Expert Tips For Building a Client-Centric SEO Agency

Hey, hi, everyone. Now, welcome to your show E-coffee with Experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. Today, we have Bob, who is the CEO and partner at FourFront with us. Hey, Bob, how is it going, man?

That’s doing well. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Great. Bob, let’s rewind to the early days. You started coding in the ’80s, then went on to truck driving. What a fascinating career path. How did those seemingly best experiences influence your approach to the digital marketing that you do today at FourFront?

There’s a direct correlation, which you wouldn’t now be able to tell intuitively. I started driving a truck first in the early ’80s, and I became overwhelmed with the paperwork, so I bought an Apple computer. Then I started to program, and I started to program various aspects of driving a truck, and the amount of revenue and expense and the time to delay to get a load all over the country. I started to predict which I would take, and I started to make a lot more money from driving a truck. I was an owner-operator by starting to program all these things. I programmed it because I needed to manage my truck better. Now, the other side of this is I was part of the supply chain. I was in and out of businessmen. I would pick up from Business A, deliver to Business B, and Business B the product that A sent them, and that was their business. I learned all about the supply chain, and I looked at how the businesses work, and how they market themselves, I went from the supplier to the consumer, and I learned that whole thing, which gave me an amazing foundation to go into marketing.

I knew how these businesses needed to work. I would ask the business questions like, why are they buying your product? What makes it unique? Everything about the early ’20s, I was trying to put together the whole system of business. That’s where the foundation of what I I bring to FourFront today is that understanding, that knowledge, that very diverse understanding of how business operates.

Lovely. You mentioned starting FourFront in 2010, around the same time that we started our agency as well. The challenges were different back in those days, especially in the digital marketing world that we all are in, considering the SEO landscape. It was so much different back in those days. What were those initial challenges that you faced, Bob, while starting your agency how did you overcome them, and how the journey has been thus far?

In 2010, SEO services were a very black box. None of the consumers of the service understood what they were getting. It was a buzzword. SEO was an easy service to do bad, not at all. Some of these SEO agencies were just taking screenshots of Google Analytics, and that was the reporting. That was the problem back in 2000 that we went into. We were constantly being questioned by clients who had been burnt by other SEO agencies, planning to do SEO. I won’t dignify them by saying they were SEO agencies. And so heavy skepticism came in. But our approach, what we thought then was ROI. We started to show the impact of our work. We started to predict what change would happen, and that gave us a leg up right there. So for all the clients we talked to, we were the first ones that bring data to our clients for decisions, or we were also the first ones to show ROI. So it was very different. Now, if you don’t show ROI in your service, you’re probably not going to get the job.

Absolutely. And your background in software development, is a unique asset, right? Let’s accept it. How does your coding experience perform your approach to SEO and data analysis?

Good question. I have a background in adaptive algorithms, in algorithms that back into the ’80s when it was based on recursion, and that was a very primitive form of AI, I’ve been fascinated by this. I’ve been a software developer. I’ve also specialized in data acquisition. When I saw the search engine, and all of a sudden, one day, a friend of mine said, I need you to write these keywords. I’ve never considered SEO before, but I started to understand the search engine is an adaptive algorithm. Right there, that day, I started to write code for my data out of the search engine. All I had to do is I had to understand the response, and that response formed me of audience requirements. That ability to write software, collect data, to analyze data was a huge advantage to starting an SEO company.

Lovely. To your own younger self, Bob, what is that one piece of advice that you’d want to give when it comes to navigating the ever-changing world of digital marketing? What could you have done differently than what you did?

What could I have done differently was not do all the work myself. I was a bad businessman when I started SEO at the end of the FourFront, and I had to train myself. I would have put much more emphasis on being a smarter, more astute businessman, understanding How to put the right people in the right seats, and how to define roles and accountabilities. That would have been something I would have done earlier on.

Delegating more, right? Delegate more.

Delegate more, but know how to delegate more, too. I learned that while I was running the business. Now, I have to say, I feel I’m pretty good at it.

I’m sure you are in that position right now after 14 long years. The number of years, they teach you a lot, the journey that we are on. Bob, we’re talking about personal inspiration. What keeps you pushing those boundaries of innovation at the FourFront? How do you translate that innovation? One thing is we talk about motivation and inspiration, and the other aspect of it is transpiring it into real actionable projects. How do you go about doing it at FourFront?

I am fascinated by technology. My passion is already here. Let’s just start with the fact I love writing code. I code every day. I love data. I love providing… I love getting the wow from my clients. So all that is already there, and we’re doing that. As far as the boundaries, I started a system at FourFront. It’s called the factory, and it’s faced with the idea factory. It’s based on the idea that everybody at FourFront has a voice and they can contribute. And why would I hear that voice? So it’s a social platform we have running on one of our servers, and people can enter an idea there to improve their current process or how they contribute to operations, or it could be a brand new, Hey, FourFront should do this. Here’s an opportunity. And the team goes back and forth on the idea. At FourFront, when somebody suggests or provides an idea. Nobody can critique the idea until I say so. So you could only enhance the idea. So we have a very positive approach. When somebody gives an idea, every contribution has to enhance the idea, talk about how great it could be, how big it’d go, or other considerations.

Then when it’s time, we critique the idea. Then once the idea is successfully critiqued and we have a realistic approach, the idea gets then to a jury. That jury decides if we’re going to fund the MVP, the minimally viable product. If we do, then we put together a sprint team that will go ahead and test the idea, minimize and optimize the assumptions, and build a revenue plan with real information, and real data. Then once we agree that the minimally viable product was a success, here’s what we learned, then we fund it for primary funding. That’s how we move new ideas into four issues.

Lovely. And then talking about core values, taking a point out of your answer there. What are the core values at FourFront, Bob, and how do you ensure that this is deeply integrated into your daily operations or day-to-day working processes, and also decision-making at all levels of the company?

It starts with me, and I stayed at the core values on day one. There are three core values to FourFront, as you mentioned here. The first one is we would never take unfair advantage of anyone’s. That means that if a client cannot be better for our services, we won’t do it. We’re not just in it to profit follows our value. We’re a value-first company, and that’s important to us. The second one is you have to give us your best. That means that nobody’s the best at what they do on our team, but we’re good, we’re really good. I’ll just say everybody gives their best. You come to FourFront, bring your A games because we want that. The third one is about growth and personal and professional growth. FourFront commits to our team to make sure that they know that we’re behind them professionally and personally. What I’ve learned in my tenure as CEO is that when you hire a person, you hire a lawyer. We understand that. Nobody’s life is 100% work. We do our best to work with our team to make sure that there’s a life balance. At the same time, they’re growing and pushing themselves professionally.

Lovely. For you as the CEO of the company running the show, leading the team there, how do you measure success beyond profit numbers? What are the metrics that you feel are important for the agency to grow in terms of both your clients and your in-house team?

FourFront is considered an operations-centric business as opposed to a sales-centric business. What that means is that we measure success on a retainer, how long we keep a client, how well we provide value to them, and how happy they are. We increase our retainer over time. We also ask for feedback from the clients. We like to get critical feedback. Most of the time it’s very strong, very positive feedback that we get. Our way of measuring success is retaining revenue. The second one is acquiring new clients that fit our culture. The third one is are we making a profit? The third one, not the first two.

Lovely. Lovely. Great. Yeah, Bob. Bob, the final one, can’t let you go without understanding your take on AI. As with so much of technological advancements in AI and search systems, what do you believe will have the most significant impact on digital marketing? How are you, as an agency, getting prepared to embrace those challenges?

We have one person in charge of acquiring AI information. We have a social thread that we post AI information on once a week. We have AI demonstrations on new tools and technologies. Our team members absorb that and build case studies on how to use technology. We have been very aggressive with AI. I have built tools that have been in AI. The first AI tool I built for FourFront was in 2015. It’s still running today and it’s still very useful today as well. It’s a learning system for content creation. But for two years now, we have had a person appointed to be in charge of curating AI information and disseminating it, giving demonstrations. Then we also have to have the case studies that tell us how to move this into operation, and how to operationalize it. We’ve watched our efficiency increase over the past couple of years through the use of homegrown AI tools that the team says we need, as well as commercially available tools as well. We’re right there. We make sure our clients are getting It’s the full benefit of current AI, where it stands right now.

Lovely. Great, Bob. What is the piece of advice that you’d want to give to a listener today? Young people, trying to make a mark in this particular space in the digital marketing space, or starting on their entrepreneurial journey, because you have been there, done that for quite some time now. Let’s say if I were to ask you, what are those top three bits of advice that you’d want to give to our listeners today? Give us your tweaks up your sleeve.

SEO is not a one-size-fits-all, and some agencies insist on that. But if you’re doing SEO for the University of Penn and doing SEO for Swarthmore, there are different scales of university, and they require different approaches to how you’re going to gain visibility on the search engine. So understand that SEO has to be the right size for the brand itself. And the smaller the brand, the more specific the SEO strategy has to be. So that’s the first thing. The second The second thing is always to be aware of the client’s goals. So if you ask the client, What are you being measured on? What is the success for you? What’s the success of our relationship? Know that upfront. Know what it is, and then create KPIs that represent the goal. Those KPIs should be right and centered on your resources. If you’re flying blind, if a client doesn’t know what he wants or they wants, make sure you articulate that. Here’s what I see as a success for our relationship, you’ll agree with this. They have to be clear on that. Then finally, also understand that a client might have what we call a headwind. In all fairness, as to the SEO trade, it’s all exciting to pick up a good brand, but if that brand has negative reviews, we call it a headwind.

Reasons why the search strategy won’t work. You’re responsible for identifying that upfront. You Always do an analysis of the brand and reviews and make sure you’re not picking up a harness desk and then you’re being held accountable to get digital visibility for a brand that the search engine knows has issues. Those are the three points that I’d like to make for the people listening.

Lovely, Bob. This has been a brilliant conversation. Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us. Appreciate it. One more thing before I let you go. For our audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Bob@FourFront.us. It’s F-O-U-R-F-R-O-N-T.us. It comes right to my email.

Lovely, Bob. Thank you so much. Appreciate you doing this with us. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.