Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business Marketing

Welcome to the 100th episode of the Priority Pursuit Podcast! 

We're thrilled to celebrate this milestone with you, our loyal listeners. 

As passionate advocates for small businesses, nothing excites us more than helping entrepreneurs like you take their marketing strategies to the next level.

In today's special episode, we'll address the most commonly asked questions we receive at Treefrog Marketing, providing you with the clarity and direction you need to enhance your own marketing efforts.

Don't miss out on this knowledge-packed episode! Tune in today and empower yourself with the knowledge and strategies you need to thrive in the competitive business landscape.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• Setting the right marketing budget for your small business
• Hiring an in-house marketing manager or fractional CMO
• Building a lead-generating website to attract and convert customers

Other Mentioned Links & Resources

3 Signs It's Time to Outsource Your Small Business's Marketing (Marketing Consultation with Restaurant Owners Noe & David Garcia)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2113427/13050894

Marketing Consultation with Photographer Heather Corbin: The Three Most Effective Ways to Improve Your Small Business's SEO
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2113427/12539821

Why Marketing Should Be a Top Priority for Small Businesses During a Recession
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2113427/12734146

Learn more about Treefrog services:
https://www.treefrogmarketing.com

Receive 50% Off Your First Order with Photographer’s Edit http://victoriarayburnphotography.com/pe

Join the Priority Pursuit Podcast Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/179106264013426

Follow Treefrog on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/treefroggers

Follow or DM Victoria on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/victorialrayburn

Transcript

Kelly Rice  00:00
Many people will tell you that you should hire a recent grad like fresh out of college because they aren't that experienced and should, they should be able to handle all of your marketing, right. But what they don't realize is that most new grads don't have the knowledge or expertise to oversee, like audience strategy or marketing strategy, writing, content design, website design, graphic design, search engine optimization, social media management, and about a million other things. In fact, no one person can be an expert in all of those areas. If someone actually tells you that they are, that's a giant red flag for us, because nobody can be experts in all of that.

Victoria Rayburn  00:44
Hey, there, you're listening to the priority pursuit podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping small business owners to find, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love. We're your hosts Victoria Rayburn, and Kelly rice. And today, in celebration of this being our 100th episode of the podcast, we are breaking down the most frequently asked questions we receive at treefrog, about small business marketing. Now guys, in all honesty, this episode that could last for hours, it might be a long run for it, keep it short. But if you've listened to any of the other 99 episodes of priority pursuit, you know, almost nothing lights us or the rest of the tree frog team up more than getting to help small businesses get to the next level or finally reach their business goals through strategic marketing. However, to keep this episode concise and helpful, today, we'll answer the seven most frequently asked questions about small business marketing, in hopes of giving you clarity and direction for your own marketing strategy. Now, let's dive in. And Kelly, I'm gonna let you handle the most common question we are asked. And that is, what should my marketing budget be as a small business?

Kelly Rice  02:00
And this is a great question. And the answer really is, it depends. And I know that's a political answer. And people don't like that. But it really does. Because every business is different, and they have different goals. So that being said, according to the US Small Business Administration, small businesses wanting to see consistent growth should actually spend around seven to 8% of their revenue on marketing and midsize businesses, which we consider would be those making like 5 million, but less than 50 million a year, those guys need to invest around 10% of their revenue into marketing. Now, how you spend your marketing budget is largely, it's largely dependent on your business goals. While we always recommend using budget, to create your foundational marketing items, such as clarifying your message, and utilizing funds to develop the foundational items, like in what we talked about in the marketing flywheel system. And well, I think we actually are going to discuss that later. Oh, yeah, like my brains going, like 100 miles an hour. It's like, these are all the things you need to know.

Victoria Rayburn  03:16
Right? Like, we're gonna try to keep this episode. Yeah, sweet. 

Kelly Rice  03:19
But of course, but the idea is, is spend money to clarify your messaging, and then develop the things that you need to to do the flywheel marketing system. Because what you do within this plan, and how you allocate your budget will depend on your business goals in your ideal customers. So for many small businesses, the best areas to allocate budget include clarifying your message. We've only said that three times in the last 30 seconds. But that's big, highly times in the last episodes, right?

Kelly Rice  03:49
Building a lead generating website. And you can do that by utilizing the marketing guidance statements that you create when you're clarifying your message. Implementing foundational SEO practices, such as online directory submissions, making sure that you're tracking information and Google Analytics, submitting information to your Google getting information from your Google Search Console, submitting your website, Sitemaps, updating, and even verifying your Google My Business. And if you haven't done that, that's the first thing that you need to do from an SEO perspective to make sure that Google knows that you are a viable business. And then also things like SEO based ballgame. Building a lead generation system that consists of a way to give people information in exchange for their email, because then you can strategically follow up with them after they have, you know, completed your form or done the thing to where you can. Can you get their email address so that you can continue talking to them because you have to have a lead generating system that starts with awareness content, in order to get them to become actual Buying customers. So lead generation is big. So spending money in that flywheel process about that is going to be something that you eventually want to do. But then also hiring an in house marketing manager to handle select marketing duties, such as like email marketing, organic social media, organic social media has become one of those things that it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sells, or sales sells, wow, you know, I don't, I don't write copy or anything. It doesn't make a lot of sale aspects of it. It's like when when you see something on Facebook, and they're like for sell, and you're like, it's not for sale, it's for sale, whatever. But organic social media is one of those things, it's it's a long haul, it's building your brand. It's building brand awareness, it's getting your culture out there. And it has to be done from inside your organization. companies can't necessarily manage that type of organic social media outside. So that is something that really hiring an in house person that knows what they're doing is great to do with marketing budgets. And also potentially partnering with a part time chief marketing officer in our industry, we call them fractional CMOS. And they are someone who can help develop strategy, they can oversee the implementation of your strategy. And they can manage your marketing staff. Because we work with a lot of businesses that are like, Hey, can you just come in and be our director of marketing and create our strategy, make sure it gets done, manage our staff, train them do all the things that needs to be done, because I'm so busy doing, I don't have time for that, or I don't want to do that. So that's where the fractional or the part time, cmo comes into play for a lot of businesses. And then launching paid advertising such as Google ads, social media ads, and other forms of media buying and advertising, that is a great place to be able to spend budget that's going to be maximized. If you have a clear, if you have clear marketing messages, and you have a clear strategy, you know who your audience is, you can actually reach out to them and put your sales funnel information in front of them with paid media, such as Google ads, or social media. And then really spending budget on all of the other things that you think that you might need to you need leave behind materials for your sales, team, print advertising, trade shows, things like all of those types of things have to be incorporated in that anywhere from seven to 10% of your overall overall revenue. But again, every small business is different. And it has in they have different goals. But in our experience as a marketing agency serving small businesses, if you want to see consistent growth and the whole 78 per cent of you know, my revenue, going out in marketing, you know, if that scares, you don't invest anything less than 3% of your total revenue into marketing. Because you're really just barely making noise at that point if you don't do that. But it's also important to notice that you're free, you're only spending about 3%, anywhere from three to 5% of your revenue, and investing that into marketing, that cannot include the salaries of if you hire someone as a, you know, a fractional CMO or coming out as your marketing director on a part time basis, or the in house staff, that three to 5% really does need to be associated with actual tactics that you're doing so, but also knowing that as we record this office episode in early June of 2023, most economics, economist economic people, all the people smarter than me that talk about money and where we're going, they agree that we're actually in the brink of recession, which is really not any new news to anybody. Right now. So and as a small business that serves small businesses, we know how much you guys are already feeling this I mean, everybody already is. So with that being said, if you look at data from past recessions, it quickly becomes evident that drastically cutting your marketing budget during a recession, or not investing in an adequate amount in marketing could actually harm your business, or even result in forcing you to close your doors. We discuss this more in Episode 92, which I think is titled, like, why marketing should be a top priority during a recession or something like that. So if you care to check it out, again, it's episode 92. Gonna go into a little bit more details. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you know, saying all that you're like, hey, we're in a recession, or we're almost in a recession. And we know we have to be mindful of all the costs that we're doing, you're probably thinking, Yeah, that's great. But I have no idea how to market my business or I don't want to waste my marketing dollars, you know, where should I be spending money? So don't worry, we've got you like always, and if you're ready to set up your business for success, even during the time of economic turmoil download are three ways to recession proof your small business guide, this guide walks you through three things you can do to make sure that your small business survives and even thrives during the upcoming recession, from a marketing perspective, and because we want your small business to succeed. Now, and always, this guide, even includes a breakdown of the flywheel marketing method that we talked about the beginning of this episode that we've talked about probably a million times throughout our 100 episodes. The four it's a four step marketing strategy that we use to help our agency clients see growth of up to 880%, which I know sounds like a lot. And it actually is because it works. So if you are ready to recession, proof your business and make our proven marketing strategy your own, check out the show notes, or visit treefrog marketing.com, forward slash recession proof your business. So again, don't forget to download the three ways to recession proof your business and learn the four step marketing strategy along with some really other great things at treefrog marketing.com. recession proof your business. So if we haven't said that, I'm gonna say it again. Download it so that you can recession proof your business. So yeah.

Victoria Rayburn  11:17
And all links in the show notes. 

Kelly Rice  11:21
We're definitely doing that. But our goal is to answer these questions, but not just like, Hey, answer these questions on the podcast where, you know, Victoria, and I get really excited about answering these, but it's what can you tactically do to to do these within your business? So we are going to throw a ton of stuff at you. But that's the that's the whole reason for it.

Victoria Rayburn  11:39
Exactly. Speaking of budgets, another question that we're often asked is, if we have a limited marketing budget, where should we start with our marketing. So if you have a limited budget, or if you are just starting to market your business, the first thing we recommend investing in is your marketing flywheel. Kelly's already talked about this briefly, we're going to break this down just a little bit further. But the flywheel marketing method is simply a marketing strategy where your website and online marketing efforts are in sync. And they function as a flywheel to continually produce results. Even when you're not in the office, or you're not paying a lot of attention to your marketing

Kelly Rice  12:19
small business owners. Don't they always pay attention to their marketing? What are you talking about? We don't have anything to do with sides. Think about marketing.

Victoria Rayburn  12:29
Yes, you know, in the midst of when you have to actually go serve your customers and not think about your it'd be great if your marketing would continue going. So that's exactly what the flywheel method is. But setting up the flywheel marketing method, it does take some work upfront. But once it's in place, your marketing is more or less going to continue to work on its own, just requiring minimal maintenance, which is again, ideal for busy small business owners. So the flywheel marketing method includes four phases. One, understanding your audience and creating clear messaging, to building a strong foundation with a strategically built SEO optimized website, three, creating content and a sales funnel that serves your ideal client well, and then for promoting your services and content. Again, Kelly kind of broke all of that down, she talked about where to invest your marketing budget. But this is specifically specifically the strategy that we use to help our clients see growth of up to 880%. So in an upcoming episode of priority pursuit, we're going to break down the flywheel marketing method, like even further so we can really get you all of the nitty gritty information. But for now, you can find a written version of the strategy and our three ways to recession proof your business guide. In the show notes or again, Kelly's already said this link like 15 times gonna give it to you one more time at tree frog marketing.com, forward slash recession proof your business and guys recession proof your business, it is all one word. Yes, that guide focuses on recession things, but a big chunk of it is literally how to implement this method.

Kelly Rice  14:07
Yep. So I'm just gonna jump in and talk about the third question that we get, which is what needs to be on my website to convert website visitors into actual paying customers. And we get this all the time. They're like, what do I need to do what needs to be on there? And your website is by far as a small business, really, as any business is your most powerful marketing tool. So that said, it isn't enough though, to just have a website, your website needs to serve your ideal clients while by helping them quickly and easily understand what you offer, how you can help them solve their problem, and how they can work with you. So to accomplish this, there are eight things your website needs to include in order to be successful. So the first is clear messaging. And we've talked about this I think in many different episodes, but we're still going to go back to it because it's it is is really important. So clear messaging, which is the communication that your ideal customer can understand quickly and easily is the key to successful marketing. Because we know your marketing cannot be successful without clear messaging, we put together a free mini course on how you can create clear messaging, by writing your own marketing guidance statements, these statements will be the foundation you'll use to write copy for your website, blogs, sales, script, social media, and marketing campaigns and literally, really anything with words on it, you're going to use your marketing, guiding statements to be able to do that. And you can access this mini course. In the shownotes, we'll put the link or by going to treefrog marketing.com, forward slash marketing guiding statements. So it can't make it easier than that. So marketing guiding statements, right. So the second thing that you need is a clear header. So at the very top of your homepage, you have less than five seconds to tell people exactly what you offer in a way that they can understand, really, ideally, in three seconds or less, you have about five seconds, but the less amount of time that you use to get to convince them that you know what you're doing. That will be better. So your website doing this your website, visitors will immediately know if you offer what they're looking for, and if you can help them. And this will cause them to continue to scroll down your page, which is what we want them to do. One of the other sections that you need on your website is a value proposition, which is simply a clear list of what your customers will, will receive when they invest in your services. But remember, this is not just a listing of product or service features, it must be presented in a way that helps people see the value in working with you. So show them how you solve their most challenging problems. Just don't say that, you know, it features this, this, this, this and this just to be a little bit more descriptive, because again, it's a value proposition they need to find value in it and just listing features doesn't do that. One of the most important sections to have on your website is actually a three step plan that helps your audience understand how easy it is to work with you. So there may be a million things that are happening behind the scenes. But by giving them a plan to follow, that makes it seem less daunting, you will win more leads, the formula that we normally use is first do this, then do this thing, and then you're going to enjoy this type of benefit or this type of success. So I know in other episodes we have gone back and we've talked to that I don't recall exactly which episode that was, but we'll put it in the show notes for you guys to go back and learn about specifically the three step plan. Oh, I think it's also in the marketing guidance statements, isn't it, Victoria? Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, it's all Yeah. So again, go back to that course. And you'll be able to learn about the three step plan and the formula and all of that stuff. But again, it's really important because you have to tell people what they need to do, which again, is what we call the direct call to action. So not only having a straightforward plan is important, your website also needs to include a clear call to action. So in other words, if you need, you need to clearly invite your website visitors to do something. So if you're leaving room for uncertainty on your website, by not clearly showing them what they need to do, you're drastically increasing the likelihood that they will just leave your site before taking any action. So without a clear call to action, you're missing out on business. So make sure that you're telling people what to do. And make sure that you tell them in every single section what to do, because again, people don't read a website from top to bottom like you're doing when you review your website copy. They're just scanning headlines. So once they hit a headline that resonates with them, they're going to read that copy. And then you need to make sure that you tell them what they need to be doing with that call to action. So for us, it feels a little intimidating to have 11 calls to action on the homepage. But in reality, that's what you have to have in order to get people to take action.

Victoria Rayburn  19:06
And if you guys need a visual example, at go to treefrogmarketing.com. Our direct call to action is to schedule a discovery call and you're going to see that button on our website like hundreds of times,right? 

Kelly Rice  19:17
Absolutely. And then you're welcome to send us an email and say, oh my gosh, your website is so great. And that was it didn't feel like sales at all, because that's exactly what your your people will think to when they come to your website when you follow this flywheel method in developing your own website. But now I'm getting off track and I'm getting excited. Okay, so the sixth thing, the sixth item that is important on your website is actually authority. So we talk a lot about make sure that you're showing empathy before authority so the authority comes in on your website to help potential customers trust you that you know what you're doing and so that you don't have to awkwardly like brag about yourself. If you're not putting all of the features in your value, prop and all of these things, we recommend testimonials from happy customers throughout your website. To help you establish authority. Another thing you could do is that if you've worked with big brands, big companies, something like that, you can always put their their logos or something like that. But as authority, we like to hear that other people have had a great experience or they've solved, you've helped them solve problems or do something like that. So that's where your your authority actually needs to come in is through testimonials. One of the other things that we have found, that has probably changed here in the last couple years is that everybody used to be really gated with their pricing. But now it's really important to have pricing on your website, even if it's just a starting app price. Because if you don't, it comes across kind of sketchy to potential customers. And as a result, they're not even going to reach out, they're not going to do anything. So if you include pricing on your website, it gives them an opportunity to potentially qualify themselves from a financial position, and it helps your conversation go in a different direction other than Hey, what does this cost? And you found that too, for a lot of photographers as well, right, Victoria? Oh, absolutely.

Victoria Rayburn  21:14
I mean, you know, it's like you think about it from a wedding photography perspective. And a couple has no idea what, what a wedding photographer costs, they've never done this before. And they go to, you know, a website, and there's no pricing information, they're automatically gonna assume like, this is 10s of 1000s of dollars, and I can't afford it, as opposed to, you know, the photographer who put their pricing information on their website, and you know, maybe that photographer is actually $5,000. And you know, who knows, maybe the one who didn't list is only $2,000. And they literally missed out on business. Just because they were not clear enough and it came across as sketchy in your photographers, would you love to spend less time behind your computer and more time shooting with your loved ones or doing literally anything else than editing? If so it's time to outsource your editing. Now I know what you're going to say I can't outsource my editing an editor won't be able to match my style. But friend, I'm here to tell you that you're wrong. I've been working with photographers edit for years, and their team of experienced editors match my editing style perfectly because one they took the time to get familiar with my preferences and brand to a look at the sample edits I include in each Lightroom catalog and three pay allow me to submit feedback after every project. So the next time we work together, things are even better outsourcing the editing to photographers edit has drastically streamline my workflow. I mean, after a shoot a wedding or a session I simply call the images and mark the photos I want to blog using after shoot then I create a Lightroom catalog only edit the photos I plan to blog and share on social media I add a green label to the photos edit share the catalog with photographers edit and they use the photos I marked in green as samples to finish editing the remaining images from their photographers edit since the catalog back to me within a few days I review the images export them and share my clients galleries with them outsourcing my editing has given me the freedom to spend more time with Zach and Hattie go to bed at a reasonable time better serve my clients and work on projects I'm excited about like this podcast right now editing is likely taking up most of your time, but I can tell you from experience doesn't have to receive 50% off your first order from photographers edit, go to tree frog marketing.com/p e or simply use code V Rayburn at checkout. Again, that's treefrog marketing.com/p e or use code V Rayburn. At checkout.

Kelly Rice  23:26
Many small businesses don't have an effective marketing strategy. And because of this, they try one tactic after another without seeing results. This not only prevents consistent business growth, it makes managing marketing efforts more difficult than it should be as a marketing agency. For small businesses, we understand how frustrating that can be when hard work doesn't deliver the results that you want. Because of this tree frog has developed a proven four step marketing system that will help any small business grow. On our website, you can also schedule a 30 minute discovery call to discuss working with treefrog to build a marketing strategy that will allow your small business to finally see the growth you've been working so hard to achieve. But last but not least, your website needs to be user friendly. I mean, this is a given. Most people know that you know how irritated you probably have been when you've gone to a website, you're like I can't find anything or there's so many. So many things on here. I don't know where to go or where to look or I don't know what they do. So it has to be user friendly. They need to be able to find exactly what they're looking for quickly and easily before you lose their attention. And they leave your website because remember, you have like less than five seconds to be able to capture their attention. So you want to make sure that your website is cohesive with your brand. It has clear and concise messaging. And it doesn't require users to do a bunch of clicking or detective work to find the information that they need. So again, when built strategically, your website is your most powerful marketing tool, and it sure should serve as a 24/7 salesperson. If you include the eight items that I just mentioned. You will almost without don't have a website that helps you meet your business goals. So, Victoria, do you want to that one of the other questions that we commonly get is, why isn't my marketing working? I mean, I think that one what we should I mean, I guess maybe all of these seven are like what we get almost on a weekly basis. So maybe you can help the audience understand whether marketing isn't working?

Victoria Rayburn  25:25
Oh, I would love to. And you know, I guess I realized when I divided these questions out, I kind of accidentally give Kelly the longer ones. So hopefully, she doesn't like kick me in the shins. But I know she loves talking about these things. So it is, it's all good. But yes, another question that we are often asked by small businesses is why isn't my marketing working because when your marketing isn't working, that is just super frustrating, you are working super hard, your marketing should be generating leads, and it's not. So what is the problem? Now there could be more than one reason that your marketing isn't working. But the two issues that we see most frequently are either lack of clear messaging, or a lack of an effective marketing strategy. So let's start with messaging first. Now, Kelly, again, has already we've already talked about this. And if you've listened to any other episode of priority pursuit, like in the last few months that you know all about clear messaging. But in order to convert prospects into paying customers, you have to know what to say to connect with your ideal customers hold their attention and make them actually want to do business with you. And this can only be accomplished through clear customer focused messaging. So in our experience, the best way to clarify your message is to write or work with a marketing professional to write just if this ever panics you please know that this is something I can absolutely help you with. But yes, the best way to clarify your message is to write your marketing guiding statements. So marketing, guiding statements are written guidelines that position your brand and business as a trusted partner. And the process of writing these guidelines or statements gives you the information you need to write clear, concise, effective messaging in a story based framework, which proves again and again to be the most effective marketing framework.

Kelly Rice  27:07
So what do they say? Sorry? Don't they say it's like 22 times more likely that somebody will do the thing you want them to do and remember your message, if it's written in a story like format, because you know, story is one of the the elements of story are one of the best ways to to play some messaging out there for people to remember it. So I thought that was a pretty interesting stat.

Victoria Rayburn  27:29
Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's like and you know, guys like bats should never be surprising. It's like, I don't know, if you think back to like, what did you like? What did you study your sophomore year in history? Classic, I couldn't tell you. But I do. I remember my sophomore teacher telling me this terrible story where he's like, 20 years old and East pecan pie for the first time and finds out he's a diabetic and like, that has didn't help me on the SATs, or a CTS or anything at all. But like it was a story that I remember again, I couldn't even tell you what subject we actually studied that year. But that is what stuck with me.

Kelly Rice  28:01
And you remember, it was in history class, your sophomore year and all of these non relevant things, but because he told a story it stuck with Yes,

Victoria Rayburn  28:08
exactly. So yes, guys, story, story matters. And they most definitely matters in your marketing guiding statements. And that's why we use marketing, getting statements right in the story based framework, it's going to make your marketing so much more effective, and your business so much more memorable. But yeah, so marketing, getting statements that written guidelines that position your brand and business as a trusted partner. And when you take the time to write your marketing guidance statements, as you work on your writing website, copy blog posts, social media posts, or developing any other kind of copier content, you're going to refer back to these statements to make sure that everything you are producing for your marketing is first and foremost, customer focus, like rather than brand new, you're salesy, and then that it also has the power to convert your ideal customers. So essentially, think of your marketing guiding statements as the GPS of your marketing efforts. Once you write them, as long as you follow them and actually use them, you'll get where you want to go. So in other words, your marketing is actually going to work because you aren't just going to be spouting out all kinds of randomness on your website and via social media. When you have time, you will actually know what to say to convert your ideal clients into paying customers. Now, because we know that small business smart, small businesses marketing cannot succeed without clear messaging. We did put together a free mini course which Kelly has already talked about all about how you can create clear messaging by writing your marketing getting statements, and you can access this course via the link in the show notes or by going to tree frog marketing.com/marketing guiding statements. Again, if you're ready to clarify your message so that your marketing actually works. Check out the link in the show notes or again, visit tree frog marketing.com/marketing guiding statements to access our mini course that walks you through exactly how to clarify your message so that your marketing will actually work. 

Kelly Rice  29:57
Now briefly, I think Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you because I don't I think that we said that it's free. So it's free. Like we're not charging you for this. So go and do it go write clear, concise messaging.

Victoria Rayburn  30:07
Yes. Yes, please, please, please. No briefly, we do want to discuss the other reason your marketing may not be working. And that is failure to have an effective marketing strategy. So as a small business, you are probably constantly given marketing advice, like you need to be on tick tock or you know, insert new social media platform, there are always new ones coming out, or you aren't reaching your audience because you aren't utilizing X, or X worked for her. That's exactly what you need to be doing. But the fact of the matter is that in the 2020s, there are all kinds of marketing tools and tactics, however, your time and resources are valuable. And as a result, you need a marketing strategy that works not a bunch of marketing tactics and suggestions pieced to get there. We've already talked about the flywheel marketing method. But this is something that we are so ever loving, passionate about, because we know that it works. So I'm going to mention it one more time. If you would like the full breakdown of this small business marketing strategy that we've used to help our clients grow their small businesses by up to 880%. Download the three ways to recession proof your business guide in the shownotes, or at tree frog marketing.com/recession proof your business, this guide breaks down the strategy in full, and whether you want to be all gung ho and get every piece implemented yourself, or you need to outsource different parts of it, you're going to have, you're going to know what you need to do to build a solid marketing foundation and to have a marketing system that works. Well, you are focusing on the other important aspects of your business.

Kelly Rice  31:41
And something else that we're asked at least on a weekly basis, it feels like more of a daily basis now is when is it time to hire someone to handle our marketing? And should we hire someone in house? Or should we work with like an agency or a freelancer, and you alluded to this, I mean, small business owners are so busy that it just makes sense. But they don't know when the right time to do that. And this, that's actually why it's one of our favorite questions. Because if you're currently contemplating out sourcing your marketing or adding to your team, it likely it likely means that either your business is doing so well that you're busy, and you need to take a few things off of your plate, or that you're ready to just kind of move your business to the next level. And both of them are tremendous places to be. So if you want to dive deeper into this topic, I highly recommend going back and listening to Episode 98. Three signs, it's time to outsource your Marketing for Small Business or small business marketing, something like that. So but in this marketing consultation episode, I get to talk with restaurant owners no we and David Garcia, and we break down exactly how to determine if you're ready to hire someone, or to handle the marketing for you. But to give you just a kind of a short answer, we found that they that small businesses should invest in marketing assistance when they don't have time to handle them. They're marketing themselves, right, you just kind of run out of time, your time poor, because you're having to be everything to everyone. When their marketing efforts aren't effective, or delivering the results that they need, you might be doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it worked for a while. But now it's just not developing, not generating the leads, it's not giving the consistency that you have anymore. So it's just not as effective as it needs to be and you kind of need to reevaluate that. And then third is when you have financial stability, and you can afford to invest in more personnel, whether that's an in house or an agency. So now, we know that knowing when to hire and who to hire can be a difficult decision. And many people will tell you that you should hire a recent grad like fresh out of college because they aren't that experienced and should, they should be able to handle all of your marketing, right. But what they don't realize is that most new grads don't have the knowledge or expertise to oversee, like audience strategy or marketing strategy, writing, content design, website design, graphic design, search engine optimization, social media management in about a million other things. In fact, no one person can be an expert in all of those areas. If someone actually tells you that they are, that's a giant red flag for us, because nobody can be experts in all of that. We are experts like Kelly, you and I are not experts in every like piece of this. This is why we have a team. But also, you know, it's like we both have been in this industry for a long time. And you know, 10 years ago, it was kind of a different story. But now things are just so niche and so specific. Like you literally can't be an expert all of it and sorry, I'm going to be quiet but like no, I

Victoria Rayburn  34:47
tangent.

Kelly Rice  34:48
I mean, you're 100% true because SEO algorithms change what it feels like on a daily basis. Social media changes on a daily basis, trending is changing. So if you're not being able to pay attention to that and that'd be your full focus you can't be an expert on it. I mean, just like with our agency, we used to be able to handle organic social media a couple of years ago, and it was phenomenal. And it did everything that needed to do. Now the way that social media needs to be completed, we're not the best option for that it needs to be an in house person doing that. But on the other hand, other people will tell you, you know, in contrast to hiring a new grad is that you need to hire an experienced marketer, which may or may not be the solution, a better solution. And this is because, again, a single person can be great at a few things, but shouldn't be responsible for everything. So for example, you could hire a marketing manager who thoroughly understands strategy and social media, but they might not have experience in web design, simply because there are only so many things an individual can be good at. So as a result, your marketing manager will eventually need support from other marketing staff or an agency partnership to be successful. And then the third option is literally to partner with a small business agency, which can be a great solution for some businesses, especially if they have someone in their organization that can act as a marketing liaison, such as a marketing manager between the company and the agency. And they're, they're skilled enough to be able to take on the in house roles that need to be done within that company. And if you partner with the right agency, you'll benefit kind of like what we talked about before from a multitude of skill sets, such as strategy and professional copywriting, web design, search engine optimization, social media, and all of the other things that go into marketing. But when you do when you partner with the right agency, you only pay for the expertise you need, because your in house person might be able to do organic social media or email marketing, or those those types of things. And you're not going to have to pay for that from an agency other than maybe some like oversight with strategy and those types of things. So basically, for the, for the cost of just one full time employee or, you know, depending if you're going to add a few for your marketing needs, you can get access to all of the marketing skill sets, you need to implement a strategy from the right marketing agency. Now, this is not a all inclusive, everybody needs to do this type of solution. It's really only if you have someone in your business that is going to be dedicated to marketing duties and has some sort of understanding of general marketing, social media, those types of things to be able to mark to partner with an agency to kind of come in as what we would consider a fractional CMO, or a part time marketing manager to come in and develop strategy and, and oversee things and help train staff and do all of that. But, again, if you'd like to learn more about hiring someone to manage your marketing for you and listen to what we talked about, when we had this full in depth conversation with David and no way from La fiesta, you can visit or you can listen to listen or watch episode 98. And we'll put it in the show notes as well.

Victoria Rayburn  38:01
Yes, alright guys. So you if you've been listening to priority pursuit for longer for the last 100 episodes, you know, there was no way I was going to be able to get through an episode without talking about SEO in one way or another. So another question we are often asked is, if you're going to spend a time on SEO, what are the top things I must do to see an impact? And how long is it going to take to see SEO results? So we more thoroughly answer this question in Episode 86. The three most effective ways to improve your small businesses SEO, which is a marketing consultation with photographer Heather Corbin that you can find where every listen to podcasts or has the link in the show notes. But in short, the three most effective things you can do to improve your SEO is to first of all implement an effective keyword strategy based on your ideal client search intent. Second, create online directory listings. And third, create and implement a content marketing strategy that serves your ideal clients. Well. Now, something important to note is that SEO is a long term marketing strategy, meaning you will not see results overnight. In fact, depending on your Google competition, it's likely going to take six months to a year to seek results. That said, for small businesses, SEO is a particularly valuable marketing tactic. Because when people want to intentionally look for a product or service, they use Google. In fact, 97% of people use Google when they are in need of a local product or service. And as a result, if you do the work to get your website to the first page of Google, you can consistently get your website in front of people who are actively looking for your services, and who are likely ready to invest which guys as small businesses we know like, that is amazing. Like it really doesn't get any more strategic than that. So again, if you'd like to learn more about the most effective ways you can improve your SEO, visit the link in the show notes or go back like 14 episodes to Episode 86 Oh, you did math? Yay. I know. Like, thank goodness, this is episode 100. That was the only reason that worked. Yes, go back to Episode Six, three most effective ways to improve your small businesses SEO.

Kelly Rice  40:16
Yeah. Hey, sometimes math is hard. 

Victoria Rayburn  40:21
That's all I have to say, right? I mean, I'm a copywriter and a photographer for a lot of reasons.

Kelly Rice  40:26
The math is one of them, right? Like, it's not your eyes go. Oh, well, we talked about let's move on to the very last question. I was gonna say we've talked a lot. And we told you earlier that this was going to be a long episode. And we're sorry, not sorry for this. But this is the last question that we're going to talk about in this episode. And we're often asked, how do you effectively market two services with two different audiences? And I have to say that I absolutely love this question. So essentially, if you're marketing multiple products or services to multiple audiences, you will need to have separate messaging and strategies for each. So if you follow the flywheel marketing method, this means you'll need to have marketing guiding statements for each SEO optimized pages for each content for each sales funnels for each in a promotion strategy for each. Now, after we explain this, we're often asked do I need separate websites for these audiences? And do I need a separate social media accounts for each audience? But as long as your services are semi related, there isn't a stark and there isn't like a stark disconnect between the audience Our answer is typically no. For example, if you're a photographer who offers both wedding and newborn photography, you can share about both weddings and newborns on your website and on social media. And in fact, this will likely be to your advantage. After all, newlyweds hopefully, will likely become new parents, just after a few years after their wedding. So you kind of have a captive audience that already knows likes and trusts you to kind of transition to your other services. Or if you're an auto detailing business, and you decide to start offering window tinting, your audience for each may differ slightly. However, both audiences, those needing both auto detailing and those wanting window tinting are still vehicle owners who may be interested in both services from you. Or if you run a nonprofit organization in you need to target both patrons and donors don't want to have different messaging for each audience. But you can likely still utilize the same website and social media accounts for both because after all, these audiences are connected. And they both play roles in helping your organization pursue its mission and purpose. But you'll want to have different pages on your website and make sure that you're producing social media posts and other content specific to each audience. However, you can find a lot of that information in your marketing guiding statements, because you're going to have two sets of marketing guiding statements. Let's take the nonprofit one for donors and one for patrons you're going to be able to talk to them the same way is that you're not going to talk to your window 10 clients the same way that you're going to talk to your auto detailing clients, newborn photography versus wedding photography, so you can get a lot of your statements from and what you need to be saying on your website. And keywords you should be researching for SEO, and content you can use on your social media from your marketing guidance statements. But on the contrast side of that is if you're a wedding photographer who also happens to do a lot of detailing on the side. These services and audiences are entirely different. And as a result, we always recommend starting two different businesses with two entirely different marketing strategies, websites, social media accounts, and all of that. So now in terms of how much money you invest in marketing, each product or service and how much content you create around each of these products or services, we highly recommend considering the desired revenue percentage for each for example, if you want auto detailing to be responsible for 70% of your business income and window tinting, to be 30% Dedicate 70% of your marketing budget and content to auto detailing and 30% to window tinting. So it just kind of makes sense that way. So if you have those similar audiences, you can break up those strategies, you probably need to break up your your budgets the same way. So I hope that kind of brought a little bit of clarity to that because similar you don't necessarily need like separate social media, separate websites and all that but if they're drastically different you absolutely do. The other caveat is is that if you're splitting businesses off in this business is going to be called like brand name this or brand name that even if it's under the same business, that's when we would also consider on different social media and website and all of that, but that's kind of a different conversation. So welcome to the somewhat end of our 100th episode. Yeah.

Victoria Rayburn  45:13
Guys, whether you have tuned into all 100 episodes of priority for Su or this is your very first time listening. Thank you so much. Please note that Kelly that treefrog team and I are always rooting for your small business and we are committed to sharing weekly episodes that help you maintain and pursue both your personal and business priorities so you can build a life and business you love. It's an honor of the 100th episode, we would love to ask you a little favor. If priority pursuit has served you well. Please take a few minutes to share the show with small business friends, whether you send the show to them directly or simply share about the show on social media, or take a minute to leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Either way, you'll help other small business owners and leaders wanting to be present in their personal lives confident in their business choices, and proud of the legacy they're building fine priority pursuit. Thank you for tuning in. And I hope you'll join us next week for even more marketing boundary and priority driven tactics that you can use to build a life and business that you love.