Build A Marketing Foundation That Brings Better Leads with Emma Rodger

SEO shouldn’t feel like wizard dust you sprinkle on a website and hope for the best. We sit down with Emma Roger from Saltd Studio to break down what search engine optimization really is, why it has expanded beyond Google and Bing, and how AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini are reshaping what it means to “show up” when someone is ready to buy.

We talk about how Emma went from a professional ballet career to building a marketing studio, and how that creative and strategic mindset carries into business growth. You’ll hear what actually drives consistent lead generation for service-based businesses: a smart mix of referrals, word of mouth, Instagram community building, paid social media ads, and local networking. Most importantly, we dig into long-term marketing assets that keep working, like an optimized website, a strong Google Business Profile, and content that matches real search intent.

Emma also shares a practical SEO plan you can start today: use Google’s own suggested questions, write focused blog posts that answer them, and link those posts to your service and contact pages. We explore why consistency beats constant pivoting, and how to repurpose a single podcast into transcripts, SEO blog content, and social posts without reinventing your whole content strategy. Then we zoom out to brand messaging, including why your About page should be written for the customer’s goals and emotions, not just your resume.

If you want better visibility, better-fit clients, and a marketing system you can maintain, you’ll get a clear roadmap here. Subscribe, share this with a business owner who’s stuck on SEO, and leave a review with the one marketing question you want us to tackle next.

Transcript

Why SEO Feels Like Magic

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You sound like some of our clients who say to us that SEO, I don't understand it. You just put some words in there and it's like magic and all of a sudden it works out. And I always say almost, not quite. So SEO is search engine optimization. And these days it is no longer considered just Google, Bing, you know, those search engines. It's also considered AI. So ChatGBT, Gemini, those kinds of platforms as well. And uh basically what it is is setting up your foundational marketing so that it is discoverable when people put certain terms or questions into those search platforms.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Welcome again to the Commission Code Podcast. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and join us here today. We're here to help you increase your business revenue and have time to enjoy it. I'm your host, Morris Samson. I've been consulting and training business people for, well, let's just say over 40 years. We're focused on increasing revenue and having time to enjoy it. After years as a professional salesperson, I spent 32 years in the corporate world. I retired as Vice President and Chief Learning Officer of the Sales Department of a large insurance company, where we've designed and built and delivered training for over 12,000 professional salespeople. Now, I get to consult one-on-one helping people grow their business and organize themselves to make the most of the time they have. We also build online courses to support business owners in their work as they strive to build the business that they've always wanted. Our objective is really very simple. It's this we're here to help you get what you want from your business and your life. So right now, let's get on with this episode.

Ballerina Discipline Applied To Marketing

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Emma Roger is our guest today from Stalted Studios. And yeah, I gotta tell you, Emma's got a great story, and that's kind of where I'd like to just start our conversation. Emma, if that's all right. Ballerina to Marketing Spurt. Tell me, tell me about your story. This is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me, Morris. I'm really excited to chat with you today. So, yeah, I I would I like to say that my first career that I'm retired from was a ballerina. I spent about eight years as a professional dancer all over the country, many years training before that to get to that point. And one of my favorite things about having that opportunity was that I was able to see how dance is both very creative and very strategic. And it's creative in the way that you listen to the music, you flow with things, you have to kind of lay off of the other people on stage, the music, your costume, the colors, all these different things. So much goes into it to make a performance, you know, have this beautiful, captivating moment that the audience experiences from lighting to, you know, all these, you know, extra components, things like that that go into it. So that's very creative, but it's very strategic as well because you have to think about how you're executing everything, the decisions that you're making. You have to be very precise, thoughtful. You have to plan ahead. Um, even in a moment, you have to figure out, oh, I'm off balance, how do I fix this right in the moment, you know, optimize.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

So how do I not follow my face? Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

It's it's not just only, you know, muscle memory. So um so I took a lot of those experiences and applied them to marketing. During my dance career, I did work in social media alongside my dancing. So uh I helped a lot of the companies that I was dancing for with event marketing, social media, brand messaging, things like that. Um, and then also started freelancing with some other businesses through the connections, you know, physical therapy, gyms, restaurants, coffee shops. Um and so I learned a lot, kind of got started in the freelancing world in that way, and then eventually worked for a tech business for the marketing and then decided to start our business here.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

So it kind of I got a I got a dance question before we get into it.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Any any time on Broadway?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Not on Broadway. It was more of a ballet career and less of a uh musical theater career.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Gotcha. We we lived in New York for 20 years and we did not do enough Broadway. We did we did a bunch. Stomp was a lot, was the best dance show I saw, but uh it was uh we didn't do enough. We should have done a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, you'll have to go back, make a list.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Bucket. We left there almost 10 years ago, and I don't want to go back.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Uh really wow, that's interesting. I don't hear many people say that.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

I say that. I would love to go back and do all the touristy stuff that we didn't do when we lived up there. Yeah, but uh it was it it was too damn cold. Oh, yeah. It was just ridiculous. My wife said one day, you know, I don't think I can do another winter in New York. And I said, Well, why don't we retire?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

We did. It worked out really, really well. Good question from Dance as a ballerina, which is so highly professional and skilled and very specific to marketing.

Growing From Solo To Team

SPEAKER_02 5:43

That that's an interesting story. Tell me about building your business.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

So I started the business, just me, solopreneur, offering business services, uh, mostly marketing-related social media, website, brands, that sort of thing, to other service-based businesses. And I've worked with clients all over. Uh, we don't specifically focus on local to us, although we do have a handful of clients that are, you know, in our area. And so I worked as a solopreneur doing that for several years and eventually got to the point where things were growing enough that I really was starting to need some help, or we were gonna have to kind of scale back the business. My husband was working full-time in a corporate job. Uh, we were about to have our baby, so we were trying to figure out how do we balance everything. And ultimately, we made the decision to bring my husband into the business. So he joined the business about a year and a half ago now. And you're still married. We're still married. Let's grow. So many people ask us about that. We love working together. Uh, he actually, his whole career has been in marketing. So when he joined the business, it wasn't like he had to learn something new. Uh, and we balance each other really well. He really enjoys sales and SEO and meeting with clients. And I really enjoy the more of the design, the creative side of things, and uh managing the team, things like that. So we we work it out well.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Oh, that's great. That is super. That is super. My wife worked for me when I was an insurance agent for a few minutes, and uh, we decided that was not gonna be a good idea. So she went back to teaching kids and I sold insurance. Yeah. And then wound up training people to sell insurance. Anyhow, the the fact is you've done that and you've done it successfully, and you've got a daughter now. How old is she?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Uh she's almost two.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Oh, wow. That's a wonderful age. It's a wonderful age.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

You sound like you got a really wonderful whole complete life. But I do want to chat about business. That's that is also a wonderful story of how you've grown your business. How did how did you get to to to grow from that one stage of being a solopreneur into now a business that is international and and does business all over the place? And oh wow. Tell me, tell me about that growth period.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So we are really blessed in the way that our business has really grown from word of mouth and referrals. Uh most people that we work with end up either sending someone to us or um, you know, recommending that we reach out to someone in their network or something like that. Um, so that has really helped us, especially in those earlier stages of the business, get more clients and not necessarily feel like we're chasing around and trying to figure out what our sales strategy looks like. And while we were kind of riding on the referrals, which we still get a lot of, but during that time, we started to figure out well, what is our you know outgoing sales strategy gonna look like? And so we we get a lot of traction from Instagram, actually, um, which is very exciting. We love that. So a lot of our posts, a lot of our you know, community and followers on Instagram we've connected with either as clients or, you know, hopefully one day as clients. And we also do some ads, social media ads, which has helped us to expand into newer locations or reach people that maybe we wouldn't have found otherwise. So combining all of that over time has really helped us to balance like the organic sales and the more like paid advertising, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Where do you find the majority of your clients come from? Is it from the referrals?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I would say these days it's a balance between referrals and ads. We've done a little bit of local networking as well, uh, which has helped. What we really like to do and we encourage our clients to explore as well, is finding a balance. We never want to put all of our eggs in one basket, right? So because if that basket breaks, what happens? You know, so we always like to encourage people to look at the long-term strategies like SEO, for example. And then in the meantime, how do we also work on more immediate, let's get leads in the door, like ads, networking, you know, those kinds of things. So we're trying to kind of balance all of that for ourselves and for our clients so that we never feel like there's seasons where you don't hear, you know, one fills out your contact form for months, you know, and then all of a sudden you have this really busy season that you can't keep up with. We want it to be a more even ride along the way.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

I do uh pardon me, I do some recruiting for uh one of my clients. And that means I interview the people who apply. It's amazing how many people want to come into this business. It's a travel agency business, and the the people think they can come in and be uh a business owner as a travel advisor, and all they've got to do is post on Facebook and LinkedIn. And they think that's gonna solve all of their problems. So we we do some training, make training available for our our agency. And I'm always uh I'm not a marketer by profession by any stretch, but I teach you a little bit of the basics of there are five platforms to to utilize, and you need to be in all of them and and kind of make it overall. But doing that, and some of it is always online, it's a website, it's it's the social media stuff, it's all the rest of that.

SEO Today Google Plus AI

SPEAKER_02 11:39

SEO has always been a mystery to me. Can you help me understand that a little better?

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yes. You sound like some of our clients who say to us that SEO, I don't understand it. You just put some words in there and it's like magic, and all of a sudden it works out. And I always say almost, not quite. Um so SEO is search engine optimization, and these days it is no longer considered just Google, Bing, you know, those search engines. It's also considered AI. So Chat GBT, Gemini, those kinds of platforms as well. And uh basically what it is is setting up your foundational marketing so that it is discoverable when people put certain terms or questions into those search platforms. So that looks like a really optimized website. It looks like paying attention to what you're putting out and how you're talking about social media content, um, blogs. It is even some things like how can we generate content or traffic, otherwise, you know, QR codes around town and business cards, networking, things like that, ads. Um, how can we, you know, get people to know about your business? Google My Business page is really important. Uh optimizing profiles for those kinds of different platforms. Um, but what's interesting about that is Google is making some of the biggest changes to SEO in the next year that they have made in a very, very long time. So that is really due to this AI world that we live in now. So if you've gone to Google recently and put in a search term, it comes up with that AI overview now. And so it's no longer just about either being on the maps if you're a very local business or showing up, you know, below that on the search results. It's how do you get into the AI overview sections? That's really, really important these days. And that's a very new thing that people are starting to work on. And uh so we help people with all of that, trying to figure out, you know, the right strategies if they're local or not, what their goals are, and then working on the content to sustain that.

Write Blogs From Real Searches

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Okay, you open the door. Tell me how.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So, one of the best ways to work on that, that we like we like to be practical around here.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

I tell people, here's what you can do today. It doesn't take that long. Write a few blog posts, think about what it is that you most love doing, right? What is good for your business? What do you make money from? What do you enjoy? What do you want to be selling more of, right? Um, what has good margins, things like that. Think about those topics and go to Google and type in that service or product and uh scroll down the search results. There's that section that says people also search for. There's usually one of those sections, right? That's what you want to look at and look at those questions that people put in there that it recommends. Copy and paste one of those questions or search terms into a Word document, write a blog post about it. In the blog post, you want to talk about the term, right? So let's say it's uh installing a new AC unit for an HVAC business, right? Or implants for a dentist. So what are the questions people are asking about that? Write a blog post about that specific question. Link on your website back to your services page and your contact page within the blog post and publish it. Repeat that same process for two other services that you are thinking about. And then repeat that same process again in a week for different topics that are closely related. And in between those blog writing days, make some social content, put up a post, answer some frequently asked questions, and you know, make it authentic. That's really what's important now with SEO and the changes that they're making. What are what is your specific approach? What is it in your training or how you've set up your business that makes you different from your competitors? Maybe it's a pricing structure, maybe it's some sort of education that you've had or a certificate that you have that sets you apart. Maybe it's just something you've learned along the way of years of experience that helps you guide your clients differently. Put that information out there online and include those keywords, social captions, blog posts on your service pages in your Google My Business page, and repeat the process. Consistency is key. And call me in six months, let me know how it's going.

Repurpose Content And Stop Pivoting

SPEAKER_02 16:49

We'll do. We'll do for sure. That's uh that's great. I just launched a digital course, for example. Great. I did a series of podcasts about it. I did a a series on post on LinkedIn and so far four people have bought the course at $27. So it's not a high price thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Six videos. I think it's a pretty damn good course. It's called How to Create Your Own Personal Operating System. And, you know, I thought it was gonna be great. Four people have bought the course. So obviously, I'm not doing something right, and I need to listen more intently to what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Well, I think something that is kind of a relief that we talk to some business owners about sometimes is there's a lot of pressure to feel like you have to think of new things all the time, new content, the next big idea that's gonna change the trajectory of your business forever, right? It's not working. I'm gonna rip the band off and do something, pivot, do something different. And what we like to tell people, there's like this theory, I forget what it's called, that when you go to a parking lot and all the spots are full and you're just sitting there waiting, you know, do you wait or do you go find a different parking lot? You know, and there's some sort of theory out there that if you literally stay still for seven minutes, that's a better use of your time and your gas mileage and you'll find a spot than going and driving around looking for other parking lots. And I think that applies to business a lot. It's about figuring out trying things. Marketing is all about trying things and seeing what works. But if you're constantly trying, you're never getting the data and information about what it is that's working. You have to give things time to breathe. And with content, that applies to repurposing. So you mentioned your podcast about this course. So take those podcasts, transcribe them, turn those into blog posts. You could probably get four or five blogs out of each episode, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Then you could think about well, what are the questions people might be asking me about this specific blog post? Turn those questions into social media posts that, you know, and link back to the blogs and things like that, right? So you can kind of repurpose, you don't have to reinvent everything. You can kind of take one high-level piece of content like your podcast and use it and really like ring it out and work it from there, and then do the same thing with the rest of the episodes. And that's just one example of how people can do that. And they don't have to sit there and you know rack their brain. What should I talk about next? So I talked about, you know, tooth extractions today. So I can't talk about that again for a month. No, we can talk about that a lot more in different capacities. So that's what we how we approach content in our work.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

That is so true. And and it's true at an even a higher level. Uh, the more I read the the new stuff that is coming out, people writing books and doing all the things online, they're talking about uh principles and concepts that have been taught for a century. You know, people are oh mindset, it's really off. Yeah, well it we become what we think about. You know, one of the the biggest uh pieces of of content about that is from Earl Nightingale, if you're familiar with that name. In the 1950s, he was a radio guy, and he's uh the guy who built Nightingale Conant, which was a big, huge company that uh sold cassette tapes. Now, Emma, you let me tell you a cassette tape was about this big magnetic tape in it, magnetic tape. You could record stuff. I'm teasing. Um, but the the fact is he he built all of that. But one of his one of his most uh popular uh uh broadcasts that he did, they recorded and put it out as an an album. That was a record. Now it's that big black thing, it was plastic, it's vinyl, and oh she's got one. I can see it. You guys can't see it, but I can see it. She's got one. First time my son saw one, he said, Dad, what's that big black C D? You know, uh anyway. Uh he recorded it, put it out there in one big time stuff was a a golden something or another Hall of Fame recording. It was all about we become what we think about. That concept is in the Bible. And it's it's been around for centuries. Earl built a business based on the strangest secret recording that he did. And it's just it uh it's amazing to me when I talk about things that uh are uh ancient, people go, Wow, I didn't I never thought about it that way. So everything old is new again, I guess, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Right, I think so. And I think that applies to business and marketing and sales a little bit as well. Well, because there's a big competitiveness out there. You compete with your local, you know, other people in the same industry, competitors, things like that. And it's true, that's really important, right? That's basically what our whole business helps with. Um, but I also think that there is this concept that there's always enough to go around. There's always enough of a need from customers and clients. There's a balance, in my opinion, between being competitive and being kind of slimy, right? And I think I've I've had to learn that a lot. You know, the dance world is a little people, whenever you say Yam is a dancer, they're like, oh, how is that? You know, it's the the tone of what people think it is, is you know, people are like slashing each other and you know, it's it's bad. And that does exist, but I think in general, it's like, well, you know, in some ways, running a business, even if you're a solopreneur, it's kind of like tennis. It's like you are you're a one-man show athlete yourself, but at the same time, you get better and you optimize and you grow and you learn because of the people around you. So, in a sense, it is a little bit of a team sport, even though it's not, right? And business can be like that, whether you have a team or not. You're only getting better with your sales and your marketing because the people around you who are, you know, you're learning from and you watching what they're doing and taking nuggets of that for yourself and applying it, right? So I think sometimes figuring out like what's old and what are people, what have people done for years, centuries, decades, whatever that you can apply now versus what's happening? How is marketing changing? How can we take those two and bring them together and make it work?

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Oh yeah, I think so. I think so. That's a that's an amazing uh analogy. I agree. It's incredible to me, though, how difficult it is for those of us who are not marketing-minded to come up with the right stuff. And you you mentioned you mentioned salesy, it's just that way. It's it's we've gone from a world of sales where it was about uh you know putting people in a corner and and uh asking them questions that are going to drive them to give you the answer you want to where we are today in the way I teach sales. Our job is to help you get what you want. So my main job is to find out what you want down deep, what you really want your travel experience to be, what you really want your business to become, what you really want to achieve as a business owner or as as a husband or a wife, or what do you really want? And if I can help you get what you really want, then I'll create an environment where you just might buy my service or product. Right. Sales is about creating that environment where they want to buy. It's not about, so Mr. Sims, what can we do today to earn your business? No, no, no.

Brand Messaging For The Right Leads

SPEAKER_01 25:15

One of the things that we like to educate our clients on is the about page of their website. An about page of a website, you think at first pass is about the business or about the person, but it's a really missed opportunity if that's how you approach it. Really, the about page of the website is still about your dream customer who is reading that page, going through what they're going through and what their goals are and what their needs are. So, yes, it's about the business owner, but you know, it's not about saying, I, you know, we, we, we, me, me, me, I, I, I. It's about the person still that's reading it. And um, one of the things that we do when we work with our clients, we start with brand. But before we get to, you know, colors, logos, fonts, things like that, is we work on brand strategy. And traditionally, brand strategy is really just about your position in the marketplace, things like that. But brand messaging is more about the copy, the tone of the business, the personality of the business, what it sounds like. We combine them because I think that's really important. We talk about what are the goals as a business owner? What do you want your business to be in the first place? We don't want to market something that you're not gonna enjoy, right? Right. Um, and then how do we take that? Who else is doing something like that? What are they doing about it? We look at their competitors, we look at colors, we look at designs of those competitors, we look at their inspo, and then we combine all of that into marketing, you know, messaging, what's their business sound like? That's really important. And then we take all of that information, put it into an actual marketing plan that's practical, right? Not just like dream ideas. And then we work on the actual design based on all of that. So it's very strategy-based because it's important to include in the designs things that nod to the strategy and but you know, the foundation of the business and all of that. And then we take all of that and translate it into their actual marketing websites, social media ads, SEO blogs, newsletters, all those kinds of things. Um, and we found that when we do that, it helps in their sales because not only are they having the right actual strategy marketing pieces in place to get traffic, get leads, all of that. But when people land on their website or get a business card or see their social account, it's memorable, first of all. The messaging is what you're talking about, where it's very story-led, it's emotional. People buy because of their emotions, right? They want something, there's an emergency, they're panicked, whatever it is. So talking about that on a website or in social media on marketing materials, literally naming what people are going through and then how this business can help guide them to the solution is really important. And so we find that people don't just get more leads, they also get the right kind of leads. And that's something that's really important to us. That piece of data when we work with our clients is something that we want to hear about and chase because I don't want to just say, well, you got 200 calls from Google and 50 form fills. What's wrong? That's not helpful, right? I want to know whether you get one call from Google or 200, that the calls that you're getting are the kind of people you want to be working with, because that's that's the whole point of the business growth, right? So that's what we kind of strategize and set up our whole process around is that piece of analytic data.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. You've taken this concept of marketing, Emma, and you've made it very simple and understandable. Thank you very much. Yeah, that's my goal. Oh, you did it. You did it. You reached your goal, you reached your objective, you done good. Now, it really, really you've done a wonderful job. And I know it's going to help our audience because it's already helped me 100%, uh, which is usually what occurs. I learned more from doing podcasts than I've ever learned in my entire life. It's it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, totally and completely.

How To Reach Emma And Wrap

SPEAKER_02 29:34

But thank you so much for being with us. How do we find you? How do we contact you?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Thank you for having me. This has been really fun. Um we have a website, we have Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, lots of we have TikTok, lots of social platforms. We also have a newsletter. We try not to bombard people, so it's just a once-a-month newsletter. Um, it's a little zesty, a little spicy, but also very practical, just like my conversations with people. So uh definitely you'll find some opinions on there, but you'll also find some very practical tips. So we always recommend people sign up for that. And then for anybody who's looking to potentially help, you know, grow their business, have some marketing support, you can fill out our contact form and we'd love to connect with you.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

And what's the website?

SPEAKER_01 30:23

It's saltedstudio.com. It's saltdstudio.com.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Salted without any yes, SALT studio plural, studio, studios.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Just one studio.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Just one studio. Saltedstudio.com. Get in touch with Emma Roger, because I tell you what, this young lady, and I've interviewed a lot of marketing folks, and you've made it more simple, straightforward, and practical than anybody else I've ever interviewed, I think. So Emma, thank you so very much for being with us today on the Commission Code.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Thank you, Morris. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the Commission Code to success in your business. Remember, go to MorrisDems.com for more information, and in the meantime, hey, have a great week. Get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes, I'm Morris Dems.