Welcome to the entrepreneuring show, where we strive to provide insights and stories for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, where innovation meets inspiration, led by veteran entrepreneur and tech founder. Here’s your host, Jill Button.
Jill: Welcome to the Entrepreneuring Show. Today’s episode is brought to you by Light Switch Media, a boutique digital marketing agency, specializing in helping local businesses get found online, offering website design. Online reputation, SEO, and content marketing. Their virtual marketing team will help drive new clients for your business with customized plans that suit your unique needs.
My guest today is Brian Davidson, who is the president and chief marketing officer at Light Switch Media. With over 25 years in the marketing game, Brian is a pro at crafting marketing strategies from Canada’s largest banks and financial institutions to local eateries. Brian guides businesses to epic growth, smashing sales targets along the way.
Known for his laid back approach and killer instincts. Brian is leaving his mark on the industry. He effortlessly connects brands with their audience and creates a brand. campaigns. With his track record of success, it’s clear that Brian is the go to guy for any marketing needs when he’s not in the office, creating winning strategies.
Brian likes to golf camp with his wife, Sherry and their rescue jobs. Sadie Dog, Sadie Reed and He may have a slight addiction to coffee, so thank goodness he’s had his coffee today, I hope. Welcome to the show, Brian.
Brian: Thanks, Jill, for having me. I’m looking forward to this.
Jill: Yes, me too. I’ve been trying to get you on the show for a while.
You are a loyal founding member of ProcureHub. Uh, in fact, you’re probably our number one supplier on the marketplace, um, with the highest sales. So there’s a challenge to the other ProcureHub, uh, suppliers. Uh, see if we can top Brian’s stellar record. Uh, I’m really interested to jump into your entrepreneurial journey, Brian.
I know it’s. It’s been a challenging and a rewarding one. Um, so why don’t you share with our listeners, um, you know, what got you into being coming an entrepreneur?
Brian: So, yeah, thanks for having me on. And, uh, yeah, as, as you noted in your intro, um, I started back in the marketing space in the year, back in 2000, uh, in the direct mail and print world.
And so I, I ran, um, an organization for 20 some odd years. And working with, as you mentioned, Canada’s large banks, mom and pop shops and everything sort of in between the cool first, first major project that I had, I was less than six months on the job at the direct mail company. I actually was the head project manager for the merger of Canada trust and TD.
So we, yeah, so we managed the, uh, the communications out to all the customers across the country and also all the employee benefits and, um, Um, the transition documents that were were happening. So that was that that was my thrown to the fire moment with that. It was, you know, like I said, less than six months in the industry.
And all of a sudden now I’m dealing with this massive, uh, massive project. So I kind of got with the bug and, you know, data and all that kind of the stuff that I kind of find fun, which most people, their eyes sort of roll back in their head when we start talking about that. But, uh, yeah, so from there we ran, I ran that company for, like I said, over 20 years, and at one point I moved the company from Toronto into Dermot.
So for any of those who are listening or familiar with the area, it’s just a little bit east of the city of Toronto. And once we did that, we kind of started working with smaller businesses, even more smaller businesses. And what really happened is that we’re starting to ask, you know, social marketing was starting to become really, uh, to the forefront at that time.
And so they’re asking for help, like, we’re doing these direct mail campaigns and print campaigns. How do we throw social media into the mix? And, um, so. We started, uh, so I started light switch as, as a result, um, working with these small companies and, and doing the digital marketing in partnership with, uh, with direct mail companies, sort of navigate those uncertain waters at the time.
Um, you know, one of the other main factors that led me to start lights, which I had a colleague that I’d worked with in the direct mail world for a number of years, and he went off and started his own consulting business. He had a killer, uh, set of credentials. He had this great idea on how he was going to help, um, financial institutions make these specific transitions.
And he went off and got this started, but he, he felt that he didn’t need to do any marketing that the, the, the business proposal was going to sell itself and he lost tens of thousands of dollars and the company went under and unfortunately had to go back and try and find a job. So, you know, that was a really big catalyst for me looking at entrepreneurs and say, if you don’t have your marketing ducks in a row, you’re going to end up in a place you don’t want to be.
So, in 2018, we started Light Switch, um, we were handling, you know, just small social media campaigns, um, you know, content and ads, uh, and to, to tie together with the direct mail campaigns. And, um, that was, it was really well, then in 2020, um, I left, uh, the mailing company and to focus on light switch full time.
And so we’ve, we’ve grown steadily since in almost 7 years now, 7 years in January, um. We’ve grown steadily. There’s a team of five now, um, and we’re growing every year and, uh, we’re working with local businesses, small startups, and big corporations as well. Our largest client has over 20 million in revenue and we are providing virtual marketing team services for them.
And, uh, yeah, it’s just been a story of sort of slow and steady. Growth, and this year we’re on track to, uh, we’re sitting right now at 70 percent year over year growth and open to get to 100 percent year over year growth.
Jill: Congratulations. That’s amazing. Um, I’ve, I have known you for a while since before you, um, through both feed in and I know.
As an entrepreneur myself, it can be really challenging and daunting and sort of putting both feet in can be, um, quite scary, right? Because you’re sort of letting go of that one foot on dry land. Um, what was it that made you take that final leap? Um, for me, I have a different story, but I’d love to hear, like, what was it that said?
If I’m going to do this, I got to be both feet in.
Brian: A certain, uh, coffee meeting at a Tim Hortons in Ajax with, uh, with, uh, with a certain someone, um, and, and probably the best advice I got, uh, to this point was at some point to win the battle, you got to burn the boat. I don’t know if you remember telling me that.
Um, and that was, that was the catalyst. And then, you know, COVID hit and the world changed and there we are. I’m, I’m, I’m all in and, uh, I’ve been since well, I, I don’t, I, I do remember the conversation. I didn’t realize that that had such a, um, uh, it was a memorable or cattle, uh, catalyst moment for you, but it was something that for me was, um, very.
a motivating, um, or guiding, uh, philosophy. It’s actually, um, something that I heard from Tony Robbins who, you know, his philosophy is if you don’t, if you have a, an escape hatch, if you have a boat that you can row, um, if you, if you don’t burn your boats to take the island, Um, then you may not ever take the island.
If you burn your boats, you have no way off. You’ve got to take the island. So, um, yeah, I, I appreciate you bringing that up. Um, so what has it been like now that you’re two feet in you’ve seen. Phenomenal growth, um, you know, 70 percent year over year is amazing. And, you know, we just, again, quick plug, we use your SEO services, um, for the consulting side of our business.
And we saw, you know, from obscurity and SEO to the first page, and I’m pretty sure it was in 30 days, which is ridiculous, uh, how you could actually achieve that kind of results.
Jill: Um, so tell me about. You know, now that you’re sort of both feet in laser focused, what has been the most challenging thing for you that maybe you weren’t really expecting?
Brian: Two things. Um, I think the first one was, I jumped in both feet, March, 2020, the world just imploded. Actually, you and I were on the phone. I was in Florida at the time when it happened, when, when we were, uh, dealing with a, with a project at the time. And it was, yeah, so both feet in the world’s imploding. I now have no, I no longer have the security of a steady paycheck, and I now have to come up with this plan to convince terrified entrepreneurs and business owners, um, to spend money and invest in their business on the marketing side of things.
And so I spent, I think it was about four months of nail biting and building systems and redoing our website, getting new, um, new to the platform in place. And, uh, that was, that was the biggest one where there was no money coming in. There’s. You know, we’re not sure what the world’s going to do. And, you know, and then the other big thing with that.
So the world’s in upheaval and it was for everybody. So this is not a unique situation, but for me it was, okay, let’s just start a business in the middle of a global pandemic. Good call. I got a few side glances from my wife and along the way, but I think the other side of it was, was confidence. And it was, I mean, I know marketing, I’ve been doing this for a long time.
It’s a whole different animal when you’re on your own and you’ve burned boats and you’re, and now you throw in, you know, the uncertainty of the, of the world’s economy. And so it was a lot of nights of questioning. My life choices. It’s questioning my sanity. Um, but then also trying to, you know, stick firm to the belief that there was something here that I had something to offer and that I had, um, And that I can approach this, not, I’m not here, obviously, we’re all here as entrepreneurs to make money, but if you approach it from the side of how can I help people not be like that colleague of mine who didn’t put their focus on the right things and then their businesses failed as a result.
So, coming at it from the point of view. You know, point of view of service or helping making sure they have the tools in place, um, to, to offer what, what my clients need, um, and then just, you know, maintaining that belief and having some patience that at some point, the world is going to return to something resembling normal and, uh, You know, business owners are going to be a little less afraid of investing in their business.
Jill: Yes. Yes. I remember that phone call well, because you were actually on holiday, um, with the kids and nobody knew what was coming. There was absolutely no, uh, Expectation that we would end up where we are and what we went through. Um, and so many businesses were so dramatically affected by the pandemic. You know, people were like, we were dramatically impacted.
We had 95 percent of all of our projects, revenue immediately turned off and we were growing exponentially and we’re expecting phenomenal success. And, and. It like you, it was really scary. And a lot of entrepreneurs didn’t make it. Um, what has been the most successful or rewarding thing for you as an entrepreneur?
I mean, there’s lots of scary stories, but there’s such joy in being an entrepreneur. What, what for you brings you that joy or what has been the most satisfying thing?
Brian: My favorite thing is, like, I love getting involved in the startup phase, it, to be honest with you, not necessarily the most profitable for me, um, to, if I’m being honest, because, because I don’t have the budget or the, the resources yet, um, to, to do the things that are, that are, you know, necessary.
But there are things that can be so what I love is I love getting in on that planning stage where they’re coming up with their idea or they’re ready to launch and they’re they’re fine tuning stuff. So I’ve had a few, um, clients who came in at that stage and, and sort of brainstorming around, you know, how do I get my message out?
Where do I do this? What about technology should I use? And I’d love getting into there and coming up with different ideas for them. And sort of just throwing ideas against the wall, see what sticks. That’s the most fun for me is, is when we get there and when we start, like I said, you just start brainstorming and it’s, it’s a lot of fun to get to that stage.
And that’s when the juices really get flowing for me. Um, and you see the lights go on in their eyes from there when you’re, when they’re really getting excited. Makes a lot of sense. I don’t have the budget for that. Yeah, you can do this for 50 a month or something like that. And they’re You know, you get that look on their face, right?
You know, there’s you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars. You got to spend money But when you start there’s different options available to you and and yeah, that’s the most fun for me I love sitting there and seeing that you know, we had um, I have a client who’s a dietician in in Cleveland area and she got her business up and running and um Here in Canada, she so she focuses on on diabetic, um, uh, training programs because in the U.
They don’t have the same sort of infrastructure that we do here. And so he really was building this course to help these people who are just recently diagnosed as diabetics. We went to course, um, I’ll build up course and all that kind of stuff. So it’s just those are the kind of fun things where you can really get.
Um, up them form that vision of what they’re trying to do and then actually provide them with a way to deliver it. And that’s going to make the bank
Jill: amazing. It aligns with the principles that we’re trying to, uh, to build on in the procure hub marketplace success through service, right? So helping others, providing service, excellent service, because you can’t otherwise get onto the marketplace unless you deliver excellent services.
Um, it’s that success and taking joy and deep satisfaction and delivering amazing services and seeing your customers successful. I share that, um, with you. Um, just a reminder, uh, for our audience. If you have a question for Brian, I would love for you to post a comment. If you’re on LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube, and we will get to those questions throughout the show.
Sorry, Brian, tell me, tell us a little bit more about the types of services that you provide in your light switch media organization. And what are the things that Entrepreneurs, um, you mentioned startups, but what other, uh, services are you offering entrepreneurs? And what is it that you’re seeing those entrepreneurs gravitate?
Where, where are their greatest need?
Brian: Greatest need is what we’re seeing really is sort of the marketing tech stack. Like what. What are the pieces that need to go into place to make it easy for your business to be found online? Because, I mean, the buying journey today is, if you think about back when we started our careers and want to date ourselves.
Um, but, you know, it was, you’d get a flyer in the newspaper or you’d hear a radio ad or something like that. And you go, well, that’s interesting. Then you’d go to a store to check it out. That doesn’t happen to you. Now you, you know, you’re reading content, you’re still hearing those ads, you’re seeing flyers in the paper, but instead of going to a store, people go to their phones or laptop, and they start researching and seeing, and the thing that’s consumers, but also business to business as well, right?
They find out, you know, they learn that maybe we should be doing SEO, for example. So the first thing they do is they do a Google search. So if you can’t, if your business can’t get found in a Google search, You’re gonna be really hard pressed unless you’re getting great referrals. You’re gonna be really hard to generate any kind of revenues when you business online.
So having a tech stack or having the techno technology pieces in place that you need to make sure that people can find you is, you know, is what we’ve had the most success with our clients doing. You know, there’s a bunch of different places to start, but I believe the primary thing and There’s a lot of stuff in, in, in sort of popular media or, you know, the popular gurus of the day that say websites are dead.
We strongly disagree. Um, because that’s from like the funnel builders and the click funnels and go high levels and all that, which are fantastic tools. Problem is you don’t own that, right? That they, they own that, that funnel for you. So you need to have a hub, centralized hub, which is your website. You, it’s yours.
You own, you, you have the content out there and it’s got to be set up. In a proper way to make sure that it can be indexed by the search engines. Um, so, you know, things like it’s got to be mobile optimized. or if your website’s not mobile optimized, not easy to load on a phone, Google won’t even show it in a search result if they’ll even deliver, allow you to actually show up any, um, a lot of phones, the modern phones, if it’s not mobile optimized.
It won’t even go to it. So you’ve got to make sure it’s there. You can make sure it’s fast. It’s got to be clean and simple navigation. Pages have to be set up properly so that the search engines can find the content and then say, yes, you know, ProcurePro is an expert at ERP consulting. So you’ve got to have that information struck properly in your site so that that’s the basis now for everything.
So that’s your hub and then off you go from there. Then there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that you need to have in place to make it easier but that’s probably the number one thing. You do need a website. It needs to be done right. It has to be clean. It has to be simple. It has to be, um, have good contact points, right?
Or, or conversion points as we call them. So, a form to put in information, maybe a chat bot, easy to find phone number and email addresses in order to reach out to, to your business in order to, to, you know, capture their attention because it’s all about grabbing attention. What, uh, what you said sort of earlier in your response around, you know, entrepreneurs having the right tech stack and, you know, getting sort of the basics websites, et cetera, I think is so important because a lot of entrepreneurs are not tech savvy, they’re not marketing savvy.
I think you and I met, um, I don’t know how many years ago, quite a while. Um, but as an entrepreneur, It’s so challenging to find, you know, what are the basics? You don’t know what you don’t know. And not every entrepreneur is tech savvy enough to know that you need to have an SEO on your website, that you need to have, um, the right, uh, copy that converts and that there’s, you know, a proper structure of your website that users Or visitors are going to follow that user experience.
Jill: Right. And, you know, you can either spend hours and hours and hours trying to figure it out for yourself, or you can actually find somebody who knows what they are talking about. And for me, I feel like that’s. Something entrepreneurs really struggle with is they focus too much on how do I build a website instead of who can build me a website?
Um, so I think marketing is one of those like critical, critical, critical, um, skill sets that people need to have. But rather than spend hours trying to figure it out on your own, it’s called light switch media. They’re going to help you, right?
Brian: Exactly. I mean, it’s true because you didn’t become, you didn’t start a baking business to become a marketer.
Right. You started that because you love to bake and you, you know, you bake these incredible cakes and pies and things. So that’s the, that’s the big challenges. And I think that’s, you know, advice, you know, advice for entrepreneurs. You have to have, you have to come into owning, starting your own business with a bit of a marketing mindset, because if you don’t.
That’s when you’re going to get yourself into trouble. You can be the greatest baker on the planet, but if you have no idea how to tell people about it, or get the information out there for the world to find, you’re going to struggle. Absolutely. Yeah, the website, like, and websites, you know, a basic website doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
I mean, it used to, and unfortunately in the industry, there’s, there’s too many examples of, of, you know, people have been taken advantage of, but you know, we’ve, we’ve built, I’ve built this business around fair pricing, so it’s fair for me because I’ve got bills to pay and the family to feed and fair for my clients.
There, there’s no reason that, you know, I had an example, person was starting up, they came to me after the fact, they got, they, they paid 10, 000 us dollars for a three page website for a startup. Oh, that’s, it’s an, that’s an insane amount of money for a simple website. Quite frankly, you’d be far better off just going to GoDaddy and using the website builder and doing that on your own, going out and spending 10, 000 for a website.
Yeah, but but it’s an important piece to that. So yeah, the website structure is there. But also like other really important things to be is using the free tools that are available to every business owner things like Google Business Profile. I can’t stress enough how important a proper Google Business Profile is.
Jill, you’re laughing because we know that Makes it that we went through with yours. And that’s not even because it wasn’t set up properly. That’s just dealing with Google is sometimes a real nightmare. But having a proper, um, Google business profile set up and ready because that is huge element and just having your business show show up in an online search.
If you don’t have one, the likelihood of your business showing up anywhere to search is almost zero. So and it’s free. And it’s free. So if you get it set up and you make sure you have the right address and all the fun stuff that goes along with it, there’s a whole, we can talk for a long time about those profiles on how to do that.
Yes. properly, there’s lots of articles and stuff out there. And I believe we have a blog on our website too, that just talks about what you need for your, your business profile. I think we do, if not, it’s in the works coming. Um, but making sure that’s there and your social media channels, they’re free, right?
Like getting, getting, you know, a Facebook account, Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, um, an Instagram account set up. Property for your business, not on your personal, um, makes it makes a difference. And then you can stand up because again, the whole point with getting found online is playing the search engines, algorithm games, got your social media profiles set up as business profiles.
You’ve got your Google business profile set up. Your website structured properly. Now it’s Google and the other search engines are starting to say, okay, this is a legitimate business. So making sure that you have those things in place.
Jill: Right now, we’re going to get into how to get found online, um, after the break, but for entrepreneurs, you know, understanding what are the basics, the foundational things you said are, you know, you got to have a website.
You got to have Google set up correctly and you got to figure out your SEO and what are the keywords that are actually going to drive people to your site. We didn’t talk a lot about social media. You sort of touched on it. Um, you know, is that something that you’re, you’re also recommending for businesses?
And, you know, I’ve sort of struggled with social media and you know, how it, it, it applies to. Business because you can’t see that direct R. O. I. Right. You can’t see somebody says, Well, I saw Brian on the show. And so I contacted him and then I got a quote. And then I like that direct conversion is a challenge.
What do you say to entrepreneurs about social media? Yes, it’s free, but it also takes time to create social media content. So what’s your what’s your thoughts on that?
Brian: It’s a really interesting case study. So, um, our, one of our clients just did a, um, direct mail and email campaign out, um, so, and it was B2B, so business, business, um, transactions, and they had a list of 3, 500 contacts that they were, that they sent the direct mail piece out to, then followed up with a, with a five touch email campaign.
And when we analyze the clicks, the open rates and all that stuff, the in five drip sequence, you know, the first email, we had a 62 percent click through rate, meaning they opened the email. And when they opened the 60 percent or 62 percent of people clicked on links. The interesting thing was there was links to a booking link to the book of call.
There was a link to a landing page to give more information about the service that was being offered. But in the first, um, two email sequences, it was almost exclusively. Flicks through to the social media channels. Yeah. And that is the, that’s a two week old case study. So, um, so we’re just putting all that together just for more information.
But so the, the lesson here is that’s where people go, and this is a business to business world, right? So this is, this is slightly different. If you’re selling directly to consumers, it’s even more important, right. Uh, to have content that people are looking at, cause they look at it from two different perspectives.
Are they active? Do they post on a regular basis? And what are they posting about? Are they backing up with their content? What they’re saying on the landing page, but then also they’re trying to get a feel for the brand for your business, right? Oh, how have you been able to humanize it? I hope you’ve been able to sort of showcase, you know, the staff, the people, the ownership, your values of your business and social is a great place to do that.
So we highly recommend doing content and it doesn’t have to take, and we’ll talk later about the tool sets and things and how to get found online. Um, and the specifics of that, but it doesn’t have to be all about a light switch, media cells, SEO services by SEO services from light switcher. Uh, light switch is great.
Don’t forget, buy SEO services from us, you do that, people are tuning out instantly. So you want to educate, make sure they understand why SEO is important. And then you also want to, I said it before, humanize our top post for this year. On our social media channels was, um, the silly meme. So you, you know, our social, we have these avatars, uh, of our, of, of the three client facing people on our team and myself, and so there was a post and it was the first day of summer and it was Kim and Ella sitting on lawn chairs with their avatars and drinking.
You know, fancy margaritas, whatever. And me walking by them on their lawn chairs as they’re relaxing. And I step on a rake and it’s smack me in the forehead. And it’s a silly post. It’s a funny post because you know, the team all makes fun of me. But, um, but it created engagement and people were like, okay, this brand, this company has a sense of humor.
The owner doesn’t take himself too seriously. You know, they’re there. They like to have some fun. Those things are surprisingly important. So you’ve got to get some of those things out there so that people can sort of identify or empathize with with you and your brand reputations.
Jill: Absolutely. It’s funny.
So a couple of things I just want to sort of comment on, right? So when you say, you know, people are looking for your website and then they’re looking to see if your social backs up what your website says. That’s exactly what I do. So if somebody reaches out to me to connect, whether it’s through email or on LinkedIn, which is my primary social channel, as you know, um, I’m I immediately look to see if they have a website in my mind, a website legitimizes that business and the way in which it’s constructed.
And if it’s done professionally means it’s a professional organization. So that’s number one. And then exactly what you said. Next thing I do is I go to LinkedIn and I look at their, their profile. I look at their company page. I look at how many. Uh, employees they have. I look at when they were established.
So it’s amazing that you. mention that because that’s exactly, exactly what I do. And then again, to your point, looking at the posts and seeing what kind of content they’re posting, you know, is it aligned to your own values, right? And your own philosophies? Is it somebody who I want to work with? There’s just so much real, uh, uh, relationship risk out there.
There’s so much, um, There’s so much fraud and scams going on. So you’re looking for trust and you’re looking for somebody who actually, um, lives into the values that you would hope from a professional organization that they then would, um, provide through your services. So I, I love that. I think that’s amazing advice.
Um, We’re going to take a break when we get back. I would love to dive in deeper about how do entrepreneurs get found online. Let’s get some actionable, you know, my love actionable insights for entrepreneurs. Uh, we’ll be right back
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Jill: And we are back with Brian Davidson from Light Switch Media, so we’re gonna get into some. Expert tips on how to get found online. So, so Brian, what does that mean? Like, let’s start there. What do you mean by let’s get found online?
Brian: I mean, the simple, the simple explanation is you, someone goes and pull up their phone, right.
And they, they could search for. German services near me, or services near me, or king services in greater Toronto area. And you show up in that search list. Um, that’s that’s getting found. And there’s more to it than that. That’s that’s the. That’s it buried down into a nutshell. Like that’s really what it is.
It’s where do you show up and how do people find you? So if somebody is looking for your services, it’s how they are going to find you and that generally starts with a search, a keyword and a search.
Jill: Okay. So let’s get into some of the details about how, how we do that. So we already talked about the website, right?
Brian: So having a properly structured website. It’s important. There’s a bunch of different factors that Google in particular, when we talk about search engines, we always say Google, but there are other search engines, you know, Bing and Yahoo, people think they don’t really exist, but you’d be surprised at how many people still use Bing if they’re using Microsoft’s default browsers.
Um, but we’re going to say Google, that means the search engine. So your, your, your site is structured in very specific ways. So, you know, some. A little bit more on that specific structure, if you will, each, so you’re going to have what, what people expect to see in a website, a homepage, there’s a, there’s an overview of your business.
Um, how you help, why you help, what you do to provide those services, there’s, there should be some private about page where you talk about your business values, um, your team, that kind of stuff, services page, contact page, then there’s, you know, then there’s a bunch of, those are the main ones. So, when it comes to structuring your website, what we see a lot is, is service pages.
Where they say, okay, well, we offer so for us, we offer social media content. We offer SEO services. Um, website design. Okay. But what we see a lot of startups or small businesses, they put all those services on one page, right? So it’s just a service overview page. The problem with that typically, and there’s not much content, written content about the service, and two, it’s really hard to optimize it.
If you have five services, you can’t really optimize a page in SEO. It’s just not the way the search engines work for five things on one page. You can optimize for one, maybe two, but you’re kind of taking those key words. Uh, and, and, and using them to drive traffic to your website design page, you know, it’s different variations of website design, whatever.
So when you create a site, again, your homepage, your about page, services, each of your individual services or products should be a separate page. And from an SEO standpoint, that’s going to make it a heck of a lot easier down the line when you do decide maybe it’s time to start paying for SEO services.
Thanks. Uh, for a company like LightSwitch to go in and optimize around that, it makes it a lot easier to get the ball rolling on that. So, you know, start with that. We’ve talked about the other parts of the website. The other thing is, again, listings. So, which we find really weird. I still find this kind of strange to this day.
You and I remember Yellow Pages, the real Yellow Pages, the yellow book showing up at our door and slipping through that with right to search for business listings. Yellowpages. ca still has a huge amount of traffic that goes there that people go there to search for businesses instead of just doing a Google search.
And a big part of that is the trust in the brand of Yellow Pages. So and that’s just one example. So the other element in getting found online is making sure your business is listed in the relevant online directories. So whether that is, you know, where to four square, um, better Business Bureau, there’s a, there’s, you know, about 60 or so different legitimate listing directories in Canada.
There’s plenty more in the US, um, that Google and the other search engines say are, are, you know, authentic and recognized listing places. So if your business is listed there and your website set up, right, it creates, it’s, this is a legitimate business. So just like when you said. You know, if they don’t have a website and you don’t, you’re not sure if it’s a legitimate business, Google looks at those online directories as another way of saying that this is a legitimate and real business.
So getting those what we’ve, what we’ve seen is just getting listed in the right directories. This has led on average for our clients to an 18 percent increase in website traffic just by doing that, you’re not doing anything else. Um, you know, we had a client land and all she did was do the directories and she landed a 20, 000 U.
contract and she spent 600 to get there. So there’s, it works. Um, so making sure that you’re listed. So that’s, those are the two things. Then we start talking about content, you know, and you’ve hit on that before, is writing the right kind of content. And so blog posts and your content. Both are content.
They’re just in different places, but making sure that you’re talking about and setting yourself up as a subject matter expert by educating people. It’s not selling your services. It’s teaching them about why SEO is important, right? Or why using a procurement specialist will help you save time. Money and not get screwed by, uh, I can’t remember the title of the book.
Sorry. I tried, tried, but yeah, so, so, so content is, is important and, and how to deliver their content is, is, you know, like social media blogs, those are the two main things that people go out and blog posts, really huge source of SEO, uh, Traffic is blog posts, and you know that yourself. That’s your, your number one driver, um, is your blog posts because you’re giving away such great value and information when you write your blog posts, and they result in a lot of traffic on your website.
Jill: Absolutely. That’s, that is so true. Um, you mentioned one of the articles. So we have an article that actually drives traffic. Probably the most traffic to our website, um, 10 tips to consider before implementing an ERP and it gets searched and people hit our website on it all the time. So content and it’s valuable because it allows people to better understand, like, what are the things you need to consider before you’re actually going to make a major purchase for a business system like an ERP system, which is Million potentially as you grow millions of dollars.
Um, so content. So starting with a good website, optimizing for SEO, you talked about the listings and making sure that those are established to create credibility, um, and good content. So what else, what other things are important for entrepreneurs or business owners to get found online? What are the other things, um, that they need to consider, you know, beyond what you’ve described?
Brian: More info on the SEO side of things. There’s a lot of tools like when you’re special for startups and new business owners, there are inexpensive tools that utilize AI that help you get the SEO journey started in a simple way. So they’re going to be basic, but they are going to help you show up. And they do that by making sure, um, you know, that you’ve got all your pages, page descriptions, your website done properly, tags for, um, Images and, you know, all that, all the little nitty gritty things that people don’t think about.
And I understand why they don’t think about it. Because it is, you know, when you dive into the deep part of SEO, it’s mind numbingly boring, but it’s highly effective and important. But to get started, there’s, there’s lots of inexpensive and sometimes even free tools. That are available to help at least get the basics going.
So, so making sure you do that. Then the steel campaigns like what you and I are doing are much more focused on their specific keywords. And that’s a lot more work that, that we do in the backend with linking to different sites and all that kind of stuff. I don’t want to get too into that because it is, it is complicated and somewhat boring, but when you start out, there are other ways to do that, um, that are, that are not so expensive and there’s lots of tools and, and there’s And AI is, has become a, you know, a big element in the grand scheme of things and how we can probably, um, get ourselves out there in, in the right ways.
Jill: Can you talk a little bit about that, Brian? We haven’t talked about AI, but everybody is talking about AI and every application imaginable, you know, from, Uh, recruiting screening applicants. Um, we had Jonathan on talking about his software that actually uses AI to do that. Um, what about in marketing? Like there’s a, there’s a somewhat of a fear, maybe healthy fear of ai, um, but it doesn’t have to be, it can actually be quite assistive.
So what is your thoughts on AI specifically as it relates to marketing tool?
Brian: Um, uh, it, it is a tool that is, that can be used to create efficiencies. So the fear that’s around there, it’s, it’s really interesting. We, we actually wrote a, I think we have a blog post. I know we wrote it, we just redid our website.
So I think that’s still on there. We actually wrote, uh, we asked chat GPT when chat GPT first launched, like, are you going to replace marketers? And the answer was quite interesting in that it flat out said no, because it doesn’t have it, all it can do at present time, all it can do is analyze data. And what’s out there.
It doesn’t have the, the, the creative reasoning and the creative, um, problem solving skills that human beings have to this point. So it’s a tool, um, but a very effective tool and, um, AI in the cooking space. It’s really interesting because that’s where a lot of it got focused when it first came out, you know, writing content and doing, you know, SEO and all that kind of stuff.
So I think there’s, we are heavily focused on SEO. We have, uh, you know, a new product that just launched that we call lead gen central. And it is basically, it’s an AI hub that helps connect the dots, right? So AI is really effective at helping you write content. However. You still have to put your spin to it, right?
So you have to put your personality in your, cause, cause it’s again, just amalgamating content from millions of other sources and coming up with this answer, but you have to put your spin, your piece to that, your uniqueness to it, um, it’ll speed up things like our website builder, we would build websites.
It helps when I talked about getting the basics of SEO done and there’s an AI tool built into that, writes the tags, writes the page descriptions and creates a site. But no, and all the things that the search engines are using. And it’s great. It doesn’t replace an SEO campaign, but it does get the ball rolling for you.
So if you’re just starting up and you don’t have a budget for, for SEO, it helps. Um, AI can be used to create ads and it can be used to write copies. So we, we tend to focus on what I, what I tell people who ask me a lot about it. Chat GPT is great. Uh, but it’s this big, huge monster that you have to figure out how to use and do you have time is, that’s the number one commodity that, that entrepreneurs don’t have this time, learn how to do that.
So we’ve incorporated and we use purpose built AI tools. So that the learning curve is less steep and they all speak to each other. So that they’re not, you’re not reinventing the wheel with each new thing that you’re trying to do using an AI tool.
Jill: Exactly. And I think again, kind of going back to, you know, entrepreneurs, like you said, time is so critical.
And, you know, finite amount of money to actually invest. And so they have to be very careful about where they’re investing and who they’re investing with, especially relationships, um, like yours, marketing being so critical, um, and finding the right provider who can actually take that sort of complexity around.
How do I do SEO? How do I build a website? It’s just all so frustrating and annoying from experience. Um, and that’s what I think. Um, a company like light switch and you, you know, as the, as the chief marketing officer, um, does so well is just taking that complexity and the weight off of entrepreneur’s shoulders.
And then, you know, acting as an extension of their team, uh, you’re their virtual marketing team and you do everything from. Building a website, optimizing it through SEO, you know, managing and creating content to managing social media, you know, getting you set up on Google, which I could tell you some crazy stories about.
Um, so amazing. Thank you so much, Brian, for everything that you do and for sharing your incredible knowledge and experience. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Brian: It’s been a long time coming. Like you said, and it’s, it’s always good to talk to you.
Jill: Amazing. So if you’d like more information about, uh, LightSwitch Media and their services, you can actually sign up to join the growing community of entrepreneurs on ProcureHub and you can find us at www. procurehub.ca. If you’d like more information on the entrepreneuring show, have an idea for a show, Want to be on the show as a guest, you can visit www. theentrepreneurshow. com or send us an email to at info at procurepro. ca. Until next time, entrepreneurs, just keep swimming.