Episode 356: Website Tips for Pet Business Owners with Bobby Machado

Topics & Key Points

• Needing of experts
• Getting referrals
• Prototype design
• Map out information
• SEO strategy
• Plan from start
• Measure performance
• Analytics tools
• Track and optimize

Timestamps

[00:02:21] What assets should a web designer ask?

[00:04:25] The website is the lead magnet machine

[00:08:23] How do you know if you are good at SEO?

[00:10:06] Developing SEO strategy

[00:11:56] Google analytics for digital marketing

[00:18:54] Free Competitive Analysis

Notable Quotes

“Your website is a tool for your business, and that’s the way you need to be looking at it as a business owner; it should be a lead generation machine.”

“Once you have your website prototype complete in terms of the design, user flow, and it meets all your business objectives, then that is when we say ‘ok lets now go into development mode and develop the website based on the prototype.’ ”

“What we really like to do is follow a logical process. When we develop a website, and when we are in the UI/UX phase, we are simultaneously developing the on-site SEO strategy as well.”

Resources

• Podcast: Bella in Your Business: Pet Industry Business Podcast
• Join Mastermind
• Email Bella: bella@jumpconsulting.net
• Sign up for a 20 mins call 
• Episode 340: 7 Ways To Coach Your Team To Great Customer Experiences

Connect with Bobby

• Website
• Email

Connect with Bella

• Website
• Facebook
• YouTube

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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella. And today, we’ve got my good friend Bobby. And let me tell you, he’s become my good friend, Bobby, because you might have remembered, and maybe 10 or 12 episodes ago, I told you about my website getting held hostage, it was not a good experience. A lot of you have commented to me about that. You never want that to happen to you. And you always want a good team on your side. And I met Bobby through a good friend of mine. And he came along and helped us get on hostage. I don’t know if that’s the right word, get our power back, and then also fix all this stuff that we needed. But the whole time you guys. And the reason why I want you to meet Bobby is because he has been a constant. Constant still can’t talk. He’s been a good professional. He’s been in layman’s terms. He hasn’t like overwhelmed. This, though, is jargon that I don’t understand. And his whole team has been such a pleasure to work with. And when that happens, I always want to share my friends with my friends. So Bobby, thanks for being here today.

Absolutely. No, thank you again for the opportunity. Thank you for the kind words too, we appreciate it. And so we’re happy to help where we can so glad that we’ve been able to help you guys with your website and get it on hostages.

It’s been so good to have you on the team. And so you guys after Bobby stopped competitively racing when he was 22, he decided to focus his full-time efforts on web development as a freelancer. And then that introduced him to develop digital marketing. And he’s an analytical and creative type, which I’m not, and developed a passion for digital marketing and data. After working for an automotive digital marketing agency as a paid media specialist managing a little over $300,000 a month in Google ad spending for several auto dealerships in the United States. He combined that passion for business and launched Cigna marketing. And that’s how we also you know, connected. If you guys want to stay involved with all of these episodes, don’t forget to go ahead and like and subscribe to them. And also comment because if you have questions for Bobby or myself from this podcast, find out where you found it and write those or DM me or email me, and I’ll get you connected with Bobby. But let’s get right on into this, Bobby. I think a lot of people think that a website is just a website. It’s like, it’s like a one-dimensional thing. And here you go. But they don’t understand that there’s things like development, which is all that, you know, jargon that I don’t understand. Behind the website. There’s the look of it, there’s the customer experience of it, right? There’s the sales part of it, there’s all these different things. And it’s really important not just to have a one-dimensional person helping you with your website because that is your storefront. So when we start working with someone, Bobby, what assets must I expect them to ask me to bring into a project?

Yeah, no, great question. So initially, say, for example, let’s just take the scenario that does a brand new website. And, you’re designing based on an existing website and an old website. So assets that they would ask for are like, Okay, well, who are you hosting with? We’re hosting means where are your website files sitting on what, what server because that server is what x is, is the internet. And so hosting companies, such as Bluehost, WP Engine, there’s, there’s a lot of them, you’ll and you’ll hear a lot of them. But especially if it’s like a WordPress site, you want to host that secure like WP Engine, that’s a very secure one. But that’s one of the items that they’re going to ask for. Ad I start with the hosting account, because within the hosting account, they may ask you for items like FTP credentials, and what’s your WordPress login, and stuff like that. But FTP, you might not know what FTP means. And the thing is that you won’t need to if you just have your hosting credential, so hosting credentials, and then the log into your website, which if it’s a WordPress site, it’s just going to be what you use to log into your WordPress site. So just starting with those two items there as far as getting access to those assets, at least can start the process from there.

Should a business owner come to you also to know what kind of design they want to do or lie what the copy should say, like have that all done before they start the engagement with you so that the project can still go along?

Yes, great question. So this ties to how you preface this too, as well, is that the website we have to the website’s not there to look pretty. It’s not there to look pretty. The website is a tool, and your website the way you need to look at it as a business owner, is a lead generation machine. I need the website working for the business. So that’s what dictates what the user experience should be like. What are the conversion points meaning conversion points are like, where are they going to convert, and inquire if are they filling out a form? Are they placing a phone call? Are they purchasing a product, all that matters? And so we need to understand business objectives upfront. What do we want this thing to do? That’s in line with the business goals that you have set forth. Then we reimburse the reverse engineer. That way, we say, Okay, well, if your goals are XYZ, then we know that it needs to have these types of pages and needs to be laid out in this such a way. And he’s to have this type of testimonials and social proof on these pages, because it’s going to help the user build confidence to convert on this point, like, all of that needs to get flushed out. But we always tie it to business objectives. And so that’s why we use that as our anchor is what we like to call it.

I love it, and very similar to all of that. So like, what should the developer’s research process look like? Like, what should we expect them to ask us? In which there’ll be red flags? If they’re not asking us?Yes?

Yeah, great question. So when you’re interviewing companies that may be developing your website, they’re going to it’s not, it’s not going to only just be a developer that’s on your team, you also need a strategist, which is going to be helping you have like, Okay, how this website is going to be developed and designed to meet the business objectives. So typically, when you’re looking to hire a company, they should have an account manager slash project manager, which really, they have some sort of strategist hat on as well. Because they’re there wand t to build the product tailored to meet the business objectives, then there’s going to be someone on the team who’s handling copywriting. If you are not providing that yourself, we do have clients that provide the copywriting. And that’s great. So they’ll provide that. Next is UI UX design. So having a UI UX designer is separate from a developer. And a lot of times what happened has happened in the industry over decades now, too, is because maybe some companies are trying to crunch budgets and meet very low budgets and stuff. They take a developer and they say, oh, no, you can do design too. And it’s like, no, you can notice,
like Russian and Italian, like, doesn’t work. The project manager helps with, right, they’re kinda like the go between-between between the idealistic business owner, their vision, and what it’s going to take to make it happen.

Yes, yeah, exactly. And so So you want to make sure that they have a dedicated resource for UI UX design, like who’s going to prototype my site with the content that I have given you guys, if if they’re providing it, because the cool thing is this, you should know what your website looks like upfront before a line of code is used or ever even written. Once you have your whole prototype of the website designed and all that stuff like that you’ve reviewed and you’re happy with it, it meets all the business objectives to the user flow, then you say, Okay, now let’s, let’s get into development mode. Because development is a very quiet phase of the project. It’s like, we did all the exciting stuff, which is copy design, there’s like all this movement, and then they’re like, Okay, cool, it’s development, and then you won’t hear anything for like, depending how big the site is, you only hear for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so you’ll get some updates. But it’s not asking for your feedback, because it’s all code that’s all developed. And so, the thing is that once that site goes live and is developed, there are no surprises, because you already know what it looked like it looked what it should look like from the prototyping stage.

All right. I love that. So let’s let’s, let’s move a little bit into lie SEO because I know everyone knows SEO is important. But I know how people understand SEO varies. So what should we be weary of or, you know, knowledgeable about in terms of if we’re working with someone how well do they deal with that SEO thing? Like what should they be asking us? How do we know that they are going to be good at the SO? Because, again, having a pretty website doesn’t matter if it’s not a tool, like you said, for leads and such.

Yes, yeah. Great, great question. So a lot of times, this is where the industry is still kind of fragmented, where you know, you go, people end up going to a web development firm, and then they get their website built. And then they’re like, Okay, cool. Now I got this thing built, but no one’s going to it. There’s no traffic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They learn about SEO and search engine optimization. They learn about the tactics of what SEO entails to get it ranking on search engines for your most valuable keywords and then get that inbound traffic. What happens is that then they go to an SEO agency or a digital marketing agency that’s full l house, full stack, and does SEO, paid media, etc. And then that agency says, okay, cool. Well, your website’s not SEO. So we’re gonna have to go back and rip up the foundation in some ways, and SEO it, and what that means is like, sometimes you can get away with it. You don’t have to rip up a whole foundation. But the thing is that sometimes you end up saying, oh, I want to go after certain keywords. And they would say, like, you don’t even have pages that talk about this right and he Gotta build that. So what we like to do is follow a process more logically. And when we develop a website, when we’re in the UI UX phase, we’re also developing the on-site SEO strategy. Because it’s our business objectives. If you said, Hey, we want to rank for, we want to rank our three service pages for XYZ terms, we would end up having that in the site architecture and mapping that out and prototyping the pages and all that stuff. So that once your website goes live, it’s already meeting all those criteria up front, and you don’t have to go back and do any on-site SEO or anything like that. And so that’s, that’s a kind of vague, quick way to explain it. But it’s fragmented. And so if you are someone who’s already working with the web development firm, ask them Hey, who are your SEO partners? Like, I know you guys are building my website. But there’s, have you guys considered it as an SEO strategy? And if not, because if it’s not in your tool House, who are you guys partnered with? That does do that so that we can do this all together so that the moment that site goes live, it already has all the on-site SEO in terms of dedicated keyword strategies, each page title tags, meta descriptions, ah, one’s internal linking, the whole nine yards, the whole enchilada, you’re getting
geeky on us now.

Getting it’s this also super good, because one of the things that piqued my interest when I was talking to my friend who led me to you was he said, because he has a business here locally, a couple of them. And he said, the minute we started working with Bobby, and we got him doing the SEO for the website, our sales went through the roof. And I was like, okay, yeah, he is my friend using him, and I very much respect my friend and saw what was happening, I was like, alright, that’s awesome. It’s kind of the equivalent Bobby correct me if I’m wrong, of having a beautiful Lamborghini, but the engine doesn’t run,d can’t drive it anywhere.
Yet, why? What’s the point? There is no point. So talk to me more about this. And I know you’re gonna be able to do more of an audit with our mastermind members coming up. Tuesday, September 26, at 2 pm. Eastern, but just kind of give us a good overview right now because Podcasts can only be so long about Google Analytics Search Console, all this G for this, this stuff that like really goes over my head, and they don’t understand. But for our listeners, what are the important parts that they need to know and that they’re there? Maybe they’re paying someone monthly right now? What should they be providing for them? And seeing in terms of that stuff?
Yeah, for sure. So. So in terms, every business owner should have ownership of their Google Analytics account, their Google Search Console account, and their Google Tag Manager account. At a bare minimum, you as a business owner should say, Hey, do I have these three items? Yes or no? And the items that are missing are going to Okay, I’m going to get to work on these items. If you’re working with some sort of digital marketing partner or whatnot, they should be able to help you with that, if you don’t have it set up. If they don’t, if you don’t have it set up and you’re working with them yet that question of why it’s not set up yet, or why it wasn’t brought up to their attention, because as a digital marketing specialist, usually need access to at least Google Analytics for and Google Search Console to do your job. So those items you need hands down.

But the reason why it’s important to you as a business owner is so that you have the analytics of the website traffic, who’s getting to my website, and from what sources of traffic.? Is it direct, organic search engines, social media, email, newsletter, or all that stuff like that? And then the cool thing is that you can dive into these channels within Google Analytics and be able to type to dissect it and see how that traffic is behaving. are they consuming the content? Are they are they going to another page after this one? And what do you like for sure your digital marketing partner to do is to set up conversion tracking and Google Analytics so that say, for example, you have a form inquiry form for new leads or whatnot.? Well, you want to track those leads in Google Analytics score to see where they’re coming from. The cool thing is that once you see which channels are producing this conversion, then you can double down on it and maximize that channel to increase conversions. If your business is needing, you know, a more increased pipeline.

Imagine that you guys I mean, essentially, what Bobby’s saying is that we’re going to learn what dials we need to dial in to make it rain. And I don’t want you guys to just think clients because this could also be like employees to, you know, people looking for summer jobs or work, like, you know, part-time jobs in Scottsdale or something like that. I mean, you’re like he’s saying your website is this engine for this. Bobby. I was I sent over someone to you after she told me she was paying someone $300 a month to just keep her monthly website updated. And I was horrified. One of the beautiful things was that You were able to just have a conversation with her and educate her, which I love about you. And she was able to go back to her person and ask these educated questions and come from a place of power. And I think you guys, if any of you right now are feeling like, Well, I don’t know. Because that person on your team is not empowering you or educating you, then I want you to consider this podcast. I’m saying like, you need to know this. You can’t have that Lamborghini sitting in the driveway, it needs to be driving, people need to be seeing it. And so Bobby, what kind of ongoing relationships should someone not only expect but look for before they even enter into someone who’s going to just design this website? Because it’s not a wham bam. Thank you, ma’am. Because it ain’t 9090 anymore, right? Or? Well, 2000? Let’s say
for sure, yes.

So let’s take, for example, the scenario where someone’s getting their website built or it’s maintained. We need to understand what are their expertise. And what did you hire them to do? And what are the deliverables that you expect from them? And just be super crystal clear with that, because the thing is that digital marketing is a huge umbrella. And there’s this expert in every field within digital marker marketing, just because someone says I’m a digital marketer, to me, to be honest, doesn’t mean squat, because you’re like, okay, but of what like, I do Instagram ads, Facebook, ads, YouTube, like SEO, those are all, they all have the expertise, and they take time to get proficient. And that’s what you want. As a business owner, you don’t want to do a misshare on the wrong partner. Why not? Because obviously, it could also set you back. If you hire someone for four months, and it doesn’t work out. It’s like you just four months are gone, and you can’t get them back.
Don’t worry if my first quarter before I found you.

Just just, it comes from how you set a place of power of just knowing what to expect and out of that role. And if you’re entering that role for the first time, just just doing your homework. So with an ongoing relationship, in this case, where someone’s paying 300 bucks a month. Well, we dissected it to say okay, well, what are they giving you and why and stuff like that? If they’re just doing website maintenance, like say WordPress, website maintenance, well, then yeah, maybe 150 a month for something super bare-bones basic is fine. And if you’re a small business owner, that’s all you need. That’s fine. Now, if you’re doing lead generation wet through paid media, well, yeah, that’s, that’s going to be substantially more in cost. But the expertise is completely different. You don’t want to hire a web developer to run your Google ads, you’re gonna pay media specialists or paid search specialists that has a proven track record of producing positive results for their clients. In terms of lead generation, you want to know what clients they serve currently? What’s, what their track record has been when they are producing leads, and so forth like that, even at you know, it’s not always a bad thing if they haven’t worked in your industry, but ask them Hey, have you produced leads for my industry before? Yeah, Trenchard look like? What are? What’s the average cost per lead look like? What do you expect the average cost per lead should be? Furthermore, what helps them do their job is you, as a business owner, knowing your numbers. So understanding? What’s your customer’s lifetime value? And how much are you willing to pay to acquire a customer because that’s where the magic happens, where, if you know how much you can, to pay to acquire a customer, not a lead, but you know, once they go through a sales process, they close, knowing how much it costs you to get that customer at that point, if you’re doing at a price where you’re like, okay, cool, I can scale this up, then now we’re cooking. So they can use that information to say, oh, okay, now I know what your cost per acquisition is, okay, I recommend this budget, and then we can scale up this way, and so forth.

I love this so much. And there’s so much goodness, and I cannot wait for you to come in, because I have more follow follow-up questions when it comes to the analysis. But I do see that or the audit. But I do see on your website, signum marketing.com That you’re inviting anyone to get a free complimentary competitive analysis for your business. And so you guys can just go there and straight on his front page. If you want to, you know, get more bobby in your life or figure out you know, is my website performing? like it should? Or what should I ask people or what is deficient? I can personally vouch for the integrity and honesty of this company and this man, so go check it out. And you if you want to, like really get into the nitty-gritty, like I said, we’re doing, we’re going to talk about how you can audit your site inside the mastermind this Tuesday, September 26 at 2 pm Eastern Bobby will be there he’s got he’s telling me he’s already got like a download for you guys too. So yay, mastermind members. Bobby, I’m gonna give you the final words. Is there anything that you just kind of want to conclude with?

Awesome No. Thank you again for the opportunity and excited for the mastermind, That’s gonna be fun. And we’re gonna do a deep dive into conversion rate optimization, website audit stuff, so it’s gonna be good stuff. At the end of the day, I think that what you said is important being in a place of power. And as a business owner, you know everyone has their discipline, and there are only 24 hours in a day. So you don’t have to become an expert in everything. But you have to just know enough of what to expect from each of your partners or each of the facets of your business, because that’s how you’re going to be able to determine if it’s helping you or not, and so just being able to beef up knowledge on those areas will put you in a better place of power and so that’s what we’re looking to do with the mastermind too.

I love it. I cannot wait for you guys it does not have to be tough, but when it does get tough remember to always keep jumping. We’ll see you next episode. Bye now.