Light that spark fire nation, JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like duct tape marketing.

Today we'll be sharing details on the low hanging fruits, Allah Google ads to drop these value bombs.

I brought Nick Sulakis into EO Fire Studios. Nick is a three time ink 5000 winner and founder of realtop.com, one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies in North America.

We'll talk about why Google ads are step one for your business. Why Google ads are a smarter investment than organic SEO and they're dirty little secret about Google ads that nobody wants us to know and so much more when we get back from thinking our sponsors.

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Nick say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

What's up fire nation what's going on john Lee do Moss thank you for having me one thing that I believe will help you become successful that people will disagree with is that it's all about hard work it's all about hard work I highly disagree it's not all about hard work it's about smart work.

And that's actually going to kind of be a little bit of a theme here today because one of the things we're talking about fire nation is people who worked so so hard to get that amazing organic SEO rolling in only to find out one day that it either stopped or something else happened and then all that hard work maybe evaporated into nothingness and other things around that as well but first off I do just want to say that you believe Nick that Google ads are step one.

In most small business marketing plans or at least that they should be the first step why do you believe that at least for digital marketing you know for those of you that have opened up like a retail location I get that people are walking in the door for those of you that have built a traditional referral based marketing machine I get that too right you might get some quick hits with friends and family sending you business but I think Google ads needs to be number one and the reason for that is we have a cash register you know you have a business that needs revenue.

So the idea of focusing on the long term strategy of building up your SEO or even building a brand recognition for the first year to three years of your business I mean it's just it's just a really good way to star for a while and it's just not necessary.

So I'm going to have to disagree with you a little bit it's not really disagreeing with you but it's kind of hammering the point home that even if you are retail business is needs to be step one I'm telling you right now because in Puerto Rico here one of the most miserable things the businesses do is they have zero.

Google presence their Google maps are in the wrong places no reviews it is just a disaster upon a disaster and the few in the very few businesses that do it right are crushing it as a result because you only get one chance I mean if I go to a wrong place where your restaurant supposed to be and it's not there or if I only see that there's one or two reviews for your place forget about it it's not even getting my attention and then all of a sudden one person goes to one restaurant has an immediate.

So one restaurant has an amazing experience and now I live in a community of thousands of people here in Puerto Rico everybody sharing with everybody that can make or break your business so this is so important for every single business out there and as I kind of tease a little bit about Nick in the beginning you know people

who live about the power of organic SEO because it can be so valuable and a lot of times it's free because you know you're putting in the work to make it happen why do you believe the Google ads are a smarter investments than organic SEO not only do I think it's a smarter investment I actually think it's a little irresponsible to solely rely on SEO and I'll tell you my own experience you know my my last company we relied heavily on SEO I spent you know you know you know you know you're not going to be able to do that.

You know you know 25 hours a day working on the SEO of our company and then loan behold one morning I woke up on a Saturday Google changed one of their algorithms and all of a sudden my rankings kind of went to hell and a hand basket right and and all of a sudden I've got a team of 20 sales people that rely on the leads coming from SEO and and they're gone so you know I had this reality check I was like wait a second Google

Facebook you know all these these platforms they're not nonprofit organizations okay they're making the majority the grand majority more than 90% of their revenue typically on add dollars so my whole thing is the only way that I can create predictable marketing on these platforms is by paying for it and I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing SEO

we offer to our clients every day it's a huge part of our marketing plans but I think people should be starting with paid marketing and and really try to try to get it into your heads that you know these are pay for play platforms okay you need to have a cost per acquisition predetermined early on when you're creating a business

and you need to take that cost per acquisition apply it towards your digital marketing plan and an understand you're going to be paying to get clients okay and it's the responsible thing because if you have a sales team you know if you put a thousand dollars into the Google machine it's going to spit out XYZ number of leads for your team the next day and they're going to eat if you're just playing the SEO game you don't have that same predictability

and that is a little irresponsible as a business leader for your team I like how this is a very left or right issue meeting like you're either understanding this fire nation or you're not because this is something that we really need to understand in our businesses that we have the ability to take control not allow Google to stay in control and change that algorithm one magical day and or devastating day whoever you want to look at it and either get hammered or potentially rewarded for whatever that you want to do

you know you're able to take control you're able to say look at I have a sales team I'm going to continue to be to get them the right leads because I know how to do just that and I know Nick that there is a dirty little secrets about Google ads that both the big boys and the big girls don't want us to know and they already know it what is that it's less marketing and it's more economics when I first started spending heavily on Google

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