122: Use the Internet to Get More Customers, Leads, and Sales, No Matter What Your Business Is! with Charles Manuel

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Charles Manuel. He is a pretty cool guy who knows about online marketing, search engine optimization, and he works mostly with small business owners to help them build effective marketing plans. We're going to talk about all kinds of cool 4-Hour Work Week type of stuff. Charles, welcome to the show.

Charles Manuel: Robert, thanks for having me.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Right before we started recording, you were telling me about how, I guess in college, you discovered The 4-Hour Work Week, and this whole internet marketing thing.

Charles Manuel: That's exactly right, yeah. I picked up a copy of the book. I always like to study different business methods, because I did go to college for accounting, and wanted to be a financial advisor. I actually was for a few years. In college, I started playing around with starting small online businesses, and doing them primarily online in my spare time. The first thing I did was a speed reading course, and I developed the course myself by kind of taking the best parts of a bunch of courses I had taken, and decided to make one for college students. It sold horribly. I realized, "Oh, there's a lot more to online marketing than just looking up some keywords that you think will do well, throwing $1,000 at paper click advertising, and hoping it all works out." It takes a lot of planning, and research, and everything.

I started digging into it little by little over the years, and I made another business, and had some success, and made another one. Eventually, I realized I could make a lot of money just helping out small business owners to do the same thing. To just use the internet to help them market themselves. I know so many plumbers, and contractors, and restaurateurs, and folks like that just in my area that still put an ad in the newspaper, and yet don't use their Facebook page. It just seemed really strange to me that they'd rather spend $300 or $400 a month instead of use something that's free. That's what I do. I help folks leverage a lot of stuff that's generally free, and oftentimes better than conventional methods.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I'm glad that you brought up and you started with the SEO, the search engine optimization kind of stuff, because I think that a lot of people kind of try to tell you, "Well, just build it and they will come," or, "Just put up a website, and just get some keywords, and put up some meta tags, and people will just magically find you." It seems like that's a good place to start I guess, but that's not all the traffic methods, and then I guess as you found from your early adventure with the speed reading courses, that even if you do have traffic, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will buy it. Do you know of a marketer named Onyx Singal?

Charles Manuel: Not familiar with the name.

Robert Plank: I forget what his website is, but early on, I think his first product was something about how to get better grades. In the same kind of vein as what you were selling. What's always stuck with me, years and years later, is that he did the same thing, put out a website, tried to get some buyers, and he noticed that, number one, that college kids and high school kids don't have any money and aren't willing to put money into buying this course, and the majority of his customers were the parents of kids. There would be, like, a parent of a kid with bad grades. They would buy this book as a last ditch kind of effort. It still wouldn't work, but I think there definitely is something to that. There definitely is something to getting to a finishing point with whatever project you have, put it out there, make those mistakes early, do those experiments. I'm glad that you started with that.

You started with the speed reading course, and now what you do is you help small businesses get online. Could you share with us an example or a case study of some business that maybe they were missing a few things, they were doing a few things wrong, and then you went in there and you worked your magic, and just made it work awesomely?

Charles Manuel: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my favorite ones is a local real estate developer that I actually did some work for him when I was a younger guy. Cleaning up some lots that he would develop later, and everything else. We already had a rapport, and he called me up one day and said, "Charlie, I really want a rank for these five keywords." I said, "Okay. Let me take a look at them." He was adamant about having me rank for these five keywords. I see something like this all the time, where a client will want something very specific that doesn't get them to their end goal of sales. For this client, they were five words that literally had zero monthly searches when I looked them up in the keyword tool. The majority of my time, I spent redirecting his goals towards, "Well, how about we just make sure that your website ranks for homes being built in your area, so that you're actually getting people looking at your site. If we spend all this time ranking for words that don't get any searches, you aren't going to get any traffic."

That's really what I do first, is search for the goal. What I did with him is, I helped him develop an entirely new website from the ground up, based around log homes in Vermont, because what he does specifically is he builds log homes. We developed a website that had very nice picture galleries. They showed recent builds, and we keyword optimized it for a long list of keywords which weren't used very often, because not many log home developers in Vermont have SEO optimized websites. We found him an opportunity. I put in, you know, a good amount of work on my part, but far less than it would have taken to create traffic from nothing with his list of keywords. Because of that, he was able to bring in a bunch more business the coming year.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. What you're saying is that a lot of these small business owners, they've heard about Google ranking, and maybe they looked at what rankings there are, and what you're saying is that they'll choose completely the wrong thing to rank for, and it's like, like you said, not only are there no searches for this keyword, but even if there were searches, or even if they were able to rank for that, it's completely the wrong kind of key phrase. What you're saying is, this person, he builds log homes in Vermont, and so what he would be looking for is, instead of ranking for something like "luxury homes" or "cheap homes" he would be ranking for "log homes in name of city Vermont" or "log cabin homes in name of city Vermont"? Just by tweaking the goal a little bit, or not even the goal, but the goal is to rank highly for these keywords that are searched on, and to get the right leads into his business, so that's the goal, but then you change the methods from, "Well, let me just rank for this two word phrase," into these more long-term phrases with some search volume that actual buyers that he's looking for would be putting in a search engine.

Charles Manuel: Yeah, and that's really what it is nowadays, because as I'm sure you know, there's plenty of software out there that will search engine optimize for you. There's plenty of stuff you can upload to a WordPress page to make these things search engine optimized. That's not really where the work lies anymore, for a guy like me. What I spend a lot more time doing is, since the market is so saturated with these search engine optimized sites, I spend a lot of time looking for opportunities out there in the search engines, and sometimes there won't be some, so we'll look at other methods, because I do everything from SEO, to paper click marketing, to content creation, to influencer marketing. With SEOs specifically, a lot of the time, you're just looking for some keywords that some big companies haven't started to latch onto yet, or haven't ranked for yet. You're using those to help people out.

Also, with small businesses, since many of them work in a localized area like my contractors, my plumbers, my restaurateurs, those folks, you get the added benefit of doing the localized search engine optimization, where you're able to create Google business pages for them, which is kind of a new thing. I'm sure that some of the folks that listen to your podcast have them. Basically, you create a storefront for your website that then helps Google to list it, and if you ever, for instance, are looking for a restaurant when you're walking around town, Robert, I'm sure you've been, like, "Find me some Mexican food," or whatever. You'll find that you get four or five local listings in a little box before you get search engine terms. Those come from using a Google storefront page. It's the easiest way to start to get ranked. You do that, you do a little bit of meta tagging on your site, you link them together, and you're already starting to see real results.

Robert Plank: It sounds like what you do is you go to these local businesses, and you kind of look at their situation, and I guess it's some kind of combination of, like you said, search engine optimization, paper click, and combined with, I guess, the latest and greatest, for lack of a better term, like, ways to be compliant, right? How to get listed in Yelp, Facebook, Google business pages, all this kind of cool stuff.

Charles Manuel: That's exactly it.

Robert Plank: I would kind of like to go into sort of weird, cutting edge territory, because one thing that kind of- and I don't know how well-versed in this are you- I've heard just lately that there's this thing called Pokemon Go, that I guess some business owners have been using to bring people to their business, and I've also heard of something, and I don't know what the term is, where I guess Google is trying some new kind of program where, I guess if you're out and about near a business, some kind of thing will pop up on your phone. Have you heard of this?

Charles Manuel: Yes, absolutely. The second one I've heard of. The first one, I haven't played around with at all, I have to admit. I've been busy on other projects, but I have heard lightly about the Pokemon Go thing, how you can kind of set up your storefront as a Pokemon arena.

Robert Plank: A gym I guess, right? Where I guess people come together.

Charles Manuel: A gym. That's what it is. I don't know how to work with that specifically. The second item is actually really, really interesting. It's more on the consumer level, because that's really what makes Google so good, is it focuses on its consumers, even though the businesses kind of pay it. As just a guy walking down the street, you can be at a restaurant, at a gas station, and Google will pop up an indication on your phone, and it will say, "Oh, hey, have you been to this restaurant before? Can you take two minutes to tell us about it?" It's kind of helping to validate some of the information that the business owner may have put on their page, and it helps to give it a little bit more of a solid back-link. Not a back-link, but a solid ranking, as far as Google is concerned.

Robert Plank: It seems like every couple of days, there's some new sort of fad or service that either Google or Facebook or someone is trying out, some way to plug it in there. It seems like, especially with Google, where everything's connected, I guess the more you're listed, or the more you help Google, the better, right?

Charles Manuel: That's exactly it. When you're thinking about search engine optimization, you want to think of Google as just someone who's trying to learn a little bit more about what you're teaching online. A good way to think of it is if you're a construction company, and someone searches for "contractors in my area," you don't want to just show off as a business page, where it's like, "Call me here. Get a free quote." Et cetera, et cetera. The person probably also wants some information. Google has done a very good job using its spiders, which are the things that track your site and get a good idea of what's on there, to find out if your website also has a blog, and on that blog if you have information that's pertinent to that person when they're searching for a contractor. Maybe you have a how-to for finding a contractor. Maybe it's even more specific because you're localized, and it's about finding a contractor in the northeast, because that person would be more suited to help you if you own a home in the northeast.

If you're a restauranteur, then you might want to be linking to reviews to your restaurant. It goes on and on like that. You want to be sure that when Google looks at your website, you're not just giving a sales pitch, because the second Google sees you do that, it's going to hurt you on page rank. You want to be sure that you're also giving information to the people that are searching for your site, because that's really what they're there for.

Robert Plank: That's kind of cool, and I think back to ... We've all been in that situation where we have to find a doctor for blank. Where we had to get some kind of service provider for blank. I think back to the times that either if I've researched things like a plumber, or I've researched things like an accountant, every now and then I would find a collection of maybe five or ten YouTube videos from a plumber, on, "Here's how to these common things." "Here's how to turn the water main for your house off and on," or, from a tax accountant, "What's one way to minimize your taxes?" Just little tips and little bits of advice there, and it's kind of interesting, because I guess that, well, on one hand, if someone's looking, for example, for an accountant, but they're not in the area, well, fine. They still get their problem solved, and I guess Google will, to my understanding, will reward you a little bit with that.

Then, as a person looking to pay someone money, if I find, for example, a plumber, it's one thing if they have a business in my area, and if they have a couple of reviews, or a couple of good star ratings. If they also have even a short little blog, or a couple of videos, I'm thinking, "They must really know their stuff, if they're teaching it as well."

Charles Manuel: Exactly. It adds a comfort level, especially now when you look at just, on a very broad scale, the demographics of people now. Everybody still likes to believe that the baby boomers are the largest demographic and they don't use technology. Well, baby boomers actually do use technology, and the Gen Yers, the folks that are about our age, from mid 20s up to late 30s, that's actually now the largest population demographic in America, and they're all online. Those people now, when they're searching for a plumber, when they're searching for a restaurant, just like you said, they want to see that ten minute video of the guy working. Maybe not even because they want to learn how to do it, but because they want to see how the guy's going to work on their house. It might be posted as a how-to video, but more importantly, you're going to be like, "Oh, look at this guy. He's very competent. I can see that in this YouTube video."

It creates this whole new area where you can generate credibility for prospective clients before you're even shaking hands with them and starting work.

Robert Plank: That's kind of cool. I hadn't even thought of it in that way. That's like a soft selling, sort of.

Charles Manuel: Absolutely. That's really one of the best parts about, quote, "selling like this." I came from financial advice. I wanted to be a financial advisor since I was like 17 years old. Went to college for six years. Got all the degrees, got all the certifications, and I hated it, because it's hard selling, all the time. When you're doing stuff like this, all you're ever thinking about is, "How can I add value for the people that are coming to my site?" That's what you're trying to do all the time. You just want to give them more information, and you want to help them make a better decision. Obviously, ideally, you want the decision to be your company, but if you're doing your job and you're giving them good information, you more than likely will be.

Robert Plank: That's a pretty cool insight. I guess I'm looking for, like, do you have kind of a cool story where maybe you combined some of these techniques, or you just had some kind of clever way of boosting someone's business, aside from just the usual? Like, ranking for keywords or something? For example, one thing that kind of comes to mind is, years and years ago, I had heard of a consultant like yourself, and he went to some local mom and pop diner that was losing business because of Chilis and Applebees and all of the chains moved into their town. They did some kind of interesting stuff where they, the restaurant was like a Foursquare spot. Someone could come in and use this app to check in. They did something kind of crazy where, like, if you had become the mayor of that Foursquare location, like if you checked in the most number of times, then they would give you your own parking spot at the restaurant, and they would give you, like, one free drink, or 20% off your bill, or something crazy like that.

Do you have anything kind of interesting like that, where you went to some kind of local business, and used the power of the internet, maybe in not your usual way, to give them some extra customers and money and stuff like that?

Charles Manuel: I actually did something kind of like that, with a barbecue restaurant that I worked for. There was a very, very popular spot just up the road that did something called a beer card, and so this place that was a competitor had, like, 300 beers that you could choose from. If you drank 50 different beers inside of a 12 month period, you got to have a beer stein that was engraved. I told them, this barbecue joint I was working for, "You guys have 70 different types of bourbon. Why don't we do a bourbon card? Then all the folks who had fun doing the beer card at the place up the street, they're going to love doing the bourbon card down here."

We promoted that online with a mixture of Foursquare, because people would check in and say that they were using their card, and if they did that, they would get a free bourbon. When they finished their bourbon card, they would get a special spot on the blog. There was a whole long list of folks on the blog who had finished the bourbon card. I don't remember what we did. I think we gave everybody, like, an engraved shot glass or something when they finished it. That generated a lot of interest, and a lot of traffic, simply because I was riding on the coattails of a very simple idea that a place up the street had used, and I leveraged it a little bit more with some online marketing for it as well.

Oftentimes, Robert, you can do stuff just like that, where it's not like I'm trying to break the mold and do something crazy. I'm just like, "That's very simple. What if we just leveraged it a little bit more, just using the internet?"

Robert Plank: The trend that I'm hearing when I talk to guys like yourself, who are helping out these small businesses, is that it seems almost like a lot of these small business owners, they don't know what to do, or they've given up, or they think that the only thing that can be done is doing a discount, or dropping their price, or having a coupon or something. I just love those kinds of stories where you're actually using real marketing and plugging into some combination of these tried and true business techniques that have always been around, but then because of all this new technology and these new apps and things like that, that there's just new ways to plug in all of that.

Charles Manuel: That's exactly it. There's an internet equivalent for just about any marketing method that a small business has ever used. I did a really long write-up on it on my site, so I won't wax and wane about it now. That's probably one of the funnest things about working at this level, as opposed to working for, like, a Coca Cola or something. You get to be super creative and really do these little experiments, and it's really fun.

Robert Plank: It's always nice when the thing you do to make money is also a lot of fun, right?

Charles Manuel: Absolutely. That's the best part.

Robert Plank: As we're winding down today's call, out of all of the local businesses you've worked with, and the clients and things like that, what's the number one mistake you've seen them all making?

Charles Manuel: The number one mistake that every business that I've worked with makes, is they all just seem to not understand that the goal of online marketing is to get more customers. They all think that you want to stop at, like, the mid-level goal of, "I want to have 5,000 site views a month." Or, "I want to have 10,000 likes on my Facebook page," or whatever it is. I almost always hear that when I do my initial call with my clients, and I'll go, "Okay. Why do you want that?" They say, "Well, it's because if I have that many people, then that many more people will see my storefront, or come and call me for contracting services, whatever." I was like, "Oh, so you want more business. That's what you want. Let's not pigeonhole ourselves down into just site traffic, or just Facebook likes, or what have you."

A lot of the time, I spend a good amount of the initial setup with my clients just reminding them, "Hey, we're here to get you more business. Let's make sure that we're focusing on things that get people who want to buy to your site, and then buying." You can spend a lot of time getting your 100,000 Facebook likes, or your 5,000 page views a month, but if you're getting 4,950 people to your site that aren't a targeted market segment for you, then you're only getting 50 people there that even want to buy. It's costing you a ton of money, and it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Robert Plank: It sounds like a pretty expensive way to feel good. There are cheaper ways.

Charles Manuel: Exactly. Go buy yourself a beer. It's much easier.

Robert Plank: That's funny. Do you think that these businesses, they kind of fall into this trap of thinking in too technical terms, or in the jargon terms? Do you think that they end up doing it to themselves just by researching, or do you think that there are other SEO companies maybe that are kind of getting them off track?

Charles Manuel: Probably a mixture of the two. As all SEO companies do, you write blog posts to help potential clients, and these blog posts are necessarily stuffed with that jargon. "Get this many page views. You want to convert at this percentage. You want to get this many impressions on your paper click ads." Et cetera, et cetera, on and and on, forever. You can get really overwhelmed by it, or what more often happens is, like, a few of those trigger words kind of stick in your head, and then when I'm talking with a client, they'll say, "Oh. Well, I read this thing on MAS, and it says unless I'm getting 5,000 page views a month, I'll never rank on Google." It's like, "Well, why do you think that? Why do you need to rank on Google? Is that really what your company needs?" It really depends upon so many different factors, that I could have clients who will only get 1,000 page views a month, but those 1,000 page views convert at 10%, so they're getting 100 leads per month, and then 50% of them close. For a contractor, that's out of control.

When you look at things like that, you're like, "Oh, that guy is not working very hard getting a little bit of traffic, but he's getting pointed traffic that makes him money." That's really what's important, and what a lot of people miss out on. I think it really does come from a mixture of information overload, and probably just trying to make sure that I'm not going to pull the wool over their eyes, so they want to talk with some type of experience as well.

Robert Plank: I guess that's what you're there for. Like you said, if they're fixated on some kind of arbitrary goal just because maybe they found some kind of blanket statement like that, or they found a blog post that was talking about a small step, or the mechanism, and what they're really after for is the goal or the big picture. I guess that's what you're there for, to say, "Well, even though you've heard of this, but here's the corrected version of that," I guess.

Charles Manuel: "Here's some other things that we can look at, that might be easier, might work better." Sometimes, they're right, and I say, "Yeah, that is a good thing to look at." That happens all the time.

Robert Plank: If someone, like one of these small businesses, if they're looking to hire someone like you to either enhance their SEO or get more leads, or even just make more money from what they're doing, where can they find out about you, and hire you, and find out everything that it is that you do?

Charles Manuel: You can just head right over to my company's website, which is BerkshireSEO.com, and right now I'm actually doing a free three-month marketing plan for ... Well, depending upon how popular this gets, anyone that's interested, I'll try and fit you all in. That's just kind of my way of showing folks exactly what it's going to look like when you work with me, from soup to nuts.

Robert Plank: Awesome. BerkshireSEO. I almost said, "Berkshire CEO." That's something completely different I guess, right? Charles, thanks for being on the show, and thanks for sharing your wisdom, and everything you know about SEO and online marketing, and all that fun stuff.

Charles Manuel: Absolutely. Thanks a lot, Robert.

Robert Plank: Thank you.