Small Marketing Budgets With BIG Impact with Ajay Prasad

Founder of Global Marketing Resources – Ajay Prasad

Are you trying to design a marketing strategy with a limited budget and crossing your fingers for BIG results? Tune in to this show as Ajay Prasad lays out his full spectrum digital marketing plan he developed and executes with small businesses of all budget sizes.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• GMRTranscription.com

Check out GMRWebTeam.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I?m Jaime Tardy and I?m really excited to have Ajay Prasad on the show. He owns a couple companies, he?s a serial entrepreneur. He has one which is called GMR Web Team, a digital marketing agency. And the other is GMR Transcription and they do transcription services. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, I really appreciate it. 

Ajay: It?s great to be here, Jaime. I?m looking forward to our discussion. 

Jaime: Me too. I love having people on that are in the digital marketing space. I just said a second ago offline that I?m going to ask you so many questions. But first, why don?t you give us a quick timeline of how you actually started two companies. Interviewing serial entrepreneurs is always fun, I just want a good idea where the timeline was. 

Ajay: Perfect. So actually I am one of those who used to be in the corporate world and I kind of did ok, I went in corporate marketing for most of my career for the first 17, 18 years of my 28, 29 years I was in the corporation. So after my last job I realized I paid my dues through the corporation and I had really interesting jobs including CEO of dotcom companies and I?ve been head of marketing for Fortune 10 company, and a couple of billion dollar corporations, so I had a decent career I would say in marketing. 

So when I finally decided I?m done with my corporate world, I really wanted to focus on small businesses, so first my marketing is my forte, obviously, and I wanted to really go after and help smaller businesses because I was in that world before. You can imagine that my job was to crush the small businesses as a corporation and big company. So I said maybe I can go and help them. So that?s how I started my career as an entrepreneur. 

After like three months or so, I realized that I needed to go after a niche before I just started doing ?marketing and consulting?. So I said I want a niche where I?m not selling my hours and I can provide a service and I help other people.  And I went after digital marketing - this was 11 years back - there were many small business owners who were like, ?Why do I need a website?? And I always said if you have a website who cares, you have to have a whole strategy behind an internet site, and a website is just a very small piece of it. 

So I realized that there was a big, gaping hole where there was no one there, so that?s when I started my digital agency. Just three months into it I said I?m just going to focus on the digital part, I still work with some people who do traditional marketing, when my clients need that I just pass it on to them. Literally 6 months into digital marketing I started to realize that digital marketing methods were not tested. In the traditional marketing everything was tested so I could literally look at their literature and the process and say, ?This is where you improve, this is perfect.? Now digital marketing was unproven at that time so I figured that I need to have another business where I can test all the marketing for this. So that is how GMR Transcriptions started. 

I?ll take you a few months back to give you an idea of how I talk about GMR Transcriptions. Now when I used to go and talk about the strategy I always said that digital is just part of the whole strategy. So I?ll go to the business owners and I?ll sit down and meet with them. Now I started in the corporation where there was no internet - that was that era - I used to literally have a scribe come to the corporate meetings and just take the notes. I never learned how to not just write shorthand but write fast, so when I started on my own with an assistant, I would take out a recorder and I would record our discussion. Typically it would be an hour discussion and I would come back and listen to it and take notes and based on that I would do the suggestions. 

So one time this meeting went on and on and I ended up with 7 hours of recording. Because I depended on recording so much I didn?t take notes, which meant that I had to go through it and I?m like, ?Oh my god!? Seven hours of recording and taking notes means you have to spend probably like 20 hours. So I figured maybe I?d have someone transcribe it. On those days the internet was there but the broadband was not as up and a lot of people were still using telephone lines for internet access. So I started checking out and I could not find anyone who could give me even a pricing, for example they would say, ?Oh, it?s $0.12 per line.? I was like, well that doesn?t mean anything to me. It?s seven hours, I cannot tell you, someone gave me an estimate of $15,000. So long story short I ended up doing it myself. So I knew there was a need for it where it was going to be very very transparent. 

Now, I am originally from India, though I?ve lived here now longer than I?ve lived in India, but my mother still lives there - my dad passed away -  all my siblings are still there so I?m a first generation immigrant, so I still go back a lot. So I figured, heck, I can get a transcriptionist. So for this business I knew for marketing consultants - I did not know about other areas - there was definitely a need for a transparent transcription company where you know what the cost is going to be, how long it will take and all that information.

So I decided to create a business where I could test my marketing methods first before I start testing it on my customers. So this is the start of GMR Transcriptions. Interestingly $1,000 to start this business and after $1,000 the business was up and running and just the small ads that I put in Google Adwords I was amazed. I had a list of some marketing consultants so I sent them an email and I didn?t get that really good response, a few of them said they need that service, but when I advertised I was shocked to see all these other marketers that I had never imagined. Obvious ones are people like you, the podcasters.  But we got from professors, students and all these people that are calling and I thought I?d get it done in India so I contacted an Indian company because India is very big in medical transcription, so I started sending the files there and it was a disaster in the beginning. 

My favorite example is one of my clients called me up and said, ?Who is it that does transcription for you?? And this was a financial guy so he was talking about bulls and bears, and the transcriber in India put bear as ?bare?. So I quickly realized that it will not work, this kind of transcription. But luckily a lot of people were already coming up wanting to do the job here, so when I contacted some of the transcriptionists in the United States, to my surprised the cost was the same. In India I was going through a corporation with a staff who needed to make a profit, here I can give it straight to the transcribers, so the cost was slightly higher. So I decided literally in three months that India will not do that. 

When I started to give it to the transcriber in the US all of a sudden I started getting phone calls - I used to dread getting phone calls on transcription - and then I started getting phone calls thanking me. So when I created a system I knew my pains, so with my system the cost would be based on the quality of the recording, the minutes of recording and how many people are there and the turnaround time. So it was very transparent, they knew what the cost is and the only reason I survived - and  I?m very big on customer service still - is when I started I just said, ?If you?re not happy with our transcription we?ll just refund the money.? So needless to say I refunded a lot of money.

Jaime: Did you really? That?s so interesting.

Ajay: Yeah. I would say I refunded 95% of the money. And then all of a sudden people were happy, no one would complain, if anything I would get compliments. So that was the start. And then obviously our digital marketing - and that?s the only marketing I did - of course the transcription the way I had it was a web based company. So all this digital marketing started to work. The first few we did decent business, but like we were already doing 7 figures a year. I mean, after a year I stopped making this a guinea pig for my marketing test. 

Jaime: That?s what I was thinking, you had a testing company and you hit a million in 4 years, on the side. That?s ridiculously impressive.   

Ajay: And then of course it really helped me since we knew how to be successful and what worked so we started doing the same thing for my clients. I?d say we have a fairly good record of digital marketing, and the only way you know that it is good is because I don?t lose clients. When my clients sign up they stay with me. My turnover is probably like 5% a year.

Jaime: Wow. That?s ridiculously impressive in that space. 

Ajay: And I will tell you that half of the people that drop out from my program are the ones who - for one reason or another - are going out of business. 

Jaime: Wow, that?s insane. So I want to dive into that specifically. I know a lot of digital agencies and that?s usually not the case. Even my clients will hire a digital agency and be like ?We did 3 months with them, they didn?t really give us the ROI that we wanted, let?s try a new digital agency.? It?s like hopping around like crazy. So what is it about your firm that really makes the difference, what are you delivering them?

Ajay: First thing that I started from the get go is there has to be a strategy around anything that you do in marketing. So even when someone comes to us for a simple website - which we do once in a while, people will say, ?I just need a website? , my question always is, ?Ok, let?s discuss what is your strategy.? Once you have a strategy you?re fine, then everything starts to follow.

So the first thing that makes us stand out is we are really big on defining the strategy in the beginning. So I?ve been coming up with strategies for big corporations for a big chunk of my career. Of course I?m very comfortable with that so that?s one of my strengths. Once you have a strategy, then we come up with the agreement that happens. What are we going to do given the strategy, and then set the right expectation. 

I cannot tell you how many times I get clients who would come in and ask if I could double their income. We are just talking to someone who was doing $3m and he said he wants to do $6m. Another gentleman I met last week said they were doing $8m and they want to get $20m. And I always sit them down and say, ?Ok, there?s only so much you can do as digital marketing.? So I always tell them to go slow, focus on return on investment and don?t expect just because they?re spending $5,000 they?ll start getting a million dollars additional business immediately. It just does not happen. As you start to get better you have to increase your budget. Google can suck up a million dollars in one month if you have that budget for them. So again, you have to manage it very carefully and do it right. 

So that is our big reason for success, we start with strategy so the customers really understand and meet expectation, I?m a big believer in ?underpromise, over deliver?.  I will give you a quick example that we signed up an international brand luggage manufacturer as our client. They were a regular corporation, $300m in sales, so everything goes through the board and they came to me and said, ?Can you give me a sales forecast for you designing our eCommerce sales website??  

So when I went to make the presentation I was telling them that the first 6 months they will not get any business.  And at the end of the year, they were going to be doing around $10,000 a month. And then 2nd and 3rd year I gave a projection, and when they looked at it they said it looked pretty thin. I said you?re starting for the first time, these things build over a period of time, but I know that I can achieve this. So they had a discussion and came back and decided that it was ok. So when we were starting it, I immediately wanted to beat that. So I talked to my team and said, ?Listen guys, it?s very easy to figure why they would keep us. If they are spending and investing $10,000 supposedly on digital marketing, they are getting even $15,000 in profit, then they have no reason to go anywhere.? I will only talk about improvement rather than why we should do it. 

Now we launched a program, I knew we had underestimated because it was a national brand, and the very first month we did the sales volume that I had predicted that they would be doing on month 12, and the first 6 months were supposed to be zero. This year I was invited to their board meeting to come and present the whole strategy and how we go to the next level. So that tells you our approach is very different.

Does it mean that I lose customers because I?m under promising? Yes, it is correct. But I would rather under promise than over promise. I?m telling you that I sometimes feel like doing something and I don?t know what I can do about this area because there are just way too many people that over promise and know that it is not doable. I have had clients who said, ?Oh,  you are saying that it will cost me $4,000, but this company is saying that for $1,000 they are promising results that are 3 times better than you.? I just tell them that if you believe them and I were you, then I would go with them, obviously. 

Luckily we do get some of the people after getting burnt,they come back. That?s one of the pros of being in the business a long time that you can see some of those results. So we have some people that talk to us 2 years back and say they are very unhappy with their company and I always ask them, ?What was your expectation?? Because again, setting the right expectation is the key and I am very big on making sure that the digital marketing that we are doing is also helping their traditional marketing, so it?s going hand in hand.  

Now one of the areas I did do - since you told me some of your listeners are people who want to be entrepreneurs - my big reason also for creating GMR Transcriptions is people were losing good jobs back then and a lot of people like me were tired of corporate sales, to wanted to do something on my own. So I started helping people create web businesses. So that was one of the other reasons because I'm saying I cannot tell you how to do a web business. I can show you and I cannot say my digital marketing is not a good business. So that was another reason I wanted GMR Transcriptions.

There was a time when my wife thought I was crazy doing a second business, and I told her that one day you never know, one day this business may may make our car payment. Obviously it?s doing much better than making the car payments. 
 
Jaime: Oh, that?s amazing. Tell me about some of this digital strategy stuff. Number one I have to commend you because we all hear about ?under promise, over deliver?, but when it comes to making the sale over and over again salespeople are just like, ?Oh yeah, we can do that.? That?s a big, huge problem in business in general. Pay yourself on the back. I know you guys don?t need that because you?re doing amazing well but it?s just so impressive to see because so few people actually do that and that?s a great differentiator to you comparatively to everyone else. But what I really want to know is, what is working for you now, what are some good, digital strategies?

Ajay: So what is really big now is Google had this approach where you have an even playing field. So for example if you had a fast food restaurant and you were next to McDonald?s, as far as Google was concerned, both of them were equal. This was 2004, so the whole strategy  was very different. Nowadays it?s the branding. How is your online brand perceived has become a very big piece of even Google algorithm. Google wouldn?t tell you, but of course we are very involved in the online community and we know, because getting your website found with keywords is still a very big piece for digital marketing. It?s not a majority but it?s still a very big piece of it. 

So if you have a small or medium sized company - even this luggage manufacturer - how do you build your online branding? So that becomes a real challenge. Of course social media is one way. We?ve done contests literally to the bloggers saying that if you write about it our reviewers are going to judge you and then based on that we are going to...so we got some really creative writing talking about our brand. 

And then we started working on the reputation development, which is very different, Everyone has heard of reputation management if people say very bad things about you, but what we want really is saying good things about you, which is what we call reputation development. So in the new arena today in digital marketing, having a great online brand becomes very important. So there are a lot of things, you have social media, you have reputation development, the blogging and getting mentions all over. All those things have become far more important today, it was irrelevant when I first started doing this job, the digital marketing world did not care. At this point you know Google is god when it comes to digital marketing. 

So that?s what has changed which means that it thinks much harder, in a way it?s good for a company like ours because there was way too many people who were one trick ponies and they created a digital marketing agency and promised to get you on page one. Now everything is needed. From the very beginning when people said, ?Can you get me on #1??, I used to tell them that since I do not own Google I cannot guarantee you, I can tell you what is required and what we will do. What has happened also is Google has made the whole thing such that having a pay per click paid advertising on Google is becoming a big piece of strategy. You cannot get around it.

I was always for it - we?re a Google partner - and we have always told our clients that it really doesn?t matter because what is the budget. You should be looking for what is the return and Google Adwords - for example - is very easy to judge the return. Alot of people used to not want to do it, now I tell people I don?t think you have the option, you have to do that as part of the strategy. And then again our job is to make sure that you?re getting positive return on whatever money you?re spending on Adwords, so that is where we come back because I am personally big on return on investment. Like I told my guys, anyone spending $10,000 that?s getting a $15,000 return, will have no reason to say they?re leaving. So the only discussion that happens is how can we do better, and I love that discussion.  

We are very focused on that and I?ll give you another interesting example. Recently we signed a client who was spending - they didn't have any digital marketing strategy - and by the way everything that I talked about, online branding and everything, surprisingly impacts your Adwords also. You end up paying less and having a higher ranking. So they were just doing Adwords, they were spending $100,000 a month on advertising. [inaudible] So when we give them a proposal, we are basically saying immediately your sales will be $50,000, they?re not impacting the reserves, and here?s the business strategy that we have to improve it. If our cost is $10,000 to do it, they are immediately saving $40,000 per month to start with. It becomes a no brainer so it gives us room to make sure what works because at the end of the day marketing is still not a science so you cannot be 100% sure that you?re going to do this and get this result. You have to test it so it takes time to come up with that process. But if we can walk in and save someone $40,000 a month and then do all the testing, we have a lot of time to think with the right formula. 

Jaime: And who says no to that? Now tell me about the time thing, because what I?ve been hearing lately is a lot of people are still saying that Google Adwords is really expensive and people are sort of going into Facebook ads, though those are getting a little expensive nowadays and everybody is sort of hopping from platform to platform.

What do you give for a strategy for a timeline of how paid - instead of SEO and all that stuff which is a different timeline - of what paid advertising will really do for you? 

Ajay: So the paid advertising my timeline is very simple. At week 3 if you are not getting the good return on the money that you are spending, then there is something wrong. So it is that quick. I am right now talking to a dentist in Australia, he is starting his new dental practice and interestingly he came over to the US to learn from this expert who teaches dentists how to do marketing.  Now luckily she?s my client so she recommends to everyone and is very vocal about talking to me about digital marketing. So he contacted me from Australia and in that strategy I told him  that in the short term the fastest way that he?s going to get the results is through Adwords. Now of course Adwords has its own formula and it has gotten more complex, so it is no longer that whoever pays the highest stays on top. You?re paying half of someone?s ad for every click.

To meet the requirement it takes a little time, so that?s why I?m saying by week 3 there has to be a very clear path where you can see where it is going. I?m not saying that by week 3 you?ll start recovering all the money that you?re spending, but you will start to cover a portion and you can see a trend. 

Jaime: Ok, that makes sense. Because some of the leads you get probably won?t convert right away I?m assuming. So you?re getting leads and they?re starting to convert in general so you can see that it might be a trend that might be going. 

Ajay: Perfect, yes. And by the way, the other platforms, Facebook I?m 0 for 20. So I have still not figured Facebook out. Another thing I do is every Saturday my office is closed but I pretty much come in a full day and I am always checking what is happening. When you have General Motors and Ford and all those guys, they always waste a lot of money on advertising and for them it?s all about rent. When you?re a smaller business then you cannot. I have heard logic like, ?Oh, what we are doing right now will pay off in 5 years.? And even then I do not believe it, even for big companies. How do you know what happens 5 years from now? 

But for a small business, then you start getting a return really fast. And Facebook I have not figured out. I mean if any of your listeners has a success story, I?d absolutely love to talk to them and I will blog about it. I really want to learn how Facebook is working, we are right now trying LinkedIn for B2B clients to see how it works. And of course I always like to be the guinea pig before I ask my client to spend money. So we are launching an approach for B2B on LinkedIn to see what kind of response we get. 

Facebook didn?t work for either transcription or  web team, and I even had some of my clients say they know it will work. So the strategy is very straight forward, we did that and it didn?t work.  Facebook is very good for building brand, for that I would say it?s very effective and we use it. So there doing a post to promote it so Facebook shows it. You probably already know what Facebook does even if you have 100,000 or 1m followers, anything you post they just show it to a random number of people. 

Jaime: I know, that?s so annoying. 

Ajay: So if you want to go to everyone else you have to pay for it. That is worthwhile, that we have found is definitely worthwhile. But doing a pay per click ad on Facebook, that has still never worked for me. 

Jaime: I know that you?re being honest about that, having tested it and tested it and it didn?t really work for you, which is really refreshing to hear because I just hear a lot of people go, ?Oh, this is the hot, new thing!? And it?s really interesting to hear you say that the data that you have isn?t really working for your people. 

Ajay: And like I said, we still have customers once in a while who will say, ?Can you do that for me?? We have a graphics team, we can create all the banners and so we do everything all in house, so I agreed to try it and frankly for me, I always said that just because it did not work for me it does not work. So I?m dying to get a success story and I?d love for it to start working.

Jaime: I know some people I can connect you with for whom that is working. I?ll have you chat with them because that might actually be helpful for you. 

Ajay: I would really appreciate it. 

Jaime: And that?s the thing that?s interesting because I know that some of my clients are doing really, really well with it but it?s hit or miss with people in general. But that?s why I love your approach, because your approach is, ?yeah, I?m going to see if it works for me and I?ll do my due diligence and test the heck out of it first and really know what I?m doing.?  

Ajay: And like I said, I?m not a big fan of Google, I don?t like monopolies and they have total monopoly. But having said that, we are managing about a couple of million dollars worth of Adwords accounts per year right now and it?s working, so at least I know that this has worked and is working for many of my clients. Of course I have more faith in it, but again, I would absolutely love to get connected with the people you know who are doing well on Facebook. 
 
Jaime: That?s awesome, ok. But it?s really refreshing to hear you, too, because a lot of people that I know have been trying Google Adwords with not as good success because things are a little more expensive and they?re not getting the ROI that they want, so it?s really cool hearing you specifically. Can you give me just an idea on who?s working on Google? Is it just product companies it seems to be working for really well?  Or like people are searching for ?dentist?, or who other types of clients are?? 

Ajay: Oh, so we have clients like dentists and several of them thinks Google - like the one I was talking about - thinks it?s fantastic. We have adoption services, we have the water restoration companies, we have landscaping companies, we even have urgent care centers. It?s just amazing, and we have many of these and so we have all sorts of companies there. The thing is, again, you cannot just put anything up and expect it to work.  So in order for something to work is like, we know the best practices so we?ll start there and then it?s a matter of tweaking.  

Imagine this company that came to us spending $100,000 a month on Adwords, they were basically content with the results. They came for SEO and I so I said, ?Listen, SEO should be banned, it?s not just SEO, you have to have a complete digital marketing plan.? So we started telling them what was needed and then in the discussion he said, ?Oh, so you guys do Adwords also?? We?re actually a Google partner, which means we have jumped through many hoops for Google to say, yeah, these guys know what they?re doing. So I offered to audit him and we could see it was wasting half of the money.

It?s a matter of someone has to do that analysis and tweak it and either stop spending that money or try something else. If you just leave it like that, then you'll keep on wasting 50% of the money. And this is the beauty of digital marketing, I have been through probably hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising on the TV, but the ad guru has said that 50% of my campaign is not working, but I don?t know what 50%. 

Now the beauty of digital is you know which 50% is not working so you can do something about it. So again, that is a challenge. A lot of people try to do Adwords on their own and then generally speaking it doesn?t work or they?re not optimizing.  

Jaime: It?s a huge learning curve for some of that stuff. Can you tell me any non paid - because I know some of the new business owners are like, ?Ok, that?s great, I?d love to spend $100,000 but I have zero marketing budget, but I have time.? - do you have any non paid tactics that are working really well for you right now, too? 

Ajay: Sure, so depending on the business, for small businesses - if someone has a small budget I?m assuming small business - doing local marketing on the internet is relatively easy. So the first thing I always tell people you have to have your social media profiles. You have to be active on social media because what you?re doing is you?re building your community and that becomes almost your support group. They are the ones who will talk about you if you have something interesting, so have your social media and start building your community. 

Do the basic local marketing. There are very few businesses where locally in one city you have 20 of them - of course restaurants are different - you don?t just type in ?restaurant? you specify family restaurant, italian restaurant, chinese restaurant. Generally speaking in a city you don?t have more than 10 anyway. So by doing things right, just for local on search engine, you will get found. 

And then with your social media activities - depending on what kind of business you are - Yelp becomes very important. So we have a client who gets about 60 new patients every month just from Yelp. And we created a whole Yelp strategy, it?s not like go and make fake reviews it?s almost like create a process so that people who leave the location will go and write on Yelp. I always say the first thing is asking. Unless you ask people they are not automatically going to do that.

Jaime: What is that process, how do you ask? 

Ajay: What we do is we have a process of first asking people about their level of satisfaction and we don?t ask instore, because instore most of the people will be saying ?good? because they don?t like confrontation. So we send them an email saying, ?How did you like our service? How was your experience?? If they say ?good? we ask if they would recommend people and to rate on a scale of 1-10. Now if they rate an 8 or 9 and say yes they would recommend someone, then we send them a request asking them to please write a review on any of our profiles and we just give them the links for whatever is most convenient for them.  

A lot of people have Gmail accounts, so G+becomes easy. I love G+ because whatever happens on G+I know it helps, and Google won?t tell you that it helps in Google ranking. Then Yelp, a lot of people are active on Yelp. Facebook is very easy for people to go and write.  So now you have a lot of interaction on social media and it?s again building your reputation. 

Jaime: Do you ever give them anything to do that, or do they just do that willingly?

Ajay: No. I think it?s very unethical. I know some companies do that, I would refuse. I actually turned down a client who asked if we could bribe them. Unless your business fundamentally is sound, no amount of marketing is going to make it work. Like this [inaudible] center in the beginning, when we started there it had like 3 Yelp reviews, all of them 1 star.

Jaime: Ouch.
 
Ajay: And when I talked to them about why, they said they didn't know and they were totally scared of asking people for a review. So my response to them was, ?Listen, then you first need to address your problems. There are obviously some issues and until you fix it, people are not going to go and give you good reviews, you?re not going to have a good a brand presence.? 

It?s almost like when supposedly you?re doing marketing and we track the number of calls - the leads - and if someone is getting 100 calls from the Google Adwords but not closing any deals. 

Jaime: That?s their problem.

Ajay: Then they need to look into their process. Maybe the people taking the phone calls are not right, maybe it?s the sales process. So I said, ?That becomes a business concern. A thing which I don?t do.? I can do it, but I don?t do that. So you really need to handle it. 

Of course all this digital marketing that we talk about it still really needs to have a solid business proposition, otherwise, business won?t drive. There?s only so much fake reviews, and I know people are doing fake reviews and the sites are going crazy trying to address it. Almost to a fault Yelp is like, every time someone writes a review they almost always put it in sandbox. 

Jaime: I know.

Ajay: But they are overreacting, obviously. There are millions of fake reviews going on Yelp, so they have to do something. I tell my clients don?t worry, Yelp will be fine, they?ll start to show up. Just get your people to write about you. and you?ll do ok. And it always works. We create a whole reputation program, by the way, for our client. It? for big brands like the luggage company, we get very involved in the PR campaign, so if anyone blogs, we offer them something to go and write about it.

We recently had this lady who  was on her honeymoon with one of the pieces of luggage that she had won and she wrote about it. We did not ask her to do that, but because the product was good, you will get that. So you ask people and people will write about it.

Jaime: I love that. I love it because it?s really paying attention to having a company and having a good brand and being ethical - who knew - and then the long term approach to marketing. If I?m going to be in this game for a very long time, I want to use the best methods instead of going around trying to make it overnight. And people really think that and it?s sad and it does sort of make you want to shy away from digital marketing because there?s a lot of skeezy things online. And I really, really appreciate your approach. 

Ajay: I just wish that the fake digital marketers disappeared tomorrow. People are still skeptical. I have talked to many companies who will come for pay per click and I explain to them why we?re doing all these other digital marketing and how it?s going to reduce even the Adwords cost and they are not believing. 

Right now I am working on a blog which is going to plead to digital marketers to ban the word SEO from this whole thing, because a lot of people just say they do SEO but they don?t understand what it means. to do SEO. 

Jaime: Oh I know. I?m a huge geek, I have a degree in IT and I never have gone after SEO, I?m always like, oh, backlinks, what a surprise. It?s so funny how that works out. 

I really appreciate it and I want to make sure that we don?t go over today so I?m going to wrap up with my last question. What?s one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? 

Ajay: So like I mentioned with our approach, everything starts with strategy. It really takes time - I?m not talking about writing a huge marketing plan or anything - but even someone who has a small business or starting a business wants to grow. They need to sit back and think about a strategy and the simple things they need to identify is what is unique about them. It?s like common sense but you?ll be surprised how few people do that. Who is my customer, how am I going to reach that customer, what?s the value of each customer and just having that basic plan and then the marketing approach, the reaching the customers.  

Having that in plan will give you such a good start because not everything in your plan will work but at least you know what pieces are not working so you can evolve. And that?s the advice I would tell someone getting from zero to a million, it?s amazing how many times you?ll have to evolve and you?ll have to tweak your offering and you have to tweak the marketing. It?s just incredible.

When I think about what I thought was needed to be successful when I started versus what we are doing now. Maybe I?m doing 10% of what I originally thought. So evolve marketing, that?s life and things happen. So having a solid plan in the beginning strategy really helps you through all that transition that you will have to make to be successful.

Jaime: Definitely, I love that. Especially where thats a journey, right, there?s going to be so many tweaks and parts and everything and keep moving forward anyway. 

Ajay: Yeah. Another thing I will suggest - which I?m sure most of your listeners know - you will not reach zero to a million in 3 months. It just does not happen. You will have to work very hard. You will persist and you will hit a point where it will start to show results and if someone can reach from zero to a  million in 5 years, I think they?re successful, from my perspective. 

Jaime: Thank you for saying that. Everybody listening needs to hear that again. It?s a process and sometimes it can get tiring, but we need to hear that that?s what it takes. As long as we know that that?s what it takes, then it?s way easier for us to keep going.  

How can we get in contact with you, what are your websites so everyone can check them out and we can keep in touch? 

Ajay: So I will give my personal email address so someone can contact me, it?s ajay@gmrwebteam.com. That?s my primary email, and my office number is 714-731-9000. So if any of you listeners are successful with Facebook, please contact me and I want to understand what you do that is working. 

Jaime: I love that. I love it when people give their personal email addresses. Don?t abuse that people. But I really appreciate you saying that and check out gmrwebteam.com and gmrtranscription.com for any information. Thank you so much for coming on today, Ajay, I really appreciate it. 

Ajay: Same for me, Jaime, it was really good talking to you.

Tags: Adwords, Ajay Prasad, digital marketing, digital marketing plan, marketing strategy, millionaire interview, reputation program, sales marketing, sales process, SEO

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

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