Real life business owners explain their Digital Marketing secrets.
So today I’m starting something new.
I’m interviewing REAL LIFE HUMANS for my podcast who’ve changed their digital marketing for good and who’ve used simple techniques to transform their business and brand.
These shorter episodes will include practical DOABLE advice for real-life humans (not lofty abstract tips that require 40 hours a week of effort and a $100k budget).
First off the rank is Jenny De Lacy.
Jenny explains how some simple usability changes improved conversion on her home page, encouraged more sign ups to her lead magnet, and ultimately drove more sales.
About Jenny
Generating ideas to bring your video marketing to life, taming the technology and building a profit-focused, client-centred strategy, Jenny inspires and motivates clients every day to use video marketing to grow their business and increase their profitability. She runs workshops, online programs, and 1:1 intensives.
Rejecting random acts of video marketing and needing an uncomplicated system to follow to build her business visibility, Jenny developed a five-step system that makes adding video marketing simple to implement in any type of business.
A solo mum to three teenage boys, she can be found at co-working spaces and cafes avoiding taxi driving gigs and crimes against personal hygiene.
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Transcript
Kate Toon: Hello my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef here at The Recipe for SEO Success an online learning hub for all things Search Engine Optimization. And today I’m starting a new mini series to go along with the regular episodes. These episodes are going to be called Reality SEO and I’m going to be talking to members of my Digital Master Chefs community about their real life digital marketing experiences, their wins with SEO and social media and all things marketing. And my very first guest today is Jenny De Lacy. Hello Jenny De Lacy.
Jenny De Lacy: Woo hoo! Hello.
Kate Toon: Hello, so lovely to have you here on the show. So Jenny, we’ve known each other for a very long time. And you’ve kind of evolve from copywriter extraordinaire into video human extraordinaire. Do you want to tell us a little bit about you, your business, and what you do?
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah, sure. I left a corporate learning and development career, that’s four years ago now, and had a little sabbatical I like to call it, which is kind of another word for doing stuff all for months and months while I tried to sort of decide what I wanted to do. And I just thought about writing and the fact that I like writing, and so I started Googling and of course found Kate, found you straightaway, and dabbled in some of your little courses in the copywriting community, but it wasn’t until I sort of dived in a little bit further into the copywriting that, I realised actually I really don’t like being by myself all the time behind the computer. And what I do base of course is work with other adults and train people to do things, and I’d already used video in my own business, so I sort of created a little system around it and started teaching people and realised how mush I love doing that. So that brand if you like is just over 12 months old, maybe 18 months now since I moved from copywriting into focusing specifically on video marketing.
Kate Toon: Yeah and I’ve done your courses and also you presented at Copy Con way back when. And what I love about what you do is it’s all about boosting confidence, not just personal confidence, but confidence in the tools, and the skills, and getting the right equipment so that you can really make video well on Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn and really use it to drive your brand awareness which is so, so important right now, isn’t it?
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah that’s right and just do it DIY as much as you can as best you can. And save your pennies for really special videos, for special new websites or launches or something like that, that we can DIY as much as we can and do it really well.
Kate Toon: Yeah and I will actually be having Jenny on the big podcast later on this year because I’d love her to pass on some video marketing tips to you guys. But Jenny, we are going to talk about SEO today. We are going to talk about digital marketing. Take me back a couple of years and tell me where your head was at when it came, if someone had whispered the words “SEO”, or the letters “SEO”, would you have shuddered? Would you have shuddered with delight or horror?
Jenny De Lacy: Well, I wouldn’t have known what it meant, so I would’ve thought they’re a bit mental-
Kate Toon: Creepy.
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah, what the hell. So I think it was because of the copywriting community, and hanging out with you, and listening to podcasts, particularly Hot Copy, that I started to be aware of it. Then I did the ten day, your ten day challenge, which I absolutely loved. And I remember I booked into a coaching core with you, I think, before I ended up doing the big SEO course. And I still confess to being really un-techy and very scared of parts of it which I find somebody else to help me with. But then I really took the whole personal SEO and really ran with it even more so than my own website, and it wasn’t until just recently that we sort of really stopped and looked at the website properly because, I was lucky that you were there that day and so was I.
Kate Toon: Yes, so you’ve increased your knowledge and I think what you said there about the technical bit, maybe it’s not so much that you’re scared of it, it just doesn’t float your boat.
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah that’s right.
Kate Toon: And it doesn’t have to float everyone’s boat, but I think the importance for small businesses who are listening is, it’s good to at least know what it is and then you can outsource with confidence.
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah that’s right.
Kate Toon: And you know whether they’ve done a good job. You don’t have to do the technical bit yourself, if you don’t want to. We’re not forcing you people. So what the aim of these little micro episodes are is to pass on some real life experience to small business owners, soloist, because often SEO podcasts, the things that they recommend you’d need 40 hours a week to focus on the things they’ve told you to do, and we don’t have that. So for you, what do you think has been the biggest change for you? What’s had the biggest impact so far?
Jenny De Lacy: Apart from the ongoing guest posting, being on podcasts so that the Jenny De Lacy ranks is everywhere. What happened that day when you said “I’m going to do a 10 minute review of a website” and I was lucky enough to be quick enough to get in, which is rare for me. Going through the usability of my homepage with you that day, its always confronting when someone looks at your website, but I immediately, I knew how to do it because again I’ve spent a fair bit of time with you, and I can juggle chucks of word press on the page, I know how to sort of do it. So I spent the rest of the afternoon after that feedback, rearranging my homepage and within, and including the keywords actually because you were saying “Yes, you’re a strategist but people might look for coach, why don’t you change the name.” So I changed the keywords and two weeks later when I saw you in person in Melbourne, I was ranking one for video marketing coaching and small business video coaching. So that was really quick and a massive change for me to see the traffic increase really quickly, which was really good.
Kate Toon: I love that because we talked about various things with your homepage, we talked about really you have about ten seconds for people to understand who you are, what you do, and why you do it better than anyone else. You need that page to be sticky and inviting and have a clear call to action. We also talked about the fact that you wear many hats, you offer different services but it wasn’t really clear on the homepage, so we added icons to really quickly communicate that you do this, this, this and this and this. And then we changed the focus a little bit, because we looked at the traffic and the competition of the keyword that you were going after, and the traffic was pretty meagre where the traffic for the other term was pretty good. And I know also that you posted it in your visibility group and everyone was like “Wow, it looks great. Well done, Jenny.” But the thing that I thought was the most impressive of all of that was that you took action, because so many people get feedback and then they kind of go, “Yep, too hard,” but within a day you’d done all the stuff. Who even are you?
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah, I know. I really enjoyed it. I think I saw the clear picture of what it was supposed to look like, so it wasn’t hard to do it. And then the person who, sort of does maintenance on my website, said to me “Don’t ever tell me that you are not techy ever again, I just saw what you did that you didn’t pay me to do, you evil human.”
Kate Toon: Evil witch, [crosstalk 00:07:19]and the thing is it is quite empowering to be able to do it yourself. I think that’s the goal of my course, I’m not expecting everyone that does my course to go on and be high powered SEO consultant, although many do. It’s really just that empowerment to make small changes or medium sized changes yourself, without having to pay a fortune and without having to second guess yourself. And isn’t it lovely, when someone just tells you what the hell to do? Do this, this, this, and this, and it will have this result. And you do it, and it had the result. Gosh! I wish someone would tell me what to do, can you tell me what to do?
Jenny De Lacy: Absolutely not.
Kate Toon: Make more videos, make more videos.
Jenny De Lacy: You’re already doing it, you’re already awesome at it.
Jenny De Lacy: But one thing I wanted to say to, that you know when people say that the traffic coming through to my website, how does it convert? I don’t really get contact requests, inquiries through my website very much apart from SEO companies in India trying to get me to [crosstalk 00:08:15] but what I do get is people opting in numbers every day to my freebie on marketing training that’s on that homepage, in the freebie tab as well. So, it had a different kind of conversion to what I was expecting but actually a better one. Because inquiries are good, but as you know they, sort of, few and far between really decent ones, but when people are actually opting in and hanging out and spending a bit more time with your content, staying on the page a bit longer I think that’s even better
Kate Toon: I think you’re right because it allows you to build authority and trust and it is a slower burn but the relationship you end up with is stronger, rather than having to kind of cold sell to a random email inquiry. They are already warmed up a little bit, they’ve already dipped their toe in the warm bath of Jenny De Lacy.
Jenny De Lacy: That’s right.
Kate Toon: They’re ready to plunge full in. And I think so important, one of the things, the future of search is something I’m going to be talking about at the Melbourne Click Engage Convert conference, a little plug there for Lauren, and I really feel that the main future of search is around personalised branding. It’s getting harder and harder to compete for what you do, although you’re doing very well, so really building up that equity in your own name, your own brand name, which I think you’re doing such a good job of through SEO, video marketing, Facebook, email, it’s all part of the same thing. SEO is not a box to be checked. Do you agree?
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, you take action, take action, then you do an incognito search and you think, actually the article that I wrote, the podcast I was on, my Facebook stuff, some of my YouTube videos, they all kind of are in this lovely mix of grooviness on the front page. I think it would be very boring if it was all LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, but actually there’s quite a mix, and it’s interesting I think people go “Ah, she does a bit of that and she writes a bit and she’s on podcasts.” So it’s a bit they can choose what to…
Kate Toon: Digest.
Jenny De Lacy: Dive in. Yeah, yeah. What to check out.
Kate Toon: The blended results for your name are great, there’s videos coming through, videos for your own video channel, videos that you’ve done for other people, different profiles. That’s what we want, we want to own that first page and in fact, you own the first three or four pages. So…
Jenny De Lacy: Who is that other Jenny De Lacy? Who the hell is that lady?
Kate Toon: A dentist, a dentist in Ipswich called Kate Toon, who I’m sure gets a lot of inquires about SEO. Okay, Jenny, we like to finish, I say we like to, we haven’t done it before. I’d like to finish these episodes with just one clear piece of advice for the listeners. If they could one thing tomorrow to improve their SEO or their digital marketing, what would you recommend they do?
Jenny De Lacy: Well, obviously I’m going to say video but let’s not be too obvious or boring. I do think there’s a way to maximise the time you spend, and like you said personal SEO is really fantastic, so where are you? Go and do an incognito search to see where you come up and start deciding how you can maximise your own name. But also using video or your website really does drive more traffic to your homepage or wherever people are landing. And I kind of forget what we were talking about off the air about the number one tip-
Kate Toon: Usability.
Jenny De Lacy: Yeah, looking at that front page, my homepage, and how much clearer it is for people to know what I do. And I look at a lot of websites and sometimes I still think “Man, what are doing? I don’t know.” And that was me, and I didn’t even realise that that was me. So, yeah, usability on your homepage is really super important.
Kate Toon: And getting someone else who’s kind of-
Jenny De Lacy: [crosstalk 00:12:00] Check it out. Don’t mind you, don’t be too shy to sort of say reach out to someone you trust and say “It’s okay to be honest with me, do you know what I do when I land on that homepage?” Just brace yourself, clench the bum cheeks, and it’s worth it, it’s worth it, it was so good.
Kate Toon: #sphincterclench. It’s all worth it in the end.
Kate Toon: Well Jenny De Lacy, thank you so much for being my very first Reality SEO guest on the show. We will be having you back soon to talk about video marketing, so keep your ears peeled for that. And, of course, if you want to find out more about Jenny, her SEO is rather good, so just type in Jenny De Lacy into Google and you’ll find all her various bobs, all her various bobs, all her various bits and bobs. Jenny thank you ever so much!
Jenny De Lacy: You are so welcome. I am so glad. Thank you so much for letting me go first. Woo hoo!
Kate Toon: And thanks to you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed it, please don’t forget to subscribe or leave a rating or review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you heard this podcast. Your rating will help other people find the show, and learn more about the wonderful world of Search Engine Optimization. And if you want to learn more about SEO in general, feel free to head to the I Love SEO group on Facebook or to www.therecipeforSEOsucess.com. Until next time, happy SEOing.
