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Why Word-of-Mouth Marketing Still Holds Importance in 2022
Why Word-of-Mouth Marketing Still Holds Importance in 2022

No other marketing strategy may be more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing.

Studies suggest that word-of-mouth marketing is five times as effective as PPC campaigns. This is more staggering considering that you spend nothing when a loyal customer spreads the good word.

However, building those initial relationships is a more complicated endeavor.

This article will explore:

What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing refers to any time an existing or previous customer speaks positively about and promotes interest in a brand.

All of us experience word-of-mouth marketing daily. Any time we share our interest in a product or service, friends or family may share recommendations.

These word-of-mouth exchanges happen all the time, cost nothing, and generate valued business.

Why Word-of-Mouth Marketing is Still Important in 2022?

The benefits of word-of-mouth marketing are abundant. Here are just a few to convince you of just how powerful this advertising channel can be.

1. Word-of-Mouth Marketing Builds Trust

Think about your perception of a typical advertisement.

They’re often noisy, intrusive, and abundant. Even if an ad might teach us about something we’re interested in, we ultimately understand that a business is trying to profit off of that interest. We’re much less likely to trust a paid ad or promotion from that perspective.

Nielsen, an audience measurement and analytics company, finds that 92% of consumers trust personal recommendations over all other marketing.

That’s a level of confidence that’s simply possible to recreate on your own. While you may strongly value a customer’s well-being, your brand survives on profit, meaning that your motives will always be questioned.

2. Referred Customers Have a Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value is a metric businesses use to determine the actual value of a customer over their lifespan.

You can calculate CLV with the following formula:

Customer Lifetime Value

We also know that, on average, it costs a business five times the amount to secure a new customer than to retain existing ones.

Here's how word-of-mouth marketing fits into this picture.

Whenever you invest in a loyal customer, they're much more likely to share recommendations with others based on positive experiences. Those consumers may then become customers based on the referral.

That means that you gain value from new customers without spending anything to acquire them.

Furthermore, the data shows that a referred customer has an average 16% higher CLV than a non-referred customer that features the same attributes. Referred customers also show roughly an 18% lower churn rate than their non-referred counterparts.

For brands that wish to improve revenue and grow sustainably, generating quality word-of-mouth marketing is non-negotiable.

3. Generate Compelling Content with Loyal Customers

Satisfied customers generate social proof for your brand.

We know that outside recommendations generate better results than paid advertisements. Therefore, there is an opportunity to combine customer stories with your marketing vehicles to create compelling user-generated content.

UGC can come in the form of text, photos, videos, or creative works that speak positively about your brand. The work still comes from an outside source, you're just leveraging your following to give it greater reach.

How to Motivate Your Audience for Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

While word-of-mouth marketing generates free results, you still need an important component - loyal customers.

If you're struggling to generate solid WoM, you need to first invest in your existing clientele. While you may provide a useful product or service, it takes exceptional customer care to generate a passionate, loyal following.

Here are some quick tips for motivating your audience to speak up about your brand.

1. Focus on Connections, Not Numbers

Most modern digital marketing primarily focuses on data collection, and for great reason.

Between PPC platforms, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other analytics tools, we can easily collect insights about our daily visitors.

Paid ads specialists then utilize this data to curate marketing campaigns directed at key demographics. Segmented marketing will generate superior results than campaigns with less focused targeting.

However, many experts get too caught up in viewing their users as mere data. Customers feel the disconnect, and that's why you aren't developing relationships.

Customer Relationship Model

The good news is that you can correct this process by training your sales teams accordingly. Your brand should be striving to give each new prospect an exceptional buying experience. Listen before you speak, prioritize their needs, and think about what you can do to make their lives better.

Each person is different, so results can be unpredictable. However, we can start by focusing on the key qualities of a genuine individual. This includes kindness, humility, compassion, and empathy.

In a transactional sense, you can provide a better experience than your competitors by rewarding both new and loyal customers. Exclusive discounts, gifts, and thoughtful service are often enough to get people talking.

2. Deliver an Exceptional Product or Service

This may be intuitive, but it's a point worth acknowledging.

The entire reason customers come to your brand is for your offerings. If your goods or services are substandard or worse than a competitor's, there's nothing worth sharing with friends or family. An experience that fails to hit the mark may earn negative word-of-mouth marketing, which can rapidly tarnish your reputation.

Get back to the basics. Focus on building a team that's genuinely passionate about what your brand aims to provide to others. Work hard to make something exceptional that's worth the buzz.

Finally, listen to your audience. Even amid complaints or negative reviews, they are telling you how you can improve. Taking your lumps and utilizing that feedback may be the first step in fostering goodwill with alienated customers.

Dos-Don'ts When Responding To Negative Feedback

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Building a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy

You can start to build customer motivation by utilizing related marketing channels. Here are a few strategies used by top brands to generate positive buzz around the web and in person.

1. Get Active on Social Media

If you want to focus on building connections, there's no better marketing channel than social media. It's in the name.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube function differently than other parts of the web.

A website, for example, provides a solo user experience. Your audience likely found your site by asking a question or typing certain keywords into Google. They then check out your site for information and eventually leave.

Social media is different in that it's a communal experience. Thousands of updates go out every minute that allow each user to participate in new conversations. They could be discussing local happenings, national events, or viral content. They may also be talking about you.

Engaging in the conversation on social media helps to build those connections. You can alter your public perception to make your brand seem personable, rather than being a cold, profit-driven entity.

Be sure to utilize a social media expert that understands how to use the local lingo. Capitalize on trending hashtags to help your content connect with the right audience. You may quickly gain likes and shares, which in themselves are a form of word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Gather Reviews & Testimonials

This tip harkens back to our understanding of consumer-to-consumer recommendations.

Positive reviews about your brand create social proof. Even though the review isn't from a personal connection, it can satisfy the need for a trustworthy recommendation.

Reviews are so important that they act as a ranking factor in local SEO. When you search for “restaurants near me,” you get a list of results accompanied by star ratings and testimonials.

Naturally, businesses with higher ratings take precedence over results with low ratings or with zero reviews.

How Reviews and Testimonials Help

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Adding positive reviews to your website helps you to control the narrative. It also demonstrates that you value the customer experience and helps you forge those connections that lead to quality word-of-mouth marketing.

3. Initiate a Referral Program

Another way to motivate customers to talk about you is to reward them for their efforts.

A referral program typically offers gifts or exclusive discounts to loyal customers. Any time a new customer makes a purchase based on an existing customer's referral, the existing customer gains the reward.

Typically, referring customers can continuously gain rewards. This makes it beneficial to keep spreading the word about your brand.

Creating the ideal reward is key here. You want to offer something genuinely desirable that will not hurt your bottom line. Think about how much you stand to gain from these new free customer acquisitions. Then, compare that to the amount you're spending to provide the referral reward.

Referral rewards are powerful because a great one offers exponential gain. We know that referred customers exhibit less churn. Therefore, they're more likely to spend and pay the referral forward to even more customers.

4. Start a Content Blog

Content blogs help you market in several ways. If you're trying to improve your website rankings, content becomes a critical part of your SEO strategy.

However, great content can potentially generate positive word-of-mouth buzz.

A high-quality blog offers users educational or entertaining content for the audience. If you present something worth reading, then your users are more likely to share it with peers.

6 Step that Make People Share Content

In addition to this, a blog presents the opportunity to build your authority as an industry expert. The better your content serves your readers, the more they will trust you in everything else you have to offer.

5. Promote User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any content that your customers make regarding your brand.

UGC can take many forms including stories, videos, artwork, or photos of themselves enjoying your products or services. In many ways, UGC can serve a similar purpose as testimonials or reviews.

UGC costs nothing to create but can pay dividends for marketing your brand. It establishes trust with new audiences, offers new and creative content for your ads, and shows the public that you value your customers.

All of these help you create a more sociable, genuine, and positive connection with your audience.

6. Create Entertaining Video Content

The power of video content is unquestionable. It’s far more powerful than text-based content or static images.

Wyzowl’s 2022 video marketing report proposes the following stats:

  • 94% of marketers report that videos help customers better understand an offering
  • 93% say that video contributes to brand awareness
  • 81% say that video was a direct factor in increasing sales

Video content is stimulating. Entertaining or insightful video content gets people talking. Some of the most successful marketing campaigns ever started with a simple video that went viral. For a small investment, it can get the entire internet talking about you overnight if you’re successful.

To give your video content the best chance of success, choose a compelling emotion.

Humor is a popular way to go, but heartfelt messages can trigger a response that motivates action. There's a reason why ASPCA's TV spot with Sarah McLachlan still plays today.

Plan Your Video Content

Build a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy That Works

Word-of-mouth marketing is desirable for every brand.

Not only is it direct feedback on your positive performance, but it also generates free publicity and lead generation. When you provide something worth sharing, the results will come to you organically.

Referred customers from word-of-mouth are not only free to acquire but statistically exhibit a higher customer lifetime value.

You can motivate your customers to share your brand via word-of-mouth with a variety of strategies.

Take advantage of modern marketing channels like social media, video, and blogs to connect with audiences. Find opportunities to utilize testimonials and user-generated content to foster trust and social proof with new leads.

All of these techniques come back to one key point - personal connection. Appeal to emotion, focus on their needs, and provide the answer to their problems. Positive word-of-mouth will follow naturally.

6 White Label Reporting Features that Agencies Need
6 White Label Reporting Features that Agencies Need

Client reporting is an important part of running a successful digital marketing agency, thereby making reporting tools crucial for marketing agencies. Most agencies use third-party tools, but they don't want to see the tool's branding on their reports. It is because third-party logos and branding send a wrong signal to your clients that their work is being subcontracted. It puts a question mark on the efficiency of the agency itself.

Many tools that the agencies use give them a competitive advantage. So, there is no way you can suddenly stop using those tools. But, you would never want your clients to identify the tools you use. It justifies the practice of "white labeling" for agencies as it safeguards their branding interests.

What is a White Label Report?

White labeling allows you to add your own branding to the product or service marketed or sold by you regardless of where you have sourced it.

When we use a third-party reporting software but use our own branding, it's referred to as white label reporting; it doesn't threaten your agency's branding.

Reports are an integral part of your overall branding. That explains why you should include branding in your reports. It also gives a personalized touch to your reports.

Some clients are so demanding that they want their branding. At least, they want a combination of their logo and the agency logo on the reports.

DashClicks' White Label Reports

This article discusses the most essential white label reporting features that agencies need. These features will add a touch of branding to your company's deliverables. A white label reporting tool allows you to add your branding in six ways.

1. Allows You to Use Your Agency's Logo

As an agency, you would definitely like to see your logo on the white label reports that you get through your white label solutions partner. The location of the logo is also crucial. Usually, it is placed in the top right corner for better visibility but can also be added to the top left corner.

Your dashboards should also carry your branding. You can always use a Wordmark logo, but you don't need any of the taglines while using it. However, you are free to add a slogan or tagline if you are interested. You can also add your client's logo here, which will help you personalize and quickly sort your reports.

You can also add a logo on the cover page of your report. You can place your logo on the Dashboard in the top left corner. It will help your client feel a sense of belonging.

DashClicks' Dashboard App

2. Enables You to Add Your Branding on Cover Pages

A logo on cover pages reinforces your brand. Agencies also use it to impress their clients. Branding everywhere, right? As people frequently see reports, it's crucial to have your branding on the cover pages and the report title, time, and release date. It gives your reports a professional look.

Using a Woodmark rather than a logo will also be treated as a brand element and can be judiciously utilized with brand colors.

Sometimes, your clients would insist on combining your branding with their branding. In such situations, you can choose the colors from the color palette and save the cover page and the report to use later as a template. The next time you create an SEO report, you will not have to redesign your cover page. All you need to do is update the logo design, colors, and title.

3. Allows You to Add Vital Agency Info on Headers and Footers

Sometimes agency owners want to have their branding on every report page. In such situations, we would use branding on headers and footers. It helps your clients or anybody else using the report easily find your contact information. You can add this on every page.

However, avoid cluttering your reports with unnecessary information. Also, never paste images other than the logo because they look messed up. If you don't use your logo or Wordmark, you can use your agency's brand fonts and use your primary color for the text. It would suffice your branding needs.

4. Allows You to Match Your Brand Colors

Make sure you don't use unnecessary colors that are not your brand colors. In your reports, use your brand colors only. For example, if you have maroon in your palette, you can use that as the primary color of the font against similar colors such as red or orange. You can also choose specific colors for headings. White labeling also includes the background, row, and column colors in a table and element colors in a chart, such as lines, bars, and pie slices.

5. Enables You to Create Your Email Domain

Agencies share reports through email using PDF files or links to an online report. They also do it directly through the Dashboard. These are the automated solutions, so you need to ensure that they have agency branding in them. For example, the sender's name should appear as xyz@myagency.com and not a third-party domain name autogenerated by your email software, such as no-reply@my-report-vendor.com.

Your email domain strongly represents your branding. It also helps your clients identify the sender to open it. This becomes crucial when clients use strict email filters that dump such unbranded emails straight into the spam folder. Once your client safelists your email domain, your email will not land in their spam folder.

Sometimes, an agency assigns an account manager to send such reports and other important communication to specific clients. The email is delivered by the account manager's email account, which comes with an agency-branded domain. So, just by hitting reply on the email, your client can easily communicate with the right person, who is an account manager in this case.

6. Allows You to Host Dashboards On Your Domain

Agencies provide their clients with access to their white label reports through the white label dashboard. Luckily, you can also add your branding here. While providing the access, the agencies would use a unique subdomain to host all of the white-label reports generated for their clients.

All the clients have to visit that subdomain to view the reports by login into the URL, i.e., https://dashboards.yourdomain.com. It provides you complete creative control over the Dashboard's appearance and choosing the branding elements as per your wish.

How to Add White-Label Features?

Choosing a white label reporting software that allows you to personalize your white label report entirely is crucial. It applies to online reports, PDF files, and dashboards you create for your clients.

Start Building White-Label Reports With Your Branding

To scale your company and grow it, you need to create a strong brand. It is an identity that helps clients know about the company's services, its mission statement, and values. Your brand also reflects your commitment to your customers.

White label reports include your company's name, logo, brand colors, and other branding elements.

Your clients frequently log into their lead tracking dashboard, where they see your logo and other branding elements such as your agency’s name on the platform and in the URL. Similarly, every time you send them an email about a fresh lead generated, your branding also appears here. According to stimulus and response theory in psychology, it leads to an intense brand reinforcement, where a client thinks of your agency whenever they think of a new lead.

Reporting Done Right WIth DashClicks
How to Efficiently Outsource Digital Marketing Services (Ep. 12)
How to Efficiently Outsource Digital Marketing Services (Ep. 12)

In this episode of Whiteboard Wednesday, i.e. episode 12, Chad Kodary, CEO of DashClicks, discusses efficiently outsourcing digital marketing services. So, if you are a marketing agency looking to offload all the hard work instead of doing it in-house, read on.

I’ll also discuss how to use an outsourcing partner efficiently. To begin, you can do the following:

  • Scale-up fulfillment
  • Focus on the front-end of your business, i.e. sales
  • Let a white labeled company like DashClicks handle all the back-end work

It will keep your hands free to focus more on sales and revenue for your agency. So, first and foremost, let’s talk about why agencies cannot scale.

Here at DashClicks, we provide white label fulfillment services. DashClicks is a white label platform for marketing agencies and your clients. Thousands of agencies use our platform and white label fulfillment services, and we’ve been doing this for a long time.

How to Scale Up Efficiently?

We’ve seen a lot of trends, and one of the biggest trends that we’re shocked to see here at DashClicks is the number of agencies failing to scale. Why does it happen? Why do agencies fail at scaling their fulfillment and their services?

How to Scale Your Business Using White-Label Fulfillment Services?

There can be different reasons for that. So, let's discuss how to avoid those issues and scale up efficiently.

Disadvantages of Using Multiple Vendors

The first reason most agencies fail at scaling and creating scalable fulfillment is that they use multiple vendors. For example, someone uses DashClicks for SEO services and other white label fulfillment partners for their Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and content requirements.

The drawback of such a practice is that it leads to chaos as different vendors have different processes, contact persons, and schedules. Such a matrix leads to a management disaster that can drive you insane. Furthermore, it prevents scaling, especially if you have numerous clients. This system may collapse if you have 50-100 clients.

Imagine your team members interacting with a dozen teams and white label partners. It makes it very difficult to keep the data streamlined and organized in one place.

Reporting is another issue that you might confront. Imagine outsourcing on-page SEO, off-page SEO, backlinks, and directory listings from several freelancers on Fiverr, UpWork, PeoplePerHour, etc.

The entire practice may become inefficient if you put 50 clients through these processes.

The Takeaway: Never fall into this miserable matrix of using multiple fulfillment partners. This process is not sustainable.

Experience the Difference With DashClicks

At DashClicks, we offer all fulfillment services in-house. We don't source it from the marketplace. Instead, we have full-time employees and trained teams to take care of your campaigns. It ensures reliability, timely delivery, quality, accountability, and robust communication. The entire DashClicks ecosystem is designed to help you scale faster.

We are already past the experimental stages and have a proven track record of solid white label fulfillment partnerships with agencies. We have built a system that ensures your success.

What makes this entire ecosystem conducive to the success of agency business? It’s fast and hassle-free, and has the following advantages:

  • Allows you to order white label fulfillment with the click of a button
  • Enables you to automate the onboarding process
  • You speak to one team through the Slack workspace
  • Sign in to one reporting dashboard in DashClicks to log in to the platform
  • Your clients get their own client dashboards where they can see their reports

Apart from that, there is no need to deal with different freelancers when you use our platform. It increases your overall efficiency.

What Makes Fulfillment Services Perfect for Agencies

Source: Ep. 12 ā 05:33

Disadvantages of Using Freelancers

There are many disadvantages to using freelancers. They disappear suddenly, citing different excuses, and they may steal your clients. And that's not the way you would want to scale up your fulfillment partnerships, especially at the beginning.

The most efficient way to do it is to get it all done by one vendor. They will produce quality results and help you maintain consistency. The most significant advantage of using reliable white label partners is that they will help you scale, whether you add five or 100 clients.

The Takeaway: You can use freelancers in an emergency, but you shouldn't make it a long-term strategy. It's not a sustainable practice.

Scale Your Way up Using a Single Dashboard

While choosing a white label service partner, you need to ensure that you can offload all of your customers. They should have one dashboard to log into, so you can easily manage and track all your projects, quickly.

Life becomes more manageable when you create a system that can do things consistently to scale your business. On the flip side, management becomes a nightmare with multiple vendors, and you are always busy firefighting. So, hiring a reputed white label fulfillment partner is a winning solution for your business. With just one team to speak to, you can save almost 70% of your productive time.

Benefits of Having One Point of Contact

When you order fulfillment services from DashClicks and get onboard for the first time, you get a 30-minute onboarding call with your account executive. You'll interact with the DashClicks team using Slack Workspace. You can also give its access to your employees.

We assign a dedicated account executive and a client success rep to your account. They will help deliver your work with our fulfillment teams on the back-end.

Our trained teams are always at your service removing all the hassles of hiring, recruiting & staffing, payroll, vacations, software expenses, and equipment. We'll manage all the stuff for you, so you can focus on just one thing — getting clients. This is the best thing about outsourcing from a white label fulfillment partner.

An Amazing and Powerful Dashboard

Secondly, our dashboard is fantastic. This is a blessing for both agency owners and their clients. You can check analytics and results right on the dashboard. Apart from analytics and reporting, you also get a built-in CRM, automations platform, and many other features in the dashboard.

Our analytics app offers cross-channel reporting and supports multiple integrations such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, call tracking, Google Analytics etc. You can do these integrations with the click of a button.

Use the Power of DashClicks

Source: Ep. 12 ā 10:34

Leverage Our Expertise & Robust Processes

We have been doing this since 2009, so we know how to deliver digital marketing services. We specialize in many digital marketing services such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, search engine optimization, content marketing, social media posting, and directory listings.

Our teams have provided these five core services for the past 13 years. As a result, we have successfully built a solid process around these.

Very few people know the importance of processes in successfully running an agency business. To deliver outstanding results month after month, it’s extremely important to streamline your processes.

Final Words

We are not talking about your efficiency at the front end of the business. To produce quality results at scale, you need to have robust processes in your fulfillment department. To achieve that, you should avoid the following:

  • Missing tasks
  • Not making and working on a schedule

The inability to make a routine and stick to it is also responsible for the failure of many businesses. Along with energy and resources, you should also have a winning strategy and robust processes.

To explore DashClicks’ incredible features, create an account today and go to your dashboard. You’ll be amazed at the level of automation it offers.

We’re super excited to speak with you, so feel free to discuss the challenges you’re facing or ask away ‌questions‌.

See you in the next episode of Whiteboard Wednesday. Have a fantastic day!

Let DashClicks Bridge The Fulfillment Gaps In Your Business
How to Find and Fix Indexing Issues in Google Search Console
How to Find and Fix Indexing Issues in Google Search Console
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Crawling and indexing your web pages is a critical component of any SEO strategy.

To achieve these goals, marketing specialists utilized a free tool known as Google Search Console. This application monitors your website to track health errors that directly impact performance and search engine rankings.

When analyzing your website, you may encounter something known as an index coverage issue.

This article will explain what indexing issues are, why they occur, and what you can do to fix Google index coverage issues moving forward.

What Are Index Coverage Issues?

To better explain an index coverage issue, let's first explore how the indexing process works.

To manually submit your site to Google Search Console, you will need something known as an XML sitemap. This site map lists all of the pages present on your website along with their corresponding URLs.

Otherwise, Googlebot will periodically attempt to crawl your site by following links on and off of the domain.

Crawling is the process Googlebot uses to discover a URL and read the content on the page. Once it reaches the URL, it begins the process of indexing the data.

Indexing is the process in which Googlebot attempts to understand the content. It does this by checking for keywords, analyzing headlines, reading content, and following internal and outbound links. The better it can understand a page, the more accurately it can “grade” a URL for search rankings.

Googlebot Crawling and Indexing Process

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With this information in mind, let's answer the initial question.

An index coverage issue happens if something prevents Google from properly crawling and indexing a URL.

You can identify an index coverage issue by checking your Google Search Console Index Coverage Report for one of four status notifications.

The Four Index Status Codes and How to Fix Them

When the indexing process is complete, each URL will feature an index coverage status. You can find a full list of these statuses courtesy of Google here.

Valid

Ideally, all of your URLs will have the “Valid” status.

This means that Googlebot was able to successfully index the webpage without any notable issues.

How Googlebot Successfully Index Webpage

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You will only receive a notification if you did not include this URL in your sitemap. If you intend to index a page, always be sure to properly list it within the XML file.

Warning

If a URL displays the “Warning” status, it can indicate several things.

First, know that the Googlebot did index the page despite the warning. You will need to check the reasoning for the status of the report for greater details. The two types of warnings are as follows:

  • Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt – Googlebot indexed the page despiting blocking it with your robots.txt file. This typically occurs when an external website is linking the blocked page. In this scenario, Googlebot still follows the outside link to the page and indexes it.
  • Page indexed without content – Google was able to index the page, but some factor is preventing it from reading the actual content. You can refer to the coverage section of your report for more information.

How to Fix Warning Status Indexing Issues?

A. Indexed, Though Blocked by Robots.txt

If you intend to block the URL from further indexing, you must add a ‘noindex’ meta tag or header on the page for the HTTP response. Your meta tag should look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex>

If you instead wish to add an HTTP response header, Google recommends the following:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

(…)

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

(…)

Furthermore, Google instructs us to not add the blocked URL to the robots.txt file. If you attempt to block using this method, Googlebot cannot check the page for the appropriate ‘noindex’ tag.

How to Fix Indexed, Though Blocked by Robots.txt

B. Page Indexed Without Content

This warning only occurs in rare circumstances. The most common culprit is accidentally publishing a webpage to your site that has zero content to read.

However, pages can also receive this warning if you are using a practice called cloaking.

Cloaking is the act of using technical processes to show Googlebot one type of content while showing your users something different than what is indexed. Cloaking is against Google guidelines and can prevent your website from appearing in any search results.

Cloaking Process

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If you receive this warning, but cannot find a discernible cause, check with your development team for a possible hack. After addressing the problem, you can resubmit your website to Google for proper indexing.

Excluded

The ‘excluded’ response code typically appears by user choice.

Your SEO team may choose to prevent Googlebot from indexing a page for several reasons. The most common is having multiple versions of one page with duplicate content. To avoid penalties, you may exclude a page from the indexing process.

If you do not wish to exclude a URL, check your coverage report for one of the following messages:

  • Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag – The URL has a meta tag or response code instructing Googlebot to avoid indexing the page.
  • Blocked by page removal tool  – An authorized website user blocked the URL with a URL removal request. These requests will expire after roughly 90 days.
  • Blocked by robots.txt – A robots.txt file is blocking the indexing process.
  • Blocked due to unauthorized request (401) – Googlebot was unable to continue the crawl after receiving a 401 authorization response put in place by the website owner.
  • Crawled, currently not indexed – Googlebot crawled the page but has yet to index it. In most scenarios, the indexing will follow soon after.
  • Discovered, currently not indexed – Googlebot identified the URL but stopped short of crawling to prevent site overload.
  • Alternate page with proper canonical tag – Google recognizes this URL as a duplicate of an existing page. The other page has a canonical tag prompting it to avoid indexing.
  • Duplicate without user-selected canonical – If two pages have duplicate content, and neither has a canonical tag, Googlebot will attempt to differentiate the two. This URL received the non-canonical tag.
  • Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user – Google sees your canonical tag but thinks this URL should be the one to receive the tag.
  • Not found (404) – Googlebot found this URL organically only to receive a 404 error.
  • Page with redirect – Googlebot will not index redirect URLs.
  • Soft 404 – The URL leads to a page with a soft 404 not found message.
  • Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical – This URL is likely one of the multiple pages that contain duplicate content. However, none of these pages has the canonical tag.
  • Blocked due to access forbidden (403) – The URL features restricted access prompting Googlebot to provide credentials. This almost always results in an incorrect error response on your site.
  • Blocked due to other 4xx issue – This applies to an error caused by any other unnamed 4xx code.

How to Fix Excluded Status Indexing Issues?

1. Excluded by noindex' Tag

If you meant to use a noindex' tag, this code requires no response.

If you wish to submit the page for indexing, simply remove the noindex' tag from the page.

2. Blocked by Page Removal Tool

Avoid using URL removal requests and instead, use the robots.txt directive. Make additional attempts to crawl the URL for indexing before the request expires.

3. Blocked by Robots.txt

If you meant to block a URL from indexing, remove it from the robots.txt file and use the noindex' tag instead.

Otherwise, simply remove the URL from the robots.txt file.

4. Blocked Due to Unauthorized Request (401)

Remove the authorization requirements you have in place to access the page. More importantly, look into how this URL was discovered and address any related issues like broken or toxic links.

5. Crawled, Currently Not Indexed

Check the date of the last crawl. If it was recent, allow Google more time to index the page. Typically, no action is necessary.

6. Discovered, Currently Not Indexed

Google likely rescheduled the crawl. No action is necessary but check back to ensure that the site is properly indexed soon.

7. Alternate Page with Proper Canonical Tag

You added a canonical tag to a page with duplicate content. If this for some reason is incorrect, remove the canonical tag from the other URL and add it to the correct one.

8. Duplicate without User-Selected Canonical

Your site has more than one page with duplicate content. Select the most valuable one and add the canonical tag.

9. Not Found (404)

If the page no longer exists, meaning the 404 is intentional, no action is required.

If the page does exist at a new URL, you must add a redirect to the new location.

10. Page with Redirect

Google does not index redirects. No further action is necessary.

11. Soft 404

If the page no longer exists, make sure it returns a proper 404.

If you do not mean for a 404 to appear, you need to update this page with appropriate content for proper indexing.

12. Duplicate, Submitted URL Not Selected as Canonical

If you wish to index this as the URL, you will need to use the canonical tag. Google will index this page and prevent the other duplicates from being included.

13. Blocked Due to Access Forbidden (403)

If you wish to index this page, remove all restrictions preventing users and Googlebot from accessing the page.

If you intend for the page to be this way, be sure to utilize the noindex' tag as described earlier in this article.

14. Blocked Due to Other 4xx Issue

You will need to investigate the particular URL to understand its behavior. Be on the lookout for the 4xx status code and investigate what needs to be done to correct the issue. These errors range from 400 to 451, making it difficult to diagnose with a quick tutorial.

Error

The error code appears on your Coverage Report when Googlebot is unable to crawl the pages that are eligible for proper indexing.

The types of error codes are as follows:

  • Server error (5xx) – This occurs when the website’s server is unable to fulfill the request to access the URL at the start of the process.
  • Redirect error – One of a few direct errors occurred. This prevents Googlebot from reaching the desired URL for indexing.
  • Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt – You blocked this page from indexing using your robots.txt file.
  • Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ – This occurs when you ask Google to index a page that has the ‘noindex’ tag.
  • Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404  – Googlebot crawled the page and found it to be a Soft 404.
  • Submitted URL returns unauthorized request (401) – Authorization requirements prevented Google from crawling and indexing the page.
  • Submitted URL not found (404) – You asked Google to index a URL that no longer exists.
  • Submitted URL returned 403 – Something on the page is preventing anonymous users from gaining access. This is usually regarding a login issue.
  • Submitted URL blocked due to other 4xx issue – One of the many 4xx response codes not previously listed prevents Google from indexing the URL.

How to Fix Error Status Indexing Issues?

1. Server Error (5xx)

5xx errors are most commonly a firewall issue. It can also be caused by a DoS protection protocol you have in place to prevent excessive requests to the server. Because Googlebot is making many requests in the indexing process, your security may be halting progress.

You or your hosting provider will need to examine which part of your website’s security is stopping Google. With the correct configurations, the indexing process should be allowed to go on without issue.

You can learn more about server errors from Google here.

2. Redirect Error

There are multiple types of redirect errors. The first step is to identify which one your website currently has.

  • Redirect loop – Your redirect chain is taking the user back and forth between the same URLs. You need to check your redirect chain and make sure that the user ends up at the correct URL.
Redirection Loop
  • Chain is too long – If you need to redirect users, you should always point them from URL A to URL B. If you receive this error, your website is redirecting Google too many times, causing it to abandon the crawl. Eliminate unnecessary steps in the chain to resume normally.
  • Redirect URL exceeds max URL length – Google has a limitation on how many characters belong in a URL. If you receive this error, look into how you can update the URL or move the content to a new one.
URL Length vs Google Position

Image Source

  • A bad or empty URL in the redirect chain - Google recognizes that one step in the chain is preventing normal navigation. Revisit your redirect protocol and make sure that each step points to the right destination.

If you have any more questions or concerns regarding redirects, Google recommends that website owners utilize Lighthouse for these types of errors.

3. Submitted URL Blocked by Robots.txt

If you wish to block a URL from indexing, you should not use robots.txt. Instead, use the noindex' protocol on the page.

If you mean for this page to be indexed, remove it from robots.txt and avoid using any unnecessary tags. Then, resubmit the URL for indexing.

4. Submitted URL Marked noindex'

If you wish to index this URL, you need to remove the noindex' protocol you have in place.

5. Submitted URL Seems to be a Soft 404

If you receive a soft 404 error, you can take one of the following actions depending on the situation.

If the page no longer exists, utilize a true 404 status code to indicate this.

If you moved the content to a new destination, submit the new page for indexing and remove the soft 404 page from the website.

6. Submitted URL Returns Unauthorized Request (401)

You must remove any authorization requirements if you want Googlebot to crawl the page.

7. Submitted URL Not Found (404)

You cannot submit a nonexistent URL for indexing.

If the content exists and you mistakenly used an old URL, update your sitemap with the correct URL.

8. Submitted URL Returned 403

Remove any restrictions that are preventing anonymous users from gaining access.

If you intended to restrict access, utilize the noindex' protocol for this URL.

9. Submitted URL Blocked Due to Other 4XX Issue

As we explained with similar exclusion errors, there are over 50 potential 4xx errors. Read the status description carefully to gain insight as to how you can correct the issue. See if you can replicate the issue or identify the problem using Google's URL inspection tool.

Address Index Coverage Issues Quickly to Protect Your Rankings

Google Search Console is a great boon for helping you publish your website updates quickly. The more you utilize best SEO practices, the more likely you are to see positive gains in SERPs.

Indexing issues are not uncommon. Fortunately, many of them are easily correctable with Google offering many solutions to get you back on track. Healthier websites equate to more satisfied users.

Understanding how Google responds to certain protocols also allows your SEO team to perform actions in your favor. This can protect your rankings as you experiment with website changes.

As long as you stay on top of these notifications, your website should always remain under control. Regardless of website length, utilizing these coverage reports will better serve you in keeping your website healthy.

How Long Should a Blog Post Be for SEO in 2022
How Long Should a Blog Post Be for SEO in 2022

Content is king.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates would push this sentiment in 1996 with that very title.

We consume that content daily through text, images, video, and live streaming. A popular form of content among these channels is the blog post.

If you've ever interacted with digital marketing, you understand the power blog posts can have on SEO. But, what exactly is the ideal blog post length?

The answer isn't objective. However, let's explore the factors that dictate appropriate blog post length. With this knowledge, you'll be able to supercharge your SEO in 2022.

Why Does Blog Post Length Matter for SEO?

When Google ranks a piece of content, it considers multiple factors. Among these are:

  • Quality
  • Trustworthiness
  • Authority
  • Backlinks from external sources
  • Page clicks
  • Bounce rate
  • Time spent on page
  • Length

When we refer to length, we are referring to how well the content serves the needs of the reader. With that in mind, appropriate content length can vary greatly depending on what the blog is attempting to discuss.

As a general rule, longer articles tend to be more valuable for SEO.

Let's say that two websites are writing about how to develop a technical SEO strategy. One blog post is 500 words in length. The competitor's article is 2,000 words in length. In all likelihood, the longer article provides more valuable information as the increased length allows for greater coverage.

Average Content Length of Top 10 Results

Image Source

A longer blog post also allows for more keyword opportunities. Writers can not only highlight primary keywords but create additional headlines and paragraphs that delve into secondary or tertiary keywords related to the topic.

With greater information available, Google is better able to understand what purpose the blog post serves so that it can serve it to the ideal audience.

Blog Post Quality vs Blog Post Length

Blog post length becomes more variable regarding the user experience.

When someone searches for a topic or question on Google, they expect to get a thorough answer. If the subject allows for a deep dive with supporting information, it should be included to make a longer, better-quality blog post.

On the other hand, you might fall into the trap of padding a blog post purely for length. While it might provide more opportunities for “keyword stuffing,” it makes for a poor user experience.

Google has also improved its understanding of content padding. If your blog post contains unrelated fluff, duplicate content, or too many instances of a keyword, it can harm SEO.

All of this serves to illustrate the point that content quality matters more than raw blog post length. If you can expound more on the topic to better serve the reader, you can and should provide a better user experience. With an improved UX, you'll see increased benefits to your SEO.

Why High-Quality Content is Important for Success

Likewise, if their topic does not warrant 3,000 words, do not stretch the material to help SEO.

Google provides fully-detailed guidelines of how it rates every webpage here. You can better serve your SEO strategy by practicing these guidelines as opposed to focusing on length.

Be aware that the more succinct and effective your answer, the more likely your blog post is to achieve the coveted position zeroā  at the very top of SERPs.

How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

You now understand the critical factors that go into determining a blog post's SEO value.

However, is there an educated estimate of the ideal blog post length?

In prior years, the often-quoted word count minimum was 500. This length allows you to provide bite-sized educational value to an audience without running into thin content warnings from Google. Anything less than is unlikely to positively impact SEO.

In 2021, HubSpot ran a study on its most-read blog posts and found 2,100 - 2,400 words to be the sweet spot.

Meanwhile, SEO company Yoast explains that articles should exceed 1,000 words for better results.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, marketing veteran Neil Patel and his team warn to avoid exceeding Google's cap of 10,000 words. Even 5,000 words or more may offer diminishing returns.

Changes in Blog Post Length Over Time

Image Source

These different findings seem to corroborate what we shared above regarding how audiences receive different types of content. Some companies find more success with quick, lean content on social media, while others fare better with well-researched, academic blog posts.

Determining the Right Blog Post Length for Your Site

The most effective way to determine how long your blog posts should be is to experiment and measure. This is a golden rule you should practice for all digital marketing channels.

It's best practice to create a content calendar and plan out all of your blog posts in advance. This allows your SEO team to research ideal topics based on your keywords. The research will also allow them to look at similar, competing articles and their respective lengths.

Several metrics will indicate whether your blog posts are performing well. Keep an eye on:

  • Page clicks
  • Shares
  • Average time spent on page
  • Clicks to other pages/blog posts
  • Bounce rate
  • Subscriptions

If short-form posts are not gaining the desired results, try to select topics that allow for greater blog post length. Your readers may be looking for more detailed articles that offer additional knowledge and insights.

At the end of the year, examine your top-performing blog posts. If they have a similar length in common, this may be the sweet spot you want to aim for regarding word count.

Finally, you can always ask your core audience what type of content they want to see. So long as you are striving to provide the best user experience, the issue of content length will typically resolve itself.

Conclusion - Focus on Blog Quality Over Blog Post Length

If you're looking for an actual number, 1,500-2,000 words will likely get the most traction with Google SERPs.

However, the length of your articles will not positively impact your SEO if they do not serve the reader. You should not attempt to pad your blog with fluff simply to meet an imagined quota.

Brands have found success in digital marketing when writing short, 300-word articles. Likewise, many brands dominate the top rankings with regular 2,500-word posts. What matters is how loyal your audience is and how well your content serves their needs.

Finally, you should seek out your own ideal blog post length by experimenting with different types of blogs. Utilize free tools like Google Analytics to track key metrics that are direct indicators of user engagement. The more your audience interacts with and shares your blogs, the more likely they are to improve your website rankings.

How I Would Do $100K in Sales in 12 Months if I Had to Start All Over From Scratch
How I Would Do $100K in Sales in 12 Months if I Had to Start All Over From Scratch
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Running a digital marketing agency, scaling it, and keeping it profitable is no child’s play. With increasing competition, things are getting even more nutsy in the market.

It requires a strategy, mindset, and a specific course of action. This article will discuss all these and many other proven tactics that we implement at our very own DashClicks and Social Agency.

It includes a brief itinerary of the Social Agency. It’s an interesting story that will motivate you to succeed. It also includes the things that we learnt along this journey — what to do and what not to.

The Synopsis of the Article

The article covers:

  1. How We Started “Social Agency”: A Chronology?
  2. Personality Traits and Mindset You Need to Succeed
  3. How Did I Make My First $4000 in Sales?
  4. Prospecting & Sales: Core Concepts & Best Practices
  5. The First Step: How Do You Get Multiple Calls Booked on Your Calendar?
  6. Prospecting Streams That Worked for Us
  7. Prospecting Tools to Use
  8. What Is Sales?
  9. What’s a Value Ladder?
  10. Our Core Service Offerings
  11. Our Sales Team Structure
  12. The Communication Paths We Used to Sell
  13. The Contract Terms We Offered
  14. Our Monthly Price Offerings
  15. What Is Fulfillment?
  16. How Do Most Agencies Operate?
  17. Top Reasons Why Most Agencies Fail
  18. Our Fulfillment Retention Measures
  19. Core Strategies: The Whiteboard Session
  20. The Right Prospecting Strategies
  21. Make Your Life Easy With Deal Automations
  22. How to Scale?
  23. The Proven Sales Strategies
  24. How to Close More Deals?
  25. How to Use an Irresistible Offer?
  26. How to Become a Seven-Figure Marketing Agency?
  27. Questions & Answers

In this article, we’ll try to decode everything I did that made us a successful, profitable, multi-million-dollar revenue-generating digital marketing agency.

So, if you’re pumped up, and if that sounds like something you’d like to learn about, read on.

I’ve split this presentation into two sections to set some context.

The first half is more like a slide deck presentation, chronological in order. It’ll be more of a full-blown whiteboard session in the second half of this presentation. In this session, I’ll go through the core strategies that we implemented in our marketing agency that got us to over $100k a year in sales and, later on, over a million dollars a year in sales. Soon, it expanded to a multi-million dollar corporation.

We have our fantastic team members, Daniel Matthews and Gil Golan from our dashboards team, here in the session. They will also answer your questions.

How to Make $100,000 in Sales in 12 Months?

If I lost everything and had to start all over again from scratch, this is what I would do to get $100,000 in sales.

How I Would Do $100k in Sales in 12 Months?

Source: Chad's Webinar 06:13

My name is Chad Kodary, and I'm the CEO of two multiple seven-figure marketing companies DashClicks and our retail agency Social Agency, which has been running since 2009. So, let's begin with a chronology of how the Social Agency was launched and how things unfolded to make it a multi-million dollar company.

Chad Kodary CEO of DashClicks & Social Agency

Source: Chad's Webinar 06:53

1. How We Started “Social Agency”: A Chronology?

To understand the future, we have to start with the past. So, let’s go ahead and take the time machine back to 2009 to see how it all started.

On September 13, 2009, I started my digital marketing agency Social Agency. I started my marketing agency from a bedroom in my parents’ house.

I was about 21 years old when I started my marketing agency. This was almost 12 years ago. So, you can see I had no experience doing this. I jumped into this industry with no training or formal education in digital marketing.

I started from scratch, and this is where I think most of you are today.

Personality Traits and Mindset You Need to Succeed

I want to set some expectations for everybody, fast-forwarding almost 12 years later. If you’re getting into this industry or starting your own business, remember, the first thing is to eat & breathe it. Your business drive should embody everything you are — including all of your traits. You become the brand, the visionary, and the creator.

So, unless you’re ready to take this head-on, this article is not for you. This post is specifically for entrepreneurs, people who want to start a digital marketing agency, and people looking to build a successful career in this industry.

How I Started Social Agency?

Source: Chad's Webinar 09:43

How Did I Make My First $4000 in Sales?

From this desk in 2009, I made a whopping $4000 in sales annually the entire year.

I sat at that desk, working every day for 10 to 15 hours. I sweated days, weekends, and nights and made about $4000 in my first year in business.

Most of you may think it was a failure earning just $4000 a year, but to me then, it was not. I was laying the foundation of an ambitious startup.

Four years later, on August 2, 2013, I moved into my first office, a shared office.

Year 4 - On August 2nd, 2013

Source: Chad's Webinar 11:07

I shared it with one of my good friends.

On October 20, 2014, I opened my second office.

Then, we hired multiple people, and expanded our operations into sales and a fulfillment team. Those were the two main avenues that we were focused on.

Year 5 - On October 20th, 2014

Source: Chad's Webinar 11:47

October 20th, 2014

Source: Chad's Webinar 12:08

On October 16, 2016, we opened another office and expanded again. We hired more people and took our sales to the next level.

Year 7 - October 1st, 2016

Source: Chad's Webinar 12:23

We opened up our first call center, which you can see in the picture below on the bottom right. We had probably about 20 to 25 employees in this office at this time.

October 1st, 2016

Source: Chad's Webinar 12:51

Let's fast forward again on February 9, 2017, I had a dream. I woke up in the middle of the night and started mocking up what we know today as DashClicks. This was my first wireframe and my first mockup. Imagine if DashClicks looked like this today; that'd not be very pleasant. And, that vision became a reality.

February 9th, 2017

Source: Chad's Webinar 13:03

On October 1, 2018, we launched DashClicks v1, which looked like this.

October 1st, 2018, We Launched DashClicks

Source: Chad's Webinar 13:26

Fast forward once again, almost ten years later, from that bedroom seat in 2009, on July 1, 2019, I was out of the country, and I got a call from one of our partners. He said, “Chad! The office next door just moved out, and I think this is the expansion time.

This was the time to break down the wall and double up, precisely what we did. We broke down the wall to the next-door office and took the space. We hired more people, built more offices, and expanded our business again. We took chances, and I can tell you from this 10-year journey that looking at making big moves and taking chances is part of being an entrepreneur.

Year 10 - July 21st, 2019

Source: Chad's Webinar 13:32

Today, I have a growing business. I’m making money, I’m my own boss, I have thousands of customers, full-time employees, ample office space, a dream car, and a dream wife.

And I’m not saying this to brag because I want you to go back in time again and look at where I started. I’m simply showing you that your dreams can become a reality, and I am living proof of that.

I went from being home at mama’s house as a 21-year old making four thousand dollars a year annually to a successful entrepreneur speaking on stages in front of hundreds and thousands of people at conferences.

In 2019, I made $1.64 million from sales.

Keep in mind that results like these will not happen for you unless you work for them.

Pro Tip #1: Take risks. Everything that I’ve done until today or that you’ve seen in the last 12 years is the result of taking chances, bold steps, and calculated risks. During this time, I was working and taking big shots. I made big moves and took big gambles, which got me to where I am today.

I want the same for you now.

Pro Tip #2: Hire full-time employees instead of highly-paid freelancers.

Pro Tip #3: Capitalize your prospecting framework to create a multi-stream automated lead generation approach.

2. Prospecting & Sales: Core Concepts & Best Practices

Here are some of the core concepts and strategies you need to understand to succeed in the agency business. It covers all aspects of prospecting & sales. It will also include tips on how to retain your clients for a long time. So, let’s begin with prospecting.

A. The First Step: How Do You Get Multiple Calls Booked on Your Calendar?

This is where it all begins. First, let’s understand that prospecting is the first step in your sales process which consists of identifying potential customers, aka prospects.

The goal of prospecting is to develop a database of likely customers and then systematically communicate with them to convert them from potential customers to paid customers.

Let me show you how we used to prospect in Social Agency. We had multiple prospecting streams.

Pro Tip: The more fishing lines you have out in the ocean, the more fish you will catch. It is as self-explanatory as that.

B. Prospecting Streams that Worked for Us

Here are the prospecting streams we used at the Social Agency.

Multiple Prospecting Streams

Source: Chad's Webinar 21:32

Here are the streams that worked the most for us.

Streams That Worked the Most for Us

Source: Chad's Webinar 21:50

C. Prospecting Tools to Use

Here are the prospecting tools that we used.

Prospecting Software We Used

Source: Chad's Webinar 22:13

Here are the prospecting tools that worked the most for us ā CRM system, InstaSites, and InstaReports.

Prospecting Tools that Worked the Most for Us

Source: Chad's Webinar 22:22

Here is the following framework that is known as sales.

Lets, Move Forward to Next Framework

Source: Chad's Webinar 22:33

D. What Is Sales?

Here is the basic definition of sales that will clear misconceptions.

What is Sales?

Source: Chad's Webinar 22:51

E. What's a Value Ladder?

It's crucial to rise up the value ladder in order to survive and stay profitable in the long run. Companies that don't rise lose their appeal soon.

What Is A Value Ladder?

Source: Chad's Webinar 23:03

F. Our Core Service Offerings

Here are our core service offerings. SEO, directory listings, and website design were the most sold and in-demand of our services.

Our Core Service Offerings

Source: Chad's Webinar 23:59

G. Our Sales Team Structure

Here is our sales team structure. Fronters are the people who make the first contact and set appointments. They can be telecallers, whereas closers are the sales reps who close the deals. Focus on the fronters here.

Sales Team Structure

Source: Chad's Webinar 24:15

H. The Communication Paths We Used to Sell

Here are the communication paths we used to sell. Phone calls worked the best.

Communication Paths

Source: Chad's Webinar 24:29

I. The Contract Terms We Offered

Here are the four contract terms we offered. The 6-month contract worked the best.

Contract Terms

Source: Chad's Webinar 24:47

J. Our Monthly Price Offerings

Here are our monthly price offerings. The $699 per month package was the most popular.

Price Offerings

Source: Chad's Webinar 25:16

K. What Is Fulfillment?

Fulfillment is the latest concept in the agency business. Most agencies specialize in one or two streams such as SEO or social media. However, the clients may need various other services. White-label fulfillment comes as a life-saver for such agencies. It allows you to accommodate more clients and bigger portfolios without expanding your core teams unnecessarily.

What Is Fulfillment?

Source: Chad's Webinar 25:33

L. How Do Most Agencies Operate?

Most agencies are busy with their daily grind and hardly have the time to review their strategies. So, they can never think out of the box, which is a crucial step to succeed. It also involves making big moves. You can't achieve that without right partnerships and strategies.

How Agencies Operate?

Source: Chad's Webinar 26:13

M. Top Reasons Why Most Agencies Fail

Here are the top reasons why most agencies fail. Setting impossible expectations is the major one.

Top Reasons Why Most Agencies Fail

Source: Chad's Webinar 27:00

N. Our Fulfillment Retention Measures

Here are our fulfillment retention measures. Setting proper expectations helped us the most in retention. In fact, unrealistic expectations are responsible for a majority of the churn that happens.

Fulfillment Retention Measures

Source: Chad's Webinar 27:28

3. Core Strategies: The Whiteboard Session

Now, we will discuss the strategy part in whiteboard format.

Whiteboard Strategies

A. The Right Prospecting Strategies

Secrets to success are simple – a phone and good communications skills. Use prospecting methods like InstaSites and InstaReports and start fishing on the phone. You can start with as low as $200 to get your foot in the door. Introduce yourself and hook the people with what you have to offer.

Book 5 to 10 appointments each day, add them to your CRM system, and start making your sales pipeline. Keep it simple. I did that for months and years. Doing it consistently will surely help you get good results.

Right Prospecting Strategies

Source: Chad's Webinar 42:58

B. Make Your Life Easy With Deal Automations

Deal automation can make life simple for you. Create deal automation on the first stage and automatically build an InstaSite when a new deal gets created. Send the website access through email or SMS to your prospect.

It will hardly take one or two hours.

C. How to Scale?

Now, it’s time to scale. So, instead of making 150 calls a day, you’re going to make 200. You can go from 7 to 14 scheduled calls a day. You can also use InstaSites or InstaReports to get people on your calendar. If they become interested in the Instasite, send them the link.

You can add, “By the way, I’d like to have one of our website activation specialists join you on a call so they can show you the website. It’ll only be a 20 or 30-minute phone call.

You can give them an approximate time frame, whatever it is. The website expert will walk them through the website, and if you do it right, they are highly likely to ask for access. You can say, “The website design itself is completely free. Just let me know, and I’ll schedule a day and time. What day and time is good for you?

That’s where your scheduling system comes and you can use Calendly. Just create a free calendar account on it and jot down all your scheduled appointments.

Aim to get five appointments everyday on your calendar.

You cannot sell anything if you have no one to sell to. So, if you have no appointments on your calendar and nobody to speak to, you won’t make any money.

Nothing else will work if this part doesn’t work, including sales.

D. The Proven Sales Strategies

I turned over millions of dollars in revenue in my digital marketing agency with these strategies. So, these are proven and tested. My name is Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, and I’m excited to help you in your entrepreneurial journey and get you a ton of revenue. However, I would recommend you take baby steps in the beginning.

First of all, you need to have your calendar all filled up. We usually have five to ten scheduled calls on our calendar every day. It gives me immense happiness when I have a calendar full of scheduled demos every morning.

But, if you think that this is not your cup of tea and you can’t pick up the phone and do cold-calling, or you can’t work on weekends and non-working hours, this webinar is not for you.

This webinar is for serious entrepreneurs who can do what it takes and get it done. This is what you need to do.

You should have at least five to ten calls booked on your calendar to get into the sales mode. This is called a calendar full of leads.

To be in the “beast mode,” you should start selling the big things that involve collecting credit cards and processing transactions.

Receiving payments feels like ecstasy for an entrepreneur, akin to getting high on a drug. But, it doesn’t make you tired. It makes you rich and happy. It builds up momentum.

I have a team of people for prospecting. They book calls on my calendar, and I do what I enjoy the most – sales, all day long. However, you should start selling only when you have at least 100 leads.

You can move to the sales environment from prospecting, which is step two.

So, here we are at step two – selling the website. We’ll next discuss how to close a deal.

Many people have their calendars filled up, but they can’t close the deal. And it’s a widespread problem. If that’s you, here’s how you can help it.

E. How to Close More Deals?

If you’re not closing deals, you need to dissect your sales structure. Ninety percent of the time, you don’t have a good offer. That’s the primary reason you’re not able to close the deal.

In the rest 10% of the cases, you might have a great offer, but you’re not an efficient salesperson. Still, you manage to close tons of sales.

It emphasizes the fact that your actual offer is exceptionally crucial.

You can be the worst salesperson in the world. Still, people may want to buy from you.

But, entrepreneurship is not for you if you’ve got a deep-rooted belief that you are a lousy salesperson and can’t do cold calling.

You can afford to be a lousy salesperson if you have an excellent sales offer. You’ll sell like crazy.

During the Black Friday sale at Walmart, they give away five T.V.s out of their inventory (like 3000) in their warehouse for a hundred dollars. All of Walmart is filled up. People join the rampages to get a $100 TV, where only five are available. It happens because the offer is so good that it attracts everyone, which is the secret to closing a deal.

You also need to make sure that your offer is not the same as everyone else’s offer.

It has to be unique and creative.

You can sell them a website that’s excellent and fun to use. You’ll make $300 for each website, which will be great.

You can sell it for a slightly higher price, but I don’t recommend going over $500. If you want to do it on a bigger scale, I recommend you start creating a bundle of products and services. Your bundled sweet spot is $699. That’s where you should be, so you want to make an offer with this in mind.

The best offer that got us the most revenue is $699 a month. In this deal, the client gets a website with our InstaSites tool, which is also SEO friendly. Besides that, you can also charge a one-time setup fee of $199.

So, you get $900 in the first month.

You can run your client’s credit card every month for $699, and you’ll get this amount for the next six months as it’s your deal.

F. How to Use an Irresistible Offer?

In this deal, you’re leveraging an enticing offer, and that’s the website. Your client gets a $5000 website for free, and they just pay $699 a month for SEO.

The website is free as it comes with the bundle offer. Bundle offers make things appealing. Imagine getting an Internet connection with your house phone as a bundle offer. Now split the two, and most people won’t buy the house phone.

They will prefer an Internet connection, but when they know that they might have to pay $180 a month just for the Internet instead of $100 as a bundle, they’ll go for the bundle offer.

That’s why companies create so much hype around bundle offers and use heavy promotion.

The offers attract as they’re only for a limited period of time. You can’t say “no” when you get a $5000 website virtually free of cost with the SEO bundle offer for just $699 a month and a setup fee of $199; you just can’t say “no.”

So, you can not only sell everything, but you can port it to a fulfillment company like DashClicks. Allow us to do the heavy lifting and focus on profit and revenue generation.

If you hire DashClicks’ white label SEO fulfillment services, you just need to pay $225 a month ($199 a month for SEO and $25 for Instasites,) and pocket the $699 a month you get from the customer.

So, DashClicks will take care of everything, and you’ll earn a 70% margin on the fee. Not a bad deal now, is it?

That’s insane when you try to scale your business. For example, you can hire more fronters and sales reps and 10x your revenues every month.

It’s not difficult to multiply your sales every month. I’ve done it every single month for years. At one point, I was handling the sales alone, and I used to close more than ten bundle sales every month. I added sales reps to close even more deals. It’s known as the stack effect.

I’ll also discuss how to close more deals and consistently and predictably grow your digital marketing agency with enough paying clients to call it a real business.

G. How to Become a Seven-Figure Marketing Agency?

Do you know what needs to be done to scale a seven-figure marketing agency or even a six-figure marketing agency?

You need to set up a strategic value ladder that’s proven to work It will not only change your life, but also impact others’.

You should also have the ability to keep clients for years if you want to turbocharge your business. A good company also generates many jobs, which is always a good factor.

Clarity on the services you’re offering and knowing how to sell and scale them will help you scale your digital marketing agency.

Book a Call With My Team

If all of this sounds exciting and try-worthy to you, I want to become your partner, and I want you to book a call with my team.

You can call us on +1 (866) 600-3369 to know the killer strategies to succeed in agency business and partner with us.

It will be a 30-minute private zoom strategy session to see where you’re stuck and how we can help you.

After this private zoom strategy call, I’m sure you’ll get some clarity.

And wait, did we tell you that your zoom strategy consultation call is free?

You don’t need a credit card for this call, so put your wallets away. This is not a paid call. This is a 30-minute call, and it’s free!

Refresh the page, and you’ll see that only a couple of appointments are left on the 12th. I’m available for the next two weeks.

The objective of this call is to:

  1. Analyze your agency strategy
  2. Know your mindset and your external and internal beliefs
  3. Know the limiting beliefs that are preventing you from hitting six-figure revenues
  4. Get more clarity around your core offer and the value ladder you’re on

We believe that you should be able to grow your agency from zero to $100,000 within 12 months. And there is no reason to doubt that.

You’ll not be able to do this if you don’t have clarity. I will help you get that clarity. So, if you’re interested in partnering with me and learning more about what we have to offer and how everything works with our partnership, schedule a call with us today.

Strategies for Selling Just the Software

Looking back to the time when I was selling these bundles, we didn’t have DashClicks, so I was mostly freewheeling on the back of my sales skills and the limited offers that we had then.

But now, with DashClicks, you can create an even sweeter option in that bundle. So, with a basic SEO plan, you can also offer a free website, an InstaSite, and free access to a sales marketing and automation tool.

So, now you get a CRM system and unique sales tools. In 90% of cases, you don’t need to be a good salesperson. You just have to have a reasonable offer, and you’ll make it all look good. You can build your whole marketing strategy around it.

Keep Your Sales Process Organized With DashClicks

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Unlimited Sub-Accounts

Unlimited Users

All Apps

All Features

White-Labeled

Active Community

Mobile App

Live Support

100+ Tutorials

Unlimited Sub-Accounts

Unlimited Users

All Apps

All Features

White-Labeled

Active Community

Mobile App

Live Support

100+ Tutorials