What Are Main Street ROI Courses?
Main Street ROI courses are a variety of digital marketing courses available by topic. They are available by individual selection, and give you a wide range of options. They have a lot of different options to choose from, such as social media marketing, Facebook ads, Google analytics, email, SEO and Google ads.
This hub is designed to let you select what topic you want to learn from, rather than giving you a course that is jumbled together. The courses debuted all the way back in 2012, when these topics were still underground.
What Is Main Street ROI?
Main Street ROI is a small business digital marketing company located in New York City. They produce a variety of online content that focuses on digital marketing. The course is taught by Phil Frost, the chief operations officer of Main Street ROI.
Phil got his start in 2006, working as a PPC ad manager for a company. In 2011, he started working at Main Street ROI, creating the courses available today.
Main Street ROI was created to help small “main street” businesses increase their sales and revenue through online channels. Since its creation in 2010, it’s been one of the original digital marketing agencies.
Main Street ROI’s Course Pricing
The courses cost $97 each. Each course is about 90 minutes long. It offers a 60 day, 100% money back guarantee. The exact terms of this moneyback guarantee is unclear, as you have to go through customer service to get it.
Each course is bought as an individual membership, and there’s no membership option as well.
The courses do not come with any added benefits. All you get is the straightforward course.
Main Street ROI’s Core Curriculum
Each course comes as an individual topic, as stated. Here’s a breakdown of each course that’s available.
The Local SEO Formula
The local SEO formula is a course that’s designed to help you with Google’s My Business listings. It aims for any local business to increase their search results in maps, and other local listings.
Frost, the course creator, teaches you everything you need to know about jumping up your search results. He goes over things like keyword research, listing optimization, citations, and reviews.
He also goes over things to avoid, such as “over optimization” in Google my business. Frost also talks about the best way to get reviews from your customers. H even gives you email templates to send to customers to increase your review rate.
Frost also includes a list of local directory listings that you can take advantage of. Overall this course is a good overview for anyone looking to dip into local SEO.
Introduction To Social Media Marketing
In this course, Frost gives you an overview of social media marketing. He first goes over the different networks to use, and when to use them. He talks about the advantages that each one has, such as Facebook or Instagram, and which industry that they work best in.
He then transitions into the bulk of the course, such as building your audience, posting content, creating content, and generating leads in sales from social media. He also covers the best way to track your growth, and organize your content calendar.
Introduction To Google Analytics
In this course, Frost gives you an overview of Google Analytics. Cross gives you a tutorial on how you set up your Google Analytic on your website. He transitions into the bulk of the course, like generating reports from your website, analyzing trends over time, identifying your top traffic sources, measuring your SEO results, and interpreting bounce rates.
At the end of the course, he gives you a checklist of things to do in order to properly organize your efforts. This course, like the last one, serves as an introduction and mainly a “how-to”. The main goal of this course is to give you familiarity with the platform, but not mastery.
The Email Profit Formula
The email profit formula is more of a live training than it is a course. In the training, Frost essentially teaches you how to set up an email marketing campaign. He goes over a lot of basics, such as content marketing, structuring your emails, building your list, and setting your content schedule.
Like most of the courses here, it serves as a general overview, but doesn’t get into any extensive detail.
The Complete SEO Tune Up
This part, like the email profit formula, is a live training. In it, Frost teaches you the best way to optimize your website for SEO purposes. Frost goes over some technical things like meta tags, image tagging, anchors, and backlinks.
He also explores different pages that do good examples of SEO, and bad examples. He points out specific things that you can do to make sure your website stands above your competition.
This section is more of a “how to”, with it mainly being a live tutorial. Frost basically guides you through optimizing your website.
How To Create A Profitable Google Ads Campaign From Scratch
This topic is also a live training. In it, Frost goes over how to create a Google ad campaign from scratch. He explains a lot of the terminology associated with Google’s PPC platform, navigating through it’s interface, and setting up your campaign. Topics covered in this module include:
- Benefits of Google Ads
- Creating your Paid Advertising Strategy
- Understanding Your Customers
- Planning a Google Ads Campaign
- Creating Keyword Lists Using a Variety of Strategies
- Grouping Keywords (Campaign Structure)
- Creating a Unique Selling Proposition
- Creating Effective Ads
- Creating Effective Landing Pages
- Tracking Conversions
Ultimately, this course serves as a great “Google Ads 101” course. While a lot of similar information can be found for free online, Frost does a good job of organizing it and presenting it in a way that is easy to understand.
This course is ideal for someone who is completely new to Google Ads.
How To Optimize Your Google Ads In Just 15 Minutes Per Day
As a follow-up to the previous course, Main Street ROI offers a course on optimizing your Google Ads. As anyone who utilizes PPC marketing knows, optimization is the most important part of running a successful campaign.
This course follows a similar format as the previous course with a live presentation on Google Ads optimization. You will learn how to
- Optimize Targeting
- Optimize Keywords/Bidding
- Optimize Ad Copy
- Optimize Landing Pages
- Discover New Keywords to Target
- Utilize Ad Extensions
- Re-organize Campaigns to Improve Results
The “live training” style of the course (combined with PowerPoint slides), makes it easy to follow along. While campaign setup can be taught by just about anyone, campaign optimization is an art. Frost does a good job of sharing best practices for PPC marketers.
This course is ideal for intermediate Google Ads marketers or those that completed Main Street ROI’s introductory course. That said, it would have been nice if the two courses were combined, since they are both essential to Google Ads management. Instead, they run $97 each.
Creating Facebook Ads That Sell
In this training, Frost focuses on increasing your Facebook Ads conversion rate. He goes over the basic structure of an ad, and the best way to utilize the post’s thumbnails, titles, and descriptions to increase your sales.
He briefly goes into the best way to generate opt-ins and leads. He also briefly touches upon optimizing your cost-per-click. Overall, this training does do a better job than his Google trainings, but it is not that advanced.
Main Street ROI’s Course Quality
Main Street ROI courses maintain a high quality. The audio and video production goes so far that it even has its own intro, with music. Frost does a good job of sticking to a script, as the content is straight to the point without the filled “ums” most courses do. The video and audio quality are quite clear.
The “live training” format is effective for bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Overall the quality definitely adds to the experience of the education.
Does Frost Deliver?
In the most simplest of answers, yes.
The course titles give you everything you need to know about what’s going to be inside of the course. It completes its task of giving you the necessary knowledge, while not straying too far from what it promised. The course basically teaches you exactly what it says.
Students who take the local SEO formula, will indeed learn about local SEO formula. That said, the lessons are relatively simple. The courses are more like tutorials/walkthroughs than insider strategies.
Who Are Main Street ROI’s Courses Best For?
These courses are best for anyone who’s extremely unfamiliar with these topics. Frost definitely knows his audience, and markets this course towards people that have existing businesses, but are struggling to make the transition to online themselves.
It seems as though he utilizes these courses to also sell his digital marketing services. The courses give thorough explanations on very simple and graspable topics. If you are someone who heavily struggles with digital marketing, consider this course.
These courses are ideal for beginners who want comprehensive and effective tutorials related to online advertising. Experienced marketers are likely to prefer advanced courses.
Are Frost’s Courses Worth The Money?
Main Street ROI courses are priced on the low-end for premium courses, but on the high end, when compares to courses on sites like Udemy and Skillshare.
Are they worth the money?
Ultimately, it depends on your marketing goals and learning style. If you are an ambitious, self-motivated learner, you can find a lot of the information covered for free online. If you prefer a well-organized curriculum taught by a credible marketer, you will definitely get some value out of the courses.
For example, there is tons of free information available on running Google Ads campaigns, but you have to dig for it. You have to read multiple articles and watch multiple videos. Furthermore, you have to know what to look for. Frost does a good job of organizing this info in one place and presenting it from the perspective of a marketer who actually walks the walk.
If you can justify the $97 price tag, these courses deliver valuable information for beginner marketers.
Main Street ROI Alternative Courses:
If you are looking for alternatives to the Main Street ROI courses, here are a few options:
- LinkedIn Learning- If you like these courses because it provided you a general understanding, consider a LinkedIn Learning membership. Starting at one-third of the price of a single topic, it gives you access to every single course available. Topics include everything that Frost teaches, and much more.
- Complete SEO Training (Udemy)-If you were considering buying the scores for the SEO aspects of it, consider this course instead. Peter Kent, the course creator, does an amazing job of teaching you a basic and intermediate understanding of SEO, for significantly less.
- Digital Marketer’s Paid Traffic Mastery-If you’re looking to learn more about pay per click ads when it comes to digital marketing, you may want to consider this course. This course is taught by Molly Pittman, a Digital Marketer’s VP and traffic manager. This course focuses on PPC Ads and includes curriculum on optimization, scaling, and analyzing ads.
Final Thoughts: Main Street ROI
Overall, Frost does a good job of putting effort and time into this course. Frost is a good teacher and does a good job of presenting information in a way that is easy to understand. The slideshows combined with the live training do a good job at teaching both theory and practice. That said, these courses are ideal for absolute beginners marketers who have no experience with the topics being discussed.
Pros
- Effective format (live training + slides)
- Credible information
- Well-organized curriculum
Cons
- Very basic information that is best suited for absolute beginners
- Similar information is available at cheaper rates on sites like Udemy
