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Brent: I'm Brent Weaver, and you're watching uGurus, the must-watch web series to become
a more profitable and in-demand web professionals.
Today, I'm here with a close friend of mine, Kevin Cohen from Kevin Cohen Consulting. Kevin
has been a long-time adviser and mentor for me and my company. Did a lot of work with
us back at Hot Press Web. And you're a wealth of
information when it comes to online marketing, growing businesses, and all that kind of stuff.
So definitely glad that you got a chance to join us today.
Kevin: Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Brent: So Kevin, tell us a little bit about yourself. Like, what's your specialty?
Kevin: So what I'm... kind of my stupid human trick, if I have to describe it that way,
is I know how to build sales and lead gen funnels for
clients and friends and different businesses. So most
businesses have a sales problem, and they need to figure out how to solve it. And so
I walk them through the journey of how to do that.
Specifically, I do that in the online medium. So I'm
an online marketer, and I help to either generate sales or generate leads.
Brent: So you do that for businesses of all types? I mean, for us, you helped us with
that in the web pro space, so obviously I'm very interested
in that. I mean, we were able to significantly increase our ticket price for web projects.
We were able to also get a lot more referrals, because we were doing better stuff for clients.
So what are some of the types of clients you typically work with?
Kevin: I've actually applied it to a variety of different clients. I've worked with an
oil and gas distributor. I've worked with a crane repair
company. I've worked with web developers like yourself, or Brent, you used to do. I've done
it with my own sites, where I sell supplements online. So in reality, the businesses change,
but the process doesn't. And it's a proven process
that actually has roots back in direct response marketing in magazines in the 1800s.
Brent: So one of the problems you talk a lot about is this... you know, all businesses
have a sales problem.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: So, you know, what's the first step in identifying how to solve that problem?
Kevin: Well, the first observation that I would make is that most businesses talk about
themselves and their products and services, rather than talking about their customers
and their problems and pain that they're dealing with.
Brent: So in the example of web pro, you know, you go to their website, and it says, you
know, "I'm a web designer. I can do... I can build
your website," etc. Like, they identify themselves with
their craft, essentially.
Kevin: Right. So to a customer who's sitting across the table from a web designer, you're
thinking, "How do I solve my sales problem?" Not, "How do I have a web site?" So a web
developer, the best thing for them to do in a conversation or in their marketing
communications with the outside public or prospects, or even existing clients, is to
always focus on the customer and what their goals and aspirations
are, or what their problems are. And typically for most businesses, you have a
sales problem. I don't care if you're a small entrepreneur or whether you're a Fortune 500
business that's publicly traded. You still need to
sell more products or services. So that is the big problem of most businesses.
Brent: So once you identify that problem... I mean, it's hard to go into a conversation
with a prospective customer and just come right out
with that. To do, like, "You have a sales problem,"
you know?
Kevin: Sure.
Brent: I mean, how do you kind of breach that subject with somebody?
Kevin: Well, the first thing you do is you build a rapport with them. So you ask them
about their business. You say, "Hey, what's working, what's
not working. What do you want to be," you know? "What does success look like for you?"
And more often than not, success is tied to sales
performance and cash flow. And then when you get into that, then you steer the conversation
towards how you can utilize a website to either generate leads or generate sales for your
business. And that's where you get to do the white knight for the customer.
Brent: What do some of your solutions like in that department? So you've identified sales
as a problem for a company, and then, you know,
website could potentially be a solution. Is it just
any kind of website, or do you have a specific proscription for that?
Kevin: You know, that's a very good question. So the two things you need to look at when
talking in the web space is number one, traffic, and number two, conversion. So a website is
really only a lawn sign that no one will see unless there's traffic. So the first thing
you've got to do is you have to figure out both of those
elements. How am I going to drive traffic to the site,
and then how am I going to have a conversion even occur on that site once it happens? So
for most small businesses that would be your potential
customers if you're a web developer, it would be a local... let's say attorney or
real estate agent. You know, local SEO combined with
pay-per-click advertising probably would be your best traffic source. So you want to incorporate
those elements into your bids when you're talking to prospective clients. Because a
website by itself doesn't really do anything. And then
on the conversion side, you know, most professional businesses, unless they're selling something
online or they have a shippable product, you know,
that can be ordered over the phone, you're going to want to capture a lead. So that covers
most of the businesses out there. So what you want
to do is you want to design a site that's optimized for conversion of... you want to
get email addresses, maybe phone numbers. You
know, those are the vital contact pieces. And then you want to build a whole marketing
system behind that to convert that prospect to a
customer.
Brent: Now, what if somebody is sitting here watching this and says, "But I'm just a web
designer. Why does SEO have to matter to me? Can't I just be the most brilliant web designer
in the world and still get lots of customers?"
Kevin: You can, but you're going to miss out on a potential marketplace that creates a
strategic advantage for you. So long story short, just
producing a website will not solve your customer sales problem, so you're not going to get
as many referrals or publicity in local papers, or win
contests, whatever, if you don't create the real need. And the real need is you've got
to generate sales for your customers. So you
can either avoid it, or you can accept it. And there's
different ways you can deal with it. So you don't have to be a pay-per-click specialist
or an SEO specialist. There are people that, within
your network, you can refer people to. At uGurus, you
have some contacts with pay-per-click people that you can supply to your network of
subscribers. You have SEO specialists that you can refer people to. So you have those
solutions, and you don't have to necessarily bring it
in house. You just have to find a partner to work with
to supply that service to the customer.
Brent: In terms of charging more. I mean, you're talking about adding additional services.
Do you find that being able to go in and do some
lead gen stuff actually is going to increase the
project size in just scope, or are you going to actually get more dollars per hour?
Kevin: You know, what I look at it is... if you can add additional services like SEO and
PBC, you can get your upfront fee for web development,
and then you can get a reoccurring revenue piece, even if you're outsourcing it. So you
can upsell... you can sell PBC services, and instead
of... let's say your third-party provider charges $500 in management fees a month. You
can add $200 on that, and get $200 for doing nothing.
So it may not seem material, but if you have lots
of clients doing that, then all of a sudden you have this passive income stream that you
didn't have before that you can then really benefit
from. So the reason why I like it is, number one, it
solves the need of the customer, and then secondly, it can provide economic benefit
to the web development professional.
Brent: So it seems like that model is a model that a lot of folks are chasing, which is,
you know, upfront fixed price projects, of doing something
kind of, you know, big chunk upfront, and then
get tapped into that customer on an ongoing basis. I mean, that was the problem we had,
was we were always out there hunting for new business.
Kevin: Right.
Brent: It was always about the next lead, the next project. Because we'd do a project,
and then we'd move on to the next project, you know?
We had nothing to come back and sell those existing customers. Or probably better put,
we had nothing to come back and... we couldn't solve more problems for them. We couldn't
continuously provide value ongoing with doing that
online marketing piece.
Kevin: Right. The other thing that's really nice about creating a sales or lead gen funnel
is it actually gives you something to measure. So
in addition to having traffic numbers, that you can
measure either organic or paid traffic, you can also measure in opt in rates, and you
can show them a list that's growing every month. Every
day, for that matter. And the beauty of having a
list, as you know, is that with an email list, they can sell to their customers throughout
the year. So you're giving them really, really valuable
assets for their business. Whereas a website, again,
is just one piece of the puzzle.
Brent: We're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about finding talent.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: I think with your consulting company and the work you've done in the past with
building online businesses for companies, you've been
able to leverage a lot of kind of freelance and
market talent.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: Talk to me a little bit about how you go about finding people to fulfill these services
within your business.
Kevin: Well, first and foremost, I try to network with professionals that are doing
similar things to me, and I flat out just ask, and say, "Hey,
do you have a good designer? Do you have a really
good person that's for speed optimization of a site? What do you like for hosting?"
So it's important to be involved in a community. Secondly,
there's some huge freelance networks out there that allow you to access talent that
is pretty amazing, like Elance. And so one thing you
should know about Elance is that Elance has a search engine within it. So once you figure
out and experiment on how to set up the search
engine within Elance, you can effectively sort
through the talent and then identify the top three prospects. You know, it does... there
is a process. I mean, as you know, I developed
an information product in this space about how to
find talent on Elance. But the main thing is you have to understand that it operates
similar to Google. You can set some settings to determine
how many stars, how many... you know, whether they're in a certain country, whatever.
And you can identify all these things. The types
of things that you should be looking for as a professional on Elance is, like, graphic
design work, copywriters. You can even find PBC management
people, though I found that some of the whitelabeled PBC providers outside -- which
I can give you guys a referral on that, as well -- are
sometimes a little bit better. There's some great SEO people. And just a variety of different,
you know, things. There's video editing that's
available on Elance, which is great. So, you know, I
specifically go on Elance. Some other great resources in addition to that would be, like,
99 Designs, which you can set up a design contest.
So there's some really great resources there. Also, the reason why I like Elance is that
they have an escrow process, and then they also have a
dispute resolution process. So, you know, sometimes projects do go sideways, but there
is a process for reconciling that within the Elance
system, so...
Brent: And talk a little bit about... I mean, you use Elance like that to kind of stay lean
as a virtual agency, you know? Instead of having
a big team, you basically are leveraging specific functional freelancers to do very specific
things, and when they're done, they're done, and you
basically can kind of move on to the next thing.
Kevin: For sure.
Brent: I mean, how has it been to stay lean as a company, for you?
Kevin: You know, it's all based on personal preference. For me, I know who I am and what
I'm good at. And I'm good at managing projects,
but I'm not necessarily as good at managing people. And so when you truly know who you...
you know, your DNA and what you're good at, you really have to be honest. You really have
to get naked about, you know, what your talents are. And so for me, it's been really beneficial
up until this point. I am at a current point in my
business with my own business stuff where I'm now deciding that I probably need to start
building a team. But building that team is also finding someone who can manage those
teammates. So again, when you're honest about what you're good at and what you're not good
at, then you can devise a plan. But for me, it's been great. I mean, the reality is if
you've ever read "The Four Hour Work Week," one of his
things that Tim Ferris talks about is getting paid in
dollars and paying subcontractors in other currencies. In Elance, you get that benefit,
because if you can work with developers and designers
in India, or Eastern Europe, or South America, you're paying based on their value. Their
economic values of those countries. So typically, there's a significant amount of savings on
there. So what I try to do is I try to find the highest
priced person in India.
Brent: Mm-hmm.
Kevin: And it still represents, like, a 25 percent savings over domestic, or even up
to 50 percent, depending on the tech. But you want to find
the best person, who's on the high end of the scale
for that foreign country. That really provides you with some leverage.
Brent: That's definitely very interesting. You mentioned one of the ways that you get
business for your consulting company: referrals, word
of mouth.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: I think that that's very common for most people. How, in the past, have you gone
about... maybe incentivizing or growing your referral network? I mean, it's so hard to
create a pipeline for referrals, because you don't
know when they're going to happen.
Kevin: Sure. So the first thing you have to do before you even ask for a referral is you
have to deliver overwhelming value. So that goes into
the whole philosophy of just building the right
site is probably not enough. Because if you're doing that, you're just doing the bare minimum.
But if you're providing a sales or lead funnel, that's a pretty big deal. And if you go out
and look at your competitors, they're not doing it.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you know,
you can ask for referrals, and some people will do it. But there's something that...
I like to take it to another level. I like to do incentivized
referrals. So, for example, let's say... and this is just a
very rough sketch. But let's say, you know, it costs you $300 to acquire a customer. Why
wouldn't you offer that $300 to your friends and clients and say, "Hey, I'm looking for
this type of customer. If they sign with me, I'll pay
you $300." You have zero risk in that proposition. And
in reality, you're doing them a favor, as well. You know, friends will refer you when
it's top of mind, but if you offer them a cash reward,
you're going to get 10 times as many referrals.
Brent: So you just make sure... I mean, how do you pitch that to your existing friends
and family? Do you just send out an email, or
do you actually kind of sell it to them along with their
projects?
Kevin: I personally think that picking up the phone, jumping on Skype, or meeting in
person is always better than sending an email about
that kind of thing. And I would just say, "Hi, John.
You know, this is Kevin. I'm looking on maybe taking one or two, you know, great clients
on. I don't expect anything for free. Your time
is valuable. I know you're busy. You know, if you think
someone is a good fit, please refer them to me. And by the way, I don't expect you to
do that for me for free. So, you know, if they come
and they sign with me, I'll either pay you a
percentage of their deal, or I'll give you $300, or $500. Whatever you think is worth
it for you. And, you know, you can go out and buy something
nice for your wife, and I really appreciate the
referral." So it's just a pretty simple thing. I think it's more based on relationships,
and just being honest and transparent with your friends and
clients.
Brent: Very good. I think that's a great tip. Kind of a bounty program for your referral
marketing. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk
about, you know, you as a person.
Kevin: Sure.
Brent: What practices have you done that have gotten you where you are today?
Kevin: So the first thing that I really emphasized is personal assessment. So I've gone through
Myers-Briggs. I've gone through, you know, a variety... strength finders. I've gone through
a variety of things. And the reason why is that
early on in my entrepreneurial journey, I tried to be
a Swiss army knife. I tried to do a lot of things. And luckily I was able to do a lot
of things pretty well. But if you've ever studied the Peretto
Principle, or the 80/20 Principle, in that study of the
Peretto Principle and 80/20, they say that, you know, 20 percent of your efforts bring
80 percent of the results. And so the trick is
to find that 20 percent. And so what I really try to
focus on, day after day -- and when I work with subcontractors and partnerships -- is
I focus on that 20 percent that brings really great value
to my clients and to my customers. And then I
outsource everything else. So that's really the first thing. And then, you know, the second
thing, which has been really, really important for
me, is that in the world of websites and all that stuff,
it's really easy to talk from a technical standpoint, and talk about code, and talk
about design, and talk about these things. But it's... the
reality is that we're emotional creatures, and the best
way to connect with potential clients and your existing customers is to speak from the
heart and not the head. And so, you know, if you
do that, that'll build your relationship, and it will
increase your sales, but also increase your satisfaction between, you know, in your relationship
with them. And so those are the things that I try to emphasize in my business.
Brent: What would you say you're best at?
Kevin: For me, it's strategy. I get... you know, my favorite thing to do is to hear a
friend or a client's problem and figure out a mousetrap
for them. Figure out a solution. I'm an ENTP, which
is a serial entrepreneur mindset. Strategy and activation are kind of in my blood. So
what I really gain energy from is, you know, finding a problem,
whiteboarding it out, and coming up with a quick solution. And I kind of prescribe to
the "ready, fire, aim" philosophy. You know, most of
my plans are about 80 percent there, but they're done super fast. And so one of the things
that's really important for me is momentum. So, you know, a lot of people get into analysis
paralysis. That drives me crazy. For me, it's all about action.
Brent: You've been in marketing for a while.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: You know, just from what I know of your story, you kind of had a pizza business
that you were running. Multi-store pizza business.
Took some lessons, learned from there, went into
online marketing. What have you learned since you've been in online marketing that you think
other web professionals should know?
Kevin: Well, I mean, I think the biggest thing is one of the things I spoke about earlier,
is that... you know, creating systems and measurement
is really the way to differentiate yourself in the
marketing world. And a lot of that came out of direct mail, and also out of placement
ads in magazines, where people would fill out stuff
about learn how to play music, or... you know, there's some classic John Cables advertising
that was done back then. The biggest thing for me
was when I was in the pizza business, I would spend a lot of money on advertising in all
these different forms, and none of them would work,
and none of them I could trace to an actual sale
or event. Which, as a business, owner, was very frustrating. So I'm a lot like your customer,
or a lot of the subscribers here that would be
buying your services, you know, for web development. You know, I wanted to actually see what this
was going towards. What happened was the only thing that really worked for me, where actually
I could measure them and actually gauge the effectiveness, was direct mail in the radius
around my stores with a coupon code with an expiration date, and then conversely driving
people via SEO to a newsletter signup and then
sending out those same offers via email. So once I saw that, I thought, "Well, why aren't
other businesses doing this?" So what I did is I
created a web development company. I didn't know
how to build websites. I found coders to build, you know, CMS websites for me. They would
build them, and I would design... I would best practice, you know, the opt-in fields
for these websites, and then I would create follow-up
sequences on the back end. So I would drive traffic
to them, I would get conversions, and then I would say, "Hey, your list is growing X
amount. You have this traffic. You have this customer
list. How are you doing?" Almost all of my customers
loved the fact that they had a system kind of built on automatic pilot.
Brent: Very cool. I always like to understand where the puck's moving.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
Brent: So what trends are you currently following?
Kevin: You know, the interesting thing is... you know, obviously everybody's talking about
mobile, and the growth of mobile. You know, I think the biggest trends that I would say
that are huge are click to call campaigns for mobile.
Because people don't want to fill out forms, but
people will certainly do a click to call campaign on a phone. The other thing is separating
your web properties by desktop/tablet versus mobile.
And I think tablets really are the same as desktop at this point. You know, they have
the same resolution, and they look... most pages
don't break. I mean, that's my opinion. But you have to siphon out traffic by that. Now,
there are a lot of great responsive design templates
out there that are good, too. You just have to
make sure that the opt-in forms and the phone numbers are still as prevalent on the mobile
responsive sites as they are on the regular sites. So you just really have to be careful
about your browser testing, your device testing. And
you sometimes have to change your conversion goal
depending on the site. So, for example, a real quick example would be on one ecommerce
site that I own, anybody that is detected on a
mobile device, I actually forward them to my Amazon
store so that they can check out with their Amazon login already, because everybody has
all their information in Amazon already. So it's
a couple clicks and they're checked out. Versus if
they have to enter all these fields without a keyboard or a... you know, hand typing it
in, that's a long process, and you'll lose a lot of sales.
Brent: Sure.
Kevin: So things like that.
Brent: Very cool. So what's next for Kevin Cohen?
Kevin: So, you know, I split my time between a few select clients. I don't take on a lot.
Typically, I like to work with a few kind of high dollar
stuff, where I can really dig in. I mean, a lot of the
reason is that half of my work is psychological counseling, because entrepreneurs have a lot
of baggage that they come in with. And that's
just the nature of it. I mean, it's just being purely
honest. It's not a bad thing. But you've got to talk through that stuff. And, you know,
there's a lot of belief systems that entrepreneurs have,
just because of the way... you know, they're human, you know? They have stuff. So I spend
half my time on the consulting side, and then the
other half of my time is on my supplementing commerce stuff. And I also have an information
product stuff. My supplement stuff is really taking on a huge amount of time right now.
Brent: Very cool.
Kevin: Kind of growing really fast, so...
Brent: Well, we'll definitely make sure we link out to your various products and the
consulting company you guys maintain. I have to say,
I mean, a personal referral from me to you, you've
done a great job in our business over the years providing some of that value. So definitely
big props to that. Thanks, Kevin. Definitely appreciate
you stopping by. Definitely keep us up-to- date on what you're up to, and wish you all
the best.
Kevin: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Brent: Well, stay tuned for more great content from uGurus.com.