The Future of Renewable Energy with Wesley Smith

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of Timber Talks, host Mindy welcomes Wesley Smith, the CEO of Tree Service Digital, a specialized marketing agency for tree care companies. The discussion centers around the importance of digital marketing in the forestry and tree care industry. Wesley explains how tree service companies can significantly grow their business by enhancing their online presence. The episode delves into the specifics of how companies can leverage digital tools like Google and Facebook ads, SEO strategies, and personalized website content to attract more clients and stand out in a competitive market.

Lessons You’ll Learn

Listeners will gain insights into the crucial role digital marketing plays in modern forestry and tree care businesses. Wesley shares actionable strategies on how to improve visibility online, including the use of Google Maps and SEO to target specific services and areas. He also emphasizes the importance of maintaining a dynamic online presence with regular updates and photos. Additionally, listeners will learn about the benefits of utilizing multiple marketing channels, such as paid ads and social media, to increase lead generation and business growth. Wesley’s expertise provides a comprehensive guide for tree care professionals looking to enhance their digital footprint.

About Our Guest

Wesley Smith is the CEO of Tree Service Digital, a marketing agency dedicated to helping tree care companies optimize their online presence. With over 14 years of experience in digital marketing, Wesley transitioned from a general agency background to specialize in the tree service niche about six years ago. His journey began during the financial crisis with a real estate investing business, where he developed a passion for digital marketing. Wesley’s expertise in SEO, Google Ads, and social media has helped euro tree service companies across the country improve their visibility and grow their businesses.

Topics Covered

The episode covers a range of topics essential for tree care businesses looking to thrive in the digital age. Wesley discusses the importance of SEO and how optimizing website content for specific services and locations can enhance search engine rankings. He highlights the role of Google Maps in local search visibility and the impact of regular updates with photos and detailed job descriptions. The conversation also explores the effectiveness of Google and Facebook ads in attracting motivated customers and the advantages of retargeting and lead generation on social media. Additionally, Wesley touches on the use of LinkedIn for targeting commercial clients and the overall strategy of integrating multiple digital marketing tools to maximize business growth.

Our Guest: Wesley Smith – The dynamic CEO of Tree Service Digital

Episode Transcript

Episode Transcript 

Introduction: Welcome to Timber Talks, the podcast where we interview experts in the forestry industry sharing trends, insights and best practices in the field. Be sure to subscribe to the show and leave us a review.

Wesley : Timber talks podcast. It’s great. I think we’re aligning the same industry, same type of folks. Probably listen to both podcasts. And ,I’m looking forward to just having a conversation, I guess.

Mindy : Okay. All right. Do you have any questions about my background before we get started?

Wesley : sure. What is your background?

Mindy : I have a degree in agriculture and a couple of minors in science. I have a background in natural resources and a master in many things. urban planning, environmental education, stuff like that. So the reason I brought that up, used to be an educator and decided that just wasn’t for me in the public school system. So way back when, when blogging first started, I started my second career as a blogger. I’ve done several things: social media, marketing, blogging.  , in the digital format, still do it. So I do have a background in that digital marketing aspect, so that’s great.

Wesley :  do you like that service that you’re using to help find podcast guests?

Mindy : Do I like the service? I am just a cog in the wheel. I was hired to be the interviewer because of my background, so I don’t use I don’t edit the videos, I don’t schedule the guests or anything.

Wesley : Right? It was like some sort of third party service. And I looked them up. I found their website and they basically work with people that have a podcast, helping them fill spots for guests and how to edit it and how to do the agenda. And sending me like, like the upfront, hey, here’s what we’re going to cover in the meeting. And so I think they kind of just organized the whole thing for you.

Mindy : Right.

Wesley : It’s kind of cool. So that’s not a service that you.

Mindy : Now I know I don’t do that. So I’m just the interviewer.

Wesley : Mean, so you’re not Timber Talks podcast like the owner of the.

Mindy : Podcast. Oh no. No.

Wesley : Oh okay. I think I’ve heard of Timber Talks at some point, but, ,.

Mindy : Well, I think Timber talks are something new. It’s to encourage people to consider jobs in forestry. So it’s kind of an equate it out to like the modern day job shadowing type of thing. … in my day you had to, like, go somewhere.

Wesley : No doubt in today’s virtual world you can kind of do it through a desk or whatever.

Mindy : Yes.

Mindy : that is my understanding of the project, but I was just hired to interview people, so.

Wesley : Great No That’s great. I’m. I’m all about it. I mean, we’re always looking for guests on our podcast, and I’m always able to be on other people’s podcasts. And you’re right. Right.

Mindy : So. Well if you would like, we’ll just go ahead and start.

Wesley : that’s fine with me. Okay.

Mindy : Welcome listeners to another enlightening episode of Timber Talks. I’m your host, Mindy. Today’s guest is Wesley Smith. He is the CEO of Tree Service Digital, an agency that specializes in marketing for tree care companies. And so the kind of the just of Tree Service Digital’s mission is to make it easier for individuals that are involved in tree care to be found. Some people are still using other means that have worked in the past. But now that the digital environment is very important as far as getting leads as an example. So explain why navigating the digital market in forestry is important. I mean, I can understand why, but maybe our viewers wouldn’t understand digital and forestry needing to work hand in hand together.

Wesley : Sure. Thanks so much for having me on today. Thanks, Mindy, for the question. We help tree service companies, forestry mulching companies, and land clearing companies. Anybody in that space just really becomes more visible on the internet. And the reason is, it helps you grow your business tremendously. If people can find you when they’re looking for services that you provide. So if you think about it these days, most everyone goes to Google or Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo or wherever they’re going to do their browsing, and they’re going to search for, for example, tree service near me or tree removal companies,  , and put your city in there, or tree removal service near me. And they’re going to see a list of results of the very, very top of the page up there. And some of those are paid ads. Some of those are organic listings that Google has deemed as the most viable and authoritative websites, and Google map listings that should show in that area. And so you want to be in that area, because that’s where people are going to gravitate to at the top of the page and make a few calls to get a few tree companies out or forestry companies out and. They’re gonna make a decision. But if you’re not up there, then you get overlooked and you really just don’t get any of that lead flow. And these can be very lucrative jobs that people are looking to get done. So you want to be up at the top. It definitely benefits your business with the visibility kind of just a long term strategy of your marketing.

Mindy : All right. So how did you decide to go into digital marketing? Were you already doing that and decided that you were going to go for a particular market, or were you a forester and decided you wanted to do digital marketing?

Wesley : No. No background in forestry or tree service or anything like that. I started in digital marketing about 14 years ago, and my mom and I have a real estate investing business. I started back then during kind of the great financial crisis where the pricing of houses were down in the,  , the, the trough,  , the prices were lower. So we started a company back then, and I just really loved the aspect of being found online, and I just kind of fell in love with the process of being ranked for your website for certain words people are searching for. And then after that kind of led into paid ads where you could do the same thing. People are searching for things, but then your sponsored ad would show up above some of the organic listings. So you kind of get a little bit higher up there on the page with the paid stuff. So I really fell in love with digital marketing and just how all of it worked with websites, organic, search engine optimization, SEO, the Google Maps section, getting reviews and paid ads with Google ads and things like that. I just really enjoyed it. And I said, wow, this would be a nice business to start.

Wesley : ,, I think it can help a lot of other business owners who don’t have any visibility create that visibility and online presence. They need to grow their business, because the majority of the eyeballs have just been shifting to digital over the last, as 15, 20 years probably now, I used to say 10 or 15 years, now it’s probably 15 to 20 years. it used to be that, Yellow Pages, you would go and you’d open it up and you’d look for the services that you wanted, your local market, and you’d pick a couple and call. Well, it’s similar today, except it’s online versus the offline yellow page book. Most people take those books and toss them right in the recycling bin, or they just don’t get them in the first place anymore. So most people are going towards the digital, and so you just want to be found in those areas also. And so we just found that’s kind of the best place to be. And I just, really wanted to help other business owners kind of have that same visibility. So we started about 2015, 2016 with a general agency where I just helped everybody. Right. I have a team and we would help anybody.

Wesley : You’d have roofing company, tree company, lawyers, dentists, whoever came in, you would kind of try to help. And it’s really hard to reinvent the wheel for every new business niche that’s difficult. So we got some really good results for three companies. I think we were working with 3 or 4 at the time and just really decided, based on some coaching and mentoring, that I got as well, to focus on one niche and it will boil down to like, who do you want to work with every day? And I grew up in the blue collar space. My dad had a pl,bing business for 30 plus years, so I kind of just like contractors and people that work and work outside because I still like doing things like that too. And so I picked the tree service niche because we had gotten some good results. And there’s a good ROI there if you, ,, do the online marketing. So we pivoted probably about six years ago and kind of just rebranded as Tree Service Digital. And I’ve been helping tree service companies ever since. We’re members of,  , a lot of the main associations out there that you guys are probably members of as well. And we just love what we do.

Mindy : Oh, great. So you kind of touched on a little bit. Could you share a success story where digital strategies significantly impacted tree care? companies?

Wesley : Oh, Like we’ve got a couple of case studies on our website. We’ve got 10 or 12 testimonial videos from customers who have left a video review. But, in a lot of cases, we take people from places that are nonexistent online to show up everywhere online we’ve got one client that we did a case study for. they’re in the Brandon, Mississippi market, kind of like the Jackson, Mississippi market and had had a general agency before that helped them with their website and stuff, but they got to the point where the communication was lacking and they just couldn’t get responses, even calling an email. And so they moved forward with our program. And we quickly implemented a complete solution. So the website, , the SEO for multiple areas, not just your main area, but,  , usually you serve a good 20, 30 mile radius and there’s lots of cities and towns in between all those. So we target all of those. We optimized their Google Maps, got them a review strategy to get 5 to 10 new five star reviews per month. ,, set up Google paid ads, Google guaranteed ads, which are the local service ads and really got their search marketing dialed in. And they’ve been able to double their business over the past three years just because now people find them all the time. And a quick story on this company too.

Wesley : They actually were doing like. Billboards locally, and I think they’ve had a couple of radio spots. So once your name gets out there like that, it only intensifies how well you’re going to do on the digital side too, because people are hearing about it on the radio. They may see a billboard every day to and from work, and then when they go do a search for tree service. Oh, I’ve seen that company. Let me go ahead and click on their ad or their website. Go ahead and give them the quote opportunity. So it’s really good to do a lot of different things. And that’s kind of what we teach and suggest is we look at it as a fisherman would. Right. So if you go out on a fishing boat, if you’ve only got one pole in the water, you’re probably only going to catch one fish, right? But if you got ten fishing poles on the water, you’re likely to catch more than one fish at a time.8 to 10 fish at a time, for example. So we like to do all of what we discussed already for that client, plus email marketing, text marketing, direct mail, things like that, because people kind of get their services from different places. So, right.

Mindy : key strategies for digital success. I’m very familiar with SEO. So do you feel that your SEO strategy is the cornerstone of your service, or do you think you just have a multifaceted approach to your digital marketing? And SEO is just part of it?

Wesley : Seo is definitely a very large foundational aspect of your digital marketing success. So,  , with the website and your search engine optimization, you really want to target the certain areas you want to cover and also the services that you want to cover in the areas that you serve. So you basically want a website that’s fully built out with really good content, written content. Are. Google Maps is the other strategy, which is very, very important because a lot of the calls come from Google Maps. When people do a search for tree service nearby or tree companies near me, something like that. If they’re on their phone, their mobile device, their GPS, and Google Maps is going to tell them exactly where they’re standing. So they’re going to match up the local companies that are very close to that person searching. So you do want to be highly visible on Google Maps, which is part of your local SEO, as well as on the organic section right below the maps. And so that is pretty much your organic kind of SEO strategy there. What we see working really, really well in today’s market. Google constantly is changing their algorithm. And last year they had a new update called the Helpful Content Update. And what that meant was, hey, we’re going to start weeding out people’s websites who have hundreds of pages of just keyword stuffed page content or AI written content recently. They also have another rule there. Now, if somebody is publishing more than 50 or 100 pages per month, that’s not really likely.

Wesley : So they’re not going to publish an index. All those pages. So what they want is just helpful h,an written content. And they can tell when it’s handwritten. I mean, we didn’t get an algorithm checker that says, hey, did ChatGPT write this? And ChatGPT comes back and says, yes, they know that it’s AI content. You can modify and edit it to make it a more h,anized type thing. But helpful content are things like your job descriptions in your local community. Let’s say you do a job and you’ve got before and after pictures of things like removing a tree and then how the yard looks after the tree. ,, that’s a really good job description to post on your website. So think of … what city and state was the job in? What type of tree was the job? What type of service did you do? How many crew members helped perform the job? What were the customer’s requests? What specific challenges? Was it in the backyard? Was it on a slope? Was it on a busy street? All those things make that job description a very unique piece of content for your website. And so if you’re constantly updating your website with things like that, ,, Google loves that. That is helpful content for the people visiting your website. So we found that strategy works very well. Also, you want to get mentions on other websites which are links back to your website, hence the name backlinks. And you want to do that carefully, but you want to do that consistently as well.

Mindy : Right. So that what you said kind of leads to our next question. So businesses personalize their website by taking photographs of the before and after and giving more detail. Do you find that is a great way that businesses can separate themselves from the pack, especially in a local area where there might be several, ,, tree care professionals in the area?

Wesley : Absolutely. It’s the biggest differentiator you can really do, because a lot of tree companies kind of do the same services in general. But a lot of people, I would say 80% of tree service companies don’t really take any photos, don’t update their photos. They don’t, they don’t have consistent photos. And by taking photos of your trucks, of your crew, of your jobs in action before and after, ,, just showing safety,  , doing maybe some small video clips of you guys removing trees or trimming trees, pruning trees, whatever. It just goes a long way. And the customer or the visitor of your website or somebody looking up your services and thinking, okay, this is a tree company, this one’s kind of come to life. I kind of see the people that work in this company. And then also on the website, if you have an About Us section, you may want to have,  , a little write up of the owner. Even if the owner is not on every job, there’s 3 or 4 or five crews that it’s a multi-million dollar tree company. Who cares? It’s still got a picture of the owner.

Wesley :  , you’re telling them, hey, I’m here. I’m the owner. I started this business  , an XYZ year. We’ve been in business for 20 years. 30 years,  , dot dot dot. But really telling that story of that tree service company from a personal standpoint. Because when you can kind of bring the company kind of to life as a, as a person or as people, it’s more likely you’re going to get people to call you and get more conversions that way from people visiting your website. So we always recommend lots of ongoing photos. I mean, smartphones today are 2030 megapixel cameras, so they’re good enough. You don’t really have to hire photographers in order to get good pictures. And don’t overthink it. Just take pictures out in the field.  , you could do this twice a week. Once a week, really take 10 to 20 photos of a job or two jobs done. But it really helps and it goes a long way. So that’s a great point that you bring up about taking photos. We see that’s one of the bigger differentiators out there online.

Mindy : Okay. So could you elaborate on your role in Google Ads and Facebook marketing? Because we haven’t really touched on Facebook marketing and reaching potential clients for these. ,, these tree service companies.

Wesley : Sure. ,. Google ads are very good. This setup  , in some markets they work better than others. A lot of what Google Ads depends on is how many advertisers are bidding on those searches. Right. So if there’s only three tree companies bidding on those searches in a local area, you’re probably going to have better results because there’s just not as many ads showing up, and there’s just more leads to go around for that view of tree companies. Now, on the other hand, if you’re in a market and there’s 20 or 30 tree companies running ads, Google’s got to rotate these things. They got to give everybody a little bit of love right in the search impressions and the search vol,e. So you’re going to get a little bit less lead flow in that environment. But all in all people are coming and going all the time in the ads platform. So you’ll find one month they may not work well, the next month they do because six people dropped off or decided not to do ads. So it’s a fluid process. You gotta really monitor and check it. As far as what we find with Google Search, whether it’s Google Ads or Google Local Service ads, those are very motivated customers, like they’re doing a search at that moment, and they’re looking to get a couple of estimates for the tree service work. And  , as we know with tree service, it can be $1,000.

Wesley : It could be $5,000, it could be a $20,000 huge job. So they’re very, very important to answer the fall. I want to make sure I throw that in there. So if you’re paying for these ads and advertising, it’s very important to answer the phone in the first place. Otherwise they just go down the line and keep calling everybody else. So if they get somebody on the phone, you’re more likely to get that estimate and they’re less likely to call more people. As far as Facebook goes, ,, Facebook. What we see is a great branding play,  , and people are on Facebook a lot for just personal,  , looking up news or  , just gossiping and socializing and things like that. So it is good to be there. And  , if your business page is highly visible, you can do things very inexpensively on Facebook, like retargeting ads. So you could put, , if you create a Facebook ad account, you could actually take this little pixel code, put it on your website, and everybody that visits your website or clicks on your Facebook page, you can then retarget those people, for example, for 60 days, right. And show them a small little ad about your tree company. That’s very good for branding if you think about it. People log into Facebook every day, several times a day, most people.

Wesley : So your ad will be there and people will see you over and over and over. And guess what? When they think of tree service, they’re going to think of calling you. So it’s very important to do that. Again. The budget’s very small on that. In addition to that, you can also run lead generation ads on Facebook. So you can put a budget into Facebook in the service area you want to cover, and the ads will show up. No. If they visited your website or not. So it’s just showing up to a specific audience in the area, so that’s good too. What we find is Facebook ads can be a little less motivated than the Google ads, because on Google they’re actually searching,  , to get research done. Whereas on Facebook it’s kind of like, well, let me put my toe in the water and see what they might charge for this or that. But some of the leads can be very, very good too. So that’s the two strategies we use. And then also you can post frequently on Facebook just to kind of show the same thing we just talked about a minute ago. Your point to taking pictures. You could upload those pictures to Facebook and kind of have a little job description about what you’re doing. And that goes a long way to just showing people that you’re active and kind of how you do business.

Mindy : So are you branching out because I know there’s a set demographic for Facebook and there’s a demographic for Instagram and Twitter. And so are you branching out into some other social media channels or are you just sticking with Facebook?

Wesley : So Facebook and Instagram generally, if you do create an Instagram account, the nice thing is, you can just sync up the Instagram and Facebook account. So if you post on one it goes to the other as well. So because post on Facebook, it goes to Instagram, post on Instagram, it goes to Facebook, vice versa especially on the ads platform. Two it’ll run on both. But as far as other ones, I’ve heard of people going kind of the TikTok route,  , on trying that out for the short form content, things like that. Some of the things you can do as a tree service company, if you want to concentrate solely on commercial, , LinkedIn is a great strategy because you can,  , really personalize your profile on LinkedIn and brand yourself as the expert tree care professional arborist in your market, and then reach out to property management companies, property owners, homeowners associations in your local area on LinkedIn. And  , friend, request those people and really get content out there and try to start conversations with that. So that’s a good commercial play. ,, but as far as other social media channels, we see, most people are on and some people do have Twitter accounts as well. We don’t do much with it. But  , there’s a lot of people that use Facebook, Instagram and the LinkedIn kind of those are the main three that we see. But ,, I mean, the other ones could work too  .

Mindy : Okay. All right. So do you see email marketing and direct mail campaigns seem to bridge the old and the new marketing together. ,, how do you integrate these to maximize customer engagement and retention?

Wesley : ,, that’s a good question. So I think  , even old marketing medi,s are still relevant today. Right, Brett? Mail and things that are going to physically land in people’s mailboxes, whether they ask for it or not, is still a good strategy. It’s kind of like the same branding strategy as a billboard. If somebody’s riding down the street and they’re going to work every day and they’re passing by this billboard that says XYZ Tree Service, give us a call today, they’re going to see that. And the next time they think of tree service, they’re probably more than likely going to remember that and probably want to call that company because they’ve seen it so many times. Same thing with direct mail. If you’re doing that,  , there’s a certain demographic population that would cater to direct mail versus other people.  , we see people that are middle aged and up do respond to direct mail pretty well, and it really depends on the area. It kind of goes back to the same thing we were talking about with Google ads. So if there’s a lot of people doing direct mail in the area for tree service, then your results will get watered down. But conversely, if there’s not anybody doing direct mail and you’re doing it, you’re going to get a huge response, right? So we see kind of both ways and everything in the middle. And so we think,  , we just know that works very well, a call to action, maybe some sort of little coupon if they call before the end of the month with direct mail. Works. Well as far as email, ,, it works really great because most people, most tree companies that have grown to a certain size are keeping a database of their customers.

Wesley : So whether that’s jobber or single ops, Arbo, Star Arbor, Arbor Gold, any of those tree related CRMs that help you manage your business and the operations of your business, they usually build up a pretty sizable client customer list over two, five, ten year period, 20 year periods. So if you think about it, you got 5000 contacts, for example, in there you can export that list. And there’s a lot of email services you can use. If you’re doing this in the office, there’s MailChimp, there’s constant contact. And basically you take that list of customers, upload that into one of those tools. The tool usually will scrub the list to make sure there’s no bad emails or emails that are going to likely bounce and remove them. And then from there, you can start sending them just educational email newsletters,  , maybe highlight one of your blog articles on your website or a case study job description that we were talking about earlier. You could highlight that in an email showing people how you do work. You can put front and center whatever type of tree specific care that you want to do for the quarter. Maybe you’re focusing on some sort of pests that are getting people’s trees and you want to treat those. You could tell people what to look out for and give you guys a call for consultation. So these things are really good to do on an ongoing basis, to really kind of brand your company as the expert and just keep reminding people that you’re out there, right? Both of them work very well.

Mindy : All right, so, ,, another question I had. So your service, do you provide all these services for a company that’s involved in tree care, or do you teach people how to do these services themselves, or a combination of both?

Wesley : So we do put out free content out there. So I usually do a topical webinar of one of the digital marketing topics, typically twice a quarter. I try to do it once a month, but it doesn’t always happen. So usually like maybe 2 to 3 per quarter of a digital marketing top it off, off digital,  , offline marketing topic, whatnot, just something that’s really relevant to the tree service industry. And we put those on YouTube and we put those on the podcast where people can kind of either watch them or they can listen to them while they’re driving in the truck or doing whatever they do in their spare time. And so that free content is out there for pretty much everything that you would need for online marketing. It’s on the Tree Service digital YouTube page and then also in the Tree Service Marketing Profits podcast. But ,, I mean it’s we put out the free content, but we also offer a completely done for you solution based around all the ideas and the strategies that we talk about on the podcast and the webinars. So, we have a whole program that we plug three companies into, , really branding their company, marketing their business, getting them front and center of their local market, and just really outshining the competition with just more online visibility. And that helps them grow their business.

Mindy : Okay. So if somebody had interest, they could either purchase the package deal or they could follow the YouTube video or podcast to learn how to do this strategy that you’ve come up with.

Wesley : ,, absolutely. People sometimes have in-house marketing teams. And so ,, they’re welcome to dive into the videos, training or the webinars that we put on because we send out invites to register for the webinar and it’s free. And then we also have the replay based on when we send the replay out on an email. And then we also have it on the YouTube channel. And then we have quite a few of those on the website too. At Tree Service, Digital Comm, where they can go to our training section. But ,, we just put it out there and ,,  , we get people that would just want to make sure it’s done. They don’t have to think about doing it. They want a professional team that knows what they’re doing. They kind of implement this and really get this running for their business. So that’s what we offer. Yes.

Mindy : Some people just don’t want to take the time. A mentor of mine said,  , if you can find somebody to do something that’s not in your wheelhouse, pay for it and then do what you do best versus trying to do everything yourself.

Wesley : So that’s right. ,. And you think about it too. If you hire somebody in-house to do marketing, it’s really tough to find that individual that’s really good at SEO, website maintenance, blog articles, Google ads management. That’s a whole nother animal in itself. The Google Ads platform, ,, social media, email marketing, making sure you have good deliverability, just all these little things, they require a good bit of expertise in each one of those channels. So we’re a team that’s got the whole team put together so you don’t have to worry about hiring somebody in-house or people calling in sick. We’ve got a whole team that takes care of all that great.

Mindy : So looking into future trends and tree service marketing. So as we all know, the digital landscape has changed. In doing so, digital marketing has changed. So what are some upcoming trends that you believe will shape the future for tree service companies?

Wesley : ,, as far as digital marketing goes, that is a great, great question. And  , predicting the future is very difficult because this is rapidly changing. But I think good content is always going to tr,p everything else. So if you’re putting out really good content about tree care related tips, video strategies on how to care for trees or carefully pruning trees, this is content that people are interested in seeing, whether it be on your website or on YouTube or whatnot. So good quality content is going to continue to be kind of the tr,p card for organic rankings. And kind of showing up online. But some of the trends are definitely AI, which is artificial intelligence. And  , we use some of that for idea creation. Sometimes it’s very good at leading you down a path to create ideas for certain things or to come up with little small postings on your Facebook page or things like that can help save some time for sure, but the jury’s still out. Whether or not you really want to put out too much AI content on the web, , Google’s algorithm and a few other being Yahoo, too, are carefully examining all of this content created by these bots and saying, is that really relevant content that people want to read? And as it makes sense, in some cases, it’s just more really what it is. A s,mary of all the articles that are already online. A lot of times it’s not somebody’s opinion. So if the jury’s still out on that, on how they’re going to continue to kind of refine that process. But those are some of the trends. I mean, AI is definitely here, and it’s going to make people’s jobs and life a little bit easier as we move into the. But what we see and what’s always been the case is good quality content for tree companies putting out good things like that, good vibes in the community that’s going to tr,p everything else.

Mindy : Right? Right. Well, I’m seeing with several things that I do that,  , there’s two separate camps. There’s totally h,an produced content and totally AI produced content. So,  , ,, I ,, I have kind of my own philosophy. I would rather write it myself, but I’m with you. I do use AI occasionally to, to just kind of get a general idea of how something could be laid out. ,, because sometimes you’re just too close to the topic and you just need a different perspective.

Wesley : ,. And to that point we were talking about earlier with Google’s algorithm updates, a lot of it was catered around this new AI content that’s being mass produced. And so we saw a lot of competitor websites literally just fall completely out of the rankings that they had enlisted some sort of AI content service provider or something to produce 20, 50, 100 pages on their website really quickly. And we saw a lot of those fall by the wayside. So be really careful of how much of that you put on your website, because I think still there’s a lot of detection mechanisms that Google and Bing have to kind of weed that type of thing out, because I want to make sure it makes sense, and it’s engaging and it’s readable. It’s not just some like,  , robotic type paragraphs, ,, spit out content of s,maries of a bunch of articles that be really be really careful about that until there’s some sort of further kind of,  , everybody knows exactly what they are or not looking for. But most of our clients’ websites really spiked in the rankings after that update because all we do is write content. ,, and it just kind of showed and we were like, okay, we’re on the right track with that. Like because we saw some other competitors moving up pretty quick and it’s like, wow, that’s this guy who just published a website. Why is it already way up in results? And,  , lo and behold, after the algorithm updates, some of those disappeared and just never came back. So just be really careful of how much of that you use.

Mindy : Well, that’s this process that we’re in right now. Kind of reminds me of many years ago,  , where people were SEO stuffing and, ,,  , to get a higher rank took away from the content. But there was that,  , don’t do it, do it type of, or strategy. So businesses were,  , kind of waiting to see what the jury was going to say on whether SEO stuffing was an appropriate thing to do or,  , to utilize SEOs in an organic format, which,  , they found the organic way was the best way. So how do tree service digital stay ahead of the curve in adopting new technologies or strategies?

Wesley : We’re constantly reading all the new updates with Google we’re all subscribed to. It’s actually pretty cool. You can go to Google’s website and get, , content updates from Google, and they’ll give you updates about Google Business profile, content, best practices, their new algorithm updates, etc. and we’re all subscribed to that. So we’re pretty nerdy when it comes to like, digital marketing and then specifically for the tree care industry. So we’re always looking at best practices for Google Ads. We’ve got a certified Google partner on staff that runs the ads. It’s kind of taking care of that process. Google local service ads, best practices because these things are constantly moving and changing. So just when you get it figured out, it seems like they go ahead and toss a curveball in there and change it. And ,, you got a whole nother learning curve. So we’re constantly on top of it, ,, reading all kinds of journals online and making sure we stay in front of it. I’m part of a lot of masterminds as well where we all share best practices. So that’s kind of how we stay out in front of it.

Mindy : Okay, so what advice would you give to a tree service company that maybe is looking to start their digital marketing or enhance their digital marketing? What would be the first step that you would recommend?

Wesley : Ooh, I love this question. I actually did a YouTube video about this about a year or a year and a half ago. It’s on the YouTube channel, and it’s basically what should a startup tree service company do online when they first get going? Because  , you don’t have that budget yet to just go out there. So what I always recommend is getting your Google business profile and your local area verified. So basically that’s your Google Map listing for a better word, it’s Google Business profile. It used to be called Google My Business. Now it’s called the Google Business Profile. So it’s basically where you go to create your business entity on Google. ,. Your name of your business, your logo.  , your phone number, your address, your website, all that. And you click verify. And then once you do that, they’re going to send a postcard in the mail. Or these days, a lot of times they’re doing video verification. So you have to kind of film your location of business or your trucks and things like that to get verified on Google, but that puts you on the map, so to speak. Right? Put you on the Google map so that you’re on the map for tree service near me.

Wesley : And, and your business is able to be found when somebody searches your business name online. And that’s where you can get your reviews built up. And those reviews are so important for the foundation of your digital marketing. But it’s free. That’s a free thing you can set up as your Google business profile. Next, I would always buy the domain of your business. So if your business is XYZ tree care, go try to find XYZ tree care. Com and if that’s not available XYZ tree care.   your state abbreviation.com or call XYZ tree care com or something like that to where you’re branding your business name as well on the domain. And there’s lots of website providers these days like Wix, Squarespace, which are very inexpensive. And you can drag and drop photos and content and just create your own. But just having that website online, people can find you having your Google Business profile verified. That’s free. Start getting reviews on that, because when you do decide to do online marketing, your reviews are going to play a major role on how high you rank on certain platforms. So you really want to get started on that as soon as possible.

Wesley : And the other thing is create your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, all those are free as well. ,, and you can get listings on Yelp and different places to all. This kind of creates your digital footprint online, and Google crawls and sees all these websites that have your information on it. It’s called your nap, your name, address, phone number. And so the more of those you’re listed in, the better. A lot of that stuff’s just easy. It takes a little bit of time, but it’s really simple. ,, so that’s what I would start with on the digital. And then once you have a budget, it’s good to start perhaps doing Google ads, Facebook ads. ,, there’s some offline strategies you can do too, like yard signs I think are a great idea because for a couple hundred bucks, you can get yard signs and stick those out on the jobs you’re doing. Make sure you wrap your trucks as soon as you have the budget as well, because that’s a digital billboard. I mean  , truck billboards all day, every day,  ? So those are some things I would suggest starting with.

Mindy : All right. So I and you are a plethora of information. So I want to try to recap the insights and strategies that you’ve talked about Wesley. So let’s see your digital age. Everybody needs to be online so that their prospective clients can find them. ,, and they can find people that they can talk to and give estimates to. In a nutshell, how I would view it, just any type of first step for a business that isn’t doing digital marketing is an improvement, starting with verifying on Google and utilizing Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, which are all free. So starting off with some free services, also watching your YouTube videos to get some information on how to do some certain things. Is there anything else you would like that I’ve missed that you would like to share?

Wesley : No, that’s really a lot of it there. ,. Just your foundational elements.  , the sooner you get started with digital, the sooner you’re kind of planting a seed there and the sooner your tree will grow. Right? So digital is kind of like,  , once you get your domain and publish your website, there’s going to be a little time there that needs to season before Google is going to start showing you over the competition, even if you do everything right. So the sooner you get your website online, the better, because there is a seasoning factor there with the algorithm and the trust and everything like that. So sooner the better on all that stuff, right?

Mindy : And digital is not going away. So   we’re just going to have more and more. Thank you, Wesley, for your expertise and contributions to the industry through innovative marketing solutions. So everyone do not forget to check out Wesley’s website, Tree Service Digital to learn more about the services he offers. Don’t forget to check his YouTube channel either or his podcast and contact them for a tree discovery call. Remember listeners, the trees are very important, but digital marketing is just as important to find those types of services that you’re looking to maintain your trees. So do you have any questions for me? Leslie?

Wesley : No. Thanks so much for the opportunity and the time. I enjoyed it. And, ,, ,, if anybody has any questions, we’re easy to find all over social media, tree service, digital, YouTube, the podcast. Or you can go to tree service, digital comm and contact us there.

Mindy : And the best part of that is digital marketing saves trees.

Wesley : Yes it does. It saves on paper, that’s for sure.

Mindy : Yes. All right. Well, thank you for your time, Wesley.

Wesley : Thank you.

Mindy : Appreciate it. Bye.