Jeff Harrison from Swing Point Media examines how local business marketing has shifted over the past five years, moving away from traditional media toward digital content creation and customer segmentation.
Hey, welcome back. I'm Jeff Harrison. I just have a question for you. Do you think, or actually I've had that question posed to me is do you think there's a difference between marketing today and even as little as five years ago? And I say yes and no. Now, let's start out with the no. We still need customers, right? And we still need to have an offer and we still need to convert those people into sales. Those are fundamentals that I don't think will ever go away because we have to have customers and offer, in other words, a product or service, and we have to have sales. If not, we really don't have a business. We have a hobby. But the way we get our message out there now is so much different than it used to be. Just like what you're seeing now. I mean, we all have the opportunity create media and content.
With that device in our pocket or in our purse. Well, your purse. And so when it comes down to it, you have very few, if any gatekeepers telling you what you can and cannot do. And here's the other thing. You know, it used to be a day. And this is where. Yes, it is very different. There used to be a day where we'd go out and get the morning or the evening paper, whichever one you receive, and we would read through that and we would find what we're looking for. You know, whether it's to buy a washer, a dryer, refrigerator, take a trip, go out to eat, whatever it may be, maybe a new exterminator. It was all in the newspaper. Or we'd watch the six o' clock news and we would see the advertisements or the commercials. There was. And because there was a day. And I know it doesn't seem, it seems like forever ago, but it really wasn't that long ago where we didn't have a gazillion channels. So what's happened? Does that mean there's fewer people out there? No, they're just more segmented. And here's the thing. I remember about five or six years ago, we talked on the subject to business owners here in the Coachella Valley about how important segmentation was and how poorly it was being done, even by the largest of large corporations. And I gave this example of, of Staples as an example. They would send me emails two, three, four times a week, and it would have nothing to do with what I purchased from them. When I go to Staples, I was buying like, you know, printer cartridges or paper. I wasn't buying toilet paper and Doritos, but yet they kept sending me information about that. In other words, there was a huge disconnect. Well, here's what's happened. We, as the consumers, have now segmented ourselves. And how have we done that? We're in specific groups. We let people in and we block other people out. Because as an example, if I have no interest in collecting bobby pins, I am not going to probably friend those people or be in groups of people who do. Conversely, if I like Italian food, I'm probably going to seek other people who like Italian food and, and be in that group. So how does this work for you? Well, for you as a business owner, it's up to you to start creating groups of people who say, hey, I also resonate with that message from that business owner. As an example, we have a page that we've started called Coachella Valley Good. Or, excuse me, Coachella Valley Locals. And what we're putting on there is content that resonates with our ideal customer. You know, people who say, hey, what do I like to eat? Where do I like to go? What activities do I like to get involved with? And that's the kind of content we're putting out there. So if you're a, if you're a enthusiast on, let's say, motorsports, you're probably not going to find what you need on our page, and that's okay. And the thing about it is, it's like when we discuss what's going on, we're discussing it in our language. So you as a business owner can start segmenting or finding those segmented lists, people that are your ideal customers and attract them into your group. If you'd like to know more about that, hey, just reach out to me. Just DM me or send a message to the info on the screen. Jeff Swingpoint Media and I'll talk to you more about that. So that's really the message today is, is the way we market today to have our business run successfully different than it was for five or seven years ago. And the answer is definitely yes and definitely no. If you're just catching the tail end of this, go back and watch this and see what those yeses and nos are. And I think if you start putting that combination together, one, it'll be less stressful because when you're speaking to somebody, it's just like if I go out into the marketplace and I start speaking to people who are not my ideal customer, what do I get? I get very little attention. I get a lot of eyes rolling and I get a lot of no's. So why would I spend time there doing that? I don't want you to do the same thing. Hey, thanks for joining me again. My name is Jeff Harrison with Swing Point Media. Have a great day.
