Transcript
Joe: Hey. Can you hear me?
Joseph: I can hear you.
Joe: Hey, what’s up, Joseph?
Joseph: Hey. What’s up, man? Sorry about that. I had my mic muted.
Joe: All good, all good. Not a problem. So, can you restate your question? I saw most of it, but just restate it for everybody and for the recording purpose.
Joseph: Right. So, yeah. Absolutely. I feel like I’m at that stage that I see a lot of people get to, where things start to get really messy, really complicated due to the amount of clients we’re trying to do organic with. And, everything from GMB. I noticed a lot of guys at this point, they switch over to ads. That’s something I’ve been resisting.
Joe: Yep.
Joseph: I reached out to someone, and they recommended you. They said that they knew that you had taken the organic pretty, pretty far. So my question to you is, being it’s July of 2019 with everything that’s going on, what would you recommend to scaling?
Joe: Okay. So, let me get a little more background-
Joseph: Right.
Joe: … just so I can make a good recommendation, and I know what’s happening. So in the questions, you said you’re billing $40k a month for organic. Right?
Joseph: Right, and that’s almost 90% … We’re doing pay per call or rank and rent, and that’s in two different industries. Our prices are good. They definitely could go up a little bit. But, they’re definitely pretty competitive.
Joe: Yep.
Joseph: Other than that, we’re using tracking numbers and Google My Business listings. That’s 99% of where our leads are coming from.
Joe: Okay. What do you charge on a lead?
Joseph: Depending on the industry, we have some that we’re charging $20 a lead. It sounds really low, but the industry it’s in, that’s actually pretty fair.
Joe: Okay.
Joseph: We have $2000 a month retainers.
Joe: Okay. So, you got about 20 customers, roughly? Is that fair to say?
Joseph: Actually, about 32 total. 32 total.
Joe: All right.
Joseph: And there’s some that have been with us for four years, so the prices on them are definitely lower.
Joe: Okay. What’s the high end that you’re charging per lead? You said $20 to …
Joseph: The high end, they’re billing about five grand a month. I apologize. I don’t have the lead price in front of me, but I know their billing is about five grand a month.
Joe: Okay. Okay. How many verticals are you in?
Joseph: Two.
Joe: Okay. Why not one?
Joseph: Well, because I was in a niche that really only worked in really, really large cities.
Joe: Yep.
Joseph: And we were able to do some damage that way, but we really basically just ran out of cities.
Joe: Yep. So, you kind of took it as far as you could without diminishing returns?
Joseph: Right. Right.
Joe: Okay. How much of the revenue comes from that niche?
Joseph: About $24k.
Joe: Okay. Has that been pretty stable?
Joseph: Yes. Very, very stable.
Joe: Okay. All right. How long have you been going after the second niche?
Joseph: It’s been the last … Basically a year. About a year even, actually.
Joe: Okay. So, are you finding trouble scaling fulfillment, or scaling sales?
Joseph: Scaling fulfillment. Really, the second niche that we’re in, we can execute. It’s a little more difficult to get the results. We’re just in a little more competitive space. And so, it’s not even so much the ranking. It’s just when we bring on new clients, and it’s not the sales, either. We have the sales. We have the referrals. We have everything in place.
Joseph: But, I almost kind of groan a little bit inside when a new client comes on, because we’re still trying to make it happen for the last three that we signed on. You know?
Joe: Yep. So, what is bothering you, or what I hear is bothering you is the timeline?
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the timeline, and also … Basically, just doing everything. It feels like we’re just doing a lot of everything at once. I’ve got good systems in place. I have the training that we need. I’ve got the project management systems. But, it’s really just the fulfillment timeline.
Joe: Yep. For sure. So, I’ll tell you that for me, I built a seven figure pay per call agency in four months. It was hell. Like, honestly. It was horrible. We were going through a lot of those scaling pains. How’s your retention?
Joseph: Very good. Very, very good.
Joe: Good. So, I find that when people are scaling pay per call agencies, that’s one of the biggest killers.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: Is a lot of times, people are … They’re leaving as fast as they came on board. So, you’re good there. So really, it’s about delivering leads in a short amount of time. Well, you’re propping up the organic. Is that correct?
Joseph: Exactly. Really, maybe our lead cost needs to go way up, which I have tried. I’ve attempted to do that with different clients. There’s a lot of, lot of push back, just to their profit margins. Which it could be because of the industry we’re in, but running ads, I have not done thousands of dollars of research on it or anything. But, I know that definitely it eats that up really, really fast.
Joe: Yep. So, I would change around how you sell clients on the front end. And, I would run a test with this. At the end of the day, the only way to get leads fast, right, is to use pay per click.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: You can go do some Craigslist, but the leads are going to be okay quality. They’re not going to be great. But to be frank, like the quality isn’t so much a difference, but it’s not on demand. You can’t just turn the faucet, and it just starts raining calls like pay per click. Right?
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: So if I were you, I would switch to selling a market test on the front. Had you hear me talk about this before?
Joseph: I have, yeah. I’ve watched the video on that. Yeah.
Joe: With the market test, at the end of the day, here’s the thing. By all means, Google is the most expensive. Right? It’s going to be the most expensive, but it’s going to be the most immediate, with the clients having the most immediate need as well.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: At the end of the day, whatever market you’re in, I’m assuming that in every city that you’re in as well, you go look and you go do a search. Whether you’re on your phone or your desktop or your tablet, and the pay per click spots are filling up all the spaces. Right? It’s sold out. So, people are willing to pay that. They’re paying it now. Right?
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: So, do you want to go after the best customers in the niche, or you want to go after the mediocre customers in the niche?
Joseph: Right, right. Right.
Joe: So, a lot of people are like, “Yeah, but people won’t pay that.” Like, that’s what they tell me. “They won’t pay the pay per click prices.” What do you mean? Everybody’s in that auction all day long, everyday. Does that make sense?
Joseph: Yeah. It does. It does. I’m sure I’m holding myself back mentally on that.
Joe: So if I were you, I would … You already got a successful business, but it’s like your stress point is that onboarding time. And then also, you could probably … Based upon your lead numbers, you could probably at least add an additional 30-40% more profit, just by selling it this way and getting a higher cost per lead. Right?
Joseph: Got you.
Joe: Basing your lead price off of the market test. It also would completely take the stress off of you, in having to deliver as fast as possible. You still got to do fulfillment, but you could launch a Google Ads campaigns in a couple of days. Right-
Joseph: Yeah.
Joe: … versus it taking you 60 or 90 days to get your first call.
Joseph: Right. Right. That kind of leads in my question of, is it feasible right now with the way ad prices are to do pay per call strictly off of call only ads?
Joe: If you follow my advice, yes. If you follow everybody else in the market’s advice, all the gurus, no.
Joseph: Right.
Joe: Because all the gurus are telling you to pull a price out of your ass. Like, just come up with a number in your head. Take the cost per click, estimate, and multiply that by this. And it’s just a guess, right?
Joseph: Exactly.
Joe: I’ve surveyed my list, and I can’t tell you, man. It’s depressing, how many people have lost over $5000 running that type of campaign because a guru has told them to do that. Right?
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. I’d be included in that.
Joe: Yeah. It’s sad, but the opportunity is there. You just got to flip around the pitch. The pitch is, “I’ll run this market test, and the reason that I’ll run this market test is there’s no way for me to know what it’s going to cost in your market.” Because it’s a bidding system, so we’ll run the test for 30 days. I’ll set it up according to best practices. Here’s what I’m going to do, show them what you’re going to do, and run it for 30 days. And then, use that as your benchmark. Use that as your cost per lead.
Joe: At the end of the day, you should be able to get that cost to drop an additional 15-20% or more. So if you keep running that, you’re profitable right after the first month. And then, you’ve already started on the organic. You’re 30 days into the organic.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. That’s a good point. That’s a good point.
Joe: You should be making, depending on the niche you’re in, you should be making a couple grand a month per client just after the test. Then once your organic kicks in, most likely you’re going to have to go prospect again and find another client, because you’re going to have too much volume on your hands. Which is a good thing.
Joseph: Right. Right, right. This is kind of a-
Joe: Run them. Run them back through that market test again. Don’t sell them directly. So, that’s the other thing that people mess up on, is once they do it in a location once, they just want to push people right to buying the calls again. Don’t do that. Make them go back through the market test so that they see what it costs in Google. That’s half the battle. So now, if they think your cost is too high, you can show them, “This is Google’s cost. It’s not my cost.” Right?
Joseph: Right.
Joe: Like, we don’t set the budget rate. Google does. And so we’ve all in pay per call and pay per lead, and me included, have been setting our own rates, but the market sets the rates.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Right, right. What is your go-to training for … You mention if you follow it your way, I’ve watched obviously all your YouTube videos, and I’m on the live quite a bit. What is your training that you have in place for call only ads?
Joe: Honestly, I don’t do call only ads.
Joseph: Or call ads. I should just … Sorry. I should just say ads.
Joe: At the end of the day, I don’t think anybody should, as a Google Ads newb, start out running their ads. I just don’t believe in it. So much so that I sought out InvisiblePPC to partner with them.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah. I watched that video, too.
Joe: It’s just a lot of work. It’s like you need a PhD in Google Ads to run Google Ads. They’re constantly changing everything. What is best practice today doesn’t work tomorrow. It’s just, frankly, it’s a clusterfuck.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: I think the best way to battle it, personally, and InvisiblePPC knows this, by the way. This isn’t like me undercutting them. The best way to battle it is to get a professional to really build out the account in a niche, and to run a couple of accounts. And so, pick somebody like InvisiblePPC, and get them to run it for two or three accounts. But then, you can take it over if you want.
Joe: At 20 accounts or at 30 accounts coming in, it’s not going to make sense cost-wise for you to probably keep using Invisible. A lot of people will pull it back in house at that point. It’s just part of their business model. When you look at how much it’s going to cost to manage the campaigns, it doesn’t pencil out as well.
Joseph: Right, right. Right. And so, what you’re saying is basically having that first market test would be ran by InvisiblePPC, and you’d be actually making a profit off of that.
Joe: Yep.
Joseph: Because of the way the leads are priced.
Joe: Exactly.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay.
Joe: You do a market test for 30 days, you share the data with them. You have that case study, you have those results. Almost everybody that I do the market test with continues on.
Joseph: Right, and that’s on their credit card.
Joe: Yeah. That’s on their credit card.
Joseph: Right, right.
Joe: The only skin off my back is paying InvisiblePPC to run the campaign, but then I have like a 90% close rate on that market test. So 90% of the time then, I’m getting a deal, where we’re setting the cost per call off of the CPA for the last month. That’s the average for the whole month. You know as well as I do, some things are going to work, some things aren’t. Your quality score is going to go up, so your cost per click is going to drop. So immediately, I’ve built in myself a 15-20% margin as soon as I get them to sign that contract after the market test.
Joseph: Nice. Nice.
Joe: And now, my cost per lead is here instead of here.
Joseph: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: So, you’re doing well in the business, but I think you need to look at changing up your sales process a little bit.
Joseph: Absolutely.
Joe: I think that’ll help you set better expectations. It’ll help you keep clients longer, and you’ll increase your profitability, too.
Joseph: Absolutely. Yeah, because getting the clients really is not the issue. It’s just that one to two month cricket silence when they first sign on, it’s really killing us.
Joe: For sure. 100%, man.
Joseph: Yeah, no. Thanks a lot.
Joe: Anything else I can help with?
Joseph: No. That was awesome. That answered a lot of questions.
Joe: Awesome, man. Happy I could help you, brother. Congrats on your business, keep crushing it.
Joseph: Thank you.
