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foreign thank you for having me a great Rams up before we move any forward and let us speak about and then hear from you about how do you channelize your sales funnels and stuff I request you to introduce yourself to our audiences yes my name is Ramsey swice I'm the president and founder of aquaba Technologies we're located in lovely Michigan and our background began back in 2004 the cons the conceptualization of the company and it's its business model we started off as a search engine marketing company and evolved into Web Design Boutique design and SEO and uh then social media as we adopted the progress of these these utilities as we know today yeah absolutely and then since we were discussing about sales funnels before the podcast I would like to start it off about knowing about how do you think about what is your take on the importance of aligning those sales funnel with the buyer's journey and what are the key considerations that any business should look into while creating that effective alignment yes great question so for example the sales funnel varies from audience to audience because primarily you're targeting the audience it's not for the business but if it's business to business B2B or b2c then it's a completely different landscape the behavior of the sales journey in terms of segmenting the steps along the way it varies so let's just say for example you have upload so when you look upstream and upload where is this traffic coming from how are we targeting that how do we get them to perform a certain task which is to land on your sales page or sales funnel and what are they doing when they reside onto the sales page and then as they go through the segmentation the top of funnel mid funnel bottom of funnel conversion event Evergreen perpetuity what happens after you capture this information that the entire life cycle of that user is captured and behaviors are modeled and that data is collected so having all the appropriate attributions in place really are just as important as say devising a an ad campaign budget strategy content uh ear tone the Avatar doing performing the research now what do you do with that data once you collect it as you drive traffic to the sales stop that's the craft right this is the science and let's say for example through the onboarding process you want to analyze the data you want to capture the customer's attention uh whether you speak different tones for B2B standpoint or from the perspective of b2c the sales page design the ux for both mobile and for desktop primarily mobile the nurturing of that relationship throughout the process of the Upstream top of funnel mid funnel bottom throttle conversion Evergreen and then staying in touch having Outreach via social media and then having the correct platform in place that you want to use there are many out there all are good all serve a different purpose all have different benefits but it all depends if it checks the boxes of what you're trying to provide your client as the end goal from a reverse engineering standpoint this the goal is what matters and then you go back to your ad the messaging the tone the brand the user experience and the optimization through conversion rate optimization over time takes effect and it just improves all rant may all very important all driven by data so attribution singling out each step of the funnel offstream as they leave the funnel Downstream all of this data should be collected and then a model starts to shape it takes place as it forms your job as a marketer is to optimize and deliver results and to do that it must be managed it's not something back in the day when funnels first launched and excited let it go because no one really knew they were on a sales funnel page they thought it was just a landing page or a very poorly designed sales page but it worked today your audience is far more sophisticated and you need to better establish credibility as an authority from the B2B stand standpoint from the b2c standpoint you need trust signals citations credibility case study use case study video you'll figure all this out when you see what's performing and what's performing in an ill fashion and how do you improve and leverage what you have working for your team in terms of that sales funnel so that's that's the long version the short version goals understanding target audience helps you define that road map the Jer the customer Journey from point of entry from a click to where they left what's the behavior on page off page and then speaking to that audience where having a retargeting plan maybe that's important try it collect the data take the feedback advise a plan what does the model look like present to your client see what your audience likes and dislikes about it and that's where you the attribution helps you allocate or reallocate your budget ingly so it's an ongoing relationship it's a symbiotic relationship and it's very important to have a data mindset first and foremost knowing what the goal is going to be and then architecting ingly in a reverse engineering standpoint to your messaging your content the the graphic images for your ads and the the content the body the the description and the offer I mean data is at the central Focus point of all of it that we speak about in SEO digital marketing PPC and then a lot of businesses obviously this you must have faced it as well a lot of businesses when you approve when they approach you as the expert in digital marketing or as a marketer they all talk about that lead gen number end of the day there a lot of businesses they do not really care about what you're doing whether it is technical SEO you're running ads they have given you a budget or let's see you're building links but they want their phone ringing right so lead gen becomes so important for the end businesses right how what are your techniques at akaba to attract those high quality leads for to put in those sales funnels for your clients yes there's organic and there's paid so both verticals work organic takes a little bit longer in terms of SEO but organic content marketing newsletter remarketing retargeting that can be instantaneous if you've checked all the boxes leading up to that point and at how we manage our campaigns gave you the skinny on the onboarding process outlining the basics very simple sales funnel there's much more to it but there's also much less to it depending on the type of product your budget and other possible constraints that you identify along the way so I would say let's just say for example you have a budget is X right call it ten thousand dollars a month and of that ten thousand dollar an ad spend you budgeted ingly you allocate some for Google you allocate some for Facebook paid ads possibly LinkedIn paid ads and then they to perform based on the the uh the target audience and the sales goals if you don't have the budget you're going to fail from the get right there's no sense even taking on that client so they either have the budget to perform on Google there'll be a minimum in terms of AD spend on LinkedIn a minimum Facebook is more flexible you can go video on demand or you can do um contextual ads and static ads and Carousel ads so there's a variance of those that's where attribution comes into play and you have to budget ingly and see what performs best and and then scale ingly SEO is long term that is more highly qualified sets of eyeballs in terms of users if done properly and what we do for ourselves and for our our clients in some cases in the B2B world is crafting very fruitful useful relevant articles and we do that and a dual pronged approach one prong within that fork is to write content that can be optimized up to the top level domain or sitemap within your website and all of your metadata and everything ingly right it's all relevant and then you get the juice on that article and that article tends to rank very well if properly crafted there's PRS you can do PRS and do distribution by region or globally point that to a landing page or a sales page and by accident you're going to get traffic to that page yeah that's another Channel that's how you leverage content the other is newsletter don't just produce a newsletter for the sake of seeing your name come across your inbox needs it needs to be purposeful it needs to be fruitful they give this information away I'm a True Believer in that you get to show your knowledge Trust your the value and what you do and you get to show it express your passion about your industry and your knowledge so all very truthful all very honest and all meaningful from there make sure that you craft your newsletters to a landing page whether it hosts the entire article and infographic a downloadable takeaway but try to leverage that so there's retention and the retention will lead to subscriptions revisits shares social posts Etc lastly what I believe in the second Fork is The credibility Factor just by accident by creating this content you're viewed as an industry expert or someone who's very knowledgeable in that space so you're establishing a relationship and you're asking for nothing no sales page just here's the information do with it what you please just come back and visit and watch more often that's the social like follow share join a group Roundtable conversations speak with your peers and that's the second forum so in terms of content marketing it's very important to have these principles in place but the first and foremost being give it away and then to see spam no one wants to read spam no one wants to read something that is somewhat interesting right it there needs to be value behind it so think like this when creating your blog post provide images provided for graphics provide links to videos link up to other articles keep them entertained and extend the length of that user experience is such an important rule like you mentioned and AI has actually taken it up blown it away in the last couple of quarters so just wanted to generally understand what is your take on AI where are we headed love it love it it should be used as a tool that complements everything that we do yeah the media is blowing AI out of proportion and the misconception of AI uh doing like humanization of AI is far from it still needs a human interaction and input so AI is only as good as the input so what how we use AI brand mate is to give us insight to perform the research and not to do our job of personalization asking a robot to personalize something or teaching it to speak in my tone or my voice is not me and and to me I think it's to cop out for people in our industry and they should not use it to replace human generated content inspired or the guide rails provided by AI to allow you to turn that content over quickly yeah and and then there's the media part so you can create graphic elements that's fine to assist you with say SEO research we do heavily use AI to research competitors prior campaigns industry leading industry topics and subjects to go out and perform the research on that think about all the things we have to do collectively in our day to drop everything to perform research to get your keyword strategy your competitor information all of these things take time takes knowledge takes know-how and then you have to present it AI takes about 90 of that task off our plate the 10 percent is the knowledge how to purpose that and what the goal the end like where you want to land with this information you can't eliminate the humanization aspect it does give you a head start like you mentioned in terms of collecting information which will take time for a human to do it right but the fire it cannot be your you know final deliverable product because the end consumer of the content is a human at the end of the day so that's human touch in terms of humanizing the content which has to be read by a human at the end of the day and then that in itself that logic justifies that it really cannot take up human chops so yeah people are scared but that's the way we look at it as a as an organization as well we use it to the optimum in terms of reaping out the benefits saving time we've just seen that our resources have become all the more efficient after using AI versus the other way around that people are thinking oh we're thinking at one point yes it's just the way how you're gonna use it how you think about it yeah and also pronounce about since we were discussing about leads talking about leads when you are either doing SEO or social media campaigns all let's say PPC ads you get a lot of feeds and leads right and there are junk leads are not so good leads then there are good leads hot leads for any business it becomes extremely crucial to bifurcate and segregate those leads so that they can be nurtured moving forward if you can help us understand what are the best practices as per you for qualifying and prioritizing them to ensure that it is efficiently allocated to the resources in the organization or in your case in your clients business yeah scrubbing through that data is is very important and terms of leads I always lean on attribution attribution by industry you can go criticals within an industry you can go industry by general purposes and then the modeling takes takes shape the number you want to look at in terms of paid ads is cost per acquisition absolutely so if you were to Silo those segments say for example you have Healthcare you have manufacturing you have industrial you have you can break down B to B to C as well and you look at attribution of course if my cost per acquisition is is eighteen hundred dollars for health care but yet manufacturing is is twenty two dollars and there needs to be a decision made like the economics the business sense takes in place and I see many agencies fail from that standpoint which is why Things fall into our lap because they've had an experience they believe in it but they also believe that they don't have the right team in place we tend to land those types of accounts because of our background technical background our data management and background and data mining background so to me if you were to Silo these things ingly and look at the numbers the bare ball numbers you need a sales and then the the human business logic what does this mean I'm reading the data put your reports together analyze the data converse with your clients and often and get them to cooperate in terms of I think that's probably the biggest challenge we have is everyone's so busy they just expect us to know everything we don't know is how many leads did you close how many deals do you have in the hopper how many came from from call tracking right like pay-per-call how many came from PPC from your website how many were mobile how many were desktop this data really helps us perfect our craft and optimize for even greater results as you hone in on your on your skill sets right so those inputs and attribution is also required from the customer so that means as an agency you need to interact and schedule meetings weekly monthly quarterly semi-annual annually and then do a year in review right and then your review that dovetails to budget planning for the up and coming year so when you put that into perspective it should be done in Q4 right that's why we pretty much we have gone fishing signs on our doors the month of December because the book is scheduling all of our our client meetings and budget and planning for the up and coming year so that's it's not something you put say A salesperson on that task it needs to be the account manager who's rummaging through this data on a daily basis right so how does that affect your business it affects your agency too if you have a properly properly scheduled reviews in place for the year and it's adopted as part of your workflows right it should be in your day-to-day management and then that signal will help you optimize your cost per click cost per conversion off-page optimization of your campaign your on-page optimization of your campaign your Upstream optimization to your campaign and all of it Mouse together and affects your cost per acquisition absolutely absolutely and then talking about these leads what I want to what what are those key metrics that you know you are your you know account managers or project managers look at while tracking the measures which drives those leads to the sales funnels wait that's um that's an excellent question in place should be identified in your campaign requirements before you kick the campaign off all of this should be outlined and checked off your project management as uh part of your workflow now when we look at your research it's a good Baseline it's not final if you have the funds deep enough funds to drive traffic to a sales Page Track the performance of that campaign and the website then you can make Intelligent Decisions on behalf of your client and recommendations based on the data points and the sets that everything flows up to and that affects your budget it affects performance it affects optimization requirements and you can mask it that way as part of your reporting for me if I were a client I would want to know very simply what's my cost per acquisition and the model is if I sped X I should get receive around y right we're plus minus within this range then I can share with you that we our clients some of them tend to get very spoiled they have a stellar month and then things seasonally taper downwards so the Ebbs and flows so when you're in the valley your phone's ringing when you're in Peaks they don't want to talk to you and it's just that's part of the game that's just how the internet works there are seasonal trends there are non-seasonal Trends too and that that can be addressed and cured but the seasonal trends you can't really do much throwing more money at it is not the solution to the problem optimizing if you average it out and you see the performance year over year if you were to to map overlay bar chart and look at your performance cost per click is always going to increase that's just the way it works so the bidding strategy what you're willing to pay and what you're actually paying are different but always be willing to pay more doesn't necessarily mean you're going to pay that amount and and then optimizing that channel for top performance is like natural that that should be your your goalie or objective for your campaigns I hope I'm able to answer that question prop yeah absolutely absolutely and I also wanted to understand from you those strategies that you use at a carbon Technologies to maximize these funnel to ensure that the funnel has is kept warm and it fills in through the entire year although there will be at some points like you mentioned but how you as an agency for a client's business ensure that it is kept warm throughout the year I'll throw the kitchen sink at that one so obviously there's your paid ads yeah and then there's your top of funnel mid funnel bottom funnel Evergreen so where's your onboarding process at the bottom of funnel you need to determine where that is so now you need some automations in place all of this can be automated the ecosystem is fully automated a smart marketer will develop the entry point to the exit point and perpetuity and then the segmentation of top mid and bottom of funnel the nurturing process so let's say I'm giving away this thing write an e-book and they click on the ad on Google or Facebook they land on the landing page they arrive the landing page and they go through the copy you can track that entire uh user experience now they either perform something or they did not so if yes then these set of rules apply yeah download you have to provide your email it's then dispatch is sent out moments later they click on it if they don't click on it then the rules apply keep nurturing until that conversion at top of funnel takes place they download it's executed then what's the next step when they download There's a thank you page thank you for downloading maybe it's a video explainer personalized message by a real person not an avatar and it welcomes them and thanks them and then hopefully they find benefit in this download and then the next series of events happen how do we get them to the middle of funnel if you like the ebook or if you would like to schedule a free consultation then we welcome you to perform the next set of tasks right under a schedule it syncs with the team calendar a sales rep then sends out an email it's automated it's personalized have your photo in the email signature I want to see who the person is maybe even a link to a video introducing themselves really helps and then from there they schedule it's booked in their calendar an invitation or it's sync directly with the user calendar and the salesperson then there's a set of reminders that take place yeah up until that moment but he can't be spammy right two maybe three emails one three days before the second one two days before a third one say 15 minutes or an hour before the scheduled meeting as a reminder in some cases we use SMS if we're taking their phone number we'll send a message via text message just an hour before as opposed to each step of the way and it's a bit irritating to have your personal mobile number being pinged three days straight and then they either attend conditional logic or they don't if they attend there's a thing a series of thank you emails that go out afterwards thanking them for attending on what the next steps are potential steps are in warming them up to a sales meeting or a demo or a potential proposal submittal to review the proposal don't just email it schedule that Zoom call if you will to go over the proposal and you record it you send them a video of the recorded meeting and your proposal or the demo also a recording it is personalized it means a lot to the user and it also puts you ahead of the competition absolutely I can vouch for this because we also do this as a practice and this has worked wonders while not really sharing the proposal on an email actually explaining every logic as to why you have proposed something against what was the need what was the discussion so that you have to actually present it in a way that it matches to their expectation requirements and the discussion versus your proposal rather than just sending out uh very fancy PDF proposal on an email so I get completely relate to what you mentioned in a very valid point there in terms of explaining the proposal over a zoom call to help them understand why have you mentioned so and soothing against swin so parameters and what all what is your thought process behind preparing that proposal as well versus just you know mentioning numbers and the dollar value against it yeah you know implying fear is not good but presenting an expectation ran me this is what we're going to accomplish in our demo yeah and the expectation is as follows we expect you to walk away knowing abc123 correct no strings attached absolutely that alleviates the pressure of being sold that alleviates the hard selling tactics that we're all expecting on a day-to-day basis when you open up your email this is what we don't want we want the opposite yeah and not sell it's your job to inform absolutely yeah you solve this problem that they have and the guard is not up waiting for the the one two the left the right and then the uppercut to follow that goes away you have to establish ability you become the authority you become liked and welcoming to the next step into your sales process which is to not sell and at the end here's your proposal we did a presentation yes I'm interested no I'm not yeah absolutely I'll be able to leave the door open for our consumers and we also for our clients that didn't get we but then we get operationally involved we always educate the clients group further educate their end clients and inform them about the process if they let's have cleared a 12-month roadmap plan for them to succeed now that success they can achieve either with you or some other partner some other vendor but it is shown them the process so you have kept that dialogue open that this is the way of doing it you can do it with someone else that's absolutely fine but it your job since they've walked into you it's your job to educate and tell them that this is the best way that you feel that we feel you should go about and then you leave the door open like you mentioned let's say yes or no it's they call fine at the end of the day and you have to accept it that's absolutely fine and and not selling is so important in sales so that that is one learning that our audiences will definitely take out today you know from this podcast yeah yes yeah and it's like what we're doing right now I'm passionate about what we do our team is very we had longevity here in terms of team members clientele and to take great pride so no if not up to two with the industry I can't provide value I'm just doing what everyone else is doing I could find those people everywhere and anywhere um but to establish a relationship with someone you need to be the authority you need to provide value and insight into the black hole this is what you're going to expect in working with us or in the case of your question on a strategy for a sales funnel or a campaign right this is what you're going to expect and we map it all out now the bottom of the funnel to complete the campaign is another set of rules yes I'm interested we book we whatever the conversion uh measurement is if it's a demo a request for a proposal or audits that review a safe in terms of SEO like what you do here's a comprehensive SEO report here are the 200 plus signals that Google is monitoring here's what you reside within this ecosystem and then the recommended improvements now that's great but what's my strategy that's where most audits fail because they're just generating a report using some third-party software yeah it's not applicable in terms of keyword strategy we call them our the payloads right so it would be your profit Center keywords absolutely not what's easiest to optimize and get you rankings here you go Mr client I got you first position on a very broad keyword that's not going to melt so much in terms of sales yeah no traffic at all you're ranking but that's there's no point there so bottom of funnel if yes then a set of rules we welcome them we want to schedule an onboarding process here's what you'd expect as the next steps maybe even a video a personalized video and welcoming them with the just a brief bullet point on the sales page or the the welcome onboarding sales page the other would be the Evergreen so now it automatically enters them into an email newsletter and invitations to click and follow or join their social groups so it goes on from there you don't just hand it off to the sales team and then begin the onboarding process and scheduling that there's an ongoing nurture nurturing process and there's also an ongoing delivery of material and it helps with cross-selling and upselling and pushing them further into your CRM for forecasting yeah and so all of this can be done with the proper sales funnel and a CRM with automation features and characteristics that cover like the workflow I describe absolutely absolutely and so we have spoken so much about say before we wrap it up I would just like to take I understand your thought process on customer retention which is so important in today's date because there is so much of competition for any business for any Niche for any industry for that matter right you cannot really afford to have a leaking bucket when you are spending so much of energy to create that sales funnel that Ops model and and finally converting a client and you cannot afford to lose a client in three weeks six months down the line so it is very important for sure what is your thought around it how should businesses create that stickiness for the clients to stick around with their business for a longer period of time that's the agency's role it's their responsibility so don't have a step-by-step process in place your team members are only as good as leadership right yeah if I don't outline goals and objectives and have Team meetings and sit in on client meetings and review and analyze and show areas of weakness that can be approved upon touch on what they've done really well that your team is just going to continue down that path and you're going to have churn and it's not a profitable venue for you or your clientele mm-hmm yeah absolutely absolutely and now that you've put it on the agency side of things I'm sure a lot of our listeners from the industry would get scared to take that ownership after the sales happen as well right yeah you know what that you know what that matriculates into a couple hundred dollar a month client and everyone's targeting them or if you want to increase your engagement retainer you have to be a true agency there needs to be customer service in place um expectations like on a monthly basis get into that routine client's gonna you know my biggest pain point is Ron May getting clients to return my calls to in terms of speaking on behalf of the agency I can probably imagine yeah there's a there's the notion that everything's good it's in in the hands of my agency um there needs to be some communication a little collaboration goes a long way and as long as we're doing our job by reaching out to the client I can always put it back on onto their plate and say you missed this meeting we defer this meeting we've hit a class ceiling to get to the next level we need a commitment and that's my biggest challenge everything else can be perfect it doesn't matter when you hit that glass ceiling with the client it becomes a challenge you can't improve absolutely absolutely what I'm saying we have spoken a lot about the sales funnel retention as well customer retention there's a lot of serious discussion but finally before wrapping this up before we let you go I want to play a quick rapid fire with you I hope you'll be interested shoot great your favorite book ah 48 Laws of Attraction okay your last Google search you can check your computer if you want to nope that was a good one that was a good one okay and what where did you go on your last vacation my last vacation was Indian Rocks Florida oh okay and let's see if we have to make a movie on you if DWS has to make a movie on you what genre would it be oh man what genre you could not Google that about me for sure if I can narrow it down a two go ahead we'll do it for this one I love Bruce Willis I'm old school Die Hard uh like action so action movie that is yeah the other would be like business oriented like Wall Street or something along those lines yeah okay talking about business it brings to my last question do not really any further what is it one thing that you like the most about your job or let's say this industry or the field that we are in oh man sorry I'd have to say premium has to be the success of our campaigns putting a smile on a client's face oh okay wonderful wonderful that's a good one sir yeah super weird I'm saying oh really thank you so much for taking out time for this question thanks for having me this was very nice and a pleasurable experience thank you so much for what you do great pleasure is all mine and thank you for your time really appreciate you coming to our podcast yeah and I'm sure our audiences would have benefited a lot out of the insights which you have shared tonight and can't thank you enough yeah you have a great day cheers