SEO, Domain Authority vs Customer Authority w/Jamar Ramos

0:00Jamar RamosThe reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as your domain authority goes down. Is because customers are happy with you.

0:06They love what you're giving. They love seeing your stuff on social media. They love seeing your content. They love your product. And so they're going to keep coming back.

0:13And that's probably a lot of happy customers who shop with you before.

0:17Who are coming back to shop with you again, repeat. Repeat.

0:20You're going to see these tools say all your domain authority isn't high and all that stuff.

0:24It's yes, but my customer authority is high.

0:26Crystal WaddellWelcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence.

0:41Thank you so much for being here.

0:43Let's jump into another great episode.

0:45I'm here with Jamar Ramos, who is a multi channel marketer extraordinaire, and you are in for a treat today, my friend.

0:52Because he is going to break down some of the most complex topics of SEO and marketing.

0:57No, just kidding. But he's breaking it down into a way that I know you're going to love and enjoy and understand.

1:02And most importantly, be able to apply today. So thank you, Jamar. Thank you for coming on The Simple and Smart SEO show podcast.

1:09Jamar RamosThank you for having me.

1:10Crystal WaddellI have a variety of questions to ask you.

1:13Is there any special designation or title you want me to-?

1:17Jamar RamosI would say multi channel marketer.

1:19Cause I'm not an SEO proper.

1:21Like I did SEO earlier in my career.

1:23I've got a blog post that I'm working on right now. About how, we need to stop thinking about SEO as a channel and think about SEO as organic marketing.

1:32Because SEO is just what you do on the technical side of the website. And if all you're doing is technical SEO at a certain point.

1:40You run out of things to do. And you run out of new people that you're bringing in. It has to be about multi channel marketing.

1:47In all the stuff that people are saying about S. G. E. and overviews.

1:52As people want to be the first out there to tell you how to do it right.

1:55They're ignoring what Google is telling us. Forget about plans and check boxes and all of these best practices.

2:04Think about the people. Who is at the end of the telephone line of our marketing services?

2:08Crystal WaddellYeah.

2:09Jamar RamosWhat do they need?

2:10Stop thinking about what your list is and how you go down it.

2:14Give the people what they need. And Google will reward you for it.

2:18They'll also reward you if you spend a little money on the paid side. But shh. Don't tell anyone that.

2:21Crystal WaddellWhen you mentioned that you started as an SEO.

2:24Could you give us just a brief overview of your journey to becoming, from SEO to multichannel marketer?

2:31Jamar RamosOf course. So I was potty trained with books.

2:35Like my mom could not get me to sit down. So the only way she could get me to focus was to hand me a book.

2:41So books have been in my hand since I've been two years old.

2:44And so I grew up just voraciously reading.

2:46I think about it now, walking back from high school out of my kitchen window you can see my high school, high on a hill.

2:52And so I would walk back, it was maybe 15, 20 blocks, and I'd have a book in my hand. And I'm walking across streets, reading books.

2:58Not paying attention to traffic or anything, because these words are more important than my life, apparently.

3:04And so I decided I wanted to go to college.

3:06Get an English degree. Because I wanted to be a writer.

3:08And I thought, that's how you're a writer. Without reading of how anyone else became a writer. By the time I graduated in 2012, it was all the vanity press stuff.

3:17So people were self publishing. And I realized, there's not going to be a lot of immediate survivability money in this.

3:23So I better get a real big boy job.

3:26And so I found a company that was looking for content writers and Editors who had an SEO background.

3:32I had no idea what SEO at that point was. So I Googled it.

3:35Not knowing that Googling SEO was doing SEO. And so I read a little bit about it. And I went into the interview and I just told the truth.

3:42I said, Hey.

3:43I've got all these years of training to write and edit. I don't know anything about SEO.

3:47So if you train me up on this, we can add those two things together. And I can be the perfect person for you.

3:54Luckily, they bought that. And so that's how I entered into the digital marketing world. And I realized SEO just wasn't for me.

4:01For me, it's boring.

4:03I don't, when I look at HTML code, I can mess with it.

4:07As long as I have the base. And I know where I'm going to. And I have a little bit of time.

4:11But I don't see it. And see the matrix. Like I just see a bunch of letters and wingdings and everything.

4:17So. I wanted to get back into content writing and found a job where I could do that.

4:23Took over social media for them as well.

4:25And realized, I like that combination of things.

4:28And not really realizing that was my start as a multi channel marketer.

4:32Where I was helping come up with the blog ideas, facilitating them, getting them out to people in the company to write them. Editing them, publishing them.

4:41And then promoting them across all of our channels and figuring out how do these things work together?

4:46And I think of it like Legos. If you don't have the guide, if you don't see, okay, these pieces go together. All you have is the pieces in front of you.

4:56And the box that shows the final picture. How do you put that together? Trial and error. You just figure it out. So you figure out what piece goes here, what looks like this.

5:04And so to me, that's all marketing is. A bunch of Legos without the steps.

5:08And you have to figure out how do I go from this scattered wasteland of individual pieces. Into this beautiful millennium Falcon that I wanted to build for $500.

5:19Crystal WaddellIt's so interesting that you say that. I totally agree with the pieces being there.

5:24I've never thought that there was actually a picture to envision.

5:27That gave me an example of like how those pieces should go together. And in the middle of it, I have trouble putting things in order.

5:34And so the trial and error really speaks to me. But the seeing the picture is even better.

5:40It's like, where do you find that picture?

5:42Jamar RamosFor me, it's, if you're working externally. What are the client's goals?

5:46They're always going to say, we want more money. Okay. That's a given. So I always say, okay, outside of more revenue, what are your top three goals?

5:53What are your KPIs that you're monitoring?

5:55And for me, that paints the picture. Okay. So you want to get revenue first. You want to get. More qualified traffic to your website.

6:02Then you want to get more qualified leads from that traffic. Then you want to get people funneled to your conversion pages. All right.

6:09I've just painted the picture right there.

6:11That's how I can start figuring it out. Then I can say, okay, what's the order of operations has to be? How do I get people here?

6:17Do they already have a lot of top of funnel traffic that I just have to start figuring out how to get to the middle and the bottom of the funnel?

6:24Or do they just have what I like to call window shoppers, people who are walking by their internet storefront. Have no idea who they are what they sell, but just go, ooh.

6:33That's a nice shiny object and then walk on by.

6:36Okay, that's another data point. If you just have window shoppers, first, I have to get them to stop and see your brand name. Because right now they're just seeing the shiny objects in your storefront.

6:46I got to get them to recognize this is what you do. Then I got to get them the next time that they walk by your store, instead of just looking in the window to see what your storefront looks like. I got to get them to walk in.

6:55So always asking about goals. What does the client want outside of revenue? And they'll tell you exactly what that final picture should look like. So then you can take that wasteland of misfit pieces.

7:06And start putting them together. And there's going to be trial and error and there's going to be failure.

7:10In that failure is beauty because sometimes you figure out okay, this piece really should go here. But for the stability of the thing that i'm building, it's got to go here.

7:19So that's why I hate when people say " best practices." because best practices, yeah, there's A sandbox we all have to play in if we don't want to be Black hat marketers.

7:27But best practices need to change and morph. Depending on who we're working with. What niche they're in. What their comp set is.

7:35If they're a startup. A small to medium sized business or an enterprise business.

7:39All this stuff needs to change, but too many people just want to rush in and say, Oh I've got the best fit for you because I worked with these people and it's okay.

7:47It may work, but those people are different than the people in front of you.

7:50So respect that difference. Even if it's 1%. That 1 percent could be the difference between your marketing taking off. Or your marketing plummeting back to earth.

7:59Crystal WaddellOkay. So I have so many questions about everything. I want to start with this one, though.

8:06With entrepreneurs, because that's a lot of who the audience is of this podcast.

8:11I noticed that a lot of times their offer. Or what I call their perfect product, is not clear to them.

8:18They're still in that development stage. So, it's like what advice do you have there from, an optimization standpoint?

8:24What business advice do you have for someone who's really not even quite sure what's the best thing for them to sell, what they should double down on in their marketing?

8:33Jamar RamosThe biggest piece of advice I can say is: be ready to iterate on your product as quickly as possible.

8:41But also be willing to hold off until you have the data from your customers that say, Hey, this is where we want to take it.

8:49Because sometimes our ideal product that we're selling and what our actual customer base wants to buy. Are diametrically opposed to each other.

8:58And we need to be willing to say, I want to listen to the audience, or we need to understand that.

9:03If we're pushing the product that we want to sell, that might push away a lot of that audience and potential, buyers away. So we have to be careful. We have to respect.

9:12Crystal WaddellSo what's the fastest and most practical way to find out and iterate?

9:17Jamar RamosGet your product out there as soon as possible.

9:19Even if it's not, Perfect.

9:20If it's the minimum viable product, that's fine.

9:23As long as what you're putting out there is not going to make people mad. Ask people questions.

9:27Tell them, Hey, this is my MVP. Put out a form there. Hey, I'd love to get your honest feedback. And there's going to be some people who... digression.

9:34So in my writing courses, there's one time where. I had to give everyone a manuscript, it was like 15, 20 page story.

9:43And they would put notes on it and hand it back and it was all anonymous. So you couldn't get mad and go, why'd you give me this?

9:48And so someone on the manuscript on every one of the pages. In all capital letters, wrote BORING.

9:54So you're going to get some people who are going to not give you helpful feedback.

9:57But even in that you can understand and say, Hey, you know what? This person really didn't have anything but anger and vitriol for my product. Without ever really trying it.

10:05Ignore that and just go. Even if you put out a survey for 100 people.

10:09You get 50 of them who give you good feedback.

10:11That's amazing. Because within that, you're going to be able to say, okay, this is what people want.

10:16And you can triangulate that to see, okay. What are the top three things that people are saying together?

10:20Okay, they want these three new features. Let me build those in. They want these two new features.

10:25Let me build those in.

10:26Crystal WaddellOkay, so even more practical: where do you build a survey like that? How do you find the hundred people to take it? And how much does something like that cost?

10:34Jamar RamosOh, Google Forms. It's always free. Free 99 is my favorite. So putting together just a form.

10:39And when people are buying your stuff, when you send them that, hey, thank you for the purchase, send them that survey.

10:44Hey, thank you for the purchase. I'd love to get your feedback on the product as you're using it, because that's going to help us iterate. And move forward. And if you give the feedback, here's a 10, 15 percent code off.

10:56So that way. You're getting that feedback loop. You're giving them a reward for doing it. And you're also giving them a reason to come back.

11:04So you're retargeting them in a free way, and you're getting them to come back later.

11:08So all of a sudden, you're building in that habit of coming back for your product, giving you feedback.

11:12And then eventually people will start giving you feedback for free. Oh, hey, I've been a customer since your beginning.

11:17And I love this version of the product. But I'd really like it in blue. I got you. I've got blue coming out in the next six months.

11:23I'd love for you to be a tester. So that way you can start building up those proselytizers for your business.

11:28And as you get bigger, you have those people who are going to go on social media. Oh my God. I can't wait.

11:32Crystal told me about this new thing she's getting ready to release you guys.

11:35If you thought that version two was great, wait til you get to version 3. 5.

11:39And, you just get that again. The snowball effect of people loving what you're doing. And then it's a little bit more hands off later.

11:45The marketing is done by your customers. You just have to keep building that product that they love. And they'll market it for you.

11:51Crystal WaddellOh man, I'm working on something right now for Pinterest.

11:54So as you're saying this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is so exciting.

11:56And it's also liberating to know that you don't have to create the perfect thing to start with.

12:01You know what I mean?

12:01I know that it sounds ridiculous even to say out loud.

12:04But it probably has stopped me before. From even trying to present what I had.

12:10Because I was like, Oh, it's, I know that there's some deficiencies.

12:13I'm not exactly sure how to fix it. So I'll just keep it and hold on to it. When in reality, if I would have shared it.

12:18There might've been people who would have said, Hey, this is how you can close that gap. Or even, recognize a different need that would have made it better anyway.

12:26Jamar RamosJust think of any company who's doing a shareholder call.

12:30We think that what they're getting on that call to say is their finalized stuff and everything. And they have a great vision.

12:36The thing about the shareholder call is it only has to be true as the words are coming out of their mouth.

12:42The next day they could change everything they say on that shareholder call.

12:46So they're even putting out stuff that's imperfect.

12:49So if these people to their shareholders may change in 24 hours, give yourself permission to change as well.

12:57Crystal WaddellOh my gosh, you've made my day. I can just go around and float, for the rest of the day.

13:01So it's something else that you mentioned because you were talking earlier about traffic. And I love how you, you separated qualified traffic from lead traffic.

13:09Because honestly, I had lumped those two things together.

13:12And again, that makes it more difficult because it's okay, I'm getting more qualified traffic, but.

13:17Why are more of them not converting?

13:18Maybe because I need to separate those a little bit more.

13:21Jamar RamosSometimes I might go online and I might look for suit jackets. A couple of months before I need it.

13:27I'm still a potential lead. I'm just right now in the consideration phase.

13:33I'm looking around. I'm pricing. I'm trying to find, ooh. I know I want a nice floral pattern for this spring wedding.

13:38So that's what I'm narrowing down my options. I'm narrowing down the companies that I'm going to.

13:43Then it is up to those businesses and companies to retarget me. Give me the right ads.

13:48Understand what I'm shopping for, get my size.

13:51Be able to say, okay, Hey, he's looked at our website two, three, four different times.

13:55He's almost ready to buy. Here's 15, 20 percent off.

13:59Or Hey, we found these other styles that you might be interested in. Keep me thinking about you.

14:04And in the end, I'll become that qualified lead. And I'll convert with you.

14:09But you do have to make sure you're leading me down the buying funnel. Which is why multi channel marketing is what's important.

14:15If we only have one channel and one touch point, if they're not on that channel, They don't see us anymore. They see our competitors.

14:22They see other people who are in the space willing to touch them at that touch point. It has to be email, social media, content, SEO to make sure your website is running fast.

14:33If you can differentiate where your traffic is coming from. It makes it easier to get those people, take them from Lookie Lous, to qualified leads.

14:41To converted leads back to qualified leads again.

14:44Crystal WaddellOkay.

14:45So there's a couple of things that I want to revisit again there.

14:48When we're talking about window shoppers, and those that may eventually become qualified leads.

14:54Or, just completely irrelevant traffic. Is there a way to exclude irrelevant traffic?

15:01Especially you think about like conversion rates. And you have so many visitors come in and maybe they're just like there for a non commercial reason.

15:07Is there a way to troubleshoot that? And distinguish between the non customer and the the potential customer?

15:16Jamar RamosThere's many different ways. I think it all depends on how early you are in your business.

15:20If you're a startup, you're going to want as much traffic as possible. Especially if you're testing.

15:25If you're in a high traffic niche, like e commerce.

15:28You're going to need to figure out, okay. Who out of all these millions of people are going to be our buyers.

15:33If you're in a more regulated, smaller space. Let's say like cryptocurrency.

15:39You're not going to have as big of a pond of people to fish in.

15:44So it's going to be easier to figure out. Okay. There's not going to be as many Lookie Lous here.

15:49Because there's not going to be a lot of people who really care to know about cryptocurrency. If they're either not in the niche are not about to invest. Other than those two buckets.

15:59Like I'm not looking at cryptocurrency a whole lot. Are you? No. So it's, you're not going to get those window shoppers because it's not that interesting.

16:07But I'm a window shop for fashion at all times.

16:09I might be out of my fashion budget for the year. But I'm always still going to look cause I'm interested.

16:14Cause you'd never know if you sell me the right thing and be like, Ooh, I like those pants. I might have to go over budget to get those.

16:19Another great example.

16:19So when I ran my own digital marketing agency. We were on WordPress. And we got hacked.

16:25And some people put 200 pages of gambling content on our website.

16:31So all of a sudden we saw a spike in traffic. In our traffic, we went from two to 300 a day to two to 3000 people coming a day. And it's Oh, this is awesome.

16:40Where's this coming from? Oh, it is these pages that got put on.

16:44So to your, how do you troubleshoot that? That might be something.

16:48If you see all of a sudden a spike in your traffic, start looking around.

16:51Did people come onto your website? Did they do something? Did you put out a piece of content that may have spiked traffic for a certain subset that you don't really need?

17:00We had a, how to become a hairdresser blog on our site.

17:04And people were searching for that. And it got a featured snippet. There was nothing we can do with all that traffic.

17:09So eventually we're like, we have to deprecate that piece of content.

17:12Because it's bringing people to the site. It's killing our conversion rate because none of these people are going to ever convert with us.

17:18So just looking into what traffic is coming? Why are they coming? And where are they going? Is it to a page we didn't put up?

17:25Is it to a blog post that's all of a sudden bringing extra people? Or is it, after three years, all of our marketing stuff finally hit that tipping point.

17:34To where people are paying attention. Where we got accidental virality.

17:38Where we kept hammering our message and hammering our message and hammering our message.

17:42And finally, It pushed everything over and we got that snowball effect. Of this person heard about us who shared it with these two people who shared it with these eight people.

17:50And that's the virality we got after 10 years. What is the big Sean? I guess it took 10 years to be an overnight success.

17:57Crystal WaddellYeah.

17:57Yeah. I love that one.

17:59So we were talking offline, about this idea of Vanity metrics. And made up terms in SEO.

18:05And, one of the questions I was asking you was like, okay.

18:08Why would it be possible for someone's domain authority to go down. When not only their traffic is going up, but their revenue is going up?

18:18And so I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on that.

18:21Jamar RamosOh, yeah. It's domain authority. It's something that the tools give us.

18:26That our customers don't care about. Like the idea that this two to hopefully three digit number in the back end.

18:34Like that's for us as marketers and it's a more directional thing.

18:38What the domain authority our customers are looking at is, does this website give me the content to help me make an informed decision about my purchase today? Does what I purchase make me happy?

18:48Does what I purchase come at a price point that I would come back and purchase a replacement or a renewal version of that product later?

18:55Does what I buy and the company make me feel good? Do they talk to me and respect me? Those are the things that build up the actual domain authority that I, as a marketer, care about.

19:07I've stopped looking at Ahrefs. Similar stuff.

19:10Sorry for all y'all who work there listening. I love y'all. I appreciate your tools and what you do.

19:14I wouldn't be the marketer today without them. But I would like for us to stop thinking about that. And start thinking about what helps the people.

19:23Because right now. Google, in order to make money, is giving the power back to our customers.

19:28Crystal WaddellCan you explain that?

19:29Jamar RamosOh yeah.

19:30Google, before. Used to have do no harm in their text. And they took that out once they started making a whole lot of ad revenue.

19:38Because you're going to accidentally do harm as you're testing with all that stuff.

19:44And I know there's going to be plenty of hot takes at me for saying that. But, right now, Google is out for ad revenue.

19:50That's why all of the organic listings that are important are now pushed down to make space for all of the ads. And all of the extra questions that people are asking.

20:00The more money we spend with Google, the happier they are. So in the end, we have to think about what we can do for the customers organically. But also understand Google's business model.

20:11And instead of getting super mad at Google all the time, yes, I said it. We have to understand how we can work within that framework. Okay.

20:19We know that for these search terms, Google is probably making a lot of money on the paid advertising side.

20:25Should we put ad dollars in there?

20:27Yes.

20:27We want to make sure that Google sees all the signals, but if we know that there's a lot of money on the paid side, what can we do extra on the organic side that will make the customers happy.

20:38Because Google can't ignore what makes the customers happy in the end.

20:41Because that's going to make them more money. Because the ads are going to be seen by more people. More impressions, more cost per click, all that stuff.

20:47So there's still ways to game the system in a very white hat way.

20:52By looking at, okay, where are the customers going?

20:54How can I help them organically to make sure that my list happens?

20:58And to go back to your deeper question.

21:00The reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as your domain authority goes down? Is because customers are happy with you.

21:07They love what you're giving. They love seeing your stuff on social media. They love seeing your content. They love your product. And so they're going to keep coming back.

21:14And that's probably a lot of happy customers who shop with you before. Who are coming back to shop with you again.

21:20Repeat repeat.

21:21You're going to see these tools say all your domain authority isn't high and all that stuff.

21:25It's yes, but my customer authority is high. And in the end, that's what's going to bring me the stuff.

21:29Because customers don't have those little tools that say, Oh, your domain authority is 81.

21:33And this is over here.

21:34I guarantee you, if you surveyed 100 people. Who don't work in digital marketing. They couldn't tell you off the top of their head, what the domain authority of Verge is.

21:43But I guarantee you, if you survey a hundred digital marketers, most of them can tell you after the alligator incident.

21:48What the domain authority of the Verge website is.

21:51Crystal WaddellYeah. Oh, that is just so beautiful. And it's so true. And because I came into the SEO world, not as an SEO.

21:59Not even as a marketer, but just as a learner and a a practitioner, I guess you could say. Because I have a Shopify store.

22:06I realized I was like, some of these things just don't make sense.

22:09Or. If they do, it's just not relevant to my particular situation.

22:14And I'm trying to be careful about, saying, Oh, that doesn't work or that's not right, or whatever. Because it could be right for another industry.

22:21I don't know all industries. But one of those things was domain authority and helpful content.

22:26I would see different things happening, and I couldn't quantify it. The way that most SEO tools would quantify something.

22:33And so like you, I started to question the tools a little bit. And then I started to triangulate what each of piece of data was saying.

22:42And then tried to make it relevant to my business.

22:45And that's what I try to do for other entrepreneurs and small businesses.

22:48Because I feel like they get so distracted by these metrics. That don't actually pertain to their business. I see you shaking your head.

22:55So I just wondered your thoughts on that.

22:57Jamar RamosIt's people want numbers. They feel better with numbers. But I think that, and you were talking early about hearing me on with Mordy and Crystal.

23:05And the thing that I talked to them about is dangerous levels of honesty and transparency.

23:11And we need to be able to tell people like wrap them on the knuckles, like the nuns. And say, no. This is not the metric you should be looking out for.

23:20And tell them why.

23:20Again, going back to all the stuff that people are putting about AI overviews.

23:24In the race to be first. We forgot that the most important race is to be correct.

23:30And sometimes in order to race, to be correct, we have to look at our client and we have to tell them hard truths. Like you're looking at traffic.

23:39That's great. But if I can get you a million people visiting your website a day. And yet only one person a day converts.

23:46Is that traffic important?

23:48But if I get you 1000 people coming to your website a day and 500 of them convert per day, that traffic is much better. Yes, your traffic is lower, but we've gotten you to those business qualified leads who are higher converting than all of the People who are just walking by your internet storefront. Looking in and saying, Oh, that looks cool.

24:07And then walking by. So, we have to be careful how we talk about the numbers. And we have to be careful about how we report on the numbers. And always tell the truth.

24:16Yes, your traffic is down, but that's because we did things to make sure we're getting in front of the right market.

24:21And as traffic has gone down, conversion rate has gone up.

24:24This is why.

24:26I think that as people are talking about AI. Always remember there is a human element, AI can do a lot of things to help us, but AI cannot tell those stories to people.

24:36It cannot look that person in the eye and say, Hey, I hear what you're saying. I hear you think that this is important. It's actually not.

24:42These are the things that are important and it's actually tied to your revenue, because these other things as well.

24:47We can make those connections and tell the story. AI can help us beautify it. And simplify it. But we have to be able to communicate it.

24:55Crystal WaddellAbsolutely. Beautify and simplify. Those are the two top ways that I use AI in my own, or large language models or whatever.

25:02And also to brainstorm, and clarify. That would be another one that I'd add in there. But you're so right. We tell the story at the end of the day. Okay. Thank you.

25:10Because we only have a short period of time left.

25:12I'm going to jump to some of the questions that I had.

25:15How can SEO be integrated with other marketing channels?

25:18Cause we've talked a little bit about Instagram and SEO. A little bit of email marketing.

25:21You've mentioned paid advertising. I really haven't gone into that but could you share an example of a successful multi channel SEO strategy?

25:32Jamar RamosOh, God, so many. Cause I'm so successful. No it's for me, it's again, Legos thing. How do we put all of these pieces together to make them a reality? A fully functioning experience for the people who want to shop with us?

25:48Like Okay, we have a website.

25:50We don't always have to tinker with it in the background. We don't always have to Look at lighthouse. We don't always have to look at core web vitals.

25:57We don't always have to look at our page speed to say, okay, we're 88 today. How do I get to 89? It's like you know what 88 that's plenty fast enough. Yeah, what can I do there?

26:06So it's making sure that Okay, what is build mode? What is test mode? What is iterate mode?

26:14Build mode is when you're first starting. Okay, I've got to get my website up. I've got to make sure that I've got my social media handles and all that stuff. Okay, I've got all of that.

26:22They're interlocking, interconnected.

26:24All right, test mode.

26:25Putting the content out there across social media, starting to say, Hey, if you want to be a part of our newsletter, here's our newsletter thing.

26:32Starting to really get the people talking to us in different ways, talking to us by coming to our website. By shopping with us. By, as we talked about earlier, giving a survey feedback. By talking to us on social media.

26:45I worked at an e commerce company where. As doing their social media, I was also part of their escalation process when people were unhappy.

26:51What does that look like? How do we talk to people on social media to say, Oh, you got something wrong with your product?

26:57You know, let me return it. What was going on?

26:59Do we hear a lot about that? Okay. There may be something in the manufacturing with our product. Let's fix that.

27:05And then iterate mode. After we've built, after we've tested and got all that feedback. Okay. What are the top three things that we've heard and all of the feedback? That would make the best business sense? That would make the best sense to bring us in revenue.

27:19Those are the things we're going to fix first, because we probably have a thousand things we want to iterate on.

27:25But we can't do that because you're a solopreneur, correct?

27:29Crystal WaddellYes.

27:29Jamar RamosSo you've only got a finite amount of time in your day on top of, okay, I want crystal time and I got to do family time. I got to split my day into thirds already.

27:38So you can only work on your business for so much throughout the day. Throughout the week. Throughout the month, throughout the year.

27:44What are the things that are really going to do? What is the 20 percent of work that's going to have 80 percent of change on your business? Those are the things you have to focus on.

27:53And then once you've iterated that you're back into testing mode, all of this, again. Buying funnel. The way that we build and fix our businesses, all of this is just iterative. It's always three pronged approach.

28:04And then you go back to that first prong and you start over again. And going back to simplify.

28:09We just have to simplify everything because we get so grandiose with how we talk about things.

28:15We want to be the experts and we want to sound like the experts.

28:17But the best way to be an expert at something is to be able to take a gigantic concept And boil it down to something that anyone, a non practitioner even, could understand.

28:28Crystal WaddellOh, that is amazing.

28:29And I just want you to know, I feel so seen, breaking life down into thirds. Thank you for that.

28:37And so you're talking about systems in the back end. And then another thing that you said, from a solopreneur perspective.

28:43Iteration and testing. Like testing to me has been a kind of a bad word.

28:47I love iteration, but testing has been a bad word because it's and even in e commerce, I think it's true for a lot of businesses, no matter how big you are.

28:53It's like testing needs to happen quickly. And sometimes concurrently, with other things.

28:58But the experts will say, test one thing at a time. And I know that's important for isolating to find out what's working.

29:05But do you have any, specific things to look for when you're to test multiple things at a time?

29:11Jamar RamosIf I'm going to do anything, multivariate testing, it's usually email marketing.

29:16That's where I'm going to do more testing. But also it's for me, it's the way my mind works. If I split things in too many ways, I can't figure it out. I can't understand it.

29:27There's too much disparate data and I personally don't see the story. Other people, it might work for them.

29:33But for me, the reason why I'm willing to only do A, B testing. Is because I need to see what does A do?

29:39What does B do versus the control?

29:42That's the only way that I personally can break it down. And also, I'm okay with a little bit of a slower test. Because I know that, for me, the quick thing is going to be the iterating and the feedback loop.

29:55I want to make sure that, for me, the testing takes a little bit longer because I know in the end, that for me is how I'm proving out that I'm doing my best. If it's testing for a client, if it's testing for something that I'm doing for, customers.

30:08If i'm doing the best for them if i'm giving them enough time to look at something and say hey I like this. Hey, I don't like this. I like this for these reasons. I hate this for these reasons. All that again It's just such good information for me to then say, okay when I iterate and give you the next version of it It's going to take all of that feedback into consideration.

30:25And it's going to be even better. And you're going to see that i've implemented this stuff. And also i'm going to tell you, Hey, this is version 1. 5.

30:32The more that we again Take that feedback and then communicate to the people who gave us that feedback. Hey, I took your feedback in. We made these changes. It's ego bait.

30:41This is how we turn people from detractors to proselytizers by telling them, Hey, I listened to you.

30:46And this new version of what I did is based on something you said.

30:49Oh my God, thank you.

30:50Crystal WaddellExactly. Oh my gosh. Exactly.

30:52And the three words that you said, see the story. Like you need to be able to see the story.

30:57I'm gonna hold on to that.

30:59Since we're out of time here, why don't you tell people how they can find you. And what you're doing right now, career wise. And how they could connect with you.

31:07Jamar RamosAwesome. So if you didn't hear in the beginning, I am Jamar Ramos. You can find me. I'm back on Twitter at Jam Ram 33. That's J a M R a M and the numbers three, three. I'm trying to get back into that and make it a more positive place again. Although it's really fighting back against me.

31:25You can find me on LinkedIn, Jamar Ramos.

31:28I post more there. Career wise, if you're hiring and looking for a lovely, wonderful, charismatic multi channel digital marketer, go ahead and reach out to me. Cause I'm looking.

31:37Crystal WaddellAwesome. Thank you so much, Jamar Ramos.

31:40You have been amazing and such a pleasure to talk to.

31:43And I'll catch you next time.

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