Small Business Marketing Stories – Part 2 – Small Business Show 45

Greetings folks, and welcome to the Small Business show. Episode number 45 for Wednesday, December 16, 2015. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Concord, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you, sir?

I'm good, I'm good. Getting ready for, you know, the. Well, we're in the holiday stretch. I'm not going to say we're getting ready for it. We're in it.

We are crazy. Yes. Yeah, we are in it. The kids getting them done. My daughter has finals, my son's ready to get out and they're all, they're ready to be out of school. And I think we're going to go hit the snow. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Oh, nice. Oh, that's good, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I forget that you guys don't live too far from snow out there with the elevation helping.

Yes, yeah, that's right. We basically just drive straight up and go to, we're at about 7,000ft up there in, around Lake Tahoe and it'll be nice. We'll spend the week up there.

And if I, if memory serves, the one time I took that drive, you hit almost 10,000ft on your way there and then you actually come down into Tahoe, right?

Yeah, I don't know if it's quite that high, but it's pretty darn high.

Yeah.

Yeah. On the peak and then you, then you roll down on the, to lake level. So. And they're getting a bunch of snow up there, so it should be a good, you know, good, good year for skiing and hopefully some snowpack for water, which we kind of need around here. So.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey.

So in, in last week's show we talked about marketing our businesses and of course we, as we probably could have predicted, ran out of time, at least in a self imposed way. And we figured, why impose that on us and on you? We just continue the conversation here and we'll take it from there. Right?

Yeah. It'll be marketing part two. Right?

Part two. Yeah. So it is worth going back and listening to these two episodes. I mean, all of our episodes are kind of part of a narrative here, but these two 44 and 45 are very much joined together. If you haven't heard 44 yet, go listen to that first. It's 39 minutes long. Then come and visit us here. This we're just going to continue right along.

Yeah. And I think it's good, you know, important to point out this is, you know, our conversation about what you know, Dave and I have done over the years what has worked for us, what hasn't worked for us. It's not that you should, you know, absolutely follow our lead and do X or Y or not do this or not that. And we certainly would love to hear from you what's worked for you and add to the conversation@feedbacksinessshow.co. and love to include you in the chat.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's important that we, that, you know, we get everybody's thoughts in on this. And that's actually why we, you know, we said this at the beginning of 44, why we did this. We've. Our marketing thoughts and practices have come into these shows, but only when we have guests. And so we figured we'd do this without a guest at least this once.

Yeah. And if you're listening and, you know, you're small business and you've had success in something, well, you know, reach out to us and, you know, maybe we can get you on the show and talk about what's worked for you or hear you tell us what we've done wrong and, you know, that that's what this is all about to be resource for all of us.

Yep.

Like, like I always say, I'm pretty sure I'm getting the most out of the, out of these shows, especially the interviews where you learn so much from other, other people. We got a great interview coming up soon with a web developer that I know and like and another. Some other guys coming down the road. That's going to be great.

It's good. I always have you say that all the time, that you're the one that gets the most out of this. And I always want to disagree with you only because I feel like it's me.

Yeah, well, that's good. That's really the reason we do this. And I think it goes to, you know, finding something that drives you, you know, beyond, you know, commerce and these kinds of things. What are you getting out of it inside and how's it make you feel? And whether you're building a great team that you want to work with or you're getting that interaction, whatever it is, I'm glad to have begging.

So let's get into this and then before we end the episode, I actually have a surprise question for you that's totally related to this and in fact harkens back to something that happened in 44, but I didn't want to overextend that one, so. But yeah, no, I want to go through. And we ended 44 talking about or alluding to a conversation about SEO, and maybe that's a different episode. Maybe it's better to just go right into social, I think. Um.

Well, yeah, let's roll down the list and see. I. I think it's all related to SEO. Let me back up a little bit. You know, the, The. My closing, you know, comments on last week's show, and I'll open them up again with this. This week's show is. It all has to start with offering an authentic, you know, genuine service or product that really adds value. You know, what is it that differentiate yourself from the guy down the road or the business down the road, or the, you know, the website, or what experience are you offering to people? That's different. And, you know, it doesn't have to be wildly different. If it's great service, okay, that's great, but really make it great service, and that will help surface your business through all these marketing channels. I think it has to start there. It's not the end. It's really the beginning, especially when it relates to social. You know, you want to share your story and, Dave, you do a, you know, I mean, you're. You are the brand, right. And you're the name. Get out there and, you know, with all your other entities. But you do a great job of sharing and getting the word out there and connecting with so many different people. Much better job than I do. Yeah. You know, and talk about that a little bit. We talked about transparency and, you know, comfort level of that stuff before. But I, you know, I think you've done a good. It's worked really well for your, you know, niche that you're in.

Yeah, I, you know, it's. It, it's easy. It's. I do it because it's what's easiest for me. It's hard for me to compartmentalize different parts of my life and say, okay, this is the Mac Geek Gab Dave. This is the business show Dave. This is the, you know, Mac Observer Dave. This is Backbeat Dave. And then. And then here's personal Dave. Right? Yeah. It's easier for me to just be Dave because that's. That's who I am. And it. It's how I, you know. Yes. Each person that knows me knows only. Potentially knows only one aspect of my life. Right. You know, it's not necessarily important that my sister understand what I do for a living. I mean, it would be good if she did. But. But sometimes, you know, and I bring her up because she texted me the other day and, And Said, you know, I always have trouble explaining to people what you do. And I'm like, well, I've.

I've heard that before.

Yeah. And. And it's like, well, and that was actually really interesting. I do sort of blend everything. And, you know, my sister's on Facebook and sees. Presumably sees what I post, although who knows what Facebook shows her because they have their own algorithms or whatever.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it's just, you know, living in my own head. Everything is just jumbled. Right. I'm a business owner, I'm a podcaster, I'm a dad. I'm a drummer. And these are all the things that I do. And I wish I could say that I was intentional about the things I choose to post. Usually, just whenever the mood strikes, I just post something. In retrospect, even as we're talking about this, I think, wow, I should be more intentional. I should post more pictures at gigs. People like that. But I'm busy at gigs because I got to set everything up and then I got to go play. So even to take 30 seconds and take a picture, I have 30 seconds, but not when I'm in the spot where I would want to take the picture from sitting at my drums. Usually if I'm sitting there, it's time to go, you know. Yeah. And the people in front of me don't want, you know, don't want to wait. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Well, I think that that not being intentional about it is actually better, and people enjoy that connection. And, you know, we talked about PR and, you know, stuff in the previous episode, and, you know, they're trying to get the word out and get your name out there and help you become an expert. But, you know, you are an expert at these things. And I see, you know, on Facebook where people will you out and ask you a question, and to me, that's a huge success. It's like, hey, what would you say? What would you suggest? And, you know, that's it. You know, you are an influencer, which is a tremendous asset, but you didn't start out to be that way. It just. It's real. It just happened. And because you're focused and your business and your expertise and you're doing research, whether it's on the latest, you know, something related to music or whether it's related to technology and that you're going to write an article about, you post up, hey, I'm doing a review on this, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. That's. That's authentic. And then later, you know, it could be a week, a month or whatever you, oh, here's the review that I did. And that, you know, it's useful. And I think that's, that's the key is it's, that's.

But it would be. See, I see it as, I mean, this is interesting feedback because I always think, gosh, I should have, I, you know, I should have teased that out earlier or in a different way or at all. Like, sometimes I'll post reviews that I've known I'm doing, but I just never thought to say, hey, I got this cool thing and soon you'll see my full thoughts on it. Right. You know.

Yeah, but if you did it every time, nobody would pay attention.

I guess that's probably true.

You kind of drop in and go, oh, this is, this is really cool. I'm going to, I'm just going to go up there and cricket and post a little thing. And it's true.

I, you know, I get genuinely excited about a lot of the things that I do and. Yeah, no, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They pay attention and it's, it's, you can tell there is an air of authenticity about it. And I think for social media, that's critically important. And, you know, what we do here, you know, there's always this, oh, it's an 80, 20 rule. 80% of the time, you know, you're just posting things and 20% you're trying to sell something or whatever. Well, we probably are closer to 90. You know, we just want to be a resource for people in our particular niche, depending upon which business, you know, we're, we're focusing on and, you know, we've got a few of them and some, and it's a totally different audience for different people. Some heavily tech people, some heavily analog that are, you know, not tech people. And so it's that authentic being authentic. And really, truthfully, we have these social meetings, okay, what do we post? What is really adding value? And a ton of the stuff we post is not our content. Because, like, oh, Mac observer wrote an article about X and we think you should read this. You know, here's a good way to do this. Or tidbits. They wrote an article last week, or maybe it was week before about how to bring back that save as command that we all lost. And it always makes me mad. I'm like, oh, I'm definitely posting this because that's, it's a real good value and I'm happy to send them to tidbits.

Yeah, of Course.

And, you know, so you just being a resource for people on social, I think is the way to go. And. And yes, it may. Yeah. I just don't think you can game the system. You know, it. It takes a little time and, you know, to build up and we can talk. You know, I always say, what's a, like, worth? And, you know, now there's a. Now there's a follow button on your. On your. You know, first of all, you need to have a business page up on Facebook. It doesn't cost you anything. They've got some good analytics and you can experiment with it. You know, like, we just did a. You know, I boosted a post for the small business show, you know, spent a couple hundred bucks just to see, and I'm not sure it was really that effective. And. But I think maybe it was the demographic. Although I tried to really drill down for small business owners and to really get in front of them, and we got a lot of traction on it. It was a ton of likes, everything. But I was looking at the. At the folks. Unless there's a lot of high school kids that are running small businesses that I'm not aware.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. Yeah, it's. It. But, you know, again, I think we, you know, we just need to learn more about.

Yeah, that's right. And how to pick your demographic and how to, you know, try and do different a, B. Testing. And maybe, you know, instead of spending a couple hundred bucks, maybe it's, hey, pick four different audiences and spend 50 bucks each and see if you get different results.

Right.

And I think that's. That's very good. And, you know, and Facebook's not the only thing, you know, we, you know, if you're. If your customers are on Twitter or you're following other influencers. You know, we did a thing years ago on Twitter where we went out and we followed. We had little ways we could find these folks. We would follow every Apple genius that worked at the Apple store.

Yeah.

And, you know, you wouldn't get them all, but a lot of them would follow you back. And that worked really well. And that stemmed from, you know, a marketing thing we used to do when the Apple stores first started. You know, we really wanted those genius referrals. And typically they'll tell you, oh, we can't refer. But you know what?

That's B.S. they do it all the time. Yeah. And.

Yeah, and you're trying to do good customer service, and if you can't help a customer, you don't want to just say Nothing. So we had sent, you know, care packages out to every Apple store in the country with just some little, you know, food, a little T shirt and, you know, you could send it to the manager and try to get to the, and it was really effective, you know, and, and it worked out really well. And so we've tried to extend that out online and keep those referrals coming, especially local ones, you know. Sure. The Bay Area, where it's just, you know, everybody has an iPhone or probably two. So, you know, definitely you looking at it, different ways of doing it. And again, I think you're probably much more effective on Twitter than we have been. But I mean, are you typically tying, tying into, you know, just your other feeds and are you posting different things to Twitter than you would on Facebook?

Yeah, I, I, I do tend to post different things at times on Twitter. I'll join conversations, you know, I'll see what other people are posting about and maybe post stuff. There's times when I'll start something brand new there, but, but a lot of times Twitter is, is more kind of in the moment and reactionary to whatever's going on, whereas Facebook is somewhere where I can start. Yeah, Twitter kind of sucks for having a conversation. Right, right. It's great for that real time, you know, sort of fire hose of information. And sometimes I have something to contribute to that and sometimes I don't. But Facebook, you can start, you know, you can start a new topic and other people can reply to it and it can become a destination. Each topic on Facebook that you start, you know, each post you make sure can, can be its own destination, sometimes for days. That rarely can happen on Twitter. So I do treat them differently. But yeah, I also, when I post a picture, like, you know, if I'm behind the drums or just getting ready to podcast and there's something interesting I can post. Right. You know, and it's, it's interesting for people, those I do want to post in every place that I post pictures, which for the most part is Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr and, and sometimes Google plus if I remember. And that's a very tedious process. No one has written an app to do that in an easy way. So I wrote a workflow on my iPhone in the workflow app that I, that I start with a picture and then I, it asked me for a caption and I write the caption and then it kind of, you know, automates the process of going through and posting that in each separate place and makes it a much simpler thing. So I Do do that with pictures.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Because. Because otherwise, you know, now, you know, I talk about. I don't want to spend the time sitting behind the drums to. To take the picture. Well, now I've got to post it in six different places. It's like, all right, hang on, everybody. You know, just talk amongst yourselves while. While I take care of that. You know, that's crazy. So. And it just wouldn't happen in any venue. Not. Not just sitting in my drums. So, yeah, so I. I have that little workflow and actually I have a little problem with it, but I'm a geek, you know, and it's not that hard to do that sort of stuff.

Yeah, that's right. And. And, you know, there's so many different, you know, venues to. For you to be active in. You kind of have to look at what works for you. Where are your customers? You know, if you're an interior designer, you know, you. You really need to be up on Pinterest, I would imagine. And yeah. On Houzz. H O U Z Z. I think it is houzz.com.

Yep.

You know, those are great places to show your work, whether you're an architect, a designer, a builder, those kinds of things. And Facebook or Twitter may not work. Good for you for that.

My kids have been telling me, my daughter, especially now, she's 16, so totally different world in terms of social. Right. But she's been telling me that she feels like me starting my own Snapchat story that our listeners and such could follow would be an Is. Is. She said, I'm a fool for not doing this. She said, you'd have thousands of people immediately. And, you know, it would be great for you. I haven't done this, but yeah, I.

Would agree with you. And you know, my kids are the same thing. They live in Snapchat and Instagram. Yeah. And, you know, if. If that's your demographic that you're going after, I think it is. It is pretty powerful to get in front of them and to. In, again, an authentic way, you know, that is interesting or useful or humorous or something like that, you know, has to be. Has to be. You know, can't just be interruption, you know, marketing. I don't. It just doesn't work well.

No, nobody's interested in that. They won't follow you. Right. It's.

That's right.

It's opt in for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so. And opt in means people can opt out. So. Yeah, it's got to be valuable at some level and value can simply be, you know, I mean, people like to watch train wrecks, right? Yeah, you know, it's entertainment value is enough, but it has to be something, it just can't be annoying, that's all.

Well, and I think, you know, promoting mistakes and failure, it's, it's a, it's, there's a big opportunity there to talk about how you screwed up or what happened and you thought it was going to go this way and it went this way.

Yeah.

And people like to see that, you know, it, it's, it's real.

I, I, I don't do enough of that. But it's not because it's not out of fear of exposing myself for doing something stupid or wrong. It' usually I'm involved with other people and sometimes those mistakes are wow. I, you know, I, I, I, I, I assigned the wrong person to this task or I, I linked up with the wrong person to do this and that starts to get to be a little dirty laundry ish for me.

That's right, that's right.

You know, but, but if I could find a way to tell those stories and obscure the, the, you know, the, the guilty parties. Yeah, that's valuable, right? I mean, and we've done some of that on the show here.

We have.

Yeah. And it's valuable.

Yeah. And especially if you can show the, the lesson. The comeback. Right. And the, oh, and then so we did this and that didn't work and it really made a big mistake and so we changed this and now it, now it's, here's the impact that's having or here's the results.

Yeah. But sometimes I feel like, I mean it's great if you can have the success story, but the failure story that remains a failure story forever is also valuable. And so I would hate to, and maybe that's part of my problem too is I always want to kind of tell the, the, here's why this is good to, to know about. Right. And you wait and it's like, well actually that just sucked and, and I didn't do anything and I moved away and you know, and did, and now I'm doing something different and because that was stupid, you know. You know, that's its own story.

I don't know. It's like it actually I take it back to like our pre show conversations that we typically always have. You know, we get, get connected here. We start talking about our business and we're like, oh, listen to this nightmare. You know, and it's not that. And I can tell you, we just recently had one where I was like, oh, you know, I'm not happy that you're having that problem, but I'm happy that I'm not the only one that has those kinds of problems. Right. And it is valuable.

It is. You know, I don't think either of us would remain in business very long if we started a podcast called Business Nightmares, sharing our own stories. But if we could find, like, if you have a business nightmare story, you folks out there that you want to share even anonymously with us, we would happily work with you. Because I. Because those kinds of stories are really valuable. The problem is if I share the story as it. As if it were mine, then it's easy for people to connect the dots and say, oh, I know exactly who he's talking about, you know, and that's not cool. In most cases, I don't. You know, the point of telling the story isn't to highlight someone else's shortcoming or my feelings about somebody else. It's to teach a generalized lesson. And to be honest, we've done that in this show. We generalized things and, you know, it works out well, I think. But, but if you have a story feedbackus show co, we'd be happy to share it, you know, and work with you on that.

Yeah, that's right. And so before we jump into another topic, I definitely want to, you know, include sites like YouTube and Instructables.com in your social marketing and some, especially service providers, you know, tile people, landscapers, whatever, painters. I mean, those kinds of sites where you can become a resource are very valuable even if you don't get, you know, a direct customer from it. You know, it all can lead back to your website and SEO and your reviews and I mean, it's, it's long tail, right? It takes. It's sometimes hard to really look at it and say, okay, well, how did I. Yes, I got, you know, 5,000 views on that YouTube video. How do I find out, you know, who really, you know, paid me some money for something? And there are some, you know, certainly analytics, but it also goes to making you the expert. And I don't care what you do. It doesn't matter if you're an accountant that can do some instructable or, you know, writing up a PDF on things to do at the end of the year for your business or your personal taxes and, you know, posting on your website, that's fantastic. But you should also go out and post it to social sites. Whether you write an article on medium.com or you're going to post it on Instructables on how to do some things. Those, those sites, you know, they are far better at SEO and PR and marketing than we are going to be. They're, you know, they've got the eyeballs and they want the content. You know, they want to promote you. And I can tell you out of experience, you know, we do take apart and repair videos all the time and you know, yes, we would rather book a repair than sell a part, but we, if you're the type of person that wants to buy a part and do the repair yourself, well, we want you as well. And you know, we post those up on Instructables and when they get picked up and get featured, you know, we'll get 5 or 6,000 views in a 24 hour period, which is great. It could take a year to get that on our website. And so, you know, I highly recommend you look into those sites and learn how to put your content. You may not think your content's very exciting. Whatever it is you do, I guarantee you there is someone out there that is going to search and eventually find that information and we'll be very thankful to you for posting it.

Yeah, that's true. Totally true. Yeah, yeah.

Let's see what you know, let's talk about, let's talk about offline.

Okay.

A little bit.

Okay.

And you know, again, our wheelhouse is really, you know, online stuff. And, and I always, you know, the bulk of my business comes from people searching for something on their phone or their iPad, but it's all mobile and it's really changed the way we market it and what we do.

But I'm curious, what percentage of your business is foot traffic? You know, walk in versus online.

For, for our repair.

For your repairs? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay. For the repair business, I would say now where it used to be 10%, now it's probably 50.

50. 50. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

We split up.

Okay.

Because we. And that's the phones. Nobody, nobody is going to mail their phone off to get it repaired.

Nope.

It's just not going to happen.

Not a single person. That's right.

No, you can't be without it. So that's our same day business, you know, that just kind of feeds in and you're out all day long. But iPads and laptops are still, you know, primarily mail in because you've got, you know, schools and businesses and that, you know, that's really our target customer where they want to send in multiple units.

That makes sense. Gotcha.

Okay.

All right, cool. Okay. I just kind of wanted to frame the discussion about, you know, offline marketing and. Because it matters to you, right? I mean, if I were to market Mac observer locally here, you know, it wouldn't make any sense.

For us. So we've marked, you know. Yeah, offline stuff. I always try to find, you know, where are you going to have a captive audience? You know, where can you put your ad, your display ad, where they have to look at it. You know, we've done pretty well on transit, you know, with. We have bart, BART out here, Bay Area Rap Transit. So the subway, even though barely goes underground, we've done pretty well with display ads on in those venues. And, you know, you get certain number of impressions. I mean, they sell it just like a billboard, right? Yeah. And you buy out, you know, and your budget, you definitely need a few thousand dollars to do anything up there. I would say probably, you know, five grand, really, just to kind of be out there long enough to have some impact. But you see it right away, especially when you can track it and put like a QR code. Everybody has their phone in their hand. What we're really targeting for that repair business is there's a look around anywhere you go to the movies, on a bus, on the train. How many people do you see using a phone that has a cracked screen?

Oh, a lot, always tons.

So we want that customer to look up as they're dragging their finger across the cracked piece of glass and see our ad. And it's very effective. You know, we've done other things like ads on the side of buses and things that. Not as effective because it's not a captive audience. But, you know, we've done some in movie type things, you know, where they do that before the movie. But that used to be effective. But now that there's national, you know, there's basically commercials. When you go to the movie, we kind of get lost in there. So we don't. We don't do that anymore. Used to be great public.

Public swimming pools would be a great place. Right. If you could advertise at the beach.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that would be. That'd be very good. But those things are worth looking for. And in your business, people, you know, you may have that. I mean, I still get stuff in the mail, you know, these flyers that come in especially lots of contractors and, you know, builders or remodeling type, you know, folks that do businesses. And I do look at that stuff. You know, I get it in. There's magazines that come into hockey ranks.

Is where I see ads. I mean, because it's what I. It's what I do. Right. But, you know, you're getting both parents and kids or adults and. And children there, and you're staring at the boards of that. That rink, whether you're in it or watching a game or whatever you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think with those types of ads, it's probably the same with, you know, online display ads. You have to make it a little different. I mean, just putting your name up there and saying something, this is not enough. You know, try to. And if you're not a funny person, that's fine. But get somebody that can make it. Help you make it humorous or interesting to look at or worth writing down the phone. Memorable.

That's what you need.

Or.

And even better than memorable is shareable. Right. Like, hey, did you see that ad over there? Right? And now it's a conversation piece. That's perfect.

Yeah, yeah. And everybody has a camera with them at all times. So what better way to, you know, whether, you know, take a picture of this ad and get X or do this or, you know, this kind of thing.

Yep.

Gotta, you know, be creative with that. So people look at that and talk about it. I think that's, you know, very, very important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we find. If we repair your phone and we find a picture, we'll give you, you know, 5% off. So save it in your camera roll now.

Yeah, we used to do, you know, take a picture with the. This was another. Another company they have where we would send out T shirts every time they did some service, and we'd say, you know, take a photo of your. Of you somewhere with the T shirt and we'll credit back your account. I mean, we had nice. Thousands of people doing that. I mean, even we had some nuns that, you know, wore the T shirt, you know, differently. It was hilarious. I mean, it worked out really good. Yeah, you engage people at a. At another level again, it comes back to just that, authenticity. What makes you laugh or what piques your interest when you look at an ad? I was on the. We were in New York a couple weeks ago, and there was an advertisement for, you know, the subway. The transit authority wants you to sit closer to make more room. And. And they had a sign, you know, kind of this ergonomic photo of. Of a guy sitting at the. At the. On the bench with his legs spread wide apart. Right. Like guys often see.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was like. It was like, you know, stop the Spread, dude. You know, it was very, well, it was very funny. And I looked over and both my kids were taking photos of that to post it on Instagram.

Right.

Because it was funny. And I was like, well, it's not really an ad, but that is the kind of thing you want to, you know, promote. And people, people will share it if it's interesting and funny.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. That's the thing is. Yeah. Become shareable. Yeah, yeah.

And then, you know, all of this leads back to, you know, word of mouth. You know, where did they, what impact did you have on somebody to where they're going to talk about their experience and how did you surprise them? You know, we tell all people you want to under promise and over deliver. You know, I know it's a cliche, but you really want to do it. You want to tell them it's going to be ready tomorrow and then call them this afternoon and tell them it's ready to pick up. You don't want to tell them this afternoon and then call them and say, oh, I can't have it ready for you tomorrow. It's really important. And you know, there's some words that we've tried to, to ban from our vocabulary when talking to customers and they're words like should it should be ready by this time or maybe, you know, we want to be really succinct and we. You give yourself some realistic time frame.

Right.

But you want to tell people it's going to be ready at this point.

By Tuesday or by Friday, whatever it is.

Yeah, I'm going to have this done. I'm going to deliver it at this time. You're like, when we sell things on ebay and Amazon, we have this wide window of delivery for our free, for our free shipping. Because, you know, everybody wants free shipping and they look at that and go, wow, you know, it's seven to 10 days. Well, we really want them to upgrade to the three day shipping so we can actually get our cost back. But if they don't, well, we deliver it in three days anyway.

Right.

It's just, that's just the way it works. And so they're pleasantly surprised from the minute they get the box. Wow, I wasn't expecting this for, oh, you know, another week.

Yep.

Versus. We told them it was going to be there in three days and it didn't show up for a week. You know, there's a vast difference in the experience that you're trying to have with your customer and the way they feel about your business. And so you Want to. You want to do that. You want to get that word of mouth. And you wanted to talk about how pleased you were. And they may talk about it on Yelp or, you know, these review sites. We talked a lot about those last week. Really important that you do something to allow them to share things. You know, I looked at one of the reviews on Yelp where we gave a guy a free cable. You know, that's a really inexpensive little thing. And he was just kind of. Guy was in a tight spot and everything.

Sure.

And that's what you want. You got a man. They gave me something for free. I couldn't believe it, you know, so.

Yeah, it was the thing he needed. Yeah.

Yeah, you helped the guy out. It's authentic. You know, we're all humans here. And I always joke, you know, in our marketing, I use the word human all the time. It's like, you know, speak to an actual human. You know, because most businesses, and maybe not small business, but certainly as you get larger up the food chain, they do not want to speak to you. They just want to sell you something and never hear from you again.

That's right.

And, you know, we. Our value is the fact that we're just like everybody else, and you can call us or walk in or communicate with us, but, you know, we want the same things that you do. And trying to get that message across to your customers, I think is really valuable. It's worked really well for us.

Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. Yeah. All right, so I. I think we're at a part where we can wrap up. I mean, we can talk about this forever, but we've done two episodes on this. I did want to sort of. It sort of ties into this. I mean, it's definitely a question, but we do a lot of sharing of advice here, and, you know, generally speaking about your, you know, your businesses, and that's what we do. I'm coming here, Shannon, today for some very specific advice, and. And I did not prep you for this, so this may not go anywhere but you. Recently, we talked about podcast advertising in. In the last episode, and. Yep. And you recently advertised on one of the shows that we represent here. It's not one of the ones that I do, but it was one of our shows, and you did a few months with it, and then you. You stopped your. Your ad, which. Which is totally fine.

Sure.

I'm curious if you have any feedback for me about your experience with that particular show or backbeat media in general, or if you have any specific reasons for why you continued as long as you did or chose not to continue. I'd just love to hear that stuff.

Yeah, sure. I think that. So for us was kind of experiment. We launched a new part of our business. We really have never focused on selling repair parts to end users because we've always felt that our value is in our expertise, our Apple certified techs, and all these things that we've always done. And it served us very well. But, you know, there's a large portion of folks out there that want to tear into this stuff and it's growing. And so we said, you know, it's a good opportunity. Let's go ahead and, you know, brought somebody in to manage it and that kind of thing. And so looking for places to promote it and looking at different things, I said, well, we'll try this show. We'll try the podcast. It was inexpensive, and I think it.

Was one of our smaller shows. That was when we were offering a deal on it. It was fairly. Yeah, fairly inexpensive, right?

Yeah, fairly expensive. And I thought a good value. I still think it's good value. I think that for us, it's more about finding. Developing or finding. Where is that client base? Where is it that. That wants to buy those components? Maybe is it a. Is it like the. The show that's focusing on phones or iPads, that kind of thing? Or is it, you know, the maker type, you know, podcast, where people are tearing everything apart and that kind of thing? So that was kind of the reasons I said, hey, we'll run it for three months and we'll see what's going on. And when I sat down with my. The guy who's managing this for us, it couldn't really give me any. Some good answers on some of the analytics that I would ask, okay, what did we get and what are referrals? And again, we talked about this last time too. You know, not building it success around just clicks or this kind of thing. It is definitely.

It's hard to do with podcasts, right? It's hard to get a straight answer. And part of the reason I'm. I'm asking this is it was a inexpensive show, but it's one of our smaller shows. And I always worry when I saw that you were. You were coming on that show, I actually had a little bit of reservation about it because I knew it was your first time, or I thought it was at least one of your first times advertising on a podcast. I thought, you know, yes, it's inexpensive, but it's inexpensive because of the audience size.

There's a reason.

Yeah. Is it going to, you know, it's not a huge amount of money. It's not going to kill you if there are no true results that you can see, but is it going to sour you on the concept of doing any other podcast advertising either here or anywhere else? Right.

No. And, yeah. Yeah.

And I don't just think about this with you. I mean, I think about it with all of our customers. Like, is it really smart to let them, Let that be the front door? You know, it'd be better if they were on a show that was bigger, but of course it's going to cost them four times as much. That's right.

Yeah, that's correct. And that's when we're selling. You know, I also have to look at, okay, what are we doing? And what's the, you know, what's the profit margin on these components that you're selling? And, you know, it's a challenging business environment for that aspect where you were, you know, used to dealing with products that had much higher value and, you know, selling a screen for four or five hundred dollars versus selling a, you know, screen for an iPhone, that's seventy or eighty dollars.

Yeah.

The volume you have to move to make it worthwhile and to get the return on that advertising is much, much higher. And I do always struggle with that because, like, okay, well, how many units did you move? You know, was it good? And putting the value on the branding side of it, I always have a.

Tough time with, oh, it's impossible for a small business. No, it really is. I mean, I've seen some of these brand lift studies done. Right. And, and they're great. And we always try and share them with, with clients when we, when we come across them. But to do a brand lift study is going to cost you about 100 grand. Right. You know, somewhere between 40 and 100 grand is what a good brand lift study costs.

That's a lot of money.

Yeah. For most businesses, that makes zero sense. Right. You know, why would you, why would you ever spend that kind of money to do it? But it's the only way that you can truly find out what your real brand lift was. There's no way to automate this. There's no do it yourself way. Right. So it, it's, it's a, it's a difficult thing that we struggle with here all the time. And it's like, you know, we try to make it up with customer service, with people and that sort of thing, to give them this warm, fuzzy experience, even Though they aren't able to pinpoint results, especially when it's somebody like you that's certainly been through the PPC days and all of that. And, and there was ways to pinpoint at least what the people that were selling you the ads wanted to tell you your results were. Whether they were your actual valuable results or not is a whole other conversation. But yeah, it's very, it's a thing that we struggle with and so is kind of generalized advice to everybody listening. Don't just, you know, when you're looking at doing advertising, focusing on the lowest priced thing may not be, you know, you get what you pay for.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I don't want to say this about our own stuff, so but there's a phrase that comes to mind. One of my. Actually the guy's a drummer, but he's also a travel writer. This guy named Neil Peart plays drums in Rush or did if he retired, who knows. But yeah, that was the other meme of this week that seemed to trump. Trump in fact for a day or so. But anyway, he's also a writer. He's a travel writer. And, and he, when he's on the road, he actually likes to stay in. In cheap motels or inexpensive motels because he rides his motorcycle all over the place. And a lot of times when he's reviewing, you know, as he's writing about something, he's like, I walked into the room and I had this, you know, this, this thought recur to me. Yep. Cheap and worth it.

Yeah.

And it's. Right. You know, it's a very succinct way of cap. Of capturing that idea. Like, yeah, I didn't pay much for this and I shouldn't have, you know.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Too. And for us it's really a process and on business channel that rolling out like we, we totally go through this. We do all these different things. I can tell you right now, the. And, and it's not because it's, there's no charge for it because there is a charge because the time it takes. But that that demographic that has responded the best to that new business channel for us is Craigslist. And you know, excuse me, because the, the. I don't know if it's the tinkerer thing. The guy that's looking for a deal.

Yeah.

You know, that has been. And again, I. Excuse me, I would pay for it. I don't want anybody from Craigslist to hear that. But.

Yeah. Right.

You know.

Right.

We would Certainly pay for. Okay. Because it's not just clicks and all that kind of stuff. It's like, oh, well, these people are buying.

They're the ones that are buying.

Yeah, yeah, they're, you know, when it comes back to. And I sound like a broken record, but you, you have to. What is the value that you're adding? So maybe adding that value to somebody that wants to order a part, you know, or order something. But what we find is in the Bay Area, we run these things and people show up at the door and say, oh, I want to buy this, I need this cable. I want this, I want that. And so, you know, it's gone from zero revenue to, you know, not insignificant amount of business in just a few months. And we'll continue to tweak it. And it's definitely a process that we always try, you know, new things with and you never know. And the key is, I think like you said, it's the customer service like that you guys add too. It's like, okay, try this. You know, there's all different ways, you know, and, and like your business. I always think of it. Well, these guys are really trying to partner with me because my success is their success.

Absolutely.

And, and you know that that's an important message. And you want those kinds of vendors to you, you don't want this. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna, It's gonna cost this. And we're done.

And we're done, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to sell this to you because it's going to help you do X. And hopefully as a business, you're going to earn more money for it.

Yeah, you need to make, you need to be able to capitalize on whatever it is I sell you and make more than I charged you for it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we'll get a lot of good stuff. We could, you know, we could go another episode maybe even down the road after the new year. Maybe we'll do that. We have a lot of good content coming up, some good interviews, and we appreciate everybody, your subscriptions. And if you have any comments, we would love to hear from you feedback@businessshow co or jump on Facebook. We got some good comments this week that we're going to be delving into soon.

Thanks folks. See you next week.

Take care.