The Business of Digital Podcast

Join Dave and Matt as they kickoff their Leadership Series of podcast episodes. Over the next couple weeks will be deep dives into hiring, building teams, growing teams and other leadership topics.

Leadership Podcast Series

Just over a year ago we did a 100th Episode Series where we talked to 5 great guests about various digital marketing channels and how they have evolved over the past 20+ years. This year we thought we would do a similar series but instead focus on something more "practical" to our listeners.

So the next few episodes are going to be some great talks, a bit longer than our normal episodes but each one is really going to focus on a situation and leadership.

We hope you enjoy them as much we enjoyed making them!

Leadership Series Guests & Episodes

Building and Hiring Digital Teams W/ Sean McGinnisManaging Marketing Teams W/ Lauren VaccarelloLeadership & Growth W/ Amanda OrsonLeadership & Teams W/ Mark Barrera

The order honestly is just the way we recorded them. So if you start with the first or last or one in the middle it doesn't really matter. For the rest of June be sure to check back here or your podcast player of choice 2-3 times a week to catch all the episodes.

When is the last time you audited your lead process? Have you tested your contact and other lead forms? Join in and get some ideas on how and what to test right now.

Kicked off by Mat and his story of a leaking roof starts off the episode with a perfect example that just happened in recent weeks. Dave also had some water issues this year where he had trouble getting not the Marketing -> Sales handshake to work but just a good overall follow up experience.

Dave then digs into a Memorial Day Test that was the initial test that spurred this episode. To those four landscaping companies that were part of the test and the 2 that responded. Thank you! Also know that Dave does have the quotes and is looking to hopefully hire one of them later this summer for the project!

Form Thank You

If you have a lead form on your site or a contact form make sure that your form solution also sends a notification to that person to thank them or let them know that the form "worked".

Continued Communication

Do you keep the prospect or client alerted to any changes? It can be via email, text or a phone call but if there are updates or delays anywhere along the line do you communicate that?

There is a fine balance between not enough and too much but in most cases companies lean far into the "not enough" category. Of the 4 companies Dave contacted on Memorial Day only two really responded and one did a great job of that continued communication.

How to Increase Close Rates

Matt talks about his past Custom Mattress business and one of the things they quickly learned was that they had an almost 100% close rate if they could talk to a person right away.

If the phone is ringing, they would talk to them. If someone filled out a form they would try and get back within 30-60 minutes. Just fast responses would get them a leg up and a much better close rate.

Better Forms, Better Leads

There is and should be a balance between asking lots of questions on a form and trying to get as many people as possible to fill out a form.

Dave looks at NorthSide Metrics and Avalaunch to get a baseline and throw us under the bus (we both passed).

Then Dave went through the four forms from the Memorial Day test and walked through each of them. In general some were super basic with just name and contact but didn't ask for any real information. There were two that actually asked which services you wanted and left it open for additional information.

What does your form look like? Do you ask enough or too many questions?

Have a Lead Process

No matter your size, you need a lead process. The guys wrap up the episode talking about texting, lead process, marketing -> sales hand-off, customer service and really the whole funnel. Look at how and when you handle leads of any type and follow it through - where can you improve?

If you aren't sure how to test your lead process, ask a few friends to fill out leads or call in and test your process for you. Tell them to use fake names or to do it in some window so you aren't sure it is them, don't alert your staff and then test the process. Do you and the team miss something? Do you crush the follow-up or totally drop the ball?

Full Transcript

] Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us here on another one of these episodes, grateful for you as always. And how's it going, sir?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:17] Let's coffee.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:20] I got you right at the right time, but what we're going to do today guys is, uh, and here's the funny thing we were still trying to.

Figure out. Yeah, exactly. That's what we're trying to figure out what the title is going to be. But for all you listeners out there, it's going to be something related to, um, lead generation and you know, your followup with that. And I'm going to talk a lot about the local businesses and I like how you put a Dave, the, uh, the gap between the, the, uh, The owner and the marketing or the communication or lack thereof.

I can't

Recently we created 150 videos on YouTube for all of our podcast episodes. Dave recalls some tips and things he learned along the way that you can use for any content or scaling project.

While we started this project almost a year ago or so it has taken some turns and twists and a major change to the Business of Digital YouTube channel. While you might not be thinking about creating 120 or 150 videos for your podcast, you might use some of the thought process and lessons learned to apply to scaling your social media posts, content for your blog or even meta descriptions for 1,000 products.

In the end this episode is not really about just creating videos at scale but the processes and learnings from doing it once poorly and then doing a post-mortem and applying those learnings to doing it faster and better the next time.

So if you recently checked out our episode on starting a new content channel this episode is a great companion to that one.

If you are new to podcasting or video creating there are also some other resources in the form of past episodes that may also help you.

What Goes Into Making a Podcast EpisodePodcasting Best Practices & Lessons

Video Editing Tools

While your usage may vary, these are the tools I use or looked at to create the process for taking our podcasts -> video for YouTube.

RelaythatCanvaNotePad ++Windows Photo and Movie Editor

Not a case study really but maybe down the line a follow up will be interesting to compare bulk video vs one off and performance.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, extended to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcasts. Um, we're ready to go. How's it going, Dave?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:18] It is. It is. It is that's. Yeah, that's all I got.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:22] So what does one do during a pandemic when he has nothing but time?

Well, He has other stuff to do, but, uh, but uh, more

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:32] times did a couple months ago, technically

Matt Siltala: [00:00:37] when he has a project staring at it and, you know, staring down at him. And, uh, when, when, uh, and then I'll be the first to admit it when my son wasn't being fast enough. Um, We wanted to get a bunch of our podcasts on YouTube and this man and, and a bear says hi to everyone, you know, bark.

But, um, [00:01:00] you did it, you, you basically got a, I know you said you started a couple of months ago, but basically you got over a hundred of them done within the last week. And so, um, we're going to talk about lessons learned from creating 150 YouTube videos and really. What a couple of weeks.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:18] Well,

Matt Siltala: [00:01:18] I'm kind of bored.

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:20] So yeah, that's one of the first lessons I learned was, um, batching. But if I go back even further, your son had started it, but he started it based on what I created. And I created like one or two and I was like, I was like, we should do this. And you were like, Oh, my son I'll do it. And he did some. And then as I looked at them and what I'd given him in the direction,

Matt Siltala: [00:01:42] he didn't like the direction

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:44] I didn't.

Well, yeah. I looked at the, I looked at the, um, the placeholder image that we had and I was like, I really cheaped out on that. Like, that's not. It's not really good. Like we were just [00:02:00] going for, what is that Venn diagram? You can go fast, cheap or good, but you can't

Matt Siltala: [00:02:04] have all three.

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:07] You can pick two. And so we were just going for cheap and fast, but it wasn't really good.

So I was like, all right, well, what if we flip this and go good and cheap instead of fast? Well, yeah, he wasn't moving fast, but I also didn't like what was there? He'd done some, and I was like, This is going to be painful, that I'm going to wipe out what he's done. But as I looked at it, I didn't think it was good.

Matt Siltala: [00:02:31] So it was just my money to

Dig into the URL Guide & Best Practices with the guys and guest Rob Woods plus get tips on how to fight to keep URLs the same!

The TL/DR is this:

Really plan out your URLs and where you think they will be in the next 5+ years if at all possible. The goal is to future proof your URLs so that redirect, 404 and lots of other common issues simply aren't problems in the years to come.

URL Guide and Rules

Whenever possible the following guidelines should be followed: 

Use dashes (-) and not underscores (_) to bridge one word to anotherCorrect: /sun-round/Not Correct: /sun_round/Refrain from using stop words like “and”, “but”, “a” and other stop words whenever possible.Avoid using years or dates in URLs as it is hard to just refresh the page in later years without it looking dates.Optimal is 3-5 words, long is 6-8 words, extremely long URLs are more than 8 words.Use the Page Title as a guide and the overall topic of the page to help create the URL.Don’t repeat keywords or phrases if possible as it just looks over optimized, spammy and longer than it should be.Avoid using capital letters and mixed case URLs. Go with lower case always for URLs.Trailing slash vs. No trailing slash - go with one and make sure it works with your CMS.Avoid # in URLs as they will not follow after that.Organize, prioritize and create standards when you do use URL parameters/variables.

Arguments For Keeping URLs As Is

In meetings often SEOs have to fight with various teams on WHY URLs should not change or what they should change too.

For those times here is some ammo to take into those meetings but do listen to the full podcast to get even more ways to combat requests to change URLs

Analytics & Reporting - doing WoW or Month over Month reporting becomes very complicated.Mixed case URLs complicate reporting.Variables in URLs make reporting complicated or duplicate pages.Slash and No Slash can again muddy reporting.Redirect Chains - if you have done 2-4 site redesigns over 10+ years and have changed the URLs each time, you likely have many redirect chains.Domain Change - one of the few times when Rob is for URLs changing.Platform Change - if you are changing from ASP to PHP based platform this is one of the other rare times where you might need to change URLs.

Tools for Managing URLs

While every project and issue is different but Dave asked Rob what tools he goes to the most often:

Google Search Console - it just gives so much data and insight that you cant get anywhere else.Screaming Frog (or crawler of choice) - he uses it to look at the export of all the internal links for a site.Screaming Frog Log File Analysis - to get a view of what is going on with crawlersLink Tools (Semrush, Ahrefs, Majestic, etc.) - uses them to help find external links maybe pointing weirdly to a site

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcasts. Uh, grateful for, um, you know, grateful for that as always, that you give us the time of day and today we have a really good one for ya.

Well at least I'm excited for this one cause. Um, I know that we've got Dave there, but also the surprise guests that we have for you is a good friend of mine, Rob woods. Hey Rob, how's it going man?

Rob Woods: [00:00:33] It's good. Good man. Thanks for having me.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:35] So, just want to give guys a little bit of a background. So Rob and I, probably one of one of the oldest industry, if you call it friends that I have, um, way, way back in the day, one of my, one of the first clients.

And, and, uh. Anyway, Rob and I have been working together in some form or another. He's even come out to avalanche and done what we call an avalanche day at times, and where [00:01:00] does training for the teams and, and, uh, anyway, um, Rob, I'm gonna let you go ahead and, uh, kind of introduce where you're at now and what you consider, uh, your, your title t

Dave talks MDMC20 for a minute and then digs into analysis tools and reporting tools to leverage your Google Search Console data to improve your business.

As most conferences either postpone or outright cancel, MDMC went the other route that a few have gone - full virtual.

Some quick info about the conference:

FREE LIVE 2-day virtual summit Wednesday, May 20th and Thursday, May 21st.  During this event, we will be live-streaming 7 breakout sessions each day led by our most in-demand speakers. Cost: Free

MDMC20 On-Demand Digital Experience is a full access ticket to over 80 sessions and panels lead by industry experts on-demand online for 1-year, as well as access to watch all the sessions during the 2-day virtual summit live or on-demand after the event. Ticket purchasers will also have access to a special marketing resource center, network with other attendees virtual, chance to win awesome prizes and connect with our amazing sponsors. Cost: $99

The rest of the episode covers tools and ways to leverage the performance data in Google Search Console. If you are intersted in Python or building your own tool be sure to check out these articles that will walk you through some solutions.

How to get more of your Google Search Console Data by using PythonConnecting Search Console API to Google SpreadsheetsAnalyzing A Recent Google Update Impact via Search Console Data w/ a Segmented Google Data Studio ReportAutomatically Download Google Search Analytics Data Every Month [Updated for New API]

GSC Site Analysis Tools

Screaming FrogSitebulbJet Octopus

GSC Reporting Tools

Analytics EdgeSEO Tools for ExcelSearch Analytics for Sheets

Google Search Console Web Interface vs. Google Search Console API

Along with breaking down some analysis and reporting tools that you can use we compared the pros and cons of the GSC website vs GSC API.

The only con to GSC API isnt just that you need 3rd party apps or that many cost money but that simply not everything in GSC is available via the API.

There are also pros and cons to using the site. Do you need more than 1,000 rows of data? Well too bad using the website.

This episode focused just on tools and some of the items that were covered in my talk so if you want the full 55 minute talk be sure to check out MDMC this week!

Full Episode Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast featuring your host, Matt scintilla and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you joining us again on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. Grateful for you joining us as always, and we got Dave over there. I was going, bud,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:20] it is going, it is going in, is going.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:23] All right, so. We're just going to jump into this one. I'm

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:26] like my sub pump. Sorry. It's been raining nonstop here in the Chicago land area. What's rain?

Matt Siltala: [00:00:33] What's rain and what's a sub pump? Actually, I know what it is. At least it's working. It's

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:38] been, I just, there was a Jew. Yeah. It's been working hard. I'm very grateful that it's working.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:44] I'm just saying, because I had another friend talk about coming home to a flooded basement. So

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:49] based on the amount of rain, um, I saw someone posts that. The, uh, the Chicago river is so high that, you know, along the thing, there's picnic tables that I [00:01:00] believe are chained down. Wow. Um, and they're chained down as I learned today.

Um, so that they don't float away.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:07] That's the reason

Dave Rohrer: [00:01:12] cause it's right along the river. I'm like, I always just thought so that no one would take it. But I go, maybe it's for both.

Matt Siltala: [00:01:18] Well. Um, you guys don't care about that. So let's just jump. Let's just jump into, we're going to, we're going to talk a Google search console today, but also, um, you know, we usually like to take a little bit of a time to, um,