Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Local Marketing Strategies with Brian Ostrovsky

Transcript

Local Marketing Strategies with Brian Ostrovsky · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  Statistically speaking, any brand that has a major service failure, including an airline
• 0:06
  that crashes a plane, if they deal with it well, they come out the other side stronger
• 0:11
  than before the service failure.
• 0:12
  So it's really important to realize this is an opportunity to show your character and your
• 0:16
  values.
• 0:17
  The second thing is for those positive reviews, of course, say thank you, and I'm
• 0:21
  opportunistic.
• 0:21
  So I'm saying if somebody likes you enough to leave your review, go back to them and say,
• 0:26
  hey.
• 0:26
  Do you mind if I share a little more about your experience, kind of a mini case study?
• 0:34
  One zero ignition, liftoff.
• 0:39
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:42
  Welcome to the Small Biz chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert, Melinda
• 0:47
  Emerson.
• 0:48
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give be the information you
• 0:53
  need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 0:56
  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
• 1:00
  Melinda Emerson.
• 1:02
  Hi, everybody.
• 1:03
  This is Melinda Emerson's small biz lady.
• 1:05
  America's number one small business expert And I'm so excited to welcome you to another
• 1:10
  episode of the small business chat podcast.
• 1:14
  I am so excited for today's show Now the small business chat podcast is a peer to peer
• 1:20
  interview show where we give small business owners advice, they probably would not be able
• 1:25
  to afford otherwise.
• 1:27
  The mission of the small Bishop podcast is to end small business failure.
• 1:32
  Now the goal of the small Bishop podcast is to give our audience an opportunity to get sage
• 1:37
  advice from multiple angles to grow your business.
• 1:40
  Now it's time for me to introduce my guest.
• 1:43
  His name is Brian Estrovsky, and he is a local marketing expert and author who's dedicated his
• 1:49
  career to supporting small businesses in local communities.
• 1:53
  As the founder and CEO of LocalABLE.
• 1:56
  I hope I pronounced that right, as well as the author of marketing 3, 4, 5, the business
• 2:02
  owner's guide to effective local marketing in 15 minutes or less.
• 2:06
  Brian has taught thousands of small business owners with dozens of local workshops on main
• 2:11
  streets and state programs around the US.
• 2:13
  And for more information, you guys can go to locable.com.
• 2:18
  It's Brian.
• 2:18
  Welcome to the small business chat podcast.
• 2:22
  It is great to be here with you.
• 2:23
  It's little challenge to go from listener hearing all this great stuff to someone who
• 2:27
  needs to then turn around and, you know, share, but, it's good to be here.
• 2:31
  Well, you know, hopefully, the good energy feeds your soul.
• 2:34
  That's what I want.
• 2:35
  So let's talk about local marketing because I think a lot of times, Everybody talks about
• 2:40
  online marketing, online marketing, online marketing, and I think local retail marketing
• 2:45
  sometimes gets law.
• 2:47
  And we still got mainstream businesses everywhere.
• 2:49
  So I'm really excited to have this conversation with you.
• 2:52
  So what is local market And how is it different from traditional online marketing?
• 2:59
  Well, a lot of the components are the same.
• 3:02
  Right?
• 3:03
  You need to have a website.
• 3:04
  You need to have a brand identity, but how that's manifest, how you communicate those
• 3:09
  things and frankly, the scale of it tends to be quite a bit different.
• 3:13
  I often say that, you know, at the local level, you're out manned you're outgunned.
• 3:18
  You don't have the resources of these big competitors, but you have 2 things they can
• 3:22
  approach, and that is authenticity and relationships.
• 3:26
  And so we wanna do a lot to help you leverage those things, in telling your story.
• 3:31
  Awesome.
• 3:32
  Awesome.
• 3:32
  Alright.
• 3:32
  So 88% of mobile online searches for local businesses are really searches for intent.
• 3:40
  People are either gonna go there or they gonna call there in the next day.
• 3:45
  So how can small businesses that a local be prepared?
• 3:49
  Like, what do they have to do to make sure that call comes to them?
• 3:54
  That's a really fantastic question.
• 3:56
  And so much of it comes down to search engine optimization, one of these scary three letter
• 4:03
  acronyms that people throw around.
• 4:05
  Really, it's about having information about your business.
• 4:08
  I can't tell you how many small restaurants do catering Nowhere on their website do they talk
• 4:13
  about catering?
• 4:14
  No where can you learn about their catering experience?
• 4:16
  And yet when I grab my phone and I'm looking for catering, why would I find them?
• 4:20
  I wouldn't.
• 4:21
  I need to make sure as a business owner that I'm telling you about the services I offer, and
• 4:26
  I'm sharing examples of how I've done this in the past.
• 4:30
  So if I've done a successful catering job that's happened locally, a great thing for me
• 4:35
  to do is to do a little blog post, another 4 letter word there, but do a post highlighting
• 4:41
  some of the things that I've done.
• 4:43
  And if it was at a notable local business, Now all of a sudden, I'm talking about lots of
• 4:48
  local things when people are searching locally.
• 4:51
  Right.
• 4:52
  So What are some of the common mistakes, though, that local marketers make?
• 4:57
  I mean, I know one is, like, they don't have a click call button on their website.
• 5:02
  That makes me super crazy.
• 5:04
  Don't make me wreck my car trying to figure out how to call you, and I gotta remember with my
• 5:10
  feeble memory, your phone number to dial you, like, are you kidding me with that?
• 5:14
  So that's one, but I I'm sure you have others, but that's, like, my personal bugaboo.
• 5:20
  But, I mean, you're assuming, of course, they have a website statistically somewhere around
• 5:24
  50% of small businesses still don't, which is a major problem.
• 5:28
  And those who do, I would say often don't have what I call an effective website, meaning It's
• 5:35
  not mobile friendly.
• 5:36
  They don't have the ability to update it without some tech guy that they gotta contact.
• 5:40
  And then, of course, they're missing things like those calls to action.
• 5:44
  Or as I sometimes refer to it, click your next dummy button because we're all so distracted.
• 5:49
  You gotta tell me what that next thing is I should do at this point.
• 5:53
  Right.
• 5:53
  Right.
• 5:54
  So some of these folks don't have a website.
• 5:58
  You know, if they do as a old website that's not optimized, it's not mobile friendly that
• 6:03
  they just don't load quickly.
• 6:04
  Right?
• 6:04
  You know, so there's all these other issues.
• 6:06
  But, you know, how can they still I mean, like, if you are that person, right, if we're talking
• 6:13
  to you right now, what is it that they could do to turn the ship around, like, right now?
• 6:19
  What can we do to help them get a mobile optimized website with local SEO?
• 6:25
  What can we do to help them?
• 6:26
  And how much would they need to invest to make that happen?
• 6:30
  So 1st and foremost, you wanna appease the Google Gods, of course.
• 6:34
  So you need to claim your Google business profile.
• 6:37
  Formally Google My Business, formerly 5 or 6 other things.
• 6:40
  It's free to do.
• 6:41
  It affects how you appear on Google Maps and to some extent on Google search, of course, all of
• 6:47
  that changes daily.
• 6:48
  In terms of getting a website that is effective, you you have a a bunch a bunch of
• 6:54
  options.
• 6:55
  Right?
• 6:55
  There's a lot of do it yourself options out there, not necessarily the best option, but
• 7:00
  maybe and definitely offers the lowest cost opportunity.
• 7:03
  There are local providers who can help you with all sorts of things.
• 7:07
  I would encourage you if you work with a local marketing person, Find someone who views this
• 7:13
  as a marketing activity, not a coder.
• 7:16
  You don't need somebody to code you something from scratch.
• 7:19
  You wanna move the needle forward.
• 7:21
  Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention local in this mix, but there's a lot of options
• 7:26
  out there.
• 7:26
  On a monthly basis, you should be looking at somewhere between $15.50 for a website and
• 7:32
  related marketing tools.
• 7:34
  And then from a setup fee, if you do it yourself, it's free.
• 7:37
  Sometimes local folks will charge 2 to 4000 a month.
• 7:41
  Our packages start in the 3 75 to 875 range.
• 7:44
  So there's different options depending on what you're looking for.
• 7:47
  Now what about some of the templated sites?
• 7:49
  You know, like Wix, Squarespace, you know, some of those guys Shopify, you know, some of those
• 7:55
  guys, like, is it worth looking at some of that.
• 7:58
  Like, that's they seem like they've simplified that stuff a lot more lately.
• 8:03
  Yeah.
• 8:03
  You know, the the notion of cookie cutter gets a bad rep.
• 8:07
  Right?
• 8:07
  I don't want a cookie cutter site, but why do we have cookie cutters?
• 8:11
  So the cookies look good.
• 8:12
  Right?
• 8:12
  They don't just fall apart.
• 8:13
  They don't whatever.
• 8:14
  That sleeves everywhere.
• 8:16
  That's why.
• 8:16
  It's like, why would you why would you let's go invent a website no.
• 8:22
  Let's, like, you know, let's let you put your brand colors on this one, you know, like, yeah.
• 8:26
  Yeah.
• 8:27
  If you're doing something unique online, you're doing it wrong.
• 8:30
  That's basically the rule of thumb.
• 8:32
  But, yeah, I mean, all of those services make doing websites fairly straightforward.
• 8:37
  I like certain options that you mentioned more than others, which I won't get on here now
• 8:41
  because I don't wanna get sued.
• 8:43
  But but there's a lot of good options, and the key is it's about telling your story, as I
• 8:48
  said.
• 8:48
  So it's it's sharing experiences from real life.
• 8:52
  See, we all use inside baseball.
• 8:55
  Right?
• 8:55
  We all have our jargon.
• 8:57
  We all have our thing that is really accurate, but most people don't understand.
• 9:02
  The best way to help people understand things is with examples.
• 9:05
  And the more examples you can give, I I can see myself in that situation go, oh, I get it.
• 9:12
  You can help me with my kid's birthday party or birthday cake.
• 9:15
  Or my office party or whatever the thing is.
• 9:18
  So you wanna give people a chance to see themselves working with your business.
• 9:23
  I love it.
• 9:23
  I love it.
• 9:24
  Alright.
• 9:24
  So let's talk about those pesky reviews people give people out here.
• 9:30
  So You know, there's lots of places where you can give people reviews.
• 9:33
  Like, Google reviews.
• 9:35
  We got Yelp is probably the biggest one that I hear most small business owners.
• 9:39
  Ghammering about, but, you know, Angie's list, all that kind of stuff.
• 9:43
  How should a small business embrace reviews, solicit reviews.
• 9:48
  Right?
• 9:48
  You know, I think a lot of people just wanna get out here and respond to review when it's
• 9:52
  bad.
• 9:52
  And I'm always like, no.
• 9:54
  That actually, you should respond to all of them so that you don't look like some defensive
• 9:58
  jerk out here.
• 9:59
  Just no.
• 10:00
  What we what happened was, you you don't wanna be that person right, online.
• 10:05
  Yeah.
• 10:05
  But but how could a local business really benefit from reviews and actively proactively
• 10:12
  go out and and seek reviews.
• 10:15
  So reviews are this magical opportunity to get customers to talk about you in their own words?
• 10:21
  And their perspective is probably more like the other customers you want than yours is.
• 10:26
  So you wanna really look at the language people use.
• 10:29
  How can I weave this into my messaging?
• 10:32
  You know, I might be talking about it over here and they're talking about it over there.
• 10:35
  I only line up with them.
• 10:36
  So that's the first thing.
• 10:37
  Be mindful about that feedback that you get.
• 10:40
  Now in terms of positive and negative reviews, I think we can all share examples of that crazy
• 10:46
  person who left a bad review, and it's just not legit.
• 10:50
  So first off, don't sweat those.
• 10:52
  Right?
• 10:52
  Everybody gets them.
• 10:53
  Everybody has them.
• 10:54
  When we see it, we know it.
• 10:56
  Right?
• 10:56
  It's not meaningful.
• 10:57
  So when you get into the legitimate reviews, if it's negative, make it right, figure out where
• 11:03
  the service failure was.
• 11:04
  And I remember in business school, in in a service marketing class, we were looking at the
• 11:08
  fact that statistically speaking, any brand that has a major service failure.
• 11:14
  Including an airline that crashes a plane, if they deal with it well, they come out the other
• 11:20
  side stronger than before the service failure.
• 11:22
  So it's really important to realize this is an opportunity to show your character and your
• 11:25
  values.
• 11:26
  The second thing is for those positive reviews, of course, say thank you.
• 11:30
  And I'm opportunistic.
• 11:31
  So I'm saying if somebody likes you enough to leave your review, go back to them and say,
• 11:35
  hey.
• 11:36
  Do you mind if I share a little more about your experience?
• 11:39
  Kind of a mini case study.
• 11:41
  And this sounds super intimidating within marking 3, 4, 5, we have these prompt based
• 11:46
  templates where you literally just answer questions.
• 11:48
  It's super simple.
• 11:49
  It allows you to use these real world examples.
• 11:52
  Now you asked about how do I make this a part of my business?
• 11:55
  And If reviews are something you care about, then it should start in the sales process.
• 12:00
  And at the risk of sounding a little cheesy and cliche, If I'm selling you, I'm gonna say, hey,
• 12:05
  Melinda.
• 12:05
  My goal is to strive for 5 star service.
• 12:08
  And if we get to the end of this and I deliver, can I count on you for a review?
• 12:12
  Right?
• 12:12
  And so now you're getting some accountability built in.
• 12:15
  And along the way, if it's a longer project, hey.
• 12:17
  My my delivery on that promise I was working on, if not, how do I get there?
• 12:21
  And at the end, Alright.
• 12:22
  We're all done.
• 12:23
  Did I deliver on that 5 star service?
• 12:24
  Can I count on you for a review?
• 12:26
  And so you're conditioning your customers to come along with you.
• 12:30
  And at that point, the number one thing you can do is make it painless.
• 12:34
  And so there's a lot of ways to do this.
• 12:36
  We have some tools where you can send an invite to somebody to say, Hey.
• 12:39
  Will you leave us a review?
• 12:41
  And they can respond and reciprocate and and sort of skip the middle man, so to speak.
• 12:46
  Mhmm.
• 12:46
  Mhmm.
• 12:47
  Can you talk a little bit about geo tracking, you know, geo tracking ads because I think
• 12:52
  that's something that local businesses should be doing, and I don't know that enough of them
• 12:56
  know about it.
• 12:57
  And so can you just a little bit about that?
• 12:59
  Yeah.
• 12:59
  So I think there's a lot of mysticism around advertising in general.
• 13:03
  In fact, most small businesses that I talk to use the words advertising and marketing
• 13:07
  interchangeably.
• 13:08
  And that that's a a big mistake.
• 13:10
  You know, advertising is like, doing bench press where marketing's like going to the gym
• 13:15
  and working out your whole body.
• 13:16
  Right?
• 13:16
  It's one narrow piece.
• 13:17
  So first, I wanna say geo targeting gives you the ability to reach people in a very specific
• 13:23
  location which is a wonderful thing, but we've seen it executed in interesting ways, I'll say.
• 13:29
  You know, sometimes I hear people say, oh, you can get people who walk into your store with a
• 13:33
  coupon.
• 13:34
  And I'm like, if you're walking into my store, I'd wanna give you a discount.
• 13:37
  You're already there.
• 13:38
  Right?
• 13:39
  So you want to be
• 13:40
  intentional.
• 13:42
  Mhmm.
• 13:42
  Right?
• 13:44
  And the other thing is I think that when people think about geo targeting, they think that if
• 13:50
  you walk into my perimeter, whatever that is, I can punch you in the face with a message.
• 13:55
  And it's gonna get to you.
• 13:56
  And that that's not how it works.
• 13:57
  You need to be in an app and then the message will be delivered.
• 14:00
  And so there's a role for it.
• 14:02
  I think it's part of the equation And an important thing to note coming full circle to
• 14:07
  the website thing, what's gonna happen when someone hits the gets that ad from you?
• 14:11
  They're gonna click on it, and they're gonna go to your website.
• 14:14
  And if your website's garbage, if it doesn't have a call to action, if a message doesn't
• 14:18
  align, your ad was effective and you didn't get a customer, and that's the worst possible
• 14:23
  outcome.
• 14:23
  So I have to talk about focus on the foundation and then choose what makes sense to build upon
• 14:27
  that.
• 14:28
  Yeah.
• 14:28
  No.
• 14:29
  That's actually something that I talk about a lot.
• 14:31
  Like, look, if your website sucks, please don't go use social media because you gotta spend
• 14:35
  your time fixing that first.
• 14:36
  Big, big fan and proponent of what you're saying.
• 14:40
  And, Brian, tell me the best business advice you've ever gotten.
• 14:44
  Well, two sides of the same coin.
• 14:46
  The first is show up, and the second is to do what you say you're gonna do.
• 14:50
  Right?
• 14:51
  There's nothing worse when someone says, hey.
• 14:52
  I'll follow-up with you.
• 14:54
  And it's crooked.
• 14:55
  If you're not gonna follow-up, don't say it.
• 14:56
  And if you say it, make sure you can deliver.
• 14:59
  There you go.
• 15:00
  Keep your word.
• 15:00
  I love it.
• 15:01
  I love that.
• 15:03
  Alright, Brian.
• 15:03
  What's your favorite podcast?
• 15:06
  I'm a little, gun shy about saying, but I love stirring the pot.
• 15:11
  So Joe Rogan covering all the different topics he covers.
• 15:14
  I mean, they're long, but they are fantastic.
• 15:17
  So, I
• 15:17
  mean You're committed.
• 15:18
  A 3 hour podcast is a long podcast, but, you know, I'm not mad at you.
• 15:22
  And, you know, that's his hustle, and it worked for him.
• 15:26
  Alright.
• 15:26
  What is your favorite business app?
• 15:29
  I'm, like, reaching for my phone trying to scroll through.
• 15:32
  Google Workspace we live in that.
• 15:34
  It's, you know, Gmail for business and all of that.
• 15:37
  So it it makes things pretty, pretty amazing last night.
• 15:40
  I was working on a contract with my business partner and we're live writing over each other
• 15:44
  in Google Docs.
• 15:45
  It was it's really amazing.
• 15:46
  What is your favorite old school marketing tip?
• 15:50
  I, I'm actually an introvert.
• 15:52
  I don't know if I come across that way, but, you know, in person networking is challenging
• 15:56
  for me.
• 15:56
  So what I figured out was if you show up first at the event, you become a de facto greeter,
• 16:02
  and all of a sudden, everyone's coming to your party.
• 16:05
  And so it totally changes the dynamic.
• 16:07
  I love that.
• 16:08
  That's a good one.
• 16:09
  That's a really good one.
• 16:11
  Alright, Brian.
• 16:12
  What's your favorite book?
• 16:13
  Wait.
• 16:14
  That's my vote.
• 16:14
  I can't say that.
• 16:15
  Alright.
• 16:16
  So almost anything by Peter Drucker is gold.
• 16:20
  The effective executive is a fantastic book.
• 16:23
  If you don't know Peter Drucker, he wrote for 70 years of business and management and
• 16:28
  brilliant, timeless at knowledge, timeless insights, a lot of it's about being
• 16:31
  intentional, with your time and how little you can control, so be real intentional about it.
• 16:36
  So the effective executive by Peter Director is fantastic.
• 16:39
  I love it.
• 16:39
  I love it.
• 16:40
  And you guys, I always have to share my It is disrupt you by Jay Samet.
• 16:44
  And what I love about this book is he says in order to disrupt the world, you need to start
• 16:48
  by disrupting yourself.
• 16:50
  Alright.
• 16:51
  Thank you so much for being my guest tonight on the small business chat podcast.
• 16:55
  Thank you all for joining me for this episode of the small business chat podcast.
• 17:00
  If you're still working on your digital pivot, be sure to check out my small business lady
• 17:04
  university where you can sign up for my latest course, social media selling.
• 17:09
  It goes live February 1st.
• 17:10
  So go ahead and sign up for your spot right now.
• 17:14
  I can't wait to help you finally start making the money you deserve.
• 17:18
  Online.
• 17:18
  So don't forget to head over to smallbizladyuniversity.com.
• 17:23
  And thank you all for joining me for another episode of the small fish podcast.
• 17:27
  Our mission here is to end small business failure.
• 17:31
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small busily, and I will leave you with this.
• 17:34
  You never lose in business.
• 17:36
  Either you win or you learn.
• 17:38
  God bless everybody.
• 17:39
  Good night.
• 17:41
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 17:46
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 17:53
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.