Small Business Marketing – Our Stories. Part 1 – SBS 44

Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show, episode number 44 for Friday, December 11, 2015, here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean, coming to you from Concord, California. How are you, Dave?

I'm doing okay. It's Friday. That, that comes with. That's, that's, in my world, that's its own little weird thing, because I do.

Yes, it is.

My big podcast, macgeekab, happens on Sunday. So Friday is like prep day for me, or I try to have it be prep day so that I don't have to do it on Saturday because I would usually wind up chasing around to kids hockey games and various things.

Sure, it's cool. And we're, we're on our. We're. What do we got a few weeks left here at the end of the year. And today we came, we decided that we're going to talk a little about marketing and different ways to get the name out there, your name out there for your business, and what kind of results you can expect. And I guess I want to preface that by saying, you know, there's so much about marketing that I don't know. And the key, I think, for everybody is to do your own research and your own niche and figure out what works. I have a sense that we're going to be kind of leaning towards more, you know, online stuff because that's our. Yeah, that's our wheelhouse, if you will.

Well, we've heard from others. I mean, we've had some PR folks. We had Tim Cox on, and we've heard other people, but even just other business owners, you know, talking about how they market. But I figured it would be interesting to, you know, have this conversation about marketing without other people here, because we really haven't done that. We've peppered in. We've peppered in a few of our ideas, but we don't like to step all over our interviewees. So we don't, you know.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we've got a list of things we can kind of go down. And one of the first ones I wanted to talk about, which, you know, obviously, you know, revolutionized things and, and created, you know, Google's huge bank account is pay per click. And, you know, pay per click ads were, in my opinion, at one time, they were just incredible. And like many things, they start out really great, but, you know, then you get a swarm of people and companies, which is great for the company that's hosting the pay Per click, you know, platform. But as competition goes up, I mean, I can. The first time I heard about pay per click, I got a call from a buddy of mine who had a similar business and he's like, oh, you got to try this out. And it's only 5 cents, 5 cents a click. And I was like, well, you know, okay, five cents a click, let's do it. And had immediate results. Driving traffic to your website and you know, great conversion tracking and the tools are really good. But of course, I wasn't the only one that sure found that, that, that five cents a click. And, and I, I think over time it's gotten more. The requirements or the, maybe the barrier to entry isn't the right phrase, but to, to really take advantage of pay per click, it's gotten more and more sophisticated. And the biggest part that I learned is working to understand how to not spend money and how to not get clicks that are, you know, not useful for you.

Well, that, yeah, that, that, that's my question. Right, because so, and I should preface all of this with my history that that gives me a very different perspective on pay per click. It's not that I disagree with you, but you know, I've been in the display, bad display ad business longer than Google has existed.

Okay.

Yeah.

And, and, and I mean Google, not just, not just AdSense, but Google in general. And that, and that's fine. We were selling display ads.

Right.

Which, right.

Which was basically billboards on the web at the time. And display ads, of course also include, you know, pop unders and all these really annoying things. But, you know, what we were focused on was sort of tasteful billboards on the web fit well into the websites and all of that.

Yeah, sure.

And then I remember the day I first heard about pay per click. And I remember saying to the guys, this is going to ruin the business. And I didn't mean our business, you know, itself. Obviously we've survived, but it's going to ruin the market. And the reason I said that was we had customers. And clearly, you know, Google and the others that really kind of were the first players in the pay per click game knew this. But we had customers that would obsess over the number of clicks that they got for an ad campaign. And certainly it is a metric. In fact, at one point in time, it was the only metric that, that you really had. But it was different than any other kind of advertising before it because you knew that when somebody clicked on it, you know, you could track that. And that that was, that was Unique to the Internet, right. We had direct response on radio or even, you know, the mailer flyers that you used to get or whatever and use this coupon code or what. You didn't have to offer a coupon code. You had, you didn't have to offer anything special for somebody to click on the banner. But what we had learned up until that point, and there have been countless studies since then too, that have, that have supported this, was that clicks are a horrible way to measure the overall effectiveness of an advertising campaign. They're a great way to see how this piece of creative performs compared to that one in exactly the same places.

Right?

So you've got, you know, ad for ipod repair and Mac and you put them both on one site and, and actually it. But it can also be, it's been proven that the number of clicks that an ad gets can be inversely related to the amount of people that wind up buying and wind up remembering. A lot of times what will cause people to click on an ad is curiosity. They don't. Not that they need it, but that the ad is unclear. And so they click on it to find out more.

Right?

I mean, that's what we do. And that, you know, if you think about like clickbait headlines, if the headline has all the information in it, you only click on it if you know, you want to read it. But when it says, you know, you won't believe what happens next, you click.

Right?

So the same thing is true about ads. And so clicks were this horrible thing and we would have customers focus on it and, and we try to tell them, okay, yeah, fine, we'll, we'll give you the data. You know, we have it. We actually talked for a while about just not divulging this to customers, but they knew we, and it's fine. It's like, we'll give it to you, but you need to understand that you're doing branding and you're associating yourself with the websites that you pick. And then out came, you know, Google was the kind of, the first big one that did this en masse. And it wasn't just the fact that they were doing pay per click that was going to ruin the industry. But they were doing no targeting whatsoever.

Right?

So instead of saying, I know that I want to buy an ad on the New York Times, it was, well, I'm going to buy an ad from Google and they're going to put it wherever they want. And whenever somebody clicks, you know, that's all that matters to me. And, but, but I Know it's not. And to what you were, to what you were saying when, you know, you want to make sure you're getting the right clicks and you're getting in front of the right people.

Yeah, yeah. And I can tell you, you know, at one point, like in the, the, the MacBook or the Mac laptop repair business, you know, hinge repair was a huge part of our business. I mean this was, you know, a number of years ago. Sure. And it was definitely worth investing in and advertising in. And I'm sure I was one of those advertisers with backbeat that was like, look, there's no clicks, you know, what's going on, you know, and trying to build that, you know, drive that traffic. And in my experience, the hard part is we're an event driven business.

Right.

You know, you're not going to come to me to learn about hinge repair unless your hinges are broke.

Right.

It could be the day before my hinge breaks and I will not be interested in clicking on your ad. But if I see it, that's important because the next day when my hinge.

Breaks, hopefully that's right. Yes.

Right?

Yes.

Right.

Yeah. And I can remember, you know, coming in on a Monday morning and looking and saying, hey, you know how, look at our campaign. We just spent, you know, $8,000 over the weekend on hinge ads up on Google on pay per click. What happened? And you know, it turns out there was some kind of recall with an automotive hinge kind of thing. And I started to do this. This was my first experience of negative keywords. And you know, if you'd asked me what a negative keyword was back then, I would have just been, I have no idea.

And eight grand will make you learn that lesson.

Exactly. And you jump and say, wait a minute guys, what happened here? And it looked, you know, sure enough the clicks massive but the conversions were just non existent because they were not coming to us to learn about, you know, a laptop hinge. And so you have to go back and it, you know, you spend a ton of time. And I found it was more important than the actual keywords you were putting in were what you put in that they, that the ad would not come up. Auto hinges, you know, that kind of thing. And learning about the, the whole pay per click, like I said, it's gotten more sophisticated and maybe it's just me and I'd love to have somebody, you know, send us some feedback to feedback at BusinessShow Co with their experience with pay per click and it could be the Most awesome thing for your business. And it worked out great. And, you know, we've done it for years, and we've hired consultants to manage it, we've hired employees to come on board of management. And I. I will tell you, there was always a part of me that I was always. And we had a show on fear and I should. And I should have talked to this, but. But I didn't. I was always afraid not to be up on Google with pay per click ads because it drove a ton of traffic and even looking at conversions and. But it was like, gosh, you know, I got to be there, got to be there. Everybody else is there. And it wasn't until we started a division doing data recovery, and by that time, the cost per click and had gone up so much, but it was still, you know, three, four dollars per click. But the term data recovery was $25 a click.

Right.

That's when I was like, wait a minute. You know, this is. This is crazy. And yes, it's a. It's a great business and there's good margins in it. And finally, you know, I'm actually very happy to say today we do no pay per click ads.

No kidding. Isn't that interesting? So you really. I mean, you rode the wave all the way from the beginning to. I mean, it's. I know it's not over, but. But.

No, sure.

But a lot less people are doing it now than. Than were. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And I could watch people doing it. I don't want to make the whole show about Paperclip, but one of the other things that really hit me is I would watch people search and then they look at. And they would just click. They didn't even know it was an ad.

Sure.

Even though now there's a little yellow tag next to it, but.

But, you know, nobody pays attention. Yeah.

They just, boom, oh, I'm gonna go there. And you're like, wow, man, you probably just cost that company. You know, and if it's like Target or, you know, Walmart or some, you know, that's fine. But, you know, some huge company, but it's some little guy that's advertising. And I see it all the time. It's like, oh, this. This company doesn't know about negative keywords because clearly I don't want to learn about this. You know, I'm searching for some other. Some other term. So I guess my comp. My. My advice on pay per click is do your research. Use the resources at Google. Get a good ad rep who will walk you through, you know, they're actually, to their credit, they're very good at trying to help you not have those problems where you come in on Monday and you spent eight grand and, you know, that kind of thing. And.

Yeah, because they don't want you to have a negative experience. That eight grand is not worth it to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some great pay per click courses up on Lynda.com that you can take and really dig deep into methodology and. But, you know, you can spend a ton of time, you know, and I don't know, if you want to be a pay per click expert, it may be better for you to hire consultants. We've had mixed results with that and sometimes it's worked great. So. Yeah, you know, and we were talking about display ads.

Yeah, I want to. I want your opinion on display ads because again, I mean, my history kind of informs me in a very different way.

So, you know, I was a huge display ad guy. We were. We were everywhere and we.

That's how you and I met.

That's right. And then, you know, in 2004, I left my other business and started Tech Restore and we did a big display ad campaign. And, you know, back then it was. It was very effective and it really helped us build our brand and that kind of thing. But I have to say, today we don't do display ads anymore.

Right.

Because they just seem to be not as effective. And I will tell you, a big part of it for us is mobile. You know, 82% of the people that come to our website are mobile. You know, and over 80% of the people that find us, that walk in our door are using their phone to search for a specific thing that organically we want to come up in the search ranks or come up via a circular pattern. And one of the biggest ways we come up is on review websites. And we have. I have some stuff up here. So, you know, our results may not come up, but Yelp or, you know, Google or reseller ratings will surface results that they believe are relevant. And because our rankings are high on those sites, we come up higher.

Sure.

And you can just see this path they come in. Okay. They hit through Yelp that we have, you know, very good reviews, and then they click through to us. And you can. You can track all that.

Yeah, no, I want. And I want to. Actually, I want to get into that, but I do want to say, because the display ad business, we've seen it kind of. I mean, when we started, it was crazy. Prices were 10 times what they are today, I bet.

Yeah.

Yep. They went down really far with both the, the pay per click kind of, you know, introduction, if you will. And then of course, the market just crashed.

Right.

You know, in the early noughties there. And that was not so good. But that was just sort of a, you know, a general industry wide thing. People still use display today. Sure. But it's very much for branding, what you just said.

And I also would say, you know, to your credit for like backbeat is, you know, that is just one. And maybe it's the small, smallest part now, I don't know. But the, the display ad is just one part of your services that you offer people.

That's right.

As marketing. And that goes to changing in your niche as the market develops. If you guys were only pushing display ads, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

No, I'd be busy working a day job.

That's right.

No, it's true. Yeah, day job. I mean, day jobs are not what I want. The display ads were 100% of our revenue initially and now are less than 50%. Podcasts have actually been the thing, believe it or not, that has taken off, but to serve the same purpose.

Right.

You know, podcasts are the best branding option I have found, bar none. I mean, it's just, it's crazy how good it is because think about it. And we don't do ads on this show yet.

Right.

We've chosen not to just as we're growing it.

But.

But we will. Don't, don't get us wrong, they're coming, but they'll be tasteful. And because we know that that's what works. Think about it, you know, if, if we were to sit here and in the middle of our discussion say, hey, we want to take a minute and tell you about our sponsors. We're being very upfront about, you know, that. Yes, this, this next little bit is a sponsor read. And then we spend whatever one to three minutes talking about, you know, lynda.com, right, which you happen to mention. But see, that's the thing is sponsors, that would be relevant. And Linda is not currently a sponsor of the show. They are of my other. One of my other podcasts with Matt Geekup. And then we tell you why Linda's important and we dig into that a little bit and then we say thanks to Linda for sponsoring the episode and off we go. You've heard about this from us. It's not that much different from us talking about it because Shannon didn't know I was going to bring up Linda. I didn't know I was going to bring up Linda. But you brought it up because it was content.

Right?

It's useful.

Yeah, it's useful.

Right.

And you're hearing about it from the people, presumably if you're listening to the show you trust.

Right.

Or at least that you want to listen to. So yeah, podcasts are a huge part of our business right now and can be a great opportunity for sponsors too.

Yep, yep. And there's, you know, thousands of podcasts related to your niche. You know, things are going on whether you're a local business or national business. You know, you definitely want to look and jump on the itunes store or on Google Play and you know, find something related to your thing, you know, your business and look into that. I think a very strong and up and coming because it's just, it's narrow casted, you know, you're, you're going to find people listening to those shows that are, you know, interested in hearing that content, you know.

So yeah, think, right, think about it. Nobody accidentally listens to a podcast. I mean, it's a very intentional thing. You have to not only go and find it and download it, you have to press play. It's not like it's just on the radio and oh, I happen to be driving at this point in time and now.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

And, and then, you know, we do a ton of, of social. Obviously now, you know, I want to.

I want to get back to the, the, the reviews websites and then we'll go to social. But I don't want to miss that topic. You mentioned Yelp and, and reseller ratings. How do you. Because I've never done anything with them and I have, I mean I, I think I understand how it works, but I'm sure I don't. So I'd love to hear, well, how, how you go about engaging with those sites.

So after long, long, you know, many, many hours and maybe days and months of looking at. I don't think there is a way. And again, I usually pick the wrong phrase, but game, the game, the system, so to speak. And I've always, you know, had that knack of looking at going, oh well, let's do it this way and we'll benefit. And this is what people missed. But with the review sites, it, it's really just about letting people know they can leave you a review up there and being very transparent and authentic and just offering kick ass service. And when you do that, those people that are comfortable using those review sites will review you. In my experience, it doesn't work to really ask people that don't do those reviews to go up and hey, go, leave us a review on Yelp. It just doesn't work that. Right.

So you don't, you don't prompt anyone to do this. You truly let it happen organically.

Yes. And we've tried it. I mean, I've tried, hey, leave us a review on Yelp and we'll give you a X dollar discount. And you know, it's, it's almost like, I don't know when it's, when it happens organically, it seems very authentic.

Yeah.

And I, and believe me, I have a love hate relationship with Yelp because of their filtering algorithm.

Of course you do. Yeah.

You know, because I'm a small business.

Right.

You know, and I get called and emailed by their salespeople, you know, weekly. And right now, I mean, we've done a pretty significant amount of ads on Yelp, but all that really does is you pay money and it removes other business ads from your review page. That's the first thing it does. And then on the flip side, it puts your ad on your competitors review page.

But if they pay, I mean, so is it this, this, this game of okay, whoever's willing to pay more to knock out and take over the other guy wins?

Well, I think there's enough people out there that don't do it. Okay. There's, there's enough, you know, traffic or content available that they can serve those ads, but you know, they offer great analytics and I can tell you I don't see a huge difference when you pay versus when you don't pay. And that's why we don't pay anymore.

Yeah, well, that's makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. And it just freaks them out and they just really have a hard time with it. And yes, you do get some extra little benefits and the analytics is a little better and the response and everything, but you know, have it gone full. And maybe it's just my, the cycle of where I'm at in my business career, but we had so many problems with Yelp, with people leaving just bizarre reviews and then not being able to talk to anybody. Like if you get a crazy review or feedback on Amazon or ebay, there's typically somebody you can call and say, look, this is what's going on and let me give you some, some feedback on this. And, and if you reach a reasonable person, you can often resolve things or even resolve things with a customer. But sure, there's really nobody to call at Yelp. I mean, you can talk to a rep, but there's not a lot you can do to get rid of those, you know, crazy ads. And so. And I do. You know, we use them all time. You know, we get all those reviews up there. We take the good with the bad, and again, it comes back to just trying to be really authentic, trying to offer a better service than your competitors. What is your value? Why are you here? Are you just another place? Is that it? I mean, or is it. Do they get a sense of. When they walk in your shop or your office or they come to your website, is there a sense that you're. You're different? You know, what is your value proposition? And I think that that drives more people, because if you read, like, the Tech Restore reviews on Yelp, you see that they're, like, pleasantly surprised. You know, they compare it.

I've been reading some here, and, I mean, the reviews are all great. I haven't found one that's bad yet. And maybe one.

There's some up there.

Yeah, I'm sure there.

Almost. They're there. Yeah.

But what really surprised me was where these ads go from your competitors. And it actually, to me, devalues Yelp's value.

Right.

It lowers their value. Because I go to Tech Restore, and I see, okay, I'm here at Tech Restore. Yep, that's the address. There's their logo. And then the first thing I see is a review. I mean, these. These ads, if you haven't seen it, folks, these ads are. Are built to look exactly like the reviews that you would have come here to get. But they're not about Tech Restore. I'm seeing two ads from other companies where. With people's pictures, and they're, you know, I love this. They recovered tens of thousands of files, yada, yada, yada. And then I have to scroll down and, oh, there's the ads that are actually about Tech Restore.

Right?

That, to me, as a user, makes it feel like, well, what am I supposed to be reading here? That's very bizarre.

Well, and, you know, a lot of times folks are winding up there because they're doing searches that don't have our company name in it.

Right.

You know, Yelp surfaces us to, you know, the top. And because we're, you know, we have a good rating, so they come in there, and then, you know, obviously these other folks that are paying for these ads are saying, well, I can catch them and try to get them over there, you know, and, okay, it's great, and, you know, it's fine, but it is. I don't think it's very, you know, genuine. No, you're kind of playing. You're kind of playing games with people. And that's one thing that it drives me nuts about. Yelp is.

Yeah. The first time as I saw this, I thought, okay. I mean, because one of them is the data rescue center. I'm like, did Shannon. Well, my first thought was, do you call your business by that name, too? Is it some SEO thing that you did?

Right.

And I realized, oh, wait a minute. I see. No, this is an ad. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So it's interesting. And.

But.

But again, it is very useful. Whether you're, you know, Angie's List for reviews, you know, where people are paying a monthly service to be on Angie's List to, you know, find qualified folks. Reseller ratings is a good one. I really like them. I mean, we don't do a lot with them, but their model I like is the fact that you have to be a confirmed customer. You know, they actually tie you back to your order information and that kind of stuff. Or Yelp, you know, you can get somebody that calls up and leave you a bad review because they didn't like your price.

Sure.

And that's really.

That's a little weird.

That's weird. And it happens and, you know, that kind of thing. So it, you know, I go back and forth, but reviews are very powerful and asking for them, you know, I mean, Yelp will tell you you should not ask for reviews. You know, they don't. They don't suggest you ask. They suggest you kind of put their sticker in the window that says, you know, people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

And that kind of thing. And, you know, it's human nature. Right. Much. You're much more likely to get a negative review than a positive, because when something that you perceive as negative happens, well, your first instinct is to tell people.

Yeah.

When you have a positive thing, it's like, oh, okay. I expected it to go well. I'm. That's it. You don't. You don't talk much. And. And that's when I'm just. I finally. I mean, I used to look at Yelp every day and, you know, these other review sites and Google and this kind of. And I was like, you know what? I just have to. Rather than focusing on the reviews themselves and getting really frustrated. And we still look, because if we get a really bad review, we want to talk to the client. Try to resolve things. Of course, if we made a mistake, which it happens. Of course. Of course. And actually, I think when people come and look at your. Your reviews, if everything is perfect, they suspect that as well.

Absolutely.

You know, and it's more important, you know, I say to our team, I said, you know, the true measure of a. Of a company is how you handle it when you make a mistake.

Right.

And how you take care of that customer. So you want to show that process. And, you know, these review places, they typically are on Yelp, they give you a chance to go update your review or this kind of thing. And if you're dealing with reasonable people.

Yeah.

And usually resolve those things. And so I think it's a great way to build trust and to do it. But I think you. For. In my experience, it's better just to do it organically. It just works the best.

So. Okay, we've talked a lot about, you know, advertising that you can go and buy. And. And we haven't dug into the social thing yet. Maybe we'll get there. And we've talked about reviews like that happen organically or any of that. But all of the things that we've talked about so far fall into the category of what I would call do it yourself.

Right.

This is you. You understand that it's happening some of it. You help to sort of shape and mold some of it. You're actually going out and spending the money in some. Is. Is or happening organically just because you're providing a good or bad service.

Right.

You know, so my question is, have actually a discussion point because I've got some things to say about this too. But I'm curious. Have you ever hired someone not to manage your PPC ads or anything, you know, like that. Have you ever hired someone to do PR and marketing in a general sense for you?

So, you know, we've done. And this is my, you know, bootstrap, I think, mentality. We used to do tons of press releases that were. They were great. And I still think they do work very well when new. New services or new products. And, you know, we used pr, Mac, and. And, you know, years ago, we used Business Wire for, I think, you know, a little bit of time. And those things worked great. And I taught. And then, you know, I. I often have talked to PR folks and, you know, the. The problem I had with it. And again, this is just my experience. And, you know, it may go against everything that you believe, but there's so much. I'm a real tangible person. You know, I really want to see, and I want to have my finger on it. And maybe that's held me back, but it's also given me a really good sense of, you know, my gut instinct on what works and what doesn't for our business.

Yep.

So I have not hired just a PR place to go out and get our name in here, get us interviewed here, you know, And I do think that's very effective.

It can be. I've done it.

Yeah.

I have not. I'm not doing it currently. So that may give you a feel for my. The success I've had with it. But I've had. But that's not to say it's always been a failure. I've had at least three different people that have been here simply to do pr.

Right.

One of them was really focused on getting our name out there with other news outlets. And this was mostly focused for the Mac observer, but we were doing some PR for Backbeat 2 and getting us interviews with other news outlets. And that actually was. Of all of it, that was by far the best.

Yeah. Because now. And that I would also. You write that you're. You're searching for this really broad exposure.

Yeah, yeah, we were looking for broad exposure. That's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was very effective.

Yeah. I mean, he got me on with Katie Couric. I mean, there was some serious stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it wasn't just that. It was, you know, smaller things and making sure that, you know, Lifehacker wrote an article about things that we did. And, and it was, you know, my goal always for the Mac observer is to get other. To get influencers to pay attention to what we do, so that when we do something that makes sense for their audience, they will tell them about it.

Right.

And so I have a very specific goal. And, and, and, and so by getting us interviews with these people, and really, it was about developing relationships. But. But he was working that and. And doing a lot of that stuff for us. That worked really well. I had another PR person that. But. But then it sort of fizzled out, to be honest. You know, that I think. And I think it was mostly that that person had kind of used all their connections, wasn't developing anything more. And so it was like, yeah, okay, I think we're done together here, you know.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

But it was fine for a short period of time, and then I probably paid for, you know, three months that. That was. That weren't valuable. But, you know, if I lump it all together as one flat rate, then it was fine. You know, one flat, that flat fee was fine. I had another person that I brought on to do PR that I had seen great things from or I had seen companies that this person worked at had done really well. And we would get together and he would tell me all these things that I should do. And that was not helpful to me because I know all the things that I should do or lots of them. I don't know all of them. The problem is time. And I tried to kind of react, define what we were going to do together and actually pass things to him. But he knew. He's like, well, the things we're talking about really should come from you to make it more authentic. I was like, okay. So we did some things where there was like a little bit of ghost writing happening where he was trying to do the hard, you know, the time consuming part of the work and then I would just go and deliver stuff. And that sort of worked, but it never really got off the ground. But I can see where the right person and the right fit where that could work fairly well. You know, someone essentially helping me to tell the story of Dave.

Right.

You know.

Yeah, that's right.

And that's fine. That's fine. And then I've had people that say, well, we just need to do, you know, press releases and this and that and the other thing and that. It's fine. But again, you know, if they're just writing them or whatever, we've got writers in house, it's like, you know that. But. But if you can't write than having someone that can go do that. Like you said, press releases can be very valuable.

Yeah.

I love the idea of having someone doing pr.

Right.

Because I know there's a value to it and because I know there's a value, I like the idea of having someone do it, but it's very hard. Like you said, it's that small business owner, but it's not just small business, it's that entrepreneur in me that makes it difficult to have someone else telling my story.

That's right. Well, I think that also for me we've put more effort behind and I know these are different, but you've kind of a PR person, but it's kind of somewhat similar. It's business development people.

Yeah, it's the same, but different.

Right?

Yeah. So biz dev folks have been very effective for us, but they operate their. Their goal is not as much exposure as, you know, really direct relationships and business.

Yeah, well, it's almost. Biz dev is like reverse Sales, almost. I mean, it's sales. You're selling the concept of the business to someone. That's right. But it's the concept of the business and why we should work together and this, that and the other thing, as opposed to you should buy this one product that we have.

Yeah, yeah. And in like Tech Restore's case, we do biz dev on both sides from the purchasing side as well as the sales side. And often, you know, the purchasing side can be actually, you know, most of the time, the purchasing side is the most important.

Yeah.

Once we have the product, you know, especially right now, we're selling, you know, and doing service on the most popular products in the world. You know, people find us. It's not very difficult. And. But getting access to the product is always a challenge. And so, you know, biz dev on that side, opening up relationships has been very effective.

But that makes sense. Yeah. You know, I've been friends for years with, with a guy named Scott Jordan. He started a company called Scotty Vest. They do extremely well. And, and he is a PR master. It's just in his bones. And. But he's. He's one of these people that a hundred. You, you. You and I have had talks about, you know, how transparent we are on things like, like Facebook and that sort of thing personally, not just with our businesses. And you've always said, wow, you know, you're so transparent. And I think, wow, I'm so guarded compared to that guy because he's crazy, you know. Yeah, he's just all over the place. Like, you know, he's a. He's a major pot smoker. And so he's constantly posting pictures of, you know, himself rolling joints. And I mean.

Right.

I mean, it goes way beyond anything. He talks about intimate experiences with his wife, but at. He's also pushing his personal slash business brand. And the interesting thing is I've seen him and he rants about more things than he should. You know, topics that we try to avoid, like specific interactions with our employees and stuff. He just. It's all out there. Every bit of dirty laundry is hung on his Facebook page. But because of that, I know that he's been. In the past, just year and a half or two years, he's been through two, maybe three PR people that he's hired and fired because they don't do. You know, he. And I think he probably has the same problem I do at a different scale.

He.

He knows the importance of it, but no one can do it. It's hard to compete with it's. Hard for someone that works for him to compete with him and show results, because everything he does is, you know, is all he needs to do, so.

Yeah, well, especially now, you know, where you can reach so many people on your own. I would imagine that, you know, there was a time, and I don't know if it's now or whether it's, you know, at some point in the past, that PR firms had dwindled down and, you know, like travel agents. Right. And because the message. And, you know, and I don't know. You know, I know we're running low on time, so we'll, we'll bump the rest of the show into another episode. But, you know, with social and all these other things, you know, you can have that direct relationship.

Yeah.

That was much more difficult before, and you need it.

It's what people expect. So when someone else is telling your story and really, you know, I, I, as we're, as we're having this conversation, I'm realizing what I need and perhaps what. Or what I could use. I don't know, I probably need it. And what you could use is not so much a PR person that does the pr, but a PR consultant to keep you on track. Kind of like the guy that I complained about.

Right.

That, you know, I wanted him to do the work, and really what he was doing was telling me what to do. And you need to find the right person. And maybe it was the wrong fit for me with that.

Sure.

With that one. But, but that's the kind of thing, just somebody to keep it top of mind, simply because I know it's important, but I also do 18 zillion other things. And so, you know, even just, you know, it's like a therapy bill.

Right.

You know, you pay and you, you get something out of it because you're paying, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

I don't know.

One thing I want to, I want to make sure we get to. But we aren't. We don't have time now is I want to have the SEO conversation with you. And I know we've had it a little bit, but I want to have it again because I think it fits here. And, and you are, of the two of us, you are the master at it. And I actually want to learn some things from you about it.

I would use that very loosely, but, you know, you have been more successful.

With it than I have.

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And so, yeah, we'll come back around and talk about it, and, you know, we'd love to hear your feedback. You know, reach out to us either Twitter or Facebook or feedbackusinessshow co and talk about your marketing successes and what's worked for you or what hasn't worked, and we'll get them on the show.

Thanks for listening, folks. See you next time.

Take care.