PRIVATE: Marketing for Local Businesses - No Excuses Marketing

Foreign.

Hey, good afternoon. My name is Jeff Harrison. I own a company called Swing Point Media. And today I want to talk to you about local marketing. And I put it on here, marketing locally, because I want to talk about really helping and addressing challenges that local businesses tend to have. And so let's just dive right in. So the first thing we want to talk about is the average business owner when it comes to marketing really only has two challenges. And those challenges are pretty clear. The first one being time. I mean, let's face it, a local business owner, and I'm one of them, we're busy doing things. I mean, I have a, I have a, I have a business coach that actually today we're talking about this. And I said, you know, I said in our next meeting, I said, maybe we want to postpone it because I've been so busy with other things in my business that I haven't been able to get to it. And she says, no, I'm here to hold your feet to the fire. So today I want to point out that I understand, you know, being part of the local business community. I realized when it comes to marketing, you have to make time. Let's face it, you're out there taking care of your customers, you're training staff, you're hiring people, you're going to networking events, those kind of things. That takes a lot of time. So one of the biggest challenges they have or one of the biggest pushbacks when it comes to marketing, when I talk to people, they say, I just don't have the time for it. I'm just too busy. And let's face it, the other piece is money. Money is a challenge because marketing can be very expensive. It doesn't always return an ROI immediately. Some of it is longer, some of it is more expensive. Sometimes people think, well, if I just do paid advertising, that's much quicker. It's not necessarily true because there's a testing period, if you will, a warm up period when you're working with.

Paid advertising. So time and money tends to be a pushback for local businesses. And so today I thought, you know, I want to share with you how I personally beat these two challenges.

Let me just give you a quick journey on this. I started this company, Swing Point media, back in 2010. I started my digital marketing back then. But then like most businesses, I kind of hit the wall. And for me it was this. I make organic digital content. And what that means is, you know, we have to physically make the content. And by doing this, it gets to the point where you're saying, hey, if I want more customers, I have to hire a whole bunch more people. And so I physically at the wall, it was like somebody would say, hey, are you taking on new customers? And I cringe. I'm like, you know, not really. But then I would end up taking them on and stressing things out. So I just, like, you reached this point. I said, I just can't take on any more clients because they hit the wall. So then In December of 2023, I began plotting a plan. Now, I'm not sure exactly what else I could call it. I just, again, plotting a plan to get myself out of this process. And let me just. Let me just kind of take a little bit of a side note here. I love technology and I love learning, so I'm always on the cutting edge and sharing this and sharing that and, and trying these things. So I started looking at this whole thing about automation. In fact, when I first. When we were in this business, you know, I was like, one of the first that ever came up with using a URL to send out video content. I know when I first started, I was working with people in the, in the TV industry, and they're like, oh, that'll never work because it'll take too long to process it. And I'm like, it's gotta work well now we'd use. Use it all the time. I was also the first one to have a licensed drone in the state of California. Then when it came to chatbots, when they were hot at that time, my business partner, Andrew McCauley and I put this together, and we were building these things like nobody's business. And the returns for the clients were amazing. So this is who you're talking to here today is I love this type of stuff. Well, okay, so we pushed forward in February. And in February, I began building an automation workflow. And what I envisioned was, is there a way that I can cobble all these different pieces of technology together and make them produce what we do for our clients? And that was kind of the question. And, you know, I didn't see anything out there at the time that there was no one piece that was built from end to end that did this. In fact, even today, it's not there. So in February, we started doing this. Well, In April of 2024, it went live. And here's another thing about me. I like making sure something works. And the way I do this is I will test it on myself first. For those of you who may not know me, I was in the golf business. For almost 40 years. And I always tested things on myself, and if I got the results I wanted, and I was expecting, then and only then would I share with my clients. Well, I did the same thing when it came to digital marketing. So I started saying, hey, if this is going to work, I want to make sure if it breaks, it breaks on me and my company, not one of my clients. So I tested it there. And then in June, after some pretty hard testing, April and May. That's 60 days. And a lot of content goes, you know, through that process in 60 days. I said, you know what? Let's move some of our current clients into this process. And it was great success. Great success, and it worked out really, really well. And so I said, hey, in October, I finally named it. Now, some might be thinking it took you that long to name it. Well, the reason is because I wasn't expecting to use it on anyone or I wasn't expecting to offer to anyone except my clients. I never intended to say, hey, let me share it with the world. But the bottom line is I wanted to help more people. So I said, you know, I've got to name it. And so I began also working on an offer. What would I charge for it? In December 2024, I started offering to local businesses and other digital marketing agencies. Now, the reason I did both that because I can only talk to so many people, Even though now we live in a global. A global community. You know, people could be watching this from all over the world. I could only talk to so many people. And I got to thinking, what if I talk to other digital marketing agencies who were against that wall just like I was, and I offered them a solution and. And I did it. What we call the white label price. Now, what does white labeling mean? White labeling means, like, you know, there may be a particular brand of lotion out there that says, hey, if you want to put your name on it, it'll be the same. Same stuff in the bottle, but it'll be Jeff's, you know, miraculous hand cream. And then I would sell it as mine. It's called white labeling, but it's exactly the same. Well, this is an opportunity for those local business or those other agencies to do the same thing. So that's what I did. So what the heck did I name it? Well, I named it the accelerator, because that's what it did. It accelerated everything we did from a build standpoint and delivered it at a very high quality. And what it did, it fixed this time and money problem of marketing. And that's what I want to share with you today. By the way, if you do have any questions, if you're here with this live, please, please put your comments or questions in the, in the comment section. I'll be more than happy to get to them. So let's, let's keep moving. So what does it do? Well, first of all, it creates all your weekly content. Now, when I say all your weekly content, what am I talking about? Well, first of all, it'll write a blog post and it will write your blog and it'll create the images and it'll also do the SEO. And this is real important because to me, and if you talk to somebody who's an SEO expert by putting blogs on your website consistently, it's, it's almost like saying, hey, I spent all this money for a website, but I'm not putting any content on there. It's like saying, I bought this really expensive tree, I planted my front yard, but I'm not going to put any water on it. Both will die and it will be an ugly death. Because what'll happen is your website will just get older and there's no content on there that, that keeps it fresh and relevant and in the eyes of the search engines. So with each blog post, we make sure to write it in such a way that has the right keywords on there. It's showing your brand, is showing your authority. It's showing your knowledge and expertise in the marketplace. We also create images that go along with it. So that way you have images that are perfect for your business and branded. And of course, the SEO is all done with meta tags, titles and all of that stuff. So it's all in there. So that's first thing it does. The second thing it will do is it writes a video script based on that article. You see, because we want the video to support that, that blog post. We want to get as many people back to your website as possible. So we write a blog, it writes a script, then it creates the video. And this was probably the biggest hurdle when we started making this because there was nothing out there would do this. And we finally got it all together. It creates a video and then we also create a custom thumbnail for that for that video. The next thing we do is, of course, we take that longer form video because that video is typically three to five minutes in length. And we'll create shorts and reels. Now why do we do that? Well, shorts and reels are very popular nowadays. They're attention getters. They're almost like somebody, if you're driving down the road and you go by a shopping center, somebody spinning a sign about a mattress on sale. You get your attention and then you move on. Well, sometimes a 30, 60, 90 second reel will do the same thing. It'll get your attention. It may not make the deal, but it will do this. It will keep your brand and your product and your service top of mind. So now if I am looking for a mattress, I can think, oh yeah, there was a guy spinning the sign over on XYZ Road. So that's what we do. The reels plus it increases how much content you put out. And again, it's not just about quantity, but it's about quality. It's about putting out quantity plus quality. The next thing we do is we also create social media content. Now I say we put on three to four platforms because we've got a couple of different programs, but let's say on three platforms, five days a week. So now you have 15 blog posts going, or 15 posts going out and they're on five different platforms, or excuse me, three different platforms. So now it's, let's say LinkedIn and it might be Google Business Profile and it might be Facebook. Well, every time we create those pieces of content, it's customized for that, that platform. In other words, if you look at, at how the description and the tags or the hashtags are put on a LinkedIn post, they're very different from what you see from a Facebook or an Instagram or TikTok. They're very different. So we want to make sure it looks native, that it is native. So we create that for each one and that's five days a week. So you have really good coverage. Now.

All of this is done with artificial intelligence and automation, but we chose not to let it play without supervision. And we've all heard stories, hey, because it, it hallucinates and whatnot. I want to tell you right now, somebody who's been dealing with this since, you know, we've been doing AI and automation now for, gosh, three plus years, and we've only seen it get better and better and better. The hallucinations are way down. It being able to create content in your voice is really super.

And it's exciting to see. But we chose said, hey, you know what, we don't want to let it. We're not just saying, hey, let's post it or let's create it and then just let it go through. No, we want to have, if you will, a quality control in place. We call ours an H a I O. These are human artificial intelligence optimizers. And what do they do? Well, they look at every piece of content. So let's go back to that blog as an example. They'll look at the blog, they'll make sure it reads like a human. It's not AI that it has. If it has links, it will make sure to send it. When you click that link, does it send it to an actual page? Is it appropriate? Is it connected to the content? Are there internal links, Are there proper calls to action, those kind of things? If it's a video, it's kind of doing the same thing. It's making sure that has on screen text, it has the right background music, it has the right phone number. All of that stuff is there. And of course, the same thing with social media, we look at every piece of content before we let it go out the door. That's called H A I O. So I think as I look around, that's what makes what we do at Swing Point Media so much different than somebody who says, hey, I just, I went to ChatGPT and I wrote this article, I wrote this and I just posted it. Well, you know, I think it sometimes might backfire. You backfire on you. I'm not saying it, it won't be. It, it won't be really real well done, but it could catch you. So we make sure not to let that happen because not only is for us, but it's for our clients. The next thing we do is we're constantly testing and we're tweaking. Why? Because things are changing all the time. You know, we hear this all the time, algorithm this, algorithm this. Well, we're constantly testing and tweaking, and not just on the algorithms, but we're also looking at the content accelerator and saying, hey, is it delivering the best, highest quality content every time? If it's not, we're going to get in there and we're going to tweak that. In fact, when you come aboard as a customer and using the Content accelerator, there's an actual questionnaire that you fill out and then it customizes this for you. Because let's face it, if you're a dentist, your content's going to look different than if you're a plumber. And so we want to make sure that it's customized just for you and it has your own voice. So we're constantly tweaking that and we're testing it and then we deliver all this content ready for you to post. We call this done with you Marketing not done for you marketing. There's done do it yourself. That's why there's no time and you know, just don't have the time and done for you too expensive. So we do done with you marketing. So let's talk about this. It's a savings of time and money and let's just break this down for us. And again, remember we're, we do this every day. We've been doing it since 2010. We're making this content and the typical amount of time we were investing per client to create the same amount of content we just described would take approximately three to four days. And this is for, you know, the blog post, the social media post, the people who you know are graphic artists that make the images, the people who do the videos, choosing the music. It's, it's heavy, intense.

So now we can produce it and optimize with our human team in a day. So let's just take the very worst case three days or very best case three days. And now we're down to a day. We've cut down our, our investment in time tremendously. Let's talk about the other side. When it comes to saving money. Swing Point Media has always been a done for you agency. So I can speak from experience. Exactly. Hey, what does it cost to have all these things done? Well, if you have a blog post just a thousand words with the images, even on this on the low end, you're going to pay somewhere between 3 and $500 an article because it takes some research, takes some time. You're going to write it, you're going to send it to the customer, they're going to look at it, they're going to have some edits and then you're going to put it back. So if you're doing four blog posts a month, you're going to spend somewhere between 1200 and $2000 a month just for blogs. By the way, if there was one thing that you said, hey, what should I invest in? It would be blogs. Trust me, that's where you want to go. The next thing is social media. Well, social media posts with images and optimization for each platform, you're going to spend anywhere from 12 to $1500 a month. Yes, I'm sure you can get somebody out there that says, and I see it all the time, hey, create 30 days of content in five minutes using Canva and ChatGPT. I'm not saying this garbage is pretty good, but that's not what you want to drive your business because again, it's not about quantity as much as it is quality, but when you combine quality and quantity, wow, that's a powerful situation. That could be like a perfect storm. Now, if you're talking about videos, a three to five minute video, which is typically the type of videos we make, each video with full edits, including the background music, on screen, text transitions, a call to action, you're going to spend about $2,000 a month. In other words, you're going to spend some about $500 minimum per week to create that video. So at the end of the day, your monthly investment is between 2,500 and $5,000.

So my plan or my reason for getting on here today was to share with you the fact that you don't have to go down that road. There are now because of technology and people like me who keep tinkering and keep digging and saying, hey, I got against, I got against wall. I'm no different than somebody who said, you know, I'm going to show you how I lost £100. I figured out a way and it worked for me. And I want you, I want you to have that same success. So let's talk about that. The Content accelerator pricing. Now, this is a blog of video, social media posts, images, descriptions and optimizations all done for you.

We review every piece of content, put it in your folder each week. So now it's just there, ready for you to take it and go on with the next step. And you can then post it on your website, your social media and YouTube and you can do that now. Now you can do that in just a few minutes if you, in fact, if you'll stay to the end, I'm going to show you how you can, or I'm going to share with you how you can do that and we'll help you set that up and it will basically be streamlining that process. The content accelerator, I know this is going to sound crazy, is just 6,99amonth. So to create all the content that's up above, there is just 699amonth and that's every week. It's a one time setup fee of 9.95. All we ask that there's a one year commitment. And when you set up for that, we'd love for you to, you know that that allows us. Because content marketing is not an overnight success. It takes a while. It's like planting that oak tree out there and watering and watering it, watering. And then finally it starts to grow. It breaks ground, it grows. In five years from now, it's this big beautiful tree that provides shade and protection for your home. I'm not saying it takes five years for content marketing, just giving you example. It's not an overnight thing. So I want you to hang in there for a year. Now, I do have an opportunity where it says, hey, if you pay in advance, then you get the 12th month for free. And that's, that's. So you just pay 11 months at 699 and then the 995 setup free fee and you get the 12 month free. So I just want to give you some final thoughts before I bow before I jump out of here. Time. You get your time back to grow your business and lead your team and enjoy your family. That's important. Remember, these are the two main things that when I talk to business owners, they have a resistance there of. Hey, why aren't you marking your business? I just don't have the time. Why don't you hire a company? I just don't have the money now. There's no reason the money. With our done with you program, you literally can have a full marketing program covering platforms where your prospects hang out all for less than three months of a done with you agency at the lowest possible price. So again, it's saving you a lot of money. It's saving you your time. There's no reason. Excuses are gone. Now before I leave you, there's a saying that once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. In other words, now that you know that plan exists that can help you market and grow your business using organic content and you don't use will potentially haunt you. Every time someone mentions content marketing or making a video, you're thinking, geez, I could have done this. I could already have three months in the go of having my content out there. I could already be, you know, people call me say no, no, no. I'm just ready to move forward because I've already watched your videos. I know exactly what you do. That's what can happen. I don't want that to be your. Your memory is. You have that haunting you. So if you'd like to discuss this more again, cause this is not a sales pitch. This is not anything hard. I just sharing something with you that has worked for me. I'd like to. If you'd like to discuss it more, DM me, send me a message or email me at Jeff Wingpoint Media I'd love to talk to you. Jeff Swingpoint Media. I want to thank you again for joining me. Again again, my name is Jeff Harrison. Here's my phone number, my email address. I just said that. If you want to check out my website, please go to SW swingpointmedia. Com. And thanks for joining today. I really appreciate it. Have a great weekend.