In Episode 4 of the Trades Secret Podcast hosts Devon Hayes and Amanda Joyce discuss why it is critical for your company to own your digital assets. Don’t miss these contractor marketing tips that could save you thousands in wasted marketing spend and years of progress in SERPs.
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Transcription:
Amanda Joyce:
Hi guys, I’m Amanda Joyce.
Devon Hayes:
And I’m Devon Hayes, and welcome to today’s podcast. Today we are talking about owning your digital assets, and here’s why you should care. Owning your digital assets keeps you in charge of your brand and not tied to any agency or developer or a third party that is not you, the business owner.
Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce:
This is for you, if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s trade secret.
Devon Hayes:
So Amanda, let’s dive in. So digital assets, I don’t know if that’s marketing jargon, I don’t know if everyone understands what that is.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
So let’s talk about what we mean when we say …
Amanda Joyce:
When we talk about …
Devon Hayes:
Digital assets. Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. So this is everything. This is your domain. This is your website. Any Google product, Google Analytics, Google Search, Console, Google Tag Manager, Google Business Profile.
Devon Hayes:
All your social media channels, your Facebook, your YouTube, Twitter.
Amanda Joyce:
TikTok.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, everything. All social channels,
Amanda Joyce:
All things.
Devon Hayes:
Shoot, even … I was going to say, even like your Yext account, or people’s … Yext is something you can sign up for that sends your name, address, and phone number to all the directories on the web, pretty much. That’s a simplified explanation. Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, absolutely. And the content on your website, your blogs, the images. Now when we talk about these things, it might sound to your everyday person like well duh, of course, I own that stuff. If I’m paying somebody to build me a website, of course that’s all mine, and unfortunately, it’s not the case.
Devon Hayes:
It’s not the case. I mean, having access to your host is something too, that’s important for a lot of clients. So okay, so we’re going to tell you some horror stories and explain why this is important, right? So we had one of our most recent clients, they were on one of those easy plans where they had a website built, it was on WordPress, then they gave it over to a WaaS, or a website as a service company where they were paying a super low $249 a month. And a lot of contractors, they get into that, right? They’re like all right, I’m a startup. This is kind of a lot of money, but you know what? If you’re going to run my website, you’re going to do content for me, you’re going to kick up my Facebook page for me. You’re going to do all these things for only $249 a month, and our agency, we’re upwards of $2,000 a month, right? So $2,000 versus $249.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
We understand why, but herein lies the problem. In this particular example, our client, they actually had a website prior to going to this website as a service company. Imagine this, you hand somebody a cracker and then they’re like, “Cool, cool, cool.” And then you enter a contract with them …
Amanda Joyce:
We’re going to take care of this cracker for you. Yeah. We’re going to hold onto it for you.
Devon Hayes:
They take care of the cracker for you. Yeah, they put a little peanut butter on there maybe for you. They jeuje it up while you’re paying them that $249 a month, and then you’re like, Cool, I’m moving on. Contract is over.” They’re like, “Cool.” Smash up your cracker, and they’re like … They give it back.
Amanda Joyce:
Throw it back at you.
Devon Hayes:
They’re like, “What? We gave you your cracker back. You have it back.” Essentially what happened to this client. They got their website handed back to them in a million files, not actually built on their request.
Amanda Joyce:
When they handed over a functioning, fully operational website, and to top it off, the agency had the nerve to reply to them when they were asking for those files and say, “Are you planning on sharing these with anyone?” It was their cracker. They can share it with whoever they want.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. So how this happened was that the WaaS as it’s called, website as a service, they took their website and then they rebuilt it on their proprietary platform. So this client could … They had access to the backend, they could go in and make changes, but it wasn’t the same website that was built on WordPress. So when the contract ended and it was time to get their cracker back, the WaaS company was like, “Well, we never told you we were going to rebuild it on the original platform. That’s on you.” And then in addition to that, they also … This client had set up their Google Analytics so they could track user usage on their website as … If you guys aren’t doing that, please do that. I think most everybody is, but they stripped off the client’s asset and added their own Google Analytics tracking code so that when the client left, they now have lost two years of historical data. It’s so dirty.
Amanda Joyce:
It’s maddening. It’s the way, unfortunately, certain companies operate to hold you hostage, and then it gives marketers a bad name. It burns people who are good business owners and then makes them afraid to tap their toe in marketing again, and they need marketing to grow their business. So it’s this really gross cycle that we see that aggravates us to no end. And when we started talking about this podcast, this is the episode we kept saying this is going to be one of the first ones we shoot because this is a pain point that we see with so many contractors and other business owners as well in other verticals. But we see it happen so often and they don’t know what they don’t know so they don’t know how to protect themselves.
So we’re hoping, please take note of this today. If you have friends in other markets, in other verticals, please share this with them. Encourage them. If you never listen to another one of our podcasts, this can save you so much. Not that we want that, but this is … These horror stories, listen to them, let them sink in, and make sure you don’t make this mistake. Sorry, that was a long diatribe.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. So no, I know. And we could … The horrors, even if we don’t even convert someone as a client, or even if someone’s family and friends, or family and they’re like, “We don’t want to get muddy the waters.” And they don’t work with us. I’m like, “Cool. This is what you need to know.” So this is how you can ensure you own your digital assets. You probably already bought your domain from GoDaddy. Don’t leave that up to somebody else to purchase. You can create all of your profiles. You can create them using the same email account and there they’re super easy to set up. Google, and actually all social media sites, they really do make it very easy for you to follow the steps. Having them tied to one email account is just easier for you.
Amanda Joyce:
That way if somebody leaves, even if you’re managing it and an admin leaves, you don’t want your Facebook tied to their personal account, for example. Doesn’t mean they’d even have any mal intent, but you could lose access to that.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So I mean, every product we’re talking about, just try and get them all under one email address. You don’t have to, but that’s the easiest way to kind of manage it all, and then you can delegate access. You don’t have to turn over your password to any of these things. You can add users and then you can choose their administrative level. Do you want them to be an admin or just an editor? Same thing on your website, and it really is just kind of a super easy point and click situation. When we’re talking about … So that’s setting up these assets, right? Now Amanda, what about blog content? Okay, let’s talk about the burns there with when you are paying somebody to write blog content for you.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly.
Devon Hayes:
And you think you are because you’ve been paying for it.
Amanda Joyce:
Why would you not? Why would you not? That’s another huge thing that we see people run into when they’ve invested with one of these companies, and a lot of times they’re not as inexpensive as the one we were just referring to. A lot of times people are spending up thousands of dollars a month with certain agencies that are following this same practice, and they’re writing all this blog content and publishing it on your website, and then one day you want to leave and you’ve got thousands of index pages that you assume you can just walk away with, with that cracker, and suddenly you realize that all that content that even though you might have been weighing in on it, you were approving it, maybe a lot of it was your own IP.
The second you go to leave, they’re going to tell you none of that content is yours. And then you have to start over at the very beginning, which it’s crazy to imagine investing years and time into creating an online identity and then having to start at scratch, and it can be detrimental to a company, especially maybe one that’s really already established in your local market. That’s how you can end up finding yourself in this really unhealthy relationship with an agency or a developer, whoever. Typically, this kind of thing would be an agency where then suddenly you’re not going to leave. You’re just going to stay and be unhappy because you can’t afford to start over.
So that’s a huge one to just ask. Right now, if you’re working with an agency and we’re telling you this stuff and you’re like … Your brain’s spending, I don’t know if I own all this stuff, now is the time to talk to them. Ask them. Maybe even if that is their current practice where oh, you don’t own it. You could say … Maybe you could negotiate something. I’m going to stick around for another year or two with you guys, if you can promise me you’re going to make good on this and I’m going to own this content. Oftentimes the way people find this out is when they’re trying to break up with the agency or the agency is so mad at them that they’re just willing to cut it off at the knees, but basically start the conversation now. Maybe you love your agency and you don’t want to go anywhere, but you just want to know that in five years you’re going to own all the stuff that you’re going to be creating together as a partner. So long-winded answer, but that is …
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. No, that’s true. So this made me think of two different things. Number one is with the content, say they’re taking away, but then there’s also something that we see, and I guess this is probably a whole different podcast in itself, but there’s the super niched out agencies that they’ll produce X amount of content for you per month, but it’s all duplicate content. And so it’s on 50, I don’t know, dry wallers or plumbers websites. It’s the same thing, and they just plug in your company name and location, but that’s a whole different Oprah, and you don’t want to own that content anyway, but …
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. Exactly. But kind of talking to one of the things I wanted to bring up earlier when we were talking about those price points, if it’s too good to be true, if you’ve shopped out all these other agencies or developers that are offering to build you a website for a few thousand dollars, and it might feel a little tight to think about paying that, and you’re like oh, this feels more comfortable, 250 bucks a month, blah, blah, blah. If it’s too good to be true, there’s a reason for it. And that right there, if someone’s willing to provide you marketing services for a few hundred dollars a month, you probably don’t own your assets. Please comment below if I am wrong and you have found that golden egg of an agency that’s producing all this amazing content for you and they’ve built you this great website and they’re only charging you a couple hundred dollars a month. Good for them. Good on them. But we don’t see that.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, we haven’t seen that.
Amanda Joyce:
We see people with handcuffs because of these setups. And then one other thing I wanted to say too, like you were talking earlier, Devon, about making sure that you’ve got that one email address that’s associated with everything. These platforms, as you were saying, you can grant access is make it easy to grant access. So if you’re ever leaving an agency or developer or anything and they tell you, “Sorry, I can’t turn this over to you. It’s part of my larger agency platform.” Blah, blah, blah. It’s simply not true. You can call Google directly and start the process of getting the account back, and nine times out of 10 when we’ve had this problem with our clients, the second we start barking up that tree and they realize we know what we’re talking about, they start to just give it to you because it’s just not true.
Facebook, Google, all of those products are set up to allow for multiple admin, and there is literally no reason for someone to tell you, you can’t have your product back. Even if today you don’t have access to it, they could grant it to you tomorrow and it will not take … You will not be able to see into any of their other clients or anything like that. The products are built specifically to allow people to give and take and receive accesses.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. They do. They make it super easy. That’s my favorite fight that we get when they’re like, “Well, we really want to help you out, but that’s under our agency account.” We’re like mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Amanda Joyce:
I’m like don’t worry, you’ll have an email from Google in five minutes. Don’t worry, we’ve already taken care of the legwork for you. And suddenly their attitude changes a little bit and it is quite satisfying.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, so there is a caveat too. So with this same experience we’ve had with this client, their Facebook page, we noticed there was two of them. Well, one of them, they started and it’s got healthy organic followers, and the other one, it’s like 2,700 hidden followers. And we’re like oh, and they’re not granting access. We’re like I see what they did. So they build a following, it’s all purchased followers. They slap your company name and logo on it, and they’ll produce content on there for a long time until you break up with them. And then they’re going to … They strip it away and you go back to your regular Facebook page with like 110 followers, and you’ve lost two years worth of content that you’ve been posting.
So if they’re offering to hand over a Facebook page to you with that much following, the thing is you don’t need it. You don’t need purchased followers. It’s not going to convince a … Your Facebook page following is not going to convince a homeowner to go with you or not go with you. They’re looking at your reviews. They’re vetting you out on your website. They want to see that you have a professional site, that you exist. They’re looking at your Google business profile. They don’t care how many followers, so don’t buy followers and don’t fall for any company that’s trying to sell you a Facebook page that has thousands of followers because it has literally no impact on your entire journey.
Amanda Joyce:
No bearing.
Devon Hayes:
No bearing on … I mean, you’re positioning with the search engines. Yes, social media has something to do with it, but it more has to do with your engagement anyway, and chances are that company’s posts are just as generic as … They’re not as high quality as your personalized post would be on your own site anyway. So that’s a whole different rabbit hole. Digital marketing, I feel like it’s all connected in some way, and so somehow we can get off track, but somebody else owning your Facebook page that has a high following, don’t do it. Your Facebook page is also a digital asset, those social profiles own them. Own a small following, but at least they’re people that care and they actually want your company news.
Amanda Joyce:
And they’re going to engage with you because they want to see your content. They’re not … Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, and on that same note too about buying followers and things like that, the thing that really bothers me about that practice, A. Everything you just said, but it also bothers me when an agency takes money, that in most cases they’ll have you allocate a certain amount of ad dollars every month that they’re using your money to buy those followers, and then they’ll tell you, you can’t have them. Same thing can happen sometimes with your Google Ads account. They’ll also try to tell you that they don’t want to give it to you at the end of the day. It’s a hard fought battle, but a lot of times we can get it back because again, it’s your money. You’ve spent the money.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
You should have that back.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, and I’m going to interrupt. Yeah, and I’m going to interrupt right here for a second, because why? Let’s explain why you want that account back why you want your ads account. Why you don’t want to start from scratch. Why you want your Google Analytics account back. Why do you want it back?
Amanda Joyce:
This just makes me so upset.
Devon Hayes:
Let us tell you. Historical data, my friends, historical data.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, historical data and Google favors you if you have historical spend with them, so that is your money that you spent. I mean, you own your data in Google Analytics. Yeah, it’s a free account, but you should still own it. But I’m sorry, it gets me fired up when I think about somebody spending their own money on their own ads and then someone telling you that you paid for that data. It’s not free Google Analytics data, you paid for it. And over the time you’re learning what keywords work, what don’t, what negatives you need in there, where you should be targeting. I mean, if they’re doing a good job, and even still, if they weren’t doing a good job, you could hand that same data over to a different marketing manager who could look at it and dissect it and say, “Oh my gosh, we’re going to not do this. We’re going to do this.”
It’s your information and you paid good hard money for it. And again, if you start an account over again, you’re starting at no quality score that you have to re-earn and buy with Google. So you need that account back, that is worth the fight, and if you’re moving to a new agency, work together and fight the good fight to get it back, because you really … You can set off red flags with Google, you can do a lot of stuff, and a lot of times we can win that battle. Sometimes we’ve lost it, but it’s worth … It’s sure as hell worth trying.
Devon Hayes:
Well, and I think that’s a great exploration into a new partnership with an agency, are they just handing it off to you and being like, “Well, you figure it out.” Or are they partnering with you and really trying to walk you through it, guide you through these things like any contractor, marketing company that’s worth their salt, they’re going to help you and actually be a partner and not just say, “Well, that’s in your bucket. My bucket is managing it once you give me access.” So that would be a great way to tell if that’s really a partner or just someone who’s collecting a paycheck.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely.
Devon Hayes:
And then with Google Analytics and that historical data, I mean, it’s always great to see, okay, what’s cyclical? Are my users usually down this time of year? Or are they up this time of year? Why is that? What are the most popular pages? Where is my traffic coming from?
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. What’s the journey through your website?
Devon Hayes:
Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
What content is actually driving people to that contact form that they’re actually completing it? Like this is incredibly important information.
Devon Hayes:
Where’d they fall off?
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Where do they fall off? Where are they like eh? Where do you lose them? That’s the type of thing that … That information is like … It’s priceless. So anyway, worth the good fight.
All right, so Amanda, if I am a contractor and I’m hearing this podcast and I’m like, “Oh shit, I don’t know if I own my stuff. What do I do?” What do they need to do? Let’s kind of clean it up and put it in a nice package, put a little bow on it, and make it succinct.
Amanda Joyce:
Give them their cracker back whole. We’re going to give you guys your cracker back.
Devon Hayes:
Give them their whole cracker with a little peanut butter.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay, so step one, if you have an agency, email them right now and ask them to clarify if you own all of your assets and check … And you can ask internally too, perhaps, maybe you already know the answer to that. Can you log in to Google Analytics? Can you log into your Google Ads account? Can you log into all these things? And if you don’t know the answer, just ask them directly. But you might have an admin that has all that information, but just ask the question, and if they can’t give you a straight answer, it’s time to dig deeper and the answer is probably not good news. But it doesn’t mean you can’t fix this. If they’re still actively doing your marketing. Let’s talk about how we can continue to have a healthy partnership and how you’re going to make me feel at ease, and you’re going to give me access to all of these things. I don’t know, what’s your take, Devon?
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely.
Amanda Joyce:
Do you feel like that’s …?
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, I think that’s great. And even you want admin access to the website. Sure, great. Please don’t break anything or touch anything, or that’s … All that stuff. You know our agency, we’re fully transparent when things are going great or things are going bad, so we don’t care. Take access, have a peek under the hood. You got a question, we can answer it. That’s kind of our joy. We love the transparency because if there’s a problem, we love nerding out and diving in and analyzing a whole bunch of data to try and solve the problem and come up with a solution. I could just toot our horn all day.
But no, I completely agree. I think just get everything in one spreadsheet. Put it in one spreadsheet. Did your admin set up your Facebook account? A lot of times contractors’ wives, business owners’ wives, they set up the account and they’re often under different email addresses. Sometimes you start with a Gmail, but then you end up purchasing email addresses under your domain name. All that stuff. Get it in a spreadsheet, get it in one spot, and start most importantly, I think with probably your social media channels. With contractors, we see Facebook as their primary social media channel, but all of them. If you’ve got a YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, whatever, whatever it is, get them all on a list, get all Google products on a list, Google Analytics, Google Business profile. That one is massively important.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Let’s see. Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, all that stuff. Just get a list of it, see if you can log in, and start to … Your website, figure out if I needed to go in there and I needed to make a change because I can’t get ahold of my developer, could I figure out how to do? Could I log in? Could I even log in? Do I even know who my host is? All of these things are going to protect you as a business owner. You spend the time, you spend an hour doing this one day, and then it’s something that won’t keep you up at night. And should anybody ever ask you, should you go with an agency? Should you hire an in-house marketing person? These are all things that that person is going to need access to and you’re going to have it.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
So spend the hour, do the legwork, do it once, and then you won’t have to do it again.
Amanda Joyce:
There you have it.
Devon Hayes:
It’s a long-winded way to wrap it up, but own your digital assets. Make sure you are the master of your own destiny and that you’re not going to miss out on all of this IP, intellectual property, that you’ve been building over the years for your brand and your company.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. It’s a necessity.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. So thank you so much for joining us.
Amanda Joyce:
Yay.
Devon Hayes:
For today’s Trade Secrets and our podcast. We love you listening. Comments, questions, suggestions, we’re here for it. Let us know and take care.
Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s Trade Secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.
