Branding Advice From Jason Barnard Made Me Millions | Brand SERP
James Dooley: Hi, James here and I’m joined with Jason Barnard from Kalicube® and today’s video is about some branding advice that I received a few years ago from Jason Barnard that has actually led to one of our businesses doing millions extra in revenue. I didn’t realize the power of the brand until these outcomes started to come along and it didn’t just happen once it’s happened several times. I’m going to run through a case study of how just on one job alone it made us half a million pound but to start with Jason can you just explain to people very briefly who you are what is the Brand SERP and the power of brand SEO and branding online?
Jason Barnard: Yeah great question well I’m Jason Barnard The Brand SERP Guy®. I focus on the search engine results pages for brand names people’s names or corporate names because I understood years ago that the people searching our name are bottom of funnel. They’re the people who are most important to your business and in this case it’s purchasing from you and they will Google your name they will search your name before making that final decision when they’re researching the last couple of choices. And what’s been interesting is this is a conviction of mine for the last 12 years and I’ve seen it work for Kalicube but James is one of the first people who’s told me a story with actual numbers where intentionally and proactively improving what people see when they Google his name and his company name has driven the bottom line to the tune of millions so tell me about that I’m interested.
James Dooley: So the branding advice that you give me that has made me millions was to do with a company called Soft Surfaces Limited people can Google it they can go on company’s house. We’ve grown the business from a million to 10 million in revenue per year and it builds playgrounds and sports pitches in the UK. And what we did was we had an amazing company that builds playgrounds and sports pitches throughout the UK and until we met you all my testimonials and all my reviews was via colleges head teachers at schools universities that would send us an email saying how amazing that we’d been and we might then say oh could you put it on letterhead paper that we could send out to customers when people are asking about a case study what other jobs have we done. Never once had I heard until I spoke to you you need to take everything offline and put it online and that’s exactly what we did. We went through everything of what we had all positive reviews all jobs that we’ve done where we had before during and after pictures we put case studies together we did all of it everything that was offline we put online. We wanted to make certain that we shout and scream that we are the best in the UK at doing what we do.
Now this specific job was a job for Bradford Council and it was a sports pitch for a private school and there’s been many others as well but this one job sticks out very very very well and it was a job that was £540,000 job. We was doing the ground works the tarmac the surfacing the fencing and the flood lighting and there was five companies that we was up against on price. Now all five companies we was up against they’re all five good companies right and we’re all relatively similar on price so and we knew it was going to be a tough job for us to win that job and we managed to get down to the last two companies and there was us and another company. Now this other company they actually do more revenue than us we’ve built up to doing 10 million over the years these do anything from 15 to 20 million a year they’re a bigger player than what we are actually doing the work however they hadn’t spoke to Jason Barnard and they hadn’t put offline online.
Basically what happened was the head teacher of the private school had two quotes side by side there was negligable difference in price both the quotes looks good on paper it was exactly what they wanted it met the budget they had £550,000 budget and there was a few thousand difference on price so the head teacher then had to make a decision who am I going to go with. And what did the head teacher do after we won the job I asked the head teacher after we’d done it and we’ve now maintained the pitch and it’s been a great case study for us over the years I asked the teacher just out of interest why did you choose us. And they said I spent 30 minutes online checking your company out and checking this company out to see not what you were saying… but we wanted to see what others were saying what other schools what other colleges what they were saying about you and they said literally after 30 minutes it was literally night and day difference we had to go with you.
That all came down to our branding and our reviews and everything that we had put online was with a positive Brand SERP delivering the message that we wanted to deliver that we might not be the cheapest but with the best value that this is what we do look at all these other jobs over here see what they’ve got to say about working with us. And the other company was great offline and they’re a great company… but we won that job and we’ve won many other jobs because of our branding. And that branding advice that you give me has literally made us millions in revenue extra and some of these are high ticket jobs as well.
People need to understand it’s not just about E-E-A-T signals for Google this helps your conversion rate on jobs. If you’re an SEO agency you’re charging £5,000 a month and you’re going up against another SEO agency charging £5,000 a month who does the customer choose? You’re both the same price you both delivering a very similar set of services they’re going to go online they’re going to Google who you are they’re going to Google your company they’re going to Google you as an individual and then they’re going to make a decision and if you can improve that Brand SERP to be more positive it can be the difference between you winning and losing jobs. And the biggest thing that you always said Jason was this is about the bottom of the funnel when they’re ready to buy if you can win that at the 11th hour it can literally double your revenue because if you’ve got a negative Brand SERP you can be losing all those in the 50/50 battles against your main competitor and that’s where in my opinion brand SEO branding and the Brand SERP is so important.
Jason Barnard: That’s brilliantly said. I don’t think I can add anything to that.
James Dooley: Sounds good anyone doesn’t have a positive Brand SERP if anyone’s looking to get a Knowledge Panel I strongly recommend hitting up Jason Barnard at Kalicube. Leave a comment in the comment section let me know what objections you’ve got to improving your branding yes you will not get a return on investment next week on it you’re not going to get an inquiry next week on it this is a long-term strategy but if you’re looking to sell assets if you’re looking for people who might be looking to recruit and then check side by side there’s so many more benefits. In fact check the link in the description there’s a link to all the benefits that come along with Brand SERP and branding and brand SEO but if you’ve not got a positive Brand SERP hit up Jason Barnard at Kalicube because I tell you what he’s definitely changed our business for the better hopefully he might be able to change yours.
