Traffic

Sharon Bolt: Thanks very much for having me, Robert. I'm really please to be here.

Robert Plank: Cool. I'm pleased that you are here. I understand that you talk about press releases and publicity, is that right?

Sharon Bolt: That's right.

Robert Plank: Cool, so could you tell us a little bit about that and how you got started with that, and what makes you different, and unique, and special?

Sharon Bolt: Yeah, sure. People are actually a little shocked when I tell them about my first media experience because what happened, Robert, was I got myself booked on BBC Radio 2, which is a national radio station in the UK. That was without any prior media exposure. Now people are a little bit shocked about that but what actually happened was that I was introduced as a dog-training expert, answering dog behavior questions, when I actually had a complimentary therapy business and not a dog-training business. Dog training was passion at the time and I went on to do for the next 9 years. What happened was I saw an opportunity, I believed I could make a difference so I went for it. It was the start of numerous media interviews.

Robert Plank: That's cool. You said that you had a therapy business and BBC Radio 2, they were looking for experts to talk about dog training so you were able to fit that in, is that right?

Sharon Bolt: Well that's right. I had recently got 2 puppies and had been told that it was the worst case scenario because they're brothers, litter mates. I was told that they would fight for the top dog position, and they'd take no notice of me, and that I would probably need to re-home one. I had been on a mission it had to be a natural way of communicating with them, and I looked at my 2 puppies and said, 'You two are not going anywhere." I had embarked on this mission to save my puppies and what had happened was is that I had started to introduce what I was discovering and what I was learning to my complimentary therapy clients who had dogs. We were all getting amazing results.

When I heard the DJ say on the national radio station that he was going to get somebody from the TV, a dog-training expert, on the show the following week, I thought to myself, "You know what? I can do that." What I did, Robert, is I sat down at the computer and I wrote to the host. It was just the normal email address. I didn't have his direct email address, it was just the general email address, and I said everything about dogs. Now I didn't make it about me at all. It was nothing about me, it was all about what I could do for him and his listeners. Then at the end I said to him, "You've got to give me a call because I'll be a great guest on your show." Naturally I told him I was a dog expert and that he should call me.

Well, nothing happened. I got no call back. A couple of days later he actually said that he was also going to include the following week on the show, and he called them podgy dogs. There I was, Robert, in the subject line now, of the email, I wrote, podgy :04:01] dogs. I'm your girl." Again, I wrote this email and I explained why dogs were overweight, what the answers were, what I could tell him, what I could tell his listeners and that he needed to get me on his show. Nothing happened.

Then it was the weekend and I went and did a dog-training consultation. It was about a dog that was eating the home from the inside out when the owners were going to work, had severe separation anxiety. I came home over the weekend, and I wrote about this consultation, and I sent that off to the show again. Monday morning I got a call from the reporters. On the Wednesday I was being interviewed as a dog-training expert live on the show and I was speaking to 4 million listeners.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. Would you say that the reason why that worked is because, number 1, you were listening to what the radio station needed, number 2, you kept on following up and even though you got ignored a few times you kept on doing it, then number 3, you sent over this blog post you had written kind of as proof that you're an authority on the subject?

Sharon Bolt: Well, that's right, Robert. It is. It's that persistence. I knew, it was the self-belief as well. I knew I could make a difference. I was seeing with my own eyes the difference that was being made with people's dogs when they did what I had developed. Although I hadn't been doing it for months, I had probably about 3 months or so at the time, or even years, naturally, I thought, "You know what? I've got a lot to offer here," so I claimed that expert slot and I went for it.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. Is that something where you've repeated that technique over and over? Maybe even like this same kind of informal thing where you happen to hear that some radio or TV station was looking for X subject and you kind of fit yourself in there?

Sharon Bolt: Well it's very important that when you do pitch or send a press release that you need to be relevant. Of course if you do hear something that they're saying that they're going to feature or you find that out on their website, then you match your pitch, your press release, so that you're ticking their boxes. The other way that's a good way to do it, Robert, is just keeping an eye on the general news. What's topical? What's coming up? What are they talking about? Of course, that's when your pitch, your story idea's in line with what they're looking for and this is where it becomes a win-win situation.

Robert Plank: How can someone duplicate that? It's one thing to be listening on the radio and you hear that they're looking for certain topics, but is there either some kind of database someone could and find out all the shows and all the subjects coming up? Or is it a matter of, like you said, looking at the news and kind of tailoring something to, I don't know, Brexit, or Donald Trump and then shopping that around? What's the strategy behind that?

Sharon Bolt: Well there are books and there are places that you can go to look for journalists but in my experience, Robert, is that what happens with journalists, they move around and change very quickly. For example, if it's a media book that's been published, and I've bought these in the past myself, and when I've come to use them, of course, there's no answer because those people are no longer working there or they've moved jobs and they've got different positions. The best thing to do is to really keep a check on what's going on locally, so read your local newspapers, watch the news, and then go to the specific websites of the particular shows, or newspapers, or radios, magazines that you'd like to appear in. That's really the very, very best way of doing it.

Robert Plank: Okay. How much of your current business would you say that is? Is it half? Is it the majority? Or are there other techniques that take up more of your time?

Sharon Bolt: As in the publicity? That's what I'm really focused on now, and to obviously teach other business owners, and startups, and entrepreneurs how they can grow their business, and increase sales, and position themselves as an authority in their niche by cleverly using free publicity. What I find is, Robert, is that so many people are not using publicity because either they don't know what to do or perhaps they're introverts and think, "Wow. I couldn't get involved in all the media things," but that's really not how it is when you're doing an interview.

For example, Robert, I've got a regular slot on BBC Radio, and I go down once a month, and I answer live phone-in questions. Now, people would think, "Oh, that's really scary," but the truth is is I turn up. I arrive, there's a receptionist, there's 1 producer and there's 1 host. You sit in a room and it's like a small dining room. As long as you can keep your mindset away from how many people are listening and keep out of the negative, "Wouldn't it be awful if it goes wrong," story, then you're on track because you're not talking to 500 people. This is not public speaking but you are reaching just thousands and sometimes millions of listeners.

Robert Plank: How did that weekly, that regular slot you have on BBC Radio, how did that come to be?

Sharon Bolt: Well that was when I was at a social event and a networking event, and where you obviously mingle with other business owners and talking to other people. There was a gentleman I met there who was a freelance radio host in the BBC. He was then going to be on the show as a one-off and he invited me on as a guest. Then they heard me and they liked me, and so it developed from there. Then when they came up with a slot, they call it the Sound Advice slot, where they experts on the show to answer questions, that's when they said would I do that. This is 8 years down the line now.

Robert Plank: You've been going in it for 8 years, is this like a once-a-week program?

Sharon Bolt: The program is on every day but the slot that I do is once a month. I go to the actual studios and do the phone-in once a month.

Robert Plank: That's cool. Do they let you promote your practice or anything like that?

Sharon Bolt: Yes, I mean with the BBC you have to be a bit careful because it's a publicly funded company so they don't have any advertisements on the show and they don't like to be seen to be endorsing people but, yes. I mean, at the end you give your website out, I might talk about consultations I've done because specifically what I'm doing there is about the dog training so I'll talk about different aspects about that. Then it's a case of not blatantly saying and plugging something but telling people in general. For example, "When I was doing a consultation this happened," so then people realize you do consultations. It's that type of thing that you weave into but you always do say your website at least at the very end.

Robert Plank: Even if that's all that's kind of allowed or all that's polite, it's still pretty cool. Just even that little mention to thousands of people.

Sharon Bolt: That's right. The thing is in the UK, the BBC, and I think it's worldwide, is very well-known. Of course you can imagine for your type of credibility and certainly your marketing, when you say, "As heard on BBC Radio," of course that opens doors for you. It's not always what you're saying on the show, it's just that credibility. The great thing is, Robert, is that when you are featured, whether it be a newspaper, a magazine. Whether it be a radio show or obviously a TV show, people think and see you straight away as an authority in your niche. It doesn't matter how long you've been in business. This is why this is great for start-ups as well as long-term business owners, because it can skyrocket your business literally overnight when you get featured in the press.

Robert Plank: What's cool is that so far you've told us 2 different ways to do it. One way is to listen to your local news and to see what subjects are coming up lately, or what keeps coming up, and then keep on, I guess, pitching them a little bit on what subject that you can cover. The other way that you've covered so far is that the way that you were able to get your regular radio gig was just by networking, just by knowing someone who was on the radio and just knowing to ask, I guess. Do you have another way of getting that free publicity and getting the word out?

Sharon Bolt: Yeah. What I like to do is come up with story ideas. For example, this is where it goes back to your marketing, where you ask yourself questions like what are my target market's pain points? You know, just your general market and what keeps them awake at night? What would they really like to change? What questions do they regularly ask me? For an example here, Robert, if, for example, you're a dentist and people are confused about the different teeth whitening products on the market, you could write a pitch or a press release explaining the different products, what the differences are between them and what you would recommend for different types of people.

Do you see how you can just tie it in to what you know is relevant and what your target market is asking for? The key then, Robert, is to find the exact publication or show that is then having your target market and is looking for the type of story ideas that you come up with.

Robert Plank: Is there a reliable way of finding those kinds of publications or shows? Or just kind of see what's local, see what's around?

Sharon Bolt: Well, I think the number 1 tool that we all have is Google. I mean, just to Google something like, if you're looking to get on Entrepreneur Magazine, for example, and say you were a health and fitness expert. Just Google in health and fitness magazines. You'll get a whole host of different magazines and then of course you can click on that. Then you need to do some detective work. Start finding what are the magazines and they usually have contact information there because they want you to come up with good story ideas because it is a win-win situation. When they have to constantly be coming up with features and finding people, that's hard work.

That's the key thing to remember here. Journalists and media people, they need us as much as we need them because otherwise it makes their job really difficult. If you show up with everything done for them, coming up with a great story idea that's relevant to your target market and to their audience, and you give them all the tools that they need, they're laughing.

Robert Plank: That's cool. You make it sound so simple. It seems like an easy way for people who, if they want more exposure or they just don't know what to do, I mean, even just that seems like a pretty easy list of things that someone could kind of go after. As we're kind of starting to wind down this call a little bit, you mentioned press releases, so could you kind of explain press releases a little bit? Because all I really know about press releases are I've seen people do them, I've hired some people to write some, and I kind of posted them and they didn't seem to really do much. Could you tell us about press releases and what people are doing wrong, to know what they should be doing instead?

Sharon Bolt: The number 1 thing that people do wrong with press releases, Robert, is that they send it to the wrong people. This isn't about just doing a general mailing and spamming people. There's nothing more annoying for the press, from a journalist's position, than receiving press releases that is nothing to do with their department and what they're interested in. That's what I find the number 1 thing is, sending press releases to the wrong people. The other thing that I find is that with a press release it is a particular format. Now, I have got that, I go into great detail on my website. There's a free report called How to Write An Attention-Grabbing Press Release That Creates Win-Win Situations in the Media, so people can download that free from my website because there is a specific formula to follow.

What happens with journalists, they are trained of how to read a press release. They know how to skim through it really quickly as to what the press release and what the story idea is about. Now if you don't do the right format, if you don't get that right, then of course that already says to the journalist that you don't know what you're doing and what you're talking about. I think they're 2 key things why press releases don't work for people.

Robert Plank: Get the press release to the right people and then use that format that way the journalists know how to read it quickly.

Sharon Bolt: That's right, and they know that you know what you're talking about. It gives them confidence. You can imagine, with a journalist they will often receive something like 100+ pitches and press releases every single day, so in order to get their attention really quickly so they don't hit that delete button, you need to come up with something very eye-catching and in that particular format, which is what I teach people in the press release report that I've written.

Robert Plank: Can you give us a little bit of a case study in a situation where you sent out a press release and what did that get you?

Sharon Bolt: I sent out a press release, in the UK we have something called Bonfire Night. It's November the 5th and it's a great celebration. People light bonfires and fireworks. I sent a press release out about the different ways that people can support their dogs during Bonfire Nights because obviously it's a frightening time for dogs because there's all the fireworks and the fire that's going. It's a nightmare time for a lot of dog owners. I wrote a press release around that, about how to make your dog comfortable when the fireworks are going off and what's the right information to give them. That actually landed me 2 slots on national TV on the Breakfast Morning show. They also came and they did some video footage, and then I was on twice explaining about different ways that we can best support dogs during firework night.

Robert Plank: That's pretty cool. It seems like one of those cases where you take 1 action and it leads to all these other cool things too.

Sharon Bolt: Well that's right, and of course what happens is, Robert, is people are listening. Other journalists, other media people are watching, and reading, and looking at the different media channels. If they see a good guest, this is how it can really catapult very, very quickly. That's it, so 1 appearance can really put you on different medias. Like, for example, if I'm interviewed on 1 radio show, I often get a call almost straight away from another radio show asking me to do an interview on their show about the same topic.

Robert Plank: Nice. It's not just a 1 shot deal and it sounds like a lot of what I'm hearing in these stories that you tell, a lot of it is in the follow-up. Where it's not like you're just doing all this work just for 1 appearance, it's for many.

Sharon Bolt: That's right. I mean, just 1 TV appearance. Obviously it's going to make a big, big difference to your business because you are elevated as to the top authority in your niche, so that is going to be fantastic. It's how to then really pay off that and get lots more leverage. Just that one appearance so that you keep getting asked back time and time again by different media outlets. Because that's where the goal is then, is to have different outlets contact you and obviously repeat interviews and features in both the press, and the radio, and TV.

Robert Plank: Right. I mean I could imagine once you've been on their show once, once you have a relationship with them it's easier to come back, I would imagine.

Sharon Bolt: Yeah, and that's a really good point you make there, Robert. Thank you for saying that because it is all about building relationships. All about that. This is why, another reason I would say with the press releases if they don't work, 1 thing I like to do is if I start to research and I have a particular reporter, for example, that I want to get into a particular publication, I'll start looking at them on social media. I will comment nicely, and favorably, and supportively to their posts, to their tweets, so they start to get to know who I am before I even pitch them or send them a press release. It's all about building relationships.

Robert Plank: I like that. That's a pretty cool tactic. Could you tell everyone about you, and your website, and where they can find out more about you and publicity, and especially that template you mentioned too?

Sharon Bolt:Yeah, they can download my free report, that How to Write An Attention-Grabbing Press Release on my website, which is getfreepublicitytoday.com. I'm in the process right now, Robert, very exciting, it's taken a year in the unfolding, but I'm creating and hopefully launch in about a month or two, free publicity courses where I explain and show people step-by-step exactly how to do it with templates, with everything that they will need. From media training to mindset, everything somebody would need in order to get featured in the press.

Robert Plank: Cool. That seems like something that people need. This whole media, TV and video thing, for me it's pretty unexplored but I like hearing your answers, and your stories, and all these little things about how we can all tap into this. It seems like this is something that every single business needs, I think.

Sharon Bolt: Well it's great as well because people that are not extroverts, who would shy away from this whole media thing, when you are doing an interview, say for the press, for your local newspaper, you sit at home on the telephone and you give an interview. That's all it is. Then that could be 10, 15 minutes and then they go off and write the article and now you become a local celebrity because you're the one that's featured in your industry in the news.

Robert Plank: I like it. You don't even have to put on pants to be in the paper.

Sharon Bolt: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. Sharon, thanks for being on the show today and that link again is Get Free Publicity Today. Thanks for sharing everything you have to know about press releases in this short amount of time. I had a lot of fun. I hope you did too.

Sharon Bolt: Had a great time, Robert. Thanks so much for asking me on your 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.

Naresh Vissa: Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be on.

Robert Plank: Could you tell us what it is that you do and what makes you different and special.

Naresh Vissa: I am a publisher by background, and a lot of people Robert don't really quite understand what that means when I tell them I'm a financial publisher. It's like, what is that? Really what I do is I use the online and digital world to sell information, whether it's investment information, financial information, personal financial information, or even books. I have a book publishing division. That's what I do, so my skillset is very, very strong in the online and digital marketplace. My company, Krish Media & Marketing, it's one of the companies that I have. We provide an array of online and digital marketing, and just general digital services for small businesses.

This is what I call Robert the 21st century economy, because what I do, I'm a publisher, and as an online business person, this job wasn't around 15 years ago, or 20 years ago. It's a 21st century job.

Robert Plank: Okay, and what you do exactly. You said you have your books and you have products and things. Is that right? What exactly is it that you've been putting out recently?

Naresh Vissa: Yeah, so the the Krish Media Marketing side, we help existing businesses improve their bottom lines through the online and digital world. That could be we offer services as simple as web design, web development. Some more complex things like Google AdWords, pay per click, affiliate marketing, copyrighting, etc.

Now on the publishing side, I said I'm a publisher. What we do is we sell investment research to individuals, so let's say Robert, for example, you don't want to put your money with a financial advisor, or a money manager, who's going to manage all your money. Instead, you can subscribe to our services, and we'll tell you exactly what to do with your money. We'll tell you what companies to buy, when to buy, what to sell, when to sell, what to short, when to go long. We provide economic analysis, and other insights so that our subscribers have a very firm grasp, and also total control over their money. These are subscription products that we sell.

Two of my companies that do this, one is called Money Ball Economics, and the other one is called Normandy Investment Research. Normandy Investment Research focuses on options trading, and Money Ball Economics, is more for beginners, so beginner and intermediate type of traders and investors. Those are subscription products that we sell, and again, my skillset in the online and digital world helps me sell these products. It helps me find leads, market to them, and funnel them through our processes.

Robert Plank: Well cool, so you said that this is a job that didn't exist 20 years ago, so can you tell us how you came across this, and how you developed the skills? I mean, how your even discovered the need for this kind of thing?

Naresh Vissa: It happened completely by chance, Robert. I didn't grow up telling people I want to grow up to become a financial publisher. It kind of just fell in my lap, while I was in graduate school, actually, the leading financial publishing company in the world, at the time, contacted me because they found me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one social media platform that I've been, I don't want to say very active, but I've had a presence for almost 10 years now, and even though I'm not super active on it, LinkedIn is very similar to Yelp, where if people type in a few key words, they can find you, and find out all about you.

In the case of LinkedIn, I had a full profile, and this company was looking for someone who had a very similar skillset. That skillset happened to be someone with a media background, and someone with a financial background, all in one. They typed in a few key words, they found me, they contacted me, and they asked if I could consult to start a new project for them. This was while I was still in graduate school, and when I was a consultant to help launch a new project for them. Keep a long story short, the project went well. They wanted me to take over the project after I graduated which I did, and that was my entry into the financial publishing space, because of this company that recruited me. If that did not happen, then there's a very, very good chance I wouldn't be talking to you today, and I would be working in a corporate function.

Robert Plank: Interesting, and so it all happened because they made that one connection. They found you in that one place on LinkedIn from the key word search.

Naresh Vissa: Exactly.

Robert Plank: That's crazy, and that's one of those things, I mean even like five years ago, or so, I was trying to get a house sold over in Nevada, about a five hour drive away, and the realtor was doing all listings, like putting a video of the home on YouTube, and posts on Facebook, and there were four cash offers for the house, and one of the offers came from just posting on Facebook. Even though that was pretty recent, five years ago, I was pretty blown away, like with your story, just having something online, not even having it very well marketed, or having a lot of traffic, or even very well refined, but just having something online. It seems like if you just make this one connection, it can lead to all these extra things.

Naresh Vissa: Yes, absolutely. I tell people all the time some of my friends who are still trying to find their way in the corporate world, or trying to develop a career, they refuse to get on LinkedIn, because they say, oh it's not going to help me. But you can't look at it that way. You have to look at is it going to hurt you. You might think that it's not going to help you, but it's not going to hurt, either. I only see platforms like LinkedIn or Yelp if you're a small business, a brick and mortar type of retail business. Those only start to help you. They're really platforms for people to find you, and to give you business, or to give you opportunities. I lay out actually in my book Fifty Shades of Marketing, I lay out why LinkedIn, and Yelp and a few other platforms, why it's so important to have a presence on them.

Robert Plank: Let's unpack that a little bit. Could you tell us about your Fifty Shades of Marketing book.

Naresh Vissa: My book, it's called Fifty Shades of Marketing: Whip Your Business Into Shape and Dominate Your Competition. It was an Amazon number one best selling book. Sales have been pretty good. It's really a primer on 21st century online and digital marketing. The feedback has been really awesome, because it covers everything you need to know about marketing, step-by-step. Again, concepts as simple as what direct marketing is, what direct response marketing is, why email marketing is the most effective type of marketing, the importance of an email list. It also walks you through the basics, like how to build a simple website, how to set up an email list. What is affiliate marketing? How do you calculate customer lifetime value? How does mobile tie into 21st century marketing, and then social media? It covers anything and everything. I even have a chapter on advertising on porn sites is a cost effective ROI driven endeavor.

Robert Plank: We can't just mention that and just leave that hanging, so could you unpack that a little bit? Can you tell us, I'm really curious, I'm no sure how far we can go with it, but how the heck do you make money, get traffic from porn sites. I got to hear this one.

Naresh Vissa: All right, so this has actually been a very, very popular chapter, because people are like, whoa. Let's face it, porn is a very, very popular niche, and to give you a statistic, 30% of all internet traffic goes to pornography, or other sexual material, so to put that number into context. Okay, 30%, what does that mean? It was actually the Huffington Post that reported that more people visit porn sites than they do Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined, so combined. That means there's a lot of traffic going to pron sites.

Now, what's the opportunity here? The opportunity is advertising on a porn site is 1/10th the cost, even though the traffic is a lot higher, it's still 1/10th the cost of advertising on mainstream channel, or mainstream online channels such as Google AdWords or Facebook, so this is a pretty good opportunity. You've got very high traffic, low cost. Now why don't people do this more? Because it's boring, and there's a stigma attached to advertising on porn sites. That's the gist of the chapter. In the book, I include a case sturdy of the a food delivery company, so again, this was not a company that had anything to do with sex or porn, but they found creative ways to tie their advertising campaigns, and give it a sexual twist. They were selling sandwiches, but they were able to be creative and advertise on porn sites, and it grew their business tremendously, and I lay out that case study in the book.

Robert Plank: That's pretty crazy, so are you talking about banners ads, or free rule ads, or all of the above?

Naresh Vissa: Yes, so to give you an idea, banners on individual video pages on porn sites, or sorry on individual video pages rather than the home page of a porn site, performed remarkably better than the home page, and that's largely because when people go to porn sites, they're not there to look up the home page, they're there to watch videos. The big take away is that banners on these sites have worked extremely well, even better than email marketing. Most cases email marketing is most effective, but in the case of porn, you have to remember people are there for a reason. They're there to essentially watch videos, and they're not going to waste their time reading any emails or grow in through the home page. People are strict business there.

Robert Plank: I mean, that's pretty crazy, but I always like stuff like that. I always like stuff that's a little different than the tired old traffic methods people are using. I like that, that's real, because how many times have we heard stuff like, well just make a website, just optimize for SCO, and that's pretty cool, and I like that it wasn't even anything sex related. They connected it like you said, but just a simple sandwich company getting traffic from that interesting new method that you have there.

Naresh Vissa: Right, exactly. And again, to talk about qualification, porn sites have very engaging users. They're not visiting them by accident, whereas you might accidentally click a Google ad, or a Facebook ad, and then you'll immediately bounce off the page. Instead, the people who visit porn sites, they're visiting there for a reason, and so the quality of the traffic is relatively high. Actually, probably higher than any other type of site on the internet. Bounce rates are low, and session lengths are a little over 15 minutes, so you know that when you advertise on such a medium, you know what you're getting. You're going to get a very attentives probably male, who's going to stick around for about 15 minutes, which is unheard of on the internet.

Robert Plank: Right, that's silly by also crazy. I really like that technique there, so you have that book. You have Firth Shades of Marketing, and then I understand you have another book about podcasting. Is that right?

Naresh Vissa: Yeah, so that was my first book that I came out with, called Podcastnomics: The Book Of Podcasting To Make You Millions, and it is again, another primer, this time on all about podcasting, from its history, what it is, how to start a podcast. The necessary software you need to start it, and most importantly, this is what most training courses and sessions don't do, but what my book does do, and that's how to monetize a podcast. How to actually make money from it.

Robert Plank: Can you walk us through that really quickly. What are the steps, or what are the ways that you listen in this book about how to monetize a podcast?

Naresh Vissa: There are three primary revenue drivers for monetizing a podcast, and to give people a background on why am I qualified to write a book on this or to talk about this. I mentioned earlier about the company that found me on LinkedIn, and asked me to start a new division for them. That division was actually an online radio podcasting network, and it consisted of just a bunch of business and financial shows. Now what we were able to accomplish there by the time it was all said and done, that station was called the Santeria Radio Network, and out of the sense of all to be called the Choose Yourself network. James Altuchera, if your listeners, are familiar with him, he's now running it.

Anyway, there are three primary revenue drivers in properly monetizing a podcast, and this is what I learned while I was starting up this division. The first revenue driver is the old school, 20th century advertising model. This is something that I don't recommend because advertising has changed so much. In the 20th century, you workday was very difficult to track the return that you were getting on advertising, but now you can track exactly how many times someone listens to an ad, or clicks or visits a website. You have all this data available to you and as a result, advertising has been going down, or advertising dollars have been going down. This is evidenced by mainstream media, and how much they're struggling, newspapers, and television stations, trust real radio, all struggling because they're ad based models.

When it comes to podcasting, you can certainly make money off advertising, and I'd say go for it, but that shouldn't be your primary source of revenue. You're going to be sadly disappointed if that's the case.

The second revenue driver is selling an existing product, so that means using the podcast as a lead generator to sell an existing product. In our case back when we got started, we were selling financial research, so we knew that okay, we're going to funnel people in, and our end goal is to sell them our research. We funneled people in by being on all the major podcast distributors, iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, our website. You name it, we grew our listenership. We ran campaigns. We ran discounted offers to our listeners so that they could subscribe to our research, and that ended up being the primary source of revenue, so it's just really another lead generating tactic.

The third way to monetize a podcast is through premium content, so that means creating a pay wall to offer your free stuff, which is available on iTunes, and your website, and all those other places, but coming out with a paid product, where people pay, in our case, they were paying something like $5 to $10 a month. It wasn't expensive at all. Again, because it's recurring, that comes out to about $60 to $120 a year, so let's just say $100 a year, which was more expensive than some or our products that we were offering for $39 a year, or $49 a year. Anyway, we came out with this premium content that people subscribed to, and what they got in return was special type of content that they could share with the listeners. It has to be worthwhile for the listener to get them to subscribe.

We have three different revenue drivers, and now when I consult with the various clients, and podcasts to get them started or to turn things around, those are the tree revenue drivers that I tell them to keep in mind, advertising, selling an existing product, and premium content.

Robert Plank: Awesome, and what I like about what you've shared with us today, is it seems like it's all based on your own experiences, and your own case studies, and you deleted the things that didn't work out of all the noise, and just taught just the proven methods that you know, whether you're talking about, like you said, LinkedIn, Yelp, podcasting, advertising on porn sites, just a whole family of different things. As we're winding this down, could you tell us, as far as the clients you've helped and businesses you've grown, and things like that, when people are trying to grow their business, get some traffic, get some eyeballs, what's the number one mistake you see these businesses making?

Naresh Vissa: The biggest mistake, biggest, biggest one, without a doubt, Robert, is failing to capture traffic, failing to capture traffic. They might get a good amount of traffic on their website, or podcast, or whatever it is, they might get lots of listeners, or hits, and all that. The problem is they're not capturing that traffic you need to capture it so that you can continue that dialog. You can continue that relationship moving forward, and it's not just a first date. It's not just a one and done thing, and the way to capture that traffic, there's no better way to do that, than by collecting their email address. That's a huge problem I've noticed. The podcasters, the media companies, the newspapers. People like their stuff, but they're not capturing that traffic. It's so, so important to do that because that opens up a world of endless possibilities, and opportunities.

Robert Plank: Everyone has an email address, right. I mean, as much as Facebook and Twitter, and all those social platforms are gaining all this traction, there's still more people with an email address, than people with a Facebook account, right?

Naresh Vissa: Yes, absolutely email, everyone has an email address. People say that email is dying. Right now it's still very prevalent. A lot of businesses don't do email. People don't like to be called anymore, so don't call them, instead you can email them. Ten years from now, things could be completely different, and my prediction is things will be completely different, just like ten years ago, there was no Facebook. There was but it wasn't as ubiquitous as it is today. There was not Uber. There weren't so many things around that are so prevalent today, but right now, email is still king.

Robert Plank: Cool, I mean the old tried and true stuff works, but there's still lots of exciting things coming up ahead in marketing, for sure. Could you share with us about where people can go and buy your books, and which websites of you're they can go to to find out more about you and buy a bunch of stuff from you hopefully.

Naresh Vissa: My name is Naresh Vissa, website, NareshVissa.com. People can subscribe to my free newsletter, there where I send out tips an tricks on online and digital business, the marketplace. You can also check out KrishMediaMarketing.com. That's my online business consultancy, and agency. We work with a variety of businesses, to help them with any online or digital need, and if you want to contact me, you can visit those sites, and get my email address or contact me through the pages there.

I thank you for your time Robert. It's been a great, great interview.

Robert Plank: Awesome, it's been an entertaining, and an educational conversation, so I'm really glad that you were able to drop some knowledge bumps with us. Thanks for doing that.

Naresh Vissa: No problem Robert, it was a pleasure.