Transcript:
Miles: [00:00:00] Hello. Good morning, happy Wednesday and welcome to Ask Wildman.
My name is Miles Bassett. I’m the CEO and founder of Wildman Web Solutions. That is a digital agency based here in lovely Lawrence, Kansas. We seek to help small and medium-sized businesses leverage technology to grow and achieve their goals. So, in the line of our work, we come across a lot of different questions from business owners and entrepreneurs or people trying to get businesses started.
They want to get online, they need website. It’s they need advertising. They need social media and they come to us with all their questions. So, we started this open Q and A for anyone and everyone who wants to learn a little bit about digital marketing, technology, business. This show is for you we’re streaming live right now to our Facebook page, YouTube channel and for the first time ever to Twitch. So hello, Twitch. If you have any questions about anything I listed above, or you just want to ask us how our day is going please throw your questions in the comments below. If you’re catching this later, you’re not watching this live. You can still participate by emailing your questions to askwildman@wildmanweb.com
Alright, me and my team are here to answer any and all of your questions. I’m going to bring in my partner, Mike here to hopefully answer some questions on the marketing side of things. Hello, Mike.
Mike: [00:04:14] Good morning Miles. How the heck are you doing today, sir?
Miles: [00:04:20] I’m doing good. I’m doing good. Another beautiful day.
That is not Arctic anymore. I’m happy with it. Just spend a little time outside.
Mike: [00:04:30] That’ll get you wired, fired and inspired. Won’t it.
Miles: [00:04:35] All right. Like I said, here, this is an open Q and A, so feel free to throw your questions in the comments below or email us your questions to askwildman@wildmanweb.com and we’ll get to them either via email or next week, I didn’t. Forget to mention that we are doing this every week, Wednesdays at 11 live streaming to our social platform.
So, pick one. And if you think what we’re doing here is valuable, we’re providing some good information. Then please give us a like, share, subscribe, follow, depending on your social platform, you know what to do. All right. I’m getting a comment
Mike: [00:05:10] here before we get into the questions and helping people. I just got a little insight.
I got a little insight baseball here. Can we not have the cool sounds on the intro anymore? What happened?
Miles: [00:05:22] Oh, there’s supposed to be audio if there wasn’t
Mike: [00:05:25] okay. Oh man. Maybe I couldn’t hear it backstage. Okay. If not, we got to get that. I thought that was the best part of the show.
Miles: [00:05:33] Yeah, we just switched streaming platforms last week. You’ll have to give me a little bit to get a little learning curve there. There may be a couple of odd bits here and there.
Mike: [00:05:43] Give you this time Miles, but I need those sound effects really loud in the intro next week. Okay. All right.
Miles: [00:05:50] We got it.
Thank you. All right. Looks like we got a couple of comments coming in here. Good morning, Jeff, as always.
Mike: [00:05:58] Good morning, Jeff. But I was getting worried, and we missed him last week. I’m glad to see he’s healthy and back with us this week.
Miles: [00:06:06] Yep. If you were interested, if you got some questions or you just want to throw your comments in on whatever we were discussing here, you want to throw in your 2 cents.
Please follow Jeff’s lead and comment. All right. Waiting for some those questions to come in here. I see some people trailing it in, but I believe we had a couple of news updates that you wanted to get to. Mike. You mentioned a little bit before the show.
Mike: [00:06:39] Actually. Miles, hold off on the news. We’ll do a news break coming up. Let’s jump into some questions though. I think we have one coming from Google My Business about Google My Business before, but the news desk is not quite ready to deliver the news yet. Okay. And also, I’m going to go I’m gonna go tweak something.
I’m going to go tweak something in the back real quick. So, give me about 10 seconds. I’ll be back.
Miles: [00:07:02] All right. Okay. So, we did have a couple of questions coming in beforehand regarding Google my business. So, I wanted to take a little bit of time and speak to that. Google my business is just Google’s business listing platform. It’s half directory business directory, half social media platform. Half map service and it’s tied into all of Google’s other information, their listing information, their search information, their advertising platforms.
So, it can be an incredibly powerful tool that I’ve been surprised to see a lot of local businesses not leveraging to its fullest extent. There are entire subcultures on online going into Google, my business or GMB. And people subscribed to it just religiously. There are some out there I’m not among them, but there are some out there that claim that a good Google, my business listing is more important than even having a business website at all.
And so, if they’re prioritizing getting your business online in the first place, then they’re going to have you get set up on Google. Getting a Google my business listing before even considering building out your own website. I like having my own website. I like businesses having that.
There’s a creative outlet there that doesn’t really exist on GMB. It really allows you to create your own place your own online storefront, if you will. And Google my business doesn’t really have that, but man, Google likes working with its own tools. And whether you’re doing basic Google advertising or you’re trying to rank and search, the best thing that you can do is play their own game.
So, setting up Google, my business is incredibly powerful and also just really easy. It doesn’t take any technical proficiency or anything. And it immediately gives you certain benefits, like showing up in search, some basic search optimization gets you higher access and better access to advertising and other tools from Google.
It gives you the opportunity to be listed in there. There are three pack or a snack pack or whatever you want to call it right there at the very top. When you search something, you see the ads, you see a map block with three listings. That’s their three pack and that’s really where you want to be for local search.
And the way that you get there is by setting up an effective Google listing or a GMB listing yeah. If anyone has any questions on Google my business, please throw those in the comments here. But that’s the big wins there is. It’s super easy to set up. You’re playing Google’s game and they are the King of online search gives you better access to their other tools to analytics, to advertising and to just some basic search optimization.
It also allows people to, to rate you online, to give you good reviews. You can’t get those Google reviews if you don’t have a proper listing and it really just gives you more control of your own online presence. So, it’s a super easy way to get started on search engine optimization and establishing your presence online.
If you’ve got nothing else and you really don’t know where to start, this is probably a pretty smart way to get going.
Mike. Did you have any input on just Google my business or do we have any other more specific questions?
Mike: [00:10:14] Yeah. I have a couple of things to add there, Miles and I’m not sure which one of us it is. One of us I think has a slow internet connection. I just went and had some stern words with my 14-year-old to tell him to stop using 17 devices at once.
So hopefully that will help it on my end, but maybe see what you can do on your end as well. Yeah, Google my business right now is huge. If you’re a local, if you’re a local business, especially which I think, most of our audience is and Google. Love them or hate them.
They have thrown a couple of bones the local small businesses way since the Corona virus hit. And one of the things that they’re doing is they’re really optimizing local businesses through Google My Business. And yeah, I don’t know about it completely replacing your current website or getting a website.
I wouldn’t go that far with it, but I would think of that as my second website. Because it is really important. And you want to make sure that you’re uploading content to it regularly. Just like you would on your normal website for SEO purposes you can run ads against it. As well, which is highly effective and cost efficient right now.
Yeah, as Miles talked about reviews, it’s a great way to get reviews, but it is really a, I don’t want to say a hidden gem, but it may be an underutilized gem out there that I think more small businesses should and can be taking advantage of it. But right now, the people that are getting their unfair advantage from Google my business because it is really crushing it. I’ve heard from people that has said that once they started optimizing their Google my business, they saw a bigger boost in sales and business than anything that they’ve done prior on, content organic or paid marketing within the last nine months.
And hopefully that trend will continue. But it is certainly an underutilized asset that everybody should be leveraging for their small local business.
Miles: [00:12:07] Yeah. And a couple of points in there. As you said, it is, I think it is one of the easiest things to do, the biggest bang for your buck that you can get for just an absolutely free pretty easy thing to do.
Again, you don’t have to have any sort of technical proficiency or anything. We can help you out with it. And we do set up and optimize Google listings for people, but you can just go online and search how to do it. Google has a bunch of great support articles. If you go to YouTube, there’s a ton of great walkthroughs for getting yourself set up and optimizing your listing.
Another thing to note here is like one of the big wins here is that it is free. There are some rumors out there and there have been for some time that at some point in the not-so-distant future Google is at least entertaining the idea of charging for the service. So, I don’t know if this is going to stay free forever.
If there’s going to be some sort of paid structure or if it’s going to tie into, something like their search Systems or their advertising, if it’s going to be part of Google ads or something like that. There’s a bunch of different things floating around out there.
They’re really just rumors at this point, but there is a potential that this could be. A paid service or at least there are going to be paid elements around it at some point in the not-so-distant future. So, leverage it right now while it’s free and easy. It’s a huge, easy, free win. So, get yourself listed on Google my business and also continue.
To utilize it. It’s not just a one and done thing. You get yourself set up and then you have a listing out there. Continue to use it. As I said before, it’s a social media platform as well in that you can post to it. Your posts can receive comments. You can have that sort of one-on-one engagement with your audience in the same way that you would on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.
Google likes to see that as well. Having regular posts to your Google listing shows them that you are an active business, that you are actively attempting to promote yourself and put information out there and engage with your audience that tells them that they are that you are an authoritative source and that you are the kind of organization or business that they would want to promote.
Ultimately Google and the other search engines. When their customers, which are the people who are searching find relevant search results. So, it wouldn’t be good for Google if all, a bunch of their people or a bunch of their audience were searching for something and not finding what they wanted, they’ll stop, and people will stop using Google.
They only win when they’re when people search on Google and they find relevant information. So, Google is always looking for the most relevant, the most authoritative sources out there. They look to see if you have a Google, my business listing, they look to see if you have a website, if you’re regularly producing content, if you have other social media presences if people are engaging with you, if a lot of people are going to your website or interacting with your posts, either on Google or other social media platforms that tells them that you are an authoritative source, people are wanting to see you and, therefore.
Other people may want to see you and you may be a relevant point to show on search. This can be the beginning of your search engine optimization journey is just getting yourself set up on Google posting, regularly, interacting with it regularly. If you’re getting reviews there, respond to those reviews and interact with those, anything that you can do to show Google that you are active and you are engaging with people that helps Google to understand that you are Someone that they should be displaying in search prominently.
Okay. Hopefully we are we’ve addressed our streaming issues here in watching it over here and it looks like it’s working just fine.
Mike: [00:15:45] I think it’s on my end, but I’ve done what I can at this point Miles. If we don’t have any questions down there in the queue, I’m ready to go into news now if you’d
like the two Miles.
All right. We’ve got one question that’s popped up. That should be pretty easy, and we can address the others afterwards. Get to it. Yeah. The question is how do we post on other Facebook pages as my business? So, I’ll be a host for them. Okay. But what was the question again? Can you repeat that? Sorry.
Miles: [00:16:15] I’ll be posting on other people’s other Facebook pages as my business. So, acting as my business page, how do I’m going to expand that to how do I interact with other posts, other pages as my business page. I will share a Facebook help article with you that kind of details this. But as long as you’re an admin on your page, you should be able to.
Depends on what you’re trying to do. I guess there are some restrictions as far as interacting as a page on other people’s pages or within groups or something. But if you’re just going through your newsfeed and there should be a little drop down at the bottom right-hand side of of the of the post itself, where it’ll show your profile picture and you should be able to click that drop down and then select from one of the pages that you are an admin of. But I’ll go ahead and post that help article here in the comments.
Mike: [00:17:20] I’m back Miles.
Miles: [00:17:22] Sorry. I was just addressing that question. And like I said, I’m putting a Facebook help article in the comments so people can reference this later. So, Jeff who asked this here Yeah. Like I said, there are some sort of limitations that Facebook has as far as interacting with certain types of content as a page or as an organization.
So, if you don’t see this option available to you, it’s probably not because you’re doing something wrong. It’s because the platform doesn’t allow it. But mostly, yeah, you’re looking go through those steps detailed in this article that I’m sending you here, and it should allow you to interact with at least basic posts and other content as an organization or as a page that you have admin privileges on.
Yeah. So, he wants to share news as my page on. Some other related sites. So other related pages you want, or are you talking about groups or as there’s different rules regarding those things.
Mike: [00:18:25] I think he’s talking about in the newsfeed commenting on other people’s posts is the way I read that question, Miles.
Miles: [00:18:37] Okay. Like I said, I just put a Facebook help article there that should show you what I’m talking about. So just walk through those steps, but basically if you’re just going through these feeding, when a comment, then just look at the bottom right-hand corner and look for that drop down.
Mike: [00:18:53] Yep. Yeah. You just need to make sure that you’re acting as your page when you’re. Interacting with the other people’s pages or posts. And then, yeah, I actually have to usually join as, as the organization or as the business page and not as your personal Facebook page in order to post in the group. And some groups won’t allow you to do that. So just FYI.
Miles: [00:19:20] Yeah here, check this out. So, I’m on my Facebook page here. Here’s our last posts, by the way, follow us at wildmanweb. We put all its good content and here at the bottom right-hand corner I see this little picture. That’s my profile picture. If I click on that. Yeah. Then I can see all of the pages that I am an admin on, including our company page here.
As soon as I select that, anything I do as far as interacting with this post will be as this organization. So, I can, like, I can comment, I can share based on or as this organization, as this page, if you don’t see this option here, follow the steps in the article that I showed you. And if you still don’t see anything there, it’s probably because the platform doesn’t allow you to interact with that particular piece of content as as an organization or as a page.
So hopefully that answers your question there. If not, please follow up with us in the comments or if you have any other insight on this or anything else, we’re talking about, please throw those throw those comments in below. Okay. So, let’s that throw to the news desk.
Mike: [00:20:27] Alright. Coming in hot from the Wildman Web news desk here. After we got done with the show, it seems to happen almost every Wednesday to us. So, I’m like, I’m afraid to look at the news after we get done with the show. Big news drops though. And so last week Google put out a statement Wednesday afternoon basically saying that they were abandoning their entire business model in the foreseeable future and that they would no longer be well, not immediately, but in the near future that they would be basically phasing out tracking your search results.
And using that data to then just serve you ads. And so, this is just the latest in a long list of updates coming from both Google and Apple, which are basically phasing out third-party data and cookies and, the traditional ways that we’ve been tracking people, so to speak for lack of a better term and serving them ads across the internet.
For the last 10 or so years. And so, a big shift, is coming down the pipe on multiple levels. To be honest, I, Miles I’ve been so busy. I haven’t been able to do a deep dive into this specific announcement other than just reading the initial article in posting it on our social feeds.
It all just goes back to what we’ve been saying about how you really have to now, as a small business owner, especially get focused on collecting and utilizing and leveraging zero and first-party data that is data that people give directly to you and not relying anymore on third-party data because within a matter of months, and certainly by next year of this time, the, that entire landscape is going to be completely changed.
And so, if you’re not making. The adjustments right now, then you’re going to be behind the ball and you’re really going to be hurting. When all these things come down the pipeline, if that’s what you’ve been relying on for your marketing and your sales up to this point. And what people need to do is they need to think about how can I engage with my audience, engage with my customer, with my client in order to leverage my knowledge or my expertise or what they want from me in order to get them to give me.
Their data. Typically, people want to do some sort of a Hey, here’s a buy one, get one, or something like that. You don’t necessarily have to discount anything. People will give you their email or something. If they think that there is something for value in for them on the other side of it.
But that’s really important in building up your email list, building up your video content leveraging platforms like text messaging, AI chat bots through messenger are all different ways and many more that you can get around this and you can still be effective with communicating with your audience, even after third-party cookies have been completely obliterated from the digital landscape.
So that was a big piece of news that came down the pipe Miles. And I’m sure it’s not the last major announcement that we’ll have from our friends over there at Google before the year is out. In another, just going back to the Google, my business aspect of it, another great reason to jump into that and leverage that because as Miles was alluding, they may take that away.
But for right now, that is a wonderful tool that you don’t have to pay for it. You just have to be able to use it and use it well, and it can really reap big rewards for you. Couple of other things, Miles we’ve been talking lately about. The retail world, specifically the mega giant retailers and we’ve I think it was last week on the show that we did a little deep dive into Macy’s and what they’ve been doing to reinvent themselves, becoming a media company and really there’s several of them out there.
So, I got another one here for ya that we haven’t talked about. I don’t believe we’ve talked about this one yet, but Nordstrom. Is also one of these heritage brands in retail and one of these kinds of slow-moving giants that was maybe a little late on the uptick. So, to speak of getting in the digital world and e-commerce and suffered tremendously for it.
Their stocks have just been absolutely massacred over the past. Of course, of the last decade, but they are also reinventing themselves in a new way. And what they’re doing is they’ve made partnerships with popular DTC brands DTC of course, direct to consumer, basically the current state of commerce on the internet, e-commerce, and that is what many people are familiar with today, where we go on and on the internet.
We buy something directly from the people that make it, and they send it to us. And that basically is cut out the middleman or middle person and that’s really the story of the entire internet, that’s just what the internet is doing is it’s just squeezing the middle and it’s allowing direct to consumer to take over the landscape.
So, what Nordstrom has done. And I think it’s smart on both sides. I think it’s smart for the DTC brands. And I think it’s obviously really smart for Nordstrom because they’re tapping into brands that currently identify with a younger generation and with the up-and-coming generation. And so, what they’ve done is they’ve had 20, I think brands at this point that have Bonobos is one, Everlane is another one.
People probably familiar with those brands, but 20 and all, and what they’re doing is they’re going to bring those in-house and sell them, not exclusively. But I exclusively, as far as other retailers on the Nordstrom website and then in Nordstrom locations. And this was the first time for example, that Bonobos and men’s clothing brand has been showcased in an actual store other than the one showcase store that they have in New York city, I believe.
And so, it’s a way. For the DTC brands to also reach a new audience. It’s a way for people to go and try on the clothes and touch and feel the material and everything like that. And it’s also a course, a new way for Nordstrom and some of these bigger brands to keep their current customers interested. And bring in new customers that are right now, their attention has been grabbed by these DTC brands who typically build their businesses on the back of Facebook, Instagram, and social media with a great content marketing plays and just great marketing and advertising in general.
So, I see this as the direction of a trend that is coming to fruition now where it’s a lot of people think, Oh, DTC is going to completely remove traditional retail. I don’t see it that black and white. I think it’s going to be that there’s going to be some sort of a merge here where, there’s going to be mutually interest in parties that are getting benefited by both of these agreements where the DTC brands are going to get actually more visibility.
There are there here’s. The interesting thing is I think the DTC costs, or their acquisition costs are going to drop. Because that’s the biggest thing that DTC brand has to fight right now, right? Is their marketing costs versus their actual sales and lowering that cost of acquisition? Which is what every company should be focused on, but especially when you’re in the DTC world. And so, if I can get more eyeballs, more touches, more fields on my clothing, I’m probably going to have a higher rate of people buying the clothes, liking them and not returning them. And I don’t have to spend additional ad revenue in order to get that.
And so that’s a way that I can scale the brand, I’m not having to spend more money in order to get growth. I’m taking a different Avenue and I’m getting growth and that’s really the hardest scaling. Really, I think. The big picture takeaway from this Miles is that, once again, the internet has won.
And for those of us who are keeping track now the internet is undefeated. It has never been beaten. No matter what brand we’re talking about even Walmart, is really, positioning right now is I think we talked about a couple of weeks on the show to, fight Amazon.
In the e-commerce space and this is, this trend is just going to continue at least for the rest of our lives Miles, I believe that the internet will remain undefeated, and we’ll keep crushing the middle. And so, what we have to do as brands and businesses is find a way to leverage that and not get caught underneath the pressure of a steam roller.
So to speak as this thing starts just rolling down the pipe, getting faster and faster. That’s just quick little news update I had there for you Miles. You can add something to that, or we can get back into answering questions for the people.
Miles: [00:28:54] Yeah. I just want to throw a little bit extra on that and piggyback on your last comment there.
And that is that the internet will always win, but big caveat, the internet is always changing as well. This is a dynamic beast. And so, when we say the internet is all, will always win, always come out on top. That can mean a. Vastly different thing today, then it does next year or 10 years from now our health next week, that can be massively different.
Part of our job is to stay on top of that that kind of thing. But I like to hear your input on this as well. Cause this kind of ties into both the news stories that you just brought up there. It seems like there is a bit of a trend going on. With the updates from Apple updates, from Google, then you see the lawsuits against big tech.
You see government jumping in and, at least considering different types of regulation or encouraging different types of activity to discourage different types of activity when it comes to social media different policies on information collection and information sharing between different platforms.
It’s really seeming like it’s all going in one particular direction. And that is that, we always talk about operating on something that you own utilizing your website, because you own that utilizing an email list because you own that utilizing a text. Platform because you own those fo those phone numbers.
I think these other platforms in these other technologies are moving in a similar direction and are taking control of their own data. And requiring you to use their data while on their platform, rather than just the internet being this giant pool of everyone’s information for all time. I don’t know if that’s a, if that’s a win or not.
It definitely makes our lives as digital marketers, a little bit more challenging in some ways. But it seems like everyone is taking our advice here and moving towards really owning their own information. Whether you’re talking about small businesses running their digital ads for the first time or tech giants, like Google and Facebook they’re treating information a little bit different.
And I think that we’re moving closer and closer towards something more resembling an email list or a phone list then. What we have traditionally seen over the last couple of years regarding information provided to us as marketers.
Mike: [00:31:24] Yeah. Great points there, Miles. Yeah. And a whole lot to pack. Let me just take it first from the data standpoint. I do think that yes, that entire landscape is changing. Some of it is directly from government regulations that are coming down the pipe California. Has has already instituted some laws in that, in Google side of those, in that announcement that, that th that’s one of the reasons that they were making these changes was to come into, conformity with these laws before they really came into effect.
So, they would avoid fines, which they’d been getting fines in the EU, both Google Facebook. Apple, all of them for a number of years now from their regulatory agencies. And so that’s certainly part of it. And I do think that there’s a new dynamic coming down the pipe just in terms of the internet in general.
And you’re absolutely right. That the only thing that is constant here is that the internet is not going away and the internet is not staying the same. Those are the two things that we can really Count on. And what we have right now in the current state of the internet is we have these bohemoth companies that were basically early adapters to creating platforms that became, the landscape for lack of a better term for the internet itself.
And now, going back to the DTC brands. And then what happened is that then other companies basically built themselves on top of those platforms. Which allowed DTC to happen, which allowed the middle person, the heat to to be eliminated, which is an end win for the consumer, nine times out of 10.
And that’s why the internet is undefeated because the market is a market. It’s the market. The market will always win. Okay. And so, if it’s going a bit going to benefit the consumer, that’s what’s going to happen. And the same thing with the data, the pushback from the consumers, the vast majority of people out there do not want their data collected.
And so that’s the other part of this is that they’re, they’ve got to find other ways or they’re going to lose influence with their end user, with their end consumer and. I promised myself, I wouldn’t talk about clubhouse today on the show, but I’m going to break that break right now.
Miles: [00:33:37] Yeah, no one believed that for a moment.
Mike: [00:33:41] I was up talking on clubhouse till one in the morning, last night. So, I figured I’d give it a rest. But I can’t help myself. I think that this is maybe where the model of new platforms like clubhouse are going because clubhouse is least, they claim, if we’re taking them at their word that they’re collecting zero data from their users, they’re not reselling it.
They’re not even collecting it. They’re not leveraging it. They’re not going to create an ad platform, which has basically been the monetary. Of the monetization structure for all of these platforms, that we have so far is that they basically just took the same model that we’ve been running.
In media for hundreds of years that, Hey, we’ll give you information. We’ll give you value. We’ll give you entertainment. But we’re also going to interrupt that periodically to give you messages from sponsors that you may or may not care about, and those people are going to pay us and that’s how we’re going to fund our operations.
And so, there’s, there is, and I think there will be new models emerging. Rather quickly and, I’m obviously very bullish on cliff house. I think it’s the future of social media. I think it’s in some ways, the future of the internet for a couple of different reasons, not only because they aren’t collecting data. They aren’t going to monetize it through ads, but it’s also, like we talked about before Miles, we really do need to do a deep dive on voice coming up here in the next few weeks. Just a little reminder that between the two of us, but it’s also different in the fact that it’s traditional social media in a lot of cases.
It’s one to many, right? It’s like I make a post and it’s supposed to go out to my audience. And yes, my audience can come in the comments and they can leave. And there’s some back and forth there, but it’s not like you and I having this back and forth right now, is it right? It’s not an actual organic human conversation, but, and that’s what clubhouse does is that instead of one to many, it’s many to many and real time and, and using voice and using that connectivity.
And I’m like, like last night in the room I was in, we had at one point 20 different people in the conversation talking most of them from all across America, we had people from Europe, we had a guy over in Hong Kong, offering in their perspectives on the topics we were discussing real time.
Where else can that happen? That doesn’t happen on a one-to-many platform that doesn’t happen on a podcast that certainly doesn’t happen in traditional media. That’s where I think, this whole new kind of revolution of social platforms is going to go, I know I’m going on a little bit of a tangent here Miles, but the point is that the only thing that we know for sure is that there are a lot of things are gonna change.
The market is the market and the internet, as long as it keeps serving the consumer and the customer, is going to continue to win. And so, we need to do as small businesses, going back to my original point or any kind of business, is position our company to serve our customers the best way we can, but cutting out as many hoops as possible and giving them directly what they want.
And that’s what the internet empowers us to do. And that’s what we need to take full advantage of. In whatever form that it currently is in.
Miles: [00:36:55] And I think that’s what we’ve been harping on for the last couple of weeks, if not the last couple of months is really taking control of your audience and of your online presence.
So, you can continue to communicate to that customer base regardless of what changes come down the pike later on I do find it interesting that clubhouse among other social media apps are moving to a slightly different advertising. Strategy that maybe it looks like Google or Facebook, or some of these other tech giants might be leveraging at least partially here in the near future, which reminds me of the old style.
We’re talking like TV ads where instead of targeting individuals or particular groups, demographics, I want to hit. Women this age, to this age, in this geographic area that have X, Y, and Z interests, that’s how you do a typical Facebook ad. But when you’re advertising on TV, you have to do a little bit of research and understand who was watching this particular show or this network at this time.
And then present your information during the. Show or during the spot that makes the most sense for you to reach these particular individuals. A different kind of company would advertise on a show on HGTV then would advertise on the food network. For example, and I think that will clubhouse anyway, their proposed ad strategy is sounding a little bit more like that, or they’re going to leverage influencers.
And or particular influencer or the owner of a group or of a room would place ads in there for the members of that group, understanding that the members of that group probably have some sort of common interest rather than targeting individuals or demographic groups you’re targeting. These influencers are these people that have a specific type of attention and then using them to position your product, your service in front of the right group. So, it’s still the same overarching strategy. It just kinda changes the marketing a little bit changes the positioning a little bit. But I am seeing more and more platforms look at that kind of model. And I’m wondering if that’s not where some of these tech giants are going to be going as well.
Mike: [00:39:06] Yeah. I think you’re correct Miles, that kind of traditional media buying media planning. Ethos and tactics and strategy, I think is going to come back to the forefront. And that’s something that, is interesting about clubhouse in general. And just watching it grow is, even several weeks ago, you and Anna were making fun of me, cause early on in, in clubhouse, which it’s still very, very early on, it was mostly sales coaches and, motivators and marketing people like me and people just want to talk all day long about business and get you motivated to go out and make a million dollars today and all of this stuff.
And you guys were like this, Oh, like a cult. There was some truth to that.
Miles: [00:39:46] But still out on that one, it went well.
Mike: [00:39:48] But go ahead, spend some more time on it today because just in the last couple months, it’s completely different. Those people are still there. Don’t get me wrong. But, as the platform opens up, it’s like, man, now there’s dating shows and there’s sports and there’s music and for better or worse, there’s politics on the platform.
Now I’ve been staying out of those rooms, it’s really opening up into a real community with all of these different diversity and topics and things like that. And so, what this does from a brand standpoint, is that it really allows you to practice the principle that we preach a lot here on the show and just in our lives Miles.
And that is that, it’s better to move 10% of the audience a hundred percent of the way and not try to reach a hundred percent of the audience because you’re only gonna move from 10% of the way 95% plus of the time. Reach is overrated. I think it’s probably the most overrated metric.
In marketing and advertising, it, I just want to talk to, I don’t care necessarily how many people I talk to. I want to talk to the right people in the right way and move them a hundred percent through my brand new, through my sales funnel. And get them to do business with me. So that’s what we can do when we can really niche down in and really, sponsor certain shows and do product placement and things like that.
Not only across clubhouse, but across media in general. And I think that that’s a little bit of a lost art for Miles that, we need to be, we need to harken back to a, so to speak.
Miles: [00:41:19] Hey, this could be a big win for some Some older fashion admin out there, or some people that worked in traditional marketing.
Mike: [00:41:26] We’re coming back, baby. They thought we were dead. They tried to bury us. And here we come.
Miles: [00:41:32] Now at least there’s a certain element and has been for a while of, anyone can be a a Facebook advertising specialist. Anyone can be a digital advertising specialist to not speak speaking.
All these people out there that really have no idea what they’re doing. Or they don’t have the skillset. Required to, really be effective, but the platform is relatively easy. There’s a small learning curve at least to get you in and going and doing stuff. And so there just this influx of people that maybe you shouldn’t have been doing this professionally that decided to jump into that boat.
There’s a beacon in my house. There’s a potential of that changing as these marketing strategies and as these platforms adapt to the new requirements of data gathering and trying to be a little bit less invasive it was people don’t realize that we’re still in the infancy of the internet.
This thing is No just decades old at this point. And in its current iteration with what we’re currently seeing, as far as social media this has all happened in the last couple of years. It’s so invasive into our lives. There’s so much of it. It’s so all encompassing that it feels like it’s all always been here, but at least the current iteration of it is really just a few years old.
I think we’re going to see a lot of these. Tectonic shifts. These massive changes in these platforms and how they operate over the next couple of years. As we approach maybe something more like an adolescence or maybe even early adulthood of what the internet is going to become. So, we to make sure that we’re staying on our toes out there, business owners out there, you gotta make sure that you’re staying on top of all this stuff.
And. Do what you can right now while it’s easy, while it’s cheap, while it’s free. Even when we’re talking at the top of the show about Google My Business listings that is just a stupid, easy, highly effective thing that you can go out and do today. If you haven’t done it already that is, grabs your premium or premium listing out there. It gets you started on SEO gets you started on advertising gets you started on a solid online presence for nothing but a half hour work. As these things change and adapt and things get a little bit more complicated and the whole world shifts around us.
When you find a good opportunity, when you find a land grab like on odd and clubhouse, new emerging, social media platforms, when you find an easy opportunity, like a Google, my business listing capitalize on it, you can’t afford not to.
Mike: [00:43:56] Yeah, for sure. Miles. And it’s funny because, one thing that I’ve really found true is that the more things change, the more they stay the same meaning that, the more things that change in marketing and digital technology, the more that we just, I myself, especially coming from the traditional advertising world originally, the more that I rely.
The things that, have been true in advertising for a hundred years and that those are the constants that that the tools just change. But the actual things that advertising is based on, and he really human psychology and then that’s really what we’re getting at is that the internet and technology, actually, I heard this stat the other day that I think since world war II, Technology has grown a Corrillion times from where it was a trillion.
That was a trillion times from where it was. But of course, the human brain it moves a lot slower and there hasn’t been, massive leaps in human psychology in hundreds, probably thousands of years. Like we’re still. Unfortunately, in some ways we’re still hardwired the way we were back in the cavemen and women days.
And that’s, it’s hardwired into us and those cognitive biases are put strictly into us. And so, when we, when things get confusing, we’re like, oh man, Google’s changing everything again. And they’re taking third-party data away. And that’s when people who don’t have a foundation in marketing and advertising, they lose their, you know what, and they get scared, because they can’t just figure out this one little trick that they’ve been doing on this one tool when they change how that trick works or that tool works completely, or they take the whole tool away.
And so that’s why, just as business owners, but especially as marketing people, I actually think that we need to do a lot of studying about what has worked over the I’ve been doing it myself Miles, even though I came from this, that. And then I even plan this, but fig, reading the guys like this old groovy, and the guys that were doing it 50 a hundred years ago, that’s where you’re going to learn the methods and the strategies and the tactics that will work no matter what happens.
In the future. And so that’s just something to keep in mind is that we always have to be staying up to date on the trends and what’s new and all of these new fads and things like that. But we also have to become educated and stay educated and keep learning about the tried-and-true methods that have always worked and will always continue to work Miles because I don’t care. I actually would like, other than maybe clubhouse, I would be fine if the entire internet stopped tomorrow, just cease to exist. And we just went back to the way that was, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it’s an interesting just mindset to put yourself in is that, if the internet went away tomorrow, how could I grow my business?
How could I actually do better than I did before? And if you have those answers or you at least have an idea of how to have that conversation with yourself, then you’re not going to panic every single time the internet changes because that’s good. That’s something that’s going to keep happening over and over again.
And so, you have to have a way to stay grounded and stay true to what’s happening in your business. When that does change.
Miles: [00:47:17] Yeah, it actually plays directly into I guess a webinar that I was on earlier this week talking about. In marketing tactics versus strategies and how people use those words interchangeably.
And that’s really not the case. It’s important to understand that their strategy is something overarching that can be applied on different platforms and utilizing different tool sets. It’s the strategy is still the same. Whereas tactics will change based on your tool sets and where where you’re applying these things.
So regardless of where you are, what tool set you happen to be using, you should still have an overarching marketing strategy that is more applicable to what you were just talking about. Those tried-and-true methods, those little locks and human psychology that gets them interested. It gets people engaged that gets people ultimately ready to convert or to buy.
It’s important to use these things as. As what they are to see them for what they are. And that is tools. These are just tools in your toolbox. That is not the end all be all of your marketing strategy or of your business. And, like you said, what would you do tomorrow? If the internet was gone, how would you grow your business?
Because your marketing strategy should still hold outside of a particular tool set. Yeah, that’s another thing that we, I don’t think we really say enough here. We really push people to leverage their own audience and to move into something that they truly own, that they have full control of. We mentioned the, or your own website, your own email list.
That’s something that you control completely and totally. And it’s not dependent on external platforms like Facebook advertising. They could switch the rules tomorrow. On you and all of a sudden, your strategy doesn’t necessarily make sense on that platform or utilizing that particular tool. Whereas in an email list or on your own website, you can, you have complete control over that.
And therefore, you’re not dependent on these third-party companies. And one thing we don’t really talk about is just the idea of diversification. Where maybe you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. If you were putting a hundred percent of your marketing efforts, your blood, sweat, and tears into Facebook ads, and then they changed the rules tomorrow, or platform turns off tomorrow, who knows what happens, Facebook, somehow implodes then everything you have is gone.
All that equity that you’ve worked to build up is gone. It was a poor investment. In. In a world like the internet in this digital age, things move so quickly and so drastically. Again, it seems like this has been around forever, just because it’s so integral in our lives now, but we’re talking about stuff that’s just a couple of years old and is subject to major change at any time, you got to make sure that you have some sort of diversity in your marketing strategy.
You have. You don’t have all your eggs in one basket so that you can be agile. You can be nimble. You can shift priorities from here over to here, and as things change and adapt, you can change and adapt along with it.
Mike: [00:50:23] Yeah. Excellent Miles. I’m just going to give people a one quick tactic here to increase the fundamental strategies.
And then I think maybe we’ll move on to the last thing before we put a button on the show if you really want to understand human psychology and how. You can utilize in your business to create fundamental strategies and tactics to grow your business and become more aligned with your customer and what your customer wants and needs.
Then I encourage everybody to Google, YouTube, buy the books or several books on this as well. But check out the 25 cognitive biases because this is really what we’re talking about from a psychological standpoint is. There’s hard. There’s hardwired biases in the human brain that everybody is subject to, and if you understand those, then you can leverage them for good. Never use it for evil. Okay. This is powerful stuff. And some people do use it for evil we’re not promoting that. Wildman Web Solutions only promotes that you use this for good and to grow your business, to help people. But when you understand the 25 cognitive biases, you can reverse engineer those in order to get people to know like, and trust you, and then two, and then to offer your products and services to help them and to only help them remember that.
So yeah, there’s a guy called Charlie. I finger he’s Warren Buffett’s partner, the dude’s a hundred years old. It’s freaking genius. Highly encouraged everybody. He’s got some YouTube I guess lectures about this. Highly encourage everybody to check that out. Like I said, Google it, read some articles, check out a book about it, a study that and apply that to your business.
Okay. Miles, do we have any questions down there or should I tell my tale of cautionary web. Site horrors to close out the show, but if there’s any, I want to make sure we answer anybody’s questions and we got.
Miles: [00:52:19] Oh boy. Yeah. I’m looking forward to that. Doesn’t look like we have any other questions in the comments.
So yeah, if anyone does come up with anything here, we’re probably going to be closing out the show here on the hour. So please email us your questions to askwildman@wildmanweb.com and we’ll hit those next week onAsk Wildman Wednesdays at 11 Mike. Storytime Storytime
Mike: [00:52:41] Storytime with Mike. So, here’s the cautionary tale, a true story, unfortunately and Miles is going to help us with some advice here at the end of this.
So, we can, so none of us can have this happen to us because to be honest, anybody can fall for this. And that is, let’s be honest. There’s some shady website companies out there, and there’s a lot of people who just know that I need a website and that’s. All they know. And so, they get taken advantage by these companies and Miles.
And I, we hear these kinds of horror stories a lot unfortunately, and I don’t think it’s. The majority industry or anything like that. I think 90 plus percent, excuse me, 90 plus probably percent of web design and in website companies out there on the level, but there’s probably 10% or so that are there’s complete shade balls.
And so, this happened to a friend of mine who serves on a board of directors for a statewide non-for-profit, and they had bought a website a couple of years ago. I believe about 18 months ago before he became president, he really wasn’t involved in this whole process. And so, he just kinda got thrown into it and, they were shopping around, they got some quotes, et cetera, et cetera.
And they took the cheapest one, which, should always throw a red flag your way that the cheapest option is not usually probably in your best interest. And they got a WordPress side and only cost them a thousand dollars even through, and if a free A free hosting for a year.
It sounded like, Hey, this is a great deal. Let’s take it and be done with it. They basically are now held hostage by this company who did their website and, first it was, Hey, you got pay us $800 for an SSL certificate. Then it was, Hey, we gotta re up you’re hosting. You gotta pay us five years in advance.
So, we have you locked in and our hosting. And then the latest thing which he called me about yesterday was you got an email from him saying, Hey, it’s time to update your domain. If you want, which is basically the name of your website, right? It’s the address that your website lives on pretty important stuff.
And most people are pretty attached to that domain name. And they said, Hey, if you want to keep your domain for the next year, it’s only going to be $699. Or you could lock it in for five years for $1,700. Can you believe it? What a deal. And luckily my friend wasn’t born yesterday, this smelled a little fishy.
And so, he called me, and he said, you know what’s the going rate for a domain. And now. Domain is simply supply and demand and there’s one unique domain. And so, there’s limited supply. And so, if there is a lot of demand you could end up paying a whole lot of money for domain that, that, that actually could happen.
It’s very rare though, unless you have getfood.com, you know what I mean? Something that, like I said, just a lot of people would be interested in having. And of course, this was a very unique domain name. We looked up, what the the relative names to it would cost, oh, it was a lapping $9 a year is what he could have his same name as a .com instead of a .org, which they currently have. And it’s just a complete scam in my book. When companies do this they come in, like I said, they low ball it. They get the deal. They never give anybody access to their website.
And so, they hold them hostage and then they just keep throwing these high-ticket price items at them too. So, they end up spending a whole lot more than they ever would have dreamed if they just went with a rep of a company at the start got a good website. You don’t have to pay an arm and a leg because I’ll also throw in this word of caution to you that just because it costs.
Five times more. It doesn’t mean it’s great either, Miles and I, unfortunately we’ve come across the opposite end of this spectrum as well. I won’t say them by name, but there’s companies in Kansas City that are charging people five times more than what we do and their websites. They’re crap.
Perhaps it will crap. Okay. They have a fancy office, and it was a slick Dick and some slick talking salesman and, they charge a lot of money and people fall for it. So, you have to be careful in that, in the spectrum as well. But and Miles is going to give us some tips here in a minute and how to do our due diligence, but that’s really what I’m getting at is, buying a website is if you don’t know what you’re getting into.
It can be like buying a used car that has a lot of problems that, you don’t see, and you’re not a mechanic. And it’s, one thing after another is going to start coming down the pipeline and they’re going to be really, really big invoices that you’re going to start getting in the mail.
So, Miles tell us how to avoid that. So, you don’t have to, you don’t end up like my friend and by the way, just a quick conclusion to that horror story there, we are going to help them out. We’re going to take them off of that system. We’re going to give them a new website for basically next to nothing, just because we felt so bad that they’ve been taken advantage of it.
And we don’t want this kind of this kind of just terrible business practices to plague our industry. And so, we’re going to remedy the situation, but we can’t do that for, The entire world, unfortunately, Miles. So, tell people how they can avoid this from the…
Miles: [00:57:44] Yeah. Unfortunately, there are some, like you said, shady characters in our industry.
I think you put it at 10%. I think that’s really generous of you. I don’t know why. I think mostly just because a lot of this stuff gets fairly technical pretty quick. And so, I guess people can get away with it. They think their clients don’t really know very much about the products or services that they’re selling and therefore they can get away with just throwing in some jargony terms and charging a bunch of money for.
No black magic behind the curtain that you don’t really understand what we’re doing. So, we’re going to charge you $500 an hour for doing nothing. So, there are a couple of things that you can do to make sure that you are working with someone reputable and to avoid this all too common problem.
The first thing and the biggest thing and the most challenging one outdoor I’ll get to some easier ones here real quick. But the biggest thing that you can do is to just know what you’re talking about. No, you likened it to a used car lot. I can go in there and be a much more powerful negotiator.
If I know a little bit about cars, I don’t have to be an actual licensed mechanic or anything, but I know enough to know when you’re making up parts that don’t exist. For example, that allows me to bypass some of the, just the quick and dirty scams that. Come up all over the place.
That’ll get you past a lot. If you just have a a basic literacy about websites and technology, if at any point in the the early communications or when you’re starting to talk with a new agency, they start using a bunch of technical jargon. Or they try to talk over your head or somehow imply, Oh, you won’t know what we’re talking about.
That’s a red flag for me because you can speak in plain English about a lot of this stuff. And if you really know what you’re talking about and you are knowledgeable enough, then you can explain these things to a five-year-old and it’s perfectly fine. You don’t have to go into absurd technical depth in order to explain the utility and the value behind some of these things that we’re talking about when we’re talking about websites or design or UI UX or SEO, or a pile of other acronyms out there, you can explain that fairly simply if you know what you’re talking about. So, if they start to say, ah, you’ll never understand, just pay me a thousand dollars and I’ll handle it.
That’s a red flag. First tip past that is just to be very, very clear upfront, make sure that there are very clear set expectations. This isn’t necessarily for a good agency or a bad agency, a good agency would hopefully guide you through this process and ask you the right questions. But regardless of who you’re working with, make sure that there are very clear expectations set at the very beginning of the project. So, they know what they’re supposed to be doing. What you’re supposed to be doing. And both of you are completely clear on what the end result is going to be, and that’ll help you to end up with a product that you are actually happy with at the end, regardless of who you’re working with.
Another tip, if an agency, a web development agency has a crap website themselves, why would you trust them to do your website? So, go to their website, check it out. Great point
Miles.
Miles: [01:00:55] It’s just crazy. The number of web agencies and developers out there that have crappy websites. Now, part of that is, some of them I know are just No, they are decent quality developers.
They’re just busy on their client’s stuff. And so, they don’t have a whole lot of time to turn inward and update their own site that happens. But again, generally, as a rule of thumb, that’s all all these tips are going to be is check their website. And if they have a crappy website, maybe don’t hire them.
This is one that directly applies to the conversation that we were just having with your friend over there, Mike make sure that whoever you’re working with gives you access to your own website regardless of what technology they’re using. If they’re. Doing from scratch custom coded website, they should give you source code.
If they if they’re working on a content management system, like most most agencies are nowadays, then they should give you login access, admin access that you have access to everything. And whenever we do a website for someone, I make sure to make, to tell them you have access to absolutely everything that I do.
Now I have these tools aren’t going to make or you’re not going to use them and you’re probably not going to want to touch this. But. Here it is just in case you ever need to access it. You do have access to it. And here’s how you would, get into the backend of your website.
Here’s how you access your database. Here’s how you access. Here’s FTP access to the server. Even if you’re never going to use these things, I want to make sure that you have access to it. So, if an agency is saying that they’re not going to grant access to you and they’re not going to grant you access to your own website, then that’s a huge red flag.
That means they’re trying to hide something. What else do we have here? Oh yeah, this wasn’t actually my tip, but I heard this, or someone told me this a few weeks back and I kinda liked it especially with the modern context. And that is don’t work with anyone that won’t show their face. Have an actual conversation with them.
So, you know that might’ve been a little bit weird before now, but now everyone is used to having these sort of virtual conferences. These virtual meetings set up a zoom meeting with them, set up a Google, meet with them, whatever at least get on the phone with them and have an actual conversation.
If all of your correspondence. Over email or via text or something like that, then that’s a big red flag to me. And if you ask them to meet with you, either in person or virtually, actually speak with you and show their face and they say, no, that’s that’s a telltale sign of a problem at the very least, if not a scam.
Mike: [01:03:32] I’m back. Sorry. I’ve been frozen there; I think for the past 10 minutes.
Miles: [01:03:36] Oh, you’ve been frozen the whole show, but it’s okay. Your audio has been going through wonderful. Yeah, I guess the rest of my points here are really looking at their website, look at their portfolio, look at their reviews, just like you would do any other business.
Talk to people who they’ve worked with. Look for any reviews out there. Hopefully they have a Google my business listing that has reviews there, or they have social media, Facebook reviews. If you can find anyone that’s worked with them, try to get some sort of testimonials or something. And then finally, there should always be some form of discovery phase as Mike refers to as a CNA customer needs analysis.
At the very beginning, if they don’t do some sort of meeting with you in order to learn about you and learn about your business and really understand what it is you’re trying to do, then they’re probably not worth your time. I’ve worked with a couple of agencies or I’ve seen a couple of agencies work with people that, won’t go through that process of learning about you and your business, and they just immediately give you a quote, feel immediately give you like, okay, cool.
It’s going to cost this much to do your website. Without really learning anything about you. That means that they’re not going to give you something that’s really customized for you, or that’s really built for you. They’ve just got some template that they give everyone. And they’re not really going to bother giving you something that’s really worthwhile.
So especially if you’re paying some, a real amount of money, a real junk of money for something like a website, make sure that they express that sort of That sort of curiosity and put an effort forward to learn about you and your business before giving you any kind of proposal. So those are my tips for interacting with digital agencies and hopefully avoiding some of the issues that Mike brought up there.
Basically, do your research. No, what you’re talking about before you go into the conversation, check them out online, anything you can find reviews, testimonials portfolio, make sure that they are clear, open and transparent. They’re giving you access to your own site. They’re willing to speak with you.
They’re willing to show their face and actually talk with you and make sure that they’re actually expressing a genuine interest in you in your business and your project before signing up with them. Okay. That’s my tips.
Mike: [01:05:52] Fantastic Miles. Do we have any questions down there or do we need to put this bad boy bed and go back to work?
Miles: [01:05:57] No, we got some comments here. I think just on, on what we’re talking about here, we’ve got a so thank you for that. I think that’s a good thing anyway. Yeah, so I think we’re going to wrap up the show here.
We’re a little over an hour, but we’ll be back next Wednesday. And if you’re catching this not live later, please email us your questions to ask while I’m at Wildman web.com. I have that address scroll and below us in this crawler here. Yeah, email us and we’ll hit your questions next week, Wednesday at 11.
Mike, any closing thoughts for the people?
Mike: [01:06:29] Thanks for listening. Appreciate the questions and yeah, everybody just, focus on those fundamentals and we look forward to talking with you next week, send in some questions next week and we’ll have some more fun.
Miles: [01:06:42] All right. Thanks Mike. We’ll see you next Wednesday.
Thanks everyone for tuning in this has been Ask Wildman and open Q and A for anyone and everyone who wants to ask us at Wildman Web Solutions, questions about advertising, technology, marketing business, or anything else you want to throw in there. So, make sure you send us your questions at Ask Wildman.
Or askwildman@wildmanweb.com and we’ll get to you next week. We’re doing this every week, Wednesdays at 11 live streaming to Facebook, YouTube, and now Twitch. So, pick your poison there and join us next week. And I will see you then. Thanks everyone.
