Seth & Joe Laratro: Review Management: How Business of All Sizes Can Utilize Their Companies Reviews

Seth Price is joined by Joe Laratro, the founder and president of Tandem Interactive, on this episode of SEO Insider. Seth and Joe discuss how companies of all sizes can manage their reviews and how to use them to benefit your company. Joe also dives into his experiences with Google My Business and Local Service Ads and how both can help develop company strategy. Listen in to hear Seth and Joe discuss these best practices.  

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BluShark Digital

Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price founder of BluShark Digital taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price

Thrilled to have Joe Laratro here, the founder of Tandem Interactive, Joe, thank you for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, for those who don't know, Joe, Joe is not only very well liked guy in the SEO space, but is one of the driving forces behind PubCon. He's been a senior moderator there for years. Tell me about that journey, what you've seen, as far as, you know, the development of the industry, you sort of had a front row seat to all these changes over the last few years.

Joe Laratro

Yeah, so I started the industry in March of 2000, I had come from a very technical background that was a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. And I got the start kind of right at the beginning. And the company I was with, was kind of at the top of the industry, which was awesome. And I got to participate in conferences very early on. So I went to the first PubCon in Orange County, and I believe was back in 2001. And I met some of the founders of this industry. I mean, it was really, it was really cool. And I, I kind of got known there because at the time I was a spammer. I didn't know it. But I was hardcore spammer using Blackhat techniques using redirects and cloaking, like really bad stuff. But the person that taught me SEO, was a magician, like the guy literally started as a magician, and somehow made it into SEO. And that's who taught me and then I had to learn my way from there. But we had two of the engineers from ink to me, which was the largest search engine at the time. And it was really the OEM or back end search engine search engine of many sites. And I sat there and debated cloaking with them for half of the PubCon. And then Brett and I became good friends and I got to, I got to kind of ride his coattails with PubCon, for many years that it's a it's an incredible conference to be part of, in the industry started there as a very small group of people that were trying to find their way through it. And it evolved, and it didn't quickly evolve, it's actually I would say, a very slow evolution. Where at one point, you know, it was a cat and mouse game with the search engines, then the search engines realized they need to work with us. And they started like the Webmaster Tools and Search Console, and they started sending reps, they were sponsoring these conferences and, and contributing quite heavily to PubCon. And it was, there was a heyday there that was, you know, PubCon was not only an incredible educational experience, but it was also a wild social experience, parties and fun. And I mean, we were all we were all having a great time. And as it's matured, the search engines have kind of pulled back some of their spin there. And it's PubCon really has become just very educational. Right now with the pandemic. I don't think that our social aspect is quite what it used to be, even though we have these cool, happy hours. But the educational aspect is still amazing that I can sit there for two days and walk away with I mean, the most recent PubCon was focused on local search, you were a great speaker, I got to sit in on your session. But to see kind of what's happened there that it's it's really just education. And a lot of people are disconnected. A lot of people are working from home, a lot of the speakers that used to work very prominent companies are very isolated. And they're still you know, they're still kind of cranking along and still sharing great information. It's great to be part of it. But it's definitely like we've kind of like had this high and now we've got this maturing and who knows what, you know, a year from now they bring you imagine we come out of the pandemic, everybody's biggest opens back up suddenly, search engines have budgets again, and companies have budgets to go spend. And I mean, what if the next in person, instead of being like a half, you know, almost half scared is like a full throttle. Like, let's go let's celebrate, we've made it throw in, I don't know, it's kind of hard to say where.

Seth Price

I hope so, I'm not optimistic, I feel it's gonna be a slow dribble back. But that would be awesome. I was there, I got to catch some of the hay day and that it was something else. And the, you know, what I what I loved about the environment was that it was both newbies coming in, as well as the senior people. And I'd say more than most conferences, it was the accessibility to and you describe what you first got there. Accessibility to some of the thought leaders was I thought unique there, it was not us versus them, but rather, you know, everybody's sitting down at some bad Mexican restaurant with lots of beers, you know, sharing concepts and ideas in a way that really is not normal. A lot of you know, hire in other industries, speakers come in do their speaking and leave. And this is one where the driving forces would stay and that was almost equally as important. What went on in the hallways and at the bars at night as to what was going on during the session.

Joe Laratro

Yeah, even the name PubCon I mean They don't like saying that it was Pub is a bar. And it's not publishers conference, but in Yeah, that the concept, the original concept was that kind of camaraderie of sitting there having a drink and tell about your experiences, what's working, what's not working some new ideas, you and I, over the years, got to do that quite a few times and shared some great stuff. And not just about the industry, but even about business and light.

Seth Price

So I have loved that know, from your own point of view, you know, you've gotten really well known, particularly in the moving vertical, you know, it's sort of analogous to a lot of stuff I've played around on the legal vertical, as far as, you know, similar techniques and things. Talk to me about what you're seeing within that within the professional services or home service, I should say, in the home services, space, and where what you've seen going on over the last couple of years.

Joe Laratro

So, Home Services is always an interesting vertical for me, because you've got players that are national companies, it can be very dominant, very good at marketing, very good at, you know, customer, CRM solutions and managing leads. And then you got a lot of small businesses that depending on the market, you know, can thrive because of good word of mouth and reviews. I think that what, and I don't want to go too far back, because really, we're in a different world today. But you know, the pandemic and COVID accelerated that world in being online. And kind of just going on a quick tangent. One of the one of my takeaways from PubCon was they were they were talking about restaurants, and how the pandemic certainly, you know, accelerated full force, I mean, 10 years of innovation of restaurants having to go online, because there was tons of restaurants that didn't care about reservation systems, didn't care about Google, my business didn't care about their websites. And today, I mean, if you go to a restaurant that doesn't have a deal with Uber Eats or delivery service, an online presence with Google My Business with our hours, whether they're COVID friendly, they're not they're not in business anymore. I mean, it's kind of that simple. That's a that's a far extreme, I would say that the Home Services vertical is not that extreme. But the companies in the home services vertical that were able that were online, and then able to accelerate through this has been incredible. I mean, we've seen, we've seen 40% growth, since q3 of 2020, in the home services vertical, because people don't have money to or they, they're not spending money. In other places in their home, they want to spend money in their home, they're there. I mean, small bit small business owners, you know, they're not going on vacations, they're not traveling, the kids didn't go to Camp over the summer. I mean, there's a lot of a lot of disposable income that wasn't spent that could be reinvested in kind of in businesses.

Seth Price

And kitchens, fixing stuff you hadn't done for years, right. And then just this acceleration, you know, something we've seen, I've seen the legal space, which I assume is what you're sort of referring to, is that those people that report on, relied on referrals per word about didn't work as well during the pandemic. And those that were in digital really did Excel. So that like as a provider of digital services, it was sort of, you know, a great time to, you know, that there were more eyeballs than ever. One of the things that you and I have talked about over the years, navigating for to some significant large clients was sort of review curation. And looking at, you know, obviously Google My Business being the ultimate, but looking at all these other services where you can amalgamate reviews, wondered where you are today, as far as what you like, in the third party review world and what you know, where and how much effort is just like not Google, Google My Business reviews.

Joe Laratro

So before I give my opinion, I'll give the PubCon opinion that I walked away with from the most recent local search one. And I was a little surprised because the consensus from the group seemed to be that they only cared about Google reviews. They didn't care about Yelp anymore. They didn't care about these third party sites that had been building these big review databases of companies that they can show up on your business. And they were more worried about using tools like Trustpilot and Bird's Eye, reputation.com, to manage your Google review, more than anything else. Now. I don't know that I agree with that. But it was the consensus that I felt in you know, I kind of have...

Seth Price

A unique space, and we'll talk about that more in detail. But I understand what that where that consensus is coming from, because you get cynical and that Google may give love to one of them, but then they fall out. They lose a contract with water, they get pissed off at one and that one disappears, but remains.

Joe Laratro

Yeah. I would say that if I'm if I'm focused on reviews, I am focused on Google reviews first, and they seem to be doing more things to kind of promote getting reviews. I mean, in your own GMB, you can get a shortcode very easy to share that. I've seen a lot of success on SMS, Sharing for reviews versus emailing and when requesting that way, it seems just a little a little more personal if you're sending it on a phone.

Seth Price

Have you? Have you continued to work with your me you have a specific space, which every space has its unique nuances? Have you found things like Trustpilot to still deliver ROI? Or is it a distraction?

Joe Laratro

So from my point of view, I like the review platforms that are out there more in terms of being able to manage the reviews then generate reviews. So reputation.com, bird's eye, I haven't used Trustpilot. Lately, I used to, I used to use it. And like the platform, I still like the platform, but something that can kind of pop to the top troublesome reviews that make sure you're dealing with them or responding to them. Something that's giving you fast access to the amount of reviews that are coming in, you know, kind of the velocity, and making sure you're staying on top of it. I would say that disputing reviews right now seems to be a business that might be growing and kind of growing at a rapid rate. Because there's a lot of spam. I got one yesterday, I was shocked. We had an office in California that we shut down, I guess over the summer 2020. And for some reason I started getting these strange reviews on it, even though it's shut down. And then somebody's like, oh, well, we can help you get these reviews off, I'm like, Well, of course I can get these reviews off, they're not reviewing my business, and that business is closed. So I mean, it's easy, I could just shut that location down. But I didn't kind of realize I wasn't paying attention to it, where if I was using a tool, the tool and putting that more in my face, like you're getting these reviews, but you should be paying attention to them.

Seth Price

You know, one of the pieces I guess at scale, and again, it depends on the price point of your product, right? If you're doing somebody's doing a really inexpensive product, from restaurants to sort of like home services, where it's a small product, you know, the potential for reviews at scale is tremendous. As the price point moves up, there's sort of a lesser number of those widgets being sold. You know, any any thoughts or best practices you've seen on that continuum, when you have somebody that's doing like a news where, you know, you have X number of trucks doing X number of views, moves a day, the the the velocity of reviews must be tremendous. And that the issues, you know, in that industry to begin with before online reviews was horrific. I remember growing up in New York and like, there were companies that were famous for like renegotiating the price, once your stuff was on the truck and locked in, I assume that reviews have been a great equalizer in that world that it gets rid of the complete fraud. At the same time, you know, every move is fraught with parallel from timing to, you know, attitude to breaking of things, like, how do you deal with all of those different pieces where you're trying to present to the next buyer, the best possible results? And they're all these different issues? Do you find that, you know, as the digital marketing, consider the area to a certain extent that you have to sort of send word down into the first thing you say is do great work, and you'll get good reviews, but there are touch points, in addition, making an ask and or doing things to sort of inoculate negative ones figuring out whether you know, a Starbucks gift card to make up for a issue and in the process, what you know, are you finding it, you have to be more hands on to help make sure that the end review quality hits there, or is that really separated from the digital world in your in your experience?

Joe Laratro

So for me, it's kind of separated at the moment, it's, it's more separated, and maybe it should be and we're trying to be, we try to be involved as much as we can be. Because certainly if the review score is higher, we have a higher click through rate. If the stars are higher for the local service ads we're getting, we're getting more leads. So there's lots of benefits on my side, if the reputation of the company is is in better shape, what what we are allowed to participate in, let's say is more on trying to find fake reviews and spam reviews and get rid of those. On the proactive side. We're involved in some strategies, you know, I don't for me, it's more about incentivizing the person that's doing the work that if they get incentive for getting a positive review, it's a it's kind of a win win because one, they did a better job like if they if they know right away that they're gonna get rated or there's a good chance they're gonna get rated and they can get a bonus from getting a good rating, then they're doing better work and then they're more personable potentially with the customer and then they're able to ask for that review in a good way. If they did something and they broke something and even if they break something like you could break something and still walk away, you know kind of clean is you know, be apologetic and figure out how to get it resolved. Or you break Something and being asked about it and be like, well, we don't care, you have insurance, and then you know, certainly affects the company's bottom line.

Seth Price

Right? I mean, it's your your, it's not that you are gaming it but I have found a pretty good the higher price point that it becomes sort of, you can see you'd see basic reviews coming in, you gotta raise your game, but it is it is getting staffed by in. And I would think that at scale that that becomes a whole industry unto itself, you're doing the blocking and tackling on the fake reviews, and making sure they're they're letting you know when to respond, what's your, what's your feeling, and best practices on response and things like that to good and bad reviews.

Joe Laratro

So I think that there shouldn't be kind of a pool of canned responses, depending on who's doing it. Now, if it's, if it's a low level person, and that's their job, maybe they have five canned responses on both sides, good and bad. For doesn't like you always keep posting the same thing. And you can put it in a in a variety. But on the good side, I mean, thank them. And it doesn't always have to be the same thing. Same thanking, on the bad side, if it's can, there should be a variety, but all basically asking them to reach back out that you know, we want to help, we want to resolve the problem. If the person that's interacting is, is very integrated with the customer relations, then maybe they can be a little more custom and respond back. It's really about volume. And if if they have the time to really do custom responses back, I would recommend that. But companies don't always hire people that can sit there and just deal with that all day. Or they don't have time to deal with that like that all day.

Seth Price

One of the things I've admired about your operations, your ability to deal with national players with lots of local locations, that that is something that you know, is not easy to deal with, because you almost have two different constituencies they should be working together. Talk to me about balancing the needs of sort of an umbrella organization with local with locations that each need to have the love. But you know, giving love at scale is not easy.

Joe Laratro

Yeah, So this has been a fun ride, because I've worked with companies that started as decentralized and worked with each one individually. And then they kind of rolled up became very centralized in terms of management. When a company becomes very centralized in terms of marketing direction, I think it's a better play, because you can see everything at scale. But you do have the outliers. So on a day to day management basis, what we do is, we look at the outliers, we look at the top 5 or top 10 And bottom 5, bottom 10. And we can see what's happening there in usually make adjustments, that we don't make adjustments the entire group, but we can find those outliers, and then the average kind of comes back together. Now, with that, you know, sometimes you get exposed to you get exposed to competitive environments that you wouldn't have expected. So if we get an office that's in the bottom branch locations, in the bottom five, we look at it, we might see that they're in an area, for example, this has happened a few years ago, but Phoenix, so Phoenix in the home services industry got very competitive. And people started putting rates in their ads. And it was very unique. It wasn't it wasn't happening nationally, it was happening in Phoenix, and there were these very attractive but low rates, and they were destroying the market. And it was okay, well, we can play this game and we can put rates in there and then upsell them 10 different ways. Or we can you know, completely ignore it and focus more on our brand flag and other things that would work. But again, there's 80% of them run on the same strategy and the 20% You know, may need some custom customization.

Seth Price

I guess, there are nuances, whether in language or market factors, you know, that that is one of those, one of those areas, when you are dealing with those larger organizations, you know, you have your portfolio piece, how do you generally interact with? Do they with their in house? Team?, meaning, you know, for you to be able to get things done, you may know what needs to get done, but what have you seen as the more successful iterations where what you know, what is what does the company have that allows you to implement what you're seeing, you know, when you do notice, things that are outside the standard deviation. So, first..

Joe Laratro

First, first success for me has been patience, working with national companies, lots of locations, you have to have a lot of patience, or at least I've had to have a lot of patience with different teams because resources can always get pulled different directions and I may want to put something on the form that's going to track certain variables about the person filling out that form that I can later use for remarketing. And I've had to wait a year two years for the implementation of that, because it always gets back burner to other things that, you know, they think will make the business more money more quickly, or they're putting on fires. So patience, I think, I think is huge. Where we're, I've worked with teams that have helped me help to kind of our success is really having higher level people that come up with some really good ideas. So something that I may be in the trenches and just kind of always, not with the blinders on, but always just focused on making sure everything runs right every day, we don't always step back and kind of look at like, big picture, should we be trying something completely different? You know, should we eliminate form? Should we eliminate emails? Should we should we try to target different markets use different channels, I'm not always that good at kind of pulling back and saying, let's, let's go this route, because I'm so entrenched, and we're making money here, the performance is good like this, just keep going down this this path. And we should also be like playing with some of these guys over there.

Seth Price

You know, one of the things that, as you said, that I was just thinking about is that you're responsible for a large portfolio often, Ed, but there's a junior Joe somewhere who has one shop in one city, what you know, what, how have you sort of done you know, when you go to battle with some, some individual Junior you who who doesn't have to worry about this? Are there things that you've sort of been able to do where you your number one goal is you have to scale across the board, but then you very often are in micro battles against people that are sort of focused on something where you have two different responsibilities. Talk to me a little bit about that battle.

Joe Laratro

Yeah. So my, my perspective here, may not hold up all the time. But from what I've seen, you know, a national company with national leadership, big budgets, big volume, can be the small guy, I mean, and they're always worried about the small guy. But the only the only advantage that I currently see that the small guy has is better review management, the small guy in in a lot of the industries that I work with, can have the passion to stay on top of the reviews can build the relationships with the customers can potentially give a better service product. But in the grand scheme of things when it comes to lead generation, closing, closing, closing rates, booking rates cost per lead the big companies, when it's it's that review, management, maybe even the ease of the sale, because of the reviews, the small guys have an advantage.

Seth Price

Interesting. What do you see next? You know, where we've talked, we both spoke on LSAS. The reason PubCon? What are you What are you focused on for your clients in the coming quarters.

Joe Laratro

So for the home, for home services, I keep hearing next door, next door, next door, and I participate in next door not from an advertising but I pay attention to it, I think there's just so much noise there that I don't I really don't see it as being a real medium yet, I advertising the local service ads. And I meant to say this in my presentation that my last presentation that to me, the local service ads today have replaced what was formerly called AdWords Express. And I only know if there's still an AdWords Express. It's um, it's a very it's it's become a very simplified platform. That is very, it's very accountable. I mean, you can see how much money you're spending, it's very easy to track how much money you're making, it's, I think it's a, it's an incredible solution for small businesses that may not have a good lead management system, to be able to kind of test the waters of spending money and generating leads, and seeing what it really does for you. At the same time, though, that that platform has to evolve for the big companies to use it better. And they've got to open up API's and they've got a longer conversation. But on the review management side of the LSAs, if they had an API that made it very quick to be able to dispute the leads, go will be losing money, because a lot of their leads, they'd have to be getting credits back. So it's not in their best interest to give that kind of technology to companies that will be able to use it better and faster. And it's still a very manual process. But I think that for small businesses if the categories have to expand, and it's just it's a it's a pretty good product to not have to use an agency to have kind of a self serve. And again, if you're that small guys passionate about your business, you may even have the finger on the pulse of the business better of when you should be advertising on and off.

Seth Price

I get what you're saying like basically it should be and could evolve to so that you paid you need x number of calls. I'm very familiar the legal space lead gen is a huge deal. It's been consolidated with a few companies at this point. It's not As many mom and pops out there, but essentially I, when I saw the JMeter illegal, and I'm sure it's no different than home services where lead gen exists, that they are saying, Hey, we see a piece of demand in the market for this, but the lead gen space, a pretty slimy space at full development, meaning we're seeing a gift right now where they're giving it away to get market share. But I'm curious to see how this goes. I remember my first there was a woman who I dealt with lead gen for myself for the law firm early on, and she you know, he'd give me this much money. These are this is what this is, what a lead is, I'll dispute everything that's not illegitimate. And she said, Go ahead, dispute everything. So I was all excited. And I had about, you know, about half of them were legitimately the rest was garbage. Because Oh, yeah, no, I have a maximum of 20% you can dispute. And like, let's great for your business model. And it was devastated. That young lawyer was not a lot of resources. I was like, it was, it was it was a huge body blow. But I mean, Google, can't get to the point where if they make it too easy to dispute these leads, the economics will fall upside down. They're gonna need to charge multiple 3,4,5, etc what they're doing now, which they may get to anyway. But it's fascinating to sort of right now, it's all it's so cheap, that even if you pay for some that don't count in most markets that I'm seeing, I'm curious to see as it becomes more expensive, and like each lead will affect your ability to get ROI. Will they really move it up? Because you're right, I think your analogy a moment ago, talking about, you know, the their earlier iterations of clunky, non fungible, paid search, you know, people are spending a lot of money with it, you would think that they would add some additional benefits in what I'm most interested in, is whether all this pain in the ass background check that they've gone through, if that green checkmark is going to eventually make it to the organic repack. Because to me, if they really want to fight spam, I don't know how big it is in your space. It's huge in our space. But that would be one of those areas if they were serious about fighting spam, that could actually help dramatically reduce it.

Joe Laratro

Yeah, I mean, I think that they're doing a better job in general fighting spam in the GMB side. And I mean, and today, if you get a GMB listing approved, you make one change and it goes into suspicious activity and gets flagged, I mean, there's a lot more interaction. And I really don't just don't think that with COVID, they have the resources that you can, you can work within GMB fast enough, but because of COVID, GMB for some businesses, I mean, it's, it could be all of your business can going back to the restaurant space, if you don't have a GMB with the hours and the links to the delivery dudes and UberEATS. And all these things. I don't see how you're staying in business right now, even in the in South Florida. I mean, everything is open. And I can imagine in markets that are tighter and you can't go to restaurants, it's even worse.

Seth Price

In our remote, remaining minutes here, I'd love to get your thoughts. You know, you see, as we started the conversation, you've seen this from the the first row of of a lot of major thought leaders, what are some of the big sort of things that you are seeing in your crowdsourcing, the thought leaders in the space that you're like, hey, if you're if you're building an agency you're working in house that you should be most focused on. And what I love is sort of the flip side to conclude is, what do you see some of the things that are being talked about, but they're great to talk about, but may not really deliver results, the way that you know, they're great to talk about from stage, but they not convert the same way in reality when you're dealing with clients?

Joe Laratro

Okay, that's a tough one. Let's start with the second the sorry, the second half of the question. So two things that I would say right now are talked about a lot that, that maybe don't yield the results that you would hope they would yield. First one very specific is ad copy optimization, ad copy optimization, you know, they write articles about it, and oh, you're gonna have all this ad copy. And, and if you really look at today's paid search environment, and if you hit anything that has the LSAs, the local service ads, there's no ad copy, and people are clicking and calling and you're getting plenty of business without any ad copy. So how do you prove the point that if you're, you know, doing this amazing ad copy, that it's even relevant anymore, when you have these ads at the top of the page, that's it's kind of like positioning is more relevant than than the ad copy. So that's, that's one right now that I think is being talked about that is just it's a little bit tricky. Another one is conversion rate optimization. I mean, conversion optimization just sounds amazing. And you can play with chatbots. And you can do this AI and all this stuff. But when I've played with companies that are excellent at conversion rate optimization, again, if like, I don't know, I just don't see the I don't see huge benefits in it, if you've got a decently working website with, you know, decently working forms. So that's, it's kind of just two things, I think are talked about a lot, but the implementation of them is challenging and even tracking, the performance increases. I mean, there's so many variables that are happening right now that how do you show that you made two changes here on a webpage. And it should be easy enough to show the May two, eight and two changes on a web page and conversion rate went up 10%. But then, all of a sudden, something happens in the world. And two weeks, two weeks later traffic's down, gasoline prices spiked, and you don't know why you're suddenly not not getting business, because there's all these other variables. So that would say that, and then what was say the...

Seth Price

Concluding like, so where where do you put your money right now? If we say that meaning timewise? Like, what do you what's your best advice for people as far as like optimizing? You know, within it within an agency or a certain house? Where do you like, what do you think smart money is going to

Joe Laratro

Be a little bit more specific?

Seth Price

Well, meaning what techniques? What things? You know, having seen

Joe Laratro

that what's working for clients? Or what's what, what's..

Seth Price

working for clients? What do you what are you implementing? Where if you're looking forward, I'm asking..

Joe Laratro

Yeah. So I mean, I think LSAS are a no brainer. And here's a perfect example. So the guy that just did the landscaping in my house, he's got a great company, I mean, unbelievable machinery, super professional, he his presence online as a joke. I mean, he's really, he's got a terrible website yet. His GMB is not managed, I mean, it's all a mess. And we set up an AdWords account, small budget, targeting wealthy neighborhoods. And instantly, he started getting calls. And he's like, I can't believe my phone's ringing. And this guy has been in business for a long time. And he's getting very successful company, but he wants to grow in the right way, which is very nice homes, big, you know, big landscaping projects, things like that. And when I looked at his paid search, I was like, okay, but guess what, there's a, there's an LSA category for him. So I can do the same thing that's even potentially easier. And he's only paying for calls, pick the super targeted zip codes where he wants to be, you know, potentially can bigger homes on the water, more affluent areas. And it's, I mean, he should thrive, the problem is, he's not been able to take care of my house, because he's gonna have all this other business.

Seth Price

But that is not the greatest one, you buy and hold the wall things and you're like, you don't want to you want to tell your friends, but you know, you'll tell your friend and the service is gone, because he's not in a position to stay right

Joe Laratro

He's gonna, he's gonna end up being too busy. And I can almost guarantee it's, it's the end of January, that may, by the end of February, he tells me pause, like I can see where I'm going to generate too much business for him too quickly, at a fairly reasonable cost, that he's just gonna say, I can't handle it. And I mean, it's a great problem to have.

Seth Price

But isn't that the, as an SEO or as a digital marketer, are there moments where like, you know, half expect to see Joe was a half owner in the landscaping business next month, because you can see it, you see, where you can get the cost of acquisition low, you can get the phone to ring, you don't have any interest in the sausage making, you want to be out there, like pulling the trigger in the palm trees. But at the same time, you know, you know, where it can be done. And I think that that's sort of the interesting piece, as I look at different verticals, finding one where there is enough infrastructure, revenue and ability to scale because I see this, again, in legal space. If somebody is a solo, and they're doing, you know, 400,000 in revenue, you know, yes, you could spend 50,000, in digital marketing, but let's say to justify, you need a one and a half, to three to one return minimum. So now you're going to do 550, you're killing yourself in order to bring home an extra $50,000. So there's this very interesting world where you can see the ability, if there was a rational play on the other side that said, I'm going to add additional labor widgets, and additional customer service widgets to that mix. The question is, will they and it's, you know, you can see almost like you walk around life now, knowing what you know about making the phone ring, seeing opportunities, but knowing that there's likely not somebody there unless it becomes their passion to say, not only do I want to do landscaping, but I'm prepared to create the infrastructure to allow Joe to make the phone ring.

Joe Laratro

Alright, so hang on a quick side note, because you bring up a very good point. So I just had a buddy that I've worked with for years, he's doing a development project in Nicaragua, serve villas or something and your looks so cool. And he wants he wants me to, you know, kind of partner with him on the marketing says, Okay, I said, but we're taking the calls. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have my team answer the phone, and I'm gonna make the appointments and then your salespeople can call them back. But you want to track it, you want to know what the hell and I want make sure the calls get answered. I mean, it's really that simple that if I just put a phone number on a website, and I can say, Okay, you got this many calls. I guarantee if I listen to it, I get it. The bane of my existence. Yeah. So I said, I mean, I'll hire two people sit in the office and answer just answer the phone and then we'll, we'll book the reservations. You guys follow up, get them out there and see if they like to property great. But the first step of it, I want to own that because I want to make sure the ball doesn't get dropped on the call.

Seth Price

And isn't that crazy and that that and let that is where people end up creating their own call centers. I've never to do that I have 12 Call Center, but it's everything. It's everything when they call to speak to you. It's so variable. Joe, thank you so much. This has been awesome. I've appreciated get to know you over the years and watching your business thrive. And it's a difficult difficult time for many of us, but you seem to have done a solid job of of navigating and appreciate your guidance along the way. Yeah, thank you. I guess we'll chat soon.

Joe Laratro

I think everyone.

BluShark Digital

Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. episodes are available to stream directly on Blushark Digital's website.