Ken

Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the marketing guides for small businesses podcast. I'm Ken Tucker. Today, we're joined by Ian Cancel, Paul Barthel, and virtually, by Jeff Stack, who is, I guess, floating in front of an ocean today. So, anyway, what we're gonna be talking about is a little bit different than what we've done in the past. And, you know, I'm sure in your your head's probably about to explode because we're kinda skipping the strategy piece. But we're assuming that good strategy work has already been done. You know? And so what we wanted to do is just kinda talk through some scenarios about how you package marketing solutions to get the amplification effect that we talk about so often on this show. So we're gonna hit several different types of businesses and and really look at a multichannel, set of, you know, campaigns that, that integrate well with each other to support the different types of businesses that we, that we're gonna go through. So, today, we're gonna start with Paul. And, Paul, I would like for you to kinda talk about, you know, what, what would you do for a service area business like a home remodeler or a painter?

Paul

Well okay. So first of all, the first discussion you have to have with a client is their budget, what their budget is because if you're and we'll probably might talk about this a little later. But if if your budget is if you only have a few hundred dollars a month to spend, Google Ads is probably not the right platform for you because Google is doing their best to screw over small businesses. But optimize your small business listing. You know? Your unique cuss unique reviews. Make sure your service area details are filled out correctly. Upload photos, and respond to reviews. That's one thing that we see consistently that no one ever does. They never respond to reviews or they rarely respond respond to reviews, and and Google does look at that. So you need to do that. Nextdoor ads, I don't know. Has has anyone seen a lot of success with them? I mean, it's it's definitely something to try, but I don't know that we've ever seen a lot of success with Nextdoor ads.

Ken

Well, I know we haven't seen success with Nextdoor ads, but it's an intriguing platform for sure.

Paul

Yeah. Definitely. But in you know, video ads, we've talked about this in past podcast, video ads or video is is huge. And even if if you're if you're if you don't wanna be on video, there are ways around that that you video ads can definitely help with visibility. And, you know, social media before and after photo gallery pics. I think social media, it really depends on the industry you're in. Be like, Facebook is gonna work good for lifestyle type businesses. If you're not if you're an accountant, I don't know how much Facebook is gonna help you. You should still have a presence there.

Ken

But we're not talking about accountants. We're talking about home remodelers and painters.

Paul

Right. And, Pinterest. If you're a home remodeler, if you're a painter, Pinterest might be a platform that you that you wanna be on.

Ken

Yeah. You, when when we talk about optimizing, your your Google business profile, what what importance do you put on doing regular Google posts and also doing, you know, the questions and answers feature that the Google business profile gives you?

Paul

Well, I think q I think q and a's are important, definitely. The post, it's it's it it is important. It's very important, but Google has kinda changed that. It used to be that your posts were there for seven days, and Google said you should be doing two or three posts a week. Now they stay there for about six months. You should still post regularly at least once a week, maybe twice a week, probably twice a week. But the posts do stay there longer. It's not like it used to be where it's so your post is gone in seven days. It's not really gone. They just didn't show it anymore. Now it's it's it's like I said, it's about six months

Ken

Yeah.

Paul

That those posts will stay up there.

Ken

Yeah. And and and I love, you know, that you talk about, you know, the the before and after pictures and or videos. You know, those are so important. I mean, it gives you great content for your website in a way that you could package it and describe the, you know, the work that you did and the transformation. I mean, because ultimately, you know, these two businesses, Home Remodelers and Painters, I mean, they're in the business of transforming the way a house looks or feels or the livability of the house. And so that transformation is gonna be best captured ultimately in pictures and videos. You gotta give words to it to help, you know, rank on Google because Google needs the words for for content to rank. And and, obviously, I mean, this isn't a comprehensive, set of tactics. I mean, we all, you know it it like you said, it depends on your budget. And, you know, what I like about what you talked about is you picked a couple of traffic sources where you're paying to get traffic. This is probably a scenario where, you know, there's a smaller budget. The SEO is gonna be driven around building up the Google business profile ranking, probably focusing on a three to five mile radius around where the business is located, you know, with the with what you've talked about so far. Anything else that you wanna add?

Paul

Yeah. Yeah. One other thing. When you do a Google business post, you should always link back to your website, and I don't mean the home page. If let's say you're doing a before and accurate a before and after post on Google business profile, you should have content on your website that speaks directly to that, and you should link back to that content. And that gives Google another signal that, hey. This is content that is important. This is what we do. And just posting, that's good, but it's really not enough. You need to link back to you. You need to link back to something relevant on your website. Because I see this a lot with with Google business profile posts. They'll they'll do they'll people will put a post up there, and then they'll just link back to the home page. And I guess that's better than not linking back to your website, but it linking back to relevant content is gonna help you a lot

Ken

more. Yeah. You can do, promotions and special offers too, right, with Google Posts? Yes. Yeah. So so, you know, I mean, if that makes sense, to do. And then the last thing, which, I think, you know, is something that you should look at in conjunction with this that you didn't mention. I'd love your thoughts on it or, you know, just getting other key business directory listings synced up. Is that is that still important?

Paul

Yeah. It it it is because it's it's important from a trust standpoint in Google's eyes. You know, we talk about did a podcast a few weeks ago about e e a t expertise, authority, trust. So yeah. And the most important thing there is trust. And having your directory listings be consistent goes a long way towards trust in the Google ecosystem.

Ken

Yeah. Okay. Cool. I mean, part of what we're also trying to accomplish with this episode is just to, you know, kinda talk about maybe some tools that we don't talk about a lot or some techniques or or tactics that you can plug into an omnichannel approach. So, again, these are not vetted. These are not crafted by hardcore strategy work. These are just kinda brainstorms to just kinda give people an idea of, you know, what's you know, what you could put together, but really just to hammer home the importance of omnichannel integrated omnichannel marketing. So next, I wanna add I asked Jeff, about emergency services, home services, you know, like emergency plumbing services, water damage restoration, you know, things like that. Here's what he had to say.

Jeff

Okay. So let's talk now about emergency home services. So if you think of the kinds of problems homeowners are likely to have that they need emergency service on, we're talking about, you know, things that you might imagine, a plumbing emergency, a clogged drain, water leak, water damage restoration. If they've had a bad storm, if their carpets are soaked and they need them dried out fast, they don't want mold to start growing. And if mold has started growing, they need mold remediation. And I would also throw HVAC contractors into that category. If the HVAC goes out in the middle of the summer, it's a big problem, and you don't wanna wait a week in hundred degree temperatures to get that fixed. So, typically, if you look at the buyer behavior, the people are looking for quick solutions. They're looking for resources right away. They're probably doing Google searches. That's probably their starting point. Whether it's on their phone, whether it's on, their desktop, Google searches are gonna be paramount. So, of course, the quickest way to show up in search rankings for Google is ads, paid ads. So we're talking about keyword driven search. So things like emergency plumber in water damage restoration near me, those are what people are looking for. So you wanna make sure that you buy those keywords and get an ad showing if you're not doing well for SEO. And even if you are doing well for SEO, you're not doing well for SEO. And even if you are doing well for SEO and and showing up organically for those keywords, you still might wanna buy that just to have extra coverage on the page and get extra notice. So that's the first place to start, Google search with ads and, for sure, some SEO. Then when people get to your website, you want twenty four seven contact information. You want to give them a path to get a hold of you quickly and get a response quickly. And especially after hours, that probably means an AI chatbot on your website answering their questions. It probably means an emergency contact form in a way to get notification to somebody who can get back to them. Yeah. That probably does mean somebody's gotta be on call. It doesn't do any good to say I've got twenty four seven contact information. Thank you very much. It's midnight. Somebody will get back to you at 07:00 in the morning. That's probably not gonna fly because your competitor that does have true twenty four seven response is gonna get the business. So you need to think about how are you gonna allow people to connect with you and how are you gonna get back to them. So that means some kind of automations, as I said, with chatbots, with emergency contact phone numbers, probably a missed call, text back, reassuring people that you're gonna get, back to them right away, and then make sure you've got the mechanism to do that. You may wanna look at doing some remarketing ads and specifically online. Again, think about the buyer behavior. If somebody's looking for emergency service, they go do some searches, they find a couple of possibilities, They may also be going to, you know, Facebook and looking to see who their friends have used or, you know, who in the neighborhood, puts on a good presence. So if they're gonna go online, if they're gonna bounce around and look for different options, then having retargeting ads, remarketing ads showing up is gonna help your case too. It's gonna help you get more visibility and then potentially more business from that. And then, again, the big customer review sites, can play an important role. So, again, buyer behavior. People are looking for that help. They've got a couple of possibilities. They've gone online. They've looked for recommendations. Now they're maybe gonna look at Yelp or HomeAdvisor or Angie's List or even your Google Business profile. They're gonna check up on you. They're gonna narrow that shortlist down, and they're gonna figure out who to call. And this is all gonna happen in a very short amount of time. Again, if my air conditioning's out and it's a hundred degrees, I'm not gonna take an hour you know, even even an hour, maybe minutes, but I'm not gonna take days by any means to do research. I'm gonna figure it out pretty quickly. But the more coverage you can have on the more channels and, again, working together. You know, your website is dropping a cookie in the browser. The cookie Facebook pixel is used to do remarketing ads. You've got the chat bots. You've got the missed call text back now, getting back to people. All of these things working together, that's your your multichannel approach to getting the business in.

Ken

Okay. So, I I mean, again, obviously, this is just a brainstorm. I'm I'm gonna keep mentioning this throughout the podcast. But, you know, again, a a really nice set of solutions and some key points that, sadly, way too many businesses don't have their phone number prominently displayed on their website. They there it doesn't scroll as some as somebody might scroll down the website. You know, the the the navigation the top navigation may not be sticky and stay at the top. You're you're missing opportunities if your business is related to emergency services. It's all about people contacting you and get an immediate response. So you gotta eliminate any barriers that, that are out there. Paul, Ian, any any thoughts from you guys on this?

Ian

One one of the things I think that, is so important, is, Google local service ads. I don't think he mentioned that. Google local service ads are radically different. They're basically a different platform than how you manage your other Google Ads, but they show up in the listings. They're highlighted at the top. You only pay for the leads you get. You don't pay per impression or per click like you do with some of the other ad platforms, including Google Search Ads. But those for a lot of emergency type services, those are really important. But I would reemphasize, since we're talking multichannel, that to actually win at the game, you you shouldn't if you have the budget, because you're the ROI will prove this out to you. If you pay for local service ads, if you pay for search ads, Google search ads, if you optimize your Google business profile, so you show up high in the maps as well as those ads, you show up in the regular ads and you do great SEO optimization, like, you're just hitting people. You know, it they say that it take it used to be seven impressions took seven impressions for someone to make a buying decision. It's now you know, the the stats are all over the place, but it's at least 12:15, sometimes thirty, depending who you listen to. Right. But the the point is the more impressions you as a business can make on someone, the higher the opportunity that they will actually click the button, research you, and call you or have you call them back. So if you can own all of the Google search results, your your chances of winning are far higher, and the stats show it you know, prove it out if you dig into the stats for Google stuff.

Ken

Yeah. And when you say Google search results, I mean, you're including the different ad platforms, the maps, and organic listing. Everything. Own own the Google search results.

Paul

Yeah.

Ian

I mean When you type in emergency plumber, you wanna show up on everything.

Ken

Exactly. Exactly. So Yeah. Paul, any other thoughts?

Paul

No. I don't think so. Okay.

Ken

Alright. Ian, we're gonna shift to you now. Let's talk about professional services. In this case, I was thinking of, you know, predominantly, like, accountants or attorneys, folks like that.

Ian

Yep.

Jeff

Talk about,

Ken

how you would put together an omnichannel or multichannel approach for them.

Ian

Sure. Yeah. There's gonna be some some consistency in what we talk about today because, you know, for a lot of businesses, it just proves beneficial regardless of the type of business you're in. But since I'm talking about professional services, accountants, attorneys, lawyers, Paul talked about Google Business Profile Optimization. You have to be there. You have to have that optimized to the hilt. You have to be generating more and more, turning great satisfied customers and clients into great online reviews, right, and responding to those reviews. It all helps you show up better. Search engine optimization, you know, for for professionals, if they're ignoring this, huge opportunity lost. So this is just low hanging fruit. They every everybody should be doing this. Google search ads, for professionals, they work as well. Because, again, if even, you know, even if somebody is referred to you, the chances are they're gonna Google you anyways. So, you know, you wanna own the search results as much as possible. So show show up in the search ads, especially like, you can you can the nice thing about ads is if you're really busy, you can pull them back a little bit budget wise. If it's getting into tax season and you're feeling lean, crank out those ads. Right? Like, it's you can't do that with organic type, strategies.

Ken

Right.

Ian

So, ads give you a little bit of, power that way to control things. LinkedIn ads. And I say this with a caveat because, quite frankly, we have not had dramatic success with LinkedIn ads. It seems like it should be a slam dunk. So I I'm really interested to hear if you guys have had some success, but we we've tried LinkedIn ads for our own business, for some of the professionals we serve. It again, it seems like a slam dunk. You you can target by industry, job title, decision making, authority, like, you name it, interests. It feels like, strategically, it should work. Mathematically, it just hasn't worked for our clients. But I I put it out there because with the type of targeting and its unique targeting that is very unique to LinkedIn because of the type of platform it is, it should work. So I I would I I always recommend to clients, like, don't, just because you have a preconceived idea. And even the reason I say it, it that you should look at it is because I haven't given up on LinkedIn, because one of the premises of good strategic marketing is to test and optimize. Right? And so one of the tests, if you've if you've already done some of the other tactics for your business, try LinkedIn ads. But but do it well. Like, give it a good test. Don't just throw some money at it and see if it sticks. Yeah. Was Paul gonna jump in there?

Paul

No. I think okay. I think LinkedIn, I think they're they do have all this targeting you talked about, and I think that's just kinda become their own worst enemy because it it's almost as if it's turned into nothing but a spam and sales platform

Ian

Right.

Paul

Because of the targeting. And like you said, it it does have all these targeting, and it should work. But I think it has become a platform that people just abuse because of those targeting options. That's my opinion.

Ken

Yeah. We we talked about a couple of weeks ago too, I think, you know, that LinkedIn ads are really expensive. And in order to get the coverage that LinkedIn recommends that you do from your ad campaigns, they're demanding very large budgets. You know, and sometimes that just doesn't align well with a service area or or a natural area where you're gonna draw your clientele from.

Ian

Yeah. Yeah. And one one comment about LinkedIn. Like, the more you can tighten your focus so, you know, a lot of business owners, and this is true of professionals as well, Think, you know, like, think dentists. Right? Everybody has teeth. Everybody needs our services. Yes. But from, like, just from a pure advertising standpoint

Paul

I've seen some people without teeth.

Ian

Well, that's true. But they could use dentures. So, maybe. But, it's far easier to get high ROI or higher ROI by tightening your focus and targeting, like, say, you're a pediatric dentist only targeting parents of young children. That is so much easier and more cost effective than trying to do a shotgun approach to everybody with teeth. Right? So as an example, for for, the and this isn't just LinkedIn ads. This is any type of advertising for for professionals. As an example, if you're an accountant, like, yes, maybe you can do personal taxes for everybody. But for a lot of account accountants, they kinda choose one side. Right? Like, we're we're either serving individuals and families or we're serving businesses, and you need to target appropriately. Right? And and if you go too broad, it's to your detriment. I I did wanna mention, content marketing. Right? Like, as a professional, you have a strong point of view. You should be sharing that point of view consistently in blog posts, sharing those blog posts on social. When you create consistent content, and blog posts are kind of the easiest, most natural way to do that because it's it's content on your website, It helps your SEO. It provides you with shareable content for social media. It's shareable content for your email marketing to stay top of mind with the contacts that you have in your database. So, it's it's very, very powerful. And then that leads into email marketing. If you're not email marketing to both prospects, customers, contacts, you should be. It's it is absolutely one of the highest return on investment activities you can do as a business, but do it well. Be a welcome guest, not a pest. Right? And then we've already talked about websites, But all of these things, like, I don't think there's I can't think of one. There's very few marketing strategies that any business will do today that doesn't lead people to your website. Like, even referral marketing leads people to your website. People who are referred to you, whether they check out reviews online, whether they talk to a family or or colleague member, they're gonna come to your website. They will investigate you because we are all researchers as businesses and as consumers. So make sure you target your website appropriately to your ideal clients you're trying to attract as an accountant, as a as a attorney, a lawyer. Clearly communicate what your value proposition is and what sets you apart from the competition. I think that's so important. But those are just a few Yeah. Probably long winded top of mind things.

Ken

Yeah. A couple of things I'd like to kinda touch base on is, with both accountants and attorneys, I found historically a lot of concern and resistance about asking people to write reviews for them. And it's like, you know, nobody's I mean, you you may be lucky where the people who've written reviews for you have all just been five star. That's the exception rather than the norm. We've talked about this before. Negative reviews aren't necessarily the, you know, the worst thing. Obviously, you've gotta maintain a threshold of a certain, you know, I think four four point o or higher Google rating is is is extremely important. But, you know, a lot of people in these spaces, they think, okay. Well, if they have a bad tax year, they're gonna write a bad review about my accounting service that I did for them. And it's like, well, if they don't have confidence that you didn't get them the best possible return and the best outcome, yeah, maybe. But if they feel that, yeah, it sucks that I have to pay a bunch of extra taxes that I wasn't planning on, but I know my accountant did the best job to kinda keep that as in check or help me pay off, you know, my my tax, you know, throughout the year so that it wasn't a massive burden, then they're gonna write a good review for you. So, I I I mean, it's just crazy. Reviewing the truth is

Jeff

so critical.

Ian

Yeah. And the truth is, Ken, that, statistics show that people are more likely to to unsolicited leave you a bad review than a good review.

Jeff

Right.

Ian

And so the fact that you're not and and don't think solicitation because that's a a bad term in a lot of people's minds. But but if you don't ask for reviews, the chances are more bad people will leave a negative review than good people. So you owe it ultimately not just to your business, but to the future prospective customers that you can serve better than your competition, hopefully. Yeah. You owe it to them to try to get as many great stories that will help people make a good choice. Right?

Ken

Yeah. Yeah. Or you don't get any reviews, which also speaks volumes. Yeah. The other thing that I wanted to kinda hit up on is you talked about content marketing. And and, again, this is this is, you know, professional services seem to me there there where there's a proliferation of syndicated content onto their websites that does them no good, but it makes them think that they're helping themselves with SEO. But it's not unique content. It's syndicated to dozens and dozens and dozens, hundreds of other attorneys or accountants or or whatever, you know, whatever niche you're in, because it's not unique content, so Google just ignores it. And so you're paying for a service thinking, hey. Everything's great. I'm really helping with my SEO here. You're not. And and this is, you know, this is a professional services seems to me to be to be an area where this they've been victimized by, you know, people who's I mean, the content may be fantastic, and there may be value in getting that content and putting it on your website. But if you're trying to do it to rank, it ain't happening.

Ian

Here here's an interesting story that we had with a a CPA, so a a chartered professional accountant. They which is kind of the highest level, at least in Canada, of accounting that you can get. Right? Like, it's these guys are highly educated. They know what they're doing. When when we, pitch them on their strategy and then ultimately on their website, they were hesitant about, like, even going down that path because they were like, man, we gotta we gotta write all this content. We're like, no. No. Like, this is that's included. We're the we're the content experts. We just need to download your point of view from you and your team, and then we will write it and strategically create it. And then you just have to look at it and review it and, you know, your feedback will be vital. But, they were, first of all, astounded by that. But then going back to that content engine, you know, no no accountant, no attorney, no dentist, like, anybody that's in that professional world, the whole point of them doing marketing is to is so that they don't have to do anything but the work they love doing or and that they, you know, studied for Right. And to grow their business. And none of them, for the most part, have time to write blog posts. Right? So hire a professional. Not only will they create great content for you, it will be your point of view because good come good agencies will download it. They'll take your feedback. They'll optimize the process of creating content, and and it will be fantastic. And it's not duplicate content like what you were talking about, Ken. But it's hard. Like, it it's hard to get past that for some professionals.

Ken

Yeah. And for professionals, you know, there there's a real tendency to to write techno babble.

Ian

Yeah.

Ken

You know, it means a lot to them, but to the target audience that they're trying to reach, it may it may be basically just gibberish. And so, you know, that's where working with, you know, professional writers. Free first, it frees up your time, so that you can go uniquely do what you need to do to make money in your business. And second of all, you know, a good writer knows how to write to a specific audience. So

Ian

Yeah. Another another quick story. Like, we we this is a different CPA. This is actually a certified professional account out of the US, where they felt their unique point of view was so unique that nobody else could write it, and it kept them stuck in the in the we were just doing a website for them, but they got really, really stuck because they couldn't think. So the whole purpose of your website, people, is not for you. It's for the people you're trying to attract. And that was the biggest thing we had to get them to switch their perception because if they only thought about it as this is me, this is a representation of me, and I have to say all these big words and fancy stuff because I'm I'm so highly educated, it doesn't matter. Like, you you know, there's other opportunities. You can do a peer presentation, you know, where where you could use lots of big words because it's to your peers. But for consumers, for customers, business business, think about the target audience. That's the most important thing.

Ken

Yeah. Alright, Paul. I tried to get this question to you, Ian, but I just couldn't get it to fit on the on the schedule. So I know you've got to share a lot to share on this, so jump in as appropriate. Paul, I wanna talk to you about now what I refer to as a brick and mortar business, specifically, you know, places of business that people go to to receive, you know, service. For example, medical spas or med spas, dentists, chiropractors, places like that. So, talk about, you know, what, you know, what a good omnichannel approach might be for them.

Paul

Yeah. Sure. Well, search ads, obviously. And the one thing that I will say two things on that is that and I was talking to someone else about this is that you have to have a decent budget to get to really get a return on investment. If you only have a few hundred dollars, you can really narrow it down to one ZIP code, one service, and you might get something you might get a a return on that. But what what I started to

Ian

notice Google's always happy to take your money. Right, Paul?

Paul

Regardless of the You're always limited by budget. Even if you're spending ten thousand dollars a month, you're limited by budget.

Ian

Yeah.

Paul

But one thing I noticed when I was talking to someone else about this is if you're not spending a couple thousand dollars a month on ad spend, your return isn't gonna be great. I mean, you'll get something, but that's kinda been what what we've been seeing lately. But your keywords are important. Okay? So, like, things like dentist near me, you know, med spa near me, whatever it is. And you can put the city in there, and I usually do, but you're gonna that's kinda gonna be taken care of with your location targeting anyway. Your ads are gonna show in the in you didn't tell Google this is where I want my ads to show. Because one thing Google's been doing is they they're pushing their Performance Max campaigns. And, Ian, I'm sure you've seen this. They want they that's every time there's a recommendation, run Performance max campaigns. And

Ian

And why why are they promoting those, Paul?

Paul

Because they can because it costs you a fortune.

Ian

And it's all automated. Right? Like, that's

Paul

It's it's almost largely automated. And it Yeah. What that is for anyone that doesn't know, it's a combination of search, display, and video ads. And those are all good things, but you might wanna keep those separate. And even Google will tell you if you change something in a Performance Max campaign, you have to wait a month for the algorithm to adapt before you start tweaking things. So and I touched on display ads, which those are, you know, image ads, and Google isn't the only platform. There's other ones out there, but they're usually more of an awareness kind of thing, getting your name out there, staying top of mind. And they have some pretty good targeting options. You can target websites where I know we're talking about brick and mortar here, but but if you're okay. If you're a med spa, you can target websites if they allow ads, websites that people that go to med spas might go to and your ads will show to them. And then, obviously, you have your social media, Facebook, Instagram. We talked about LinkedIn. With any of these ads, and this is one thing we've noticed as well, is no one ever wants to have an offer. You you've gotta have an offer because if if you don't have some kind of offer and your competitor does, you've just lost that opportunity more than likely, unless they're they have some compelling reason to click on your ad without an offer when your competitor has an ad with an offer. So and but one thing you can do is so and you you can put images in your search ads on Google as well as display ads. But with social media, you can put your you can put images in there. They have I'm I don't really do Facebook advertising, but or, well, I I don't create Facebook ads, but do they still have, like, the the carousel kind of things?

Ken

Oh, yeah.

Paul

Okay. So that that's something you can do with social media that you can't do with with Google necessarily. And Yelp ads do not discount Yelp ads. What I would say is work with a Yelp partner. If you if you go to Yelp because Yelp has created a bad reputation for themselves in the past. And we've had people that work directly with Yelp, but they're like and so they're they're just you mentioned Yelp to them, and they they just get downright pissed. They're like, I'll never spend another fill in the blank penny with them because because they were just aggressive. But if you work and irritating and annoying and obnoxious and intrusive And they burned companies? Yes. They did. But if you work with a Yelp partner, you don't have to deal with Yelp, and that Yelp partner has a Yelp representative that they're working directly with. So you can mitigate a lot of those issues. And, you know, one thing I was gonna touch on, and you were talking about email marketing, and you said do it right. Would you say be a welcome guest, not a pest? Yo. A while back, I I bought it, And this is what not to do. I bought a chainsaw from Home Depot.

Ian

Nice. Yeah.

Paul

And they, for the next two weeks, they were sending me email, which I unsubscribed from their their email list. But they sent me emails about, oh, hey. We found these chainsaws for you. How many freaking chainsaws do you think I need? So, you know, don't do that. But, anyway, that's kinda what I have on on the different platforms. I don't know. Did I miss anything?

Ken

Well, obviously, you know, as Ian, I think you mentioned before, Google business profile is huge. I mean, sixty to seventy percent of all clicks or phone calls happen if to those three businesses that show up on the Google Maps results. And interestingly enough, you know, Google is experimenting of adding up to five people now on the Google Maps in a few markets. It's an experiment. Right now, you still have to assume that it's gonna remain three because they test this stuff periodically. You gotta be one of those top three. So, you know, that's gonna pertain to any one of these scenarios. I'll just say that categorically. Your Google business profile is just incredibly important. What one of the points that I wanna make is, you know, with social media ads, with med spas and dentists and, Ian, you might be able to speak to this even, you know, with more authority. But, because it's talking about beauty and has a potential of maybe making somebody feel intimidated or, you know, I don't know the right phrase. Because all of you know, everybody wants to show beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty. Nobody wants to look at, you know, picture of a mouth of, you know, really crooked, ugly teeth or rotten teeth or stuff like that. So, you know, when you're running these ads, just know that you're gonna get challenged very frequently, on the ads that you're running. And and, you know, it's it's a difficult mark it's a different difficult set of niches to run ads in, I think.

Paul

Yeah. And they're on Facebook because they'll disapprove your ad because if if they think it might make someone feel bad and that this is not a joke, I'm not being sarcastic, that they would disapprove your ad.

Ken

And Google's starting to do that too.

Paul

Yep. They are.

Ian

You'll you'll notice that most med spa, most dentists, most any kind of, treatment that's aesthetic in nature, orthodontist, right, where you're going from before to and after, like you were talking about with remodeling. Right? Like, it's really hard to do those. So most of them have been very much sterilized from an ad standpoint where you'll see that most ads are about the practice, are about here's a photo of our team. Even and this isn't just the visuals, it's the words. Like, you can get disapproved very easily if you again, it's, see, advertising, as most people know, is aspirational. Right? You're you know, if you're targeting people in their eighties, you're probably showing pictures of people in their sixties. Right? Because people are young at heart, and they don't view themselves as old. And the same is true with, like, your teeth. You know, if you're thinking about getting veneers on your teeth because your wedding's coming up, you don't wanna see a per picture of a person with crooked teeth or gaps or, you know, teeth that aren't perfect. You want to be aspirationally driven. But that's where kind of the politically correctness I don't know how else to say it.

Ken

You're concerns over this discrimination.

Ian

Yeah. It's concerns over discrimination, but it's almost like it the pendulum swung so far that it gets a little bit ridiculous in that you can't even show people with nice teeth without, you know, Facebook saying, well, you might make some people feel bad about their teeth. Well Yeah. You know? So you have to find the exact center medium of somebody with not too crooked, not too straight. You know? Like, it's a it's a funny world Yeah. On the digital advertising side. But one one thing I would add, I think I think, Paul, you've covered it really well. Of course, all of the things we've already talked about with organic search and everything like that are very relevant for these guys. But I would even say, like, direct mail is super important for dentists, for med spas. Like, you have a very tight geographic area usually that you're targeting. Like, down I live in, we have twenty three dentists, orthodontists. Right? That's a lot for, you know, a forty thousand population area. And so one of the ways to get in front of people is direct mail. And and, you know, it kinda died a little bit during COVID, but it's back in full force. And the one thing I would say, though, the the mistake I see ninety nine percent of dentists, med spas, all of these guys doing, is that they they send out the thing without an offer sometimes. Oftentimes, there's an offer, but sometimes without an offer, big big no no. And the call to action isn't digitally connected, meaning they don't use a call tracking number, so they can say, oh, this is the number of calls we got through this postcard. And they don't use, like, an a specific link or a QR code. Right? And Right. And, like, often the QR codes just send you to their home page without any kind of tracking. How is a business are you ever gonna know what's working? Like, you're just throwing money at something, hoping it sticks, hoping that your sales rise and that inquiries rise, but you you actually don't know. It's just a feeling, and that's a bad way to invest in your marketing.

Ken

Yeah. So one of the things that, you know, Paul, you mentioned that you you you gotta have an offer, especially if you've got competitors that are running offers. I think it's important to to note, you know, having the word free in your Google ad or Facebook ad dramatically increases conversion. And it could be free consultation. It doesn't have to be a discount, but having that word is critical. Now on the flip side, if you put the word free in email, you're probably gonna have that,

Ian

you In the subject line.

Ken

Yeah. Then you're gonna run into trouble getting that email delivered. Right. So so, you know, that's why, again, it it it behooves businesses to work with marketing professionals who know these nuances where free works and where different platforms react to that. So but but, again, I mean, there's there's pretty solid data that just having the word free in your Google Ads dramatically increases the click through rate. So, the next type of business that I ask about, I asked Jeff to talk about restaurants. So let's see what he talked about here, and he's got a long answer. So we may we may click the

Jeff

Now let's talk about brick and mortar businesses such as restaurants, and I I would throw some retail into this category as well. We're gonna talk about the platforms you wanna be on and, again, multichannel approach, how everything kinda integrates together. So social ads can be very powerful. You can run targeted social media ads. And, again, we're talking about ads now, not posts. But you can promote special offers, new menu items, happy hour deals. You can target geographically down at the ZIP codes. You don't need to target an entire city or an entire state. You can work close to your location. You're probably gonna be on Facebook or Instagram. You can use the ads both to bring people back if you have an established audience base that you're advertising to, or if you have a lookalike audience or at least a target demographic, then you can use, those platforms to to grow your your base as well. Content marketing can be good. So we're talking here about organic social media and also organic content on your website. But especially on social media, now we're talking about the post side of social media, not the ad side, but the post side. So it's a little different. The ad side, of course, can be all offer and sales oriented. The post side should maybe be ten percent on the sales y, and the rest of it should be establishing rapport, growing, building relationships, looking for engagement, looking to grow your audience through organic engagement, which means you've got to give them information of interest. You've got to, show them what's going on behind the scenes at your operation. You've gotta get them let to, you know, let them get to know you, I should say, on who you are and what you stand for and who the people that work for you are and why you're a great bunch of people that that they wanna come visit. So you can establish your expertise by publishing informative articles, informative posts on relevant topics. Again, we're trying to build trust and establish thought leadership here. Display ads can be really cool. Display ads are graphically oriented, and they have some different targeting options than typical search ads or or even regular social media ads. They can be sent out what we call programmatically, so you have a lot, lot, lot of control over the parameters that you use to target the ads. And one of the really cool ones is geofencing. I think we've talked about that before. But geofencing is drawing an electronic fence, if you will, around an area and then people that are in or pass through, that's a key, that geo fenced area are then potential targets for your ads either at that time or later. So how might a restaurant use that? Well, let's say you're an Italian restaurant. You're looking for people that like Italian food. So let's say you geofence all of your competitor Italian restaurants near you, and then anybody that eats at them can then, at a later time, see ads from you. So you know they like Italian food. So now you start showing them ads and offering them a free app or a discount on their first visit, some reason to come in and see you, and boom, you're growing your audience. You're growing your customer base. Email marketing and text, I would kinda lump these together in the way they're used, but they are different channels. But if you can build your email list, if you can get people on your text based marketing list, now you can drip content on them. You can send out regular updates of what's going on at your business. You can send them offers. You can send them specials. You can let them know about new menu items or new products in the store. And then you also, based on how they join your your email list, or how they got into your text funnel, you can then target your ads for them. For instance, if you have different buttons on your, website to opt in to get, you know, a discount coupon. If they opt in on the button in the dessert section of your menu, then you can send them a coupon for dessert. If they opt in on the appetizer section, you can send them a coupon for an appetizer. So you can segment your list based on their interests. Same thing with with products and retail if they're joining your list. So you can target your promotions based on, what you've learned about your customer audience. You You can also send, regular information, to those people with general interest or specific sections even of the email could be targeting their interest. And the same thing with text marketing, just a little different form. You're not gonna be as long form, but you can still send targeted text out based on their interest. But But text messages have the added benefit while you can't be as lengthier as descriptive in them, you can get a much higher, delivery rate. Email delivery is getting tougher and tougher. They do go through. It's does still work. However, text messages, when's the last time you got a text message that you didn't at least glance at? They're short. They can get attention quickly, especially if they have a a headline like, you know, free appetizer. This Friday, I'll you know, kinda create a little urgency, create a little special, aspect of it, and use that text to bring people into your establishment. You can also send weekly texts with just general offers of, again, new menu items or kinda what's going on in the business. Come see us, limited time promotions. Then review management. Review management becomes important because you wanna clearly communicate your services and how they benefit clients. You want to ensure that your clients have a positive user experience, and you want to build your reviews so that when people are out looking for what you're what you're doing, what kind of food you're selling, what kind of products you're selling in your store. People will see the reviews about your food, about your service, and it will make them more likely to wanna come see you. Now here's a tip on reviews. You need to engage with people who leave you reviews. They leave you positive reviews, thank you for them. Thank them. Thank them for their reviews. If they leave a negative one, don't be argumentative. Just say, hey. We're sorry this happened. Contact us. We'd like to fix it. And then once they do then ask them to leave a follow-up or change the review, just don't argue with them. No. You're wrong, because that does never end well.

Ken

Okay. One other thing that I know Jeff talked about and just for brevity because I wanna make sure we leave time for you for your last question, Ian. Yelp ads and and just the the paid tools that Yelp Yelp gives you for restaurants, you know, that's what ninety percent of people probably think Yelp is really all about is restaurants. That's not the case, but, yeah, but restaurants are a heavily used type of business in the Yelp platform. So definitely take advantage of that. And, again, as Paul said, work with a partner. Don't don't deal with the, obnoxious direct Yelp salespeople. Their the partners are gonna give you a lot of good benefits and and extra insights and probably even some extra ad spend. One thing that, I wanted to talk about too with text marketing, and then I'll turn it over to you, Ian, for your last question. Most people when they do text marketing, they they feel compelled to to send out text to get people to try bizarre stuff. You know? It's like, hey. We just created a mango pickle, mushroom pizza. Come in and try it. It's like, no. People you need to focus on the bread and butter things that people know about you, that they've you've built your reputation on, that's what's gonna get people in the door. The whole point of text marketing is to get people to come in more frequently and and buy more often. And sometimes when they buy, they spend more than they normally would. And, you know, you're missing the boat if you're using text to promote these bizarre things. So, anyway,

Ian

what If I can just add to that real quick, Ken, the the ones that I've seen work really, really well are when the business owner of a restaurant knows precisely which days they're the weakest at.

Ken

Right.

Ian

And they do promotions for those days even for, like, the regular items you're talking about or you get a a free app appetizer with something. Right? So you're not actually discounting your giving bonus.

Jeff

Right.

Ian

I I think that is a tremendously strong approach because Yeah. If you can boost your weaker days, that is in fact a bigger win than boosting your busiest days. Right? So That

Ken

that's right. And Yeah. What's great about text marketing is if you've built a really good text marketing list, if you need to step on the gas pedal, it's it's Friday afternoon and, you know, you're normally busy and full up by that time of the day and you're not, you can do a text message to your list and say, hey. For the next ten people or if you can get here before 05:00, here's a special we're running. You know? And so you can you don't wanna abuse that because you need to be very respectful of the number of texts that you send overall, but it's it it it it it's got such a high delivery and read rate that, it's it's the way to it's the best way to step on the gas.

Ian

A little a little bit different. One one thing I I think that should be added to restaurants, and I don't work with a lot of restaurants. So this is more observational and strategic thinking, but please, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. But I I see the power of user generated content as such a high value thing, not just for, like, if somebody will take a picture of the food they're eating like you do, Ken. You travel. Yeah. Fairly often, you eat out while you're traveling. You take a picture of it. You You share it, and you talk about the restaurant you're at. Right? Yeah. And it's not super detailed. It's just, boom. Here's what you know, here's this awesome looking food I'm eating.

Paul

A lot of people do that.

Ken

Uh-huh. I'm eating this and you're not.

Ian

Exact that's how it feels. So I'm at home eating a sandwich. Ken's having barbecue, Texas barbecue. But what I would say is there are strategies to help motivate people to do that, whether it's a contest entry or something like that. But if you can get people to do user generated content, if and if you can encourage them not to just to leave reviews, but to leave reviews with photos, man, like, that's gonna boost your results to a higher level.

Ken

Yeah. Yeah. Great point. So, Ian, we're gonna wrap up our scenarios with you. The last one that I kinda came up with was, a local business that has a high volume of customers, meaning that the customer has to go back in to to visit this type of a business on a fairly frequent basis. And so I was thinking, like, auto repair. You know? Like, getting oil changes or tire rotations or things like that. And, you know, we're kinda running up on time, and and I I know you and I have a huge list of things that we could talk about here. Just pick three or four or five that you think, you know, package well together, that maybe are some things that we haven't really discussed before or or things that you see are absolutely critical.

Ian

Sure. Yeah. And and I think one of the biggest things to keep in mind when we're talking, like, high volume where what's a little bit different between HVAC and auto repairs, auto repair, you're probably gonna be back to the auto mechanic more often than you are for an HVAC, right, unless they do an annual maintenance program and that kind of stuff. Right? Right. But but what I would say is, you and this is true with any business, where you're trying to, keep retention high. But I would say it's one of the things that are often overlooked by these types of businesses, repair and HVAC and some of the other types of businesses like that, is that every single time a person comes into your business, they're making a choice. And so don't assume that because somebody's been a customer of yours in the past that they're gonna be a customer of yours in the future. Like, you have to work at providing great service. Absolutely. If you're not provide that's a caveat that we should probably say in any of these podcasts. Like, if you suck at what you do from a customer service standpoint, from a technical standpoint, no amount of marketing is gonna help you. Your bucket is gonna become so leaky, nothing can help. Right?

Ken

You're just gonna the audience that you're trying to attract.

Ian

Maybe there's a case study there, but I don't know of that one. One. But but I would say this. So all of the things I think we've talked about are super relevant for these types of businesses. Right? Like an HVAC, an auto mechanic. When somebody's searching for you, you need to be showing up in search, the maps, the reviews. Right? Yelp can help you in some areas. You know, I the one thing I would probably say is, you know, a lot of these guys don't do a lot of content marketing. They could. I've seen it where, mechanics do, in fact, it's a local mechanic here. They stopped doing this, but for a while, the wife of the mechanic got very involved in the social media, and she was creating not just social posts for women to help them with mechanical issues and how to navigate an engine and car issues. But she would actually do training on, like, a Saturday morning where she would walk people through walk women through. Here's an engine. Here's how to, you know, here's how to check your oil. Here's that. Right? Just things that, some people just have no idea what to do with. And so I thought that was a really cool thing to to

Ken

do,

Ian

and it was fairly very highly praised socially on social media. Paid search can work for these guys for sure. Start with organic. Layer on paid. Right? Get involved in social media. If you're not there and your competition is there, you know, that's a big miss. The one thing I would say too on social media is as a as an HVAC or a mechanic, you have so much you can talk about. Don't get too technical. Keep it at a high level, but there's a lot of things you can talk about. You can talk about how to set a thermostat. You can talk about, you know, how to change a tire on a car. You there's so many things you can talk about. And I think what raises the level of social media in any business, but specifically with these guys, stay professional. I'm gonna say that. Stay professional. Don't lose your minds because some businesses do that when once they start hamming it up on social. But, like, capture your team working professionally, and share it socially. Have somebody talk about how they're serving a customer that day and what they're doing on social media. Like, there's so many things you can do that I think when you're in the business, you take for granted. Mhmm. And, again, I don't I often don't see social media as the lead generator in businesses, but it's a layer. Right? It's a layer. It's a signal, and it's part of the omnichannel approach. Yeah. The one the one thing I think that has been missed by a lot of these types of businesses, and it's on if it's not on their website, you already talked about clear call to action, click here, schedule an appointment, call us now. You know, for either of these, you want that. But even on your Google business profile, you can have a button now where you can click to book appointments. Right? Make it easy. Yeah. And we've talked about this before. Speed to response is so vital because if if somebody doesn't get a response from you quickly, if not immediately, then they're gonna move on to the next person on that Google search result. Right? They're gonna keep going through until they get a response. So speed of response is super, super important. Yeah. And capture referrals, like, testimonials and share those with people.

Ken

Yeah. Yeah. One thing I think, you know, for these businesses, transactional text marketing or email marketing works really well too where, you know, people are set usually on some kind of a schedule, you know. And so, an auto repair shop may know generally that the average driver, drives three thousand miles in the course of six weeks or eight weeks or whatever. And so, therefore, you know, send a reminder message. Hey. You know, you're it may be time for your upcoming oil change. If you're ready to schedule, click, you know, click the button and boom, they're done.

Ian

Yeah.

Ken

So so just, you know, having those automated reminders, that again, they have to align with what makes sense. You know, I mean, if you're off by five or ten weeks, you're you're they're either gonna ignore it, which is not so bad, or you're gonna make them mad, and then they're gonna start complaining. If it's email, they may mark it as spam. Even if they did opt in, it's still tough for you to to deal with that. So with that, we probably need to wrap up. We could go on and on and on. I mean, hopefully, everybody found that this was an interesting, nice little format where we talked about, you know, some different business types and how we see a variety of different social media I'm sorry, digital marketing components being able to play well together and actually amplify the business results. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to you, Ian, and let you take us out.

Ian

Yeah. Because amplification becomes a force

Ken

Multiplier. Multiplier. Multiplier.

Ian

Well, thanks again for joining us, guys. Click like. Share with all your friends, family, colleagues, enemies. Get them to, watch the show, to listen to the show. We're on Spotify, iTunes, you name it. We love serving you guys. If you have questions that are burning a hole in your mind or your wallet, reach out to us. Let us know. We would be happy to cover or at least explore the idea of covering that topic. And until next week, folks, keep calm and mark it on.