all right welcome back to online marketing explained uh I'm your host johy Howard this is presented by CFI the carpet and fabricare Institute uh let's get everything set up here all right so hopefully everybody's doing well tonight of course this is online marketing explained I'm your host chony howart uh tonight's topic is um transitioning to high-end clients but of course let's throw out some sales stuff if you are a carpet cleaning company and you need some help from other carpet cleaners you should visit cfic connect.org that's right that is a Association for carpet cleaners just like you that's right cfic connect.org all right now let's move on to the fun tonight we're talking about um transitioning to high-end clients all right uh I've been watching some uh rings of power on Amazon so we got ourselves a dragon on a horde of gold to represent what you want and that is to get yourself some higher-end clients because when you trade dollars for hours you know everybody we'll cover this when you trade dollars for hours there's only so many hours that you have in a day and the only way that you can go up from that point is to expand your business by getting more trucks more employees or or by getting higher paying business uh this here is going to be a two-part seminar um the first part is mostly going to cover what you can do on your website the second part is going to cover uh things like ads and other ways that you can uh Target high-end clients let's see uh all right so uh part one is strategies for attack attracting high paying clients and building a compelling online presence part two will be Advanced marketing techniques client retention strategies and refining operations to meet the expectations of affluent clients most of what we cover is going to be online stuff that you can do on a marketing level so I'm not really going to be hitting you on operations uh that is for a different webinar um so let's uh let's talk about this why would you target higher end in um clients and I think the answer is pretty obvious and everybody's going because I want more money because they have more money because they'll pay more money you know but um the problem with obvious is we tend to overlook the obvious you know uh I don't tend to lose my shoes I lose my glasses I lose my keys I lose all the stuff that I'm supposed to be tracking on a regular basis the stuff I think I know um and so it's really common that people will lose sight of some of the easy ways that they can Target hiring clients and we're going to cover some of this right now and after this you'll be able to take a look at your website and you'll go like uh I can tell I can tell if I'm doing this um well the goal is higher income clients within that goal you know there are other goals so so uh those are the ones we tend to miss and Overlook so what are the benefits of the higher paying customer uh obviously higher Revenue per client is the number one that means that you spend the same amount of time maybe a little more time you know you might be dealing with a bigger house but not always you know uh here I live in Ashland Oregon and some of the fanciest most expensive homes are the smallest homes you have ever seen so that's not always the case but you know it's safe to say that might be a little bit more work but uh definitely more money you also have a greater uh potential for repeat business um I guess part of this is hard because there's a stereotyping of people with money and without money and so on and so forth and you can go ahead and look at that however you want but we're all on the Quest for more money and as we get more money throughout our lives like now I get my carpets cleaned a lot more than I did when I was younger why is that because I was poor why is why do I get more now because I am less poor you know it's like um so greater greater potential for repeat business for one if you fulfill all the expectations of that client there is a loyalty that will come with that because you're fulfilling all of their expectations and we'll cover that later it's not necessarily A loyalty that comes with people with money or anything like that it's a loyalty that you're fulfilling their checklist but on top of that you'll also get repeat business because frankly they can afford to have their carpets clean more often and probably want their house to look nice don't get me wrong everybody wants their house to look nice they can afford to make their house look nice more and you get better referrals again a weird one but it's true you know affluent people no affluent people so uh you know you get in there and everybody knows that referrals are by and large the best clients because they've already been vetted by your clients they already understand what you're charging uh you know they they've already been given the sales pitch they're a hot lead they're basically just calling you up and awesome so the uh benefits of targeting higher paying customers is more money per client greater greater po potential for repeat business and better referrals now what impact does that have on your business you can offer premium Services you know um again this might up your work a little bit but the uh third one that we can see here is that you can charge higher margins and you can introduce tiered pricing models because this so a lot of the time when you're working at the bottom financially uh people are scraping by you're scraping by you know you do what you can they do what they can and you can't really get into the psychology of the pricing model but when you get to people where money is a little bit less of a concern the psychology of the pricing model becomes much more effective um you can say well that's the medium tier here's the best tier and here's the starter kit and you know they don't want to go for that you know so so as money becomes less important to your clients um the psychology of your tiered pricing becomes more effective and then again like we said we you're charging higher margins for premium services and for upselling and items like that oh I don't have my chat open I should pop that open just in case at the end I'm happy to answer any questions so if you have any questions feel free to pop them in the chat and we will address them uh so the way people do this normally and the way that we would do it is by creating a uh customer profile or a um there's several words that they use for it but creating a profile of what would be your perfect customer now again this is the obvious everybody's going to say well it's somebody in a nice house with a nice car somebody with a good job that's reliable you know and and we get that but there are specifics within that that we tend to overlook let's take a look at a few hey look he's getting fancier he's got a little bow tie he has expectations uh okay characteristics of high income demographics lost my place in my notes okay um values so when I was poor when I was young young not sure how to word this when I had less money these things weren't quite as important to me quality time efficiency convenience eco-conscious Solutions those are things that can be a big roadblock to some a to uh some audiences but also can be the pathway to other audiences so one thing you got to consider is you know you don't change up your whole system uh unless you're stable or unless you're making the leap you got to be aware that you're doing it so I'm going to go after this um means that you know you're going to stop going after the other and you're going to start going after one or I'm going to go after this because my hours are full and uh nobody else gets to come in so there's two different strategies there I would think about which ones uh you do but uh these quality time efficiency convenience eego Consciousness these are things that you can convey on your website that will really haer to somebody who cares a little bit less about money and cares a lot about their prizewinning dog uh you know they're they're kid that goes to a what's that school called what's that uh montauri school you know they're their kid that goes to the montor school um you know the these things are very important eco-conscious of course fits into that but uh you know convenience time efficiency these are people running around um offer them what they need uh you know get those roadblocks out of their lives uh their expectations tend to be professionalism punctuality and seamless experience which you know uh I hope you're already providing if you're not already providing you need to do that now regardless of who your clients are uh but we could all do better at that so I'm not shaming anybody but you know hopefully that is your goal in what you do um behaviors that they have they research more thoroughly before making purchase decisions and looking for credibility such as reviews and testimonials they're doing this a lot of the time in the evening they have access to things they have access to information and they have the time to spend to get that convenience that they need during the day because you know you're not coming at 9ine o'clock at night most of you I guess every once in a while there might be some of here so your goal is to reduce pain points higher income clients May worry about inexperienced service providers uh you know causing damage to their home inefficient customer service slowing them down or lowquality results making them have to go to somebody else else ruin their stuff um and just generally get in the way of their life ego Consciousness yes you know it it is a big factor um as my wife my wife and I recently had this conversation about how we've sort of like hit this level in our lives where we're no longer buying a Walmart bookshelf that's going to fall apart in 3 years and we're buying life Furniture you know but I mean you have to you have to buy the life furniture and don't get me wrong we could have bought the life Furniture before but we had this mindset where where we didn't so that's a whole other sociological thing that you can discuss uh with my wife who goes to school for that sort of thing but uh you know there is a mindset that uh you really just can't help to have you know if you pay a th000 bucks for your phone you can't tell me that you don't take better care of that phone than you did the you spent 150 bucks for I'm sure you agree Barry um all right so moving on what do they expect from service-based businesses uh as we said impeccable professionalism you know they are paying extra but like we said you're not being professional because you're being paid more you're being professional because you are a professional so don't for forget that you know stay confident um Solutions and that respect their time that is a big big deal you know um during the day time is a big big deal uh my wife and I both work from home we had meetings last week and somebody was coming to provide some service fix our washer and uh and he was showing up in a 4H hour window while Terry's seeing clients and I got meetings you know it's just a we would have paid more money to know exactly what time he was going to show up or have a smaller window even you know and then quality of price they expect quality over price um now I realize that that's a vague statement you know how much quality over how much price you know uh it's like in the world of technology um something can double in value and double in price but if it doubles in value again it'll quadr in price at that point um so you know you'll find you'll find your comfort zone but if we pave the way they'll start coming in and if they start going whoa that's cheap well then the next one you got to raise that price all right tailoring your service and messaging like we said you want to highlight quality professionalism and time saving this means that through your content on your website mostly in your headlines and your calls to action you need to highlight that don't get me wrong you need to highlight it in your in your content but I mean if you're going to start someplace that's where you need to start so we've run over the same stuff over and over we've drilled it in we understand but now let's address a little bit on how we can make that change to our websites how we can make our sites look a little bit more professional expert a little bit more expert because that's really what you're trying to convey when they get there they want to feel that they found the expert who knows everything that they don't know that already asked all the questions that they didn't ask and when they do ask is willing to be quiet and answer be quiet and answer is a very important thing uh just think about all the times that uh you try to order food over the phone and the person keeps talking over you as you're just trying to tell them you want a side of walk you know all right professional website the importance of a professional website is very important you know it's your business card you want it to look good you want it to look clean you want it to look sharp your website is often the first impression High income clients will have of your business and it should exude trust and professionalism the design of your website uh should be sleek and clean mostly clean um and I'll throw in Mobile optimization for me here recently mobile optimization is really just a massive simplification of a website you know uh pulling out a lot of design pulling out a lot of animations um people are coming to websites on so many devices and and uh there's so many different options especially now that there's Ai and they're pumping this stuff up all over the place that a clean and concise website that gets them to the point will get it done now people will say yeah you know but there's stuff all over the place and you got to stand out no you don't you don't need to stand out you're not creepy pasta you know you're not Discord you're not Facebook you don't need to stand out from the pack what you need is a website that works and converts and is easy for the person they're not hanging out they're not there to research their next book they're not there to find out any great information they're there to find a phone number or a contact form they're there to find a basic amount of information that they can utilize to get somebody to clean their floors so now don't get me wrong you got a Blog sure you work on your blog but you don't expect high traffic from your blog frankly you know why because you're a carpet cleaner that's why not a lot of not a lot of amateur carpet cleaners out there you know I happen to be married to one but she's the only one I've ever met so uh you know uh finally trust s uh trust signals you want to display your certifications like beinging a member of CFI right uh licenses memberships and professional organizations maybe that one I should say like CFI right and then uh you want to show case your client testimonials and before and after photos you know how easy is it to take a photo and everybody thinks like oh this photo looks like bat Kaka you know um the goal is to show it before and after you know uh crappy photos look like real photos taken by human beings and in a world of AI generated photos of course I use them you see me using them right now this one isn't this one's a stock photo but but the dragon that was an AI photo um but we are coming into a world that when it comes to a service and you're showing before and after stuff you should be showing Unique Images solely to you that means you take the photo you have your Web Master upload them we we show it they submit that to Google search console Google knows that you are the original uh you know source of that human photograph and uh that's going to become very important because with AI there's one thing that people uh have forgotten and I believe I've said it before and that is when you search for something like I want a review of a carpet cleaner your ENT implication is that I want a review of a carpet cleaner from a human being you just assume that it's from a human being but the world has changed now so the more that we can provide human results uh I bet you the better we're going to do uh so keep it human in your trust signals don't get me wrong you can use AI for some of your content and to help you create content I'm not saying stay away from AI like the plague or anything like that you know don't use it for your testimonies uh website design considerations of course like we said you want clean Aesthetics uh you also want clear messaging uh this is one place where I use AI all the time to to help me and that is I'll put in a sentence and I'll say uh you know write this sentence five times for me and a make this sentence more I should probably do it with this sentence all right I'm GNA give you the sentence and then uh you know maybe later we'll see if AI can make it better make this sentence simpler and easier to read you know I will put that in there often to sort of get ideas and you'll be surprised on how I can take a sentence that's this long and like trim it down to like this much that totally conveys uh the situation you know so and and I'm not a particularly Wy writer you know so um uh lot of options there clear messaging very important and then clear navigation mostly we're looking at clear navigation to a phone call we're looking clear navigation to a message or to a free estimate um you know go ahead and provide oh and you're about page we want that too everybody's a looky L they all want to look more pay attention to your about page make it look nice and make sure that that's part of your navigation so by clear navigation it doesn't mean you need all sorts of crazy topics up in the top it means you need to tell them how to they can call you get a free estimate get to the homepage uh learn more about you stuff like that and then of course if we're targeting higher paying local clients uh SEO is a big factor in that so you want to Target higher income Search terms so reliable fast you know terms like that are people who have been frustrated before and are looking for a difference and you know who those people are those are people with money and let's extend that sentence those are people with money now the reason why I say that is all of us at some point were people with no money who called people and waited and didn't get what we want we all have that experience so now when we search maybe we have the money and we say I want it fast because I used to have to deal with this and I'm not going to deal with with this now or they melted my carpet I need the best I need the most professional you know there are a lot of Search terms that you can Target higher paying people and then of course local SEO by targeting different locations uh different cities uh different locations within those cities you can grow your footprint in those areas let's make sure I'm not getting a text telling me this is terrible all right so content creation high value content uh we want them to find what they want quickly and easily and we want it written in human words Touch by human words we want it dabbled at and touched up every once in a while anything that can show that we care about it uh that we're using it that it matters to us and that it is there to help people that we are there to help so that's what high value content means um you know don't get me wrong with your blog content high value content means that you that those people learned something and they took something away but high value content for a landing page means that somebody's trying to find your phone number they're trying to find your service uh they're trying to get it done that would be high value content for let's say a landing page uh not an informational search which would be a Blog so there's transactional searches which is hire a carpet cleaner and then there's informational searches which would be like how do I clean my carpet um so uh eco-friendly and expertise of course you want to write content that highlights eco-friendly cleaning methods and Advanced Techniques to show your expertise because uh again you know these these people are wanting some sort of value for their dollar but their dollar matters less the value matters more at this point and then case studies and testimonials I don't know about case studies um but uh testimonials you know when I think of a case study I guess really what I'm thinking about is kind of a longer testimonial you know feature detail uh testimonials of past work for high-end clients including high quality testimonials this reinforces your credibility especially if you can get those photos of those people's houses because your new client comes in and they say well I have a house that's nice like that look at this you know I want to be represented like that you know Steve's been singing this song for years Steve's been singing this song for years that you always have clients on your website that are a step or two above where you are you know you're always creeping your way up by by showing off your nicer and nicer clients to a degree of course you don't want to alienate people you know you want to work your way up there and when you're up there you know you want to establish and work your way but uh you always want to have a little bit nicer of clients than you God because you want people to look at it and you want them to say I want my house to look like that and everybody's crazy crazy everybody thinks their house is potentially nicer than it is so having it up there it's like uh it's like toy commercials you ever look at toy commercials and they got a they got a kid playing with a toy that's obviously made for a six year-old but that kid's like 12 you know that's the sales pitch you know this is where you want to be buy my service and you're going to get there uh elevating your online reviews and testimonials um positive why do reviews matter obviously we know they matter because people read them and uh then they make their their judgment off there you know positive reviews are crucial in building what's called social proof especially for high-end clients who rely heavily on recommendations and pure feedback and uh you know these clients might not trust you without without that information but but there are other reasons and and that is those clients you know you can't leave a review on Yelp without having a Yelp account and you can't leave a review on Google without having a Google account and both of those websites know where you live so when you drop that when they drop that review they know where they live and that is just adding more weight to the locations that you so if you start telling that location that you're just doing absolutely great well you're not only telling people who live there who frankly probably won't know that from the testimonial unless they start digging like a creep you know but Google Google's digging like a creep all the time you know so they know exactly where that person came from so let's cover this real quick we're going to finish this up with some talk about reviews um how to ask for testimonials you know you ask after a service followup you develop a habit of uh reaching out at the end especially of high-end clients and uh you frame it as a way of uh to can continue providing top service you know you say uh you know reviews really help me make sure that I do a quality job and if you could leave me a review I would really appreciate it and I would like you to be honest I mean don't you mean it I mean I mean it heck I meant what I just said right now and I wasn't even talking to anybody but it's true I want to know you know you want to know and if you don't deal well with critique well then you need to uh work on that uh you can incentivize reviews by offering discounts you know again remember your margin has been hiked up so but 20 bucks is still 20 bucks you know 30 bucks is still 30 bucks it's still means something to people but remember it's not necessarily the money that means something what means something is being given something or being taken care of so 20 bucks is still 20 bucks to somebody who has a lot of money they just appreciate it and then you know the the big one it's on here just because it is the Unicorn the Unicorn the video testimonial if you could get one of those yeah but it's not easy to get um I I would say that your best chance is you have such a lovely home I'm so happy that I cleaned your carpets these look great would you mind if I took a little bit of video and then you talk to them in the background while it's happening or or asked if you could talk to them in the background while it's happening I'm not saying to be sneaky or anything like that but make it a little less um formal make it a little less formal you know but uh you know that you want to show the world that you clean such a great house and a lot of people are proud of their houses especially those that spent a lot of money on it and then of course the obvious we've discovered this many times before where do you display your reviews you display them on your website social media Google and Yelp um seems like a lot of people have a hard time with displaying them on social media so I'll throw uh this in when you display it on social media display it as a thank you don't display it as a lookie look at me or anything like that display it like oh I can't believe that these people gave it such a great review we totally appreciate it and uh please reach out to us in the future anybody who needs help you know stuff like that uh all right so uh that's it uh we can take a couple of questions if you have any but if not uh that is also fine this webinar is presented by cfic connects.com I am chony howorth and my website is monsters of search.com and uh so hopefully you learned today you can take a look at your website and review it uh review the design the content and see if you feel that it's targeting a client that's at the tier that you feel that it should be targeting you know start realistically start with your area start realistically to your area you know you can see if you have local optimization uh simple things would be do you have your address in the footer you know is that showing up on every page you know having an address in the footer is a big deal because that shows Google that your business is located in the area and it very much clarifies it and then are you requesting reviews these are some big things that you can do but transitioning to higher level clients really has to do with um taking a step towards them and being confident that you're going to get them and be sure that you're always providing Professional Service all right what do we got here in the chat we got some good job from Miguel we got some uh thank chony from Eloy I appreciate that we got some Barry regarding before and after photos do end clients want to see those um yes yes they absolutely do but not necessarily for the reason that you think they do they don't want to see them they're not like inspecting the carpet of course you want to put up a picture of a clean carpet you know it's like but but they're not looking at it in the sense that they're examining it going like well that carpet's pretty clean you know they're looking at it in the sense of like oh they got the job done you know they're proud of their work oh that house is similar to my house or so on and so forth you know so yes they want to see it but really not for the reasons that you think they want to see it uh Kathy a bur says many of us have someone taking care of our websites which is not easily posted social media is fleeting how else would you capture reviews for legacy uh do you mean that people are giving you written reviews I'm not sure what you're asking uh with this question but I will tell you that um what you do is you have your website company put up a review page and this is not a review page that shows your reviews this is a page that frankly it's probably not linked to from your website unless maybe in the footer you say leave us a review or so people can find it when you direct them to it but but um and then you get yourself a QR code that you put on your receipt or you get yourself a link a shortener that you put on your syn car uh receipt carpetcleaning business.com review me you know something easy the point is that we get them to a page where they're able to review you where they can choose Google or they can choose Yelp or they can choose to tell you how much they hate you so here's the deal if they choose Google we automatically link them out to Google if they choose Yelp we link them out to Yelp if they choose that they hate you we pop up a contact form where they can contact us directly you got what going on here it means that the person who hates you is not being sent out to review they're talking directly to you you don't get a bad review and you get to work on that in-house and having your uh your website company set up a page like that for you so when your technicians are out or when you're out and on your paperwork you can have links you can have QR codes that can send people to that so it's quick and easy and you just say oh yeah all you have to do is go here and you know click the one you want to do and you're right there so um maybe we should do something about how to set that up or at least I should have an example uh that I can show you guys sometime but in the meantime the next part of this uh we'll be talking about using paid advertising uh leveraging social media um and partnering and I know I've said in the past that leveraging social media is not necessarily hugely effective but social media is very very good at targeting locations so you can uh you can get some retargeting going on there that will really help you but in the meantime it looks like uh we're done and I will see you guys all next month with part two