Episode #146 – Jeff Beale On Revving Up Your Digital Marketing In 3 Simple Steps

[00:00:00] Everybody it’s David and I’m back with another edition of the podcast. Today we have a gentleman all the way from Atlanta Georgia. Mr. Marketology. Jeff Beale. What is up.

[00:00:13] Hey Dave how are you doing. I am doing fantastic. What about you sir.

[00:00:17] Oh wonderful you know the Falcons about to win the Super Bowl so I can find out like we talked about off air.

[00:00:25] My sister does live in Atlanta she actually lives in Milton and she’s not the biggest football fan. And her husband is sort of you know watching on occasion. But yeah they were super pumped about the Falcons being in the Super Bowl and I have to say I will play for the Falcons because I despise the Patriots so hopefully it is a turnoff to many people but it’s going to be a great day. I’ll just I just hope it’s most of all I want to see it be a close game.

[00:00:50] I hope so.

[00:00:51] Yeah I think it was a out they too many of you will be upset because we all hate the Patriots so they better check those balls ahead of time make sure they are there.

[00:01:01] All right so let’s let’s try to dive into this because you’re into marketing you’re into email marketing of course which we like to talk about a lot on the show. Let’s jump back now to how you sort of got into this whole marketing and e-mail marketing world how you got sucked into the vortex. If me start back you know when you maybe had more normal jobs how you sort of quickly you know got got to where you are now Joy is a beautiful transition.

[00:01:27] So when I started I started in military after getting out the military I worked in the government for the military. And so I was in charge of webdesign. And for a symposium that they had. And as I transitioned from webdesign I said well you know I really it’s funny I got that job because I told them that their Web sites suck and they said well you can do better you should do better.

[00:01:51] And so that’s how I got into web design.

[00:01:54] And then from there moved into book Great started nosing that Web site weren’t getting traffic so me and my big mouth.

[00:02:03] You know a nice web site but you’re not getting any traffic. So they say well you know so much better so got into marketing digital marketing that way.

[00:02:14] And so from there move to an agency great agency 360. I worked for them for a while. I had some great clients moved into in-house working with some companies larger brands. From there I then transitioned to consulting and so I’ve been in marketing strategies ever since being in those transitions. I went from web development to MCO to digital marketing and started to see that emails convert more than anything. So I started looking at email marketing but I would like to say more than just email marketing marketing automation. So the difference between the two email marketing usually you collect emails you send out newsletters broadcasters maybe an autoresponder series but it is based on Push Marketing where marketing automation you’re interacting based on the behaviors of your visitors so there’s triggers if they look at this you’ll send them that if they go to this page you’ll send them something if they don’t go they don’t respond or reply then you’ll send them another series of emails and so forth. So it’s a little more advanced and complex but it’s still in the email marketing family and that’s currently what you’re focused on.

[00:03:36] Yes yes. So when did you make the transition into helping people with this kind of stuff.

[00:03:41] I would say probably two years ago started really enjoying this strategic part of it. I love to put together the strategy and pretty much I wouldn’t say try to manipulate minds but seeing what works and what doesn’t work with with the person’s behavior.

[00:04:00] Right. So from a marketing strategist point of view as I am as well and this is a conversation. You know when you look at people’s Web sites now I find because I do copywriting primarily I find is the business people have advertisement making the exact same mistakes they’re making six major mistakes and then maybe some side ones.

[00:04:22] What what sort of stuff do you find when you encounter new people or you take a look at a Web site you know what sort of things are you accounting on a daily basis. People are stock that do it.

[00:04:35] I think the bundle it all up into one mistake it is they don’t understand their. So it’s more of vanity than it is actual value. They are looking at this is what I would like to see and what I would like to hear and how I would like to. But you’re not your customer and I tell my clients that all the time you are not your customer. First of all you’re too close to your product. You know too much about it it’s a lot of assumption in that there because you know so much where you or your audience may not know that your audience may not care about that. So a lot of times they don’t really understand the audience they don’t listen. So a lot of the techniques that they use methods and messaging that they use is self serving and so it isn’t as effective as it could be.

[00:05:24] So that’s a great point. That is something I encounter probably on a daily basis is that the people here. You’re exactly right. They’re just too close to the product or too close to whatever they offer and they’re not their customer and so they see a real disconnect with the market that to try to try to get into or try to sell to now for for specifically digital marketing. When you’re going to different peoples websites stuff what sort of systems or stuff at a very basic level should people have set up the U.S. you know create the biggest differences.

[00:06:02] The biggest difference I would say would be to get your analytics set up correctly. I mean if your numbers are right if you don’t know what you’re looking at you can’t really make an informed decision. So that’s the first thing. Make sure that your tracking is set up correctly and then based on that going back to strategy make sure that you have a good sound strategy and then you can put other things in place so things such as your marketing automation. You may want to put bring your souces sharing event to which you’re talking about Dave as far as content the type of content to write. You know that because you’re looking at the analytics and you are looking at the numbers and you’re seeing what’s working with may not be working or some patterns that are occurring that you can get in front of. So I think that’s the very first thing a lot of times it’s not the sexy thing. People don’t really want to see all that they want to see the nice slider and the beautiful flash animations and videos and this and that. It doesn’t matter if you’re not converting.

[00:07:10] That’s true as a copywriter. That is a big big thing for us because people do like to pretty stuff up you know to the point of destroying their conversions and so forth and not just not using it that’s just not helping them sell whatever it is they’re trying to get people to do. You know it’s just it just seems to be a crazy thing and you see so much and I don’t understand why sort of happens to because you have people have aesthetic things in their head. Like you said just to go about what they like. Now they want to represent themselves. But again what are you trying to accomplish. They are such a such a big factor at it keeping it simple often is one of the biggest obstacles people think it’s we had a guy show here a couple episodes ago that settle a guy and he said that people think that his way of doing things is so simple it couldn’t work it out that it must be it must be it must be more magic mystery to it.

[00:08:15] You know and it is true. It’s very it’s all these things are quite simple but hard to get people to do because you think well that’s got to be more to it than that you know you just got to think of how people encounter stuff and how reticent people are to really much of anything.

[00:08:30] So yeah well it’s just like communicating with people.

[00:08:33] I mean you’re out you see a person that you really want to meet and in your mind you’re thinking of all these wonderful things that you can say this is going to wow them right and they start the conversation just walk up and say yeah.

[00:08:45] It’s that simple. Yeah yeah start the conversation before you can have. Yes.

[00:08:52] So for people who are out there who have web sites they may be listening to this podcast themselves. I mean I’m one of these people who is making the same kind of mistakes and the chances are good that you are. Where should people start. You know what. Sort of maybe some maybe two or three steps that people can take a look at. You know that be simple to fix or simple to sort of think about but maybe they haven’t really into marketing enough to really know how would it affect that.

[00:09:22] I would say the first thing to start with would be to A and analytic that has a heat map or video he map I love video he maps like inspect let goes right there a couple of what is out there of course details out there. But get one of those put it on your site and then you can start seeing what your visitors are doing and where they’re dropping off. If it’s an image or the page is loading slow or did some copy that just seems to turn off some colors and then start testing. I mean really marketing and app and I even cringe when I say it.

[00:09:59] Because I don’t like it either. But marketing is all about failing modifying and retraining.

[00:10:06] That’s that’s really you’re going to fail sometimes you know fail for you know try something different. See if it works. And with with the video or heat map type of technology tracking you can start seeing some things and you can start saying well OK I notice when they get to this portion of the Web site they always leave. And. And so now you can start making like again someone form decisions on what should I do next. That’s really the first place to start because if not you’re really just thrown or thrown in when trying to figure out where it’s going to blow. Instead of being able to actually see some of the some of the traction I think you’re right.

[00:10:50] Because it’s important. I mean one of the things that copywriters like to do is we like to read stuff outloud to see where the you know where where the wording is not quite right in the rhythm perhaps throws you off so that people get stuck in you can see a heat map if you’re doing it digitally. Yeah because you can tell where the you know if they skip to the end or whatever.

[00:11:13] Because it all sounds good in your head and it we’re going to shower mostly but does it.

[00:11:22] And I think people who are in the market again and haven’t done marketing perhaps for other people suffer or haven’t done it themselves. Like you tested testing it’s hard to conceptualize. You know this is not know they think the sky is just going to take a paper brush this magic wand perhaps and make everything in one fell swoop but it’s it’s kind of a grind always to get it exactly converting it’s highest because you’ve got to test these little elements first. Some level reason can often make a difference.

[00:11:56] Yes. And if you leave something small to it is it is.

[00:12:00] I mean the people stupid things like what color text or stuff like this what you think why would that change anybody’s mind.

[00:12:12] But it just it. You have to speak it to. It does. So what’s the next step. Once people got that heat map and they’re look at that see where people are falling of course are going to take steps to correct that. Hopefully somebody else thinks that people should be looking for can access quickly.

[00:12:30] OK another thing would be actually the path that they use do they come to your site. Then they check your social do they respond to your e-mails. Do you know what other channels are playing a bigger back in your conversion. Most of the time with today’s market people do their due diligence so they’re not going to call you and say well you know I have these questions. Usually they’ll try to research it on their own. They’ll go to your Facebook or Twitter or Instagram Pandora is one of your social’s. They’ll start doing research elsewhere and then make a decision making sure that your communication on all of your platforms go in line with what your Web site is saying and going live with the strategy that you put in place. You know you may have your Twitter being a quote unquote be behind the scenes that gives that extra incentive and then Facebook you may have Facebook as more of your educational platform and YouTube being more entertaining platform. There’s several different ways you can do it but you want to see if you can take them on that path and you analysts will start to show what your first touch would be. All the ones in between and what your last touch and you’ll see that the commonalities and based on that you’ll start to notice a trend and you can start to I don’t want to say manipulate I hate that word but this column is kind of the truth. You’ve got to nip you late.

[00:14:02] The behavior of your audience because now you’re saying if you’re going to this let me push you to this other channel because it’s the channel that is the next in line for that greater conversion path. And then based on that let me suggest and keep suggesting. Not not. Not selling because that’s another thing that a lot of Web sites and a lot of businesses do wrong. They try to force you to buy what you want to suggest and then they decide to purchase. They want to purchase it. So you’re suggesting as they go through the path you’re pretty much filling the holes that are there for them to make a clear decision to to do business with you. So you know that’s really the next step.

[00:14:47] Yeah that’s a good that’s a very good thing to bring up. Where are these people coming from.

[00:14:53] And then you can hone in on maybe or to also you know because a lot of people I think get overwhelmed by all the social channels they’re trying to be sort of you know all talks to everybody all the time. And it’s really tough to find you know the real people that are going to read your product or service whatever it is you offer it’s going to resonate with because they’re trying to be all things to all people the more you can sort of like me shut down those people are going to be able to help the best you know. You see where that’s coming from. Like you say you could probably tailor it even more to the people that are big and you know it’s kind of an 80:20 thing to bring in more people coming from YouTube. They might the people are interested in your kind of stuff maybe more video they’ll enjoy video or whatever. So with analytics You know you can sort of tell that kind of stuff now because it’s getting. I mean it’s getting the data you get it’s pretty fresh.

[00:15:48] It is and you know one at a another mistake that a lot of companies use. They look at what other companies are doing and they try to base it on that. You don’t know all factors that play into that. I mean so yes take some information from your competitors. That’s good to know but don’t base your decision based on what your competitors are doing because you don’t know all the factors involved.

[00:16:13] Right. Yeah that’s one of the sort of things I think I see most too is like people have no idea. I mean they do if you sit them down and like go through it all they have an idea of why people should be buying their products when they haven’t communicated that in any way. They don’t have what people would refer to as like a USP. And you know they don’t have this overwhelming reason to people to do business with our company as opposed to our competitors and having intel on competitors like you said is great because it allows you to differentiate. So yes.

[00:16:45] And that’s another good thing is understanding first of all who your audience would be. But then there need. And then how do you benefit their needs. It’s it’s funny because a lot of times companies from behind the desk want to give you the features and benefits. I mean like we offer them as we all but but you know let me give you a little story I love given the stories a man walks through the desert. He was in the desert for three days. He comes to a water fountain. He drinks the water is the best water you ever drunk. Is it the best water because it’s the best water or just because he was that thirsty. The real need is that he’s thirsty. So your clients are mean and customers their real need a lot of times don’t really relate to whatever the features are. You need to just find out what their core need is and how you provide benefits that coordinate all the other stuff is just icing on that cake.

[00:17:41] Yeah I completely agree with that. And one of the things I think people often mistake is when they get into business is you see people who say you know I’m going to offer this product and because they may see other people offering the product they’re just saying it’s like you said at the very beginning of this podcast it’s more of a personal choice based on what they think that what the market or the people or their audience is telling them like a very easy way to to have a thriving business is to find out what those people actually want and they just give that. You know that’s an easy way to make selling so much easier than trying to force something on them that it may not only be lukewarm to it may not really want or don’t see the value even though you see it it’s so hard because oftentimes and this is you know you sort of referred a few times to like I don’t like to say manipulation.

[00:18:39] But often people’s desires and needs are so desperate that could be very difficult. So people are listening you might think of this a little harder. You know people I know they need this like we just talked about people should get some heat that they might need that because that’s something you could use initially to make decisions going forward. But at the time people to desire something entirely different. And as a business owner you could provide both you know. And you can often satisfy those desires and get what they need at the same time but not sell on the need selling it the desire you know. So it’s it’s very hard sometimes for business owners to understand that because they because like you said they are so close to a product they know that the real value of it and that’s how they stopped communicating.

[00:19:28] Yeah. And that’s why they need to leverage people like yourself Dave that are wordsmiths that are experts in different areas leverage those experts that know how to pull that out of you. A lot of times you know businesses may look at their budget and they may say wow I don’t want to spend that money on that and not see that that will get you greater return because it’ll get higher conversions and you know it is worth it.

[00:19:58] For instance need is funny you may have seen this. OK everybody’s on the health kick and see these fast food restaurants trying to force people to come eat their health. It’s a hard sale because you’re a real healthy person is going to just pick apart from ingredients pick apart everything that you offer. So understanding who your audience would be you may not want to go after a vegan you are McDonald’s it might not work out here.

[00:20:31] No.

[00:20:32] So knowing your audience but knowing their needs and in knowing how to communicate that that’s what makes it so beautiful. I mean you see you see companies like both will use fast food. Wendy’s did a great job. I mean Wendy’s is a fast food restaurant and they can attack all their health health. I would say health food nuts. Right. By offering the salads and they made the salads. The big thing in the end the little potatoes stuff potatoes the big thing.

[00:21:04] And so people were like Well Wendy’s is healthy right now they really are good at. Right but they have salad. In the end they learn how to do that.

[00:21:16] Well that’s very true. You know I heard a story about Burger King they talked about how Burger King and this is something you know as a marketing strategy of course we’re familiar with the Burger King’s main strategy for expanding their business for growing their business to where it is today was they didn’t have to do all the market research that McDonald’s did you know pioneering that industry. Instead they chose to accept that McDonald’s had done a lot of the right research given how successful and choose to leverage McDonald’s research. For instance McDonald’s has chose certain locations for market research.

[00:22:01] Burger King is spending the money to do their own work market research largely they chose to say OK. McDonald’s has already done that research and looked pretty good. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to leverage their research. They’ve already done. And we’re just going to put our locations within that you know say two miles of every three dollars. And by doing that they put themselves in flight like. Remember where I heard my dad Kennedy obviously. I heard this from what he said you know the easiest way is just to get in front of a parade that’s already ongoing. Yeah. And that’s exactly what they did there. You know they just they got it now so people are on their way. You know they want a quick meal. They don’t really care if it’s Bedales they just oh we’re already here Burger King is right here. Yes. So that kind of thing is when it comes to marketing strategy purposes people have websites. If you take a look at that kind of stuff too because it can be it could be just slightly off and be missing a huge boatload of business.

[00:22:59] Yeah. Yeah. Yes sure.

[00:23:02] So Jeff if people are going to you know have one more take away from this conversation you really have people a lot to think about it because people are staring at the Web site medievalist has pulled it up on their computer on their browser like oh man I think I’m doing that.

[00:23:20] What’s the other takeaway that people should be doing. And they could start doing it today.

[00:23:26] If it’s relating to web sites I would say make sure that now your web site is mobile ready made sure that people can access your web site no matter where they’re looking at it from which device. A lot of times if if they can pull it up on their phone and as you know if you have any type of children they stay on their phone. And so if they’re pulling up from their phone and your site doesn’t look appealing you can lose a lot of opportunity. I’ve noticed from analytics mobile over the past few years have increased tremendously as far as the share of traffic. So make sure that your site is available on any device. The majority of device I’m not going to say any device you don’t really have to care if it’s on a BlackBerry you can use that anymore.

[00:24:23] But you know just make sure that your brand is appealing no matter how they see it. And so that’s I guess you would say as far as web is concerned I would love to put this in as well and not just as your Web site leveraging social platforms as if it was your website. I make sure they’re appealing and make sure that you are consistently communicating with your base on there. That’s going to help you a lot. Even if your web site isn’t converting where you want it to be right now so you might find some golden nuggets and opportunities within you or other real estate which are your social platforms.

[00:25:09] So people you know think about that. Listen to your words. This thing that I don’t find like I can maybe post enough or how often I post this will be a lot of consternation about people what exactly they should be doing is some sort of simple little template to give people to how often they should be communicate with audiences on those platforms.

[00:25:30] Yeah you should. So as far as you know posting schedule that comes back into sitting down and actually having a great strategy up front and then from there you can google posting schedule for whatever that platform would be and it’ll give you from other experts have done the research some good best practices. Now that’s all they are just good best practices test them and then see how your audience response.

[00:26:00] And based on your audience response which a lot of these platforms have their own analytic you can tie that into your main analytic and then find out the best times that you start seeing increase engagement. And I encourage you to look at engagement versus just peer followers. They’re following and not engaged. It really isn’t doing you any good. So their engagement and then you can start modifying your schedule based on your high engagement. You can start modifying your content based on what is engaged most and then be sure to communicate a lot of people post and you can use sweet’n Bufferin and what is it. There’s tons of those type of solutions that can schedule your posts but you need to be in the conversation. If you’re not communicating with the audience you’re losing a big opportunity there to build the relationship because that’s really you know in sales everybody knows people buy from who they know like and trust. You want to build that relationship and actually who gives you an advantage because they have what’s called auto schedule. So it will schedule for you at the best times based on and they have analytics with them as well based on best times best practices. So your data. So if you’re.

[00:27:28] Each year I’m not going to say lazy if your time constraint I’m lazy and I do it as well. I always travel schedule I just the first step is to get out of denial. Right exactly.

[00:27:44] A AB I have a bit of laziness to get back to pose and let’s say you have 20 different things you want to say and put it in a hit schedule on each one of them and it will deliver it at the best times. That’s one method you could use without doing a ton of research and procrastination. Just use auto scheduling. And then as you start seeing more engagement then you can start tweaking it to your liking.

[00:28:18] That is awesome. That is very good advice. You’ve given a lot of good advice today for people to get started. Take a look at your web sites people. Check them out see what’s what maybe some some issues are very much of us told us here today a lot of a lot of very easy fixes. You know quick fixes and may give you some much more information about what your Web site is or is not doing that you’ll be able to make some decisions that could that could change a lot for for what’s going on with your website. Thanks a lot Jeff for coming on the show. Man it’s a great show they could give a lot of information. People going to school today take action with people who want to get a hold of you where do they go.

[00:28:56] They can find me at Mr. Market already dot com. That’s m r m a r k e t o l o g y dot com. One thing is branding. So on Twitter Facebook Google Plus Instagram is Mr. Market ologies.

[00:29:11] So all of them are designed.

[00:29:14] That’s awesome man. So Mr. Market comment you know everything. Every platform tied to that name.

[00:29:22] You’ll be able to fight Jaffe’s in Atlanta Georgia for people that may be local.

[00:29:25] Jeff it’s been a real pleasure having you on the show. I had a lot of fun got to talk to Dave Dave.

[00:29:30] So much for me on the show it’s been great.