Master Modern Marketing

In today’s episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we sit down with Steve Setka, from InXpress, a third-party logistics franchise, for a live coaching call about modern marketing.  Part 1 Topics: Marketing Audit: We reviewed their website and social media channels and discussed some of their strengths and opportunities for improvement. In short, their website is modern and easy to navigate. They have the ball rolling in social media and are trying some creative ways to build their brand and engage with prospects online.  They need to clean up their Google My Business page as there are actually two listings and they should only have one. Then they also need to beef up the content on the remaining GMB page. This is simple to do but it has a big impact on their business. We also discussed how driving more Google and Facebook reviews immediately would give them a boost.  Part 2 Will be published shortly.  Contact Steve and InXpress: Website: InXpress LinkedIn: Steve's Profile Related Content:  Master Modern Marketing Podcast: Examining Becker Logistics’ explosive growth through marketing Master Modern Marketing: How to get more online reviews for your business with Chekkit If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at FarmersMarketing.ca, or Facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we sit down with Lachlan Kirkwood and discuss the ins and outs of personal branding. Todays Topics: 1. Bonus Content about Tik Tok.  2. Why is personal branding important? 3. What are some real-world examples of personal branding?  4. Where should someone get started to build their personal brand?  Connect with Lachlan: - Lachlankirkwood.com - On LinkedIn - On Twitter - On Instagram If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at FarmersMarketing.ca, or Facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we sit down Nate Dame from Propecta to discuss increasing revenue and new business through modern SEO.  Nate Dame, as well as another past guest, Randy Milanovich, were both named as Top 100 Influencers by BuzzSumo!  Today’s Topics:  A high-level overview of modern SEO In simple terms how does modern SEO work? Why should a company care? How has SEO changed over that past few years?  What is the biggest issue in your opinion relating to SEO? What are the SEO myths today?  Can companies actually achieve scalable SEO growth today? Where should a company start?   How to determine fit and timing  How to know if your company is ready for SEO? How do you drive the most success out of SEO in general? What timelines, investment, and results should you expect?  When is it best to insource or outsource?    Search Engine Optimization, is an incredibly interesting topic. It has changed radically over the years, and there are often heated debates about white hat and black hat SEO practices.  SEO is one of those topics that are easy to understand - at least a high-level, but very hard to become a master of. In our industry, we often hear business leaders say they want to rank #1 on Google, and there are also companies that promote they will get you there. Yes, there are tactics and strategies to get you higher in search results, but your success at doing so is quite technical and takes a commitment of time and money over a very long period of time. Looking back at my discussion with Nate, I was impressed with and really respect the fact that he was very clear on what it took to be successful with SEO. He even goes so far to discourage companies at certain stages in their growth to NOT invest in SEO. Nate and his team, are clearly interested in the best interests of their clients, rather than just selling something that people will buy. We need a lot more companies like that in marketing and business in general for that matter. Nate also offers a free download of the CMO's Guide To Modern SEO, so be sure to listen for that and to see the link in the show notes. Whether you are a large company with a big marketing team or you are just getting ready to hire your first marketing person or contractor, I’m confident that you will learn a lot during this episode, and I hope that it gets you one step closer to being able to Master Modern Marketing. RELATED TOPIC: Examing Becker Logistics Explosive Growth Through Marketing.  RESOURCES: Learn SEO & Turn SEO into your company's most cost-effective marketing channel About Nate Dame: Nate is the founder and CEO of Propecta, a results-oriented SEO consultancy trusted by forward-thinking companies, including a few of the world's largest B2B and technology brands. Propecta builds holistic SEO strategies, supports internal teams, and offers full-service execution to create an organic search presence that generates significant revenue. Nate Dame is fascinated by the complex, constantly changing, layered world of SEO—where creativity rules, nothing ever stays the same, and sustainable, steady growth is the only true sign you’re doing it right. Nate began his digital marketing career more than 10 years ago in the nonprofit world. One of his first side projects was SEO for Skechers, which ultimately led him to found Propecta (previously known as SEOperks). He has led SEO, content marketing, and influencer marketing projects for leading companies including Marketo, Musician’s Friend, and Grasshopper, in addition to a wide variety of small- and mid-sized businesses. Now a regular speaker and columnist, Nate oversees client strategy and thought leadership for Propecta when he’s not busy in his favorite role as husband and dad to his family in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Connect with Nate & Propecta:  Nate on LinkedIn | Propecta  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at FarmersMarketing.ca, or Facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we sit down with Doug Darling, CEO of Tripwire Media, and discuss the art and science of storytelling through video.   Doug and his team have been growing a very successful video production company for over 10 years. And if you check out their portfolio, you will definitely recognize many of the brands on there.  Doug is clearly an expert on video production, as you'll hear, but we actually focus specifically in this episode on storytelling.  I was listening to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast recently and the guest, Alex Cattoni commented that many people say our attention spans are super short. Have you ever heard that our attention span is actually shorter than that of a goldfish? Wait a minute, What am I talking about again?  All kidding aside, Alex disagreed. She states that we have a short attention span, but that attention span is only for terrible content. If you made it through Game of Thrones, you know people clearly can pay attention for long periods of time.  You know, here a few quick and amazing stats: 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week, One-third of online activity is spent watching videos,  Over 500 million people, now folks, that's a half a billion people that watch videos every single day on Facebook. That really is amazing.  One of the major things that impact how engaging content is is actually the creator's storytelling abilities.  There's actually an art and a science to good storytelling. And, that's exactly what Doug and I speak about in today's episode. We really hope that you gained some valuable insights and storytelling and those insights can help you get one step closer to being able to Master Modern Marketing.  Today's Topics: A high-level overview of modern video marketing What the most common current challenges for businesses relating to video The Muse Storytelling philosophy Case Study: The Alzheimer Society of Manitoba How can SMBs apply these concepts to their businesses?  About Doug:  Doug Darling is all about the impact of stories, and how they can help connect people and move them to action. As the President and CEO of Tripwire Media, a video production company based in Winnipeg, Canada, Doug’s main focus is working with organizations, in all types of industries, to create communication pieces that help break through the clutter of an overly noisy and saturated market.  Doug is also a Muse Certified Storyteller, with the Emmy Award-Winning Muse Storytelling, in Portland OR. He has worked with Muse for the last 2 years, on various projects, including being a Coach for their Muse Film School, and Producer and Executive Producer for two films in their 'Remarkable Ones' Series. Doug has adopted Muse’s storytelling process into Tripwire’s offerings, which helps evoke more impactful and engaging work for their clients. Connect with Doug and Tripwire Media: LinkedIn | Facebook  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at FarmersMarketing.ca, or Facebook.com/farmersmktng. 

In today’s episode, we speak with Jim Becker, CEO & Founder of Becker Logistics.  How would you like these results?  In 2018 we were doing around 4,000 shipments per month, and now we are doing around 6,000 per month. And all of that, I want to say, is due to all of the marketing that I, and my team, have done over the last two quarters.  This podcast dives deep into how Becker Logistics drove their business to such incredible heights, and how those lessons can applied to your business.  If you are in the transportation industry, there is a great chance that you know who Jim Becker is. If you aren’t in that industry, its fine as the insights and learnings that Jim shares, relate to any business and industry. Becker Logistics has been around for over 22 years and has about 170 employees, however, they have hired over 70 just this year and are experiencing hockey stick like growth. You will also hear straight from Jim about how much of their success he attributes to modern marketing. In today’s episode Jim talks about their overall marketing strategy, and gives specifics on their '31 and 1' campaign, where they released a video a day in May on LinkedIn that generated over 150k views … so far! Here is a quick example of one of Becker Logistics' '31 in 1' videos:  What do we like about these videos?  1. They were consistent.  2. They were NOT salesy or self-promotional.  3. They were unique and spoke to the Becker brand essence.  4. They were real and unscripted. Obviously, Jim had a plan but there was no telepromter in sight, and he said they did 15 of the videos in one take, which is pretty impressive.  5. They were focused on education and providing value above all else.  SPECIAL NOTE:  If you are a leader or business owner that thinks: ‘Who cares about social media? Who cares if we got 1,000 more followers on LinkedIn? Or, we have been successful for many years without a marketing team and strategy, so why now? ... then Jim, has some thoughts specifically for you! While many companies ignore the modern world, don’t respond to online reviews, and play no role in how their brand is talked about online, Jim and Becker Logistics are lighting the modern marketing world on fire and reaping the rewards for doing so! RELATED TOPIC: How to Get More Online Reviews with Chekkit RELATED TOPIC: Track ALL Leads With WhatConverts Connect with: Jim Becker on LinkedIn Becker Logistics @ www.beckerlogistics.com or 1-800-Go-Becker Want to join their team? Go to: www.wearelogistics.com If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at FarmersMarketing.ca, or Facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode, we speak with Amrit Dhanraaj, CEO of GetTruckDrivers.com.  We dive deep in the truck driver shortage, which in many people's opinions is plaguing the trucking industry. Amrit and Lionel speak specifically about modern marketing strategies and how if you know how to market in the modern world, you can find the drivers you need.  There is a shortage of drivers, a shortage of money, and even and shortage of love, if you don't know how to look for it.  About Amrit:  Amrit Dhanraaj is an entrepreneur from Winnipeg, Canada who has worked in various stages of the trucking industry. Starting as a Truck and Transport Mechanic for top suppliers, dealerships, and fleets. He then proceeded to work in Trucking Logistics throughout Western Canada.    With the extensive knowledge Amrit gained, he now works as a Trucking Consultant who helps Trucking companies grow massively by helping them create an authority figure for their driver market. He excels in personally managing large digital campaigns on the behalf of clients, carefully tailoring them to their specific needs. He provides a comprehensive one-on-one service that consistently yields an outstanding return on Investment making the trucking companies dominate their target space to attract drivers and clients.   Segment 1: Let’s talk about the driver shortage? What are the underlying issues? First of all, the demographics are changing rapidly. The average age of truck drivers is much older than other industries and new drivers are not entering the industry as fast as older drivers are leaving. Secondly, the industry is having trouble attracting youth and women drivers, although that is improving. There are many more issues, but one last one of note here is there are still misconceptions of what the driving career is like. The reality is that it is a very highly-skilled, highly-paid profession, with a lot of opportunities. Many people think drivers are gone for weeks and months at a time, which is actually very rare in the modern trucking world. Segment 2: What is the real issue in your opinion relating to the driver shortage? “Yes, there is a shortage but the bigger issue is many trucking companies don’t know where to get started to hire drivers and they don’t use modern marketing strategies. If they are actually on social media, they just have a bunch of ‘Now Hiring’ posts.” RELATED TOPIC: Map Your Marketing Funnels Easily with Funnelytics Segment 3: What are 3-5 tips that a trucking company could implement today to get experienced truck drivers? Think like a modern marketer. Transportation companies excel and setting up processes, finding efficiencies, and maximizing the flow of goods through their system. Use the same strategies to build a recruitment marketing machine. Get testimonials from your current drivers and put them everywhere. They don’t need to be professionally designed but they need to be real. Get your online presence in order. Have a robust Facebook page, set up your Google My Business Page, and capture a lot of positive online reviews. Think at a higher level. Don’t just focus on filling the job of the day, create systems to fill all the jobs over all of the days.   RELATED TOPIC: How to Get More Online Reviews with Chekkit Segment 4: If you had a $100 to spend where would it be? “I would get a video driver testimonial and run it as an ad on Facebook for $5/day for $20 days. I should mention that all of the magic happens with ads BEFORE they are on the platform. What I mean is that its the effort you put into the story-telling, the design, the imagery, etc., that makes a great ad.” RELATED TOPIC: How to Develop Your Inbound Video Marketing Playbook Segment 5: Case Study Art Pape Transfer dba Tucker Freight Lines doubled their fleet in just 10 weeks after having 4 trucks parked in the yard. Contact Amrit: Amrit Dhanjaaj on LinkedIn GetTruckDrivers.com If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode, we speak with Michael Cooney, Co-founder of WhatCoverts. In this detailed interview, we discuss the current status of lead generation and tracking. We start off with one of the most common questions from business owners - "Where are my leads coming from?", and move into the features of WhatCoverts and describe how it can improve insights into your business and create confidence in your marketing efforts.  SPECIAL OFFER: Go to www.WhatConverts.com/try30 Segment 1: Let’s discuss what must be the most common question in marketing...Where are our leads coming from?! Why is that question is so hard to answer? Google Analytics shows conversions which is helpful, but we can’t see the individual leads so it is very difficult to tie sales results to specific leads. Results from phone calls are completed invisible to business owners as well. Segment 2: How do we answer this question with confidence? Michael commented that he hates saying “I don’t know”, and that drove him to say this:  “I really need this tool that can capture all leads, tie it back to the marketing, keep a record of all those leads, and then give me reporting of the results of all the marketing. What I need is a system that I can capture the information from any website and any form in under 1 minute.“ Segment 3: How does WhatConverts deal with these issues? WhatCoverts swaps the phone number on the site dynamically. When a call is made we capture the call recording, we capture the caller record from the phone company, we capture all the marketing data, and we store all of this for that lead. Call Tracking: 30% to 75% of website visitors use the phone to make contact. Tracking phone calls and the marketing responsible is really easy with WhatConverts. Here is a list of some of the key features of WhatCoverts: Dynamic phone numbers - Automatically track marketing to a phone call with Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI). DNI may be a new concept if you are new to website call tracking. Some think it’s magic because it works so well; we also think it is magical. When you buy a tracking phone number in WhatConverts, we ask what number you want us to swap out on your website. Our script then finds all versions of the swap numbers and, when triggered, our software swaps the number on your website with a tracking number that allows us to track your marketing data including the caller’s source, medium, campaign, keyword, lead page and landing page. Offline: Offline call tracking allows you to track the success of your offline marketing materials. Having offline tracking numbers takes the guesswork out of determining the ROI on printed materials, television and radio advertising and more. Marketing Source Tracking with Dynamic Number Insertion. Using Dynamic Number Insertion for All Traffic gives you the insight to track how your leads arrive and find your site (such as Google Organic, Facebook Referral, Bing CPC and more). This information allows you to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing plan. Keyword Level Tracking with Dynamic Number Insertion. Using Dynamic Number Insertion along with your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns gives you the opportunity to track what bidded keyword was used to trigger your ad and resulted in a phone call. Call Tracking - There are three main options when implementing your call tracking. Each option works in a slightly different way. Call Flows - Streamline the call process but more importantly help apply tags to leads such as “new patient”, “existing patient”, etc. Call recording - WhatConverts gives you the ability to control, download and monitor your incoming calls at no additional cost with Call Recording. Being able to listen to your calls lets you review the incoming calls, determine if a lead is qualified, monitor your sales team and more.WhatConverts’ Call Recording feature allows you to choose which of your phone numbers record calls and lets you listen to them all from your main dashboard.  Segment 4: Lead follow-through “So much good marketing is killed by bad sales” Have you ever heard from Sales that the leads are junk? Link Segment 5: Michael’s Pro Tips Call Tracking: 30% to 75% of website visitors use the phone to make contact. Tracking phone calls and the marketing responsible is really easy with WhatConverts. Understand the value you are providing as a marketer, business owner, or agency partner. Look at the lifetime value of your customer. Customer lifetime value is the metric that indicates the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account. It considers a customer's revenue value and compares that number to the company's predicted customer lifespan. Businesses use this metric to identify significant customer segments that are the most valuable to the company. HubSpot Ensure that marketing reports are accurate and easy to read. Don’t focus on ‘vanity metrics’ such as clicks, impressions, etc.. Those metrics are important but don’t mean much to a business owner. So be leads focused instead. Test campaigns with WhatCoverts reporting. Michael tells a very compelling and insightful story about an industrial company that invested $18,000 to advertise in an industry directory. 75% of the leads were salespeople pitching them, not customers!   If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode, Lionel Johnston, and CJOB radio host Kevin Burgin discuss small business marketing.  I represented Farmers Marketing on CJOB with guest host Kevin Burgin on April 24, 2017, and we spent most of our time talking about small business marketing. I was asked several questions, but with being on-air and having limited time, my answers were very short. Check out our interview below. However, in an effort to share full information, I have provided the complete answers below the audio link.   1. Does every business need a website? Yes! I said this succinct answer jokingly, but seriously, this question should never be asked ever again. The internet is over 20 years old and while it is still in its infancy it is not a fad. If your business doesn’t exist online, you simply don’t exist. If you aren’t able to get a website set up quickly, at a minimum create a detailed Facebook business page.  2. What common mistakes do many small businesses make on their website? Too much info: Many treat their website like a digital Encylopedia, instead of treating is like their #1 sales rep. Inconsistent design, content and function: as a business grows it is common for more people to ask to add things to your website. Over time, your site becomes fat and loses its purpose. Technical issues: High blood pressure is nicknamed the silent killer. Technical issues are similar for your website as you often don’t see the issues that are hurting your traffic and conversion rates. For example, there are still many sites that are not responsive, meaning they work well whether you are on a desktop, a tablet, or a smartphone. Google implemented a new algorithm called ‘Mobilegeddon’ in 2015. In short, this algorithm change rewards mobile-friendly websites … which also is the same as penalizing websites that are not mobile-friendly. If you can only fix one thing on your website this year, making your website responsive would be the #1 thing to fix! 3. How to use small business marketing to build an online presence? Slowly. It is easy to get caught in the trap where you try a Facebook post or ad and you don’t get waves of customers crashing through your front door. Some things hit big right away but most growth will grow over time. The most important objective, in my opinion, is to think about your customers or audience first. Who are they? What do they care about? What are their needs and how can you help them? Find a way to add value to them and as you gain trust and a reputation, you will also build an audience.  4. What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To keep it simple, basically, SEO helps Google understand what content you have which helps match the content online to the search query a user had. Think of it this way. If you upload an image, Google can’t see what the image is, but if you add alt tags to the photos such as “Red Mustang convertible beach palm trees summer”.  SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines. – Search Engine Land 5. Why Blog? Because Google says so :). Google rewards businesses that produce unique and consistent content that people engage with. Working to do what Google wants is generally a good business practice in today’s digital world. Blogging is a great forum for you to share your expertise, insight and philosophies. Having a robust blog covering relevant information is a great resource for you when dealing with your customers. When they have questions you can direct them to a thorough and well-produced blog post.  BONUS TIP: Not sure what to blog about? Create a list of your top 10 most asked questions. Then write a detailed post answering each question. See more blogs from Farmers Marketing on the Farmers Report: a blog for lovers of marketing and growing small businesses.  6. What to look for in a digital marketing contractor? We didn’t’ have time for this question on air, but it is a very important topic. Marketing has changed forever. Assuming you have watched Mad Men, there are still many marketing agencies that want to run 100% of a company’s marketing functions. For some very large brands, that practice still exists today but it is becoming less common. One major reason for this shift is digital marketing activities seem like one discipline, but it is actually is a collection of many specialized disciplines. For example, you have SEO, graphic design, website design, content creation, video production, email marketing, blogging, pay per click advertising, UX, and so on. In each one of these specialties, you could spend your career honing your skills. If a contractor tells you they can do EVERYTHING for your business they are simply wrong.  7. What should a business owner do first? Go to Google and learn the importance of digital marketing. I suggest this because many agencies and experts like to throw around ten-dollar words to confuse you and show your importance. At a high-level, digital marketing is simple to understand: Digital marketing (also known as data-driven marketing) is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. – Wikipedia As a business, it is critically important to get a basic understanding of digital marketing. You want to be prepared for when a contractor tells you they can “make a new website for you, but it won’t be responsive.”, you need to know enough to politely stand-up and leave the meeting.  Google has upwards of 500 updates per year which is a pretty good reason to have an expert in your corner. If it helps you feel better, even website experts are challenged to keep up with all the changes. Yes, there is a lot to know, but it is simple at the same time. So, don’t get overwhelmed or intimidated. You can do this. Let me leave you with this: Over 50% of people pick up their smartphone immediately when they wake up. The digital world is here to stay and your customers, are like you – they live online. So make the commitment today to get started with digital marketing. You can’t do everything but you can do something. If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today’s episode, we speak with Daniel Moscovitch, from MoreHotLeads.com about local lead generation. While many local businesses are starting to embrace modern marketing, there is still a long way to go. In this detailed interview, we discuss the current status of local lead generation, how it works, and where a small or medium-sized business can get started. Daniel also shares some case studies from their clients to demonstrate just how powerful local lead generation can be. Today's Topics:  Tell us about 'Local Lead Generation'? What is it and what should a small to medium-sized business know about it? How seriously should a local small and medium-sized business take digital marketing? Where should small and medium-sized businesses get started? Can you share some real examples of how local lead generation impacted one of your clients?  Do you have a Pro Tip, something interesting, shocking, surprising, insightful, to leave our audience with?  Here are some excerpts from our discussion with Daniel: Tell us about 'Local Lead Generation'? What is it and what should a small to medium-sized business know about it? Well, the scope of generating leads has completely shifted in the last  10-15 years with the advent of the internet, specifically, Google and Facebook. Being able to take advantage of the traffic that is available for businesses on these platforms, is huge. Businesses have to rely a lot more now on making sure that they can get in front of the people who are showing interest in them. Long gone are the days where people are relying solely on word of mouth to promote businesses, especially in certain areas like bigger cities. So, the status of Local Lead Generation right now would be, it's really important to be where your customers are. And when it comes to other paid advertising platforms, that means making sure that your products or services or your messages are getting in front of your audience where they're hanging out.  And as long as your website is set up properly to convert that traffic into leads, then that is how you're going to really expand and build a consistent and steady flow of leads. That goes for a local business, like a mom and pop shop, and it goes for international businesses as well. The concepts are very similar across the board. It's just the way that it's the scale of the campaigns that that are different. In terms of local businesses, I still consider this time to be the wild west, or like the Gold Rush, in terms of not every business has gone online yet. I think five to 10 years ago, that was really where it was, businesses were not advertising online, but businesses now are starting to realize that their leads, their prospects, their ideal clients, are searching for them online, and they need to be there. So, businesses are starting to get used to the need for investing in this technology. And yes, because more businesses are doing it, it is more competitive, but that's why it's important to just do it right. Word of mouth is still very important. Because word of mouth is all just about reputation. So then, when you're competing against other companies you should make sure that that your company has the best reviews, you're attracting the most reviews and all that kind of stuff, there are other ways to leverage that word of mouth, into the online world. I saw a statistic recently that said something like 88% of consumers will read multiple reviews before making a decision, it really depends again, on the industry, on the service being provided on the product being sold. When people need something now like emergency plumbing, or, repairing a garage or an appliance when it's broken. A lot of the time, those consumers won't spend as much time worrying about reviews, and they'll spend more time just calling the first company that pops up if I'm doing a Google search.  That's what we've noticed, as well on Google and with SEO, is that as long as a result provides the information that the searcher is looking for, the business will benefit.  So, if there's a searcher that has intent, as long as the result has the information that the searcher wanted, then chances are they're going to stay on that search result.  How seriously should a local small and medium-sized business take digital marketing? Typically, one of the biggest things that I come across when I talk to prospects and talk to businesses that we work with, is they just don't really a understand the type of investment that it takes to actually get the results. And what will provide them value and they don't truly understand the value of it. So, there are a lot of business owners that look at marketing just as a cost but don't see it as an investment. Yet, it’s an investment in their business meaning for every thousand dollars that I spend, I'm hoping to make $5,000 back? If it's phrased properly, like “You pay me $1, and I'll give you five”, most business owners would jump through hoops to get to that. But a lot of people don't really quite understand it, they just see, oh, it's an expense and they are not sure what they are getting. That's up to me, and up to two marketers like us, for us to educate  our customers, our clients, or prospects, on how things work, how to calculate the return, how to how to project results, really show the perceived value there, that this stuff brings, because this stuff does work. If it didn't work, people wouldn't be investing money in it, and they wouldn't be paying companies like you or myself that, you know, money to do campaigns on a monthly basis. Where should small and medium-sized businesses get started? At the end of the day, I truly believe that really all that matters are the number of leads that are coming in, because you can have a poorly run business and not the best communication with the client, but as long as they're getting a lot more business out of what their investment is that at the end of the day, it's just a smart business decision to keep it going. But the proper onboarding of a client setting those expectations of what to expect and when to expect things, how much to expect, how to check this report how to understand this, that builds a lot more trust and will be a lot more beneficial in the long run. In terms of setting up a predictable marketing system for local businesses, it really just depends again, on what services they need, what would help them achieve their goals. So, say “I want to have the 10 new leads next month”. If that's the case, then obviously SEO wouldn't be the best solution for them. Because SEO takes a lot longer. If they say, "I want to have 10 leads next month, and I know that my target audience is active on Facebook", then we would look into running some Facebook ads. But at the end of the day, we're not just running the ads; we're running the ads, we're testing the ads, and then we're setting up conversion tracking. So, we know exactly what campaigns are working, they know exactly how many leads are coming in from where. And it's really important to show that level of transparency.  I know there's a lot of SEO companies out there who basically just send a report saying “Hey, here's an invoice. This is what we did last month. Here are some rankings”. But it doesn't really explain what it led to. So, we're big into explaining that. "This is the work that we've done. These are your rankings now. But it's, it's led to an increase in the 15% leads from organic Google search. So, you've got another 15 phone calls this past month just because of this work". And that's really what the bottom line is and what the business owner cares about. Definition: Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the metric that indicates the total revenue a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account. It considers a customer's revenue value and compares that number to the company's predicted customer lifespan. Businesses use this metric to identify significant customer segments that are the most valuable to the company. HubSpot  They have to ask themselves, "What's more important to me?" A business that has been around for 10 or 15 years, who are established who isn't going to go out of business, they don't have to turn off the lights because they don't get those 10 leads next month. Those are the type of businesses who are going to be more serious about marketing and taking their business to the next level in the long term. Those types of business might think about an SEO strategy. The reason that SEO is so powerful is that do those organic results, whether it be in maps, or you know, at the top of Google, our trusted a lot higher than the paid ads results. So, you're going to get more traffic, you're going to get more results, you're going to get more customers more leads and all that stuff than organic, it takes longer to get there. And it's not guaranteed, right? A lot of business owners are really scared of the long game. And they said, “Oh, I'd rather just pay Google to show up. I know that if I set up a campaign, and every time someone clicks on my ad, I'm paying for it, it's fine. I'm getting, you know, traffic to my site”. The problem is that not everyone trusts online ads. I mean, they're highly effective, but they're not necessarily as effective as SEO in the long run. So, if you're talking to a business that's more established, then they should invest in SEO for sure.  I've talked to a number of businesses that have such a stellar offline reputation, they've been around for 40 years, for 30 years. And now they can't believe that these young guys who've only been around for two years who started investing in digital marketing, are ahead of them in Google, and they don't understand it. They think it's an illegal act! Basically, they're offended by it. So, for those types of traditional business owners, they should definitely think seriously about investing in some online services. I always say if it's something that people are searching for, then let's try out a Google Ads campaign. If we can do it right, you're going to be making money more money back than what you're investing, your return on your ad spend is going to be at least double of what you are putting into it. But if it's a company where maybe people aren't searching online or the cost per click is rather high, or it's a prospect that actually needs to educate their clients a lot more before they can become a client, then we would suggest something like, Facebook and Instagram ads, as they may be a better fit to build some brand awareness. Can you share some real examples of how local lead generation impacted one of your clients?  One of these the companies I just mentioned had that old school mentality. They had never invested $1 into marketing. They were really skeptical and hesitant at first, they didn't really understand the benefits of being online. They just really didn't get it. They wondered why they should be spending more money than they ever spent before on advertising. So, one of the neat things that we did for them is we did some conversion rate optimization. We added a simple button to their site when people get on their homepage just said, “Call us now”, or “Request a quote”, or “view our past projects”. There weren't the right calls to actions on their site initially, so we switched them, and the number of leads and conversions went up 191%! What is Conversion Rate Optimization? Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take the desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise. The CRO process involves understanding how users move through your site, what actions they take, and what's stopping them from completing your goals. Moz Do you have a Pro Tip, something interesting, shocking, surprising, insightful, to leave our audience with?  Google has a number of ways for you to get in front of your customers. For example, you have Local Service ads and Google ads, which have higher costs and lower click-through rates than organic searches but are located at the top of Google or in the Google Maps section. So that is an important place to be. One of the things that have worked for me in the last little while, to get them ranking in the Google Maps, is just adding some keywords to their business name and their Google My Business. It's a neat little trick, but it works. And it actually brings more business that their way. So, for now, it works. I'm all about doing what works and not about following what Google has to say.  In terms of optimizing a Google My Business profile, in order for them to get, you know, show up in the maps, I would definitely: Update your Google My Business profile and fill it out completely, there's a descriptive place for description products and services, make sure you fill that out. Add some keywords in a natural way to your business name there and Google My Business, I would make sure you're getting good reviews. And, if the reviews include the keywords that you want to show up for, as well, that's definitely a bonus. And make sure that you are responding to those reviews when you get them. So those three things definitely would help. RELATED CONTENT: Master Modern Marketing: How to get more online reviews for your business with Chekkit Connect with Daniel: More Hot Leads website | More Hot Leads on LinkedIn | Daniel on LinkedIn If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode, we speak with Barb Gagne, Director of Demand Generation at Wistia.  We discuss an incredibly interesting project called 'One, Ten, One Hundred'. Here is a short project overview to get you started:  ‘One, Ten, One Hundred’, is the title of with Wistia's first ever video docuseries. Wistia partnered with a video production agency called Sandwich, to come up with a creative concept and produce three video ads to promote Soapbox,  with a production budget of $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000. (Learn more on Wistia’s site) Wistia has a video team and they shot behind the scenes coverage of that production and made it into a four-part video docuseries. And the goal of the project was to explore the relationship between creativity and money. And does money actually impact creativity? So, ultimately, the goal was to test which video would produce the most app downloads of Soapbox. What is Soapbox you ask?  Soapbox is a Chrome extension that enables anyone to record, edit, share, and measure presentation videos. Today’s Topics: What is the current state of video and what are some growing trends? Deep dive into the ‘One, Ten, One Hundred’ video docuseries project What areas of video production and distribution are often misunderstood or under-appreciated? What should a SMB consider as the main goal of videos they produce? Pro Tips Here are some highlights from our interview with Barb: What is the current state of video and what are some growing trends? One of the trends I'm most excited about is when brands create long-form episodic video content. And, this is where brands and creators dive deep into a particular topic. And, they tell a story through a series of long form videos, which also aligns with our business strategy. And I like this, because long-form video allows brands to dive deeper, and have people engage more with their content. So, it’s a way to provide educational and entertainment value beyond the products and services that your brand offers. And it helps you build your brand in a really meaningful way. “We think that longer form, episodic video content is one of the most exciting and creative mediums to pop up in recent years, and we’re excited to get in on the action.” RELATED: Master Modern Marketing: How to develop your inbound video marketing playbook So, one of the common questions that I get from marketers at small and medium businesses is "How can I do video marketing with a limited budget? I think there's a misconception that you need a big budget to include video in your marketing and communication strategy. But in fact, you can do a lot with a very limited budget. For example, if you have one produced video, there's lots of ways you can repurpose it; you can shorten it to share on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can make it into a vertical version to share an Instagram. Or you can even make it into a video thumbnail to use in your email. Or if you don't even have one piece of produce video to repurpose, that's okay, you can just create a video using your iPhone or with Soapbox, which is a Chrome extension from Wisteria that allows you to record your screen and webcam at the same time.’ Well, I think it's a long-form episodic content is something that I think a lot, not a lot of businesses are considered right now. Because they always think the thing that they have to do is the shorts, you know, product overview, or maybe a video ad to generate, you know, conversions from for their product, and those are absolutely things that you should be doing. I would encourage other businesses to consider producing longer form or maybe episodic content, to build more of a story about your brand, and provide the educational and entertainment value to keep users on your site. Because once they're on your site, and they're spending more time with your brand, they then will see the value in your brand. And then they will start to explore the products and services. So, it can be used as the gateway to be able to get them in get to know them within your brand.  RELATED: Wistia's Blog - 4 Companies Producing Episodic Video Content, Big and Small A Deep Dive into ‘One, Ten, One Hundred’ Project Project Overview: So ‘One, Ten, One Hundred’, is the title of with Wistia's first ever video docuseries. And this is where it was to work with a video production agency called sandwich video, to come up with a creative concept and produce three video ads to promote soap box with a production budget of $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000. Wistia has a video team and they shot behind the scenes coverage of that production and made it into a four-part video docuseries. And the goal of the project was to explore the relationship between creativity and money. And does money actually impact creativity? Results: For the Soapbox video ads, we had three videos, with three very different production budgets, and I wanted to find out what video will be the most effective and efficient at driving product installs, would it be the video that was shot with a production budget of $1,000, 10,000, and $100,000. or $100,000. So, to test this out, I used Facebook and YouTube to test at scale, which provided us with the flexibility to move the budgets around based on performance and optimize in real time. And what we learned was that across the board, the video that we created with $10,000 production budget performed the best based on our goals. It had the lowest cost per install across both Facebook and YouTube. And, I think it has to do with that $10,000 video ad deliver the strongest story about what soapbox is and how it can be used. It all came down to the storytelling, the $1,000, one to have enough of the story to showcase the product. And the $100,000 version was just over the top with this production, so the $10,000 was like the perfect blend of both. Additionally, our goal for that was to achieve the lowest cost per install. And it was consistent across all media partners, you know, that the $10,000 ad was the winner at achieving our goals. So, to promote the docuseries, we had a two-minute trailer to promote it. And again, we turned to Facebook and YouTube as our primary paid partners. But we also tested the video ads and Reddit and text ads and core as well. And we promoted the series use the trailers three weeks prior to the series being released online. And during this stage, we captured email addresses of those who wants to know when the content was released. And, we came away with a lot of great learnings not only from that phase, but we had another phase that included promoting the series once it was released to the public. And we're still gathering learnings now to this day, because we're still promoting it. So, what we learned was that people really appreciate in crave this kind of long form episodic content. In addition to tracking sessions, so landing page with the videos and video views, we also have tracked engage video views, which was we defined as being having to watch 25% of the video. And, in the first two months of the content being released, we were able to generate 484,000 engage video views. And, we also learned that early promo phase, where we had the trailer promoting the series before it was released, the project then far exceeded our expectations. The trailer promo was great a capturing and creating interest in the series. And it was really helpful in building buzz around the project and generate interest in the series. And during this short three-week promotional period, we generated nearly 7000 leads the cost per lead of less than $5. And we also learned that we can use One, Ten, One Hundred project, or other video docuseries to build an audience pool for marketing of future video series. And each time that we do this it is going to be easier and easier to build that reoccurring audience base. What areas of video production and distribution are often misunderstood or underappreciated? I think one would be script writing, which I think can seem really intimidating. But I found that having a process and framework and place, is crucial to writing a good script. You could start with a simple brief and include, what you want your audience to be, that consumes the content, what the key takeaway should be, and how the video be used, whether it be on your site, or through other additional promotion, for example, on social, and that really helps with the writing process. And, I would say like, when you're writing your script, keep it conversational. Read it out loud a couple times, and just keep practicing getting really good at it. What should a small to medium-sized business consider as the main goal of videos they produce? I would think about using video to drive more engagement with your audience. I know, we've been talking a lot about that with the long-form episodic content. But I really believe that you know, if you provide a lot of value in your videos, whether it be educational, or, entertainment value, it’s a great way to keep them watching the video and stay on your site for longer. It really  is great thing. So again, I would encourage folks to consider creating episodic video series a way to do this, and also to help your company achieve their goals.  Pro Tip: First of all, set goals. As digital marketer, I often get overwhelmed with all the data that is available. And it's often easy to lose sight of what you're trying to do with your marketing campaigns, because there's the access to data is just in abundance. So, I would say when evaluating your videos, like look for metrics, outside the standard ‘view’ or ‘play’ metrics. I would look for other metrics such as time spent with brand, which will give you an indication of engagement with a brand. It will tell more of a story. So, video views and plays are great. But if you can get people to watch 25% of your video, 50 or even 100%, that's way more valuable. And, you should be evaluating and optimizing off those engagement metrics, rather than just the click or the play metrics. And I will also say, look for opportunities to play, and display your videos as a series either as like a carousel ad, or sequential in advertising, or as a video question on your website. Because, once someone has watched one of your videos, they're much more likely to consume more content and display the videos in a way that makes it easier for them to watch related content is key there. Connect with Wistia: - Wistia.com - Instagram/Wistia - Facebook/Wistia - Twitter/Wistia - LinkedIn/Wistia Connect with Barb: - LinkedIn Profile Connect with Sandwich Video:  - Sandwich.com - Instagram.com/Sandwich - Twitter.com/Sandwich - LinkedIn/Sandwich If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode, we speak with Keelyn Lewis, Head of Talent and Brand Partnerships, from Cherry Pick Talent.  We present a detailed introduction to influencer marketing, and we discuss a case study where they generated over 56 million in video views on YouTube for a client!  Today's Topics:  1. What is Influencer Marketing? Influencer marketing (also influence marketing) is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole on social media. It identifies the individuals who have influence over potential customers and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Wikipedia Here is an example of a project Cherry Pick Talent did with YouTuber Wengie. This video has over 11 million views on YouTube and she has 13 Million subscribers! Watch Video 2. What is the difference between Affiliate Marketing and Influencer Marketing?  There is actually a lot of overlap between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing. Affiliate marketing pays a commission on actual sales generated.  Influencer marketing is more of a brand deal where an influencer is paid to create and distribute content for a brand - regardless of sales.  Where the overlap occurs, is when an influencer has a paid brand deal but also can earn affiliate marketing revenue if they generate a lot of sales.  Typical sales rep compensation is a good parallel in explaining how affiliate and influencer marketing are different but work together. There are generally three ways sales reps get compensated: 100% base pay (similar to influencer marketing) 100% commission (similar to affiliate marketing) Base plus commission (similar to a hybrid model) 3. Where is Influencer Marketing going and where should a small to medium-sized business start?  First of all, there are three main levels of influencers:  Micro-influencers have around 5-10K followers. Brand deals are a good way for them to build their status. They could earn around $150/post on Instagram or more. Mid-range influencers have between 10k-200k followers. New brands often look more at follower /subscriber base, but engagement is more important. Macro-influencers have more than 200k followers and could earn 6 figures for a single post! Keep in mind that there is a ton of work on the influencer's side due to the creative, filming, editing, etc. needed to create the content, not to mention their investment in building their audience as well. So, macro-influencers command the largest investment but also present the greatest reward for brands.  4. How can brands evaluate the results and return on Influencer Marketing?  There are a number of metrics and results that brands can use to measure ROI, but, engagement is typically the most important metric.  Additionally, brands don’t want to sound too 'salesy' so they focus more on brand awareness and social engagement. However, many app and game brands are able to directly measure results for downloads, so there are some cases where conversions are the goal of influencer marketing.  Further to the point above, influencer Marketing can work for all three stages of the Buyer's Journey, but the awareness stage is the most common stage.  Awareness - "I think I might need X" Consideration - "What are my different options for X?" Decision - "Where can I buy X?" 5. Case Study: We get into a lot of detail on a case study but here are some of the measurable results.  * 47 YouTubers participated | 1 Competition | 3 Charities | 56 Million Views on YouTube!  RELATED CONTENT: Influencer marketing and online reviews are closely linked as they both increase a brand's online credibility and the level at which they will appear in searches online. The more credible, and the more a brand is engaged with, the more Google will show the brand in searches.  Podcast: How to Get More Online Reviews Featuring Chekkit More about Cherry Pick Talent:  Cherry Pick Talent is a boutique influencer agency that specializes in partnering top social talent with dynamic brands. We have worked with thousands of international influencers in 17 different countries and 6 different languages. We are headquartered in London with offices in Canada and the US; allowing us to work around the clock to make sure that even the tightest of timelines can be met. Connect with Keelyn Lewis on LinkedIn.  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we speak with life coach, podcaster, and entrepreneur, Katherine Koroll.  In recognition of International Women's Day, we speak with Katherine about the common roadblocks and opportunities she sees with her women entrepreneurial clients.  We also dive into why she has built a very specific business model. HINT: She doesn't want to be limited by trading time for money.  Connect with Katherine:  On Instagram On Facebook On LinkedIn On KatherineKoroll.com Listen to the Freedom To SHINE Podcast!  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode, we speak with Patrick Edmonds, Chief Marketing Officer at Proposify.  Proposify makes it easy to create beautiful online proposals that are impossible to ignore. Professional, interactive, and mobile-friendly. Your clients will be so impressed they’ll have no choice but to say yes. What are the biggest benefits that Propisfy has to offer?  Proposify helps you:  Get the proposal in front of your customer faster and have as little friction as possible for them.  Gain customer insights. You can see if they opened it, how long did they look at it, how many pages did they view, what pages did they ignore, etc. Create more beautiful looking proposals. Save significant time.  Case Studies: New Lawn: An artificial grass company can turn quotes around in just 15 minutes, which is a huge advantage.  Sea Monster Studios: Saves 20-25 hours per month in administration.  Sandler Sales Training: Sometimes had to wait a month to get the contract back from their client, and now they can do that in 24 hours and they a 90 response rate! What types of businesses is Proposify good for? Highly transactional non-personal (e-commerce). Highly personalized sales - 1 to 1 relationship. May also call these quotes, contract, agreement, bid, pitch, etc. about us, service offering, legal contract, digital signature, etc. B2B service related industry agencies, consultants. B2C - construction, cleaning, hospitality, event planning, HVAC, Roofers, etc. Features: Integrates with many CRMs. Templates (case studies, bios, etc. Share online and have full tracking. Full design editor. Embed video (testimonial, personalized message). Protips: Shorter is better Keep fees simple - offer small medium and large options Faster is better - within 4 days are 11 % more likely to close, It takes 7 days between the opening and signing off across their customer base The average proposal sits in an inbox within 26 hours! Contact Patrick or Proposify at:  Patrick on Twitter | Patrick on LinkedIn  Proposify on Twitter | Proposify.com Related Content:  How to get more online reviews for your business with Chekkit If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng.

In today's episode, we speak with Clint Clarkson, Founder, eLearning Alchemy. This is part 2 of a two-part podcast series.  The purpose of this episode is to conduct a marketing audit of eLearning Alchemy and have a live coaching call with Clint. We discuss the many things that are great with his business, and the opportunities for improvement.  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, and get a FREE marketing audit and LIVE coaching call, please apply HERE!

In today's episode, we speak with Clint Clarkson, Founder, eLearning Alchemy.  The purpose of this episode is to conduct a marketing audit of eLearning Alchemy and have a live coaching call with Clint. We discuss the many things that are great with his business, and the opportunities for improvement.  Below is a summary of the marketing audit and live coaching call:  Strengths: Website, social, and promotion: 1) Comic - The L & D Comic Series is outstanding. We are most impressed that Clint tested various marketing tactics for 5-week periods to test what resonated best with his market. It was the 5th comic in the 5 comic series where he noticed a surge in engagement. He committed to doing 5 more and as they say, the rest is history. Comic #100 is complete and being released shortly. 2) Podcast - The eLearning Podcast is a long-form style of content where Clint can go deep into e-Learning strategies and share his philosophies. Podcasting is a long-game strategy but this has a lot of potential as the company grows. 3) Thought leadership - Though Clint doesn't see himself as a thought leader, through his speaking and social media presence he has positioned himself as an expert and someone that can facilitate discussion and engagement. 4) Linkedin - Clint has amassed close to 14,000 followers on LinkedIn. While the exact number of followers isn't important, the fact that he is building an audience is significant. In many cases, creating content is easy, it is finding a message and medium that resonates with the market that is the challenge. Clint is in the enviable position of having high engagement plus a large audience 5) Twitter presence - Similar to our comments with LinkedIn, Clint has a strong presence on Twitter and has many engaging discussions and Twitter chats to date.  Opportunities for Improvement: 1) Website Technical Overview (speed/content, etc.): NOTE: As of recording this podcast, Clint's website wasn't completed but it was within one week of being live.  HubSpot Website Grader: https://website.grader.com/results/elearningalchemy.com GT Metrix - https://gtmetrix.com/reports/elearningalchemy.com/vCWb6iXI Website speed is critical Compress EVERY image on your site. Use free tools like www.tinypng.com. Use no image sliders. Period.  Use compression optimization plugins. See the top 5 plugins. Delete unused plugins. They are not necessary and add weight to your site.    2) Analytics:  Add Facebook Pixel (Read this for sure Hootsuite blog post). You will need a Facebook ad account but you don't need to run adds until you are ready.  Ensure Google Analytics is installed Add conversion tracking Read https://optinmonster.com/google-analytics-101-how-to-track-your-conversions-step-by-step/ Funnelytics - This is a FREE campaign mapping tool, and it is very helpful for mapping out your marketing strategy.  3) Lead Prospecting:  Sales Navigator - This tool can be helpful to target the right type of prospects. Learn more from LinkedIn here. You are going to need some sort of CRM email mgmt. system. Farmers Marketing uses HubSpot's growth suite. It gives you a lot of functionality at a reasonable price for a small business. https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/growth-suite. Click on 'starter'. Many of the tools they offer, such as their CRM, are free.  4) Campaign Set-up Jeff Walker's 21-day Launch Formula - One this I really like about the Product Launch Formula is it teaches you how to treat new initiatives, campaigns, products, or services, like a big deal. If you published a book you wouldn't just float it out there. You would have a full launch campaign. This strategy can be applied in many areas of your business.  Build your 'value ladder'. Where do leads become customers? Is there a clear path that a prospect would take? What would they buy first? What would they buy next? Etc.  5) Overall Philosophies: The Googles and Facebooks of the world, want to provide a positive experience for their users. At a high level, those that run good businesses and provide what the market wants, get rewarded (more exposure and lower overall advertising costs).  Don't ever try to trick Google, Facebook, or the market.  Always ask 'Who Cares?'. If the answer is no one, then don't communicate it. Find a way to get people to care or find ones that do. For example, doing a month of native LinkedIn videos could be tiresome if they are sales pitches, but, if they are filled with fun and insightful commentary on a specific comic, for example, people likely would care.  What does your brand stand for and what do you offer the world? Do your website and everything you create clearly communicate that? Check out Building a Brand Story by Donald Miller. It is an excellent book that will walk you through challenging yourself about what your business stands for.  Website promotion - Outside of announcing it is new, most, if not all people, won't care. In short, promoting your new website just highlights what you have to offer, and doesn't speak to your client's pain points - unless there is some new functionality that is really valuable to them. If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, and get a FREE marketing audit and LIVE coaching call, please apply HERE!  

In today's episode, we speak with Daniel Fayle, Co-founder of Chekkit.  Chekkit is simple to use yet is a hugely important tool to help businesses capture positive reviews from their clients. We discuss the importance of generating reviews on your bottom line. we dive into some stats on consumer behaviour. And we talked about how and where to get started getting reviews for your business. RELATED: Chekkit Case Studies We cover a lot of important topics for small and medium-sized businesses here on the podcast. But getting reviews is by far one of the most important topics. Press pause on the podcast for a second and Google some local businesses around you. Well, obviously don't do that if you're driving right now. But, what did you find? I bet you were like me and found that many of these companies had very few reviews and some even no reviews. I know of many businesses, you know, some businesses doing 10s of millions, even hundreds of millions a year with no focus on generating reviews.  Yet, many companies hope that doing nothing will help fix things. Think about this. When are you more likely to leave a review without being prompted?  Usually, it's when you have a bad experience right so generally when you do nothing you collect more negative reviews and you should if those negative reviews actually were a true reflection of your business you'd be out of business by now but those reviews don't represent your business, do they? Most people love your company that's why you've been successful to this point. So, this head in the sand strategy leads companies to have their reputation dragged through the mud when you Google a company or look on indeed TripAdvisor home stars etc. You often see reams of negative reviews from disgruntled customers are past employees peppered with the few positive reviews from customers. As you can tell, I'm pretty passionate about this topic. And I'm amazed by how many companies don't take generating reviews seriously in today's day and age. And that's why Chekkit is on the show today. I encourage you to stick with us for the entire episode. And, I'm confident by the end of the podcast you're going to be excited to drive more positive reviews your business and more importantly, you will know how to drive them efficiently and consistently. Need more convincing? Check out these stats from BrightLocal! 97% Search for local businesses online 93% Read online reviews about local businesses Most consumers look at 2+ review sites before making a decision 85% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation 77% of consumers think that reviews older than 3 months aren’t relevant Some Common Review Sites: 1) Google My Business 2) Facebook 3) Trip Advisor 4) RateMD 5) Zomato RELATED: Chekkit e-book and resources If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, and get a FREE marketing audit and LIVE coaching call, please apply HERE!

In today’s episode, we dive deep into modern web design. Our expert guest, Lindsay Creedon has close to two decades experience in the marketing and web design world.  Today's Topics include: 1) What is the role of modern web design? 2) 5 key factors that every modern website must have 3) 4 areas for businesses owners to get started with when building a new site 4) Finally, a PRO TIP that is sure to save you money any time you work with web designers.  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, and get a FREE marketing audit and LIVE coaching call, please apply HERE! Read the full transcript below: Lindsay 0:00 So that is what could be the million dollar question because it is endless. And this is probably the most asked question. And it's also probably the least satisfying. Yes, sir. Okay. Because it really does range, it ranges on a couple of factors. And I would say, one, the experience of the person you're working with, so like, you know, are you getting your nephew to do it for you might be $500 and expectations are low, you know, no offense to the nephews, but, um, but, you know, and it can, it can go upwards, even in the small and medium-sized business, you know, we see a lot of people who, you know, are upwards of, you know, 20, you know, north of $20,000 on a new website, but that's not the arena I really deal in. So, I would say the big range would be probably around two to 10,000 in my world is what they're looking for. Lionel Johnston 1:01 Hi folks, this is Lionel Johnston, with the master Modern Marketing podcast, and that was Lindsay Creedon, Lindsay has close to two decades in the marketing and web design space. And she is definitely an expert specializing in modern web design. In today's episode, we discuss with Lindsay the role of a modern website we also get into the five key factors that every single website must have. Then we transition to four areas of focus when you're building a new website or if you are updating an existing site Lindsay also shares a pro tip that is sure to save you time and money anytime you're working with web designers. As you heard in that short clip, she has a lot of great insights and great tips for you that you can implement in your business immediately. So I encourage you to stay with us right to the end, as there's a lot of great gems that you can take and apply to your business. So let's cue the intro and dive right in. Announcer 1:48 We really love marketing, telling stories and sharing ideas with others to help them achieve their goals. You enjoy growing businesses through digital marketing or would like to learn how to take your knowledge and skills to the next level. You're in the right place. Welcome to the master Modern Marketing Podcast. Lionel Johnston. Lionel Johnston 2:09 Hi, Lindsay. Welcome to the Master Modern Marketing podcast today. How are you doing? I'm doing great, how are you? Great, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show today. I've been really looking forward to this because, you know, we have a great working relationship. And I know you've got a ton of great insight that you can share with our audience today. So I'm looking forward to diving right into that. And just before we have you introduce yourself, Lindsay, I just wanted to give a quick overview, again, of how the podcast typically works. The majority of our guests on our podcast actually are small and medium-sized business owners. And what they actually do is they apply to be a guest on the podcast, and then we're able to do a digital marketing audit of their business. And then we actually have a live coaching call where we're able to give them than that, you know, tips on how to improve their business, they can go off on their own and do that, or they could hire someone or work with farmers, you know, to be able to do that work. But that's generally the majority of the guests that are on this podcast. The other part of it, which I really enjoy a lot is having experts like yourself, you know, and you're an expert on the web design, and you're able to share your insight to these small and business small and medium-sized business owners of what they need to know to build a run an effective business. And again, specific to web design. So are you ready to jump right in? Lindsay? Yeah, let's get to it. Alright, great. So how about if we could just start off if I could just have your say, your name and a little bit about the company that you're running over there. And if you have an interesting anecdote that you'd like to share, that would be great. Good. Well, my name is Lindsey creative. I've worked in design, web design, print design for almost 20 years, the last 17 years or so I've worked with a focus on automotive marketing in my sort of nine to five world. But I also do a lot of freelance work in the web design website building category. So as I mentioned, I have kind of done a lot of different design work. I started out actually, as a print designer. Sounds a little archaic these days. Lindsay 4:11 But yeah, yeah. So you know, doing Print Layout, logo, design, branding, that sort of stuff. You know, it teaches you a lot of great things about just sort of the basics of design and type biography. But I always sort of had this real passion for the digital side of, you know, website, they didn't really teach that when I went to school, but it's something I sort of always did in my free time for myself, and I found myself spending more and more of my free time and kind of doing projects for friends and friends, businesses, and yeah, it just sort of took over my life. And I found myself working on it more and more with small businesses. And, and it turned into a large freelance sort of career on the side for me, Lionel Johnston 5:00 do you have clients all over the world now, do you not? Lindsay 5:02 Yeah, Yeah, I do. Actually, you know, I think I'm, we have clients and have had clients maybe on like, four continents now at this point. So, yeah, I've met lots of great people through it just keeps growing. Lionel Johnston 5:20 All right. Well, that's, that's great. Well, I definitely am very excited to have you on the podcast. And Lindsay, as you know, we've done some work together on some different client projects. And I have shared this with you individually. But, uh, definitely want to share this on the podcast as well. You know, I've really been very impressed in this situations where we've had the opportunity to be able to work together, you're definitely one of the most talented people that I've worked with, especially in the web design arena. And you're very, very easy to build to work with, and a very professional and you do great work. So really, all the things that you would look for, you know, in someone to do business with you check off all those boxes. So yeah, my pleasure. And it's been great working with you. All right. You're welcome. My pleasure. Well, how about Lindsay? Why don't we jump right in? We're going to talk about the first question, which is the role of a modern website. So I just wanted you if you could take a moment I thought that would be a good starting point is what does a modern website look like? I know there isn't just one way to build to do things. But in your expert opinion, what do you feel the current state of a modern website is? Lindsay 6:27 Yeah, that's a big question. Definitely, most of what I've learned has come from seeing, you know, what's not a modern with a lot of the Small Business worked on some of the things that make a great website, I would say, it definitely starts a few rules for businesses. So whatever your website looks like, it's got to generate leads for your business, whatever that means to you. Whether it's, you know, people buying products are people picking up the phone, so they're definitely the modern website has to be a lead driver for your business, it also has a sort of serve as a calling card for your business. So there's a lot of, especially people I've worked with, who might be in the service industry, so that, you know, they might be doing home renovations or, or that type of work. And clients tend to backcheck someone they're thinking about doing business with. So you know, as soon as you sort of here have a business, the first thing most people do is go to their website and see what they're all about. So, so that modern website should really reflect your professionalism, reflect your brand, what you offer, you know, people are asking themselves, like, is this business professional? Do they seem trustworthy? You know, are they able to provide the type of level of service that I need. So I think the purpose the overarching purpose of a website for companies should do those things, it should help you generate new leads, but it should also reinforce your business to people who've already heard about you from different places. Lionel Johnston 7:58 Yeah, that's a great summary. Lindsay. And one thing I found interesting is the very first thing you mentioned was around the lead generation, and that it has to drive leads for your business. Again, as you mentioned, that could be various different types of leads, of course, but that's one thing I have seen working with different, you know, small and medium-sized businesses is, you know, the websites of yesteryear or almost treated like a one-stop shop for everything about that business, almost like an encyclopedia on the business, right? And they know, businesses just kept adding more and more and more to it, and no one was really protecting the site and saying, no, that's not appropriate for the site, or that's not needed. But things definitely have changed where people are looking at at the website as being their number one sales rep, you know, would you agree with that, with that comment? Yeah, Lindsay 8:45 yeah, that is a really great way of putting it, especially with small or medium-sized businesses, where you need that you need your website to do a lot of heavy lifting for you because you don't have, you know, dozens of people out there working for you. So I think that is a really fair assessment. Lionel Johnston 9:01 So let's look at, you know, we've talked about what the role of a modern website is, let's look at the, you know, this, the status and the things that it needs to do, what do you say, a modern website looks like, and, and functions like, and what I really mean, there is, is what, what really matters for that website to be able to do and, and I guess a small and medium-sized business owner could sort of look at it, like, Who cares? You know, there's a bunch of tips and different things they could do about a website, but what should they really care about? And hopefully, we can talk about why they should really care about that as well. Lindsay 9:35 Yeah, there's definitely sort of some non negotiable is, I think, that people should think about no matter how they're doing their website, whether, you know, they hired a professional or whether they're, you know, trying to kick it out themselves, I think that there are a few areas that are really important, obviously, because of my background, I always I'm going to lead with design, but design is important. I think it's, it's what your visitors notice, you know, without seeing everything under the hood, it's that first impression. So I think design can be really crucial to projecting the image that you want to project. So is it you know, it hopefully, you already have a great brand for your business that includes a logo? So, does the site really mirror that and reinforce it, you know, does it look connected to your business? Or does it look like you just kind of filled in a template, and it's, you know, different fonts, different colours, so, you know, different logos. So, I think it's important that the branding is really strong and cohesive, threw out everything, including your website. And just also part of that designers are, there's a clear call to action, you know, people you've, you've maybe spent money getting them to your website, like, now, what do you want them to do you know, is, is it submitting a form or buying a product. So I think really taking that to the forefront before you get too caught up in the pretty things is, you know, am I telling, you know, visitors what I want them to do. So having some prominent calls to action on the site as part of the design is really important. So that's one thing that we noticed a lot in the sites that we're redoing for clients at this point is that either, you know, it looks like it was done in 1994. So the design just overall isn't really very modern. And also, there's just no clear call to action. Lionel Johnston 11:23 So Lindsay, specific to the design, you know, what types of people are generally building websites? If it's contracted out? And what I mean, there? Is, there are the people that are more artistic or more functional, there's a bit of a combination of both of those. Lindsay 11:38 Yeah, that's a really great question. Because most people don't realize like when they're hiring someone, there is such a vast amount of specialties in the web world. So, you know, some people are really strong in one area, and some people are, are strong in another. So ideally, you want to deal with someone who can, you know, someone or a company who can execute on all the different areas like, you know, the functionality under the hood, as well as the design, you know, oftentimes, that means having two separate people if you have a more complex functionality, but if you're dealing with, you know, like a smaller company or freelance person like myself, you want to definitely make sure that they can handle all the things that are important to you. So, you know, it's great to have a very functional website that can, you know, do all the code things you need it to do. But if it if it doesn't look great, you know, are people going to follow through with it. So, there's definitely a wide range of skill sets out there. So I think having an idea of what you want as an end product will help lead you to that right person, or people or agency who can help you with that. Yeah? Does that answer your question? Lionel Johnston 12:46 Yeah, no, yeah, that's, that's great. So thank you for some additional information there. Okay. Lindsay, so great points on the design front of a modern website, what are some other things that really matter for small and medium-sized business owners about their website? Lindsay 12:58 I think functionality is another huge area, it covers a lot of ground, but what type of website are you going to have, you know, what do you need it to do. So I think, sort of mapping out some of your goals for your website. So you can ensure that you have the right functionality and that the person you've hired to help you can execute on that functionality. So it might be something as simple as, you know, a contact form. But, you know, it can get more complicated if you're if you have an e-commerce store that's going to be selling things. And handling, you know, payment integrations and shipping. But, you know, it's a great idea to have a bit of that thought out before you engage with someone to build your site. Because that can really affect, you know, the type of person or the type of people you're going to need to hire to, to get it done for you. So, functionality wise, just having a good understanding of, of what your goals are, is really going to help get you the result, you want. Another thing you're really going to want to consider whether you're redesigning the existing site, or, you know, starting a new website from scratch is the search engine optimization of your site and the performance of your site, it can be sort of a complicated field, for a lot of people, a lot of people might not even understand what that means. So maybe I'll just explain that a little bit. Yeah, so, you know, people throw around the term, you know, SEO search engine, a lot of people are getting marketed to by companies that want to, you know, help them get to the first page and whatnot. So, So in a nutshell, search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website through content and structure to be presented higher in the search results. So for example, if your business is selling, you know, widget XYZ, if someone potential customer goes into Google and searches, widgets, XYZ, how far down the list of websites is your website going to be. So you know, that dictate all a lot about your traffic to your site, your conversion of your site. So it is a really important part and something that should be thought about, I definitely have worked on a lot of sites for people where, you know, no consideration was, was given to that originally, because it wasn't, wasn't maybe a big thing a number of years ago, but it's got to be sort of front and center in your plan. Lionel Johnston 15:24 I appreciate you sharing this. And one of the things that Lindsay them that is a goal of the podcast is we can't expect every small and medium sized business owner to be an expert about everything in the marketing environment, or being an expert on SEO, but it's crucial for them to at least have a working knowledge of it, and know what the topic is, and the importance so that way, that way, when they are being, you know, pitch by someone about making those improvements, they, they at least can identify if that advice is sound or not, right. And if they should know, continue to pursue working with that, that company or person. So it's really great to provide that background of the importance, the importance of SEO, and what it is, Lindsay 16:06 yeah, I think, you know, as you mentioned, it's great advice, like, you don't have to be an expert, but you just, you have to know what's important. And if the person you're dealing with isn't talking about it at all, like that should be a bit of a red flag, because, you know, you could have the redesigning an existing site that you have, because, you know, maybe it doesn't look great anymore. And you can really wreck a lot of the work that you've put in over the years with your content. And you can actually see your search ranking drop considerably if you were to redo your site. So yes, it may be beautiful now, but he said he was going to find it. And that is a lot of lost ground, that can be hard to get back. So you want to make sure that you're working with someone who's going to take that into account for you. Lionel Johnston 16:49 All right, there are other Are there any other topics that are really critical for the modern website to be able to take care of, Lindsay 16:57 yeah, for sure. I mean, I could go on. But definitely, another one that sort of links into SEO is the performance and speed of the website. So one thing that a lot of people don't realize is that Google for one, they really Wait, the performance and the user experience on your site high when they're returning results. So if you have a very resource intensive website, that doesn't take the end user into account, it could affect your ranking. So if you're serving huge images, huge videos, not taking advantage of what's called caching, you know, all these sorts of technical aspects of it, you can sort of lose points, if you will, also just the experience of the end user. So if you know what it feels like when you go to a website, and you're waiting for it to load, and you're waiting for it to load. And, you know, research shows that people won't wait around. So if things aren't loading quickly, they can get to, you know, get to the task they want to do quickly, they're going to leave your site and go to the next. So I think performance and speed are again, things you don't have to be an expert in yourself, but things you should be asking about, or, or hearing about from the professional you're working with. Lastly, I would say security that, you know, it is a hot topic these days with, you know, data breaches. And you know, you don't necessarily think about it in a small business aspect that much. But you're always collecting data from people on your website, whether that's through contact forms, or if they're making purchases with you, even just by having an analytics like Google Analytics installed on your site, you're collecting data about your visitors, and you just have to, you know, think consciously about how are you taking steps to protect, you know, protect your business's data, but also protecting your visitors data. So that's, again, should be a piece of the puzzle when you're talking about your website. Lionel Johnston 18:54 Okay, great. Well, thanks for the summary on those different components of what a modern website should. So we've talked about, you know, the role of a modern website, what are some of the critical components that the website needs to be able to do for a business, so we can move on to the next topic of really where a small and medium-sized business owner can get and get started. But I think we'd be remiss also if we didn't talk about cost here, right? Because I'm sure there's a wide variety of different options out there. So how much does a modern website that has a nice design and great functionality? How much does that cost these days? Lindsay 19:30 Well, that is what could be the million dollar question because it is endless. And this is probably the most asked question, and it's also probably the least satisfying answer for people because it really does range, it ranges on a couple of factors. And I would say, one, the experience of the person you're working with, so like, you know, are you getting your nephew to do it for you might be $500 and expectations are low, you know, no offence to all the nephews out there. But, but, you know, and it can, it can go upwards, even in the small and medium-sized business, you know, we see a lot of people who, you know, are upwards of, you know, 20, you know, north of $20,000 on a new website, but that's not the arena I really deal in. So, I would say the big range would be probably around two to 10,000 in my world is what they're looking at, Lionel Johnston 20:30 what would that website look like? Now, my question is, is clear there? Lindsay 20:35 Yeah? Are you talking from a pricing standpoint? Or from a standpoint? Lionel Johnston 20:39 Yeah, more? So what that website would look like? Yeah, it doesn't have to be the pricing so much. But yeah, what would I need it? You know, if I'm launching a small business, what do I need to have, at a minimum, you can imagine, you know, homepage and the about information, that sort of thing, what would it what would like, I guess a minimum be that someone would need on a website? Lindsay 21:00 Okay, that's a really, really good question. Because this is something we're explaining to people on the daily. So what I usually advise people to do is, obviously you need a homepage, then you should plan on doing some sort of about page that explains that you know, about you, your business has been a very unique point of difference, if you are, you know, most businesses we deal with are offering some kind of service or services. So you should plan on having an individual page for every service that you offer. And this kind of goes into the SEO portion of it, which we can discuss. But you should plan on having as opposed to having one page that describes all your services, you should plan on having enough content to fill out a single page for each service that your business offers. And then another great thing to consider is a testimonials or reviews type page for your website. So somewhere where people can see other people's experience with dealing with you, and then a contact page. So something that can help generate some leads and direct people of how to get in touch with you. So I would say, yeah, if I had to itemize it, it would be homepage about page services pages, potentially, a reviews or testimonials page and contact page would make up a basic site for small business. Unknown 22:23 Okay, Lionel Johnston 22:24 well, that's a great, great checklist, and then they're up and running. Right. And as your business grows, and they can make things more elaborate and add more service pages as they're offering, you know, more services to the market. So Lindsay 22:36 yeah, absolutely. It's a great starting point for, for someone and like you say, they can really grow with it. And and it can really develop over time. Lionel Johnston 22:45 Well, that's, that's great. I'm glad we took a moment just to talk about to that question specifically. So let's see, we've talked quite a bit about the different website and what's, what's needed, and so on. So now are, you know, say, three to four important factors or tips with that small and medium-sized business ownership, consider when they're getting started with their website? Like, what are some of the main things that they really need to, to think about and have in place for their site? Lindsay 23:07 Yeah, for sure, there are definitely some things you can do beforehand, as a business owner, that is really, you know, going to improve your end product when it comes to your website. So I'd say the first thing and one of the first things I ask people is, do you have a cohesive brand, so do you have a brand for your business already, you know, in a brand isn't a logo, a brand is sort of the whole the whole thing. So that might encompass a logo and might encompass you know, the voice of your company, you know, that sort of thing. So you don't have that it's something you should consider beforehand, and it might just be a logo to start it that, you know, ideally, you have sort of a full package that explains like your ideal customer, and all of that. But even just having a very, you know, strong logo to start with, you don't want most web designers to design a logo for so it's a good idea too, to just consider that where you stand right now, as far as having a logo and some branding in place. Lionel Johnston 24:10 Yeah, it's funny, that is funny, you mentioned that Lindsay, actually, one of the things I've come across working with different people is, again, because I'm in the marketing arena, I see the difference for myself, but people outside of marketing, I found don't really get it, they sort of look at like, all design, all designers are the same, right. And someone that has a print background for design is very different than a web designer, someone that's an actual developer building websites is greatly different than someone like yourself, that is actually a designer, you know, built building websites. So yeah, that's, it's funny that you mentioned that, that you really need all these niche specific skills, right? for different areas of the business and the website. Lindsay 24:52 Yeah, yeah, no, it's so true, you can definitely tell the difference, I will, maybe I'm a little more biased. But you can tell us someone who spent some time working with a professional on their logo and brand as opposed to someone who hasn't. But you know, not everyone can afford them, the big money for that at front. So just working with someone competent, to make sure that you have something that reflects your business is a good place to start. I think one of the other things that you really want to sit down and spend some time thinking on before you move to the website is about gear, businesses, key offerings, and the point of difference you're bringing to the market that you definitely are going to want that highlighted with your new site. So like full disclosure, I've worked with you on these exact same before for clients and helping you know, when you've done a great job of helping people refine their offering, and really understanding what they're bringing to clients. because like you said earlier, when we were talking, you know, you can throw everything at a homepage. And really, all people want to know is, what can you do for me? What are you the best that I can't get anywhere else? Yeah, so I think just spending some time really digging in and going, you know, what do I offer, you know, that's different from my competitors. and expanding on that, you know, it could be what they call it, you know, your elevator pitch of, you know, if you had 30 seconds to explain to somebody in an elevator, what your business was about, what would you say? So, having, yeah, having a good idea of what you bring that's different than your competitors will really help direct your website and the calls to action that you have their Lionel Johnston 26:38 points here. Lindsay 26:39 One thing that I run into a lot is, you know, people say, I need a website, I need a website, and then they don't consider how they're going to get traffic to that website. So that's another factor that they should consider. You know, just because you put a website out there doesn't mean people are going to find you right away. So I think just spending some time thinking about how my planet to get traffic, you know, do I have a really big network, I own personal or professional, so I can, you know, send that out an email, and I'm going to get, you know, some traffic or am I going to have to spend some time, you know, doing some paid advertising, whether through social media or through Google. So, again, just thinking about that, as you're planning it out, so that you don't spend a ton of money on a new website that nobody ever sees? Right? Lionel Johnston 27:25 Yeah, Lindsay 27:28 another area, I think that you want to think about before you engage with someone would be your budget. So, you know, your budget is going to determine, you know, a little bit about who you're going to be working with, on your project. So, you know, thinking about what you're comfortable spending ahead of time so that you don't, you know, end up overspending to is important. So I would sort of get some of that down on paper as well so that you can find someone who's a good fit. Lionel Johnston 27:56 Yeah, that's a really tricky area, right. And I know even on the side, when I'm putting pricing together for someone for quote, and, you know, they, they ultimately are comparing just the final number, but there's so many, you know, you could build a site that would be dramatically different than what I may do to build a site, right. And, and the prices could be the same, or it could be radically different. But the, I definitely can see the challenge for, for the business owner being able to compare all of these different quotes that they're getting, and people they're considering working with, right, Lindsay 28:28 yeah, and, you know, it may not even be one person, it may be several people that you end up working with, like, you know, as I said before, there's a lot of sort of niche expertise in the weapons business. So understanding what you need your website to do for you, you're gonna be able to bring the right people on board, or at least ask some of the right questions. So, you know, it may be one person, like, oftentimes, I'm working, you know, solo with someone, because I have a marketing background, you know, I have some background in SEO, I have some bad background in, you know, the more technical aspects of security and that, so I can be sort of the one stop shop for some small businesses. But a lot of times, if you're looking for a really custom type of application or functionality, you may need to bring on some different people to help you. So, you know, you might have a website designer, you might have a cold, you know, a coder who's working on some of the underhood stuff, and you might have a separate SEO or marketing person also, depending on how far you want to take it. So, you know, thinking about that in conjunction with your budget to make sure you're allocating in the important areas, I think is key to Lionel Johnston 29:39 all right, so. So based on your comments there, it's pretty likely that someone needs more than the help of just one nephew. I guess Lindsay 29:47 they might need a whole gaggle of a few handfuls of nephews, yeah, no, he wants to be you know, you wanted, they talked to different people, talk to other small business owners in your network and see what they've done. Who made that wish to see about finding some of those, those key people to help you. So it's important. And then lastly, I think it's the boring part, but needs touching on is there's a lot of, sort of, I call them housekeeping items with websites. So there are things like buying your domain and who owns your domain? Who's going to host your website, you know, do you need email addresses? Are you moving away from someone else that you're going to have to have a difficult conversation with? These are things that you know, whatever new person you're working with, is, is going to ask you about. So at some point, they're probably going to send you a list of a bunch of technical questions, asking sort of what you have, and who's doing what right now before they move forward. Lionel Johnston 30:49 All right. Excellent. Excellent point, sir. Thank you. So let's shift gears a little bit. Lindsay and I can put some of the links in the show notes so people can check these websites out for themselves. But could you share a couple of examples, maybe one or two websites that you've worked on that you're really proud of, but even more so than being proud of them. But, you know, ones that you feel are a great example of a modern website? And then if you can even just take a couple of points and explain what makes them so good from both design in a functional point of view? Lindsay 31:21 Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to, I think, one site that I'm happy with overall. And what it's done for a client would be a Keener Jerseys. And you and I have worked on a couple of things for this client before together. So I know you're familiar with their site, you know, it's a few years old at this point. So, you know, we're looking to probably over the next year or so maybe update some of the design elements, but I think there's a lot of good stuff happening under the hood here. That's a good example for people. So just an overview, this was a website redesign. So they had an existing website, but it was lacking for them in a few areas. So we tackled it from a content standpoint, a design standpoint, and then very much so from an SEO standpoint, as well. So just looking at their homepage, there's a, you know, a strong call to action above the fold, you know, get a jersey quote, there's a cohesive look to their brand, you know, using their colours and, you know, some consistent fonts and logos. And just I think it reflects the personality of the company, which is also important. So, yeah, it's when we talk results-wise, they've had a lot of good success in their search ranking since updating their sites. So they've moved into the number one position for a lot of their key search terms. So yeah, I would, I would count this one as a success. Lionel Johnston 32:52 Great. Alright, thanks for the overview of that. And you're mentioning there's, there's one other one that he thought would be a good example to talk about. Lindsay 32:59 Yeah, totally different industry. One that I worked on a couple years ago was for plumbers, Arctic Lodges. So a bit of background there a pretty well known Arctic fishing launch up in the Northwest Territories, they have a really a lot of history, a strong reputation. So this was a website redesign again, to get that more modern looking functionality for them. So maybe I'll just take you through this one. A little bit of a great way. Yes, Lionel Johnston 33:32 it looks great about it open right now. And I've got actually an extra wide monitor here. And the full screen is filled with, you know, close up video people fishing and looks really, really eye-catching for sure. Lindsay 33:45 Yeah, thank you. Like, I was lucky enough that this client particular had a lot of media. So they've had because of their sort of notoriety, they have a lot of shows, go and film there, a lot of fishing shows, so they have access to a lot of great media. So a lot of videos, a lot of great images. So, you know, one of the key things that I wanted to bring, especially their homepage is, is just really feeling that excitement of the place as soon as you hit the page. So integrating, you know, I'm not a big advocate of always integrating video onto the homepage for some performance reasons. But for this one, it really made sense, you know, you can't beat it when you're looking at, you know, 70 pounds. Yeah, like the dream, right. So for their target market, I think that it was important to have that, so. So yeah, that's the video that you mentioned, at the top, Lionel Johnston 34:39 one of the things I find striking, as well as you, have this really, you know, eye-catching and captivating video. So there's really lots, you know, for you to be able to process as the viewer, but at the same time, the content on the page is very limited, like, it's a very start page, right, it just really has the, you know, plumbers, Arctic lodges, and then, you know, to experience plumbers. So if, if it was a like a traditional website, where they've got tons of information about, you know, the business and the owners and all this stuff, there would be so much so it would be hard to really see anything. So, I like the contrast between the two with eye-catching video. And then the starkness of that the copy Lindsay 35:20 Yeah, and I think that's a good example like this, you know, is an investment that their clients are going to make and visiting there. So I think sometimes you also want to consider the buyer journey. So you know, someone's not just going to click on a button and spend $10,000, you know, so depending on your business, I think you have to understand that sort of that customer buying journey. So for this one, we, we really thought it was important for them to see, you know, what it's all about. So that that button that clicks to experience, plumbers, watch some of these videos kind of get familiar with what they can expect is sort of that first step in getting them to understand the whole experience. So that was important. And then just some of the little design details. So I don't know if you noticed, but if you see the tree line, that's kind of Yeah, so they're in the Arctic. So they're kind of what's called, like, above the tree line, almost. So, it's this idea of sort of going above the tree line and just taking some of those little details to make it feel really custom to their business. Lionel Johnston 36:20 So all this great. Lindsay so what is the feedback been from the customer here? Like the owner of the lodge have they had some initial you know, comments from their customers or their partners at all? Lindsay 36:32 Yeah, the feedback was great, I think because we incorporated you know, throughout the site a lot of images that was one of the first feedback is that people just love seeing this place they love right reflected so they got tremendous feedback from their their customers and from the people you know, the people who own it and work there they felt like it better reflected the quality of experience that they offer their guests so the you know, we did an email launch campaign for them and they had a lot of great feedback and you know, there have been referrals from this site so I think overall it was received really well you know, it's hard like this places and institutions so whenever you change anything, there's always that risk that people will like it so it's a little nerve wracking but in the end I think they were really happy with it. Lionel Johnston 37:27 Alright, awesome. Well thanks for walking us through some of your work there and and more importantly again, what makes different functions about beneficial for those business owners so if I'm a small or medium sized business owner and I want to learn a little bit more about web design I don't want to be a web designer I'm running my own business of course when can I go to to learn a bit more information about modern websites and and you know just start my journey of learning more and more about this topic and it's important Lindsay 37:53 yeah it's it's honestly it's it's tough there's it's such an ever-changing industry and you know, the rules and the benchmarks change every day one of the places I like going to that just sort of is a lot of neat stuff collected together is web designer news website so we can post the link for that as well. And then another place I like looking is actually the HubSpot blog. I don't know if you're familiar I am actually Lionel Johnston 38:21 Yeah, yeah I've used to HubSpot for a number of years actually I have HubSpot on the farmers marketing website as well. So yeah, it's a great tool and I said I stolen information from not really stolen information from HubSpot for many years before I ever became a customer. And yeah, they really are our leaders at producing great content for the Modern Marketing World. Lindsay 38:46 Yeah, absolutely. I think that they really can open people's eyes because they talk a lot about, you know, the different things like, you know, lead funnels and, and just sort of on page design, and just, I just find it really interesting and they deliver right now really accessible way I feel like so that's a couple places and, you know, just any, you know, keeping up on different blogs will always sort of get you tuned into the new all the new stuff. But, you know, within web design, there's, there's so much to consume it, it can be really a rabbit hole for people. So, yeah, I definitely don't x, you know, your small business or no one expects you to be a Web and Digital experts. So I think it's good to sort of be educated on the basics, but I wouldn't stress out if you know, you don't understand everything there. Lionel Johnston 39:42 Okay, let's start moving to wrap things up here. Lindsey, I've got two quick questions for you. But one is thought it might be a fun question. Is there one question that you wish you'd never heard again, you know, and working with the small and medium-sized business owners? Lindsay 39:57 I don't know what never hear again, but I could probably hear less of, can I just do this myself? You know, can I just go on Squarespace. Or, you know, can I just use wicks and do this myself and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to seem rude saying that. But, you know, you certainly can do a certain portion yourself. But I think comparing hiring a professional too, you know, doing it yourself isn't always a fair comparison. So, that's something I could definitely a debate I could do without so great. Lionel Johnston 40:31 Yeah, and I respect the fact that you did mention that the technical answer is yes, they could do some of those things on their own. Right. Lindsay 40:39 And over time, yeah, yeah, they could learn a lot. And, and, and, and certainly, like, I've seen a lot of small business owners who do a fantastic job on their website. And I don't want to discount that. But, you know, when you're comparing someone who does it for a living, who's trying to give you a reasonable quote with Well, you know, should it just cost a couple hundred bucks, you know, it can be a little disheartening, Lionel Johnston 41:03 yeah, that's a great observation and comment there. And, yeah, I actually know someone that they run a, a, a local cleaning business, and they are so advanced in their marketing, output them up against any modern marketer like they're really outstanding. At the same time, you know, if you're a dentist, I know, you have dental clients, and I've worked with them as well, you know, if you've gone to school for, you know, four to 10 years to become a dentist, you don't necessarily want to be an expert at a web design us that's not the best place to spend your time and your resources, right. So Lindsay 41:37 no, and I think people can add, especially small business owners get can be so hard on themselves, like, you know, you see all these commercials, and, you know, do it yourself, get your own website builder. And, and so that, you know, they do just think and good on them. Like, it's, it's a great endeavour to do. But then they beat themselves up, why, why they can't make it look the way they want, or why it's not professional. And I don't think that's being, you know, fair themselves, like you said, like, people go to, you know, go to school for it for you for years to be able to do that. And some people just have a knack for it. Some small business owners can do it all themselves, but I don't think you should be beat yourself up over it if you can, Lionel Johnston 42:17 for sure. And one thing I found is, there's a lot of things in marketing that are seemingly easy and doing 90 95% of it is pretty easy for a DI wire. But when you get those challenges, that's when things go bad. Just get like a home renovation example. I can share. I've changed tons of tons of toilets in my day, we own a few houses and so on. And then I had one that just kicked my butt and it was like a three-week toilet repair by it was it was unbelievable. Shouldn't have been 15 minutes. like three weeks. We don't have a toilet in this one looks like it was it turned bad. Lindsay 42:55 That's a great example. Because like, could you have spent if you would spend, you know, two and a half of those weeks on your own business? You know, would that have been better time spent in hired a plumber for sure. Lionel Johnston 43:07 Sure. Lindsay 43:08 So sometimes, yeah, the lesson is sometimes just like, go hire the flower. Unknown 43:11 Exactly. Lionel Johnston 43:13 That was the takeaway from that one. And, you know, unfortunately, I ended up hiring a plumber after all, because I was actually so frustrated. I ended up I didn't know what the time but I cracked a pipe because I was hammering on it. And I caught a leak elsewhere in the house to save a couple bucks. And I'm not hiring a plumber. So anyway, Unknown 43:34 there's a lot of great life lessons. Lionel Johnston 43:37 That was that was one for the ages for sure. So so. So definitely, people could do a good chunk of this work themselves. But a lot of people that were talking to and after listening to this, they're likely going to be hiring someone. And Lindsay, you made a comment to me a number of months ago, and I thought it was such a great comment that I wanted to add it in all if you almost all of the podcasts if not all of them. And that was around being a good customer. So I wanted to ask you about that. If I'm, again, a small and medium-sized business owner, and I'm working with someone like yourself, it's a very talented web designer, how can I be a good customer? And what I mean, there's How do I stay out of your way? Or how do I make things as efficient and effective as possible? And how do I ensure that I'm getting the best value possible for the money that I'm spending with you? Lindsay 44:31 Yeah, that's a good question that I I appreciate you asking that. Um, I think there are a few things you can do. I think, you know, vetting if you've gone to the trouble to someone, and now you're engaged with them on this project. One thing is to trust their advice, you know, you've trusted them enough where you may be paid a deposit and you're, you know, you're going to spend some money with them. So you vetted them, I think you have to sometimes trust their advice. Even if it's maybe not what you would do, at least, you know, think on it, we often run into the issue of people in all this sort of relates to all designing, but who designed for themselves and not for their clients. So that's a big thing that is so hard to remove yourself from, because, you know, you have an opinion on the way things look, and it's valid, but it might not be the same as who your target audiences. So I think just really taking into consideration the advice that professionals giving you and, and giving it a try would be the first thing I would mention. And I've been really lucky in this respect, that it's, it's not an issue normally with a lot of the clients I work with, but it is it occasionally happens where somebody wants something that fits their taste, and not necessarily their clients taste, and, you know, we want something that's going to perform really well for them. So it can be disappointing sometimes. Another thing I would say is before you, you know, we talked about this earlier, is whether you work with someone to develop or whether you develop yourself, it's understanding what your most marketable messages to ensure a great call to action on your site. So, you know, a lot of web designers and developers that you work with, doesn't necessarily have the marketing background to help you with this. So I think that's something that you don't, doesn't get talked about a lot, where they're just going to say, you know, what content Do you want on the site, and then just put it on the site for you. But, you know, that may not perform great for you, again, it's throwing everything into it, but not really having a refined call to action. So I'd say, you know, if you don't feel comfortable, or if you don't, yourself, have a marketing background, seek out someone, you know, whether it's a business coach or a marketing professional, or if you're lucky enough to have someone you know, on your web team who can help you with this, then definitely refine your message of like, if I could tell customers one thing when they get to my site, is that one thing and understanding that before you get started, I know, this is an area that you have a lot of experience in, and we've worked together in this. So that's probably something you can relate to, with some clients. Lionel Johnston 47:12 Absolutely. And you made a comment to about not, you know, not having many challenges with your clients. And, you know, from an outside perspective, I think one of the reasons that that is the case for you is you're very thorough on the front end, great. And even one of our clients that we're working with, together, we had lots of information that we had to provide before you got started on the web design, right? And we had to ask those questions. So the owner, what is that one thing? How do you know, it should just be a professional or casual, you know, a website? What's the culture like? So, so, yeah, you forced us to go through all of those questions. I don't mean force in a bad way. But it was, it was a good thing because we had to think about these questions. And more importantly, we had to deal with the owner of the business to make sure that they agreed, and they were on board and that it matched their vision. So yeah, when you take the time on the front end, and that's what professionals do, right, you know, take the time on the front end, it helps avoid a lot of those problems down the road. Lindsay 48:09 Well, and I think it gives a great value to the business owner, because, you know, having that sort of directed discovery of those things that you can reuse that in so many areas down the road. So you might use that in other marketing material, you know, like, once you have that refined, so I think that it can be, you know, sometimes it can seem like, Oh, you want me to answer speed questionnaire, but the, it's a great takeaway for both sides. And, and it will actually save you money on your website design, because it, you know, you'll have fewer revisions, you'll have sort of that common vision, and you can make sure that the person developing your website sees your business the way you want your customers to see your business. So I think that's, that's definitely key. Another again, kind of a bit in the housekeeping department. And the other thing would be to definitely have that clear understanding of who's going to be writing the content for your website, and where the pictures and photography is going to come from. So is that something that your, your web your agency, or web designer-developer is going to do for you? Or are they expecting you to bring that to the table? So I think that's just something that's worth talking about up front so that you can make sure there's no misunderstanding sell the room on that note also is, you know, there's a lot of back and forth going when you're developing a website, and they're gonna have a lot of questions, and you're going to get a question. So I think just providing timely feedback in the process really helps. You know, a lot of times, you're not the only client that they're working with. So, if you kind of have delayed responses, they're probably moving on to the next project and getting them really engaged in yours. If it's been a month of waiting for an answer, it's going to drag on for you. So you want to sort of strike when the iron is hot. So if you can get back to if they have a question for you. And if you can get back to them right away, they're going to stay really engaged in your project, and it's going to get wrapped up sooner. Lionel Johnston 50:10 So it's just great tips Lindsay on how to be a great client. And actually, as you were, you know, speaking through those different points, and I was, you know, looking back to my home renovation example is very similar than, you know, to a lot of large projects that you're dealing with professionals, sometimes, again, because a website can seem easy that the people don't take as much time as they need to through the discovery stage. But think about if you're paying someone 40 or 50,000 to renovate your kitchen, you're going to have these discussions, right? You're going to have mockups of things, you're going to have questionnaires, you know, several meetings, you for sure are going to know who does what work on that project. And I guess my point here with this is that the small and medium-sized business owners can take that same approach to their website updates as they would with any other large scale project, especially since the websites so critically important to their business, that they need to make sure that that that project goes through as efficiently and as quickly as possible. Lindsay 51:10 Absolutely, I that's a great analogy. You know, if you're investing any sum of money, I think that you're going to want to take that time do the plan, you know, make sure you have the right people execute the plan and get the most for your investment. Lionel Johnston 51:26 Lindsay that was really excellent. And I'll add some details show notes so people can see exactly, you know, the points that you walk through of, of what a website needs to have, and what things they should focus on, and how to be a good customer. So really lots of valuable insight and appreciate you sharing that with us here today. Lindsay, Lindsay 51:43 thanks so much. I know it's a pleasure talking to you. That's great. Lionel Johnston 51:45 And for all the small and medium-sized business owners out there. If you'd like to build your business and start capitalizing on the digital world, I'd encourage you to apply to be able to be a guest on the master Modern Marketing Podcast will actually conduct a brief marketing audit and then have a live coaching call on this podcast. So at the end of the podcast, you'll actually know where your business stands. You know what you need to work on how to do it, and then we'll send you on your way and you can either choose to do that work yourself as we talked about today with Lindsay or about hiring someone or you can even choose to work with someone you know, here at the farmers marketing Of course, but at the end of the day, you know, with that podcast, you'll know exactly where you stand and how to be able to take your business to the next level. So check us out at the farmers marketing.ca and you can fill out your application right there again, Lindsay, thank you once again, for everyone else, listening today until the next podcast onward and upward, Announcer 52:40 the master Modern Marketing podcast with your host Lionel Johnston podcast for lovers of marketing and growing small businesses. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please rate and review. We'll catch you next time on the master Modern Marketing Podcast.  

In today’s episode, we review the marketing audit of Kevin's business and we have a live coaching call with him to discuss what his biggest marketing opportunities are, and you get to be a fly on the wall. Kevin Burgin is the host of CJOB Radio’s show, The Main Ingredient. He is also responsible for the Winnipeg Beer Festival and Manitoba Pizza Week. Kevin’s entrepreneurialism, enthusiasm, and drive, is making a big impact on the local food and beverage scene. If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. See below for some of Kevin's main takeaways and action items from our call.  Main takeaways from the audit and coaching call: 1) Improve technical issues, such as: - adding Google Analytics and the Facebook Pixel  - Reduce image size by using a tool like TinyPNG.com - Determine if moving his sites to a new host will improve speed or not.  2) Ongoing Marketing:  - Work with vendors to produce guest blog posts throughout the year.  - Tighten the analytics components to better capture the true value of the festivals. This will help attract more vendors but more importantly, demonstrate to all parties the sheer value these events create.  New Tools: 1) Linktr.ee/ to add multiple links to an Instagram bio. See live example here: www.instagram.com/farmersmktng. Look at our bio.  2) Headliner.app to make enticing video thumbnails for audio files since you can share strickly audio files on social media. See the video thumbnail for this post as an example.  3) Use Funnelytics to map our your digital marketing campaigns. Its mapping tool is free and total transformational for marketers. See this real-world example of Funnelytics at work below.  Summarizing the audit: Kevin's content, social media, and engagement with his audience and vendors are stellar. As mentioned in the podcast, his business is in an enviable position. The hard things like content and engagement are already in place and the technical changes are easy to knock out. Well done, Kevin!   To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, and get a FREE marketing audit and LIVE coaching call, please apply HERE! Read the full transcript: Kevin  0:00  I've already checked it out. I'm on the page right now. That's three things I'm stealing from you immediately. Lionel Johnston  0:06  I folks, this is Lionel Johnson with a master Modern Marketing podcast and that was Kevin Bergen. from Kevin Bergen. com Kevin is a host of CJOB Radio's show The Main Ingredient. He is also responsible for the Winnipeg Beer Festival and Manitoba pizza week Kevin's entrepreneurialism enthusiasm and drive are making a big impact on the local food and beverage scene here in Winnipeg. In today's episode, we review a marketing audit of his business. And we also have a live coaching call to discuss what his biggest marketing opportunities are. And you as the listener today get to be a fly on the wall. As you heard in a short clip, he found a number of great ideas implement in his business immediately. So, I encourage you to stick with us right to the end. As I'm confident if you do, you will find the exact same thing for your business. So, let's cue the intro and dive right in. Announcer  0:53  We really love marketing, telling stories and sharing ideas with others to help them achieve their goals. If you enjoy growing businesses through digital marketing or would link to learn how to take your knowledge and skills to the next level. You're in the right place. Welcome to the master Modern Marketing Podcast. Michael Johnson. Lionel Johnston  1:15  Hey, Kevin. Welcome to the master Modern Marketing Podcast. How are you doing today? Kevin  1:19  I'm pretty good. How are you? Thanks for having me. Lionel Johnston  1:22  Yeah. Hey, my pleasure. I appreciate you coming on the show here when this podcast was in development. And just in its infancy, you are one of the first people that I thought of that would be an excellent guest to be able to have on the podcast. And I know we've talked about this in the past a number of times. But just to give you a quick overview. Generally, the process with the master Modern Marketing podcast is that will meet with small business owners like yourself, and really dive into their business and try and find some opportunities that we can help these people to help their own business. So, we're going to dive into some things on your own business and see what's great, and what are some opportunities for improvement. And then at the end of the podcast, will basically do a summary and pick one or two priorities and send you on your way. So, you can tackle those things on your own or have someone help you out with that is that sounds like a good process for you today. Kevin, Kevin  2:18  that sounds great. I appreciate you taking the time. Lionel Johnston  2:21  All right. My pleasure. So, we are I should mention, we are in the circle of trust here. And all of us have worked or it's on our businesses. So, it's not to point out anything that someone's doing bad to make them look bad or make fun of them. Again, it's really a learning opportunity for all of us to be able to get better businesses, and then share this with our listeners. And they can apply the same principles to their businesses. So how about Kevin, why don't we just jump right in here. And if I could have you actually introduce yourself, if I could have you say your name other than just Kevin and the company and companies that you represent. And if you have an interesting adding anecdote that you'd like to share with us, please feel free. Kevin  2:58  My name is Kevin Bergen. And one of the organizers of the Winnipeg Beer Festival and the organizer of Manitoba pizza week, I also have a food show on which is all about food is called the main ingredient. And a lot of those events probably came about because of my hosting the show, there's a lot of different small businesses out there that I felt were a lot of mom and pop shops that didn't really have the opportunity to market themselves properly. So, these events give smaller businesses and smaller breweries the opportunity to do that, you know, Lionel Johnston  3:35  that that's great. And you're definitely filling a need in the market. And I've been to too many of your events and festivals over the last couple of years. And, you know, I really am very impressed with the business model that you have created, you know, a couple things I find that is quite interesting one is you have your radio show, which, you know, helps, really helps you build your personal and helps in terms of your network and being able to connect with people and gives you a platform to be able to meet, you know, reach the masses, and then through the festivals, you know, you're also producing value for the business owners as you're mentioning, but also for consumers. So, it's, it's interesting how many people that you're able to provide value for a place to connect in a place for these businesses to grow. So, so definitely, kudos to you for being able to see an opportunity. And more importantly, I'm really impressed with you just taking action and getting things done, you know, and actually, some of the boat Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Kevin  4:36  No, no, it's all You go ahead. Lionel Johnston  4:38  Oh, I know, I was just going to mention one of the challenges that business owners can get in when we're living in the world of the internet is there's so much information and often, we get stuck, where we want things to be perfect. And then we'll take action. And, you know, there's a lot of great things in your business. But really a lot of respect to you, Kevin, for, for taking action and figuring out things as you've been building your business and helping people out. So, I just wanted to start here, just to be able to say that, that it's been, you know, have a lot of respect for you. And it's been impressive watching from afar, you building what you're building over there? Kevin  5:12  No, no, you know, what we've known each other, obviously, for we've known each other for a while, you know, personally, but kind of professionally in the last couple of years, and what you said about things not being perfect, or they don't have to be perfect is exactly that sometimes I found I was probably the kind of person that wanted everything to be perfect before I actually launch anything instead of just, you know, doing your research, starting a business or creating an opportunity and tweaking and learning as you go, because, again, there is a lot of information out there, but there are a lot of people such as yourself, that can help you help guide you through it, once you have things going to kind of tweak the machine and make it as perfect as it can be as you're running your business. Lionel Johnston  5:54  Yeah, that's a great point Kevin and actually have on one of my pages on the farmers website, then, you know, unless you speak with a fancy marketing agency is likely that you don't need one a, you know, and what I found from a lot of business owners and people like yourself is, yeah, it's just that little bit of tweaking or pointing something out that should change or could get better and then you can set them you know, on their way and they can take action. So Kevin  6:19  as I say, you and I go back and forth even from text messages and messenger on little pieces of software that make your life easier all the time. Like you have a like this deep bag of tricks that you always flog everything that you find him you know, he may want to try that you're trying to do this you know you may want to use that so that all that stuff really helps Lionel Johnston  6:40  for sure for sure. So, let Kevin let's dive right into the first section here which is the audit review and how about just before we do that in the spirit of you know, your beer festival. I ended up getting a couple local beers. So, I've got some barn hammer for trader in front of me and great you know, the one great city brewing monkey trailer Pale Ale and what we're going to have here while we enjoy our time together in podcast is a Trans-Canada Brewing the Blue-Beary Beer I've had at one time before it was it was pretty awesome. So, I'm going to be enjoying that while we talked the other night. You're saying you've got a local beer on your end as well as that right? Kevin  7:17  Yeah, I got my boys from Torque got the woody Belgian. But now that you've rambled on and said, how many beers you haven't your place. I'm kind of mad that we didn't do this in person now. Lionel Johnston  7:25  Wow, we should have but plans change sometimes. Right? So... Alright. Well, how about I'm going to open this beer here and get it going. This may not be typical on the podcast. But we're all ready to go and how we do a quick Cheers. And we'll jump into the audit review. Ready? 321. Kevin  7:41  Cheers. Lionel Johnston  7:42  Cheers. All right. And someone will be figuring out trying to figure out how we got the cheers noise when we're in different places. But you know, in our bag of tricks. Okay, so Kevin, let's dive right into this audit review. And actually, in the podcast notes, I'll be able to paste us some of the information from the audit. So, you know, future podcast, guests can get a bit of an idea of what the types of things are, that we're looking at. And I won't get into tons of detail. And I know you've had a few moments to review this as well. But, you know, since you have a number of different websites, I focus specifically on the one has a beer festival website for, for, for the purposes of this podcast, at least. Okay. But really, I looked at, first of all, the speed of the website and then the technical aspects, you know, which those are very closely related, and then the content and then your social media aspect as well. I didn't get into just to, you know, what I made it to too long, but I didn't dive into you know, really deep into SEO and backlinks and those sorts of things that are a little more technical than that, what we need to talk about today, but generally, that's, that's what I was looking at here. And, you know, what, have basically an A or C or, or an F grade. And between the two different areas, you know, if you look at speed, and technical and content and social are two different categories. Really, the as you see here, the biggest area to improve is on this the speed and technical side, and you've got lots of great imagery and some videos on your website. And those sometimes, depending on how things are uploaded. Can you know, slow down a website, I've also found that your host really makes one of the biggest differences in how fast your website can get. I know with farmers website, we got it up and running and but still hit a wall until we switched, you know, our host, and we were able to get a bump and speed there. But if we look at some different results here, Kevin. So, you have you know, like a see with your speed score and mobile a 19 out of 100 and desktops a little bit better. Is there anything there that surprises you at all? Or is that similar to either what you were expecting? Or you already knew that? Kevin  9:52  Yeah, I knew I definitely wasn't it wasn't premium, because I know there are things that can be changed in the back end that I want to change. I just haven't had time to change it. I'm surprised about a couple of the apps I know the page sizes are kind of big because some of the pictures need to be slim down the rather large and you and I talked about that before using good tools when I'm uploading pictures, not putting in ones that are rather large. So, I have another time to clean that up. So, it's surprising but not shocking, I would Lionel Johnston  10:22  say Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the image size. That was one thing when I first got into working on websites, you know, I didn't realize that you can upload a six-megabyte picture, you know, but using something like tiny p amp G, you know, really shrink that quite a bit and praising. Yeah, and Kevin, I know, you know a lot about this, but also, when you're doing site speed scores, you know, just taking one moment in time really isn't fair to a business or a website, because if there's a number of factors that can impact a website score, right, you know, total traffic, you know, and that that area and a whole bunch of things, right, you really going to Kevin  10:59  win. I know, in general, this one is probably you know, of course, it may be different on different days. But in general, I know that the things that it's failing or giving me different grades on are pretty accurate. Yeah, I know that you don't mean Yeah, Lionel Johnston  11:11  perfect. Well, and I'd say one thing that's important as you look at your business as well, especially with the, you know, the pizza fest and beer Fest, that those that at least at this point are more seasonal, where you have one big event. So, it's a little bit different than being in the e-commerce world where every millisecond really is making a big difference, right. So, you do have a bit of an advantage there where it's somewhat a captive audience, that people will find you anyway. But still, there's a lot of competition on the website. And for sure, speed matters, you know, and again, I know, I'm not telling anything that you don't know, in terms of the other improvements, you know, I want to ask you about, we're really the big things that we're most striking with some of the different tags and codes that I didn't find at least, and maybe they're there on there. But it didn't appear that you had Google Analytics on the at least this one site, and I know you aren't running Google AdWords. So that code wouldn't be there, of course, and then the big one is that, you know, the Facebook pixel as well. So, are those tools that you've looked at, at adding or, you know, have you made a conscious effort just not to have them on your, your website? Kevin  12:19  No, those are tools that I again, want to add. But time is an issue for with, with, with multiple events and multiple things, it's either, you know, I pay someone to do it, or I buckle down and add them myself. And, you know, for sure to improve the performance of the site and get more people to the site, Lionel Johnston  12:36  for sure. Now, you do an excellent job on the social side. And content side, I'll get to that just next Are you do run any Facebook ads, or Instagram ads currently, Kevin  12:47  right? When the events are coming, I do for sure, I don't do an all year round. And, the beer festival is going to be in year three. So, year three is, it's a lot easier, it's not the first time out of the gate. So, you kind of has a capital audience that gets larger and larger every year you do it. So probably a month or two before the event is when we really start ramping up with Facebook ads, and different kind of advertising and stuff like that. Lionel Johnston  13:14  Okay, well, great. And, you know, obviously, want to look at all of those areas. But the ones that really would stand out the most for me would definitely be getting that Google Analytics code on there. And then that the Facebook pixel, because once they're there, then you don't need to think about them anymore, right. And, but then you're able to go back and utilize them to help with your business. And I'll actually come back to the Google Analytics code when we talk about the vendors you work with. And in a few moments, anyway, those are some of the main improvements on the technical side. And then again, moving on to the content and social media side, you know, you have mostly always there and really been doing a super job is quite impressed with just the sheer volume of content that you're able to come up with. And the quality of the imagery, even then, you know, how some of the social posts are written the other, they're very, you know, cleverly written, and, you know, and getting a lot of attention. So, congratulations on, that definitely is a great thing that you're doing for your business. Kevin  14:15  Thanks. I appreciate that. That part of it as well, because of the job I do that part of it isn't a lot of work to me, you know what I mean? It just that's kind of the nature of the business. So, um, yeah, I appreciate that. It's, it's good to know them doing something properly. Lionel Johnston  14:29  Yeah, you know, I think that, you know, the content is great, but also what it was even more impressive, you know, looking at it, from my perspective, is the consistency, you know, and that's common, where someone can have a whole flurry of activity, but then, you know, it dwindles over time, but you're, you know, constantly engaging with people and trying to connect with businesses and connect with those consumers. So, so great, great work on that, actually. Kevin  14:52  And that industry is not really hard, right? People like beer, exactly like to socialize, I like beer, and I like to socialize. So, it's a, it's a no brainer Lionel Johnston  14:59  for. So, when one note I made, Kevin is that you're really in what I would consider an enviable position when I look at the audit. And what I mean, there is, if you had a website that was super-fast, and you had your Facebook pixel, you had your Google Analytics, all the things that we've pointed out that we could, you know, quickly fix if you had all of those things, but you weren't doing the content and the engagement and the networking with people online, you know, you wouldn't be in the position that you are right now. And it's much easier to be able to add some code to your website and change host to a faster host than it is to come up with hundreds and hundreds of really, you know, high quality and engaging photos and great videos and connections with people. So, that's, I mean, by your enviable position, that these are all really simple fixes, and just keep doing more of what you're doing. That's great. And fix a couple simple things and you'll be in at, you know, I feel a much better position, you know, moving forward, that makes sense. Kevin  16:00  Oh, hundred percent, for sure. Yep. No, that isn't. That is great news. Lionel Johnston  16:03  Super Well, I want to move on to our next section, we can move off from the audit review here and really look at some of the challenges, you know, for a small business owner, you know, I've been at these events as a participant, and I've seen the number of vendors there, and, you know, the people cooking food and serving a beer and, you know, checking people in and selling tickets, there's a lot of moving parts, or I have to imagine it's got to be, you know, quite a challenge to be able to keep all of these people organize and meet your timelines, is that the case or, or, you know, is it a pretty streamline processes problem free Kevin  16:44  it? Well, obviously, there's, there's never an event or festival that goes problem free, but because of the place where it takes place like it takes place at for Gibraltar, which is it's geared towards catering already like they do hundreds of weddings a year. So, when it comes to getting licenses, or an or a kitchen or certain things, it's, it's all turkeys, you know, I mean, so that eliminates a huge portion of organization right there. Plus, all of the beer vendors are used to doing festivals already, like all these guys go to flatlands Beer Festival and other festivals during the year. So, they all know the routine, you don't have to sit there and micromanage them. And they all usually have their own booths with their own logos and everything. So literally, all you have to do is tell them when you know what time to show up, you know, and where their spot is, what time are closing, and, you know, you just kind of giddy-up. So, okay, as far as festivals go, it's probably the easiest festival to run them. The main reason we did this festivals because I found that, of course, during my show, when I'm interviewing guys, all of them are doing their seven, you know, separate marketing doing their own separate thing, you know, I'm saying so this vessel was just an opportunity for them to use their separate marketing strategies, put them all together and get all the strength and power as a group and have a festival where they're not going to lose money. They can make a few bucks, but they can pour as many peers are wanting, they weren't going to lose any money. You know, we can all raise money for charity while we're at it. So, it just seemed like a like a win-win. Right? Lionel Johnston  18:18  Ya I know, that song sounds great. Well, thanks for sharing some background on that. And actually, I'm glad you mentioned the one part about the marketing and that was one thing I was curious about, you know, for, for these businesses that they're, you know, really in the early stages, you know, it's a couple people with a passion to brew beer or, you know, where the launch a pizza-related business, you know, what's, you know, how savvy would most of them be in terms of, of actual Modern Marketing, you know, do some, they really have a dialled in, or some it's completely foreign to them outside of these types of events.  Kevin  18:54  Well, if we're talking to beer guys, a lot of the beer guys, I'd say its half and half. Some are super dialled in John from Torque. He owned a marketing company for 20 years before he opened up a brewery. So, he, he knows what he's doing. Like, you know, he's, he's very, he knows a lot about marketing. Plus, he's open to learning new things about marketing, you know what I mean? Like, he's, he's just going to be a student of the game the whole time when it comes to industry. Like, if we're, if we're talking about pizza, you know, a lot of the pizza companies for the pizza Fest, that it's old mom and pop shops, you know, they've, they've, they've been making their pizza the pizza has, has gained a following or sold itself for the last 1520 years. But now, as you know, it's a new world we're in. So, either they don't know how to do it, they don't want to do it, even though they have a great product, or they don't know who to turn to, to actually get things done. So again, when it comes to festivals, that particular festival kind of gives everybody a market to collectively market as one, you know what I mean? So, all the while the people that don't really aren't, don't know a lot about marketing can kind of learn from others, or just kind of ride the wave for that weekend and find opportunities to, you know, find opportunities and learn from other people who are doing it properly. Lionel Johnston  20:12  or interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have expected the difference between the beer folks and the pizza folks in terms of their marketing know-how, and says, That's quite interesting. Kevin  20:21  Yeah, the beer, the beer guys, usually younger guys, right? It's about I'm not going to say young, but it's usually younger guys who are, you know, you got to be quite ambitious to open up a brewery, no matter where you are. It's not, you know, $10,000 investment. These guys are getting investors and investing millions of dollars to open these places. Whereas a lot of the lot of the pizza places I've been around for years, and it may have been open, you know, on a shoestring budget, because they had it, you know, it's not like, it's really expensive to make pizza, at least that, you know, way back in the day. And this was a different kind of mentality in a different crowd that are running two different businesses, even though beer and pizza go hand in hand, right? Of Lionel Johnston  21:00  course, very interesting, you know, regardless of how savvy they are, with marketing, either way, when you're creating a market for them to be able to meet with customers and, and share their story and share their food and beverages. Definitely a lot of value for the vendors, you know, to be gained there. Right, Kevin  21:18  right. And that's the best part especially for me, too, because a lot of times I'm dealing with the actual vendor themselves, not the customers. So, the beer festival kind of gives you a chance to talk to the people and the and the breweries. Of course, that's the number one thing to actually see their customers and hear what they have to say. And the customers really like that, you know, like back in the day with the big macro breweries, right, you would drink their beer you'd never get to see meet the brewer You know, that's unheard of. You never Of course, if you ever stepped foot in the brewery, it's not going to happen. No. Meanwhile you in Winnipeg can go to a taproom, you can hear their story of the different kinds of beers they come up with, you can even suggest something and go and see something back in a week later, they could be making this something that you thought was a great idea, maybe should try this. Or you know what I mean. And these guys are super open to everything. It's kind of, it's kind of fun. Plus, the guy, it could be your neighbour that owns this place. They're super down to earth. And there's no formality there. You know, because you're talking to some guy and you're having a couple beers, and everybody kind of loosens up your loose-lipped and you kind of just hang out so it's a great opportunity for Brewer to meet customer and just kind of get involved in the community right they're smaller and usually a lot of them are in places where there are reachable their touchable you can you can you can learn how to make beer and plus they're very good with each other. A lot of ones that have come up didn't have their own brewery, so you play select torque and embracing Hall all these guys are letting other brewers brew their beer in their facility like does that you know what I mean? Like, it's not like Burger King is going to go and make burgers and McDonald's because they're one of their places broke down, right? These guys have no problem with that, you know, they give advice to home brewers who are brewing beer in their home on you know, the guys will bring it in, they'll taste the beer and go yet, you know, what you should have done this kind of give them advice is just kind of a way of information sharing that I don't find in other kinds of businesses. It's way less cutthroat. Lionel Johnston  23:17  Yeah. Oh, I wasn't aware that. And that, that's great to hear about. And really, it's fostering the development of a community right for these foods. Kevin  23:25  So that's great. I'm fully right. Yes, billion dollar a year business, there's tons of business go around, Lionel Johnston  23:31  they have very interesting and I know from my experience being at a number of these events, like the vibe there has been really great. And I could see, you know, now that you're talking about the collaboration between the vendors, I, you know, looking back, I could see that, yeah, everyone was really friendly, and eager to help out and good to see Kevin  23:48  it's nice for people to say that actually follow through. Lionel Johnston  23:51  So, Kevin, let's move into the next section here. What I wanted to take a couple minutes to talk about now is just some ideas, looking at both opportunities to use, say, promotion with consumers and, you know, opportunities with vendors and have, you know, your business is way better than then I know them of course, I don't pretend to have, you know, all the answer. But I wanted to bring up a couple ideas and, and questions and, and see where they go. The first one I want to talk about was really on the content side. And, you know, I know we've talked a lot about, you know, the content that you produce, and I produce some of my own content, not to the same level that you do, but I know it takes a lot of work and a lot of coordination to be able to get, you know, people in the right place and the gear and so on. So, one thing I've, I've trained other, you know, small business owners on when they're creating content, as I've suggested, that they, you know, document things more so than trying to come up with an idea of what can they teach someone or what can they show, but one of my, my thoughts I had in terms of helping develop more content is looking at guest blog posts, you know, through the, the pizza and the beer industry, have you looked at that where, you know, you have, say, the annual event, but you're able to work with all of those vendors where they're producing unique content specifically for your website, you know, and then you're able to have, say, a theme every month or have a featured vendor of the month, but they're the ones that are producing the content not in a salesy way, but they're promoting your there, they're doing a video highlighting how to make a certain pizza, or how a certain type of beers produced, have you looked at, you know, having that type of content on an ongoing basis? Kevin  25:31  No, I haven't. But that actually is a really good idea, depending on who, you know, depending on the vendor, so that if we're talking to the beer festival, yes, that would that is something I would definitely consider, because a lot of their social media content is like, spot on, and it's usable. And, you know, you wouldn't have to teach them how to do how to create the content, whereas there's probably a handful of the pizza festival customers that are savvy enough to in order to do that. Does that make sense? Like, as I understand the whole point, it's kind of like, yeah, you're, you're marketing your event without really having to get your hands dirty? Like they're creating the content, you're both you're broke, you're both kind of winning? Where I think with the pizza festival, it would be it be more of the same. Okay, does that make sense? Lionel Johnston  26:22  Yeah, I would imagine you would probably find, it sounds like this is exactly what you're describing, people would be at a different level of sophistication. So, there could be somewhere they produce everything. And, and you don't have to touch it, you just upload it to your site. And there are maybe others that need hand-holding, or they want you to come out and take some photos or, or maybe something needs video needs to be produced. And then everywhere in between there, Kevin  26:44  right. And, and, and if I was creating something like that, I wouldn't want to slight the people who aren't, who aren't a savvy as the person that is, because in the person that is, is getting all this, you know, all this promotion and content. Meanwhile, the person who isn't is left in the dust, and I just wouldn't want to leave that person who ended up in the dust. So yeah, I will use that idea. Because it's, I think it's awesome. But then I'd have to keep in mind that whoever needs a hand, I have to make sure that that they're covered to Lionel Johnston  27:08  Yeah, one way I've seen this work, Kevin, in the past actually is an organization like yours would actually publish an editorial calendar to say, all of the vendors and say, Hey, we want to focus, you know, February is, you know, we're focusing on, you know, gluten-free or, and, you know, summertime, we want to talk about, you know, beer, this made with certain types of fruit, those sorts of things, and basically able to share that out. And then and then that, you know, people see what things fit their business really well. And then it's more now hand to hand to try and get the gaps filled in the calendar.  Kevin  27:43  Oh, I like that. I like that I do Lionel Johnston  27:45  well, and for people that are listening right now that maybe don't know the background of why we do this a big benefit why you'd want to have other people produce content for you. One is, it's obviously easier for you, your job is to produce the market and to the eyes and ears, right. And that's creating value for these people. But more importantly, Google and Facebook highly reward companies that are producing unique and consistent content. So that's one of the big reasons you know, to have that, and all of those companies, you know, produce that content, you're going to get links between your website so, so that would help out them and that would help you as well. Right. Okay. Kevin sauce. So, let's talk a little bit about the promotion to consumers here. And I wanted to ask you, you know, what are some promotions that you've run in the past that you've found have resonated with the consumer so far, you know, if it was an early bird offer or contest anything like that, you know, Kevin  28:39  it's Winnipeg, so usually, if you're giving away free things, people love it, right, like the contest for, for free pizza, or for the beer festival we have? Well, for the charity part of it, too. We give out gift certificates to them too, to the tasting rooms for the beer guys, we had a thing where you could win a beer for and along with the beer fridge came a keg from every participating Brewer for the summer. So, if you're not if you're a guy that likes the entertain, you had a beer fridge that came as a cake fridge, and you didn't even have to, if there were 12 vendors at the beer festival, well, you got 12 kegs delivered when whatever cake ran out. And, you know, for you to entertain your friends. So, a free beer fridge and 12 kegs that went along with it. You know, I think it's a no brainer, very hard sell. Ya know. So that raised a lot of money for charity with the pizza fest it was just giving out free pizza, right. So, a different pizza from different pizza vendors every day for like, two to three weeks before the festival even started, right. So that those ones really go over really well. Because like I said if sometimes it's nice to just be able to taste the actual product. And usually, you know, no one's just going to order one pizza. I don't know, anybody just orders one pizza. So, it's kind of a no brainer for the pizza vendor also prefer the person if they're going to order one. Sure, you get something free. If you're going to order to will, I get two for the price of one it was a lot less and the actually get the taste of the good product and the beer at the pizza vendors making some money too, right? Lionel Johnston  30:24  Yeah, for sure. So, for some of them, or some or most or all of the promotions and contest would people be entering the contest through your website, or they are entering it directly with the vendors. Kevin  30:38  They enter through my website. Lionel Johnston  30:41  Okay. All right. So, then you're Yeah, you're the portal there where they come in and Enter. And then you're capturing their emails and, and building relationships over time then, Kevin  30:50  right. So, you build the relationships over time. It's not 12 different small databases. It's one large database. And then when the pizza festival is over, you can market to everybody, you know, that one large database that you already have a captive audience for everybody who collectively participated. So you give them the pizza vendors as the year you know, as the year goes on, until the next event, the opportunity to market to all the people that were interested in the pizza festival, whether they having a special for, you know, gluten-free pizza that week, or they're giving out free pizza, or they, you know, whenever they have an event coming up, it's their first anniversary, 10th anniversary, whatever they want to market, we market collectively, they just send it to the they send it to the Winnipeg pizza festival group. And we do the marketing for them, you know, so its kind of helps us build the event, build that large database and help the people who really don't know how to market at all. They may be great at social media and maybe they don't know how to do email marketing, what are they going to do is say, you know, what, their what they want to market, they can either email it to us and we'll send it out or, or if they need help creating it will just take them the information on what they're doing. Create something, show them they say yes, we send it out. Oh, I see. Lionel Johnston  32:07  Okay, I'm actually going to come back to that in a moment when we talked about working directly with vendors. But no, that's great. Two different topics that I wanted to cover or two different items under this one topic here around promotions that I wanted to share is, you know, one of the things I've run with a number of clients recently, or some viral contests, and I know you've had a chance to enter them, and we won't take too much time talking about them. But basically, for those listening to that may not be aware of a viral contest, that's where someone can enter a contest. But they actually get rewarded for taking a number of different actions, you know, where they can share it on Facebook, or they can come back every day and win more entries. And for the clients have run this with we fed they've generated anywhere from about 250 leads so that every lead is a new email all the way up to almost 10,000 emails from the contest. So that's pretty cool. A way to be able to capture that engagement, build your brand awareness and get those email addresses. And then yeah, and then another similar opportunity, Kevin, our lead quizzes, and I'm not sure if you've done any of these in the past with any of your businesses, but basically, they're, they're really fun and engaging simple quizzes. And people love quizzes, especially on Facebook, you know, that's, that's one of the highest, you know, click rates and completions, you know, out of all the content on Facebook or quizzes, you know, anyway, so with these lead quizzes, basic and ask all these simple questions. So if you think about in the pizza and beer space, you know, you could ask about what type of food someone likes or and, you know, say they're answering questions, they get to a point where they answer that they're, they're vegan, you know, then you're able to have some sort of, say, pizza profile at the end. And then it could actually say, Hey, here's a couple vendors that would fit you ideally, right? Or here are some recipes to other make these types of pizzas at home, or, you know, on your side, you know, do you like fruity beer, stronger, stronger beer, you know, they're answering all these fun questions. And then they're able to find out what their profile is at the end. And then ultimately be directed to some recipes and vendors. But ultimately, you're, again, improving your brand awareness, capturing emails and getting a lot of engagement as well, Kevin  34:21  right. But then, but the customer is getting a lot of value out of that to instead of doing their own research or are actually going to be your vendors or pizza places individually and trying to find out something that works for them. Your, your information is captured every kind of thing to point them in the right direction from the start. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's great. I think it's awesome. Right Lionel Johnston  34:42  now, we spoke a little while ago about different tools. And I know we have lots of we've had lots of discussions talking about different tools in that again, the challenge is, we can have that I believe it's called the shiny ball syndrome, right? Or like, Oh, look at that tool. Look at that tool. And then you have a real mess because you're trying to, you know, coordinate all these different tools. So, we want to be careful that we don't try too many. But there are a couple Actually, I've come across recently that I again, know, you know, thought of you right away here. And the first one that I have is LinkTree. Have you ever heard of LinkTree before? Kevin  35:13  It's called what? Linktr.ee?  Lionel Johnston  35:14  Yeah, links tree. So, if you actually check out on Instagram, and believe you're still on your computer there. But if say you go to farmers marketing on Instagram, one of the challenges on Instagram, and it's a great platform and growing like gangbusters, and you've done a really, really good job on Instagram. It's great seeing the content you have there. But the one challenge is, you've only been able to have one item in your bio,  Kevin  35:41  right, Lionel Johnston  35:42  right. So what link tree is, is it's a website that you basically go to as, sort of like a bitly link or, you know, link shortener. But basically, you go to this website, and you're able to put in their other links. So, for farmers marketing, for example, what I haven't in there, as you there are, there are four different links, so someone can click on that link. And it opens up, you know, one, or two, or three or four or more different options. So, for, again, for farmers marketing, someone could click on getting a live audit, or they could subscribe to the podcast, or go to our website. So why I was thinking of you, of course, is, you know, you have a lot of different things that you would want to promote in your business, right. So, it could be, you know, checking out another social profile, or could be for a contest, but it can also be buying tickets. So, you can have that all just in that one link.  Kevin  36:31  Oh, so you have the one link on your page. And I just click your link and it shows me four different links, get free marketing on and live where the coaching call, subscribe to the master, that gives you four different options, instead of just having gone to the one that the link is actually pointing to. I like that. I'm using that. Lionel Johnston  36:47  Yeah, especially because you have so many different aspects of your business. Yeah, so I thought that would be a good tip for you. So, I'm glad you like that You sound like you, you enjoy that one. Kevin  36:56  Oh, I'm stealing that right away. Lionel Johnston  36:57  right on to others that I came across us just recently. One is Headliner.app. And the other one is Wavve.co with two V's and dot CEO. And I'll put this actually in the show notes. And that these two are similar. Kevin one actually is paid, and one is free. I just recently found out but especially with the show that you have, you know, The Main Ingredient, and, you know, all of the other, you know, videos that you have going on. One of the great things with this tool is you actually can't upload an audio file to Facebook or Instagram and, and Instagram, you're limited to only 62nd videos. So, what you can actually do is take a static image, or you can use a video, of course, but you can take a static image, and you're basically turning it into a video. So, you can upload your static image, you upload your mp3 files, your audio file, it actually transcribes it for you. It also adds the little lines going up and down. So, it's showing that there's some audio being spoken. And then you export it. And you can upload this your 62nd video or less on Instagram, and Facebook and LinkedIn. But it really, I think, adds a lot more impact than just a static image saying, Hey, you know, this new podcast is out, you know, come listen to Episode Six, that sort of thing. Kevin  38:15  All right. Well, I get it. Yeah, Lionel Johnston  38:16  hundred percent. Yeah. And then. So, the last tool that I know we've talked about is funnel lyrics. And one of the big challenges that I had when I was really in the early days, and marketing and getting into marketing automation was being able to visualize the campaign and being able to see where's the traffic coming from, where's the goal where we try to send people to. And so that's that visual mapping software. And actually, you can get that for free as well. There is a paid version where you get the analytics, but you can do tons of work just on their free tool. So that's something you could check out for you for your businesses if you'd like as well.  Kevin  38:51  already checked it on. I'm on the page right now. Um, that's three things I'm stealing from you immediately. Lionel Johnston  38:57  Alright, well, there we go. So, if nothing and Elsa at least you got some cool tools that will directly relate to the type of business that you run. So, so I wanted to share your bag Kevin  39:07  of tricks is deep. That's why I like talking. You always have all these little tools. And yes, you can get caught up in having too many, but usually, nine times out of 10 the stuff that means you go through us are almost immediately usable.  Lionel Johnston  39:19  You're right. And really the things that we talk about our Hey, I'm doing something. And I think you actually mentioned this a few moments ago, but you know, Kevin, I'm doing something right now, how can I do it more efficiently. It's not like, Hey, I can do a video thumbnail for a podcast will I'm going to launch a podcast now like that it doesn't work that way, right? It's just Hey, producing a podcast or doing videos, it takes a lot of time, where can we shave time? Where can we pump with this content faster and more professionally, and you know, it feels all those tools help out with that. So, let's just move into again, the next topic and then we can summarize things and see what the top priority should be, I did want to take some time to talk about the relationship that you have with the vendors and the promotion to them. And you know, I really see I'm sure you do this quite a bit but I rarely see when I first saw your business model that there's a huge opportunity for you to really be that funnel of, of leads and customers for the business for these businesses, right and they have their own marketing going but really what you're doing is you're again building that marketplace and real estate where they're able to sell their products correct.  Kevin  40:33  Right. And it's funny that you said that because that the pizza festival actually came about from that that wasn't my idea thinking I'm going to have a Manitoba p2p You know, there's a lot of specialty weeks burger we can all kind of stuff. And I wasn't my idea to say, hey, let's, I'm going to have a pizza week that came from interviewing restaurants that sold pizza. And week after week, I would hear someone going, someone should have a pizza week so much and have a pizza week till two or three people would email me saying, why don't you organize a pizza week, that's how that came about. So, it's just kind of the relationship with different with different customers that kind of lead in that direction, right? Lionel Johnston  41:08  I totally agree. So I want to give you an example. Now, these companies are at a much larger scale. But if you look at Google, you know, Facebook, YouTube, you know, LinkedIn, those are all huge websites, of course, but they aren't the ones that are producing and owning the content, they're there do you know, other people are doing that right there really creating that platform, and that, you know, building a following of eyes and ears that those other companies can sell to, and that's really what you're doing as well. So that's why as I mentioned, when I first saw your business model is really impressed with that, and being able to see the value you can offer to people when we look at lead generation, you know, specifically for the vendors and the pizza and beer fest are you right now generating identifiable leads for those individual or collective vendors, like, how does a flow have a potential customer goes through, you know, your website, or the vendors website? Kevin  42:05  Well, usually goes through our website. So, a lot of times, different vendors will have a marketing idea that they actually want to post they want to market to the distribution list that the event created. So, we'll do it that way. It makes it easier, but it makes it easier because the vendor doesn't technically have to do any work, all they have to do is create the promotion and the event will promote their promotion. But in turn, we get a larger distribution list that we can market to. And the pizza, any pizza vendor that participates in the event can market to 12 months a year if they want to. Right, Lionel Johnston  42:38  I see. Okay. And would each vendor typically have their own standard offer, Kevin  42:45  right? When we're not going to tell them we know what they want to offer? Like, right, they can make up their own offer, we're just going to promote their offer or whatever event they have coming up. Okay. Lionel Johnston  42:57  All right. Thanks for sharing that. And where I'm getting at, or what I'm trying to get at Kevin is, you know, is there a way to be able to clearly show the pipeline rate and the funnel of people coming in and how many leads are being generated? And then how many are being distributed to the vendors? And then are we also able to capture, you know, the financial aspect of how much was generated from those leads? And I realized that would probably be the most difficult part and that this question as part of the reason why I am suggesting final lyrics, because you're able to see the flow of people, you know, through the entire process. And if I could give one example, you know, to demonstrate what I'm trying to get at is a friend of mine, actually, I know, he runs a really successful digital marketing agency, a local agency here, and they have on their website, and the last in the last quarter, they've generated something like 85,000 leads, and over $5 million in additional revenue, or 50, I don't think tech numbers, but I thought it's pretty neat that they're able to say this, how many leads we created in this is the value of them, I was just wondering, on a smaller scale, is there is there an opportunity for you to do that with these fests and does that help you then, you know, promote that to the vendors to attract more in the future, Kevin  44:16  for sure. Hundred percent, that's probably an area that I need to work on a lot more, because there are a lot of a lot of opportunities there that can be done better? 100%   Lionel Johnston  44:29  Well, that's great. Well, how about Kevin, let's just start wrapping things up here. And I just wanted to ask you one question. And then we can talk about it for a couple moments as necessary here. But you know, from the different discussion that we had, we touched on some, you know, technical improvements, your website and how well you're doing in the content and social side. And we talked a little bit about, you know, the, you know, direct engagement with consumers and vendors, are there any things that we've talked about here so far, that really stood out to you the most that you know what, when you when we discuss it, you're like, man, I really they need to tackle that right away.  Kevin  45:03  Yeah, tweaking the websites, like as far as the things that you and I have talked about before, as far as, you know, the background portion of it. So, we're talking the speed of a lowering of the page that the mobile portion got an F, so anything that's red and got an F are things some of them, I knew. Hey, I can't believe I got an F, or I knew that was going to get an F. So, make sure I correct those things right away technically, because, again, the hard portion of the work is done the networking and content creating is stuff that you just can't create overnight, that takes time and effort. And it's huge. So, if it's just tweaking the technical portion of it, something I can literally do in a day or two, you know, that portion of it has run out to me that, you know, it's an easy tweak. So, make sure you get your infrastructure running properly, and then the rest you can continue to work on Lionel Johnston  46:02  these items. I know that, yeah, all very easy fixes, especially, I know, you're very tech savvy. So, it'll be very easy for you to knock those things out. And, you know, and I hope you found a lot of value, you know, to our discussion, and I know, you know, for my own business, you know, I often asked other people to build a look at things as much as I may think, I, I know things having those additional eyes are different eyes on your business can really uncover a lot of things. And I remember working with someone one time and, you know, my team had worked on this project for many, many hours, and, you know, 100 different times you looked at it, and then, you know, my leader looked at it immediately and said, well, there's no logo on it. And, you know, we'd looked at this thing for hours. And none of us said, had caught that, you know, but it definitely is valuable to build to get those outside opinions on the businesses that we're running. So, hope you agree with that as well.  Kevin  46:57  Okay, Lionel Johnston  46:58  right on. Well, thanks a lot to Kevin. And for everyone that's listening right now, for all the other small and medium-sized businesses out there like Kevin Bergen, if you'd like to have a similar discussion like Kevin and I have just had, where you have a marketing audit and a live coaching call you all in an effort to be able to take your business to the next level, please check out our website at farmer's marketing.ca where you can start your application and submit your information. And we'll have a couple of discussions and see if you're a good fit for the podcast. And the podcast is a good fit for you. And Kevin, thanks again for you know, being able to put your businesses under the microscope but I am sure that potentially created a little bit of unease. But to be clear, I really am very impressed with everything that you're operating and running on your side. You've really built a pretty neat business for yourself. And it's great to see how all of these different components are tying together and it sounds like there are even bigger and better things, you know, in the future for you and these events moving forward. Hey, hope so, thanks, man. Thanks for joining the master and Modern Marketing Podcast. Kevin, and for everyone else, listening. Until next time, onward and upward, Announcer  48:10  the master Modern Marketing podcast with your host Lionel Johnston, lovers of marketing and growing small businesses you enjoyed today's podcast, please rate and review. We'll catch you next time on the master Modern Marketing Podcast.

In today's episode, we speak with Jeff Pelletier, from Basetwo Media.  Jeff has a long history with video production.  The Inbound Video Marketing Playbook: Using Video to Attract, Convert, Close and Delight  Video can be a powerful tool to help attract and convert leads, to close prospects, and delight your customers. But for your video marketing efforts to be effective, your videos must be contextual and platform specific, focusing on each stage of the Buyer's Journey. In this practical guide, we'll walk you through the different ways that you can use video within each step of the Inbound Sales & Marketing Methodology, including tips and best practices on the production, distribution & optimization of your videos, as well as how to measure success. If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please apply at www.FarmersMarketing.ca. Read the transcript here:  Jeff Pelletier:                Don't try to solve major problems with video. So, focusing less on these big-picture strategies, and think more about the low hanging fruit, some of the quicker wins. And the way that I look at that is, look at what's already working, and try to boost those results using video, as opposed to trying to solve problems. Because I think we often see video as potentially like a magic bullet where we're trying to say like, we need more leads, let's make a video, right, and that's just such a bigger problem than just a video's not going to solve. You still have to think about how you're going to convert those leads, and what channels are you going to use the video on. So, there's a lot wrapped in there. Lionel:                          Hi, folks, this is Lionel Johnston with a Master Modern Marketing podcast, and that was Jeff Pelletier with Basetwo Media. Video is literally everywhere. Let me share some stats with you from YouTube and Google. The total number of people who use YouTube is 1.3 billion. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every single minute. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day, and this is also quite amazing. The average viewing session is over 40 minutes, and that's up over 50% year over year. So, people are spending a lot of time all at once on YouTube. So, it's clear that there's a huge audience and a huge potential for producing video and getting exposure on YouTube. But at the same time, there's also a lot of competition, so what that means is you need to make some darn good videos. Many small and medium-sized businesses have embraced video, but there's a lot of room for growth. For example, currently, only 9% of US small businesses use YouTube, so lots of opportunity for improvement there. That brings us to Jeff Pelletier with Basetwo Media. He has a long history and experience with video. I am confident that you will be glad you invested time with us in listening to this podcast. So, let's cue the intro, and let's dive right in. Announcer:                   We really love marketing, telling stories and sharing ideas with others to help them achieve their goals. If you enjoy growing businesses through digital marketing or would like to learn how to take your knowledge and skills to the next level, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Master Modern Marketing podcast with your host Lionel Johnston. Lionel:                          Jeff, welcome to the Master Modern Marketing podcast. How are you doing today? Jeff Pelletier:                I'm doing great. Thank you. How about you? Lionel:                          Oh, I'm doing fantastic. Thank you, very much. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today and share your expertise with our audience. Jeff, you'll remember it was a few years back, we actually had met on an unexpected layover in the Mississauga airport. We were flying back from a HubSpot conference and got delayed by weather, and we were able to share a couple of drinks together, and from my experience, we found that we had some similar mindsets and ideas on business, and I really enjoyed my time talking with you, and we've kept in touch periodically since then. So, looking forward to being able to catch up and really dive deep on the topic of video in the modern world. Jeff Pelletier:                That was a great chat that we had at the bar there in the hotel, and yeah, I was really interested at the time to hear what you were doing with video in-house working client side. So, I mean, that's something we can talk about today is some of the changes with video being done in-house more and more. So, I learned a lot from our conversation that night too. Lionel:                          Yeah. I remember at the time, and I'm looking for an update, but you were just transitioning a little bit of some of the services that you're offering to people, and how you were looking at the services that people really needed in the current environment. So, Jeff, if you could just introduce yourself. Say your name and your company, and if you have any interesting anecdotes you'd like to share with everyone, that would be great. Jeff Pelletier:                Sure. Well, my name's Jeff Pelletier. I founded and still run a video production and marketing agency called Basetwo Media. We're based in Vancouver, BC, and we work with clients primarily in the Vancouver area, and increasingly across Canada. I also do a lot of writing, and speaking and consulting with clients, coaching around video marketing strategy. I also volunteer and lead the HubSpot user group here locally, and we recently launched a video marketing meetup, as well. So, have a lot of fun kind of sharing my experiences, and tips and tricks there, as well. Jeff Pelletier:                And I recently just published a book, my first book called Inbound Video Marketing Playbook, which is available on Amazon. Lionel:                          Congratulations. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, thank you. I do a lot of running, I'm a trail runner, so that's kind of my alternate life here. When I'm not working, I'm usually spending time in the backcountry, and I shoot little kind of films myself for my YouTube channel. I just did a big race in Italy, a big 200-mile race in the Alps, and I'm working on a documentary from that, as well. Lionel:                          Wow. Wow, that's great. You've had lots on the go. Jeff Pelletier:                I've got lots on the go, yeah. Yeah. Lionel:                          Yeah, for sure. Jeff Pelletier:                I like to keep it, yeah. Lionel:                          So, let's dive right in here. Really, the first topic I wanted to dive into was just the prevalence of video in the modern world, that video really is everywhere, yet I still notice there's a lot of businesses that are slow to embrace video, or they aren't really sure where to get started. So, do you find the same thing in your world, and if that's the case where businesses are slow to adopt video, why do you think that is? Jeff Pelletier:                Well, over the last few years, I mean, I've seen a bit of a shift where I would say most businesses now are using video, or at least understand the benefits of using video, whether they've successfully adopted a video into their marketing communications. As far as say the customer journey of awareness and consideration, we're past awareness, we're past having to preach about why you should be using video, and we're now into sort of typically we center our content and a lot of the questions that we answer with clients. It's more about how they can use video, whether it be producing video in-house, working with an agency, or freelancer.              I think most businesses understand that they can and should be using video, but the challenge really is in the implementation. It's in getting results from the video, and I think that's where a lot of our customers, prospects that we speak to, as well as our existing customers, seem to sometimes struggle. Lionel:                          I believe, if I remember correctly, you were mentioning that a lot of your clients are really in the medium size to large space. Is that correct? Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah. I mean, as far as Vancouver is concerned, we do typically work with the larger companies in town, which on a global scale, I guess comparatively aren't that large, but we work with a lot of enterprise-based clients. So, typically, our customers are doing quite a bit of video. So, our work is all project based, but it tends to be work that we're doing on a regular basis.              And then, we do have a mix of smaller to medium size companies, as well, mostly in technology who are using video quite a bit in their marketing. And then, increasingly, we are working with some smaller companies, as well, where their budgets might not be there to outsource work to us, but we are working in a more consultative fashion, and actually helping people to get setup, both with the equipment and a strategy for doing video in house, and I think that's really where the opportunity is now for a lot of businesses, is to start looking at how they can use video in house. The way you would write your own blog content, potentially. Lionel:                          Yeah. That's very interesting, and that was actually one of the comments you made, Jeff, when we were in Mississauga before that really intrigued me was that the core of your business at the time was producing high quality video for businesses, but you also, yeah, were recognizing that businesses were doing some video, but yet they really had a lot of opportunity for improvement. And even things that you could point out, for example, like having captions on their videos, or using video hosting like Wista in addition to YouTube when appropriate. I thought that was a pretty interesting angle where you could really ramp up a business's video presence, but really just by sharing some information and tactics, and them not needing to have an entire huge team to be able to make a big impact. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah. I mean, as a professional, but also as an agency, our goal is to help our clients get results from video, which 9 times out of 10 means producing the video content ourselves. But increasingly, that's where we're becoming more of a consultant, and it's all the stuff leading up to the video project, or even on the backend on the hosting that the optimization, the distribution, that's often where the results come from, as well. So, yeah, increasingly, we are becoming more of a consultancy, and long-term, that may be where we end up. Jeff Pelletier:                As video becomes more ubiquitous, but also more cost effective to be done in-house, we likely will end up transitioning that way, as well. If that's the best way we can serve our clients, then that's where we'll continue to move towards. Lionel:                          I see. Well, that's definitely good to hear that we're beyond the days where we have to explain the value of video, and people recognize that, and they're just looking for ways to [inaudible 00:09:24], or they're just looking for ways to introduce that to their business. So, that ties back with the next topic I wanted to look at, which was really what does a modem video strategy look like? This may be where your book comes in, Jeff, but could you explain a little bit about what that should look like if I was wanting to design a modern video strategy? Jeff Pelletier:                Well, on the one hand, I think there is room for what we may call a video strategy or a video marketing strategy. But on the other hand, I really see video as a tactic, one that supports other strategies. Video shouldn't be created in isolation in that way. So, for example, you might already be blogging, and video is a great way to take that to the next level. But at the end of the day, blogging itself is just a tactic, right. It's part of a concept marketing play, an inbound marketing strategy.             So, inbound marketing can include video as a tactic. Outbound sales can include video as a tactic. The video itself isn't a strategy, it's only a tactic that supports existing strategies, and I think that's the part that I think a lot of companies when they approach an agency like us, or when they're considering doing video in house, they're in that consideration phase trying to figure out how to best approach using video, that's often the part that I think people miss, is that video isn't a box that you check and a list of assets that you just need as part of your marketing where you say, "Oh, we need a corporate video. Let's get a website, let's get a video, let's get a brochure." Instead, it's best used to support existing strategies, and I think that's really the key to success. Lionel:                          Oh, that makes a lot of sense. So, thanks for taking the time to explain the difference in a strategy and how it should be seen as a tactic. So, for a small, or again in your case, a medium and large size business, where should they really get started, and are there three to five factors that they should really focus on when they're getting up and running, and adding video as a tactic to their business? Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah. I mean, typically, so if you look at sort of a strategic marketing communications framework, the first question we always ask our clients is, is why? Why video, why now? So, what problem are we trying to solve, or what opportunity are we hoping to address by using video. And before we even talk with the tactic of video, we really want to understand the underlining. Is this part of a campaign? Is this part of a brand new strategic initiative? Again, are you just now implementing inbound marketing, and video's going to form a part of that? So, we really try to get the groundwork, and that's really where all businesses should start. It's let's look at this strategically. What's the problem? What's the opportunity?           Video is super powerful. It is a really powerful tactic, can help to demonstrate. It can help to humanize, tell stories in ways that I think a lot of other tactics can't do quite as well. But it's also a really expensive tactic, right. Whether you're doing it in-house, or whether you're outsourcing it, it's one of the more expensive marketing communications mediums. So, there's a lot of reward potential, but there's also a lot of risk when approaching video.             So, with that in mind, I think you need to approach it as a bit of an experiment. You do have to, like anything it can take time. If you just start a new blog, it takes time to develop your voice, and your positioning, and even your process for generating that content. And video is kind of the same thing, so it's expensive. It's not just a one-time thing where you're getting to check that box, and you're done. So, with that in mind, I usually recommend that businesses don't try to solve major problems with video. So, focusing less on these big picture strategies, and think more about the low hanging fruit, some of the quicker wins. And the way that I look at is, look at what's already working, and try to boost those results using video, as opposed to trying to solve problems. Because I think we often see video potentially like a magic bullet where we're trying to say like, we need more leads, let's make a video, right. That's such a bigger problem that just a video's not going to solve. You still have to think about how you're going to convert those leads, and what channels are you going to use the videos on. So, there's a lot wrapped in there.      So, we kind of see using video as a way to sort of boost what's already working. It's kind of like steroids, like you have to be going to the gym for steroids to work. But if you want that extra edge in competition, whether it's ethical or not, you can use steroids, and give yourself that extra boost. And video's kind of the same way, it just happens to be legal and it happens to be ethical. But you still have to be going to the gym, right. You still have to be getting some preliminary results if you want to boost it with video. And I think that's really the best place for smaller businesses who are likely on a limited budget to see some quick wins. So, an example would be you've been blogging for a year or two quite successfully, and you want to take that up a level, you can start using video in your blog posts as a way to see if you gain additional traction, maybe some additional engagement. Or even take it another step, and look at developing a YouTube channel strategy, which is really just blogging on steroids. It's video blogging. But of course, you wouldn't want to start with YouTube, because it's more expensive, it's more time consuming, more resource intensive, and blogging on its own is hard enough without having to introduce video production into it. So, again, looking for, I think, things that are working where we ...  then say, okay, what happens if we now spend a few thousand dollars in video, can we get an additional 25% of whatever it might be, conversions, leads, whatever the result is we're hoping to boost? Lionel:                          Great advice, sir. I like the steroids analogy, and I guess one thing that I thought about that analogy specific to the gym is that you can't just go to the gym one time and bang out 1,000 push-ups, and all of a sudden, you're in shape. So, I bring that up in the sense that you may have customers that they say, "Well, I've made my corporate video, now what," or I'm just waiting for the leads to come in, and they haven't come in yet, and we made our video. Do you ever come across any of that with clients? Jeff Pelletier:                Well, that's just it. We've been doing this for quite a few years. We're on our 15th year of business. Admittedly, in those first maybe five or six years, we were making videos that we had ... we wouldn't ask the tough questions. We would make the corporate video, it would be put on YouTube, and you know, fast forward two or three years later, the client's maybe got 150 views, and most of those were probably by accident. It was people stumbling on the video, and not taking any results after seeing the video.            So, yeah, you definitely get a lot of that, and I think that's where we are now. I think we're sort of in that stage where, like with websites, everybody initially needed a website. Well, now, everybody has a website, but now it's about growth marketing, it's about getting more out of our websites, and figuring out really what are we trying to achieve. And video is in that same stage. Everybody's kind of typically made a video at this point, and often what's stopping them from making more videos is that they just don't know how to measure the results in the first place, even if they were getting them, and then try to boost those results, and justify spending more money on more video. And truly, I think that's the worst thing that can happen, is you make a video, you get no measurable results, so you just don't make another one for two or three years. Basically, you wait until that video is so outdated that you're forced to make a new one, and to check that box again. And I always kind of like to joke with clients, like, my goal is to get you as much measurable results as possible so that you come back, and you double down, and you spend more. Lionel:                          Interesting. I know we've talked about all different types of videos from a sales rep sending a personalized video to someone, corporate style, or even a commercial style video. How can businesses owners start to look at some sort of metrics and results? How do they place a value on the video that they're producing? Jeff Pelletier:                Well, yeah, and I think again if we look at the strategic ... the way that video as a tactic can fit into that strategic frameworks, I would say what are you already doing that's working, and what are the results currently, right. What's our baseline? Because if we're going to use video, and we want to measure the change, the effect it's going to have, we need a baseline.            So, again, you might be looking at your email marketing, and email's a great way to use video. It's a super powerful channel, but it's also noisy. We get a lot of email, so video's a great way to stand out. So, if you're already sending emails to a big newsletter list for example, we'd say let's measure the baseline for say the average open rate on an email, as well as the click through rate. And then, maybe we would make a video that was intended to help boost those two things, as well as possibly conversions on a landing page. So, you would have a nice big image in your email, highly optimized sort of one or two calls to action at most, and you can even do an AB test with a version of that one email with a video, and one without. And now, we can measure what's the difference in the open rate. So, including the word video in your subject line, for example, can even just boost the open rate of an email. What's the difference in the click through rate? So, including an image of a video in the email that takes you to a landing page where the video would play. Including that image can improve the click through rate. So, again, we've measured that before and after with and without a video. And then, on the landing page itself, does the video help with whatever your goal is there? Conversions, et cetera. So, you can measure that on a case by case basis with AB split testing, but you could also measure that against your baseline. So, okay, we've been using video in email for a while, have the average open rates and click through rates gone up? So, how was it given our marketing a boost, and to what degree? And at the end of the day, if you can put a dollar value on that, even better. So, what is a conversion sale lead in a form? What is that worth? And if we boost that by 25%, we'll work backwards now. How much has that video generation in terms of leads, and ultimately, sales? Lionel:                          That makes a lot of sense, so thanks. So, this is a big question, of course, and it can be across the board, but what are some general ranges of cost for a business? I'm sure you get asked that question quite a bit. So, everything from a small team and they're insourcing everything to going to a large professional team outsourcing it. What are the different categories of videos, and typical cost if that's something you're able to speak to? Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, I mean, and that's almost always the first question when somebody contacts us. They'll say, "What does a video cost, and how long does it take?" I hesitate to fixate on that, because video is best approached as more of an iterative process. So, again, if you're going to say we want to add video to our blogging, our blogging strategy, the question then would be, well, how often do you blog, and how often do you want to make videos? If you want to add a weekly video where you're ... and in fact, here's a good example. We worked with a client named Kintech, and they produce content that's designed to reach an audience to position themselves as experts in footwear and orthotics. So, they sell footwear and they create custom orthotics. And they want to be the store and the service provider that you think of the next time you need footwear or orthotics for your feet. And so, they do this by answering questions that people are searching for around shoe reviews, around foot health, and they have a great blog, and they wanted to add video to that. And so, they approached us, and they asked that question, how much would it cost to make a video for the blog? And when dove in, we realized what they really meant was how much would it cost to make a weekly video or a monthly video for the vlog. And at that point, we said, well, look, we're not going to charge you whatever it is, 3, 10, 30 thousand dollars per video, that would be ridiculous. We need to help you develop a strategy where you're, like with the blogging that you're doing internally, you need to be producing this video internally. So, we helped them to produce that in-house, and their goal was to have at least one if not two to four videos produced per month. Jeff Pelletier:                And so, we kind of worked backwards from, well, what would success look like here? And as an experiment, we want to benchmark, we want to add video, and then we want to measure the results. What's the best result that it would give us, and what would that mean to our bottom line? And what is...the minimum acceptable result? And we kind of helped them establish a budget by thinking that way. So, they budget 2 to 4 thousand dollars a month say per video. And then, based on that, we could then say, okay, well for that amount of money, we maybe can't help you make the videos, but we can train you on how to make them yourself. No, they won't be quite as high production value, but do they need to? At the end of the day, as long as your content's valuable, I think that's one of the shifts we've seen with video, is that sometimes it doesn't matter about the production value, as long as the audio is clear, the image is somewhat clear. You can shoot video on an iPhone. Depending on your goal, depending on your audience, as well, and the channel. That content might actually perform better than if it was highly produced. And so, for them, that was a real win. Now, for other clients, some of our enterprise level clients, they will come to us with a very specific communications objective where it's less about a program, it's less about an ongoing strategy. It's a specific campaign, and they're saying, you know, we need to reach a broad audience, or we're communicating to our 10000 employees across the country, whatever it might be. There's a very specific message a very specific window that they're going to use that asset. And so, in that case, and they're saying, you know, we've tried doing this in different ways, or we will be doing this in a few ways, one of them is video. In that case, we usually will help them establish a budget just for that one video, and we'll produce it for them. We're usually looking at maybe $10000 and up. So, that's usually kind of the threshold for us on a project level, and many projects are closer to the 30 to 50 thousand dollar range when it comes to these large enterprise organizations. Lionel:                          I see. But one of the differences is that they're often trying to match a certain ... you know, there's branding guidelines. And also, a lot of the dollars that are being spent there actually aren't going on screen. So, we're not creating fancy animation. Often, we're just doing a lot of work in terms of revisions and project management, just because of the nature of these large organizations. It can just take a lot of time to get work done and approved. Jeff Pelletier:                And so, to them, the value equation there. They're okay paying a little bit more because they understand it's difficult to get these projects done with a bureaucratic organization. Whereas for smaller businesses, I think that's less of an issue. They really want to make sure the money is going to ... as much of its going on screen as possible, and that often means not working with an agency, not paying for project management, and all those kinds of things, and working with freelancers. Jeff Pelletier:                So, you can get videos done for as little as a few thousand dollars. Again, as much is very quickly in that 10 to 30 thousand dollar range. But I would sort of say for a smaller business on a limited budget, to focus more on spending the money on working with a consultant to make sure that you are approaching, or the video program if you're doing ongoing video. So, you're approaching it in the right way. You're also spending a few thousand dollars upfront on consulting and then look at ways to work with, say, interns, or to hire cheaper labour where you can, or even just doing things yourself to produce video content in-house. But it's all going to be found on that sound strategy initially. That's the biggest thing. Lionel:                          That's great advice, and it sounds like, Jeff, if I were starting a new business, that you would be able to come in, and actually teach me how to do things properly, but also help me know how to build my team over time, as well, right. Which resources can they to continue to add, and where to spend money, and where to save some money as you're mentioning, as well. Jeff Pelletier:                Exactly, yeah. Going back to Kintech, that's one way we worked with them where, first of all, all made a case for them doing things more in-house, and then we helped them buy the equipment, we trained them on using the equipment. We recorded that training for future onboarding. We found the locations in their offices to film in, and then we helped them get set up with a template with graphics that they could just reuse. And then, we do a monthly phone call where we talk about the challenge they're having around everything from production to distribution and optimization.              It took a while, right. The first six videos are going to be somewhat embarrassing, but by the time you're on your 16th video, you're doing quite well, and it's sort of that teach a man to fish kind of thing, right. So, they're off to the races now, and they've been doing it for close to two years, and they've seen great results. But more importantly, they have sort of this sustainable strategy where they don't have to keep coming back and paying for each video.              Now what they do is bring us in for sort of the odd higher value campaign where they're saying this is not something we want to do in-house, this is something that we feel should be invested in, and we'll look at that on a campaign by campaign basis. But yeah, things like blog content. You mentioned personalized video, which I think is a huge opportunity for sales teams. A lot of that stuff is being done in house, and should be done in house, and I think we're going to see more and more of that happening. Lionel:                          Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for sharing that specific example, and the businesses that we work with a lot as our clients are people that are interested in working with us. Everything you just described, when I look at the discussions we've had with them on other topics, it seems like that would just be a great fit, and something that they would whole heartedly embrace. So, I can see why you've taken your business down that path.                       On a related topic with your shoe client here and their business, one of the things that have come up in discussions with various clients is the topic of professionalism. What are your thoughts there? Because we can, insert cases, there's a lot of live video, and Instagram live where it can be just off the cuff, and doesn't need to be professional, or maybe it does, and then there's also other corporate clients that really want a very polished and professional look. Can you speak to the difference between the different channels if appropriate, and where someone should be more professional or less professional? What are your thoughts on that topic? Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, and I think video is a great example of a tool that can be used really well. It can sort of exposes things unintentionally, or it can expose you and make it more authentic intentionally. If you're blogging, and you're trying to really have an authentic voice, and you really want to show the team behind your company, and build that trust, and really show ... humanize, humanize your brand. Video can really help there. But I think that's also what scares a lot of organizations, is that it sort of pulls back the curtain, and some people aren't comfortable on camera, and they might just not have that voice established yet. They might not be comfortable with that level of authenticity.              And that's where you see the more traditional highly produced videos, or potentially an animated video. Often, we see animated explainers where it's more about the product, and it's less about the team. And in that case, you're telling stories through animation, typically.             But I mean, if you are sort of leaning more towards that authentic voice, that's where video works really well, and I think you alluded to this. Look at the channel first, right. So, we often will say, when we're looking at how can we use video to support an existing strategy, the logical next question is 'what platform?', and 'what's the context?' So, if you want to use video to boost your Instagram strategy, and maybe do more video, and likely this would be done in house with more Instagram stories, you'd have to look at, well, why are you using Instagram? Who's your audience? Are you using it for recruitment, are you using it for lead generation? What's your goal, and who are you speaking to? And that should then inform that voice. So, if you're saying, "We use Instagram because we want to use it for recruitment, we want to show the behind the scenes look at our company," for example. That's how we Instagram ourselves. Then, that probably leads you to the logical conclusion that it should be more authentic and personal content.              And so, that's that. Yeah, you'd shoot it on an iPhone, you'd have fun with the videos. Maybe you'd show people being silly, you'd show people having fun at work. Whereas a lead generation video, if you're selling a software product, that tone maybe wouldn't be appropriate. That's where you are more polished. If you show somebody, it's more of a spokesperson. You use more animation.           So, I think the platform ... I'm not sure that there's necessarily best practices for using video on those platforms as much as it's about start with the platform first, and how are you using that platform, what's your goal? And the video content should be exactly like the rest of the content that you're putting on that platform in the case of Facebook or Instagram. Lionel:                          You've spoken about this a number of different ways here, and if we look at, from a client's perspective, working with a contractor like your company, are there any best practices that they can utilize to get the most out of your services? Are there ways that they could reduce the amount of rework, or make the process more efficient, more effective? Do you have any thoughts on if I'm the small the business owner, me being a business owner, what could I do to be a good client, basically? Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, I think it depends on ... I mean, I really see there being two different types of service providers when it comes to video. There's the agency side of things, and that's like our team, for example. And then, there's more of the freelancer that you might work with, or you might assemble a team of freelancers. And I think that you need to be clear on who you're higher, which end. You could say it's a bit of a spectrum, but really, the reason there's a distinction there, I find, is that a freelancer, say a videographer, is going to do exactly what you ask of them. They might push back a little bit. They might ask some questions along the way. But if you say, "Hey, I need you to come and film for a day on Tuesday, and I need you to bring some lights and a couple of microphones," they'll do exactly that.               When you work with an agency, most agencies will say, like hold on, let's go back 10 steps. I know you want us to come and film on Tuesday, but why? What are we trying to accomplish here? And they'll often help you to approach your project in a different way where appropriate. Typically, an agency will do everything from the script writing through to the post production, and even help with distribution. So, you're getting more of a team approach. Now, that team approach costs more. It's more [inaudible 00:32:42], of course, but you get a lot more value if that's what you're looking for. If you want a turnkey solution, somebody's who's going to come in, and sort of handle the entire process for you, hold your hand throughout that entire process.              Whereas the freelancer approach, you're really going to have to ... you know, you're essentially the producer if you're hiring a videographer. And then, if you then hire a freelance editor, again, you're the producer. You're the connection between that videographer and the editor. The agency would likely have a producer.             So, when it comes to the freelancers, I mean, I think you really need to be ... again, if you've worked with a consultant, and you've developed a strategy, and you've maybe even gotten some initial results, it's more likely that you can work with those freelancers, especially if you want to learn about video, and really get into nuts and bolts. And in that case, I think you just need to communicate really clearly and manage expectations with those individuals.         When you're working with an agency, I think that's more where it's about coming in with a bit more of an open mind, but being super clear on your goals. So, instead of being clear on what exactly you want, and being prescriptive, you just, I think, need to have a really clear idea on what it is exactly you're trying to accomplish. And that's the way the agency's going to provide the most value. Otherwise, I think the worst thing you could do is work with an agency, hire an agency, and be prescriptive. Because now, you're missing out on all this potential, right, for them to say, well, actually here's how we approached this for another client, or here's potentially a better way to do this, or maybe, hey, you shouldn't be making video at all, how about do this instead and come back to us in a year, and we'll help you at that point. And a good agency partner should be honest with when and how they can help you the most.               So, I think it's just being clear. Are you hiring a freelancer, and having to be prescriptive, or are you looking for a partner who's going to help you more strategically? Otherwise, you might just be trying to ... and especially when you're hiring somebody, you have to be clear. Are you comparing apples to apples, or are you comparing the price of a freelancer to the much higher price of an agency, but expecting agency level services from that freelancer? And that's not going to work out well. Lionel:                          For sure. That's a great distinction between the two camps there, and all the more reason why it's important to work with someone to be able to talk through these questions, and make sure that all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed before you get too deep into a project. As I'm sure you've seen, and you know with design projects, especially video, things can go sideways quickly if you don't take the time at the beginning to get on the right path. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, and that's often like, there's less scope creep that often happens, and I know that's ... a lot of clients say they have the fear of that, right. Especially, when you're getting billed by the hour. It's very easy for that clock to just keep running, and you get quoted one thing, and then the invoice ends up being double. And that's where I think, again, clarity on what your objectives are is really important. Where we've seen projects go awry is when if a client is being prescriptive, and saying we want a six minute video featuring, you know, we want these people talking in it, we want to film on location here, and do this, this and this, and yet they're not clear on the reason for that, and how they're going to measure those results, we're no longer able to advise on how to approach the project to pushback in any way. So, what'll happen is you end up with, maybe the video's supposed to be 3 or 4 minutes, and it ends up being 8 or 9 minutes, because different people come in out of the woodwork, and now sales is saying, hey, well, we want to talk about the product. And HR's saying, oh, but we also want to use this for recruitment. You know, let's talk about our company, and why you should work here. And leadership is saying, well, we want to be in the video, because we should, you know ... and so, you end up with this big kind of all these cooks in the kitchen kind of throwing in their own ingredients, and you end up with this big mess that doesn't work for anybody. It's this nine minute video, it's not clear what your message is, it's not clear who your audience is, and that's the kind of video that you end up throwing on YouTube, and getting no results from. Lionel:                          Right. Jeff Pelletier:                So, again, it kind of comes back to that clarity, because if you were to say, "We need a video to help improve conversions from this landing page, here's exactly the persona of our target audience, here's what they know so far about the product, here's the context, and here's exactly what the call to action is," we're then, as an agency, able to help you to pushback when you need to. So, when HR says, "Oh, can you also talk about the benefits of working here?" We can help you to remind them, sorry, guys, this video is only to convert traffic on this landing page. This is not the HR video, we'll get to that later. So, really having clarity around your objectives, what success looks like, help you to reign those projects in, and avoid all that scope creep in the first place. Lionel:                          I can see how all of those things can happen by dealing with any given client, of course. Just to wrap things up though, one term that you've used a number of times is inbound, and inbound marketing and inbound video. At the beginning of our podcast, you spoke about the book that you've written. So, could you give us all some background on what is inbound marketing, and how does it tie into video, and tell us a bit about your book, and we'll find out where we can get it? Jeff Pelletier:                Sure. Well, inbound marketing is ... I know, Lionel, as you know, having come back from the HubSpot conference where we met. HubSpot is a software platform who have really helped to coin the term and really develop the market, but at the end of the day, inbound marketing is about attracting customers to you. So, it's attracting leads, it's converting those into sales [inaudible 00:38:11] leads, and moving them kind of through that helping them buy essentially, as opposed to going out and trying to sell. So, it's sort of the inverse of an outbound sales approach.               Typically, we see a lot of content at the top blogging, video potentially, where you're really not trying to sell a service, you're trying to answer your question, you're trying to address ... if somebody's looking for, they recognize they have a problem, they're beginning to look at solutions. And in our case, again, that might be the benefits of video, or how to use video on different platforms. And then, as they move down that journey, they're going to start to look at those solutions. In our case, again, maybe it's should I be producing video in house, or working with an agency?             And at some point, again, with us, they're likely going to land on our website, and they've decided they're going to work with an agency, which is the question of, which agency? And so, as an agency, our goal would then be to ...  to start that relationship as early as possible. So, if we're the ones to have provided that top of funnel and beginning of customer journey awareness content, if we're the ones who explain the benefits of video, and help them through that journey, we're more likely to be the person they choose at the end of that journey, as well.               So, that's kind of the foundation, right. And so, video fits into that, and so that's where we sort of use the term inbound video marketing. So, the foundation is an inbound marketing strategy, but we're using the video at potentially any of those touchpoints along the way. So, you can use it during the awareness stage, you can use it during conversions. You can even use it once you've started working with a customer for onboarding and retention. You know, helping them to maintain a happy customer. You can delight them with video, as well.   So, video works throughout that entire customer journey and throughout the entire sales funnel, and that's what the book that we published is based around. It's called The Inbound Video Marketing Playbook. InboundVideoMarketing.com, or it's available on Amazon. And basically, just talk about kind of a lot of things we talked about today. We talk about how to use video strategically and tactically at each of those stages. We talk about whether to hire somebody externally, or to do it in-house, when that's appropriate, as well as how to do that. So, how to choose a freelancer versus an agency. All the legalities that you need to watch out for when you're producing video. We have some resources in there about doing video yourself, and what gear to buy. Some of the websites that you can use as tools.                And then, all the way through distribution and measurement. So, we really try to approach the entire thing. It's packed with content. It can be dry at times, but it's also a good reference book for anybody who wants to sort of begin their journey into using video in their marketing. There's lots of stuff in there even if you're not doing inbound marketing. We talk a little about using it for outbound sales, as well. Lionel:                          Great. Well, thanks for the overview of that. It sounds like really anyone that is in the process of thinking about ramping up video or introducing video to their business, it sounds like the book would be a great place for them to be able to start and make sure they get off on the right track, Jeff. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah. Lionel:                          Yeah. One of the things I'd like to do actually, Jeff, if it's okay for you, with our audience is to be able to have. How about we'll pick out a random commenter, and we can send them off your book for free, what do you think about that? Jeff Pelletier:                That's a great idea, yeah. Happy to do that. Lionel:                          Okay. So, for anyone that is thinking about adding or ramping up video in their business, please leave a comment, or a question, or your one experience on video, and we'll be able to pick a random commenter, and reach out to you by email, and we'll send you a copy of Jeff's book. So, thank you very much for offering that Jeff. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah. No problem at all. Thanks, Lionel. Lionel:                          So, Jeff, thanks once again for sharing your knowledge on the Master Modern Marketing podcast. For all of the small and medium sized businesses out there, if you would like to join us on this podcast, and start capitalizing on the digital world, for all of the small and medium sized businesses out there, if you would like to join us on this podcast, and start capitalizing on the digital world, please apply now to be a guest. Basically, we will conduct a short audit, and sit down with you on this podcast, and talk about what things are great in your business, what opportunities there are to improve, and actually have a live coaching call, as well. So, at the end of that podcast, you'll know exactly what you need to do to be able to take your business to the next level. So, you can apply at FarmersMarketing.ca if you'd like to be a guest. So, Jeff, again, as we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, you've got a ton of things on the go there, both in your personal life and in business, so I appreciate you taking time out of your day today to be able to share your expertise with our audience, and hopefully, we can talk more about this in the future, and I hope that our listeners will reach out to be able to get more information from you, and potentially even work with you in the future, as well. Jeff Pelletier:                Yeah, glad to do it. Thanks. It's been fun, and if anybody does have any questions, or wants to get in touch, you can do so at InboundVideoMarketing.com. Lionel:                          So, InboundVideoMarketing.com. Jeff Pelletier:                That's right. Lionel:                          Right on. Thank you. And for everyone else listening, until next time, onward and upward. We'll see you on the next podcast. Announcer:                   The Master Modern Marketing Podcast, with your host, Lionel Johnston. A podcast for lovers of marketing and growing small businesses. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please rate and review, and we'll catch you next time on the Master Modern Marketing Podcast.  

In today's episode, we speak with Stockton Fisher from Funnelytics. We discuss some common problems that marketers and business leaders experience, and talk about how Funnelytics can help you map your marketing funnels easily.  Funnelytics is truly transformational, so click here to learn more.  If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please apply at www.FarmersMarketing.ca. Additional Resources:  1) Check out Funnelytics 2) Connect with Stockton Fisher here: Facebook; LinkedIn 3) See a real example of setting up a campaign using Funnelytics: Read the full transcript here: 

In this episode of the Master Modern Marketing podcast, we chat with Randy Milanovic, CEO of Kayak Online Marketing about the Gutenberg update in WordPress. We discuss ways to deal with the update, how to delay it if necessary, and how to implement it without causing any disruption to your business. Additional topics include what a client should actually expect from a marketing agency and how HubSpot's marketing automation could solve your website woes. If you enjoyed the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please subscribe, rate and review the show. You can also keep in contact with the show sponsor, Farmers Marketing, at www.FarmersMarketing.ca, or www.facebook.com/farmersmktng. To be a guest on the Master Modern Marketing podcast, please apply at www.FarmersMarketing.ca. Additional Resources: Gutenberg is by far one of the largest updates in WordPress history.  One thing that sets WordPress apart from other systems is that it allows you to create as rich a post layout as you can imagine — but only if you know HTML and CSS and build your own custom theme. By thinking of the editor as a tool to let you write rich posts and create beautiful layouts, we can transform WordPress into something users love WordPress, as opposed something they pick it because it’s what everyone else uses. Gutenberg looks at the editor as more than a content field, revisiting a layout that has been largely unchanged for almost a decade. This allows us to holistically design a modern editing experience and build a foundation for things to come. (Source) Contact: Kayak Online Marketing and Randy Milanovic Blog Post (Kayak Online Marketing): What does the Gutenberg Editor in WordPress mean for my website?   Blog Post (Smashing Magazine): What Can Be Learned From The Gutenberg Accessibility Situation?   News Update From Yoast