Agency Owner, Mark Herre shares the history of SEOgame and its evolution from a diverse service provider to a specialized digital marketing agency. Mark Herre shares insights on focusing on niche markets, scaling businesses, and the symbiotic relationship between coaching and digital marketing. Mark emphasizes the significance of surrounding oneself with people who prioritize results and suggests narrowing down the agency’s specialty. He shares his experience as a performance-based SEO white label specialist and highlights the need for a strong network of reliable professionals.

AL EP 51: Mark Herre – Finding Your People In A Performance-Based Market
Show Notes
Do your client’s sites need better rankings? SEOgame does performance-based SEO. Contact Mark Herre for a 30-day test drive/trial.
Connect with Mark Herre & SEOgame here –
Email: mark@seogame.com
Web: https://seogame.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seogame/
Episode Transcript
00;00;04;02 – 00;00;11;03
Jesse P Gilmore
Everybody is adjusting to your agency and transformation coach and founder of Mission Control, Greater of Leverage for Growth.
00;00;11;08 – 00;00;13;25
Speaker 2
And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist.
00;00;13;28 – 00;00;16;27
Mark Herre
Which scaled from 0 to 200000.
00;00;16;27 – 00;00;19;22
Speaker 2
Dollars a month with my own agency.
00;00;19;25 – 00;00;46;06
Jesse P Gilmore
We are the host of Leverage for Growth podcast Agency, Leverage and Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets and leadership styles. We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money in order for you to get your agency to the next level.
00;00;46;09 – 00;01;09;18
Jesse P Gilmore
If you find value in these episodes, watch the case, Study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at Niche in control Icon slash Key Study at Niche in Control Icon slash Kingdom. You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody. This is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Niche and Control and creator of Leverage for Growth.
00;01;09;20 – 00;01;23;15
Jesse P Gilmore
And welcome to the Agency Leverage Edition. Today I am here with Mark Henry, a founder of SEO Game, a peer to peer agency that offers performance based SEO to digital agencies. Thanks for coming to our show today, Mark.
00;01;23;17 – 00;01;26;00
Mark Herre
Thank you so much, Jesse, for having me.
00;01;26;03 – 00;01;30;28
Jesse P Gilmore
Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the history and background of SEO game?
00;01;31;00 – 00;02;09;04
Mark Herre
SEO game goes back 27 years and that’s when I was out of college and wondering what I was going to do. But I was actually totally involved in that in one of those ISP’s Internet service providers and doing things like SEO. Before I started. But the company started in 1996 as SEO game was doing everything for everybody. And then at that time we even had to fix fax machines and that sometimes required me to get under a table and talk to a business owner while in the under the table fixing fax machines and printers.
00;02;09;06 – 00;02;30;15
Mark Herre
I was able to talk a little bit about getting their website ranking and all the search engine for Google. And so I just continued to focus on that. And for about 17 years, I mean, for about seven years, doing All Things Considered web design, everything that in this SEO company did back in that early stage tool.
00;02;30;18 – 00;02;45;06
Jesse P Gilmore
And how was it kind of like doing a lot of different things that you have to go through trial and error, trying to determine what your services were that you’re going to narrow down to? Or have you kept a lot of the services aside from the fax machines?
00;02;45;09 – 00;03;14;00
Mark Herre
No question. I know I didn’t want to be in web development and that just required it came with the territory. People didn’t have websites back then, but a lot of them did. And those were the companies that I could do really well working with. What I really realized then is that I was already doing what I’m doing now, and I was working for digital marketing agencies and it took me a while to figure it out.
00;03;14;00 – 00;03;39;10
Mark Herre
The digital marketing agencies would allow me to work at home and they would allow me to come into the office at times. And for somebody who was able to work at home with a small little family, that was a great. And the thing about digital marketing agencies then is they were doing the same thing they do now. And that’s why I service strictly just digital agencies.
00;03;39;10 – 00;03;49;09
Mark Herre
And a big pivot happened in my career figuring out what I needed to do to just focus on the digital marketing agency. Mm hmm.
00;03;49;12 – 00;04;03;10
Jesse P Gilmore
Was that kind of my aha moment? You talked about the pivot and being able to focus on serving agencies. Was it kind of like over time or was it kind of like, Oh my gosh, this is like my favorite client to work with or.
00;04;03;13 – 00;04;34;06
Mark Herre
Talk a little bit? Oh, I’ve always figured that there’s companies who are owners of websites who are great to work with, but and realize what I do. And I still have some of those existing clients today, personal injury lawyers and whatnot that just continue to pay, you know, gives a value. Be number one, let’s say their keyword, let’s say salt Lake City personal injury, if you could, if you could stay number one with that kind of a keyword leverage, you’re going to be you know, you’re going to keep your website.
00;04;34;06 – 00;05;02;02
Mark Herre
You know, working for you all 24 seven. But these are marketing agencies that that would have also relationships with personal injury lawyers, dentists. And so and they constantly had a sales force behind them that I never really could develop internally. And so the desire market agencies back then and big pivot and the light bulb that went on for me at that time was simply they were extending me an opportunity to do a good job.
00;05;02;02 – 00;05;31;12
Mark Herre
But let’s you know, they already already worked with me. So let’s try you out on this new website. And here are the lists, the keywords or Mark, what are the key words you should suggest we use already? I was into almost 10000 hours of doing keyword audits back then in the nineties. In the early 20 years, however, as I continue to help agencies grow, they continue to extend 30 day websites at me all the time.
00;05;31;15 – 00;05;56;21
Mark Herre
And so I’ve actively gone after that performance based 30 day test drive where a digital agency says, Here’s a website, get started and then I get paid in arrears, but it’s on the performance based at meeting the expectations of the agency and the website owner that the agency represents and also dominating and getting the most maximum amount of results based on the top keywords.
00;05;56;23 – 00;06;32;05
Mark Herre
As I continue to realize I had a scalable model to continue to do this, I went from my ten websites to almost over 500 that I currently active work today. So doing the same thing, getting paid equally from 10 to 500 is quite a big, you know, exponential, you know, ratio of, you know, I can I got the right systems in place and the team and plus ideally I help the digital marketer grow their business at scale and that’s a great formula to have a vendor for them that does their job.
00;06;32;07 – 00;06;41;28
Mark Herre
And that’s why that’s been my mission ever since. That’s, that’s what I call the pivot is I have one job, make you look good. The digital market.
00;06;42;00 – 00;07;08;27
Jesse P Gilmore
Mm hmm. That’s awesome. And you’ve taken specialization and niche. I like niching down to you. Both are a scalable model, but also a product market fit, which is really, really cool. So that’s something I can obviously back up, you know, niche and control being the main thing I did. You always know that you’re going to go after kind of like specialization as kind of a thing, like even just from the way beginning stages now.
00;07;08;28 – 00;07;26;12
Jesse P Gilmore
Was that kind of part of your strategy or was it something that kind of happened? If I know a lot of people that are listening, they’re thinking about niches in some form or trying to determine what it is? Yeah. Was it part of your strategy to kind of niche down or was that something that it kind of happened organically?
00;07;26;15 – 00;07;53;27
Mark Herre
Okay, you’re going to love this answer, I think, because you and I both are coaches when it comes to getting the business to scale, get ready for them to grow their business and possibly even sell their business down the road. Well, I didn’t realize this at all because I just wanted to be the best vendor, the production team behind the right delivery of services and 30 day test drive, you know, get all the results, make the client look really good.
00;07;54;03 – 00;08;23;14
Mark Herre
However, the client was always asking me questions. They were coaching questions. I was just thrown into a lonely world of coaching where I didn’t know, Is this what I’m doing? Why a coach to help This digital marketer turned from a legacy SEO company or digital marketing to a niche focus on like a laser, like a digital marketing agency focused like a laser and and, you know, a field of, let’s say, legal marketing or health marketing or or even even networking even deeper.
00;08;23;14 – 00;08;52;22
Mark Herre
Like go in with high ticket clients like that, do roofing and focus with h-back or focus with a plumber or focus with garage floor guys who do grudge flooring or mobile tinting companies, right? There’s all these different niches of digital marketing. You just go in and as a coach, I wouldn’t call myself as a potential just advisor of Hey, let’s go into this niche.
00;08;52;24 – 00;09;24;13
Mark Herre
It’s ways that I can help. That digital marketer also scale their business by helping them with their lead generation. Not that I’m a great lead generator, but I know a little bit about, you know, helping them grow because if they’re on fire, that just mean more, you know, you know, websites that I get to work on that are contracting me to do the job, to get the rankings, to keep them number one, and keep that client long term paying, you know, the digital marketer.
00;09;24;13 – 00;09;49;25
Mark Herre
And so so anyway, did that answer I’m trying to best answer how a coach coaches without really knowing what a coach. So I love this relationship I have with you Jesse to be able to pass on digital marketers that I know that are ready to scale and grow and they need need all of the full of professional coaching that they can actually get.
00;09;49;25 – 00;09;52;16
Mark Herre
I’m just a pseudo coach.
00;09;52;18 – 00;10;23;27
Jesse P Gilmore
The coach would then, you know, being able to have them focus and be able to take on some of their work, which is really beneficial for anybody that’s kind of maybe is starting kind of the agency journey. I mean, you’ve learned a lot of things over the last 20 some years. If you were to give them any advice, not necessarily like digital agencies that need SEO, but more based around just agency owner, is there anything that you would kind of pass on that you may have learned through trial and error is that, you know, focus on a niche?
00;10;24;01 – 00;10;34;19
Jesse P Gilmore
That focus on one of your main services is that whatever that kind of comes to you, what are some of those things that you could pass on to the next agency?
00;10;34;22 – 00;11;00;13
Mark Herre
Well, as a vendor, I could speak for myself and I can speak of those who are within my circle of influence of people who I get questions from agencies all the time. Hey, Mark, you’re great at performance based SEO. You have a performance based marketer which is simply a paid media specialist who’s good at performance. And yes, yes, performance based marketing is the new buzzword.
00;11;00;15 – 00;11;40;14
Mark Herre
A lot of digital marketers are clamoring, crying for, you know, they’re saying even in their profiles on LinkedIn, they’re talking about it in their post word performance based marketing agency groups. Now, it’s easy to just say I’m a performance based marketer or I’m a performance right? It’s easy to say that. But I have worked with people, time tested people who I could say, Yes, you want to work with performance based web developer who will actually build a website, scale it to not with all the functionality, but at least get it to a presentation where you could then pull the trigger and say, Yes, I like this WordPress theme and I’m going to go with this
00;11;40;14 – 00;12;10;23
Mark Herre
custom, you know, these functionalities that, you know, I, I, I believe that if I were to look at my younger self, I wish I did the big pivot 20 years ago to be a performance based SEO White label specialist to digital marketers, I wish at that time I really had kind of figured out who my team was, but it took me almost 20 years to generate a team of performance based marketing performance based, you know, sales funnel, lead generation specials.
00;12;10;23 – 00;12;36;10
Mark Herre
A great AB tastic group fails. Mark You know, there’s so many different performance based, performance based lead generation, There’s performance based web development. And so I have developed a little bit of a small network is a perfect sometimes we switch different people because the, you know, literally sometimes I had a death just recently, my last paperclip guy, he died.
00;12;36;12 – 00;12;54;15
Mark Herre
So just unfortunately, he died with small little children in the hospital. And I said, But these are people who stuck with me for 20 years. And, you know, so yeah, constantly trying to improve my circle of performance based marketers. Exactly.
00;12;54;17 – 00;13;14;12
Jesse P Gilmore
Yeah. So one of the main kind of pieces of advice would be first, have to surround yourself by people that are more based around results. That’s number one. Second thing is if you find your niche, kind of be able to narrow it down towards your specialty and then make pivots towards that. Maybe earlier here what I’m hearing.
00;13;14;14 – 00;13;42;28
Mark Herre
Yeah, just, you know, there are people that will put up, you know, will call themselves performance and there are people that realize, you know, I have the discussion with digital marketers every every day and they’re in I discovered call wondering if I’m the right connection for them to basically be a vendor that will provide a delivery of ranked rankings, you know, getting websites to pop on the first page, search.
00;13;43;00 – 00;14;16;21
Mark Herre
And I bring that up only because I call myself performance, I call myself white label. And when I’m meeting with people, I always ask, Are you interested in also becoming white label? And it’s interesting. Those people who have thought it through are the kind who will say, Yeah, actually, Mark, if you can introduce me to some of the digital marketing agencies, I believe I, I have a strong position to be behind the scenes for digital agency and I do understand how the agency works.
00;14;16;23 – 00;14;38;17
Mark Herre
And then there’s others who are just thinking about it for the very first time, or I’ve never thought about it, but I’m constantly building my network of the people who say I’m a strong advocate for digital marketing agencies. I do white label. I am a performance based marketer, and those are the people that get on my list who I refer to and and then I have to test them out.
00;14;38;17 – 00;14;49;15
Mark Herre
So it’s not like I’m going to refer them right away. I’m going to dig a little deeper, but I try and keep my list pretty strong of performance based.
00;14;49;17 – 00;15;03;00
Jesse P Gilmore
Go bottom and for anybody that’s listening, either agencies or not, what what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or you know, do you have any offers for them that they could take advantage of?
00;15;03;03 – 00;15;35;18
Mark Herre
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you easily get a hold of me Mark Henry SEO game. Either way, if you search both my personal name or SEO game, you’re going to find my LinkedIn profile. There’s where we can make a connection and possibly do a 1 to 1 where we can discuss ways that performance marketing might work for you as a digital marketer and that that’s I’m going to just leave it at that simple and sweet as well.
00;15;35;20 – 00;15;45;11
Jesse P Gilmore
And then for anybody that’s listening, I will include all the links to Mark, including the LinkedIn in the show notes. And Mark, I want to thank you very much for being on the show today.
00;15;45;14 – 00;15;48;25
Mark Herre
Yes. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
00;15;48;27 – 00;16;23;10
Jesse P Gilmore
Agency owners, if you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business where you can regain control of your time, delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day. Go to niche in control dot com slash case study right now to learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always
00;16;23;10 – 00;16;31;09
Jesse P Gilmore
dreamed about. Go to niche in control dot com slash key city that is niche in control dot com slash case study now.
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