assigned to you.
00;36;44;28 - 00;37;02;15
Unknown
So go out there. Don't be afraid. Take action so you can connect with the right people and serve them. I love that. Thank you again. Sean, for joining me today. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right. And for those of you listening, the best thing that you can do for Sean and I is share this with others that you know, that need to hear what he had to say.
00;37;02;17 - 00;37;24;12
Unknown
And until next time, everybody enjoy your marketing journey. Thanks for listening to the Marketing Expedition podcast. Want to continue the journey? Don't miss out on new episodes. Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00;37;24;15 - 00;37;45;16
Unknown
Wouldn't it be great if there was one place you can go to get all the latest information and tips about marketing and advertising? The marketing expedition community is that place. People like you gather in our online community to build relationships with others and find the latest marketing trends, tactics, tools and technology. We help you build your brand and your bottom line.
00;37;45;19 - 00;37;50;27
Unknown
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