 So a couple of things that Brittany didn't tell you about me I've been through and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I've been through extensive therapy Yes Retail therapy that is You can follow my high heel shoe collection on Instagram at merida shoes 22 I Really do dig my shoes post pictures of them as I travel speaking at conferences all around Super fun, and if that doesn't tell you that I'm a marketer by the fact that my shoes have their own channel Then let me share with you my most coveted marketing credential Yes, I bear a striking resemblance to flow the progressive girl right oh My word When I got up on East Coast time this morning at 4 a.m. And put all of this work into my appearance I can assure you what I was not going for was hey You know who you look like? flow the progressive girl That's just Awful really As Brittany mentioned I am the very lucky and proud Co-founder and president of Meredith communications. We I founded it in 2001 at the beginning of the internet. Yes. I am that old We manage SEO and ad words for home builders to give you an idea We're a team of eight. We're all virtual on average. We build about 30 websites a year We have 28 SEO clients on retainer currently 25 on ad words Handful of Facebook ads and and so forth. So just to give you an idea of our stats and where we're at But the stat that I'm the most proud of is this one 90% You see we have an SEO client retention rate of 90% and We've worked really hard to get it and I'm here today to share with you the number one and only Reason that you keep getting fired by your SEO clients So if you're an agency in the house, this is right down your lane if you are In-house marketer your clients are your bosses and your decision makers And I hope that you will get something from this as well So how did we get to 90%? Well, we weren't always there at the very beginning of the company We churned and burned through SEO clients faster than Kim Kardashian could take a selfie Yep, they would just love us and leave us. We could be getting them fantastic results an Agency folks with me in the room or in-house people. Don't you sometimes feel completely invisible to your clients? Don't you feel like sometimes you are delivering incredible value? You're killing it in the rankings You're giving them the reports. You're doing everything you can and they just don't see you and the next thing you know Because you can't get the owner's favorite phrase on page one, which by the way has zero search traffic inner loop Houston new homes. Hello Because you can't get the owner's favorite phrase on page one you are fired Well, we'd hit this brick wall and I was sick and tired of it and I sat down with my mastermind group and I said, what do I need to do? You know, here's what I'm thinking. I'm just gonna can SEO completely I'm just gonna focus on the full-time speaking gigs on digital marketing write the books whatever and my mastermind group looked at me and said So you're telling me you're going to abandon the recurring revenue That's currently 40% of your business for up and down revenue for conferences That sometimes they pay you to speak and sometimes they do they're like, no, we're not doing that. I said, well, what are we doing? They said, well, how are you currently communicating your value? So we email them reports every month every month We produce PDF after PDF after PDF after PDF after PDF when the Moz reports come into my inbox every month It's a great day and we send out those reports and they were like, yeah, so what? So they suggested and we implemented several years ago a proactive Required meeting with our clients every single month. Now. Remember, I'm industry niched So my clients aren't local to me necessarily they're all over the country. So I can't necessarily get to their office So we do a virtual meeting every single month and I'm gonna break down for you how we do it but the focus of this meeting and what I hope for you to take away whether you're in-house or agency is That while we're spending time meeting with them, my focus is to educate them I want to inspire you motivate you help you think about your communication style today And I want you to think about communicate to educate communicate to educate Whether you're in-house or agency the fact of the matter is your decision-makers your bosses your peers They have no idea what you're doing Because they don't understand it and how do we expect? To keep them loyal to us if they don't understand you see we communicate for many many different reasons We communicate to inspire we communicate to motivate we communicate to inform we communicate to persuade We communicate to condescend There are a lot of reasons we communicate but not all of them are with the focus of Education and what does it mean to actually educate someone and teach them what you do? Because in the 17 years that I've been running this agency what I can tell you is I have never ever Had a client call me a potential new client call me and said Meredith we're thinking of leaving our current provider and coming over to you because we got so much information And we know everything that we're doing and we're so informed on everything that we're doing that we think will cancel and hire you No, what do they say every time you get a new? Lead in that for your your agency. They say we don't what? we don't Know what they're doing and I think to myself I'm about to get one and keep them because I will communicate to educate so how does the monthly call work all right number one This is critically important to the process. We proactively schedule these web Conferences all right So I do not send them a link to a calendar app and put the work on them and say here You need to sign up for a time No, our scheduler reaches out to them and also it's very clear to them that when they engage us that This meeting with me is mandatory and required Not everybody makes it every month, but most of them make it so it sort of makes it sort of elite and exclusive That this is the part of doing business This is the partnership that we've agreed to so we proactively schedule number two We remind and confirm the heck out of it, so we will send them a reminder 24 hours. We'll attach the reports When we actually have the call we're using zoom currently we've used to go to meeting we've used web apps We've used all the tools Here's how the hour-long meeting works. I ask for an hour. Sometimes I only get a half an hour I'll take 15 minutes because what I can prove time and time again is that the more I get to Communicate to educate with these folks the longer. They'll stay with us Now I did have this one incident this time one time with the webcam So most of the time since we're a virtual team. I'm not necessarily webcam worthy every day that I'm working So most of the time I don't turn on the webcam and we just do its Screenshare and you know audio that type of thing Well early on in doing these I hadn't realized yet that there was a setting where you could click Video doesn't automatically come on. I had just returned from the gym Yeah, super sweaty hair and a ponytail ball cap and no makeup The next thing I know as I hear the client coming through the call Hey, Meredith. Hey, we can actually see you and my instant reaction was this you ready? Down I went down I went below my desk and then it occurred to me They can see that I just ducked beneath my desk and that's when the client goes like this. We can see you Now I'm thinking how do I get out of this? Like I'm down here So I recover with the oh just dropped my pin Hi guys, and I just kept going like I don't care that you're seeing me in this state. So Auto settings no video automatically very important the way that the call breaks down the first 30 minutes are on reporting I go through the Google Analytics reports through the Sprout social reports through the Moz reports I live in this tool every single day. I love it And then once we're done in that half then the Next half of the call is where the money is You want to hear where the money is? The second half of the 30 minutes is their open mic I call it open mic time and they get to ask me anything they want if they don't want to talk about Our reports and what we thought I don't really care They want to talk about this one particular cells associate They're having trouble with or this one product that isn't moving. I don't care They get me during that time to brainstorm with them and figure out what they need And that's where we make the money and lastly I always in the call with action items not only for myself but for them Because I want to transfer ownership Look, I'm not marketing my business. I'm marketing their business And if they want to sell more homes and make more money then they've got to be actively involved with it So I almost always think up of a homework assignment and I give it to them and I make them do it So my wish for you my hope for you for this call today whether you're in-house or agency is I want you to be bold I Want you to think big and I want you to think about your communication style and really what are you trying to do? When you're talking to whether it's your in-house team or your boss or your agency and it's a client Are you talking to them to persuade them to motivate them to educate them? I think it's education that they need They want to know how to do it Debunk the myths tell them what SERP actually means I get them in the crawl error reports And I'm like see this is what a 404 is and this and you would think they would just know they eat it up They have no idea what I'm saying and they don't care And if you have a fear that if you teach them too much, they're gonna do it without you a they can't and Be they won't your value only goes up The other thing I found is I share my frustrations with them So frequently if we've got a phrase that we have just been pulling our hair out We've been working on it for a month. We've been blogging on it We've done all the right things and it's still not moving in the right direction and getting the kind of results We want I will say to them. This is so frustrating and We talk about it openly so communicate to educate What's your next step at this link? I put a Detailed doc of our monthly call process and procedure. There's a lot more to it than I actually described Also posted to my marketing books for the PDFs if you want to download those so those are for you The other night I was at Tijuana flats It's a kind of a funky edgy Tex-Mex restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina where I'm out of and it was Pouring outside. So we were several of us were kind of trapped inside the restaurant And I had left my phone in my car and I couldn't go get it because again pouring So I actually looked up from my table Imagine that and looked around and I see this cute little family sitting over here Jam and out to purple rain Was going on on the overhead thing and they're like All right, and their kids are looking at them like I hate you You are really weird, right? And so the next thing I know I'm like And we're like, oh, yeah, and then the next thing I know I look over here And here's a table of I'd say college age Whatever kind of that and they're doing it And we're all going and then purple rain comes off goes off and my personal favorite I am a child of the 80s. Oh My guilty-pleasure bond jovi comes on and the next thing I hear over the thing I hear Shut through the heart and I'm like you're too blame And I look over and the parents are doing it too like this and the kids are here doing it like this And we're all like this and then I thought to myself. I just got the closing to my speech at Mozcon Yeah, baby because I think these things I think this way because you see this is what it feels like At the end of every day my son comes home from the school He's ten his name is Brady and he says mom how many SEO calls today, and I say whoo Brady I did five today. I did four. I did three however many it is and I'm telling you when I do those calls and we are in Sync and we are in tune and we have brainstormed and we have clicked and the clients are selling and I'm getting paid It's like we've got a jam session going on Just shot through the and I am not to blame and With all of that comes together. Well folks that's simply fan fantastic