Restaurant Marketing Predictions for 2022 with Bruce Irving

Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I am honored to have on the show a frequent member as a guest on the Restaurant Coach podcast, the one, the only, Bruce Irving from Smart Pizza Marketing. Bruce, hey, man, how's Boston today?

It's not bad today. Winter sucks usually, but today's okay.

Yeah, it's like, you know, trying to get. So it's like a lot of times I do stuff in the summer and Bruce says, I'm not leaving Boston this summer. I'm never leaving Boston this summer. It's like the only time. It's nice here. I'm never leaving Boston the summer. Yeah.

If any. If you asked me to speak at an event or go anywhere from June, July, and August, the answer is no.

Exactly.

Maybe for you, I'll consider it, but most people, the answer is no.

Yeah, but, you know, I live in Scottsdale, so it's like I'm wearing shorts. You know, it's. You know, it's 70 degrees in January and, you know, I'm wearing a polo shirt and shorts, so I hate you. It's awesome. I love it.

But thank you for having me on the podcast. It's always.

Let'S change it. So let's talk about anymore. So, hey, nobody knows about Bruce. I'm gonna tell you. There's probably. When it comes to restaurant marketing, there's five people. Five. Five people in the world I trust to talk about restaurant marketing with, and Bruther Irving is one of them. In fact, Bruce is the guy I talk to when I need advice from my Restaurant Coach brand about how to help me with my marketing, how to help me with Facebook stuff, Instagram, things like that. And if you have not tuned in, I highly recommend listening to Smart Pizza Marketing Podcast. It's an amazing podcast. Tons of tons of information. In fact, I was listening to. I was driving this morning on the way to the gym, and I was listening to one of his last latest episodes on the Smart Pizza Marketing Podcast. And I was like, you know, this is sad. I'm driving. I'm like, I'm listening.

Oh, my God, that's.

That's a good. That's a gold. That's a gold nugget. Oh, I gotta write that down then. I'm driving. Listen. Oh, my God, I gotta write that down, too. And then so I started thinking, you know, I'm. My nickname is like, you know, my tagline is the Restaurant Coach. I got a new nickname for Bruce. I'm gonna call Bruce from now on. The marketing machine gun Irving Bruce Marketing Machine Gun Irving. That's your new tagline. That's it.

I love it. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate that. I love it.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah.

Thank you for the kind words about the podcast as well. Yeah, I, I, you know, I don't know a whole lot of stuff. I know a little. I know marketing, and that's kind of what I talk about a lot because I try to stay stick to what I know. Like, somebody asked me the other day on Instagram, I posted something in a story and they messaged me and they said, you know, marketing is great, but how do I find. You should post more about how to train or how to find employees. And I'm like, you know what? I. It's never going to happen because I don't do that. You want, you want that information? Go talk to Donald Burns. That's not what I do.

I do the hiring thing all the time. I talk about.

Yeah, I said, you want to learn, like, build a culture in your team and learn how to hire. And that's not me. That's not what I do. Marketing, I'm your guy. Anything else, I'm not.

Yeah. When people. The same thing. When people go, hey, how do I set up Facebook ads? How do I set up Instagram ads? How do. What kind of, what's the best Instagram way to do advertising? Yeah, culprits.

Exactly. Like, I gotta, you know, that's the one thing I always talk about too on the podcast is like, especially moving forward, doing one or two, maybe three things, but doing them so well. You're the best at it. Not trying to do a hundred things mediocre, but do a few things really, really well.

Yeah. I say it a lot to my clients. I mention all the times that you can do anything. You just can't do everything right.

I mean, you can do everything, but you'll be really bad at a lot.

You'll be really bad at it. It's better to specialize and be like, the very, very best. It's like, do you go to Chick Fil A and get a burger?

No. No.

And why? You think they're like the number, you know, dominant brand in the world? You know, I mean, right?

They have just chicken and fries pretty much, maybe salads, in and out.

Burger. What do they do better than anybody else? It's like, you don't go there and get salads. You don't get chicken sandwiches. You know? No, you know, burger does what they do.

Right.

Be the best at what you do, and you Will, number one, you'll. Especially if you're really, really good at what you do, you will create a following, and you will have a huge market share. Yeah. Yeah. So today on the podcast, it's 2022. Of course, you know, we thought we got past all the, you know, Covid stuff, and now it's. It's back. You know, we got some Omicron and next. I. I'm always wondering who. Who comes up with the names for these things.

Well, they're Greek names. They're Greek. It goes by the Greek Alphabet.

Or.

I've just realized that the other day, because my wife's Greek and she and my kids know all these names of these. The way they're naming Covid, because they're all from the Greek Alphabet. So I think, like, hurricanes, they go through the Alphabet. I think they're going through the Greek Alphabet with the names of the COVID.

So if you had to pick the next variant name was. What are you going with?

I don't know. I can text my wife right now and say, hey, what's the next letter in the Alphabet that they got to come up with?

So they got. They had Delta, now Omnicron. Omni. Right. Omnicron. So, I don't know, Spartan.

Spartacon.

Spartacon. I see. I thought they were going with like. Like, what's that? Transformers. Names like, you know, Megacon. Megadeth.

Yeah. What's the guy's name? Oh, yeah, Megatron. It's gonna be Megatron next.

And that's gonna be something. It's gonna be horrible.

That's funny.

But, you know, just. Just like anything else, markets up and down, it's, you know, things are always going to be. There's always something going on in the economy. It's always something you got to deal with. But looking at marketing, I'm going to say right now, or I'm going to ask you, if you had to start a restaurant today, what would be your three main marketing tactics that you would focus on? Is.

Is social media considered one tactic, or do you think, like, Instagram is one and TikTok is another?

However you want to say it?

I would. If I was to start a restaurant today, I would obviously, having a good product and having all my shit together behind the scenes is given. I would start an Instagram account, I would start a TikTok account, and I would start an email list, and I would create content. Now, this is January of 2020. So if you're listening to this in, you know, June, this may change, or.

This may Change, it will change.

As of, as of January 2020, I would start Instagram, I would start Tick Tock and I would build my email list and I would create content for reels and Tick Tock twice a day. Because those are the only two platforms right now on social media that if I had no budget and I had to kind of do all this organically or with as little budget as possible, those are the only two platforms, TikTok and Instagram Reels, that are giving you organic reach. So if you go to my Instagram account, MartPizza Marketing, you can click on the reels button and as of the recording of this, I have like 19,000 followers on Instagram. Some of my reels, if you scroll down, have reached 50, 60, 70,000 people. So that tells you that Instagram pushed my content out to way, way, way more people than were following me. Now if I post a photo or a regular video to my feed on Instagram, yeah, you might get a couple hundred views or a couple hundred likes, but that's it. If you're lucky, right? But reels right now on Instagram, I would do two reels a day and I would have a link in my bio going to offer people an incentive to either a coupon, which I know a lot of people don't like, or a free item or something off their next order. If they order for me because I'm new and try me out because I know that my product's good, if I get them in the door, I'm good and I want to capture their information so I can follow with them later. And I would do the same thing on TikTok, same kind of content, just organically post it to TikTok twice a day. And that would be my marketing strategy. If I was starting out right now, those are the only two things I would do.

Yeah, but you gotta, you gotta get the video going.

Yeah, they have to be videos if they're not videos. Yeah, I wouldn't. Even if I was afraid to do video or didn't want to do video, I wouldn't do those things because it's gonna take you. First of all, you can't do non video on Tick Tock. You can, but it looks weird because it's not organic or natural. And like we just talked about a few seconds ago, Instagram doesn't like. The CEO of Instagram just came out a few weeks ago and said Instagram's moving away from a photo sharing app and they're transitioning more to a video community app. So if he Tells you that that should tell you to say, hey, maybe you should start creating video. Like, it's like if you have a restaurant, right? And it's like. And you walk in and the owner is at the door and he says, you know what? You should try burgers. And I would only eat the burgers here. And then you sit down, you're like, you know what? Gonna get a pizza. It's your freaking fault for getting a shitty pizza. If you didn't listen to the guy, what he said in the beginning, right?

The owner just told you what to do and you went totally against the grain. You get what you get then, right? Yeah, same thing, man. I have to say that probably the number one kind of complaint I have about 99 of restaurant social media is they post the same boring photos all the time.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

If you're posting a photo to your. First of all, I think Instagram is the menu. The. It's the modern day menu of your restaurant. It is being said. It doesn't have to be. You shouldn't post photos of your burger or pizza next to a pepper, an onion, a cucumber that's like placed on the side that looks like you're taking a Photoshop for your menu that you're going to send out to a mailer. It's different. You know, you got to be in the moment. You got to make it a little bit more interactive. You have to be a little bit more organic and natural. Not so much placed there.

Exactly. And then Tick Tock. Tick Tock now is like, it took over like Google, didn't it?

So yeah, Tick Tock got more visits on videos, like more views on videos than YouTube.

Oh my God. Crazy.

Because you now there's a difference though. Like I've been talking a lot about and you hear a lot about Tick Tock and I do think it's great, like YouTube is a long term strategy. So if you're telling me if I'm starting today, YouTube is hard to do because it takes, it takes you a year or two of being on YouTube creating content consistently to actually get any results from it. TikTok, you can start today and go and go. You know, all in. That being said, if I had a, if it was like a five or ten year strategy for me, your audience you build on YouTube is way slower but way more engaged and way more valuable than an audience on TikTok. But you can build an audience quick on Tick Tock, that's for sure.

Yeah. And I know you, you commented recently because I started. I finally jumped into the Tick Tock game.

I saw that. I like it.

Yeah. Yeah. I finally, I'm gonna say Tick Tock was a lot like I was with Twitter. So when Twitter first came out, you know, I had a Twitter account for years and I didn't really do much with it. And then finally I just kind of. I think it was like a challenge. I think maybe even you put me up to challenge. Like, you know, you gotta dominate. You gotta do something 30 days in a row. Boom, boom, boom. Get out there and push past your comfort zone. Do it, do it, do it. And so I actually started really pushing heavy on Twitter. And then, you know, now I've got, you know, close to 5,000 people on Twitter.

Yeah, that's great.

And then, so now it's like, you know, I decided in 22, I know Bruce is talking about Tick Tock. Do Tick Tock. So I started doing TikTok.

How is it going for you?

Actually going really well. I get a lot of people, like, you know, watching a lot of views, and I get, like you said, I get more organic views on Tick Tock than I ever got on, like, Instagram and stuff. And then I share a lot of stuff. And I know you got a special technique for. There's like an app you can do that takes the Tick Tock logo off.

Yes.

Yeah. Because there's.

If you just Google it, I'll. I'm gonna. I'm gonna put it in here right now. I'll tell you what it is. So, yeah, know, Instagram and TikTok are kind of rivals, right?

Yeah, yeah.

They don't like each other. Well, not that TikTok doesn't like Instagram. Instagram doesn't like TikTok, because Instagram.

Right there. Yeah.

TikTok used to be the big boy.

When you do. When you do TikTok, they'll let you share to Instagram, Right. But Instagram will not let you share to TikTok.

Well, here's the deal. Instagram's algorithm is really smart and it can tell that the TikTok watermark is on there. So if you download your TikTok video without removing that watermark and then upload it to Instagram reels, Instagram can see the logo, the watermark logo on TikTok. And it won't. It won't share it to as many as it would now, you still might get views. And if you're in a rush, it's better to do that with the logo than to not do anything. But if you have a time to download your video, upload it, get rid of the watermark and then upload it to reels. You're going to get a little bit more reach than you would naturally.

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. No, I've. And I like, I mean, honestly, Tick Tock. You don't have to be a huge video editor to have some fun with Tick Tock.

Oh, that's the thing. You can really. And the better performing videos on TikTok and Reels are actually the ones that aren't as professionally edited exactly. Like you can be a little bit more raw.

You know, I think that's the big thing. And I think people a lot of times are scared about, you know, putting out video because, you know, and I, I think I was the same way when I started first doing videos. You know, I had the professional cameras, they had all the lighting and all that stuff and it had to be like, you know, just a pain in the butt.

Yeah.

Now, man, I just, I do. Almost all my videos are on my phone.

I, I listen, I'm doing a nice camera here, but I have my set up here for the podcast, which is different. But, and listen, I get it. Even me, I talk about tick tock and reels. I don't do enough of them. Sometimes I get in a funk or I'm like, you know what? Who the hell wants to hear me talk about that again? I already said that stuff on 47 podcasts about Instagram and Tick Tock. Like, do people really want to hear me spiel about the same thing over and over and over again? And I end up going a couple weeks without posting anything. And I know I should do it more, but you know, I understand sometimes you get in a funk or sometimes time goes by quick.

But I'm telling you, when you're in the mood though. So what I like to do, and this is one of my little techniques I do for when I'm doing video production, I do batch videos. I got this from Brendan Burchard. Brendan Burchard, you know, is one of those guys, you know, you know, peak performance kind of guys. And yeah, one of the techniques he teaches his like influencers Academy, he just says do batch videos because, you know, when you get this, when you get everything concept the way you like, you got your lights, your microphone out, instead of just doing one video and all right, that's done. Just record quite a few and just get it done. And I'm, I use, I use Big View. It's an app on my phone. And it's basically. Big View is a. It's a teleprompter. It's built right into my phone. And so a lot of times I'll just write scripts or I'll write, like, a little thing I want to say, and I just pull up Big View and I put it on my phone, and I'm just. Basically, you wouldn't know because I get.

Oh, I can tell. I didn't know you were reading it.

Dude, I'm reading a script.

Wow.

Yeah, but you. You know, but, you know, and the first time you come to do it, it sounds like. So today I'm talking to Bruce Irving from Smart Pizza, you know, and at first you're uncomfortable, but then after you get your rhythm down and stuff, I go, hey, today I'm talking to Bruce Irving from Smart Pizza Marketing, right? And you get really comfortable with it, you know, again, man. And we talked about this a lot of times. Those first videos we ever made, they were horrible, man.

Oh, my God. I just went back YouTube. I just went back on my YouTube channel and saw a video that I used, I did about. With, like, Mike Gandino, and we did it on Blab, and It was in 2016. It was terrible.

But what happens? You get better. You get more comfortable. Yeah. You get used to talking to camera. You get used to talking. I'm telling you, nowadays, especially with everyone on zoom calls and they kind of like, you know, doing what we do now, you get just used to talking. It's all about just making a connection with people. But here's the thing. I start doing it, you gotta get your voice out there. You gotta get your message out there. Number one thing I think restaurants could really benefit from is if you start marketing your culture, what's the number one thing we all have problems with right there? Hiring. Right. And you know why? Because restaurants all have this stigma. The stereotype that we're a crappy place. We're gonna treat you like. We're not gonna pay you anything. If you're lucky, you can stand over a trash can and eat some leftovers out of a deli cup. All right? Or you get to sit on them. You know, how many times you seen those pictures of the, you know, the kitchen guy sitting on a milk crate in the corner of the kitchen, eating out of a bowl, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Or he's ducking down behind the stove, you know?

Yeah.

Trying to eat some.

Trying to shovel something in quick for the next rush comes in.

If we want to change that, man, we gotta start marketing our culture, that we're a different place, we care about our team, we love our team. Hey, why do you like working here? You know, I talk about this a lot and you and I talked about this before. It's like everyone does exit interviews, do stay interviews. Why do you work here? What's your favorite? I like that, you know, what's your favorite pizza? You know, what do you like to do in your part in your spare time and stuff like that? Well, that kind of leads me also to this other question is like, and this is like a huge kind of, this is like my focus for 2022 is like, what's success? What, what's your definition? What is success to you?

Oh, that's a good question. I've talked about this a lot lately because I feel like we all got wrapped up in being busy, right? And being like having the most. To me, when I was in the, when I was operating the pizzeria, success to us was how much business could we get?

Yeah, yeah, right.

It was like, how many, how many pizzas could we sell? How many tickets could we get through on a Friday night? That, that was success. As I get older and I realize that time goes by real fast, success to me is not to me. Success to me is being able to live a lifestyle that I want to live on my terms. So if you want to be, you know, if you want to have a mansion and you want to have three houses, then you're going to have to work a whole lot harder than someone who doesn't want all that thing, you know? But for, for me personally, it's like I want to do what I like to do. I want to wake up and not have to feel like I go to work. I want to work on my terms and I want to be able to support my family in the way that they're used to living. And to me, that's success. And I don't need to have the biggest podcast in the world or have the most clients in the world or have the busiest, most trafficked website in the world. As long as it can support my lifestyle, I'm totally okay with that. And I've been trying to relay that message to owners that says, you know what? Stop trying to go to be the busiest place. You know, how many owners I know have really, really busy stores in their miserable. In their life.

Miserable. Yes.

And then I know other people who just have little pizza pop ups and they make enough money to support their life and they're the happiest people you'll ever meet.

Oh, yeah. It's like this question out to owners a lot. It's like, would you rather have a 3 million dollar restaurant doing 2% profit or would you have a $1 million restaurant doing 15% profit?

Right. It's, you know, it's a no brainer.

Yeah. But you'd be shocked how many people I want the 3 million because it's an ego thing. Sales are an ego metric.

Yeah. It's like I think that there's certain people out there who, it's, it's like you see these professional athletes or actors, right. And you're, and you see them make $20 million a movie and you're like, how much money do you need? Like to them the money is a game. Maybe they, it's not necessarily the money that they want. It's like the achievement of being able to say, I'm the highest paid actor. But the thing that you don't realize is they really like acting. Like to them, that's not work. Like they just go and they like doing that or they love playing football or baseball. And the benefit of being really good at it and trying hard is that they make a lot of money. So. But it's not the money that they go after. It's because they like what they're actually doing.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you're going to look into your crystal ball, Bruce's crystal ball of the future. I know it's early in 2022. What do you think is going to be the hot trend of 2022? If you had to put your. Yeah, you had to make a bet.

That's a tough question because part of me is I'm putting polls out. There is, I'm interested and I don't want to. This is not financial advice. And I am not an attorney or an accountant. I am a. With a microphone.

I did say the Holiday Inn Express 1, so there you go.

Okay. Yeah, I'm a moron with a microphone. I say, so don't listen to me about anything financial. But I think I've been fascinated with cryptocurrency in NFT, this whole web 3 in how we can leverage it. For whether you're a podcaster or an artist or a restaurant owner or a small business owner, how you can be ahead of the curve instead of being drastically behind the curve like a lot of businesses were in 2020 when the whole coronavirus happened. How can you learn leverage and invest so that way you can have a better future? I think, you know, Facebook just announced that they're changing their name to the Metaverse.

No, I know.

Which is interesting. Was the. Microsoft just bought a Metaverse company for the. It was like $70 billion. And to put that into perspective, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for like $30 billion.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So they just bought a metaverse company for 79 billion billion. I think the total was. So these really large companies and corporations are investing a ton of money into web 3, into cryptocurrency, into the virtual reality worlds that we have coming. And I think we should be looking into that is how can we do that ourselves for businesses. So Web3, cryptocurrency, NFTs, digital everything is what I'm fascinated with in 2022.

And if anybody doesn't know what an NFT is, real quick, just kind of give them a. Like a. Just the Cliff Notes version. You have a whole podcast on it.

Yeah. So the Twitter, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be doing a whole podcast series on cryptocurrency and nft. So if you want to subscribe to that, I'll send them on the link. You can do it. We're gonna be doing. Talking all about it in 2022. An NFT is a non fungible token. So it's a non. It's one of a kind thing. So think of it as like the Mona Lisa painting, right? Like there's one Mona Lisa painting that's the actual painting. There's a lot of copies of it, but there's one that's certified as the one painting that you can have. So an NFT is a digital version of something like that. The cool thing about NFTs is that. And I got a lot of about this because I talked about on the podcast and people are like, you're not talking about the, the costs that are associated with it. I know there's a lot of gas fees and costs that go along with it, but in. It's not in its simplest form for me to explain to you. If you don't know what it is, it's a digital version of something that has a smart contract attached to it. So if I was a restaurant, you could create and I've done a couple podcasts where they're creating NFTs, they're going to sell them through the blockchain and you can use cryptocurrency to purchase them. And as the benefit of being one of the owners of a nft, you get certain benefits that are written to the smart contract that go along with the purchase of that nft. So I'll give you an example. My friend Ethan, who has five locations in Utah, is doing an NFT where he's creating each location is going to have 75 NFTs. Each NFT is going to have a different level. So he's going to have 25 silver, 25 gold, 25 platinum. You're going to be able to enter a drawing and it's going to cost 400. You're not going to know which one you're going to get. You're gonna buy one of the NFTs for 400 and you could get a silver, you could get a gold, you could get a platinum, and each one of those is going to have a character that's associated with that level. So and that character is going to be like a thirst drink and you're going to get a lemon lime drink. If you're a silver NFT holder for the first six months, every week, you're going to be able to get a free drink. As long as you're the owner of that nft, you're going to get invited to exclusive events and you're going to get merch drops. And as a part owner of that, and if you're a gold member, you're going to get those same benefits, but you're going to get it for a year. And if you're a platinum member, you're going to get those same benefits, but you're going to get it for life.

Oh, wow. So think of it like an amped up loyalty program.

Exactly. It's an amped up loyalty program. And the cool thing about the, the way they work now is say somebody buys or sets up a rewards program for their restaurant. Right. I have Bruce's Pizza. I'm going to set up a rewards program. You pay me $20 a month and you know, you get two free pizzas every single month. You buy that, Donald, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

You live in my town, you, you pay me $20 a month and you get two free pizzas a month. Great. What happens if it's six months, you move away and you're not going to be in this area anymore? You just cancel your thing. Right?

Cancel it, Cancel it.

The difference with the NFT and a rewards program through that is that NFT still has value because if you got the platinum one, you could resell that to somebody who's moving in. Exactly. And you get your money back. Right. You might make some money. Right. If my pizzeria is really busy and really desirable, those NFTs could go up in value. The other thing is you can attach a royalty. So as the owner of that business who minted created the nft, I can say, hey, every time this NFT sells in the Future, I get 10 of the sales for every time it sells. So say you bought that for $400, six months from now, you sell it for $400, I get 40 bucks. That new owner gets an NFT maybe six months or a year from now, he sells it and the value has gone up to 800. I still get 10% of that sale. So every time that sells in the future, you're still going to get a certain percentage of that sale.

Wow, that's so cool.

So it's like you said, it's an amped up version. It's an amped up digital version of a rewards program. That's kind of how I think you can do it. Now. There's obviously other ways that people can use them, but I think that there's still a small percentage of people who understand exactly how it works and what it is. So you're early.

Are you taking crypto yet?

Oh, yeah, I take crypto for sure.

Yeah, I take crypto. I got, I finally, I got my first client who's paying in crypto in bitcoin.

Now, what kind of crypto they would pay with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, wow.

I don't know if I would pay with bitcoin. I feel like I wouldn't pay anything with crypto because I would be afraid to be that guy who in 2010 bought three pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin and I'm afraid to be that guy.

It's like, that's awesome. He asked me, do you take bitcoin? He's in Russia and he asked me, you know, I have, I have clients all over the world. He's like, do you take bitcoin? I go, yeah, I take bitcoin.

Of course. I would rather you pay me in cryptocurrency. I would rather everybody pay me in crypto.

I would love to be paid in crypto. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. Especially right now.

But listen, I don't know if that's going to be something. I don't know if that's what you should focus on in 22, but that's what I'm thinking about in 2022. I do think that's the future.

I mean, these are things that make me just kind of go, you know.

Yeah. I mean, social media is social media, right.

I think NFTs are really a really fascinating and I think you know, and there's so many people drawing attention. Just like anything else. There's early adopters who, if you're an early adopter and you jump in the market, you can make some, you have some great opportunities with it. If you're a late adopter.

Yeah. As business owners, NFTs, if you're the owner and you sell something like the board apes and the crypto punks, like, I wouldn't buy one of those because I don't know how long that's going to last and the value is going to stay up for. But to me, the value in an NFT for a restaurant owner or a customer of a restaurant is what you get with that nft, not necessarily the NFT art itself. The value in the. And the benefits that come along with being the owner of that.

Exactly. So another question I get a lot of, you know, is a lot of people think that they can have a huge impact with marketing on social media, with just organic reach only. And I'm always saying that you got to put, you got to pay to play. It's become a market where you got to pay to play. If you were a restaurant, what percent of your sales would you budget each month for? For advertising Where I'm actually, you know, paying. And not just, you know, I mean.

I think if it was me and I would, I don't think it would be that higher percentage, as high a percentage as you think it would be, because I would look at what these platforms want. Like Instagram wants Reels, TikTok wants big videos. Right. But you can't promote reels right now. And the way you could run ads on Instagram is with a regular video or a regular photo, which means you have to spend money. I think I might spend, you know, whatever my. Say it's 1% or 5%, whatever that is. I would say, all right, my budget for digital advertising is say 2%. Let's just put it out there. 2% of my sales is going to be allocated towards digital advertising. What I would do is I would say, all right, 1% of that is going to be the actual ads. And then the other 1%, I would actually hire somebody to whose sole job it was was to either create that content or help me record. Create videos, create content specifically for those platforms. Because I think that would be much more, much more better. Much more better for you to allocate your dollars that way than it is to put the whole 2% on just digital ads.

And if you're looking to hire someone to do that, Kind of stuff. Where would you even start?

I would start with my kids. I would start with coming up with, like, all right, what's my goal? What do I want to achieve? What kind of content do I want to do? And then I would start to look around. You can go on the platforms themselves. Like, who are the creatives in your area? You can do that by searching hashtags and seeing who comes up on the top versus the recent. The people who come up on the top. On Instagram, if you go to the search feature and you type in your town, let's say as a hashtag, you're gonna see a top and a recent tab. The top is the most popular, let's just say posts. Who are the creators on there who are creating those top posts? They're obviously on top because people like those posts and they're engaging and they're entertaining and they have a lot of engagement. So who are those creators? Reach out to them. Maybe you can invite one of them in and you don't have to pay them. You can exchange for some food for them. Helping you create some content. Maybe you can just start building a relationship online with them and say, hey, you know what? You're doing a fantastic job. What would it take for you to come in and maybe do a few videos for my restaurant? It doesn't have to be somebody you hire full time. It could be someone that is creating content in your area that you think is good on that platform. And then, you know, talk to them and reach out to them that way.

Local colleges, I find, are a good one, too. Anybody? Any kind of. Some kind of digital, you know, course or any kind of digital media courses at local colleges are also a great way to reach out to.

You know, the other thing that happens is, and this happens with artists or influencers and business owners. You know, you'll hire a kid in college who has a really good following on TikTok or Instagram, and you'll start a relationship and you'll say, hey, listen to create some content. And they're like, they get all excited and then they create content. And you, as the dumb business owner says, you know what? I don't like that. I think it doesn't represent my brand. Good. You should change the way you're doing the content to what I want it to look like. Meanwhile, they have a hundred thousand followers and you have seven. Yeah, and they have 100,000 for a reason, because the content that they create is engaging and entertaining and you're boring as. So let them do their Thing don't get in their way. Obviously, you want it to be appropriate and to fit in with your brand, but let the creative person be creative and get out of the way.

Exactly. That's the truth. That is so, so true. Nowadays especially is that we always think we know best, you know, but then we struggle and then we just, like, when someone comes in, offers like, do it like this, do it like that. And like, well, I don't think that'll work in my market.

Well, you never know until you. Obviously, if there's someone doing it in your market and they have a good following, it's working. It's just not working for you. I get that all the time. I'll get sponsors who email me and they're like, bruce, I want to sponsor the podcast and I genuinely like the product. And I'm like, great, let's do it. And then they send me the script and I'm like, I don't talk like this. I'm not saying that.

Hi, I'm Bruce.

Yeah, I use this product every day in my everyday life.

Every day of my life. I use this product every day and I can't recommend it enough. Right.

Like, I don't talk like that. It has to. It has to come across like I actually talk or it's gonna look like an ad and then what happens? No one's gonna engage with it.

No one's gonna engage it. All right, I'm gonna give you some rapid fire stuff. I call this segment now Dead or Alive. All right, okay, I'll give you. I'll give you a term. And then you say if it's dead or if it's alive in 2022. All right, Twitter.

Alive.

Alive. Facebook Messenger.

Dead.

I knew you were gonna do that. So dead.

Yeah.

All right. TikTok, of course, alive.

Alive and well.

Live and alive and thriving. Yeah, yeah. Snapchat.

Dead.

Dead. Snapchat.

Although, here, hear me out. Let me just hop in here real quick. Snapchat for content, I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time in. But like, if you ask younger people, they do still go on Snapchat. So if you have built the following on Snapchat, I wouldn't say, all right, I'm not going to do it anymore. But if I was starting today, I wouldn't go on there.

Do you see on TikTok, I mean, they're actually doing visual virtual resumes nowadays, too. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy.

It's great. It's a fantastic way to get people who are young to want to. That's where they spend all their time. If you can figure that out, you're going to be fine.

You're gonna be fine. All right. Third party delivery.

I live. That's gonna be really alive. As much as I don't want to say that I do think it's gonna be part of people's.

Which third party delivery do you see pushing other ones out or which is your favorite third party delivery?

I mean, I don't have a favorite because I don't use them because, you know, I would just rather go either pick up my food. I don't like delivery that much because I know I'm not getting the full experience of the food itself.

Yeah.

So I don't use them myself, but my kids use it a lot. And even though I tell them not to and order them from the restaurants direct, they just find it easy to do. And they like. Doordash is one that they use easy.

Which one do they use?

DoorDash probably is probably the one they use the most. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't really use third party delivery, but, you know, also I have a chef background, but I do love Amazon Fresh.

Oh, yeah.

I love having groceries. You know, it's like I get like a two hour. I get fresh groceries dropped off of my door in two hours in Scottsdale. I'm like, this is. I mean, I might never leave the house again.

Well, hold on, is that third? Well, that's their own delivery, right. Because Amazon owns Whole Foods, right? Yeah. So like, I don't know. I don't consider that third party, but I do.

But that's what I use. I don't use third party. I don't. But I don't use Grubhub or DoorDash to buy restaurant food, but I'll just order Amazon Fresh all day long, you know?

Yeah, I do the same. I use Amazon for a lot of stuff, even though I probably should. It's just a lot easier to go get it delivered tomorrow than me to trek outside. Especially when it's zero degrees here.

Awesome. All right. User generated content Alive. Very much alive.

Yeah. I think people are. I think if you went. If you want a business right now, if you own a restaurant, go to Instagram, type in the name of your restaurant, and I'll. I bet you'll be shocked about how many people are creating content and tagging themselves that they've been in your business or eating your food that you don't even know about.

Even know about. You are so unaware. User generated content here's the best thing I would describe user generated. It's like testimonials. It's like social proof. It's not you saying you're good. Which most time in social media is you going around saying, I'm great, I'm great. This is our stuff. There's other people coming in your restaurant saying, this place is badass. These guys are awesome. I love this pizza. I love this sub. You take advantage of.

I.

Who do you think of all the people you've talked to, who do you think has the does the best job at user generated content? Which account?

I have to think about the counts that I follow right now. I mean, Tony Baloney's, who's a pizzeria in New Jersey, does a really, really good job of content and user generated content and using influencers and doing the whole Internet thing. He does a fantastic job, especially on Instagram. And then Frank from East Village Pizza does another good job as well. I don't know, he. He doesn't do a lot of user generated content, but he does a lot of his own. But Tony Baloney's, I'd say does a great job.

Yeah, I mean as far as big national brands, I think, you know, a Shake Shack does a great job user generated content. Starbucks, of course, I think is like the master of user generated content. I don't know how many people like take selfies of their goddamn cappuccinos and lot, you know, lattes and post it up like I'm having a flaming dragon latte.

You know what other account that's really big that does a really good job is Walt Disney. If you follow Walt Disney on Instagram, a lot of their photos and images are from people who have gone to the parks who take really good photos and they just reach out and ask them to use it and they repurpose them.

Yeah. And there's easy to use apps out there like repost and stuff like that that you can easily, when you get tagged and stuff like that, save the link and then you use repost to repost. It's most user generated content is one of the best ways to get your brand out there. And also it basically it's networking almost. Yeah. You know, because you're giving them credit for it now. It hits their thing. So not only they tag you, but now you re tag them and it's actually expanding the. It just basically it's like a pay it forward kind of thing.

I think user generated content is better than word of mouth because if I have a good experience and I Tell a friend, hey, this place is great. That's great. I told one person, if I. If my experience is so good, I'm willing to put it on my Instagram account or on my TikTok for the rest of my life, as long as I don't delete it. That's telling. Thousands of people, potentially. Or hundreds of thousands. Like, that's even better than word of mouth.

Exactly, yeah. All right. Dead or alive? Clubhouse.

Clubhouse was dead a month after it started.

Do you think Twitter has the same thing now?

Twitter. LinkedIn's coming out with that audio room.

Oh, God.

Here's the problem. Here's the problem with Clubhouse. Clubhouse was a great app for the time it was in. It was, you know, early 2020. Right. Everybody was kind of sick of being.

In the House four months of 2020 when no one could get out.

But the problem the Clubhouse had is it was noisy. There was no verifying what people. Who they were or what they were saying on stage. Everybody had an amazing bio, and everybody who asked a question never came on stage and just asked a question. It would be 14 minute long questions.

I know.

Just get to the point.

Yeah, no, you and I played around the Clubhouse when it first came out, and it would just be these, like, tirades. I mean, just, oh, my God, they.

Have to get on stage. Okay, here's what I do. Here's how long I've been doing it. This is where I know. Just ask me a question.

Just ask a question. Let's get on with it. Let's get on with my life. I'm, like, losing life as we're talking, guys.

Clubhouse is very much dead.

Very much dead. All right.

So much dead. I deleted it off my phone. I don't even have the app on my phone anymore.

That's really dead. If. If Bruce deletes you off his phone, you're dead. I'm just telling you, right?

I still have Snapchat on there, even though I don't use it. Clubhouse deleted.

Deleted. All right, how about hashtags? Dead or alive?

Alive. I think they're alive and well, I think on Instagram.

But yeah, using Smart, though.

Yes. Instagram, you want to use less. They said there was a. If you go to Instagram, there's an account on Instagram, it's called Creator. Okay, search out Creator. One of the posts from a few weeks ago laid out exactly how they want you to use hashtags. And it said on every post, use five to six hashtags. And they should be a range from really large to medium to maybe even your own. And on every post, you do put between five and six hashtags, and that's how you should use it. And don't cross promote your hashtags from Instagram to Facebook. Maybe use one or two on Facebook, if any at all. But you don't need them. They don't work the same way on Facebook. Even though they work, people don't use them the same way on Facebook that they do on Instagram.

Right? Yeah, yeah. And then when we're talking about large meaners, like different categories for hashtags that hit market share, depending on what you want to do.

Right. So a lot. By large, I mean, one hashtag may have 1 million followers, a medium may have 500, and a small may have a thousand or 2,000.

Yeah. All right. LinkedIn.

I don't know how I feel about LinkedIn. I, I, I think it's, I think it's on life Support. I like LinkedIn, but I don't love LinkedIn like I did. I think a year ago, LinkedIn was really hot. Everybody was getting a lot of organic reach. And now I go over to LinkedIn and it kind of is Facebook ish.

It's getting there. Yes. No, it is getting Facebook ish. I still have a lot of clients that actually, if you're going after that lunch catering, that lunch business, that catering kind of sales. Yeah, it's a good, it's a good platform, I guess.

I guess. Here's my thing on LinkedIn. You're right. I think it would, it would depend on what kind of business you are.

That's true. Yeah. If I'm just, you know, a general pizza place and I'm not doing a lot of lunch business caterings, then it's probably not a place for you.

I don't know. If you have to create content on LinkedIn, you may just want to reach out to people or engage with people on LinkedIn.

Yeah. How about email Alive?

I love email. Email's fantastic.

I don't know how many times I get people every week say, email's dead. And then here's the thing, they'll, they'll reach out to me through an email, tell me email's dead. I'm like, do you understand the irony of what you just did here, people? You sent me an email to tell me email was dead and I had to change my marketing strategies. Do you understand how stupid this is?

I think the way people email could be dead, like HTML, a lot of photos.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Highly produced emails from a business Is dead.

Or spamming an email every day, a couple times a day. Jesus Christ, man.

Yes. I think the, the, the, the platform of emailing people is alive and well.

Yeah, but, you know, like, you send out an email once a week. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I changed the way I do it. It's like asking me, is Instagram dead because photos aren't getting as much reach. No, but the way what you're doing on Instagram is dead. You need to adapt.

Exactly. All right, how about direct mail pieces?

If you're a local business, I don't think it's dead. I don't think it's as much. I don't think it's. I don't think it should be 100 of your marketing like it was in like 2000 or 1999, but definitely integrated with what you do. It could really, really work. Especially if you're new to a market. And bombarding people with direct mail in the beginning to get them to be aware of you is a much faster process than using social media.

Text marketing.

I don't think it's dead. I like it as long as it's used properly. As long as you text people who ask to be text and ex. And your expectations for text are different than email. You could email somebody today and they may read that email two days from now or three days from now. But if you text somebody today with an offer, that offer is going to be good today for them in your business, and then tomorrow it's going to be gone. People are going to forget real quick.

Geofencing, I don't know.

I. I mean, geofencing is great. It's just expensive. So if you're a little expensive. So if you're a local business, I don't think you should spend time on that because I don't think you're going to get. If you're spending, especially if you're a business who has, you know, a price point of 10 or 15 or $20, I don't think it can help you that much.

No, no. It's definitely for bigger brands.

Yeah. So dead is a local business.

Yep, Dead is a local business.

QR codes, I think they're making a comeback. I know. Somebody gave me so much shit for this on YouTube the other day. Why are you promoting QR codes? It totally messes up the. It totally messes up the flow of a restaurant because you know what? I don't want to touch any menus I want to like. And I think people are much more aware of how QR codes Work. And your phone is much more adapted to being able to use a QR code than it was five years ago. So all I gotta do is open my camera app and it brings me anywhere I want. So used properly and not overdone, I think QR codes can help you push people in the right direction.

Exactly, exactly.

Now, I don't want to see 57 QR codes all over my restaurant. Don't get me wrong.

Yeah, I don't want. Just give me. Make it minimalized. I mean, very go very Zen with the qr. Very zen with it. Very, very subtle with it. So, Bruce, how. How can I know you got a couple of new things going on? I know you got. Actually, we talked about Instagram a lot today. You have an actual Instagram course, right?

Yes, I do. I have an issue.

Smart piece of marketing. Right under products.

Yep. You go to smartpizzamarketing.com there's a tab there, it says courses. Just go click on that. We do. I'm gonna be doing like not weekly, but bi league webinars, teaching something. And then you can take the Instagram course. The cool thing about the Instagram course, it's one flat fee. And I'm always updating because Instagram's always changing. So I'm always adding tutorials and new sessions behind the scenes. And once you buy it, once you get access to all those, forever.

Yep. And then.

And if anybody's interested in crypto, just today, this morning, I'm going to add you, Donald, if you don't mind, I created a new Facebook group, Crypto for Business. I'm going to be doing all kinds of information. If you're a business, like all the news and updates in a non crypto bro kind of way.

Oh, yeah. See the link and I'll throw it into the show Notes. Yeah.

If you want to hop in our Facebook group, it's free. You don't have to pay any money to join. And it's just going to be free info about things I learn about crypto and NFT and web3 and all that stuff.

Very, very cool. Yeah. And you know, Bruce and I are both huge believers in the math, the power of a mastermind group, in fact, that Bruce and I kind of got started years ago. We had a mastermind group that we were in together and stuff like that. And I know Bruce has his own, you know, smart pizza marketing mastermind groups. I have restaurant masterminds. My mastermind group. I'm like, if you've never been into a mastermind group, I'm telling you right now, it is a game changer. It changed my business, changed the whole trajectory of my business. I know Bruce has one and he specializes more on the pizza side, but you know, it's open for anybody actually. And you know, and he actually, if you're in his mastermind group, you can get access to his courses and stuff like that. Just like me in my mastermind group, restaurant masterminds. You get access to all my restaurant coach university courses I have and I have 14 courses available right now. So I got a lot of stuff.

Yeah. And like, mine's more marketing based. So if you're looking for hiring and training, don't join mine because it's not what we do in there. That's what Donald's marketing.

If you want marketing, talk to Bruce. You want stuff on culture, you know, creating a core values and getting your team to be able to actually do what you want them to do. I, I say I can't legally teach you how to brainwash people, but I'm close. I can't legally.

You can, you can nudge them in the right direction.

Nudge them in the right direction. And we're not using electroshock therapy either yet. We're not usually electric collars or nothing like that. We're not shocking people in the compliance yet.

That's awesome.

But yeah, but hey, it's always a pleasure to talk to Bruce. I mean, I'm a huge, like I said, when I need advice for my restaurant, for my brand, for my marketing, I always, oh, I, hey, Bruce, man, you help me out. He's like, yeah, sure, man. Get on a call.

I appreciate that, Donald. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's always great to talk to you.

That's awesome. Also, hey, people want to reach you.

How they find you, go to smartpizzamarketing.com that's my main website, in my email if they want to reach out to me directly. Bruce, smartpizzamarketing.com all right, always a pleasure. Thank you.