[EO Chicago] Building a Leading Digital Agency Through Niche Mastery

Mark Bealin is the Founder and CEO of SearchLab, an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in local SEO and PPC. He started his agency as a side project in 2017 while balancing a full-time job and growing a family. Under Mark’s leadership, SearchLab has flourished, being recognized thrice on the Inc. 5000 list. He’s deeply involved with Entrepreneurs’ Organization Chicago, particularly in the Accelerator program, and has a rich history in coaching, which he uses to impact emerging entrepreneurs. Through strategic hires and a carved niche in local SEO, Mark has steered his company to tremendous growth.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[03:23] Mark Bealin talks about his passion for coaching and entrepreneurship and why he volunteered as an EO Accelerator coach
[05:11] Effective coaching strategies that transformed Mark’s businesses and career
[08:17] The impact of harnessing peer pressure in business accountability groups
[10:53] The importance of financial reserves for service-based businesses
[16:51] How podcasts can help recruit top talent
[22:41] Mark shares his agency’s niche within a niche that led to explosive growth
[30:25] The philosophy behind creating a conference that counters industry norms
[35:35] How building deeper business relationships can help navigate the transition during acquisitions
[44:16] The influence and impact of mentors and fostering a company culture built on shared values
[49:53] The legacy of Mark Irvine and how it continues to shape SearchLab’s values and mission

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered how some digital agencies rise to the top in a crowded market? What sets them apart and fuels their growth, especially in highly competitive niches?

According to Mark Bealin, a seasoned entrepreneur and digital marketing expert, the key lies in niche mastery and strategic specialization. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on a specific market segment to develop deep expertise and offer unparalleled value. Mark highlights that understanding your niche’s unique needs and language can significantly boost client trust and satisfaction. This targeted approach differentiates an agency from its competitors and drives sustainable growth and long-term success.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Mark Bealin, Founder and CEO of SearchLab, to discuss building a leading digital agency through niche mastery. They explore the role of mentorship in scaling a business, the impact of niche specialization on client relationships, and the strategies for maintaining growth and honoring team legacies.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mentions

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments

“One of my favorite things I ever did was I volunteered to be an EO Accelerator coach.”
“This is a good marketing lesson. It helps to start with a small number anytime you want to triple things, you know.”
“We had seven; now there are 21 by the end of the year. So, it’s been great.”
“We make sure that Google doesn’t just spend all your money.”
“How do I give him a legacy moving forward?… If you’re a new employee to SearchLab, part of your onboarding is to learn about this honor.”

Action Steps

Join a business accountability group to fast-track growth and benefit from peer support: Engaging with like-minded entrepreneurs fosters accountability and encourages actionable steps toward scaling your business.
Focus on cultivating long-term, mutually beneficial relationships in every business interaction: Building meaningful connections can result in a loyal client base and collaborative opportunities that fuel sustainable growth.
Identify and double down on your most profitable and enjoyable niches: Streamlining your offerings allows you to become an expert in your field, which can attract a specific and loyal customer base.
Implement a referral program that rewards and encourages partners to mutually enhance each other’s businesses: A strategically designed referral program can increase your reach and credibility within your network.
Regularly review and optimize PPC campaigns to ensure you’re not wasting resources on irrelevant traffic: Being vigilant about negative keywords and ad placements can significantly increase the ROI and effectiveness of your paid marketing efforts.

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Mark Bealin of SearchLab. You can check him out searchlabdigital.com. Mark, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. This is part of kind of the EO series / agency series. I had Anthony Standifer “How To Start a Beauty Brand From Scratch”. That was a really good one. I had Kevin Hundal, “Delegate, Elevate, Transform: Unlocking EOS” that was a good one. You’re smiling because I know you know these guys. We had “Giving to Your Best Business Relationships” with Andrea Herrera and also “Leveraging Local Expertise for Worldwide Business Growth” with Cameron Heffernan. And I want to give a shout out to Bo Patel. Bo Patel’s a good friend, colleague and I know you know Bo really well, Mark. And he said, You must, must, must have Mark on you. I’ve thought about having you on for for a number of years. I just never reached out. So thank you, Bo. He runs xtechenergy.com. They’re an energy efficiency company specializing in LED lighting, EV charger installation, solar installation, and much, much more. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Mark, we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run all over the place to make it happen so the host and the company can develop amazing relationships and create amazing content and do just that and show up for the interview. For me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I’ve found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people in companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you definitely should mark it as a podcast. We’ll talk about it. And if you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more, or email support@rise25.com. And I’m excited to introduce Mark Bealin. He’s the Founder and CEO of SearchLab. SearchLab is a digital marketing agency focused on local SEO and PPC. He actually started it back in 2017 as a side gig, right? So picture a full time job, working nights and weekends in addition to all those hours, in addition to a growing young family, and it grew. SearchLab won numerous awards. They’ve been on the Inc 5000 list three times. He’s also active in a few boards, including EO Chicago, where one of his goals is to grow the Accelerator program. So Mark, thanks for joining me.

Mark Bealin 3:07

I’m really happy to be on. Thank you for that kind introduction.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 3:10

So we’ll get to SearchLab and what you do. But EOA has a special place in your heart, and it relates to SearchLab, so talk about that on your journey.

Mark Bealin 3:23

Yeah. So I think what I would say is I was part of this group EO for I started in 2019 and I really loved it. One of my favorite things I ever did was I volunteered to be an EO Accelerator coach. So to give people a sense of I should back up and explain what the program is. So to be a member of EO, you have to have a business that has revenue over a million dollars. And so there are some businesses that that’s that’s more than they have. They they have between, you know. So what we did is we created a program for businesses with 250,000 you have to have some revenue. $250,000 of revenue up to 999,999 with a fierce desire to scale like, that’s, that’s really all we’re looking for. I get questions a lot of people like, is it for service based businesses? Is it for manufacturers, products, businesses, whatever it’s it really doesn’t matter, as long as you have a fierce desire to grow. The whole program is designed to help people like, double and triple their business, because it’s not so if you’re just sort of in a lifestyle business, or you want to incrementally grow, it really wouldn’t. It wouldn’t make sense. Like the whole program would make sense. So I started coaching. I have a background I don’t know, like, if you even know this, but I have a background.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:36

I do for many years. Actually, I was surprised when I saw that, yeah, I think it was like, I don’t know if it was 10 years, but it was, it was a long time.

Mark Bealin 4:45

I think in total, it was 10 years, yeah, so eight years at Ignatius, and then one year at U &f D, and then I was back last year a little bit. So, yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 4:54

You did a talk, actually, Mark, you know, I did, I did my research. But how you talked about. Out in the championship. How you discovered if the running back was in a certain position the quarterback, if they were running or passing? So you did your homework when you were later coaching, yeah?

Mark Bealin 5:11

So I always we would do a million tricks like that, yeah? Like, I have stories at the galore. So I have this real passion for coaching that’s like, what I love. And so this just was, like putting two passions together. You have the entrepreneurs who I tell people all the time, I can have a conversation with an entrepreneur all the time. You know, it ruins conversations with my friends and neighbors, because I find entrepreneurs a lot more interesting than, you know, everyone else. And I’m always like the first one who wants to leave the I used to be. I’m super extroverted, but I used to be, you know, I’ll stay and talk to anybody for now. I’m like, let’s get over. Let’s get home, you know, I want to be down talking to the, you know, whatever, the friends and so anyway, I loved it, and I watched these really gutsy early stage growth, stage professionals, you know, languish and struggle, and then they’d get a little momentum going. And I’ve had two, had two people who graduated into EO, and so that was like doing backflips, you know, I was so happy, and I just got so much energy out of this program. And I then got approached to run it. So I was, now I’m on the board, and it is, my job is to grow the accelerator program, and we’ve been able to triple the size of it. So it’s been, it was, it helps anytime. This is a good marketing lesson. It helps to start with a small number anytime you want to triple things, you know.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 6:35

So now we have three.

Mark Bealin 6:40

We had seven, another 21 by the end of the year. So it was, it was great. And I just get so much value out of working with this, this cohort. And the thing that you you realize, you know, a certain point, my business is really pretty established. There’s a decent rainy day fund. There’s the sort of normal business things that you have, operating expenses out certain period of time, access to capital if we need it. These are people who are very much hanging out like they’re doing all the jobs they’re trying to get. And I loved it. I love that phase of the business. Just the grit that they get. The people have, they screw up a lot of things, and you know, you’re pulling for them. And then to see some some success stories out of it has been super, super rewarding for me. And I just, I love, I love being around entrepreneurs. And so if I can help people, you know, for me, the, you know, to make a short story long, I started like I had partners in my first agency in 2009 you know, it was a moonlighting gig, but it was technically, I had a company as well, so, but I was, I started in 2009 I didn’t really cross the million dollar mark till 2018 says nine years. And I just tell people, this is a lot of this is a story of suffering like it just when you’re to blow a million dollars, it’s just like you have no real employees, you’re doing everything. You kind of have to no processes or anything like that. I really could have shortened that considerably had I known about a program like EOA.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 8:13

What would you at the time knowing what you know now back to that first one.

Mark Bealin 8:17

Well, here’s the biggest thing. So they call it an accountability group for a reason, I would say my biggest flaw was that I love the freedom, and I loved, you know, not not having a boss and all that stuff. What I didn’t love, what I wasn’t thriving at, was I could say I was going to do something, and then didn’t do it. Nobody really caught me right? Like it was no there’s no boss. And so when you get into eoA, you get into an accountability group, and you say, you know, the coach is going to encourage you to share what some challenge you have in your business. At the end of the meeting, he’s going to make you make a commitment to the group that you’re going to do in the next month. And that could be as wide as your imagination, right? Read this book. Or hey, you’ve been talking about your director robs for the last three meetings. You got to take a take an action here, either put them on an improvement plan or fire them. There was one time where I told somebody they needed to start paying themselves because they were not paying themselves. You know, you need to put yourself on payroll by the next month. Pay. Have a paycheck. All of it is really rewarding, because what would have happened to me was I would have actually felt peer pressure to do the things that I said, and instead, I could just there were things that I knew the right thing to do, and not a month went by, not a few weeks went by, like years would go by, where I would just, I’m a compulsive people pleaser. I would just like, let I like. I had eight years in a business with business partners. I had three good years. You know, that means there were five knocks of good years. And so I knew what was going to happen. Like, I think they knew it was going to happen, but we liked each other, friends or whatever, and it just, there was no accountability. So.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 9:59

What were some of the lessons you learned at that agency that you then brought to SearchLab digital? Because obviously you grew very quickly at SearchLab digital.

Mark Bealin 10:13

Yeah, a few things. I learned. A lot of really dumb lessons. I learned a lot of things not to do, like, Don’t, finance 101 things. Learn lessons the hard way. Don’t, don’t after you take money in, don’t pull all of it out every month. Like, have you know, I learned a lot about just, like, hard lessons about finances, making sure that you had money, stayed away, stashed away.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 10:41

What do you when the you know, for an agency or for the EOA, what kind of reserves do you recommend someone have in like, as far as months go?

Mark Bealin 10:53

For me, this is what I would recommend as a coach. I think the the call it core capital, I think you should have two months of expenses saved and no debt. And if you have, if you have no debt and two months of expenses, you’re in pretty good shape. And you probably should have access to to a line of credit if you’re if you’re able to and particularly that applies to agencies like mine, I think it’s more valuable advice people who are in different kinds of businesses that that may not work, you know, you I see people who sell products, they they need to juice their their their line of credit all the time. But for people who are in professional services agency, I think two months of expenses and no debt is a good rule of thumb. And, you know, I, I think at that point you can become more opportunistic.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 11:45

You mentioned two mistakes, but I know you did a lot of things for growth. What helped move the needle from a growth standpoint with SearchLab?

Mark Bealin 11:58

So there’s multiple stories here. I think there’s, there’s like three phases. At the beginning stages we were, and this is what I did in my first agency, evolving. So we just kind of continued the same blueprint we I started doing this in 2007 and so there was this thing that was happening where people were leaving print media and finding digital media. And it was such an easy sell, right? You would go spend a third of what you’re spending with the freaking, you know, yellow pages with me, and I’ll give you a much better return. And we could really, there was two and seven. There were few enough people in here where you could really make that kind of a promise, like it was, it was really, it was working very well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 12:43

I knew someone mark that, um, they would take the yellow pages. They’d rip out the page of the person with the full page, direct mail the person totally and and write the offer on there, right?

Mark Bealin 12:56

So that’s, that’s pretty much, pretty much. I mean, that’s a more sophisticated playbook, but we were doing the same thing, right? So we would do, though, my heck was, I would go to the person who was selling for the Yellow Pages, right? And I would say, Look, you got relationships, but you don’t get a product anymore. I’ve got a product. I could use a few more relationships. So we paid a lot of commission to print Yellow Pages in particular, would print media folks to convert them over. So that was really great. That worked. That worked really well. At the same time, I was doing an amazing amount of like, just hustling. I would just go to networking things I would, you know, go to every cocktail hour I could. I tried to make friends. I tried to establish a reputation in Chicago, mainly. And with that allowed me to do I set up like a pretty sophisticated referral program with IT companies and web developers and design folks. And it was a lot of striking out, but then if you hit it was all upside. So it was great. And it was kind of a fun way to grow too. I liked it. You got to, you know, you got to talk to people a lot and and and learn from them. So you kind of got, I kind of got some free advice along the way, while I was also growing my business, which was really cool and helpful. So those were kind of the first two things we did. And I kind of equate it too. If you ever see like a rocket go off, and then they have to jettison the thing at a certain point, like just drops off. Well, at a certain point, we became a real company. We had employees, and we had, you know, rules and stuff like that, and core values and, you know, purpose, cause and passion for doing what we did. And these yellow page sales reps were not like exactly, you know, ideal fits. They weren’t part of the company, right? They were not rubbing elbows with my teammate. We’re in the trenches doing all this stuff. And a certain point, what we realized is we were just we bought this many this this book. Business. And that was it. It was over, you know, so now we’re still paying the commission, but my people kind of own the relationship. There’s a cultural divide between the the rank and file and those people. And so it really became Okay, it’s time to time to pivot and become a real business. At that point, we got scary. We went and really, what I started to do was attend conferences, speak at conferences, and then hire people who were really good at conferences. And so once we did that, it went crazy, like, really, as soon as we hired Greg Gifford.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 15:32

I was gonna say, Greg Gifford’s everywhere.

Mark Bealin 15:34

Yeah, as soon as we hired Greg, and in the December 2019, it went crazy. And then we ran. We were growing really fast. And then, boom, covid hits. There were no conferences. So that’s that stuck. But hired Greg, hired Mark, who was a PPCHero. We hired Mark in 2020. In 2019 he was number one on PPCHero’s list of the most influential people in PPC and Microsoft’s North American Personality of the Year. So there’s one more you could win. He said he was one, one shy of the Triple Crown, or something like that. But he was, he had appeared, he he died in May, but he had been on the PPCHero list every year since 2015 so he was a rock star, too. So we, I just, like, got really lucky with two hires, basically, and then the speaking started to take care of itself, and we’ve grown like, you know, eight, eight times since, since hiring Greg, pretty much.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 16:29

Yeah, I’m so sorry to hear about Mark, and we will touch on that. But talk about recruiting for a second, you know, because you said, Oh, we got lucky, but I just doubting that statement. What did you do to recruit over what both dynamic, really smart individuals over to SearchLab.

Mark Bealin 16:51

It’s funny, there’s a this will be a plug for you at some point. So, Greg truly was a struggle block. Greg’s in one category, and then I’ll tell you why. It’s a plug for you and for the other two. In the middle of the night, I had my third baby, so it’s just one of those times was my turn to get up and feed the crying child. So I was doing that, and I was scrolling through Twitter, and Britney Muller, who’s very well known in SEO said, if anybody’s looking for a local SEO, Greg Gifford’s on the market, here’s his email address. And I was the right amount drowsy and the right amount courageous, and I just said, Hey, you know, we do local SEO. You want to talk? And I knew how, like, I knew how good he was and everything like that. So we talked, and it was sort of a ho hum conversation. And then the only thing that was interesting was, I was speaking at a conference called state of search, and he was keynoting the same conference. So I said, when I’m in town, will you get a, get a get lunch with me? And so we, we got a burger. And legitimately, you know, I don’t know what his exact start date is, it felt like, from that point on, we’ve just been working together ever since, you know, it was like, it just clicked, like, immediately, where what he was really excited about, I was really excited about, he has this like, attention to detail and anal retentiveness, where I’m really, like, whatever the opposite of attention to detail is, and laid backness That gelled well, so it just clicks really, really fast. Mark was interesting. And my director of SEO now it was interesting, both of them I met on my podcast.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 18:30

So you had them on?

Mark Bealin 18:32

Correct. Yeah. So I had them on my podcast, so it it was interesting. I had Mark on and the day he got fired. So WordStream is this huge company in PPC, they got acquired by Gannett. It was a horrible acquisition. Then they ran into covid, did a big layoff, and so I got, like an hour before I was supposed to talk to Mark. And this is like one where you, I can tell you did some you did a lot of research, whatever. I had done a ton of research on Mark, because it was a big interview. He just come off this huge year. I loved how he blogged, too. I thought he was really smart, and he had access to huge data sets, so he had interesting case studies. So about an hour before, Greg messaged me and said, you know, heads up, Mark got laid off, and he may not show, he may not show. So I was like, All right, well, that’s fine. And it was like, five minutes past the time, and I was like, I guess then he came on and we, I thought he was hilariously funny, and it was the same kind of thing. We just gel. And so I’ve had two leaders on my team who I met on my podcast, which is fine, and I love it worked out well. So, I mean, it’s another you think about podcasts for a number of reasons. Name of the game for me is get talented people.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 19:49

We have a number of people. Yeah, use it for, I mean, obviously building amazing relationships, but that can span with partnerships, clients and hiring. Right, totally, you know, in addition to professional, you know, development, but, yeah, I mean, I kind of joke around, but I’m not really joking Mark, when I say, like, every great relationship for me tracks back to a podcast episode. And except for my wife, I did not meet her on a podcast. But like John, my business partner, yeah, through a podcast. You know some of my you know my mentors through a podcast. You know, indirectly or directly, so I’m, I’m with you. I love it. Yeah, you talked about, there’s a couple things you said, I want to unpack. You talked about a referral program that worked really well. I’m curious now, you still have a referral program in place, and how do you run it?

Mark Bealin 20:42

We do. It’s less, less of an emphasis now, and so we’re, my opinion, especially in the early stages, was always, I don’t care if I make any money from, you know, sending you business, and I don’t care, you know. So I was always comfortable with the other person leading the dance, right? If they wanted 10% kickback, or if they wanted, you know, some, some edible range, I don’t care. Like, I was covered with them leading the dance what they wanted. And for me, it was, I was totally fine with, if you sent me business, I was gonna make my license mission to send you something back, right? Like anything. It was an opportunity. So we diligently kept track of it, just like your we had you have, like, a HubSpot or CRM for prospective new sales. We would have a visual where you could see my referral partners and who, yeah, and if they were helping me out, it was, like, my life’s mission to make sure that I I got something back for them and and so it was. It was really this virtuous cycle that worked really well. Ultimately, what we found was just like, there was a lot of work in terms of getting the right kinds of partners right. So we had, we would have people who you have a lot of conversations without a lot of actually it happening. And we fell in love with conferences in the rest of history like it was kind of it became focus is really important. And our focus went to conferences and trade shows.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 22:11

Relating to the conference. You have your own conference. And the other thing I want to talk about was niche. Right in the beginning, you’re networking. You’re probably talking to everyone. Talk about how you came to your niche. We haven’t talked about your niche yet, but this relates to your conference. People can check out the conference. It’s ignitionautomotiveconference.com. How did you eventually come to your niche of car dealership.

Mark Bealin 22:41

We’re almost like a niche within a niche, right? So it’s really, really specific. So there’s something called Local SEO, which is different than traditional SEO. Basically, we look at this algorithm that anytime you have local intent in your search, Google uses this local algorithm, boring, boring, boring. Anyway, we became really nerded out on that algorithm. And so we found that you said it so well the backup. We would do web development for clients. We did social media marketing for clients. We would do design work for clients. We would do, I had a client. He’s still my client, so I can tell this story. But he said, you know, Mark, if I asked you to retell my roofie tickets, we did everything, right? So it was, I would say yes, and then figure out how to do it, you know, afterwards.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:30

Like we have a telling company, honey.

Mark Bealin 23:32

Yeah, exactly no problem. Like, we can do it yes. And then we figured out how to do it later. And it was some des like, I’ll tell you, you know, that’s that’s all well and good with, like, certain things, but like, one time we knocked out a client’s emails, right? Because I didn’t really know how to do it. I kind of thought I knew how to do it, and I could figure it out, this is not something to play with. So there were some bad stories too. What we figured out eventually, I started to work with coaches, and coaches do a really good job of, like, kind of getting you, hey, let’s figure out who your most profitable clients, and kind of you’re, I can, you can miss a forest from the trees sometimes. So you’re having this, this really smart person who gave me some perspective, and we just kind of looked and said, what are our favorite clients? Oh, they’re all on local SEO. What are our most profitable clients? Oh, they’re all in local SEO. I think we should just be local SEO, and then it gives you an expertise, right? You’re not everything to everybody. You’re an expert in something. So you can now make case studies about your local SEO work. You can speak at conferences about your local SEO work. You’re more interesting as a personal brand because you have this niche expertise. So we started to do that. That got me, they got me starting to speak at conferences. And then I met Greg. The real way with automotive Greg had already been in, it is a fact of the matter. And so once, once Greg got on board, we were, we were, we’re still a totally, you know, if you’re a local SEO type, client, doctor, lawyer, trades, people. We’d love to work with you, but it just exploded. It went crazy with cardio, and he, he could tell you some things, like, he was kind of unshackled from things there. This is really inside baseball stuff, but like, there’s something called, like, you’re in the OEM programs where he was before we were we are not. And so we can really do it whatever we want.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 25:26

Those are some of, like, the manufacturing companies?

Mark Bealin 25:29

Yeah. So if you’re, if you’re in, in their programs there, there’s certain rules you have to follow. You kind of have to take the client. You can’t be like, you know, I already have your competitor. I can’t, I can’t work with you. And so as soon as he got in there, automotive took off, and then we have just really talented salespeople who’ve been in there. You know, it starts to take on a life of its own. What I would say is the focus allowed us to go very fast, and it’s very valuable. All it is for your clients, they don’t want it’s annoying to be like, there’s a lingo to everything. So when they say, you know, it’s my how’s my fix ops doing, you know, you got to know what they’re talking about. Or they say, like, you know, this is a buy here, pay here store. I got to know what they’re talking about. And there’s a whole you know, you got to know the models. You got to know what they’re selling. You got to get used to, you know, is this? Is this going to sell a bunch of trucks? Is this going to sell a bunch of sedans, whatever it is, and what differentiates the brands? And so we have this expertise. It’s really valuable. You know, you mentioned before, and touching this with Greg’s going out with a study. We’re partners with a company called place the scout. I think it’s gonna be the largest local SEO study of its kind ever. It’s gonna have like 19,000 dealerships involved, because places scout can do that kind of data set at work. And so we’ll be able to tell car dealers here’s what the best you know websites that are all ranking in the top 10 are doing. Are you doing that and and so you just, it takes on a life of its own. Jeremy was like, You’re, one minute, you’re you’re like, oh so happy. We got some cardio clients. The next you’re, now you’re an expert. If you, if you do it. The other thing that we did that was really big, it was a really big deal, is we won a US search award for a car dealer. So in 2021 I think we won for Tom kettle, Kia and Best Local SEO campaign. That’s, there’s a bunch of awards that you can, just like, pay for. The one that you want in my business is US Search Awards. So it was a big deal when we got that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 27:35

It reminds me of a story Mark I had Dan Zawacki, from the Lobster Gram. And he wanted one of these dealerships as a client, and he walked away with a Lex, I think it was a Lexus, because he’s like, I’ll send these to all of your clients, or whatever, he said, all of your best clients, and you just give me the brand new Lexus. So I think he did, he did a deal there that was, that was interesting. But I love what you said about thinking through the most profitable clients. And not only did you niche in like a service with local SEO, but niching in an industry with the car dealerships. You know what made you decide to start your own conference? I know that’s been a great channel and Avenue from authority expertise, and you and Greg have spoken at a lot of conferences, so it’s a big undertaking. Why start Ignition Automotive Conference?

Mark Bealin 28:37

Yeah. So what you’ve mentioned some US folks. So I know Dan, Kevin Hundal, is another one. So part of doing your EOS work is you come with your purpose, cause, or passion. And so our purpose, cause and passion is to is to cultivate long term mutually beneficial relationships. So it’s not to do well for car dealerships. It’s not to do well with but we want to cultivate long term mutually beneficial relationships that. So that’s how we view things, for our clients, our employees, our vendors, everything else. And so when you think about your purpose, cause and passion, how can you use that? How do you actually use that as a tactic in your business? You say, you know, is this, uh, is this viable? Like, if I was just, could I go be a debt collector with cultivate long term, mutually beneficial relationships? I don’t think so, but I could start a conference, because what that is, is these are all our friends, like the people who are speaking here are buddies of ours. We vet them. We know them. They’re definitely friends with Greg. The attendees are going to be mostly my clients and prospective clients, and we’re either friends with them or hoping to become friends with them. And so if I look at it through a purpose, cause and passion lens, this isn’t such a dramatic shift. You know it would be to go, Hey, you’re a. Do the market now you vent coordinator, that’s pretty well, but what we care about most is long term, mutual, beneficial relationships. We can serve people with this conference the same way we can with an agency that purpose calls and passion. And so we, we’ve been to a bunch we, you know, one of the things that happens is we, you can see, we we put a bunch of things. We hated conferences.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 30:25

So if you’re listening to the audio only, we’re looking at the Ignition on one of the conference and you can see no vendors or booths. Yeah, our speakers were invited who didn’t pay us to speak, and no pointless hype.

Mark Bealin 30:40

Yeah.. So we’re not, we really don’t want it to be pushy thing. We don’t want it to be where anybody has to pay to get on the stage, which is, which is fairly common, especially in automotive. And, you know, we don’t want to be super promotional. Come here and actually, like, learn something about what we do. And so it’s a really push, push for education. And what I think was, was really great, was we went to, we go to all these shows. We go, isn’t this, isn’t it tacky how they have, you have to, like the people run after you with the business card? Isn’t it tacky how this, this presenter is always, you know, isn’t it lame how you have to pay to be at this, this show, or whatever? And so he said, let’s, let’s we the working title for this, when we were trying to come up with a name, was the unconference, like it was, it was the, the the opposite of what everything else was. But that’s, that’s a bridge too far. It’s still, we still love conferences, so we want to keep what we what we love, but it’s about doing everything different than the ones we really dislike, who’s a fit for to come to this conference. So I think it is designed for automobile dealer, you know, marketing managers, general managers and dealer principals. But we have a huge intention of just digital marketers who want to come and learn. So there’s, there’s a group in Dallas called DFW SEM, which is a very vibrant network, so we usually will get a big contingent out of that. So if you’re, if you’re an up and coming Digital Marketer, and you want a really cheap, inexpensive conference that’s just full of information, it’s not about, you know, trying to make a ton of money or anything like that, this is a really good place to start, and you’ll have exposure, probably, to the to the speakers and to the guests that you wouldn’t have at a larger event.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 32:25

So I encourage you know whenever you’re listening to this, there’ll probably will be a next conference, so you can check out ignitionautomotiveconference.com. I want to get people to get a sense Mark of what you do as a company. And I know you do a lot of things, but there’s specifically you did a rebrand for an auto dealership which was acquired, which seems like a pretty complex project. And again, if you’re listening the audio, I’m gonna as Mark as you talk. I want to kind of poke around SearchLab digital here.

Mark Bealin 32:58

Please do. Yeah, so we have, they’ve been a long term client of ours. They have three stores in Northeast Ohio, put it that way, and so they’ve been, we great results for them. They did, they did. They were going. Things were going swimmingly. And then I got a call from the dealer principal. He said, listen, keep this quiet, but we’re going to sell, we’re about to sell, we’re about to have somebody else. I want you to be aware of it and start laying the groundwork before it happens, because I know an SEO that can be helped. And it is. It’s brutal. Like, when you hear that it’s and you have a lot of success, you’re like, Oh, man. Like.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 33:38

Is it kind of like starting from scratch.

Mark Bealin 33:41

It’s not like starting from scratch, but you’re, you typically were like, expect best case scenario, you’re going to lose 10% of your traffic. And that’s best. That’s if we do well, if we screw up, and there’s a decent chance you could screw up, then you could lose more than that, or you could, you could see, you know, if you leave this to just your web developers, like they, one of the things we really did for them was they, they’re with a web developer that we recommend. And I like these guys a lot, but they’re just not SEOs, and they were going to wipe out, you know, tons of content that we want to transfer it over, or they’re going to charge them an arm and a leg. And we said, like, no, it’s just a, you know, we understand the expertise of it, so save them some money as well. And, yeah, that was the beginning of 2023, and rather than and it was starting from a pretty high point, rather than that, going backwards the I’ve just checked with my team to make sure before I say this, but that the traffic to that website is up 86% since the conversion. So instead of going down even 10% we’ve been able to manage it and really lift their organic traffic, their leads and everything else we have. More importantly, I think you know, numbers are numbers, but we have expanded our relationship with that dealership group so we have more of their stores. We have more service offerings for them. And they’re spending more money with us, which is, you know, when I talk about mutually beneficial, long term relationships, that’s that’s it, right? Like we want to make more money, but we want to do it because we’ve done good job for our clients.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 35:12

Mark, what the transition for a second? Because, um, and how you handle that transition with the new owner? Because I have seen the opposite happen, where a company gets acquired and they bring in all their people and then fire whoever agencies they’re working with. So talk about managing that relationship, the new relationship with acquisition.

Mark Bealin 35:35

Yeah, that’s, that’s, we have the same situation, right? So like, like anybody else, when we hear our point of contact is leaving, that’s like danger Will Robinson like red, red flags go up. A bunch of, bunch of people get involved, and everything like that. I think it’s really hard if you only have a relationship with the one person, the point of contact, that point of contact leaves, you’re in a lot of trouble. You’re hoping. Hope is not a good strategy. What can be really helpful is, if you have worked your way up the food chain, you have three four people in the organization. The odds of all of them leaving are slim. And if you can make all three or four of them say the same thing, search lab is awesome. Your chances are much better. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to happen, but I think when one of the things I challenge my team to do a lot is move up the food chain. So if we get a, you know, marketing manager, or sometimes a digital marketing manager in a dealership, that’s great. We need to make sure that they’re extremely happy and treat them like this is the Ritz Carlton, right? But start to try and get to know the general manager, try to get to know the dealer principal, see if you can get solve problems beyond just our little silo. And even if it doesn’t make me money, if it solves a problem for the dealership, we’re stickier. And so I think that that has been one piece of advice I would give you. The other thing is to have the sort of mechanisms where you go. This is a problem. We better not just leave it to, you know, Stephanie Patrick on that, that kind of they’re great, but they need some help right now, because this just got really, really tricky. And there’s a reason I have a job and I need to be involved in these kinds of things. And so it’s about running to that problem and not and recognizing that it is a challenge. So when, when we see that happen, it’s, it’s, it’s like, Go put your put your boots and hard hat on. Let’s get to work, because this could be trouble.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:47

Now, I know you help a lot of dealerships. There was a case where you helped a bank in the Northeast, and I know there’s companies listening that you know, I may not be a dealership, but I know a lot of these principles and things that you did to help grow, whether it’s the dealership of the bank, transcend other businesses. So what were some of the things you did with the bank?

Mark Bealin 38:10

Yeah, so there was, this was a huge one. I think we’re gonna win the US Search, where I shouldn’t be so presumptuous, we don’t win. I’m gonna be mad though. You know, in total for 2020, 13. What’s cool about this account is there was, it was only online, and so the only way you can make a deposit was, you know, online. So we ran paid search and paid social ads for it. And I’m trying to remember how much they spent. Basically, it was like a like eighth the ROAs went from $27 to $338 we tracked $89 million of deposits into this account from a bank, from my agency, just doing directly from our work. So not just, Hey, you got a qualified lead, or you got a contact form, straight money, 89 million bucks and and maybe $100,000 of ad spend, or so maybe $100,000 ad spend. So it’s pretty girl loving you. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. So we have a we had a now you have a new niche banks, I know, so let’s see how it goes. So we’re, we loved, you know, it’s so fun, been doing this since 2007 when you have a story like that, and then we’re on a zoom, kind of like I am now, and there’s like, 10 people from the bank, I don’t even, can’t remember everybody’s name, and I’m like, you know, this is a huge deal. And we’re, I’m just there, like a chief High Five officer, and somebody else is presenting this data, and I’m just going, this doesn’t get old, like it’s really fun when you have those moments where you’re just really proud of your team, the accomplishments of what we’ve done.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 39:53

You know, I love that. What were some of the Are there any, I don’t know, tactical things that you. Can share for people out there who are looking to it sounds like there’s a lot of paid related stuff with it. I don’t know if you see some big mistakes on what people do when they’re running, you know, paid traffic.

Mark Bealin 40:13

Oh, yeah, yeah. So it’s Yeah. When I Where do I start? Yeah? Today I don’t like what I’m gonna say. This is gonna make it sound like I’m being mean to Google. Who is my you know, I have a business because of this company, but today, what they’re doing is, why you would hire somebody like me a lot is to make sure that Google doesn’t just spend all your money. And so what we see ourselves as being good stewards of people’s marketing dollars. And if you don’t have somebody who’s watching out for this stuff, Google will spend your money, and they will spend your money on nonsense keywords that are never going to give you business, and they’ll do it. And if you have a problem, they won’t be very helpful. There’s not a customer service who’s gonna and so one of the things I think, in 2024 as we’re filming this, one of our most important jobs, is to make sure that we’re not sending good money after bad and I It’s a strange thing to be so focused on, but I really feel like I’m, you know, consumer advocate for my clients, like, do not show their ad and charge them 20 bucks. For somebody who’s looking for a job, you know, at a car dealership, or somebody who’s looking for, you know, what was the the car in this movie? You know, I don’t need that. You know, you need I want to get I want to get customers, and so I, I would say Google, left to their own devices, will a though, the biggest thing they do is if you’re searching for your brand. So if you had ads and for rise of 25 you know you’re probably going to get that click whether you pay for it or not. So maybe don’t pay for it, or maybe pay a little bit for it, but not a lot. They will charge you every time. If they, if they can, they’ll charge you for for keywords. So a lot of it is about going through. Is there used to be these match types that were really they really meant something. If I say this exact term. I mean, don’t deviate this exact term. Now it’s that term or close variant. And so they’ve given themselves license to spend your money. And that’s what I really would say, is psychologically, I think of it as, how do we protect our clients money and just be good stewards of that money as best we can? Don’t let Google run wild with their budget.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 42:42

Yeah, so maybe not having the correct targeting or the correct keyword, real specific keywords, and people are making mistakes.

Mark Bealin 42:53

Making negatives. So what will happen legitimately? People will have a search term, they’ll say, hey, you know, I want auto mechanic like so there’s auto mechanics in every single one of these things. Auto mechanic is the search term, but if somebody looks for auto mechanic school, we don’t want our ad showing so you need to make that a negative, or you need to do something to modify the keyword so it’s not showing up, because people will click on every time they click on it. It it costs you money, and you’re not an auto mechanic school. You know, you’re just, you’re a cardio so making sure that you’re you’re looking through for negatives is really important as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:31

I want to talk Mark about mentors, and some of your mentors throughout the years that have been influential, because obviously we talked about EOA, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, the Accelerator program. It’s a great place to get mentorship, to get to the next level. And it’s accountability and mentorship. It’s based off of they want to check out Verne Harnish’ book, Scaling Up. I actually did an episode with Vern Harnish. That’s a good episode to check out, too. But the book Scaling Up, and then obviously being a part of Entrepreneurs’ Organization mentorship is important to you. Who are some of the mentors for you that have been influential?

Mark Bealin 44:16

Yeah, it’s, I mean, when I in my first company, I got pretty lucky. And so LocalLaunch! was this company that got acquired by DEX One, and our CEO was a guy named Justin Sanger and the Director of Search is a guy by name Brad Geddes. So Brad Geddes is still among the most famous people in PPC. So I got really good training in how to do this very quickly from Brad and his disciples at LocalLaunch! And so I knew how to I knew how to do this. Well, early Justin was one of the great like you get in a room, he’d have everybody in the company, and he’d give a speech about what we were doing. He just would present a vision for what we were doing. And. That would get you really excited. I mean, you run to your desk and start doing things. So I really began to learn from Justin, the power of a leader telling everybody where we’re going. And so that was really helpful. As I developed in my career as a guy named Andy Crestodina, who owns Orbit Media. So, Andy’s just so generous to me, and not, not just to me, to everybody else. There’s a My favorite story about Andy, a guy named Chris Madden was quoting Andy. So this is like a third, fourth person or something like that. But he said, you know, going around Orbit Media, he’d be like, Yeah, everybody here is just so nice. Like, everyone’s so nice. And Andy stopped and said, Yeah, it’s good business. And it’s true. You know, people like to they don’t like to be around jerks, and so it’s good business. It was like, I was like, yeah, that is true. It’s not just like, you don’t have to be a tyrant, you know, you can be. It’s good business to be kind to people, and to, you know, ask them how they’re doing, and to, you know, to actually give a crap about your employees. So I really learned a lot from Andy, but that was the, one of the main things, was like, you don’t have to be the picture of that CEO behind their table in a movie or something like that. It’s not. It was never going to be me. And so it gave me a little bit of a confidence that this is a company I really do admire. And then I really would would say two people, Taylor Cimala and George Zlatin own a company called Digital Third Coast. When I first started SearchLab. So I worked with them at LocalLaunch!, 19 years ago. And when I started SearchLab, I asked them to have, you know, drinks and dinner and stuff like that. And we went out and hit it off, and they were just like, dying to help me, when, really, we’re, yeah, we’re friendly competitors still to this day, but I owe them a lot, because they were like, first people to say, hey, you should join EO. And I didn’t even know what it was. And really, after it got explained to me, I I definitely didn’t know what I was signing up for. I could tell and it was just kind of like, you need friends. Sometimes you just go, like, just, trust me, just do it. And you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna love it. You’re gonna take, take to it like a duck to water. Just go do it. And I did it, and I’d like, drank the Kool Aid hard, and I loved every bit of it. But I owe those guys a lot for number one, you can have competitors that you’re you don’t have to be like at each other’s throat all the time, you know. And really, it’s been a great relationship. I mean, we, till this day, I don’t think we’ve ever had an argument or a bad word for each other. It’s all helpful. It’s all supportive. When they do well, I’m really happy for them. And we don’t compete, like, they’re not really an automobile we only compete on, like, a little bit of stuff now, but they didn’t have to do that. Yeah, it could have been like, hell with you. You’re coming from my market share or whatever. Like they were, they were really cool. And I that was it made it really big. Again, back to me too.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 47:56

What I have found with quote, unquote competitors is when I’ve dug deeper, we’re actually not competitors like, you know, there’s certain services that we do different or there’s certain niches that we really focus in on. It sounds like the same. It’s like, okay, you’re going off and doing cart more car dealerships may they’re maybe going off and doing something else. So at first glance, I found it seems like a competitor, but maybe not as much when you when we’ve dug below the surface.

Mark Bealin 48:26

That’s so true. Yeah, so I, I love those guys. It’s been really, it’s been really fun. Like, I feel badly for people who are in agency life post covid, because there was this period of time it was very social, right? Like you would go to work, and then my office, we’ve talked about my office in Ravenswood. It was to the north of me was dovetail brewery. To the south of me was beguil Brewery. And if you walked into one of those after work hours, you’re you were going to run into somebody who owned an agency, and it was just an awesome time to be like. So there were social things that would go on, and I loved that period of time, because we just had so much. I feel like I learned how to be kind of a T shaped marketer in that year, where I knew a lot about SEO, but then I learned a little bit about content marketing, a little bit about web development, a little bit about copywriting, a little bit about digital PR and all this other stuff. So it was really a fun time to to be coming up. Now it’s a you have to be much more intentional about making those relationships. It just happened organically back in the day.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 49:33

So, Mark, I have a last, I’m not gonna say last question, but last series of questions. And I really want to talk about, you talk about purpose, cause, passion, and around about Mark Irvine in and honoring his legacy. Can you talk about Mark for a second?

Mark Bealin 49:53

Yeah. So Mark’s, you know, he, his professional accolades are unbelievable. So he’s 35 when he died, he turned 35 March 2024 and so most of the stuff happened before his 30th birthday was just crazy. And you know, he was, yeah, he just, he was just a rock star, of a of a personality, and he was hilariously funny. So we had so much fun working together. We worked really long hours and laughed a lot. Yeah, he had his really goofball relationship with our VP of Sales, Don Ramsey, and they would just make fun of each other all time. It was really funny, and we had a great time. His time as our director of PPC or or Vice President of Search, our PPC division grew 610% so he was a absolutely sensational like, made my life a lot better. So when he died, it was devastating. And, you know, we talked to, I still have a hard time talking about it, but we, we talked to the team, and one of the things I’ve really focused on is, how do I give him a legacy moving forward? So there’s a few things we’re doing so far. The first is, Mark started a program at our at our company, for a core values award winner. So each quarter, a member of the team would be it’s a employee led effort, so you have to be nominated by another teammate, somebody who really exemplified the core values of the company would win an award and be acknowledged on our state of the company address. And so Mark led that whole effort, selected the winners, read through all the submissions, and it was everyone’s favorite part of the of the state of the company address every time. And, you know, just really good stuff for morale in the company. So what we decided to do is each, each person who wins that core values award will be able to go to Boston, where Mark is from, and we’ll go and we’ll have kind of a Mark Irvine day. Mark was a famously like, he was a night owl. So he will start the day at like, 10am it won’t it won’t be early. We like Dunkin Donuts coffee. We’ll do some service work. Mark was very interested in animals, and in particular, penguins. So we’ll do some service work related around that. We’ll have lunch at Chili’s because he loved terrible food, and then I don’t mind Chili’s huge, huge fan. And then at night, we’ll get together with his hopefully they’ll agree to this, but we’d like to get together with his husband, or his husband and his his mom, and just tell stories about Mark. And so if you’re a new employee to SearchLab, part of your onboarding is to learn about this honor. And of the four people who’ve won that core values award, each one will be nominated will be eligible to win the Irvine Award, which would be the highest honor in our company. So that will become a way to really stand out at SearchLab. If you’re an Irvine award winner that really matter, like we want that to be something you take with you, and we don’t have any award like that right now. So this would be, this would be new, and it’d be a way to keep them going. The other thing that we did is, you know, I’m such a big fan of EO, but Mark helped, not just me, but many entrepreneurs really live our dreams. So when there was an opportunity to to name a conference room, like, what you could do is, like, donate some money, and you could get the name of a conference room. So I said, I’ll pay that if you name it Mark Irvine conference room, and where there’s some insignia that says, you know, for a man who helped entrepreneurs live out their dreams, because he really did that for me and for other people as well. So, you know, we’re going to continue to do things for him. It was really important, you know, his at his celebration of life, I talked to his mom, and his mom was worried that, you know, no one remember him like he was, he was gone. So it’s, like, really important in my life that I make sure that that she’s not right after that he is remembered. So he did, he did a lot of a lot for me, and we miss him a lot.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 54:04

You know, Mark, I want to be the first. Thanks for sharing that. I know it’s difficult and it’s pretty fresh, actually, but thank you for sharing that, and hopefully this piece helps him live on a little bit long, you know, longer too. And that’s what I love about this, is it helps leave a legacy beyond ourselves. So I just want to thank you for sharing your story. SearchLab. Everyone can check out searchlabdigital.com to learn more and Mark, thanks for joining me.

Mark Bealin 54:33

Thank you. Jeremy, this was great. I really enjoyed it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 54:36

Thanks, everyone.

Outro 54:37

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