Smart Traffic Strategies To Grow Your Local Business

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:03 - (Jared Erni): This is the four 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'll help you amplify your impact. And now, here's your host, Jared Ernie.

0:00:38 - (B): Hey everyone. We are going live for our Q and a session today in local search academy and I'm grateful for everyone who's been able to join us in the past. It's been really great to get the feedback from you as well on what we can do to improve the program. And so I'm going to ask again and always ask, how can we continue to improve the program for you as well? So this becomes more valuable and more effective as you implement the strategies and participate in the community that we have here.

0:01:05 - (B): But as people are getting started here, I'm seeing a few people jumping on. Hey, great to have you in the, in the call today, art. As we get started, I'm going to just start with a little bit of a backstory here and a little highlight on something I think will be great information for those who are tuning in today. I'm always going to lead with a little bit of something. It fills in a little bit of space as people are joining, but also it's great, great information to just keep things relevant in what we're seeing working best today.

0:01:35 - (B): I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a little bit of backstory on Jennifer. When we were working with her, she is doing a wellness center, but she was spending about a month on Google Ads with an agency and was not getting the results she wanted. Every time she would tell him, we're not seeing results, we're not getting the calls or the customers from this campaign. They would say, well, it's working. Look at all these clicks, look at all this traffic.

0:01:58 - (B): And that was the big disconnect is they weren't really concerned about if it converted at all or not, but it was just traffic. And what we did with Jennifer when she came in, we actually cut out that ad spend. We helped her create a really strong offer strategy, put that into a sales funnel structure. So now that campaign that was sending traffic before, the problem wasn't whether or not the campaign was working. It may have actually been working properly. It was the conversion. And that's what most people don't realize is that it's not usually just a traffic problem, it's also a conversion problem.

0:02:37 - (B): And that's where you, when you can fix both of those, you're actually pulling two levers to your growth, not just one. And that's where you see things starting to amplify. But there's also something to be said about what I call smart traffic. And that's what I wanted to share a little bit about today because when we started with Jennifer, we said your biggest opportunity is going to be starting with Google profile.

0:02:56 - (B): But there's some elements that Google profile opens the door to as well. And I'm going to share a little bit more about that. But this is what I call smart traffic. Number one, there's two qualifiers. Number one, it's a source of traffic with high buying intent. I want you to think about, like where do people go to look for what I offer? Because that is going to have higher buying intent than, say, an entertainment platform where people go to spend time or to decompress or to be entertained, such as Facebook.

0:03:26 - (B): So you're going to get better traffic there. Secondly is where can I compete with traffic in a place where there's far less competition so it's easier for me to win and stand out. And so those two qualifiers, number one, it's a source of traffic with high buying intent. And two, it's a source of traffic where you can compete and win. That's what I call smart traffic. So I'm going to shoot you over a snapshot here of what we consider smart traffic today for your business. And this could evolve, too, as the dynamics of the market shift and change as well.

0:04:02 - (B): Layers can be taken away or added to this, but the key here is to also diversify your traffic because you don't want to rely just on one thing. You want to rely on multiple, you want to have multiple ways of bringing traffic into your business. That's going to create a stronger, healthier business for the long term. So you can see this kind of like diagram here. A big component is going to be Google Business profile because that is where you have such an amazing opportunity to win real estate. On the first page of Google today, far fewer competition.

0:04:34 - (B): The second one is going to be Google Ads. But I want to specify not just traditional search campaigns that most people are running, but local search campaigns or local search ads. I'm going to tell you what the difference is on that. Oh, let me go back here. Come on. I'll share with you what that difference is here in a minute. And I'm going to break this out. This one, I don't have a label here, but this is going to represent retargeting strategies, which I'll share with you here in a second.

0:05:06 - (B): And this last one is going to represent an added bonus for those businesses it applies to there. It doesn't apply to every business category, but local services ads are what I like to call Google guaranteed. I don't want that to get confused with local search ads because there is a massive difference between those. But usually that's a question that gets a little kind of muddled and people aren't sure what the difference is. So let me break out the differences.

0:05:32 - (B): We all know Google guaranteed right now that's actually the main reason you probably joined this program to start with because that's the biggest opportunity we want to begin with. But then the door opens up for these others that are paid strategies to allow you to scale beyond that. So local search ads are a type of pay per click ad in the map section and we'll see these and recognize them. But most people don't know how to set these up and that's why there's far less competition in this space, making it easier for you to show up, get more rotations, have a lower cost per click, leverage the higher level of trust people have in the map section and be able to target your Google profile with specific keywords and geographic areas.

0:06:13 - (B): This is set up much like a typical pay per click campaign, but the big key is you got to create an asset out of your Google profile and then attach that into the targeting in the proper way. And now your campaign can now show up in the map section just like this. Does that make sense to everyone? So this is a snapshot of a, what we call the map section, local search and then the map section down here. So when you click on view more businesses, it goes into the map section. You get a bigger list here. So you might see a couple in that section.

0:06:44 - (B): But just on the first page of Google, there's always only get one if there's four. If there's four, one is paid, the other three. And maybe if you don't only see three, that means they're all, all three are organic. So that's the local search ad and that's the next way to amplify your Google profile. So here's what you can think about. It is Google profile organically now takes place of what traditional SEO did for us, right? That's the new method.

0:07:10 - (B): You don't need to do all the old school SEO strategies as much because you're going to generate more traffic from your Google profile and it's going to be up above all of the SEO anyway, so you're already beating them. Second, pay local search ads is the new method for local businesses versus traditional pay per click. Traditional pay per click can be super expensive. It's getting more like continually.

0:07:33 - (B): The cost is rising. Just you got these corporations out there with deeper pockets than us, and so they're going to increase the bid, but most of them can't be in here because of the local presence that you have. That's your target there. The next is going to be Google guaranteed. This is a program not everyone's heard of, but maybe some of you have. Tina, I see here, we talked about this yesterday.

0:07:54 - (B): Google guaranteed is a different program. It is a pay per lead program. So we got pay per click and pay per lead. Now, this is not open to all businesses, but lots of service businesses do have categories that this could play into. And so when you're searching, say, locksmith with the zip code or locksmith near me, you may see, and you may have seen the before because it doesn't always show up on search, but just with specific types of search, you may see a carousel of three different businesses at the very top that are going to push you into giving of making a phone call.

0:08:28 - (B): When that phone call comes into the business, it is a paid lead. They're paying maybe 25, $30, I don't know, whatever it is for that category, for that phone call. But the reason I like this is if you've ever been in the service business, like roofing, plumbing, H Vac, you know, they're often familiar with Angie list, Homeadvisor, thumbtack, these lead gen sites that will pay for leads. They'll send you a lead and send it to four other contractors. You got to get on the call and try to jump on that lead quickly or you lose it.

0:08:57 - (B): In this scenario, this is an inbound call coming to you. So there's already higher buying intent. You're getting in touch with the lead. Cause they're calling you and it's exclusively yours. It's not being shared with others. So that makes it a lot, lot more valuable. And last but not least is retargeting. This is the idea of anyone who comes to your website that does not move forward. You now have the ability to show your ad all over where they spend time online, reminding them that you're still there to serve them.

0:09:26 - (B): The reason this is important is because, you know, the studies we've all probably heard before that say, you know, it takes seven to eight touches for someone to move to action. Well, today there's research that shows it's over 30 because we're inundated with so much noise. There's a million things that come up between now and when I'm ready to book that can distract me from doing that. And so retargeting is a really effective way to keep you top of mind for that person. And the other reason is only about 90.

0:09:55 - (B): About three to 5% of the traffic that comes to your site is likely financially and emotionally ready to make a decision and move forward. The vast majority of that traffic is coming to check you out first and probably check out others to see what are their options. And so if you have a much better way of not losing that person if they go to another one or they're not ready yet or somewhere in the, in a different space in the buying cycle, if you can now show up all over the face. Oh, we're getting some background noise. So let's see if we can meet that here.

0:10:28 - (B): Perfect. That you're gonna. This is what someone called recycling traffic. And it is. We've seen business increase as much as 60% with good retargeting strategies. But it's these methods combined that create what, along with what you'll see in local search academy, good offer strategy and good sales funnels for nurturing that have the amplification and results. And that's how we're able to double and triple businesses in a very short period of time by leveraging all of these, you know, frameworks together that now magnify. That's. I don't know if I have a snapshot of.

0:11:06 - (B): Let me come back here. I don't have it on here. There's like one little thing I wanted to show you, but it's probably the Venn diagram you've all seen before with like, how I draw out there's three circles. You have good offer strategy, sales funnel, and nurture, and then good, what we call smart traffic. It's in the center where all those merge that you get the most and the best results. So with that said, I wanted to give that snapshot to everyone because, oh, let me see here.

0:11:34 - (B): Stop sharing screen there because I felt like it was good to see kind of where you're going. You know, we right now in local search academy, many of you are still in the Google profile stuff, but there are things that are coming that will help you amplify your impact with Google profile and give you real scalability. Because the thing about Google profile being an organic strategy is it's, it's hard to scale.

0:11:55 - (B): You can't just tomorrow decide to double the traffic from it. It takes a lot a Runway, and at a certain point, there's a threshold that you hit, and you can't really get past that without adding some paid layers to it as well. But it becomes a strong foundation of organic traffic to your business, which creates stability, and that's what we want to lay as the foundation and then bring you into some of those other areas to, to scale.

0:12:19 - (B): So hopefully that's helpful for those that have joined and maybe those who can catch up later in the, in the call. But I'd love to open this up to q and a's now. And so if you. I think some of you have been here before for Q and A's, maybe some of you haven't. But just like last time, if you just raise your hand, we'll jump around into the Q and A's and see what we can do to help you today. All right, we got art.

0:12:47 - (B): How's it going, Art? We'll start with art, and then I see Stephanie next, and then we'll go from there.

0:12:52 - (C): Going. Good man. How are you doing?

0:12:54 - (B): Good. It's good to see you again.

0:12:56 - (C): Yeah, it's good to see you. I wanted to get a clarification on when you're doing the local search ads. Are the ads specifically for that, or are they also going to be showing up in the click, the normal pay per click area? Is there a choice or is there a?

0:13:16 - (B): That's a really good question. And the answer to that is they will show up in both places because Google doesn't allow you to select only maps or only the other section. I don't know if there's an actual name for that section, but we know what we're talking about. A local search ad opens up the ability to show up in the maps where most other ads aren't. And so depending on the algorithm, you might jump around back and forth a little bit, but because there's far less competition in the map section, you will get more rotations there.

0:13:48 - (C): Okay. Does it help with your bad. Your bidding process to help it? So you're not. I mean, if you're lower on your bid, then maybe you're not showing up in the. On the searches, but you're showing up in the.

0:14:04 - (B): Yeah, so, so, yes, it can. It can actually greatly decrease your cost per click in that space. When you're dealing with actual changing the bidding strategy, you'll just have to kind of test where that sweet spot is for you. I guess if you're getting that deep into it, but we've. Here's a good example. One of our clients, Vince Lardy, has a mold remediation company, and just a few weeks ago, we were looking at his account with him in the past, with traditional pay per click, he would spend about dollar 300 to dollar 400 to generate a new lead.

0:14:42 - (B): When we set this up for him, he was getting leads around $30. So it greatly reduced his overall cost per acquisition or lead conversion, I should say. From that, I don't know what all the factors like that. We don't see that big of a gap with every business that does this. There's a lot of different factors that go into it, but what I can tell you is setting this up just opens the door for lower costs per click, lower better conversions, and a whole lot more benefit.

0:15:10 - (C): So the only difference was that you're doing the local search ads, that you added that to it, or did you change version lead?

0:15:17 - (B): Yeah, we added that to it, but we started a campaign from scratch to make sure everything was dialed in. And I don't know if there were certain other things about his other campaign that, like, we're a little bit different. But one of the things we show you in setting up your local search ad is certain audiences to turn off. But also, once you get some data through there, you'll be able to go into your audience's demographics and look at ages or household income and things like that, and you can turn off the ones that don't make sense, and then it focuses your budget more on the ones that do.

0:15:53 - (B): And so there are some deeper ways of optimizing it that we've seen as well. But you want to get it started so you get that data in so you can make those decisions. Great.

0:16:02 - (C): Great. Okay. Thank you.

0:16:04 - (B): Yeah. Good question, though. Did that help?

0:16:06 - (C): Yeah.

0:16:06 - (B): Okay, perfect. All right, we got Stephanie. Stephanie, how are you?

0:16:20 - (D): Can you hear me?

0:16:21 - (B): Yep, we can hear you.

0:16:22 - (D): Okay. I'm sorry. No, I put together my. Was it called the landing page?

0:16:33 - (B): Uh huh.

0:16:34 - (D): Um, and I have it, you know, it's kind of going. It's active. My question was, I heard you talking about retargeting, but I missed the very beginning.

0:16:47 - (B): Uh huh. Oh, so your question is more about, like, what are the other components that we talked about?

0:16:53 - (D): Yeah, well, I know that this is. That's part of the training.

0:16:56 - (B): Oh, yeah, it's actually. Yes, actually, it's in the training. Retargeting is going to be more of the kind of the capstone on all the other traffic. So as you continue to go through the modules. We're going to start breaking into the other layers of smart traffic, starting with local search ads. If it makes sense for your type of business, showing you how to set up Google, guaranteed that doesn't apply to everyone, but it's a good additional, you know, thing to have if it does apply to you.

0:17:24 - (B): And then going into retargeting after that.

0:17:27 - (D): Okay. And when you start advertising with Google, what is the. Did you say it's about $30 you would, you would need to about start with, or is it more than that?

0:17:39 - (B): Yeah, that's a great question. We typically would see $25 to $30 as a pretty good starting point on a daily budget for Google just to get some data in. Now, that can vary depending on your industry and maybe the competition in your space.

0:17:53 - (D): Is that daily or like, just all in general, $30 a day or $30.

0:17:58 - (B): $30 a day? Yeah.

0:18:00 - (D): $30 a day.

0:18:02 - (B): Yeah. That's kind of like how you set your budget on a daily budget kind of thing there. And Google's interesting. I think it's about 20% threshold, where sometimes Google will spend 20% more on certain days and 20% less than $30 on certain days, but. And in the end, over 30 days, or however they calculate the full month, you will not exceed the maximum of averaging $30 a day.

0:18:28 - (D): Okay. All right. That's pretty much was my question. Thank you so much.

0:18:32 - (C): Okay.

0:18:33 - (B): You're very welcome. Perfect. All right, let's go over to Wendy and then Avi after that. Hi, Wendy. Let's see here. Waiting on Wendy. Wendy, are you there? You may have to unmute your mic, though.

0:19:04 - (E): For me, but now I've wasted all this time. Can you hear me?

0:19:07 - (B): Yeah. It sounds a little bit muffled, though. I'm not sure what's going on with the mic.

0:19:11 - (E): Maybe if I get closer.

0:19:12 - (B): I don't know.

0:19:12 - (E): Can you hear?

0:19:13 - (B): It's. It sounds super magnified or, like, convinced I can understand you.

0:19:20 - (E): Okay, I'm sorry. I'm kind of new to it all, but my business is not showing up on the map. I do have my Google, my business elements set up. Do I just have to do more, be more active for it to show up on the map?

0:19:38 - (B): On the maps? Yeah.

0:19:43 - (E): It'S a service. Business aesthetics. Like, I think they call it a salon. Usually it's under personal services. I think they've been doing a salon, which is kind of.

0:20:07 - (B): Okay.

0:20:09 - (C): Hey, Jared.

0:20:10 - (B): Jared, she might.

0:20:11 - (C): Sounds like she. There's an echo.

0:20:15 - (B): Yeah. Wendy, I'm going to mute you for a minute while I some advice on that because the feedback was kind of sounding a little off there, but I think I got it. So you're kind of categorized as a salon in the aesthetic space. You've got your Google profile all set up. It's not showing up in the map section all that well yet this. And your question was kind of like, do I need to get more active with it?

0:20:40 - (B): That is actually the number one thing you can do to help your Google profile. Now, it's not going to be an instant fix, but you can see results happening fairly quickly, not as much quicker than traditional SEO. So traditional SEO is like what you do to rank your website on the first page of Google. We're moving away from that because that's so saturated and competitive. It's really hard for you to win in that space.

0:21:05 - (B): But what's easier now is being able to rank your profile in the map section and you'll see faster results with that than traditional SEO. But it is a matter of activity largely now. There may be some other factors in there as well, and we'll break down as you continue through the modules in our program. Little hacks on different ways to better optimize your Google profile and get better results. But at the end of the day, what I recommend is getting into a routine where you're publishing a new photo every single day, new photo every day.

0:21:38 - (B): You want to have a system in place to publish a new post at least once daily as well. That's going to allow you to have a photo with some text content that creates more metadata for Google to consume. And then you want to have a good review acquisition strategy. So frequently it doesn't need to be daily, but frequently you're generating more reviews consistently over time and responding to those reviews.

0:22:02 - (B): Now the best way to do that, so it's not as big of a challenge to just handle is to have software that can help you do this. This is something I'll share here first for the first time with all of you guys, so you know it's coming. But Mapleads Pro is a software that we put together to help with some of this and we did it for us because we knew there weren't at the time great tools to help us manage Google profile all that well.

0:22:32 - (B): And we built Maple Pro. Here's one of the challenges, though. There are some things about Mapleds Pro, they're a bit quirky. One of the things I wanted in there that we still haven't been able to get is the ability to schedule photos to be published. So when I talk about adding a new photo every single day. How nice would it be for you to be able to have a whole batch of photos, put them in, and schedule them to go for the rest of the week or even the rest of the month, and then you don't have to touch it again, but it will automatically publish new photo for you.

0:23:01 - (B): That's something I've wanted for a while. What I've learned, too, though, is that we're not a software company, nor do I really want to be a software company. So we have this nice tool, but there's some things about trying to keep it up to date and managing it that's getting a little much, and I'm not sure I want to scale it in that way. So I've had meetings with the folks over at local IO, the CEO and the director over there. They have an amazing platform that actually has the same things I've wanted to put into map leads pro, but haven't been able to yet.

0:23:31 - (B): And I want to get you guys access, or have the ability to have access to this tool. So we're working on being able to do that. Now, this will help you, Wendy, because you can now spend one day, like a few minutes on a day, one time, and take a whole bunch of photos of your. Your salon or spa or whatever, some before after photos, like great client photos, team photos, things like that, and have a whole batch of photos, and you can put it into the software and it will schedule a new post every single day that will really help your profile.

0:24:02 - (B): Awesome. All right, great question. And so just wait for that update. I apologize. I don't have a timeline on what's coming out, but I did get some stuff from them this week, so I need to get through it, and then I'll be able to share that with all you guys here very, very soon. Let's jump over to Avi. Hey, Avi. How you doing?

0:24:23 - (F): Hi. Hi, Jared. Sorry, I cannot. My camera is disabled.

0:24:27 - (B): Quite all right. Don't worry about it.

0:24:29 - (F): My question is, I'm getting confused. Is the difference between local search ad and local services ad?

0:24:37 - (B): Yes. Big difference, too. And this is not an uncommon question. That's why I typically refer to local service ads, or I should say local services ads, as Google guaranteed, just to create a little more differentiation in the name. But local search ads are a separate channel than local services ads, which is Google guaranteed. So I broke this out once in. Well, that's actually why I did the visual earlier.

0:25:10 - (B): But here's how you can think of it. Let's talk about local search ads. So think of search much like search campaigns. These are going to show up, these are pay per click, number one, so it's a different model. They are going to show up in the map section below the traditional search campaigns, which are the purple links that you typically see at the top of the page. There's far less competition doing this, so you get more rotations. That's why we like to do the map, the map section or ads in the maps, which is local search ads.

0:25:44 - (B): Now, Google guaranteed is a different thing. Actually, it's a whole different department at Google as well, but it feels similar to your Google profile. That's why it causes a little confusion. Google guaranteed is first and foremost a pay per lead program. So you got pay per click versus pay per lead. Secondly, it shows up on the very top of search in a carousel with two other businesses that it just rotates based on budget basically.

0:26:17 - (B): And number three, it generates phone calls, whereas the other one generates clicks and traffic. Some you can optimize it for phone calls too, but we typically want to generate traffic from local search ads and calls from local services ads or Google guaranteed. So those are some of the big differences there.

0:26:34 - (F): This helps a lot because I know that. So I own commercial cleaning company and there's no option for local services like Google guarantee it for commercial cleaning. My question is, can I do local search ads in that case for commercial cleaning, is that option available? I didn't search for it yet, but just quick, you know, for you maybe, you know, off the top of your.

0:26:58 - (B): Head, yes, you definitely can. Local search ads gives you a lot more options and flexibility. The reason it's not available in local service ads or Google guaranteed often has to do with volume of search for that specific thing and then maybe some other categories about your market as well. And they just haven't quite got there yet. This is a little bit ago, but when I last spoke to a technician over at Google about Google guaranteed in their categories, they said they added 27 categories the following or the previous month and so they're always adding new categories.

0:27:38 - (B): However, what we typically see on the front end sometimes doesn't align with what they actually have as options. I'm curious, do you think janitorial services would fall into a category that, that would be a category you'd fall into or not really?

0:27:53 - (F): Yeah, it will. Yeah, commercial. It's. We usually advertise as a commercial cleaning, providing commercial cleaning and janitorial services. So it has to be commercial, not residential.

0:28:06 - (B): Yes, got it. So let me double check here because for some reason I feel like I remember seeing janitorial services as an option. But they also recently redesigned the page that you'd go to look at it and I've noticed not all the categories they used to have are on that page. But if you go into getting started, you often can actually see all the categories that they have, which are more than what they show publicly.

0:28:30 - (B): So I'm going to just real quick see if I can check that category for you and see if it is. If it is available. There we go. Yeah, I don't see it and I feel like I have seen it once there before, but maybe I'm misremembering. So I don't see that option there. That's quite all right, though. I don't want anyone who cannot fit into the Google guaranteed program to feel like they can't do this program because of that.

0:29:10 - (B): The truth is, is Google guaranteed is a great supplement for additional business. But you're going to see that Google profile organically takes place of what most people try to do with SEO. So that's your new method. Local search ads will take place of the traditional pay per click that most people are spending a fortune on and give you that ability. With those two layers, you'll be able to scale a healthy business.

0:29:34 - (B): It's always nice when you can add additional options to generate more phone calls from leads through Google guaranteed, but it's not necessary in order to have great success with this program. And if you add the extra component of retargeting to that, then you've got all three layers of smart traffic really working for you.

0:29:52 - (F): Okay, thank you, Jart.

0:29:54 - (B): You're welcome, Avi. Perfect. We've got another question from art.

0:30:00 - (C): Yeah, it's on the LSA ads. Like Avi was asking, if there was a janitorial category, would he be able to have it where. Okay, I'm just going to focus on commercial and not residential and then the calls that are coming through for residential, he doesn't have to pay for. Can it be that specific?

0:30:24 - (B): No, I don't. I don't believe so. That there's a great way to do it. Unless your service category in general is more b two B versus b two c. But the Google guarantee platform is a very good b two C program. It's not going to differentiate a ton between b two C and b two B calls. So keep that in mind with the type of service that you're thinking of for that program there. You're going to get calls from both. Because if you think about like the types of clients that go, you've got home cleaning services, residential cleaning, and you got commercial cleaning.

0:31:04 - (B): But if someone goes to Google and searches cleaning companies near me, they could be one or they could be consumer, they could be business. But that's one of those triggers that Google is going to use to pull up the Google guaranteed. So you have to be able to play on both, I think, for that. But I can also go ahead.

0:31:23 - (F): 99% you will get residential calls.

0:31:26 - (B): Yeah.

0:31:27 - (F): Because. Yeah, that's what. And people I know, colleagues, I haven't did it, but I know college, losing money because of that, because they're in a commercial and they're getting residential.

0:31:36 - (B): Yep. Yeah, that makes sense, avi. It's going to lean a lot more residential than commercial with that program. One of the benefits that you'll have in doing local search ads is that you can create more targeting keywords that will focus more towards commercial business. And then when they click and come to your offer, to your funnel page or your website. Right. With the offer strategy there, that offer should use the kind of language that would basically filter out, oh, this is a commercial only or. Right, like, this is commercial, not residential type of service.

0:32:15 - (B): And that way you can do a better job of filtering because the funnel is not just for getting people to move forward. It's also designed to filter the wrong people away so you can focus more on the people who are a good fit versus the leads that aren't.

0:32:28 - (C): Okay. So I guess one of the things is that, you know, there's that one, it's a guarantee for the client that they're good, good business, but also they guarantee that, you know, you're not getting a bunch of like, telemarketers and different things like that. Also because you get credit for that. Right?

0:32:48 - (B): Yeah, you're right. So if it's not a qualified call or qualified lead, it's recorded. Google can go back and play it back. You can play it back inside your platform. And if it's for some reason you say this was not qualified, you can dispute that. But Google can also see you'll have to dispute probably more than they will recognize on their own. Right. It's just Google.

0:33:14 - (C): Right.

0:33:15 - (B): But they do have the ability to dispute a lead and they'll listen to it and go, oh, yeah, that was not a good lead. And then it credits you back. Now with that, though, on, compared to local search ads, you will. I've had people optimizing their campaigns to generate phone calls from local search ads, and I don't really see that working as well as it used to today? Because we'll, I've had clients see a huge increase, intelli marketers, or maybe not telemarketers necessarily, but like solicitors calling them because they're doing Google research, they're seeing their ad, they're clicking call.

0:33:50 - (B): And now when you start connecting the dots that these calls, this increase in spam calls or solicitors calling are coming because of your paid ad campaign, you're actually paying for solicitors to call you, that gets frustrating. So I don't typically optimize those ads for calls at all. I leave my phone number out of it. I want to get the traffic to click that ad, get to my funnel and then my funnel does the filtering from there.

0:34:19 - (C): Okay. All right, so you're still charged for the click, though, right?

0:34:22 - (B): Still charged for the click, yeah.

0:34:24 - (C): But you're thinking telemarketers aren't going to be clicking, right?

0:34:28 - (B): Yeah, and maybe, maybe some do, but what it's done is it's filtered. A lot of those solicitor calls that we didn't need to get in the first place.

0:34:37 - (C): Okay. All right. So I guess I'm curious as to how fine tuned you can have it to where. Okay, this is my business and that's not my business, to where, you know, if it's a plumber and he specializes in water heaters or installation, can he be that focused? Or is it like, okay, he's going to get, I mean, he can have that in his ad also. But would they, can you deny the that call if it was just for.

0:35:08 - (B): Something that is this relays in relation to Google guaranteed, or, you think on Google guaranteed? Yes. Now, I can't say specifically for that situation, but let's say you're categorized as plumber. Then inside the platform, you'll see a list of subcategories that fall under the plumber category and you can deactivate and activate the categories you want so that you get the calls that you want. If it's not one of those things, then you can dispute that, but.

0:35:39 - (C): Okay, cool. So if it's not a service that you provide, then you can dispute it.

0:35:43 - (B): Exactly.

0:35:43 - (C): Okay.

0:35:44 - (B): Yeah, cool. Now, I can't say, I've had some cases where you dispute it. It comes back and they're like, no, it was a good lead, but I don't know if a lot of it is algorithm based or not on Google. You never know. But what I found is their call center is really good. You call them, you say, hey, no, this was really not a good lead. It almost always comes back at that point, but it just takes that extra effort sometimes.

0:36:09 - (C): Yeah, okay. Thanks, man.

0:36:11 - (B): Yeah, you're welcome. Great. We've had some great questions. Any other questions I can help today with? All right, well, I want to just thank you guys again for being part of local search academy. And if you have any ideas of what would make this even more impactful, more valuable to you, I'd love to hear your ideas. We're building out a roadmap to how to improve this program and keep people in the community even longer.

0:36:41 - (B): We want this to be a valuable community that's an ongoing thing for people. So any other ideas? I'd love to hear from you. I appreciate you guys joining today. Have a wonderful weekend.

0:36:54 - (Jared Erni): Thank you for tuning into the four 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

0:37:26 - (Jared Erni): to take our impact marketing challenge. Keep pursuing your dreams, making an impact, and living life on your terms.