In this training, you’ll learn about the foundational pieces you need to have in your business to set yourself up for success.
Transcript:
Let’s talk about your business foundation.
One of the things that is really important when you start marketing and you start branding and building your business, it’s important you have a solid foundation.
What does that mean?
Well I’m not going to mention names. We have a company right now that we’re working with… One of the issues was getting a lot of people into their funnel, and a lot of people that are coming in, but half of those people were not ending up becoming clients.
And so we had to fix the foundation in order to take care of the leads that are already coming in.
Now as appraisers, what you want to do… and this always surprises me when I talk to appraisers across the country… only about 35 percent of appraisers have a website.
And the most important foundational piece when you’re looking to diversify – whether you think you need one or not – is having a website. You have to have a Web site and it’s got to be unique.
It cannot be one of these expensive websites that looks really pretty but it doesn’t convert visitors into clients.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had appraisers come to me and say “Roy, I’ve had all these visitors and all these hits on my site this past month, it was great.” – And I’ll ask them how much work did you get out of that? “Well none – I didn’t get any.”.
That tells you that you may have an issue with your site, but the one thing and the main issue is most appraisers don’t have a site.
The key thing here is that is the key foundational piece of your business is in having your website because that’s where people are going to be going to learn about you.
People meet us online before they meet us offline. And if you want to learn more about the importance of a website, how to get them to rank, etc. You can learn more about that here.
Bottom line is the key foundational piece is your website. There’s a lot of people out there that develop websites. But here’s what you want to ask…
Whenever you’re looking to work with somebody to create your website, you want to ask them if they have done websites in the appraisal industry. Do you know what works for appraisers? Do you have proof? Can you show me proof that you have websites that are ranking and converting business clients?
Do you have referrals? Do you know how to rank these sites? Do you have proof of helping get a website ranking?
It’s really important that you work with a credible company that are doing these for you. Otherwise I’ve seen appraisers really waste money and sometimes thousands and thousands of dollars on websites that just don’t convert. And this is often people that are putting together websites in the past, but they weren’t from the industry. And the last thing you want to do is get something that’s one of these templated websites that looks like everybody else and you can’t customize because it doesn’t make you stand out.
So that’s what I wanted to touch on for setting up your business foundation. Your website is the number one piece because it’s like the hub that all of the spokes kind of evolve out of for your marketing and that’s where you’re going to be driving all of the people when you’re driving traffic. They’re all coming to your site.
The next thing for your business foundation is Facebook. And if you look at diversifying and growing your business, there is no bigger opportunity other than on Facebook. And I’m going to talk about LinkedIn here in a little bit as well.
We get so much work from Facebook and you can do it in so many ways, which we’re going to share how to do that a little bit later in this training. But you have to have a business Facebook page and those are easy to do. They’re free and there’s a lot of work in regards to branding and marketing your business on Facebook.
Once again we’re talking about the key foundational business pieces you have to have in place. Starting with a website, Facebook business page, and then the next thing is a Google Plus business listing.
We use this primarily for a couple reasons. One is so that we can get listed on the search engines (especially Google) and the other thing is to get reviews.
But you have to have a Google business listing. We don’t really use it as a social media platform whatsoever, but this is something else that if you don’t have this, it’s something that is free and it’s really important to have that.
The next thing is for your business foundation is (and I can’t emphasize it enough)… LinkedIn.
This is something I’ve ignored for many many years. I never really needed it. Even quite frankly now we don’t because we are in maintain or monitor mode for our Appraisal Business, but LinkedIn is something you really want to have as a foundational piece as well.
There is so much opportunity between Facebook and LinkedIn. There is so much work out there.
Once again it’s free.
The issue I see with most LinkedIn profiles is most people talk about how great they are and all the things they’ve done instead of crafting their profile in a way that talks about the problems you solve for your clients.
You want to make sure that your profile is optimized and it addresses how you help your clients.
The pain points that you solve, not about how great you are and all the great things you do.
Make sure if you do have a LinkedIn profile, if you will be setting one up, (which I highly recommend)… that you make sure you’re crafting your message for more about how you help people, and how you solve their pain.
And then the last thing is your YouTube channel. This always scares everybody. It scared me in the beginning! It doesn’t mean you have to do videos all the time. I’ll be sharing more about why you need a YouTube channel in another training.
There’s other things you can be doing, but these are your foundational pieces.
And four out of the five are free. Facebook Business page, your Google business listing, your LinkedIn profile, and your YouTube channel are all free to set up and that you can be using in your business.
Questions or comments? Leave a comment below or talk about it in our free Facebook group.
