Do you think you could start with nothing and build a 7 figure local marketing agency in your first year? If you follow Graig Presti’s advice, you sure can.
Graig Presti started his local marketing consulting business and did something different than most: he chose to offer his services only to dentists…and by doing so, he grew top line revenue to 7 figures in year one…and has increased it to $3.5 Million in year 3. When you consider that most local marketing consultants really struggle to attract clients, Graig’s accomplishments are nothing short of amazing.
In this interview, you’ll hear Graig and I talk about:
(2:17) Introductions
(3:47) The results he’s getting (automating all sales)
(7:47) Why he picked dentists
(12:17) How he generates leads, and his sales funnel
(14:47) How he builds a list; using sponsored email, direct mail, LinkedIn, and JV partners
(17:47) The lead magnet he uses: Google Review Cheat Sheets
(19:27) How leads are nurtured
(22:17) How he’s using webinars
(30:57) How he converts webinar attendees to customers
(32:37) An overview of his product offerings
(41:17) The downside of continuity
(43:37) Where his customers are located
(45:17) How he leverages the telephone
(52:17) How to get others to send email sponsoring you
(57:17) How he’s using direct mail
(58:17) How he uses postcards with personalized landing pages
(1:04:17) How he’s running ads on LinkedIn
(1:08:17) How long it took him to get his ad spend back
(1:11:57) How long it took him to get his first client
(1:18:27) The benefits of a Mastermind
Links
LocalSearchForDentists.com
Infusionsoft
Brian Horn
Private Website Link
7 Figure Local Marketer
Best Buyer Formula
Additional Resources
Graig gets great results using simple text like this.
There’s nothing complex about this formula.
More About This Episode
The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.
It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.
Listen Now
Transcript
Trent: Hey there, bright idea hunters. Welcome to the Bright Ideas podcast.
I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid, and this is the podcast for marketing
agencies and entrepreneurs who want to discover how to use content
marketing and marketing automation to massively boost their business.
On the show with me today is an entrepreneur by the name of Graig Presti.
He’s the founder of localsearchfordentists.com and you are in for a real
treat in this interview because I ask Greg a truckload of questions and I
drilled down for detail on all of them. He’s going to explain to you how he
built his local marketing company that serves dentists.
He did a million dollars in his first year. Three years in, he’s doing
almost $4 million a year. His profit margins are off the charts. He’s got
hundreds of customers, and he has automated virtually the entire sales
process. I shouldn’t say “virtually the entire” — he’s automated the
entire sales process and so attracting new clients for him is not a
challenge. When you listen to this interview, you’re going to hear exactly
what he does. There are gold nuggets galore in this interview.
Before we get to that, I very quickly want to tell you about the Conversion
Tactics Toolkit at brightideas.co. I do a much better job than the average
website at converting my site visitors into subscribers and then those
subscribers get converted within my marketing funnel into customers. In the
Conversion Tactics Toolkit, which is a four-part video series, I’m going to
open up the kimono. I’m going to show you exactly how I do it all. It’s all
free. All you’ve got to do is go to brightideas.co, enter your e-mail
address, and you’ll get your first video right away.
So with all of that said, please join me in welcoming Graig to the show.
Hey, Graig, welcome to the show. Thanks for making the time.
Graig Presti: Hey, Trent, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Trent: No problem. So for the folks who don’t know who you are yet, please,
real quickly, who are you and what do you do?
Graig: Well, my name’s Graig Presti and I’m the CEO and founder of a
company called “Local Search For Dentists”. Basically what we do is we help
dental practices all over the world, really, we have clients all the way
from the United Kingdom to here in the United States leverage the Internet
and start to get more patients, more phone calls, and more bottom-line net
profits. The way that we do that is through a lot of Internet tactics and
so on and so forth, but we’ve really had some good success with being able
to do that and I’ve grown the business quite quickly in the last two to
three years.
Trent: Terrific. So, for the folks — I know that I’m like this whenever
I’m listening to a podcast, I always do this and I hope you don’t mind –
let’s talk about the results that you’re getting now and then I want to go
backwards and have you explain to everyone all the strategies and tactics
you’re using to get those results. So can you talk a little bit — if
you’re willing to, of course — about number of customers and maybe top-
line revenue that your firm is generating?
Graig: Sure, and if you hear someone blowing in the background, they’re
doing the landscaping right now at the office, so I apologize for that in
advance. I didn’t know that they would be coming today.
Really, the key way that I built my business so fast was the fact that I
was able to automate all of my marketing and all of my sales to occur all
the time, seamlessly without me, so we were able to therefore have a
minimal staff because everything we were doing was completely automated. We
use InfusionSoft to automate our marketing. I’ve tried a bunch of different
other things but, for me, the InfusionSoft, like I was telling you earlier,
basically I’ve used it since its inception and there really is no other
software out there that you can sync up direct mail, sales funnels, e-mail
marketing, SMS marketing, and then syncing up automated webinars.
There’s really no other system out there that allows you to do that. You’d
have to have 1,000 microworkers doing what you need them to do, so without
out it, we wouldn’t have had half the growth that we’ve had.
Trent: So how big’s the company now?
Graig: In terms of employees or . . .?
Trent: Revenue. Give a range.
Graig: Revenue? Well, we went in our first year, we went from $0 to $1
million in revenue in 12 months and this year we’re going to do over $3.5
million dollars in just under three years.
Trent: That’s not a bad business, my friend.
Graig: No, and it’s a very good business and the reality is we’ve become
very profitable because of what I’ve said, where, we’ve automated
everything. We don’t have huge overhead. We don’t need 50 employees. We
only need a small team and as long as the little engine is running in the
background, we’re good to go.
Trent: So let’s talk a little bit about that. I don’t normally ask this but
you alluded to it: you’re very profitable. Do you mind sharing what the
profit percent is?
Graig: Yeah, I don’t mind. It obviously ranges from product to product but,
in general, our company’s going to run around a 40% profit margin.
Trent: Wow, that is phenomenal. All right, and how many employees –
because I know when I ran my old service business, and I didn’t know
anything about automation back then — I needed about one employee for
every $100,000 of annual revenue. So how many full-time employees do you
have?
Graig: Well, to your question — let me back you up. Your little formula
that you used applies to your business a little bit, but you can really
scale ours a little bit more because we’re Internet-based, so it really
comes down to utilizing a system and then putting clients into that system
so then you don’t get out of that system. So we can basically crank out
more work with less people.
Right now we have, I’d say — I like to break it up between operations,
which is fulfillment, and sales and marketing. So on the operations side,
we have about 12 people. Some of them are outsourcers, some of them are
internal employees doing the fulfillment inside of things.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: Then on the sales and marketing side of things, you have really four
people, including myself, because I do handle the marketing. I don’t write
the copy, but I handle sort of the campaign-building and things like that,
so about four. The reason we only really needed three to four people on the
sales and marketing side is because we’re so systematic with our marketing
that I’ve figured out how much I need to spend to acquire a client, what’s
my most profitable activity, and all I do is I just put leads into that
system. I don’t try to get fancy and that’s really all we’ve done.
Trent: All right, and we’re going to talk about that. Before we get into
that — because I know that a lot of people that are in my tribe that are
going to listen to this interview, they are either looking to start a
business, and I do everything I can to encourage them to start what I call
a “real business”, which is one like yours that has customers, as opposed
to some goofy fly-by-night, get-rich-quick thing that you see all over the
Internet, which I don’t believe in those.
Then the other portion of my tribe is marketing consultants–or the next
biggest portion, I should say, is marketing consultants who, by and large,
are one-person shops and I don’t think too many of them are getting rich
and they’re all looking for ways to get more customers. In one of my
courses called the “Best Buyer Formula”, one of the very first things I
talk about is pick a profitable niche, so do you want to talk a little bit
about why you picked dentists versus all the other niches you could’ve
picked?
Graig: Right, right. It’s a good question. I get asked that at every dinner
party I go to because that just sounds so crazy to people, like, “Why
wouldn’t you just try to conquer the world?”
Trent: Why not just be everything for everyone?
Graig: Why wouldn’t you just do everyone? It’s hard to explain that to
someone who might not think the way that I think and the way that you think
and so on and so forth. It’s a very logical thing why I chose dentists.
Well, I use this in any time I look at going after it for any niche, is
there’s like three to four criteria.
Let’s just take dentists for example. One, their customer transaction size
is high, so their average customer value is going to be anywhere between
$1,000 and $3,000. That allows them to spend more money on consultative
services, i.e., Internet marketing, right? So now a service that costs $500
a month or $2,000 a month, if it gets him patients, is pretty palatable
because they know they only need a few to make money.
Trent: Yeah.
Graig: So it lowers price resistance naturally. Now, on the flipside of
that, if I was to go after, say, the chiropractic niche or plumbers or
roofers, well, the transaction size is a lot less and a lot less frequent,
so they’re not going to be able to essentially afford expensive services,
okay?
Then the second step with dentists is they have a lot of problems with
marketing and a lot of problems with technology, so they essentially need
outsourcers to do the work. They’re not going to do it internally mostly.
They need someone who’s an expert to do it. Then, on the flipside of that
is you need someone who has, essentially, the need for marketing. They’re
not a referral-based business. Dentists have to market externally. They’re
not like an M.D. who gets patients from insurance. I think it’s only like
20% of people get dental insurance. They need to go out and get new
customers and new patients so they need marketing, so it was very, very
specific as to why I chose dentistry — because they have the transaction
size to support the cost, they have the problems and need the marketing to
sustain their business, therefore they need a company like mine.
Trent: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. Okay, so now let’s roll up our
sleeves here and talk. Let’s start at the very beginning of the funnel
because nothing happens until you have a lead. It’s hard to make a sale if
you don’t have a lead.
Graig: Right on.
Trent: Please talk about InfusionSoft and automation as much as you like
because that’s the big thing that I’m trying to get people to understand,
is you shouldn’t be doing this stuff manually and obviously you’re not, so
please give as much detail as you’d like.
Graig: Sure. Yeah, I mean, just as a disclaimer, anyone who is trying to
half-ass it and not 100% automate their marketing and using something cheap
like iContact or AWeber, you really need to change that mindset because if
you really want to increase your income, you need to just bite the bullet,
go over and do something that automates everything. That’s just a
disclaimer. That’s not a sales pitch, that’s just the truth because I’ve
messed around with all of those things before.
But back to your original question, okay? For me, it’s a very simple Dan
Kennedy-style lead generation: put them through a simple sequence that
makes them more able to purchase and buy, right? Then there’s pre-
qualification steps in between there. We’ll do the typical lead source,
drive them to a landing page or squeeze page offering them a free report or
some sort of free content for an opt-in and then the opt-in takes them to a
low-end product office for $97. Then after they buy the $97 thing, we’re
trying to up-sell them into the big, multiple-of-thousand-dollar thing.
So that’s the lifecycle of our client. Now, not everybody’s going to take
that cycle, but anyone who doesn’t essentially take the $97 low-end offer,
they get put into a drip sequence that’s automated and then they get
marketed to constantly after that, both offline and online.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: Until they buy or die.
Trent: Pretty much just like my funnel.
Graig: So someone listening is probably going like, “That’s it?” Honestly,
I coach other people on how to become local marketers like myself and we
spend a day together and I map out this funnel for them — and obviously I
go into greater detail — they’re just blown away at how simple it is, yet
how effective it is.
All that, by the way, Trent, operates on its own. I don’t sit here pushing
a button 270 times a day. It just happens because of InfusionSoft and that
allows me to do that. Then one of the other cool things that I do is in
between those sequences and so on and so forth, is I can automate webinars
with Stealth Seminar to work with InfusionSoft, so I can literally use live
events to sell my services automatically, which is pretty cool.
Trent: Absolutely. Okay, so let’s go right back to the leads. How are you,
first of all, getting your list? Are you buying a list? Are you having a VA
going around and do Google searches and make a spreadsheet for you? Because
you’ve got to identify your targets and you’ve got to build a finite list.
Graig: Right, right. I have a very specific criteria and pet peeve of mine
that where all I do is I find the lead sources and then I let my marketing
copy drive the opt-ins and drive the leads because I don’t want to deal
with folks who are not really interested in the topic that I’m talking
about, okay? I don’t want to just buy a list of dentists and then just
bombard them with push marketing. I want people who are actually going to
be interested in my services, who that copy speaks to them, right? So
they’re like, “Well, I need to have that.”
The way that I do it is I have, just like a lot of my things is I don’t
like using just one lead source, so I use some sponsored e-mail blasts that
are through other dental companies. I do direct mail, where I’ll use
postcards and so on and so forth to drive them to a landing page. I’ll use
online traffic via LinkedIn and paid ads and I drive all those people to
one single lead source, so I’m getting a myriad.
I also have JV partners and so on and so forth but I’m not one to go out
and just buy a list or have a VA scrape anything or use any software
because I don’t want crap leads, right? I want people who are actually
raising their hand like, “Oh, you know what? I have that problem, I need to
get that free report.”
Trent: Now, are you using tracking links, Google Analytics tracking links
so that when you look at the traffic that’s going to this one squeeze –
because, I mean, you said you’re using one squeeze page regardless of where
you’re getting the lead from.
Graig: Well, when I say “one squeeze page,” I mean one templated copy
squeeze page. I have that copy myriad of times over tracking each lead
source, so what I’m doing is I’m not only tracking the lead source using
Infusion — which you know you can do, you can set it that way — and then
each lead source has their individual landing page. It looks the same but
it’s a different tracking mechanism, so I don’t really use Google for that;
I use InfusionSoft for that because they have their own dynamic page, so I
know for certain what’s going on there.
Trent: Okay, so these folks are coming from these variety of ways –
sponsored mail, direct mail, LinkedIn and so forth — they’re coming to the
squeeze page. What’s the offer on the squeeze page? And these are
prospective dental clients for you, I just want to be clear. I want to make
sure people know we’re not talking about your dentists and getting them
patients; we’re talking about how you’re getting clients.
Graig: Correct, correct, but the thing is that I need to focus on that. In
order for me to offer solutions to their problems, I need to understand
that they need phone calls, they need patients in order for my services to
speak to that problem, right? So, for me, one of my biggest lead source
magnets, if you will — because I’ve done a few, more than one — but my
best one has been my Google Review cheat sheets, which essentially is a
templated way for dental practices to get more Google patient reviews, five-
star Google patient reviews.
Essentially that’s what I’m giving them that template for free so they can
go out and start to get good patient reviews instantly on Google, and that
seems to be quite the little hot button for folks right now. Then that gets
them going into my sequence.
Trent: Okay. I’m just jotting notes here. Sorry, audience, I wish I could
write faster but I’ve got to have good show notes for you guys. Okay, so
that’s your number one lead magnet? Do you use anything else for a lead
magnet or is that pretty much . . .?
Graig: I have three to four free reports and so on and so forth. I have a
couple videos, stuff where I just put content out and then I have my
copywriter write it up and I’ll use that just to sort of shake it up. But
my bread and butter is what I just told you.
Trent: Okay. Let’s talk about the sequence that happens because when you
use InfusionSoft, they fill out this form and you’re applying some tags,
which is just a means of categorizing people and causing things to happen.
Walk us through the sequence so that we understand what is happening to
those leads, so we understand how they’re being nurtured.
Graig: Okay, so after someone opts-in, right, they give their name and e-
mail to get, we’ll say, the Google Review thing, okay, they are then sent a
follow-up e-mail automatically, providing the content that I said I would
give them. That’s important for people to understand that. You can’t just
give away crap. You do have to provide them with some really good stuff in
that follow-up e-mail because that, essentially, is your first introduction
to them, right? They need to trust you at that point and not think you’re
full of it.
So while that’s being sent, they’re also being flipped to an up-sell page
which sells them a $97 product.
Trent: Which is what?
Graig: Which is what?
Trent: Yeah, what is that?
Graig: It’s basically the ability to essentially look at what they’re doing
right now with their marketing and kind of give them a diagnostic on where
they’re failing and where they’re not failing.
Trent: Is this a loss leader for you? I mean, do you actually have some
manual delivery in fulfilling what they’re buying for $97?
Graig: Yeah, it is a manual thing but that’s on purpose.
Trent: Okay, and is it a VA that’s doing it or are you interacting with
them?
Graig: Nope, that’s actually my sales consultants will fulfill on that.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: Because it’s part of the sales mechanism, so it’s important that
they communicate the results to them in a proper way.
Trent: So what do you call that product or that report?
Graig: We call that like a “Dental Marketing Game Plan” is what we’ll call
it.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: And it’s okay that’s manual, by the way, because 50% of the people
that buy that $97 product buy the big one.
Trent: Yeah, which we’ll get to.
Graig: Sure.
Trent: Okay, so nurture sequence: deliver the content, deliver the up-sell
of $97 — or rather offer the up-sell — and what percentage of the people
who come at the top of the funnel buy the $97 product?
Graig: Well, it really depends on the lead source, right? Because sometimes
the house list is going to convert better than a cold list, so about 25% of
the people take the up-sell. But even though they don’t take the up-sell
doesn’t mean we just stop and give up, right? Because the majority aren’t
going to buy anything, right?
Trent: Right.
Graig: So then they go into, really, just a four-step sequence of
delivering over five days more content — give them an invite to a webinar
in there, give them a video that they can watch, all sort of breeding
content, breeding trust with me, right?
Trent: And is it you on the video and your voice on the webinar?
Graig: Oh, yeah.
Trent: Because you’re trying to get them familiar with you.
Graig: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it’s me. It’s me all the way around, yeah. It’s
more so they can identify with me because here’s the thing: in this day and
age, man, e-mail marketing is just going to get tougher and tougher and
it’s really getting hard now. So without being recognized in the inbox and
being recognized as the go-to person and the authority, man, it’s hard to
sell.
Trent: Yeah.
Graig: It’s hard to sell.
Trent: It’s why I do podcasts and probably the same reason you do them.
Graig: Right, right, right, and so what we do, one of the other things too
is once people are on my list, right — so those are people that opt-in,
they’re on my list, right? So I’ve dripped content to them, they know me,
they hopefully trust me — not everybody’s going to trust me, some people
are just going to ignore it but that’s okay; you actually want that in some
folks — is every month we’re doing a promotional webinar driven to promote
sales. All we’re doing is re-inventing the copy around very similar topics
so that they seem new and then we go out and we sell more stuff every
month, doing it that way, so we’re actually holding virtual events one time
a month.
Trent: And are those one-time-per-month virtual events actually live or are
they recorded?
Graig: Of course not. Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. I would
say most of the time, most of the time they are evergreened most of the
time.
Trent: Yeah, and some people are like, “Oh, you’re fooling people.” But
you’re not because I think most people know, but it doesn’t matter. I read
a study and it was like 86% of people that attended webinars actually
preferred the recording because that way they can watch it on their on
time.
Graig: You want to know the real answer to that question?
Trent: Sure. Yeah, please.
Graig: The real answer to that question is that most people surveyed in
this country actually think infomercials are live television.
Trent: No way.
Graig: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s a hard, proven thing, stat. I’m not
making that up and the reality of that situation is that you should never
feel bad for automating and evergreening everything because some people are
just always going to believe it’s live even if you tell them it’s recorded.
Trent: Yeah.
Graig: So there’s a reason infomercials convert like crazy is because of
that.
Trent: Is that a dog?
Graig: It is my dogs.
Trent: No worries. I like live action on my podcasts. Okay, so, again, I
want to make sure that everyone understands this: they opt-in, they get the
content, they’re all going to see the $97 up-sell, if they don’t buy the up-
sell, they’re going to go into a five-day nurturing sequence of more
content, and then they’re going to get dripped on and then probably going
to see an offer once a month to attend your live event, correct?
Graig: That is correct. They will get sort of driven to opt-in for a live
event once a month, yeah.
Trent: Okay, and the content on the webinar, can you talk about that?
Graig: I can’t. Now, I’m going to disclaimer this: I don’t just have one
webinar. I don’t just sell one thing, right? The webinar content’s going to
depend on what I’m promoting that month and maybe it’s a launch, maybe it’s
not a launch. It just depends on what I feel is going to work that month
from a CEO perspective I want to know what do I think is going to make us
the most amount of revenue this month, so sometimes it’s a long-term
strategy, sometimes it’s just what we do every month.
So what was your question again? I’m sorry.
Trent: Just the content of the webinar, so I’m assuming . . .
Graig: Oh, yeah. The content of the webinar — and this may fly in the face
of what a lot of people say, but it works — yes, I focus on content of the
situation, so whether it’s dental marketing or some sort of dental
marketing, Internet dental marketing, whatever it is, yes, I focus on
content, but I’ve shifted the paradigm where the old way of doing it used
to be, “Oh, just give them amazing, amazing stuff that they can do for like
80% of the webinar and then 20% can be the pitch.”
I did that for a while and it did do well, but then I decided, since
everybody’s doing it, why don’t I just do the opposite of that? I’m just
going to try to sell from the get-go. Sure, I talked about content and what
you should be doing and I did put them through sort of a problem and
agitation and then solving that problem, but I just flat-out made it a
video sales letter, which I don’t know if your audience will know what a
video sales letter is. Do you want me to explain what that is?
Trent: Yeah, go ahead, please.
Graig: Okay, a video sales letter — and I’m sure everyone has probably
seen one before, they just maybe don’t know what that name is — a video
sales letter is basically a PowerPoint slideshow on video of just written
word and someone speaking to that written word in black-and-white. It’s not
a fancy Keynote presentation, it’s not a fancy PowerPoint presentation with
these crazy images. It’s just spoken word to written word is what it is and
they’re just essentially reading it.
The idea behind that is to keep the person engaged and they actually read
along with you as you’re speaking so they’re soaking up that information
more. I decided just apply that to all my webinars and everything’s going
to be a video sales letter now. Even if it’s a webinar, I’m just going to
make it that type of style and, man, I tell you, my conversions went up 20%
by just doing that and that’s how I launch everything now. Everything.
So my webinars really are a video a sales letter. I kind of scrapped the
content and I know that sounds crazy, but . . .
Trent: Just so that me and everyone else understands this, everyone of your
webinars is black text on a white background and your voice is reading
exactly what’s on the screen.
Graig: You got it.
Trent: I love it. All right.
Graig: All my friends, by the way, all my buddies who are entrepreneurs and
Internet marketers and all this stuff, they think I’m crazy.
Trent: Yeah.
Graig: They’re like, “You’re the only one I know that does all that crazy
stuff and that’s how you launch everything?” I’m like, “That’s why it
works.”
Trent: Yeah, sometimes simple is best, man.
Graig: Because think about it this way: if you’re in consulting — so like
you said a lot of your people are consultants and maybe coaches and
marketers and so on and so forth — everybody does a free demo, a free
webinar, a free evaluation. Everyone does that in some fashion or form. I
mean, I even see e-mails these days — that’s how I know it’s getting bad
out there for people — is they’re bribing people to get on their webinars
and do taped demos, like giving them Starbucks gift cards and $25 Visa
check cards. I’m like, that tells me that they don’t know what to do, other
than bribe their prospects to absorb their crap content.
So doing it my way, that’s why it works so well, because everyone’s doing
these demos and webinars and real soft stuff.
Trent: It’s a way of definitely separating the folks that are seriously
interested and likely to take action from the folks that are kicking tires.
Graig: Sure, sure.
Trent: Okay, so I’m at the point now in your funnel where I’ve seen one of
your webinars. What’s an offer look like? What’s the call to action on the
webinar?
Graig: Well, the call to action is buy because here’s this great package
with these great bonuses that I’m offering to the first 10 people, and if
you’re not one of the 10, then that’s okay but you’re just going to miss
out on this great opportunity, so go hit the button below this video, go to
the order page and we’ll talk to you.
Trent: So give me an example of something that you’ve sold via this method
recently, like was it a $1,000, was it a $5,000 deal?
Graig: Well, I’ve always done more expensive products. In my world, I would
deem them expensive, medium to expensive. I’ve never been the cheap person.
I’ve never been the low-end $100 guy, but just recently we did come up with
a low-end offer, which was a press release product where we offered a very
inexpensive, it was $200 to set it up and it’s a $97 a month subscription
and we’re offering some press release marketing for that and that’s the
least expensive thing I’ve ever offered.
But it did quite well. We sold 30 in a night.
Trent: Well, that’s good. That’s three grand a month in continuity for you
right there from one webinar.
Graig: By the way, the goal of having that lower-end sort of nugget is not
to really make any money off of it. It’s okay, the money part of it is
okay, it absorbs some of the cost, but I really want to get those folks
into my other programs, so now I have someone who’s actually paying us, we
can prove results, and now we can really show them how we can even really
ramp it up for them.
Trent: Let’s talk about your products for a minute. Let’s get out of the
marketing funnel for a second. Don’t worry, audience, we’ll come back to
this. But I want to talk about what are you offering to do for people?
Graig: We have “the big three” is what I call them, so we have our big
three products. Now, we don’t do any sort of a la carte stuff. We don’t do,
“Oh, you can pick a Twitter account and we’ll create a Twitter account,”
“Oh, pick a Google account and we’ll create a Google account.” We don’t
really operate like that. It’s really just a one-thing-or-not. You can’t
pick-and-choose what you want type of deal.
Our first product is really our local SEO product, which is basically
helping dental practices get ranked in the cities that they serve via
Google, via Bing, via Yahoo!, utilizing a bunch of things within that.
Trent: And what do you charge for that?
Graig: That one is $2,500 to set it up and $500 a month continuity after 30
days and it is a 12-month contract.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: The second one that we have is Google AdWords management. If people
don’t know what Google AdWords is, it’s basically managing, creating, and
monitoring dental marketing ads for our clients on Google and their various
ad networks, so that way they can get more phone calls, more traffic, and
that’s $699 a month and that includes your budget on Google and your
administration fees. There’s no hidden costs or anything. It’s $699 a month
and that’s a four-month agreement.
Trent: Now I want to clarify something. Does that include the cost of the
ads or that’s just . . .?
Graig: Oh, yeah, that’s everything.
Trent: So they spend $700 a month and you’re going to spend some portion of
that $700 on the actual ads and the rest is kind of your profit margin.
Graig: Correct, and the reason that I structure it that was is because it’s
advantageous for us as the company to run their campaign at 100% premium
efficiency because we don’t want to waste any of the ad budget because we
want to keep them at the top and we want to make money, so they look at us
like the good guy, not the bad guy.
Now, the way most companies price their pay-per-click campaign is they’ll
say, “Okay, well, it’s $1,000 budget minimum and we take 30% of that.” So
if you want to do $2,000, they take 30%. Whatever it is, they take 30%.
Problem is the customer always looks at you like the bad guy, so now
they’ve got to pay Google one thing and then they’ve got to pay your pain-
in-the-butt another thing and if it doesn’t work, they get mad at you no
matter — they don’t get mad at Google, they get mad at you.
So I looked at it as let’s just get a bunch of ads going and we’re just
going to crank down on this, make sure we know our keywords, and that way
our client’s going to get the most out of their campaigns. Because some
months and some days we don’t get any money on our PPC, but that’s okay
because we know our clients are doing better and we know we’ll make that up
at some point.
Trent: So out of $700, how much is left for you, typically, for profit?
Graig: It depends on the city and the area and the client, but that product
really does quite well. That’ll run at a 40% margin.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: Sometimes more.
Trent: And how about the next product?
Graig: Then the next one is our reputation management product that I don’t
actually call it “reputation management” — most people would know
“reputation management” on this podcast — I call it “revenue protection
program” because reputation management implies that you have a reputation
problem and, at that point, now you’re being reactive. I like people to
protect their revenue sources
That means even if you don’t have a reputation problem — say you have no
bad reviews. Let’s just say you’re squeaky clean. Well, the problem is that
you’re not putting your best foot forward because 9 out of 10 patients are
Googling you before they call your practice. So if you’re disorganized and
have nothing done professionally and no review sites on page one and your
Google reviews are slim to none, they’re not going to trust you.
But if you have press releases from FOX News, CNN, third-party media sites,
video on YouTube of your best patients talking about how you’re the best
dentist they ever went to, you’re going to close more cases and you’re
going to have more revenue in your practice. In the event, somewhere down
the line when you get a bad review — not if, but when you get a bad
review, which is bound to happen — you’re protected because you just spent
this amount of time letting us market your practice so that way you’re
almost indestructible on the web.
So if they go to Ripoff Report or Pissed Consumer, you don’t really have to
worry about it because, number one, we’re on it, but on the second part,
you’re protected because you have all this great PR as opposed to none.
Trent: So I want to ask a question about this then. Essentially what this
boils down to is you’re building up so much positive PR that when someone
leaves a negative review, it’s not going to rise to the top because, as a
percentage of the overall reviews, their negative review is negligible. Is
that correct?
Graig: Right, that’s correct and they may never see it.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: For example, I did have a dentist in Louisville who had a patient go
onto — and he was a client of my other services, actually — but he had a
patient go onto Pissed Consumer and say that Dr. Larry gave him a metal
mouth. Talk about a bad review, right? “Gave me a metal mouth.” Well, every
time you Googled his name or his practice, it was like the third spot on
Google in big, bold letters saying this poor dentist gave this guy a metal
mouth.
He was like, “I’ll hear about this all the time! Patients are saying, ‘Do
you know this guy said this? Do you know this?’” He didn’t know what to do,
so we essentially plugged him into our revenue protection program and that
Pissed Consumer site is on like page 15 of Google, never to be seen again.
Trent: So you just produce so much good stuff that ended up being newer
and, because of press releases and so forth, ranked better than the bad
stuff and literally just it pushed down, made it go away.
Graig: Yeah. Yeah, we nuked it. Yeah, it got nuked.
Trent: What are your customers paying you for this service?
Graig: That one is $1,000 to set up everything and $497 a month not only to
maintain the rankings of that content — which, by the way, you can’t just
do it one time and think it’s going to stay up forever. You do have to do
some Internet stuff to do it and make it stick. So we do that for the
months after that and then we monitor the reputation and so on and so forth
after that for $497 a month.
Trent: And what are you doing to monitor it? Are you just using Google
Alerts or is there a special tool that you use?
Graig: We have some proprietary software we use. I mean, obviously, we do
have Google Alerts because they’re quick and nice, but we do have some
reporting tools that we use.
Trent: Okay. So is there anything else in your product portfolio or is that
it?
Graig: That’s pretty much it. I have one program that is basically specific
to implant dentistry. Are you familiar with dental implants? Do you know
what they are?
Trent: Help me out.
Graig: Okay, basically dental implants are a way for people with dentures
and missing teeth to get permanent teeth.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: So this is going to sound awful, but what they do is they drill a
metal post into your jaw and then they put a crown on it and you basically
have stronger than real teeth, so you can go out and eat a steak and smile
and you’re going to have these until you die. Here’s the good news: you’re
going to be happier and your wife’s going to love your new smile, but
they’re $1,000 to $1,500 per tooth.
Trent: Per tooth, yeah. Isn’t this what people call . . .?
Graig: The benefit to that is that every new patient to a dental implant
dentist is worth more, so I decided to come up with an Internet marketing
program that gets more implant patients coming to practices.
Trent: Okay. What do you call that?
Graig: I just call that “Local Search Dental Implant Marketing Program”.
Trent: Okay, and what do you charge for that?
Graig: That one is, we’re charging, I believe, $3,000 to set it up and $697
a month.
Trent: Okay. What percentage of your top-line revenue is recurring?
Graig: What percentage of my top-line revenue is recurring?
Trent: Yeah, because every product you’ve described to me has some kind of
monthly fee, which is what we want.
Graig: Yeah, no, you may have duped me. I have to pull up Infusion — I
actually don’t know that number. You want to know why I don’t know that
number — and this is actually a very good lesson for everyone listening –
because I was part of a business that declined because of its gluttony with
continuity. Continuity is phenomenal. I don’t sell anything without it. I
never will ever.
It’s the best thing in the world, don’t get me wrong, but here’s the
problem: continuity in subscription fees can make you gluttonous. They can
make you forget about the fact that you still need to retain and sell
stuff. So what happens is once a business sort of starts to lean and only
lean on its subscription income, it will die.
Trent: Because you get lazy and stop looking for new customers.
Graig: Correct. For example, this is actually a good lesson for your folks
because just recently we had a bit of a bad stretch. We had some retention
issues with our clients, not because of performance on our part. I think it
just happened to be we weren’t doing the right things to maintain some
customers. We plugged some holes, but here’s what started happening was we
started not retaining and adding new customers and all we did was live off
our continuity.
Well, you have a few customers leaving every single month, before you know
it, you just lost 20% of your revenue, so I don’t know that number but the
reason I don’t is because I know that I have the continuity. I focus only
on new sales and retention and the rest will take care of itself.
Trent: Because if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Graig: Right, so if I know we need to hit 10 new customers a month and we
hit that above, I know that we’re where we need to be. If we do three to
four, I know we’re screwed because we’re basically going to be living off
of continuity and that just drives me nuts.
The last business I was a part of, that’s how the business died. I had a
company that was doing $15 million a year that went down to barely doing a
million because it lived off its continuity.
Trent: Wow. How many of your customers live or work within driving distance
of you?
Graig: Four.
Trent: Out of how many.
Graig: Out of 400.
Trent: That’s what I wanted you to say. I want people to understand that
this is a business that doesn’t matter what town you live in.
Graig: No. No, no. That’s a minimalistic type of attitude because even the
people that I coach and consult on how to be local marketers have been
conditioned and predetermined to think that they can only sell local
businesses in their particular city and geography and the reality is that
is going to be your death.
Trent: So your sales process begins with online marketing, you make
extensive use of automated webinars, and the sales are, I’m going to guess,
either closed by someone clicking the “buy” button or are they ever closed
by one of your sales reps being on the phone and making the final sale?
Graig: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Trent: But they’re not doing it in-person, they’re not getting in their car
and going . . .
Graig: No, no dog-and-pony shows.
Trent: They’re just calling, they’re following-up with someone who is a
lead that has opted-in to your system, correct?
Graig: Correct.
Trent: So there ain’t no cold-calling happening in your shop.
Graig: Oh, no. We have never — and I’m proud to say this — ever, ever
cold-called anyone.
Trent: But yet the phone, very, very powerful tool.
Graig: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think people who don’t master the art of
selling on the phone and using language and scripting that works is really
doing themselves a disservice because the old-school way of doing it is
somewhat how like the pharmaceutical sales rep does it, and I’m not saying
selling pharmaceuticals is comparative to what we’re doing but think about
it: they have a territory, that’s their territory, they go and they get in
their car and they drive to their offices and they do a dog-and-pony show
and they’re giving away stuff and they’re doing this and they’re doing
that.
Phone sales is a great leverage, a leveraging point to very good marketing.
It should not be the other way around. Your sales should not be your
marketing because companies that are sales-driven and have a little bit of
marketing, they’re always going to be limited and may never be around
forever, but a company that is focused on marketing that has a sales team,
you always do well. Always, always.
Trent: It’s so much easier to hire people, it’s so much easier to train
people, it’s so much easier to retain people when they don’t have to make
cold calls.
Graig: It is. You know what’s funny? I have to tell this story real quick
because this is one, this is a funny story. My aunt is in sales, right? And
she just started doing this job where she works for a very prominent and
well-respected reputation management company in the auto dealer space.
They’re a very large, big, dumb company and they’ve got a lot of money to
burn, clearly.
So I was at her house the other day — we actually took her kids out to go
to Lasertron or whatever, laser tag — and she needed to work from the
house and she needed quiet so she could cold call. I asked her after we
came back, I’m like, “So tell me about how you’re selling these things.”
Which is basically it’s a reputation management sort of portal product for
auto dealers, not a very complicated sale. She’s like, “Well, I have to
make 40 to 50 dials a day.”
Trent: Ugh.
Graig: I’m like, “So where are you getting your leads from?” I’m like, “Are
they giving you opt-ins and you’re calling opt-ins? Where are they coming
from?” She’s like, “We just have directory sites that we just dial.” I’m
like, “So you’re cold-calling?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Ugh, what?”
She goes, “What I don’t understand is, I’m having trouble getting to four
sales a month for a $300 product for an auto dealer.”
Trent: Yeah.
Graig: She tells me — this is the kicker, Trent — she tells me that, in
the Chicago area, they just hired three more sales reps to do what she’s
doing, just dial. I’m like, “Okay, here’s a very philosophical difference
between businesses. There’s a difference between a sales-driven culture and
a marketing-driven culture. Very distinct things, very distinct things.”
A sales-driven culture like that company, they’re using their sales force
like lead gen. They’re saying, “We’re paying this person $15 an hour. We
want them to dial so they can get working leads and that’s just how it is.”
That’s the sales-driven culture. “And hopefully we get lucky and they pop a
sale.”
As opposed to a marketing-driven culture like what we have in my business,
where we wouldn’t even pick up the phone unless the prospect raised their
hands because what they want is what we are giving away, so therefore,
we’re not wasting man-hours, marketing material, energy, money on people
and things. They’re wasting it.
Trent: Plus, no one likes making those calls and nobody likes getting those
calls.
Graig: No. No, and you want to know the funny part about you saying that is
she told me, “I called on a guy who I got him on the phone, I actually got
through the gatekeeper and I got him on the phone” — because, remember,
these are big businesses, they’ve got a gatekeeper, meaning they’ve got
multiple receptionists — so she got the guy on the phone and she says, “I
want to get you on one of our webinars,” and he goes, “Ugh, seriously?
Another webinar? I’ve had five phone calls today of people asking me to get
on webinars, demos, more demos.”
I’m like, “Well, you’d better hope you’ve got a hearty appetite because
you’re going to get 100 more of those every, single time you call because
that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” You just look at that compared to
what we talked about today where people are only getting on my webinars
when they either pay my company, like fork over $100 or $300 or whatever,
or they’ve raised their hand and said, “Hey, I love what you’re saying. I
would like to learn more.” No problem, but you have to get on this webinar
first. They’re going to sign up for the webinar and not complain.
Trent: Can you give the URL of one of your landing pages? I’d love to look
at it.
Graig: Let me check and give you a good one here. Let me pull one up. Ask
me another question and I’ll pull one up.
Trent: All right. Well, now I’ve got to think of another question to ask.
Oh, yeah, while you’re pulling up, let’s talk about your podcast because I
know that you’ve got one.
Graig: Yeah.
Trent: How’s that working out for you?
Graig: It’s good, it’s good. Okay, here, I found one for you.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: Go to localsearchfordentists.com/googlereviews.
Trent: All one word, no hyphens or anything like that?
Graig: Yeah, all one word.
Trent: Okay. Folks, if you’re listening to this . . .
Graig: There’s going to be audio on that, by the way, if you want to shut
that off.
Trent: Yeah. For the folks that are listening to this while you’re driving,
don’t worry, I’ll put this in the show notes, this link, so you’ll be able
to get to it and at the end of this episodes I’ll give you the link to the
Bright Ideas, where on the blog you’ve got to go to get to this interview,
so fear not. Don’t be trying to take notes while you’re driving.
Graig: Yeah, that landing page I just gave you is really good for cold
traffic, meaning a lot of paid media and such. It’s pretty good.
Trent: Now, is this any particular plug-in that you used to make this
landing page or is this just somebody did HTML?
Graig: No, we made that one, we made that one. We made that one in-house.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: But I know this is a template of something. One of my buddies told
me, “Oh, yeah, that’s a whatever page,” and I went, “Well, I saw it, I
liked it, we just made it.”
Trent: Yeah. What’s the conversion rate on this page?
Graig: This one has a 50% opt-in on cold traffic.
Trent: Very nice. Okay.
Graig: I only use this one on — and when I say cold traffic, meaning not a
house list. I only use this one on paid media.
Trent: Okay, so you’re spending money on, say, LinkedIn ads, for example,
and you’re driving them to this page.
Graig: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that’s right.
Trent: All right, I want to go back, actually, to the top of the funnel
because I don’t know that I got enough detail. So, sponsored e-mail — we
didn’t dive into that all, so if it’s okay, I’d like to go back and just
talk a little bit more about that particular one and some of the others. So
if someone wants to market to dentists — like you’re doing — how do they
go about finding — first of all, explain what sponsored e-mail is. I’m
sure everyone gets it, but in case a few people don’t, explain what it is
and then explain how you find people to buy it from.
Graig: Right. Okay, so I’m going to be a little private on this answer,
okay, for an obvious reason because lead sources are like gold. That’s my
money, so I will tell you how to find them, essentially, but I will not
tell you where and who, okay?
Trent: Sure, all right.
Graig: So how about that?
Trent: That’s fine.
Graig: Sponsored e-mail blasts — and this is something no one does in any
sort of business, and not necessarily dentistry, and this is what I teach a
lot of the people that I coach on how to be local marketers is there are
people out there who have herds or subscription or magazine companies or
whatever it is, educational companies, that have e-mail lists of people
that open their crap and read it. They have maybe never thought that they
can monetize the e-mails that they send out.
Essentially what a sponsored e-mail blast is, let’s take eye doctors, for
example. Say you want to target LASIK surgeons with marketing consulting or
something like that. Let’s just take them for example. You can go and find
publications, whether it’s continuing education, Eye Doctor Magazine, any
sort of print, maybe there’s blogs, forums, where these guys and gals hang
out and get their information from. You can use this cool little thing
called Google to figure it out, where those things.
Some may have media kits where they do offer sponsored email blasts, you
just didn’t know about it. It’s, say, $1,000. Now, in exchange for that
$1,000, they will send pre-approved e-mail content out to their list from
you with basically an offer: “Here’s my free report, here’s my Google cheat
sheet.” Then you get to keep the leads, you pay them the $1,000. Done deal.
Now, here’s a cool way to do it, is sometimes these media companies never,
ever think to monetize their e-mail list like that. They sell print space,
they sell banner ads, but they never think that by clicking a button they
can make $1,000. And you’ll keep coming back for more if it works, so what
I tell my people is find a community of people in the niche that you want
to go after, find the key-holder to the e-mail list. If they don’t offer a
media kit or something like that, tell them you’ll pay them $1,000 to send
one e-mail out and if it goes well, you’ll give them $1,500 an e-mail and
buy four more of them. That is a way to get someone to mail for you
essentially, sponsor you in a way and I’ve done it a myriad of times
myself.
Sometimes they’ll say no. Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, we don’t want to do
that.” Sometimes they’re just not into it but, honestly, I know some of the
biggest names in the business in certain niches who, from a publication
standpoint, from a media standpoint, love the e-mail sponsored blasts and
they’re open to doing it.
Trent: Okay, and where does that rank in-between, let’s say, direct mail –
which we’ll talk about next — LinkedIn — which we’ll talk a little bit
after that — and sponsored e-mail? Are they roughly equal? Is sponsored e-
mail the best one?
Graig: Sponsored e-mail is the fastest way to cash.
Trent: Okay.
Graig: That’s the fastest way to build your list. It’s the fastest way to
make money but the problem is it saturates quickly, so it comes down to
really knowing your numbers when it comes to that. In the beginning, you’re
going to be like, “Oh, this is amazing! I got 100 leads from one e-mail.”
Well, in three months, six months, that might be 30 people, that might be
10. Who knows? So you need to have back-up. So that leads my lead source is
the e-mail blast but I also do a lot of direct mail. I do a lot of cheap
postcards and then I’d say just after that LinkedIn and other paid traffic,
not just LinkedIn but other outside traffic.
Trent: Yeah. Let’s talk about direct mail.
Graig: Sure.
Trent: So are you doing only postcards or do you do three-dimensional?
Graig: No. For lead gen, yes, and the only reason I have is because I’ve
been able to make money doing it, so I just know if I send these postcards
out, I’m going to get traffic, I’m going to get opt-ins and then we’re just
going to push them through. So right now, I do do other direct mail but
mostly I’m using postcards to drive traffic.
The other thing that I’m doing that nobody does is I use postcards to drive
webinar sign-ups.
Trent: So the postcards are either sending to a landing page like the one
you shared with me, this Google Reviews one, yeah?
Graig: Yeah.
Trent: Or a webinar opt-in page.
Graig: Correct. I also use what’s called a PURL postcard. Do you know what
a PURL postcard is?
Trent: No, I don’t, I don’t.
Graig: You don’t? Okay.
Trent: No.
Graig: They’ve been around for a while and they’re pretty cool. So PURL
stands for “personalized URL”.
Trent: Oh, okay.
Graig: So what that basically does is you print a postcard and it’ll say,
“Hey, Trent, look at this cool new thing on how to get 10 to 15 more
clients a month without lifting a finger. I made this brand-new website
just for you. Check it out: abc.com/trent.”
You’re like, “Wow, this person like made their own individual website for
me. Cool.” So you go to the computer and you type in “abc.com/trent.” You
go the landing page, and it says at the top, “Hey, Trent, thanks for coming
to this webpage” and then ins