Secret "Door Opener" for Local Businesses - Mike Schmidt - FHR #238

Why Dave Decided to talk to Mike:

Mike Schmidt is the CEO and Founder of a digital marketing agency based in Tucson, Arizona. Tired of competing with other less experienced companies he decided he had to find a way to get to the customer before they did. He found his secret and shares it on this podcast. Due to his success he now teaches and trains others how to do the same and build their local agency as well as being able to do it from a distance. He details the numbers and stats he is getting and how you can do the same for your business.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Understanding the value of your company (3:35)
• Investing in awareness strategies (7:12)
• Getting leads (10:10)
• Reputation Management (12:09)

Quotable Moments:

"At the end of the day, you have to have a strong reputation, otherwise you risk losing out on the effectiveness of the advertisement and give the competitor opportunities."

"One of the most effective strategies we have had for getting in front of local business is doing JB opportunities with local chambers of commerce and help them with their own reputation."

Other Tidbits:

Helping the average consumer be able to leave reviews in a more simple fashion. Reputation building through client knowledge and introducing marketing strategies for people and businesses.

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Every welcome back

Speaker 2: 00:18 you guys are in for a treat today. I want to reduce your dear friend of mine, Mike Schmidt. Mike, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 00:24 Hey, thanks so much, Dave. I appreciate being here.

Speaker 2: 00:26 So Mike's been super patient with me. I've been begging and begging him to get on this podcast and then he finally says yes and then I've canceled on him twice. So thank you very, very much for being so flexible with me. I appreciate it, Mike.

Speaker 3: 00:38 Hey, no problem.

Speaker 2: 00:42 Well, for those you guys don't know Mike, this is a guy who's been crushing it. He's got his own marketing agency down in Tucson. He's been doing just amazing work inside of that industry, but the coolest thing for me is here's a guy who is on top of his game and yet at the same time understands there's always more to learn and so for the last three years he's been a part of Russell's inner circle, been implementing things really in the last, uh, year or so, and I love just the results that you've been getting. That's kind of one of things I want to talk about. At the same time, I really want to kind of explore how you are going from this local business guy to becoming this expert because I know that's for a lot of our, a lot of the people we talked to, Mike, that's one of the things that they're trying to do. They're trying to get to that next level and you've done it. So if you don't mind kind of let's dive right into this thing and find out how you did it and what tips and tricks you might have for those who are wanting to follow in your

Speaker 3: 01:30 steps. It's been an interesting journey for me too because I started my business back in 2000 youtube, facebook and all this stuff and so I've seen a lot of things changed, but one thing that's remained constant is that local local business, right? Like you know, our agency builds websites and digital marketing for the local business owner. It's the person who has clients locally and is looking to track leads and opportunities for themselves. And it's been interesting as we've kind of got into the clickfunnels world and like as you mentioned, we've spent a lot of really smart people in the inner circle. Like we kept on trying to apply like our old way of doing things and it just wasn't working. We spent the first two years of, of our time in the inner circle kind of fighting the advice of things up and now we're kind of finally at a point where we are kind of following along. The steps have been carved out by clickfunnels, by Russell and to really kind of put together a business where we're able to teach some of the things that are working so well in our business too, like other other people who are agencies and web designers and digital marketers and stuff out there.

Speaker 2: 02:56 I love it. You know, there's the old saying that used to be, you know, those people who can do and those people who can't teach and yet I'm seeing, I'm seeing that shift a ton these days to where actually those who can teach you can teach it extremely well. Are, are those people who can actually do it the very, very best. And I know that for you guys, I mean you guys have international clients, you guys are, are much more than your typical mom and pop marketing agency that just do it. Running facebook ads, so help people on. You've been doing this for 20 years, but uh, you've got a lot of experience here. What are some of the things that you've learned over time to grow your business and what are you, what are you doing next?

Speaker 3: 03:34 So let's say like the biggest thing that we've put together for ourselves, what our true value ladder is for a local Web web and digital marketing. A mistake I'd say we'd paid for most of our time in businesses that are the very first thing that we're offering to our clients. The people who are coming to us was like was what you'd expect. But we would, we would try and open up the doors and conversations with local businesses by offering a websites or talking to them about funnels. We're talking about facebook ads. I would find like all this stuff that we would chat with them about. It requires a lot of like education, right? For a local business owner to understand like why, why they need a funnel or why they need a website or on any of those things. And they would take a lot of trust to like, like to me who they might not know and I'm trying to sell them on why they should invest in law.

Speaker 3: 04:27 Allow me to help do marketing for them. And we found like we built a successful business doing that. But what we found is that we needed to actually have a step in our very first step of our value ladder that wasn't websites, wasn't facebook ads and all these other more complex and harder to buy things. And what we figured out is like the very first thing on our very first step in our value ladder that's common across all local businesses is their reviews and their reputation, um, simply because a lot of them just aren't thinking about that and are really paying attention to even the people that we're helping them with. Websites or funnels or facebook ads like aren't even paying attention to, to their reputation. And we've found that it's like an awesome door opener that we can go to any local business and, you know, while they might not want to talk to us about websites or might not want to talk to us about what kind of facebook ads we could run or what kind of funnel that we can help them build. Like they are more willing to talk to us about their reputation. And it's, uh, it's been an awesome door opener for us.

Speaker 2: 05:24 I love that. I always laugh because a lot of us, we get really good at other things and you kind of forget those things that matter most and I know that for the reviews that seth for a local business or even for us literally recite. We're talking about this the other day. I'm on Google that we had a bad review or like how did that happen and I mean we're $100,000,000 company. We still pay attention to those reviews. We want to know about them and I think more importantly, how do we fix it? We want to make sure we're servicing our clients best. We also want to make sure that as you're taking a look at reviews, that you're getting enough

Speaker 3: 05:58 reviews and so what are some of the things when you're talking to these business owners and how do you get them focused on that first and then where do you take them from there up your value ladder. What's interesting is like a lot of business owners think that the way, the way that it works is that they might advertise where they create awareness for their business and then somebody shows up, like, to give you an example, is a client of ours that he owns a carpet store and um, you know what? This guy is awesome. He's a, he's a really sweet guy and every, every Sunday though, like he's one of those guys are still advertises in the local paper. There's lots of people who are still doing that. This guy is one of them, right? Um, and he's doing it because his dad before him, when he owned the business, he did it too.

Speaker 3: 06:44 And the way that he thinks that works in his mind is that he runs an ad and then somebody says, Hey, you know what? I need carpet. I'm going to show up and buy buy carpet or whatever from the sky. And that's the way most business owners believe that we've created this idea that if you get more business, you need to create more awareness. And so as a result, a lot of these businesses have gotten very good at investing and awareness strategy. Any kind of advertising would generally fall into just creating that awareness. But the truth is it's not the way that it works. You know, the guy that picks up the paper even and sees this advertisement, a lot of times their first step might be just to look up the guy's phone number or where are they located in town or you know, does this, does this company carry the brand of carpet we want to use our next, another really leads to to a search for this guy's website or his phone number, his address.

Speaker 3: 07:37 And when you're doing that, they're being exposed to the reputation. And more than likely you're seeing not just that person but the competitors in that space and the reputation. So what ends up happening is an ad leads to a search which shares a business's reputation. And that's going to lead to either of them calling a business. Obviously it was what they want, but many times it leads to them actually going to their competitors. So when you, when you really put the pieces of this puzzle together and advertisement for a business that has a poor reputation, could in fact be sending leads and opportunities to a competitor. Right? That's crazy. It's crazy. Like this guy is spending money on ads on, on, on a, on a, in a newspaper, but really his competitors, the one benefiting from it if his reputation is not taken care of. So for us, a lot of times it's, it's, um, helping a business owner understand that no matter what, even if you're investing in, you've got a great website and other paid advertising that you're investing in at the end of the day, like you have to have a strong reputation, otherwise you risk losing out on the effectiveness on that advertisement. And it might be sending the, your competitors those opportunities. That's cool. So tell me what's, what's your value out of it? I know you've been doing webinars now consistently

Speaker 2: 08:56 for what? Like 40, 45 weeks or something crazy?

Speaker 3: 08:58 Yeah, exactly. So, so what's interesting is we've kind of taken that model of helping local businesses with, with reviews and reputation management. And that's actually what we teach in our course and that's what we've been really working hard over the last six months or so. And so, yeah, we, we have taken the advice to heart and saying, you know, Russell says, until you've, your courses built a done a million dollars in sales, how you need to be doing them live and, and I'll tell ya know, we're probably somewhere around 44, 45 weeks at this point. I'm doing them live every week. And it's awesome because most people, especially in our space think that they're just like prerecorded webinars and like, like the number of people assume that this is what I'm doing is not live. And getting to call them out by name on there is actually a quite a bit of fun. But so are our value ladder. Basically, if you, if you look at our, um, our, our course business and where we're teaching other agencies and freelancers and web designers and digital marketers, how to deploy the strategy and their business today. Like, we're actually at the very beginning piece of that business where we're doing a weekly Webinar to sell access to our course, teaching this whole strategy.

Speaker 2: 10:10 I love it. So for, as an agency, when, when you were doing it as an agency, how are you getting your leads? Were you driving them from facebook to a webinar talking about reputation or what was, what was your funnel?

Speaker 3: 10:21 Yeah, so our funnel for the agency, I'm kind of works in a couple of different respects because we have such a local presence. We've got just a lot of, a lot of word of mouth that happens organically. But, um, we've also been able to take the perfect webinar format and teach local business owners about reputation. And so we drive traffic from facebook ads. Um, we have email lists that we use and in one of the most effective strategies we've had for, for getting in front of local businesses is doing a jv opportunities with like even things like local chambers of commerce. So we'll talk with local chambers of commerce and help them with their own reputation and an exchange. Um, they've been really open to allowing us to promote the service and promote the Webinar to, to people on their list, and so it's been a really inexpensive way to get eyeballs and traffic to our webinar that, that doesn't involve having to spin up.

Speaker 2: 11:20 I love it. I think that's the one part people miss so much as there really is value in providing value to other people first and finding value to the local chamber of commerce or something like that to get those referrals. I think that's fantastic. That's, that's super cool. Well, they've been super receptive for sure. And I think again, once a person gets results, the first thing they want to do is share it with other people, especially if they're chamber. I mean that's A.

Speaker 3: 11:43 Yeah. And you think about the chambers responsibility in the world in many cases is to act as a beacon of strong reputation for all their member businesses. So a chamber needs to have a good reputation because they're wanting to look good to the member organizations that that belonged to them as well.

Speaker 2: 12:00 So what type of things are you actually doing for the reputation management then?

Speaker 3: 12:04 So our biggest drive here and it's a pretty simple strategy and that we just want to make sure that there's a process in place for most businesses to ensure that they are asking their happiest and most satisfied clients to leave reviews when we work with the average business. Average local business hasn't ever really asked their clients. Um, and if they have, what they find is that they just don't do it. There's two main reasons that people don't leave. Her reason. Number one is they don't know how to do it, isn't necessarily very clear and the second is that they forget about it. So our strategies are really about making it really easy for them to leave their reviews. And then second is making sure there's a strong reminder system to actually follow up with people to leave those reviews. What we find is have you, have you ever thought about like what it actually takes to get to the screen on Google to leave that review?

Speaker 3: 12:58 Like you have to search for the business, you have to pull them up on the map listing, you've got to, you've got to scroll halfway down the page to find where the review block is, and then there's a button that says, read all the reviews. When you click on that, there's a pop up that happens and then there's a blue button that says, write a review. By that point, the average consumer has already checked out. They've not made it through that process, so we've got to get that sequence a lot shorter and that's essentially what our. What our system does is helping the average consumer, the average person who's going to leave a review, many of cases that are not people who have done this before and making it really easy to get to that point where they can actually leave that for the benefit of of the business. Who's who's wanting to solicit that,

Speaker 2: 13:43 so are you using your own software or what type of tools and resources you have to make that happen? Because that's it. I have the same problem as far as even podcast reviews. I've asked a person to give a podcast with you and I'm like, you know what, you know how hard it is for me to even go and do a podcast for somebody else. It's not easy and apple doesn't make it any easier either. I mean it's just these are tough things. You've got to really want to do it.

Speaker 3: 14:04 Yeah. We use a software called review review lead. It's basically is a software package that allows to really make it very easy to both get that person to the point where they can leave the review, but then also that they can actually get reminded when we offer this solution to a client of ours, it will make sure that they'll get a email sequence of several emails to remind them to do that. So if they leave, they get the email and they don't leave their review. They get another one. If they forget, they get another followup email. I'm sending text messages and stuff like that. Buttons in different places to make it real easy so you can direct your clients to leave those reviews without a, without a lot of hassle.

Speaker 2: 14:48 That's awesome. So once you got a person, you basically at a client as an agency on the review side, what's the next step?

Speaker 3: 14:56 So on the agency side it's awesome because when I, when I brought somebody on, especially if they've never worked with our agency before in about a 30 day time period, we're actually able to get some really great results. There's some businesses that we've worked with within 24 hours of working with us, you know, they've got five star reviews, right? And they're like so excited about that and by 30 days they're seeing a huge transformation and their online reputation. So that makes the opportunity for us to go out and talk to them again about the other services that we can offer really easy because we've gone from a company that they just hired to help with this one piece to accompany that, that, that they know that when they invest money with us that they get a result. So now it's set the platform for us to talk about like anything else.

Speaker 3: 15:46 A lot of times we have clients that will come back after a 30 day period where we can talk to them about like, how are you marketing yourself? Like before, where maybe the door was closed to allow us to, to, to do some work even on their website. Now they're asking us questions like, Hey, well I know I didn't want to talk to you before about our website, but what'd you mind taking a look at it and see if there's anything that you think that we could improve. It's been a great way for us to sell all sorts of things because now, now they not only trust us but they. But there's a working relationship there that we can, um, we can use six times easier to sell to somebody that's already been, has never bought from you at all. So. So we'll get questions like, you know, I've heard that that funnels or facebook ads is something I should be paying attention to, but I never had anybody I could ask before, is that something you guys can do? And we'll be like, sure, we can help you with that too. And all because we've opened up the door with something that's really core to their business and they were neglecting the point we brought to their attention.

Speaker 2: 16:55 I love it. So are you doing like a review review for the business or what? What's the original offer? How much did they pay into to get that first month with you guys?

Speaker 3: 17:04 Yeah, so when we asked the client to make an investment in the review and reputation side of things, we ask them to invest, invest annually. Most of them pay annually and some choose to pay monthly. We ask them to invest $1,800 a year or if they pay monthly, we ask them to invest $250 a month. So it's there's a significant savings to allow them to pay and they decided to pay annually because that's kind of our preference to get that cash upfront as opposed to spreading that out because what will inevitably get them into other programs after that point as well.

Speaker 2: 17:37 Yeah. I love that so much now. Now that you've mastered this piece, now you're going out and you're teaching others how to do it as well. And I believe this is that piece also, primarily webinar section there,

Speaker 3: 17:49 so that's, that's all webinar today. We're running cold facebook traffic to a webinar registration page and every Wednesday at 9:00 AM Pacific I jump on there live and do a Webinar, ends up being close to about two hours or so, and it's been an incredible experience for us to to connect with people that way and sell the course as well.

Speaker 2: 18:12 So that's a b Webinar then because you're going after other agencies, other people involved in email, Seo, pr, anything like that. Right,

Speaker 3: 18:21 exactly like the way that I say it broadly on the Webinars, like if you're in the business of helping a client get a result in their business through the work that you do, then this is a great fit. And that could be copywriters, that could be a web designers, graphic designers, you know, facebook ad experts in the marketing space that helps a business review and reputation as a great first step.

Speaker 2: 18:45 That's awesome. What type of audience or how do you find those people on facebook then?

Speaker 3: 18:52 Yeah, so we're targeting based off of like people are interested in wordpress or people are interested in, you know, all those different thought leaders in that space as well. So it's been, it's been a really good thing and we've got, you know, just every week we were somewhere between 501,000 registrants that are, our numbers have been incredible as well in terms of our close rates and all that.

Speaker 2: 19:24 So what type of percentage, how many people actually show up and just walk me through your quick numbers on the.

Speaker 3: 19:28 Sure. Absolutely. So we have about a show rate is about 25 to 28 percent each week and we've got a really strong email indoctrination. We've been using the heck out of reminded to show up and that kind of stuff. And um, and then from there we'll have usually about a 10 percent close rate, 10 to 11 percent close rate on attendees and we have about a three percent close on, um, on registering. So it's been a very strong, very, very strong webinar. And our return on adspend is ranges anywhere from three and a half to eight, which is unbelievable, but I can tell you we're really happy.

Speaker 2: 20:22 Fantastic. So what's the offer? What's the price point on the offer?

Speaker 3: 20:26 So the price point is and um, and it includes the course and there's a bunch of other bonuses as, as you could imagine,

Speaker 2: 20:36 obviously you're building a huge list, but that many registrants per week that you can continue to go out too. So

Speaker 3: 20:42 at this point, like after unsubscribes or list is about $15,000. Um, so we've got like a good strong list and we've just, uh, we just, we, we hadn't really been nurturing that as much as we should have and we've just started reading to them more often, which has been great.

Speaker 2: 20:59 I just love your success, Mike. That's so awesome. Well, any part, as we're kind of getting close to wrapping things up here, any parting words you want to have for our audience or recommendations they should do?

Speaker 3: 21:10 Like one of the biggest lessons that hubs teaching and from our use of the strategy and our agencies, just under just the understanding that the value ladder is like, it's amazing. Like any business, you know, whoever you are, you have to understand your value ladder and I would challenge everybody to look at the bottom step, like what is the first thing that you typically offer to a client? And like get even more creative with something that's a step below that. Like, like I used to think that the bottom step of our value ladder was like web design. Well that's the first thing, but the truth is, is like even in our business there was a step that we kept ignoring year after year after year, which happened to be reviewing reputation management, but whatever it is, whatever that bottom step is like, challenge yourself to think, is there a step below this that makes it that much easier to engage with me and to say yes and to give me just a little bit of money to turn them from some stranger to a paying client. Right.

Speaker 2: 22:17 Oh my gosh. That is so awesome. Literally recite, we're talking about this just the other day as far as what's the very earliest, simplest result that you can get for someone and I think it's something you're doing because the great part is if you're able to go one spent one step lower than your competition is even thinking you're getting clients before they even start looking for the other service that your competition is offering. Absolutely. I love that idea because honestly, it's one of the main things we're looking at right now. If you'll see it, people see some of the products and stuff we're rolling out here in the next couple months will all be things at what's the simplest thing we can do to help a person get a result the fastest because you're right. As soon as you get that, when they're like, man, what else do you got? Because I'm ready to spend money.

Speaker 3: 23:02 The world is full of people who are selling products and services. Right? And it makes it really hard for the average consumer just to to to make that step and go forward. So you have to reduce the resistance. You have to have the risk associated with moving forward and one of the strategies of doing that is giving them something they can give you money for the lead magnet idea, like give somebody a pdf in exchange for their email or whatever. That's one idea of having a lower step on your value ladder, but how can you have something that people were willing to exchange money for that that really turns them into a buyer at that point, you've them as somebody who could potentially extend the other steps because they're willing to take their credit card out of their pocket and they're willing to move on from that step where you help them get that result.

Speaker 2: 23:55 Oh, I totally agree with you on that. There's nothing more important to us than a buyer leads or one thing. Buyers are totally, totally different. The value is so much more important for a buyer.

Speaker 3: 24:04 Totally different.

Speaker 2: 24:06 Well, Mike, I'm sure people don't want to reach out to. What's the easiest way for them to connect with you?

Speaker 3: 24:11 Easiest way to connect with me is agency mastermind.com agency mastermind.com. Slash learn is where you can check out our webinar. Love to hear from you guys.

Speaker 2: 24:23 Always such a pleasure talking to you. Look forward to seeing you again real soon and thanks again for everything.

Speaker 3: 24:29 All right, Dave, thanks so much. There's a lot of fun today.

Speaker 4: 24:32 No. One of the things that means a ton to me is the personal reviews that you guys leave on itunes. If you wouldn't mind going out, rate the show, let me know how I'm doing. Just go to Itunes, click on the episode and rate and leave a comment. I read all the comments. I appreciate all the stars and everything already left for me. Again, I really appreciate it and it's my way of finding out how I'm doing so if you don't mind, I'd really appreciate it and I again, thank you so much for all you guys do. Have a great day.