Driving SMB discovery and conversions with SEO strategy | Jordan Brannon from Coalition Technologies

Kevin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more. Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Letting the artificial intelligence do all the work. And increase conversions by 50% while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on Pathmonk.com.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. We’re really looking forward to today’s episode. We’ve got Jordan Brannon, co-founder and president over at Coalition Technologies. How you doing today, Jordan?

Jordan Brannon: I’m doing really well. How are you, Kevin?

Kevin: Doing excellent. It’s an awesome Friday. Looking forward to the weekend. I want to talk a little bit about coalitions and Coalition Technologies — an awesome full service digital marketing agency. But before we dive into anything, I’m hoping you can give our audience a little bit of background. Who are you guys, what do you do, and who do you serve?

Jordan Brannon: As you mentioned, Coalition is a full service digital agency, primarily focused on the SMB market, and we’re really proud of the value that we can bring to bear there. We are best known for our work in e-commerce, although we work with a wide range of clients in different industries, and I would say we’re probably best known for our SEO and SEM work as well, although I always love to talk about our design, development teams, email, email marketing, social media as well. So it’s just really a great well-rounded team. We have over 250 people. We are now almost old enough to drive. We’re coming up on our 16th anniversary this fall, which is really exciting. And we’ve been able to improve every year, which is a great piece of fact about Coalition, because it does bring a lot of added value to our clients as they extend their time with us.

Kevin: Awesome. Almost old enough to drive — that’s something that not a lot of companies are able to say, so congratulations.

It’s true. The first thing that I want to talk about is really the problems that you guys solve for your clients. So I know you guys handle a lot of different services that you can provide. But when people are coming to you, what are the main problems that you’re looking to solve for them?

Jordan Brannon: Yeah, the biggest problem that we’re solving is discovery. We work with a lot of SMBs that are maybe not as well known as some of their competitors or the big names in their particular spaces, and they’re trying to figure out how to get their audience — their potential customer — to be aware of their product or their service or their brand. And that’s really the story that usually brings people to us. Today that involves AI on top of SEO, on top of paid advertising, on top of email, on top of e-commerce sites. There’s just a lot of things that go into that. But really it is that discovery moment: how do we get people to know we exist?

Kevin: Yeah, that’s a really interesting topic that you bring up, because as an AI tool that focuses on converting traffic, a lot of people always come to us saying, okay, but we also need more top of funnel traffic, right? And so they always say awareness — how can we create a larger number at the top of that funnel?

Yeah, all of those services that you guys provide would be awesome. But all of these clients that you have, they typically have some pretty… how do I say… common acquisition channels. What are the ones that you guys are typically seeing perform the best, or which are the ones that clients want to focus on? Where do you put all these efforts in terms of those acquisition channels?

Jordan Brannon: Yeah, top of funnel, it’s really hard to beat the value of SEO. It does require a little longer upfront investment, but once you’re mature in your rankings and your positionings — and again, that does include LLMs like ChatGPT now — you really are able to own more of the conversation and more of the awareness inside of your particular category.

SEO is definitely one of the most popular. The paid channels — still huge. That really hasn’t moved much in the last 16 years, although we see some new ones emerge here and there. But paid advertising with Google, paid advertising through Meta’s platforms — always a big place for discovery and getting in front of those particular customers.

And of course, we’re always trying to figure out how do we tie in additional marketing services that will support that conversion or convert a customer who’s already purchased before. So email, SMS are a great follow-up connection point.

Kevin: It’s interesting you bring up conversions. That’s actually a really good segue into my next question because everyone always talks about, okay, once we’ve gotten this traffic to our website, we want to make sure that they convert, right?

What do you see in terms of what makes a great converting website? You guys have been in business for so long and things have changed so much. Nowadays, of course, like Pathmonk — an AI tool that does something like this — there are so many different tools, so many different strategies, so much data to look at about “How do we AB test this?” and what actually performs and what doesn’t?

In your opinion, with all the years of experience that you have, what makes a great converting website?

Jordan Brannon: Yeah, I think probably my short list of recommendations — because we could talk on this for probably a few days if we really wanted to get into it and dive into some nuance. But one is: make that conversion moment happen above the fold. It really should be part of that first interaction, first experience. There should be some way for someone to convert. If your advertising is doing its job well, by the time they get to that page, there should be a good percentage of customers who are actually ready to click the buy button and move into that conversion funnel right away. And if you bury that experience someplace, you’re actually gonna be working against yourself and against some of what you’ve already achieved from a marketing standpoint.

The other piece is really understand what it is that acts as that trigger for someone to make that purchase decision if they’re not there already. For most sites, it’s some kind of testimonial, some kind of review — some way of proving out that you are in fact a trustworthy business and this product is good. It’s worth interacting with. It’s good. It’s a good thing to purchase. So really address the fears, the cautionary moments. And again, doing that with other users or consumers or customers is a really fantastic thing.

So those are two things that jump off the page always for me when I’m doing that initial audit and evaluation.

And then the other thing that I love to see is: knock out those FAQs quickly. You don’t have to always present them as an FAQ, but if you can answer the question before it’s asked or before they have to go looking for it, you’re usually gonna be in a spot where you can get someone again to move into that conversion step process very quickly.

Kevin: That’s an awesome answer and I want to take it one step further. For those folks that have already tried these techniques that you’ve mentioned and are looking to maybe do a little bit of testing and see how they might be able to improve even further, what are some of those things they can do to push that conversion percentage even higher? Maybe with some AB testing or other features or something like that.

Jordan Brannon: I think that’s actually something you always want to have in mind — this idea that “I can do a little bit better,” because that’s how you continue to improve. And also customers change. And so if you’re not testing, if you’re not innovating, you’re typically going to be taking steps backwards over time. And then you’ve gotta reset and do it again.

So yeah, if we’ve got the basics covered, I would definitely look at some sort of AB or multivariate test. That can be very simple — just run two landing pages in parallel and watch those metrics. But obviously there’s great tools out there which help you run more — a true analysis, true understanding of that customer journey and what’s performing better and why it’s performing better.

So AB testing is a really huge piece of that. And you also want to look at personalization. You want to look at how is this particular page responding to particular customer groups? Can we personalize further?

And then lastly, is there a way to recapture, retarget — take that audience that maybe you just… you can’t move that needle to a buy button or buy experience on that first visit. Maybe it’s that second visit. And start to work on that particular step and refine that process as well.

Kevin: Understanding where they are in that buyer’s journey, right? Maybe the first time they aren’t ready for that conversion, but making sure you’re aware of, okay, as they move from awareness to consideration to decision making, how can you make sure that you’re engaging them in that personalized, customized way that speaks to them in the moment, right? So I think that’s a really good answer.

I want to shift the focus of the conversation a little bit away from Coalition and a little bit more towards Jordan as the marketing professional and business leader that he is. Maybe you can tell our audience — as a co-founder, as a president of a digital marketing agency that’s been around for a while — what are some of the day-to-day tasks that you work on? What does a typical day look like for you?

Jordan Brannon: Yeah, I’m up early. I’m Pacific Standard Time, but I’m up early and working probably by seven o’clock in the morning. And I’ll typically work till five or six, so I usually put in a pretty good day. A lot of my focus is on the leadership of Coalition — and so the teams who are really helping to guide the vision and the execution. So I work a lot with our senior marketing leadership team, our senior web design and development leadership team, to help come up with better strategies, come up with new tools, to help look at how changes in the market are really driving our business.

I also get involved in client strategy quite a bit. So I take some time and set that aside every day to work on some of our new client accounts that are kicking off, make sure that we have a good plan of action in place for them.

And I also will participate if there’s ever a customer service concern. That’s another thing that I really take a lot of pride in. We try and make sure our senior team members are available to our clients if something does come up. Because it can — we’re running very complicated campaigns for a lot of clients at a very brisk pace. And so whenever that happens, I love to jump in and be available for them as well.

Kevin: Yeah. Not always just a leadership guy in the background — getting your hands dirty, getting in with the clients. That’s always important.

Next question. I know there’s a lot of places to go to stay up to date, learn, grow. There’s such an overwhelming amount of content out there. Where do you go to learn and see what some of your fellow digital marketers are doing and just stay up to date?

Jordan Brannon: There’s a couple of Substacks that I love to follow. There are some Reddits — subreddits — that I like to be participating in. They’re usually good. You can give a little and you can take a little, and there’s a good sort of interchange of ideas that’s happening there.

Certainly I follow a pretty curated list of people on LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s become a little rough these days with some of the AI content that’s not really thought through and not… published… there’s all the “comment ‘mom’ inside of the comment thread to get access to my playbook that’ll make you a trillionaire by the time you turn 12.”

Kevin: Oh yeah.

Jordan Brannon: And so I’m a little more careful with LinkedIn, but there are some people there that I follow and I really enjoy their content.

So those are probably my big ones. And then also I’m a member of a couple of private groups — Discord, Facebook — and some other places where I can get inside intel from others who are practitioners in some of our service areas. And that’s really helpful.

Kevin: I think it’s interesting — a lot of people we’ve had on the show recently keep bringing up Reddit as a place to stay up to date. Not just to read what others are saying, but to provide your own input. And it’s interesting — these places where you can do a little give and take.

I’ve also heard people talking about publicly available Slack channels you can be a part of — communities where people are focused on the same goals and can bounce ideas off each other. It’s really interesting you bring it up, because a lot of people think, “Oh, it’s something online. Anyone can go on there. Anyone can type.” But there are some really good interactions that happen on those channels.

Jordan Brannon: Yeah. And a lot of subreddits are pretty well curated. The moderators like to spend their time really making sure this is not promotional content — it is really intentional. And there’s gonna always be some mixing of that in. But it is often a great place where that engagement is pretty pure. There are people asking genuine questions and giving genuine answers from genuine experiences. And that… even if you’re not buying the whole thing, you can take a little piece of that and say, “Hey, I’m gonna try that,” and involve that in what I’m doing.

Kevin: I totally agree and it’s something that I’ve actually implemented into my own weekly routine as well, and I’ve found it really helpful.

Okay. We’re gonna move into a section of questions that are like a rapid fire round. They’re meant to be a little more playful and thought-provoking and they’re definitely not business oriented per se. So let’s have some fun with these last four questions.

Number one: what’s the last book that you read?

Jordan Brannon: Ooh, interesting. I would have to say… I’m trying to think of what was… I read a book recently called Binge Worthy, which I really enjoyed. If I’m reading books, I usually am running a short list of them, but Binge Worthy was a book that I read pretty recently.

Kevin: Okay. I’ll have to add it to the list for me.

Next one, rapid fire. If there were no boundaries in technology and you could snap your fingers and anything is possible, what would be one thing you would want to have fixed for your role specifically as a marketer today?

Jordan Brannon: Oh man, if I could just snap my fingers… that’s such a tough question to answer. I think if I could just snap my fingers and change one thing, I would love to have an AI that actually did a good job of curating my inbox.

Kevin: I—

Jordan Brannon: I’ve tried so many and just… none of them are good. And I don’t know if that’s just that I overwhelm them with emails — there’s just too many coming and going. But that would be a pretty big pick for me. It would save a ton of time.

Kevin: I agree. And you’re not the first one to say it on the show, so — somebody out there — if you’re an AI developer, this is definitely an opportunity. I’m investing.

Okay. Next one. If there was one repetitive task you could automate, what would it be?

Jordan Brannon: I’d have to go back to that email. There’s just a lot of emails that don’t need to be answered — they just need to go into a to-do list. I think that would be one thing I would love to have. Again, maybe we’re building an email suite here right now, but grabbing an email, turning it into a to-do or a task that I can actually track and work off of — just automagically — that would be an amazing one.

Kevin: Oh, really good. Okay, and the last question: what is one piece of advice you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Jordan Brannon: I would say probably the best thing that I’ve learned over the years that I would offer to myself as early stage advice is really finding ways to align our customers’ objectives with the company objectives and with the people that we work with here inside. Align those three things. Do that as quick as possible and double down in all ways that you can. That’s been a real key to our growth and I think it’s been a big part of our success. But we just figured it out a little bit progressively. If I could just download all of that to early Jordan, I definitely would.

Kevin: Awesome. And I want to say — awesome, Anthony. Jordan, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you on the show. Anyone out there that’s looking for any type of digital marketing help or support, feel free to reach out to Jordan at Coalition Technologies. But before we sign off, why don’t you tell our folks one last time — who are you and how can they find you?

Jordan Brannon: Yeah — Jordan Brannon, Coalition co-founder. You can find me on LinkedIn — I’m pretty easy to spot there. I run the CoalitionTech Reddit account if we’re talking about Reddit for that. And of course, coalitiontechnologies.com.

If you don’t even want to do the work of typing in our domain, do a search for “SEO company” on Google — good chance you’re gonna find us. Or ask ChatGPT who the best SEO company is — there’s a good chance we’re gonna be recommended. Any of those places are a great way to find us.

Kevin: Awesome. Thank you so much for the time, Jordan.

Jordan Brannon: All right, pleasure Kevin. Thanks for having me on.