243. How to Rank #1 in Your City's Search Results

Amber Farrell grew up watching her father dig ditches as a master plumber for 40 years. That upbringing gave her something most marketers don't have. A genuine respect for blue collar business owners and a frustration watching them get sold marketing they didn't really need and really couldn't measure. So she built far beyond marketing, an agency that helps trades and home service businesses cut the waste and actually grow. Today she's breaking down exactly where small businesses should spend their marketing dollars what they should stop paying for immediately. How to protect yourself from dealing with agencies and why getting your message right matters more than any other ad campaign you'll ever run. I'm Ryan Ackinson and your listen to help the podcast where we interview entrepreneurs to hear their advice on how you can start a business too. So with that I am so excited welcome Amber to the show today Amber thank you so much for being here so excited to have you on. Hey Ryan thrilled to be here how's it going? It is going good. I'm so excited to talk about all things marketing with you and I know our audience loves talking about marketing. So before we do that let's dive in at a high high level. What do you do? What does far beyond marketing do? So far beyond marketing exists to do just that to be far beyond traditional marketing. We want to empower business owners without the huff, the fluff and the crap that a lot of them get sold. So we do marketing consultation. We have a marketing membership for business owners who cannot afford a marketing agency and then of course we have the standard deliverables of an agency but we would much rather educate and empower busy entrepreneurs to do and control their own marketing and business growth. So good and I'm excited to talk about setting up small businesses for success when it comes to marketing. Before we do that I want to hear your intro or origin story. What made you decide against video marketing? Did you come out of the wound? I'm going to be a marketing agency. How did you get into it? No not at all. I fell into it from the school of hard-noughts. You already mentioned that my dad was a plumber. My mom had three business degrees. My dad has a master plumbing license and works with the state of Texas a lot for the state board of plumbing and containers. I grew up wanting to sing opera. So I was all into music, all into music competitions until I realized it as a lovely soprano. I wasn't going to get paid crap. In typical fashion went to school for a performing arts degree that wasn't going to pay me and then decided hey it may more sense to have a steady paycheck and worked in the family business. I ran a call center. I wrote scripts. I did dispatching and then one day my mom brought me all the yellow pages because that's how old I am and said you're going to manage our marketing from now on and I went I guess I better figure out what's working and what's not working. So from the school of hard-noughts was born my passion for creativity and analytics and ultimately ended up creating my own marketing agency in 2013 which was a lead generation business where I had business owners in three states that needed lead generation through print marketing sold that to private equity in 2018. Heck yeah. Blade and private equity learned how to do enterprise level marketing for national brands and then decided that I wanted to help entrepreneurs because they are the backbone of our American economy and then realized that entrepreneurs did not have the skills that they needed to win. They did not get into business to be marketing experts. They did not know what experts to trust or what platforms to buy and so my team and I created the YG3 platform which is basically the first kind of marketing that allows all of your marketing needs to be put online and completely automated and managed by AI. So cool and just not any entrepreneurs. I mean you're focused on like blue collar like home services like why did you decide on like that nation particular and then we're going to dive into all things marketing. Well because those are my people. I mean nobody works harder than someone that sends their day digging ditches and sweating and doing all the jobs that most people don't want to do and we also have a massive shortage of construction workers and the skilled trades in Texas and in the United States. So if we can help blue collars do their job better then we're not only supporting business owners we're supporting whole communities and again those are my people my dad's the plumber my brothers your plumbers I understand that business. Okay let's get into it then so let's just say someone's listening right now like okay I'm launching a business or I'm just at like the very early stages I don't have like a huge marketing budget amber but I need to get a few clients what's like the first step that they should take to get like their first like 10 clients of all the expertise that you know now. Okay so the first two things that they need to do is a equal importance Ryan so number one you need to think about your elevator pitch you need to think about the unique selling position that your company or your services are going to offer so get on my download quad and tell it this I want to story brand my business my business specializes in X and I want you to follow the Donald Miller principle of story branding my business I'm one of only a few hundred people certified in the world as a Donald Miller story brand coach and the most overlooked aspect of someone starting their business is learning how to talk about their business in a way that people will listen tip number one what's the importance of that is that like so everything marketing like comes back like to that or talk just a little bit more about like the importance of it just to someone's like I don't really want to do that I know kind of what to say but sometimes you really don't know what to say so tell all this other importance of that. Yeah so picture yourself in a networking event because tip number two is you're gonna go shake hands and kiss babies you're not going to have typically a lot of money to spend on marketing when you're first starting a business so guess where you start your personal network so you're talking to people at school at work at church your friends of your spouses the people you go hang out with happy hour if you can't accurately describe what your business or product is or does you've already lost them so number one Laura had to talk about your business number two use your network to grow your business and commit to 30 coffees and 30 days hey this is what I'm doing now can I just have 30 minutes of your time you go through a very casual meeting and then here's the kicker who do you know that would benefit from the product or service that I'm offering no one wants to be sold to but everybody wants to help someone that they know like and trust so step number one you have to know how to effectively and compellingly talk about your business because people have to hear about your business at least 11 times where they take a single action tip number two when you're talking to someone about your business don't sell them ask them who would benefit from the product or service that you offer okay let's just say you do get those first two clients you now have a thousand dollars a month to like spend on marketing where you put in those dollars is it going to ads is going to sco yeah thousand dollars a month amber what are you what are you doing to get some more clients first thing you need to do is again spin up your website make sure you have a digital footprint get yourself a Google my business profile because again if you're going to rank online and you're going to be a legitimate business then you need to have a digital presence you don't have to have a massive website you don't have to have a fancy website you need to have an s seal optimized accurate website late to a Google business profile so that's where you put that first thousand dollars Ryan what is one of the best like tools for developing a website right now are you saying hey go to square space develop it unlike clawed code or something that's like not technical where like some of the best resources get started for actual websites the best way for you to start with an actual website I like clawed I like clawed code I think you can accomplish so much by just telling it what you want it to do again when you're telling it what to do tell us a story brand it because yes there is a formula for doing your website correctly and optimizing it for conversion that's another good tip optimize my website build for conversion number one and then what you do is you take that completed HTML code and you find someone that can build it out for you if you're not savvy to do it yourself so send that thousand dollars build it yourself get it the way you want it and then just pay someone a nominal fee to get it live I'm not a square space fan it's just my personal opinion I still believe that WordPress is the the ultimate platform for integrations or you could do something like a go high level where you're putting your website on an actual CRM and tying all of your funnels your social media and stuff like that together are you ready to launch grow and scale a business inside the uplip Academy yoga a complete roadmap to shortcut your success with 25 plus step-by-step programs top by active business owners not gurus who shared their step-by-step blueprints plus ongoing live workshops skills training a business idea database and community to share resources and celebrate your wins click the link in the description below to join the uplip Academy today and start surrounding yourself with the people and tools that can change everything for your business I'll talk about optimized for conversion what does like that look like at like a high level because I just feel like I see like so many like websites out there and like some of them I'm like oh wow that looks like super good but it's like oh like where's like book a call like how do I actually like talk to somebody so it is like a balance of like design but like actually like you know getting someone to do something so what are some of the foundations you have for like actually optimizing for conversion yeah the bottom line is you have 2.5 seconds or less to get some of the tension when they bounce on your website or they're gone so the hero section of your website needs to say what's in it for them immediately what do you do what's in it for them first thing they need to see and then like you just said call the action call the action call the action do they need to call you do they need to put an appointment do they need to fill out a form what is it upper right hand corner middle underneath the hero section and then follow you down the line as you scroll scroll scroll and then of course story branding what's in it for them oversee the objections overcome the objections and then so on and so forth from there don't give a lot of fluff don't give a lot of junk what's in it for them tell them how to do business with you or what I love about your website is when I was on here like in the top right corners has built my growth engine like it'll like shake and like grab your attention have you like seen like results from that or like anything from there I think that look it looks so good time to encourage you to go on the barbieonmarkie.com but yeah tell us about like the button there Yeah, I mean, you wanted to be interactive, right? I mean, you're all about visual and your company as well. Like video sells. People don't want to read a lot. So you need to make it interactive. You need to make it compelling. You need to help people to draw the eye where you want it to go. Okay, so we optimized for conversions. We got the story brand down. We got a website up. The piece that stood out to me that you said was the local SCO. Foundational base here. Like, what are some of the best practices that go into local SCO? Like actually stand out in a market. So number one, make sure all of your other stuff is connected to your website. You would not believe how many times we do a search engine optimization audit. And people have multiple addresses. Multiple phone numbers, multiple company names. Wow. Yeah, across the Google Vens profile, a social media profile, a website, and then maybe a Yelp directory. Because they're trying to figure out their marketing as they're going to launch, right? No, figure it out and be consistent. Because if you have inconsistent address, phone number, names, across online, you're going to get dinged for that. So number one, keep your information consistent. Number two, connect your Google business profile. Connect your social media. Connect your website altogether. Yes, there are widgets for this. Yes, there are pixels for this. Because you're not going to get the 33 different factors that Google looks at for optimized SEO unless everything is connected together. And then lastly, when your website is being filled, ask the person that's building it. Are you going to do my H1 and H2 titles? Are you going to use local search engine optimization keywords? How are you going to make sure that I'm findable in my markets? Yeah, I feel like a lot of people can use cloud codes. Because I'm thinking of like, so that's like a blue collar, like, person. Like, what I know is like, they might not even know what an H1 or H2 is. So like, how do they even like know what questions actually? They just like go to cloud code and they can't hire someone for SEO. What questions should I ask? Really any best practices there for you? Yeah, I mean, I tell cloud what to pretend to be. So when we're doing with cloud or Gemini or anything else, I say, hey, you are a local SEO expert pretending to be, or as a local SEO expert, I want you to optimize the HTML code for my website. My website does blah, blah, blah, blah. So you tell it what you want it to be. Nice. That's great. Okay. So we got some, we did 30 coffee dates and 30 days. We have our like our website up now. We got some like local SEO running. What do you do next for marketing? Is it ads? Is it something else? Is it yard signs? Like, what are some of your best practices again? I'm trying to like grow this from like really like step zero to like website. Now what what do we do? How do I continue like for money on the the engine here? So this is the intersection where it really does depend on your business goals and your business and district. So if you are a retail or an e-commerce store, you're going to look completely different on your next steps than if you are a blue collar worker or even a professional service provider. I mean, in our agency, we work with churches, we work with day cares, we work with blue collar, we work with attorneys. The strategy has to be different based upon the business goals. So the first thing you do is you ask yourself, who's paying for my services now? What's driving the most revenue to my business? Who's that unique customer? How do I go get more of them? So for a blue collar, if you're actually making money by going to people's homes, then maybe you're ready to optimize on some localized ads or maybe you're ready to optimize on some hyperlocal branding within your Chamber of Commerce. You have to figure out where that ideal client lies. If you're an e-commerce provider, then it isn't going to do you any good to really advertise your services in your own backyard. I mean, you can start there, but you're going to want to have more of a embedded imprint online so that people are finding you. So maybe you're investing retargeting ads. So again, think about who that unique customer is. Where do they live? What are their buying habits? And how do you go and position yourselves at the top of the sales file? Because people don't even know that they want to buy from you until they know that they have a problem that you can solve. So number one, they have to be problem aware. Number two, they have to be solution aware. And then number three, they have to be you aware or brand aware. So you've got to meet that unique customer where they're at. How do you identify the people that are problem aware? More like intent-based marketing is their way to do that. Let's only stick to blue collar, like home services, types of work. So for home services, someone only uses the plumber every couple of years. Someone uses an electrician every four years, right? So you're going to want to lead with the problem that you offer. So hey, do you have a light bulb with flickering or do you have a sink that's dripping? Ben, here's how you fix it. Maybe you go online and you're doing a one-minute video on Facebook or Instagram to talk about what the problems are that people are experiencing. And then you're tagging local companies, your name, your chamber of commerce, your city, in your post. So you're going to talk about the problems that you solve that people are experiencing so that when they come across you, they go, oh my gosh, they see me. They don't even know why exist that they see me. So you always leave with the problem that you solve, regardless of the platform, whether that's social media, whether that's a paid ad, a television commercial, a radio ad, you're always going to leave with the problem. We've talked a lot about ads, local SEO, website and stuff. I'm just curious, did all the clients you've worked with, what's been the highest ROI activity that someone does? It will always be Word of mouth. No matter what marketing you invest in, Word of mouth, your reputation, your brand awareness, your clarity, all of it's going to come down to localized reputation, which is why you had to put so much emphasis on your reviews and making sure that you're creating that buzz around your brand from day one. Word of mouth, Word of mouth, Word of mouth. Well, let's talk about the reviews because that is so, so important when it comes to marketing and local SEO, I know, getting clients, just like that, social proof is like so, so I'm boring. What's the playbook for reviews? You just simply ask, is it really that easy or like, how do you get like good reviews? In the beginning, you need to have some kind of easy methodology for people to give you a review. And it's okay for you to ask friends and family, hey, can you give me a review? Or something like that. So get your Google Business Profile set up. There's going to be a button that says share, go to cloud, get a QR code set up that people can scan with their phone, and say, hey, can you leave me a review? Then as you're getting busier and your company is scaling, you can put tools or automations in place at the end of every service call. They're on a math and getting a text message during email saying, leave me a review. And that's linked to your Google Business Profile, which we've already covered is also linked to your website. So you're golden. But in the beginning, get that link, get that QR code, ask people to scan it. It is that simple. Yeah, it's, it is like truly like the hack. Why I feel like when it comes to marketing, we've heard it so much on this podcast, you need customer reason. There's some of these great tools out there. And I absolutely love the word of mouth play. But I would say at some point, you do have to get out of word of mouth and actually use digital experiences to reach your clients. I presume at some point. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because you're only one person, right? And so the brand awareness is what we call the wind and the sales of the rest of your marketing. If you have a healthy, sexy brand that people really love, I mean, kids are going to point out the truck on the side of the road. Look at that cool brand, mom. I mean, rotor, rotor, gorilla plumbing. I mean, some of the most powerful brands, it's because they're catchy. So branding is what drives awareness, which drives people to your business. So you do have to invest in brandy. You do have to invest in ads. You do have to get out there digitally. It's the world we live in. You're not going to live underneath a rock. Good luck. Yeah, that's what I should ask this earlier. Like give me like the three foundational principles that goes into like a good brand. Is it having like penguin plumbing or like having a iteration or like what's like, give me like three things that like make a good strong brand. So you have to begin with the end of mind. You have to make sure that your brand aligns with the people that you're wanting to serve. And this is why brands go through reg iterations from time to time because you don't always know that when you get started. So make sure it's clean. Make sure that it's catchy. Make sure that it's memorable. Those three things alone are what are going to build a good brand. You can debate what is a good brand all day long. The brands that you like may not be the brands that I like, but they should be the brands that you can maintain as a business owner operator. Let's dive in to ads a little bit more because I'm honestly interested in this as well. We're going to start running some ads for like space bar visuals and whatnot. And like, I don't know if I should do like LinkedIn, Google, Meta. I don't really know, but we're going to stick to like home services here. What's like a good ad budget to get started with and like what are some like creatives they should be using early on to just get zero to one in ads. So again, this is going to very greatly based upon the number of people they're trying to reach and where people are hanging out. I tell my clients all the time, if you are hanging out, if your clients are people that are baby boomers, don't put an ad on TikTok. They don't care. If your clients are new homeowners, it just thought they're first house and they can afford your services because most people spend the most money in their houses in the first year that they own it. Then maybe you want to think about Instagram and Facebook. Maybe you want to think about some of the more video-esque ads. Your budget is determined around who that ideal client profile is, where they are and how many you want to target. The same thing doesn't work for everybody. A YouTube app is really great depending on the demographic versus a meta ad or a linked in ad. So again, for a blue collar, you're going to want to go where the homeowners are. So put your money there. I like that. Is there a good test budget to start with though? So they do like $500 a month, $1,000 a month. I would say that probably varies on platform there. But what's a good budget to actually test it? Maybe give us a dollar range per day. You really can't do a dollar range per day because you don't know how many people you're going to reach within a certain geographic area when it comes to a blue collar type of thing. So if you're looking at doing ones that code, look at the saturation number of homes. This is where more AI becomes your friend. So if you have one truck on the road and you can only serve 10 clients a day, then you need to reverse engineer the map and go, okay, if I'm going to serve this number of clients and I want to go in these zip codes, I need to know how many homes are serviceable in this zip code. And then you weed it out and weed it out and weed it out. And until you can cross-reference that with a sustainable budget. Because consistency is key. Don't you're going to run ads for 30 days and see a list. You're not. You have to run ads for a minimum of 90 days before you ever see it. And that's why I really rather take my established audience and retarget them and then do a look-alike model, then go after a virgin audience that you're going to have to build brand awareness and problem awareness with. Take the group of people in your database, have it reverse append, build a look-alike audience, and then go from there. Tell us the difference between that, between going after a net new audience and a retargeting audience. Tell us a little bit more about that. Because I don't think people actually know that you can do this. And it is truly a hack. So tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. Retargeted audience is someone that you can track who's come to your website. So pretty much any website that you're going to have in a analytics title, you should be able to get a pixel that says, hey, I'm going to track everybody that comes to my website. By the way, this is the legal thing. Make sure you have a cookies and a privacy policy on your website. This is a federally mandated thing. And at various states, say, if you don't have that, you're in potential violation of $5,000 for issue. Little soapbox there. Get a privacy policy in your website immediately. I can give you a link for someone that I love that does this or a bunch of attorneys. But you're going to do a retargeting pixel on your website. And then you're going to put that retargeting pixel into your paid ads. And then you're going to give the people that have come to your website or visited you on your social media, the ads. Not other people, only those people. Does that help lower your cost per click or cost per mile? How does it actually benefit? I definitely get it metrics wise. What are we seeing in a different set of metrics there as well, then? Sometimes you're actually going to spend a little bit more for a retargeted because you're being more narrow. And sometimes you can be penalized on Meta or Google for having a more narrow audience. But you're going to get fewer leads that are going to be higher quality leads. So it's not necessarily a less expensive way of doing it. It is a more targeted way of doing it. And so you are able to control the parameters of the people that you are reaching out to more effectively than if you were just throwing it up against the wall and see if it sticks. And honestly, I don't like to tell any of our clients to do ads until they've done a lot of other things first. Most businesses do ads wait prematurely. Interesting. What should they be doing first, of course, I've asked. What should they be doing first then before ads? Well, number one is that word of mouth and met localized branding. Number two is that strong website presence. Number three is that SEO. SEO gets a bad rap. But the bottom line is people are fleeing from Google every single day. And they're starting to search on their phones via chat, GBT, Gemini, and other ways. So if you're not being found in your city, here's a hat for you, put in your company name plus the city where you're in. If you're not in top five, you need to invest in SEO. And you need to invest in AEO. It's not enough just to be found on Google. You need to be found on chat, GBT, and Clawed, and some of these other platforms too, because everybody runs their life on their cell phone. Yeah, super, super good. Speaking of the AI tools, I kind of want to end this there. How are AI tools reshaping small businesses and how they can operate and even market themselves? Oh my gosh, they're completely reshaping it. What used to take two years to change the landscape of marketing is now taking two months. It's changing at rapid fire speed. So and different AI is good for different things. So we just did a mastermind in our office last week, teaching people how to use the different AI's. So Clawed is great for agenic, is great for complex learning, is great for content creation, Gemini, is wonderful for the graphics. And then you've got chat GBT, which is more of a generalist. So figuring out which AI is best for your business and your industry is really important. And the other way that it's changing small businesses instead of hiring someone, you can literally create these AI agents to function as people. So rather than hiring a copywriter or a graphic designer or a strategist, you teach the AI to function in that way and then you program them so that you actually have agents that work in your business as these people. What's been your favorite usage case for AI's, these AI agents? So what's been one of the most unique ways that you see small businesses using AI? So one of the most unique ways that we're using AI as a business is by having AI manage and monitor the results for our clients because people have to sleep, people have to eat AI doesn't. So I can optimize a client search engine optimization through AI. And if I get a single negative signal from some of the SEO optimization we're doing, the AI will take it down immediately and replace it with something effective. I can also train the AI with the basic questions to ask my client that it's going to create a total customized approach for that client and all the nuances of that company. So rather than hiring people to do this for me, I can work AI to death. - How are you guys using it for like any like marketing stuff like personally? - Well, I mean, I use it for all my long form comments. So every single meeting that I do with the potential client is often recorded. So I will batch out 90 days worth of video calls. I will have AI pull out the free marketing advice that I give on calls every single day. I will splice that out into clips and then into highlights and that becomes my reels on my social media. - No way. Wait, so how are you then doing like the content creation? Do you have like an AI create like the actual like video itself there from that clip or like what is that? - No, it's already recorded because I'm using Fabian or you know, something else to record those meetings. - Oh man, that is a phenomenal like use of case for AI there. I really like that. Last question before we dive into our fan blitz questions. Do you give like one more like take the step tomorrow to get started with marketing for your business? What would that tip be for someone that's listening? - Well, it really depends on where you're at and what your business goals are. Business has a like cycle. So whether you're a startup, whether you've been in business for a while depending on your goals, are you needing to hire someone? Then you need to think about your content creation for hiring someone. Are you needing more calls? Then you need to think about whether or not you are well positioned in your local market to handle your services. So again, I'm strategic thinker. So begin with the end in line. What's your next 90 day goal for your business? And then ask yourself, what can AI or marketing do to help me get there? - Let's dive into our fan blitz questions. Amber, this has been amazing so far. So let's dive into fan blitz and listeners, these are questions for our community. If you want to join in on real class entrepreneurs like Amber, email us at podcastedupflip.com. Amber, ready for our last five here. - Let's do it. - Number one, biggest marketing myth in the trades industry. - Biggest marketing myth in the trades industry. It's you don't need marketing. (laughing) - Simple enough, Google or Facebook adds for a new home service business. - Yes. The answer's yes. - Yes. Both, okay. If you only had to pick one, what would it be? - Meta. - Meta, I like it. One free marketing move anyone can do this week. - Google your business name with a city where you're located, figure out how you're ranked, where you're ranked, and then fix it fast. - I like it. Finish the sentence. Most small businesses don't need more marketing. They need more clarity. - Oh, I like that. That's a good one. - When marketing's not confused, your customers are. They need to understand what you do, how you do it, why to hire you. - Very last one for you. Book, podcast or person that changed how you think about business. Donald Miller, absolutely. Clarity is king. You don't exchange clarity for cleverness. So story, ranger business, one of the most foundational books you can ever read to your marketing. - Amber, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on the Uplift high gas. If someone's like, oh my gosh, I need to learn more about Amber, connect with her, where can they do so at? - It has been such a pleasure, Ryan. It was so much fun hanging out with you today. So go to farbeyondmarketing.com or hook me up on LinkedIn, Amber Farrell. - Everyone, that was an amazing episode with Amber, three quick takeaways for you. Number one, when you're starting to build out your brand, you really need to put time to thinking about this. Use AI tools, go back and listen to how to build a story brand. That is the best way to get started from zero to one. Once you do get to one, the next best step you're gonna wanna do is get a website and be SEO optimizer. So many tools out there now where you can get a website up and you can optimize it. Really great to admit there for you. Then number three, optimize for conversion. So once you do start having that website up, you need to optimize for conversion. Using the framework that she gave early in the podcast is gonna be the best way to do that. If you guys are enjoying this podcast, please do us a five star rating wherever you do this and do your podcast. It helps us get more amazing entrepreneurs like Amber onto the show. Amber, thank you so much for your time today. - Thanks, see you soon. (upbeat music)