How to leverage Social Media Marketing in Rent to Own

The rent-to-own industry has always been built on relationships — but the place where those relationships now start has changed dramatically. In this episode, Pete Shau and Danny break down exactly how RTO stores and operators can stop leaving customers on the table by ignoring the most powerful and trackable tool available in rent-to-own digital marketing today: social media.

This isn't a surface-level conversation about posting a few deals on Facebook. Pete and Danny go deep on platform strategy, content philosophy, and the mindset shift every RTO operator needs to make to compete in the digital age. From TikTok and Instagram Reels to email newsletters and web lead conversion, this episode maps out the full digital marketing funnel for rent-to-own businesses of every size — and why your rent-to-own website strategy needs to function as your new digital showroom.

They break down which platforms reach which generations and why targeting only one is leaving money on the table when four generations are actively buying right now. They talk about why entertainment, not promotion, is the key to building rent-to-own brand awareness, why hashtags and trending challenges matter more than most RTO operators realize, and how grassroots marketing and digital marketing work best when used together — not in place of each other.

Pete and Danny also tackle one of the most overlooked pieces of the puzzle: response time. Whether it's a comment on a reel, a Facebook message, or a rent-to-own web lead, the speed at which your team responds is now a direct factor in whether you close the sale. They even make the case for a position most RTO companies haven't considered yet — a dedicated social media manager — and explain why closing web leads, not just foot traffic, is where rent-to-own customer acquisition is heading.

Drawing from their own experience building the Rent King video content strategy from the ground up — camera shy and all — Pete and Danny offer an honest look at what it actually takes to get started, get better, and drive real RTO store growth through content marketing. If your store is still relying only on mailers and door knocking, this episode is your wake-up call.

Transcript

Danny Lastra 0:08

And welcome to the RTO show with Danny and Pete. I'm your host, Danny.

Pete Shau 0:11

And I'm your host, Pete. And today we're talking about the digital dance of digital marketing. It's time to get digital. From the analog age, uh, because I was born in the 70s. Ouch. Just so you guys know, this is the way to go, right? Social media is the way to go. Digital marketing is the way to go. Now, that isn't saying that we're going to take away from what you have been doing, what's been going on as far as maybe you guys send out mailers or comeback checks, maybe you guys do the phone calls. But listen, this is a new age and it's coming and it's coming fast. And the best way to approach it is to get with the times. And the time says it's digital.

Danny Lastra 0:44

So if you look at certain statistics of generation, you can see millennials aged from 35 to 45 are primarily on Facebook. I would even say the 45 to 55 range is also on Facebook. Now the younger generation and then 20s to 30s, they're on Instagram. And then the even younger generation, high schoolers 225, they're on Snapchat and TikTok, which I would even say the younger generation of 25-35 is also a lot on TikTok. So you have to find out your age demographic first and then really go into how to market to them directly. My advice is do all three. You know, you don't want to restrict any age limit, even though if your primary age demographic is millennials, you don't want to just do Facebook. You want to do all three. You want to do Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And the great thing about Facebook and Instagram is that you can link your two accounts together. So every anytime you post to one, it'll automatically post on the other ones. Couple tips as well. It's not just about posting. In this day and age, it's all about stories. And if you don't know what a story is, it's on your little icon of your profile picture. It will always highlight blue the reels. It's just quick little snippets, 60 seconds or less. That's what a lot of people are looking at. And you just want to post every day. Quick little story throughout the day. The most important thing is it's not just about product placement and deals happening. You don't want to just push stuff in customers' face, they want to see relative, funny, entertaining. That's why they're going to follow you. They're not going to follow you because of the great deals or maybe the hot products. They might be on the lookout for that as they follow you, but to gain your following, it's more about entertainment, and you have to be entertaining.

Pete Shau 2:32

There's a couple of different ways to look at digital marketing because digital marketing comes in so many different aspects. But digital marketing is about getting your brand out there, and there's a different couple of different ways to do it. Social media is more to me about brand awareness. So you're going to create these skits, you're going to show a little a little bit of yourself, you're going to show a little bit of the company and the content. But it's going to be more towards brand awareness where you have the digital marketing aspect on the other side where you have the websites and more static items that you can kind of pull up and look at. So when you have direct marketing that goes into mailers and your flyers that you're doing directly to customers and you're reaching out to them, there's the social media platform which is meant to grab their eye for a quick second, keep their attention for about a 60-second span, and then it lets it go. Where you have your other forms of digital media like YouTube, you have your websites, where it's meant to kind of hold it for a little bit longer, kind of pass a little bit more of a message. Now, depending on the content that you have on YouTube or the things that you do on Snapchat or let's say TikTok, you want to throw what you have in there, but you want to throw it in there in a fun and precise way and not beat it down as in this is what I got, come see me, check out the prices and all of that. You can do that, but really it's about entertainment. A lot of people are on the gram for entertainment, right? They're on the TikTok for the entertainment. And if it doesn't come across as entertainment, you're not going to keep their attention span. So the idea is to make sure that as you're posting the content, they can see it as something fun, something relatable, but it has to be a constant loop of quality content entertainment that they're going to see. Oh, this is what I'm seeing, this particular rent-owned company. Yeah, this particular rent-owned company sounds great. And you want to involve things that you do. You want to also add like hashtags that are probably trending right now, or do some of the challenges that are trending. I know that I'm I'm terrible at challenges, but when you do the challenges and you kind of add in, it gives your brand that awareness piece that people are going to come come back and kind of take a look at. And as they come visit you more, then they're more inclined to really take a look at what you have. That's when you use that piece to drive them to your website or drive them to your locations for that direct salesman approach.

Danny Lastra 4:40

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned hashtag my children, my nieces and nephews, they all tease me anytime I do post a picture on my personal page because I use a lot of hashtags. But the hashtags is how you put yourself in that category so other followers or people that aren't following you can actually see you'll pop up on their feed under that hashtag. And I just learned recently, like with hashtags, you you want to put metro cities and states because then that real that quick video will actually play in that specific area. Hashtag FYP for you page, that way it will come up. For you page, the way for you page works is the TikTok specifically knows what content you are constantly looking at, so they will grab relative content and put it on your for you page new content mix in with the stuff you normally watch. It's crazy. It's the analytical design behind it is just amazing. Kind of going back to what you were saying. Yeah, you know, you can track your posts and see how many engagements, how many people you've reached. You can see all the way down to how many people watch your video for three seconds and stopped, or they watch it past three seconds, they go 50% through, did they watch all the way through? And that's important information to know. That's why digital marketing is the way to go because you don't want to exclude the grassroots, but you put out a thousand flyers, you don't know who looked at it or not. You don't know if 999 customers threw that thing away, didn't even look at it. I mean, you could track how many people call you or go to the email, and if they're honest and say this is what brought me to your company, okay, but you can't really track to see who really saw what if you know what if people are out of town and the neighbors grabbing the mail and they're just automatically throwing the junk away, hypothetically. But with the social media, it tracks to the very second of who's watching and who's following, who's engaging, and that gives you the materials you need. Okay, this is what's working, this is what's not working. I'm not as funny, I need to get funnier, I need to get kookier. Oh, my clientels want a more direct approach. You gotta look at the stats, you gotta do your homework. It can be fun, but it is work. Understand that.

Pete Shau 6:55

Part of digital marketing is because there's always the pros and cons, right? When you have a marketing schedule that you come up with and you have your flyers and you have your mailers and you get those ready, you can perform that and then have those ready for the next six to eight weeks and you send those out. And that platform is great, and it's it's something that I don't think we should ever get away from. But when you're doing the social marketing or the social media marketing, you've got to remember you've got to change up the content quite a bit. It can't be the same thing all over again, the pictures, the same pictures, right? So what's great to do is the live through Facebook, or when you get the Instagram reels, or when you're on TikTok and you do the crazy things that are going on, you kind of mimic the challenges or whatever's going on and you get the great effects that are going on, or you do the Snapchats and you have those filters where people got different faces and they turn to kitties. Those things they do have to be looked at and reviewed quite often because you do want to see what works and what doesn't work. And the thing about making that static marketing that you send out, it's the piece that doesn't change, right? So you have that one solid concrete piece that they can put on the table and then maybe come back to. But with your social media, you have to remember, you've got to change it up. You've got to be in the moment, you've got to be relative to what's going on right now. And that particular point sometimes it scares people, especially in the older generations. But if you're not doing it, you're gonna miss out. Right now, the best way to do digital marketing is to find somebody who can do it. And our sponsor at Unlimited Marketing Solutions is a great partner to do that. Unlimited Marketing Solutions is a social media marketing company that can market directly to your specific customer base and provide solid and trackable results. They have extremely flexible payment plans to meet your unique budget, and they're currently running a promotion for 10% off on your first six months of service. When you mention the code RTO show, that's R T-O-S-H-O-W. When you call them at 352-553-3245, you can also email them at unlimited marketing solutions LLC at gmail.com. They'd be able to kind of explain exactly how that works. They've explained it to us, and it really kind of gives us a better idea of what we're doing here. Now, we could probably put out better content, but the truth is we've got a lot going on, and this is why we want to discuss it with you because if you're not in the social media market arena, you're missing out. And I think a lot of rent to own, I've seen actually the company Rent2Own. I see a lot of their stores on there, they're doing a great job coming out every day and kind of doing their promotions. I see Buddies Home Furnishings doing it. Magic is doing a good job. As a matter of fact, Magic just had a meeting not that long ago. Dan Fisher posted it that they're doing their training and stuff up there. And I'm hoping that they had digital marketing segment in that meeting because that's exactly where this is all going.

Danny Lastra 9:31

Speaking about the live video that you just mentioned, Pete, that's a great way to really get people engaged. Obviously, you don't want to go live if you only have five followers, but once you get a couple hundred, you want to periodically go live and make it a fun, especially at events, go live, promotion, giveaways, make it a big deal. It notifies every one of your followers immediately that you are live. And you can engage with your customers directly right there while they're at home and you're at the store. The reels, again, those are quick 60-second videos, make it funny, make it snappy, get to the point, but just entertainment purposes. Another tip is your response, and that's something we've been talking about in this day and age, whether it's web leads, which is digital marketing or Facebook, Instagram, you want to respond to everybody as quickly as possible. So when someone comments on your Facebook page or your story, you want to respond almost immediately and let them know, hey, I'm looking, I see you, I appreciate you, and not just like a like or a heart. You want to actually respond with words. If they say love the video, respond back with a simple thank you, thanks for the support, and then give them a heart or a like on their comment as well. You want to be engaging. The more engagement you get, it again is a trend that the social media platforms will understand and will keep pushing you in front of other people because you're engaging and you're responding to other people. You know, as far as pioneering the digital marketing, I gotta be honest, Pete, uh, not to toot our own horn, but I think me and you and Ranking, we're kind of leading the way. We our YouTube videos are on point, we're getting a lot of traction. April's mentioned us. People are always asking, love the videos that we do. And, you know, that just goes to show the brand awareness and digital marketing is the way to go.

Pete Shau 11:14

If you're gonna go to the social media, you gotta remember that this is basically a technical funnel, right? And so your Snapchats and your Facebooks and your Instagrams and your TikToks are all designed to come almost kind of ensnare and capture your audience for a short period of time and direct them. That direction has to go towards the website or a place to capture their information. When I say that, I don't mean just through cookies, but I do mean getting them information to understand, to read, and to go over when they do have time. So you're funneling all of that social media content and all of those contacts and all of those responses, like you said, we have to get the responses into an area. And you want to funnel that into your website. And when you do that and you funnel it into your website, it gives you the opportunity to then show them all the static images that you do have, the living room groups, the bedroom groups, the new items that you bring in, the items that you can bring in, because then that leads you to if you're staying on top of your social media and you're doing the responses, remember that you have to use the utmost quickness when it comes to responding to your web leads. You have to respond to them just as fast as you would spawn to them on social media. So you for anybody out there listening, you definitely want to have somebody capable and ready to be on that button, be on that screen when something comes in. People want to be talked to and they want to be talked to quickly. And the reason that we have those short bursts of 60 seconds or 30 seconds is because the extension span right now is it's becoming very short. I can consume so much media in this point in time, and then I can just flip the page and go to something else, or flip the screen and go to something else. Well, if they come on the screen, make sure that you're attacking those web leads, get a response to them, respond to them to the way that they have responded to you, whether it's an email, whether it's a message through the website, make sure that you're responding to them, get those emails because you can also then resend digital content to them later on that they can open up. And that's that's kind of taking place of mail, right? I know it's it's we've said that for years and years and years, but email really is replacing mail. It's faster, it's instant. You can tell if they've opened it. It doesn't cost you 55 cents or whatever it's costing to the post office now. You don't have to worry about it getting there through the storms. Do they bundle it with all of their unfortunate trash that they get every day? Did they throw it in the trash can? It gives you the idea that you can see if they can open it. You can see if they went through a link on your email to go to your website. So the digital marketing, the social media marketing is kind of exactly where it is. And I'm gonna tell you guys, if you guys want some serious responses, some serious follows, do something that's being a challenge on there, do something that's trending, and you will see a lot more response. And the more views and the more responses that you get, you just have to remember you want to keep your content with the name of whatever you're doing. So if you're in Rent King, if you're in Buddy's Home Furnishings, if you're in Rent A Center, you want to make sure your magic rentals, as a matter of fact, we just got an email uh not that long ago from Brian Eckleberry and Ace Rent to Own in Nebraska. We love the email, Brian. We really do appreciate it. But all the way even to Nebraska, I'm sure they're the thing, there are trends on TikTok that they probably don't do here. They have snow. We don't have snow, right? And if you guys go out and do it and enjoy it, but funnel them to the website so that you can kind of track that information. That's what it's all about, is getting everybody to the website. And so you don't want to forget how important that can be. You want to update that every so often. It can't be every day. It's not like a that typical social media you change every day, but you do want it to be relevant. You do want it to hold a lot of the core items that you have, but then you also want to show the differences, what makes your rent to own different from another rent to own, and make sure that when as you're engaging, be as engaging with the conversation with that customer because a lot of times now they're not even coming to the store. It's almost going to we're trying to capture all their information and get the agreement done online. And if you guys have that capability, more power to you. It is something new to me, and I'm kind of trying to get used to that. But I know a lot of places are going to online signatures and e-signatures, and you get it sent today once it's verified digitally. Uh, it's a crazy new world out there, guys.

Danny Lastra 15:05

And I was just about to hit on that. So understand everybody, what is the purpose of social media marketing? So, for us that's been a rental owner for a long time, let's just talk about marketing in general. What is the point? The point of marketing is to get your company's brand out there, deals, products, and then get the potential customers' clientele to come into your store. That's the old school way. I'm not saying you're gonna do away with foot traffic, you still want customers to come into your store, absolutely. But this is the new era, it's 2022. Now, the objective with social media marketing is just what pizza you want to direct them to your website. Your website has got to be your new showroom. The standard of the showroom has always been what clean, tagged, packaged, accessorized. You want to walk in like the to the Taj Mahal and rent your own and be like, Oh wow, this is great. You know, lights are on, music is playing, TVs are on, and that's how you bring a friendly environment, welcoming, and customers just will love it and want to interact and recommend you to other people because it's such a clean, cool store. You need to have that same emphasis on your website. So, what you don't want to do is you do all the social media marketing doing all these trends, and then they go to your website, and then boom, no, they're not gonna send anything. You don't have any cool products, you don't have any great deals, you don't, you know, there's nothing on your website that pops. There's so many ideas you could do, you know, put a little game on there, or you know, subscribe to win, register to win, or whatever it takes to catch their audience. Again, you don't want to ever step away from the entertainment purposes because that's what draws their attention. People that want a washing machine are gonna get a wash washing machine, and you have to differentiate yourself from everybody else. That's what the importance of the website needs to be is what makes your website different than the other guys because that's why the referrals will come. Oh, go check them out. You know, that's what the referrals is. It's not go to the store anymore. It's oh hey, they're having a great sale online, go to their website, you know. Oh, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it needs to also be easily maneuvered through. You don't want to put them through so many steps that they can't find it, it's got to be one click, easy access, carry something different that the other people aren't, special promotions, testimonies, community involvement. Just keep that in mind. You know, it's it's a couple step process. And then, yeah, just like you were saying about the e-signature, if you can get it to where you can they can start a rental agreement online before they even walk in the door, that will improve your chances of closing sales. Because let's just face it, like you know, my wife she shops online. 95% of everything my wife purchases is on Amazon, it's on Wayfair. I'm just getting packages left and right at the door, you know, and we barely go to the stores anymore. You know, it's online, online, online. So you have to think about that. We're in the rental and industry, but we're gonna have to evolve and develop into that new era and make it easy for everybody at home to shop at.

Pete Shau 18:10

Another good spot that you want to make sure that you don't forget is when you're capturing those emails or a way to contact your customers, newsweek letters or or newsletters sent out weekly or bi-weekly or monthly keeps your customers involved in what's going on, even if they're not shopping at that point in time, right? So the brand awareness is always to kind of give them that in the back of their mind, they're always reminded of you. Well, newsletters is another way to do that. And when you have newsletters that come out with different things of what you're doing every month, don't forget to include maybe pictures of your customers that have come in, maybe pictures of customers that have paid out. Kind of give them that recognition, like, hey, we do really appreciate your business. We appreciate you guys coming in and doing business with us and staying loyal to us. And then you send out the newsletter and it'll say the different activities that we have going on, or like this particular month, we'll have a Halloween contest and some things that have come up for Halloween. Well, make sure that you capture those emails for that particular reason. Right now, we just got email from the A Pro, and it was awesome to see that Jen Troke, somebody we deal with a lot. She just actually got promoted to a vice president, I believe, of memberships, and Jamie Powers was also promoted to a vice president position, and I believe in operations. Had we not been on that newsletter, we would have never known that. And it's nice to see people get recognized, but as a customer, you know, and we're reaching out to the customer base, maybe it's nice to know that we have that trunk or treat going on right now for the Halloween situations that we have, or maybe that the one thing that we're finally putting on sale is the one thing that they've actually needed. Remember, we do those items, core items that we have all the time. But sometimes we have something that we just we bring in for one particular reason or another, whether it's on sale, whether it's seasonal, whether it's a new trend, and we finally were able to get some, like PS5s. I mean, last year we were chasing those around for God knows how long, and we finally had them available. We'll put them in a newsletter, put them in your mailers uh as far as your emails, and as you're doing your social media, make those little quirks and late say, hey guys, we finally got a hold of the uh the PS5 unicorn, come in, see us and do something funky and wonky on there that would keep their attention just long enough for them to realize, you know, you've flashed your brand on the screen and say, hey, come see me at this. And those things like newsletters and emails and watching everybody get filtered down from your social media captures, that's really what it's all about. But make sure that you put your customers in it as well. Give them an opportunity to be a part of the growth of your store and and the face of your store in the sense that, you know, they want to be seen too. And we've said it a hundred times the best words that anybody wants to hear is their name.

Danny Lastra 20:38

Something to keep in mind in in this day and era, there is actually a new job title and job description in the world, and that title is social media manager. Younger millennials or the generation below us, Gen Z, I believe it is, and that's actually their full-time job. Uh, we just mentioned our promoter on limited marketing solutions, it's out there. If you're not that comfortable, you need you have need to do a couple things. You need to learn how to do it, hire a company to do it, or you need to look at your staff and make that a criteria. Maybe I'm just throwing this out there, but instead of maybe that normal dynamic car salesman on the front line ready to attack anybody that walks in your store, maybe what you need to look at is someone that can just handle all of your social media marketing and web leads for you. We mentioned it in the Notecap, Dan Fisher Magic. One of their biggest tactics to growing their revenues was web leads and closing the web leads. It wasn't foot traffic, but you need someone that's technological savvy enough to respond to the emails and close them over the phone, close them on the emails. I'm gonna keep saying I know I sound like a pair, I'm just repeating myself is the digital era.

Pete Shau 21:48

So the beginning of this year, we were sitting in a meeting room and we were all talking about what we're gonna do about the marketing this year and how we're gonna make it better, how we were gonna differentiate ourselves from what's going on. And the first thing That came across, and of course, you guys got to understand, I'm the old guy of the group, and we're sitting there, and um, Amberly is sitting there, our marketing director. We're sitting with Danny, and the idea of making videos comes across, and I'm just like, guys, I just don't know. I mean, I'm just I'm not in front of the camera kind of guy. You know, I've I've haven't really done it. I'm the older guy in the group. And Danny came along and said, I'll do it. I don't I don't know if I could do this. And Danny was like, Gotcha. I was like, damn, he said that pretty quick. I mean, that was there was no question there, right? So, you know, they're talking about it, and then I get I get as I'm walking out, I'm getting that FOMO effect, and I'm just like, okay, I'm not gonna let my boy do that without me. That's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. I'm gonna be in the video. And so we go down this rabbit hole of getting a team together, and you know, Steve and Sergio are recording guys, they do a great job at kind of focusing what we have and the content that we want to come with. We come up with these great stories, and of course, so then Max Your Tax comes out, and we realize that we have been missing the boat. We realize that on top of sending the message across that we do want to take care of our customers, that we're part of the community, we do want to make sure that everybody understands that we've been here for a long time and we want to continue to be here, but we've been missing out on that digital marketing, that digital space that we could have been attacking. And all of a sudden, this flurry of ideas starts coming out, and before you know it, we've really tried to put ourselves as everywhere as much as possible. And I wish we weren't as late to the party as we were, but it sometimes it takes somebody to kind of really get out of there that skin of, oh my god, I'm afraid to be in front of the camera. That camera shyness, it comes through. Believe me, I had it, we all had it. And everybody needs to remember that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The more that you understand what it is that you're doing and the focus group that you're trying to go towards and what you're trying to sell and what you're trying to bring to the table really helps when you've done it a couple of times. So don't be afraid to do it that first time. Get somebody who's, you know, really good on being the camera. Because some guys, some guys are really good or gals, they're good at the recording part, they're good at the technical part, they're good at making the filters and changing it and doing your screen changes and your scene changes. And then you have some people that are just better at being on camera. And there are two different sets of people, and they they could be the same people, but some people have a better affinity for being in front of the camera and being that personality. And if your location needs that personality, talk to people. So maybe you'll find that driver who you know you probably wouldn't realize is just an amazing person to be on screen, and they have that ability, they have that personality, and then you start putting them on and you realize that's the person I want in front. But you know, take your time and figure it out. Sometimes your personality is not the same person that's doing your technical situation, and sometimes they are. But once you're in front of that camera, once you're in front of it doing it a few times, you get better at it, you become more comfortable. And being more comfortable shows on screen, it shows when you talk, it shows when you're doing your content, and it comes through a little bit better and better. So don't be afraid to not be great at first. Be afraid of what happens when you don't do it.

Danny Lastra 25:03

Practice makes perfect. If you haven't seen any of our videos, I strongly recommend go check them out. You can go to our website, www.therto showpodcast.com. All of our videos are uploaded all the way to the most recent one of the the superheroes, and which was a great video. It was so much fun to make. And again, if you just watch them all, all of them are about 60 to 90 seconds long. And if you watch them all, you'll see what Pete is talking about. You know, from the very first video to our most recent one, you can see how we generally got better. The energy, the rapport, the flow just became more naturally because we got more comfortable with it as time went on. We kept practicing. Uh, on a stupid side note, very first video, I had lost my voice, and you can hear me crackling. And you know, I tried real hard not to let it come out, but I it was just we just finished, I think it was Super Bowl week, it was right after Super Bowl weekend, and everyone like yelling it like, so I come in and I'm talking like this, and I'm like, don't worry, guys, I'll push it through. So you'll you'll hear it in that first video if it comes out when I get excited. But it's you know, that's a you know, Easter egg, whatever you want to call it.

Pete Shau 26:10

But that's why he sounds like he sounds like I did when I first hit puberty and I was trying to sing that James Earl Jones voice for Darth Vader. You gotta max your tax, you know, which is crazy. I just looked like two packs of cigarettes. Oh my god, it was crazy. Like it was like he vaped for 10 days straight before that. And so we were trying to get through it. It was it was a funny, it was funny saying because if you guys see the bloopers, which is up on YouTube, if you guys go to the bloopers, it it is a hilarious, hilarious thing. But to be in all fair and honesty, we're not the best at it, right? We do our best and we're getting better at it, and we always want to encourage the youth today to really take those forward steps because it, you know, rent to own has been around for a little while. And it's one of those businesses that it took a little while kind of to get going. It it holds on to his roots very well. But going into this new digital age in this last year, I've really seen a huge pickup, and there's a lot of people that are doing it well, but we have a lot of small companies that aren't. Don't be afraid, social marketing is actually very inexpensive. Pushing it out there versus your old school EDDMs and flyers and mailers is probably comparable to the right price, and you can get to the right people. You can focus in on who you want to get to. And one of the better reasons of going to social media, and again, you're not doing what you don't want to get away from the grassroots marketing, but going to digital marketing, like we've said before, is you get to know kind of where it's been and where it's going. You get to kind of target an audience. I mean, guys, just so that you're aware, millennials are from the mid-90s, or excuse me, from the mid-80s to about 2000s, and they make up about 21% of the US population. Gen Z is about 10 to 25 years old, they make up about 20.67% of the population. Together, that's a little bit over 40%. You still have Gen X, 19.3%, and then we have a huge chunk of baby boomers. Now, yes, baby boomers might not be on social media as much, and that's why you don't want to go away from the regular marketing, but it's probably one of the few times in history that you literally have four different generations alive at the same time, still working, and still part of that class where they're buying. There's a lot of you know, a lot of older baby boomers that haven't been able to retire that are still on the workforce right now, and you have Gen Z coming in. To have four different generations at one time, you have to do what it takes to capture all of them. And this is a great way to do it. So, you know, make sure that you keep it broad, make sure that you kind of reach out to everybody and say, for a little bit of this and a little bit of that, yes, I'm a little bit more Facebook, and uh Danny might be a little bit more Instagram, and all of our Gen Z might be a little bit more TikTok. Don't alienate anybody, do all of it, and then reach out to all of them and just make sure that you're doing trendy things that are gonna bring them there. But don't ever forget to mention who you are and where you are. And I think a social media manager, I'm gonna start pushing that a social media manager very hard. I think that is a new a new thing that if we don't have guys, it might even be able to start as a part-time position, but a social media manager can do something, they can do it quick, but the influence in that is huge.

Danny Lastra 29:13

Speaking of social media, if you're not following our Facebook and Instagram at the RTO show, please give us a thumbs up, like us, follow us. We are posting content. We're also on LinkedIn, the RTO show, and we will be having a giveaway here soon, shortly. Be on the lookout for that post. Thanks to Venetian Worldwide. They are going to be donating us an NFL logo helmet, legit, of NFL team of your choosing. They will be donating an NFL team logo helmet of the Tampa Bay Bucks. The criteria is gonna be like, share, comment, our specific post. We'll be talking about on the next couple podcasts. We'll be giving away sometime in mid-November. So if you are an NFL fan and you want a genuine NFL logo helmet, you know what to do to earn a free one.

Pete Shau 30:02

I want one right now. Don't forget to hit us up at Pete at the RTO Showpodcast.com or Danny at the rto showpodcast.com. Also, before the end of the week, we are also gonna have our swag shirts up. It's gonna be our first edition shirts that are gonna be up. They're gonna have pictures. Right now, the best way to hit us up for those shirts would be to send an email to one of us. They are going to be up with a couple of different colors, and we will get those out to you as soon as you s you send in the order. Probably gonna start mailing out within the next couple of days. So that'll be up on the website coming up at www.theartoshowpodcast.com. Please hit us up, email. Don't forget to subscribe. When you hit us up, we love to mention names. We've been talking to a lot of different people, and we love when you guys hit us up and we talk about different things and different aspects of the show. Give us ideas of what you want to talk about and what you want to hear, and definitely don't forget to subscribe. We appreciate everything that you guys do.

Danny Lastra 30:55

Don't forget, keep it digital, keep it moving forward. Thanks for listening. This is the RTO show with Danny and P.