Digital Marketing Masters Podcast

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In this episode of Digital Marketing Masters, host Matt Rouse welcomes Dan Wood to discuss the intricacies and common pitfalls of Google Ads for small and medium-sized business owners. They dive into the challenges many businesses face with Google Ads, often finding themselves spending money without seeing returns. Dan shares his expertise in troubleshooting and optimizing ad accounts, starting with the crucial step of setting up conversion tracking correctly. He explains how conversion tracking helps Google Ads understand valuable actions taken by visitors, which is essential for optimizing ad performance.

Matt and Dan also explore the importance of proper location targeting in Google Ads. They discuss how businesses can waste money by targeting the wrong geographical areas and provide insights on how to set up location targeting effectively. The conversation highlights the significance of understanding the difference between targeting people "in or interested in" a location versus those "recently in" a location.

Furthermore, they emphasize the importance of having a robust follow-up process once leads are generated. Dan shares real-life examples of businesses losing potential customers due to poor lead management and the lack of a systematic approach to handling inquiries. They discuss the decay of lead value over time and the necessity of quick responses to maximize conversion rates.

The episode concludes with a discussion on the future of AI in lead management and customer interaction, highlighting the potential for AI agents to streamline processes and improve customer service. Matt and Dan agree on the importance of having a well-defined process for managing leads and continuously optimizing it to enhance business performance.

[00:00:05] Matt Rouse:

Show intro music for the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Mad Rouse.   Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Digital Marketing Masters. I'm your host, Matt Rouse. And, today, I've got Dan Wood. How are you, Dan?  

[00:00:24] Dan Wood:

Great, Matt.  

[00:00:25] Matt Rouse:

Thanks for having me. No problem. Thanks for being on the show.   Today, we're gonna talk about something that is,   probably   the scourge of many, a small and medium sized business owner, as well as can be,   profitable if done right,   but rarely is done right. And what we're gonna talk about is Google Ads,   the one thing   that everybody loves to hate. So   Yeah. Dan,   I know you're, you're an expert in in fixing   Google Ads. Right?   And,   I mean, this is something that, I mean, our agency also runs into all the time   is that we'll go into someone's account and they're like, we have a problem. We're not making money and we're spending all this money on ads, and   and   I know you do specifically Google Ads. We do kind of, you know, marketing department type stuff,   But   it's always the same thing. You go in, you look at their account, and you're like, I don't know who set this up or how many people's fingers have been into this account,   but it is a disaster. It's always a disaster,   right? Yeah.  

So   in a nutshell, do you want to maybe explain   the process   that you've developed   to figure out how to clean up somebody's ad account?  

[00:01:54] Dan Wood:

Absolutely.   Yeah.   PPC can seem like   a black box or, I mean, search ads specifically can seem like magic. That's either working or not,   but you can troubleshoot it systematically.   So,   I basically built a step by step process. We start with tracking   because   a lot of people   either don't set up conversion tracking properly or they just skip it altogether because it seems   really technical, confusing, and maybe unnecessary.   Right. But conversion tracking isn't just for marketing reporting.   And how many marketing reports go unread?  

[00:02:35] Matt Rouse:

Always feels like a waste of time sometimes. Yeah. Dan, before you move on, let's for one thing.   For for maybe the uninitiated,   what is conversion tracking?  

[00:02:47] Dan Wood:

Well, basically, that's when you put a little bit of JavaScript on your website   and   when someone does something valuable on your site like filling out a form or   clicking a download link or clicking a phone number,   then that bit of code sends a ping back to the Google Ad server   to tell it that your visitor actually did something valuable. So it helps Google understand the difference between   a valuable visitor and,   someone who is just looking or someone who bounced or a spam click.  

[00:03:19] Matt Rouse:

Right. So a conversion action is not necessarily a purchase. It could be some other type of action. Like, they asked signed up for a newsletter, they filled out a form to get interest. They you know, whatever that thing is right add to carts.  

[00:03:33] Dan Wood:

Exactly. Yeah, it really depends on the business model the purpose of the website.   But a conversion,   yeah, I guess that's just the technical term for   a visitor who   did something useful or did what we were hoping someone would do when they came to our site.   And if we don't send that data back to Google,   and meta ads works the same way, so does LinkedIn.   You know, every tool is hoping to get this feedback because they are all   machine learning algorithms   or AIs that are   trying to optimize the ad performance for results.   So if we tell Google   that this click turned into nothing and that click turned into a sale,   Google has   a lot of information on that click.  

So, I mean, who made the click, what device they were on, where they were, the time of day, what ad they saw, what keyword they searched.   It has all of that information, including that person's   recent search history   and even   some web traffic data.   And unless you have an infinite budget,   which means your ad could run   every single time a keyword is searched,   Google is trying to make a decision whenever your the keywords you're bidding on come up   whether or not to show your ad or someone else's or which version of your ad to show.   And they're trying to   optimize for results because they want to keep your marketing budget. They don't want you to go and try some other tactic. They they want your ads to work so they could keep making money.  



[00:05:07] Matt Rouse:

So if we're not sending conversion data back to Google or whatever ad platform we're using,   then they don't have the information that they need to determine whether it's working.   And so they just randomly show your ad to people pretty much. I mean, or anybody you typed in the keyword.  

[00:05:25] Dan Wood:

Not randomly. An an analogy I use is, with a music service, streaming music service. So imagine you open a Spotify account   and you listen to a couple songs every day   and you   never interact with the platform. The music plays   and you don't give it any feedback.   You're just gonna hear the same song over and again, you know, the same it it's just gonna play whatever music.   Maybe you pick your 3 favorite bands when you created the account.   But if every time a song plays, you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down,   you add the ones you really like to a playlist or share them or play them again, you're giving that platform feedback. You're giving it data to work with, and it will get better and better at recommending songs to you until   before too long, you're finding your new favorite bands   through the recommendations it's making because it has   data on you, and it has all of the rest of the data it has from everybody else. And all of the platforms like   Netflix will work the same way. If you've ever opened someone else's Netflix account, you'll see genres you didn't even know existed.  



[00:06:29] Matt Rouse:

Right.  

[00:06:30] Dan Wood:

You know, I have a friend who's really into anime, another friend who's really into true crime.   And when I go to their house and they turn on their TV and there's Netflix,   things I've never heard of,   just because I'm in different genres. And, you know, YouTube works the same way. All of the social media platforms are trying to optimize   their content delivery   to engage you, and Google Ads is the same way. If we don't give it the data, we don't give it the conversion data, it's just gonna keep playing the same It's just gonna keep playing Taylor Swift.   That's right. That's all you're gonna yell at. They say, I don't like that. Stop playing that and it will try something else. Yeah. Or that you also like something else.  



[00:07:08] Matt Rouse:

You see, you don't wanna anger any Taylor swift fans, you know. Right. Bad things happen when you do that. Look at the US election.   Alright. So anyway,   besides Taylor Swift, what is the next step after we've got the conversion tracking fixed and it's going feeding back into the platform? What's the well, I wouldn't say what's the next step, but what's the next biggest problem you see people making?  

[00:07:32] Dan Wood:

That would be the targeting.   So   in location targeting, location settings in Google Ads,   there's used to be, an advanced location setting. Now I think it's called something else.   But there's   2 different modes there. 1 is to show your ad to anyone who's in or interested in your target locations. Mhmm. And the other one is to show ads to people who are just in or were recently in your location.   So   so here's an example. If you're a hotel in Niagara Falls,   you want to target   people who are in or interested in Niagara Falls because you want your ads to show to people who are researching   a vacation   wherever they are.  

But if you are,   an auto mechanic   in Niagara Falls, you don't want your ads showing in Kentucky   because no one's gonna drive that far for an oil change.  

[00:08:29] Matt Rouse:

So there's a big difference between   interested   in and was recently in a location.  

[00:08:37] Dan Wood:

Yes. And that setting, it's a little bit easier to see in the current interface in Google Ads and the the current campaign setup process. It used to be a little more hidden. But you still have to open a drop down and click the switch. It it defaults to people who are in or interested in your location.   Yes. And for any local service business,   that's just bad   news, especially if you have a brand   where the name,   maybe means something in a different language. So   I had a client whose   name meant credit card in a in a couple Slavic languages.   Oh, yeah. So they had   they had their ads showing all over Eastern Europe.  

Wow. And just because that setting was wrong. It looked like,   it looked like their brand name was an exact match keyword in a different language.   So at that point if your ads are showing outside of your service area,   it doesn't matter   how good your landing page is or   or what your ad copy says.   If you're advertising to people who you can't serve,   that's just wasted click money.  

[00:09:42] Matt Rouse:

Something that I've tried a couple times and I don't have hard data on this, so maybe not quote me on it, but you can test it if it's,   you know, for your own ad account, which is if you have a fairly large service area, like, let's say you serve   everyone in Arizona   is your is your service area.   Then what I'll do is I'll say, okay. We want to include people in Arizona, but we want to exclude, and I'll put   every other US state, Canada, Mexico   as exclusions.   Because   I just wanna make sure that if they're, like, close to it or they're thinking about it, you know, kind of thing, I I just wanna kind   of double confirm to Google that I don't want those people. Right? Yeah.  



[00:10:29] Dan Wood:

So anyways, we'll definitely test the all the countries in the world.  

[00:10:32] Matt Rouse:

Right. You just paste it in and  

[00:10:35] Dan Wood:

Yeah. All the countries in the world, all of the other states and provinces, just to be on the safe side, you can put that in. Right. The other thing is if you're including stuff like a like a town or a city name,  

[00:10:45] Matt Rouse:

a lot of times it'll it'll show like a certain area around   that, you know, like this city plus 20 miles or whatever the default is. I don't know. But so you want might wanna keep an eye on that too because if you don't service people outside of your city, you don't wanna be serving ads to people 20 miles out of your city.  

[00:11:03] Dan Wood:

That's right. Yeah. You can target by city name or a radius or a ZIP code, postal code. There's a few different ways to do it. And you can overlay,   like, overlap those and exclude some of them too.  

[00:11:15] Matt Rouse:

So and this might be an opinion based question, but   do you find that   it's better   to kind of opt to the side of   giving Google   a wider area   and saying, you know,   give me all the people in this area and then figure out who to serve ads to   or, you know, limiting it by both the geo geographical location and then also saying, I only want people who are in market for this product or something like that. I  

[00:11:48] Dan Wood:

usually recommend   maximizing   your targeting in the smallest area possible.   So,   again, for, like, a brick and mortar store or a local service business,   travel time is important.   And if they haven't fully saturated   the market   closest to them, there's no point advertising further away because they'll have a more competitive   offer.   You know, like a roofing company that has to drive 45 minutes to get to the job site   shouldn't   it wouldn't they wouldn't be on a   level competitive footing with a company that doesn't have to do that drive time. Right. Just because they've got guys in trucks and they're burning fuel and it takes time to to travel. So   if they've already   booked all of the business that they can   closest to home, then it makes sense to expand.  

But no one's marketing budget is infinite.   So   we I think that comes back to the mindset with pay per click that we are not trying to get as many eyes as possible.   We're not trying to buy as many clicks as possible. We're trying to just buy the best ones.  

[00:12:54] Matt Rouse:

Right.   One thing that we've had had some success with   is,   like, if we are targeting a certain amount of budget on a on a very small area, you know, like maybe a section of a city or something like that or or, you know, like a town in a metro area,   then when we've kind of burned through, you know, as much of that as we're gonna get, you know, we're getting 90 plus percent of the of the click share for that area, then we'll actually duplicate the campaign   and then exclude the town, but include the surrounding area.   And sometimes you could do that with like zip codes or, you know, municipal districts or voting districts and stuff you can use to get the area around it.  

If there's no name of a town or city that you can target, you can use postal codes,   or zip codes, right, in the US? So   anyways, just thought I'd throw that in there.  

[00:13:49] Dan Wood:

Yeah. That's a similar strategy to using bid adjustments on different locations,   especially if you are   located in a suburb of a bigger city.   And if you just target them equally, 90% of your   clicks will go where 90% of the search is, which is in the big city, and if you're the small town. So you can separate those by campaign or apply bid adjustments so that your budget is focused more   where you are.  

[00:14:15] Matt Rouse:

Yeah, it's a good idea. Now I would recommend for people if you're doing your own Google Ads,   I would I would stay away from bid adjustments   until you're really really familiar.   Oh yeah. I have seen, some nightmares   in bid adjustments   where   they've got bid adjustments on location, bid adjustments on the device, bid adjustments for the hours. And a bid adjustment is where you can say I want a percentage more or less paid for this marketing,   right, for this advertising. So you could say, okay, well I wanna bid, I wanna run my ads 24 hours a day, but I wanna bid 50% more during business hours. That would be a bid adjustment.   Mhmm. But if it's 50% more during business hours and 50% more in my town   and I want 50% more if they're over 40,   you know,   now you've got, you know, your $2 a click   is now 4.50. Right?  

Or 3.50, I guess that would be. But it's still   it's almost double what you were paying before, so you gotta be really careful with bid adjustments.  

[00:15:21] Dan Wood:

Yeah. They can overlap.   It's still auction based,   but, yeah,  

[00:15:27] Matt Rouse:

a lot of that stuff getting more money. National   if you have a national competitor   who's got basically endless deep pockets,   then you're gonna burn through money.   You know, if you put a lot of bid adjustments on and you're bidding for, like, DUI attorney, you'll be spending, you know, $50 a click before you know it. Right? And Yeah. Nobody wants that.  

[00:15:48] Dan Wood:

Yeah.  

[00:15:49] Matt Rouse:

So   and now that let let's say hypothetically, right, we we fix we fix the the data problem with conversions.   We fix the targeting.   Right?   And, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of other things we can fix, and and we could talk about copywriting and and ad copywriting and all this kind of stuff all day long.   But   once someone comes to the website   and they take the action, say they fill out a form or they say, hey. I'm interested in this thing.   What do you think is the the the biggest   kind of thing that people are missing after that?  

[00:16:32] Dan Wood:

Well,   a big question is where that lead information goes.   Right. So,   I've just started working with 2 new clients, and one of them left their old agency because they haven't had any leads since February. It's, September now. Yeah. That's that's wild. And yeah. And they just weren't getting the phone calls.   The I mean, they hired kind of a discount   pay per click agency that operates probably on a, like, a burn and churn kind of business model. No one had troubleshot it with them. No one had spent time on the phone. The first thing I did was send them an export of their leads out of their   local service ads and just ask them to correlate that with their CRM to make sure that they've actually had them. And   they're like, no. Our phone hasn't   their phone I thought they were   I thought they were exaggerating when they said their phone stopped ringing. But literally, like, their phone, as far as paid ads or paid leads is concerned, their phone literally did stop ringing, and no one took the time to troubleshoot it. And they just thought that the ads weren't working,  

[00:17:35] Matt Rouse:

but they simply weren't getting the leads. Right. And so that's probably a disconnect between, like, the phone numbers entered incorrectly somewhere or the phone system is not working or, you know,   it's going to the wrong phone number or whatever.   Right? Yeah.  

[00:17:50] Dan Wood:

Yeah. And I'm not sure where the notifications were going, but   they   they were manually entering the leads into their CRM system. So if they didn't first get the notification   and then go type it in, that person wasn't in their system, and they didn't know how to look it up.  

[00:18:07] Matt Rouse:

So it's really just a, like, a systems problem. It's a process problem. And you talk about, like, that like, it's a one off, but it's not. That happens all the time. Like, I don't know how many times I've seen where people are, like,   where we're on the agency side and we're, like, you know, hey. We wanna check-in, see how things are going. And they're like, I haven't gotten anything. And we're like, how can you not get anything? We can see the people going to you. And we troubleshoot it. And, I mean, just with the phone example,   I had one where they had two lines for their business, and the second line they had forwarded to the cell phone of an employee who didn't work there anymore.  

You know?   I see I saw another one where it rang 47 times before I left a message.   Like Woah. Because because I just called the phone number. Right? I can just see why they're not getting it.   But   oh my god. Yeah. I had a what about company.  

[00:19:01] Dan Wood:

So I had a roofing company spending $8,000 a month, and we did that. We called the number to test it, and   the the they answered and said, sorry. We're not booking for another three and a half weeks. But this was for their they were specifically running   a an emergency roofing   a post hurricane   emergency roofing ad campaign,   and then they were already booked 3 weeks out   before they could get there. So this is someone who's, it's raining in my living room. Can you come now? And they're   saying, we're 3 months out. Yeah. 3 months out. Or 3   3 3 weeks out. 3 weeks out just to get someone to assess it. Right?  

Yeah. Yeah. That's 2 more hurricanes later.  

[00:19:43] Matt Rouse:

Yeah. You can just go send somebody to nail some plywood on that roof and get onto the next one to come back to it. But anyway, yeah.   Like, I've also seen problems where actually, you know what? That one kind of reminds me of one that I saw that was really bad.   What happened was the the company that they had hired to do the ads,   they, I guess, Googled their phone number. Right. But Googled and, and just took the first listing, which was an ad for a competitor.   So they sent all the leads to the competitor that they were paying for. Lucky   them. Yeah. It was like a garage door company and,   you know,   stuff went bad. Anyway,   we fixed that. So that was an easy fix. I've also seen problems with automations. Right? Where it's it's supposed to be going automatically putting people in the CRM and the CRM assigns it to someone or, you know, this or that.  

Yeah.   Actually, I had a company the other day.   Literally yesterday, they emailed me back. This was from an event I went to 2 years ago.   And they said, we're going back through our records,   and we just wanted to message you and tell you that when you contacted us about using our service, it went to this person.   And we just found out that that person was not returning the calls. And we know it's, like, you know,   way after the fact, but we just wanted to let you know our mistake kinda thing.   And it did start a conversation. Right? Like, so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to them next week and maybe they could fix the the, you know, problem I was trying to get them to fix in the first place. So   Yeah. I mean, it's it's if you do find a problem like that, it is worth it to go back   to those leads and try and see if you any of them are recoverable.  



[00:21:31] Dan Wood:

Yep. Oh, yeah. They're in your database. There's no harm   in reaching out to them. And it it's cool that these guys actually admitted the mistake.  

[00:21:41] Matt Rouse:

Yeah. I was seeing people I met at, like, a networking event in Phoenix.   And,   anyways, yeah, just just interesting because they're gonna have the same event, so I think that's what triggered them to go back and look. And then they're like, oh, crap. These people were contacting us to use our service and nobody called them. You know?  

[00:22:00] Dan Wood:

Yeah.   Yeah. I had a client recently who,   same thing. Like, I'm not getting any leads. We need a meeting. So we got on the phone with him, and he said, oh, actually, never mind. I looked in my spam folder, and they were going there.   Same thing. And no CRM system. It was just a   a a website form sending to his inbox.   And then they're going to spam because I guess he'd ignored too many of them, which is probably a bad sign.   And then he's calling them weeks later for a service that you probably,   it wasn't an emergency thing like roofing, but it's still something where you want 3 quotes and make a decision and get on with it.   So Absolutely. 4 of the 6 were unreachable,   but they probably just didn't need them anymore. And one of those sales would have paid his entire marketing budget. So we're talking about making a, like, a 100%   increase in ROI or 2 or 300% return on ad spend   just by troubleshooting that thing.  



[00:22:55] Matt Rouse:

I have a brokerage   that's a client of ours, a small brokerage. They only have like 5 real estate agents,   but they're in a very wealthy area in the United States.   And he said that about 10% of his clients   are people searched for him, called a realtor, called the next one,   and that he was like second or third on the list of calls. And he's the first one who answered the phone. So they sold their over $1,000,000   home with him because he answered the phone. Wow. Yeah. Speed to lead. It's huge.  

[00:23:27] Dan Wood:

Yeah. I'll call you back within a business day isn't fast enough sometimes.  

[00:23:32] Matt Rouse:

No. And you know what? There's there's a study, and this is an old study now.  

[00:23:36] Dan Wood:

Mhmm.  

[00:23:37] Matt Rouse:

It's from pre COVID time,   but   it asked people,   specifically   about, like, chat systems like direct messenger on Facebook and that kind of thing. If you message a business, right, how long   do you think is an appropriate amount of time before the business responds to you? And then they ask the same question to the business owners. They said, if you're an owner or a manager,   how long do you think is an appropriate amount of time for you to respond to a chat from, you know, a client on Facebook or whatever.   And the business owner said 48 hours was the average,   and the customer said 12 minutes.  



[00:24:16] Unknown:

Yep. So Yeah.  

[00:24:17] Matt Rouse:

The customer is expecting you to to get back to them within 10, 15 minutes, and the business owners are expecting to call people back in 2 days.   And obviously, there's a pretty big disconnect there.  

[00:24:30] Dan Wood:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the value of a lead just decays   faster than fresh fish.  

[00:24:36] Matt Rouse:

That's right. Time decay. On that thing, right?  

[00:24:39] Dan Wood:

Yeah. Well, if you especially if you're,   if you're looking for an answer right now, like with,   let's say with a with an ad on Facebook or Instagram,   you're sort of scrolling through, something catches your eye, you fill out a form because it's just a couple clicks.   K. And then someone calls you   2 minutes later.   You'll remember that you've done that. But if someone calls you in 2 days, I don't remember what quote I don't even know what I was doing.   Yeah. You're just doom scrolling on social   and clickety click. So then someone calls you, and then you're   defensive. Who is this? How'd you get my number? Why are you calling me? Like, oh, yeah. Right. I remember that. But   if it's immediate, you're still in that process. And Absolutely. Google too. With Google, you're even more focused because you've you aren't just opening an app to waste time or be entertained or   see what's in the news. You're going to a blank white page to get an answer for a specific thing. A super easy way to kind of fix that problem,  

[00:25:41] Matt Rouse:

is just to ensure that there's more than one way that you're getting your lead.   Right? So it could be like a text message and an email. It could be an email goes to 2 different people. It could be, you know, it goes to your CRM, but notifies you with an email.   But   or, you know, you could have like a a roundup email. Like, every day it sends you, here's all the leads from today. All that stuff's easy to do with automations nowadays.  

[00:26:06] Dan Wood:

And Absolutely.  

[00:26:07] Matt Rouse:

You know, talking about automation and especially, like, in the the AI age that we're in now,   It is gonna be   months from now,   not years,   when everyone has an agent on their phone that can start to take action   on their behalf.   I hope so. I'm sick of doing my taxes. I know. Well, you know, you what I am sick of just calling people. Right? I don't like to call people. It the problem with having to be on the phone is that it takes you can't do other stuff while you're on the phone. Right? Like, it's pretty much impossible. So   but if I say, hey,   I gotta get my roof patched right from this storm.  

Can you find me an emergency roofer   to your agent? It's just gonna go and call everyone.   Right? And it's gonna say, I talked to this company. They said they could be there in 38 hours and this company said I could be there in 4 days and these other 6 didn't answer. So I'm not even gonna tell you about them.  

[00:27:09] Dan Wood:

It's almost like making an API call to their booking system.  

[00:27:12] Matt Rouse:

That's right. But not only that, let's say there's 10 on the list that it called   but only 2 people answered the phone. The other 8 are now completely invisible to the end user   because   they didn't answer the phone. So it didn't mention them. Right? It's just gonna say, I talked to this person. I talked to this person.   Mhmm. If one of them gets back to you, maybe, you know,   3 hours later or whatever. Right? And it'll say, oh, you know, hey. We just got an incoming call from roofing person,   and, they said that they could come out right away if you'd like to, you know, know about that or whatever. Depending upon how how good the the calling agents are for AI. I mean,   it's probably not gonna take long.  

I booked my Yeah. My mother's day restaurant reservation with an AI system in May.   So,   like, the technology   exists and,   you know,   Apple was talking about the Apple's onboard agents. I forgot what they called them.   And,   you know, Apple AI and Apple Intelligence is gonna be in everything.   And same as Samsung and and Google have their own versions.  

[00:28:20] Dan Wood:

Yep.  

[00:28:22] Matt Rouse:

So I mean,   just responding to your leads that you're paying for.   Right? Because you're running ads. Yep.   You're running ads and the people are coming in. So you gotta make sure you get them, but not only make sure you get them, you gotta respond to them. And after you respond, you're gonna follow-up.   Right?  

[00:28:39] Dan Wood:

Yeah. And and there   there's a lot of interaction that can be done with that. So,   like, the worst the worst kind of thing is going and well,   the very worst is going to a website and finding out that they don't have a contact form or a booking system or something. And now I have to wait   until during business hours to make an appointment. I have,   I live in a smaller town, so I've got a barber and a physiotherapist   who don't have an online booking system. So I have to call them I have to make a note for myself to call them during business hours   to open my calendar,   get to a place where I can look at my calendar and figure it out instead of just submitting a booking   at 11 o'clock at night or whatever. Right. So that's probably the worst. But the the next level up from that is having a form. And when you fill out the form, it just says, thank you. Your submission was sent.  



[00:29:32] Unknown:

Right. And the default WordPress You don't get anything. Message.  

[00:29:36] Dan Wood:

And you yeah. You don't get a copy of what you   what your inquiry was. You don't know if they're,   call you back   tomorrow or call you back next week kind of company.   And now you're just sort of waiting for   a phone call maybe or an email. You don't know the next step.   It's so easy to   to tell the customer what the next step is so they they know what to do. And you can even,  

[00:30:02] Matt Rouse:

at that point, start to presell them or prequalify them. Right. Or you can tell them what the step is before they fill out the form. Right? You can say, hey. This is a 3 step process.   Step number 1,   fill out the form below. Tell us, you know, what the issue with your roof is. Step 2,   one of our friendly staff is going to read over your request, look at our schedule, look at where our crews are working, and we'll give you a callback within 48 hours or 2 business days, whatever it is. Right? Yeah. Set the expectation.   Step 3, your roof is fixed and you can go back to to having a nice dry home. Whatever. Right? That's right. So   the the high level plan   Yeah. Always works.  



[00:30:43] Dan Wood:

I mean It's all about making life easier for the consumer. Right? That's what we're trying to do, like, with the the,   AI agent. Just remove the friction,   make life simpler,   make life easier.  

[00:30:55] Matt Rouse:

You can get an AI agent for your email now.   If you're using Outlook, right, you can use Copilot or, you know, Google Workspace has their own Gemini agent for mail, and there's a bunch of other ones. But   the business owner side, you can have the email come in from the web form and the AI could read it and it can say, you know what? We think this is a real customer and it's an emergency,   so we think you need to take care of this right now.   Or it can say, we think this is probably spam. Look at it later. Or, you know, this can wait, you know, do something else first. Like, it can prioritize   what's coming in for you so you're not getting inundated with stuff that's not important immediately.  

Or you could have it Yeah. Another system like a CRM where it routes to the correct employee depending upon,   you know, the correct salesperson or engineering or support or, you know, depending on the size of your organization.  

[00:31:49] Dan Wood:

Yeah. Some kind of pre filter, so not everyone needs to get spammed with everything that comes through the web form because there's always gonna be some kind of spam.  

[00:31:58] Matt Rouse:

And if you have an automation system like Zapier or Pabbly Connect or something like Zoho Flow or whatever it is,   then   there's a thing in there called a router,   and the router can be used to basically do, like, if then statements. So you can say, okay, if they filled out the form and they click the emergency button, send it to Jim because Jim handles emergencies.   But if it says, you know, oh, this is an inquiry like a sales inquiry,   then we wanna send it Janet because Janet takes care of sales inquiries.   Yeah. You can also do that with Outlook. Right? Where he puts it into folders or mailbox folders,   shared folders. Yeah. But that's kind of old school way to do it.  

Yeah. I remember doing that in the nineties.   Yeah. That's right.   But But   Yeah. And,   like   I really like   the idea of   of   what you were saying earlier where, like, you're like, we we designed a process   to fix the ads, right?   You need the same process in your business, right? You gotta say, okay,   once the ads do their thing, right? Dan's fixed my ads and, and people are coming to me.   So what's our process to take care of them. Not just I'm gonna answer the phone, right?   You have to have a process. You don't have a process. You don't have any strategy.   Right? So Yeah. You know, your   your process is gonna   not only help you follow-up with your leads,   but then you can analyze your process later.  

And I think that's another thing that that   where people really their business kinda   is throwing money down the trash.   Like, I don't know another way to say it. Right?   You paid for this lead   and   then you have a system set up, right, that is gonna put them   to to the right staff member or, you know, whatever that that process is.   And   then if you don't have a follow-up process   or   you have a follow-up process, but you never go back and look at that process again and say, how can we improve this?   Then you're just throwing away money because you could have improved it,   especially for high dollar stuff. Right? Like, you sell you sell houses, sell used cars, you sell your attorney, whatever that is. Right? LASIK surgery or, you know, engineering   or, you know, all these things that are out there that cost lots of money,   lots of b to b stuff.  

That lead could be   1,000 to 100 of 1,000 of dollars.   That one follow-up that you change that tweak that process to make it better could be the difference between you making lots of money and getting by. You know?  

[00:34:48] Dan Wood:

Yeah. And all of these things have a KPI. They all have a number attached   to them that ultimately boils down to your customer lifetime value and your cost of customer acquisition.   So,   you know, missed leads, if you're missing   10% of your leads, or you're calling them tomorrow instead of calling them now,   you know, all of those all of those are sort of like   points of loss that you can tighten up. So if you can get your close rate from   20% to 25%   because   you're actually reaching out to everybody and get it from 25 to 30 because you're you're   following up with them sooner or pre selling them or serving them some way better,   Those things   will affect the bottom line. Just like making sure that you have   all of your budget being spent in   Athens, Georgia instead of spending 25% of your money in Athens, Greece on your Right. Because your your location settings are are incorrect.  

So each one of those things, it's   10% better times 10% better times 10% better. Those gains compound through the whole   business.  

[00:35:58] Matt Rouse:

Absolutely.   And you know, I don't know how many times I've seen it in my life. It's gotta be 100 at this point.   Where   I look at an ad account   and   like checking or unchecking a box   saves them the amount of money that it costs me to do their entire budget, right, to handle their entire account. Just just one thing one thing, but that doesn't count all the other improvements that get done by having someone who knows what they're doing. And I mean, I don't want this to be a sales pitch for people, but let's be honest. Right. If you don't know how Google Ads works, you should not be in there   messing around with it because all you're gonna do is mail your credit card. Right?  

Yeah. And   because   the system is designed   to maximize   ad spend,   right?   Unless   you know how to tell it to maximize conversions.   So do you want to maximize the amount of money Google makes or maximize the amount of money that you make?   And that's why you get somebody who knows what they're doing. And that doesn't just go for Google Ads,   LinkedIn Ads,   Facebook   Ads, any of these platforms. They are too   bloated and complex   and   terribly   documented   and all the documentation's   out of date and they change them on a regular basis without telling you   And if you're not keeping up on it,   it's gonna cost you. So I just in   a 2024,   25 world, you need somebody who takes care of those things for you.  



[00:37:35] Dan Wood:

Yep.   Yeah. And getting it set up properly   is really important. If you're just feeling like your ads aren't working and you don't know why,   then   you need to troubleshoot it. It's like my car is making a funny noise. Right.   I could figure it out myself eventually   if I maybe I watch enough YouTube videos, but it would be way more efficient for me to take it to the mechanic   who can diagnose,   you know, the whole system.  

[00:38:02] Matt Rouse:

People make a lot of assumptions. They go,   well,   every year in June,   you know, the the market gets worse for this product than I have.   So that must be the reason I'm not making money.   And   a lot of times,   yes, there are seasonal slowdowns for for certain types of businesses,   but a lot of times the advertising   can make up for the slowdown because you can grab a larger percentage of the market share than your competitors.   And we've proven that time and time again,   not just with ads but all kind of all different kinds of marketing. But   so I don't think you should make any assumptions. Oh, people are people don't have any money where I live or they're they're not spending right now or whatever the reason is.  

I think what you wanna do is is at least have somebody take a look at it, get an audit.   Right? Figure out if there's something that they can do   to fix the problems,   optimize your spend,   try and give you a better ROI.   Right? That's all we want at the end of the day. Right? We want the phone to ring and we wanna make money, and we don't wanna have to dick around with it. So   I don't know if that's the correct terminology,   but that's what the average business owner that I talk to, that's what they want. They don't wanna deal with it. They want their phone to ring and they wanna make money. That's it.  

[00:39:23] Dan Wood:

Right?   Yep.  

[00:39:25] Matt Rouse:

Dan?   Yeah. I think I know we talked a little bit longer than usual. I know I say this every episode, but Right.   It's a interesting topic. And,   Dan, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to reach out?  

[00:39:40] Dan Wood:

Just my website, breakdigital.combreak.  

[00:39:46] Matt Rouse:

Alright. And, Dan, thanks so much for being on the show and sharing your insight with us.  

[00:39:52] Dan Wood:

My pleasure, Matt. Thanks a lot for having me again, and,  

[00:39:55] Matt Rouse:

good talking to you. Alright. We'll see you soon.  

[00:40:03] Unknown:

This voice over used to be done by a human, but now it is synthetic.   Oh la la.   If you want to know if your job or business is safe from disruption,   read Matt's new book,   Will AI Take My Job? Predictions about AI in corporations,   small business, and the workplace.   Available now on Amazon.   Trust me, it'll be worth it.