SEO Insights From Real-World Experience
Tim Fitzpatrick
MSP & B2B Professional Service Firm Marketing Consultant/Advisor | Fractional CMO | Build and manage your marketing engine to get where you want to go faster. | Remove Your Revenue Roadblocks
SEO is not black magic. And in today's episode, we delve into the practical side of SEO with actionable insights and strategies drawn from real-world experiences. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or starting out, our guests will provide valuable takeaways to enhance your SEO efforts and drive B2B growth.
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SEO Insights From Real-World Experience
Tim Fitzpatrick
SEO is not black magic. And in today's episode, we delve into the practical side of SEO with actionable insights and strategies drawn from real-world experiences. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or starting out, our guests will provide valuable takeaways to enhance your SEO efforts and drive B2B growth. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate growth. And marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Fernando Leon with me from Single Point of Contact. Fernando, welcome, and thanks for being here.
Fernando Leon
Hey, thanks for having me on your show.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Absolutely, man. It's nice to switch sides of the mic. I know it was on your podcast several weeks ago. So thank you for coming and joining me today. And I'm excited to dig into what you've learned with SEO in your experience as a marketer. You've been a marketer for a long time, so I'm excited to dig into that. But before we do that, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions to help us get to know you a little bit. Are you ready to jump in with both feet?
Fernando Leon
Let's do it. Let's go.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, man. So when you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Fernando Leon
With my wife and daughter and our dogs. We're either walking them, going to the park, or we're foodies, so we like to go out and eat and hang out. But yeah, very close to my daughter and obviously my wife. But yeah, that's what... We keep it casual out here.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And now, how many dogs do you have?
Fernando Leon
Two.
Tim Fitzpatrick
And what kind?
Fernando Leon
One is a Shitsu Maltese, who won't leave my side. And the other one is a rescue. And we don't know. She's like a terrier type of dog.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So they're on the smaller side?
Fernando Leon
They are small, yes. Ten pounders.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Oh, wow. Yeah, they're really small. Nice. So what's your hidden talent?
Fernando Leon
I guess I used to play the drums. I used to be part of a band, so that would be, I think, my only talent. Everybody in my family are very musically inclined, so they can either sing or play some type of instrument.
Tim Fitzpatrick
One of my buddies from college is a drummer, and I was always impressed. He could just listen to the music and start to do the beat. I was like, Dude, how in the world do you do that? I can't hear that stuff. That's an awesome talent, man. I'm jealous. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Fernando Leon
There's been so many, and from a personal side, I was given this piece of advice when it came to raising my daughter, that she is going to be attracted to men who are a template of me. They said, Hey, be the greatest dad you can be. In a sense, there's so many... That can be defined in so many ways. But the way I defined it as being patient, kind, loving, showing compassion, being an overall good person. But also, I was raised in a very, how would you say, rough environment. I have a little bit of that rough side on me. I wanted her to be tough, too, not be this soft kid. We weren't coddlers or anything like that. But yeah, it was that type of a device on the personal side was, I think, paramount on raising... She's an amazing human being who is just a far better human being than I am. On the professional side, I would say that marketing was the best piece of advice. You have to know. I'll take this from two angles. It's great that you can sell. I can sell, and I'm great at selling and all that. But if no one is knocking on your door, if no one is calling your phone, who are you going to sell to? It's like, What are you going to do? Yeah, referral and word of mouth is great, but that well is going to eventually dry up. You have to learn how to market yourself. There are so many components that go with marketing before you even go down that journey. But yeah, marketing, I think was... If I could go back 20 years, I'd be learning everything I could about marketing. I think that was probably one of the best pieces of advice that I was given.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people?
Fernando Leon
I'm incredibly fast. No, I'm just kidding. No, I'm actually really slow. What I'm... People are most surprised about me. I don't know how to answer that. I'm a very candid person who is, I guess, just... I speak my mind, right? So it's like, there's no surprises with me. What you see is what you get. So I really don't see any surprises where people are like, Oh, my God, I didn't know you would do that. It's like, No, that's who I am. I think people would be very surprised that I'm just really passionate about animals, right? If I could be out there rescuing animals, I would be doing that. They've changed my life. My child changed my life. My wife changed in my life. But boy, let me tell you, animals are just phenomenal creatures that can have an impact on your life.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. What success mean to you?
Fernando Leon
To me, success is having a great relationship with my daughter and my wife. That's it. If I have succeeded there, that's it. Yeah, that's my relationship with my family, obviously my extended family, but my close family, my daughter and wife, that's, to me, is raising a great daughter and having a relationship with my wife is probably my success story.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?
Fernando Leon
Oh, gosh.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Sitting at the drum kit?
Fernando Leon
I would say my happy place is going on a hike with my wife. We love going on our hikes. We do a hike two, three times a week, and we just connect. We discuss whatever goals are going on or whatever projects are going on or whatever is going on with my daughter. We'll discuss it. It's a great way to connect. You're just in touch with nature, and that's been my happy place.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, cool. I love it. And what qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Fernando Leon
People with... Quality people that are compassionate, moral values, are in touch with their moral compass, are generous people, not only with their time, but also with... I don't want to say monetary. It's not monetary. It's just more they're I think people that are just generous with their time and advice. People tend to hold back on giving people advice. If you ask for it, I think that's important to me. I think people need to connect in that fashion. One thing that I also admire in people is having difference of opinions and still coming together as a community to say, Hey, even though we don't agree on something, we can compromise on those beliefs or whatever. But people that are really narrow-minded and not open to new ideas or that's just such a turn off to me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
领英推荐
It's a drain.
Fernando Leon
Yeah, it can be. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, thank you for doing that. Let's talk a little bit about Single Point of Contact? What are you guys doing? I know you guys focus on a specific industry. Which industry are you working with? Tell us a little bit more about that.
Fernando Leon
Sure. We only work with IT service-based companies. What that means is there's a lot of small IT firms out there that don't have the bandwidth to deliver 24/7 help desk or even the expertise or knowledge because experience and expertise are two very different things. They don't know how to deliver a 24/7 SOC. With today's threats, every IT firm, if you're an IT service firm, you should be delivering some type of SOC solution around the clock. We're working with individuals that are building what they like to call the MSP side hustle. We're working closely with them. A lot of IT service firms that are on their way to be coming MSPs. They want to get away from the break fix. MSPs that need that after-hours help desk. And then MSSPs, managed security service providers that maybe they don't have experience or the bandwidth to take on a larger opportunity. But those are the organizations we're working with. I did forget to include Vars. Vars are very… They have a mindset of a transaction. All their relationships are transactional. They're like, Okay, we sold this hardware. Let's move on to the next opportunity. It's like we're teaching them how to establish a relationship with that client they just had a transaction with into a long-term relationship where they deliver value, value in a transaction. It's just like, pension in numbers, here's your bill, see you later. Working with them. VoIP service providers are also starting to work with us because they're losing clients to other MSPs who are bundling in VoIP services. So, yeah, it's all these firms in the IT service industry are approaching us because they're missing something or they... Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So you guys are providing outsource security operation center services. Are you doing help desk or do you just focus on SOC?
Fernando Leon
Yes, a lot of help desk. So we take on Overflow or we are the help desk. A lot of these small firms just want to focus on projects, consulting, selling, and account management.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it.
Fernando Leon
Building the team to deliver a 24/7 help desk and managing it and retaining their employees is starting to become a burden on them, and they're just sick of it. So they turned to us to do that help desk. And yeah, that's worked out very well.
Becoming an Online Authority in the Industry
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. So I know you mentioned this about marketing. Super important. You guys have become pretty strong online authority in the space. What have you guys done? What have you been focusing on to get to that place?
Fernando Leon
So It took us a while to get there, but we were able to accidentally, it was all by accident, to become the online authoruty. We just decided to, Okay, let's focus on this one industry. We accidentally said, Let's just focus on this one industry, and let's start creating content that solves problems for this one industry. We started publishing a lot of blogs, case studies, and miraculously, we started receiving 20 to 30 meeting requests every month. I don't want to say that I did it all. I had an SEO team that I work with that has been an integral part of becoming that online authority because there's a lot that goes behind in succeeding with SEO. You got to have a great website. It's got to be fast. You got to have great meta-tags. There's so much on-page, off-page, call-to-actions, navigate. It's just a long list of items you need to check off. But one of the most important things is content creation. We're creating podcasts, webinars, and we're creating blogs, case studies, articles. A lot of thought goes into that content creation. We're not just producing content to produce content. There's a lot of thought that goes into that. It's quite a bit.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Fernando, I want to pull out I want to pull out a couple of things that you just touched on that I think are super easy to overlook.
Fernando Leon
Sure.
Tim Fitzpatrick
One, you said it took a while, right? Oh, yeah. Despite what we all read about marketing, and unfortunately, there are people that over promise and under deliver all the time, right? Praying off of people's desire to get results quick. Marketing takes time. It takes consistent effort over a long period of time, which you guys have done. Now, even though it was an accident, I still want to pull this out and give you credit here for this. The choice you made to focus on one industry, Look, it's not the only way to be successful in marketing, certainly. But especially, I think it's one of the simplest ways to focus. And when you have that focus, you touched on this as well, man, now you can start to create content that is hyper relevant to that market. And the more specific and relevant it is, the better it's going to perform. And that's why I think there's such a benefit in focusing on a specific industry like you guys have done. The other thing that you touched on that I think is really important is you're not producing content just for the sake of producing content. There's strategy and a plan behind this. Why are we doing this? And what is the end result that we want to get from this? Which is so, so important because, man, when we create content with a strategy and a plan, as we progress through it, we're starting to create much better assets and much stronger assets rather than just creating random content and hoping something, some of it is going to stick.
Lessons You Can Learn from Outsourcing Marketing
Tim Fitzpatrick
So you have an SEO team that you work with, that's an outsource team, correct?
Fernando Leon
Correct.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Let's go down this path just a little bit because I know a lot of IT providers, MSPs, man, they struggle to hire when they're outsourcing marketing. I think one of the reasons that happens is there's a number of them, but I think one of them is they're hiring expecting it's just going to be an easy button and everything's going to be outsourced and they don't have to worry about it. But two, they're hiring for something that typically is not in their wheelhouse. It's not in their area of expertise. And that can be very challenging.What have you learned in outsourcing marketing? And are there any mistakes that you've made that you learned from? What can share there that might help folks?
Fernando Leon
The mistake that I've seen across a board based on conversations I've had with other IT service from... Because I have these same conversations that you're having. It's like, they all feel like it's the silver bullet. It's going to be the answer to all their prayers and that it should start working within weeks. And I I have to give them a reality check. It's like you have to recalibrate your expectations because this is a journey. They feel, not all of them, but some of them feel like, Okay, I do SEO for a year and it's over. No, this is not a start and stop type of situation. This is a journey, not a destination. You have to You have to really think about what content you're going to be producing because SEO is just not about optimizing keywords. It's really about the content that is speaking to your audience. If you're producing content about how to solve or how a small business should solve a printer problem, I don't know if that's really any of value to a small business. Small businesses don't want to know the technical steps to solving a printer problem. That's not what we're talking about here. When you talk about strategy, that's where you have to sit down with somebody and say, Look, this is who my industry is. This is who our target audience is. This is the size of the firm, blah, blah. I'm targeting CEOs, et cetera, et cetera. A great marketing person will tell you, Okay, these are the key words you need to focus on. This is the content you should about. SEOs, they don't know that. Seos are really just the conduit between you and your audience. They're delivering that message to that audience. You really have to sit down and think about the challenges your audience have and then write on those challenges. Because if you don't, you're just going to be wasting money on SEO if you don't do that.
Tim Fitzpatrick
This is a really good point that I think is easy to overlook.
Fernando Leon
Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Many MSPs, and frankly, just businesses in general, approach that marketing agency expecting them just to do everything and put everything together, when in reality, most of the time, they really don't understand your audience. So you have to have a clear understanding of your target market and the ideal clients that you want to work with. And you have to be able to clearly communicate communicate that to whoever you're outsourcing your marketing with. You need to know your target market, tell them who your ideal clients are, and I think you also need to be able to give them a messaging playbook to just say, Hey, this is what we say. This is what our company is about. This is how we're different. That, to me, is the fuel for the marketing vehicles that that agency is going to implement for you, whether it's SEO, content creation, social media. You got to give them the fuel that's going to help them be successful. Otherwise, they have vehicles, but they don't have fuel. It's tough. I think it is a huge mistake to go to an agency expecting them to do everything because most, not all, but most are not good at strategy. They're great at implementation. If you come to them with a clearly telling them what you need support with, they'll help you with that. But don't expect them to understand your business inside and out because they're not.
Fernando Leon
Yeah, exactly. The other point that I want to make on SEO, it's escaping my mind now. You were just touching on it. Oh, yes. This is the other mistake a lot of companies make is you're building a brand. If you want business owners, especially CEOs, to consider you credible, reliable, and trustworthy, and a resource they should turn to for support, you got to build trust. You got to build a brand that says, Hey, we're producing content that solves your problems. And as people, as businesses read your content, they're going to start trusting you. They're going to start building rapport with you because they're following your company on LinkedIn. They're following your page, maybe on Facebook. They get your newsletter. If you're producing quality content content that touches on their pain point, you will eventually turn them into a client or an opportunity to at least meet with them and talk to them about their challenges. Because no one is just going to trust you just because, Hey, I'm a great IT guy. That is the worst approach to say, Hey, I provide tech services, and I provide this security tool, endpoint detection and response to keep your computer safe, and we quarantine it with AI if they're attacked, and blah, blah, blah. People don't want to hear that. They want to hear value. What is the value you bring to my company. Let me tell you, Tim, to deliver that value message in a blog or a social media post or a podcast, Man, it can be challenging. You really have to put a lot of... Just like you said, you have to put a lot of thought into that strategy. This is the other sad thing I hear with a lot of IT companies, and this is a lot. It's hard to hear sometimes. I've been in IT for 20 years. My business has been around for 20 years, and we've only relied on word of mouth. I go, That's all you do. And so many of them say, Yeah, that's all we do. I go, You're either growing or you're dying. You cannot rely on word of mouth or referrals for new business. You got to go out there and get it. This world has changed, and you're in an industry that is just flooded with IT service companies. What's going to make you different? And what's your message of value to earn that meeting, right? Earn that business.
Tim Fitzpatrick
The way I think about it is having a business that is 100% referral is like riding a unicycle. If the tire goes flat, you're screwed. So business owners that want to grow past a at a certain point have no other choice but to start to expand into other marketing channels to bring more consistency and reliability to their growth. Look, if you're happy with where you're at and you don't want to go any further, that's fine. Who am I to say that's not the right thing? But if you do want to grow past that certain point, you will hit a ceiling with referrals because they're not scalable and they're not predictable. It's still a great way to generate leads, but you have to have other channels. So shifting from riding a unicycle to being on a three-wheeler or a four-wheeler is a much better place to be because if one of those tires goes flat, you're still going to get to the destination. They take you a little longer, but you're still going to get there.
Is SEO Black Magic?
Tim Fitzpatrick
I have a feeling I know how you're going to answer this question, but with SEO, I started this episode out. It can feel like it's black magic to some people. But I mean, is it myth, luck? Can anybody do this no matter what industry they're in?
Fernando Leon
Oh, gosh. That's a great question. Because I work with other industries. I help other CEOs of other industries with their own challenges, with their own marketing challenges. They all have different audiences. They're targeting consumers, different strategy from B2B. They all have challenges. This is not just an IT service industry challenge. This is across the board. I would say that the IT service industry is in a very unique position because 99% of their competitors in their area are doing nothing for marketing. They have such a huge opportunity to become that thought leader in their area, gain all this market share because their competition is ignoring the online marketing strategy to to go after businesses that are searching for them because thousands of searches are made every month for IT services in every big city. Now, if you're in a city with a thousand citizens, SEO is the wrong approach. I would not recommend SEO for somebody like that. But in most big cities, in all big cities, you need to be investing in SEO. There's no way around it. I see so many services out there that are still talking about old-school methods, and I'm just looking at them going, Wow, okay, that's fine. If it was working for you, great. But I really feel that SEO is just like you just said earlier. It's the simplest way to start generating new business. I agree with you. It's the simplest and the least expensive way to start getting huge opportunities. Let me tell you, we've huge opportunities. Huge. I did forget to mention that we used to target all industries. Before we started going with just targeting one industry. We decided, Hey, you know what? Let's go after every industry out there. This is what we discovered because we would run our reports and determine, Okay, why did we lose? Why are we not getting into these larger opportunities? It's because they were picking an IT firm that worked in their specific industry. We weren't the leaders. We weren't the thought leaders in that industry. They were picking IT services firms that had a dozen businesses that are in their same industry, that prospect that approached us. It was disheartening. That's when we made that shift of, Okay, let's just target one industry and see how that goes. It's paid off for us. It's done very well.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
I think that's a huge takeaway from the stuff that you've shared today. You've shared a ton of great stuff, Fernando. Any last minute thoughts words of wisdom you want to share with us?
Fernando Leon
The only thing that I would tell IT service industries or any CEO in the service industry is that marketing is not a destination. It's a journey. Pick good people that understand strategy, understand your business model, and that have resources that can make you that online authority, because it can be done. It's not a myth. It's not magic. It's not any trickery, smoke and mirrors. I wish I can control Google searches, but Google wants to point your firm to... They want to provide their customers with great information. And if you're that online authority that is going to answer the problem to their client, they will point you to your site. We're not just a... This is one of the reasons I love SEO and Google, the Google platform is, this is not about company I outrank my competitors that are in the 12, 14-figure... They're generating that much business. They're much bigger than me. So So this is not about company size or amount of revenue you generate. This is about, okay, who's producing the best quality content that solves problem for this audience? So that's what it comes down to. So you can beat your biggest competitor, produce better content, have a great strategy in place.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it, man. Where can people learn more about you or connect with you?
Fernando Leon
They can find me on LinkedIn, and also they can reach out to me on email, [email protected]. They can email me any questions. I'm mentoring people. I mentor other CEOs of IT service firms. It's They need a lot of guidance. They need a lot of help. They need to be pointed in the right direction.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. I love it. We'll make sure those links are in the show notes. Fernando, thank you so much, man, for taking the time. I really appreciate it.
Fernando Leon
You got it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Those of you that are watching, listening, appreciate you as well. If you want to connect with us, you can do that over at rialtomarketing.com, RIALTOMarketing.com. The other place is over at RevenueRoadblockScorecard.com. So when we work with clients, we help them remove revenue roadblocks in nine key areas of marketing. If you want to know which of the nine are slowing down your growth, you can do that in less than five minutes over there. So, thank you again. Til next time. Take care.