0148: The Benefits of Integrating Print & Digital Marketing for Increased Profitably with Ryan Cote

Ea interviews, episode 148, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Lead generation Digital marketing, Direct mail. Are you doing it? Are you doing any of it? Are you doing all of it? I have and it's a lot of fun and I'm excited to have Ryan Cote, director of digital marketing at Ballantine, a family owned and operated company since 1960s. He is going to be sharing with you the strategies that work from the old direct mail, which is the old process, I should say, because if you're not doing it, you absolutely should in bridging the gap with the new digital marketing that you've probably been inundated with the whole time. So pay attention and listen closely because if you don't have a lead gen strategy, if you don't have lead gen without a strategy, you've got one problem. And if you don't have lead gen, you have an even bigger problem. So that's why I'm excited to be bringing them on the show here right after we thank our sponsor.

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Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ryan Cote. Ryan, how are you today?

Hey Mario, doing great. How about you?

I'm feeling excellent and I'm excited for what you're going to be sharing because it's so, every business needs it. It's so needed and so many people are not doing it the right way and I want to help them maximize that. So tell me a little bit about the business. I know you said you got started.

Tell us how you got started and also how the company got started.

Yes, I've been here 16 years. It's a family business. My great uncle started the company in 1966 and now it's myself, my two brothers and my uncle that are partners in the business. My cousin is here too so there's, there's five Coates.

And you know, we started out just doing direct mail and then over the years we both, about five years ago I helped start the digital division with one of my brothers and so that's sort of like a startup inside an established 54 year old business. So it's been fun. Just, you know, when I started the company. I was just doing marketing and now I'm, you know, director of the digital department and sales and some other, you know, team managing the team, kind of wear multiple hats, you know.

Well, that's fantastic. I love entrepreneurship and business and helping people in general, but even more so when it's family owned and just a testament that you can really do anything you want and put your mind to it and, you know, spend more time with the people you love instead of just working for someone else. Yeah, so I'm happy to hear that. Not only that that's how you did it, but also it's been around for so many years. So congrats on that.

Thank you.

With everyone you help, who are you really looking to help? Because I mean, ever, the worst thing some business can say is, well, I help everyone. And even though you can, who's like your ideal prospect?

Yeah, that's a good question. It's actually something that we went through in 2017. We went through a period where we started losing a lot of big clients and it really made us take a hard look at our processes, the clients that we were going after, how we were onboarding them, the whole thing. And since then, every year we've tried to do things better and better. But going back to your question, that six month period really made us evaluate who we serve the best. And so now it's really service, service businesses, B2B businesses, business to business, usually small clients, 10 to 40 employees. Usually they don't have a marketing person. So we become essentially like their marketing department. But. Or they've got one person who can only handle so much or maybe like marketing is sort of like half their, half their role. So we, you know, help them add, you know, we basically essentially manage all their marketing for them and help them with all that. So that's, that's, that's a real sweet spot. So like what does that look like? Contractors, manufacturers, getting big into auto dealerships too. That's a lot of fun.

What would you say you're helping a majority with now? Because I love the fact that you're doing direct mail. I've done it and I actually really enjoy it because for me and also everyone else now it's been around for so long, a lot of people forget about it. So you'd think, well, who's doing direct mail? Because there's all this widget gizmo stuff, but at the same time no one's really doing it and they're not doing it right. So now it went from the direct mail being Cluttered to everyone going to email and then everyone forgetting about this. Not everyone. I shouldn't say that. But a lot of people go in strictly digital. And now it's like the wild west again with, you know, if you actually send them something. So what are you finding works best now with direct mail? And how do you couple that with the digital side?

Yeah, good question. I mean, so on the direct mail side, our typical client is very large companies, like very large corporate companies. On the digital side, that the profile I just described, the small businesses, that's who. Who we usually serve best. And even, even small businesses, they're getting back into direct mail. We're actually doing a project right now for a financial client that we, that we signed up a few weeks ago. And we're starting off the engagement with redesigning all the flyers, printing them, new business cards. We do for one of our contractor clients. We handle all their digital. We also do postcards every quarter looking for home, kitchen, and bathroom remodels. And so it's. Even the small clients are realizing that, you know, because direct mail can be a little bit, you know, when you consider the printing and the mailing, the postage, you know, it does add up. And it's, it's typically more expensive than digital, but it does offer a unique element where it's less, like you said, less crowded in the mailbox. With email, you're competing with, you know, could be thousands of. Of emails. With direct mail, it's 10 pieces, 15 pieces, 20 pieces of mail. And so it's a nice complement to any digital. And then how do you kind of combine the two? Well, you know, you. There's. You can take the mail, the mail file that you have, and upload it to Facebook. And so certain percentage of people that are getting your postcard or whatever you're mailing out is also getting your ad in their Facebook feed. Obviously, they've got their email. Then you can add email to the mix. So they're getting a postcard, they're getting a Facebook ad, and they're getting an email. So it just depends on what assets you have, like what information you have. But there's. Because all this technology, we can kind of combine the two now.

That is. I'm glad you're mentioning that because a lot of people just don't think about it that way because unless you're in the marketing space like we are, you're not keeping up with it. You're only going at best off of what you think you're going off of what someone you Think knows what they're talking about and they're only limited by what they know. And I don't find too many people that are doing both sides of it. And how else are you coupling it? Do you also mix in some phone calls with tracking numbers? Have you done anything with Facebook messenger bots? What about remarketing?

Nothing with phone calls though. We always encourage if one of our clients is going to do a direct mail campaign with Facebook ads, what have you, I always recommend that they get the phone number with the list so they can do their phone calls based on a service that we provide Facebook Messenger. Not that much. A lot of Facebook ads. A lot of lead form ads, local awareness ads on Facebook video. Not with much with Messenger. We're starting with our dealership clients. And then remarking. Yeah, remarketing is something that we, it's part of like almost every plan that we do. Because you think about it, you're pushing most, most any marketing you're pushing to a website. And so they come to the site and most are going to leave. It's the way it is and you want to have a second chance of getting, getting in front of them. That's where remarketing comes into play. So you remarket on Google, you're market on Facebook, Instagram, so you know, they leave your site and you're just surrounded no matter where they go.

What are the benefits you're seeing in your conversion rates if you were to only do a direct mail piece or only do a single Facebook ad? What are you typically finding when you're doing the remarketing after the fact?

It's good question. I don't know if I have any, I don't know if I have any hard stats on the. You mean it's like you're adding remarketing to like a direct mail campaign?

Yeah, because what I'm breaking down is there's people that have come to me that go, well, we do direct marketing and that's cool. And then they go, well, we do this, we do that. But there's very few that combine it. And if you. I know just statistically whether it's a direct mail or online ads, if you hit someone one time, it's one time. When you expand that out. Yeah, same thing with the phone call. Well, I cold call people. Well, I'm asking myself why. But if you're using it in conjunction with you send them in something in the physical mail that says go check out the website now you can see what they're doing. And maybe a week later say, hey, we noticed you checked out the site. If they didn't take any action yet, that's powerful. But just doing any one of those, just randomly is like boring.

Yeah. We always stress the importance of multiple touch points because you don't want to rely on one channel. Even if we're just talking about digital. You don't want to rely on just Google, Google or SEO because it's always changing. You want to do paid search, you want to do social media, want to do content. They all work together. So we never rely on just one channel because you need multiple touch points. I mean the dealership, dealership, dealerships, we help. They're famous for that because they really want to saturate their whole sales area with as much information as possible. So email, direct mail, Facebook ads, Google Ads, because it's very competitive and they have to. You never want to assume that you're prospect potential client is going to notice your email, they're going to notice your postcard. You want to hit them in all their, in all their feeds and their inboxes and their mailboxes because those multiple touch points. What's going to increase the response rate?

Absolutely.

What would you say to, if we were sitting down, if I gave you a dozen people right now they're listening to the show, but we're all in the same room. What is one or two things you could say to small to medium sized business owner for the biggest ROI and the biggest jump with the least amount of effort right now? What is something that they could do that they might not be doing already?

I'm my. The two answers, believe it or not, that came to my head, my head right away is center on content. So we're doing a lot of transcription content which is basically interviewing our clients on their expertise and then transcribing it into a blog post and then editing that into a blog. So basically recording the conversation, transcribing it and then editing and proofreading that, that transcription into a blog post. It's a way to create expert level content with minimal effort. And that's been working the gangbusters. We probably do it for half our clients. And then the other thing that came to mind along with content is once, once you start creating a lot of content, you'll notice after six months, 12 months, it gets a, it gets hard to think about the topics to create and to write about. And so what we do, and we've seen really good organic growth from this, is going back to old blog posts, especially ones that are doing very well. And then basically not rewriting them because if they're doing well in Google, you don't want to change too much because you don't know exactly why Google is ranking it. But we'll basically double, double up the blog post. So we'll have the original blog post, we'll keep the metadata the same, all that and we'll just add more content to the blog post. So basically you're giving Google more of what it already likes. Whenever we do that, it's the organic of that post always goes up. It's been magical.

Tell me more about this metadata on the post because you got me, you got my interest piqued here. I'm thinking with the own show notes for eainterviews.com sure. Where do you even find the metadata? Are you talking with like a plugin or do you have special tools or is it. What would you suggest to. How do you prove. How do you keep the existing data and not jack it up too much? But how do you even know what to tweak on there?

Yeah, so the metadata is the title tag and the meta description. Technically the title tag is not part of metadata, but it's just kind of.

What most people something you should pay attention to.

So yeah, the title tag and the meta description, every page has a title title tag and every page has a meta description. And those are what usually shows up in the search results of Google. So if you look at their search results, you've got the blue headlines that are clickable. That's usually not always, usually the title tag. And then below it, that little snippet is usually the meta description unless Google rewrites it. But most searches, that's what's showing up. And if you're on WordPress, it's easy. We use the Yoast SEO plugin. That's 99 of what we use on WordPress. If you're not on WordPress, you know, it just depends on what you're on.

You should be.

You should be. Yeah, it feels like 30% of the web if not more. Now we our own sites built in. It's just very easy. It's very easy to. You have more options with SEO, you just have more options with content creation, with web building. It just. I know that has some vulnerabilities with like security and stuff like that, but if you keep the site up to.

Date, it's so do hospitals and the government and everything else.

I mean.

That'S very true. But the Yoast SEO plugin is what we used and you'll See, if you go down on the page, there'll be a YO section and there'll be a title tag field, and there'll be a meta description field. Okay, type in there.

Well, I appreciate that info because I'm always looking to improve eainterviews.com and also.

I know there's a ton of people that have no clue what SEO is. Some think it's irrelevant now. I wouldn't agree with that, but there's been people. What's that?

It's harder, but still, it's harder.

I've had people for 15 years plus. Ask me, what should we do for the SEO? I'm like, I have no clue and I don't care.

Can I give you a free tool that helps with finding the right keywords?

Please?

I'm not affiliated with them. It's just what we use a paid tool called Semrush. But then we also use a free tool because they're sort of becoming very similar to SEMrush. I think that's the idea called Ubersuggest. It's by a guy named Neil Patel. He's a big content marketer. It's ubersuggest IO, no affiliation. It's just a free, really good keyword research and site analyzer tool. And so you plug in your keywords and it'll come back with a bunch of information, like how many people are searching for the keywords, how competitive they are in SEO. So when you're. When you're trying to come up with content to create, when you're trying to come up with the title tag and description, and what keywords do I use? It's a good tool to kind of point you in the right direction.

Make sure we get a note of that. That's awesome. Thank you very much. I've heard of Semrush. I have not heard of the other one, but I'm familiar with Neil Patel and it, like, legit. It's something that I've been trying to improve. It's better, but by no means. I mean, I'm half tempted if you were to look at everything, what you'd say. But.

Thank you for sharing that. So out of all the people you've been able to help, clearly you know what you're talking about. Who would you say is your biggest success story? You don't need to name them, but tell me the story of what they were doing before they got in touch with you and then what was it like after working with you?

Yeah, definitely. It's a. It's A newish client, been with us for maybe four months now. We are doing print for them. It's not really part of the marketing. They're a custom iron door manufacturing manufacturer so we're doing print for them. We print their catalogs, which is more of like a handout at the, at their place. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily part of what we do on the digital side. So we're not blending print and digital together, but we are printing for them on the digital side. So he basically he's a home builder and he bought this business. The guy was retiring and he was looking for someone to buy it and he knew it was family friend knew of him and so he, he bought the business from him. And the guy, the iron door manufacturer, he had nothing going on in terms of marketing. He had a little website but no marketing whatsoever. And this guy was taking over. He had no idea about marketing but obviously he needed to do something to get sales going. And we met him at trade show, hit it off with him, started working with them. And so we're basically we're helping with his SEO, with his Google Ads, Facebook marketing, his content creation. We just started doing emails for, for him and it's been, it's been like a rocket ship. He's getting so many leads now where and my saying it's like all us, like we're the greatest. I think it's a combination of that. He had nothing going on before and we're doing all the right things and he's got a pretty in demand, in demand product right now at a really good price. So you kind of put all those together and it's, I think that's what's getting the results. But he's getting so many leads now that we're actually about to add a service where we're going to help him manage the leads because he's got his mom coming in to, to help field the calls and there's just too much falling through the cracks now. So now we're basically a new service that we're gonna map out his, his lead generation. Like what happens when someone comes in who calls them? Then what? Like sort of like a whole, like a, like a site map for the lead flow. And so that's definitely stands out right now.

That's fantastic. And what kind of first world problem is that? Like we gotta do a new service for them because there's getting too many leads. You know, it's one of the things I love helping my clients with because when I first launched my company.

Years ago.

What I realized was I was getting clients quick, which I'm thankful for. But I was also like, this post it note and pen system isn't going to cut it because when you. I tell people like your first five, fine, the next 10.

The next 50, you've got a problem. So one of the things I've always been passionate about is the organization and the system side of stuff. And I've told people about pipedrive for years. I'm sorry, I've told people about CRM for years. Yeah, Pipe drive for years now too.

If you're not using a CRM. And this just reminded me of it because I don't know if he is or not, but whether you are or not, it's just, it's. It's just like anything with marketing. It's an enhancement. You can have Facebook ads and all kinds of stuff, but if you don't know what you're doing and hitting the right levers, you know, I'll give you some credit because you downplayed it. I think you are awesome. So that is a factor because you can hire any company to help you with any of this stuff and they might not get you those results. Having the right offer, you mentioned that is also key. Having the right business, you know, that's on him. But when you do put it together, there's people that are just so stubborn.

They don't.

I can do this all on my own. I was just talking about that. And the reality is, no, you can't. I mean, you're. You're only gonna grow to a certain point if you're trying to do everything on your own, even if you are the best at it and it's like, cool. You get to kill yourself, like work 23 hours a day. Awesome. Yeah, I don't really think. Yeah. You know, partner with people like yourself that can take this over and actually enjoy it. Enjoy it more.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Been fun.

So I'm sure he's not the only one. How long. So you mentioned something. He's been with you for four months. Give me a timeline here. What should someone expect to see? Because I know there's people listening going, oh, my gosh, this is awesome. I'm going to fix the meta tags, I'm going to fix all this stuff and tomorrow night it's going to be, I'm going to get more Facebook, I'm going to get more traffic than Facebook. What is a reasonable expectation? You had mentioned he's a new customer for four months with you is three to four typical where you've seen results in the first 30 to 60 days, what would you say is the norm?

I would not say. It all depends on the strategy. So.

SEO, Search Engine optimization. If you'd asked me that, if you'd asked me this question in like 2010, I would have said like a month. But nowadays it's, it could take a year, honestly, to get really. And his organic rankings are increasing, but we got ways to go. It's just the collective effort of all the channels. It's helping, but it could take a year to really get solid results with SEO. It depends on the niche, of course, and all that, but paid search, obviously, that's more, it's quicker because it's, you know, you turn on the credit card and the traffic starts the same day, but it takes a couple months to really fine tune the campaigns. Negative keywords, all that. I would say three months for that content, six months. So I would say if you're going to go into either going to handle the digital yourself or you're going to hire someone, you know, I would say give it six to nine months before you throw in the towel. Give it a really solid effort for six to nine months. Because this stuff does take time. You know, his case, you know, happened quicker because I feel like we had all the pieces in play, like the product and the good offer and, you know, nothing going on before and just the right channels. But I would say six to nine months.

And I already hear, hear people going, well, that's a long time. And I just want to remind them, how long is your life? Don't worry, it's only your company. And if you didn't start it before, maybe now's a good time because the time's gonna go by either way.

Right.

For the people that do implement it, what would you say they can expect? What are the benefits? Obviously increased leads and traffic. But let's add a ratio amount. Let's say 12 months out, right? 10%, 20%, 30%. I mean, you gave a specific scenario with him, but what would you say is the range? That's reasonable expectation. After a year or two, you can really jump your business up.

I mean, we see easily, like, if you're Talking about like SEO, for example, after a year we see 100% gains. You know, it's a hard question to answer because it just depends on like, are we talking about a site that's starting from scratch? Are we talking about a domain that's brand new, competitive? But yeah, I mean, we see gains on SEO even easily 100% after 12 months. I think that's realistic, especially if you're adding content to the mix. You know, we talk. We talk about SEO and content as separate strategies for small businesses, but really, nowadays especially, they're really one in the same. You know, we. We talk about them separately. But the SEO, I mean, I'm sorry, the content. Because we're keyword optimizing all the content. And nowadays, you know, Mario, you can't just throw up 300 words and call a day like you used to be able to. It's got to be beefy. Content, images, you know, visually appealing piece of content, very informative. Keyword optimize. So the content almost becomes an amplifier for the SEO.

I like what you were saying about interviewing people and bringing out their authority into the transcripts.

I've heard that works pretty well, too.

Yes, yes.

I like what you're saying about the 12 months. 100% gain. So six to nine months is too long. But who, you know, if you're listening to us right now.

Is it not worth 100% gain 12 months out? I mean, how much. How committed to your business? Are you just saying, like, we should put an asterisk?

Results will vary, but yes.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, but. Well, maybe not obviously. I'm not an attorney and haven't played one on TV yet. But it's like, it's your business. It's like you. Why would you just want to kick it with a stick? I can't wrap my head around someone who wouldn't want to do it full out. But I do like to set the expectation because I know there's people going, well, I've thought about it. It's like you've thought about it longer than just doing it and waiting.

And if you're. If someone's asking me, like, our. Well, you know, where do I get started? I always say the best is content, because that's if you're. If you want to do it yourself. And you. Like what? Like, you know, to learn paid search, you can waste a lot of money doing that SEO, it is a really steep learning curve. But content creation, because there's so much you can do with it, you know, you create the content, make sure it has the right keywords, and then you can put it on your social media. It's all stuff that you could do like, like thought leadership, almost go on podcasts like this, and then create content out of the. Out of the actual audio or the video. So content is sort of the hub for a lot of this. And it's something that it's not easy to get started with it because it takes time, but it's manageable for anyone to create content on their expertise.

It's fun, too. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I mean, if there's one thing you're. Well, I don't know, it takes a lot of effort. Fine, go. Call, call, call. A thousand people tell me that's more, more appealing to you getting yelled at people than, you know, talking to cool people and learning. Yeah.

I'm gonna behave a little bit. But also, it's like, I'm not gonna sit here and not tell people, like, the reality of it. I got a question for you.

Sure.

So when we put your episode on eainterviews.com we make a nice graphic. It's a 4k image. It looks awesome. It's professionally edited. When you go into WordPress and you upload it and it says alt tag, description, and then the two other boxes, how. What should you be putting in there? How important is it compared to the page tagging itself.

Like in the naming convention itself? Because right now it's like, yours would be episode number underscore ryan cote. Underscore eainterviews4k fi featured image. Is that the best keyword or should it be actually digital marketing, SEO, direct mail?

First off, I wouldn't use underscores. Google prefers hyphens. That's the first thing I would say.

You know.

So you're talking about. Now we're talking about on page optimization. So that's making sure that the keywords are in the right spot in the right page. And so the image, the alt tag you're talking about, that's one of the spots that we look at. So we make sure that the keyword is in the title, meta description, headline, first paragraph of the body of the content. The image tags, there's a whole checklist that we follow. So in that box you're talking about, I would worry about the alt tag. That's the image tag. And you want it to have keywords. But don't get too keyword stuffy. Like, you don't want to make it so obvious where it's just. You feel like you're doing so much SEO, it feels unnatural. You want to make sure that the. The image file name has some keywords in it and the alt tag has some keywords in it. But it needs to be described descriptive of the image. You can include my name. I don't think many people are searching for my name. But it would be relevant to the image. And then, yeah, maybe Ryan Cote. You know, Ryan hyphen, Cote, Hyphen. We're talking a lot about SEO, so SEO and whatever else, you know, just don't get too crazy with the keywords. You don't want to stuff. Stuff the tags.

You kind of just made my day great. But also ruined it because now I'm thinking, do I have 150 episodes? We have to change all the underscore scores to hyphens. How big of a deal is it?

It's not a big deal. Honestly, with SEO, there's. There's some things that make a big difference, like link building and.

Like load speed, for example, of your site. But then there's a lot of things, like a lot of little things add up to a lot of results. The image, the underscores and image name. That's going to be like a teeny, teeny bit to your ranking factor.

But it would be worth doing if.

You want to check off all the boxes. Yes. But I don't think you're going to see a huge boost if you change that. I just. If you're talking about, like, it would.

Be better to actually put title tags and meta descriptions on the actual episode pages than tweak all the images.

Yes, that would, that would give you a bigger bang for your buck, for sure.

Thank you. That, that was. I'm sure you can tell which one of these are legit for me and other ones that people have asked me. You're delivering massive value.

It.

I'm, I'm appreciative and I know others are too. I want to ask you a couple more things before we go to the wheel of whatever and thank the sponsor. Let's jump back to direct mail. We kind of went good with the direct. With the digital marketing. Let's go to the direct mail marketing. How pertinent is it, would you say? For most companies, I mean, obviously there's more of an investment with the printing and everything. But for. Let's talk to someone who hasn't done it or has done it and not got the results they're looking for.

If they're not getting the results, there's a lot to look at. Obviously the offer, the creative, who you're sending it to. There's a lot of things to look at. So I would do a deep dive into what, you know, is it a compelling offer? Who's. Who's mail, who you mail to. Will they care about the offer? How does the piece look? You know, what did you mail out. Was it like a small, little, small little postcard? Did you use an oversized postcard that get takes more real estate up in the mailbox and then the consistency. You can't just, it's not just one and done. You have to. Usually with clients like, you know, especially on, like on the direct mail side, we work with some huge clients and they're not just sending out one mail piece.

There's like, there's, they're doing a campaign.

Oh yeah. There's a whole stream of them follow up pieces and you know, it's very, very complicated now. Obviously they're working with bigger budgets. What I'm saying is if you're going to invest in direct mail, because it will be an investment. You figure the postage. I think the postage. I don't want to give the wrong amount, my brother.

No, it's okay. You don't need to. But I mean you have the actual postage. You're paying for it per piece and then printing and then. Yeah, it's not just an email. That's 1/100th of a cent or whatever. You know, I love when people are like, well, they're charging me more to do 10,000. I go, do you know what that would cost them?

Print. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, but you know, one thing I was will will say, and this is something I'm not an expert on, but I, I'll, I, I, I'll mention it because I think it's worth for small businesses to, to look into it and we do it. I mentioned the contractor that does the quarterly postcards. This is what they do. It's called every, Every door Direct mail. It's a, it's a program from the usps. It's, I wouldn't say it's, it's cheaper. You still have to pay for the program, print and the mail. And when I say mail, I mean the prep, like the imaging of the address block on the mail piece. But the postage and the list is discounted. It depends on what zip codes you're mailing to and all that. But you're basically just, you know, you're, you're paying a discounted rate for the list and for the postage and you have to pay for print mail, but the print and postage, the postage list, it's a big part of the campaign cost. So you are saving a lot of money. And it's good if you are okay with just saturating a zip code. You're not Percy. You don't get the person's Name. But if you know that you're, let's say you're a contractor, you know, zip code, whatever, is a real hot spot for you. Like most any home is a good, good, good lead for you. Then you just do every door direct mail into that zip and it saturates. Every mailbox gets your postcard, and it's less money.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that because they're putting it in with the normal mail? It's not, not considered a specialty piece. That's like, like you're saying your. My personal name and address and all that. It's, you know, they drop it in with the other stuff in it.

Yeah, yeah. You're not, you're not, you're not getting names. You can't. Like, the address block doesn't say, like, you know, Mr. Ryan Cote. It'll say to the homeowner of. So you're not getting the person's name. You can't personalize the piece. But the mail, the mail person is just putting it in with their normal route. And every mailbox gets it in that zip that you order.

But see, and I love that you're mentioning it because not everyone knows about it. And if you've never done anything. Same thing with the email campaign. When I'm helping clients publish their books. You know, you need a war. If you have a cold list, you need to warm it up. So even if you plan on doing a campaign, would you agree it's probably smarter to at least send them something to, you know, let them have some brand recognition first?

Yeah, I mean, we recommend it for, for our small business clients that don't usually have the budget for direct mail. We'll recommend it in the case of special occasions, like a grand opening. The contractor makes sense because a home, a kitchen remodel could be, you know, a lot of money. So the ROI is not hard to justify. But, you know, we've got a.

Kids therap kids therapist that's looking to do it. And, you know, they're started a new location and they're looking to get their name out more. So they're just considering different options. And every door, direct mail might be something they try.

That's a great tip. And it's exciting. I love this stuff because it's like you're figuring out a puzzle essentially and get to be creative with it. And it just baffles my mind when people go, I don't do direct mail. Especially when, like, you're saying they're a contractor or A local restaurant. It's like, what else are you doing? You're trying to compete with the attorney that's running Facebook ads like no one cares there. You know, you have to think about who your client is and who your perfect prospect is and go, what are they doing? I don't know about you, but would you. Do you base your restaurants off of what ad you got this afternoon?

No. Yeah, there definitely is a strategy involved. And, you know, it reminds me of. I was in a podcast like six months ago, and the guy runs a. The garage door repair company, but he's also like a. He's also in love with marketing. So he handles all the marketing for his company. He's wildly successful with his. His garage door repair installation company, and he's also wildly in love with marketing. He just. He just does everything to the nth degree with his marketing, and he's just dominating the market. So it's like, you have to be. Not that you have to be that crazy, but you have to take advertising and marketing seriously. Doesn't mean you need to hire an agency you got, but you have to do it yourself or hire someone to do it because it is important, because your competitors are doing it. If you're not doing it, how are you going to compete with them? I guess if you do the best job in the world, referrals will come in. But you can't rely on that because you don't really have as much control more to a certain degree over referrals.

Yeah. And it's so easy nowadays. It's like, well, I can't afford an entire agency or someone. You know, there's plenty of people who can and they choose not to. That. That whole control freak thing I was talking about. And there's so many ways to get that information just listening to you share it. And thank you again. I mean, you're given a lot of great ideas that anyone can put into practice. It's. Do you prioritize it or not? Or it's not that important. You know, I get. I'm gonna behave. But yes, prioritize it. And if you're not doing anything, just put it into action. Because the time's gonna go by either way. And I'll say this before we go to the wheel of whatever, give yourself a break. So you didn't master it in a week. What have you mastered in life in a week? How long did it take you to ride a bike, drive a car, even start. Start your company? Like, relax.

That's actually a great. I mean, I've been doing SEO for about 15 years now. 12, 15 years. And I'm still learning new things because it's always changing. You can't, you're. You're exactly right. You have to have a long term perspective because there's takes a while to really master some. Something. Especially if things are changing constantly like, like marketing does. You know.

It'S time for the thing I told you was going to be. You know, I kept on track, didn't I?

I'm nervous about this. Give me an easy question. I'm not, I'm not good on the spot like this, especially live.

It's gonna be marketing related, but it's gonna be five to ten years from now. Where do you see marketing going down the road?

Where do I see marketing going down the road?

And this was kind of along the holograms and spaceships thing. Like. Yeah, because you can turn anything into a marketing piece. But do you think there's going to be a giant climactic shift or it's just going to be a continuation of an add on over the years?

I think, okay, here's a few things that come to mind. You know, it's. And we're already seeing this now but like the reliance on one channel, it's. You can't do it anymore. SEO, even if you have a first page and first spot ranking, it doesn't really mean as much anymore because the actual ads and everything else is pushing everything down. So you have to really diversify your channels, integrate everything. So I think the reliance on just one channel and we're already seeing this, it's going to go away more and more. Voice search is obviously huge. All the devices that we have now mobile more and more. I wonder if websites are going to be around. I think in five years they will be. I hope so because that'd be bad. That would be a bad thing. Like be shocking if websites weren't as important anymore.

I think they'll always be around. The whole, the whole Internet is websites, whether it's an app or whatever. It all breaks down to images, te, text, video and code.

I think you're right. And there's always like the, like everyone's been saying direct mail is dead for years. Yet like, you know, we're doing a lot of it. It's not dead, it's just changing. Things change, you know. And so you're right. I think the websites are going to be around. Sometimes I think about that and it freaks me out. But I'm like, you know what? That's just another One of those, you know, direct mail is dead situations where, no, it's just going to change and we're just going to have to adapt. But I don't answer your question.

Well, but no, you did, because I've heard that for email. I've heard that with Facebook ads. I've heard it. I remember around 2010, people were like, websites are dead and they start driving everyone to social. And I'm just thinking now because I've told people for years, make your own list, build the relationships, and it doesn't matter where you're marketing them to where you're marketing to them. And I'm thinking of someone great guy, great restaurant. They didn't even have a website. They had the URL just drive to the Facebook page. That got capped. Facebook changed. Now you have to basically pay for ads. The reach has gone down. And I'm thinking, how many years could you have been building up your own site, your own list with organic. Now also do the Facebook. But they used, I mean, look at MySpace. What if you put five years and, you know, thousands of dollars into MySpace.

It might not go away. But you got to admit, it's changed a lot in the last five to eight years. I mean, you used to be able to post anything in the world and everyone saw it. And now it's like, even if you pay for it, it's like, what the heck.

Yeah, it's definitely. Yeah, definitely. You know, things change. Like Facebook, organic reach is not as much, not nearly as much as it used to be. But it surprises me, Made me think of something. It surprises me how little restaurants ask for cell phones or email addresses. I mean, my wife. My wife and I go out to eat fairly regularly. I. I can't think of the last time someone has asked me for my, my cell phone or for my email address. I mean, what's the offer, where I would give it to them? Maybe like a coupon for the next or something. I have to think about that. But very rarely do they ask. And it's just shocking to me.

It's also a gold mine because I, I have a couple restaurant clients to this day that have been with me from, for over 10 years. And when I was focusing on them years ago, I had a review generator I did with them. And same thing, I was like, how many? Because I was like, you got the foot traffic, you got people in. How many people are asking? No one was. And I go, let's do this. It was paper, a sheet of paper. So if you're listening and you have A restaurant, you really need to make a point of this. And if you don't have a restaurant, it doesn't really matter. Truthfully, if you're not getting reviews and asking your customers, it was just this little thing that asked for, you know, what did you think of the meal? I'm not talking Google. I'm not talking. You know, you could.

There's stuff you can do with your.

Cell phones that just think of the logic of this. I go, let's generate some good reviews for you. And it's not like they didn't have them. They just. There's like five. And they get 2,000 people a week through there. Like the numbers didn't add up. Yeah, well, how are we going to get everyone to do this? Incentivize. It's part of my process. And I go, can you get some of the waitresses and waiters over here? We're sitting at the booth and I go, you guys open to asking a question when you come back for the check? They go, yeah. I go, ask them this. What would you like for your free dessert?

What do you mean? Oh, we have a special going on right now. If you just fill out this paper and hand it to them. They're in a restaurant. This isn't online. They're not going anywhere. They still have to pay.

Hmm.

All you gotta do is just tell us what you thought of your meal and everything, and we'll bring you free dessert. So which one do you want?

They generated 300 reviews in one weekend.

Oh, wow.

And I asked him, actually, that was one client. I was thinking of the other one. He generated 60 or 80. It was a single location. This other one that did the 300, I go, was that between your four restaurants? He goes, no, that was the downtown one.

He only did it in one of the four he owns. And I was like, holy smokes. And I check back periodically, and they're still there.

You want to generate content, you got foot traffic coming in every day. So. And that's with paper. And now if you couple that with, you know, all the other stuff you do that. That's a form of direct mail advertising.

Yeah. It's got to create a system out of it. You know, may sound daunting, but if.

You create, who wouldn't want that on a postcard to send out? Here's what the last 15 people said this week. You could send a direct mail every week with new, new reviews on it.

And it's social proof to the.

Or. Don't even get me started on that. I Mean. Yeah, I mean you, you get it.

Yeah, yeah. Reviews are very important. We, you know, we try to get them for our own company and we're always clients always saying get more reviews, get more reviews. Because it just helps everything. You know, when someone Googles your name, usually Google my business is shown in the right side and that's, you know, your name and your address and your reviews. So sort of pre sales the person before they even visit your site. So it's really, it's really important.

100%. And anyone can be doing paper if you want a daunting task. I don't think it's daunting, but I encourage everyone to get video reviews because you the people can dispute. Well, you know, who's Bob, Sally, Mike, you know, it's a review, you know, it's written. You know, you could, you could pay the, pay the chef or someone or pay. Hire someone for 10 bucks an hour just to create crap.

Yeah.

But when they're on video, ain't no one disputing it. And when you got 50 to 100 plus of them, they're like, there's no way you paid this many actors, especially when you do it over years.

Yeah. That's one thing we have not done is video reviews. It's really, that's really powerful if you can get them.

So I'll, I'll leave, I'll ask you the question for the, we're going to go to the sponsor. But what could you incentivize your customers with to get them on video?

Because like the story of the contractor you just shared here, if you had him saying it.

Yeah.

Or even make a demo video with it and you know, keep doing that one out of even every four clients.

That's when it gets real fun.

So YouTube and all that stuff. So.

Oh yeah, video. Video is my little playground. So I got all kinds of ideas for that, but we're gonna keep it on point because I'm really good at keeping it structured, which is my own personal victory because this is not how I grew up. But we're gonna thank the sponsor and we're gonna come back for the imperfect action round. Invest automatically, save for later and spend today.

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And we are back with the imperfect action round. Ryan, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Absolutely. Let's do it.

First question.

I know you know what it is I do. What is the fastest path to the cash?

I'm going to say focus. I used to listen to a podcast by John, John Lee Dumas and he would always say focus, you know, follow one course until success. And I, I've seen that with my own, you know, Valentine here where, you know, you don't want to get yourself, you want to let yourself get diluted or distracted. Just focus. And that's the fastest way, the shortest way to cast.

I agree 100%. John's a good friend of mine and he reminds me of that also. And also put in the reps.

Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way they can fix it.

Yeah, I sort of alluded to this before. A typical client for us that comes on board or prospect, they're, you know, they're a small business but they're dabbling in all these different channels like, you know, social and content, SEO and paid search. And they're not weaving them all together, not integrating them. They're not like the saying, the rise and tide lifts all boats. I think that's what it is. You know, it's, it is, it is absolutely true. You want to make sure that like for example, SEO, if you're doing SEO, because if you're doing all those channels, you actually have an advantage because you can, you can, like I said, weave them together and get better results. So for example, like SEO and Google Ads, they all are run from keywords. And so with ppc, since the traffic is quicker you're going to get that keyword data coming in faster. Then you bring that over to SEO, you know, and then you have keywords optimized for SEO. And then both those, those keyword ideas you can translate into content topics for blogs, content topics for your social media calendar. Obviously, remarketing fits into all this. So if you're doing all these channels, make sure that you are, you know, mapping it out. Here's what I'm doing. How can I weave these all together to get better results?

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Sure. I mean, for me, the obvious choice is obviously get them results. Something that we do is, you know, heavy, heavy support and communication. So bi weekly, bi weekly phone calls with our clients at a bare minimum, you really surround them so they feel our support. I mean, I would also say, you know, maximize what you can help them with. Don't sell them something they don't need. But like I mentioned, the iron door manufacturer, we're selling him a new service to help him with his CRM and his lead force and mapping that all out because he absolutely needs it. It's going to make him more money. So always think about what other services you can offer to your clients that they, that they need and that will help them.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of that. I have one other question.

Sure.

What type of, what book. What books would you rec. What books would you recommend that have made a big difference in your business?

I like, I mean, I just, I know this is probably said a billion times in your show, but how to Win Friends. Influence. Influence people. I just like, I don't know. Such a timeless book. I've read it probably about five times. You know, it's just, there's so much gold in there. So I really like that one. I like the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy because it reminds me that like we're, you know, every day you're trying to make, you're trying to make get small victories and sometimes it doesn't really feel like you're making progress, but that there, there are things compound and you might not see. And then when you look out 30 days back, it's like, okay, yeah, actually I made a lot more progress. It's a nice reminder. And the book goes into a lot of detail about it.

Well, those are two great recommendations and I appreciate you for sharing them with Expert Authority World. Where can they find more?

Absolutely. So first of all, Mario, thanks for having me on the show, everyone. Thanks for listening. And so we set up a special landing page for your audience where on there they can, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. And that's not the exciting part. The exciting part is there's an offer for a free video review where I will personally go through the website, go through their SEO, their social media. It's like a 10 minute screen share. Just giving them whatever tips I see that I think are worth mentioning. And if you go to ballentine.com.

You'Ll have that all there, all that information.

That is fantastic. I'm gonna head on over there because I'm curious what you piqued my, like legit. When we were talking about the images and stuff, I'm like, crap, I got to change these. No, don't waste your time on it. And it's an important thing to do because it's not my area of expertise. You know, if you want to get a business book published, do video production, let's talk.

Right.

But that stuff I've avoided for every single, you know, and we've done websites for people and they go, well, what do you have for SEO packages? I go, none and I don't want them. You know, it's very specific. And I've seen some great companies just, you know, they try to take on everything and it's like it just crumbles because you're doing everything, let's say part way. Wasn't my first thought, but thank you for providing that. I'm not joking. You'll probably see mine come through in the next day or two.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you for coming on. I appreciate you sharing all the Expert authority insights.

Thank you. Thanks, Mario. Thanks for having me.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here. I'll see you on tomorrow's. Have a great day and God bless. Why every business needs a book, including yours.

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I hope you got a lot out of it.

I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.