Dear marketer and entrepreneur:
I was recently browsing on my business Upwork account and realized Iâve hired 220 contractors in the last 7 years (as Iâm writing this).
It made me gasp....
That's a lot of hires!
Why am I telling you this?
Because after all these years of hiring experts, I have a pretty good idea about whoâs going to be a great hire, whoâs going to be a âmehâ hire, and who do I need to run fromâŠ
November 4th, 2015 is when I found my first unicorn.
It was for a personal project.
Jay was a writer at $35/hr, who wrote the most amazing content you could think of.
He was from, guess where?
The Philippines. đ€Ż
I had to go through 37 writers to find him.
Writers from all over the World, including the US.
He wrote at the quality of a $75-$100/hr native US writer and at the speed of light!
(I may be exaggerating with the speed, but you know what I mean).
As you may guess, he started to write a lot of my clientâs contentâŠ
...untilâŠ
He got a full-time job offer...
And just like thatâŠ
Poof!
He was gone.
Why am I telling you this?
(You knew that though).
You need to dig and go through A LOT of applications, agencies, consultants and then... some more.
But who has the time to go through 37 applicants?
At best you may go through 10⊠TOPS!
And in the real World, you're likely going to go through maaaaybe 5.
Now, did you know that 84% of agencies and consultants produce average or below average results?
I was shocked when I found out...
Weâre talking about being VERY lucky to find above-average results (not even close to Unicorn).
And the size of the agency doesn't change the type of results you may get.
I've been hired as a contractor for big agencies with clients in the $80+ million/year and I have consulted agencies with 250 to 600 clients...
And let me tell you, I've seen how agencies waste money and upsell stuff that is not in their client's best interest.... I've even seen things that I think are borderline illegal.
That means...
Iâm talking about an SEO expert with 7-10 years of experience that has been involved in multiple industries, helped multiple business sizes, B2B, B2C, someone that can bring the best strategies from all these industries and apply them to your business.
I have an acquaintance that after 6 months out of college was managing mid-size clients for one of the Worldsâ largest CRM/Direct Marketing Networks.
6 months out of college!
Do you think he knew what he was doing?
No, he didnât!
And there are PLENTY of agencies out there with Junior SEOs like my fried that are handling important SEO projects...
THAT WON'T HAPPEN WITH ME OR MY TEAM.
Shouldnât this be a standard?
You expect a car to have an engine that works, right?
Imagine buying a brand new car and the engine doesn't work. How would you feel about that?
I'd be pissed off!
Unfortunately, if we get to talk and you've gone through agencies and consultants that didn't do what they said, it won't be the first time I hear about it (and won't be the last).
We have a client that was paying $4,500 a month and was receiving...
(wait for it):
two   blog    posts   per   monthÂ
(I spaced the words because this needed some dramatic space-between-words).Â
OK, OK, they were also submitting them to Google Search Console...
I thought it was a prank, but the face of the client told me differently.
Do you think that makes sense?
And no, the blog posts were not 5,500-word articles with 50 hours of research.
They were simple, average, blog posts.
I think this is one that may shock you (If you don't know about what's going on with agencies).
How many clients do you think a project manager handles at the typical agency?
Let me show you instead of telling you:
Source: Moz (managing 55 clients, haven't got to half of them in 5 months)
Source: Reddit (Managing 60 clients)
In the low end, it could be 30, in the high end, Iâve seen 100!
(yes, I handpicked those, but it's the norm out there)
Now, letâs imagine you ask one of these project managers a question specific to your campaign.
Do you think they know whatâs going on?
They may be able to find information, but if you get on a call, this is what youâre going to hear:
"Let me check with my team and I'll get back to you."
They donât own the campaign so theyâre a âmessengerâ.
And thatâs frustrating and a time-waster.
When you work with us, you'll be talking directly with the person that's on top of your campaign, not someone that needs to ask someone else about what's happening with your company
No more: "I'll check with my team and will answer in 24-48 hours."
Most agencies out there have a defined process they canât change.
Why?
Because their resources are not flexible.
Having a defined "one process for all" makes changing one thing in their strategies a major pain!
So if you change strategies, focus, etc., youâre stuck with a contract that wonât evolve with your business.
Am I flexing here?
It may sound like it, but I'm pretty serious about what I'm saying.
Skeptical?
You should be.
In a World plagued with agencies and consultants that disappoint, how could you trust another one by just reading what they say even if:
You shouldn't blindly trust what I'm saying.
You're likely "seeing me" for the first time (unless you're connected with me on Linkedin, or have read any of my content online).
So no "I want to marry you" on the first date.
It's easy to see at how someone talks, behaves, communicates, and if he/she complicates things instead of going straight to the point.
I personally like people that are direct.
With a "tell it how it is" attitude.
If they canât help me, donât have the time, itâs not a good fit, just tell me.
Now, direct doesn't mean being disrespectful or harsh.
It is telling you what's the best for you even if it's not what you want to hear.
You need someone that's interested in helping your company grow and asks a bunch of questions to make sure he or she understands exactly how to help you.
We usually talk about:
In fact, quite the opposite. People are usually glad they talked with me.
I hear things like:
"Thanks for being honest, it's refreshing (for example when I tell anyone they shouldn't pursue SEO)."
"I wish I'd found you earlier."
And stuff like that.
My request from you is to please only book a call if SEO is a channel that's important for your business.
Maybe you don't know yet and want to find out, and that's ok too.
But I like to waste as little time as you do.
Something else before you book a call.
Most people want to know if they can afford us.
"Jesus, what's our "typical" budget range?"
In business, there are always two sides.
So you're likely wanting to pay less than what I want to charge you.
We need to compromise at some range, though.
Our clients invest between $3k and $20k per month with a median of $5k/month.
I'm using the median because it is more accurate than the average.
We have two clients under $3k/mo but they're in special circumstances.
P.S. In our call, feel free to ask me how I found out 84% of agencies and consultants deliver average or below average results.
In a nutshell, this is what's all about
This B2B company wanted to become a leader in the ESG vertical. We helped them with their SEO strategy and implementation generating great results.
This is a local business platform for a specific industry where businesses can create a profile and visitors will contact them for hiring their services. The strategy is to rank in thousands of cities in the US. We focus on improving quality traffic instead of "raw traffic" and that resulted in less traffic but more conversions and revenue
This is a content aggregation website focused on the personal growth vertical. We helped them launch and strategize their SEO getting pretty good results.
We helped this eCommerce website increase sales by 700%+ Year over Year.
We helped this eCommerce site launch and grow