3 Simple Tweaks That Will Double Your Website Revenue with Michael Buzinski

Courtney Elmer 0:00  

Welcome back is the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ Podcast. This is episode 109.

[INTRO]

Courtney Elmer 2:48  

How many times have you rebuilt your website, only to have it completely fail? To bring you the steady flow of new leads you are hoping for? I've been there more times than I can count way more times than I would like to admit. I'm pretty sure we are on what's now the fifth iteration of our website. I wish I wish I had the marketing tools that our special guest is about to share with you today.

Courtney Elmer

Back when I first started, I made so many marketing mistakes with that site. I clearly see that now. People today will try to tell you marketing on websites are dead. They don't work. Try this try that you don't need to market on your website. No, they aren't. They are alive. And they are well. The problem is the marketing on your website isnt working right. And my special guest today Michael Buzinski or Buz as people call him is here to help. 

Courtney Elmer

With over 30 years of marketing experience Buz is going to help you demystify the website process and show you how to make a website with marketing that actually works so you can avoid the pain and frustration of wasting your time and money on a pretty website that doesn't bring you new business. He's going to show you step by step how to find and attract more profitable leads and convert them to your lifelong clients with a few simple tweaks you can start making to your website and marketing today. 

Courtney Elmer

He's also going to show you how to stop undervaluing your services so that you can get paid what you're worth as well as how to tell what's not working in your marketing, so you can stop wasting your time on it. This was such a fun conversation to record for you. I know you're gonna love it. So let's dive in. Michael, welcome to the AntiFragile Entrepreneurship™ Podcast.

Michael Buzinski 4:53  

How's it going, Courtney Elmer?

Courtney Elmer 4:54  

I'm excited you're here today because marketing is something that I could certainly use help with in my own business. Marketing is a thorn in the side for so many of the business owners that are listening to this show today. And I know that it's something you can help us with.

Michael Buzinski 5:19  

My name is Michael Buzinski, I go by Buz, I own a company called Buzworthy, integrated marketing. I've been in marketing for 30 years now. So before the internet, wow. And I focus on the needs of service based businesses. I wrote a book called the rule of 26. And that is a book that streamlines the digital marketing strategies for service centric businesses.

Courtney Elmer 5:46  

Digital marketing is one of those things that is a monster, and there are so many things we could do for marketing our businesses. Tell us a little bit about this process that you help people with to utilize, these key performance indicators that are going to help them double their revenue from marketing on their website.

Michael Buzinski 6:46  

Digital marketing can be a beast. And the problem is that people don't know where to start. And there's so many shiny marketing objects out there. And so the rule of 26 does is it boils down your digital marketing strategy to three focusing on three key performance indicators or KPIs. And so the rule 26 simply states that if you increase the unique traffic to your website by 26%, the conversion rate by 26%, and the lifetime value per client coming from your website by 26%, you will have a compounded result of 100% more revenue. And the great thing is, is you don't have to wait to the end, you don't have to wait to do all three of those objectives to see the revenue because each of those drives revenue 26% by themselves.

Courtney Elmer 7:49  

Wow. That is fascinating. How did you figure that out?

Michael Buzinski 7:55  

completely by accident Courtney Elmer!

Courtney Elmer 7:57  

That sounds amazing. And I want you to teach us how to do that. But also like, whoa, very cool.

Michael Buzinski 8:06  

Back in 2020, we were strictly a concierge white glove done for you digital marketing firm. And when the pandemic hit, I realized I needed to find a way to help all of the businesses out there that could not afford my marketing website service or my my done for you marketing website services. And in the process of that I needed to figure out a way to help people do it themselves. I started looking and I went like to places like HubSpot where they tout 38 KPIs to digital marketing success, or Shopify. Who says 78 KPIs that you use to measure your E marketing, e commerce success. And I was like, this is way too much like teaching a business owner digital marketing is not what they went into business for. So I needed to find a way to boil this down to the most simple, rudimentary processes possible. I looked at KPIs that directly affected revenue. And I started with the end of mind in that I wanted to be able to at least double the revenue coming from their website. And once that happened, we ran reverse engineering. tiered process and found the numbers that it would take. And we looked at those three KPIs, traffic conversions and lifetime value, have the biggest impact and the most direct impact revenue. So with those three found that when you do it by 26%, it creates this compounding effect that gives us double. And that was we ran with that, because it's three, which is easy to remember. And 26%, all the way across the board easy to remember. And who doesn't want to double the revenue from markeing on their website, right Courtney Elmer?

Courtney Elmer 10:31  

I'm over here laughing when you said. I put a story up on my Instagram the other day where I was like, I did not expect to learn all these different languages, getting into business for myself. Can you give us a peek into that process? Where would we even start with that? Let's pretend that I'm coming to you and like Buz, Okay, help me out with this, I need to figure out how to double my revenue, want to do it from marketing on my website, I have no idea where my traffic is coming from right now. Like, what would be the first thing you tell me to do?

Michael Buzinski 11:59  

So I go into detail on this in the book Courtney Elmer. First we have to measure what marketing is working and what is not, there's a saying in the digital marketing world or in in marketing in general, that 50% of your marketing is working, you don't know which 50%. That comes from the fact that we as business owners are never taught how to track the progress have any of our marketing efforts. Therefore, we start throwing different marketing noodles against the wall hoping something will stick. And then eventually, something sticks. But because we're not measuring the marketing behind it correctly, we don't know which one of them create that they're sticking on the wall or actually creating the revenue.

The first thing you need to do Courtney Elmer, now that we understand what we're looking for, is plug our website into something like Google Analytics, which is free and see, am I getting traffic? Am I getting conversions from my marketing? am I setting up conversions? Right from there, you got to decide whether or not the traffic and conversions you're getting are actually profitable. Once we figure that out, then we can I we can identify what the first problem is in the marketing. Now for service based businesses, I actually run the rule of 26 backwards. And if I ever rewrote this book, I would actually put lifetime value. First, because it really helps solve a lot of problems quickly. Because as small business owners, we, especially folks who have been around less than five years are undervaluing our service, and therefore not even charging enough. And there's strategies of figuring that out, and then implementing increases. But there's also other things that we can take a look at, are we serving profitable clients? If we're not serving profitable clients, then which ones are profitable versus which ones aren't? And once we identify which ones are, then we want to find out how can we create the most value for those people so that we can then outline a message to only talk to the most profitable types of clients that can come into our business from our website? Does that make sense Courtney Elmer?

Courtney Elmer 14:22  

It makes 100% sense. And I've never thought of it this way!

Michael Buzinski 14:28  

Once you have figured out now I'm charging the right amount, the crazy thing is, is you're probably charging your current clients enough right now. And so you can literally even touch your website, increase your revenue by readdressing your current clients. And if you feel like you are so busy that you don't understand how to get more business, how you could serve more business because your bandwidth is choked. Don't hire more people, fire clients. Fire the client, the 20% of clients that suck your time, energy and resources away from you fire the clients that you cringe every time you see their number on your caller ID fire the clients that don't pay you on time, open yourself up to the profitable. And then and it's real easy to, to get rid of them, you tell them your new pricing structure, they won't, and don't appreciate what you're doing for them at the price that you're giving them anyway. So even if they they leave, you're going to make more money, and you're going to play some much quicker.

Courtney Elmer 15:42  

I'm going to stop you right there, though and say, Dad, if you were listening, pay attention. My dad, we love him to deahis has been a big thing. And it's often a bit a complaint in his own business. He's a very successful small business owner. But through the years this has been the biggest struggle is bandwidth. And we've always told him that if you can like let these people go, that are sucking all of your energy. 

Courtney Elmer

Imagine how much that would free up for you to really devote to those people who you look forward to seeing their number on your caller ID the work you want to be doing and the people who value you. That is what I really want to call to mind to our listeners here listening. The people who are not your ideal clients, those that you're working with right now who are draining you, don't appreciate the value that you provide to them. That's the foundation for a relationship to go sour.

Michael Buzinski 16:46  

We have a bunch of impoverished entrepreneurs out there that feel that that's the way it is that you have to take the good with the bad. And you don't, the people who are sucking the life energy out of you actually have a service provider out there in the ether that would love to work with them, and they are actually a better match. And therefore we'll be able to serve them better and more profitably, as a win win for their relationship and leave you open to find your better relationships.

Courtney Elmer 17:23  

Yes, that's it, because when you can cut in the negative right out, and that which is a drain, then it opens you up for the abundant and the profitable.

Michael Buzinski 17:34  

When people say, Well, wait a second, I'm losing that revenue? Or are you opening up your bandwidth to mark it better? I mean, a lot of times I hear is I don't have time, I don't have time or money. Because as entrepreneurs, we usually have more time than money or more money than time. So as we start, we usually have more time than money. And as we get more successful, we end up with more money than time. We have to be able to leverage both of those scenarios to our advantage. If you have neither, that means you have an unprofitable business.

Courtney Elmer 18:41  

Yes. 100%! That was so valuable! that's why I really wanted to bring that up and I didn't want to gloss over that. This is something that so many entrepreneurs struggle with. I have struggled with this, especially in the early days of my business, and still to some degree where I have to be so mindful of the things in my business that are draining my energy on a regular basis, right, because sometimes it's clients. 

Courtney Elmer

Sometimes it's other tasks that you were doing that you should not be doing yourself, right. So really optimizing and being able to create that leverage in every aspect is so critical. This is the whole philosophy behind my company, the effortless life is that you are one person, the visionary leader of your business. You only have so much time energy effort to go around. This is where leverage really comes into play.

Michael Buzinski 19:50  

Once we have identified who we want, now we get to start talking to them. And this is the biggest mistake that people make for their websites, Courtney Elmer. And it's why most conversion rates for service based businesses, and even e commerce to some extent, struggle because they talk at their visitors. They talk about benefits, and and features. And they talk about how awesome the service provider is, well, guess what? No longer can we talk about ourselves all the time, because people have become an always have been selfish. As a service based business. Those are the two things you're offering. Sometimes it's the same thing as the both of them. But most times it's one or the other. In marketing, there's frustration, there's time drain, all of those things that I overcome for people. So the first thing on my website, I tell I say is like most businesses, you are frustrated with the complexities of digital marketing, we are here to help you simplify that process so that you can get more revenue from your website for your business.

Michael Buzinski

So what I did there, it's about them Courtney Elmer. If you don't have good conversion rate, one of the most direct things you can do is start taking all the eyes on your website and turn them into us and yours. When you start talking to the perfect client, and listened and start marketing the things that they want to hear, to like and trust you and you show them that you have the solutions that help them overcome the pain, or achieve their dreams, you will only attract and convert those that connect with that message and therefore only be talking to or mostly be talking to people who you want to attract. So now we're driving this level of conversion and profitable conversion, we're increasing the profitability of every one of these conversions. Because they're more profitable leads. Once you've done those two things, driving traffic and marketing on website is merely an exercise of finding the right traffic. And making sure that you are putting the triggers that are converting your visitors on your website, mirroring them, and that they are in line with the messages you have off of the marketing on your website.

Courtney Elmer 23:05  

makes so much sense. I want everyone who's listening right now to go take a look at his website. Take a look at your website. I had a friend of mine reach out to me the other day, she's building her own website right now. She's in this place where she's morphing her brand. She said, would you mind taking a look at this and providing some feedback for me. And I do not claim to be a website expert by any means. I, Courtney Elmer, don't claim to be an expert in humans either. Because they surprise me every day.

Courtney Elmer

There are some things there that I feel like okay, I'm a little more attuned to how someone might be thinking as they might be visiting this webpage. I'm looking at it and aesthetically it's beautiful. She's a photographer photos, absolutely gorgeous. And it was all eye language that she was using and her copy. It wasn't copy heavy, but every little bit of copy that she did have there was here's what I believe and here's my philosophy on photography and different things. So I said look, your website's beautiful. The layouts, great. I see a few little optimization things. We can tweak here simplifications to get people where you want them to go, which is that book, all right. But you got to frame it from their perspective.

Michael Buzinski 24:37  

Why should they fix it for me? Yes. I'm here for a very selfish reason. Right? , we're artists probably have the worst problem and because we've been taught as artists that we are expressing ourselves, and therefore as an artist, you are here to take me in a piece of me. My art is me, and therefore you are here for me. Right? She can take all of the MES out of that and make it a autonomous like, not autonomous but anonymous, right? You could say, I believe in dot dot, dot, dot, take the I believe in, and start with dot, dot, dot. And now it is you because you're there, right? It's your art, they get that they're not stupid, right. But if you if you made it more of a, this is a thought of the ether, now they can become part of a self centered statement. And there are places on your website that you belong, like your ethos belongs on an about us page, the team page, because when people go to those pages, they're looking to find out what you're all about. And that's where you it's the Me, me, me, I assess us, we we we, right Courtney Elmer?

Courtney Elmer 26:04  

Right, they've extended the invitation to you to tell them about you simply by going to that page to click to learn about you.

Michael Buzinski 26:11  

So don't I came here for to overcome or solve a problem or achieve a dream, I don't care about you, my needs, my problems, my dreams, let's start there. And then only then if you when they click on the About Us or about me, that's them saying, Please tell me more about you. And they're willing to flip the script.

Courtney Elmer 26:37  

Right. So important. So I also really liked what you said about by honing this messaging like this on your site. Not only is it going to attract the right kind of people who are actually going to have more of a likelihood of converting, so it's going to help you increase that conversion, they will be more profitable for you in the long run, I think that's really key.

Michael Buzinski 27:04  

Another thing is going to happen is you're going to turn off the what I call plate liqueurs and tire kickers, right, because if you're not connecting, that if somebody doesn't is not in line with where you want to do business, they're not going to connect with it. So you can disqualify bad prospects by disqualifying them in your copy. Because you make money by not taking bad calls.

Courtney Elmer 27:35  

Saves you money in the long run to do that.

Michael Buzinski 27:39  

Exactly, Courtney Elmer. You make money, you have more energy with every call that you expend energy on, that doesn't that with a person who's not going to buy from you takes away from the energy that you can give to the next call for people who potentially will buy from you.

Courtney Elmer 27:56  

There is nothing more frustrating than sitting down on a sales call and realizing and you, within the first minute or so minute or two of that call, it's like this is not No, no, you have to sit there and go through the call anyway. And , the outcome is gonna not be the outcome you were hoping to get, which is that sale. And then like you said, it's going to be a drain on your resources.

Michael Buzinski 28:18  

Well, let's stop there, Courtney Elmer. But we're going to go into sales now because marketing sales are very different. But let's stay let's go with that real quick, because we're talking about freeing up time, because we can always make more money, but we cannot buy more time. Okay. If you get on a sales call, and it , within five minutes, that is not a good fit, or you are convinced 100% They're not going to spend a dime with you, or they're going to drain you and you don't want to do business with them anyway. Get off the call. Respect yourself enough to understand that you are wasting both of the people's on the phones time. You are now disrespecting them by giving them hope that you will help them only to find a way not to. So over qualify them at the beginning, when you have that feeling. Start qualifying them early so that you can stop and go what, Mrs. Jones? I think your actually your situation, the way that you're talking about it would be better fit for one of my friends who would work with you better? Or maybe this company over here has the service you're actually looking for. what, I don't think this is a fit right now. For us. They're not what what's the harm in telling people? No.

Courtney Elmer 29:43  

Absolutely. I think the proactive marketing that I know, I know back to market. I think we could have a whole nother conversation about this. Like I could go down a really deep rabbit hole here but I will say this. 

Courtney Elmer

You have to value your time enough to be able to do that on a call like that. And I think this is where a lot of entrepreneur Newars really struggle is time. One of the the only resources we have in our business, especially when we're getting started out right money is usually not flowing in as much as we would like it to be in those early days. 

Courtney Elmer

Generally speaking, and so our time we give our time away, but But what happens is we develop this habit of not valuing our time. And so that habit can actually really hurt us in the long run in terms of profitability, because when we undervalue our time, we will always undervalue whatever it is at that time is going to provide someone. 

Courtney Elmer

Whether it's a sales call, whether it's time spent with you with whatever service you're providing, and it creates, it's a very negative. It's like a downward spiral. That's the word I was trying to write.

Michael Buzinski 30:46  

I mean, you're gonna you're not paying your employees as much as you should be. Or could be. There's also your your quality of life is down, believe me, I did it for 15 years, I did exactly what I'm talking against. For 15 years, I grew a mult, I grew a creative agency into a multi million dollar company. And what I actually did was I grew it broke. And I grew myself miserable. Because I did not understand the value that I brought to my clients.

Courtney Elmer 31:17  

hard lesson to learn.

Michael Buzinski 31:20  

expensive lesson to learn

Courtney Elmer 31:21  

that too. Oh, yeah. We did you learned it, and that you're telling us here today what not to do?

Michael Buzinski 31:31  

Spend a lot of time and money and you anyone, you can make more money, but you cannot buy that time back?

Courtney Elmer 31:37  

Right? 100%? Alright, so back to marketing. So where to from here? But where should we look? What are our first steps? , if someone that's listening to this episode, they're like, Alright, I'm thinking about a lot of things right now. First thing that I need to do in order to kind of either learn more about this or kind of assess the marketing on my website, where do we begin?

Michael Buzinski 31:57  

Yeah Courtney Elmer. I think, if we listen back at what we've talked about, we've given kind of the first steps of people who are ready to take action on their own. And if you're one of those people with more time than money, then I would urge them to go to the rule of two, six, or I'm sorry, to www dot rule of two six.com. Grab the book. It is only about 150 pages, and it is stacked full of actionable items to help you with all three of the objectives, the rule of 26 addresses. If you're somebody who needs a little help, or wants to hand it off to a pros, and make sure that it happens right the first time, you can visit us and see how we work at Buzworthy dot biz. We have Do It Yourself website marketing services, done with you website marketing services, and done for you website marketing services that you can peruse there. And we always have free consultations for anybody who's interested in learning more about anything they read on that website.

Courtney Elmer 32:58  

Amazing. And we will link to all of that in the show notes as well. And for your book, you mentioned something to me before we hit record that I thought was pretty cool. So tell me about that. So if someone goes and they download, what is it the e book, the ebook version of your book?

Michael Buzinski 33:10  

Yeah, so we're on Amazon. And I'm a big believer in having both an e book and a hardcopy of all my books, I do all of my all my notes and ebooks, because I can then search it on the Kindle, or whatever reader I'm using. And for the paperback. And when it's on the shelf, it reminds you it's a constant reminder, when it's in your phone, you don't see it unless you're looking for something right. And you happen to over it. But if it's on your bookshelf, it's a constant reminder of Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I, but I don't want you need to buy it twice. So if you buy my ebook, which is the cheaper version, and email me at https://www.Buzworthy.biz, send me a snapshot of your purchase, where you would like the paperback to be sent and who you'd like it dedicated to? And I will email or I will mail a free copy. No charge.

Courtney Elmer 34:07  

Amazing was thank you for that. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you be in here today. This is such a not only was it a valuable conversation, it was it's such an important conversation. These are the conversations we need to be having as business owners. And I think so many of us can fall into the trap of being so focused when it comes to marketing on , getting a presence on social media and whatever the next new trend is. 

Courtney Elmer

I'm going to start dancing on Instagram reveals and doing all these things to get attention to get people to notice us. And I think at the end of the day, as business owners, we want to be seen, we want to be acknowledged for the expertise and the value that we bring to the table. And I believe as chances are I'm sure you would agree with this that you deserve to be paid for that too and paid well. And you deserve to have a profitable business.

Courtney Elmer

Thank you Buz for coming here to share with us some of the first steps that we can begin to take that are already here. It's already at our fingertips. I mean lifetime value of a customer right Go into your existing customer base. And look at how you can optimize that. And these other KPIs that you gave us, , to increase conversions and traffic, I mean, it's invaluable. So thank you for what you do. And thank you for being here.

Michael Buzinski 35:12  

Thank you, Courtney Elmer!

Courtney Elmer 35:17  

Okay, so definitely go check out the show notes right now where we have linked to all of the resources that Buz shared with you. Next week we are talking about team building here on the show. I have got a guest expert who's going to show you how to use the power of an underrated leadership tool to hire the right people to solve teamwork dilemmas and to unlock your team's full potential. 

Courtney Elmer

Join me back here next Tuesday and until then, go live your EffortLESS Life®.