We were lucky to catch up with Christy Olsen recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Christy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?
Right now, ChatGPT is shaking up the SEO world, well – at least its been the “talk of the town,” so to speak. My take on it? ChatGPT is dated, it tells you, right there, that it cannot access real-world or real time information. It also doesn’t cite sources. From a content standpoint, I think the marketing world is making way to big of a deal about ChatGPT. However, from a usability and tools standpoint? This is where the value is – use ChatGPT to fix your hreflang? Check. Use it to help with Schema? Check – custom coding? That too. Trending right now is a huge focus on AI content, fed mostly by ChatGPT – I think this is a massive miss from the Marketing Community – but ChatGPT is revolutionizing our industry – just not with content.
Video I think is what will be the next “trend” – why? A lot to do with what I mentioned above; so many low-quality marketers are now spamming content straight from ChatGPT – that’s going to get old. What cannot (at least at the time of me responding to this question) not be manipulated by AI (at least not super well)? Video. I think Video in both Search Results and social media, Videos of real live people talking / sharing and conversing will be what is up and coming in 2023.
Christy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am Christy – one of the co-founders of CadenceSEO.com – I got into this industry purely by accident. I was a stay-at-home mom/wife – and my life took crazy drastic turns. My husband died, and I needed a job. I found one, through a friend (to who I had donated a kidney too, so a trade a kidney for a job ;) (kidding!!!) ) – and got a job at a local marketing agency link building. To make a long story, slightly less long (not necessarily short) I ended up at that agency, moving to sales, and working my way up to Director of Sales – I loved working there, but I knew I could do more. While working there, I would bring the SEO team coffee (bribe? maybe) and ask them questions, all the questions! From this, I learned SEO – marketing, and a lot of other valuable information! Eventually, I had the courage to branch out and start my own company. The 1st one, didn’t exactly work as planned, and this is actually my 2nd “attempt” if you will, and I credit this brands success to my partner Kevin McLauchlin (who I coincidentally married, yes he’s the crazy person who voluntarily married the widow with 5 kids). Kevin had the business experience that I did not, and together we have had a lot of fun both running an Agency, as well as raising our 6 kids.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
Before I started this agency – when I was still working as a lead qualifier at a different agency, I was always looking for things to do, and when I had downtime, I would look for new ways to generate leads. For this particular campaign, I exported all of this agency’s old contacts from Salesforce, and made my own mail merge (yep, straight with word and outlook! I didn’t know there were better tools at the time!) and sent out a mail blast. I had a bite! Did a discovery call – and set up a subsequent meeting with our sales team. The sales guy – didn’t want to take the meeting because “the site looked too small and was a waste of his time,” so, I took the call – well, the site he was looking at was their holding company – they were a multi-billion dollar company – I closed them at 50k/month. Which taught me to always take leads seriously – you really don’t ever know who you are talking to (or who they know).
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
By far, my most effective strategy to date has been cold outbound email. I know you all just cringed. However, it works as long as you know somewhat what you are doing (or at minimum, are willing to learn from your mistakes). Automate – don’t burn your domain (I burned my 1st one!!!) – keep your emails very short and to the point – AND FOLLOW UP, and then follow up some more. This helped me build from 0 to 1 million in a year with my 1st, and even better success the 2nd go around.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cadenceseo.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cadenceseoconsulting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cadenceSEOconsulting
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cadence-seo/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CadenceSeo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVf4MmJRzUeF0ZZqMuEwypA
- Other: TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@cadence.seo STRAVA (yes we love to run, bike and swim) https://www.strava.com/athletes/18947383 https://www.strava.com/athletes/13798819 https://www.strava.com/athletes/92961997 https://www.strava.com/athletes/57272807 https://www.strava.com/athletes/46600587
Image Credits
https://melissarusephotography.com/