We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Liz Cortes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Liz thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Clients come to us wanting more website traffic. However, when I go to their website homepage it’s not clear on what steps I need to do to hire them or who they help. If you confuse you lose. You need a website that converts. This starts with choosing the right words and layout. Something we do differently when a new client hires us to drive more website traffic is we do a 60-minute marketing message call. Next, we copywrite the most popular website pages so that when we do traffic strategies like Local SEO or Google ads they work! Most business coaches or marketing agencies will just do what you want. This is why most people are disappointed with the results. They did what you hired them to do but the marketing strategy would have worked so much better if you would have clarified your marketing message first.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My husband Robert and I own a local marketing agency in San Diego and I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur with him for 7 years. I know firsthand what it’s like to build a successful business doing all the digital marketing yourself. I wish I knew then, what I know now about a highly converting website when I moved my local business online 13 years ago. Our clients want to have a coach or a team to help take some of the digital marketing off their plate. The top problem we solve is driving more traffic to your website through local SEO and Google ads. Our clients are busy so they love our monthly Loom video reports going over the results we got them. I’m most proud of the couples that work together like us. It can be challenging but it is so rewarding to be building one business together. Since so many local businesses got hit hard and have to stretch their marketing dollars, we’ve created affordable online courses, workshops, and coaching this past year.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Joining paid online groups has been the best source of new clients. I’m in a group of copywriters and website developers. When I joined I noticed that our core offer of Local SEO is what set us apart from the people in the Slack group. I’d film 5 minute Loom videos or take a minute to answer questions. Now it’s been 3 years and we consistently have a flow of referrals. The business owners in this group are great people so their clients are great too. I have multiple people tagging me whenever anyone has a question about SEO. Yes, we have a full-service marketing agency but in this group I’m known for 1 service and stand out from the 600 people in the group.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For 3 years, we’ve had people ask if we’d white label our local SEO services. That means that other agencies would let us work with their clients without ever talking to them. It sounds great right? They do the sales and gather all the info for onboarding. Finally this summer we gave it a shot. The first white label partner gave us 3 clients and it’s been a great relationship. However, for everyone else, it would take double the time to onboard the client and double the emails or Loom videos explaining why we are doing what we are doing for the local SEO strategy. There were 10 people that said their client was ready to go so I filmed a Loom audit video with the strategy and sent the proposal. Then I was ghosted or apologies that their client is going in a different direction. Resilience is recovering quickly. After 30 hours wasted and 2 months of trying out white labeling, we decided to pull the plug. The R in Rebel is a core value for Relationships Matter. We’d rather give a monthly referral commission and work with the client directly so that we can educate and pivot the strategy if needed. To be a great white label you need to provide that identical service over and over. That isn’t how we do things over here. It’s all individualized. I feel so much more relaxed and at peace saying no to white labeling. You’ve got to know how you work best and stick to that boundary. It’s great to try things out but have a set time to assess and call it off if it’s not working.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rebelfishlocal.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebelfishlocal/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebelfishlocal
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizcortesonline/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rebelfishlocal
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaGmTx5ASE_gC1bLt8ADF8w
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rebelfish-local-san-diego
• Other: Business Coaching http://lizcortes.com/coaching

Image Credits
Christie Turner