The Virtual CMO
The Virtual CMO podcast discusses growth marketing strategies for SMBs and how new technologies are improving marketing effectiveness. Hosted by Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group and a fractional CMO, the podcast focuses on building strategic marketing plans and executing successful growth marketing programs. It includes interviews with industry thought leaders who share their experiences and insights. The show highlights new marketing automation platforms, AI-enabled tools, and other cutting-edge technologies that can enhance marketing campaigns.
The Virtual CMO
SEO, User Experience, and Conversion - The Basics of Online Marketing with Joey Donovan Guido
In episode 102, host Eric Dickmann interviews Joey Donovan Guido. Joey is an SEO and web design expert, speaker, business consultant, and author with over two decades of experience as a copywriter working in print and on the web. He is the owner of Cuppa SEO Web Design based in Madison, Wisconsin which focuses on strategy and architecture.
With a passion for search engine optimization, Joey realized the importance of looking at websites, and online marketing, holistically. This led him to write a book entitled "A Holistic Guide to Online Marketing" where he talks about optimization methodologies, user experience, and conversion.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/seo-user-experience-basics-online-marketing-s7ep2/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Hey, Joey, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. So glad you could join us today.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks man.
Eric Dickmann:You know, I'm excited as always about the conversations that we have on this show about marketing. And today, you know, I'd love to focus on just some of the basics. You know, our audience for this show typically are small and mid-sized businesses, maybe they have a dedicated marketing team, or sometimes they outsource it, bring in agencies or freelancers to help them with their marketing. But I know, you know, when we talk about marketing, there are some basics that just everybody needs to kind of focus some of their efforts on. And so if you could, I'd love for us to dive into this a little bit today in our conversation, but if you would just give the audience a little bit of background on yourself and how you're helping clients in the marketplace today,
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, for sure. So my, as you said, my name is Joey Donovan Guido, and I'm born in Brooklyn, New York, and living in Madison, Wisconsin now. And I've had a
Eric Dickmann:That's where I was born.
Joey Donovan Guido:You're kidding.
Eric Dickmann:No, I'm a Madison boy. I'm a badger.
Joey Donovan Guido:Oh, boy. When did you move?
Eric Dickmann:Well, a long time ago. But yeah, I was born there.
Joey Donovan Guido:Oh, that's super cool. We love it here, it's an amazing town. So I started my web design firm Cuppa SEO, it'll be nine years ago in January. That's a blink of an eye. And really, you know, what we do in the marketplace is we keep it real tight, we help clients get found on Google, really. And the way we do that is by building them custom websites that get found, build trust, and make it easy for website visitors to turn into customers. And there are fancy technical terms for that, that we can get into. But really you know, what we look to do is look at websites holistically, as a whole, and not look at little compartmentalize, parts of marketing or website.
Eric Dickmann:That's so interesting because you know, I think for many people they look at websites, and obviously your website is your digital home on the web. But oftentimes I think businesses lose sight of what the purpose of the website is, right? The purpose is to educate, inform, and then convert people into contacts that might be interested in doing business with you. And so there are some steps and intentionality that you have to have as you design your website. So I'm interested as you engage with clients early on in the process, what is some of that initial discussion that you talk to them about, about how they need to look at their website?
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, that's a great question. And really the way we do it is we try to take the pressure off the client. So I'll have a couple of initial conversations with them and just get to know them and understand them, and kind of just let them talk about their business. What are their pain points? What are their goals? What have they been doing in the realm of marketing? And that helps give me a really good idea of who they are, what they do, and what we need to do with them. But really the biggest thing has come down to, you know, what is the benefit that your services or products offer?
Eric Dickmann:Yeah.
Joey Donovan Guido:Because all too often, you're absolutely right. Businesses lose sight of what the website is for. And I think it's to kind of to sell.
Eric Dickmann:Yes.
Joey Donovan Guido:And just say, Hey, look, we got this award last month and we've got you know, 300 years of experience on our team of 30 people. And you know, the person showing up on that website doesn't care about any of that. They want to know, can you solve my pain? You know? And I always like to say, people don't go to the dentist because of where that dentist went to school.
Eric Dickmann:Right.
Joey Donovan Guido:They go to the dentist because they literally have pain.
Eric Dickmann:Yes. Well, it's funny, you know, Assignment CENIC has this great book, you know, Start With Why, right? Which I think is great, but I think many businesses, when it comes to presentations, collateral, their website, you know, there's is, start with I, right? It's all about what they do, what their product or service does, their features, the greatness of whatever it is that they're selling rather than what it's actually doing for you as a person.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. So as you start to look at a website, I mean, obviously conversion focused is very important. You want to generate leads from a website, not only educate people, but help them find a way to educate themselves because so much of that now is taking place on a customer's own time, right?.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Dickmann:So share a little bit about that. How do you frame a website in terms of being able to educate people about a customer's product or service?
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah. So it's kind of a three-step process. But like before we get to that, the first thing we do is we work on optimizing the website. What that means is something called search engine optimization or SEO. And that really is essentially making it easier for that website to get found on Google.
Eric Dickmann:Yes.
Joey Donovan Guido:Right? So when someone does a search query for like, you know, web design in Madison, Wisconsin, or SEO in Madison, Wisconsin, we want them to find us. So we use keyword phrases and content that do that. So that's kind of like the preliminary, almost like opening the door, getting the person, the visitor to your website. Now the whole thing is if we got 10,000 new visitors a month to a website and the website think about like, if you go to a hotel and you walk in and it smells musty and it looks dusty and it's just like, Ugh, I need a different room or I need to find a different motel or hotel, you know, that's, what's called a user experience. So once we get somebody there, the first thing we need to do is help them feel comfortable, start to build trust, make them kind of feel like, Hey, I know the lay of the land here, I see where I've landed, it's where I expected to land for this particular search query I did. And this user experience methodology is directly tied to conversion. Hmm. Because as you could imagine, if you show up on a website and you feel like, ah, aesthetically, it looks nice, things are clean, we've gotten rid of all the distraction and the noise of moving parts and you know, pop-ups and all these things that we can talk more about that can often be detrimental to conversion. And then we really have a nice, clear single, maybe two calls to action. So it's a nice flow, right? And then when we have that call to action, we want to make sure that we're making it hit that pain point, address it directly, don't beat around the bush, right? With the dentist, hey, if you've got pain, we can help, click here to make your appointment. Something simple like that can go a long way in rising your conversion.
Eric Dickmann:I like the way you frame that and making people feel comfortable. You want to speak to the customer in their own language, describe that you understand what they might be going through, talk a little bit about how your product or service might help them address one of those pains or several of those pains, but then you also talk about this idea of a call to action. At some point you want them to do something and it's amazing how many websites lead you nowhere. There's no call to action.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, yeah. There's often no call to action. Sometimes you're even missing a contact button or a tab in your top level navigation, which is like, well, how, how is somebody going to know to get in touch with you if that contact page isn't easily available? Oftentimes too, we'll see too many conversion methodology. So somebody got eight products so they throw eight conversion buttons on the homepage. Or they like, you know, like to go back to the dentist, they'll be like, Hey, download a free one sheet or a PDF about how to keep your teeth for your plaque and you know, great for blog posts. But when someone shows up on that dentist homepage, man, you want them to book an appointment, not download something. So it goes back to understanding what your customer needs are.
Eric Dickmann:I sometimes call this like the Netflix syndrome. You know, if you've ever sat down in front of Netflix and scrolled up page after page after page or movies and TV shows, eventually you know, you just get exhausted and you end up watching something you've seen before, because it's just an easier choice. And I see that with a lot of web page design that's out there. They're giving people too many choices, too many different calls to action, navigational tips, whatever, and it just becomes exhausting. And you leave because you don't know where to go. What's the next appropriate thing to do?
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, I love that. That is a great analogy. And to kind of piggyback on that, what Netflix also does, I think often poorly is they give you kind of like the call to action, right? They give you, based on your watching history, here's some suggestions for you. And sometimes I look at them and I'm like, where did these come from? Because this has nothing to do with what I've watched or what I want to watch. It's totally out of line.
Eric Dickmann:Yes. When you talked about calls to action and you know, downloadable assets like a PDF and we're in a different time, right? Things are changing. It used to be that people would have white papers on their websites, and those would be popular downloads or infographics, but we're moving into an era where video is so popular and other things. What are you finding, working with your clients that are still successful downloadable assets versus needing to make things like video on demand without that kind of gate in front of it?
Joey Donovan Guido:That's a really great question. Video is tricky. We've got some clients that we've worked with over the years. Widen is one of them. They do software as a service, they're international. And they've done a great job with video because what they do is they do a lot of repurposing. So do a webinar, and of course, you know, record that webinar and then repurpose it on their website. So it becomes usable content either on a blog post or on their videos page. And then what we would do is also take that and transcribe it into like two or three blog posts, so repurposing it again. So you really get a lot of bang for your buck when you do video like that. Kind of that whole gated thing. I am not an expert in that area because I don't do gated video for myself because I've always found it to be very challenging, to get people to want to get behind that gate. What I'm finding that can be really successful for video that is also somewhat manageable, even for smaller businesses, is to do things like video testimonials.
Eric Dickmann:Hmmm.
Joey Donovan Guido:Right? Or to do something, if as long as they can muster up the comfort and you know, the desire to do small videos, kind of like what we're doing today, but maybe like for five minutes, and just sit down in front of the camera and talk. Just about one of the main pain points that their clients struggle with. I would say the biggest advice I could give for video is the same advice I would give for any webpage or blog post and it's to make it about them, not you.
Eric Dickmann:Hmm.
Joey Donovan Guido:The less it's salesy, the more it's about developing a relationship and just giving really good information. Like you know, the top six areas to optimize on your website, people aren't going to learn it all in five minutes, but at least you're giving them some knowledge.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. Oh, I think that's great because you know, one of the reasons that we're doing this as a live stream today is because it creates a video asset. Yes, we're going to put together a blog post on this podcast, we are going to put together some video snippets that we'll use on social media, and yes, ultimately the audio podcast will come out and be out across all those players. But what we're trying to do is make the content consumable the way the listener, the viewer ultimately wants to consume it, right? And we get a lot of videos on the video channels, Facebook and YouTube, et cetera. So it's important to make that an option for people because we definitely are in an age of video.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, that's a great point. And that, that whole thing about it being consumable, how somebody wants it, that's again, making it about them. You know I find that when I do a video, I'm always extremely self-conscious about it as the guy on the video. But I find when I post that on social, it gets hundreds more views than just a photo with content, with words. But I think it's important to understand, like, everybody's different. Like you said earlier, sometimes you have a marketing team, sometimes you don't, so whether it's video or blogging, it's really about what's manageable for you as the person creating the content.
Eric Dickmann:Well you know, one thing I would love to get your thoughts on, because I know you do some webinars. And I think sometimes people look at webinars and they think back to the corporate days, when you've got to get one of these fancy webinar platforms to put everything together, it doesn't really need to be all that complicated does it? You know just getting out there, putting yourself on video, you can create a reusable webinar asset, you know in the exact same situation, the exact same setup that you and I are recording this today.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, yeah, it's super easy now. That's totally right. It used to be you have to spend all these dollars every month to have WebEx or whatever it was. And, you know, StreamYard, even Zoom, even if you don't want to live stream. If you feel like that's too much, you can always use Zoom and record it or I think you can do the same with StreamYard if I'm not mistaken. And then, you know, record it and then upload it. And then you know, upload it to YouTube and then share it on social.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. And there are some great little additional tools. Somebody clued me into a tool, I think the product name is terrible, but it's called Mmhmm, you know, M M H M M. And it's basically a little plugin that allows you to put like the video over your shoulder, like they have on the evening newscast or something like that, or an easy way to insert slides into a video recording. And it's actually super helpful and it's a plugin, so it can work with any video platform that you're using. I could have it enabled here, for example. And it's just a way to add something more than just your face to whatever you're doing. You can show a slide or a picture, a graphic or a video, as well as your face. And so there are a ton of simple solutions that can really up your production level at a very low cost or no cost at all.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, that's a great point. And to your earlier point about that, this preconception of webinars. I used to think of it as kind of like stiff, almost stoic, you know, really like these professional things that happened that nobody was really excited about. And I think that's been changing for years, especially with the pandemic. When I do a webinar or an online workshop, man, for me, it's all about just having that relationship, even though it's virtual, even though you're not here with me, you know, we're talking and the more we can engage with each other, the more value that has. And that's what I'll do. It's good advice I think if you're going to do a webinar or a talk or a workshop, you know? I never wait until the end to take questions.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah.
Joey Donovan Guido:Because man, you know, Eric, if you're sitting there thinking, what does he mean by that? I want to give you an opportunity within a couple of minutes of me saying something to say, Hey Joey, I don't understand or I don't agree. And this is a specific style. Not everybody is comfortable with that. But I find it as much more engaging, the audience is much more apt to be paying attention.
Eric Dickmann:Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. Yeah, I think the more that you can add that interactive element so that people feel they're part of it. I mean especially now, you know as we're sort of working our way through this pandemic, people are so tired of Zoom calls because you know, it's this crazy thing cause it just locks your attention into the screen, it can be very fatiguing after a while. But having that element of interactivity where people can participate in some ways I think is so important. I think you know, we've seen the rise of things like virtual summits and other ways to sort of interact virtually, but interacting in some way as a key part of that.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, yeah. And there is that fatigue and I just feel like the more we can have a conversation, the better it works out.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, I agree. What have you seen in terms of, I know you specialize in SEO, but what have you seen in terms of some of the changes that Google has been rolling out in terms of page speed and optimization? Have you really seen client websites taking a hit or is it largely a non event? I mean, what's been your early feedback from it?
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, it's kind of all over the place. We were very lucky that, I've been doing this for years a long time. And so typically when Google makes a change, they kind of make a change that aligns themselves with how we do the search engine optimization in any way. So we're big believers in not breaking any rules, even if something looks like it might be breaking a rule. Like we optimize every single image on every client's website,
Eric Dickmann:Yeah.
Joey Donovan Guido:optimize the image and the alt image name. A lot of SEO firms don't do that. And I'm kind of puzzled as to why they don't. But we've got an internal rule where these image names need to be. typically 50 characters or less. Now that's not a Google rule, that's a Joey rule, that's a Cuppa SEO rule, because as soon as you start to get past 50 characters, it starts to look spammy. If it looks spammy to the human eye, there is very good chance it might look spammy to Google. So really it's like common sense, you know? If you're trying to work the system, you're probably going to get busted now or down the road.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah.
Joey Donovan Guido:If you're really truly thinking about that customer experience and making it them first, you typically fall into alignment with Google. There are certain rules you don't want to break. What I've seen clients get hit really hard. There's one that is, I'm going to forget the acronym now. It's not FOMO, it's not fear of missing out, it was financial websites that were strictly financial and there are also medical websites that what they did was talk about procedures, talk about medical news, things like hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices. And this goes back over a year I think where there was a change in algorithm and some of these websites were getting slammed.
Eric Dickmann:Oh, really?
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah. And then the problem was for a few months, some of these websites that had nothing to do with finance or medical were getting hit hard because the algorithm oftentimes goes too far and it needs to correct.
Eric Dickmann:Yep.
Joey Donovan Guido:So once in a while, a client will call and say, Joey, what happened? We were ranking first on page one for all these different keywords. And now we're like, we're not.
Eric Dickmann:Yes.
Joey Donovan Guido:So I'll typically know if an update has happened. But we'll kind of walk through it and usually that corrects itself without us, my team needed to take any action within a couple of weeks. But we have to look at it. Cause sometimes the client does something and they don't realize what they did.
Eric Dickmann:Just broke something.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah.
Eric Dickmann:Well, you might not be able to answer this specifically, but that brings up a curious question to me. So let's say that you did rank number one for a number of keywords, Google pushes out an update, and maybe there was something now that's broken on your page that they're dinging you for and so you're dropped down in the rankings, assuming you get that fixed. So now you're sort of 100% in compliance if that's ever possible. How fast could you expect to recover your rank?
Joey Donovan Guido:That's a great question. And I can't answer that. What happens is when you take a dip in ranking for whatever reason, sometimes it's because you're not pumping out fresh content, typically a blog. Or even if you're doing a video, you need to blog, they put fresh actual words on the page, so Google can see it. So you might stop blogging for a few weeks or months, or let's say all of a sudden you're out of compliance. Like one of the not so recent changes was you had to be SSL certified or in other words, you had to have that little lock on your website, so it was quote unquote secure. For most websites that weren't selling websites, that made no difference. But Google didn't care, if you were non-compliant with the SSL, you could get dinged. And I always say you could get dinged because they're kind of not overtly objective about who they dig and who they don't. So that's one thing though, if all of a sudden, you know the deadline came and you were no longer compliant with that SSL, you might take it.
Eric Dickmann:Okay.
Joey Donovan Guido:Right? And I've seen that happen pretty quick, where like you're not that, you could take a dip within a week or two, right? And then when you fix it, you can pop back up within a week or two. You know if something happens where like all the SEO on a page goes away, like somebody on the team changed everything and didn't say, Hey, Cuppa SEO, are we good? Do you need to optimize this? You won't see changes like that happen. It could take a couple of weeks, but more likely it's going to take a few weeks up to 90 days for you to start to see a dip. And then you know, on the flip side of that is once you start to make the corrections, it might take up to 90 days for you to get back to where you were.
Eric Dickmann:It makes sense, but you're not looking at six to nine months before Google starts to slowly recognize. It's not you're back to square one. You can recover from them relatively quickly.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yes, you can pretty much recover from anything unless you're really doing some black hat things. Once I worked for a company who was, shall not be named, it was an international company who had a local business here in Wisconsin, kind of a subsidiary, and they were breaking all kinds of rules. They were literally in what I call the black hole of Google Panda, you know, like black hole in space, like you just disappear, you're gone.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah.
Joey Donovan Guido:You know, you couldn't find them in a keyword search, if you knew the URL you'd find them. And that was it. What they were doing is they were publishing a blog post a day and it was total garbage. It was obvious that it was being posted for SEO reasons, not for value.
Eric Dickmann:Gotcha.
Joey Donovan Guido:That took me about six months to fix. And it's not rocket science, there's ways to fix it. And we took them from less than 10 hits a day to over a hundred, which you know, for a small local business
Eric Dickmann:that's a big deal.
Joey Donovan Guido:It was you know, 10 times the amount of traffic. And it did help tremendously with their conversion, with their business growth.
Eric Dickmann:Interesting. Yeah, it's a complex world. You know as a podcast, host, people regularly reach out to me to be guests on the show. And I would say that at least half of the inquiries that I get are from SEO experts. It's such an important element of business, it's constantly evolving and changing, and something that businesses need to keep an eye on. It's not like you can create a website, create some content one time, and then just sit back for 10 years and let it go, right? It needs to constantly be nurtured. So for people who might be looking for an SEO expert to come into their business and really help them with their website, how could they find you guys and get in touch with you?
Joey Donovan Guido:Oh, yeah. So they can find us just by going to cuppaseo.com. We kind of named the business off of a cup of Joe.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, I like that.
Joey Donovan Guido:Cause my name is Joey. YSo yeah, cuppaseo.com, and there's all kinds of great information there too. So if you just looking for more information about SEO or kind of like what to look for when you're hiring a web design firm or if you're working with one and you're wondering, Hey, are they doing a good job? Are they actually optimizing my website or am I kind of burning my money with them? There's a lot of good information there, but otherwise just go, you know everything you need to know is on there for web design or SEO, and you can just go ahead and hit the contact button and get in touch. Love to talk.
Eric Dickmann:Hey And that's great. I know yougot some great webinar replays on the the website as well that have some great tips for people. So I'd encourage people to go check that out and we'll also make sure that all of that is linked up in the show notes so that people can find you. Joey, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I've really enjoyed our conversation. This is a fascinating topic.
Joey Donovan Guido:Yeah, man. You're welcome. Thanks for having me today.
Eric Dickmann:Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.
