Podcast With Gregory Ortiz

Stop Losing SEO Clients! Retention Tips That Work with Gregory Ortiz

Show Notes

Ready to transform your SEO agency and achieve game-changing growth? 🚀 In this episode of the Agency Insider Show, Gregory Ortiz shares his inspiring journey from retail to running a highly profitable SEO agency. Learn how to master networking, build retention strategies that last, and implement top SEO strategies for 2025 to rank your website number 1. Whether you're looking to drive more organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, or create a step-by-step plan for agency success, this video is packed with actionable insights.

Discover the power of networking at events, creating strong client relationships, and leveraging tools like AI and automation to streamline your processes. Gregory also reveals unconventional tactics that have helped him sustain an agency for over a decade while mentoring others to quit their day jobs and thrive in the SEO space. This is your ultimate guide to building a resilient and growth-oriented SEO business.

Are you ready to rank your website higher, attract more clients, and elevate your SEO strategies? Hit play now and take the first step toward achieving a #1 ranking. Don’t forget to subscribe for more insider tips and share this video with someone who needs it!

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:45 - Gregory's Background and Insights

03:18 - Transitioning from Retail to SEO

08:20 - Launching an SEO Agency and First Client

09:44 - Landing Your First SEO Client

11:38 - Advice for Transitioning to SEO Careers

15:33 - Modern Transition Tips for SEO Professionals

18:18 - Sustaining an SEO Business for a Decade

25:08 - Evolution of SEO Strategies Over Time

28:36 - Importance of Diversification in Digital Marketing

31:40 - Client Retention Systems and Approaches

34:47 - Common Client Retention Mistakes

36:34 - Unconventional Client Retention Tactics

43:15 - Networking and Event Power

49:37 - Maximizing Industry Conferences and Networking

53:01 - Reasons Agencies Lose Clients

55:35 - Effective Client Retention Strategy Components

57:53 - Top 3 SEO Strategies for 2025

1:00:15 - Rapid Fire Round

1:03:35 - OUTRO

Transcript

Intro

0:00 welcome to the another episode of the agency Insider show I'm your host NAIT Kell and today we have a truly special

0:07 guest someone who has built a rock solid reputation in the SEO in digital marketing space he has ranked for some

0:14 of the most challenging keywords coach agency owners and build retention system that many in the industry admire please

0:21 welcome my dear friend GR [Applause]

0:32 [Music] hi now thank you so much for having me

0:38 hello everyone I'm really really appreciative of being here and super excited so thank you same here same here

0:44 uh Gregory before we dive into the Su and the business talk can you share a bit about yourself beyond the industry

Gregory's Background and Insights

0:51 what's something most people don't know about oh um a good one is I actually

0:56 have a culinary arts degree so um before I ever got into marketing or anything

1:02 else I wanted to be a chef that was like my dream from when I was much younger as a child so um I had went to colonary

1:09 school I graduated and to make a long story short in my very last um semester

1:15 of culinary school and I was getting my associates degree um I realized it really wasn't for me and I didn't really

1:21 realize it until I went to my next 3th that's when I went ahead and went to one of the restaurants in St gorgeous and I

1:28 went ahead and did my externship there and when I was doing it I realized Not only was it way more work than I

1:34 expected it to be but it was nothing but pure grunt so it's just you know peeling potatoes all day or cutting just the

1:41 onions and everything for like all the other chefs because you start from the botom right and um in New York City you

1:46 take the train for the most part home so I'd go home every day smelling like onions and I'd see people like looking

1:51 around like what what's that smell and I here so embarrassed and I'm like I don't stink but I know me being around all the

1:58 onions and everything all day it does and I just really didn't like it it was like wow is this what I want to do for like the rest of my life and at the same

2:04 time I had been working as a part-time associate in H&M the clothing company

2:10 and the district manager had been bothering me for about three months to become a department manager and I was

2:15 like no I'm going to culinary school going to culinary school so when I realized it really wasn't for me anymore I went ahead and asked them I said hey

2:22 like how much were you guys thinking of paying and their starting salary was $114,000 more than I would have started

2:28 as a chef and at the bottom and I'm like okay you guys are good I'm going to go ahead and take that deal so I did I went

2:35 into retail and a whole bunch of things happened after that eventually I got into marketing but that's something most

2:40 people don't know is I can cook really really well I love it it's something I'm passion

2:46 watch the retail thing I'm gonna bring there I didn't yeah so cooking is like one of my

2:53 favorite things in the world to do I still cook almost every single day my girlfriend loves it I cook very very

2:58 well at least what everyone tells me cooking shows every single day still

3:04 obsessed with it I just don't want to do that for Kore and I love it okay that's interesting next time I'm

3:11 gonna have some some things up from you hey what

3:16 the very next time we get together absolutely for sure sure now let's talk a little bit about the journey from

Transitioning from Retail to SEO

3:22 retail to Su of course you uh B that as well so you had an interesting career transition from working at a retail

3:29 company company to building a successful Su agency can you walk us through that journey and what actually sparked your

3:35 interest in Su yeah sure so that's another thing that some people know like the ending

3:42 part of the story but not really the beginning so I kind of give you overall of everything so like like I mentioned

3:47 um the colal aspect most people don't know and that's how I got into H&M I became a department manager long story

3:53 short and there um I actually was doing very well that they kept wanting to promote me so I kept getting promotions

3:58 and I kept skipping um certain levels that there were in H&M to where I was eventually I became one of the only four

4:05 operation managers that we had in the entire United States and they sent me to go open the first West Coast store over

4:12 in um San Francisco when they first opened so I loved working at H&M and things were going well but then I ended

4:18 up meeting um the young lady who became my wife at the time who gave birth to my beautiful son that you happened to see

4:24 where is it right over here on the camera yeah right there um ended up giving birth uh to my son and at that point I was like okay we're doing good

4:31 but I want to make more money so I kept getting offers from different companies and one of them in particular Bed Bath and Beyond they made me an offer I

4:38 couldn't refuse they offered me 20,000 more than I was making at H&M I went to them say hey H&M like these guys are

4:44 offering me 20K more is there anything you could do didn't want to match it so I left um then I ended up working there

4:50 for about five years and the first year was okay but every year after I was miserable I couldn't stand it and um

4:56 couldn't stand it for a variety of reasons first off it was tough working there um they treated all the managers like which I didn't really

5:02 appreciate or understand and then um the culture there wasn't that great to begin with but I had a son and I'm like I'm

5:08 making a lot of money I can't stop working here because I need to provide for my son then I started realize I'm

5:13 missing all of his first his first walk his first time talking his first time doing this as many fathers end up

5:19 missing right going to work and it sucked because for me I didn't really grow up with a dad so I wanted to make

5:24 sure that I was there for my son seeing everything that I could so I'm like okay what can I do now at the time I was

5:30 pretty familiar on how to build websites it's something that I had done as like a hobby back when the old AOL days you

5:36 hand code through HTML and kind of everything else you know right so I knew how to do that I also was very familiar

5:42 with WordPress at the time and I'm like okay I can build a website so why can't I build a business so I was on Reddit

5:48 and there was actually someone who did like over the-shoulder study of them starting a cleaning company and what

5:54 they did their whole thing was they would have people that they would find on Craigslist that would handle all the

5:59 cleaning they just had the website that would take the payments and they would advertise for people to come in and go

6:05 ahead and you know book appointments so I was like let me try this so I tried it and it was actually working out okay um

6:11 but then I realized Yelp was taking most of the money because I was doing Yelp ads and everything else and I'm like there's got to be a better way so I went

6:17 ahead and looked how to get more traffic to my website lo and behold I hear this thing called search engine optimization

6:23 I'm like what the hell is this and then um it's funny because through my research I ended up on Flynn's website I

6:30 don't know if it's still active now but back then it was and um on there he did an interview with a gentleman named Alex

6:36 Becker um so Alex Becker was hilarious to me I was like who is this guy this guy's crazy like some of the stuff he's

6:43 saying is funny so I went ahead tried to follow him on social media and that same night he was actually hosting a webinar

6:49 where he had a bunch of people in a group that he learned from he learned SEO and they explained what it is how

6:55 powerful it is and what it can do I was so enamored by everything that I saw and hearing everyone's story and especially

7:01 the stories of the people who were able to quit their day jobs and do this fulltime that I'm like wow this is like

7:08 something that I want to do if anyone can make it happen I believe in myself I know I can make it so I then decided to

7:15 go ahead um and without telling my wife at the time charge it on the credit card

7:20 it was our emergency credit card and I said I got one month if I can't make it happen in one month I'm screwed because

7:25 I'm putting all my you know kind of like all my cards in so to speak on this or my chips rather into this so let me go

7:32 ahead and see if I can make this happen and luckily for me you know I understood things very quickly and you understand

7:38 Na and obviously most of your listeners do too that once you get into this field this is a field for us where it just

7:44 clicks for us like everyone finds something in life that clicks for them for me it was SEO it was just like oh I

7:51 understand this this is natural to me I really like this so within the first month you know I was able to go ahead

7:56 and rank for New York City SEO which at the time everyone in that group was trying to rank for their own City and

8:02 SEO at the time so was most of the people in the industry and everyone was surprised that me being able to do it

8:08 within the first month they like wow you're like number one in the first month like what are you doing differently and for me at the time um it

8:16 was one of those things where I'm like this clicks this works so I'm going to continue to do this and I couldn't quit

Launching an SEO Agency and First Client

8:21 my job right away because yeah I got one month of making good money because I started get clients and I was making new reference money to 40K in that first

8:28 month which is great money you know was more than like it thinking back on it I'm like wow in like two months I was

8:34 making more than I was the whole year but at the same time I couldn't just quit because it wasn't stable like it's

8:40 great this month I don't know if it's going to be like this six months from now a year from now so it was kind of scary to want to go ahead and take that

8:47 full dive but eventually I did I ended up leaving b b and beond and I always keep actually my ID card right here from

8:55 B on from all those years ago yeah exactly yeah well this is a

9:01 much younger version of me this is about uh 11 and a half years actually you know this is when I first started so this would have been 5 years PR so this is 16

9:07 years ago wow because I left there 11 years ago but this was taken when I first started which was five years prior

9:13 so I still keep it um on my desk and also sometimes post it up on the side on one of my whiteboards just always to

9:19 remind me like why I started how I started and to never go back to it it just my own personal motivation but that

9:26 was kind of my transition from retail into to SEO how I fell into it through the cleaning company learning SEO

9:33 finding Alex Becker and kind of getting things going there hopefully I didn't ramble too much I just wanted to give

9:38 you the context so now now the thing is you you

Landing Your First SEO Client

9:45 started ranking now now the next question natural question comes how did you land your first SEO client and what

9:51 lessons did you learn from that experience yeah so for me Landing my first SEO client and I understand that

9:57 like some of the things that we're going to say this interview it's not going to be typical for most people and I want your audience to understand that too for

10:03 me I was very fortunate in the sense that I was already part of a group of SEO people and many people in those

10:10 group and other groups as well um they happen to be business owners that are trying to learn SEO like that's what I

10:15 was originally right I wanted to have this clean company and I wanted to grow it I my it wasn't my intention originally to an SEO agency it just

10:22 worked out that way but because there are business owners in there and people started to see how well I was doing my

10:27 first client was literally other members that said hey I own a business I see you're doing great you actually have

10:33 proof because I can see it with my own eyes by going to Google and typing in New York City SEO like can you help me

10:39 in my business and that's how I was able to get my first I want to say 20 to 50 clients all mainly was from Word of

10:45 Mouth of people knowing me ranking and them wanting their own businesses to get ranked so I know that's not going to be

10:51 typical for everyone but why would I would recommend to everyone is if you don't have something public that people

10:57 can see with their own eyes ranked already maybe focus on that first because there are so many people who

11:03 want search engine optimization done for their business but they've been burned by so many bad agency owners and other

11:08 bad people in the past that all they really want to see is proof they want to feel like hey I can trust this person

11:16 and the first step is hey showing you can actually do what it is that you do and it doesn't need to be something

11:21 super competitive most of these owners business owners they don't understand like what the level of competition is

11:26 they just see with their own eyes holy crap I go into Google I type in this and you have a website ranked their number

11:31 one just like you said they would I would like that to be my business all right my first

Advice for Transitioning to SEO Careers

11:38 client now now uh looking back uh of course what advice would you give to

11:44 someone looking to transition from a traditional job to a career in Su yeah so um the first thing that I

11:51 would say is you want to make sure that this is something you're going to want to do for moving forward and what I mean

11:56 by that is this field isn't for every everyone and if I try to break that down

12:02 it's more of a thing of you have to keep in mind that it's not all like puppies rainbows and candy canes right it's just

12:08 not like you end up dealing with clients and clients are people and some clients are just you know for lack of a better

12:13 term they just happen to be and some of them are great you're going to have that mixture of everything it's

12:18 like any other business in life but what you need to make sure I would recommend is you are someone who is organized and

12:25 disciplined so many people I've seen over the years so many people I've taught over the years and so many people I've seen try to get into this over the

12:31 years can't handle it because they're too relaxed and what I mean is like they don't take this seriously as though it's

12:38 a real job it's a real job you still have to sit down every single day you still have to do work every single day

12:43 yes it's great that you can pick up a laptop and live a lifestyle where you could take a week or a month off and do

12:49 things but that lifestyle that you see some people live all the time that's not for everyone it's a very small

12:56 percentage of people that can do that so keep in mind that you're still going to have a job the bonus is you don't have a

13:02 boss that's an that you need to listen to the only boss that is an is yourself right and you can be

13:07 as hard on yourself as you like or as easy on yourself as you like but you need to make sure that you're disciplined because if you have no

13:13 discipline it's so easy to be home and working from home and find a million in one things that you can do off of the

13:19 computer that'll take up your day and then you realize I'm letting the ranking slip on my own agency I'm letting my

13:25 clients rankings slip I'm not getting new acquisition of new clients all those things take place when you're not

13:31 focusing on your business so first thing is making sure you are a disciplined person if you're not that's okay many

13:37 people learn how to become disciplined I wasn't 100% disciplined when I started bunch of these books behind me actually

13:43 helped me become disciplined and a bunch of um networking and speaking with other friends is also the most important thing

13:49 I would actually recommend that as the second thing if you're not in a community already a good one make sure

13:54 you're a part of one it doesn't need to be like a paid Community necessarily it should just be a of other people like you that are

14:01 interested in the field or already doing it in the field so that way you can kind of hear from them their struggles

14:07 because once again like what worked for me or didn't work for me may not be the same for everyone out there right

14:12 everyone's going to run to different things and one of my favorite parts of this entire industry

14:17 is hearing everyone else's experience like I like to hear from other people hey what struggles have you faced

14:23 because some of the struggles they fa I may not have faced them yet but now I'm going to be prepared when I do because for example like if you shared with me

14:29 now have a struggle that you faced and I haven't reached it or maybe it just hasn't happened yet when it does happen

14:35 what's the first thing I'm going to do I'm going to reach out to you and say hey I'm facing this right now can you tell me how you got through it and it's

14:41 going to go ahead and speed things up so I say the big two is making sure you are disciplined and you have a good

14:47 Community around you after that you know you can kind of do anything right you have the support system you have the

14:53 discipline then it's all just on you actually going out there and getting things done right I know when I started

14:59 I used to work almost 15 16 hours not out of compulsion but out of passion for SEO I mean so I remember right since

15:08 2005 until today we rank in top five for a keyword like SEO company India and

15:14 never lost it never that's awesome congratulations that's super yeah a lot of time people come and they say oh we

15:21 recognize you are one company which never moved out what do you do I swear just don't touch website too many days

15:30 yeah yes now you you have taught thousands about SEO if you are to Mentor someone

Modern Transition Tips for SEO Professionals

15:36 today making a similar transition what advice would you give yeah so it would be somewhat

15:42 similar to what I just mentioned as far as discipline and having a good support system but if we're taking it even a

15:48 step further um it's making sure that you are understanding and living in breathing our industry because things

15:54 change so rapidly I mean honestly if we think about it right like 2 three years ago yeah a some AI existed but it was

16:02 nowhere near what it is now the entire landscape has changed and there are so many people that I know in the industry

16:07 that are now starting to implement Ai and I'm like you're so far behind everyone else that already implemented

16:13 it you're never going to catch up to them so making sure you're staying on top of what's happening in the industry

16:18 there's so many people who can just get locked into what they're doing Focus just on what they're doing and lose

16:24 sight of what's happening in the industry you definitely don't want to do that so that kind of also boils back to

16:30 having a good support system like I'll hear things from my friends and buddies oh my God I'm trying X Y and Z I'm

16:35 getting results with this I've tried this and this didn't work so many friends of mine are doing if you Flack

16:42 on better term like testing for me essentially without it really being for me they're testing for themselves but

16:48 they're sharing those results with me so now I don't need to do those tests because I can understand what works and doesn't work so if I was mentoring

16:54 someone today I'd say the big thing is making sure you find yourself your own

16:59 circle of people that are just as passionate about this field as you are because if it's just me mentoring you

17:06 and it's just the two of us you're only going to get so motivated by me you're only going to find out so much

17:11 information from me but when you have multiple people in your circle they don't need to necessarily be experts in the field they could be on the same

17:17 level as you but as they're trying things and getting things going you can do different tests you can have this

17:23 group of people I mean it kind of reminds me of um and it's funny because a lot of us yourself included have done

17:28 this um kind of going throughout the our entire Journey but someone who spoke about it really well in an interview I

17:33 watched was Mr Beast Mr Beast mentioned that when he first got into things it was him and a group of I think it was

17:39 four or five other people who all they did was test things in the YouTube algorithm and they shared it with each

17:45 other it was like their own little mini Mastermind they were all friends and all of them except for one I think he said

17:50 went on to continue to become millionaires because they understood the algorithm what to do and how to get

17:56 things going you find yourself a small little Circ CC like that that is more valuable to me than kind of anything

18:02 else that would be the first thing I'd Mentor everyone other than that it's just technical stuff when I'm mentoring someone like hey you know what's an

18:08 anchor text what's a good anchor text what's a bad anchor text that kind of stuff which you can kind of get from all over the place but I'd say getting your

18:14 circle is probably the most important thing right right uh let's talk about a

Sustaining an SEO Business for a Decade

18:20 little bit about longevity in the Su industry of course we' both been quite long in the industry now now most people

18:26 burn out or struggle to sustain an your business for over a decade you have been in this space for 11 plus years so

18:33 what's your secret yeah I mean I would love to say it's like one thing in particular but

18:39 you know I'm kind of like everyone else eventually it gets to a point where you start to feel like you're getting a little burned out we all experience it

18:46 like no one is going to go through any field regardless if it's or anything else no one's going to be in one field

18:52 as an entrepreneur business owner everything on your shoulders for 10 plus years and never face fears never face

18:59 bad times good times I mean it's like anything else you're going to face times where it's like you feel like the world

19:05 is crashing on you there's also going to be times where your business is going great but maybe stuff in your personal life is going terrible how do you manage

19:11 that too there's so many different things and I know I keep mentioning it but for me it's support system like I

19:17 have surrounded myself with some of the best friends in this industry and some of them even outside of when it comes to

19:22 personal things that just enable me to continue moving forward and also mentorship is super important like I've

19:28 had had mentors throughout my entire 10 year career well 11 year now I forget we're in 2025 but my entire 11 year

19:34 career now where if I'm struggling with something or I don't understand something or maybe I'm just in a funk I

19:42 have people that I can reach out to to kind of help pull me out of it now those people aren't responsible for getting

19:47 you out of whatever you know ditch you dug yourself into but they can help show you the way they can provide a little

19:52 bit of guidance say Hey you know when I faced that I did X Y and Z and if you don't have anyone in your circle like

19:58 that who maybe has that experience that's fine sometimes just talking to someone is also good like I often find

20:04 in our industry the people who usually end up not staying too long they don't really have a good support system and

20:10 it's not so much that they're not finding out what's testing and what's working like I spoke about earlier it's just having someone else to talk about

20:17 things with like you know obviously now better than anyone else like there are times when you're in this industry and

20:24 things feel lonely and it's because you're just your head is down you're working and you're not talking to someone else about what's going on

20:30 what's pissing you off what's frustrating you what's not working but jumping on just a zoom call with a buddy

20:36 that you happen to just see maybe at only conferences for example but you jump on Zoom with them it boosts your

20:41 mood like right now we're on the streamyard together right I'm in a great mood now I was in a good mood earlier

20:47 but I'm in a much better mood now why because you are one of my brothers in this field that I'm talking to I'm

20:52 excited to see you and you need to have that because you don't want to isolate yourself where the only people around

20:58 you don't understand what you're doing like there's a lot of people who they'll get in this field and their only support

21:04 system is their family which is great for their personal life but your family can't understand what's happening business-wise because they don't know

21:10 the struggles of what's Happening they don't understand that your website can be making money one second and the next

21:15 second if it's penalized manually by Google you lost all your income they don't understand that stuff so having

21:21 these discussions with people in the industry is super important and I feel it's one of the key factors to my

21:26 longevity obviously another huge part of longevity is just delivering right like you need to be able to get results for

21:33 your clients for your own websites for everything else and that should go without saying but it's also one of the biggest key components in longevity is

21:41 delivering as well but I would say a good system where you can speak to people about your own struggles in this

21:46 industry is super important right right I absolutely agree with it a lot of these resonates with me

21:52 as well uh because when I started there were no friends no Masters mind

21:59 nothing was BL blind from almost from 2002 to I think

22:05 2008 I I didn't had any industry just six years of yourself so if you don't

22:10 mind can I ask you a question yes what what was it like during those six years do you feel like it was uh much more of

22:17 a struggle during those six years when you didn't have a support system in this industry uh compared to now you having a

22:23 support system what what are you would say personally it was very smooth because you were like the king of the

22:29 SEO I had a lot of us clients I mean I it's a funny story we would actually put on our website sold out for three

22:37 months that's used to out we we can't take more client and that was the thing

22:44 so it was like I was I started doing blogs around 2006 and 8 but then uh around 2010 I started speaking as well

22:51 so I've been blogging since 2006 but I started speaking around 2010 onwards so probably would have spoken around 200

22:57 conferences of plus so then I started meeting people and then I started meeting my competitors who felt very

23:05 comfortable they became good friend of mine and then how I started so they started talking about things I didn't

23:11 knew for for example in 2010 11 I first time heard about pbn it so I didn't know

23:17 what pbn are I was stuck but in 2011 they were my friends doing pbn

23:23 then yes I yes that there's one thing you there too that was kind of

23:29 interesting and cool is that you mentioned your competitors became your friend which I love because there's a

23:35 lot of people also in the industry when they get started because you ask what do people do for longevity you

23:40 shouldn't really look at your competitors as like your enemies too many times people look at it like oh well you know they're the opposition

23:46 like I really want to mess with that's not the case like one of my closest friends actually happened to be the

23:52 person who told me the day I became number one for New York City SEO he was number two he kept on trying to become

23:57 number one he reached out to me and told me hey congratulations you're number one we became at this point lifelong friends

24:03 now and we're still obviously going back and forth for a lot of different keywords but we don't look at it like

24:08 competition there's so much space for everyone you don't need to look at everyone as competitors because what ends up happening is you end up creating

24:15 enemies and you just end up just keeping yourself short of finding out more information more connections because in

24:21 this industry there's a lot you can do but connections is the most important thing in my opinion and not just this industry but all of them any IND

24:28 business and you end up losing all those connections by kind of just thinking it's you versus everyone else when it's

24:34 really not it's all of us versus Google essentially right and the market is so

24:39 big I don't think we will any G to fall short and now in last few years I've

24:44 made so many friends all of them run Su agencies and we don't feel anything like we share just like you said so we don't

24:51 exactly as a mastermind but we share a lot of things we share lots and lots of data and lots of help each other around

24:58 and I feel very good about it and and especially they feel good about it because me reaching at that this stage I

25:04 don't fear sharing anything and they they also reciprocate in the same on to the next part so SE is always changing

Evolution of SEO Strategies Over Time

25:11 algorithm updates new platforms AI advancements how has your approach to SEO evolved over the year and what

25:17 strategies has remained constant yeah so for me the um biggest

25:23 two that I say have remained constant is on page SEO bread and butter making sure that's always good always down packed as

25:30 it should be and pbn's I'm still a huge pbn guy I know many people may not be which is fine for me works out better my

25:37 for me to be honest if they're not um but I'm still huge into pbn I've also obviously integrated other stuff than

25:43 before like when I first started everything was 100% pbn now you integrate guest post and some other things into it sure but the main recipe

25:50 for me is still uh pbn and um for me like I want to say I have this passion

25:57 when it comes to people cuz most of my career began with me first off selling pbns and then it also evolved to me just

26:04 literally no longer selling them just using them for all my projects because I had so much business coming in so that's

26:09 kind of what stayed consistent now what changed obviously is AI um AI is great in the sense that it now takes care of

26:16 almost all the content that I needed before before I would have to either Outsource um writing or I'd have to have

26:22 a bunch of members on my team taking care of writing and you know I I always hear um people who complain like oh AI

26:28 is taking jobs yeah it takes some jobs but it creates a whole bunch of new ones too at the same time and that's another

26:35 thing that people don't really truly understand so for me now everything that

26:40 we do in the agency I try to automate as much of it as possible now for me I don't look at that like getting rid of

26:46 people because I don't really get rid of my staff I just move them on to other things because I don't want them like

26:51 before it used to be a thing where if you were hiring members of your staff regardless of where you hire them from you would hire people and you would want

26:57 to give them the work you didn't want to do quote unquote example right well now that AI can handle a lot of that work

27:04 now you give them higher level things to do which then get allows you as the business owner to go even higher than

27:11 you ever were before it's always a net positive it's not really a negative so AI we Implement of course as you know

27:17 across all of pretty much everything we do we have it for our content we have it for automations I have automations built

27:23 that'll automatically take when someone writes an article and they go ahead and put it into uh Google Drive it'll

27:28 automatically send it over to newon newon R will go ahead and give it a score do the a there's so many things I

27:34 wasn't able to do before because I'm not a programmer coder don't have anyone on my team that is but through so many

27:40 things through Automation and asking things like chat gbt and Claude and Gemini hey I want to do X Y and Z I'm

27:48 not a coder help me out literally giving you the code walking you through the steps like I didn't know how to use

27:54 Visual Studio code at all about a couple years ago Chad gbt hey I don't know how to use Vis Studio code walk me through

28:00 how to set it up on my Mac walk me through everything step by step I have a bunch of applications that it's also giving me code for that automate a lot

28:06 of things that you know used to take me some time to do it's all about just being more efficient and like any

28:12 business in general you want to be as efficient as possible which will help you be as profitable as possible and

28:18 also it makes your staff feel better like they're no longer doing grunt shitty work they're doing stuff that

28:24 they feel proud of stuff that they know has an impact and you know that's pretty much it hopefully

28:30 that answer your question I didn't really Ram sometimes I can go off on tangents I just want to make sure I

28:35 don't now now what are your thoughts on diversification in digital marketing and

Importance of Diversification in Digital Marketing

28:41 how important is it to offer services Beyond just SE especially in today's

28:46 world oh it's super important um so there's a um interview on YouTube um that I had done I want to say let me try

28:54 to think of the year because before I was living in this house that I had built had my house built eight years ago so I want to say this is maybe nine

29:00 years ago or so I did an interview and um I specifically said inside of that interview like the way I see the future

29:07 of SEO is not just SEO you want to be able to do everything so you want to be able to take care of their ads you want

29:13 to be take care of web design you want to take care of their SEO you want to take care of all aspects of marketing

29:18 because if you think about it it helps in a lot of different ways first off for the client like it kind of goes into the

29:25 sales psychology and some people get uncomfortable talking about it I don't you want it to be as painful as possible

29:31 for your client to leave you now you don't want to be a dick about things and what I mean by being painful meaning if

29:37 a client has you as the SEO agency but they have someone else doing their PPC and they have someone else doing their

29:43 web design it's very easy for them to leave any one of those three to go ahead and find a new company but if you're

29:50 taking care of all three and more it's super painful for them to leave because first off they have to find an agency

29:56 that can handle all those things they then need to make sure the agency can actually deliver on all those things and

30:01 then it takes time away from them running their actual business to find these type of companies that can do it

30:08 so the more you can offer your client I always recommend the better so diversifying is not only great when it

30:14 comes to diversifying your money right but it's also great for your business as well like I want to offer as many

30:19 different things as possible anything that a client needs I'm going to say we can get it done because if we can't

30:24 ourselves once again networking I have wonderful friends that can like for example we don't do anything with paper

30:31 mailing like we don't have that capability in my agency but I have a buddy who does that's kind of his whole

30:36 business is sending out paper mailing to for businesses and flyers and advertisement so if a company tells me

30:43 hey we need you know paper flyers and Banners Etc okay cool no problem I'll get back to you on a quote on what it'll

30:49 cost touch base with my buddy he'll give me a quote I market up some boom we're good to go he handles the Fulfillment I

30:55 don't need to worry about it he's someone that I trust so just offering as many things as possible I'll I'll rare I

31:00 don't want to say never but I'll rarely ever tell a customer no if there's something that they want as part of

31:06 their marketing that we can't offer the only thing that I can't offer people that I don't really have a connection to

31:11 and if you do I'd be more than happy to connect with you or someone you know who can is for television advertisement it's

31:16 the only thing that I can't really offer anyone but any other forms of advertising Billboards whatever it is I

31:21 always say yes because I have a connection for it for everything so i' say definitely offer everything that you

31:27 can that's within your network now don't offer things that you tell someone yes you can do it and then you're scrambling

31:33 trying to find someone to do it that just will probably end up badly but it's all about building those connections

Client Retention Systems and Approaches

31:40 right right right now uh you built an highly profitable agency of course with

31:46 a strong client Rel uh retention what key systems or approaches have worked

31:51 best for keeping clients longterm yeah great question so um this is kind of goes back to when I first met

31:57 you actually at the legi event um there had spoke about client retention and one of the things in particular that we've

32:02 implemented for a couple years now that has helped a lot is having a client success manager and uh for this client

32:08 success manager there's a lot of different um training that we do with them but one of the most important things is we want them to understand

32:14 that whatever clients they're assigned like that is 100% their focus we don't

32:19 like to give them additional work or anything else that doesn't relate to those particular clients and keep in mind you don't need to have them be

32:25 full-time if you don't have enough clients for it maybe they just work parttime which is fine too but their whole job and focus is to know

32:32 understand this client and I always look at it like if you are a sports star for

32:37 example every sports star has an agent that's the person that works on behalf of the sports star for negotiating for

32:45 understanding what they need and getting the Superstar whatever it is they need in this instance the client to me is a

32:51 superstar they're the one paying us so my customer success manager is the agent

32:57 they're always communicating with them seeing what they need making sure they're good making sure they're happy and relaying back to us anything that

33:03 they may see hey you know the client said that they're happy but I can kind of tell based on all the conversations we've had before they have a little bit

33:09 of a tone today like you want someone who will understand and pick up on those things because they know the client so

33:14 intimately that they're always making sure that they're happy so first off the

33:19 client success manager is great not just for kind of relaying information to us but it also makes the client feel like

33:25 wow these people care cuz how many other agents has this client been through probably a bunch before they get to us

33:31 and they don't have that level of they can speak directly to someone usually they have to send an email or leave a

33:37 message in base camp and pray and hope that someone gets back to them quickly you know what I mean whereas the

33:42 customer success manager they're in slack with them the minute they go ahead and at them as soon as they can and

33:47 always tell the agency I mean not agency owners the uh actual business owners as long as it's within business hours

33:54 because you know someone's going to send a message late on Saturday be like hey no one got back to me well it's the

33:59 weekend it's late on Saturday you need to understand but um as long as it's during business hours the customer

34:05 success manager is going to get back to them and say hey here's an answer for you or I'm going to get back to you by

34:11 tomorrow just making sure that the customer always feels like they're understood they're heard and they're not

34:16 waiting for anything because while we can always get new clients we tend to forget clients can

34:23 just always get new SEO agencies it's much easier for them to leave us and get a new one than it is for us to get a new

34:29 client because you and I both know customer acquisition isn't always the easiest thing right like you spend a lot

34:34 of time energy effort and most importantly money to get new clients you don't want to lose them so I feel like

34:39 holding on to them is the most important thing so the customer success manager is the first most vital part of

Common Client Retention Mistakes

34:47 it right now now many agencies struggle with client Y what are biggest mistake

34:53 agencies make when it comes to keeping client happy yeah so I'd say the biggest

34:58 one is probably thinking that you can just send them a report once a month and as long as the rankings are up and

35:03 traffic is up the clients are happy yeah that's true and that works sometimes for a little bit but it it won't work for

35:10 years and years and years now don't get me wrong we have a couple clients that I'll hear from them maybe once a year

35:16 and I don't hear from them again because they're just so busy all the time and they continue to pay us and things work out great but most clients aren't like

35:22 that you know that's like a dream client right they're few and far in between most clients in general they're going to

35:28 want some form of communication so when it comes to that in particular sending just a report once a month that's not

35:35 really good enough you want to make sure that if you are sending a report you're at least doing some form of video or audio breaking it down for them because

35:42 to them you send them a report they don't know what the hell they're looking at like what is this what is this report supposed to mean yes my phone is ringing

35:48 but I don't understand this stuff you're sending so make it show that they at least have the education and

35:53 understanding on the reports you're sending them I say is critical because I've noticed like you mentioned before

35:59 I've helped teach tens of thousands of people and one of the big mistakes I see is they'll send someone a rankings

36:05 report after the first month is over hey look all your rankings are up and to the client okay cool what does that mean for

36:10 me how much more money did I make how much more traffic did I have like I don't understand this stuff so making

36:15 sure that you break it down for them and I think we often times take it for granted that because we understand it we assume that everyone else should and the

36:22 same way it is in any business in any industry you have people that are hyper intelligent and you also have people that are not so intelligent but you need

36:30 to explain it to both people so you have to make sure you're able to understand that another big thing that I see people

Unconventional Client Retention Tactics

36:35 do when it comes to losing customers through churn is once again lack of

36:41 communication that's why that customer success manager is so crucial because they're not just hearing from you once a

36:46 month when it comes to a report they're hearing from you and your company at least once a week to see how things are

36:52 going they you're getting updated another big thing too that I spoke about at the legit event a couple of others is

36:57 we also Implement a customer success newsletter so at least once a month every single month we email out to all

37:04 of our customers hey guys this is what's happening in the field of SEO or Marketing in general or here are some

37:10 things that we're doing to improve or here are some results we had for a previous client that we had or current

37:15 client here's how we obtain those results because often times too like we'll get a client who's on board for

37:21 maybe PPC or just SEO but through those newsletters when we're highlighting other clients and what we've done for

37:27 them on their SEO or their PPC they'll come to us and say hey Greg you know I noticed you sent out that email on how

37:33 much you know return on investment this client got from PPC can we add PPC to

37:39 our business we're doing with you as well it's a great way to upsell your business because you're not like directly pushing it to them you're not

37:45 directly trying to sell them they're just reading amazing results you're getting for someone else and they're already getting results from you to

37:51 begin with on one aspect why wouldn't they want another one so that also helps with churn because like mentioned in the

37:57 beginning it makes it more painful for them to leave because now they have two services with us it'll help reduce churn

38:03 in the first place and as long as you continue to get results which is the most important right like any advice I give you won't help if you don't get

38:09 results you're gonna have churn no matter what so as long as you continue to get those good results the churn will inevitably go down now there's no way to

38:17 prevent churn completely you're always going to have that one client that you've gotten amazing results for you've

38:22 done amazing communication with and for some reason or another another agency convinced them that they're better and

38:27 just going to leave no matter what you do it's like okay cool but one of the unique things that we do is if a client

38:33 leaves we don't remove them from the newsletter the reason why we don't remove them unless they specifically ask

38:38 us or click the unsubscribe button is because we've had clients in the past that'll leave us and we keep sending our

38:44 newsletter and keep sending it and sometimes the update will roll out and right away the same day the update rolls out we'll email all of our clients and

38:50 let you know that newsletter what's happening and that client that left gets that newsletter and they're saying in

38:55 their head hm I left them I'm with this new agency and this new agency hasn't even informed me that my rankings are

39:02 dropping because of this new algorithm change but Gregory's agency knew about

39:07 this they emailed it what the hell's going on so they'll end up coming back to us hey you know what I'm so sorry I

39:14 left you guys you guys actually understand and have a pulse on what's happening in marketing that agency that I left didn't end up working out how can

39:21 I get back with you guys and of course we'll welcome them in with open arms we'll almost always charge them more

39:26 because hey you us that was the old rate this is the new rate now kind of like an extra fee for leaving us in the first

39:32 place but it's one of those things that you can also get back clients who've left you and who you've had churn with

39:38 just because you churn them doesn't mean they lost forever you can get them back right right right now besides these what

39:44 are some other unconventional uh client retention tactics that work for

39:51 you um unconventional besides the sorry I'm just thinking this out loud customer

39:58 success manager and a customer newsletter I would say it's

40:04 probably it it ties in with the newsletter it's us sharing results of other clients like I notice a lot of

40:10 agency owners they keep their results of their clients either to themselves or maybe they'll share it on their own

40:15 private like Facebook wall or what have you but they're not letting their other clients know hey we're having amazing

40:21 success with client a for example sharing those results because often times I find some people might be afraid

40:28 where maybe they're not getting great results for client B and they don't want to share the great results they're getting for client a because client B

40:34 might be like hey why aren't I getting these results but it usually doesn't work out that way what ends up happening is client B sees you're getting results

40:41 for client a first off they usually in a totally different field and if they're not they're in a totally different part

40:46 of the world or a different city or a different state so the results aren't going to be the same and you can explain

40:52 that if there's any push back but usually what happens is that crossover where it's like hey you know what we may

40:57 not be getting the results I desired with SEO you're still getting me good results but I expected you know 10 times

41:04 Roi I'm only getting four to five can we add PPC like you got for client a I

41:09 think that'll be phenomenal then they start to see things Skyrocket so I say the most unconventional really is

41:14 sharing results of other clients with other clients like a lot of people I know don't do that and they're always

41:20 just afraid of a client saying hey why aren't I getting those results and you don't really get too many people who do that we do have some who say that sure

41:27 but then you just go ahead and temper their expectations it's usually someone that's still new or only have been with

41:33 us two to three months and they're expecting the same results as someone who's been there a whole year but it also helps with kind of going back to

41:39 turn like you mentioned if I'm sharing results with someone who's been with us for a year and someone who's only been with us four or five months they can now

41:46 see light at the end of the tunnel instead of them being where like oh man we're really just breaking even it's

41:52 been four or five months already what's happening they can see oh wait if I'm patient and I give it more time I'm

41:57 going to get those kind of results as well and I'd say that's like the biggest thing that's helped us a lot as far as

42:02 retention goes okay that's honestly I haven't used

42:08 I do have uh the newsletter but not used any of these strategies yet so I'll just an honest confession but I would love

42:15 absolutely I would absolutely love to hear your results because once again and I want everyone to understand too that this has worked for myself and also has

42:22 worked for literally hundreds of other agency owners that I've taught this to but it may not work for everyone that's fine if it doesn't work maybe it's the

42:28 way the newsletter is being written it could be the client base it could be the industry maybe the industry is different

42:34 but for most people it will end up working out and I would love to hear your feedback um if you do

42:39 Implement of the newsletter is going in in I think in an hours in 45 minutes one

42:44 of the newsletter is about to go so I can't do anything but yes so we do that so I have a quite a large I'm very lazy

42:52 with the newsletter but I'm trying to be regular now

42:57 AI is helping so that makes me more I don't see any other excuse to make

43:02 honestly well I understand I mean like we spoke about earlier everyone gets busy there you as a business owner huge

43:08 agency you have so many other things going around juggling it's hard to implement every single thing that works for

43:14 everyone now let's talk about the power of networking and events uh you have

Networking and Event Power

43:20 mentioned that attending events has been crucial for your growth can you share a specific example of how an event has

43:26 done directly impacted your business and H how has attending events accelerated

43:32 your yes so I to be 100% transparent I wouldn't be here with you now if it wasn't for me attending events and the

43:38 reason why I can say that is because the first event I ever attended was um like I mentioned I joined that group to learn

43:45 how to do SEO so they had an event so I joined them in uh March no I'm sorry May

43:51 was it may yeah may I joined in May of 2014 and after joining them I want to

43:58 say it was in October or November I can't remember which month was the first event and I went to the event it was in

44:04 Nashville super excited to be there and one of the guest speakers will actually happen to be Alex Becker so for me it

44:10 was a full circle moment it's like oh my God I got into this because I listened to this guy watched his webinar got into

44:17 this group and he's gonna be speaking here so I was super excited about it right and I didn't really I I personally

44:22 didn't know many people at the event but I was fortunate that most people at the event knew me and what I mean by that is

44:28 because I was having such great success in the beginning uh the people who were um running that group would often times

44:34 ask me to jump on like online webinars they were having they would share my results in the group so everyone in the group knew me knew my successful and

44:40 everything and I didn't really know most people though face to face but I had some conversations so going there for me was interesting because when I went

44:47 there there were a lot of people excited to see me I was excited to see everyone else but because of me being there at that first event and it's literally the

44:53 event that changed my life one of my uh buddies who I was was just starting to become friends with at the time he

44:59 already had um conversations with an somewhat knew Alex Becker so after the event was over we all head over to the

45:06 bar and Alex is sitting there you know kind of by himself and his own circle of people who knew him and you know

45:13 everyone didn't want to crowd him or whatever but my buddy calls me over he's said hey you know he's Alex this is

45:19 Ortiz because he always called me by my last name because one of the other uh founding members of that group his name

45:24 is also Greg so it gets confusing Greg Gregory so hey this is Ortiz um and then

45:29 Alex immediately says oh yeah I've heard and seen a lot about you in the groups you know I'm thinking of um restarting

45:36 my entire training program uh Source wave and I would like to know would you like to be the person that teaches

45:41 everyone on Source wve what to do my mind at the time was blown and I'm like

45:46 hell yeah but I was like yeah of course I would love to let's touch Bas more now I'm going to be honest at the time I

45:52 thought he was going to forget because he already drank a bunch at the time and I'm like this guy's not remember who the I am he's not going to remember to

45:59 reach out to me and everything Char the very next day he messages me says hey

46:04 what are we got to do to get started what are you looking for um here's the percentage I'm offering and my whole life changed just from that one

46:11 conference and I understand everyone else won't have the same type of life-changing moment but you'd be

46:17 surprised at how many people I speak to have had their own versions of life-changing moments of meeting people

46:23 in all of these conferences and that one was a huge one for me changed my whole life but every conference I've been to

46:30 after I always consistently continue to meet people who continue to elevate and grow my business and also continuing to

46:37 elevate and grow my knowledge not only as a you know SEO or marketer but in business in general and sometimes just

46:43 in life in general and I've made literally my closest friends in the entire world from meeting them at these

46:49 events they happen to be strangers when I first met them and end up leaving as family with a whole bunch of them

46:54 yourself included obviously like known you or anything before we met the legit

46:59 event and we clicked right away you see we're still here today right so it's one of those things where if I had to

47:05 recommend anything to anyone it's 100% go to events 100% now now if you're one

47:12 of those people that are shy and you're not going to talk to people and you're not going to interact with people you're doing yourself a disservice you need to

47:19 put yourself out there I can understand it could be super uncomfortable like for me personally people know me people see

47:25 me people have seen me and think I'm kind of like someone who's okay to be verbal and kind of out there and

47:31 outspoken you saw nav when you were with me in South Carolina I'm not really like that I'm chill I like to be laidback and

47:38 everything else so I have the personality of a lot of people who would go to a conference and keep to

47:44 themselves but I have to put myself out there and I have to be someone that's introducing myself to people having

47:50 conversations with people because I learned from the very first one I ever went to you don't know what can happen

47:56 from the people you meet and you have no idea what can happen from the connections that you end up making and for me the most important thing is not

48:02 even so much what people can do for you because I think that's the wrong way to look at it it's more of what can you

48:07 learn from these people I've learned so much from all these people that I meet and not everyone becomes like a close

48:14 friend right like I don't have thousands of close friends but my closest friends like I mentioned come from these events

48:19 but all the other people that I meet and that I'm just friendly with or that I consider you know someone who's an acquaintance I learned so much from them

48:26 too and always able to touch base and reach out a good example would be um at an event I want to say this event was

48:33 maybe about two and a half three years ago that I went to there was someone who um used to be um his old profession was

48:40 a professional guitarist but he happened to be in marketing which I found funny I end up coming across someone who's

48:47 interested in doing marketing but that they want to do it for their band now I

48:52 wasn't able at the time to help them because I couldn't really understand what they needed but I went ahead and just refer them to that person to this

48:58 day that person still has them as a client and they're doing extremely well so you also don't know where referrals

49:04 are going to come from from you meeting people at these conferences you can have someone that just refers clients to you

49:10 based on what it is that you do what your expertise is because all of us do things differently all of us have

49:16 different Specialties different expertises and you won't know what people can do unless you're meeting them

49:22 in these conferences like it's way different to meet people on Facebook and type a couple messages but being at

49:29 actual conferences and events to me is my opinion the most important thing you can do in the industry right now uh what

Maximizing Industry Conferences and Networking

49:37 are your top tips for making the most out of Industry conferences and networking

49:42 events the top tip is going to be first off putting yourself out there like I mentioned making sure that you're

49:48 someone who's going to be able to have conversations with people but also being completely open and free with your

49:54 information don't be one of those people are guarded and maybe you're trying something and you're having great success with a case study you're doing

50:01 and you don't want to share it a lot of people are like that that doesn't help you it doesn't help anyone else share those results because what ends up

50:06 happening is you share those results with a group of people that you're starting to get friendly with at the conference and guess what's going to happen they're going to share their

50:13 results with you oh okay he's open enough to talk to me about it hey well you know what I'm trying this this this

50:18 and this and I noticed that this is working really well you'd be amazed I mean you specifically know because I'm

50:24 sure you had the same experience but so many people listening would be amazed and how many times you hear someone else

50:29 talking about something that they're testing that you never thought of and you're like holy that's working you test it out and you start making money

50:35 from it so many times that's happened to me over my career so many times I'm sure it's has it happened to you as well now

50:41 I imagine yes yes so lot of things in fact lot of things uh it gives you a all

50:47 different perspective of looking at the same problem and you say what it it was that simple some sometimes that happens

50:52 a lot with exactly it's it's like the phrase they say what is it a fresh set of eyes right like you have fresh set of

50:58 eyes looking at a problem and it's like wow they figured that out it's absolutely incredible so I would say

51:04 that would be the biggest thing don't like hoard information be free be willing be open to sharing because

51:10 that's why people come to these events if you think about it like it's not like Facebook or anywhere else where anyone could just jump on sign on from their

51:15 phone people are taking their time to travel to these events people are taking their time to go to hotels near these events so people are more willing and

51:22 able to share information because they're excited that there are other people like them that are taking it so seriously to come to these events to

51:29 take time away from their family to take time away from their loved ones to go ahead and go to these events why not be

51:35 open and free with everyone because they're going to be the same with you right now for someone new to the

51:41 industry which SEO digital marketing events would you recommend they prioritize okay um so for me the one of

51:49 the best events I've ever been to is SEO spring training um that's one that Terry and his wonderful wife Elizabeth have

51:56 every single year um that one for me is absolutely incredible um I'd also recommend if Chris does it again I know

52:02 he was on the fence about doing again but the legit event where I met you that was a great event as well um it was nice

52:08 that it was a smaller event because we all got to know each other better and that's another thing too that I do want to mention to people don't be

52:15 intimidated if the event is large or if the event is small there are benefits to both to large events you get to meet

52:20 more people you get to hear more perspectives in small events you get to meet people and become more friendlier

52:25 on intimate levels as well so there's opportunities in both of them um but those would be the two main ones that um

52:32 I recommend just because those are the two that I go to now that's not to say there's not plenty of other great events out there and there absolutely are also

52:38 great events that I've spoken at and I'm sure you've spoken about that are great but if someone is just getting started

52:44 and wants to surround themselves with a great group of people those would be the two that I recommend for two different reasons like legit was the more smaller

52:51 intimate one spring training is that larger one with more personalities and more things that you learn as well so

52:57 just to kind of give you from both sides of the spectrum right uh we I know we

Reasons Agencies Lose Clients

53:03 spoke a little bit about client retention and agency growth now in your experience what are the most common

53:09 reason agencies lose clients and how can they issues be addressed of course besides being not very proactively open

53:17 to clients yeah so um I would say results

53:22 probably right like people often like it's something that should be like obvious to most people but for some

53:29 reason it isn't and I understand when most people start you get your first client you're excited and you're you're

53:35 like oh my God I'm making money now now let me get those results that's kind of the wrong way of thinking it you should have a understanding on how to get

53:42 results and if you don't that's fine if you want to learn but your profits going to have to be smaller meaning you're

53:48 probably going to have to Outsource that first client so someone else to get the results because if you don't get good

53:54 results your reputation can be ruined and and you might never end up rebounding from it so first off making

53:59 sure you can get results if you can't get results rely on someone who can't um now if you're already at the point where

54:05 you can get results the very next step after that is just communication like I mentioned of course but I'd say it's

54:12 more education than anything else like I mentioned before most clients don't understand what we do they think it's

54:17 magic right what we do they have no idea no understanding all they know is one day they were getting x amount of

54:23 traffic and what feels like the next day to them they're getting 10 times the traffic they have no idea how you did it

54:28 but they love you they love your whole family and they love everyone you ever interacted with for getting no more traffic so just educating them a little

54:35 bit better is super important because when you're not having those highs and you're in the low period of things they

54:41 need to understand that not every month are we going to be 10 times up it's eventually going to hit a point where

54:47 it's going to Flatline a little bit or go up slowly and they need to understand why that happens when it's going to

54:52 happen and most importantly what are we going to do on our end next after that happens they need to understand that

54:59 because if you don't and you have your first month where your client gets you know negative their maybe their rankings

55:05 go down maybe their traffic isn't doing well and you didn't explain to them that the algorithm changes you didn't explain

55:10 to them that maybe you don't understand what's happening in the algorithm change yet but you'll have a better idea in a

55:16 week when everyone starts talking about it if they don't understand this they'll end up leaving you and going to someone

55:21 else thinking you were the problem when in reality you weren't in the fact of getting results you just were the

55:26 problem and not relaying to them the right education so I'd say educating your customers is probably the most

55:32 important thing when it comes to that now now you have developed a system for client retention so can you also share

Effective Client Retention Strategy Components

55:38 some other key components for an effective client retention strategy yes so for me the client

55:45 retention strategy the bread and butter is like I mentioned customer success manager the customer sucess newsletter and obviously getting results now if we

55:52 go beyond those three when it comes to retention it's more of making sure that

55:57 you're doing things in the best interest of the client often times we'll do like what's in our best interest because we

56:03 want to be as profitable as possible which is great but if I already know

56:08 that we're getting good results for a client and I want it to be better why not pour in some extra money from their

56:14 budget to get them even better results because the better results that they have what ends up happening is what they

56:20 talk to all their business owner friends which means more referrals coming your way which also means they're going to

56:25 end up staying long longer too many times I'll find uh people that are doing like what we do in marketing and yeah

56:32 the client's budget isn't going up it's staying the same but you're doing the same amount of work every single month

56:37 and some people think that's fine that's not always fine some months you need to pour a little bit more gasoline on that

56:43 fire sometimes you pull it back a little bit so being flexible I'd say is the

56:48 next key step in client retention is that you need to understand that there's going to be a month and it's going to

56:54 happen no matter what you do to prevent it from happen there's going to be a month when the client's going to go down and it's going to be 100% out of your

56:59 control but if you have those other months where you pour a little bit more of the budget onto things to get them better results it's going to be able to

57:05 hold them and sustain them over and most importantly they'll have that trust in you because you've gotten them such

57:10 great results they're going to understand hey you know what I'm gonna ride this out with Gregory and his team

57:15 right now even though this month is a little bit wonky and I think the big thing too A lot of people forget is the

57:22 business owners like they're taking care of their family the same way we are like their business pays for their family so

57:28 if their business goes down and they're still paying us our business isn't going down our family is not affected but

57:33 theirs is and for me it's always important to remember that that when it comes to retention at the end of the day

57:39 that's someone else and someone else's family on the other side we need to do everything we can to make sure them and

57:44 their family are good too the same way we want them to keep paying on time to make sure us and our family are good too

57:51 right right right now if an as if an agency had to focus on just three Su

Top 3 SEO Strategies for 2025

57:57 strategies in 2025 what would it be I would say um automations first and

58:03 foremost um which also ties into AI you can also put AI in its own category because not everything AI is automations

58:09 but really having a good system in place for all of your you know AI task and

58:15 kind of all the AI things you do and automations I'd also say one of the big things that I neglected actually in the

58:21 first couple of years of my business is standard operating procedures like you'll create a sop which is great but

58:27 then many people forget to update it like I went through the process this year of going through all the Sops with

58:32 all the other managers that I have on my team and we realized hey a lot of these Sops are outdated because now ai exists

58:39 now when it didn't exist before so now we have to update all these Sops and get them going so I say Sops and having them

58:45 up to date is one of the most important um a lot of people also will just rely on themselves to update Sops I Empower

58:52 all of my employees to inst because we use notion primarily by the way for all of our standard operating procedures so

58:59 in there they can comment at us same way you can like Google Docs Gregory or whatever they'll comment and let their

59:05 manager know hey we no longer do X Y and Z please update this standard operating procedure and boom with a good update no

59:11 longer are we relying on ourselves to update our team is telling us hey we don't do this anymore we do this now so

59:16 we can keep them updated say um that would be crucial so getting your AI automation systems in place making sure

59:22 your standard operating procedures are exactly where they need to be and then third and most importantly I'd say is

59:27 continuing to further your own education not necessarily in um SEO and marketing

59:33 which you should be doing all the time but in business because the more you understand business as a business owner

59:39 and the more you understand how to grow your organization and hopefully eventually either sell your business or

59:45 just keep it going forever whatever people want to do um that's going to be the most important key aspect is

59:50 continuing to grow as a business owner too many people get stuck in the hamster wheel of just running their everyday

59:56 business and keeping things going and then when five years passed they they then say to themselves well damn like my

1:00:03 business isn't doing as well as it did five years ago that's because you didn't grow in the last five years your

1:00:08 business may have but you as a business owner didn't and now you can't handle these changes that are taking place I

1:00:13 say those three will be the most important okay with that we came to the last uh section of our podcast which is

Rapid Fire Round

1:00:23 rapid fire round so I'll ask questions and you need to answer what comes first

1:00:30 thing in your mind okay okay as quickly as possible I got it I love these type of games what's the biggest seom myth that

1:00:37 needs to die uh pbms are dead that drives me crazy I hear people experience

1:00:43 that I'm with you on that one SEO tool that you can't live

1:00:49 without um specifically oh I'd say

1:00:56 no I know I'm just trying to think of one if I had to pick one it'd be search Atlas for me um I use that as opposed to

1:01:02 HFS some people can use ahrs too whichever but I think those tools are invaluable because they give you so much

1:01:08 data okay one book every digital marketer should read um I'd say profit first it's not

1:01:16 necessarily digital marketing related it's business related and if you own a business you should read it um in my

1:01:22 opinion it's one of my favorite profit first right there it changed my whole aspect on how I pay myself how I do

1:01:28 business just in general okay most underrated SEO

1:01:34 tactic underrated oh that's a good one um I'd say probably on page SEO too many

1:01:40 people skip how important it is and they don't really understand how powerful it is they just think they point a bunch of

1:01:45 links and it's good yeah your proudest professional achievement oh um I would say it's many

1:01:53 of them by the way because they all kind of go together but there's so many people that I've helped quit their day job to do this full-time so I'd have to

1:02:00 put them all together for me it's always been my Prest achievement because that I know how happy I was when I was able to

1:02:06 quit my job so I can't name one of those people it's literally hundreds of them but uh every person that's ever been

1:02:13 able to quit their day job due to any little bit of help I've been able to give them that's always my proudest

1:02:18 achievement uh what's the best investment an agency owner can make your people make Mak sure you take

1:02:26 the time to vet and actually go in depth and interview and most importantly train your staff the most important otherwise

1:02:33 you're doing everything yourself uh Gregory where can people find you follow your work or reach out

1:02:41 to you that's my find question okay perfect yeah I'd say the best place is probably Facebook um you can easily find me just put my name Gregory Ortiz um

1:02:48 it's the best place for me to keep in touch with all of my marketing buddies all my other social media it's really just personal stuff like my Instagram

1:02:54 it's mainly just friends and family because I'm posting just stuff going on in my personal life but business-wise

1:02:59 marketing wise everything else Facebook is the best place to get in contact UM and for anyone that's watching and

1:03:04 friend request me I apologize if you message me and I'll get back to you right away because just like nav I'm sure I get hundreds of messages every

1:03:11 single week it's hard to keep up with all of them but I do get back to everyone I promise so I say Facebook is the best place to reach out okay okay

1:03:18 okay uh Gregory this has been an absolute masterclass in Su business and

1:03:24 thank you so much for sharing your Insight I really appreciate you having me here um this has been one of the best

1:03:30 ones I've done so far I really really appreciate it I'm so happy to be here so thank you really appreciate thank you

OUTRO

1:03:36 and to our listeners if you find this episode valuable make sure to subscribe leave a review and share it with someone

1:03:42 who needs to hear this see you in the next episode of the agency Insider show thank you