Webinar Transcript

Online Marketing Webinar

Hello and welcome, my name is David Caruso and I’m going to be your host for the next ninety minutes, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day to join us on this webinar.

We are going to talk about how to generate more leads in sales online but before I get into the presentation I just want to get rid of the white elephant in the room. You see after when I introduce myself as David Caruso the first thing that comes to people’s mind is David Caruso CSI Miami, well obviously I’m not David Caruso CSI Miami no matter how hard I try. If you’re going to think of David Caruso and David Caruso CSI, I like you to think of Davis Caruso CSI the speaker because the CSI stands for something that I want to try to achieve as a group today.

Now I often say to my audiences, I am not here to give answers to your business and I haven’t got the answer for your business specifically, now before you hang up the call and say “hey, why am I wasting my time here listening to this webinar for,” please here me out. The reason I say I say that is because I don’t know anything about you, I don’t know anything about your business what life cycle, what concerns and issues you face on a daily basis so for me to stand and say “hey I’ve got the answers for your business,” I’ll be telling a small white lie. You see my role today is to do three main things and those three main things just happen to correspond with the CSI.

You see my first role today is to challenge you, challenge your thoughts, challenge your expectation, challenge you on if you’re using online marketing correctly in your everyday business. Now the great thing about being challenged is our mind is stretched and that’s a great thing to do, the second thing I’m here to do and that is to simply spark ideas.

Now I’m going to use some real world examples from my real world business, a high company I had in Sydney West for close to twenty years plus some other businesses I‘ve done some consulting work with. Now don’t use these examples to say “hey look at me, look wonderful I am,”

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I use these examples to show you that the principles I’m teaching in online marketing how they actually in the real world, how to actually in the everyday business scenario for an everyday small business like yourself and like myself, so I’m here to challenge you, I’m here to spark ideas.

Now lastly I’m a professional motivational and speaker my job as a motivational speaker is to motivate you to take action, inspire you to take action so I doesn’t matter how much great information I share with you today and it is going to be great information its worth zero if you don’t do anything with it.

Now I’m going to take you back to that word challenge and I’m going to make the assumption that you join this webinar today because you’re facing challenges when it comes to your everyday business, when it comes to online marketing. Now as much as I sound like an online or marketing speaker or a professional marketing motivational speaker today I’m not going to focus much on the motivation because I think you’re motivated enough, I know you’re motivated enough because you’re taking time out of your busy day to join the webinar to learn more about online marketing.

So changing what is happening in your business today will only happen with a combination of motivation and education, so today I’m mostly going to focus on the education. Now just a little bit about myself, I had a business in Sydney’s west for twenty years and that business was a hire business, it was a very successful business, we hired fifty plus employee’s turned of $3.5 million dollar per year.

Now we know we were successful because we won a multitude of awards during our time, we were business swap international business of the year, we were (Speaker not clear 3:43 – 3:44) 2004, 2006, we were Black town award winners 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 and we were the finest in the Australian high company in the year 2008 – 2009. Now in 2010 I sold that business and since 2010 I’ve been on the professional motivational speaking circuit and I speak at conventions, industry associations basically anywhere when somebody wants to pay me to make a presentation and what we do is a 45 minute to a 90 minute key note presentation a bit of a rev-up presentation for the audience.

Now you might be able to tell because of my accent, I’m an Australian but I don’t live in Australia anymore I live in Thailand. Now I live in a quiet little fishing village called the (Hachiausome Ran 04:29) its 90 minutes south of Bangkok just on the gulf of Thailand. Living in Thailand we’ve got all the trappings of success, we have a private little beach at the front and a very nice lifestyle to go with that house or with that living.

Now the reason I share this with you I change my philosophy when it comes to business and maybe you can relate to this.

You see I got caught in this trap and I see a lot of other business owners get caught into the same trap but for seventeen, eighteen years of my life I had my business as the centre as the core of my life and I had my lifestyle built around my business let me repeat this because I want to see if you can relate to this, I had my business to the core of my life and my lifestyle was built around my business, my business dictated, my lifestyle dictated how I lived and what I did.

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Now I don’t think that’s 100% correct and I’ve turned that around, turn that on its head so in the last two years I’m now actually building a business around my lifestyle, my lifestyle comes core front and centre, my families, my health, my well-being comes way before any business (Speaker not clear 05:47) so I’m actually building my business around my lifestyle.

Now I’m writing a book about it and currently two years into the endeavour so far so good, I’ll let you know how it goes in a couple of years. Before that I was a paid advisor to the new (Speaker not clear 06:07) government and I sat on a board called the Small Business Development Co-operation the SBDC and I sat on that board for two three year tenures and principally we were the voice of small business we advise the small business minister of the new (Speaker not clear 06:21) government on policies issues and issues regarding small business owners and I just completed a 48 month contract with the entrained federal government as part of the NBN The National Broadband Network, we all heard of the NBN rollout where we had to teach small business owners how to be better online marketers with the onset of faster broadband. I’m a veracious writer and a reader of course but here’s one of my books, Chase Peter please keep an eye out for it, it’s a very good read so I’ve been told.

So that’s enough about me because today is more about you and this is what we’re going to cover today, how to generate more leads and sales online, we’re going to cover four main items. First we’re going to look at the secret to business success and I’m going to give you some insights to what makes your business successful then we’re going to look at mystifying the world of online marketing I want to break down the online marketing terminology into simple to understand language that both you and I can relate to.

Okay and then (Speaker not clear 07:25) web strategy I promise you that you would never look at your website the same way again after I unveil the strategy I promise to blow your socks off, you let me know if I do so or not and then lastly I want to share with you an opportunity on how you can control your online destiny forever because it about taking control in the online arena.

Through the presentation I’m going to drop some bombshell and when I do drop these bombshells I just want you to relate to the current circumstance how that relate back to your business. So the first bombshell that I want to drop today is simply this, to be successful in your business you don’t have to be the best at what you do, let me say this again because I this to resonate, to be successful I your business you don’t have to be the best at what you do. Now just kind of play at that scene I’m going to come back to that statement, I’m going to come back the slide in a little moment and explain what I mean and look into that statement in a little bit more detail.

That’s a rhetorical question because I can’t see you of course but if you ever heard of Joshua O. Bill, that doesn’t matter if you haven’t but Joshua O. Bill is one of the finest violinist in the world he’s (Speaker not clear 8:39) young fellow as you can see by the picture and the violin that he’s holding is a Stradivarius violin built in 1713 its three hundred plus years old and this violin is worth $3.5 million dollars alone.

Apparently it’s the most beautiful sounding violin ever engrafted, so here we have the finest violinist in the world playing the most beautiful violin this guy is at the top of his game, this guy is the top of his business and we know so because he plays to packed audiences all across the globe and when he does he makes up to one thousand dollars per minute, not bad for a violinist player.

But Joshua O.Bill was approached by the Washington posts a few years ago and they wanted to do a social experiment, they said Josh we would like you to play in a prompt you one hour concert at Lea Strachan’s plaza at the Washington subway and during that one hour concert Josh approximately two thousand people will walked passed you. Josh if you put out your violin case we want to see how much money you’re going to make, finest violinist is playing the most beautiful violin.

So we are going to watch what happens in that one hour, we are not going to watch the full hour of course but we’re going to watch the sped up version to see what happened, see if you can see and guess how much money Josh Bill made in that one hour (Video being played).

I think it’s safe to say that Josh Bill didn’t make much money in that one hour, can I tell you he made $32 and 17 cents, that’s the finest violinist playing the most beautiful violin they’re throwing pennies at this guy $32 and 17 cents. Now what I didn’t tell you and I didn’t tell you on purpose was that the night before Joshua O. Bill played to a packed audience about two doors down and when I was referring to Josh Bill making a thousand dollars per minute I was actually referring to the night before the event.

Now for you to see Josh Bill the night before I would have cost you a minimum $250, $300 per ticket but you couldn’t have got a ticket because it was a sold out event. So here we have to start to consider, we have the same musician, we have the same violin, they’re the same songs and we had a similar audience size but the question we have to ask is, what was the difference between the night before and the morning after? What was the difference between the night before and the morning after?

And hopefully you’re sitting there thinking that without marketing Josh Bill is only worth $32 an hour. So here is the bombshell you can have the best product and service in the world but if you don’t have a marketing strategy you’ll be the Josh Bills of the world playing for $32 an hour. Now what’s worst is your business have a poor marketing strategy, a poor marketing strategy will mean your business will never reach its full earning capacity, never reach its full potential for growth with a poor marketing strategy.

Now take you back to that slide a few slides back, I said to be successful in business you don’t have to the best at what you do lived and die by that statement the last twenty odd years of my business endeavours. To be successful in business you just have to be in a lot of instances the better marketer, the best marketer, now I’ve actually refrained that statement lately because I do talk to a lot of business owners and I said small business owners we can’t out market the big business co-operations we don’t resource, we don’t have the funds behind this.

But you know as small business owners we don’t even have to be the best marketer we only have to out market our closest competition. So to be successful in business you don’t have to be the best at what you do you just have to be the best marketer and in a lot of instances you only have to out market your closest competition that making sense, hopefully that’s making sense. So we know that online marketing is starting to take a larger slice of their marketing budget a larger slice of their marketing empire, marketing spent so we even have to refrain that statement, you can have the best product or service in the world but if you have poor online marketing strategy you will adversely affect your business. So how do we become better online marketers, how do we become better marketers in general?

Well we start to understand the ‘Why?’ behind online marketing; we start to understand online marketing as a tool of our marketing endeavours. Now the first thing that we’ve got to come to grips with is online marketing is not just about having a website, they’re a lot of channels when it comes to online marketing, there’s email marketing, there’s search engine optimization, there’s Google advertising, there’s viral marketing, there’s banner advertising, there’s affiliate marketing, there’s social media marketing they’re a lot of channels when it comes to online marketing just as there’s a lot of channels when it comes to real world marketing, traditional marketing we know there’s radio, TV, magazine, local newspaper, sales rep, word of mouth, bill boards.

Now in the real world we knew as small business owners that certain channels works better for us than others so local newspapers might work well for me where as somebody in a different entry they might rely on radio and TV.

Certain channels will give us a better return on investment specific to our particular business, specific to our industry, specific to us; well the same principle applies online, certain channels are going to work better for you and your business than others so just because they’re lots of marketing channels out there doesn’t mean we act like the kid in a candy shop and try to do more, certain channels are going to work better for you than others. Now where we go wrong as small business owners in some instances is that we try to use different channels, we use different channels and they don’t work for us but what has actually happen is we haven’t use that channel correctly, we haven’t use that channel to its full ability and then we wright that channel off as an affected channel for our business because we say, “hey it didn’t work for us” but the only reason it didn’t work for us is we didn’t use it correctly from the onset, so understanding how to use the channel correctly is vital to our online marketing success. Now I want to have a look at just a few channels here of online marketing and I want to break them down into everyday language that you and I can understand, so I want to de-mystify online marketing so you’ve probably heard some of these terms, search engine optimization, email marketing, pay per click (PPC), websites of course.

Real world tradition marketing channel

Now I want to show you for every channel there’s a real world tradition marketing channel that can I tell you search engine optimization is just like getting front page listed in the old yellow pages, in the old white pages. Now to get front page listing in the old directories, the old print directories we would use certain techniques and strategies so we might register our business called (Speaker not clear16:52 – 16:53) we knew that would get us to the front of the yellow pages section well maybe perhaps get a bigger Ad in the yellow pages to move us up the front.

Well let’s say I was just trying to get us to the front page of a directory and the directory generally speaking is Google, see Google is just one big online directory but it’s a directory for websites. Now instead of just one or two strategies Google is looking at 220 plus factors when he’s making a decision where to put your website in his directory.

Search engine optimization is a process of getting onto page one of Google, now we do talk about Google a lot and we do focus on Google because Google has got something like about 80% – 85% market share in Australia and a lot the principles we apply in our SEO approach to Google also applies to the other search engines out there, Yahoo, Bing, Msn and all the different search engines.

So just as a quick overview on what we’re talking about when we are talking about an SEO just have a look at the screen here it’s that area in red and we call the organic results, we say it’s a free listing and the reason we say it’s a free listing is that If you appear here and you get a click it doesn’t cost you a cent as oppose to that area on the right the area in the yellow on the top which is the Google advertising the pay per click and as the name suggest you get click there and you pay Google a price, 50 cents a $1 I have a client paying up to $8’s.

Now we’re going to cover Google advertising in a little bit further in this presentation but let me direct you back to Search Engine Optimization, SEO the organic results. We say it’s a free listing there, now what if that was the biggest lie when it comes to Search Engine Optimization and it was about that free listing that I was just talking about. Now hopeful you can relate to this because you’ve had a quote from an SEO company come knocking at your door and told you they would get you on page for x amount of keywords for a certain price, now because this is a one way conversation in this particular presentation so in a live presentation I usually ask the audience, ‘how much do you pay or what’s the prices for Search Engine Optimization?

The usual price is anywhere from $800’s per month to couple of thousand dollars per month. So in this example in this presentation I just went to a couple of websites and just did a couple of quick screen shots to show you that the prices people are paying or offering for services for Search Engine Optimization. So if we have a look at this second column here, rate for modelling local and niche key words its $900 to set up and $900 per month for the rest of your business life, now Search Engine Optimization isn’t just for today forget about tomorrow it’s a monthly price and it’s for the rest of business life, so $900’s a month if my math serves me correctly that’s about $10,800’s per year for the rest of your business life.

Here’s another example of a company offering SEO service they will get you on page one of Google for ten keywords, ten key phrases for $1100 per month for the rest of your business life, $1100 per month if I extrapolate that out if my maths serve me correctly once again I think that’s about $13,200 per year for the rest of your business life. Now ten keywords, now when I talk about keywords I’m talking also about key word phrases so I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page with this , so keyword, key phrases same thing nobody searches for one keyword anymore. So let me share with you a bit of a story about my hiring company, I had three divisions in my hiring company, I had a small equipment hiring division so that was for hiring out chain saws, lawn mowers, generators, whipper snipers, mortals anything handyman tools you could use we used to call our customers the weekend warriors because they would come in on a Friday hire some stuff for the weekend go home do some stuff at their house bring I back Sunday afternoon, Monday the weekend warrior.

The second division I had was heavy earth moving machinery so that was bigger machinery like backhoes, bobcat, escalators, (Speaker not clear 21:24), graters anything to do with civil construction, one of the machines you see on the side of the road. The third division I had was a party hiring division chairs, tables, jukebox, mar key’s anything to do with a party or event we would rent it out to you or we would hire them to you. Now let me direct you back the small equipment hiring division, in this particular division I had two hundred and twenty plus products but just picking out one of those products a weed eater or a whipper sniper, now one of the keywords that I might want to be ranked for, for this particular product might be weed eater hire, now once again this is a key word when we talk about SEO even though its three word it’s a keyword phrase, keyword phrases, keyword it’s the same thing in this instance I just want to make sure we’re on the right page here. But after a bit of investigation you know I might call a little weed eater hire somebody might be looking for a weed eater hire but somebody else might be looking for to hire a weed eater so they might use a different keyword in the search area of Google they might use the keyword hire a weed eater where somebody might call it a whipper sniper so they might be looking for whipper sniper hire somebody else might want to hire a hitcher maybe rent an hitcher.

What if you had a weed eater rental? Now these are all different keywords relating to this one particular product, can I tell you I found forty keyword variations for this one particular product. Now if I extrapolate that in I’ve got two hundred and plus products, if I had a forty variation for each product roughly speaking that’s 8,800 keywords, so if an SEO guy come knocking at my door and said David, we can get you on page one of Google for ten keywords for $1100 per month for the rest of your business life that’s $13,000 a year, do I think that’s a good return on investment on my limited marketing budget, I don’t know about you but I only had a limited marketing spend related as a KPI against my turnover and I had a limited marketing spend and I had to get the best return on investment if I want my business to grow and would I think that $1300 a year for ten keywords on Google is a good return on investment for my marketing spend, no way and you know what $8,800 keywords that’s not even one division of my particular company

I had another two divisions to go. So the BS lie of SEO is it’s not free, we say it’s a free listing there’s nothing free about it, it can be expensive but it’s definitely not free you’re going to pay to get there. Now would I think spending $13,000 a year or would I think spending $13,000 to learn how to do SEO myself to bring that service in house to bring that skillset in house of my business would that be a better return on investment for my marketing spend, of course it would be because it would still be a one off cost am I saying to you that’s it’s going to cost you $13,000 a year to learn SEO, no way it’s not going to cost you that much, but I want to get into your mind that bringing SEO as a skillset into your business is a real possibility and should be considered very carefully as an option for you. Now I hate reading my slides but I am going to read this particular slide, it’s been estimated the cost to optimize a model resize website is between $8000 – $12000 a year, we saw that through those SEO companies. Which it probably explains why less than 8% of all websites in this country are currently optimize, that is great news 92% of your competitors aren’t optimizing their website so that gives us greater possibility, greater chance for success for our own business. Now add to that SEO as an on-going cost we now guarantee that Google won’t go and change the rules and to strip any page rate, see today we could be on page one on Google tomorrow we’re page thirty five. Google is always changing the rules; he’s just altering his alga rhythm a little bit that affect the rankings in a lot of instances but if we knew how to do

Do SEO inhouse

SEO ourselves and that’s (Speaker 28:02) twenty plus factors once you have that skillset you have that skillset for life, now sure you just have to keep up with the changes but they will publicize and you just keep abreast of Google changes very s light changes core principles of SEO remains the same, so the skillset you can actually bring into your business and I want you to start thinking about doing so. Now still talking about SEO I want to talk about blogs, now if you listen to online marketing speakers, professional speakers that talk about online marketing they will tell you a blog is about engaging with your audience building up a following and there’s some famous bloggers out there, there’s Perez Hilton who blogs about Hollywood celebrities, there’s Ceff Golden who blogs about marketing and sure they do build up a following, people who come back to their blog to read what they’ve got to say about Hollywood stars about marketing on a day to day basis. Now with hand on my heart I don’t want you to feel sorry for me but I am going to share with you that David Caruso wrote a blog for his hire company since 2006 never built up a following, never built up or engage with an audience that came back to read his blog on a day to day basis because

I can honestly say that nobody gives a stuff, nobody gives a care about what David Caruso has got to say about his whipper snipers about his lawn mowers but that’s ok because I didn’t use a blog for engagement to build up a following, I use a blog purely for SEO services and I want to show you what I mean by that. Now here is just a quick diagram of how my website was, myhirecompany.com and this is probably how your website looks per-say as well. Now on any given website at any given time my website was about ten to fifteen pages, now when we do SEO we can only technically SEO each page for three to four keywords, so if I got a page about backhoe hire I’ve got keywords around that page about backhoe rental, rental backhoe, hire backhoe, backhoe hire you know what I am trying to say it’s all about backhoes I’m not talking about chainsaws on that page, I’m not water carts or other different products that page is about backhoes so

I can only really ranked for three to four keywords for that page and those keywords are really relevant so they’re just different variation of that backhoe hire, hire backhoe, rental backhoe, backhoe rental hopefully you’re following what I mean. Now if you had fifteen pages on your website technically speaking we can only really SEO that website for about sixty keywords now we can get over that hurdle by attaching a blog to our website. So I had a blog on my website www.myhirecompany.com forward slash blog and I would rather blog post about different items. Now every time we write a blog post we are actually creating another page on your website let me say this again every time we write a blog post on your blog we’re actually creating a new page on your website.

So I would rather blog post about weed eater hire, I would rather blog post couple days later maybe a week later about whipper sniper hire focusing on those particular keywords so hire whipper sniper, rental whipper sniper, whipper sniper rental, hire a whipper sniper I would write another blog post about rental weed eater perhaps maybe lawn mower hire, bobcat hire, hire backhoe hopefully you know where I am going with that. So at the time when I sell my business I had 850 plus blog post on my website so principally I had another 850 website pages on my website targeting two to three different keywords per page.

Now one thing I don’t call a blog, you should never call your blog a blog your customers nobody knows what a blogs is so we call it latest news or FAQ’s or news or Tips & Advice whatever relates to your particular audience, whatever relates to your target market. So we use a blog for SEO purposes because I could write a blog post and actually get on page one of Google for a specific keyword that I wasn’t getting on page one of Google for through my main website so here is an example and this is current that’s how I talk about my business sold then 2010 and I’m very conscious of the fact that kind of what work yesterday in online marketing sometimes doesn’t work today it might work today, I can tell you about principles but I want to give you real world examples and current examples as well so please feel free to check this on your websites, check this on your computer after this presentation, please don’t leave this presentation now but after your presentation go to Google and type in keyword speaker Sydney and see if my search results, see if my website has come up and that’s the davidcaurso.com that I used so this particular page you’re looking for dynamic keynotes speaker Sydney event.

That’s a blog post so I’ve targeted the keyword the keyword that I wanted to target in this instance was obviously keynote speaker Sydney and I write a blog post about that so here I am on page one of Google for 1.5 million results that’s pretty good it’s pretty cool. Now every presentation I give a free plug to my wife please go to her website and but some silk scarfs she sells tied silk scarfs get them delivered directly to your door direct from Thailand.

So we use the same principle and the same strategy for her scarfs website so here we wanted to target silk scarfs Melbourne and 836,000 results but here we’re on position three looking for beautiful silk scarfs Melbourne order online today do it for customers some of my clients in this instance this is a caterer, so somebody looking for paramedic caterer there is 1.5 million results and here we are we’re about position 1,2,3,4,5 position 5 not including the Google maps and the Google places area but (speaker not clear 32:42 – 32:43) with targeting specific caterer, caterer parameter hopefully that’s making sense that’s just a blog post. So here is the bombshell I’ve been effectively using this marketing strategy since 2006 so if this is a new concept to you geez you better get up to speed fast so we don’t use blog to intern engage with our audience to build up a following, I use blogging purely for SEO’s purposes and that’s the example of doing so.

So one last example once again go to your website, why do I keep saying go to your website, go to your computer go to Google and type in marketing speaker you’ll see 113,000,000 million results and there is one of my blog post a blog post that (Speaker not clear 33:30) actually wrote Australia leading business marketing speaker so I’m in position 1,2,3,4 and that’s it, once again it’s just a blog post, so that’s SEO that’s SEO as a module.