SEO for Sales Growth & Weird Sales Stories [Episode 659]

Phil Singleton, content marketer and co-author with John Jantsch of SEO for Growth: The Ultimate Guide for Marketers, Web Designers & Entrepreneurs, and Bridget Gleason, VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner, join me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

First guest: Phil Singleton

• Phil’s first book project, Small Business Owner’s Guide To Local Lead Generation, changed his life and his career as he moved into content marketing and SEO.
• Phil was miserable in a cubicle space. He moved to Taiwan and married. In 2005 they moved to the U.S. At age 35, he made a successful one-page website for a friend. There was no looking back!
• In Taiwan, Philip had been working at DVD X Copy, after they got shut down States, and before they were halted around the world after lobbying by Hollywood studios. That’s where he learned about web design and SEO.
• When Google cracked down on spam and emphasized content and social media trust, Philip went from SEO coder to marketer. He read John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing and joined his network. That led to their book.
• Small businesses should use their site as a marketing hub that is continually updated. Put valued content on your site, not just on social media where it passes out of sight.
• Your website is like landscaping. You have to nurture it. You can use social media, so long as you put the content on your website and share it on Facebook from there.
• Blogging is a fundamental piece of inbound and content marketing. It establishes authority on your website and increases ‘dwell time.’ It’s a way to build the ‘long tail’ of keywords so search engines lead to your site.
• Most business owners are not professional bloggers. Their time is better spent on the operation of their business. Hire the posts out to writers. Give them the topics and SEO keywords important for your business.
• A series of related posts is better than random posts. You can develop them into a book, giving you backlinks from Amazon. An e-book establishes expertise. A little investment in time yields a massive amount of value.
• Philip invests time in podcast guesting with influencers. With a book and endorsements, it is easy to get on podcasts that are looking for guests.
• Keywords are the most important factor in reaching your key market. Philip recommends the Adwords keyword planner for ideas. With enough keywords, blog topics to attract and educate your market suggest themselves.
• Philip tells how to go national with a localized approach including unique local content.

Second Guest: Bridget Gleason

• Is a sales career worth the risks of travel and in the field, and even of the job itself? Andy recalls when his car front fender was shot on a sales call early in his career. Bridget says risks are everywhere, whatever your job may be.
• Andy recalls being forced by his CEO to call a client at home on Christmas Eve to get an order in during the last quarter. They got the order and lost the goodwill of the customer. The CEO was gone in 90 days.
• Bridget tells a war story of dropping in with her VP of Sales on someone at their home because they had downloaded a whitepaper. Bridget refused to go in.
• Andy once had to go to someone’s home with a sales rep to sell a $250K business system. The windows were blacked over and had iron bars. They wanted to pay cash for the system. The ‘branch financial person’ said, “no.”
• Another customer wanted to pay for a $100K system with Travelers’ Cheques.
• Andy was detained once at the Canadian border because his NDA would not allow him to disclose where he was going and whom he was meeting.
• Bridget recalls her most painful sales call. Her vendor representative didn’t show up and the customer was raging at Bridget.
• Andy shares his next-worst call — an international sale. The call went great. The deal closed. Back at the office, the VP of Engineering informed Andy that in one calendar day the delivery schedule had slipped by six months.
• Resilience is a key skill.