Simple Marketing for Blue Collar Businesses

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 1
Welcome everybody to Blue Color Startup, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the frontlines of life in the business of the trades. I’m your co-host, Derek, with Daigle Cleaning Systems.

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Speaker 2
You are. And I’m the other host, Mike Belson, for $5.

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Speaker 1
You know, let’s get to work with this machine up the intro. So, you know, I figured that would throw us for a little bit of a loop.

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Speaker 2
Playing around a little bit. I still got my air in there, so that’s good.

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Speaker 1
But there’s a reason for it. There’s a method to the madness. And, today, we’re going to be doing, talk on marketing and what you need to get started in your business versus growing and scaling. And as you acquire customers, how that how those needs change over time. So, nobody better to, drop the knowledge and nerd out about digital marketing and all things marketing than than Mike.

00;01;18;18 – 00;01;38;20
Speaker 1
So, I was actually really excited because we’ve obviously had a lot of conversations recently over the last few weeks, just with our marketing and some of the things that we’re doing. And there’s obviously a lot going on, in the world of marketing, mainly digital and, I know we’ll we’ll talk about a lot of that here.

00;01;38;20 – 00;02;02;10
Speaker 1
So super excited. Yeah. I want to remind everybody, that we do have some new episode formats. Our let’s ask Bill or lab segments. I think we have one coming up here over the next couple of weeks, if I’m right. Yep, yep. I’m I we’re really grateful for Bill. And he’s over at the shop. All the knowledge that that he brings from his years of experience.

00;02;02;12 – 00;02;25;09
Speaker 1
Very educational. So please tune into those, Catamount roundtable discussions with Stacy and Scott. Super grateful for everything that those guys do to support the show. And, we love having them on to talk about personal development, growth and leadership. Also, our women in the trade segments, which, we shot our our first episode here last week.

00;02;25;09 – 00;02;48;00
Speaker 1
So that should be out, pretty soon. Super excited to, to see that. And also our interviews from the field, which is our base tempo of what we started, started with and we have had and continue to have some amazing guests on the, the podcast. I’m always happily surprised when I see every week, a new episode drop.

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Speaker 1
So I think we’re a couple episodes. Ahead. Right.

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Speaker 2
Or behind? Yeah, I think we might be like 4 or 5 episodes, that we’ve got in the can right now that are just waiting to get released, that we’ve already recorded. So, yeah, we’re like a month ahead on episodes. So there’s a lag between when we record and and when they get, they get put out in public.

00;03;09;05 – 00;03;27;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, I’m, I’m excited because I actually started, listening to all of the episodes again. Oh, yeah. I get excited because, yeah, it’s like we hear when, when the guests are talking and going through the interviews, but then they sound great. And your team, obviously that’s great job with putting those together. So, you know, super grateful for that as well.

00;03;27;27 – 00;03;53;00
Speaker 1
I want to remind everybody about our, our Patreon side of the show. It’s a whopping five bucks a month. Huge. So we have some additional, rapid fire questions and some additional, information from our guests. That we, we leave exclusively for those Patreon members. So if you’re not a member yet, sign up. It will be worth it, I can promise you that.

00;03;53;02 – 00;04;24;18
Speaker 1
And last but not least, I want to thank our sponsors. We do have sponsorship opportunities available, for tools and tuition. We donate some of that money back to, students over at Hudson Valley and Boces programs to help cover costs of tools and tuition. Current sponsors are people, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Banjo Construction, Michaels Group homes, Catamount Consulting, the Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, My Team over at Daigle Cleaning Systems, and Mike’s team over at Five Towers Media.

00;04;24;21 – 00;04;34;13
Speaker 1
Thank you to all those sponsors. Now, without further ado, further ado. Hold on. I got a question. I think marketing.

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Speaker 2
All right, but hold on before we talk marketing, you you mentioned listening to the show. I can’t how do you do it? How do you listen to the show after the fact? Does it bother like, I hear myself talking and I’m just like, I don’t know. I don’t even know how to explain it. I cringe, I flinch, I hear my voice, and I’m like, oh God, like.

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Speaker 1
I’ve gotten over that over time. Have you? But the short answer is you do most of the talking so I don’t have to listen.

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Speaker 2
Let’s go. I never shut up. Okay?

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Speaker 1
That’s okay. You set me up for that one. That was too easy. No, they sound great. They they sound really good. Mike, we. I think we’ve come a long way over the last couple of years, and, I know they’ll continue to, to grow and and, get better as we, as we go. But, yeah, I, I like listening to it.

00;05;21;01 – 00;05;34;24
Speaker 1
I honestly, I pick up content that I didn’t catch the first time around. Yeah. Or things resonate differently. So it’s, a learning opportunity. And that’s kind of what I leave it as in my mind. So a lot of good information there.

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Speaker 2
All right. I got to reframe in my brain and get over my.

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Speaker 1
Voice, I guess. Yeah. That’s all.

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Speaker 2
All right. I’m sorry. I just I had to ask that. Let’s let’s talk about the topic of the hour. So when somebody is.

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Speaker 1
Either looking to or, or in the process of venturing out on their own, whether that’s, in a trade or another blue collar industry, in your opinion, what is the first step or what should folks do, to deploy that marketing tactics? Both at a base level, with no budget. And then as they start to grow and develop a budget, what is your recommendation?

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Speaker 1
How should that work?

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Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s I mean, we definitely we’ve talked about it before. I think we might have done some special skits on it too. Just talking about the mistakes that I see people make. And I think one of the first things that people do or one of the first considerations is your available capital. So like if you’ve got money to invest in a website, which if when you first start out, if you’re going to invest any money in your marketing, it should be especially given the current environment we’re in.

00;06;51;10 – 00;07;15;28
Speaker 2
It should be a website. However, you can very easily if you don’t mind spending the time doing it. You can go to a Wix or a Squarespace and build a website for yourself so that at least you have something and it’s not going to cost you any money. You don’t have to pay a company like ours thousands of dollars to build you this beautiful site that’s going to show up in Google and all the things it’s got to do.

00;07;16;05 – 00;07;35;23
Speaker 2
You don’t need that yet, right? So in the beginning, you right out of the gate. I think just having a really simple website. So that it gives you the credibility that a website gives you. But also it does give you the opportunity to be found by people that you don’t know. So first step, make sure that you’ve got a website that says who you are.

00;07;35;23 – 00;07;58;16
Speaker 2
It talks about what you do and makes it easy for people to get Ahold of you. Like that’s the simple, you know, first thing, right? And then from there, honestly, like, and trying to make it and trying not to assume that people have heard the other, podcast that we’ve done on this. But the big mistake I see, Derek, people do is they run out and they feel they got to do all these things.

00;07;58;16 – 00;08;18;17
Speaker 2
They’ve got, has spent money on advertising and they need to get a Facebook page set up. And they got it. They got to do all this stuff. And honestly, like, none of that is necessary, you know, especially I think, you know, for like the contractors out there, you know, you’re, you’re doing renovations, you’re doing framing, you’re doing decks, you’re, you know, you’re a plumber.

00;08;18;17 – 00;08;41;07
Speaker 2
Like any of those things. It’s in such high demand. I think the easiest thing is if you’re on social media, use your your personal social medias. Don’t don’t sign up for a business page yet. Don’t start trying to figure that’s a whole nother ball of wax that, is going to, it’s it’s a rabbit hole. You don’t want to go down yet.

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Speaker 2
Let’s put it that way. Right. Because it’s just going to start sucking all your time and sucking all your energy, and you’re going to be trying to figure out why no one’s seen your Facebook posts or whatever. And it’s just it’s just not a valuable spend. So get a website and then just talk about what you do every time you’re on a job site, post a picture to whatever social media channel you’re on, put a quick video up, talk about what you’re doing.

00;09;04;00 – 00;09;15;16
Speaker 2
Doesn’t need to be fancy, doesn’t need to be anything spectacular. You don’t have to spend hours editing or making it whatever. I just keep it simple in the beginning for sure.

00;09;15;18 – 00;09;42;19
Speaker 1
So for me, I marketing is overwhelming. Obviously. You know, for for anybody, it’s overwhelming for me, especially somebody getting started. There’s all of as you mentioned, there’s all these different things that you could do. How do those all tie in together? So you got the website, somebody goes and they get their website established at a real pace.

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Speaker 1
Easy online presence, just something to be established there. But how does that tie into SEO? And how do they get found or set themselves apart? Like, how does that all tie together? And what are some simple ways that people can leverage social media with their website and SEO?

00;10;03;08 – 00;10;31;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. So it’s marketing has become so technical and complicated. And I think if people knew the amount of hours I spend every single week reading and digesting information on on marketing, like, I’ve been doing this for 12 years and I still I spend hours every day reading and searching and looking at different tactics and strategies to try to figure out like it changes so fast.

00;10;31;22 – 00;10;55;23
Speaker 2
And there’s so many things and it can just be so overwhelming trying to figure it all out. So, let’s pretend you’ve got a website. You built it yourself with Wix. Let’s pretend you’ve got a personal Facebook page. Maybe you’re on Instagram, maybe you’re TikTok and whatever. The realistically in the environment we’re in right now, which is rapidly changing.

00;10;55;23 – 00;11;17;15
Speaker 2
And we’ll I’m sure we’ll talk about it in this episode or maybe in the Patreon side about the, the four specific things that you need to be doing in the market right now. But realistically, if you want to be found on Google, let’s say, then you really need to make sure you’ve got a Google business profile set up.

00;11;17;17 – 00;11;43;10
Speaker 2
It’s it’s been very important for years. But with the current changes being driven by AI and the prevalence of AI use with things like ChatGPT and all these other, what we call chat chat bots or LMS is the technical term which stands for large language models. With those changes, your actually your Google business profiles becoming even more important.

00;11;43;10 – 00;12;16;14
Speaker 2
And I would argue it’s, it’s more important right now than having a Facebook page or being on social media. So it’s getting found. Someone goes to their browser, they put in contractor near me, or the contractor or plumber or whatever it is you need to make sure you’ve got a Google business profile that’s like numero uno for showing up in search right now, and also in showing up in ChatGPT when people are asking questions of it, it’s it’s going to be a very powerful tool for that as well.

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Speaker 2
So that’s the first thing, Derek, you know, again, for it when you’re in startup mode. I would not go beyond that website.

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Speaker 1
So when you set up, if somebody is not using Gmail, right, because I think Gmail is the default for Google Business Profile. So would you recommend then that somebody set up a simple Google profile with their email so everything is in one place or your thoughts on that?

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Bare minimum. You want to have an at Gmail account. I believe Google still requires it as far as, being able to set up your, a YouTube account, a Google business profile, anything really in the Google universe is going to require a Google, address. They may have recently changed that. But, you know, as far as I know, you still have to, have a Gmail address.

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Speaker 2
Maybe they’ll change that at some point in time, but.

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Speaker 1
And can you link that to your website? Because I know there’s, a way to do like at the website dot com.

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Speaker 2
So yeah, you can, if you wanted to go the extra steps and set up what we would call a business email through Google, you can do that and you can just Google. How do I set up Gmail for my business so that you’ve got an at Dago clean.com or an at Five towers that us are we do use gym or Google or Gmail business Gmail for our company.

00;13;41;19 – 00;14;00;17
Speaker 2
We always have and it’s, there’s some, some set up there and if you’re using like a Wix or Squarespace, they typically have a really good interface that makes it as easy as possible without you having to be too technical to do it. And then, yeah, and then your email is Mike at whatever your company name is.

00;14;00;17 – 00;14;22;26
Speaker 2
And that’s nice and clean. And I think it’s a little bit more professional than saying having an at gmail address. But at the end of the day, also not necessary. And again, when you’re in startup mode, I, you know, you can you can get lost going down all these rabbit holes. So it’s like, you know, do what you need to do at bare minimum, you got to have a Gmail address so you can set up that Google business profile.

00;14;22;26 – 00;14;27;13
Speaker 2
And which is super important, super important.

00;14;27;15 – 00;14;39;13
Speaker 1
So you got your website, you got your basic Facebook account or personal page that you can post to. Yeah. You got your email address? Yep. What’s next?

00;14;39;15 – 00;15;02;29
Speaker 2
So now you’ve got a website, you’ve got a Google business profile at that point and you’re posting to your personal accounts on social media. Again, I can’t stress that enough. Don’t waste the time and energy of getting a business account on social media yet. And I will say, since I say that, there comes a time in your business when you may want to have a business page for your business.

00;15;03;02 – 00;15;23;15
Speaker 2
However, you have to understand, Facebook specifically does not prioritize business pages. It prioritizes personal pages. And what that means is, when people are on Facebook and going through the scroll, they’re going to see more personal pages than anything else.

00;15;23;18 – 00;15;42;05
Speaker 2
If you want your business page to be seen by people, you pretty much have to pay Facebook for it. Which is why I say don’t do it. You’re going to get free exposure on a personal profile as soon as you have a business profile. The number is roughly 3 to 5% of people that follow your business page will see your posts when you post them for a business page.

00;15;42;05 – 00;16;04;17
Speaker 2
So it’s like, you know, let’s just say you go to the extent of creating a Facebook page for your business, and you’re going to invite all of your friends and trade and you’re going to work. So hard to get to like 4 or 500 followers. And then the reality of the situation is only 4 or 5% of those people will actually see your posts once in a while when they’re on the scroll.

00;16;04;22 – 00;16;28;07
Speaker 2
So you’re going all this time, money and effort to make this thing happen, and then you’re getting almost nothing from it, like 4 to 5% of 500 people. It’s 25 people. Like there’s not a lot of people. And you’re working so hard to do it. And like when you look at audience acquisition on Facebook right now, it’s costing 2 to $4 per person to get them to follow you just to follow your page.

00;16;28;09 – 00;16;46;26
Speaker 2
And they’re still not going to see it. So it’s like, so you’re going to spend, you know, to get to a thousand followers, you’re going to spend 4 or $5000 to get there. And still only 50 people will see your posts. Like, that’s just it’s chasing good money. It it’s good money chasing bad money or bad whatever the saying is.

00;16;46;28 – 00;16;58;20
Speaker 2
Yeah. So that’s why I say like, don’t, don’t worry about doing that. Just focus on posting to your personal profile. People will see that you will get business like I. It’s almost guaranteed, right?

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Speaker 1
Are there any recommendations that you have a ways to set, those posts apart or to be able to stand out from some of the other businesses out there?

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Speaker 2
The biggest thing that people have to understand is that you want it to be indicative of the work that you’re doing. So if you’re a framer, then those photos better be you in front of a wall you just framed. And it better be talking about the work that you do. I just framed this kitchen in that in, and guaranteed people are going to be like, hey, do you do this?

00;17;32;22 – 00;17;51;11
Speaker 2
Do you do that? You know, I need to do this. Is this something that you could do? And so you want to make sure the imagery, you know, if you’re a plumber, then you want pictures of you underneath the sink, you know, or if you’re installing in a, you know, an Hvac unit, that’s what. That’s what you want.

00;17;51;13 – 00;18;11;23
Speaker 2
And it doesn’t matter if it’s a similar image over and over and over again at the end of the day, people are going to see it. There is such a shortage of people in the trades out in public right now. And I think anyone that listens to this, that is a contractor or a plumber or whatever, they know, right?

00;18;11;23 – 00;18;21;11
Speaker 2
Like I can post a picture on Facebook and I get five calls like it’s it’s that easy right now, but only fits your personal profile doesn’t work if is your business profile.

00;18;21;14 – 00;18;23;26
Speaker 1
Got it. Very interesting.

00;18;23;28 – 00;18;46;13
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s the business profile thing and it what’s wild about it is to me is now these changes happened in 2016. That was ten years ago Derek. I remember we were watching our clients who would get hundreds of interactions on a Facebook post where their business page went down to like 2 or 4. My phone’s blowing up. They’re like, what are you guys doing?

00;18;46;13 – 00;19;06;10
Speaker 2
We’re not getting any likes on those posts. I’m like, I’m telling you, it’s not us. We’re doing the same things yesterday that we’re doing today. And, it was just Facebook needed to make money and they had millions of business pages. And, you know, if you force all those people now to pay for what they used to get for free, that’s a lot of money.

00;19;06;12 – 00;19;25;03
Speaker 2
And but the wild thing about it, though, is that it’s now been ten years and people still think that a Facebook business page is a valuable tool in marketing. And I’m just like, it’s not most of my clients, which are B2B clients and not B2C. Most of my B2B clients, I’m like, we don’t even need to have a Facebook page.

00;19;25;05 – 00;19;43;21
Speaker 2
Like we can just delete it. It’s going to matter nothing for your business. And it’s the rule of thumb that I tell people is like, hey, listen, if you have one and you’ve got 506 hundred 1000 followers, might as well at least post a couple times a week to it in case this ever changes, because you don’t want to have to start over two years down the road.

00;19;43;21 – 00;20;02;18
Speaker 2
If the if Facebook decides to give out a little a little love for free, but at the end of the day, for a lot of brands like that, those pages aren’t doing anything. And for people to waste, especially when you’re young business to waste a bunch of time, money and resources chasing after it. You’re just never going to get the return on it.

00;20;02;20 – 00;20;13;02
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s what I was. I was I was hoping you were going to say that because it sounds like it’s it could be a huge time and it resource suck. But yes, I would. I was brand through it.

00;20;13;05 – 00;20;34;14
Speaker 2
I watch people do it all the time. They’re like, I see a friend. They started a new business. First thing they do, they start a new Facebook business page. And I get it. They’re proud. They want to tell the world, I totally understand that. But then I watch them, like doing all this content, spending all this time creating stuff, and they’re getting 15 likes on a post, which is like big, right?

00;20;34;14 – 00;20;49;13
Speaker 2
And it’s like they spend so much time to get that those 15 likes and comments and half of them are their cousins, their aunts, their grandmothers. And it’s like, those people are going to work with you anyway. Like you’re it’s not. Get it? It might be good for your ego, but it’s not good for wallet.

00;20;49;13 – 00;21;14;08
Speaker 1
So what? Since we’re on a topic of social media, how about some of the other social medias, that are out there? You know, now you got TikTok, you got LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. There’s so many at this point. Yeah. Are there any is there value when you’re starting up to put any time into those social media outlets?

00;21;14;10 – 00;21;32;21
Speaker 2
So a couple things about it and it is very splintered. There’s so many options and every channel is a little different with who their audience is. So the first thing, and maybe I should have said this in the beginning, but every marketing decision that you make should start with who your target market is, who you’re trying to get in front of.

00;21;32;23 – 00;21;55;00
Speaker 2
If you’re telling yourself, well, I can work with anyone, you can’t market to anyone in quotes, because then that means you have to market to everyone. And marketing to everyone is expensive. So you want to be like super specific about who your ideal client is. Doesn’t mean you won’t work with these other people, but you want to focus all your stuff.

00;21;55;03 – 00;22;19;27
Speaker 2
And I always tell people like, if you’re a contractor and you want to only do kitchen kitchens and baths, but you’ll do other stuff too, right? You won’t say no to the work, but you want your primary focus to be kitchens and baths. Then every single thing you do should be about kitchens and bathrooms. You’re still going to get the inquiry like, oh well, hey, do you do decks?

00;22;19;27 – 00;22;42;16
Speaker 2
Do you, do you know, additions like you’re still going to get those questions because people are going to see you working on a kitchen and they’re going to be like, oh, wow, he’s a contractor. She’s a contractor. I wonder if they do this and they’re still going to ask the questions. So you don’t don’t be afraid to like, be really specific about your target market and who you’re going after and being afraid that you’re going to miss out on something you won’t.

00;22;42;17 – 00;23;13;13
Speaker 2
They’re still going to ask, like, I promise. But so you start with your target market. You have to be really specific, because when we look at each channel, the demographics have some overlap, but they’re also really kind of specific to. So if you’re trying to get after, we’ll say Gen X, Gen X and baby boomers right now, primarily Facebook, some Instagram, and usually the people that are on Instagram are not on Facebook because they left Facebook because of all the toxic garbage.

00;23;13;13 – 00;23;40;29
Speaker 2
It’s on Facebook these days. So like, you know, Facebook, Instagram, when you’re looking at like the younger generations, like my kids range from you while my youngest is six, but, you know, my 15 year old, my 17 year old, my 21 year old, you know, those guys spend most of their time on Snapchat and TikTok. There’s TikTok is kind of, what’s the word?

00;23;41;01 – 00;24;05;12
Speaker 2
It’s kind of a white night as far as social media goes, because. The baby boomers aren’t really on TikTok. There might be a couple outliers, but not really. It’s. But there’s a lot of Gen Xers, a lot of millennials, a lot of Gen Z’s on TikTok. The good thing about TikTok is that TikTok hands out, it hands out views and exposure.

00;24;05;12 – 00;24;35;29
Speaker 2
Kind of like what Facebook did when Facebook still worked. When when Facebook was, you know, quote unquote doing it. Right. That’s how TikTok is currently. However, there is the barrier with TikTok that you still need to be somewhat entertaining. It still needs to be video driven and not image driven. So from a production standpoint, you know, you’re you’re going to spend your time and your resources putting it all together, or you’re going to pay someone to do it for you and paying someone to do that stuff for you.

00;24;35;29 – 00;25;00;10
Speaker 2
I mean, that can get expensive really, really fast. And whether or not you’re getting the return on investment is a whole nother story. We we don’t we’ve never done TikTok for clients, but I just when when clients ask about it, I’m like, hey, listen, like what? You’re going to pay us to do 3 to 5 reels a week for you and post them to TikTok is going to be so much money, you’re never going to get it in return.

00;25;00;10 – 00;25;18;09
Speaker 2
So it’s if you’re doing it yourself, that’s the way to do it. If you’re not going to do it yourself, I’d be very wary of paying anyone to do it. So, so that’s kind of the breakdown on those channels. You know, it’s and then, you know, let’s we’ll bring LinkedIn to the conversation for our B2B people.

00;25;18;09 – 00;25;54;18
Speaker 2
You know, LinkedIn is still somewhat effective. Depending on how you use it. Again, it’s almost always going to be best if you’re doing it yourself rather than paying an outside company. You know, a lot of the value to LinkedIn is their paid programs are okay. They’re not awful. They’re not great. They do work. They’re a little more expensive than some of the other, platforms as far as minimums and, and what it costs you to get out there on a day to day basis, however, is putting you in front of a business centric environment or people.

00;25;54;20 – 00;26;24;25
Speaker 2
So from a target market, if you’re B2B, you’re better off spending money on LinkedIn than you are on, say, a Facebook. They but I think the real power with with Facebook is the groups and having conversations with other people on LinkedIn, which again, you don’t want to pay an outside company to do that for you. And even if you did, like, would they be able to effectively have a conversation about what you do and how you do it and to get into all the intricacies of how it gets done in a conversation?

00;26;24;25 – 00;26;48;06
Speaker 2
I just don’t think I don’t think that that’s, a possibility for most brands. So it’s, and I’m probably, I’m sure I’m sounding not very bullish on social media in general because I’m not, it’s it’s the last thing I like when I tell people about social media, I’m like, hey, listen, the only reason why people pay us to do social media for them is not because they can’t do it.

00;26;48;09 – 00;27;06;08
Speaker 2
It’s because they just don’t want to. And they feel like they need to be there. Or they have, you know, like I said earlier, if you have a Facebook page, you have to you have to post to it. Otherwise, if you’re not going to post to it, you should just delete it because there’s a credibility piece in in the buyer journey.

00;27;06;08 – 00;27;32;24
Speaker 2
Typically when people are trying to get educated, they they usually start on your website first. Not always. But you know, I, I, I speak mostly from the B2B world, but in the B2B world that for some reason they landed on your website, they’re learning about your company, the services you offer, and then when they’ve gotten what they can get from your website and they’re still looking for more, they’re going to go to your social media and they’re going to start learning about who you are from that standpoint.

00;27;32;24 – 00;27;42;06
Speaker 2
And if you haven’t posted in three months, it makes you look like you’re a fly by night. Or maybe you went out of business or, you know, so you’re better off just to leaving it at that point.

00;27;42;06 – 00;28;03;20
Speaker 1
But so there’s so much we could dive into here, I know I would want to. So just to recap for, for listeners. So build your website. Yeah. Do it yourself. Perhaps pay somebody to do it for you. Set up your Google My Business page. Yeah. Set up your email account. Set up your social media account if you desire or.

00;28;03;21 – 00;28;08;05
Speaker 2
If you want to. You can also not. You can also not set up social media.

00;28;08;09 – 00;28;26;20
Speaker 1
Is there anything else from the digital side that you know we miss? Because I, I do want to jump into the grassroots marketing and some of the things that can be done. You know, for startup into pound the pavement, kind of like what we had to do before social media. So big. Yeah. And digital marketing is so big.

00;28;26;20 – 00;28;29;13
Speaker 1
So is there anything else that you want to cover on that front?

00;28;29;15 – 00;28;42;23
Speaker 2
Well, you know. I think that we would be remiss if we did not just at least talk about AI and how it’s impacting marketing. It just real quickly. We can I.

00;28;42;23 – 00;28;44;10
Speaker 1
Think we should say that for Patreon, you.

00;28;44;10 – 00;29;00;20
Speaker 2
Want to say that you have. Well, let me just tell you. Yeah. I mean, there’s there’s four specific things that you need to make sure you’re focusing on for the AI marketing environment that we are now in, that is only going to increase as it catches more and more steam. And we’ll save those four things for the Patreon side.

00;29;00;20 – 00;29;24;06
Speaker 2
So we’ll we’ll tease that a little bit. However, I just want to say, if you’re not concerned about what AI is doing to the marketing landscape, then you are following behind. And so and this is mainly for the companies that are existing. They’re out of startup mode. They’ve got a team they’re cranking and they’re spending money on marketing.

00;29;24;06 – 00;29;48;22
Speaker 2
If you’re spending money on marketing and you have not started to adjust your strategy for or for, artificial intelligence, you really need to, it’s completely changing everything. We literally in the last 60 days, I had had to reinvent my whole company based around this stuff. Change our offerings, change how we do business, change how we bring our clients to market.

00;29;48;25 – 00;30;10;04
Speaker 2
And it’s impacted how we do websites. It’s impacted how we create content. It’s impacted, it’s impacting what we do for clients now. I mean, we’re getting rid of a host of services, that we’re just we’re new clients coming on. We’re not even offering them because it’s just not going to be, there’s going to be no return on investment for them to do it with us.

00;30;10;04 – 00;30;26;08
Speaker 2
So it’s like, I, I understand that this is something people have been doing for a decade. It no longer works or it’s dying slow death. So, but we’ll we’ll get into that a little bit more on the Patreon side, I guess. Just be aware. Lots of changes. You need to be looking at that stuff.

00;30;26;10 – 00;30;46;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. When we were talking about that yesterday, you know, my, my mind was blown with some of the different things that are going on out there of the landscape. And, you know, obviously the fact that, you know, you’re being honest with people and being able to to reinvent and change and pivot, says a lot about you, obviously, in the $5 team.

00;30;46;06 – 00;30;47;16
Speaker 1
So.

00;30;47;18 – 00;31;04;09
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, we have an obligation, right? Like 100% our clients are paying us good money, and they’re doing it because they’re counting on us to do certain things and like for us to just keep doing them just because we get a paycheck for them. And even though we know they’re not working or no, they’re not going to be working very soon.

00;31;04;09 – 00;31;18;16
Speaker 2
And like, yeah, that would be it would be terrible for us. They’ve just continued down the path just because we’ve got retainers coming in for it. So it’s it’s created, created even more work for us to, to make the turn that it’s necessary. So.

00;31;18;19 – 00;31;50;29
Speaker 1
Well, we’ll flip, we’ll flip back to that when we, when we head outside. But one thing I did want to talk about, Mike. And we’ve had these conversations a couple of times. We talked a little bit about them in previous episodes, but, you know, for folks who are just starting out or looking to get started, on their own, you know, we’ve had some folks who have worked full time jobs, and then, you know, we’re weekend warriors, if you will, or, you know, work that night, on their business, you know, which is what I did, you know, Devin came gay, for example.

00;31;50;29 – 00;32;13;21
Speaker 1
He always comes to mind when when this comes up. There’s been so many people we’ve had on what is a good place to start. You know, aside from the digital side, the digital landscape, what can new business owners do to get themselves out in front of the right people, who may or may not buy for them what may open doors?

00;32;13;21 – 00;32;17;02
Speaker 1
Like what? What do you recommend for somebody just starting out?

00;32;17;05 – 00;32;40;21
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think the number one strategy is to sit down and write down a list of 25 to 50 to 100 people that you know, right, that you could call today and they would answer the phone, and then you’re going to call those people and you’re going to tell them what you’re doing. It’s that simple. You’re not trying to sell them anything.

00;32;40;29 – 00;32;55;21
Speaker 2
You just like, hey, I just I just launched a new business. Here’s what we’re doing. I just want to get the word out. If you know anybody, if you come across anybody, if someone brings this up in conversation, please, please, please give them my name. And number. Like salsa.

00;32;55;24 – 00;33;01;15
Speaker 1
So what I’m hearing you say is that people who aren’t afraid to pick up the phone and have the conversations are going to be further ahead.

00;33;01;17 – 00;33;20;07
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And if you are afraid to pick up the phone, I suggest getting over it. There, check your ego at the door. And, you know, I mean, you and I talked about this, but like people, especially those 50 to 100 to 200 people that you know, that when you call them, they’ll pick up the phone. I mean, they know you pretty well, right?

00;33;20;07 – 00;33;37;12
Speaker 2
They know how known you for years. You could probably call them and say, hey, let’s grab a beer or a cup of coffee and those people want to help you like they’re they’re in your corner, they’re on your side, and you’re, again, you’re not trying to sell them. You’re just trying to let them know what you’re doing.

00;33;37;12 – 00;33;55;14
Speaker 2
If they have a need, they’ll let you know. You don’t even have to bring it up, right? You don’t have to be like, hey, I want to know if you have any plumbing needs that I can help with. Don’t say that. Just tell them what you’re doing and just tell them that you’re trying to get clients and that you need the help of the people that you know and, trust and surprise, surprise, you’re one of those people.

00;33;55;14 – 00;34;15;03
Speaker 2
So I’m calling you, and it’s. I’ll tell you, Derek, it’s the easiest thing to do. Also sometimes the hardest because people have that, like you said, right? They’re afraid to pick up the phone, afraid to have that conversation. They don’t want to look like they’re losers, or they don’t want to look like they’re not doing well. And it’s like, it’s nothing to do with that.

00;34;15;03 – 00;34;32;09
Speaker 2
You got a business, you’ve got a responsibility to grow that business, and the only way to do that is by getting in front of people in some fashion and picking up the phone cost you almost no money. It costs you very little time. It’s, And it’s the fastest way to get clients.

00;34;32;11 – 00;34;51;21
Speaker 1
Yeah, I gotta be honest. I think people enjoy the the human interaction in today’s digital age. You know, bring them back to social media and, and, you know, all the digital things from a marketing standpoint that you can do. I think that’s the norm. And, you know, I almost look at it as a way to set yourself apart.

00;34;51;21 – 00;35;04;09
Speaker 1
So if you’re able to have those conversations, get in front of people you know and utilize your network. I 100% agree. I think that’s, good way to go. And it doesn’t cost you anything. Yes, I phoned up. Yeah.

00;35;04;11 – 00;35;14;26
Speaker 2
And which, you know, everybody’s probably on an unlimited plan, so it doesn’t matter how many calls you make. And, it per per phone call, it’s going to cost you five minutes, and you get to talk to someone that you know.

00;35;14;29 – 00;35;47;18
Speaker 1
So. Yeah. So how about when you love door hangers? I do love to bring that up. Business cards, brochures, t shirts, apparel. It’s real easy to get wrapped around the axle of all of these things that are tangible. I, I went through it, and it adds up pretty quickly. Yeah. How do you recommend for somebody that is going door to door or stopping a job sites or, you know, just dropping by offices, introducing themselves?

00;35;47;21 – 00;35;54;11
Speaker 1
What are the essentials that they may need to be able to get something in front of people without overspending and overdoing it?

00;35;54;14 – 00;36;14;23
Speaker 2
Yeah, I well, like you said, I love it. Well, I should say I love door hangers for home services. So, like, I don’t care if you’re in pest control, you’re a plumber, you’re landscaping. Like it doesn’t matter. I love door hangers. It’s even better if you knock on the door and try to actually talk to somebody.

00;36;14;23 – 00;36;35;10
Speaker 2
But I know that’s, that’s a really rough one. So if you if you have that, if you’re not afraid to knock on the door, knock on the door, man. If you’re afraid to knock on the door, then just leave the hanger. They work. They work better than. They work better than mailers. They work better than brochures.

00;36;35;12 – 00;37;01;29
Speaker 2
I’m actually not. You know, we design brochures all the time, but I’m not a big fan of them. I think in some cases, business cards are very valuable tool, if they’re used correctly. You know, I think in a lot of cases, people drop a business card and it’s over. So you have to at like if you’re going to use business cards, you have to use them in a tactile way.

00;37;02;02 – 00;37;24;09
Speaker 2
And like I, I have not carried a business card in probably 20 years. And, but I have a strategy for not carrying business cards. So like, if I’m out in public and I’m talking to someone and they ask me for my business card, I just sound like, you know what? I actually don’t carry cards. Let me get your information and then I’ll shoot you notes that you have mine.

00;37;24;11 – 00;37;44;17
Speaker 2
And now I’m. I’m staying in charge. I, I’m staying in control of the situation. Now I’ve got their name, their phone number, maybe their email address. And I’ve got a clear next step. I have a legitimate business reason to reach out to them in the next day or two, and that’s to give them my information. And that allows me to keep the conversation going at least another step or two.

00;37;44;19 – 00;38;00;23
Speaker 2
Otherwise, if you just hand somebody a business card and walk away, it’s over. Like you’re not going to hear from them. They’re going to lose the card. So it’s like, you know, unless they had like a, a burning driving need to get Ahold of you about something. But, in my experience, I see most people, they hand out business cards.

00;38;00;25 – 00;38;03;17
Speaker 2
That’s the end of it.

00;38;03;20 – 00;38;34;28
Speaker 1
Glad you brought that up. So networking events are obviously a good way to connect with people as well. That’s what I always think of when I hear exchanging business cards. You know, and I’m sure in every community there’s numerous groups that could be joined, whether it’s, you know, industry specific or chamber of commerce specific, what questions or what should new business owners look at when evaluating where to spend their time in terms of networking events and the events to attend?

00;38;35;00 – 00;39;02;19
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s all again target market, right? Like always, every decision gets made by target market. However, I do see people rule out organizations sometimes because of that target market rule. And, I think the best thing to do is just give them a try. Doesn’t if you’ve got a networking organization in your area, whether it’s a B and I, a gold star, a meeting point, a chamber of commerce, you know, there’s a zillion of them.

00;39;02;21 – 00;39;19;22
Speaker 2
I say especially in the beginning, in your startup mode, go to every single one of them at least twice. And at first, it’s going to be uncomfortable. But the more you do it, you’re going to see similar familiar faces. You’re going to meet new people, then you see them at the next one and the next one.

00;39;19;22 – 00;39;45;03
Speaker 2
And so it’s not you’re not walking into a room full of people that you don’t know. I, I think networking is huge, regardless of what business you’re in. I don’t care if you’re a plumber, an electrician. I don’t care if you’re a B2B sales guy. Like most business. And I think you’ll share this, most business that I have done in my life has been has started somewhere or been touched or reinforced by networking.

00;39;45;05 – 00;39;58;03
Speaker 2
Right? Like, maybe I met him at a networking thing, and then they read an article I wrote, or they saw an ad or a social media post, or maybe it happened in a different order. Maybe they saw an ad, and then they met me at a networking and they’re like, oh, I just saw your ad the other day and blah, blah, blah.

00;39;58;03 – 00;40;20;05
Speaker 2
And I was like, yeah, yeah, it’s our company is what we do. So it’s it’s just a way to get touch points, which is what you need. But it’s a way to get like a very active touchpoint. And you can have real conversations with people you can tell them who you are and what you what you do. You can, you know, find out who they are and what they do and figure out, you know, can I leverage their network?

00;40;20;05 – 00;40;40;04
Speaker 2
And I think that’s the power of networking is it’s not always about the direct people that, you know, because like, I forget what the guy’s name was. He was like a philosopher or something. But he you he said that you could only manage in your life like 200 to 250 relationships. Right? Like that was the max number you couldn’t manage any more than that, right?

00;40;40;07 – 00;41;08;10
Speaker 2
But then it’s like, all right, well, if I can only effectively manage 200 relationships, we’ll say for easy math and realistically, only 25% of those people are going to need what I do. Well, that’s not a very big number. That’s only 50 people. I need more clients than that. So the the magic with networking is if I can effectively manage 200 people, but in a way that gives me access to the 200 people that they know now, we’re like, what’s the math in that 40,000?

00;41;08;13 – 00;41;30;11
Speaker 2
So now I’ve got a pool of 40,000 people instead of right. Is that 200 times 200? We’ll just pretend that’s right. I don’t know without. Yeah, I without a calculator, I can’t do the math. But, now, now 25% of 40,000 people. That is a big number, right? So it’s that’s the power of networking. It’s not necessarily the people that you know.

00;41;30;14 – 00;41;38;24
Speaker 2
It’s the people that they know. And whether or not you’ve got a good enough relationship with them that they will introduce you to those people. Powerful.

00;41;38;25 – 00;42;09;26
Speaker 1
Interesting. Yeah. Very. And so I know we we do get a jump over the Patreon side in a few here. But, one last thing that, I think is extremely valuable, and something that the audience could really take from this in terms of networking, but how do you approach or what is the best approach walking into a networking event, or, you know, in a room full of people that you don’t know, and how do you break the ice?

00;42;09;28 – 00;42;29;12
Speaker 1
You know, because typically networking events can be challenging. And I’m always very uncomfortable. At them. I’ve gotten better about it over the years, but you tend to have groups of people that know each other already, and they all have conversations. How do you break into that, navigate the introduction of yourself and get over that fear?

00;42;29;14 – 00;42;34;05
Speaker 2
Yeah. So my my strategy for it is.

00;42;34;05 – 00;42;35;13
Speaker 1
Or a certain number or something.

00;42;35;16 – 00;42;54;23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. Somebody and then it was no it’s I literally I just, I, I try to lead with being humble. So I’ll if, if I’m there, I know no one, I’m just going to pick the closest group of people. I’m going to walk over. I’m like, hey guys, would you mind if I join you? I don’t know anybody here, and I don’t want to stand by myself in the corner.

00;42;54;23 – 00;43;08;06
Speaker 2
So if it’s all right, I’m just going to stand here. You don’t even have to talk to me, you know? And I’ll kind of make a joke out of it. And again, people want to help, man. So, like, if you are vulnerable like that to those people, they’re like, oh my God. Yeah, come on in, man. Who are you?

00;43;08;06 – 00;43;22;24
Speaker 2
What do you do? And now you’re talking to a group of people. You’re meeting new people. And then you know how you handle it from there. You got to. I guess you got to not be afraid to be awkward, because it’s going to be awkward at points and just.

00;43;22;27 – 00;43;23;09
Speaker 1
Call it.

00;43;23;09 – 00;43;37;12
Speaker 2
Out. Oh, man. Guys, I’m feeling a little awkward over here. Standing by myself eating the sandwich like you. Would you mind if I joined you for a little bit? You know, and then if you feel like it’s time to move on, you can even be like, hey, guys. So I don’t have to tell somebody else how awkward I am with one of you guys.

00;43;37;12 – 00;44;00;05
Speaker 2
Introduce me to somebody else in the in the room so that I can, meet some more people. And it really, it’s just that simple. Like, it’s. I don’t think it’s being too fancy. I think just being authentic. I don’t know anybody. How are you guys? You know, it’s, Or some version of that. I. You just have to just got to rip the Band-Aid off and just talk to strangers.

00;44;00;07 – 00;44;03;03
Speaker 1
It’s a great way to do it. Humor always, breaks the ice.

00;44;03;05 – 00;44;06;07
Speaker 2
I mean, I like I’m not always as funny as I think I am, but.

00;44;06;10 – 00;44;15;13
Speaker 1
At the court. Well, I think. Is there anything else, Mike, that you wanted to cover from a grassroots perspective? I know, there’s so much that we could talk about here.

00;44;15;13 – 00;44;16;01
Speaker 2
You know, I could.

00;44;16;01 – 00;44;20;21
Speaker 1
Go on forever. We could do segments on every individual piece that we should.

00;44;20;23 – 00;44;28;05
Speaker 2
And maybe we will. Yeah, but no, we can jump over to Patreon and talk about what I is doing and how to how to handle it.

00;44;28;08 – 00;44;32;10
Speaker 1
All right. Well, thank you, everybody for joining us. And, we’ll see you over on the Patreon side.

00;44;32;12 – 00;45;00;12
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;45;00;12 – 00;45;13;09
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;45;13;12 – 00;47;11;11
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;47;11;14 – 00;47;25;28
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;47;26;01 – 00;47;51;14
Speaker 1
Well, welcome everybody. Back to the Patreon side of, the episode. Thank you for being a Patreon subscriber. We we really appreciate that. And, we’re here with Mike Nelson, co-founder of Blue Collar Startup and owner of Five Towers Media. We taught in our, main episode a lot about digital and grassroots marketing and some of the key things to focus on.

00;47;51;17 – 00;48;23;04
Speaker 1
If you are going off on your own and starting your your own business in the trades. And there’s it was brought up that there’s a lot of unique changes happening in the digital marketing landscape and, you know, might begin to touch on some things that he’s doing over our Five Towers to prepare for that. And, Mike, I’d love to to have you walk the listeners through those top four things that, are extremely important to look out for and, and be aware of.

00;48;23;06 – 00;48;25;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Digital side.

00;48;25;05 – 00;48;47;17
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s, and I’ll try to be succinct and, keep us to our normal, 15 minute ish time limit here. Yeah. So, you know, to kind of, set the stage a little bit. For the last 15 years, marketing has the digital side of marketing has been largely website social media get found on Google, that kind of stuff.

00;48;47;17 – 00;49;18;28
Speaker 2
Right. So website SEO, social media, you know, email stuff. What we’re seeing right now with AI, number one, AI is changing the whole way that consumers behave with regards to Google searches. So that’s that’s a big thing that’s driving a lot of this. So, you know, up until now, the game was you do all this stuff for SEO so that you can show up on the front page of Google in the top 5 to 10 spots, right?

00;49;19;01 – 00;49;50;03
Speaker 2
People do a Google search list, the websites pop up, you then go click on a website, go to it, see if you found what you’re looking for. If not, you’d click back, you’d go to the next one on the list, and so on. What we’re seeing now is people are no longer doing that. So now you if you’re even using Google, which is another piece of this, but for the people that are still going to Google, a lot of them are stopping at the AI summary right on top, and they don’t get much past that.

00;49;50;06 – 00;50;12;19
Speaker 2
The and forget about getting to the organic results because those are so far down now because Google still they’ve got their search ads, they’ve got their their local search ads, they’ve got the AI summary, all the and all that stuff is like above the fold. And then by the time you get down to, you know, where you’re going to start scrolling again, people aren’t making it that far, and that’s where the organic listings are coming in.

00;50;12;19 – 00;50;37;09
Speaker 2
So it’s we’re seeing that clicks to websites from Google just it’s not happening like it used to. So this in turn is is causing a whole bunch of other stuff. You know, one of the things that we’re seeing, Google search ads, they’re becoming more competitive, which makes them more expensive and they’re becoming less effective. The so cost per clicks are going up.

00;50;37;09 – 00;51;03;26
Speaker 2
So, so to speak. So like for us as an agency, we are not telling clients to increase search budgets right now. And and not because it won’t be effective. It’s because we just don’t know. And we just don’t want to spend a bunch of money for no reason. So it’s like if we’ve got and we have a few, you know, I say we’ve got probably 20 clients that we do Google search ads and other Google ads for.

00;51;03;29 – 00;51;26;17
Speaker 2
And, you know, they’re they’re getting enough results to keep spending the money on it, but it’s it’s dwindling. And we were watching numbers not be where we’d like them to be. So, so we’re kind of in a hole recommendation as far as Google Ads go. And what we are saying to people is where we should be spending our time, money and resources on these four things.

00;51;26;19 – 00;51;55;13
Speaker 2
The four things are then, you know, drum roll, your website. So in the AI era of marketing, your website is going to be your number one asset. Like don’t skimp, spend the time, spend the money, spend the attention on making sure that your website is structured properly. And what that means is people build websites all the time that are just a hot mess on the back end, but they look great up front.

00;51;55;15 – 00;52;33;06
Speaker 2
And if your website is not structured properly with meta descriptions, schema, other things, the way that, you’re, you know, again, not to get too technical, your H1 tags like all this different stuff, if it’s not set up properly, it’s going to hurt you. So you want to make sure you’re set up, and then you also want to make sure that you’re set up not just for traditional search, which the term SEO, but you also want to make sure that you are set up for LMS, which is again, large language models, which is the technical term for your ChatGPT and your quads and your perplexities and graphics and all the other ones that

00;52;33;06 – 00;52;54;20
Speaker 2
are out there so structured on the back end, but also structured on the front end, the content that we’re creating needs to be done in a certain way, so that when people are engaging, let’s say with ChatGPT and they’re asking the questions and having a whole conversation and asking follow up questions, you want your website to be one of the sites that’s answering those questions.

00;52;54;22 – 00;53;13;20
Speaker 2
Okay, so the structure of the website needs to be set up for that. But wait, there’s more on top of that. It’s not enough just to make sure you have an FAQ and some blogs that do that on your website. On the backside, there’s a couple things that need to happen. One is you need to have this new file called an LMS.

00;53;13;21 – 00;53;38;28
Speaker 2
TXT file and that needs to be set up properly. You also need to make sure that you tell there’s another file called a robot dot. TXT file that basically allows LMS to even scan your website. So there’s structural technical things that need to happen. And unfortunately it’s not just a one and done. It’s a you do them and then you have to keep maintaining these things so they don’t get out of date.

00;53;39;00 – 00;54;02;09
Speaker 2
Essentially every time you add a new blog, make a change on your website that can put these files out of date with what’s actually on your website. And if those things are not congruent, it can create a lot of issues for both traditional search and for AI search. So website, second piece of this and I, I, I say it’s a separate thing, but it happens on your website.

00;54;02;12 – 00;54;24;11
Speaker 2
But blogs are going to become even more important than they’ve been in the past. And we use our our strategy for clients over the last ten years is basically like, hey, listen, let’s just make sure we’re putting one blog per month on your website that is structured for search engine optimization, and that is it. It’s good enough.

00;54;24;11 – 00;54;46;12
Speaker 2
It’s not great, but it’s good enough. Moving forward, our recommendation is going to be putting two blogs per month, minimum. But, you know, even better if we can do it every one, every week, and that we want to make sure that these blogs are being written to be a resource for these LMS. And when they’re trying to answer questions to their users.

00;54;46;14 – 00;55;09;28
Speaker 2
So it’s not just, they need to be informational. How to, what if you know, how much does this cost? If I want to do this, how would I do it? Like those, the blogs need to be geared around those kinds of, answer engines. So blogs very important. Also, when you’re inputting the blogs on the website, you need to make sure that the back end is being structured as well.

00;55;09;28 – 00;55;31;04
Speaker 2
Proper meta descriptions, schema, these kinds of things. For DIYers, you can certainly Google or ask a chat engine on how to do that. If you want to do it yourself. However, it it it can be done incorrectly. So you want to you want to tread lightly. Third thing, like I said before, is Google Business profile.

00;55;31;06 – 00;55;55;15
Speaker 2
The reason why Google Business Profile is becoming even more important in this a new era is because Google specifically pulls directly from those business profiles. It’s pulling directly from the reviews. So like you want to make sure a that you’re getting reviews. You also want to make sure that you are getting that you’re answering every single review that gets left and that you’re being conversational about it.

00;55;55;15 – 00;56;24;19
Speaker 2
Again, that’s fodder for the, lens and for like, so Gemini is Google’s AI engine. Gemini pulls directly from that stuff, also not commonly known. Google Business Profile gives you the ability to post to it, kind of similar to posting to a social media channel. So I’ve never before really been big on recommending this. But now with this, I’m telling people like, hey, treat it like a social media channel, post to it 1 to 3 times a week.

00;56;24;21 – 00;56;55;02
Speaker 2
Make sure what you’re posting to it is going to be, good food and fuel for those, ChatGPT and Geminis and everything else. Also, one other thing with Google Business profiles, you can upload videos and photos, and you should do that every week. And you want to make sure that they are named and tagged correctly. So when they get uploaded, the right information is there and that you’re making it easy for the chat, engines to be able to pull information from.

00;56;55;05 – 00;57;19;02
Speaker 2
So Google business profile very important doing all those things. That’s just for Google summary alone, which Google still has like 85% of the market. That they actually just they recently was when they fell below 90% for the first time since like 2015, which is pretty wild. That’s how much like, wow. Yeah. Like your chat GPT especially, which is the biggest one.

00;57;19;02 – 00;57;46;02
Speaker 2
I mean, these guys are certainly cutting into their market share. But the important thing to note, too, about your Google business profile is it’s not just Gemini that is reading that essentially all the other chat engines pull from Google, but they do it indirectly. So Google pulls directly out of it because it owns it, so it has direct access to it, but everybody else is pulling out of it, like basically through an intermediary, from Google.

00;57;46;02 – 00;58;03;24
Speaker 2
So it starts with Google kind of gets sent over there, and then ChatGPT pulls it from over there. And that’s a lot to do with, Bing in Yahoo and, you know, not to go down that too far, but it’s it so what that means is that your Google business profile is not just important for Gemini.

00;58;03;27 – 00;58;31;29
Speaker 2
If you want to say that your target market is only engaging on ChatGPT, guess what? ChatGPT is still accessing that information. It’s still important. So as I was three, the fourth one, the fourth one is earned, earned media. And what earned media essentially means is anytime you do something to earn acknowledgment from the media and they write a story about you that mean that’s earned media.

00;58;32;02 – 00;58;39;28
Speaker 2
So, like Derek, you’ve recently had some stuff done, on the automation work that you’re doing with the robots.

00;58;40;01 – 00;58;41;16
Speaker 1
Right now released yet? It will be soon.

00;58;41;16 – 00;59;04;11
Speaker 2
Oh, okay. Well, by the time this comes out, hopefully it will lead to. Yeah. But that’s, you know, that’s an example of earned media, right? And earned media has become a very challenging thing for folks because in one case, you’re kind of at the mercy of the press outlets around you on whether or not they’re going to write a story about you.

00;59;04;13 – 00;59;27;25
Speaker 2
There’s ways to be proactive about it, you know, make the reporters and journalists at your local paper your best friends, reach out to them, buy them coffee, ask them, what do you got to do to get a story done? But you know, the rest of the PR and communications activities that we do. Sending press releases out for anything and everything you can you hire someone, do a press release, send it out to everybody.

00;59;27;27 – 00;59;45;00
Speaker 2
You wrote a story, you wrote a blog, you finished a job or whatever it is. Like anything you can do, write a press release, send it. You don’t know if it’s going to get picked up or not. But you hope that it does. And if you network in kind of back channel, well enough, you should be able to get some good relationships.

00;59;45;02 – 01;00;02;03
Speaker 2
And then also, you know, there’s plenty of organizations out there that have, ways for you to be able to pay for that earned media. So, you know, I know a lot of local outlets around us, you know, if you want to get a press release published, they’ll publish it for you. It’s going to cost you, like five, 600 bucks to get that thing published.

01;00;02;03 – 01;00;19;09
Speaker 2
But they’ll do it. I know a lot of them do add articles. So you buy an ad, they’ll do an article. It. There’s a lot of ways to do it. It can get expensive quick, however you want to do it. And I know what people are like. Well, if I just do it a couple times a year.

01;00;19;12 – 01;00;48;03
Speaker 2
And here’s the. Here’s the rub with earned media in relation specifically to I. I just like normal SEO frequency is a thing. So how often it’s happening? Relevancy that is a thing to what people are talking about in the chat engines and what they’re searching. You want to make sure your article is relevant to those things, but also recency, which is going to be a word we’re going to be talking about a lot is how recent was that Google Business review.

01;00;48;08 – 01;01;19;22
Speaker 2
How recent was that earned media? Was that article or that press release? If you as an example, if you had an article written about you six months ago and your competitor had won two months ago, their article is more recent. It’s going to weigh heavier for those chat engines than your six month ago article. So it’s like, yeah, it’s now we’re we’re plotting and scheming on how we can get content out there on a monthly basis in the earned media landscape.

01;01;19;24 – 01;01;53;14
Speaker 2
Also, no trade organizations like I want to say was a recently on one of the shows we talked about, we we talked about trade organizations. I think it was Sarah from. Yeah. Sarah. Patrick. Yeah. Sara Patrick was saying that, like, you know, for every single kind of trade out there, there is a trade organization. Right there is, if you are not a member, you should be member a lot of member benefits, but one of them is every one of those organizations has a newsletter, an email list, a website.

01;01;53;17 – 01;02;14;02
Speaker 2
Try to work with them to get your earned media published on their website. Do a guest blog about the stuff that you want to talk about. Use those organizations as a tool to be able to get that earned media so that maybe in January you got an article done and, you know, the Times Union. But then in February, nothing.

01;02;14;02 – 01;02;30;21
Speaker 2
So maybe you try to get something in with one of your trade organizations and then march and, you know, you want to keep that going. Chambers of commerce. You know, if you’re a member, I’m, I’m a big advocate of the chambers of commerce. I think that’s great organization. They do a lot of good for the business community, especially the small business community.

01;02;30;24 – 01;02;49;01
Speaker 2
So if you’re a member of a trade organization or if you’re a member of a chamber, you know, trying to work with them to find out, like, okay, how do I get them to put something on their website about me? How do I, get into their email campaigns and have them talking about me or a link to a blog on my website or something along those lines so I can drive clicks to it?

01;02;49;03 – 01;03;12;22
Speaker 2
It’s, earned media is going to be a big one. I mean, we you know, for those of you the unsure, they don’t know we we own a small media product, we’ve been doing for years. And, you know, we just literally just repositioned the whole thing, to account for all of this so that now we’re no longer selling advertising like advertising, we just give to you as a part of it for visibility.

01;03;12;22 – 01;03;26;16
Speaker 2
But the real value is not in the ad, it’s in the rest of it. And making sure that you can get the frequency and the recency that you need in there in the media. So it’s it’s a wild world, man. It’s the wild, wild West right now.

01;03;26;19 – 01;03;45;01
Speaker 1
It sounds like a lot of, you know, before people would set it their digital presence and forget it to a certain extent, just, you know, pay for ads and, and do what you need. Now. It’s there’s more proactivity that’s required. Yeah. It’s hard but.

01;03;45;04 – 01;04;14;20
Speaker 2
It’s I’m and again like we we changed our whole company offering to be able to help people with this so that it’s no longer like we did it and it’s done. It’s okay. How do we get every level of business owner from a small startup that’s got no money to a company that’s doing $30 million a year? Like, how do we get them all the opportunity to have earned media in some fashion, and to have these things without, and have the constant maintenance and upkeep that you need?

01;04;14;22 – 01;04;41;20
Speaker 2
Which is very challenging. It was really hard for us to try to put that together because it’s the end of the day. All this stuff takes somebody pushing a button or doing something and so it’s time. Time is money and you know you can’t do it for free and can’t lose money on it. So, but I think we put together some pretty solid packages to help every level of business owner get some, exposure and, and get what they need, or at least get get some anyway, maybe not everything.

01;04;41;20 – 01;05;02;23
Speaker 2
And again, I don’t think even our solution is to have all, end all be all. I think it’s a very affordable and a great offering, but it’s not the only thing people should be doing. There’s, it’s there’s a lot if you want to be the man or woman that shows up when someone’s talking to ChatGPT and says, you know, who’s the best plumber in the 518?

01;05;02;25 – 01;05;15;01
Speaker 2
You know, you you want it to be you, right? And in order to make that happen, there is an astronomical digital footprint that needs to exist in order for you to be that answer.

01;05;15;03 – 01;05;27;22
Speaker 1
One last question. And do you think so? That’s where we are today. And obviously things have changed so much just within the last ten, 15 years. Yeah. Is this permanent?

01;05;27;24 – 01;06;00;10
Speaker 2
Do you see? Well I will what’s wild is we’re on the front like this wave is just starting to break, right? And right now we’re on the front of it and but we’re going to hit the beach. At some point that wave is going to be gone. So it’s I think that the like the repositioning that we have done in my mind, it’s going to get us through the next 18 months and then I’m almost sure that in the next 18 months there’s going to be some changes.

01;06;00;10 – 01;06;20;25
Speaker 2
I mean, one thing I know, like right now when we look at market share adoption for this, it’s pretty staggering. So like Gen Z and millennials, like 70% of them is a number. I read the other day are only using like a ChatGPT. And they’re not even doing a regular Google search anymore. They’re literally they’re not doing a search.

01;06;20;25 – 01;06;43;28
Speaker 2
They’re not doing traditional search. Gen Xers, we’re still, you know, and like me, I 90% of my research now happens on cloud. That’s the AI that I use, a little bit on ChatGPT mostly cloud. And then every once in a while, it’s really funny. Every once in a while, out of old habit, I go to Google, like if I’m on my desktop and I’ll do a search, and then I’m like, what the hell am I doing?

01;06;43;28 – 01;07;05;24
Speaker 2
And I go back to cloud. So like, we’ll say I’m 90, but I certainly I do not scroll down through websites that I’m going to click anymore. And that’s a huge percentage of the market already a year from now it’s going to be pretty much everyone. Yeah. You know, so like and that’s why as how we’re looking at it is right now, we’re trying to get people ready for what it’s going to look like a year from now.

01;07;05;27 – 01;07;24;21
Speaker 2
And then a year from now, things are we’re going to start to see symptoms of what is going to change next and how we need to adjust. And, you know, there’s a lot of things that are going to change, like with ChatGPT and all these guys are trying to figure out how to add advertising into their platform so they can increase their revenue.

01;07;24;21 – 01;07;46;27
Speaker 2
ChatGPT recently tried to do a in-app checkout, so you’d be doing a search on your phone, having a conversation, and it says, oh, you can buy those shoes right here, and you could literally buy it right there through the ChatGPT app. I think it did go well, so they might have pulled back on it, or maybe they’re still doing it, but, all of them, every one of these guys is trying to figure that out right now.

01;07;46;27 – 01;08;08;02
Speaker 2
How do we get more revenue? How do we get AdSense? How do we get clicks, bans? How do we take the old Google model and put it into our apps? So that’s going to be like the next change that we see in the next year to 18 months, depending on how long it takes these guys to figure it out, is where now we’re going have to start looking at like, okay, who’s your target market?

01;08;08;07 – 01;08;32;09
Speaker 2
So based on that, what I app are they using for all of their conversations. Because that’s where we want to put our ads. That’s where we want to put our checkouts. So like that’ll be the next thing. But we’re not there yet. And then as we march slowly towards like 2029, 2030, when they think they’re going to have quantum computing figured out, that’s a whole nother thing.

01;08;32;12 – 01;08;49;25
Speaker 2
And that’ll basically make all of us irrelevant anyway. So, we’ll see what happens. We get there. But right now we’re, you know, our long answer. But right now, we’re basically figuring this current strategy is going to last about a year to a year and a half, and then we’ll start making adjustments again.

01;08;49;28 – 01;08;51;17
Speaker 1
It’s amazing. There’s a lot going on in the world.

01;08;51;20 – 01;08;54;14
Speaker 2
It is wild. It is wild.

01;08;54;16 – 01;08;57;09
Speaker 1
What a time to be alive. What a time I love it.

01;08;57;11 – 01;09;10;15
Speaker 2
It’s it’s like it really is exciting. Gary guy. Like it’s a pain in the ass because we literally the amount of work it’s created for me that I’m not getting paid for to pivot one more time. I mean, in marketing, we’ve had to do this so many times in the last.

01;09;10;19 – 01;09;12;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. What’s one more?

01;09;12;18 – 01;09;23;13
Speaker 2
And I’m just like, I’m like, wow. But I’m like, but here we go. Let’s figure this out. And, it’s pretty wild, but it’s still it is really exciting. Like it’s it’s cool to watch.

01;09;23;16 – 01;09;27;15
Speaker 1
If, anybody does want some help with their digital presence, where can they find it?

01;09;27;17 – 01;09;55;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, our website, Five towers.us. We’re actually getting ready to rebuild that because of AI. So, you know, don’t judge us too much on that website, but you can go to the website. Get right on my calendly from there. Shoot me an email. Michael, Michelle at Five towers.us. Those are the you know, you can get rid on my calendar from our website, or you can shoot me an email and we can chat and, happy to do it.

01;09;55;16 – 01;10;00;24
Speaker 1
Awesome. Well, I appreciate all your insight, Mike, and, look forward to having the marketing discussion. Part two.

01;10;00;27 – 01;10;05;16
Speaker 2
Oh my God, never ends. Thanks D appreciate it. Thanks everybody.

01;10;05;18 – 01;10;33;16
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

01;10;33;16 – 01;10;46;13
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

01;10;46;16 – 01;10;56;13
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.