Cut the Fluff: Smarter Marketing, Better Customers with Ryan Burch

Tech Diva Biz Talks is talking to a strategist who cuts through the noise like a laser. Ryan Burch is the Founder of Tobie Group, a consultancy built on one simple belief: businesses deserve better marketing.

After running advertising campaigns for major Fortune 500 brands at eBay, Ryan saw firsthand how bloated budgets, buzzwords, and confusion often get in the way of real results. So he built something different. At Tobie Group, he delivers smart strategy, flexible support, and marketing that actually moves the needle.

With 20+ years of experience across retail, healthcare, financial services, SaaS, education, and consumer products, Ryan brings a rare dual perspective; he’s been on both the agency side and inside the pressure cooker of corporate teams. That’s why he’s known for simplifying the complex, cutting the fluff, and helping overwhelmed teams regain clarity.

From paid media and SEO to CRM systems, marketing tech, and the new world of AI and automation, Ryan helps businesses stay competitive, sustainable, and dialed-in to what actually works, not what’s trending this week.

He also publishes Office Hours, a marketing newsletter for business owners who want practical insights without burnout, and he advises nonprofits and startups while breaking down classic ads for timeless marketing lessons.

So get ready, because today, we’re diving into the kind of marketing clarity every business owner needs.

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Transcript

[00:00:01 - 00:01:10]
Welcome to Tech Diva Biz Talks, where we tune in, dive deep, and level up. I'm your host, Audrey Wiggins, AKA the tech Diva brand strategist, marketing mind, and your guide through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Let's talk tech. Today on Tech Diva Biz Talks, we're talking to a strategist who cuts through the noise like a laser. Ryan Burch. He's the founder of the Toby Group, a consultancy built on one simple belief. Businesses deserve better marketing. After running advertising campaigns for Major and Fortune 500 brands at eBay, Ryan saw firsthand how bloated budgets, buzzwords, and confusion often get in the way of real results. So he built something different. And he advises nonprofits and startups while breaking down classic ads for timeless marketing lessons. So get ready, because today we're diving into the kind of marketing clarity every business owner needs in 2026. Welcome, Ryan, to Tech Diva Biz Talks.

[00:01:11 - 00:01:26]
Hey, thanks for having me. That was a really great intro. I wish I could take credit for all those things. The reality is, you know, it's mostly my team doing a lot of our, our work and delivering for our clients. But yeah, it was cool to hear that, so appreciate it.

[00:01:26 - 00:01:38]
Yeah, absolutely. You are so welcome. So I want you to, before we, you know, we're going to take a break and get into our fun questions here, what's one personal fun fact that you want to share with us?

[00:01:39 - 00:02:14]
Well, I, I love to travel and luckily the, the job that we get to do allows me to travel, so I spent an entire month in New Zealand just exploring, doing all kinds of things. And it's, it's a 20 hour time difference from where I live, so I was actually able to work, but it was a day ahead for me. So the digital nomad thing was very real for me this year. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life and would love to do it and would urge anybody who has the opportunity to get out and travel to definitely do that. So.

[00:02:14 - 00:02:18]
Yeah, that's fascinating. 20 hours. Oh, my goodness.

[00:02:19 - 00:02:41]
It's. Yep, 20 hours. Well, and it actually worked out relatively well because if I had a 9am meeting, you know, normally where I live, 20 hours ahead of that would be the next day at like 5 in the morning. Right. So I was just, I would just wake up really early in the morning, I'd have all my meetings and then we'd go out and explore. It was, it actually worked really well.

[00:02:41 - 00:02:46]
Dang. That's fascinating. What types of things or places did you get to explore?

[00:02:46 - 00:03:27]
You know, I I had been to New Zealand one other time, but I had never been to the North Island. So there's, there's two islands in New Zealand. I got to. I went with my, with my partner and she had never been there. So we explored the entire south island. But then I got to go to the north island and it, you know, the people, the, the scenery, everything there is amazing. There's probably some, some Lord of the Ring fans listening to the podcast. So, you know, those Lord of the Rings fans, uh, know that a lot of that was filmed and all of it was filmed in New Zealand and we got to go to Hobbiton and all that stuff. So I think that those are definitely some highlights, especially for my partner. She's a. She's a big Lauren the Rings fan.

[00:03:27 - 00:03:39]
Okay, well, that's fascinating. Thanks for sharing that with us. I know I'll get my first real abroad trip coming up where I'm going to go over to Tagana in the west, you know, West Africa. So I look forward to that.

[00:03:39 - 00:03:40]
Amazing. Amazing.

[00:03:41 - 00:03:44]
Oh, my goodness. I probably need two cell phones to take all the photos.

[00:03:44 - 00:04:37]
Well, hey, next time I'm on the pod, we'll have to. We'll talk. I got to go to BOTSW South Africa a few years ago. Yeah, I got the opportunity to go do some media training in Botswana, and it's just kind of a serial experience. I found myself at the US Embassy in Botswana, and the United States government at the time was investing in media professionals in Africa. And we had the opportunity to go there and coach them on how advertising, digital advertising works. And my old manager, who worked at Arizona State University coached them on some of the editorial practices. So really neat experience. And so you'll love it. You'll just. There's just so many things. I mean, you're in West Africa. That was South Africa, Southern Africa. So there's obviously a lot of difference, but just such a neat place.

[00:04:38 - 00:05:37]
So we're going to take a quick break, Ryan, and we'll be right back. Sponsored by All Together Domains. Bringing your business online, whether you are launching a new venture or leveling up your brand altogether, domains.com helps you secure, secure your digital real estate the smart way. Visit All Together Domains.com Ryan, thanks for that intro and, and sharing your experiences with traveling to New Zealand and, and down over into Botswana. That's. That's amazing. So let's, let's bring it back home a bit and we're going to talk about your digital marketing and going on. So let's just pop off with the first question here. Okay. The return on investment roi, Right? Real talk. Okay, Ryan, for the business owners listening who need results yesterday, what are the simplest, smartest moves that they can make to squeeze more ROI out of their ad campaigns starting today?

[00:05:37 - 00:06:33]
Yeah, the number one thing is that you, you know, we tell our clients this all the time. You will never get the outcomes you're looking for if you don't have the proper inputs. And what that typically looks like is many times clients and businesses don't have the correct tracking and analytics set up on their website. So what winds up happening is there's really bad data that's flowing into Google Ads or flowing into Facebook ads. And if, if you don't get that data right, then you're just going to be working uphill all the way. So the number one thing to do to get, you know, improve your ROI is have somebody audit your analytics and your tracking in any Google Ads or Facebook ads or TikTok, whatever it is that you're run. Sure that the, we call it digital plumbing. Make sure your digital plumbing that's on your website is actually working because that, you know, those inputs are so important

[00:06:33 - 00:06:49]
strategy that actually means something. You've seen strategy done right and wrong. Right. How do you build a marketing strategy that truly supports business goals instead of just looking good in a slide deck?

[00:06:51 - 00:08:12]
Yeah, I mean, look, this is such a prevalent question, especially with AI. And I think a lot of people are leaning on AI just to drive their strategy for them. But what a lot of businesses miss is they don't spend enough time identifying their audience. So we say audience first, always. And that means that you have to identify who your, your best customers are. So a lot of times businesses know who their current customers are, but they haven't spent enough time identifying who their best or their ideal customers are because those are actually two different things in a lot of cases. So when you ask me a question about strategy, I always fall back to that audience first, Always. Who are you? Who, who is going to purchase from you? Why are they the best customer? And then everything else should kind of fall in line after that. And we actually recommend that you take a closer look at this way more often than most businesses do. So most businesses will take a look at that once a year. They'll do some type of off site or once like every five years. You should actually look at this once a quarter, once every six months. Bring your team together, just make sure that your products are aligning with that best ideal customer fit and you'd be really surprised how much a strategy just falls in line right after that.

[00:08:12 - 00:08:24]
Wow. Now you said something there interesting because you said, you know, best client versus, you know, what's my niche? Who am I? You know that the zeroing in on the bullseye. So unpack that a little bit more before we go on.

[00:08:24 - 00:09:44]
Yeah. So a lot of times the current customers that you have aren't necessarily your ideal customers. And everybody is listening to this probably is got in their mind, they've got that customer that's just a pain in the neck, really low margins, you know, things just aren't working out. Or if they're selling products, you know, they're always return, there's always a problem. And there's a pretty big subset of your customer base that's probably made up of those. So what I'm asking you to do is actually take a look at who the ideal customer is. So who's that customer that pays on time every time, great margins, not a pain in the neck, you know, loves working with your team. And how many times what are you trying to do to rinse and repeat and find more of those ideal customers? Right. And are the products and are the things that you're putting out into the marketplace from an advertising standpoint aligned with what that ideal customer is looking for needs? Because a lot of times there's misalignment between those things and that's why you keep getting these really bad customers. And that's why some of your advertising probably isn't working. You're splitting the difference between trying to be everything to everyone instead of really honing in on, hey, here's this customer that we really enjoy working with. They like working with us. Let's just double, triple, quadruple down on the things that they're actually looking for.

[00:09:44 - 00:09:58]
That's important right there. Okay, moving on. Tools worth the time. With so many shiny objects in Martech, which marketing tools are actually worth using right now and why?

[00:09:58 - 00:11:21]
Man, I will give you, I will give you a free one. So one of my favorites right now is actually, it's actually a Microsoft product, so don't recoil too hard on that. But it's called Microsoft Clarity Clarity. And it's a tool that you can for free put on your website and it will allow you to see basically what traffic is doing on your website. So there's some similar softwares out there that kind of do website heat mapping and some things like that. But I actually think Microsoft is really strong and, and you can just, you can pop in, add it to your website or have your web developer add Microsoft Clarity to your site. You can see recordings of how people are moving through landing pages. You can see where people are stopping scrolling. So people get to a certain portion of your site and then they bail. You can see that. And one of the best things that you can do with it is actually see what's happening with your mobile website traffic versus your desktop website traffic. So a lot of times you'll see that people are interacting with your website very differently on their phones than they are on the desktop computer. So Microsoft Clarity top tool right now, and that's saying a lot, because there's a awful lot of cool AI tools, but this one is really foundational, I think, especially if you're trying to figure out what's going on with your website and why you aren't getting the ROI out of things that you're. You've got running.

[00:11:22 - 00:11:43]
Okay, awesome. So this kind of rolls into the next question. The first word is AI. All right, AI, automation and the new marketing reality. Let's demystify the buzz. You know, what does AI and automation really change for marketing teams since 2025 or in 20, and what still requires the human touch?

[00:11:44 - 00:12:59]
So much of it's look AI. I'm super excited about AI, just like everybody else. I think we're all, you know, looking at it and kind of chomping at the bit and saying, hey, how can we get this infused into our company? But yes, what you need to be careful of is another phrase that we tell our clients is you need. You need systems. You don't need heroes. Okay. And. And heroes is chatgpt racing to the rescue to turn out a blog post for you at the last minute. You know, a hero is having Claude try to churn out a presentation for you and not doing a great job of that. Right. So I think AI is really exciting, but I think what we as marketers need to make sure we're doing is we need to be building some of the systems and plugging AI into our marketing systems and not necessarily the other way around. And I think that that's a huge gap that is going to take us some time to learn. It's going to take us some time to fill that gap. So I'm not sure if that answers your question directly, but I would say think systems before heroes and get that foundation underneath you before you start just adding all this great, cool technology.

[00:13:00 - 00:13:09]
Yeah, that makes sense, though. I appreciate that for sure, because that goes around. That goes back to grabbing, you know, the shiny object syndrome. So to Speak.

[00:13:10 - 00:13:10]
Absolutely.

[00:13:10 - 00:13:11]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:11 - 00:13:57]
And, and so much of this stuff is shy. It's shy. It's, it's not only shy, it's cool. It works really well. It works really well. But, you know, it's interesting. We, we, we've had a number of junior employees come through, and you could tell a difference between when somebody has had to learn the old way and they're using AI to augment versus really leaning on AI first. And I think there is still a lot of value in understanding the underlying principles of what you're trying to accomplish. And I just don't think that's going to go away. I think that's that human element. You know, the AI tool is only ever going to be as strong as the person working it. And so we just can't lose sight of that, I don't think.

[00:13:58 - 00:14:13]
Yeah. Thank you. All right, so small business wisdom from big brand wins. You've worked on some major campaigns. What lessons from Fortune 500 wins still apply to small businesses trying to compete and stay visible?

[00:14:14 - 00:15:36]
Well, first, you'd be really surprised how many big businesses make the same mistakes that all of us make as entrepreneurs and small business owners. So I think that there's this idea out there that big business has it figured out. The reality is they make a lot of the same mistakes we do. On the marketing end of things, though, one of the things that I think many businesses, big business has figured out is they spend a lot of time understanding their costing. And, you know, whether it's customer acquisition cost or a certain cost per product sold, they know what that cost system has to look like. And that allows them to do a lot of backward math to understand how they should be spending their advertising, what advertising is working, what advertising isn't working. And when I work with a lot of small businesses, they kind of inherently know that they need to work on that, but they don't have a great understanding of what their cost, customer acquisition cost needs to be. And again, to go back to that best customer, you know, versus current customer, that costing should be different. Right. Your best customer may cost you more up front to go get, but in the long run, you're probably saving yourself an awful lot of money. So you have to really spend a lot of time understanding those metrics. And I think that's where a lot of big business spends more time than small business did.

[00:15:36 - 00:16:31]
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[00:16:33 - 00:16:43]
Having every subscription under the sun? I mean, Audrey, how many subscriptions do you have that are.

[00:16:43 - 00:16:45]
I'm not telling you. You're being nosy.

[00:16:45 - 00:17:09]
Just, I mean, look, I', got, you know, is. Sometimes I get these things, you know, and I do these sometimes. A lot of these companies got really smart, right? They. They say, oh, you know, pay for the year up front. And I'm like, I got this thing. It was. The last time I used that tool was the day I signed up for it. And then like next February, I've got like a, you know, a $480 bill, and I have no idea what it's from.

[00:17:09 - 00:17:10]
Right, exactly.

[00:17:10 - 00:17:40]
So you want to talk about fast fix? Get rid of all those subscriptions you're not using. And, you know, business owners, you know, you got to bring the team together and look around the room and just kind of go line by line, all right? You know, who's using this? Who's using that? Who's using this? You've got so much duplication in your marketing stack. And I know that because in our marketing stack, I still have it, and I'm aware that I need to get rid of this. Right. So you want to talk about a quick win? Just go through that. Just go through that account statement and just start deleting stuff.

[00:17:41 - 00:17:46]
Yeah, we need to. What's. What's your. Your. What is it? Your cash app? We need to pay you for that advice, Right?

[00:17:46 - 00:17:56]
Yeah, Y. I'll just, you know, you can just. You can just point that 15amonth for whatever CRM you're using toward me. That's no problem. I'll find something to do with it.

[00:17:57 - 00:18:34]
Exactly. And along with some of the paid ones, there's. There's some free stuff, free tools out there that we have, may have signed up for. And we just have, you know, this is. I'm thinking now about, you know, security. Right? So we have all of these accounts hanging out there with the. With old password structures that we don't even use. So that's. We can add those to the bottom of the list. Dangerous yeah, get rid of those too. But, but what you said was, was, was right on point, like I said. That's why I said, let's go to your, your cash app, because, oh my goodness. And I did do go through that and, and assorted them out. And then the thing, the key I think too is to go back and, and sort them out again.

[00:18:35 - 00:19:50]
Right. Yeah. And how often are you doing that? Right. So is, is that, you know, that I think a lot of times on a monthly basis, we're, we're, you know, if we've got great, you know, financial folks around us, we're going through those things. But the reality is you're scanning through that really fast. So, you know, once a year, once every six months, just really sitting down and saying, okay, what, you know, what exactly are each of these things? I had a, I had an agency partner that, you know, had a lot of software running. They had, they had, they cut, they were able to cut out, you know, literally a couple thousand dollars worth of software per month, you know, and yeah, so we're talking 20, $25,000 a year. And it's just, you know, you just get nickeled and dimed. And again, this is all part of that marketing cost that is hurting your overall roi. If you've got six systems that are all doing the exact same thing and they're each costing you fifty or a hundred dollars a month, that's, that's really hurting your ability to get more ads in the marketplace. It's really hurting your ability to invest into the product, bring on a new person to help with customer support. Right. All of these costs start to add up pretty quickly. And that marketing line item actually has a lot of stuff on it. My guess is that you don't need.

[00:19:51 - 00:20:09]
Yeah, absolutely. My goodness. Marketing without the mega budget. I think this is going to be interesting to hear from you on this. So for businesses running lean, small teams, small budgets, what's the smartest approach to advertising? So they still get big brand impacts.

[00:20:09 - 00:22:03]
Oh, boy. Man, this is a, this is actually a tough one. I first, you know, I, I not to, not to jump back to my previous question, but the first thing I'll say is you have to get your analytics right. Okay. Because you, you might be wasting money. You just don't even know it. And those analytics are going to help, you know, shine a light on that. So a lot of times what winds up happening is we're able to cut out entire plat, cut out ad spend, cut out entire, you know, marketing channels once we have really Good data to see what's happening from that, from that digital advertising standpoint. So I think the first thing to do is just get, get your foundation underneath you before you start stacking, you know, and trying to, you know, finagle new things and all that. A second thing that I would say is, you know, really spend some time with your marketing funnel and really spend some time identifying what each marketing channel that you're using where, where it's actually impacting your, your best customers. Okay. So sometimes as marketers, we just turn things on because, oh yeah, we have to have Google. Oh, we have to have Facebook. Oh, we, you know, and you're not, you don't spend enough. A lot of business owners and businesses, they don't spend enough time thinking about. Okay, what is Google actually doing for me today though? It might be that nobody ever searches for the product that you sell and you're just running Google Ads. You know, why are you spending that money if nobody's actually searching for it? You may need something else in your funnel. So I think, you know, it's kind of like addition by subtraction, right? That's, you can be more impactful with your advertising spend if you spent enough time identifying what you need that advertising to do for you.

[00:22:03 - 00:22:16]
Speaking of funnels, the 2026 funnel, what does a healthy, modern marketing funnel really look like in 2026? And what should businesses be focusing on at each stage?

[00:22:17 - 00:23:39]
This is where I think there's a lot of question marks, especially if you are in the search engine optimization, the SEO space. You know, there's all this noise about how people are starting to use things like Gemini and ChatGPT as their search engine. So a lot of businesses have invested a lot of money in their search engine optimization on their website. Okay. What's happening though is there's this new emphasis on brand. And if chat, ChatGPT is pulling information from your website, but it cares maybe even more about what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. So our clients, we're advising them to invest more in public relations, which everybody's kind of forgotten that, that you know about that. But you know, being out in the media, being out in the market, in the community, taking, you know, quick videos of yourself, your founder, you know, recording a, you know, a 30 second video and posting that on your LinkedIn on social media, because these are all signals that the LLMs, you know, the chatgpts of the world are, are, are looking at. And I think so a really healthy funnel looks a lot more like building a brand than maybe a lot of us really kind of, you know, niche digital marketers have thought about in the past.

[00:23:39 - 00:23:50]
Yeah, yeah, Great advice. Okay. Measuring what matters. How do you truly know if your marketing is working? Not just busy, but profitable?

[00:23:51 - 00:24:27]
You have more of those best or ideal customers and your team has less of a headache. And you'll know, like you get more of those best customers that aren't a pain in the neck all of a sudden, everybody's a lot happier. So, so if you're, if you're at, if your marketing is actually working for you, you're. You're bringing in more of those ideal fit best customers at the cost that you need them to come in at. Right. And those things have to work together. But that's why we say audience first, always. Right. Who is that best customer? Everything else just falls in line afterward.

[00:24:29 - 00:24:43]
Yeah, definitely. You're going to drive that best customer scenario home. I like that thousand percent. If you had to double a business's marketing results using half the time and half the money, what's the very first thing you do?

[00:24:43 - 00:26:30]
The very first thing I would do if I had to double the results in half the cost. I already told you I'd cut, I'd cut a marketing channel. Right. I would cut something out of, of what's, what's that, what we're. Because you can, you should be able to tell what's working, what isn't working. I'll tell you, there are some Easter eggs that are hiding in people's digital marketing budgets. And maybe that's what we talk about right here is some of the things that just right off the bat, we see all the time, the first thing is in Google Ads. Whoever's running your Google Ads, you should ask them how much money we're spending on our, we call branded search. Okay, so branded search, you know, my company's name is Toby Group, so if I was spending money on Google Ads on branded search, we would be trying to get our ads in front of people searching for Toby Group and where a lot of money is wasted and where there's some of this double upside is on those branded search terms. So right off the bat, ask whoever's managing your, your Google advertising how much money you're spending on your branded search terms and maybe cut that back. You know, there are some industries where you need to be spending quite a bit on that, you know, where you've got competitors that are trying to bid on your terms and things of that nature. But I'd say by and large, 10%, 15% of your budget should be going toward that. When we bring on new clients, a lot of times we see that 50, 60% of their Google Ads budget is actually being spent there. So that's the first thing. Second thing is if you're running Facebook ads, how often are you updating your ad creative? So if you want to double the results, okay. And you've been running the same ad Creative since 2016 because, because it.

[00:26:30 - 00:26:31]
Same old tire.

[00:26:31 - 00:27:40]
Because it, because it works. Right. And I'm putting some air quotes out because it works. Because here's what happens. We fire up ad campaigns, we do all this work, we put all this energy into identifying target audience. Hey, Ryan said we near tracking, right. All these things, right? And you fire off this campaign and it works great at the beginning and then it just drops off and then it starts working and it drops off and you get frustrated with the platform. You're trying to pull all these different levers. Well, the reality is the campaign is just moving with your sale. Like you might have had a sale on your website or you might have like there's just might be seasonality in your business and you're not even paying attention to those things. You just think that Facebook's doing better or worse. Update your ad creative, update your messaging, pay attention to that every three to six weeks. And, and again, there's, there's kind of some of these Easter eggs out there where people, there's things that we know but we just don't execute on. So I'd say that between those two things, I don't know if I can get you to double the results, but I think I can get you probably 50 to 60% more.

[00:27:40 - 00:28:22]
We're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and we're going to close out with some, some fun questions here. Get your brim on. Since 1972, American hat makers has been dedicated to the art of fine hat making. Their diverse selection caters to out outdoor adventurers, style conscious individuals and hat enthusiasts just like me. With a focus on meticulous detail and quality materials, I love wearing their hats. Embrace your own spirit of adventure and individuality. Visit Bit Lee Hats now. Bit Lee Hats now. Or use our affiliate link in the show notes to view their vast selection of men's and women's styles. Okay, Ryan, this is the rapid fire section of our, of our show.

[00:28:22 - 00:28:23]
I'm ready.

[00:28:23 - 00:28:24]
You're. Oh, you're ready.

[00:28:24 - 00:28:28]
I didn't even have time. I'm gonna take a sip of my Coffee here.

[00:28:28 - 00:28:29]
All right, go ahead, take a sip.

[00:28:29 - 00:28:33]
And it is early in the morning, and I got to be ready for these rapid fire questions.

[00:28:34 - 00:28:37]
Exactly. Because you're three hours behind.

[00:28:37 - 00:28:41]
Yeah, it is, it is early. And we're recording this on a Friday, so.

[00:28:42 - 00:28:43]
Okay, we should.

[00:28:43 - 00:28:47]
But this is a good. This is gonna get me ready to go for the rest of the day.

[00:28:47 - 00:28:53]
All right, all right. What's one marketing myth you wish would disappear forever?

[00:28:54 - 00:29:57]
Man, I wish I could. I wish I could. I had a whole list of these. I've got a good one. That you can actually determine exactly which ad drove a sale for you. And, and that one's kind of complicated, but I think people want, we want to just be able to assign credit for different things. Right. And the reality is that's not how marketing works. Marketing works a lot more like a relay race. So if you think about, you know, the, the Olympic swimmers and you've got four people swimming in that race, if all you do is give credit to that last swimmer, then you're forgetting that those other three had something to do with it. And I think in marketing, we do that way too often. We just want to assign, oh, email did this, or Google did it, or it was Pinterest or it was my organic social. All of those things have to work together to drive a sale. Now some of those should get better credit. Right? Like Michael Phelps was in that pool. He might have been, he might have been swimming a little bit faster. So one of your marketing channels was going a little bit. Was, was, was pulling its weight. Right?

[00:29:57 - 00:29:57]
Right.

[00:29:58 - 00:30:04]
But the reality is you've got to be able to kind of identify how much credit to give each of those next one.

[00:30:04 - 00:30:08]
What's your favorite? Small tweak, big win for any business.

[00:30:09 - 00:30:27]
Adjust your ad. Creative change. And it's got to be. You have to swap it. You have to, you have to change more than you think you do. You can't just like add a logo to it, you know, you can't just change, you know, oh, it's a woman right now and it's a man. No, completely change it.

[00:30:27 - 00:30:32]
AI automation or human instinct, which saves the most time today for us.

[00:30:32 - 00:31:01]
Some of our internal operational things are actually doing really well on the AI side. So recording meetings and sending meeting notes into. We have a Slack channel set up. So that AI Slack channel, actually, that, that, that little simple automation probably saves us five or six hours a week. And it's not sexy. It's, it's a really boring. Here's the transcript. Push it into Slack. Everybody can see it. We can put it into our project management system.

[00:31:01 - 00:31:06]
One marketing tool you would keep. Even if everything else got taken away.

[00:31:08 - 00:31:11]
I know. I would say this is so much for rapid fire, right?

[00:31:11 - 00:31:13]
I mean, you just ruined the whole thing.

[00:31:15 - 00:31:44]
You stuffed me with that one. I would say. I would say give me. Give me a phone. Give me a telephone. Because at the end of the day, we are in the business of selling things. And if I've got a. If I've got a phone and I can just call people directly and I have no, I don't have a website, I don't have email. I don't have any of these things, but I can, with my phone, get on the phone with somebody and sell them something. I'd say, give me that.

[00:31:44 - 00:31:52]
Okay. If you could instantly fix one marketing mistake for every business owner, what would that be?

[00:31:52 - 00:32:01]
I'm repeating myself. But get your tracking right. Get your digital. Digital plumbing. So if you get that digital plumbing right, everything else falls in line.

[00:32:01 - 00:32:15]
You're a good sport there, Brian. Appreciate that. Okay. As we come to a close, though, I know people are going to want to connect with you, learn more, perhaps work with you. Where can we find you? And if there's, you know, something else that you want to share with us.

[00:32:15 - 00:32:59]
Yeah, I, you know, a couple things. Tobygroup.com is. Is our website that's T o b I e and then group.com, you can always reach us there. We've got, you know, some pretty good resources there. We built an ads report card. It's actually ads report card.com. you can go there. It's about 20 or 30 questions and it actually will help you diagnose a few of these things that could be going wrong on your ad campaigns. And honestly, I think the readout is really good. We spent a lot of time getting the rubric right and there's a lot kind of happening in the back end with these questions. But just the process of going through it is going to. I guarantee it will help you identify a few things that maybe you should be thinking more about with your marketing.

[00:32:59 - 00:33:33]
Awesome. Wow, this has been amazing. Ryan Burch, really appreciate you from the Toby Group, everyone. Be sure to plug in, follow and. And definitely hit his website especially well. It'll be in the notes, so you can take that, that. That survey there. I think that was. Was amazing. I'm going to go out and I'm gonna. I'm going to do the same. We'll see you next week on Tech Diva Biz Talks. That's it. For today's tech Evil Biz Talks. Hope you caught a gem or two. If you did, share it, review it, and most of all, put it into action. Until next time, tune in, level up and talk tech.