Ep. 4 - Uncle Marketing Live - Mailbag!

Okay. We are live again. This is a mailbag episode. I am Derek Chang of Uncle Marketing. You can find us at uncle.marketing. Uh, and I know some folks can't join live, but you know, a lot of you still had some great questions throughout the week. If you are live on YouTube or LinkedIn, shout out any questions in that chat, and I'll take them as they come. And I won't finish until everything is answered. If you ever have questions as part of the Uncle Marketing community, you can always ask at help dot sorry at help. You shouldn't say @help, right? You can always send an email to help@uncle.marketing. Send me your challenges and we'll tackle them together. So one of the new— one of the first questions I got was for a design and build construction company catering towards affordable Luxury markets, what percentage of our total marketing should social media marketing consist of? And for, for all budget-related questions around marketing, it really needs to be aligned with your goals. Is it to get more branding? Is it to get more followers? Improve engagement. What, what do you look— are you looking for more selling opportunities? They have to be measurable in order to actually determine the actual budget. And once you have that in mind, you need to kind of look at each of those activities and figure out what they're worth to the business. Then you can back into a number, and it's just an estimate, but it gives you a better understanding of how to plan your budget. Around specifically marketing activities. They need— they should tie to some aspect of what you're trying to achieve. And some of it depends pretty heavily on where your prospects are. In other words, are they already following you? Do they engage with your content already, especially specifically in social media? Are you just repeating content to to an echo chamber, and they're not going to be customers? Then you have to kind of gauge well. Is that actually a value for us? And social media is tricky in that way is because unless you are creating content that is. Actively viral and has a chance to kind of break away from just the pure, hey, this is who we are and this is what we do kind of content, it doesn't always yield the same. You can't cast a bigger net because of that. And so you really have to either think in terms of Well, do we want more viral content that can catch fire beyond who we're already— who is already following us? Those folks are important. They will help amplify the content. But if you are looking to actually go beyond those folks, then you kind of have to expand on what you're trying to do from a social marketing perspective and get out there just a little bit further out. And so, uh, how do you budget for that? It's like, well, can you be more creative? Can you— do you need to hire, uh, an agency that will help you do that, or a freelance, um, team that will help you do that? That's another level of, uh, discussion that you need to have about how you want— what your goals are around that. So, um, Yeah, 'cause social media isn't ironically about being social. It's actually about feeding this content machine in the networks. So you have to remember that social networks run off of algorithms and they're only gonna reward engagement and then that engagement ideally turns into more eyeballs for you. So you kind of have to be a little bit more creative in that way, get out there a little bit more. Again, if that's your goal, if you want to grow social media, then you have to grow your approach to it. And it's not— it can't just be like, I have a flyer and I'm going to put it up. That's great for the people who are already following you, but to extend beyond those folks, you need a little bit more there in terms of content. And the real question of budgets is, you know, if you are— do you have an engaging presence? And if you do, does it actually yield business? So it's a— you have to kind of be measured about it, literally. To try and figure out, well, what is my engagement? Um, and again, it goes back to goals. Am I trying to do this to drive brand awareness, or, um, uh, is this more about I want customers? Either way, you have to be very clear about your approach to social media. So I would definitely recommend you talk to somebody who has that in mind and can help you figure out from like a goal perspective to, to the actual strategy part of it. But you yourself also need to understand, well, what is our goal? Does it make— does it make sense for me to invest in this right now, or should I just continue putting out kind of regular content. Regular, I say, like it's, it's going to hit your followers, but maybe that's about it. And if that's it, that's the case, then, you know, that's probably more of a minimum budget and you do it on your own, or you have somebody who does it for you on a regular basis. Again, that's, that's up to you, but you If you wanna actually make a larger impact and expand beyond your current followers, you gotta be more creative about it. You know, on the subject of budgets, you might also be thinking about paid social, so paid media budgets. And if you're gonna do that, then there are other accommodations you have to put in place in terms of a budget. Uh, digital media is highly susceptible to fraud. I mean, we're talking anywhere from 5% to 35% of fraud that's happening within digital media. So those are display ads, mobile ads, search ads, social ads, things like that, things you— where you are actively renting an audience And you're trying to show them content, you should, when you're planning your budget, then just know right off, right off the bat, you're going to be— you need to think about spending, you know, 25 to 30% more, or that 25 to 30% is going to have to go in the toilet. And it's just the cost of doing digital ads. These are bots that are clicking on your ads. They might be bad publishers who are putting ads in places that shouldn't— you're putting your ads in places where they shouldn't be. It might be bots that are like creating artificial engagement of an ad and therefore like commenting and liking something even though they're not actually human. Believe it or not, there was an entire election based on this with Meta, which was a problem. So there's a lot of noise just in terms of like the fraud that exists out there. So that doesn't mean you shouldn't do digital ads. It just means like you should have a realistic view of how you approach them. Um, in terms of budget. And now you could also spend some of your budget more on retargeting and remarketing. So these are people who have come to your website, or you know them, or they're subscribed to a newsletter that you have, and using digital media to get another impression with them. So these are— they've come to the website, and maybe you want to plant another view and just hope that when they're looking at social media, um, that they are also getting a hit of a paid ad, but it's specifically targeted towards them because they visited your site. You can actually then do some really cool stuff like, uh, uh, let's say, um, your interior design company, and they— you knew, you know that they were interested in kitchens. So now, you know, they were interested in kitchens because they went to your kitchen page and they read up on it, or they looked at it and whatever, they came to your website. So now you've tagged them. Hopefully you're track— you're tracking them. And now you know, okay, this is a person who is interested in kitchen remodels. So now I want to, uh, show them, uh, only kitchen ads, you know, uh, high-end sinks and Sub-Zero freezers and whatnot. So that kind of stuff. And that's what you're looking for is like another opportunity to engage with them. But, you know, this topic of budgets, I know I've already talked about it for 15 minutes, but— or 10 minutes. But it's a very loaded question. I love it. So please keep them coming. But just know that budgets are very contextual in nature and you have to have a real Real frank discussion about what your goals are. Okay, by the way, I want to shout out to my wife Carolyn, who so all the backgrounds that are here in my room, in my recording area, they're quilts. So so they actually Carolyn has been making is a quilter, and so I thought this is a great way for me to. Kind of have her around me while I'm doing this thing. So, and then there's enough quilts that I can adjust it each week, so I'm really proud of her for that, so thank you, honey. Next question, what are the main social media sites to post nowadays? Are these sites sufficient Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok. Okay, yeah, there's a lot out there, and those are all necessary generally for, uh, uh, the home design space. Um, this is, uh, from home design company, uh, and so for sure those are great. But you want to make sure you're presenting the right content. You want a lot of good eye candy since photos and videos tend to be the most engaged with content. The photos should look obviously professional or at least elevated from where they normally are, unless it's kind of like a behind-the-scenes DIY thing. That you want to show, which are also, you know, great content. And videos, you know, you want walkthroughs, keep it fun, keep it light, have some music. There are other social networks that you might think about. I'll add one that's possible and then one to maybe keep an eye on. The one that's possible is Reddit, but you have to kind of proceed with caution. It's a different kind of engagement model. There is a lot of activity there, and— but you have to remember that it's more like an information exchange. It's a place of fandom and enthusiasm for things, and so they don't take well to promotional stuff. Um, in fact, I mean, you can put an ad out, but it— where the real value is, like, trying to have these kind of anonymous entity communities. Um, and the, uh, moderators of these subreddits tend to be fairly aggressive in terms of making sure that people aren't promoting their business. Um, so you kind of have to tread a little bit differently there. There are quite a few subreddits dedicated to interior design, for example. The— there's a main one that is like a million members, which is right off the bat. So they're exchanging ideas and whatnot. And you might also start to track some of the local subreddits or real estate subreddits or the homeowner subreddits, things like that. Again, this isn't about being promotional. If somebody maybe has a very specific problem and they've asked it in the subreddit, you can ask to DM them if you have a solution for them. But generally speaking, it's not really like a free-for-all. It's not an ad space. You wouldn't use it for that. It's more like you have to think of it more like community. Um, and but they are active. It's very, very active. Uh, you can probably show something on a site that you've done, uh, or get opinions and things like that. That's another way to kind of build that part of it up. Um, does it add any brand value? Not necessarily, but maybe it opens some doors from a connection standpoint. Um, and Reddit is indexed by the search engines. So if something you put out visually gets crawled on and picked up by the search engines, potentially there's a little value there, especially maybe if you watermark those images just so that people know about them. Yeah, Reddit is a potential. So it depends how much time you want to spend on it. The other one to think about, and this is more of a one to watch, uh, it hasn't really come up much in the business side, but, um, Bluesky. It's very early for Bluesky. Uh, much of the stuff is very political right now. Um, so it's basically left-wing X and Twitter. Uh, it looks exactly like Twitter, although underground. It doesn't— or its infrastructure is not like Twitter, uh, and it's a very nerdy thing to, to comment on. Um, there isn't a business play that I can tell yet. Uh, however, more people may be moving off of other platforms because they don't agree with the politics of their leadership, of the leadership that owns those platforms. So Bluesky is actually kind of a neat model where it's kind of decentralized. And it's a way for some of social media to be more focused. So it's kind of like being able to program a social network so that you can say, you only want to see skeets. I know skeets are what the tweets are in Bluesky. You only want to see skeets about cats, and you can do that. You only want to see scats. You only want to see skeets about Uh, interior design, there aren't that many. So there it's a way to maybe over time, um, uh, have a very focused discussion. And then at that point you can probably see where it would monetize, um, or they would just go like pure membership. Um, but the idea is that it's like Twitter but it's programmatically under your control. So, and then it sits in its own kind of like pool. Good questions. What is— what's the most important parts of marketing to build brand and bring in— what is the most important parts of marketing to build brand and bring in clients and projects? This is an eternal question. Every marketer faces it. So when I was in software startups, the ad budget tends tended to be broken down as 80% was focused on revenue generation. So specifically, it was about leads, leads, leads. We want to get leads. We want to get people to an event or download a white paper or. try a demo or whatever, but 80% of your budget was spent on that. And then if you were lucky, 20% was on branding. And I say lucky because sometimes even that was never going to happen. So this is so that people know who you are and what you do. And technically, some of that branding might be like sponsorships at an event, um, or, uh, somebody else's newsletter or content or something to that effect where you're not actively selling a specific solution, you're just letting people know that you're around and exist and this is what we do. That's pure branding, uh, 80%. So 80 to 20, 90 to 10, that kind of rule, at least in the software space. Um, funny enough, uh, when I was part of an ad tech firm that helped people manage their advertising Uh, it was well understood that B2C brands, so people who target consumers directly, soda manufacturers and consumer products and electronics products like a Best Buy kind of thing, um, they would spend 80 to 90% on brand advertising and only a little bit on the actual like, uh, uh, revenue part. Um, now their budgets are massive, right? So Coca-Cola's budget is not to be messed around with, but that 80% of it, 90% of it was spent on brand. So it was like, what— why is there such a big difference between it? Um, and one, uh, theory I have— so this is very— I'm not a professor on this stuff, but Um, it's about person or people. So in other words, am I marketing to one person who's going to be cop, judge, and executioner on deciding whether or not to buy something, or am I marketing to a committee so they have to discuss and decide and everybody's viewpoints have to be taken into consideration? It's a different target. And so for the single person with no attachments, they can walk into Taco Bell, right? No, no big deal. I'm hungry, I need a gordita, and I'm off to Taco Bell. Um, that completely changes if they are coupled, if they have a family. Uh, that decision gets way more complicated. And so if you imagine a business customer who is not cop, judge, and executioner, but they have to go through layers of decision-making, uh, and talk to a lot of different people, that is a different conversation to have. And so your approach to marketing has to be different. And now this is just advertising, you know, average marketing has a lot more tools in the belt than renting an audience and showing them a thing. You know, first, really, you can— you have to find out who the client is. So, and theoretically, what were they doing, um, the moment before they learned about you? So this is your opportunity to kind of earn their brand recognition. And can you get to them before the question Is ever a thing. And there are a lot of different approaches to that, but one would be like a strong content plan that really looks at the journey of not just the individual who has to make the decision, but like, where are the places where you're gonna lose them and who's also involved in that decision? And So in a content plan for, say, an interior design company, you might be having a dialogue, a passive dialogue where they can come in and look at things. That gets them to prime their thinking. So are you thinking of redoing your kitchen? Here's how to tell if you need it. You know, what kind of cook are you and how do you optimize the kitchen space based on, you know, what you have? And what's your budget? How do you decide on a budget for a new kitchen? It's all the things that you would have actually told them in a consultation and planning meeting. But you're trying to inspire them to make the next move, make it easy for them to get and understanding what they need. Be the voice in their head. Go watch the movie Inception with Leo DiCaprio. It's a Christopher Nolan movie, great movie. And I, when I, when I watch it, you know, I don't— I appreciate it because it's very visual, but the movie is actually to me about marketing. It's Like where you plant ideas so that you can be there when they actually have to decide something. And so what you're doing is you're planting seeds, planting ideas for them, and making sure that they know that they're not alone on the journey. They're not— they have a guide in you. And to me, that is— Oh, that is so much of what marketing you should focus on, um, uh, to build the brand, because now you become the trusted advisor. Um, the— it's, it's content generally that's pretty evergreen, so they can pass it to the people who are also making the decision. Um, you can even ask You can even have a piece of content. It's like, well, how, how as a family do you decide, uh, how to remodel the kitchen? Uh, that would be great, actually. Uh, you know, what do you— what should you know before, beforehand? Uh, uh, and getting the whole roadmap out for them so that they see, oh, actually these are things we can do ourselves, or these are things that we want to involve somebody with, and oh, we need some help here. It just helps shape that journey and gives a really strong feeling for them. And again, when you're doing this, it's, this is us, this is us, this is what we recommend, here's what we did for, for another client. It's about storytelling, it's about showing before-after, that kind of thing. But really, it's like, oh, you want to help them imagine how to real— you want to help them realize that their vision and how to get there. So that's where I would focus. All right. Another question that came in the mailbag. Again, if you have questions, send them to help@uncle.marketing. I look at every one of them, um, and, uh, we can have another mailbag session, uh, which is fun. I like this. Okay, how do you make your business look more established to global clients, whether it's having a legit business address, clean proposal Um, solid email domain. I'm curious what tools or strategies, uh, would help you punch above your weight. This is a cool question. Um, so you're small, you're getting started. A lot of us have been there. I'm still there, honestly. Uh, so, uh, but I've done this for other businesses and I've done it as, you know, my normal career. It's about if you want to seem bigger, you want to validate. So you want to spend your time mostly showing that the person you are trying to reach won't be the first one, right? You're trying to validate your success and talk about those successes and use them in content and and whatnot. Um, you now specifically for global clients, uh, you have to make sure that the basics— your content is grammatically correct for the country that you're going to target, that you are localizing copy so it sounds and feels natural. You don't want like, you know, the dictionary definitions. Have somebody local who can actually read it and tell you whether or not, um, you sound like a robot, um, and that it's compelling, right? You don't— you might, you might be able to put into, uh, ChatGPT a, uh, a translation for your content, which is great, but is it copy that would actually inspire somebody? You need a copywriter, local, um. And then you also want to be— if you want to seem bigger, this is kind of funny, but like you don't necessarily need to, um, as long as you have those customer validations, uh, and, um, use that as your mechanism for saying, hey, it's okay, you can work with us. Um, being— the other thing I noticed a lot of times is smaller companies, they're so worried about like Oh, they're gonna find out who I am. Well, yeah, that's the whole point of doing business with you. Um, you look sketchy if you don't include, like, who you are. And don't hide your contact information. Don't hide the company information. Um, show your team members. Uh, use their backgrounds as part of validating why you are a good choice for them. Those are not bad things. Now, obviously, if you are completely new to a space and you have no real traction, that's a different conversation. That, I think, requires less about like pure presentation of your marketing, but more like the ground game of getting those validating clients. And getting that business going so that you have something you can draw on, that people understand what you're doing. And then in that process, you'll also be refining how you talk about your business. So incredibly important. I can see why you wanna be bigger. Everybody does. But, you know, you have to be realistic too. That said, great design can go a long way to at least removing the emotional trepidation somebody might have with going, ugh, what is that? That's terrible. What a terrible design. They can't even get their business right. They don't even know what they're saying. And that's a problem, right? So being able to articulate what you do, present it in a professional, meaningful way that doesn't scare people away, That doesn't give them pause. That's how you seem not so much bigger, just like well put together, right? You don't have to be the biggest company in the world. You just have to show that you understand who the customer is and how to engage with them. Okay. All right. This is a big one. So I'm gonna have to drink a lot of water for this. All right. What is going on with? I'll do my Jerry Seinfeld. What is going on with AI versus search? Okay, that was enough. What should a small business focus on? Okay, AI. Love it. I use it every day to some extent. Use it for planning. I use it for structuring. Information. I use it for, uh, uh, designing things, editing things. Um, I rely very heavily on AI as a solo. Um, now when it comes to AI's infection into marketing, this is where— not, not like creating marketing materials, that's different. I'm talking about how it's affecting search. And AI search is here to stay, and it's kind of eating search's lunch. Because when you search for things now, even on Google or DuckDuckGo or whatever, um, every meaningful search engine right now has an AI summarizer that sits at the top of the page. It's pulling from all its knowledge and then creating the answer for you. Um, and that means fewer clicks to your paid and organic content. So if you see your numbers go down because of that, or if you see your numbers go down, you can't understand why. Um, not only is there more competition, probably, uh, because of the way the economy is right now, But the— that AI itself, and even the companies that are selling you search and selling the search functionality, um, their, their whole, you know, effort around that, uh, is actually kind of cannibalizing. Um, AI actually cannibalizes that. So, so it's cannibalizing it for them, it's cannibalizing it for you, and the only one who really wins is technically the consumer because they'll get their answers faster, um, even though it might be a cold version of that. Um, so what do you do in this kind of current scenario? So step 1, I want you to go to ChatGPT or Anthropic or whatever, um, and Maybe not just one, but like multiple, and ask it about your business. Ask it about you. If it doesn't know who you are, or if that content is wrong, that's an opportunity to define what you do. Your new business is actually a benefit because, you know, like the Janis Joplin song, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. So you can really start with a clean slate. And oh, by the way, every time you do this, you'll probably get a different answer. You know, what's one of the weird things about these GPTs is that, um, there's design randomness to the answers, uh, and it's to make it more natural and more human. But sometimes that means you get very, very variant, uh, answers to what you ask. So you might, you know, this morning you might have asked Hey, who's Uncle Marketing? And then the next, just like several hours later, you ask it again, it's like, I don't know. And it really is this kind of weird thing until it gets enough content to really build on. So now you can really imagine what's going on in the back there. Well, there's probably like one training model is learning this, and then another one's up way, way, way out here, and they haven't talked to each other yet. Um, so there's a lot of stuff going on that makes this kind of frustrating, right? Uh, and there's no data. You can't like go in and say, uh, show me where I'm ranking. There's no such thing. You don't rank in AI yet. Uh, yet we don't know yet. But you know, for search engines, you can tell. You can tell where your ranking is. Um, so that's why you're able to kind not game the system, but at least understand where you play in the universe of content. For AI, very different because it's not something you can just hold on to. So that was step 1, look yourself up and see what it says about you. Okay, step 2, have a real content plan. I don't mean just like blog incessantly. Uh, that won't really get you anything really. Uh, but really start to build out your website. Um, this is what AI is being trained on, so give it good information. Try to make the content super clear, it's easy to digest. Uh, make sure everything you do on there is some— is in a format that is readable and findable, um, and that it really expresses what your business is all about. If you're creating a lot of content and it's really just clickbait and it's not really what your business is about, that interferes with the clarity, uh, of what you're trying to do. So I would have a real content plan in place that can actually Uh, tell the AI what it's doing, what you're doing. Now, it's content that maybe even your own prospect will never read, but because AI is reading it, it needs enough good quality information to create the summary. So just always think in those terms. Um, uh, yeah, you— oh, that's the other thing. It's like if you use AI content to feed another AI It becomes really weird. So just make sure you're doing it right and make sure you're, uh, checking everything and you're tweaking things the way they need to be tweaked. Okay, so now you've got a content plan, uh, and you're creating good information about what's on your website. Step 3 is to, uh, take advantage of all the listings and directories you're on. So, um, and this is true for SEO, but take it one step further. I want you to go into your profile content that's out there— business directories, listings, um, social media accounts. Uh, uh, you need to put in as much as you can there. Um, now for small businesses, interestingly enough, you Not a lot of small businesses have a pre— have a real tangible presence on LinkedIn, and yet LinkedIn is a very trusted resource for a lot of these AI. Um, and so they— and it's deep information, there's a lot of activity associated with it. And good news, your LinkedIn profile could be an entire compendium of everything you've ever done. Um, you can stuff it— not stuffing is the wrong term, but you can load it up with very clear information about who you are. And it's one of the first resources that, uh, if AI knows about you, it's going to go and try and search for it. Um, and so even a small business, maybe not a flower shop per se, although, you know, it doesn't hurt. Um, you— I mean, even as a flower shop, you have business contacts. So working together, uh, leveraging LinkedIn for that is not a bad option to do that. Uh, and you go, oh, I don't like checking out LinkedIn's feed. Don't worry about the feed stuff. Just have your profile up so that there's a way to reach you. Have it filled out and really build it. Um, And use that to drive small business activity and knowledge of your small business. You know, if you get a lot of junk because of LinkedIn, don't worry about it. You get— you're gonna get junk no matter what. You put yourself out there, you get junk. That's, that's all there is. And so, yeah, LinkedIn is a very well-curated space. So, oh, that's the other thing about LinkedIn. You can add links. You can add links to what you're working on. You can add links to your profile page. You can add all kinds of different links. And it's a respected area to try and to build some understanding about who you are. So make sure you have all your links on LinkedIn. It's like in the word. It's in the brand, so you definitely do that. What else? So, so you've, you've, you're taking advantage of all the listings. You're, you're beefing up your profiles on these secondary sites, not secondary, but these primary directory type sites. Step 4 is to go back to step 1 and look up yourself again. Give it a few. Give it a month or something. Just right now, there are no tools to see if what you're training it with is working. It's a lot like talking to your teenager. You don't really know it. They you don't know if they get it until they have to use it. So you can tell them. You know your life story, and until they come back with a reason for using it, they you won't know if you it actually you know made into their brain. So that's so treat treat the AI like a teenager, and always check check in on them. How's it do? Are you doing? All right. So oh, and lastly, everything you're going to be doing for AI. To help AI search will still benefit SEO. Um, but, you know, SEO just become— and even paid search ultimately becomes less useful for your prospects because they're looking at the summaries, not the actual listings. Um, so because SEO and paid search become less useful for the prospect, they'll be less useful for you. But like I said, if you're doing it for AI search, it automatically applies to search engine optimization as well. So, uh, there— think of it as AI being like even more SEO, but maybe less gamed and more like realistic. Told you that was a big one. All right, last questions unless anyone has others. I hate marketing. It feels manipulative. Okay, I get it. It does sometimes. What I try to do is remind myself that what I'm really doing is pointing people to a solution as completely as I can. Um, they need to decide. I'm not making the decision for them. You know, of course there are some dirty tricks that marketers play, um, to get you to sign up for something but not letting you— not giving you a way out of it. Uh, they make you click on something just for the statistic. Um, that's not marketing to me. Uh, that's akin to scamming. Uh, I once worked for a— I contracted for a pseudo-scammer once. It was a husband and wife couple who had the first black MX I ever saw, which apparently means you are, you know, in the $5 million range. And they were very opportunistic. Um, they justified their services, well, those people were going to be stupid anyway, so they might as well give me their money. Um, it paid really well, that gig, but I had to shower 3 times a day just to get over it. Didn't love it. Um, so yeah, there's definitely bad marketing out there, uh, you know, but marketing How you market your business is actually a choice you make. If you do so with a certain amount of honesty and you have your customer in mind, you won't get thousands of bad reviews or reported to the Better Business Bureau. Um, you're doing it with your own ethical standard. Um, so I would say you shouldn't hate marketing. You can hate bad marketing, you can hate evil marketing, but you don't have to do it that way. And that's a great place to end. So, uh, if you have questions, please send them to me. I'm all ears, and I would love the connection. In the meantime, if you want to— if you're not already part of the Patreon, definitely join in. I'm trying to grow the community that way. If you know people who are— who could get some value out of what I'm trying to do, please point them to some content. I don't care which one. Just help me out there. All right. Uh, but otherwise, I'm really glad to be part of this, and, uh, I hope you get some value. Thank you.