Get More Calls! The Lowdown on Organic Marketing for Trade Businesses

Discover how to boost inbound phone calls with organic marketing strategies. In this video, we dive into an innovative SEO program designed to maximise your local search presence and leverage your Google Business Profile effectively. Learn from real client results and see how our approach can generate consistent leads for your trade business. Whether you're in plumbing, solar, or renovations, this video will guide you through actionable steps to enhance your inbound marketing efforts.

Don't miss out on these valuable insights! Watch now to transform your inbound marketing and grow your business.

Watch the video version of this podcast at https://youtu.be/k6JPnDYJDdU

Discussion Points:

00:00 Invest in outcomes, not just programs.
04:12 Google favours paid traffic over organic listings.
08:55 Highlighting the success of local search optimisation for businesses.
11:06 Google Business Profile: Utilise free real estate.

Resources:

The Sales Engine Overview - https://youtu.be/n2in6uQKZ18

 Welcome back to The Site Shed Podcast! If you're in the trades and wondering how to integrate AI into your business, Tradie Hub has you covered. Discover innovative ways to reduce labor costs, increase efficiency, and leverage AI for growth. Check out Tradie Hub at tradiehub.net and see how they’re transforming the trade industry with cutting-edge AI solutions! 

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Transcript

0:30

Good day, guys. Welcome back to The Site Shed podcast. So I'm doing a short episode today because I wanna speak to you about an observation and a lot of an area of opportunity, which I think a lot of you guys could be capitalizing in relation to generating more inbound phone calls through organic marketing. Now I will say this, we've been running SEO over at trade web guys, our agency now for close to 12 years, and the landscape has changed significantly. But what I'm gonna show you today, and I've actually for you guys that are tuning in via video, I'll be able to actually physically show you some reports from client accounts that are consistently getting 20 plus leads every single month just through this program. Now the thing is, it's not traditional SEO, and it's actually considerably cheaper than what an SEO program would normally cost. But and in my opinion, it's formidably better from a results perspective, and our clients tend to agree as well, which is why they always stick around with it. It's a really good strong program. Now 1 thing that I do wanna say to you guys before we get started is this is an important observation above all things. When you guys are investing into a, like, a marketing solution, it's important that you have an understanding of what the outcome looks like. And what I mean by that is instead of investing into, like, a program per se, so let's say SEO or Google ads or Facebook ads or whatever it might be, you wanna invest into an outcome. And so that might look like we want 5 new clients, or we want 20 phone calls or whatever it might be. Because truthfully, the problem with a lot of this stuff that you're gonna see that you do see day to day and perhaps it's been your experience in the past in relation to marketing reports, is that the reports always show green. And they and truthfully, the campaigns may well be working because they're moving you further and further up positions, but they don't necessarily make the phone ring. This is without question. 1 of the reasons why I don't necessarily recommend that you use SEO as the only solution. You would typically use it as part of a solution because you don't normally have a lot of control over dialing up, like, ad budget and things like that. You don't have that ability when it comes to organic marketing. So sometimes the emphasis to get taken often, actually, the emphasis gets removed from outcomes and gets put on to indicators. And those indicators, although they might look great, they don't always make the phone ring. So just be really clear when you're speaking to your agency about what the outcome looks like so they can help you design a machine that'll generate that outcome for you, not just some fancy glossy report, which looks fantastic. So as I mentioned before, I'm gonna be able to show you guys that are watching some of these things. But truthfully, if you guys tuning in via audio, you're not gonna miss a whole lot here. I'll I'll make it really straightforward and and explain to you what I'm looking at. But it is important that, I suppose, for you guys that already investing into some sort of marketing program and you're not getting the outcome that you're looking for, then this is gonna be an important podcast for you. So I hope that it helps you ask better questions and steer you in the direction if so of some services and solutions that might be able to help you reach those outcomes that you desire. So the first thing that I really want to talk about is the search engine as it stands today. So for you guys that are watching here, I'm just gonna share a screen, and I'm gonna take you over to Google. Don't worry. As I said, I'll explain this to you guys that are listening. However, when you type in, I've just typed into an incognito search here, plumber in Balmain. Now the first listings that I will see, the sponsored links, and a sponsored link is essentially you might be familiar with the term Google ad or, like, SEM or paper or something along those lines. Right? So the first 4 listings that I see here, the very top of the page, paid traffic listings. Now why is that? Well, because Google is a business and their interest is in serving real estate through potential visitors that is gonna generate their money. So whenever anybody clicks on any 1 of these listings, The company that's listed, it gets charged and that charge will vary from anywhere from, you know, cents right up to literally 100 of dollars per click, depending on how competitive that search term is. And this is often where a lot of businesses come on stock when they're trying to compete on these huge, big popular search terms that are so expensive, like plumber Sydney and all this kind of stuff. You just need astronomical budget to actually make it work. And it's not very, very rarely. Is it a vie is it viable for a business to compete in that space depending on the size and, you know, the the cash flow and things like that of the business? So as we scroll down, the next part we get to is, Google Business Profile, and I'll circle that back to that in a little bit. And then as we scroll down a little bit further underneath Google Business Profile, you'll see now there's a number of, organic listings. So this is SEO what I'm looking at here, and there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 listings there. And then below that is some more sponsored links. Now 1 thing that I will point out as well is as at the time of this recording, which is the 2nd July 2,024. You'll notice that Google now has pages back again. So where, in over the last, you know, year or so, there haven't been pages. It's preparing 1 scrolling page. Now they've gone back to having pages, page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Pretty much all of last year, anyone that was trying to sell you front page results was a bit of a fast because there was only 1 page. It was just a scrolling page. Now they brought, different pages back, and I don't quite know why. But this is also 1 of the reasons why I'm talking about this podcast, because you never really know what Google's going to be doing. And quite frankly, even what I'm gonna be talking about in a second with really prime real estate, that may well change as well. But at the moment, we're saying that this this is definitely what is working well for our trade based customers all over the world. So 1 thing I will point out while I'm in here is there's a lot of well, you'll start to see inorganic listings down here. A lot of sites like lead pages and 1 flare and yellow pages and things like that that are taking up real estate for certain areas. Now what this essentially means is that you have organic listings, which are typically not paid, but they're being driven by paid aggregate sites, so even the free listings are getting bought up by companies that are trying to make you pay for them. So the real estate is becoming a pretty hard space when you look at organic SEO itself. And unless you're willing to be investing or able as part of your strategy to be investing in, paid advertising, then that takes out the top part of the page as well, which is the, the Google Ads side of things. So directly underneath that, we have our Google Business Profile, which used to be called Google My Business, and what it basically is is, it's Google Maps. So you can see or for you guys that can see there's 3 listings directly underneath the ads, and we call that the 3 pack listing. And if we click further into these, on this link here, we'll open up a whole bunch of different businesses that are showing up for, plumbers in Balmain, which is the search term that I've put in here. Balmain, for you guys that don't know, is a suburb, in the inner west of Sydney in Australia. And so I'm just doing this as as purely as a test. Now the things that I'd really wanna draw attention to before I jump further into the, listings are the options that you have available directly from the platform. So you so what you'll find here with Google Business Profile is there straight away, somebody can click and go directly to my website straight from the, from the listing. I can get directions. And then if I dive further into the actual, maps listings, you'll notice I also have the ability to call so I can call directly from platform. Now what that means is essentially, I don't have to go to Google. I don't have to find the website that I'm looking for. Don't have to click on that website to go to the to go to the page, to find their phone number, to click on that, to actually contact the company. I can just go directly from the platform. So it's very good real estate. And as you've seen as well, it holds very high in the page, which is essentially better real estate then you would see further down the page because it's just higher. So the the premise there is how likely are people to actually scroll down the page in order to get to, your ad. The reason that we like the Google business profile, now we we we have a program which is called, local search, and we're actually doing an intake for that now. So if you guys are keen on what I'm about to show you, then make sure you throw your hand up, head across the Facebook group, send an email to tradewebguys.com.au, whatever you need to do, but, let us know as soon as you can because we're obviously limited on capacity for that program. But the reason that we like this program so much is because of the outcomes. And I'm just gonna jump into a bunch of different a few different reports here just to show you exactly what I mean, so this is a report for a plumbing and realigning company for last month, you see they generated 20 phone calls, they had 36 direction requests, they had 46 website clicks now this is like a black and white number like when you talk about outcomes this is an outcome you've had 20 phone calls you've had 36 direction request, you've had 46 website visits, right, like, we know this for a fact. There's no, there's there's no, like, did this happen or not? Like, it it happened. Jumping to another 1 here, this is a solar company. This is a very new campaign, by the way. This has only been live for, I think, maybe 2 months. You can see here 21 phone calls, 30 on direction requests, 45 website clicks. And this 1 here is another plumbing client of ours, 26 phone calls, 24 website clicks. So the point is, like, this this is better results than I've than I ever saw when I was running SEO for myself and and in terms of phone calls that are being made. This program actually does generate phone calls, and it does generate website visits. And it doesn't have all the fluff and all the stuff that comes with your traditional SEO programs, so that's kind of the point. With the changing nature of the landscape, it's important that you stay agile and that your strategy moves and molds to suit what's happening out there because it moves it changes pretty quickly. Now if I was to crystal ball what's gonna happen here with Google Business Profile, and I don't know, but I would imagine at some point they're gonna offer the ability to be running ads. You already can run ads to a degree in Google Maps listings, and I think that's probably the direction that Google will end up taking it because this real estate is too good to be free. So at the moment, it is free and it's such an amazing opportunity for you guys, but for how long that's gonna remain, I can't tell you. So what I would recommend is that you do double down, you do capitalize on this real estate because it does make a really big difference. And truthfully, again, from the perspective of, like, a business owner, someone who used to be a tradesman, I used to be a plumber, like, I don't care about the reports. I don't care how many, how many points I've moved up in rankings on Google. All I care about is how many phone calls have I made and how many people have made inquiries through the website, and that's it. So this is a very good program if that if you're of a similar mindset. Anyway, that's all I wanted to show you guys today and talk to you about the changing landscape of an organic search specifically on Google's platform is something that is definitely I can see working in the favor of local based trade businesses at the moment. And it's something that I think you should definitely jump on. If that's of interest to you, please head across trade web guys.com.au, reach out to us somewhere, fill in a form, pick up the phone, do whatever you gotta do. And, if we have space and and we can help them, we'll definitely we'd definitely love to have chat. That's all for me today, guys. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes, and that's a wrap. New Zealand based home renovation company, 6,593 percent ROAS. Sydney based solar company, 2,700 percent ROAS. Hunter region based bathroom renovation company, 5,600 and 16% ROAS. Melbourne based building company, 13,182 percent return on ad spend. Adelaide based solar company, 2,881 percent return on ad spend. Guys, the list goes on and on. If you were a trade based business and you work with projects like roofing, solar, bathroom renovations, kitchen renovations, anything like that, head across to tradie.wickyforward/podforpodcast. Tradie.wickyforward/pod for podcast, a book in a conversation. It is game changing.