10 years ago internet marketing was a new concept for all. In this episode, Hugh is meeting up with Victor Martinsons, who hired him as a consultant for SEO and managing Pay-Per-Click accounts back then. They will talk about how the market has changed and what has started the same. tip for startups, Bitcoin, secrets from working on million dollars accounts and how they took an empty office and grew it to be $1 million in revenue company in a year.
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Victor Martinson here. And I met Victor at real search.
About 10 years ago. Yeah. And they actually they had an ad. In the paper. I think they were looking for salespeople. Yes, we were hiring. Yeah. And then I had called them up. And we had a really good conversation over the phone. I think it was Jonathan. He said, we're doing something new in our company and different. And I said, Oh, I should come and meet with you. And then he told me that they did bid management software for pay per click, you guys were working with a quiz do and they're like, it's a really technical sale. You know, it's not simple. So it's a technical sale. And I came and observed for I think, was about 48 hours or 72 hours. He had me just sit and watch. And then I came back to you guys with like a long list of all the things that I saw, yes, or things that I didn't see weren't planning on. We didn't even thought about hiring a sales manager. Yeah. We were just looking for salespeople for the
And you put together a whole plan. And
that's when we hired you as a sales manager. Yeah. And it was fun working there. I mean, we learned a lot about, I learned a lot about pay per click and the internet. And
it was, I mean, your company grew. I remember, I remember meeting that we did one time and I'm like, Can you guys handle more customers? Right? Yeah, cuz, cuz they're like, hey, they're just coming in so fast.
build out the tech side even more, because?
Yeah. And some of your text got a little overwhelmed. Yes. Because they're like, wait, I got six new accounts. Yeah, but but I only had one account last night. Yeah, it was. It was a fast growing process there for a while. Right. And then you guys had a web designer. I remember. Think Todd, was it Todd? Todd helped with some of them. Yeah. He was kind of a high end web designer. Yeah, he wanted I think he went
To do landing pages for like $1,000 or something like that. I mean, if you do a good landing page, I mean, it's worth the money. Yeah. But our clients didn't want to pay that. And it was a hard sell. Yeah. So, yeah, so I worked with real search for
probably about probably about a year, I ended up getting an offer through a referral at another company. But we've kept in contact. I mean, you, you were always great to work with. Yeah. And you guys were open to ideas, which is, is great. Yeah. And then when I started with this current company that I'm working with the Bitcoin processing.
We've had several conversations about potentially bringing you on to build out
more of a sales force. Yeah, of course, as we as we get to that point. We'll talk about that more. But yeah, you know, there's there's potential there for working together again. Yeah, I had somebody else in my industry. They'd called me in and they, you know, we met
We had a good conversation. And they're right by the Beverly center. And so they said, Hey, I want you to come in for three, four weeks, I'll pay you this much per week.
Within the first day, I found one thing that saved them $10,000 a month.
So after I worked with the guy for, you know, three, four weeks, I said, you know, your company needs some work, and they had just hired a new CFO. And I said, I don't think the timings, right. But after I left, he goes, You know, I probably shouldn't tell you this. But he goes, you know, somebody would hire you for like, 25 $50,000 for eight weeks of consulting. Yes, he goes, the stuff that you brought into my company, was so high value. And he calls me every, like, every two months, right? He calls me He's like, are you gonna help me build my company? I'm like, I have my own company. You know, I'll help them. Yeah, but it's got to be like a win win. But it's always funny. You know, because
There's companies out there. Yeah, moronic companies can really benefit from several weeks of high intense expertise and build now Salesforce. Yeah. And then after real search, I started up another company where I came in and there was nobody, No, nobody in any desk, no phones. It was funny because I came over there. And they're like, Oh, yeah, we have. We have a sales team. And I got there and there was no phones. And I was like, Well, where's the phones? And they're like, Oh, we got phones. So I ended up hiring everyone from scratch. And within 12 months, we went from nobody to like 50 appointment setters and 13 closers doing 100,000 calls a month. And I and I developed up a whole call center and it was like the Navy SEAL boot camp. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, you really got
to take off. Yeah, I wish I had a piece of it.
They actually were voted like that.
Top 20 places to work in LA. Yeah, they got ranked in one of the fastest growing companies in Inc 500. They were actually acquired by a huge corporation for millions of dollars. But within I think it was 17 or 18 months, we acquired 3000 accounts.
We got it down that we knew that every minute we were dialing we're getting $2. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of business owners and startups. They don't have the initial resources or tools or time to dedicate to learning a lot of stuff that's now as far as online marketing, right? Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I haven't had a I remember I got a call from I'm sure you've heard of hailstorm restaurants like the 69 or 70 restaurants. And they do like seven 750 million a year. And they called me up and they said, we're trying to figure out
how does this whole internet thing work?
And I was like, You don't know how it works. And then I went and met with their team like in Beverly Hills. And
all the people in their internal department had no idea how SEO worked. They didn't have their social media on any of their local pages. They weren't optimizing any of their menus or maps.
They were actually logging into 110 separate social media accounts with no software.
And I was like, Oh my gosh, how could you do that? So I introduced them to like Hootsuite and some of these software's that are out there that make it easier. A lot of companies think it's this that happens magically in the background. Yeah, ahead. If they have a website, it'll automatically be online and a good place and and they'll get business from that and sometimes they get a little bit and then enough to pacify them. But yeah, it requires either a lot of time
In an effort to build out an internal
department to handle that or outsource? Yeah, yeah. Well, I definitely learned a lot working in real search. I mean, I've never gone through so many Pay Per Click accounts. And then studying, you know, all the information. I remember sales reps that wanted to be Google certified. And I was like, Listen, it's not gonna help you much. But yeah, like a lot of it is really knowing what to look for. Yeah, it's a lot of hands on experience. Yeah. And a lot of companies don't have that. And that's what we found when we would you No, contact your companies. It was the same story all the time. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of people even in 2019, I mean, you think everyone's up to speed. They got the latest smartphone, but you ask them about analytics or conversion tracking and they're still like living in the dark ages. Yeah.
You know, it's a it's an educational curve.
And also time
takes a lot of
dedication hourly every day to ensure that
you're getting the results that you need. Yep. How did you get into search marketing and internet marketing? What gave you that? Oh, I was actually working in the merchandising business and saw a need there.
Some companies were struggling with their online marketing. So we were selling them t shirts and hats, but they didn't have a good online presence. And so the company I'd been with started
dabbling in that a little bit. And then I saw a greater need, so became certified as a Google search professional and branched out from there.
And then when you came through, you offered some
good points on on a good vision on where the company
could be based on your initial
initial take on on the office that we are in. And that's when we said yeah, let's, let's do it.
I think the first thing you did was
get some ads out to hire some salespeople and develop a training process and build up a whole sales room. Along with that.
Our phone system was pretty, pretty medieval.
Especially the way we transferred calls, from the sales people to the tech people to
to you to actually and other closers that you would groomed. And that's when we invested in a better phone system and
strategy to actually utilize the leads that were coming in. And then of course, that evolved into
call centers.
I think you hired a couple call centers, maybe with 2030 people
that were making cold calls, and then transferring those in to our sales team. And then closing the deals. And I think we grew actually a million revenue, a million dollars in revenue that first year.
So yeah, it was a big, big change that that you brought to the table.
Yeah.
What would you say are
some of the things you learned as you like your business? I know, I know, there's, you know, obviously you brought in all those processes, but what would be advice to like a new business owner than as a startup that, you know, maybe they're
maybe they're doubtful whether they can, you know, work with a consultant or a digital marketing agency, or, well, if they're a start up, and they're gonna be online and they're going to
need a heavy focus on sales, then they have to get that in place in the beginning, because it's so hard to play catch up, especially in the ever changing, you know, online hemisphere. If you're behind in market share, it's really hard to catch up and that's, that's, that's a that's a big issue for a lot of startups. So having a strategy in place for sales.
Having a strategy in place for online marketing is,
is important as even
getting offices.
Tell us a little bit about real search, like what kind of clients did you work with? You know, was there any like, was there any like, oh, wow, I can't believe we got like these people as customers. What are what are some of the, you know, maybe accomplishments that you guys did during real search that you were like, wow, this is really cool. Well, when we started out, we thought we'd get medium size, small, medium sized businesses.
We never thought we were
ready to take on
larger businesses and corporations, but as things evolved,
we found that
those businesses that were you know, multi million dollar companies were getting
in need, and then of critical search, marketing support.
Some of them had an internal
people that handled that. And then some of them didn't have any companies. That was the big surprise.
Right. I know it's so crazy. We're like these big six $700 million companies, right? Yeah. A lot of them just do, never outsourced. I know when I came in there, one of the things was training the salespeople more of a technical sale. We did a lot of we did a lot of join me's where we actually took people through the back end of their AdWords account, which really was really revealing because what people said versus what was in their account was was totally different. Yeah, better. transparency. Yeah. When when we initiated that
live interaction
With the prospects that was a game changer, because we could show them exactly where they're losing all their money
in a simple
you know, two three minutes
right?
I remember is hearing this like a customer you get on the phone with them and they would say their pay per click and their internet marketing is fine all the time you get into their account What does fine mean to you? Exactly. So, we get in there and we show them. Probably some of them we could show thousands of dollars just going to waste Blyton waste every month.
Yeah,
that's funny.
This this company that I that we just got as a client
you know, the I told you one day they
spent by mistake like $35,000 on their pay per click, they said there wasn't much difference. And when they started working with us, I talked to them about setup like setting up your account. They said, Oh, it's already set up, you just have to manage it.
And then we went into their account, and it was like a mess. They had money going in 20 different directions with no focus campaigns. We need to build out the whole account. Yeah. So what's what's the importance of getting a pay per click account set up with a certain structure? Because I used to always tell people that a lot of times when people first get on to pay per click, it's like Vegas, they like, they like pull the lever. Yes. And they start getting calls. Yes. And the account runs rampid. Yes. And then their money just starts going away. Well, yeah, that was a big problem. Trying to tell, explain to companies that they didn't need to spend x
over an amount of money to get better results or the same results, and a lot of them were very skeptical about that. They were willing to spend 10 20,000 a month because they were getting business. But they didn't realize and we showed them very quickly that they could spend 5000 a month and get the same if not more business by outsourcing their search marketing to professional.
Cool. What would you say like if you could name
if you could name like maybe five industries where you were shocked, like what's the largest Pay Per Click account that you worked on over the years, maybe maybe five, five different verticals where maybe people are like, wow, they spend that much money.
You know, we work with a Pendleton clothing, and they would spend 100,000 a month. So they were doing about a million a year.
Pay Per Click.
And
other companies that
sold high ticket items.
You know, they would spend 50 to 60,000 a year.
And
they needed help. Yeah, they needed help. Yeah. Yeah, I know one time I was.
Well, two times. One time, I was actually looking at a jewelry company in Orange County a big one. And I think on their pay per click, they were spending about $148,000 a month. Yes. And then I looked at Hornblower cruise lines, which was spending like $78,000 a month and like the average small business guy could look at that and go What? Right? So and it's, it's funny, you know, I see I see a trend between
Like, sometimes they get a contractor or someone that does remodeling that's kind of like a one man show. Maybe it's got a couple man crew. And I'll look at like one of my clients spends 15,000 a month and pay per click, but he's doing 3040 million a year in revenue. Yeah, as a contractor. So I think in internet marketing, you start to see like this evidence that if you spend x, you kind of get why.
And I think it's, it's true with SEO, it's true with pay per click. I mean, we had a we had a company that was spending about 910 thousand dollars a month on SEO, and they were doing about 510 million a year and we out ranked them, you know, next to Home Depot. But the guy wouldn't have gotten a 10 or 20 million if he didn't like playing the game. Yeah, you have to be online. You have to be advertising yourself and you have to spend,
you do have to spend, but you have to spend wisely, and
we had mom and pops, you know brick and mortar
All the way up to large corporations. And they're all the same when it comes down to search, marketing and SEO, because you I mean, you were in that space for what like how many years like
10 years, 10 years.
We know people can run ads, how how important is how important is like a landing page or a website?
I would say the landing page is the most important. And that's another thing you brought to the table when that was a game changer for a lot of our clients was landing page development. That's where the sale happens.
After they click through to your site, it's like the first thing they see when they walk in your store. That is the call to action that's going to take them from point A to
the sale
Yeah, I mean, you see so many people running ads on a really bad website all the time. Yeah. And if you go to a website and you're instantly lost, and don't know
where to go, what to do, especially to get what you're looking for, then it's a waste of money for
the advertiser. Yeah, yeah. I think one of the things I learned from selling over the phone, even even like before, you're a company, like I was, I was at another company that were we were doing webinars, and the ticket item was like three or four grand. And I did like 1000 webinars in a year. And I think the most frustrating thing was getting a sale, and then having someone go online and Google you, and then you lose that sale. So that I know when I was working at real search with you, we put a lot of that online content because we would talk to people on the phone and they'd be like, I don't
can't find anything on your company except your website. Alright, so we started putting up all these informational videos. I think we did some white sketch videos. We did a PVC calculator. Yeah, yeah. There was a lot stuff after, after you got on the wall with that. So yeah, those were game changers that was driving and drove in a lot of business. Yeah.
What what are you doing right now? Like what kind of what kind of company you're working with and maybe tell people about what kind of business you're working in right now. Well, right now, I am working with a
company that does processing for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. So if a merchant wants to accept
cryptocurrency, as an alternative or additional form of payment,
alongside with credit cards and cash,
we handle that transaction
Through an online gateway that our customers can pay with Bitcoin, and we actually convert that into US dollars and
deposit that into the merchants account. So the merchant doesn't even have to deal with with cryptocurrency and the fluctuations in value and the exchange rates and we handle all that. So it's a it's a whole new space. And it's really exciting because it's the future of
online payments. Is your is your company doing a lot of transactions right now in crypto and you feel like
it helps bridge the gap with like international business? Yes, we do thousands of transact transactions daily and, and that's a globally so we have
merchants that we service in Singapore, South Africa, South America North America Europe
and
yeah there's no there's no internet there's no borders anymore with its it's a borderless payment system no exchange rates with different
values of fiat currencies so we don't have our merchants don't have to worry about US dollars to euros or, or to British pounds.
We handle all that.
What are what are some of the goals you're trying to do right now with your company when it comes to you know, growing out your your customer base or certain partnerships you're trying to form? Well, the biggest thing is educating
merchants.
of the
increasing value in
having this as an additional payment method for their, for their potential customer base. And also that it's not as scary as it looks.
And
getting over the hump of Bitcoin is only for money laundering and criminal activity. So, yeah. And that's a big hurdle.
But we're hoping that
that, that changes. Yeah, back in the day, like when I hadn't been planning company, I was a member of bx AI, which was like a barter network. Yeah. And what was really cool about it was it opened up doing business with other people that were in that same network business that you want them got, right wise. Yeah, I mean, you have time. If you can add another 10 or 20. More accounts like I signed up with your company.
Apparently for the fact that I have a lot of friends that are in crypto that fly to Switzerland and right, you know, they're going from country to country and yeah, I'm going to banks because they're there. They're getting like international investors for different or, you know, different organizations. I had a friend named last year. I think he made like a couple million $5 million in crypto.
Of course, it went down so he was on there. But yeah, he was taking that money and investing in all these different companies, you know, with crypto and then he kind of became like one of those crypto influencers. So now he's like, talking with the international businessman and he kind of he's, he's like a, you know, kind of a jet setter. I'll be in Switzerland and then it'll be in Dubai. I'm like, What are you doing? I can't even figure it out. You know, well, the big market place for crypto is
luxury goods, travel
and high ticket items. Yeah, but more and more
smaller businesses are accepting
crypto now for smaller transactions. So maybe online gaming portals or web hosting companies. They do microtransactions in the dollars. Yeah. And then, you know, smaller to medium sized businesses average in the
hundreds, right? And then we have larger companies that they'll do 150 k transactions. Yeah. Thanks for joining us in our conversation with Victor Martinson's from go coin and if you want to find out more about go coin or learn more about internet marketing, click on links below and we'll talk to you soon