Internet Marketing Secrets With Internet Wizard AJ Aluthwala

In this fast-paced digital age, having proper internet marketing strategies is a must. You only have a few seconds to get the attention of your audience. Missing that small frame means losing your chance to turn them into customers. Jason Williford explores the best ways to maximize ROI with a strong online presence with AJ Aluthwala, Co-Founder and CEO of KallistoArt. Together, they discuss the impact of implementing SEO to rank higher on Google, integrating direct response marketing principles with internet marketing, and the eight components of a well-designed business website. AJ also shares the most common CRMs mistakes and the usual requests his team gets from their clients.

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Internet Marketing Secrets With Internet Wizard AJ Aluthwala

How To Optimize Your Website, SEO & Follow Up Strategies To Maximize Your ROI With Direct Response Marketing Principles

I got a special guest on this episode, my great friend, Aj Aluthwala. He’s the Cofounder and the CEO of KallistoArt, which is an online marketing company specializing in websites and SEO for small to medium-sized businesses. He’s worked with over 200 companies across the world. KallistoArt was named Upper Tampa Bay’s Chamber of Commerce 2020 Small Business of the Year. Aj has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and North America and visited over fifteen countries around the world. Without further ado, Mr. Aj Aluthwala. How are you doing?

I’m doing great. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a genuine pleasure to be here.

I’m grateful for you to take the time to be on as well. It’s going to be a lot of fun because I want you to speak and tell the readers more about what you do in the digital marketing space then we’ll get rocking.

For those who are reading, I like to call myself a marketing technology strategist. What that means is that my team and I provide online marketing solutions for businesses through high conversion websites. We work on search engine optimization and mobile apps to generate qualified leads to build an engaged audience. As Jason shared with you all, we’ve worked with over 200 companies in the past, produced twenty cloud-based systems, and built over 40 mobile apps. When I see something, I know how to make it better online, and it will get you the biggest bang for your buck.

That’s amazing. I can’t wait to dig into this stuff because it is so crucial for real estate agents, lead generation, lead conversion, and the power of a magnificent website to even a good website. That’s an opportunity for people to miss out on a ton of income. The difference between even a good site to a great is substantial when you’re looking at it as a potential missed opportunity for your business. Not everyone knows what CRM and SEO are. Can you give us a simple definition of what a CRM is and what it does for people?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management software. It’s pretty much a database. It’s a platform that can capture all the leads which you have generated through online marketing, cold calling, mailers, in-person networking, and word of mouth. Rather than having all this lead information in an Excel sheet, because this is how we used to do it back in the day and keep notes, we throw it into a system. That way, when you do follow-ups, you can leave notes for yourself or for your team members. Also, you can create tasks for yourself to follow up in maybe in 2, 3, or 4 weeks, 2 or 3 months, 1 or 10 years.

Follow-up is so important. We all know we’ve spent the time getting these leads. We worked very hard to get these leads but if there’s no follow-up, you pretty much burn through your effort, and money, and you’re not going to see the results. It’s extremely important to have a CRM system that works for you.

You probably have heard about Salesforce HubSpot. There are other good CRM such as Zoho, Pipedrive, and Freshworks. These are some of the names which are out there, and they’re not expensive. I would highly recommend anyone reading to get a CRM for your practice because your brokerage will flourish when you have that CRM.

I do want to hit on something quick. It’s a reminder for me of when we started talking is how powerful you are in direct response marketing. You’ve learned from some of the best in the world as well as I have from some of the best direct response marketers. One thing you said that stuck out and reminded me of what Jim Rohn says, “There are pennies in a sale, and there’s a fortune in the follow-up.” You nailed that with having an appropriate CRM where your database lives that you can go back to the market with text campaigns, email campaigns, ringless voicemail, dials, etc. That was magnificent. Thank you. Going into SEO, what is your simple definition of SEO?

Internet Marketing: Use your Google My Business profile to talk about your services, what makes you unique, and what you can bring to the table, all while incorporating a lot of related keywords.

For those who don’t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. They are talking about the world of Google. When people are serious about spending money, what do they do? They go in and they look at Google. For example, you need an electrician or a plumber at your house or a CPA. If you don’t know whom to ask, the place you ask is Google. Everything you can do in Google to make sure that you are seen is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. That’s the simplest definition I can give.

You don’t want to be on page two of Google.

You don’t want to be on page ten either. You want to be on top of Google. Page one is a great place. We’ve had folks in highly competitive industries such as the legal industry. Obviously, real estate is a very competitive industry as well. The legal industry will move people who are not even in the top 100 to the number 1 position locally in their local market because they were after the local market. For real estate agents, I also believe that the local market is extremely important. People always go and search for someone who is local or your neighbor. It’s important that we get shown in Google when someone is searching for your name.

Tech can get complicated. I know it can for me. What I do is I don’t look for how to do it. I look for the who to do it when it comes to stuff like building platforms, websites, CRMs, and putting all that stuff together. I’m not saying that I could not learn how to do it, but I don’t have all the time and years of experience like yourself as. What are strategies that you guys take to rank higher on Google?

What I’m going to show you is something even better. I’m going to show a strategy the readers can implement on their own without even having to hire someone like me or my team to do something like this. You have probably heard of the Google My Business Profile. If you haven’t, you can go to Business.Google.com and sign up for your own Google My Business Profile for free.

What Google does is, once you create this profile, they send you a postcard then you get verified. After that, your information is out there. There’s something called a NAP consistency, Name, Address, and Phone number. Whatever the name you have on your website, make sure you have the same name in your Google account as well as all the other social media accounts.

The address, make sure you have the same address everywhere. Phone number, make sure you have the same phone number everywhere. I know that all of you are great at putting Facebook posts and getting creative on Instagram. There’s something called Google Posts as well, which you can do through the Google My Business Profile. A lot of people don’t know about that.

I didn’t know that. Again, I look for the who, not the how.

You go and talk about the services you provide and what’s your uniqueness. What do you bring to the table? If you talk about that, make sure you have a lot of keywords. In your profile, think from the perspective of the people who are searching for your information or the hoop or real estate agent in my area who has shares.

It can be a new construction real estate agent wherever. Use these keywords as you’re creating your Google posts. One thing to remember is you don’t want to sound robotic. If Google doesn’t like it, people don’t like it, so you want to have these keywords almost hidden in a paragraph. This is something which you can do now.

Make it conversational. When we do it, we do the Google My Business Profile optimization and so many on-page optimizations. It’s basically getting into the nitty-gritty of how we do it. We also do what we call on-page of those issue pages. Behind the scene, it’s your pages on your website. Having said that, to do all of this, you need to have your own website on the website side.

If you get a page on your company website, you get a free page on some of the popular or well-known real estate company websites. You cannot do anything because you will have to talk to their IT and they won’t lift a finger to make any changes on your personal page. I suggest getting your own website so you can do all this backend stuff to make you more popular online.

In a website, what would you say are the components of having a magnificent website?

There’s a good flow you need to have. It’s the components. I like to refer to them as a floor. The first floor, the first section, or the first component is to describe your value proposition in less than fifteen words. No clutter. Don’t overstuff anything. It’s almost a one-liner. Say, this is what you bring to the table. The second component is to add some stats to show your experience. The number of clients you have or the number of products you sold. Anything which you can highlight about your service. Make that pretty evident in the second section.

The third one is if you have worked with some big name clients and have the ability to use their logos. Sprinkle them in a section to build confidence and show who is on the website that you have worked with these people, so you have the trust. The fourth component is to present some briefcase studies so I can say that I’m a great real estate agent. I can self-proclaim that, but how did you do it? If you can present not too many, just three case studies. Write a paragraph or two in each one of them. That’s going to have a lot of power because people love stories. Tell your story.

The fifth component, discuss your products and services using icons, images, and videos because visuals are very powerful. You don’t want to get a lot of information out there without the visual on the homepage itself. By the way, you need to have all of these things on your homepage very briefly. If someone is interested in learning more, they can hit that learn more button and get more into what that component is.

The sixth component is actual customer testimonials. You can lift them up from your Google My Business Profile or Facebook account. The seventh one is describing your approach to solving a problem and the process. What is it? How is that different from everyone else who’s out there? The eighth section is a lead form to collect prospect data. It’s the opt-in.

If they’ve seen all you’ve got, what do we do now? The Call To Action. People call this the CTA. Have a lead form to collect the prospect’s data. We’re talking about CRM. This lead form information needs to go to two different places. One is your CRM, so it’s automatically there and you don’t have to copy and paste from an email into the CRM.

Internet Marketing: Your website’s first component must describe your value proposition in less than 15 words. Make it free of clutter and condense what you bring to the table in one-liners.

The other place is the email, so you notice that someone has sent something through the website. The reason why I said that it needs to go to two places because sometimes your email program might mock an email is coming from your website as spam. You’re never going to see it, but it’s going to stay in your CRM. That’s why it’s important to have that CRM.

One thing I wanted to take a deeper dive into is because I love it and it’s fun to me. It’s the Psychology of Influence in Marketing. There’s a book called Influence by Robert Cialdini. It’s one of my favorite books, and then he wrote a book called Pre-Suasion. In the book Influence, there are six principles to marketing. I’m pretty sure that in your explanation of those components that you hit, all of those six principles of the psychology of influencing someone to do business with you.

In the book Pre-Suasion, they add another principle which is unity. How do you persuade someone? You have to capture them immediately on your site or they want to move on somewhere else. You did a magnificent job of hitting that. We could do a whole five episodes on that type of marketing. That’s one thing you and I are working on behind the scenes in Beta now. That’s going to be a lot of fun that we’re testing. Not just testing. What we’re working on is proven. We know it works.

It’s like referrals, as I have a lead agent referral mastery with Jay Abraham. There is not any other more proven, more profitable lead source on the planet than a referral from a trusted friend. The same thing ties back to influencer marketing like the true Principles of Marketing. It’s proven unless our minds get reprogrammed some crazy way. Theoretically speaking, influencer marketing has been around for hundreds of years before they knew what it was. It’ll be around for many years to come because it’s human psychology. A great explanation you hit on there. How do you tie in direct response marketing principles with internet marketing?

If you look at the numbers globally, around 68% of website visits that happen in 2020 came from mobile devices. There’s an increase of 63% in 2019. In 2020, the amount of searches went up. In the direct response marketing principles, when someone wants to get something, you immediately give it to them. When they are ready to react, you are there to fulfill that need. That’s direct response marketing. That is what it is all about.

A fast way I like to describe it is we can’t afford to be a brander type marketer like Delta, Coca-Cola, or Home Depot, where they can put a logo on a billboard, and there’s their marketing. Direct response marketing is if I can put $1 in and get a return of $5, $10, $3, or whatever the number is. Back even to the book, The Ultimate Real Estate Machine. It’s in there and it talks about direct response marketing deeper. You have able to have ads that trigger when you have a strong return on investment or if it’s not. With direct response marketing principles, it’s even working up until breakeven point because, at breakeven point, you’re still getting the branding from it.

You hit the nail on the head. That’s what I was trying to get into. When you do a website, email marketing campaigns, text message campaigns, invest in a CRM, run Google ads, and social media ads, you are looking for those responses or immediate reactions so people can connect with you. It all has to do with your copy, the visuals, and some of the items from those eight things I mentioned, which are customer testimonials. These are things that you have to plug into your messaging when you are doing any direct response.

If you think about it, we all get mailers about different types of services. A lot of those mailers people pick it up and throw it away because it’s not telling a story. They are not telling a story. Now, the great thing about the internet marketing space is you can tell a story. You are not limited to the available screen real estate on your screen or your recipient screen. They can keep on scrolling. If you are telling a story, that’s going to do something in to do a potentially working with you because you are telling about the wins you had for your clients and personally. You can talk about your background to show them that you are one of them.

That’s where the power of copywriting comes in. I agree 1,000% with you that facts tell and stories sell. One of the biggest things about being a powerful marketer is being a powerful storyteller or maybe storyseller. I think there’s even a book called Story Seller but make sure that your story is fascinating. Here’s the catch-22. It’s so easy. If they’re getting bored, they’re onto their next website. That would be in the power of having the right copy and not going too deep into a story.

You have to keep them interested. One of the principles of copywriting is how long should ad copy be. How long ad copy should be is it can be until you start to lose them. You do not want your ad copy to bore people because we all live in the world now with a sense of immediate gratification. If they’re not getting immediate gratification on what they are looking for at that moment, they’re on to the next. What are some common mistakes of some of the high-level entrepreneurs you’ve worked with through the years, or what are common mistakes that you see people make with platforms, CRMs, and their websites?

It’s funny you asked that question, Jason. Ninety-nine percent of the website work, especially the website work we get, is from someone who already has a website. The reason why I say that is because the website was created maybe 3 to 5 years ago. It’s not generating any leads and making their phone ring. It looks dated and literally not working for them. It used to be a showpiece, but now it’s an eyesore. The common mistake a lot of entrepreneurs, especially those who are in startup mode and hungry, make is trying to hire someone for cheap. That’s the easiest way I can say it. They would hire their kids, their cousin, or some guy who was in between jobs.

You got to think about it. This is the marketing message, which is seen 24/7 by everyone whom you want to do business with. Do you want it to look bad? I’m not saying that you’re got to spend a ton of money and get a website, which costs you a fortune. Please, don’t misunderstand. I’m saying do your due diligence. Get the website before you need the website. It’s like when you’re successful, what website do you want to have? Get that now.

I agree with you. I’ve done that before, and we’ve all done it before, whether it’s a website or some other product, because the word cheap and great quality are not using the same sentence and it doesn’t happen. When you try to go cheap on a website, you spend X amount of dollars to get the website, and then it’s not working for you. It’s not what you thought it would be, not driving traffic and conversions.

The next thing you know, you have to hire Aj. Aj not only does a magnificent job, but he can’t be the cheapest guy. Your team is amazing to work with and you don’t get great people on your team by paying peanuts for one. You have an amazing team that not only does it right but delivers a high level of client experience and is also very systematic. That’s another key to having a website built at the site. I have one agent that’s a friend of mine. Her site has been in the being built phase for about five months.

You hit on the fact that, “If your site is 5 even 3 or 4 years old, it starting to get to that dated phase.” Time is of the essence and having someone who has systems in place that can get it done quickly because if not, your site is becoming outdated before you launch it. That was magnificent what you hit on, which is mistakes that are made not. I agree 1,000% with you. We always get what we pay for. You don’t want to go cheap with a website because if you do, you’re missing out on a plethora of opportunities.

When we want to have something nice, we splurge. Maybe it’s a house, a handbag, or a car, but people will try to cheapen it out when it’s that main thing that will make you the most money. You’ll think about the ROI when you have a great website.

All those things, whether you did them intentionally or not, were profound. All those examples you hit on are all depreciating assets that are expenses, but a professionally developed website is not an expense. It’s an investment. In my realm in real estate, our company has had light through the years. Many buyers terminate working with other agents they’ve been working with and come to work with us.

The conversations that you and I have had in the past sound like you get a lot of that in your business as well. What are some of your clients dealing with when they come to see you? Some people who come to see you say, “What I’ve got is not working. I spent all this darn money, and it’s not working for you.” Why are those people terminating their services with another provider and hiring you?

Internet Marketing: Sometimes, your email program might map messages from your website as spam, and you will never see them. That’s why it’s important to have a proper CRM.

The main reason is that the previous entity or the guy they were working with is missing in action. When they come to us, they get a very high-level production quality in the websites, the systems, and the mobile apps we create. Our team is extremely responsive. You have experienced that, Jason. A lot of businesses or agencies have at least 2 or 3 days of turnaround time, even to say, “I received the email. We are working on it.” You notice that our guys are almost immediate. If you send an email, here’s a response back within 24 hours.

Also, the after-sales customer is a very important concept when it comes to website design because entrepreneurs and website developers think that website work is done when it has been created. It’s like marriage. Getting married is not the end. It’s the start of a journey together. You have to work hard to keep it going. Websites are like that. Once it’s created, you get it all polished up and put it out there for everyone to see. Technology changes all the time, but it’s not a problem. It’s a good thing.

Before we know it, iPhone 20 will be here. We have to keep on changing the websites depending on how people digest the information you throw on a website. How do you get them to do the call to action on a website and also if you want to stay ahead of the curve? If everybody is doing the same thing, it gets old. No one likes that. It’s like when you are on LinkedIn. The moment you accept someone’s friend request, the next thing you know is, “I want to send you something.”

Even if you’re doing what everyone else is doing, you’re a commodity. I worked late, and I was reading in an article in Real Trends, which is a famous publication for the real estate industry. That article said that the number of agents in America broke a record of the most agents in real estate in the country ever.

You don’t want to be a commodity and be a part of the real estate industry. Only 11% of consumers trust real estate agents. That’s per a study done by Business Wire in 2018. I don’t want to be with the pack. I want to stand out from the pack. One of the greatest ways to do that is through influencer marketing, but you have to have a magnificent platform to have those qualities that make you stand out and stand above the maddening crowd that gives you authority, preeminence, and influence. That’s a must-have. Is there anything left that you’d like to leave our readers with?

I think it’s important to share this little story. I am closing on a new construction house we’ve been building since 2020.

Congratulations.

Thank you. We are closing, so we are very excited. I’m so glad to be on this show, which is a real estate show, and I’m doing the real estate deal.

This is the Ultimate Real Estate Machine show. The show is about building a machine that works harder for you versus you having to work harder for it. You’re going to be on the Agents on Fire TV show we’re releasing. I’m excited to see you on the show and have you on the show as well. You and I spoke about it how I believe in omens. There’s a magnificent book called The Alchemist. Have you ever read that book?

I have not, but it’s on my list of books to read.

It’s amazing. It talks a lot about omens in the book and paying attention to omens. I read it multiple times. I read it once, and I re-read it again immediately after because it was very profound to me in my life at that point in time. You start paying attention to those omens that are around you. That’s why I responded back to you and you sent a text, “No, that’s an omen.” It isn’t an omen. You happen to be closing on the home you’ve been building for a year and a half since 2020.

It so happened that we were doing this show one day before that. Were there any challenges that you had or anything that you’ve seen out in the industry while you’re working in this process of having your home built that you can help real estate agents with maybe part of the process that you’re like, “I have seen that on their website. If there was something I didn’t like, they could have communicated better with me?” Is there anything or any advice you could give that would be helpful?

It’s not even a website thing but an outside perspective. I was thinking about it, and I left a review for the real estate agent locally whom I’ve been working with. She’s a good friend. She started showing all the home stores because that’s what we wanted. It’s to get into an older home North of where we are living. Back in the summer of 2020, we told her, “This is the price point we want to work with.”

She started doing showings to us. As we walked through some houses, my wife and I both realized we could get into a new construction home and stay in the area in which we are living. The real estate agent guided us that it would be a good fit for what’s going on in your life. The point here is, what’s the true calling of a real estate agent? Is it to sell houses or help someone buy a house? I don’t think so. I’ll argue it’s not. It is to listen to your customers, learn what they are truly after, and guide them in their journey. That’s what she did. She helped us get the exact house that we wanted to get into. When she did that, her commission got delayed by sixteen months.

She wasn’t about the commission. She was about serving you.

Build trust and following. Money will come.

It would go back to her. It’s Human Psychology 101 that you’re going to refer people to her now versus if you thought that she was a commissioned breath salesperson that was all out for herself and you were nothing more than another transaction. You probably would not refer her, but it sounds like she’s made a lifelong client out of you.

She did. That’s what happened with our previous agent who sold us this house. We haven’t heard from her since the signed paperwork. There are no follow-ups. You’ve got to make sure that you keep your website and are doing great. Have a CRM. You can learn about their kids’ names, birthdays, and moms’ names. Put all of that into your CRM. This is why you need a CRM. You get reminded about all this stuff when you have the CRM.

Internet Marketing: Direct response marketing is important now more than ever. When people need something, you must be there to fulfill that need at once.

Make sure you are seen all the time through search engine optimization. With the influencer marketing you do, get on social. Talk about what’s going on in your life that day. Tell them about your journey. Talk about the testimonials. That way, people understand that you are another human being and you are trying to help other human beings get to what they need at the right time, so when they have the need, they’ll reach out to you. You don’t even have to go after in a very aggressive manner.

Jason, you mentioned Starbucks can put a store anywhere. Coca-Cola doesn’t have stores. They sell to stores, and we know how to get Coca-Cola. You are attracting business rather than chasing the business. I would say that’s where you want to be. There are tools you can make to where they’re working for you, where you put tools in place, and little processes in place, especially online where they are working for you. It’s the branding aspect of yourself. You are in front of people, and when they have the need, they’ll come to you.

Aj, I appreciate you being on. Where can our readers go to find out more about KallistoArt?

They can go to KallistoArt.com. They can reach out to me personally at AjA@ThreeSixty.com.

I sure do appreciate you. I can’t wait to see you on the TV show because I know you’re going to be delivering a lot of great value for the world to see. I’ll be seeing you very soon in person at our mastermind.

Thank you, Jason, very much for having me. In the UItimate Real Estate Machine, it has been a great pleasure, and I look forward to meeting you in person too.

Have a great day. Congratulations on your home.

Thank you very much. You take care now.

Important Links

• KallistoArt
• Salesforce
• Zoho
• Pipedrive
• Freshworks
• Business.Google.com
• Influence
• Pre-Suasion
• The Ultimate Real Estate Machine
• The Alchemist
• AjA@ThreeSixty.com

About Aj Aluthwala