Do you think you could start with nothing and build a 7 figure local marketing agency in your first year? If you follow Graig Presti’s advice, you sure can.

Graig Presti started his local marketing consulting business and did something different than most: he chose to offer his services only to dentists…and by doing so, he grew top line revenue to 7 figures in year one…and has increased it to $3.5 Million in year 3. When you consider that most local marketing consultants really struggle to attract clients, Graig’s accomplishments are nothing short of amazing.

In this interview, you’ll hear Graig and I talk about:

(2:17) Introductions
(3:47) The results he’s getting (automating all sales)
(7:47) Why he picked dentists
(12:17) How he generates leads, and his sales funnel
(14:47) How he builds a list; using sponsored email, direct mail, LinkedIn, and JV partners
(17:47) The lead magnet he uses: Google Review Cheat Sheets
(19:27) How leads are nurtured
(22:17) How he’s using webinars
(30:57) How he converts webinar attendees to customers
(32:37) An overview of his product offerings
(41:17) The downside of continuity
(43:37) Where his customers are located
(45:17) How he leverages the telephone
(52:17) How to get others to send email sponsoring you
(57:17) How he’s using direct mail
(58:17) How he uses postcards with personalized landing pages
(1:04:17) How he’s running ads on LinkedIn
(1:08:17) How long it took him to get his ad spend back
(1:11:57) How long it took him to get his first client
(1:18:27) The benefits of a Mastermind

Additional Resources

Graig gets great results using simple text like this.

There’s nothing complex about this formula.

More About This Episode

The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.

It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.

Listen Now

Transcript

Trent: Hey there, bright idea hunters. Welcome to the Bright Ideas podcast.

I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid, and this is the podcast for marketing

agencies and entrepreneurs who want to discover how to use content

marketing and marketing automation to massively boost their business.On the show with me today is an entrepreneur by the name of Graig Presti.

He’s the founder of localsearchfordentists.com and you are in for a real

treat in this interview because I ask Greg a truckload of questions and I

drilled down for detail on all of them. He’s going to explain to you how he

built his local marketing company that serves dentists.He did a million dollars in his first year. Three years in, he’s doing

almost $4 million a year. His profit margins are off the charts. He’s got

hundreds of customers, and he has automated virtually the entire sales

process. I shouldn’t say “virtually the entire” — he’s automated the

entire sales process and so attracting new clients for him is not a

challenge. When you listen to this interview, you’re going to hear exactly

what he does. There are gold nuggets galore in this interview.Before we get to that, I very quickly want to tell you about the Conversion

Tactics Toolkit at brightideas.co. I do a much better job than the average

website at converting my site visitors into subscribers and then those

subscribers get converted within my marketing funnel into customers. In the

Conversion Tactics Toolkit, which is a four-part video series, I’m going to

open up the kimono. I’m going to show you exactly how I do it all. It’s all

free. All you’ve got to do is go to brightideas.co, enter your e-mail

address, and you’ll get your first video right away.So with all of that said, please join me in welcoming Graig to the show.

Hey, Graig, welcome to the show. Thanks for making the time.Graig Presti: Hey, Trent, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Trent: No problem. So for the folks who don’t know who you are yet, please,

real quickly, who are you and what do you do?

Graig: Well, my name’s Graig Presti and I’m the CEO and founder of a

company called “Local Search For Dentists”. Basically what we do is we help

dental practices all over the world, really, we have clients all the way

from the United Kingdom to here in the United States leverage the Internet

and start to get more patients, more phone calls, and more bottom-line net

profits. The way that we do that is through a lot of Internet tactics and

so on and so forth, but we’ve really had some good success with being able

to do that and I’ve grown the business quite quickly in the last two to

three years.

Trent: Terrific. So, for the folks — I know that I’m like this whenever

I’m listening to a podcast, I always do this and I hope you don’t mind —

let’s talk about the results that you’re getting now and then I want to go

backwards and have you explain to everyone all the strategies and tactics

you’re using to get those results. So can you talk a little bit — if

you’re willing to, of course — about number of customers and maybe top-

line revenue that your firm is generating?

Graig: Sure, and if you hear someone blowing in the background, they’re

doing the landscaping right now at the office, so I apologize for that in

advance. I didn’t know that they would be coming today.

Really, the key way that I built my business so fast was the fact that I

was able to automate all of my marketing and all of my sales to occur all

the time, seamlessly without me, so we were able to therefore have a

minimal staff because everything we were doing was completely automated. We

use InfusionSoft to automate our marketing. I’ve tried a bunch of different

other things but, for me, the InfusionSoft, like I was telling you earlier,

basically I’ve used it since its inception and there really is no other

software out there that you can sync up direct mail, sales funnels, e-mail

marketing, SMS marketing, and then syncing up automated webinars.

There’s really no other system out there that allows you to do that. You’d

have to have 1,000 microworkers doing what you need them to do, so without

out it, we wouldn’t have had half the growth that we’ve had.

Trent: So how big’s the company now?

Graig: In terms of employees or . . .?

Trent: Revenue. Give a range.

Graig: Revenue? Well, we went in our first year, we went from $0 to $1

million in revenue in 12 months and this year we’re going to do over $3.5

million dollars in just under three years.

Trent: That’s not a bad business, my friend.

Graig: No, and it’s a very good business and the reality is we’ve become

very profitable because of what I’ve said, where, we’ve automated

everything. We don’t have huge overhead. We don’t need 50 employees. We

only need a small team and as long as the little engine is running in the

background, we’re good to go.

Trent: So let’s talk a little bit about that. I don’t normally ask this but

you alluded to it: you’re very profitable. Do you mind sharing what the

profit percent is?

Graig: Yeah, I don’t mind. It obviously ranges from product to product but,

in general, our company’s going to run around a 40% profit margin.

Trent: Wow, that is phenomenal. All right, and how many employees —

because I know when I ran my old service business, and I didn’t know

anything about automation back then — I needed about one employee for

every $100,000 of annual revenue. So how many full-time employees do you

have?

Graig: Well, to your question — let me back you up. Your little formula

that you used applies to your business a little bit, but you can really

scale ours a little bit more because we’re Internet-based, so it really

comes down to utilizing a system and then putting clients into that system

so then you don’t get out of that system. So we can basically crank out

more work with less people.

Right now we have, I’d say — I like to break it up between operations,

which is fulfillment, and sales and marketing. So on the operations side,

we have about 12 people. Some of them are outsourcers, some of them are

internal employees doing the fulfillment inside of things.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Then on the sales and marketing side of things, you have really four

people, including myself, because I do handle the marketing. I don’t write

the copy, but I handle sort of the campaign-building and things like that,

so about four. The reason we only really needed three to four people on the

sales and marketing side is because we’re so systematic with our marketing

that I’ve figured out how much I need to spend to acquire a client, what’s

my most profitable activity, and all I do is I just put leads into that

system. I don’t try to get fancy and that’s really all we’ve done.

Trent: All right, and we’re going to talk about that. Before we get into

that — because I know that a lot of people that are in my tribe that are

going to listen to this interview, they are either looking to start a

business, and I do everything I can to encourage them to start what I call

a “real business”, which is one like yours that has customers, as opposed

to some goofy fly-by-night, get-rich-quick thing that you see all over the

Internet, which I don’t believe in those.

Then the other portion of my tribe is marketing consultants–or the next

biggest portion, I should say, is marketing consultants who, by and large,

are one-person shops and I don’t think too many of them are getting rich

and they’re all looking for ways to get more customers. In one of my

courses called the “Best Buyer Formula”, one of the very first things I

talk about is pick a profitable niche, so do you want to talk a little bit

about why you picked dentists versus all the other niches you could’ve

picked?

Graig: Right, right. It’s a good question. I get asked that at every dinner

party I go to because that just sounds so crazy to people, like, “Why

wouldn’t you just try to conquer the world?”

Trent: Why not just be everything for everyone?

Graig: Why wouldn’t you just do everyone? It’s hard to explain that to

someone who might not think the way that I think and the way that you think

and so on and so forth. It’s a very logical thing why I chose dentists.

Well, I use this in any time I look at going after it for any niche, is

there’s like three to four criteria.

Let’s just take dentists for example. One, their customer transaction size

is high, so their average customer value is going to be anywhere between

$1,000 and $3,000. That allows them to spend more money on consultative

services, i.e., Internet marketing, right? So now a service that costs $500

a month or $2,000 a month, if it gets him patients, is pretty palatable

because they know they only need a few to make money.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: So it lowers price resistance naturally. Now, on the flipside of

that, if I was to go after, say, the chiropractic niche or plumbers or

roofers, well, the transaction size is a lot less and a lot less frequent,

so they’re not going to be able to essentially afford expensive services,

okay?

Then the second step with dentists is they have a lot of problems with

marketing and a lot of problems with technology, so they essentially need

outsourcers to do the work. They’re not going to do it internally mostly.

They need someone who’s an expert to do it. Then, on the flipside of that

is you need someone who has, essentially, the need for marketing. They’re

not a referral-based business. Dentists have to market externally. They’re

not like an M.D. who gets patients from insurance. I think it’s only like

20% of people get dental insurance. They need to go out and get new

customers and new patients so they need marketing, so it was very, very

specific as to why I chose dentistry — because they have the transaction

size to support the cost, they have the problems and need the marketing to

sustain their business, therefore they need a company like mine.

Trent: Absolutely, couldn’t agree more. Okay, so now let’s roll up our

sleeves here and talk. Let’s start at the very beginning of the funnel

because nothing happens until you have a lead. It’s hard to make a sale if

you don’t have a lead.

Graig: Right on.

Trent: Please talk about InfusionSoft and automation as much as you like

because that’s the big thing that I’m trying to get people to understand,

is you shouldn’t be doing this stuff manually and obviously you’re not, so

please give as much detail as you’d like.

Graig: Sure. Yeah, I mean, just as a disclaimer, anyone who is trying to

half-ass it and not 100% automate their marketing and using something cheap

like iContact or AWeber, you really need to change that mindset because if

you really want to increase your income, you need to just bite the bullet,

go over and do something that automates everything. That’s just a

disclaimer. That’s not a sales pitch, that’s just the truth because I’ve

messed around with all of those things before.

But back to your original question, okay? For me, it’s a very simple Dan

Kennedy-style lead generation: put them through a simple sequence that

makes them more able to purchase and buy, right? Then there’s pre-

qualification steps in between there. We’ll do the typical lead source,

drive them to a landing page or squeeze page offering them a free report or

some sort of free content for an opt-in and then the opt-in takes them to a

low-end product office for $97. Then after they buy the $97 thing, we’re

trying to up-sell them into the big, multiple-of-thousand-dollar thing.

So that’s the lifecycle of our client. Now, not everybody’s going to take

that cycle, but anyone who doesn’t essentially take the $97 low-end offer,

they get put into a drip sequence that’s automated and then they get

marketed to constantly after that, both offline and online.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Until they buy or die.

Trent: Pretty much just like my funnel.

Graig: So someone listening is probably going like, “That’s it?” Honestly,

I coach other people on how to become local marketers like myself and we

spend a day together and I map out this funnel for them — and obviously I

go into greater detail — they’re just blown away at how simple it is, yet

how effective it is.

All that, by the way, Trent, operates on its own. I don’t sit here pushing

a button 270 times a day. It just happens because of InfusionSoft and that

allows me to do that. Then one of the other cool things that I do is in

between those sequences and so on and so forth, is I can automate webinars

with Stealth Seminar to work with InfusionSoft, so I can literally use live

events to sell my services automatically, which is pretty cool.

Trent: Absolutely. Okay, so let’s go right back to the leads. How are you,

first of all, getting your list? Are you buying a list? Are you having a VA

going around and do Google searches and make a spreadsheet for you? Because

you’ve got to identify your targets and you’ve got to build a finite list.

Graig: Right, right. I have a very specific criteria and pet peeve of mine

that where all I do is I find the lead sources and then I let my marketing

copy drive the opt-ins and drive the leads because I don’t want to deal

with folks who are not really interested in the topic that I’m talking

about, okay? I don’t want to just buy a list of dentists and then just

bombard them with push marketing. I want people who are actually going to

be interested in my services, who that copy speaks to them, right? So

they’re like, “Well, I need to have that.”

The way that I do it is I have, just like a lot of my things is I don’t

like using just one lead source, so I use some sponsored e-mail blasts that

are through other dental companies. I do direct mail, where I’ll use

postcards and so on and so forth to drive them to a landing page. I’ll use

online traffic via LinkedIn and paid ads and I drive all those people to

one single lead source, so I’m getting a myriad.

I also have JV partners and so on and so forth but I’m not one to go out

and just buy a list or have a VA scrape anything or use any software

because I don’t want crap leads, right? I want people who are actually

raising their hand like, “Oh, you know what? I have that problem, I need to

get that free report.”

Trent: Now, are you using tracking links, Google Analytics tracking links

so that when you look at the traffic that’s going to this one squeeze —

because, I mean, you said you’re using one squeeze page regardless of where

you’re getting the lead from.

Graig: Well, when I say “one squeeze page,” I mean one templated copy

squeeze page. I have that copy myriad of times over tracking each lead

source, so what I’m doing is I’m not only tracking the lead source using

Infusion — which you know you can do, you can set it that way — and then

each lead source has their individual landing page. It looks the same but

it’s a different tracking mechanism, so I don’t really use Google for that;

I use InfusionSoft for that because they have their own dynamic page, so I

know for certain what’s going on there.

Trent: Okay, so these folks are coming from these variety of ways —

sponsored mail, direct mail, LinkedIn and so forth — they’re coming to the

squeeze page. What’s the offer on the squeeze page? And these are

prospective dental clients for you, I just want to be clear. I want to make

sure people know we’re not talking about your dentists and getting them

patients; we’re talking about how you’re getting clients.

Graig: Correct, correct, but the thing is that I need to focus on that. In

order for me to offer solutions to their problems, I need to understand

that they need phone calls, they need patients in order for my services to

speak to that problem, right? So, for me, one of my biggest lead source

magnets, if you will — because I’ve done a few, more than one — but my

best one has been my Google Review cheat sheets, which essentially is a

templated way for dental practices to get more Google patient reviews, five-

star Google patient reviews.

Essentially that’s what I’m giving them that template for free so they can

go out and start to get good patient reviews instantly on Google, and that

seems to be quite the little hot button for folks right now. Then that gets

them going into my sequence.

Trent: Okay. I’m just jotting notes here. Sorry, audience, I wish I could

write faster but I’ve got to have good show notes for you guys. Okay, so

that’s your number one lead magnet? Do you use anything else for a lead

magnet or is that pretty much . . .?

Graig: I have three to four free reports and so on and so forth. I have a

couple videos, stuff where I just put content out and then I have my

copywriter write it up and I’ll use that just to sort of shake it up. But

my bread and butter is what I just told you.

Trent: Okay. Let’s talk about the sequence that happens because when you

use InfusionSoft, they fill out this form and you’re applying some tags,

which is just a means of categorizing people and causing things to happen.

Walk us through the sequence so that we understand what is happening to

those leads, so we understand how they’re being nurtured.

Graig: Okay, so after someone opts-in, right, they give their name and e-

mail to get, we’ll say, the Google Review thing, okay, they are then sent a

follow-up e-mail automatically, providing the content that I said I would

give them. That’s important for people to understand that. You can’t just

give away crap. You do have to provide them with some really good stuff in

that follow-up e-mail because that, essentially, is your first introduction

to them, right? They need to trust you at that point and not think you’re

full of it.

So while that’s being sent, they’re also being flipped to an up-sell page

which sells them a $97 product.

Trent: Which is what?

Graig: Which is what?

Trent: Yeah, what is that?

Graig: It’s basically the ability to essentially look at what they’re doing

right now with their marketing and kind of give them a diagnostic on where

they’re failing and where they’re not failing.

Trent: Is this a loss leader for you? I mean, do you actually have some

manual delivery in fulfilling what they’re buying for $97?

Graig: Yeah, it is a manual thing but that’s on purpose.

Trent: Okay, and is it a VA that’s doing it or are you interacting with

them?

Graig: Nope, that’s actually my sales consultants will fulfill on that.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Because it’s part of the sales mechanism, so it’s important that

they communicate the results to them in a proper way.

Trent: So what do you call that product or that report?

Graig: We call that like a “Dental Marketing Game Plan” is what we’ll call

it.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: And it’s okay that’s manual, by the way, because 50% of the people

that buy that $97 product buy the big one.

Trent: Yeah, which we’ll get to.

Graig: Sure.

Trent: Okay, so nurture sequence: deliver the content, deliver the up-sell

of $97 — or rather offer the up-sell — and what percentage of the people

who come at the top of the funnel buy the $97 product?

Graig: Well, it really depends on the lead source, right? Because sometimes

the house list is going to convert better than a cold list, so about 25% of

the people take the up-sell. But even though they don’t take the up-sell

doesn’t mean we just stop and give up, right? Because the majority aren’t

going to buy anything, right?

Trent: Right.

Graig: So then they go into, really, just a four-step sequence of

delivering over five days more content — give them an invite to a webinar

in there, give them a video that they can watch, all sort of breeding

content, breeding trust with me, right?

Trent: And is it you on the video and your voice on the webinar?

Graig: Oh, yeah.

Trent: Because you’re trying to get them familiar with you.

Graig: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it’s me. It’s me all the way around, yeah. It’s

more so they can identify with me because here’s the thing: in this day and

age, man, e-mail marketing is just going to get tougher and tougher and

it’s really getting hard now. So without being recognized in the inbox and

being recognized as the go-to person and the authority, man, it’s hard to

sell.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: It’s hard to sell.

Trent: It’s why I do podcasts and probably the same reason you do them.

Graig: Right, right, right, and so what we do, one of the other things too

is once people are on my list, right — so those are people that opt-in,

they’re on my list, right? So I’ve dripped content to them, they know me,

they hopefully trust me — not everybody’s going to trust me, some people

are just going to ignore it but that’s okay; you actually want that in some

folks — is every month we’re doing a promotional webinar driven to promote

sales. All we’re doing is re-inventing the copy around very similar topics

so that they seem new and then we go out and we sell more stuff every

month, doing it that way, so we’re actually holding virtual events one time

a month.

Trent: And are those one-time-per-month virtual events actually live or are

they recorded?

Graig: Of course not. Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. I would

say most of the time, most of the time they are evergreened most of the

time.

Trent: Yeah, and some people are like, “Oh, you’re fooling people.” But

you’re not because I think most people know, but it doesn’t matter. I read

a study and it was like 86% of people that attended webinars actually

preferred the recording because that way they can watch it on their on

time.

Graig: You want to know the real answer to that question?

Trent: Sure. Yeah, please.

Graig: The real answer to that question is that most people surveyed in

this country actually think infomercials are live television.

Trent: No way.

Graig: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s a hard, proven thing, stat. I’m not

making that up and the reality of that situation is that you should never

feel bad for automating and evergreening everything because some people are

just always going to believe it’s live even if you tell them it’s recorded.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: So there’s a reason infomercials convert like crazy is because of

that.

Trent: Is that a dog?

Graig: It is my dogs.

Trent: No worries. I like live action on my podcasts. Okay, so, again, I

want to make sure that everyone understands this: they opt-in, they get the

content, they’re all going to see the $97 up-sell, if they don’t buy the up-

sell, they’re going to go into a five-day nurturing sequence of more

content, and then they’re going to get dripped on and then probably going

to see an offer once a month to attend your live event, correct?

Graig: That is correct. They will get sort of driven to opt-in for a live

event once a month, yeah.

Trent: Okay, and the content on the webinar, can you talk about that?

Graig: I can’t. Now, I’m going to disclaimer this: I don’t just have one

webinar. I don’t just sell one thing, right? The webinar content’s going to

depend on what I’m promoting that month and maybe it’s a launch, maybe it’s

not a launch. It just depends on what I feel is going to work that month

from a CEO perspective I want to know what do I think is going to make us

the most amount of revenue this month, so sometimes it’s a long-term

strategy, sometimes it’s just what we do every month.

So what was your question again? I’m sorry.

Trent: Just the content of the webinar, so I’m assuming . . .

Graig: Oh, yeah. The content of the webinar — and this may fly in the face

of what a lot of people say, but it works — yes, I focus on content of the

situation, so whether it’s dental marketing or some sort of dental

marketing, Internet dental marketing, whatever it is, yes, I focus on

content, but I’ve shifted the paradigm where the old way of doing it used

to be, “Oh, just give them amazing, amazing stuff that they can do for like

80% of the webinar and then 20% can be the pitch.”

I did that for a while and it did do well, but then I decided, since

everybody’s doing it, why don’t I just do the opposite of that? I’m just

going to try to sell from the get-go. Sure, I talked about content and what

you should be doing and I did put them through sort of a problem and

agitation and then solving that problem, but I just flat-out made it a

video sales letter, which I don’t know if your audience will know what a

video sales letter is. Do you want me to explain what that is?

Trent: Yeah, go ahead, please.

Graig: Okay, a video sales letter — and I’m sure everyone has probably

seen one before, they just maybe don’t know what that name is — a video

sales letter is basically a PowerPoint slideshow on video of just written

word and someone speaking to that written word in black-and-white. It’s not

a fancy Keynote presentation, it’s not a fancy PowerPoint presentation with

these crazy images. It’s just spoken word to written word is what it is and

they’re just essentially reading it.

The idea behind that is to keep the person engaged and they actually read

along with you as you’re speaking so they’re soaking up that information

more. I decided just apply that to all my webinars and everything’s going

to be a video sales letter now. Even if it’s a webinar, I’m just going to

make it that type of style and, man, I tell you, my conversions went up 20%

by just doing that and that’s how I launch everything now. Everything.

So my webinars really are a video a sales letter. I kind of scrapped the

content and I know that sounds crazy, but . . .

Trent: Just so that me and everyone else understands this, everyone of your

webinars is black text on a white background and your voice is reading

exactly what’s on the screen.

Graig: You got it.

Trent: I love it. All right.

Graig: All my friends, by the way, all my buddies who are entrepreneurs and

Internet marketers and all this stuff, they think I’m crazy.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: They’re like, “You’re the only one I know that does all that crazy

stuff and that’s how you launch everything?” I’m like, “That’s why it

works.”

Trent: Yeah, sometimes simple is best, man.

Graig: Because think about it this way: if you’re in consulting — so like

you said a lot of your people are consultants and maybe coaches and

marketers and so on and so forth — everybody does a free demo, a free

webinar, a free evaluation. Everyone does that in some fashion or form. I

mean, I even see e-mails these days — that’s how I know it’s getting bad

out there for people — is they’re bribing people to get on their webinars

and do taped demos, like giving them Starbucks gift cards and $25 Visa

check cards. I’m like, that tells me that they don’t know what to do, other

than bribe their prospects to absorb their crap content.

So doing it my way, that’s why it works so well, because everyone’s doing

these demos and webinars and real soft stuff.

Trent: It’s a way of definitely separating the folks that are seriously

interested and likely to take action from the folks that are kicking tires.

Graig: Sure, sure.

Trent: Okay, so I’m at the point now in your funnel where I’ve seen one of

your webinars. What’s an offer look like? What’s the call to action on the

webinar?

Graig: Well, the call to action is buy because here’s this great package

with these great bonuses that I’m offering to the first 10 people, and if

you’re not one of the 10, then that’s okay but you’re just going to miss

out on this great opportunity, so go hit the button below this video, go to

the order page and we’ll talk to you.

Trent: So give me an example of something that you’ve sold via this method

recently, like was it a $1,000, was it a $5,000 deal?

Graig: Well, I’ve always done more expensive products. In my world, I would

deem them expensive, medium to expensive. I’ve never been the cheap person.

I’ve never been the low-end $100 guy, but just recently we did come up with

a low-end offer, which was a press release product where we offered a very

inexpensive, it was $200 to set it up and it’s a $97 a month subscription

and we’re offering some press release marketing for that and that’s the

least expensive thing I’ve ever offered.

But it did quite well. We sold 30 in a night.

Trent: Well, that’s good. That’s three grand a month in continuity for you

right there from one webinar.

Graig: By the way, the goal of having that lower-end sort of nugget is not

to really make any money off of it. It’s okay, the money part of it is

okay, it absorbs some of the cost, but I really want to get those folks

into my other programs, so now I have someone who’s actually paying us, we

can prove results, and now we can really show them how we can even really

ramp it up for them.

Trent: Let’s talk about your products for a minute. Let’s get out of the

marketing funnel for a second. Don’t worry, audience, we’ll come back to

this. But I want to talk about what are you offering to do for people?

Graig: We have “the big three” is what I call them, so we have our big

three products. Now, we don’t do any sort of a la carte stuff. We don’t do,

“Oh, you can pick a Twitter account and we’ll create a Twitter account,”

“Oh, pick a Google account and we’ll create a Google account.” We don’t

really operate like that. It’s really just a one-thing-or-not. You can’t

pick-and-choose what you want type of deal.

Our first product is really our local SEO product, which is basically

helping dental practices get ranked in the cities that they serve via

Google, via Bing, via Yahoo!, utilizing a bunch of things within that.

Trent: And what do you charge for that?

Graig: That one is $2,500 to set it up and $500 a month continuity after 30

days and it is a 12-month contract.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: The second one that we have is Google AdWords management. If people

don’t know what Google AdWords is, it’s basically managing, creating, and

monitoring dental marketing ads for our clients on Google and their various

ad networks, so that way they can get more phone calls, more traffic, and

that’s $699 a month and that includes your budget on Google and your

administration fees. There’s no hidden costs or anything. It’s $699 a month

and that’s a four-month agreement.

Trent: Now I want to clarify something. Does that include the cost of the

ads or that’s just . . .?

Graig: Oh, yeah, that’s everything.

Trent: So they spend $700 a month and you’re going to spend some portion of

that $700 on the actual ads and the rest is kind of your profit margin.

Graig: Correct, and the reason that I structure it that was is because it’s

advantageous for us as the company to run their campaign at 100% premium

efficiency because we don’t want to waste any of the ad budget because we

want to keep them at the top and we want to make money, so they look at us

like the good guy, not the bad guy.

Now, the way most companies price their pay-per-click campaign is they’ll

say, “Okay, well, it’s $1,000 budget minimum and we take 30% of that.” So

if you want to do $2,000, they take 30%. Whatever it is, they take 30%.

Problem is the customer always looks at you like the bad guy, so now

they’ve got to pay Google one thing and then they’ve got to pay your pain-

in-the-butt another thing and if it doesn’t work, they get mad at you no

matter — they don’t get mad at Google, they get mad at you.

So I looked at it as let’s just get a bunch of ads going and we’re just

going to crank down on this, make sure we know our keywords, and that way

our client’s going to get the most out of their campaigns. Because some

months and some days we don’t get any money on our PPC, but that’s okay

because we know our clients are doing better and we know we’ll make that up

at some point.

Trent: So out of $700, how much is left for you, typically, for profit?

Graig: It depends on the city and the area and the client, but that product

really does quite well. That’ll run at a 40% margin.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Sometimes more.

Trent: And how about the next product?

Graig: Then the next one is our reputation management product that I don’t

actually call it “reputation management” — most people would know

“reputation management” on this podcast — I call it “revenue protection

program” because reputation management implies that you have a reputation

problem and, at that point, now you’re being reactive. I like people to

protect their revenue sources

That means even if you don’t have a reputation problem — say you have no

bad reviews. Let’s just say you’re squeaky clean. Well, the problem is that

you’re not putting your best foot forward because 9 out of 10 patients are

Googling you before they call your practice. So if you’re disorganized and

have nothing done professionally and no review sites on page one and your

Google reviews are slim to none, they’re not going to trust you.

But if you have press releases from FOX News, CNN, third-party media sites,

video on YouTube of your best patients talking about how you’re the best

dentist they ever went to, you’re going to close more cases and you’re

going to have more revenue in your practice. In the event, somewhere down

the line when you get a bad review — not if, but when you get a bad

review, which is bound to happen — you’re protected because you just spent

this amount of time letting us market your practice so that way you’re

almost indestructible on the web.

So if they go to Ripoff Report or Pissed Consumer, you don’t really have to

worry about it because, number one, we’re on it, but on the second part,

you’re protected because you have all this great PR as opposed to none.

Trent: So I want to ask a question about this then. Essentially what this

boils down to is you’re building up so much positive PR that when someone

leaves a negative review, it’s not going to rise to the top because, as a

percentage of the overall reviews, their negative review is negligible. Is

that correct?

Graig: Right, that’s correct and they may never see it.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: For example, I did have a dentist in Louisville who had a patient go

onto — and he was a client of my other services, actually — but he had a

patient go onto Pissed Consumer and say that Dr. Larry gave him a metal

mouth. Talk about a bad review, right? “Gave me a metal mouth.” Well, every

time you Googled his name or his practice, it was like the third spot on

Google in big, bold letters saying this poor dentist gave this guy a metal

mouth.

He was like, “I’ll hear about this all the time! Patients are saying, ‘Do

you know this guy said this? Do you know this?'” He didn’t know what to do,

so we essentially plugged him into our revenue protection program and that

Pissed Consumer site is on like page 15 of Google, never to be seen again.

Trent: So you just produce so much good stuff that ended up being newer

and, because of press releases and so forth, ranked better than the bad

stuff and literally just it pushed down, made it go away.

Graig: Yeah. Yeah, we nuked it. Yeah, it got nuked.

Trent: What are your customers paying you for this service?

Graig: That one is $1,000 to set up everything and $497 a month not only to

maintain the rankings of that content — which, by the way, you can’t just

do it one time and think it’s going to stay up forever. You do have to do

some Internet stuff to do it and make it stick. So we do that for the

months after that and then we monitor the reputation and so on and so forth

after that for $497 a month.

Trent: And what are you doing to monitor it? Are you just using Google

Alerts or is there a special tool that you use?

Graig: We have some proprietary software we use. I mean, obviously, we do

have Google Alerts because they’re quick and nice, but we do have some

reporting tools that we use.

Trent: Okay. So is there anything else in your product portfolio or is that

it?

Graig: That’s pretty much it. I have one program that is basically specific

to implant dentistry. Are you familiar with dental implants? Do you know

what they are?

Trent: Help me out.

Graig: Okay, basically dental implants are a way for people with dentures

and missing teeth to get permanent teeth.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: So this is going to sound awful, but what they do is they drill a

metal post into your jaw and then they put a crown on it and you basically

have stronger than real teeth, so you can go out and eat a steak and smile

and you’re going to have these until you die. Here’s the good news: you’re

going to be happier and your wife’s going to love your new smile, but

they’re $1,000 to $1,500 per tooth.

Trent: Per tooth, yeah. Isn’t this what people call . . .?

Graig: The benefit to that is that every new patient to a dental implant

dentist is worth more, so I decided to come up with an Internet marketing

program that gets more implant patients coming to practices.

Trent: Okay. What do you call that?

Graig: I just call that “Local Search Dental Implant Marketing Program”.

Trent: Okay, and what do you charge for that?

Graig: That one is, we’re charging, I believe, $3,000 to set it up and $697

a month.

Trent: Okay. What percentage of your top-line revenue is recurring?

Graig: What percentage of my top-line revenue is recurring?

Trent: Yeah, because every product you’ve described to me has some kind of

monthly fee, which is what we want.

Graig: Yeah, no, you may have duped me. I have to pull up Infusion — I

actually don’t know that number. You want to know why I don’t know that

number — and this is actually a very good lesson for everyone listening —

because I was part of a business that declined because of its gluttony with

continuity. Continuity is phenomenal. I don’t sell anything without it. I

never will ever.

It’s the best thing in the world, don’t get me wrong, but here’s the

problem: continuity in subscription fees can make you gluttonous. They can

make you forget about the fact that you still need to retain and sell

stuff. So what happens is once a business sort of starts to lean and only

lean on its subscription income, it will die.

Trent: Because you get lazy and stop looking for new customers.

Graig: Correct. For example, this is actually a good lesson for your folks

because just recently we had a bit of a bad stretch. We had some retention

issues with our clients, not because of performance on our part. I think it

just happened to be we weren’t doing the right things to maintain some

customers. We plugged some holes, but here’s what started happening was we

started not retaining and adding new customers and all we did was live off

our continuity.

Well, you have a few customers leaving every single month, before you know

it, you just lost 20% of your revenue, so I don’t know that number but the

reason I don’t is because I know that I have the continuity. I focus only

on new sales and retention and the rest will take care of itself.

Trent: Because if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Graig: Right, so if I know we need to hit 10 new customers a month and we

hit that above, I know that we’re where we need to be. If we do three to

four, I know we’re screwed because we’re basically going to be living off

of continuity and that just drives me nuts.

The last business I was a part of, that’s how the business died. I had a

company that was doing $15 million a year that went down to barely doing a

million because it lived off its continuity.

Trent: Wow. How many of your customers live or work within driving distance

of you?

Graig: Four.

Trent: Out of how many.

Graig: Out of 400.

Trent: That’s what I wanted you to say. I want people to understand that

this is a business that doesn’t matter what town you live in.

Graig: No. No, no. That’s a minimalistic type of attitude because even the

people that I coach and consult on how to be local marketers have been

conditioned and predetermined to think that they can only sell local

businesses in their particular city and geography and the reality is that

is going to be your death.

Trent: So your sales process begins with online marketing, you make

extensive use of automated webinars, and the sales are, I’m going to guess,

either closed by someone clicking the “buy” button or are they ever closed

by one of your sales reps being on the phone and making the final sale?

Graig: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Trent: But they’re not doing it in-person, they’re not getting in their car

and going . . .

Graig: No, no dog-and-pony shows.

Trent: They’re just calling, they’re following-up with someone who is a

lead that has opted-in to your system, correct?

Graig: Correct.

Trent: So there ain’t no cold-calling happening in your shop.

Graig: Oh, no. We have never — and I’m proud to say this — ever, ever

cold-called anyone.

Trent: But yet the phone, very, very powerful tool.

Graig: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think people who don’t master the art of

selling on the phone and using language and scripting that works is really

doing themselves a disservice because the old-school way of doing it is

somewhat how like the pharmaceutical sales rep does it, and I’m not saying

selling pharmaceuticals is comparative to what we’re doing but think about

it: they have a territory, that’s their territory, they go and they get in

their car and they drive to their offices and they do a dog-and-pony show

and they’re giving away stuff and they’re doing this and they’re doing

that.

Phone sales is a great leverage, a leveraging point to very good marketing.

It should not be the other way around. Your sales should not be your

marketing because companies that are sales-driven and have a little bit of

marketing, they’re always going to be limited and may never be around

forever, but a company that is focused on marketing that has a sales team,

you always do well. Always, always.

Trent: It’s so much easier to hire people, it’s so much easier to train

people, it’s so much easier to retain people when they don’t have to make

cold calls.

Graig: It is. You know what’s funny? I have to tell this story real quick

because this is one, this is a funny story. My aunt is in sales, right? And

she just started doing this job where she works for a very prominent and

well-respected reputation management company in the auto dealer space.

They’re a very large, big, dumb company and they’ve got a lot of money to

burn, clearly.

So I was at her house the other day — we actually took her kids out to go

to Lasertron or whatever, laser tag — and she needed to work from the

house and she needed quiet so she could cold call. I asked her after we

came back, I’m like, “So tell me about how you’re selling these things.”

Which is basically it’s a reputation management sort of portal product for

auto dealers, not a very complicated sale. She’s like, “Well, I have to

make 40 to 50 dials a day.”

Trent: Ugh.

Graig: I’m like, “So where are you getting your leads from?” I’m like, “Are

they giving you opt-ins and you’re calling opt-ins? Where are they coming

from?” She’s like, “We just have directory sites that we just dial.” I’m

like, “So you’re cold-calling?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Ugh, what?”

She goes, “What I don’t understand is, I’m having trouble getting to four

sales a month for a $300 product for an auto dealer.”

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: She tells me — this is the kicker, Trent — she tells me that, in

the Chicago area, they just hired three more sales reps to do what she’s

doing, just dial. I’m like, “Okay, here’s a very philosophical difference

between businesses. There’s a difference between a sales-driven culture and

a marketing-driven culture. Very distinct things, very distinct things.”

A sales-driven culture like that company, they’re using their sales force

like lead gen. They’re saying, “We’re paying this person $15 an hour. We

want them to dial so they can get working leads and that’s just how it is.”

That’s the sales-driven culture. “And hopefully we get lucky and they pop a

sale.”

As opposed to a marketing-driven culture like what we have in my business,

where we wouldn’t even pick up the phone unless the prospect raised their

hands because what they want is what we are giving away, so therefore,

we’re not wasting man-hours, marketing material, energy, money on people

and things. They’re wasting it.

Trent: Plus, no one likes making those calls and nobody likes getting those

calls.

Graig: No. No, and you want to know the funny part about you saying that is

she told me, “I called on a guy who I got him on the phone, I actually got

through the gatekeeper and I got him on the phone” — because, remember,

these are big businesses, they’ve got a gatekeeper, meaning they’ve got

multiple receptionists — so she got the guy on the phone and she says, “I

want to get you on one of our webinars,” and he goes, “Ugh, seriously?

Another webinar? I’ve had five phone calls today of people asking me to get

on webinars, demos, more demos.”

I’m like, “Well, you’d better hope you’ve got a hearty appetite because

you’re going to get 100 more of those every, single time you call because

that’s exactly what’s going to happen.” You just look at that compared to

what we talked about today where people are only getting on my webinars

when they either pay my company, like fork over $100 or $300 or whatever,

or they’ve raised their hand and said, “Hey, I love what you’re saying. I

would like to learn more.” No problem, but you have to get on this webinar

first. They’re going to sign up for the webinar and not complain.

Trent: Can you give the URL of one of your landing pages? I’d love to look

at it.

Graig: Let me check and give you a good one here. Let me pull one up. Ask

me another question and I’ll pull one up.

Trent: All right. Well, now I’ve got to think of another question to ask.

Oh, yeah, while you’re pulling up, let’s talk about your podcast because I

know that you’ve got one.

Graig: Yeah.

Trent: How’s that working out for you?

Graig: It’s good, it’s good. Okay, here, I found one for you.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Go to localsearchfordentists.com/googlereviews.

Trent: All one word, no hyphens or anything like that?

Graig: Yeah, all one word.

Trent: Okay. Folks, if you’re listening to this . . .

Graig: There’s going to be audio on that, by the way, if you want to shut

that off.

Trent: Yeah. For the folks that are listening to this while you’re driving,

don’t worry, I’ll put this in the show notes, this link, so you’ll be able

to get to it and at the end of this episodes I’ll give you the link to the

Bright Ideas, where on the blog you’ve got to go to get to this interview,

so fear not. Don’t be trying to take notes while you’re driving.

Graig: Yeah, that landing page I just gave you is really good for cold

traffic, meaning a lot of paid media and such. It’s pretty good.

Trent: Now, is this any particular plug-in that you used to make this

landing page or is this just somebody did HTML?

Graig: No, we made that one, we made that one. We made that one in-house.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: But I know this is a template of something. One of my buddies told

me, “Oh, yeah, that’s a whatever page,” and I went, “Well, I saw it, I

liked it, we just made it.”

Trent: Yeah. What’s the conversion rate on this page?

Graig: This one has a 50% opt-in on cold traffic.

Trent: Very nice. Okay.

Graig: I only use this one on — and when I say cold traffic, meaning not a

house list. I only use this one on paid media.

Trent: Okay, so you’re spending money on, say, LinkedIn ads, for example,

and you’re driving them to this page.

Graig: Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that’s right.

Trent: All right, I want to go back, actually, to the top of the funnel

because I don’t know that I got enough detail. So, sponsored e-mail — we

didn’t dive into that all, so if it’s okay, I’d like to go back and just

talk a little bit more about that particular one and some of the others. So

if someone wants to market to dentists — like you’re doing — how do they

go about finding — first of all, explain what sponsored e-mail is. I’m

sure everyone gets it, but in case a few people don’t, explain what it is

and then explain how you find people to buy it from.

Graig: Right. Okay, so I’m going to be a little private on this answer,

okay, for an obvious reason because lead sources are like gold. That’s my

money, so I will tell you how to find them, essentially, but I will not

tell you where and who, okay?

Trent: Sure, all right.

Graig: So how about that?

Trent: That’s fine.

Graig: Sponsored e-mail blasts — and this is something no one does in any

sort of business, and not necessarily dentistry, and this is what I teach a

lot of the people that I coach on how to be local marketers is there are

people out there who have herds or subscription or magazine companies or

whatever it is, educational companies, that have e-mail lists of people

that open their crap and read it. They have maybe never thought that they

can monetize the e-mails that they send out.

Essentially what a sponsored e-mail blast is, let’s take eye doctors, for

example. Say you want to target LASIK surgeons with marketing consulting or

something like that. Let’s just take them for example. You can go and find

publications, whether it’s continuing education, Eye Doctor Magazine, any

sort of print, maybe there’s blogs, forums, where these guys and gals hang

out and get their information from. You can use this cool little thing

called Google to figure it out, where those things.

Some may have media kits where they do offer sponsored email blasts, you

just didn’t know about it. It’s, say, $1,000. Now, in exchange for that

$1,000, they will send pre-approved e-mail content out to their list from

you with basically an offer: “Here’s my free report, here’s my Google cheat

sheet.” Then you get to keep the leads, you pay them the $1,000. Done deal.

Now, here’s a cool way to do it, is sometimes these media companies never,

ever think to monetize their e-mail list like that. They sell print space,

they sell banner ads, but they never think that by clicking a button they

can make $1,000. And you’ll keep coming back for more if it works, so what

I tell my people is find a community of people in the niche that you want

to go after, find the key-holder to the e-mail list. If they don’t offer a

media kit or something like that, tell them you’ll pay them $1,000 to send

one e-mail out and if it goes well, you’ll give them $1,500 an e-mail and

buy four more of them. That is a way to get someone to mail for you

essentially, sponsor you in a way and I’ve done it a myriad of times

myself.

Sometimes they’ll say no. Sometimes they’ll say, “Oh, we don’t want to do

that.” Sometimes they’re just not into it but, honestly, I know some of the

biggest names in the business in certain niches who, from a publication

standpoint, from a media standpoint, love the e-mail sponsored blasts and

they’re open to doing it.

Trent: Okay, and where does that rank in-between, let’s say, direct mail —

which we’ll talk about next — LinkedIn — which we’ll talk a little bit

after that — and sponsored e-mail? Are they roughly equal? Is sponsored e-

mail the best one?

Graig: Sponsored e-mail is the fastest way to cash.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: That’s the fastest way to build your list. It’s the fastest way to

make money but the problem is it saturates quickly, so it comes down to

really knowing your numbers when it comes to that. In the beginning, you’re

going to be like, “Oh, this is amazing! I got 100 leads from one e-mail.”

Well, in three months, six months, that might be 30 people, that might be

Who knows? So you need to have back-up. So that leads my lead source is

the e-mail blast but I also do a lot of direct mail. I do a lot of cheap

postcards and then I’d say just after that LinkedIn and other paid traffic,

not just LinkedIn but other outside traffic.

Trent: Yeah. Let’s talk about direct mail.

Graig: Sure.

Trent: So are you doing only postcards or do you do three-dimensional?

Graig: No. For lead gen, yes, and the only reason I have is because I’ve

been able to make money doing it, so I just know if I send these postcards

out, I’m going to get traffic, I’m going to get opt-ins and then we’re just

going to push them through. So right now, I do do other direct mail but

mostly I’m using postcards to drive traffic.

The other thing that I’m doing that nobody does is I use postcards to drive

webinar sign-ups.

Trent: So the postcards are either sending to a landing page like the one

you shared with me, this Google Reviews one, yeah?

Graig: Yeah.

Trent: Or a webinar opt-in page.

Graig: Correct. I also use what’s called a PURL postcard. Do you know what

a PURL postcard is?

Trent: No, I don’t, I don’t.

Graig: You don’t? Okay.

Trent: No.

Graig: They’ve been around for a while and they’re pretty cool. So PURL

stands for “personalized URL”.

Trent: Oh, okay.

Graig: So what that basically does is you print a postcard and it’ll say,

“Hey, Trent, look at this cool new thing on how to get 10 to 15 more

clients a month without lifting a finger. I made this brand-new website

just for you. Check it out: abc.com/trent.”

You’re like, “Wow, this person like made their own individual website for

Cool.” So you go to the computer and you type in “abc.com/trent.” You

go the landing page, and it says at the top, “Hey, Trent, thanks for coming

to this webpage” and then inside the web form is pre-populated with your

name and e-mail already and you’re like, “Wow, this is super-customized.”

Conversions go up exponentially because of it because people actually think

you made a real, live individual website for them — but you didn’t. All

you did is all it is is a list uploaded to your server that talks to some

code and the code, when they type in their name, pops it into the fields

and you’re done, so it’s really one webpage with a list. That’s all it is.

Trent: Now, is there a service that you subscribe to get these PURL

postcards?

Graig: No, but there are and they all suck. So I’ve tried to do that before

where I thought I could crank them out quicker, and they’ve all been very,

very terrible, so what I decided to do is I just have a mailing company

that prints the postcards and then the developer uploads the list and then

I just go.

But here’s the good news: once the list is uploaded to your server, you can

just keep adding to it. It’s not like it has to be replaced. So once that

mailing list is uploaded, you could have 100,000 names on there and still

only mail to a 1,000 and it’ll still work.

Trent: So the URL on the postcard is abc.com/trent and it doesn’t matter if

you had 47 Trents on your list because they all come to the page that says,

“Hey, Trent,” because . . .

Graig: We usually do first name, last name.

Trent: Oh, you do? Okay, so everyone’s getting an individual page, so

you’ve got one landing page, your developer wrote a little bit of script,

queries the database, pulls the first name and populates it.

Graig: Yup.

Trent: And makes the URL the same thing.

Graig: Yup, and I would imagine if anyone listening is an InfusionSoft

user, if you go under the Community page, there will be people on there

that can build PURL pages for you.

Trent: Absolutely. What are you spending per-piece for one of these

postcards?

Graig: Oh, geez, I think it’s — what is postage? $0.45 right now or

something like that?

Trent: I have no idea, something like that.

Graig: I think postcards probably run me around $0.65 in total, so the

postage is more than the stuff on the card.

Trent: So it’s about a buck by the time you’re all done.

Graig: No, it’s less than a dollar. No, it’s $0.65 cents.

Trent: Oh, including the postage.

Graig: Like I just mailed a letter — I call it the “granny letter”, one

piece of paper, handwritten, everything for $0.85 cents apiece.

Trent: And is it actually handwritten? I used to hire people off

Craigslist.

Graig: Uh-huh, not fun. Handwritten.

Trent: I’d just hire people off Craigslist and they’d come over to my house

and pick all the things up and they’d go home and watch TV and write them

all.

Graig: Are you being serious?

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: Oh, dude, there are mailing houses that could do that for you for

$0.85 cents.

Trent: This was years ago before I knew about any of this stuff.

Graig: Oh, okay. No, you’d be surprised, you’d be surprised with that

stuff. It’s pretty reasonable. The reason I like the PURL postcard is

because it’s personalized so people really get engaged with it and it’s

really inexpensive.

Trent: Any chance you’d send me a screenshot of one of these postcards that

I could include in the post?

Graig: Yeah, I can do it but I’m going to blur stuff out.

Trent: That’s fine.

Graig: Okay.

Trent: Is the message on the postcard pretty much the same message as on

the landing page that it’s driving them to?

Graig: Pretty close because, obviously, from being of Direct Response 101,

you do need congruency.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: But you still never want to get away from the fact that you need to

get the click. You need to get the click and you need to get the traffic,

so don’t be too revealing in your message upfront. Give them enough to not

satisfy their appetite so that when they get to the landing page, they’re

like, “Ah, makes sense but it didn’t say it all on the copy.” Because

that’s what a lot of people do, they forget that they need to get that

click, so they give away way too much on the front end when just give away

your stuff later because you don’t want to satisfy their appetite by just

writing a bunch of great copy and them being like, “Oh, that was pretty

good, thanks. Well, see you later.”

Trent: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Okay, and then let’s finish this off on

LinkedIn. Just talk very briefly about how you’re using LinkedIn.

Graig: Okay. Like no one else. Because everybody goes on there to solicit

and profile and go into groups and network and all that. Isn’t that what

most people use it for?

Trent: Probably, yeah.

Graig: Yeah, yeah, right. I don’t even go on there and do anything other

than run my ads. That’s it.

Trent: Okay.

Graig: Because one thing people need to understand about LinkedIn versus

Facebook — which I’m not saying don’t do Facebook, I’m saying do a lot of

things that make you money but let’s just talk about LinkedIn for a minute

— is it lets you specifically with, by the way, 100% accuracy, sort by

profession. So if you want to go after Fortune 500 CEOs, you can do that.

If you want to go after eye doctors, you can do that. Pinpoint that,

exactly that, so it really enables you to go by profession and that’s

really good for us sort of marketers and consultants because we really can

segment out the people that we want to go after.

I don’t use it for any of the social networking. I don’t network at all,

actually, and that’s not because I’m antisocial; that’s because I don’t

make money when I network and that’s actually good. We don’t use it for

that, we just use it for traffic, that’s it. Ads and traffic.

Trent: And ads are driving to like the Google Reviews landing page?

Graig: Yeah, sure, or various landing pages, yeah. Yeah.

Trent: In the ads, is it like Facebook, you can include a little image?

I’ve actually never advertised on LinkedIn yet.

Graig: Yeah, it’s actually the set-up for LinkedIn ads is simpler than

Facebook but it is an image and copy. They restrict you a little bit more

with the number of characters, but they also let you get away with a little

bit more than Facebook, so it’s kind of a give-and-take.

Trent: And what kind of images are you doing? Pretty girls with smiles?

Graig: Pretty girls, pretty girls.

Trent: Really? Seriously?

Graig: Oh, yeah, of course. That’s pretty much it. Pretty girls most of the

time.

Trent: And these pretty girls are dressed in business attire, I’m assuming?

Graig: No, sometimes bikinis.

Trent: You’re pulling my leg, right?

Graig: Nope.

Trent: And LinkedIn lets you do that?

Graig: Yup.

Trent: Because Facebook is ridiculously anal about that.

Graig: Yeah, they’re a little tougher. They’re loosening up a little bit

but, yeah, LinkedIn, they’ll let me — I’d probably embarrass you if you

saw some of the pictures I got away with on LinkedIn but they work, man.

But I’m going to say this, though, with a disclaimer, is the business that

I’m in happens to be very male-dominated. I think about 80% or higher are

males in dentistry. So, if you’re going after the holistic niche or, yeah,

females in it, still use pretty girls but don’t put them in bikinis. But I

still need to get people’s attention. I use pretty girls on all of my — I

even put them on my postcards.

Trent: Yeah, I still think you’re pulling my leg about the bikinis.

Graig: No, no, I’m not, I’m serious.

Trent: That’s awesome.

Graig: I’m not ashamed. I try to push it, because I know that if you’re

online and you’re looking at ads, you’re looking at thousands a day, so I

know that I’ve got to make that thing jump out at you.

Trent: Yup. I went to a workshop where the guy did a lot of paid ads.

Graig: Sure.

Trent: He even went so far — pretty girls were his images — that he would

split test how big their eyes were.

Graig: Oh, that’s funny.

Trent: He would split test which direction they were looking, whether it

was looking at the camera or away from the camera. It was insane, but this

guy’s running an eight- or nine-figure-a -year business. I can’t remember.

Graig: Yeah, no, I have friends like that, too, and they’ve tested cleavage

versus no cleavage, stuff like that, and cleavage got more clicks. That’s

very true but, to his defense, it probably depends on his market. Like I

said, mine happens to be a male-dominated industry where bikinis and

lingerie probably get clicks, but in other businesses it may not

essentially work.

Trent: So when you first started, you had to spend some money on LinkedIn

ads, sponsored e-mail, direct mail. How long did it take you to get that

money back?

Graig: Well, I ROI’ed out pretty quickly. I’d say it depends on the lead

source, though, but I didn’t do them all at one time. I had my lead sources

and I was like, “Okay, we’ll do this one, see how it goes.” This is

actually a good lesson. I don’t know the exact number of days, but I know

that I made money on it. Because here’s what a lot of people do when it

comes to marketing: they do a lead source campaign. In the lead source

campaign, they get a bunch of leads and they say, “Okay, well, we’ve got

100 leads, so I’m not going to do any more marketing until we make money

off that one campaign.”

Trent: They’re wrong.

Graig: They’re like, “Okay, so waiting, still waiting.” Whereas what if

that lead source just sucked? Or what if that lead source needed six months

to be nurtured before it converted? Maybe that’s just the way those people

are. So now you’ve done no marketing for six months because you’re still

“testing” this lead source, right? You’ve sat on your ass and made no

money, whereas when I did it — and I’m not saying this is the only way to

do it but it’s definitely a smarter way to do it — is I ran the campaign,

I got, say, 100 leads.

I knew I had the leads. I knew that they were going to be in Infusionsoft.

I knew that I could market to them forever. I knew I was going to give them

good content. So what I did was I waited until some more cash came in, just

a little bit of cash, and then I did another lead source campaign and then

I stacked them like that. Now I have 300 leads that I’m able to monetize

versus a six-month gap of just marketing to one particular customer and I

was able to build my list, my herd, right, because I just need more people.

Sometimes it’s just pure numbers. Sometimes 100 people in your niche just

isn’t going to cut it to get a customer. Maybe you need 300 people to get a

customer. So a lot of people do that one-and-done marketing, that one-shot,

“Oh, I’m going to do one direct mail campaign,” “Oh, I’m going to do one

thing” — and then they sit and they wait. Sometimes you waiting may cost

you your business.

Trent: Yep, because cash flow is king.

Graig: Right, right. The thing is that, especially when you start a

business, you don’t really know the life cycle of your customer. You don’t

know it might take seven months to close someone, so you’ve kind of got to

get your marketing in order and just stagger it and go out six months and

then look at it and say, “Okay, on average it took us four months to get a

client. Now we know that,” as before you may not have known that.

Trent: How long did it take you to get your first client?

Graig: A week.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: A week, but you know why was because I knew the basics of what it

was going to take to get a client. What I mean by that is in the first week

of being in business, I hosted a live teleseminar where I got 50 dentists

on and I sold my first product.

Trent: How’d you get those 50?

Graig: Various lead sources opting-in to a landing page. The life lesson

there is I didn’t focus on anything but just selling them on the one thing.

I needed eyeballs and I needed ears and I had a product. I just needed them

to listen to it and I put them on a telecall and I think I sold five in

that one night.

Trent: So the machine began.

Graig: Then the matrix started, that’s right.

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: But how many people do you know spend the first two weeks of

business making up a website and business cards and a logo?

Trent: Yeah.

Graig: I had an e-mail address. I didn’t even have a website and I made

thousands in a day.

Trent: I interviewed a guy by the name of Sam Ovens yesterday and he has a

marketing consulting business and he put up a one-page website. He didn’t

have a business card, he didn’t have a business plan, he didn’t know what

he was going to sell and he didn’t know who he was going to sell it to. He

just started to reach out to everyone he knew and he said, “Hey, I’m pretty

knowledgeable about online marketing and I’m looking for clients to help.”

Graig: Yep.

Trent: And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven clients later, he

started figuring out what they really wanted, who he should really be

selling to, and what he should really be selling and he figured out that

his sweet spot was selling to high-ticket B2B companies for the same

reasons that you explained at the very beginning of this interview, was

because their customer value was between $50,000 and $100,000.

Check this out — he would go to one of these companies and say, “I can

make your website produce more qualified leads for you.” “Okay.” And he

would tweak — so these people wouldn’t even have an opt-in form.

Graig: Right.

Trent: So he’d fix the headline, fix the sales copy, put on in opt-in form,

basic autoresponder, and charge $10,000.

Graig: Yup.

Trent: But these customers are like, “Well, if I could get one more

customer per year, that’s $50,000 and I only have to pay this guy $10,000.

Yeah, sign me up.”

Graig: I have a lot of friends that do exactly what he does and it’s very

true. It’s very true and that’s just the basics of it. I mean, Trent, I

still to this day, we’re talking three-and-a-half years later, I still

don’t have a business card.

Trent: If you’re not going networking, then what in the hell do you need

one for?

Graig: Oh, yeah, that’s a whole other hour podcast right there but, yeah,

no, and that’s exactly it and that’s the thing is a lot of people don’t

understand is I still do deals. So a lot of people associate networking

with deals, getting deals done. I still do deals all the time. It’s made me

a lot of money, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t do them where I go and I

peddle around my business card at stupid conferences.

What I did is I elevated myself to a certain stature that allowed people to

be attracted to me, not the other way around, so now all I have to do is

ask. So if I want one of my friends to send an e-mail out for me, they’re

my friends now because of the respect that they have for me, not because I

handed them and peddled them business cards at conferences and they just

say, “Yeah, I’ll send it out for you.” Because I’ve elevated that stature,

as opposed to saying, “Hey, call me, let’s get something together.”

Trent: And, folks in the audience, if you’re listening to this and going,

“Yeah, I’d like to elevate my stature,” I have three words for you: start a

podcast.

Graig: Start a podcast. That’s true. It’s very true. Write a book. Get

featured in press releases.

Trent: Blog.

Graig: Actually, you know what? Can I do a shameless plug and it’s not for

me, it’s for one of my friends who does a really good job with this, a

really good job?

Trent: Yeah. Please do.

Graig: If you want to be the authority in your particular arena or you just

want to be able to hang your hat on more notoriety — because nobody argues

with an expert, no one argues with Dr. Oz or Suze Orman about financial

stuff, even though they’re average in their profession. You would think

they’re phenomenal.

If you utilize my friend Brian Horn, he’s got a website, I think it’s

horndogsearch.com or something like that or beonpageone.com. You just

Google “Brian Horn SEO” and he will help you. He has done a phenomenal job

with helping his clients in all sorts of businesses from dentists to

Fortune 500 CEOs on how to get featured in local media, Wall Street

Journal, and syndicate you all over the dang place so, that way, you can

put all of those labels on your authority badge. You’re “as seen on CBS,

FOX News, CBS Sports,” whatever you’re in. He does a phenomenal job with it

and that’s an easy way to become an authority where you can garner more

respect from not only your peers, but your clients and customers and

prospects. So that’s a shameless plug for Brian but he’s good at it.

Trent: I was going to ask you about that because I noticed you had “ABC,

NBC, CBS, FOX, blah blah blah,” Brian Horn, did you work with him to be

able to do that?

Graig: I did and Brian’s a really good friend of mine. He’s in my

MasterMind group with me, and he’s phenomenal at it. He’s phenomenal at it.

Yeah, I was even in Newsweek Magazine as a featured person and, by the way,

guys, you can pay to be in all that stuff. It’s not special. I mean, it’s

special to the outside world, but it’s not that hard.

Trent: So you mentioned a word near and dear to my heart: MasterMind group.

For folks, if you’re listening, Bright Ideas is about to launch a

MasterMind group for people that want to learn how to build a local

marketing agency to serve dentists. Why, Graig, do you think MasterMind

groups are so valuable?

Graig: Well, I mean, it’s the whole adage of the power of the MasterMind. I

mean, the simplest way to explain it is many brains is better than one. So

you’re automatically multiplying what can be done in a room. For example,

if Trent and I sat down in a room together and I told him my biggest

problems and biggest ideas, he may just look at me and say, “Well, here’s

what I would do and what I’ve done.” But what if you had seven Trents in

that room? It’s the ultimate multiplier.

Anyone who’s not part of a MasterMind, you should just be in one. I don’t

care, be in at least just one. Most successful people are in more than one,

but be in just at least one and that’s really it because when I go to

MasterMind and I’m like, “Okay, here’s what I’m seeing,” not only can they

help me, but when I say, “I’m doing this that’s working,” I have 8 to 10

other eyeballs in the room helping me out with that, versus just one.

Versus just a coach. It’s not just a coach, it’s a room of experts.

Trent: What do you pay to be in yours?

Graig: The one that I’m in is actually sort of, it’s like Fight Club.

Trent: Yeah?

Graig: So we don’t even tell people where we meet. We call each other,

we’re the “SEO Mafia” is what we say, so I can’t tell you that or they’ll

kill me. They won’t kill me literally but we don’t talk about it. But in

all honesty, I think paying around anywhere from $20,000 to $25,000 a year

for a MasterMind is not a bad investment.

Trent: Yeah, because you’re around other people who can afford to pay

$20,000 to $25,000 a year.

Graig: Yeah, and the other thing is don’t just join a MasterMind group of

average people, right? You want to be in a room with seven- or eight-figure-

earners. So if you were to be in Joe Posh’s $25,000 group or something like

that, you know you’re going into that room and there’s going to be other

millionaires in that room. That’s a good place to be.

Trent: Yeah, absolutely.

Graig: It’s a real good place to be.

Trent: I guess I’d better raise the price of my MasterMind.

Graig: Double it, double it.

Trent: Actually, as of this recording, I have not decided yet how much I’m

going to charge. I’m off to Washington D.C. the tail-end of this week,

actually, to do a meeting which will be instrumental to my figuring out

what the pricing will be and what will be included.

Graig: Nice.

Trent: So details to come, folks.

Graig: Nice.

Trent: All right, Graig, let’s wrap this up. We’ve done a long one here,

but, man, this has been super-awesome and thank you for that.

Graig: Yeah, I know we went over but I think everybody’s going to get a

good idea of things. If people are looking to get more information like on

me and so on and so forth, not necessarily me itself but sort of how I look

at marketing, is if you go to 7figurelocalmarketer.com — that’s where

you’re going to be able to get my free report on how I’ve really built my

business. The dentist stuff is good to talk about but that’s where all your

people are going to want to go.

Trent: Okay, I’ll make sure that I link to that from the show notes, as

well.

Graig: Yeah, yeah. That’s where they’ll want to be.

Trent: And do you have an affiliate link for whatever that is?

Graig: I can set one up for you, Trent. That’s not a problem.

Trent: Okay, cool. All right, so unless there’s anything else, Graig, that

you want to add to this.

Graig: No, this was good, this was fun.

Trent: Yeah, thank you very much for making the time. I hope that people

who are listening to this were both educated and inspired by your story as

I was and thanks for being on the show.

Graig: No problem.

Trent: Okay, to get the show notes for today’s episode, go to

brightideas.co/70. And while you’re in front of your computer, I’d love it

if you would take a minute and go to brightideas.co/love. If you’ve enjoyed

this episode, there will be a pre-populated tweet that you can click and,

as well, there’s a link to the iTunes store where you can go and leave

feedback for the show and for this episode. If you would take a moment and

do that, it would make a huge difference because it helps the show to get

more awareness and more people can listen to it and we can help more

entrepreneurs to massively boost their business.

Thanks very much for tuning in. I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid, and I look

forward to seeing you in the next episode. Take care, have a wonderful day.

Announcer: Thanks very much for listening to the Bright Ideas podcast.

Check us out on the web at brightideas.co.

About Graig Presti

Graig Presti, founder and CEO of LocalSearchForDentists.com, is a foremost advertising authority who operates with dental practices all around the planet, assisting them to leverage the internet so they can generate more telephone calls, reach more new patients, and bring in more revenue. His strategies begin to work immediately and continue to work month after month.

Presti specializes in helping dental practices dominate their nearby location by using confirmed regional Internet dental advertising strategies to help them dominate the top rated regional research engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Presti uses easy to understand stories to help his clients comprehend how they can improve their internet presence. He is a repeated featured speaker at dental conferences and other venues.

Presti has mastered the art of bringing a flood of new patients into dental offices, and has undoubtedly established himself as a top specialist in his field. His considerable accomplishments, and his industry contributions, led him to be showcased as a Newsweek Magazine Champion of Health, Wealth and Success.