Zoom Meeting with Pro Engineering – July 24, 2024

Josh Ramsey

Yeah all right so really I mean we can take more time but I don’t three segments so I don’t know if you have this pulled together or you have questions but I see this kind of working in the in the scenario of there’s three sections we have you know outreach your proactive outreach to drive business new contacts into the business then you have your ongoing like people in the funnel working you know getting quotes we’re trying to stay in touch with them and then you have your ongoing touch points they haven’t been in touch with us

Josh Ramsey

They haven’t shared any quotes. It’s been whatever period of time, whether that’s, you know, 30 days or, you know, 30 years, whatever that number is, it’s an outreach back to those people.

Josh Ramsey

Then the marketing needs to be built around that, those three levels. what I can do is I send you a report, I said, talk about it, but you can see there what, what simply we would do is I would work with Ryan to say here are the KPIs that we need us to show or mean.

Josh Ramsey

Like if when we have the budget, then I can say, okay, Ryan, how many new reach people are we trying to get?

Josh Ramsey

How many do we have? How are we tracking that? How many are you actively running? How many do we have in this bucket?

Josh Ramsey

Then we can dedicate the budget out to each of those to say, okay, so for instance, just throwing random numbers out there.

Josh Ramsey

If you said, hey, Josh, put, you know, $1,000 on each. Okay, the math becomes real simple. $1,000. How much?

Josh Ramsey

How can we generate leads for? What are we doing to generate those leads? Where do we spend that thousand?

Josh Ramsey

And the next one is, hey, ongoing pipeline. Well, you have to look at your pipeline and say, if you have a hundred projects and it’s a thousand dollar budget, we even leave first set out to say, at any given time, we have a hundred projects and we have a thousand dollars.

Josh Ramsey

That’s what we have to work with, right? And then, you know, on the ongoing, if we have 500 in our CRM that we want to stay in touch with, and we have a thousand dollars, you know, then we’ve only got a couple of bucks to work with.

Josh Ramsey

So that’s where, again, using really stupid numbers, but that’s kind of the conversation that the long and the short, what I don’t want to do, Rameen, at times, is I always want to try to walk a fine line with my staff in any of my companies to not,

Josh Ramsey

Give them too much feedback and information that really should be kept at a C-level executive conversation rather than what have our salespeople and employees knowing the conversations and how we come up with budgets and why and expectations because I feel like I’ve experienced it where I can create either animosity or anger or you know more frustration or just a number of different scenarios where I didn’t want to have this even as this may be a short conversation I didn’t I don’t want to share that with Ryan and Trish on the front end it’s more of I’d rather go in and be like okay Ramine said a thousand dollars Ryan how many do we have and I don’t tell Ryan our budget I’m going to take the approach of Ryan how many do we have what do you think we need to do with them what’s our best case scenario and then come in and see if our budget matches that or I can get back with you and be like hey man

Josh Ramsey

And Ryan had these ideas. You and I were talking about $1,000. This is going to cost us five, not $1,000.

Josh Ramsey

And then you go, well, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, let’s do that. And then I’m able to kind of connect the pieces.

Josh Ramsey

But it’s kind of a, it’s not that you can’t bring right in on this, it’s that I’ve seen it not go well at times and that’s why I’m kind of taking this approach.

Ramin Parsi

Does that make sense? Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I think the first stab at it, at least. Hey, can you hear me, Josh?

Ramin Parsi

Rameen? Can you hear me? Yeah, no. OK, I don’t know. That might be my network. I don’t know.

Josh Ramsey

So it’s in China.

Ramin Parsi

I heard everything you said. But then I tried to talk it. Yeah, so but that makes a lot of sense.

Ramin Parsi

I think, yeah, the higher level approach. I think it’s definitely a good idea to have the budget in mind and come up with a plan.

Ramin Parsi

Then if it turns up that it’s short and some aspect or whatnot, then can use Ryan and Trish’s feedback to kind of reevaluate that.

Ramin Parsi

But yeah, I think that makes sense. And from my perspective, I think the probably the most critical is the initial outreach versus things that are already in the pipeline.

Ramin Parsi

I feel like that would be more of a, I think that’s more of a touch point thing where they need to be constantly checking back in with the client.

Ramin Parsi

So not necessarily having a budget for that, but rather making sure that the sales team CRM using Catalina, who’s the new hire, the new hiring to help them to go back and just touch on the client.

Ramin Parsi

So I think that’s, I think for people in the current funnel, I think that’s doesn’t need budget to be thrown at it, at least not too much.

Ramin Parsi

I would say the main places where we need budget are, like you said, new outreach or clients that we haven’t touched on in like, in like a year or, you know, maybe two years, all the way back to like 10 years ago.

Ramin Parsi

I think those are, those two buckets is where we want to put our money.

Josh Ramsey

Okay. So I’ll call on outreach and back reach. Have you thought I was trying to pull up some, some numbers here, but hadn’t you thought through

Josh Ramsey

What those budgets look like on a pre-limb?

Ramin Parsi

So, I used to, I haven’t updated my marketing budget plan in a while, but I was keeping an ongoing list of expenses.

Ramin Parsi

I think I have to go back and make sure it’s up to date, but I think I think I’m on a task to get hit like 200,000 for my yearly spend right now, so that’s including like your fees, including trade shows, including like just Ryan and Trish taking clients out to events, dinners, and those kind of things.

Ramin Parsi

I think right now it’s about 200k, so yeah, but like I said, I’m kind of at fault for not a habit.

Ramin Parsi

I haven’t updated in maybe two months, but I do have I do have that spreadsheet. So I should update it and get it get it up today.

Ramin Parsi

Me put it as an action item for myself.

Josh Ramsey

If you can put that together for me and get it to me, you know, within the next week, two weeks, then I will, I’ll take a right now, right now, the only benchmark that I’m looking at at this second on AdWords is worse.

Josh Ramsey

Our benchmark is on AdWords. $650 per lead.

Ramin Parsi

Okay.

Josh Ramsey

So that’s where we’re at right now. So you and I’ve never gotten down to the specifics of how much we’re willing to pay as a company per new lead.

Josh Ramsey

Did you ever track that down and identify your value of an new customer?

Ramin Parsi

Yeah, well, it is kind of high, in my opinion, but you said because it’s probably that’s probably due to our quality score, right?

Ramin Parsi

If we were to increase our quality score, we could reduce that 650 because I definitely think it’s worth it, especially for because one client has, let’s say on average, one architect has, you know, five to 10 jobs a year.

Ramin Parsi

Each one is about $5,000, maybe profit of that is lower, of course. Maybe each one is $1,000 profit. it.

Ramin Parsi

So maybe that one architect will lead to like, you know, $10,000, $15,000 of profit. So for a $650 investment, that’s not definitely not a bad thing, as long as it’s the right target, if it’s going to be like an architect that’s going to have repeat business for us.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, I mean, organically, we’re getting a lot more leads than a letter of lesser values. I mean, this is your event, so I’m going to share it stream for just a second.

Josh Ramsey

Me show you what I’m looking at. But these are the benchmarks that I want to hone in on. Just say, okay, we’re at $650 for paid ads, but SEO, we’re a lot better, because SEO would have to look, but I want to say, I don’t remember what you’re paying the agency, but we typically take a portion of whatever you’re paying the agency and we dedicate that.

Josh Ramsey

To maintenance and take the portion of it. We did it to like ongoing outreach on SEO side. So right here you have, get a quote 15, this is the last 90 days.

Josh Ramsey

So in the last 90 days, that’s three months, you’re talking three grand spend and it’s a whole lot better.

Josh Ramsey

You see this? click the email, 169, contact us form submission 58, phone calls 33, a quote 18 and get a quote 15.

Josh Ramsey

So the numbers are coming through on SEO. But what we need to do is continue to have Trish and Ryan narrow in and hit the target of knowing what our cost per sale is.

Josh Ramsey

Like what they’re actually closing. So, So I have Liza, who’s my new assistant, just listening in to take notes.

Josh Ramsey

Liza, an action item that I want you to write down is I want Ricky to go back in and probably Jimmy also to go back in and see and update me on the drop down or tags to track leads better in the CRM.

Josh Ramsey

Ricky might need to have a meeting with me on that, but let’s get with Ricky after this call and have him follow up on that again and see where we’re at and then have Ricky go in and also pull a source acquisition source for each lead in the CRM, all for pro And Liza, this is in the fathom as well, so you can share that with him and to make sure that he understands what that is.

Josh Ramsey

But when he watches this again, Ricky, I want to know. ultimately how we’re getting the leaves in by source.

Josh Ramsey

And primarily, I’m seeing that we’re getting a lot from online when they’re saying to get a quote. So I want to make sure what the source is and how they’re coming in and then project that in AdWords.

Josh Ramsey

So Ricky, you look at AdWords, I only saw two in the last two to three months in AdWords. I saw a lot in organics.

Josh Ramsey

So let’s see what we can find in that and get back with me on that, Ricky. Then, Rameen, back over to you and I’s conversation.

Josh Ramsey

One thing to always take note of is there’s a term that you probably heard that I use in marketing off and on, but probably should use it all the time, which is high tide raises all ships.

Josh Ramsey

There’s going to be a level of we don’t know if AdWords is really you and AdWords, they click. they like it, they remember your name, but then they leave.

Josh Ramsey

Then they go back and do a search and just for your name, and then they show up. You show up for your name organically, but we don’t pay for that.

Josh Ramsey

Therefore, we get that lead and we attribute it to SEO, even though it’s very likely that that lead attribution came from paid ads.

Josh Ramsey

Does that make sense?

Ramin Parsi

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I myself do that. If I search something and then if I see that the same company has the AdWords ad and then I scroll down and then I see their organic listing and I probably click on their organic listing, but because I saw them twice, I had more confidence in them.

Ramin Parsi

Sometimes by having an AdWords posting that also elevates your … Does that elevate your organic listing results or not necessary?

Josh Ramsey

Fairly. Yes, because it’s it’s called like brand. So with your brand, the bigger your brand is, the more you’re going to rank, like you’re going to have you’re going to have more with that.

Ramin Parsi

Okay. Okay. So that’s another reason. And then so and then based on your budget, I guess it’s how many times you’re going to appear.

Ramin Parsi

So it would elevate those things. So yeah, from that perspective, um, I think that could that that side effect in itself could be a good enough reason to to, um, you know, have a have some sort of a budget, even if even if the cost per click is yeah, isn’t it?

Ramin Parsi

I mean, you know, here’s what to kind of pay attention to here six months over six months. Okay. Over previous period.

Ramin Parsi

So basically the last 12 months, but screen shot in the last six months and in the previous six months, the

Ramin Parsi

previous, so if you look last six months, that’s like January to now, right? And then you look at the back end would be, you know, June, like I call it July 24 of 2023 to December of 2023.

Ramin Parsi

And then this one, this number here, last six months would be 2024. So we’re comparing the six months but what you can see is we’ve done a better job with our clicks.

Ramin Parsi

So the SEO has really done his job because we’re up 0.2% and click through rate. But impressions were down, but we’re down in impressions because they’re not searching.

Ramin Parsi

People aren’t searching as much. Okay, got it.

Josh Ramsey

So that’s what it’s telling us is people aren’t searching so we’re not getting, we’re not getting that. This is what I looked at when I pulled that number and I said 650.

Josh Ramsey

That’s where you’re at, because the cost, and we have two, only two conversions hit. And this is where Ryan did confirm back a couple of weeks ago that these did come first.

Josh Ramsey

So in May 8th and then in June 18th, he did confirm that he got those leads. I didn’t never hear if he closed them or not, but he did confirm that he got those.

Josh Ramsey

And then we go down here and we look at our overall rankings from some rush reporting. So you can see the SEO has increased as well.

Josh Ramsey

Organic traffic is up. Come on. So, you can see that there’s been a steady growth in organic traffic. We’ve taken a nice big jump here, June to July, and that’s why page one has come up and we’re getting found here in different features.

Josh Ramsey

So, we’re getting tagged in position zero and other things like that. So, the breadcrumbs, that’s all coming through. So, that’s why we’re getting more traffic here, is because of this getting found there, but then page one.

Josh Ramsey

So, you can see that we’re up, you know, 29, our peak was September 3, 44, and, you know, 1,200 and 1,000, but we’re still coming up, which is what we want.

Josh Ramsey

So our key words still seem to be going up, and then right here, this is a great word, and this is why I serve, So right here, local pack, local pack, so we’ve increased your Google My Business, which is driving a lot of traffic, then your name, your name, some other random name, and then we, you know, that’s, that’s what we’re at, and then we’ll spread out really well here with our content.

Josh Ramsey

So the SEO is working, but right now I wouldn’t say necessarily that you spend more in SEO until we know from Trish and Ryan in the CRM specifically, is it coding more?

Josh Ramsey

Like, are we getting more leads, is it, are they training into sales? But right now, our only benchmark is 650 per.

Ramin Parsi

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh Ramsey

So if you can put the budget sheet together and get that to me and show me what you. are projecting where you’re at then I will work with it and try to get it back to you and we can have another we can have a follow-up conversation on this to talk about what it is that like where where that revenue needs to go like where we need to dedicate things.

Ramin Parsi

Okay yeah yeah I can I can finish that marketing plan especially filling in the last like couple months and then for is there any way to know like what a projected number

Ramin Parsi

But I will say this, if you were trying to consider an increase in marketing, I would more recommend that you spend it in SEO.

Ramin Parsi

Oh, an SEO. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So, what are some, what are, what, what other SEO functions, is it, is it more like, you know, creating like backlinks and stuff like that?

Josh Ramsey

If backlinks is more on page, it’s, it’s diving in and working more on errors. Backlinks is another one and then building out some other pages with more content and developing more content.

Josh Ramsey

It’s getting more of this index to see how we’re kind of in flat line, but we’ve been submitting it.

Josh Ramsey

So it’s having more time dedicated, see how these haven’t started, but it’s probably because they just finished reporting. So the time dedicated for them to get in there and fix it.

Josh Ramsey

See how this just came back yesterday, the day before yesterday. So they haven’t got in it, but it’s like the more to any agency, just like anything else, the more you dedicate.

Josh Ramsey

Of a budget, the more engagement that that person or company has, right? about it. hire someone part time or hourly and they only show up for five hours a week.

Josh Ramsey

That’s all they get paid. So if you pay them, you know, if you increase their amount, then they can go to more, but you know, there’s a lot of little things that go into it.

Josh Ramsey

And this is one of them getting built out. We can build more portfolio and blogs. We can expand on some of these pages.

Josh Ramsey

Can take some of the content, repurpose it, send it to Ryan and Trish, have them review it and get.

Josh Ramsey

Those pages live, you know, build out more pages, but if you’re saying, hey, you know, what do we do to get more right now, I can tell you that overall your connections, your better and SEO than you are in AdWords.

Josh Ramsey

I wouldn’t get rid of AdWords, but I don’t know that I would do more. What this is saying is your monthly forecast of what you’re spending and what your limit is, and this just kind of give you a projection of what it looks like if we were to modify it.

Josh Ramsey

So I can pull more of this for you, but this kind of gives you a little bit of idea of what that looks like.

Josh Ramsey

I can pull a report and give it to you or, you know, whatever you’re trying to look for of additional spend.

Josh Ramsey

Okay. But again, I would want to go back and change before we even spend more in AdWords, we’re not getting enough.

Josh Ramsey

Result before we change the page.

Ramin Parsi

Pages need to be changed.

Josh Ramsey

That’s the other thing to consider. When we pull the agency and they go rebuild that page because I give them the specifics of how I want to rebuild, that takes them away from ongoing SEO.

Josh Ramsey

So they stop that and they go do what I wanted to do because that’s a higher priority. But if they have time and more budget, then they’ll keep all of this going and do what I want them to do on other pages that will apply to both SEO but also AdWords.

Ramin Parsi

Gotcha. OK. there any way to quantify? were doing 10 hours a week. Now we’re going to go to 20 hours a week.

Ramin Parsi

Is there any way to quantify that on a higher SEO spend?

Josh Ramsey

Because that, that, that always helps me if I, if I have something I, I’ve been, yeah, part of it is, is I, I know what it is internally, but I don’t typically share it with a little bit of a secret.

Josh Ramsey

The the staff member, the less work they do in the site, the more direction they get, right? So a low level person does all the work and is learning how to give the direction.

Josh Ramsey

So they just do the work. A higher level person doesn’t do the work because they’ve done it for years and they understand what needs to be done and they know how to get it done.

Josh Ramsey

But they push the work flow down to the lower level people, right? Just like anything, it’s built as a pyramid where there’s less or less people to hire you go.

Josh Ramsey

So, but I can say this, when you log into the site and you’re trying to do SEO, happens is the more where you’re at right now, the more budget you spend the more results of effort we can give because it already takes us.

Josh Ramsey

When we go in, we go into a system, we go, what’s been tasked, the coder goes, what’s been tasked?

Josh Ramsey

Well, will it task them a certain amount of things, but it still takes, you know, 20 minutes to go in and look at the task, then another 20 minutes to go find the login credentials and get into the site, and then another 10 minutes to say where and acclimate themselves again with where the site is in troubleshoot if there’s any updates that need to happen.

Josh Ramsey

So, right there, you know what I mean, you’re an hour, almost an hour into it. Now, start to do the work.

Josh Ramsey

Okay, well, if they’re only allotted three hours, they have two hours of work they can do. But if you add in.

Josh Ramsey

You know, another couple hundred bucks or five hundred or six hundred dollars, now what happens is you can take that allotment instead of him having three hours to work on it, you now basically give him five hours so he’s in it and he can spend an entire day in it rather than he’s in it once a week for three or six and see how much effect did it change, because what I can show you is what you saw in Search Console, which is we improved the search volume for your industry did not increase it actually went down, but the amount of clicks to your site went up.

Josh Ramsey

That’s good SEO, that’s like we’re still being found and we’re climbing the ranking and that’s why I showed you also in some of that, so the expectation would be if you say hey let’s increase it by like six hundred bucks.

Josh Ramsey

Okay, to increase what we’re looking for in the next three to six months is to see an incremental increase of our rankings and our overall traffic and visibility.

Josh Ramsey

So you’re looking for those three things that are all tied together. You’re ranking, give you the impressions, which gives you the clips.

Josh Ramsey

So we’re looking for that increase. That’s what you just saw in search engine console. Now we’re looking for a higher level of that ROI.

Josh Ramsey

We increase that then more. Okay, and let me put another dot on another eye for that to explain one more way.

Josh Ramsey

It’s the same thing in AdWords. If you spend more in AdWords, you’re getting more quantifiable cost per click. It’s just AdWords guarantee you the specific words, the specific terms that you will show up for how many times how everything else.

Josh Ramsey

What we don’t have right now remain as we don’t have AdWords. From 12 months ago. We only have it for the last like three months So we can’t really see the metric of what was and where we are now Okay, okay Gotcha, okay.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, then I a hundred percent agree Josh That we should increase In STO, but if you want to see where my marketing budget plan is and see what I currently am spending Yeah, I’d like to see where the budget is and get another week or slow down the road to to have Have Ricky on my team work and then also Ryan and Trish to kind of see where Our leads are coming from for the last like 16 90 days So Liza when you tell Ricky tell him 60 to 90 days is the time frame 60 days back or 90 days back by month so we can see it incrementally

Josh Ramsey

link and see if Ryan and Trish have tracked it at all. And then let’s see what we get, Rameen.

Josh Ramsey

So I would say Ricky and I will work on that. Ryan and Trish need to work on continuing to update which Trish was already going in last time we spoke.

Josh Ramsey

And so I expect that they probably have done it more and more. And then if you can work on the budget that I’d say next week, we can reconvene and we can our index week or two by around the beginning of August, we can reconvene and say, okay, like here’s where the numbers are, here’s where our budget is, and then I’m able to logically with you say, here’s where we can invest more dollars to get higher lead flow in.

Ramin Parsi

Okay, that sounds like a plan.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, I’m all about the data. I’m about numbers, making logical sense of what’s happening, and then projecting out what will happen if we do this for this.

Josh Ramsey

What is the respect that response and how do we get more reason at the lowest dollar volume. So if we’re at 650, which we are right now for AdWords, then I’m looking at it and going, okay, we got to drive that down.

Josh Ramsey

So there’s some changes that we need to review. So Liza also making note for me, I need to go back in and look at, have Ash, Liza have Ash cool, an exit rate, bounce rate, all benchmarks as well in our fathom, but have Ash cool, an exit rate, a bounce rate, and engagement time report in AdWords only from AdWords and GA4 so I can see both, and then have him boil point recommendations that he would make on anything that he sees, and then I’ll review that as well.

Josh Ramsey

And then again, when we do that, it’s going to be, I want to I want to make the smart decisions based on the data sources we have to see what the expected change would be because if we look at AdWords and we go, man, our bounce rate is great and this is great and this is great.

Josh Ramsey

We’re at 650. What’s the problem? I can tell you right now, we haven’t done some things right. So that’s going to tell us plus we need to change the pages.

Josh Ramsey

So I don’t want to increase AdWords budget until we have those pages dialed in.

Ramin Parsi

Yeah, that makes that makes a lot more sense. Okay, I like playing forward. So yeah, let’s get the information and we’ll talk about it in the next week or so.

Josh Ramsey

All right, man. Awesome. We will catch up soon and I guess we’re good for it.

Ramin Parsi

Sounds good.