Chris: —becoming irrelevant rather than relevant doing it that way.
Steve: Oh yeah, absolutely!
Chris: You really—I think like a lot of companies, we stick to our core competency which is creating the keyword list, doing our research and developing ad copy. And then things like the graphics work on websites and some of the more minimal task than we outsource a lot of ads.
Steve: Because this is obviously going to be a question that the people who’d watch this will have is what this is cost? How expensive are this, guys?
Chris: Absolutely!
Steve: Yes.
Chris: So, we start on the basic account set up which wouldn’t include landing pages analytics or anything like that. It’s simply as doing the research, developing your keyword list, writing ad creatives. We typically write anywhere from 50 to a 100 ad creatives and then we customize those for each keyword.
That set up depending the amount of products will range from $500.00 and then right up to, I mean as much as $25,000.00, $35,000.00 or $45,000.00 if you say, you know, if you’re Wal-Mart and you want us to promote every storm in the country then we’re really probably looking at somewhere $5,000.00 or $10,000.00. But I would say for the average advertiser, the average company, you are certainly going to be looking up to $500.00 to a $1,000.00 range and most of you will set rate in the middle of that.
Steve: That is extremely affordable, I mean—
Chris: It really is, absolutely!
Steve: You can—Let me tell you folks, take it from experience, you can lose a whole lot more net by just doing it on your own with Google.
Chris: And in a few days, absolutely!
Steve: And really fast too.
Chris: Yeah, there’s no question.
Chris: When we talk about profitability, okay?
Steve: Uh-huh.
Chris: Obviously there’s metrics that you and the owner of the business probably come together and they’ll say, “This is successful, this is working.” What would be some of those metrics, for me as a small business say, “You know what, I couldn’t have a great order but haven’t been for the folks at—or big local.
Steve: Right!
Chris: What—give us an example of some—we know you’re making more money but can we get a little bit more specific on that?
Steve: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s—in terms of you’re return on investment, it’s going to be very based on the industry, that sort of thing but what’s really great again about search marketing is that we get to actually look at the data and give you a pretty good estimate about what it’s going to be in terms of how much you’re going to see back on each dollar put outs.
If somebody was to come to us to have the campaign running currently, one of the first things we do is put in in writing that will guarantee to increase your click through rate by most of my clients. I’m able to increase it in writing by 200%, that alone will bring their qualities score up from a four to a seven almost overnight.
Chris: Wow!
Steve: Yeah! And then from there we can also guarantee that the qualities score remains above six or seven out of ten. Most of our advertisers see eight, nine and ten out of ten on the majority of their keywords so that really helps.
And then from there we’re also able to guarantee things like the conversion rate we’re able to guarantee but that’s really contention on us having control over the landing page. We put people on.
Chris: Right!
Steve: But yeah, we can guarantee—basically guarantee a profit which is something that most people can offer especially in advertising.
Chris: You know you’re right! You know especially in advertising. I don’t know how many times I feel like I’ve thrown good money after bad on you know like things are traditional media radio for—because one of my big, you know, how we’re really pay our bills—is we resale software security. When we specialize in software, we deeply understand, and we take a consultant—and we stick with network security, storage, messaging software, messaging I mean things like fax servers, dealing with spam and viruses for a change, that sort of thing.
Steve: Right!
Chris: All right! All this stuff, right has gazillions of keywords out there and you’ve got some people with extremely deep pockets.
Steve: That’s right.
Chris: Okay! That’s advertising. So, when you go on the radio for example, you know they of course talk to you in going to a lengthy campaign. That’s their business, to sell advertising, okay. And there’s really no clear metrics. You know they throw these Arbitron ratings at you and say, “We can be on this show and these are the number of lists and this is the demographic.”
Steve: Uh-huh.
Chris: But that’s it. That’s as far as you go, they start, make kind of commercial, you like it, you don’t like it or whatever. Once they start running it, you’re done, there’s no guarantees.
Steve: No, there not. And there’s no guarantees in just sort of any aspect, I mean of course they can give you a rough estimate of who’s listening but you know as we know lots of people listen a lot throughout different stations, lots of different shows, so there’s no real way to tell.
Chris: Right.
Steve: But this sort of marketing, you can actually narrow it down right to the perfect client if it were, and you actually brought up a really good plan which is that with Frugal Brothers, you offer consultative selling, that’s one thing that again I have to express is that most people out there have abandoned that and they just seem to feel that if you advertise here or you’re running a business online then everybody is just numbers.
It’s like I say as soon as you start training people like cattle, you start dealing with people or you stop dealing with people. And that’s certainly what’s been happening on the majority of the website businesses these days. And if I can offer any sort of advice to online businesses out there, that’s to keep the perspective, at the other end of all these metrics is people and that you want to offer them the best experience possible. And you really want to be open to them and give them lots of options to get in touch with you and to look at the product and you know virtually feel the product and just give the same experience that you would if you’re running a shop.
Chris: You know, that’s exactly right because the stuff that I use, it’s very complex.
Steve: Absolutely!
Chris: Unfortunately, there are people out there running E-commerce sites who are deeply discounting the software.
Steve: Uh-huh.
Chris: If I discount the same level they are I could not afford to provide this service that I do. And I have one deal eventhough my prices were a little higher because I was able to answer their questions even jump online and remote control their computer to show them these particular points of the software. And I’m going, “You know what? I can’t call these CDWs in the world and all these guys and get this kind of answers. They don’t know.”
Steve: Absolutely.
Chris: That’s why we limit what we do to software we understand and that we use ourselves. But you know finally Steve and I always like to wrap up our—alright this has been some of the very insightful information. So first off, I want you to make sure that you let everybody know how to get a hold of you guys? What’s the best way to do it?
Steve: Absolutely! So, feel free to give me a call, 9 times out of 10 I answer a telephone, I don’t have a receptionist. You can reach us at area code 613-424-3867. You can also visit biglocal.ca and you can email me directly at steve.biglocal.ca.
Chris: Okay! Now, a couple of things number one, what we like to do is on especially something this powerful we’re probably going to take this recording and we’re going to make into a series of YouTube videos and show that community. We got your blessing to do that?
Steve: Oh, absolutely.
Chris: Okay, very good. Finally, because we are a business and technology show, I was at the end with this class—because you’re an entrepreneur yourself, right?
Steve: Uh-huh.
Chris: And we’re facing some of the most extremely challenging times in modern history from economic perspective.
Steve: Yeah.
Chris: And lots of people now are finding themselves as one of the entrepreneurs. What single piece, if you can only give one piece of advice to a fledging entrepreneur, new manager, something like that, what would it be to be a successful? What would golden nugget from Newbie?
Steve: Yeah, so I mean I really can’t offer any better insight than to always look at things from your clients perspective. Right from the time that you even start your business so before you start business the worst thing I see is people who fall in love with the product and decide that they’re going to be the spokesmen for that product and run out and start a company based on it.
Unfortunately, we can all buy our own products to the point that we’re going to be successful. What you want to really do is look at your market, look at the people who encompass that market and really determine what it is that you can bring at the table, what you can bring to the conversation and if you’re looking it from that perspective, I think you’re going to have a hard time failing.
Chris: Well, fantastic. That’s some great piece of advice folks. Ladies and gentlemen this is Mr. Steve Hampton, big local—search engine optimization and paid advertising, thank you so much for being on the show today Steve.
Steve: Well again, it’s really real pleasure to be on here. Thank you so much Chris.
Chris: All right you have a wonderful day. Thank you so much.
Steve: Thank you, bye now.
Chris: Bye-bye.
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