At this point, you may be wondering what the final impact of They Ask, You Answer was on River Pools and Spas.

As mentioned at the beginning of the book, in March 2009 we at River Pools and Spas were getting ready to lose our business. After learning about inbound and content marketing, we embraced what we called “They Ask, You Answer,” and brainstormed every single question we had ever been asked by a prospect or customer. Night after night, after having heard multiple questions during the day from prospects, I (along with the help of my business partners) would write articles and produce videos addressing these questions.

When we first started this process, we were getting about two thousand visitors a month, and most of that traffic was coming from pay-per-click traffic on Google. We were spending about $500 every two days, and the money had finally run out.

But within three months of beginning to generate content, our site’s organic (free) traffic began to double. Then, month after month, it just kept getting better.

Although 2009 was our toughest financial year as a company, we managed to survive. Our focus on content and great teaching was just enough to scratch and claw our way to at least keeping the lights on.

By 2010, I could see the work was starting to pay off. Our traffic and leads had exploded. The sales began to pour in.

Fast forward to today:

Today, River Pools and Spas has thousands and thousands of inbound links coming from other sites—even though we never attempted a “link-building” campaign to increase these numbers. This all happened simply because other sites and companies thought our content was useful and helpful enough to link to.

In 2014, our traffic peaked in the month of July with 350,000 visitors to our site.

In July 2015, it reached more than 500,000 visitors.

And in 2016, we crossed the 600,000 visitor threshold.

Today, River Pools and Spas is the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world.

Not only that, but in 2015, because of the tremendous growth, it was a natural progression for us to begin the manufacturing process as well.

Now, instead of just being a small installer of fiberglass swimming pools, we are in the process of developing a base of dealers throughout the United States. Based on where we are today, my guess is that, within the next five to seven years, we will become the largest manufacturer of fiberglass swimming pools in the world.

In conjunction with this, I share a couple of other statistics about River Pools and Spas that may astound you. In 2007, when home values were inflated and anybody could get credit to buy a swimming pool, we did about $4 million in business. In order to do $4 million in business, we had to spend about $250,000 on our advertising and marketing efforts.

In contrast, if you fast-forward to 2014—a time when most swimming pool builders were still dramatically down from the pre-recession time period—we did about $5.5 million in business, and spent roughly $20,000 on advertising and marketing.

So, when people ask me, “Marcus, what will be our return on investment if we follow the principles of They Ask, You Answer?,” I can only laugh. I am someone who has been there and done everything I’m sharing with you. And, everything you have read up to this point in the book saved our company and helped make it what it is today.

Today, when I look back at the crash of 2008, I do it with an incredible sense of gratitude. Those low moments forced me to look outside of myself and the industry, and forced us, as a company, to do things as they had never before been done in the swimming pool space.

What is crazy about all of this is that we are just a small swimming pool installation company in Virginia with about thirty employees, and yet we’re dictating the education of swimming pool shoppers all over the world.

Every day at River Pools and Spas, we receive e-mails from people all over the globe who want us to install their swimming pools.

Even though I am no longer in the swimming pool industry full time, I still receive these e-mails from places as far removed from Virginia as Australia, Europe, and the Virgin Islands. These e-mails often say something along these lines: “Marcus, we just don’t trust our swimming pool contractor. Would you come out and oversee our swimming pool installation?”

Long before I became Marcus the Sales and Marketing Guy, I was turning down these requests, even though people were willing to pay me lots of money just to go out and oversee their swimming pool installation.

Why would I say no if I was being offered so much money to simply be an overseer? Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I can’t install a pool. I can’t even turn on our excavator at River Pools and Spas. I am probably the worst pool builder in the world, and believe me, I’m the last person you want to see installing a swimming pool in your backyard.

But what I can do is look at how things are done with our installers (the real experts), ask them about what they’re doing, and explain it in a way so that the average person understands how it is done. Because I am able to distill the facts into simple-to-understand words that pool shoppers find helpful, they naturally think I am one of the foremost authorities in the world.

Someone once told me, “It’s dumb not to dumb it down.”

At the time, I had no idea how right they were.

Since that moment, I’ve seen again and again how, when it comes to great marketing and communication, the moment a business or brand tries to sound smart is generally the moment they start to look stupid.

But when you don’t try to sound smart, and instead look to have communion with your listener, that’s when the magic happens. For me, this is my singular goal and obsession as a professional speaker, marketer, and communicator.

My point to you is this: Think like a teacher. Obsess not just over their questions, but the way you answer them. It will make all the difference.