Look for ways to add more value to your customers. Continually evolve your business and how you serve your customers. This will keep you ahead of your competition.
Craig Andrews is the Principal Ally and founder of digital marketing agency allies4me. Allies4me specializes in solving two problems for its clients: driving more traffic to their websites and getting people to take more action once they get there. Applying the conversion mentality to SEO, paid search and email campaigns, allies4me gets results that make its clients more profitable.
Andrews brings extensive scientific and marketing expertise to allies4me. Over the last 25 years, his experience has spanned disciplines and industries including search engine optimization, conversion optimization, internet marketing software, biomedical and semiconductors. Andrews is backed by a team of marketing allies who support start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.
In more recent years, he started conversion optimization via SEO by trying to respond to Google’s desire to rank the best pages on the Internet. He found conversion optimization to be an effective way to measure that by seeing how well people interact with the content. His digital marketing agency, allies4me, is about building SEO, PPC and email strategies that convert visitors into customers.
Where did the idea for Allies4me come from?
The origin of allies4me is rooted in the belief that alliances are stronger than individuals or individual organizations. Our goal is to bring the strength of alliance to our clients and allow them to focus on their core strengths while we bring our strengths to them.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
My day typically begins between 5AM and 6AM. During this time, I catch up on email, do social posting and engagement, and do creative writing. As the day progresses, I find myself in meetings and interacting with clients. Like many people, I find my energy dipping in the mid-afternoon. This is a good time to go for a run and rejuvenate – yes, even in the triple-digit Texas heat. After dinner I read and catch up with the latest industry news.
How do you bring ideas to life?
It begins by identifying the desired outcome. Once I know where we’re going, it’s a lot easier to map the path there. Our client onboarding process begins with strategy development. This provides the framework for achieving their goals. After that, it’s just tactics and execution.
What’s one trend that excites you?
Businesses are starting to see the need for optimizing the total customer journey as opposed to just tactics such as SEO, paid search, or social. This is better for the customer and better for the business.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
Getting an early start is essential for productivity. Typically, I accomplish more before 9AM than I do in the rest of the day.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Ask more questions and listen more.
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Long-form copy is more effective than short-form. You aren’t limited by attention span. You’re limited by not having anything interesting to say. Once you find something interesting to say, your customers will read it.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Look for ways to add more value to your customers. Continually evolve your business and how you serve your customers. This will keep you ahead of your competition.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Find people that are smarter than you and relentlessly study their methods.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
We increased leads for a client 2400% but never got credit for it because the people responsible for running the marketing automation never nurtured the leads. We pulled lead nurturing inhouse.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Buy a copy of Buyer Legends by Bryan & Jeffery Eisenberg. Develop 3 Buyer Legends every quarter and implement what you learn.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
That’s tough. There are many choices. I spent $20 on “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. This has been extremely valuable.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
Asana is my software of choice for project management. It’s a great way to keep tasks moving forward and to know who’s responsible at any moment.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
“Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. The framework Chris lays out is essential to bring people together and create true alignment as opposed to forced alignment.
What is your favorite quote?
Never, never, never give up. Winston Churchill
Key Learnings:
• Read “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. Read it again and again until it’s a way of life.
• Develop 3 Buyer Legends per quarter and implement what you learn in the process
• Start your day at least one hour before your peers and use that time to work on correspondence.
Connect:
Craig Andrews on LinkedIn:
Craig Andrews on Twitter:
Carlyn runs the day-to-day publishing operation here at ideamensch and interacts with our awesome customers and entrepreneurs. She is likely editing this with a cat on her lap.