This episode dives into three different mindsets small businesses should get into when it comes to marketing their business online—getting found online, getting in front of the right customers, and getting into your numbers.
Our hosts, Dan, Sarah, and Ian, chat through three essential marketing mindsets designed to help local businesses grow their online presence and attract more customers. First, they emphasize the importance of being easily found online by claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile, improving local SEO, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly and aligned with your branding, and leveraging customer reviews to build trust. Next, they talk about reaching the right audience through targeted advertising across search, social, and display platforms, and using retargeting ads to stay top of mind. Finally, they highlight the value of tracking performance metrics, using data and AI to identify high-quality leads, and managing campaigns effectively through the Hibu Dashboard.
[TRANSCRIPT]
Dan, Sarah, Ian
Dan 00:00:00
Hello. Welcome to another episode of Small Business, Small Talk. I'm Dan, and joining me in studio is Sarah. How are you doing, Sarah?
Sarah 00:10:17
Good, how are you doing?
Dan 00:11:06
Doing all right. And joining us remotely. We have Ian. Ian, how are you doing?
Ian 00:14:16
I'm good. How are you guys?
Dan 00:15:16
Good, good. So today we've got a really interesting topic here. We're going to be talking about three marketing mindsets for success. So, we're going to cover a couple different things that small business owners should be thinking about as they're setting up and marketing and planning out marketing strategies. To get us started off, I think we can all agree that one of the most important pieces is getting found online. Sarah. Like, what is that? What's what are those some of those steps to give out online for small businesses?
Srah 00:39:04
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest things is obviously going to be claiming your Google My Business profile. Right. Or GBP Google Business Profile. This is going to be central, especially when people are searching for you. Right. We want to be shown in Google Maps. You want to come up when people are looking for a “need it now” service or even people are doing their research for, you know, some of those larger ticket things.
Dan 01:03:22
Some of the longer business cycle or buy cycle.
Sarah 01:07:10
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, you really just need to have that essential piece because that's really going to be your foundation to online marketing success.
Dan 01:15:22
Absolutely. And with that, you know, it's easy to… we say Google Business Profile, but it's not just Google when it comes to that. You have to manage the hundreds, not hundreds, but a lot of directories that Google is referencing to ensure that the information's correct. Really, because they're not there. Their goal is to provide accurate information. So it's going to cross-check what it knows. So, when you're checking your business profile, you need to make sure that you're accurate and consistent across all of the major ones for sure.
Sarah 01:41:02
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there's, you know, so many other listings, you know, that are important right. To ensure that accuracy. And then really optimizing those listings. So are you filling out all the most important information. Right. Your hours. You have a website. Are you having your photos, your logo, anything on there that you can make sure that you're showing activity to Google and keeping that profile up today, as well as those additional listings.
Dan 02:09:12
For sure. You know, Ian another one of those big pieces is websites. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of keeping your website up to date and what that maybe looks like?
Ian 02:16:20
Yeah, I mean, especially for, for local businesses. I mean, it's kind of wild how many still don't have a website today. And, you know, I mean, part of that is because you can in some cases kind of skate by with, you know, just having your Google business Profile and optimizing your listings. But, you know, there seems to be this split between like folks that have a website, but maybe it's five years old and folks that don't, but even that first group, the ones that have like a five year old website, you know, what worked five years ago may not work today. May look great, but, you know, have you looked at it on your phone and you're like, oh, it's it's like, you know, negative three point font. I have to like pinch and zoom to see every little thing. You know, you may realize that, oh, I changed my, you know, my logo and I didn't I don't have the number for my website guy anymore. And the logo is old here, but it's updated on my listings and is updated on Facebook. So, you know, a lot of what, what we work with small businesses to do is make sure that website is really, you know, built right, built in today's standards, make sure it's easy to update, make sure that, you know, we're available to help you update it. And also making sure that any information that's on that website is connecting back to your Google Business Profile. Is connecting back to those listings so that, you know, someone looks you up, finds your Google listing and then wants to know more about your business. And they go to your website. They're not going, wait a minute, how come the hours are different between. Are they open to a do not? So, yeah.
Dan 03:47:06
Yeah. It's a good point. Especially the part where, like, you know, Google's ever changing, you know, that you said what worked five years ago doesn't work today. What work last week might not work today, given the way that these algorithms change. And that's kind of a benefit of working with a partner like us, is we're constantly monitoring those changes. We're making sure that all of our websites are meeting those standards to make sure that our clients are showing up top of these listings with our websites. Another piece of listings that I think everyone knows and loves, maybe hates, reviews. We all know. What's the first thing we look for when we look at a business is how many stars do they have? Sarah, how do you even manage review marketing? What does that even look like?
Sarah 04:24:10
Yeah, I mean, I think the most important piece. I know business owners love them, they hate them, but they're necessary, right, in terms of reviews. And so building up that review profile is so important because it's great for customers searching your business. But it's also great for the search engines. Right. You know, when I'm searching “best plumber,” “best dentist,” anything like that online, those keywords will oftentimes show up in reviews left by your, left by our customers. So not only is it beneficial for potential customers, it's going to be beneficial for how Google is showing you online. It's one of the key ranking factors. So managing that review strategy is so important. And you know, obviously, also making sure that you're commenting back to your customers. So, if the client's angry, it's all about how you respond. And making sure that you do respond, in that instance, as well as when a customer is happy and thanking them for their business.
Dan 05:20:16
I think I saw a stat that's like, “80% of reviewers expect a response on their review within 48 hours.”
Ian 05:26:06
Yeah. Quickly. Right.
Dan 05:27:09
Yeah, it's kind of wild. And it's a good… response to reviews is a way to turn that two star review into actually a positive because, a customer, a potential customer consumer might look at that and see how you handle the situation. And you could when someone over there.
Sarah 05:43:00
I know as a consumer I'm guilty of it. I know you guys probably do it too. Is filtering by worse reviews. You know you're looking to make a large investment, a large purchase. I'll filter by some of the negative reviews.
Dan 05:55:07
Yeah, because I want to see why people are having problems.
Sarah 05:56:21
Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, but I think that's something that will, you know, turn could turn the experience around is I'm seeing how the business owner’s responding. And if you are arguing with a customer or, your response is non-existent. How do I know that this wasn't resolved? Right. So, I think that's really important. Especially when it comes to some of those longer buying cycles. You're doing a ton of research. Versus, you know, “need it now” service. Of course not always going to be, you know, reading every single review if you're stuck on the side of the road and you need a tow truck. Right. So, but, you know, I think that's…
Dan 06:33:00
But that's the influence is where you get ranked.
Sarah 06:34:12
Exactly. And I think that's kind of going to kind of dive into our next point too.
Dan 06:39:09
Well, before we get into that, I do want to have Ian talk through a little bit of how are we? How do you even go about getting a review? You know, we kind of you can't just wait and hope people come.
Ian 06:47:10
No, no, I mean, you know, it sounds it sounds simplistic, but I mean, you got to ask. And that doesn't necessarily I know. Right. And you got to ask Santa if you want the presents. No, you know, it's like, it doesn't that doesn't have to be a, physical, you know, actual like, you know, every time you shake hands with someone and a job is complete, you know, say like, “oh, by the way, because you leave me review,” which is fine. You can absolutely do that. But it's more so, you know, even in that scenario, someone's going to forget something's going to come up. Maybe you forget to tell them where to leave a review. Whatever the case may be, in today's world, it's all about how do you keep in touch with that person that just did business with you? You know, it's figuring out, how can I how can I send them that reminder the next day? You know, so whether that's email, whether that's a text message, it's just figuring out, you know, how to kind of keep that line of communication open even when the work is complete.
Dan 07:46:04
Right. I know it's one of those things that sounds daunting, but, you know, you're already collecting customer data in a lot of circumstances, and you have an automated system that will automatically send that out for you. It makes it infinitely easier. So, finding that system, that partner to help you with that, I think is super important and super vital. I think that going back to where you were leaving us is our second mindset of our three here is making sure that you're getting found by the right audience at the right time. I’m going to throw it you first here, Ian, what are some of those strategies to make sure that that happens?
Ian 08:20:03
Yeah, I mean, what we, what we kind of talked about so far is sort of, you know, an inbound thing like your you're building something and the people are coming to you, you know, which is great because people are out there searching for you. They're searching for what you do. This mindset is really about, okay, but how do I broadcast? How do I push out and get in front of these people? You know, maybe when they're not looking for at least not looking for my business name specifically, but potentially, like they're so early in their buying cycle that like, they're just kind of, you know, in the ether and like, you want to capture their attention and get in front of them and go, you are thinking about that kitchen remodel, I know it, it may be six months off, but I'm going to get an ad in front of you. So really that comes down to advertising. You know, your kind of classic marketing tactic of advertising. So, you know, today that's really… you're talking about paid search, you're talking about ads on social media, you're talking about display ads on, you know, Google and the apps that people use and the websites they visit. I mean, anywhere you go, you're going to see ads, you know, banner ads at the top, ads in the sidebar, like you, you should be there if you're trying to drum up business from, from a target audience.
Dan 09:28:11
Sure. I think there's also a piece of that, you know, with ads, people are often thinking clicks, clicks, clicks and clicks are very, very important. But in some of those instances, you're talking about, just getting your name, your business, your logo, whether it's through a display ad or a search or social ad, just getting it in front of somebody already starts that process in the brain for that brand recognition that maybe down the road, as they continue their process, they're going to recognize it and then they're going to start clicking through it.
Sarah 09:57:23
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's online it's an online billboard, right?
Dan 10:01:06
I mean, that's a very, very good analogy.
Sarah 10:02:07
You’re driving on the internet. But I think that's the most important piece too, is reminding that reminding our clients, that it's is super important because how will people know to look for you, you know, and obviously if they're in a, you know, looking for a service that they need now, if they've seen you before, you know, when you're talking about display advertising, they may be more likely to choose you. And then all of a sudden you're taking up more real estate, right? Because you've built your foundation, because you have your Google business profile. But on top of that, you're layering on, different types of advertising. So you're really just building your online brand.
Dan 10:39:13
Yeah. I think a part of that is also thinking through what we'll call a retargeting. You know, it's not just one lane here, you know. They click on your website, you drop this fancy little thing called a “cookie” onto their device that kind of tracks that they've been your site. And then we can retarget them, show them a display ad that reminds them, “hey, remember this company, this website? Why don't you come on back, let's do some more research. Let's maybe fill out a contact form, give us a call.” It's those things that help keep you top of mind. And it's just another one of the steps along the customer journey that you really need to make sure you're engaging with as many of them as possible, because you never know when someone's going to take that next step from… to get closer and closer to conversion.
Sarah 11:23:01
Yeah, from casually thinking about a kitchen remodel to, “okay, I'm ready to, you know, pull the trigger and I'm ready to get started.” You want your brand to be there at that time.
Ian 11:31:02
Well and even for those, you know, must-have businesses, right? Your car's dead on the side of the road, and you're trying to figure out who to talk to. You know, you're not going to be reading reviews. You're not going to be, you know, spending much time Googling. You're probably going to click the first thing that comes up. But, if you saw an ad in the last, who knows how long? Could have been that day, could have been that month. Something might be stuck in your brain of like, oh yeah, Jerry's Towing. I've seen them. I've seen their trucks. I've seen them around here. I'm going to give them a call. So, even for those really short term kind of emergency things, ads can be super powerful.
Dan 12:05:06
It kind of builds that trust subliminally within the customer just because something they're comfortable with. It's a name they've seen before, right? They're just comfortable. That's what it's all really about.
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Sarah 12:36:15
So now we're going to move into our third mindset. Leveraging your data.
Dan 12:41:11
Yeah. This is one of my favorite things. I love data so much. And I think we can all agree it's so important for a small business owner to be looking at their data on a regular basis. How are you calculating your ROI? Is this working? Is it not working? And boy, let's say do you sign up with all of these things or you're using all these different strategies? There's a lot of different channels, a lot of different metrics that you're looking at. You have to be able to determine how you're going to look at them and determine success. What are you looking for? You know, not every strategy is going to be clicks. And ultimately that's what we want. Every strategy should ultimately lead to clicks. Where we've talked about before. There's different processes, different steps in a buying cycle. You need to worry about impressions too. You need to worry about softer leads like information, other things like that versus full on conversions. And so when you've got that many data points, it can be really hard to look at it. But it's important to make sure that you're spending your money wisely and you're spending it effectively. And you know with Hibu, we've got our Dashboard that's able to pull all of these things and make a really nice and easy to look at. You can look at a big picture. You can also get into each individual program and see what the ROI is and whether or not those are being effective.
Ian 13:49:15
Yeah. And I think for, you know, a lot of our clients that we’ve talked to, I think you, again, I'm, I'm, I'm painting with a broad brush here, but you get folks that are like very into the nitty gritty of, you know, every individual piece my search ads, my display ads, my website, my reviews. And then, you know, they might say like, but how's it all coming together? You know, what's that big picture of all those things? And then you get folks on the other side who maybe just look at the big picture and go, I, I'm not sure that I need, you know, X, Y, and Z because the, the big number looks good. So, you know, the nice thing about the, the dashboard of, of looking at your data and to your point, you know, having that high level view and that granular view is you can really start to, you know, whatever floats your boat, it's there. But it's also going to give you that other perspective of, you know, here's what that all adds up to, or here's what those component pieces are doing for you.
Dan 14:42:09
For sure. I think the one other piece of it is about time. You know, I think it's real easy to be impatient when you've invested the amount of money that someone invested in their business to run marketing. Talk a little bit about that, Sarah. When you've talked to a lot of clients, obviously. So, what's that conversation sound like when you're saying, well, I got nothing this month. Like how do you handle that? What's that actually mean versus it being just a number on a screen?
Sarah 15:08:07
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of pieces that go into that when you're thinking about data, right? I mean, some of the easiest ones are seasonality. When did you start your marketing? You know, how are we, what are our key metrics that we're tracking? You know, in the summertime versus the wintertime or when you're typically going to be more busy? And then making sure that you have the right expectations. Right? So, when you're first getting started with a marketing strategy, again, I'm going to go back to our first topic almost. You know, we're building a foundation. And if you haven't done any of those pieces yet, you’re brand new to Google, essentially, even if you've been in business, it's a family run business. You've been in business since 1970 something, you know? Right. It's, you know, if you don't have your foundation first, you’re brand new to Google. And so it's going to take that time to really build that up. And then you know, getting to the place where you’re tracking your numbers, you're tracking the key metrics that you want to be able to track. Right? Whether that's engagement, traffic, customers. Ultimately, we want customers. But you have to understand that it's not a switch that you just flip. And all of a sudden somebody is coming into your business, right. You know, you might catch some of those customers, but it's really all about how you're building that robust strategy. And then as you start to build that data, you're using that data to kind of inform or, you know, make changes or make adjustments to your strategy. So that's why data is so important, because you want to make sure you're getting in front of the right customer. And I know with our Dashboard, you know, you're going through and identifying, okay, was this a solid lead? Okay. This is great. This strategy is working well for me. You know, whatever the case that might be. So, I think I think that's really important too, is, is being able to turn use that data to drive what you're doing in your advertising efforts.
Dan 16:54:23
For sure. And I think it's also looking at trends, not necessarily specific moments in time.
Sarah 16:59:04
Exactly.
Dan 16:59:17
Because you may have a down day. That down day doesn't mean that everything failed. What does a month look like. How does the month look over the last month? If you're lucky enough to have multiple years’ worth of data, what's this month, this year look like last year? That's where you can really start to see the growth that once you've gone through that 12-month cycle.
Sarah 17:17:00
Yep. And I mean you're looking at that. You're looking at your competitor environment. Right. How's that shifted. You know, Ian brought up, you know, your website five years ago. Well, you know, when you're looking at data, you're making sure you're reviewing your website traffic, you're making sure that your website is exactly where you want to drive customers. And how is that shifting? You're looking at your total landscape as well when it comes to your total strategy.
Ian 17:40:10
Yeah. And the flip side of the coin, you know, when you're talking about time is effort too, you know, because maybe it's your, maybe it's your third or fourth time that you've talked to Sara and you're like, okay, I get it. I understand the why. And I'm making time and I'm looking at, you know, both the, the kind of small potatoes and how it all adds up. But like, I don't have time to do this every day. I don't have time to do this every week, you know. So how do you make time for this over and over again? And, you know, a lot of that just comes down to Dan, I think you mentioned this before. Like what you can automate, you know, and one of the cool things that we're able to do is through AI, through some of the technology that we use, we're able to at least take the burden off of, listen, you got 16 calls this week. These 14 are solid leads. You know, these are the ones as you follow up on this one might have been a spam call or a bot form fill. And then this other one is a is a maybe. But if you're trying to just kind of make a, you know, a daily calendar of, hey, it's Thursday, I want to follow up with every lead I got by Friday, we're going to tell you which ones to start with. Give you a head start.
Dan 18:42:19
Yeah, absolutely. Being able to target and manage your time effectively to make sure the most important the hottest leads are the ones that you're focusing on. Because obviously the sooner time to value is there. You can get in front of these people, especially if you're a “need it now” service. If someone calls saying, “I've got a leaky pipe,” you got to know that right away. And that's where kind of where our services there will help score that for you and put it in front of you right when you need it.
Sarah 19:05:07
Absolutely. Well, I think that wraps up our topic for today. I hope you guys enjoyed, you know, really focusing, of course, on building your foundation, getting in front of the right customer, and really tracking all of your data.
Dan 19:16:23
Absolutely. And that's all really important. Don't forget to like us on YouTube. Subscribe on YouTube, leave comments if you have any questions. You can also find us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Leave us a five-star review. All those things help us greatly in terms of getting down and getting in front of other business owners like yourself.
Ian, Sarah, thanks so much for a great conversation and everyone else, we'll see you next time.