Note: This transcript was auto-generated
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, client, marketing, business, seo, convertkit, month, text message, online, pay, amazon, website, podcast, thinking, transit, called, mail, targeted, results, letter
SPEAKERS
announcer, Eric Dingler, Amr The Internet Guy
00:00
online with Amr the internet guy stream it today on your favorite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hairs out or buying expensive software.
00:17
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this special episode from online. In the next two episodes, we’re discussing business and marketing, specifically marketing strategies for small and medium businesses, as well as online marketing and search engine optimization, or SEO. So make sure you listen to these two together, you have so much benefit. And you will be blown away with some of the marketing strategies, how simple they are, but how effective for everyone who’s like 30 years of age or below, you probably grew up in the digital age and with digital marketing, and with technology, spearheading the marketing process for every business, but marketing is still marketing. So whether it’s digitized, whether we’re using software’s and email lists are not eight steel marketing is not about the technology is about the marketing strategies that you deploy in order to raise your products, awareness, your brand awareness and educate your community so that you’re on top of their mind when they think of a service that is similar to something that you and your business deliver. So I expect to see you on this episode. And the next one. Without further ado, let’s meet our special guest today. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of online. Today I have a special guest Mr. Eric Wrangler. Hey, Eric. Hello, sir. How are you doing? Oh, good. How are you?
01:59
I’m doing great, man. I’m excited to be a guest here on your your is it? Do we? Is this a podcast? A video?
02:07
I don’t know. Like it. There’s it’s a hybrid? Video and Audio? Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve seen this yesterday on somebody’s site, the vodcast vodcast. Nice, nice. So Eric, where are you Bay’s what you do? And how do we know each other? Sure,
02:25
man. I mean, how did Oh, well, we got connected through in transit studios. Yeah. So I am in the Virginia Beach, Virginia area in the United States. I’ve owned a web design agency, coastal city creative for a couple of years. And then last fall or last spring, actually, I had the opportunity to purchase another web design agency that was larger than mine, and what more of a stat like 10 years established. And so we did, we purchased it. That’s in transit studio. So we now run the two brands in transit and coastal with different two different totally market ideas. And we’ve expanded to, to include we kind of the way we look at it is we’re the all about the website, where we’re the website, but we’re also on the other side, getting traffic to the website. And then on the opposite end, nurturing those visitors into sales. So we connect, the whole thing in the website is just kind of the center of the wheel with all of the spokes.
03:37
Well, I like that you mentioned a wheel instead of the word funnel, because people get scared of that word.
03:44
Yes, in fact, we try to win with our client, both ourselves and our clients, we generally use an upside down funnel. So instead of having the funnel where we try to get as many people into the top as we can, with most of our clients, we’re able to work that funnel upside down where we target gatekeepers, and those gatekeepers bring in several people, and the leads expand because we’ve targeted, you know, you know, 20 or 100, very high, you know, targeted gatekeepers is what we the term we use.
04:19
That’s quite interesting. I remember in one of our past conversations, off camera, we were discussing marketing, and you have some great ideas that worked that and and before I get into asking you to give examples of these ideas, I wanted to retreat to everyone who’s listening or watching us that my own analysis of the current situation is that people when they think of online marketing, or internet marketing 90% of the time they’re thinking, tech and not marketing. So they’re thinking about the tool or the thinking about to process or something to do with a mailing list or, or SEO or whatever, so that they’re thinking more technology and enablement. But what gets lost in that kind of message is the actual marketing. So today, we want to discuss marketing. In general, it doesn’t have to be online. And you know, I believe that if you understand marketing, you can then take it online. But if you go online only without understanding of marketing, you’re not going to be as successful. And I don’t know, I could be wrong.
05:34
No, I completely agree. So one of our guiding axioms, one of our guiding principles here is the principle behind the practice. And what that means is before you copy what somebody else is doing, spend some time dissecting it and figuring out why it works. Just because you see somebody doing something, and it’s working for them, there’s a very good chance it may not work for you that specific practice, if it doesn’t align with the DNA of your organization, a completely different, you know, avatar, your targeting, you know, whatever it it might be, you know, I we had a client that was adamant about really wanting to get move they wanted to move forward with, with people texting them, and following up with text messages. And finally, we just had to be brutally honest and go, you’re a senior living facility, your avatar is you’ve told us your average website, visitors over the age of 60. They want a brochure in the mail, you know, like they’re they take they take longer to make a decision. They’re not they don’t want to like my dad, he doesn’t want a text message. Yeah. Now, are there exceptions? Sure.
06:49
Some would love. Yeah, their phones, but not
06:51
Yeah. But we’re not. You don’t want to market to them. You want to go like, Who are you really going after there? So and so we went to a, we convinced them to test the brochure route, and they’re loving it. So a lot of people think that that kind of stuff is old fashioned. It’s Dad, you just kind of know your avatar. So what’s the principle behind the practice? Because I like you said, I think a lot of people see something working and they focus immediately on, how do I do that. And a lot of people want they believe that, you know, they fall for these heights that if you just put this funnel together, it just works for you. And you can go on vacation and your business just makes money
07:31
that they think it’s a it sucks people in like you put the funnel and it will work like I don’t know, Hoover or something like, yeah, on its own without your intervention. You know who it works for? It works for the first person that created it, because it’s because he’s selling it to you.
07:49
Yeah, he’s selling now. He got the he or her got it to work. Because it was unique and different. And here’s all here’s what works in marketing, different. That’s what works in marketing. It’s that simple. If your marketing is different, it will it has a much better chance of working. If it just if it’s like everybody else’s marketing, you’re going to get everybody else’s results.
08:13
You just reminded me like in I think, when was it 2005. In 2006. I used to teach marketing, and at the time wasn’t online marketing, but the online part was coming on catching up. But it was at the time, like when you say they used to have like a funny name still exists cyber marketing. I don’t know why, because it wasn’t called internet marketing at the time. And I read books about it. And where I was working, they were thinking to make a new course. And now that I moved to a complete online business in general, and I started to do everything online, you kind of forget the traditional marketing completely or ignore it, until someone points out to you that it’s still there, and it still works.
09:02
It’s still very effective. It’s still very effective. So yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And so balance is where the pendulum swings through on its way from one extreme to the other. And we have three really dry, you know, axioms that we that I repeat regularly. One of them is what’s the principle behind the practice. And the other one is consider the third option. I believe there is nothing in life that comes down to either this or this. Now, the exception is I’m a person of faith. And so I think that you know, in my faith and for those that do I think that So
09:47
apart from God does nothing else this shoe right
09:50
outside outside of everything else is debatable. Absolutely. But absolutely everything else and I’ve got so many clients that we start working with that they’re like Well, I don’t know if I want to do you know, SEO or pay per click or I don’t know, if I want to do email marketing or send a newsletter in the mail, you know, and they get this idea that I have to do one of these. And I believe what we have seen for us, and what we’re seeing for our clients, is different marketing ideas, and marrying these two together, bringing online and offline marketing together. It’s a lot easier than people think it’s a lot of fun, actually, I think. And it’s, it’s amazing results. And then what happens, because here’s what happens with the approach that we’ve been working with clients is we get it dialed into a system where it becomes predictable. If you send out 20 letters in a month, you know, you’re going to close 20% Well, now you can start to predict and scale out, you know, if I, if so if I send 20 and I get 20%. I know I’m going to send 60, I’m going to get 20%. That’s this. And so it just, it just makes things so much smoother, and gives you a lot more control bringing together online and off online and offline.
11:06
So we’re talking about sending things in the actual mail like USPS.
11:13
Absolutely, absolutely. That’s just one idea. There’s other ways to do that. I mean, we do different things as well, like, yes.
11:21
So yeah, I heard some fun examples. And then let’s just tell people about them without saying the name of the company. But in general, sure. Well, I was angry, what worked?
11:33
Yeah, well, these kinds of things will work for a lot. So just just as an idea, I’ll just share one that we’re starting to do ourselves. So we do what we do experiments with marketing. And we do them on small scale, until we figure out lock in what works, and then we can begin to scale it. So actually, just yesterday, my I have a VA cam, she’s amazing. We had our weekly meeting. And what we’re doing is I identified two communities that I want to start trying to work in, and she’s going to go through their business association or Chamber of Commerce websites, she’s going to look at their members. And she’s going to look for members that look just like our clients already. And you know what businesses look like the businesses we already serve, she’s going to make a list of 20 targeted businesses that we want to that we believe we can serve, we are going to mail the 20 of them an envelope, and in the envelope will be a very simple letter, and a little magnifying glass about just a little plastic magnifying glass, we’re getting like 250 of these magnifying glasses for $14 on Amazon. So you know, very, very cheap. These 20 go in the mail with a very simple letter that I haven’t written yet. But it’s gonna say something along the lines of it shouldn’t be hard for your ideal clients to find you or it should be easy, we can help, we can help make it easier for you to find your your new sales. At the same time, we’re experimenting, we’re gonna do another 20 with letter openers, and the letter openers, we’re getting them custom printed with our logo on it. Because people will keep those on their desk for a long time. We’re gonna send letter openers that say we can help you open up new markets or whatever via whatever phrase we come up with. While that’s important, what really is important is when we use what’s called vanity URLs, this is just a term we use, there’s probably a better term for it. But Canvas is going to create this Excel spreadsheet. I’m going to go through the spreadsheet one day, each month, I’m going to set aside a day. And I’m going to record each of these people a video, you know, Hey, Joe, so glad that you got our letter, you’ve jumped over here to in transit to, to see what we can offer for you. Here’s why I believe we can help blah, blah, blah.
13:58
I come up with a quick script. Okay, so you have your pitch on video, habit pitch.
14:02
It’s no more than 60 seconds. Yeah, it’s it’s evergreen, because then every time we target a business owner named Joe or Yeah, or whatever. Yeah, right. Because they’ll go in the letter, it’ll say, Hey, I think we can help you, you know, go to in transit. studios.com forward slash Steve. Yeah. Okay. Or it might be their business name. If we don’t know, have a contact, we can use the business name, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is when you get something in the mail, and there’s a website with your name on it. There’s a very high likelihood you’re going to click through to that. Okay, so you’ve clicked through. Now I’ve just used your name, which is very powerful. That creates rapport. Yeah, yep. And so right away, I’ve used your name, I’ve taken a few moments to say hi to you. And then the page is going to be a blank page with the video and below it is going to be a phone number. And I’m just gonna say send me a text to that number. Right there. And I’ll follow up with you. And we’ll get started on talking about details on how we can help you open new things or fine and I might have a magnifying whatever it is. gimmick is not a four letter word. Don’t be afraid to be to be gimmicky. And then they send a text message that works for the avatar, we’re attract, we’re at going up because we’re going after the busy solopreneur entrepreneur, business, small business owner. They don’t they don’t want to open up something and send out an email form text message, great. Those we’ve done a couple of these, and they are so much fun, they get results. We did one where we sent little packets of headache medicine. And we said hey, we can take the headache away. You can send you can send individual packets of hot sauce. Hey, the markets hot right now, let us help you. You know,
15:52
the key is it has to be USDA approved. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead. Exactly. Yeah, let me grab something to show you. So we
16:04
use these brown envelopes, right here. Oh, and we got why stands out? Here were the packets, Advil. Advil that was in that was in the envelope. And then a very simple letter. And the reason we do all that is because it’s different than everybody else. Would it be cheaper to maybe send a rag a white envelope versus this a little bit? But it’s not that much more?
16:36
Yeah, then you remember this envelope? Even if it doesn’t look, it still looks different?
16:42
Yeah, it stands out in your mail, and it gets your attention. And now it’s different. So I’ve got your attention. You opened it. I’ve got your name in there on a on a URL,
16:51
I think why do I have a headache medicine in there,
16:54
right. And you read it and everything. The whole idea is it’s different. And it keeps your attention. Different is king in marketing. And so it pulls you in to this. You know, it pulls you I’m taking you on a journey, I’m pulling you along step by step. And so we can engage in a conversation. And now and here’s the thing. Yes, that I could probably do that. Because people are like, oh, but the cost, you know, online? Yeah. What’s the concert? Okay, so, right there, put as about $2, a little under $2 per per packet letter, but I get a 20% close rate. The lifetime value of a client for us can be anywhere from 30 to $50,000. Okay,
17:44
$2 across the nation. Yeah, exactly.
17:47
What’s the cost? $2? Yeah, $2 times 20 envelopes, you know, in mailing post everything to the football? I’ve got 4850 Yeah, yeah, let’s say $50 20%. Close rate. I’ve got $200,000 in lifetime value. I do that this month. I do that next month. I do that following month. We can’t go any faster than that. You know, we got to on because we’re building,
18:15
nurture them as well, like you don’t want, you don’t want 100 people calling you on the same day, you’ll have no time to respond.
18:22
Absolutely. Absolutely. And now you’re not providing great customer service. And this is where it’s it’s a mindset, you have to have a shift in your mindset. It’s like, when people live paycheck to paycheck, they get stuck in a mindset of money that I’ve got to make enough money for next paycheck. But like in the classic, you know, book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, when you change your mindset to think wealth, building versus paycheck to paycheck, you handle money different when you think long term of my business. I’m building a client base, and what if I grow 5% a month? I grow 3% 10% like that, do it right? Because I tell you, one of the number one reasons businesses fail is they grow too fast.
19:10
Yeah, one of these reasons, either they don’t grow at all, or they grow too fast, right.
19:15
But I can project out well, in six months, my team and I can’t handle this. So in six months, we’re gonna have to add somebody. Well, I can start
19:24
looking for some Yeah, or now.
19:26
Yeah, exactly. So we have done this. Now we have clients that we’ve got a client, their lifetime value of a lead of a new prospect is anywhere from 750,000 to a million dollars. And so for them, we have mailed we mailed they do fleet repair, like trucks, trucks delivery, like to have a
19:51
mobile truck to go to trucks and repair them on the spot or something like that.
19:56
They do emergency roadside assistance, but they also have a garage where If you’ve got a fleet of vehicles, you set up a regular schedule your trucks come in, they make they keep them operating, they do the state inspections, all of that. So there’s a lot of potential lifetime income and revenue from these clients. So for them, we’ve sent, we sent toolboxes, a small red metal toolbox, weighed about, we had about $35. And these, we filled them with candy. And we put a note in there that said, Don’t worry, I have all the tools, I need to keep your trucks on the road. And then we said, I, let’s I want to take you out for lunch. And we and so we can talk about how we can help you over the long haul, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, send me a text message. And we’ll schedule a lunch. You got a 30% response rate his first month doing that. He called me I was like, let’s do it again. Now and with him, we only did we only did 10. The first the first month. Yeah.
21:02
Cuz I figured that his his clients aren’t in general aren’t going to be 100 companies. He probably
21:10
right. He’s got a much smaller area the worst? Yeah, yeah. And his nurture tie. Most companies don’t just go Oh, yeah. Okay, well, here’s a million dollar contract.
21:19
Yeah. And they don’t go and say like, we want to change where we do our repairs or whatever.
21:24
Right? That takes time. Now, then. Now, the other side of this, like I said, is talking about the gatekeeper. So we because we got some people, they’re like, you know, we’ve got a client, their e commerce, they sell pet supplies. And, you know, so they’re like, Well, you know, we want to do so. And they had people that were doing SEO for them, and they were paying 15 $100 a month for SEO, and not getting a whole lot out of that. I’m like, well, you’re going up against PetSmart, Walmart and Amazon. Yeah,
21:55
yeah, exactly.
21:56
Come on. You’re a mom and pop supply store. Your products are amazing. They’re all American made, but you’re going up against the big guy. A 15 $100 a month won’t cut it. Yeah. And so I said instead,
22:10
you can’t beat amazon for 15 $100 a month. Yeah, no,
22:13
no, not not in that. And even if you do pay per click, you know, well, you turn that funnel, you turn that 15 $100 off of pay per click, and guess what happens? Your sales die out? Yeah, you know, so let’s, let’s do something different. Okay. So instead with them what we did? Is we targeted? We started with a list of 20. Pet trainers, dog trainers, okay. And we contacted them and we said, Hey, listen, we would like to provide you with free gifts for your next graduating class. How many can we give you 1015? You know, what, what can we provide for you? And then we had the client go to their suppliers and said, Hey, we’re putting these packages together. Can you provide some samples? Well, all of their supplier said absolutely. We’ll provide samples. So they got samples of dog treats, you know, toys, all this kind of stuff. All right. So you get this now we create a coupon for your website. You know, some type of you know, an offer. We put these packages together, you send them to these tiny dog groomers. Now, you’ve just sent out, you know, 234 100 gift bags. All right, going into the hands of people from somebody they trust.
23:39
Yeah, sometimes dog trainers. Yeah,
23:41
somebody that just helped their life become better because now Fido listens. And they can control their dog. Hey, here you go.
23:49
Here’s your treat. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, if
23:52
you trust this tree, I’m gonna trust this. Where do I buy that? Oh, I’m gonna go to this website that has got a discord trainers name in it. Why would you not do and now it works. Next month that trainers like, Hey, can we get more? Yeah, slowly and then we start adding. Even if down the road, you have to start paying for some of the samples.
24:15
Okay, yeah. Well, that’s if you if you think like, I don’t think they spent 15 $100 on the samples. So no, they got all the samples for free. Yeah, measuring this against 15 $100 SEO ad campaign. And I don’t know I’m not saying it doesn’t work. But like if you look at the results, because I have an example somebody, she wasn’t my client or like she wasn’t a long term client. We fixed her computer. I have a friend who’s the PC doctor. He he’s he prides himself as the PC Doctor Who makes house calls. Of course, that was before COVID Sure. And one day he calls me and he said, Look, can you change a hard disk for somebody? I’m just too work down here. And I have to go to Toronto. And, you know, so I said, Yeah, sure, like, you know, I’ll fix her computer, I don’t mind. So we met in Starbucks, I had like my screwdrivers and everything. And I had the new hard drive, and I fixed it and everything. So as we’re talking, she tells me about what she does. So she’s an inventor. And she has a product that sells on Amazon for I think, if I remember correctly, $9 or $8, or whatever. And as we were discussing, you know, this is a brand new product. So how do you market it? How do people know about it? And she says, I’ve made some videos talking about it. I’ve been interviewed by other entrepreneurs. And some people know about what I do and stuff like that. But most of my marketing is in the hands of an agency. And I’m paying them. I think it was close to 16 $100 a month. And I said, great, you know, how much sales do you have? From the 16 $100 a month? She says about seven, eight units? I said, What? Again, please? Okay, how much? And she said, seven, eight units sometimes. Then I said, Okay, so your product sales for nine. So let’s say you sell 10 units, you’re making $90. And you’re spending 1600. To make the 90, something is broken. And you said, Yeah, I realized I’m spending too much. But I’m new. And not many people know me. And it sounded like she’s repeating what the agency people told her to justify the amount that they’re charging. And again, I’m not against anyone, and many people are doing a great job. But you should see the result you get for your client, because like how to, ethically, how would you justify, because I know that agencies they say, Oh, we got stuff to pay, we got, you know, our cost and blah, blah, blah, blah, nice, okay? It works for some people, for your 16 $100. They make 10,000. That’s fine, it’s justifiable, right? If you look around, and you’re charging this month in and month out, and after three, four months, your client is telling you there’s no sales, you got to stop and adjust. You got to do something. You’re not just taking their money. Yeah, I don’t know if she still is, but it pains me and I couldn’t forget that example of how SEO sometimes doesn’t work and ends up actually emptying your pockets instead. Yeah,
27:33
no, it’s it’s a good point. And that’s why I like the approach. We do these, we do these experiments. And we tell people, hey, let’s just start with 20. Let’s start with like, what depends, it depends. Everybody’s different. Sometimes it’s five, you know, sometimes it’s 20. Sometimes it’s 50. It just, it just depends on the market and all that. But we start with an experiment, we put a deadline on it, we track the conversion, we track the results, it’s a lot easier to track this to when you’re only doing 20. You know, and then we adjust and we do it again, with some a jet with one adjustment. We pick one thing and we adjust Yeah,
28:07
it’s like it’s like a B split. It’s gonna say the same thing. I,
28:13
I sent an email out yesterday, um, and I use a tool for email, our email marketing ConvertKit I love it. Okay. I put an email together with two different subject lines. Subject line one was, here’s how I’ll give you here’s how you can get a $10 amazon gift card from me. And the second one was business advice from the trenches. And I thought the Amazon was going to get more open rates.
28:44
Yeah, what ConvertKit does sounds like everyone wants a $10 gift card. Yeah,
28:49
exactly. What’s cool about ConvertKit is and other ones do this as well, I just, I just, I used to use MailChimp, I’ve left the champions e straight on ConvertKit now, but it does it really really great. It automatically then for the for the first four hours after I hit send, it sends to 30% of my wet my list. It sends half of that 30% Oh, subject line a and the other half subject line be
29:19
at the end of the crowd separate campaigns,
29:21
right at the end of four hours, whichever one works. They said just everybody else
29:27
and take the successful one. For the rest of them. Yeah.
29:32
Though. The Amazon one had a 15% open rate. The advice from business owner had a 30% open rate Wow, double. I would have missed out on a significant number of emails being opened. had I gone with my gut. Marketers don’t always know. You know, copywriters don’t always know. That’s why testing. I love again. One of our other axioms is shoot a bullet before a cannon. Ball test test test, how can you give it a little bit of a test? on a small scale adjustment? It doesn’t hurt. You know? Because I’ll tell you some of these experiments. There, there’s no doubt about it, we’ll tell clients, hey, there’s a very good chance our first two, maybe three will bomb. I can’t guarantee I don’t know what’s going to work. But if you if you’ll trust us and keep going with us, we will land because I’m not telling you. This is what’s going to be for years. And it may be we’ve got an idea for a client. And I don’t have a client to take it on yet. I just I love coming up with with ideas. I want to find and I think this would be fun for a restaurant. Okay. So let’s, let’s say a local restaurant, we put together in a one hour sitcom, script, okay, we write a funny script, takes an hour, we record it and five minute episodes, and we release them on YouTube over 20 weeks. Okay, so you’ve just created your own TV series, with your restaurant as the backdrop. If it’s if the script is funny, you’re you start promoting this to your local market. Because here’s the thing, you don’t have to compete on a national market. If you’re if you’re if you’re a local restaurant, you need to compete against all the other local restaurants. None of your other local restaurant are putting out TV show. Yeah, yeah, are putting out a YouTube TV show. Alright, so you do this. And you do it a couple times. And you have some people in the restaurant sign waivers to be extras. And then you email them when their episode drops. Guess what that person’s doing? The sharing
31:49
with everyone?
31:51
Yeah, they’re sharing it tell you something. You don’t even have to mention a special, you don’t have to offer a coupon. Your brand awareness is going to go through the roof and your, you know, 20 minute 30 minute radius, I think that would be so much.
32:08
I saw something funny on like, not, not like that. Not not a sitcom, right. But I saw this on on on Egyptian TV. So the man had a new coffee shop, his daughter studies marketing and university. He’s got two daughters and a son. The eldest is 19 one. The other one is like, I think 14 and then a very young son like eight or nine anyway. And he tells his eldest now that we have our own coffee shop, can you do the stuff that you do? And she says that what do you mean the stuff that I do? And he says all these online things with like, the stuff that I don’t understand, like Facebook and tik tok, and whatever. And then, so what she thought about like, Okay, if we do a pay per click, or an SEO or whatever, that’s gonna cost him a lot of money. And I don’t want to let my dad down. But I don’t know what to do, because he doesn’t understand any of this. And he doesn’t have a budget. So what she did, she picked up her phone. She brought her sister and her brother in front of the coffee shop. And she was just talking, she’s telling people the story. She said, hey, my dad open this brand new coffee shop, he wants me to market it. I don’t know what to do. There’s no budget, the coffee shop looks cool. Look, here’s what it looks like. And she went inside. And like she showed people around. And she said, but now I’m stuck. I don’t know. So let’s have a little bit of fun. So hey, sister poses a model in front or whatever, and they started slack kids, you know, the guy says, I swear to God, like, I was unhappy, because that was very childish. And I thought, like, she’s, she’s not serious. And then he said, but she’s my daughter. So I didn’t want to get angry with her. And I let it go. Within two or three weeks, he said, people started to flood. Like, they want to go to the place. Because the video became like, I don’t know, something emotional, like everyone wants to help the girl whose dad doesn’t have a budget to market. So in the beginning, he thought that that’s bad publicity or telling people basically, I have no money. And, but it, it worked. Well, you know,
34:17
there’s a word behind why that word, and it’s the word authentic. Be authentic in your marketing. I mean, that’s just people and I have to fight this as a small business owner, and I have to fight this. You know, I look out because I sit down in the evening, watch TV with my family. And I see these big brand commercials and stuff like that. And I get this idea that that’s what a business looks like. Yeah, and I don’t know why that’s the case. You know, because that’s not true. You know, my favorite businesses to deal with are the fun unique ones. Exactly. And where I know their story, so like, I just think there’s so this is why
34:57
I do this podcast. That’s exactly why I do this. podcast. Yeah, I want to share things, those authentic stories and, and the uniqueness of every guest who comes here with me with the world because like not many people get to know, like, you know, they look in the same transit studio. Yeah, it’s a web design company, but they don’t know, the ethos behind that, what what you like what gets you out of bed in the morning, what you’re passionate about, and how More importantly, how you get stuff done. Because there’s, for all of us, not only entrepreneurs, for every single person, even if you’re working at as include as an employee in a company, everything you do has a little bit of you in it. And that’s what makes you unique. And in most cases that what makes you successful people connect with your authenticity with with you being like, a regular person rather than a brand as per se like, Yeah, I know, we say sometimes that you have to have your personal brand and whatever. But what what many people don’t tell you is that it doesn’t have to be hard, cold, distant brand. It actually should be you still be you. Like I’m I’m I love laughing I laugh out loud. I kind of take a relaxed approach to to life, maybe because I’m in the West, I don’t know. But But if you see, like all my photos, and everywhere and even my caricature, it’s always a big smile on my face. Because that’s me that it does represent me unlike, you know, without this laugh, I feel something is missing. There’s not enough energy.
36:41
Yeah, no, I agree. And here’s the thing, if you put out a persona for your business, that’s not you, the first time a client engages with you, they realize like, wait a minute, this isn’t what I see is not what I expected. So just be authentic and have fun. And, you know, I think there are so many missed opportunities out there for people, I do have a restaurant client that we are starting to, we’re working with them. And they’re going to start there, they’re starting their own cooking show. They’re going to be about seven minute long episodes, we’re going to put them on YouTube and Instagram, they’ve got this amazing column airy staff in this wonderful kitchen. And people are like, they think that you know, well, I can’t compete with the Food Network. You’re not trying to compete with the food.
37:30
Yeah, that’s, that’s the wrong approach. Yeah,
37:33
you’re trying to build a relationship with, you know, the 1000 people within driving distance, you know, like, it’s just, you got to think different. And with YouTube, right now, people, people are looking for content, and if yours is unique, and fun and engaging, and right there, like video content right now is, I mean, it’s just and there’s so many easy ways to do it. There’s so many easy ways to do it. But you know, you could start a series, um, you know, at your, at your office, you know, whatever it is a restaurant, or there’s so many ways to do it. And then you got offline marketing in here’s, here’s just one more example. Real quick, I don’t know where we’re at on time or anything like
38:12
that, oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.
38:15
Um, but here’s one more example. We had a client we have have a client that’s on our hosting and maintenance plan for their website, we take their website, and they’re a treatment center for people with addiction. It’s a residential treatment center, and they’re nonprofit. And so they they called out and they said, hey, we’ve got a budget of $300. What can you help us do for SEO? Or more Pay Per Click? And I said, well, low budget. Very low. Online. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But let’s let me take a look. Let me see. I have no idea how competitive the market is. And I want to make decisions based on data. Because we just proved a little bit ago, just because I think a subject line is going to work $10 Amazon necessarily. Yeah, I was I was double wrong on that. So, um, so I said, let me let me look at it. So actually had Michelle, you know, Michelle, she’s our SEO expert. So Michelle looked at and she came back and she’s like, Eric, there’s nothing they can do for $300. And here, here’s why. their competitors are they their competitors get $10,000 a month per bed. This place gets nothing. It’s free. It’s a nonprofit, you pay nothing to use this facility. their competitors are paying Pay Per Click for their for this nonprofits name. So if you search this nonprofits name, their competitors are all running ads against it. And so for them to overcome this was going to be a lot. And so I went back to them and I said, Hey, listen, we I think it’s a mistake for you to do anything. So instead, here’s what I I think you should do take that $300. And once a month, this was pre COVID. Once a month, have a lunch. And we can help you identify, you know, I’ve got four ideas off top my head if you want, we’ll work with you, we’ll identify 12 targets. But month one, have a free lunch for pastors, because that every pastor will take you up on a free lunch, you know, those will take you about a free lunch, social workers. So the next month social and you know who else have a free meal for the directors of nursing homes and urgent care facilities? In the next month? Have a like for the police department? Have these free lunches, bring people in and offer to do a training or something? Yeah. And tell them show them the place. Here’s what we can do, and spend the $300 to provide the free meal and build relationships. Because you know what? These are the people on the front line that engage with people every day action every day.
41:00
Yes, addiction. Yes,
41:01
I can’t afford a $10,000 facility. You know, get get your judges, get your district, you know, your prosecutor, your local prosecuting attorneys, get your defensive
41:10
to know and he gets a bit scary. Get your defense attorneys. It’s basically anyone who sees someone with addiction. And they want to instead of incarcerating the person they want to help. They want to rehabilitate the person,
41:28
high school guidance counselors and principals,
41:31
counselors, football coaches got like, the I can come up I can drug dealers. No, just kidding. If you want to offset what you sell, we’re here for just kidding.
41:46
Yeah, that’s not good there. But that is and you know what they’re like, Okay, great. It’s not what they expected. And here was their thing. They’re like, yeah, that sounds good. But, man, that’s, that’s gonna be a lot of work. We were just kind of hoping we could put some pages out there on the internet and send people to it.
42:05
You can but what’s the result that you getting? Yeah, yes.
42:08
It’s You know what, though? There, here’s the truth about money. There is no money hiding here behind my desk in my office. I’ve looked, there is none here. I have to get my butt out from behind my desk, and hit the streets and make relationships and networks because peep You and I both know Josh Hall. Josh says all the time. I don’t know where he got it. But he says it all the time. People buy from people they know like and trust. Yes. You’re not going to know like, and trust me from reading a blog post. Is there a place for blogging?
42:42
Yes.
42:43
Is there a place for potty I have a client that’s a that’s a auction here. And there, we’re helping them put together a podcast. They’re gonna put together a podcast where they’re going to talk about the land that’s for sale, in the end and in the state of Ohio. And they’re going to do this every other week. Their potential client listening base is not that big. But this is very targeted. It’s very direct. And we’ve helped them come up with some ideas to help get the word you know, they’re going to interview some landowners and things like that. What’s that landowner going to do? They’re going to share their episode and stuff like that. But here’s the beautiful thing about it. They’re on there. They’re fine with the fact that their podcast may only get 100 downloads every other week. where most people that like all of if my podcast, you know, isn’t number one on the list or I can’t I can’t compete with Dave Ramsey. I can’t compete with
43:38
NP I can’t know. I don’t even know the numbers of my podcasts. I don’t look.
43:42
Yeah. are you adding value to people? Great. I would rather add value to five people this week. Exactly. Nobody because I was afraid to try.
43:54
And the funny thing is, people I know tell me, they listen to my podcast. So he so I don’t know if some strain on me helped me. Maybe not after this specific one. But no, it’s funny because I have an existing client the other day, we had a meeting a socially distance meeting. But we were I went to their office to meet them in person, right. I’m old school. I you know, they’re a new client. They came through a referral from a friend. And while there the lady told me Oh, I was just listening to a podcast with that guest who does X and Y? And I said, Oh my god, like, I didn’t think like Where did you find the podcast? I remember the in my signature below my signature. I usually put the latest episode. So she clicked but she didn’t actually listen to that specific episode. She went to the one that was more of interest to her. And to me Yeah, wow, this works. Yeah, I haven’t. I didn’t get new business from the podcast, but this is the thing as well. When you do marketing, you should be clear. To what you want from whatever you’re doing, this is the thing that people sometimes forget about. For me, the podcast is about adding value is about meeting nice people listening to their stories, highlighting their uniqueness. And having fun in the process is not about how many customers or how many clicks will come from my podcast, some other podcasts, maybe have that target, but not mine. Yeah, so for me,
45:28
both in both are great. And that’s, I think that’s the key. You just have to know your why, like, why are you doing this? What’s the value behind it? What’s the point? are you adding value to people. And it’s the same thing with your marketing, you just got to, you just got to know why you’re doing it. And And not only that, you need to know what you’re not going to do. We get asked all the time, all the time, if we will help people with their social media marketing, or we’ve started recently, we just had our third one in the last like three months. Ask us about helping with their Amazon store. And I just say, God, we don’t do that. We’ve got some we’ve got some people that can, but that’s not what we need help with on an Amazon store. I suppose. There’s all kinds of now Well, there’s all kinds of keywords and
46:19
you know, oh, my Amazon store? Oh, yeah. It’s it’s all marketing. And because within your Amazon ecosystem, there are similar people with similar products. So how would you stand out? Yeah,
46:30
yeah. And that’s, and there’s, that’s great. And I’m sure, but you know what, here’s why we don’t do it. Because I don’t get excited about it.
46:37
Yeah, it’s boring. No, and it’s like me, you know, social media management. I, okay. Full disclosure, guys, because this is on YouTube. And it’s considered social media. But I don’t actually like social media that much. Nothing against it. But I think you could easily waste a lot of time and money on social media with no result, unless you’re doing it right. And I, I just I don’t, I don’t have it in me to charge a retainer for a client where I cannot show good result, or where I’m not convinced of the result. So for me, since this is not my bread and butter, this is not where my where my experiences. That’s it, I don’t do it, when they ask I just refer them or help them find somebody or look with them, you know, to find somebody. So I would say my,
47:26
yeah, we’ve got a referral network we refer people to because I just, I don’t get excited about it. And if I’m not excited about it, I’m not gonna do you a good job. Yeah. And so and are there some people that do great with apps here? Absolutely.
47:41
That’s it, if they know what they’re doing, they show the results. They’re not doing it. But
47:48
it’s like, it’s like investing. If you talk to somebody about investing, if they invest in stocks, they’re going to tell you that the best place to invest
47:58
everyone is doing Bitcoin right now. If they invest, if they’re gonna tell you that if they invest in real estate, they’re going to tell you that says the best investment you can ever do. Yeah,
48:07
everybody’s got a bias for that. And the same is true for marketing. I have a bias towards creative, targeted marketing, because I think it gets a higher return rate. And could I get, you know, can I get the same return rate doing social media? Or an SEO and SEO ads?
48:32
Yeah, you can, but the cost is going to be 10 times,
48:35
right? Big, but because the, the, the conversion rate is only going to be 123 7%, maybe 30. Like, we’re working with clients, where after six months of doing these experiments, we’re getting a 40% you know, 6080 whatever it is, we’re getting these high conversion rates. That’s but here’s an example. This isn’t this isn’t for me, this is from somebody, somebody that did this that does this kind of marketing. They have a client that sells solar panels. And I was doing a training with this this guy. I was from him. He’s a great guy, Justin, real smart guy. Um, and I think he’s, I think if he I forget the his brand, but anyway, um, he had a client selling solar panels. And they, they were running radio ads. And he was spending a lot of money on radio ads, and he’d get one lead a month. And so they said, let’s just, let’s just do this whole thing different. So they stripped them the radio ad from all the music. They slowed the talking down. It was just him talking just audio of this business owner talking. The radio station thought it was terrible. And he sent them to a they build a brand new website. It took him about seven minutes to build the website. It was a blank page with a video of this business owner standing on his roof holding his phone up with his own solar panels in the background, and a phone number below that sentence, text message, we’ll get a free and we’ll we’ll schedule a free on site, you know, estimate no obligation. Okay? They roll this out, they first month live with this. They were getting four leads a week, they went from one a month, for a week doing something that everybody else was saying, Don’t. Don’t do it. Your ads got to you speed it up. You got to have music. Well, let me ask you this. When’s the last time you listen to the radio? Tell me three ads you heard? Probably can’t do it. Most people can’t. Because they all sound the same. Yeah, here’s this guy. His ad comes out. It sounds totally different. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So I just think I mean, so even if you like radio, if that’s if that’s your thing. Okay. Maybe I saw an ad for an orthodontist. They had a mask on. And this was about. This is about middle of last summer, maybe towards the end of the summer. And it was and it said never been a better time to get braces.
51:27
Yeah, cause you call Exactly. Your mouth is covered already. That’s gold. Yeah. If you’ve got a teenager who’s not wanted, yeah, yeah, this is
51:36
the time I would have loved to bring it. I almost contacted them and said, I just want to know, what’s been your risk? And this is a billboard, I’m fine. Yeah, words, if you do it, right. So
51:48
yeah, so like, let me sum it up. We’re not saying don’t do online marketing, we’re saying the approach that we saw working in the last maybe year or two is a hybrid, a little bit offline a little bit online. And we’ve laid out the reasons why the offline part is important. And I totally agree with you. And I always laugh because when I when I meet a new prospect, and we’re discussing things, and I am terrible in sales, sometimes I just talk too much. Sometimes I bore the listener, I don’t know. But I get it. And I go for the Education Opportunity rather than the sale itself. Because I truly, I want to share the knowledge with the people that I’m meeting. And but what normally happens when people ask me about, you know, paid ads, and SEO and online marketing and stuff, and I say, look, okay, My nickname is the internet guy. So I’m supposed to be the one who tells you, everything goes online, everything is done with technology, whatever. But 99% of my business comes from referrals from people who I met, either met in person physically, or like, zoom, or have been introduced by you by Josh, by another friend. So like, I barely get business or inquiries from strangers, like people finding me on Google or whatever. And I do have some keywords that are on the first page of Google. So like, I’ve done that Bart have done my homework there. Right. But again, like you’ve quoted Josh, the same thing, people do business with someone they know and trust, or someone who knows someone they know and trust. So this is just the truth of the matter. The only difference is, for people who are doing Massive Online campaigns, like things that cost you know, I don’t know, $3,000 a month or whatever, and they soil, the pages is like, if you open your your water tab, they’re gonna come out of it, you know, from the amount of advertising they do that, that that’s different, you know, but for the average, small, medium sized business, they can’t afford that. And then it becomes very competitive, because what you’re trying to rank on becomes suddenly, instead of paying, I don’t know, $16 per click, it becomes $30 per click, or instead of paying $3, it becomes $17 and then and so on. And it just goes up and up and up. And the only winner is Google. So and we’re gonna, in part two, like this is so guys, yeah, part one, we’re just discussing business and marketing in general. part two of this is going to be another episode of separate I’ll produce it as a separate episode, we’re going to be discussing SEO optimization, website speed optimization, user experience, things like that in depth, so we’re going to put more or we’re gonna put the online part of marketing under the magnifying glass and and, you know, give us
54:58
because it’s still important At least Yeah, it’s still important. But don’t put all your eggs in that basket in one bite.
55:05
Exactly. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah. And yeah, if you didn’t do Bitcoin I’m not saying I don’t know whether to say do it or never do. I don’t know. Like I. Somebody told me about it when it was about six $7. And I was thinking like, virtual money. What? Like, I don’t know, maybe my age then like, I’m a techie. But like, not that techie.
55:28
I don’t get it. I saw the other day somebody paid $500,000 for a virtual house. Yeah. What virtual? Oh, so this virtual property as well. Yeah. Yeah. Because one day they’ll be able to exchange I tell you, I, I saw somebody bought or bought a piece of digital art for $100,000. And I’m just
55:48
like, Okay. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that’s funny. Instead of going to the museum, you look at it on your screen, but like,
55:55
Yeah, but I mean, anyway, and that’s teach their own. And that’s again, yeah, that’s how some people invest that whatever your strategy is, yeah, mine. I love to invest in businesses. I invest in businesses and entrepreneurs. I love because I’m one, you know,
56:12
yeah. Last. That’s best in knowledge. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love it. It’s fun stuff. Perfect. So Eric, thank you very much for this great insight about hybrid and offline marketing, as well as online and how to marry the two together.
56:30
If we can say that. Yeah, we try to always send people to the website, you know, leverage your website, you’ve got it. So you should have it anyways. You really should have your own website if you don’t, don’t. cracks me up. When I see somebody, you’d go to their URL and it redirects to their Facebook page.
56:49
Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, me too. pains me. Yeah. Don’t Don’t do it. We are going to actually demystify this whole world in in part two. Love it coming up on the next episode. Alright, so that’s the end of our part one, and we’re going to start Part Two shortly.
