Local Search Advice with Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor is the Founder and CEO of eSalesHub, a Google Premier Partner, and he joins the Next 100 Days podcast for a record equalling third time to share local search advice.
In this podcast, Mark shares 3 local search advice tips to help every marketer who wants to effectively create leads by local search marketing.
The recent promotion to Premier Google Partner status reflects well on eSales Hub and their team. In 2018, Google invited eSalesHub to be part of their accelerator programme. The programme is designed for high growth companies.
Which means eSalesHub is in the top 10% of all Google Partners worldwide based on expertise and certification. Pretty darn good wouldn’t you say?
Local Search Advice – Mark offers you 3 Tips
When people look at search, there are 3 themes people should look at. Their streamline at eSales Hub is:
“We Pay For Google, You Pay Per Lead”
How? People think it is too good to be true. The answer is data. That’s how they can take the risk of someone’s Google spend.
Tip #1 – Do it or Not?
Well, you can get some great market research.
As a result of discovering more about the car manufacturer’s market in South Wales, they have started to use NHS nurses and blue collar workers (i.e. their actual market) in their local marketing. They realised that South Wales performs differently from other parts of the UK. All of which means they have got a higher return on their investment.
Actions:
- Decide if local search is for you by profiling your customers.
- Understand where your best customers come from geographically.
- Start tailoring your message to those people.
The trick most people miss is they treat Adwords as a way of targeting the whole of the UK. Actually, you don’t want to target the whole of the UK. There will be some locations that warm to your proposition. And other locations, where you really don’t want customers (like those areas known for bad debt).
Just as Mark says, this is akin to the direct mail strategies, deployed by Finely Fettled on behalf of its customers. Profile the customers. Find out where they live. Target them with direct mail.
How to Profile Where Your Customers Live
Once you’ve worked out WHERE they live, work out WHAT your proposition is to those customers. Demographically, they can behave very differently. For example, north Manchester and South Manchester. The footballers live in south Manchester. Getting it now?
Tip: Adopt your message to different conurbations, to give yourself the most benefit from Google search. Testing different things is really interesting.
“It’s the difference between a page conversion of 10% and a page conversion of 50%”
Mark Taylor, eSales Hub
Note: Page conversion means a unique user turning into a lead.
Mark recalls at Halfords early in his career, he’d high five around the office if they got an 8% conversion. Now, they don’t have a single client who is below 12%. The average is nearer 33%.Their record is 82% page conversion.
Tip #2 Track the Data
The challenge you have is Google tells you that 71% of people CALL as part of the local search transaction. Their belief is as you have someone looking for a local solution, these are people who don’t know your business, so they want to chat.
However, Mark’s view differs from Google. In his experience, 85-90% want to call.
Very few people fill out a form fill, for a call back. People want to talk. This is really good local search advice.
One of the ways this helps is by understanding return on investment. For a utility (plumbers and drainage), eSalesHub spotted engineer availability. The customer wasn’t bothered about price. It was about availability. They fixed the availability. And got a 72% lead to conversion which of course increased their ROI.
Sales Hub produced a forecast based on:
– leads
– conversions
– average order.
Without an analytics tool capturing and understanding these metrics, you really don’t know what is going on. By tracking the physical search terms on Google, using the G-Click, which is a code that Google produce for every search on Adwords. If you can track that right the way through to someone’s CRM system, which is what ESH’s system does.
This enables you to optimise in REAL TIME:
- early detection in the first few hours to see what is going on
- you can pick up trends
- and when you start demographically profiling you can understand the different customers.
Again, the utilities thought their clients were older established customers, over 50s. Nope. They were younger 30 somethings in metropolitan outer areas, all desperate to get a problem solved. AND, they had never used the brand before.
Why do people use Local Search?
- They don’t know anybody.
- No-one has been recommended to them.
- They aren’t signed up to a specific brand.
Mark recommends you look up Google research papers: THINK WITH GOOGLE
Now people pass the research stage and discovery stage quickly and when they call, they are ready to convert.
Phone calls – you have to be pretty serious about wanting a product IF you make a phone call. Just in that action itself, you want to be pretty serious about the search you are undertaking.
Graham Discusses MOTION
The big problem with form fills or email forms, is CONTACT ratio. Call me on this time and date. You still have to get hold of them.
Tip #3 Set Yourself Up for INBOUND CALLS
Golden Local Search Advice – set yourself up for inbound calls. Don’t use an outbound script! Ask for the order. Offer a Call back service.
Plus, add an incentive. Not online. This is about taking inbound calls. Do you have a third party call centre, you have the right script and your people are incentivised.
This massively improves ROI.
Sophie heads the ESH account management team. They act as coach. How can they help grow your business. They now use a score card, taking 5 KPIs, so the client can see how they can make an improvement.
Your best inbound strategy is YES, NOW WHAT DO YOU REQUIRE US TO SOLVE….
What is it you want
When do you need it
What’s you budget
3 key questions to ask before a service is pitched. Often people come back to you later. Maybe after they chose to use a cheaper option.
Use the data or information wisely. ESH helps with their analytics platform.
Tip #4 – Extra Value – Test, Learn, Develop
There is always something to tweak. Things that will help them in other aspects of their marketing. Testing does not all work. Thats why you continue to test, because sometimes you know it out of the park.
Premier Google Partner
Google recognised that eSales Hub were doing something completely UNIQUE. With their analytics tool, that is. By tracking a click, through a phone call, right through to sale and then upload that data back into Google. Google said they don’t know anybody that does what you do. They offered to help ESH.
They offer coaching and technical support. This affiliation and endorsement is big thing for the business and recognition of the team’s abilities. It is good for their clients. No panic about Google algorithm changes, as their pages are already in line with their guidelines. Access and knowledge is helpful to their clients.
Landing Page
You want the visitor to answer all their questions on the page and MAKE THE CALL. You dont want them to have any doubt about what you offer. Quality of content on the page drives their pages. This is what Google focuses on. Not back links.
Jason Barnard – Answer Engine Optimisation
So, build your content around the answers your customers want.
Contact eSales Hub
The next 100 days podcast is sponsored by Linked Professionally and is brought to you by Kevin Appleby and Graham Arrowsmith
