In this series, we’re taking on remodeling contractors and how their business can be found online by previous and potential customers. If you’re a contractor this marketing model works, we know because we use it. If you are not a remodeling contractor don’t tune out, this advice applies to all companies who want to be found online.

Joe: Welcome back to the Being Found show, where you can take the unfair advantage. This is the best two hours in radio for business. You will be found by more buying customers if you listen to this show. I think I can go on and on. What do you … Yeah.

Chauncey: Well, we got to get the point across about how great this is. I think it’s somewhat worth going on and on about because it is simplifying. Everybody goes, “Oh my gosh, SEO. No. I got to wrap my brain around this crazy idea. Oh my gosh, SEM, search engine marketing. Now I got to wrap my brain around paper click advertising and social. I don’t even want to get started there.” Being Found really sort of says, “Okay, here’s the premise. Your goal is to be found. It’s not search. It’s not paper click. It’s just to be found.”
Make yourself available and let’s take it from there because once you make yourself available, let’s say I’m available and let’s put it in old school advertising terms. I’m in the newspaper, and I’m in the phone book, and I’m on TV and I have a call tracking number for each of those things, and TV is making me 400 times more money. Where are you going to put some of that advertising dollars? But you wouldn’t have known that if you didn’t put yourself in those three areas in order to see where you’re being found at.

Joe: Yeah. I think you said it well too. This is about being found, and it’s not about search or social or anything. It depends on where your customers are and what they’re doing. I got to go back. For me, there was a magic moment, and I don’t remember how many years ago it was. Maybe four or five years ago, maybe a little more than that, and a brilliant marketer, I’m telling you this guy was brilliant or is brilliant, so he’s not dead, brilliant.

Chauncey: He just lost his brilliance somehow over the years.

Joe: Yeah, he lost his brilliance, really a marketer. He said, he goes, “Joe, I got this business model, and I want to start it, but I’m not going to be able to handle how many people are going to be calling in. So, I haven’t turned it on yet.” I go, “Oh well, I’ve got some contractors. I can help you handle the phone calls.” It was a troubleshooting type of business. “I’ll help you with phone call.” I go, “What do you mean you won’t be able to handle the phone calls once you turn it on? How good are you at marketing?” He goes, “Oh yeah, it’s a lot. It will be a lot.” I said, “Prove it.” He goes, “Okay.”
He goes to his computer. He messes around for a minute on Google AdWords, and the next thing I know the phone starts ringing. We were on the phone most of that night answering calls, or we were on chat, chatting with people. I said, “What in the world just happened?” I said, “That was the most impressive AdWords campaign I’ve ever seen.” Well, that’s when Being Found came to me almost in an instance. What he had done is what all smart businesses should do.
He figured out who his customer was, where his customer was, what they were looking for, what their problem was, and he built an AdWords campaign that he knew was for them, in that place, at that time, right where they needed. He made sure his website had what he was looking for. He put that front-end hardworking. You know that measure twice, cut once that contractors say? He did that which made, so he knew when he turned on that AdWords campaign it was going to work.
That’s when my brain started trying to make sure I could identify and make sense of that, and it took me a couple of years to put the whole concept together of Being Found. That’s really what it is. It’s that brilliant marketer did the work ahead of time to make sure he was talking to the right audience, and he had the right ads, and then he just put it to work.
So, I think that’s what I’m trying to say we’re doing here for the remodeling contractors or anyone who’s listening is, we’re trying to give you a glimpse into you can know the things you need to, to make wise marketing decisions. You can know the things you need to so that you are being found where your customers are and with what they’re looking for, and like never before.
It’s funny. Back when we had newspaper and TV and radio was all we had, we only knew if it worked if the phone rang. But now I know if an ad’s working by if it’s showing up or if people are clicking, or I can watch a website and I can … I don’t know if everybody knows this, but we have software that allows us to see where you’re clicking and watch your mouse when you’re on our websites and know whether you’re going to come to our websites.

Chauncey: Oh yeah. You can straight up record their visit if you get that point, but that’s further [inaudible 00:05:01]. You got to start somewhere and Analytics is in there, and a great metric that anybody can understand if they look at it is bounce rate. Okay. People are finding us. We are being found, but when they find us, they don’t like us because they’re leaving the medium. So, that is a great starter metric to get people to go, “Okay, well I’m doing the first half right, but the second half needs a little bit of help.”

Joe: Yeah, and that’s all knowable now. That’s all visible and that’s why I call it being found, or we call it being found by more buying customers. It’s not just being found. What if you’re being found and everyone bounces? They leave your website, or they don’t call you. Well, who cares? You want to be found by more buying customers.

Chauncey: Yeah, and something I like to point out, so my wife’s mother-in-law, she didn’t want to use Facebook. Computers, man, true. They’re too much for her. I finally sit her down, and I’m all, “Now, we’re going to learn to use Facebook.” I’m all, “What do you want to do?” She’s all, “I want to find my daughter to be friends with her.” I’m all “What do you use to find things?” She looks at the screen and she all, “A magnifying glass,” and I’m all “You click that.”
Then it comes up and there’s a picture of two little profiles sitting next to one another. I’m all, “You want to be friends? Look on there. What button makes you friends?” She all clicks it. I’m all, “That’s right.” Most things on the Internet now, analytics, these things, most of these things are not made for people like me. Most of these things are made for business owners, are made for consumers, are made to be easy and to be understandable.

Joe: That’s right. Chauncey, that was a great point. Especially nowadays, you could go into your Analytics, your Google Analytics, which is Google’s reporting tool that tell you what’s going on with your website. You can go in there, and your very first dashboard will be a set of reports that Google thinks are very important for you to know. You’re going to look at regular charts and graphs like you’re used to looking at in the rest of your business as soon as you log in.

Chauncey: Oh yeah.

Joe: Yeah. That’s a great point.

Chauncey: Because it’s meant to be easy. Windows was really the beginning of the world deciding that if people weren’t going to come to the computer, well then, the computer was going to come to them.

Joe: Right. No, that’s great. Even when we talk about BuzzSumo and looking at where are people sharing important articles, which tells you where to share your articles, but it’s also telling you, which articles are good and people like so that you can consider what kind of article or page or content to put on your website. That’s more complicated than typing in general contractor or remodeling contractor or bathroom remodel and clicking search. That’s how complicated that tool is.

Chauncey: Right, and that tool is meant to be digestible because who uses that tool? Well, I’m an SEO. I use that tool. Sean is a content writer. He uses that tool. You’re researching the topic, you’re using that tool. So, people are left with the impression that certain things are targeted towards one person and if I don’t understand it, then I just can’t understand it, but these tools are not made for one person.

Joe: No, no.

Chauncey: Yeah.

Joe: As a business leader, I use these tools all the time to check up on my team.

Chauncey: Oh absolutely.

Joe: And if I can get anything else across to anybody listening is that these tools that we talk about, I think they’re for the business owner first because I can go, “Hey guys, I looked at the article you created with BuzzSumo, and I looked at what the most popular is, and I don’t see anything that’s recognizable with our article. You didn’t look out what’s important.” Or I can use the Google tool, the Mobile-Friendly Test, to see if my website’s mobile-friendly, or the page that just got built it’s mobile-friendly. I can say to my team, “Hey guys, why didn’t you make that page mobile-friendly?” It’s that easy. I now all of a sudden have the tools to know how to check up on my team. I mean, it’s just I don’t know how else to say it. It’s just that clear.

Chauncey: Yeah, or how to assist them to know what direction. I mean, if you have a team, I mean, saying checking up on my team, yeah, that’s part of being a boss. I realize that it’s maybe a … But it’s only one part of being the boss. Another part is that your team is looking to you for leadership and maybe they’re not going in the directions that they need to be going in. You can draw their attention to these things so that they are more successful at their job making everybody happier.

Joe: Right.

Chauncey: Yeah.

Joe: Okay. Well, we are coming to the end of this show. You’ve been listening to the Being Found show. I’m Cloud Wise Joe and we’ve got Chauncey Haworth. We’re-

Chauncey: I’m your curve interest superheroes.

Joe: Are you reading something that is not spelled right? That is cruel.

Chauncey: Yeah.

Joe: It does say interest. Well, you’re-

Chauncey: Hey, you’re sharing it man.

Joe: Yeah, you’re right.

Chauncey: That’s funny.

Joe: Yeah, you’re right. It does say that. So, we’re on every Saturday, come on back. You also go to BeingFound.com, and you can watch the video of the show and find all kinds of helpful articles. We are trying to pull back the green curtain and make sense of the Internet for you. Thank you for listening. As always, we wouldn’t be on if you weren’t listening. Have a great weekend.