Episode 19 - A New Way to Market Your Local Business

Are you confused or maybe you're just frustrated when it comes to, hey, how do I get my message out there? How can I get in front of my customers? Will they even look? Is there so much noise out there? Well, today I'm going to share with you a strategy that is often overlooked and misunderstood as a great way to build your audience, build your trust. And, you know, when we talk about that know, like and trust factor, this hits all those buttons. Hi, my name is Jeff Harrison. You're at the Local Voice. This is a podcast we've been doing for, geez, I don't know, 10, 12 years. And yeah, I took a little break in the middle there, but I'm back. And we have a digital marketing agency called Swing Point Media. And I want to talk about an alternative way to promote your business. It has nothing to do with mailers or direct marketing or any of that nature. It has to do with actually podcasting. Now, that's exactly what this is. This is a podcast. This is a video podcast. But from this video podcast, a lot of things can be made. One of the first questions, and we'll get into that. One of the first questions I get when I talk to people about podcasting. You say, well, should I do a solo podcast or have guests? Well, here's what I'm going to say. It depends. I'll give you an example. We are about to launch. It starts, this is as I'm recording this. It's on the 6th of May, and starting June 1st, we will relaunch a podcast. We have done again for quite some time. And our ideal customers.

Are behind the gates of these country clubs. So what we want to do is we want to have guests on the show who actually run those businesses behind those gates that we'll have on. We'll get to know them. It'll be a genuine conversation. We want to know about them, their business, how they're doing things that nature. But then because they are a guest on this show that we will also promote.

They will get us in front of their. Their customers who are ideal customers. And we don't compete against one another. This is a win win all the way around. I call that indirect marketing. I had to go to another group to have a conversation, build a relationship that could get me in front of my actual end user, my ideal customer. So that might be a situation where you say, you know what I'm going to have. I'm going to have guests on my show who are in this situation. They're either my ideal customer or they are going to get me to my ideal customer. When I first started my business, I started a podcast called the Local Voice. And what I did at the early part of that is I would invite business owners because I focused on local business owners in our area. I invited them to be on my show, and I invited people that people would recognize. Like I invited Katie Stice. Now she's the president and CEO of Rancho Mariah Chamber of Commerce. But back then she worked for Palm Desert. Maybe she worked for La Quinta Chamber of Commerce that time. It's been a while, so I'm not sure. But she was a mover and a shaker, and she still is today. I had interviews with those type of people. Why? Because it added validity to. To my message, and it took the pressure off of me. I didn't have to come up with content every week. They were the content. I got to ask the questions. And who doesn't like being interviewed? So it was a win, win. And like I said, here we are today, you know, eight, nine, ten years later, maybe even longer than that. I think I said, I think it's been. I think it's been 10 years at least, and we're still doing this. I tend to do more without a guest now because, well, quite frankly, I am pretty busy, and I just want to share a message like we are today. So when it comes to this, take a look at what you're trying to do. Are you trying to get to an ideal customer that you can't get directly to? If that is the case, who is that? Go between. Who is that? Best referral partner, if you will, that. That will come on your show. You can talk to them. It's very entertaining. And you then get to be exposed to the other people who are your end users or ideal client. Or it's a situation where you're saying, hey, I'm gonna invite somebody on who is my ideal customer. And in that 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, what's happening? You're building a mutual relationship. You're asking about them, you're telling a little bit about you. They're finding out more about your business, you're finding more about them. And all of a sudden now, if you were to follow up with them later in an email or a phone call or a text, guess what? They would recognize you, and the chances are they would take your message. So that's a great way. I'm not talking. Hey, I'm not trying to close anybody on my podcast. This is usually like an icebreaker. It's our first date. And it's an opportunity to get to know each other a lot better. So take a look at that and think, hey, should I be solo or should I have guests? If you are somebody who's, let's say, for instance, we do a lot of stuff in AI and I'm sharing tips and things that nature in that. And quite frankly, a lot of local business owners are just now getting exposed to some of this, and it would be hard to have a discussion with them and find out their expertise in this, but they would find it very valuable to say, hey, how can I reduce my overhead by including AI as and then fill in the blank? So it may be something that's very appealing to them. But now let's talk about. Let's go back to this, because. Why podcasting? Well, there are several reasons, but probably my favorite reason is this, and I've kind of already alluded to it. It gives me a chance to spend more time with, with my potential ideal customer, whether it be direct or indirect, and it allows me to spend more time talking about my message. Now, some people might say, well, geez, Jeff, nobody is going to watch a video about you doing something for 30, 40 minutes. Well, I beg to differ. I want to show you a couple of examples because some people might say, well, that's great if you're, you know, if you're a particular, you know, maybe you're a rock star or you're, you're something of that nature. You know, you're well known. Podcast would be great. I want to show you a few examples of how this works. Now, I'm going to start out, and I'm going to be in my.

Genre. And what I did is I put video podcasting for market digital marketing. And if we look here from, first of all, we see, okay, here's a guy, Omar.

El Takori. He's out of Las Vegas. He does a podcast. He's been doing it for one year. There's 65,000 views two weeks ago. Now watch this. 44 minutes and 49 seconds. I honestly listen and watch him quite often because he's always sharing value. And, and he does a combination of. He'll have a guest on. He'll also have one of his staff come on and they'll talk about things or their staff member will ask them things, and then he'll do solo. So he does a combination of all of those. And he's adopted a saying by a guy named Russell Brunson, who you should look up because he is kind of the let's say the modern day king of marketing. And he said, if you will do a podcast consistently once a week for a year, you'll never have to worry about money again. And guess what? Omar has been doing it for about a year and he isn't worrying about money. He's not trying to sell you anything on there. And so he's just sharing information. Now, he does sell something. We'll get to that in a minute. Somebody says, well, he's a one of a kind. Well, let's watch down here.

Here's Gary Vaynerchuk. 2.2 million views. Now, this is a short little reel he made. Okay. Which quite frankly, when you go back to this 43 minute video, and this is another reason why I love podcasting, is because it allows you, or let's say a VA to take that and chop it up into short reels just like Gary Vaynerchuk did. He didn't sit down and say, okay, I'm gonna make an eight minute or an eight second video. No. His staff went through one of his presentations that he was given. He was on stage somewhere and they said, this is a great piece to cut out. And let's put it up there. That one piece got 2.2 million views three years ago. You think that's driving things? Yeah, absolutely. It's driving things to his brand. Here's another one. Now, this guy, 395 views four years ago. Best video marketing podcast for 2020. Well, there's a couple things here that, that hurt this. And I would say, if I were him, I would go back and probably change the title because it's 2020. I don't want to hear about something five years old. I need something newer. Here's another one four weeks ago. How to make $100,000 a month with with WAP. If you don't know what that is, that's a pretty cool platform. 263,000 views, 25 minutes. So I want to dispel the idea that, hey, you know, if I go too long, nobody will listen to me. The other thing I love about this, and I've talked about this, said, hey, you can chop it up into many different things. The other part is I'm spending more time with you. If you come to one of my podcasts and let's say it's, let's say it's a half an hour like I do a podcast with a friend of mine, it's usually about an hour. If you come for that hour, guess what? You have invested a lot of time with us. You've got to know who we are, our kind of, our. Our nuances and things that we might say, our favorite sayings, whatever that might be. But you get to know, like, and trust us. The more time you spend with us, not the eight seconds, but let's say 30, 40 minutes, the more you are in. Invested in this relationship. And so now what happens is you're also telling the algorithm, now watch this. The algorithm is saying you like this type of content. So even if you don't subscribe to my podcast, guess what's going to show up in your feed? My next podcast that I actually release and put on YouTube. And we're talking about YouTube a lot. We're not. I'm not talking about creating videos for YouTube. I'm talking about podcasting. It is now becoming one of the best podcasting platforms on the planet. Why? Because we're already used to going there. What's that? Yes, podcasting is also audio. And here's the beautiful thing about this. I'm gonna go back to Omar as again, and even Gary Vaynerchuk. We do the same thing. When I create a video podcast, I always start with video. I can strip out the audio and I can put it on platforms like Spotify or Apple and the other audio platforms. And now let's say, for instance, I start a video podcast with Omar. I start this video and I start watching it. But then I have to drive across town to a meeting. Well, guess what I do? I'll pick it up in Apple, itunes.

And podcasting, and I'll listen to it on the way over and the way back. So I'm. He's got me for that whole 45 minutes. The other thing I love about this, and this is, this is me, but I'm sure I'm not the only one is I might start this and say, I'll listen to 10 minutes of it, and then I'll come back and do 10 minutes. So I'm spending four different occasions investing 10 minutes with you, which is very, very powerful. So that's why some of the reasons I love podcasting now, some people might say, well, yeah, that's great, but that's for marketers. Well, let's go for local people. Let's say video podcasting for plumbers. Have you ever heard of this guy? He's Roger Wakefield Plumbing, and he does education videos. And Here it says 163,000 views five years ago. But he has all kinds of videos that he does. Here's another one. One year ago 271,000 views. Now, some of these are podcasts for the industry.

Which is really good. If you're going to make a podcast and you're going to attract your ideal customers, you probably wouldn't talk about it in the same way as if you spoke about it to attract your homeowners, right? You would Talk about the 7 things you need to do as a homeowner to avoid waking up to a flood or three things you want to do before you leave. For, let's say you're an absentee homeowner. You do vacation. You spend six months in the south and six months in the north. And before you leave, make sure you do these three things before you leave to prevent catastrophic damage when you return. Those are the kind of things that get our attention because they say, attention absentee homeowners or snowbirds or vacation rental owners, you know, that is, those are the type of things that'll pop up. And so you see these kind of things popping up. And then here's a plumbing sales training. You know, here's a guy again, a year ago, 17,000 views. Now, I can almost guarantee you for him, he has a plumbing business. But I'll bet you Jason also.

Sells something, some kind of a training program that he probably does really well there. You know, these are things. I just wanted to point this out that again, these are 15 minutes long, 53 minutes long, 2,000 views, right? Some people might say, yeah, that's 2,000 views. That's not very many. But here's the deal. You're not trying to attract customers if you live in Palm Springs, California, you're not trying to attract plumbing customers from Wisconsin. So your viewing range may be smaller, which means now your actual client may be higher quality. Right? Higher quality. The other thing I love about podcasting is because it's video, it's also searchable. It's on. And this is another beautiful reason why you put it on YouTube, because it's the second largest search engine on the planet. So if I put it in there, sales training for plumbers, and I put it in search, there's a chance that video is going to show up. And here's the thing. We're two times more likely to click the video than read information about that. Podcasting would rather watch the video. This will show up in the search results. Now, I want to also, because people say, well, you know, doesn't podcasting take forever to generate an roi? Well, I want to share with you a strategy that you can use to start making money day one. And here's what it is. Let me take this off here for a second.

So here's what I want you to think about.

I'm going to give you a perfect example. I have a client, his name is Art Alvarez. He owns a company called Mortgage Works in Palm Springs, California. And he does a weekly podcast. It's usually about 35 to 40 minutes. And he's giving strategies and updates for lending and people buying and selling or basically buying homes, maybe they're refinancing. It's great for people who are doing, let's say their retired age or 65 and older for types of loans that help them with their retirement. Well, now we do is after that video is done, we can actually, we've created an in show commercial.

So what this means is as we're doing the podcast and you can check it out, it's called Mortgage Minute. Mortgage Minute. And if you watch that video along the way, it'll be kind of a. Let's take a little break for our sponsor. Well, guess who the sponsor is. He is Mortgage Minute. It's his show, right? So he talks about, in this case, he talks about a reverse mortgage or a HECM loan for people over 65. And the reason he does that is because 71% of seniors are concerned with the retirement program, but they have these homes with massive amounts of equity in it. And considering a reverse mortgage is a good idea, this is a way to monetize your podcast right away. Now, the old version of doing this would be say, okay, I'm going to get real popular. And what's going to happen, someone from, you know, a company is going to reach out to me and say, hey, I like your message. Can we buy time on your show? I'm going to call that the old days of TV advertising. Right. I could put my show out if I had enough sponsorships to pay for production and make some money on it. It's not that way anymore. The cost to do this is virtually free. Yeah, you got to buy a mic, a nice camera, get some lighting and the right platform. You probably need somebody who helped you edit. But other than that, there's not a lot of upside or, excuse me, a lot, a lot of downside or expenses in creating a weekly show. So the way you can do this is one. Put your commercials in there. I would ask you or I would encourage you now to go to some podcasts. There's a guy named Tom Bellew. It's called the.

Oh, gosh. It'll come to me in a second. Tom Bellew. And in his podcast, there are several commercials in there. They're not his commercials. He's not selling anything. They're his sponsors commercials. He's one of those guys that he has enough following that they will pay him to be on there. And for him, these are, these are ways that he's created revenue for this. He's making revenue from the sponsors. What I'm really talking about for most local businesses is to create a way to attract more of your ideal customers using podcasts. Now, let me ask you something.

If you were going to make a decision, let's say for instance, God forbid, but you had to replace your air conditioning. They're not cheap.

Where do you start?

You know, you start on Google and you start searching for H Vac repair, H vac replacement, my area. Then there's all kinds of different models you could get. There's all types of customers. You start checking their Google reviews. How are they lining up? But what if there was a show every week, which we did with a guy named Mike Solomon, who owns a company called Anthem Heating Air Conditioning and Plumbing out in Coachella, California, which is just on the opposite side east of Palm Springs, but he services all of the area every week. He would do a show. Well, if you saw Mike on there, who's giving you tips and free information about anything from.

How to make sure your air conditioner is taken care of, properly changing your filter, you name it, and you watched him a few times, or you did some research and then you watched a few of his videos.

You'Re building no like and trust factor in there. And so now when you start there, there's a higher probability. We'll just pick up the phone and call Anthem and say, hey, I'd like to get a quote with my air conditioning system. And then use that as, okay, we got a bid. Now let's go out and get some other ones and see how it stacks up, because I don't. No one else has that, that weekly show. So it's a way to help make sales from day one. Now, here's what I encourage you to do.

I want you to consider this. Who is my ideal customer.

If I make a podcast? Is it to provide tips and strategies for them, or is it to invite leaders in my area? They're key leaders in my area that know these people that they'd want to learn more about and that would attract them to my, to my podcast. Because here's another little thing. Let's say I invited. Let's just say I had Tony Robbins on my podcast, do you think Tony Robbins has a big following? Absolutely. So do you think I would get some bump in viewership if I had somebody like that on my podcast? Well, yes, of course, but. But if I had somebody who's the Chamber of Commerce.

CEO and executive, does she have a pot? Does she have a following? Absolutely. And they're probably better for me than Tony Robbins because they're in my area. So when you have people and you invite them on.

They probably have their own followers that they'll take. Once it's done, they'll share the episode with them, and guess what'll happen. They may have not known me from Adam, but after they watched the podcast, they said, huh, who's this guy? Let me check him out. This is where the rest of your content comes in. So now if I take that content, I slice it up into, you know, eight or 10 little vignettes, and I put them all over the Internet, and then they see me and I'm only cutting out the best parts that would make sense to them. And every time they watch a video, they're going like, wow, this guy's really got it going. That's a smart idea. Whoa. That was a good tip. And all of a sudden they're thinking, if I need digital marketing for my local business, whether it's a plumber, electrician, whatever it is, I'm at least going to give Jeff at swingpump Media a chance. That's how that works. And then I would convert it to an audio podcast and put it out. I'd probably put a blog together. Not probably. I would make a blog from this same piece of content, and then I would put that on my website.

And then I would put my blog, or excuse me, I would put my video podcast on my website. Because again, if it's searchable and it comes up, it's going to be going Where? To my YouTube channel, which. Where I have a link to my website. They click my website for more information, and guess what? Now they find out more about me, who we serve, how we help them, the things we do, from email marketing to content creation, blogs, social media, things of that nature, video.

So I just want to end with this. We have this pro, we have this product called the Content Accelerator. We started using this about 18 months ago. I can't believe it's been 18 months ago. And what it does, it's all AI it bring. It goes out, researches your information as far as your company is concerned, what your ideal customer needs to know, what questions they're asking. And then we can create content from that information. In other words, we find out, is anyone asking about that before we ever create it? We've all seen that. Somebody invents something, they think they're all in, they spend their life's work and savings in there. And then what happens? Crickets? Nobody shows up. Well, we do that, reverse engineer. We find out, is there an audience for that? If you're the one to talk about it, we create the content for it. Blogs, social media, posts, video, an email for you every week. That's a content accelerator. If you'd like to know more about that, just please reach out to me. I'm@swingpoint media.com and it's Jeff swingpoint media.com and check it out.

Like I said, today we're talking about creating a new form of media for your business. Because in closing, here's the deal. How many of you have picked up your phone and you start scrolling? Yeah, I'm guilty of it. I'm guilty of it. And I'm watching these shorts that have nothing to do. I'm just, I'm like zoning out.

When I get done, all I've done is expire time versus if I went to, let's. Let's say a podcast for real estate agents. I needed to get on real estate agents. And I started looking through this stuff and I said, hey, I need tips and advice if I'm a real estate agent, you know, here's Tom Ferry. 773,000 views. Now, Tom is one of the leading coaches in the real estate space, but the point is he's doing it. That should be a clue. That should be a clue.

Here it is, the Ramsey Show. Dave Ramsey, he does a podcast. Oh, my gosh. 515,000 views. Real estate for beginners. 2.6 million views. 11 minutes. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. 444,000 views. 35,000 views. 60,000 views.

To me, I'll call this. This is low hanging fruit. In fact, it might even be laying on the ground. Like you just have to bend over and pick it up. Because here's the deal. When you put a post out on social media, it's really hard to get reach. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's really hard to get reach. Why? Because there's so much noise out there. Everybody's on that platform. But when you create something very specific like a podcast for your ideal audience, or you use it to build relationships with your ideal audience.

As Michael Gerber says, you're Swimming in a blue ocean. In other words, there's no competition there. I guarantee you there's not one other H vac and plumbing company and there's about, there's at least 500 in my area. There's not one other company doing a podcast.

You'd stand out. You have to stand out. If you're a real estate agent and you're helping first time homeowners, you can talk about things like that. You can show them homes that are ideal, why it would work for them, show them the mats. You can meet with Art my, my mortgage company and you could do, have him come on once a week. You could actually meet with a home inspector. Like you could have four shows a month and each week you're like doing, you know, ideal buys for first time home buyers. Things you need to know. And it's a, it's a home inspector and then it might be a pest control agent who needs to do the inspection for pest controls and termites. And then you have art on talking about mortgages. And guess what, you're helping them understand. Hey, if I need information, that's the resource I want to go to.

And here's the thing, that's four different people. Remember I said they all have their own audience. But at the end of the day, what if you took your podcast and you said, let's put a little advertising dollar behind it. What if you spent 50 bucks a week to promote your podcast in your area? Let's say you're a local business and within 20 mile radius of your office. Do you think you'd get some views on that? You think you'd get some attention? Absolutely. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the point.

It's not a new medium. As I said, I've been doing podcasts now for 12, 13 years. It is just now coming mainstream.

Let's face it, we saw politicians win elections because they're doing podcasting. Why? Because I can. It's not a. You've got 30 seconds to do an interview with somebody and it has to be cut down because I asked too many questions or their answers were too long. No, we, we can go deep into that question and I can do follow up questions just like I did now. I thought I was going to wrap it up and I thought, geez, I want to tag that in there because it's so important.

If you want help creating a podcast, please reach out to me. This is what we do. It's one of our key things that we do for local businesses. In the coachella valley. My name is Jeff Harrison. This is the local voice. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it. This is fun. Always talking about this. Make sure to join us next time. I've got a really cool topic that I think you really like, so make sure to watch out for that. Thank you. Have a great day.