The Summit Podcast
The Summit Podcast
Small Business Digital Marketing - 2021 and beyond
Small businesses are the backbone of American commerce and COVID has impacted them all differently. Survival is a matter of doing the things others are not capable of doing.
Digital marketing will be key in helping businesses thrive during 2021, but what to do and when can feel daunting. In this episode we sit down with David Somerfleck to discuss how digital marketing is the great equalizer in the next 12 months. Listen in has he shares from his experience on how small businesses can compete without breaking the bank.
About David M. Somerfleck
David began studying web design in the early nineties, during the earliest days of the internet.
He quickly realized that without SEO, content marketing, social media content distribution, and a smart layered marketing plan moving strategies forward, a website in and of itself simply would not do much to help the average small business owner.
David worked for multiple agencies as a freelancer, staffer, Project Manager, Team Lead, writer, editor, and wearing many other hats. Eventually, David had amassed several decades of experience, working with non-profits, business owners of all kinds, while still working for digital marketing (or “web agencies”) of all kinds until finally starting a solo consultancy in early 2019.
Now, David’s semi-retired, enjoying life with is lovely wife, but still ready to help today’s committed business owner make the transition from being operational to establishing sustained profitability and self-reliance.
David enjoys hiking, horseback riding, learning new languages, studying technology and business trends, watching Bloomberg and Cheddar, practicing aikido, and helping entrepreneurs reignite their passion for change.
About Kyle Hamer
A sales and marketing veteran with a deep understanding of strategy, digital marketing execution, and using technology to enhance brand impact. A hands-on leader with a passion for solving business challenges with process, operations, and technology. When Kyle's not tinkering on businesses, you'll find him spending time with those he loves, learning about incredible people, and making connections.
About Hamer Marketing Group
Market growth for a new product or service is often limited by market distractions, unreliable data, or systems not built to scale. Hamer Marketing Group helps companies build data-driven strategies focused on client acquisition and sales development supported by the technology and operations necessary to create profitable growth.
Ooh, welcome to the summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I'm your host Kyle hammer, and I'm on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there's one thing I've learned in my 20 year career, that you won't find an overnight growth scheme, a shortcut to success or way to hack yourself to the top. Nope. Success is the by-product of hard work, great relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We're here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people. One conversation.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the summit. I'm your host Kyle hammer. Today's guest on the summit is David summer flick David, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Kyle. How's it going today, man? I can't complain. And if I did, nobody would care. So there you are. So you look like you're doing okay. And I had fun talking to you before we started. Yeah, absolutely. Now for those of you who don't know, David David is a, uh, well self professed Jack of all trades master of none digital marketing, extraordinary. Uh, David spent his time studying web design in the early nineties. He's really got a background in creative writing in journalism, but across the, uh, th the steps of his career, he's taken progress in to look at what's going on with business owners, put together creative ways in which to solve things and ultimately helps set them up for success. Long-term if you don't find David in the middle of a presentation or helping somebody transform their, their business digitally, you'll find him hanging out with his wife, doing some air retired activities like working out, or maybe bumming around on the beach. Did I capture just about everything, David? That's pretty good. There be anything fun you'd like to add. Um, you know, I, I love working with, uh, business owners who want to turn things around and that's, it, it requires a high level of commitment and realistic expectations organization. So as you might expect, it's, it's rare, but businesses now need it more than ever before. Probably in our nation's history. I mean, certainly like within the last two, um, last hundred years, you know, uh, I like to have fun, but you know, when I look at the news and I see what's going on in terms of business and what's happening to the business owners to small business owners, to mom and pops right now, they're getting crushed. And, um, that's why I want to be on podcasts. That's why I want to help business owners. And it's a passion of mine. I love to read. I love to enjoy life with my wife and relax and everything. Um, but I also see what's on and, you know, I want to do everything I can to try to help.
Speaker 3:That's great. You know, having a servant's heart is a, is never a bad thing, especially when it comes to helping out, uh, other businesses in the market.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm very passionate about it. And, um, you know, in addition to this 20 plus years experience working for different marketing agencies, I was also certified small business mentor for an organization called score, which is a division of the us small business administration. So I went through all the training and everything, which, you know, I had already had, but I went through all of that. So I could be a mentor for them. And often on, it was like 10 years. And I must've talked to a couple of hundred small business owners and nonprofit administrators and startup founders. And, you know, you see patterns after a while, and that's why I'm here talking with you. I want to do everything I can to try to be a positive, you know, positive force when it comes to business. That's great. And, and sales and marketing.
Speaker 3:There you go. So today we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about the future, uh, the future of digital marketing, 20, 20 and beyond, I think the year 20, 20, 2021 and beyond the year 2020 really introduced something new where if you weren't digitally adept, you quickly became evident as the local governments and ordinances started shutting businesses down and putting out orders. Talk a little bit about what you saw happening to small businesses, who really, weren't not only thinking about today, but also weren't thinking about tomorrow as it relates to their digital environment.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you know, look, I live in Southwest Florida and, you know, in between going to different parks and everything, of course, you drive two main streets and I see hundreds of these businesses, probably thousands of them that they're going to go under. If they're not already going through bankruptcy, they're going to go under the odds are pretty harsh right now with COVID, whether you believe COVID is a hoax or conspiracy, or you believe it's real and you know, businesses are suffering well, what can you do about that right now? Every business. I mean, let's, let's be honest, 10 years ago, every business should have been online and should have been online, aggressively and efficiently. And what you see happening right now is that businesses that were not set up to take payments online to offer video consultations or video conferences, or to sell downloads or online booking, or don't have competitive SEO, which for those who don't know, SEO is how you outright competitors online in Google and businesses that weren't set
Speaker 4:Up for that before COVID are suffering and they're suffering big time. It's not too late to turn things around. I don't think, but yeah, it's, it's harsh.
Speaker 3:It, it, it has been, I mean, it's been difficult for a lot of businesses to transition, you know, the whole concept of digital transformation, where do you start? What is, what is SEO? Who do you trust, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Start with some of the basics before we, before we, you know, future start really forecasting. What are some of the basic core tenants of things that, that business owners and, and I would say small and mid-sized businesses really need to think about and really need to be paying attention to for a, not a, not a best in class, but just a good
Speaker 4:Digital presence. Well, I really liked the points that you brought up just a minute ago. So give yourself credit. You just brought up some really good questions. Remember you just said, who do they trust? How do they invest? Where did they begin? What did they, you it's that old saying, you don't know what you don't know. And most small businesses, they don't know marketing. They may think they do, or they may have a nephew or some cousin who's good at Excel or something. So he'll go to Wix and he'll build me a website. And now we'll be number one in Google. I'll make a million dollars. It doesn't work that way. So I'd really like to touch on the points that you brought up and shame on me for having a pen here. That's yellow and not blue. Let me get rid of this right now. But
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're looking at, you know, looking a little off brand. I mean, I don't think anybody listening in is going to worry about what your pin color is, however,
Speaker 4:Terrible, terrible. But, um, no, it's my favorite color. My website, dms.blue, my initials, what I do, digital marketing solutions and then my favorite color. But, um, and that's branding by the way, but, okay. How do you know how to budget? Let's talk about that. Cause I'd really, really like to touch on the points that you brought up and then answer these other questions, because I want people who are watching or listening to really get the information they need to be informed and not be a victim of what's going on today. There's no excuse for a business to go under right now. Everything you need to be profitable is right there in front of you. If you just willing to take advantage of it and willing to take a few steps forward and invest just a little bit of money, it doesn't have to be a fortune, but it is what it is. So how do you know how to invest, really sell? And by the way, I have all of this on my website, plain as day, anybody can go there and read it for free. You can purchase a course. You can purchase a workbook. There's plenty of stuff there. Okay. 10 years ago, if you wanted to put ad in a local newspaper and you wanted it to run for several months, so you could start generating some phone calls, hopefully what did it cost? It wasn't free. It wasn't super cheap. It was maybe what, 1500, 1500, 2,500, maybe three grand at the most to put an ad in a newspaper and let it run for two, three months. They would never guarantee results. And the minute you stop paying, they had stopped running. Okay. Billboards, same way. A couple of grand to put a billboard up hell is probably several 10, several tens of thousands of dollars to put a billboard up on or above an interstate. Same thing. They can't guarantee results. The minute you stop paying, they take it down. Okay, same as with the side of a boss. And you see this in every city law firms love this. That's how you budget. It's really that simple. You know, there's no professional in digital marketing who will turn you away. If you say my budget is two grand or three grand, they'll say, okay, I can work with you. Or that's 50% of what I'm going to need based on your business size and scope and market and what your expectations are. But if you come to it with the attitude of what can I get for free, I just need a website, but I want to be number one. I don't want to spend any money or whatever. Then you're not going to get very far. And that's what a lot of business owners, especially small business owners or new business owners do because they don't know. And they're not sure if their idea for business is going to work right now, as far as, how can you tell if someone's professional or not? This is the, it's the same kind of thinking. If you go to a doctor, you look up reviews. When you go into the doctor's office, you look to see, did they have any kind of credential, any kind of educational background? Does their website look professional or does it look like something a 10 year old built? You know, does it have ads all over it that doesn't look professional? Does it work on your phone? Okay. If it doesn't, then you have to wonder, are they professional? So I'm very transparent. I put, uh, testimonials all over my site from real people with real names, you know, con real photographs, pimples on your faces, everything. These are real people who don't look perfect. They're not models. And I always, if somebody asked me, can you give me names and numbers for one or two references? I say, sure, I'm glad that you want that. So a professional would be happy. They'd love to hear those types of inquiries. And what, what are some other questions that you had because I really, really want to dig down deep. Well,
Speaker 3:I think, I think, you know, from, from a baseline, it's a good baseline of, of, of understanding. I think one of the things that would be interesting to clarify though, is when you say newspaper ad or billboard, and there's your budget, what do you mean by that? As far as there's my budget, my budget for what
Speaker 4:Your budget to get started with digital marketing on a professional serious level, so that you can work with someone who can spend the time with you and not have to worry about going onto the next quick flip cause let's get real. I mean, if you go to fiverr.com or you go to Wix or Weebly or one of these free do it yourself or templates, you know, unless you're already an expert in SEO, content marketing, e-commerce design branding, and marketing it, unless you're already an expert in all of these areas together, you're not going to know how to put them all together as a process. And you're not going to know how to optimize that site so it can move up the rankings in Google. So what that means is there you go. When I say that, what I mean is that's the beginning of a realistic budget. If somebody came to me and said, look, I own a mom and pop. I want to have a, uh, a professional looking online presence. I wanted to work on mobile devices so that it looks sleek. I want to have at least some kind of basic, you know, local SEO. So I can try to outrank competitors locally. And my budget is two or three grand. I would say, you know what, at least they're trying to take this seriously. I can work with you. I'll find a way to work with you. We may, you know, what are your expectations? Do you have five different locations? Do you have, you know, uh, uh, 20 staff or a hundred staff, do you want, you know, different image, galleries or clients section, do you want, uh, employees to clock in through the company website when they show up for work and attracts her their hours, the more you want, the more scale you want to add, the more overhead you want to reduce. And you're talking about enterprise businesses where it's 50 or more employees. If you want more of those types of functionalities within, obviously it's going to cost more because you have to do more work and it's going to take more time. But if you invest with the expectation of getting some traction, if you say I'm willing to invest two or three grand in order to make back double or triple that six months later, most people are happy to work with you, and they're going to want to give you that. But it's when they come along and say, well, my budget's$200 or something and it should be easy. It should be simple. You should be able to do this immediately. That's just not how it works. It's not burger King businesses, not burger King. You can't get it your way and you can't get it immediately every time for a dollar. But you see that very commonly and anybody who's been in marketing has heard this or sales for them or digital marketing. So I hope that kind of,
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I did. I mean, I think, I think that helps clarify a bit more. It sounds like there's a, you know, there's a, there's a perspective here where I need some level of, of web presence. I need to have some level of advertising. Sounds like I need to be paying attention to search. Those are just kind of the base, the basics for folks that are more advanced folks that are, you know, they've been doing this awhile or, or, you know, they're running a larger organization where they have team members that are doing marketing forum. What do you think's going to happen in 2021 and beyond? Cause there's a big shift that happened in, Oh my gosh. And all of a sudden we have to lean on email marketing really, really heavily there's there's people out there that are flirting with text messaging there, ads in making that a way of doing B2B. There are, there are, um, outbound farms now where everybody in their cousin will, will get you 30 appointments a month. Like, what are the trends that you're seeing happen as it relates to digital sales marketing that we can expect to see expand in in the next year and maybe beyond,
Speaker 4:Well, the trends that you're going to see are you're going for, and this is not for all businesses. This is going to be for businesses and business owners who are committed and take themselves very seriously and want to be competitive. Believe it or not. Not every business wants to be competitive. Not every business wants to grow. They may say that, but then their actions will be lie. Uh, what they say, and I've seen this for decades. And, um, the, the changes that you're going to see is that by the time COVID is done running Rashad through the economy, through politics, through our population, you're going to see that more businesses than we ever drempt are going to be gone. And those businesses who are online and aggressively online will be the ones that you go to, whether you like it or not. And there's going to be much, many, many fewer mom and pops, many fewer local businesses. And this is not what I want, but this is what's going to happen because it's happening right now. And all you have to do is look at Bloomberg and Forbes and Inc magazine and CNN and all the other news outlets to see that this is happening. And, um, you know, Google is the Google is the standard bearer for search because they do it in an organized, deliberate manner. They changed their algorithms every six months or so. So it's, it's very, very difficult for SEO specialists to really get a solid grip on SEO now, uh, because Google, uh, is changing their algorithm so regularly. And so many people are trying to finagle it and try, try to find ways to hack it. So what you're going to see is more and more people creating more content more often more regularly. I'm certainly not immune to that. I mean, I don't have anywhere near the amount of content that I would like to have, but a one person I'm semiretired now. So on any given day, I may write a new blog post or make a new video or podcast, or I may just say, I'm going to go sit outside and read for a couple of hours. But for the business owner, that's committed, you're going to see much more emphasis on content production. And that's across the board podcasting, just like what you're doing, a video creation, because the number two search engine in the world is YouTube is I'm sure you know, and that's also owned by hello, Google. So for every, and I call this, the golden rule of marketing is multiple formats. So this is called content. Re-purposing so more and more businesses are going to be doing this. And those who can't do this are, should say, refuse to do it because everybody can, you either have the time. You don't have the time. And if you don't have the time you bring someone in. So content re-purposing is basically you write a blog post, good for you. You've got a blog post. That's great. Now you can create an infographic based on that blog post. So now you have a visual image that you can also use for sites like Pinterest and show your infographic on other social media sites. Right now you take your blog posts that you just RO you could read it, just read it verbally, uh, as a podcast change, it's the terms and hashtags around. So you're changing the SEL around. Now. You have right image a podcast. Now do a video of your blog post. You can just look into the camera and just read it like a talking head, or you could interview someone and try to frame a discussion around the subject matter of the blog post, right? And now you've got the video. So you've taken one piece of marketing content or collateral and create two pole forms okay. Of marketing content, just from that one. Now, imagine if you do that every day for 30 days, you're going to have a tremendous amount of material and the more complimentary or overlapping your SEO is, the more likely it is to hit in Google. And, um, I'll tell you a story about SEO, if it's okay with you, absolutely go for it. Okay. I don't know how your time is. Uh, this was maybe 10 years ago and I was in Denver, Colorado. I was very, very active and I was between agency positions. So I was freelancing as an independent contractor, and I'll never forget this. There was a competitor of mine, but we were also friends because he was a very, very nice guy. And even though we were competitors, we were unfriendly terms, you know, and he called me up one day out of the blue. And he said, you beautiful blankety blank, blank, ex expletive. And I said, well, who, the blank expletive is this. I had an idea. It was because the way he was talking and his tone of voice, right? He said, you're number one at Google. How the F did you do that? And I said, really, you're nothing made, um, not literally, but figuratively. And he said, well, how did you do it? And I said, well, I didn't know, because I don't look at Google every day is too stressful. So anyway, he told me I was number one at Google, for web design and digital marketing in Denver, Colorado, how did I do it? And I told them how I did it. And I said, what I did was I was tinkering with my website every day. Sometimes multiple times every day I was writing a new blog post every day about, uh, upcoming workshops or seminars that I was conducting in the Denver area, the Denver tech center area, or in other areas of Colorado, I was blogging about it. I was podcasting about it. I was also changing the terminology on different pages so that they were more local. And I was talking more about the local scene in local digital marketing goings on. So everything that I was doing had to do with more local SEO, more local events, and tying everything in to web design or marketing or SEL. And after about 60 days, it started ticking up the search results in Google, which that we call SERPs search engine result pages. So it was moving up and shortly after his phone call, I started getting phone calls, emails like every 15 minutes for about two weeks. And it honestly, it got to be overwhelming because yes, I was getting more phone calls and more emails, but they weren't all from people I really wanted to work with. They were from people who were calling and saying, how much is a website? How much is e-commerce? How much is web design? How much, how much our launch, everything. So they were looking at what I was doing as one in done physical items and not as beginning of process. So I'm explaining, and re-explaining this. So of all of the phone calls and emails that were coming through, I had a handful of legitimate clients on any given day or week. So I realized I had to start doing more of what the agencies were doing. So it's not enough to just get phone calls and emails, but you want to get phone calls and emails from qualified prospects. People who want to work with you who have money and are willing to invest it in order to get more in return. But that's something I wanted to, to illustrate how SEO works in very basic terms. And there's obviously a lot more you can do. So the more organized and deliberate you are, the more effective you're going to be. So sorry to go off on a tangent like that.
Speaker 3:It's, uh, it's, it's fun. Whenever you get to find out stories about how people, you know, climb to the number one search result, and then, you know, the, the by-product of what that means. I mean, there've been been groups that I've worked with, who they'll rank number one for certain elements, but those elements really are, are driving traffic to their site, not necessarily qualified traffic or people who would end up buying they're buying their wares. A good example of that is, you know, years ago, worked with an organization who they had, they would write blogs almost religiously, uh, twice a week on topics related to safety workplace safety. Yeah. But the information they sold was basically a version of dun and Bradstreet's Liga a data list, right. There was information and they didn't line up, but they had a boatload of traffic that would come to the site, hoping that somebody was looking for safety would also want data in, in that bridge was just too far apart. One person explained to me, he just said, you know, if you're a beer company, don't go out in, in write about cars. Or if you're, you know, if you're a software company don't grow right about beers, like it doesn't, it doesn't translate, make sure the content and things that you're writing about are relative to the type of person and the type of customer you want to see come through your baskets.
Speaker 4:Absolutely abs a frequent Luli. Because when I was in Denver, I was very active. I mean, like I said, I'm teaching boot camps, I'm teaching workshops. I, um, I did work, uh, through the, the WordPress foundation, which is a, not the nonprofit arm of WordPress, which is owned by a company called automatic. So I would teach all kinds of workshops and boot through
Speaker 2:Their groups on meetup.com, um, teaching other boot camps and workshops on a weekly basis. Every weekend I would do something and sometimes a week evenings evenings during the week. So I'm also cross pollinating, all of that marketing with these groups and these presentations and the more I focused in on WordPress. Well, I attracted people who wanted to know more about WordPress. The problem with that was I was attracting a lot of people who are all do it yourselfers. So they would never invest a penny. They would never invest 10 cents in their business because everything had to be free. So I had all these people coming and saying, can you help me fix my broken site? But it has to be free or, you know,$10 or whatever. And I'm thinking these are businesses that are never going to get anywhere. So over time I changed that and said, no, I want to only work with businesses that are enterprise level 50 or more employees. And now that I'm older and kind of, semi-retired kind of, sort of, I only really want to work with business owners who are committed, who really take it seriously. And that's a big determinant, you know, and you can usually tell after about 10 seconds. So the first thing they talk about is money. We're probably not a good fit, but if you talk about my business is going under, I'm not getting any phone calls. I need to turn that around. Now you're a good fit. Cause you're, you're, you have a business you care about, but anyway, let me let you go.
Speaker 3:I look, and I, you obviously, you're, you're kind of on the tangent there, as it relates to finding the right fit for, for who you have. But, you know, expanding that out with this digital transformation that's coming. I mean, today there was a, there was an article or an article or a video shown by Boston electronics of a dancing robot. The, the Tik TOK craze is taking over the world with, you know, everybody's going to have 15 seconds of fame. It's no longer 15 minutes. It's 15 seconds with your tech dog or your Instagram. What are the trends that we're seeing happening and how it's going to force businesses to do things differently as we move beyond 2021, because you said mom and pops are going away, but don't, they have a competitive advantage because they don't have corporate brand standards that they have to meet or, or shareholders that they have to,
Speaker 2:They can, they can, it doesn't mean that they do. So. I mean, you and I both know there's how many small business owners out there who are out there right now, who don't have websites, who don't have websites are mobile responsive,
Speaker 4:Who aren't using, e-commerce who aren't on YouTube, who aren't podcasting. They're not doing everything that they can do. And it's either because they don't have the resources or they don't care, or maybe they don't know how, or they're trying to do everything themselves for free. And, um, you know, I, I totally get the challenges that are upon the American business owner right now. I totally get it. And my heart goes out to them. But you, you, so you have to pick your battles and like what we were saying with SEO and like what we were also saying with not every customer or every client is going to be an ideal fit for you. You've gotta be very selective and very deliberate with what you do, or are you going to go under right now? There are sharks in the water. There's a Wolf at every door. If you're a business owner right now, you know, when COVID first was going through this area, you know, I remember telling my wife, I would love to order groceries locally and have a local POB or local mom and pop or a local grocery store delivered to us. I would prefer that I couldn't find a single one that did not a single one. I read about a local pub. That was, uh, because nobody wanted to go into inside the pub. So they were offering like 20 pounds of pasta, 20 pounds of chicken, you know, discounted rates. And you could go pick it up by curbside pickup, but you couldn't do it through their website. So you'd have to physically, you know, call them up on your phone, give them your credit card number and then go get in your car and go pick it up. I mean, why could you partner with Uber? But Uber eats with door dash with any one of these companies and offer home delivery. Why couldn't you have a modern website that works on your phone? Why could you have e-commerce so you could take payments online. Why couldn't you do these things? Because he didn't want to that's the thing.
Speaker 3:Do you think it was want, or do you think it was money? Like, I may think don't you think that some, some of the, some of the apprehension in modernizing or going through digital transformation, doesn't some of that come with, I'm afraid of the investment, because I, I picked the wrong vendor the first time to do X, Y, or Z, or I don't understand where my audience is anymore. Like, what is it?
Speaker 4:Is it, they don't have any money or, or flat broken. I don't have any money, but like, you know, but let's break that down then. Okay. Let's say for the sake of metaphor that you have a huge tumor on top of your head. Okay. Now, of course, I don't want that, but let's say that anybody listening or watching, that's what you have. If that's happened to you, you're going to go to the doctor. You're not going to call the doctor and say, I know what ails mean. I know how to resolve the problem. I know how much it should cost me. I know what medicines you should prescribe and how you should do your surgery. And I'll tell you what tools you should use. And I'll tell you the deadline that you should have this all done by. You know, if you went to the doctor and said that they would laugh you out of their offices, they wouldn't hear it. And yet that is what happens every single day. When you are a digital marketer like myself, and you see RFPs request for proposals, where they're telling you, this is how much it should be, this is what tools you should use. This is the deadline that has to be, everything has to be done my way within my budget. And this is my problem. And this is how you solve it. They're not asking you for help. You're telling you, this is how you need to do it. And this is how much you should make. That's insane. And then they wonder why they're going out of business, or they can't reach any new customers. Well, you did it to yourself. Now, as far as the business owner who doesn't know what to do, you know, look, I'm not Buddha, but if anybody has a question, they can email me. I offered this on every podcast that I go on online, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. And I always tell people, if you have a question about digital marketing, anything, as long as you're not selling me some kind of spam nonsense, I'll give you an honest response and I'll try to send you a link to a blog post I've written on this subject. And if I don't have one, I'll send you a link to someone else's. So I'll give you an honest answer. And I don't care whether you work with me or not. I've never had any taker, not a single one. Okay. And it's because they don't want to know, or they think they already know. But the whole thing is everything that you need is right there in front of you for a few thousand bucks, you'd get started. You work with a professional. How do you tell a piece of,
Speaker 3:I feel like that the reason that people don't think about when the free consultations or contact you with any, any question has less to do with, they'll take you up on it or not. And more to do with, they don't even know where to start in asking questions. They don't know. Are we starting at, uh, are we starting at digital marketing one Oh one where it's like here, this is what search paid search is, or are we talking about here's how you fine tune Google ads? Or are we talking about here's how you do email marketing and target your automation campaigns on the back end to drive lifetime customer value? Is, is it, is it more about, they don't know where to start or is it more about they don't trust the, the consultation not to be a sales?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, as far as not trusting the sale, the consultation not to be a sales call, you know, I always say, you know, there's no strings attached. Um, you know, if you ask me a question online, there's no way that it could be a sales call in the first place, because you send me a question. And if it's a legitimate, honest question, I'll send you a short response. Here's your answer? I do it on Quora all the time, same as on LinkedIn and Twitter. And I've had several people on Twitter, uh, emailed me questions. Uh, so, you know, I just answered very directly. I, and I just tell them if you work with me, great, if you don't, I'm just, I'm still going to keep on trucking. It doesn't matter. You know, I'm just trying to be a legitimately helpful, honest, um, person here, but, you know, that's all you can do, um, and be transparent. And I think that differentiates me from the magical gurus that you see out there telling everybody, you can make a million dollars overnight with no money. You're not going to, you know, and if you hustle endlessly with no organized plan, do you're not going to get anywhere either. So I'm not Gary V and I'm not a magical guru guy. Uh, you know, just somebody with this experience and they can take it or they can leave it as they may wish. But for those who are sincerely interested, I try to be as open and as honest and as forthcoming, as helpful as I can, because I believe in being a moral person now, um, as far as not knowing what to ask you begin with the first gap. So, you know, I'm not going to shoot somebody down for asking me what is SEO, or how does SEO work, or, you know, something really basic. I'll give them a flat, you know, answer and just say, now, now that you know that it's not an item, it's a process. It's not immediate. It's not overnight, it's not free. It's not$50. You have to commit. I can't do anything for anybody if I don't talk to them first. And I, you know, and I mean, honestly, I put a lot of this, um, on these free do it yourself or templates that I really really think do, uh, business owners have profound disservice because you know, this idea that you could get something of great value for nothing is not how it works. And they all will work with you and give you more, but triple the cost of what you would get if you were to work with someone independently. So like the hosting is probably three to four times more than it would be if you were to go to
Speaker 2:Blue host or GoDaddy yourself, you know? So over time they nickel and dime you, you know, so if you want help with SEO, well, that's going to be$50 an hour. So maybe they think it's a great deal, you know, but after four or five hours, are you going to have the results that you wanted? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3:Uh, look, I, there was, uh, there bills and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend to own this. Steve Wiedemann, um, who does SEO consulting in California? Actually, he, he does it across the States. He has a really great statement. And he says, if you think hiring an expert is expensive, try hiring an amateur. That's right. You're going to spend three, four, you know, you might spend 20 to 30 grand using an amateur because you had to redo something five, six, seven, eight times versus spending 10 grand with an expert. And it was the highest quote to begin with. But there wasn't all of the change orders on the backside because you had an expert actually doing it with you on the front end.
Speaker 2:Right. And I've never turned down a client, uh, for that matter, who offered me, um, much less than that. You know, when I worked for marketing agencies, okay, the marketing agency, they cannot work with you. Most of them cannot work with you. If your budget is below 10 grand, why is that? Because they have infrastructure that they have to pay out of pocket. They have to pay the, lease, the utility. They have to pay their employees, EHR, their legal department, and all of this infrastructure. Some agencies will talk to you if your budget is five grand, but now much lower than that. They're not going to take you seriously. So when I worked for agencies, I would pick up the clients who didn't have the budget to qualify, to be taken seriously by the agency. So if some, if, if a business said, well, my budget is five grand, but I need a beautiful costume site. That's going to work on mobile. I want to try to get to be number one in Google for local businesses of my type. I need some help writing some content, you know, could you help you with two or three blog posts and setting up some social media accounts? I want to have e-commerce so I can take payments for five or six types of services or five or six types of five or six items. I'll say, well, five grand is a little bit low for what you want, but you know what? Let's talk about it and see if we can work out a plan and some structure and some organization to this. And then if after we talk, I really feel like I can knock this out of the park for you and be proud of the work that I do. I'll do it. So we have a couple of conversation through zoom or through Skype, or what have you. And we work it out. So where are there is a will, there's a way. And that quote is absolutely correct. In fact, I, I have that same quote on one of my blog posts, where I talk about budget and I go over that with infographics and everything. Cause I've heard that before as well. You know? I mean, how many times have we taken cars? You know, if you, somebody who's been driving for a long time and you, in fact, I'll tell you this, you know, I, I remember I had a friend who went and bought a, um, and it was a, like a hobby motorcycle. He paid 50 bucks for it. And I remember laughing at him and he was a really, really big guy. So I didn't want to laugh too. Obviously, you know, we were friends and everything. So I just said, that's going to last you about one week. If you're lucky, actually it lasted about three or four days and he was furious. And I just said, well, what did you expect? And the guy's not taking your calls and everything. But this happens every single day, all across America with business owners every day, we're trying to get something for nothing. I remembered there was a nonprofit or organization, and this is the ultimate irony. Okay. This one will make you slap your forehead. This was a woman who contacted me and said, I want to start a marketing agency, specifically offering web design services to nonprofits. And I said, okay, do you have five Oh one C3 nonprofit status yet? She said, no, I don't need it. I don't want to talk about it. I just want the website. Do you have any content yet? No, I don't. Well, what is your SEO should be local because all businesses start local. She disagreed. I said, well, what's your budget? She said$200. I said, you're kidding me. She said, no, it's 200 and I'm not going a penny above it. So I said, okay, well, based on what you described to me, I don't think we're a good fit, but I wish you all the luck in the world. She told me what her domain name was going to be. And I checked it two weeks later, you know what happened? There's nothing there. I wrote on my calendar three months later to check it, nothing there nothing ever happened. She probably had a website for a couple of days. You know, it's, it's, it's part of the, it's part of the adventure. You, you have to be willing to put in what you want to get out. You know, just like, you know, weightlifting being physically fit, writing a book, starting a business. The more you put in the more you will get out. And as far as financially, you want to budget to begin just as if you were putting an ad in a local newspaper or a tabloid or on a radio station. So the more returns on investment you want, the more you're willing to invest. So for print newspaper, 1500 to start, and this was 10 years ago to around three grand that's to be taken seriously. If you want to put an ad on a radio station, we know it's going to be probably triple that. If you want to put an ad on TV, it's going to be much, much higher than that. And now Hulu will let you put ads on their TV programs now. And certainly YouTube will let you put ads on their programs as well as we know. And you can look at those budgets and easily get an idea. And that's how you can kind of get a blueprint for estimating realistic budgets. But if somebody were to come to me and say, you know my budget 3000, I'm not going to turn that down, turn that away. I'll say let's find out more because at least it's a start.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think, you know, I think the thing that we've, we've, we've highlighted or you've highlighted well today is, is that you've got to start. You got to get moving. You can't let the digital transformation that's happening in the marketplace, pass you by.
Speaker 2:No. And do you know the term digital transformation, as opposed to digital marketing, a lot of people get lost in the weeds of technical jargon. Like, what is SEO? What is content marketing? What is e-commerce basically digital transformation means in very basic terms. It means you're transforming a business using digital media and online marketing. So that's why I tell people, look, if you want to get technical, what am I? I'm an enterprise digital marketing specialist because I take all these tools and I bundle it all together and see, now how can we take your business and put rockets on it? How can we turn your business into a lean mean machine and give it some, you know, really super sharp teeth and make it competitive in this jungle out there. And, uh, so when people refer to digital transformation, that's really what it means. You know, using everything that's out there to make this business more competitive and more, more agile, good stuff. I hope so
Speaker 3:Well for those, for those that are listening, if they want to, they want to get a hold of you. What's the best way for them to reach out to you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's really easy. I mean, you could go to Google and just type it, DMS dot Ballou. You can go to your address bar for whatever browser you use and type in dms.blue. And you can find me that way. That's great. And you can go to Twitter and Facebook and type in the same thing. Sorry. No.
Speaker 3:Oh, you're quite all right. We want to thank you so much for, for being on today and sharing not only your thoughts on digital marketing strategy, how organizations can transition ways to prepare and future-proof the business. It's, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Well, I really appreciate your time and I appreciate the time of anybody watching or listening. And sorry. If I went off on a tangent, there it's a subject that I feel very passionate about. So it's a subject I could really, really talk all day long about, obviously.
Speaker 3:That's great. Uh, thanks guys for tuning in, make sure you like follow or subscribe. You've been listening to the summit podcast with your host Kyle hammer, and until next week, keep grinding, keep growing, keep learning and keep moving. Make 20, 21 your best year yet.
