MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Stop Chasing Leads, Start Building Relationships
Every business owner dreams of growth systems that work automatically while they focus on what they love. Reed Hansen, founder of Market Surge, has turned this dream into reality for service-based businesses across multiple industries by combining powerful CRM systems with cutting-edge AI.
The journey began with his wife's photography business. Unlike most creatives, she was incredibly process-oriented, allowing her to maintain a full calendar while other photographers experienced feast-or-famine cycles. Reed recognized this as a formula that could transform similar businesses. "We took her processes and replicated them for photography studios across the country, and they saw tremendous success," he explains. This approach—partnering with industry experts to create tailored solutions—became the foundation of Market Surge's growth strategy.
What makes Reed's approach distinct is his recognition that different service industries face unique challenges. Photographers struggle with lead generation during busy periods, plumbers need help preventing appointment no-shows, and high-volume sales businesses like solar installation companies require sophisticated systems to handle their complex workflows. By understanding these nuances, Market Surge creates customized implementations that address specific pain points rather than forcing generic solutions.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Reed discusses how AI is democratizing business growth for small service providers. Beyond content creation, he highlights practical applications that directly impact the bottom line: AI receptionists that never miss calls, intelligent systems that analyze business trends, and even agentic AI that can perform complex tasks autonomously. "These powerful tools enable people to do more of the jobs they like and find the right customers," Reed notes, emphasizing how technology can remove barriers that previously limited growth.
Perhaps most surprising is Reed's revelation about marketing his own business. Despite his sales background, traditional outreach proved less effective than increasing his visibility through podcasting, networking, and content creation. "What's funny is I don't know that I've had any direct new clients from those approaches, but it does seem like my relationship with clients is stronger when they see multiple touch points from where I'm present in these conversations."
Whether you're a solopreneur looking to scale, a creative seeking more consistent income, or a service business owner tired of missing opportunities, this conversation offers practical insights on leveraging technology to create growth systems that truly work while you sleep.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:I am thrilled to have Reid Hanson on the show today. Reed, you have created Market Surge, which I love. Your tagline on LinkedIn I'm reading it just so if I'm looking off screen. That's why Built business growth machines that work while you sleep that is every business owner's dream and it's something that you're making a reality. And one thing I noticed when I was looking at all of my stuff on you was that you were really taking the approach of like we don't have a problem necessarily getting leads, but how are we taking care of nurturing our clients? And that is something that I think most people, most small business entrepreneurs especially, fall down in that area. So thank you, first and foremost, for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm and foremost, for being here. Thank you, I'm really excited to be here. This is a great series of speakers that you've had and I hope to add some value to your followers.
Speaker 2:Well, I have no doubt that you will, so I'd love to hear a little bit about because I know that you had originally a bachelor's in Italian, english and business- yes. You got your master's. You have an MBA, of course, in strategy and finance. You've had a series of roles at different organizations. What was that journey like? To then decide, you know what? Yeah, let's go to market surge and see what else I can do?
Speaker 3:Well, absolutely. You know, I'll try to be succinct, but I have a funny take on a humanities major and how AI is the real enabler of humanities majors. We can write the best prompts. So anyway, that's my two cents.
Speaker 3:But out of undergrad I had initially thought that I would go to law school, but my now wife, her father, was a lawyer and talked me out of it and so I changed gears kind of at the last minute, after doing a lot of LSAT prep, and went into technology and sales and learned a lot and I think I was successful there, despite being somewhat of an introvert.
Speaker 3:And I'd say that the introversion kind of continued through my career.
Speaker 3:And I don't say introvert is a total negative.
Speaker 3:I say it is kind of a different skill set, a different perspective, and I found over the years I went on to get my MBA that I was a little bit more like geared towards marketing and so I went from working at a startup and then a large corporation in Oracle to getting my MBA and then I started to work for some digital agencies and that helped me make the transition to full-time marketer.
Speaker 3:So I was in business development but then it turned into this agency that I run in I'm running today. Now we work with a lot of service-based businesses small businesses, home service businesses and I love working with people that are experts in their field you know whether they're creatives or technicians and helping them realize that they can have a steady flow of leads and that there are tools that can work while they are busy working. And you know, I've been fascinated. First it was some of the powerful tools that come with a CRM, and then recently it's been the AI suite of tools that have gotten more and more powerful, and those combined really do drive a lot of business growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, one thing that you said service-based businesses those are businesses that are not going to be replaced by AI. Right, absolutely Right. It's fantastic. And there are businesses that people may not realize that they're really great growth fields and you can make really good living and become a multimillionaire in service-based business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I applaud that you're doing so much for those type of businesses. You also mentioned CRMs, which are really important for any business, no matter what size you are, and you already brought in AI to the conversation. So what I'm finding really interesting is right now we just started the new term, so we're already doing summer. We're in week three of summer and for the digital media management program, we have some students who are very sophisticated. They have been working in gross marketing, performance marketing, content creation strategy for years and years and they understand how that ecosystem works and some of the AI tools. And we have students who are brand new, who are really just looking at a pivot to a new career, or they've been working in a different type of marketing or sales and they're ready to learn new approaches and really get into the digital side of things. So, in your career, talk about that transition and how this also helps, because do service-based businesses typically realize the power of CRM or you having to educate them? There's a mix.
Speaker 3:I think there are so many niches within the broad swath of service-based businesses. So I'd say one large group I work with is photographers, and photographers are by nature at least in this century they've had to learn to use the editing suite, editing tools, uploading files back and forth, and so they're fairly computer savvy overall. But I think, just also by nature, they are creatives, and so they think conceptually rather than, for the most part, are not as much process minded. And so what I've observed when I take on a new photography studio client their business flows in big spurts. They have big spurts of activity, sales, and then while they're busy creating the beautiful photos, they neglect the funnel. You know the funnel isn't getting filled, and so I mean they're frankly busy hard at work making money. But that gap between where the sales activity stopped and then the busy period ends and then they start trying to fill up their calendar again, it's problematic because it costs them a lot of money and it's capacity that they have that is not being used.
Speaker 3:You know, I'd say others are so many like if you talk about, like a plumber or an HVAC professional. They are just always busy, they almost never, they don't necessarily even need, you know, more leads or anything but. But they could benefit and they do benefit from a CRM that manages appointments. It prevents no-shows, because no-shows is always an issue for whether it's getting a bid or a delivery, and so that is a different issue. But they are not very tech savvy at all. In general they have been very technical and focused and with more work than they can handle. So it will vary by grouping, but well, and then I'll say there's another group that they do super high volume of sales. So you think, like the solar panel salespeople, the pest control, security sales they do such a high volume of sales outbound calls, inbound leads, high spend on ads that they tend to be very sophisticated. But they are very people intensive and there's opportunity to replace some of the busy work with tech tools, because we know there are a lot of tools.
Speaker 2:There are tools that you know, I mean in my LinkedIn. Every day I probably get people who want to help me with leads generation or help me with this or help me with that, but having something that's a full funnel process right would seem to be much more advantageous, no matter what kind of business you have.
Speaker 3:Well, absolutely so this business was built and I think as many should be with like hand. Absolutely so this business was built and I think as many should be hand in hand with an industry sponsor. And this industry sponsor was my wife, who is a photo studio owner. Oh, wow, and she informed and she would be one of the more atypical photographers that she is in fact very process-minded, that she is in fact very process minded and, and she'd probably say that her, her creative, her art kind of suffers because she's so like controlling and OCD about everything has to be perfectly sequenced.
Speaker 3:And but the thing is that she was able to always keep a full calendar because she had the right team in place, she had the right verbiage, the right ads, the website was formatted correctly, and so we took all those processes and leveraged an existing framework, a software platform, GoHighLevel. I don't know if many are familiar, but we took her processes and replicated them for other photography studios across the country and they saw tremendous success. And so when we realized that that was a formula, we started to replicate this and partner, either formally or informally, with industry coaches and high-performing practitioners in a given industry. And you know, and I'd recommend that approach for anybody doing a tech startup is they either bring this deep, deep expertise in a niche or you partner with somebody that does and, as a result, we create processes that are industry specific. Then we replicate them and build out that industry and then continue to add more groupings to our portfolio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you mentioned go high level, which I think is really interesting, because what I've seen with independent practitioners is the tendency to go from one to the next, to the next Right, so I can't even name all of them, but there is one systemio from france and then everybody was leaving, so it was on a different one and then moving over system and then moving over to go high level and then moving over to the next thing, because we I say we, but it's not me, it's a lot of people, you know this group, who really doesn't have a person or a company like yourself that can help systemize all the processes. So even if you get help from a supposed expert from within one of these ecosystems, they're really not going to understand how to build it out for your specific business.
Speaker 3:Right, right, so we'd be like the implementer in that equation, but it is an important role because, you know, as you say, moving from one platform to another, I am trying to stay on top of potential trends and so I I take a call from almost every sales person that that they calls, just so I, you know, I know what's out there and you know I want to be abreast of what's next. But, yeah, it's valuable to have a partner that can navigate the technology well and even I'd say we're definitely a level up from just chat support. We're actively project managing implementations and advising our clients, telling them when there's a market trend they should be aware of, or something we're seeing in one account that they should try to replicate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you mentioned that small businesses really need to understand and learn artificial intelligence tools, particularly, of course, generative AI is what we usually talk about when we're having these conversations In the universe of collegiate students.
Speaker 2:I'm finding that a lot of undergrads who go into grad school in undergrad they're being told not to use any AI, and then in my classes I'm saying, no, you must use AI and let's actually turn some of your assignments into more AI first focused assignments so that they're actually getting application. Same thing on the Intuit Small Business Council, which I just rolled off a membership of that, which I just rolled off a membership of that. But last year we went to Congress and talked about how AI powers Main Street and how it's really important that, from the SBA through the whole ecosystem, that small businesses are understanding and getting to learn how to use AI in their workflows. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about you know, your take on that, what you've seen work really well and some of the processes that people need to be thinking about just to start the process of learning, not just going into chat or going to some other platform and just doing basic prompts and things, but what are really the best use cases.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great question. You know everybody thinks of AI first as, like the generative roles, the, you know, generating blogs or graphics for sites, and you know that's helpful, very helpful. But you know, and I'll go back to my point earlier about you know, I think the humanities majors are going to benefit the most from AI because you know we were critical thinkers and we're writers and I think cultivating the skills of curiosity and of being able to think and observe technical, both problems and potential solutions and to be able to articulate those to ask the GPT to help you, is going to be really important. Now, some of the best use cases I've seen are, so you know, if I'm talking about these home services businesses that I'm working with quite frequently. Sometimes they're one man shops, you know, making tons of money but doing everything themselves, taking all the calls, maybe not doing the bookkeeping, but they are missing calls all the time. You know message are left and so a great use of AI is, you know, either a chat or a voice receptionist that can. You know, ideally they identify themselves as an AI agent, but it helps keep things moving and we know that speed of response is really critical and people are very quick to move to the next vendor when somebody doesn't pick up the phone. That's a great use case.
Speaker 3:Underrated, I think, is generating high-quality web storefronts, which is web pages, high quality web storefronts, which you know, web pages and you can ask chat, gpt and there's other platforms as well Gemini and Grok that do a great job as well to generate HTML code for websites, landing pages, so you can continue to build out your website. You can take that same HTML code, copy it, paste it into GPT and ask for updates and changes. You know so you can. You can do your a lot of your website maintenance through that. You know you can ask it questions about roles in the business that you aren't familiar with, like you know.
Speaker 3:Take a look at my financial reports or my sales numbers or my reviews that I'm I'm getting publicly. Tell me what I should be thinking about. What trends can you help me identify? The GBT agent in ChatGPT is excellent at that. The most advanced level is so far that I've come across is the agentic AI that you can actually, with the latest ChatGP GPT high model, can log into systems for you that you would do yourself, can book your travel. It can do simple tasks and the one that I'm having the most fun with.
Speaker 3:I've been using a lot is cursor, which is able to generate full apps, set up servers, build out the middleware, you know, make connections, you know. So I built I built a full app on over the weekend to help me with some large CSV files that I was I was using for a customer and you know, basically I now have a website, a working website, that I can it's like password protected and I can filter large files that I couldn't do on my desktop and it has been. It's just tremendous and really it's like just a matter of describing what you want and then asking the engine to generate it and then say like, oh, I need this tweaked a little bit and it does it and it pushes out the production role. So that's probably just the beginning. I think we're just going to see more and more agentic opportunities and that will enable people to do more and more of the jobs they like and be able to generate business and find the fit, find the right customers, using these very powerful tools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because when I'm talking about these tools with students or with most people in marketing or PR in those worlds right, we're talking about it in a very different way than the way that you're talking about it with your service-based businesses, because what you're really saying is this is democratizing a lot of the process of taking the pain points of owning a business If you don't have time to do all the menial tasks. You're talking about the businesses that are always busy. They don't have time to sit and nurture new leads because they're out in the field all day, and they probably have all their workers out in the field all day as well. So it's really helping create more growth and create the businesses of the future, the ones that we dream about having right, but that we, as maybe solo practitioners or small businesses, can't always achieve because we have monetary barriers or time or we're not. You know, we don't have the right brain functionality to like, understand and be able to sit and do all these different tasks.
Speaker 3:Well and I love what you're saying the democratization of this technology.
Speaker 3:It is just so wonderful that these platforms all have free tiers that are very powerful, and so in many cases, you can use the free tiers of these tools to do everything you want, and a lot of people may feel intimidated by some of what we're describing here, but for those that have never tried it, that probably does not include your audience, but I do tell people that it is much more accessible than you can imagine. Basically, it's like you can open up the app and ask it how to use it and it will explain it to you, educate you on how to use it and, in words that you can understand, it'll learn how you like to learn as well. So it's just remarkable technology and, by necessity, it needs to be democratized in order to get the best learning into the algorithm, and so it is a bit symbiotic. But also, you know, the powerful people in this field have been very generous and they've realized that right away. They haven't put huge cost barriers in front of people that could be users and providing value back.
Speaker 2:Your background also. You worked at Northwestern.
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:Which seems a little different than some of the different other roles that you've had. Do you feel like creating that custom programs for professionals and managers also helped you figure out how to design market surge and you know all the different steps to implement?
Speaker 3:I think so. Like I said, I really like teaching and enabling, and so my role at Northwestern was and I live here in Evanston that's very close, I'm just a few blocks from campus. So it was a great time in my life where I got to walk to work. I don't know how many people get to do that, but I enjoyed working with a wide variety of companies, associations and healthcare organizations to design either for high potentials or very line-of-business specific programs to help them learn different parts of the business. And, of course, ai even then was a hot topic and we were trying to help them enable that in their environments. And it was just you know. I think that experience really helped me to think through how to educate my clients, and so it does. There's that concept of skill stacking, where you know and and sometimes by accident it happens. But I think my experiences have definitely built into where I am here and what we do at market surge. It's it's uh, it's funny how life kind of sets the table for you. But Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really does, but you have to be willing and open to say yes, right. Yes, uh-huh yeah so you went from that position walking to work to the studio, to filling a market gap. Does your wife still have a photography business? Is she probably ingrained in market search?
Speaker 3:she does still have her photography business and it's doing very well. So we're, we have our independent businesses. You know, I, I, our business supports hers and and she is, you know, like she's been doing this about 10 years on her own and I think she is ready for something else and so she's starting to start look around and so that's that'll be an interesting process for her. She keeps saying she wants to go into a corporate role, but I was like, how could you do that? Like you know, that's so fun to run a business and just try something a little different. But she is a tremendous talent and has been very successful.
Speaker 2:So what does your work look like today? You have market surge. You had to figure out how to get clients. You started out with one industry, started creating profiles and protocols for other industries. Do you still have to walk to work or do you work from home primarily?
Speaker 3:I do work from home and I have a remote team across the country and then a few international employees that support some of the technical functions. So I do a lot of sales and business development, and so I say sales when it comes to new clients. And then business development I'm often working with our current clients to take whatever next step in their marketing process needs to happen, and lately we've been working with some logistics providers a couple of our clients and we're and that's an industry where there's a lot of opportunity. I'd say they're not very. They don't use a lot of technology. It's a very handshake and face-to-face contact type of business.
Speaker 3:But they so tremendous opportunity and we're looking at potential ways that the AI can be a part of the carrier evaluation process, the, you know, automating the quoting process and a lot of systems you know just a lot of different systems they use and hopefully just connecting those into the one hub that they can operate from and get like a data dashboard on. But yeah, that's really fun. There's a whole variety of sophistication in every industry. Within the industry they're very similar, but then you go from industry to industry and that's all different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the nuances.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:One. So how did your personal brand and the contacts you had and, of course, that your wife had in photography as well play into growing your business and starting something new that I mean this is very different than some of the other things that you've done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's been a really good learning I've had over this time, leading Market Surge. At first, so, coming from a sales background, I was selling somebody else's product you know an Oracle database or a machine or middleware or whatever it may be, and I had tremendous resources for marketing to describe the value. And when I come to Market Surge I'm thinking, well, it's kind of a numbers game and you know we do good things and I'll just try to contact as many people as possible. You know I was thinking cold emailing was going to be the best way and maybe a little bit of cold calling. But over time what I've really learned is that the business is doing better when I'm more visible.
Speaker 3:So when I you know I've started producing a podcast this year and interviewing other entrepreneurs and learning from them and networking. I joined the chamber of commerce. I, you know I've been trying to guest on other podcasts and collaborate and blogging I've just what's funny is I don't know that I've had any direct new clients from those approaches, but it does seem like my relationship with clients and new clients. They see multiple touch points from where I'm present and visible in these conversations and seems to build a little bit of trust, like if I can speak publicly about the value and you know like my face can be on screen or I can write blogs that are compelling. That has really seemed to just be more valuable than the sales efforts that I assumed would work.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's been a bit of a surprise.
Speaker 2:So well, I love hearing that, because I always preach that podcasting is the best marketing and sales opportunity you have, because somebody else is saying that you're an expert in your field. You're getting to share your expertise. You get a lot of content that you can share as blog posts, social media, newsletter content all you know and you get video and you get static and all of these different pieces that you can put together as part of your construct. And then, of course, it helps with your SEO, because other people all the backlinks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so thank you for actually sharing that. Yeah, huge plug for podcasting.
Speaker 3:Totally.
Speaker 2:I would just say that's been the best channel I have what is the name of your podcast and how have you found that?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's called inside marketing with market surge, and I just did it on a whim, you know, I I just like, I kind of asked chat gpt to educate me on what do I need to do to do a podcast, and it gave me a list of platforms that I needed. I didn't realize I needed both a video editor and, like a platform publisher, you know. So I've been using descript and then publishing on transistor and which has worked pretty well, and I'm kind of a one man show. I do have a team and I'm trying to get them trained on this, so I don't have to do this all myself. But so far it's me and you know, I've taken the approach of you know, and, anika, I'd love to have you on my podcast. You have an open invite. I'm going to send you a link after this.
Speaker 3:But I've been reaching out to podcasts, listening to podcasts and sending them maybe a little email about, like how I might be a fit or what we could talk, and then when I go on their podcast, I invite them to come back and it's also been like a great conversation starter People that like have a business that's interesting, that I've never met before. Just reach out to them on LinkedIn and say like, hey, would you be interested in chatting? And if they understand the value of a backlink. It is a very easy sell and it's a very less investment, but it's been so valuable to make all these contacts I've learned about, like technologies that I didn't, I didn't know so much about and, you know, just just been tremendous all around and you know that definitely, uh, is a bit of a labor for me as an introvert, but I the benefits have been totally worth it, yeah fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, you would never know. You're an introvert. My daughter is an introvert and she can talk to anybody anytime, but then of course she needs to go home and just completely decompress. I'm an extrovert and I still need to go home and decompress.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that's what I'll do.
Speaker 2:I'll probably be asleep after a few minutes, after we wrap to excite you, it continues to surprise and delight you, because oftentimes we can build a business and then we get tired of working in the minutia, we get tired of doing the same thing over and over again and trying to figure out, like, how am I going to continue to grow my business, stay excited, but not, and you know? Then my follow-up question to that would also be you're the face of the business. You said that things do better, but you can't be there all the time. So how do you then, you know, stay inclined to continue your business but then also find other people who can step in for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is a challenge. You know. As far as what makes me excited is, I, you know, have been really immersed in the technologies. You know like I love to talk to. You know, product hunt is another place where I've been reaching out to people and and inviting them to chat or or do a podcast with me, and they have some cool ideas. These are people all over the world that have cool startups, cool, cool widgets, and and then so I'm I'm just excited about the, the rate of change, of change in the technology space, ai in particular. It's like every day there's something just groundbreaking and hard to believe that this is happening.
Speaker 3:Usually we used to wait years in between these big leaps forward, but now it's like every week, and so I love the technology. It's like every week, and so I love the technology. I love seeing these returns from our clients that you know, people that came from like totally not familiar with technology and to making that leap and using the vocabulary of marketing frameworks and being very deliberate and organized with their efforts. You know that's very satisfying, I guess, like kind of the teacher instinct. You know the very rewarding results there, and then I have tried my best to enable my employees to be autonomous and give them their realms. So, for instance, one of my employees is she has an interior design business on the side and and so I thought, you know, wouldn't it be great if she could help? You know, if those skills could translate to something in the technology realm? So she really wasn't like a marketer per se.
Speaker 3:She has some experience with social media, but you know, I I kind of invited her to do things and she was constantly checking in with me Like, do you like this design? Do you like you know? I kind of invited her to do things and she was constantly checking in with me Like do you like this design? Do you like you know how? About this like font, you know? And and I did take her side one time and I said you know, I don't know if you know, but I'm kind of colorblind and I really need you to own this and I need you to tell me what looks good. And you know, I want you to really run with this. And she has and has done fantastic. Like the bet paid off and her skills did translate and as she's had to learn like some HTML and and how to use some new tools for her, she's kind of approached it the way she would. Interior design job and you know project managers, the designers and and just has has been tremendous, and so I look for opportunities to do that where I can say you own this and you know, so, like I'm probably looking to hire somebody to do my podcast and say you own this, I will record you, you do everything else and you know know, but there's a lot of tasks that, uh, that I, I think that.
Speaker 2:But giving people on the team a sense of ownership and finding people that like treasure, that like that is how, how I'll grow, I think, and and still still want to keep doing this yeah, yeah, wonderful, and I really appreciate using that example of somebody who might have been an atypical hire but you saw the potential, you saw where she could fit in to your team and what skill sets she did have in her other work.
Speaker 3:That would translate really well, just to underline your point, in this day and age, you know, with the tools as they are, I don't know that there is much that can't be learned on the job. I think that, like we're in in the time where you can learn just about anything and if you have like characteristics or qualities, I think employers should look at that much more than they should Like. Do you have experience on this particular platform? You know, I think employers should look at that much more than they should Like. Do you have experience on this particular platform? I think that would be very short-sighted to really focus on platform over skills and qualities.
Speaker 2:And you also mentioning that you're colorblind. So many times we forget about accessibility.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I mean even for somebody who's not completely hearing, impaired vision impaired, other impairments. But that is really important to consider still when we're thinking about fonts and color design elements.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I wouldn't say I'm not majorly colorblind. But green and blue, that spectrum is very difficult for me and usually it hasn't manifested so far into a safety issue but it has definitely in my wardrobe choices.
Speaker 2:My wife always tells me One of the things that you said you'd be willing to answer is an unconventional marketing move that worked really well for you and for your clients.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, let me talk about, like, a specific tactic that we've been experimenting with. So you know, I don't think we're the first to do this, but we were really. I think somebody had. I think this idea sparked.
Speaker 3:Somebody on our team received a PayPal like for one cent from a friend and, and, and it was interesting that, like I mean all the things that go to the spam folder the PayPal email will always hit your inbox, you know, and and it always catches your attention, so that that kind of evolved into this two cent campaign and maybe people have attempted this.
Speaker 3:But we will target somebody that we think is in a buying position and send them a two cents on PayPal, and you know they get that email at the top and you can add a little description and you say hi, I just wanted to give you my two cents. I think your business is great, but I think you could be doing even better. We'd love to chat, and so we kind of hacked the PayPal system to make it work for a marketer, and two cents is a small price to pay for a phone conversation, tremendous response, and it's just been a really fun thing, you know, and the plenty approach I think is just starts on a positive note, rather than like what are you doing? You're trying to steal.
Speaker 2:That could go very many ways. Yeah, it could Right.
Speaker 3:And it does, it does.
Speaker 2:But that is very clever and I actually haven't heard of people using that. So thank you for bringing another idea to the table for us all. Yeah, absolutely. So you have an offer where people can go to your website and get a free local map of their search engine ranking. We talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. A lot of businesses, especially the kind of businesses that I work with, they're service businesses where it's in-person delivery. They're very reliant on how they come up in search engines and you know so. If somebody is searching for AC unit repair, you want to be in the top. You know the top spot is coveted, the top three is awesome. But you know there are definitely some fundamentals that companies can do.
Speaker 3:But what I can provide is a heat map of a radius around your business.
Speaker 3:So you pick your addressable area, give me, like the miles away from your business that you'd either drive to deliver or that they would be willing to drive to you, and I can give you, in each quadrant, heat map you know it's green, yellow, red based on are you in the top three, top 20, or not in the top 20. And I can give you the names of the businesses that are ahead of you. Now that those are good data points because you can mimic their approaches and climb in the rankings, or you can hire a consultant that that can assist you in doing that. But yeah, it's, you know we can do that. We can turn that around in just a few minutes and just give you that piece of data just to know where you're ranking. And you know like a business, for instance, might be ranking really well in certain quadrants of the city and not in others and that would mean that there's a stronger competitor in that area or that you know. Maybe that's a time to reach out for a backlink and somebody in that little community.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, fantastic and that is. I mean, that's hugely valuable and it's something that we talk about in the class that I'm teaching right now.
Speaker 3:It's great Awesome.
Speaker 2:We're going to be going yeah, we'll be touching base after this, because I'd love to show your tool to my students.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Is there anything else small medium-sized business service-based business should really think about as they're getting their start, they're looking for the person to work with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I would look at if you were looking for a consultant to help you with the marketing of your business. I would want to speak to them before you engage. I would not pick them based on the technology that they. I would try to talk to them and see, you know, is this somebody that is going to listen to me and understand my business or is this somebody that's going to dictate how it's going to be done? And so I think that engagement is really important, because you should look at hiring a human rather than relying on technology, Because the technologies are just constantly evolving.
Speaker 3:You can't really say you'll be on one CRM for years and years. You'll probably be changing, but if you have a good partner, then that will last you a very long time. So I'd say get to know the person, get to know you know. There's a lot of free resources. So some things you can outsource to a partner, a lot of things you can learn, and a lot of things are very simple to pick up. There's YouTube channels that cover a ton of knowledge and a lot of like tips and tricks and hacks, but then there's also the GPT engines that can teach you in the way that you need to learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fantastic. We're going to have everybody go to marketsearchio. Of course we'll have that in the show notes. We'll also have your podcast in there. I'm looking forward to being a new listener and giving you a read with you, so, and you're talking to you about your podcast, my other podcast, and having some fun further conversations on these.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love to collaborate. That would be fantastic.
Speaker 2:Thank you, reed. It's been a pleasure having you on Mediascape and thank you to everybody who's been watching this episode or listening to it. Leave us a rating review if you haven't. Give us a follow if you haven't, and we'll be back again with another amazing expert to talk about being a digital change maker, how they're helping change the narrative for businesses everywhere through their knowledge, their expertise and their services. On Mediascape Insights from Digital Changemakers brought to you by USC Annenberg's MS in Digital Media Management Program.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital Media Management Program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.
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