The Internet changed sales and marketing. That’s common knowledge. But, says Dave Orecchio, founder of Bristol Strategy, too many companies still struggle to take full advantage of all the ways online marketing can increase leads and boost profits.
Even worse, they throw a lot of money at solutions that are anything but.
Dave talks about the strategies to avoid and the digital marketing fundamentals that can set the stage for exponential growth. Simple techniques that get big results.
We also discuss…
- The simple way to figure out if your website brings in customers
- A sales-centered website content strategy
- Best practices in marketing automation
- What you must do when offering a new product or entering a new market
- And more
Listen now…
Mentioned in This Episode: www.bristolstrategy.com
Episode Transcript:
David Elmasian: Welcome to the Hub of Success. I’m your host, Dave Elmasian. Today I’m excited to have Dave Orecchio, owner of Bristol Strategy. Dave helps businesses trying to figure out why they are struggling with growth, why they’re not able to focus on the clients that matter the most.
Bristol Strategy is certified with HubSpot’s growth stack of automation solutions for marketing and sales. Dave’s a 30-plus years startup entrepreneur with extensive experience in sales and marketing. He has held C-level positions in numerous high-tech and engineering companies. His real-world experience and frustration with legacy sales and marketing efforts has led him to the creation of Bristol Strategy.
Welcome to the podcast, Dave.
Dave Orecchio: Thank you very much, David.
David Elmasian: I’m exhausted already with that intro and that opening, with all the stuff that you’re doing. We’re setting the bar pretty high when we say you’re going to uncover all the secrets to sales and marketing for every small business. So, I hope you’re prepared to … be able to deliver on that, Dave.
Dave Orecchio: Well, hopefully I won’t disappoint you, because we certainly wouldn’t want to do that.
David Elmasian: No, I don’t think we will. So, Dave, let’s roll back a little bit. When talking to a lot of business owners, I realize that many of them, myself including, we had kind of an a-ha moment when we said, “You know, this is a business. Maybe we’re working somewhere else, maybe we had recently departed another business, or another company, or another position.”
Was there one of those a-ha moments for you with your current company?
Dave Orecchio: Absolutely, and it’s interesting, because it’s something that evolved. So, as you mentioned, yeah, I’ve been in high-tech, sales, and marketing for many, many years. I actually have an engineering degree. I don’t know if this trend is where I-
David Elmasian: That’s too bad.
Dave Orecchio: … began things, so yeah-
David Elmasian: That’s really too bad. No, I’m joking.
Dave Orecchio: Actually, it turns out that in the high-tech world, when you’re in marketing, and you’re selling, you learn what matters to customers. Right? And there’s nothing better than a lesson carrying … being a quota-carrying sales rep. Where you have to meet the number every quarter to-
David Elmasian: And the number keeps changing. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, to generate a high level of focus on what matters, and what really turns the dial for a business.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: So, my evolution went from that, basically being a high-tech marketing and sales rep for high-tech businesses here, in the Boston area to becoming a CEO of a startup company, and doing all the things that an entrepreneur needs to do to figure out the business model, what’s working, what’s not working, and iterate until you’ve got something that actually does work.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And it basically resonates with the prospects. It was back when I was CEO of that startup that I had adopted the HubSpot platform. I was one of their earliest customers, and I adopted it mainly because I wanted the company’s dollars to be invested in engineering, to build the product, and I had done marketing before; so I figured I’d just do that myself, and I realized very quickly that it was very well-suited to creating content that attracted a buyer.
And I, by mistake, frankly, was doing inbound marketing without even knowing what inbound marketing … In fact, it was, at the time, well before inbound marketing was actually even a term.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? They figured that out after the fact.
David Elmasian: So, what time period are we talking about here, roughly?
Dave Orecchio: Well, it was between 2006, and 2011.
David Elmasian: Okay, all right. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: That’s when … the five years I ran that business.
So, once that business was sold off, what I did was I transitioned into management consulting. I did some turnaround work for big companies like Techtronics. They had a division that wasn’t performing. They asked me to come in, and turn that around.
And I also consulted with several Boston-area startups that needed to get leads.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And I looked at what they were doing, and I found that, over and over again, tech companies … And I focused initially on tech companies because those are the ones I had the technical background to support.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: They didn’t really know how to market what they were doing, and the industry had shifted because of the internet. Everything is available online, and they were doing everything wrong.
David Elmasian: So, let’s talk about that a little bit, that shift that you just mentioned. Paint a picture for those of us … maybe younger people that are listening that don’t know what the … And I’m doing air quotes for everybody, that don’t know what the old days were like.
What was sales and marketing? Again, briefly. What was it like in those days prior to everybody googling things, or what have you?
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, well, so if you think about it, back in the day, the information was controlled by the sales reps at most companies.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, if you had an important solution to a critical problem, you just needed to call … You’d have a target list of customers, you’d call the phone number that was listed, and you’d say, “I’d like … ” You know-
David Elmasian: And people would pick up.
Dave Orecchio: They’d answer the phone, and you’d say to the receptionist, you’d say, “Who is responsible for this particular thing at your company?”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And, she would say, “Oh, that’s John Smith, over in engineering.”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: “Could I speak to John?”
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: “Yeah, here’s his extension. I’ll transfer you now.”
David Elmasian: Ah, the old days.
Dave Orecchio: Right? And she would transfer you in, and you’d have a quick conversation with John Smith.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: You’d say, “Hey, John. Listen, my company does this. We address this critical problem that companies like yours have. Is that something that resonates with you at all?”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And John would say yes or no. He’d say, “Yeah, we have that problem,” or he’d say, “No, we’ve addressed it this way.” And what would happen there is if he said he’d had the problem then you’d have a sales opportunity. If he said he didn’t have the problem, then you learned of an element of your pitch that was not going to resonate and turn into a sale.
David Elmasian: There you go. Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, as time went on, as you talked to more and more people, you were refining your pitch.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: But also, you had access to the buyer, and later conversations with John Smith … You’d stop with John Smith, and he would … he’d want to learn about the problem that you addressed, and then later on, he’d want to learn about your company, and after that, if everything lined up, he’d want to buy your product.
David Elmasian: Right, yup. And so, that old way of doing it had some advantages, and obviously was very effective, and you know, not to change the topic, but I think it’s relevant to this. My first career … real career, was in real estate property management.
And as a property manager back in those days, in that … And we’re talking late ’80s, early ’90s. I would get calls from sales people, and so I … I’ll do a quick story on one, because I think it’s relevant to this conversation.
The guy sold light bulbs for a living.
Dave Orecchio: Wow.
David Elmasian: So, now I’m property manager. I buy a lot of light bulbs.
Dave Orecchio: Right.
David Elmasian: And my view of light bulbs was, you know, go to the local hardware store, or maybe I had a supplier, or you know. This was even like before Home Depot was prevalent, but they were out there.
Well, this guy would call up, and like you said, he’d get me, and he’d say, “Hey, do you need any light bulbs?” And I was like, “No.” “Okay,” hang up. 30 days later, “Hey, you need any light bulbs?” “No.” “Okay.” Hang up.
30 days later, “Need any light bulbs?” “How much do the light bulbs cost?” “Oh, okay, so … ” He got me talking a little more. And long story short, after about a six-month process, guess where I bought all my light bulbs from?
Dave Orecchio: From him.
David Elmasian: From him. Right. Now, he recognized that I was his ideal customer. Right? Because I did buy a lot of light bulbs, amongst many other things. He was able to find me because … How was he … Well, you help our listeners. How did he find me in those days? If you’re going to take an educated guess.
Dave Orecchio: Phone book.
David Elmasian: Yeah, bingo! Right. I was in the phone book.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Right, and … He rang directly to my number.
Dave Orecchio: And that phone book was actually made of paper.
David Elmasian: Right. Okay. All right. So, the point of it is, not to go down memory lane-
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: But, in some ways, the world was a simpler place. Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: So, that took care of it, but then this thing called the internet came along, and Google, and search engines, and all the rest. In today’s world, is it … You probably see people that are still doing this. Is that an effective way to make sales for most businesses in today’s world?
Dave Orecchio: No. Here’s the reason, and it’s not any fault of the sales people.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: Right. We’ve all been … If you just think about your daily experience today, how many spam calls you get in your cellphone.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: How many spam emails you get in your inbox.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, that kind of activity, what it does to you, is it causes you to shut down all inbound calls.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And, those are called outbound sales methodologies. Right?
David Elmasian: Yeah, yeah.
Dave Orecchio: So, you shut that down, everybody shuts it down.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: The other thing that happened was we all … You know, when a brand becomes ubiquitous, the name of the brand becomes the thing?
Well, we all google stuff.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? And if you remember, back when Google was first coming out, there were other search engines. There was AltaVista.
David Elmasian: Yeah. Yahoo!
Dave Orecchio: Yahoo! And all the others.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: But now, the majority of all search comes from Google, and it’s because the brilliant people at Google figured out how to render the best search results; so once they did that, and once businesses started publishing content such that you could find what you needed very … I’m amazed.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: I can do a Google search on something that’s very esoteric. And I can find an answer to it.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? So it’s really amazing, and the combination of the barrage of inbound requests, and the fact that search engines have rendered information, regardless of what you’re thinking about, very easily for you, it makes your research trivial.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Everybody nowadays googles, and it’s gotten even more pervasive with the advent of the cellphone, the mobile phone that is high-performing, information appliance, so to speak.
David Elmasian: Yup. So what … because of that, we know that those old methods changed, but also … it also changed the playing field, to to speak, for the people that were looking to make sales. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: So now, all of the sudden, I’m not just competing with the guy next door, so to speak, but I’m also competing with virtually everyone. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
The way that’s done is that … it’s made even local companies have to compete with global businesses.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: If you think about landscape companies, or other businesses, you can have a large company that, if they do their marketing right, can actually come and steal the business of a small business.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: But, if you think about the dynamics of what we just described, we described the old way to the new way, sales has converted from what used to be human-to-human. It’s now human-to-digital.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And the human, the first human, is the customer. The second is who they’re reaching out to.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Businesses today have to … Step one is they’ve got to realize that change has occurred, it’s not going to go back to the old way, as much as we would love it to.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: It’s not going back, and … you know, that’s … if they recognize that, they’ve also realized … If you think about it from a sales-funnel point of view, the top of their sales funnel is broken.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And they’ve got to take steps to fix it.
David Elmasian: Well, let’s not trivialize that. And the reason I say that is … you know, recognizing there’s a problem or there’s an issue. It sounds easy when we say it in that context, but really … And again, I’m talking as a business owner myself, I reminisce the old days, being in the service business where if I could pony up enough cash to put my ad on the Yellow Pages, I was literally guaranteed business. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Correct. Yes, exactly.
David Elmasian: It was so simple. Everybody looked there.
Dave Orecchio: Yes, yes.
David Elmasian: And so, you know, we all want that home run. Right? We want that-
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: We do one thing, and all of a sudden our business is worth a billion dollars. Who doesn’t fantasize about that?
Dave Orecchio: We all want it, we all want it.
David Elmasian: Yeah. So, now that it’s not that simple, I think that denial that you referenced about, “Hey, you can’t keep doing it that way, it’s not going to work,” I think that’s a real, legitimate issue that I still see; and I’m in the technology business. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
There’s an easy way for a business to figure out whether they’ve fixed their digital … their funnel.
David Elmasian: Okay. What’s that?
Dave Orecchio: The easy way is: are you getting any leads from your website?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And, I will tell you, most businesses that I speak to, they say, “I’m not getting any leads.” There’s a right solution. Let me mention what the wrong solution is.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: The wrong solution is: hire a search engine optimization company. Search up engine optimization to be a little bit radical, when not done well, it’s snake oil.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: You’ve got companies basically hiring people, hiring companies, to do this. They think that’s going to be the fix of the problem. They’re self-diagnosing, and they’re picking the wrong solution.
David Elmasian: Right, yeah, no, and I think … You and I talked about this a little bit prior. That was kind of the progression of things, that was one of those things where, like you said, everybody was an SEO company, because they knew people were literally just throwing money at them if you said you were an SEO expert.
And unfortunately, it still happens today. And again, it’s not to minimize that there is some value in SEO, but as I’m sure you can tell me, it has to be part of a larger strategy, a larger model, a larger process. Not just say, “Hey, if I pay 500 bucks to these guys to do my SEO, all my problems are solved.” Right? Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: It doesn’t work-
Dave Orecchio: That’s not going to fix it.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: What I find is people become unsatisfied with their first SEO company, then they hire a second one.
David Elmasian: Right, right.
Dave Orecchio: So they need to understand what they need to do to truly fix their problem.
David Elmasian: Sure, okay. So, let’s talk about that; and again, we can’t go into every individual detail.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: And I know you have all those details. But let’s kind of hit the high points. So, if I’m a business owner, and I’m saying to myself … And quite honestly, you kind of say to yourself, “Yeah, I did that. Yeah, I did that,” and you’re thinking to yourself, “I didn’t get the results I was looking for,” and now they can say to themselves, “Oh, well it’s okay. You’re not alone.” Right? Because again, we’ve all seen that.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: So just from a high level, what should they be doing as part of that overall strategy? And again, no, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Dave Orecchio: It’s not. In fact, it’s custom for each business.
David Elmasian: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: What the business owners should think about is … What I mentioned before was the top of your sales funnel broke.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? So they need to be thinking, “How do I fix the top of my sales funnel?”
And then, the second question I would ask them is, “Do you, as a business owner, are you capable of selling your product or service today?”
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Right? So, if they get a qualified prospect, and they speak to that prospect, do they understand what an effective and successful sales process is for their business?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: As long as that’s the case, so if they’ve got any revenue at all, they know the answer to that question. The question’s yes.
David Elmasian: Hopefully. Right?
Dave Orecchio: So, to restore the top of their sales funnel, what they must do is clarify and digitize their ideal sales process.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: The process of clarifying and digitizing it is through what I call a sales-centered content strategy.
David Elmasian: Okay. Give me an example of what you’re talking about there.
Dave Orecchio: Okay. So, here’s the case. Okay?
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: This is going to be a silly example.
David Elmasian: That’s okay.
Dave Orecchio: But it’s an example.
David Elmasian: Yeah, yeah.
Dave Orecchio: You have a headache. Okay? And you decide, “Okay I need … ” You do some Google searching.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: “What’s the cause of a headache?”
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And you see a bunch of answers. Right? It could be migraines, it could be … you know, the fact that you have too much stress.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: It could be that you drank too much alcohol the night before. Okay?
David Elmasian: Or, if I’m on WebMD I have cancer, diabetes, you know-
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, yeah-
David Elmasian: 14 other conditions.
Dave Orecchio: There’s a million of them. Right?
So, then you read that, you became educated. That’s the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: You educated yourself on the causes.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And then, you say, “A-ha! I did have too much alcohol last night.” Right? So, you-
David Elmasian: Hey, hold on a second. He’s getting very personal here.
Dave Orecchio: I’m not saying you, particularly-
David Elmasian: No, I’m joking. I’m teasing you.
Dave Orecchio: But this is the storyboard. Right?
So, you had too much alcohol, and then the next stage of the journey of research is, “What are the solutions to eliminate a headache caused from too much alcohol?” And what is it? It’s aspirin, or Advil, or something like that.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: So, you did it, searched best solution, and there’s going to be a lot of articles, and someone’s going to say, “Take Advil.”
You go to the store, you buy the Advil, you take it, your headache goes away, and then you got your solution to your problem.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, if you think about that, prospects do that search. They’re not searching on headache remedies. They’re searching on, “I’m a business owner. I need to find the best solution to streamline my manufacturing.” Or it could be, “I need a better CRM,” or, “I need … ” Something else. Right? They’re doing searches around it-
David Elmasian: They’re looking to solve the problem.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly. So, if you think … Now, let’s come back to your original question, which was you’re a business owner, you know how to effectively sell your product. Right? So, you know what kind of information people are searching for.
David Elmasian: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave Orecchio: The questions they would ask to address their need. They’re going to buy a product because it’s addressing a critical need.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: I call that a trigger.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: That’s a trigger for someone to spend money.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Because we’re all barraged with millions of requests to spend money.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: Right? But, you are going to prioritize only on those investments that are the top of your business priority. So, what we do is we do a workshop with our clients.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And through that workshop, we identify the triggers and goals that their customers would define, that would cause them to want to engage.
David Elmasian: Okay, so let’s … Again, it’s oversimplified, but let’s go back to your headache story.
Dave Orecchio: Yes, yes.
David Elmasian: So, you have a workshop, and the business owner says people’s … complaining that you know, “Oh, had too much to drink. I have too much stress,” and one of the things that we talked about a little bit, which again, I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves here, is … you know …
People then will make that leap of saying, “Well, I don’t need you. I’m just going to do pay per click, and google, and anybody that types in aspirin, I’m going to … ” you know, “Bid 14 dollars for, that they’ll find the word aspirin.”
Do people search for the word aspirin, generally?
Dave Orecchio: Generally, they search on problems that they have.
David Elmasian: Such as?
Dave Orecchio: They just log into-
David Elmasian: “I have a headache.”
Dave Orecchio: “I have a headache. How do I fix a headache?”
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Right, exactly.
David Elmasian: So, that’s what that analysis that you’re doing, in general, is saying. People don’t look for aspirin. Aspirin is the solution, maybe.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: What they’re really saying is, “I have a headache.”
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: So, we need to find people that-
Dave Orecchio: Have headaches.
David Elmasian: … are willing to pay to fix the problem of having a headache.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Am I on the right track here?
Dave Orecchio: You’re absolutely on the right track.
David Elmasian: Okay, all right.
Dave Orecchio: And that, basically, is at the top of your funnel. And if you can collect enough people … When we talk about collecting people, collecting search results, we’re creating organic search results.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: The difference of implementing a content strategy that restores your funnel is once you put that in place, and the content ranks, you wind up with a continual feed of leads.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Pay per click has its right place.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: But every business owner must understand it’s coin-operated. When you pay, you get the leads; when you stop paying, the leads dry up.
David Elmasian: They aren’t there anymore.
Dave Orecchio: Right?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, you should think about the restoration of the top of your funnel. It’s kind of like investing in a sales person.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: It takes some investment to get it in place, but once it’s in place, you’re basically modeling your best sales process, and your best sales person that’s working for you 24/7.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And there’s some more subtle fees than that, as well.
David Elmasian: And again, and correct me if I’m wrong in this, but a little light bulb clicked on. I don’t know if you noticed it or not. When you talk about a sales person, that’s more like organic. The pay per click is more like almost like a referral type situation, where it’s transactional-based, so that if you pay somebody, they’ll do it; but if not, like you said, if that referral agreement goes away, those sales go away.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly. And another factor that business owners should understand about this, is if they do restore their top of their funnel, and they create these digital funnels, the benefit they have is if they have a slow month. Right? They can step on the gas by doing some pay per click ads.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: But the pay per click should drive the traffic into the funnel.
Or you can be more specific with regard to the ad that related to that particular trigger, and once you capture the audience into your funnel you can then nurture them through email and other tools, to get them till they’re ready to buy.
David Elmasian: Okay. We’ve addressed that we’re not looking for people that looked into buying aspirin per se, we’re looking for people that are suffering from a headache.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Okay. We’ve now defined that process through SEO and organic methods. What’s the next step in that process, roughly?
Dave Orecchio: The content strategy in and of itself doesn’t actually solve the problem. You actually have to create the content, you have to publish it on your website, and you have to have automation that feeds additional data to that prospect that converts on some of the offers that are at the top of the funnel.
David Elmasian: So let’s start with the creating the content. Whether you do it yourself, or you have somebody do it, in my experience, that’s the easy part. It’s, “What content do I create?” Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: That’s the hard decisions to make.
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: So, how do you help your clients with that?
Dave Orecchio: Okay. When we have the workshop where we interview them about the triggers and goals that cause people to want to buy, and all the questions that they’re asking around these triggers and goals, that creates the foundation of the content strategy.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And, there’s technical implementation details to make sure that it actually ranks in Google. And there’s a technology … a methodology called content clusters.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And if you publish content in clusters that all relate to each other, two things happen. Google actually ranks for it.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And then, secondly, you are answering a number of questions that relate to one particular topic, so that you get them into your funnel regardless of which question they happen to be asking.
David Elmasian: Right. Okay. And is that something that you do for your clients in terms of the content itself? Or is it … Do you outsource … And again, not to get too granular on that, but how does that content generally get created for most of your customers? Once you decide, “Hey, this is the areas that we’re going to focus on, and this is type of stuff that we want to generate.”
Dave Orecchio: Great question. I handle all the strategies myself.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: Because it’s too important; if you get that wrong, then you won’t get the results. Some companies want to write the content themselves.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Others want to outsource it.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: So, I have partners that I work with that are writers.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: As you can imagine, if you looked at the publication industry nowadays, there’s a lot less publications out there. But there’s still a lot of writers that actually write, and they write very, very well.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: So, I’ve hired a number of those to be contract writers, to write for customers. Marketing automation, of course, I work with HubSpot. That’s my primary company that I work with.
And I put in place the automation that looks at the behavior of the visitors that come to a website, how they’re engaging with the content, and nurturing them to the next stage of the sales funnel.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: So the sales funnel is not a static thing, it’s an active thing.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Marketing automation is a critical element of this, and that’s what inbound marketing is all about. The right strategy, the right content, and automation that ties it all together.
David Elmasian: Let’s try to take some of the mystery out of this whole automation thing. And again, I’m in the technology business, doesn’t mean that I understand it any better. Maybe I have a higher comfortable level, but for the people that are listening. And I’m, again, talking as a small business owner myself, when I hear automation, a lot of things go through my mind.
But, when you talk about the HubSpot suite of automation tools, what kind of stuff are we talking about here?
Dave Orecchio: Let’s go back to the original problem that we had. Remember when we talked about the fact that we’re getting too many emails.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right. We’re getting so many phone calls, and we’re ignoring all of it.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: How does that dynamic change if you do research, and you actually find an eBook on a company website you downloaded, because it relates to something you care about?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And then, if you get an email from that company, that’s an educational email that goes into more detail about something related to what you downloaded. You’re apt to open that email.
David Elmasian: Accept it. Right.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly. So-
David Elmasian: Eager for it.
Dave Orecchio: Right. So what happens is the marketing automation basically helps you automate the delivery of a particular email to a particular person.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, what it’s all about is personalization, and point-to-point communication. It’s not about spamming a list of 50,000 contacts.
David Elmasian: Oh. So what it’s really doing is taking some of that heavy lifting away-
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: … so that you can focus on other things that are going to give you a better return.
Dave Orecchio: So, if you were a sales rep. Right?
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: And you sent … you basically had some … you learned about an individual that cared about a particular problem, and you basically crafted an email that educated them some more, you sent it to them, they’d open it. Right? If they-
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: But, you’d have to know that they cared about that particular topic. Right?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Now, the sales reps don’t know, that that person cares about that topic.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: So what happens is by automating that, you’ve got an engine that’s working for the sales team. So, by the time the prospect asks for a call, they’re a hot lead.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: You’re dealing with hot leads that are already educated about your company, your differentiation, your product, and they want to talk to you. You’ve solved all of the issues that sales today are dealing with.
David Elmasian: Sure, right. Yeah. And all of the sudden, you’re a much better sales person. Right?
Dave Orecchio: The sales people love it-
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: … when they get those hot leads.
David Elmasian: Okay. We have the sales automation tools in place now. Are there any other steps that we’ve missed in this process?
Dave Orecchio: Yes. It’s kind of like … The story I like to tell is a website, and anything you’re doing on the internet is like getting a new puppy; and interestingly enough, two weeks ago, I got a new puppy, so-
David Elmasian: Oh, congratulations.
Dave Orecchio: So you have to have patience.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: You have to be teaching it constantly, and as it relates to website-
David Elmasian: Dave, your customers don’t want instant results?
Dave Orecchio: No, well, some things you can do quickly, other things take time.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: But more importantly, is when you create the content strategy, and you implement the content, and you’ve implemented these funnels, you need to measure everything.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? Because, you can’t assume that just because you created it, it’s going to work for you.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: The other factor of the HubSpot platform, which I love, is you get analytics about every single detail, of things that happened. So, I can look at the behavior of a sale. Let’s say John Smith again, learned about a product by downloading an eBook, and we nurtured him. He then asks for a call with a sales rep, and he then basically purchased the product.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: I can look at all the behaviors of John Smith: what website pages did he look at, how did he go through the funnel. I can then look at people that came into the funnel that stalled.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: They didn’t engage with anything.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: I know who they are.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: I can pick up the phone and call them.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And I can understand more about them. Right? So, you can basically refine and optimize your funnel. Funnel management is something that takes continual work.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: And refinement. Once you tune the engine … That’s what I like to call it, an engine.
David Elmasian: Right, yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Once you tune the engine, your lead generation, your lead flow is prolific.
David Elmasian: So, one area that we kind of touched upon a little bit, but I think it’s worth mentioning is … When you’re starting out in business, any customer is a great customer. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Anybody that’s willing to spend money, you love them.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: As time goes on, you realize that maybe isn’t such a good idea.
Dave Orecchio: Correct.
David Elmasian: You have to be a little more selective, and so on and so forth. One of the things that I’ve heard over the years, being in small business, and not knowing much about sales and marketing, honestly, is this term called the buyer persona. Okay?
Dave Orecchio: Correct. Right.
David Elmasian: I’m old enough … Again, going back to the old days, I had a mentor of mine who was very good at sales, and markets, funds, and corporate IT position, and he used to do those black … What do they used to call them? Those … They weren’t slides, but they’re actually a series of descriptions, and it kind of hit upon what we just talked about, which is buyer persona, or the perfect customer, whatever term you want to use.
Do you create that persona, you? Is that something that the business owner creates? And how’s the relevancy there, too, in the context of what we’re talking about?
Dave Orecchio: The topic of buyer persona is another area that people have had experiences that haven’t produced any results for them.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Okay? When we basically do buyer persona research, we do it for businesses who don’t know how to sell their product.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: All right?
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: So, they’ve not established a particular target user, they’ve not had success in some-
David Elmasian: So maybe it’s a new business, or a new venture, or a new product or service, or what have you.
Dave Orecchio: Yes, yes, yes.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, basically, if you think about the questions I was asking earlier, about what triggers and goals, problems and solutions do a particular customer have, and what are the elements of the ideal sales process, if you know that, you’re capturing all the meat of what you need to do.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Let’s talk about where persona work should be done, and how to do it.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: If I’m a business, and now I’ve fixed the top of my funnels, and I’ve decided I want to go into a new market. I have not yet sold successfully to that market.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, what you can do, is you can do via a persona research, effective persona research, is a company called the Buyer Persona Institute, and they’ve established-
David Elmasian: Appropriately enough.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah. They’ve established a methodology, which I love, that’s called the Five Rings of Buyer Insight.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And the output of that project feeds directly all the information that I would normally collect in the workshop. So, if there’s a business that needs to expand to a new market, what I recommend is a persona research for that new market, and a strategy development so that we can create funnels that’ll work to attract those kind of buyers.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: If it’s a new business that doesn’t know how to sell, we start with the persona, then we do the strategy, then we implement that whole model.
David Elmasian: Right. And again, make the corrections and changes as necessary.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: We’ve found what the world is telling us. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly, exactly.
David Elmasian: Okay. Yup. All right. We hit upon a few other things that maybe we could dive a little bit into. Objections. Everybody that’s in business hits sales objections. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: For our own business, not just necessarily when we’re helping others buy, as well, or sell. We talked about the whole denial thing, “Hey, I don’t need to do any of this stuff.” We’ve talked about SEO, and the rest. What other kinds of sales objections do you get that you kind of shake your head, and you say, “Geez. They just didn’t get it,” or, “They don’t get it.”?
Dave Orecchio: I win the deal when I’m speaking to the person who has responsibility for revenue.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Right? And, they’re looking to grow, or they’re trying to decline less. Right? So, they got a slow revenue flow, they don’t know why. I have a dialogue with them, and educate them on the core problem. They have that a-ha moment that you had.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: I describe the methodologies and the process to fix it, and they’ll invest … Most cases, if they have the resources to do it, they’ll invest the money to implement inbound.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And, if they don’t have the a-ha moment, then they won’t.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: The good news is there are enough people out there looking to address this need, that we’ve got plenty of opportunities to work.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: So, the ones that decided not to invest, typically they got educated enough that they experience more of life’s experiences, and they ultimately do come back.
David Elmasian: Okay. All right. That’s a good attitude about it.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: In that context, every business develops a niche, or what have you, or they find they’ve had a lot of success with certain groups, or some certain commonalities. In your business, what’s it been? Any surprises? Anything that you’ve seen that, hey … When you get an inquiry from A, B, C type of either company or business, you’re like, “Hey, I know I can help these guys really along.”
Dave Orecchio: Yeah. This is a great story, because … So, you know, I was marketing the sales high-tech.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Engineering background. I can understand any technology.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: When I launched Bristol, I focused, initially, on high-tech businesses. And that’s where I got my early clients.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And then, through participating in events like the HubSpot User Group meetings here in Boston, they call it the Boston hug, I connected with a landscape business owner who was already a HubSpot client, but she was using it like a normal website. She wasn’t implementing inbound.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: And I remember that meeting quite vividly. It was four and half years ago. I met-
David Elmasian: Is it the mutual connection that you and I have, or is it somebody else?
Dave Orecchio: Yes, no. It’s that-
David Elmasian: You can name names. It’s okay.
Dave Orecchio: Yes. It’s Monique Allen at the Garden Continuum.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: So, I was sitting at the front of the class, because I’m one of those people, and Monique was-
David Elmasian: Doesn’t surprise me.
Dave Orecchio: Monique was, as well. We were sitting there-
David Elmasian: Doesn’t surprise.
Dave Orecchio: And it was at a west session that Mike Volpe, who used to be the VP of marketing there at HubSpot-
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: He was giving a speech. And we were just doing regular talk.
So, I’m sitting there, and she went up to Mike Volpe, and said, “I need to fix my inbound marketing. Who should I work with?” And Mike pointed to me.
David Elmasian: Wow.
Dave Orecchio: The funny story about this is back in the early days of HubSpot, everybody was in sales. So, when I called in to get HubSpot for my startup company, Mike was the guy on the phone.
David Elmasian: Oh, okay. There you go.
Dave Orecchio: So, he knew me, and he’s known me for years, so he basically pointed at me; she then came down and sat next to me-
David Elmasian: There you go.
Dave Orecchio: We started a conversation, and basically … And she’ll say this herself, her website … it was functional, but it was not effective.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: It didn’t generate any leads at all for her.
David Elmasian: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And as a result of the work that we have done, it’s completely transformed her business. She never has an issue with sales.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? And in fact, her sales increased so much, and she tells this in the case study we did, that she now is focused on improving other elements of her business.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? Service delivery, and some other things. And she tells that. We have a case study that describes that.
David Elmasian: Well, you know, I think one of the reasons why you and I connected, because again, we had that mutual connection with Monique, is because of the growth of her business, and the fact that she … And again, this is what she expressed to me.
Because she has more demand than she has capacity regularly, she realized that she needed to implement similar practices within her organization to drive that capacity, efficiency, whatever term you want to use-
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: And technology is part of that.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: So, that’s what led to her and I being introduced; and that’s when your name came up, as to why her business has taken off the way that it has.
Monique is a great success story, and so … You know, all of the sudden, now you’re the landscaper whisperer, so to speak. Right? Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Yes, yes.
David Elmasian: And again, that’s how life happens. You never know what’s going to happen.
Dave Orecchio: Yes, yes.
David Elmasian: But, for other people that are interested, and saying, “Gee, this sounds like a good idea,” or what have you, what’s … You mentioned the process that you go through, you mentioned that … you know, like any sales and marketing initiative, it takes a little while to … you have to kind of stick with it, and make the changes necessary.
But, what’s the typically timeframe that you would say to a prospect of when to start expecting results? Whatever those results are.
Dave Orecchio: It depends upon how their existing website is performing today.
David Elmasian: Okay. Let’s assume it’s terrible. It’s awful.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, to-
David Elmasian: Okay. With this thing is … You know-
Dave Orecchio: It’s doing nothing for them.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: If you assume that the funnels need to be in place first.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And, that takes a couple of months to define what it is, write the content, publish it, get it in place.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Once it’s in place, it … Google, for example, when you publish a content, it takes a couple weeks for it to be properly indexed.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right, and start show up in search, if you-
David Elmasian: The internet is a big place-
Dave Orecchio: If you do the best job.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Right? So, it takes time, and over time, depending upon the techniques that you apply to the content as a whole, it’ll rank and rank, and that rank will grow, and you’ll start to gradually build organic performance.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: There are many other technical details that are probably too technical for the podcast.
David Elmasian: Sure. Right.
Dave Orecchio: Of things that you do to improve that event.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: As I mentioned earlier, once you have the funnels in place, you can basically invest a small amount of money in paid advertising.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And for a B2B business, my recommendation is an AdWords campaign.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: For a B2C business, my recommendations is Facebook, because it’s very, very inexpensive.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: You basically can invest a small amount of money to start driving the traffic directed to a particular problem, into a particular element of your funnel. And by being very laser-focused like that, the people that come in are qualified, are interested, they confer it. Now you’re building a database of contacts.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: An email database that can engage these prospects. That’s one thing. The other thing is, it depends when we’re … let’s say B2B or B2C. If it’s a B2C, and it’s a local business, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that gets done to make sure they show up in all the directories.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: They’ve got customers, so they can get customer success stories. Most businesses don’t take the time to ask for them.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: There’s a litany of tactics that I have them implement, and they should be receiving lead flow within the first couple of months.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And then, that should grow over time. And then, they can throttle their investment based on how many leads they need.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: What I like to do with every business is, as I’m engaging with them, understand what’s the annual value of a new client. Right? And map that against the investment.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: To implement inbound, and to come up with a model that says, “Okay, if we generate these many sales, it gives you a positive ROI.”
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And always measure every-
David Elmasian: Yeah, I mean, I learned that lesson many, many years ago, because we all get caught up in, “What’s the cost of something?” Right?
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: And we look at the number, and we say, “Oh, geez. I don’t know if I can afford X,” whatever that number is.
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: A person, much smarter than I was, made a comment to me about this one time, and he did it in a kind of an off-handed way, but it stuck with me. He says, “I don’t really care what something costs if it’s going to give me a better return on what that cost is.” Don’t get hung up in the initial number; whether it’s $100 or $1,000, or 10,000. If that activity, whatever term you want to use, is going to generate that plus, why wouldn’t you do that all day, every day?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And here’s another point that people should be aware of. There’s a mindset when it comes to digital marketing. Most business owners, they self-diagnose. They say, “I need SEO, I need content strategy,” and they won’t know what a content strategy is.
They’ll need a blog, they need to do a podcast-
David Elmasian: He’s been listening to my-
Dave Orecchio: Right?
David Elmasian: … my phone conversations, I think. You know?
Dave Orecchio: They do all the … They think of all these things, and then the next thought is, “Okay. What’s it going to cost?”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And they break down a tactic by cost, and that’s why … If the number one thing that happens from someone listening to this podcast is they change their mindset from … Don’t think of digital marketing as tactics that you implement, you know, like a feature solution.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Think about, “How am I fixing the top of my sales funnel?”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Would you hire another sales person? So, your sales are slow.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: The instinct is hire another sales person for that person to then beat their head against the wall, they’re trying to do something. Right? What you need to do is-
David Elmasian: I’m thinking out loud of some people that I know, but that’s exactly what they do; but that’s okay.
Dave Orecchio: You need to make your funnel effective, and streamlined, so that the sales people you have are effective.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? And then, once that’s in place, as the leads flow, the qualified, hot leads flow, you can then invest in others … You can bring on other sales people, because at the end of the day, once a hot leads comes, you then need to make sure you’re following up with it. Right?
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: You do need sales people.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: This is not eliminating sales people. Right?
David Elmasian: Right. That process … Again, let’s just say for the sake of discussion, you’re talking a very minimum couple months, maybe six months, or greater process.
One thing that I think that is always, inevitably going to come up, is … And maybe you get asked this a lot. Do you create a new website? Do you have them create a website?
Dave Orecchio: Ah, great question.
David Elmasian: When is that decision like, “Hey, we got to scrap this, and start fresh,” or-
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: “Oh, a little tweak here or there,” and then … You know. Who does all that?
Dave Orecchio: Okay. We absolutely do-
David Elmasian: Because nothing will paralyze a business owner more than … There’s a whole website question about, do they need one, have one-
Dave Orecchio: Exactly. But, you know what? It’s a critical element of the overall solution.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: So, if it’s a problem, then it has to be fixed.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: The easy way to think about it is the business owner can decide … Does he like the appearance of the website? Does it represent and differentiate their brand? Is it responsive to search? Is it fast? Because, if it’s slow, Google demotes you from a rank point of view.
So, you can answer all those questions. If the answer to all of those questions are a yes, it’s a great website, but it’s not creating leads, what we do is we instrument the website for conversion.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Basically, once the content strategy is in place, we instrument calls to action at different places to take the traffic that they are getting, and get them to convert to leads.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And, the blogs that they do will increase the traffic, and also convert to leads.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: If their website is not responsive to mobile-
David Elmasian: It’s a flat-out no to all that.
Dave Orecchio: It’s a no, it’s ugly, it’s not representing their brand, it’s part of the investment of fixing the funnel.
David Elmasian: Right, okay.
Dave Orecchio: Right? Because one of the elements of the content strategy is we spend a good amount of time making sure the business describes their abilities in a differentiated way.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, if they can’t differentiate, if they say, “I win because we’re the cheapest.” That’s not a good client.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right. They have to have some differentiation in their solution. So, it really depends upon their site. It’s either instrumented, or redesigned.
David Elmasian: In the case that the answer is, “Yes, we need a new website,” is that something that you provide to your customers, or you-
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: You have people on your team that can do that for them?
Dave Orecchio: Yes, so basically, what we do, we start with, believe it or not, a website strategy that defines the information flow on each and every page.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: I then work with expert and creative designers to do the design phase of the site.
And then, I have expert developers that implement it, so that it’s responsive, fast, and engaging for the visitor.
David Elmasian: Okay, so let me talk as a business owner now. That all sounds really expensive.
Dave Orecchio: It’s actually no more expensive than-
David Elmasian: I get it, man. I’m playing devil’s advocate here, Dave. I’m not going to put you on the spot and say, “Hey, for 1.99 a month, we’ll get you a new one.” Yeah, I’m not-
Dave Orecchio: Right, exactly, exactly.
David Elmasian: I’m not going to do that. But, where do you feel that people should be inquiring about … because there’s two factors that go into an investment, no matter what you’re talking about, and especially if you’re talking about growth of your business.
The first one is the costs, the money numbers. Right? It’s going to cost X number of dollars.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah.
David Elmasian: And, blah, blah, blah. You know. Okay.
The second one is time.
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: Because, again, if you’re working with a lot of small business owners, and it sounds like you are, they have to be available, and they have to be dedicated to provide the time and the resources to have a successful outcome.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Am I right?
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: That’s absolutely true.
David Elmasian: So, there’s a time commitment, as well, too.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: I’m going to turn it back on you. If you were to say, “My ideal,” you know, “My dream customer,” what are those elements that you’re looking for yourself to say, “Hey, let’s do a reality check here. You need to invest X number of dollars. You need to invest X number of time. Here’s the commitments, and all that”?
Again, you don’t need to tell me how much you charge or anything like that-
Dave Orecchio: Sure, sure, yeah.
David Elmasian: It’s none of our business.
Dave Orecchio: Right.
David Elmasian: But give us a view of that, so if somebody’s listening, and they’re interested, they can explore further with you.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, exactly. So, the websites we create are optimized for conversion, they’re inbound-marketing-implemented websites. Okay?
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: That’s the first point. The second point is when people are thinking about restoring their digital funnel, there’s a category of activities that are one-time expenses. And there are categories of activities that are reoccurring costs.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: The website redesign and implementation is a one-time investment. The initial funnel content is a one-time investment.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Although, you want to continue blogging on an ongoing basis. Right?
David Elmasian: Of course. Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, there are those one-times, and those reoccurring.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: That gets factored in, the cost of that one-time investment to fix the website gets factored in.
The second question you asked about was time of the client.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: I did what I like to call a rescue, recently. For a local tech company.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: They had-
David Elmasian: Wasn’t me.
Dave Orecchio: No, it wasn’t you. They had a-
David Elmasian: Maybe it should’ve been, but it wasn’t me.
Dave Orecchio: They got into what I would call a death spiral, a website redesign. In other words, they worked with a traditional website development company, and they started putting content up and the CEO would look at it, so, “That’s not what we wanted to say.”
And they got in that death spiral, and it turns out they invested a lot of money and never launched; so that I did not know this had happened before.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And then they reached out to me, and they said, “Hey, we need to implement inbound. We need to do a new website.” So, I … And you probably have known by … You probably are figuring this out by now. I’m a very process-oriented person.
David Elmasian: Yeah, I kind of figured that. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Okay, so when we create a new website, we break it into three pieces.
David Elmasian: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave Orecchio: What I call the website strategy, which is really a document I call a website purpose map, which defines the information flow at each stage of every page.
David Elmasian: Okay, yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And what I find is, when I interact with a client with this website purpose map, which is a strategy for communicating information, I can quickly get to an answer. They can see the way the information is going to be displayed on every page of their website.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: It’s almost like a site map so to speak.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: But, we’re talking about, “What information are you communicating?” Now, remember, before I did this, we did a content strategy.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, I understand the key value points they’re delivering, I know their differentiation, I can make a recommendation of what information should flow.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And we iterate that so we know what the information flow is. Once that’s done, we go into design.
And then, we have a graphics artist that gives them the emotional look and feel-
David Elmasian: Yeah, the visual that they need.
Dave Orecchio: … that they want.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? So, the fact of the matter is we don’t go into design until we have an approved content flow.
David Elmasian: Yeah, which is probably the opposite that most people kind of look-
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: … at the process. Right?
Dave Orecchio: Yeah, they want, “Okay, I need a new web home page.”
David Elmasian: Yeah. “I like red, I like green.”
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: And, “That picture’s pretty,” and you know.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: All right.
Dave Orecchio: So, we then implement the design, and in parallel with that, I work with them to get the input for the text that needs to be in different sections of the page. If you think about it, high-performing websites, nowadays, don’t have a lot of text on them. Right?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: And then, once the design is approved, the implementation is … you know, guys in a closet coding. Right? Then, you go live, and then, if we did our job right, we’ve got the content strategy, the content’s been created, the website is up, everything stitched together; it should sing for the client.
David Elmasian: Right. Okay. We got to wrap things up a little bit here, Dave, but a couple quick things. So, you’re at a cocktail party with a bunch of … It’s a social event, and you know, you make the normal introductions, and people say, you know, “Hi, how are you?” And you introduce yourself, “Hey, Dave, what do you do?” So you tell them, and …
You tell me if this has happened to you, you kind of give them … You tell them what you do, you help businesses grow, blah, blah, blah. So they’re like, “Dave, you know, I own this fill-in-the-blank business. What’s something quick that I can do? You know, real simple?”
What’s that one piece of advice you like to give people that is useful, but it’s quick and it’s easy? And again, I don’t want to put you on the spot here with this.
Dave Orecchio: Actually, the answer to the question is trivial.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: You need to measure what your site is doing for you today.
If you don’t measure it, there’s absolutely no way you can come up with a tactic to fix it, to improve it-
David Elmasian: So, your answer is you have to know what’s working and not working before you can fix it.
Dave Orecchio: Exactly. And what I do, the tools I use for any website, I use a tool called SEMrush.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: SEMrush is a tool that you can look and determine how that particular website is performing for particular search terms, or any terms, at all.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And the reason I do that is it tells me … For example, I had a call this week with a company who was getting a thousand visitors per month, and I did that analysis and it turns out 98% of all their website traffic, 98% of a thousand per month was their brand, their-
David Elmasian: Oh.
Dave Orecchio: Not only their brand name.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: But their brand name misspelled.
David Elmasian: Oh, boy.
Dave Orecchio: Okay? And it was because somebody was looking for something else.
David Elmasian: Right, right.
Dave Orecchio: So it turns out that’s not effective for them.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Right? Because-
David Elmasian: I would imagine.
Dave Orecchio: All the people that are finding them are people who know who they are, and they had no search traffic on any problems that they solve.
David Elmasian: Yeah, right.
Dave Orecchio: Right? The business owner knew this.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: He said, “My website’s not generating any leads. Everything that we get is crap, or solicitations.”
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: “And it’s just not working for us.”
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: So, I just did a quick search on SEMrush, and I was able to see that instantly.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And then, by look at their website, I can tell whether they’ve optimized for conversion. Most websites, they have a lot of information, it’s like a brochure.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: In a Contact Us page.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: That’s terrible.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: It’s better than nothing-
David Elmasian: He’s talking about my website, again.
Dave Orecchio: Right.
David Elmasian: Oh, no.
Dave Orecchio: So, basically, I can very quickly, by just looking at what they have, have a conversation with them first about what we do restoring the funnel.
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: Do they understand what their funnel is? So, could it be clarified and digitized at all?
David Elmasian: Right.
Dave Orecchio: If the answer is yes, they have a lot of opportunity. And sometimes, there’s a quick fix. It could be, “Let’s put a CTA in your homepage, with this particular offer.”
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Generate a lead at the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, and you’re off to the races. But now, let’s make sure you fix everything else.
David Elmasian: Sure. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah.
David Elmasian: Okay, now that’s great. That’s very, very helpful, and I think, like I said, we’re all looking for those quick, easy answers, and quick, easy solutions, but I think-
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: If nothing else, what that does is that starts the right journey for a business owner to educate themselves, to know that, “Hey, I have a problem here. Now I can see it.”
Dave Orecchio: Exactly.
David Elmasian: And most business owners, when they know they have a problem, they do work hard to fix it; but if they don’t really know what the problem, they’re not-
Dave Orecchio: Yes.
David Elmasian: Either they’re not fixing it because they’re not fixing the right problem, or they just throw up their hands and say, “Well, I don’t know what to do.”
Dave Orecchio: It’s what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast.
David Elmasian: Yes. Right.
Dave Orecchio: We talked about the fact they have to have awareness that their funnel is broken and need to fix it.
David Elmasian: See? We went full circle. Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Absolutely.
David Elmasian: So, let’s wrap things up. This is just a quick, fun thing … You being the nerd, the geek you are, this is a piece of cake for you, and … I call a tech quiz, but it’s not really a tech quiz. Okay? And if you listen to any of our previous episodes, it’s called Check Your Tech.
You’re going to pass with flying colors, trust me, Dave, so don’t …
Dave Orecchio: Okay, go ahead. Have at it.
David Elmasian: All right. Are you a Mac or a PC guy?
Dave Orecchio: I’m a Mac guy.
David Elmasian: Oh, I could’ve predicted that. iPhone-
Dave Orecchio: Do you know why? Do you know why? I made the change when Microsoft Vista came out.
David Elmasian: Oh, you and a lot of other people.
Dave Orecchio: I was going through Vista hell, computer that was rebooting all the time, and frankly, I just wanted something that was going to work.
David Elmasian: Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: So-
David Elmasian: Okay. iPhone-
Dave Orecchio: I know that Microsoft has fixed it since then, but-
David Elmasian: Just a little.
Dave Orecchio: Okay.
David Elmasian: iPhone or Android?
Dave Orecchio: iPhone.
David Elmasian: Okay. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, any, all? What do you go for first?
Dave Orecchio: First is LinkedIn.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Because, business owners need to know how to reach me, learn about what I do, what I care about.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: Facebook for family connections.
David Elmasian: Sure.
Dave Orecchio: Instagram to publish images of my new dog.
David Elmasian: Ah, nice. Yeah.
Dave Orecchio: And Twitter-
David Elmasian: What kind of dog is it, by the way?
Dave Orecchio: It’s a English-style Golden Retriever.
David Elmasian: Oh, nice.
Dave Orecchio: Her name is Luna.
David Elmasian: Nice. That’s great. Netflix or Hulu?
Dave Orecchio: Netflix.
David Elmasian: Nobody ever picks Hulu, nobody. I don’t know how they’re still in business.
Gmail or Outlook?
Dave Orecchio: Gmail.
David Elmasian: Now, this one is the most important one. Single-origin light roast, or single-origin dark roast?
Dave Orecchio: Single-origin light roast-
David Elmasian: Nice.
Dave Orecchio: In fact, I’m a coffee nut. Can I do a plug?
David Elmasian: Please.
Dave Orecchio: I get all my coffee mail ordered from Barrington Coffee out in the Western Mass.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And they have a roaster there who is absolutely fabulous.
David Elmasian: Yup.
Dave Orecchio: He goes to the farms, he gets the beans-
David Elmasian: Nice.
Dave Orecchio: He does his own roasting there.
David Elmasian: Good.
Dave Orecchio: I love it.
David Elmasian: We’ll talk about that offline.
Dave Orecchio: Great.
David Elmasian: I’ve been known to drink a cup of coffee every once in a while myself. Well, Dave, what a story. I know we could talk for hours, but we’re really out of time. For people that want to learn more about what we discussed, how do they get in touch with you?
Dave Orecchio: The best way is my website.
David Elmasian: Oh, you have a website.
Dave Orecchio: Yeah-
David Elmasian: You do?
Dave Orecchio: It’s www.bristolstrategy.com.
David Elmasian: Okay.
Dave Orecchio: And there is a case study on there that Monique shared, and that’s basically under the inbound marketing tab, there’s a trade business growth, basically; because she’s a trades business.
David Elmasian: Yeah, yeah.
Dave Orecchio: It’s a wonderful video where she describes her own business.
David Elmasian: It is. And again, not to delay it, but I watched that, and what it did is it made it all real for me, because, you know, as a business owner myself, I heard her, and I heard how genuine, and … because she was using the language of a small business owner.
And so, to me, that was fantastic, because it really opened my eyes, and like I said, quite honestly, I said to myself, “Oh, my gosh. I got a lot of work to do here.” Right? But it was really effective, because it wasn’t a sales pitch, it was a real-world example of how you were able to transform her business.
And like I said, and again, not to get off-topic here, but my first meeting with Monique … phone call, your name came up in the first 10 minutes. No joke.
Dave Orecchio: Wow. That’s fantastic.
You know, that’s basically the way I … One of my philosophies is you have to deliver value to every customer. If you deliver value, they’ll sing you praises, and that’s where your lead flow comes.
David Elmasian: Right. Okay.
Dave Orecchio: Right, so that’s the way it goes.
David Elmasian: So, people know how to get ahold of you. Again, thank you for joining us here in the Hub of Success, and sharing your story.
Dave Orecchio: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
David Elmasian: Thanks again, Dave.
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