How Ledlie Tripled His Boat Business With Zero Paid Ads

[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:03 - (Jared Erni): This is the For Impact podcast, the destination for impact driven entrepreneurs striving to live life on their terms and create a ripple effect of positive impact in the communities they serve. Where we put your success stories center stage, dissecting the lessons learned, and sharing insights and ideas that will help you amplify your impact. And now, here's your host, Jared Ernie.
0:00:35 - (Jared Erni): What's up, everyone? I'm so excited to dive into the story I'm going to share with you today because it's one of my favorite clients that we've worked with and really towards the beginning of how I got into what I'm doing today. Because in episode one, I shared with you a little bit of my background. And one of those ventures that really guided me here was an indoor digital billboard network. I spent eight years building this network that provided an alternative to outdoor billboards for the local business community. We had over 200 gyms and restaurants that hosted these big digital displays, and we'd sell billboard type advertisements to this. Now, one of our clients was Ledley, who owned a boat sales business up by the lake near where we live.
0:01:21 - (Jared Erni): And he was a client of ours for a couple years before he came to me and said, hey, I am opening up a new division here and really a new business, if you will, but it is a boat rental business, so we can capitalize on the rental market here on the lake. And I said, that's awesome. So we actually put another campaign together for him on this network for his boat rentals. But really, surprisingly, as well as it performed for boat sales, it did not perform well for boat rentals.
0:01:51 - (Jared Erni): It was the same client, or I should say same product, just two different types of clients. And there was a difference. And we couldn't figure out, why is this not working? But I had learned some things about how to dial in our marketing in that billboard business. And so I started to build a plan to help Ledley accomplish this same thing. And so what I did was I dove in deep. I put these frameworks together, which I will share with you in a minute.
0:02:19 - (Jared Erni): And surprisingly, I was a little surprised that it happened so quickly, honestly, but I knew it would work. Well, in two weeks, we had filled his calendar. What? That is crazy. How quick of a turnaround we could have on this. But I had the right pieces in place to amplify that impact. But here's what's even more incredible. Over the next eight to twelve months, he actually tripled his business and his fleet of boats with zero paid ads.
0:02:49 - (Jared Erni): Now, a lot of people don't think that can even be possible. How do you do that without paying for ads? Because a lot of business owners, small business, local businesses, they naturally default to things like Facebook ads or pay per click campaigns or paying for SEO. That just is a very long game and isn't working very well. We were able to overcome all of that without any of it. And here's how we did it.
0:03:17 - (Jared Erni): Let me tell you this, by the way. So here's what happened while evaluating his numbers, what we discovered in his very best month, he was being discovered by nearly 80,000 people with his Google Business profile. In 30 days, he had over 6000 visitors clicking his link from his Google profile going to his website, and he tripled his fleet of boats within that time frame without spending a single dime on ads. So take a minute and think about your business, where you're at right now.
0:03:52 - (Jared Erni): What would it do for you if you were being discovered by nearly 80,000 people this month and had over 6000 visitors coming to your website? How would that impact your business? And how would it impact you if you got all that without paying for ads? It's crazy. Here's the thing though. If you run a local business, brick and mortar business, or a service business, google Profile, known formerly as Google My Business or Google Business Profile, today is your biggest opportunity.
0:04:33 - (Jared Erni): Most people are not capitalizing on this. Here's why. Your Google business profile is a gateway to exponentially growing your business. Number one, near me search has increased over 900%. There are more people than ever in the history of the world looking for local businesses and local services in their area right now. That's why Google even created the map section. When you search for roofers near me and you see that map with the three Google profiles next to it, that's what that's for.
0:05:06 - (Jared Erni): But more than 70% of near me search results in a same day purchase. Now, what's crazy about that is that means there is very high buying intent when this traffic is looking for those local services. If someone searches Mexican restaurants, their intent to eat today is very high. If someone's searching roofers near me, their intent to get a company to come do a roof inspection is very high. That's the kind of intent you want. When you do Facebook ads, you're putting yourself on a platform that's designed for entertainment, and people don't go to Facebook to look for you.
0:05:41 - (Jared Erni): So if you've ever experienced Facebook leads that have just been so poor quality and it feels like trash tire kickers, they aren't committed. That's why it's the wrong platform for high intent buying traffic. That's not to say that you can't be successful with Facebook, but if you want to prioritize where you're getting your traffic from, focus on the best traffic first. And your Google profile is an incredible source of high intent traffic. Here's another amazing statistic that makes it a massive opportunity.
0:06:13 - (Jared Erni): 92% of businesses that set up their Google profile rarely ever touch it again. And 56% never even claim their Google profile. So when you think about that, while SEO or paid per click ads or even Facebook ads have been a platform a lot of people use to grow their businesses today. They are all very saturated and competitive because that's where most people are going to compete for ads. 92% of businesses are not optimizing their Google profile the way they should and 56 haven't even claimed it. So that opens up a massive gateway for you to soar way ahead of your competition.
0:07:00 - (Jared Erni): So much easier. If you want to compete, go to a place where no one else is running right, you'll win. So much easier. That's the whole idea here. This becomes a blue ocean for you, rather than fighting in a red ocean of advertisers in the pay per click space, SEO space, or Facebook ad space. Now the other thing here is that most people just don't know what to do with their profile. They think that by putting my information in my profile, I've got some pictures, my description, a few hours of operation, then that's all that needs to happen.
0:07:33 - (Jared Erni): And that's why so many are not capitalizing on the opportunity it can give you. So get active with your profile, use it properly, and when you know how to leverage it, this is going to be the fastest and most efficient way for you to show up on Google search results, actually ahead of anyone fighting for first page. Rank with traditional SEO and you're going to win 80% of that. Traffic is going to see you first and you have the ability to drive that traffic from your website. So here's the big shift. While everyone thinks that I need to rank my website on Google, forget it, SEO is dead.
0:08:16 - (Jared Erni): Focus on ranking your Google profile and your Google profile will drive traffic to your website. That's the shift. Second, we implemented a sales funnel. Now, when I say sales funnel, there's a lot of ways you can think of a sales funnel. And so I want to clarify what I mean by this, because a lot of people says, well what about my website? A sales funnel is a website. But here's the big shift. Most websites are designed like informational websites where you have a nice hero image at the top, your logo, several menu items, a whole bunch of page links and most agencies that put these together for you or most templates. If you've done it yourself off of a template based program, you're going to most likely model what you've seen out there. And they're all terrible.
0:09:06 - (Jared Erni): They're terrible in this way. So most websites are designed to look pretty and contain a lot of information for SEO purposes. But on average, the traditional website only converts one to 2.8% of traffic into sales. That is horrible. If you think about 100 people. Let's say you're doing Facebook ads, which know don't recommend for most, but let's say you're spending money on Facebook ads, you're like, man, it's not working.
0:09:36 - (Jared Erni): It may actually work a whole lot better if what happens after the click has the right things in place too. Because here's the thing. What happens after the click is just as important as getting the click. So instead of following what everyone else does with a traditional website and optimizing it for all this SEO, which, by the way, one little algorithm change and you're back to page ten. Don't waste your time and energy on that anymore.
0:10:03 - (Jared Erni): Instead, focus on a sales funnel. A sales funnel is a website with specific marketing strategy and psychology that moves people forward. So in a bigger picture, or just very broadly, a sales funnel is the process of getting someone from point A to point B. And a sales funnel website is a landing page that guides them through that process. Now, the main difference of a sales funnel there's a few differences. The main difference of a sales funnel versus a traditional website is, number one, it's not built with pages.
0:10:32 - (Jared Erni): A website is built with pages that becomes an informational highway going all kinds of directions. And it's kind of like going to Netflix in a showhole and scrolling for 50 minutes, but not actually doing anything because you're overwhelmed with information. A landing page is different. A landing page directs you in one place, and it's specifically for one thing, and you get an action. It requires you to do what we want you to do to go to the next step. So instead of pages, it's built in steps.
0:11:03 - (Jared Erni): And so if I want you to do something, you have to enter your name, email, and phone number in order to get to the next section. What that does is, number one, it captures your leads information for you. Now you have the ability to nurture that lead and get more bookings from it. Two, it filters your traffic. So those who are not serious go away, and those that are, take that step forward. And now I can spend more of my time nurturing them into clients.
0:11:31 - (Jared Erni): And that's the beauty of it. A sales funnel is more than just a website on the front end. It's also what happens on the back end. So imagine if I'm interested in booking a boat rental. I enter my name, email, and phone number to claim an offer that's given to me and immediately get a text message that says, hey, Jared, it's Ledley over at Alatuna Boat Rentals. I saw that you're interested in renting a boat. When are you looking to book?
0:11:55 - (Jared Erni): All of a sudden, I now have made a micro commitment, and I start engaging. I'm like, hey, thanks for texting me. You're engaging with that lead in the first five minutes, which increases your ability to book them far better. If you don't engage with them in the first five minutes, your chances of booking that client go down as much as 70%. And so it's an automation. It feels natural. I love texting automations because that's very high open rate on those.
0:12:25 - (Jared Erni): But that gives you the ability to start engaging. And when they engage with you, that becomes that micro commitment. They are six times more likely to continue moving forward with you and committing to the next thing, booking or whatever it might be, buying your thing or whatever, that's important. So we implemented a sales funnel instead of a traditional website. Last or three here. This is you've got to have a good offer.
0:12:56 - (Jared Erni): Most people operate under this messaging, marketing, messaging kind of idea that I'm open for business, come sign up. I'm a roofer. If you need a roof, call me. But that's not an offer. And then the other thing that I see so much is if you open up, the messaging becomes more about me instead of the client. I say, if I open a roofing business, then a lot of people are going to do this. They're going to say, hey, I've been in business over 30 years. I'm locally owned and operated.
0:13:33 - (Jared Erni): I have the best quality products. That's all about me. That's not about the client. You've got to have an offer that creates the higher perceived value for the actual transformation and benefit you provide to that client. And so here's the thing you want to think about when I say you create an offer. Most people think, I've got to discount my price. And that's the wrong way. If you are competing by discounting, then you are conditioning people to view you as a commodity.
0:14:04 - (Jared Erni): And the only way to win in that game is to be the one, the one that charges the least. You're going to cut all your margins. It's going to be harder to grow your business. You need more volume. And then there's always someone who's going to undercut you. It's a very competitive, difficult game to compete when you're competing on price. The other way. And the recommended way that I would have you create offers is not by discounting or not competing by price, but by competing with a value.
0:14:34 - (Jared Erni): What people care about more than value, or excuse me, more than price, is convenience, quality and value. But often we do a very poor job of articulating that value. So you have to create high value here. And in order to do that, you really got to get clear on who your ideal client is. What is it that they are struggling with, what is their pain point, what is their desired result, and speak to them not just on a feature level, but you got to translate the features you provide to the benefits physically and emotionally.
0:15:13 - (Jared Erni): And what we do, we have actually what we call our three point offer framework. And so we always create offers with three bullet points. Bullet point one is going to be your feature. To benefit, we're going to describe exactly what you're going to get, what we're going to give you, and what that will mean for you. The second bullet point is your emotional benefit. How is that going to make you feel?
0:15:36 - (Jared Erni): And three, is our value add on. This is going to be something you can add give for free or for a little extra cost that will greatly enhance the experience or added value of your offer. And those three things combined. It's not the only way to create a good offer, but it's what we've done to create a framework that allows someone to take almost anything you do and turn it into a high perceived of high value. Offer something that people can see high perceived value, and it listens people to move forward with you. Here's what happens when you get really good at creating a good offer strategy. This will do more for your business than anything else you can do.
0:16:15 - (Jared Erni): And you will attract more clients, you will attract higher quality clients, and you will decrease your cost per leads. If you're spending money on ads, you will increase your conversion rate. I think I already kind of said that. Ultimately, all of your other marketing will start working better because your offer is the foundation of conversion. When most people go to a marketing agency, here's usually what happens. They say, I need more traffic.
0:16:42 - (Jared Erni): And so that agency goes, all right, let's put a budget together and we'll spend more money on ads. They drive a ton of ads or try a ton of clicks to your website, and it doesn't work. It's not a traffic problem. It's a conversion problem. First, fix the conversion problem with a good offer and a good funnel. And you know what? That campaign that wasn't working before probably is going to work, if not at least a whole lot better. But there's other ways to get better traffic there too, as the that's the framework, guys.
0:17:17 - (Jared Erni): Drive traffic. And by the way, one of the best ways to do it for local business is with your Google business profile today. Two, get a good sales funnel in place. Stop operating with the traditional website that does not convert. And number three, that sales funnel isn't going to work anyway unless you have a good offer strategy. The number one rule to marketing this is Dan Kennedy's words, not mine. The number one rule to marketing is to abandon all methods everyone else is doing that doesn't work.
0:17:48 - (Jared Erni): If you keep doing the same thing, expecting different results. What does that mean? Right. Shift your mindset. Try get yourself away from what everyone else is doing because most people are struggling and you don't know it with their marketing. If you're trying to model businesses out there, you're probably modeling people who are also struggling. Change that, be different. And this is a plan that, as of recording this video, is the absolute 100% best way to open up a whole new stream of clients to your business without expensive ads or complicated SEO like everyone says you need.
0:18:24 - (Jared Erni): Most people are afraid to do this because they don't have a lot of marketing experience, or maybe they're not tech savvy, but I assure you, you absolutely can. If you're interested in learning how, you can join our free challenge. We call this our GMB challenge. Google my business. GMB challenge. Just go to gmbchallenge.com. You can sign up for that free challenge. We'll go deeper into these frameworks for you and show you exactly how you can master this without having a lot of marketing experience or being a tech genius.
0:18:57 - (Jared Erni): Thank you for tuning into the For Impact podcast, where we're all about driving positive change through entrepreneurship. Remember your impact matters and your journey matters. If you found inspiration in today's episode, please subscribe rate and leave a review. Your feedback fuels our mission to empower impact driven entrepreneurs like you. You can stay connected with us on social media and go to Forimpactpodcast.com
0:19:29 - (Jared Erni): to take our Impact Marketing Challenge. Keep pursuing your dreams, making an impact and living life on your terms.