Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another edition of the your marketing support podcast. I'm Matt McClure here. Basically just the guy pushing buttons and stuff. But the real stars of the show are David Belville and Joe Barker with your marketing supports. Hey guys, how's it going?
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Good. How are you today?
[00:00:26] Speaker C: Doing great.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I am doing wonderful as well. Beautiful day here where I am and I hope in our offices there at Clearwater as well.
Today though, we're talking about, you know, speaking of locations, we're keeping all things local today. It's all about, you know, I guess the old saying goes all politics is local. All advertising is kind of local as well in, at least in our discussion today. And we're talking about, you know, some practical steps for using Google and different sort of aspects of Google, like Google my business, Google local listings, Google Analytics, like all these different things.
Do you guys find that it's easy for people to sort of get confused about the differences between these things and kind of how they all work?
[00:01:12] Speaker C: There's definitely that possibility. Google has a great suite of options for any business, but especially local insurance marketers to utilize these platforms and tools. But it does take a learning curve. And so taking it in a phased approach, step by step, organizing yourself and making sure that you're just doing one thing at a time. That way you're not allowing yourself to get overwhelmed and you can set up a process in place, check things off as you go. Setting up your Google my Google business account, making sure your local listing is up to date, making sure that you have professional photos. All of those things can be done in a step by step process that doesn't require you to get overwhelmed or do everything all at once.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, like the movie Everything Everywhere all at once. Right.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: It's funny because I, I still mention Google my business to people when we're talking and I'm like, oh, do you have a Google my business listing? And it's, it's kind of funny because I think we live in this world and sometimes we forget that some, some people don't even realize what Google my business is. And they're like, what do you mean, a Google my business? I mean, I know what Google is, but I'm not sure what you're talking about. And, and it's hard to, you know, it, we forget about that. But Google my business is just an easy platform. It's free to everybody and it's a local listing. So when you're on Google and you see those listings and you see, you know, those Sponsored or those AI posts. And then you see the map of everybody local. That's Google my business and that's where everybody should be, especially you know, dealing with the market and, and the target audience that we all deal with. We know they're shopping local like we know that's where they want to be. So between Google My business, your website on Google and just making sure that you're popping up organically for that, there's so many different tactics that can be put into play and it is vital for anybody that has a storefront or that sells locally.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And so Google my business and local listings are really, they're kind of two separate things or are they kind of. Are they two sides of the same coin really?
[00:03:14] Speaker A: So there's actually two. So there's Google my business, which is the, which is its own local storefront. So that's the listings of all the local directories. And then there's actually what's called Google Verified or some people spend Google Screen Google Guaranteed where those, that's a separate list where the. So say you're in a financial advisor and you want to come up on, on that you actually have to submit all of your licenses. You have to go through a full background screening and that's a completely separate entity. So if you go and you were to Google Financial Advisor near me, you're probably going to see Google guaranteed or Google Screens come up first. Then you're going to see the Google my business come up next. And then you're going to start to see those either sponsored, most likely the sponsored paid ads next. Then the organic being pushed all the way down because of all of those. So there's, there's so much to it. And, and it's as simple as, as like going on and Googling it yourself to experience it. And then you can really see separately. You'll see each section and then decide from there where you find the most value of where you believe that you should be located.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's great. That's a great way to think to do it and to go about it is just to kind of experience it yourself and then feel things out. I feel like, you know, and then, you know, kind of go back. I feel like I stepped back in time because we talk about that, about the Google my business and the local listings and all that. That's sort of like, I mean it's not really new anymore, but it's newer than say Google Ads, which is I think what people think about Google is huge in the ads business. And you know, I mean it's going to be something that, okay, people are going to say, well if there's all this, these other things now that I can do, is Google Ads maybe as effective as it used to be? And what should I think about when I consider maybe, you know, taking out an ad on Google?
[00:05:09] Speaker A: I think it's still effective. I think if you ask me this questions of what I think it's going to be in five years from now, I'm going to change that answer and I, I'm going to say it's going to be much less effective. But I think for now in current state, Google Ads is still effective. And, and don't get me wrong, that, that Google guaranteed that I mentioned that cost that is a part of Google Ads. It's just the local Google Ads is what that is. So that's a paid, I think it starts at 50amonth, but that's your paid first. Then you're going to Google my business which is a hundred percent free. And then you're going into the search results and those search results is where it can get very expensive. And it's, and that is moving down a little bit. But it's absolutely. Today it's still vital now as, as behaviors change in the next couple of years, I'm not sure or I wouldn't think it's going to be as vital. But for now I definitely think it is.
[00:05:58] Speaker C: Yeah, that's really well said. And just adding on to that, I would recommend always that a Google my business account should always exist. Google Ads don't necessarily always have to exist. I would examine case by case basis for Google Ads depending on what the specific campaign or goal is.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's, you know, you just sort of have to tailor everything often, you know, as financial advisors, of course, which I am, health and life insurance agents, which I am as well. I kind of fall on that side of things too. You, you have to work in the best interest of your client, knowing that every client is different, knowing that every situation is different. So it can't just be a one size fits all thing. And you have to customize, you have to make sure that what you are doing is good for that client. In this case a business or someone wanting to, as an Agenc agent or as an advisor wanting to put themselves out there. And I feel like, you know too one of the things that we often talk about, we hear three little letters. SEO, Search engine optimization for those who need the translation.
I sort of get slightly baffled by SEO because I tend to do that. Like, I'll do a lot of like my own, as you guys know, my own, like video production and stuff like that for my shows that I have. And I'll, and then I will try to optimize for search engines. I'll try to make it SEO optimized and like the descriptions and the titles and all of that hashtags and all that stuff. And I still find it tough sometimes to get traction. Like what are the things that people need to think about when they think of SEO? And maybe just some best practices.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Sure. Well, first and foremost to your point, Matt, SEO is a very competitive arena to be in. I mean, when you think about Google and the millions and millions of listings and results that can come from a single search, it's a competitive landscape. So just by default it is a challenging strategy. But there are best practices that you can put in place to allow yourself the best chances to rank on Google and YouTube for that matter as well. And so first things first, what I would advise people is to act as the consumer. A very, very easy SEO trick is to just ask yourself, how would I Google this? How would I Google how I'm going to find an insurance agent? And then use those keywords that just come straight into your mind for a search as a starting point. But there's also plenty of tools out there, both free and paid and AI tools that can also help you identify keywords to help your title, to help your abstracts, to help, you know, the body of text and your website. So there's numbers of tools, but you can really just start from right up here in a simple Google search yourself and then from there, there you have a bevy of options to choose from.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I would, I would add on that as, as we're beginning to get into the voice searching more and more, so you're seeing people go to Siri and, and I mean I do it all the time. I go to Google and I still hit my microphone and I just say it. So as you see, those behaviors change. People when they are typing and when they're speaking are very different in the way that they're asking questions. And so it's optimizing for, for that experience of, as David stated, what are they actually asking for? And then it's giving the value and giving the answer. It's not putting a bunch of things in there that, that you don't necessarily have to have. People now, they, they have less time than ever. And so if they're asking a question, if you're trying to Build your SEO, answer the question and then try to provide even more value by answering what you think their next question's going to be in that same page or that same post that you're doing it. There's a lot of tactics that you can put into play between. Like one of the question that we always get with SEO is well, should I be doing it on pages or post? That's a common question on websites. Should I, you know, should I be creating it on pages and posts? I always say if it's going to be something that's going to stay on your website and that you really want to garner a lot of organic traffic from, it's going to be a page. And then for your posts, that's where you're going to put the, the more timely articles and the things that, that maybe aren't as evergreen as what those pages are. But there's, there's a ton of tactics and, and I'll tell you, like, for those that are interested in learning SEO, there's so many videos and there's so many, so many ways to teach it and then you can always reach out to us if you have those questions or you need that help of trying to build your SEO and you're kind of unsure where to start because one key part, and this is a huge mistake we see people make, is they will start building SEO on things that people aren't even really, there's not a high search volume for. And so while it's great that you're showing up on page one of Google, nobody, if nobody's searching for it, it really, it really doesn't matter that much. I mean, it's great to say you did it, take a picture, share it, it's wonderful. But at the same time there's a reason probably that there's not a ton of competition there and it may be there's not a lot of people searching that keyword and it could be like a little change from the word agent to agency, whatever it is, agent to advisor, who knows? But it's really critical to do that keyword research before just going out and creating a bunch of SEO.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: A couple of follow up points on that, trying to be as specific in general at the same time as possible. And I know that sounds so contradicting, but the more specific that you can get a keyword that people are actually searching for, the greater chance that you have of ranking in search. So instead of just insurance agent, you know, that's a very, very general search term, but it's a search term that's utilized a lot. How can you make that more specific to you and your business without losing the general aspect of searching? And one more follow up point. We talk a lot about search engines and website optimization when it comes to SEO. But social media is becoming more and more of a use case for search and especially for our younger generations. They're going to TikTok, they're going to Instagram, they're going on Facebook to search for the information that they're looking for. And so social media SEO is just as important as search engine optimization and website optimization.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: And I feel like that's absolutely right. And I, I know that Joe, last year you shared this statistic and I, I wonder if it is still true that you know, Google still like number one search engine out there, that YouTube is like right up there as well. I mean people do that. I cannot tell you. Just in the past week, just thinking about my own life, I've been like, I've been doing some, you know, different projects around the house and yard work and stuff now that the weather's getting nicer and all that. And I'm like, okay, I don't really quite exactly know how to do this right. So I'm going to YouTube and watching a video, like a how to video of how to do something. And that is something that I have done many, many times. And so I guess, you know, utilizing that but also making sure that things are optimized so that you are found and show up on, on YouTube and get some traction. I think that's an important thing as well. You know, kind of bouncing off what David was saying about the social media channels.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. YouTube's not going anywhere. I mean it's clear as they, and, and the more especially like you just said, you've already caught yourself twice this week going and looking for how to videos. Just imagine as that behavior continues to build because you're getting your answers on that platform and so you're going to continue to rely on that platform. And I, I think in the future it's going to, it's going to continue with AI searches and, and social media searches. We're going to go wherever we believe is going to give us the fastest, most accurate and to the point content and answers that we're looking for. And that's where we're going to see, I think YouTube continue to just absolutely kill it. I mean they truly are. And I like that you pointed out that we talked about Google, so we talked about Google. My business. It's not to say that Bing and all the other search engines aren't out there. They're absolutely there. And if you're looking to run ads, it's not a bad idea to test out those platforms because the cost per for those ads and the auction cost is so much less. But the fact is, is Google owns 96% of the search traffic. I mean, you can't get away from that. And then of that search search traffic, 46% of it is sitting local searches. That's why we always, you know, try to share so much how critical local is, especially with our target audience. We know they love to research. They're researching, they're online, they're trying to figure out things by themselves. But what we also know is that when it comes to make a buying decision, they want to talk to someone. And so especially you want that trust factor. You want somebody that, that you feel like has your best interests at heart. And if you can find someone local that you can maybe go to their office or they come to your home, like that connection you can't beat. And that's where, you know, we try, we try to remind everybody that while being number one in Google across the US Is amazing, maybe, you know, if you're just getting started, focus on your backyard and focus on your city and try to own that at that territory and then expand from there instead of trying to tackle the whole us, you know, on day one.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: So yeah, I, I don't know why. I just thought of the old Pinky in the Brain cartoon. You know, what are we going to do tonight, Pinky? Try to take over the world. That, yeah, you just try to do, you know, the whole taking over the world thing, it might not work out so well for you. You know, start, start local and build from there. Absolutely. I think that's, that's great advice. And then, you know, we often say kind of in the, we like either rhyming or alliteration a lot of times in the financial advisory world. And so one of the things that we'll say is inspect what you expect. Right. So that is also true. I feel like in this space when we're talking, whether it's ads or, you know, search engine optimization, you know, the organic showing up in organic search results and all of that kind of thing, all of these things. Google Analytics is sort of that information source that really kind of shows you under the hood of, you know, kind of what things are performing well and what things aren't. And I feel like that is sort of a great tool that can be used to Then like, if you know what's working and what isn't, then you can improve on it.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Yeah, we're talking all about optimization and it's really hard to optimize your content if you don't have any data or analytics to back up your decision making. And so Google Analytics is a great tool that is within the environment that we've been talking about this entire time. And it can tell you what ad is performing better against another ad. If certain imagery is performing better than other imagery, if certain copy is working better than other copy. And if you're noticing that people, you're getting a lot of impressions on an ad, but not a lot of clicks, maybe you need a stronger call to action. You know, there's so many factors that go into a successful campaign that only data and analytics can tell you. And so having the insights that Google Analytics can provide just make your chances at having a successful ad campaign all the more better.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: I think, if you look at. Sometimes people forget that while it's great to drive the traffic and you're bringing them to your site and you've provided them the content and the answer that they're looking for, don't just leave them there. Like, sometimes people drive them to a dead end of, here's your answer. Okay, there you go. And they, you know, they kind of forget like, hey, let's guide them somewhere else and let's take them to that next step. So that could be, you know, I hope you found this helpful. Subscribe to our newsletter. It could be if. Do you have further questions here? Contact us today or even, hey, here's an entire white paper we made about this entire topic. Go ahead and down that low. Download that now for free and just give us your email. So it's things that, that, like that, that you can, you can create conversions on. Even if it's not getting all of the lead data, it's getting some of it. And what you're doing is you're just building trust with that person. If you can get them to give you some point of data, whether their email or their name, whatever it is, it's just building along and, and it's showing that, that you are providing value. And within Google Analytics there you can set up events, there's a ton of stuff you can do on there. And I completely agree with David. How do you optimize and how do you get better if you don't have the data to kind of, you know, guide you along the way and tell you what's actually working and what's not.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: And Google Analytics doesn't end with the ad. Once they are on that journey and they're on that site and you know you're taking them further in, there are analytics that you can track once they're on your website. You know, what are they downloading, what are they clicking on? And Google Analytics is just a window into more of those insights to see the, track the behaviors once they do land on your, on your platforms. And so it's just such an invaluable tool that is so necessary if you want to continue refining your content.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't know where you've been, how can you plan where you're going? That kind of a thing. And it's, it's very true. In this space, you got to have those, those numbers and those stats to be able to show you what is, as I said again, you know, what is working and what's not and what changes to make as a result. Well, and just about time for us to wrap up here, guys, but anything else that you wanted to touch on that we haven't mentioned or maybe just a couple of key takeaways for folks who've been watching and, or listening today?
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah. The only thing I would say is, is don't just get stuck on digital. When you're talking about growing your local presence. Keep in mind, you know, we're, we mainly talk about digital, but direct mail is, is still a very, very great marketing tactic to utilize and digital can, can just help optimize that and complement it. So digital is not meant to be the end all, be all of everything local.
So think about your direct mail, think about doing seminars anytime, anything in person that you can do there be in your local community. If there's community centers, be involved. So the more that you can kind of ingrain yourself there and then there's additional opportunities online. So when you look at your Facebook and even LinkedIn, if that's, if that's your target audience, there's groups and there's community groups that are tied within those. And just being an active participant in those and then every once in a while mentioning what it is that you do is okay as long as you're providing value. And you never know those questions come up because that's the questions that people face. And then you're there to answer those questions and you're just being valuable when and if you know people have questions and you're telling them that's who you are. So I think it, the more organic you can be about it both online and you know, in person, the better.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And really this goes along great with, with Joe. Your point? I look at the 50 and up demographic, this as a very unique generation that, you know, if you would have asked the same age group 10, 20 years ago, their comfortability with technology wasn't where it's at today. And so today we have this fascinating group of people who are kind of on the fence of new age technology and new age marketing tactics, but also traditional marketing. And so it's important to recognize that and know that you shouldn't leave behind more traditional marketing tactics just because there is newer technology available. This demographic benefits from both sides of the fence. And while you might be able to hook them with your digital content, at the end of the day, they do want a trusted partner to help them protect themselves and their family. And so the traditional aspects of marketing, especially with this demographic, is still very vital and important.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I can attest to that just in my own professional life. You know, those things do still work. And you know, anything that you can do, cover all those bases, the digital, the physical, the traditional marketing as well, I feel like you're gonna do, you're gonna do the best that you possibly can be the best you that you can be. Right. So that's, that's what it's all about. David Belleville and Joe Barker with your marketing support, thank you as always. Always really do appreciate your time and your insights.
[00:21:50] Speaker C: Thank you, Matt.
