John: Hi, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings. Hello to you Mark

Mark: Hi John, how are you?

John: Doing well thanks for asking. So today Mark, we wanted to talk abut how Twitter fits into your lead generation activity. So how can I get more leads by using Twiiter?

Mark: Sure, that’s a great question and I have a bit of a presentation to take us through the builds on what we talked about last couple weeks ago, we missed a week because of some technical glitches on the Hangouts scene, but let me just do a quick screen share here, bear with me and we’re going to start off with a bit of a review. Just let me know when you can see that John?

John: Perfect

Mark: Ok, so last week we, or two weeks ago, we talked about identifying that target customer or target market which is essentially narrowing it down to that specific person, then going backwards from that and then a point of conversion. You know, what are we looking for? Are we looking for a email address or to sign up for our newsletter? Are they buying something? I come into a store, what’s our conversion point, then what is the funnel that we create to take someone through to that conversion point and that can be complicated or very simple. In this case, it’s going to be pretty straightforward and then find how do we find and connect with that target customer. So that’s a quick review from a couple weeks ago.

So why would we want to even consider something like Twitter? There’s people will say, there’s only a hundred million users, they’ve actually signed up 1.3 billion people on Twitter. There’s only a hundred million or so per day only using it, but it actually proves out that Twitter is very effective. It’s the number two way for business-to-business lead generation, only LinkedIn is better and twitter is quite a bit less expensive. LinkedIn is also effective and we’ll get into that later. So generally, you can target the right people that you want on Twitter but also structurally, Twitter can show you what a market is interested in and what people are talking about right now. So that makes it out of a veritable super powered kind of way of really targeting the right people with your message. So, how does it actually work? You can search profiles to find what groups your target is interested in. You can literally look at what are people, who do they like, what groups they belong to, what’s their general interest and see if you developed out your customer avatar or target market really quite well, you’ll know that somebody’s who’s interested in X aligns with who your target market is. You can find that information on Twitter and Twitter lets you see lists of people who follow your competitors which is an even greater way, you know, if we use like Business Coach as a example, I’m a business coach, I’m trying to get more customers. Well I can actually look at other business coaches and start to see who is it that’s actually following them and that’s a shortcut way of starting to really find customers who might be interested in my offering.  And then of course, Twitter lets you interact with all these people which is, it basically adds up to, it’s a gold mine. It can generate a tremendous amount of leads or it can generate the right leads for you and power your whole marketing campaign. Many companies have done that so let’s dig a little bit further into that. So what are the steps? We search for posts that are relevant to our market, we follow people who tweet or retweet that relevant content, we would follow them, then if it’s appropriate, we’ve had some interaction it seems like they’re simpatico, then we could actually connect with them, send them a direct message and begin the process of taking that person down our funnel and turning them into a client. So it really is that simple. How does it work? Well, for products, so business-to-consumer, when it’s done well, there’s some real specific steps and we’re going to dig into these but you know, you can get 50 signs ups a day and a 150 new active followers who are interested in your product every single day. And this has been done multiple times. There’s been much higher than that or less than that it depends on the demand, but that’s an example. If it’s done well and you’re targeting specific people, so you have a very small niche, high profile perhaps, targeted market that you want to reach, this is an example from a friend of mine who decided to target a major bank in our country and basically followed, found and searched and found the name for the CEO of the company, saw that he was on Twitter, searched for him on Twitter, followed him, the CEO followed him back, a little bit of interaction back and forth, next thing that turned into a dinner in Toronto and then an opportunity to pitch… and then actually act for the entire country… an immense amount of money just done with using the power to Twitter’s search and… that are very very powerful. You can find the people you want and when they’re active on there, it’s incredibly powerful. So the manual, hand bomb way is a bit tedious. It’s important, I think and we’ll actually show you how to do that. The sweat equity way of doing it is very effective and helps you understand what the process is but then it’s, Twitter’s super power is semi automation. You can use tools like Follow-Liker, then that Audience etc to dig quite finely into the information that you want so you know your triggers and what are the right people to target and auto-follow them, auto-connect with then and really drive a lot of interaction and that’s where it becomes, if you have a business that’s driven by a lot of leads that’s how you do this basically. That’s how you get that 50 leads a day kind of plateau. It’s pretty difficult unless you’re going 18 hours a day on Twitter to get there by yourself. But with automation, smart automation, with great power comes great responsibility, because you can torch your account pretty quick too if you go off the deep end. And we’re going to get into that, how to, where’s the line. But when you do it right, it’s incredibly effective. One of the things that this becomes is that you want to make sure that you set up Twitter for Business properly, so you’re not doing this on your own personal account. You have one that represents your business and we’re actually going to start this week a quick video series. We’re going to show you step-by-step what are the best practises to set up your Twitter account for business so that you can then start going through the process as we work through the next few weeks and show you how to growth hack Twitter until you say uncle. That’s my presentation on that, let me get out of here. So there you go.

John: So if you have been wondering how to use Twitter as a tool to get access to your prospects, then Mark has some ideas on how to make that happen. He’s given us a bit of an outline but how do you execute on that? Let me encourage you to connect with Mark at TopLocalRankings.com or send him an email mark@toplocalrankings.com and ask him that question, how can I use Twitter to get more leads for my business. Thanks very much Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Hi, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good afternoon Mark.

Mark: Hi John.

John: How’re you doing?

Mark: Great.

John: Awesome, so we’ve been talking a little bit about lead generation and how that applies to your business and today we want to continue that discussion, so from time to time business owners are probably wondering Mark, I’m doing some social media marketing and I’m not getting the results that I want. What do I gotta do or what do I gotta fix, how would you answer that question?

Mark: Well a big part of it is tracking, a big part of it is the strategy or the steps that you are using and we like to follow a reverse engineer process, just like we showed last week of how to determine perhaps where your target market is actually, what channel are they using and today I want to dig a little bit deeper into the sort of the next level of that reverse engineering, start from the goal and working backwards to what a result is. So we can get a bit of a funnel going to actually make social media work and show and how and why for you, so let me just do a quick screen share here, pardon me while we do the technology dance

John: Sure, no worries

Mark: And now we’ve got our sort of the overall, what I’m going to try and create is a bit of an overarching view of how to reverse engineer any marketing channel specifically to social media so this is going to apply to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you name it but building off of what we’ve already looked at so let’s have a quick, our example thing will be Twitter and again this is based on our knowing our target market and having done the steps that we showed last week of reverse engineering where those folks are actually going to be and where we might be able to find them easily and what we’re going to try and do is reverse engineer the most wanted response steps so ultimately we started the final step, we’re saying o.k. someone visits the website, they called to enquire, they booked an appointment. Step prior to that would be to get an email that they have a one day 10% off coupon if they click the link and now they’ve got a way to enter that coupon and get to book an appointment and get the 10% off. The step prior to that would be, o.k. but how do we get them, or they’ve seen our Twitter account, read the postings, maybe they’ve shared them, maybe they’ve you know, interacted with us for a while, it all depends, they might have done, this might happen the first time, this might happen from a Twitter card, advertising on Twitter. There’s many ways we could actually set this in place and that’s sort of Step 2A but Step 2 is o.k. they’re finding value and now they want to do, they want to go further, they can get 10% off if they subscribe and then the step prior to that Step 1, we figure out how to get someone to check out our Twitter account; how do we begin this whole process. So let’s just kind of recap this whole thing; we’ve got our target customer identified, we’ve got a point of conversion identified, we have a step by step funnel identified and created, and now we need to connect with our customer and that’s what we’re going to talk about actually next week is the reverse engineering, how to actually get to the place of connecting with that customer that’s going to apply to all social media. This little process that I’ve outlined of target customer, point of conversion, step by step funnel and then connecting with them applies to every social media actually applies to every form of advertising that there is but it’s definitely specifically is applicable to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, you name it, if you want more RY on your social media investment. Does that make sense?

John: Yeah, so what I think I hear you saying is that if you’re not getting the results that you want or getting the number of leads that you’d like from your social media platform it’s probably because you’re not asking the right questions in the right order and that first question starts with what do I want my best prospect to do as their final step in the process of getting introduced to me.

Mark: Yeah, so we want to create a way of being able to chunk down or reverse engineer the process so that we can make this repeatable, we want this something that we can track, that it’s a step by step that’s not this fancy kind of magic fairy dust process, it’s very simple, it’s very scientific, it’s very clear what’s going to work and what isn’t going to work and it applies to any channel that you want to use.

John: Yeah, so reverse engineering makes me think of Stephen Covey’s work in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and one of those habits is they start with the end in mind and I think that’s the advice you’re giving us today is start with the end in mind and work back from there to where you’re currently at so that when you start to proceed you’re aimed at something that’s going to get you the outcome you want.

Mark: Absolutely and you get clarity, clarity, clarity allows you to make great decisions which allow you to take action and get results.

John: Yeah, well that’s awesome, thanks very much for your expertise today Mark and helping us get some perspective on how to make your social media platforms get you better results, I know that’s a source of frustration for lots of business owners because they know it’s out there, they know that they should be getting results but they’re not entirely pleased with the ones that they’re getting so if you’d like some help in getting better results and or if you feel like you should be getting better results but don’t know where to start let me urge you to connect with Mark@toplocalrankings.com, toplocalrankings.com or Mark@toplocalrankings.com and let him take you through the process and see if that clarity helps you get better results for you and your business. Thanks Mark.

Mark: Thanks John. Next week we’ll talk about how to reverse engineer, finding and connecting with those people because there’s very clear steps that we can follow, that’ll apply to any social media at all.

John: Well it’s comforting to know that’s actually a process and you’re not just stabbing, taking wild stabs in the dark. Cheers, look forward to that next time.

Mark: Thanks a lot.

John: Cheers.

John: Good Day, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Mark how’re you doing today?

Mark: Just great John, how are you?

John: Good. We’ve been chatting over the last few sessions about lead generation and conversion; you wanted to dig in a little deeper on that today.

Mark: Yeah, we’re going to just dig into maybe some of the steps of identifying that target market a little bit better, like what, how do you specifically do that and then how do you find the channel in order to take advantage of getting in front of those people. So, I’m just going to do a quick screen share here, bear with me, see if this works.

John: Got it.

Mark: And I’m going to flip this up so hopefully that’s full screen

John: No I still have you

Mark: Ah, o.k. so that is definitely not working so we’ll just play this, how about, can you see this now? They’re getting leads

John: No, you know, hold on

Mark: I wonder if it quit, yeah it did, the screen share quit here, so let’s just we’ll just leave it like this and we’ll go through the steps here. Not as elegant as I wanted but hey it’ll work. So getting leads user acquisition or conversions if you want to call that, the reason I’m calling it user acquisition is that we’re going to try and drill down into that one person, some people call it a persona, I really like the idea of digging into who is this, what’s an example of a person that you might already know because that way it becomes a little bit more tangible rather than just making something up. You know, how do we deliver value, what, like what are we, what’s the purpose of all this stuff is, we want to create a product or service that delivers value to a subset of people that’s your target market, this is just a bit of a reminder and number two, we want to get in front of those people regularly in the right way. So here we’re digging into the steps of doing that, so what channel would be possibly use. There are so many I’ve just outlined a few here, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube Search?; how do we determine which one? Well, that’s determined by what is the people who are in our target market actually using so we’re going to dig into in the next minute or two about how we find that but it’s also important to realize that sometimes your product or service might determine it exactly so in the example I have fresh in my mind is like a restoration company. They pretty much, the only way that people reach out to them is with search but why is that, while when the plum juice hits the floor somebody’s on the phone looking for that restoration company that can fix it. They’re not looking on Facebook or asking their friends or they don’t really care, they’re just want you know, the plum juice cleaned up. So or the flood stopped or you know whatever in, it’s dire and so speed, it becomes a thing and search is probably the fastest way, so given that say it’s another product or service other than that then we want to identify a person, who are we actually selling to, who’s that ideal market, drill down into let’s make it into someone tangible and who would be somebody who you know, who likes what it is you’re trying to sell and you need to dig into this. So why would they be interested? Generally I find that they like or use other products or services like this, so let’s pick something out of the air, something that you’re maybe familiar with in the past; somebody likes fine suits and to dress really nicely, not that you don’t dress really nicely now, I’m just talking about your past work history

John: Yeah, no I get it

Mark: So why, you know what’s their day like, you know, it’s Bob, Bob likes to dress really sharp. Bob buys all his suits at Nordstrom’s or at Harry Rosen, he’s always, you know, blah, blah, blah, you start to define all these things with into a list of you know, what are the parameters of what’s this person like, what’s their day like, you know, Bob owns his own company, he’s very successful. These are all giving you clues that you’re going to use so you know, we dig further, what websites would they be visiting, what especially when they’re thinking about this area of their life, you know, perhaps they’re they love Instagram because Instagram’s a place where there’s a lot of fashion information so you know, perhaps this guy’s a little bit towards the fashion plate end of things you know GQ style kind of guy, he’s into that and you know what websites would that represent, gives you an idea where you might advertise. Instagram gives you an idea, oh well, let’s dig into the social media side of things and start to see if we can identify the target market that’s beyond just Bob but using Bob as the simocrom, so then we’re going to check out their account on that most used media, dig into it, who do they follow, what hashtags do they use, this is probably the big key to really finding someone on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. To find that kind of a magical huge group of people because they’ll have almost unconsciously adopted a hashtag that you know, becomes the statement for the whole group, you know; could be hashtagged dapper or fashion or you know, I don’t know what it is, you know, but you find that and so you look for those things and you also look at who they follow and start to, what groups are they in etc. and these all become clues to, for you to be able to identify that market and then all we want to do out of all this process basically is, the point is to generate that step-by-step think through process for each channel, for each product or service and it really makes it simple, not easy but it simplifies the makes it into a process to further understand who your ideal customer is and where they are so you can get your value in front of them and that is all I wanted to say today.

John: So if I could summarize a little bit what I think I hear you saying is that, if you don’t know what your target looks like, you can’t find it and so the degree to which you can define your bulls eye if I can use that metaphor is the degree to which that you’ll have any success at and in fact hitting it so well it’s, it may seem like you know sort of an empty exercise or kind of theoretical in fact it does answer the question is you can’t hit at, you can’t hit what you can’t aim at and so the better you are at figuring out what you’re aiming at the clearer the chance that you’ll actually be able to discover or hit it or even recognize it when you see it.

Mark: Sure, it’s the old copywriting story of who would you rather sell to, a group of people you’re selling hamburgers, you want to sell it to just a group of people or do you want to sell and get in front of that starving crowd and that’s what we’re looking for, we’re looking at starving crowd to really launch things in a nice strong, consistent way, so we always have leads very week.

John: Awesome, well today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings. You can find them at the phone number you see there 778-385-0098. Send him an email mark@toplocalrankings.com or check them out on the web at www.toplocalrankings.com. Thanks today Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Cheers

John: Good Morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good Morning Mark.

Mark: Morning John

John: So today the question of the day is why is video critical to growing leads, the number of leads that you get in your business, why does video matter so much?

Mark: Sure, that’s a great question and I think it’s something that a lot of people are talking about right now so I want to put an exclamation point on it, it’s and it’s kind of analogous to the next level of shift that’s going on. We had this massive shift of the internet; we had this next massive shift of, of these things becoming an incredible tool but we’re seeing a massive shift now of TV and video changing because the new TV is this and many other things, tablets etc. and it’s a new way of connecting with things but I think to make the picture even bigger and wrap it all up even further, the new network is not CBS or CBC, it’s social medial, it’s what we’re doing right now with doing Hangouts, it’s Facebook Live, it’s You Tube Live, it’s further iterations of live broadcasting that are going to take place rapidly and they’re scaling. I know people now who are reaching a million people a week with their own broadcasts and you think well, wow, that must be really expensive, they spend about three hundred bucks, less than three hundred dollars to reach one million people and they generate hundreds of leads every single day. So the final thing of which is always true of completing this picture, this video is the most important easiest, fastest way to connect with your audience, to let them know who you are, what you’re about, why they would want to even possibly think about doing business with you, to move them down that line of know, like and trust so that they’re willing at least to consider investigating perhaps what the value is you bring with your business and providing them value. So that’s what generates leads today, the network is now social media and you are the show, so get over yourself, get on media as you can see I have got a face for radio and I don’t care anymore, I’m here, I have value to provide. I have done this kind of work for a long time and I can really help people with generating leads and so I got over myself and I got online and started talking to people about here, here’s the value that we can provide so I encourage you to do the same and get in touch if you want some help on how to do that.

John: So the bottom line in all of this is everybody walks around with a camera in the form of their phone which is also a monitor and that’s the primary way that we digest content these days and so if you want to talk to the people who might be your best prospect the way to do that is to use video. That about summarize what you said?

Mark: That summarizes it, we’ve got some fantastic and horrifying examples of that, um recently, you know Chewbacca Mom, the police shootings, you know, it’s not going to go away, it’s going to expand, it’s going to grow and it’s going to be the only game in town, so given that your blog postings not going to cut it, your Facebook post of some you know, quotes, is nice but is it really going to bring you business? Talking to people, telling them what your values are, what you provide, why they might want to do business with you, that’s what’s going to drive your business forward in the future, if you want to have a business.

John: There’s an impending doom about that statement. So hey if you want some help in figuring out how to use video as a marketing tool in your business to attract leads, give Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings a call. You can find them at toplocalrankings.com or mark@toplocalrankings.com. Thanks for your time today Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Good Morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Mark how are you today?

Mark: Good John, thanks.

John: Awesome, so today our question is: what’s the difference between demand generation and lead generation.

Mark: So this is a bit of a maybe a contrived kind of difference but it’s something that’s out there, so I thought maybe I’d address it and I for me, and for our business we see it in kind of two buckets that really are very related and similar but they’re both, um, they use different mechanisms to get to the same place so actually one of your, um publications talked about the difference between being a leopard and a spider and I think this is a really good analogy to use so and not necessarily the way you were using it but it applies to what I want to talk about. So a leopard when he gets hungry, he goes and eats or he hunts, kills something, drags it up on the, in the tree, you know, feasts on it and then waits until he gets hungry again, you know lions etc. all those kind of big cat predators would function the say way so they, it’s feast or famine, they only will hunt when they need to and that is somewhat similar to lead generation in my mind; demand generation is more like a spider. You build that network, you build that web and then you wait for something to come to you and grab it when it shows up. So that’s more of a long term strategy of creating something that is evergreen that continually brings you new customers, may take longer to build, may take longer to actually get fed and you might not control exactly when you’re getting fed but you’re not actually having to go out there and expend energy on getting those customer to come to you because you’ve already done that work over time. So you know sort of specific examples of that would be like what we’re doing right now, where we’re creating valuable content for people, putting it out there, making sure that it’s going to be seen in search and people are going to find it and hopefully be attracted to what we do and talk about and expertise shown, so that they want to contact us, reach out and do something to move towards creating more business for themselves. Where lead generation would be more of something along the lines of really knowing your target market, having an extremely good offer and putting that out there on say social media advertising like a Facebook Ad, Twitter Ad, using video and video advertising in order to grab people and say hey, similar to direct response advertising, call this number, this is the place to get us right now if you want to move forward and so one is really when you’re, when you need to drive those inquiries, those leads right away. Lead generation is the ticket when you have more of a, you’re maybe not wanting to push that hard, you’d rather have people come to you, demand generation is creating content that works long term and brings people to you. Of course you can do both and that’s what I would recommend strongly and that‘s what we do in practice every day, is doing both, demand generation and lead generation, that way you’re always getting fed.

John: Yeah, it’s not an either/or it’s an and; that’s the degree to which you want to do one or the other and it’s a high wire kind of a balancing act. Well that’s awesome, so do you want to hunt more like a leopard or hunt more like a spider. It’s kind of ironic Mark, that over your shoulder you’ve got a picture of what looks like a leopard there. I guess you’re in the leopard business although today you’re kind of promoting the idea of a spider, um in either case both work and the, the thing to think about is that it’s more of a blend of the two than an either or question and if you want some help, to help you figure out how to make that blend work for you and your business, let me recommend that you give Mark a call or reach out to him by email at mark@toplocalrankings.com. Thanks Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Hi, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Coaching, business coaching firm here in Vancouver and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings. Good day Mark.

Mark: How’re you doing John?

John: Doing great, Mark so the thing we wanted to talk about today is, help me understand why video is so important today in generating leads for your business, why is video become so such an important dimension or so important in how you market your business.

Mark: Sure, first it depends on how you’re driving leads but let’s, let’s start in the framework of ranking using Google Search to get in front of people who are looking for your type of business or service. When people um, or when people do a search the, a video will rank 53 times higher, sooner, faster than just written content so right out of the gate Google has weighted the game pretty seriously towards YouTube and video that’s online. Hangouts like we’re doing right here are even higher. Our own internal estimates based on results is about another 15 times higher than just video so the power of the live broadcast which is being borne out by what’s happening with other providers like with Facebook Live or with Periscope on Twitter, Amazon’s rumored to be coming up with their own live thing, um this is a major, major area of growth for all the big internet companies and it just it’s really important for you to play in that pond and get used to it because it is the future.

The second kind of idea here is that the old school sort of thing of going on the parking lot and saying if I could show you a car that you could get for 200 bucks a month and blah, blah, blah, would you be, would you be willing to buy today, that kind of selling is still effective but not anywhere near where it used to be. People have been exposed to it especially the young digital kind of people who are way beyond pioneers, people who have grown up in digital media have seen all that kind of stuff before and can sniff it out from a mile away and so they want to relate to somebody, they want to be able to connect with someone who’s like them and video is by far the best way for us to be able to do that, so rather than getting a cold call and we’ve had this conversation, rather than getting a cold call from somebody trying to pitch them something you have to get through the gate keeper and call that business owner and all that sort of stuff, people much prefer being able to connect to a platform that delivers value, and video is the fastest, most persuasive way of connecting with someone and relating a story that they’ll relate to, to move not only reach a lot more people as we already talked about, but also then move them down the path from you know, who the heck is this guy to know, like and trust you to then move to the step of saying you know what, maybe I’ll give him a call and that call coming in is obviously a lot easier for you as the business owner to move forward with rather than you calling them and interrupting them and trying to convince them that this is a good idea that they need to listen to you, does that make sense?

John: It sure does though what I’m hearing you say is that pitching from the back of a wagon is no longer as effective and what we’re trying to do today is create a platform that attracts the people who are in a place where they’re interested in having a starting a conversation or starting a relationship with you so and the other thing I think I hear you saying is that all the major internet platforms, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook have deemed video to be the place where they’re going to compete and if you want to you know, as you say given the pond and participate in that then you’re going to take advantage of the, the way in which they want to compete.

Mark: That’s one way of looking at it, the other way a bit more simple kind of folksy way is you know, fish where the fish are so if everyone’s on video and the majority of already internet traffic is from video you know, there’s many, many we could quote statistics from you know a long time about all the traffic and all the money that’s being made in video etc, etc, just trust me, this is, that’s where the game is. We’ve proven it conclusively so this is, this is the game, um fish where the fish are, you know, get used to the fact that you’re going to be online and be a bit of a star that nobody knows, famous person nobody knows and but that’s going to be the most effective way for you to connect with people and it what, and it’s all about connection , that’s really what we all want, we want to be able to, to know, like and trust the person, the person we’re going to do business with and this is the greatest way that there is to make that reach around the world.

John: So Mark what the best way for someone who wants to get started in using video to help them attract leads, what’s the best way to get started?

Mark: The best way, the, the least intimidating way to get started would actually be to set up video testimonials for your customers. It’s always better to sell with proof than it is to do any other way, I mean when you think of all the sales training that many of us have gone through over time and you know dealing with objections and all those kinds of things, the more you can have that set up ahead of time that you’ve answered those objections before they even come up for the person the easier it is to make the sale. Well a video testimonial from customers who you dealt with is the best way to try and close the sale way before and answer all those objections way before they even come up in the person’s mind and it’s easier for you because all you’ve got to do is ask the questions, you’re the interviewer and then your client tells about the wonderful job you did and then that’s fantastic information because it’s going to be relatable to the people who are looking, the new possible, possible potential clients who are looking at, you know, do I want to use this guy or not, well here’s a testimonial from the company that’s like mine, have problems like mine and then you know becomes a lot easier.

John: Well look at it, if that all sounds too daunting the easiest thing you can do to get started is to touch base or connect with Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings. mark@toplocalrankings.com and he’ll show you a way that you can start from wherever you are to getting some video marketing happening for your business and to attract more leads of the kind that are more qualified than you might be getting at the moment. Thanks for your time today Mark.

Mark: Thanks John.

John: Cheers

John: Good morning, I’m John Nieuwenburg, I’m a business coach with W5 Coaching and this morning we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Rankings. Mark is an expert at generating leads for your business. Good morning Mark.

Mark: Hey John, how’re you doing?

John: I’m doing great. So today we wanted to discuss the idea of what is the power of RSS feeds and generating leads for you and your business.

Mark: So there’s many, many tools that we use, um my background as a Search Engine Optimizer, there’s many tools; there’s social media, there’s links, there’s all sorts of things but RRS feeds are something that are built into websites. If they’re built on a blog platform or you can generate your own RSS feeds actually and RSS means real simple syndication; it’s a way of syndicating or spreading your content across the internet and RSS feeds are like a superpower. I’m going to reveal a little bit of what we do but not the whole basket because some of its proprietary but the power of this, if you think about it, if you had a way of taking your content and making it available in many, many authoritative places where it would be picked up and shared more and even perhaps get that bit of viral content would that be of value, so that’s what we do with RSS feeds and some of the things that we can do is we create more authority for your RRS feed and your blog and your website by braiding those RSS feeds with other higher authoritative websites and also that are also on topic so if you talked about say, coaching we could go to government sites or university sites where they talk about coaching or training and coaching or how to become a coach or whatever it is but it’s on topic and actually braid those together with your feed about coaching so that your RSS feed, your articles have a lot more juice, they have a lot more authority and they rank higher, ranking almost always as certainly you can attest to John, ranking highly brings leads and that’s the power of RSS feeds for lead generation.

John: That’s awesome, so if you want to learn or take advantage of what Mark is talking about how to get your blog, your content, to get disseminated across the internet in a way that lends you credibility and builds your reputation and brand then you might want to give Mark a shout. You can do that at the phone number that you see there or go to his website at toplocalrankings.com. Thanks for talking with us today Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Good morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg and I’m with W5 Business Coaching. This morning we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good morning Mark.

Mark: Morning John.

John: So today we wanted to talk about or at least respond to this question, when thinking about marketing why is it important to be consistent?

Mark: So, what we found in doing this for years now that it creates an expectancy or a reliance of your customers that you’re going to show up every week or every day that you’re going to show up so Monday we do these Mondays at 9:30 am. We’re there every Monday morning unless there’s a holiday doing these hangouts and that consistency creates an audience because people start to expect that, that you’re going to show up. Now a lot of times that, o.k. that’s simple straightforward, now what do I do? How do I actually create that audience, well how do I, what’s my message? Do I use an email blast? Do I create a newsletter? Do I send out a paper newsletter? Do I create videos? Do I, what do I do? How do I do this? Well I think it’s matched very specifically to your target market so for both of us these work really well. They’re time sensitive, they’re packed with information and value for our target markets and they’re easy to consume and video is probably the most effective way but say if you’re somebody like I just want to give some a couple examples, what if you’re a painter for instance so I’m just going to bear with me I’m going to do a bit of a screen share here, when I find my right screen, technical difficulties . .

John: No worries Mark, we’re with you

Mark: So we’re starting the screen share here, just let me know when you can see that John

John: Sure, there you go

Mark: So here’s a building under construction. You can see that they’re using a pretty standard for Vancouver right now, this kind of mild green I guess and the owners wanted something a little different so they are going to switch to a different process here and just another shot so this is the before picture so this is an exact way that a painter could show how they work. You can see the mess, you can see the job, here they’re masked it off, here’s what it looks like under construction or under the painting process, again another angle, this is actually the house next door and they’re doing two of them at once and then this is the finished product. You can see what it looks like at end is very different and then you can talk about your process, you can talk about your checklist of how you make sure the site is cleaned up every day, you know you’re not, you’re not leaving debris everywhere, you’re making sure that this, this site is clean and it’s fast and it’s done professionally but the interior looks like the same thing, you can show the before and after shots and isn’t this a beautiful thing. Well this is, this conveys very very powerfully to someone what exactly the value is of your business, what are you providing, what exactly is it and in a visual manner like this you can actually just do it in a hangout like this and do a screen share of it. You can see the video that would be a slideshow video and just have a voice track that talked under it and you can actually accomplish this in a very short period of time as long as you have the resource of taking some shots, even your crews out there could take the before’s, the during, the after shots so that you can tell that story every week and do different kinds of jobs you know, whether it’s residential, whether it’s interior, whether it’s you know commercial, exterior, interior again you have many stories to tell that are going to be very relatable to people because they’re going to always think that their, their situation is unique and different even though generally they’re pretty close to the same.

John: Yeah so what you’re describing is giving your prospect or your potential client a preview of what it’s like to work with you.

Mark: Absolutely

John: And prove the result, and proof then is the result that you’ll have more confidence and sort of earn the trust that it’s going to be o.k. to make a decision to go ahead.

Mark: Absolutely but it all hinges in my experience on being consistent, on showing up regularly, if you’re going to show up every day, then show up every day, if it’s 5 days a week, it’s every 5 days a week, it’s a long term play. You have to be a publisher today to be an effective marketer online, if you’re not you’re putting your business at risk in my opinion.

John: Yeah, it’s interesting, so once you set a pattern, uh that pattern becomes a marker of your trustworthiness and if you break that pattern so to then does the confidence that you’re going to you know, do what you say you’re going to do.

Mark: Absolutely.

John: I get that’s what you’re describing, that makes sense. We humans are pattern seeking animals.

Mark: Absolutely, we love that, we love, we like to be able to rely on someone, we want to find someone we can trust and rely on that’s why we do business with anyone is because we’ve grown to trust and rely on and so this is just a subtle way but a very, very important and powerful way to override everything that you’ve heard about marketing in a way because it said you know your USP suddenly become not all that important that you have one perfect one, you can have many, you can have thousands because you’ve got thousands of proofs, kinds of proof that show I, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, here’s the proof, here’s the proof, here’s the proof and now which one matches up with that person who shows up to consume your content,

John: Sure so if you could summarize all of this into a bumper sticker what would it be?

Mark: Pick a time each week and stick to it. Show up and do your thing, whatever the thing is isn’t as important as showing up in my experience and doing it every single week.

John: Awesome, well today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. If you’re interested in finding out more about what Mark does and how he can help you in your business achieve the results that you’re looking for give Mark a call. The numbers on the screen or you can reach him at his email at mark@toplocalrankings.com. Thanks Mark.

Mark: Thanks John.

John: Good day, it’s John Nieuwenburg, I’m with W5 Business Coaching and today I’m talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good morning Mark.

Mark: Morning John.

John: Mark, so the topic for today is when you work with clients, your clients at Top Local Rankings, how do you help your clients figure out who their ideal client is?

Mark: We have a set of questions that we basically send to them to fill out and work through the process. It can be challenging, to just sit down and go who’s my best clients, who do I want to have and so, a bit of a process is always a lot easier. I’ve learned from somebody, so following that process, we get them to ask questions like who’s your most consistent client, who do you enjoy working with, average age of your best clients, who have you had the longest, is there a gender that you like working with more, where do they live, what are their interests, what do they watch, those kinds of things. We have a pretty organized set of two pages that if you really understand your business, it probably takes 10 minutes to fill out and send back. If it’s something you haven’t really thought about before or you want to go into more detail, we’ll ask people, often you’ll find in a company that the CEO or the owner will have a different view point from the customer service people or the people who are on the front line actually answering the phone or even the sales people. And so, sometimes it’s an amalgam of all of those. Getting sheets filled out by everyone and then putting together, ok well, here’s our best target out of all that from the people who are actually out there doing it rather than the person up top who’s pulling the levers and maybe doesn’t have as much customer contact anymore. So that’s how we do that.

Why this is important is actually very critical for who we target when we’re going to run ads for a company to drive leads, we must have an ideal customer profile or avatar or there’s many names for it, so that we know who to target because we can dial in exactly to those people on Facebook or even we’re doing strict lead generation. We can tailor the keyword searches towards specific demographics but we got to start with who is that first.

John: Yeah, you can’t hit a bulls eye if you don’t have a target, if you don’t’ even know what the bulls eye looks like. So one of the first services then you help clients work out is benchmarking who their ideal clients are, and for some clients that’s a new thought, a new concept it’s a bit of an effort to work through and to get that accurate and for some clients then they’ve got a pretty good handle on it, it’s time to refresh their client benchmarking.

So if you want to get a better return on your investment and marketing, a better return on the investment you make with Top Local Rankings, the first thing you want to do and make sure that you don’t overlook the value, the importance of benchmarking who your best clients are, establishing who you’re going to go after in your lead generation efforts. Does that about summarize it Mark?

Mark: Absolutely, it’s a critical part

John: Yeah, yeah and something when starting with clients, often they’re so anxious to get going, that they don’t give this part of the process the amount of attention it deserves in my experience. Would you say that’s true in your experience as well?

Mark: Well, it’s kind of why we went this direction of making it into a system, was they didn’t know, honestly. If they did, you know if I sat dow with them and spent a couple hours dragging it out of them we could get there and doing interviews with everyone around the offices and finding it. We just needed to have a more efficient way and allow them to have more time to let it roll around in their head a little bit, for a few days and then, oh yeah, there was that guy who was with us for 10 years etc. So having that process to follow just makes it much easier and for us, you know for advertising, it’s target and what’s the offer. That’s how simple it is once we get this refined, so this is critical for us to do the best job possible.

John: Yeah, so one marketing mentor that I know talks about strategy before tactics and what we’re discussing here is exactly that. Let’s make sure we have the right strategy that were going after the right prospects before we decide what tactics, which marketing programs we’re going to use to attract those clients. So today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation, you can reach Mark at mark@toplocalrankings.com or you can see in the avatar, his phone number there, or visit his website at toplocalrankings.com. Thanks very much Mark for your time today.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Cheers

John: Good Morning, this is John Nieuwenburg I’m with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good morning Mark.

Mark: Morning John.

John: How’re you doing today?

Mark: Good, feeling great after my cold shower.

John: Awesome. So my question for you today is what form of lead generation works best?

Mark: This is a really common question that people ask me. I think there’s at least twelve different versions of lead generation that you can engage in, everything from having a very defined referral program to reputation marketing to content creation to any kind of advertising - many, many choices. So for me, the real crux of the matter is what, within all those ways of you’re getting the word out there, what’s going to actually work and for me, the real, puddings in the proof, basically.

John: Yes, the proof is in the pudding.

Mark: So the deal here is that you lead with proof, you lead with, here’s the kind of results that we get for our customers on a consistent basis. So it’s telling those stories, whether it is in your referral documents, whether it’s in your Facebook ads, whether it’s in your reputation marketing where people, after you’ve delivered they are then willing to give you a referral. Those are the methods that are the most effective. So it doesn’t really matter, it can vary based on your industry, your market, your personal preference, your budget, which one of these tools you use. But the real message here is to sell with proof. Because then you don’t have to sell basically, you’ve already proven something. You’re not sitting somebody down and having to close them necessarily on the idea that you’re the right guy to use.

John: So it’s marketing using some form of proof, evidence that what you’re promoting, suggesting, recommending has worked for that prospect in the past?

Mark: Absolutely, so if you have, if you are in a specific area, if you have a specific kind of client, then having proof that the perspective client can relate to is going to be a lot easier for them to go, ok that worry of is this going to work for me is going to be partially taken out, they’re never going to trust you completely until they’ve got the proof, until they’re the next one you’re using for your next marketing campaign. That’s the most effective manner of generating leads that there is, to sell with proof.

John: Well, in todays day and age with the way the internet works, we are growing increasingly skeptical and rightly so, given all the click-bait and etcetera stuff that we see

and sources that generate editorial content that are dubious providence but everyone is looking for is credibility, can you demonstratively prove that you are able to do what you say you can do and that you can do it for me. I think that sums it up, does it?

Mark: That’s it in a nutshell.

John: Awesome, well that’s great. So we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation and feel free to visit him on his website at toplocalrankings.com, all of his contact details are there and thanks for spending some time with us today Mark.

Mark: Thanks John

John: Good morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Morning Mark.

Mark: Morning

John: So today, the question is when starting a lead generation plan, how do you create the plan?

Mark: So the plan, I think is the most, the kind of the core element of the basement of the structure if you like, the foundation. So it really comes down to answering some very important questions and the biggest one that I find for our customers after we dig in to who are their customers, what they look like, what are their information of, where are they getting leads from currently, is ok - What are your goals?; What do you want to grow your business to?; What are you doing now?; and What’s that difference? How many leads will it take per week to get you to that goal and that then determines the plan. It is also sculpted by the value of their customers. So if it’s a job or a business where they normally get, you know, say a $1000 dollars a year from a customer typically, then there’s one plan that we would use as compared to somebody’s who’s more like five to ten thousand dollars on a bigger one off kind of job, say like a roofing company or restoration company. That would be a different strategy that we would use and different tactics that we would actually build that. So that’s soft of the core questions that we ask.

To give more examples, say for a roofing company or restoration company, we would build a website for them, we basically manage the entire process from stem to stern. There are tracked phone numbers that are actually recorded calls that they and we at the end of each month can say, ok well you got 10 phone calls each week, 40 phone calls this month and we either charge per phone call or a one off monthly charge for that kind of service. And we can go through and listen to every one of those calls and see, were they valid, were they real leads and what kind of a job did the company’s people on the phone do in turning those into valid leads. And that’s an opportunity for more coaching if needed.

If it’s a smaller situation, then often, smaller in terms of the customers value is lower, so we’re talking about something like a fitness club, where it might be $30 a month for a year, so we’re talking $360 dollars, but the total lifetime customer value could be a lot more, a customer could stay a lot longer than one year. But at that $30 dollar level, building out an entire website to drive leads to them doesn’t really make ecomonic sense, so that’s where Facebook ads becomes really, really effective. And again, it matching that, their knowledge of their target market and a killer offer, you know - a week’s free training or etc. whatever the is proven is working for them or based on our experience doing this right across North America, what we know works and create an offer that drives leads to the operation and flood them with customers. We’ve had campaigns where we’ve had to shut them off after a couple days because it had 200-300 leads within 48 hours and they’re full and couldn’t handle anymore for the next few months. So it can be very, very effective. It just depends on again, how well they know their target market and how sweet the offer is.

John: Sure, so what you’re saying is client value has a relationship to what the client acquisition costs should be. In other words, what are you willing to spend to buy you next client?

Mark: Absolutely. That’s where you can, in any market the business that can efficiently bring customers in the door is going to win and the reason why they’re going to win at that efficiency level is because they’re able to spend more per client to get those clients in the door than the other guys. And as soon as you’ve got that, you’re going to dominate in your market and that means you have all the business you want. Whatever your growth goals are, whatever you can handle on that end, where you need a business coach to help you, you can drive that process because you’re efficient. And that’s really where our focus is, is making that process as efficient as possible to meet the customers goals.

John: Well that’s awesome. So today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation and if you’re looking to develop a new lead generation plan give Mark a call 778-385-0098 or go visit him at toplocalrankings.com. cheers

Mark: Thanks John

John: Good morning, it’s John Nieuwenburg with W5 Business Coaching and today we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation, morning Mark.

Mark: Morning John

John: We’ve been having an ongoing series talking about what lead generation can do for you. So todays question Mark is this, so we’ve agreed to work together, what role do I as the client have to take on in order to make the lead generation program work and be successful?

Mark: Sure so when we start an engagement we inquire pretty deeply about the processes, the history of the company and what they’ve used for lead generation in the past, what they have for resources, what they’re comfortable with. We have four arrows in our quiver that we use out of the many tactics or strategies that you can use for lead generation, there’s four that we concentrate on. So that starts with content, Facebook ads, reputation management and we also do lead generation which is a whole separate thing which is we actually drive the whole process. So depending on which of those fit your business the best, will depend on what and how much you will actually need to do.

So lets look at content: For content creation an example of which is what we’re doing right now, there is some investment on your part as our client to get expert content created and we try to make it as easy as possible by doing these hangouts. The hangouts are transcribed and distributed around the internet, on your social media platforms, put it on your blog, it can become a Pdf. There are many ways to repurpose that one off content creation that is that it shows you as the leading expertise or at least in your area. So there is some investment in time, thinking around that.

If we get into the Facebook ads, there is some effort in terms of who is your target market and what would be the best offer to give that target market? So again that’s knowing your business, knowing who you have done business with in the past.

Reputation management: there’s effort in terms of asking your clients to review your business on a consistent level. And on the lead generation side of things, where we’re driving the entire process, basically then it’s up to you to really make sure that your sales process is dialled in because we deliver the phone calls. Those are recorded, we have exact tracking every step of the process up to the phone call and if your guys on your end aren’t doing their job well, then you’re going to be spending money on leads that aren’t converting. It’s up to you to make sure that conversation takes place. So your sales process has to be dialled in. That kind of synopsizes all the four channels that we use.

John: The classic case of pouring water into a bucket that’s got holes in it.

Mark: Yeah, if someone is busy and they don’t want to answer the phone, we’ve had all kinds of different examples where if people’s process isn’t refined and so we’ll help work that out. I mean, it just depends on what the process is. We’ve got some pretty sophisticated methods of driving what that, what is it that a target market is going to want, what are they going to pay you back with their attention with, what’s going to attract them, what’s going to move. In the copywriting days, it was you know, what’s going to move that somnambulistic slob off, slug off of the couch and actually give you some money.

John: In my experience Mark, many times the first thing that needs to be established when you’re taken out one of these kinds of campaigns, is the quality of the data, the quality of your data collection process.You talked about the fact that you record all the phone calls etc, how many of your clients are good at recording, collecting and analyzing their conversation?

Mark: They’re not.

John: Exactly, yeah. So the first thing you can do to help yourself to lead generation is to become better at knowing what your conversion rate is, so that you know in which direction you need to make corrections if going down the road you have a lead generation problem, a conversion problem and if you don’t have good data, there’s no way that you can manage that

Mark: Yeah, if you’re going to build a lead conversion funnel of whatever type, you need to have the right tools, you have to have the right training, so you know what it is that you’re looking for. The data’s there, there’s mountains of data. How to make sense out of it does take a little bit of experience. It’s not terribly difficult. It’s something that if you’re doing it every day is very second nature because it becomes obvious what’s working and what isn’t. But if it’s on the side of the desk on top of everything else you’ve got to do and I’m going to devote 2% of my brain power to making this go, it’s always going to be a real fight, a difficult situation. That’s been my experience with my own business honestly, plus working with other companies.

John: I read an interesting blog post by a sales trainer expert who said it’s remarkable how so many people say their number one goal or priority is sales as an example, and yet when you assess how much of your time, how much of your effort is going against your number one priority, there is a mismatch.

Mark: Yeah, well it’s the same with leads. I mean there is out of hundreds of companies that we’ve worked with in the last nice years, there’s been a couple who were like ruthlessly focused on leads and they were very successful. The rest said they were and weren’t. That’s the truth of it.

John: Well that’s awesome. Today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. If you’re interested in getting more leads in your business and understanding the lead generation process I urge you to give Mark a call, you see his number there on the screen or at mark@toplocalrankings.com. Cheers man

Mark: Thanks John

John: Good Morning, I’m John Nieuwenburg with W5 Coaching and this morning we’re talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation. Good morning Mark.

Mark: Good morning.

John: So the question we have in mind for you this morning is once one of your clients or prospects starts a Lead Generation program with you, how long will it take before they can expect to start getting some leads?

Mark: Sure, and this is a really common question that most clients are very focused on.

John: Yeah, of course; with good reason.

Mark: Yeah, and it really depends on which strategy so as we dig into understanding their goals, their company, how they’ve gotten leads in the past, we try to determine what the best path is for them so often that could be like Facebook Ad campaign and in that case, a Facebook campaign can driving leads for them inside of a week, as fast within a couple days actually, or a day, just depends on the service and the offer and how well they understand their market. For the long term if they’re looking for something where they get even further qualified leads, if they want something where they’re really concerned about the quality of the leads that they’re getting, the enquiries they’re getting then it becomes more of an inbound campaign where we’re using different techniques to create content that’s relevant, that will actually establish them as an expert, as the expert in their area so that they’re the only choice for people to use and when that takes place then that can take a while, that can take three to six months for that to really blossom and for there to be a regular enquiry rate of you know, 4 to 8 to 12 leads per week for the business, so that’s the short answer.

John: Yeah, you’ve made me think of a common bit of wisdom which is that when thinking about marketing its strategy before tactics. What’s your big picture, what are you trying to accomplish, who’s your target market, work all that out before you decide which tactics you’re going to use to try to attract leads for your business.

Mark: Yeah, and that’s something that we actually emphasize with customers. I’ve turned customers away pretty much every week who, not on purpose but because I’d say you know, they just come to me and say, they want Facebook Ads, they want to run a Facebook Ad campaign, while, o.k., I ask them the strategic questions and they don’t have an answer and I said well you’re not ready, I’m not going to take your money and waste it until you’re ready so here’s the path to follow to get ready and then you can start the campaigns; kind of similar to selling your business.

John: Yeah, it’s a bit off putting to business owners to hear what you’ve just said, they want leads, they want them now and this notion of working out your strategy if you haven’t done that in advance then it’s a bit painful to go through that exercise of working out your strategy because that entire time you still need to get some leads. So what do you tell prospects about how to handle that?

Mark: Well it’s a function of what can they devote in terms of, any business owner, let me back track, any business owners an expert on his business, he has more information about his history, who’s he dealt with, who have been his best customers, what customers he wants to focus on than anyone else in the world so he’s an expert on his business, he might not know it or trust it but that’s a fact so it’s a case of him using a bit of a process which we have, we’ve basically emailed them a set of questions to follow that will make it pretty obvious if they work through it and it’s a question of how fast can they do that, then we have a bit of a landing path defined for us to then go o.k. well here’s the next step, here’s what we do next to drive this process forward and start getting you leads ASAP.

John: Yeah, well that’s awesome Mark, well today we’ve been talking with Mark Bossert of Top Local Lead Generation and talking about what’s the best way to design your marketing plan to get you the leads and clients that you’re looking for. If you want some help with your lead generation program give Mark Bossert, you see the phone number there or go to toplocalleadgen.com, is that correct?

Mark: toplocalrankings.com for now, we’ll launch our new site in a few, probably in a week or so.

John: o.k., pardon me, toplocalrankings.com. Thanks Mark.

Mark: Thanks John.