welcome to the content supply podcast I'm Dallin need and each episode we bring you an inspiring brand creator or message to help you discover how you can experience success in your business as we unpacked stories and strategies about all things content and growing a successful brand so this is just a whole discovery process for all of us we feature a variety different brands on the show from entrepreneurs painters copywriters marketers coaches athletes to designers filmmakers photographers and many more all brand owners all creators so it's my belief as with many others that every company is a Content company and has to be one to stay relevant and competitive because let's be honest the internet is so full of brands that it can be very easy to get lost in the crowd so quality and effective content really separates you that's why content supply was created to supply brands with ongoing custom content so they can engage with their customers by providing value telling stories and making more sales and when we say content I'm talking about video and audio and written or image all and everything in between all those content creation and building a business is really hard you never finish the building and creating even after you experienced some success you have to keep going on in the journey content supply was created to be a resource a community and a solution to fill that large gap of content so thanks for joining the show now let's get to the interview all right so on the show today we have Peter Gregory he is the digital marketer and founder behind for cord digital marketing so I'm just going to go ahead and read the about us a synopsis version from his website so Peter says that at four they specialize in both organic and paid search marketing to give a more holistic approach to the search marketing space they think a strong strategy revolves around a healthy mix of paid and organic search as well as the many other digital spaces such as social media email marketing display banners and retargeting to name a few they get in front of the eyeballs that are searching for what you offer so I literally just read that verbatim - searching out the we today from their website but that's really what it is Peter is a very smart guy who's really doing well with local business advertising that is his big focus and what he talks about in our podcast which is really really fascinating is the number crunching and the data side of digital marketing something that many can overlook by focusing just on what's on the outside versus what's underneath the hood and so he really digs in deeper a little bit into this but he does more so in what he services and provides to his clients and so without further adieu adieu adieu adieu let's get into the interview first off just thanks for joining today seriously yeah of course yeah awesome and so tell me give me like a quick overview of Peter Gregory tell me about your brand and okay yeah I saw in 2015 I started my own digital marketing company called 4 chord 4 chord digital marketing love music so kind of incorporate I really wanted to be more about me and the four chord you know kind of came from like the basis of a ton of songs you know are based around kind of like the fundamental four chords and there's you know there's obviously a lot more stuff to be done with that but that's like the same thing kind of my philosophy in marketing and digital marketing in particular there's a lot of people who like hear the terms SEO and they freak about it or they don't really understand it quite well and you know it really comes down to the fundamentals of market you know the basics of real basics of marketing and then you're suing from a digital standpoint and so that was kind of the synergy there behind that I wanted to be very much me and my love of music kind of fold into that so so that's where I decided on the name and everything since then it's been going really well a wide range of clients from lawyers to a lot of home servers HVAC window companies solar installation companies do some ecommerce as well but a lot a lot of stuff on the local businesses I like the local small medium-sized businesses you know kind of helping them navigate their way to the digital world and rather than focusing on all these crazy numbers and you know technically difficult things for them to understand just really like focus on the one thing almost supper bone business sort of cares about and the ROI how much money am i spending to get you know that's not a dollar so and making sure it makes sense for them so that that really was my whole Drive behind it all because there's tons of different you know there's so many different metrics that I look at on a daily basis as far as traffic where we're getting the traffic how do we generate traffic but the other day is it doing anything you know are the eyeballs that we're getting in front of are they actually going to pay for the service that they they're selling and and how does it make them money in today so I can go over all the metrics use them all day long but half the time they don't really care but they really care as I go I've given you 100 bucks I need to make a thousand bucks well and that leads me to a great question to where that up obviously applies to your certain areas of digital marketing but let's say on the content side you know where your creamy blogs or videos or images you work with a brand to identify what the content ROI is so let's say a brand invest $1,000 a month and content and they how do you guarantee that they'll get 10 20 30 thousand dollars in return well it's kind of more looking at like an overall piece of the pie the whole digital market I like the content is it's critical for it because if the content is not good enough people aren't going to you know use it now it's hard to necessarily put a specific dollar amount to oh this piece of content made a section dollars and this was specifically made like a video made for ad service that we know we can actually track and see okay how many times I was viewed after the view they actually cooked over the surface and bought but grant people don't really do that it's not like last click attribution anymore for a lot of this stuff it's just part of the funnel and if you look at it's crazy how much you'll see okay this piece of content was was viewed and they read this and then they saw an ad when they saw a display banner and then because no because we pixel them now and we're following around retargeting ads and now it went to the Facebook page and you know so they're people are absorbing conscience so many different ways but is that Facebook ad gonna necessarily have a great specific ROI from being like the last click that somebody did and no probably not because most people are on Facebook and in social media stuff to socialize not they're not in buying mode now if they're searching for something in Google they're directly looking for you know something that they they're probably more likely to buy so if you look at as an overall picture you may say oh that Facebook advertising is not working well know was if you look at in the funnel of everything it's almost like a billboard you know buy like somebody's you know yeah but it but it's more targeted because at least they've already searched out for what they're looking for and now you're just reminding you may remember you needed a you need to dis locks in this service you know they still need it okay that gives it it's like a extremely targeted billboard it's still there keeps the brand top of mind like think there some other ways we can measure also specifically content that's like like text and video links where we specifically on the SEO side when we're looking to do basically outreach and and build links to the site because it's like the foundations kind of of SEO or obviously content you know the on-site SEO stuff and then making sure that you're getting other web sites to link to you well how many paces people are gonna link to you don't know from anybody and you contact them say hey link to my site because it's so great no you have to provide some actually really killer content for them to want to link to you and then you have to make it known that this content exists so you can start with are some metrics they're like okay we create this really kick-ass piece of content that is a great resource page and it would be great for children looking at astronomy or something we're contacting teachers and people that have web sites at you know that would potentially leak to the because it's actually a good piece of content you know it's really critical that so how do you make that killer piece of content so I mean speaking of that to online there's a local level obviously there's a more global level when you're on them you know you're basing online and there is a mixture of data there's a mixture of creative how do you qualify and quantify content that's killer that's effective and impactful well I like specifically resource pages are really really good especially wouldn't going after trying to go after a thorat ated link so a page that has good content on it but also links out to a lot of great resources like so if it was something about a firm have some cool angle about you know what you're going about but then also have like specific links to NASA's of the world all the you know the top thought leaders and whatever piece of content it's about you know like it just really encompass not just text make sure you know include imagery infographics video is just a more robust you can build it out the better people are gonna stay on that page longer they're gonna find it more interesting and then people like you know everybody different I prefer to read but a lot of people don't like to read they'd much rather watch a video or look at an infographic over it and you know those things are also easily shareable especially on our landscape now where you have you know places like Reddit and all over that you know things can go viral actually pretty quickly without a whole lot of effort sometimes you know depending on how good that piece of content is so seeing how some of the metrics like you know tell you how many people view obviously or you know are big one how many people are hit the pages but the nice thing is with like you know analytics stuff you can easily tell what pieces of content are doing well on your site how long people are staying on them are they actually reading are they going to other pages on your site after reading that content like are they interested in more and then you can start fine tuning that content when you start saying hey you know there's a lot of balance people were hit in this thing and 20 seconds later they're leaving maybe we need to catch them up with something up a little bit more above fold that makes them want to stay longer and read more basically the people are the judge of that you know and we can start seeing what they're doing because we have the analytics and the metrics and showing where they are what they're doing what kind of tools can you use to organize that data and actually make it useful because they're just there's so much data out there and actually organize it into something that is understandable not only for yourselves but a way you can just show the clients so it's not super complicated and simple and you can actually show that it's being impactful yeah I mean I would say analytics is probably the best tool you're ever gonna find as far as what's going on on your yeah Google Analytics specifically and the thing is you know most clients aren't gonna understand movement there's just so much I mean I know people have done this for over ten years and still have barely scratched the surface of understanding what analytics is but there are some quick ones that you can really get to like I usually had about five or six like things I'll go through when i explaining analytics to them and say look forget about all this fluff stuff that you're never gonna realize a pitch ID but let's go check out the behavior what people are any pages they're hitting on your site what they're doing on the site how long they're sitting on the side the bounce rate that kind of stuff and then just to source the traffic sources where is that traffic coming from are they coming from is it coming from Google search is it coming from paid search is it coming from Facebook is it comes like all the different referral places out there I mean you give this piece of content hey look it's spiked these two days because look it it was also tagged tagged and reddit for those two days and some of it has waves of you know some of it might not have a long shelf life in some of these but some cases that's all you need you know for it to be or it for it to be effective hmm but I would say definitely Google Analytics and like fine tuning like specific locations it's between the behavior and the behavior sections and then the sources so so it's four four chord and your agency and your focus in digital marketing how do you partner with content creators from the branded content creators what is what is your moment there and and how do you use the data to then drive more traffic and more engagement well first of all you know I try to like stick with people who specialize in specific fields like this guy's a design guy does infographics okay you know and so and all the pool for just those guys then maybe it doesn't pool of videographers that I deal with edit video editors and and then obviously content writers that copywriters and stuff so you know just over the years you know developed relationships with with many different end know kind of their strengths so I'm not gonna expect my video guy to be a great ride I'm trying to kind of go with their expertise and then kind of put those things together like kind of more like there's a project manager at that time and said okay this is this is a direction we want to go this is what I need from you this is writing from you this is learning then I'll kind of be the master mix or at the end and put it all together in a piece of you know I think works well or you know other web developers I have that worked closely to that have an understanding of how to go about business and how I how I manage that content but I'll go with them the freedom of you is that as well so you use your marketing expertise to kind of see the whole picture and then put in the talent and the resources where they need to fit like you know videographers copywriters and and place them where they need to be to support the digital marketing efforts from a-z absolutely okay exactly I mean you know I think that's important like with any businesses know your strengths like you know think of it like a general contractor and hiring out subcontractors you know I'm gonna have electrician and the plumber and the drywall got you know everybody's got to work together but they all have their own specific expertise that lets the project flourish totally well I totally see where government it's interesting because as I'm building content supply as a business it's a similar approach but it's on I've been talking recently in developing the idea behind content ROI but what that means is there's this there's a creative side and then there's a data side or like a math side to the kind of the digital marketing echo-chamber or whatever you want I mean world and that way where someone like you and fork or digital is your expertise lies in the math side the number side the data side that really drives and measures the results and then although you do have content knowledge you partner with then the content or the creative to help open and execute on the content and its really fascinating to have that oversight whether you sit and like for me I'm more on that creative side or the content mm-hmm you sitting on the digital marketing side and seen how by necessity you have to marry the two together it's it's not like absolutely on the content side you're doing it just for the creative experience and you know like there's the artist on this side if it's like I want to create art just to create art it's not easy it's not cells driven know that you you have to find the balance there because I totally get it as a musician / lucky and I like to play my music I wouldn't wanna go play cover money but that's what was paying bills you know that's what would you know people want you to come to their party you play their cover you know I like my crappy punk songs that I was playing you know the corner with my buddies but in the dick you know obviously why they also didn't work out as you know I had other ideas and you have to really think and that is tough because a lot of times when you have it with these are different sides of thought processes oh but you have analytical versus that creative and I feel like I have like a little bit of the vote that's what helps me like you know manage it correctly but you have some people that are just they're just creative and they're all for the sake of the art and don't really realizing how the you know so if you make a suggestion to them hey I need you to make this change like they get hurt like this is no this is my art piece that I got in you know I think on the other side you know they got people that are too analytical and I don't understand it all like so you have to have a healthy marriage well and you're not you're gonna get nowhere honestly if you want to build a business out of the creative yeah out of the content you have to have the matte side the data side the business and the sales side you know whatever you want to go there's all these different names for it because your business is either gonna fail because you don't you lack in the sales driven aspect or you're just going to kind of meander and not really have any kind of growth um you'll just kind of have that that's set mix and I think there's there's still a disconnect with a lot of those who are the pure artists at heart this is those who see the artistic you know you can experience the art in the in the experience of whether it's producing content or just doing that creative side but inevitably you have to to deal with the data and until wit and get partnered with someone who knows the numbers and knows how to put that those numbers in action and so you talked about how you deal primarily with local clients why the choice to go with the local oh sorry when I met local I didn't necessarily mean local like digital Santa Clarita I meant um businesses that are local based business like so they're location-based like okay if they might be in Santa Rosa California but their business pretty much you know Sonoma County we're again you know all those that's surrounding areas like so business is our local service businesses kind of what I met more of that yeah so like the plumber in Los Angeles or the locksmith in Santa Clarita or it doesn't matter like they have a home base and they have a maybe a service area of 50 or 60 radius miles or so and some people have multiple offices multiple locations but in such location it's just they they provide their service or product to the local yes so tell me then more about with these locally based clients that you do digital marketing service for tell me about some case studies like how does the work you do in digital marketing space impact their cells and their bottom line yeah so you know these is you know everybody kind of there's different I have like different packages and stuff to offer but basically SEO and PPC are kind of my biggest ones social media also summon in third but the on the SEO side we're constantly that's heavily content you know the PPC said isn't so much there's an initial content going into landing pages and testing different types of coffee and that kind of stuff but you know maybe some additional video work from the paid side but the SEO is probably where the heaviest the most important you know content yeah having that really killer content is the probably the most important part for that as well as in social media but when we're talking about the web sites you know it's all about all right what keywords we have to start thinking about the words that people would be searching for whatever service that is and then sometimes you know industry people are in the industry have these industry terms that only people on the industry would maybe not like the local the other person actually looking for the service wouldn't arresting enough I was recently doing with a company who sells like custom top notch in wheels for cars right and I was always assume their rims like you know and then it turns out that you wheels it's like a little bit more about installment they were missing out on like 40 percent of traffic's they weren't even focused on rims when I that was the first thing I thought I'm not a built car guy so you know maybe that makes no but I was able to look at some data and say okay well you've been all your content is all about wheels it's great customers customers look at all this traffic you miss out because you don't have anything about rims and a lot of the average people are thinking these are rims like I would think the wheel is the rim with the Chiron and all that good you know I don't know you know and that's just it was just an interesting thing where we found a whole bunch of area where we could have really easy gains just by changing ups and you know the strategy a little bit well and it sounds like you have to put your mind in that of the customer and understand you know I mean that's what you did I mean you put yourself and the fact that I think of different words so you have to dumb down the words or use alternative words to make sure that if I'm the customer and if I'm word searching or just searching for the product I need to find in order to find the right girl the right friends or just that company to provide that product you got to think like the customer yeah and there's awesome really great tools that Google provides for that too keyword planners one and then Google Trends is awesome that's a really good one checking out Google Trends cuz then you can actually see a couple of icky words compare them to each other what are people what are the trends going hey if people are start to search for this instead of this you know that's going down this is going up all right we need to shift gears you know but there's there's some really great tools out there that are free to like assist with this stuff so you can start start with some seed keywords think of it okay these are things that I would think of and then Google tells you well people that are searching for these also are searching for these terms and you so you get like you're basting beaded some seed keywords and then get all this other data back up okay this is how much search volume is how much there's and then that's where you can start really developing con start coming up with content ideas and developing card and now you know what people are searching for how much competition level there is out there how hard it's gonna get to rank okay what do we need to do and where can we find maybe some of the low-hanging fruit first baby you know and now people are searching so differently with their phones and they're talking directly into serial exa all those type of things so now you're getting searches that are really long till versus somebody who's maybe like just looking for a plumber in Seneca rather than just plumber in South Korea it might be I need a 24 hour emergency plumber because if my pipe does burst at 2:00 a.m. so I'm looking for maybe even talking right under your phone find it find a merge ensue plumber open right now near me you know so it's like a weird longtail phrase that probably hasn't even really been seen before in some cases because people you know talk to their phone so differently now it's changing researches well now if you can start taking advantage of that a lot of the near me searches are a really big time for the local stuff so wow that's really good insight yeah I mean that is I the power of voice is only gonna increase obviously yeah it's only getting a bit bigger like Britain has its place but you think of like Amazon's echo and you know from Siri on your phone to echo or Alexa yeah and that that capability to tap into that AI the intelligence that they can share that information and in understanding that process of what's required to be come out come up in the search results and get that attention that you need it yeah yeah yeah it's crazier the stats even bigger now especially more but it used to be it was it's like it's 20% of all searches every single day Google never seen before wow that's a big number and that's only gonna be that's got to be even bigger I would think now or at least you know maintain that percentage because of the fact the way people are doing voice search you know they're talking to so differently rather than just typing in plumber Los Angeles but you know they're searching differently and I think search yeah people are using search engines smarter too they actually understand what they're looking for there might be a little bit more precise but I think voice ting is definitely a game changer I think and it's gonna continue to do so that's really interesting so how do people discover your services right yeah like that's a crazy thing I'm marking company I'm not doing any marketing for myself I mean I have my site and I do you know do you stay on top of like social media and people that you know in the industry and stuff like that but mostly just I've been doing this so long that I've had you know contacts and I also work like the last agency I worked with I still have really good friends with them and they you know they simply they will pass along stuff that they got because they've got it what were their do more traditional and they really love the production you know they're into the video production they do turn of that stuff that's where they really like their space to be so when it comes to some of the digital market especially the technical stuff you know they'll just know basically outsource it to me and essentially and I'll just white label my services for them but most of them most of my clients have all come from I've either worked with them in the past they know somebody who's worked with me in the past you know I guess right now I've had to actually amid the point where having look at how I'm gonna grow and expand cuz I always AK landed I'm just into this myself well I've got my dad involved he's he does he's a he's a really good WordPress developer and my daughter she's part of the business and helped me she basically does admin stuff and work for I can't with books and back stuff like that she's she's like OCD and I take advantage of that her organizational skills are far far better than mine but you know I said Jen tenet now I'm at this point where I have to think about growth and how do I want to grow and how big do I want to grow how many people don't want to take on it's really gonna be advantageous for me to do that or am I kind of cool where I'm at right now so I'm a minute's weird spot night head where I think I'm going high but I do want to take on a little bit of I don't want it to be huge though that's one thing I don't want to have 30 employees and have to work you know even I mean no I just I don't want the headache of that I kind of like being I kind of do my own thing in my own time whenever you know but I think that I could help some more feet more companies and obviously people that would you know working with me you know being able to make some more money as well so that would get think there would be some areas I'd like to experience yeah when eventually will probably come to me having to do some marketing to and actually have some sales guy you know involved if that's gonna be the case yeah Wow yeah and that's - because I think there are so many entrepreneurs and companies in your boat where they have receipt I mean marketing doesn't need to be a massive push for their own brand because they receive those firls those referrals or they get that constant that constant work yeah that and the need to expanding your you're making enough to thrive you know and progress and and now you're looking to grow so as kind of like an ending parting thought to those who are just starting out we're getting into building a digital marketing business what do you recommend like where you begin what's kind of a square for step 1 uh you know especially in the digital marketing realm like online I would you start make sure you have like the proper go to Google do all the certifications you can get because they have plenty of resources and not only that that does they do if you like I'm a Google partner meaning I can do monthly get-togethers where Google actually provides insight into some of the products on the new stuff coming out to clients or prospective clients you get and get it up in their directory where people are actually looking for someone and you're approved AdWords certified you know agency they all actually refer you business I think that's a good place for people to start so as long as you do this and the tests aren't that bad you know I think it's for the most part you know you can knock them out in about an hour hour and a half and you know but they and I think they update every every two years you need to you know reuptake it it gives you a foundation where people that don't know you from anywhere that these can trust that owe you at least past the guidelines at Google assess for their own products like you know to use out use analytics properly so if you have those it kind of gives you that little badge of honor I think that helps with help a lot of people are digital artists a lot of people don't think about no I know it I know it I don't need to super test okay yeah but you the person who doesn't know you doesn't know that about you and tell you prove and then that they're gonna have to spend money with you like to test it when they don't know if you really understand the basics so I think that's a good place to start I think the like if anything just having integrity it goes a long way just be honest upfront don't try to tell somebody you're gonna be able to rank them number one overnight or the next few days or you know just beyond say this is what its gonna take here's what I've done in the past hopefully can you know people are starting this aren't starting completely from scratch at least have done something in this world before maybe it wasn't working for another company doing it but like you least say hey this is the kind of stuff I did before here's what I was able to do like we went from drinking nothing in the top hundred which results do we have these 15 keywords because of the quark I did hear hear hear hear you know those are things that I think you know to go far in just business in general I like that I like it a lot um how do you how do you define success for yourself oh that's interesting I mean obviously you know obviously financial success is important enough to you know be able to support my family the kids everything you know my household that's all that that's you know important to me but ultimately I like being able to have like my times I liked I played hockey you know with my my brothers a bunch of dumb adults that you know are too old to be out there and I like doing I like being able to have weekends away or go out you know they'll take my car go our vacations all that stuff those isn't being able to do all that stuff is and you know the beauty of it too is if I ever really needed to pop over the laptop long as a Wi-Fi connection somewhere I can work you know I don't have to be sick I don't have to sit chained to a desk you know from 9:00 to 5:00 and do every you know it some people have no problem I did that for a lot of years but I love the flexibility now that think you have that flexibility sometimes means I am up at 3:00 a.m. working you know working on something to have to be done you know so I take the good with the bad and ultimately if I can have the freedom to enjoy my life and that's I think the most important that's solid solid well Peter this is awesome thank you so much for making the time I know you're a man yeah you're staying busy with so many clients and that's definitely so yeah I mean let's totally keep in contact for sure yeah absolutely man because I you know I know skill level two so your skill set we could I'm sure there's some some way there could be some more synergy and beyond these things this is cool though yeah well you know it goes back to I mean what else talking about the content are I like I'm serious like I'm at the point where I've been the creative guy I've been kind of the artist side yeah I've become more realistic to actually grow and provide even more results for the clients I do have yeah it's I've got a pull in a numbers guy like someone who knows who knows typical marketing so yeah when I do get to that point in the near future let's we should sync up and talk yeah for sure need that that wisdom in that strategy cold in from you so cool and you know you got my information anytime you have like something pops up your question about anything feel free to shoot up I mean I might not respond that second but I'll get back to you as I can Joannie cool boy hey thanks Peter we'll talk soon awesome AJ Gator's everybody cheers taker

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