088: How to Tackle Marketing Overwhelm as a Business Owner

Title: How to Tackle Marketing Overwhelm as a Business Owner

Guest: Emily Caddell

Peter: Marketing overwhelm. Today, I’m joined by Emily Caddell. She’s the director of marketing for biz marketing, and we are going to have a conversation about marketing overwhelm for small businesses. Emily, thanks for joining me today.

Emily: Absolutely. Let’s get started. Yeah. So I think, you know, a lot of small businesses feel very burdened by the feeling of overwhelm. There’s so many platforms out there.

There’s so much to do when it comes to online marketing. So what do I do? If I don’t know where to start, I’d feel completely lost. And I think a lot of small businesses feel like, oh, I need to be doing these cool new platforms that are coming out. I need to do TikTok.

I need to do threads. I need to do all of these. But if they’re not doing it well, then it’s not working. So marketing overwhelm kinda feels like, okay. Well, I need to do all of these things, and I feel so swamped and burdened by it, but I don’t have the time and money to do all of these.

Peter: So so you get paralyzed. Are there any other things that you see businesses trying to do that is contributing to this overwhelm?

Emily: Yeah. I mean, I think they’re, like you said, either I’m not gonna do anything or I’m gonna try to do it all and the business owner is trying to do it and obviously does not have time to be keeping up with a consistent marketing strategy on these, like especially social media platforms that are so quick moving. They don’t have time to do it. So they’re like, oh, I’m gonna open all these accounts on all of these different platforms. Gonna do it for a couple weeks, and then I just fall off.

Peter: Where are we gonna get started?

Emily: First step, what kind of business are you? Where’s your target market hanging out? There’s so many especially when we’re talking about service businesses. Like, I think of roofers, I think of yeah. Like you said, home remodel.

That target audience is gonna be on Facebook. That’s where they’re gonna be. And that’s the easiest place to do it to reach those people. You know, the younger, slightly younger generation, but also old enough to still probably buy your services is gonna be on Instagram. Then it’s great for b to b type of businesses.

So you just need to assess what kind of business you have and where that target audience is gonna be. And we really we try to focus on, you know, kind of the top five, I would say. Obviously, the website is very important. You know, beyond that, we really like to focus on Google business profile that needs to be up to date. It needs to be accurate.

You can post updates on it. It’s very important. This was formerly known as Google My Business, just in case you’re confused there. Two is Facebook. Three is Instagram.

Four is LinkedIn. Five is email. And each platform has different perks, so that’s kinda where to get started.

Peter: I would sort of add one to the list. People don’t necessarily think about it as your own website because really that’s the only platform you can control 100%. So the conversation today assumes that you are optimizing your website already. You’ve got articles on there that are getting added and that sort of thing. We’re sort of assuming that that’s a baseline, and that may not be a good assumption, but we can’t forget about your website.

The good news is that all of this stuff we’re doing, whatever platform we select, we’re going be able to reuse information in different forms for the different platforms. So yeah, let’s talk about Google Business Profile. That that’s kinda like the number one thing that you got to start with outside of your website. Right?

Emily: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This actually this makes me think of my son’s dentist does not have a Google Business Profile for some odd reason. I don’t know.

But it’s really hard to find like, oh, I need to look them up to call them about this. Or I went to I was gonna go leave them a review because they’ve been a great dentist and they don’t have a Google Business Profile. It makes no sense. They haven’t a website. They have all of that, but there that is a massive flaw.

That’s a big that’s a big deal to not have a Google Business profile. So this is very important. We really work to optimize it, make sure everything is correct on there. You know, your hours, your reviews are so important, and Google reviews are just huge. People are gonna Google you Right.

Before they use you. They wanna see what reviews you have on there. It’s very you know, it’s important for your visibility. I mean, what else do you think about Google Business Profiles?

Peter: I mean, Google Business Profile, a, it feeds Google Maps. So if you have a brick and mortar location, you absolutely have to be on Google Business Profiles. If somebody is gonna Google you and try to drive to your location, it’s going to be a lot harder if you don’t have a Google Business Profile, a, because that’s what drives Google Maps. And Google Maps is the predominant mapping software. I know Apple Map is important as well, and I believe they use data gathered from Yelp Mhmm.

For local stuff. But going back to Google Business Profile, a, it powers maps. B, Google Business Profile is what shows up on the search results page in what we call the three pack or the local listings. So when you’re looking at search results on Google, you’ll see or four, in some cases, locations when you search for type of business and a location. Dennis near me, for example.

Right? You’re gonna see that or Dennis for kids near me. And so you’re gonna see that show up. That generates a lot of visibility for businesses, and it’s essentially free. I mean, you’re gonna have to take the time to set it up.

Emily: Mhmm.

Peter: But that one and with the Google reviews that appear there, that’s where your Google reviews appear. Honestly, today, I would argue it is the most important place for every single business. You have to have a Google Business profile. In fact, we should call that Dennis and see if they need some help.

Emily: I know. Honestly. So Next up, Facebook. Obviously, Facebook still has that big service area. Target audience like I talked about.

I mean, kind of the age range of like 40 to 70 homeowners like that age range, that audience is gonna be on Facebook. So it’s really a great way to connect with customers. You can engage with them really well. They can message you. You can do all kinds of stuff like that.

I mean, the cost effective marketing, that’s even it’s pretty solid on cost. We’ve seen our own customers. But even just the, like, organic side of it, of being able to get reviews, being able to showcase your business through visual and text.

Peter: What I don’t get about Facebook is this. Folks are saying, Well, I don’t use Facebook anymore. Well, you know what? I think you’re lying because I can’t believe how many people I see on Facebook. There’s a ton of people still using Facebook.

Especially for, like, I use Facebook constantly for some groups that I’m a member of. I’m not really interested in, you know, seeing whose birthday it is. Right. That sort of thing. But I definitely use it for some groups that I am part of for phishing.

And, you know, these groups are like, you know, 1,200, you know, 2,000, 3,000 people constantly updating stuff with something I’m interested in.

Emily: Mhmm.

Peter: So I’m I’m checking that out sometimes during the efficiency season, checking it out, like, twice a day, three times a day.

Emily: Right. Oh, yeah. So So that Again, I completely agree. There’s just everyone is still on Facebook, like, unless you’re maybe, like, 25 and below or some people have decided to go away from it. But most people are still on Facebook.

Peter: So Yeah. Especially if you are trying to sell something that is requires a certain level of income, and generally that’s going to be people that are probably in their early thirties and older. Tied to that, of course, is Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. What is it that you like about Instagram for businesses, and what particular types of businesses do you think can really do well on Instagram?

Emily: Obviously, it’s a very visual you have to have a, like, picture or a video or something to upload to post on Instagram. A little bit different than Facebook, but very visual, very easy for home remodeling, pet groomers, anything having to do with pets is gonna do amazing on Instagram. Any kind of visual I mean, even like roofers can do well on Any kind of home service that you can really highlight visually. Remodeling. Remodeling.

But then I think even, you know, some health care stuff can do well on there too. And I really like, obviously, again, it is owned by Facebook aka Meta. So you can go on and you can post at the same time. So why wouldn’t you? You can post on Instagram and Facebook at the same time either using the, like, Meta dashboard or if you’re posting from the, like, Instagram app, you can also share to Facebook.

Makes it easy. Again, it is maybe a slightly younger audience. Like, you are gonna get the younger side, but you also will still get a lot of that audience that’s also on Facebook. They’ve kind of also moved over to Instagram. So you’re gonna get a lot of people who are available to buy your services or your products.

Obviously, again, I know we really focus on service area businesses less with product focused businesses, but products, of course, are gonna do very well on Instagram. But services can do Right. Pretty great.

Peter: We should make a distinction here between Facebook and Instagram organic posting, and Facebook and Instagram advertising, and then boosting, right? So there’s kind of three things you can do here. You can create a post and just post it organically.

Emily: Mhmm.

Peter: And it’s gonna go out to your audience. Hopefully, some people that are following you may see it. Not guaranteed, though, on these platforms, which is why they are in business because they take advertising dollars. So there’s a second thing where you can boost a post. What do you think about that in terms of, like, a business that’s to me, it seems like kind of the first step of dipping your toe into advertising maybe?

Emily: I think it’s a little easier for businesses to do themselves to boost a post that maybe you’re like, this post is doing pretty well. I’m gonna boost it. Or, like, boost a post about maybe you have an event going on or something like that. Those Mhmm. Can do pretty well.

I would caution against putting a lot of money into boosting posts because they’re not they’re not necessarily gonna they’re gonna get your brand out there, and it’s good for branding. It’s not necessarily gonna get you leads.

Peter: Yeah. It’s not they don’t they don’t run long enough to get optimized.

Emily: And they’re not gonna necessarily, like, have a button for someone to go to your website or whatever Right. Kind of thing. But then it’s worth it maybe a little bit for branding. So, yeah, I would say a small budget, worth trying it, dipping your toe in the water and seeing if it works.

Peter: And then of course, you’ve got advertising. So the nice thing about Meta, Facebook and Instagram, is that you’ve got a ton of different options for advertising. The thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that we can target audiences by geography, which even folks don’t understand. But if you have a business in a certain area and you know you’re not going to get a customer from 20 miles away, don’t waste your money putting your ads out there, which I see the default settings in the ads is like 20 miles from your location, which is like, what? Here where we live, where I live in Seattle, it’s like, oh, it went across the water and it’s on a peninsula on the other side of the island or on the other side of the water, right?

People have to take a ferry. Same thing happens in Long Island or Connecticut. And there’s a lot of places like that. So you have to really be careful. But the cool thing is with the advertising, if you’re using those platforms for advertising, it’s a consolidated view, and you’re able to advertise through the platform, and then it’ll automatically optimize, you know, the results for what you’re looking for, and you can target it geographically.

And there’s other targeting as well. We don’t necessarily need to get into that now, but there’s there are other types of things you can do, like retargeting. So if somebody goes to your website, plant a pixel on their browser, and the next time they go on to Instagram or Facebook, they’ll see your ads. I know you’ve all seen this before.

Emily: Oh, yeah.

Peter: Or you can upload an audience. If you’ve got a bunch of customers and you’re trying to reengage your customers, you can upload a list assuming you have their permission to market to them. List to their email addresses, Facebook will go in and match the email addresses that you load with the users on Facebook and then show those ads specifically to that audience. Custom audience is what they call that. So that’s Facebook, Instagram, Google Business Profile, and then we’ve got LinkedIn.

What do you think about LinkedIn? Who’s that good for?

Emily: Yeah. So, obviously, this is a little bit different of a site than Instagram and Facebook. Professionals, other businesses are gonna be on there. So it’s really good for b to b type of businesses. Like, it’s great for us for, like, a marketing company, but it’s really good for lawyers, that kind of professional services, I would say.

Peter: CPAs.

Emily: CPAs. Like, anything like that.

Peter: Consultants. Yeah.

Emily: Exactly. I would recommend LinkedIn. And I don’t think every business needs to really focus on LinkedIn, but I do think those kind of businesses can do well. Yeah.

Peter: Like a dental practice, unless they’re looking to hire and that I mean, it’s it’s it’s free to get a profile. You might as grab your profile. But

Emily: Yeah. But you don’t need to worry about keeping up with posting on there constantly and doing all of that kind of thing.

Peter: Right. There’s two strategies on LinkedIn with respect to users. So you have a business profile. Again, that’s something else you should get, a business profile. And then associated with the business profile, you have people who work for your organization.

Emily: Mhmm.

Peter: And generally, what they’ll do is they’ll look at the email address. It’s gotta be like the same domain name to link the users to your business. So people can say, I work here, and then they can get associated with that business. Mhmm. But what’s one of the strategies that we’ve found to be really pretty powerful for LinkedIn is if you post an item on LinkedIn on the business page, people can go in people who work for the business can go in and share the post.

That’s one of the cool things about LinkedIn. You think about it, a lot of us in the professional world have relatively big networks of people on LinkedIn. If you’ve been in the working world for the last ten or fifteen years, you have got to probably have a LinkedIn profile. You probably have at least 100 people, if not more. What’s cool is you share a post, it gets shared to your connections.

Now, there’s algorithms and things like that that we don’t know exactly. It’s going get shared with everybody, but from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty consistent that things do get shared. So it’s a great strategy. So you just post it once, and then you just get all the people that work for the business that are, you know, relevant to that post to reshare or repost, and it’s super easy.

Emily: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We’ve seen this with one of our law firms that they’ll one of the lawyers will write a post for the law firm. Mhmm.

We’ll go share it on their LinkedIn. And then whatever lawyer wrote that post is gonna go share it on their personal, and they have a huge network of people. So it’s been a great way for them to drive traffic to their blog post, way to do things for specific businesses.

Peter: The next platform that you talked about was email. Really overlooked. Right?

Emily: Email is just huge. It’s such a perfect way to reach past clients that maybe will use your services again or in a different way, or also getting new leads into your email. Yeah. Exactly. And sending them information that has to do with your business, like you said, blog posts.

It really builds customer loyalty, builds trust. It’s informational. It’s intentional. It is very worth doing.

Peter: I would almost I would almost move email up the list here. And after your website and your Google Business profile, I’d almost put email in there as as a gotta do, like mandatory. When we say email, we’re talking about a couple of different strategies that a business can use. So one of the most common ones that we work with our customers with, and it’s extremely powerful, is getting at least a monthly newsletter type email out to their client base. So customers or emails, prospects from the past, emails that they’ve collected.

But most of the people we’re talking about are their existing client base or people who have done business with them in the past. It’s super important to establish that relationship in an ongoing fashion with the customer because their needs are going to change over time. If you’re providing home services, maybe they moved or maybe their brother moved into a new home that needs some services Or there’s just any number of permutations of things that can happen in people’s lives that may need them to use your services again. So even if you do kitchen remodeling, it would be a great opportunity to share pictures of some of the latest remodels you’ve done.

Emily: Right.

Peter: Show off your work, which is one of the strategies that we believe in, show off. And people move and people have a new kitchen that needs to get done. Or like I said earlier, their brother just bought a new house or has a house that really needs a new kitchen.

Emily: Oh, yeah.

Peter: What’s really cool about it is you’re just showing up in people’s inbox once a month, for example. Or if you’re really on your game, you know, once a week, even if they just read your name and hit delete, they have read your name and reminded themselves about your business.

Emily: Yep. You’re just putting your name in front of them. Even that is important to do.

Peter: That yeah. So that’s that’s what I call that is more of the, like I don’t really have a name for that strategy. I mean, that’s really just kind of the bread and butter marketing campaigns that we run email marketing campaigns we run for our clients.

Emily: Right.

Peter: The other thing would be prospect nurturing, where you use some type of Alan Dibbs calls it in his book, one Page Marketing Plan, the ethical bribe. You offer the prospective customer something, and in return, they give up their email address. And now this is a prospect. This person has not purchased from you yet. And there’s a whole series of emails that you can send out to them in an automated fashion.

We call that a drip email campaign using some marketing automation tools to get them. If it turns out that they’re in the buying mode, you want to reinforce your brand and do all kinds of things with them, reinforce their needs, reinforce their pain, help them think about that transformation they’re looking for, that aspirational endpoint and how you’re going to help them get there. You can do that through a series of emails which can contain anything from a blog post to a video to any number of things.

Emily: Oh yeah.

Peter: Those are kind of the two. I didn’t mean to go off on a tangent there but I really think it’s overlooked.

Emily: We’ve been wrapping all of this together for our clients in one big bundle of like, you should be posting content on your blogs.

Peter: Mhmm.

Emily: That content should then be used in an email and on these platforms. And it’s Yep. It’s so worth it to just have that strategy all in one and very important. So

Peter: I think we should table the discussion about content creation for another episode going deep on that. But I think we could just give the Reader’s Digest version of that.

Emily: Sure. Yeah. So we you know, we’ll work with a client of what kind of what kind of topics do you wanna talk about this month. We’ll usually put out two blog posts that really are great for SEO, local SEO. We’ll really hit some topics that we think prospective clients, but also, again, current clients could really be interested in or past clients.

And then those get posted to their site, send in an email that will have that information in it, and it will all of the buttons and stuff will go back to those blog posts. And then we will also post that on their Google business profile, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever kind of platforms that they’re using. And it’s just kind of full circle marketing plan that we have going on.

Peter: Yeah. And there’s a whole host of things we have to do related to that. It’s defining the this is straight out of the one page marketing plan. Who’s your audience? What’s your messaging?

Your core messaging? Your marketing messaging? And then we talk about how we’re going to get it out there. So there’s some pre work that has to happen, which we could cover in another episode. But I think it’s really important to understand that when you decide to commit to marketing on a platform or two or three, that they don’t stand alone.

You are looking for complementary assets and squeezing the most juice out of that, the work you are doing. Looks like you’ve set me up for a lightning round here.

Emily: Yep. So I figure you can ask me what type of business. After Google, we’re going skip Google, skip email, skip the website but what other platform should they focus on and I will tell

Peter: you. Roofing company?

Emily: Facebook.

Peter: Pet groomer.

Emily: Instagram, definitely.

Peter: Law firm? LinkedIn. Yeah. I will I will throw one caveat there. Mhmm.

In that when we say law firm, we’re talking about different there are different types of lawyers, so maybe a bankruptcy lawyer or a personal injury lawyer. Know, personal injury is is a totally different type of so that’s kind of a loaded question there.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I mean and I mean, there’s different platforms that specifically lawyers should be on, but that’s a whole another Yeah. Can of worms. Right.

But yeah, definitely at What

Peter: about a pest service company? Facebook. Okay. Yep, HVAC Heating and Air.

Emily: Facebook again.

Peter: Okay. Auto Detailer. Instagram. Okay. Okay.

Yep. Very visual. Dentists and other health type professionals.

Emily: Facebook. I would do Facebook.

Peter: Okay. Good. Is there anything else that we ought to cover in this episode? Like I said, we’re going to cover just more of the content in the weeds in an upcoming episode because I think there’s a lot to cover. Mhmm.

Is there anything else you wanna add before we sign off for today?

Emily: Yeah. I would just say, you know, don’t feel the burden. Don’t feel FOMO about all of these platforms like we talked about. Stick to what you know. Stick to what you can be consistent in.

And if you need help, we’re here to help.

Peter: So if you were a business owner, what is the minimum what what what’s the minimum commitment that you should make to a let’s say that you’ve decided you’re obviously, you got your Google’s profile figured out. Mhmm. You’ve decided we’re gonna do Instagram. What what’s the minimum commitment that any business should make if they are going to look for some results from a particular platform?

Emily: Sure. I would post at least 10 times a month. If you can do that, that will get you headed towards

Peter: the So two and a half times a week basically is So what you’re some weeks are going to be three, some months will be two. That’s good. That’s good to know. So if you’ve heard this conversation and you’re still not sure where to start and you’d like to have a conversation with us, you go to our website, bizmktg.com, bizmarketing.com. You can book an appointment with us for free and we will discuss your needs and give you some ideas of what you could do.

Also, if you’re looking for help, obviously we’re here to help as well. That’s what we do. That’s the reason we’re in business, is to help businesses win online. Go online and go to our website, book an appointment. There’s a big red button there.

Just click the button. Let us know. You could also just send an email to podcastbizmkatg dot com. Emily, thanks.

Emily: Thank you.

Peter: Have good day. It’s a great conversation.

Emily: Absolutely.

Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.