Kaylene Grieve is the Managing Director of a company called Sales, SEO, and Social Media. With over 20 years’ experience in sales and marketing, Kaylene has perfected the art of solution-based selling as a powerful tool towards achieving an effective sales strategy. She possesses a wide range of knowledge on the business requirements of different organizations, and more importantly, their markets.
On this episode, Kaylene and I discuss how to automate lead generation, optimize social media pages, increase visibility online, and more.
What is Sales, SEO & Social Media
Kaylene Grieve: We've been running now for about 10 years and the business has had a lot of different, you know, evolvements over time. What I thought what would be the business when I first started turned out to be very different.
I'd originally set up all of these little packages that people could buy online and then, you know, talking to clients and learning about more about what they wanted and stuff. It sort of evolved into more of a spoke, but now kind of very process driven, I guess, service that you know, delivers a range of lead generation.
Alex Bond: You know, I look at your website and the variety of services is, it's a lot, you know, I mean, it's very wide. So I think it might even be easier asking, you know, what don't you do?
Kaylene Grieve: Don't we do? That's a good question. It's funny. You look at digital marketing. There's just so many things you can do and, you know, new things pop up all the time that you can try. So good question. We do do a lot. So we do a range of service.
We provide for clients each month. Is a combination of lead gen with content because both are really important, but we also do things like AdWords and obviously social media advertising, all of that kind of stuff, because you know, each client has different requirements.
So things we don't do is e commerce platforms maybe specifically, but we do work with a lot of clients that have got them. So we need to know how to SEO, SEO, optimize those and make sure that their branding is correct and products are placed properly with descriptions and all of that kind of stuff.
But we don't actually build the e commerce ourselves and we're probably not really a huge brochure. Creation kind of a agency either, but we do do that too. So really anything we don't do.
Empowering Companies to Harness SEO and Social Media for Lead Generation and Sales Success
Alex Bond: And I can imagine it's a really delicate dance to kind of streamline and implement all of these different services together. So how do you properly help these companies that you're working with leverage SEO and social media to generate leads? Cause that feels like that's kind of the end goal is generate leads so that they can get sales.
Kaylene Grieve: Yeah, it's funny, you know, when I first started this business, I did a lot of interviews with the target audience, I guess. And biggest pain point they all had was lead generation. And it's a, you know, an age old problem for most businesses, because if you're not inherently a salesperson or you even like doing sales, lead generation can be quite difficult.
And also too, if you're a person that's quite shy or introverted. Getting out there and networking and doing all of those kinds of things can be quite daunting.
So, and we always find at the end of the month when we're having conversations with clients about how the month went, you know, how are we tracking when we're going through the reports, et cetera, all they care about is the bums on seats appointments. Because that's what keeps their pipelines consistent.
It also keeps the revenue consistent. So having that balance of late gen with content, I think is for small business anyway, really important because. You know, it just keeps the pipelines not so big ebb and flows, but also the importance of having regular content out there is so important.
But sometimes that doesn't feel like it's the best spend of money. If you know what I mean, if it's not correctly generating a sale, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's that continuous, you know, movement through newsfeeds and things like that, that triggers people when they're ready for your product or service.
They go, oh, that's right. I saw someone on Facebook advertising or talking about, you know, blah, blah, or whatever. And then the content side of things does become very important, but it's not as easy to quantify a lead from say content type getting it as opposed to lead generation marketing.
Differentiating Between Brand Awareness and Lead Generation for Effective Marketing Campaigns
Alex Bond: And I think that's kind of one of the really tough distinguishers is like, what is the difference between. Just all out marketing having getting people aware of your service or your products or your brand versus actually turning that into a lead because those might feel like they're the same thing, but from my experience, they're not.
I mean, sometimes you just want people to be aware of something so that when they're ready to, they'll reach out. I consider that more marketing than lead generation, which is. I'm going to put this thing out into the universe and hopefully someone extremely soon, the goal is to get someone to call you or text you or reach out for a service. So how do you distinguish between those two things when you're creating that sort of content?
Kaylene Grieve: So the lead generation side is quite direct. So we use LinkedIn and also emails, sequences and things like that. So campaign sequences and, and that more direct approach. So it very much is sales approach. And it's based on volume.
So we know how many emails you need to send to get, you know, six to eight sales qualified leads a month. We know how many emails need to go out through authentic requests in LinkedIn that then turn into an email sequence to generate those kinds of volumes. And we've found amazing success on LinkedIn.
We conservatively suggest, you know, six to 10 sales qualified leads per month, but on LinkedIn, it's usually a lot more because you're coming from a trusted source. So people can see the profile, all of the client profiles that we work with legitimate, like they've been branded. They're professionally.
But together, the visibility with their, how they profile structured is high. Whereas, you know, if you're coming at someone with an email and they don't know you, sometimes that can be a little bit more of a challenge to break through those barriers, I guess. And you have to be very careful with compliance and making sure you're not breaking the rules, I guess with, with that type of stuff as well.
So, you know, so they're easy to quantify. So you can say, okay, so this month we've generated, you know, 10 40 leads, whatever the number is, and he's here at the, here they are and now you need to follow them up. So they're actual sales qualified leads. And that means someone that's interested enough that said, so we have a meeting, can we have more information?
So we jump on a call and discuss for what we would define as a sales qualified lead. It's a shame because the content stuff and I've done this myself, you know, when you need something and you remember, you've seen something on social media, so you go and find it and you buy it, right? But that's not always as obvious to business that you've bought from how you've come to them.
So, and sometimes those measures go unmarked. So you can't actually really get a clear idea on. Sorry, you can, if you're doing the proper reporting, et cetera, but sometimes they're just not as easy to quantify how people came to you as like, say, a qualified ladies. That's been our experience.
Alex Bond: Because I could, for example, see that someone may have gotten to my company via an Instagram ad or something like that, but you might not know exactly how long that took to hit or how many times they had to see it maybe. Or if they bookmarked it and came back to it. I mean, what I'm hearing you say, Kaylene, is those are the things that are kind of murky sometimes.
Kaylene Grieve: Definitely. And also too, like sometimes you'll ask clients how they came to you and they don't remember, you know, because they've done like what you've just said, bookmarked it, come back to it, thought about it, come back to it.
You know, people don't buy, it's not like you walk into a bar and pick up a date usually. In my line, you know, you've got to work the room, conversations, build relationships, all of that kind of build trust and rapport. So, you know, that happens in marketing as well. And sometimes you don't know what their journey was. You know, did they see you on Facebook? Did they see in different article on LinkedIn?
Did they say something in print media? Like there's a whole range of reasons why they might've come to and the old sales at each of, you know, it takes five to seven points before someone will reach out to you is true in this sense as well, because we don't see sometimes how people are interacting with you online with your content, because most of that information isn't visible.
Streamlining Lead Generation: Harnessing the Power of Sales, SEO, and Social Media Automation for Business Success
Alex Bond: And one of the ways that sales SEO and social media cuts down on that workload to create those 5, 7 points of contact is by automating lead generation. Can you explain to me what are some ways that a company can automate lead generation?
Kaylene Grieve: Yeah, so for businesses that are just starting out and, you know, the cash flow might be a bit tight, there's a lot of ways you can automate things on, and I'd probably suggest, depending on the type of business, obviously, B2B, obviously more, more so on LinkedIn, B2C is obviously Facebook and Instagram.
But having the old adage of the campaign, so you've got something to give to people, whether it's a downloadable, an audit, a meeting or whatever that is. And then creating that content to lead up to that point where they are downloading something or they are booking time with you or whatever that is.
It's easy to automate through things like MailChimp, campaign structures within Facebook and social platforms allow you to automate a lot of stuff now as well. And automation through your website can make that process very easy from like a B2C perspective. With the B2B stuff, we use tools to load what we're doing in.
So say on LinkedIn, we need to connect with people first. So the tools will go out and we'll define the target audience. We'll say, we want to speak to people in this location, this size business, this type of industry. All of the parameters are there and you know, you can set these types of parameters up in social ads as well on Facebook and Instagram, et cetera.
And then it will go out and reach those people and connect with them. And if your, you know, introduction message, et cetera, is in line with what they're looking for, what they're doing, most people will connect them when we're finding connection rates of about 20 to 25% which is good.
And then once that happens, the automation sequence will start. Start with the email sequence. So that's all a prewritten script which you can, you know, personalize a little bit with fields and custom fields and things like that. And then from that, they'll go into like a two or a three email sequence, depending on the client basically does the work for you.
So if you can imagine sitting there, like we send out 80 connection requests on LinkedIn a day for the. client. If you have to sit there and pick 80 people and connect with them and then manually load in that email and then manually find that that's a lot of work. And most business owners I know don't have that kind of time.
So, you know, having that automated definitely makes that much easier. And the same with the email sequencing tools. Like we, we have a process where we find emails or we find the people that we want to target through list builders and lead generation tools, et cetera, and then that all gets loaded into an automation system as well.
And that's spitting out, you know, a volume of emails each week that just keep happening. So, if you had to manually do all of that, most of your time would be spent on sales, business development, like processes. And whilst that is important, and it should be attended to, if you can automate that stuff as much as possible. You're going to make your life a hell of a lot easier.
Enhancing Social Media Optimization for Optimal Business Growth and Engagement
Alex Bond: And just switch gears a little bit to the SEO and social media side of things. Since we've been talking sales, I'm curious, how do you help companies optimize their social media pages?
So that they work for search engines, because that's something that I have found is doable, very doable, but it's difficult because people can often use the same words, or there's a web page that's taking over instead of a social media page that I'm looking for when I'm like doing research on guests and that sort of thing. So I'm curious about that.
Kaylene Grieve: With the about sections on social media pages, you've got an opportunity to really demise those areas with keywords. So when you know, once you've done your keyword research on your business and you know what people are searching for, and the key with keywords is to start where they are.
So if you've got specific products or services that might not be well known yet. What are some keywords that people might type in that don't know about the product or service yet. So you've got to start where they are.
So once you know the keywords that your client base is looking, you know, using to find you, optimize your about sections on your social profiles with as many characters as you can. So say on LinkedIn, and I think on Facebook too, you can have 2000 characters in a summary section.
Now, most businesses without sections on their Facebook page, they've got a paragraph because people don't really want to write, they just write something quickly to get it over with so that they can get it set up.
But if you write out true but search engines do. So, yeah, if you've got keyword optimized content in the about sections, like in LinkedIn, if you've keyword optimized the headline summary section, and also your experience sections, that's what they're searching, right? That's how the algorithms work. That's where they're reading the text from.
So if you make yourself more visible by using search terms in your about sections in, in all of the areas on the about sections, you just make yourself more visible and you make yourself visible to Google as well as within the search engines of the social platforms, which is really important.
And, you know, doing things like optimizing, like with your images or texts though. So tell always imagine online, like if you were a person who was visually impaired. Their readers tell them what photos are about. So if your photo is titled like, just as an example image of a social media report could be the alt text on that, right?
So then the visually impaired person knows that this image is about social media report. So that's what Google's reading, right? So if you can make your content compliant, I guess, with how visually impaired people have to work online, you're making Google's life so much easier because that's all the stuff they read. Right?
So I'll text the images. Make sure you're about sections are fully optimized with key search terms. Even your content, like some content on social media now, like Twitter, Google my business, I think are the only two at this stage, and I could be wrong that are search friendly.
So Google search friendly. So even optimizing your social posts with. You know, key terms and phrases and things that, you know, pain points that your clients are researching about really help you with that visibility story.
Alex Bond: And are there any other sort of ways that brands can just increase their visibility as a whole online? Or did we cover a lot there? Because I feel like that's really hitting on the social media part of things, but I'm curious if about web pages, if that's all the same advice.
Kaylene Grieve: If you need to be think about it too, like, so keywords that might work on LinkedIn might not necessarily work on the website. So you've got to think about where you're placing the content.
So website, SEO, foundation, one on one stuff. When we set clients up. We always do the back end of their site. So not all clients have a lot of money to spend on optimizing, you know, doing a whole new website. And it's a big job doing a website. So what we can do is you can back end optimize website with keywords and make sure the back end of the SEO is good.
So once you know the keywords, we spit out reports that show us the page, what Google can see. So we can optimize that page for specific keywords. So if you've got a website that say, you know, most, most small business websites are between 10 to 20 pages on average. That's 10 to 20 opportunities to use different keywords that your clients are searching for.
So if, you know, you've got a product services page about a specific product, you can optimize that page for service and the product that they're looking for and make sure that if it's in the URL, that's great. Sometimes when you go and fiddle with links in URLs, that can get a bit messy.
So I don't advise changing links unless you've got a proper website person helping you. You can change the title, the meta description, make sure all the images are all texted. You can put the headlines on the page. And I think the general rule of thumb is a one, two to three keywords per hundred words of text.
So don't overload the text with keywords. Cause it looks, you know, they'll argue against you for that. But if you know, you've got that keyword in the content, in the headline and it's all at the other side, they just pretty much optimized. And it just means you're like, if you've got a correctly addressed envelope, you give it to the mailman.
I know where to take the that person. If the back end of your website is optimized for a specific keyword and that person is looking for that specific keyword or term or product, Google knows where to send them because the back end of your site has the, all of that information correctly listed.
And Google goes, oh, these people, this is what this means. And they'll send that. Page will pop up. Now, just because you've optimized a page with a page one. There's a lot of other parameters with SEO that, you know, it's a heavily involved area.
And if you've got the foundation right, your traffic will be stable. Relatively stable, right? Because back end is set up so you know, I hear a lot of clients say, oh, what if I turn the SEO off with the company I'm using? A lot of SEO companies aren't doing the right thing by clients. We don't actually know what some of them are doing.
So if the back end is set up and done, the foundation is set, right? So you've got a really good platform to work from. And then if you continue to add, you know, content over time, right? And you optimize that your digital footprint will expand. And, you know, foundationally you're very strong online. So your visibility is always working for you.
Alex Bond: So when you put it in the right two words, all 20 or 25 of your web pages pop up on that first page instead of, you know, just the about section or something like that.
Kaylene Grieve: Well, no, because you would put a different keyword per page. So like if you had 20 pages.
Alex Bond: This is the sales page and the SEO page and the social media page, so that it's actually covering more of a wide, a wider landscape instead of like a vertical one.
Kaylene Grieve: Yeah, absolutely. And it just means like, you know, if there's different ways to say like, plumber in X suburb or X suburb plumber. Plumbing services, blah. You know, there's lots of different ways to talk about what you provide, and you can use the different pages to, you know, put those keywords in.
And then Google goes, oh, that's great. And then once your website is SEO optimized, and then you start doing something like AdWords, if your SEO is set up really well, your AdWords, your quality score on AdWords will go right up. And that's what you want. Because what that means is your AdWords will perform better because Google can see the site matches the ad groups. So it goes, oh, this is high quality. We're going to push this up more.
Whereas, you know, if the site is not optimized and Google's running your AdWords, which has got all the keywords and things you'd want in it, it's not as high quality, I guess. So it's not, I mean, they'll still obviously push you. What adds out there because you're paying for it, but it works, but I SEO in the back of the side is set up.
Common Mistakes and Misunderstandings in SEO Implementation for Sustainable Business Success
Alex Bond: So I'm curious what from your experience are some more of those mistakes and misunderstandings that people have when working with such a, in the grand scheme of things, young technology that is constantly changing and moving like SEO.
Kaylene Grieve: Yeah, it really is, isn't it? And it's very, very difficult to keep up with it. And if you think about like all of the different elements of marketing in the big corporate worlds, they have teams of people working on each element, right?
But as a business owner, you've got to know everything about everything. And it's tiring. And you're right. Like this is a fast moving game that we play with, with online marketing now, because platforms keep changing and they don't tell you what they changed. It just changed.
So it's, you know, you've got to really be on your toes and keep up with, with what's happening. The things I think, you know, for SEO, not doing it is. I don't know, like, if you, if you could see the back of the reports, like we see, and you can see, you know, like a line on a website, it has like the URL and then title tag, and it's all blank.
You can kind of understand why Google just bypasses that business in a fraction of a second, because it really does. It's just going into a dark room. It's got no information. So not doing it is, I think, you know, important. Also really pay attention to the keywords you're using. Because now Google is searching on intent.
So is the person looking for information or are they looking to buy? So there's very different tonalities with keywords. So a lot of the buyer journey that we learn about in marketing is people will go through a period of time where they don't know what they're looking for, then they're researching what the remedy is.
And then they want the answer, right? So it's consideration awareness decision on stages. If you can have content on the website that talks to each of those stages, you're building unconscious rapport with clients and a lot of clients or a lot of people just put the sales beat up, right?
This is why you should buy our product. Here's the product. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's all about the product. But there's no, not a lot of content generally about uncovering the problem. Why is it a problem in the first place? Talking really about those pain points. And then, you know, what are the solutions?
What are your options? What are the pros and cons? Those types of pieces of content can be really helpful for clients and then talk about here's the solutions and then, you know, talk about the different types of solutions and all of that kind of stuff.
So if you've got more information on the site about the awareness and consideration stages, as well as that decision stage, you really do start building that unconscious rapport with clients. And building that trust online, because you're giving them information and you're helping them discover and uncover what's going on for them.
And that's all they really care about. And the products, if you've done a good job of that, you've got more chance of them buying your product than if you've just gone, my product, buy it. So, you know, a lot of clients or a lot of potential, you know, clients miss those really important parts of the journey.
Because most people don't walk into the bar and, you know, pick up the person. They've got to build a relationship and the trust. So having that on your website as well is really important and I think a lot of people don't do that. It's most websites are big sales pitches, which is, you know, it's good too.
The other thing with SEO is backlinking is good. It really does help drive traffic into the website. Just make sure backlink is reputable. And most of the time you'll, we'll have to pay for backlinks and just make sure they're high quality because sometimes could get messy.
If you've got bad quality websites pointing to yours, that's not a good reference. So yeah, that, that's another area where I recommend people be careful when they're looking for those types of support services with SEO.
Alex Bond: No, that's wonderful stuff. And I really appreciate explaining the necessity to kind of walk people up the mountain instead of just get them a helicopter there in terms of streamline, not, not necessarily streamlining.
But creating that process of a sale instead of just shoving it right in people's space that it feels domineering or aggressive sometimes. And that more often than not, it makes me not want to buy a product is when I feel overly sold to instead of getting education or using it as a resource.
Kaylene Grieve: But isn't it funny, like, you know, when you see a piece of content and it just resonates with you, like, you know, that stuff that keeps you up at night that you worry about and you think about, and you're like, oh, I don't know how to do this or I need more information. I don't even know why I feel like this way.
But imagine if you've got that piece of content and it just, it's straight to you and you're like, these people get me like they really understand where I'm at. If you've got that kind of content online, you've just built so much rapport with that person. You know, they are more likely to come and work with you than not because you've really helped them.
And everybody wants relief from their pain. If you can provide that relief in the form of content and help and support without, you know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that's, you know, it's good, I don't know, rapport and trust building online that sometimes, you know, people are researching at three in the morning when you're in bed.
Identifying the Toughest Pillar among Sales, SEO, and Social Media for Companies Seeking Effective Implementation
Alex Bond: So among those three services and marketing techniques that are, you know, in your company title, sales, SEO, and social media, which one with the companies that you work with, which one do they struggle with the most that you feel people have the hardest time with?
In terms of like, whether, you know, I know the end goal is kind of lead generation, but sales is lead generation. SEO is kind of getting that visibility and social media. I think kind of works hand in hand with SEO. It's just kind of the other side of the coin a little bit. So, I'm curious which one of those three things companies often come to you with and have a misunderstanding about or are trying to get the most help with.
Kaylene Grieve: That's funny because we work with a lot of businesses in construction and sometimes lead generation for them isn't necessary. It's more about that branding awareness. Keeping their projects alive with people.
I'd say like sales is definitely key focus for most businesses because most people do struggle with that lead generation, you know, and a lot of businesses, especially when you're in that entrepreneurial stage in that startup phase, a lot of people work on their own networks to get things moving.
And sometimes people's networks dry up or they've worked with them to their capacity. So they need to go and find new things. So I find sales is generally the biggest thing that they need help with content is so important. So when you've got a balance of like, so with our service, we, we do a little bit of content just to keep it consistent.
Because, you know, lots of small businesses don't have big cashflow pots to throw thousands of dollars at, you know, advertising and, you know, I'm going to do 20 blogs and all this kind of stuff. And if you're doing under four blogs a month, one post a week minimum and boost it. So it's up for 5 days, 10, 7 days, however you can.
And you're doing an email a month out to your database. That's kind of enough content to keep things consistent. And then if you're doing the lead generation stuff as well, the beauty of that is people they'll get your action requests or they'll get your email and they'll go, oh, who's this person?
And I'll go and reference you online. And because you've got current content and you've been consistent with it, they go, oh, these people are really active. They're doing a lot of stuff. So they both help each other. Sales side of it, I think is probably the most important for most businesses because not everybody is a natural sales person.
