Business
Actionable Marketing Tips for Every Industry with CEO Joshua Brown
In this episode of the SEO Tips and Tricks podcast, host Tim Jennings welcomes Joshua Brown, CEO of Soul Heart, to discuss actionable marketing strategies applicable across various industries. They ex...
Actionable Marketing Tips for Every Industry with CEO Joshua Brown
Business •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello, and welcome back to the SEO Tips and Tricks podcast with Tim Jennings.
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I'm Tim, your host.
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I've been doing SEO now for over a decade at Soul Heart, and I am so excited for today's
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episode because today's episode is going to be slightly different than anything we've
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done before.
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So if you're coming along, if you're new to the journey, understand that I normally focus
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on very specific SEO tasks, but I have gotten a lot of emails and have met with a lot of
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my listeners lately who need more than just SEO.
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And so since I work for Soul Heart as the organic vice president or organic growth, I thought,
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you know, what a better way to teach people about marketing in general than bringing on
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the CEO of Soul Heart.
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So ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you Joshua Brown.
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Joshua has been the visionary, the founder and the CEO at Soul Heart now for over 11 years now.
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And it's just, it's going strong.
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It's going solid.
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And I love, I love working here.
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I love working with Josh.
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He's such a brilliant mind in how to message and get messaging across.
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And so without further ado, a Joshua Brown.
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Hey, thanks Tim.
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Happy to be here and happy to be here with all your listeners as well, talking through some
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of these strategies.
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We get to talk about it behind the scenes all the time.
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And so it'll be fun to unpack a little bit for your listeners and just let people get a little
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extra insight into the world of marketing and how that even weaves in and out with SEO
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and organic to page strategies to just general messaging, word of mouth, all of it.
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And what what the state of the world is for this space right now for us.
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Because it's drastically changing.
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Yes.
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Artificial intelligence is through the roof.
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And how do we interact with it and work with it and understand what to even do in this
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current state?
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So excited to be here and talk a lot more about it.
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Definitely Josh, real quick.
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Can you give me like a 30 second tell one minute intro into what got you into marketing?
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Yeah, great question.
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It is a little weird because my background was I didn't even have a computer until I was
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17 years old growing up on a farm.
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It wasn't super necessary in the backwoods of Kentucky.
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But what was interesting was because I grew up on a farm, I was around a lot of storytellers
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and not just on a farm, but being in Kentucky, you know, everybody had a story about something.
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And I just fell in love with the concept of story early on and got into college and majored
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in journalism because I wanted to tell people stories and minored in English because I was
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really passionate about how do you even craft a story?
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And I looked up to, you know, authors like Shakespeare and Tolkien and see us Lewis and how
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they would weave and build these narratives that then could translate into people that
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were passionate about the work that they did.
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And over time, I started getting exposed into the marketing world and realizing that like,
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hey, in order to build brands, you actually have to tell a really great story and a good
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friend of mine years later, I worked in kind of the marketing space on the more graphic
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design level.
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And he got introduced to Donald Miller, who was a New York Times best selling author,
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started a company called Story Brand.
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Now I think he runs business made simple and coach builder and all these different things.
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And I was in Nashville at the time.
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And he created a framework that was largely built around the concept of story and how
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really for a business, if you follow these seven steps to Story Brand is what he called
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at the time, then it would actually lead to a business growing.
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And for me, I just gravitated to that.
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And about that time, Don had asked a question to one of my friends and he was basically like,
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if you were reading your life and as a story in a book, what would you want the main character
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to do at each pivotal, crucial decision making moment?
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And I knew for me at that time it was to step out and launch a business, but I had no clue
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what it was going to actually be.
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Was I design, was I marketing, was I web, everything was kind of fresh and new.
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You had to build it all yourself.
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And so I kind of started with what I knew, which was design and web and eventually realized,
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these are great assets that I can have.
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I can build sites.
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I can, you know, do designs for marketing, but there's no tracking to know.
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Did this actually result in anything?
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Did a business just pay me a bunch of money for something that looked pretty or did they
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invest in something that I could give them that had a return on that investment?
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And anyway, so I kind of love the concept of story.
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And then it quickly translated into how do we actually see an investment into this space?
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And I quickly realized then, if you connect story to the design, to the website,
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and learn other techniques, like, you know, all the things that go into marketing,
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then you could actually help a business and a company grow.
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And once I did that, it was like, it opened me up to this wide world of marketing.
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What it looks like that we got connected about that point as well, like a year or so later.
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And then from that point, it was just like everything I could do was just live and breathe marketing.
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It changes every day.
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You have to stay on your toes.
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You have to be quick to respond.
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But I just fell in love with that right away.
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And these days, I'm in love with the strategy behind it all because some of the techniques might
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have changed the tactical, but largely the strategy and what actually compels people to make
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decisions online to buy, to donate, to sign up, to, you know, do whatever the action is
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that a business wants them to do and how you connect all the dots is, it's a mystery,
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you know, human behavior is never easily identified.
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But there are certain techniques that you can put in place that would then allow it to
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hopefully accomplish the goals job as a company.
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And so that's what I love doing.
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That's awesome, man.
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I love it.
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I can hear the passion in your voice.
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And that's what honestly excites me about working at Soul Heart is everything we do we're
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passionate about.
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You know, we, we, one of the big things that we do here at Soul Heart that many of my
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listeners don't may not even realize is we vet all of our clients.
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And so we make sure that we're working with somebody who's making a positive impact on
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the world.
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And so another thing that you had mentioned that I think really resonates with my listeners
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as you talked about, you don't, how do you measure the impact?
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You built this beautiful website, but is it doing anything, right?
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Yeah.
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And I talk about that all the time on my podcast.
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I talk about it's like you could have a, a quad Monet painting, but if it's in your
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basement, your unfinished basement, nobody's ever going to see it.
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Nobody's ever going to enjoy it.
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Except for you, you walk down in your basement and you're surrounded by filth because your
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basement's not finished and you're looking at this beautiful painting.
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But you're the only one that can enjoy it.
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Yeah.
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Without SEO, that's what a website is to me, unless you're running ads and you have all
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the other marketing set in place, you have this, you can have the most beautiful website
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in the world.
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But if you don't have visitors going and seeing it, then what's the point?
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It's just for you at that point.
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And honestly, that's one of the big challenges I think a lot of companies have.
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You know, the economy's been tough and all these companies have been having to let
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people go or shore up their spending and the majority of companies when they start freezing
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funds, they go to the marketing department first.
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Oh, yeah.
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And they default to, well, our website exists and we don't, you know, we can cut back on
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content.
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We can cut back on ads.
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We can just maybe like we actually had a company at one point that ran a study.
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This was like a $40 million organization.
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They paid a consultant to run a study to see what would the impact be if they just cut
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all of their marketing and the impact study came back and said you would lose 96% of
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your business.
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Wow.
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96% of $40 million.
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And so many people don't understand that it is layered upon layer that contribute to
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actual organic growth, paid growth, all the strategies that go inside of it.
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And the companies often that pull back on marketing are usually the ones that don't
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survive the storm.
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So anyway, if you're out there listening and you are a business owner, especially or
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a marketing director, like just know, like the case studies are out there.
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It has been like proven and this is a brand I know really, really well.
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Actually, I know a lot of the leadership and they, they did that.
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They paid us, you know, pretty good sum of money and that was the impact that came back.
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And so they decided, of course, well, let's not fire our marketing team and just stop
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marketing altogether because word of mouth alone is good, but it's just one piece of
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the overall puzzle.
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Oh, for sure.
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And I think we saw that as a company at Solhart during COVID, you know, during COVID,
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a lot of companies and organizations started to reel back in those finances, especially
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in their marketing departments because of the uncertainty that was going to happen.
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And what we saw at Solhart was the companies who weren't scared and the companies who actually
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doubled down in Solhart actually had exponential growth during the COVID era because everybody
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else was pulling back.
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And so the market was just wide open for them.
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And so as economies, you know, tend to go down right now and things like that.
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Just like you said, so it's so easy to say, oh, we have a website already.
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We don't have to worry about SEO.
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Yeah.
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You know, we've already on page one of Google, so we don't have to focus on SEO anymore.
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Well, the second you pull that back, this is the second that your competitor is pushing
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down on the accelerator.
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Yeah.
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And you're going to, yeah, you may be page one right now.
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You may be result one right now, but what happens in two months when you're not really
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continuing that keyword research and, you know, attacking the proper keywords in the right
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ways, but that company is now all of a sudden, you're result five or, you know, God forbid,
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you're result 11 on page two.
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You're now what I call the Google, Google, Google graveyard, you know, result 11 is
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great when you're starting at zero.
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Yeah.
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But result 11 is the graveyard when you were on the first page.
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And so no, I love that, I love that perspective for sure.
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And it kind of reminds me of, you know, you've probably heard the term in crypto or stock
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trading by the dip.
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Yes.
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And some of the most savvy investors of all time, they do dollar cost averaging, which is
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they continuously invest, especially when the stock market's going down because guess
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what?
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What goes down has to eventually come up unless it's going to bankrupt.
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Right.
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And some companies takes a few years to come back up.
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Other companies, it's a few months.
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And often if the company is, you know, well, run, you know, it has a great organization
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and culture, and vision, and product, then it will come back up sooner than later, but
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they invest as it goes down.
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And therefore they end up kind of closing the gap at the margin between that investment.
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So if you buy high and it goes low and then you sell in the middle, you lose money.
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But if you continuously buys, it goes down and you sell in the middle, you might break
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even or make money if you had to.
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So anyway, there's some good strategies on that.
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And I think it just applies in the space as well.
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You know, don't be afraid to double down on marketing and then use some of the techniques
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we'll talk about today in order to make it a win.
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Perfect.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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Thanks for that insight.
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That's actually great transition because what I want to do for today's episode is I want
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to take a niche that maybe you're not as familiar with that, and I'm just going to start
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rapid firing some stuff off at you.
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I want to hear how you would begin to position a brand in this niche.
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And so just so you know right now, we're going to be talking about the CrossFit community.
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The CrossFit community.
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I have some friends in the CrossFit community.
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They do a lot of really good work.
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I love the fact that they're focusing, especially today, they're focusing on health.
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That makes a huge impact for a lot of people, especially where we are in the United States.
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You know, health isn't always the priority.
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And so this is a huge place that I just love to pick your brain about and see if we can't
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help some people.
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Yeah, let's do it.
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Cool.
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So for my listeners, if you're not in the health and wellness, that's okay.
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Continue to listen because there's going to be some great insight and hopefully it'll
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unlock some ideas for you as well.
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So let's just go ahead and jump right in.
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I want to talk about, like I said, the CrossFit brand.
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I want to talk about specifically first, how can you build a strong CrossFit brand identity?
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Because CrossFit gyms, they're popping up everywhere.
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You can get one on any corner.
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And so some people might even say that it's becoming a crowded market.
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So since it's becoming a crowded market, how important is it for each CrossFit
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gym to create a unique brand identity that reflects their community and the values in
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their community?
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Because CrossFit gyms are very community focused.
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Like where I live in my part of the state is completely different than the culture at
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the CrossFit gyms in your part of the state.
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And we only live 20 minutes away from each other.
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That's so true.
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It is so hyper focused.
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So how important is it for each CrossFit gym to create that unique brand?
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And identity.
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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I think one of the interesting things about this space is CrossFit.
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And so I don't know a whole lot about CrossFit as a full brand and company.
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But I am familiar with it, having been a Shark Tank listener through the years known Damon
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John.
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And he's actually one of the key influencers of a company in town called TrainUill.
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And so I've gotten to watch a lot of different podcasts and learning about him.
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And even how he built Fubu back in the day and just understanding brand and identity.
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And one of the key elements I think of this group is it's not so much like a normal franchise
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where everything looks the same, smells the same, tastes the same.
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There are key principles behind it.
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And everyone knows about the CrossFit games.
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You've heard about it at some point.
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And any person you know that does CrossFit is like always in a competition.
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Oh, yeah.
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Always doing something in that space.
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And I think that's where the identity comes out quite a bit.
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And there's basically when I look at a brand at large,
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you're going to see like there's some core elements that make that brand as a whole unique.
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But then in the new age of marketing, how do you extend that uniqueness?
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And when we were doing research not too long ago for our client,
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we came across it's less thinking, customize everything,
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and more personalized everything.
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And to me, that was just such a defining moment.
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Headed into 2025, it's all about personalization.
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And it will, how do you personalize something?
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Well, there are certain things that groups of people in your community are looking for.
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Maybe there's certain buzzwords they have.
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Maybe there's other things that they would resonate with.
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Maybe there's certain types of events.
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Everybody's got local events that go on
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that you can attach to.
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And maybe there's an organization you can support.
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A lot of groups that are doing it really well,
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they're actually supporting and doing good in their community.
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And so I often think about, because we've worked with a lot of nonprofits
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the years, that was my background.
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And Spina Bifida Association is one of the nonprofit groups that we work with.
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And they're always doing a walkathon or a rock and roll thing.
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It's always something that's related to activity and health.
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When you start to understand that, then you can create a really unique identity for
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we are going to be a health oriented center and location.
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What that looks like in our community is rallying people around to improve their lives in
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these certain ways.
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In the space of like CrossFit, for instance, what are those unique challenges that people in your
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area love to do?
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Or what are the unique challenges that they've never done that they could get a chance to do?
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So for instance, in Arizona, you might not have like where we're at in particular,
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you might not have the mountains super close by.
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So you're not going to necessarily go in like a mountain of venture.
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But if you're in a space where you're close to that, then you could have your location be
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sort of the starting point.
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But the actual identity extends up into the mountains.
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For us, there's a lot of desert all around the place.
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And the desert is hot and it's grueling.
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And guess what?
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People that want to make a big impact on their health,
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they got to push the limits of endurance.
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And endurance is so huge when you watch, you know, what are they?
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Like tough mutters that come into town or the different urban style races where you're
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climbing over obstacles and going, you know, almost like miniature military exercises.
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There is an element of that that's really interesting.
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Recently, my family and I were watching this show called the summit.
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And the summit is interesting because they have like 14 days or something to get to the top of
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this mountain. I don't even remember where it is. But when I saw it, I was like, oh man,
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it's going to be interesting to see all these rock climbers and mountaineers and compete against
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each other. And then they showed the people and their normal people.
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In fact, some of them are a little overweight, like maybe a little overweight.
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Like some of them are pretty overweight. Others are like in the best shape of their lives.
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And they have these different competitions and they have to make it to the next place.
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And you can see as a group of people, sometimes they're paired together and they have to
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encourage one another and support one another and help each other get to that next space.
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The world that I work in is that resonates with people. It's on TV.
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Right. They didn't just throw it out there to see what happens. They've done the research,
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the market research, they know it, works with people. CrossFit's are everywhere.
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Like in fact, I was doing research just kind of when we were talking to see how many are there
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in the US. And there's like 15,000 affiliates currently active in the US. And it's 72% of all
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crossFit Jones worldwide. So three quarters of all crossFit Jones are in the US. It's 15,000
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affiliates. That's a lot of opportunity to help build a brand around the goodness of helping
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each other, the goodness of helping people accomplish their hopes, their dreams, their goals,
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to get healthier, to learn how to eat, to do nutrition, to work out really, really well to
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understand what are even some of those basic principles. And so if you start with a core identity
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of who you are and it's about serving others and helping others and improving your life,
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that will go a really, really long way. But I think for each community, that core kind of looks
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a hair different. Like what are those challenges? And maybe in one community, it's a lot of singles.
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And so in that community, maybe it's a lot of single races. Another community, it's more family
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oriented. Another community, it's like pair people up and let them work together to improve
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their lives. And so when you start to understand what is it that makes it unique for your space,
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this guy knew who ran a gym years ago every year around the holidays, he would have basically like
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a bunch of cookies that you got to eat if you accomplished the goal. Like you ran this challenge.
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And if you reached your goal that you had set, then at the end you get a big cookie bakeoff or
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something. And others do like chili suppers and others just bring community around. So it's not
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just like, oh, we're only building relationships when we're sweating and endurance oriented. But
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it's beyond that. And when you start to go beyond that for the thing that works in your community,
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that's when you can really start to build a brand that's focused on values. And I think it's
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really special. Now I love that. I think there's so much insight in what you just said. Because what
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came to my mind as you were talking was unity does not equal uniformity. So like when I'm thinking
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through like CrossFit, it's a strong brand on its own already. If you're in, especially in the
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United States, you've heard of CrossFit. And so when there's already a strong brand like that,
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like CrossFit or like McDonald's, for example, you know, there are certain things within those
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franchises that have to be done. Right? But you still have the ability to be unique. And that's
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where, you know, unity, you know, following the brand guidelines doesn't equal uniformity.
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Yeah. Uniformity you can meet your individual unique brand by attacking your specific community
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where you live, you know, because this is one of the things that bugs me when it comes to
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marketing and anything in general, really. But like we live in the desert, we're in the Phoenix area
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in Arizona. And I'll go somewhere and all of their backgrounds for like a presentation or something
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is of the ocean. And I'm like, I've got to drive six hours to get to the ocean. You're giving a
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presentation in Arizona. You're in a Phoenix. You're in the desert. Why do we have the ocean in
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the background? You know, like this has no, no uniformity, no unity. It has nothing. It's confusing
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for a brand, you know, earlier you talked about story brand and part of Donald Miller. If you
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haven't for my listeners, if you don't know about story brand, I highly, highly, highly encourage
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you to go Google story brand. It's by a guy named Donald Miller. Almost everything we do at
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Soul Heart when it comes to content goes through a story brand lens. Even now has a book called
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Building a Story Brand. Yeah. And it's that book will change a whole lot of stuff if you've
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never gone through it before. So absolutely great, great advice there. But everything we do kind of
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at Soul Heart with content kind of goes through this story brand lens and inside story brand.
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The thing that sticks out the most to me is the caveman test. And in the caveman test, what it is
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is basically can a caveman if he landed on your website explain what your business does in less
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than three to five seconds. Can he understand? And so, you know, brand identity when you have this
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mismatch of vision and visuals and content and all these different aspects and they're all
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over the place. It confuses the user. Yeah. And so that's actually it's actually going to kill
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your SEO too. Because what people don't realize and I'll I'll have a specific podcast about this
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coming soon. So listeners be ready. But what we're realizing right now in Google is there's a couple
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of things and I talk about topic authority all the time on my podcast. And I will plant my flag
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in that in that topic. Because to me topic authority is where it's at. If you don't have the money
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to pay for all the PR external links and stuff like that, your only way to compete is basically
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with technical and on page SEO. And if you're going to compete with highly competitive niches,
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then you have to show yourself as the topic authority in order to do that. And so
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when you when you're building your topic authority, what you're doing is you're building a brand
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is what you're doing. And so topic authority is super important. But what I was going to say is
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for another podcast episode, what we're finding is that brand authority is just as important as
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topic authority. So for instance, let's take a brand like Coca Cola. I know we're getting off
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across the earth for a little bit, but you can take a brand like Coca Cola and type in soda in a
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Google search. And Coca Cola is going to show up. Why? Because Google understands that when people
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are looking for so for soda, in search is a lot of times they're typing Coca Cola. And so if you
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get people to search your brand, that is another aspect on topic authority where you're just going
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to completely dominate your niche. So as for my listeners, as you're doing your search engine
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optimization efforts, as you're working on SEO, I really, really, really would encourage you to
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focus on building that brand because it's so important. Yeah, I create. I actually just searched
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Coca Cola while you were saying that. And they are searched soda and Coca Cola was first to show up.
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So there you go. That was life, folks. That was literally an example off of the top of my head.
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So I love to hear that. Awesome. Let's, let's move on a little bit. Let's get back into the CrossFit
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space. Because now I want to talk about how we can leverage community for growth because CrossFit,
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like we already mentioned, it's such community focused. And so advertising to them and doing SEO
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for them is all great. But there's another bigger aspect that somebody like a CrossFit gym could use.
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And since CrossFit is all about the people and their progress, I was kind of wondering from you,
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what types of social media content would resonate with, you know, potential members who are thinking
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about going into the fitness space, wanting to make that change in their lives? Yeah, no, that's a great
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question. And I think you just hit on it. There at the end, like, change their lives. Right? That is
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at the core. What everyone wants to do. If you feel like I'm not fully healthy. And let's face it,
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like I saw a statistic the other day that said 70 something percent of the US adult age males
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that should be or that like had to sign up for the draft at 18. So the army was having trouble
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recruiting because 70 percent don't match the minimum or meet the minimum standards to get
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into the army. Right. And it was largely around weight, blood pressure and stamina. And so like,
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well, weight and blood pressure right alone. I mean, you're gearing up for years of problems
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and health issues and whatever. If you don't have, I mean, you're talking like 18 years old. Yeah,
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this isn't like, I mean, I get you look around at America at large and know we've got a lot of
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health issues. I mean, when you see the pharmaceutical industry ads, if you've ever gone back on TV,
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old school TV, we have a few shows we'll watch every now and then that are all old school and you
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see the ads. They're like almost 100% pharmaceutical. Yeah. And then when they aren't there,
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they're advertising chips and sodas and don't get me wrong. I love all of it. But when you're
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thinking about changing your life, you have to do something drastically different. And so for me
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in the social media space, there's this idea of interruptors. And I think this guy who runs a
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podcast years ago called Pro Church Tools, he had used this phrase called Stop the Scroll. And I
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don't know if he came up with that or if it's already around and he just mentioned it, but it was like,
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as you scroll through your feed on social media or YouTube or whatever it is, that you'll see
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something that will cause you to stop. And those are the interruptors. They interrupt your experience,
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these social networks have to make money and so they will interrupt your experience with an ad.
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Now, it doesn't always interrupt your experience unless you stop. And then now you're going to experience
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whatever that is, right? There are a few out there like on streaming devices. If you don't pay
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to play and you get you're just forced to watch. Hulu, I used to hate it back in the day because you're
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just like forced to watch the ad, you know, and it wouldn't let you click off of it fast forward.
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There's no hacks around it. You just had to sit there and watch. But most social networks,
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you can just flip right on by unless it interrupts your experience and it's enticing. And how do you
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do that? Well, there's a few different ways. But one of the most unique ways to Americans is we
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have short attention spans. So even like, you know, the classic hold the phone out and talk to the camera,
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that doesn't work so well anymore. But if you watch the ones that are making it work still,
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they're moving around in their chair. They're getting closer to the camera. They're getting
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further away. They're changing their angle. They're moving around. They're holding it up. They're
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just to keep the watcher engaged. Now, meanwhile, the content itself always matters.
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This is an SEO podcast and we get the question at Solhar all the time. Does SEO matter in social
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media? The answer is 100%. Yes. Thank you. It is 100%. Yes. I had someone the other day. He's a
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genius in a certain area and he was telling a client, SEO does not matter in social media. Well,
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we've done the research and we've done the implementation. It does work because people are always
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searching. And what are they searching for answers? This is a life thing. The classic, what's the
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meaning of life? That person was searching for answers to life. The classic, how do I get healthier?
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How do I avoid diabetes? How do I find out people that I can build relationships with me?
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In my community or better yet, in this specific niche, we're talking about CrossFit, CrossFit,
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Gyms near me. In fact, I ran some searches on SimRush, which is a great tool. I think you use it
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probably every single day of your life. Yes, I do. SimRush.com. And inside of here, I just
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searched the word CrossFit and it comes up like crazy amounts of content, ideas, everything from
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the CrossFit Gyms near me to CrossFit workouts to wads, which if you don't know what those
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are to work out of the day, I do know that much. I've worked out a few times. But then there's also
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here's CrossFit Women. Here's CrossFit age 50. Talk about personalization. People are in 2,900
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people a month are searching CrossFit age 50. In fact, those of you that are in this space, it is
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15 on the difficulty scale out of 100. So that one, it's like create a blog and you're going to
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rank on page one in no time at all. So there's plenty of ideas that you can get right away of, okay,
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when I see that CrossFit age 50, now let me also create a piece of social media content around that.
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Find someone in my gym who is 50 who can put the question in the not just the caption, but right
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there on the video of can you still do CrossFit at age 50. And guess what? The answer is yes, you can.
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And then you get someone to demonstrate it, you GC content, user generated content, or where you
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have someone in your facility creating content on your behalf is like vastly underutilized. Like we
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see it a lot and like you've probably seen ads or maybe your wife has told you about stuff that's
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like in the beauty and the fashion space. Use like crazy over there. In general, every day,
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additional industries, it is just not used that much. And so those are the areas I would really tap
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into finding the people who can just be excitable, engaging, can move around a bunch of different
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positions. CrossFit age 50, if you've got five or six different people in your gym that are
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50 and older, like literally ask the question and then get them to do something fun and how they answer.
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And it bounces from person to person to person to person to person to show we've got multiple people
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in this age that are enjoying CrossFit. And what I would actually take this a step further,
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we may talk like ads at some point a little deeper, but Facebook has an ads library. I literally
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search this ads library. And I put the term CrossFit in there so I can see what is going on in the
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space of ads because a lot of times and these are life hacks too for the world of marketing and SEO,
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do the searches and then see what other people are doing. I think you told me years ago when you
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said do a Google search, scroll down to the bottom and see all related searches. Or if you're on
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certain devices, you can type your Google search, don't hit enter and you'll see all the suggested
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additional autofills. So I search on this and here I see one Miami men looking to transform their
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body and lives in just 21 days, introducing our new Healthy Teachers program. They're targeting men,
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21 days, which is three weeks and they're targeting teachers. Boom, done. And guess what? You want a
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quick transformation. So people are looking for and isn't that our world. They want things fast. They
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want it now. They want it done today. Anyone who's ever been on like a Friday night after you
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being a huge meal and you're like, man, I just I just want to lose some weight. You wanted to lose
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it by Monday. Yeah. You want to walk in the office on Monday and be like, man, I just people are
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complimenting me. I look great. I'd you know, all that kind of stuff. And so they are attaching onto
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this. So then they take it a step further and they say in the picture, I'm looking for 12 locals
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wanting to transform their life and body with our Healthy Teachers program in just weeks. So they
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identified three program that identified the target audience. Miami men, then they gave a little
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bit of that urgency. I'm looking for 12. This is an open for everybody. It's open for 12. And if
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you can start to capitalize on that, especially in the social media space, and I talk ads as well
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because ads run on social media. So people are going to behave about the same. But even there
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organically posting it out there, hey guys, we've got 12 slots open better yet. We only have four
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or more slots open. Guess what? Two days later, we only have one more slot open. If I was thinking
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about doing it, I'm going to do it now. And if you can personalize it to who I am, what my desires
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are, where I'm at in the stage of my journey and start multiple programs. Here's one for 20s.
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Here's one for 30s. Here's one for 40s. One for 50s. Here's one for families, single moms, you know,
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kids, like all the different areas that you can target if you're equipped. Don't do them all at once.
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But find a few niche ones that tend to gravitate people in your community to that spot and then build
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content that's interesting for them. If you don't know, it's interesting for them. Ask them what do
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you watch on Instagram and YouTube and find out what some of those things are. The biggest
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appeal I think with the CrossFit space is the challenges. When you look across the space, you know,
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I mentioned the word YouTube, and it just sparked all these ideas for me because when you look at
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the space of YouTube, Mr. Beast really exploded this. It was the idea of challenges, doing stuff
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that seems impossible for him if you win, you get a bunch of money. But for most people, if you
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win with consistency and discipline over time, you change your life. I guarantee if you go to
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anyone and you say, hey, I'll give you a million dollars or you can live five more years longer.
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They're always going to choose life. Money doesn't matter. So at the end of the day, if you can find a
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way to capitalize on that, don't just improve your life, live longer. I think it was not too long ago.
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We were working with a YNCA group and they had done some research and found that the current
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generation's life expectancy was lower than all previous generations that were alive today.
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Wow. He did it with all the medical advancements. Yeah. Wow. But it was all due to the health and
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fitness of kids today. And what are they doing? They're sitting. They're on their phones. They're
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playing video games. Things that we all did, but there's just not as much outdoor activities
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that are used to be. And so this is a great way to help parents get disciplined. Kids can get
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disciplined and the world can be changed for the better. Absolutely. Everything and moderation.
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Absolutely. No, that's great. In fact, I'm glad you brought up the community events and challenges.
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I actually want to talk about that right now because I do know like you a little bit about the
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CrossFit space and because of my friends and things like that. And I know that a lot of what they do
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are CrossFit challenges. Get healthy in 21 days. How many pounds can you lose in this 30-day
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trial? Things like that. And so since CrossFit gyms often host these challenges or competitions,
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what are some tips? I know you've given a couple already, but I'm going to ask you to focus now.
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What are some tips for gym owners on how to run these events in a way that not only excites
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current members, but brings new people, draws new people in. Because I think a lot of times,
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like for instance, a niche like CrossFit, it can be so internally focused where you get in
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and you're part of a family, but it's intimidating for outsiders to come. Especially in a health
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scenario. Like I'm thinking about myself. Like back in the day, I was well over 300 pounds. And I
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needed to lose weight. I knew I needed to lose weight. So I got a gym membership, a standard gym
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membership. And at that gym that I was going to, there were a bunch of people hogging the weights,
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but not using them and looking at the mirror. And so that was my gym experience. And so knowing that
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that's my gym experience and that's where people like me go, you got CrossFit. And those guys are
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shredded. Those guys are doing 100 pull ups and you know, those things. So someone like me might
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be interested in a challenge, but would be kind of intimidated at that stage of my life to join
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something like a CrossFit. So again, how, what can some gym owners do in order to run these
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events in a way that not only excites their current members, but also can bring new members in.
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Yeah, that, that is a great question. And I mean, two things come to mind immediately. You've
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all seen it. You've gone to some health and fitness page out there. And there's a before picture
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and an after picture. And the reason that stuff is everyone's got their shared off and there's
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stomachs hanging out. The reason they do that is because it works when you can give people a
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visual. This goes all the way back to the Donna Miller part of the conversation. Story brand
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is built on this idea that you have to show people what failure looks like and success.
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The ultimate goal is transformation. But if you don't know what you're transforming from
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and what you're transforming into, then you won't actually have a good picture of what could go
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wrong either way. So if I tell you like, hey, Tim, don't put your hand on that hot stove,
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you might listen, you might not. So I was like little to me over there. He wouldn't listen.
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Broly would boom, all of a sudden he's burning. But if I'm like, hey, don't put your hand
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on that hot stove, here's six pictures of people that did and lost a finger or have charged
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skin for life. Like, yeah, this sounds kind of gross. And I'm probably never going to touch hot
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stove over the rest of my life. Right? Like, there's a way to persuade people. And most times,
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people want a more positive persuasion. That's what they're going to gravitate towards. But
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sometimes you do have to show them the alternative. You know, if you don't improve your health,
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a doc will always tell you this, hey, if you don't lose weight, you're going to have heart problems,
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diabetes, kidney issues. Like they're going to list all the things, you know, and I think that's
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a big component of this. Now, you're right. I worked at the YMCA for a number of years in
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Nashville. And we were the top floor corporate office and the gym was right underneath. So we're
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always in the gym and checking it out. And I remember everyone saying that I went to the gym to work
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out. And it was just like I was overwhelmed and intimidated. So what does the Y do? They're like,
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well, you need a personal trainer. That's how you do it. But you got to pay more for the
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personal trainer. If you are a gym owner of CrossFit really anything, you want the people that
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need to be there. And the people that need to be there are intimidated about going there when
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they look around all these nice, super healthy fit people, crushing it on the pull up bar or
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throw weights above their head. Not everybody can do that. And so you really do have to focus
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challenges that everybody can compete in. And but it still pushes them a little bit because
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people do want to be pushed. But they also want to win. Right. People hate losing. But they're not
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going to sign up and participate if they feel like it's only like I'm who's never done something
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and competing against people who do it every day of their life. So what I would actually encourage
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in this space is know your audiences and attract them. These people running this ad group right
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here. They're looking for 12 men in the like that are teachers. If you did it one step further,
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like 12 men in your 50s that are you know teachers thinking about retirement one day, but you want
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to get fit now and not just wait till later. Right. Like you can continue to go down that space.
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Basically what I'm saying in this space is I would create a challenge for everyday people.
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Well, who are those everyday people? They might not know teachers are everyday people. Look around
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at the people that are in your community. You know, maybe it's a restaurant workers. I mean,
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those guys are on their feet all day. Some might not be the best example. But maybe there's desk
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workers. Like, hey, if you're stuck behind a desk all day and feel like you're just not moving
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enough, you need to be working. You need to be walking at least 10,000 steps a day. Are you only
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getting 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 max? You need to be in this challenge. And whatever the challenge is,
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it's a 21 days is a fifth. I've seen them all. I'm looking at all these ads. It's like 15 days for
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15 dollars, you know, 57 bucks for 30 days. Get in the challenge first and then we'll talk future
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long lasting results. But get in a challenge, get an experience, get it started and make it as
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least intimidating as possible. And that's going to be the key. Absolutely. That's awesome.
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One of the things that I liked about CrossFit and we talked about a little bit, like we said,
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they're very community-organized or oriented. And since they're so community-oriented, I think
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one of the ways that a local business can kind of market themselves best is through partnerships.
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I mean, think about it. Even in just general, the general digital marketing world right now,
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influencers are so important. You know, you could have the best product in the world,
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but if only your friends know about it, you'll only make a certain amount of money. But if somebody
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famous knows about it and wears it at Disneyland and then gets some eyeballs on it, then all of a sudden
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boom, your brand takes off because of it. And one of the ways that I think a lot of local businesses
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that need local traffic, especially like a CrossFit or a health and wellness business, would be to
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partner with other local businesses. It almost serves as like an influencer, if you will.
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And so, like I'm thinking like a CrossFit gym and a local nutrition shop, or a CrossFit gym and
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a sports store, or a recovery center, or what I would I'd never seen this, but I think would be
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fantastic, would be like a CrossFit gym and a chiropractor, or a CrossFit gym and a physical
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therapist. You know, somebody who can really get in there. But I guess my question to you is,
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how can CrossFit gyms knowing that they use these events and challenges and stuff like that,
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how can they partner with other local businesses to create events that benefit both the gym
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and the local business and the community?
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That is a great question. And the first thing that I would actually say is, before going into the
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content portion of that question, there is a marketing hack that I use to figure a lot of the stuff
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out. And if you go to Facebook.com slash ads slash library, this is where you can run a search and
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see what are people doing in ads right now. Like it's public. These ads are all public. Anything
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that you run as a company is going to be public because you're advertising to the public. So anybody
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can see it and you can type it in there. Well, what's interesting is I think it was like the 10th or
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11th ad is a partnership between a gym and a doctor. And here's what they're targeting. This goes
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back into that targeting space again. Getting older doesn't have to mean getting weaker.
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No one wants to be weak. And then there's one group especially that doesn't want to be weak,
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not to stereotype, but men don't want to be weak. They don't want to be seen as weak.
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And he goes because today after helping 13,000 men targeting those men, he's revealing the one
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thing any guy over 40 there again, personalization over 40 can do naturally to naturally regain
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strength and muscle. So they partner with that. And then they talk through in another ad about
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protein and building muscle and nutrition advice. And then they continue to target any guy over 40.
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So they have very niche audience men over 40. Why should you trust me? I got doctor in my
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title and I've helped over 13,000 men. Okay. So what does this do? Well, first it creates a
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way and an opportunity for a brand to capitalize on that. But to your point, it's what I think
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Instagram calls it cross posting. Where you can essentially merge two brands together. You post
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it and then you can choose to allow that one to post on your profile as well. What it does is it
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cross pollinates audiences. You have a very unique audience as a gem owner. You over here as
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a nutritionist or a doctor or a chiropractor have another unique audience. You actually need both
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sides, right? You want to continue to say healthy. So you don't have to keep coming in over here.
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So I'm going to partner with this group and trade people basically because guess what? If you
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have an injury, people get injured, you know, working out all the time, you know, if you have an
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injury, you get sick, you want your doctor or your chiropractor over here. If you got your back
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all aligned, but it keeps getting out of whack and you want to make sure that you're not getting
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weaker, you're getting stronger than you need a cross-fit gem, right? So those kind of partnerships
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can go a really long way and they don't have to be just ads driven, although that does help.
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In general, we kind of have two rules of thumb. Like we want to see 60% of your attention in social
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media coming from organic, like you're posting, they're posting, you're cross-posting, whatever.
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And then we want to see about 40% coming from ads, meaning you're buying that traffic.
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The beauty of the ads is you get, you know, you can target and say, I want this only to be
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cold audiences. They don't know who I am. They've never seen me and then I've gone to my profile,
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whatever. The discoverability engines are what allow things like, you know, Instagrams for you
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feed or any of these like TikTok, I think has it as well. All these for you feeds that are out there
spk_0
and it finds content that they might be interested in and it will display it to them. But
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but you're in the sea of content right there, right? You know, and you might, you know, people love
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the idea of going viral. But if you are going viral in another state and you're running a local
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business, doesn't really help, you just makes you feel good, you know, it gives you smakalades.
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But the real reality is if you can create local partnerships, it gives you local visibility.
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And I know you're big on this because of local search. Yeah. Those are huge components to
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building a brand and running a business. And I think for me, when I see that, the local visibility
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often leads to them, what are people going to do? They're going to go and search your company or
spk_0
your name or the phrase in Google. And from there, you could probably go all day long with what happens
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in local search and why it's so important. But SEO transfers beyond social media to the general
spk_0
worldwide web in those capacities. Absolutely. No, thanks for thanks for bringing up the local
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search because that is an area that I kind of wanted to lean into myself here for a second.
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I'll give you a break. Let you breathe for a second. But because when I'm thinking through CrossFit,
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you've already mentioned some incredible ways to market through ads and through organic social.
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But when I my brain always goes to local organic. And so when I'm thinking through, you know,
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for so many people, you know, finding a gym, it starts with a local search on Google. And so when
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I'm always going to default to as an organic guy is I'm going to question and I'm going to ask myself,
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what are the best SEO practices specific to CrossFit gyms in order to ensure that they rank
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when people search fitness options in their area? And so what I'm going to do for that is I'm going
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to create some hyper localized pages. And so if my CrossFit gym, for instance, is in Mesa,
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Arizona, most people don't know what Mesa, Arizona is. It's the 36 or 37th largest city in the
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country. But it's a suburb of Phoenix. So if my CrossFit gym is in Mesa, I'm going to create some
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very hyper focused Mesa content surrounding my in my website. So I'm going to talk about landmarks
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that are near my gym. You know, because even inside Mesa, like I just said, it's like the 36 or 37th
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largest populated city in the country. So there's even going to be more hyper localization that needs
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because Mesa is so big. And so I'm really going to focus on my part of town because again,
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especially in CrossFit community is so important. And so Liz, for instance, and I'm going to create
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content for Phoenix because that's a huge, you know, search term. But I'm also going to create
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content specifically for my area of Mesa. So the usery mountains are right by me. So I'm going to
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talk about, you know, putting the usery mountains in my content somehow, whether that's a picture.
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I'm going to use that as my image, maybe me and a couple of the people at the gym hiking the
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usery mountains. And then I'll caption that and make sure, you know, that usery is in there
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because that's a that's a local area. And then, you know, things like that. But then just beyond
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hyper focused content because I think that's what when people think SEO, that's all they think
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about. But there's so much more to that. Just like you said, there was ads and organic for social.
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There's your website. But a lot of people don't talk about Google business profiles.
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Used to be called Google My Business. But Google business profiles, they're critical for local
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visibility. I mean, think about it. How many times have you been somewhere? I mean, I just did it
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today where I pulled up my phone and I looked, I searched coffee shops because I needed a coffee shop.
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The place I was going to didn't have good coffee like I expected it. It was like the the two gallon
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silver tin jars that you see at a church potluck, right? And so I googled just coffee shops.
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And immediately the first things that pull up on my phone are is the Google map. And inside the
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Google map is those local search results. And so many people are so focused on their website.
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They're not focused on the Google business profile inside that Google map. And there are so many
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different things that you can do that people will never even scroll down to see the website listings.
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They won't even get past the maps because their answer is right there. And so organizing and
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optimizing for your Google business profile is incredibly important when you're thinking about
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localizing or optimizing your CrossFit gym or whatever other industry you're in. And so I would
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encourage my listeners to not just focus on your website, just like you wouldn't focus on
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organic social you'd want some ads in there. I would do that that that partnership focus on your
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website, but also focus on your Google business profile. And what people don't realize is the
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Google business profile part is even easier than the website. Yeah, really. It's matter of
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taking photos, getting real life photos of people in your gym, doing activities that they will be
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doing at your gym. Because again, topic authority, but also revelances incredibly important.
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You don't want to be just posting to post. It's got to be good things that deal with your
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clients. Well, even thinking earlier like we were talking about how would you build more community
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partnerships and what if like your gym, you know, let's just say a CrossFit Mesa. And they come
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together to raise money for Phoenix Children's Hospital. And they do an event and they raise a
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bunch of money and they're all together. And it's maybe seven or eight people because you got a
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bigger jump. But only if you wanted to do it, you snap that photo with your little banner and you
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put that up because you want people to know we care about our community. If you're bringing in
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usery mountain like my brain's firing on the marketing side right now, but it's like that's a
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great example. How have you know, people who are sitting there thinking, man, I'd love to hike
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that mountain one day, but I get winded walking up the stairs. Right. I can create marketing messages
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all day long. Get, you know, want to hike the beautiful usery mountain, but get winded walking
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up the stairs. You need to be in CrossFit. You've got to join this gym and don't just join a gym
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that requires you to work out with a bunch of people who are far better than you.
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Join a community of people that look like you talk like you sound like you have the same
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interests as you. Some are a little further ahead than you, but together we help each other
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build and improve our lives. That's enticing. And, and if you do that, maybe that's the thing.
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The 28 day challenge or the 21 day challenge at the end, you get to walk that mountain and plant
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your flag at the top. I mean, all of a sudden, if you win the challenge, you get a flag and you're
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going to plant it at the top, you're going to selfie it, you're going to picture that, and then
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you're going to ask people to send that and drop your Google review, put your picture in there,
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and then would you be so kind of willing us to give us those photos so we could put in our Google
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profile or business profile. And that's how you can easily take user generated content,
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social pref is huge. If you want to have social pref on your website, even, you can build these
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little feeds or get testimonials.to and some, I'm plenty of other ones I can only think of that one,
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but where you can get people's actual social proof testimonials and encourage your people,
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like we recently had a brand where we just literally emailed people out and told them how to leave
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a Google review. And every single day, we're getting brand, I mean, we got like 20 reviews in the
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first day of a business that, you know, gets more visibility when people are reviewing it. And
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but you see everyone incentivizes it, but not everybody treats it in the creative way of how do
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you utilize that to further build your message, build your community, build the exact people that you
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want to see. The over 50s challenge or the 40 year old men and whatever, name those things,
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get a banner, give some visibility. Some people click that they see, there's unique challenges.
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There's people that I can relate to, you know, the healthy teachers challenge, I think,
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because what one of those was, there's people that I can relate to, every teacher can relate to
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that one, you know, the men over 40 or over 50, the, you know, single moms or stay at home moms,
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like working moms, I mean, every single area has an opportunity for you to personalize a challenge
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for and allow people to accomplish something. Absolutely. And I think that would really go a long way.
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No, definitely a couple of things come to mind real quick is what what I'm hearing consistently
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throughout today's episode is something that I really want to focus on. And that is, you know,
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when it comes to SEO keyword research, I will die on this hill. Everything starts with keyword
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research. You may think you may know what users are searching, but you could be wildly wrong. And
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many consultation calls I take with my listeners who think they know what the keyword is. And then
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I'll be on the call with them. I'll pull up SEM rush. And I'll show them like actually it's not,
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it's this over here. It kind of all starts with that keyword research. But what I think a lot of
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people do wrong is they just look, they do SEO like it was 2004. And they look for the highest
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search volume keyword. And they only attack that one keyword. Well, that might get you the visibility.
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If you're successful, it's hard because you're in a hard, highly competitive area. But even if you're
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successful, that might get you the visibility. But SEO isn't just visibility. Good SEO. And this
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is how you know you've hired somebody who really knows what they're talking about when it comes to
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anybody can pull rankings and show you, hey, I just got this on page one of Google with a little
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bit of effort. You can YouTube teach yourself how to do that. What you can't do is teach yourself
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how to land a sale after that happens. It's a little bit more difficult. And so while you're
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attacking CrossFit because that has 600,000 searches a month, CrossFit 50 plus may only have 12,000
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searches. But that 50,000 searches, you may land one client. CrossFit 50 plus, you just landed
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nine clients who are 50 years old or older because now it's hyper focused and personalized
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for them. And you're probably going to have higher conversions because you can email them or text
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them more specifically to who they are and where they're at. Like I did a search earlier for fitness
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challenge because CrossFit challenge, there was only a few that were showing up a fitness challenge.
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And here's one, 210 searches a month low on the difficulty scale to rank for. And it's the
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couples fitness challenge. Well, guess what month celebrates couples every February. And Valentine's
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Day hits. So you can promote it in January. You can rent it in February. Well, February, I think
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it's usually like the 14th or something. So literally February, one, 14 day couples fitness
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challenge because people are searching it every single month. And that's one month out of the year.
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I'm sure there's plenty other things that you could go through and find. Like there's a November
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fitness challenge. It's a one on the difficulty scale, meaning the easiest 210 people search every
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single month. And in fact, nobody's running ads to it right now. So I can look at this and say,
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okay, that's huge. November, people are thinking, I'm about to go gain a bunch of weight. Yeah.
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Like if you were a CrossFit Geminer right there and you're listening to this before November first
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or anytime in November, create that month plus fitness challenge and get them in. Let them know
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what it is. And 14 days, all you need, all you need to demonstrate that this is a challenge you
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can have people sign up for because they want to win. And during November, you want to help them
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get healthy and stay healthy through the holidays. So like you look at the moments in culture that
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are leading up to events that are in everyone's life. Everyone just about in our country. Maybe not
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all aspects of our country, but most people are going to celebrate Thanksgiving. They're at least
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going to have a gratitude day. Most people in our country are going to celebrate Christmas.
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Definitely, they're off the final week of the year in a lot of industries. And so those are things
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you know, people are going to have time. They're going to be do everyone in January just like how do I
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lose weight? I just gained a bunch over the last two months. You know, we've worked with WISE for
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years. If you like, you have to have a big January or the rest of the year for the Y will struggle.
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And so know where culture is going. Know what those messages need to be. Know the story that you're
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trying to tell as a brand and then do the technical work like figure out what are people searching?
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Where are they searching? When are they searching? How are they searching? And build that into your
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overall SEO strategy. Attach it with a great messaging strategy. And then you can feel an
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incredible marketing strategy. And that's the secret to success with all of this. Doesn't matter
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your industry. Crosswood's a great example though. So I'm glad you chose that one because you know,
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there's so many things that you can come up with and do. And it's brainstorm experiment.
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Get the right tools in place so that you know and you understand how do you create workflows?
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And how do you build automation into it so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.
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But at the end of the day, there's some very easy to go after on first search. I mean, I've spent
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five seconds searching this stuff. And at first search, I know exactly the first things I would do
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in order to try and grow my gym on an organic scale, on a paid scale. And the final thing I'll
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leave you guys with and your listeners is there's a concept of a pie chart. And I've probably
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mentioned this before, but there's a pie that's cut into four slices. And this is the world of
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marketing in general. One of those slices has to be organic. It's your SEO, it's your organic
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attention. That's a huge component of what you want. The other is your network, your referrals,
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your partnerships with other brands and people. The other is the paid opportunities. The ones where
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you're buying traffic again, another 25%. So now we're at 75% and the last one, social media,
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it's also organics really organics like 50% of the whole pie. But social media is word of mouth
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today. So if you want to be getting the visibility, getting people out there that gets your people
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talking, sharing, inviting, promoting, evangelizing, being your brand ambassadors and incentivize them
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to do so. Like, hey, refer five friends and get 10% off next month. I mean, whatever you got to do
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in order to get people just to be excited, energized, and ultimately crafting this whole thing into
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a very clean growth flywheel. And you'll be well on the road to success.
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I love that. Thank you for sharing that. It's finals insight. I haven't really enjoyed our time
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together. Unfortunately, we're out of time. I had about like 10 or 12 more questions to go for you.
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So I might have to have you back here pretty soon because really what I wanted what I wanted to
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get into, but we ran out of time today. So I will get into it in another episode is okay, now we've
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got them. What do we do to keep them? So yeah, for my listeners, be on the lookout for that episode
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because I think that is going to be just as if not more valuable because we know it costs so much
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money to gain a new client. And it costs a fraction of that to maintain them and to keep them coming
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back. So we'll catch that on the next time. But until then, Josh, thank you again. Thank you for
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your time. Thank you for sharing insights to my listeners. I know they are more focused on SEO,
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but I just I think in the state that we're in right now, marketing in general just really needs to
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be focused on. And so I really wanted to take out a special episode. So again, thank you. Thank
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you for your time. Thanks for having me. It was really fun. And yeah, we got to continue the
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conversation. I always like to say we want to make money, but then we want to keep money. And as
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a business, cash flows oxygen, that's the focus that you kind of have to think through. But if you can
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build the right relationships along the way, then you're going to create a company you can be proud of.
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Or if you're not creating it, you're going to be helping to market a company that you can be
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proud of and the work that you do is meaningful. So that's what matters. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.
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Well, guys, I think that'll do it for today. Thank you for listening to the SEO tips and tricks
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podcast with Tim Jennings. I greatly appreciate it. I know your attention could be anywhere else in
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the world right now. So thank you for taking this last hour or so of your time and spending it
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with us. I do want to remind you of a couple of things for my listeners. The first and foremost is
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as you view, have any questions about SEO, things like that. Please feel free to reach out. I'd
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love to sit down and have a consultation with you and see if maybe even if it's a good fit for
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Soul Heart to step in and help you out with those efforts and trust the experts. Or if maybe that
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isn't an option for you, we also have the Soul Heart Circle. And what I love about the Soul Heart
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Circle is basically it was this episode on steroids. If you want to learn how to market your
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business, you need to be in the Soul Heart Circle. Soul Heart Circle, we provide ads courses. I give
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my own SEO course. We have resources that you can download. We do our own challenges. I think it's
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funny. We are talking about CrossFit challenges. We have our own marketing challenge. That's right.
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They are the Transformer Marketing Challenge. All of those resources are available at a greatly
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highly affordable price. So definitely check out Soul Heart Circle. Otherwise, have a great day
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and keep focusing on organic search. I promise you it is worth your investment. Have a great day,
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everyone.
Topics Covered
SEO Tips and Tricks
organic growth strategies
marketing insights
storytelling in marketing
impact of SEO
digital marketing trends
website optimization
business growth strategies
measuring marketing impact
AI in marketing
content marketing
branding techniques
customer engagement
marketing during economic downturns
keyword research