BRISTOL, ENGLAND – 10 Oct, 2017 – When Callum Davies 22, of Bristol, was in high school his grades were a major part of his life. “I used to really badly want to beat everyone in my classes at each subject and of course it was something I took great pride in”, he says. However, on his final major results day, things didn’t turn out the way he wanted. “I thought I was destined to go to a specific top university and was completely crushed on that day because I felt like a big part of where I was meant to go I felt had been taken away from me”, says Davies.
Fortunately, he quickly realized there were other potential university options out there which sparked a new opportunity. “I knew going to a different university was my most ideal option at the time and it’s strange how I felt oppressed as I had the feeling this was my only option”, he mentions. It wasn’t until his second year of university where he’d not only switched subjects from History to Politics but then decided to drop out of university completely and try something completely different. “After leaving university I tried a few different jobs in sales and banking but frankly I just felt demoralized which at the time was the norm where I worked and I’m extremely grateful for what happened next”, recalls Davies.
His inability to consistently pay rent led to Davies finding an internet consulting course on how to start your very own marketing agency online. Sadly, however, he realized very quickly the course was too general and miserably lacked the information on how to truly help business owners. Fate now decided Davies would obtain a new mentor and start to figure out exactly why local business owners and attorneys just weren’t seeing the kind of ROI they were hoping for. “I saw a major hole in chiropractors and dentists initially as both fields have had so much value in my own life due to very weak teeth as a child and born with scoliosis, it made sense to focus on the businesses which had the biggest sentimental value to me”, says Davies.
As Davies’s research and business moved forward he started to notice most specifically “disgraceful” Google Adwords campaigns for medical practices performed by other marketing agencies. “To me, it was plain and simply stupid. 97% of these agencies didn’t even have the skill-set to setup Google Adwords & Bing campaigns up properly let alone achieve a substantial ROI”, recalls Davies. it was after hundreds of hours of research of medical practice’s & attorney’s marketing that a completely new shift was set in place. The whole creation behind Illuminate Digital by Davies as a result of this was consistently providing ROI’s exceeding 1000% every month for medical practices & attorneys to prove to business owners that it can actually be done as Davies mentions, “of all local businesses, medical practices most notably chiropractors, dentists, surgeons, and attorneys have the lowest quality Google Adwords and Bing presence”. Illuminate Digital & Davies now managing clients ranging from every possible medical niche alongside attorneys are every single day improving, updating and strategizing exactly how to improve the process. Here’s how Davies & Illuminate Digital consistently obtain such high ROI for ongoing clients.
What made you decide to focus on Google Adwords and PPC?
It was largely because Google Adwords was the area which had the highest risk of failure. If you’re a personal injury attorney in Miami for example and you’re spending $200 a click, it’s essential every single one of those clicks are going on real prospects. If not and as I’ve witnessed time and time again, you’re going to have to temporarily stop advertising on Google for who knows how long until you recover.
What is it about Adwords which causes such a high failure rate for local businesses?
There are multiple major errors but the initial biggest error is poor set up meaning the ad itself isn’t set up properly to show to a specific radius of people surrounding your business. Most local business campaigns are set up so everyone around the world who searches their keyword can see their ad which is a huge error because what use it is if I’m not even in your state but can click on your ad and cost you money? On top of that bidding on general keywords e.g. back pain rather than city specific keywords like back pain Chicago. Both of these errors here contribute to a good 30% of overspend.
How is your agency different from any other agency offering Google Adwords and PPC?
It’s largely our ability to minimise your budget by on average 3-5 times less than your competitors in positions 1 through 3 whilst outranking them resulting in a much higher ROI every single month. On top of this, we’re one of the few agencies who actually offers a full PayPal guarantee so if for whatever reason you’re not happy with the results you can get your money back easily.
Tell me about your stand on Facebook advertising and social media marketing.
Facebook advertising can be extremely profitable for medical practices and attorneys purely down to how little ad spend you need for major success. The real flaw, however, is the large inconsistency of the platform due to its prime purpose for most people being social. It can work very well for one business, but then the same niche business next door could run the same offer in the same format and not get anything from it. So really Facebook works best on the retargeting side of things. As for social media marketing, it’s unbelievable in the modern age for building a major online presence but in terms of bringing you mass amounts of patients and new cases coming through the door each month, it’s unlikely. A few customers each month for sure but even to get to that stage you’ve got to be putting new content on each platform every single day.
How did you learn about Google Adwords?
Well, initially my mentor who had been to multiple conferences and invested in multiple Adwords courses by people such as Perry Marshall and Mike Rhodes started to teach me the basics just because in this industry you can spend $100,000 on courses and not get anything out of them. A strong foundational knowledge of the platform such as quality score, relevance, compliance, and ad copy is very key and helped push me further. As a result, I started heavily testing with client campaigns to figure out as much as possibly could. So really my knowledge of the platform stems from learning from the right people and from constant trial and error as regardless of how much knowledge you have you need serious trial and error practice just because the platform is always changing and if you don’t stay updated like most agencies, you lose.
When you met your mentor, did you have much income to rely on?
No not really as at this time after I purchased the online course I pretty much cleared most of my savings in my account to get in it so I didn’t have much left. I had a little saved up for rent and just enough for the bare minimum amount of food but that was it. I didn’t want to go and get a normal employed job again just because I hated working a 9-5 schedule all the time. I just had no freedom whatsoever with those jobs and I decided if I was going to make this work I was going to go all out or not at all. However with that being said, had I ran out of money completely I would’ve had to get a job but fortunately, I was cautious enough to save prior although that doesn’t take away the stress of not having any income to rely on.
How did you get so good at internet marketing so quickly?
It largely came down to constant immersion day in and day out learning the current trends of what worked and what didn’t. Most agencies and professionals are of course much older than me but because I sped up my learning process and they stopped which meant I could provide results for business owners 97% of other agencies couldn’t. On top of that, I’m strategizing, improving and updating my processes and learning every single day to incorporate changes because if I was to slow down on my learning and stop, I would turn into one of the other 97% of disappointing marketing agencies. The thrill of improving the process my agency uses is what allows my agency to consistently provide fantastic results every single month.
What have been your major turning points?
Paying off my mentors full $10,000 program because at the time he let me in for free which he didn’t have to so being able to pay him every single dime back when I had nothing was unbelievable. In terms of turning points with clients, there isn’t one specific point but the main thing for me was when clients were consistently happy with their ROI each month. Making clients the happiest they’ve ever been with any marketing agency is a turning point for me every single time.
How do you feel 97% marketing agencies currently are going wrong?
That’s a heavily loaded question with so many answers. But the first major flaw in these marketing agencies is because they want to handle so many clients they pawn all their work off to their employees and because each employee isn’t trained to the high level they need to be, the work and results aren’t very good. Now when it comes to web design, the goal often times of the business owner is just to get a new site not to get customers right away from the site and therefore it’s very easy for business owners to get ripped off here. The second major problem with marketing agencies is especially for PPC their ability to spend 3-5 times more than the business owner needs. As the agency doesn’t understand the platform very well the business owner ends up overspending tremendously and further discouraging the business owner to invest in a quality consultant or agency in the future. They place doubt in the business owner’s mind as to what can and can’t be done.
What hasn’t been asked?
A question I get a lot is why I wrote a book on Amazon. Well, the main reason was to educate every single business owner on how the platform works and the most effective strategies for local business owners to get results. Alongside that, I wanted to prevent local business owner’s from going into consultation calls without knowing more about the platform than the agency because if that was the case then you know you shouldn’t work with that agency. Hence why a client of mine branded me as a “savior” because of the information and results I provided which in many ways are hidden from business owners to go out and see for themselves.
Media Contact
Company Name: Illuminate Digital
Contact Person: Callum Davies
Email: callum@illuminatedigitl.com
Phone: 786-864-0611
Country: United Kingdom
Website: www.illuminatedigitl.com
