2016: What's your marketing budget?

Question

Sean Dolan · Answer

@William Allen I'm not trying to be a bully here, but I work in the  SEO/PPC space, and we have clients come to us to fix their SEO because they took the wrong advice (or worse, hired them), and it ruined their business. Millions in revenue lost overnight, and they have to fire their entire staff. And we can't take every case on, some are beyond repair, so we refer them out to someone who can help them start all over again.

So, I may seem a bit overly sensitive when someone is giving advice on a topic, without any proof they've achieved the results they are advising others on. It can be really dangerous to someone who has a lot to lose. And to be giving SEO advice through a Virtual Assistant? I can't even respond to that politely, so I won't. If I was taking house flipping advice from someone on this form, and found out they had never once flipped a house, I would be pretty disenchanted.

William Allen · Answer

@Sean Dolan

I read a lot of Antonio's blog posts when I was preparing my website and he certainly has some great knowledge of SEO and online marketing.  I have gotten some good tips from his posts, however the spelling in the past few posts makes me wonder if he is using a cheap VA to respond to certain keywords on here.  It is way worse than just the few that you make when responding on a phone.  Shocking.  Sorry Antonio, had to call you out on that...

Let's move this conversation back to where it started.  What is your marketing budget for the year and how does it compare to what you were doing last year?  I have committed to a healthy marketing budget this year and have a few strategies lined up including direct mail.  However, I don't have much to compare it to last year as we only did a small marketing campaign of 800 letters for 3 months.  This year I put systems in place to allow me to do a lot more.

Sean Dolan · Answer

@Antonio Coleman I don't see how it would be promoting your own service to mention keywords you've successfully ranked for. People post how much money they've made, pictures of homes, and lots of other evidence of their successes. I'm just asking for a couple keywords you've successfully ranked for with the SEO advice you're sharing on this forum.

Antonio Coleman · Answer

@Sean Dolan If you look at my first response you will have seen this line.

"At this moment, I'm focusing on two markets. One which is "local marketing" which I'm going after "local SEO marketing. Right, about now I'm jumping from page 2 to 9 all day every day. This"

It says that I'm moving all around "PAGE" 2 to 9, not page 1. Plus I said that I just started this year trying to rank for that keywords, which when it comes to SEO it takes months to get to #1, it doesn't happen over night.

Finally, I can show you tons of keywords I rank for, but my over goal was to answer your question with value, and not to sell any services I provide.

Sean Dolan · Answer

@Antonio Coleman Sorry, I'm just confused that you claimed to get a ton of SEO traffic, and you offer SEO services, but you can't seem to provide a single example of anything you've successfully ranked for. I didn't find your site in the top 10 pages for "local SEO marketing" either.

Antonio Coleman · Answer

@Sean Dolan Over the years I've careted tons of content around the local marektign market. Now I'm ranked for keyword that I didnt even optmize for which is normal. You as you write content, and perfomr seo on the varis of blog post then you see growth thrpuhgut the search engine for your content.

Just this year I've taken the approash to rank for the two keywords I listed above. At this time I'm not on the page for them, so I'm gettogn any traffci for them as of now. But in due tiem when they reasch the frist page, this is when I will see atrgetd taffic.

To give you exaplmes of keuywords I can rank for..well that's unlimmited. There is nothign I can't rank for, but the issue comes down to the authoryt of that term that determian the linked of time of getting tot he first page.

Sean Dolan · Answer

@Antonio Coleman can you give me a couple examples of anything you rank on the first page for? You said that you're recieving so much SEO traffic that "getting traffic is not an issue" so it's unlikely you're getting all this traffic from 2nd -9th page results - just curious if you can give a few examples of the terms that are bringing you all this traffic.

Antonio Coleman · Answer

@Sean Dolan At this moment I'm focusing on two markets. One which is "local marketing" which I'm going after "local SEO marketing. Right, about now I'm jumping from page 2 to 9 all day every day. This is the norm because of the Google dance. When doing SEO, Google sees what you're doing but in the meantime your site jump around like a pinball. That search term is very competitive, am talking about thousands of search per month.

Next I have a new project for this year to rank #1 for "real estate marketing" which gets thousands of search per month. So I created some good epic-wow content around that keyword on my website for real estate investors teaching them how to implement real estate marketing the smart way called "How To Guide: Real Estate Marketing That Works in Every State, City or Town" just Google it

I'm not ranked yet since I just started this project which will take anywhere from 6monts to a year to get to #1. But I'm doing a monthly report on my website for those who want to follow along to see what I'm doing to rank it.

Besides that I'm ranked for hundreds of keywords, but these are my focus for this year bro.

Sean Dolan · Answer

@Antonio Coleman what keywords do you rank for that bring you traffic?

Antonio Coleman · Answer

@Sean Dolan how thinsg goign bro. Marketign bufget can be broking up in many stagtes. Honestly I don't spend too much on marektign since I do lots of SEO, so gettng traffic is not an isuess. But what i will say if people plan on spending money oin 2016 then I will say focus on the following.

Facebook Ads

Google Adwords

Local SEO Marketing

These three togtehr will bring in tons of leads..if implemntented the right way.