Growing UK Businesses with Lead Generation: Inside PromoSEO with James Dooley

James Dooley: I believe that I'm one of them kind of people that people like dealing with people local to where they are. So, UK like buying from UK people. Um, US they're dealing with a UK person, it's out of hours.

Carl Hudson: I wasn't aware how many servers and James goes, "Oh, yeah, I've got 26 servers."

James Dooley: Yeah.

Carl Hudson: I told you he was a good contact for you, mate. Very good for my SEO side and all the lead generation strategies too for while in the UK.

James Dooley: Getting a little bit more into it, EAT signals. We could generate brilliant, high-quality leads, but the customer is not good enough at converting them. So, for that reason we've always got to make certain that we're doing quality control. That's what the account managers are there to do. Choosing the right businesses that got a great brand and then any time we can help them build the brand up and

Carl Hudson: How James Dooley has grown a super successful business called PromoSEO that hosts over 650 businesses and many more ventures. I'm Carl Hudson in today's podcast, I'm joined with James and we're going to go through everything that he's done to get to this point with PromoSEO. And yeah, let's get into it.

James Dooley: Yeah, so PromoSEO's in over 650 different industries within the UK. Never really set out, if I'm being honest with you, to enter so many

Carl Hudson: [laughter]

James Dooley: different markets.

Carl Hudson: Anyone who knows James, you know that was always going to happen, though.

James Dooley: [laughter]

Carl Hudson: That's true, yeah. Yeah.

James Dooley: So, why so many markets?

Carl Hudson: Um, literally there was no plan. Um, so it was just we started out in the playground industry. It led on then to landscaping, hard landscaping, fencing, sub lighting, um, doing blacktop like macadam surfacing. Um, and things just kept progressing from there where it was we did a great kind of offering and then from there then we got referred in to others.

James Dooley: So, out of the 650, what was the kind of starting point which which which niche did you go into first? very

Carl Hudson: niche was wet pour is called which is like a rubberized safety surface um for what like children play on. Um that was just because that was the business, it was Soft Surfaces Limited. We've grown that from half a million a year to 10 million a year. Um so we 20x there. Um in the last three or four years we've we've kept it and maintained it where it needs to be. We don't really want to take it any further than that cuz you need like a second warehouse. Um so we've just looked at profitability. Um but from there in the last 15 years from that start from Soft Surfaces, things just led into who do we work for? We work for playground equipment companies. So if we could get them busier, it would get us busier. Landscaping companies, we needed landscaping going around parks.

James Dooley: is how you've ended up going to like different niches basically almost like I don't know like a sub niche or like a partner niche.

Carl Hudson: Yeah. So they go hand in hand with each other.

James Dooley: Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, so we call it like growth by shouldering niches or neighbouring niches. Um and like one would feed the other. And then it just then started to lead on to someone was in finance, someone was doing mortgages, someone was doing pensions and wills, um legal.

Carl Hudson: So wait a second. Wait a [laughter] wait a second. We're just in brick and mortar now we're in pensions, mortgages. And anyone who knows these niches knows these are hard hard ass niches to rank in, right? So how or what was the strategy involved with you know ranking in so many different niches as well? I I assume there's you know different strategies involved.

James Dooley: Yeah, there is different strategies for sure. Um it was just literally someone I think the first one in the finance was car finance. Um someone who basically was like, "Oh my god, I'm paying quite a lot for vehicle finance. Um you should get into that." It was like, "Oh, that's a good idea." Me being me just jumped straight into [laughter] it. And there was definitely different nuances to the lead generation strategies of what's needed. Um they're much tougher industries to go after. Um but kind of liked it because it mean the team had to level up. And when they started to level up on ranking for finance related terms, where maybe like authorship came a little bit more into it, EAT signals, it's like your money your life type industries that you needed to start building a little bit more trust on there. Where previously it was mainly content and links. Now there's a trust element to it of what you needed to do as well. So yeah, built out from there really.

Carl Hudson: So how do you then manage all of those cuz I assume obviously there's going to be with 650 different niches there's going to be multiple partners almost in those niches. How are you managing those relationships?

James Dooley: So you've got a large sales team. So you need account management. You need to make certain that the clients are getting a return on investment, that they're happy with what they're doing. So it's there's a large sales team. There's not like there's a lot of things now where you can go and click cloud to kind of implement a lot of stuff, but I think the face-to-face sales team of what we have is is what makes us great. We're able to sit down and listen to our clients. As we sat down listening to the clients, we understand where they make profit. And double down on those keywords where I think traditionally in SEO I think a lot of people obsess over keyword search volume and CPC, like cost per click. And they think the highest cost per click means it's the most profitable service. It's not always the case. So in local lead generation there's so many keywords that can make 10, 15,000 a month that might even show as only getting 20 monthly searches and there's no way

Carl Hudson: that myself where it literally it doesn't even say it sometimes says zero search and then obviously all of a sudden you you rank for it and then it's like wow this isn't zero search.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah.

Carl Hudson: This is not zero search.

James Dooley: So

Carl Hudson: Why have you only done UK? That's the next sort of question. I know like obviously you are huge in the UK with the the promo SEO side and all the lead generation strategies you do, but why only UK?

James Dooley: It was mainly to do the the the only other one if I was going to or the other two that I was if I was going to do it would be Australian US, right? Huge markets, different time zones. I believe that I'm one of them kind of people that people like dealing with people locals to where they are. So, UK like buying from UK people. Um US if they're dealing with a UK person it's out of hours. It's just a whole new operation similar to we didn't want to go source our services too much more cuz we needed a second warehouse and stuff like that. It's a whole new operation. Yes, it's a the similar algorithm, but you still got different citations and different links out in the US and different press release service in the US to the UK. So, there's just different models of what needs to be done. There's tens of millions to be made in the UK alone. Um and I think at times I think Jason Annis it was a great mentor in the fact that sometimes you need to have a no man in your life. And I just think sticking in my lane in the UK and trying to become the largest lead generation agency and have the best service for growing businesses. And just sticking to the UK and sticking to what I know is kind of why I've kept Promotional as a UK lead generation agency. But we will always go wider in more industries. Like if you interview me next year it could end up being we're in 900 industries cuz it's still we're still not even touched the sides of how many niches there is.

Carl Hudson: I was going to say the crazy thing about cuz obviously I'm very very very friendly with James and own many businesses Um but one of the crazy things about James is he might be in 650 niches, but he's probably got a thousand websites in each of those niches. So, it's I I I think I referred a server guy into him recently to have a look at some server issues. And this server guy I was like oh I think he's only got three servers cuz I I wasn't aware he had any servers and James goes oh yeah, I've got 26 servers. I was like I told you he was a good contact for you, mate. Like you're very good. So, he was "Oh, I'll do I'll do things for free for you now."

James Dooley: [laughter]

Carl Hudson: Um but when it comes to like, obviously operating so many websites, what's your infrastructure there? How How's that been set up? Because

James Dooley: Yes, you've got I mean, there's a large team involved, like a lot of people go, "Oh, how do you manage to to manage all the 6,000 websites in all the 650 different industries?" And it's difficult. Like, we we have a lot of staff. Things have become easier with AI, for sure. Like, graphic designers now can leverage image 2.0 on ChatGPT, and it's brilliant. Logos can be done on ChatGPT, and it's brilliant. Or you can use Nano Banana for image creation. The the the footage now that we do with podcasts can now be clipped down quite easy into shorts using certain AI tools. The AI content can be used using like, say, autoblogging.ai to implement good quality content. So, we can leverage AI to scale out what we do. But yeah, there's still a large team. The infrastructure behind it is there's a large sales team, and they're bloody good at what they do. Clients are generally always happy cuz they're always getting a return on investment. I think the offering is is brilliant in what we have. And then we've got we've got link builders. We've got semantic SEO content writers. Um we've got technical SEOs within the team. Um and we've just got good account managers that do the keyword research right. And I think that's where the key part is, listening to the clients, understanding that where they make the money, and doubling down in them areas. When you do find them key words, like you said, that get more search volume than what Ahrefs or SEMrush is showing, and then saying, "Okay, this is a profitable keyword. There's enough search for this. We might build a dedicated site out for that specific service."

Carl Hudson: I guess it is sort of like panning for gold, isn't it? Where you have to just keep on digging, and eventually you hit that little keyword, and no doubt James already has an AMD for it. But what what would you say is the future then of PromoSites? What what envision the next 5-year 10-year plan?

James Dooley: So, the the 5-year or 10-year plan we want to be the largest lead generation agency in the UK.

Carl Hudson: you know the second largest?

James Dooley: [laughter]

Carl Hudson: I'd say Checkatrade probably.

James Dooley: Checkatrade.

Carl Hudson: Is probably the largest. They're like a 4.1 billion pound business. Um I want to build it to get a billion valuation. Um so, we we're on our road there. We're not We're not there yet. Um so,

James Dooley: So, does that work from um does that work from the asset value of the websites? That's obviously your your model is you own the websites, right? So, then the customers sort of almost get the leads. Um so, does that just increase the asset value from the websites, or do you also then get involved in the other businesses, and do they fall under as part of Promo SEO?

Carl Hudson: No, so the the businesses that we invest in so in time what starts to happen is we actually get um certain businesses too busy. Um so, it's a good problem to have, but it is a problem. So, at that point sometimes they come to me as an investorpreneur saying, "We want you involved in our business." So, at times I might be looking to do that and help their business to be able to deal with the leads better. The speed to lead is important, and the conversion rate of the inquiries of what we're generating is important. So, at times there could be an investment standpoint, but that's different to Promo. Yeah. Promo SEO we own we own the websites. It's completely risk-free for the business owners. They get the leads and they only pay on conversion. So, it's a no win no fee model of what's being set up.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Carl Hudson: Um and yeah, the future is to get the billion pound kind of valuation. Probably won't even sell it then. Like, I want the team to kind of blossom and them to kind of

James Dooley: grow out. Let it self-run on more.

Carl Hudson: Yeah, exactly that. Um I don't A lot of time though I don't do business just for the monetary value. I enjoy what I do. I enjoy going on the Christmas do's with all the business owners and having a good time and stuff like that. Like, we like who we work with. We can be very selective with who we work with. Um it's probably probably generate anything from 80 to 100 leads a day from business owners coming to us wanting our lead generation service. So, we get a lot now of business owners coming to us saying, "We want the PromoSEO no win, no fee business model that you have." And we might reject 95%. They might not be ready yet for our leads. So, if they're emailing from a [email protected], that email's not professional email. It doesn't look good. They need to have a professional email being set up. The brand needs to look good online. They need to have a salesperson that's going to be responding to those leads quickly. Cuz if they don't respond quickly to the lead, they could be wasting our leads. And therefore, we don't get paid anything. So, we could we could generate brilliant, high-quality leads, but the customer's not good enough at converting them. So, for that reason, we've always got to make certain that we're doing quality control. That's what the account managers are there to do. Choosing the right businesses that got a great brand, and then in time, we can help them build the brand up, and PromoSEO grows just as much as the clients we work with grow. So, yeah, overall, it's a great business model. 650 different industries. Probably next year will be more. But, I love it, and yeah, that the plan is to just carry on, continue to grow.

James Dooley: So, how do people get in touch with Promo? If you If you've got capacity to take more on?

Carl Hudson: Yeah, so I mean, they can reach out to www.promoseo.uk. Fill in the contact form there. The team will go through, check to see the industry that you're in, check to see the areas that you cover, and then from there, then we can check to see, "Are you ready to take our leads yet?" If you are, we can build out the websites. We might already have some some sites in that industry. Um, if not, we can build them out very quickly, and within two to three months, we can start generating the leads.

James Dooley: Awesome.

Carl Hudson: Cheers.

James Dooley: Cheers, Dooley.