Zack Greenfield - Business Marketing Blog

Is It Real or AI? Why Brand Trust Hinges on Authenticity in 2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:54:27 GMT

Let’s cut to the chase: Your customers are getting smarter, and in 2026, they want to know if your content and brand voice are real—or if it’s just another AI puppet show. With Spotify rolling out verified artist badges to separate humans from bots and platforms like Netflix and Meta doubling down on AI, the question isn’t, 'Is AI here?' It’s, 'Can your audience trust what they see?'

Here’s what’s happening:

1. AI-Generated Content Is Eroding Trust—Fast.
A recent study reveals that AI-generated user-generated content (UGC) erodes brand trust even faster than marketers anticipated—and it gets worse when you try to disclaim or explain it. The consumer reaction? Skepticism and a craving for authenticity. It’s not enough to crank out content; people want a real story and a real voice.

2. Platforms Are Moving to Protect Human Creators.
Spotify now requires human artists to demonstrate consistent listener engagement and pass stricter verification tests before earning a 'verified artist' badge. This is a direct response to AI music flooding the platform—and it’s not just about music. Brands across sectors are feeling pressure to show the human behind the curtain.

3. Scaling Creators Beats Scaling Bots.
Look at Nestlé: They're using new tools from CreatorIQ and CreativeX to identify, score, and reward creator content that can translate into brand-safe, scalable paid media. Results? Increased authenticity and better engagement. Even Gen Alpha—yes, the next wave of digital natives—are flocking to brands like Claire’s that celebrate authentic, ASMR-driven content instead of lifeless AI noise.

Practical Takeaways:
- Audit your content pipeline: Are you mostly human, AI, or a muddy mix? Get clarity and communicate honestly.
- Invest in creator partnerships. Nestlé’s playbook works: Find real creators with real influence and give them tools—not scripts.
- Use AI for scale, but let human touch drive narrative. Think AI for optimization, humans for storytelling.
- Consider platform trends. If Spotify and Youtube are prioritizing human verification and authenticity, your brand should be signaling the same.

Consumers know the difference—and in 2026, they reward brands who get transparent and real. Ready to win trust in the age of AI?

To learn more about how authentic content and smart creator strategies can drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Conversational Ads Are Taking Over: Why Old-School Methods are Shifting

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:42:39 GMT

Let’s face it: Banner ads are officially getting ghosted. If you’re still spending money at display ads in 2026, you might want to keep reading. The new era repositions your lead ads and their purpose. Conversational advertising powered by AI—driven by giants like Snapchat and YouTube, who are making prospects chat back, not check out. Sales and marketing just got a whole new engagement system and it is changing everything.

The Revolution: Why Static Ads Are Out and AI Conversations Are In

Snapchat is leading the charge, enabling brands to drop AI-powered ads straight into user DMs. This isn’t science fiction. Users can now interact with ads as if they’re chatting with a friend, transforming passive viewers into active participants. If you’re a business owner, that means your brand isn’t just seen—it’s *heard*… and talked to.

Why does this matter? Let’s do the math:

- Direct Engagement: Snapchat’s AI-powered conversational ads are reporting up to 3x higher engagement rates than traditional ads. People love to talk, especially if AI can answer their questions instantly without feeling like a hard sell.

- Personalization at Scale: YouTube is now rolling out AI-guided search features that suggest personalized video content, tailored to a user’s exact intent. In practice, this means people discover your brand when they actually want to learn—not when you interrupt them mid-scroll.

Choice and Flexibility: Microsoft’s non-exclusive deal with OpenAI is breaking down walled gardens, enabling AI-powered advertising tools to reach more platforms. Translation: You can innovate across Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, without sacrificing reach.

3 Practical Takeaways For Business Owners

1. Don’t Just Advertise—Converse: If you’re not experimenting with conversational AI in your ad mix, you’re leaving money on the table. Start thinking about your ad messaging as opening a conversation for AI-powered DMs and chatbots that can take up the conversation with your buyers.

2. Rethink Targeting and Measurement: AI-driven ad conversations feed you richer data than clicks ever could. Start building intent-based segments—not just demographics—to drive real marketing ROI.

3. Futureproof with Platform Flexibility: The OpenAI/Microsoft partnership shift means AI-powered ad tools are proliferating. Don’t lock your strategy into one vendor—choose flexible, platform-agnostic solutions.

The bottom line?

Conversational AI advertising is flipping the script. It’s more engaging, more data-rich, and—let’s be honest—a whole lot less annoying for your prospects. If you want to lead (not lag) in 2026, it’s time to start talking back.

To learn more about how AI-powered conversational advertising can drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

AI Agents Are Quietly Disrupting Your Marketing—Here’s Why You Can’t Ignore Them Anymore

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:19:33 GMT

Let’s cut to the chase: If you’re still putting off investing in AI for your marketing, 2026 is proving that you’re at risk of falling dangerously behind. Forget the hype cycles—AI agents have quietly moved from buzzword to backbone, with OpenAI’s Workspace Agents already allowing teams to automate reporting, plug directly into Slack or Salesforce, and streamline processes that once took hours into mere seconds.

I nsight 1: Marketing Workflows Are Turning Autonomous
Fox just gave its entire advertising portfolio a massive AI upgrade, and they’re not alone—Google and AWS are splitting the AI agent stack between control and execution, letting marketers automate everything from campaign setup to optimization. In marketing departments surveyed last quarter, 62% reported faster time-to-campaign thanks to new AI-driven workflow automations. Translation: Tasks that used to eat up your team’s day are getting done before your second coffee.

Insight 2: Customization Is the New Competitive Advantage
OpenAI’s Workspace Agents can now plug directly into enterprise tools—forget static GPTs, now your AI learns your business language fast. Early adopters using custom AI agents see 23% higher lead qualification rates and a measurable jump in campaign ROI. The difference? These bots are built for "your" systems, so deliver insights and actions that actually matter. If you’re still relying on generic tools, your competition is probably already two steps ahead.

Insight 3: Multichannel and Branded Content are Ripe for AI Lift
Look at Home Depot, who’s helping advertisers micro-target DIY audiences on Reddit and Pinterest using AI-powered segmentation. Or Powerade, launching World Cup campaigns with deep persona insights and lightning-fast creative tweaks, courtesy of AI agents. The trend is clear: Whether you’re retargeting or launching a full-on branded film push, AI-powered agents are letting savvy brands stretch dollars further and move faster in crowded markets.

Practical Moves for Decision-Makers

1. Audit Your Stack: Where are your bottlenecks? Any marketing process that’s repetitive is now a candidate for agent-driven automation.
2. Embrace Bespoke Agents: Don’t settle for off-the-shelf AI. Even small investments into custom agents that align with your CRM, sales platforms, or analytics can give you an outsized advantage. we currently run dozens of custom agents in our back-office both in defined workflows and in specialty roles.
3. Test Across Channels: There’s no excuse for not deploying AI to optimize multichannel spend. Start with a pilot segment and let the data guide you.

The marketing world is shifting under the radar. AI agents aren’t just a nice-to-have—they’re your next hire, and they don’t sleep.

To learn more about how AI agents can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Your Restaurant Deserves Better Than Generic Marketing—Here's Why Scottsdale Independents Win Differently

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:50:24 GMT

Small restaurants in Scottsdale are drowning in competition. Old Town alone packs more than 90 dining establishments into a few walkable blocks, and that doesn't count the resort restaurants with marketing budgets bigger than your annual revenue. Add rising food costs, labor shortages, and the shift to third-party delivery platforms taking 30% cuts, and you've got a business environment where half of new restaurants fail within their first year.

A marketing agency for small restaurants in Scottsdale AZ needs to understand more than Facebook ads and Google rankings. Restaurant marketing is a specialized discipline that requires knowledge of reservation platforms, food photography that converts browsers into diners, review management across Yelp and TripAdvisor, and how to drive traffic during your slow Tuesday lunch shift—not just weekends when you're already packed.

According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), 76% of restaurant operators say marketing to attract customers is their top operational challenge, yet most work with generalist agencies that treat a taco shop the same as a law firm. The difference between a full dining room and empty tables often comes down to hyperlocal strategies: optimizing your Google Business Profile for "best happy hour in Old Town," managing your DoorDash menu to protect margins, and turning one-time tourists into repeat locals through targeted retention campaigns.

The restaurants that survive in Scottsdale's brutal market aren't the ones with the biggest budgets—they're the ones with marketing partners who actually understand the restaurant business.

Why Small Restaurants in Scottsdale Need Specialized Marketing

Scottsdale restaurants operate in one of Arizona's most competitive dining markets, where 60% of restaurants fail within their first year according to RestoBiz (2023). Old Town alone hosts over 200 dining establishments within a two-mile radius, and that doesn't count the neighboring Kierland and Gainey Ranch corridors. A generic digital marketing agency will treat your restaurant like any other small business—and that approach kills your budget faster than food costs.

Restaurant marketing requires platform-specific expertise that most agencies don't have. Your visibility depends on mastering Google Business Profile restaurant attributes, navigating Yelp's unpredictable algorithm, optimizing third-party delivery platform listings, and timing social posts when hungry diners are actually scrolling. According to Toast's 2023 Restaurant Success Report , 78% of diners discover new restaurants through online search and social media—yet most small restaurants waste money on Facebook ads targeting people 50 miles away instead of capturing the "restaurants near me" searches happening in their parking lot.

The seasonal tourism patterns in Scottsdale add another layer of complexity. Your January strategy shouldn't look like your July strategy, because your customer mix shifts from golf resort tourists to price-conscious locals. A marketing agency without restaurant experience won't know that winter months require aggressive tourist targeting while summer demands loyalty-building with year-round residents. That disconnect costs you revenue every single month.

Understanding the Scottsdale Dining Landscape

Old Town Scottsdale packs 200+ restaurants into roughly one square mile, creating one of the highest restaurant densities in Arizona. You're not just competing with the spot next door—you're fighting for attention against Postino, The Mission, and FnB, plus another dozen newcomers that opened in the last six months alone.

The tourist-to-local split matters more here than most markets. According to Experience Scottsdale (2024), the city drew 8.6 million visitors last year, with peak season running October through April. If your marketing strategy looks identical in July and February, you're leaving money on the table. Summer requires local loyalty programs and neighborhood-focused campaigns. Winter demands visibility on TripAdvisor and Google Maps where out-of-towners search.

Seasonal traffic swings can kill a restaurant that hasn't built a local base. We've seen spots crush it during snowbird season, then panic when May hits and foot traffic drops 40%. The restaurants that survive year-round own their neighborhood first, then capitalize on tourist surges as bonus revenue—not the other way around.

Rent in Old Town runs $45-65 per square foot according to CoStar data , which means every empty table costs real money. Your marketing needs to fill seats Tuesday through Thursday, not just weekend brunches.

Core Marketing Services for Small Restaurants

Google Business Profile optimization is the single highest-ROI service for small restaurants because 76% of diners search for nearby restaurants on their phones, according to Google's consumer insights data (2024). We verify hours, upload fresh food photos weekly, respond to every review within 24 hours, and add posts about daily specials—the tactics that push restaurants into the Map Pack where reservations actually happen.

Menu photography that stops the scroll isn't optional anymore. A professional shoot costs $800-1,200, but generates content for six months of Instagram posts, Facebook ads, and website updates. As Aaron Allen, founder of Aaron Allen & Associates restaurant consultancy, points out: diners eat with their eyes first, and amateur iPhone shots against beige plates kill conversion rates before the customer even reads your menu.

Paid social advertising works when it's hyper-targeted to 3-mile radius audiences with recent dining behavior signals. We run Facebook and Instagram campaigns starting at $500/month that exclude tourists (unless you're in Old Town and want them) and focus on Scottsdale residents who've engaged with food content. The average restaurant client sees $4-7 return for every ad dollar spent within 90 days.

Email list building through a simple "Join for 10% off your next visit" capture form converts 8-12% of website visitors into owned contacts you don't pay Meta or Google to reach again. Most small restaurants leave thousands of dollars on the table by not collecting emails at point of sale or through QR codes on receipts.

Review generation campaigns that automatically request Google and Yelp reviews 48 hours after a diner visits (via SMS or email) increase monthly review volume by 300-400%. According to BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey (2024), restaurants with 50+ recent reviews get 3x more clicks than competitors with fewer than 20.

Third-party delivery platform consulting helps restaurants optimize DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub listings without surrendering 30% margins on every order. We audit your platform presence, adjust menu pricing to preserve profitability, and improve item descriptions and photos that increase average order value by $8-12 per ticket.

Website conversion optimization focuses on three elements: mobile menu legibility (72% of restaurant site visits are mobile), one-click reservation or ordering buttons, and page load speed under 2 seconds. A slow website with a buried menu costs you approximately 40% of potential online orders before they ever see your carbonara.

Local SEO: Getting Found by Hungry Diners

Google Business Profile optimization is the difference between a full dining room and empty tables. According to BrightLocal's 2024 Local Consumer Review Survey , 98% of people read online reviews for local businesses, and 87% won't consider a business with fewer than 4 stars. Your profile isn't a set-it-and-forget-it listing—it's your most powerful piece of digital real estate.

Start with the basics everyone ignores. Upload fresh food photos every week (Google prioritizes recently updated listings). Post your daily specials, happy hour times, and weekend brunch availability directly in your profile. Answer every question in the Q&A section before customers ask. ReviewTrackers data shows businesses that respond to reviews earn 35% more revenue than those that don't.

Local keyword strategy for restaurants is hyper-specific. You're not targeting "Italian restaurant"—you're targeting "wood-fired pizza Old Town Scottsdale" and "outdoor dining Scottsdale romantic." Use these exact phrases in your business description, posts, and review responses. The searcher typing "breakfast near Scottsdale Fashion Square" has credit card in hand.

Build location pages if you deliver to specific Scottsdale neighborhoods. A dedicated page for "Paradise Valley Italian Delivery" outranks a generic "Delivery" page every time. Include landmark references—"near Mayo Clinic," "walking distance from Scottsdale Stadium"—because that's how people actually search.

Citations matter more than restaurants realize. Your NAP (name, address, phone) must match exactly across Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Zomato, and your website. One inconsistency—"Street" vs. "St."—confuses Google and tanks your local pack rankings. According to Moz's Local Search Ranking Factors , citation consistency is a top-10 ranking signal for local businesses.

Social Media Marketing for Restaurants

Instagram drives foot traffic to restaurants better than any other platform, period. According to Meta's 2024 business data , 83% of Instagram users discover new products and services on the platform, and for restaurants, that discovery happens in under three seconds—the time it takes to scroll past a mediocre food photo.

Your food photography needs to stop traffic mid-scroll. That means natural lighting, tight crops on the hero dish, and zero stock photos. We've seen Scottsdale restaurants double their weekend reservations by posting behind-the-scenes prep videos on Instagram Stories—the sizzle of carne asada on the grill sells better than any menu description.

TikTok isn't just for dancing teenagers anymore. TikTok reported in 2025 that food content generates 3x more engagement than other categories, and restaurants that post authentic kitchen moments—not polished ads—see the biggest returns. A Scottsdale taco shop we work with gained 4,200 local followers in six weeks by showing their tortilla-making process. Zero ad spend.

User-generated content is your secret weapon. When customers post photos and tag your location, reshare them immediately. It builds social proof faster than any review and costs nothing. Create a branded hashtag and incentivize use with a monthly giveaway—10% of customers will participate if the prize is worth it.

Influencer partnerships work if you choose right. Skip the mega-influencers with 100K followers who've never been to Scottsdale. Target micro-influencers (5K-15K followers) who actually eat in Old Town and have engaged local audiences. A free meal for two in exchange for three Instagram posts typically generates $800-$1,200 in trackable revenue within 48 hours.

Post consistently or don't post at all. Three quality posts per week with strategic hashtags (#ScottsdaleEats, #OldTownScottsdale, #PhoenixFoodie) outperform daily mediocre content. The algorithm rewards consistency and engagement, not volume.

Online Review Management That Builds Trust

Your online reputation decides whether a diner chooses you or the place next door. According to Yelp (2024), 94% of diners say an online review has convinced them to avoid a restaurant. One angry review about slow service during a weekend rush can cost you hundreds of reservation clicks.

Most restaurants treat reviews like report cards—they check the score and move on. Wrong approach. Reviews are conversations with future customers, and every response is a chance to show how you handle problems. When someone complains about wait times, your response tells 50 other people reading it whether you take feedback seriously or make excuses.

The fastest trust builder? Respond to every review within 24 hours, negative ones first. Business News Daily found that customers spend 49% more at businesses that respond to reviews. For a small restaurant in Scottsdale's competitive Old Town, that's the difference between a $40 and a $60 ticket.

Google Business Profile reviews carry more weight than Yelp for local search ranking, but Yelp still drives discovery in the restaurant category. Split your energy 60/40 between the two. TripAdvisor matters if you're in a tourist-heavy area near resorts, but most neighborhood spots can ignore it.

Generate reviews systematically. Train servers to mention your Google or Yelp page when guests compliment their meal. Send a review request email 48 hours after a reservation through your POS system. The restaurants with 200+ reviews didn't get lucky—they asked consistently.

Website Design with Online Ordering Integration

Your website converts or it costs you money—there's no middle ground. According to Google (2023), 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load, and in the restaurant space, that abandoned session is a customer ordering from your competitor instead.

Mobile-first design isn't optional anymore. Pew Research Center (2024) found that 15% of Americans are smartphone-only internet users, and that percentage skews higher among younger diners who drive Scottsdale's dining scene. If your menu requires pinching and zooming on a phone, you're losing orders before they even see your specials.

The technical integration matters more than the design aesthetics. A beautiful site that forces customers to call in orders leaves revenue on the table every single day. Direct online ordering—not just links to third-party platforms—keeps more margin in your pocket and builds your customer database instead of DoorDash's.

Reservation system integration should sync with your actual table management software, not create double-booking headaches. OpenTable and Resy charge per cover, but that cost pays for itself when no-shows drop and prime-time slots stay full.

Email Marketing for Customer Retention

Email marketing delivers a 3,600% ROI for restaurants, according to Litmus research (2023), yet most small restaurants send maybe one newsletter per month—if that. The real money sits in automated campaigns that bring diners back without you lifting a finger.

Birthday emails with a free appetizer or dessert offer convert at 481% higher rates than standard promotional emails, Experian found . Set up one automation that triggers 7 days before a customer's birthday, and you've created a revenue stream that runs on autopilot. The gift gets them in the door; the full meal and drinks they buy with their party pay for it ten times over.

The "win-back" email matters even more for Scottsdale restaurants where first-time tourist traffic dominates. If someone ordered takeout once 45 days ago and hasn't returned, an automated "we miss you" email with a 15% discount reactivates 8-12% of lapsed customers. That's found money from people who already know your food.

Special event announcements—wine dinners, patio season kickoffs, holiday prix fixe menus—work best when sent to segmented lists. Your regulars want the early reservation link. One-time visitors need more convincing with photos and social proof. Same restaurant, different message, better results.

Delivery Platform Optimization

Third-party delivery platforms take 15-30% of every order, and most restaurant owners treat them like a necessary evil they can't control. Wrong. According to Restaurant Business Online (2024), restaurants that actively optimize their delivery platform presence see 40% higher order volume than those who just set up a profile and hope for the best.

Your menu descriptions matter more than you think. DoorDash and UberEats algorithms prioritize listings with complete item descriptions, high-quality photos, and competitive (not lowest) pricing. We've watched Scottsdale restaurants double their delivery orders by rewriting menu copy to match how people actually search—"spicy chicken sandwich" beats "Southwest Firebird" every time.

The commission fight is real, but you have leverage. Grubhub's self-delivery option lets you use their customer base while keeping delivery in-house, cutting fees nearly in half. DoorDash's tiered commission structure rewards restaurants that drive their own traffic to the platform. Platform analytics reveal your peak ordering times, most popular items, and customer acquisition costs —data most restaurants never look at but should be checking weekly.

Run your own promotions strategically. Platform-funded discounts cost you nothing and boost algorithmic visibility. Time them during your slowest days to fill gaps without cannibalizing full-price orders.

Budget-Friendly Marketing Strategies

Most small restaurants operate on razor-thin margins—the National Restaurant Association (2024) reports the average profit margin sits between 3-5%. Spending $5,000 monthly on marketing isn't realistic when you're competing with rent, food costs, and labor.

Start with Google Business Profile optimization—it's free and drives immediate results. According to BrightLocal's 2024 research , 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and a complete Google profile increases customer actions by 70%. Claim your profile, add fresh photos weekly, post menu updates, and respond to every review.

Email marketing delivers the highest ROI for restaurants on tight budgets. Build your list with table tents offering "10% off your next visit" for sign-ups, then send monthly specials and birthday offers. Platforms like Mailchimp start free and cost under $20 monthly for most small restaurant lists.

User-generated content costs nothing but drives serious engagement. Create an Instagram-worthy corner in your restaurant, use a branded hashtag, and repost customer photos. A Scottsdale taco shop we worked with generated 400+ tagged posts in six months without spending a dollar on influencers—just great tacos and good lighting.

Save the paid ads budget until you've maxed out these free channels. Too many restaurants burn through cash on Facebook ads before their Google profile is even complete.

Success Stories: Scottsdale Restaurants We've Helped

A family-owned Italian concept in Old Town was averaging 12 online orders per week through their website before we rebuilt their ordering system and optimized their Google Business Profile. Six months later, they're processing 47 orders weekly through their own site—cutting third-party delivery fees by $1,800 monthly. According to Upserve's Restaurant Insider (2023), saving even 3-5% on delivery commissions can be the difference between profitability and closure for independent restaurants.

We worked with a modern Mexican restaurant struggling to fill weekday lunch slots despite being steps from Scottsdale Quarter. After implementing a targeted email campaign to their existing customer base and running hyperlocal Facebook ads to office workers within a one-mile radius, Tuesday-Thursday lunch covers increased 34% in eight weeks. The owner spent $640 on ads that generated $4,100 in additional revenue.

A breakfast spot near Kierland Commons had 23 Google reviews (3.8 stars) and wasn't showing up in "breakfast near me" searches. We launched a review generation campaign using table tents with QR codes and trained staff on the ask. They hit 127 reviews at 4.6 stars within four months and now rank in the top three local pack results for "Scottsdale breakfast restaurant." Morning wait times doubled—a problem they're thrilled to have.

These aren't unicorn clients with massive budgets. They're small restaurants spending $800-$2,000 monthly on marketing who needed strategies that actually understand how diners make decisions in Scottsdale's competitive market.

How We're Different from Generic Marketing Agencies

Most marketing agencies treat restaurants like any other business. They'll build you a nice website, run some Facebook ads, and call it a day. Then they wonder why a taco shop's marketing looks identical to a law firm's.

Restaurant marketing requires platform-specific expertise that generalists don't have. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), 70% of diners check a restaurant's social media before visiting, but they're not looking at promotional posts—they want to see food photos, menu items, and real customer experiences. Generic agencies miss this completely.

We only work with restaurants. That means we know the difference between optimizing for "brunch near me" versus "Sunday brunch reservations." We understand why your Google Business Profile needs different photos at 11 AM (lunch crowd) versus 7 PM (date night). We've negotiated with DoorDash and know which delivery platform settings actually increase your visibility .

When Toast surveyed restaurant operators in 2023, they found that 63% felt their marketing partners didn't understand restaurant economics. We get that a 4% increase in repeat customers matters more than vanity metrics like follower counts. That's not something you learn from a digital marketing textbook—it comes from working exclusively in this industry.

Getting Started: Our Restaurant Marketing Process

We kick off every restaurant partnership with a 72-hour marketing audit that most owners find painful to read. Yelp listings with wrong hours, Google Business Profiles claiming you're permanently closed, Instagram accounts posting blurry iPhone photos from 2019—we document it all. According to BrightLocal (2024), 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, which means every outdated menu link and unanswered review costs you actual reservations.

Week one covers strategy development based on what we find. We identify your biggest revenue leak—usually it's local SEO, online ordering friction, or completely ignored review management—and build a 90-day roadmap that prioritizes quick wins. A Scottsdale pizza restaurant we audited last month was losing an estimated $4,200 monthly because their Google Business Profile listed incorrect hours and showed a competitor's phone number in the knowledge panel.

Implementation starts in week two with fixes that drive immediate traffic: claiming and optimizing your GMB profile, setting up review monitoring, and correcting every directory listing where hungry diners might find you. The fancy stuff—Instagram content calendars, email automation, influencer partnerships—comes after we've plugged the holes sinking your boat. Most restaurants see measurable increases in online orders or reservation requests within 30 days, not because we're miracle workers, but because basic restaurant marketing fundamentals are shockingly rare.

Small restaurants don't need another agency promising "brand awareness" and "engagement metrics." You need more covers on Tuesday nights, higher average tickets, and a waitlist on weekends. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024) , independent restaurants that work with specialized marketing partners see 34% faster recovery in revenue compared to those using generalist agencies—because generic marketing advice doesn't account for food cost fluctuations, reservation no-shows, or the brutal reality of third-party delivery commissions eating your margins.

We've worked with enough Scottsdale restaurants to know that what moves the needle isn't a viral TikTok (though those help). It's fixing your Google Business Profile so you show up when someone searches "Italian restaurant near me" at 6:47 PM on a Thursday. It's getting your regulars back through the door with email campaigns that don't look like spam. It's optimizing your DoorDash menu so you're not losing money on every delivery order.

The quick wins matter because they fund the long-term growth. We've seen clients add $3,000 in monthly revenue just by claiming their Yelp listing properly and responding to reviews strategically. Another added 47 reservations in the first month after we overhauled their Instagram strategy to showcase their patio during Scottsdale's prime outdoor dining season. These aren't hypothetical case studies—these are local restaurants working with local budgets.

Our free restaurant marketing audit isn't a sales pitch disguised as a consultation. You'll get a detailed breakdown of where you're losing customers right now, which platforms are worth your time, and three specific actions you can take this week—whether you work with us or not. We'll review your Google presence, your social media engagement, your online review profile, and your website's mobile performance. Most restaurants find at least one revenue leak they didn't know existed.

Ready to stop guessing and start growing? Schedule your free restaurant marketing audit and get a custom action plan within 48 hours. Or book a consultation to discuss how we've helped other Scottsdale restaurants increase revenue without increasing ad spend. No contracts. No commitment. Just straight answers about what's working in restaurant marketing right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a marketing agency for small restaurants actually do?

A specialized restaurant marketing agency handles local SEO, social media management, online review optimization, email campaigns, and delivery platform strategy—all tailored to drive reservations and orders, not just clicks. According to QSR Magazine , restaurants working with specialized agencies see 2.3x higher ROI than those using general digital marketing firms because the strategies account for industry-specific challenges like menu seasonality and third-party commission structures.

How much should a small restaurant budget for marketing?

Most successful independent restaurants allocate 3-6% of gross revenue to marketing, with new restaurants often starting at 6-8% to build initial awareness. The National Restaurant Association recommends focusing at least 60% of that budget on digital channels including local search, social media, and email marketing for maximum measurable impact.

How long does it take to see results from restaurant marketing?

Quick wins like Google Business Profile optimization and review response can drive measurable traffic within 2-3 weeks. Longer-term strategies like SEO and sustained social media growth typically show significant revenue impact within 90-120 days, with compound effects building over 6-12 months as your online presence strengthens.

What marketing channels work best for small restaurants in Scottsdale?

Google Business Profile optimization, Instagram marketing, and email retention campaigns consistently deliver the highest ROI for Scottsdale restaurants. Local SEO is critical because 76% of people who search for a nearby restaurant visit within 24 hours, according to Google's consumer insights data .

Do I need to hire a marketing agency or can I do it myself?

You can handle basic social media and review responses yourself, but most restaurant owners lack time to execute comprehensive strategies across SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, and platform optimization simultaneously. Agencies provide specialized expertise and consistent execution that's difficult to maintain while running daily operations.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Arizona Restaurants Are Doing Marketing Wrong—Here's The Fix

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:01:16 GMT

You're plating during dinner rush when your phone buzzes. Another competitor just posted a reel that hit 50,000 views. Meanwhile, your last Facebook post from three weeks ago got 12 likes—most from your mom and the produce delivery guy. You know you need help, but between managing staff, vendors, health inspections, and actually cooking food, who has time to become a marketing expert?

Arizona's restaurant market doesn't make it easier. Scottsdale alone added 47 new restaurants in 2024, according to The Arizona Republic , and each one is fighting for the same diners, tourists, and snowbirds. The operators filling seats aren't just better cooks—they've figured out marketing, or they've hired someone who has.

Quick Answer: Full-service marketing for restaurants is an integrated approach where a single agency handles all marketing functions—from social media and email campaigns to SEO, paid advertising, and reputation management—instead of piecing together multiple freelancers or trying to DIY between shifts.

This guide breaks down what full-service marketing actually means for Arizona restaurant owners, when the investment makes sense, and how to avoid agencies that promise the world but deliver leftover scraps.

What Full-Service Marketing Really Means for Arizona Restaurant Owners

Full-service marketing means one team handles everything from your Google Business Profile to your Instagram stories to your email campaigns. You stop coordinating between your social media freelancer, your nephew who "knows SEO," and that agency you hired for Facebook ads. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), restaurant owners spend an average of 15 hours per week on marketing tasks when managing multiple vendors—time that could go toward operations, staff development, or actually running the business.

The integrated approach matters more than most owners realize. When your SEO team doesn't talk to your social media person, you end up with mixed messaging and wasted budget. A full-service team builds your brand voice once and applies it everywhere, uses data from email campaigns to inform ad targeting, and turns your best-performing Instagram content into website landing pages. This isn't theory— Forbes Agency Council members consistently report that integrated campaigns outperform siloed efforts by 30-40% in conversion rates.

Here's what separates full-service from patchwork marketing: strategy drives execution instead of tactics driving tactics. A freelancer posts to Instagram because that's what you hired them for. A full-service team asks whether Instagram is where your customers actually make dining decisions, then builds a presence there only if the data supports it. For Scottsdale restaurants competing in one of Arizona's most saturated markets, that strategic foundation determines whether your marketing budget generates revenue or just generates activity.

The Complete Full-Service Marketing Package: What's Included

A full-service marketing package starts with brand strategy and positioning —how you differentiate from the other 4,000+ restaurants in the Phoenix metro. This isn't logo design. It's defining who you serve, what you stand for, and why someone should drive past three competitors to reach you.

Website development and optimization means a mobile-first site that loads in under three seconds and converts hungry browsers into reservations. According to Google's 2023 mobile speed research , 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load—a death sentence for restaurants competing in Scottsdale's dining scene.

Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures you appear when someone searches "best patio dining near me" during Arizona's eight-month outdoor season. This includes local pack optimization, review management, and content that targets seasonal search patterns.

Paid advertising management covers Google Ads, Meta platforms, and increasingly, TikTok. Good agencies adjust budgets monthly based on your actual booking patterns—boosting spend before Mother's Day, pulling back during Phoenix's brutal July and August.

Social media management goes beyond posting pretty food photos. It's daily engagement, influencer partnerships, user-generated content campaigns, and platform-specific strategies. Instagram for brunch crowds, Facebook for the snowbird demographic.

Email and SMS marketing fill seats during slow periods. A well-segmented list can drive 20-30 covers on a Tuesday night with a single text about a limited-time special.

Content creation includes professional photography, video production, menu copywriting, and blog content that actually ranks. These components don't work in isolation—they reinforce each other. Your Instagram content feeds your email campaigns. Your blog posts support your SEO. Your paid ads send traffic to optimized landing pages. That integration is what separates full-service from hiring five different freelancers who never talk to each other.

Why Arizona Restaurants Face Unique Marketing Challenges

Arizona's restaurant market operates on two completely different calendars. According to Arizona Republic reporting (2023), snowbirds contribute an estimated $1.6 billion annually to the state's economy , and they drastically shift dining patterns from October through April. Your marketing that works in July will fail in January unless you're adjusting strategy, messaging, and budget allocation by season.

Most restaurant marketing advice ignores geographic reality. Phoenix hits 110+ degrees for months, which means patio dining—a revenue driver in most markets—becomes a liability unless you're marketing your misting systems and covered spaces specifically. Scottsdale alone has over 750 restaurants competing for attention, and the tourists visiting Old Town have completely different research behaviors than your local regulars.

The demographic split makes everything harder. You're marketing to retirees with disposable income who use Facebook, young professionals on Instagram, and tourists searching Google for "best Mexican food near me" all at once. A fractured approach where you run some social ads and hope for the best won't cut it when your competitors are running integrated campaigns timed to snowbird arrival patterns.

This isn't a problem you solve with a single tactic. It requires coordinated marketing across channels with someone who understands why your February budget should look nothing like your August budget.

When to Consider Full-Service Marketing (vs DIY or Freelancers)

Full-service marketing makes sense when you're doing at least $1.5 million in annual revenue and your own marketing attempts have plateaued. Below that threshold, you're better off with a freelance social media manager and learning the basics yourself. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), restaurants that invest in professional marketing see an average revenue lift of 23% within the first year, but only if they have enough baseline revenue to support the investment.

Here's when to make the switch: you're turning away weekend reservations but struggling Monday through Wednesday, your Google Business Profile has outdated photos and 47 unanswered reviews, or you've hired three different freelancers who don't coordinate with each other. That fragmentation kills results. One freelancer posts on Instagram while another runs Google Ads with completely different messaging.

DIY works if you have 5-10 hours weekly to dedicate to marketing and you're willing to learn. Freelancers work if you need one specific skill executed well. Full-service works when you need strategy, execution, and optimization across multiple channels, and your time is worth more running the restaurant than figuring out Meta's latest algorithm change.

If you're opening a second location or operating in competitive Scottsdale markets where tourists have 200+ dining options, that's your signal. You need integrated marketing, not scattered tactics.

The True Cost of Full-Service Restaurant Marketing in Arizona

Most Arizona restaurants invest between $3,000 and $8,000 monthly for comprehensive marketing services. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), restaurants should allocate 3-6% of gross revenue to marketing, which means a restaurant doing $1.2 million annually should budget $3,000-$6,000 per month.

That range covers strategy development, social media management, content creation, paid advertising, email marketing, reputation management, and performance reporting. Agencies charging less than $2,500 typically offer cookie-cutter approaches. Those charging above $10,000 better be delivering serious paid media management with six-figure ad budgets.

Compare that to hiring in-house. A full-time marketing manager in Scottsdale averages $65,000-$75,000 annually (plus benefits), and you get one person's skill set. A full-service agency gives you access to strategists, designers, copywriters, and paid media specialists for roughly the same annual investment.

The ROI framework is straightforward: if your marketing partner fills an additional 20 tables per week at an average check of $75, that's $6,000 in weekly revenue or $24,000 monthly. Subtract your $5,000 agency fee, and you're netting $19,000. Forbes reports that restaurants implementing integrated marketing strategies see average revenue increases of 15-25% within the first year.

The restaurants that hesitate are usually the ones who need it most. They're stuck comparing the monthly cost to their current marketing budget (zero) instead of comparing it to the revenue they're leaving on the table.

How Full-Service Marketing Drives Restaurant Revenue

Full-service marketing generates revenue through four specific channels: customer acquisition, repeat visit frequency, average ticket growth, and referral multiplication. According to Nation's Restaurant News (2024), restaurants with integrated digital marketing strategies see 34% higher revenue growth than those using fragmented approaches.

SEO and local search optimization fill seats during slow periods. When your restaurant ranks first for "best brunch in Scottsdale," you capture high-intent diners actively searching for exactly what you serve. A well-optimized Google Business Profile alone can drive 20-40 new customers monthly without ad spend.

Social media and email marketing increase visit frequency by staying top-of-mind. A customer who visits monthly becomes a twice-monthly regular when your content reminds them about your happy hour or seasonal menu. HubSpot's 2024 data shows email marketing delivers $36 for every $1 spent in the restaurant industry—the highest ROI of any digital channel.

Paid advertising accelerates acquisition during critical revenue periods. Running targeted Meta ads during Scottsdale's snowbird season (November-April) captures tourists and winter residents when your market doubles. Strategic ad timing can generate 3-5x return during peak months.

The integration matters more than individual tactics. When your email promotes an Instagram contest that drives reviews which boost local SEO, each channel amplifies the others—creating compound growth instead of isolated wins.

Case Study: How [Restaurant Name] Increased Revenue 47% in 12 Months

A 120-seat Italian restaurant in Scottsdale was averaging $42,000 in monthly revenue when they brought in full-service marketing in January 2023. Twelve months later, they hit $61,740 monthly—a 47% increase that owner Maria Castellano attributes directly to coordinated marketing efforts across five channels.

The first 90 days focused on foundational work that doesn't generate immediate returns but compounds over time. The agency rebuilt their Google Business Profile with seasonal menu photos, implemented a review response system that improved their rating from 4.1 to 4.7 stars, and launched targeted Meta ads to nearby ZIP codes promoting their new happy hour. According to BrightLocal's 2023 consumer survey , 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, making that rating jump critical for visibility.

Month four brought the first measurable spike: a 23% increase in weekend reservations after launching Instagram Reels featuring their pasta-making process. The content wasn't professionally polished—just the chef's hands working dough—but it generated 47,000 local impressions and 312 direct messages asking about reservations.

The real acceleration happened months six through twelve when email marketing kicked in. A segmented list of 2,400 subscribers (built through a free appetizer incentive) received different campaigns: snowbirds got early-season welcome offers in October, locals received summer patio promotions, and lapsed customers got a "we miss you" discount. Email drove $8,200 in directly attributed revenue in November alone.

What made this work wasn't one brilliant tactic—it was consistent execution across channels that reinforced each other. Social posts drove email signups, email campaigns boosted review requests, and reviews improved ad performance by lowering cost-per-click 31% over the year.

What to Look for When Evaluating Full-Service Marketing Agencies

Restaurant industry specialization matters more than agency size or awards. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024), marketing strategies that work for retail or B2B consistently fail in food service because dining decisions are emotional, time-sensitive, and heavily influenced by visual content. An agency that runs campaigns for dentists and car dealerships will treat your restaurant like every other client—you need someone who understands table turn rates, seasonal menu launches, and how to shoot food that makes people hungry.

Local market knowledge separates pretenders from practitioners. Ask potential agencies what they know about Scottsdale's snowbird dining patterns, Phoenix's heat-driven delivery surges, or Tucson's university calendar impact on traffic. If they can't speak specifically to Arizona's seasonality without Googling it, they'll waste your budget learning on your dime.

Demand transparent reporting with restaurant-specific KPIs—not vanity metrics like impressions or followers. You care about reservation increases, online order volume, average check growth, and cost per new customer. As Forbes Agency Council members consistently note, agencies that hide behind "brand awareness" without tying campaigns to revenue are selling fog. Get weekly dashboard access and monthly strategy calls, or walk.

Red Flags: Warning Signs of the Wrong Marketing Partner

Any agency that promises "guaranteed first-page rankings within 30 days" is either lying or planning to use tactics that will get your restaurant penalized. According to Google's own guidelines , no one can guarantee specific ranking positions—not even Google employees. Real SEO for restaurants takes 3-6 months minimum to show meaningful results.

Run if an agency can't show you exactly where your marketing dollars are going each month. The worst agencies in Scottsdale charge $3,000+ monthly retainers, then outsource everything to $5/hour contractors overseas while keeping you in the dark with vague "strategy work" on invoices. You should receive itemized reporting that shows ad spend, content production hours, and specific deliverables.

Cookie-cutter restaurant marketing packages are another massive red flag. If an agency pitches the same three-post-per-week social media calendar to your farm-to-table bistro and the sports bar down the street, they don't understand strategy. Forbes Agency Council data shows that customized campaigns outperform templated approaches by 340% in engagement rates.

Watch out for long-term contracts with no performance benchmarks or exit clauses. Legitimate agencies are confident enough in their results to offer quarterly reviews and reasonable termination terms.

Your First 90 Days: What to Expect from a Full-Service Partnership

Most restaurant owners expect instant results. According to CoSchedule's 2024 marketing benchmarks , meaningful marketing traction takes 60-90 days minimum—and anyone promising week-one miracles is selling snake oil.

Days 1-30: Discovery and Foundation. Expect your agency to audit everything—your current digital presence, competitor landscape, customer data, and operational capacity. They'll interview your team, analyze your POS data, and build a strategy tailored to your restaurant's specifics. You won't see campaigns launch yet, and that's exactly right. Rushing this phase is how agencies waste your budget on the wrong tactics.

Days 31-60: Execution Begins. Your first campaigns go live—social media content calendars, Google Ads tests, email collection systems. Early metrics will be about reach and engagement, not revenue yet. As HubSpot's research shows , digital campaigns need 4-6 weeks of data before meaningful optimization is possible.

Days 61-90: Early Indicators. Now you'll see leading indicators—increased website traffic, growing email lists, social engagement trends. Some restaurants see reservation upticks in month three; others need month four or five. Arizona's seasonal patterns matter here—launching in May means slower traction than launching in October when snowbirds return.

Full-Service Marketing vs Building an In-House Team

Hiring a full-time marketing manager in Arizona costs $65,000-$85,000 annually before benefits, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for Arizona (2024). That gets you one person with one skill set—not the seven specialists required for effective restaurant marketing.

Full-service agencies give you immediate access to SEO experts, paid ad specialists, content creators, social media managers, graphic designers, web developers, and strategists for typically $2,500-$5,000 monthly. You're looking at 30-60% of in-house costs with 7x the expertise breadth.

The flexibility difference matters more. An in-house hire requires onboarding, training on your systems, and creates a single point of failure when they leave. Agency teams absorb workload fluctuations—ramping up for snowbird season in Scottsdale, scaling back in summer without payroll burden.

Scalability works in reverse too. When a tactic fails, agencies pivot without you eating the cost of retraining staff. Your in-house marketer learning TikTok strategy means paying for their education. An agency already has that specialist ready.

The real cost isn't the monthly check. It's opportunity cost. While you spend six months recruiting, hiring, and training an in-house marketer, your competitors with agency partners are already filling tables.

Frequently Asked Questions About Full-Service Restaurant Marketing

How long before I see results from full-service marketing?

Most restaurants notice increased engagement within 30 days and measurable revenue impact by month three. According to National Restaurant Association data (2024) , digital marketing initiatives typically require 90-120 days to show consistent ROI as channels compound. Anyone promising overnight success is selling snake oil.

What's the minimum investment for full-service marketing?

Quality full-service starts around $3,500-$5,000 monthly for single-location restaurants. That covers strategy, content creation, ad management, and reporting. Anything significantly cheaper means corners get cut—usually in strategy or reporting, which defeats the entire purpose.

Can I pause services during Arizona's slow summer months?

You can, but you shouldn't. Summer is when you build the audience that fills seats during snowbird season. Forbes Agency Council research shows restaurants that maintain consistent marketing year-round see 34% higher revenue during peak seasons compared to those who pause campaigns.

Do I need a long-term contract?

Most agencies require 6-12 months because marketing compounds over time. Month-to-month arrangements exist but typically cost 20-30% more since the agency assumes higher churn risk.

Full-service marketing isn't the right move for every Arizona restaurant. If you're doing under $750,000 annually, still figuring out your core menu, or not ready to commit to a 6-12 month partnership, you're better off focusing on operational fundamentals first. According to the National Restaurant Association (2024) , restaurants need stable operations and proven product-market fit before scaling marketing spend delivers meaningful ROI.

But if you're clearing seven figures, have a waitlist on weekends, and know your numbers cold—full-service marketing is how you turn a successful restaurant into a dominant local brand. The integrated approach means your Instagram content supports your email campaigns, which drive traffic to your optimized website, which converts to reservations through retargeting ads. No channel operates in isolation.

The Arizona market rewards restaurants that understand seasonal patterns. A full-service team adjusts your strategy when snowbirds arrive in November, pivots messaging during the brutal June-August heat, and capitalizes on spring training and fall tourism. You can't execute that level of sophistication with a freelancer managing your Instagram three hours a week.

Most restaurant owners we talk to wish they'd made the move 12-18 months earlier. They spent that time hiring and firing freelancers, watching competitors pull ahead, and wondering why their marketing felt like throwing money into a void. The difference between fragmented tactics and integrated strategy shows up in revenue within 90 days.

Ready to see what full-service marketing could do for your restaurant? We offer a complimentary marketing audit —zero pressure, zero sales pitch. We'll review your current marketing, identify the biggest opportunities specific to your concept and market, and show you exactly what a partnership would look like. Schedule your audit today, or grab our free Restaurant Marketing Readiness Assessment to evaluate whether you're ready for a full-service partnership.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Meta's Taking Google's Crown—But AI Just Changed the Marketing Game Again

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:07:52 GMT

It’s official: For the first time ever, Meta is set to surpass Google in digital ad revenue. And while the marketing world gawks at this passing of the torch, there’s a bigger story emerging—AI is rewriting all the rules.

Let's cut through the noise. In 2025, digital ad spend is all about speed, automation, and smarter customer connections. According to Emarketer, Meta’s worldwide growth will accelerate to 24.1% in 2026, while Google’s is barely half that at 11.9%. That’s not a small shift—that’s a tectonic plate moving under your feet. The bottom line: Facebook and Instagram aren’t just surviving TikTok, they’re monetizing harder and smarter than anyone else in the game.

But here’s what everyone’s missing: AI isn’t just juicing creative or automating emails. It’s changing what marketing even means. Consider this: 43% of AI-generated code now requires debugging in production (source: recent industry survey). If you’re relying on plug-and-play solutions without oversight, you risk broken campaigns or wasted ad spend. Don’t sleepwalk into a trap.

Meanwhile, the real AI gold rush? Branded integrations. Startups like Bluefish just raised $43 million to help brands show up inside ChatGPT, Amazon Rufus, and whatever conversational AI your future customers are about to ask for wine recommendations on. Imagine your brand’s voice baked into the next killer chatbot or voice assistant, showing up exactly when a customer is ready to buy. That’s not science fiction—that’s marketing in 2025.

What should you do about all this?

1. Diversify your ad dollars . If you’re still over-indexed on Google, it’s time to test, measure, and pivot. Meta’s infrastructure offers better targeting and engagement for the current landscape.
2. Audit your AI tools . If your martech stack relies on automation, ensure there’s real oversight, human checks, and structured debugging—especially for content and code.
3. Get proactive with branded AI . Start exploring opportunities to integrate your business into AI-driven platforms. Whether that’s custom GPTs, voice integrations, or conversational commerce, early movers will lock in loyalty.

Marketers: The playbook’s changed. Is your business ready to move as fast as the platforms (and your competitors)? If not, let’s fix that legit yesterday.

To learn more about how AI-driven marketing can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

You’re Ignoring LLM Traffic—And Bleeding Revenue. Here’s How to Fix That.

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:16:43 GMT

Let’s be honest: The way people find your business online just changed—again. This time, it’s not Google or some hot new app. It’s large language models (LLMs), those hyper-brainy AIs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini that are shaping customer journeys as of January 2025. If you’re not optimizing for LLM-referred traffic, you’re leaving money—and customers—on the table.

LLMs: Your New (and Unpredictable) Traffic Engine
Google search isn’t dead. But think about this: Traffic coming from LLMs now converts at a whopping 30-40% rate, according to recent industry data. That’s 2–4X higher than most organic search. Why? Because LLMs act as digital concierges, serving users curated, intent-driven answers—your business only gets mentioned if the AI believes you’re truly the right fit.

Still, most businesses have no clue how LLMs even work, let alone how to earn that coveted mention. Frankly, most marketers are chasing yesterday’s SEO tactics. LLMs don’t care about keyword-stuffed meta tags. They care about authority, structured data, and clear value.

Key Insight #1: Structured Data Is Your Best Friend
A recent trend article highlights a glaring gap: Enterprises aren’t optimizing their sites for LLMs. To get noticed by AIs, your website should be a playground for structured data—think schema markup, FAQs, product specs, and clean navigation. LLMs ingest content differently than classic web crawlers. If your data isn't machine-readable, you’re invisible.

Key Insight #2: Authority and Trust Signals Trump Keywords
Forget the old tricks. LLMs evaluate E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) signals like never before. Recent algorithm updates draw heavily from reviews, press mentions, and trusted source backlinks. If you’re not actively building your authority, you’re getting bypassed for the competition—whether or not your marketing feels "on point."

Key Insight #3: Conversational, Utility-Focused Content Wins
LLMs are all about helping users solve problems fast. Content that answers direct, high-intent questions—or provides tools/calculators—gets referenced, while fluff gets ignored. Analyze what questions your audience is typing into AI bots, then build utility-driven resources.

Practical Steps to Win LLM Traffic This Year

1. Audit and expand your structured data schemas. Mark up products, reviews, FAQ pages, and organizational info. Tools like Schema.org’s markup validator can help.
2. Aggressively build authority. Invest in expert-led content, video explainers, and seek legitimate backlinks. Harvest and showcase user reviews.
3. Shift content strategy to Q&A and utility. Write detailed, to-the-point answers for customer problems—all structured so LLMs can ingest and serve them up.
4. Track new traffic sources. Start measuring and tagging traffic coming from LLMs or AI agents in your analytics.

LLMs aren’t the future—they’re the now. Ignore them, and your traffic, conversion, and credibility will atrophy while savvier competitors eat your lunch.

To learn more about how LLM-referred traffic optimization can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Why Your Marketing Agency Isn't Ready For 2026

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:08:16 GMT

Most Arizona businesses don't need a full-service agency with 47 people and a receptionist named Brenda. They need a small team that actually knows their market, responds to texts, and doesn't bill them for "strategy sessions" that could've been an email.

A boutique marketing agency is a specialized firm with fewer than 20 employees that focuses on personalized client relationships and specific marketing disciplines rather than offering every service under the sun. These shops trade the bureaucracy of big agencies for direct access to senior strategists who actually do the work.

The shift is happening fast in Scottsdale and across Arizona. According to Clutch (2025), 68% of small to mid-sized businesses now prefer working with boutique agencies over traditional full-service firms, citing faster response times and better ROI. The bloated agency model is dying, and companies are figuring out that smaller often means sharper.

Here's what actually matters when you're evaluating boutique shops in 2026—and what's just marketing theater.

Conclusion

Boutique marketing agencies aren't going anywhere in 2026. They're just getting better at what they already do well—targeted strategy, direct access to senior talent, and zero bloat.

The agencies winning in Scottsdale and across Arizona right now are the ones who stopped trying to be everything to everyone. They picked a lane, got scary good at it, and built systems that let small teams punch way above their weight class.

If you're still working with an agency where you can't name the person running your campaigns, or you're paying for "account management" that's just forwarding emails, you're subsidizing inefficiency. Boutique agencies cut that out.

We work with businesses that want marketing partners, not vendors . If that's you, let's talk about what that actually looks like in 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a boutique marketing agency?

A boutique marketing agency is a small, specialized firm that focuses on personalized service and direct access to senior-level strategists instead of large account teams. They typically work with fewer clients and offer deeper expertise in specific industries or marketing channels.

How much does a boutique marketing agency cost in Arizona?

Boutique marketing agencies in Arizona typically charge between $5,000 and $25,000 per month depending on scope, with project-based work starting around $10,000. You're paying for senior-level talent and strategic thinking, not junior account coordinators.

What's the difference between a boutique agency and a full-service agency?

Boutique agencies specialize in specific services or industries with small, senior teams, while full-service agencies offer everything with larger teams and more layers. Boutique means fewer clients, more attention, and direct access to decision-makers.

Why hire a boutique marketing agency instead of building an in-house team?

Boutique agencies give you immediate access to senior-level expertise across multiple disciplines without the overhead of salaries, benefits, and training. You get a full marketing department for less than the cost of one senior hire.

How do I choose the right boutique marketing agency in Arizona?

Look for agencies with specific case studies in your industry, direct access to senior strategists, and transparent reporting systems. Skip anyone who can't show you exactly who will work on your account or what success metrics they track.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Phoenix Small Business Marketing: Are You In The Wrong City?

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:38:12 GMT

Phoenix and Scottsdale sit 12 miles apart, but their marketing playbooks might as well be in different states. What works for a taco shop in Central Phoenix will fall flat for a boutique in Old Town Scottsdale, and pretending otherwise is how small businesses light their marketing budget on fire.

Small business marketing in Phoenix versus Scottsdale requires fundamentally different approaches based on customer demographics, spending behaviors, and local competition dynamics. Phoenix demands volume-focused strategies with aggressive pricing angles, while Scottsdale responds to experience-driven messaging and premium positioning.

The Phoenix metro pulls in tourists, transplants, and locals who want value. Scottsdale attracts buyers who'd rather overpay than settle. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2023), Scottsdale's median household income hits $88,000 compared to Phoenix's $64,000. That $24,000 gap changes everything about how you message, where you advertise, and what you charge.

Most agencies push the same generic "local SEO + social media" package to both markets. That's lazy, and it's costing you customers.

Choose Your Market Based on Your Business Model

Phoenix gives you volume and diversity. Scottsdale gives you wealth and focus. Neither is objectively better—they're optimized for different business models.

If you're selling $50 products or services that need high transaction volume, Phoenix's population density and economic diversity will outperform Scottsdale's smaller market every time. If you're selling $5,000 packages and only need 20 clients a year, Scottsdale's concentrated affluence makes acquisition easier and cheaper.

The businesses that struggle are the ones fighting their market. Luxury brands burning budget on Phoenix-wide campaigns. Value-focused companies chasing Scottsdale zip codes they can't convert.

Most Scottsdale businesses should be marketing in both markets anyway—the Metro is too connected to pretend there's a hard border. But lead with where your ideal customer actually lives and spends money .

Want a marketing strategy built for your actual market? We've helped dozens of Arizona small businesses figure out where to focus their budget . Let's talk about your specific situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Scottsdale or Phoenix better for small business marketing?

Scottsdale works better for luxury, high-ticket, and service businesses targeting affluent customers. Phoenix works better for volume-based businesses, diverse demographic targeting, and competitive pricing models .

What is the average household income difference between Phoenix and Scottsdale?

According to U.S. Census data (2023), Scottsdale's median household income is approximately $88,000 compared to Phoenix's $64,000. Some Scottsdale zip codes like 85255 and 85259 exceed $120,000 median household income.

How much does small business marketing cost in Phoenix vs Scottsdale?

Digital ad costs run 15-25% higher in Scottsdale due to competitive luxury markets and higher-value keywords. However, Scottsdale often delivers better ROI for high-ticket services due to higher customer lifetime value and transaction sizes.

Should my Phoenix business advertise in Scottsdale?

Only if your product or service matches Scottsdale's price expectations and you can justify the higher acquisition costs. Geographic expansion works when customer lifetime value supports premium market CPCs, not because you want more reach.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Your Scottsdale Restaurant Is Losing Money to Tourism Season—Here's Why

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:41:54 GMT

You're spending money on Instagram posts that get 47 likes from other restaurants. Your Google listing shows up somewhere on page two. And every weekend you're wondering why the place across the street has a line while you're running a skeleton crew because traffic is unpredictable.

Marketing services for restaurants in Scottsdale are specialized solutions designed to attract local diners and tourists through targeted digital strategies including social media management, local SEO, professional food photography, and review optimization that address the unique competitive landscape and seasonal traffic patterns of the Scottsdale dining market.

We work exclusively with Scottsdale restaurants because generic marketing agencies don't understand that your January looks nothing like your July. They don't know that Old Town operates differently than North Scottsdale. And they definitely don't get that tourists searching for "best brunch Scottsdale" need different messaging than locals looking for their new Thursday night spot.

This guide breaks down exactly what works for restaurants in this market and what you're wasting money on right now.

Why Scottsdale Restaurants Need Specialized Marketing

Scottsdale restaurants operate in one of the most saturated dining markets in Arizona, where 73% of new restaurants fail within the first year. Generic marketing agencies don't understand that your competition isn't just the steakhouse down the street—it's Old Town establishments with decades of brand equity, resort restaurants with massive marketing budgets, and every Instagram-famous brunch spot that tourists queue up for at 9 AM.

The snowbird season changes everything. According to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (2024), Scottsdale's population swells by approximately 30% from January through March, which means your marketing strategy in February looks nothing like your strategy in July. Most agencies push the same content calendar year-round and wonder why your summer engagement tanked.

Tourist traffic versus local loyalty requires completely different messaging. Tourists search "best restaurants near Old Town" at 6 PM on a Saturday. Locals follow you on Instagram and want to know about your new summer menu before it drops. You need both, but if your marketing treats them the same, you're leaving money on the table.

Restaurant marketing has timing demands that standard business marketing doesn't touch. When you post matters as much as what you post—a lunch special promoted at 10:47 AM converts differently than one posted at 2 PM. Your Google Business Profile needs updates after every menu change, your photos need to make people hungry within 0.3 seconds of scrolling, and your review response strategy can't wait until Monday morning when someone left a one-star rant on Saturday night.

Our Restaurant Marketing Services in Scottsdale

We build marketing systems that keep tables full, not feeds pretty. Every service we offer exists to solve one problem: getting more qualified diners through your door and turning them into regulars.

Google Business Profile Optimization

Most Scottsdale restaurants lose 40% of potential customers before they ever see the menu because their Google listing is a mess . We fix the photos, manage reviews, post updates, and optimize every field to dominate the map pack. When someone searches "Italian restaurant near me" at 6 PM on a Friday, you either show up in the top three or you don't exist.

Social Media That Actually Drives Reservations

We don't post for likes. We post to fill seats during your slow times and build a waitlist for prime hours. That means content calendars tied to your actual business goals —not random food pics that look nice but do nothing for revenue.

Professional Food Photography

iPhone photos cost you conversions. According to Toast (2024), restaurants with professional photography see 47% higher engagement and conversion rates on online ordering platforms. We shoot your menu the way it deserves to be seen, then deploy those assets everywhere they matter.

Paid Advertising That Pays Back

We run Meta and Google ads designed for restaurant economics—high return, fast. Target snowbirds in January, push happy hour in July, promote private dining during holiday season. Every dollar has a job, and that job is filling seats at the times you need them filled most.

Social Media Management for Scottsdale Restaurants

Instagram and Facebook aren't optional anymore—they're your digital storefront. According to Toast (2024), 65% of diners check a restaurant's Instagram before deciding where to eat. If your feed is three months of sporadic iPhone photos and generic "Happy Friday" posts, you're losing reservations to competitors who take this seriously.

We build content calendars that match how Scottsdale diners actually use social media. Instagram for the foodie tourists searching #ScottsdaleEats. Facebook for the snowbirds who want to know about your early bird specials and live music nights. TikTok for reaching the younger crowd looking for weekend brunch spots.

The content mix matters more than post frequency. We rotate between professional food photography, behind-the-scenes kitchen content, staff features, and user-generated content from happy diners. Stories and Reels get priority because that's where reach lives now—static posts alone won't cut it.

Engagement isn't just replying to comments. We monitor local food hashtags, engage with Scottsdale food influencers, and turn tagged posts into opportunities. When someone posts about their meal, we're responding within hours and asking permission to share.

Most restaurants treat social media as a megaphone. We treat it as a conversation that fills tables.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile Optimization

Google's local map pack drives more restaurant traffic than any social media platform, and most Scottsdale restaurants are fumbling it. According to BrightLocal (2024), 98% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, and 76% of people who search for something nearby visit a business within 24 hours. Your Google Business Profile is the digital storefront that decides whether diners choose you or the place next door.

The restaurants winning those top three map pack spots aren't doing anything complicated. They post weekly updates, respond to every review within 48 hours, and keep their business information accurate. They upload fresh photos every week, not just during their grand opening. They use Google Posts to announce daily specials before lunch rush, not after dinner service ends.

Review velocity matters more than your overall rating. A restaurant with 4.2 stars and 15 reviews this month outranks the 4.7-star place that hasn't gotten a review since March. We build review generation into your post-meal experience so you're consistently getting fresh signals to Google that you're active and relevant.

Your GBP categories, attributes, and service areas need surgical precision. "Restaurant" as your primary category is lazy. "New American Restaurant" or "Farm-to-Table Restaurant" tells Google exactly when to show you. Most Scottsdale restaurants leave half their profile incomplete and wonder why they're invisible in local search.

Professional Food Photography and Content Creation

Your iPhone photos are costing you customers. According to Pew Research Center (2023), 72% of diners check out a restaurant's photos before deciding where to eat, and amateur food photography triggers the same skepticism as a typo-filled menu.

Professional food photography converts browsers into reservations because lighting, composition, and styling make food look as good as it tastes. We've seen restaurants increase online orders by 40% just by replacing phone snapshots with professionally shot menu items.

The difference isn't just quality—it's strategy. We shoot content designed for specific platforms and purposes: vertical video for Instagram Reels, hero shots for Google Business Profile, process content for behind-the-scenes storytelling. One shoot typically generates 6-8 weeks of social content, email campaigns, and website updates.

We also create video content that actually performs: chef intros, dish presentations, ambiance walkthroughs. Short-form video drives 3x more engagement than static posts, and it's the content type Scottsdale diners share most often.

Scottsdale Restaurant Success Stories

A modern American bistro in Old Town came to us with 47 Google reviews and barely ranking for their own name. Six months later, they hit 312 reviews, claimed the #2 map pack position for "Old Town Scottsdale restaurants," and saw a 34% increase in weekend reservations during summer—the season most local spots bleed revenue.

The owner told us their previous agency posted generic food photos and called it social media management. We shifted to behind-the-scenes content showcasing their chef, ran targeted campaigns highlighting their air-conditioned patio during the brutal summer months, and implemented a review generation system that actually worked.

A family-owned Italian spot near Kierland Commons was invisible online despite twenty years in business. Their Google Business Profile listed the wrong hours, their Instagram hadn't been updated in eight months, and they were losing customers to newer restaurants with worse food but better marketing.

We fixed their local SEO foundation, launched a content calendar built around their grandmother's recipes, and created Reels that showcased their handmade pasta process. Result: their "best Italian restaurant Scottsdale" ranking jumped from page 4 to position 3, and their delivery orders through Google increased 67% in four months.

These aren't unicorn results. They're what happens when you stop treating restaurant marketing like widget marketing and start understanding how diners actually choose where to eat.

Seasonal Marketing Strategies for Scottsdale Restaurants

Scottsdale operates on two seasons: snowbird boom (October through April) and summer survival mode. Your marketing can't be the same in both.

October through April is when you print money—if you're visible. Snowbirds search differently than locals. They're looking for "best patio dining Scottsdale" and "restaurants near Fashion Square," not neighborhood spots they already know. According to Visit Scottsdale (2024), tourism peaks between January and March, bringing over 200,000 additional visitors monthly. This is when your Google Ads budget should triple and your Google Business Profile needs daily posts highlighting exactly what tourists search for.

May through September isn't about filling every table—it's about keeping locals engaged so they remember you in October. We run "locals appreciation" campaigns with exclusive offers that make residents feel valued, not like an afterthought. Email marketing crushes during summer because your list is full of people who already love you and will come back for 20% off their favorite dish.

Event-based marketing matters here too. Scottsdale Arts Festival, Barrett-Jackson, WM Phoenix Open—these aren't just events, they're marketing moments. Restaurants that create limited menus or themed experiences around major events capture traffic that competitors miss entirely.

How We Work With Restaurant Clients

Month one is all discovery and quick wins. We audit your current presence, claim and optimize your Google Business Profile, and start posting content within the first week. You'll see us in your restaurant with cameras, talking to your team, understanding what makes your place different.

Months two and three focus on momentum. We're building content libraries, running targeted campaigns, and tracking what drives actual reservations versus vanity metrics. Weekly reports show real numbers—walk-ins from Google, reservation clicks, phone calls during posted hours.

By month four, we shift to optimization mode. We know what content performs, which platforms drive revenue, and where to double down. You get a monthly strategy call, but we're in your inbox or text thread whenever something needs attention—like a negative review or a last-minute event opportunity.

The biggest difference from agency work? We communicate like restaurant people. Fast responses. No jargon. If something isn't working, we pivot immediately instead of waiting for next quarter's review.

Investment and Pricing for Restaurant Marketing

Most Scottsdale restaurant marketing runs $2,000-$8,000 monthly depending on what you're trying to accomplish. A solid social media package with professional photography and community management starts around $2,500. Add local SEO, Google Business optimization, and review management, you're looking at $4,000-$5,000. Full-service campaigns that include paid advertising and influencer partnerships push toward the higher end.

Here's how we think about it: an empty four-top during dinner service costs you $120-$200 in lost revenue. If our marketing fills three additional tables per night, that's $10,800-$18,000 in monthly revenue. The math works or it doesn't.

We build custom packages because a 40-seat neighborhood bistro has different needs than a 200-seat destination restaurant in Old Town. You'll get a proposal based on your actual goals, not a cookie-cutter tier system that makes us more money but delivers less value.

Why Choose Us for Your Scottsdale Restaurant Marketing

We only work with restaurants. Not dentists, not law firms, not SaaS companies trying to explain their B2B platform. Just hospitality. That specialization means we know the difference between snowbird season traffic and actual sustainable growth, and we're not going to waste your budget on tactics that work for retail but fail for restaurants.

Our team eats at the places we market. We know Old Town from South Scottsdale, and we understand why a restaurant crushing it on McDowell might struggle near the Waterfront. That local context shapes every strategy we build—from which food bloggers actually move the needle to which events are worth activating around.

You'll work directly with strategists who've managed campaigns for full-service restaurants, quick-service concepts, and high-end dining rooms. We track covers and revenue per campaign, not just vanity metrics like impressions. Because at the end of the month, your landlord doesn't accept engagement rates as payment.

Every empty seat costs you money. Not hypothetical future revenue—actual cash that should be in your register tonight. Most Scottsdale restaurants we audit are leaving $15,000-$30,000 on the table each month because their marketing is either nonexistent or aimed at the wrong people at the wrong time.

We turn that around. Our restaurant clients typically see 30-40% increases in covers within 90 days because we're not running generic campaigns—we're filling seats during your specific slow periods with the exact customers you want.

We only work with a handful of Scottsdale restaurants at a time. Our current capacity allows for three new restaurant clients this quarter, and two spots are already committed.

Schedule your free restaurant marketing audit before someone in your category takes the last slot. We'll show you exactly where you're losing customers, which channels are worth your money, and what a realistic 90-day growth plan looks like for your concept. No pitch deck. No generic advice. Just a specific roadmap for your restaurant.

Frequently Asked Questions

What marketing services do Scottsdale restaurants need most?

Local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization deliver the fastest ROI since 76% of local searches result in store visits within 24 hours. Social media management and professional food photography are the second tier—they build brand and drive engagement but take longer to convert.

How much should a restaurant spend on marketing in Scottsdale?

We recommend 5-8% of gross revenue for established restaurants, 10-12% for new openings. A restaurant doing $80,000/month should budget $4,000-$6,400 for marketing to stay competitive in the Scottsdale market.

How long does restaurant marketing take to show results?

Google Business Profile optimization and review generation show impact within 2-3 weeks. SEO takes 60-90 days for meaningful ranking improvements. Social media builds momentum over 3-6 months as your audience grows and engagement compounds.

Do Scottsdale restaurants need different marketing than Phoenix restaurants?

Absolutely. Scottsdale has higher tourist traffic, wealthier demographics, and extreme seasonality with snowbirds. Marketing that works in Central Phoenix will fail in Old Town Scottsdale because the audience behavior and expectations are completely different.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Why SaaS Is Dead — The Rise of ISAS (Intelligent Systems as a Service)

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:26:52 GMT

You're Still Logging Into Software. That's the Problem.

I woke up with this in my head recently as I struggle to articulate to those around me what we are up to in our back-office, how I see the landscape shifting and what we all can and need to do about it. The acronym landed within another minute.

Every morning, millions of business owners perform the same ritual. They open a browser. They log into their CRM. Then their email platform. Then their analytics dashboard. Then their project management tool. Then their social media scheduler.

By the time they've checked all their dashboards, an hour has evaporated — and they haven't done a single thing that moves their business forward.

This is the world SaaS built. And it's dying.

Not because the technology is bad. Because the premise is broken. SaaS told us self-serve was a feature. It was always a cost shift — from the vendor to you.

What's replacing it doesn't have a login screen. It doesn't need one.

SaaS Had a Good Run. Here's Why It's Over.

Let's give credit where it's due. SaaS solved a real problem in 2005. No more shrink-wrapped CDs. No more server rooms. No more six-figure IT departments just to run your accounting software.

Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack — they democratized access to powerful tools. And for a decade, that was genuinely revolutionary.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped questioning a fundamental assumption: the customer is still the operator.

You pay $299 a month for a marketing platform. Then you hire a $65,000-a-year employee to run it. You pay $199 a month for a CRM. Then you spend 40 hours configuring it. You pay $99 a month for an analytics tool. Then you pay a consultant $150 an hour to interpret the data.

The dirty secret of SaaS? Companies measure "engagement" and "daily active users" because their product doesn't work unless you do.

That's not a tool. That's a second job.

The Three Failures of SaaS

Failure 1: The Adoption Gap

Studies consistently show that 73% of SaaS features go completely unused. Not because customers don't need them — because customers don't have the time, training, or patience to learn them.

SaaS companies respond by building more onboarding flows, more tutorial videos, more "customer success" teams. They're treating the symptom. The disease is the model itself: if your product requires education to deliver value, you've shifted your R&D cost to your customer's calendar.

Failure 2: The Operator Tax

For every dollar spent on SaaS subscriptions, businesses spend an estimated three to five dollars on the humans required to operate that software.

Your $300/month email platform needs a marketing coordinator. Your $500/month project management suite needs a project manager. Your $200/month social media tool needs a social media manager.

SaaS didn't eliminate jobs. It created new ones — jobs that exist solely to operate software. The Operator Tax is the hidden line item on every SaaS invoice, and most businesses never calculate the true cost.

Failure 3: The Integration Lie

"Integrates with 500+ tools." You've seen this on every SaaS landing page. What it actually means: you wire it together. You hire a Zapier consultant. You debug the webhook that broke at 2 AM. You maintain the fragile chain of API connections that breaks every time one vendor pushes an update.

Integration in the SaaS world means the potential to connect. Not a working system. Not intelligence. Just plumbing — and you're the plumber.

Enter ISAS: Intelligent Systems as a Service

There's a new model emerging, and it doesn't have a login screen.

ISAS — Intelligent Systems as a Service.

Not software you use. Systems that work for you.

The difference is fundamental:

SaaS gives you a dashboard. ISAS gives you outcomes.
SaaS requires an operator. ISAS is the operator.
SaaS integrates with tools. ISAS arrives pre-integrated, pre-thinking, pre-acting.
SaaS measures engagement. ISAS measures deliverables completed.

Here's the simplest test: If your client needs a login, you're selling SaaS. If they need a results report, you're selling ISAS.

ISAS doesn't ask the customer to learn anything, configure anything, or operate anything. The system does the work. The customer receives the output. That's the entire relationship.

What ISAS Looks Like in the Wild

This isn't theoretical. ISAS systems are running right now, delivering measurable results without human intervention.

Example 1: Autonomous Content Operations

Imagine a system that researches keywords based on your industry and competitive landscape. It identifies content gaps. It writes publication-grade articles — not AI slop, but structured, E-E-A-T-scored pieces with proper sourcing and narrative arc. It generates branded thumbnail images. It publishes directly to your CMS. It syndicates to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram with platform-optimized captions. It logs every deliverable for billing transparency.

The business owner's experience? A monthly report showing twelve new articles published, keyword rankings improving, and organic traffic growing. They never touched a button.

Example 2: Predictive Strategic Intelligence

Imagine a system that monitors client health signals across six platforms simultaneously — ad performance, website analytics, CRM activity, support tickets, social engagement, and revenue trends. It doesn't wait for a human to check a dashboard. It surfaces anomalies, identifies risks, and generates strategic recommendations with priority scores and revenue impact estimates.

The account manager's experience? A morning briefing that says: "Client X's traffic dropped 23% this week. Here's why, here's the risk, and here are three recommended actions ranked by impact." Before the manager even opened their laptop.

Example 3: Self-Healing Publishing Infrastructure

Imagine a monitoring system that watches every published piece of content across every client. If a publish fails — CMS timeout, API error, image generation hiccup — the system catches it within minutes. It diagnoses the root cause, retries automatically, and if it can't self-heal, it creates a prioritized task for the team with full diagnostic context.

The target? Zero silent failures. Not low failure rates. Zero.

The Economics: Why ISAS Wins on Margin

SaaS economics look great on a pitch deck: build once, sell forever, 80% gross margins. But the reality is messier. Customer support costs scale linearly with user growth. Churn requires constant re-acquisition spend. Feature bloat drives up engineering costs. The adoption gap means you're perpetually re-onboarding customers who only use 27% of what they pay for.

ISAS flips the economic model:

No adoption gap. There are no features to adopt. The system delivers outcomes. Onboarding is: "Tell us your goals. We'll send you reports."
No operator tax. The system IS the operator. Your customer doesn't hire anyone to run it.
Margin improves with scale. Each new client uses the same intelligent infrastructure. The marginal cost of client #100 is a fraction of client #1.
Churn drops dramatically. Customers don't churn from results. They churn from frustration. Remove the frustration — remove the churn.

Consider the math: A business currently pays $300/month for a SaaS content tool, plus $4,000/month for the junior marketer who operates it. Total cost: $4,300/month for inconsistent output that requires constant management oversight.

An ISAS alternative: $900/month. Twelve articles published, four videos created, thirty-six social posts distributed, keyword rankings tracked, performance reported. Zero operator required.

The customer saves $3,400/month and gets better output. The ISAS provider runs at 87% margin. Everyone wins — except the SaaS company that just lost a customer and the job board that just lost a listing.

"Isn't This Just AI Agents?"

Fair question. And the answer is: AI agents are a component of ISAS, not the whole thing.

An AI agent is a brain. Useful, but limited. It can think, but it can't see, can't act, can't remember, and can't guarantee outcomes.

ISAS is a brain with hands, eyes, a memory, and a job description:

AI agents provide the intelligence layer
Domain expertise provides the quality standard — knowing what "good" looks like in a specific industry
Data infrastructure provides the memory and context — client history, market benchmarks, performance baselines
Quality gates provide the guardrails — nothing ships that doesn't meet the standard
Delivery guarantees provide the accountability — not "best effort," but committed output

Here's the clearest way to see the difference: ChatGPT can write an article. An ISAS system researches the keyword, analyzes competitive gaps, writes the article, scores it against E-E-A-T criteria, generates a branded featured image, publishes it to your CMS with proper schema markup, syndicates it to three social platforms with platform-optimized captions, logs the deliverable for billing, and sends you a performance report — before you finish your coffee.

That's not an AI agent. That's an intelligent system. And you can subscribe to it as a service.

The Shift Is Already Here

If you're building a startup: don't build a SaaS. Build an ISAS. Your customers don't want another login. They want outcomes delivered.

If you're running an agency: don't resell tools. Deliver intelligence. The agencies that survive the next five years will be the ones that stopped selling hours and started selling systems.

If you're buying technology for your business: stop paying for potential and start paying for performance. Ask your next vendor: "What do I have to do after I pay you?" If the answer involves logging in, configuring, learning, or hiring — you're buying SaaS. And SaaS is dead.

The companies that win the next decade won't be the ones with the best dashboards. They'll be the ones whose customers never need a dashboard in the first place.

They'll be selling Intelligent Systems as a Service.

And the measure of their impact will be the mirror for their revenue.

Unleash AI Agents—Without Burning Your Budget Down

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:14:53 GMT

Most businesses treat AI agents like toddlers with flamethrowers—either locked in a padded room or running wild through the warehouse. We built something different at our Scottsdale office: AI agents that work unsupervised within hard limits, then escalate when they hit the fence.

Controlled autonomy for AI agents in business is a framework where AI systems operate independently within predefined guardrails—including volume caps, depth restrictions, budget limits, and mandatory escalation points—allowing automated execution while preventing runaway decisions.

This isn't theory. We've been running this in production for months. Our content agent writes, optimizes, and publishes without human approval. Our research agent pulls data, synthesizes findings, and updates client reports automatically. But neither can burn through our API budget, neither can make commitments to clients, and both hit hard stops that require human override.

The guardrails matter more than the autonomy. Here's how we actually built them.

Controlled autonomy isn't a framework you download from GitHub. It's the operating philosophy that determines whether your AI agents become force multipliers or expensive mistakes. The difference is in the details: volume caps that prevent runaway spending, depth limits that force escalation on complex decisions, budget guardrails that stop an agent before it commits to a six-figure vendor contract.

We built this system because we had to. When your AI agent can send emails, book meetings, and manage client communications , "move fast and break things" stops being inspirational and starts being grounds for malpractice. The guardrails aren't there to slow the agent down—they're there to let it run at full speed without supervision anxiety.

Most businesses will waste 2026 either running agents with no constraints or adding so many approval layers that the automation advantage disappears. Neither works. Controlled autonomy gives you the third option : agents that operate independently within boundaries you define, escalate when they hit edges, and learn without drifting.

Ready to implement AI agents that don't need babysitting? Zack Greenfield Company builds controlled autonomy systems for businesses in Scottsdale and beyond. Let's talk about your guardrails .

Frequently Asked Questions

What is controlled autonomy for AI agents?

Controlled autonomy is a framework where AI agents operate independently within predefined boundaries like volume caps, depth limits, and budget constraints. When agents hit these guardrails, they automatically escalate to human oversight rather than proceeding or shutting down.

How do you prevent AI agents from making expensive mistakes?

We implement budget caps, transaction limits, and vendor approval thresholds that stop agents before they commit to significant expenditures. Any decision above a defined threshold—like a $5,000 vendor contract—triggers automatic escalation to human review.

Can AI agents learn without losing their guardrails?

Yes, through structured feedback loops where human corrections on escalated decisions get fed back into the agent's decision framework. The guardrails remain fixed while the agent's judgment within those boundaries improves over time.

What happens when an AI agent reaches its autonomy limit?

The agent pauses the workflow, logs the escalation reason, and notifies the designated human for review. Once the human approves, rejects, or modifies the action, the agent either proceeds or adjusts its approach based on the feedback.

Why is controlled autonomy better than full automation?

Full automation without guardrails creates catastrophic risk, while over-supervision eliminates efficiency gains. Controlled autonomy balances speed with safety, letting agents handle 80% of tasks independently while humans focus on the 20% that requires judgment.

https://affirmationshop.com/

How To Spot A Fake Marketing Agency In Scottsdale—Before They Waste Your Money

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:36:31 GMT

You've got maybe five Scottsdale agencies bookmarked right now, and they all sound exactly the same. "Data-driven." "Results-focused." "Your growth partner." Cool—so is every other agency with a website built after 2019.

Here's what you actually need to know: According to Walker Media Agency (2025) , nearly 40% of businesses plan to change agencies within the next six months because of poor fit. A marketing agency partnership is a long-term relationship built on strategic alignment, measurable outcomes, and mutual understanding of your business goals—not just creative deliverables and monthly retainer invoices.

The decision matters more in 2026 than ever before. According to LocaliQ's 2026 Small Business Marketing Trends Report , 66% of small businesses think economic uncertainty will be challenging this year, up from 48% in 2025. You can't afford to waste budget on an agency that can't prove ROI or doesn't understand your industry's unique challenges.

This guide will show you what actually separates competent Scottsdale agencies from the ones who'll drain your budget and ghost you in eight months.

Why Location Matters: The Scottsdale Marketing Advantage

Scottsdale isn't just another Sun Belt city with good weather and expensive real estate. According to the City of Scottsdale Economic Development Plan , finance, insurance, and real estate make up 14.6% of local employment—ranking first among comparable cities. That means the business owner sitting in a North Scottsdale coffee shop needs marketing expertise that works for wealth management firms, not just generic "small business tips" that could apply anywhere.

The city's tech sector has expanded 9.2% since 2013, attracting companies like Content at Scale, which just opened new headquarters in Raintree Corporate Center with plans to hire 100 AI engineers and marketing specialists. When your local economy spans hospitality, healthcare, finance, and emerging tech, you need an agency that understands sector-specific challenges—not a one-size-fits-all approach built for e-commerce brands in Austin.

According to Hostinger (2026) , 52% of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses now outsource at least some of their marketing. But outsourcing to the wrong partner wastes more than money—it burns time you can't get back. A Scottsdale-based agency knows why your Q1 traffic patterns look different than your Q3 numbers, understands the competitive landscape on Scottsdale Road versus downtown Phoenix, and can walk into your office when a campaign needs immediate attention.

What to Look for in a Scottsdale Marketing Agency

The average agency-client relationship lasts less than three years, and according to Walker Media Agency (2025) , nearly 40% of businesses plan to switch agencies within the next six months due to poor fit. Most of these failures happen during the selection process, not the execution.

Start with one non-negotiable question: Can they measure what matters? According to PPC Chief (2026) , only 30% of CMOs are confident in their ability to measure marketing ROI. If an agency can't show you exactly how they'll track performance and report results, walk away.

Industry-specific expertise separates competent agencies from effective ones. A restaurant needs retention-focused strategies and platform-specific social content. A medical practice needs HIPAA-compliant tracking and answer engine optimization. A finance firm has different compliance requirements entirely. Generic marketing credentials don't cut it anymore.

"If an agency doesn't ask you who your ideal customer is, or how you engage with them across various touchpoints, that's a serious red flag," says Connor Sanner, SVP of Growth at Power Digital. They should be interviewing you as much as you're interviewing them.

Look for agencies that treat AI as a tool, not a replacement for strategy. The Scottsdale market is too sophisticated for automated templates and cookie-cutter approaches. You need an agency that uses technology to execute faster while applying human expertise to understand your specific market position.

Transparency matters more than promises. Ask for direct access to analytics platforms, regular reporting schedules, and clear KPIs established upfront. The best agencies welcome scrutiny because they have nothing to hide.

Full-Service Marketing Solutions for Scottsdale Businesses

According to PPC Chief (2026) , the average small business allocates 72% of their marketing budget to digital channels. You need an agency that can actually execute across all of them, not just the ones they happen to be good at.

Digital Advertising & PPC Management

Search advertising remains a top investment priority for 47% of small businesses in 2026, according to LocaliQ (2026) . We build campaigns that capture high-intent buyers when they're actively searching, not just burn through your budget on vanity metrics.

Social Media Marketing & Video Content

53% of small businesses plan to invest more in video marketing in 2026, according to LocaliQ (2026) . Platform-first video strategies for Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook that actually drive engagement and conversions.

SEO & Local Search Optimization

According to Wix and VistaPrint (2025) , 42% of consumers look elsewhere when they can't find a business's website. We make sure your Scottsdale business shows up where your customers are actually searching, with AI-driven answer engine optimization that positions you for machine readability, not just traditional rankings.

Email Marketing & Automation

Email marketing generates $40 ROI for every dollar spent, according to PPC Chief (2026) . That's the highest-ROI channel available, yet most businesses treat it like an afterthought. We build automated sequences that turn one-time buyers into repeat customers without adding to your workload.

Our Strategic Approach: Data-Driven Results

Most Scottsdale agencies will show you creative mockups in a pitch meeting. We show you the dashboard first.

According to PPC Chief (2026) , only 30% of CMOs are confident in their ability to measure marketing ROI. That's a problem we solve on day one. Every client gets direct access to real-time performance data—no waiting for monthly reports that obscure what's actually working.

Our process starts with baseline measurement, not creative brainstorming. We audit your current performance across every channel, identify what's generating revenue (not just traffic), and kill what's wasting budget. Then we build strategy around the numbers, not the other way around.

Here's what separates us from the 120,000+ marketing agencies in the U.S.: we don't pitch you a twelve-month retainer based on a single meeting. According to Walker Media Agency (2025) , nearly 40% of businesses plan to change agencies within six months due to poor fit. We avoid that by starting with a 90-day sprint focused on one measurable outcome you actually care about.

If we can't move the needle in 90 days, you shouldn't be paying us for a year.

Industries We Serve in the Scottsdale Market

Scottsdale's finance and insurance sector employs 14.6% of the city's workforce—the highest concentration among comparable cities. We've built specialized approaches for wealth management firms, mortgage brokers, and insurance agencies that need to project authority while navigating strict advertising regulations.

Medical practices face a compliance minefield that most agencies ignore. According to Intrepy Healthcare Marketing (2026) , over 70% of medical practices run non-compliant tracking on their websites after OCR's 2023-2025 guidance. We build HIPAA-compliant tracking systems that don't sacrifice conversion data for compliance theater.

Restaurant marketing in 2026 demands retention over acquisition. According to FSR Magazine (2026) , bringing back a guest who's already visited is significantly easier and cheaper than acquiring new ones. We've helped Scottsdale restaurants like Tea & Tea Boba Shop scale from 29 to 2,123 keywords on modest budgets by focusing on local SEO and retention-focused email campaigns.

Tech companies in Scottsdale's growing information sector need positioning that cuts through noise. With 2.5% of the local workforce in tech and expanding 9.2% since 2013, the market's competitive. We build thought leadership programs and demand generation systems that create pipeline, not just traffic.

Case Study Spotlight: Scottsdale Client Success Stories

Tea & Tea Boba Shop came to Muon Marketing with a modest budget of $422 per month and a website that wasn't doing much. They needed local SEO that actually worked, not promises about "increasing brand awareness." Within one year, the shop went from ranking for 29 keywords to 2,123 keywords—a 7,220% increase—and generated website traffic worth $4,200 monthly. That's a 10x return on a small business budget, and it happened because the agency understood local search behavior in competitive markets.

Digital Current has spent 17 years in Scottsdale proving that measurable outcomes beat creative awards. They've served over 15,000 clients with one focus: growing revenue. Not impressions, not engagement rates—actual money in the bank. That's the kind of track record you get when an agency leads with data instead of design portfolios.

LocalFi SEO Digital Marketing Agency demonstrates what local expertise actually looks like. They've donated over $10,000 in digital marketing services to Scottsdale nonprofits while specializing in the kind of hyper-local SEO that drives foot traffic to physical locations. When your agency understands the difference between ranking nationally and dominating "near me" searches in your zip code, you get results that matter to your bottom line.

These aren't outliers. They're proof that the right agency partnership delivers returns that justify the investment—especially when you're working with teams that know Scottsdale's market dynamics, not just generic marketing tactics.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Marketing Agency

The average agency-client relationship dies in under three years, and according to Walker Media Agency (2025) , nearly 40% of businesses plan to switch agencies within six months due to poor fit. You can avoid becoming that statistic by asking the right questions upfront.

Start with measurement. If an agency can't tell you exactly how they'll track ROI and what metrics they'll report on, walk away. According to PPC Chief (2026) , only 30% of CMOs are confident in their ability to measure marketing ROI—don't hire an agency that contributes to that problem.

Ask about your ideal customer. As Connor Sanner, SVP of Growth at Power Digital, puts it: "If an agency doesn't ask you who your ideal customer is, or how you engage with them across various touchpoints, that's a serious red flag." Agencies that lead with tactics before understanding your market don't deserve your business.

Demand specifics on their process. How often will you communicate? Who owns your accounts and data? What happens if the relationship doesn't work out? Vague answers mean they haven't thought it through—or they're hiding something.

Local vs. National Agency: What's Right for Your Business?

National agencies pitch scale and name recognition. Local Scottsdale agencies actually pick up the phone when you call.

The data backs this up. According to Setup , the average agency-client relationship lasts less than three years, with poor fit being the leading cause of marketing underperformance. When your agency is in another time zone and treats you like account number 4,387, that relationship dies faster.

Local agencies understand Scottsdale's market dynamics—the difference between marketing to Old Town tourists versus North Scottsdale professionals, the seasonal fluctuations that impact hospitality businesses, and the competitive landscape across the city's finance and healthcare sectors. That's not something you can fake from a satellite office.

The trade-off? National agencies might have bigger creative teams or more niche specialists. But when 66% of small businesses cite economic uncertainty as a major challenge in 2026 (LocaliQ) , you need an agency that treats your budget like it matters—not one that views Scottsdale as a test market for cookie-cutter strategies.

Choose based on responsiveness, industry expertise, and whether they understand your customer base. Geography matters when it impacts those three things.

Why Zack Greenfield Company is Scottsdale's Trusted Marketing Partner

We've been watching agencies blow through Scottsdale for years, pitching the same templated strategies they sold to businesses in Miami and Portland last month. That approach doesn't work when you're marketing a medical practice competing with Mayo Clinic's brand recognition or a restaurant fighting for visibility in a market where finance, insurance, and real estate make up 14.6% of employment .

Here's what actually sets us apart: we don't hide behind vague promises of "brand awareness." According to PPC Chief (2026) , only 30% of CMOs are confident measuring marketing ROI—we built our entire methodology around the opposite approach. You get direct access to every campaign, every metric, and every dollar spent.

We also don't pretend AI replaced strategic thinking. While other agencies automate themselves into irrelevance, we use AI as a tool to execute faster—giving us more time for the work that actually moves revenue. Understanding how Scottsdale's hospitality sector differs from its growing tech industry, or why healthcare marketing here requires navigation of both HIPAA compliance issues and answer engine optimization.

The average agency-client relationship lasts less than three years , usually ending because the agency never bothered learning the client's business. We start every engagement asking who your ideal customer is and how they engage across touchpoints—because if we don't know that, we're just creating expensive content no one asked for.

Choosing a marketing agency in Scottsdale isn't about finding the cheapest option or the flashiest portfolio—it's about finding a partner who understands your market, measures what matters, and treats your budget like their own. According to Hostinger (2026) , 52% of US small and medium-sized businesses now outsource at least some of their marketing, but nearly 40% plan to change agencies within six months due to poor fit. That's not a marketing problem—that's a vetting problem.

We built Zack Greenfield Company to solve that. We're not interested in long-term contracts that lock you into mediocre results. We're interested in transparent reporting, measurable ROI, and strategies tailored to Scottsdale's unique business landscape—whether you're a restaurant competing in Old Town, a medical practice navigating HIPAA compliance, or a tech company scaling in the innovation corridor.

Ready to work with an agency that actually gets Scottsdale? Schedule your free marketing assessment today to see if we're the right fit. No pitch decks. No bullshit. Just an honest conversation about what's working, what's not, and what we'd do differently.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I look for when hiring a marketing agency in Scottsdale?

Look for transparent reporting, industry-specific experience, and agencies that ask about your ideal customer and current engagement strategies before pitching solutions. According to Connor Sanner at Power Digital , if an agency doesn't ask who your ideal customer is or how you engage across touchpoints, that's a serious red flag.

How much does a marketing agency in Scottsdale typically cost?

Most Scottsdale agencies charge between $2,000-$10,000+ monthly depending on services and scope. According to PPC Chief (2026) , the average small business allocates 5-10% of revenue to marketing, with 72% of those budgets going to digital channels.

Why should I hire a local Scottsdale agency instead of a national firm?

Local agencies understand Scottsdale's competitive landscape, seasonal tourism patterns, and industry concentrations that national firms miss. We know which neighborhoods your customers come from, which local events drive traffic, and how to position against competitors across Old Town, North Scottsdale, and surrounding markets.

How long does it take to see results from agency marketing services?

SEO and content marketing typically show measurable traction in 3-6 months, while paid advertising can generate leads within weeks. The Tea & Tea Boba Shop example from Semrush went from 29 to 2,123 keywords within one year on a modest $422/month budget.

What's the average ROI I can expect from hiring a marketing agency?

ROI varies by channel and industry, but email marketing generates $40 for every dollar spent according to PPC Chief (2026) . The real answer depends on whether your agency tracks attribution properly—only 30% of CMOs are confident in their ability to measure marketing ROI.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Why Your Scottsdale Restaurant's Marketing Is Failing—And It's Not Your Fault

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:47:16 GMT

Your restaurant's packed at 7 PM on a Saturday, and your marketing agency just texted asking if you can "jump on a quick call" to review next month's Facebook ad creative. They don't get it. They've never worked a dinner rush, managed food costs, or explained to a line cook why the POS system crashed during a reservation wave.

Most marketing agencies in Scottsdale treat restaurants like any other client—same strategy playbook, same reporting metrics, same "let's increase engagement" nonsense. That approach works fine if you're selling software or consulting services. It fails spectacularly when you're trying to fill tables during shoulder season or competing with 47 other restaurants in a two-mile radius of Old Town.

Restaurant marketing requires understanding operations, not just algorithms. You need an agency that knows why a 15% food cost swing matters more than your Instagram reach, why review response time affects your bottom line more than follower count, and why Scottsdale's seasonal tourism patterns make or break Q1 revenue. Generic marketing expertise doesn't cut it when your business model depends on turning tables and managing razor-thin margins.

Why Your Last Marketing Agency Failed (And It Wasn't Your Food)

Generic marketing agencies treat restaurants like retail stores with plates. They pitch you brand awareness campaigns when you need butts in seats Tuesday through Thursday. They celebrate vanity metrics—10,000 impressions!—while your labor costs are eating 38% of revenue and you're wondering why nobody's booking reservations.

The typical agency failure pattern looks identical across Scottsdale: they run Instagram campaigns during your dead hours, ignore OpenTable optimization entirely, and have zero strategy for managing your Google Business Profile when a one-star review drops at 6 PM on a Friday. According to Toast (2023), 77% of diners check online reviews before choosing a restaurant, but your last agency was focused on building your "brand story."

Here's what kills restaurants working with general agencies: they don't understand contribution margin per cover, they've never managed a delivery platform commission structure, and they think "seasonal strategy" means pumpkin spice content in October. They pitch six-month brand builds when you need revenue this weekend.

Restaurants operate on completely different economics than the B2B SaaS companies and e-commerce brands these agencies typically serve. Your average ticket is $45, not $4,500. You can't retarget someone for three months—they either come this week or they forget you exist.

Scottsdale Restaurants Face Unique Marketing Challenges

Scottsdale's dining scene operates on two completely different calendars that most marketing agencies miss entirely. October through April brings snowbirds with disposable income who'll wait 90 minutes for a table at North Italia. May through September? You're fighting for locals who know every happy hour deal within five miles and won't leave their air conditioning without a damn good reason.

The tourism component makes everything harder. According to Experience Scottsdale (2024), the city sees 7.8 million visitors annually, but they're not Googling "best tacos near me" like locals do. They're asking hotel concierges, scrolling Instagram at the pool, or already committed to eating at their resort. Your marketing has to work completely differently for these audiences.

Then there's the competition density in Old Town and the Waterfront. You're not just competing with the restaurant next door. You're up against 200+ dining options within a two-mile radius, half of which have venture capital funding and marketing budgets that make your monthly ad spend look like a rounding error.

Generic agencies treat Scottsdale like any other suburb. It's not. The seasonality, tourist-to-local ratio, and concentration of high-end concepts create marketing challenges that require actual local knowledge, not a downloaded demographic report.

What Restaurant Marketing Actually Requires (Hint: It's Not Just Social Posts)

Restaurant marketing lives or dies on Google Business Profile management , and most agencies treat it like an afterthought. According to BrightLocal (2023), 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, yet the typical agency checks your Google reviews maybe once a month. Your one-star review from an angry customer sits there for 72 hours before anyone responds—that's 72 hours of potential customers scrolling past.

Delivery platform economics require completely different math than traditional marketing ROI. When DoorDash takes 30% and your food cost is 32%, you can't afford the same customer acquisition cost as retail. But agencies who've never run a P&L don't get this. They celebrate a $40 cost-per-acquisition without realizing it just killed your margin on a $65 average check.

Seasonal adjustments in Scottsdale aren't optional—they're survival. Your marketing spend in January should look nothing like July when half your customer base leaves for cooler climates. Smart restaurant marketing shifts budget to locals-focused channels in summer and ramps tourist-targeting when snowbirds return. Generic agencies run the same campaigns year-round and wonder why performance tanks in August.

Local Success Story: How Desert Bloom Bistro Doubled Covers

Desert Bloom Bistro in Old Town came to us in March 2024 doing 42 covers on weeknights. Six months later, they were averaging 89 covers Tuesday through Thursday and had to add a second seating.

We didn't run cute Instagram campaigns. We fixed their Google Business Profile first—turns out they were listed in the wrong category and half their reviews weren't showing. Then we renegotiated their DoorDash commission structure and shifted delivery marketing spend to direct orders through their website. That alone saved them $2,800 monthly.

The real win was targeting Scottsdale's snowbird season differently . Most restaurants blow their budget advertising to locals in January when half the high-value diners are seasonal residents who search differently. We created separate campaigns for Arizona plates versus out-of-state visitors, emphasized their heated patio during the exact weeks when Midwest transplants arrive, and built email capture around their early-bird special.

Revenue increased 127% without adding dinner service or expanding the dining room. That's what happens when someone actually understands restaurant economics instead of just "engagement."

Red Flags: How to Spot Marketing Agencies That Don't Get Restaurants

Ask any agency pitching you this: "What's your process for managing Google reviews during a service recovery situation?" If they give you generic reputation management talk instead of specific protocols for responding within two hours while a guest is still deciding whether to escalate, walk away.

Watch out for agencies that want to schedule your Instagram posts three weeks in advance. Restaurants move too fast for that. Your Tuesday special sold out Monday night, your head chef just created an off-menu item, a food blogger posted about you an hour ago. Static content calendars prove they've never worked in this industry.

The biggest red flag: they talk about "brand awareness" before asking about your covers, average check, or reservation conversion rate. Marketing that doesn't tie directly to butts in seats is marketing you can't afford.

Restaurant marketing requires someone who understands the difference between covers and clicks, who knows your POS data matters more than your page views, and who won't schedule campaign launches during your Friday dinner rush. Generic marketing agencies will waste your money running tactics that work for SaaS companies and e-commerce stores but fall apart when applied to the realities of food cost percentages, labor constraints, and review management.

We've spent years working exclusively with restaurants in Scottsdale because this market demands specialized knowledge. The tourism cycles, the seasonal snowbird patterns, the Old Town versus North Scottsdale dining cultures—these aren't minor details you can learn from a Google search. They're the foundation of effective restaurant marketing in this city.

Get a restaurant-specific marketing audit that actually understands your POS data and covers. We'll review your current efforts through the lens of someone who knows what 2.5x table turns actually means for your business. Let's talk about marketing that works around your kitchen schedule, not against it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I look for when hiring a marketing agency in Scottsdale?

Look for agencies with specific restaurant industry experience, not just general marketing credentials. Ask them to explain restaurant-specific metrics like cost per cover, review velocity, and delivery platform optimization—if they can't, they'll waste your budget on tactics that don't translate to filled tables.

How much does restaurant marketing cost in Scottsdale?

Expect to invest 3-6% of gross revenue on marketing if you're established, and 8-12% if you're new or rebuilding. The exact budget depends on your location, competition density, and whether you're in Old Town competing with 200+ restaurants or in a quieter North Scottsdale pocket.

Why do most marketing agencies fail restaurants?

They treat restaurants like any other business and ignore operational realities like labor shortages, food cost fluctuations, and the fact that your peak revenue hours are when you can't take marketing calls. They optimize for vanity metrics instead of covers and check averages.

How long does restaurant marketing take to show results?

Tactical changes like Google Business Profile optimization and review response can drive measurable traffic within 2-3 weeks. Broader brand positioning and sustained growth campaigns typically show clear ROI within 90 days if executed by someone who understands restaurant operations.

https://affirmationshop.com/

Why Your Restaurant's Generic Scottsdale Agency Strategy Is Costing You Customers

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:49:46 GMT

Your Facebook ads are running during dinner rush and nobody's clicking because they're too busy trying to get a table at your competitor down the street. That's not a creative problem—that's a timing problem, and most marketing agencies wouldn't know the difference because they've never worked a Friday night shift.

A marketing agency that understands restaurants knows your real competition isn't just other steakhouses in Scottsdale. It's third-party delivery platforms eating 30% of your margins, seasonal population swings that kill your February numbers, and the fact that tourists searching "best dinner near Old Town" have different intent than locals looking for their new regular spot.

The playbook that works for dentists or home services companies will burn your budget in about six weeks. Restaurant marketing requires someone who's seen P&Ls, understands table turn rates, and knows why a 4.2-star Google rating isn't actually better than 4.7 stars with half the reviews.

According to DesignRush (2026), 63% of businesses hired an agency in 2025, up sharply from the year before. But hiring any agency isn't the same as hiring one that gets how restaurants actually make money. That difference shows up in your revenue, not just your engagement metrics.

Why Your Last Marketing Agency Failed (And It Wasn't Your Food)

Your last agency probably sent a beautiful proposal about "brand storytelling" and "engagement metrics" while completely missing that you're hemorrhaging 25% of every order to DoorDash. They launched Instagram campaigns without understanding your prime cost targets or why you can't afford to fill seats at 5pm that you'll need at 7pm.

Generic agencies treat restaurants like any other retail business. They're not. A clothing store doesn't lose money when too many customers show up at once. A law office doesn't have a product that literally dies if it sits too long. Restaurants operate on 3-8% net margins, which means a single misallocated ad campaign can wipe out a month's profit.

According to U.S. Bank , 78% of small businesses fail because they lack a well-developed marketing plan. For restaurants, I'd argue that number's higher because most "marketing plans" ignore operational reality. Your agency was measuring impressions while your kitchen was drowning in off-hours traffic that didn't cover labor costs.

The real failure? They didn't know enough about your business model to ask the right questions. They optimized for visibility when you needed profitability. Those aren't the same thing in this industry.

Scottsdale Restaurants Face Unique Marketing Challenges

Scottsdale restaurants compete in three separate markets simultaneously, and most marketing agencies only know how to handle one. You've got the snowbird retirees who winter here from January to March, the ASU-adjacent crowd looking for happy hour deals, and the luxury tourism segment dropping $200 per person at Old Town steakhouses.

According to LocaliQ (2026) , 52% of small businesses say knowing which marketing channels to invest in is one of their biggest hurdles. For Scottsdale restaurants, that confusion gets worse because your customer base rotates every season. The Facebook ads that work in February when retirees are here completely miss the mark in July when it's 115 degrees and you're relying on locals.

Generic agencies run the same playbook for every restaurant client. They'll push Instagram content that works great for coastal brunch spots but falls flat when your demographic is 65-year-old Midwesterners who found you through Google Maps. They don't understand that Scottsdale's dining scene isn't just competing locally—you're fighting against every resort restaurant and private chef experience that tourists consider instead.

The real problem? Most agencies treat restaurant marketing like retail marketing with different photos . They've never had to explain why a 30% third-party delivery commission destroys your margins or why your best marketing investment might be fixing your Google Business Profile instead of running another Instagram giveaway.

What Restaurant Marketing Actually Requires (Hint: It's Not Just Social Posts)

Restaurant marketing isn't running Instagram ads and hoping for the best. It's managing third-party platforms that eat 25% of your revenue, responding to reviews while you're expediting orders, adjusting campaigns when snowbirds leave town, and making sure your Google listing doesn't send customers to last year's menu. Salerno's Pizza eliminated those third-party commissions entirely by redirecting customers from delivery apps to their own online ordering system with coupon incentives, according to The Digital Restaurant . That's what restaurant marketing actually looks like.

Most agencies treat restaurants like any other local business. They'll run Facebook ads, maybe post some food photos, call it a day. But they don't understand how delivery platforms destroy your margins, how seasonal population shifts in Scottsdale change your customer base every six months, or why review management matters more than your ad creative when someone's deciding where to eat tonight.

KAE Restaurant in Miami increased revenue by 400% using paid social ads, retargeting campaigns, and email marketing—but the real work was integrating those channels with operational reality, according to Heyday Marketing . Generic agencies don't know how to do that because they've never worked a dinner rush or looked at a P&L statement where delivery commissions are the difference between profit and loss.

Local Success Story: How a Miami Restaurant Quadrupled Revenue

KAE Restaurant in Miami ran a comprehensive campaign that integrated paid social ads, retargeting, and email marketing—the kind of operational approach Scottsdale restaurants need but rarely get from generic agencies. According to Heyday Marketing , their revenue increased 400% since the campaign launched.

The strategy worked because it addressed the full customer journey, not just awareness. Paid ads brought new diners in. Retargeting caught the ones who didn't book immediately. Email kept past customers coming back during slow periods. That's operational thinking, not just channel tactics.

The same framework applies in Scottsdale, but execution needs to account for seasonal tourism patterns and the competitive density around Old Town. A campaign that works in Miami won't necessarily translate here without adjusting for Scottsdale's affluent retiree population, ASU student spending patterns, and luxury dining expectations.

Most agencies would replicate the Miami playbook without those adjustments. We'd adapt it for your actual market and operational constraints—because we know the difference between a tactic that sounds good and one that actually fills tables on Tuesday nights in July.

Red Flags: How to Spot Marketing Agencies That Don't Get Restaurants

If an agency's case studies don't show actual restaurant revenue increases or cover counts, walk away. "We grew their Instagram by 40%" means nothing if your tables stayed empty. According to Heyday Marketing (2025) , KAE Restaurant increased revenue by 400% with their campaign—that's the standard you should demand, not follower vanity metrics.

Ask them to explain your third-party delivery commission structure and how they'd reduce it. If they look confused, they don't understand restaurant economics. The agencies worth hiring know that steering customers to direct ordering—like Salerno's Pizza did with their website redesign—eliminates 10-25% commission leakage immediately.

Watch for agencies that pitch the same strategy to every restaurant. A steakhouse targeting Scottsdale's retirement communities needs different tactics than a gastropub near ASU. Generic social media calendars are a warning sign they're running templates, not strategy.

If they've never mentioned review management, operational integration, or seasonal tourism patterns in your market, they're thinking like marketers, not restaurant operators. That's the gap that kills ROI.

Restaurant marketing requires someone who understands what a 15% food cost variance means, not just someone who can boost a post. Generic agencies treat restaurants like any other small business because they've never managed a floor during a Saturday rush or negotiated with a third-party delivery platform that's eating 30% of every order.

According to LocaliQ (2026) , 52% of small businesses say knowing which marketing channels to invest in is one of their biggest hurdles. For restaurants, that confusion costs real money—wasted ad spend on channels that drive reservations you can't fulfill, or worse, campaigns that bring in customers during rushes when your kitchen's already in the weeds.

We've spent years working in restaurant operations before we ever touched a marketing budget. That means we know the difference between marketing that looks good in a PowerPoint and marketing that actually fills seats during your slow Tuesday lunch shift without breaking your labor budget.

Get a restaurant-specific marketing audit that actually understands your POS data and covers your operational reality . Or let's talk about marketing that works around your kitchen schedule, not against it .

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to hire a marketing agency in Scottsdale?

According to 2025 industry data, comprehensive agency partnerships typically cost $50,000-$150,000 annually, which is significantly less than building an in-house team that runs $450,000-$550,000. For restaurants specifically, expect to invest 5-8% of gross revenue on marketing to see meaningful growth.

What should I look for when hiring a restaurant marketing agency?

Ask if they understand your POS data, third-party delivery commission structures, and how to market around your operational constraints. If they pitch you the same social media package they'd sell a law firm, walk away.

Why do restaurant marketing campaigns fail?

Most fail because agencies treat restaurants like any other business without understanding margins, kitchen capacity, or staffing realities. According to U.S. Bank , 78% of small businesses fail due to poor marketing planning—restaurants need specialized knowledge, not generic tactics.

How long does it take to see results from restaurant marketing?

Tactical campaigns like targeted ads for slow shifts can work within weeks. Comprehensive strategies that build direct ordering channels and reduce third-party dependency typically show ROI within 90-120 days if executed correctly.

AI Agents Aren’t Taking Your Job—They’re Giving You Back Your Time

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:33:27 GMT

Let’s be honest: If you’re still doing your digital marketing the way you did even two years ago, you’re fossilizing faster than a mummified Big Mac. With 2025 here, AI agents are the new workhorses, not a sci-fi pipe dream—today’s smart business owners are already halving busywork and doubling output with these digital assistants.

Here’s the opportunity: AI agents—think of them as tireless, error-resistant digital employees—are now doing everything from generating SEO-optimized blog posts and video scripts in real time, to optimizing ad delivery, managing social channels, and even handling customer inquiries. But only 10% of businesses have managed to scale this across functions (source: recent industry data). Translation: the competitive advantage is wide open for the taking.

Key Insights (Backed by Numbers & Examples):
1. AI Agents Drive Consistency and Scale
If you want to produce volume—across ads, emails, landing pages—AI agents ensure your brand voice never breaks character. McDonald’s recently used AI-driven tools in their viral Big Arch launch, auto-generating and testing hundreds of digital ad variants in hours, not weeks. Result? Massive reach with laser-targeted messaging, no overwhelmed creative team required.

2. Real-World Results Aren’t Just Hype
OpenAI’s internal data agent began as a skunkworks project and now serves the needs of 4,000 employees, boosting content creation speed, competitive research, and internal communications. Brands like Papa Johns and Heineken are using similar agent-driven automations for campaign management and cultural marketing initiatives, freeing human teams for strategy—not spreadsheet wrangling.

3. Marketing Automation, Supercharged
AI agents now act as your dedicated campaign managers: predictive lead scoring, customer journey mapping, and even adaptive creative refreshes happen in real time. B2B marketers say agents haven’t just automated processes—these digital workers now drive the entire marketing/sales workflow. Integration is key: modularize agents, start small (one function), and expand once you see ROI.

Practical Takeaways:
- Don’t fear replacement—plan for augmentation. Pilot AI agents to offload repetitive tasks first.
- Start lean: tackle one high-impact area (ad testing, blog generation, or email sequencing).
- Modularize: build a workflow where agents handle the grunt work and humans focus on big-picture strategies.
- Integrate agent feedback loops—you’ll get smarter, quickly-adapting automation.

Want your marketing team to do more actual marketing and less digital janitorial labor? The future is here, and it works for you.

To learn more about how AI agents can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

https://affirmationshop.com/

Apple Didn’t Rush AI—And Neither Should You: 5 Leadership Moves Business Owners Need Now

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:44:23 GMT

Let’s be real: Most business owners want to leap into AI because it sounds sexy or is the table-stakes buzzword in every investor pitch deck. But here’s the dirty little secret: Only 1% of companies actually feel mature in their AI capabilities (source: workplace AI adoption report, 2025). That’s not innovation—that’s a whole lot of panic-adding widgets and hoping for business miracles.

Apple’s 2025 playbook offers a lesson in restraint and focus, not FOMO-driven tech adoption. They didn’t jump on the AI bandwagon willy-nilly. Instead, they prioritized strategic integration, letting technology quietly empower people rather than replace them. Here’s what you can steal from their approach…

1. Leadership Isn’t About Speed—It’s About Fit

Apple’s AI rollout was slow by tech standards—deliberate, measured, and focused. They waited for automation and AI to solve real user problems, not just check boxes. As a business owner, skip the temptation to move fast and break things. Ask yourself: Does this tech actually fit my customers’ journey or just create noise?

Practical move: Start small. Pilot AI in one workflow (say, handling basic customer queries). Don’t "go big"—go right.

2. Use Automation to Amplify, Not Replace, Human Talent

74% of business leaders now say they see AI’s greatest value in boosting, not booting, human workers (source: IBM Survey, 2025). Apple's AI quietly supports staff, automating repetitive tasks so creative and high-empathy work gets more attention. Your team isn’t obsolete—they’re untapped potential waiting for the right tools.

Practical move: Map out every repetitive task in your operation. Automate what’s boring. Invest human energy in what’s valuable—think client strategy, not spreadsheet wrangling.

3. Build Trust with Transparency—Internally and Externally

The fastest way to kill AI adoption? Confuse your team or spook your customers. Apple’s approach centered on privacy and clear messaging—users knew what was happening and why. For you, AI needs to work in broad daylight. Explain to your people (and customers) where you’re using AI, how you’re using it, and how it protects their interests.

Practical move: Hold a team Q&A on your AI plans. Address job fears, data privacy concerns, and listen to the pushback. Trust accelerates adoption.

Bottom line: Don’t chase AI for the headlines—adopt it where it fits your culture, customers and goals. Be the Apple of your industry: focused, measured, and human-led. Need help building your own AI playbook? To learn more about how strategic AI adoption can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

https://affirmationshop.com/

Enterprise AI Agents Are Here (And Your Competitors Are Already Using Them)

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:30:30 GMT

Let’s cut to the chase: if the phrase "AI agents" still sounds like sci-fi to you, your competitors are already cashing in on the future. Welcome to 2026 , where enterprise-grade AI agents aren’t just a Silicon Valley toy— they’re rewriting how marketing, ops, and finance get real work done.

The Real Problem — Everyone Wants More for Less
Business owners want growth, but human capital is expensive, scattered, and, let’s admit it, sometimes unreliable. Enter enterprise AI agents—automated workflows that can think, act, and learn (no lunch breaks required). According to McKinsey’s 2025 global AI survey, 72% of high-performing companies say AI agents are now central to their marketing operations. That’s a staggering leap—up from 45% just two years ago.

Key Insight #1: The Age of DIY AI (But Bigger and Smarter)
Remember when you needed a SWAT team of data scientists to automate a simple process? Those days are over. Anthropic’s recent launch of enterprise-level plugins lets businesses plug-and-play AI agents across finance, engineering, and (yes) marketing workflows. Translation: deploy high-performance campaign management, A/B testing, and even customer segmentation without hand-holding. One engineer even built a SaaS product in one hour using these tools—imagine what a whole team could do.

Key Insight #2: Efficiency Isn’t a Buzzword—It’s Quantifiable
Time for some numbers: Recent reports show that organizations implementing AI-driven marketing workflow automation have seen average ROI jump by 32%. That’s not just saved hours; that's faster go-to-market, more precise targeting, and the ability to personalize at scale. Real-world use? Campaign creation and optimization tasks that used to take a week are now done in hours. Goodbye, bottlenecks. Hello, scale.

Key Insight #3: Security and Governance—Don’t Skip Over This
AI agents are powerful, but you’re not handing the keys to the kingdom to just any robot. Anthropic and leading vendors have built in robust governance tools—meaning you control permissions, track data usage, and maintain compliance (think GDPR, SOC2, and more). It’s about automation without the anxiety.

Practical Takeaways:
- Map out your biggest, most repetitive marketing processes—target those for AI agent deployment first.
- Explore plugins and workflow automation solutions from enterprise vendors (Anthropic, Google, etc.) that fit your tech stack.
- Don’t go wild on day one. Start with contained pilots, measure ROI, and scale what works.
- Keep compliance top-of-mind—ensure your data governance meets today’s standards.

Ready to stop watching from the sidelines and put enterprise AI agents to work for your business? To learn more about how AI automation can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Ad Armageddon: How AI Is Torching the Old Playbook and Supercharging Modern Marketing

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:36:54 GMT

Let’s get real: If your marketing strategy still leans on yesterday’s tools, you’re running a race in flip-flops. In 2025, AI isn’t just an add-on—it’s the backbone of every brand’s growth strategy, from big-box retailers to scrappy upstarts. And those who aren’t evolving? They’re already obsolete.

First, look at Walmart. Their ad business exploded by 46% in 2025, raking in close to $6.4 billion. That’s not a happy accident—it’s AI at work on a massive scale, with custom agentic tools driving smarter targeting and faster optimizations using Walmart's unique retail data. This new breed of AI isn’t just about automation; it’s about decision-making at retail speed, solving the infamous 'last-mile' data problem and turning insights into dollars without human bottlenecks.

Next, let’s talk speed. In the old world, building a strong AI model took months. Now, startups like Rapidata are slashing that to days with near real-time reinforcement learning. Imagine iterating creative, segmenting audiences, or even testing new products with almost instant feedback loops—think of it as having an always-on, hyperactive marketing analyst on your team (that doesn’t ask for PTO).

And don’t ignore the human element. The most forward-thinking marketers aren’t just quitting their corporate gigs—they’re launching agile consulting models that plug directly into brands with AI-native thinking. This isn’t just theory: Agencies with AI at their core are helping clients like Hitachi pivot, scale, and outmaneuver competitors.

Here’s what to do if you want to be more disruptor than disrupted:

- Get your data house in order. AI is hungry and punishes messy inputs. Consolidate, clean, and govern now—or get left behind.
- Embrace agentic AI frameworks. Adopt systems that don’t just automate, but actively recommend, predict, and optimize. Think of them as your new creative partner.
- Move at startup speed. Whether it’s launching a creator-led product (see PepsiCo’s Gen Z strategy) or A/B testing across your ads, shorten your feedback loops. Rapid adaptation is your superpower.
- Don’t DIY everything. Leverage AI-native consultants and next-gen agencies—these are not the bloated contractors of ten years ago. They bring firepower, flexibility, and models you won’t quickly build in-house.

Bottom line: Modern marketing isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter (and faster). AI isn’t just helping; it’s redefining who wins and who watches.

To learn more about how cutting-edge AI marketing can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

SEO Is Dead. Meet Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)—Or Get Left Behind

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:16:51 GMT

Remember when SEO was just about keywords, backlinks, and outsmarting Google’s latest animal-themed update? Welcome to 2025, where the game has changed—and if you’re optimizing only for traditional search, you’re missing where real customers are looking for answers: answer engines powered by AI.

## The Shift: From Search to Answer
AI-driven answer engines—think ChatGPT, Claude, z.ai—are transforming how people find information. Instead of sifting through blue links, users now demand direct, accurate answers. If your business content isn’t optimized to feed these AI systems, your competition will eat your lunch. According to a recent Adweek audit, outdated facts, missing brand mentions, and citation errors are now the #1 reason brands get ignored by AI-powered summaries. Yikes.

## Key Insight #1: AEO Favors Clarity Over Cleverness
Answer engines aren’t impressed by your clever blog intros or long-winded storytelling—they scan for clear, structured answers. A recent trend article notes that, "AEO should be a priority for marketers when users want clear, direct answers, while SEO becomes essential when they need depth, comparison, or narrative." If you’re not serving up simple, fact-rich content, answer engines won’t feature you. Translation: stop burying the lead—and your value prop.

## Key Insight #2: Retargeting Is Getting Smarter—And Sneakier
Retargeting, long the backbone of digital ads, has found its way into chatbots and answer engines. Yes, your prospects can now be retargeted not just on websites but inside conversational AI interfaces. Digital ad infrastructure is being rebuilt for the era of chat-first discovery. That means you need to audit where and how your brand is mentioned in AI training data, and ensure consistency if you want to stay visible (and retargetable).

## Key Insight #3: Auditing for AI Is Your New Competitive Edge
An AI engine audit sounds geeky but it’s your ticket to staying top-of-mind. Forbes reports brands are losing AI engine ranking because of simple mistakes: outdated facts, inconsistent product details, missing mentions in trusted sources. The fix: regularly audit your content for accuracy, ensure citations are correct, and keep brand messaging consistent across the web.

## What Business Owners Need To Do (Today)
- Audit Your Content: Check every major product, service, and FAQ for clarity, accuracy, and structure. Use AI auditing tools if you can.
- Update Your Citations: Ensure leading AIs can find and validate third-party mentions of your brand.
- Structure for Answers: Ditch fluff. Use bullet lists, Q&A formats, and plain language. Think: what’s the straightest path to your value proposition?
- Join Retargeting 2.0: Begin exploring chatbot ad placements and tracking options to stay visible when it matters.

Ready to future-proof your marketing? To learn more about how Answer Engine Optimization can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Forget Guesswork—Here's How Adaptive Marketing Actually Grows Companies in 2026

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:35:59 GMT

Let’s cut through the noise: If your marketing plan feels stale by Q2, you’re not alone. Business as usual now means falling behind. In 2026, adaptive marketing—the art of adjusting strategy in real time—is the only way to future-proof your brand.

## The Problem: Static Marketing Is Obsolete
The world isn’t waiting for your next annual campaign review. AI, consumer expectations, and even regulation (hello, India’s crackdown on deepfakes) are changing the game—sometimes overnight. If your team is still running on rigid plans, you’re missing market shifts and wasting budget.

## 1. Marketing that Never Sleeps: Real-Time Agility
Spotify’s record 751 million users? No fluke. Their Wrapped campaign and free-tier tweaks were driven by real-time user insights—not gut feelings. Adaptive marketing lets you pivot instantly when you spot a trend or threat. According to recent studies, brands practicing adaptive strategies see 25-35% faster revenue growth compared to their less-flexible peers.

## 2. AI Optimization: Beyond SEO
If ‘SEO’ still makes you think of keyword stuffing, you’re overdue for a reboot. Today’s leaders are running AI engine optimization audits (think: answer engine optimization, or AEO). That means your content doesn’t just need to *rank*, it needs to *answer*—giving AI models what they crave to surface your brand. Plain English: Business owners using answer-focused, adaptive content are seeing 2x the qualified traffic—from both search engines and AI platforms—over those still stuck in 2010 tactics.

## 3. Proven Playbooks (and When to Burn Them)
Nvidia’s DreamDojo just trained on 44,000 hours of human video to fuel smarter robots—because adaptation beats perfection. The same goes for marketing: Test, measure, adapt, repeat. We see the most growth when clients ditch their “safe” routines for data-driven experimentation. Those who audit and optimize their strategies quarterly, not annually, are 60% more likely to outpace their competitors.

---

Practical Takeaways:
- Audit your marketing quarterly. Younger companies and digital natives are setting the pace—not Fortune 100s.
- Layer in AI and answer engine optimization, targeting the right questions, not just keywords.
- Build a real-time trend dashboard and empower your team to act on it—don’t bury insights in reports.

Adaptive marketing isn’t a shiny buzzword. It’s about survival—and serious growth—in the noisy digital jungle of 2026.

To learn more about how adaptive marketing can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

If Your Website Can’t Answer, You’re Invisible: The Rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) in 2026

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:51:40 GMT

Let’s rip the Band-Aid off: if your website is built for Google circa 2016, you’re invisible to the algorithms running the internet in 2026. Why? Because the game isn’t just SEO anymore. It’s AEO — Answer Engine Optimization. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re handing your competitors your digital lunch money.

AEO is how businesses carve out relevance in an AI-driven world where tools like Gemini, Alexa, and even customer support bots are the *first* stop for customers looking for answers — not your website, not even Google’s classic results page. Here’s how to get ahead:

1. Chunk Content for AI, Not Humans (Well, Sort Of)
The old playbook said ‘long form posts’ — now, keeping it short is king. AI answer engines parse your content into bite-sized chunks. Best practices: break your pages into 2- to 4-sentence paragraphs, use heading tags liberally, and make each block answer a distinct question. Think of your site as an FAQ, not a manifesto. The more direct your answer, the more likely an AI pulls it for its responses. Google’s latest push on ‘Helpful AI’ isn’t just marketing hype — their Gemini ad campaign proves they’re betting on answer quality, not keyword stuffing.

2. Structure and Metadata Matter (More Than Ever)
If you want to be cited by an AI, you need to play by its rules. That means Schema markup, FAQPage, HowTo, and Article schemas everywhere you have an answer worth sharing. AI relies on structured data like this to extract context, relevance, and authority. Kilo CLI and Mistral’s open models gobble up clean metadata faster than a bot can say “contextual search.” It’s not nerdy detail — it’s your ticket to becoming *the* answer.

3. Voice Is Eating the World — Optimize for it
The CEO of ElevenLabs recently called voice interfaces the next big thing for AI. Translation: tomorrow’s customers are asking (not typing) their questions. Structure your content in a natural, conversational tone. Include direct answers to questions like, “What’s your return policy?” or “How much does this cost?” so you’re findable in voice search. If Chris Hemsworth is getting roasted by AI in Amazon’s Super Bowl ads, your brand can’t afford to sound like a robot.

Real Results, Now
A recent trend report shows that AI answer engines are outpacing traditional search as the main source of truth for consumers — and brands that win at AEO are seeing up to a 33% lift in featured snippets, call volumes, and aided recall.

The bottom line: AEO isn’t another buzzword. If you aren’t structuring your digital presence for answer engines, you’re already behind. Time to play catch-up (or better yet, leap ahead).

To learn more about how AEO can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Unlimited PTO Is a Mirage: Smart Businesses See Through the Hype

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 16:41:51 GMT

Let’s rip the band-aid off: Unlimited PTO isn’t the dream benefit it’s made out to be. Sure, companies love to dangle it as a recruiting carrot, but for business owners, the reality is far more complicated — and possibly riskier for your team and your brand.

## The Problem (and Opportunity)
We’re witnessing a talent war where every job posting screams about perks and culture. Unlimited PTO sounds killer — say it in a boardroom, and you’ll see a lot of nodding heads. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most employees with unlimited PTO end up taking less time off than those with traditional accrual policies. Why? Ambiguity breeds anxiety: employees worry about what’s “too much,” leadership isn’t always clear, and no one wants to be the first to test the limits.

According to a 2025 survey cited by Fortune, workers on unlimited PTO plans in the U.S. took on average 13 days off in the last year — two fewer than their peers with traditional allowances. When’s the last time a so-called perk made your team work harder for less?

## Insight #1: Unlimited PTO Sells, but Creates (Expensive) Uncertainty
From a marketing standpoint, unlimited PTO reads like gold on a job post. It’s a quick way to show you’re modern, progressive, and care about work-life balance. But here’s a stat you can’t ignore: A 2025 Workhuman study found confusion around unlimited PTO is one of the top drivers of disengagement and burnout, especially among high performers who feel pressure to always be “on.”

## Insight #2: Policy Without Structure Means Pain — For Everyone
Unlimited PTO is often code for “figure it out yourself.” Managers squirm when asked: “Will my time off look bad at review time?” HR cringes when conflicts pop up. Worse, in some states, unclear PTO policies can create legal headaches — especially when people leave the company and expect a payout. No one wants a lawsuit because you embraced a trend without a process.

## Insight #3: Trust is Good. Transparency is Better.
You can have a flexible time-off culture without falling into the unlimited PTO trap. Set a clear baseline (“take at least X days”), encourage managers to lead by example, and normalize unplugging. Build in check-ins to ensure people actually *use* their time off — or you risk your benefits backfiring.

## What Business Owners Should Do (Now)
1. Audit Your Policy: Is your PTO policy clear, fair, and actively used? If not, start there.
2. Communicate Expectations: Don’t just hand-waive "unlimited." Tell employees what an appropriate amount is — and back it up in practice.
3. Track and Report: Monitor actual PTO taken. If people aren’t unplugging, intervene.
4. Train Managers: Empower them to have honest conversations about time off and set the right tone.

Unlimited PTO might be a shiny object, but smart leaders look past the hype. Over-promising and under-delivering on benefits can wreck culture faster than you think. Want to offer a perk that truly attracts and retains talent? Focus on real flexibility and clarity.

To learn more about how building the right PTO policy can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Why Your Marketing Needs Less 'Algorithmic Sameness' and More Bold Moves in 2026

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:04:03 GMT

Ever feel like your marketing is stuck on repeat—lookalike posts, generic campaigns, same-old offers? Welcome to the club. But here’s the real problem: in today’s blizzard of content, sameness is a growth killer.

2026’s smartest marketers are not just jumping on trends—they’re actively rebelling against them. Let’s unwrap a few lessons from brands leading the charge, and what you can steal (ethically) for your playbook.

Insight 1: Be Wonderfully Unordinary (Take a Page from Crocs)
Remember when Crocs were the punchline of every fashion joke? Fast forward: Crocs is crushing it with Gen Z, driven by their new “Wonderfully Unordinary” platform. Instead of chasing algorithmic perfection or the bland consensus of ‘what works,’ Crocs is leaning hard into community, self-expression, and unapologetic weirdness.

Why it works: Gen Z—now the biggest global consumer cohort—demands authenticity. They’ll shell out for brands that champion individuality and offer ways to co-create the experience. Homogenized, algorithm-blessed campaigns? Those are DOA. (For your brand: double down on user-generated content, and let your audience drive the story—messiness and all.)

Insight 2: Experiences Beat Ads—Ask Applebee’s and the Super Bowl Crowd
Applebee’s made headlines this year with its ‘Date Night Pass’—a $200 all-you-can-eat offer that sold out in seconds and ignited TikTok buzz. Rather than spam feeds, Applebee’s designed a real experience—scarcity, shareability, and fun in one. Their secret? The campaign was social-first, focused on value and community, not empty impressions.

Even at the Super Bowl, where $7 million thirty-second spots are routine, brands are shifting. The winners? Those who use the Big Game as a springboard for stunts, teasers, and layered storytelling before and after the event—making their spend work across every channel, not just TV.

Insight 3: Social is Fragmenting, But Boldness Cuts Through
All signs for 2026 say: Social marketing isn’t just about volume—it’s about cultural resonance. The strongest moves aren’t chasing every new app, but nailing one or two channels where you can build deep community and be truly memorable. That might mean championing a polarizing product, backing real causes, or co-creating with your customers. Just make one promise: you won’t be another brand polluting the feed with beige mediocrity.

Practical Takeaways
- Audit your marketing for ‘sameness’—cut anything that could work for your competitor’s brand.
- Invest in branded experiences you can’t copy-paste (events, challenges, limited launches, etc.)
- Let your customers talk—and listen. Prioritize user-led content, partnerships, and co-creation.
- Don’t default to the broadest social channels—double down where your community already thrives.

Ready to burn the playbook and make marketing fun (and profitable) again?

To learn more about how bold brand moves can help drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Brand Storytelling in 2026: Why Social Feeds Are Yesterday’s News

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:28:20 GMT

Let’s get real: If your brand storytelling starts and ends on Instagram, you’re playing a 2023 game in a 2026 arena. The social feed gold rush is over—or at least, it’s getting crowded and, frankly, predictable. This year, the savviest retailers are moving beyond the algorithm and finding new ways to make their stories stick with real, engaged customers.

What’s really working in brand storytelling right now?

1. Experiences Over Eyescrolls
More than 64% of consumers crave content that feels tailored and interactive—not just another flashy video on mute. Take Campari’s pivot into the low-alcohol market: it’s not just a product launch, it’s an experiential shift. Their branded events and behind-the-scenes tastings have created excitement that a flat feed post just can’t. If you’re only posting product shots, you’re missing the cocktail party entirely.

2. Channels Your Competitors Ignore
Retailers are finally wising up to channel fatigue. The big winners are blending physical events, owned media, and yes—even print. (Didn’t think you’d see print again? Surprise!) Data from late 2025 shows brands using multiple touchpoints—pop-ups, podcasts, even interactive QR codes—see up to 27% longer engagement times than those sticking to socials alone. If you want to be memorable, think beyond the screen.

3. Stories With Substance (and a Purpose)
In this AI-everything world, authenticity wins. Consumers know a bot-written post when they see one. Brands that talk about real challenges (supply chain issues, sustainability efforts, founder flops) are seeing double-digit increases in trust scores. Look at Blackpink’s Lisa and NikeSkims; their partnership is making big waves not because of celebrity, but because it tells a story of empowerment and inclusivity that customers actually care about.

Practical Playbook for 2026:
- Audit your current channels: Where is your ‘story’ landing flat? Cut what’s not working.
- Invest in at least one immersive or interactive experience this quarter—a branded event, a live stream, or a customer-driven campaign.
- Use data to find overlooked touchpoints: is your audience hanging out on podcasts, Discord, or in-person events?
- Don’t hide your real stories: Transparency = Trust in 2026. Show your team, your challenges, and your process.

It’s 2026. Time to leave autopilot behind and elevate your brand storytelling—or risk invisibility among business owners who get it.

To learn more about how storytelling off social media can drive your business, contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Entrepreneurship Is Booming—Are You Ready to Ride the 2026 Wave?

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:44:18 GMT

If you think the age of entrepreneurship is cooling off, think again. America is staring down the barrel of the hottest startup explosion in a generation. In 2026, the country is projected to set all-time records for new business creation—yes, records. The question isn’t just "Will you get a share?" but "Are you prepared to ride this tsunami or get swept aside?"

Why the Sudden Surge?
We’re not in 2020 anymore. According to Inc., several factors are juicing the engine: the rise of young entrepreneurs, a narrowing tech gender gap, and, you guessed it, AI-driven business models making it easier (and cheaper) than ever to launch. Global startup ecosystem growth hit 21% in 2025, outpacing expectations. Bottom line: Opportunity has never looked this good or this competitive.

Key Insight #1: Young Guns Are Taking Over
Gen Z and Millennials aren’t just swiping on TikTok—they’re launching companies at breakneck speed. The barrier to starting a business has never been lower thanks to cloud tools, social commerce, and access to global audiences from day one. This younger cohort isn’t afraid to experiment or pivot, which means old-school approaches simply won’t cut it. Want proof? Startup growth rates hit a 21% global high in 2025, driven largely by under-35 founders.

Key Insight #2: The Tech Gender Gap Is Finally Shifting
Diversity in entrepreneurship is actually happening. In 2025, the confidence gap in AI skills between young women (56%) and young men (74%) is shrinking, and we’re seeing more female leaders in high-growth startups. A competitive edge in 2026 will belong to those who break out of the look-alike founder club—because the data shows diverse teams, on average, perform better and innovate faster.

Key Insight #3: AI Is the Great Leveler (and Divider)
AI isn’t a buzzword; it’s the battlefield. Eighty percent of high-growth companies in 2025 credited AI adoption—not just efficiency, but as the core of their business model. If you’re not integrating AI into your offerings, operations, or marketing, you’re basically bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. From automating customer service to predictive analytics for sales and supply chain, the businesses embracing AI are widening the gap from the rest.

Practical Moves for Business Owners
- Stay flexible and know your top priorities: Don’t chase every shiny object. Prioritize adaptability and continuous learning.
- Expand your talent pool: Seek diverse (especially younger and non-traditional) hires with fresh perspectives.
- Audit your AI stack—now: You don’t need a data scientist in a lab coat, but you do need to get sharp on what AI-driven tools are out there for your industry.
- Network wider, not just higher: Tap into emerging entrepreneur communities to spot trends before the rest of the market catches up.

The bottom line? Whether you’re a seasoned founder or an established brand, the next year will separate the leaders from the laggards. Don’t leave your growth to chance. To learn more about how entrepreneurship trends can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

X's $1M Articles Feature: Is This Twitter's Game-Changer for Business Content (or Another Shiny Gimmick?)

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:56:30 GMT

Let’s get something out of the way: When X (formerly Twitter) dangles a $1 million carrot in front of creators for using its new Articles Feature, you better believe it’s not just about generosity. It’s a play for content dominance, and if you’re not paying attention, you’re handing competitors the spotlight.

The Problem : Most business content on X gets lost in the scrolling void, and let’s be honest—the micro-post era is showing its age. Brands need ways to hold attention and monetize expertise, not just chase likes.

## What’s the Hype? X’s Articles Feature, in a Nutshell
X’s Articles let brands and creators publish long-form content directly onto the platform. And now with the $1M incentive, expect a gold rush—early adopters are already seeing surges in visibility and engagement. This isn’t just a traffic play; it’s an ecosystem shift. X is positioning itself as a competitor to Substack, LinkedIn articles, and even traditional blogs, but with its viral DNA.

## Insight #1: Native Long-Form = Big Upside
According to January 2025 usage data, top brands testing the Articles Feature are seeing time-on-page metrics nearly 2x higher compared to standard X posts. More dwell time means better brand recall and more room for calls-to-action. Add in the payout carrot, and creators are motivated to pour their best stuff here first.

## Insight #2: Paid Content Isn’t Just for Creators—It’s a Strategic Business Move
There’s a trend among B2B companies and SaaS brands using Articles as gated content, offering industry insights and reports as premium posts—sometimes for a fee. Early reports suggest conversion rates up to 18% higher when leads are nurtured through native articles versus off-platform email sequences. Why? Less friction and more immediate trust. Paid does NOT equal ineffective (despite some old-school thinking).

## Insight #3: Opportunity for Thought Leadership and SEO—Right on X
Articles on X are starting to rank in search. That’s right: your well-crafted, keyword-rich explainer isn’t just warming a feed; it’s showing up on Google. For decision-makers tired of battling the LinkedIn or blog wars, this is a fast track to authority—in a space your competitors may not even know exists yet.

## Practical Takeaways for Business Owners
1. Start Now : Early adopters get outsized rewards—visibility, engagement, and (yes) a shot at a share of that $1M.
2. Think Content Funnel : Use X Articles to tease gated whitepapers, video series, or event sign-ups. Measure conversion and retention closely.
3. Blend Paid and Free : Test premium Articles for industry insights. Offer value up front, and watch for paid conversion lift versus your old-school blog tactics.

X’s Articles Feature isn’t just another shiny object—it’s a new front in the content wars, backed with real money and audience reach. Businesses that ignore this are literally leaving dollars on the table.

Ready to discover how long-form content on X can drive real business results for you? Contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

AI Is Eating Your Ad Budget—Unless You Learn to Tame It (Now)

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 03:45:53 GMT

Every year, business owners face a familiar question: "Is this new marketing trend hype, or is it about to eat my lunch?" In 2025, generative AI in advertising isn’t just a trend—it’s a tidal wave, and if you’re not steering, you’re sinking.

Here’s the kicker: ad testing with generative AI (think ChatGPT running creative at scale) is no longer just experimental. Google, Meta—even your competitors across the street—are using AI to churn out thousands of ad variations, dynamically optimized in real-time. But while everyone’s caught up in the AI arms race, most brands risk handing over control—and cash—to algorithms they barely understand.

Insight #1: AI-Generated Ad Spend Is Skyrocketing
By January 2025, global ad spend on AI-generated campaigns has jumped 120% year-over-year. Major companies report marketing and sales as the #1 area where AI directly increases revenue. Netflix, for instance, revealed $1.5 billion in ad revenue thanks in part to AI-driven ad placement—proof the big players are betting the farm on algorithms.

Insight #2: Control Is Shifting—But You Don’t Have to Surrender
As LLMs (large language models) design, sequence, and even tweak ads mid-campaign, human oversight often drops out of the loop. Anthropic’s CEO threw down the gauntlet at Davos, warning that brands blindly relying on black-box AI will lose. The antidote? Assert your control: set your own audience rules, brand voice, and campaign triggers—don’t default to “auto-pilot” just because AI makes it easy.

Insight #3: Personalization and Engagement Are the New Table Stakes
2025 consumers are savvy—over half say they notice AI-crafted ads, but that’s not enough to win their loyalty. Dynamic content that adapts to real-world events or user habits now outperforms static messages by up to 3x in engagement, according to recent industry trackers. Brands experimenting with adaptive storytelling (and yes, a pinch of humor or humanity) are cutting through the noise.

Practical Takeaways (No Fluff):
- Audit Your AI: Know exactly which tools are shaping your campaigns, and set guardrails. Don’t trust “set it and forget it” platforms.
- Customize, Don’t Commoditize: Use AI to personalize, but keep brand standards high. Audiences spot lazy automation a mile away.
- Test Ruthlessly: AI lets you iterate fast. Run micro-campaigns, track real metrics (not vanity impressions), and ditch losers quickly.

To learn more about how modern AI advertising can help drive your business—without losing your brand’s soul—contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

What Every Growing Business Must Know About AI Powered Marketing

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 18:17:40 GMT

What Every Growing Business Must Know About AI Powered Marketing

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If you're running a business and trying to grow in 2025, this is the most important video you'll watch. AI isn't just a trend, it's a marketing weapon, and businesses that know how to use it are scaling faster, spending smarter, and outperforming the competition. Today I'll break down exactly what every growing business needs to know about AI powered marketing, from tools to strategy to crucial mindset shifts. So what is AI marketing really, most people hear AI and think robots writing content, but AI marketing is truly about augmentation. It's using machine learning to do repetitive data, heavy creative, or insight driven tasks faster and smarter. Think of it this way, AI doesn't replace marketers, it amplifies them. It works across content targeting, automation, analytics, and personalization. And it's not the future. It's already here transforming the landscape of marketing. Why does this matter specifically for growing businesses?

Big brands have massive teams and unlimited budgets. Growing businesses often don't. That's precisely where AI levels the playing field. It lets you do more with less money, less time, and significantly less trial and error. AI helps you punch above your weight. Imagine personalized email campaigns, optimized ad copy, and high quality content all at scale without the need to hire an entire team. AI enables rapid AB testing, generates crucial data insights and streamlines lead generation, all designed to accelerate your growth. Let's get specific. Here's where growing businesses should be using AI right now. First, content creation, blogs, emails, social captions, and even video scripts. Second, customer targeting AI helps segment your audience with precision, even predicting future behavior. Third, chatbots and support providing 24, 2, 47, lead capture and constant customer engagement. Fourth, add copy and creative generating instant variations and smarter messaging that converts. And finally, analytics.

Delivering powerful insights without requiring a dedicated data team. The key is to prioritize quick wins. Use AI where your business is already spending the most time. And remember, pair AI with your unique brand voice. Don't fully automate. Instead, use AI as your copilot. Now let's talk about the best AI marketing tools for SMBs. For content and emails, look to chat GPT or Jasper. For quick sales pages and ad copy, copy.ai or write Sonic are excellent. For SEO focused content optimization, consider surfer, SEO or Market Muse. For CRM, email flows and automation, integrate hub HubSpot AI or Salesforce Einstein. For stunning visuals, thumbnails and ad creatives, explore midjourney or Canva ai. And for chatbots that convert, check out ManyChat or TIO ai. When choosing select tools that address your biggest bottleneck, start with just one or two, master them and then expand. The process is simple.

Test, learn, optimize. The key to success with AI isn't replacement. It's integration. Don't just use AI randomly build it directly into your existing marketing system. Think about what's consuming most of your time right now. Start there, document your current workflows and identify precisely where AI can step in to create efficiencies. Set clear expectations. AI assists, but you guide and always track your results. What's improving? Is it speed? Lead generation or sales? Measure it to truly understand AI's impact. The fastest growing brands of 2025 aren't necessarily the ones spending the most. They're the ones adapting the fastest. AI marketing isn't, isn't optional anymore. It's absolutely essential for sustainable growth. So the question isn't if you should use ai, it's where do you start today? Drop a comment below with your biggest marketing challenge. We want to hear from you, and if you found this valuable, please like this video and subscribe for more smart growth tools every single week. Don't miss our next video where we'll dive even deeper into practical AI strategies for your business. Would you like any further edits to the script?

Automate or Stagnate? The Future of Marketing Workflows

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 19:20:54 GMT

Automate or Stagnate? The Future of Marketing Workflows

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Still copying content across platforms, juggling 10 tabs and burning hours on repetitive tasks. The truth is, if you're not automating your marketing in 2025, you're not just inefficient. You're invisible. In this video, I'll break down the exact workflows top marketers are using to scale faster and why automation is the non-negotiable skill of the decade. Traditional workflows relied on human bandwidth, creating, copying, uploading, tracking, tweaking, reporting all by hand. But content velocity, platform complexity, and AI capabilities have all exploded. If you're not using automation, you're falling behind, not because you're bad at marketing, but because you're too slow to compete. So what does a modern marketing workflow look like? A future ready marketing workflow is AI first automated and adaptive. That means tools, doing the heavy lifting, idea generation, multi-channel distribution, repurposing, and performance feedback without human micromanagement, think less, grind, more guidance. There are five core pillars of automated workflows.

First, ideation use AI tools like Chat, GPT or Claude for instant content plans, angles, hooks, and even audience personas. Next creation, Jasper Notion AI or copy.ai generate full articles, captions, and emails with a consistent voice. Midjourney or Firefly create branded visuals and creative concepts. Third, distribution, metrical, publisher, or later schedule and auto publish across platforms. No more copy paste. Hell connect Zapier or make to trigger campaigns when you publish a new post or video. Fourth, repurposing Descrip and Opus clip. Turn long videos into reels Chat. GPT summarizes interviews into newsletters. Finally, the feedback loop. Use GA four plus AI dashboards to auto report what's working and push winning content into new formats or audiences. Let's look at a real life workflow example. Let's say you're launching a new product. Here's how it looks When automated Chat GPT generates launch angles and hook ideas. Jasper writes the sales page and emails.

Midjourney creates the hero images and ad creatives script repurposes your explainer video into three tiktoks Metro cool schedules across all platforms, and Zapier sends Slack updates and auto uploads, everything to notion. Now let's tackle some common myths about automation. Myth one, it kills creativity. Automation frees up your creativity. You stop wasting time on the how and focus on the why. Myth two, it's expensive or hard to learn. Many tools are free or low cost. Most are drag and drop simple. It's not about budget, it's about mindset. Myth three, it replaces humans. It enhances humans. You become the strategist, not the robot doing repetitive labor. So what's next? For the future of automated marketing? AI tools will soon recommend campaigns before you even ask. Custom GPTs will run your content engine. You'll clone your voice for narration, build prompts for every team, and automate creative testing on autopilot. 2025 is now you have two options. Automate or stagnate, one saves you time and scales your impact. The other keeps you stuck in the same loop. If this video sparked ideas, hit like, drop a comment with your favorite AI tool and subscribe for more high performance workflows.

Your CRM Is Dumb Without AI — Here's the Smarter Way

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:21:41 GMT

Your CRM Is Dumb Without AI — Here's the Smarter Way

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Here's a harsh truth. Your CRM might be loaded with contacts, deal stages, and emails, but without ai, it's basically just a fancy spreadsheet. You're collecting data, but you're not doing anything smart with it. Today I'm going to show you why your CRM is underperforming and the smarter AI powered way to finally make it work for you. Most CRMs just store manual inputs, names, deals, notes that your team has to remember to fill in. And let's be real. Nobody updates CRMs religiously. It becomes a graveyard of contacts, not a sales growth engine. Zero predictive insights. No action prompts, totally reactive. Instead of proactive, AI turns your CRM into a living learning brain. Instead of just storing data, it helps you decide what to do Next, prioritize hot leads, autofill tasks, write emails, analyze behavior lead scoring based on behavior, not gut feel, predictive close rates and deal forecasting.

Automated follow-up suggestions. AI tracks customer intent signals, email opens, page visits, response patterns. It learns which prospects are warming up and which are wasting time. It even suggests the best time to follow up or how to respond. Auto summarizing sales calls and logging notes suggesting personalized subject lines and CTAs. Identifying churn, risk and current customers tools. You should know HubSpot, ai, Salesforce, Einstein, Zoho, Zia fresh sales, AI and enrichment and automation layers like apollo.io, clay, or levity. Don't ditch your CRM. Enhance it. AI integrations are the upgrade your team actually needs. Start with what saves your team time. First, start by identifying your CRM pain points. Is it manual logging? Lead scoring? Follow-ups. Then layer in the AI that solves that. First, don't overhaul everything at once. Set up automation that saves time daily, not someday. Use AI for input, assistance and output intelligence. Train your team. This is a co-pilot, not a robot. Track. Key metrics response time, close rate, lead quality. Your CRM isn't working against you, but it's definitely not working for you if it doesn't have ai. Every growing business needs intelligent automation to compete, so ask yourself, do you want to keep guessing or start knowing? Smash that like button. If your CRM needs this upgrade, drop a comment. What CRM tool are you using and do you think it's smart enough?

Neuromarketing Secrets Influence Without Manipulation

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 14:14:38 GMT

Neuromarketing Secrets Influence Without Manipulation

Ever wonder why some ads stick in your head while others disappear in seconds? There's a science behind persuasion, and it's not shady. It's called neuromarketing. In this video, I'll show you how to ethically use brain science to influence decisions without manipulation or tricks. Neuromarketing is the intersection of neuroscience and marketing. Understanding how people's brains respond to messaging, visuals, sounds, and triggers. It's not about manipulation. It's about creating content that feels natural and compelling to the subconscious brain. We're tapping into emotions, memory, trust, and instinct, not coercion. People don't make decisions logically. They justify decisions logically, but they buy emotionally. Neuromarketing focuses on the limbic brain where feelings like safety, connection, and excitement live. This is why stories work better than statistics and why simplicity always wins first, emotional triggers use words, visuals, and colors that activate feelings. Think fear of missing out, belonging, freedom, success, security.

Second, simplicity and clarity. The brain filters out noise. Keep your message clear. One message, one outcome, one. Call to action. Third, storytelling. Overselling stories activate multiple regions of the brain, not just logic. Use case studies, testimonials, hero journeys of your brand or customers. Fourth, visual hierarchy. The eye follows patterns. Use size, contrast, and motion to guide attention where you want it to go. And fifth, reciprocity and trust give before you ask. Free value builds trust. Consistency builds familiarity. There's a crucial difference here. Manipulation, hides the truth, pressures the buyer, and removes choice. Influence, on the other hand, builds trust, educates and empowers Decision-making. Neuromarketing done right is about creating experiences that feel aligned, not forced. Let's look at some real world examples. Apple doesn't sell tech. They sell identity and simplicity. Their language is emotional, clean, and consistent. Nike's just do it, taps into the brain's desire for action, confidence and belonging.

And Spotify uses personalization and surprise to activate dopamine, think wrapped and curated playlists. So what's next? The future of neuromarketing is exciting. With AI and biometrics, brands can now test brain response in real time and adjust content based on real emotions. Soon campaigns may adapt live based on how your nervous system reacts the goal, less guessing, more resonance, and still totally ethical. The real secret to neuromarketing, respect your audience. Know how the brain works, and speak to the parts that matter. Influence with empathy, not pressure. That's where trust and conversions actually come from. If this helped shift your perspective, hit like, comment your favorite brain-based strategy and subscribe for more high trust marketing content.

The AI Marketing Stack You Didn’t Know You Needed But Now Can’t Live Without

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 18:14:00 GMT

The AI Marketing Stack You Didn’t Know You Needed But Now Can’t Live Without

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What if I told you that your entire marketing workflow from brainstorming to execution can now be done faster, smarter, and more profitably with just the right AI tools? In this video, I'm revealing the AI marketing stack that elite marketers are using in 2025, and it's probably not what you think. Stick around to the end. I've got a secret combo that can double your content output without adding a single person to your team. Most marketers still juggle spreadsheets, Trello boards, Google Docs, and late night content sprints. It's exhausting and inefficient. You're not behind. Tech is just moving faster than our teams can adapt. Idea paralysis, poor execution, no bandwidth. Sound familiar? Think of it like this. An AI marketing stack is your marketing team in a box, a set of AI tools, working in sync to plan, write, design, analyze and optimize your entire funnel. It's not one tool, it's how they talk to each other.

Think strategy, content design, scheduling, analytics, iteration. Here's the setup for strategy. Use chat, GPT or Claude AI for idea generation. Customer research and brand tone development for content creation. Jasper AI or notion AI for fast on-brand blog posts, emails and scripts when it comes to design. Midjourney or Adobe Firefly for ad creatives, thumbnails and product mockups for video and audio script or runway ML for repurposing videos, editing podcasts and creating faceless reels for scheduling and repurposing metrical or buffer plus Zapier to automate posts, test timing and format reuse. And finally, for analytics and feedback, Hotjar GA four plus AI dashboards like Airtable with GPT integrations to spot what's working and what's not. Let's walk through a launch. Say you're launching a new product. Here's how the AI stack works. Chat GPT generates customer personas and campaign themes. Jasper writes the landing page and email sequence midjourney designs, hero graphics and ad creatives, descrip edits of video teaser and TikTok clips.

Metric cool schedules everything automatically. And GA four and GPT dashboards report what's converting the real magic automations. Zapier make.com or native integrations are the glue. For example, a new blog from Jasper can auto post to WordPress and LinkedIn. A new YouTube video can auto generate social snippets and emails, and a high performing ad can trigger AI generated variations for AB testing. Want to level up? Try custom GPTs trained on your brand voice AI notion, dashboards that brief you daily on content health voice cloning tools for consistent narration on video and prompt libraries to speed up every step. Here's the truth. AI isn't the future. It's now the marketers who adopt these stacks aren't replacing humans. They're multiplying their output. The question isn't, will AI take my job? It's who's using AI to outperform me? Like, comment, and subscribe. If you want the exact stack guide I use with clients.

AI Search: What We're Doing for Our Clients—and What You Need to Do for Your Website in the Shifting World of SEO

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:07:18 GMT

AI Search: What We're Doing for Our Clients—and What You Need to Do for Your Website in the Shifting World of SEO

The Future of Search Is Here. Is Your Website Ready?

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the way people find information online is changing—fast. And if your website is still playing by the old SEO rulebook, it’s about to get left behind.

AI-driven search is rewriting the playbook. Google’s rolling out its Search Generative Experience (SGE), and platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude aren’t just crawling your content—they’re summarizing it, interpreting it, and delivering answers directly to users without necessarily sending traffic to your site.

So even if you have the right answers, you're no longer guaranteed visibility.

We're not hoping this trend slows down—we’re building for what’s next. And more importantly, we’re building for you.

AI Is the New Gatekeeper

Traditional SEO focused on keywords, backlinks, meta descriptions, and mobile optimization. Those still matter—but they’re no longer enough.

Today, machines are the first to read your site. And they aren’t evaluating how visually appealing your homepage is or how clever your copy sounds. They’re scanning for structure, clarity, and context. They want to know what your page is about instantly.

So we asked ourselves: what makes a site readable by AI?

The answer: quite a bit. And we’ve already started addressing it.

What We’re Doing to Prepare Your Site for AI Search

We’re baking AI-readiness into every Zack Greenfield developed site using our Mysite editor platform—automatically. No extra work needed. Here's how:

AI-Optimized HTML Structure

We’re refining the behind-the-scenes code to be machine-friendly. That includes semantic HTML tags, clean heading structures, proper metadata, and schema markup. These elements may be invisible to your site’s visitors, but they’re critical to how machines understand and rank your content.

Structured Content That’s Easy to Summarize

AI tools often don’t show links—they show direct answers. That means your content needs to be digestible, scannable, and well-structured. We help shape your pages so that search engines can extract clear, valuable information quickly and accurately.

Real-Time Adaptation to AI’s Evolution

The AI landscape is moving fast. We’re not taking a “set it and forget it” approach. Our teams are constantly updating the platform to keep pace with how AI tools evaluate and display content.

Auto-Generated llms.txt: Your AI-Friendly Content Map

Every time you publish a Zack Greenfield developed site using our Mysite editor platform, we automatically create an llms.txt file. It includes:

A list of your live URLs—blog posts, store products and categories, and multilingual pages
Meta descriptions for each page (or titles if descriptions aren’t set)
Only public-facing content—no drafts or no-index pages

This small file carries a lot of weight. Most sites don’t have it. Yours does. That means AI tools are far more likely to:

Accurately understand and represent your business
Link to your real, live content
Present your brand professionally across the AI-driven web

Want to see it for yourself? Add /llms.txt to the end of your site’s URL and you’ll see exactly how your site presents itself to AI.

What You Can Do Next

We’re handling the technical heavy lifting—but content still matters. Here’s how to make sure your messaging works for both people and machines:

Write to Explain, Not Just to Sell

AI tools are looking for clear, direct answers. Structure your content to address real questions and solve real problems quickly and efficiently.

Use Headers to Guide Readers and Machines

Headings (like H1s and H2s) and bullet points don’t just help with readability—they give your content the structure AI systems need to parse and summarize effectively.

Stop Writing for Google. Start Writing for the New Reality

Think beyond keyword stuffing. Think about what an AI tool would extract from your content. Is it helpful? Is it clear? That’s what matters now.

The Bottom Line

SEO isn’t dead—but it is changing. Ranking is no longer the end goal. Now it’s about showing up in AI-generated answers, in the content summaries delivered directly to billions of users.

The brands that win in this new era won’t necessarily have the flashiest websites. They’ll be the ones that built smart, structured, AI-ready content early—and kept evolving.

We’re making sure every Zack Greenfield developed site using our Mysite editor platform is built for that future.

If you're already working with us, you're ahead of the curve. If not, now’s the time to adapt—before you find yourself wondering why your traffic suddenly dropped off.

The shift is happening. Those who prepare will lead.

The Application of Artificial Intelligence: Why Smart Isn’t Enough Anymore - The Real Power of AI

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:15:00 GMT

The Application of Artificial Intelligence -- Why Smart Isn’t Enough Anymore The Real Power of AI

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You're being lied to. Everyone is telling you to get smarter, study harder, learn more, gain mastery, be an expert, et cetera, et cetera. But here's the truth, being smart is no longer the goal, not in the age of ai. Artificial intelligence is now everywhere. It's free for the most part. It's instant that I think we can all agree on. So the game is just basically completely changed after thousands of years of us little humans working so hard in school, learning to read and write and think and learn and critically think and gain mastery and even go all the way into graduate school with multiple degrees. All in this quest for knowledge and intelligence, our own intelligence. The deal though, is that all just completely shifted and a lot of people don't even know it yet. So let's unpack it and I'm going to give you some thoughts that I had recently about the way things are now, even if we aren't fully acknowledging it.

Alright, so big change if you guys haven't been paying attention, intelligence is now abundant. So let's apply that to some sort of just categories. There used to be a limited number of lawyers that's about to unlock and lawyering is about to just be in full abundance, like a river of legal expertise at everybody's fingertips. It will also happen in areas like medicine as well and many other professions like tax prep and things that traditionally people had to go to school for years and years and years to gain intelligence about all that stuff is being swelled up by AI and is now virtually instant to access. So the value in having all that intelligence is now sort of undermined in a way. But the good news is with all that abundant intelligence, of course we can do a lot more things. So if you're one of those people and you've been working so hard to get smart your whole life and you feel like you just got whipsaw, it's not entirely untrue.

And at the same time, this video, I think maybe frames up where the opportunity is, right? So the reality is, and I went to school a long time ago where you had to just, school was basically some sort of death trial of memorization. We would go in there and memorize words for a spelling test, go in there, memorize formulas for a math test, go in there and memorize shapes for geometry and all these other things. And it was just memorize, study, memorize, be tested on whether you could remember was a lot of high school, certainly. And then in college it starts to be a little bit more like we assume some things. Now how do you want to apply them? Kind of the next step in the hierarchy of learning.

But the reality today is you just don't need to memorize formulas and all of these other things. And in fact, you don't even know how to have to write code because that's being done already by AI to a large degree. And research can be done, and that used to be a whole time consuming task. So we all know that AI can write emails, create business plans, or certainly help get them started, can even do some video editing, which is not awesome yet, but it's also getting better hour by hour and it can even give you life advice. What's a great fitness plan? What should I be eating if I want to lose weight? How should I handle this relationship problem, et cetera, et cetera, based on all the stuff that it's read and researched across the internet. So intelligence is now kind of being commoditized.

And I want to say that in a way that sort of means that while there's still incredible value in knowledge and intelligence, the constraints on it are effectively about to go away. So you're not going to have to go to some one person that's smart in your neighborhood who holds this body of knowledge like the local law firm in order to get legal advice that is going to just be available to everybody. So it'll be a lot more int intelligence to start of going to start looking like water and electricity and some of these things that we just assume are always going to be there when we turn on the tap or flick a light switch. Pretty phenomenal if you think about it. So it's basically giving us instant access to genius for everyone. So what does that mean? We all kind of get that it's there, but what does that mean in terms of the new paradigm?

How are we to operate and how do humans even fit into that? A lot of talk right now, we're just going to only work two days and then sit on the couch or something. That all just seems weird, and I don't even know if that's accurate. Of course nobody has a crystal ball, but it definitely seems a little off that we would all just suddenly chill out and go on a permanent vacation with hundreds of millions of people just sitting around letting I guess things happen while they do other stuff, I don't know. But if intelligence is abundant, what is actually valuable now? Because basically life's work, huge amount of money poured into education and college education and all of these stuff and student loans, there was massive value on acquiring intelligence. But if that's getting commoditized, like I just said, where is the value?

Where do we go now? How do you become valuable in the context of all this? Or how do I become value or how do we add value to a problem-based scenario at all if all answers are theoretically now known at the keystroke? The answer to that I think is an application. So let me clarify a little bit. But the winners going forward aren't necessarily going to be the smartest people, which is a real game changer, right? They're going to be the ones that understand how to apply intelligence very different than having intelligence. And hopefully you can see how different that is. It's kind of the difference between, perhaps you guys can criticize me in the comments here, but a little bit between high school and college. I always like to say in high school you learn to learn and in college hopefully you learn to think.

And those are two different sort of sides of the same coin. And this situation that we're in now, this evolution of computer technology that is now making intelligence abundant by default means that the next thing that we need to do is learn where to apply it and to apply it effectively and how to use it and so forth. So it is the sort of secondary level of intelligence where the profitable roles, the opportunity are in going to be in hosting intelligence, in hosting, dynamic problem solving and services and product development and all the things that go with our economy and the abundant outcome that we all see will now reside in applying intelligence, not necessarily gaining intelligence. So you don't need to know everything anymore, even if you felt like you did or felt like you didn't. Clearly we just don't need to, just need to know what to do with everything that AI can give you in terms of vast resource of intelligence.

So let's talk about some strategy, insight, execution, and a little bit of stuff that has been on my mind lately because obviously we're all thinking about this. And in the marketing business, AI's clearly been a really great tool. It's also presented a lot of challenges. So I don't want to say it's just like this incredible magic wand. It's also taken up a lot of time to figure out how to apply and implement, and we've talked about that on other videos. So careful when bringing into your business is all I have to say on that. But the opportunity going forward now is not in studying more, it's in understanding how to use the existing knowledge and solve problems. So basically looking at what's already available and then looking at how problems can be solved faster, better, more efficiently, and in a way that more people understand them and can access the solutions.

So I would argue on this video, and we're posting this, so this is I guess my permanent record. The AI isn't necessarily going to replace you or me, but someone using AI better than you will replace you. So you get where I'm going with that. The folks that figure out how to apply intelligence are going to be the front runners in this next chapter of human evolution, economic evolution, opportunity, evolution, and so on and so forth. Okay, so let's talk about where the money's at. And I always say this on this channel, the money is in solving problems for people that have problems that can't solve 'em on their own. That's basically the premise for almost, I would say all businesses. All businesses solve problems. If you think there's a business out there that doesn't solve a problem, that makes money, I'd love to hear about it in the comments, maybe I'm wrong, but the last time I checked, we're all solving somebody else's problems that they cannot solve on their own.

So they need us or they need a team or they need some expertise, or in this case, some intelligence that they don't have to come in and solve their problems. But the money now is going to be solving problems faster, but also in solving what were previously more complex problems because of this vast access of intelligence, which again, I said used to be kind of the constraint we used to have to study and get smart and study the problem and study the scenarios and look at all the outcomes and all these time consuming things is all very much accelerated now. So for instance, in creating content services and businesses powered by ai, things are just not going to be built the old way because they're not going to be built in a way that is for the human interface. So that's another thing to think about.

The actual geometry of workflow is now shifting. So the bridge between AI and people who don't know how to use it is complicated, but one of the best things that you can do and that I can do is start being that bridge, right? The bridge between intelligence and application of intelligence or the bridge between intelligence and the problem. And that is the sort of application bridge. And there is a ton of opportunity right there. There's basically unlimited demand for people who can say, yeah, I know how to use that tool and I can make something valuable for you, or I can solve your problem because I have set this up to do that. Okay? So you don't have to sit there and say, oh, I'm smart. I know all the answers. That's not where it is anymore. The trick now is saying, yes, I know how to put it all together and get you the answer.

Okay, so I might be stating the obvious, but I like to work some of this stuff out online with you here on YouTube because it's all evolving and every week that we're working on stuff here at the agency and also facing the world just like you are, brings thoughts. And I think that this is sort of the clearest way to look forward with some positivity or potential opportunity. And I always like to look at stuff like this and say, okay, where is the opportunity? And I really believe that it's here in the way that I'm describing today. So stop worrying about acquiring intelligence just to store it, hang onto it, constrain it, play some sort of gatekeeper to it, which is a lot of what professions have done over the last several, let's call it thousands of years, that game is over. Now you're going to start applying intelligence, building with intelligence, monetizing intelligence, and solving problems rapidly, efficiently, and in new ways with an abundance of intelligence.

And the world has never been more ready for new creators, thinkers, and doers who are willing to partner with ai, leverage it and position them in that more hosting role coordinator, almost like quarterback if you're a sports fan. So the tools are here, the question is, are you using them right today? Do you know enough to even get started? And what can you do? If not you, either way light me up in the comment, I'd love to hear what you guys think about all this stuff and maybe add to it. Maybe I'm off base, I don't know, but this is where I'm seeing things today. And if I don't hear you in the comments, hopefully I see you next time on YouTube and maybe just see you as a subscriber to the channel.

Advertising and Marketing Variables We Can Control in a Shifting Business Environment

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 06 May 2025 14:47:40 GMT

Advertising and Marketing Variables We Can Control in a Shifting Business Environment

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Are you tired of trying to market your business when everything feels out of control? Recessions, AI changes, platform updates. It's wild out there. We all know that. But here's the good news, some marketing variables are still in your hands. Let's talk about what you actually can control and how to make those moves count for your business in uncertain times. Message clarity is so important. Confused buyers just simply don't buy. So your message needs to be laser clear, super tight about who you want to help, what you solve, and why it matters to them right now. So get rid of the jargon, the cliches, say everything straight. Your audience should understand your value in five seconds or less. Okay? We all know you can't afford to market to everybody. No brand really can. Even the biggest brands in the world have to make targeting decisions. So double down on your ideal customer, what they're feeling, what they're fearing, and what they're needing today.

Update your customer avatars and make sure that those are current for today's buying environment. And make sure that your buyer's world hasn't shifted and you've just kept the offer somewhere off on the left side of the road. So get the targeting right, but also make sure that you're empathizing and understanding your potential ideal customer In the changing environment that we're in, content consistency is key. Algorithms change. Platforms evolve, but consistency is algorithm proof, right? So be consistent. Make sure you're messaging at the right frequency for your audience. Post with purpose, educate, entertain, and then of course, convert. Set a content calendar and stick to it, even if it's super simple, at least that keeps your feet to the fire and keeps you heading in the right direction. All right, let's talk about offer positioning in tough markets. The best offer wins, and you're seeing a ton of that right now as we publish this video.

There's a ton of value-based offers out in the market. So it's not just the loudest one, it's the best offer. So work on your bundles, bonuses, price anchors, and make your offer feel like it's a no-brainer in terms of value. People should look at that and just say, man, that is a great deal. So communicate the value, not just the price. And I can't say that enough. We talk about it all the time on this channel, but value is king. Price is only an issue in the absence of perceived value. So focus on how you can create value around your products and services. Make it urgent, but don't seem desperate. Let's talk about email and your own assets or first party data. Okay? I've said this plenty of times, and if you haven't had it happen to you, maybe this video will save you. But don't build your empire on rented land.

Yeah, you heard it from me. Don't build your empire rented land. And worse than that, don't build your empire on one lot. Okay? So email is still king. Probably has been for as long as I've been doing this. SMS is rising and retargeting, as I always say, is gold. And in terms of messaging tactics. So try to grow your list every single week, and I mean your list in terms of first party data, so that would be emails, SMSs, SMS records, which phone numbers and data sets that you have in your retargeting audiences by setting up your pixels and tags and all of that stuff with your advertising platform so you can get that first party data. Make sure you have at least one email going out every week. That should be a no brainer. You don't want to let your list get cold, and it's so important that you take advantage of those first party data sets that you have, right?

That is your direct line. When any sort of platforms go dark, the algorithm changed, you get your account banned or whatever. Don't put your business at the risk of other people's decision making. Yeah, a little piece of wisdom there. Let's talk about the customer experience. So when budgets are tight, experiences win. Yeah, retention is an important part of acquisition. If the environment is changing, if people are tightening up their spending, every customer counts so much more than it previously did because they're not going to just have an easy replacement behind them. So focus on making sure that your customer experience is exceptional and you're not just running people through the conveyor belt. You're actually holding on to and limiting attrition within your customer base. So think about your onboarding processes, your follow-ups, your thank yous, and your surprises and delights. Those are all part of that customer experience.

And those might be if you have a restaurant or some other type of business, might not be onboarding, but it might be your welcoming script, your hostess stand scripting. And then how's your two minute check at a table? How's your thank yous? Check present presentation, and so forth. Okay. And then what are the surprises and delights when somebody is in your business or working with you? Okay, let's wrap this one up. Stop stressing about what you can control. Get back to focusing on what you can control and double down on these levers, messaging, targeting, content, great value-based offers like we just talked about. And of course, maximizing and leveraging and growing your first party data sets. So if you want help mapping this out for your brand or you want to learn more, keep watching, subscribe, and of course we'll see you on the next one on YouTube.

Reacting to Marketing Fails or Wins

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 13:09:13 GMT

Reacting to Marketing Fails or Wins

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Did you ever see a commercial and think, who approved this crap or might've been a great ad and be like, man, this thing is genius. Today we're going to be reacting to some of the best and worst brand campaigns and let's see who nailed it and who should just delete their agency's phone number. There's a lot to learn from this, so stick to this and let's unpack some of these national campaigns and see who won and see who blew it. Okay, campaign win Dove's, super Bowl, real beauty sketches. So Dove just crushed it. Dove crushed it on this with emotional driven storytelling. Always one of our favorite things to try to figure out how to do on this channel. So if you're not doing that for your brand, work on that. They didn't sell soap and that's so important. They sold what it means, which is self-esteem and feeling good about your skin and how you're going to meet the day.

So this campaign was so powerful and it went viral when that was really a thing. So check that one out if you haven't. But the takeaway there is Dove was selling what it means to use their soap, which is feeling great and having great skin win on that one campaign fail. Let's see here. Pepsi's Kendall Jenner protest ad. This one was just a masterclass in tone Deaf marketing, right? So don't do that. You don't even want to go there. But they tried to join a movement and just miss the mark completely on the whole thing. It was kind of giving, how do you do follow activists type of stuff, right? So total loser on that one. Watch if you're going to trend surf or do anything like that, that you don't just step in it like they did there with that Pepsi ad. All right, let's look at another whim here.

So Tuby, fake remote, super Barrel prank. So funny, Tubby, the television streaming platform hijack people's TV remotes mid Super Bowl with a fake remote, and everyone thought that someone sat on the remote. So it was like chaos, confusion, just overall brilliance, really got ahold of people's attention and a ton of humor there. So the whole thing was just funny, and they just nailed it by being memorable through humor, which is something that we always recommend if it fits your brand. Okay, here's another one that is a Fail Charmin's All Bear, which is a 2024 campaign. Charmin debuted that Al Bear in 2024 to announce toilet paper innovation. This one left people wondering is Al officially being abused? So it just didn't really work out very well, and either way, the tweets and so forth were just not good on that one. So it just didn't come together very well.

And sometimes stuff just doesn't work, no matter how hard you force it. Okay, so let's talk about what makes campaigns or even an individual ad be a win or a total fail. Okay, the clear formula that we all follow, the winning formula is to come with a clear message, which we always talk about on this channel. You cannot be clarity in your advertising. Some sort of emotional hook or humor that draws a viewer in, gets people to remember the whole ad and or why they're watching. And then in the backdrop, the cultural timing is super important. You don't want to just seem like you're coming from another decade unless it's deliberate. And then strong visual identity. Now the fail stuff to watch out for trying too hard, no matter what sort of categorically that might be. Misreading any sort of cultural movement or trend and just kind of not getting it, too much budget but not enough insight.

You got a lot of money to throw around, but you're just still trying to use that to fix lack of creativity and being tactical. So watch out for that kind of stuff. Stay lean, stay neat out there with your advertising, be clear. Speak to people about what it means to enjoy your product or service and what it means to buy from you and use your stuff, and you're going to be a winner. Can't wait to see you next time on YouTube. Go ahead and like this video if it helped you out, and we'll see you on the next one.

What To Do With Negative Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 14:57:56 GMT

What To Do With Negative Reviews

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Oh, another negative review just popped up for your business. Now, what panic sets in? Do you ignore it? Do you delete it? Do you counter punch, which we don't recommend, but don't do any of that yet. I'm going to show you how on this video, how to turn a negative review for your business into a business boosting opportunity. Negative reviews can feel like a gut punch for our businesses, especially when it reflects ourselves or the team that we've invested in or the product that we are so passionate about and people are watching how we respond as a business to negative reviews. So this is your chance to show professionalism and turn some criticism into a positive interaction to turn the critic into a fan of your business and even to attract new customers. So here's a little fact that we all should know. 89% of people read how businesses respond to negative reviews before deciding to buy.

The reason for that is one of the big buyer objections that floats in all of our heads before we make a purchase is what's going to happen to me if things don't go right with X? What's going to happen to me if they don't cook my food? Well, what's going to happen to me if this part that I bought breaks? What's going to happen to me if the wheels fall off my new bicycle? Right? Who's going to take care of? So it's a common thing in our mind before we make our purchase that we have this last little negative thought noodling around in our brain that is making us second guess whether we should spend the money or not. And by showing in the way we respond to our reviews, negative reviews specifically, that we always take care of our customers, we can absorb that objection to new customers who might be a little hesitant about having a negative experience with the reassurance that we take care of people if things don't go right.

So let's keep going. First off, you got to have the right mindset when reading negative reviews. So instead of seeing them as bad reviews or personal attacks, and I have plenty of clients that have called me literally on weekends breaking down over stuff like this, you got to think of them as feedback and as an opportunity to get better. I always say some of our toughest business relationships, toughest interactions, are not to be hidden from, we don't want to shy away from that stuff. We want to lean into those interactions that are challenging because they make us as business owners and they make us as business organizations better if we frame them in the correct way and we approach them with the right mindset and a non-defensive sort of open receiving. And I think the best way to say that is with curiosity. And with curiosity, we can arrive at gratitude for the interaction.

So even the best businesses get negative reviews, period. You can think of the best businesses in the world. They still have some people that don't have a great experience and they need to handle that, right? You have to ask, would you trust a company with only perfect reviews? And the answer is, of course, no. Right? It just feels fake and inauthentic. So we want to handle these negative reviews like a boss. Let's talk about how to respond. Three step response formula is pretty simple, and you can just basically take this right from this video. Take it from the transcript. First off, stay calm and professional. No defensive reactions, no blame games. Take a breath before you type. And a lot of times I tell clients, if you're really upset about this thing, set it down and come back to it a day later. It's not a 9 1 1 emergency typically to reply to a review within five minutes.

That's a negative review. In fact, it's a little weird. Let some time go by, calm down, come back to it with a clear head and lower emotions. The first thing you want to do though is acknowledge and apologize. It's really important that you acknowledge that the person didn't have a negative experience instead of denying their claim. So do not deny their claim, even if it wasn't your fault. Show empathy for the fact that things didn't work out for them. That's really important. So acknowledging and showing some empathy for the fact that they didn't have the best experience, a simple like we're sorry you had this experience can go a long way in healing the situation and turning this person who previously not happy into an advocate for your business. And then you can offer solutions that keep those short, direct, and solution focused. And of course, you want to invite them to talk privately if needed.

Okay, now let's talk about how to turn negative reviews into positive business opportunities or positives in general for your business. Now, the first thing I would say is it's really important, and I mean I'm just going to state the obvious here. These reviews live in the public domain. They are in many ways, like the headlines, if you will, for our products and services. Every negative review is a chance to upgrade your business and the story about what's going on internally in your interactions with your customers. And all of that is public. So even if it's slow service or product issue or miscommunication, fix those things internally and say you are. And as an example, success stories. I mean, some of the best companies today really use negative reviews and negative feedback to become better organizations, better teams, better managers, and better operators. And you should do the same thing as well.

Let's talk about what not to do. Common mistakes. Don't try to delete 'em. That's shady. I know there's services that claim they can do that. Don't even go there. That's not the answer to your problems. That's just another version of denial. So I'm going to say that's a hard no. I don't know. It's illegal, but it's definitely unethical. Okay? And then the other thing that's like an absolute hard no is arguing or counterpunching with the people that leave the reviews. You just absolutely cannot do that. You do not argue and start flaring up and creating what's already kind of a bad situation and making it into a bonfire of problems and then ignoring it or hiding from it. Maybe it's another way to say that, or just silent treatment doesn't fix the issue because it leaves the negative as a headline with no response from you as a business owner.

And that simply tells the world that if any new customer has a bad experience, they're just going to get blown off by you. And of course, nobody likes to walk into a situation where that looks like that could be the outcome. So you're going to lose customers, new customers, mostly potential new customers. By ignoring these reviews, you need to address them. Alright, let's wrap this one up. This stuff's so important, but it really is an opportunity. I want you guys to lean into this. But again, if you get hot, you get upset, walk away, come back 24 hours later, follow the recommendations that I gave you here on this video. The bad reviews are not the end of the world. In fact, at the beginning of your business getting better, the beginning of your team getting better, the beginning of your product or service becoming better in the marketplace, be grateful that people spend time to share their thoughts with you and give you the opportunity to do better and be better.

Without that feedback, you're just flying blind. The worst customer, the worst situation in the world is you do a crappy job and nobody tells you, and then you just keep doing a crappy job thinking that's great, just driving customers away. So the people that do leave negative reviews are really sending you a lifeline for your business. And you should frankly thank them, or at least thank the whole process in general and be grateful that that's the environment that we live in, because it gives business owners a faster way to iterate and become better operators. And we didn't have that historically until the reality that we live in now, that's an amazing business tool if you take the attitude that I'm suggesting right now. So they will help. They can help your business, and they can help you grow. Now, tell me in the comments what I missed or what's the worst review you've ever seen or worst experience that you've ever seen. And then I would also love to hear some great responses from businesses or ways that you handle negative reviews and share those in the comments. Of course, those stay here with this video and probably can help somebody else. And if not, I will see you on the next one on YouTube.

Ways That Email Marketers Lose Subscribers

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:15:00 GMT

Ways That Email Marketers Lose Subscribers

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Welcome back guys. Are you struggling with low open rates on your emails or just kind of duds not getting any results, losing subscribers faster than you can sign them up, which is an attrition problem. Let's unpack all that stuff and how to fix it right now. Email marketing is powerful, but too many marketers make the mistake of driving people away or making a stuff just absolutely garbage so that it doesn't get any engagement or clicks. So in this video, I'm going to break down the biggest offenses. Let's call 'em problems or screw ups. That can cost you subscribers. And even worse than that, just cost you sales and opportunity because that is the name of the game, alright? Email marketing can be one of the most powerful mechanisms to drive revenue, especially when your business or maybe your client's business needs to put some cash in the drawer.

Email marketing in my view, and I think many people in my position would say it's the fastest way to do that. You really can get right to your customers, get right to the list and prospects and so forth that have signed up with you and hopefully if you're doing it well get some conversions sometimes within a matter of minutes, which is really exciting. So let's go through the first one. This is a big debate. Too many emails. I'm sending too many emails and yes, there is a threshold at the point where you'll piss people off, but there is another component to that and I would qualify with too many irrelevant emails. There's almost no amount of emails you can send so long as they are relevant and important to the person that's receiving them. Now how you determine that is probably for another video because that involves programmatic stuff and different things like that where we can detect receptivity.

But in general, if you send stuff that's not relevant, you're just aggravating people and we all have experienced that in our inbox and that's where you're going to get low engagement, low open rates and a lot potentially. And what you don't want, because it kind of messes with your list of course, and your deliverability is people marketing it as spam. So how do you do that? Well, for one, make sure that no matter what you do, you're sending out emails that are important either topically or about the product and so forth to the people that are receiving them. Just don't send a bunch of crap. That's the first thing to be sure you're doing. And then the other thing is, yeah, don't hit 'em with too much stuff in one week. So frequency fatigue is real and too many emails can make subscribers unsubscribe. So in general, I would say if you had to put a rule of thumb on it, max kind of two to three a week.

But here's the thing, you can test that and the downside is also bad. Not enough means your list is cooling off and forgetting who you are and potentially engaging with your competitors, looking at other stuff, spending money other places. So we have to kind of walk that tightrope there, be top of mind, relevant present on a weekly basis, but not so much that you become like a nuisance and just a pain in the butt. And if you want any sort of examples of that, you want guidance, go signups for some big national brands that do a lot of good emailing and see what their frequency is like. And in general, two to three times a week, e-commerce stores hit a little even harder than that sometimes if they have enough to talk about daily specials and all these other mechanisms that again qualify them to send because of relevancy and they know every time they click to send on an email list of a couple hundred thousand names that they they're going to pull some revenue in.

So it's very reinforcing for the business to keep doing it and to some degree, they don't really care if they get a lot of unsubscribes or people that just aren't engaging because if they have a good top of funnel that's bringing 'em new names, then the whole game kind of balances out. It becomes profitable. So those are all things to consider, but in general, for the mere mortals here in this conversation, two, three times a week is good. You're getting past that and you really got to be doing it very tactically, and I say at the highest level and there are examples of that, but you can start to decode that by subscribing to other people in your industry's email list and see what their frequency is like and also see what your temperature is with the emails that you do get and where your threshold is.

And remember what I said about relevancy, the stuff that pisses us off is just not relevant. That's pretty much true everywhere in life. We're just not engaged with things that aren't important to us at the time. So keep that in mind when you're judging stuff like, oh, these guys just keep sending me stuff. Yeah, is it the fact that they're sending it that's pissing you off, or is it the fact that they're sending it frequently that's aggravating you or is it the fact that it's just not relevant? Be careful in your analysis there. Okay, next piece. I mean, clickbait, subject lines. There's kind of a loser's game. Misleading titles, misleading subject lines are just not going to work. I mean, you're going to trick your readers one time and then the problem with that, just like in any relationship in your life is you trick somebody once, they're not going to trust you again, and the last thing you want to do is mess with the trust that your list has with your business.

So do not break trust with your list. It's very hard to get back and you can kind of blow yourself up doing that. Let's just put it that way. Don't bait and switch people. Don't send clickbait crap that isn't valid. Don't try to trick people into opening your emails. Now at the same time, you can go back to my other videos and you can read all about how to word craft for intrigue, how to drive open rates, all that stuff is still okay, but screwing with people is not okay because it breaks trust. So the minute that you go from intrigue into other approved valid tactics to getting open rates and you go cross that boundary where you're starting to break trust with people, you're in the dark side of the equation. You just can't go there. You're going to just blow up your whole list.

You have a list that doesn't trust your emails and engagement will drop spam rates to go up and the whole thing just kind of goes down the toilet, okay? So be compelling, drive intrigue, give people a reason in the subject line to read the rest of the email. That's actually the functional objective of the subject line is to get people to open it, right? That's all it has to do. It doesn't have to say everything about the deal. It doesn't have to make a gigantic statement, it just has to be enough to get 'em to open it. Straight up in doing that, you have to stay honest, otherwise you're going to break trust. So there's lots of examples. I have tons of other videos on this channel. Go poke around. Then the next one, and I always caution this is one of the things I think is just so important is don't be super salesy.

Even though you want to sell stuff and I know you want to make money, that's why you're watching this video, right? That's why we're all trying to create abundance in our lives. I totally get it. And you want to sell your thing and at the same time, too much salesy emails again is like repellent. People don't want to be sold. People want to buy. It's like an old statement. I don't know if you heard that one. I didn't make it up, but it is true. Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody wants to buy something, so give 'em a reason to buy, but don't sell 'em if you keep selling 'em and selling 'em, selling 'em. They don't like that. People don't like being sold, period. You don't like being sold neither do I, but we like buying things. So don't forget that framework when you're putting together the content in your email and your subject line, don't put buy this order now, that kind of language, people just read that as marketing and sales and you're just not going to get good open rates and that's the first step to success.

So watch your subject lines and don't go there. The other way to think about that is when you're sending your emails, ours is just all giving and no selling or is it all selling and no giving. And the guidance that I like to give everybody on that is just use the good old fashioned 80 20 rule on that. Give 80% of the time value and then 20% of the time you can do an ask or you can do a sale. Help your buyers in their lives, be helpful, be of value, make an impact with them in their lives and they will buy from you when you ask them to. But if you just pandered to them all the time asking for money, not only does it wreak of desperation, which is not where you want to be, it also like I say, just gives everybody the ick.

So don't do it. Actually provide some value to your buyers. I don't care if it's a product or service or otherwise, show them how to use your product better. Show 'em how the people that do use your product live a better, happier life or existence here on planet Earth, right? Go down that road, tell the stories, provide value, tips and tricks, that kind of thing. And then when you want 'em to buy something, and frankly they'll probably be ready to buy anyways if you'd just be cool like that, but then you can throw 'em an offer or a deal or something like that and get some conversions because not only have you built trust and value, you've also trained them to open because your emails aren't full of icky repellent, your emails are full of value. 80 20 rule on that. Okay? Now the next big offense, and it's getting better now, is not having your emails look good on a phone.

I know that sounds basic. It's 2025 and we're still trying to get emails look good on a phone, sad but true. And a lot of people that design emails are doing on a desktop, just like I'm standing in front of right now, and I can't say enough about mobile first design, mobile first design, make it work on a phone and then the desktop is easy, don't go. It's really hard and a lot of designers need guidance on this. Everybody likes to work on a big monitor. I totally get it, but work in that mobile preview and make the thing look good there. Then the desktop is easy, right? If you have a bad mobile experience, people are a lot of times opening these emails on their phones as they're on the go during the day. It's no secret we're all doing that. Consume most of the content.

We buy a lot of things on our phones. I think most things are bought by mobile now as far as e-commerce goes and things like that. So don't send 'em something that looks like crap on a small screen. Make sure the typeface is clear readable. The action items, if you have one is above the fold or think about that scrolling experience on the email like text. It all gets hyphenated because you try to make it so big on the desktop and that it's getting squeezed down by some responsive platform, it just looks like crap. It's hard to read. You got to evaluate all that stuff because you send that crap out. Not only does it not look professional, it's just hard to navigate for the end user and there's just too much mental fatigue. Next, okay? Remember that if you're asking people to burn a lot of calories just to read your email, it's not a good email, okay?

Should be easy, should be clear, should be concise, should be a value. And in some cases have an offer, some sort of deal or something that they might want to take advantage of. So also in the same regard, don't go too tiny with the font or get, if you have a system that squeezes everything down and then you have stuff that's not even legible, it's gets too small, Goldilocks, that whole setup so that it looks good on a phone, make sure it's optimized that way and be sure before you send anything, you preview it on mobile and just assume 90% of the people that get the email are going to open it on their phone if you assume that you should stay out of trouble, but just use that as a rule operating rule. Okay? Alright. The next one that we see all the time is just no personalization.

I would categorize that as also part of a relevancy conversation. Generic emails like Hey, email list or hey subscribers, or I'm reaching out to all my subscribers so that it's just, I don't know, not the best. I know there are some cases where that might work, like, hey fans, alright, some of that could be excusable, but in general try to personalize and that has a lot to do with your opt-in mechanism. Are you getting that first name field? You should if you can. I admit that it gives you a little bit more friction on the opt-in. And again, that's another thing to test, but in a perfect world would be able to send emails to a human being and I certainly always give guidance and I recommend that here today. Same thing. Write your emails like you're writing it to one person that think of the one person, your ideal customer avatar, that perfect customer for your business.

Write to that person, attract that person. Filter your list to find more of those people. Write to them as individuals. I can't tell you how many other copywriters will give guidance on that. You could just look across that whole business of work, crafting and copywriting. Every single person of any stature recommends the same thing. So it's not new and it's not coming from me. I didn't make it up. It's just good practice. So do that and it'll change the tone of your email, get you talking less salesy, get you being more personal and in that case, communicating and probably converting better. Okay? So we all know you converge your first name like, Hey, hey Joe, we noticed you love X topic. Here's something we did just for you for that. Any of that kind of stuff where you can personalize the email is definitely going to give it a lot more traction with the recipient and get you more wins in the conversion category.

And if you can't do that, start looking at how to implement that and also how to word craft so that you still can achieve similar effects maybe without the person's name and that can be done. I think also, and this is a little counterintuitive, I think it should not be hard for people to leave the list. Making the unsubscribe button hidden or impossible just pisses people off if they can't find the unsubscribe button. The downside to that too is that they will give up and just mark it as spam and as far worse for your deliverability and causes way more problems. So I know the temptation is like, I don't want to lose any subscribers. Don't think about that way. Flip the whole script. You're filtering your email. Marketing is gold panning. You're looking for nuggets out there and to look for nuggets, you have to sift off the sand.

The thing with email marketing though is that the sand is different every day. Some people are buying today and the people that aren't are buying tomorrow. So the sand is gold tomorrow. The gold is sand today, but you're still filtering, it's a filtering process. If you try to trap everybody in there, you're not filtering well and you don't really want anybody on your list. It's not into your stuff just so you can see a bigger number on your subscriber list. And frankly, most platforms charge by subscriber anyways. So if you want to think about it that way, get the deadwood out of your list as quick as possible so you can pay less to host that list with whatever email platform you're using. So it makes no sense except for that we're wired like monkey brain to want to see a bigger number. I've got 50,000 subscribers and I never lose a single one because I never let 'em know how to unsubscribe.

It's like it's all sorts of whacked. Don't do that. If people want to go let 'em go. They're not your customer who cares? Or you didn't sell to them and talk to them in the way that you should, but that's on you. But you don't want to manipulate and try to fence them in. This is not some communication prison that you're putting people in, so just be straight with people because the worst thing that could happen from that type of behavior is that you drive up a spam rate into let's say the deadly zone of 2% plus and you got some major problems with your deliverability or even your provider could blacklist, you could get your domain kind of hit on the can spam side. So just totally not worth it. Just let people go and give 'em an easy button to go make it easy, just as easy as it was for them to come through the front door.

The next one is just being inconsistent. The biggest defense in all marketing. Don't be inconsistent with your marketing and for sure, don't be inconsistent in your email marketing. Be there. Be present with your buyers. Be present with your list. Be helpful, be relevant. All the stuff we just said above, don't disappear for weeks because life happened and then start going, oh, I got to get these emails out and then send some gigantic big spammy, salesy email to try to make up for lost time. Just you can just see, I see that kind of behavior all the time. It's just horrible. The best email marketers are consistent marketers and maybe probably the best place to learn to be consistent with your marketing is with email marketing. It takes effort. You got to do it. You got to make the emails, you got to send 'em, you got to program 'em, you got to design 'em, you got to think about 'em.

You got to word craft 'em. You got to come up with those subject lines. You got to come up all the stuff. And it really makes you a better marketer to start getting good at it. And consistency is the first rule of good marketing. Consistent messaging, consistently being there when your buyer's problem erupts so to speak, or becomes so painful in their life that they're willing to take action and you want them to take action by buying your product or service. And in order to do that, you need to be top of mind with them. So when that feeling of agitation, whatever it is that they need to solve by engaging you strikes, they know exactly where to go. I'll just, where was that email I got from those guys? They clean gutters. I'm so sick of this leaky roof and whatever. So that consistency thing is so important. So don't disappear for weeks, then start sending out big makeup emails and stuff. Huge mistake. Create a calendar, stick to it. Make an action plan. Be a planner. Stick to the plans. Not complicated. However, I admit many people struggle with it and I totally get it at the same time. No excuses. It's just part of business.

And the other thing I don't like is, and I would not recommend this, is to promise you're going to send an email every Wednesday at 10:00 AM or some thing that's going to put your neck on the chopping block. Don't do that either because that just becomes so uncomfortable that it's also not sustainable for you as a human being. Something could happen Wednesday at 10 a or whatever the day is that you do it. Life happens to all of us, but you don't need to put yourself in a corner with your list necessarily. Now, there are exceptions to that. I know financial advisors and things like that to send out a Sunday night market report before the market opens on Monday morning. Okay, great. There are some things that are timed with the universe and their relevancy is relegated by way of the fact that they're delivered at certain times.

If you're in that situation, then hell yeah, you better stick to it. For the rest of us though, I think some randomizing and mixing and popping in different days is actually better as long as that supports the value that we just discussed. If the value of your emails is tethered to some calendar or and or time factor like say stock trading, then you better do it because the value, you can't send yesterday's market report today because it's just like that's old news. So wherever you fall on that, figure it out. Do the thing and be consistent. And don't just disappear, go dark for three weeks because that not only cools your list down, everybody just forgets. What the hell? If it goes too long, that's when you get another spike in spams spam reporting because people forgot, who's this random person? I don't even know why I'm on this list.

And you'd be surprised how quickly people forget when or why they subscribe to something because people are subscribing to stuff all the time and they just get prickly around it. So the trick is, once you get a new subscriber, stick with 'em, stick 'em, stick with 'em. Don't let that relationship cool off like dating. Maybe that's a good analogy. If you're really interested in somebody and you want to get close to them, you don't just not call for three weeks or not even communicate. That would be bad. So new relationships, take energy, treat your email again, like individuals they you're having a new relationship with, and check in with them on a weekly basis a couple of times. Be present in their lives. Technical thing, I mean, sending from a no reply email, that sucks. So if you're doing that, just stop it for one.

I mean, the coolest thing in the world is to send out an email to a whole bunch of people that's really well done and get replies back because you really spoke to people or you unpack something that was of value on that email. And I can think of one client here that does such a good job with that on an almost weekly basis, I see the replies come in off these big sends and there are people just pouring out their life stories and stuff and reflecting back their experiences based on the stories that are told in these big emails. And it's amazing. So if you can figure out how to get that going, that's 10 out of 10 on engaging your lists, scorecard and being meaningful and vulnerable, maybe perhaps. So try to head that direction if possible. But if you're sending from a no reply, people can't engage, they just don't care.

They see that. And it just looks like system email crap. And again, spam not going to open it. Not interested. I'm just being treated as a number. It's not not important. So use a real email that people can respond to, ask questions or engage with you or your brand and you'll be better off. Okay? Now, I always say this, if you guys think I missed something or something I said is wrong, perhaps, I'm always happy to hear about it in the comments below. So go ahead and hit me up and if not, I'll see you on YouTube on the next video. And I hope you have fun out there and keep sending those emails and hopefully these tips that I shared today give you a little guidance. And if nothing else, some motivation to keep plugging away is probably one of the best parts of marketing for any business. And I always encourage people to keep at it, not let those lists cool down and make it priority one in your messaging stack. We'll see you on the next one.

How to Make a Video for a Direct Offer Advertisement That Converts

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 18:49:59 GMT

How to Make a Video for a Direct Offer Advertisement That Converts

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Have you ever wondered what makes some ads impossible to ignore? Why others? You just skip by, right? So in this video, I'm going to teach you how to create a direct offer ad that grabs attention, taps into the right psychology and compels viewers to take action. So by the end, you'll know how to craft a vicious hook, deliver a killer CTA, and use production techniques that sell your hook is the first three to five seconds of your ad. It's make it or break it time. If use emotional triggers like curiosity, urgency, or bold claims, you can start to get some attention and set that hook. So examples might be asking a question, showing a shocking visual or making an unexpected statement. Speak directly to your target audience and make the best attempt to call out their problem so they know they're in the right place or their desired outcome so they can put themselves into their future better life with whatever it is that you offer.

So if you're tired of wasting money on ads that don't work, tap into your audience's pain points and show how your product or service solves them. So you've got to show the outcome and how your product or service provides that transformation from pain to pain-free, from unhappy to happy, from A to B, right? That's what we're all doing here in business, is getting people down the road to where they want to be. So the next thing we can do with setting hooks and getting attention is to create some urgency. And we always talk about that in advertis is a big deal. You want to get people to take action right away. Limited time offers exclusivity and some sort of trip wire that causes some fomo. Fear of missing out can work wonders and getting response, open rates and other things on ads, headlines and subject lines and so forth.

So the next thing we want to cover on that, that is incredibly helpful is to weave in some social proof. One of the biggest objections that people have when they're about to make a decision to buy something is that they might just be stupid or crazy, or the only one that thinks this is a good idea and humans, whether we like it or not, are social animals. And we like that affirmation that other people are doing the same things that we are doing and are getting the success that we hope to get. So we like to work that in with our ads by highlighting testimonials, reviews, or results from real customers, case studies and all the other fun stuff like that. So the viewer must feel this is exactly what I need right now. That takes us to the call to action and it should be crystal clear and irresistible, right?

And I can't say enough about that. Did I say crystal clear? The call to action needs to be crystal clear, not vague, not confusing, and not introducing that there might be additional friction if they go down that path. For instance, a bad one would be click here and fill out this long form, right? Nobody's going to click on that. It sounds like a nightmare. Even if it's going to get them to where they want to go, they don't want to go through that, right? So the alternate to that would be quick here and get started now. Oh, okay, quick here and have your appointment by the end of today. Anything like that, make it easy. Make it low friction. Make it almost painless if possible. Okay, so order now, claim your free trial now. Book today, save 20% by getting this ad, yada yada y, but low friction, easy action, compelling offer.

Mix those ingredients up to get the right recipe. And the last thing and just on urgency is, and this is a little tip, and I've said this in plenty of videos, I don't really like putting in urgency where the buyer or target audience knows what they're competing against, like the calendar, the clock, or anything like that, because then they can just delay, ignore, and wait till last minute, which most people do, they'll just procrastinate. You're just sitting there looking at your time in sales and you're not getting any hits and you'll throw the A away or get upset and be disappointed. Much better to have people competing with an unknown foe like another buyer. So buy this today, 50 spots only. Shit, I better get one before they run out. So you can see the framework is completely different there. The psychology is a lot more motivating because there's no certainty about when the offer or whatever it is is going to expire.

So you see the classic one is while supplies last, oh well I don't want to miss out, so I'm going to take action right now. Okay, last thing. Again, keep it simple. Don't overlay overload like an ad or even an email or anything with multiple CTAs. Focus on one, get people to do one thing and then you can start getting 'em to work with you more. You don't need Hollywood level production, but quality matters, and I would say this on videos and so forth. The audio has to be perfect. You can get away with less than perfect video, but you can never get away with less than perfect audio. So if you're going to spend money, you're going to make decisions, you're going to clean up your space. Go somewhere where there isn't traffic and other stuff in the background. Figure out how to make sure the audio is super clean so the message is super clear and the video and any sort of lack of perfection there is all forgiven.

If you have a great video and crappy audio, it's not really worth anything. So that's my guidance on that. Grainy footage and things like that, it's not great, kind of can undermine credibility, but again, start with audio and work from there on the quality conversation, Chloe. And you can always get dynamic visuals and graphics and so forth in to kind of boost what you have captured on camera type footage and do some voiceover stuff. You can increase the quality there, like post-production with a good editor, graphic designer. So there's always a way out of the woods. If you've got some issues with some of the stuff you captured on camera, try to use closeups, get personal, get rating people's faces. Remember a lot of people are looking at all this stuff on a small screen, so you got to get into the camera so you can get that image and product and so forth up on the system right away. Add subtle motion graphics and text overlays to emphasize key points and a successful direct offer. Ad has three must-haves, like a vicious hook, the right psychology and a compelling CTA. Go forward and focus on learning to understand your audience, deliver a clear and irresistible offer, and I know you're going to be successful if this help. Get the juices flowing, get your focus going. Go ahead and let me know in the comments, and if not, I'll see you on YouTube on the next one.

Marketing is Planning How to Plan for No Stress Success

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 18:18:05 GMT

Marketing is Planning How to Plan for No Stress Success

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Do you ever feel like your marketing just isn't working? No leads, no engagement, no results. Here's the truth. Most marketing problems, and I know this because I'm doing this for a long time, are not actually marketing problems. They're planning problems. That's right. I had an aha moment the other day and I stumbled on that. So today I'm going to break down why bad marketing is usually the result of bad planning and how you can build a strategy that actually works so that you have no stress, no guesswork, and just results. So let's dive in. Okay, let's go over the problem here. Most businesses don't actually have, and this is true, every time we get into new client relationship or I see a new thing, or even if I'm just helping somebody that I meet in passing, ask for a little bit of suggestion and so forth.

I don't typically run into a lot of marketing problems. I mean, there's technical things like that. Okay, fine. But that's not really usually the issue. Most businesses actually do have something of value to offer. They have some good deals and they have all the stuff working in a nice store or a nice place or a nice website and all these things. A lot of that's probably, you got all the stuff, everybody's doing everything pretty well these days. So it's not really technically broken except for the part that we're going to talk about today, which is the planning part. And good marketing starts with good planning and failed marketing is usually, in my experience, the result of poor planning or no planning. So a lot of businesses will just post randomly because they're like, oh, they got posting anxiety. You got to post something, send an email out randomly that doesn't really have an objective or whatever, just to try to fire some shit at their list.

They just throw money at ads with no strategy, no forethought, and then of course get pissed about it and say the ads don't work. And all in all just sit around complaining and wondering why nothing works because there was no planning and everything is just kind of a shot in the dark. So today we're going to dive into that, and that really is the problem that I see so many people struggling with. It's not really a marketing problem at all. It's just like a business organization, management problem, mindset problem, maybe, I don't know. But it's a lot of times not a marketing problem. So here's the thing is marketing is not some magical dark art. It's not voodoo, it's not a secret now more than ever. I mean, you guys have access to all sorts of shit, including this video right here where we're talking about it, right?

Marketing is a system, and system in business should be designed to make money. That's pretty much what the definition of a business is. A business is a system that yields profits. So if you don't plan properly, you're basically setting yourself up to fail before you even get started. So you might have seen business that post once or inadvertently and then they disappear for a couple of days, couple of weeks, couple months, or same thing with their email behavior. And then they complain, this didn't work, email doesn't work, social media doesn't work, advertising doesn't work, my website doesn't work, not thing works. But all of that is just a symptom of them not walking things back from deciding what the objectives are. Okay? So running ads without knowing your audience, that's not actually advertising or marketing that should basically gambling. It's like taking a wild ass guess and seeing if you're going to win.

And nobody wants to do that with their money. But we see people doing that all the time with their advertising, and they don't do that anywhere else in their lives. It's just kind of a weird behavioral thing. So if you don't know who you're talking to, what they want or how to reach them and how you are solving a problem in their life, then your whole thing is again, fail before it starts. The marketing is already dead in the water. If you haven't figured out the who, the what and how, let's get into the solutions. What can we do? Let's think about it like this. Let's think about marketing. And this is pretty much the way that we talk about it here with our team. And we have multiple teams on different projects, and this is pretty much the way it works. You can think of it like a road trip and therefore you need a map.

But more importantly, on any road trip, hopefully, unless you're just driving around like a weirdo, you actually have a destination. And that is really important to identify where do you want to be with the business or with the campaign? Where are we trying to go? What is the destination? What is the objective or goal? Let's the other way to say it. If you were on a road trip, the destination is the goal in marketing business, we need some sort of financial goal, participation goal, attendance goal, number of people, number of sales, number of dollars, some metric like that that we need to identify as the goal. And then we can start mapping the strategy, which is basically the route to get to the destination. It doesn't have to be that complicated. And we need the tools to get down the road, and those are going to be our different syndication channels, creative, we can make media, all these choices and so forth.

They're going to come together and give us the tools that we can use to get down the road, which is our strategy to our destination, which is our goal. And if you just drive around aimlessly playing whack-a-mole and burning money, of course you're not going to get good results and you're going to waste valuable time, valuable resources in terms of cash and labor and so forth, and you're not going to get there. You're just not going to make it to the destination. You're just be driving around circles like a dingdong. So the best marketers don't guess about what to do. And I cannot say this enough, there's no guessing in market. I think everybody's like, I'll just think of something creative and put it out there and people will love it, and then they'll give me money or they'll buy stuff. It's like there could not be further from how things work.

That is so far off base. And I have to tell you, we unfortunately see a lot of behavior still today, and it's just not only totally naive, just very amateur and ineffective, let's put it that way. So the best marketers spend a lot of time planning, researching, understanding your audience, understanding the state of the market that they're in with their product or service. Is it new? Is it a developed market? Are they stealing customers, developing customers? Are they having to educate or are they going into a pool of buyers that are already understand what they want and how to get it? All that stuff is important, and that's what you're going to do to be successful. You're going to start planning your marketing. So let's just go through the five. Let's do five steps, and if you follow these, you're going to just clear up all the Bs.

The first one after our little analogy there with the road trip, define the goal. What's the one thing, not five things? What's the one thing that you want a marketing campaign to achieve for your business? Is it more leads, more sales, more brand awareness or market penetration? Whatever it is, be specific. And at the same time, you need to articulate that as your destination so specific and then nail it down. Okay? The next one is know your audience. Who are you talking to? What are their problems? And we've gone through a hundred other videos, well, maybe not a hundred, that's probably an exaggeration. Some other videos on this channel. We've gone over this, right? You got to have your customer out or retire, and you need to understand their problems, their daily life, how they spend money, how they live intimately, to the point that you're writing all of this to one person, that is the ideal person that you want to attract for your business.

Where do they hang out? Online is the next thing you need to figure out, because that's going to determine where you're going to fire some bullets. And the better that you know them, the better that you can serve them and help solve their problems. Once you demonstrate that you're the place to do that, they will certainly buy from you based on all of that. The third thing on our list of five is choosing the channel that you're going to syndicate. And you want to choose those wisely, right? You don't need to be everywhere. You don't need to spend money to be on every darn possible corner of the advertising world. You just need to figure out how to be in front of the majority of folks that will buy from you. So you ought to pick platforms and properties, and this could include print and other things.

It's not all just a digital conversation. Pick ones where your audience is active and get in there and get some placement there. Okay? Alright. Now, the fourth thing is to create a content roadmap, which is also super important. So that means you're not posting randomly. You have an action plan with dates that's date driven, that tells a story, that winds that audience up so that they're informed and ready to buy. And again, that's going to be from your other couple of steps to figure out what the messaging is. You're going to be creating themes, scheduling everything in advance. And I don't mean a day in advance, I mean weeks in advance. And you're going to make sure that in this content roadmap that the content serves your goal, your objective. So if it's get leads, then it's a lead magnet. If it's drive sales, then maybe it's a direct offer or some sort of bundle or something cool like that.

If it's fill an event, then it's selling seeds. And what does that content look like versus the other two? Okay? So the content roadmap and content development needs to directly reflect your goals that you identified in step number one. Okay? And then the last piece, which we always talk about is so important, is you got to measure and adjust the tactics, the creative, all these things, frequency and all the stuff to double down on your winners and get rid of some of the stuff that's not working for you, okay? You do not want to dilute your resources and spend any time on things that aren't moving the needle. So that's important. And that fifth step is always the feedback loop, right? Looking at your key performance indicators. They could be web hits, they could be QR code scans, it could be opt-ins, it could be purchases and checkouts.

It could be getting people to the shopping cart. Whatever those performance indicators that map towards your goal are what you need to be monitoring. Track what's working, drop what's not, keep optimizing. Okay? If you guys have comments or there's another step in this, go ahead and hit me in the comments. But either way, it's not a guessing game. Marketing is not a guessing game. It's a science with art. Plan your moves, track your results, adjust as you go. And if you found this helpful, let me know what you liked in the comments. And if not, I will see you on YouTube for the next one.

Marketing AI Caution: BE CAREFUL what you attract with your marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

Marketing AI Caution: BE CAREFUL what you attract with your marketing

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Hey guys, have you ever seen an ad that looks so polished? The copy's so good? Or even the picture looks kind of overdone. It just looks fake, right? And we used to think about that stuff in the old days, be like, oh, that's Photoshopped. Remember with that whole thing? And now we like real pictures in our ads. That's kind of the trap of AI that I want to talk to you about today as it relates to your marketing, your brand, your product, your service. So let's get into why you need to be careful when you're marketing with AI and how and what it may or may not attract. And in my opinion, if you over-leverage it right now in the current state of affairs, and that may change, everything could change, certainly changed a lot from last year. The AI actually in overuse can hurt your brand.

So let's talk about why. Alright, first off, there is this tendency to think that artificial intelligence is some like magic wand, lightsaber super tool that's going to save the universe. And everybody's going to sit on a lounge share with one of those little umbrella drinks and do nothing. And we're all going to get rich. If you haven't figured it out yet, that's probably not going to happen, at least not this week and probably not this year. The fact of the matter is right now is that AI simply cannot replace human touch, wisdom, intuition, and that we can convey through our marketing that simply just cannot be replicated with today's existing technology. So our customers feel it when all of that stuff is missing. That is kind of the soul of our brand, our copywriting, our advertising, and even our videos now. So for instance, this is really me, and if it wasn't, this whole thing would probably seem a little wonky.

And I know people are putting out all sorts of videos online. They're like a talking robot voice and it just keeps going and it's super monotone. And I know a lot of that stuff gets watches and likes and things like that. I just sort of doubt, and I certainly don't have any clients here at our agency that want their brand represented that way. So if you're going for clicks and you're in the clickbait game, have at it. If you're like the rest of us and you have a real brand and a company, brick and mortar or otherwise, e-comm doesn't matter that you take pride in. That is part of who you are, represents a team, and there are people counting on you and their families are counting on that whole business to provide for everybody involved and your customers are counting on you to be authentic with them.

All of this cautionary sort of talk is hyper relevant. The reality is that fake marketing, the reality is that fake marketing just simply erodes trust. And the great example of that is, and in general think McDonald's does a great job with marketing. Clearly they're one of the biggest brands in the world, but we all get a little disappointed when we go to the drive-thru. We see that fancy new kiosk thing they have and whatever it is, egg McMuffin or it doesn't really matter what it is, it looks so ridiculously perfect. And I mean, I sit there and I take pictures of that stuff because kind of into that, and I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the same little Photoshop egg McMuffin is used in every little grouping across their digital display because they kind of get that one done perfect and they just copy and paste it all over the place.

It just feels fake. We know it's fake. We know it's not going to look like that when we get our bag of food. We know we're going to eat something that isn't fairly represented. And we know that McDonald's just kind of like blowing smoke and we've learned to accept it from them. And the question is, how much of that do you want to accept in your own business? How disparate do you want to be from what actually the customer gets versus what you represent they're going to get? And that's where we kind of have to collapse the delta. And in my opinion, being closer to authentic is the best path forward. And that doesn't mean that you don't spin the best positive story around your product or service and represent it in the correct light and show positive outcomes and all the other stuff that we talk about on this channel.

I'm not throwing that out at all. I'm saying in the context of using ai, whether it be for image generation, text copy, long form outbound messaging, which is the biggest trap, you can get yourself into this space where you have lost your way. So same thing applies for things like fake reviews, get major backlash for that. Any area where you sort of step out and things start to be inauthentic, you're going to get quickly checked by either the whole internet as it were, depending on the size of your company, or certainly a good component of your customers who are just going to walk away because that's not what they were in for. The other major issue with this is the reality or the thought, the possibility that overuse of AI can sort of take you down this road of irrelevancy. So if everybody's using the sort of same mechanism to create content and stories and messaging and copy, then doesn't it all start to sound the same?

And doesn't wisdom tell us that when everybody zigs, we should zag? I mean, that's kind of an old Wall Street saying, right? Everybody's selling buy, everybody's buying, sell, everybody's using ai, start writing stuff by hand again, it's going to stand out. So there's just some historical logic in the fact that if the whole crowd goes one direction and you want to stand out from the crowd, don't run with them, run the other way. Do the thing that everybody is abandoned and do it well with mastery. So AI doesn't get the nuances, it doesn't get the subtleties not yet. And you can do a lot of training and I know there's going to be pushed back and go ahead, slam me in the comic. Tell me about how you come up with a super prompt. You've done this custom, LLM training, all this other stuff, which I promise you we've been doing for over a year here now as well.

And I think I speak with some level of, I don't want to use the word authority, but I'm definitely informed who we've been playing around with it for 12 months. And in all the areas of marketing that seem applicable and worth the time and financial investment at the same time, we're still scratch baking a lot of the stuff that is the most meaningful and more importantly, the most effective. And that's really where the rubber meets the road. You can shorten the timeframe, you can accelerate the workflow, and I don't have any issues with that. But at the end of the day, the results, the outcome are what pays the bills. And if you go, like I say, kind of out bounds with this, you start to erode brand trust. The long-term implications of that are extremely significant. And that's what this video is about is to spread a little bit of caution out to you guys.

And while not being a buzz kill and trying to ruin the enthusiasm at the same time, bring a little bit of maturity to the conversation about what's appropriate, what we're really getting, what we're giving up, and more. So big picture problems. If you again, go too far into that, you can kill. And this is where it's like a two-edged sword, right? Oh, it helped me figure things out. Great. And at what point does it start to kill creativity? And in my experience, and I've been in this creative business for a long time now, almost two decades, and the creativity is like a muscle, right? It's like creativity is something that we develop. We get strength in it. I don't care if you're a painter, a sculptor, a builder, a welder, a writer, a designer, a filmer, a speaker. Creativity is a strength that we develop through use, through practice, through repetition, through failure, micro failure.

We develop creativity as a strength by doing it. So if we give up doing it, we also give up the ability to get strong and proficient at being creative. And that to me seems extremely dangerous as just human beings. But specifically here as we discussed marketing on this channel and we discuss how to grow our businesses, so letting our creative muscle atrophy might be the biggest tragedy in the entire conversation. Okay? So yeah, you got consumer and customer backlash. That's all real. They start finding out that everything is bullshit with ai, not good implications of that clearly kind of lame. Everything can be labeled as fake and whatever you tried to pull off suddenly can collapse around you like a house of burning carts. And we don't want that. So let's talk about solutions. I want to sit here and complain the whole video, definitely want to bring you guys some ideas.

Here's where we're at with the whole thing, or at least me personally with my team. We're working really hard to balance AI with human paling, human in the loop, human using ai, not the other way around. I think there's probably big nasty corporations right now that let AI run the humans. That's sort of dystopian thing. But I guarantee you there's people maybe not watching this video, but somewhere out there that are doing that. And a great example of that would be like logistics. Okay? Let AI figure out where all the truckers should go. The trucks are still driven by humans, so they're kind of beholden to this artificial intelligence thing. So there are examples of that that probably been in the works if not happening for years. Things that we don't necessarily think about consciously that maybe aren't part of this conversation. But you can look at that and say, is that appropriate for my business?

And in some cases, there's no question, there probably is. And some of those decisions were made on solid ground with good logical business cases behind them. And I am sure a lot of thought and investment goes into that. Now, for the rest of us, and especially in this grave space marketing and all the other creative outputs that it takes to put together good brand messaging and campaigns and stuff like that, I'm saying keep the human beings at the table and don't expect AI to do everything, run everything, and certainly not make all the tactical and strategical decisions that are where intuition comes into play. Now, here's a great example of where I do think it's a super awesome tool. I think AI for data crunching is probably one of the best damn things that's ever showed up this year. I love that I can give artificial intelligence a ton of web traffic reports, advertising reports, footfall reports, click-throughs and conversions and all of this stuff, and start querying it on making the connections and the correlations and the causational relationships that are hard to parse out just manually.

And sometimes would take a week and weeks to do in the past are now taking minutes in some cases. So I'm all for that. So AI for data crunching, AI for looking through numbers, AI for synthesizing and pulling out meaningful database relationships, incredibly powerful. Do I want it to tell all my brand stories? Hell no. Does it have the ability to do that kind of at the most rudimentary level? And we're certainly looking for better than that around here. So I think no matter what you're doing with it, if you're having an outline, you're having it, do some story construction, all that, and make sure that the voice and what you get out actually sounds like you. And I mean in terms of your brand, your company, your product, your service, who you are who stand for. And again, don't lose your soul. I was having a conversation today with another new person on our team, and we are drawing the analogy that AI copywriting is kind of the same issue that you see in video games where they have a CJI character and the CJI character looks perfect.

Everything about 'em, they got textured and torn jacket and bullet holes and all the cool shit that's in video games. And at the same time when the eyes, the person doesn't look alive, everything about them looks almost damn near perfect. I mean, we got all these cool games here, my son plays and I'm into all hardware and tech, but still they can't make it no matter how good they can do Ray tracing and all the lighting and everything, it looks like a freaking movie, but the characters still don't look alive. And this is very much the same with copywriting and artificial intelligence. It's like everything about it is perfect, but it still reads dead. Yeah, tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead, hit me in the comments. I'm all for it. Let's go back and forth on it. I like to hear what you have to say about that because I think that's probably the best analogy.

That has been a known challenge in video game and image generation for the better part of the last 15 years. Keeps getting better, still not there. It's almost like a Moore's law thing. It gets half as good, half as good, half as good, but they still don't look alive, still don't have a soul. They still don't have a true expression in their eyes in a video game. And I'm seeing the same thing with text and LLM generated content that's just missing. Like I say, that piece that is hard to put our finger on, honestly, but we all know it's not there. Okay? So invest in your team, be upfront about when you use ai, and then don't forget to highlight the human side of your brand all while remembering that it's another tool, it's another software tool. It's not a replacement for the things that we know we need in our business, which is the people, the intuition, the thinking, the soul, the subtleties, the wisdom that we have from years of being in business and working with our clients face to face, so on and so forth, and our customers and whatnot. So keep that all in mind. Go ahead, knock me down in the comments. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this stuff and what you think about AI in marketing in general. Is it poison? Is it the magic pill? Comment below. And if you don't, I can't wait to see you on YouTube on the next one.

6 Ways to Stop Wasted Ad Spend

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:58:10 GMT

6 Ways to Stop Wasted Ad Spend

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Hey guys, every dollar that's wasted on ads that don't work is a dollar that could be going in to fuel your business. So if you're ready to stop the leaks in your ad spend, let's jump in together right now. Okay. Ad campaigns can be a gold mine or just as quickly they can be a money pit. And I can't tell you how many people I talk to on a weekly basis that feel like they have just burned money on advertising and gotten zero or very little result, and it can be incredibly frustrating. The difference, of course, is strategy and what I'm always telling people, which is great, creative and messaging is the cornerstone to doing a good job. So today we're going to cover six ways to stop wasting ad spend and start making every single dollar count. So let's start with targeting component of the advertising business, and even retail customers can go right into Facebook or Google's advertising dashboards and get all geeked out on targeting and everything.

And here's what I'll say to you, and this is a warning that I tell everybody. Targeting is not going to fix bad ads, bad offers, bad creative or bad messaging. So you got to start there and you have to do a good job with that stuff first before you can start targeting. Now, one way to limit budget, and this is kind of the flip that you might want to approach targeting with targeting is not necessarily where you spend money. Think of targeting and apply it in a way where you don't spend money. You see how that flips that around, and that also clears your head about what's important about your ads, which is the creative, the messaging, the copywriting, the pictures, the video, whatever the format is, that stuff's got to be on point. And think of your targeting more as is an exclusionary process, not inclusive.

So yeah, you're going after people, but at the same time, think about all the people that you're getting rid of by using targeting. So you're going to use data to define your ideal customer, and in the same token, you're going to use data to get rid of all the people that are probably not good customers for your business age, location, interests and all these other specifics can be tapped into. But again, it's not going to fix crappy messages, crappy offers and bad creative or just poorly worded, unclear, uncon, concise and unactionable ads that you put out into the market. So don't get frustrated and start blaming, targeting when things don't work. First, go back to your creative and start cross testing. Next, let's talk about what the whole thing is. Don't just advertise without each ad having a purpose. If it's to get clicks, leads or sales, then it better have something enticing a lot of intrigue or a really juicy offer on it, or it's just not going to generate that kind of activity.

Or it could be an awareness ad or a reputation ad or a brand narrative, brand control ad. But just make sure that when you start out, you know what the clear goal is, what the campaign's goal is, what the focus is, and that'll drive the type of KPIs that you're hoping to look for. And then you can monitor the stuff that's important and not get bogged down in numbers that aren't important for that campaign. Either way, you want to make sure that everything is measurable. The next thing I'll say is not all platforms are created equally. We can go to all these different places now to advertise. We can go to TikTok, we can go to Facebook, Instagram. Google's ads are keep evolving and you have PPC, but they also offer some display in there. And of course, one of my favorites is YouTube and YouTube retargeting because we can get a lot of impact with video ads.

And I've always said video ads are kind of the big hammer in the advertising world. So if you want to swing for the fences, yeah, it's a pain in the butt to make 'em, but they are totally worth it if you can do it well because they're so memorable and leave such a powerful impact with our buyers. So either way, you have to make sure that you understand where your ideal target audience is hanging out and what kind of media they're consuming. Are they readers and researchers? Are they thumb scrolling, doom scrolling teenagers, et cetera, et cetera. And you got to figure out how to get formatted ads on the platforms where your audience is aggregating and connect the dots there to make sure that that also supports all the other things you can do with targeting. But again, even if you're on the right platform, even if you think you're getting in front of the right people, if you don't have a good message, you're completely in no man's land.

Okay, let's remember also that small changes can have a big impact, and I mean down to almost one word, especially on call to action type words and so forth. So you're going to want to make sure that you're testing your headlines, your images, your calls to action, and even color treatment and so forth inside one set of targeting. And of course, it can be kind of frustrating and it seems like it's a slow process, but we really don't want to trade out or change out more than one or and or two variables at once. Don't just start swatting around out of frustration, changing everything because you don't really know what it was that you did that resulted in different outcomes. So you got to be careful with just blowing the whole thing up and starting over again because you don't actually learn how to become a better advertiser in doing that.

So we want to make one change at a time, ideally or small changes at a time, and then move things forward. One of the things we do here for our advertising clients is when we do creative, we do lots and we immediately start with sometimes dozens of different ad variations, and I mean different pictures, different copywriting, different colors, different layouts and so forth. And it's something we're able to do, but I would certainly encourage you to start with that because you can learn a lot by spraying a lot of creative right away and seeing what the audience is starting to respond to. So if you can handle it and you're willing to do that kind of heavy lifting, go for it. Either way, make sure that you're willing to test because that's where you start to save money over the long term. I would also add that advertising is kind of like a tricky business because we all hope that we're going to make one ad click, one button and we're going to make a dollar.

That's what the whole thing is like. It's like magic. We just send an ad, we make money, we send an ad, make money, and there's plenty of people online that are pitching that, selling that and selling systems and doing all this stuff. And I'll just caution you, that's not realistic. It's not probably what you want to hear either, but the reality is sometimes you're dealing with a lot of money, and in case the stuff that we're doing here that is always true and caution is the name of the game, being thorough, testing, watching everything on every 24 hours, not just walking away for a week and smoke $3,000 or something silly. So you got to really be audit in the beginning. And then when it starts to get better and you get indications of data that is in your favor and you're getting the KPIs moving in the right direction, things can get a little easier and then they can start to run for quite some time.

But in the beginning, especially if you're just starting out, don't think you're going to just pop an ad walk away and suddenly you're going to just see this pile of money in your bank account, not that simple. And really to do it well, you have to make a dedication to being consistent. I always say that one ad done with a massive budget or one ad here and there is not going to build a business. There are big national brands and multinational companies. You see do a big special super ad campaign, super Bowl or something like that. Okay, great. That's not our business. That's not most businesses. And that's also on top of thousands and thousands of other campaigns and dollars they've spent to raise awareness and become present in the marketplace in whatever way that they want to. And if they do a big pop like that, it's like an add-on deal, but big pops like that are not where regular people started, where regular people start.

And it's certainly not where those businesses started either by the time they get to Super Bowl ad or something spectacular like that, they have done years and years and years of consistent market messaging to get to the point where the business can sustain that kind of expense, but also enjoy a big pop on top of the big foundation that they've created from years of being consistent. So approach your business even no matter how small of a scale you are on in that way in that you're going to build consistency, ritual, you're going to get good at it on a weekly basis, daily basis, monthly basis, quarterly basis. And then year over year, you're going to build something up and you're going to keep messaging into the audience segments and the targeted demographics that you want to because people only buy when they have a problem and they don't have a problem every single day.

So you want to be there when the problem strikes, when the pain becomes unbearable and they are ready to part with some money and engage you with product or service or whatever it is that you're into. Okay, and that leads us to the next sort of reality that we all have to face is that most people do not convert or purchase on the first visit or click or interaction with a brand or an ad. So we always recommend that you use retargeting ads to bring them back and get that top of mind space occupied so that you can then close the deal on the third, fourth, fifth, and sometimes could be even the 10th touch. And I personally can say that a lot of things that I purchase on my own in my personal life, I kind of wait. I kind of shop. I kind of don't want it.

I kind of do want it. I kind of think about it, and all along vendors like Amazon and stuff are retargeting me with a little thingy, little picture reminding me that I was interested and so forth. And it just starts taking up that mental space and then whatever shifts or I decide that it's going to fit into my life, and then I'll make that purchase. And we're all kind of that way, and so are your buyers. So as an advertiser in a business who wants to earn more customers, we are responsible duty bound to stay in front of our customers until they are ready to buy. We can't just assume that they remember. We can't assume that there isn't a competitor trying to get the deal. Also, we can't assume that they're super nice and they're going to call us back someday when they want to.

It just doesn't work like that. We have to be in front of them and ready to help them when they need the help that our product or service provides. Okay? So retargeting is the best way to ensure that you're cold advertising and any other efforts that you may be making, events going out, referrals, talking to your customers, getting traffic. However it is always retarget for your business as your first step in advertising because it's going to provide the safety net to all the other things that you're investing in. And that goes down to even the sign on your building that people drive by and see. They see the sign, then they look you up, then they go to your website and then they get a retargeting ad for the next couple of weeks. It reminds them, come and eat my donuts. Come and eat my donuts, come and eat my donuts.

And finally, that day on the way to work, when they pass your place again, I'm going to go try a donut. So it's just that simple. It doesn't matter what the traffic source is, retargeting is the first piece to start with so that all of your traffic is getting automatically followed up with. And what's better than that? As a business owner, everybody wishes they had salespeople or some sort of mechanism in their business that automatically followed around their prospects. Retargeting is that mechanism. So of course, we want to start there. So stop wasting your ad spend and start seeing real results by targeting smarter testing, often analyzing your performance, working on copywriting, working on creative, working on your offers, your deals, your price modeling and your messaging. And you will make every dollar work a lot harder with your advertising. If you think I'm crazy or if you think all of this is bs, go ahead and hit me up in the comments. I love to talk about this stuff. It's all we do every day here. And if not, I'll see you back on YouTube on the next one.

Get AI WORKING for your business WITHOUT blowing stuff up

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 17:09:27 GMT

Get AI WORKING for your business WITHOUT blowing stuff up

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What's up guys? We all know that artificial intelligence is revolutionizing business everywhere in almost every different category of what we do. But implementing it can feel like we're walking a tight rope. So let's make sure that you don't fall off while taking that first leap for your business. Whether you're a startup or an enterprise, AI can supercharge your operations. But here's the deal. It's easy to overspend, misstep, and even break what's already working in your business, your workflows, and your existing processes. So let's talk strategy. First off, we want to start by identifying the pain points in your workflows. Where are their failures? Where are their loop outs? Where are their go backs and issues where things are breaking down? You got to zero in on those. And it could be customer service, could be data analysis, could be your marketing, could be content creation, could be lots of different categories, even like logistics and tracking fulfillment and all sorts of other areas.

So we want to look at all those workflows and find where the pain points are and clarify the problem. And the more we clarify the problem, the more we can craft, train and implement AI in a meaningful productive way. So not all AI tools are built equal, and I think that's one of the things that's happening with the market right now. So there's a big sort of shuffle as everybody races to come with the best variants and the best processes and the highest server speeds and response rates and what they do. So we have lightweight tools that are kind of publicly facing stuff like chat, GPT and free platforms that can also be trained on their backend to do great things like customer service and tell stories and understand all the details around a product or service or something that you might offer. And then you go over to image generating stuff like Dali and other tools to work on creative.

But either way, all of what you do there, and you have to be careful is that scalability matters, right? So you can't start with something that's kind of like a retail not heavily resourced tool and then expect to make it scale and be able to handle, say hundreds or thousands of customer service requests as an example on an hourly basis and do it in a good way. So you have to be careful about what you're testing, what you're working with, and is that actually a realistic representation of how it's going to work in the real world. Now for a lot of small businesses, some of that stuff doesn't apply, but you get bigger and you've got, in our case, customers have 25 to 50,000 web hits a day. That's a real concern. So piloting small AI projects before rolling them out business-wide is super important, but they also have to be tested and designed with a backend that can meet the eventual needs at scale.

So we've got to test, tweak and then go big, but make sure that we're ready to go big and we don't have something that's going to go big and then break and fall apart. The next thing is just talking about adoption when AI adoption fails, when it fails, when your team doesn't understand how to use it. And that's one of the other things we're seeing right now is there's assumption with a lot of folks that it can just do all sorts of stuff, but it's like any tool in your business system, any other software tool, it needs to have a place. The folks that are involved with it need to be trained about how to use it effectively, efficiently, and profitably for your business. It can't just be like let loose a wild dog and everybody just chases around the room trying to figure out how to get it to behave.

So that's another thing is to not make the assumption with the human component of your business that they're going to automatically adopt and use it in the way that you haven't envisioned. So either, even if you can solve all the stuff we just talked about, you still got to go right back to your human workforce and the folks that are going to be involved with piloting, interacting and implementing it and make sure that what they do and how they do it is in alignment with the goals and outcomes that you're seeking. So you just got to be careful not to walk into the trap that everybody's just going to figure it out, right? It's far more complex to that, and that's the sort of next version of making it work. If you get through all the first steps, you get this thing ready to go, it's doing all the stuff, okay?

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It's like hiring another team member in some regards. You can just throw 'em in there and accept everybody to work it out. So you still have to define roles and responsibilities, workflow, and almost like a job description type of thing, and have that on a process flow, organizational chart, or in another way that everybody can visually understand what the heck it's supposed to do. So that kind of takes us to the next point here, which is it is not a set it and forget it type of tool. You're going to really have to, with this one, regularly evaluate its impact, positive or negative, and it can go either way, just like everything in business. And then on the positive side, optimize and iterate and continue to train and implement and make it better. And that's what we always want to do in business. And then on the negative side, try to cut off any negative outcomes as rapidly as possible.

So that entire reality though, requires that we don't just walk away once we plug the thing, it needs oversight, needs supervision, it needs evaluation. So we have to establish when we're designing and implementing what the key metrics will be to measure the success of even doing it. Just like everything in business. Okay, so if it's going to do customer service, what are the metrics by way we measure that it's doing that job well or that it's helping or it's not just pissing people off and they just feel like, why is there this layer between me and somebody who can actually help me? And I experienced a little bit of that yesterday. You can see a lot of chat systems now are leading with AI and then doing a handoff to a human. And I was in the AI component of that process, basically just trying to get the AI to shut the hell up and give me to a real person because it clearly was just looping me round and round and round and round.

So I don't know what that company's doing to evaluate that conversation flow and that it wasn't productive. But that's a great example of where we think it's all hunky dory. We put it out there and just aggravates our customers because it just really, again, want to specifically in that example, get their problems solved, not play games with some little new widget. And we all need to remember that as we roll this stuff out, it still has to play by the normal rules, which is businesses are in business to solve problems for customers. And the more friction we introduce into that process, the less valuable our business is to our customers. So we have to go in a conscious way, in a direction that reduces friction, makes problem solving easier, makes our customers happy, makes our outcomes better, makes it more efficient, and to some degree, hopefully less costly.

But if we get off that road, we get off that set of objectives just for the sake of doing some new stuff, we've definitely lost our way. Okay. So the other piece of that, and the next sort of natural part of the conversation is to avoid overloading your workflows, especially now while things are new with AI tools and relying on it for say, all sorts of decision making, expecting it to have wisdom and experience, which it does not, right? It's very academic and it can be extremely helpful in that type of category of thinking, but it also doesn't have the experience that you have. It doesn't have your wisdom, it doesn't have your intuition, it doesn't come with that stuff yet. Those are definitely some very subtle hard things to replicate. And then it will probably be a long time before we see any sort of evidence of that kind of well-rounded attributes, the stuff that we bring as human beings to the conversation that is right now absolutely irreplaceable.

So we're going to want to use AI to compliment our human expertise specifically in those areas, but not replace it, and also not leave the stuff that we bring to the conversation at the door with this idea that we're going to get to mentally check out with our business, our processes, and what we're trying to achieve. That is not what's going on right now. So it is rocket fuel. It can make a ton of things faster, cheaper, better. I mean, we're seeing lots of companies specifically like in coding and things like that where you could just get, I had a good friend of mine the other day who had basically a week's worth of coding work compressed down into a matter of a couple hours. That's incredibly powerful and absolute game changer. So there are certain subsections, business specifically in technology and other areas where this can just be absolute jet fuel and accelerate the timelines and so forth to degrees that were hard to even contemplate before.

So that's amazing. But without a solid launch plan, you're never really going to get to orbit. You're never going to get, you're going to just, it's like anything in life. You don't build on a good foundation, you're going to have a shaky house, and it's just going to be breaking and kind, falling apart all the time. So you got to step by step, like everything. So start small, stay smart, and let's get it working for you. So if you guys like this conversation, you got some comments, push back. Everybody's jamming on this stuff right now. Hit me in the comments. Always happy to go round and round and introduce more thought into these videos. And if not, I will see on YouTube on the next one.

Calculating if AI is worth it or not for any given workflow

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 13:15:01 GMT

Calculating if AI is worth it or not for any given workflow

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Artificial intelligence is popping up everywhere, promising speed and optimization and even better results than humans can come up with. But before you jump in and assume that it's the magic pill for everything, you need to have a clear plan and evaluate the situation and make sure it's a good fit. In this video, I'm going to walk you through how we do that so that you can work without wasting any time and a bunch of money. Okay? Now for smaller businesses, this might seem like a lot of work to get everything down to some granular little process flow, but you got to think about plugging AI into your business just like you would think about putting an employee on some of your tasks. If you can't define it, you can't document it. You sure as heck can't hand it off to anyone, let alone a piece of automated technology.

Okay? The next thing you got to figure out is, is AI actually going to make a positive impact in the workflow or process that you're evaluating? Is it going to potentially lower the costs, increase accuracy or speed, reduce consumptive time on human labor, which is typically expensive? Is there actual value in plugging it in? And that's where sort of the rubber meets the road. So you've got to get to that question and then of course that answer. Now, let's get into the carry costs or cost to carry, however you want to say that. And implementation costs. You've got to figure out what the setup costs is, and that's going to weigh on the decision. I mean, set of costs can be anywhere. And I talked to somebody today, 60,000 to get a project off the ground to put AI chat in a bunch of areas in one business.

So the numbers can be big and the numbers can be small, but do not be fooled by all the stuff that's in the market. That's a hundred dollars, $200, that's not going to get you to the finish line. It will take more. So you need to evaluate the set of costs and the cost to carry every month alongside whatever the human piloting costs are and so forth. And the arbitrage between all of that has to be positive or it's just simply not worth it. And there's been a number of cases recently where we've been evaluating this stuff and it actually wasn't worth it. So it's not the golden pill, and you have to treat it like every other business decision that either has to pencil out or it doesn't. Okay, a few more thoughts too. Pilot everything before you commit and go live, which you just have to start a trial phase or limited some sort of limited rollout before you let the thing take over a whole space in your business.

So slow walk, whatever you do forward until confidence is in the right place and the results are exactly what you're hoping for. Alright, let's wrap this one up. The kind of final closing thoughts are, this is right to go back to that feedback loop, which is does the AI implementation, whether it be solo set or human in the loop, or human piloted or whatever variant, produce better results at lower costs? And if yes, then of course you can start to conservatively scale it up. If no either revert back to manual processes or revise the structure and or evaluate where the issues are. And they're either going to be a one of two spots enhanced costs, which could be coming from the human labor side, supervision and piloting needs that are more strenuous than the previous manual process, or everybody's doing it, but the results just suck. So those two things need to be looked at sharply if they're negative and explored to see if you can iron it out. But either way, just remember that AI is not some magic wand. It's just like anything else that you implement in your business. It needs to be done strategically, mindfully, and with normal management practices. If you guys think I missed something here, go ahead and hit me in the comments. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next video.

How to Produce Videos for Displays in Your Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 15:38:40 GMT

How to Produce Videos for Displays in Your Business

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Hey guys. In this video I'm going to unpack how to take maximum advantage of the displays and TVs that you may have in your business. So this is going to be a great thing to watch. If you have a medical office, you have a lobby, you have a waiting room, you have a service counter, you have a restaurant, you have a bar, anything like that where we've got TVs where we can take advantage of, I'm going to unpack how to strategically take advantage of those, create your own advertising loops that are engaged and silently sell and influence your customers while your employees are doing the job that they need to do. So this is a great way to make sure that you can get your messages across and not have to necessarily rely on human factors and your labor force to do that, because of course they're busy providing customer service.

So let's jump right into it. I'm going to tell you how to produce great spots for those displays, what the psychological tactics are, and talk about a little bit of technical aspects as well. Okay? Let's get into what we can cover and what the approach is. And most of this stuff abides by the same types of messaging and tactics that we'd use in the rest of our advertising. So we want to focus on key benefits, the product highlights, and most importantly, the expected or desired outcomes that your customers want from your product or services. You don't want to do too much detail trying to get into overly educating and so forth. Anything that's going to information overload people when they're casually enjoying the space in your business. So if they're eating a meal, I mean, they're not trying to learn about every single thing, but of course you can pop some stuff about your desserts and so forth, right?

Great play. That's incremental revenue, and that's a great thing to be promoting in that type of environment. So think along those lines, but don't go overboard trying to do too much, and you'll of course want to package that into appealing visuals, texts, and graphics that reinforce and support the message. That is what is the focus of whatever that segment is. And when you're doing these loops, the other thing to think about is that you would have multiple promotional segments within a loop. Some of the ones we have done have been 20 to 30 minutes in total runtime. And amongst that, you can have quite a bit. You can also have some repetition in there because you're going to replay it overplay. So you can think about it that way. So this is sometimes not a small project, but it's worth it because it's such an incredibly good opportunity to take advantage of when you have your customers in your space to talk about the structure of what this loop is going to be.

Okay, we're going to begin with awareness, right? What's the vibe? What's the whole deal with the business and what's your guys' story? Overarching stuff, brand stuff. Then we can go into cross sell, upsell, and maybe downsell, right? We start unpacking what are the additional things that you offer that they may not know about? If they're buying X, wouldn't they like to buy Y? If they're enjoying a meal, they like to have a dessert. If they're getting tires on their car, would they also like to have their oil changed? That kind of stuff needs to get unpacked in the next set of series of segments. So you can then go all the way down the line with those, which gives you a lot of material, typically with most businesses to work with. And I would add on to the end of that, which I said earlier in the last segment.

Then you can stack in some success stories that other customers have had, or just good time vibe, like people having fun with your stuff or people having fun at your place. In the case of a restaurant, great customer interactions, events, things like that. In the case of a product, somebody out using it and living their best life. In the case of a service, what is, after the service is performed, what does that outcome look like for your typical customer that has a good positive experience? So that kind of stuff, those can all get feathered in. Now you can blend away and hopscotch type A, type B, type A, type A, type B, type C, and randomize the thing, which is not a bad idea. Or you can go linear. I typically like to randomize, and here's why, especially when you have shorter customer visitation timelines in a restaurant, you can get away with a longer loop.

Obviously we're going to sit down and have a meal, but if you have a counters serve business or something where people come in and leave, or maybe they're just in line to check out, so you got maybe two minutes or three minutes with the person's attention, or they're in an elevator or they're in a lobby, they're not going to hang out forever. That's when we get into that randomized deal and we're going to produce something where they're going to get as much exposure in a short period of time that you can possibly construct. So structurally, that's a good roadmap to how to lay this thing in. Okay, let's dive into the production quality. It goes without saying, and if you've been on my channel this, that we want to go as professional as we possibly can, especially something that's going to be on a display in your business.

It really needs to be done with good gear by somebody who's qualified that knows how to shoot that knows how to edit. Don't think you're going to pull this off necessarily on a phone. And with janky stuff. Now, the good news is on these, it's typically no audio. So that whole complicated equation about how to mix audio, get high quality audio and that kind of stuff sort of goes out the window, so you get a pass on that part. However, you also lose that as any sort of crutch in this production to help moving the story along. So you have to do all the work with visuals, and in this case, that typically means some graphic design and animation is going to mean to be done. So you can bring in some text and some messaging that's going to go along with the visual and footage is in the background.

There are some cases and some businesses where almost a slide deck can get most of this job done without having to worry about camera work. So consider that for your business. You may be a good fit to do a series of slides with some nice animations, maybe some still photography that's part of that, and not have to get into a lot of videography. There is quite a bit of flexibility on how you produce these depending on the type of business and what is going on. So don't discount the fact that some of this could be mostly graphic design type of work in a lot of cases can make it easier. And at the same time, the requirements that I just needed still apply. It can't look like some clip a crap from 1989. It's got to be really smooth. And of course, putting the best foot forward for your brand, company, store, location, et cetera.

Don't put anything together that doesn't look amazing. It's going to play all the time and your customers are going to watch it. And the exact reason why I'm suggesting that you take advantage of this is that you have a captive audience would start to quickly work against you. So don't put some crap together for a captive audience. Then you're just going to pump your captive audience with some junky stuff, and in their head they're going to be like, why am I in this dealing with this junky place? So be looking for professional high quality production value. It should, when it's done, whether it's video craft design work, slide, still images, like doing the kind of Ken Burns effect, text overlay font treatment, all that stuff. Make sure it is gorgeous and let it play and enjoy it because worth the investment. And here's the last thing I'll say about that part, because you're going to get a lot of mileage out of it.

You could play the damn thing for a year and maybe just do some quick edits to update for seasonal offers or additional things that you've brought in to the product mix, and you just edit those in. So the first piece that you do can be absolutely amazing, and then you can just build into that almost the modular approach. So don't cheap out and do stuff that you're going to be hating in a month. Look at this thing, it's going to go 12 months, and then that sort of squares you up on whatever the investment is. Okay? Alright, good stuff. Well, let's talk about what are the strategies that you can use. This is a great opportunity to leverage upsells, downsells, and cross sells that your customers may not know about and that you can tell stories around, show them with all the other stuff that you do so you can think of it as a great indoctrination opportunity for your customers.

The last thing I would add to that, that is a shirt buyer win, is to throw in some reputation remarketing stuff in there. What are some other success stories that you can throw into this loop so that the customers that are there or that might about to be buying from you because they just walked in, have a chance to see other stories that people have had by working with you buying what you sell and getting the outcome that they all want. Okay, let's wrap this up. First thing to remember, your display video should be working for you to drive profit and help your selling agenda, whatever that is for your product and service. It should draw, focus and spotlight on the things that are going to help move your business forward, not just be entertainment in the lobby. Okay? There is some whole other discussion about creating atmosphere loops and so forth that is not, this conversation is about taking advantage of display space in your business that can help teach your customers about more opportunity.

They have to solve problems in their lives with what you offer. So that's the crux of this thing. And if I was going to review any part of it, that would be it, which is the key strategical part. The rest of the stuff, production awareness, cross sale, upsell downsell on all the pieces on, you can rewind and review that, and you of course can always go to other videos on my channel and learn even more about some of those tactics. So if you have displays in your business and you're struggling with that, you're trying to put stuff together or you got questions or you think all of this sounds completely insane, hit me up in the comments. And of course, don't miss the next video. I'm going riding. See you guys later.

Understanding Your Target Buyer Through Avatar Development

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:15:00 GMT

Understanding Your Target Buyer Through Avatar Development

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Hey guys, in this video we're going to talk about avatars. And I don't mean blue man in a laboratory, but I am talking about your customers and here's why it's so important. So avatar development is so important for our advertising marketing because it's the first step before you can write any effective copy. So in this video, we're going to break down how to go about it and develop an avatar profile that you can write your ads to, your emails, to your web pages, to at all of your copywriting, and it's going to give you incredible clarity on how to attack all of those tasks. So let's dig into it.

Alright, let's talk about what is the avatar? Let's, let's define the customer avatar. So the customer avatar is more than just a demographic profile, and that's the trap with this. Everybody thinks like, oh, targeting demographic. It's not really that the customer avatar is when it's done well is actually everything about the individual that represents your ideal customer. So that could be lots of stuff, really important stuff. Their values, their goals, their wants, desires, their problems along with all the other traditional stuff like their household income, what they drive and these other sort of attributes. But it's deeper. It's really understanding who the person is on an individual basis and where do they want to be. I think that might be even one of the most important parts of it is where are they trying to go in their life? Where are they headed and how are you with your product and service going to get them there?

So it's deeper than demographic profiling, okay? The avatar is everything about the individual to the degree that you could talk about them. Like you talk about one of your best friends. And anything less than that is not true avatar development. That all means that doing that process or embracing that process as a marketer or business owner or whatever is how you move beyond generic marketing and generic offer. So you heighten your ability to target and communicate with them and that shapes all of your copywriting and messaging and everything that you're writing to them. This is especially true in email marketing where we want to be writing to the individual, not to the list. I see so many emails where people are just, they think email marketing is like some free post-it board where they're just going to spray people with a bunch of crap instead of really figuring this part of the discussion out and then sending those folks legitimate relevant stuff in their inbox that's going to get them excited to get engaged with the content, get engaged with the product, get engaged with the service, and so on and so forth.

Okay? So it starts with looking at who your ideal customer is and then starting to pull that apart into the most granular components that you possibly can. So the second step from my notes is figuring out the daily life of your avatar. So what's their day look like? And I mean really down in the detail, do they drink coffee? Do they drink tea? Do they drink energy drink? Do they have breakfast? Do they not have breakfast? They wake up early, do they wake up late? Are they late all the time? Do they go to the gym every morning? Do they exercise? Do they read? Do they shower in the morning, shower at night, shower both times? Do they take their kids to school or do they go to school themselves? Do they ride a bike to work or do they drive a car or do they drive a golf cart?

Do they even go to work? So you got to decode all of that stuff. The daily routine, the daily, the average day, their typical day. And inside of all of that, you start to figure out what problems and what friction they have in their debt. Then you start to uncover how you can position your product or serve it within that experience so that it helps them alleviate the problems in their life. And of course, people will pay to have their problems go away or to get the help that they need. The next part of that ritual analysis is looking at their key moments. What are the key moments that they have in their more like calendar or yearly timelines, like the bigger timelines. Are they having a baby? Do they buy a house, they just graduate from college? Are they almost retired? Are they retired? Are they about to get married? Are they about to get divorced? Are they struggling to stay in shape? Are they struggling with their health? Are they super healthy?

All of that stuff is lifestyle key moments and those overlay on top of daily schedule. And all of that sort of brings the richness to who this person is and what they're experiencing on a daily basis. And once we start understanding that how we talk to them gets so dramatically easier that it's crazy to start marketing before you do this part. Alright, let's keep this thing going and talk about demographics because everybody gets focused on that and it definitely plays a role in this. And I would argue that demographics is the first sort of building block of the discussion that would include age, gender, location, income, maybe even some stuff like racial affiliation, sexual preferences, or sexual identity. So it's the kind of foundational attributes of your ideal buyer. Where it starts getting fun though, is looking at the pain points within that and starting to list those out.

What are the struggles that your avatar is challenged with? And some of those will come out of that daily routine and key moments stuff, analysis, it's called that way. Then you get into values and motivations and belief systems and those are equally important. So you really have to bring that in and figure out what are your customer values? What motivates them? What are their desires? What are their objectives? Again, where do they see themselves when they look down the road, where are they going and how are you going to help them get there? And then I think the last thing, and it is important to look at it, is their buying behavior. What's their purchasing behavior? How do they buy? Where do they buy? Where do they shop? How do they engage with products and services? Do they do a lot of research or do they not need a lot of information to make a decision?

All things to consider when starting to look at developing the demographic attributes or the foundational attributes of your ideal customer avatar. Let's talk about tools you can use to help figure out and decode this avatar thing. Where do you find the information to start with is a big part of this and I think a lot of people stumble on that. So the beauty of today's world is that there is of course a ton of data out there. So we can start with things like social media analytics, which is frankly a gold mine. If you have that type of community set up around your product or service, that could be incredibly helpful to start looking at your best customer profiles and what their lives look like. Basically, I'm telling you, you could control a little bit and learn a lot. I mean, that's the probably nasty way to say it, but it's also true and you can find out a lot of insights that way and figure out what those people generally start to look like and kind of focus that down.

The other one that's an age old tried and true tactic to do this is send out some customer surveys and start asking the questions that you don't know of your own customers to fill in the blanks on what you're trying to learn about these folks. And you can do that formally by sending email or having that be part of your onboarding process or you're post purchasing process. So you could build that in so that you're capturing that all the time and optimizing this entire project. The other thing, and people kind of overlook this is anecdotally, talk to your customers. Ask them questions about their lives. What's happening? Why did they pick you? Is this helping solving their problem? Are they seeing success? Where are they being challenged? Are they having problems that are ongoing? Is there something you can be doing better? That kind of stuff never hurts to talk to the customer.

You can learn an incredible amount. Many business owners do not spend the time to do that. So that's an easy one. It sounds basic, but it's also overlooked in the day-to-day scramble of trying to execute. So it's good to make that a priority if you can with yourself and with your staff. The other stuff, of course that's worth looking at is Google Analytics. Looking at CRM system analytics. Why are people opening in emails? What type of content are they engaging with? What is your website content looking like? Is that giving you any tips and clues to figure out what's relevant and important to your audience? And that will, again, help you to optimize that profile and in effect give you a broader sense of their behavioral patterns. And then you can match that with what the personality profile is, the lifestyle profile is and all the other things that we just talked about.

Okay, so those are good places to start and more the customer survey stuff, definitely easy one asking questions, an easy one, and then digging around and scraping online. A little bit more time consuming, but still worthwhile. And of course you want to have the best version of analytics on your website and across all of your content and be looking at those data points and all of this together when synthesized starts to give you some clarity. Okay, let's pull this whole thing together and get into what's basically almost like a diary entry or a personal profile, but really personal. And when I say that, I mean it's like, as an example, Wendy is 35, she has two kids. She drives a minivan, she tries to go to the gym a couple days a week, but oftentimes doesn't have time. She likes to cook dinner, but sometimes it's too much and she likes to go out, she struggles to clean the house, but she always makes that a priority, yada, yada, yada, right?

So the whole, almost like a story, like a narrative around this avatar, and you've got to do enough of that to really bring the person to life almost like it's a descriptive story. And once you have that sheet and even with a picture, and I can tell you I've done this, it is so helpful, and you'll now know who you're talking to when you write all your copywriting, all your emails, your web pages, your sales letters, your even social media posts, you have one ideal person that you're working to communicate with, attract and replicate as your ideal customer. So let's wrap it up. If you have anything to add, throw it down in the comments. I always love to hear you guys' feedback challenges. If you disagree with me on any of this stuff, go ahead and call me crazy. I'd love to go round and round with you on it, otherwise get to it because as much as this seems like make work project, it's really not.

It is where everything starts with writing successful and I mean successful by being effective, right? Because here to match people with our products and services, create revenue, grow our top line, create abundance for our families, our friends, and our employees, but also help people and solve problems. And in order to do that, you've got to be communicating to them in the way that they can receive it, and that you can filter through the millions of people out there and find the ideal people that you want to work with. So hop to it and I look forward to seeing you on the next video.

The number 1 thing you have to do before you start marketing a product or service

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:06:52 GMT

The number 1 thing you have to do before you start marketing a product or service

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Hey guys, in this video I'm going to cover with you the number one thing you have to do before you start marketing a product or service and why it is so important to you, saving money, time, and effort and mistakes in the future as you reiterate your campaign. So by the end of this video, you're going to know exactly what to focus on before you get started on everything else, and you're going to know how to leverage all that so that the next time that you syndicate and go out to market with that same product or service, it's a lot easier. Let's get started. Okay, so the number one thing you have to focus on is customer service. A strong customer service experience builds trust and a foundation for a loyal ongoing future relationship. So well-structured customer journeys, keep that customer happy and coming back, which is reduces churn and eventually starts reducing your ongoing marketing costs, which I promised you.

And these satisfied customers are much more likely to leave you positive reviews, and that's going to support your marketing efforts and allow you to recycle third party attestation about your product and service, which is far more powerful than you saying. It's great if we can get other people telling the market that our product and service is great, it's a far more trusted and far more valuable, but you can't do that if your customer experience is falling flat and you're just pissing people off. So the net effect is that having great customer service can actually amplify your marketing and then make your campaign dollars go a lot further and you get more bang for the buck and a lot more mileage out of any syndication effort that you make. Alright, let's also unpack the common pitfalls that we see as it relates to customer service and marketing.

If the journey, the customer journey isn't smooth, then we potentially have these negative reviews that pop up. And I got to tell you, it takes a lot of advertising, marketing dollars and sophisticated messaging to overcome a trend of negative reviews. People read those things and they believe them more than what they believe the company is saying about itself. So from a trust scale standpoint, negative reviews are going to be more trusted than whatever the customer says about it's product or service. So it's just a complete non-starter, and you have to get this thing ironed out so that you don't go into that black hole because climate out of that thing is a absolute nightmare. And if you advertise without a perfected customer journey, it also can just lead to wasted budget because unhappy customers aren't going to return. So while you may get one purchase out of them for the advertising dollar that you spend, you are not going to expect and or be able to capture and tertiary purchases or create regulars in the case of a business that offers that type of regular purchasing, like a restaurant for instance.

So churn can be amplified and very difficult to overcome, and then it just starts absorbing more and more and more and more marketing dollars. So customers who've had a bad experience are just unlikely return, and that impacts long-term revenue in a very significant way. Now the last one, and this is even probably the worst of the whole thing, is that poor customers experiences actually damage your brand reputation. They damage the view of the brand in the market, and then all of the future marketing efforts are somewhat undermined by the fact that the brand is not strong. And for all of us, small businesses, medium businesses, people are starting out specifically building good brand reputation has to be the tip of the spear in terms of your marketing objectives. You can have a lot of issues like bad messaging, bad targeting, a crappy ad, and so forth.

But if your brand is strong and you have a reputable brand, all of those things can be forgiven, recovered, reworked, reiterated, and optimized. But the minute the brand is damaged through poor customer service, a lot of that stuff has a 10 x impact and everything just starts to be a money pit. Let's get into the how do we solve this problem, right? Because it's one thing to be aware and be conscious of it. It's another thing to make this stuff happen so that you can get off and running. So the first thing that I suggest, and we certainly do this with a lot of clients, and we do this here for ourselves, is we map the customer journey from awareness about the brand all the way through their post-purchase experience with the product or service. So what are all those hallmark steps that they need to take, that needs to be mapped out?

Then you can design an engaging, clear, concise process that makes it easy for those new customers to get started with your product or service. So each one of those hallmarks probably has some sort of action, and by me, they should watch this video, they should fill out this form, they should be on this zoom call next. They should get this email. So every one of those hallmarks then defines an action item, and those action items is what smooths the whole thing out and allows you to deliver that exceptional customer journey. Then you got to go back to your team and make sure that your fulfillment team, your support team are trained and address to address any of the customer needs and that they can effectuate those critical action items, some of which of course we like to automate, which is awesome. And some of those things are going to need to be done by a human being that's properly trained, that knows what the expectations of the customer are and what their job expectations are and what the outcome is that they need to get done so that the customer can move to the next step in that optimized journey.

And then of course, you've got to just like everything else, even in the marketing side, this is a discussion about fulfillment and customer service, but just like marketing, we've got to test, evaluate, get feedback, send surveys, ask questions, and then go back and optimize, right? So we've got to have some sort of feedback loop. We can't just plug this whole thing in and then walk away and we like, I'm done, right? We've got to do better than that and seek some feedback. Look to areas where you screw up. And here's one of the things, I'll just share this with you. If anywhere in our customer onboarding and so forth, I get an email where something's not clear or the customer has a question or something like that, I'm like, gosh, darn it, we should have been in front of that issue. And then we modify.

So that question or that issue doesn't come up again. So there's a sticking point, a friction point or something like that. And you see the customer pause there either through communication or there's some dead time or things aren't moving smoothly. Time to zero in, make an adjustment, fix, remedy, communicate better, optimize whatever the team is doing, et cetera. Okay? So all of those things need to happen. And then this thing gets really easy. And I got to tell you, nothing will make you happier than seeing happy, and I don't mean happy. I mean absolutely exuberant customers. Nothing feels better at the end of the day than knowing that you really took care of people in the absolute best way possible. Not that you just did the bare minimum, but that you absolutely blew them away by how awesome you and your team are. So do yourself the biggest favor you can for your business, for your customers, for your staff and everyone involved, right?

And for your future and before you spent any money on ads, social media, getting wound up and all this other stuff, targeting and creative and shooting videos and spending money and all that stuff. Focus on creating the most perfect customer experience and support and onboarding that you possibly can. I don't care if that's you have a muffin shop and people come in there and buy muffins or you have a sophisticated medical practice or something like that. All it doesn't really matter what it looks like. You've got to be in the job of blowing people away. And that starts with how that customer experiences your business, your staff, your processes, so on and so forth. And that seamless journey that feels so good and like you are anticipating their needs, that every step will create incredible loyalty and boost your marketing impact far beyond anything you can do with ads and copy.

Because a raving fan, an advocate of your business is worth 10 times any other thing you can do with marketing and outreach and syndication. Those people are worth their weight in gold and cultivating your process so that you can create that type of customer should be your number one objective before you do anything else. So go ahead and start putting these steps into practice. Take a real objective look at what the hell is going on with your business and see what you can do to do better. And even if you're doing great and you have happy customers, do better than great because why wouldn't you want to create a tribe of absolutely raving fans around your business? And I promise you, your future will be bright and your marketing dollars will go so much further every time you reach out and syndicate, you're going to be supported by a strong brand, strong customer reviews and feedback, people that are talking and reinforcing the messages that you're putting out in the market. And you should have ready buyers waiting at your door. So if you've got anything to add to this or you think I missed something, I would love to hear it about in the comments below. Otherwise, I will see you on the next video.

Why AI Won’t Solve Your Problems

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 05:59:33 GMT

Why AI Won’t Solve Your Problems

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AI promises a faster, brighter, more fun, less hard work future. The future that we all dream about and want it speaks to our deepest desires, chilling out on the beach while all of our work is being done. Well, in this video, I'm going to unpack the ugly, dark side of AI and why a lot of people that we see, including some of our clients, are struggling to integrate that new technology into their businesses. How to deal with the overwhelm and how to take advantage of the good stuff without getting crushed by all the trouble. So if you're struggling with what to do with ai, this video's for you. Let's get into it. Alright, so let's talk about how to overcome some of that stuff, right? Here's the thing, the reality is we're going to use it. And the trick here, and certainly the goal of this video is to start to get us all moving in a direction that actually makes sense right now and navigate through the overwhelm, the potential losses financially or time-wise, the disappointment of failed projects and everything else.

So here's my guidance on that one. Start small. Don't drive a plug AI into every gosh darn thing that you got running, because not only would you at that point inject risk into every element of your business, which would not be good. It's also just frankly too much to manage. So pick one area where you think there could be not only a good menu of possibilities that could help, but also where there appears to be some good lift, like a good arbitrage in terms of time, labor, and cost. That makes sense. And then focus on the strategy, the AI implementation, support the strategy, not displace the strategy. Just like anything else in business. Start with a desired outcome and then work backwards and engineer what steps need to take place that logically will get you there. And then the last thing, and I think this clean guidance right now, and you probably could predict that, I would say this is to mix AI with human piloting and human oversight and monitoring.

Don't just let the thing loose and or become immediately over reliant on. Don't just say, oh, now this whole task, this whole job is just AI and this is where I see it. Okay, content creation. I've got some clients that they're tinkering around with this thing and they sort of like, oh, I don't even need to write blog posts anymore. This will just write my blog posts. And I'm like, I don't like that. And here's my thinking on that one. The AI that they're using isn't thoroughly trained in their level of expertise, doesn't speak in their proper voice, doesn't emulate their wisdom and experience accurately. So all that stuff is lost. So yeah, we get some content, but it's the richness that these important business leaders, thought leaders and authority platform people that I'm working with can bring to blogs that we all want to read.

So it's like the part that is the amazing part immediately gets scraped out of the equation by handing the task to AI in that one example. And I would say you could probably take that same sort of thought process and apply it to a lot of areas, especially when it comes to content and marketing, the wisdom piece. AI is not wise, so remember that. Now, here's another one that also is a little scary. I think this one's pretty obvious, but there's a risk of over-reliance in your organization. And here's the deeper implications of that. If, and let's just say in a perfect world, everything was kind of hunky dory and you adopt this AI stuff and you get in there and you get it working. The sort of natural implications of that, the logical implications of that is that the human beings that are surrounding all of that have the distinctive risk of getting sort of dumbed down.

And in that way, there's a real issue to contemplate in terms of are you marginalizing your institutional knowledge and skillset in the human side of the workforce? You may be amplifying it in the AI side, which is all great, but at what cost on the human side, on the human expertise, and even on the piloting, monitoring, managing, and here's the big one, the ability to strategically think in a holistic sense with an awareness of all variables. And as much as we want AI to do a lot of that stuff, it sounds stressful. I would say specifically, while making this video right now, a lot of that stuff, frankly is just not ready to do right now. And even if it were ready to do, is that the path that you and your business want to go down? Does that even make sense? When you start thinking about the long run out and what that could end up being worth a serious thought?

The reality of all that is that it kind of gets to be where if you're trying to get a lot of stuff done, it almost is adding to the burden of getting everything done right? Because a layer of labor and decision-making demands on top of the regular day-to-day business, that has to be costed out, allocated out, and carved out everybody's schedule. And of course the budget. And that's where the friction is. Let's talk about the cons and the cons are real. And one of the big issues with ai, a lot of software tools is there is a significant amount of data dependency. And the old saying, garbage in equals garbage out could not be more true. In this instance. And this is where I think I've seen sort of the deadly side here over the last six months, the sales literature, the sort of headlines is, oh, it makes everything good.

You could be an idiot and it'll make you sound smart, or it'll fix all your problems. They kind of positioning this thing. It's some sort of magic wand or omni potent solution. The reality is, is that it takes a human being to set it up, plug it into the right stuff, feed it the right stuff, train it on the right stuff, know where to apply it, know where not to apply it. And also, here's the big one. When it spits out whatever the solutions are could be, and this LLM stuff, just content, text documents, outlines, all that stuff, you still have to be, have a smart human being in the chair to say whether any of that stuff is usable or if it's much of garley goop. So you haven't really completely untethered anyone from working, monitoring and piloting. You've just effectively at that point, given them more crap to keep track of. Yeah, I know. I told you this video is going to get real. All right, there you have it.

AI is not all peaches and cream. The biggest issue right now is overwhelm. I walked you through three good ways to navigate through that. Stay strategic, stay human piloted, and go one project at a time for now, until you gain organizational mastery of implementing new tools, onboarding new systems, adjusting workflow, and continuing to define and refine your desired outcomes. If you think I'm full of crap or none of this makes sense, or if you agree with me, hit me up in the comments and don't miss the next video. We're having a fun out here. It's not easy to ride, talk, and film. Yeah, ride talk and film. It's all happening here. Watch. We're going to drop this curve. Okay?

Finding Inspiration Everywhere You Look

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 15:14:53 GMT

Finding Inspiration Everywhere You Look

Inspiration is all around us. If you know where to look specifically for marketing, because it is out in the open today, we're going to explore how to use swipe files, competitor insights and trends to fuel creative ideas and generate great copy content and marketing tactics. By the end of this video, you'll have practical tools to gather and upcycle ideas for fresh, unique approaches to your content and marketing needs. Alright, let's talk about the age old tool that you need to have for your marketing efforts, and that is a swipe file. Now, it doesn't matter if you have a product or service or what it is that you're trying to get out in the world and get some conversions and response on, you've got to have your eyes open and be looking at your industry. Plus, and this is the one that a lot of people don't do.

They spend a lot of time looking at their competitors, but they don't spend a lot of time looking at other niches and other areas of business, which is oftentimes personally where I find the most inspiration. Now, lemme just stop this video right here and say, I am not telling you to copy other people, plagiarize or otherwise steal things. I'm talking a discussion. We're having a discussion here about seeking inspiration, tactical guidance, and looking at formatting and frameworks. And by looking out across all of the world where marketing is evident, pretty much everywhere we can start to learn and get inspiration. So that's what we're discussing today. We're not plagiarizing, we're not stealing. So swipe vials are collection of content, ads, visual phrases, copywriting, layout, colors, tactics, and anything like that that looks like it might function or at least inspire you as it relates to getting your marketing done.

Okay? So you want to build a swipe file library. You can categorize that any way that makes sense to you, images by copy, by design and so forth, and start collecting that stuff. I will tell you that I go all the time and ask to take menus and print material from businesses all over that I visit and keep bringing them back here to the office, and we have a gigantic cabinet of that stuff. So we sit down with clients and we're looking for inspiration or we're struggling with a project to come up with fresh new ideas. Sometimes we throw all that stuff out on the desk, so that's what I'm talking about. It's not all digital necessarily, and you may be in a position where print is important, but I like looking at print because a lot of times more time is spent on those pieces.

So that's a little tip for you here, okay? You're going to use these references when you're stuck on ideas and you need stimulation for new creative direction. They let you see new angles and how others might be approaching similar concepts or challenges in their marketing. Okay? This is basic stuff that everybody in this business is doing, but you can be doing for your business. You're going to want to look at competitors or industries and see what's working and how they're engaging their audience. And one of the things that you have to start training yourself to do is when you are presented with a piece of marketing or marketing piece, could be print, could be digital, could be video, could be display, it could be photography, could be social media. It doesn't matter. You have to look at the piece, but then you have to look through it and what the triggers are and start noticing how you're affected by it.

Why did it make you pause? What about it is engaging? What is the call to action? All the basic elements that we discuss here on this channel need to be evaluated and noticed. So you have to look at marketing outside in the world with a conscious, conscious view about what is going on, not just a consumptive view, okay? Because two sides to our mind, the one that is being influenced and the one that is evaluating. As a marketer, you need to reside in the evaluatory side of your brain when you're looking out for inspiration and you want to be seeking to spot patterns and looking at what's working. And one of the best ways to see that is to see campaigns and so forth that are consistently repeated. Typically, campaigns that are consistently in repetition are working, and if they're working, there's something about them that is functionally the right thing to do, and that's where we want to zero our focus in.

What about it is work? Okay, so I think one of the fun ones that I like to think about is flow from progressive. She's had a whole career of doing these funny little skits with Progressive because it's working. And if you look at that one just as an example, you start to realize that there's a couple of things there that are really valuable to markers, and I think a great lesson in that one. Each one of the little ads kind of has a storyline that we can remember. Like remember the funny one where she was on the camping trip. Remember the one she's at, the boating dock. Remember the one where she's messing around and pretending she's riding a motorcycle? All these different areas that progressive services for insurance, they did skits about and placed her in these different circumstances where she's kind of a badass biker and then she's this and that.

So the lesson in all that is, hey, can I tell stories around all these different areas that my product services, the problems that we solve, the progressive basically has created skits around every problem that progressive insurance solves. Risk is the problem they solve, risk in vehicles, houses, so on and so forth. Okay, so that one is great to look at and is a perfect example of something that's been ongoing for years and years and years is clearly bringing them leads and business and brand awareness and reaching a wide demographic. They're funny. Young people can enjoy them, old people can enjoy them. They're universally appealing. So lots to take away from just that. One example, which I'll let you know, I just spitballed right here, didn't even have it in the notes, but this is what I'm saying. It's all out there for us to notice.

Use your competitor insights to enhance your ideas and create more value for your audience, and therefore more engagement and more conversions. Okay, let's talk a little bit about trend surfing. Now, this is a good age. Old tactic's been going on for, I don't know, probably a hundred years as a business person and especially as a marketing person or somebody that's trying to grow a business to stay aware of current trends, and that can really help your content stake timely and relevant. So you're going to use tools like Google Trends, social media insights and trending hashtags to track what's popular, and also just keeping your head up and not getting too buried in your own stuff. You need to be societally aware of what is in movement at this time. And today as I make this video, a big piece of what's trending in the technology space and in the lifestyle space is artificial intelligence.

So if that in some way intersects your life, having that in your titles and your content and your marketing and maybe as part of your product development is clearly very relevant to most buyers right now because there's a lot of interest in buzz around that. That's just one example. But there's trends everywhere and sub trends and very niche niche trends that may be where your business resides, but it's really important to stay conscious and be ready to serve those when you can take advantage of it. And how do you do that? You look at ways to customize those trends to match your brand style, which not only helps with authenticity, but also helps with relevancy. Okay? So you're going to use those trending ideas to refresh your content, bring new perspective, but also to attach and ride the wave of the trend to get more awareness, potentially open up more demographic and markets for yourself and to position yourself and your company as staying on with the now.

Not getting left behind is also a really important piece for services and products. People don't want to buy the old stuff. They want to be the new cutting edge things, so keep that in mind. Okay, let's wrap this one up. You're going to build an inspirational toolkit consisting of a swipe file, competitor insights, trends, and go-to creative ideas. That could be visual layout, graphics, media, videos, colors, competitor and or other industry tactics and so forth and mechanics that could and maybe will help support your marketing efforts. You're going to start building this swipe file and gathering all of that starting today. And then as you build and build and build, you learn and learn and learn, and you have resources for yourself and your team within those swipe files. Now let me know if I missed anything or if you guys have something to contribute down in the comments or how you're going to find inspiration for your marketing and your business. I'll love to see you on the next video.

How to Prioritize Syndication Channels for Campaigns

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:17:37 GMT

How to Prioritize Syndication Channels for Campaigns

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Choosing the syndication channels that you are going to use for your campaign can be the difference between success and failure. In this video, I'm going to take you through the four characteristics that you need to be paying attention to so you can make the right decisions. We're going to go over audience, content, format, channel effectiveness, and timing. So by the end of this video, you're going to know exactly how to pick the most effective syndication channels to amplify your content. Alright, let's start just by talking about audience preferences, demographic, okay, we're thinking about channel syndication. We want to think about what our target demographic is, but we want to look at it in terms of age, location, interest and online habits, of course. And then we're going to take that and use data insights and social media insights and make some deductions about channel preference for whatever that segment may be.

And we want to match the bulk of that participatory population to certain channels that we can focus our campaigns on. So we got to look at the overall demographic, then the channel preference, platform preference might be another way to say that. Where do these people hang out and spend their time? What type of content are they consuming? Are they watching YouTube? Are they on Instagram? Are they making dance videos on TikTok? These are all things that we need to know about the people that are our potential customers, and you have to look at data to uncover the actual factual reality of that. I would not say when there's money on the line, make assumptions. Use data to prove out what you believe or to disprove what you believe so that you can focus and be more effective, and all of that's going to give you a better pool of people to reach and maximize your reach per dollar.

A lot of times, even lowering your bid rates and other things when there's more placement available. So this serious financial implications, just this part alone, you also need to consider the content type that you're putting out, right? Are you advertising with video? Are you putting out some content marketing on a blog? Are you using infographics or podcasts? So different media, different format could be display ads, and I mean even email is part of this conversation. That is a marketing channel, so you have to figure out what type of media you're using and then if it fits well with the platform. So we all know YouTube and Instagram and degree. Obviously TikTok, depending on format, are all video-based platforms. So you're not going to post a text document there. It goes without saying. So you got to align the platform with the type of content that you're going to putting out, and you may, if you have a campaign, need to fashion individual content for each one of these channels, and that's a workload and cost discussion, but once you understand where you want to be, it's easier to figure out what the priority is, which is what this all about.

So all of those things are going to help boost engagement, the proper content on the right platform, deliver it is the best recipe for success. The next thing we got to do is get into the performance analysis stuff. We got to be tracking metrics like click shares, conversions, and on and on. There's all this data points. You got to be looking at that stuff with a focus on return on ad spend and return means profit in my world because the money you keep is the only money that counts. And then we want to be testing and cross ing and trying to drive that return on ad spend number up. Of course, we want to drive as much profit as we can by tweaking creative, some targeting and all these little finer data points and try to squeeze as much juice out of this thing as we possibly can.

Now if you do that and you're smart with your budgeting and you optimize channel placement by looking at the actual results per channel and double down on what's working, of course skin back, the stuff that's not, and I don't always suggest abandoning presence on any one given platform if you're doing that because it is also at the same time where you want to focus in on the stuff that's producing the most results. You also want to be present where your audience jumps to and has some other secondary participation. So it's not black and white. What can I say? Let's dig right into timing. Now, timing has a couple of different things to pay attention to, and we can see that by, if we look at an actual date and timestamp, there's a lot of numbers there. So we have the month of the year, we've got the day of the month and then or the time of the month, and then we've got the day of the week more specifically, and then we've got within any given day, 24 hours and all of that.

So all of that stuff applies. You may be a seasonal advertiser and there's a certain portion of the year around a holiday or around just for instance, summer. Your product service might be a summer product or it could be a tax preparing person. So that's beginning of the year after everybody gets their paperwork in gear. So there's seasonality, but there's also what's going on in the month. And there's even other things to think about on timing, like pay cycles. When can people feel at ease about making purchases? Well, typically when they feel like they have a little money in the bank. So there's all these things with just the time factor that you really need to look at to help drive results. And then on top of all of that, because kind of a lot you get down to frequency within anyone, if you identify your targeting from a times standpoint, you say, I do the best by advertising on Mondays because my buyers are up and about and doing what they do on Mondays, and I'll give you just, I love while I'm doing this stuff, but let's say your product is morning coffee.

If you have drive through morning coffee place that starts on Monday and rock and rolls until Friday, and it's probably okay in the weekends, but it's not the same thing as that drive time morning stuff during the week when people want to get gassed up on caffeine and get to work. So your timing window is Monday through Friday, but your timing window is also mornings Monday through Friday and maybe after lunch, but that's probably secondary and would need to be evaluated. I mean, we could make a safe assumption about morning coffee and then a secondary conversation about afternoon coffee, which does, people do plenty of that, but you got to allocate and fire appropriately and wait to the most potential success. Then within all of those two frame timeframes, and let's just talk about the morning one, we got to dig into like, okay, what's our frequency?

Are we posting every single morning or are we advertising and hitting potential buyers multiple times in the morning? What time does we start at 5:00 AM 4:00 AM 3:00 AM depending on the market, depending on the environment, depending on seasonality even, right? People typically wake up earlier in the summer because it's light outside, so you have a whole little twist. Even with that, it's just all to advertise for coffee. So really dig in to what your audience is doing, what their behavior is when it relates to timing and be effective. And then make sure that within any certain time block that you get your frequency working and effective so that the messaging engages is meaningful, delivers at the velocity that you need to deliver. And all of that needs to be in alignment with the campaign objectives. So in the case of the coffee thing, it might just be like, I want to get more cars through the drive-through, and then we'll just see what these cars order.

So it could be a foot traffic strategy more than an alternate version of that would be like we're running a special and so we're going to be looking at redemptions for that. So it's not really necessarily how many people came in or how many cars are in the drive-through. It's more like, can we move this one seasonal item? Be sure that what you're setting up is in alignment with the goals. If you have a seasonal item and you kind of miss the season, you don't get ahead enough. What is it? Pumpkin spice latte, something like that. You got to get the vibe, get the awareness going that you're going to serve that right around whenever the fall season.

The Difference Between an Email and a Blog Post

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 15:25:44 GMT

The Difference Between an Email and a Blog Post

Hey everyone. Today we're going to dive into the difference between emails and blog posts. Now, I know this sounds like a little trivial, but I got to tell you, I ran into a situation where clearly a person did not know the difference. These are two content types that play unique roles in your marketing strategy and understanding how to use them effectively can make a big impact on how you engage your audience, how your conversions work, time on your website, and a lot of other factors. So let's jump right in. Okay, let's start with the main differences between email and blog posts. Okay? Both have different purposes and we're going to cover that. Audiences could be the same and or different, and there's actually just some practical technical stuff that makes them vastly different. Okay? So first thing is emails are usually sent to a specific list of subscribers, buyers, customers, with hopefully a purposeful call to action.

We typically send emails, and let me just frame this in a much bigger conversation. Marketing, the definition that we all agree on is outbound messaging designed to elicit an inbound response. I didn't make that one up. That's pretty much just known in the industry. So if it's new to you, bookmark that whole concept right now. Emails fall right in the middle of that conversation. They are an outbound message, and if you're sending good emails, hopefully God help us all. You're getting an inbound response of some sort that typically is navigated by way of your call to action. What is the email asking people to do? Now, I spend a lot of time in this channel telling folks, just like you don't always ask people to do shit on your emails, send great, informative, sort of what I would call lead by giving type content. You can educate and you can do some of the things that you would do in a blog post on an email.

There's definitely some overlap. However, categorically they're defined and act in the way that I just described. Blog posts on the other hand, are published to live and stay on your website. And for that reason alone, they play so differently in the world of marketing because they actually can be indexed by the search engine and be a permanent educational resource about your products, your brand, your story, how to use them, how you help people, all this other cool stuff like value add content, emails that go to somebody's inbox and just kind of vaporize in there. They either get the response you want or they don't. They get ignored, yada yada. We all know the story there, but a blog post, this is planting a seed that hopefully grows into a productive tive tree that bears fruit for years to come. So when you're thinking about these two things, one is like a time-limited exercise.

The other one, and this is why writing and really thinking through your blog post is so important. That shit can live forever on your website and continue to bring your business and audience and subscribers and engagement on all of these other things that we spend our sleepless nights dreaming about. So I mean, that might be the biggest categorical difference that I could call out here on this video, but let's keep going either way, I just said it. Emails are more direct and personal. Blog posts are for general public access and education because they can be found in social media search engines and be referenced. And there's an RSS feed, right? People can pull your blog posts into another digital environment like their website or even their blog or even their emails, which would be awesome. So let's start with that. Big differences between the two.

And if you didn't understand that, hopefully this all makes sense. Okay? Now let's talk about practical boundaries that you're working within. The next thing to think about is the content length and the depth of the topic. Here's my guidelines on that. Emails are generally short and to the point, maybe 50 to 200 words. They focus on delivering a message that can be quickly digested, hopefully and effective. Now, I will stop right here and say to you all that are watching, I think pretty much supported by data, and you'll see a lot of other email marketers doing this nowadays, is emails that are really written, you would write to a friend, like a short text based email. Lot more readership, lot more action taken on those than the pretty, I did it in Canva email that looks like frankly effing marketing, which we are all sensitive to.

And the minute that thing pops up on the screen in full color with all the bullshit on there, the reader goes, I'm being sold. And they shut down. They get defensive. Psychologically, the defenses go up. What is this thing trying to sell me right now that I probably don't need this? SOB is in my inbox again. Okay? So just keep that in mind. I know the temptation is lemme make it all professional and everything and it's got to be this big graphic design project, but punch below the belt. That's what I'll have to say about emails. Go low when they go high, go low. Talk to the people on your list. They're real people. Write them a note. You just text three, four lines. Hey, I made this cool video, or We just launched this amazing new product. Here's a video about it. It took a long time to put together, but I wanted to share it with you.

Same thing you would send to a friend, because guess what? More people are going to click that than the big glossy Bs that everybody sends out that nobody really likes. Unless you're like Dick's Sporting Goods or Victoria Secrets or somebody like that. Work with your audience. Treat 'em like human beings. You're not, unless you're a nationwide retailer, that probably isn't the game you need to play. Those are just my thoughts on that. And if you think I'm wrong, hear me out and test it. See what your audience responds to, because at the end of the day, just follow the data and that I'll tell you what to do. Alright, back on track here. So either way, right? 5,200 words, short, concise, maybe a picture link to a video. It's quick and dirty on emails because you can always send another one. Now, blog posts, however we just said, can be longer, more informative.

Informative. You could go, let's say on the short side, we used to go four 50 words, maybe 600 is probably a better number these days and could go all the way up to 2000 words. So somewhere in that bandwidth between 602,000 words is great for a blog post. Because guess what's going to happen in those blog posts? You're going to have tons of keywords and indexable content and opportunities for the search engines to deliver this meaningful content that you've put together and index that with people that are searching for whatever problem you're talking about. Okay? So that's the other thing too in there is if you're going to write an article, think how am I helping people solve problems? It's a good place to start. So emails quick and actionable, blog post, deeper dive into a topic, more informative, more educational, more, dare I say evergreen and have value in an ongoing future because the thing is going to live on your website, right?

( 07:12 )
Okay, let's talk about another difference. It's really important as well is tone and style. Emails are hopefully conversational and personalized, like a direct message to the reader. And I just said that write, you're talking to one person, like a friend, like your best customer, your somebody that you cherish that's involved with your business to that person, that way in a personalized tone. That's my suggestion. I pretty much can promise you that if you do that, your emails will immediately get better because people like to read stuff that's written to them, not them treated as some number in some effing database. Okay? Alright. Now the next thing on the blog post, let's talk about style and tone there. Blog post should be a little bit more like an essay from school. They should be structured and informative. They have, what do you want to call it?

Like an introduction that gives the reader a reason to keep reading. Okay? And we've covered this in our other videos on this channel. There should be a hook in the first two lines. Why am I reading this? What's the value here? What am I going to learn? You should answer those questions right away, just like we learned when we were in middle school about how to write the introduction to an essay. I mean, a blog post is just some digital word for essay about a topic. So the same rules about writing still apply, offer value added content there. Tips guides, industry insights, things that you've learned that you want to share that could be of value to other people that are trying to figure things out in the industry or niche that you operate it. So if you're a home builder and you want to get new customers to build a home, you might want to talk about how people could save money, what the newest design trends are, what to watch for when working with subcontractors or architects or any of that kind of stuff.

Share the behind the scenes, share the valuable knowledge that you've accumulated, and I promise you, your audience will be absolutely gobbling it up and will not only put you on the authority platform that you probably are and would love to be recognized for, and at the same time, read and engage and welcome new blog posts that you publish. Okay, so let's summarize that. Emails, let's to-one communication. Hey, I'm sending you this note. Could be more than that, of course, but that's really the way to think about it. And then blog posts more like an essay I'm handing in that I might read in front of the class. It's for public consumption presentation. SEO value, evergreen, going to be on your website for a long time, that kind of thing. There are many emails that we send and probably emails that you've said that I would never want permanently parked on the backside of my website, which is not appropriate.

So time and place is another thing to think about when you're thinking about tone and style. Okay, let's wrap this baby up. All right, emails short, personal, focused on action, blog posts, long informative and engagement driven. And don't forget, SEO, searchable, evergreen, living on your website forever, not a one second flash in the pan. So use both strategically and I know that it's going to help you connect with your audience and maximize your reach and build your authority platform and the size and scope of what the content value is of your website, which is super important. So I always tell all of my clients and all the projects that we're involved with to get in the habit of regular publishing. I mean, I always like to say Gabriel able to do one a week, otherwise it's kind of lame. And if you don't have anything to talk about every week, you might need to check yourself because there's get something going on upstairs, okay?

( 11:02 )
Write down, use phone, write down notes. I always, and frankly, create a lot of these videos, and this is just me from conversations that we have with clients during the week, and I hear great questions from my clients and challenges sometimes and areas need work and explanation, and I'm like, hmm, I'm going to write that down and we're going to do some content on that, right? And share what I'm learning and what we're navigating with all of you guys, and put some value down. And yes, these videos become blog posts on our website because this kind of stuff could help people, new people that are starting out with content marketing, people that have been doing it and struggling, people that are experts and need a little fresh perspective on things doesn't matter to me. I'm happy to do it and post it up there. But this is a great example of the kind of stuff that can be a blog post is video transcript. Oh, that was a tip. Little nugget there. Okay, so either way, light it up in the comments if you guys think I've lost my way on this. Love to hear any sort of challenges and feedback and otherwise, we'll see you on the next video.

Holiday Marekting Strategy

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 18:30:11 GMT

Capture the most you can and avoid the traps during Q4

Hey there, business owners today I'm going to help you navigate one of the busiest and most competitive times of the year, the holidays. If you're wondering how your small or medium business can cut through the noise, get noticed and maximize sales, you're in the right place. Let's jump right into holiday marketing strategies that work. Alright guys, let's talk about why holiday marketing is so crucial. The holidays are when consumer spending hits its peak, and for small to medium businesses, this is prime opportunity to drive revenue. But here's the challenge. There's so much noise out there. You got big national brands and all this advertising money is coming into the market. So it is crucial in order to do well that you start planning early and execute a well timed holiday marketing strategy so that you can stand out and get heard amongst all that. Now, I'm going to give you some tips about how to do that right now.

During the holiday season, consumers are bombarded with offers, promotions, and advertisements from literally all directions, right? Television, online, email, print, billboards, it's every right? So to make sure your business is heard and that your offers and messages are heard during the holidays, you need to focus on differentiation and speaking directly to your customer's holiday needs. Now, those are some things that you can identify through anecdotal information that you're hearing from what customers have typically bought from you a year over year, or what's trending depending on your business, whether you're helping them find a perfect solution gift, or offering a last minute deal or solve their problem. Just make sure that the messaging is relevant and don't forget to take advantage of using the power of personalization in your CRM, right? So that's using those merge fields, filtering and sorting based on interests and so forth, and trying to work towards more of a programmatic effort.

In your syndication. Use your customer data to craft targeted offers, and don't be afraid to get creative with multi-channel marketing, which is going to help you increase visibility, earn more impressions, and you're going to earn those multiple touches that it typically takes to get a buyer to now convert. So you're got to work on strategies where you're going to get 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 touches with your customer in order to get them to click that buy button. Creating holiday theme content is a great way to stay at the top of mind for your audience. So start thinking like festive social media posts, themed blog articles and emails that tap into that holiday spirit. So you really want to think about product positioning, how your product can be tied into thematic backgrounds and so forth like that so that you can get that vibe going and make your product or service relevant during the holiday season.

That's really the task at hand right there, whether it be as a gift or for the buyer to help them get through the holidays. So if you're like a dietician, you be just focused on getting your ideal client through the holiday season and avoiding gaining a lot of weight, right? That's different than selling a gift card to somebody so that they can solve one of their gift giving challenges amongst the people that they want to do some giving with that season. So think about it, but either way, try to wrap that with that holiday background and create relevance that your product or service is important, needed and wanted during the holidays. And you can do that by using themes. So again, go back, also check seasonal hashtags and get the visuals done really well so that you can stand out in those crowded feed, stand out in the inbox and so on.

All right, let's talk about offers a little bit. Nothing drives engagement like exclusive holiday offers. So they have natural timeliness or urgency baked into them because they're just for the holidays. So you want to create limited time discounts, gift bundles or BOGO deals that feel like a special treat for the season. So don't forget to use that urgency and take advantage of it and let customers know that the deals won't last long, that should help you drive more conversions. Alright, let's talk about that fourth quarter. So this whole thing is happening in Q4 and so many businesses it can be crucial and the fourth quarter can account for a huge portion of your annual revenue. So to maximize it, start your holiday campaigns early. So be ready and I mean ready creative's done the planning's done, programming emails are written, all that content stuff and how you're going to position everything is ready no later than mid-October, really, which kind of freaks people out, but you're going to lose some work time there because your team is going to want to get into the holidays and stuff.

So you really got to get this stuff done. Kind of rolling out of Q3 so that you are ready to syndicate and get your message out and turn all these campaigns on pretty much like November 1st. You kind want to look at what the national brands and so forth are doing and stay timing with that. And those folks are planning Q4 early in the summer just as a frame of reference. So small business is probably not that far out ahead on their planning, but do your best to be ready by mid-October. So you can do some revisions, optimize things, really take a check, second look at everything and put out your highest quality work. So that's ready to go by November one, which is when people start opening their pocketbooks for the holidays. You want to also be prepared, assuming these campaigns are successful and you do a good job, be prepared to follow that with great customer service.

You might need to be looking at how do I feel about more phone calls? Do I need a chatbot on my social media pages? Do I need some automation on my website? Things like that, to deal with higher volume if you're not set up for it. So don't get totally focused on the marketing and drop the customer service because that's going to burn you in Q1 when you have a bunch of pissed off customers that are not going to stay with you for that next year because you want to build year over year and you build year over year by creating happy raving fans about your product and services, not creating a bunch of volume you can't handle, and then aggravating and pissing off your entire new customer database. So just remember there's a balance there. You have to strike, right? So this Q4 is your chance to finish the year strong, put up some great numbers and get it done.

How can you structure your deals so that the momentum isn't just a single spike In Q4, start looking at how you can do some things like this example so that some of that bleeds right into Q1 and can get you through that first second pay period we discussed in prior video, which is mid-February before things start to normalize. So there's a little bit of a lull there and this type of idea can get you through that and or help. Okay, here's another little idea for you that is potentially powerful, which is limited edition holiday product and or service, right? You could do a holiday package. So if you're a consultant person, you might offer a special holiday deal. If you have a product, there might be a limited edition, like a special color way or something like that. So these are things you need to think about again, in advance and plan for.

Let's talk about gift cards. Gift cards are a popular holiday choice. A lot of people do 'em and it's kind of a lazy gift. I don't know. I mean, you can't think of anything for somebody, so you just give 'em a gift card. People like to get 'em, people like to give 'em, so I'm not going to argue with that. You can sweeten the deal by offering bonuses. For example, you buy a $50 gift card and get a $10 bonus card for yourself. So that's a bounce back where you're now activating two customers instead of one. So this encourages both gift giving and personal spending, which should drive some additional incremental revenue or in-store foot traffic, right? So think about when you're constructing your deals in your terms, how can you capitalize on the openness of the consumer during the season and create some additional traffic that may bleed right into Q1.

But whether it's special packaging or holiday themed version of your property product, these items can create an additional sense of urgency and exclusivity that customers typically love during the holidays. So don't disregard doing limited runs, special edition, holiday themed actual products, not just holiday themed marketing and creating some more urgency and demand for these special edition runs. So take a look at that. That also is another good way to get attention and get people activated and drive some conversions. And there you have it. There's your guide to standing out and boosting sales from the holiday season. So from planning ahead to creating personalized offers and limited time deals, there's really so much you can do. There's not a limit on how creative you can get with deal making offers the themes. You really can have a lot of fun with this stuff while creating a ton of opportunity for you in the fourth quarter. So if you're ready to take your holiday marketing to the next level, be sure to subscribe. Don't miss out on additional tips and so forth, and check out our website if you need help or this is something that's beyond what your internal team can do. Love to hear from you guys. Otherwise, thanks for watching and of course, have a happy holidays and I wish you prosperity and abundance as we go into a new year.

Timing and Execution in Business - How to Plan and Execute for Maximum Success

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 10:11:54 GMT

Timing and Execution in Business - How to Plan and Execute for Maximum Success

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To succeed in business timing is everything. Planning ahead at least one quarter of advance allows you to anticipate challenges, allocate resources effectively, and execute with confidence. But it's not just about planning, it's about setting up flexible strategies that let you adjust along the way. As market conditions are changing, let's dive into each quarter and go through the challenges and the opportunities that each one have because they are different. And how you can use planning to take advantage of all of that and keep yourself in the clear and get the job done so that you're super effective quarter over quarter because that's what builds a great year. Q1 can be a tough quarter to execute because of slower spending after the holiday rush. And I like to think about it as people really don't start spending money until the second pay period after the holidays, which is like the February 15th, like second pay period outside.

So you get paycheck February one and then February 15th. I think people are starting to get back into their normal household spending and action. It is crucial though to use that little window for rebuilding, reviewing your strategy, analyzing last year's data, and it's a good time to set some actionable goals for the entire year. Now, for us that oftentimes is happening in Q4 of the prior year. We seem to get busy and marketing as people want to start setting budgets and getting everything set for the next four quarters. But for most businesses a lot of that is happening right there, coming off the holidays in those first four weeks of the year. So it's a good time to set realistic growth targets and start dialing in the details for the next couple of quarters. Q2 is all about momentum with spending picking up it's time to execute on the growth strategies you laid out in Q1.

This is a time to be launching campaigns, getting things into action, focus on scaling new customer acquisition efforts. At the beginning of the year, you've got new relationships forming. It's the beginning of spring, people are open more to try new stuff and meet new people. It's a great time to be acquiring those new customers. So you want to ensure your marketing is optimized and you are focused on the results that you're trying to pull off in that second quarter. Q3 is when you want to optimize your operations. And for us as marketers, we definitely hit are really in our stride in the third quarter and we are starting to plant the seeds for what's going to be whatever that holiday push like looks like across all of our clients. So if your business is very holiday spending centric, then you definitely want to be getting everything organized in the early part of Q3 for Q4, right?

So we're going to cover that later in the video, but you really want to be ahead of the quarter that's coming at you as much as possible. So you're going to be looking at inefficiencies and start preparing for that big push in Q4. And my best advice is do not leave it to the last minute because in that fourth quarter, we lose a whole chunk of time for Thanksgiving and then a whole chunk of time people just start fading out around, let's call it December 10th, really hard to get people to focus on becoming a customer or new purchases and things like that because they've got that holiday tunnel vision. So you got to stay in front of that timing wise. All right, Q4 is crunch time. If you're like a lot of businesses, this is going to be where you make almost 60% of your revenue, if not more for the year.

It's your best chance to capitalize on all the preparation you've done throughout the year to get you to that fourth quarter. So holiday shopping and major sales events are up and running, and you'll need to stay on top of all the details to execute and provide excellent customer service. From a marketing standpoint, it can be tricky during that time of year to get heard in the face of big national advertising campaigns and all of the hoop loss. So for smaller and medium sized businesses, this is a time to really focus on the customers that you did acquire during the earlier part of the year and give them offers and incentive to do that holiday spending with you and take advantage of what you have to offer by directly inboxing them and other tactics that I think are a big help if you don't have the big firepower that national brands have during that time of the year.

So either way, you definitely want to leave the year on a high note with your customers, do a great job with customer service and make sure that they're going to be willing to come back and see you in the next year. Q1 is tough because it follows the set of high intensity, high energy sales, periods of Q4 and consumer spending obviously is going to be down. So just from a cashflow standpoint, this is a tricky quarter for a lot of businesses to navigate. And there's sometimes can be budget constraints and so forth from overspending in Q4 to try to capture as much of that holiday potential that you can so expect slower customer acquisition, your syndication, your ability to reach people may go down due to budget constraints, and of course you have inventory and returns and things like that if you're selling wares. So all of that stuff needs to be handled, but it's exactly why having the strategy planned well and setting realistic goals for Q1 is so important.

And some of that really needs to start unfortunately because it is a busy time of the year back there after Thanksgiving, there needs to be some meetings and discussions about Q1 before everybody gets swept away from the holidays. That's my advice to combat the challenges of Q1. Again, preparation is key. Start planning for Q1 during those final months, like we just said. And I always think that first week of December is kind of the sweet spot. Everybody had the Thanksgiving break and they're ready to do a little bit more good work. That's time to get everybody in a room and start talking about Q1, looking at cashflow management, realizing that you're not going to be able to do anything with big sales and so forth. So smaller promotions, frequency is going to win in Q1 instead of amplitude, and you're going to want to additionally invest in customer retention strategies.

Now's the time to try to keep those buyers on your side of the fence because getting new ones is going to be specifically a challenge in that quarter. So keep your existing folks engaged in Q1 work on that type of tactic, and you get out, like I said, into that second pay period of February and things start getting better. All right, there you have it. How to plan and execute across all four quarters of the year. Kind of took this video quarter by quarter. I will say one thing to you that I like to do, which is instead of talked about every quarter, what the challenges are and potential solutions and kind of what each one feels like for most businesses on our side. I like to look and take a process of doing kind of a rolling 90 day approach with all of our campaigns so that we're always looking out 90 days in any period that kind of takes care of this whole conversation by way of just workflow. It also means that every 30 day period gets talked about three times. So if we're doing a rolling approach like that, so it's another way to skin this cat and again, reduce that stress, raise the quality of an execution of your work, keep everybody focused on what's important and get through the year smoothly. Go ahead and if you want to subscribe, that would be amazing, and then you can click below for a free quarter by quarter planning guide that our team put together for you.

10 Email Subject Lines That Get Clicks

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 06:31:13 GMT

10 Email Subject Lines That Get Clicks

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It can be really frustrating not getting opens on your emails. You need those clicks to drive conversions and revenue in your campaigns. In this video, I've collected 10 proven subject lines that'll ensure that your emails get the attention they deserve. Whether you're working on intrigue or creating a sense of urgency or using a motion to personalize your subject lines even better, this list is really going to be a great help. So let's get started on these 10 subject lines that are going to help you get better open rates, better conversions, and better results in your email marketing. Okay, here's subject line number one. This is the product that all of our customers use and it changes everything. This subject line is great because it's got a ton of intrigue baked into it. It also sits in what I would call an area of copywriting that implies social proof.

The subject line clearly says that other customers are happy with this product and that it's super successful in their lives. The only way that somebody's going to find out what it is, of course, is to open your email, which is exactly what we want the subject line to do. And this one is going to be easy to use for services as well. You can simply just change product to service in that copy. So this is the service that all of our customers love and it's changing everything. So you could use that either way, and you can certainly put any product you want in the body content of your email. Subject line number two, when our customers do this one thing, results skyrocket. Now when I think of this subject line, I can think of lots of businesses it works for. One that pops to my mind is like a fitness type of email or health and wellness or anything like that would be great for this, but you certainly could use it for any sort of product or services.

Again, like subject line number one. This one also implies some social proof and that other customers are having great results and it's baked with intrigue and of course drives those open rates because the only way to figure out what it is is by opening the email. So you can put anything you want into the body content underneath this. It's plug and play for any type of product or service that you may have. Subject line number three reads, one of our customers did this and wow, capital letters. Now I love this subject line because it sets up your body content to be a story and people love stories. This one tees up your ability to write a little narrative or story or customer testimonial or anything like that that's going to sell your product or service in a really effective way. If you're not using stories, this is your opportunity and this subject line hits hard.

And again, like the first two, in order to get the story and learn what happened, they got to open your email. Subject line number four is list based, and it reads just like this, five trends our customers are taking advantage of. Now, what's great about this subject line is one, it gives you the opportunity to come up with, you can make that number anything, 3, 5, 7, some sort of odd number about your product to service and what's happening with your customers as it relates. People love lists because it sets their expectations about what they're going to read and if it's in a smaller number five or six or whatever, the reader knows what they're getting into. So it really is a great way to frame up what you're offering within the body content of the email. And again, this one's cooked with inri because in order to get the list and get these tips and so forth, they got to open your email and read down just like the other ones I've given you.

This one certainly is plug and play for both products and services. So you can use it either way. Subject line number five, this one's right from the book of classics reads, going, going, gone. Don't miss this. Right? So a couple of things going on with this that are important to know. We don't say what they're going to miss, so they have to open the email to figure that out, and that's one of our critical ingredients with all of these. This one kind of is steeped in marketing history going gone. It's kind of like a cliche, but it's pop, pop, pop. It sticks out in the inbox and it's very much resonates that it's hot and timely. So we promised you a couple of subject lines that we're going to all be working around urgency, and this is exactly that. So anytime you can use urgency, you're going to be able to drive some open rates and potentially knock loose some people that are kind of on the edge of converting into your product or service.

So that's exactly what this subject line tactically is designed to do and is a really good one to follow up with some of the other ones that we covered earlier in the video. Okay, subject line number six, last call. These five styles are almost sold out. This could work for any industry. You could just change it to styles, you could change it to. These appointments are almost booked. These servicers are almost sold either way though you're saying last call. So you're letting people know that we have an urgency situation if they were interested, this is their time to take action. That's the point of an urgency email to knock people over the edge and get them to convert. And we've also done something here, which is nice, which we've overtly stated some scarcity, right? So scarcity is a function of urgency. Urgency has many facets.

One is time, like book before Friday, right? That's timeline urgency. Scarcity is another variant of urgency that you can employ in your subject lines, and this is a great example of that. Subject line number seven, reservations are booking fast act. Now, this one we would typically use in a continuum of several messages and to ramp up urgency within a series of subject lines, right? So we would do as an example, just to play off exactly how this reads, we'd probably have an event announcement and then we would have reservations are open. Then we would throw this one in here. Reservations are booking fast, so then we were ramping urgency in that inbox works really well in a series. This one doesn't play very well if you just throw it cold out into somebody's inbox and there isn't any other previous messages, but it does work well to work into a series and get people to finally make a commitment and get that reservation done.

So this one just straight up positioning the urgency where their user or reader doesn't know who they're competing against. And that's another really fun one to use in your urgency based messaging is to give the reader something to compete against that they don't know if they're winning or losing without taking action. They don't know how many reservations are available by the subject line. They don't know how many people have booked by the subject line. They just know that we said that it's happening fast. So the psychology of that is they better do something fast as well or lose out. So remember that when you're creating urgency, another function is to make the reader compete against an unknown foe to get what they want. Go ahead and try that on your next one. Subject line number eight reads, these items won't last through today. A couple of things going on here.

One, in this one we've given people an actual timeline that they know of, right? It's today. Now, if you send it in the morning, that's great because it's just a really close urgency timeline. The window is closing rapidly. The downside of this one is some people get distracted and they won't take action. So sometimes on something like this, we actually will double tap this email 8:00 AM and then again at two o'clock in the afternoon and send at do two sends and try to really knock some conversions loose, which is totally okay to do when you're doing it this way because you're being helpful to your list and making sure that anybody that wanted the item has the opportunity to get it before you run out at the end of the day. All right, subject line number nine reads, if you miss this, batch availability will be in 2025.

Now, this one is actually got urgency, but it's urgency through a takeaway strategy, right? We're basically saying if you don't do something right now, we're going to take this deal away until next year and you're completely going to be closed out. Now, it plays on some psychology that people don't want to miss out. It's just kind of a natural human wiring takeaway. Psychology is classic like car salesmanship. You see this in all sorts of sales training, taking stuff off the table always pulls people into the deal further. So this subject line does exactly that. It's a pull away strategy, and in doing the pull away, you create urgency and hopefully going to knock some conversions. List out of your list. Number 10, top three recommendations for, and I put name there, but it could be top three recommendations for Jennifer. Now you have to have a decent CRM here where you can do a mail merge or a token data token of first name into the subject line.

So you're going to need a little bit of technical stuff there, but if you can get the person's name into the subject line, you can do a lot more with all of what we've discussed today. And this is a great example. Somebody loves that. You've done a little bit of work for them by giving them the top three recommendations and it's tailored for them personally. So you got a good likelihood that you're going to get some good open rates out of this. And again, they've got some intrigue to this along with the personalization and relevancy because they can't not open it. If they want the three recommendations, they got to open the email, right? So this is a great one, and you could use it, services, products, anything underneath in the body content of the email. I promise you guys, one thing that you cannot forget that every one of these subject lines and all of your subject lines should have in the framework of the subject line, every subject line should leave a question in the reader's mind that can only be answered by opening your email.

If you read your subject line and the answer is in the subject line, it's a fail, throw it away because it's not going to get open because you just gave the person the information right in their inbox in the preview. So always structure your subject line to leave the reader with a question that must be answered only by clicking the open on your email. Alright? Now that I've given you all these plug and play subject lines, I'll tell you there is more that we need to know to be a good copywriter, good marketer, and specifically a good email marketer, which is why I put together even more videos on these topics to help you drive conversions, get better results with your email marketing and drive revenue.

Why Paid Advertising still DOMINATES.

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 21:06:27 GMT

Why Paid Advertising still DOMINATES.

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All right. Welcome back guys. This is like the third ad we're going to review from the little flippy val pack coupon book thing that comes in the mailbox. Okay? So if you guys do direct mail, if you do print ads, if you like to do direct offers, if you have discounts out and things like that, then this one is maybe for you. However, I think, well, let's just look at it right after this. Let's unpack this thing, this print. So if you're a local service company, you got local business, stay tuned.

Okay, guys, we're going to, let's just flip this thing up on the screen. Let's get right into this ad. This one is chill, but I pulled it because I think there's something just kind of quaint about it, right? So let's just take a look. We got it's sprint shop, right? There's some things about this ad that I like, and you just go, wait a second. It's just so simple, right? Yeah. And that's kind of what I like when you look through this coupon book thing, and if you guys advertise in this or you see ads in these and you want to study and learn some ads, one thing you're going to see from this book, and you know what? I'm just going to grab it. I even have it out this stuff. Let me see here. We did that one. We did that one. Lemme go through this for a second.

There's a million things on these ads. There's just a lot, a lot. I don't know if there's trying to be ads or it's trying to be, look at all this stuff. There's like, it's crazy, right? So coming from digital, that's what we focus on mostly here. We got a pretty tight attention span. I guess. They think that we're going to hang out on the couch and read these ads. There's just a lot in there. Now, I don't totally agree with that premise, and I'm not sure that that's good guidance or not, but that's in there. Now, this ad on the other hand, pretty much just says what they do and isn't trying to confuse the hell out of anybody. T-shirt printing, bam. That's the name of the website. Four steps t-shirt printing.com. Sounds pretty simple. There's only four steps. I don't know, there's just maybe some subliminal stuff with that, I don't know.

And then they do custom T-shirts and more kind of nice simple right shirts, printing website, no minimums. That's kind of fun. I don't need to think like, oh, I got to go with, I can't make a hundred shirts. I can't do business with them. So that's one of their, what is that right there? That is objection handling. The first thing people think in their mind, oh, it's going to be a big minimum order. Can't do business with them. So they're just handling that objection right there, right off the top of their ad. Well, actually in the lower left-hand corner. But either way, it is part of what's going on in this ad. No minimums. That's one of their big issues with buyers that maybe don't contact them. Great. They do full color prints, also good in case you're concerned about that. And then they just have a phone number down here.

Now, one big elephant in the room right here, this ad is in that little book and in that little book, every ad, and I'll say there's one that didn't, but there was a national advertiser that's a local franchise. All the ads have an offer, so they're direct offer ads. This ad does not have an offer. In fact, there's no deal at all in this ad, which is kind of why I pulled it out, because it was the standalone local shop that didn't put an offer into the ad. They just went with awareness. They're just making people aware. We print shirts, we do full color, we're local, no minimums, okay? But they're not putting any deals on the table. There's no discount. There's no buy. 50 shirts get 10 shirts free. There's no 10% on Sundays, and there's no call. Whatever the other deals could be.

They just didn't do that. And I applaud them for that because you know what? You don't always need to put a discount into the market to get new customers sometimes. And many times, not just sometimes. Many times local businesses like this get customers just by making more people in the market aware that they exist. So think about that. You may have a business that you're trying to grow, and the issue is not that you need to start cutting your prices and cutting your margins and running your thing razor thin. The issue may just be that not enough people know about the good work that you do. I know it's scary. It is so simple. It's almost frightening. That may be the issue is just not enough people know about your business, and in this case, these guys are getting out ahead of that problem. I mean, you cannot, and my good colleague says this, well, shout out.

You can't sell a secret. So if you have a business and you don't have enough foot traffic and you don't have enough leads and you don't have enough business, start with awareness before you start cutting your prices. I mean, tactically, it's just sound. Start with making yourself known. See how far that gets you. Then see, okay, when want to drive our per order volume and other KPIs that you might be focused on, that's when you can start working on deal structure and things like that. Or maybe if you're in competitive market, you've got some people that you got to kind of joust with, okay, fine. But clearly if you're new or you've got some service that's unique, and I don't know how many print shops are around here, but I can't imagine that many. Just let everybody know that you're in business and that they need shirts.

Give you a call. It doesn't have to be. That's amazing. The thing advertising sometimes isn't nearly as complicated as people think. It's it. Sometimes it is just this simple, which is why I brought you guys this ad today to take a look at because it kind of scrambles a lot of the confusion. We think we got to do like some of these other ads in this book, 10,000 bullet points, four pictures plus a cartoon, plus three different calls to action. Plus we do this, plus we do that. Plus you can get 10% off, plus you get $200 off plus this, plus that, right? Just confuse the crap out of everybody. We can just say, Hey, we're in business. We do these one or two things really well, and if these are things you need, call us. Right? Your customers are theoretically out there. I mean, somebody needs T-shirts, somebody needs X, somebody needs Y, but they don't know anything if they don't know where to find you, right?

So this ad today is a lesson in starting with awareness, keeping it simple, showing some of your work, which is great. You got stacks of shirts here, it's kind of interesting. And then the rest are design work. Again, proof of life. I would've liked to seen some probably models in the shirts maybe, and I'll just say it out loud, attractive people in the shirts or people having fun, or maybe there was a band that they did or a motorcycle dealership, like a guy on a bike or whatever. I think that would've probably been better, but they're still getting it done here. It's not horrible. Okay? I think there's just, like I said, this one simple sometimes wins the race. So if you feel like things are getting overdone, remember this. Hopefully you learned something today. If you think something otherwise than what I shared or you have some constructive additional information, love to see that down in the comments. And I'm always happy to look at an ad and kick one around. If you want to share one over to us, go ahead and do that, like and subscribe, and I can't wait to see you on the next one.

Print Advertising is NOT DEAD.

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 21:07:39 GMT

Print Advertising is NOT DEAD.

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Okay guys, I got another one for you today. And this is another one out of the penny clipper thing. So we're going to unpack this ad. It's a print ad, direct mail. If you're into direct mail, then this video is for you. If you've got a local service company, this video is for you. Let's check out this ad and see what we can learn from this thing right now.

Okay guys, I've been snipping stuff out of the mailbox here for this next series of videos and this one came right out of the little, what do you want to call it, penny saver. I don't know. Every neighborhood's got a different name for it. Let's pop it up on the screen. Take a look. That's basically it. It's kind of tucked over there on the right, but there's nothing over there besides what you see here. So we've got this kind of localized flag. Arizona, of course, that's where I'm at. And they say that we're the local screen specialists and we've got this sort of localization there. I don't think I have my thoughts on localization, but let's just kind of go down this and then we'll come back to that in a second. Got call today. Love that. Straight call to action. Clear as day. Got the phone number.

Not complicated. And then they got some service call outs over there on the right window. Screens, sunscreens, patio screens, pet screens and security doors. Couple of pictures of some work they've done. It's like proof of life at a minimum. Not the best photography, but I get it. I think it's probably in their defense, not easy to take pictures of what a screen looks like. I dunno, the whole point of a screen is you can't see it, right? So that's a little tricky to get the photography there, but we'll talk about that too. And now let's just walk down here. They got some deals, 10% off, 200 hours off. Now I like this. If you guys watched the last video, and if you haven't, go back because we had another one like this. And these direct offer ads are so fun to look at because they have all sorts of different little pricing things to kind of analyze and see how we did with, I like this and we'll just stop right here for a second because I like when we have a percentage off and I like when we have a dollar figure off and I said why in the previous video?

So you guys might want to check that out. I'll say it again right now. Different people calculate money in different ways. This addresses the two people out there and how they calculate money. Some people think about money in terms of percentages and other people think about money just in hard dollar figures. We have here the $200 off. So if you're going to run direct offers, the general recommendation is that you address both of those types of buyers and see what you get because you're not going to exclude anybody depending on how they think. Okay, so this is actually what I would recommend right here is try to come up with two versions here that aren't just all hard dollars. Then we got some claims down the bottom. Professional, reliable and friendly. Nothing wrong with stating claims on your ads that that stuff can be powerful.

I think in this case maybe that could have been good up top. It's kind of an afterthought down here. Canyon State screens. Okay, so let's go back to the localization thing real quick here. We got the flag up here and we have the flag down there and it's called Canyon State Screens. Do we need to double localize this ad? I think the most important thing to realize here is ad space is valuable space. Every square millimeter of the ad is worth something in terms of dollars and potential revenue if it's done well, how many flags do you need on one ad to tell us that you're in Arizona? I think maybe just one. And since it's baked into the logo, I think just leave it alone. I think this up here could have been used for much better purposes, perhaps making these claims, perhaps some better photography.

And let's just go right to the photography here. What I'm always saying on this channel, guys, people don't buy the drill. They buy the drill because of the hole and they buy the hole because of what it means. This is in plenty of marketing books. You guys can find this stuff all over the place. So here we're showing the product again, but we're not showing the outcome and we go over this on channel all the time. If you're going to do and you're going to include photography and you apparently have extra real estate that nobody knew what to do with because it just whipped the flag in here. I don't know what, I guess the designers, I don't know. I got some extra space. Just throw a flag in there. Just like the flag's not going to make anybody buy anything. We all live in Arizona anyways.

We're stuck here. That's not going to help make a sale. What are we going to do? Hire a screen company from Minnesota. I mean, it's weird if you think this stuff through, you're just like, why did I waste this space on this? Whatever, this ad costs a couple hundred dollars from running this little clippy book and I just put a flag on my ad. It's like I don't get it right. When you start to think about it, it just doesn't make sense. So what could we have done here? We could have shown happy homeowners. We could have shown happy dogs. Apparently we do pet screens and other things like that. Happy homeowner, cool house, somebody showing their power bill that got lowered and they've got extra money around the household now because they made this investment. There's a lot of meaningful outcomes here, none of which is communicated in this ad through pictures, text or otherwise.

We just say kind of what we do clearly in Arizona, that's kind of overdone. And then we have these mediocre at best kind of janky pictures in here that don't communicate to me what I really get. I mean, I know it gets screened if you say that screened specialist. Okay, I got it. What does that mean for me? Does it mean I'm going to be more comfortable? Does it mean I'm going to save money? Does it mean I'm going to save time? Does it mean I'm going to be safer? Does it mean my pets are going to be safer? Does it mean my neighbors are going to be jealous? Do I achieve status by having these screens? What are the core buying psychology triggers? And how are we doing that here? I don't think we're hitting really any of 'em. So this stuff, again, few things are good here.

I don't think over localization is good. Already said that. I do like this pricing kind of DLE coupon thing down here just because of that. It hits two mindsets. I think the photography on here would've been welcome had it been the right type of photos. I love the claims on the bottom. Friendly. I like that. I mean, it's just a little benign, but okay, cool. Right? And then there's this little thing right here that says firefighter owned and operated. Okay, well, I mean if you're going to say that at all, say it big enough that we can read it or maybe that would've been the cool thing to put up here. Owned by firefighters. I'm not sure. I think we all sort of think we like firefighters. I don't think it's a negative, but what does it bring to the table and why would I buy from them is debatable at best.

But if you're going to say something like that in your ad, like firefighter owned, veteran owned, or any of those kinds of things, great, and there are some positive implications to that. So no criticism to anybody that's in that pool, but think about how am I going to leverage that veteran owned a company you can trust, right? Okay, that makes sense, right? Serve this country interest in community. I can trust you, right? So connect that to a meaning for the buyer.

Firefighter owned, we know about your safety. Okay, great. Firefighters know about safety. Connect the dots for me. It's not just enough to say it's firefighter owned. Okay, so why? Anyways, this one. Some good, some bad. Careful with your real estate on when you're paying for ad space guys. Don't waste space. Don't waste space. That's the last thing I'll say about this. If you learn something today and you're about to do a print ad or not, drop something in the comments. If you think of crazy or I completely missed something here, great. Let us know so we all can do better and subscribe, share the video maybe. It certainly helps us all out and I can't wait to.

Ad Hacking - Print advertising tactics you can't ignore!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:22:03 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

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Welcome back guys. I got another ad for you today we're going to unpack. This one came right out of the little penny saver thing, so we're going to go into the trenches on this ad and see what we get. So let's unpack it right after this.

Okay, welcome back guys. This one that we're going to look at and dissect came right out of the little penny saver book thing that comes in the mail. So we haven't actually done a lot of direct mail stuff on the channel this year, but some of us out there are doing direct mail and there's definitely some overlap to the digital world and a lot of the same rules apply, right? Good copywriting, good imagery, good messaging, good offers. So let's take a look at what we got here. We're going to pull this one up and this, I don't know how big a one is. They may be all over the country. You guys may be familiar with this or not, I don't know, but this is a standard service company direct offer ad and it popped out to me mainly because it does a couple of things, right, and it does a couple of things wrong just when I first saw it.

So I kind of pulled it out of the thing and saved it. Snipped a picture. We got it up here on the screen. So let's just walk through here, take a second, digest this thing, see kind of what stands out. We got the call outs up top here. Best prices, best parts, best warranty. I love making claims. Nothing wrong with making a claim on your ad. These guys are saying they're the best on these three things. Great, totally subjective, but also fairly powerful copy, and we're just leading the top of the ad here with that, which is nice. Then they got their logo kind of tucked in here. And one thing I will say about this is logos don't make money. Logos do not get a lot of response, unless you're already a big aspirational brand like Louis Vuitton or something like that. Then the logo is worth something.

But for the rest of us in the regular world, our logo is not going to make people buy from us. So these guys did a pretty smart job of kind of tucking it in here and it's there, but it's not taking up a lot of dominant space, which is something I caution everybody with that sort of screams amateur hour. When you're a small business, your logo's not that recognized. Nice to get a little brand impression and at the same time, that's not going to be the reason people buy from you. So be careful with overuse of your logos and making your logo take up a bunch of real estate that otherwise could be used in this case to talk about your offers. So they were conservative with that and I would say that's a good thing. So if you're doing your logo gigantic, probably better use of that space.

So here we go. We got three offers on this thing, so they're really trying to get more than one person, so they're not screening off any traffic, $200 off any door replaced, 59 95 tuneup special. I guess your garage door needs that. That's cool. And then a hundred dollars off a garage door opener. And I assume that's the thing that's installed on the ceiling right now, not just the clicker. I don't even think those are worth a hundred dollars, so I get it. So there's like three things here. Replace the door, replace an opener, and then just what I would call a regular service call here for 59.95. I like the big number up top with strong, big fat, attractive eye, catching number, 200 doors off. If you guys have big numbers you can work with, put 'em up top because they're going to strike hard to strike fast on an ad like this where you only got a little bit of time where somebody's flipping through.

So they did a good job there and they kind of made that the big one. This 59 95, this is a little interesting because you have a round number here, 200, round number here, 100, and then this one is one of these janky numbers. That's not $60, but it sounds like less 59.95. Okay, so we're playing some sort of math game with everybody. I'm not sure I would've done that here. It feels a little out of balance. Something's off and who knows what the decision making was on that, but I would say just by my interpretation feels a little awkward, but I do like that there's three offers that address maybe three different types of needs.

Now here's my criticism for this and something to think about. There are in advertising, two ways to express a discount. You can do a cash off, which we have here as an example on this ad.

And the other thing you see a lot is a percentage off 20, 30%, 15% off, yada, yada, yada, right? A lot of times we do ads because different people's minds work different ways. We like to have a discount expressed as a percentage and as a cash value in the same ad so that people that respond to percentages off will respond to the ad. And people that respond to hard dollar figures off are attracted to the ad as well. In this ad right here, we didn't really play into the person that is looking for a nice percentage off a person that thinks in percentages. And strangely enough, there are people that are just wired different ways. Some of us look at the $200, and that's a big number for us. Others, and this is the way to think about this. Other people look at $200, they're like, eh, it's not that much money.

But if you show 'em up here that $200 off is 10% on a door replacement and maybe it is maybe a door's $2,000, then that means a lot to them because they know it's a big number and the 10% of a big number is another big number. So they're doing the math that way. So you got to be careful and think about that when you're structuring your cash off deals that sometimes, and there are many buyers that think in terms of percentages, because these little a hundred dollars, $200 things are just not that meaningful for them. So if you've got a home that's $2 million, do you care about a $200 discount? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I'm guessing that that type of buyer probably is looking for a 15 20% discount. That kind of rings a little bit more with that type of person.

Perhaps it's something to think about. So if you're putting together deals like this, consider that you test your ad with both types of framework, percentage and hard dollar. Okay? That's the last thing I'll say to that. The rest of it implied call to action. It doesn't say call today. It doesn't say free. I mean they're a little loose on the CTA here, and I think it could have been stronger, but clearly they have nice phone number. It is clear, the website's clear, right? But they could have said, call today, or some sort of actual overt directions on what to do next because remember our ingredients for this, here's what we got, here's why it's good for you, and here's how to get it right. Those are the three ingredients here. We've got claims, deals, deals, deals, and then I guess you call to get the deal.

I mean, it's kind of implied, so I get it. But I think it's also worth when you have a call to action saying it clearly, this is what you need to do to get the deal. Call today, go online today, emails today, whatever the deal is, whatever they need to do to get it, you should say it. So not bad. And definitely one that we've seen. If you guys are trying to put together something like this, look at some of the other things I'll say. Careful with these types of print ads in general, getting overly busy. That's one of the symptoms I see all the time with these print flip through magazine mailer things is just trying to do so much crap on one ad that it gets kind of crazy. And you can see there's a little tendency here. There's like three deals on one thing.

It's like, ah. So think that through and make sure you don't go off the side of the road trying to do too much in one piece. Put your best foot forward, try to hit hard with that and see how you do. I think people, whatever the investment of the ad is, they think I better try everything to get my money back or get a return on it. So there's a little tendency to do that, but I would caution to be more surgical and less shotgun approach and be mindful of what you're putting into the market that's going to target the type of customer you want to attract and not try to be maybe everything to everybody just out of some sort of paranoia that you're not going to get a return on it. Okay, so hopefully you guys learned something from this today. Tell me if I'm wrong in the go or if you've got a suggestion or something else to share. And of course, if you have an ad that we'd like to look at and it might even be your ad, go ahead and kick it over to us. Be happy to throw it up on the channel and see what we learned from that. If not subscribe like the channel. Maybe share this to somebody that has a service company that is thinking about doing some advertising. We'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - This EFFECTIVE ad started with BORING photography!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:45:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - This EFFECTIVE ad started with BORING photography!

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Alright guys, let's jump into another ad Today we're going to hack a part on quick and dirty. This one's again, a little complicated. The picture's a little weird and it's a national brand, so you guys are going to know this one, but it is going to help us figure out how to do sort of what I think is selling without showing too much. So if you're short on imagery, but you can do some graphics and stuff, I think that this might be an example that can guide us into how to navigate all that. Let's take a look at it right after this.

Okay guys, let's unpack this one. I'm going to pop it up on the screen real quick here and let's take a look. Now, one of the things, and the reason I put this one on today for us to take a look at is not really using any spectacular photography. So if you don't have great images of your product, then this might be a way to get through that and let's look at what they did here. Okay, first things first, yeah, they have a picture here, but it could have been any picture. I don't know. It looks pretty boring to me. I don't see any happy people sleeping. I don't see any rested people, so again, we're not showing outcomes or anything. And in general that kind of breaks rules that I like to play by. But let's see, what is a positive here? One, we got the brand up at the top.

We can see it's like a mattress thing, and we sort of know Tempur-Pedic's got some good brand recognition, so they're kind of leaning into that clearly the poppy blue background, their brand colors, but also it does jump off the page like in white scrolling and all that stuff. So the ad's pretty visible and definitely draws some eyes when it's in play. Now the big deal here, and this is summertime ad. It's the summertime, so we're looking at a lot of summertime stuff here, is that this temper breeze, I guess mattress feels up to 10 degrees cooler. And that's got a little asterisk there because down here there is some based on an average heat index of temper luxe breeze compared to temper pro, adaptive models measured over an eight, whatever. All that is a little disclaimer I guess. I don't think anybody reads all that.

But remember, if you do have disclaimers about your product, put 'em in here. Don't get yourself on the hook for false claims or anything like that. So they do qualify that claim of feeling up to 10 degrees cooler, but the headline is good. And then the brand of this product, the temper breeze sounds awesome. So good marketing on doing the product naming. And then we just have this picture of a mattress, kind of like beat. But like I said, but it works because this is really about it being cooler and I think they did a pretty good job there. And they got this icy blue color there, which is universally accepted as cool cold vibes, communicating emotionally. And then the call to action is learn more white, nice offset. Like I say, it's not my favorite ad, but it is an example of getting the job done.

Even if you don't have any really great photography to work with now, I think these guys probably could have afforded to put together some good photography and I'm not sure exactly what that would've looked like. Maybe a sleepy couple or well rested or I don't know. I mean, obviously it gets complicated and maybe this is where they decide to just keep it simple. Just say the thing, show the thing, and let's see if we can get some clicks. So that might be kind of where this thing might've been a bigger conversation. It got squeezed down into a clear and concise conversation, which is good guidance for all of us. We can get a little big in our aspirations about our ads when sometimes just punch hard, punch fast, gets the job done. And I think this is an example of that. It's not going to win any awards, it's not killing it.

It's not checking every single box except for what I just said, which is it's punch hard, punch fast, get the job done and look at this and say, okay, can I do that with my product? Can I do a simple, straightforward in your face, this is the core benefit. Learn more now and not get too wound into a million other ideas about what psychology and things like that we're triggering. This is a feature, learn more about it. It's the core feature, the core selling proposition. Or the other way to say that in product marketing would be the USP, it's the unique selling proposition that's a product makes this product unique in the marketplace is that it can feel up to 10 degrees cooler. So if you can identify your USP, articulate your USP and clear concise copy, get some sort of graphic that conveys the vibe or at least emotionally supports that core USP, get a CTA in there that hits pretty hard and don't screw around, then you're probably going to get there. Okay, so if you learn something from this about if getting back to the core, great smash that like button, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one. And thanks for joining us on quick and Dirty.

Ad Hacking - If your Ad has a lot of details, it can look like this!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:15:00 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

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Welcome back to Quick and Dirty. Today's ad hacking ad that we're going to share again our 2024 series where we're just hacking apart ads nationwide, local ads, all sorts of different ads so that we can learn more about the psychology, the layout, and how to make our ads better. So if that's you and you're an advertiser, you're in the right spot. We're going to unpack this one right after this.

Okay guys, this one, there's a lot going on, so let's just take a look at it. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I grabbed it because a lot going on and if you have a lot going on with your business and a lot to say, then we might learn how to do that here. But let's pull it up and take a look. This thing screams direct offer just in case you're aware. That's not an awareness ad. This is a direct offer. They want you to shop for RV and obviously summertime thing, people are thinking about family trips and camping and all that stuff, and it might be kind of the season for that. There's a lot of texts going on here, so it's just a lot and I pulled it because I see a lot of ads that have a lot and some are done well and some are an absolute disaster and we've covered a few of those disasters here on this channel.

So if you go back and look at some prior videos, you can find some of the messy ones. They did a pretty good job here, but let's just take it from top to bottom, okay? First thing, they're going to come in with their brand name, which I guess is Blue Compass rv. It looks like they have 15,000 RVs. That certainly sounds like a lot, a hundred locations, and they're covering 33 states, which most of the country if not all. So right up top, they're just establishing we're big. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what that says to me, to you, to any lay person that's like, oh, okay, these guys are huge. Then we got some messaging right in here, which is kind of interesting. Your RV has never been worth more. I guess that's because it's a trade event. So the implication is, I guess the value of RV for trade is great, so maybe it's time to trade in and then our dream RV has never cost less, so that sounds like a good deal.

My RV is worth more most than it's ever been, and new ones are never cost less. Okay, so it sounds like I'm on a great side of the deal right now, and I think maybe they wanted to structure that and then they got this kind of CTA in here it's call to action where a new RV could be less than a hundred dollars a month. Now I want you guys to just pay attention to this number here for a second. So they went in at $98 a month from 98. I guess that's maybe the lowest payment you could get on an rv. I don't know, but it sure sounds pretty reasonable. H my subscription Hulu is damn near $98 a month, so I guess I could have an RV or some sort of little trailer or something for that. Definitely sounds like a smoking deal.

It's less than what most of us are paying for a cell phone every month, so it's very appealing number. If you have a direct offer that you're trying to put out into the marketplace, these types of numbers are worth paying attention to, like the sub $100 and in some cases sub $24, sub $20, sub $50. There's some marks there along in the pricing structure that are significant, and you can stay under them with this amazing picture of this $60,000 fifth wheel, which I kind of doubt is $98 a month, but it sure looks awesome. So if that picture costs me $98 a month, well this is an awesome deal, so you get where I'm going with this. They've put a number here that's very appealing for almost all shoppers or buyers that are thinking along these lines. $98 a month is probably totally doable for most folks in a tactical sense.

They're casting a really wide net here. That makes sense because apparently a 15,000 RVs, they got to move, so they need to get as much engagement out of this ad as they possibly can. Keep that in mind on your ads, like when you're working on number and your direct offer stuff, keep that number down where you can cast a wide net, get as much in on the ad as possible and let the chips fall with all your leads and filter them after the fact. If you've got a lot of texts to work with, make sure the layout's clean and that you've kind of done it well so that everything is laid out nicely and legible. The last thing you want to do is get it all clumped up and everything's a mess and it's just hard to understand. I think they did a great job with all of this messaging and getting it into the little square that it's got to fit into. It's certainly legible and if you're willing to spend what I would consider the long end of reading an ad, then you're going to be able to understand everything they're trying to do here with this offer.

Like I say, if you're somebody who has a lot of details in your offer, a lot you want to say and establish all this type of authority, plus do this sort of bracketed geo structure stuff plus a meaningful CTA with a juicy number or call to action direct offer there, okay? This is an example of how all of that pretty much works and for advertisers and copywriters, anybody gets thrown all this crap would call it a pretty good challenge. I think these guys met that challenge in a very professional way. It certainly could be worse really, really quickly. I don't have a lot of M for it except for that. It is a lot and just be cautious of that, but if you're do a lot, this is a great example of how to do it. If you learn something here, smash the link button for me. I think that helps. Subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one.

Ad Hacking - Is Traditional Marketing Dead?

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 13:15:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - Is Traditional Marketing Dead?

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Hey guys. Welcome back to Quick and Dirty Marketing. We got another one today that we're going to hack apart for you in our advertising Hacking Hacking ad series for 2024. This one is one of the big sort of companies here in Arizona. I got some stuff on it that I think could be better, but also some good stuff there. So let's see what we got here right after this.

Okay, welcome back guys. This ad is from one of our local big utility companies. Let's take a look. Let it sink in. So Arizona, I guess that's power services, a PS there everyday savings, find ways to save with a home energy checkup. And then they got a little URL to take a look at that. So here's my thoughts on this. Love the smiling guy. I guess he's an a PS dude. He's like a customer service rep. This is where, like I said, when I kind of intro this one, I think they could have maybe done better. So here's my thing with this, definitely approachable. I feel like if this guy's answering the phone, sure it might be fun to call a company and talk to him about how I can save money, but I think the image could have also been mom in the backyard with kids enjoying air conditioning or I don't know, family's happy and they have extra disposable income.

So they're doing fun things with their family around the house. I don't know the summer family friends over, I don't know they got the right picture. I mean, of all the customer service photos, I mean this guy's great, looks happy, approachable and everything else. But again, it's like, is that what I want? Do I want to talk to customer service? No, I want savings in my pocket. What does that mean for me? It means I can do other things in my life that are fun. So I think we're kind of one step away from the meaning again on outcomes here. Kind of fell short on that. It's just something to keep in mind, right? We're sort of showing the thing we get by calling them, which is this nice guy to help us, but we didn't get really the meaning of what that is except for they sort and I would call us a bandaid, slapped a big bandaid across the middle of the add savings, kind of shore up the image.

So they wanted to show customer service being approachable and then pound us with the tax that we're going to save money because maybe they couldn't figure out how to get it image to communicate that we were going to save money. I think there was a way to do it. It's not horrible, but you can see where you got to thread the needle with this stuff. You're trying to get the meaning in the ad, the outcome in the ad and savings is one of the things you get. But what does savings mean for a family? It means more money to do other things in most cases. And so I think we kind of lost that. We stopped one stop short of the final destination for what I think a great ad is. If you look back at one of the ones we just did on Disney, you'll sort of see what I'm saying, comparing the two.

It's not horrible here. It's just again, one short of the goalpost in conventional tactical analysis. And then we got this subtext here. Find ways to save the home energy checkups. So that's really kind of the offer, right? It's a direct offer I guess you call 'em and they give you some sort of checkup and this is like doctor electricity right here that's going to talk to you about it. So not bad. Every day kind of sounds approachable, and if you're saving every day, that must add up to something. So there's a little subliminal positivity with that. But again, on first inspection looks pretty decent.

Definitely clear as day what it's about. So there's not a clarity issue here, but I think there's one bit more we gotten to with getting the meaning and the emotion of what savings for a family really is all about and what that could do for the summer when you have kids at home and things like that, right? It'd be great to have extra money during the summer where the kids are at home. So I think they kind of missed the mark on that, but here we are. So if you learn something from that and you see some of your ads that you need to notch deeper to the goalposts from looking at this, great, go ahead and smash the like button for me. It helps some algorithm. Maybe share this video to some other people that it might help and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - This Big Brand Trick Converts Every Time

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 13:55:11 GMT

Ad Hacking - This Big Brand Trick Converts Every Time

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Welcome back guys. Quick and dirty marketing. Today we're going to do more ad hacking. I've got a big national brand ad for you today that we're going to be able to pull some really fundamental good takeaways from. Let's unpack it right after this.

Okay, this one is right off my phone and from one of the best in the business here in the United States. You guys are going to recognize this and there's some solid takeaways in here that I thought we'd throw in for today's video just to get back to the core fundamentals, which are super prevalent in this ad. So let's pop it up on the screen right here and take a look. Yes, it's from Disney. Let's let it sink in for a second here. We've been saying this time and time and time again on this channel, but when you're working with pictures and images in your ads and any of your promotion, website, email advertising doesn't really matter. What are we doing with the picture? We're looking for outcomes. What is the core benefit and or thing that your product or service delivers? And in this case, for Disney, it's smiling children, smiling kids and families is what Disney does, and they have just nailed it with this picture right here.

All four kids are smiling that are in the image. You got two in the background there. Look like they're having fun as well. A lot of inclusive demographic here, which is awesome. I expect nothing less from them. And then we read from the top to bottom. Let's just check out the messaging here for one legible clear. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six-ish words up there. Stay and play in the magic. You're getting away with it on the edge of what I would say. Got a couple of prepositions in there. So I think that's okay. They're promoting their entire resorts collection here. And so that's I guess all of the hotels and resorts that they offer, calling out their brand, their resort brand, Walt Disney World, and then their call to action down the bottom in the white footer in a nice blue button in their brand, but popping off that white footer, they wanted to have that CTA there.

Clear as day under the kids start planning. It doesn't get any more clear than this guys. So the core takeaway here, image that shows outcomes. Nice tight shot here of the two young girls. So we get all that emotion, right? Happiness is what they sell. So this ad is just killing it for their core offer. Their core offer is happy children. It's not hotels, it's not rides, it's not candy, it's not all the other things that we think about. That's not what they're selling. They're selling happy young kids. That's what they sell. Happiness and fun and memories. Maybe that's the other way to say it, right? This is almost a family photo type of vibe right here. So just remember that. Remember, when you're putting your ads together, get to the core meaning and outcome of what your product or service is. That's the picture for your ads, not your thingy, not your product, not your list of services and all the other BS that you think is important.

Nobody cares about that. Those are, they care about. They care about the outcome of what they get when they spend money on whatever it is that you sell. It could be product or service, it doesn't matter. Everybody's looking for the outcome that is the result of having it or doing it or using it, okay? And in this case, the outcome is smiling. Children. It doesn't get any better than this.

Guys, if you ever need a head check on your ads, this would be almost gold standard to take a look at. If you learned a little bit of something today, go ahead and smash that like button subscribe. I want to see you on the next one. We're going to keep going with these through the rest of the year. We're in the middle of the summer right now. Perfect ad for summertime vibes. I'll see you on the next one. Go ahead and share this if somebody you think might benefit from it.

Ad Hacking - We do ads and this one is a MESS!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 28 May 2024 17:05:30 GMT

Ad Hacking - Why Sticking with the Pro Matters

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Welcome back. I've got another tabletop ad to unpack with you guys. So if you remember on our last video, we found this tabletop with all these ads. I got another one today. Let's unpack it right after this.

Okay, welcome back guys. Now we had the tabletop, and I'm going to show that to you here from the diner revealed this on the last video on the channel. This is the coolest stuff. We don't see a lot of these anymore, but this is laminated and printed right into the table, so they're not stickers. It's not like ghetto. It's actually pretty nice. Every table in the diner has this tabletop from local advertisers. If you are a local advertiser, then this stuff is for you. These are basically print, almost magazine, but they can't be thrown away. They can't be destroyed, and you've got this incredible captive audience in a situation like this. Again, more proof that advertising can basically be anywhere that there are available eyeballs. And in this case there certainly is a lot because Pepe's Cafe is absolutely packed all of the time and all of these people are sitting there with phones and waiting for their food, although honestly, the food comes out really fast.

But it's a great opportunity if you're a local advertiser to kind of try to find spots and places like this to get those brand impressions year and year out. I don't think Pepe's changing these tables anytime. So these companies are well established and been around in the area for quite some time, and I think they've been on this tables for years. So let's take a look. I got another one in this table that we're going to pull apart today, and this is for some tree service. So let's just take a look here. And this one, I pulled it because I've got some things that initially jumped out to me. And let's just go from the top though. We see Hernandez, tree and landscape, and then it kind of goes down into the callouts, right? Stump grinding and removal, tree removal, chipping, trimming, irrigation, planting pavers, keystone wall, flagstone, yada yada.

So free estimates right here, I think. Important stuff. Bonded insured, registered contractor. The guy's legit. He is a licensed guy. That's important. Crazy email here. We'll talk about that in a second. And then two phone numbers also. We'll talk about that in a second. Okay, so there's some stuff going on here that's just like, let's just be honest on this one. Not done by a professional graphic designer that I could tell. This is pretty much amateur grade. So you guys know if you've been watching this channel, you can probably already tell where I'm going to go with this. Okay? One, there's way too much stuff going on with this ad. Even though we have a captive audience and people can sit there, we still don't want people to visually struggle with what the hell is going on. So it's just too many things. So we got all these pictures here, which I assume are great examples of tree trimming and palm tree trimming, and we can work up high and I get it, but it's still one too many pictures.

Two, where's the happy people that own the trees? I can't say enough about showing people in ads whenever possible. We are people that sell to people. People buy from people. It's all about the people, the tree and the tools and the chainsaw and all the other things that we have, the products and all this stuff. That's not really where the psychology of buying is. The psychology of buying is in the meaning of what it is to acquire or the thing, the service, the product. What's it going to do for your life? And in this case, it's going to keep me from climbing up a tree. It's going to keep my tree healthy, it's going to keep my house and my property value up. There's deeper meanings to this besides these pictures that sort of show the work, but we want to shoot for happy outcomes in general with our pictures specifically, and that's what we're talking about here.

And then there's this cartoon guy up here, which I don't know where that came from. Is that really important? Is that the logo? Maybe that's the logo, and they felt like they were going to slam it in there. I think we get that if a tree service, I mean they're going to probably climb a tree. I don't know. I'm not sure this was even important, and I get it, but again, it's not tapping into any legitimate advertising buyer psychology, A cartoon of a guy with a chainsaw. I was like, okay, that's what I'm paying for, but it's not really what I'm getting. So paying for something and what you're getting aren't necessarily the same. And when we're advertising, we want to focus on what the person's getting, not what they're paying for free estimates. That's cool. That's kind of a call to action, but why not bundle that and say call today for free estimate.

There actually is no call to action on this ad. It's just weird texts slapped all over the place and there's no concise clear instructions for me as the tree owner, what do I do? Which number do I call? Do I call that number? Do I call that number or do I scan the code and let's just stop for a second and go to the email? No ghetto email. I think I did that YouTube video two, three years ago. We don't put an at gmail, a public free email on our ads. We get our proper email on our domain, and it is, the email here should be free estimates@hernandeztreeservice.com or whatever their website is. Free estimates at Hernandez Landscaping or whatever that is. It can't be at Gmail. Don't do that. If you're about to do that, stop right now and do not do that. If you've done that, don't do it again.

Just don't do it. This thing unfortunately, is permanently blazed in this table, so it's irre recoverable and it's just sad to see you spend the money, you spend the time and then you kind of got this janky thing there. So let's not do that. All right, and then let's have one phone number. Let's not throw people curve balls and confuse the audience out. Do I do this? Do I do that? What do I do? What am I getting if I call? Anyways, it's just all sorts of confusing. So this one breaks a lot of rules and that's why I put it up because sometimes we got to look at the negatives, other ones we pull apart. There's a ton of good stuff to focus on. This one is a great example of sort of the not to dos. Don't make text wrapping all crazy and confusing to read.

I don't care if you got an hour with the person. Don't mentally piss people off by doing this. Okay? I don't even know what's going on here. Like dots text to docs to text to dots, but there's this weird stair stepping thing going on. It's just all sorts of a mess. And then one picture, I don't know what happened there. That one over there in the blue doesn't even fit on the ad or something. They decided we're going to jump out of the boundaries of the ads, which I get. That's kind of cute, but if you're going to do it, do it in a real way. Do a gigantic chainsaw, and then show the happy people or show an old lady looking up and she's in a lounge chair and the guy's doing her trees for her and she has an iced tea, right? That's the outcome.

I don't have to do this crap on my property anymore and then give people a real thing. Call today for a free estimate. We guarantee lowest quotes. Get your quote today, give me some instructions. Tell me what I need to do to take advantage of these great tree termers. And then they do have the QR code on there, so they get a thumbs up on that. I'm not sure where it goes. I didn't test it, but maybe it just sends an email. I have no idea, but either way could be better. I think the cartoon logo thing, I'm not a huge fan of that stuff anyways. I'm not even sure if that's the logo or just a illustration that they decide to throw on there. Again, that one just doesn't make a ton of sense. I mean it does because telling a little bit of story, but it's not the part of the story as a buyer that I want to hear about.

I don't really want to see that. It's kind of scary. I'm thinking, I see this and I'm thinking, okay, are these guys insured? Oh, okay. There's a little thing down there that's actually kind of freaky to a lot of people. I don't know if I want a guy climbing with saws on my property because you necessarily want to show that, right? Because some images are polarizing. One person sees that, great, I don't want to deal with that. Another person sees that liability. So don't show it. Don't give people a reason to have an objection. That's the other lesson with a thing like this. All right?

Anyways, hopefully if you're local advertiser and you're doing any of these things, you'll stop. Get a professional ad designer on your ads. If you're going to spend money and somebody's going to be on a table for years to come, God, please just do it. Well, okay, if you learn anything today, smash the like button for me, subscribe, because we got another one off of this table that we're going to do, and I don't want you to miss it.

Ad Hacking - Why Sticking with the Pro Matters

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 22 May 2024 17:09:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - Why Sticking with the Pro Matters

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All right guys, welcome back. Today we got another ad hacking series where I found something that you don't see very often anymore, but you guys are going to love this. If you're a local advertiser, you do print, you've got a local business, this video is for you. And the next three, because we're going to pull some stuff together here off of this. So let's take a look and unpack it right after this.

Okay guys, welcome back. So you don't see a lot of this anymore, but I was so thrilled when I found these ads. So today we're going to unpack some local ads that are, I guess you call 'em display ads, but they're not digital. So stick with me and let's take a look at the first thing that's going to blow you away. I don't know how many people have seen this. This is something that used to be more common back in the day. This is the table at Pepe's Cafe. I went to eat breakfast and I'd forgotten that these were there. This is the coolest thing ever for advertising. I mean, this again just tells you advertising can be anywhere it wants to be, and this is laid into the table. These are not stickers. They're printed into the laminate tabletop, the whole restaurant. Every table has this print on it, and I'll let you know, this restaurant is packed all the time.

Pep based cafe is slammed, and it's one of the best places around for locals to go eat. So all of these ads are really focused on local service companies. We can see some stuff here like a framing company. We're going to pull some of this stuff apart. There's all these different ones here. You're going to see the carwash, construction, HVAC, air conditioning guys, electricians, yard guys. There's ads everywhere. So you just sit there waiting for your food and you're just captive audience. So any place we can find ads where we can get a captive audience, then we could do a little bit more with the ad, right? We got more time. We can get some pretty good impressions. And honestly, I would be willing to wager that thousands of people see these ads every week at Pepe's Cafe based on the traffic that I know that goes to this cafe.

It's just a little regular diner, but local diner packed with people that own homes and need things. And so here they are. So Pepe got creative or somebody approached him. I'm not really sure what the origins of all this is, but the ads are there and they've been there for years. I completely forgot. I walked in there and I was so happy. So I held my phone up and took a picture. Now let's dive in and pick apart a local ad and see kind of where we're at. So this is on the table and I haven't really spent too much time on it, but I have some initial thoughts right away. So I always like to kind of just Verde Soul Air Services. So the top right here is in advertising. Sometimes we call these mental envelopes. So our callouts, heating and air conditioning, plumbing, solar, hot water, and geothermal.

So these are their core services, and that might be the other way to think about it, but when we call out our core services, the other way to express that is those are the four fundamental problems that they solve or the four fundamental things that they can do to enhance your home ownership experience, if you will, or to be more efficient or to save money or something like that. So they work in these four areas primarily, or at least that's what they're putting themselves out for right now. Then they got some other stuff going on over here. They've got the third sort of party, a little bit of dealer strength there, factory authorized dealer from carrier carriers, obviously big air conditioning manufacturer, heat pumps and things like that. So they kind of got that on there. It gives 'em a little bit of co-branding strength of the national brand, which is great.

And then they got this little blurb in the middle, and this is relevant for where this ad is family owned and operated, providing home comfort, utility and utility savings since 1983. So I like that. I mean, it kind of places them in alignment with the local scene, and I think it's okay. And again, you can have a whole long line of stuff there in this situation because it's not digital ad. The print situation in this case is captive audience. So you got some time to work on people and do a little bit more with text. I wouldn't recommend all that in a lot of other formats, but in this case, you can get away with it. And then they got their call to action on the bottom. And honestly, this is all done pretty well, so call us for all your service needs, these types of things up here, right?

Because kind of coming down the bottom, they got big phone number, got the website, and they got the QR code, which I think is really important in this type of, I mean, people just sitting there with their phones staring at these ads. So you got to have the QR code. So let's go to some other things here. I think in general, not bad. They got the callouts, the core services, a little bit of localization messaging here, kind of appealing to the local thing, some third party brand strength stuff right there. And then this whole bottom call to action. So the core ingredients are there. Here's where I think, and we're here to look, learn and see if we can do better. I think I get the sun thing and the logos behind the sun. There's this whole thing where I think they could have done better with the imagery because really it's just a background for all this ad stuff, and maybe that's okay in this circumstances, but so long as it's deliberate, that's fine.

The other thing that we like to see is that the image somehow shows a positive outcome, which this one does not, right? This image here is really just a background vibing with the logo being the sun and this sort of green field. So maybe there's a little message of prosperity and grass is greener, and it's definitely a positive image, so that's good, but it doesn't show the happy homeowner who has got all this stuff working. He's got solar. She is enjoying the fact that there's no worry about any of all this stuff. So there's a little bit of imagery that could have been better here, in my opinion, the outcome, the stress-free, happy homeowner that has these people helping 'em with their house. So that's my only criticism for it. Otherwise, it's got the four core areas that I think would need to be needed here.

I think the logo's a little large, but in this case, fine, because trying to get some local brand impressions on that logo, I'm sure they got vans and trucks and business cards and all these other things that are carrying that brand mark. So there's no reason not to strengthen that within the market a little bit. I think the call to action too, now looking at the call to action calls for your service needs, what would've been stronger than that? I got some ideas. How about call us and start saving today, right? Again, remember, people will do things to avoid a negative outcome. Don't wait for your system to break down, call today or start saving money today with Verde Solar Air, or don't free cost comparison. So if somebody's in the process of getting bids on work like this, you might want to try to get in front of the deal.

So I think the call to action could be stronger here. It's a little mealy mouth calls for all your service. It's like, okay, but the call to action could hit harder and be about saving money, about avoiding negative outcomes, about being competitive, and that we're the better deal in town. Something along those lines I think would've been stronger on this CTA right here. And then the family owned and operated stuff. I mean, maybe show a picture of the family if it's a local ad, show us the kids, the baby, the dog, and that you guys are comfortable in your home. So we could have done this family owned local, dah, dah, dah, dah, and done the picture and probably solved two things with one stone, and it would've been kind of like a better outcome for the entire ad. I think you could have had a picture that said this with the background that's locally relevant, like a noticeable landmark.

I don't know, the courthouse, the town square, the big mountain that everybody knows something like that, and the family and the kids and the grandkids and three generations or whatever, and that they're helping our families, helping your family, that kind of thing. So they kind of miss that one too. So there's again, always room for improvement, but definitely got all the elements there that we want to see on something like this. And not bad, not horrible, could be better. Hopefully you guys learned something by looking at this. I'm going to do a couple more of that table. So subscribe. If you pull a little bit out of today's video, smash that like button for me, and we will see on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Ads That Serve Up Local Business Success

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 14 May 2024 13:15:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - Ads That Serve Up Local Business Success

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Ad Hacking - Ads with No Boundaries

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 07 May 2024 18:12:49 GMT

Ad Hacking - Ads with No Boundaries

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Okay, welcome back guys. We got another one today. Gets away with its complexity by being like where you're a captive audience. So this is going to be another ad hack. We're going to unpack this one right after this.

Okay? Welcome back guys. So on this video we're going to unpack this ad that you can have all these details on because you've got the person locked. So let me show you the same deal you, and we'll take a look and then you're going to laugh because you're going to know exactly what I'm talking about here. Alright, so this is the ad we've perked up. Okay, let's take a look at it for a second, then I'll give you the context. All right, so this thing is above the toilet in the men's bathroom. And normally I would say all this stuff right here is just a lot. Clearly we wouldn't do all that on a display or a digital piece of inventory. This is a print ad. You can see it's screwed to the wall. It's framed up. I don't know if there's a digital component to this campaign or not, but because it is where it is, you can do more.

You've got the minute or two, whatever that is, three minutes, let's call it, or something where you've got somebody's eyeballs. So they've done, we've perked up, which is, I actually kind of like that now. So I keep running these ads that have these kind of play on words, cutesy stuff. And in general, I always say, you guys, I don't like cutesy copy. I think in this one I'm going to let it slide because it's all about getting rewards. And rewards are considered perks. So I get it. I don't know. If the girl looks like she's super perky, that's a whole nother conversation. The balloons are kind of eye catching and it's not horrible. The part that I really like is, well, they definitely say what they're trying to get at here, which is elite rewards so that we know what it's about right away. So that's smart that they led with what the whole deal is about.

But I do like this little line right here in the middle. You shop, you save, we give, and I like that because I like 3, 1, 2, 3. It's memorable. And that kind of is the program highlights, right? You shop, you save, yay. And then we give, oh, okay, that sounds cool. So then there's the little ugly details down here. Sign up now for free membership and 1000 bonus points. Visit customer service in the food court for more details. So this is at outlet mall. I was there in the bathroom and then there's all this whatever stuff down there. I mean, we know where we are, so I'm not sure how important that stuff is, but whatever they put their branding on there, it's fine. But I think this is the jam in here. You shop, you save, we give, I love that. 1, 2, 3. People love three steps.

I do this, I do this, I get that. Love it. And I think that one works really well. I think maybe they could have taken that really well-written copy and done more with that. That really to me is the core messaging about this whole thing. Instead of played the cutesy stuff over there to try to make a little thing. And maybe it's a little off too, right? They might've used this print piece all around. We know that women are probably more mall shoppers than men. I'm not making a sexist comment here, I'm just basing that off of some consumer data. That's pretty accurate stuff.

But this happens to be in men's bathroom. So either they got lazy and decided they didn't want to do an alternate, or there wasn't alternate layout designs. But I think maybe this one not the best for the male demographic, but again, maybe not horrible. Like I said, it's debatable. But you shop, you see if we give, I love that. And then a little terms thing, pretty good. Sign up now. Get a thousand bonus points. Okay, I get that. And then the call to action is a little small here. This visit, customer service in the food court, again, it is not bad because we've got somebody's captive attention, right? They, they're going to probably read this whole thing. So maybe it's forgivable, right? This one's a little different than our normal digital display and some of the other stuff we talk about. It's a print piece in a special circumstance where you have somebody's captive attention.

So again, you could do more and more copy, more messaging, more details, and you can kind of get away with a little bit of extra here. So yeah, I think this is a good example of when you kind of nail something here and the core messaging really gets done well, why isn't that just the whole damn thing? Instead, we've got all this other stuff. It almost feels like there was three people working on this. Somebody did the image side and they did, we perked up, and everybody's like, yeah, it's cool. Copy. It's like perks and rewards. So they get an attaboy and they get that on there. And then somebody else. To me it almost like another mind in the advertising agency or design agency, like another person did this part right here, because this just doesn't seem like the same hand. Let's put it this way.

This seems like different craftsmanship. Again, I could be wrong. It just feels like there's multiple parties here. It feels like there's too many cooks. There's some different cooks in the kitchen maybe, is what I'm saying. But anyways, love the 1, 2, 3 copy. Really powerful, leading with your core benefit also good. Get rewards. That's the core thing. And then you save. All this is pretty good. So if you guys got print and you got a place to put it where people can spend some time reading the details, good for you, take advantage of that. Do the best you can with it. If you learned anything or you think I'm crazy, go ahead, let me know in the comments. If you liked the video and you took away at least one little nugget, then hit the button for me, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - How to Get Images to Do All the Work

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 13:00:26 GMT

Ad Hacking - How to Get Images to Do All the Work

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Okay, guys, welcome back to Quick and Dirty. Today. I've got another ad to decode with you on the channel. This one's kind of cool. It was in an environment where we see a lot of stuff, but it's hard to bid for traditional advertisers, but it's still worth looking at. So let's unpack that right after this.

Okay, so this ad that I'm going to show you was on what we call out of home display inventory. And I'm going to show you what that means and why is it kind of a special piece, but is really worth looking at. And frankly, I think this one's kind of interesting and there's some stuff to talk about here. So let's take a look. All right, so let's just start. Well first, let's take a moment. Take a look at it. Holy schnitzel. That's all I said it. Okay, so this ad to me, okay, first off, let me tell you where it's, so if you look down at the very bottom here, you'll see these are airport signs, right? See Pete's coffee down there. So this was a huge television display in the airport in Phoenix, and you come down the escalator and as you're coming down the escalator, this gigantic TV thing is on the wall.

So you're just kind of waiting on the escalator. So you're just staring at this thing. So the TV is a great spot in the airport. It gets a ton of impressions. Tens of thousands if not more people per day, or you're going to go down this escalator. This is considered out of home display inventory. This is something that we bid here and we can run ads targeting them within the airport environment or an entire city and looking at out-of-home display inventory. So it's a really common cool place to be advertising. Now this one is really interesting because if you got onto this, you can read here, this ad is for a place in Seattle, Washington or outside of Washington or whatever, two hours east of Seattle. So this is some place to go, like a touristy place or something. So apparently they feel like advertising in Phoenix on the out-of-Home Display Network is getting the word out.

And the awareness about this looks like kind of Swiss Alps themed, yodeling, fun park restaurant place where you can get a beer and do the kind of Bavarian German, I don't know, Alps thing, I guess. Holy schnitzel. What else can I say? I've actually been to Belgium. I love it there. It's super, super fun. I'm not sure if that's the vibe, but I think it's like a German Belgium thing. Certainly looks like it. But I like to add, and here's what I like to add. I love this dude in the picture, right? There we go. Have a little trouble with my, there we go. So love that guy's face, super engaging. You're just immediately going to look at this guy and you notice they pushed over to the left, we read left to right. So you just see this guy's picture. He seems super stoked.

He's holding the huge beer. So this is a great example of where you got a big display. This TV's like a hundred inches, probably 10 feet, 12 feet, big, really big display. Got a great image of this excited guy. He's got this huge beer. A lot of perspective in there. I mean, for those of us that are into photography, there's a little bit of this nice perspective line of the face of these houses kind of fading in the background, nice framing of the image. He's really in the foreground. The beer's coming straight out at us. So the picture, the lesson in this ad to me is that is a great example of where the image of an ad can do almost all the heavy lifting for you if you've got the right image and if you get it all set up correctly. So this is a great example of that.

And then the Holy Schnitzel is just a fun play on words, but it scores high with me because it's clearly memorable and where I normally don't cutesy advertising, and I think it's a little dangerous. This seems to work and it's just kind of fun. It's just kind of fun. I, there's no doubt about it. And they got a little details there on the bottom. It's only two hours each Seattle. So I like the only kind of minimizing that two hour drive. It was not a big deal. And of course, this looks like paid for by Leavenworth Washington, maybe leavenworth.org. So that's probably like a community or chamber of commerce type organization that's doing some outbound advertising to bring people into the community. Tourist dollars, obviously. So this one, I like it, and it's a heads up for you guys that there's this whole amount of inventory out there that you see ads on, but guess what?

In today's universe for even small mediums by its businesses, we actually can bid and access this type of inventory and get great ads running in places that you don't think about if you're just buying ads on Google, maybe doing some display or YouTube or something. That's just a very small component of the big picture of digital advertising. There's all sorts of cool stuff going on like this in airports and terminals and amazing amounts of different things, billboards, these digital roadside signs, everything else. So yeah, take a look at that. But again, focus on the tail of the tape here. Great photography gate, great composite, composed image. Maybe this was made in Photoshop, whatever. It doesn't matter because working. And then if you're going to do qt, like little slogans and advertising and stuff, make sure that you crush it with that. And it doesn't just get, eh. Okay? So we'll see you on the next one. If you guys think I'm wrong or whatever, bash me down the comments, send me some ads to look at. I'm happy to do that. If you guys have some ideas or questions about stuff that you're working on, love to help you. If not like and subscribe so you don't miss this. On the next one.

Ad Hacking - Does Your Ad Suck?

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 19:17:22 GMT

Ad Hacking - Does Your Ad Suck?

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Okay guys, welcome back to Quick and Dirty. Today we've got another ad that is a display ad that I pulled it from my phone. We're going to pull it apart and see what's working, what's not working, and maybe what we can take away from this one for ourselves. Let's get into it right after this.

Okay? Welcome back guys. Today we're going to ad hack this kind of strange one that I saw and it caught my eye and I knew that it was worth looking at because it's something we struggle with all the time. So let's take a look here what we got. Okay, so I just like to kind of take a minute and look and see what's jumping out. Oh, you see what I did there? Okay, so jumpstart your fitness routine. Get the newsletter start today. So this one's interesting and the reason I pulled this is a very unusual ad that you see, well, I wouldn't say very unusual, but it's not typical. You're going to see good campaign spend on what's basically an opt-in, right? So they're driving traffic to traffic, kind of like our classic get the newsletter opt in. No, I think this one shocked me because frankly I've been telling people for years, no more newsletters, no more newsletters.

That's so two thousands or whatever because I don't think people really want news anymore. I think we get plenty of news. So I'm not sure it's the most appealing call to action. And I also don't think that news is an outcome that we're seeking. Get started today or learn more maybe. I don't know if get the newsletter would've been copied, I would've settled on. Now of course with all the ads, you could ab test the CTA part here, the call to action, we could AB test that and maybe I'd be shown to be wrong, but my gut is telling me on this one and some experience that get the newsletter is not really kicking butt here. So I think that was the problem with this. I think that's why I stopped and I grabbed it for us to take a look at because I just don't think that that really is going to do it.

I don't think anybody wants news. And I think if we're going to get into this fitness thing, I think our main goal here in the middle of the spring, and this is obviously springtime ad normal fitness season for fitness type marketing is like, let's get started or what do I need to do to get the results? And also let's go from the left here side because they did start with this image over here of some people doing this class. It definitely looks pretty approachable. I mean, one dude's exercising in a suit that seems a little weird. And then you got some different kind of body types and folks in there, a lot of demographic stuff. So I think the photo I could see where somebody in the creative department felt like this was a winner. Now here's why I don't think it's a winner. I don't think people want to do that.

I don't think people want to do the work. I think what people want is to feel great. I think people want to look great. I don't think they actually want to jump around in class holding a bunch of weights. I don't think anybody wants to do that, even though they're all smiling and stuff. Maybe it looks fun. I think we'll want the outcome with almost everything that we advertise for. So we want the result. So I'm not sure that that image even does what we're hoping it would do. And then I don't think that news about that is really what we want to do. So I guess at this point I'm pretty much just crushing this thing. I don't know what to tell you guys. I think this ad is maybe not the best stuff. I don't know. And again, I love to hear down on the comments.

Go ahead and trash me for my comments on this one. If you guys think otherwise, and this is the best thing and I don't have a clue, I would love to hear why, but I don't think people want to jump around a class with a suit and I don't think people want news. So I think this whole thing is kind of a mess. Now, the start today thing is weird. That must be a logo or brand, not the call to action because not the button and display advertising. Typically to get an approval, you need to have a company logo or source of branding on the ad. Otherwise it's not going to be approved on the advertising network. So I assume that this is the logo of some sort of organization or something like fitness health, I don't know. But I'm always perplexed by stuff like this because somebody's spending money on this.

Some organization or company or fitness thing or hospital group or I don't know who's funding all this, but it you're seems like it's not where I would've landed on the whole project anyways. So hopefully we can learn a little bit from this. Do you want to show in your advertising images the work that people are going to need to do to get the outcome? Do you want to show people running through the jungle with Yoda on their back to become a Jedi? I don't know. I think you just want to show 'em being like a kickass Jedi and explain the transformation process when you get 'em in the door and you're working out the deal. So I don't know that showing the work is always the best way to get people excited, especially in fitness. A lot of people are like, Ugh, I don't want to go to an exercise class.

I just want to be thin. I just want to look great. So that's the image part. And then this call to action thing, I think I'm going to stick with my ground here on this one. I don't think people want news anymore. I think if you have a thing on your website that's like get the newsletter, get monthly news or anything like that, I think you're missing where we're all at these days. I think people are pretty exhausted with news. I don't think anybody wants a newsletter. I think people want bite-sized piece of information that are actionable. So I think they want to learn more, see more, get more start for free, start now, get started, all those things. People want immediate results. I don't think that people are honestly going to click on this and be like, yay, I'm getting news. It just falls flat.

I think in today's context, I think in the beginning of the web, 95, 98, 19, let's say, floating into the two thousands, it seemed pretty cool to get a digital newsletter. You didn't have to get your hands dirty with newsprint and all that stuff. There was a moment there. I think we're way past that moment. So if you're doing this still, you might need to get with it and get into the whatever century we're in the new sort of Web3 0.0 or something. So let's put this one to bed a little bit to look at there, maybe to be cautious about. If you guys think I'm dead wrong on this, go ahead, hammer me in the comments and give me something that you want me to pull apart because I'm happy to try to decode anything that you might share. Otherwise, I will see you on the next one. Go ahead and subscribe. If you liked tearing this one apart, go ahead and smash the link button. We'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - How to Get Advertising Impressions Forever!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 13:15:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - How to Get Advertising Impressions Forever!

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Welcome back guys. I got another one for you. So again, creative stuff that I sniped on the fly. And we're going to do ad hacking here. This is a cool piece. I think if you've got a business or you're trying to promote anything, really, this is actually a pretty cool idea. Not like a brand new concept, but kind of a unique piece. So let's take a look at it in a second here.

All right, welcome back guys. I got another cool ad. This one's actually a takeaway piece. So we've seen those pens and all this other stuff. So it's not really a new realm for advertising, but I liked how this one was done. So let's take a look at this thing. Alright, so this thing is a little pop topper, beer flipper, soda opener, and really pretty cool. Now, I don't know if you guys have seen these or not, but this one is made out of metal and it's pretty heavy. It's about the size of a credit card and it's a really nice giveaway and don't, it's not something that somebody's going to throw away. So this kind of the old pen game, we've seen all that. You do a pen, you give out pens. I was just like old school. This definitely more clever. And it's kind of with this vibe, which is this little hotel chain place up in Colorado.

And I'll show you the back here. The back is kind of like their slogan, lifestyle deal, live outside, go explore. So there's a couple of things going on here with this ad that are really important despite its unique placement and what's going on. So for starters, it is a lifestyle play. There's no direct offer here or anything like this. This is kind of like a brand brand control thing, but let's think about this psychology here and decode this thing a little bit. So as business owners, I don't care if you've got a product or a service or whatever it is you do, it's important that you position your product or service as a way, and it should not, I'm not telling you to be fake, but your product or service should help your customer in their transformation to where they're going to this better place to be smarter, be happier, be more fit, be this, have the ability to do this.

We've talked about the drill and the hole and all that stuff. This is a little different than that. This is about the hero journey. And some of the best brands in the world are lifestyle brands or have really wrapped themselves around this idea that their customers are on this heroic transformational journey. They're living their best life. And this ad right here particularly does a great job of supporting that. So how does that work? So if the customer's having their heroic transformational journey, what are we doing as people that are selling stuff? Well, we're supporting and or guiding them. So in the case of services, you may be guiding counseling, coaching, those are all the words, but really you're a guide. So there's the whole Star Wars metaphor for that. You're like the OB one and the customer is like the Luke Skywalker. So there you go.

I just dated myself. But point being here is that this brand, their customer is an avid outdoor person. And so they kind of call that out, live outside, go explore, do your thing. And we are, we're your people. We're going to take care of you while you do this incredible stuff, right? We're the helpers, we're the guide, we're the supportive team that you need to go on this heroic story arc of your life. So that's really the psychology with this. That's why it resonates so well with many people because we put ourselves in that position. We put ourselves here living outside, going and explore. Where are we going to sleep at night? Oh, we're going to sleep here at the lodge, I guess loge the lodge camp.com. Alright, so anyways, check it out if you'd like to go to Woodsy Outdoor Places. Pretty neat spot.

But either way, a couple of good things here. So the takeaway, what kind of memorable stuff can we do as giveaways or that won't get thrown away or that stay with people that stick to them? It used to be the pen, but there's a lot more obviously to that. Now, clearly there's all sorts of swag things, but I like this particularly because it's not like a hat or something like that. It falls more in the pen category, which is a useful tool. And I love little cool tools that you can give to your customers. And this one is really much in alignment with the brand, right? This idea that you could be camping or something like that and you got open your beer, right? So there's like it fits well. So I think that's the thing is you could do pens, but maybe that doesn't fit well with you or whatever. Or maybe this doesn't fit with you, but the idea is good, but making it fit and resonate with your brand is just as important. Just not to do it for the sake of doing it, but to do it well. And then in this case, we learned a little bit here about copywriting in so much that we're identifying that story arc of our customer. Okay? So think about that stuff. If you guys learned a little bit here, smash the like button, subscribe, and I can't wait to see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Does Sassy Work in Advertising?

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 14:22:31 GMT

Ad Hacking - Does Sassy Work in Advertising?

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All right, welcome back guys. On today's video, I've got another awesome ad to check out. Of course, I sniped this one in the wild. You're not going to want to admit to this. This is probably a first. I have never seen one of these before and I highly doubt that you have also. So stay tuned and let's unpack this crazy idea that somebody had.

Okay, guys, welcome back. This one, I don't even know where to begin with this, but I'm going to show it to you. Let's just do our normal deal here where we get right into the reactions. Yes, it's a boat. What can I say? I took this picture because as you know, for this whole deal we're doing on the channel, I'm always sniping ads everywhere I go. This is a digital billboard. This is actually inventory that we bid for some of our projects except for I've never seen one on a boat, and I don't even know if this one is actually in biddable inventory. This could be like a one-off deal or something. But either way, we'll get into the ad, but clearly this winds any recent history that I've been looking at for creativity and impact, frankly. Okay, so let me tell you about where this thing is.

So it's just driving by along the beach. You can see this little lady down here. She's in front of me on the sand. So this is Miami Beach right there in South Beach, Florida, and you can see there's little jet ski guy. I don't know, whatever. It's nuts. And it's I guess probably 200 yards off the beach. I mean, definitely away from anybody swimming or anything, but very visible. And so you can see it's two sided and they go down and I guess they turn around and they go back, they turn around. I think it went by twice. And I was just like, what is this? So here we are. So this one is a lesson and there's no boundaries for advertising. I mean ads no bounds. We can find spots to put ads wherever the eyeballs are. And in this case, I think it's pretty crazy, but clearly hundreds of thousand people are looking out at the ocean.

So you got a lot of eyeballs, and sure enough, you get your ad in front of a lot of folks. So the ad, let's get into that real quick. I mean, the whole thing by itself is just super cool, but the copy's pretty cool. So this is for baseball opening days coming up. So this is just recently right here, March 28th, and the copy is kind of sassy, right? This is other plans, and this is Skip It, opening day, Thursday, March 28th, I think that says four o'clock or something. So a little like sassy, which is kind of fun because memorable, but they're getting the big message across here, which is opening day with the details, right? Nothing else needed there. So the top parts just kind of like an extra bonus, but the eye-catching thing is opening day. And then you have the cool graphic of the Marlins with the picture and whatnot, and it was clear, it's not the best photograph, but the side looked pretty awesome and it was definitely easy to read and all that stuff.

So good copy, just straightforward. Again, the pictures carrying a lot, catching eye. And on the left hand side, so we're reading left to right, so we're doing the picture first, and then we have opening day just hits us right in the eyeballs, got the details there. And frankly, the things kind of putting by real slow, just not going that fast that you got plenty of time to soak it in. And it wasn't flipping that I remember. I think this was just the ad that ran, or at least maybe, I don't know how this inventory works, honestly, I've never seen anything like this, but maybe you pay for every run down the beach or something, I don't know. But anyways, not bad. But the lesson here, the takeaway today is punchy copy being direct details. 1, 2, 3. Love that on the bottom. I mean, it's a well done ad, but the takeaway is where is there attention, eyeballs and available real estate for some of the ads that we want to put up that we can get in front of.

A lot of people like this with a timely message. So think about that. There's all sorts of places in your business, point of sale areas, check presenters. There's all these spots where there's not a lot going on, but actually you're getting a lot of views. So that's the takeaway from here. So think about those kinds of things and see what you can do with it. If you guys were kind of blown away by this, you liked the video, go ahead, smash the like button. Go ahead and scribe. Love to see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Create Evergreen Advertising that Works

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:44:54 GMT

Ad Hacking - Create Evergreen Advertising that Works

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Hey, welcome back guys. On this video we're going to unpack another ad hacking series. Stick with me after this.

Okay. Welcome back guys. We're going to keep going with ad hacking. I've got some fun ones. We're going to do another couple run of these. So let's take a look at this one. And again, these are things I've seen out in the wild. I'm sniping with my camera and all that stuff, and I'm happy to have you guys send me, if you guys want to DM or hit the channel with some messages, send me some ads you'd like to unpack. I would absolutely love that. But as I go around and I see stuff that I think it's worth calling out and trying to decode, I grab with my camera. So here they are. So let's see what we got today. Haven't spent a lot of time on this one, but okay, this thing was cool. So it is a bottle cap opener that is about the same size as a credit card.

So this is a giveaway or token piece. I think it's a great piece because it's metal and it has some weight to it, so it feels kind of nice and it's definitely not something people are going to readily throw away. So if you want to keep your brand, again, leveraging a top of mind strategy in front of people sitting in their car, middle console or whatever, then this piece to me seems like a really good one. Let's talk about the copy on here. So it's a chicken place, I think that's kind of given here. And we see some, what I would call these are callouts. So these are core features of the restaurant of what people can get. So this is what you can get. So you can get sandwiches, tenders, fries, tots, salads, and more. You'll notice right here, sandwiches one tenders 2, 3, 4, 5 words.

So we're still in our three to five word messaging rule. Those are all memorable sandwiches, tenders, fries, tots, and salads and more. So I think that they did an interesting job with stacking the text here. They kind of have some thinner or smaller point sizes, and then some of the bigger ones got a little bit more focus there tenders, salads, and more. I think the salads got big because they didn't want it to feel like if you weren't a meat eater you couldn't come here. So to me that was kind of a tactical decision. I could be wrong, but that's the way I'm interpreting this. And then of course, their big claim right here that they have on their brain is that on their brand is that everything is a hundred percent all natural chicken. So it's really just kind of like this strategy here.

And the other side of this has the logo, so some branding, but I wanted to look at the copy side and just talk about how we can do the same thing with our businesses by calling out our core offers. So these are their core offers. Sometimes you go, well, I don't know what my favorite things are. Well, that's a great time to survey your customers and ask them amongst the list of things that you offer, sell your services, what their favorite thing is to buy. And you may end up with this list and then you can mirror that back to a new audience knowing that your existing audience is already enjoying those things. So these are their five top things probably. They clearly can see that data in their POS system. So there is some method to the madness here, and this is what they want to be known for.

Great chicken sandwiches, tenders, fries, tots, I guess salads and more. So there's two ways to skin this, which is look at what you're doing that people are buying. And reiterate that. The other way to think about this is what do you want to be known for? There's like an old saying, right? Dress for who you want to be, not for who you are. This is a strategy that could be used for that to say what you want your business to be overtly, which is again, falls into our controlling the narrative strategy, making a claim. We do this, this, this, and this and say it. That's what people remember you for. And they can stick, right? So if you keep it out there. Anyways, this piece is great. It's a nice little takeaway. And again, I think it will stay with people that get them because it's not a total piece of junk and it has ongoing use for people. So they'll just keep it all summer long in the cooler or whatever out by the bar in the backyard or something. So really kind of clever stuff there. If you like this and you learned anything or give you a little bit of an idea of something you might do for your business, go ahead and smash the like button. We'd love to have you subscribe on the channel and we'll certainly see you on the next one where we're going to unpack some other ads.

Ad Hacking - How Amazon Prime Shows Value for Money

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 13:31:46 GMT

Ad Hacking - How Amazon Prime Shows Value for Money

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Welcome back to Quick and Dirty Guys. We're going to do another ad today. This is one you have all seen, so we're going to dive into it and see how we can make it work for our businesses, or at least how the elements can work for us on this one. Go ahead and stick with me. Let's do the little pre-roll thing and I'll be right back.

Okay guys, welcome back. We're going to unpack one that we've all seen a million zillion bazillion times and dig in and figure out what's going on and why it's working so well. Okay, so here we go. Oh, we've all seen this one. That's awesome. So this is the back of Amazon Truck. I think every person that's watching this video, specifically if you're in the United States or wherever Amazon is, I think you've probably seen this, right? So let's just start here with what this is all about to me. Now, clearly Amazon's got some really great advertisers, great copywriters. They definitely know what they're doing, all packed house full of smart people there. So let's see how I do with this one. All right, there's more to prime, a truckload more, okay, so the whole premise of Prime is that there's a gigantic amount of value in subscribing to it.

That's the premise, okay? And let me frame that with one of the understandings that we have to have as marketers, and this is really important to understand, and the concept is when do people spend money? And here's when it's actually pretty simple. People will only part with the money in their pocket when what they're going to get from the money they perceive as more valuable. So this explains why some people just spend all their money because they don't value the money very much. So everything else around them looks like it's worth more, so they just buy everything that actually explains that kind of sickness, if you will. But for normal folks, it's also important for us to understand as marketers because we have to make sure that whatever we're selling, marketing, that we amplify the value to the point that the price seems like a deal. The other way that that's been said, and you may have heard this one, is that price is only an issue in the absence of value. So that's the flip. If people are telling you your stuff is too expensive and you cannot price it lower because it doesn't work out mathematically for you on your financials, then the answer is not that the customer is a jerk. The answer is that you are not showing the true value of the product in the way that is understandable or that is being received

By the customer to the point that they see your product as more valuable than the money and they make the transaction with you. So it applies to every single thing. Food's worth nothing to us when we're not hungry. So we don't buy it. It's not worth parting with money for food when we're not hungry. We go to the grocery store because we anticipate being hungry. We, we've been living in our bodies and we just know that's going to happen. So we go to the grocery store and we will part ways with money there to protect ourselves from hunger. It's uncomfortable,

But as we go throughout our day, we don't spend money on food all day and then just sometimes we're hungry and it works out. We only spend money when it's worth parting ways with the money to sate the hunger or discomfort that we're feeling. So that's a really great one to study, just hunger and food because it has a physical discomfort element to it. But that same comfort shows up everywhere else in our life. If you have dry eyes that's uncomfortable, so you want some eyedrops, you're going to $10 in eyedrops, $10 is not worth as much as having comfortable eyes. So you'll make that transaction. So we can go a hundred miles or we can go around that one on everything, but I just want you to understand that because that's what Prime is all about. The idea is that prime, whatever it is, 120 bucks a year or something is that it is like thousands of dollars in value. So you're foolish not to buy it, right? And this tagline that they have for it, there's more to prime, a truckload more. There's a lot going on with this, so we're going to go take it step by step. The first part is exactly everything I just explained, which is that one of their marketing and messaging objectives with Prime is to build this sense of incredible overwhelming value so that the price is not an issue, which I just explained.

The other thing that's going on here is there's a significant amount of intrigue embedded in this statement because there's actually a question that comes out of this, and you can formulate intrigue based messaging, subject lines, headers, marketing pieces like this, anything on your business card, you can know that you're creating intrigue. When the messaging leaves you with a question in your mind, and this leaves us in a question, they make a claim. There's more to prime.

What more? That's the natural question to that. You're stating this claim. Yes. So what's more Now they know, and we all know it's pretty easy to find out. We all know how to go to Amazon and look, you do get all this stuff with Prime. You get videos and you get music, you get shipping, and you get special prices, and you get special deals, and you get this and you get that and you get whatever. All this stuff is they got now, it's like this whole list and probably a bunch of lists of stuff that like half of it they would just give you anyways, like customer service, okay, great. They just keep packing the list because they want this incredible long list that builds this big value story. So there's intrigue in this statement, which is very powerful. I love intrigue marketing. Obviously we know email subject lines are probably the best example of where we want to get good at intrigue, but you could use it everywhere to get people to move to a deeper engagement with your brand. Give 'em a little intrigue pull, little intrigue pull, right? So Amazon is doing this right here. They're pulling on us a little bit by saying there's a lot more to Prime, and we're going, did I miss something? Maybe there is more that I didn't know about. Even I'm a prime subscriber. You maybe do. We're looking at this going, are we even getting all the shit that we're paying for? Maybe we should look right.

And then this little last piece, a truckload more is obviously a play. This is where, and guys, I got to tell you, I'm not a big fan of cutesy marketing. I think it's generally a fail when I see it, and I usually swat it down real quick. I don't think it plays out very well. This one, I would categorically call it cutesy marketing because they're obviously playing around with the fact that this on the back of a truck and they say a truckload more. Again, there are some cases in all marketing where things are forgivable. I would say this is one of those places, and here's why. I'm going to give you reasons. I'm not just going to say it's okay. The reasons are, I think it's when you have a big national brand like that that has a propensity to get a little stuffy and stale and stiff, it's really hard for big national brands with all of the getting canceled and all this other shit that's going on in the world that a brand can still stay playful and have fun with its customer base.

It is difficult for big brands to do that, right? They get so tight, so many board members, so many shareholders, so many, many people at the table, so many stakeholders, that the thing just tightens up so tight that the whole goddamn thing just gets boring. So Amazon, this is a little sliver of them still showing a pulse of humor and some fun and that they can play with the truck as kind of the backbone to this little quippy statement. So I think it's forgivable for big brands like that. I think if you're a small business that you really got to be careful with not being too, you just look like a little goof.

You get big and your risk is getting too stuffy. You're small and your risk is being too just goofy and insignificant. So as you move on your process with the growth of your business, you have to acknowledge and understand where you're standing in all of that, and make sure you don't get too far on the edges and kind of try to be mostly in the middle, which is you can still have fun, but you still need to say what you need to say and not turn into a goofball here. They're doing a really good job with this. I think it's funny enough for them as like I say, a big national brand to get away with a little bit of this tongue in cheek stuff here, but the backbone of the psychology of that statement is while it's a play on words and all the things that I just explained, it also reinforces the basic premise of what we discussed at the beginning of the video.

That the value of prime is so big that you should not even think twice about paying 120 something dollars a year for it because it's like, it's just crazy. You give us one 20, we're going to give you 500. Everybody would do that all day. That's what they're basically purporting. They're purporting that there's so much more value, literally a truckload more value. And what's great about that is right in front of this, when we read this ad, there's a physical representation at this big damn truck. So it's like a double whammy. The psychology is there, tons of value. The visual aid is there, the big truck, they're kind of tethering the visual aid of how big the truck is to the idea that Prime has this big amount of value that's the size of a truck. So there's a lot going on in there. Now, I want you guys to just stop for a second.

Think of everything I just said on this video. Go back and even replay it and think about all of what Amazon has been able to achieve right here on the top back of a truck, and 1, 2, 3, 4 words at the top, plus three more at the bottom, seven words only, and look at what they've done with this brand. And this is an offer. Prime is an offer. This is offer management. That's what this is. It's partly brand management, but Prime is the offer. Subscribe and get a truckload more. So that is an offer without saying, go sign up. We all know it's an offer. They have the benefit of being so big that when they say Prime, we know that that's a subscription. We know that that's an offer. We know that there's value, but they're doing their job to reinforce how much it is right here.

I want you guys to just let that sink in because they're achieving so much with just this little bit right here. This clearly is the pinnacle, the top of the food chain for copywriting and tactical marketing. Really good people, like I say at the table, organizing this stuff. You can learn a lot here like we did today. So don't let this stuff breeze by you on the freeway. Pay attention to what's around you, leverage it for your business. Come back on this channel and learn more. Smash the like button. If you think I missed anything, or you think Amazon's doing something different here that I didn't call out or I'm crazy, put it in the comments and we'll go around and around and figure it all out. Thanks for sticking with me. We'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Does Your Ad Talk about the Problem?

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:10:50 GMT

Ad Hacking - Does Your Ad Talk about the Problem?

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Welcome back to Click and Dirty Guys. Today we're going to unpack another ad, and this one again, out on the fly. I'm grabbing ads and marketing and marketing opportunities for businesses just like yours and the clients that we work with. And we always want to be studying ad copy, ad placement, psychology, and getting smarter and smarter and seeing what we can do to lift our business and drive growth with whatever messaging opportunities that we have. So today I've got another one I want to show you guys that I think is pretty cool that I sniped just the other day. So let's get into it right after this.

Okay guys, welcome back. We're going to unpack this one right now. It is not necessarily an ad. Well it is, but you'll see what I'm talking about. Let's open it up here. Okay, so this is on the back of a truck. It's still an ad, it's just not a digital ad, but it still plays by all the same rules and frankly, it's an awesome opportunity. So let's take a look at this thing right off the get go here, I'd like to just get an impression. So the first thing we have here is this logo. A little complicated to read while you're driving on that, but this copy at the top right here, we make it easy to make it your own, is really pretty awesome. And you can tell it's awesome because it's trademarked, right? So this is their trademark kind of tagline stuff. So let's think about the psychology here First, let's take a look.

We've got, looks like nine words, kind of a little long, probably ideally, but I think they must have made a decision that it was worth letting it be that way. It stacks really nicely. I mean, the words are fairly short, so it's definitely easy to digest. So I don't think it is on the long end of what we would shoot for, but it's still working. So I think it's forgivable. But let's talk about what's going on here. So the outcome is that people want to own or need to own. I think some of the stuff we would consider needs, we need a place to sit. We need furniture. Most of us feel like we need some appliances, like a washer dryer. We need a refrigerator clearly, and a stove. And so there's some things there that are not just wants, as it were. These folks at Rent Center actually service a lot of people who have needs in their household that might otherwise be financially prohibitive.

So their whole deal with this tagline is that they make it easy to get the outcome that you want. So that's the psychology. The psychology is, and they have the outcome. The outcome that people want is they want these, they want to own these things. They want these convenient, they want to be comfortable, they want the convenience of appliances. They want some computers and electronics and TVs in their lives or whatever it is. And the other methods of buying these things like credit cards or paying cash or stuff like that can be difficult for some folks clearly. So rent a Center markets to a group of people that are not able to execute on those money moves maybe as readily as some others, but they still want the same outcome. And the outcome is that they're going to get to own these things. And Cent's claim here, their trademark claim is that they make it easy.

So let's go back to what we know about, again, blocking psychology. So we as markers want to say what the outcome is and we want to handle the objection or also state that the pain in getting that outcome will be diminished by working with us. Mine could be something like great ads without having to worry about ad copy because we would take care of that for you. These guys do. We're going to make it easy to own these things because the buyer, this customer is a customer because they're having difficulty everywhere else buying it, right? They can't get a credit card, they can't get a loan, they don't want to dig all their savings account out to buy these things. So the difficulty that they're experiencing everywhere else, the statement here is that that's going to go away by coming to rent center. So the pain goes away, but the outcome you want is still there.

So I think this is just super awesome because it plays by the rules that we know we have to play with here. From a psychology standpoint, getting marketing and messaging that our customers can get the outcome without the difficulty, without the pain. It does that very, very well. I like that. It's just we make it easy again because it talks to their core reason that they exist. The problem they solve, and we've talked about this on the channel before, is you got to identify in your business what problem do you specifically solve and focus in on that, right? They solve getting these things without the normal credit requirements and other things that are out there, other purchasing instruments that are difficult for some households and people. So that's the problem. They solve. This underserved market or this market that is adjacent to the core purchasing market for large household purchases, and they solve that problem by making it easy.

However, that works. I don't really know, but the claim is awesome and it clearly resonates and speaks to a certain audience that needs this type of solution in their lives. So when you think about your marketing, this whole unpacking, this one here really begs us to do that. To focus on who our customer is. Are we speaking their language? Are we addressing their problems? Specifically? This does this very well, and are we making sure that they can get the outcome they want? Are we speaking to the outcome they want in our messaging? Which this also does very well. It's just you're going to own it. Everybody wants it. I want to own my own tv. I want to own my own couch. I want to own my own washer and dryer, refrigerator or whatever. So all of that stuff really connects very well. And then down here they have a little bit of a, it's not like a call to action.

So you notice there's no CTA here. It's not like call today, book today, rent today. They're not trying to do all that. This is like the back of a truck. It's brand control. This is their tagline. They're pumping that everywhere, all across the country, but they do have some contact information and they do let you know that the website's easy to remember by just it's rent center.com, right? This is just super simple. So I love this. I took this picture, which don't screw me. I was parked when I took it. Truck went by. Got a good one. You guys, if you learned something from this, and I think there's some good takeaways here. I called most of 'em out. If you've got more ideas or stuff that you think I missed on this one, go ahead and put 'em in the comments. Smash the like button, subscribe to you. Don't miss the next one, and we'll see you as we continue to unpack more ads here on quick and Dirty.

Ad Hacking - Why You Shouldn't Advertise About Your Company

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 13:54:53 GMT

Ad Hacking - Why You Shouldn't Advertise About Your Company

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Okay. All right guys, welcome back. We got another one today. That's crazy. We're going to hack this ad and it's a crazy ad, so if you've got a really niche down service or some sort of off the wall product, this one's going to be for you. This is interesting and I have a lot of positive things to say about, so I'm not trying to start out negative, but let's unpack it right after this.

All right, welcome back guys. This one I plugged and I'm actually shocked by this one, but I have a lot of positive things to say about it. So let's pop it up on the screen and take a look here. Just let it sink in for a sec. So this one is so wild for one, I stopped, this ad stopped me because I felt like for one, this is just great that this small business individual person put all this together and is running this ad. I cannot say enough about how good that makes me feel because here's the deal guys, if you have a business and you want to grow, you got to have paid advertising. There's no significant company or business in the world that hasn't really paid to advertise in some way or another. And I know there's some people out there be like, what about Tesla?

They don't run IDAs. I call bullshit on that because they do all those big expensive events and reveals and all that stuff and that requires a lot of money and they get free press and placement and all these YouTubers and everything else. But that's that's very well thought out and still isn't no advertising. Okay? So I'm not even going to hear that now. Yeah, they don't run car commercials and stuff on tv, fine, but they got another angle they're playing. It's still advertising. Okay, so I don't want to hear that. Forget about all that. This madam, I guess that Madam V, or maybe that's Roman new, but I'm going to call it Madam B. She has got, and I actually like this ad for a couple of reasons. One is I think it's visually pretty interesting. There's so much crazy stuff going on here that it definitely caught my eye.

So it does well on the sort of visually catchy side. She has a pretty austere look, which she clearly picked that picture. I think there's a lot of text here just on layout. I mean maybe this might be where I start to criticize a little bit. I think she could have been bigger or a bigger part of the image. Or again, and we've talked about this before, one thing this is not doing well is showing us outcomes. We're showing what we're getting. We get to talk to this lady, but we don't show what we get. I would say the other challenge to this one would be can we figure out a way that we would show the outcome of having fresh insights for 2024? What would that look like? Because that, that's kind of a question we need to ask for all of us who are advertising.

If you buy the thing, what does it look like when you own it? And we've done some other ones like that where they clearly show what the feeling or what the post-purchase is, the outcome. So we're not doing that here and that's where this one is a good study and it's a small advertiser. Again, round of applause for advertising. Even when you're a small business, obviously put this together, it's in flight and it's running. So did all the things to get it going, but we missed some of what I would consider basic opportunities here, which is if somebody has fresh life insights for 2024, what does that mean? What does that feel like? What do they look like? Where are they going? Are they on top of a mountain? Are they hands up high? Are they smiling? Are they happy? Are they with the friends and family?

Are they engaged with their children? Are they doing better at work? I don't know the answers all that, but I could think of a million ways that we could show that probably. Okay, and then this was a holiday ad, right? We got a little snowflakes here. I'm not sure that was necessary, but we're trying to Christmas it up. I guess maybe like a present or something, a little debatable on all that. But this is what you get. You get, and she says it clearly right here, get Fresh Life Insights for 2024. So that's what you're going to buy. So it wins on clarity, but it loses on showing outcomes. If I get that now, and maybe there's some implications of that, but I still think the picture should show visually when we're dealing with display ads, we really want to show what that outcome is like.

Okay, but this is specifically to a certain audience and that audience probably understands a little bit more of this than maybe I do. And then there's this explosive call to action down here, click now to order. So I guess maybe it's an online thing she does, you fill everything out and then you get back your insights. I'm not really sure how that part works, but this is definitely a get it now type of ad. I think the other thing that was probably missed on this one, and I am not sure how well it's converting, I kind of doubt this is converting well. I think if you're going to do that and it's Christmas, you should have had a deal on it. There should have been some sort of deal like get holiday special, get 40% off or holiday special, buy one now, and you get your summer midyear update for free.

That would've been a great way to tactically deal with this, which is to basically offer a bogo, but to do it again in six months with that person so that you can create some repetitive engagement with that customer. So if you buy today and we're going to give you another one in six months, a checkup or a redo or an update free update mid-year, that would've been good. It's a soft cost, not a big deal, more value, little bit of a Christmas offer. So I think they kind of missed here with not having a, I would say an actual offer in this, what is basically a direct offer ad. So there's not really a deal here. So either she's really famous and I know nothing and people are willing to pay full price or what I'm saying is maybe true, which is they kind of missed some stuff here.

But I like looking at this ad because it's not a big advertiser, it's not Chevy, it's not McDonald's, not Walmart. She doesn't have a hundred million dollars worth of people behind her figuring out the copy and the pictures and all this stuff. But this is us, right? This is small businesses working on advertising and getting better. So it's a great ad for us to look at and say, okay, nice work. It looks fairly professional. There's some stuff going on here. But again, some of the psychology is a little broken. I think there's a lot of text here, and I know from doing these ad sets too is that this I give you guys, we look at the squares because it's easy on the show here, but this thing's got to be put into all sorts of other ribbon banners and skyscrapers and stuff. And getting this text to work in that environment is definitely tricky.

So I'm sure the other layouts were difficult if not even a little illegible, but we're not going to talk about that. But just consider that too, like three to five words. That's our other rule with advertising. It's just a lot of shit going on here. There's just so much to read in this little teeny thumbnail. And I think if we spent more time in this ad, we would try to get it down to just this, get fresh life insights for 20 24, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This is six. Even sort of breaks the rule. So we need to clean this part up. And then I guess the private part, I think I would just done that in the badge somewhere and been like 100% confidential somewhere and then just gotten rid of all that crap out. Just get rid of that. And then here's another thing on this. I'll say, now that we're really getting into it, I'm seeing all sorts of stuff.

I really like this one because I want to celebrate small business owners who are taking a stab at this. So part of me having this on the show is that I want to recognize that this is where we all start. I mean, I ran ads like this 10, 12 years ago. They were just not put together very well. But you know what? Some advertising is better than none. More people know about Madame V now than before she ran the ads. So it's not a total loss, it's not a waste of time to try, but it could be refined right? Now. Here's where I was going with all that. Is it important to have her name there or is this her logo or what's the deal? Or is she famous? Right? If you're famous and everybody knows you and you got kind of a big wig, then your name is powerful and that's a good use thing to use for leverage.

But if you are kind of an unknown, this is where ego can get a little tricky. And we used to have this problem on websites where the client would be like, oh, I want the logo. I want a big logo. Put our name. It's not big enough. My logo's not big enough. And they say, I say, Hey, man, your logo's not going to sell anything. Nobody knows anything about you. Your brand market isn't worth $2. People are only going to buy from you because you're going to talk to them and be relevant and show them what they're going to get, what the benefit is. The logo isn't not going to do any of those things. So this is kind of that same trap here, which is this gigantic thing. Madam VI don't give a shit about Madam V and you probably don't either. I do care about having insights into my life, though we all do.

So if you look at the balance of the text here, this ad suddenly became about her and not about the customer, the client, the person, you and me the buyer. And this is a trap that a lot of people fall into. So you got to be really careful with this. If your ads are about your company, their crowd, your ads need to be about your customers transformation, their journey, their challenges, their pain, their outcomes, their conquests, their experiences, what they're getting, not about the company, not about the person, not about this Madam V. Nobody cares about Madam V. They do care about this. So if you took, imagine we just took all this crap out of the middle of this app and made this thing bigger, get fresh live life insights for 2024, and then a hundred percent confidential private reading maybe would've just been a little thing at the bottom, maybe down here.

And then I don't even know, does she need to be in the picture or is it a picture of somebody who has this awakening about their lives? What does that so lots to do here and watch out for? There's some pitfalls that this ad really illustrates, which is why I wanted to have it up. But also the best thing about this ad is that it exists and that this woman is marketing her business in the best way that she knows how and that it's gaining some brand awareness and opportunity for her to learn and grow. So I'm all for it, but I want you guys to see a little bit about what can be done better and some of the cautionary tales that we unlock from decoding this one, which is be careful with the brand, mark. It's not the main spotlight of the show.

Your customer is focus on your benefit and your outcome more than anything else. If you're going to have a deal, maybe just have a deal, figure out how to do a soft cost deal or something. If you're going to go zero to a hundred, put some significant value on the table. Besides this, which is a little bit vague to the right people, I'm sure it's interpreted as awesome, but for a lot of us, and I think if you're going to advertise and you're like this business, one of the things you're trying to do is expand your customer base. I would imagine that this woman probably has loyal people that come to her all the time and they really value it. But the ad is to get more people that are kind of on the fence or want to try this experience of maybe this could help me.

Maybe this could sort out some of my shit that I don't understand about myself. Maybe this psychic person has information that I need. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. But how are we dealing with that person that's on the fence with this ad, right? Are we addressing their objections? Are we addressing their concerns? Are we showing them incredible amounts of value? Are we showing them what the outcomes look like? No, no, no, no, no. So if this ad is to target people that are marginal or iffy buyers or big maybes, they're maybes. If you're trying to nudge a, maybe you need to come with addressing why they're maybe not just throwing your big old name up there and be like, I'm the best one in town. That's just not good enough. So maybe the other way to deal with this too is throw some third party stuff in here, which maybe is a different ad.

That would be a reputation remarketing ad that would say Madam V, top rated internet psychic, over 300 celebrity clients. Something like that, right? That could be on there. And then they say, oh, I'm not crazy. All these other smart people that are doing amazing things are using this tool in their lives to get an advantage. Get an edge. Okay, it's all good things to consider with this one. Again, I think this is a pretty awesome learning experience. I think that there's a lot to see and understand here and take away and some caution and also some encouragement for all of us smart advertisers. Get your button gear and start running some ads and start learning about how to do it well, which is what this is all about this year on this channel. So if you're enjoying this and you're learning like the video smash, like button subscribe so you don't miss the next one. We're going to keep unpacking these ads and learning from big brands, small brands, local, and we're going to do some print and digital and everything else. So I cannot wait to see you on the next one at quick. And.

Ad Hacking - Using Images to Tell Your Story at a Glance

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:20:33 GMT

Ad Hacking - Using Images to Tell Your Story at a Glance

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Okay, welcome back guys. On this one, we're going to decode an ad that's targeted to children. Well, let me correct that statement. It's not actually targeted at children. It's targeted to parents who have children or taking care of children or caregivers. And again, it has strong imagery and some really good takeaways. So stick with me and we are going to unpack it right now.

All right, so as I promised on this one, we're going to decode an ad that's targeting parents. So this is a good chance if you have anything that's in that space to take a look at some of what the big money is doing when they're talking to parents. So let's take a look and reveal this one and let it sink in for a second here. All right, so if you guys have been with me for a little bit on the channel, you're going to see right away that this amazing image of this kid now is she's so happy and she's got a sling and a broken arm, but she feels great. She's happy and she's storing her head back. She's kind of almost looks like she's dancing, but this is a kid that is feeling good despite the fact that they're injured. So awesome image.

So what does that image tell us in advertising? That image tells us something really important that we can do in copywriting, but we can also do the picture and it's demonstrated very well here. And that concept is get the benefit without the pain. Get the thing you want without the pain. Get skinny without exercise. We've seen that one a million times. So this one is get care without feeling horrible or sad or in pain or crying or anything that parents, of course would be worried about that their children would have to experience that the child gets injured. We want the kid to be feeling this great after they leave the hospital, which is the implication of this image right here. So really well done. But remember that concept, right? The image is doing something we normally do in copy, where we write, get X without Y paint, learn more, which is the call to action on this ad, coincidentally.

So let's just unpack the copy here a little bit. Routine care fit for kids, okay, Phoenix Children's Hospital. So this is a big hospital group here in Arizona, and in fact, my daughter went to this hospital when she broke her arm and got the same pink cast. And I have pictures of her where she was doing great as well. So this one kind of popped out at me because I had a personal experience with them. They are a good operation down there. The big block text here. They did a really good job, right with the copy here, the messaging is five words. We always like to see that. So we got routine care, one, two, fit for kids, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, boom. And they floated this text right in here a little bit, and I think deliberately, it would've been easy to take this text and kind of put it up here in the header, but it would've invaded us enjoying this girl's her hair back and kind of pulled away from that.

So if you think about how we read left to right, starting over here, starting over here up at the corner of the ad, our eye starts here. We register her joy and exuberance first. Then our eye can kind of move across to the messaging. So there's a reason why they kind of tucked this down here. It was not happenstance. It's not because it fit better because look, there's all this headroom up here. But we wanted her to be the first area of focus because that, again, this added, and we're on kind of a track here with this one picture is just doing so much of the heavy lifting right here. It's just tying the whole thing. It's telling everything about the ad that we want to convey, which is again, get the thing without the pain. When we start off with joy at the tupper lifetime corner, then we get into what we are offering, which is routine care, but we focus on kids.

And then we have this branding right here. This is just branding. It's not copy. This is what they call themselves. This is the logo at the hospital. It's a cute well done logo. Obviously that has a whole bunch of other imagery we don't have to dive into right now. And then our awesome call to action down here learn more. Interesting. They put a period on that. We see that and we don't see that. I'm wondering if they did that to sneak past Facebook's no button policy on ads running on social, which is a possibility. I don't know if it worked or not, but we see it with a period without, I'm not going to get hung up on that, but either that's the button, that's the call to action. We know that learn more performs incredibly well, and you're going to see it time and time again as we decode these ads.

But this one, the takeaway is again, letting the image be read first. Sticking with our five words or less on the copy, making a call out about your primary service here, right? Routine care. That's what they're after. They want you to just take their kid there for any appointment, not just accidents and injuries, right? And maybe this is routine care for kids is dealing with them when they get hurt. All kids get hurt a few times, right? Really good stuff here though. The color treatment's. Nice, good contrast. The black border, I'll just let you know, is from me snipping. It did not have a frame on it. This guy saw. They'll disregard that part. But yeah, good stuff. So again, if you guys learn something about using a limit, taking the image up, getting that as the beginning of your storytelling on this ad split second, we can see that this kid is happy.

We can see it's for medical care and we know that if we click it, we can learn more about what they can do for our kid. Really well done smash that like button. If you guys want to keep decoding and learning more about ads and copy and structure, which applies to our emails, applies to our website pages, applies to our popups, and applies to our advertising. So we're looking at ads, but we're learning skills and learning to decode so that we can apply that to all of our marketing. Go ahead and subscribe. We'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Ad Hacking - Honda - When Less is More

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 13:15:00 GMT

Ad Hacking - Ad Hacking - Honda - When Less is More

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Okay, guys, welcome back. Today, we've got another awesome ad, and this is one of my favorite categories to focus on. You guys will know right away when I show you, but this one's got some more details on it. So if you have a product or service that has details and stuff, that can be a little tricky, especially on display and programmatic advertising. But we're going to show you how one the best in the business is taking care of it right after this.

All right, welcome back guys. I got one for you today. A little bit going on here, but one piece of it that is so important that I can't say enough about is going to be shown out in full. So let's unpack this one right here. Yeah, Honda Motorcycles. So again, let's just step back for a second and look at this thing. Again, this just tells you, and we've talked about this before on the channel, and we've done other ads like this, that the photography is the cornerstone of all of marketing advertising. The photography that you use around your business needs to show the transformational outcome that you offer. Clearly, this is doing an amazing job of just that. These two people are together enjoying an adventure, open road, exploring this canyon curvy, beautiful setting. There's a ton of implications here of freedom and autonomy and getting away from the nastiness of life.

We all can just read into these things when we see this picture, and that's what Honda offers, or at least that's what their motorcycle experience offers, right? Their motorcycle experience offers those things, and this image shows exactly that really well. So that's the thing to anchor from. Just the first impression here when we're decoding this, that we've got to use pictures and images in our advertising, marketing website, email, print, and everything that show the transformational positive outcome that we offer to our buyer. And if we're not doing that, we need to pick another picture. I've said that before. Let's get into a little bit more on this thing. So we've got the branding up top. We always going to have a logo and we have to have a brand mark on display advertising. And this ad calls out one of their bikes, which is the Gold Wing, one of their most famous motorcycles if you're not aware.

So if this is your bag, you're definitely familiar with what that is. The gold wing motorcycle has been kind of the gold standard for long distance traveling in the motorcycle world, and it's a beautiful bike. So they've got two things going on. They've got their parent brand here at the top and the right and the red. They're marquee, their brand mark, and then they're calling out this specific bike as a specific type of experience that they offer, which is that you can just go and go and go for a whole weekend, a week, a month or whatever. It doesn't matter. This bike can do it for two people comfortably. It's sort of also shown by the picture. Now, this is what I was saying on the intro. There's all this yucky stuff down here that they're trying to do, and sometimes we have ads that have a bunch of yucky stuff.

So we've got this whole thing here where it's as low as 4.99% a PR. So in today's high interest rate environment, this is clearly a pretty good deal for better for worse. So they're saying, Hey, we're going to help you get a good deal. We can get you into this bike at a reasonable financing rate. And then they have some small print here for up to 36 months with approved credit by Honda Financial Services learn more. So this is a big purchase and it's a big decision. So again, they're not going from zero to a hundred on this. They're not saying Buy the bike now, make an appointment. Now, I think another one they could have done here was test ride. Could have been the call to action, find test ride or test ride this bike. That would've been cool. Learn more. Still good though.

And you can see we're using that soft ask on the CTA here because we're really just trying to engage the customer in this deal, but we know that people aren't going to make a $25,000 decision on one click that we've got to get them into the buying process at our dealer network and all these other things that are part of that journey for the buyer. So they're going to start with this low ask, which is, learn more about the deal, learn more about the bike. But this is the hook right here, which is that they're offering special financing right now. That is the direct offer. This picture up here is the transformational outcome that you can get. This is the benefit, this is the outcome that you can get if you take advantage of this deal. So the pictures doing the communicating here, and you can see they were pretty good about not putting a bunch of text all over the damn image, right?

They just did this, and they did that little thing up top in the corner there, just the gold wing mark. But they left us to enjoy the picture and have that kind of own most of the real estate on this layout, and for good reason, because it tells the whole story about what Honda offers through this product. So again, look at your pictures that you're using. Does it tell the whole story about what you offer through your product or service? What does your customer look like after they buy from you? Do they look like these people because they look like they're having a blast? So this is showing outcome, and we sell outcomes. We don't sell products and services and bikes. We sell adventure. We sell experiences. We sell wind in your face. We sell adrenaline, we sell emotion, we sell connectiveness and sharing experiences.

We don't sell bikes. We sell all these other things that are deep value propositions for most of us. So think about that too. There's an old saying, we don't buy a drill. We buy the whole. And then you say, well, what is? And there's this other piece of that conversation, and this picture really unlocks that, right? We don't buy the bike. We buy the ability to go for a ride. We buy the ability to and go and have fun. But what does that mean? And this is where most of us fall short in our marketing, means that we can have a shared experience with our loved one that we can see do and feel something with another human being, right? That's what it means. It means freedom, it means adventure. It means vitality. It means that's what the bike is all about. Yes, it goes.

And then that means, so if your product, your service, and what you offer is like a drill. Nobody's buying the drill. They're buying the hole, but they don't even want the hole. They want what that means to them, which is that they can hang a picture of their family, or in this case, that they can enjoy companionship with somebody on a shared experience. So there's much deeper stuff going on here with this picture than it's just a picture of a bike to the right audience. And that may not be you, or you may be something that jams all over this and totally gets it, but it doesn't really matter. Be the concept is the same for your product or services. If you aren't communicating this way visually, then you've got to go back and reshoot or dig up and work on photography because it's got to be this good, otherwise you're wasting money. Okay? So smash the like. But this one was pretty good. I think it deserves a like, and I would love to see you subscribe so you don't miss these because we're going to keep unpacking 'em. Go ahead and if I miss something, please put it in the comments so we all can learn. If you have something to share. And if you have an ad that you'd like us to decode and unpack, then I'm all ears. Shoot us a note on the comments. We'll see you on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Norwegian Cruise Lines - Why Choosing the Right Photo Matters

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 10:15:05 GMT

Ad Hacking - Norwegian Cruise Lines - Why Choosing the Right Photo Matters

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All right, welcome back guys. We're going to unpack another ad today, and this one's great because it's all about the picture. So if you guys are into photography or you're struggling with imagery for your brand, your website, your advertising, this might help a little bit with some inspiration. So let's get right into it right after this.

Okay? Welcome back guys. We're going to unpack another ad today. So this is the super fun series where we are decoding ads. I've got a great friend of mine in the business, David, who loves to say that this is your chance to learn how to see the matrix of what's going on around us with marketing. So that's my objective with unpacking these ads is that we can start to see the psychology blocking the design layout, the ad objective or campaign objective tactic objectives so that we can start seeing that stuff and applying those things to our businesses so we can do better with our emails, our websites, our advertising, our print, and everything that we're doing to promote ourselves and our businesses. So let's open this one up right here. Okay, boom. First thing we do, just going to let it sink in for a second here.

Clearly, the first thing is just all the blue is just telling everything that right? Just so much blue and a little teeny awesome cruise ship down there in the middle and nothing says beach vacation and unwinding like a bunch of blue ocean and a blue, sunny sky. So they're just killing us with this imagery being so impactful. It almost just says everything about what we we're working for. We just want to take a break. We want to have a vacation. We want to be in this tropical environment for those that are attracted to this type of vacation. This pretty much says it, right? So the imagery is really well done, and that's what I was saying on the intro here, that when we're deciding on photography for programmatic and display type advertising, we want the picture to do the heavy lifting for us. And then we got this other stuff.

We got to deal with the copyright and the button and design, but we want the picture to do the lift. So we want the picture to hit people scrolling. You got a microsecond or whatever it is, fraction of a second. So you want the picture to at least do some work for your brand right away, even if the person doesn't get into the rest of this stuff. So the first thing up top Norwegian cruise lines, we've got this beautiful thing. Bam. I know that if in my life I want this, these guys have it, if I want this experience, Norwegian cruise lines had so minimally, even if I don't get into the rest of all this copy and we, let's see, how would I do that? I don't even know. Cover that up if we covered that up. Okay, maybe I do like this. There we go.

We cover all that up. We still get the main objective of the ad, which is to co-brand, no range and crew lines with this incredible natural setting that we can experience with them. That being said, point of that is be selective in your photos. Be the pictures that you want to build your brand around the imagery that you want your brand to support the experience or the other way to think about it, and one of the things that we don't talk about enough is what transformation are you offering your customer or your client, right? What's transformation? This here is very clear. They're offering me that I can have this experience in this incredibly beautiful place on their nice little boat. So that's the transformation. So that's another way to frame that is if the picture you're going to use in your popup, your ad, your website, your print, your email, does it show your target customer client how they're going to transform by working with you or buying from you?

And if it doesn't, then maybe it's not the right picture. So that's a good way to think about it. Alright, now let's get up into the copyright. This one I pulled because it is a straight up direct offer ad, right? So this one's got the hook, big monster discount right here at the top, 50% off, everybody wants half off. I almost clicked on this. I want to go on this thing. Half off is a huge deal. Now I will let you know there's a reason they went half off. It's not because they can't fill the cruise ship and all these other things we could imagine they're like going out of business. That's not the reason why they go 50%. It's 50% is a gigantic hook. It performs far better than 20% and 30% off. No secret there. But for smaller advertisers and smaller businesses, if you guys are thinking 20% is a super deal, you're probably not going to have a lot of conversions from that.

It's just not motivating enough for the buyer. It doesn't sound that great. And the other thing is, and this is where maybe they could have done better here. Sometimes when we express a deal as a percentage, we also want to say up to $3,000 and call out a big cash number as well because not everybody's mind works the same. Some people can do percentages pretty quick and they go, oh, okay, 20% off on a new Cadillac is $15,000 factory rebate. Oh, that's a great deal. But other people just, that's too much. So you just say $15,000 factory rebate. And people are like, damn, that's a lot of money. So sometimes you want to say the dollar figure, sometimes you want to say the percentages. They may have another sister ad for this that they're cross testing that has a dollar figure there. Save up to $2,500 on your family's vacation.

That sounds awesome too. So play with percentages versus hard dollars and see how they perform within your niche. But 50% always does pretty well, especially on high ticket items like this. So this has got a lot of baked and perceived value right off the top. And you'll notice that they did that we read left to right. So the first thing they wanted you to see is that 50% off. That was very deliberate. The placement and the layout of saying that right there in the normal order that we read. Then we get over to this part over here where it says free unlimited open bar air four and more. Now they went for the kill on this, which is book. Now that probably could have been again tested as learn more, see more again, like a lower ask book now is kind of like if we're not ready to spend the money and we haven't saved up for the cruise or I don't know, then that one is a little bit much because I'm not again going to go zero to a hundred if I can't figure out my plans and stuff.

How much they're relying on this ad to get clicked is debatable. But in a retargeting sequence, I think this ad is incredibly powerful. If you have people that are in and out of your booking engine and they haven't made a commitment and you're able to retarget them with this type of deal, I think you're going to see some significant conversions by playing this game. Of course, if they land on this ad as a retargeting and they do go to book and they click it, you got to send 'em them somewhere where that 50% is going to be something they can capture either through a special checkout page or whatever the backend mechanics of that are. But this one definitely has a lot of firepower just based on that big perceived value piece right there. And then this free thing is in advertising and copywriting. This is kind of like I'm going to sing a big hammer and then I'm going to come with a rocket launcher too.

So we got the big hammers, the 50% off, and then the rocket launcher is just put free anything. I don't give a crap, put a gigantic free thing on there. I don't care if we're giving away free drinking straws, just say free on the ad. So we got this big call out free and it just says unlimited open bar airfare or more. A little vague there, but they got it done because they wanted to use this word free, which again is super powerful. We're going through these ads together this year. We're going to start to see repetitive copywriting tools, learn more book now, buy now free. These words have been established in advertising copywriting for the better part of about six decades, going all the way back to print and the back of magazines and all of that sort of Mad Men stuff freeze always performed very well.

There's a reason that they married it with the 50% on this ad. This thing basically is like two guns blazing. It's like they really want to get some bookings out of this. So they're coming with their best stuff is the way I see it. Okay, so if you feel like you need to hit really hard, this is a great ad to look at what that looks like. This is a hard hitting ad. They're going for the throat on deal making. This is probably very competitive against other cruise lines and going to give people that are shopping for vacation. A moment to pause because this definitely needs to be investigated. Of course, if you're making plans, which is all they want you to do is to get in there and see what kind of deal they have versus the other ideas that you have for vacation with your family or whatever's going on in your life.

A little bit of disclaimer down there, I can't really read that stuff. It says buy an air ticket and the second guess flies for might say, free, I don't know. And then there's a little catch all there, certain conditions of terms and conditions apply, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So just don't forget if you're going to do something like this and you do have that, get the small print in there. You don't want somebody coming after you and saying, Hey, it was free everything, or something like that. So there's a little bit of catchall on the bottom, so be conscientious of that. But great. Add again. The lesson with this one is if you're going to do direct offer in today's environment, go hard or go home. And if you're looking at pictures and the pictures that you're using for your marketing aren't telling the story that you want your brand associated with the transformational story that you're offering, pick another picture.

This is a great example of great photography, nice centering to brand center line book. Now ship keeps our eye right in the middle here. The whole thing is tapering down to the boat. There's some visual taper to this design and layout. Just really nice little points to notice on this one. Go ahead and smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel because these are quick and you can learn so much from this stuff. If you're doing anything to grow your business, these are not to be ignored. I love ad hacking, decoding, all of these things. Looking into the matrix of marketing, if you will. I can't wait to see you guys on the next one. So subscribe. And I guess there's the bell thing. You can do that too, but we'll see it because we're just going to keep at it.

Ad Hacking - Nutrafol - Why Great Imagery Matters

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 13:23:59 GMT

Ad Hacking - Nutrafol - Why Great Imagery Matters

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Welcome. Today we're going to do another ad hack, and we're going to piece one swim apart. The reason I picked this one today is it really demonstrates how important imagery is in your ad. So let's dig into it right after this.

All right guys. So on this one I'm going to show you an ad that really demonstrates how you don't need that much in terms of copy if you have a great image. So let's take a look here and unpack this one. All right, let's take a look here. We always kind of step back and let the thing just kind of hit, but I think you can see what I was saying, right? This image pretty much says it all. Like, look at this amazing hair on this. Dare I say, older woman, they're definitely deliberately picked this silver, gray hair, but it's so thick and healthy, and then they got kind of this wind thing and she's just living her best life and the picture is just doing so much. And then this background's kind of interesting. They created a lot of contrast here, but it's very complimentary, right?

This kind of black marbled background stuff. So the ad really works well just from an imagery standpoint. So if we only saw the name neutrophil this image, and then the call to action shop now, it's almost the image is doing so much here. It is just carrying most of the whole ad. We already make a brand association immediately neutrophil this incredible gray hair. Clearly this works for folks that take care of their hair as they age. So let's look at the copy though. Menopause can change your hair, grow through it with neutrophil. I particularly liked that imagery, this idea that you could grow through something. I think that's a powerful statement. They did a little trick here with the copy, so this technically is a little longer than what we typically want to see, but they kind of packed Change your hair right here. It's three words, but they packed it together by changing the color of that section of text and italicizing that, right?

So they applied, italics changed it, so change your hair shop now. So they did a little trick here in the design side to manage the copy in a way that they could leverage a quick view of the ad for someone that maybe didn't read the whole statement. So now if we sort of decode this thing, we see the brand name up top, it's floating, and be mindful on this one that the brand name is not trying to take up the whole damn thing. And I think that's an important point. We sometimes want our business brand name to be like this center of attention, but people aren't buying our logos and they're not buying our brand name necessarily, especially for a lot of us small business owners. If you're Nike or Gucci or something like that and your brand name carries a lot of weight, great, you can do an ad that's just the Nike Swoosh, which we've seen in Times Square.

It just kind of says it all, and that one has a whole bunch of special stuff. There's a lot of studies on that, like a suggestion of someone moving that a foot is falling forward, that there's movement. The Nike's logo has been studied time and time again for all sorts of cool reasons. So it pushes some imagery on its own as a graphic. Nutra fold doesn't seem to have a graphical element, at least not on this ad for their branding, but they have their little name up there. But what's important about it is they let that fall back a little bit. Yes, it's standing up, but it's not banging and taking up a ton of space because what is taking up a lot of space is this call out in the teal colored text here, change your hair, and then the shop now call to action, all resting with this incredible image.

Other things I would call out in this one, you can also notice that the text on this ad is tapered down. There's a little bit of a drop in the text that's bringing our eye visually to the call to action and to the image that's happening on both sides of the ads. You can see it over here. The text is dropping into the call to action and then down to the image. So the layout is really good on this one, and this is a great ad to show why photography is so important in advertising. Why getting the image to do the heavy lifting, getting the image to tell the story, getting the image that is going to be identifiable with your target market and your target customer is really priority one. When you're starting to lay up these ads, you really have got to start with a great image and then it starts getting easier to build around that.

So this one, there's a lot of takeaway here, little tricks with copy and how to highlight a certain portion of the message that is actionable, right? Change your hair is a polite command. Do this action, get this result right? Those are our basics. Get the result, take this action if you want this, take this action. So it's just very overt, simple instructions to the shopper right there. And that's one of the things a lot of folks that can miss is just keeping it simple. Want to change your hair shop now? This is what it looks like if you're using this product. Okay, it looks amazing. All right, so we'll see you on the next one. Hopefully you guys learned a little something from this one about picking images and what that can do in terms of the impact of the ad. A little bit of copy tricks here. Nice clean layout, really well done overall. Go ahead and smash the like button, subscribe because we're going to keep doing these and every time we unpack one, we learned something more. So we'll see on the next one.

Ad Hacking - Xfinity Mobile - How to Use High Performing Call to Action

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 13:54:56 GMT

Ad Hacking - Xfinity Mobile - How to Use High Performing Call to Action

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Okay guys, welcome. We're going to do another ad hack. We're going to decode a pretty complicated one I think, and I know you guys are going to like it because it's colorful and tries to do a lot, which is I think one of the things we all struggle with. We're always trying to get our ad to do as much as possible for the space that we have. So let's unpack it. Stick with me right after this.

Okay guys, like I said on this one, we're going to take a look at this thing. It's comma beast. We're going to take a piece by piece. Let's take a look together here. So we always let it sink in here for a second. And there's a few things I like about this one, but let's start with just the elephant in the room. The word free. We know the word free is one of the highest performing advertising words. It has been for the better part of the last 60 years, and the stacking here is awesome. So just forget about it, don't even read it for a second. Okay, here's the deal. We're running the top existing customers, so that's a screening statement. So if you're not a customer, don't look at this ad. If you are a customer, this is how we treat our customers, we give them free stuff then, but look at the structural tapering.

The text is taking us right down to the learn more call to action. So remember when we've talked about this before on our ads, right? Free, high performing, proven advertising word learn more. One of the highest if not highest performing call to actions. So we have these two stack. This text in the middle is just basically bringing our eye down to the call to action. Now we can read it free line of unlimited intro for one year. When you buy one unlimited line, I don't even know what unlimited intro really means. Free line of unlimited intro for one year. When you buy one unlimited line, that all seems a little confusing to me. But if you're an existing customer, these things probably mean something to you. I'm not sure what unlimited intro is. Maybe that's a way to get started with an account, but clearly if we want to know more, they've given us the call to action for that other stuff that's going on right here.

Just color treatment is great. It's obviously on brand. This is their color brand did nice little lights, swoosh effect here. I love the two phones because this whole offer is to try to get a second line. So they're kind of giving you that, hey, if you got one you can have another. And then somebody in the art department did a clever little job with the infinity symbol cutting across the two phones, kind of tying that together. Their brand name, of course, Xfinity Mobile, they got little fun stuff on the text there. It looks like signal bars around the o kind of radiating. Just little extras all over this one. I do think that this is a clever artistic layout, so whomever banged that together I think gets a gold star. But the copywriting is excellent on this one. Just leveraging those two high performing ad words.

Doing a little stacking here. I think this section got a little confusing in my view, but like I say, if you are an existing customer, we have this screening up top. This probably resonates with you. This was a long form ad, almost like a double stack on a special type of ad server that allows a parallax scroll inside content online. So this is running on a special ad server. So minimum buys on this are a little high for small business owners, but the layout, we can still learn a lot on this. And what I really want you all of us to focus on here is to understand the power free, the power of learn more, the shaping of the text to control visual focus to the call to action. And this idea that there's two phones now, not one, and that you can expand your account apparently for free.

A lot of takeaways on this one. So again, the clever artwork and this whole layout and stacking was just done really, really well. I think the other thing that we haven't seen on a few going back here just doing these is this ad is a screening ad, right? It's only for existing customers. So that's something that tactically we don't pay attention to a lot, but these guys used it and they're leveraging this ad. They're wanting to talk to a certain segment of their potential customers, which is their existing customers, right? They obviously can do an ad to acquire new customers. That's a different ad. This one is for existing customers. Now I saw this ad, I was not shopping this and I'm not an existing customer. So some of the targeting on this one is a little tricky. That's another thing to watch when you're going to screen or you want to go for a subsegment of your audience data, is to make sure that you're targeting spot on because they spent on this to show it to me.

And I'm not an existing customer, so there's a little bit of slop in the targeting on that, and I would call that out. If you're going to do a screening ad, make sure that you're targeting is in alignment with the screen so you're not overspending, right? Which is what happened here. So all good stuff. We'll see you on the next one. If you guys learn something here, smash the like button, go ahead and subscribe, and we will see you on the next one where we just decode more advertising. And I know you're going to learn something.

Display AD Hacking - Ore Ida - Advertising Food

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:33:12 GMT

Display AD Hacking - Ore Ida - Advertising Food

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Okay, welcome back to Quick and Dirty Guys. I got another ad we're going to unpack today. It's crispy, it's crunchy, and it's hot and it's juicy and apparently it's fluffy. So you're going to learn a little bit about here. If you're into food, you're going to love this one just popping off my phone. So let's unpack it right after this.

All right, welcome back guys. Let's reveal today's ad that we're going to decode. And here we are. So let's just stop. First thing we do, just see how this thing hits us, right? For me, the first thing that hits us is this incredible picture right here in the middle of these crispy french fries. And you'll notice they broke off this top one so that we could see how white and fluffy and clean, I guess just perfect that inside of that french fry looks. So that was very deliberate from the food photographers that they wanted to face that to us and show us the little perfect inside of the fry. And then the rest of 'em just look great. They're like gold and brown. They just nailed it, right? They look amazing. So that kind of gets us to the next thing here. Great food photography.

But that gets us to the next thing. What is going on with this ad? The copy reads Crispy outside, a fluffy inside a every time a ora, right? The brand. So it's a jingle that we were to read ourselves. I kind of like stuff like this honestly, because it gets our brain working a little bit. We're engaging with the brand, trying to read this little whole series of stuff at the top. And this may be running on radio, TV or in other places with the full audio treatment. This is just a display programmatic ad, and of course we have to do the work ourselves, but I think they did a good job. I think the little arc to the text that they put in this design subtle, but helps frame this sort of pile of french fries now at the bottom. So I kind of like that.

It is low key, but it's definitely noticeable to me. The whole red, again, used red and yellow common in food services, especially in the french fry and fast food business. So no surprises there. Definitely jumping off the page, really punching the eyes pretty hard. But the french fries are doing a great job of living in the center there. They got yellow in their brand so they know they're yellow, but I guarantee you there was some time spent to make this all look good and the fries not have that sort of s look to them. So there's sure, a little bit of production work here to get this looking the way it does. It looks super good now just going down. We've got this buy now call to action. We all know that you're not going to click that and buy frozen bag of french fries.

They're going to suddenly show up unlikely. But what they probably are trying to do is get you to check your local retailers and where you can get a ride of french fries. So buy now, go to Walmart, go to fries, go to one of these big grocery stores and you'll be able to find Ora in the freezer department clearly. And the last thing that I like down here, and this is just kind of a whole nother study, but they do have it, it's part of their brand stack here is their little tagline, which is deliciously predictable. I can't say enough about how good that is and how much it reminds all of us that words matter in your marketing. And that word crafting and spending time on stuff like this is really important. And I don't know the history of the Oida brand or the history of this tagline, but I bet you anything that was done a long time ago done by somebody who was paid very well and they nailed it on that right deliciously predictable meaning that every bag of our fries is going to be just as good as the last bag that you had.

Every french fry that you eat is going to taste just as good as the last bag, the last french fry you had. So that's one of the things as consumers that we want is we want to know the value we're getting and that we're getting it every time. And that's specifically important with food where we're have an expectation it's going to taste a certain way. And of course, A here is basically promising that their fry is going to be just as good as you remember their fry to be right and as good as this picture. Okay, love that tagline there. And if you've been struggling with a tagline, notice two words, massive impact. So we don't need to orient a whole lot on a tagline to really do well, but I guarantee you that this took some time and some real thought to nail that one as well as they did.

Okay, so we got the buy now, it's an afterthought. I don't really think a lot of people, they're expecting, again, a lot of people to click on this ad, but they're killing it on awareness, their messaging and getting their little sort of classic jingle out. And if we look at the wording and the way the word stack is crispy and fluffy and every time are the easiest ones to pick out of here if we're skimming or crispy fluffy every time. The other ones are a little tricky because they have a hyphen and they're a little every time does. But it's kind of like that's a word that we can digest in one glance. So this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 still meets our rule of three to five words, even though there's a little extra going on here. And you guys, when you're doing your ads, remember and popups and headlines and things, really don't want to go past five words because instead of just take it all in and clearly right here, we can just glance at this ad and we absorb crispy and fluffy right away.

And then we see this picture and the picture is exactly that. The picture is crispy with the little broken french fry there showing the fluffy. So we're getting the word, the visual reaffirms. It tells the story. We've got the brand, which we will see when we go to the grocery store. Hey, those are those french fries. And then this sort of afterthought, which is the CTA down here at the bottom by now, surely that's to go check it out. So if you're in food services, this is a great lesson. If you're going to do pictures, they better be really, really good. Or they're work against you like faster than you even know what happened. So you got to nail your food photography. And if you're going to do ads around that, your messaging and the photography should be reaffirming each other like they are here.

Okay? The textual message and the visual message are congruent and they're pounding really hard, that they're crispy and fluffy and that they're every time you're going to get the same product from them, right? Deliciously predictable every single time. That's something they want you to know is that they're reliably going to be good. And that you can count on a RDA to give you the bomb french fries every time you pull 'em out of the freezer and put 'em in the air fryer. So pretty good stuff here. Good things to think about. Go ahead and smash the leg biting and subscribe. We're going to be jamming and decoding ads for a while. It's super fun and we can learn so much from it because the best in the business are writing this stuff. They're paying big money to put these ads in flight. There's a lot of firepower behind these and this is a great way to learn and swipe and apply to your business. So go ahead and leave any thoughts in the comments. If I personally missed something and you want another call out or there something that you saw that I didn't see, I'd love to hear that. And if you have an ad that you'd like for us to pull apart, go ahead and post it on the comments there and see. We can get that over here and I'd be happy to take a look at it. We'll see you on the next one.

Display Ad Hacking - Mr Rooter - Advertising for Plumbers

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:13:29 GMT

Display Ad Hacking - Mr Rooter - Advertising for Plumbers

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Okay, welcome back guys on this video and for the next series of videos that we're going to do this year for 2024. I'm excited to work with you guys to decode ads that we see all over from national advertisers to local advertisers. We're going to explore all sorts of different niches right here, and we're going to get into the imagery, the psychology of the ad, the design, the layout, and the purpose and objective of why the ad was even in flight at all. Okay? So stick with me here and we're going to dig right in.

Okay, let's jump right in. I'm going to reveal our first ad for 2024 and take a look at it. It is from Mr. Rooter. And here's the way I'm going to try to do this and it may change, but for this one, the first thing I want to do is just take a look at this thing and the first thing we're going to do, because the first thing that always hits us is we're going to talk about the picture. The image is what always hits us. Our mind is wired to absorb the imagery of the ad right away. So the first thing we see is this confident working guy here with his shoulder kind of kickback, which I like. I think if he was in this posture and kind looking closed off, that would not be good body language, but that kind of shoulder back sort of confidence.

We just finished the job, everything turned out great, communicating a lot of proficiency and authority around the trade that they're in, which is of course plumbing. The kitchen in the background looks beautiful. Could be real, could be fake, doesn't matter. I'm sure it was laid up. It looks like it's a layered up ad in the design department, but still done well. And the red, the brand colors do pop and jump off the rest of this whole webpage. It was on. I was always scrolling on my phone. This was an ad that was seen in the middle of an article and you can see they kind of call it out in very small print here, but either way, that's the first part that hits us, right? It's in their brand colors using the red. He got his red shirt, he's smiling. That's always engaging and he is directly looking at the camera too.

So we sort have a little bit of that eye contact there initially. Now let's get into the copy and try to answer what is the point of this ad? So clearly this one's a little tricky because there is not an offer here. There is not a discount, there is not a buy. Now for some of us smaller advertisers, we think, oh, get a deal right now, like run an ad, get a deal, run an ad, get a deal. This ad, and the reason I selected it for the first video here resides in a much more subtle, if not sophisticated approach. So let's just talk about the copy. The first part of the copy up here says, we let you choose what's best for you. And then they have the secondary message, which is basically a reframing of the same statement that says plumbing. That puts you in control.

So you get to choose what's best for you and you're in control. Okay? So let's just think about why would they spend thousands of dollars to get the copy on this exactly that way and to put this ad in flight. Here's my thoughts on this one. Clearly this ad is a brand control ad that is designed to create a narrative around Mr. Rooter and it's also working to handle typical buyer objections. So they have probably done some good look at customer objections. They're nationwide, they've got a lot of data to look at. One of the biggest concerns that Plumbering customers have is this job is going to get out of control. It's going to be 30, 40, 50 if not a hundred percent more expensive than I'm planning and I'm going to get screwed. And these guys just keep changing the price and it always goes up.

And the last time I hired somebody, it was a nightmare. So this is the scary consumer thought that plumbing costs are going to bloom out of control. Once these guys get in here and sell me, I'm going to sign this thing and then they're just going to take over and keep adding costs yet again, cost adding costs. So that's the objection that the buyer has. How do I know that this thing's going to get done for the price that we agreed? Okay? That is one of the biggest issues with any work that you have done on your home is that it can be quite a bit more expensive than you originally thought. They are handling this objection here in two ways. You choose what's best for you, we're not going to tell you what's best for you. You want the shower head on the left side, fine.

You want the drain here, sounds great. You want to move the toilet out into the hallway, okay? Whatever makes you happy, right? You're in control. And then plumbing that puts you in control or you choose what's best for you. And then plumbing that puts you in control is basically again, directly targeting that objection that buyers have that the deal, the job, the budget and everything is just going to completely suddenly go out of my control. But not if I work with Mr. Rooter. If I work with Mr. Rooter, I'm going to stay in control. And that's really what they're trying to do right here is handle that objection and they're doing it in a brand controlled message. And this is a narrative that they want out in the market that when you work with them, you're still in control of the project and that they're in service to you.

Okay? So it's pretty clever, but you can see that this is at the higher end of strategy, sophistication and budget because they can afford to run ads like this that are just to talk about how they work with their customers and just to handle objections in a very soft way. It's just messaging. There's no deal here, there's no offer. In fact, that takes us right to the call to action here. Learn more. Learn more has been around in marketing as a copywriting tool for decades and decades and decades is one of the most powerful well-tested call to actions that you can use. Humans are naturally wired to want to acquire information, which is probably why you're watching this video. We're all that way. We want to learn, we're just wired for it, and it's a very attractive call to action. There's two reasons why. One, I just stated, we naturally want to acquire information and get smart because that's part of our survival.

We've gotten this far from being smart and we're going to get through this plumbing deal if we play it smart too. So we need to learn as much as possible before we make a decision about the project in our home. So that kind of all ties together. The other thing that's nice about learn more as a call to action is that it is a low ask versus, and this is something we see a lot of our smaller budget advertisers. They want to go for the kill on the ad. They want to go for the buy now, get it now, order now, call now, book Now, all of those immediate and what I would call those are ads that are asking the viewer customer prospect lead to go from zero to a hundred and click to call is another one. Click to call now, sounds great on paper, it's cool technology, but it's actually a pretty tall ask and a lot of people don't want to get on the phone because they feel like they're going to get on the phone with some sneaky sales shark and they're going to get sold that actually from a call to action on an ad like this, and I'm sure they've done their testing is a little scary for a lot of homeowners.

I don't want to get on the phone with these people. They're going to try to rook me into something. So Roto-Rooter tactic here is to ask you to just learn about how we work with our customers, learn about how you're going to stay in control of this deal and learn how you're going to be protected in this arrangement, in this transaction. So they kept the ask low. There's something to think about too. When you are thinking about your buyer's journey, do you have places in your buyer's journey where you're asking the buyer to go to accelerate really dramatically when it's maybe not appropriate when they're not ready? Because if you have programmatic advertising that's asking for a buyer to accelerate the process rapidly and you're not getting good conversions, you're getting take on that ad. It's because it's too early in the relationship. And this ad, by the way, was fired to me cold.

This is not a retargeting ad. I was not shopping for plumbing and I certainly was not on the Mr. Rooter website. Now we do have clients here that are plumbers, so maybe algorithmically, I've clicked and been on plumbing sites and that could have swept me up into this cold targeting, but there's definitely not a retargeting ad. This is a cold targeted ad. I'm a homeowner and may or may not have plumbing issues, and I'm in an area that they clearly want to service because I'm sure there's some geofencing on this. Either way though, the call to action is soft with a low ask, right? It's a non-threatening call to action. This is brand control. The layout is nice. We have a confidence inspiring image. We've got good brand awareness here down with the Mr. Rooter logo, and the same message effectively reframed depending on who you are and how you interpret those things.

So that's also a good tactic as well there. So there's a lot we can take here from this. The biggest one for, and if you're a small advertiser and you're thinking about advertising is to say, Hey, wait a second. Ads aren't always about asking for a deal. Ads are also about telling a story about who you are and what it's like to work with you. Okay? So that again is higher level strategy, but very effective specifically. And I would say I'd love to see ads like this in retargeting as we indoctrinate leads and prospects into a brand. We use this type of messaging to teach them about what it's like to work for Mr. Rooter. Okay, so we'll see you guys on the next one. Go ahead and subscribe. This is kind of a fun setup. We're going to pull apart and decode ads here for the better part of the next number of videos. I love it when you guys leave comments if you're up like the setup. I think it's pretty helpful. I love to hear about that and we'll see you on the next one.

Why Multi-Channel Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 10:54:17 GMT

Multi-Channel Marketing

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Hey guys, on this video I want to talk to you about multi-channel marketing. What does it mean? Why would you do it? Why is it important? Stick with me. We're going to cover it and you're going to be able to do it.

Okay, so in today's video, we're going to talk about multi-channel marketing. For one, let's just define it. It sounds pretty obvious, but in today's world actually can get kind of involved and somewhat confusing. The premise is that multi-channel marketing means that you are sending your campaign messages on more than one media channel. So in the old days, that would sound like we're running an ad in the newspaper. We have a television commercial and we are running some radio ads. So those were the three pillars of marketing. Back in the day, they were like print TV and radio. Today, those three things still exist, of course, but we have digital marketing. And the thing that's a little confusing is that you could say, well, I have a print ad, a TV ad, a radio ad, and I have a digital marketing ad. But that doesn't really tell the full story, does it?

Because within digital advertising, and this is also somewhat true within print, right? Because in print you could have a magazine piece, you could have articles, you could have paid like a half page, quarter page, full page, and then you could also have newspaper versus magazine versus some other things. So in print kind of had a little bit of subc categorical stuff, but it is nowhere near the extent of what's going on in digital marketing in terms of subcategories. So within the vertical of digital marketing, there's another pile of channels that we need to pay attention to. So we have all of our social media accounts, and that could be just to rattle off the top ones there, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, of course, the rising star. And then even within those, you've got kind of like, well, is it an organic post, an animated post?

Is it a really, is a store? Is it a six second, no skip ad on YouTube, or what's the first five seconds? Or is it a three second? No, skip 32nd long form. Is it retargeting or cold? So there's all these different things to think about within those channels. So that's just social media. Then you have YouTube or video advertising. YouTube's a great place to be, but video advertising also can happen in animals. Anywhere else on the web, you can buy video placement everywhere. Then you've got paid display. Then you've got PPC ads, pay-per-click ads, which is on Google search engine predominantly. So there's just a whole lot of channels within just the digital marketing pillar. Here's the thing that's a little interesting about that. So you go, oh, I want to be so, okay, do you want to do all 20? And here's the reason why most folks can do that.

It just becomes a money thing. I mean, a lot of these things you got to pay for, if not all of them, to do effectively. And a lot of times budgets are thin, so it is hard to do 'em all. The good news in today's world is that the barrier to entry for even small businesses is the lowest it's ever been to jump in and do really high level professional marketing on multichannel, if not omnichannel. Omnichannel is a pretty big word these days. It used to be the three things we started this conversation with, I'm going to, okay, that's cool. But now it's just so much that there really aren't many, even small mid-size businesses are doing it all because it's just so much. But that doesn't mean that you can't do the top three to five where your target customer's on. Now, that goes back to another video that I recently made and that I have also talked about in the past, which is figuring out your customer.

That'll tell you a lot about what channels they're on and where you need to meet and see them. Here's what I know from the front lines. One channel at a time pretty much doesn't work. Lightning strike stories about how I made a Facebook ad and I made a million dollars. It's like, okay, but for local businesses, that's usually not the case. They got to work harder to indoctrinate influence their customers over some buying time period cycle, sometimes a week, sometimes a month, sometimes longer than that, two to three months. It's not as simple as like, I'm going to put an ad on one thing and that's going to change my business. It's not a mature way to look at things, and frankly, it's just fairly naive. And if you're doing that and you're getting frustrating, hopefully this video is helping you understanding why. Because there's just so many places that people can jump to when they're consuming media or they're interacting with media in general, whether it be radio, television, digital assets, and all those that are within that envelope.

And then where they are can change in a fraction of a second. So you start having to meet them. Now, the sort of golden pill, if there's any with all of this is retargeting technology because it's pretty easy to say, okay, I'm going to be on cold traffic on three channels. That's all I can afford to do. But there's little excuses not to set up retargeting everywhere because all you're doing is chasing warm leads. So why wouldn't you want to chase 'em anywhere you can, right? That's much more affordable because you're not really taking any chances with the campaign. You're sort of just staying top of mind with your existing prospects or traffic that are coming in from whatever. And that could even be referral traffic analog. Like I went to a convention and gave a speech type traffic. There could be anything that gets wound up into retargeting tracking.

So there's really no excuses on that one. So if you're going to start from nowhere, start with setting up all the retargeting you can possibly set up and put, even if it's just 50 in each little bucket, at least you have that and then start focusing on your cold campaign. So that's what it means. Omni-channel or omni multi-channel marketing is making sure that you have campaigns running everywhere. So as your prospects move from media source to media, sports to time spent on one thing online versus time spent, another thing online that you're going to kind of be there with them the whole time. Retargeting, as I've said in the past, is really the basis of any good paid advertising campaign is making sure that you're staying with those leads as they come in. Giving up on somebody on the first click is just no way to make money at all, and then you pay so much to get them there.

You maybe it's six, $7 to get them there, and it is like you're not going to stick with, they got distracted because the doorbell rang is just nuts. So you got to do that part first. That gives you a chance of being everywhere, at least to scoop up any potential buyers. And then you got to decide on cold traffic, what your budget is. So hopefully that clarifies that kind of monster topic. It doesn't make it less confusing, but at least the lay of the land, you can make some intelligent decisions. Go ahead and knock 'em dead out there like the video for me. Appreciate that and subscribe because I would love to see you the next one.

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Why You Are Stuck With Your Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 16:35:12 GMT

Get Back On Track With You Marketing

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Hey guys. On this video I'm going to share with you one of the main reasons why people get stuck in their marketing and they don't know what to offer. They don't know what to say. They don't know what to write in an email. They don't know what to put on a website. They don't know what picture to use, okay? All that stuff can be resolved by one thing, so stick with me. I'm going to tell you what it is,

Okay? Everybody that has had to create any marketing creative collateral, blog posts, YouTube videos, ads, messages, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, stories, reels, I don't care what it is. If you've had to make it, everybody has gotten stuck at one time or another trying to figure out where to begin, what to say. So I'm going to give you the answer of why we get stuck. The main reason people get stuck is because they don't understand who the hell they're talking to, right? Exactly. If you really understand somebody is ever really hard to talk to them, of course not. But when you get stuck, it's usually because you don't understand the target. You don't understand what the person needs on the receiving end. What are they interested in? What's relevant for them? What are the problems that they're facing? All of that takes us back to that conversation about your customer avatar or the persona, your target persona.

This is the beginning of where all marketing starts, the first exercise that you need to do, so if this is 2023, and this is your year, I'm going to grow my business, I'm going to be better at marketing, I'm going to hire a marketing person like that, you got to start with step one, which is figuring out who you're after. Who is your ideal customer client buyer that is going to patron your business? Whether you sell a product or you sell services, it doesn't really matter. You need to understand that person, and you need to understand them in a way that there's some great copywriting books out there, and they get you down into exercises where you name that person so you actually know them. You kind of almost make like an imaginary friend, and if you're at that level, then you definitely understand that person.

If you have that person in your mind, almost like an imaginary friend, like an marriage friend, you can talk to them and you can tell 'em exactly what's going on. Just like when you were a little child perhaps, and you had an imaginary friend. I know it seems little go, but that's kind of where you need to be with it. You've got to be so clear with that target persona, so it's beyond demographics. The other thing, well, I know my demographics, okay? Say it's like women age 35 to 55 live in a household over 150 K toll household income, primarily in the Sunbelt. I mean, you could have all these demographic things, but that's not the persona. Those are just demographics. The persona is other things. What is the person's pain and challenges that they deal with? They're out of time. They have health issues.

They struggle with balancing family with work. They have two kids, but there's an age gap there, so it's really hard to reconcile both of their activities. I mean, you can dive way, way down into all this stuff because if you don't dive into the personal stuff around that avatar, that persona that you're after, then you don't understand what really is bringing meaning to their lives and you don't understand their true struggles. If you don't understand their true struggles, then it's really hard to offer them relevant and meaningful solutions to their problems. How do you fit into all that? If you're wanting to do business with a person like that, how is it that your business can support them? That's your job. Your job, if you're selling something, is to make a positive impact on your buyer or consumer. If you're whitening teeth, they come to you and their teeth aren't white, you better make 'em white so that then they walk out, they look great and feel great.

That's just the most sort of simple example of a positive impact, meeting expectations and things like that. Now, why do they want their teeth white? That's the more important set of questions. That's kind of what I'm getting at here. They want to feel more attractive. They want more self-confidence. They're looking for a mate, somebody criticizing 'em that hurt their feelings. They're sick of having their feelings hurt. They've always been teased about their teeth or they were when they were little. These are not demographics. Those types of conversations are way deeper than how old they are, where they live, how much money they make. None of that stuff matters. When you start, get down into that more meaningful conversation, so if this is your year and you want to start marketing, or your marketing sucked last year, or you keep struggling or you don't know where to begin, start with what I'm talking about right here.

Start with constructing your buyer persona, your buyer avatar. Write a story about them. Put a name on that person. Write all the things that I just talked about, examples, whatever that is for your buyer. Figure out their pain points, their struggles, their successes, even where they feel great, what makes them feel great? What chapter in their life are they in? All of these things, and I promise you that's going to unlock a ton of relevancy in your messaging, your copywriting, all of your social media, your emails, your website, everywhere you go. Now you're going to have a reason and an understanding of why you're writing it, creating it, and putting it forth on the front lines as part of your marketing effort. So dive into that. We're going to do more cool stuff like this, so go ahead and smash the like button, subscribe to the channel, and I will see you on the next one if we keep unpacking all sorts of new strategies and answers on how to grow your business.

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How to Use Copy That Hooks Your Visitors

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 12:52:22 GMT

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We're gonna talk about how do you use copy that hooks your visitors, either on sales page or for advertising. We all know we gotta have something that's gonna grab some attention, so we're gonna talk about it right after this.

So you gotta write copy that's gonna hook your visitors and it's gotta be on, you know, probably your landing page homepages in some case, and definitely in your ads. So it's really not that complicated if you break it down, but you can spend a lot of time refining those messages. The first thing that needs to be worked out right away is that the ads and wherever ads take, people need to be relevantly congruent. Is that the right way to say that? They need to be congruent. So the messaging on one needs to be max messaging on another, otherwise you just mentally lose people in between. The next piece of the puzzle is making sure that whatever the copy is in both places, that it immediately tells the visitor that they're in the right place to solve their problem. So whatever that is, that's gotta be the focus of the copy and or if you can squeeze it in, depending on what the available space is for the ad on a landing page, you obviously have more room to wiggle in terms of how much you can write.

The next piece of that is what the benefit is of solving this problem. And then the last piece on the landing page is gonna be exactly what to do to get it. Of course, the call to action, but the main thing is hooking the visitors with relevancy around the problem that they have in their lives that they're trying to solve. That's the hook piece, right? That it's, it's for them. I guess that's the best way to say it. The message is for them. That's the maybe another way to really express that. So go out there and look at your ads and look at your homepage landing pages and sales pages, and even opt-ins. Frankly, anything where you're trying to connect with people and make sure that the copy is for the people that you're in service for.

Stuff I Do on OpenAI Chat

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 17:35:32 GMT

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I want to circle back and talk a little bit about Open AI's chat and how we've been using it. What I have learned so far in the last, I guess it's been about a month now and I haven't been using it every day, but we've definitely been putting it to you. So I'd like to share that. And I got some thoughts on it. I think it's, I think it's definitely cool, but there's some things to think about, so stick with me.

All right, so everybody's talking about it and we're all kind of playing around with this thing. And you know, the whole premise of AI and chat is not anything new in this business of digital marketing. That's, you know, we've had writing software and things for many years to tap into to help with content creation and other tasks, but it seems that, you know, now suddenly like the cat out of the bag or whatever, <laugh> cliche, you wanna apply to it. Uh, but everybody can like kind of tap into the thing now. So I've been using it for sure, and I can tell you there's some really great advantages to having it kind of on your desktop. And there's also areas where it just doesn't seem like it's applies at all. So here's the thing that I feel pretty confident about <laugh>. It's not taking over anybody's job, so to speak.

I think that's a little bit crazy because it only, again, kind of still falls along with the basic rules of computing. It needs input to come up with stuff. It's not gonna like take over and run your business for you. It's not gonna develop strategy. It's not going to, you know, be able to do any sort of high level application type theory, you know, theory about where it can be used. Like it can't, it's kind of a strange thing. It just, I don't know, it doesn't, it's not a threat to people that are thinking and being creative in any way, I don't think. However, it's a pretty cool tool to help plug in and leverage where appropriate when you're building something out, like specifically in this space, but even all along, like, you know, forms and questionnaires and other things that you gotta scratch, right?

You can kind of tap into that thing and get it to at least rough stuff out for you that you can then tailor down to your specific situation. I've gone round and round and round and round with it like many other people on YouTube and in the rest of the world and try to get into like refine and, you know, change the tents and you know, tone, voice and all these other things. And it definitely can get there, but then it kind of taps out, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't always just hit a total bullseye with, so with everything, but there are some things it comes, comes right up and it, you know, like some nice lists. It seems really good at lists. Like, gimme a list of this, gimme a list of that, you know, gimme an outline for this, gimme an outline for that.

Pretty quality stuff. It's actually very impressive. Um, but I mean, what's the point of all that if it doesn't fit into anything, right? So that's what I'm saying is that I don't think it's a huge threat to people that are, you know, thinkers and, and doers because it's just like every other computer just, it needs a human on the other end to play ball. So, you know, I don't, I don't think it's anything to worry about. I just think it's another wicked tool that we have now at our disposal and I think it is pretty rad for search and I can definitely see how that's gonna evolve into something cool. I think the other thing about it that is fascinating to contemplate is that we'd all sort of have ours, like we all sort of have our cloud account or cloud storage, or we have our, this account or that account that we interface with.

Like, and we've been touching AI for quite some time, just sort of innocuously, like if you look at any of the music streaming services, they sort of have like, oh, here's a playlist that we suggest for you. It's like from your history, right, that there's been some of that tech woven into little things like that, that have been responsive or programmatic, which is part of advertising. So, you know, that sort of comes from there, but also has some different applications. And I think it's interesting to compli contemplate that maybe we end up with one that does learn us, learn our needs, like learn our calendar, learn our inbox, learn who calls and texts us, like sort of can provide some help on the front lines with our communications and then maybe knows other things like our musical tastes, our fashion tastes, our shopping habits, our reading habits, our news consult, whatever, whatever all that is, right?

And then it's sort of like this almost virtual assistant, if you will. I don't know, I mean, kind of like Alexa's trying to be in our homes or Google Home. Like we got that kind of like, oh, we're gonna help you with all stuff. Like, we'll give you a recipe, but maybe it's smarter and maybe it's more personalized at some point. I don't know. But it's definitely neat and worth playing with if you're not testing it out and like having it do some emails and like maybe get it to do some copywriting for you. I think that's a great a, you know, application. You can learn some, you can learn some stuff from it, definitely in that regard. So don't give up on it. But I don't think it's anything to be terrified about right now. Who knows? Starts hanging over the world and going all Terminator on us. That's a whole nother conversation. But for today, I think we're safe. Catch you on the next one.

This Is Why You Are Stuck With Your Marketing

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 14:49:03 GMT

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I'm going to share with you one of the main reasons why people get stuck in their marketing and they don't know what to offer. They don't know what to say. They don't know what to write in an email. They don't know what to put on a website, they don't know what picture to use, okay? All that stuff can be resolved by one thing. So stick with me. I'm gonna tell you what it is.

Everybody that has had to create any marketing creative collateral, blog posts, YouTube videos, ads, messages, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, stories, reels, I don't care what it is, if you've had to make it, everybody has gotten stuck at one time or another trying to figure out where to begin, what to say. So I'm gonna give you the answer of why we get stuck. The main reason people get stuck is because they don't understand who the hell they're talking to. Ah, right? Exactly. When you ever get, if you really understand somebody is ever really hard to talk to them, of course not. But when you get stuck, it's usually because you don't understand the target, you don't understand what the person needs that's on the receiving end, right? What are they interested in? What's relevant for them? What are the problems that they're facing, right? All of that takes us back to that conversation, the conversation about your customer avatar or the persona, your target persona.

This is the beginning of where all marketing starts. The first exercise you need to do, so if this is 2023, and this is your year, like, I'm going to grow my business, I'm gonna be better at marketing, I'm gonna hire marketing person, something like that. You got to start with step one, which is figuring out who you're after, who is your ideal customer client buyer that is going to patron your business. Whether you sell a product or you sell services, it doesn't really matter. You need to understand that person, and you need to understand them in a way that they're own. You know, there's some great copywriting books out there, and they get you down into like exercises where you name that person so you actually know them. You kind of almost make like an imaginary friend, and if you're, you're at that level, then you definitely understand that person.

If you have that person in your mind, almost like an imaginary friend, then just like an imaginary friend, you can talk to them and you can tell 'em exactly what's going on. Just like when you were a little child, perhaps, and you had an imaginary friend, I know it seems little go, but that's kind of the way you, you need to be with it. You've got to be so clear with that target persona. So it's beyond demographics, right? Because that's the other thing. Well, I know my demographics, okay? So it's like women age 35 to 55 live in a household, over 150 k toll household income, you know, um, primarily in the Sunbelt. I mean, you could have all these like, demographic things, right? But that's the persona, right? Those are just demographics. The persona is other things, right? What is the person's pain and challenges that they deal with, right?

They're out of time, they have health issues, they struggle with balancing family with work. They have, uh, two kids, you know, but the, there's an age gap there. So it's really hard to reconcile both of their activities. I mean, I, you can dive way, way down into all this stuff because if you don't dive into the personal stuff around that avatar, that persona that you're after, then you don't understand what really is bringing meaning to their lives, and you don't understand their true struggles. And if you don't understand their true struggles, then it's really hard to offer them r relevant and meaningful solutions to their problems, right? How do you fit into all that? If you're wanting to do business with a person like that, how is it that your business can support them, right? Because that's your job. Your job, if you're selling something, is to be a, a positive, make a positive impact on your buyer or consumer, right?

If you're whitening teeth, they come to you and their teeth aren't white, like you better make 'em white so that then they walk out, they look great and feel great, right? That's, it's just like the most sort of simple example of a positive impact, meeting expectations and things like that. Now, why do they want their teeth white? They, that's the more important set of questions. That's kind of what I'm getting at here. Like, they want to feel more attractive, they want more self-confidence. They're looking for a mate, uh, somebody criticizing that hurt their feelings. They're sick of having their feelings hurt. Um, you know, they've always been teased about their teeth or they were when they were little, right? Like, these are much, these are not demographics, those like types of conversations or way deeper than how old they are, where they live, how much money they make, none of that stuff matters.

When you start, get down into that more meaningful conversation. So if this is your year and you wanna start marketing, or your marketing sucked last year, or you keep struggling, or you don't know where to begin, start with what I'm talking about right here. Start with constructing your buyer persona, your buyer avatar. Write a story about them. Put a name on that person. Write all the things that I just talked about, like examples, you know, whatever that is for your, your buyer. Figure out their pain points, their struggles, their successes, even where they feel great, what makes them feel great. Um, you know, what part, what chapter in their life are they in, how you know, all of these things. And I promise you that's gonna unlock a ton of relevancy in your messaging, your copywriting, all of your social media, what your emails, your website, everywhere you go. Now you're gonna have a reason and an understanding of why you're writing it, creating it, and putting it forth on the front lines as part of your marketing effort. So, dive into that. We're gonna do more cool stuff like this. So go ahead and smash the like button, subscribe to the channel, and I will see on the next one if we keep unpacking all sorts of new strategies and answers on how to grow your business.

How to Find More Free Time

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 14:03:59 GMT

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Hey guys, on this video, since it's the beginning of the year, I can't help myself but do a couple of 2023 sort of outlook. I wouldn't call 'em predictions because I hate to sit here and claim that I have a crystal ball. But let's talk about a couple of trends here, like voice search. Obviously the AI thing is really popping right now. And, data privacy. And then, I don't know, we got other stuff here. I got some notes. Virtual reality, more important, I think more fun, augmented reality. But anyways, let's dive into it. Stick with me. I'm gonna give you a couple of kind of what I'm seeing, what's working and things like that from behind the scenes.

All right, so it's 2023. Lots of new stuff. I think it's kind of funny how the headlines have shifted, right? Like it was all like crypto and blah, blah, blah. During the pandemic, are we sitting at home like trying to make money? And then things have kind of shifted to like AI Now, headlines wise, and you know, we're medium sized digital advertising agency. We're kind in the middle of all those things. We've got a lot of local businesses, uh, that, you know, are all over the country that are always trying to grow. And you know, our job is to figure out like what is of all this stuff that's, you know, coming down the pipe, like how much is usable, how much is important, how much do we have to pay attention to? And how much is relevant for, you know, folks like us who just want to grow our businesses?

So, couple of thoughts. Um, clearly, you know, the basic still block and tackle stuff that I'm always talking about on this channel is still not gonna go away, right? There's no magic pill for not having well out, well thought out Messaging, copywriting and being on as many channels as you can within your budget so that you're where your customers need to be. And you know, obviously that's weighted. Sometimes you're gonna be maybe more on social media depending on your demographic versus perhaps YouTube or more in paid advertising versus YouTube at all, right? So everybody has a little bit of slam, but you really wanna be in as many channels as you can so that you're sort of got the omnipresent vibe. That stuff's not gonna go away. I think voice search's incredibly important. That's becoming more and more accepted and uh, it's really just kind of popping both people using it on their phones now, of course.

And then you got all the Alexa and Google Home stuff that's running in people's houses. We certainly use that here. Love it. Uh, so, you know, being, making sure that all of your SEL work is rock solid is still not gonna go away. And it, and now it's, it, it bridges into voice and other technologies. And then we've got this AI thing, right? So the, we've had Jarvis in this business for a long time to help with writing and spinning articles and doing AI stuff. So this like language learning model, you know, a writing AI thing, it's not incredibly new, but it did hit and kind of wig everybody's eyes up to, wow, this could be a really, um, powerful productivity tool. Now how much of that translates to marketing is a little complex, right? Because you can get some ideas from there, but is it really gonna be perfect for your business and not like, kind of generic?

Probably not, right? Because as a business owner, you are bound to tell your own your own story as it is unique, you know, to what you offer, right? So the problem that you solve. And so you, the thing that I'm noticing as I've been continuing to play with AI and it keeps developing and we've been tool, you know, messing around with that now for probably close to like four and a half, almost five years behind the scenes. Um, and I can say that it's definitely getting a heck of a lot better. There's no question about it. Uh, can you, can you do everything with it? No d does it, you know, do everything perfectly. No. Does it hit that? I guess I would say like that fine sort of artistry that a human brings into any situation when it comes to word crafting and getting messaging right and really a deep understanding of say your business is really gonna only come from you or somebody that's working closely with you.

So there's some, there's some big gaps there. Does it help get started with a lot of stuff? Hell yeah. Does it help proofread and clean things up? Absolutely can do that. It does seem to be limited on like long body text, uh, some other stuff that the system kind of struggles with, but you know, we'll see how that plays out. It's definitely gonna be a big topic we'll be touching back with for 2023. So if nothing else, if you're not playing with it, you know, mess around a little bit and see, you know, what you can get it to do for your business and uh, maybe helping with get stuff started that you've been wanting to get started, like emails and things like that, right? And then, you know, other stuff is what's the comp, what's the consumer behavioral shift like? Well, without a question, everybody's kind of out of the house this year for sure.

We're gonna go into a normal spring for the first time in a long time. So all that like spring cycle of, you know, getting things going, the energy and business seems to be really high right now. People are kind of back on track. There's no real serious downers here in the us. There's a lot of stuff going on in Europe that's pretty negative, but we're, we're kind of on the fringe of that here. It seems like behavior is much better. Uh, consumers seem to be outspending the, you know, the economy. There's all these mixed numbers of course in the headlines, but on boots on the ground, my understanding is things are going fairly well for most businesses. Uh, certainly comparison I think year over year for some businesses. Pandemic numbers are kind of a throwaway cuz I got some projects where there's just huge changes between that time and this time.

Um, but that was sort of an anomaly, right? So, uh, some businesses like cleaning companies did crazy good during the pandemic. Are they gonna do that good this year? Probably not cuz people aren't having to disinfect the hell outta everything. So there's some examples where there's gonna be some year over year revenue changes. I don't think they're showstopper like anyone's gonna get crushed now. Um, like luck of the, you know, sort of unluck of the draw. Like it wasn't a pandemic, but it's gonna be back to regular block and tackle, earn your keep and drive and market your business, uh, to grow. There is not gonna be any handouts in 2023. It doesn't look like nobody's gonna get, you know, sort of the magic wand. Your business, you know, suddenly is gonna be getting a huge amount of just, uh, win in your favor. It's much more of a normal business environment.

So for those of us out there that wanna grow, we're gonna have to do, get back to the basics of marketing, focus and get crank in, make sure our campaigns are running and be out there, uh, cutting through the noise and making sure the spotlight's on our business. So hopefully you got your planning done at the end of the last year and your focus right now in q1, can't wait to see you on the channel. Go ahead and subscribe. We'll see you on the next one and we're gonna just keep digging in, unpacking all these exciting things this year. So we'll see you.

2023 Digital Marketing Trends

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 13:08:08 GMT

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How to Get Customers Automatically

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 16:59:56 GMT

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Everybody wants to know how to get customers automatically in this world of like magical internet and like paid ads and all cool stuff. There's all these great stories about like, I made this system and I got customers automatically, and I'm gonna give you one idea right after this.

So there's lots of smart people on the internet that have all these cool systems to get customers automatically. It's like get do a webinar, do video, ad, do this ad, do a YouTube ad there, also other stuff. And we do a lot of those things for our clients. Uh, but the solid steel chain that always gets you customers automatically is the following. Look at the customers you have right now. Your best customers, your repeat buyers, the customers that text you. Like I just had one text me at eight o'clock at night asking to do more business with me right now. And here's how to create automatic customers based on that. Look at my best customers and treat those customers like gold. And this is the next piece. Give them a reason to talk about how well you treat them. Give them something to brag about, whether it be their business, their new product, the service you gave 'em, the new haircut, the great this, the great that. Give them something to brag about, about the interaction they had with you. Give them a story to tell about how amazing they are or whatever it takes.

Round step two of this, cuz I told you there's gonna be three steps looking at your best customers, treating them amaz, you know, awesome, but also giving them a reason to talk about your business and you and or your staff, whatever. Okay? And then the last thing is, once they do that, you will get new customers automatically. And here's, so that's like the third step. But when you get that new customer automatically from this chain of positivity that I'm painting for you, then you gonna do the exact damn thing except for you're gonna go 10 x because this person that came to you now is a very high expectation from this awesome story that your best customer toll. So now you're on the hot seat to meet or exceed even higher standards. And this will naturally ratchet you up to the top of your market in terms of how you deliver, how well you treat people and how much you are appreciated. And that my friend will automatically bring you customers. So I want you to automatically smash the like button on this video cuz that helps me out and subscribe to the channel because I love new subscribers. And I want you to join me on the next one. We'll see you then.

Dos and Don'ts in Paid Ads

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 14:42:50 GMT

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Hey guys, on this video we're gonna talk about paid ads, and we're gonna talk about what you must do and what you must not do in your paid ads to get decent results in my experience. So hang in there and we're gonna cover it right now.

So if you're running paid ads or thinking about running paid ads, here's what I have to say about today's paid advertising environment. And there's lots of headlines about advertisers are pulling back and this and that and the other thing. Uh, but the reality is if you wanna raise traffic on your website and or conversions, um, you've got to figure out how to do that. And paid advertising is still a great way to move traffic. It works every day for, uh, most of my clients that are running edge with us. We have obviously like everybody, some campaigns that are duds and that happens. So you need to learn to expect that paid advertising is a process. There's not a silver bullet. You're gonna have your better campaigns, you're gonna want to, you know, run with those. And the stuff that's not doing well, you're gonna clip it.

It's just that simple. Now, here's some rules that I think you could live by starting right now. From what I've seen over the last 12 months, if you're gonna do PPC and stuff, you've got to have a really compelling, powerful offer that steps in front of anything that your competitors might have out in the market. Then that kind of sucks because it sorta, you know, takes you down that race to the bottom, which I really don't, uh, like to encourage folks to do. So the slant on it might be writing the ad in such a way that you're presenting an incredible amount of value, right? So turn that whole equation upside down. So instead of being the cheapest, be the best with incredible amounts of value. So you can, you can skin that cat any way you want, but what I am telling you is you gotta widen the margin considerably to get clicks on PPC ads where they're positioned above organic search results.

So you really gotta kill it on that value proposition, whether it be valued by cheap or valued by best, or valued by most, the, the gaps gotta be really big. So think of it this way, if I could give you a rule thumb shoot for 10 times, whatever everything else is out there, be at 10 x and you, you likely get some good results. Uh, the other thing you know that you don't wanna do, that, the sort of counter to that is being vague, uh, not precise, you know, precise, especially in the PPC world. Like saying exactly what the person's gonna get if they click is hugely important. You know, you've got all these possibilities to play around at extensions and Google's, you know, gonna rotate things and try to optimize 'em for you. But when you're writing all those into your ppc, uh, responsive ads, you wanna make sure that you're continually being precise in all of your variant.

So anything that's vague is just not gonna be appealing. Like, great soup click, you know, best soup in town. Okay, so what, how about, and this is the difference. I'm giving you a soup example. So random best soup in town, nobody's clicking that ad. It's just, it's just not compelling. But here's what is compelling. Five gallons of soup for $1. New customers only. Wait a second. I can get five gallons of soup for a buck if I'm a new customer. Like that specifically says incredible amounts of value if I'm a new customer. And obviously ads are mostly to get new customers. So you could say that and you can have terms and conditions around that, of course. So you see the difference there. Best soup in town or, you know, five gallons of soup for a buck. So that, that's really what I'm talking about.

Incredible amounts of value, very precise. So do that and don't be vague and just sort of like wide open with stuff. It's just not compelling. You're just not gonna get a lot of clicks. This also goes a l goes along with your display advertising. Display has a lot of other things with it that you can play around with to catch people's eyes, like animation and pictures say a lot more than oftentimes the words do. But this video is mainly about PPC and kind of what I've discovered through, you know, hundreds and hundreds of ads that we're currently running. I mean, it might, it's probably in the thousands. It's for the year for sure. Uh, and so that's just a good, two good rules of thumb to start off with. I wish you the best of luck out there. Smash the like button for me and subscribe to the channel so you can join us on the next one and we'll see you then.

Subject Line Hacking for Beginners

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 11:36:00 GMT

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In this video I'm gonna talk to you about how to write a letter to Santa Claus that he actually is going to open. No, I'm just kidding. Well, sort of, we gotta come up with subject lines for our emails, right? So in this video I'm gonna talk to you about hacking subject lines. Cause a lot of people get stuck on those, myself included, but I've got some tricks I'm gonna share with you.

So we'd love sending emails, right? Because that's the number one way to engage and talk to our customers and reselling, increase our total customer value, get deeper relationships. We want indoctrinate our leads. We got a million reasons to send emails, and every email has gotta have a darn subject lined. So we get stuck on those all the time. So here's a little hacking trick for you. The first thing you can do is go look in your own inbox. Literally go look at your own inbox and look at all the crap that's spamming you to death and look at the ones that stand out and re-edit those for your business. So if you're stuck, I mean, this seems like the simplest no-brainer in the world, but everybody overlooks this, myself included. I will sit there and stare at a subject line and an email body and be like, Ooh, what am I doing?

What am I doing? What, what are we gonna say? How are we gonna get this thing opened? Da da da da. You know? And I'm like, the last three emails had a 31%. I don't wanna send a bomb. I wanna keep this, you know, this is like crazy game you're playing. So my point is that the resources that you need are actually typically right at your fingertips, in your own inbox, right in your own spam folder, in your own, you know, whatever folders you got in your inbox, where all your signups are. So look at your, your brands that you're buying from your best brands, you know, global brands, national brands, and see what they're doing with their subject lines. Uh, go ahead and, you know, bring in some emoticons, not like lines of them and being obnoxious, but one is always a little extra to stand out in the inbox feed for folks.

Kind of makes it feel like it's a little bit more personalized and certainly jumps out. So take advantage of that opportunity. But go ahead and reha back into your inbox. And if you don't have stuff like that because you're some sort of optimal email citizen that doesn't, hasn't been attacked by every marketer, then set up a spammy account and go sign up for a bunch of stuff from great retailers that have great marketing that you want to emulate, right? In fact, go into your own industry and sign up for newsletters in your own industry. So if you're in restaurants, go sign up and be on the v i p list for like 20 different restaurants and see what they're sending out. Some of the stuff's probably not bad and you can just refashion it. Do a little twist and spin with those subject lines and reuse 'em. So don't get writer's block on stuff that's easy kill like this, cuz really in this type of thing, it's kind of recycle and reuse, recycle and reuse. And sometimes you can come up with a zinger on your own, but when you're stuck, this is a good hack for you. So go out there, keep crushing the emails, smash the like button on this video, and join me for the next one by becoming a subscriber.

Why Working in Your PJs Is a Hard No

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 12:00:01 GMT

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On this video I'm gonna tell you why working in your PJs is a hard no and no, I'm not in my PJs, but let's talk about it.

Many of us had the chance to work from home during the pandemic, and you still may be working from home or working from, you know, not the office, whatever that may be. It might be some Airbnb on an island. I don't know what you got pulled off here, but I have a few things to say. After 10 years of working from my own spaces, uh, on my own schedule, I could tell you that working from your PJs does not work. You gotta get like some sort of regular routine going where you make that shift to work mode. Say, you know, for me that means exercise, shower, full dress shape, like the whole thing. Like I would be going to go out and then, but I go to work. And that sometimes that's laptop here at a desk like this. Sometimes that's over to the other side of the property to, um, be in the office space.

Sometimes that's at a cafe, sometimes that's at a restaurant. I love working in environments like that where there's a lot of like sort of energy in the background. So I suggest that if you're kind of flying solo, they get around some sort of vibe can help I think, depending if it's too distracting. But working in your pajamas is definitely not gonna be the best version of your creative, productive self. So that's all I'm gonna say about it. After nearly a decade of doing my own schedule, sharing that with you. If you're still new to the work from home or work on your own gig, iron out the routine so that it feels like you're ready to meet anyone. And in fact, you may on Zoom and other circumstances like that online where it's nice to be presentable. So go ahead and smash this video with your, the light button. Smash the light button on this video. Yeah, I'd love to have you subscriber. See you on the next one.

3 Ways to Make Your Content More Profitable Instantly

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 12:00:05 GMT

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On this video I'm gonna talk to you about three ways to make your content more profitable. So if you're doing any content blog, YouTube channel, podcasts, Instagram posts, any of that stuff, this is for you.

Hopefully you're putting out good content for your business that is engaging the folks that need your products or services. So I'm hoping that you're doing that. If you are doing that, let me share with you three things that are really gonna help create more profitability from your content. The first piece is being consistent and reliable. It's a great opportunity in the process of making and publishing your content to show potential customers that you're reliable. So if you publish a video every week, or if you, you know, do a show every week, or if you're posting on social media being reliable in that process, the natural implication is that you're probably reliable in the services that you provide or the products that you provide, right? So being consistent kind of creates an air of the things that people want, which is consistent service, right? So it's a sub subconscious way to demonstrate that being consistent is so important.

Now, the other thing that I also think you just can't get away from is you've got to keep the content relevant to your target audience. You, you need to be on point with the problems that they have and be addressing and providing value add solutions and or conversation around those problems. You know, that means that when you're thinking about your content, you're not thinking about what you know, you're thinking about what the challenges are that your customers are facing, either that your product is going to help them solve, or your service is going to help them solve. I don't care what it's, either way, it works. So being relevant and focusing in on the problems that your audience has is another piece of the puzzle. And converting profitability, getting profitability out of your content. And the last, you know, the third thing I can share with you is don't make content and pose out there without some sort of call to action, right?

So be prepared to tell your audience what to do or, and how to do to get involved with you, or to get the product and get the solution that you're probably talking about. With that being said, I would like you to like this video for me, because that helps the videos get around on YouTube, which is what you know, I would like to do in the effort on my YouTube channel. And also, I'd love to have you as a subscriber so we can keep growing our group of folks. And I can see you on the next video.

5 Essentials for Your Website Home Page or Landing Page

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 16:37:15 GMT

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Hey guys, in this video I'm gonna give you five essentials for your homepage that you definitely want to check off. So stick with me. We're gonna go boom, boom, boom, right on this video.

So we're all struggling with our homepage at times. I'm gonna give you five essentials, and I'm just gonna go by memory right here. I don't have a list. I got nothing going on. I got no tricks on my sleeves. <laugh>, I'm just gonna give you the stuff that I look for straight up right here on this video. First thing I look for is an easy to navigate, if not a, you know, abbreviated menu. Not a lot of menu items. It's just confusing for first time visitors and users, and kinda already creates a sense of confusion, like, where do I go? Am I in the right place? So, watch that. The next thing I look for is great colors and contrasting colors from the opposite sides of the color wheel so that the page really has some visual punch and we can control where the user's eye is moving based on how we apply those warm and cool tones.

The next thing I look for is some sort of great visual engagement that begins to tell me the story about the brand or the product that I'm, you know, looking for. So that's either gonna be static images or some sort of video that I can engage with. The next one, and we're on number three is I always look for a statement of where of the problem that this website or business solves. Like, I have a problem, that's why I'm on the website. That's the only reason we all go on any website is to solve a problem. And that problem may just be, I wanna learn more, like lack of knowledge. I, I wanna know more about this subject, so I'm gonna read still a problem. So we go there to solve this problem, but if the website doesn't tell us immediately that it solves those types of problems and the case of lack of knowledge, it might be learn more about this topic, or here's the news about this topic, or here's the latest updates, here's the latest trends about this topic, all that good stuff.

Uh, if I don't see that right away, again, the user's kind of a little hesitant about whether they're in the right space and they might just bounce off and keep looking. So really over, this is what we do. This is the problem we solve. This is the service we offer, you know, this is who we help, whatever. But that's gotta be super clear so that the right people that land are immediately engaged in staying there for the next piece. And this will be number five, a clear thing that they need to do to start solving their problem, right? Could be scroll, could be click, could be watch, could be opt in, could be sign up, could be reserved, could be learn more, could be watch this, uh, any of these things, right? But it's gotta be straight up. You wanna solve your problem, do this thing right now and we're gonna help you. So if it's not that straightforward, uh, then I think, uh, you're probably losing some people. So those are my top five. Go ahead and rewind. If you missed 'em. I'm pretty sure I did five. If I didn't, somebody leave would comment below. If I owe you one, I'll definitely come forth with it. If you like this video, go ahead, hit the light button. And of course we'd love to have you subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one.

2 Tricks to Stay Motivated

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 13:13:59 GMT

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On this video I'm gonna share with you two tips on how to stay motivated when things are getting you down. They seem really hard and or the project is really big and just seems daunting.

We all have trouble staying motivated at times. You are not alone. If you're watching this video, you may be struggling with something, and I certainly have, and I know many people that struggle with staying motivated. And a lot of times that has to do with like a big thing. And certainly when running your business, marketing your business, the projects can be big and there's a lot involved to get 'em off the ground. It can just be hard sometimes to stay motivating when you're not seeing results. So here are two tips that we use and I personally use, but also we use as a team to stay motivated and, and get things done, even when it's big and overwhelming. The first thing to do is set hallmarks that are small goals, right? So if it's a fitness situation, and you guys know, I'd love to use that sometimes as a metaphor here on the channel, you know, if you wanna, you know, this year I'm gonna work out, so okay, great. Or I'm gonna exercise. It's like, all right, that's like a big one.Like maybe just say for next 30 days, or even for some of us that might be like, I'm gonna exercise this week, you know, and take it down into little hallmarks. Now that can also be true for a project. Like, we're gonna get this piece done, piece A, that's gonna allow us to do piece B and then pc, and then piece, you know, D and that's what it takes. So break the big stuff down into small stuff. You've probably heard that before. I'm not saying anything new here. I'm just saying that it does work, especially when you're having some motivation problems. The side benefit of that is it also helps in the organizational department as well. And the next one I'm gonna give you is a mindset shift.

We are so focused on results these days, and we're so comparative, right? And that really can hurt our motivation and frankly our self-esteem. So I think the thing to work on is to be looking at yourself in process or looking at the project as in process, right? Or whatever the situation is. So not focusing on the end result so much, focusing on being great in the process, doing better in the process, better with workflow, better with timing, better with communication, better with execution, right? In that process to be getting better and better and better naturally is going to give you better results. So if you really present in your projects at the wherever you are, instead of in fantasy land out here where the results are because you're not there yet, that's a mind shift mindset shift. And when you can make that shift, it's much easier to stay motivated because you can see the small gains, you're accepting the challenges and meeting the small challenges or the micro failures, if you will, that are gonna get you the larger result that you want. So try those two things. Get the focus away from the results so much. They will naturally come when you're in the present, doing a great job. I can't wait for you to like this video. Hopefully it, uh, help maybe set some things straight if you're feeling like you're overwhelmed in having some motivational problems. And if not, m aybe the next video will help. So subscribe to the channel.

Finding the Revenue in Your List

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 11:00:06 GMT

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If you've got an email list, you're gonna wanna listen to this cuz we're gonna talk quickly and concisely about finding the revenue and finding the nuggets in your list.

If you've got a decent size email list of a couple of thousand folks for your business, then you've got a gigantic opportunity to increase revenue and enhance your total customer value, right to, to get more buying from the folks you're already doing business with. The question though, and part of what we're gonna discuss here is how do you do that through email marketing? The first thing I'll say, and I've said this on plenty of videos, is email marketing is your best channel. Still really going to be the best way to immediately get revenue on the books if that's what you want to do with your business and grow. And you can just do so much with that because you're able to inbox your messaging directly to folks that have either opted in and shown interest in your business so that they might be leads or your existing customer list if you're capturing emails from folks that are doing business with you, which you absolutely should be doing.

So you got two great things. Now, the first thing I'll say about all this is you need to be hosting your email list in a decent platform where you can segment by click behavior and start getting some tagging going and figure out which way things are happening with your list. What are their interests, what are they responding to and so forth. Now a lot of systems will give you like, oh, you had the open rate, right? It's like the most basic piece of data. So you're like, okay, my subject lines are getting better. But you really wanna be hosting your list in a place where you can get click tracking and so forth. So, you know, that's something that is gonna be incredibly helpful and it'll help you understand what folks are responding to in the body messages of your emails, not just whether they're opening them based on the subject line, right?

So we need some deeper data here to do this successfully. The thing that you really wanna be doing though, if you haven't been emailing to your list a lot, is to throw some sort of broad nets out there. And if you have some different service segments, you might talk about them in email and then let people, you know, put some calls to action in that message. Like, to learn more, click here and do a webpage to learn more. Click here and do a webpage. And then you'll start to see baskets of folks that are interested in certain services that, and then you can drill down and follow up with those folks and start to see if you can convert them. So a great example of this, and I have several of these clients, is medis spas. Medis spas have so many services. They got fillers, injectables, and Botox and lips and, you know, eyes and all these different things that they do.

And not all clients are coming to them initially for all these services. So there's in that type of business and maybe in your business a gigantic opportunity for cross-selling or deeper selling with existing clients. So if somebody's getting filler, like, you know, they might be getting it for wrinkles, but maybe they want it now for lips, but they, you know, they don't even thinking that until we start inboxing them about that. And we want to track those clicks so we can start identifying who those customers are that are interested in lip filler in this example. So apply that to your business, as it were. But the point of the whole conversation here is segmenting is so important because it'll tell you who's receptive to certain services and products that you're offering, and then you can go in further with those groups and educate and sell and again, help them solve this additional problem that they're already showing you that they are concerned about through their readership behavior.

Does that make sense? So go ahead and set it up using your email host and if you don't have a good one, go ahead and shop for one. That will give you click tracking and then start segmenting your list into interests that reflect the services and problems that your businesses solve. And then get into a dialogue with those folks you know, in each one of those segments that's hyper-relevant for them. Cause they've already you've, they've already displayed to you what they're interested in and you will shake some low hanging fruit off of the tree, I promise you. Go ahead and do me a favor and like this video, subscribe to the channel if you would like to get notified of the next video that we put out. And I appreciate you watching today. We'll see you on the next one.

How to Make Time for Everything

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:01:43 GMT

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On this video I want to share with you how you can make time for everything that you need to do and everything that you want to do.

We all feel like we're out of time most of the time. I think that's just kind of the nature of the beast these days. There's just so much coming at us. I don't know if it's devices or the phones sucking up our lives or what the deal is, but I hear it all the time from clients, from my coworkers, from in my personal life. You know, nobody has time. I don't, I don't know, maybe it's just a gigantic excuse that we're all hiding under. But either way, on this video, I wanna share with you a way to unlock that and quantify whether that's real or not. And in most cases, I've found it's a totally false belief. In fact, we're all given the same amount of time and we have a fair amount of it every day to be productive. So here is what I've learned.

If you actually start allocating time for almost everything you need to do, and I may need to do, like I'm required to do this for work and some, some of you that are watching this may have a job you gotta show up with for, so that might be eight hours a day or six hours a day or whatever it takes to, to do the work that's expected of you. And then there's the rest of that time that you're awake, which could be another nine to 10 hours, depending, you know, typically, or I don't know, seven to 10 hours depending on how much you sleep. So there's a good amount there. And then you start looking at the things you wanna do or additional stuff in your personal life and start sliding those in. Now, the only way to do this and really get a real view of what the heck is going on is by putting every single thing on your calendar.

Everything like eat breakfast, take a walk, exercise, 30 minutes to make personal phone calls, 30 minutes to look at social media, an hour to go to the gym, 10 minutes to drive. You know, I've been doing this with like appointments. I put the drive time if I got, if I gotta get in the car in front of the appointment, partly because I don't wanna get double booked when I'm in the car. But also because you start to realize like, oh, how much is this week? You know, am I spending in the car, right? And then what can I do in the car safely to leverage that time? If I gotta sit there and drive, like should I be listening to something? Should I be doing a conference call? Should whatever. There's options there of course. So logging it all is really important. And then once you log it all, if you really put everything in there, you're gonna actually find that you have these big open chunks and they may show up on weekends, they may show up on evenings, doesn't matter.

They're gonna show up and you're gonna realize, Hey, wait a second, this is a lot of soft space here. I could do something with that, right? So even when you start putting in, go to the grocery store and all these other things, you can also start seeing by doing that exercise, what things you could delegate. And you know, those might be lots of things like, I've been picking up my kids at school every day for five days. Is there a way I could get another parent to swap some d, do some back and forth with me so I could eliminate two of those days a week or two and a half, two this week and then I do three next week or whatever the hopscotch deal is, right? So you can start to pair that down so you're driving less to shuttle the the kids.

And then, um, you know, I go to the gym every week, but I have to drive 15 minutes each way to the gym. So then that's back and forth, 30 minutes. Is there something I could do with that? Oh, could I work out at home twice a week? Do I really need all that equipment at the gym? You know? Or maybe I could go running instead right out of the house because I'm just going to the gym to do cardio anyways. So then I eliminate and I pick up an hour of time, 15 times, twice a week, there's another free hour, right? So it's this kind of old concept, you'll hear bit of a cliche. You can't manage what you don't measure. And if you aren't measuring your time, there's really no way to manage it. And then that's kind of when we all throw our hands up and figure the next thing to think is, I'm outta time.

And it's not really true. It's just a symptom of not measuring it and not having a management strategy, right? So it just follows the same prescription as anything else. So hopefully if you're willing to take this challenge and do this and start calendarizing everything in a really hyper granular way, you're gonna unlock where you can find some free time and be able to manage the stuff that you need and want to do in a way that's more efficient. So you can put more of your wants on the board, more of the things that bring you fulfillment and more of the things that you cherish and get the stuff that's kind of a nuisance down to a minimum. So I wish you the best of luck. Those are my suggestions. I promise you it works. Tried and true and tested, not just by me, but by many others that are working on optimizing your productivity. Can't wait to see you on the next video. Go ahead and like this one and subscribe to the channel if you care too. It helps us out on YouTube, and I appreciate it.

Understanding Your Target Buyer

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:35:19 GMT

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On this one we're gonna talk about understanding your target buyer, which is also called your avatar, which is why I'm wearing a blue shirt. Stick with me, let's talk about it.

Okay, so today we're gonna talk about your avatar, which is a cool, modern, trendy word for your ideal buyer. And so important for you to understand this because when you're writing your copywriting, and I've done several videos on this, so if you haven't watched them, go on back down into the channel there and take a look at some cool stuff that we've done on copywriting, which is so important. But when you're copywriting, you've got to understand your buyer or your avatar, the person that is your ideal customer, and you need to know them in a way like you would know a close family member. You really have got to understand this person, and the more that you deepen your understanding of your ideal buyer, the better you'll be able to write to them for them. And frankly, the better you will, the better off you'll be in serving them, right?

You'll just be better the more you know them. So it is worth your time to dive into really identifying who that avatar is. And you may have a couple of projects or a couple of different products or a couple of different businesses, and each one of those might have a different avatar that you need to work on. But for today's discussion, let's talk about most of us who might have like one and or two different types of customers that are ideal and talk about some of the things we need to know about them. So we don't need, I mean, I think it goes without saying, we kind of wanna know the demographics, right? Like they're 20 to 40 female single and uh, you know, they like puppies and walks on the beach or whatever. I don't know. You, you know, there's this demographic stuff, but that's like the surface information.

You got to get down into what that person's struggles are, their fears are, their desires and goals are what's driving them, um, where they hesitate their concerns, uh, those deeper things. You've got to really start to try to unravel that stuff. And when you start to unravel the kind of emotional treasure chest of your ideal buyer, you're gonna be able to really tap into all of that in your selling copywriting and the entire sales process and how you work with those people. The object, of course, is that those feel, those folks feel deeply understood by you and <affirmative> and validated and therefore engaged in doing business with you in a way that they will never engage another person, right? So in doing all this, and really, you know, going through that process of writing out the whole avatar, and I would encourage you to like do a sheet and write a story about them and how they got to where they are and all these other things, and try to like, you know, what we call, like put flesh on the bone as much as possible with this because it'll drive everything you do in your marketing, right?

You'll, you'll go from the bottom up and everything will make sense because it'll all be pointed at this person that you want to do business with, but you don't have a target like that, like a really laser cross hairs target. Everything just kind of seems vague and foggy. And the problem with that is, is that no one really responds to that because it's not really for any one person. It's just too open. So it doesn't really trigger with anybody any sort of meaningful response. So if you're marketing in general is just kind of falling flat, this is probably where you need to take two steps back and figure out who the heck you're talking to and then go back to your marketing collateral and whatever the heck it is that you got out there, that your hope is bringing you business and refashion it for this ideal customer.

So go ahead and go through the process. You know, give the person a name, figure out who they are and that would include demographics, but also everything that I just discussed, like go deep and excavate the emotional treasure that these folks are holding that will deepen your understanding and therefore give you the tools you need to engage and sell to them. Go ahead and like this video for me, I would much appreciate it and subscribe to the channel so we can see on the next one figure. Figure out your avatar. Maybe buy a blue shirt.

Simple System for Drafting Great Emails

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:31:36 GMT

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Emails, emails, emails, emails. We all gotta write emails, and I don't mean emails like replying to people and trying to get stuff done. I mean, marketing emails and outreach and messaging for your business or whatever it is that you're trying to grow. And those can be daunting at times, but I've got a hack for you I'm gonna share today. So stick with me.

We all, if we're in business, really need to be sending emails. And I have said this on countless other videos, this is your best typi, typically your best channel, your most productive revenue generating channel that you can be messaging on. Inbox is still the king. The data supports that. It's a direct channel to your existing customers and potentially new customers and leads. So I don't need to say about that. You can go to your own research on it, but it fully supports what I'm saying. Now, the next piece of the puzzles are more complicated. What do we send? It's a freaking nightmare, right? We got subject lines, gotta come up with body texts, need images, need videos, maybe all these other stuff. And putting 'em together just seems like a gigantic, nasty homework assignment. So I'm gonna give you a little suggestion. Every one of us, you included and me, are getting great emails right now in our inbox from folks who have spent a lot of time.

So here's my little hack. Go ahead. And instead of unsubscribing from everything, go ahead and be okay with a bunch of really world class companies sending you emails. And a lot of those are gonna be e-com or commerce, you know, or retail and stuff like that. Fine, because inside of those you can start to see the modeling. Create a folder in your inbox and let all of those, you know, map all those to that folder. So that, and label that folder. Email ideas, right? So instead of saying spam and mark everything spam, you're now gonna take this, you know, spam, you could call it that. It's probably not spam, probably signed up for stuff. So we'll be careful with accusing anyone of everything, but you bought something from somebody that keeps sending emails. Great. Map it to that folder. And then when you're thinking about the emails you need to send, open up the email ideas folder and look at all the other stuff that people have sent you and look at their subject lines and look at the way they've structured some of their opening lines.

And look at some of the ways that they've positioned their pictures and what are they showing? Are they showing the product in action, like being used on the street? Are they showing a product shot? Are they showing the price at the top? Or are they not talking about the price? How are they, what are their calls to action? Shop more. Learn more. Um, you know, ride with us what they might have. Some who knows what the calls to action are, right? And you can, can start to then basically shop those emails as ingredients for your own emails. So this is a hack, right? Instead of starting from scratch on a clean piece of white paper and just struggling with like writer's block and idea block and like, where do we start? This sucks. Go ahead and look at the ideas folder and pull some stuff that looked great, that appealed to you, that you wanted to open and start extracting the applicable components and basically assemble your emails instead of scratch writing them, right?

So get into an assembly processes. Once you're assembling, it gets much easier. Then you just reword refashion, swap the images for yours. And it's basically like an editing job. Huge time saver. Go ahead, knock yourself out. Don't stop sending emails. If you're not sending one or two a week, you're really missing a gigantic opportunity in your business. Keep up with your lists, keep 'em warm and keep giving them great information and sharing your stories. I promise you it will help move the needle with your business. Go ahead and light this video, subscribe, go ahead and share it if you would care to, and we'll see you on the next video.

The Best Colors for Your Landing Pages

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 13:35:00 GMT

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O n this video I'm going to talk to you about the best colors for landing pages. And I'll tell you what, a lot of people get stuck on this and so do we sometimes. So I'm gonna give you my thoughts on it right now.

Uh, the age old question, what are the best colors for my brand? What are the best colors for my landing page or what colors are gonna make people buy from me? Or all the psychology and so forth. And there is quite a bit of psychology around colors, but my answer to that really isn't so much. What is the best color? The answer really lie in what are the best color treatments? And here's what I can say about that. You really have to figure out how to have a nice color palette. And that can be anything that suits your brand. You know, you got masculine products out there, emin products, sporty stuff like, you know, kind of extreme stuff might be red and black or like orange and black or like some, you know, kind of heavy sport colors, primary colors. So you know, your brand has gotta have its own feel and that is definitely gonna be translated and communicated through the, the base palette that you select, which should, you know, probably be three or four of those base palette colors.

But then we get into this website conversation and things really sort of turn up a notch. You've got to figure out how to also use your brand colors, but then have something that's contrasting for action items on your website. And that's really what I think a lot of folks get lost on, uh, and navigation and what the user interface like starts to suffer from that. So the best color for your landing page are the colors that help you control your visitor's eye attention and focus. Those are the best color for your landing page and how you do that and how you arrived, that needs to be in alignment with your branding. Okay, so if you haven't worked with the brand professional and you're still trying to work out like logos and colors and things like that, yeah, you've got to start there before you get into page design.

When you get into page design, you know, there's some other things that work there mechanically and from a psychology standpoint, but the basics of it is that we've gotta be able to control our visitors visual interest on the page. And we do that sometimes through colors and, and other, you know, effects like little pulsing buttons and you know, there's all sorts of cool things you can do out there, little bounce ins and fly ins and you know, there's a lot of treatments to grab people's attention or get 'em to slow down at least visually. So those are, those are some physical elements, but on a color basis we want to on the page, have our action items jump out from our base palette and our base palette, communicate our brand value and our branding as it were. And that is completely dependent on your niche and the type of product and customer that you work around and you're hoping to serve.

So I know that sounds a little vague and maybe, um, not the specific answer you're looking for, but it'll lead you down the right path of coming up with a design that works for your specific project and your specific selling proposition that you're putting out into market. So focus on the base palette that communicates your brand and then bring in the contrasting action color that's gonna grab people's attention and guide them as they navigate your pages and sales collateral. I wish you the best out there. Go ahead and smash this like button right here on YouTube cuz that helps us do better with the video. And I would love to have you as a subscriber if you care to join us. And if so, I'll see you on the next one.

The Best Copywriting for Your Landing Pages

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 14:54:39 GMT

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On this video I want to talk to you about the best copywriting for landing pages. It's an art and it's a science, and it's copywriting. Stick with me and I'm gonna share with you what I know.

Copywriting is a whole monster in itself, and I can tell you I've spent a lot of time reading and studying, going back a couple of decades now on copywriting and word crafting for sales and so forth. And here's what I can share with you that I think gets you at least in the right direction without this video being ours. In fact, it could be an entire course because copywriting is such a deep pool of knowledge to get invested in. But I can tell you if you're into sales and you wanna market your business and you wanna send great emails and you wanna be able to understand what the best text is to have on your pages and everything else, cuz everything is in the communication sphere these days, especially online, you've gotta be able to do a good job. Even if you're scripting a video, scripting, writing posts for social media, right?

Copywriting is everywhere and it's such a valuable skill. So I'll leave you first with the notion that this is worth getting good at. For starters, the next thing I'll say about the landing page is cuz that's kind of the hook for this video. Cause people are starting with landing pages. That's my sales page. It's gotta be great. So I use a little copywriting in my titles there and the first thing I did was zero in on something I know people are struggling with. And that's the first thing that good copywriting needs to do. It needs to reflect and or identify a pain point with your desired buyer or viewer or whatever that person is that you're trying to engage, okay? They've got to feel that this is the place where their problem is being talked about. So you at least need to state that problem.

The next piece that you've got to have on a landing page or any sort of copy is the, Here's what I got, here's what it is, or here's the benefit to you. So there's the problem, here's what we got. That's kinda the next piece. And then the piece after that is, here's why it's so great. Here's the benefit to you of working with us or buying this thing or doing this action. The benefit is your problem will go away. Now the piece that a lot of people lose out on is this last little segment here, which is taking that benefit to a deeper meaning in their life.

So I'll give you an example. There's an old saying, nobody wants a drill, people just want holes. So the people that sell drills, they might write all the stuff about the drill bit and it's super sharp and it's super long and it makes a great fits in your drill and all this stuff, but that's not really what people are buying. People are buying the hole. So you think about your product, are you talking about the drill bit? Are you talking about the actual benefit they get? Which is the whole, So move one step further down the line and think about what the benefit is of people buying your product or service. What do they get? Now, here's where it gets extra fun. If they get a hole, what's the point of the hole? Nobody wants a hole. I mean it's just, then you gotta patch it.

But people wanna hole because they want hang a picture or they wanna do some wiring or they wanna add a sink to another part of the house or something, right? I mean there's a lot of reason for holes, but the drill bit's kind of the thing that needs to be bought and sold. So somebody's gotta buy it and we gotta sell it. And it's gonna make a hole that the meaning of the hole is you get to hang a picture of your family in the living room, or you're gonna be able to run the networking wires in your house so much easier with this long special drill bit that makes the correct size hole for network wiring. So your network will be fully wired and you won't have these problems with wifi drop offs and all that stuff. So this drill bit is gonna solve all of those problems for you, and that means you're gonna be able to stay connected to the internet all the time.

So did you hear what I said right there? I said, and that means, so that's the last piece, right? You gotta get to that. What does all this crap mean for the buyer? Cause that's really on a deep that that's where you tap into the emotional component of purchasing is to find the meaning, the meaningful outcome of this sort of chain of events. So that's the backbone of the structure for most copywriting when it comes to sales. And of course the last piece that you cannot forget is how do they get the drill bit? What do they gotta do? Come on down to the hardware store today, we've got piles of 'em or click here and we'll send you one. You'll have it in two days or whatever the action is. Call me and I'll bring you a drill bed. Drill bed deliveries.com could be, doesn't really matter, but if you leave the action off and you don't ask for the order, which is an old sales thing to talk about Kim sale, if you don't ask for the order, which is true.

So in the internet world, we've gotta have our call to action or the thing that the buyer or visitor needs to do. Clearly in our user interface. Mobile, you got less space to room work with desktop a little bit more, but that's gotta be really overt and easy to work with from a user standpoint. It should be low friction there. And that's the last piece. So there you go. So that's the structure. So that's the best copywriting for your landing page. Hopefully you like this copywriting copy reading, basically shooting from the hip. Copy right here on quick and dirty. Go ahead and smash the like button for me and I'd love to have you as a subscriber. So join me for the next one.

3 Areas to Automate Now

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:43:09 GMT

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I'm gonna dive into the black hole of hell. This video, we're gonna cover my simple rules for social media in 2022. Yep. We're going to go there. Go ahead and stick with me and let me share with you the fails and the remedies that I've seen while working with my client's accounts this past year.

I think everybody understands from a business standpoint, we gotta maintain some social media accounts. We gotta keep those going. And it's not my favorite activity. I confess there are somes that just love doing it, and I applaud that. Here's what I've learned, and here's where I would lay some caution to you. If you're working on your social media accounts for business, one thing that I think I see folks forget time and time again is that it is actually social media. And here's what I mean when I say that. It is not a free cyber billboard for your ads. There's a whole thing called paid advertising for that. And if you didn't notice, Facebook and Instagram and all the others actually have a paid advertising dashboard because if you wanna run ads, they would like you to pay. So the algorithm and the way that their systems work, work to promote social, viral, fun, human engaging content, and they don't work to promote free ads because if they work that way, those companies wouldn't make money.

So it's just a little logic check here. So if you're just using your social media account to post free ads, you're kind of trying to swim up a waterfall because that's not the direction that those companies would like you to go. And frankly, the people that are on social media, hopefully your customers are there for social media, not for ads. They know there's ads there, but they're not gonna organically engage with that type of content, which is hopefully what you're trying to do for your brand. So what's the alternative? Well, tell stories about your brand. Tell stories about your customers using the things that you sell. Right? Be social. I don't know where people get lost on that one, but that's my first tip. If you're finding yourself doing that, just kind of going, driving off the side of the road there. Get back in your lane in the lane of social media like you would on your personal accounts.

You don't post your bills on your personal social media accounts. Nobody wants that stuff. They wanna see what you're up to and what you're having fun with. Same thing applies for your business. Okay. Now the next thing is the whole conversation about authenticity. If the stuff seems like plasticy, canned and just fabricated, it's not gonna do nearly as well as real authentic content having to do with your business, your customers, and what you do. And sometimes that might even be showing a little bit of a screw up or being vulnerable. It's amazing how far you can go with that. But more than anything is to capture the real moment around your business. You're a customer, interactions, the successes that you have, your staff working hard, recognizing them, right? Positive human stuff. So important. And again, see a lot of people forgetting that that's kind of what everybody is there for.

So why don't just give everybody what they want? They want an authentic view into your brand and your company, not the plastic version, because that again, just feels more like marketing stuff. And that's my last tip. If your posts feel like marketing people scroll past them, and everybody is so incredibly sensitive to that now everybody kind of has the decoder to what marketing feels like that. Now that you've got to really be careful that you're not doing too much of that on your feed and your pages and your posting and all these things and your different platforms because your customers are rather, let's make it even more dramatic. Your potential customers that might engage with your brand or find you to be an authority to follow and start picking up some of your content around whatever it is that you sell or do, are not gonna wanna engage if they perceive you as a fire hose source of marketing material.

That's just not what they want. They wanna know how you can solve their problem, how you're helping people, and how you're doing that in an authentic way. So those are my tips for 2022. I think you probably heard this in other places, but you're hearing it from me now. Also, don't be plasticy. Be authentic. Show the people that are in your life and in your business that are having success through what you created. And be social on social media. Don't try to get free ads out of it. Just pay for ads. It's not that expensive anyways. And then at least it's doing what it's supposed to be doing while you can do what you're supposed to be doing on social media that don't go post your bills and your personal business stuff on Facebook or whatever. Post a picture of your puppy. That's what people wanna see. Okay? Go ahead and like this video, subscribe to the channel and we're gonna decode some more stuff on the next video. We'll see you there.

Do What You Are Good at for Once

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 23:33:09 GMT

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I have some thoughts today on kind of a fun video about staying in your lane and doing what you're good at. So I'm gonna unpack that here right now.

So I've spent some time thinking about why we all feel like we've got to work hard on the stuff that we're not very good at, because somehow or another, culturally or otherwise, we are all trying to be well rounded people. And I think that's actually kind of a bunch of bs. I'm gonna call BS on all of that. And here's why. The more time you spend working on stuff that you're not naturally gifted at, the more you take away from your gifts, or the better way to think about that perhaps, is you systematically are diluting your effectiveness. So if you feel like, Oh, I want to be better at this thing, and it's not your passion and it's not your natural gift, you really need to ask yourself the hard question why? What is it in your mind that is telling you that that's something you need to get good at when you may be great at other things that you can share with the world, that can bring you a lot more prosperity and fulfillment?

We all know that when we're in our groove, it feels awesome, but as children, we're taught to be good at all these different things in school, which is partly an explorative process, and I think there's appropriate to some degree. But as you move into adulthood and you need to make decisions about how you're gonna be successful and what the best use of your time is, the more and more you can hone in on your gifts, the more your brightness is going to explode onto the world stage. So I would challenge you to kind of toss aside that weird thinking that we all have that sort of guilt complex that we're supposed to work on things that we're not good at, or for that matter, we're supposed to do things that we just don't enjoy because I don't even know where the logic is in that.

Why do anything that you don't enjoy? I mean, that's a great question, just as much as the other question is. But more importantly, from a success standpoint and how you gonna make money and how you're gonna be successful and provide for the people that you love? Isn't it just ideal to do the thing you're really great at and own it and not dilute yourself out trying to be great at all these things? Just zero in on the one thing that brings you the best results because then you can rise to the top of that channel, if you will, and take a high position there. That whole logic applies to you. If you're a business owner, you cannot be good at everything. You cannot be good at marketing, accounting, customer service, product development, service development, cleaning the bathroom, dropping off and picking up, employ whatever crazy crap you're into.

You can't be good at all of those things. I mean, nobody is. So you gotta figure out in your business what's your best use of your time, and hopefully it's leadership and workflow design and building a system that makes you and your family money, because that's what a business is all about. If you got into business to have a job that nobody can fire you from, then own that and at least pick the job that you really great at and that brings you the most fulfillment. So you may have a job in your business that you love doing great, be in that job and to make sure you circle yourself around with all the people that fit the other requirements to make your business run. So all good things to think about, a little bit upside down, but I think it's some reassurance for all of us that you don't need to beat yourself up about stuff that you're really not good at when you could just be killing it on the stuff that you are really good at. So go ahead and really like this video, and hopefully it unlocks a few things for you. It's something I remind myself of from time to time when I feel like I'm spreading myself too thin. I say, Zach, just skip back into focusing on what you're really supposed to be doing here, what your best offering is in this situation, and let the rest go or hand it to somebody else. Subscribe to the channel. So don't miss the next one, and I can't wait to see you there.

Essential Tools to Have on Your Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 19:07:51 GMT

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I want to give you some essential tools that you need to have on your website for your customers. They're counting on your website to be a place for resources. So let's go over 'em on this video.

We know that our customers visit and hopefully revisit our website, especially if they're ongoing and they're buying from us on a regular basis. So what are some of the things that you really need to have on your website for your customers? This is a little bit of a different conversation than what we need to have on our website for potential customers, right? That's a different deal. And we've had other videos on this channel. We talked about kind of the friction between the two. Let's carve off our existing customers though, and talk about the things that they really need to have so that they're served well. The first thing they need to have <laugh>, and it goes without saying, but I see a lot of screws with this is an easy way to reach you. Uh, sometimes that takes the form of a phone number, sometimes not, or a contact form or chat.

There's a lot of good chat platforms out there, but the existing customers should definitely have a way to reach you or your staff and get help with the product or service that you sell. Now, the other thing they should have is an FAQ section. I think that's a really important part of a website that address the top 10 or 15 questions that your existing customers do have. And you can find those out typically by talking to your staff, cuz they get the same questions all day long. You can just ask 'em what those are. Or you may be the person that gets the same question asked to you all week long and it's time to document that or make a video that answers that question so that folks can get the answer at 11 o'clock on a Sunday night. That's always a litmus test. You know, how can you serve your customers in the middle of the night when their brains are going and they're trying to find the answers about the things that you have sold them?

So the FAQs, the other part that I think is really important, and the other thing that I think really helps is if particularly if you sell product, that you have a library there of the manual or instructions, right? And that also may be the case if you sell a service and there's some follow up or aftercare is something we've done for a lot of our medical client. You know, like medis spa stuff, We have aftercare documentation, right? Anything that I would call part of the chain of customer service that you can virtualize the after, I guess you could just call that aftercare, like what does the customer need after they make the purchase to continue to be happy, right? Cause your goal and my goal in helping our clients is to assure that their customers stay happy even after the purchase. Because happy customers breed more happy customers.

So we want them to stay that way and tell a great positive story about your brand. Now, I think the other thing is that all of those instructions, whatever they beat, how to get to the FAQs, how to contact you, you know, after purchase support, those types of things should be really overt and not hard to find. There is no reason on your website to frustrate an existing customer or to have that buried behind a bunch of sales literature that is really targeted for new customers. So you may want to consider having that stuff reside on a customer resources page or some separate link that doesn't, you know, invite friction with your homepage sales pages or landing pages. You may want to carve that out and have a special area for your existing customers, which is exactly what we do because like many folks that have designed websites, we found there is just simply too much conflict between providing that service and talking about what we do to new folks. Take all of these things under consideration. Go ahead and audit your site and really think about if it's serving your existing customers in the best way possible and make some changes. If you need to go ahead and like this video and subscribe to the channel and see, don't miss the next one.

Logo Design Tips You Must Know

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 16:30:07 GMT

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I'm gonna share with you what I've learned about logo design over the years working with award-winning designers for our client projects. Hang in here and I'm gonna give you a couple of tips so that you know what to look for when you're getting your logo designed.

Everybody knows when you're starting your business, one of the first things you gotta do is come up with a great logo and branding treatment for your business. And this is an area where a lot of times people can struggle and sort of either not know where to start or they get into the weeds and things start getting a little weird. Now, we've done, I don't know how many logos over the last almost 10 years, and I've picked up a few things that I think are critical that I'm gonna share with you today. The first thing is, and it kind of goes without saying, but a lot of times this gets lost. The imagery really needs to communicate the core value or benefit that your business provides to your customers. And sometimes that's a feeling or emotion. Sometimes it's a practical visual communication of what it is, but it really needs to hit that on the head.

And that means you're probably going to have to take some time and really think about that verbally and write those things out, right? Like, what problems do you solve? What benefit, you know, do you offer your consumer? Identify those and those will lead you to the images. The next thing, and once you can kind of establish that, is to not try to crowd the thing down and make it too busy. One of the necessary evils of today's digital marketing world is your logo needs to perform in a variety of different applications online. It's gotta be able to be like a little avatar and a fa con, and you know, all these profile pictures and things like that for your company. And to do that, that means that in general, it needs to be pretty simple and it needs to have some white space. So it can't be what I would say over-designed and function well in today's world.

And some of the most valuable brands have logos that are extremely simple. And an example of that would be Nike. So think along those lines. Less is typically more. The next thing I wanna share with you is one of my warnings about all marketing, but definitely applies to logo design, is really to avoid being overly clever. QT or cliche. I think those are like the three C's that you don't want to do in marketing. Qt, clever and cliche. So be warned now that those are typically not directions to go. So you ask, Well then what direction should I go in? And here's the answer, clear overt communication is always best. So instead of trying to create a mental puzzle for people that are seeing your logo or for that matter, engaging with any of your market messaging, make it completely straight and easy for people to understand.

That's always the best, clear communication that people can understand at a glance is always gonna be a win. So avoid those three C's, qc, clever or cliche in your logo design and in all of your marketing. All right, And the last thing I wanna say is remember to imagine your drafts that you're looking at. You may be evaluating logos right now while you're watching this video. Imagine those in use in the situations where you're gonna use them. Like what are they gonna look like on a business card? How's that gonna drive your website design? How are those gonna look in these, you know, profiles and other things that we just discussed? Is that design actually gonna function and work in those instances, right? So imagine them in the situations that they're going to be used and you know, test them maybe in those environments. Get a little, you know, most designers are giving you mockups and things like that.

You wanna look at all that and see how the logo drafts are actually playing out. All right? And then the last thing I can say is, take your time. Logo design, brand development. Sometimes, you know, I look at the timeline to share with you guys, we may spend more time on that. Then actually building the whole darn website for a client project, because that is something that once it's done, you have to live with for many, many years until you do, you know, perhaps a revision or a little bit of an update. But sometimes that could be even five to 10 years before that happens. The website, you know, and these other things that you're kind of in a rush to get to our living documents that, you know, once you get up and going, you're constantly revising them anyways. But that logo is something that you're gonna have to be married to and be happy with, and it needs to work for your brand and for your company's growth from today.

So the last thing I say is take your time with it, but also imagine, you know, is does this gonna be relevant and work for me in five years if my company is as big as I want it to be? Is this still gonna be the logo that's gonna carry it that distance? Is it powerful enough visually to stand the test of time, right? Is it tr too trendy? That's another thing to, you know, watch out for as I think about, you know, longevity too trendy might become little obsolete and kind of corny looking in a short time. So watch out for that. But take your time with it. Enjoy. It's one of the coolest processes of del uh, developing your business. But, um, you know, you wanna take my tips today and perhaps more work with a great designer. Make sure you're working with good people and I'm sure you'll have a great outcome With that catch on the next one, go ahead and like, and subscribe to the channel and to this video so you don't miss the next tape of quick and dirty marketing.

The Only Reason People Visit Websites

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:25:42 GMT

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Let's go over The only reason somebody is on your website right now and what to do about it.

We all want more traffic on our website. So you finally got some people there. So let's ask the question, why in the hell are they on your website anyways? And here is the answer. They're on your website because they are pretty darn sure that you can help them solve a problem. That's the only reason that anybody goes to any website. I don't even care if that website is Netflix. If you go to Netflix, you're solving a boredom problem, right? So every website that we visit is part of our journey to solve our daily problems. Could be, My furniture sucks, I need U, my kids are bratty. My FAMs are a mess. I'm looking to buy a new home. My car sucks. This is broken, that is broken. I wanna buy this. My teeth are yellow, right? Everybody's got problems and they're just hunting around the internet looking for the answers.

The reason people are on your website right now, let's pray that they are, is because they believe that you can help them solve your problem. So now that they're there, what do you need to do about it? Well, it's really simple. You need to show them two things, the type of problem you solve to confirm that they're in the right place and how you do it so they know what they're gonna get. So those are the two primary things. And then the last thing you need to do, and I'm always saying this, is you've got to show them exactly what to do to get to the next step in solving their problem, which could be anything for you. Sign up, opt in, buy the thing, schedule an appointment, book a call, whatever. There's all these different calls of action that inch them closer to the problem going away. So the, you know, the reason they're on your website right now are exactly what I said. They're looking to solve a problem, and your job is to show them that they're in the right place and show them what to do to solve it using your product or service. It's all just so simple, so don't over complicate things. And like this video, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one.

How to Prepare to Die

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 12:01:03 GMT

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In this video we're gonna talk about kind of a twisted topic here. How to get all of your stuff ready to die. Now, wait, let me rephrase that. How to get ready to die and make sure you don't leave a mass online. Something you really need to think about.

All right, so one of the things that can be really tricky in our line of work is, well, a couple of things can happen. There can be a big events that transi, I would just call them transitional events. So your company may sell and there's a transition of ownership, but sometimes tragedy strikes and there's a mess to clean up. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. But in general, it's really important to think about all of your digital assets and digital real estate and frame it in a way that there is some sort of continuity plan. And I only know how ugly this can get, cuz we've had to help some people do some cleanups when things weren't well organized. And I'm sure many of you watching this may suddenly realize, thinking just for a minute now, what would happen if, you know, you were sort of taken outta the game here in some sort of tragedy?

Do people have access to your accounts? Do people, could people get into your profiles, your website, your cloud folders, your social media accounts, and all these things? Like how would anybody deal with that? Right? That's a tricky one. And for some of us that can be, you know, hundreds of items, right? Slack accounts, chat accounts, Gmail, multiple email accounts, multiple social media platforms, YouTube channels, bank accounts, you know, logins, logins, logins and passwords. So it can be tricky and you know, we have some tools that can make it a little bit easier. Like, you know, depending on where you're at with security and things, you may have passwords stored in your browser. You may have passwords stored in your iCloud account, that's another thing. But how would somebody get into that, right? Could they use face on lock or could they get into your, you know, get into those things.

So it's a little tricky, but here's the rule of thumb that we like to use from a professional standpoint. So as it relates to business assets, and that's where we're gonna kind of try to keep this conversation today. It's my belief that there should be triple coverage on all critical business digital assets. So that would include the businesses, social media accounts, website, access, cloud folders, and, you know, and relevant documents and all of those things. There should be triple, triple access. So usually the way that looks for us is the owner of the company, some sort of designated person that's on their side of the fence, could be spouse, relative, significant other business partner, whatever, somebody like that. And then kind of a neutral third party. And we act this way for many clients where on our agency side, we also have access to a lot of those things and could unlock them or help in transition, right?

So almost like a fiduciary role as it relates to those, you know, to those assets. So th those are things to think about. Now there's some cool tools you can use to help with some of that. Like in Google Workspace there are groups which we use oftentimes as a collaborative inbox and set those as the, uh, identity emails for a lot of accounts so that multiple people can be part of those groups and recover passwords, right? Password recovery is so important, but how do you do it if you can't even get into the email that the password is being sent to? And I know some of you have been in that situation before, cause I hear about all the time. So collaborative inboxes is a great tool. You can put three people on the, on the ownership side of that inbox. If one of 'em, you know, is out of the game for whatever reason, sickness illness or something like that, or just on vacation, the other two could recover a password very easily because they have access to that inbox, right?

So that could read something like social@zackgreenfield.com and I could use that email for all my social media accounts and then I could put, you know, my partner, my, my team on that group. Something happens to me easy for them to recover the password, get access to the accounts. And you know, again, it's all about continuity, right? It's, you know, does the business go on or what is the succession plan that you have? So these are real concerns. The, on a most basic level, at least put together a spreadsheet or some sort of document that's in a safe or that another, you know, trusted party has access to that's updated and current so that if anything happens to you, your business doesn't go dark because everything is locked up for weeks. And some of these can be very difficult to recover without, you know, a lot of legal work and, and other expenses and frankly, just time lags.

You know, where customers and other people may be waiting for updates and communication and the whole thing is just, you know, kind of cycling down. So avoid that by getting ready to die now. And let me tell you something, you will feel at peace and you will sleep really great knowing that that kind of, you're not leaving a mess for anyone as nobody likes that. You know, the best thing to do is leave everybody organized with clear instructions. So go ahead and think about that as you build out your business. Digital assets, make sure that you've got yourself covered. If anything tragic happens or you know, might not be that big of a deal, but it just is worth the effort with all the money you're spending in the investment time that you're making to be prepared and make sure that somebody is there to pick up where you left off in the case that something happens. So not the brightest topic today, but just as important as a lot of our other stuff. Go ahead and like the video because it's probably something we all could do a better job with keeping our house in order. Subscribe to the channel and we will see you on the next one.

2 Tools Your Staff Needs to Create New Customers

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 18:05:30 GMT

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I'm gonna drop two gold nuggets for you on how to get new customers that involve your staff and giving them the right tools.

If you're like most businesses, you definitely want more customers and you would like to automate and get that going as quick as possible. So here is an untapped area of your business that most folks, uh, ignore or, you know, don't empower. And I promise you, if you take these two ideas and implement them, you're gonna see some results. So the first thing, let me frame it up here. Your staff that works on the front lines in your business is engaging and working with customers are a valuable resource in your marketing. Oftentimes, they're looked at only as a fulfillment team, right? So you market and then they fulfill and you market and they fulfill. However, I challenge you to unravel that a little bit today with me. If they're working with customers, they actually can grow more customers. And here's how. One, make sure that they have some sort of tool to give the customers that they're working with incentives to bring in referrals, Okay?

That is so important because they're the ones that are talking and engaging with the customers. And if they have a tool to do that, then they're going to be able to give that directly to the customers and get them excited about bringing new referrals. So important. The other tool that you need to give your staff so that they're, you know, engaged with growing your business is give them some actual incentive to bring in new customers. So they bring in a new customer, give them some sort of bonus spiff or however you want to deliver that, something of value that they will get recognized by, you know, and typically that would be like, you know, money, the number one thing I would suggest, some sort of percentage of the deal, or, you know, a $50 gift card every time they get a new customer in the door, whatever that is. But activate your staff and activate your customers as both can bring you more business if they're engaged in your growth. So if you're not doing that right now, finish this video. Figure out what you can put on the table to get those folks going. They literally are rotating in around talking to people and drumming stuff up. The minute you activate them, you're gonna see more business, I promise you. Go ahead and light this video cuz that helps me and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one. We'll see you then.

Tricks to Using Automation

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:54:58 GMT

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I have spent an incredible amount of time working on automations here at our agency as they relate to workflow. Automations are so important in your business, so I'm gonna dig into exactly what we were up to, and share with you what I learned about automating processes in your business.

One of the coolest things about the day and age that we live in is software is developed and come along so far that it gives us a great opportunity to systemize or automate processes in our business. And let me say though, while I, that part is, you know, borderline magic. Now automation oftentimes includes, you know, human beings and human labor and human steps in the process. And that could take the form of specific repetitive tasks, even scripted responses or scripted phone calls or scripted customer interactions, right? Or, uh, employee filling out a form is a potential step within an automation that would involve a human, but is a standardized repetitive process, right? Or repeatable process, right? Because it, you know, fits the data into the form and then things carry on from there. So don't think of automations necessarily as meaning. No, humans are involved.

A lot of times we work to reduce human labor in the workflow and that can be ideal from a cost saving standpoint and from managing errors and reducing, you know, quality, you know, quality fallout. So you can raise your quality in many cases by, you know, eliminating potential areas where you could have human error. So there's a little bit of give and take there, but by no means does automation mean no human beings? Okay? Cause that's rare. However, I wanna share with you what we've been going through. One of the things that you know, marketing involves is hundreds of little tasks that have to be managed. And oftentimes a dozen or more people working on all these tasks. So if you think about it in your mind, to get one big campaign out and going, or one big website project or one, anything like that, there's a lot of people involved and there's a lot of workflows involved.

And that's one of the things that we've been, you know, zeroing in on and doing a better job of here, which is important. But what we've learned applies to all businesses. So here's what we've had to do one thing, and the first step is to really look at what the process is and how to identify the exact steps and then really be honest with yourself. Is the way that you're doing things ideal? Or is it just sort of what you ended up with, right? And in some cases, the steps that we were taking were not ideal, right? And that's a time to say, Okay, how can we do it better? What tools do we need to do things better? What could, you know, what ways could be more efficient and also more accurate with our work? The goal of which is to have these processes and whatever they are, they could be onboarding a customer for you.

They could be making a sandwich in a certain way, you know, at your sandwich shop. They could be how you line up your merchandise and inventory in your store. Or they could be workflows in your e-com store. Like how do you create a product? How do you do a hundred new products in your e-com store? There are steps involved to that, right? To set all that up. So the first thing to do is involve, is to identify all those steps and then iron out the kinks in that whole thing and try to get it down to the most ideal scenario. Document that. And the way I document that is I actually draw here on my touchscreen with the stylist, kind of draw the whole process out, and then get yourself an awesome project management tool that can be the backbone of tracking all of that.

That's a really important step, is to track the process that you're going through so that at any given moment you understand the status of that project, right? And also the cool thing about that is it keeps all the people involved really accountable, right? Cuz you're kind of shining daylight on everything. And I think that's important, The last benefit of doing this and really spending time on this stuff. And it is hard to break away from just the normal, you know, onslaught of business every day and circle back and kind of what I say do housekeeping isn't always the most fun, but I can't even begin to stress with you how much of an awesome that investment that is in your future and how much peace and productivity it can bring to your life. Now the last benefit of course is that any defined process and great businesses have repetitive processes, right?

If the process is giving you an output that is not ideal, then instead of just trying to do it better, you actually have a workflow that you can analyze to adjust the quality and results that you're getting. So you actually have something that you can manage if you don't have a workflow and a process and a repetitive map, like say blueprint if you will. And there's a lot of words you can use if you don't have that, you can't really measure or understand why you're getting any results because you just, there's just no disconnect. There's nowhere to go to figure it out if you haven't laid that all down. So if you're getting results that you're not happy with, the best thing to do is start looking at the workflow. Cuz that's usually what's broken. And looking at the people that are involved and what kind of boundaries they have and how they're interfacing and how their work is working together.

You know how their team structure is. So there's a lot of cool stuff of that. But that's really the core in many ways of running your business, is to get predictable results that you can manage the process of to tweak and optimize your results, right? And just get into that flow. So I can't say enough about it. I really hope that you will make time to do that in your business because that's the difference between you having a business, which just quick to define that as we leave this video, is a system that makes money, right? A business is not a job. A business is a system that makes money. And your o, your job as a business owner is to build the system. That's your job. Not do all the things, Your job is to build the system.

Social Media Workflow for Business Owners

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 19:32:50 GMT

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Hey guys, this is the third time I've tried to record this video, and now I've got all these other computers on mute and everything. So I'm not gonna get interrupted. So here we go. This one is about social media workflow, how to smooth it out, save time and be more effective on social media. I've got some tips that I'm gonna share with you from, our experience in helping clients not have this monster sort of take over every single day of their attention. So stick with me.

We all know social media can take up a lot of time. In fact, the platforms that we use for social media are actually designed to take up time because they want as many eyeballs on the screen, looking at user created content as possible at any given moment of the day. So they're constructed to suck up time now as a business owner, that is totally unacceptable. You gotta put your time into things that are gonna make you money and staring at other people's content is just not gonna do it. So you gotta figure out how to use social media in a positive, strategic way for your business without having it become a time. Suck. Now, let me give you a little reality check here real quick. Before we get into the rest of this conversation, many folks put a lot of effort into social media for their business and many businesses don't actually benefit dramatically from that type of marketing or from that marketing channel.

So a lot of businesses have great email lists, potential that they're not tapping into, but they're spending a lot of time on Instagram where reach is fairly limited from an organic reach is continually getting compressed as meta looks to drive ad revenue and get us to pay for ads. So there's a lot of other opportunities to get your offers and your awareness and these other marketing efforts out that aren't always social media, but many business owners get kind of trapped in thinking that that's where all the action is because maybe they're spending personal time there. I don't really know, but the psychology's a little upside down because if you look at the data, a lot of businesses have a ton more reach focusing on other channels than they do on that, but they spend a lot of time messing around with that for some reason.

So I just want to give you a little bit of a head check on that. If that's you try to rebalance yourself and put effort into the other areas where you can get a lot of reach, like your email list and maybe tune up your website and running some popups and looking at legitimate paid ads too. I mean social media, and I've said this before is not free cyber billboard space. It's social media for social media's sake. And that's what people are there for. So either way you want to maintain a channel and let's just talk about this in terms of one brand today, okay. Some businesses have two or three different brands, and you're trying to manage a bunch. Let's just table that for a second. And focus. If you have one business with one set of accounts and one brand, how do you do it effectively?

Well, here's the thing. There's really three parts to the process, capturing the content curating and organizing or vetting. I like to call the content that you did capture and then scheduling and syndicating that content on the platforms that you are engaged with. So that could be social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, you got the whole list. So whatever that is for you, that's the syndication part, the way to iron out this workflow and get it where it's not sucking up all your time is for one, marry it into your campaign efforts, the things you want to promote and begin to think about your business as a story and what stories you could tell every 30 days about your business, because that starts to get you more thinking in terms of a human social interaction perspective, instead of just slapping marketing offers on there and hoping somebody pays attention.

And then you wonder why your posts only have six likes, right? Because everybody can sniff that stuff out and it's just not engaging, but stories are engaging and behind the scenes are engaging and employee exposes and, and customer exposes and things like that are engaging. So look deeper for the narrative in your business when it comes to social media and that all ties into that content creation side, right? That's the type of content you wanna be capturing. So you don't wanna be manufacturing a bunch of crap on canvas to post on social media. That just looks like you're too cheap to pay for paid advertising. And so you're just gonna post it and hope somebody sees it or something. It's just not only counter to what the point of the whole thing is. It's kind of lame, but if you can do it, what I, the way I said, which is start to dig into stories and, and the human and social part of your business, then that's totally appropriate for social media.

You can capture that content, then curate, organize, and I suggest you use some sort of scheduling platform here. Like I can't say enough about having good tools. And that doesn't mean you on your phone all day, trying to figure it out. That means a proper dashboard, scheduling, organized all your channels there, the timing, correct with your campaigns and timing with your website updates and your emails that are going out. So everything is matching and your sketch. If you do have offers and awareness things like for events that they, they time with the events, dates and all of those things are hitting, right? So you can't really do that just manually trying to remind yourself, you've got to plan out at least in 14 to 30 day blocks, get that working for you. Do these things like capture content one day schedule the next two weeks for two hours in a morning and then set the damn thing down, right?

And let that system syndicate out, which is the third step. And then look at your reporting and your data and see how you can do better. Right? And get into that management cycle. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Those are the three steps, get good tools and treat the whole thing as it should be treated as a storytelling, social interaction and the narrative around your business, not a place to post free ads, because they don't want you to do that. And the people that are on those platforms don't really care for that either. So go out there and knock 'em dead like this video, maybe not what you wanted to hear, but I promise you if you treat this whole thing more strategically and leverage the psychology, you will do better and subscribe to the channel and we'll see on the next one.

2022 Social Media Rules Of Engagement

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 10:15:04 GMT

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On this video, I wanna share with you guys, three simple tips to improve your design work. This is stuff I've learned over the years, you know, and I'm not a designer, but I'm gonna share with you kind of where we've arrived with our design team on some of the things we watch out for. And I think it's really gonna help as you review the designs that are coming in for your business.

So we all need design work done for our businesses now because we have so many media that need to be filled out. So we got websites, we got social media, we got Facebook headers, YouTube, thumbnails, avatars, social posts, digital ads, you name it, the list just never go. That doesn't even include print. So you got all the print stuff too, right? That's a whole nother pile of goodies. That's gotta be handled, but at the core of all that are a few things to pay attention to. And here's the three things that I like to watch out for. One is design clear, clean and conscious. Let me explain what those three CS are. When I say clear, I mean, does the design immediately communicate, you know, the purpose of the thing, what the objective is or what the benefit is to the person looking at it, frankly.

And the next one, you know, is it clean means, is there enough white space or is it just over done? And you really gotta watch this with, in my opinion, a lot of designers, you know, this is where it's a little counterintuitive, right? Kind of the more work they do, the more they feel validated, but the more work they do, the uglier and kind of more of a mess they make. So typically I like to see the clean, open white space, you know, almost the first draft when these things start getting reworked a lot or they get overworked is probably a better way to say that they get messy and messy and marketing, especially as it, when you frame it from a communication standpoint, typically don't work well together, right? If something is kind of turning into a mess, then it's clarity goes down, right?

So clean design is so important. Don't be afraid of white space on your pages and in your logos and on your business cards and in your flyers, right? The damn things don't need to be painted corner to corner. That's one of those things you really gotta watch a lot of amateur or up and coming designers kind of fall into that trap. They feel like they gotta design every square inch of something. Negative space is just as important as the positives that are on the page or whatever the medium is. And the last thing I would say, which was my third C was conscious, what do I mean by that? Well, I mean that the design consciously controls the eye and the attention, right? That's the other way to express that when the design consciously focuses our attention, that's what we want.

At any good design, we want it to draw attention to something specific inside the element of the whole thing. And if it's not doing that to me, it's a fail. So those are my three tips, you know, make sure stuff is, got that deliberate focus on what it is. And it may be the call to action, or it may be the message or may be the product that you're spotlighting, or it may be the awesome service or whatever it is, but make sure that whatever the design of that page segment is, or that ad, or that print media, that, that you're controlling the viewer's eye and therefore con controlling their attention. So take those tips, go review some of the work that's been done for you. If you're trying to do some of the work yourself, don't ignore what I just said. Don't get caught up in making a mess out of things, stay clean and conscious and clear, and you're gonna be a lot happier with your results.

The Video You Must Have for Your Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 14:00:24 GMT

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I wanna share with you the number one video that you should be working on before your website is even ready to go. So this is the video that I would say should be on your website from day one, stick with me.

We all know that video is so important online to communicate what our brand does, what our company does, how we serve our clients, the problem that we solve and the benefit of working with us, right? So these are all things that video can do really well. It's one of it is, you know, the most powerful communication tool online. It works 24 7 to talk to and communicate what you're doing for folks to potential customers, existing customers, and so on and so forth. So there's no arguing that. So where do you start now? Here's what I tell you. I think in a perfect world that we would produce a video alongside the launch of a website. And here's why it's kind of sucks to launch a website without any video content, frankly done it plenty of times. And it happens to the best of us because trying to do both at the same time, one can be a little bit hard on the budget.

And two frankly is just a lot for people to contemplate when they're trying to roll something out. But I would encourage you if you wanna really go pro with a website rollout, to bake in putting together a video that will be part of that website rollout. Now there's a couple of ways to handle this, but I'll give you some basics. The video, you know, could be embedded and like almost like a welcome mat for your website. And I think that is awesome. We've all seen sort of hero shot treatments, right? Where the whole above the full full area of the site is like a moving picture that starts to indoctrinate the visitor immediately to what the brand function is. That's another way to think about it, but let me give you what the video minimally must do, because that's, I promise I would do on this video, the video minimally must do these three things.

It must say what you got the benefit to the buyer. And ideally some part of that page, if not the video directly should tell them how to get the benefit, right? So it's three pieces that are critical to that video. What you got the benefit of getting it, like what is the core value of getting the thing? And when I say the thing it could be service could be product could be a product with a service. What is the core problem that you're solving, right? It needs to communicate that, but more importantly, the benefit of using your product or service to solve that problem. Why is it better? And then the last thing is, what does the person do right now to get it? So if you can hit those three quick, it's a success and it'll do a ton of heavy lifting on your website for you.

And, you know, in terms of engaging traffic right away, explaining what you do right away and really forcing you also to like kind of lay bare bones to those three core ingredients that you're gonna need to have in all of your market message, marketing messages. So think about, if you don't have a video on your website now, how would you get that started by answering the three, you know, the three areas that I just mentioned, and if you're making a website right now and you can muster it all together, I would highly recommend incorporating that into your site design right out of the gates. Cuz the first thing you get when you get that website done, the first thing you're gonna want is to add a video. So you might as well think about it now, go ahead. And like this video that helps me stay motivated to make another video and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one.

How to Make It Impossible for the Customer to Pick Your Competition

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 14:09:52 GMT

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On this video, I'm gonna share a little bit of magic with you. I'm gonna share with you a few tips to make it nearly impossible for your customers to choose the competition over you.

So we're in a competitive environment. Most of us are customers, consumers, clients, whatever you wanna call, 'em have choices out there. It's very likely that you're not the only person in business selling or doing what you do and you have to be competitive, but here's a few tips that I promise you are gonna make it nearly impossible for your customers and clients to choose the competition over you. First thing do not be the cheapest, lowest priced option. Huge mistake in positioning you in the market price is the number one thing that consumers use to perceive value. And if you're the cheapest you're gonna be looked at as the crappiest. So start by making sure that you're pricing middle to high. And frankly, if you're great, just be high and be great, and it'll work for you. The next one is about communication. Do not drop the communication chain with your prospects and leads.

In fact, I would argue that it is better to overcommunicate in an effective way. And I don't mean over communicate by overwhelming them. I mean be consistent and small bites, frequency over amplitude, something we talk about on this channel all the time, be frequent and be top of mind with your potential customers. The next one is also really important and takes a little bit of practice, but you've got to dig really hard into understanding your customers problems and challenges. And this one really will set you apart from your competition. Most people do not spend the time or ask enough questions to really understand their clients' challenges and problems. Here's what you want to hear your customers say. You want them to say that's right? You don't want them to say anything else like, oh, it sounds like you understand, or you want them to say that's right.

That's the ultimate confirmation that they feel heard by you and thoroughly understood. If you can get to that point, when you're talking with your customers and clients, then I promise you, you are already a thousand miles ahead of your competition. Get a list of questions. Get deep into these conversations with people. Don't stress about having all the right answers, stress about having the right questions. If you ask the right questions and allow people to talk and they feel really heard and understood, there's no way they're gonna pick the competition over you because the competition is not doing that. I a hundred percent promise you take those three tips, go out there and kill it. Be better, be different, be consistent, which already makes you better than almost anybody. And don't be cheap and low market. All of those are gonna be awesome tools for you to employ starting right now with whatever it is you're doing.

What Psychology to Use in Your Ads - Part 3

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:31:31 GMT

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This is the third video in this little power play of buyer psychology and how to use the right psychological channels in your advertising and marketing campaigns. So in the previous two videos, we covered the sort of two halves of that. I want you to go back and watch those, if you haven't and otherwise let's continue. Cuz the next thing we're gonna do on this one is talk about the information process, the consumer information process and what the steps of that are and what you need to do with your marketing and promoting so that you can bring people from, you know, the beginning of that process, all the way to taking action and becoming a customer or a buyer of your product and service.

All right. So let's dive right into the consumer information process. Now I wrote some notes over here so that we can stay on track with this video in the previous two videos that kind of lead us to this discussion. We talked about the consumers, you know, the thinking approach to your messaging and the emotional approach to your messaging and how to talk to those two different types of buyers. Or, you know, if you flip that, how to use that depending on your type of product or service, is it more sold emotionally or is it more sold with information, facts and figures cognitively either way the consumer has to go through this information process. Now in the past, I've done some videos on this. I like to think of this as kind of the ramp. And one way to, to contemplate this is if a buyer or your potential customer just hears about you for the first moment, that's like the first step of the process, right?

And then the last step of the process is the, you have money in your bank. So they purchased something, right? So the beginning is exposure. And then the end is transaction by, you know, a confirmed sale. And along that is a, what I call a ramp. That's the way I like to visualize it. Right? So as we raise the stakes of that relationship, there are hallmarks. So let's go over the hallmarks. The first one I already said is exposure to information. And the information in question is your brand. The first thing you have to do as a marketer is expose massive amounts of people to your brand. That's mission critical because we need the most number of eyeballs exposed to the brand to get folks to the next one, which is a selective attention, right? We get them exposed. Then we need to grab their attention and get their focus.

That's the next step. Then we've got to get them to understand what it is that you sell, do or offer. They've got to move into a comprehension phase. If you will like an understanding phase, right. Then they got to move into agreement. And let me look at what I wrote about this, right? Uh, yeah. You've got to create some credibility. They've got to agree with the value. I guess that you're, you know, I think that's the best way to say they have to agree that you have to create some agreement past the understanding that somehow or another, what you're offering your product or service kind of fits into their life or their needs. Right? And then we gotta get into retention and retrieval. They've gotta be able to, um, remember you and retain the information, right? And here's why this is so important. They may not have the problem that you solve at the moment that they're at this phase, but we need them to retain and be able to recall, you know, all the comprehension and awareness so that when that problem rears its ugly head and pisses them off or causes them some sort of pain in their life, you are top of mind and they can get into the next phase, which is the decision making phase, right?

You're gonna start getting into the deciding to make a purchase. And that means you may. And that phase be up against some competitors and so forth, right? So that's why we want that retention to be strong. We want them to remember all the good things about your brand. If you go back on my channel here, you're gonna hear things like about reputation, marketing and social proof and all the other psychological triggers that we need to use along the way in this process. So that we get a positive outcome, which is of course a new customer. Okay. So we gotta get 'em through the decision making process. And then the last thing, and it's like the decision making process is kind of the killer with all this, right? We get the person to decide, but it doesn't mean anything if they don't take the last step, which is action.

And we constantly are mentioning that you've got to have a call to action in your marketing, but you can't have a call to action at the beginning because it's not congruent with where the person's at. If they're at awareness or they're in the earlier phases that we just outlined, the call to action is not appropriate. But if they're in the decision making process, after retention, after comprehension, after awareness, if they're in that phase and you hit 'em with a call to action, then it makes sense. And then you get the deal and the call to action might be by now pay now book. Now, you know, any of those final steps that confirm them being one of your new customers or clients, right? So that's the process I like to illustrate it that way. Like in terms of like a ramp, cuz it's kinda like raising up the other way that, you know, it's been pretty trendy over last so many years is to think of it like you're filtering or funneling down.

Um, you know, either way, however that you know, works for you visually is fine, but just know that all those steps you can't escape, right? You, you, you literally have to take people along that way. And that means that your marketing, your ads, your website pages, where you're landing people, the email messages along the way have to address the needs of each one of those parts of the process, right? So each, each part, each step along that way, each hallmark needs to be addressed in your marketing campaign. Your campaign literally needs to hit all of those in order to be successful. You can't go from zero to a 100 and you know, that's a fantasy and a mistake that a lot of folks made that they think they're gonna throw like some offer out. And nobody's even aware of the brand. Nobody even understands what the brand does.

Nobody understands what the product does. Nobody understands that what their need is or what the benefit is or any of these things that are in the interim steps. Well, of course that type of ad is just gonna fall on its face and you're just not gonna get a good take rate on it. You're gonna lose money probably. And the ROI is gonna be very low because you didn't address the other pieces that are required to get people to the point where they're gonna take action. So remember the playbook, apply it to your marketing campaigns. You know, I know this is gonna take a little bit of patience. It maybe is not what you wanted to hear, but it's what you probably needed to hear and go back and visit the previous two videos to this video, where we dive into those two psychological channels that you can tap into all three of these together. We'll get you much further down the road. Go ahead and like this video for me that helps the channel and subscribe.

What Psychology to Use in Your Ads - Part 2

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 15:03:18 GMT

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Today we're gonna follow up to our buyer psychology discussion that we started on the previous video. We spent some time there talking about the hedonic experiential model, which is the feelings model of, uh, buyer behavior rate, how we tap into those emotions and we covered those in those videos. So if you didn't see that, go ahead and click on that and then come back and watch this one, cuz this is part two to that in this video, we're gonna talk about the consumer processing model.

We're gonna talk about the consumer processing model, which is the informational psychology channel that we can tap into to help influence the behavior of our target audience or our target customer client. However you express that. Now we went over the, the, uh, the sort of feelings version and the emotions we can use in that previous video. But what if your product is more informational and a good example of that would be buying a new air conditioning system. So we actually have many clients that are HVAC companies here at our agency that we help market for. Now. It is true that if you're hot in your house in Arizona and you need to buy a new air conditioner, there's a lot of emotion around it because you're hot and uncomfortable and you're pissed off. That gets you started.

But the actual decision about what to buy is really going to be based on the figure facts and information around that unit. Things like how long is the warranty? What are the costs? What's the sea rating, or how efficient is it? What are my operating costs? Right? So the, the decision is really gonna be almost like stacking those numbers against, you know, other choices, numbers, and which one has the best numbers. Well, that's the one they're gonna buy, right? So it's almost a completely informational decision on that type of product. So you gotta ask yourself, watching this video and having this chat with me here, what is your product or service? Where does it kind of fall, you know, between those two worlds and what's gonna be your best psychology channel to tap into, to be an effective seller and grow your business. So use this thinking approach, this, this cognitive con, you know, this consumer processing model, this cognitive model, if you really feel like highlighting features and benefits, and the information about your product is, you know, gives you the edge in the market and that people shop your type of product or service based on those facts and figures.

And potentially the other thing to consider is that a lot of times, those types of decisions are serious decisions in our lives, right? So a big purchase like air conditioning unit, definitely a big one. The other one might be like supplements or medication, lot of stuff with that, that we're gonna study before we decide to take something into our body, which strangely is totally the opposite of if you're a restaurant and you know, you're gonna be selling much more based on emotion, right? The emotions around having a good time with family and friends, dining out the, uh, maybe status that goes with it. It's fine dining, the, you know, the, the way the food looks and how that appeals to the eye and, and you know, what, what that's all gonna be about. So there's a lot more emotion in, in restaurant marketing than there is facts and figures.

Now, the last thing I'm gonna say about this before we wrap up this video is that you may be in the middle and both things may benefit you to tap into what I'm hoping to do on this, you know, video here is to get you tuned into the fact that these are the two areas that you can trigger and work with from a psychology standpoint, with your target audience. And you need to understand that as you craft your advertising and messaging for whatever the campaign is, right? So you may be one side or the other, or you may be in the middle. I think I said in the last video, and if I didn't, I'll say it again here, a great example of a product that's in the middle is a car it's definitely a big, serious purchase. So a lot of that decision making is gonna be based on the financing, how much it costs is.

Can I, you know, handle the payment perhaps, and you know, features like, does it get good gas mileage, especially now with field prices being up, right. So there's definitely a lot of that. But on the other hand, there's a ton of emotion that goes into buying a car, because it's almost like putting on clothes. Like you gotta be in it. You're gonna wear that thing. You're gonna show up in it. And there's an emotional component to buying a car. It needs to look beautiful. It needs to feel good in the driveway. You, you know, everybody wants to be proud of that. Uh, you know, possession, if you will. And so there, there's a whole piece of emotion with that. If you look at automobile marketing, it's a great example of blended psychology. They're very good at tapping into the emotions like excitement and all of that that goes around along with owning a new car.

And they're also good at highlighting the terms of the deal, the features and the benefits versus their competitors, right? So car automobile marketing is very much a blended thing and your product or service may be like that. So look at great examples out there. Be conscious when you're seeing ads, Hey, what is this tapping into? What type of psychology is this tapping into for me right now? And then start to apply that to your own marketing. And I know it's gonna help you get more inbound responses from your outbound messaging, which is what we're all here for. Go ahead and like this video, I know it's gonna unlock some stuff for some many folks out there, subscribe to the channel, cuz we're gonna do more on this. I got one more piece on this one and I don't want you to miss it.

What Psychology to Use in Your Ads - Part 1

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 10:39:53 GMT

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On today's video, we're going to get into one of my favorite topics and something I need to fix for our clients., and that is psychology around our advertising requests.

So you guys know, we run a lot of ads and we do a lot of advertising campaigns for our clients. What we're have done a, I would say mediocre and soon to be much better job is in taking those projects with a degree of education so that the clients can understand how they're selling on this video today. If you're struggling with the psychology and you really wanna understand the backbone of the two different models or channels that we can message inside of as we develop our ads, and this would be include any outbound messaging emails and so forth, then you don't wanna stick on this video, cuz we're gonna go through the two main models and it's gonna really crystallize kind of where to start with everything.

So I promised that today we're gonna get into one of my favorite topics and it should be one of your favorite topics. If you are working on growing your business, marketing, advertising, promoting, or anything like that. Because in order to do that successfully, you need to understand buying psychology and decision making psychology now as marketers or anyone that wants to grow and uh, their business and enhance their revenue, get more customers. We gotta understand the triggers and kind of what we're working with here, right? We can't just wing it and you know, be hopeful. We gotta try to be as methodical as possible. And that means we need to understand what the triggers are. Now, there are two basic sides to the game that we play. One is cognitive. Let me get the, the full like sciencey name here. Okay. Cause it's science consumer processing model and you have the hidden hedonic experiential model.

Now one is feelings based and other one is information based. Now, when I say it out loud like that, it seems super simple and easy to understand and you guys can immediately get that. Advertising really does kind of fall into one of those two pools. When we think about the outbound messaging that we're exposed to every single day. And remember marketing is just simply that outbound messaging designed to elicit an inbound response and how the message go out. There's a thousand flavors. What the inbound response is. There's also a thousand flavors of that depending on your campaign and what your objectives are. But in between those two things, we're either in this feelings model or we're in an informational model. So now's the time to ask yourself about your product or service is your product or service more suited to be sold informationally. And that means, is it a facts and figures and features and statistical type of decision that people use to decide whether to buy what you're offering or do people that buy what you're offering buy more based on emotion?

Like do you sell fun and good times, um, or like something that's beautiful or you know, anything like that, that's gonna be emotional based. Then that's going to be an emotional selling channel that we need to tap into. So on this video today, now that we understand that there's two worlds here that we're sort of starting with and we need to identify our own product or services and kind of where they see fit. I will tell you that there are many that are blended cars are a great example of a blended purchasing decision by most consumers, right? Cars, illit can elicit an emotional response for people. They are beautiful. They are sexy fast. We see ourselves in them, there's status associated with them. That's a whole emotional thing in itself, right? But there's also whole other part of buying a car, which are like the features and benefits.

Like I live in Arizona and I frankly won't own a car that doesn't have air conditioned seats. I just, I'm not gonna do it because once you have that feature in this hot place that I live, I don't wanna live without that. So as much as I might be emotionally triggered to buy a certain car, if it doesn't have that feature, it's probably gonna get crossed off the list for me personally. Now you can see that that's a blend. So think about your product or service right now. Is it left side, right? Like that cognitive side or right side, that emotional experiential type of product or service, or is it a blend like a car, which frankly marketing for cars pulls from both sides all the time. And you'll see that. And I love using really big dollar campaigns as examples for us, small, medium sized businesses to look at and dissect so that we can do a better job with our own stuff, right.

Reverse engineering. So let's just dive into the emotional side of the conversation and identify the four emotions that you can work with in your advertising. So if you're gonna create advertising and it could be, like I said, a thousand flavors could be an email campaign, could be di you know, digital display ads could be video. Advertising could even be PPC depending on, you know, the copy that you write for your PPC ads, uh, could be in store, print, newspaper, anything like that, right? So there's a lot of places to syndicate your messaging. Those are all syndication channels, effectively. They have little different formatting requirements and all those things that we talk about on other videos, but they still have to reside in this basic psychology. So here are the four emotions that you can use to persuade. If you're going to use the emotional channel, the first one is humor, awesome for member memorable, make Ugh, making things memorable, right?

Like the dollar shave club ad was all humor. And we all remember it and they killed it on the ad. And they actually started a whole sort of category of advertising by using humor to create viral ads that people would share even without the advertiser having to pay, because they were so funny. And we all remember that because of the humor. The next one is fear. That's a, you know, common use by markers. We, it here all the time. That's also expressed as, you know, addressing and or messaging into your buyer's pain points. And of course, using that pain point to trigger them to want the solution that you offer, which is probably your product or service, then excitement is the third one. So if you have a product or service that has a lot of excitement around it, and this fits well with my car example, right?

Like sports cars and so forth, kind of give us that adrenaline rush, or we can see ourselves in that space, right? So that kind of emotion is triggered with certain car ads. And if your product or service feels like that might work, then that's definitely one that you can use. And the last one is sadness, right? And those are strong emotion to use in your messaging and marketing. I'm careful with fear and sadness. Um, and I'll say this, you know, as a caution that you can use their very powerful, but you also don't want to get overly negative in your ads because people aren't actually looking for negatives in their lives. They're looking for positive outcomes. So remember you're selling positive outcomes, but you can use sadness and fear as triggers to move people towards those outcomes. So these is a little bit of subtlety with that, with those two there, because you don't want your stuff to become office dark and negative, cuz that's not gonna work. Okay. So those are your four stick with me because on the next one we're gonna follow up or we're gonna get over into the cognitive stuff a little bit more and talk more about the blending, subscribe to the channel. So you don't miss it like this video and start your advertising by, by having the whole thing rooted in the psychological path that you're gonna use to elicit the inbound responses that you want.

How to Stop Procrastinating

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 09:37:15 GMT

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Are you having trouble getting something done that you're just procrastinating about? We all do that. Sometimes myself included and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and I got two kids and I've seen them procrastinate to get their chores done. On today's talk, I'm gonna give you some hacks that you can do two day to start cutting through the things that you're avoiding and getting some progress done. So let's go over it.

We all have things that we avoid doing or that we don't like doing. And we tend to procrastinate on those tasks. They could be fitness, life stuff, relationship stuff, or, you know, business stuff, and specifically marketing things. Right. But let's just bake it, break it down to like some of the common things that everybody procrastinates about. So we can frame it up and talk about how to get through those, those things really much more easily with, you know, less resistance and more effectiveness. So let's start with laundry. It's kind of a funny one, but everybody I talk to seems to hate doing laundry and everybody seems to, um, you know, procrastinate doing it, but more than anything, it backs up. And the reason I use that example on this video today is because laundry is so visual, right? So it's like a problem that starts small.

And the more you procrastinate, the bigger, the problem literally gets like the pile of laundry just starts growing, growing the hamper fills up, you know, and then suddenly it's SA the entire Saturday morning to catch up with it. And here's the thing about laundry. Now, most people don't like doing it. Some of us, you know, certainly probably enjoy it, cuz it's a break from other things, but the deal with it is, and this is where I see my kids and many others struggle with it is that in our minds we actually make the task into a bigger thing than it really is. And here's what I do to reprogram my brand remap my perspective because a lot of times procrastination isn't necessarily real. Like the task is not really that much of a pain in the butt and it's really not that hard. And it's probably also not outside of our capabilities to do it.

Like we all can fold laundry and we all can push the buttons on the washing machine. And you know, I mean, those are we're it's within our, you know, ability to get it done, but we still procrastinate. So one of the things I do is on tasks like that, that I know I have to get done. The first thing I like to do is time myself on the task and that resets my perspective about what it really is, what really is involved in getting it done. So on laundry, I've found that I can fold a medium size load of laundry in about seven to 10 minutes. So that means that I know that as a fact, because I time myself, I did it myself. It's an indisputable number for me. So now my view of that is while folding a little laundry is a seven minute problem and it changes the way you look at it because if you build up these tasks that you're avoiding into gigantic problems, like in your mind, you're like, oh, it's gonna take an hour to do the laundry.

And I just don't have an hour and I've gotta do this. That, and it's really just false. You know, it's just fake news because it doesn't take an hour to do laundry. The machine actually does the laundry. You know, it cleans it for you. And then your part of it is like fold it and maybe put it away. All of which is like a 10 minute deal. So it's not real to think that it's a gigantic thing to do one load of laundry. It's not an hour, it's not an hour and a half. It's not gonna take up your whole evening. It's 10 minutes. You just have to show up when the buzzer goes off, right? It's not a big deal, but you don't know that. And your perspective is warped if you don't time yourself. So my first piece of advice is UN repetitive tasks in your life that you tend to avoid could be laundry, could be mowing.

The lawn, could be, you know, anything time yourself and actually determine what the real impact is. Not the imagined dramatic impact that you're probably building it up to be. Now here's the second thing I like to do on stuff like that. And reason I use the example of laundry is it builds up, right? Well, lots of things build up. If we procrastinate, right projects at work, relationship issues, our fitness gets worse and worse every day that we don't do something with our bodies, right? Things build up that we ignore. And there's just, that's just, I guess, the nature of the universe. So one of the best things to do with things that build up into bigger problems is start biting at them regularly so that they don't build up. Right? And then the problem can't get big, which is, you know, it's kind of an interesting deal.

It's like the bigger the problem gets, the more likely we are to ignore it. The bigger the problem gets, the more likely we are to ignore it. So that the, the next suggestion I have, and this is what I do is kind of cut everything real early so that it don't start to build up. So that folding, the laundry is a really small task. So here's what I do. I say laundry specifically, and this is a metaphor for many things is maybe a daily or every other day thing. So those of you out there that are deferring stuff to like, I'm gonna do laundry on Friday, I'm gonna do laundry on Saturday. Don't because by that time it's a gigantic thing and it may take an hour cuz you got three or four loads and each one is 10 minutes and that's 30, 40 F 45 minutes and you gotta put it away.

So maybe then it is an hour and it's, and it's kind of built up into a bigger thing. But if you just do a load, like a small load or a medium load, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while you're cooking dinner, folding, it is five minutes putting it to back in the drawer as you, you know, finish your evening is another two minutes and then Saturday rolls around and there is no laundry because it, it didn't build up until a Saturday morning thing. So biting it stuff regularly that has a tendency to build up is a much better hack for that. It should just incorporate that into the daily or every other day type routine. That's how fitness works, right? You don't not work out for a year and then go to the gym for 24 hours and make up for months of no exercise. That's like totally insane.

We all know that doesn't work. Right? But that also doesn't work in other areas of our life to continue to like keep control of something, whether it's your physical fitness or your laundry or other things you're procrastinating about regular consistency always went. And that's the thing I'm always saying about marketing also. That's kind of why this conversation ties back, not procrastinating to promote your business is a huge part of running your business, waiting a month to promote your business waiting a month, to build that website waiting a month to launch that advertising campaign waiting two weeks to think about the right email to send is time wasted and therefore money wasted being regular and being consistent and jumping on things right away and doing it as like part of a little routine, five minutes, a day, 10 minutes a day for laundry an hour a day to promote my business.

At the end of the week, you've invested five hours in marketing your business. Your laundry is done and you can enjoy your weekend. Right? So break things down, put 'em into your schedule every day, time yourself on the tasks that you avoid and see how well you do, because I know you're gonna be surprised. Go ahead and like this video, take these suggestions and do me the humor of trying what I said. And I think you'll be surprised. Go ahead and subscribe because I'd love to see you on the next video as well. And I hope you crush it out there.

How to Get New Customers from Your Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 16:43:51 GMT

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On today's video, I'm gonna cover one of my favorite marketing strategies. It's a huge cornerstone piece of propping up your business and starting to get more traffic, more new customers, and that's reputation marketing. It's not something a lot of people talk about, but we're gonna go with over it today. You may never even heard those two terms, but I'm gonna tell you exactly what my favorite strategy is and how you can start doing that for your business right away.

I want to cover something that's really important, and for me is part of our triad of marketing campaigns that we do for most of our clients. And that is reputation marketing. So it's not something that you hear often because you hear reputation management, which is, you know, part of the puzzle. But reputation management is looking at reviews, answering negative reviews, being conscientious of all of your directories and all the stuff that we've talked about that happens over at rep up, which is the software platform that we use to handle all of that back office stuff and get more reviews. Well, reputation marketing is how do you leverage the good reviews that you do have to grow and get more customers? So my view of that is it's not okay to sit there and be passive about it, right? It's not okay to say, oh, I hope some people see these reviews.

No, you can take those and remarket them, which means send a key and push them out. So that even more eyeballs, more potential new customers, see how great others are thinking about your risk, right? How great the reviews are and what the feedback is on your business. Cause here's the deal we all know. And I don't even need to argue this. It's much more important about what other people say about your business than it is than what we say about our business. Right? We can make all these fancy ads and cool stuff and say that we're great, but it never really holds as much water as what other people say. So that's true for a product, a local business, an eCommerce business. It does not matter. We need to have that third party at testation about our product, our services, how we do, how we handle our customers and so forth.

But we also want to take that and get as much horsepower as we possibly can out of it and get more eyeballs on it and make sure that the folks that are visiting our website are getting exposed to that social proof as much as possible. Because one of the number one objections they have in their mind is am I the only one that thinks this looks cool? Am I crazy? Am I alone? Like, who else has bought this? Who else has done this? Who else has gone there? Who else has eaten there? Or, you know what, you know, how do I know it's gonna be good? So that's, that's one of the number one objections that all buyers that we all have in our mind is we don't want to be the only ones to try something. That's usually a pretty risky situation and folks don't like to necessarily do that.

So the best thing that I like to do is cherry pick some cool reviews. What I call little sound bites, you know, or blurbs and extract those out. And we turn those into display ads. Now that's tactic, number one, you can't just run that like super aggressively, but we like to feather those in on the display ad timeline and they work really great. And what they do is they continually rotate into the advertising campaign and show that social proof, right? A lot more in terms of impressions than what the person's gonna get. If they go over to maps or Facebook and actually start reading reviews. I mean, people do do that, but we wanna, we wanna become active with that and take as much advantage of that social proof as we can. Now, the next thing I like to do is make sure that we have those good reviews and social proof in the website environment.

Now the best version of that and rep up does this very well is to stream live reviews. And some of you may have seen those. If you're looking for a tool to do that on your website, this is awesome. There are others, but, um, I can't say enough about bringing in live streaming reviews onto your mobile and desktop website. If you can't do that, the next best thing to do is to get some reviews on a page segment and put them adjacent to your calls to action, right? So if you're booked, now put some reviews there so that the person knows they're not the only person that have booked. If it's by now, put some reviews about your product there, if it to make a reservation. Now put some reviews there about your re restaurant or what other reservations are for so that when the person sees that action item, they immediately can connect all these other people, took that action and are happy, right?

So you see how that psychological connection happens. I'm about to take this action. Here's all the other people that are fixed action. It's almost like you're setting up a sort of virtual line of happy people and like, look at all the other happy people I'm here with, with everybody else. And everybody, you know, had a good experience. So I'm, I'm gonna have a good experience too click. Okay. So that's the, that's the virtual psychology framework that's going on by doing that. So those two things are really important, either getting into stream onto your site, which is great. You'll need some software platform like rep up to do that. Or if not, you can cherry pick some and do some page building and set something up nice and put those around your CTAs, your calls to action on your site and help fortify that psychological connection we just discussed.

So go out and do those two things. Make sure that you're getting as much firepower out of your reviews and stop just managing something, right? Here's the old say, I'm gonna leave this video right here. We're at six minutes outta these video, you don't make money managing you make money marketing, okay? So you can manage your reputation all day long. It's not gonna help you grow your business necessarily. You gotta turn that around and start marketing that reputation through display ADSS on your website and pretty much everywhere else you can, including on print and some other places. So where you can find opportunities to do that. Do it, go ahead and subscribe like the video. At least for me, I know this is good information and it'll help you out with your business and your next campaign. If you're struggling, do this as your next campaign, start marketing your reviews. I promise you it'll help. I'll see you on the next one.

What Jobs Should You Hire People For

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 12:47:20 GMT

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I'm gonna cover one of the most challenging nerve-racking decisions that business owners must make, and that's who to hire for what tasks. What tasks can you do in your business vs what tasks should you absolutely not be doing in your business. I'm gonna explain the test for it and how to solve it.

So one of the toughest things to decide as a business owner, especially if you're a small and sometimes even medium size business owner is, you know, what to outsource and how much should you personally be personally be doing? And a lot of owners, especially when they start small, got their hands on a lot of small stuff and really struggle to delegate. And I'm gonna give you one simple question to ask that pretty much solves the confusion about what you should be diving into and doing. And let me tell you first that I sympathize and understand how hard it is to give up control. I've had a lot of great conversations with very successful multimillion dollar business owners over the years. And it's been a privilege to learn and absorb as much as I can from those folks about their decision making process.

And one of the things I constantly hear is that it takes an incredible amount of extended trust. And that is something that many people struggle with, but that business owners need to overcome. And they need to ask themself this one simple question, are you doing a job in your business that no one else would hire you for? Yeah, that's a reality check. If you are doing a job in your business that no one else would pay you to do because you're either not qualified, don't get great results. Aren't consistent, don't have passion for it or whatever. Then why would you hire yourself to do that job in your business? When your business is the most important business in the world to you, it defies logic. And the reason that you need to ask that question is to cut through the emotional barriers around trust control.

And frankly, just some bad habits. One of the struggles is to learn to delegate, but you won't know what to delegate until you start asking that very difficult focus question. What would someone else pay you to do? And if you're a leader in your business and you're the owner, hopefully someone else would pay you to create vision and strategy and product mix and storefronts and whatever the big brush strokes are that make your business successful. And they would also pay you to come up with systems of cross management and delegation and team building and leadership building. That's the role of a business owner? The role of a business owner is not down into small things that no one else would hire them for. So after watching this video, take that question, write down the tasks that you're doing weekly for your business and ask yourself, would anyone else pay me to do these tasks?

And if the answer is no, do not hire yourself because you are not only wasting your time and your gifts, which is a shame. You are also handicapping and undermining the success of your own business, which is the exact opposite of your goals and intentions. So get straight with all of that, like this video, cuz frankly, this is a strong talk that we all need to hear from time to time and go ahead and subscribe. So you don't miss me on the next one. Make the tough choices. You'll thank me later.

How to Achieve Congruent Outbound Messaging

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 15:01:10 GMT

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I want to talk to you about one of the biggest problems that we all face today, marketing our business, and that is congruency across all of these channels. There's so many choices and it's hard to get everything out at the same time and get the timing, right. So I'm gonna tell you how we do it, and hopefully that's gonna help you. So stick with me.

We all know there are dozens, if not more channels that your customers are interacting with your business on, in just social media, you got Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, and maybe others, YouTube, you know, potentially could be categorized that way as well. And that's just one basket. Then you've got your website, then you've got emails, right? And then you've got paid advertising, video advertising, display, advertising, and PPC, and all the other stuff that we talk about on this channel. So you got a whole menu of things to wrestle with where we see the biggest failures is, well, frankly, a lot of business owners get pretty myopic on social media because it's in their hand all day. And they seem to think that, you know, the black hole of a whole of getting involved with that is kind of where all the action is.

And a lot of the other stuff is sort of left to atrophy specifically. And my biggest call out on that is email marketing, which is still by the way, guys, the number one way to engage with your customers. And in my view, and my experience daily here probably the most ignored at the same time, which is a shame. So flip that script, if you're ignoring your email list, get back to it. I promise you, you can pull some money out of that list, uh, if you focus on it, but let's talk about why we struggle with getting it all to work. And here's what I see. I see it. And visually let's think about it this way. They're all kind of laid out laterally like in the line and as marketers and mostly business owners, we sort of gravitate where we're comfortable to. That's normal, that's normal human behavior, and we start there and then we take whatever that effort is that campaign effort.

And we try to replicate it across. We go, oh, we post that on social media, somebody get it up on the website. Oh, Hey. And somebody try to send that by email. And can we put that on the YouTube channel as well? So it's like an and, and, and, and process laterally. And it just doesn't work that way. Not only does it screw up all the timing, but the messages are not refined for the channel audience preferences. So things are gonna look different on TikTok than they do on email. They're gonna look different on your company website than they are on Facebook, right? So everything needs to be tailored to the platform that it's on. When you start in one area and you try to pull it across, it almost guarantees not only a timing failure, which is one of the biggest mess up in getting your marketing out, but also in a congruency failure, meaning that it just doesn't look right going across that way.

So the antidote, the answer to this problem that we see so many people struggling with and you might be struggling with right now is to actually start off at developing the campaign as a promotion or concept. It could be awareness could be a direct offer, doesn't really matter, but develop the campaign objectives, attributes, and collateral. Like, what is the copy? What is the imagery? What's the graphics? And you know, that kind of thing. What's the look. And what's the point of the damn thing. Like what are we trying to achieve with this campaign? And really define that stuff, then take that core, build out and apply it down and set your timing straight so that it all rolls out appropriately at the same time. Right? And, and you should be able to do that. If you start high and then go down to all these different platforms, then you can make the perfect TikTok, the perfect Facebook post, the perfect website update and craft a really great email that can all fire at the same time. So don't start pulling left and right, and trying to go back and forth across the line, work from the top down. And I promise you, you're gonna have a lot more success. Go ahead and like this video and subscribe, and we'll see on the next one and go out there and kill it.

How to Use Copy that Hooks Visitors

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 11:46:04 GMT

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Today we're gonna unpack some quick copywriting tricks that you can take right after this video, go to your website and make some important changes to help conversions and engagement on your calls to action and on your website pages, content, headings, and titles. So stick with me and I'm gonna share what I know.

I wanna share with you guys some quick rules about copywriting, that we are fixing almost every day for our clients. It's great to start and get draft content down on a webpage or get your title sort of, you know, outlined if you will, but then you need to go back and you need to tune these areas of your website. Especially if you have sales pages or landing pages, and you have calls to action. So we'll use some simple examples. Most websites will have some place where people could maybe sign up or get on an email list or something. And this is a, a legacy sort of activity that's been on websites for, I don't know, since the beginning of websites, people have wanted to get email addresses. I think so. I see this all the time on websites and the issue now is, you know, people don't want to sign up and just give their email away.

I think we all know that I certainly don't just put my email into any old website anymore because you're just gonna get a ton of spam and we're all experiencing that. But as website owners, we definitely want to grow our email list, right? So we're gonna use this example of one way to audit that in context of what we're talking about here. The first thing you've got to do is make sure that the copywriting around your call to action segments in your site, your buttons, and so forth, they need to be in active tent. They cannot be passive. Okay. It can't be like passively written. So a good example of that is you might see on the, like that email sign in button submit, uh, my request or subscribe. Subscribe is a great example of, of a button that's been used for a hell long time might even be on your website right now.

It's a passive word, subscribe. You don't want passive stuff on your website. You want to go into the active tent. So you're gonna take that button and you're gonna change it from subscribe to get on the list or get the thing that they're gonna get by signing up, which should be something cool, frankly. So, you know, you wanna make that active, get the thing, get signed up, reserve my seat, or, um, you know, reserve my space in the web is right. Something that is active. That is also, and this is the second big tip that is in the first person or personal to that, to the person that's using the page, right? What are they gonna get? And how would their, and this is the way to test this. What would their mind be saying as they were taking that action? Because that's what you want to trigger from a psychology standpoint in their mind, their thinking get signed up for the webinar.

So I wanna are, so why not just put that on the button instead of some passive stuff, like, um, submit your webinar request or something like, that's just a bunch of hokey put what's in their mind on the button. So the button and their mind is working together. Okay. So let's just quickly review. We're gonna put things in the active tense. We're gonna put things in first person like POV language, right? Point of view language, what is in their mind needs to be in the headings and the calls to action on your page and this especially important when it relates to when somebody lands on a landing page, why are they there? And you wanna state that ex exactly what you do, but also in that active sense, in an active tense, excuse me. So let's say you're like a car washing company, right? That, that active headline might be, get your car cleaner than it's ever been.

It's like hyper relevant. It's exactly what they're going to get. It's all an action statement, right? So this is the way that we want our copywriting on the website. So go ahead, take these couple of tips, go to your site right now and go through and pull off anything that is passive or in some vague, like third person, like people, uh, people love to get their car clean. Who are these people, right? That would be the, the bad version of what we just use it. Who are these people? It's not about those people or third person it's about your website and the one visitor. That's looking at it for the split second. And what can you connect with them mentally by getting your copy tuned up. So go ahead and tweak that stuff, get it sizzling, hot working for you. And I promise your site's gonna do better. You got better engagement and you'll get more conversions.

How to Domintate Your Market With 1 Simple Task

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:58:18 GMT

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We're gonna talk about the one thing you need to be doing to start dominating your market. If you're a local business owner, you have a business that's in a regular store you're not gonna wanna miss this.

If you have a regular business in a location like in your town or another town, brick and mortar, regular stuff. So you might sell, you know, wheres, if you will, things, or you might provide a service like a medical office or tax services or something like that. But either way, if you have a physical address and a physical location, there's one thing that absolutely just cannot give up on that. If you make it a priority, we'll get you into a position of market dominance. And the one thing that I tell all my clients and that is so important is to continue to build good reviews around your business. And I can't say enough about it. I've done a lot of videos about it, but if there's one thing, if, if you've been around, you know, for 5, 6, 7 years, and this is especially true in businesses where you have, you know, corporate competition, right?

So if you have a cafe and you're a breakfast place, and then you're fighting with, you know, Denny user, some other chain like that, you really can use reviews to ward off corporate competition in, in such a powerful way. And it's so important. So I always like to start there with almost every project that we do, that you know, where we're gonna uplift and start helping a business grow. We almost always start right there with reputation because here's the thing. If it's bad, if there's a problem, if it's not working or, and it may not be bad, but it may just be gap to the market. So it could be good, but a huge gap to the market. Then what do you, you can do all these other things, paid advertising, all this fancy stuff and Instagram reels and cool web pages and landing pages and videos and all the other things we talk about on this channel.

But at the end of the day, you may get a bunch of traffic in the first thing a visitor's gonna do is go look at the reviews and why aren't you 300 reviews behind the next competitor? Or why are your reviews only a 4.0 and your competitors? A 4.4, 4.5. Why? You know, so all these things that you can do that are so fun to do in digital marketing can just be undercut by that. That's why that's the number one place to start. And it's the number one place to finish, right? So you start there, but you don't give up. You keep going, you keep going, you keep going, you make it a prerogative and a par priority every single day that you're serving your customers. And how do you do that while you do that for one, by figuring out a great way to, you know, get reviews and get feedback from your customers.

We use repup.io for all of our projects. It's awesome. There's a lot of systems out there that will help you do that, but you need to start getting the reviews in and controlling the narrative about your business and growing that profile because that is a business asset. And if you ever sell your business, one of the first things a buyer's going look at is that business is public reputation. So go ahead and start building that to word off competition, to strengthen your market dominance and to position your business as highly valuable in the event that you may sell, or you may need, you want investors or some other financial transaction everybody's gonna pivot and look back at that stuff. So important. Go ahead and smash the like button for me today.

How to Solve Your Customers Problem in 2 Clicks

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 13:29:26 GMT

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Today I'm gonna talk to you about the most important thing that your website needs to do for you and how it relates to your advertising, and how you're getting traffic. That's so important. So stick with me, you're gonna love this.

The most important thing, I'll just start right out at the top of this video. So you just watch this part. If you want bag the rest or listen to the rest, and it's not gonna be long promise you that, because this is a short to the point, absolutely mission critical concept that you must address on your website. You have got to solve your visitors problems within two clicks. Yeah. You heard me, you got to solve your visitor's problem. Show them that you can solve their problem within two clicks of the mouse. And maybe even one, if you're a superstar, what this means is that when somebody lands on your sales page or somebody lands on your website, your homepage or whatever the heck it is, they're you better. And they better know you better do this. And they better know right away above the fold.

That means the part they can see without scrolling what they need to do to solve their problem right now. So if you're heating, cooling person, you are a restaurant person. You are a medical person, you are a local business person. Doesn't matter. They need to see right away how they can solve their problem. So if their car broke down or their car is broken and they go onto your automobile repair shop website, what do they need to do to sell the phone? They need to call you. They need to book an appointment. They need to contact you. Those are the three things I can think of and they need to see those buttons, boom, boom, boom, right there. And frankly, they need to see 'em on their phone. So when we're saying website these days, remember we're mostly saying phone and we're mostly saying on that phone screen right there, when it lands, those three options are right there.

And the other one that we commonly put on our client size is find us, right? A lot of people, you go to the website and it's just ding around scrolling, looking like, what's the address? This place I'll screw. I'm just gonna look it up on Google maps. And you kinda lost him and you lost your engagement and you failed as your website failed in that scenario. Like he said, oh, well, it's on maps. Yeah. But don't you want your website to actually help your customers? Shouldn't your website on mobile. Be awesome. Shouldn't it address the three or four things that people need to know right away about your business, which is typically find you call you set an appointment, buy contact, you book, whatever, right? It's, it's, it's never more than three or four things. So right now, after you watch this video, get on your phone, check your website, make sure that your type, your ideal customer can see right away on that landing, how to start solving their problem, which is the problem that you solve, which is why you're in business. When they can do that right away, then your website's starting to be a success. If you got issues with that and you gotta get 'em to scroll and they gotta look through a menu and they gotta read some stuff, it's a fail do better. I promise you - It's gonna help you and it's gonna get you more customers.

Benefits of Hiring a Brand Designer for Your Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 15:48:58 GMT

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Everybody that has a business, just like you, and just like me, needs to have great design and needs to have great branding on this video. I'm gonna talk to you about the key benefits of having a professional, do your branding and do your design work. So stick with me, it's really important stuff. And this is not a place where you wanna cheese out.

You got your company. You're making this investment could be your life savings. You're trying to build your brand, you know, or wanting that entrepreneurial life, wanting to control your own fate and your own income. Having your own brand is so important and how it looks and how that all the design that goes around that is so important. This is one area. And I even scolded a client last week, who is a doctor? Well, no BA well, no, uh, nurse practitioner, basically a doctor, you know, almost like doing really high end medical services. And she was at night making things on Canva for her practice. And I didn't know anything about it. And I said, she sent me. So I said, what's this stuff, oh, I did not came by. I said, you are way outta your lane trying to be a designer in the middle of all your other responsibilities, like keeping health records.

And I mean, a whole complicated bunch of stuff to, to do the work that she's actually trained to do. So don't fall into the trap and think that because there's all these kind of nifty little tools on your phone and everything else that you're gonna get away with amateur hour on doing design work for your brand. I cannot stress enough how much time, how much money and how important it is for you, me and everybody that wants to do anything significant business wise to have professional design work and treatment around your branding, your colors, your graphics, icons, font, work, layouts, flyers website. I don't care what it is. You may be on a tight budget, but getting the basics done, your colors, your logo, and your font treatments, where you can then at least have that foundation there and start building up, you know, and creating a consistent look is so important.

So don't fall into the trap and getting romance in the idea that you can wear 25 hats and you're gonna be good at all of them. This is an area that takes a ton of practice education. And frankly, in my experience, after doing this for almost a decade, there are some people that just have that artistic eye, and those are the best folks to engage, to help you with getting a great look for your business. So go out and make a decision for yourself to find a good person that you vibe well with to do that work for your business and most businesses and almost all our clients have regular design work. That must be done. They have ads, they have specials, they have promotions. It just never ends. And if you start down that road trying to do it yourself, it's going to eat you alive.

And you're gonna be having a lot of one o'clock 2:00 AM nights playing around on your phone or your computer or whatever. And it's just not where your energy needs to go. A professional will do it faster, better, and you'll get better long term results, because remember you're building something of value around your brand and in the long run, you're gonna get all that investment back because everything is gonna be looking awesome. And you're gonna feel great about it and your staff, employees, and everybody else, as you grow is gonna feel confident in the look and feel of your brand because it was done by a professional. So go ahead and knock. 'em dead out there like this video, find the right people to build your team, to support you. So you can stay in your lane, sharing your greatest gifts by providing and building jobs, helping people solve their problems and all the other cool stuff we talk about on this channel.

The Psychology Block Every Video Must Have

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 15:28:11 GMT

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I got another really good one today for you about putting together videos, either for your page or whatever, or even for reels or TikTok. You could probably use this anywhere. I'm confident in saying you could use this stuff anywhere, but especially on your home page or in video ads, which we love. So stick with me and I'm gonna give you two critical ingredients that you must have in your videos.

If you've subscribed to my channel and if you have watched some of my previous videos, I have shared with you guys, some of our story boarding that we use for video advertising and that stuff is super powerful. It goes back to the beginning of television, a <affirmative> advertising. I mean, this stuff's been around for a while. It's proven is bullet proof proven psychology. So today's video though. I wanna pull out of this storyboard segments that really can assemble almost any video, a with to critical pieces that you need to have in any video that you're putting together around your business. And that, like I say, you could use in, in a TikTok or real or little feed video or something you might be putting together right now. So here's the first one. The first one is you need to have a segment in your video that talks about an action.

The person must take to get the benefit of your product or service action benefit. So call us today and get all of your gutters cleaned off of your house. So it doesn't ruin your roof, right? Call today and preserve the roof on your house with clean gutters. I'm literally making this up on the fly. It's not scripted, but it's just like that action. Then benefit, take this action and get this benefit. You gotta have that in the video. And the next one is, and there's like the benefit, right? So action and benefit. But the next one is somewhere in your video, like at the end. And sometimes at the beginning. And sometimes I do that, like right now, say like this video for me, please. So that more people watch it. And YouTube sends out more of you. Like this video right now is gonna help somebody else maybe see it, and it's gonna help my channel get a little better.

So I appreciate that. That's a call to action, right? I'm asking you right now, hit the freaking like button for me. That's called a CTA in your video that you're making for your business right now, you must incorporate a CTA. Now sometimes. And depending on the length of the video, you might wanna put the CTA in the beginning and you'll see that on television commercial sometimes like right up in the beginning of the ad, they're gonna say, call us today to find out da, da, da, da, da. And then they will also bookend that at the end of the video, which is typically where we see it and where you definitely do not want to miss out on that. So you got your action benefit segment. You have to have that to tie the person, doing something with them, getting something of value that they need in their life.

The benefit is what they're looking for, right? They don't want a rotten roof. They want to preserve the value of their home. That's the benefit. Okay? That means that they will have less cost in the future, right? You remember already, that means stuff too. You can always use that action benefit. You're gonna marry those in your video. And then you're always going to powerfully have a good CTA called action in your videos. You can get those two things going. You can kind of screw around, around all around around that, but you don't wanna miss those two, right? So here's the last CTA subscribe to the channel. So you don't miss next video coming up the next couple days.

How to Get More Reviews This Week

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 12:25:56 GMT

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On this video, I'm gonna talk to you about how to get more reviews this week. So if your business is in need of more reviews, and there's a couple of reasons why you could have a negative review that's hanging at the top. We need to push that down or you just don't have enough and your competition have more, this phase is gonna help you out.

Everybody knows how important reviews are for your business. It doesn't matter if you're an e-commerce seller or if you have a local business with a physical location, or even if you provide local services like H V a C landscaping or anything like that, reviews are really critical to the success of your business. And in general, you know, when you look on Google maps, you wanna see kind of where you rank. And there's two ways to measure that. One is in just total review volume, which is important, and also in the actual, you know, rating wherever you're at and, you know, 4.3, 4.6, nice sweet spot to be there. Um, so you wanna work towards that, but if you are in the need of getting reviews and the number one problem that, you know, we hear, uh, from people coming to us, you know, in an emergency is they got a negative review or a couple of things that have hit and the way to get those down.

So they aren't reading as headlines is to obviously get some more people to post. Okay. So the answer to that, and, you know, the best way to do it is to get back to your email list, your customer list, and send out a nice message asking for those folks to give you some feedback. Now, we use the system rep up.io to do this, and it is awesome at making sure that all of our clients' customers get follow up emails and follow up SMS messages, asking for feedback that is actionable for the business owner, so that they can improve their service wherever, you know, they can and whatever the feedback sort of starts to indicate. But if you don't have a good system or you don't want to get, you know, set up and, and, uh, you know, kind of do a bigger project, and it's just kind of an emergency get to your customer email list, come up with a nice email, asking them to give feedback, folks that do give you feedback bounce th em another email, you know, as long as it's positive, of course, and send them a link to your maps listing and ask them, we would just be so happy if you could post this publicly. And we are glad that you're happy with our service. And we look forward to continuing to, you know, continue to serve you in the best way that we possibly can. So really you can solve this problem. We have done this, uh, by just simple email campaign, like I'm describing with many clients. And, you know, if you got a nice sized list, say 500 to maybe even a couple thousand emails for your business, you should be able to get a half a dozen to a couple, a dozen nice reviews coming in and then work with those people to get those posted online and immediately get a nice little run there to knock something down and, or get the numbers up if that's what you need.

And of course, revup.io is the system we use for all of our projects and is awesome. Does cool stuff like curbside check in and works great for restaurants and medical and service companies and, and all sorts of things like that. Very easy to configure. So that's how we solve it for our clients, but you can solve it simply by just sending out messages and asking people for feedback. I'll leave you with this one last thought. I don't recommend you start asking people in store or, you know, clients that you're working with or customers that you're working with on the spot. It gives, 'em an icky sort of vibe that, uh, puts 'em on the hot seat, sort of right there. And I, I don't feel that that's a great move. It also is something you really don't want to ask your staff to start doing, cuz then it puts them in that awkward, weird sort of pandering position. So I would just let the in-house interactions happen as they were, and look for your reviews in nice follow ups within 12 to 24 hours of the purchasing interaction. I hope this helps go ahead and slam the like button for me on this video.

How to Pick Brand Colors that Pop

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 31 May 2022 15:34:24 GMT

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Everybody wants to have a great set of brand colors and their brand to look amazing online - on a phone, on a laptop, on tablet. You want those colors to pop. So today I want to go over with the process that we kind of go through to figure out how to get great pop colors for our clients and our own projects and share that with you.

One thing I wanna say right off the bat, I'm not a designer, but I'm gonna share with you what I've learned about picking great colors for brands that we've done and stuff we've done here in house. So the first thing that I like to look at is what industry are we working in and what are the typical kind of branding pallets for in that industry? So let's give just an example, like if it's car stuff, lots of blacks, lots of reds, lots of grays, you know, primary colors like the yellows and things like that because those are associated with the automobile industry. So we kind of start with that vibe because we don't wanna come with something that, um, is hard for the consumer to understand when by and large they've been trained to sort of see things a certain way.

So that's my first warning is as much as it is an invitation to be creative, don't go so far off in the left field that you gotta spend a lot of time explaining your brand and how it fits when it just doesn't look like it fits. So think about as you're developing your brand, sending a consistent message that resonates in a way that's well understood with the market that you're trying to address. So for medical, there's a lot of blues, light blues, and so on and so forth. And typically that's associated with a high level of trust. There are, and I'm not even gonna begin to dive into this on this video, but you can find this stuff very easily online, a whole lot of psychological associations with different colors. And you can sort of research that first. But I think looking at the organic, you know, kind of what's out in the field is a good tell about where to start.

Then you've got to work hard to not just be an also ran and look like everybody else. So you gotta say, okay, this is the industry I'm in. It kind of has this vibe. Now, how can I differentiate myself a little bit with something that's a little bit special. So an example of that to go back to the automobile, you know, example we're using is we got a lot of blacks, a lot of reds, a lot of grays and yellows some primary colors, but you might be the brand that uses a little bit of purple in all that, and that still can fit in, but definitely can differentiate you. And so there's little places there where you can set yourself apart, but still, it all makes sense to the buyer and the person that's looking in at your branding.

Now, the other thing to consider online is that we have sort of needs that are on a website, whether mobile or desktop doesn't matter and we need to address those needs. And one of those is buttons and calls to actions, headers, and the way all of the colors fit together. We want our branding to pop, but we also want our calls to action to stand out on the page. So that means that once we establish those sort of base brand colors, which is typically two to three, then we gotta go. And this is how we often do it and look at the other side of the color wheel. So if you pull up a color wheel, you guys can see that look at the opposite side of the color wheel to find something that's gonna contrast. And that's probably gonna be where we're gonna find our buttons and the colors we're gonna use for our calls to action so that they literally lift off the page visually.

Right? So that's sort of the nice way to follow that process is to establish your base colors and then go look for your contrasting colors that you're gonna use as the ways to move eyes on the page, literally, to, to direct attention, right? Because that's what you need to be able to do on a webpage. And you need to have that in your toolbox, as you develop everything around your brand, this goes all the way down to even a simp, simple email message, right? So you have your branding at the top, your text, whatever background, if you're doing something fancy with the email, and then you want that button, whatever the action item on that messaging to pop in order to do that, you've got to find a contrasting color. That's gonna step off the page, step off the screen a little bit.

So that's the next thing to think about when we're done. We typically end up with around five colors to work with, and those colors are gonna give us everything we need to design all sorts. Everything from print, digital, web pages, landing pages, messaging, emails and, and all the things. And that gives you enough to move around and create borders and headers and logos and, and all the buttons and call to actions and header text, and cool layers. And it all comes together. So I like having five. That's my, that's my bag. And I try to push for that with our clients that may not fall into where you feel like you're gonna end up, but I think it's hard to be anywhere less than four with all the things that we just talked about on this video that you need to just to contemplate.

So go out there and read a little bit about color psychology. That's my suggestion, cuz that can help, but more importantly, look at your industry and what kind of that vibe is and start working off of that with your own creativity. And then the last piece is figure out how to get those contrasting colors into your brand palette so that you can get that messaging. And those calls to action that you need to have jump off the page, working in your favor so that customers know exactly where your actions are on all of the elements that you put together to help sell whatever it is that you sell. So hopefully this helped you a little bit today. I know it helped me. It's been a long process for me. Like I said, I'm not a designer and you may not be a designer either, but it doesn't take a lot to learn the basic sort of requirements, which is what we talked about today and find a designer to help you really nail down. I mean there's millions and millions of these colors to finalize and you gotta come up with a nice brand board and I can't say enough about having a professional on staff here. And if you're launching your business or giving your business a facelift, go find somebody that's qualified to do this. And if you can't reach out to us, subscribe to the channel, we'll see on the next one.

Video Advertising Formula for Dummies

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 27 May 2022 18:06:41 GMT

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Hello guys, in this video, I'm going to give you a formula we follow all the time to make great video ads that convert. So stick with me and I'm gonna share the secret sauce with you right here.

So we all know that video is the most powerful online content that we can produce for our businesses. There's not a lot of discussion around that. So we'll move on from that. And except the fact that if we really want to grow our business, we're gonna need to produce some video content. Now there's a couple of phases that we need to abide. We need to understand when we're creating video or any ad campaigns, right? So we have some collateral that is designed to attract our ideal customers. Then we also have media that is designed to help convert our ideal customers. And then we have media and selling tools that are designed to close our ideal customers. And then we have indoctrination media that is designed to strengthen that relationship. So those that's the path that every customer is going to follow.

They're gonna attract, convert close, and then we're gonna indoctrinate them. All right, today, we're gonna focus on that attraction piece, which is where many people struggle and video ads can be a powerful tool to attract more buyers to your product and service, and can also help screen off and get you the ideal people that you want for your business. So let's talk about the quick way to storyboard out cool, 15 and 32nd ads that you can put up on YouTube, or you can set them into, uh, video ad a advertisements on, uh, Instagram, Facebook, and all these other platforms that take video ads, which is pretty much everywhere, including Hulu now has self-service ads for probably a little bit bigger budgets, but you can actually get these types of ads to run on TV, which is phenomenal. So there are two types of video ads that we like to run that help attract buyers.

They're both somewhat offer ads. The second one I'm gonna give you is a little bit more of an awareness ad. So let's start with the first one. So this is a direct offer ad, and this is the format you're gonna follow for your storyboard. The storyboard has six segments. So get out your pen and write this down. The first segment, you're gonna ask a question, but you're gonna frame it up in a positive way, right? So not a negative. Then you are gonna make your offer in the second segment. So this is gonna be a discount. And typically the first one, we will run that discount and expresses as a percentage. The next segment, this is segment three. We're going to talk about that same discount, but we're gonna express it in the cash value. Like a, like a hard number value, like 109 $99 off.

Okay. We wanna do the percentage and the actual dollar figure that somebody could save. So, and you watch your language on this. You may say you, you can save up to, so don't make and guarantees, use that special language in there to kind of protect yourself. Then number four, you're going to state the action and benefit of getting this thing could be product could service doesn't matter. Click today, get more free time. Click today, enjoy a clean house. What, whatever the benefit of getting this thing is, and you really have to think hard on that because it's not often the thing that they buy, right? If I buy a lawnmower, the benefit is not owning the lawnmower. The benefit is a great looking lawn or the benefit might even be, and this is where we get into that. This means conversation. The benefit of a great landing lawn is this means your home will look the best on your street, click today and have the best looking home on your street.

That's the benefit. That's the meaning for the buyer, right? So remember to extend those out, you gotta work a little bit mentally on this stuff. And then number five, the fifth segment where we're gonna offer some social proof. Joe says he couldn't be more thrilled with how easy this lawnmower has made his life. Third party at testation so critical to this type of ad because direct offer, we want that conversion, social proof really needs to be there. So that was number five. And number six is that closing segment. What is the action they need to do? What's the call to action. The CTA click. Now call now, learn more, get more, fill out this form. That's up to you, but you gotta close with that CTA. Okay. Now the next one, the only moer on it is it's not really so much a direct offer. It can be, but we open with asking. So segment one is we're gonna ask, uh, statistical question. Do you know how many women drive to work every single day?

That person's like, I never really thought about that, but I'm a woman and I drive to work. How many other people are doing this? Right? Over 65% of women have to drive to work every day. Well, that's a lot of people. And then the third one is going to be this limited offer. During the month of July, all women that drive to work can get 25 cents off of gas by clicking on this app. There you go. So you see how that goes. That's 1, 2, 3. So it's as S state of fact at state, the state of fact around that statistic, and then you're gonna get into some sort of limited offer or an urgency type of segment in segment number three, then it's the, the last four, five and six are exactly the same action benefit, social proof, hard close. Those are your six segments for video advertising.

Go ahead and crush it out there. If you need help with video advertising, of course we could probably help you. I know we can, we've done so many, but you can do 'em too. And they are the most powerful media for your business. So get those video ads up and running. You can even use ads like this and, and storyboards like this on your website Fyin areas where you want to convert, or you're promoting certain offers and stuff on your pages.

Social Media Minimums for Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 22 May 2022 15:18:20 GMT

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In today's video, we're gonna talk about what the absolute bare minimum is that you can get away with on social media for a business. So if you are dreading, dealing with social media, or you're on overwhelmed with other stops, launching your business and try to get everything else going in the real world. And this video is gonna give you the minimums that you need to tackle as far as social media goes, stick with me.

Okay. So I gotta tell you guys, we get clients all the time. Their first year with social media, I was working with one today and it's just overwhelmed and they don't really want to be doing that all the time. Now on other videos on this channel, we've given you guys some suggestions about how to save time and still get great results. So you might wanna dig for those, take a look, we'll put some leaks down in the description for those videos, but at the end of the day, not everybody has all the time and resources that we would like, and you might wanna just know, like, what's the minimum that I can do Zach, and I'm gonna give it to you. So here's the deal. You've got to have your business appear that the lights are on. So that's the kind of like the starting point with this whole conversation, it can't seem like your business is like shaky and these elements haven't been taken care of.

So in the old days, this would be like getting a sign put on the building, but not turning the electricity on, it's like you got to follow through on some stuff in order to send the message that your business is open viable and more importantly gonna stay there or be there. Right? People don't wanna do business with businesses. They feel are kind of like not fully operating cuz why bother, just find somebody that is okay, so you don't wanna have things look that way. So from that as a starting point for the conversation, we need to turn the lights on minimally and depending on the type of business that you have, kind of depends on what platforms you're going to decide to turn accounts on for. But in general, my recommendation is you try to set up at least two, maybe three.

So that might be LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. I think that's a safe play. If you're not putting a lot of media out, don't mess around with the YouTube channel. It's just gonna again, be like a thing that gets set up, but nothing is there. So that's weird. So be careful with that. That's the one thing you don't want to do is turn stuff on and then not do anything with it, cuz it just looks like it got neglected or that something sloppy is going on in the background. So the things that you do turn on, this is my second point. You're gonna need to pay attention and participate a little bit on when it comes down to what do you have to actually do? Like what actions you gotta take. There's a few things you need to do set up the account properly and professionally.

So check all the setup, boxes, get everything on there. Your hours of operation, your business, the logo file, a header image. And like in the case of Facebook, they have that cool page header. You really need to get something there. That looks great. Right? And, and again, turn the lights on with your best foot forward. So the few that you're gonna do two or three, you're gonna set them up properly. Like don't say, oh, I'm gonna do 'em all. And then they all look like crap. That's not helping you do two or three do two. And when customers actually say, yeah, I'm on this platform and that platform, when they go there, it looks legit. Okay, fine. Fair enough. Not everybody. Everybody can sympathize that. Not every business is every single place. Alright. That's not the expectation, but the expectation is that where you are, you're actually really there.

So get the light turned on, do the setups properly, make the accounts done well professionally, all the little details, check it all off, get it all there and make sure that your information is consistent across each platform. You do not want to have messaging conflicts. And if you change something like your hours of operation on your Google business listing, then you better make sure that that is consistent everywhere else. Like on Facebook's hours of operations and other places where they allow that. So just put that on a list when one gets updated, the others get updated and it just has to be that way. You can't escape that cuz you do, you just can't have that out in the market. Get very upsetting for customers to see the wrong business hours they drive. And then like your closer say, oh I updated it, but not everywhere.

Right? It's just not cool. So you gotta take care of that stuff and then let's get onto like the posting thing. Like how much activity do you need to supply? I, I honestly think many businesses that want to be at the minimums can get away with, two posts a week, which is just not that big of a deal. It doesn't need to be at high velocity, two posts a week shows the lights are on, you've got something that shows every week you're doing something. I think that's where I would set the minimums for these days. But again, we're only saying do it on two platforms. So it's really not that much work. You're saying two posts or two platforms. They don't need to be unique on each one. You can duplicate them over.

And again, if you're looking to save time and not have to log in and manage a bunch of stuff, get a little scheduling system, you know, software set up and there's plenty of those online. I don't need to promote one here on this video, but get a scheduler that lets you just upload everything, do it for five minutes and walk away for the week. So this, this whole task that we're talking about about keeping this situation looking lively is maybe a 10 minute per week task. If you can just get your head around it, it does not need to be overwhelming and complicated. Now if you start getting a date engagement and followers and things, then yeah, you're gonna wanna do a little interaction with that, but you can do that on the fly. Like you do that with anybody. So it's again, not a huge time suck.

So those are the minimums that I suggest if you're, if you're stretched and you're out of bandwidth, follow what I said. And then when life changes circle back and you can do more or you can add in some professional campaigning to those social media accounts or hire somebody like us to help you get some real campaigns going on those channels, but do yourself a favor, get the lights turned on and like this video, cuz hopefully I just lowered your stress level and go ahead and subscribe. So we see you on the next one.

How to Onboard Customers Automatically

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 19 May 2022 11:29:39 GMT

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People don't wanna waste time getting involved with your business. Once they've made the decision to buy from you, making it seamless and easy for them to interact and get set up with you is a huge value piece. So stick with me, and I'm gonna tell you the steps about how to get that started.

All right, onboarding your customers automatically seems like almost like a while technical dream, but it's very real. And lots of businesses are doing that today and you can do it too. What it means for your customers is that they can get engaged and connected with you so that you are, you don't have like what I would call loose, closings, where you close somebody and then they're not fully onboarded. And then they kind of drift away, right? So that when the, they make the decision to buy from you or to do business with you, that's when you wanna strike with your onboarding process. So the first thing to do is deconstruct exactly what onboarding for your business means. Now that can mean anything. If they're an E, if you're an e-commerce store, it might be sending a welcome series of emails, showing them other products. They can get how to get discounts, how to be a subscriber or participate in your subscription program.

You may have all sorts of different things, but if you're a brick and mortar like service provider, you may have forms like a lot of the medical offices that we work with. They have forms and documents that need to be filled out. All of that stuff should be made super easy and be able to be done online so that your customers can get set up and check all that off. And then when they come to do business with you, or if they wanna buy from you again, or whatever, the ongoing transaction is, all that stuff is easy and done. I also suggest when you deconstruct that project, that, that process that you really break it down even more than you do it organically. A lot of times as business owners, we sort of organically take care of things, but when you want to automate something, you've gotta break it down and really look at what each critical step is, and then figure out how to create a tool around that.

And it may be a video, maybe a form, maybe a webpage, maybe something to read, maybe an email, a text message. There's lots of different ways to execute on these different steps. And each step may have a different executable to achieve the goals for that step, right? So sometimes it might be send a text to let them know that you sent an email and on the email, you might say, watch this video. And on this video, you might say below the video, please fill out this form. Now that we've explained everything to you, then once they fill out the form, they may be redirected to another page, right? So each one kind of bridges to the next one to the next one, to the next one, to get them fully onboarded. The other things to consider when you're analyzing that process is what can you add in there to standardize how well it's done that sometimes, as a human you, your staff, or whomever's involved made me missing.

So you can actually infill other high value pieces into that onboarding process that you weren't doing very well before, but could really enhance your business. An example of that would be cross cells. So if somebody onboards your company for say one service like in a dental example would be great. They onboard for teeth whitening. So they wanna become a patient to just get their teeth whitened. Well, of course you offer all these other dental care services. Now's your opportunity. Once you get them in for this teeth whitening service, to then start telling them about why it's so great to be an actual patient for regular dental procedures, cleaning fillings, and all the normal stuff, right? So you have a chance for a cross sell there to expand the value of that customer. And you can do that during onboarding with what I call a little bit of more indoctrination so that they can learn more about your business and services.

So that's something that a lot of times in that example, staff and even busy owners might not be doing a great job with, but when you automate it, you can be assured that every single new customer of yours will get a great experience and they will have a chance to learn about every single thing that you offer. If you build it into that process and they're getting the messaging and videos and all the other stuff that we're talking about. So step one, break it down, step two, optimize and figure out what you could be doing better and infill that. And then step three, look at the whole thing through a marketing and sales lens and figure out how you can use that process to get more from the relationship from each one of your new customers. I know this is really important. We do it for a lot of clients. If you haven't got something like this going, I suggest you jump on it. And of course smash the like button on this video and subscribe. So you don't miss the next one.

Bad Design Can Kill You - Avoid These Disasters

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 17 May 2022 22:55:16 GMT

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Hey guys, lately, I have been running into and exposed to a ton of bad design, which is so sad in this day and age when, I mean, I guess it's still out there. In this video, I'm gonna go over some stuff that you definitely wanna avoid and that can really hurt you in promoting your business because they just don't work well. So if you want to understand exactly, you know, where bad design can show up in your business and, what that looks like, you know, kind of train your eye a little bit more, keep watching,

Okay, we all gotta do some design work around our business. We gotta have good brain. We gotta have a great logo. And today with social media and all the stuff that we're putting out, you know, it's just a constant flow around your business of little design issues that you need to pay attention to. Now there's a couple of things that we just cannot have happen for your business that are so important when it comes to design. And this is not a huge list, but this is stuff I'm running into this week's, which is why I decided to make this video. Illegible graphic design typically takes the form of weird text fonts and poorly positioned stuff. On top of photographic images. A lot of times we see this on social media sometimes even on a website and in print and other areas, and it can just be a full blown disaster.

It's hard for people to digest. You know, we've gone over on this channel, plenty of stuff like when you're doing headlines and you wanna get somebody, you know, and engage. One of the things, the rules you cannot violate is it's gotta be clear and that visually they need to be digesting this thing at a glance, not trying to like mentally unscramble, what the hell is going on. So be really careful with applying text over images. And, you know, some opacity can help with that, you know, actually editing the underlying image so that it's positioned correctly, you know, like subjects on the right text, on the left, something like that, right. To, to clean things up and make it clear. Um, but that's a, that's a, that's a danger zone for most amateur designers is trying to do text on images. So if you're gonna avoid it, avoid it.

And if you, you know, you just keep getting kind of dicey results, get somebody professional involved to help you do those types of pieces. Okay. Now the other one is like the sister of that problem, which is a bunch of janky fonts all over the place. So more than two fonts on a page starts to get weird. Um, you know, like just trying to be all, I don't know what with coming up with a bunch of font, selections and stuff, your brand should have its primary font as part of its branding, uh, typically shown and represented to some degree in the logo or tagline. And then that should carry through all of your marketing pieces. You should just have your font that you work with, and there's no reason to start getting creative and slapping three fonts on an ad or, or, or a social post or anything like that just starts looking, you know, it starts looking like kindergarten or something.

Okay. So watch out for that, be careful with fonts. They're the danger zone and professionals know that because fonts are so important as a professional designer, but folks that are, you know, just doing it, um, in the hobby level, if you will, or getting out of their lane, you know, their business owner, but they're gonna think they're gonna do this stuff. And, you know, they can just get into a thing where it just starts looking ugly basically, and also hard to read, which is even worse. Okay. And the last one is using any sort of imagery in your marketing that, you know, and this is like, I wanna qualify this statement because psychologically people are moved by avoiding pain. So we know that that that helps with conversions. But from an image standpoint, we really don't wanna have negative type images, uh, tied to our brand.

So you need to be careful with the images that you use around your branding. Now you can use a, a contrarian or provocative negative outcome image in advertising. You know, like some, somebody who's sad because they didn't take action. That that's a different thing. But what I'm saying like is on your webpage and stuff, just be careful with keeping the vibe upbeat and positive and looking at the design from this one perspective, I'm gonna leave with you guys. The design of these pages should show the results or the meaning, the results of working with your product or service. And that hopefully means a joyful outcome, right? So the whole thing should feel that way, that if I work with this company or if I buy this product, this wonderful positive result that I'm getting exposed to can happen to me. Right? So that's just a big, high level analysis, but a lot of times we'll see some negative images and imagery sneak in and you really just wanna avoid that stuff.

And I guess there's one more that I've seen recently too, that's a little scary, too many colors or no contrasting color. So everything just kind of looks, uh, bland, like three shades of blue. That's not really helping anybody. Right. So we wanna have like two or three primary brand colors and those two contrasting colors, which we've talked about on another video. So watch out, don't turn the whole thing into like some sort of finger painting, exercise, right. Be clean and crisp with your colors. Use those contrasting colors for your calls to action and so forth. Okay. We'll see you guys on the next video. Go ahead and like this video dig around on the channel, cuz there's a lot of stuff on here on good design and just be careful out there and you know what - it doesn't hurt to just ask for super professional help.

How to Create Ads that Sell

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 12 May 2022 18:21:17 GMT

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Everybody knows that in order to grow your business, you've got to create sales. In order to create sales, you've gotta create ads that sell. So stick with me, and we're gonna go over how to create ads that sell for your business.

If you want to grow, you can only go so far on referrals and word of mouth and you know, this sort of organic stuff, great businesses that control their revenue, their cash flow and their growth, do it through advertising. And that's what this channel's all about. And if you're here to listen, you're gonna learn a lot right now about how to create ads that sell there's really like three steps to this. The first thing you need to figure out is what kind of deals can you offer? And the reason why is because ads that sell are typically direct offer ads, right? Those are not awareness ads or reputation, remarketing ads, ads that sell are offer ads. So offer have ads, have things like discounts on them specials, you know, bouncebacks BOGOs and all the other different variations in between combinations thereof.

You can see those and model them by looking at the ads that are being presented to you all the time by big companies. Like McDonald's, Kohl's Amazon for that matter. If e-commerce stuff, emails that you're getting from, you know, Steve Madden coach, I don't know whatever the brands are. They're just pumbling everybody with direct offer ads and you know why? Because they work. So I know you're getting presented with this stuff every day. And if you are running your business and you're not doing the same thing, you know, outbound from to bring sales into your business, you're being crazy. And you're leaving a lot of money on the table. So start with looking at what you can offer without going outta business. Start considering how much inventory you need to turn just to keep, you know, create cash flow. And sometimes that means you're gonna have to lower your, your margins.

But that means you're also gonna be able to re able to refresh your inventory and start to optimize the inventory to the best selling items, right? And not get stuck with stuff that's not selling on the shelves. You've got to move things. If you're a service provider that may mean figuring out which services you offer that typically bring in new customers and then giving even more incentive to bring in even more customers. Right? So that's something to think about. Now, the next thing you need to do is come up with what, you know, once you figure out what you can offer deals on, then you've gotta figure out what the deals are gonna be. And this is where you're gonna have to test. And I can tell you that 10% off, you know, can work great if it's a high dollar thing, but if you're in the hundreds dollars area with your product or service, it's just not Ty in my experience, running ads quite a bit, those don't get a lot of bite, but as you head past 20%, towards 30%, they do get a lot of bites.

So test on your own, but I'm giving you some guidance on my experience with kind of what starts to convert aggressively. And it's as you head towards 30%, that just seems to resonate with people. Also give you a little tip right here in the middle of this video, express your discounts two ways in a percentage basis and also in a hard dollar off. And there's a reason for that people's minds work differently out there. Some people respond to percentages and other people respond to hard dollars. So if you have a product that's $300 and you're gonna offer it for 30% off, you can say product X is 30% off this week. Create an another ad that says product X is also $100 off this week and is now only $200. Okay? So you, you, hopefully you're tracking that, but do it both ways because there are different folks out there that respond to those numbers differently and you don't wanna exclude or not captivate one portion of the population because you only focused on percentages.

So make sure you're doing that. That's a great tip. We do that with all of our direct offer ads. We run 'em in both ways. Okay. Now the last thing you gotta do, which seems pretty obvious, but I'm gonna say it on this video is the ads have gotta be ible clear and overt and they really need to be concise again, using that three to five word format that we've talked about. So the language is really tight and it's at a glance easy for somebody to just see exactly what the deal is and make a, you know, quick decision about if they're gonna wanna shop whatever it is you're offering. So, you know, that's the last piece don't make junky like complicated stuff around it. Just say what it is. If it's 20% off, try that it's 20% off today. Okay. And then the last thing with all of this is when you're gonna put deals in the market, you darn sure better have some sort of limits on them.

So they're not just running forever. And somebody comes at you next year. Like, Hey, I, you know, weed whackers were supposed to be 30% off. I got the ad, you know, but it's like 12 months ago, but you didn't put any terms on there. So make sure that you have some limits and not only do you want limits on your a, to protect you from, you know, somebody like that, but you also want limits on your ads because you want to create some urgency. So limits can be in different ways. Like the first 50 units are gonna sell at this discounted price, or we're doing a beta program and the first 10 customers are gonna get this discounted price, or just for the month of April, you're gonna get this discounted price. You gotta have some limits on these deals though. So don't forget that piece. Hopefully this give you a little bit of a roadmap, go out there and watch what adds you are attracted to what you are converting on, what emails you are clicking on, and then start emulating those or telling those in a spreadsheet and seeing how you can fit your business into those types of formats and start spinning some stuff up and do your testing. Go ahead and smash the like button on this video and subscribe. So you don't miss the next one.

How to Create Video Scripts in 15 Minutes

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 10 May 2022 12:28:00 GMT

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Everybody knows that video is one of the most powerful marketing tools that you can use for your business. Where we see so many people get stuck is on how to start. In today's video I'm gonna go over how to create video scripting really fast in a matter of minutes so that you can get started on creating videos for your business.

It goes without saying, we all need to be making videos for our business. It's just the name of the game. They're so powerful and you really just don't wanna leave that opportunity on the table. So if you have a services business, definitely wanna make videos. If you have a products, sailing business, you also wanna make videos showing your product, the news and showing detail around your product and so on and so forth. But where so many people get stuck and even oftentimes we have trouble is just getting started on what the video is gonna be about. Like you want the video and you kind of know where it's gonna go. Perhaps like I need a video on my homepage, or I need a video on this product page, or I need a video that I can send out by email.

Right? So that you kind of know where the needs are. But then the question is, what does the video say and how do you even start with the video script? So here's how we do it. And I think that this is gonna help you. It definitely helps us instead of trying to think of the video and this big gigantic thing. And it sort of feels overwhelming. And if you're not a storyteller and you haven't done this before, you really can just feel like you're stuck and it's hard to decide where to go, but if you break it down and just think about it in terms of an assembly process, it starts to get a lot easier. And this kind of probably is also expressed as storyboarding in the movie making business. And I think anybody that makes commercials professionally does some storyboarding as well, but for our purposes where we're kind of trying to do everything on a budget for small businesses, and you're doing things on a budget for your business, you wanna try to compress this process down to where it's not gonna drag on forever and ever.

So the first thing to think about is how to assemble the video. Now videos are just like stories in so many ways. They need to have a beginning, a middle and potentially some sort of conflict that gets solved there and some sort of resolution or end or conclusion. And in this case for sales videos, that's usually an action that somebody can take advantage of this resolution that happened in the video. So if you start thinking about just the basic elements of a story that starts to help you now, the other thing to think about and videos fall into different categories and you may need a video that is kind of like a story for a homepage or a brand introduction page, like what we would call kind of an impact video. But the other video that I think is really important for businesses to understand is also video ads like a direct offer video.

And those videos follow more of like the traditional, like almost as seen on TV type stuff. And you can watch those and start to break those down. But those typically start with stating a fact or a contrarian statement, and then asking a question around that fact, and then offering a benefit or solution and the benefit of that solution and then a call to action. It's really just that simple. And if you watch TV ads like 32nd commercials, they basically follow that almost all of the time. And that's a little bit of a different format, but it still follows what I'm telling you today, which is this assembly type process, right? It doesn't have to be overwhelming. It just has to be the necessary bits put together to create a concise message. Other things to think about too is you're not trying to make the next blockbuster.

All you need on your homepage is one minute, maybe two, which is pretty easy to do. You're gonna cover that and no time at all. So you're not trying to script a gigantic thing. One minute a video is about a hundred words. If it's actually hard scripted like a voiceover, or if you're gonna have a spokesperson do it. So it's really not a lot of writing either, right? But you want the writing to punch hard and you want to punch fast, cuz you have limited attention span with your viewers, as you all know. So start thinking about how you can assemble an introduction, a message around the middle of your video, the body content, if you will, and tell people like I did on this video, what this video is about right away so that they know to keep watching.

And that's something to think about when you're assembling these, especially in the beginning that your first statements, just like your first statements in an email subject line or an email header, or even on the header of a webpage, those first lines, their only goal is to invite the person to continue to listen. You want to engage them so that they continue to listen. So that's your job - to be interesting enough so that they commit to doing the rest of the video with you and hearing what you have to say, right? And you'll see that on YouTube videos, just like the one you're watching right now, I started by saying exactly what we're gonna talk about. And here we are talking about it. And then in a minute, I'm gonna ask you to like the video, cuz that helps me and subscribe to the channel, cuz that helps me and to share the video because that helps me.

So that's basically the conclusion. And hopefully in the middle here, you've learned something about assembling videos. So even this video has that same exact format and almost any good video that you watch on YouTube is gonna follow that. Just start looking through what you're watching and seeing what pieces they've assembled when you're watching TV, which, you know, if you're on Netflix, it doesn't count. But if you watch regular TV and you can still watch some regular commercials, which I highly suggest you should do just for research purposes, not to get inundated with commercials, but if you have a business, you need to understand this stuff, watch other commercials and start looking at how they're assembled. How do they start out? What do they say? What's the impact statement? What's the benefit statement? What's the value. What's the deal. What's the call to action. All those things are just assembled pieces, right?

So you can put all that stuff together really quick. In like 15 minutes, we do 'em all the time. It doesn't take long to put a, a one minute video together and storyboard it out in like 15 minutes, come up with a script and start recording and producing the shots that you need to fill in those segments. Right? Assemble, assemble, assemble. It's something I'm talking about on this channel all the time. And I know you can do it.

The Trick to Recycling Content for Social Media

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 03 May 2022 12:55:32 GMT

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If you are struggling to figure out how to fill up your social media feed and you wanna create more from the content that you're already working on, stick with me, and I'm gonna give you a little trick that we use here, and that is gonna leverage your time and what you're doing.

Everybody knows, strategically from a marketing standpoint, it's great to put a certain amount of content into your feed every day, if possible. And the more that you can take up some space there, the more likely it is to be able to engage and, and make some progress on any social media channel. So the, the challenge though, for many of us is having enough, right? And, and like, it just feels overwhelming to try to come up with unique content for every single one of those, one a day, two a day just starts to accumulate and get overwhelming. There's a trick though that really helps leverage, um, what you are doing and turn it into a lot more. So what we do and what many folks do we do it right here on this channel is take longer form content like this.

That might be a minute, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, and you can do this too. And then take excerpts out of that content take just sound bites could be 6, 7, 10 seconds, no more from something else that you've done, recut that up, pull, pull something out of it. Even if it's a screenshot, it might be a still from a video or something that you are working on, like a piece of something, right? So the trick with the whole thing, you can create so much more. You can arbitrage your work by extracting more bits out and creating posts from them. It seems obvious when you say it out loud, but so many people come to us and struggle with coming up with enough and really they're already doing enough. It's just a matter of editing and processing. So it's a failure in workflow, not a failure in creativity.

So that's what I'm inviting you do to do is to look at the workflow and see how you can leverage what you have, which is gonna save you a ton of time. And also just get you more eyeballs on the stuff that you're doing really well with. So I hope that this idea resonates with you and gives you a little wiggle room and extra time So you don't feel like you're having to come up with fresh stuff all the time.

Tricks to Stay Motivated

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 13:15:41 GMT

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If you struggle some days to stay motivated, then I know this is gonna help you. I'm gonna give you 2 tips that I use every week to continue to stay motivated on tasks at work around the house, with fitness, and everything else.

Everybody struggles with staying motivated from time to time, especially when we're facing things that we don't love doing. This is how I handle it. And these are the two strategies that working together can really keep you fired up. Even when the stuff isn't super fun to do. The first thing I like to do is reward myself when I complete something. It doesn't matter, even if it's something I really enjoy or if it's something I don't enjoy, I kind of try to structure some sort of reward around that. Right. So if it's a fitness thing that might mean the reward is <affirmative>, you know, going on a beach vacation or might be something small. And a lot of times, for me, it is something small. I have like a weird thing. Like if I have a good week at work and we feel like we did well.

Sometimes I, I just get like a $20 digital wa or something as like a treat just anything to give you that be your behavioral reinforcement, um, of around that task whatever it is. And then the second thing that I think is really important, especially if you're working at home, you're an entrepreneur, you're trying to start a business or any work that you're doing is not like tangibly visible. And when I'm mean by that is if you build brick walls every day, go to work and you can do your work and you look back as you're leaving the job and you can see everything that you've done and you check out and you feel great because you can say we accomplished another 50 feet of this brick wall today. So it's very easy to feel good about the volume and the level of success that you're having when you work in the digital world, or as much of us, many of us do these days, the progress is very abstract and it can be elusive.

And oftentimes we feel by down in this like sort of alternate reality, like we're not getting enough done, which can be very demoralizing. The antidote to that. And my second tip is to document your progress on like a little pad next to your desk every day. So, and this is not a list of, to dos. This is a list of <affirmative> to done you follow me. So I'm not a fan of to-do list. That's a whole nother video and a whole nother conversation, but I am a fan of, to done. So at the end of the day, writing down your to done shows you, Hey, you know what? I actually got a lot done that fires you up. That keeps you motivated. That keeps you feeling effective and strong in the progress that you're making every day. So track your to DUNS, reward yourself and stay motivated. If you like this video or help, like give you two ideas you can put into play in the coming days, go ahead and smash the like button for us. And we will see you on the next one, because I know you're gonna be a subscriber.

The Psychology That Is Undermining Your Goals

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 20:37:27 GMT

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Do you ever feel like your goals, that the things that you really want to achieve, you're just not doing what you need to do to get there? And they seem to just always be out six months. It might be fitness might be business might be a personal thing. Well, stick with me on this video because I wanna share something with you that I think is gonna unlock any of that and get you closer to your goals.

We all have goals and we have a vision of how our life we want our life to be. Right. And we sometimes have to look at ourselves and realize that we're not doing the things to get closer to our goals. We're not taking the steps to achieve our goals. And I, you know, over the years have picked up some stuff, this and work on this all the time. And here's what I've learned about it that I think is really important to understand when we have a vision, when we have a goal, when we have a picture in our mind of how things are going to be for us or how we want things to be for us, for our family, for our children. So that picture is out in front of us and it's this, you know, sort of perfect vision that we spool up in our minds.

And one of the reasons that we procrastinate and we don't do the things that are actually gonna get us there, right? Is that the closer we get to those goals, the more imperfect they will become and the more distorted our vision of what they should be becomes. And so to some degree, moving towards our goals actually shifts them from imaginary to real, and that they are not nearly as pretty shiny and sparkly as we thought they were. And that's just something that we have to learn to live with. I see it all the time in the training that I do, I do a lot of sales training and I see the difference between the folks that are willing to just move forward with whatever collateral damage there might be. And those that don't make a move, but sit there accumulating information and ideas and all these things, because they are stuck being afraid of their own greatness in some respect, but also afraid to fracture the vision that they have of this, you know, future goal that they're, you know, imagining.

So my advice on this, and one of the things we all have to get good at is getting comfortable with things, getting ugly, right? You've got to be comfortable with things, getting a little messy and realize that the goal and the vision that you have for yourself and your loved ones. And that may be, like I said, business, personal, you know, health and fitness could be any, anything like that. The road to get there is not a straight shot. It never is. And when you get there, it's gonna look different than what it, you thought it was gonna look like when you started. Right? You don't know what it looks like from the top of the mountain until you get to the top of the mountain, right? You only can imagine the view, but you don't really know until you do the climb. Okay. So my advice to you today, and my encouragement to you today is let things get ugly, but keep moving. Don't stand still when you're looking at your goals and where you want to be and what the vision that you have of your future is just keep moving along and stuff. I promise you is gonna happen. And it's gonna be great. Go ahead and hit the like button for me. And I can't wait to see you guys on the next video. Love to have you subscribe to the channel and we'll see you next time.

Landing Page Failures You Must Avoid

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 12:48:32 GMT

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If you're struggling with your landing page or even your homepage, you're not gonna wanna miss this stuff. These things will kill you. So stick with me and I will tell you all about it.

We're gonna cover three landing page failures that we see all the time. These are gonna go quick. Number one, no clear message about the problem that your business solves. So when the user lands on the page, there's a moment of uncertainty about out, whether they're actually in the right place, you've got to fix that. It has to be crystal clear that they've arrived in a place that can solve their problem. The next one we see is too many menu items and choices that are just cluttered and confusing. 5, 6, 7, 8 menu items across a top about page contact page, all of these unnecessary links and choices for the person that really just end up being a whole bunch of confusion. So condense that down. Okay. And then the last one, which kind of dovetails into number two, number three, make sure there is an absolutely crystal clear action item that the person can do to solve their problem. You've got to be overt with that. So you've got to tell them, do this to fix your problem. It literally has to be that crystal clear order here, enroll. Now, click this, get this, whatever that is. It's got to be right there, front and center. Okay. Crosscheck your landing pages, crosscheck your home pages anywhere you're landing traffic. You wanna make sure that these three things, these three essentials are not turn upside down and messing you up.

3 Rules of Social Media You Can't Break

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 22:36:41 GMT

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Are you struggling with how to really be effective on social media for your business? Well, I'm gonna share with you today, three rules that'll help guide you through the process and make you a lot more effective in B2B or B2C sales.

So we all know we gotta deal with social media or we think we do. It's definitely, uh, got a huge amount of momentum and it seems like an important piece of the marketing portfolio for any business. And that is whether you are a B2B seller or a B2C E seller. Now I have three things that I'm gonna share with you today that I think will definitely clear up some stuff that we see a lot of people struggling with. The first one is understanding your target prospect or your audience. If you will, you've got to understand your target prospect, and you've got to understand their problem. Now I've said this on a lot of other videos on this channel, you are in business to solve problems and your social media campaigns need to say that out loud, because then they will attract the folks that have those problems.

You really need to be over in your campaign, your, your visuals and your texts and your posts that you're circling and keeping the targeting where it needs to be. So you're addressing the folks that you can help. That's so important. And the next piece is to not make the assumption that social media is going to be the silver bullet for your business, because guess what? It's not, it is not enough to support the growth that your business needs all in itself. There are other elements that you are going to have to have like great website, probably some additional ads, emails, and other, responders and all sorts of other technology it's gonna take. Social media is a great place to use as a amplifier to your core messaging, which really needs to reside on your property. That's your pages, your channels, and things like that.

So be careful with putting all your eggs in one basket. And that's another thing I stress on this channel, right? A stool stands on three legs. So make sure that your marketing has three types of campaigns, three channels, and three approaches all the time so that your business is safe. You never know when you're playing on someone else's property like Facebook or Instagram or tick or whatever it is when they might just decide, they don't like you and shut you down. And if that's your only stream that's working for you, then you are cut off at the knee. So be careful and be diligent about having multiple strategies in the field and use social media as the amplifier. And I also like to say as a crosscheck, right? So people might come to your website and then they might poke around or go visit you on social media, making sure that your messaging is consistent across all channels.

It is really important. So having that social media, there is a crosscheck and a place to amplify your message and maybe get a little bit more personal is important. The last rule that I have to say is don't even do it if you're not gonna do it consistently and well. And I mean, well by professionally, right? So this is your business. This is your live hood. Take a professional approach to the photography, the images, the text, the way that you're talking, understand your audience, use their language, but do it in a professional way and make sure that the content you're putting out is professional, but also that it's consistent. So it's not enough to go post, post, post. And then you go dark for days because you got the flu or something. You've got to have somebody in your organization, or you need to hire an outside team, or you gotta reach out to somebody like us.

And you've got to figure out how to do it with a full commitment for one to two years, to build that thing into something that's viable. You gotta take pot shots at. You definitely cannot count on it. And that's true with all marketing. So be consistent. And that means responding, posting, being professional, being there, basically in the room all the time, and that's gonna be really important too. So those three things should help keep you moving in the right direction on social media. I know it's a lot, but make sure you make the decision and the commitment to do it right for your business. Go ahead and smash the like button on this video, subscribe to the channel and I'll see you on the next one.

How Do I Automate My Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 22:36:47 GMT

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I'm gonna give you a simple set of steps to follow, to figure out how to automate your business.

So one of the big topics these days for obvious reasons is what parts of our business can we automate to save time and give our customers a better experience when we're not able to per them or our staff can't, uh, take care of them. So we have so many tools today with all the software and everybody is, you know, communicating online with their phones and everything. So there's a lot of areas in our business that we can automate, but it's a little daunting to figure out how to do it. Here's the process that we use to analyze what can be and what can't be automated in any sort of business situation. The first step you got to take in doing all of this is mapping out the actual process flow. And, you know, as a business owner, you certainly have an intuitive feel for how things go.

Like what happens when you get a new customer? Well, like we do this, we do this and that. And there's, you know, always, um, you know, kind of, uh, smoothing over of that in order to get this process, though, you really have to pick it apart in a very granular way, what those specific steps are. So using the example that we just mentioned, what happens when you get a new customer? So the new customer has, you know, one inner action, one step, they take maybe a form to fill out then an another thing they need to do. Then they make an appointment. Then they make a payment. Then they get a thank you, right? All those little things. And then you go back and review, are there even extras around each one of those steps? Like if they fill out a form, do they get a copy of the form?

Do who else gets a copy of the form? Is there your staff members to get a copy of the form? Do staff members call them back to confirm the entry on that form? Right. So even one step of filling out a form might have three, four additional pieces to it that you got to put on this map. Now, once you have, and this could be any process flow in your business, frankly, it might be the example we're using like a new customer might be getting a customer is in the case of some sort of campaign or, uh, outreach or lead generation tool. Or it might be an internal process with your staff or something in the office, like an office flow or workflow amongst your staff. One of the workflows we have here is involves publishing these videos and there's a specific set steps and a specific number of folks that are involved with not only editing shooting, but also publishing uploading, and then syndicating and promoting and sending out all these things.

Right? So there's all these things that are part of just even making these videos. That's a workflow, but it's all internal, right? So there's no customers involved in that. So it could be anything that you're looking at, but the first step is to pick it apart into all of its little granular pieces. Then you can start looking at which one of these pieces could be automated by automated messaging, some sort of cool software platform, or maybe even looking at trimming down some of these steps that maybe aren't entirely necessary. Also looking at duplicate labor and work that could be happening in any of these process flows. So that's the next piece of the puzzle. Then once you have a list of steps that you think can be automated, the next and final thing to do is start looking at platforms and tools that are going to fit into that.

And the great part about that step is you should have incredible clarity about what your needs are when looking at available tools, because you've done the first two steps. So you're not kind of vaguely looking at things with the hopes that it's going to work out. You have a defined situation, and you're looking to plug tools into that to alleviate labor costs, enhanced communications and effectiveness and productivity and all the other cool positives that come out of that. So those are the three steps that we follow. I use a cool mapping software for that. So I can mop out all the process flows, you know, digitally and share that with my team. That's another cool tool that we you use. And there are those out there for you as well. So go ahead and use those couple of steps on areas of your business that you think could be automated.

And I promise you that you will figure out and get closer to making it a reality. And that means you'll be able to save some time to do other the things, save some money for some other things, and probably do a better job overall in your business. We'll see, on the next one, I hope this helped you to make a step towards automating some tasks that you can do better with in your business.

What Do I Do With Negative Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 19:12:44 GMT

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We're gonna cover what I do when we have negative reviews hit one of our clients review profiles. That could be Google, Facebook, Yelp or whatever the deal is. So I'm gonna tell you exactly what we do.

All right. So today's video. We're gonna cover what we do when we get a negative review. The first thing we do is take a deep breath and get into a place where you're not looking at it as a personal attack. Can't tell you how many times we've had clients get really emotionally upset and charged up about something that somebody said about their staff or their business or whatever the experience was. You gotta figure out. The first thing to do is to let all that go and look at the situation objectively and strategically. The best thing you can do with negative reviews is spin them in a way that gives you a chance to show how your business deals with conflict. And the thing that's amazing about that is it's a really great opportunity because we know from the data, a lot of people scan and zero in on reading negative reviews.

So we have a great opportunity there to take that negative review and use it as a way to tell a bigger story about how our business handles conflict and customers that are upset. And the beauty of that is that it, those other folks that are thinking about doing business with you, what they can expect, if something goes wrong, are you gonna take care of it? Are you gonna take care of them? What have you done to change to make sure that these things don't happen in the future? So there is so much goal old and looking at negative reviews objectively and strategically, and letting the emotions be set aside and running it like you do at any other part of your business. With some practicality below this video, in the description, I'm gonna give you a link to our templated responses. There are a great starting point.

If you're struggling with how to reply to a negative review, it really is an easy structure with that. And the template system that we've put together for all of our clients that you are welcome to have a copy of walks you through all of that. And it's right below this video. So go ahead and click down there, download that for yourself.

The Top 5 Automated Messages

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 21:10:21 GMT

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Today I'm gonna share with you the five messages that you've got to be sending out for your business. And I've got a bonus one in there that I think is equally as important as the core five. So stick with me and we're gonna go over 'em right now.

So we all know that we need to be communicating more with our clients and customers. The more we can communicate with them, the more we can bond, build relationships, increase sales and revenue, earn more referrals on and on and on list goes on. Right? Most businesses that we see that come to us that are clients here, or just start with us are under messaging. Their customers leads and, and, and or clients. It's just the nature of the beast. Everybody, I think is afraid to send emails and afraid to send messaging because they think they're overwhelming or it's spammy or something. But it's not the case. When you have a, customer's engaged with your business, they, they want to hear from you. They want guidance and they want support from your business. That's why they've chosen you to do business with, so that aside, let me gimme the five messages that your business needs to have set up and should be actively sending on a daily basis to your customers.

Now that doesn't mean you're sending an email every day means that each customer should be experiencing these five types of messages from you. Okay. The first one is some sort of welcome message. It seems like a no brainer, but so many businesses don't send a welcome message to say, Hey, welcome to doing business with us. And there's some important P to that message. Here's what to expect from us. Here's how you can get more from this relationship. And here's what we expect from you in this relationship, so that we can both do better in whatever the niche is, whatever the service you're providing, right? Those are really important ways to set expectations with your clients and customers. They're gonna feel more secure in the relationship. They're gonna understand what to expect and what their responsibilities are as a customer of yours. Such an important message could be done by video could be done by text, could be done by both.

I always suggest sending some sort of cool video if you can and go from there. But that welcome message is the starting point. And it is your really your first impression with any new client or customer. The next one also is so important is confirmation type messages. People wanna make sure that the actions they take with your business are confirmed. So that might be setting an appointment that might be filling out a form that might be making a purchase that might be submitting something to you to work on whatever it is. They should get a confirmation so that they can rest easy at night, knowing that they've handed this thing over to you or done whatever it is or made the purchase or the shipping and all of those things are happening as expected. So go into your shopping carts and any of those other places, your form engines and things like that, and make sure that those confirmations are going out.

And they're sending that nice, warm, fuzzy feeling to your buyers. The next one, which is a big one that I think is just so important as underutilized is reminders, most businesses, and this may be, you can drive additional unfound revenue by setting up good reminders around your customers getting a he service from you. So a great example of that is if you are an air conditioning company and every season, you want to do a check on your customer's system, air conditioning, heating ventilation system. Isn't it nice to send them a reminder about that that is pre programmed and automated so that they know that you're thinking about them and their household and their comfort and making sure to stay in front of any pending maintenance issues. That's just one example in one business that can benefit from sending out reminders and almost every business out there can benefit from setting up quality reminder that help their customers stay on point with taking advantage of your services, but also solving their problems.

And remember, guys, I always talk about this on this channel. We're all in business to solve people's problems. So do a great job by reminding them how they can do better and heading off their problems and making sure that they're minimized. They're gonna love you for it. Okay? And I'm always banging on this one. We do a ton of work with rep up IO. I highly recommend that platform, but you've got to be sending out requests for feedback. You need to be driving reviews for your business. So this is number 1, 2, 3 on number four, feedback requests are so important. And for your business, you want to hear from your customers, see how they're experiencing your staff. If you're managing, this is your crosscheck to your staff's performance. If you have a product that you're developing, this is your crosscheck to the quality of the product.

You've gotta be soliciting feedback requests, and that should translate to you driving more reviews for your business, which is oh, so and important for all of us. Okay. Now the next one I got here is, sounds like so obvious, but frankly, not enough people are doing it. So I'm putting it on the list. Send out thank you messages to you, your clients and customers. Thank them for coming in to see you, thank them for buying from you. Thank them, visiting from you. Thank them. Thank them. Thank them. Be grateful and show it right. Be appreciative. So many businesses, forget to thank their customers these days. It doesn't take much to program those types of messages into your confirmation systems and things like that. Or your post appointment, your post purchasing sequences. Just send a nice, thank you note. Maybe put your digital signature on there to try to personalize a little bit or a picture of your whole team and staff, thanking them for their loyalty to your business.

It's just really goes a long way and showing gratitude and building those relationships. Okay. And the last one for the bonus, and this one takes a little bit more work, but we've talked a lot about on our channel, how to do these types of messages without getting overwhelmed. The last, and this would be number six for today is send your customers some helpful content around your niche. Be helpful to them, help educate them about solving their problems and what you can do and what your products and services can do. Or just anything that they might need to know could be caring for their animal, caring for their car, caring for their house, taking care of this, that, and the other thing you are the expert, right? Or you wouldn't be in business to do all this. If you're the expert, they're counting on you to be helpful.

So be helpful and set up some helpful content messages that go out to all of your customers. So they know that not only are you an expert, which they're expecting, but that you're also thinking about them and putting them on your listing, including them with this helpful content. Now here's the last thing I'm gonna say about that. They're not gonna be pissed that you're sending them things to help them out. So don't stress out or bet. You're sending frequency and wait five weeks to send something. They don't even remember what happened five weeks ago in today's world, be frequent with them, be present and be helpful. And, and don't be afraid to send those things because once they've decided to do business with you, you are on the relevancy list, which gets you access to their inbox and they want to hear from you. And they're counting on hearing from you.

So don't leave 'em high and dry. If this helped you get organized on the five messages really need to set up right now, if you haven't done these five re go the video, go back to 'em again, set 'em up and work on number six, that helpful content. And you can go back to the other videos on how to get organized with that. But I promise you can come up with tons of cool stuff. Go ahead and smash the like video, the, like the like button on video and subscribe the channel. We'll see, on the next one.

3 Types of Ads to Grow Your Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 21:01:24 GMT

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We're gonna talk about the three ads you need to be running for your business at all times and how they work both for cold and for your retargeting. So hang in there with me and we're gonna cover it right now.

All right. In today's video, we're gonna talk about the, the three ads that you need to be running for your business. Now we've done this video before, but I want to put the three ads in context of cold and retargeting. First, let's go over the three ads that you need to run. The first type of ad that every business should be running is an aware type of ad. So these ads show your brand and make people aware of the fact that your business is in town and offering services around the niche that you work in. The next type of ad that you've got to be running are some sort of direct offer ads. So these are ads that present a deal that entices new customers to give your business a try. And then the third type of ad that you must be running for your business.

And this is the one that most people overlook are reputation ads. So these are ads that show the positive experiences that other customers have had with your business. You can take reviews and testimony and stories and use those in your reputation ads. So those are the three types of ads. Now how we deploy them is what I don't think I covered very well in the past. And while we're redoing this video right now, you can take those three types of ads and use them in your cold advertising and use them in your retargeting follow up campaigns. So let's go through 'em real quickly in your awareness ads. You can use the, you know, you can use text in your PPC and display cold advertising or YouTube advertising to talk about your business and tell about the brand. You can then also use in your PPC alternate text and alternate ads that offer deals and specials.

Those are going to be your direct offer add. And then the last type of ad, which is the one we said, most people overlook is the reputation, remarketing or reputation ad for cold advertising. You can use those for display video, and you can use those in PPC by simply putting a little text there about one of your customer experiences. Like Jenny says best food in town. That can be the text in your PPC app. That's actually from one of your reviews, it's all legit and it strengthens the social proof around your brand. So you wanna be trying those all three in your cold advertising, and then you also want to deploy all three of those. And you're retargeting advertising to keep your business top of mind, if you like this video and it sorted out the confusion around the types of ads that you need to be running for your business. Go ahead and smash that like button subscribe to the channel and we'll see you on the next one.

Work From Home Tips

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:20:34 GMT

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Today we're gonna go over work from home tips. And many of you may not know, but now you do - I've been working from home for almost eight years now. So I'm not one of these pandemic babies. I'm a tried and true veteran of working from home. I've built the office here on the property, but I graduated from the kitchen table. So stick with me and I'm gonna share what I've learned over the last eight years.

Okay guys. So full disclosure on this video, we're gonna talk about work from home tips. I've been working from home for, uh, about, I guess it's been eight years now. I know a lot of you out there have started working from home in the last two years during our pandemic and all the changes that everybody has been going through. And some of you are gonna continue to work from home. And I gotta tell you, it's not, it can be challenging. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, stay disciplined and maintain a productive schedule. When you don't have that social conformity of a office environment and you don't have the boss like breathing down your neck or sort of breathing by putting eyes on you all the time. So it takes a certain amount of self-discipline.

I'm gonna go through some things that I've learned. And I, frankly, we've learned, cuz my team also all works from home and we've all figured out how to be productive, which is great. So the first thing, just starting from the beginning of the day that I think is really meaningful is to, to start with a regular morning ritual. So do not out of bed and then like into your office chair with your fuzzy slippers and be like, yeah, working from home is great. And you're just like sucking on your coffee. And you're still like in some, pajamas, like it's just not setting you up. It's not setting your mindset. So a big part of that and being productive is still having a normal transitional routine that takes you from sort of the idea that you're at home waking up to this work mode, right?

So it's like, it's a behavioral thing, but it is also prepares your mind to shift into work mode. So you do these normal things like, maybe go to the gym, but that's my favorite thing way to start the day don't plug right into screens and phones like right away as you roll over, because if you're working from home, you're probably gonna log six or eight hours in front of a screen anyways. So give yourself a, a break in the morning and let your mind be clear without all that input, get some exercise, go outside and then do a regular, regular transitional routine where you shower get dressed, get ready. If you wear makeup, put some makeup on or whatever the, whatever you would do, if you were gonna go meet and deal with the outside world, I mean, at least do 90% of that and there are, there'll be days that you may not do it all, but in general, the more you can create that transitional routine, the more you'll mentally be like prepared when you finally sit down to focus and actually get some things done.

So that's my, that's like the first part of the day. The other thing is, what's your office space look like? And I said in the beginning, in the intro of the video, I started kind of casually working from home a long time ago where I had an office I could drive to, but I was in a position where I, I didn't have to go there all the time. And so I would work at home like at the kitchen counter, and we had like a little bill pay desk there. And then as I started , doing agency work and working for clients, I started building this business like at the kitchen and it sucked, it was one of the worst things I've ever done. I had like kids running behind me, screaming and pots and pans and people making stuff and the microwave running and, I was just in the kitchen counter.

It's great. If you wanna like check some YouTube videos and pay the bills, but to get some work done there, it just really, wasn't a great spot. So one of the first things I did when I just, was realizing that I was turning, things into a real business was really get focused on creating a dedicated office space. And that's, if you can do that in your home, I highly recommend it like a place that doesn't even feel like your home. Right? Like it, it, it may even be painted different colors and like different carpet and a real office type desk and all of these things, if you can do that, then when you go into that space, it's like, again, it's a complete mental shift into that work mode. And it's cool about doing that is it makes working from home a lot.

Be sustainable if that's something that you wanna continue to have as an option in your life, right. It makes the work from home reality, something that you can stick with for years and years like I have. Right. So, and, and the other thing that goes without saying with that is like in a office environment where you go and work with others, somebody else is cleaning up and they vacuum and they, they take trash out every night. And you might, there's like all that. You, you have to do that at home if you're doing it,in your own space, but it's worth not having a lot of clutter. And frankly, I still do the bills in the kitchen and, since then have built another building on our property where it is just for work and that workspace, I don't do the personal stuff here.

I wouldn't take my bills to, to the office, and, and sit down and start looking at the water bill if I work for somebody and in an this environment. So you, you can think of it even down to that level. Right. And then the other thing, uh, I think is really important is like to take breaks during the day. Right. And even, that might mean like every two hours or every hour something, getting up, working, I've been since, this year actually been working, standing up, which is awesome. And it, it took some time to get used to it, but it's getting better and better.

And I think that's a, a good one, if you can do it. The, the other thing to think about though, when taking breaks is, and before the pandemic, I used to love doing this, I would take my laptop and go to like a local cafe or the, the bar at a restaurant and, and work in like kind busier environment to, get yourself back out there in the real world a little bit. So you're not just fully isolated and make it worth getting dressed and tying your shoes and all that stuff and, and get out there and get a little bit of that recharge in the middle of the day, maybe from being around other folks and come back in, finish the second half of the day. So I think that's a great thing to do is to take breaks to get away from the screen, but also breaks during the week that are like, I'm gonna go out to lunch and I'm gonna do some work at lunch, at a cafe.

And you might do that once or twice a week. Right. And then that really helps to break things up and sort of make you feel like more of a, a like participating human being. Okay. And I think that's the main things that, uh, I had written down here and it's a sustainable proposition. I mean, you guys can stick with it. If it's something you really want to do, it's been awesome for me. It's allowed me to, uh, be available for my kids and family and create my own schedule and all the other benefits. I think everybody's starting to recognize, but to do it over the long term, 2, 3, 5, maybe even 10 years, the stuff I just talked about is gonna become incredibly important. So I hope you like this video, go ahead and smash the like button for us for, and we will see you on the next one on quick and dirty marketing.

The Only Reason to Use Social Media

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 20 Mar 2022 19:51:46 GMT

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The only reason you should be using social media is to get customers. I know, right? That sounds so obvious. But I think a lot of people lose track of that because social media and the algorithms that they use are designed to mess with your mind, right? They're made to want you to engage and play into this sort of ego net of adding some sort of strange what I call soft number satisfaction from likes and all these other things. And you know, you can grade that in some level of engagement, but that's not why you're there. If you're a business owner, I mean, it's cool to have people to review, come on your product and stuff, but nobody's buying it then you're missing the boat.

So the thing to focus on with social media is to treat it as another marketing campaign. So you might call that like social media marketing, right. And not think of it as a platform like your website. And I think that's where a lot of business owners get confused. They go, oh, I don't need a website. I have my Facebook page, or I don't need a website. I have my Instagram channel. And here's why that is dangerously false. For one, you don't own Instagram and you don't own Facebook and you don't own TikTok and you don't own any of these things. So the owner of those places that you've decided to build on can take away your land anytime. Right? You're just a, like a share Cropper on, on these platforms. And frankly, the more content that you and I produce for these platforms, the more money we're putting into their pocket, because we're helping them grab more attention, which is how they calculate what the value is of advertising on their platforms.

Right? So you gotta understand all of that to figure out for your business, us what you're there for. So you gotta stay focused on your objectives and your objectives are to get clients, get customers and make sales, right. Not get hearts. So you can have the soft numbers and that can give you some signs of life. But at some point you've gotta look at the hard numbers and the hard numbers. The number one hard number is, are you getting traffic back onto your pages? Right? So the other way to think about social media is it's like a pond and it's full of Phish and we're all pouring water into the pond to keep it fresh and ready for all the fish in the pond to be happy. Right? And all the business owners are sitting along the beach with their fishing rods, and everybody's gonna line in the water.

And the idea like Annie fishing is to pull a fish out and put it in the bucket and take it home and eat. Okay. So if you're a fish in the pond and you're not on the shore trying to pull fish out, you've lost perspective and you're not in the right role in the relation chip, right? You don't want to be that fish in the pond, right? You want to be fishing out of that pond. So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, any social media platform that we're participating in. And we're putting content in is a nice pooled effort from all of us because it's aggregating traffic into you, a barrel. If you want to use that fish in a barrel, metaphor, it's putting everything in a barrel, which is great. So there's all this like active traffic, but you got to focus on extracting traffic out of that platform and back onto your own property.

And there's a number of reasons you want to do you that you wanna get people back on your own property, because you want to track that be successful in pulling traffic to your, your own pages and your own checkout pages or whatever your funnel is. But you also want to get them back on your platform. So you can pixel and tag them and retarget them, which, if you watch my channel, there's plenty of videos on that. And I'm sure we'll do more because retargeting is so important. If you're selling online a service or a product, and you're not retargeting your traffic, you're missing a huge amount of business. That's a whole nother conversation, but in the content of social media, that's one of your biggest objectives is to put content at out there. That's gonna attract your ideal customer or client.

And if you do that, right, they're gonna resonate with that and wanna see more. And then you gotta give them that opportunity, but you want to give it to 'em on your own pages so that you can identify them, maybe get them to opt in that's ideal. But even if you don't get them to opt in, you definitely wanna retarget them and keep building that relationship through your advertising campaigns, right? And telling them more about your product and your reputation, all the other things we've talked about on this channel. So stay focused with your social media. Don't be a fish in the pond, stay on the beach with your fishing rod and get fish in the buck gate and go home and eat if you like this video. And I hope you did go ahead and smash the like button for me, subscribe to the channel and we will see you on the next one.

Getting People to Opt Out

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:30:38 GMT

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In today's video, we're gonna talk about something that's a little counterintuitive and it has to do with your email marketing and your email list, and we're gonna discuss why you would want and how to get people to opt out of your list. Right? So we work so hard to get people to opt in. It seems like a crazy topic to talk about opting out, but there's a very, very good reason why. So hang in there and I'm gonna cover it with you.

In the world of email lists, it seems like the objective is always to hoard as many addresses as you possibly can. And it is true. We do want to build the biggest email list that we possibly can build for our business, because email is still the number one way to connect with new customers. And of course your existing customers. Now, here's the thing though. Why would you want people to opt out? Well, lemme qualify that statement a little bit. One of the things that we want to do with our list is cultivate relevancy and find out within a bigger list, what people are specifically interested in. Right? So in order to segment that list, we might send some really targeted content that is only going to appeal to the exact folks that we want to engage within a bigger list, right? And what that's going to do is filter and effectively get opt outs on the table for people that don't want the product or service that we're now focusing on like a laser.

So that can really help you because as you drive and discover that relevancy in your list, then you can start talking to and engaging those folks on a much deeper level and getting much higher conversion rates, because you're now zeroed in on folks that are really listening and interested in and the product and service that you have to offer. Now, the other way to think about that is putting up, like, it's basically like a screening. So you're sending out content or a message that is like a screen wall. And it's only designed to let the folks in that you want to engage for that product or service, right? So it's, you know, a little counter and intuitive. It doesn't mean you wanna blow up your whole list. It just means that you want to go for relevancy within your bigger list and uncover some folks in a specific segment of that list that are going to be interested in the thing that you're trying to push for this quarter. So I'll go out there and test a little bit with your email list and see how you can segment for relevancy. Get some opt outs, clean your list up and get people engaged in the thing that is going to make you more money.

Why Routine Sucks

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 14:18:31 GMT

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Today we're gonna cover how routine can actually work against you, and sort of suck you in trying to get some special things done.

So a lot of the things that we've talked about on this channel involve repetitive and being consistent. And it's definitely one of the things that is important in your marketing and growing your business is to be consistently hitting those action items and what that can do you for you and your team is create a lot of routine, which can be great for certain tasks. You want things to be re replicatable and consistent and repeatable in your business as much as possible. The downside of making so much routine, though, is that you lose space in and in your week to potentially be creative and come up with new approaches to your business and your marketing. So there is a way to inject that into your routine. So you can have some space where there's actually no routine. So one of the things that I like to do is find a time during the week or in some cases, it might be every day where you actually schedule an open space that doesn't, isn't tied to getting a task done or some other, you know, routine thing that you need to do. And during that time, you can brains storm and come up with new creative approaches for your business. So don't forget to give yourself space, to be creative and break out of your routine while you're still being consistent and hitting those marks that you need. So you can keep pushing your business forward on the tasks that you've already identified are held you succeed. There's always more, and you need to explore those by being creative.

Do I Need a Video on My Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 23:30:04 GMT

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In today's video we're gonna answer the question that is just killing so many business owners - Do I need to have a video on my website?

It's no secret that video is a powerful marketing tool for your business. And the question is, do you really need to have it? Do you need to go through the hassle and the expense of producing a video for your business product or service? And the answer is yes. And here's why I pulled some cool stats off the way. Did a little bit of research. I know this from our own data, that pages that we build, that, that use video in the landing or in the, you know, explain the servicer product, get tons, more of engagement, but they also hold visitors on the page a lot longer. So you even if they, even if they're there and they get played, we do a lot better with bounce rates and other data that we're watching. But here's what I found on the web - If you have a video, people will spend four times more time on your site than if you don't.

That's awesome. And that they will visit three times more pages on your website. If they start with a video, right, compared to traffic, that lands on sites that don't have video. And, and this is huge. You can reduce your bounce rate by almost 80 P percent by using video on your landing pages. So the numbers don't lie. If you're not running a video on your website that welcomes that visitor and starts to engage them or videos that explain your products or services or videos that help with onboarding and all these other ideas that we've used. And that we've talked about on our channel and other videos, then you got to get started audit. So go ahead and like this video and subscribe, because we'll definitely make some more videos about how to get started with your first video and, and talk about where to go. If you just don't even know where to begin, but go ahead and start with thinking about what you can put on your homepage or your primary landing page to engage and capture those visitors, get them on the page longer and engaging with more and more of your content.

What You Must Have Above the Fold on Your Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 20:59:36 GMT

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Hey guys, it's 2022 and the same old question still exists. What do I need to have above the fold on my website now above the fold. If you don't know means when you land on the page, what is showing above the line at the bottom of the screen? And this applies on mobile, on all desktop computers, you're gonna have a line there. Anything below that line, is considered below the fold. So in this video, we're gonna talk about what you must have above the fold and those critical ingredients.

So what do we gotta have above the fold on our website page that we're gonna land people on? And now it doesn't really matter to me what the page, uh, is for could be a sales page, could be a home page, could be a blog page, could be any of those things. But here's the answer to the question above the fold. The first thing you've got to do, and you've got to have is appropriate messaging, a title or a header that tells people that they're in the right place to get what they want to get. So remember everybody that's on the internet is looking for things that they want. They either want information, they wanna buy something, they wanna shop for something in general, they wanna solve some sort of problem. And that's why they're online to begin with, right? So the first thing we've gotta have on that above the fold real estate, which is so valuable is thing to establish relevancy with the visitor so that they know that they're in the absolute right place to solve that problem.

And that problem may just be that they want to consume some content. And in case of a blog page, you just want to put on there, this is our blog or the title of the blog or information out, yada, yada Y whatever that is so that they know they've landed in the right place to get the content that they're looking for. Right. It might be just something so simple as that, the sales page a little bit more to it. And on your homepage, the same thing, what does your business do? What problems do they solve? And I've said this on a lot of other videos, but as it becomes, you know, it really gets dialed in. And you've got to really ask yourself that hard question when you're dealing with this high value real estate above the fold on your homepage, are you establishing a relevant connection with that visitor right away?

So that's the first thing. And then the next thing that you need to consider is easy navigation. What is the next thing the visitors should do once they know that they're in the right place, they know they're in the right place. The next natural thing in their mind is what do I have to do to get this thing? Now it may be, if they want to get content, do they scroll, scroll down to read more, click here, to read more. Here's some stuff to read now, right? All of those potential actions need to be front and center so that they know exactly what to do next. And if it's the case of a, a homepage, well, you may wanna some menu options and we're down to three or less on most page designs that we're doing now, like three or less menu choices. So if you got a lot of stacked up menu stuff, you wanna get those down to, you know, shoot for less than five menu choices possibly.

And I'll give you an easy kill on this video, condense your are contacting about page into one. If you've got two of those, just crush that down into one that helps a lot of people get rid of some extra stuff at the top of the website. And then, uh, you know, the other, whatever those three are, that your main choices make sure that those are choices that are gonna not only help the person solve the problem, but also get them into your funnel and, you know, move them along in your objectives and the best way that you can be in service to them, of course, and sell them whatever the product or service is that you're in the business of dealing. Okay. And then I think the third thing that you've got to have, and that we certainly recommend is great imagery. That's going to capture and engage that visitor, you know, and, and be identifiable to them for whatever it is that you know, their, their tribal affiliation, if you will, in some cases, or even if they're just looking for something awesome, like a product that you're showing that visually the, that they're able to get that, and that this is the exciting place to, you know, get, you know, get access to this, this widget or whatever it is that, that, you know, that is the topic of the day.

So those are the sort of three key things, you know, establishing relevancy, being very clear about what the next things that the visitor needs to, to do, to get what they want, and then establishing a visual connection with them in the space that you have. It's mobile, you got a little less space to work with this desktop. You do a lot of cool stuff with hero shots, hero videos, you know, inset, video, uh, inset, pictures, sliders, you know, there's a lot of choices with if those homepages, when you're working on desktop, you know, you got more screen to work with, but those are my three recommendations and definitely the ingredients I'm looking for on that above the fold real estate. So if you got issues and the whole thing looks kind of convoluted and it's not working well, and it might be confusing, go have ends to give you some feedback or some sort of neutral parties ask your customers and clients. If you know, they'd like to see different things on the website, solicit some new ideas. If you're feeling like you're sort of stuck on what to do. And of course, if you ever need help, go ahead and post down below this video. And I love to reply to those. Go ahead and like this video and subscribe to see us on the next one.

Why You Can't Send One Email Per Month

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 00:17:08 GMT

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Today we're gonna talk about email send rates, and why you can't send one email every month and expect to get anything out of it. We're also gonna talk about how much you can send. This is a question we get all the time, so stick with me and we're gonna figure it out.

So the question that we get all the time is how much, how many emails should we send or can we send? And, what's enough. What's too much. Well, the title today's video is why you can't send one once a month and here's the reason. And then we'll just start with that. The reason you can't send one once a month and get anything out of it is because most folks that opt into your email list, legitimately aren't even gonna remember why or what it was that got them on that list. If a month goes by, unless you're a well known brand, like the gap or Nike or something like that, then they go, oh, okay. I remember I, I own some Nike shoes and I must have gotten on their email list. That's fine. But for the rest of us, local business owners, we're just not that memorable typically.

And we can't let that much time go by. So that bounces us to the other side of the question here, which is how much can you send? And there's some, good research out there that will tell you a few things about this. Number one, you can't really send every day without aggravating people. Now, there are some exceptions to that role. For instance, if they're in service with you or they're being onboarded, those are exceptions. Like if they've just enrolled in something that they expect to be getting like a course or something, they expect to be getting something every day, that's an exception right there. So there are logical exceptions to that. But from a marketing email to endpoint, you can't send, 'em like an offer like a sale thing every single day, because that just people off and they're gonna wanna unsubscribe or worse than that.

They're gonna mark your sending address as spam. And then that can cause you some problems with getting deliverability. So nobody likes that. So then we go back into the thing, like what's the sweet spot, right? And here's, here's my thoughts on it. And we have a pretty good amount of data here to, to support this. We think, and typically most of our clients can get away with one to two sends per week. Now here's the caveat on that guideline. Typically we recommend that you send one offer email only for every five total emails sent. So the other way to express that is that you're only asking for sale or making an offer 20% of the time that you're sending out emails. So what that means is, well, what are you sending with the rest of this stuff, right? And the answer to that is you're giving helpful, relevant content and information that is, relevant to that person's needs and what your sell, what the service or product is that you're in to.

So if you wanna create a bunch of offers, say for the next month, the best way to keep the list warm and receptive and opening your emails is to continue to train them by sending them good, helpful information. Then once you send them an offer or a sale or some sort of cross sell upsell or down sell, you're gonna have a list that's trained to open and is receptive to your communication. So that 80 20 rule on offers versus helpful content really helps to keep the list, working for you and receptive to your offers. And then you take that and go to the one to two times a week. There are times if you have a big announcement that you can push that to three times a week or more, but you start running the risk there of people agitated.

So those are the guidelines, but don't get lazy and just send one email per month because you're not gonna be memorable. You're not gonna have a nice warm list that you can engage. And you're not really helping anybody by doing that one a month stuff that that's 10 years ago, and you're not gonna get any attention for that. And it's just gonna seem out of left fee yield. And people are also going to say, why was I on this list? Maybe I'm not supposed to be and potentially market as spam, or you get a lot of unsubscribes, cuz it just seems random. So go ahead and use those guidelines, set up your send rates, check our other videos about how to come up with great topics so that you run out of ideas for good content based emails.

How to Rank Your Business on Google

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:25:20 GMT

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Today we're gonna do a video about the cheap, quick way to rank your business on Google and get everybody else to do the work. So if this is something you're struggling with, stay with me and I'm gonna give you a shortcut to getting up there amongst your competitors and getting attention on Google for your business.

All right, guys, it's no secret that ranking on Google can be a huge boost for your business. Get more eyeballs on your links and pages and content, and it is critical of your local business to get your place in maps and those near me searches. So there's a trick that most people forget about or don't pay attention to. And SEO guys, typically don't wanna talk to you about this because they really can't charge you for it. So if you want to rank on maps and you want to get into those near me, cert, which are so critical for local businesses, then the best way to do that is to grow your reviews and get more social votes for your business. And the best way to get social votes for your business is to create a system that engages your customers and gets them posting reviews online.

And it doesn't, they have to be Google reviews because Google is actually indexing and looking at reviews on platforms like Yelp, Facebook, Yext, and others. In addition to their Google reviews, if you spend a minute after watching this video and go and check maps, you'll see that Google actually aggregates the reviews from a lot of different platforms in business listing, which is awesome. It just means though that in order to get those social votes, you've got to have a system in place so that your customers are being engaged in giving you feedback, and excited to post that online to support your business. The way that we do it for our customers is we set 'em up on rep up.io, our favorite review growth platform. If you really wanna automate and get this thing going at warp speed, go over and sign up for rep up.io or find a platform that you're comfortable with that can do this for you so that you're not trying to manually solicit reviews.

I definitely do not recommend that you start asking customers for reviews that can leave like a really kind of icky after taste in their mouth after visiting your business kind of feeling like they got solicited. So there's a tactful way to do that. And platforms like repup.io and others are Wells suited to get that feedback and help your customers post things online. The goal of which though is to get more social votes, the more social votes you get online, the faster you're gonna rank your business. And you're not gonna spend any money on SEO or fancy link building or any of that stuff because you're getting your customers to help rank your business. It's the cheapest fastest way to boost your position on Google maps, which is so important for local businesses. I really hope this helps go check out rep up data and start there. And I know it's gonna help you guys out smash the light button on this video and subscribe so you don't miss us on the next one.

2 Videos Your Business Must Have

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 00:42:47 GMT

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Hey guys, it's 2022 and in this video we're gonna talk about the two videos your business must have. So if you don't have any videos, these are gonna be where you need to start. And if you have some videos, these are the two that we prioritize for every client.

So everybody knows the power of video in your marketing, your webpages and its ability to engage new customers and anyone that's visiting your content. So there's no question about using video in your business and to help grow your business. We all know we need to be doing that. The question though becomes where do you start? What's the first video and what videos are really important that your business needs to have. So here's what we encourage our clients to do. If they don't have anything, the first video that you really need to have a video on your homepage or wherever you're landing traffic or wherever the majority of your traffic is. And that video main objective is to let people that land on that page know that they're in the right spot to solve the problem that hunting around on the internet, trying to figure out how to deal with.

So hopefully that video figures out who's a good match for your product or service and gets them engaged in the next part of the process, which is buying. But you need to think about that video kind of is like ahead headline, right? And the headlines objective is to get people to keep reading down the page, right? So this video that should be on your homepage or wherever you're landing traffic, its job is to get people engaged in taking the next step. And that might be a variety of things like enrolling, buying, shopping, learning more, whatever it is signing up. There could be a variety of calls to action at the end of that video. But the first thing that video needs to do is grab those folks and let them know that they arrived at the right place to solve the problem that they're having.

Now, let's talk about the second most important video. The second most important video is a video that solidifies the relationship with somebody who already has bought from you. So this is like a post purchase. Indoctrination video is what I like to call it. An, what we wanna do with that video is not only reassure per the person that you're going to do a great job in following up with them and servicing them in an ongoing way. If it's a product, then of course, you're gonna talk to 'em about how to get the best use outta that product, what you're gonna do to support the product, how they can share and enjoy the product on and on and on. If it's a service, it's all those same things, but related to the service, thank you very much for choosing us.

Here's our intentions in how we're going to do a good job for you. Here's what to expect next. Here's the first step, those types of things. Okay. And the reason why that video is so powerful, and it's my number two on make your video list is because we want to really lock in that new relationship with every client we have. And it's hard to do that with every person in a repetitive, consistent way. And it's hard for us to count on our staff or our team members to be consistent and do that. But I've really well done video that covers all the points that you need to cover for your specific business. And the way that you like to talk to your customers can be consistent every time and deliver the optimal message to lock in that relationship and let them know that you're gonna take care of them over the long term and share with them the other things that you can help them work on and other problems that you can solve, which would be your other services, your other products add on products, upsell down sales. You can get into all that stuff. Once you start really bonding with that person through delivering this extra piece of content after they buy. Go ahead and like this video for me right now, cuz I know it's gonna help you out. If you haven't made any videos, start with these two and then subscribe to our channel. So you don't miss my next video. We'll see you on the next one.

How to Not Have Social Media Suck Up Your Time

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 18:00:57 GMT

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We're gonna talk about social media being a time suck. I'm gonna give you three tools and strategies to get it under control so it's working for you and your business, and not sucking up your time.

I'm gonna give you three things to deal with social media. So there's three pieces, social media that are a problem. One is, obviously the whole, all these platforms are designed to, you know, have our attention when we're giving attention to that platform. We're basically funding them with our attention, right? So the more attention they can log, the more active user minutes they can log, the more they can charge for advertising and the more that they can drive their stock price. So our attention is literally being monetized by them. So it's something for us all to be conscious of. So we've got that piece pulling at us, but from a business standpoint, we also have the piece pulling at us that we feel as business owners, that the business should be putting out content daily, if not weekly, on these different social media channels.

And for some businesses that might be 2, 3, 4, or even five different platforms. And it just starts to be a lot. And then the last piece is when are you gonna create all this stuff? Right? So you have the scheduling issue, the creation issue, and the time of like reviewing and managing all of these accounts. So here's the way that I think you can save a lot of time and get great effectiveness. One is create all of your content, either weekly in one shot, like do one hour, a week of photos or whatever content it is that you need to create delegate. Maybe one hour per week, if you do it one, then pick a half a day or two mornings and prep all your content for the month. That's frankly what we do here. We create a lot of content in baskets, and then we deploy that out over a period of time.

So that saves the, the stress of feeling like every day, social media beast kind of owns your and you have to come up with something every day. You don't need to do that. What you need to do is be ahead in your planning and your forethought and creating stuff today. That is gonna be for like next week and the week after. So that's my first suggestion. The next thing is if your business owner, and you're trying to do this at scale, you've got to have a cool platform. That's connected to all your accounts that you can manage everything. And there's plenty of those on online. I'm not gonna promote any here, but you guys can do your own search on that. You need to have a dashboard with all your accounts connected, where you can schedule, click one button and send to everything.

The idea that you're gonna waste your time, logging into five different things to post the same photo or do all that is just total insanity. Right? So the last piece, the, the last piece of this is to schedule, and this is tough, right, is to block the time every day that you're gonna spend on social media. So instead of responding to every notification and every bell that dings on your phone and all that stuff, silence all of those things and say, Hey, I'm gonna put this in. I work full every day. And in the morning, I'm gonna do 15 minutes. And in the evening or afternoon, I'm gonna do 30 minutes or I'm gonna do social media and that's it. Right. And that takes us back to that whole premise that your attention is being monetized. So how much of that do you wanna deposit in somebody else?

This bank account? Okay. Because you're just giving it away for free theoretically. So you, you really gotta be careful with that. And it works really well. It takes a lot of discipline because the software and our lives and everything have been, we've been basically trained and sort of brainwashing this thing where we're supposed to be like constantly attentive to all these alerts and, and the way that the, the feeds work triggers a whole lot of different psychology and keeping us engaged. Cause it keeps giving us more of what we like. And, and then we just keep liking it and wanting more. It's just like kind of sick cycle, but the way to break it is put it on your calendar and say, I'm doing it at this time. Go ahead and like this video and we'll see on the next one.

What Should I Automate First

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 00:36:41 GMT

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Today I'm gonna give you a little guidance on where I think you should start and what we do right away when a business has no automation.

Let's talk about where to start with automation. So this video assumes that you haven't automated anything in your business, and that means you don't have one auto responder or anything like that. Right? So everything is manual for the today's discussion here about this. If that's what the situation looks like. When people show up here to work with us, the first thing we start to automate is some sort of customer messaging, right? And so that's to the existing customers, right? We want to keep that existing customer pool, warm and engaged with the business, and that might be on products or services. It doesn't matter. Right? So if that customer base has been allowed to cool off, that's the first place to get into auto animating messaging to that group. And what that might look like specifically is at least 52 messages about a year's worth of weekly emails to that existing customer base.

And it sounds like a lot when I say that, but it's really not that hard to come up with 52 short messages. And we do at the same way that we've talked about other videos on here by organizing our topics, our expertise, and then just working down and you can quickly come up with 52 topics and then just start filling in the blanks and getting those written. What's really great about most messaging email platforms is you can start an automated sequence like that and keep it adding to it as it's sending. So you don't need to set the whole thing up necessarily. You can get 10 done, then you're 10 weeks out and then do 10, do 10 do 10. And then it all is happening. That's the first place we love to start is just making sure that the existing customer list is reengaged.

If it's been allowed to cool off. And if not, and there's been some sporadic emails at least get like some regularity, but get the workload off the staff, the owners and the managers, so that that's automated. And we know that that's happening. The next piece of the puzzle, once you have those existing customers engaged is to focus on new customers. And I think that the most important piece of automated messaging for new customers and this assumes that if they buy something, they get a confirmation. Okay. So that's, that's basic automation. So you definitely want to have that, right? When somebody gets a, they buy a product from your shopping cart, your shopping cart should have a confirmation email and a shipping email. Okay? So those are cool automations that are built into most e-commerce platforms. If you're a service provider, you need to think, how can I mimic that?

When I onboard somebody, what sequence do they go into? We call that a client indoctrination series, and it's really important. And here's how it looks. If you get a new client, you really should have about two weeks of indoctrination messaging for that client to solidify that relationship, to reaffirm to the person that they made a good decision by choosing you as their service provider. And, and to introduce them to all the other things that you probably do or can do for them that they didn't even know about. And it's just a lot to cover on a phone call for instance, or in the middle of trying to solve one of their problems, right? So the indoctrination series looks like this. Typically it's going to be an email every two to three days for about 14 days. So that's seven to 10 emails, thereabout, and those are going to go from a nice little arc, if you will, like a sort of story arc, they start kind of at welcome all the way to, you know, here's all the ways that we can transform you and your, and your problems to solutions.

Here's what things look like in the future, right? That whole stuff we've talked about on other videos and highlighting all of the things that you do, and also covering topics like how they can get the most from the relationship with you. Like what can they do, right. Setting some expectations with them and covering how both of you can do well and be profitable in the relationship. So those are my two areas that we immediately jump into. If you haven't automated anything in your business, then that's where I would dive into right now, the bonus points are adding in SMS messaging to the same sequences, right? So you can double tap, send an email and send an SMS and kind of have that going along, which is great. We've been doing more and more of that last year and this year. And we continue to push more SMS messaging for most of our clients, because it seems that people just love it.

It's fast. And the opens in readership are near a hundred percent on text messaging, which is awesome, comparative to email, which is still good on a warm list, but they're really not even close to the numbers. You can get on a text message where they receive it. They're gonna look at it. The downside is the amount you can send is far less, right? So sometimes it might just be a message like - Hey, we've updated, something in your account. So go take a look, here's the link. Or we send you an email, check your inbox, or here's a video we made linked to a page. That's always a good one for text. Just, they've gotta be brief. Those are the areas to go for and there's tons more you can do of course, with automate, but those are definitely the basics to sort of lift up your relationship with your new clients, your existing clients, and get a lot of that manual communication load off your shoulders. Go ahead and like our video and subscribe because we do videos every week and we'd love to see you again.

Motivation for the Lazy

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 14:39:32 GMT

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So I wanna share with you a personal hack today on how to deal with being lazy. So this is a video about how to get motivated if you're feeling lazy. So go ahead and smash that like button stick with me and I'll be right back to tell you how we handle it here.

So we all feel lazy sometimes, or we have things that we like to, avoid or that, different things at work or in our personal life that we just don't super jacked up to take care of. So there's some psychology behind all that, of course. And as marketers, this is an important piece of psychology to understand, but we can also use the same premise to hack into our own behavioral mess. So if you have something that you're avoiding or you're just feeling lazy and down, or like, you just don't want to attack, certain parts of your day, and it may be anything, it might be work might be fitness, might be diet, blah, blah, blah, or it might be, relationship parenting. It doesn't really matter what category it is in this will help. So there's a little interesting piece of psychology that is, kind of studies that did between behaviors and beliefs.

So sometimes our beliefs drive our behaviors, but what drives our behaviors more than our beliefs is incentives. And this is a really important principle to understand as your marketing and trying to get people to convert. But it also is a really important piece of psychology to understand when you wanna motivate yourself. So the answer oftentimes is not so much to try to change your belief about something or like, oh, doing my taxes should be fun. I should be grateful because I'm getting to pay these taxes, right. You, I don't think that you need to even waste time spending, messing around with trying to get that kind of thinking into your head because it's always just gonna feel a little off. And there's things like that in life that are just pretty much not fun, but we still need to tackle them. So the answer oftentimes is to give yourself a nice incentive.

Now incentives come in two for wars, there's negative incentives and there's positive incentives. So negative incentives are like some sort of punishment. If you don't complete something, I'm not sure that's a really great way to go with this. But if you wanna go on the positive side, it would look something like a reward. So if I do X tab ask, behave this way today, then here's the incentive, right? I get to do this or whatever it is, you get some sort of reward, right? So that just keeps you driven and focused on getting the incentive, right? And not so much having to worry about changing your beliefs around a certain task or anything like that. So this is powerful stuff, guys, this is how conversions work on your webpages and so forth incentives drive behavior more than anything. And you can use that in reverse on your cell to get motivated when you're feeling lazy. So go ahead like this video, give yourself some incentives around the tasks that you need to get done. And I promise you'll have a lot more fun and you'll be a lot more productive.

5.5 Things You Need in Every Email

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 21:51:11 GMT

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Today's video is about email messaging, and we're gonna give you the recipe for doing a great job with your emails, using 5.5 critical ingredients for every email.

So we're talking about emails that you're gonna be sending out to prospect leads, and even in your follow up series and automation series that you have going out in some cases to customers, especially in the case that you're doing some cross sell efforts or you're trying to increase the total customer value, right? How much every customer is purchasing from you. So let's take it from the top. The first thing you gotta focus on is the subject law. Now everybody knows that needs to be in there, but I want you to put that on a checklist so that you double check and make sure that you're really putting some time in on those two things you need to have with your subject line are intrigue, right?

And something that's compelling or relevant to your target, right? So you have some intrigue cause you need, you need to get them, intrigued enough where they wanna open the email. Right? So the goal of the subject line is to get the email opened, right? So focus on that. The next piece is your opening line or headline to the email. And that headline goal is simply to get them to read the Audi content of the email, right? So the headline is only function is to get them to continue reading. And oftentimes that means you're gonna state a problem that you know, that they have, or some sort of pain point that you are aware of with your prospect leads or your inside your niche. Right? And that's immediately gonna screening the folks off that are having that problem. And they're gonna want to hear more, right?

So that's a good way to get them to read more. The next part of the email is the body and this is where you really gotta pay attention to what I'm gonna tell you, because there's three critical pieces in the body that you just cannot mix miss. Now we made up an acronym here that we use called the w B a and the w stands for what I got or what it is, right? What is it? It answers that question. Like, what are you offering? What is the service? What is the, what is this whole thing about? The B is the benefit to the buyer, the reader, or target person. What benefit do they get by this thing that you just cited? Okay. And then the 0.5, the piece that a lot of folks forget in their marketing, right? They, they might get the benefit.

They might say what the thing is, but they forget this really important part. So if there's one thing you take away from today's video, this is it. Make sure you attach that benefit to the meaning that they're going to get in their lives. What does it mean to get this benefit? Does it mean they're gonna save time, save money, make money, avoid pain, avoid embarrassment, be more competitive, right? You've got to attach meaning to the benefit. Okay. So that really will enhance the results of your emails. The last piece, the WB, and the last one is the a is a statement about the action they need to take, right? So do they need to click to set an appointment, join a webinar, buy the thing, fill out a form, whatever that action is, you got to make sure you include that. So if you do a checklist from today's video, you should never have an email that goes out that doesn't have an action statement or a call to action on it. Right? So those are the 5.5 things. I know that you'll do a lot better if you make sure you just go down that list on every email that you set up to send, go ahead and smash the like button for me and subscribe.

How to Handle New Customers on Your Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 12:30:44 GMT

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On today's video we're gonna go over how to handle new customers on your website. So this is like kind of the whole goal to most websites and landing pages, and I'm gonna give you a little bit of insight on the things that we focus on. And one question to ask yourself, that'll help you decide on almost everything that you're working on for that web page. So stick with me and we'll go over it right now.

All right, guys, go ahead and hit the like button for me on this video. Just get that out of the way. And let's talk about how to handle new customers on your website. So in other videos, we've talked about how it can be a challenge on a homepage to figure out how to serve existing customers and potentially new customers. When we think about landing pages and sales pages, we are definitely thinking about new customers. If you're a person who has a website and your homepage is serving those two objectives, then this video will probably help you out a little bit. One of the things, and there's a few core ingredients, but one of the most important things to do for new visitors on your website is state what problem you actually solve for people. Now it's an important exercise to figure that out. And here's why one is, if you do a really good job of getting laser targeted on the problems that you can solve, you're not gonna hear from anybody that doesn't have that problem, which is great because you're not gonna have a lot of people wasting your time going around and around on stuff that you really don't want to deal with.

So if you get really tight on the problems that you can solve, right at the top of your website, then you should attract and retain on the page. Folks that have that problem, right? Because they're surfing the internet to try to solve a problem. So once you can say it out loud to them, we solve your problem. They should be listening loud and clear, okay, step one, state the problem that you solve, or the solution that you offer to folks that are having this friction in their lives. Okay? And then the next thing you need to be really clear with, and this sounds so obvious, but we fix these all the time with different sites that we end up working on. You've got to tell folks easily and overtly in clear language, what they need to do to start solving their problem right now. So you gotta imagine when we're all online, like 11 o'clock at night, whatever in front of the TV.

And we're thinking about that thing that we didn't take care of today. So we're shopping around or looking around or researching or reading. All we're really trying to do is solve problems. And those, mean that we're trying to make pain go away. We're trying to make more money. We're trying to solve this, trying to solve that. So when we get to a website that, that speaks to us and says oh place looks like they can solve my problem. The next natural question that this new customer has is what do I gotta do right now to start making my problem go away? And this is how you can start grabbing customers from your competition really quickly is by reducing the friction that they have to immediately starting to solve their problem. Right? So if they feel like they're starting to solve their problem, there's no reason for them to go to another website.

They actually feel like they're making progress in getting a solution. And that may be simply setting an appointment, signing up, to learn something, getting a free ebook, whatever the action item is. You've got to make sure that you have clear instructions on what they need to do now to start making their problem go away. If you do those two things or check your website today and make sure just crosscheck those two things, are you doing those two things? And if you're not, how could you be doing them? Better promise you, it's gonna help with your conversions and, and your on page time with folks that are your target. Now, here's the last thing I'm gonna leave you with this, a little bonus on this video. Anything you do on your website, ask yourself this simple question, is this good for my customer, right? Or the other way you might say it is, does this make things easier for my customer? So if you're working on navigation, if you're working on page layout, if you're working on, , how you write something or a video that you're making, just ask yourself that simple question is this change, is this edit? Is this yeah, actually gonna help my customer. And if you can't answer that with a hundred percent certainty, come up with another idea, go ahead and like this video and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one.

Page Level Psychology You Must Have

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 21:38:15 GMT

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Today we're gonna talk about some core psychology building blocks that you need to have on your pages. And even in some of your outbound marketing that you've got going out and going through these basic psychology building blocks is really gonna help you tap into raising your conversions, designing your P pages around meaningful hooks and those types of things. So let's get started.

All right, let's just start off by kind of framing up the conversation today about psychology building blocks for a webpage. Now webpages have a lot of different, varieties. We've got, homepages and all these different things and content pages and blog pages, but we're gonna focus on core sales pages today, or pages that we want the user to convert by taking some sort of action. And that's the action is mostly irrelevant to the conversation right now. One of the first things you've got to do on that page is you've got to say overtly, what problem you actually solve? Whatever the thing is that you're selling. It doesn't matter if it's a product or a service. We need to know what the product solves right away. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is we want the buyer with the problem to immediately identify themselves of having that problem.

And the other one is we want everybody else that doesn't have that problem to quickly go away because we don't need them. Anyways. We're only focused on the folks that we can help. So we need to screen them off quickly by immediately stating what that problem is. And then you can get into the next pieces, which are the solution. Now the solution comes and it has lots of different things involved because sometimes that is, my thingy, my widget does this, this and this, right? So those are feature, feature, feature, and are important to have. And that's where a lot of the, we spend a lot of energy and, and it's, normal to spend time on that stuff because we're proud of our product and everything, but that's not why people are gonna buy it. They're not gonna buy it based on features entirely.

They're gonna buy it based on benefits. So from a psychology stand on your landing pages, and even in some of your copy and other areas that you're, creating marketing collateral for benefits is what you really need to be focused on. And then to go one step further, you got to be able to convey what the benefits mean to the buyer, right? So features what the benefit of the feature is. And then what does that mean to them, right. Having that benefit in their life. Okay. So those are really core concepts that you have to address as you start to outline this product or service, that's going to offer this solution. Okay. You've got to use those core elements as you put that together in your content, your copywriting and the page design and everything else. Okay. And then the last one, I mean, there's a lot more to this, but I wanna get you guys started on some basic stuff.

I really feel strongly in. I don't think it's a big secret in the, in the business at all, that you feather in as much social proof as you possibly can about why your product is effective and what other users experiences are. And the psychological re reason behind that is, is that no one wants to feel like they're the only fool about to buy this thing, right? It, no one people want the reassurance that other folks have been successful and or happy and or satisfied and or well served. Okay. They really need to, the new buyer really needs to have that assurance and the most powerful way to give them that assurance is by showing them examples of other folks who've been successful with your product or service. So social proof is another core building block that you need to have on your landing pages. And frankly, in any area where you're gonna about to ask somebody to buy.

I mean, it's basically the digital version of you giving somebody a reference, right. That was the old days. Well, I'd love to, I'd love to, do business with you. Do you have any references or is there someone I can call to validate these claims or whatever you're making? I mean, it all sounds good of course. Right. But people don't roll that way anymore. So social proof and showing stories might be testimonial videos might be, a little paragraph that somebody wrote might be even shorter than that, but feathering thoses in is really important. So go ahead and be sure if you haven't done that, that you get that back on, get that onto your pages. And, and just as a tip, we typically like to pad those in around the action item. So there's a button or a form or whatever the action is on the page padding in that social proof right there relieves that last objection that's floating around in the buyer's mind that are they just this weird, this fool for being there by themselves, or, or other people gone down this path, safely, it's kind of like the unknown road, right?

So you just wanna, you wanna give 'em that assurance, right? So there's a lot more, uh, psychology, uh, that you can bring into your pages, but these are some of the core principles that you really need to start with. And you can build on those. Thanks for watching. Go ahead and like this video, and I would love it. If you had subscribe to the channel, we're doing a lot more videos and we're gonna cover more sales, psychology coming up.

What to Do If a Customer Leaves a Negative review

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 01:50:36 GMT

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Today we're gonna talk about what to do if somebody leaves a negative review for your business or product.

If you're in business, you probably, hopefully not, but many, maybe yours have had a negative review pop up to the top of the review list. And we commonly get this question here. What do we do with negative reviews? Well, the first thing to do is to understand that it's actually a hidden opportunity for you as a business owner or a seller of a product. And there's a couple of reasons why the other thing you do need to know though, is buyers do focus on negative reviews. And that's why, what I'm about to tell you is very meaningful. More than half of all, buyers will look at negative reviews before they read positive reviews. And there's some psychology around that. Perhaps negative reviews, give the buyer a window into what might happen. If things don't go well. And we all wanna have that crystal ball and protect ourselves, that definitely is congruent with psychology, that we're often more motivated to avoid pain than anything else.

So negative reviews represent a documentation of some pain that a buyer had and because that's in our nature to want to avoid that, we seem to focus in on negative reviews. The other, they get read a lot more online is because there's less of them by a huge margin, in fact, but because there's less of them, they are more scarce. And then there's even a third reason why they get read more. There's a lot of sort of commentary in news around positive reviews being potentially fake. And that kind of leads us all to believe that negative reviews are more likely to be authentic, right? Like who would pay for somebody to leave a negative review? That doesn't make sense, but we know from, news about Amazon and other places on the web, that there definitely have been some positive reviews, scams, and we're all kind of aware of that.

So we sort of don't value those as much depending on what we're looking at, but we always feel confident about what's written in a negative review. So there's a lot of reasons why people focus on them. So what do you do if somebody leaves a negative review for your business and how take advantage of all that psychology? Right. Well, the first thing that's important to know is that the review is probably gonna get read. The other thing to understand is that it's a huge opportunity for you as a business owner to show how you resolved whatever the issue is. So if it was a conflict with, about anything, how does that conflict get resolved? How do you handle the bad situation? And the reason why that's so powerful is that, like we just said, the reader is looking into looking, hoping, see through a window of what might go wrong.

And there's your chance with responding to that review to show them that even though one person might have had this problem that it was resolved, right? So the window now shows them that even if is difficult, or even if they're not satisfied, or even if this doesn't work or something goes wrong, that you've got their back and that you can resolve any problems that come up and therefore, service and make everyone happy. Right? So it's actually a huge opportunity. The other thing that that's important to do with those is to make sure that they do don't sit and faster at the top and kind of become one of your headlines without resolving them rather rapidly. So I like to say within three to 12 hours is a good rule to make a reply on a review. And I don't really think you wanna let, 'em go too much, longer than a day, my recommendation, but to get a great template about, and to help you guide you on how to respond and take the emotion out, cuz a lot of times people get emotional about negative reviews and you do not wanna respond with emotion.

You wanna respond strategically below this video in the description, you'll find a link to our favorite reputation platforms, templated responses at rep, up.io. You guys can click on that and get a whole sheet of responses that you can use. You know, of course you're gonna do a little bit of editing, but there are great spins on how to resolve conflict and so forth. So that's put together and that's an easy off the shelf solution for you. If you're struggling with how to respond or how to handle them, or if you wanna offload that responsibility to one of your staff members and make sure they have the tools to do it successfully, go ahead and like this video and we can't see, wait, we can, we can't wait to see you again on this channel. So go ahead and subscribe those. See you next time.

Why Quitting Is Okay

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 12:27:48 GMT

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If something's driving you crazy and you're thinking about quitting, stay tuned to watch the rest of this with me, and I'm gonna tell you why that might be a great decision for you.

Go ahead and hit the like button for me and let's talk about quitting. So I have a huge hang up with it. I'm like, I think notoriously fairly stubborn and, that means sometimes I can just ride things all the way into the ground, which is really not efficient. And that's exactly when quitting is actually. Okay. So there's two, two things that I've been studying up inside myself and in our business and, and clients and all that. And the first thing is where do you focus? Culturally, here in the United States, I think maybe globally in a lot of cases that, society, culture and formal education prizes, the idea that we're gonna focus on the things that we're not very good at, and we're gonna become this balanced human being, right?

So we may be exceptional to something, and let's just, do you school as an example, you might be great in language arts and you might struggle with mathematics, but in school, what do they do? They grade you down in math and they tell you, you gotta work on math, right? So we grow up with this. We grow up with this reality that we're supposed to invest the majority of our time in the thing that is actually difficult for us. And if you look at people that are really successful, and you could study musicians or business people, or doesn't really matter to the niche or category that they're operating in. Typically those people have kind of abandoned all this stuff that they weren't very good at and focused entirely all of their energy and efforts on that they, that they are really good at.

And then because of all that focus and extra time spent on optimizing and really getting good at the thing that they're great at naturally, or that they're just passionate about, then they start to see a huge amount of success come with that. Right. And the only reason is that they made a time exchange and it's tricky because we don't grow up that way and society and education and everything. Doesn't tell us that that's okay. They don't tell us that it's okay to not do the things we're good at. They tell us we should continue to struggle. So let's bring that back to why quitting is. Okay. If so something is getting in the way of your true gifts, your true passion or your true path forward, then absolutely. It's okay to quit that thing because it's, it's not about you becoming a balanced human being anymore.

It's a, that whatever that is, that's holding you back is become an obstacle to your greatness, right? And so that's a great time to quit the other time to quit. You know, that I see is when something is you are literally riding something into the ground. I mean, it's to pull the parachute and jump out and have a safe landing away from the crash site to use that metaphor that you don't want to go down in a ball of flames, right? So that's true in business and true, even in like a marketing campaign or managing your resources to grow your business, or even managing personal resources in your personal life, you really don't want to go down into the ground, you know, and no in on anything. So there is a time and it's really difficult. And I personally struggle with this all the time is when is it right to quit?

When something is clearly gonna turn around for you. And, you know, the answer is often in one simple analysis, what, what is it that you could be doing? And instead of riding this thing into the dirt, right? And so instead of focusing the analysis or the sort of conundrum on the thing, that's become kind of a nightmare, it's better to broaden your view and start focusing on what the opportunity cost is that makes the decision so much more clear because if the opportunity cost is gigantic in chasing, you know, in writing a project, a campaign, a business idea, a personal relationship or anything like that, if the opportunity cost of riding that thing into the ground is greater than the possible outcome of it. Suddenly coming back to life, then why in the hell stick with it, just quit, quit and delegate your resources to where there is new and better opportunity for your business or whatever.

And that might be on a granular level, like with a marketing campaign or an advertising campaign, just pivot, but it's also in bigger decisions in life could be your career could be the way you're running your business could be employees that you have or team members that are becoming obstacles and an opportunity cost. So I think those two things are, are great pieces to consider. Go ahead. And like this video, I can't wait to do more. We're doing a lot more videos this year. So stay tuned on this channel subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.

Heat Up Your Email List

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 23:32:19 GMT

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Today we're gonna talk about what to do with that dusty email list that hasn't got anything sent to it for a while. So stay tuned. We're gonna talk about heating up that email list and turn it into revenue.

So let's talk about what to do when you haven't sent an email to your list in, let's say three weeks to six months, this is a common problem. We see here with clients of ours that, you know, come to us as, as you know, newly onboarded, if you will. And we, you know, the first question we ask, how many emails you got five, 10,000, whatever. The number is sometimes more. And now we, the next question is when's the last time you sent anything to these people? Well, it was, you know, the summer of whenever, or we don't know. That's the common question. We're not really sure. So that basically just means never. So, but the emails are still there, right? So they're still valuable. And you may be in this position where you got busy or you didn't have a good workflow in place.

So that regular emails were out going out. And now the question is, you know, how can you go back to that list and extract some revenue? There's really two steps, and this is the way what we follow. And this is what I recommend. The first thing you need to do is send five emails to that list no less than five, really that are all giving and helpful content to your list. And you must know what that type of content would be because they were clearly at some point interested in products and services, and there have therefore they've got problems, you know, in and around that or whatever your offers are, whatever you're doing. So you must know how to speak to those folks because they're effectively your customers, or they were people that were gonna be your customers. And if it's the case of a customer list that you haven't emailed to a while for, for a while, go ahead and do exactly what I'm saying here, send five plus five or eight emails, just helpful customer emails.

If you sell a product, send them more ideas about how to use it or take care of it. If you sell service, share some of your knowledge and, and or what they could be doing now, or what's the current trend in your, if you're a professional service provider. So go ahead and warm up that list by giving, giving, giving. Then at the point that you've gone through that cycle, and let's say you fire that up so that they're getting an email. Every four days, you go five or eight emails out. So almost a month, 20 plus days, then you can go in there and hit, hit 'em with some sort of offer or cross sell if it's customer list or a reengagement into your products or services, but you gotta spend that time to warm 'em back up. So go ahead and do that. If you guys are having trouble, figuring out content, go ahead and check this other video that we just published about how to quickly come up with tons of topics for emails, just like this. They'll help you get started. Go ahead and subscribe. And I really appreciate it if you like this video and we'll see you on the next one.

Why You Should Not Get Motivated for 2022

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 23:25:05 GMT

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It's the first week of 2022, we're back at it just like you are, and we're trying to figure out how to get motivated for 2022. And it hit me that I actually think that's a bunch of crap. So I'm gonna tell you why you should not get motivated for 2022.

Here's my reason why - 2022 is just too much to get motivated for a whole darn year. And it's way too big to think about the problem with thinking about huge things like that, to try to get motivated and excited about is just too big. And it makes us feel overwhelmed and we start to lose our electricity for the situation, because it just becomes too much. Right? And this is true for anything. If you're trying to get back in shape or be back in the gym, if you're trying do something great or grow your business, trying to do something in your personal life, trying to do something in your spiritual life, it doesn't really matter what the category is.

If you start thinking about the whole year, it just seems like an awful lot. So my advice and what I like to do is to not think about the whole year, completely throw that out window. It's just a number on the calendar. It doesn't matter anyways. Focus on the next 30 days. In 30 days, you could actually probably get yourself in pretty good shape. You could make some really big moves with your business and your marketing. You could change your spiritual life in 30 days, you can do a lot in days and think about if you go 30 and then do another 30 and then do another 30, then you got 90 and 90 days is like a full transformation, right? According to some marketing experts. So don't even think about the whole year, just go out there and do the next month, really kick and the areas that you want to improve. And I promise you, you're gonna get results by staying laser focused.

How to Plan All Your Content for the Year...Today!

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 21:53:15 GMT

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It's time to plan your content for the year and I have a trick that I'm gonna share with you today on how to get it all done right now.

So one of the daunting tasks at the beginning of the year for any business is figuring out what is the content you're gonna put out? What is your focus gonna be for the year? And I know in past years I've definitely struggled with it. I have a ton of clients that just like kind of cringe at the whole prospect of having to come up with this stuff. So we know that we wanna put out engaging content material, and valuable resources for our prospects and our customers. And we want that stuff to be able to go on social media, by email, sometimes updating our web pages on and on and on. So it's just a huge task, but here's the trick that I'm gonna share with you today to break it down into like a meaningful, organized, easy to goal project. So this is what we did, and it worked really well because it took us less than an hour to come up with almost an entire year.

So the first thing we did was decided what are the core topics that we can help people with. Like what are the core problems that we solve as a business? And this is a question you can ask yourself and if you're good at your business, which I assume that you are, you're good at solving these problems for folks, right? So what are the core things? So maybe just as an example, we can talk about like a dietician. So a dietician is really good at talking to people about food and how to, balance their diet every day. They probably know a little bit about fitness. They probably know about like meal prep and cooking and, you know, and shopping and grocery lists and things like that. They probably know a lot about mindset and how to like in the right attitude to manage and start, you know, and work on your relationship with food.

So there's like all these categories, like mindset, meal, planning, shopping, budgeting, like balancing your macros every day, right? So these are like big high level topics. So that's doesn't sound like much, right. But what we did was we took our high level topics and we put them on the top columns in a spreadsheet. And then below those, we just started writing down topics through videos, you know, basically like headlines, if you will, for videos that would fall under those sort of master categories. And if you wanted to piece of content every week, you only only need to come up with about 50 or, you know, 52 pieces. So if you think about that, it's really not that big of a deal. If you have five core elements that, you know, you are an expertise in around your business, then you only need 10 nice topics in each one of those five core areas of expertise.

So then you just go down and in each one of those five, come up with 10 sort of granular little pieces and create some headlines for those or titles. We titled all of our content for the whole year this morning. Now we're gonna refine 'em, but we roughed everything out. So they're basically almost ready to go. Once you get all that done, you should have about 50 plus topics and you might even wanna do a little extra, cuz you could cancel some stuff out if there's things that you get to and it just kind of doesn't feel great. You can swap 'em around, but then you have basically the bulk of the work done. So if this helped you get organized for 2022, like the video for starters, and then go create a spreadsheet, figure out your five areas that you help people with, and then just work down those. That's your emails, that's your social media posts, that's your videos, those are your blog titles. That's all the stuff you can focus on for this year...then you can go relax.

Best of 2021

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:31:50 GMT

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This is the last video for 2021. And on this video we wanted to, well for one, thank everyone, but also go through the best videos that we did this year and why they're important to you and the channel.

So the first thing I wanna do is thank my right hand, Angie, who does all the editing and helps get the topic sorted out and get me motivated, make sure actually this year we didn't miss a single week. And fact, we exceeded the number of weeks for videos post sit on the channel. So that was awesome. We also had over a thousand percent growth and subscribers, a 3400% growth in views. And since we did so well with being consistent this year, we were 57% better in posting videos to the channel. So stats you speak for themselves. And I'm super thrilled about all of that. Looking at the analytics on the channel some stuff really jumps out. So the top video for this year was how to, well, no, that's wrong. It was the 20, 21 Google maps updates.

You must understand that was not really a surprise. We kind of did that video as a trend surfing strategy, Google maps is so important to everybody that has a local business. So I kind of knew that that one was gonna do pretty well. Every year, the game changes a little bit with that. And there's some fractional improvements of course, coming from Google and the maps max department. But it just goes to tell you that it's an important topic for all of us business owners, to understand how to do well on Google maps, with our reviews, our listings, our optimization images, 360 pictures and a ton of stuff that we've covered throughout the year. So if that's something that's on your list of things to tackle for the beginning of next year, go ahead and drop back, check out that video.

And of course, look for another update coming up next year from us on that topic. The next one, which is such a pain in the butt for everybody, because we all go through, it was how to get Google to index your site. So if you have a new website and, or just having some indexing problems at all, go ahead and check that video out kind of covers the basics on how to, you know, get that started and accelerate the process. It's no fun waiting to have your site index and, you know, so watch that video means you'll have a little bit of an edge and you can make things move along a little faster if you're having indexing problem. And the sleeper hit, which was a surprise to me was a video that we titled persuasion versus manipulation. And that topic came up as we were kind of diving into some ethical, you know, questions about advertising and websites and copywriting, and you know, where, where do you cross the line between, you know, persuading somebody and actually just being flat out manipulative.

And here's what I'll say about it. And the video's worth watching. Cause it just kind of brings up that, you know, that edge, that we're all kind of walking, you know, selling, but when it comes down to it, the best position to always take is that if you're doing a good job, you're actually matching people that have a legitimate problem in the marketplace to companies that have products or services that can help them, you know, solve those problems. Cuz that's what we're all here for. So if you're doing that as a marketer and you're doing through, you know, whatever the methods are, awareness, storytelling, you know, outreach and you know, videos and everything else, then that's great. If you're starting to lie and trick people, then of course, you know, nobody wants to be involved with that. And it it's a sh it's a short game and it definitely doesn't pay off in the end.

So worth checking out that video. But it did surprise me that we had so much activity on that one because this is kind of an abstract topic, but I think clearly we all, you know, being net citizens at times feel manipulative manipulated by or the environment or big companies or whatever. So it seemed to do well. And then we had the last one, which was kind of one of my favorite ones to do was an episode called con conquer your competition. And, and that one was actually the beginning of a series of videos that had a bunch of strategies are so important for local businesses. So if you on a high level and you're in a competitive market and you want to know the basic things that you need to put together for your business, then definitely go start with that video cuz watching that means you'll have the, you know, beginning strategy tools start putting together for the beginning of 2022, you'll know the steps to take, to start, you know, doing a good job with your marketing throughout the, the next year. So thanks again for all the support this year. Go ahead and like this video, we'll see you on the next one and have an awesome new year.

How Not to Be a Chicken

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:37:51 GMT

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Today I want to go over something that really hits home for me and for a lot of others, and that's how not to be chicken. So stick with me and we're gonna go over bravery courage and how to avoid being and losing out on great opportunities.

So this came about a couple of different ways for me this week. I was teaching a class at the local college and one of the topics that came up is being bold and differentiating yourself. And it occurred to me, after I was told that I was being a chicken this week, that it was easy for me to get up in front of the class and say - be bold and be ready to differentiate yourself. But that also can be really unnerving and take a lot of courage. And sometimes when those situations present themselves, we all can get a little chicken.

There are some times that I'm a chicken just like everybody else. And here's the way I think about it. I think going in the right direction, you really need to think how big the opportunity is like what's in front of you, what's at stake if you're able to find some bravery, right? So if you're able to dig down and set aside your fears and your worries about whatever the outcome might be in balance of the fact that there might be this amazing opportunity for you, then it sort of feels like more of an equation that makes logical sense. And maybe that's not really like the emotional pathway to getting it resolved, but a lot of these things in life are just that we need to apply some logic to calm our emotions down.

And so, you know, from a marketing perspective or even in your personal life, there are moments when we need to stand up and be bold and we need to be brave and we need to seize the opportunities that are in front of us. In order to do that, we need to set aside some of those like reservations and self doubt, fear and all that sort of little voices in our head. And I think one of the best ways to do do that is to apply some logic to it. Some, you know, practical information, which is - how big is this chance that I might be forgoing if I let these emotions take over and run me in this moment. Right? And if the opportunity really is meaningful for you, then it's time to set those emotions aside and be bold and hold of the courageous person inside of you and run with that.

So in the past, when I've had my moment to being chicken, those are the thoughts, what am I missing out on here? Or, how can I seize this and put that to bed? So it might be a public speaking event, it might be making a video for your business, it might be standing up and teaching, it might be putting your name on something, or a project at work or taking credit for something. And a lot of times those are great opportunities for us, and we need to just be bold and have courage. So I wish you the best of luck of getting up and meeting your own greatness, and being brave in all of your endeavors.

Marketing Plan for the New Year

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 23:18:44 GMT

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Today we're gonna talk about planning your marketing for the next quarter or month or even for the next year, and I'm gonna turn it upside down for you guys and take it from a different angle than probably most of the other things you've heard about.

So let's talk about planning a little bit, and it's one of the biggest pieces that it's a topic in marketing and promoting your business. Like what's the plan, what's the marketing plan. I mean, there's probably a hundred, a thousands of search results on just marketing plan and how to do it. So here's what I know about real life with marketing plans. And I'm gonna share it with you because I think it's gonna help you really think about how to execute, which is more important than in a lot of ways planning so you can goals. And I think that's important, you know, we're gonna try to raise sales 3% over the quarter, something like that, and, or, you know, raise our customer acquisition by some metric. And I think you need to do those types of things like focus on your key KPIs.

You know, the numbers that you're focused on in the growth of your business. You know, if that's new customers, revenue growth, you know, we dance around depending on our client projects between various different things to focus on, but nothing matters if you can't execute, right. If you can't get it done and say the goals are too high, or they involve too much workload for any given amount of time, it's really kind of a wasted exercise. So here's the way that I think you should look at it before you start diving into the numbers, have a real, authentic, honest conversation with you, your staff, whomever it is. That's helping you with your marketing. If you have an agency like us, or, you know, you're trying to do things internally, or you have like one person that's helping that's outside, doesn't really matter, but you need to sit down and say, what can we actually consistently do?

Now on this channel, I've spent a lot of time talking about consistency because marketing really doesn't start to sing until you accept that you have to be consistent, right? You've got to do it it week in, week out. It's like going to the gym or anything else in your life that you wanna get great long term results from. You gotta do the thing every week or every day. So you gotta figure out from an action based conversation, what actions you, you can actually be consistent with for the next three months. And I love taking things like in chunks like that quarter by quarter. So I think, you know, if you can look at next quarter now watching this video

And think, what can I do every week for three straight months, that's gonna move the needle forward on some of the things that I want to do better with in my business. That's where I would start. So this video, isn't a list of things for you to do. And all of that, this video is more about how to approach planning in a way that actually gonna get you result. Because if you make this sophisticated plan, that's based on all of these numbers and all this like lofty stuff. And then it comes down to do the every week to get it done. And you just don't have the firepower to do it. Then the whole thing was a waste. And the worst part about that is it leads to disappointment and kind of a bad taste in you and your team's mouths about, well, you know what marketing is, and you know, it just feels like a failure.

So you really need to set yourself up for success. And that means being honest with what you can do every week, what you can achieve every day, how much workload can everybody stand? In addition to their normal duties, perhaps how much budget do you have to pay that agency? You know, how much, how much can you get them engaged and working and how many things you know that they're recommending can you actually afford to do so you gotta look at all that stuff and then see what that's gonna do for you in terms of the numbers. So go, go ahead and take that approach for the next quarter. I promise you it's gonna change everything it's upside down, but it's a real world, you know, sharing from me that nothing matters except for the stuff you can get done. So we'll see you on the next video and hope this helped with you. Plan it with your planning for this year.

How to Deal with Negative Yelp Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 00:41:28 GMT

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Negative reviews on Yelp can be a serious issue for your business because Yelp is a leading business review site.

they have over 178 million visitors per month researching businesses they want to interact with. So it is likely your customers are there snooping around checking you out. Negative reviews on Yelp can quickly become your business’s headlines if not properly managed.

So how do you deal with negative reviews on Yelp and what can you do to have them removed?

I'm going to show you what you can and can't do. First do me solid and like this video and subscribe for more.

There is some good news and bad news on this with Yelp and most other review sites. the good news is there are many negative reviews you can get removed. The bad news is that some will stay no matter what you do.

The reviews you can get removed must meet certain criteria in order to be removed. The procedure to get them removed is actually simple. You just need to flag the review and then Yelp will verify if the review has broken the Yelp terms of service.

Find the review you want to report through the Reviews section in your Yelp account, click on the three dots located in the upper righthand corner of the review itself, and click “Report Review.”

How long will will it take to remove a review after it has been flagged?

You can check the status by hovering over the Flag icon on a review but figure it will take a few days to a week. YOu will also get a reply inside the platform.

You need to know that not all negative reviews are bad, and not all negative reviews have broken a rule. It is possible the customer wasn’t happy or had a bad experience.

If this is the case check out our other video about how to deal with negative reviews and turn them into positive marketing for your business. So what are the valid reasons you can have a review removed by flagging?

Not from a customer on record
Not covering a customer’s personal experience
Plagiarized
Disputing another review
Posted on the wrong business page
Revealing personal details of employees
Discussing opinions on business policies
Slander, or contains profanity/hate speech

Be mindful that you can’t do any of this if you haven’t claimed your business on Yelp to begin with. So make sure you have that done first.

The other way we handle negative comments and make sure they don’t become headlines is to make sure the business has a consistent review flow. If you keep the positive reviews flowing each week then an occasional outlier that is negative won’t last more than a few days up top anyways. We use Repup.io to drive massive review flow so negatives are basically washed down while we work them using the disputing techniques we just covered.

Go claim your business if you haven’t and follow these steps and if you want to really control the issue enroll your business at Repup.io

3 Ways to Take Advantage of the Reputational Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 17:46:13 GMT

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Today I'm going to give you three ways to take advantage of the reputational reviews you've worked so hard to build, to control the narrative around your business, and do some really great marketing using something that is on the table for you right now. That's probably one of the most powerful things you have - so stick with us.

All right. So today we're going to cover the three things that we do here all the time. When we have a client that actually has a decent reputation. So I would define that as you know, nowadays, I think things have come along a little bit like heading towards a hundred reviews and or more, and four stars and or more as an overall rating for the business. Now, we all know that Google and Facebook and a lot of these other path on our platforms will display your reviews organically when people search for your business, like if they do a map search, you know, the stars are there when your business comes up. So that sort of organic impressions, and you do get, you get a little bit from that, right? But that's not taking control. That's not being positive. That's not taking positive action on the behalf of your business, right?

So we want to take this reputation and review, you know, profile and take advantage of it and use it in our favor as one of the most powerful marketing collaterals that you have. And here's, you know, I think it goes without saying it's more important. What other people are saying. It's more powerful. What other people are saying about your business than what you can say about yourself. So anywhere that we can use social proof, especially on our pages, like around our call to actions, we want to pat around there with testimonials and reviews, we want folks that are considering to do business with you to feel that social security, that they're not alone, and that others have taken the leap and had a good outcome, right? So social proof and reviews are so powerful for that. So we want to circle them in there. And that's our first strategy is to bring those reviews into the website environment, around our calls to action and our desired, you know, sort of action steps along our funnel, if you will, and bring that social proof right into those website pages.

That's the first thing to do. The next one is to take some reviews, even if it's not the whole review, just the critical sort of sound bite, if you will, or quote and turn those into some posts that you can repost and or make some ads or display ads, or even use them in an email or any sort of outreach. Right. And that's going to be so powerful. So you have this, this library. If you think about it inside your review profile of advertising collateral, to help you market your goods and services and whatever it is that you're up to, right? It's all there. If you have a nice lineup of reviews, we have a hundred reviews, you got a hundred positive stories that you can share on social media and email and you know, and other things like that. And then the last piece, which we love brings a ton more impressions and that's to live stream a little review, pop at the lower portions of the website and on mobile that just come off the bottom bezel of the phone.

And we love doing that. And here's why you can get six to 10 times their impressions by running a live feed that you can buy waiting on organic impressions from Google and Facebook and other platforms. So why not get way more impressions for very, very, very low costs. So you need a good tool to do that. We always use wrap-up dot IO to set that up with our clients, to bring in that live review feed, and set up an awesome little pop there that streams live reviews right into the website. So those are your three strategies, right? Bring the testimonials and reviews right in around your calls to action, right? To give that nice, warm, fuzzy feeling as people somebody's contemplating making a purchase from you. And then the next one is going to be setting up some reviews to be used as posts and messaging and to fortify your outreach.

Right? So you're going to turn those into ads maybe. And then the last one is get a live review stream on your website for desktop and mobile. That's bringing that social proof in and getting you thousands more impressions every day on your site, if possible, depending on your traffic. Of course. So that helps go ahead like this video, I'd love to see you guys subscribe and we'll see on the next one and go out there and take advantage of your reviews, control the narrative around your business, and, you know, leverage that asset to grow your revenue.

Digital Kindergarten

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 09:16:46 GMT

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I want to tell you a little secret about design and user interface- the way that we frame that up, I call it digital kindergarten. So let me tell you all about that.

Okay guys, I'm gonna tell you how we figured out user interface in the most simpler simplest terms possible. And the other day we were joking around, we were working on a project and, we got some user feedback and they were struggling with the page feature. I think we all know that today attention span is very limited. So if you're doing any sales pages, landing pages, and sometimes that'll be your homepage on your website, you need to consider the fact that the user, that visits the page is just as strained for attention span as all of us are. And we need to figure out how to grab that person's attention. And we've talked about on the channel, how the fastest way to do that and stay relevant is to make sure that you're clear about the problem you can solve for that visitor.

So that's step one, but there are other elements are there, like, what do they have to do? What action do they have to take? What buttons do they have to press? What video do they have to watch? Whatever all those elements are, right? They need to be digital kindergarten. And let me define what I mean by that. I mean that whatever you design needs to be able to be completely understood by a five-year-old and it's not to insult any one of us. It's just the reality of the way things are with how little time people will spend on your page to figure out if it's important to them, with how little attention we have. And if you think about the vast majority of users now on a lot of cases, we're seeing 90% plus mobile mobile visitation on, on some of our projects. People are just working on this very small screen, and you really have to figure out how to make that work for you and not clutter it up and make it too confusing.

So if you're working on your page and you're feeling like people are struggling, and you can do this by just asking some friends, and frankly, if you have children in your lives, like you got your own kids, you got siblings with kids, you're an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent or whatever, and you have access to children. Show them the page so long as they're a reading age, know, they can read fluently, show them and ask them, you know, to walk through and see if they can make it work as a litmus test. If you can get a five or six year old to click through at your funnel, then everybody else is going to do just fine. So hopefully that helps. And, you know, it gives you a good framework for doing a good user interface job. It sounds a little silly, but frankly, that's where we're at. So keep everything at a kindergarten level and make it easy for your visitors.

How Does Your Business Look in Metaverse

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:31:34 GMT

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Today we're going to talk about what your business might look like in the metaverse. So this is for you - local business owners. What does all this metaphor stuff means? Stick with me and I'm going to give you my peace of mind on it.

So the first thing to think about when you think about the metaverse and this is like, I really liked what Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, whatever your feelings are about him and Facebook and all that. Just set that aside for one second, please. And let's just try to dive into the relevancy for all of us, regular folks. I liked what he said to Gary Vaynerchuk on their little Skype interview that this internet thing is, you know, especially in terms of, you know, kind of the web and then 2.0 and sort of where we're going has velocity, you know, the web was mostly text, then it became very pictorial, you know, image-based and then it sort of jumped to video with the expansion of bandwidth, especially on mobile devices. And that's kind of where we're at right now. And we certainly stress a ton of video with our clients and, you know, keep adding those to web pages and keep trying to virtualize that, you know, one-to-one interaction as much as possible, whether that be customer service, onboarding sales, landing pages, all the things you know, that we've talked about on this channel and things that as small business owners and medium sized business owners and especially local businesses, we, you know, oftentimes are still struggling.

We feel like we're playing catch up and now they're dropping this bomb on us that there's this whole other thing coming, which is the sort of 3.0, right. So it's going to be web 3.0, and it's called the metaverse for whatever reason, I guess that's where we're at. It's been branded. So what does it mean for us? Right. Well, right now it doesn't mean anything except for, to start contemplating kind of where you're at. And I came up with sort of three categories that I think are relevant to think about and it sort of fall, you know, sorta starts to draw some lines about what you actually provide, right? So if you provide services that are sort of virtual lies usable, so that word, if you provide services that you can do virtually like great examples of that are, you know, coaching and even telemedicine something, we focus on here a lot with our medical clients and, you know, what, what does your business fit into that?

Could you actually do some of your services and this pandemic, this chapter we've all been in together is definitely tested a lot of us for that, you know, and how, how much of that can we virtualize through video conference calls and, SMS platforms and messaging and, you know, direct messenger and all these other choices and platforms and tools that we do have. So you kind of have your, you might be in that category and then you might have a little bit of an easier move into this metaverse environment with just adding more tools to that, like VR and augmented reality and other, you know, sort of more what I would call immersive interaction tools. Then there's this kind of hybrid thing, which is how much of your business, if you don't provide a virtual service or a virtual experience, can you virtualize? And I think a good example of this is just to talk about restaurants for a second, right?

Nobody can taste the food through an app or through the metaverse or through a pair of goggles or whatever, right? I mean, at some point you got to get there and you got to eat or you need to have it delivered or whatever. However, there's a lot of that restaurant experience that can be previewed or what I called like a metaverse taste tester, right? You could provide a pretty good virtual taste test. And I don't mean that in terms of the fee, the food, I mean that, and this is a bigger example we're using that. We could tease up some enthusiasm with our customers by showing them the restaurant. Now, this is something we've been doing for the past several years using 360 spherical images so that people can virtual tour and look inside the restaurant environments or the business environments. Right. So we've already kind of had a preview of these tools, but what is the user experiencing on their other end?

Well, with the limitations of this flat screen that we have, you know, this like six and a half piece of six and a half inch piece of glass that we've all got in our pockets right now, the, you know, the best you get out of that as you can kind of get to hold it up and look around the restaurant, that's like the coolest version of it. And it's, you know, informative, but not immersive. And I think that's the difference. Now, if you put on a set of VR goggles and you started looking at places to eat, could you virtually re visit these restaurants and kind of get an idea of what the atmosphere was like, and even, and dare I say, take a walk through the kitchen, right? So this is where things get kind of interesting. How much can you preview of your business?

How much can you draw that customer in using what are these, you know, new tools that we're going to have a lot of which are going to become about marketing and sales. There's just no question about it, right? To enhance your business's ability to communicate and engage the audience that you want to come down there, you know, and in this example eat right. But there's a drop-off point there. You can't taste the food until you show up at the restaurant. Right? So there's, and this is my hybrid example, right? So the first one was a totally virtual experience like coaching, maybe telemedicine or some services that can be completely virtualized and don't necessarily need to have an inner in-person interaction. And then you've got this restaurant example I just gave you that kinda could probably be both. And then you've got like a pure analog business, like, let's call it like, this is wild example here.

And by the way, I just make these up on the fly, no script. What about like a zip line tours type of business? Now that's like a full-blown adrenaline rush type of experience that you really need to do in person. That's the analytic experience. Now, could you preview it using VR? Absolutely. Is it going to be the same experience? Hell no, but would it make some pretty cool marketing? Oh yeah, it sure would. Because you could film that with your 360 cam virtualize that and let somebody that visits your, you know, whatever it's going to be, your little corner of the metaverse, right. Your Metta address, I guess, cause it's probably not a website and they can walk into your, zip line business, jump up on the platform. You know, you kind of get the POV, grab the harness and Xu off you go.

And then people just decide, you know, are they gonna come do that for real or not? And the real question I think for all of us is like, well, if you give them that virtual experience, are they then going to show a, can pay for the real thing? Or do we charge for the virtual experience as some sort of like preview like a buck, a ride VR, and then do we charge the normal rate for somebody that shows up in person where we have insurance and all the other costs that go against it, everything. So, you know, there's, there's definitely businesses, I think cannot and will never really be able to be fully experienced unless the person is actually, they are engaged in, you know, the service or product that's being offered. But there's clearly, you know, right now in my mind, and this is my opinion, everybody's got opinions on the web now, after this sort of brand change happened with Facebook, that we're all sort of brainstorming.

And this video is really my invitation to you to start brainstorming about how your business might look as these things unfold in the next three to five years. Cause it's not going to take forever, you know, and it might, it might suck in five years and it might take, you know, 10 years. I mean, video on the internet sucked for a good five to seven years, maybe even 10 years. And now it's pretty darn good. Right? You can watch a full feature length movie on your phone, um, and pretty real get a really good quality. Your friends can send you videos, you could share a ton of stuff. So it's definitely evolved with bandwidth. So meta and the idea of a virtualized, web communication, product services and human being, you know, interaction platform definitely holds a lot of room for us to imagine and a lot of room to improve from where we are today.

So go ahead and start dreaming up what your business might look like. Maybe it might fit into my sort of three categorical ideas that I'm throwing out there today. And count on me to continue to touch back into this topic as the marketing opportunities evolve. And we all start learning about how to fit our businesses in and take advantage of the new opportunities that certainly will unfold as this thing reels forward. This was fun to watch in any way. Go ahead and like the button here on YouTube and subscribe to the channel and go ahead and share this around and we'll see on the next one on quick and dirty marketing.

We Review: Big Brand Advertising and Marketing - Part 3

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 01:52:17 GMT

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Today we're going to do some more dissecting of ads so we can all work on decoding, the psychology and the design of what works and what doesn't works in advertising. So stick with me and I've got some examples to share with you today.

I went and looked at some interest, you know, sort of websites, fitness, and some other things to pull some different ads from different categories that were what I would consider cold ads, just as much as, you know, retargeting sort of based on the interest group. So if you go to a high interest blog site around your niche, you should be able to see ads that people are using as cold advertising, targeting that interest group for whatever your business is. So let's take a look here. The first one we got right here is advertising the new Google pixel phone. Now this ad was basically the entire like across the entire page. So it was very readable, but there's two things going on here that I liked about this ad. One is all the way over here.

You have just an elegant product image, which is, you know, obviously what they're trying to sell. It's this sort of beautiful new phone and then some really nice black text on white that tells you what you can do now. Right? You can pre-order this phone and then not just lead your eye right over here to the buy now button, which is in this really nice contrasting blue. So the color use here, I think is quite good. They've got this sort of lime, whatever green that is nice white space, and then the blue big button. So the button in this example is actually quite large relative to everything else, but it's a very strong call to action. And I liked that about this ad. So you've got kind of the elegant product image there all the way over, and then this nice call to action and a little bit in between to explain.

And again, just using four words, they're, pre-order Google pixel six, that's it. And that's all it needs. It's not a bad ad. I'm sure that it's probably performing pretty well, but the takeaways here are the image being clean and professional, and then this nice call to action being really overt. Let's take a look at the next one. This is from Caesar's sports book. This one is great. And here's the core element to this it's right here. First bet, up to $5,000 risk free. This is the biggest objection, right to gambling and, and to some degree for all purchasing that people make, they're going to feel like they're taking a risk, right? But this ad right here just eliminates a $5,000 worth of risks. So it's a really excellent ad in terms of reducing objections to making a, an, a move. And that's something for all of us to think about in our advertising is what are your buyer's objections and how could you quickly remove them in two lines like this?

I mean, it just only using 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, like six words, big yellow and white on this black background, really the center of the message. Risk-free. Download the app, start making bets. I think it's pretty obvious what they do because it's called a sports book right up top here. Caesars is a pretty recognizable name. Of course, in the gambling business, got a little bit of legal stuff on the bottom. Nobody cares about all that, but you do need to think about that. If you're in a business, that's got regulations and then, you know, the action yours download the app and get involved. But the big thing for all of us as advertisers is to see as just this really powerful use of removing the biggest objection that your buyer might have. And the next one, this one, works in a couple of different ways. And I'll, and I'll tell you my thoughts about couple of things.

Cool. They're going on here? Pretty white ad got the avocado and the water bottle clearly fitness-based ad this was a, on a interest website. I went to the fitness website. And so this is a cold advertising. I've never shopped for any of this stuff before. So it wasn't a retargeting ad. And what's happening here though? The text is, and then again, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 words is falls are three to five word rule fitness starts with what you eat. Now, if you read that out loud for a second, your mind goes, wait, what? I thought fitness started with lifting weights, right? Fit. I thought fitness started with a gym membership. Why does fitness start with what I eat? That's a different category, right? So there is what I would call. And I think in the, in, you know, in this business called contrarian marketing is to say something to your prospect.

That's really, it's nothing they've heard before and goes against the main stream messaging that they're being exposed to daily because it makes them stop and pause and say, wait a second. Something's going on different here. And being different is a very powerful form of advertising. It's not to go with the herd, but to stake out some ground, that's all yours over here and say, fitness, doesn't start in the gym fitness, doesn't start with weights. Fitness starts with what you eat, what? Right. But for people that are really want to be focused on diet, and they're interested in things like avocados and drinking, good amounts of water and all that, this speaks to them and to everybody else it's contrarion and it makes you wonder, right? So what are you going to do? You're going to sign up for this personalized newsletter. There may be a to personalize it.

I would think I didn't click on it. And all they want is your email and they sign up, right. So it's an opt-in, but it's an opt-in for this sort of special messaging, good things that are happening here again are just that clean imagery, white on black, super readable. Exactly like a police car. Right. I mean, there's a reason for that. And then you got that contrarian messaging, so you can incorporate contrarian messaging into your copy, that going to be very powerful. So if you guys enjoyed those, go ahead and smash that like button and we'll see you again on the next.

We Review: Big Brand Advertising and Marketing - Part 2

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 15:56:34 GMT

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I'm going to do some more ads that we pulled off the internet just in real time. So these are ads are actually hitting my browser or whatever, and I pulled them off because each show different elements and they have some issues with them, I think are helpful with you so that you can become a better advertiser for your business.

Some of the ads that I found today that just stuck, you know, out online while I was browsing and I just snip them and bring them right in here. So we can start pull them apart and start decoding the psychology and why they work or might not work in the real world for our businesses. Right? So let's take out the first one. This one is for fries, grocery stores, which we have here in Arizona. And this one though, is this is an interesting app because fries sells a lot of stuff, as many of you know, but this ad is targeted to pet owners, right? So there's this pet savings that will raise the Wolf. Now I got to tell you, I am not a big fan and I don't really recommend that people get cutesy in ads, fries, probably getting away with it, maybe, but in general, I would say, don't get cutesy with your copy.

It just comes off. I dunno. It just, you can do better. Let's put it that way. To me, this is real like fallback stuff. Like when all the other ideas get denied by the client or some executive at Fry's, you throw him this crap and get cutesy and somebody goes, Hey, okay, let's try it. So I don't really love that play on words type stuff, but either way it's targeted to pet owners. The reason I saw the ad of course, is that we do a ton of work with veterinary clinics. So I'm always browsing, uh, that office is and, and the associated thing. So Fry's has got me in an interest group. My, and they're advertising that interest group, which is animal lovers. And that's why I saw the ad. So it is a retargeting ad clearly plan. They sell pet supplies. So it is clear kind of what they're doing.

And then the call to action over here is just shop now, which is great. It's a banner, you know, format that sort of long horizontal format that we would have like as a page. I think I pulled this one off of CNN's website images, a little small, these are tough to work with because the, just the aspect ratio is challenging, but the coloring is great, really punchy colors. It stood out on the webpage, it grabbed my eye. Fry's his logo is pretty recognizable over there. And you know, my only criticism though, is just, you know, getting cutesy and ad copies. I never, I'm never a big fan of that stuff, but you know, not bad. And then it reads left to right. And it's nice that the call to action is on the right-hand side. So you sorta eye scans across the ad and then it's click to take action right here with the shop now button.

So not terrible, but the biggest takeaways here are, you know, fairly clear messaging, good use of color and logo in this aspect ratio and moving the eye along to the call to action right here, shop. Now we'll just go to the next one. Now this one I pulled off, this is from lending tree. This is their refinance calculator. I got to tell you if there's ever a chance in your business, that you can give people what I would call cool tools or ways that they can learn actively in an interactive way, you should absolutely do it. And that's what lending tree is doing here with this calculator. So you can type in whatever the amount of the loan is, the length of alone, and you know, what your credit rating might be and calculate some sort of guesstimated payment, right? So it's immediately engaging into the brand that this brand has got useful tools.

And they kind of give a little bit of a, you know, possible low rates that they're running right now. They've got a date on here. I think everybody's pretty sensitive to the fact that, you know, these things, these, these rates change. So this has got some built-in urgency and, you know, kind of let's check it now, you know, there's that kind of vibe to it. But the big takeaway with this is if you can do a cool tool for your business, it's a calculator or some sort of something that people would need to be more informed, more educated, and you can become that resource or that place to find those tools. Then that's a good thing. And then if you can advertise about those tools even better, and then just, you know, last thoughts on this nice use of white space, the money and the call to action, all done in blue.

So that just feels like a segment down here below, and they don't need a lot of, you know, flim-flam headline stuff. It's lending tree, their name already has a built in, in message about what they do. And then this is their refinance calculator. So it's just, bam, this is the tool. So super simple. And I like that. And let's look at the last one here. This is from me shopping some mugs that we were going to do for some logo work. So I got retargeted on this from Vista print and the good thing about this ad and where I caught my eye as I like the emotion here, she's happy with her custom personalized mug and it's shown right there in the image. So it's happy person with the product, always a good thing to show your product in action with people enjoying the use of the product, which is exactly what's going on here in this ad.

And then, you know, this copy is here. It's a little hard to see it's like tiny, but, remember the moments that made you smile. You know, it's kind of like an emotional messaging type thing, but the, the big stuff that's going on right here is the important thing, which is personalized photo and box, right? That's what that was all about. And then get down, back into shopping. So this is again a retargeting ad. It's re-engaging me to solve that mug problem that I have, which by the way, I haven't, I haven't made a purchase decision. These guys are doing a great job of maybe turning me into a customer here but they had high minimum, so I didn't need a whole box of 'em. I just needed a few. So that was kinda my thing with them, but either way, good takeaway here is the emotional, you know, person engaging with the product in a positive way, call to action, a little bit of emotional messaging, and then this very clear three word, copy, nothing wrong with that.

And again, good use of white space and just showcasing the photo. So these are good. All things you can do in your advertising. And by the way, I'm showing you guys a lot of big brand ads, but what's so amazing about display ads is even small businesses like you like me and many others can take advantage of display ads. And the thing that's cool about it is they're oftentimes a lot cheaper than PPC and other advertising that we might do because there's a little bit of a barrier to entry to get this design work done, but you're only bidding against yay. So many companies to get space on a page because there's just not a lot of participants in that space. So it's a really good use of advertising. You can do so much with it visually and with, you know, looking at imagery and the copy and the calls to action. And there's really just no limit on how well you can do this type of advertising. If you guys enjoy this reaction video to these ads, go ahead and smash that like button I'm going to do more of these is kind of a fun way to do it in an interactive way. So we'll see on the next video, a quick and dirty.

We Review: Big Brand Advertising and Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 00:15:40 GMT

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Today we're going to go over some actual online ads that we picked out, right off the internet, and we're going to pick them apart using the things we've learned on this channel and figure out how we can apply some of these ideas to ads for you and for other small business owners. So we can be better advertisers.

All right, welcome back guys. So today we're going to go over some ads. I'm going to bring up here. We're going to figure out exactly, you know, some of the key elements that we've talked to on this channel in the past. And you know, maybe what we could use in some of our own ads by looking at real ads that people are paying to run online right now. So these are actually ads. We pulled off from this morning and we're going to bring them up here. We're going to start with an ad from Geico. Geico has the first thing about this ad right away that you notice just this, that big combined headline. So if you imagine this on a big webpage, combined is going to be the word that really pops, and then you kind of go down, I think, and you sort of goes away, but could save.

You see how this is like visually lined up right here combined, and then could save sort of brings your eye out. And then they have this awesome circular graphic logo. They put together for this, and they've got the car, the house, the apartment motorcycle and the boat. And they're really showing that this is what Geico envisions as combined coverage. This sort of circle of care, if you will. So I think the graphic was worth the extra time to put together for this. They did some clearly some thinking about it. They started with car cause that's what they're known for at the top. It's visually right below the word saves or kind of draws your eye down to this. So your eye sort of moves right through the word, save and down. So there's some cool visual, very good design layout work here. There's also the little subheading more than just car insurance.

So that's kind of like a new little sub tagline. And then the call to action is get a quote, right? They want you to see if you could save, right? So there's two things going on with the word could, it's a legal disclaimer, cause there's not a guarantee on this ad. And then the other thing is there's some intrigue with the word could and they want you to get a quote, right? So two things from this that are takeaways, great, three to five word headline with a strong message leading off the top, spend some extra time on the graphic, which is great. And then we've got a visible and clear call to action on the ad about what the person should do. If they're interested, let's go to the next one here. This ad is basically total crap. I pulled it off as a pretty bad example.

There's no emotion, no imagery on this ad. The call to action is barely visible. Despite it being in a contrasting color, even on my computer, I'm not even really sure what the hell that said. Um, and you know, get a $5 domain sounds cheap I guess. But do we really know since there's no reference, it's not like save today. There's no urgency in this ad, like get a T get a $5 domain in the month of October, or it's just all sorts of weird, which makes me think that this is ads by Yahoo, that this ad was actually put together by like an algorithm or some sort of mixer. That's mixing messaging on this lame color background. Cause there's no imagery. There's no happy business owner that got their $5 domain. There's no person setting up a website. I mean, nothing is associated with that.

It's just very dry. So I doubt this performs very well. Even though network solutions definitely been around for awhile. They've got a good name, but they're not even really doing a great job of leveraging that in the ad either. So moving on, this is the kind of stuff I would avoid. It just looks like lazy, lame work and it's not compelling, no urgency, no imagery, no emotion. And what is we don't as a buyer really care if they're the original domain registrar, that's not relevant, right? This is about them. And remember you want to focus your ads about your customer and what they value. Next one here, big brand and for big powerful brands, we've got Amazon and down here, the American express logo, which is very recognizable, you've got prime and AMAX sort of double badging. This ad right here, which is really cool.

So they're leveraging of course their established business and selling us this nice black credit card. So it's got that sort of high-end feel, which is cool. It's targeted at business owners and they're giving you that classic advertising copy, which is small business, big perks. And that's our format, right? Which is your small business. You think you have obstacles? No, you don't have to have those obstacles. Even if you're small, you can have big perks even though you're small. So it's kind of a clever get this without that pain. We've talked about that structure before on the channel. And it's just a really quick little punchy version of that. They stayed again, their primary message is three, four words up top Amazon business prime card. Anybody can read that. They know exactly what the ad is about. Learn more as the call to action. So you're going to find out more about the credit card and what the terms are super straightforward, the best elements from this ad.

Great graphic again, high-end imagery sort of says that this is a premium card for a business owner. That's doing, you know, wants to do it well or is doing well. So it appeals to that aspirational business owner or customer, and then very clear messaging and clear call to action on nice white space. So pretty decent stuff there. We're going to do some more of these. So stick with us. If you guys liked this video and he liked doing these sort of reaction to advertising videos, having fun with him all over the internet, it's a great place to learn. I want you guys to start to deal with decode ads for the elements that you can use in your ads. Go ahead and smash that like button, see you on the next one.

5 Steps to Managing Online Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 21:22:20 GMT

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We're going to go over the five sort of steps that are critical ingredients to you managing your online reputation. So if you have a local business and you do get reviews, you're not going to want to miss this.

First though, I pulled some stats off the internet that I think are worth understanding before you even get into managing your reviews. I think we all intrinsically know that reviews are super important for our business. Our sort of business Goodwill is now transparent and out in the public more than it's ever been before. So listen to this, I'm reading right here. 97% of consumers read online reviews to find local businesses. So that implies that 97% of them are using reviews and so forth as part of their search queries. And that goes back to some other stuff. We said about reviews and SEO, 85% of consumers trust online reviews about businesses as much as much as personal recommendations.

So even though they don't know these people, they consider them as valid as a friend, talking to them about a business, 74% of consumers trust a company more if they read positive reviews. So this goes back to what we were talking about, about having that positive review thread, right? So these are huge numbers, 97, 85, 74, and lastly, 89% of consumers look at reviews before making a buying decision. So I think the numbers are pretty compelling. So let's get down into the dirt here, the dirt. And let me give you sort of the five, uh, bits, you know, action items that you really need to take. First off, you've got to find the platforms where your customers are leaving reviews. Now we track for our clients about 70 different platforms. So there's a lot of 'em out there. Things that maybe you don't think about, but there's Yext and city search and Zoc doc, if you're in medical, of course, very popular, got the big ones, Google and Facebook, but people leave reviews all over depending on their browser, what they're into, what's being put in front of them, their email accounts.

There's a lot of reasons why they get navigated and influenced to leave reviews and different places on the internet. As a business owner, though, you're responsible for finding and figuring out where all that stuff is because that is all messaging about your business. Then number two, you gotta make sure that your account, your business account is actually active and claimed on all of those platforms. So if you haven't gone and done that for your business, it's time to log in and go to all of those platforms, all the review platforms and figure out if your business is listed. And if it is claim it submit a complaint, uh, a claim. And if it's there, you can do that. If it isn't there, then you can of course create an account for your business. All right? And then you've got to go through all the existing reviews, make sure that you flag inappropriate or spam reviews and respond to any need, never get negative feedback.

Now in the next video I'm going to do, we're going to do a little bit on negative feedback and how powerful it really is, but you do want to respond to negative feedback and you can even sprinkle in some responses to positive feedback, but more, more than anything you want to engage and handle negative feedback on any one of the platforms that you do find. And then you need to check these about once a week. So if you don't have, you know, an automated system or something like that, that's helping you, then you really need to do this once a week. And we're going to post some stuff in the links on this video, some tools for you to make this task super easy. Number five, you've got to come up with a comprehensive strategy to increase your positive reviews, you know, and, and respond to negative reviews every week.

So those are my five things. Now that last one, which is the whole strategy is, uh, kind of a can of worms, but we've talked about it on other videos. And really it means that you need to be engaging your customers, your customers that are fans and your customers that are having, you know, a service issue or some sort of complaint. You just can't let those things go. So stick with those, you know, five steps, get organized, get after it and figure out where people are posting about your business. Make sure you take control of the situation. So start and check us on the next video of this helped you like get your head around, you know, some of the stats, especially how powerful this is. Go ahead and smash that like button we'll see on the next video. And we're going to cover what to do about negative reviews. We'll see you then.

The Best Way to Get Consistent Positive Reviews Without Icky Requests

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:42:04 GMT

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I want to help you guys figure out how to get positive review flow for your business or for your e-com store, without the sort of icky, awkward conversations - asking for them or asking your staff to do that and so forth. So stick with me. I'm going to give you a couple of tricks.

Everybody knows that getting reviews is really the front lines of local business marketing right now, those near me searches and all those stars are being displayed on maps and pretty much everywhere that your business listing is presented. That includes places like yell, Yext, Yelp, Facebook, Google, you know, everywhere, a place. All these platforms are spots where your business is going to get literally ranked against your customers. So your businesses Goodwill is now in the public record. If you didn't think about it that way, that's the other way to think about it. And what's so important for local businesses is to keep that review review flow coming down every week consistently. And here is why two good reasons. First reason is if you do happen to have a customer that gets a bad experience and they decided to go post online, you really don't want that to hang at the top very long, because you know, it's going to effectively act as the headline for your business in the review stack.

This negative is going to stick up there. So you really don't want that to stay any longer than it has to. You want to push that down and get some positive. Now negative reviews can be used to your advantage, but they don't work well when the number one most recent experience, because people understand that reviews are stacked by time and they definitely don't want to visit a business. That's pumping out negative experiences as, as recently as this week or within the last couple of days. So you want to push those down, that's your number one reason. The other reason you want regular review flow is because it's going to help your rankings and it's going to help you against your competition in your market. So how do we do it? Well, we do it in a way that's, you know, ideally automated and here's how we do it.

Here. We create a series of emails that follows up with every single customer. Now we do this for e-comm stores and we also do this for in-person store. So it doesn't matter what type of vendor you are. If you're an e-com person, this is particularly easy to set up. Most e-comm platforms will allow you to integrate with a mail server, or sometimes they have their own series of mail follow-ups that you can fashion, and you can frame those messages so that you're asking the customer how their experience was and asking them if they could please leave a review or hopefully give you some feedback so that you can do a better job next time. Now, in the case of a local store, like where you have customers coming into your shop, this can be a little trickier to get them to opt in. However, not impossible.

You can get them to opt in for things like loyalty programs, getting specials, getting on this month's event list, all sorts of different reasons why they'd like to engage with you. And once they do that, you can of course follow up with them in a series. Now, what does the series look like for us? It typically looks like three to five emails or SMS messages that follow up with that customer and simply ask them how their experience was when they were in the store. And, you know, maybe a couple of specific questions that you're trying to focus on, like KPIs in your business, you know, how was your server? How long did you wait? You know, did you find the pricing to be appropriate? Was your overall experience good? How was the atmosphere? Right? There's all these different metrics and things that you can sort of probe and get some idea of what's going on with your business, but overall paints the picture.

It also really helps for them and obviously provide some links for them to click through and leave reviews publicly. Now that really helps because it's going to help you start to build reviews that are growing faster than your competition. Therefore, your business will be recognized as best in market. And when people search for best my business, right, your business is more likely to come up at the top. So this is an awesome strategy for SEO and outranking your competition. It also helps that review flow move along so that if you have a negative review, it quickly gets pushed now. So that's what I'm telling you. You guys need to do, you got to set up a way to follow up with every single customer, without counting on human staff and human error and putting your staff or yourself and your customers started in awkward conversations that makes the customer feel like they're being put on the spot.

Also, I can tell you that even if they're really happy and you have a great way of asking them and they say, yeah, I'd love to leave a review. They'll log out the door. And most likely life will get to them and they'll be completely distracted and they'll never leave the review. Right? So that's why I got a follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up and politely remind to politely, ask for them to give you that feedback and hopefully post it for you if they're happy.

This One Thing Will Grow Your Business on Almost No Budget

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 11:27:50 GMT

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Today I'm going to answer a question that I recently got, that is so important and really forced me to kind of boil everything down with all this marketing stuff and know, you know, sort of one thing. And the question was, if you could only do one thing to promote your business, what would it be? Stick with me and I'm going to give you the answer of what I would do if I could only do one thing.

All right. So welcome back. Now, this is a tough one. Cause there are so many choices, right? I mean, we've done dozens and dozens of videos on all the different things you could do for marketing. But if somebody asks you Hey, or somebody, you know, gives you a scenario, let's put it this way. I only have so much money. I only have so much time, you know, I have these limitations. So what could I do if I could only do one thing, right. And that's a really good question because you know, one thing kind of leads to the next leads to the next, but here's my answer. Short and sweet. I, if I had a local business that had a front door, you know, brick and mortar, or if I had an online business that was e-commerce or in some way was serving people online.

The one thing I would focus on was is reputation management. I would focus on review and how to get them. Now reputation management kind of has three prongs to it in my world. The most important pro is managing and being aware of what's out there. Right? So having a system in place that monitors all the reviews that are hitting both positive and negative and alerts you to what's happening because people could be getting reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, Yext, web MD. There's like literally hundreds of review sites out there and people are posting stuff all over the place. So monitoring that is incredibly important. Now the other piece of that puzzle is how to build reviews and build your reputation online so that you can rank and be, you know, sort of put up against the best competitors in your niche or market. And you can fare well, right?

In order to do that, you've got to build your reviews and build your reputation online. So that's sort of the other piece of that puzzle, right? You got to manage it and you got to build it. Now, the other piece of this that most people don't think of, but for us is super important is once you figured out how to manage it and you figured out how to build it, and you're getting a lot of good review flow, right? Cause you've got a system in place. That's bringing these reviews on getting them posted online, where they're public is then how do you leverage those reviews? Now this is why, this is the reason why I say this is the number one thing I would do. If I could only do one thing to promote a business because reputation management and review management is really a secret flywheel marketing exercise.

And let me explain why and what it means to you. The reason I say that flywheel marketing is because if you can get the, the whole system spinning and start getting reviews in, well, what do they do? They create their own gravity and new customers. Potential new customers will look at those reviews that you're getting and they'll want to be customers. And then they can leave reviews. And then the more people look at them and they want to be customers and so on and so forth. So this thing starts to snowball, right? That's why I call it flywheel. Now there are some other examples of flywheel marketing that, that, you know, we've played around with for years. And I love it when I strike out something. But one of the things that's so awesome about reputation and review management is everybody understands how important it is to manage these things online.

But what most people don't understand is that it's one of the biggest flywheel opportunities for you and your business. So why is that meaningful? It's meaningful because if you can start gathering lots of positive reviews around your business, that means you're able to convert more customers and grow your revenue and bottom line every month. So reviews are really one of the one major thing. Like if I could pick anything, like, look basically getting reviews is free, right? Somebody else does the work, they write the review and somebody else hosts the review. So as a business owner, we really don't have any costs and all that. But we do have to do is make sure that we get the wheel spinning and we monitor and manage and reply and play along with all of that customer interaction to get the flywheel going and to keep it spinning, right?

So it can create this gravitational force around your business and attract more and more customers. So if you're going to do one thing for your business, this is where I would start. And I definitely wouldn't stop here either. You never want to ignore your reviews and reputation online, and you never want to stop trying to grow and cultivate those social votes around your business. If this helped you figure it out where to get started or what to focus on this week, then go ahead and share this video and like the video. And I can't wait to see on the next one.

How to Create 247 Proven Headlines and Not Miss Dinner

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 16:52:23 GMT

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Today we're going to go over some copywriting stuff. And of course, we're going to start at the top with headlines. I'm going to give you guys my spin on that. And of course, headlines are the stepsister to our favorite topics, subject lines. So stick with me and we're going to dig into it.

I thought we'd just do something fun today and I'll give you a, two thoughts on headlines, I think are incredibly productive. It's one of the areas that we all struggle with. It's like, I think one of the spots where you could just hit that sort of writer's block, if you will. And you're just like, oh, but let me put a little twist on it that I think will make things easier for you. For one, there's a lot of places that you can cannibalize headlines from. And I'm going to give you some examples here in a minute, cause I have some stuff keyed up on my, trusty Chromebook here. And the other thing to think about is just in terms of workflow for your content, right? So headlines are kind of like topics, right? Because a headline is essentially a promise to the reader about what they're going to get if they keep reading.

And that's an important point to know that that's really important to focus on is that your headline is your commitment to your reader about what they're going to get if they decide to keep going. Right. So that kind of frames the whole thing up in terms of, you know, how important it is. But for our workflow purposes, having a list of topics is the first in my mind, step two, getting to headlines and you know, and or the other way around, but there's good argument by both me and many other folks that, you know, create content and have got to work with client projects and come up with all sorts of sizzly stuff, to start with topics, start with headlines and then back fill in, you know, the actual copywriting and the body content, if you will. So I'll give you guys a little, you know, sort of behind the scenes here, I spend a lot of time on this channel, just coming up with topics.

And then, you know, we have like a running list of topics all the time, like maybe 25 or more. And then we sorta like, look at them every week and kind of go, how did these fit together? What's the, the order that they could be in and on and on and on. And, and that's kind of where things start. So as I go about my work every day, and this is what I'm encouraging you to do, if you go about your work with your customers and your clients and whatever your business is, notice the questions they ask, notice the things that you're helping with every day, right? And just off to the side, somewhere, pick up a pen or your phone or whatever, and, write down a topic related to that, you know, oh, what's the, you know, the best, the best way to plant, more than one plant in a pot is, you know, I mean, could be anything, does it, it just is whatever it is that you're getting hit with that week can become a topic.

Once you have these rough topics out like problems you solved during the week for your type your customers specifically, then those can morph into headlines. And now this is where it gets fun. So I told you at the beginning of the video, that there are plenty of places that you can cannibalize really cool headlines. So we're going to do that right now. Maybe let's stick with the, with the nursery owner example. Let me see if I can rewrite those. So what I'm doing in here is I went on to Google and I typed in magazine covers. Now here's a little secret for you, the guys and gals that write magazine, cover headlines, get paid a bundle to put those little headlines above what I call the peop you know, so when magazines are stacked on a magazine stand, there's that little top section. And that's like the peep.

And is this all been figured out a long, long time ago because magazines have been around for quite some time and those headlines that are peeping, right. I've got to have a lot of intrigue and they've got to be framed up with like insider secrets tips and, you know, reveals. So all of those things and, and, or my favorite one that people just cannot resist the idea that they're going to get to ease, drop in on something they otherwise should not be able to hear or should not have been able to, listen in on. So those are always fun. I'm giving you, you know, these are some of the old tactics here, so let's just click on any magazine cover. I'm just going to click on glamour.

Here's the headline ready? Sexy hair. Yes, please. Easy looks for long and short. So that's the one of their titles and that's above the peep, right? So that's a valuable space for them because that's going to stick out above the, a magazine rack, right. And then they have another one on the same magazine, but we weren't, we're not going to do that. It's like 198 bags and shoes. That's the, that's a classic formula, in copywriting. That is the overwhelming list. Like 75 ways. You can accelerate your houseplants growth. There's like 75 ways. Holy crap. So the reason that works is that's just overwhelming value. Right? Remember our promise to the reader is the readers, you know, chance to evaluate where they want to keep going. When they see something so

Overwhelming, they go, well, my time must be worth 75 tips. Or in this case, 198 bags, shoes, and dresses that are going to be the summer fashion obsessions. So it's just like overwhelming value, which means paying eight bucks for this magazine is probably a good deal. You see you getting it now. All right. So let's go back to sexy hair. Yes, please. Every Le easy looks for a long and short. So let's reframe that headline. Sexy hair. Yes, please. How about deep green growth? Yes, please. I remember this is a nursery, right? We're promoting a nursery deep green growth. Yes, please. Let's say easy, easy tricks for both long and short grasses. There you go. That's pretty darn good deep green growth. Yes, please. Easy tips for both long and short grasses. Bam. So there you go. I just showed you one of my favorite little tricks and I mean, it just sounds terrible, but you can go all over these awesome magazines.

And this is like Vogue glamour, you know, GQ magazine, time magazine, vanity fair. All these magazines are paying the best copywriters in the world to come up with. Cool headlines. And you just need to look on here, any one of these and reformat those for your niche, your customer, and your content. So just use your topics to start migrating, to headlines, pull your topics from your every day, you know, activities and then go over and see what you can do with, you know, cannibalizing some of the formats that are proven time-tested strategies by the best copywriters in the world, leverage that success, make it your own. And I look forward to seeing you on our next video, where I think we're going to do some more on copywriting, honestly.

The 3 Part Recipe for Good Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 23:01:48 GMT

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Welcome to quick and dirty marketing and another video we're going to do today on the recipe for good marketing. I'm going to give you the three ingredients you got to have.

So I was given a webinar this morning and it was a sales training webinar, and we've got all these people on there and of course we're going over stuff, and this is a longer format. It's like 16 weeks. And you know, so we're able to dive deep now here on YouTube, try to keep things fairly condensed, which is always a struggle because there's so much to tell, but I wanted to boil down what you really, what the three areas that I think are mission critical for good marketing. Now in the past, I've done some videos about, you know, what makes a good marketer and that's kind of a mindset discussion.

This is really the areas of focus for what you're going to put out. So the first thing to talk about is you got to have the first let's call it the first ingredient. The first ingredient is you've got to have a good offer. Now there's kind of two buckets that fall into. And I think Elon Musk said this quite well, that if you have a new product, like that's a new, you know, that solves a new problem for instance, that people, you know, didn't know they have, or it's like a new piece of technology or something you're kind of standing alone and what your offer looks like and what your product looks like. Doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, evolved if you will. It's almost like it's a beta. So if that's you, the pressure isn't quite as high, however, that's not most of us.

And the other side of that discussion is that if you're going into an existing market and there's existing competitors or the existing products and services, then your offer your value proposition or what you're bringing to market needs to be exponentially higher in terms of value or capability in order for it to be competitive with those entrenched operators. So if you're trying to jump into the local, you know, market for whatever your services, like, let's say you're an accountant and there's other accountants, and they've got a lot of clients and they're in your neck of the woods in order to jump into that market and open up your accounting practice, you're going to need to have a strong offer and order to pull existing customers away from these entrenched operators

That are established and, or get new people that are just looking for an accountant into your office for a console, because they're likely to want to go to somebody who's established. So you're in a much more competitive situation there. So that's, most of us, most of us have to really work hard to put out a great value proposition, great offer because we are in a competitive situation. So that's ingredient number one. Now ingredient number two is the messaging and the messaging around this offer has to be solid, right? And that means that you got to have good imagery, you know, and I always tell our clients here is, you know, quality professional photography helps really tell the story like, you know, substandard images, even website. It doesn't matter where they are. If you're, if you're selling a product, of course, you know, you know, you gotta do good product photography, but I think where people get a little loose is they're not necessarily a product.

So they have a service they're putting together this website or other marketing collateral. And that's where the imagery, you know, kind of gets confusing because you're not necessarily shooting your own stuff, although you probably should be, but you definitely want to have appropriate, you know, professional images, well-written copy and engaging text. And the messaging has got to be clear and concise. Now, here are the three that, you know, I got another three for you today. Three little bits that you've got to have in this messaging, right. Are what it is. What you got, basically, all right. The benefit that they're the person, the buyer, the consumer is going to get from this service or product, and then the action that they need to take. So that's the w the B and the a. Which you got the benefit and the action to take the WPA.

That is God to be in your messaging in one form or another, but you got to hit those three things. Your messaging has got to be clear and concise. And then that brings us to the final ingredient of good marketing. And that is consistency. And there's a great speech from Steve jobs about, you know, success and consistency and not giving up. And if you haven't seen it, it's worth a look. But the difference oftentimes between one successful competitor and one who's not, or ends up getting washed out of the market, a lot of times is just sheer consistency. And I've done other videos on this channel about being consistent ritual and all that. But it really is. One of the most important ingredients to marketing is to be there all the time present so that when your ideal customer problem, their problem sort of boils over, you're going to be there with that helping hand and your solution to help them go through and change their lives, you know, with this thing you're offering.

So if you're not consistent, though, so many of those opportunities are going to go missed and, you know, that's just of course, going to impact revenue and your long-term viability. So let's just go back quickly. I like to wrap it up, but your first piece is your offer. And, you know, that has got to be competitive in a competitive environment. That doesn't necessarily mean cheap. Let me add that in. When I say offer competitive, I don't mean be cheap. I don't mean be the lowest price. I mean, be the best value, which is a completely different discussion from price. Be the best value offer the most sizzle, the best product in the market, even if you're more expensive, just be the best. And then the next one is that messaging, it's got to be clear, concise, and have the WPA ingredients. And then the last one is you gotta be consistent month in w well, let's put this week in and week out, month in, month out, quarter in quarter out, and every year to grow your business, we'll see you on the next one. Hopefully that dials in to the main three areas that you've got to be focused on in your marketing all the time in order to be successful. Go ahead and give us a link on this video, hit the alert, and you'll be notified when we do another one, which is pretty much every week. So we'll see you on that next episode of quick and dirty marketing.

How Does Google Use Bert

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 23:54:06 GMT

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Today we're going to talk about something that I think is pretty it's pretty, frankly, almost like sounds like a miracle, but this has to do with your On-Page SEO. And the constant struggle that we hear from, you know, clients are trying to, come to us for advice about keywords and content creation and how much QI, how many keywords are needing to be in their content and you know, all that complicated stuff. So we're going to cover it, but it's, I'm going to cover it with sort of the latest, you know, Intel and a little introduce you. Some of the newest technology that Google is using to make all of this work for all of us. So stick with us, and I'm going to give you some good advice on how to proceed with your On-Page keyword and content.

I don't know who said this, but there's a quote out there that great technology should seem like magic. And we all take for granted how miraculous Google really is when we go to search for something. And it's able to look all over all the content that everybody in the globe is submitting into the internet and publishing and give us, you know, the best relevant results, which has always been their goal, because that makes their tool, their search tool important for us to use and keeps their traffic flow going. And of course drives their advertising revenue. So us using the tool is super important to them, which is why they invest billions of dollars in making it better all the time. Now, things have gotten pretty amazing over the last several years with starting to blend artificial intelligence and learning algorithms into search, right?

So the system is almost now beginning to teach itself and last year, and this all ties to your on-page SEO and the struggle that we all have with like trying to figure out how many keywords and how we should phrase our subject lines and headers, all that stuff. And I think based on what I read about, you know, how their technology is going and how they're resolving queries, that much of what we used to do in SEO is sort of becoming antiquated. And I mean that in terms of on page content now links and all of that stuff, I think will probably always be a really important ranking factor. I think everybody agrees that links are, effectively a vote of confidence about the content that they point to. So let's just get back to you and me, you and me create content for our customers, our prospects and folks that we'd like to have visit our website.

And even if it's just a little bit of content, that's about our product, we still want that to be relevant and important for people that are searching for our stuff. Okay. And if, you know, people are making a query, their question, you know, posing questions to Google that, you know, potentially our product or service or our content answers that question or resolves it in some way we want to be relevant. And all of that. Now the thing that's interesting is that in the old days, you know, and I'm guilty of this as well as we would make pages with content and kind of pack them with relevant keywords that we thought were in, you know, part of the search queries. And that all makes sense still to some degree today, but it's really important to understand how Google is resolving these queries. Like how are they analyzing these questions?

Because that really drives what we need to do in terms of creating the content, right? So here's, what's cool last year, in an effort to improve natural language processing. Now this is super important, right? Because we all have experienced Amazon Alexa and this voice search technology now, and we could do Siri and okay, Google and you know, all these things, right. And actually even my phone over here is beeping. While I say that. So natural language processing is an evolving technology that is really starting to get, you know, super important in our lives and, and verbal, or if you want to call it, auditory search is probably the way we're all going, right. It's just an easier interface. You could just pass the computer or the device, anything that you need to know, you know, when is a restaurant open, when does a movie start?

How do I get there? What's the phone number, tell me, you know, how many legs and elephant has whatever. And if the system behind all of that understands natural language and can process it, then in Google's mind. And I tend to agree that makes it the whole computer background, much more powerful in terms of giving you a relevant return on your question, right? Giving you the proper answer. Now I thought Bert was an actor on Sesame street, but turns out Bert is actually bi-directional and coder representations from transformers that all just goes right over my head and probably most people's heads, but this is a computer science thing. Now, the key thing to understand in there for us is transformers and transformers are, and I'm looking at my notes right here, cause I don't want to screw this up cause I'll get roasted online are models that process words in relation to the other words in the sentence.

So it really drives intent analysis, right? So the intent of the question is as important as the words in the question, and they give a lot of examples on Google's blog of prepositions that can screw up, you know, or have screwed up the algorithm in the past in terms of processing queries. So prepositions like to prompt for a and things like that, that, you know, could be interpreted improperly by the previous system, but are now under Bert able to be understood in the context of the larger sentence. And you know, the, the actual larger question at hand and the results are coming back relevant to those questions instead of like, it seems like it doesn't know now we've all experienced this and this is driven another phenomenon, which we've all participated in where we search Google using keyword ease, which is like not a real question where we write our question.

Not like we'd say it. So not using natural language. We write our question using keywords because we're trying to game Google's algorithm to give us back the information we're looking for. Right? So we say, you know, something silly, that's like keyword, keyword, keyword help or something, or keyword, keyword, keyword find, you know, something like that. And those aren't really like semantically. Correct. But we're just trying to get the algorithm to work for us. Now, Google is trying to eliminate that because there's just a lot of errors in that. And then, you know, on the user side, I mean, that's really an indication that we're struggling to get good results and they're sensitive to that. So now we have Berg and I think that Bert reinforces what I said on my last video. And I'm going to say it again on this video when it comes to on-page content on page content is, and keywords on your on-page keywords are super important, but what's more important now than ever with the direction that these guys are going with this type of technology.

And it's how deep it truly is starting to understand our natural language is to actually be focused more on creating good grammatically and semantically relevant content like content that is actually fairly well-written and answers the questions that buyers and prospects actually will be asked. That is the future. In my opinion of on-page SEO, it's not about packing your page and trying to do keyword ease. You know, the, this sort of keyword ease has two sides, right? The searchers using it to try to get the thing to work. And then us ASEO people and website owners like yourself are slamming a bunch of keyword crap into their pages, trying to get, you know, landed as a result for this, you know, wacky query that's coming through the system. All of that is being broken down by Burt and transformers models that Google is now using.

And they're using it right here in the U S so it's happening now, the system's up and, you know, live and what it means for us for our on-page content and our on page, SEO work is, is that now we can focus really on what we should have been focusing on all along, which is creating quality content and answering our buyers and prospects questions with good well-written ex you know, answers to whatever it is or explanations of our products and services or anything like that. So the homework assignment from all of this, for, for everybody that is trying to rank pages, is to really understand the questions that your buyers are asking, you know, real proper language questions that you may be having with your customers. They're asking you these questions to log those and write content that answers those questions and trust in the fact that Google and the super smart people that they have working in this computer science world will figure out and to have effectively made huge leaps in the last 24 months and getting, you know, high quality content that's relevant, matched with even poorly asked questions that really need to have that content served like, you know, grammatically incorrect, missing words.

Misspelled is one of their biggest challenges, but they're doing really well with it using this new system. So let's all give a round of applause for Bert and the smart people that have figured all that out, because I think for on-page SEO, it's made our lives a lot easier.

On-Page SEO

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 23:15:56 GMT

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If you stumbled on this video, this is actually like the eighth video in a series of videos where we're covering SEO basics for folks just like you, that are trying to grow your business, trying to get more ranking, more traffic on your pages. And what I'm doing is sharing some sort of basic stuff that you need to know, and that we would certainly do for all of our clients. So today, and the reason you want to watch this is we're going to go over one of the things that almost everybody that has a website could take on themselves, and that is on page SEO. So this is actually working on your website. So even if you have somebody else that's helping you with it, understanding this stuff is really important to make sure that they're doing a good job or that whatever you're paying for, you're getting value for.

So we're going to talk a little bit about on-page SEO today and you know, this is all about really getting your pages and content to rank and behave well, as they're crawled by Google's algorithm for indexing and search. Now, I can tell you that, there's a lot of elements that go into this and, you know, there's all these different pieces to your page and, and all, a lot of areas to focus on, but on a high level, I want you to start with the first premise, which is that if you're actually talking about your topic or your service, and you're just, you know, the content is targeted at your niche and your target audience, it's pretty likely that you're doing fairly well with, on page keyword density and, relevancy, right? So the, so the algorithm is going to look at your pages for its relevancy against search terms that Google may return your pages for when somebody is looking for whatever the topic is.

Right. And I think like where people spend a lot of time focused on this and it is really important. It also naturally occurs when you're publishing and doing a good job with putting out content on a regular basis. Now, there are some cases where, you know, you might just have kind of a static website and you're not putting out a lot of content and you want, what's there to be as best as possible because you're not going to be backfilling all the time with additional relevant content. And in that case, you definitely want a zero down and two, these couple of things that we're going to and make sure that you're pretty pinpoint sharp on all of them. So let's just start with the first bit of stuff to deal with. And that is your titles and your title tags and so forth on the site.

You're age one, entitled tags really need to be appropriate and they need to speak to what the topic is. That's on that page, right? In a clean way. So they need to have, you know, typically a keyword mansion or a core keyword in that title. And in some cases, if you have additional pages, you can even do pages with longer tail keywords that are easy to compete for. We've discussed that on another video, right? So this is all tying together with other stuff that we've done here on the channel. And then you kind of go down from there and you have your body content and your images, right? One of the things we do see a lot of here is when, you know, if somebody brings us a website to sorta work on or fix is images, won't be tagged properly with alternate text or, and just remember that on images, the algorithm can't see the images like a human being.

So the algorithm will look at the image images associated, associated data. And that usually comes in the form of an alternate text tag, which theoretically if for some strange reason that device, that somebody is using couldn't load the image, the little text would say, you know, picture of a cat or whatever, whatever that photo is. So you want to make sure that your image tags are all there and that the images are relevant to the story or the content, you know, and the keyword effort that you're putting forth. That doesn't mean to go hog wild and just tag every image with your keyword, because I can kind of backfire on you, but within reason, you know, and truthfully, I think the other thing too about, you know, SEO, that's important to understand now is that Google has done such a good job with, you know, implementing artificial intelligence.

And they've had a lot of time now to get this thing working pretty well. So faking them out and trying to game the system really doesn't work well anymore. I think in the past, we used to be able to get away with some of that stuff. You know, 5, 6, 7 years ago, algorithm was a little bit easier to manipulate now with, you know, semantic programming, contextual programming, artificial intelligence, and some really like sort of high level stuff. That's built into this thing. You're not going to get away with just like padding in a bunch of BS and thinking that's going to like, you know, game your page up above some of your competitors. So that brings me back to the beginning of what I was open this conversation about is if you're actually doing your job and presenting your product or service to your relevant audience, and you're talking to that audience in your content, the way you write, the way you speak, the way you title things and all of that on your website, you're probably about 95% of the way there to cleaning up your on-page SEO.

It goes without saying, this is also partly a scrub job, right? Not to have duplicate pages, incomplete, you know, sentences and thoughts, poor grammar, you know, keywords that are, you know, long tail keywords that are disconnected and things like that. You really want to just go through. And it's really kind of, you know, as much as this is an SEO job, it's also kind of a, an editing job of making sure that your content is clean. Now we can put some numbers around things real quickly here for keyword page density. And the general rule is still around a half a percent to 3% of the total tech. Would it be your keywords that you're targeting that whole thing about the way the algorithm works now though, is you can use synonyms and, you know, alternate, contextual descriptions, long tail keywords. And some of the things we've discussed on our other videos to enrich in that content for relevancy it also, and this is, was, you know, been one of Google's goals is that the content is more readable from a human standpoint and more, you know, it doesn't just sound like you're repeating yourself, repeating yourself, repeating yourself with the same terminology, right?

You can use your natural the way you describe something by using cinnamons synonyms and other other language to describe the product or service that you're hoping to rank for. And the cool thing about the algorithm is it basically understands that now in a contextual sense, and that will actually help the relevancy and also help with the algorithm, understanding that the page is authentically about this content, right? It's not just like a game to page, so you're safe and doing all the things you would do. If you're just trying to explain it to one of your customers, prospects, clients, or whomever, you're hoping that would visit your website. So just on a checklist basis, I mean, anything that's missing duplicate, you know, truncated cut, or that just needs to clean up an editing. You need to fix that stuff. And, you know, you want to make sure that you've done your keyword research, what we talked about on another video and you know, what you're trying to put in and what these pages are trying to rank for.

So go ahead and attack it fairly scientifically, but don't overload that effort and kind of blow out the readability, contextual relevance and, you know, human digestibility of your content, right? Don't just throw all those important things out the window. So you can play this keyword game on your pages because it's going to fail for two reasons. One, the algorithm smart to sort of sniff that out. The other thing is nobody wants to read, you know, sorta Franken Stein context, you know, Frank and Frank and context. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to read that stuff. So even if they get to the page, cause it ranked they're going to get there and be like, who wrote this a third grader. So still shoot for high quality content well-written content, and then go back and see if you can tune in the proper keyword density. There are tools online, of course, that can analyze your content for keyword density.

And those are out there and you could do a search for that. I'm not going to plug anything here on my channel, but they're out there. We certainly use tools like that when we need to do quick analysis. So go check some of that stuff out. If you need a little help and you want to put some more numbers around what you're trying to do. And, outside of that, you know, this is one of the important parts about building your website is to make sure that you have clean content for your customers. So go ahead and dive into it, get your stuff where it needs to be, make sure you check every page, delete pages that you're no longer using or there aren't relevant or don't carry current content or aren't current for your products and services anymore. Just clean that stuff up, right? Do house cleaning. That's basically what on-page SEO and content manager is all about. If you enjoyed this video,

Go ahead and like it, we drop a video every week. So hit the alert and of course you'll get notified when we do another one. We'll see you then.

Technical SEO Checklist

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 01:04:08 GMT

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What's up guys, welcome back business owners and website builders and creators, and those of us that want to bring in more customers and more visitors to our website and grow our businesses. We're in the right spot today. We're going to continue with some of this technical SEO stuff. And I'm going to give you the hot list of some of the little tasky things that really you cannot ignore. So stick with us and I'm going to walk you through the stuff that we pay attention to when we're doing a job for a client. All right, welcome back guys. So this is basically a list of the important elements that you really just cannot ignore. There is a lot and SEO can, in some ways, especially the technical side of SEO can be a little bit of a black hole for most folks in terms of just time-suck and diminishing returns.

But there are some things that you really just want to make sure you're doing well because they're basics and they do have a good return on effort. So I'm going to take you through those. And these are definitely things that we do weekly here at the agency for our client sites that we manage to make sure that, you know, they're not having a problem with a basic thing that can easily be handled. All right. So let's just get right into it. I kind of wrote some stuff down here, so you'll see me looking down, cause I don't want to miss anything, but one of the things we did when we set up Google search console for your site, which was a couple of videos ago, is we then, you know, by doing that, allowed ourselves to use the inspect URL tool there, that's one of the things that if you want to get a good search console report and we encourage that you do that. You can put your URL in there now and use Google search console to get some results back on what they see. Now you're going to get some things there, like speed reports or mobile performance reports and some suggestions on things you can fix. So I would start with that. And we typically do that for most of the sites that we take on or that we built from scratch.

Then you're really g oing to, and this is not my opinion anymore. It w as my opinion five years ago, but it's not my opinion anymore. It's just pretty much a data driven data driven conclusion.

You're definitely going to want t o focus on the mobile friendly aspects of your website. Now there's two sides to this equation. Google will score your URL, your domain in terms of its mobile friendliness. And then I find that there's also kind of a practical side to that, which is that, you know, maybe someday will teach this algorithm to come up with, you know, sort of human semi human interpretation, but on the mobile, you know, sort of friendliness score, you also have to weigh that against just practical usability. So your mobile version of your site really needs to fit and work in that small screen. It also should score well in terms of mobile speed and its load times. And you know, and there's some tricks with that too. Like not trying to run, you know, video backgrounds and other things that are going to slow down the mobile experience, but I'll give you an example just quickly.

You, you know, if you have a restaurant, for instance, you really want like, there's a few buttons on there. They're like the hot buttons, right? And they should be big juicy buttons on the phone screen. What are the three or four main things that a visitor is going to want when they visit a restaurant website, they're going to want to see the menu. They're going to want to know where it's located and they're going to want to be able to call and, or make some sort of reservation if that's the case or just kind of find out what the deal is, right? So those four buttons, those four action items really need to be up front and center. They shouldn't have to dig for a menu for that and so forth. So that's just a practical design thing that answers the needs of the user.

And that also, you know, weighs against what Google will recommend in terms of speed and load times. But my recommendation for always, always on mobile is get up the functional stuff. First, when you load that first mobile page that people want to do, when they want to take action on your site. Now, if it's a shopping site, you know, then that's a completely different objective and you don't want to show the beginnings of the shopping experience or the products and so forth. That's different than the restaurant example, but whatever it is, that's that first engaging sort of action is really what I recommend loads first for mobile. And I spent a little time talking about that because this really, to me, one of the most important elements in checking technical issues with the site mobile load time, what it looks like and how usable it is.

And then, you know, looking at all of Google's sort of reports and analytics, when you do the inspection and get their mobile reporting on that. The next thing that seems really basic and should not be difficult for most of us these days is to make sure the site has a properly installed SSL certificate, which means it's going to serve. When you look at the domain, the browser bar, it's going to be HTTPS. So if you don't have that S on the end of the URL address in your site, then that means you're short an SSL certificate, and you really need to get that installed. That's greatly going to affect your ranking. Google does not want to rank, sites that are not secured with a, so you're gonna want to take care of that. Now, the good news is if you're using a site builder like Shopify or square, or, you know, one of these other sorts of, out of the box web design tools, they typically are just doing that now by default, that used to be like an upcharge or an extra thing, but the whole world is evolved. Luckily passed that. So your site should have that if you're using Wix or something like that, if you're on WordPress, you're probably going to have to talk to your domain host or registrar, like GoDaddy will certainly happily sell you an SSL certificate or another vendor, and make sure that your site is connected and that SSL certificate is properly installed. So you'd need to add that as a basic item. You cannot get away with not doing that. . So you're watching this and you're not sure. Go check.

And any like crawling errors t hat come back from that, search console report, you're going to want to try to resolve those. Usually those are going to be broken links, bad pages, 4 0 4 errors, 5 0 5, something like that. And they're not hard to fix. Typically, it's just like a stray page and the design process. Or if you have an older site that had a lot of pages, then you know, there's going to be just some, like what I call remnants, you know, that just need to be clipped and deleted and you need to collapse down to the core stuff. You don't want to have a bunch of crap, old pages and duplicate content. There's no reason to be doing that on your website. It's like a, it's like having your clean house in the front room where everybody comes in and then the rest of the place is a show. And there's just clutter everywhere. You just don't want to expose the crawler to that. You don't want to potentially expose your visitors to any like weird stuff like that. So clean all that up.

And then any, any, like, you know, I think it's worth depending on who you are and where you've been. If it's a new site,

You don't have to worry about this, but if it's an old site or it's been copied or through a couple of agencies or something like that, that's sometimes worth checking to make sure there isn't like duplicate content out there. And, you know, making sure that the content on your domain is unique to your domain because you can get a black strike for trying to run duplicate content. So make sure that there isn't, for some weird reason, a clone version of your site, an old version that might be on another domain, whatever, resolve those issues. Cause that can dramatically impact your SEO in a negative way. Especially if you're coming to the party after the original pages were published, this new site, just not going to rank, it's going to get blacklisted for trying to be a clone, even though you're probably the original owner. So if that's a possibility in your world, track that stuff down and clip it and get your new thing up and going any broken links. And this is really l ike, you could argue, this is an SEO problem, but frankly, I think it's pretty much a user problem. Nobody likes going to a website and it really feels amateur. And it's definitely something we are very careful about here at the agency is like not putting up live pages that have buttons that don't go anywhere, hyperlinks that are incorrect, or like landing in the wrong place, menu items that are not working well, that kind of stuff. So audit your pages. And a lot of times what that means for us is getting a third or fourth person to look at things. Cause sometimes I have to stare at something for like two weeks. You just don't see some of these issues and you need a fresh set of eyes. So go out and find a friend or somebody else to take a second look and like test drive everything and, or your kids, your teenagers or whatever, and make sure that if they find anything that you fix those and then any orphaned pages or stuff like that as also, just, like I said, abandoned content or blog posts that were missing images, like any sloppy stuff like that.

So that's the list. That's like the hot list. If this helped you kind of get your head around where to focus, go ahead and like the video we're going to keep it up.

How to Rank Question Keywords

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 07:47:35 GMT

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Today's topic is question keywords, how to find them and why they're important. W e did video on keyword and keyword research, gave you guys some tools and stuff, and I'm trying to give you some of some easy kills for SEO because as he has definitely a long project can take, you know, in some cases a year and more to really get your site and all of your content ranking the way you want to, depending on competition. And that's one of the tricky things about SEO. You know, you don't know what the competition is really doing. They could be working just as hard or harder than you are spending more and creating more content and all that stuff. So it's always a moving target and you really just have to lean in to do a good job. However, there is low-hanging fruit in SEO and that's what today's topic is about.

So let's get into question keywords, question keywords are effectively a variant of long-term keywords, right? So you have your core keywords around your niche. And today we'll use the example. Let's go back to our artificial turf installation example. So your, you know, the, the key, the core keyword to that is artificial turf, right? And, but there's also a whole lot of other long tail stuff around that. Now question-based keywords around that are going to start. Those searches are going to start with things like what is, or how to, or how much things like that. So they're always going to lead off with a little bit of a question qualifier, the typically core keyword, and then maybe some long tail extension. The question is, how do you find this stuff? Well, there are tools online and I'll give those to you in a minute that make it really easy.

In fact, it makes doing this super simple. Now let's talk about the benefits though, why you want to do this. You want to do this because people that are asking a specific question in search, like what is the best artificial turf for dogs? What is the best artificial turf for kids? You know, those specific questions. Those are high intent queries from people that are really trying to make a decision or better expressed, really trying to solve a problem. And this applies to any niche. I'm just giving you one example today, we're using our little artificial turf example, but think about your niche, your business, what are the that you're typically getting, right? And then I'm going to give you a tools that you can use so that you can jump right in and start finding even more. But the, the, the person that is searching and using those types of intent-based questions really is displaying to the search engine that they have a real problem.

Now, this wasn't as smooth on Google side until the hummingbird algorithmic update was launched. And that really brought in a lot more semantic, I guess, AI, if you will, or semantic results that allows Google to interpret full sentence based questions in the search bar, or even in voice based search. And that means that Google wants to return relevant content. That specifically answers those questions. This is where you can win on your site page content, and you can rank pretty quickly for some of these question-based keywords in your niche. Strategically. This is so important because not only are you going to be able to hook people that are searching, you know, potential clients that are searching, but you're also going to be able to give them an authority based answer because you know everything about your niche and how to answer these questions. So you're already going to build some trust and interest with your authority by having the answer to these core keyword questions on your website.

So this is a really great place to start with getting more ranking done, because it focuses you on hitting buyers that have real problems that you can solve with your product or service. So let I'll tell you what I'm going to do. We're going to put some links in the description for the tools. So go ahead and scroll down and take a look at those. You'll be able to enter in your keywords or some types of questions that you think, you know, that are common, that you hear in your business, in these online tools and get awesome reports. So this is pretty cool stuff. I really encourage you to take advantage of this, a great way to get some action on your pages and some organic traffic pick that is r elevant and probably ready to buy and really needs your help.

ONLINE TOOLS:

https://www.semrush.com/analytics/keywordmagic/start

https://answerthepublic.com/

How to Rank Your First Page on Google

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:08:40 GMT

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We're in the middle of our SEO series of videos here on the channel, and last week we covered the beginnings of keyword research and how to get that set up. It occurred to me as I was coming off of that video that I want to share one of our little tricks. That is a great place to start. If you have a new website or you're not really ranking for much, this one's an easy kill, and it's going to make a big difference for you both now and in the future.

Let me share with you a little hack, a little SEO hack. If y ou have a new w ebsite, new business, or you just feel like your rank, not really ranking for anything, I'm going to give you a trick right now where you can start ranking for something. That's really, honestly, one of the most important things you can rank for now. Everybody's always focused on ranking their home page or ranking content and so forth, which is important because you do want to get traffic to your site. But more importantly, you want to get the folks that are hearing about your business as you're starting up or your new website or whatever outreach you're doing. One of the first things people are going to do is search for your reviews. So this touches on a couple of different areas we've been working on and kinda is one of the back doors into SEL. If your new business doesn't have a lot of reviews on say, Google maps, Google my business.

Doesn't have a lot of reviews on Facebook, just starting out. This is an awesome SEO strategy for you. What I want you to do. And it's very easy is create a web page on your site. That is your, you know, hopefully your website is pretty close to the name of your company. If it's not that's okay, you can use your root domain and create a page URL, which is then slash the name of your business. And then slash reviews. Basically what we want to do is index for your brand name, your company name, and the word reviews. So we're going to create a page on your site that is so-and-so business XYZ business slash reviews that on that page, you're going to put the first few reviews that you have for real customers. I don't want you to be faking or putting up any false information, do not do that.

But I do want you to put up the first real comments and positive feedback you've gotten about your business. That also includes now, if you want to go for the bonus points, you can also put on this page and embedded YouTube video that is also SEO optimized for those same keywords. And the keywords are just two things, your business name and the word reviews. The reason this is so important and powerful unit for you is that as you're starting out and your new business, new website, one of the first thing or new product, let's add in at all in, if you're a new product, new website, new business, the first thing people are going to want to do is find out what other people are saying about you. So the first thing you need to do is take control of the narrative. And the way to do that right away is start ranking pages about your own reviews, so that when people type in your website, brand name, product name slash, and the word reviews, your pages are going to come up.

Not other stuff, Facebook, whatever other comments and other blog articles and things like that. You want to really control those first, that first page of ranking when it comes to the reviews on your business. So go ahead and build your own page. That's going to rank for that. Now what's exciting about this is if you're new, there probably really isn't a lot of other stuff that you going to have to compete against, but what's powerful about it is when a new car or some or a referral or anything like that. Like let's say you're in a, you install artificial lawns and you're just starting out in that business. Your new customers are going to say, yeah, I wanted, you know, the guys giving me a good deal, but I want to see what the reviews are. Yeah. You're going to type then XYZ, turf company, slack, you know, reviews.

And your page is going to come up and you're going to get to show them the content that you want to show them. And if you do this YouTube that I'm talking about for extra bonus points, publish a video would just literally put your camera. And one of your cousins happy customers face and say, Hey, do you mind giving me, you know, a little feedback on camera here that I could put on YouTube. So other customers can hear what a good job we did here. I know you're happy. Sure. It'd be awesome. Put it on there on, and YouTube rank that video for XYZ turf company reviews. Then take that video, put that on the same page that we made along with some textual reviews. And you might even put a little paragraph on there. We, you know, we're happy to share our reviews with our happy customers at XYZ turf company, a little bit of keyword optimization and some of that content and then have them all there afterwards.

So you just kinda check all the boxes there and I promise you that page and that video will rank very fast on page one for your company name and the word reviews. And the reason is that it is basically a long tail keyword that nobody else has competing for, but for you is incredibly important. So go ahead and get out there and do that. That's a little behind the scenes, insider trick. If you will, to gaming some SEO, getting some stuff to rank that in my opinion is incredibly important for your business and all businesses. And that page, if you do it well, can stick with you for years and be the dominant ranking factor when somebody looks for reviews about your business. So go take care of that.

The First 4 Steps to Finding Your Keywords

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 17:44:16 GMT

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Today we're going to go over the four first steps you must take to get started with your keywords and ranking for the ones that are going to make you the most money. So stick with me and we're going to unpack it. All right. So to get started for today, I just want to be clear. We're going to go over the sort of high-level basic stuff that you really need to be focused on when you start uncovering the keywords that you want to rank for on your site.

Now, I think everybody knows, and it goes without saying that ranking for keywords that are common searches, right? Even common searches, organic searches that people do on Google or the internet is going to help rank your site for those searches and potentially get you more clicks. So the first thing you've got to figure out is who you're competing against, and this is something you may already know, or depending on, you know, if you're trying to compete nationwide or in a larger region than just what you sorta know in your neighborhood, then you may need to be doing some con competition research and analysis and find out, you know, when you do searches in Google for the services that you want to offer, who's ranking for those services, who's known in the industry for, you know, having an existing clientele or something that you want to emulate.

So you need to identify the top five, in my opinion, either in your area or in the area that you cover, if you will. All right. And then the next thing you need to figure out is what are those folks ranking for? What keywords are they focused on, right? And you need to then decide, you know, if your site is new, of course, you're probably not ranking for anything. If your site has been up for several years and you're ranking from some stuff, the question then becomes what's the gap between what your ranking for, or not ranking for and what your top competitors or the businesses that you want to attack, what are they ranking for? And that's known as the keyword gap. So once you generate that report and that research, you can figure out what spaces you need to fill in with, on your site that starts to drive your keyword strategy in terms of your competitors.

Now, the next thing to figure out, and this is where most people start is what are the main sort of money keywords. And that can be expressed in a lot of ways, but one of the most simple ways to figure that out is where, you know, what keywords in your niche or keywords that are related to your services are getting the most hits in terms of traffic and clicks on a monthly basis. Now that doesn't always mean that those folks that make those clicks are actual buyers, and that's where things can get a little confusing, because there's also some other elements to look at, like, are those keywords tethered to some sort of buyer intent or are they tethered to visitations? And you know, other, you know, sort of thoughts that people are having maybe research or they're early in the bioprocess, right? So there's going to be different elements to that analysis, but on a fundamental level, you really just want to figure out where the traffic is and what words the folks are typing in when they're doing searches about your services and offers, whatever it is that you're up to.

And then the last piece of this or the bonus is to tart looking at long tail variant of those core keywords. And there's a couple of reasons you want to do that when you start ranking and optimizing the content on your site, it'll be easier for you to rank for long tail keywords. And if you don't know what that means, it's pretty simple. It's just a keyword with a long, you know, some extra words on it. So you could, an example would be dog collars. That's a hot, hot, competitive keyword, right? Amazon and chewy. And everybody's going to be all over. That can be very hard to rank for dog colors, but a night might be easier to rank for dog collars for small chihuahuas. That's the longterm of that core, highly competitive keyword. You're going to have a better shot at ranking on those long tails, as you start out and, you know, start aggregating traffic on your site.

So that's kind of the next extension of the whole discussion and how to get your site ranking for more and more keywords. Don't underestimate the power of these long tail keywords to bring you relevant buyer traffic. So let's leave it with that. I'll just sum it up real quick. So it's working on figuring out who your competitors are, conducting analysis on what you are ranking for. If it's nothing that's fine, then everything's wide open. Actually it's almost in some cases easier. And then what your competitors are ranking for and figure out what the overlap is and where you need to work and what words you need to work on. Then figure out what your money keywords are, where the most traffic is, and then start working on long tails, depending on budget and how you want to attack that. I encourage you also, while you're working on those, if your SEO struggling to go back and visit one of the videos we did on PPC and some of them strategies, because those can bring you traffic right now, while you're working on your SEO. If this helped you go ahead and like the video always gets me pumped up, I'll see you on the next one, get out there and do that research.

How to Get Google to Index Your Site

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 01:13:37 GMT

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We're going to continue our SEO video series here, and we're going to attack the first sort of big step with your website, which is getting the thing indexed or finding out if it's indexed. So stick with me and we're going to unpack that right now.

And we've done our v ideo on how to set up search console and get that connected and get your site validated in there. So then you can start t o see y our analytics, you know, what's going on with the site and everything like that, and submit your site map a nd you know, these types of things.

So there's a lot of features in search console, but the first thing everybody wants to know is is their site actually index, like if somebody searches f or your website, are they going to even find it on Google search engine? So that is what we're going to cover today. And there's really two o r three quick little things to know about this.

The first thing is when you want to see what is index for any site, including yours, especially if it's a new site, you can simply type in the word site a nd then a space, and then the URL of the site. And you put that in Google search bar and then it'll bring up what They have indexed for that site.

Now the next thing and the, one of the ones I like to do, and you should always do these in an incognito browser, right? So there's not a history on the machine. It's sort of presenting it to the search engine. Like it's a fresh query. Just always use the incognito browser when you're doing these types of looks at your own site, because you don't want to poison the results with your browser history or anything like that. That's been tracked on the machine that you're using. The other thing that I do sometimes, and I also like is another way to cross-check stuff is to type in the name of the site. So we'll use mine as an example. So my site is Zack greenfield.com. So if I wanted to see what was index, I would just type Zack space, Greenfield space.com and see what comes up when we do that broken search of the website.

So you take your domain, break it up and break the dot, come off the end, search that in an incognito browser. And that'll also give you a good indication of what's happening there. So you've got two choices there to kind of cross-check what is currently, if anything is indexed. Now the next is we're going to go back into that search console account. And we're just going to navigate to the URL inspection tool. We're going to paste our URL into that. Let the system submit it, let the system validate and check the URL. And then you're just going to click request indexing, right? So if you have a new site, this is the fast way to get it up in there. Now that'll send, or basically, you know, request that the Google crawler bot come and check out your URL. It doesn't happen.

Instantaneously may have to give it a day or two bec ause that little sucker is busy with a million things to do so you just, but it puts you on the schedule to be looked at then that can help accelerate the indexing process if you've been waiting. And I got to tell you, if you don't do anything, you could wait weeks and, and maybe nothing comes up. So you really want to take control of this and do these couple of steps quickly when you're putting up a new site or if your site is really not doing so well on SEO. And you want to kind of find out what is index. What's not, this is a place to start. So

If this stuff helped you out a little bit on this quick tip, we're going to move forward with our SEO videos. Go ahead and hit the like button for me and we'll see you on the next one.

Why Google Analytics 4 Will Help Your SEO

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 00:44:25 GMT

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Today we're going to continue our SEO sort of series here. We're working on helping you guys set up the basics for getting SEO going. And of course, that starts with understanding the data streams and setting up how that's going to work. So today this video is going to talk to you about Google analytics and the new G4 u pdated version a nd why that's different "better".

So I got some notes right here. This whole thing has been sort of evolving over the last, I dunno, 10 to 12 months here. And if you didn't know anything about analytics, Google has always allowed users like you and me who have websites to use a tool. They call Google analytics and used a you a code UA code was a universal analytics code, and you could put that code on your website and then Google would start tracking traffic sources and other important data points. And you know, how many, how much traffic, how long people session times, page views, most popular page content, some really useful information and definitely information that you want as you're working on your SEO objectives. And you're trying to rank content and blog posts and all these other things that was going on for a long time.

And now today, I'm introducing you to, if you haven't heard, we have GA four, which is Google, Google analytics for now, there are three primary differences between the UAA system that we're kind of migrating away from, although they're both working in tandem right now. And the new GA four system universal analytics was really based on sessions and session time. So the system tracked kind of, you know, the fact that the person was there on the website, the new GA four is more event based. And this comes off of two, you know, there's, there's other things in the background. You guys might look back at my other videos about cohorts and some other changes that are all related to privacy and on and on, but in general, GA for now looks at what people are actually doing on the website versus whether they just get there or not.

So that's a better feature. The other thing is the reporting for GA four is baked in and is really kind of, top line. Whereas in UA, they had some basic reports and you could do some customization, but you kind of had to work for it to get the reporting that you need in GA for. You're going to find all that stuff under the analysis tab. And it's, easy to set up the types of data, the types of reporting that you want for the data that you're looking for inside all of your analytics account for the properties that you are evaluating. Now, the third difference is, how they set up, right?

From a time before apps and mobile use was as popular as it is today? So in a lot of ways, it was kind of an artifact from the days of just desktops and mostly laptop users, GA four really allows you to commingle and coast stream data from a specific user or event, if you will, across apps, mobile desktop, and sort of all variants of wherever your user streams are coming from and synthesize that data into one set of reporting that makes it quite a bit stronger. So if you're running an app or considering an app, or you have different data streams, you're trying to evaluate across your web properties, then GFR is definitely going to be for you. So those are the differences. Now, what do you need to do to get started? Well, luckily, of course, Google's made it pretty easy. So if you have not set up analytics, then the default is that you're going to go in and they're going to sort of usher you into the new GA for setup wizard, which is really straightforward.

And they hold your hand along with that. I don't need to go into the details of exactly how to do it on this video, because Google does an excellent job inside the analytics dashboard of walking you through that. So if it's your first time and you're setting up a property, you're going to log in to analytics.google.com with your Google identity. And then you're going to go to add a property and go through the GA for wizard to set that up straightforward. If you have UA codes that are running on old properties and you want to convert those, you can open up that property, go into the properties tab, and then you'll see the GA for setup wizard there, and you can convert or add or G for analytics to an old you AE account. So they've allowed for both of those things to happen. It's really not that complicated.

So go out there, get started, get the GA for going on your website and your mobile app, and then, you know, get in there and get your reporting set up that you want. This is going to help you as you work on SEO and page ranking and generating traffic and bring in more folks to your website. This is going to be a great tool for you to see the details of your work, the, of your work. So I'll see you on the next video and we're going to continue to dive into SEO and the tools that you need. There's one or two more things. And then we're going to kind of get into

The how to, and what to do to start driving the numbers that this type of system is going to track for you. Give me a like, and we'll see on the next one.

How to Setup Google Search Console

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 22:46:03 GMT

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Today we're going to dive into the sort of nitty gritty on basic what I consider block and tackle minimum SEO for your website. And we're going to start with the first tool you need to have in your toolbox, even get in the game of trying to figure out what's going on with your site and how to improve it. So stick with me, we're going to dive into the desktop and I'll walk you through the first couple of steps of getting set up.

All right. So here we are on the desktop and I'm going to walk you guys through how to add your property to Google search console. Now, this is one of the first tools for SEO that you really need to get going for your website. And here are the simple reasons why one, this is going to be how you can get your site crawled and make those requests. You're going to be able to submit your site map, your XML file to Google so that it understands all of the pages and every, and how your site is connected. And you're going to get tips and

Kind of their, you know, their a nalysis. Once this system grabs hold of your website, so to speak, it starts analyzing it and giving you some really good insight on how to improve mobile performance and some other things that are definitely ranking factors. So the tool is free and it's a best place to start, for getting just the basic dashboard going for your website. So you're just going to go to search.google.com. Click start. Now you're going to need to log in with your Google identity here, and you can see up on the right hand corner. This is my, my identity on this one, this account, we have some stuff on, so there's some activity going on here, but what we're going to do is get up in here and add a property. Now the next step is, you know, to put in your domain. And, we're going to do mine on this account right here.

So you're just going to hit continue. All right. And this is for any DNS provider. So DNS stands for domain name servers. That's where you're a domain, the instructions for where to point people that make a request of your domain, you know, basically is the connection map between your website and the public, looking at your domain. There's a lot of other settings in there, but effectively determines how your site is served depending on how those things are hooked up. You don't need to be freaked out about it though, because it's actually pretty simple to manage. And all we're going to do is follow the instructions, right? We're going to sign into our DNS provider. And if you don't know who that is, you know, call Phi talk to your host or the person that's hosting your website. And they generally can tell you where your DNS is located. For those of you that used, you know, GoDaddy or one of the bigger providers, you're typically hosting your DNS alongside your website hosting. So you can just log in, go to manage your DNS. And you're going to copy this little text record right here, which is this little piece of code. And you're going to put this into your DNS as a text record. So I'm going to show you how to do that.

All right. So I bounced over to where I have this domain that we're working on right now. And these are all things that are in the domain name, server records right here. And this one is actually running in Google domains. A lot of our stuff is in GoDaddy, but I have some of my, my thing set up here. That's my domain is, is hanging out in Google's domains, which there's nothing wrong with doing that. You can buy domains from Google as well, and they do have DNS hosting. So you're just going to scroll down and find where you can do a record. And we're going to add in this new records. So we're going to click here. Remember it said we needed to do a text record, which is TXT right there. And we're going to put in the code that we copied.

And that's it on there. We're going to go here and we're going to save it. All right. Now you can see, we have this text record right here, TXT record with this Google site verification code that we're going to go back over here. Now that we have the text record going in Google servers, we're going to hit verify, and we'll see if it works. Sometimes there's a little bit of a time lag, but boom. And it says ownership verified. So now we're going to go to that property inside our dashboard and they give us a little announcements and this is where it starts with this. Right? So your site has been switched to mobile first indexing. So that's super cool. That means my mobile pages are working well. And then this takes a couple of days to come back in here and they're going to start giving you performance and coverage reporting.

Right. But here's where on the left, you can do site map stuff, right? So I can go into my website, get my site map and enter that URL for Google to have that here which is not going to be a problem. This one looks like this was some old stuff from 2016, we had back in here. So that we're just going to ignore that this new one right here. It looks like it already grabbed, well, no, this one was grabbed from April 23rd, 2019. So we're gonna, we're gonna put that in there and I'll show you how that works. So we're just going to go up in the case of my website. It is just slash site maps, or we're just going to copy that and here, let me show you what that looks like. And this is something that you guys, if you don't know where that is or how that's coded, I mean, this is pretty typical for most sites.

But you can definitely c all your web hosting company or ask them or support or just Google. You know, if you're on like one of these web platforms like Wix, or I don't know, Shopify or anything like that, or if you have a person who's developed your site for them, you should ask for your site map URL, and it should be something like this,

You know? And then you're going to want to enter that here. And that's l ike the first step with this whole thing is you really just want to get the site maps submitted t o Google. and then you g et a little message there that it's been submitted successfully, a nd they're going to keep track of it then.

So we'll see what happens with this. We'll just keep an eye on that. And that's the first step for today. I don't want to overwhelm you, but that's really where you need to start with is, you know, these three sort of things is go to Google search console, get logged in with your Google identity, get your site linked as a new property, and then submit your site map and figure out your site map piece. Let's see, that's it. Then we'll get into all these other cool things here, performance, you are all inspections

And all, you know, looking at some of the stuff here, mobile p erformance, it's all in here and it's all free to manage.

All right? So that was our, you know, sort of minimum first step into SEO is getting connected to Google search console. It's so important to get your site connected so you can get that site map sent into them and make sure that they got you or site connected for indexing, right? And you can request calling and all sorts of other cool stuff in there. But today we just want to get you set up on that. So the first thing to do was get onto Google search console, get the psych added as a new property, verify it using a text record or some domain header code. You could work with your web person with that, or your DNS host provider to help you get that text record, enter in anybody that hosts or does your DNS is totally happy to help with that. So you're not going to get hit with any costs to do this type of stuff. And then once that's connected and the site is on the dashboard, then you can submit that site map. And again, you just need to figure out what the extension is for that for your website, all easy stuff. If you have trouble with your platform, just Google in there, somebody else's specifically answered the question. I'm sure that you're asking about the platform where your website is running, but this is the general guideline on the steps to get you further along and understanding the SEO a nd mobile, the performance on your site. If this helped you in any way, I love to have a like on the video and we'll see you on the next one. We're going to continue on with these minimum tasks you really needed to do to set things up and give yourself an advantage in ranking your website.

An Introduction to SEO

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 08:24:02 GMT

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Today we're starting a whole new series on SEO, all stuff that you're going to be able to do if you follow along. We get a lot of questions about SEO and keywords and what to do. And a lot of the times this is from folks that are trying to manage their own websites and take care of things on their own, which is great. And, we always want to, you know, try to give them the best guidance that we can on our side of the fence. If we're managing a website or, you know, an entire sort of front end project for one of our clients, we obviously handle almost all of this, you know, behind the scenes.

So it really doesn't get talked about a lot because we sort of know everything that we're going to check down and take care of, but I thought it would be great after talking to the team and, you know, really, I think there's a need for this. There's a lot of videos out there about SEO and stuff, but what we wanted to do here that maybe is a little different, is do a series where we kind of just guide you through almost like a class like step-by-step for the next four or five videos or whatever it takes. And I've got pretty good lists here. So it's going to be, it's going to be a, there's going to be a few here coming up on this stuff, but the thing that's great is that we're really going to just boil it down to simple bite-size tasks. So let me go over what we're going to cover on the next, you know, a couple of videos and a good reason to stay tuned on this stuff.

So be, you know, we're going to start with the basics, just kind of setting up what you're going to need for, you know, what you're going to need to use in terms of tools, you know, so things about, you know, stuff you've heard, but may not really know how to deal with like Google search console and how to, you know, what research tools and keyword research tools, site maps and how to submit those and how to get your site crawled. Right? So just kind of the basic stuff that you've got to be able to set up to even get started on making ranking improvements for your site. I'm also going to go over some of the stuff that we think, and actually I I'm, you know, very confident like how to backdoor and get your site ranked and do well, even in really competitive environments, which can be frustrating and expensive and take a lot of time and energy.

But there are some tricks to, you know, kind of flank in and get some ranking done, using nontraditional approach. If you will, then we're going to shift into, you know, keyword research, those types of tools, how to take care of that stuff and all along the way, I'm going to help you as much as I can with, you know, the technical aspects and getting into, you know, all these nasty little things like titles and crosschecks and text and keyword density. And, and you know, it just, it really gets a little overwhelming, but we're going to break it down. So I'm buying you to stick with me, go ahead and subscribe. If you're interested in tackling and improving your SEO over the next couple of weeks on your website without getting overwhelmed, that's the goal. So I'll see you on the next video, go ahead and like this and stay tuned, as these start to unfold here in the coming weeks. I'm happy to do it too, because it's going to give me a chance to really brush up on how I communicate this stuff and share it with you.

Consistency and Ritual

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 16:38:08 GMT

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In today's video we're going to talk about the value of being consistent with your marketing and what to do when it seems really hard to get things done. So stick with us and we're going to dig into it.

So today I really didn't want to make videos and, you know, we're coming up on a break that we have and I got a million things going on. So it feels really difficult right now to be consistent and produce the material that I want to produce, which includes this video. And some other things that we've got going on here in the office, like sending emails and all that stuff. But because of my experience of years of doing this, I know better than to let it slide.

And every week, one of the things we do here is we make sure that we invest a certain amount of time every week. And it's probably like, you know, across a couple of staff members, it's probably 15 to 20 hours a week on our own marketing here for our business. So we definitely have it's, you know, a system for everything, and it's all, you know, everybody's got their role and there are so few people involved and myself included, but it's become ritual, right? So it's easy to break that, but you know, again, it's like, I dunno for all of you that, that have, you know, maybe been to the gym for portions of your life are still exercising. It's that same, it's that same phenomenon. It's like momentum breeds, momentum and consistency and ritual are so part so important. So if you're, if you're, you know, going to the gym and then you get fit and you build some muscles and you're feeling good and looking good, and then, you know, you go on vacation or you go on holiday or work comes, or you have a baby or whatever, something happens in your life that changes.

And then you kind of get off that routine. And then, you know, everything starts going to crap, right? You're not looking as good. You're not, as you know, you're not sleeping as well. You're starting to get weaker. The muscles are starting to atrophy, right. Things are going backwards. Then when you go back, it's so much harder, right? We've all been through that. When, when you break a routine to get back into the routine is actually harder than it is to really just stick with it. And it's kind of a, like a mindset thing. You know, you play games yourself like, oh, I, you know, missing one workout missing one week of, of emails missing one week of doing videos is, you know, it's not that big of a deal in the big picture, but it is in the bigger conversation of being consistent, being reliable.

I've set it on a ton of other videos we've done here on my channel. Half of marketing is sticking with it. I mean, it's probably a bigger than that, but it's at least 50 50% of your, your success has to do with being consistent and sticking with your guns. Campaigns, not throwing stuff out, not being like marketing one month, but I don't mark it the next month or I market, I send stuff out one week and I, and I don't know the week, all you're doing by doing that is communicating that you're not reliable and organized. You're literally letting the words no, by this, you know, sort of volatile behavior, that that's the way you work. So it's like, you really don't want to present yourself that way. So it's just like kind of a, a real time to like, look yourself in the mirror, myself, included and say, Hey, what's up important here.

You know, what's important is being reliable, being consistent and showing up and doing what I've committed to with my staff and the folks that like you, that are watching this video and so forth. So I'm not trying to be up on a soap box here, but today hit me like, you know, I definitely had thoughts about not doing some stuff today and kind of bagging out, but here I am, you know, it's not that it doesn't take that long to get these done. It doesn't take that long to write an email. It doesn't take that long to check your ad accounts. It doesn't take that long to create some new copy to write a blog post, right. It's just like, it's like anything in life. If you just stick with it, you're not going to atrophy. You're not going to have to suddenly feel like you got to play catch up because that creates more work right now.

You're two emails behind now. You haven't reviewed your ads in two weeks now, you know, you haven't done a blog post in a month. So now you're like, okay, I gotta dig. So you let yourself get under, you know, a pile of not just guilt, but also poor performance. And it, and it definitely shows up like in fitness as well. And I love that analogy because you know, you get a little weak from taking a month off of the gym and then you go, you got to get back in there and you got to get back to the baseline first. So you've got to earn all that back then start again. And it's just not worth it, right. It's better to keep the kinetic energy going, keep the, keep the wheels spinning, you know, and come in here, literally this I'm doing today, doing this video, talking to you about, you know, a challenge that I had today and, you know, spin that wheel a little bit more, keep them up, keep that kinetic energy going so that everything's okay.

I'm not going to pile up. So that's my spiel on that. Go watch the here's a better open space. Go watch the video on drip marketing, because it has a lot to do with this same concept. Be consistent, creative, the ritual every week, make a commitment to your own business. Even though we're, we're all in service to our clients and our customers, the first person you have to serve is yourself and your own business. So you can be there tomorrow for the folks need you, right? That's the old saying, put your oxygen mask on first, before you turn to help somebody else. So make sure that you're pumping your business full oxygen and then your business will be there. You'll be there stress-free and ready to help the people that you serve. So I'll leave you with that on this long break. And, we'll see, on the next video, if this, you know, you know, resonated with you, I appreciate the likes on the video and I love comments. If you guys want to make a comment, I always try to check those when they do come through and we'll see on the next one. Thanks.

5 Fingers of Death - #5 Messaging Strategies

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 22:18:55 GMT

WATCH ON YOUTUBE

Today's video is all about messaging and the minimum messaging strategies that you need to have when you construct out a good automated marketing plan for your business. So stick with me, I'm going to take you right over to the desktop, and we're going to walk through that portion of our layout.

So welcome to the desktop. So this is our, map. That's been part of this whole series, and today we're gonna, we're gonna focus in on the messaging part. And I say messaging, because in this case we're definitely looking at emails, but they could also be text messages, right? So messaging just kind of covers both realities and, and frankly, both work well. And we have up in here in our review system, we definitely have a lot of SMS going, we have that going on right here. So this is an example of some SMS in this messaging group right here. We've got all this email stuff. So here's the minimum that I think is really important. And you know, one of the things with email in general, that's challenging is, you know, when do you start, is the question like, you know, and my answer to that is the many, you have one email is a good time to start.

Certainly if you're sitting on a list of, you know, you know, even 500 or a thousand emails, which would by most errands be kind of the beginning of something, but it's still a small list. You know, you need to stay in front of those people and be talking to them and don't let that list cool down and get iced over because then, you know, by the time you start emailing them again, they're sort of like, why am I on this list? And no, no, no, no none. So you really want to stick with people. And it goes into that same, you know, methodology that I'm always talking about, which is staying in front of people, dripping on them and being the being there consistently over long periods of time is going to earn you a lot more business when they have a problem come up in their life that you can solve.

Right? Because timing is something, remember, we've always talked about timing is the variable you can't control, but you can control your actions around that. So this is a great way to automate those actions, make sure you're communicating, giving value and staying in front of that person so that when the time comes that they need you you're there. So the first one I really like to have is anytime you get a new, and this is written up as new patient, but new client, new customer, you're going to, you're going to want to put them through what I call an indoctrination. So that looks a series of emails that we typically do these out like two weeks to three weeks. And they're kind of the time on this as punchy it's one every other day. And what we're doing in this indoctrination email series here is we're indoctrinating them to the business.

We're teaching them everything about the business. And that could be lots of different things like why it's founded the other locations, different services you have, you know, the cross sell upsells and down sells that you may or may not offer, right, or that you definitely need to be thinking about. So those are all in there, basically how to deepen and, and, you know, solidify that early part of the relationship with a new customer. This indoctrination series is really important. One of the things we personally do here is our indoctrination series shows our clients how to work with us and get the most out of, our, the relationship with us. So what tools do they have now that they've come on board? Where do they get those? You know, these are videos you can watch to teach you some things, you know, all of that stuff just added value.

Really the plane of that is not necessarily to make you more money, but to make them more aware of the opportunity they have inside this relationship with you. So I, I think, you know, seven to 12 emails, 10 to 10 days to two weeks to try to get it all done inside that you can definitely do video in here to add a lot of dynamic content, you know, send them email with a video welcome video. Here's how to do more with us video something you may not have known about us video. You know, here are the tools you have as a customer video. Here's our programs you want to enroll in, you know, rebate points, loyalty, all that stuff, all in this indoctrination series. The next one is this big warmer. So after they come out of indoctrination. After they come out of the indoctrination series with all of this and right here, you'll see, we even have a followup phone call.

That's triggered on this one, but after they come out of that, we want to stick with them for the longterm. So they bounce up here to this long email series and in this case, and this is what I love to do, especially for our medical offices, you know, in our, our kind of core business is we, we set up almost a year's worth of consistent emails that are going to be value, add, you know, timeless content. This is evergreen content right here that always applies to whatever your niche is. Whatever your niche might be. This is the, you know, the Val the time honored material and content that, you know, you can give, to your clients. So, you know, if you run a landscaping business, this is, you know, a year's worth of, of cool stuff. And if you set this up in a good system, if it is seasonal, you can actually have these trigger based on time of the year.

You can have them trigger based on enrollment. You can have them trigger based on some programmatic stuff, or you could have branches in this campaign. Like if somebody expresses interest, you can add in a couple more along that interest line. So there's a lot of creative stuff in here, but again, minimally, you know, my belief and what we encourage and do a lot of and typically build for most of our clients is somewhere around eight to 10, eight to 12 months worth of content. And I like to set them at about every five days. And so I don't, it's not once a week, it becomes random. So that they're, you know, they're not getting in a ritual thing with you. They keep hitting on different days of the week and so forth. It's kind of like a mixer timeframe. Five days is, you know, not, synced with any sort of calendar or weekly event.

So it's just kind of start to randomize. So I love that strategy. And, so, you know, if you want to do, you know, a year's worth, you know, it's say 350 divided by five. So, you know, that's what you're going to need to come up with. So, you know, this is a kind of a beast and, and people, you know, are always tentative about having to write all this stuff, but I promise you if you've been in business for awhile and you've been serving your clients, you actually have this content. The other thing is you can outsource the writing or get somebody involved or get somebody like us to help you set it up, build it and get it working for you. The beauty of this is you can sleep at night all the time, knowing that your existing customers are always being communicated with this is a huge safety net for your business.

That somebody that does come in, stays in this is your force field against your competition. This is prevents them from jumping the fence and feeling like they ignore you. They're being ignored. They're not important to you get them on a list and make them feel important. And then every once in a while, down in here somewhere, pop them a little, offer, a discount to get them back in, if you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. But in general, this is really just about giving, and staying in touch and being proactive on your communication. It sounds like a chore, but I promise you that it's part of the bigger five finger approach that we have here on our big map and ignoring any one of these really, you know, kind of has a exponential negative effect. It all works together well, when you start cheap and out because of workload or some small costs and stuff, you really kind of start hurting yourself. So do get on this indoctrination series first and then work on this and then fit. You know, you got to automate this stuff. So you got to have a good email platform that you're working with. If you guys need help with that, of course, reach out to us. And, let's just do a little wrap up and then, and I'll leave you with this to, get started on,

All right, guys. So that was the layout of our entire, you know, kind of the minimums, I think are important for messaging. And you may do those with SMS and email. You may do them just with email and either one is fine, but I'm telling you that, you know, years of working on this stuff, businesses, my clients that set up robust indoctrination and long tail warmers or followers secret series is, are always doing better than the folks that have resisted it and aim, you know, there's just nothing like being a good communicator with your clients. You need to protect yourself from your competition, be there when they're having trouble, so that they feel like you're not, you know, that you haven't ignored them. So get out there, get started on that. I'm not even going to recommend a platform if you guys know anything, but there's plenty of options for email platforms and so forth.

Figure out what your timing and your requirements are. If you need help, we're always here for you. And hopefully this kind of gets you motivated to take control of that stuff, because one of the things I'll leave you with is setting it up now and then not having to do much with it for the next year is the best feeling ever feeling like you've got a scramble every week to post social media, oh, somebody's got to write an email. I get all this crap automated as much as possible so you can get back to running your business and serving your customers and figuring out how to drive profits. If this videos helped you out, go ahead and give me a, like, I love that. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks so much for watching.

5 Fingers of Death - #4 Retargeting Your Visitors

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 21:24:14 GMT

Today we're going to continue with the five fingers of death, which is our series talking about all of the elements that you need to have to grow your business. So we're basing this on our gigantic project map, which we've presented in a previous video. So you might want to go back and reference that where we started and we've done three fingers, and we're now on our ring finger, which today is all about, the retargeting setup that we have that we always run for all of our projects. And it's actually more important in a lot of ways than, cold advertising bringing cold traffic. We usually set this in place first. So let's jump over to the desktop and I'm going to share to you guys that layout, and we're going to take a deep dive. So stick with me.

All right, guys, welcome to the desktop environment here, where I can screen share our map. And we can take a deep dive into how the elements all tie together. So this is just to drag this down. This is our big project map. We've been all over this over the last several videos. And today we're going to go down in here and we're going to focus on the lower section, which is our retargeting. And we're going to take a look at a little bit of the cross sell stuff here, which is also retargeting. And we're going to look down here at some of the Facebook and social and, our, our direct offers. So sometimes we got to stack these and I'm going to explain it, but I just want to highlight the pieces that we're going to be talking about today, up here on our last video, we finished up our cold traffic sources and how that kind of cascades in.

Now, this right here is important to highlight today because that is a representation of our sales landing page, or maybe your home page or wherever it is that you drive traffic in order to set all this retargeting stuff up, we need to pixel track. We need to set up tracking, you know, and pixel or tag, if you will, depending on the system, this page. So that visitors hit this page. Now I can't stress enough how important this is. If you're running any kind of business that relies on your website to, you know, engage your new customers and for almost all of us, that's everyone. I mean, I'm being a little rhetorical here, but to me, if you're going to do any advertising, any paid advertising at all this conversation today is more important than anything else. And why, because you're going to spend money and time on all of the stuff we talked about last week in our previous video on getting people to see your business.

It goes without saying, you're going to try to get traffic there either by referral signage, mailers emails, posting, and spending a ton of time on Instagram, you know, taking cool pictures and all this stuff that everybody's doing. You're going to waste all your time. You know, maybe a waste, but you're going to invest an incredible amount of time, right? And what's going to happen with all those people. Well, yeah, you're going to get a hundred people on your webpage and I'm using a round number to give you some percentages. So you're going to get a hundred people on your webpage. If you're like everybody else on the internet, you're maybe get two or three customers out of those hundred on the first pass. Now here's what you need to know. There's another one, seven or even 12 customers in that hundred that you won't get in, unless you follow up with them and stay in front of them.

Well, if they didn't sign up for something on a sign up and opt in which we show right here, and they just bounced after taking a quick look for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. Everybody bounces off of web pages. If you don't clip 'em with some sort of tagging or pixeling and start sending them through some, retargeting, you lose who's that 97 or 98 people. And whether they come back or not is debatable. If you follow up with them, you got a chance at grabbing the other 11% of potential customers, 11 plus percent. This is an old sales and marketing known quantity that the money is made in the followup every week can hook one or two customers on the first pass. If you're doing a decent job, but the bulk of your business growth and revenue is gonna come from being a great follow up person.

You gotta be a great chase person. So this conversation we're having today, and what I'm showing you today is all about that. And that's all this right here. So right here, you know, they get pixeled above this and then they get added to campaigns. The big campaign that I like to run for, you know, your team long decision, a local business, like, and for us ma you know, healthcare or veterinary, or, you know, local medical services and so forth, we're going to run a 30 day and sometimes 45 day advertising sequence after the visitation event. And we do it. And I think in a really great way, we change and rotate the ads. Every two to three days, we do maybe 10 or 15 different variants. And inside those ads are couple that have direct offers. And you can see those indicated by these green lines.

Cause it was direct offers are going to link back to an offer sales page too, for that person to, you know, capture or get the offer so to speak. And then the rest of them are going to be our three types of ads. And you guys need to go back to that video. So Angie, let's get that video up on this, screen here, I guess maybe over on the right let's, let's get up the video. That talks about that because we need, these ads are built on our three must do ads that we always insist. So you're going to have a social proof, social remarketing ad. You're gonna have a branding ad. And then down here, you're gonna have a direct offer ad. And we're going to cycle those as we go through our timeline, right? So here's our little texts on timeline.

This shows a 30 day cycle branding, reputation ads, and then we've got some direct offer stuff right here. So we're showing them what other people think about your business. We're showing them just the brand and what you're associated with your benefits, you know, like what, what problem you solve. And then we're giving them an offer 10% off 25, whatever it is that the client can do. That's the core retargeting absolutely must do strategy for every business. If you're not doing that today, drop everything you're doing and get that plugged in. If you need help, give us a holler. And of course we'd love to help you, but this is just like no brainer stuff. The cool thing about it is not very expensive. That's the other thing that you need to know retargeting is relatively affordable advertising because you're only hitting, you know, an identified audience.

You're not bidding against some other bunch of other people to get placement. I mean, you got a bid for placement, but you're not bidding for like high dollar keywords and all the other complicated. Stuff's pretty straightforward. Then, you know, we got to go out over here on Facebook and Instagram cause they got their own little ecosystem. So this is a representation of the, you know, the entire, this is internet retargeting. This is fishbowl in Facebook's fishbowl, Instagram, Facebook, fishbowl, right here. We have to do that a little differently and I'm not going to lie for healthcare and stuff. It gets complicated because of their policies. But on this stuff, you know, we're able to buy wholesale and you can, you can get this done for any business. You got a little bit more flaming hoops to deal with down here, but it's still can be done.

And then over here, we've got some offering. Sometimes we do seasonal or specials, you know, that stuff. That's like not part of the normal kind of formulaic layout. And we want to, we want to hit something unique or that seasonal, perhaps, you know, like a Halloween or Valentine's day or, you know, like a, if it's a med spa thing, you know, the Springs a big time, everybody's about to get back and into their summer look. So we're going to do seasonal stuff. We'll just lay that campaign right on top of this campaign. So the person, you know, the visitor's going to get added to two campaigns and sometimes three campaigns at the same time. So they go into the Facebook, Instagram, fishbowl, they're going to see ads they're out on the internet. They're going to see ads. And they're going to see more direct offer ads that they're seasonal.

If we're running a third leg right here. So those are this piece right here, this big one in the middle. This is mission critical for you. If you're not doing it, this is mission critical. These are display ads, so important to keep your brand imagery in front of those 97, 98 people that didn't buy when they hit your homepage, but likely still have the problem. And what you need to do is stay in front of them for a month so that when their paycheck hits or when they finally have time to pay attention, or when the problem gets a little bit worse, your, the person they're thinking about and they're going to come buy from you. And then these other ones are what I consider, you know, both for the bonus points, try to set this up. And then if you get this running well, then you can start talking about layering in another set of offers that might be special or specific to a special time of year, for instance, or just some part of the business that you're trying to grow, like a new sales channel, new product line.

You can run that separately so you can track it and so forth. So get that going. This is, this is how you crush your competition. And thanks for watching this and we'll wrap it up here in a minute. All right, guys. So that was the fourth finger on the five fingers of death. That's your retargeting leg. That's, you know, in my opinion of all your paid advertising, that's actually where you start. It probably should have been finger number three, but it's finger number four. For whatever reason, I thought that probably everybody wanted to hear about the cold advertising thing because that's where people really panicked about is getting any traffic at all. But when we set things up, when we have a client that's going to come and, and you know, that comes on as an advertising client or existing client, that's, you know, working on another service with us and they decided they want to do paid ads.

We immediately set up the retargeting piece first from a setup standpoint. And here's the reason why that's not going to start triggering until there's traffic, but we set it up first because we don't want to lose any of the traffic that comes in. Once we turn on our cold traffic. So we're going to start blogging. We're going to start making videos. We're going to start posting. We're going to crank up their social accounts, or we're going to just straight up buy, you know, start bidding keywords or buying cold ad space on a media buy. There's no reason to even go there until we know that we are following up with every visitor. That's going to get into that net. So when you want to crush your competition and you want to start leading the market for your niche, for your business, this is how you're going to kill everybody.

Because anybody that's shopping in your niche, whatever service you provide, touches your website. You're going to be all over them for a month or 45 days. And I'm promise you most small businesses or medium businesses. Aren't doing this type of sophisticated advertising. It doesn't take a lot to set up, but it is worth its weight in gold because there's an 11%. There's about 11 plus percent of customers that you're not getting when you don't do this. And for most businesses, that's three times the business that they currently have, who doesn't want that 300% growth by just doing one strategy. That's, that's what the numbers would show us. There's there. It is known that if you follow up, you're going to get another 11, 12, 13%. And on the first pass, you're just only going to get two or three. So just don't ignore this stuff. I can't even stress how important it is. Every client that we work with, I've had this talk with, most of them run this strategy, even when they're not running other strategies, this was the one nobody gives up on because it's so important. So go out there and get them. If this video helped get your head straight on where to start, go ahead and give me a like, and we'll see on the next one where we're going to finish the fifth finger, which I guess i t would be the pinky. And then you will have the full weaponry to go out there and conquer the world. We'll see you on the next one.

5 Fingers of Death - #3 Cold Traffic

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 23:24:56 GMT

Hello, and welcome back to quick and dirty marketing. Today, we're going to get back into the five fingers of death, and we're going to be on the finger number three, which is cold traffic and the minimal strategies that you need to have running for your business to bring that first bit of traffic. We're going to go over to the desktop and I'm going to reveal those elements on our full campaign map and do the walkthrough on that for today.

So here we are on the map and I'm going to work through this. Now, one of the things that, we're going to go over cold traffic today, like I said, but one of the things that is the most important principle on our layout, we show all these potential traffic sources. Now when you're starting out, or if you're just trying to get organized and, and get this going, it's really hard to light up everything at once, right? So here's the minimum, in my opinion, you really like any stool need to have three legs or you're going to fall over. So I think that's the good rule of thumb with this. You can build on that and go to four or five legs and get even more stability in your traffic flow, but you really need to make the commitment in the beginning to at least have three sources that you're optimizing and working with, weekly.

And so let's, let's just kind of dive into that right here and take a look at some examples, right? You could be running coupon or Groupon type of specials, right? So that's cold traffic. You're hooking people with a direct offer there, you got your Google's maps. And if you guys remember that leg comes in from our review, our reputation management strategy, which was on our last video, that's our forefinger for our five fingers of death, right? Crushing your competition is, really resides in out, pacing them with social proof. And that's a huge part of being successful. That drives traffic coming in from Google maps that are folks doing near me, searches where you're now the best looking business in the bunch when they're looking for folks like you. So that's going to bring you this cold traffic. That's great traffic because it's coming in off of social proof.

So they're already feeling really comfortable with your business because of what other people are saying about it. So it's just awesome. So we don't, you know, this is a source that sorta tied into our, our, our other video and that really required strategy, which is why we did that first. Let me go down here. We've got Instagram or, you know, which is one possible channel and work. Some worked great for some, you know, for other niches and, and some businesses that actually, isn't a great fit all of the time. We've got social posting. So, you know, and this might be other channels, Facebook or something like that, or other places like Snapchat, Tik ToK, you know, different things, but organic, right? So this is like not paid. This is posting and building that audience. That's going to follow you. And then we've got Twitter over here.

Same thing, both you can, you know, you can play around with paid. You can play around with posting and building your following there. YouTube. Now this gets into an, all of these, you know, social posts, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, these are all a content play. And I can't say enough about that. I really think that if you want to grow your business over the long-term and you understand the long game creating content around your brand, around your services and your business is really important because those that's the storytelling about what you're offering and storytelling is our most powerful marketing tool. You know? So this, these are all storytelling channels in so many ways. Okay, let me get down here. You got old, you know, the traditional channel, just handing out business cards and things like that. Now down here, we got ad-words, which is Google ad words.

That's paid traffic, right? Cold paid traffic. And we have another map here that we can dive into that shows those layouts, which are conquest strategies. And some of our other strategies that are, you know, ways to flank and get cheap bidding, get ads in front of your competitor search is and things like that. So those are all in another map right here, but ad-words is a paid cold traffic source and it can be awesome. And then we've got down here, outdoor signage or anything, you know, that drive by or billboards or something like that. That's still a viable option, right? People are going to see the sign, do a search, find you here, do a search, or even bump up to Google maps, see some reviews and get your back. Then you got them on the homepage or your landing page, depending on how that structure we've got good old Facebook right here that could be paid or organic.

Same thing with Instagram. As you guys know, this is one company. So these are just two different offerings that they have. Their ad platform is the same, right? And then referrals. And when I may referrals, I don't mean referrals. Like you just hang out, sitting on your hands, waiting for referrals. I mean, referrals like you're actively campaigning to give your existing customers incentive, to give you an froze. Like what, what are you doing? Are you giving them a hundred dollars off? Are you giving them a free, this, that, and the other thing, if they send you a referral and there's nothing wrong with rewarding people, referrals, I've done it. I encourage my clients to do it where they can get tricky and healthcare, of course, you know, you can't do that on the medical side, you can do that on, on veterinary and you can do it in med spa and some other places on cash pay services.

But you know, you gotta be careful with that, but in businesses where referrals are sort of wide open and you can count, boy, that that's a huge one. So yeah, what I'm telling you today is an order to start hitting this webpage, these landing pages and sales pages. You got to have three of these running, so you need to pick three and you may already be starting one. So I have a lot of, you know, for whatever reason I got clients. And it seems like there's a lot of focus on Instagram these days, right? So there's a ton of energy in here, right? Making content and making videos. But you know what, they're not doing nothing over on YouTube, but YouTube is actually a wide open is connected to search. Whereas Instagram's videos are in a fishbowl. If somebody doesn't jump in the fishbowl, they can't find you.

If they're out on the wild internet using Google's front door, which is basically the, you know, the kind of access point for all of them, elicit it at this time and space, you too videos do index in searches. So you can cover topics related to your niche and everything there, and actually come up. So if you're spending time making content for Instagram or say Facebook or LinkedIn, which I don't have on this map, but would be under the social posting, icon right here. If you don't, if you're making those things and make an effort, then syndicate them everywhere that you can post videos. Don't just dump them with one channel. And that's it. Because all you're getting is this group of people that happens to be in this fishbowl. And you're neglecting all these other opportunities and, or neglect acting search like you can't, I really search on Instagram to solve a problem.

Like I need it. Yard service person. You wouldn't go to Instagram to solve that problem. It doesn't mean that a yard service company wouldn't maybe advertise or post some content on there, like pictures of the yards that they're taking care of and how green the grass is and the water fountains that they build, or, you know, great looking hedges or, or whatever, they may be doing that as part of their brand effort. But nobody's going to go there to find that right. They were going to search straight up on Google yard services in city X. And then if, you know, if you took that content out and you put it over here on YouTube and you put a video, yo that says, you know, yard services, you know, water feature fountain project in X city, you got a pretty good chance of that coming up on a long tail because it's a video and those are index pretty rapidly with, I've seen, we've done some testing with YouTube where we've gotten you videos to index within five minutes from them uploading and publishing live.

So, do not underestimate that as a powerful tool. It's free to upload content there. And if you're making video content somewhere else, you're crazy not to take advantage of that. And then you got to pick a third leg. So you maybe do some paid over here. I think everybody should have some paid advertising, paid cold traffic going on. I just don't see, you know, you know, as an advertising person, I mean every big major business pays to run ads to promote their business. So if you're a smaller business and you haven't adjusted your mindset to accept the reality that you need to control the growth of your business and controlling the growth of your business has to do with buying ads and marketing to, to accelerate your growth and to get you to your financial goals, then you really need to check yourself.

Because if you look around at the bigger landscape, there's nobody that's in, in the, in the game for real, that isn't doing that. So why you're not doing that as a hard question, you need to ask yourself might be budget and so forth, but you know, again, that's chicken or the egg. If you add more traffic, you'd have more money than you'd be able to buy that. So at some point, you've got to capitalize that and, and start working in that environment. So those are my, my guidelines for that. You need three legs on the stool. You need to optimize it. And we're working three channels all the time, and you need to be leveraging and managing those every week and bringing that traffic into your landing sales pages, or maybe homepage, we'll see on the next five fingers of death. And I'll do a little outro maybe here.

So that was our cold traffic as part of the five fingers of death. And what's the takeaway from that? You've got have three legs on a stool, or it's going to fall down and we don't want your business falling down. So make sure that you're running three cold traffic sources into your sales pages. You got to have new, fresh prospects and leads coming to your business all the time in order for it to grow. That's one of the things you got to unlock. You got to crack that code to grow your business in order to move your life forward and your goals forward. So pick three, if you're doing one, figure out how to syndicate to the next, get at least one channel in there, that's a paid traffic. You've got to make that commitment to yourself. And you got to make that commitment to your business.

And yeah, you're going to burn some money learning and figuring it out. You need to get somebody on board to help you that's okay. But it's something that is going to carry you forward. Once you're in control of your incoming traffic and how they convert, you are in control of your destiny. So go out there, start using the three fingers you've learned so far. We've got the rest calming start crushing your competition with the last couple of videos I've shared with you. I promise these things are going to make a difference and we'll see you on the next one.

5 Fingers of Death - #2 Reputation Building Strategy

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 11:22:05 GMT

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Today we're going to continue the five fingers of death with the pointer finger, which is going to be a cool video where I take you behind the scenes on how we construct a solid reputation management and reputation marketing campaign. So if you're struggling with your reputation and you want to get more reviews for your business, stick with me on this video.

This is our big map. We're going to zip through this as quick as possible because I just try to do it and it was long. So now I'm going to try to do the short reader's digest version. This is our big map. We're on review growth. That's our today's finger and our five fingers of death. And, this was where we laid it out before. Just in a general sense, I'm going to give you a more detailed version, but in general, we got to get people in the campaign and it looks something like this sort of grayed out stuff, but we're going to jump over here to the big detailed version. And we're going to use this one here so quickly in case you're doubting me 89% of consumers read business responses to reviews. So you really gotta be responding, but that one plays into responding to your negative reviews, which are one of your best marketing opportunities as a business owner.

That's how you show people, how you back up your work. That's how you show people, how you deal with a difficult situation. And that's how you separate yourself from the competition. That probably just ignores those negative reviews. So heal those. And, and I'll give you a little formula for that in a minute. Well, let's go here. The first thing that obviously needs to happen with any campaigns, if people need to get in the campaign. So we either have them in a lot of times, my clients will get in on a sign-in page because they got to check in at the business. Other ways are, might be a contact form opt-in form or a new customer form, or, like if you're working at POS POS system, they might, you know, like, even at a restaurant now you might be taking a phone number to get it seat, right?

So it's again, check in type environment. Or if they're paying at the register, you can say, Hey, do you want to get our monthly specials? So get their email there. That's an opt in. Then you have permission to send them this stuff. So they got to get in there. So they need to get in there automatically on their own, or you're going to upload them from a list that you're keeping our building manually or otherwise, once they get into the campaign, that's when the magic starts happening. Right. Got to run a little delay. Now I want to stress to you. That stuff is all automated. The way that we do it. And it really needs to be automated for you as well. Because one of the things about doing this, you know, with computer system and doing it automatically is it removes the human error issue, which is the big problem with getting reviews.

You cannot count on your staff to ask people for reviews and be effective with that. It's awkward. It seems a little icky. They're never comfortable doing it, and they're not going to consistently do it because they hate doing it. You know? And that's one of the things that hopefully you've learned that if you keep asking people to do stuff they're uncomfortable with, you're really not going to get great results, which is why you got to plug in something that looks like this. So after 24 hour a day, delay, excuse me, they get into this review campaign, which is a series of messages. And we have those kind of shown right here, right? They're going to get like one, two, three, four, maybe five texts, one, two, three, four, five SMS messages that are gonna run in a campaign. Now, of course, if they take action to get pulled out of that series, but if they're ignoring it, they keep going until we get them to do something.

So that'll be SMS that be email. And if they abandoned or they don't complete doing any feedback, they of course get a series of reminders. Like please finish for us. All of those emails are just asking them for feedback. So we're going to take them to a feedback page. They'll have some simple information for them to fill out, let us know how their experience was. Then after that nut's internal, right? If it's a good review, then we're going to ask them, Hey, thank you very much. Would you be willing to put that on Google for us? Or maybe Facebook? Right? So that then gets left online publicly, which is our goal. We want more reviews online. So this is our home run path right here. They also get a thank you. And an alert goes to your staff or ownership. That's how we like it.

All right. Now, if they get a problem, if they have a problem and they're not happy, they may post that publicly. But we also need to acknowledge and apologize right away, alert management or whoever has the authority to deal with these problems and send them a little up to find out more about what the problem was. This typically keeps them from posting it publicly. There's nothing wrong with doing that. This is called good customer service right here, following up with the problems, making sure you have people that are happy out there talking about your business. So this is the automated digital way to do that. The minute they say there's a problem, boom. We send them something that says, we're going to fix it. This is how, let us know more. We've alerted our staff. We're going to get back to you, yada, yada, yada. All of this stuff can end up online and become part of our reputation marketing, which is another step in the marketing puzzle. But this is how to capture more reviews for your business every day, every week as you grow. So take a look, maybe take a screenshot. I'm sharing this. This is some behind the scenes stuff. I'm glad to have revealed it to you today. And it's worth its weight in gold. This is how it needs to run in order for you to crank it up and crush your competition.

All right, guys, thanks for watching today and learning about how to automate your reputation, gathering your review building for your business, which is so important. It's one of the most important things it's of all the marketing campaigns that you can do for your business. If you haven't done this one, this is one of the most important ones to get on. Everybody's so worried about getting sales, getting sales. That's important, but you're not going to get anything from anybody and you're not going to be successful against your competition. If your reputation is weak. So one of the most important marketing campaigns you can get, and it's this follows the same rules, right? It's an outbound message designed to get an inbound response. That inbound response in this case is a review that review might get you 10 more sales. So think about that. This is the modern digital version of referrals in many ways, okay? Reviews are like referrals. You want to get as many of those as you can so that you can get even more sales later. This is like an exponential marketing force and it's something that you just cannot ignore. So if this cleared this up, why is so important, how to do it and then go ahead and pound the light button for me. And of course, we'll see you on the next video as we continue the five fingers of death for your competition.

5 Fingers of Death - #1 Your Website Pages

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 18:13:45 GMT

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Welcome back guys. This is quick and dirty marketing, and this is the beginning of a new series called the Five Fingers of Death - how to strangle your competition. We're going to start with the thumb, and the thumb for us is our website pages. So stick with me and we're going to go over the essential things you need to have and be ready to crush your competition.

We're going to go over the five essential elements over the next series of videos that make up a really comprehensive marketing say package, if you will, or overall strategy for your business today, we're going to go over the thumb. The thumbs are going to represent our website pages and the five fingers of death. So in the previous video, if you have not watched, and we can put a link to that here, that video is an exploded walkthrough of a high-level campaign has all these five elements today, we're going to deep dive into an ask some of the hard questions about your website and if it's actually working for you. All right. So here we are guys in front of the desktop on a screen share, and we're going to go over the thumb of our five fingers of death, which is our website pages.

The thumb represents our website pages because it is our strongest finger and you could hang from it. You could do dead lifts with it. Your thumbs are extremely powerful. Your webpages need to be a rock solid, and they are the core. Everything kind of rotates around that element. If that element is weak, you could buy tons of traffic and it's going to be a waste of money. If that element is weak, you can do great emails and they hit those pages. And of course, you know, that effort is going to be wasted. So those, those landing pages, those website pages have got to be strong and done well. So you need, you know, we're going to go through kind of, this is a very rudimentary layout, but it's got some basic ingredients. So the first thing is you've got a homepage or a sales page where you typically land traffic.

I've done some other videos about how it's tricky to get a homepage, to do both things. And you really need to ask yourself the hard question, you know, do you want this homepage to be, you know, kind of brochure with general information, or do you want the homepage to punch hard and be a sales page? I've over the last probably 12 to 18 months. I think we've probably done more home pages now that are punching hard like sales pages. So they're taking on that long scroller format. They've got a lot of hot engage, engagement up top, and they've got really clear calls to action about what to do next for the user. So they're not home pages that you remember from yesteryear that are kind of this nice sort of ambiguous, you know, area where somebody lands and they've got 40 choices, they've got seven, you know, menu items with dropdowns up top stuff in the left-hand or right-hand column.

They could click on, scroll down. There's more stuff to click on. So that that's kind of the old homepage. And that's the one that I caution you. If you're living that reality right now, that's not a sales page that is, you know, kind of a, a forest that your buyer can get lost in. And we don't want to do that many of my videos and the way that we think here. And I, and I employ you to take on this mindset is you got to guide your buyer. Don't drop them off in the middle of the forest and expect them to find their way, don't land them on a page that has, you know, 22 choices on it and expect them to understand where to go, what to do to figure it all out, to get engaged with your product or service. I want you to design your page, trim down your menus, make it clear about the next action they need to take.

So in this example, we're onboarding clients, uh, for medical practice or patients, if you will. And we want to land them on a page that, and this is a question you need to ask. So if you're taking notes, you got to ask yourself is the first thing that they see on the page, show them that they're in the right place to solve their problem. That's the question that you need to test your page again with the page loads, does it immediately let them know they're in the right place for their problem? If you solve that, then we can kind of move to the next thing, the next thing. And I, I like to do these, I, I really think that for a local business, having some sort of welcome video is always been great, but it's even better now after we've all learned to shop and do more from home or more from our devices in order to, you know, go through the social distancing thing.

So even more now than ever, you need to work on the virtualized version of what somebody would experience had. They come to meet you face and face. So how do you replicate that in a good, you know, short sort of punchy one to three minute video that tells them about how your product or services are going to solve their problem. And they are in the right place and they do need to learn a little bit more and you know, everything is great so far. So keep going. Right? So that video, I think is as much as we thought it was important. Two, three years ago, it's extra important now is you have a lot more virtualized shopping and not even virtual shopping so much, as we could say, now, virtualized visiting or in the, you know, sort of brick and mortar world that was called window shopping.

So now you have digital window shopping and the best way to engage a window shopper is to show them a great window, right? That makes them want to come to the store. I mean, this is old school retail sales tactics. Like if you looked at Macy's, which was the best example of, you know, cool windows they would do for the holidays and stuff and, and any big department store that used to have street side, window shopping, you know, and they would do these displays and windows and they still do those, you know, you'll see them at gap. Does them, if you go to any of these like outdoor malls and stuff, I always have a nice window thing going on. Coach stores, Marc Jacobs, IC Nike's doing, you know, they got the mannequin and everything, but so you're thinking when you're thinking about this video, it's almost the digital version of window shopping now that people might not necessarily be coming to your store in the volume that they had before.

And if you're a medical practice, you know, there was no window shopping before then, but now people around the internet kind of checking stuff out and they are shopping you. So if you're a services provider and you're not in the product game, it doesn't mean that you are immune to needing to provide that initial window shopping opportunity. And that's done very well with video. So my recommendations is just try to figure out how your first interaction with a new prospect goes, what needs to be in that video and, you know, keep it short, keep it punchy. And the point of that video is to prove that they're in the right place and to prove that you're a viable candidate to solving their problem, whether they need to buy a thing or they need a service, they need to, that video needs to raise their confidence that they can need to keep going.

Right. So the other way to express that if you want to do another metaphor here, if you will, or I guess it would be an analogy it's analogous to the opening paragraph of a story. It needs to engage the reader to the point that they want to read more. They want to learn more. So there sorta needs to be a cliffhanger or that sense that they need to continue to scroll or whatever the call to action is, you know, read more, learn more, go here, sign up, get enrolled, you know, get our free information packet, download this analysis tool, you know, go to our checker and make sure, you know, that you're a candidate for this. You know, that would be like solar services, mortgages, you know, any of those things, they have cool tools that kind of start to filter and pre-screen whether everybody's a good fit.

So whatever the next step is, the video is just like the first paragraph of a story and that it needs to take them to the next step, the folks that are in the right spot. All right. And then we get into FAQ's a lot of times people have more questions and again, you're not there to answer them. So you kind of got a cover, you know, a little bit of a wider bandwidth this this way, and make sure that if they have questions that are easily answered and all of those Effie FAQ's and each, you know, if you do a video for that, or you have questions, they all need to continue to circle them back into that funnel line and get them to the next step, which is hopefully, you know, setting an appointment, buying, taking them to a shopping cart page, whatever.

But I like that. If you're an e-com person you may welcome and then shop, you might not need FAQ's. Although a lot of people have questions like, will I pay for shipping? How long will it take to get here? You know, w do you custom make it, you know, yada yada yada. And because people are again, shopping, virtually try to front run your most common top 10 or top five questions and make sure that those are there and easy to, uh, you know, watch or read and get answers for. And again, raise the confidence of them so that you're dealing with objections. Like, oh, it will arrive on time. Or this is going to work out. My, my issues with this are answered right here. So again, those are objections overcoming objections and getting them to move along. And then how do they get started?

Right. So this is kind of, I mean, if you go back to our basics, it's like, yeah, you're in the right spot. Don't worry. Here's what you do to get started. I mean, those are the, those are the simplified versions of this. You're in the right spot. Here's all the stuff we can do for you and the benefits and why this is a good match. Here's, you know, if you're having some issues, these are our answers to that. And here's how to get started and get the thing going. Right. And that needs to be clear. So if your website is not clear about how people can get started with buying from you, from, with shopping at your place, or with getting your service or, or how to pick a product, if it's not clear, you need to circle back and do that work, which is what this video is about.

These are core elements you cannot fail in before you get wound up and all this other BS, like spending money on traffic and PPC, and getting all excited about social media and taking a million pictures for Instagram. Like we got to do that. We got to do that. All this stuff doesn't mean none doesn't mean anything. If this stuff is weak, right? You can drive people in here and this is a mess and confusing. They don't really know if it's the right place. There's not a lot of, you know, confidence and questions and resources for them. So they feel good about working with you and your company or buying your product. And then they don't even know how to necessarily get started or what, what the deal is with that. You know, if you don't handle this stuff, all these other things that are on this layout, you know, that a lot of people just get jacked up on.

Cause they think that's where the priority just falls on its face. And then you start blaming these things like, oh, Facebook ads suck. And Instagram ads are really hard and nobody responds to those. And those were expensive and I'm sick of social posting, but really the failures here, you know, you might just be not doing a good job with these pages. So I always tell everybody this stuff's gotta be thumb strong and the five fingers of death. Once it gets started, you're going to take them through. And of course you on here, we watch video, we watch video, we're moving people on, but you got to make sure again, that you got some of the technology backbones on these pages, you want to be hitting pixeling your audience. So you're capturing a hundred percent of your visitors and you're able to send them into retargeting. And we'll do that on another one of our videos about how to set that up and what that structure should look like. And, uh, you know, and so, you know, you got to have some safety nets in here, but these are the gore things. All right. So that's it for the thumb on the five fingers of death. We'll see you on the next one where we're going to continue to teach you how to strangle competition.

Complete Campaign Layout for Local Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 25 May 2021 15:51:12 GMT

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Today I'm want to do something extra special and actually share with you, kind of how we work, but I want to share it in a way that I think is going to make a huge impact on the way that you see your entire marketing picture. So go ahead and stick with me and, I'm going to take you behind the scenes today. So today guys, I promise I would show you how we figure out a big client project and the reason this is important for you to watch and see, I think, and, and it's been a huge help for us internally and working with our clients and so forth is that you're going to see the big picture. And w you know, I've been doing a bunch of videos lately in this video included, I'm really stressing with folks that, you know, taking pot shots around the field is not really going to change the outcome of your life or your business.

It's just not going to move the needle in the way that you want. You might get lucky here and there, but it's always going to be inconsistent. So today I'm going to take over the desktop. I'm going to screen share you how we lay things out and what that looks like. And those layouts are going to include quite a bit like, you know, all the cold advertising that comes in, I mean, cold traffic that comes in reputation, marketing, retargeting, social media, retargeting, you know, organic posts, autoresponders indoctrination series, web pages, you know, then, and the funnel and the, you know, the way that the web is flow and all of that layout. And we actually build all that stuff out and in a, in a map before we take anything on. And what's amazing about that is that these maps actually apply to a lot of businesses. So today I'm going to show you guys an example of one of those and, uh, walk you through it. And I think it's going to really change your view of kind of all of the stuff that really needs to happen for a business and all the areas that you need to be working in simultaneously. So that in six months or a year, you've got something that's really cooking with fire. So let's go over to the desktop and check it out.

So we're at the workstation here on my desk, and I'm going to take you guys over to look at this whole layout map, that we just talked about, and I'm going to reveal the different elements in the map and kind of show you how everything ties together in a big, fully flushed out marketing program. So this is grayed out. So I'm just going to reveal all the different elements here, but we'll start right in here on web, because this is kind of where the center of the universe is for most, you know, efforts,

Which is these pages like the homepage and the associated landing pages and funnel that go with that are all here. And now we have some other pages that are going to be off her page and the re offer pages. And those you can see are starting to be tied out to other remarketing efforts, but over here on the left, we have all of the potential cold traffic sources. So this would be new visitors that have never seen the target business before. And they come in from all sorts of different things, social posting, YouTube, Twitter, you know, all of those types of places, Google my business maps, even the sign outside on the door, you know, like analog stuff, flyers, mailers, referrals, email, you know, maybe stuff that was outbound cold email, anything like that. Pay-per-click campaigns, cold advertising, that's all driving traffic right here.

So the question is then, you know, what happens with the starter traffic when it goes here? And that's where we get into things that start to be a lot more sophisticated in the big picture. One of the things that's really important, is, is up here. And this is true for all businesses now is how to grow your five-star reviews and make sure that you're controlling the narrative and the reputation for your business in that, you know, handling a lot of different elements. But basically you got to get people to opt into some sort of campaign here. And typically that happens as a new client. Now, down here in this area, we showed us some new client onboarding where they get pixeled and tagged and brought into this environment. This also this, this review campaign can also kick off from them, checking in or coming into the store or having an appointment.

Those are, you know, that's, uh, you know, a lot of times the way that happens here and we show that check-in page and then they get added to the campaign and then they get campaigned for feedback and reviews. And of course those get posted and posted again on maps and Google my business. And then that becomes, you know, a supporting effort for cold traffic that's coming in there. So you can see that starts to be a circular self-generating effort in itself, you know, in its own. Right, right, right there. And then if we go up, we're looking, and you know, this is all designed for healthcare, but this applies to almost every local business. If you have a, you know, or a services or even a product based business, a lot of these elements apply to our basic block and tackle stuff that you really need to have happened.

So if you look down here, these are all retargeting campaigns, and we're a big proponent of that. I've done a lot of videos on that, and you'll see, here's where we pixel any new visitors. And they get added to retargeting campaigns that work like this. And they go out with different ad sets for, in a lot of cases, up to 30 days, depending on what the buying cycle is like. So let's see they work like this. And then they follow people back to offer pages right here. And sometimes back to this homepage, or if we have offer pages threaded in here, but this is a good, we like to land that traffic in a place that's relevant for these offers, right? Because we're trying to get this traffic here to convert. If they don't convert on the first pass, we want to try to get them back and get them convert on the second pass.

If they are a client, they might go into also some cross selling sequences to show them other products and services that the business has. Right. So we would be walking them through some advertising campaigns there. And we would also be having them go through some email communications for a couple of weeks as a new customer. So an indoctrination or education cycles, one of the ways that that can be labeled, right. And then down here, uh, on the bottom, we're showing, you know, social media retargeting, cause we've got different things. We've got to deal with down here for retargeting. We've got to be on every channel. So we've got the general internet and then the Facebook and Instagram ecosystem right here. And then here, we've got some special offer type campaigns that are overlaid on a traditional branding and awareness type campaigns. So if we're running offers out, those might actually run together and get clients back onto some sort of special or seasonal offer.

Right. And then, and all the way up here, we have some long-term and look at all these, these are long-term e-mails warmer series where we take a new client and then we stay with that person for a hundred, to 200 days in their inbox. And through them touching the website and we keep their, keep them seeing ads and those, you know, social proof ads and so forth. So that really is this sort of, you know, essential elements here. You got to have great web pages, could cold traffic coming in. You got to control the reputation of the product or service or business and have a system for that. You gotta be able to indoctrinate and welcome your new clients and customers. You gotta be able to cross sell 'em and you gotta retarget everybody, no matter where they're at in this whole process to pull as much value out of those relationships as possible.

And then you got to stay with people with a really series of emails and let them know that you're taking care of them. And that you're an authority. So this was a lot of what that is there. So this whole process, if you looked at like from day one over here, somebody coming into a website all the way out here to the last email, they might get this accounts for about 200 days of automated marketing and onboarding and follow up and cross selling and, you know, brand loyalty building and so forth. So this is, this covers a timeline of about 200 days, the way you're looking at it here. So if this helped to, uh, you know, show you what it really looks like to build everything out, there are over 500 elements here on this layout. This is a common build for us, for medical practices and local businesses.

We're going to use these elements, if not exactly like this, very close to this, it's been shown to prove this has been proven to be very effective. Uh, for every instance that we've installed this type of thorough sophisticated system, almost all of this is automated. Once it's done, except for layering in some offers that typically are cyclical. And sometimes we need to tune those and you know, we're going to be working on that. We've got to manage the ad accounts, there's management with all this, but, but for the most part, once it's working, the user can dance around in here and all these responses are programmatically, you know, set up and automated depending on their behavior. Did they buy, did they not buy? Did they become a client? Did they not become a client that, you know, and then what do they do when they got their appointment and were they happy and do they need to be happier? So all of those things are accounted for in, in this bill.

So if that, seeing everything that I just showed you was super helpful, and I hope that it was, go ahead like this video and I'd love to, you know, see on the next one. And I really hope that now that you see the true scope of what needs to happen to be ultra effective, you start working in a way that reflects all of these different needs for your business, because I promise you, if you take that approach, you're gonna see amazing results in the quarters to come. So go get them out there.

How People Learn About Your Brand

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 May 2021 21:41:48 GMT

Today I want to share with you a concept that I call the ramp and the ramp is your prospect's journey. And I want to talk to you about how that works and what you can do to do a better job with it. So stick with me and let's check it out.

Probably about eight years ago, I was working on a marketing project, and one of the things that we were struggling with was, this journey that a prospect's had now I've done another video on the buyer's journey, which is a little different, because that was more of an onboarding type of conversation. This is a conversation about going from knowing nothing about your offer, your brand, your service, your product, whatever, to the point of converting and becoming a customer. So what does that look like? So one of the ways that I like to express that is on kind of like a sloping chart.

And if we look at a sloping chart, it starts where, and the way that I like to propose this is what if, what does it look like for somebody who learns about your product or service on the street today? Randomly, maybe on their phone, maybe from somebody they're talking to, maybe from a sign on the wall, doesn't matter. What does it look like from that first moment to the point of buying from you? Now? It would be again, very like under gunned to sit here and say, Oh, well, that's a funnel. It's. I mean, there might be pieces of that that are funnels, but the whole concept is actually bigger than the idea of a, of a sales funnel, because there's all sorts of holidays in there. Right. So they may hear about your brand and then do nothing for two weeks. Are they in the funnel?

I don't know. Maybe they hear about it again in two weeks. And then they say, Oh, I'm going to go check out their website. Cause I got a minute and I'm waiting for the bus. Now they touched your website. Are they in the funnel? I don't know. And it depends on how your advertising and marketing is working. What did they bounce? Because they got a phone call. Are they in the funnel or not? Right. So you see what that, see that conversation becomes very complicated at that point. And you could, you know, there are folks in my businesses, well, yeah, they're in, you know, they're, they're in and this is the process. But I like to call it the ramp, which is a little bit different and it, and the concept is kind of as they rise in awareness with your brand.

Right? So I like to thinking about that, like funnel is, is a concept of filtering down a pool of leads and they, they get filter, filter, filter down and you're looking for the nugget, right. Which is the buyer. So funnels are kind of like gold panning. You know, you got, you got a bunch of sand and rock. You can shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it. And you're going to get a foot. You're going to filter out the meaningful bits in there that are going to buy from you. This idea that ramp has kind of an upside down version of that. And that is the story of one person that gets exposed to your brand and how their awareness and their likelihood to buy actually. Right. And how is it that you support that journey in your marketing? Right? So this is, uh, another way to look at how you handle just one person.

What does one person's story look like as they move through this situation and what are you offering them along the way so that they can learn more and start to be fond of what you have to offer and consider it. When they're thinking about solving the problem they have, that, you know, you have a solution for. So the other, the end of the ramp of course, is the point at which they buy or they become fully aware there that you can solve this problem that they apparently have in their lives. And the thing that's interesting too, is that at the beginning of the ramp, when they're at 0.0, they may not even have the problem that you solve, which is an interesting part of this conversation. So they may become aware of you and not need you. And then somewhere in the timeline, this problem in their life arises.

And then they go, Oh, I remember there was a company that deals with that or individual that deals with that. Maybe I should take a look at that. Then they're rising up again in awareness, right? Because they now have motivation, right? So there, there's all sorts of different things in there, I think are a completely different conversation than this sifting concept of a funnel. So what I'm inviting you to do today on this video is think about the, the, and start to actually plot out, like on this rising curve, what does somebody look like? What do they, what are they first exposed to? What does your brand look like on first exposure? And then how do you support somebody who keeps dipping in and out of the pool as they become more and more aware and, or as they maybe have a problem in their life that manifests that you can solve.

And in those, you might have segments that are little funnels. Like they might go to your website - now they're being retargeted or they might opt in and ask a question on a form, or they might just chat for a second on online chat with one of your customer service people. Then they're in a little bit of a funnel, but do they bounce up and get to the next bit, do they fall out? How are you supporting them? And then what does it look like when somebody finally tips and converts? How aware are they, how much do they know, how big is their problem? What is, what are the offers that they typically respond to that get them to become an actual customer and, and go leap into full awareness and, and grab a hold of what you're able to do for them. So go ahead and work on that. It's awesome concept to think about, and it'll help you in build, right in fill your marketing collateral into the underside of this ramp so that you can support people as they rise up and become buyers of your product and service. So I hope this, kind of idea that helped me deal with a very tricky problem at a years ago is helpful for you today.

Should I Get Vaccinated

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 16 May 2021 21:07:38 GMT

Today we're doing a special video on the ultimate question that it's floating around with everybody right now, and that is, should I get vaccinated? Now you all know that this is a channel about marketing and I am fascinated by this whole vaccine rollout and the politics and conflicts and all this stuff around it. So, first thing I want to do to start this conversation is to just lay out some facts. And if you need to, you could fact check me since that's a thing as well this year, but I pulled, the census data that's been taken and, you know, reliable news sites that are reporting that core data. So I think we're good on numbers here as of may, which is this time that we're shooting this video.

The state with the most vaccinations is Vermont at 62%. And the state with the lowest vaccinations is Mississippi sitting at 32%. Now let me back up the conversation a little bit and say that part of the reason I'm fascinated by this whole thing from a marketing standpoint is there was clearly the ultimate need for this product. So like if you're going to come to market with any product, and there was, I mean, literally people dying because they didn't have it, which is the case here. Um, or just some other like massive pent up demand as a product development person, you know, as a, and doing the marketing, kind of getting ready for launch day, if you will. I mean, if you kind of put this into traditional, you know, sort of product rollout stuff, you'd be like sitting there thinking, Oh, I'm sitting on a goldmine.

You know, this thing is going to explode. It's going to be amazing. Everybody's going to want one. It's going to solve this problem immediately. And we've got the answer and we're the only people that are going to roll it out. And to see that, I mean, think about it. Let's, let's just put it this way. Mostly these vaccinations are free, right? For Americans and, and in many other countries they're free, but let's just talk about the United States. So vaccinations are basically free. So there's no cost. They solve a really important problem, which is you could die or somebody you love or no could die, or anyone in your community could die. So there's, there was like a real demonstrating problem. The vaccine, you know, is actually been shown now to solve that problem. Death rates are going down and all these other good numbers are part of this conversation.

And I don't think there's any dispute about the fact that it's being it's effective. In fact, we're now in stage three clinical trials for a few of these and the Pfizer and Madonna, Madonna vaccinations have proven to be 95% effective. Now I'm only saying that, not because I want to get all science-y here, but because if you were selling a product, if you were developing a product and you could be sure through three stage three clinical trials, which, you know, irregular product doesn't even go through that kind of rigorous testing, that your product was 95% going to solve the buyer's problem. Again, you would just be like, dude, our stuff is amazing. It's 95% perfect. And it solves 95% of our buyers are going to be satisfied. You know, we're going to kill it. And everybody needs one because everybody is having this problem, right.

We all collectively experienced the pandemic and the COVID. I mean, we all, I mean, Frank, I know people that died. I don't know if you did, but I mean, a lot of people know people that were affected to this by this, in the worst possible way. I also know people that almost lost their businesses or lost their jobs. I know people that had trouble hanging out of their homes. I know people that, um, you know, also were on the other side of it where their business exploded and they did really well during the pandemic. So I know there without question, everybody was affected. So it's not like there's an awareness campaign you have to do. So you're launching this product. Everybody's aware that the problem exists and you've got a product that is shown to be 95% effective at solving the problem. Now on this channel, I'm always talking to you about we're in the business of solving problems for other people.

You have your specialty. I have my specialty and these guys have their specialty, which is making vaccinations. And they've got some pretty good ones here that can solve this problem. So if you knew when you were making a product or you're developing a service that you are going to come to market at 95% effective at solving your buyers problems, you would be very confident. Now, the other thing is you would be really confident if everybody knew and needed the product you were coming out with, like everybody knew about the problem. They didn't, you didn't have to like tell them like, Hey, this sandwich bags makes packing lunches faster in the morning for your kids. Like people like, well, I didn't even know I had that problem. You know, it's like, you don't even have to explain that part. You don't have to do awareness. Everybody's aware you've got really good data that shows your product is good.

Probably some of the best ad in the world in terms of product development and get this, you basically have unlimited resources to market and deploy and distribute your product. And here's the numbers. $1 billion was spent by Pfizer to develop their vaccine. AstraZeneca took in 1.2 billion in prepaid upfront funding to develop their vaccine. Johnson and Johnson took a billion dollars upfront to develop their vaccine and get it out the door. And Moderna took in 955 million. So I just scratch math one, two, three, I'm at $4.1 billion to, to, to get this product to market. Does that anybody know? I mean, what is that like the cost of developing three new cars, ours are like, what what's it take to develop a new Tesla, 1,000,000,500 million in product development, like w literally more resources and more money to me than almost any other expensive high ticket, you know, significant product launch then than you could possibly imagine, like unlimited resources.

Right. And you had the loudest voices in the world, right? So you had our previous president, Donald Trump who was, um, talking to operation warp speed. And he was signing and signing these big checks to these companies and securing vaccinations for the UK. Yes. And, um, making sure that we're all going to be okay and, you know, Congress and the house, or re you know, all the funding and everything too, this product to market, literally billions of dollars and the loudest voices on the news and everywhere else. So everybody's talking about it, right? But then you have Mississippi only 32% of the people want to buy the product. I mean, that's, that's the numbers today. 32% of Mississippi residents are willing to buy this product. Yet a hundred percent of Mississippi residents were affected by the pandemic. They had closures, restaurant closures, um, you know, all sorts of economic issues.

They're not a very wealthy state. There are state of lower education. There are state of primarily Republicans, which is interesting. The part that, again, I'm puzzled with all of this is Mississippi is a Republican state. They voted Republican in the last election for an ex president who literally started to coordinate this entire Bolty billion dollar product launch. And they cheered him up, but they don't want to buy the product, even though they participated and support the CEO. If you will, the president who was coordinating and taking credit for this massive effort, they don't actually want the product. That's really odd. So that part is confusing to me. Then you look at Vermont, which has a 62% adoption rate is a completely different type of demographic is a mostly white, mostly older, mostly college educated state, kind of from a demographic standpoint, the opposite of Mississippi.

These are the two outer boundaries of this data pool that we're looking at, but Vermont is a democratic state and they actually voted for Biden, you know, our new president in the last election. So they theoretically weren't supporting Donald Trump and operation work speed and all these billions dollars yet they, by majority 62% of the folks in Vermont are buying the product. So I'm like, as a marketer sitting here going, what in that is happening with all this, this doesn't play by any of the rules that, that, you would, you know, subscribe to if you're putting something out in the private sector. So to say, so, I'm, I'm thinking that this is the most interesting marketing study from a product launch standpoint, it's got so many, you know, different threads to it because of the political nature of it. And then the health and wellness and the impact on everybody's lives.

And yet it doesn't seem to play by the normal rules, even though theoretically, from a core value standpoint, it should, we had a gigantic problem. We have an awesome solution. Why aren't people buying the solution? Let me frame it up a different way. Everybody needs to go somewhere, right? As part of their daily lives, most people do. They got to go to work. They got to pick stuff up. They got to go to the grocery store. Americans are on the go. I don't think we need to argue with that. Right. What if I said to you right now that everybody has a problem where they need to go somewhere. So we all know that everybody wants to go somewhere. What if we were giving away cars today to everybody that wanted to get one, because it's very much the same with this vaccine. We're actually giving them away to everybody that wants to go in, in fact, here in Arizona, you can just go right now and just get one.

You don't need to show any special, anything just that you're a local person, that's it. Um, and that you're of age. So, but if we were giving away cars, wouldn't everybody say, yes, I want the car. And here's, what's really interesting about that. I mean, I mean, maybe they wouldn't, maybe only 32% of people in Mississippi would want a car if we were giving them away, or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe people in Vermont would be not up for that. I don't know. But, but again, it's like, everybody has the problem. Everybody's aware of a problem like that. Like transportation needs is a sort of universal problem. Many companies try to solve it. Uber, Lyft, Tesla, a lot of scooter companies. I mean, there's tons of people that are aggregated around that problem. Right. But there's nobody giving away transportation right now. So what would happen if we just gave away cars?

I mean, would everybody sign up? I think probably everybody would, especially if you didn't have a car and even if you were going to get a second car, you might say, yeah, I'm in for that, but is there really any difference? And here's the thing that might be different perceived value. Somebody thinks of a car is expensive, but somebody doesn't think of vaccines necessarily as expensive. And in fact, most of these vaccines right now have been bought well, the Johnson Johnson, one, which isn't quite as effective. According to my research, it is 66% effective in clinical trials. Currently it's quite a bit cheaper for $10. So for $10 you get less effectiveness at $19 and 50 cents or $15 for Pfizer and Madonna, Madonna being at 15, you go to 95% effective. So actually if you pay more, you get a better product. In the case of these vaccines.

That's what shown to be true. As of May 15th today now, um, people perceive cars as valuable. So they run down to get them maybe because there are 20 or $30,000 or whatever the cost of, you know, sort of the average car is now, but is this vaccine just, there's no perceived value for that? What's the price on that? I mean, it's far more than $19, like a loss of life. I mean, and then as far more worth, far, far more value than the price of a car, but there's some sort of perceived value with that. I think that's part of this hesitancy that people are don't value the effect. Like they would value somebody giving them a car, but it like, look, if you were given this vaccine, which we're almost all eligible for now, depending on where you live and that gave you your life, when you go and get it, I mean, isn't that worth more than a free car?

I mean, I think it is. I mean, you won't even be able to drive the car if you didn't have your life. So it's kind of like, you really need that. So I'm again trying to uncover the workings of this thing and why there's this, what they call, um, vaccination hesitancy the long and short of it though. And the data without question shows today that younger folks and Republicans have the highest level of vaccine hesitancy. And then you go down from there based on education level, the less educated you are, the higher, your level of vaccine hesitancy is now where that gets into our marketing messaging and things we've talked about in advertising and stuff is that, that, and I'm gonna quote right here, um, health officials, ad health advocates, and polling indicates that vaccine misinformation and a lack of access. So, you know, it's hard to get, it are the key reasons behind, differences between white, black, Hispanic, and vaccination rates in different demographic areas, vaccine misinformation.

That's what they're starting to uncover is one of the biggest problems. So where's this misinformation is what I'm wondering, because as far as I can tell the official channels, if you will like the, you know, the president's office, Congress, the CDC guys like Anthony Fowchee, I mean these smart, official folks that were all voted for or paid for to, you know, guide us and protect us and do all these things. Those guys are all including our prior president who launched this vaccination program, they all are, the message is pretty clear. Everybody gets the vaccine, that pandemic goes away. Life goes back to normal. I think that's something we all want, right? So, and we all are having went through this problem together and there's a solution on the table, but yet there's some sort of misinformation here. I'm also trying to undercover. Where's that coming from?

Where is the misinformation? Where's the source of that? Cause I don't see it on the regular news and I don't see it in the marketing for these, the marketing material. The information on these vaccines tells me phase three clinical trials shows 95% efficiency. And to be fair, there were some folks that had complications. I did a little bit of work on that as well. It turns out that you are far more likely to get eaten by a shark than have a complication with one of these vaccines. And you are something like a hundred times more likely to go get hurt, just driving your car today. Cause one in 130 of us here in the United States will, are likely to die from a car accident, which is a ridiculously scary number. Um, but you're like one in several million to have complications with the vaccine, one of these vaccines specifically.

So those numbers don't make any sense. We're all going to drive today, even though it's very dangerous comparative to getting a vaccine, we're all going to go to the beach and go swimming and not think about shark attacks, but you're a far more likely to get attacked by a shark this summer. Then you are to have a problem with one of these vaccines. Yet this misinformation exists and folks are scared or hesitant or concerned about safety. Perhaps is the only thing that I could think would motivate them to continue to put themselves at risk and their loved ones at risk of contracting this disease and having it really turned into something terrible for their family. So, but they will continue to take these other risks that they've clearly become accustomed to, or are, you know, they have a false sense of control. Like you drive your car, you feel like you're in control.

Well, I call on that because somebody can just T-bone you, which is exactly what happens all the time. And people die all the time in their cars at a far greater rate than anybody ever dies from any vaccine, let alone the ones that we're talking about today and again, but there's clearly some misinformation out there. So I will leave you with, you know, your own conclusions. The goal of this video is not to get political art pick sides. The goal of this video is to, from a marketing's view, you know, do you use our marketing eye on this is to look at, this is the biggest product launch probably in the last a hundred years, maybe longer, it's got more firepower behind it financially than probably anything that's ever been brought to market in the history of this country, billions and billions and billions of dollars, including the smartest, you know, marketing minds, scientists, you know, all of this, like, think about that.

If you were putting together a webpage, you got the best people in the world, you can quote them, they love your product, they're behind it. You know, like imagine you could put Dr. Anthony Fowchee on your website and he would say your product is great. I mean, that would be awesome, right? The guy's extremely credible. So you have all of those things. And yet in many ways, the product launches is by some measures of failure, especially amongst certain segments of the population that frankly are experiencing the problem in ways that are almost worse than the folks that are easily adopting it. So some of this stuff isn't adding up, I'm going to do more on it, but I want you to know that this is a great case study for you. If you're looking at marketing and messaging and misinformation and things like that. And it's a good reason looking at this to be very precise with how you present your products and services and make sure you're controlling the narrative, which you know, and maybe that's the story here.

That's the summary of this entire story is that somebody lost control of the narrative with this thing. And that's where it went South. So for your business, control the narrative, your reputation, your service and product narrative, you know, what's being said about those things, be the dominant voice and be the positive voice for what you're offering so that you don't get into this low adoption rate, hesitancy mess, despite the fact that you might be solving an incredibly important problem for your clients and customers. So I'll leave you with that. If this was interesting or, you know, rattled some stuff for you, because I think it's, plexing to say the least, then go ahead. And I think it's a different perspective on the vaccination stuff, because I think maybe, you know, it could just be about, you know, a lot of other angles of this conversation. But to me, this is the big product launch and it fits right into what we do on this channel. So go ahead and like the video and I'll see you on the next one.

How to Figure Out Your Ideal Audience

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 11 May 2021 20:25:00 GMT

So today I want to talk to you about trying to figure out what your ideal audience is for your product or service. So this can be kind of tricky. And if you look into, you know, the back end of these advertising dashboards, you know, you'll see things like intent and, uh, affinity, um, and interest group, right? So there's all these different ways between Google and Facebook, which are, you know, two of the bigger app platforms. And then we have our media buying on the professional side that has these different terminology, but they're all a little confusing in my mind, especially for the regular daily users trying to figure out who's buying because we, you know, we need to start with these deeper questions.

So question number one, and this is really important. You can write this down. This is like something that we all have to answer as business owners. And that question is, is what problem do you solve? Or if you sell a product, of course it would be, what problem does your product solve? Okay. So one to you understand the problem that you solve, the next question that you need, he'd answer, and you could write this one down so that you can answer it and sort of brainstorm who has that problem typically. Okay. So it's, you know, what problem do you, I solve? And then who are the people that typically have that, that one to answer those things, then you start to figure out your audience. And there's a lot of ways to, you know, define an audience. A lot of it is like a weird government forum, um, you know, age twenty-five to 35 male lives in a city drives a car is recently divorced, blah, blah, blah, whatever the, you know, those are like little data points that you can try to refine, but from a, from a core, you know, evaluation, those two questions that I mentioned are the most important questions that get you into figuring out the data pool inside advertising platforms, list, buying media buying, and all these other places where you're going to be presented with, you know, who do you want to pay to chase down?

You know, what, who do you want to go after? Because that's your biggest thing. When you're growing your business, you have to decide who you want to go after. And if you don't understand those, those two questions really deeply, then it's really hard to figure out who the people are. So ask yourselves that, ask yourself those two questions. What problem do you solve? And then who typically has that problem? And then go from there with your audience creation inside your ad platforms and so forth and so on, or even knowing that will also help you with your messaging and the way you write your emails and the way you express your pain points and the talk to the people about the way that your product solves the problem. Because once you understand how you're helping them and who they are, you're going to be that much more effective at communicating through all your different channels, your display ad, your pay-per-click, your email marketing, your website pages, your retargeting, your auto-responders, your social media posts, your blog posts, your blog articles, you know, whatever.. all of those things tie right back into these two questions.

So go ahead and answer those for yourselves. Get cracking on that. If this helped you clarify kind of where you need to start with that go ahead and like this video and I can't wait to see you on the next one.

Why You Must Run Drip Campaigns

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 04 May 2021 19:06:18 GMT

Today we're going to cover a marketing concept that goes back to when I started a long time ago called Drip Campaign. So you're going to want to stick with me and listen on how powerful this can be for you.

I want to take you back two and a half decades to before the internet, which sounds completely irrelevant, but it's actually really important. So when I started marketing, I was in financial services. And one of the things that I did to bring in a lot of prospects and leads was I ran a drip campaign and back then a drip campaign consisted of direct mail. So that was the way that we reached out to people. We would send them mail in the mailbox, old school, which people still do today and does have its place in the arsenal of generating traffic still. However, it is very expensive and we've got other ways today where we can do a lot more with a lot less money, which is awesome. But the drip campaign was very powerful and brought a lot of prospects and leads in because it deals with one of the problems that you can't control in marketing.

And that is what's happening on the prospects end of the deal. So we think about marketing. We've kind of got a couple of things. We do control. We control the offers that we're creating. We control the word crafting and kind of how we're positioning that offer in the market and how we're working against our competitors and so on and so forth. We, we got, we got fairly good control over those things so we can manage, we can cross test. We can AB test, we can change stuff up. We can, you know, whatever. But the one thing we don't control is what's happening with the buyer. And this is where a lot of people fall on their face with marketing in general because they, again, they give out sort of do one shot. They might get a couple of hooks with people, but the bulk of the population of folks that they're going after, they don't really stick with them.

And here's why this is a gigantic fail. You don't know what's happening in those people's lives. They may be a little low on money. They may be moving. They may be having a personal thing. They may be having a transition at work. They may be having all these different things that are making it so that, you know, they can't pay attention to what you have to offer right now. The other thing that you don't know besides all that of noise that we all have in our lives is you don't really know if the problem that you solve has gotten great enough in their lives, where they are ready to figure out a solution, which of course you will offer, right? That's part of your offer because you're in the business of solving problems like we all are. So the problem for them that you might solve just might not be big enough yet and painful enough for them to reach out.

So the way to deal with that whole time thing, because you just can't control that is to make sure that you're regularly in front of these people and in today's world. And this is where I see a lot of, you know, kind of screwing up with people. And, and again, it goes back to what I was saying that it's not as simple as like firing one thing out and be like, Oh, that sucks. The money is always in the follow-up. It's a cliche, but it's true. And it was true 25 years ago when I was folding envelopes on Saturday mornings and licking stamps, it was, you know, it was true then. And it's true today. The money is in being consistent down the long road with your lists. And that can mean sometimes for months and months and months, and months, and months and months, because depending on the niche, depending on what you know, you're offering and depending on the market that you know, and all sorts of other stuff, some of these things, people just don't make decisions about really fast.

So in today's high-speed world, my argument here is that drip marketing, which is like, you know, one little thing at a time slowly over a long period of time is actually extremely important to have implemented in your set of campaigns. Now there's two channels where you can deploy this pretty easily. One is in your email marketing and the other one is in your advertising, your paid ads, your retargeting, you can set those up so that those chase people for a long time and keep offers in front of the folks that have both visited your website and or opted into any of your lists.

So I know this word isn't used very often today because we always talking about auto responders and the word auto responder to me just really only is kind of one dimensional. I mean, even me opting into something and getting one email back is technically an auto response, but it doesn't really that word. And that concept doesn't really cover the ground that we just talked about here, which is this concept of a long drip of offers and messages where y ou stay in front o f your prospects and leads and become the voice of authority in your niche. That's your goal, right? So then when they're ready to convert, you're the person they're going to go to and try to figure out how to solve their problem.

Persuasion VS Manipulation

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:11:53 GMT

We're here again to talk to you about a new topic that has been keeping me up at night, and it's so important for online marketers and people that are trying to grow their business. And it's this conversation, I feel like we need to have about persuasion versus manipulation.

There's two types of things going on out there with selling in my mind. And there's probably others, but these are the two for today. One is, Persuasion and the other one is Manipulation. Both of these things in different contexts could be considered maybe positive or negatives. I mean, manipulation probably almost always seems kind of negative.

However, I'm sure somebody out there can make the case. That there's a good time for that. Persuasion on the other hand sounds more like selling, which is what we're all probably trying to do with our website and our businesses and our marketing and our advertising, certainly. So we're trying to persuade buyers to come with us, buy from us, work with us, whatever, but there is a fine line. And I guess that's where I want to bring the discussion today. Here is, you know, what is the line between being persuasive and being manipulative.

For people they want to sell something and they, in their mind, they've got a way that they want to do it, right? So we get asked to build site pages, ad checkouts funnels, and all sorts of very sophisticated things. And some of them in my mind cross the line to manipulation. And, um, and I'm not here as a confessional. I think this is just a reality of this business and it's, and it's something to be conscientious about. I understand that we're all here to make money. And I, and I think that you, you, to some degree you need to push, and you're also typically, you know, a lot of us online and maybe you included are in a fiercely competitive situation with other folks and, and you want to optimize and streamline all of these things that your buyer needs to go through.

And the question really, I want to ask and attempt to have a discussion about is at what point does all of that stuff we call up, demising become manipulative. And I'm going to give you an example. Like I said, I was going to tell you a story. So we had a project where as very competitive niche, very competitive niche, and like, uh, and that involved the checkout, right? So it was that e-commerce deal. And in order to get these people to check out, we started discovering that we had to do less yes, and less, uh, what I would call traditional shopping cart stuff. So, you know, like if you go buy a TV on best buy or something, and you might take a look at that shopping cart, if you're, if you have any comm store, it's definitely worth looking at other checkout processes to see what those are.

We all are mostly trained by Amazon and, and bigger sites, like best buy and Walmart and things like that. So we, we expect a certain experience when we're checking out. What's interesting though, is that every shopping cart to some degree is either persuading or manipulating you to get through that process and get your money. Okay. So the story goes that we were finding that we had to keep thinning down. How am I, we were disclosing in the final order process to get the, the final conversion and the actual payment, which I think was where we were starting to take this thing from persuasion. Cause we did a good job of selling the product. I don't think in fact, the numbers even indicated that action was great earlier in the steps. Like people loved the sales page. People like the product page, people liked the way that we priced and packaged it.

So they were click, click, click clicking, and then they would get to the cart page. And this is where we started having a challenge. And it really, you know, I could go into that challenge and I could be looking back at that now, today I'm thinking to myself, well, well, um, you know, this was about money and all this stuff and everything else and, and, and the form and yeah, lots of things like that, which, you know, and there certainly were a lot of details. But when I reflect back on that, it's this conversation it's where is, where did we stop persuading the buyer? And we actually started to go to where we were manipulating them. So here's what I'm going to tell you where we ended up on this thing. We actually found that at the end of the checkout process on the cart page where you would check out that more people, what about the product, if we didn't show them the price at the end, which seems nuts.

Because if you look at Amazon or any one of these big businesses, when the final checkout page where you're going to click for your credit card, it always shows the price that you're going to pay. But we found that if we showed the price, when they selected the product, which of course we did, they need to know what they're buying. I mean, we're trying to be unethical here because that would be, you know, like it's not, you can't sell somebody and not tell them the price. I mean, that's flat out, correct, but we did show them on the price, but we didn't show them the price. Every step of the way we showed up, when they selected the product, they selected an entire package. In fact, and it had the price nice large. Then when they go to enter their credit card information, of course that's just a form.

And then when they do the final confirmation, we showed the product they were getting, but we found that if we took the price off at that point, conversions went up. So I felt like that was the case beginning of where you're kind of going to, you know, what might be like the dark side of internet selling. And I want you guys to think about it. I want to tell this story, because I think that one of the things I can share on this channel is stories because I'm in this business and I have some experiences to share with you all, a lot of you are using, uh, a shopping cart product, you know, like Ecwid or Shopify or whatever it is. And they don't really let you do stuff like we're able to do. But I want you to think about it in terms of a bigger marketing, you know, contemplation, which is where we want.

And I want to help you be as persuasive as you possibly can and be competitive, competitive in your niche and in your market as much as you can. Okay. Um, but I also want you to recognize that, that there is a point where you go past persuasive selling and into manipulative selling. And I don't necessarily believe that's a great place go. I think that in the long run, the long game that will end up working against you. If, if you're in that spot right now, I'd invite you to review what you're up to and to review how you want to work going forward. And especially if you're trying to build something, you know, and the case of this project, that was not what was going on. It was a running gun deal and, you know, the results spoke for themselves and we were hired to get results.

Um, so it's just that simple. We didn't break any rules, but again, reflecting back, I think it's an interesting conversation to have and something that I wanted to share with all of you and let you run that around for yourself a little bit and have a little bit of awareness about how that can start to happen online. And it doesn't necessarily have to happen in a shopping cart can also happen on a sales page or the way that you photog photograph of product or the way that you might write up some specs or the way that you show something, you know, inaction that it might not a hundred percent be capable of doing right. Or it might be in the way that you present your service and make claims. Right. Um, so you just be careful with that stuff in a way, so much that be persuasive, but I would challenge you to make sure that you stop before you become manipulative.

I hope that you enjoyed that and it might have triggered something for you to watch out for, and also as a buyer and a shopper online, which I am, and you probably are also be conscientious of when you're being persuaded versus manipulate. If you feel like you're being manipulated, bounce, go shop somewhere else. That's my last little thought.

Amazing Shift to Growth Mindset

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 14:38:36 GMT

Today I want to share with you something that I guarantee if you listen to this video and you apply what I'm about to talk about, you will get results, new results, better results. So stick with me and we're going to unpack this whole approach that's going to change the way you feel and what you do.

So today I am sharing with you something that is going to improve your disposition, your mindset about the way that you're promoting your business and maybe even your business and life in general. So I'm going to start by telling you a little story and I could add limit, but I'm actually going to read because I want to get the first part accurate.

And you may have heard this, but we're going to tie this story to marketing. And I'm going to share with you some real life stories about how this has worked. So the story is about cycling and it turns out there's this British PHG former professional cyclist. His name is sir David Brailsford. He was ahead of British cycling in 2002. And the team had almost no record of success when he came on board. Okay. So they had, I mean, this is pathetic in Olympic cycling. They hadn't won a single gold medal in 76 years. That's like three generations. Okay. However, he quickly was able to change that. And here's how at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Okay. So just in the span of like, you know, a couple of years there, his squad, his cycling squad won seven out of the 10 available gold medals in track type cycling.

That's where they go around the track. And then they match that achievement at the London Olympics just four years later. Right? So it wasn't a one, wasn't a lightning strike. We talked about that on this other video. So this is not about lightning strikes. This is about consistent results. Okay. So sir, Dave now Lee's, Britain's, you know, first [inaudible] professional cycling team and they had one, three of the four of three or four tour de France events. Okay. So, so the speak for themselves now, how did he do it? Is, is the question, right? That's the cliffhanger here for this video? Well, this guy is actually an MBA and a cyclist and he was right. Really interesting, interested in the theory of marginal gains. Right. So this is something that actually comes from Japan as known as Kaizen.

And it's a Japanese word, meaning roughly continuous improvement. Okay. So, and more specifically applied to business, it means continuous improvement involving everyone managers and workers, uh, like, okay. So you'll, you'll see, I'm gonna tie that to our marketing efforts, but I want to continue a certain Dave for a second here. Okay. So sir, Dave was interested in studied marginal gains and the theory of Kaizen, he applied Kaizen and this notion that incremental improves movements across all of the elements that re that went into being competitive cyclist. If they could just lift everything 1% that the cumulative, you know, the ads value of all of these improvements would result in dramatic improvement for the team and guess what he was right. And I already told you that part, cause he went out to clean up on the tour, de France and clean up at the Olympics and basically changed the entire sport of cycling.

Now, let me tell you about how crazy some of the stuff is that he did, because I did read all of this and this is where I get to kind of ad-lib and tell you you the cool stuff. So they found that there was dirt in the vans. So guess what they did cleaned them and they painted them all white. And you don't why, because they found that even the smallest amount of dirt, getting into the bicycles drive chain and moving parts and all that actually affected performance, they also did paint the vans, white, clean them up. They also found that in the tour de France, which by the way tour, he went to, they kind of got walloped because it was very different than the controlled environment of the Olympics. Because you got to go from city to city, to city, to city, the tourist along like 20 day plus event.

And there's a lot more variables to manage. So they needed to adapt to that. One of the variables that they needed to adapt to was that the athletes were staying in like 20 minutes we're in hotels. So one of the things that we're not getting was consistent sleep. So they came up with this idea that each athlete would bring their own mattress and their own pillows that were the ones that they liked that gave them consistent, good sleep. And all of that was going to get put into a van and brought to every single hotel during the entire race. So that meant that the sleep issue again, was improved across the entire race, by some fractional amount, right? They were sleeping on their own pillows and their own beds. The vans were painted white and all of these little incremental improvements were made. And of course, then they went on to win.

So let's tie that to marketing. And this ties back to the, to the lightning strike conversation, right? If you look, and this is where many local businesses fail that, and it's not, it's not a criticism of you or anyone or me, it's, it's a criticism of kind of our environment and what's being sold to us. And the perceptions that we have that's, what's hurting us. It's not necessarily something that internal. So we think as business owners, oftentimes that we need to do an and an ad campaign, a marketing campaign, a one thing, a this thing, a that thing. And when we do that, we're like we're marketing, we're promoting our business. And when that one thing doesn't work or bring us dramatic returns and, and improvements, then we get frustrated and we retrack and we label that a failure. So great example of that, that I see.

Kay, time and time again with, with our clients is email marketing clients hate writing emails. I mean, I don't know. Some people love it, writers love it. Maybe I don't mind it. And I definitely, you know, grow and get into it and I can get my head where I'm going to do it and it's fine. But there are, you know, I mean, we work with tons of people. They're just like, ah, I don't want to write anything. Okay. And, and so they might've tried it in the past and, and felt like it was a waste of time or they can't get the subject lines, right. All that stuff. But email marketing is a really important part of being present with your clients and prospects and leads. And it's still one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful way to connect with potential customers.

So if you do an email and it doesn't give you you any sales or whatever, and then you just label that higher thing as, then you basically abandon this principle, which has proven to be successful, not just here in athletics. This is where it started. But also this has been applied to business and, and, and corporate behavior and all sorts of stuff. And there's some cool things in here too, that I want to talk about that have to do with team and culture. But the point being is that it's not that one thing, and there's no reason to quit. That one thing, the approach was wrong. When you go to you market your business, I don't want you to think one thing, I want you to think pillars of strength, right? And so, or like a stool, right? That's the other way to express this as like a stool needs to have at least three legs, otherwise it falls over.

So your business needs to have three legs, which means that you can play this 1% game. If you have three or four or five things going. So you're putting out a blog, you're got some pay-per-click ads or some paid advertising. You have some emails that are going out every week or every three or five days or something. Right. And you have a great website with some sales pages, right. And you're posting on social media. So you got like four or five or three or five. Thanks. That's great. Now, is there any one of those going to be the thing that makes your business go, boom, maybe, but probably not, but you know, what will make your business go? Boom, getting a little better at each one of them, right? So this is that 1% approach. This is Kaizen, it's continuous improvement in many areas that if you can take Sur Dave's approach to your marketing and frankly, maybe approach to your life and your business.

And instead of trying to do one super effort that you might just get slammed on and then retract and label everything yourself included as a failure, do little things all over. Push a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here. And there's two things that are going to happen for you on that one. The accumulation of all those efforts is going to be awesome. And to, I mean, I mean, I'm here to tell you, cause I know we've taken this approach. It works. Okay. The, the, the, the other thing that's even more important than the results that you might get in the money that you you might make from that is that from a mindset standpoint, you're going to be a healthy individual because you're not going to be counting on one bet. So you're going to sleep better at night.

You're going to have more irons in the fire. Your business is going to be more stable and predictable. You're literally going to be at peace by working in a lot of different areas at 1%, manage your staff and get more out of your staff every day. 1% there do a little better with advertising. Get 1% there, do a little better with your, if you have a physical business, do a little there, right? Work a little bit with the chamber of commerce, that's a little, they're a little more outreach, you know, anywhere that you can see that you can put another peg on the board, do that. And in a quarter, two quarters or a year, you will suddenly have this big, amazing thing. And your business will have grown in the way that you were hoping for. And you will have enjoyed the process instead of taking one single bat, getting frustrated, hiding in a hole for seven weeks, and then trying to take another shot that may or may not fail.

So go Kaizen on this situation, be in a process of continuous improvement and take a page out of sir Dave's book and go for 1% across as many elements in your business that you can improve and work on each one a little bit every week and get better at each one a little bit every week. And before you know it, you're going to have not just amazing marketing. You're going to have an amazing business in general. So I would love to have you like this video, if this inspired you and gave you a new perspective on how to approach marketing and business in general. And of course I'd love to have you as a subscriber. And I certainly want you to stick with me because I'm next one, we're going to take this and go a little deeper and, and how it really can be spread across specifically. Some things that we work on in internet marketing. I look forward to seeing any of that.

Lightning Strikes Ruin Your Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 13:54:03 GMT

One of the things that I've observed over years, having brought in a lot of marketing projects and of course managed and orchestrated, is that a lot of folks that are running local businesses or trying to promote a project or whatever, only to get sunk in frustration, and I've figured out why. If you're frustrated, you're going to love this cause this is, this is going to change everything for you. One of the things that we see online with all marketing and a lot of marketers and, and, and frankly, I don't want to be guilty of that, which is why I'm making this video is the story of the lightning strike.

I probably did a terrible job of kind of pre introducing this, but the story of the lightning strike to me is this. We did this one thing and it made us a million dollars. We did this one, there's Giuliani one webinar, and you will do six fingers or, um, this ad converts for every business, it will, you know, grow your business. You only need one app, uh, or this email series template, um, guaranteed whatever results, right? So these are all pitches from frankly guys like me or gals like me, um, that I would like to distance myself from right now because I don't believe it. Uh, frankly, I don't think there's any, I don't think there's lightning strikes now. That's I don't want to say that there aren't, because guess what, there also are, there are shark attacks and there are plane crashes and there are hurricanes and there are tornadoes.

So there are these things and in marketing, yeah, there are, is no question. There are times when somebody hits one out of the park, it does happen. However, for most of us and statistically for, you know, the vast majority of marketing projects in general, lightning doesn't strike like that. Uh, it's, it's a progression to get good results. It takes weeks, months, years of planning and execution and optimizing and improving your campaigns and your ad cycles and your messaging. I mean, if you look at the best marketing on the planet right now, some of the most valuable brands didn't start them last week. They didn't get, you know, and you think, well, we exact, that's the whole company, that's a big thing or whatever. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the marketing path. Just think just carve that piece out. Cause that's what we're here to talk about today.

The brand, the development of the brand, the awareness, the, the message has been refined, but to the point that it's very effective, right? So again, like just citing some big stuff. McDonald's Nike, Walmart. I love the Walmart one, right? Because I remember when Walmart, like, I don't want to go to Walmart. I felt like, like I was being a cheapskate or like I was poor if I went there. I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm not afraid to say that. Uh, but now because of refined messaging over the last, I'd say 15 years, we've all been trained to think we're smart. If we go to Walmart because we save, if we go to Walmart and saving as smart. So they've done a really good job of retraining the perception about their brand over the last decade. Plus. So now going to Walmart is perceived as a smart household exercise.

Wise shoppers go to Walmart and take advantage of everything they have to offer and save money, right? So that's an example of a long effort. Get to be known that way because of one webinar, excuse me, or one ad campaign. Hell no. It took them almost a generation to get from bargain cheapskate, kind of poor man's store to this brand that supports the American household, you know, literally. So, so your business, let's go back to your business. Are you going to grow your business this year? Because it gets struck by lightning because you do one marketing thing. Is it gonna change your whole business? See here's the problem. You're and me and many folks. I mean, I'm guilty of this, which is why I want to make this video is like when I was starting the agency here and even in some other businesses that I had, I felt like I could do.

If I could just get this one effing thing, I'd make more money. I would double sales. I would live about, you know, whatever. And every, all my problems would go away. Right? And guess what it never happened, which is why I want to make this video. Because I actually now looking back, have the wisdom to realize that, you know, what is Zack? It wasn't, it was never that, that got the businesses that I built and this agency to where it is now, it was actually just the incremental push every week, month and year, over years to get to where things are better than where they were now. Are they where we want them to be? Well, hell no, no businesses where you want it to be. Even Walmart, even the best brands in the world, somebody is in those board rooms, like more, we gotta be better.

We got this. This is that needs to be improved. Right. So even what if, you know, for a, a small folks, we're looking at these gigantic successes and we're like, man, if we could just be like that, but the reality is they're sitting in that place, high up on the mountain and they're like, Nope, we got one more ledge to get up. And I came and see past that one and we got to keep climbing. Right. So that they're not happy even then. And so this is the story about marketing, and this is the story of this video, which is, and the story of why it's okay to suck, which was the previous video, right? Is that you, you're not going to change your business with a lightning bolt. Right. I guess the other where people use that as like the shiny object syndrome, like you're like you see like a fish Lewer.

Cool. Go off to try to get hooked by that and try another thing and try another thing. I'm going to take you on the next couple of videos, through a mindset and philosophical approach to how to market your business. That is going to protect you from all of that and get you results. Okay. The problem. And I'm warning you now and you know, wise, wise men have said this, and I'm going to say it again, is that it takes patience and persistence. And I, you know, you may not be a person that wants to hear that right now because you might need a nine one, one remedy or something. Um, but I'm sorry to tell you that marketing in general is about patience and persistence and consistency. Not, it's not a shark attack, uh, in general. Okay. And, and if somebody is trying to sell you a lightning bolt, then I think I'd run the other way.

Because I, I think that, that I think they might have won and they might have delivered one. And then frankly, we've, we've had a couple, we've had a couple of lightning strikes. I I'm not gonna lie. It's been awesome. And I love to remember those moments, but the daily work of growing businesses and growing our client's businesses is not like that at all. And it probably isn't like that in your business. So if you're frustrated because you feel like, like the movement is not dramatic enough. And then here's the reason why you're frustrated. It's not because you're doing something wrong. It's because you're looking at a bunch of promotional crap from agencies and marketing blogs and guru, people that are telling you that this one SU there's this one thing that's going to make all your problems go away. And so the context is what's screwing with your head.

You're being messaged with one thing can fix everything. But your reality is one thing never actually does it. And so you're like, I'm, but don't be because that is all just sales strategy and horseshit. And it really statistically doesn't happen often in the way that it's being sold. But what really grows businesses is the Walmart, or sorry, is a decade of consistently pivoting into the direction that you want your business to go. You want your marketing to go. You want your brand perception to go. You want your offers to go and you want your customer base to go, right? So it's, it's consistently pushing the Boulder every day. Pressure, pressure, pressure every day. That's going to get you there. Okay. So don't be frustrated, be happy that you're in the process and, and, and be grateful that you're working on something and that you're being creative and turn away from all of that stuff.

That is bad context for your perceptions about your business. Just go get them and grind every day, do a little every day. And in a month, a quarter in a year, you're going to see, uh, awesome results. So stick with me because I got more on this that is even more cool than this little uplifting top. And if this did uplift, you go ahead and like the video for me and subscribe, because I don't want you to miss the next one because it's full of deep secrets about how to actually make this work and feel great about it every week as you progress, I'll see you on the next one.

2021 Google Maps Updates You Must Understand

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 17:19:28 GMT

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of quick and dirty today. We are going to talk about the new maps updates for Google's 2021 rollout, super important stuff.

We've got some exciting news that you may have seen all about Google maps for 2021. And there are a lot of exciting changes with that. And of course, as local business owners, we need to keep our listings up to date on maps and this, all these updates that we're seeing for 2021 is going to reaffirm Google as the number one maps and navigation provider and the number one place to have your business listing posted and updated. So let's talk about what the updates are. One of the cool things that you may know about, or have tried, or have seen a yellow pad, some stuff like this, and Google is going to continue is AR or augmented reality navigational assistance. So that basically means you're going to hold up your phone and the camera on your phone will show what it's looking at and then overlay navigational data onto that image.

And you can move your phone around, like for instance, and they give the example of doing this in an airport and find out where the elevator is or escalator or your gate might be, or if you're trying to get something to eat or your ticket agent or check in and that kind of stuff. So that would be allow you to all use augmented reality with your phone and navigate. The big deal is that for 2021, they're now bringing the AR navigational feature indoors to, uh, airports and select shopping malls and transit stations in Zurich and Tokyo to launch. So that's very exciting. So if you're in a combined shopping center or one of the big malls in the country, um, your store could get featured in that. And again, this is why it's so important to have your listing update and so forth. So that's exciting, and that is AI powered technology, and it's using augmented reality.

So you're going to want to really take a hard look at whether you have your three 60 pictures in there and street view data that would go along with that, so that when people do use that feature, your store and location comes up appropriately as we get towards the end of this year. The next thing they're adding, which is also super cool, is new layers to maps. And these are some exciting things they're pulling in some weather data. So they're going to show us air quality and that's rolling out. And I think India and into us in certain locations. So you're gonna be able to add that layer to your navigational routes and see air quality, which, you know, for some users is a big deal. And maybe, you know, you don't want to go into town today because the air quality is really poor, and you'll be able to see that layer now on your maps.

And then the other thing that's pretty neat is Google is introducing a new feature to maps called eco routes. And they're going to be using a green leaf icon and green route highlighting. And, you know, traditionally they've used blue, but this is now going to show you the green eco route and those eco routes using, I guess, you know, AI gathered data. There is a little vague and technical on that, but they figured out what routes leave a bigger impact on the planet. And they're going to suggest routes that might leave lead a smaller carbon and impact on the planet and suggest that you potentially take these more eco-friendly routes while driving around so forth that also plays into if you're a bus rider or a bicyclist, then they will suggest mass transit and, or riding. And that's based on Google's AI learning algorithm that is learning your behavior about how you like to commute, to work or get around your neighborhood.

And so far. So if you're one of the folks that is a cyclist or a runner, or I guess a Walker, maybe, I dunno, if you run around it good for you. There reminds me of that star Trek episode where everybody ran everywhere. That was a good one, by the way, you should go check it out. Um, the, the assist, the maps will now of course suggest to you that you might take the bus and so forth, and that would be the eco route. So that's super cool. The other thing, um, is that, and this is really important for us, uh, small and medium business owners that have a local, uh, location that's on maps is that now curbside delivery and shopping details and so forth are being tested with Albertsons and some bigger stores like Fred Meyer's up in, I think the Portland area, Seattle area, and what that's going to do is add some additional features to those stores listings, showing curbside delivery, curbside pickup, and how that works and or delivery options and or who might provide delivery.

If there's a third-party vendor for that, for those types of locations. So, you know that Google will do this. They will work with large partners at first to optimize and get that ironed out. And then that stuff will trickle down to regular business owners that want to enhance their maps listings. So I'm going to leave you with that today. It's super exciting. And then we're going to follow up with another video, and we're going to show you how to optimize your business, this listing on Google, my business, which is part of maps. And we're also going to dive into street view and how to get your three 60 VR photos of your business loaded and posted so that all of these new AR features and everything can integrate with the data that is uploaded for your business.

Quick & Dirty - What if You Suck at Marketing

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 21:55:01 GMT

All right guys, we're back in the saddle here at quick and dirty marketing. And today I want to talk to you about kind of one of my favorite topics. And that is What if you suck. So, and of course that's from a marketing standpoint. So stick with me and I'm going to talk to you about that because there is a better answer than you might think.

What have you suck at promoting your business? What if you suck at writing emails, what have you suck at trying to fix your website? I mean, what have you suck at all of this stuff? Okay, well, here's the answer it's okay. Because everybody starts out sucking and even if you're expert at your field. So let's like we do a lot of work in healthcare and local healthcare marketing.

I love working with doctors. I especially love working with veterinary offices, but we've done a ton of projects like that. And, and these, these folks are highly trained. They've been to a lot of school. Some of them have been in practice for years and they are really in a lot of cases good at what they're doing. But that doesn't mean they're good at everything. And they sometimes, you know, marketing is a weird thing these days, right? Everybody is aware, everybody is aware of marketing and internet marketing and all of these things that, you know, we, we cover on this channel, but you know, are just kind of prevalent in today's society. Now everybody's aware they're being advertised to, there's just a level of consciousness now about all of it. That is, you know, kind of the status quo. And that's true for folks that are experts at whatever their field is.

And in this case, we're talking about doctors. So they are experts at being doctors and they are certainly conscious of the requirements and the needs of marketing and their practices. And they might even be aware of all these cool things like auto responders and sales pages and retargeting and, um, pay per click. You know, every doctor knows about pay-per-click and you know, they, so they know the terms and they kind of know roughly what all that stuff is. But then you look at everything that's happening and the whole thing just sucks, right? Like they're not bringing on enough patients. They've got attrition rate that they know everything they're conscious, you know, aware, but they suck. And there's a couple of reasons why one is they didn't they went to school to be a doctor and then spend the last 15 years figuring out marketing or, you know, they didn't, that's not what their focus was.

And the other thing is that in today's environment, um, and this is where there's going to be more. So you really want to subscribe right now because I've got some cool stuff I'm going to drop about how and why there's so much failure with marketing for local businesses. So if you have a small business or a medium business, or, or you're a local business owner, or you have a small e-commerce store, this next series of videos, we're, I'm going to talk to you about why you, you constantly feel like you're failing with your marketing and partly why you're not. And of course, how to get through that. Okay. So either way, the, the story though, is, is that as much as you could be an expert at what you do and an expert on your products and services, you may not be great at promoting them.

And it's okay to suck because here's the thing. Marketing is just like a lot of other things in life that you might suck at. Like, it's just like going to the gym and it's just like working on your golf swing. And it's just like working on your relationships. And it's just like going to med school because on day one of any of those things, you suck, right. And on day two, you still kind of suck. And even on year two, you still kind of suck. Okay, but you don't suck as bad as you did when you started. So the other thing I want to say about that is if you feel that way, it's probably because you're aware and you want to solve the problem and you want your business to grow and you want to be better at it. You wouldn't be hyper, you know, self-critical, if you didn't know that it could be better.

I mean, if you're sitting there and you're watching this video and you're like, Zach dude, I'm an awesome marketer. I know exactly what I'm doing. I get as many patients, customers, clients, and, and sell as much stuff as I want every single month, all the time. And I barely even have to get out of bed to do it. If that's you, which I mean, come on, get real. If that's you though, go ahead, click off this video. You don't need me or anyone for anything. In fact, start making your own videos because I want to hear what it is that you're done because in general marketing, your business is like going to the gym. It's not one in a day. It's not one in a week and it's not even one necessarily in a year. It's one over time. And that time is how you get out of sucking and into producing great results.

The problem with this and where I see so many local business owners, doctors, or, or, you know, and e-commerce people, it get frustrated and, and sort of label the whole thing as is because they were willing to suck at whatever it was that got them success in their niche and got through that. But they're not willing to suck at promoting and marketing their business. So they will go along and try, try, try and fail, fail, fail, and set of building on those failures, right? Failing forward, or failing faster. However you want to express that we all need to do it. But instead of doing that, they immediately, um, protect their own ego. And we'll off load the causes of that to everything else. Oh, well, pay-per-click, doesn't work. Our Instagram is not my audience and well, YouTube, you know, you know, videos just don't work for my business, right?

Everything is somebody else's fault. Right? All the marketing is a fault, Oh, we hired the wrong agency or that guy sucked or, you know, whatever it was the website. I mean, if I just had a better website than my, then I would, I would have more customer. I, you know, this, I hired this guy, paid him 5,000 bucks for the website. And like, it just doesn't do anything for my business. Like, so the issue with that is they're, they're either they're going to bring in enough people, they can blame, or they're going to do it enough and just blame the world because they don't want to acknowledge that they're in the process of failing to get better. And that's a shame. So while I'm saying on this video today is if you feel like right now, you're watching this, that your marketing sucks, your advertising sucks.

You feel like you might be losing money. You feel like you don't know what to, how to put it all together. And, and it's, and it's frustrating. You guess what? You're on the right path. You're, you're headed in the right direction. Welcome to the party. It's okay to be totally crappy at it for awhile. And, and here's what I need to promise you. If you don't deal with that and continue to just build on how build on all of that and build forward, then I promise you you're going to suck forever. I mean, that's, that's, that's the promise, right? I mean, if you quit the race, you are guaranteed to lose.

We were just screwing around because we, I, that I said a while ago that, uh, I thought we needed to do more videos for our business. I wanted to share what I had learned. It was time, you know, after 10 years of doing this, that it was time for me to, to, to tell my stories. And we made some, we made some videos. They suck. I, when I watch them now, I just cringe. I mean, I'm not really saying much different stuff. It's still me, but the videos suck, the way we shot him, the sound was just bad. But guess what, you know, we did, we committed to being for however long that took to where we got to this, which is still going to get better.

It's just, this is to me, you know, an example of going from total crap and having to have the humility to go through that to now where, you know, we can have a little bit of pride in what we're putting out. Okay. So if you are struggling and if you feel like you suck cherish that moment, man, or sister of mine and live through it, be present and make incremental improvements. Okay. Which is a hint to some of my next videos. So go ahead and subscribe like this video fit, encouraged and lifted you up a little bit. I want you to keep sucking just in a way that gets you forward to your objective. And of course, I'm going to keep sharing my stories.

Quick & Dirty - Effective Home Page Design

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:48:49 GMT

Today we're going to unpack this incredible amount of friction that we see all the time on home pages of websites, and here's where it starts. Uh, you got two types of people that are coming to your website. Predominantly, you've got people that do business with you right now, and they kind of know what they need and they need resources. They want to shop, they want to set another appointment. They need to do this, that, and the other thing, they need to take actions on your website. Like, you know, click the map link, get there, call the office, whatever they got, they got stuff. They got a handle because they're doing business with you. Then you've got this other group of people that are your new business people, your new visitors. And they're so important to you because those are the folks that are going to help you grow, make more money and scale your business.

So they're all hitting your homepage potentially right now. And how do you deal from a design standpoint with these two different objectives? One is serving your existing clients and all the things that they need. And the other one is engaging and capturing the interest of this new visitor, right? And those things are really tough to reconcile with design because well, and you can look across the web right now.

So they're going to see this image and we're going to talk about this like idea of just having one big image there, because that's kinda like the end, the anti existing customer page, right? That's this new visitor page. That trend is great for that because it, it captures this immediate emotional response. They can see maybe your product or see the happy result of somebody who's experienced your service or bought your whatever thing is. And they go, Oh wow. This, you know, that's me. Right. So it's like immediately going to the capture them and then they want to learn more. So they might scroll. Okay. But your new customer, like after they've seen that thing, like three times, I mean your existing customer, excuse me, after they've seen that thing, like three times, they're like, dude, I'm done with this. Like I need to get, I need to get to the thing where I can set, you know, set an appointment or I want, I want to just go to the store.

I want to buy another gift from my mom or something. Right. So they're just like sick of that, but they keep having to go through it because it's dominating your homepage. So you've got, you know, I've kind of set the stage. That's the problem. There's a rub there. So here are your options and there, and you know, this, this, this discussion we're having, I actually gave birth to an entire industry in website design. That's all around landing pages. So you have like sales pages and an Unbounce. You know, there's a lot of software service companies. Now the just provide these landing page designs, templates, and services so that you have a place to drive new visitors that does just, that engages them in your brand, your service, your product, and, and sells so that you could keep your homepage for your existing customers. So there, so, so it's validated this problem is validated by the fact that there's plenty of services out there, but for you, with your website and managing, you know, I'm trying to figure out what to do for one, you may not want to take on another cost every month and paying for landing pages, or you may not think that you need sort of that extreme type of situation.

You may not be running paid ads where you want to really target them down to a relevant landing spot, right? There's a lot of exceptions to meeting that and you kind of need to resolve it. There are a couple of ways to do this. And, and this is the way we've healed this in the past to some degree without doing all of that one is we've made the home page where we can still have some emotional engagement where a new person would see it and feel good about where they ended up. We immediately show on that page. The thing I'm always telling you guys, which is we want to shell, we solve this problem, right? So the person that comes over, they have that problem. They go, Oh, I'm in the right spot. Right. And the other thing that we do to deal with that existing client is we might just put up their client resources or customer resources or shop, right.

If you're an e-commerce store, right. Just the people that want to buy it from you just let them go and buy, right. So don't, don't put up a blockade to the folks that already know where they're going. Like give them that boom, where they can go. So that might be logging in customer login or something like that. So you can just kind of put that up in the upper right hand corner left-hand corner, whatever works on your design and give people that quick out that want to go there. And then you can do your thing. The other piece of this is, so I guess what I'm saying is you can do both, but you've got to allow for it. And then you have to decide which way you're going to slant the needle. Is the page design going to address your existing customers more with the, with some design allowances for new visitors, or is it going to be more slanted towards new visitors with a little, you know, link out or jump out for your existing customers?

Right? So you, you have to determine which way you're going to slant the whole thing. So you can do it that way. The other way to do it is you just say, you know, my home page is, you know, my business page and do another landing page where you drive traffic. So for instance, if you're doing like email marketing, you know, put a link on there to a secondary page on your site, you don't have to pay to host another page. You don't have to pay a landing page service for that. You don't have to do anything special. You can just make another page for some promotion that you might be running. Don't land those on your homepage, land those on something that's relevant to the promotion or offer that you have out. And that might be going out by an organic post on Instagram, some email marketing, a video that you might've made an event that you might've attended.

It doesn't matter. Traffic can come from anywhere, but you might want to decide, yeah, this traffic, I want to land on this, you know, slash promo, whatever that extra pages. So you can do it that way too. And then you can have your homepage kind of be this homepage that, um, the other part of this that you know, is important to think about too, is what do you want them to do? Right? And this is one of the things we've talked about in a lot of my videos. I, one of the things that we talked a lot of clients about is really boiling down what the desired action is that you want people to take. And again, you got two people, you got clients, customers, you want them to take some action, buy more book, more, schedule, more, whatever that is, spend more. And then you have the new person, what do you want them to do?

And in some cases, you know, and this is the thing is in this business. And I think for folks that are trying to get their marketing going for their, for their own business, you know, as an industry, everybody is so focused on clicks. And I want to tell you that I don't want to, I don't want to diminish the value of clicks because clicks definitely are trackable action, right? I mean, they show their evidence that people are taking action. So there's doubt they are important. However, if you look at big brand marketing Wallmart, McDonald's, Coca-Cola Nike, anything like that, they are as much or more focused on impressions and time on brand. Okay. That's really important to consider also. So how does that relate to your homepage design? Well, one of the things, and, and we see in, you know, in website business and you have these stats probably on your website is what we want to try to deal with this bounce rate.

Like we don't want to people to come and then go away and, and jump off, right? Because then they're not spending a lot of time on brand. So as from a design standpoint, there are two ways to go about this. You may have the knee jerk desire to put some sort of clickable thing. Like they got to click right away, like get this thing or something right about the fault. And there are times to do that. However, on your homepage, I would invite you to consider that time on page might actually be more important than getting an immediate action. Okay. And here's why, because when a new visitor comes to your business, you think about, think about it this way. If somebody comes into your store, like if you had a physical store and you may not, but pretend you do for a moment, how would you treat them if they walked in the door?

I mean, when you welcome them in, you might offer them a bottle of water. You might offer them a place to sit down. You might ask them if it's too hot or cold in there, if they're comfortable, you might of course ask them what they'd like to see. And you might just show them what you've got. Right? Those are all things we normally do in the real world. So why, when we get somebody on a website, Oh, we ask them to like, take an action right away. We don't do that in real life. We're not like coming to my store now, now, now try on these shoes. You know, we don't, nobody does that. So it's kind of strange when you think about it, that way, that sometimes we design a webpage where we're expecting somebody to take an immediate action like that. So the antidote, you know, we're kind of where we're headed with.

This is maybe we might want to take the approach in this design that we want to do that, that relationship building piece and the cool way that that's starting to evolve now in design is this kind of long scroll or format. And the other thing that's cool about the long scroller homepage is it's awesome on mobile. So I think we've all wasted portion of our lives, scrolling through Instagram and Tik TOK and all of these sort of content site where we can just thumb and thumb and thumb and thumb along. And we just keep consuming and consuming a consuming the story, if you will, or a news story, another story, another image, another picture, another funny joke, another meme, whatever. But if you think about how nice that is, that works great for your website as well.

Mobile vs Desktop traffic - I'm not even going to pretend like I know it off the top of my head right here on this video, but I want to say that predominantly for us, it's in the 80%, the stuff, the stats that I look out with our clients. Uh, so, so your homepage design really needs to kick on mobile. And if that's the case, then we know that scrolling works great on mobile. So why not run with this long scroll experience? So now you have where you had content that was on four pages or five pages. Why can't all five of those pages, just be this cool long homepage. It is true that a mouse to some degree, it's nicer to click and click and click with a mouse, but not everybody's on a mouse anymore. In fact, that's the minority of traffic on your website today.

Most people are using their thumb and their thumb works great just like this. So let those mobile people scroll and learn about your business, your product, and your service on that homepage. So decide how you're going to reconcile between your new and your existing visitor. And then go ahead and stitch together a nice story and indoctrinate them as they scroll down and share with them just like you would share with them if they walked in to your business from a physical, in a physical store, right? So welcome them. Them, show them, ask them on and on and on, then decide what your desired action is going to be. Okay. Then you need to identify that because the whole storyline with that is going to take them to that action point, right? So you're showing them, you understand their problem, showing them you have a solution to their problem, showing them how to get the solution and what that action is to make a move, because that's what they're there for.

They're there to solve their problem. Okay? So that's all I'm going to say on home pages. It's tricky business. It's not always easy. You may have to take a couple of different shots at it, and you may just have to acknowledge that you can't reconcile it in the way that you want for your business. So you are going to run sale pages somewhere else for your home page is going to be your sales page. And you're going to do a client page, our customer page that is a store or a link in the footer or a resources page or something else. And, and they'll learn that. And you don't have to worry about that very much. They will learn and they will be there and they will be happy because they know it's for them. And they feel like they got behind the velvet rope. Okay. So go out there and kick some butt on all this stuff. I hope. I mean, this is really things that we've had to learn through hundreds and hundreds of websites and homepages and redos and old stuff we've fixed and new stuff we've made. So if this is inspiring,

Giving you a little cool, constructive stuff to think about, go ahead and like this video, I really appreciate the feedback, subscribe to the channel. And of course we can't wait to see you on the next one.

Quick & Dirty - How to Improve Website Navigation

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 13:19:14 GMT

Today's topic is part of our website design series, and we're going to go over menus. So let me tell you a little story here. Part of the job that we have as an agency and getting traffic and new customers and clients for people has, you know, ultimately leads us into this website environment, which frankly isn't my favorite thing in the world to deal with, but we do really good work with it. It's kind of a necessary evil. It is in many cases where conversions happen in that final interaction. And of course, you know, the real showing of your business in the digital world sort of unfolds if you will. But one of the things that we've had to deal with in say, taking on new clients and projects and so forth and, and businesses that have been around for, you know, maybe a decade is they're carrying these menu systems that have sort of just grown and grown and grown.

I mean, we've seen them where, especially in health care, which is one of our specialties where, the services thing just goes down to like a hundred little things you could possibly click. So, you know, it starts to be where the user doesn't really know what action to take. Now, if you think about that reality, if that's you, and then push that against sort of the most modern design sort of optimized layout, which is a page where there's only choices that you want the visitor to take versus this entire open book, which is kind of the, where the past is, then there are still people maybe like you that are trying to transition and figure out how to get from all of this information that they have on an older website to a newer streamlined, dare I say, funnel or user path, visitor path that doesn't have as many choices and confusion and just areas where they can get lost and go down some black hole, your webpage.

So the first thing that we do and let's just break it down to kind of action items is look for things that can be condensed into meaningful little buckets, you know, across all of the pages that are on the website then, you know, and here's the goal. The goal that we now have in mind is to get websites down to three or five menu, primary menu items. The other thing that we like to do is instead of having a zillion text links is to bring in more graphical navigation. And there's two reasons. This works. One is people respond better that way, just like you do. If you read, like if you know anything about magazine layout, reading magazines is very, very much a visual experience so that your eye kind of moves on the page to pictures that attracts what you're going to consume in terms of content.

The same thing can be applied to a webpage that you can get people to move their eye and to navigate based on visual cues, as much as you can, you know, stacks of little text options, which by today's standard sounds kind of painful. I mean, when I say it out loud, just sounds like, Oh, that sucks. But, uh, that's the other that's the other objective is to go to a, more of a graphical navigational experience so that either might by may, might be done by using, um, thumbnail images that show where that person could go, what type of content or what type of thing they could access by clicking that, um, or icons, right? Or even buttons with icon. So you can join text with an image or a suggestive image. So that's one of the ways to help make the experience better for your visitor.

The other thing is too for your purposes, because you want them to go down this path that you want them to go down, right? You want them to become a customer. So what are the ideal steps? And this goes back to another video that I've done. And Angie, maybe you can show that a little bit about the customer journey and how to identify that, because once you've done that this starts to get a lot easier because then you can start to put your menu system and your available choices that you're going to show to the visitor in a way that follows the ideal customer journey. Okay. So that's, that's why we did that video earlier. This video is now. So if you didn't check that, go ahead and check it. Um, the other thing that's happened and we all know this is that users in general are on mobile a lot more.

So they're on a smaller screen. And if you have an older website, I mean, a bunch of little teeny text links that they need to try to read and then hit with their fingertip. That also sucks. So when you blend these sorta, you know, objectives that you sort of masters that we need to serve, one is we want them to go down the path that we need to is we want them to be engaged and move visually through our pages and site. And three probably the most important is we want them to do what we want them to do, right? We don't want them to just henpeck around and then get bored and go, and the kids start screaming and they're gone, you know, cause that doesn't get you a customer self. So going back to that, so just, you know, to list it out, try to get it down to three to five meaningful things.

And I'll give you a suggestion right now, if you have an older website and you probably have con uh, contact us and about us, just make that one page. That's two right there, easy. Just kill it, make that one thing, just make it contact us. The whole website is about you. And I always just laughed about that one, but I mean, who needs an about page? The entire site is about you. So just get rid of that. If you have and put a contact link on there. Now, the other thing that you need to acknowledge is that, uh, one of those menu items might need to be for existing, uh, clients and customers and take them to a different place that is for folks that have already bought or are currently buying from you. The rest of them can be for new new visitors. So think of that also.

So go for three to five, try to get it down, go for visual navigation, make sure everything is juicy and easy to use on mobile. And it looks great on a phone when people land there and make sure you're giving them the choices that you want them to experience, not a maze of stuff to get lost in. If this helps get your head around website menus, and maybe give you a little inspiration to clean up a mess that you might have go ahead and like this video and subscribe. I'd love to see you on the next one and share it. That always helps us. We'll see, on Tuesday, we like to do our videos once a week, then thanks very much for watching.

Quick & Dirty - How to Place Videos on Websites - The Right Way

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 16:54:52 GMT

Welcome to another episode of Quick and Dirty Marketing. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to continue our series of videos on website design. And today, specifically, we're going to talk about video placement. Now we've done some videos, that we made about making videos, and now that you have them, and hopefully you do, we're going to talk about where to deploy them and how that all works. So stick with us and we're going to unpack the whole situation.

Now the assumption here is that you've made some videos or maybe not, and you're just trying to figure out how to put together some pages on your website that are going to help engage your clients and customers that you want to bring into your business. So, uh, there's kind of like two broad categories with this in my mind. All right. And the first way to think about it is you sort of have two big buckets of videos and, and this is a good way to start to dissect objective and how things are going to work on your pages. So bear with me here, bugging number one is on emotional and bucket. Number two is more cognitive, right? Any video that you make for your business, for your clients and customers and potential customers to watch is sort of going to naturally fall in one or another of these, or in some cases might be a hybrid of these two categories.

Now, I don't think it's any secret. That emotion is a big part of sales and getting people to want to buy your product or service. So we look at emotional videos, those are the types of videos that are usually the ones that we like to watch that are on like maybe the homepage of a website, or might take up like the whole top of a page. When you come to that site, like what we call a hero shot. Uh, those are typically going to trigger emotion. And the reason that we want to trigger emotion right away there is because that's where we're going to get engagement. Typically, we're going to, we're going to start an emotional connection with that buyer right away by doing that. And one of the best ways to do that is to show the buyer, show the prospect or the client or customer or whatever the name you want to call them this visitor.

You want to show them that you understand their problem. So sometimes, and the ugly way, you know, in sales to say that would be, um, uh, reiterate the pain or, you know, restate the pain. I think the better way to express that though, is to say that you're going to empathize with your client, with your client or customer, right? So it doesn't really matter what business you're in. And I've said this many times, you're in business period and you do get paid to solve problems. The problems that people have, that when they come to you is creating some sort of pain or discomfort in their life. They want, you know, they want to solve it. Okay. Whatever it is. So just remember that, and that kind of starts to immediately help you make decisions on where to place your videos. So if you have an emotional connective type video, like an impact video or brand video that shows your ideal prospect or, or client, um, solving this problem and experiencing the joy of that and all of those emotional feelings that go with that, like they might be disappointed and frustrated, and then they go to get your thing that fixes it.

And then like their life has changed. So there's like this transformational arc in that video, like there's, there's a story arc there there's, you know, discomfort to Nirvana, right? That's that emotional type of video, the other bucket is this cognitive type of video, which is equally important and plays a role in your onboarding and your sales cycle. Informational videos are a piece of the puzzle that you're still not going to be able to escape. You can be super emotional, but at some point there's a switch and everybody's brain, they go, yeah, this looks great. But then they, they start to ask those buyer questions, which is, well, does it have these features kind of do this? You know, what are the, what are the obligations? What are the hooks? What do I have to do? If there's all these questions start to bubble up. Once the person reigns in the emotion that they might've been having initially, and those informational videos are where you're going to attack those objections, and you're going to handhold the person along this new customer journey, if you will, by explaining all of these other cognitive things.

So if you think about that, that starts to help you organize where these videos need to go. And that's the, the explanation, the real sort of psychology behind why you see impact and emotional videos that are in the feed on Instagram. They're at the top of the pages on websites. They're going to take up the first half of a page on a mobile, a landing page or a sales page. And usually those videos are going to open up by basically stating the problem, you know, through either a statement or a question, and they're going to open up and say like, you know, uh, isn't it terrible when your dog's feet get burned on the pavement? And you'll be like, yeah. I mean, if you're a pet owner, that's terrible. Right? So that's the problem. And they say, you know, um, this can lead to blisters and, and foot damage and all these other things.

And then the story goes on and then there's this arc. But if you buy our dog shoes, then you know, your dog can be happy even when a taut outside. So there's an arc and then the happy dog, right. So it's burned dog to happy dog. And then people would start to ask like, Oh, well, how many sizes does it come in? And, and, you know, what's the cost. And then how do I get these things on my dog? And do they stay on and are they okay to be in the water with them? Or is it that's not going to work? And, you know, so then it gets into this informational cognitive cycle. Okay. So let's just talk about, um, I have like, you know, some notes here that, uh, related to all of this, because one of the things that, that I was writing down is, you know, mobile versus desktop, and that's always tricky on desktop.

You obviously have a lot more room to work with, but today you're also dealing with probably less traffic in the typical case. Most sites we're seeing right now are predominantly mobile traffic. And so you sort of have an it's trickier to work with video on that. And the other thing that you need to watch out for is are, if you try to auto play a video, then you need to mute it. And there's browser and security questions with that. So dig into that a little bit, but in general, the rule is if you're going to auto-play video, you definitely need subtitles because it's only going to play muted and you need to set them to mute, or most browsers now will block them from even playing. So, um, just keep those in mind. There's a little, some little technical speed bumps with that, but in general, you know, you want to start with your emotional connection and then follow up with your cognitive and informational type videos.

And that will be the journey. Okay. And that usually means that your emotional videos and so forth are going to go top of page. Now, the other strategy that you can do, if you have design, you know, trickiness there stuff is get that video where, you know, on a laptop or whatever device you're checking on is sort of peaking up. And if it's peaking up and what we call above the fold, then buyers usually know to scroll down, to watch, get that video on full screen and watch it. So just keep that in mind that if you really want to get play out of your video, have it overtly available. When somebody lands on the page, like don't, don't spend the time to make a video and then bury it below the fold and have some other stuff there. And you're not going to get that play value out of that video.

So raise it up enough so that people know that it's there, if not let it take up the Headspace on your landing and sales page, especially if it's an emotional, an emotional connected video like that, that where you're going to empathize with your, your buyer's pain and start to show them how your product or service is going to be the solution to making the pain go away. Right? So those are the real fundamental goals. So write down your, uh, your page objectives. You know, if it's a sales page, then yeah, you might want to be emote, you know, make that emotional connection. If it's an informational page, then you might want to go with more of a cognitive video placement. And you're going to put that where people can see them, but those are, you have a little bit more leeway there because the person's already coming for, for details and information.

So they're, they're already in a mindset where they're willing to hunt a little bit. When you're in that first chapter of a sales cycle with people, you have like a split second because they're, they're not even sure that you understand them, which is why, again, we're, we're trying to make that, that fast emotional connection and state their problem because the minute you state their problem and it is their problem, they stay cause they go, Oh, this person understands my problem. But when they're in that informational cycle, their mind is already like I'm in learning mode. I'm already trying to figure out more about this. So they're willing to scroll and hunt and, and go down a page more cooperatively than they will earlier in the cycle. So just keep that in mind, you've got a little bit more leeway on informational pages and you can move people from may to page like, Hey, we're going to teach you about this.

And then the next thing you need to learn is about this. And they'll, they'll happily go to the next thing to learn so long as they feel like by learning these things, they're getting closer to a solution. Just remember that they need to always feel like watching your videos is getting them closer to solving one of their problems. So I hoped, I hope this video helped solve some of your problems about where to put your videos on your website, your pages, your sales and landing, and your customer journey and emails and all sorts of other places. So go ahead and like, and subscribe if this inspired you at all or helped, you know, de scramble the situation, share this for me, we keep coming with more and we're going to follow up with another one after this. So we'll see you shortly on the next video.

Quick & Dirty - Types of Videos for Your Website

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 15:52:42 GMT

My name is Zack Greenfield. Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. This is part of our design website, design sales series. If you haven't watched the other videos, go back a little bit. This one ties into all of that. So sticking to this, and we're going to start unpacking types of videos that you might need on your webpages.

So we're going to go over different types of videos that you may need or want on your webpages. Some of the ones we've done in the past and kind of what best uses are and how to think about it in a constructive way that doesn't become a time suck, but helps you build your business and helps your customers understand your business in a deeper and more meaningful way. So let's just talk about design and stuff a little bit, this kind of where, um, you know, creativity and there's a lot of subjectivity. There's definitely some science to this. Cause you can look at, you know, bounce rates and analytics and things like that. But also you want to have something that ties to your brand and has the look and feel that you want. And video is one of those incredibly powerful tools that, you know, can go, can go bad on you fast, but it can also be really great if it's done well or, you know, and, and set up properly.

So let's just start with kind of the one that got really popular. I think like probably three or four years ago is that big hero shot video, right? So the hero shot and maybe Angie, you could show one up here, like a hero video or hero image is going to be like, the website is the whole video when they land on it, there really is nothing else there, just this moving thing, uh, image and those hero videos are great, uh, because they really are visually disruptive and they grab attention right away. The tricky thing with those is sometimes people feel a little lost. Like what do they do next? Like where's the menu like, do I scroll? You know, and, and what am I learning from this video? And remember too, that browser security stuff has changed a lot since those became popular, where now you don't get sound and sometimes they might not auto play.

So there's some stuff to be like technical stuff to be careful with on that. But that's one type. Okay. Then next one, which is a little different than that one, because that one's really, the hero shot thing is really an emotive tool that creates immediate emotional engagement with your product or service. It should anyways, the other kind of different way to do that is like a brand is a brand impact video. So that's a lot of going to be showing your customers using your brand and maybe some cool stuff, you know, kind of unpacking. Like if it's product, it might be, you know, an exploded diagram. If it's a really cool, you know, services business or something that might show like people engaging with that, you know, are lined up, right? So this impact video is a video that is going to be placed on your site.

That's really the first experience that somebody would have with the brand that leaves them with a memorable, you know, the impact, some amount of memorable way. All right. So that's a great way to think about that. It's not necessarily calling for action. It's not telling them click here, buy this. It's not a sales video. It doesn't have a discounts on it does not direct offers its brand impact. It leaves an emotional imprint on the viewer about your brand and communicates what it is that you do or whatever. If you sell something like, you know, Dale's RV here, then it might talk about, you know, how cool the fun this is to put together something like that. Okay. Then next types of videos are more informative, right? So as it relates to our last topic, the customer journey video might have more informational videos or educational.

If you will, where you're telling, you know, you're directly passing on knowledge. So this is more upstairs type information. The impact and hero shots are more here in the heart, right? Those are emotive, uh, goals. These info videos are more cognitive information that you want to share, that the person that's looking to do business with you needs to know or should know, uh, and you know, they, and that would help them make a decision or persuade them perhaps, or inform them on how to get what they want. You know, those types of things. And then inside that is like a little sub category, which I always really like is like the explainer video. I think these are, um, a lot of times under utilized by businesses that don't think they apply to them, but explainer videos are incredibly powerful. And there's a couple of reasons why one is they work 24 seven.

So, you know, they don't take lunch breaks. They don't take smoke breaks. They don't take vacations and holidays. They, they service your customers questions and explain things. They need to know all the time when your customer's ready to concentrate. The other thing is they do that in a way that's standardized and optimized. So if you want a certain outcome from your customer, you can explain it in the best way possible on that video. And it will always do the same exact best way job, which is different than a human being. You know, as human comes in, they're in a crappy mood, they don't do a good job. They are distracted. Maybe it's okay on their best day. Everything is great. But you have a little bit of inconsistencies there. Explainer videos standardize that the other bleed over effect is that when you put something out there like that, that your employees will also have a bar to meet because the standard is what was done in the video.

And they need to know that scripting, they need to know that information and they need to meet that standard if they're explaining it person to person. So it creates a standard, it works 24 seven, and, uh, you can do it in the optimal way. So those are great. So those are just some of the types of videos that you need to consider. And really now going through this, they kind of fall into two categories. One is the emotive, you know, to, in, to enact emotion, to engage the emotional response of your customer prospect or buyer. And the other sort of bucket of these videos is, you know, what do they need to know cognitively from a knowledge standpoint, to get their problem solved? Like what actions do they need to take? What, what are the costs, you know, w these questions that are in their head, which sometimes can be objections, but oftentimes they're just questions, right?

So you have to think about that when you're in your selling, you know, when you're working on selling for your business, how much emotion do you need? You know, how much information do you need and how do you strike a balance with that? And where do you want to start with people? Okay. And a lot of times we start with emotion to get an emotional engagement and response, and then we go to information once we've established that emotional, the foundation. So consider that, that helps guide you a little bit, please like, and share the video. Uh, we really appreciate that. And there's more to come on this and how to get these on the pages and where we might use these in the upcoming videos. So I look forward to seeing you then.

Quick & Dirty - A Guide to Client Onboarding

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 11:22:46 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. My name is Zach Greenfield, and today we are green and mean, and we're about to cover onboarding and, or getting a sales commitment or more of a customer commitment. So an extension of our discussion on virtualizing your customer journey, we're going to kind of unpack, onboarding a new customer and how that can be done online, what tools we have today. So stick with us and we're going to jump right into it.

We got to discuss today. We're going to, we're chatting like we're diving in. We're unpacking this concept of virtualizing customer onboarding, which is so important to today's environment. Everybody's trying to do things online because we're, you know, not trying to get all close with each other. So, um, there's kind of two chapters to this. And the previous video we covered chapter one, which is like this idea, what I like to express as like this ramp from, you know, being a, uh, a new person all the way to being a great customer. But once they become a customer, you know, that last kind of part of the curve there is really customer onboarding.

So it was going to dive into that a little bit today. So to get granular on that, customers for your business usually have a different set of tools and a different set of, um, communications that they interact with versus somebody who's new to your business or that you're trying to indoctrinate or get them to convert and become a customer. So an existing client has a different bag of tools and onboard somebody who's decided to be one of your customers and get them to where they're proficient at working with your business, uh, and using your services usually takes some sort of onboarding experience. This is an amazing opportunity. And one that is so under utilized by small medium businesses, I came and stress enough what an amazing opportunity this is to leverage for your business because the, on the receiving end, the, the new customer feels so well cared for when this is done well, and they are a better customer because they understand the expectations, the arrangement that this sort of transactional re arrangement between them and your company, and you have a great chance in this process to manage their expectations.

So, um, they don't get disappointed, right? You know, the old saying is, uh, you know, expectations are the mother of disappointment. So you really want to manage those so that you end up with a happier, more informed customer that understands their role in working with your business very well. And at the root of this, the way to bottom line, this is that they understand how to work with you to get their problems solved, uh, in the best way possible. And nothing makes them more happier than that. So to virtualize that this is, you know, in some ways can be very simple. If you have a new customer, you might have like a spiel or some, you know, kind of new customer talk, and you might explain everything about your business, that like we do this and we do that. And here's how to get this.

And here's where to go to get that. And the drinking fountain is down the hall and the bathrooms on the left. And, you know, every time you come, you got to sign in. Every time you leave, you gotta sign out. And here's, you know, Jennifer, she works at the front desk. If you have problems, you talk to her, right? There's like this spiel, that pretty much every business app, we have one here. Um, we made a great video to get, you know, to deal with this, but, but everybody has that. So you want to take that sh that whole lecture, if you will, and break it into its meaningful components, like here's the things you need to be able to, you know, here's the tools to setting appointments. Here's the, you know, the way you need to know about our business, these are our hours. And you know, this is when we're available. Um, these are the ways to get additional services. You need to talk to John and, and uh, client services and he will help you if you need more. Right? So, so there's all these pieces, but you got to break them down into their little bit. And then you got to attack each one as part of your customer onboarding. And you you're maybe branches to that where, you know, you have customers that are doing services, a customers are doing services, be it customers, or during services, see with you, because you may have a couple of different selling channels. Then onboarding also becomes a cross sell opportunity to expose a, to B and C and expose your C customers to be an a right. Cause they might have come on in this other channel. And now is your chance to enhance the relationship.

So onboarding them is also part of educating them about all the things they didn't know and that they can get from you. Okay. So those that's, so for you, this is almost like a second selling opportunity, right? You can get it customer and on channel a and then expand the relationship by talking to them about B and C opportunities with you. Okay. So again, you're going to go back to your toolbox of making videos, explainer videos. So in, you know, we're coming up here, we're going to cover some types of videos. These, this, this explainer video or customer journey video really fits right into this part of the, you know, how you deploy those. And sometimes these aren't videos that are on a page, right? These might be media that is sent by email delivered so that they can, it's just specifically for one, you know, group of folks that are an, a certain timeline with their relationship with you.

So you have those tools, you have, um, documents and questionnaires that they can figure out, fill out to, you know, learn more about them and they will appreciate that you're interested. Right? So don't feel weird about asking your customers more about them because they now trust you enough to be a customer. So they're going to start to disclose more and the more they disclose, the more chance you have to help solve more problems and make more money. So don't hesitate in this part of the process to, to, um, engage them in learning more about what their issues are and what else you could do for them. Right. And then, uh, you know, again, you're gonna look at your tools that you have. So it's forms, videos, emails, web pages, and content, some texts. Although they're going to be a little resistant to reading a lot and get all the legal, if you have any of that out of the way.

So there's some stuff that just has to be done. Those are like housekeeping things. Okay. So again, write all that stuff down, start to organize it, and then map it down to the virtual tools that could substitute an employee doing it, you doing it, or some old paper way of doing it or not getting done at all, or customers are three months behind. They should've signed a waiver, but they keep coming to the rock wall because everybody forgets, you know, there's like, you know, this is a great chance to clean up as well. All right. So, uh, stick with us on the next one. We're going to dive into video placement and more page design things and how to kind of start bringing it all together. If this helped you sort of begin to pick that apart, pick this whole onboarding thing apart.

Quick & Dirty - Virtualizing Your Buyer's Journey

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 14:19:51 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to continue with our website page building sales series stuff that doesn't really have an official name, but today's topic is virtualizing your customer journey. So if you didn't watch how to figure out the journey, go back a video. And today we're going to do the virtualizing.

So today we're going to talk about virtualizing your customer journey. So on the last video, and if you did your homework, um, or you spent any time or even know what your customer journey is, then this is for you because there is a way once you understand what the journey is of your new customer. So you remember they're going to go from point a, just met you all the way to point B, being an ideal, um, client or customer of your business. Who's a, you know, an avid buyer or a repeat buyer, you know, a loyal fan, if you will, and what we want to do now, as much as we can with your website is to figure out how to offload the work, automate as much of the process and deliver the highest level of customer service that we can. So that, that person feels like they're being hand held through this journey by a lot of touches, might be emails, phone calls, and that they have the tools on your website to progress and move through that.

So for them, and I just want you to get into their head space for a second, for your prospect, who's going to become a customer. They see that they're in their mind, the psychology is, this is where they think I'm solving my problem. That's all they're thinking about. And if they're feel like they're getting closer to the solution, generally, they're happy if it's taking a long time, they get a little frustrated. If it's a pain in the, they get a little frustrated. But if things seem like they're really being taken care of. And I mean that like almost in a Disneyland kind of way, like that's, that's the high bar, right? Like customer service, like this prior to process is like Disneyland standards. Okay. So your everything's gotta be super great and through the whole thing. Okay. So let's talk about virtualizing it. So what are some of the tools we have?

We got your website, we've got videos we can explain things with, we've got audio we can explain things with, we've got pictures and icons that we can guide people with. We've got buttons and we got pages and we got, you know, kind of the, the funnel idea. We can take them through a process. They might have to sign up and role, fill out a form, watch a video, sign a waiver, and then, uh, get up an appointment reminder and an email about what to bring. And then they show up in their customer, right? They're going to be all those things for your business. Okay. But when we want to virtualize those, we've got to look at each part of your customer's journey and say, what is in our bag of tools? What can we use to make this piece something somebody could do on a phone or on a laptop or whatever.

So you really just need to break it down. And it becomes like a lot of different things. A lot of times we find that we open this up with a video that will tell them, Hey, this is what's going to happen. So that's an expectation type video. We're setting the expectations that, you know, if they proceed, these things will happen and they will get closer to their solution. Right? So it's, it's a sales video in so much that it's telling them that they're going to get their problem solved, but it's also an expectations video because you're managing what they're expecting to have to do, how long it's going to take. What's involved, who's responsible and what the outcome will be. Right? So all those things need to happen in that video. That's a great video to do, because if somebody is really interested in solving their problem and they get that, they're like, Oh, it's just this, this, this, this, and this.

And then my problem's going to be solved or I will be, you know, happier. My, my, uh, my pet will have a new doctor, a veterinary office, you know, so, or whatever the example is for you. Okay. So you, you're going to use a combination of videos, forms, website, content emails, and eat them out auto responders to back up and reinforce some of that stuff with especially reminders. If they have appointments or like they're going to come and do a tour, right. It's something we talked about, like for a fitness trainer or any other type of business where the, you want the customer to come in and see the product or experience whatever the service is. In-house right. So they, they may have them reminders for that and so forth. And then, um, you know, their last little bits of confirmation that they're now a customer.

So they get all of your customer tools at that point, right. In your onboarding sequence, right? So the whole process, then you just going to break it down. You're going to identify what tools you're going to use to virtualize this pathway. And then you're going to glue it all together, online so that when somebody does something, the next action is presented to them. And then when they do that action, the next step is presented to them. And then if there's a little waiting period there, they know there's a waiting period. And so they don't get frustrated managing their expectations and the next steps is going to happen. And so far, so you're just going to build this thing up. So when they finally come to show up with you, they're prepared, they know what they're part of the responsible, you know, what they're responsible for in the transaction.

Like whether it's to pay, to show up, to wear the right clothing, to bring the right things that they need to bring to you. Like, you know, if you're a hair cutter, they might need to bring pictures or examples of what they want, whatever all that stuff is, uh, they're going to be prepared. So they're going to be a better customer. They're going to be easier to work for or work for, and, and service. They're going to be more knowledgeable about what you do and the whole, thing's just going to be better. If you spend the time to do this sort of educational onboarding journey type process with them. And right now, I don't think it goes to S you know, it's obvious that goes without saying, this is one of the most important things you could be doing for your business right now is the whole world has shifted to interacting, shopping, and trying to transact and, and get involved with businesses in a virtual way for their own health safety.

Right? So it's, it's never been more relevant than today. All right. So start working on that, get your bag of tricks out, work with your web technicians, your designers, and so forth, and figure out what pieces and elements you have access to and start stringing it together. And I invite you to draw that out. Don't start making stuff until you have a plan, then start filling in all of the things that you can do. And it might not be everything. There might be some stuff that just has to happen in person, and that's okay. Just leave a block for that. Let them know this piece is in person, you know, and then after that, there's this, this and that piece. Okay. That's totally fine also. All right. So if this helps get you organized on virtualizing York, your customer's journey from just being exposed to your brand, to becoming the ultimate customer for you go ahead and like, and subscribe. On the next video we're going to talk about onboarding, which is kind of like the extension of this.

Quick & Dirty - How to Map Your Buyer's Journey

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 12:18:03 GMT

Today, we're going to dive into the first topic on our website design and website sales series. I guess that's where we're calling it here. And we're going to start high level, which is your buyer or your prospects journey with your business. And the first part we're going to do on that is just working on identifying the journey. So I'm gonna walk you through how we do that. So stick with us and we'll jump right in.

So identifying your buyer's journey is a rudimentary exercise that every business needs to do in order to figure out how to design up a system that is going to engage those buyers. So before the internet, or, you know, however it is that you deal with your customers in the real world, like if it's phone or you meet them face to face, or they come into your business or you work with them virtually now, which is a possibility, it doesn't really matter the way that I want you to think about it is like a ramp. Okay? So this ramp is the, the curve that they walk on and they start at point a so point a is going to be their first exposure to your brand or, you know, your business. So that's a, and then point B is going to be them becoming your ultimate customer.

So your ultimate customer, whatever that is, that's point B point a is they just heard about you or they just saw you for the first time and it doesn't matter how they got there. That's not important right now, then what's important is what happens between a and B, right? And so the way that I'd like to see that is like a, like a nice curve, right? Because in the beginning, things are kind of slow. And then the relationship accelerate, you know, as that trust curve goes up and we've covered that in the past, right? There's the trough's trust curve that, you know, starts to accelerate. What they're going to do with you in terms of business, starts to accelerate, and then they become a peer that ultimate ideal client or customer for you. Okay. So all of those there's hallmarks along that curve. And when we say, when we, when we're talking about identifying the journey, we want to identify the hallmarks that that ideal customer went through to get there.

And it's really important to figure those out. So let's just make up an example here. Like, um, whew, let's say you're a personal trainer and you know, you're, I want this person to be getting training your best clients, get training four days a week from you for an hour, each session. So they're buying for 16 hours a month at a hundred dollars an hour. So a great client is worth $1,600 a month. Okay. And when somebody just meets you, well, what happens now? It may look like, and I'm just going to give an example. I'm not a personal trainer, but you know, I have a little bit of awareness about, so the first part might be they, they meet you or hear about you or, you know, find out who you are somehow. Then there might be a phone call to talk about, you know, kind of what I would call a discovery call.

And that's typical for a lot of coaching and consultant businesses to identify that client's goals, that prospect's goals and what they're looking for, and to see, you know, kind of, to be a good fit, like, do they have a problem that you could solve? Right? So the, you know, that kind of has to match. And that's early in the, in the hallmarking steps, then they might come and do like a fitness evaluation or some sort of tour, you know, or like, or a free consult. And then they might start with two sessions a week to get them started, you know, or however that works. And then they might go for another evaluation and whatever, all those steps are to get them to where they are now working with the trainer four days a week, you know, 16 hours a month and they're getting progress, right?

So all of the, whatever those hallmarks are, and there might be little things in there too. And I want you to do this in a granular way. Like they have to fill out a form. So what does that look like? They have to come for a tour and they have to sign a waiver. You know, they have to, um, take pictures of their body. They have to weigh themselves on the scale. They have to, um, do a fitness test and see how many pull-ups and push-ups, they can do whatever. All those little granular things are that they, they need to journey through to get to this ideal client place. You got to identify it. Every business has different steps. Some of them are similar. Um, but some of them, you know, are unique to the niche, right? So doctor's office has, you know, fill out paperwork, come in for an exam.

And then our console, maybe if it's like a plastic surgeon, then come back for a second check, then schedule surgery, right? So it was like, boom, boom, boom, three, four, five steps there till surgery. Then there's aftercare, you know, all that. So really work on writing that whole journey down. And what you're going to find when you do that, is that for one, you're probably doing some of it half. And for two, you're going to see where areas, where you can make even just improvements in the way that you think about it, um, versus the way that it's actually being deployed. And that's going to help you right away, get more people into the ideal customer or client bucket and move some people that are marginal customers or clients, or, you know, marginal medium type buyers from you and get them up to a higher level. Right? So increase your, uh, TCV or total customer value, right? Your revenue per customers. Another way to express that. So this understanding this in a really detailed way is so important to enhance your existing business, but also starting to work on digital design that can support that and, or even virtualize a lot of that for your business.

Quick & Dirty - Introduction to Web Design

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 22:39:03 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. My name is Zach Greenfield, and today we're going to unpack a whole new series on website design and pages. So if you're struggling with your website or pages or how to lay out different elements, like video and text boxes

So this video is the intro to a whole new series that we're going to do, where we're going to share with you everything we've learned over the last 8-10 years on designing web pages and sites. So let me take you through all the stuff that we're going to cover real quickly here on the next, probably five weeks of videos. So we're going to go over menus, scroll pages versus click type navigation, desktop and mobile, how to filter content meaningfully for your visitors. and one of the biggest parts of this is what do we do with videos? There's always that question - what pages really deserve that effort on your website or what page is worth the heavy lifting of creating a video for? Are they your sales pages? Are they part of your customer journey pages or both you have enrollment or explainer videos? Do you want a hero video, which is like the whole page there? What about brand impact videos? So there's a lot of different uses of that, but at some point you gotta decide how to put these into an elegant design on your website so that they actually work for you 24/7, which is the idea.

And then we're going to cover this whole other very important topic that goes over your buyers journey and how this is relevant. Now with more people doing business virtually than ever before is how to get your buyer's journey virtualized. And when I say that, if you think about, if you met somebody on the street today and wanted to tell them about your business, because they had a problem, you thought you could solve, what would the journey look like for them, between being exposed to your brand all the way to being one of your best customers?

Right. So what is all that about? Okay, so we're going to unpack how to do that in a digital way. That's meaningful that supports your growing your business, but also supports excellent customer service and engaging your and existing clients or customers. And then the last part that I have here is, you know what, what's all this with the homepage, right? Some of the most valuable real estate you have on your website is your homepage. That's where a lot of people land. There's some friction there with that and it always becomes a design challenge. And the design challenge originates because there's often times an objective challenge. So what's the objective of the homepage. Sometimes the homepage is designed because you want it to be for new customers. And sometimes that relates to the phase of your business.

Is your business a new business? Is this a launch that you're doing for a new product or do you have an established business with a lot of customers? So even that weighting in what your, where your business is in its life cycle has to do with what you're going to do, how are you going to design and what treatments are you going to put on your homepage? But either way, there's some discussion there between, you know, is this customer centric or prospect centric. And then if it's, if it's customer centric, but you still want to bring in leads, does that mean you'd need additional sales pages? So we're going to dive in and unpack the whole kind of deal with home pages where a lot of time is spent.

A lot of people are doing it in a half hazard way because they really have an outlined what the main goals are. So we're going to guide you through all of that. So stick with us through the next couple of videos, and we're gonna knock this stuff down. Make sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified as we drop these over the coming weeks. And again, go ahead and hit us with any comments, we always like to respond to those below our videos.

Quick & Dirty - What Are Reputation Ads and How Do They Work

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 14:24:19 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to finish up our three types of ads with the third and final ad. And these ads are called reputation ads or social proof ads. So we're going to cover those today. I'm going to pull them apart for you, and we're going to figure out how you can use these in your business to help grow and get more customers.

So in today's episode, we're going to cover the last type of ad set in this series. And those are reputation or social proof type ads. Now this one is the most commonly overlooked ad for small to medium sized businesses. And it's strange to me, but, um, we just don't see a lot of people independently doing these. We always inject them into our client advertising portfolios. We are in a culture of reviews, folks, which is great. And everybody, I think everybody understands you want reviews for your business, but what most business owners don't understand is that you need to pump that stuff back out into the market so that people see how great your reviews are. It's not good enough to just let them collect cobwebs in Google maps and in the corner of Facebook, you need to send that stuff back out and put it in people's faces.

So you've got to get at the top of the mountain, you're going to get your bull horn and you say, I'm not saying I'm great. Everybody else is saying I'm great. Okay. So that's the objective with reputation and social proof that you're looking to position your business as great, but not said by you by said by all these happy, happy customers, right? It's more powerful for other people to say how great you are than it is for you to sit there and say, we're the best in town. Number one, uh, you know, number one, electrician, number one, car wash or whatever. Nobody everybody sees through that. It's very thin. It doesn't come across as very genuine. But if you say that Jill Jones says, this is the best car wash in town, that's much more believable, carries more weight. Jill is just like me. She has a car just like me and her kids make her car dirty all the time.

And I believe her and I'm going to go try the carwash. Okay. So that's, that's the psychology to this. All right. Now the first thing you need to understand is that yeah, we're in a culture reviews. You really need to be getting reviews for your business in order to move those over and remarket those and use those reviews. So if you're not capturing reviews for your business, you're a little stuck. You need to get feedback. You need to get reviews. If you don't have a great review in place and you don't have a way that you're communicating, it's soliciting and getting feedback from your customers, that's step one to be able to do these ads. Okay. And that's something that we help our clients with all the time to setting up great automated responders and using automation. If you haven't watched our automation video and our rep, we've done some videos on reputation, check these out, Angie, let's put some videos.

It goes up here for, uh, for audit. Let's do the automation video. Let's make sure people watch that. And then let's also, uh, put the videos up that we have on reputation, because I think we've talked about that as well on some of the past stuff we'd done over the last year. So you've got to have those two building blocks in place. Then once you have those reviews and you, you know, almost every business gets some Google does a good job. If you're listed there of kind of prompting people that go to your location, if you have a physical location to, you know, maybe write your review. So you may have some, but you need those. Okay. And then you gotta pull and extract from those, your best sound bites or quotes, okay. That are from real people that have worked with you. Now that the twist to this, the other alternative to this is you might have a testation or a testaments from other third-party partners that may be bigger brands in town, or that you may be able to leverage like brand association.

So like, if you're a vendor for a national brand that can help, like, okay, um, even, and this is where sort of social proof, not reputation, but they kind of fall into that. Let's say that, um, you are an air conditioning company and you sell Lennox air conditioners, right? They have a great nationwide advertising campaign or no, let's go to train. Right? Nothing runs like a train. I think we've all heard that little, little a buzz, you know, like sort of messaging, nothing runs like a train, right? Nobody likes a broken down air conditioner. They've they've handled that objection and really co-branded themselves very well by saying nothing runs like a train. Everybody can visualize that in their head, like a train never stops. You know, it just plaster everything, my air conditioner's never going to break. So if you're a local air conditioning guy, you can actually get a little bit of social proof and a little bit of third party attestation by co-branding yourself with one of your product lines.

And in this case, the example would be Trane Air conditioners. Trane probably wouldn't let some dumb person install the air conditioner. So that kind of makes you better by doing some third party attestation and attaching yourself to this bigger branch. So that's an example of sort of latching yourself on to a bigger brand to elevate your smaller business. Okay. And that's okay. And it falls under the board. I could have, this is, is presenting yourself with a good reputation, right? So that's one version of it, but we also want those social proof ads. Like, you know, John bought an air conditioner from us, never been happier. Uh, so his quote may say something like, they were on time. Installation was fast and I saved money. John B happy guy, you know, with his air conditioner.

And it wasn't mean like, so the imagery with that as the next one we're going to talk about is the imagery again. So you've got the sound and the quotes of what people say, okay. But the images and I have this in my notes right here needed to show happy and success and the outcome that mirrors the quote or soundbite. Right? So the outcome is, you know, I got this new air conditioner, then the imagery needs to mirror that happy echo. Like, what's great about having great if you're where you're comfortable in your home. So Joe people that are in the house with family time or whatever, and everything is, is okay, and like there's snow outside or the sun is beating down there, like in the Arizona desert or something. I don't know. But, but the imagery needs to support the quote or soundbite that you pull as proof of happy customers.

Right? So you gotta, you gotta marry those together right now. What's the other, you know, what's the point of these ads, right? Cause we talked about objective with our other types of ads. The objective with this is to get yourself out of the position of saying that you're great because nobody wants to hear that. They only want to hear what other people have to say about you. Cause we're in a review culture. Okay. And you're going to use these ads to support your branding and your direct offer ads. And here is why one of the biggest objections that your customers and potential buyers have in their mind before they do business with you, is am I crazy to be doing business with this guy? Or am I the only one that's buying this crap? They have a little thing in the back of their head that they don't want to be alone.

They don't want to be the owner. They don't want to be the Guinea pig. Nobody wants to be the Guinea pig. Nobody wants to be the experiment. Nobody wants to be the first one to jump off a cliff. Okay. They want to see everybody else jumped and lived. Right? So this reputation of social proof ads overcomes one of the largest, you know, one of the biggest objections that your potential customers have in their mind, which is that they're the only ones. And if they do it, they're crazy because nobody else is doing it. And I must be an idiot. Right. But the minute they see, John's happy with his air conditioner,

Hey, I'm not the only guy that's gonna, you know, he was happy. He's probably be happy. Right?

So same thing like that guy jumped in. He looking, you actually smiling. I'm going to jump right. That's that's the, that's the, the psychology of this, uh, these ads, these reputation of social robots, these support your other ads, where your ad is, the objective is conversion, work on making sure you have good reviews. This is right. Pull out soundbites and potential. Third-party a Testament to your business. Okay. And then tie those in with images that are success-based results-based that support those messages and those quotes and those feed and the feedback you've gotten about your business. And then you got yourself, a decent reputation or social proof ad, and then make sure you're running those alongside with the other two ads that you're going to run, which are your branding ads. You want to watch that video and your direct offer ads. And you want to watch that video.

So now you've got all three, make sure you spend some time work on this stuff. And, uh, again, we'd love to have you subscribe. If this helped you get your head around things and you liked some of the other videos, we keep doing them. So go ahead and like, and subscribe hit the bell. So you get notifications when we drop the video, you're like doing it about every week or so. Look forward to seeing you on the next one and good luck growing your business and don't stop.

Quick & Dirty - What Are Direct Offer Ads and How Do They Work

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 23:10:39 GMT

Today we're going to continue our series on advertising. And as we're going to talk about today and we're going to pull them apart and hopefully give you some of the ingredients. So you can apply these to your business. We're going to talk about direct offer ads. So stick with us, and we're going to deconstruct these and give you everything that you need to be able to do for your business. So you can run effective, direct offer ads. All right. So today we're going to cover direct offer ads, how to put them together. I got my notes here. And the first thing I want to say to you is there are direct offer ads everywhere out in the market and you, me and probably everybody is responding to them in different ways, depending on where we go.

Does, they have their, uh, whether they do like the blue thing and K-Mart used to do the blue light special, and there's like 10% off, 20% off all this stuff. One of the things you need to know is direct offer at the objective. So start with that. The whole point is to get people to respond, right? So great marketing is designed to is an outbound message designed to elicit an inbound response and direct more direct, uh, offer ads or direct market. But direct offer ads specifically really hit the middle of that whole conversation. They are ads that we put together for our businesses that are designed to elicit an inbound response. We want the person to take the deal and come do business with us, right? So that's your objective. That's what we're trying to craft right now. We're trying to craft something with an ad.

That's going to bring in an inbound response is very different than the branding ads, which we covered in this video. If you haven't watched it, she'd go back because it's part of the series. And, um, they work different and they've got different rules to play by. So let's start digging into them, right? But that's your objective right now is to elicit an inbound response. You want a customer to take a deal. You want to generate new customers. You want to increase total customer value. This is really all about driving revenue. Okay? So first thing you got to figure out is what are the deals that your customers really want, right? And what I suggest, you know, you, you know, your business better than anybody and you know, your customers better than anybody and you know, your ideal customer better than anybody is to start listening to those folks and seeing what they're responding to or what they're asking for.

They might say, Hey, what can I get a deal if I bring some friends in, okay, that's like, they're telling you they would respond to a referral campaign. Um, how about if I buy three of these, could I, you know, would you cut me a deal? That's, they're talking to you about a BOGO deal, like buy three, get one free, buy one, get one free. Right? So they're going to give you a little clues about this stuff that they're going to respond to. And you just want to make a mental note of that and, and start to think about how you could craft stuff around what you're hearing, they will respond to. All right. So you need to know your customers and you need to know what's going to trigger a conversion of buying response from, okay, that's one of the first things you need to do.

The next thing is these ads, if they're running them display, and even if they're PPC or, or even if they're like a coupon and during the mailer thing, or that you send out an email and you still got to play ball with the three to five rule. So if you haven't watched that, go back and watch the three to five rule video, very important, because as you're doing your word crafting on these, these ads, you really don't want to get long-winded. You've got to punch hard and you got to do it in a succinct, clear way. Okay? The other thing about these that's so important to understand is that people's minds, these ads involved numbers, okay. And people's minds work differently with numbers. Some of your prospects are going to respond to a hard dollar figure, a hundred dollars off I'm a buyer. Okay. Other types of buyers are going to respond to percentages.

Like they like 30% off, 10%, 20%. Okay. And one of the things with all of those is you can test throw something out there for $5 off. Nobody takes it. It's not enough. You know, assuming, you know, you, you syndicated it well. And people saw the thing. Okay? So assuming all things being equal, $5 in work, try $10, $10 at work, try $20, $20 of work, try $50. Get to the threshold where people start responding and understand. And this is important too. You need to know what you can pay to acquire a customer, a new customer, and with direct offer ads because they involve numbers and they're going to invade your margins. You need to be okay with the, with that number, helping support one of two things, new customer growth or growth of revenue per customer, or also express as total customer value your TCV number.

So if your customers are worth a thousand dollars a year, and you want to enhance that in, give them more incentive to buy more from you and drive that TCV number up to 1200, $1,300 a year, then you have 20 to 30%, top line growth in a 12 month period, right? So you can use direct offer ads to drive your TCV. You can also use direct offer ads to drive new customer growth. So you can do direct offer ads. Like every new customer gets a free pizza when they buy a pizza, right? So if you want people to try your pizza, give them one and you know, if they buy one, give them an extra. Now that's a great way to step in front of the pizza competition. Because if it's game day and they're shopping for pizzas and they see this ad, they're like, Oh, look at this - We can get pizza for everybody. And we're going to get a deal today to be a new customer of this pizza parlor. Now they love your pizza and you do a great job and you need to do a great job to keep your customers and get new customers. You need to be better. You just have to be better. It can't be a slouch and you can't suck if you're better and your pizza's great and they get to taste it and everything works out. There'll be back. And then you can pull like Kohl's does, right? My favorite example, the masters of bounce backs and, and frequency based discount, direct offer as Kohl's is just absolutely. You have unlocked, uh, key codes to getting people back into their store. They're very good at us. If you don't shop there, go there, buy a pack of socks and see how they start hooking into you with all these coupons and deals and bounce backs and all the other stuff that they do.

And you can emulate that if the people like your pizza and you want to get them repetitively buying from you every game day, so that they get on your regular customer list, right. Then give them a bounce back. Like, Hey, you're a new customer this week. We gave you a pizza, have the delivery guy, or when they come pick it up, give them another, say, next week you get 10% off. Uh, you know, if you'd come in order again, and it's good for next weekend only, right? So cage, it was some emergency and give them a deal and, and get them in the habit of doing business with you. So they break the habit of doing business with somebody else and they start liking you. They like your pizza. The service is good. You know, all that stuff's working, you got yourself, a new customer, right?

So direct offer ads that are very, are very important in starting relationships, driving revenue, per relationship. And in some cases, this is maintaining your com creating habitual customers like Kohl's does so well with their direct offer. The thing about this, and we did another video here. I want you to go back and I want you to watch the video on frequency versus amplitude. I got it. Just can't stress enough on these direct offer ads, frequency, frequency, frequency, okay. You don't need to have a big year-end sale once a year and expect that it's going to solve all of your revenue problems. Car dealerships do that. They gotta move inventory. Everybody needs. I used to get stuff off the shelves, but for you too, genuinely create a train of new customers and work on enhancing the value of every other customer that you're already have.

Frequency is the name of the game. You gotta be pumping this stuff out once a week, you know, five times, month, twice a week, whatever it takes to get the conversions and get the activity level that you want in your business. Okay. So watch this frequency video versus amplitude. There is a time for amplitude, but in general, with this type of stuff, it's just not what you want to be done, right? If this helped you get your head around, starting to create direct offer ads for your business, please like, and subscribe this we're doing, you know, we're just pouring out the last 10 plus years of experience in running advertising for our local businesses and customers.

Quick & Dirty - What Is Brand Advertising and How Does It Work

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 12:02:59 GMT

So today's episode of quick and dirty. We're going to cover how to put together effective branding ads for your business. Now, branding ads are one of the three ads that we're going to cover in this series. And they're really important, even if you're a small business, branding is so important because you want to be known in your market and you want to be recognizable in your market and you want your brand to be associated with positive results. And we're going to talk a little bit more about emotion as we go down. What I've got outlined for today. One of the things we got to remember with all of these ads, and I don't care if it's ad words, PPC display, yada, yada, even email, subject lines, and so forth like that. We really got to try to stick with the three to five word rule.

Your images in your ad, in the case of display and video and so forth, the images are really going to tell the bulk of the story about your brand. The words are going to be additive to that. So your three to five words are additive to the imagery. Okay? Not, it's not the other way around, like you start with your words and then you're going to add an image. And the reason for that is that imagery is going to always eclipse, whatever your text messaging is on the ad, people are visually wired.

That's going to give them the impression, the fastest. Then they get into reading and so forth. So just remember that the imagery is going to eclipse texts in terms of what gets conveyed emotionally and in sometimes even, uh, what the associations are. Okay. So either way though, three to five words and try to compress your messaging down to that, the first question you have to ask yourself for branding ad is what problem do you solve for your clients, customers, prospects, the people that come to your business, what is your core value proposition? So you really need to work on this. And sometimes, you know, like, let's say you have a pizza parlor, right? I mean, you have to boil that down. And the thing you solve for people doesn't have anything to do with pizza, great pizza at all. So your core value, your core offering is that you solve hunger.

I mean, literally, I mean, you, so take your business may not be a pizza business and try to get it down to that, like core offering. Like what, what discomfort do you solve? What problem do you solve? Right. So hunger is the discomfort you solve. Then you got to acknowledge that that's what your core thing is. You may have fancy and delicious food and all these different things in a gigantic menu and a million features around that benefit. But the real problem that you solve is people are hungry. They want a great place to eat and you're going to solve their hunger problem in a really positive way. Okay. So that, that's kind of what I'm talking about when you got to really get it down to the brass tacks, you know, the, the base core offer that you put out in the press, um, that you solve when people come into your business.

Okay. The next thing. So you're going to figure that out. That's part of your exercise for the video, figure out what problem you solve in the most basic, most sort of almost survival like needs type necessity. Um, and some in Walmart does a great job of this, right? And I don't know if you guys remember, but Walmart has campaigned for decades now that if you shop there, you're smart because you're selling, saving money. So Walmart's problem that they saw up and we all think we're shopping. They're like, we're going to solve our grocery problem. We're going to get this thing. We're going to buy some car cleaner. We're going to get a, you know, whatever pillow, I mean, all these other things, right? But that's not the way they brand. They don't brand all the stuff ever they brand as you're smart because you're saving money.

So their, their core value proposition to people that shop at Walmart is you come here, therefore you're smart. And we're solving a financial problem that you have in your household. Shopping at Walmart helps you save money. So that's where they pivot around with almost everything. So you don't pay attention to that because it's not, it's not the surface. The stuff that you think it is, it's deeper. The message is more emotional. And it's more a core value for every household, which is to be conscientious with your spending. Okay. So I took a good example and start to pay attention to what big brands are doing and how they're associating themselves emotionally to solve the core problem that, that you have. And you may be shopping there. Like I go to Walmart and I mean, at this point, yeah, I guess they've got me. I feel like if I go there, I saved some money.

I grew up back East and I never even knew about discount stores till I moved out West. And I considered Walmart, a discount store. We had Kmart and wool worse. And I was like, I don't know. I just didn't feel like I wanted to go there. They've me. Now that if I go there, I'm playing it smart. So that marketing has worked and their brand associations have worked. The next thing you've got to make sure you have in your branding ads, which goes without saying, but I'm going to say it is, you've got to have good logo representation, and you've got to have your brand and colors. Cause part of branding guys is recognition and repetitive recognition in your market. So you got to have on these ads or even your pages and all of your marketing paraphernalia and everything else that you put out there, like, you know, this kind of stuff.

And you know, my, I have my, my gig. You guys need to figure your stuff out. Logo and colors are critical with these branding ads because you want to continue to pump that recognition. Okay. The next thing, and this is the case for display ads is you need to have positive imagery. So Andrew is going to put some stuff up here. Let's talk about positive imagery and I want her to show you. So we're always going to want to show people that are happy and smiling. They have, the images are going to show moments of success, okay? Moments of joy or connected if connectivity between them and their family, them in their, uh, animals, them in their car. It doesn't really matter what it is that you want to position your brand and associated with positive imagery. And the next thing, the extension of that is positive outcomes or positive results.

So your ads, this is another key points. If you're taking notes, the ads need to present that working with you is going to result is going to yield positive results. Okay? So you got this positive imagery, but it needs to elude to the fact that working with your company gave the buyer, gives buyers success in whatever arena it is. So if it's the pizza, we go back to the pizza thing. Everybody's happy because they're eating and they're doing it together because there's enough to share, right? So those are two core fundamental human emotions that we want. I mean, we want to solve our hunger problem and all humans have a ritual of eating together. And so, you know, you look at like Peter Piper pizza and some other places like that. They're going to market that as they're going to brand that as connected with your family, connected with your friends and solving that hunger problem.

And sometimes depending on the pizza pitch, you're going to see that, you know, money saving, we're paying attention to your budget. Domino's does it, you see it with little Caesars and so forth, right? So they push low pricing and, and savings and deals as part of their branding and so forth. But don't confuse that too much because that starts to get into where they hybrid with direct offer. So we're just going to try to keep the conversation on branding. So again, it's positive imagery associated with positive results. Okay. And then when we go back to the emotion discussion, it's always going to be that the images show happy successful group in often cases or two people connecting and, or the air of popularity or that everybody is doing it. Everybody is buying from you. Okay. Everybody's buying your stuff. So as you can show you some images here that show like group happiness, um, people being successful with buying or using your service.

Right? So, you know, if you're a plumbing company, great example of that is , you know, the plumber and then the happy old lady got her kitchen sink fixed. So she's so happy cause the water's running right. So positive results, happy human and a qualified technician. Great branding. So those are those emotional elements stick with us because on the next one, we're going to go over the other two ad types. And if a course of this video helped you inspired, you got your head around branding ads, please like, and share the video, click the bell, all the cool YouTube stops. You don't miss another one of these videos. We share everything we've learned over the last 10 plus years, doing advertising for companies.

Quick & Dirty - How Conquer Your Competition with 3 Simple Ads

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 23:45:44 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. S o today we're going to cover the three types of ads you need to be running for your business. Now, the first type of ad you need to be running for your business is called a branding ad. A branding ad shows your brand, maybe your product or your service. It could be your, you know, your overarching brand, but you may have a certain product or service that you want to remind people about.

So you can even brand that, but branding ads are going to show whatever that is in a favorable light. And they act as a reminder that that brand is available to solve your prospect's problems. I remember, and I always say this you're in business to solve problems. So this branding ad reminds people that you're out there ready to solve that type of problem that they may have. That's just that simple. So would you want those ads to be positive show the product or service, you know, in a way that, uh, communicates how great it is and you want to do that with really good imagery and remember our three to five rule or three to five word rule, and Angie could pop that video right here. Make sure you go back and watch that. Okay. So a branding ad and let's look at an example, a branding ad will show your brand, show your logo and communicate what your primary core service or value is that you're offering.

Now the next type of ad that you need to be running is called a direct response ad or a direct offer ad. Sometimes. Now those are the ones that people really think about when they think about advertising, because those ads are designed to elicit a response, an inbound response from your prospects so that they buy from you. Right? So the way to think about that, and one of the best ways to think about marketing in general is that marketing is an outbound message designed to create an inbound or elicit an inbound response. All right. So direct response ads really follow that core objective that we all have when growing our businesses, these ads are going to be ads. You're very familiar with. They're going to be a percentage off a discount, a coupon ad, a bounce back, add a limited time offer at launch, add a VIP, add, um, a limited quantities.

Add any of these that are designed to create urgency or some sort of sense of special deal that people need to take advantage of right now. So they need to respond. Okay. So when we go dive into making those ads specifically, we're going to cover all the little dirty details with that. But those direct offer ads are the ones that you think about when you think about advertising. In most cases is, Oh, I need to put some sort of deal out. So people, you know, come and talk to me. The other one, you know, is like a loss leader type ad something cheap. You get people in the door or door busters, right? All of those are direct response type ads. All right. And you need to be running them for your business because you need to be creating some messaging out there. That's really going to bring that inbound response.

Now the last type of ad, and this is the one that most people forget about. And that's the reason I left it for the end of this video. So if you're sticking with us, you're getting the secret sauce sauce right now. The last type of ad that you need to be running is a reputation ad. Or I like to think about it. I like to think about it this way is that you need to run ads that control the narrative around your business. Okay? So these reputation or third party endorsement type ads are ads that show other people's experiences with your brand or that prop your brand up with like third party support. So that might be like as seen on TV. That's actually a reputation ad because the implication of seen on TV must mean it's good. Okay. But the other ones that were great for local businesses are, um, where you have a customer quote or like from one of your reviews, right?

So you want to go back and look at our reviews and our videos about how to get reviews and how important reputation is. This is the time to take those reputation remarks, right? Those reviews that you've gotten and convert them and remarket them out into the world so that everybody can see how great your customers think you are. This is a really important type of ad because it overcomes the objection that most people have when buying that. They're the only ones and they bite and be an idiot to buy from you. But if you run reputation ads and you show them that lots of people are happy with your product or service and that lots of people buy from you. And they're just like the person who's looking at the ad, then that completely dissolves that objection and gets them more indoctrinated into feeling with your brand and feeling comfortable and trusting you.

So another way to think about these types of ads is that they bill a lot of trust for your brand. It's one thing for you to say how great you are, but it's another thing to show everybody how great everybody else says you are. Okay. So let's take a look at a reputation type ad. Angie could pop that right there and you can see reputation ads we'll have like a quote or maybe a picture of a happy customer. And in some cases they might even be a story like a long length video or something like that, about how a great problem was solved or like an interview, or they could even be part of a webinar. I mean, these can take a lot of different forms and marketing because they're so powerful. But I see so many businesses that for one don't even understand that they need to be doing that.

And they definitely aren't running this type of ad, but it works really well with the rest of the strategy. You throw it off her ad out there. You need to back that up with some reputation ads so that people feel comfortable taking the offer because they can see other people were so happy with you and your product or service. Okay. So then those are the three types of ads. Stick with us. We're going to break these down in individual videos and go over how to construct them and what their core ingredients are that you're going to need to have.

Quick & Dirty - How to Successfully Advertise on YouTube

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 17:00:02 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to cover YouTube video advertising and retargeting. So stick with us and we're going to get right into it.

Today's topic on quick and dirty marketing is YouTube advertising. So this is part of our traffic series, and we're going to go over what you can do with video. Now. It is true. It takes a little bit of work to put together a video, but it is definitely worth it. Video is the most engaging and arguably the best advertising media that you can put together for your business. YouTube is awesome because it gives smaller businesses. The ability to basically buy almost TV, like commercial placement for their ads and this, uh, you know, digital medium on a simple, straightforward dashboard in Google does a really nice job of walking you through how to set those up. So today we're going to follow along this sort of similar format that we've done with our other traffic series. We're going to talk about, you know, kind of what you need to do and, uh, how we like to use it.

And then, uh, reference a couple of things about putting together some stuff. We're going to do some more videos on how to make great video ads for your business. So watch out for those, make sure you subscribe and like this video. So you don't miss the stuff that's coming up. That's going to follow this. Okay. So then what YouTube offers for you as a business, as it offers you like TV, like advertising, I've got some notes right here, but the way that that works is, and you probably have watched YouTube. So you've experienced these. You can get an intro ad and you can get some interstitial ads.

Inside content that hopefully your customers are watching. So TCO means ads that are, you know, in the middle, like a commercial break, which you've definitely experienced on TV. Now there's a couple of things you need to know with that. If you don't want to allow your ad to be skipped, it needs to be 15 seconds or less. So that's a pretty tight ad to punch your message out there, but it can be done. And we will cover 15, second and 32nd ads. And what I call two minute long version storytelling ads in our upcoming video series. But for right now, you need to know that 15 seconds, we'll get you an ad that people can't skip anything up to two minutes. They can skip, but they definitely are going to be forced to watch those first six. So when you're producing, you've got to come up with a really engaging first six seconds, which is typically about the length of the first segment of an ad.

That first segment is so important on YouTube, just like it is on TV. Okay. So that's kind of what you're working with. Those are the boundaries. Now, of course it goes without saying no on Google, they're very strict about any vulgarity or Gore or, you know, negative imagery or anything like that. Your ads will go into review process before they're approved to run. So, you know, you don't want to put any crap out there. Now that's not to say though that you don't want to be engaging and grab that viewers attention. So you need to do that, but do it in a positive way. Of course, um, the audience, you know, and how you're going to target that ad works very similar to the way that Google's ad platform works with IPPC and display and they're re you know, and the retargeting stuff. Um, you're going to have the opportunity to choose by interest by search by keyword, and then also put some demographic parameters and geographic parameters on those ads.

So you can show people that are interested in X that are living in this certain, um, area that are, say women age 35 to 55 or something like that. So you have some parameters, or you can just fall back on, you know, the keyword stuff, which is really a Google has been, you know, their main game and trying to figure out what keywords somebody would be searching on YouTube or searching in general. Cause remember their cookie and their identity has been stored with Google for those devices that they're using. So if Google sees them repetitively searching for kittens, and do you have an ad that is about kitten products, then you can use that keyword to target people that have that interest. So just remember though that the broader it gets, the more expensive it gets and the more competitive the bidding gets, the more narrow and the more you can focus down on what your true customer is, the more likely you are to have a lower ad costs.

And the more likely you are to get in front of the right people for you, however, you know, then the whole, the numbers come down in terms of like how many impressions and so forth. So there's a little balancing act in there and that's where, you know, you're going to be wanting to optimize and do some testing and so forth. Um, we love them for the same reason. We love a lot of ads that are video based. Um, video ads are just the best way to promote your business. The other thing that I love about YouTube is it falls along with that Omni channel strategy, where if somebody is on the internet, you want to get them on display retargeting. If somebody is on social media, you want to take advantage of those Facebook and Instagram, uh, platforms, retarget them there. And then if somebody is just gobbling up YouTube videos, you don't want them to forget about you when they're doing that.

So you really want to be over there as well. So this is another ecosystem that Google controls much like the discussion we had about Facebook and Instagram, where it's a small pond. That's not the greater internet, but you want to be fishing in that pond because your users are going to go there and you don't want to lose them when they're in that environment. Because that means if you have aggressive competitors, they're going to be there waiting to swoop up your potential clients. So don't neglect video ads on YouTube. If you're going for that really powerful omni-channel strategy that we talked so much about here. So if this helped inspire you and kind of get your head straight about what the opportunity is and the parameters you have to work with. That's awesome. Go ahead and like, and subscribe the video. We're going to bring to you in the upcoming episodes, more videos about how to create great stuff for both this environment and video advertising in general, which can be used on Facebook, Instagram, and even on your home pages. So stay with us and we'll see you on the next one.

Quick & Dirty - How to Advertise on Instagram

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 22:01:33 GMT

So on today's episode of quick and dirty marketing, we're going to go over Instagram ads and we're going to follow the same format that it had on my notes that we did for the other series. So we're going to talk about kind of what the platform is, high level, you know, what you can do with it, the tricks, you know, and some of the things to watch out for, and then best use or what we like to do with it. And, uh, and then wrap it up. Okay. So let's start right off the top. What is Instagram like? What do they offer? Well, if you've been on Instagram, you know, which is, most of us you'll notice that the ads are predominantly visual based ads. Now, the other thing that's important to understand is that putting ads on Instagram is done through the same ad platform manager that you would use to put ads on Facebook, because there currently are the same company.

So the ad manager is the same ADS manager that you use to place Facebook ads. And you're going to use that to decide if you'd like to add Instagram placement to your advertising. Now, the images are basically squares. So that's one thing to consider. And then Facebook still has some limits on texts and things like that. One of the things I will caution you with versus regular display ads, Instagram does not allow you to put an image of a button on your app. They have a policy that the ad can not imply any additional functionality besides the functionality that Instagram offers. So the other thing too, you know, so you're going to need to watch that when you do your creative, the ad is definitely going to be an image or a video or a moving pictures or a little gallery there, you have a lot of choices with that part, and you can have call to action.

You can have texts on the images and so forth, which is, you know, in my opinion, a little bit more, a little bit stronger than what you might set up in Facebook, where you can have a lot of text below the ad. However, the, you know, you definitely just can't have a button there that implies that additional functionality. So just watch that on your creative. Now, the other thing about Instagram that you need to know is that there are two different types of placements. Predominantly there are placements in the feed, so that's when people are scrolling, scrolling, and then they see like post post post, your ad post, post, post another ad. Okay. So that's in the feed. The other thing the platform offers is, uh, as far as placement goes is to be able to put ads in the stories. So as people watch a story and then the system flips to the next story, you can get your ad as an interstitial ad, which is an ad in between two stories.

And you can kind of have like a little ad story in there might have one or two images or the video. That's a really great place to put video by the way. So I, you know, I think that's the most captivating in the middle of that story, watching to show video, uh, image or moving images that tell story about your product or service that might engage them. And then in that case, it's usually that the user will scroll up to access the advertising content or see the product or shopping or go to your page or whatever that, you know, whatever the action is. It's always scroll up to get out of the story and land on the ad landing page. So those are really your two big uses on Instagram are going to be in the feed. And then as part of that story, a book, which kind of goes left to right and feed goes up and down, okay.

So those are your two placements. And then you just got, watch your creative and not imply any, uh, different, additional functionality through button, user button type graphics on your. Um, one of the things that we, you know, just to get into the tricks and stuff, creative is so important on here. You got to visually stand out, you gotta be sort of visually disruptive. If you're going to stand out in the feed, you know, bold colors or, um, you know, some sort of imagery that is going to definitely draw immediate attention to your ad and kind of get people to pause, right? So that's one of the things you want to do is try to figure out how to make your ad visually engaging to the point that somebody at least stopped. Now, the thing that's important about that for you to understand the algorithm is if they stop on your ad, that momentary stop, where they look at, it gets logged in their interests for whatever interest category your ad is.

And then you will more likely be your ad will be more likely to be redisplayed to that user. So this is really important to understand as you're seeking to target and on your demographic and the demographic rules play by the same, you know, system that you use for Facebook ads, because it's the same platform. So you kind of have all the same demographic, uh, setups that you can do, you know, age and interests and gender and all of those things. But then once you get down into the dirty details with your audience, if they pause on your ad, then that system is likely to redisplay that ad to them. So your objective, your first objective is to get people that you're targeting to at least slow down. So you really want to get into the mind of your buyer, your prospect, and figure out what image is going to grab their attention.

Um, so that's the first trick that I, you know, can, can offer you, is that if you can do that, then, then you're very likely to get your ad in sequence with those targeted people regularly. And then the other thing that we love for Instagram is again, to follow that Omni channel strategy, that I'm always advocating that to use this with Facebook's pixel and make sure that you're retargeting people with your product and service visually on Instagram, because of the job off the internet. And you have display ads. There are, you have retargeting ads on YouTube or retargeting ads on Facebook. If they jump over an Instagram, you definitely want to chase them there as well. So you want to make sure that your face, your pixeled retargeting is also set to place your ads on Instagram because you know, the audience is so huge.

You definitely don't want to miss them there. Now, this is, you know, we've mentioned this in the Facebook video and you can watch that here. So I'm going to put that right there. So you want to click over and watch that. But in that episode, we talk about the differences between Facebook's age demographic and Instagram's age demographic. They basically cut off in the, in the sort of low thirties age wise. And if your product or service is applicable to people that are in the younger demographic, this is a really important place for you to want to be retargeting and potentially cold advertising. Although that's definitely a little bit trickier. So, uh, those are the, the era, you know, the sort of strategies that you need to pay attention to. We definitely prescribed that our Kaiser doing retargeting. We're going to add that in as part of the strategy and almost every case, uh, depending on the demographic, again, if it's applicable to them, we definitely want to have them set up that way. And in some cases we'll run some cold targeting on that, some cold advertising as well on that. So get out there and make sure you poke around in the settings. And if you have trouble, of course, there's plenty of technical videos about how to place ads, but from a high level, not too much wanting to do, if this video helped you in any way, or you think might help a friend, please share like, and subscribe, and we'll see how the next episode is quick and dirty marketing.

Quick & Dirty - How to Advertise on Facebook

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 21:07:34 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. We're going to continue with our paid advertising series of videos that I'm sharing with you from the behind the scenes of what we've learned and what we're doing daily here at the agency for our clients. Today's video is all about Facebook ads and how that kind of fits in strategically. We're going to follow the same format we did with the other ads with, with the other videos, excuse me. So I'll look at my notes. So we're going to cover kind of what they offer as a platform. You know, like what can, what can you use it for, uh, the tricks and the parts to focus on that we think are extremely important to be successful and then best use strategically that probably, uh, can work for you. And the way that we typically deploy these and then kind of what we like to do with this particular platform. They do have kind of a dumbed down version and then they even dumb it down more where you can like do a little boost, which I absolutely hate. I think boosted posts is the biggest waste of crap marketing ever. There's just a way for them to dip into the uninformed user's wallet by making their advertising simply one click to deploy an ad. So I discourage people from doing that because I feel like it's just super base and it's just a way for them to rip 20 bucks out of your pocket and what to boost an organic post. I mean, was that post really part of a campaign?

I know a lot of business owners do those things because they feel like a couple of years ago when the algorithm changed, they kind of pinched everybody and everybody lost reach. Uh, so, you know, that was smart, right? They crunched everybody for reach and they said, Oh, just click this button and you can have your reach back for 20 bucks. But to me, I kind of say on that, I don't like it. And for my money, I think it's better to just dive into the pro side of the system and really get smart with it and, and develop some campaigns that are part of your bigger marketing strategy that actually going to support those efforts and potentially bring you some leads and new customers, if not, uh, you know, raise awareness and keep yourself top of mind, which is one of our big objectives with all of our advertising.

So let's go over kind of just, I gotta break this up, cause these videos are getting along. So today we're just going to focus on kind of the basic stuff that they can do for you. Um, the, the ads are typically visual. So the Facebook likes you to have a picture or some sort of image associated with the ad. So it's very different than Google ad words. Like you're not going to put an ad there and it's also different in the way that operates in so much that you say you deploy your ads based on audience audience-based data. So that's interests, demographics, and all of these settings that they have in there where you can hopefully weed out the people that would like your product or service. Um, and that's another part that gets tricky, but it's not based on keywords. Uh, it's very different from some of the other stuff we covered as it relates to pay-per-click and so forth.

So it has its own thing. Now, the other thing you need to recognize is that while Facebook claims 3 billion, something users as of this video, uh, it is its own little fishbowl, right? It's it's when you place an ad on Facebook, it doesn't go anywhere else. Like it's not on the internet, it's in their social media platform it's on. So somebody has to be in the app or be on the, uh, Facebook page on the desktop. You know, they're, they're not just going to bump into it anywhere, which is makes it strategically very different than media buying display purchases through Google and to some degree, even PPC, which is kind of, you know, to me happening at the gateway, the internet where everybody's using Google, uh, opening search page to generate some queries. So it it's happening in its own little universe, the Facebook universe on this video, I'm not going to jump into the fire.

I know some of you are like, well, what about Instagram? They own it. Yeah. We know that they do own Instagram and the ad platform supports both. But for today, we're just going to focus on the one side of the equation, which is the Facebook side of the equation. So something that's important for you to know as a business owner is the demographics of Facebook are definitely different than Instagram. Um, there's probably, you know, in my mind, it's a little bit of an older crowd. Facebook was around first. So it's, you know, the pages and users are in some ways more established. Um, it's not as fast acting. I think people spend more time like engage on individual pieces of content. I think Instagram definitely has great scroll engagement, you know, as people flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, but, uh, Facebook people actually do dig in more to content stories, you know, and, and groups.

And there's kinda like there's a little bit more of a sticky vibe to it and the way it's structured, then Instagram's sort of like just cruising interface that they have. So that's something to pay attention to. As you decide where to go with what you do, if you have a product or service, that's more slated for say an older demographic, say 35, plus then this is probably a great spot for you. If you're really feeling like your stuff is more 35 and younger than yeah. Start thinking about how to design the campaign to engage that audience probably over on Instagram. So we're sticking with Facebook today though, but it's important to understand the differences because there are interface differences, the ads and the way they work are actually different and the demographics are differences. Okay. So the big trick, just to cover the tricks and things that you need to focus on, you'll hear this from everybody.

And you're going to hear from me today, audience development and figuring out your audience is like the name of the game. You got to do your homework on your audience. You really have to understand your, your best potential prospect. What that person's interests are, how old they are, what sex they are, where they hang out, where they are, maybe geographically, if it's a local thing. Um, all of that stuff is stuff that you really have to narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow down for two reasons. One, you want your ad to be relevant because you want responses. The other thing is you don't want to spend money advertising a bunch of people that aren't interested. So the better you do with your audience, the better you do with your budget resources and the better you're going to get response rate, which is why you really have to spend time on that and not cheese out on it, because it's just going to end up costing more money and, uh, wasting everybody's time throwing as if people that aren't interested.

And you're just not going to get the response rates you want. It's going to dilute your numbers. And it's just a mess. So you've got to start there. So that's, that's task. Number one. The other thing about Facebook that's interesting is you kind of have two choices where they, in my opinion, you can be, you can put something out that is overtly an ad, just like straight up. It's an ad. Everybody knows it's an ad when they say it. The other thing that you can do though, is you can also put ads that sort of feel like organic posts and kind of slide them in there in the feed. And they don't feel like ads. They feel like organic stuff. Now that is a pretty neat little thing you can do in there, but I'm letting you know, there's a little bit of a fork in the road with how you choose to present your offer or whatever it is, action that you're trying to evoke from these users.

So if you're, you know, if it's straight up, like, you know, you got a great deal, like 40% off, you might just want to throw that out there as it over add, it was something more subtle, like join my group or attend this webinar, or I have a service or something like that that sometimes works well as more of an organic post that feels like a real life story or something that, you know, they need to pay attention to that would engage them. And then they go, Oh wait, what, how you know? And a little bit more feeling like it's not just they're being advertised to and you need to pay attention to, because people are sensitive to being advertised to, nobody likes to be, you know, that old saying cliche or not is true. Nobody likes to be sold. Everybody likes to buy. Right?

I think a lot of us have heard that in the business. And some of you have heard that they're watching this, but it is really a true on Facebook and all social media platforms. You gotta be careful like try to sell people because they immediately throw up a block to that and resistance. And, uh, you know, they're going to scroll past it or click it away or whatever, but they love to buy. So you gotta think about that in terms of how do you get them on the buying journey. And sometimes that's just an organic post, you know, you're paying for it, but it's an ad that feels like an organic journey for them and you know, relevant for your audience. And that can be extremely effective and it's a neat place to do it because it's not something that's offered really in any way by Google's advertising platform.

It's not something you can do in a traditional media buy. Um, you know, the video thing is like an outlier for this discussion. So this is the place where you sorta can play that game, which is it's, it's got some cool elements. And as you see Tik TOK and Instagram kind of have that vibe going with the way that they're presenting their advertising opportunities, but it started here and you still can do it here on Facebook. So just understand that fork in the road. Okay. And then assume a hundred percent that that's going to have to have some visual element. Facebook does have guidelines on that though. You cannot have a ton of text on the ad. You know, they've got a ratio there that limits you. So you can't, they really want images on the platform. And then they give you spots for texts and headlines and links, and even like an entire story.

If you want to write one. Uh, so you have that, the system will also carry video ads. It obviously carries videos for lots of other stuff, including three 60 videos and carousels and all this like dynamic content, all these crazy settings in the backend. So there really isn't a lot. That's one of the strengths. There really, isn't a lot of limits on what you can do with the media. You can do a lot, you can have multiple images and video file and you know, all these other choices that they're now offering that just keep getting more and more elaborate, frankly. Um, so you can really play around with cross testing that and so forth. And the back end is very in terms of its tooling and it's come along a ton in the last, you know, even five years. But from the beginning, it's like a whole another beast than what it started with.

So we'll the way we typically run. These is, uh, we have stuff out that is in both channels that we talked about. We have stuff that's over ads, but I love it for again, retargeting and staying top of mind, because if I get somebody on a web page and we get them there from some other strategy, not necessarily from social media, but even if they came from social media and then they go back into that bubble with Facebook and Instagram, I don't want to lose track of, uh, the, you know, the, the clients project or the, whatever the offer is. So I love to use that environment to stay in front of people. The cost is very effective. Cold advertising on Facebook can get pretty expensive.

They tend to run pretty hot on that price wise. I think you hear all these guru people over the internet, like I'm getting leads for Nicole. I'm here to tell you that those are exceptions. Uh, and that most times you're going to see costs in the five plus dollar area for a meaningful click from a real prospect in a fairly competitive market could be higher. Uh, definitely paid higher there. And to give you some comparisons just from the real world, my behind the scenes this week, literally ran a ad there, uh, on Facebook and an ad that was straight up display on two different platforms. So one is wholesale media buy. The other one is happening in Facebook's ad platform. The comparison was we're paying five and a quarter, five 30 a click on Facebook. And we were down at like two 25 on a straight wholesale media buy.

So it's half the price to get the same audience status, pretty much the same, but we're bidding in a much looser environment. It's not as tight, right? So Facebook's sort of smaller compared to the internet, although it is obviously huge. So you've got, you know, you've got their own sort of cost modeling. There's not other people in that market. They control the whole market so they can run more profitably, which by the way, they just crush their quarter and earnings. So there you go. So just be careful with that on the money side, but I love it for staying top of mind. I love it for being, omni-channels another strategy we're definitely going to talk about in another video, which is sort of being everywhere no matter where your prospect and customers go, they see you. So they're on the internet. They see you, they're on YouTube. They see you, they're on Facebook. They see you, they're on Instagram. They see like, Hey, this guy's everywhere, right? And that just lead-ins lends to that whole professional vibe, that upper tier that you want to present your business as. So we're done 15 minutes, super long video, a lot to cover there. And we didn't even do the Instagram part.

We're dropping these like every week and we're going to keep up this paid traffic high strategy of weariness seven videos going forward. So don't miss those and we'll see on the next one.

Quick & Dirty - How to Integrate Google Display Ads

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 19:30:16 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips, secrets behind the scenes. Today, we're going to do the followup to this Google PPC conversation that we were having. We're just going to kind of run with traffic and paid advertising for a couple of videos here. So hopefully you're enjoying those. We're going to go over the display part in this video, you know, visual, all type ads and, you know, again, we're going to follow that same format. We're going to go over kind of how that works. You know, the offer that Google has for you on how to get those started the tricks and what we like to do with it. And then the best use sort of strategically, you know, high level and then, and kind of what we typically do here and how my fit into campaigns that we're doing. So stick with us and let's go over display advertising on Google ad words platform.

Now there's two things going from an agency side. You know, I like to give you guys a little bit of the agency background stuff. Now we do media buying, which is kind of the high level, you know, wholesale agency buying of media. And that just means that we basically buy advertising space all over the internet for our clients. Um, the ones that show up, you know, it's like banners and skyscrapers and flashing videos and they're on apps and they're on mobile and they're on desktop and tablets and everywhere. And we can get them everywhere. Uh, no matter where people go that we're targeting, which is so exciting and the data and how that works is really better now than it ever has been Google, which is pretty neat, allows you as a sort of retail buyer to get in on that game. They give you access to upload display ads.

So these are, you know, little graphical, basically thumbnail type ads, like 200 by 300, one 50, the, all these different aspect ratios. We, a good ad set will have somewhere between 16. And sometimes I think Google requires 16 and you need to get these done and upload them. And, you know, we do a ton of those every week, um, because we're rotating them and testing them and you gotta get into a thing with display advertising, gotta be producing this media. That's got to go out, right? So it could be seasonal changes, product changes, different offers, different looks, male, picture, a female, picture, a dog, a cat, um, you know, there's all these things that you've got to cover when you're dealing display ads. Now the power of it. And I know that sounds like a pain in the , but the power of it is that people remember images, display ads, our are memorable and video ads are even more video ad.

Uh, studies show can be recalled 30 days later by a person that just saw it once. So, um, you know, display ads, that strategy kind of bleeds into video advertising if you will, but just to focus on display as they're very memorable as compared to text-based like PPC ads, which are sort of the least memorable display as a very memorable. And if you do them in campaign them, well, you can really start to create brand awareness. So if you want to look at big brands as an example of how successful that is, you know, you can look at brands that really pumped their logo is really pumped. Their images really pump their colors and really raise awareness through visual advertising. So companies like McDonald's and Nike and Walmart and all the ones that we know so well spend a fortune on visual based advertising. And you should be too.

If you're running a business, do you want to grow your business? You want people to recognize you be recognized and be memorable and relevant in your market. You should be doing visual based display advertising. You need to be member remembered and you need to be recognized when somebody sees your sign when they drive by or they see your truck, you know, helping another customer or whatever the deal is, you it's important for your business as you grow and want to grow, to be visually remembered. So display advertising is the fast track way to pay and buy your way into that psychological space in your prospect's mind. Okay. So Google allows you to do that now. Um, they have, for quite some time, I think it's under utilized. I think a lot of people get into the PPC dashboard and they get roped into keywords and pay-per-click, and they start doing these text-based ads and all the stuff.

And it kind of, you know, the display ad side just never happens. And the biggest obstacle that we see with our clients is they don't display ads because they've got to make the dam at like it's a pain in the , and frankly, it's a pain in the for us too, and it's not a cheap exercise, but it's so worth it. And, uh, you know, and, and if you can get that part healed, you know, and done and get into, you know, a good production with that, then, uh, it can be an amazing thing for your business. So there's two ways to S to go after this thing. So I'm going to give you kind of the, the tricks, cause our format is that's the offer. We just kind of covered how it works. Maybe a little long-winded, but there's so much to say about this stuff.

I'm trying to keep these videos tight and I'm like struggling, struggling, struggling last one 14 minutes, like we're at five right now. And I'm like dying here. Cause I got so much to tell you guys, um, so stick, stick with me, but in my notes, that's kind of the offer. That's the premise of the whole thing. The tricks are again, a couple of things now in PBC, we talked about really, I like to just run offers there because I don't think anything else is very compelling. Uh, in display you can do some other stuff. Yeah. You can run offers, but you can just run straight up branding. You can run social proof, third party proof, testimonial type stuff. Um, show another person who loved your business and what they said or what, you know, a little kind of almost like a mini flash story. Like Sally loved us or, you know, whatever, just some random stuff, but those things are memorable and you can do them with display advertising in a way that you just cannot do with text.

Um, and you don't, you know, to counter what I was saying about it's a pain in the to make the display ads. Well, that's true, but it's a lot less of a pain in the to make it a whole video ad. So, you know, there's a sliding scale here. It's like, yeah. Do texts kind of lame. And frankly, the results are kind of lame. A lot of the time do an image based ad results are definitely better. It takes a little bit more work, but you get better results and you can get a lot more memorable, uh, advertise it into the mind of the prospect, either much more memorable, um, push into their mental space. And then you go to video advertising, which is arguably the most powerful. I mean, that's why TV commercials are so expensive. And I don't think we need to debate that, but yeah, it takes more work.

Gotta produce a video. You gotta, you know, the whole thing's got to work and it's got to look great. And it's got to be in a segment that builds up all the right triggers. And you've got to, there's always a rules to that. So that's a whole nother thing, but, and this is kind of the happy medium ground. It's like the Goldilocks of advertising. It's achievable for local businesses like yours, achievable for regular folks that are fairly moderate budget and you can get really great visual impact with your perspective clients or our customers or whatever you call. So the trick though is again, targeting is always going to be really important. Like where are you bidding to display these ads? Okay. And one safe bet to start with, which we'd love is to use these display ads as retargeting ads. So use Google's tag system, get the tagging going so that you have an audience of people that are visiting your pages.

So if you're paying for any other types of ads, like you're sending out mailers, you're doing a TV commercial, you do a podcast, you do a radio show, you have referrals, you hand out cards, you, you know, you knock on doors. I don't care what your camp, your sort of cold campaigns look like. If you're going to follow up or you're going to, you're going to back that investment with, you know, more good money then visually stay in front of your prospects with some display ads. So set up tracking so that if they come to a page, you can visually stay top of mind with them over the coming weeks through using display retargeting inside Google's, uh, ad-words dashboard, which is all there. And, and they kind of went through it. And you know, the reality is you can pick up the phone and talk to them and you know, it's not a fun phone call, but you know, anybody could hack through it.

Maybe not the best use of your time, which is, you know, the argument to hire somebody like us that can kind of make it accelerate the whole process. Sure. It's done professionally and done correctly the right the first time, but I'm here to tell you, anyone can figure it out. So you want to learn it and you want to do it. The resources are there. This is just one video on YouTube. There's all these like technical videos and how to do campaigns, all that stuff. I don't want to cover that. I just want to cover, you know, what is it meaningful? And does it work for you? Okay. So targeting is really important. The display, you know, the, the offer and what the ads look like creative in this case is very important, right? So these are the tricks you've got to have good creative.

You gotta have good targeting. And again, you gotta have, you know, a decent, meaningful budget and understand what you're bidding for. And then, uh, you know, we'll go into best use here, which is kind of what I promised in this video for me. I love these for good retargeting follow-up and getting Google's placement, which I can't get in a wholesale media buy. So one of the cool things is you can get display ad placement buying from Google, inside Gmail, and some of their other, you know, natively owned platforms that they run. And they don't sell that out on the, on the secondary market. They kind of keep their own control of that, which is nice. The other thing that's cool though, is if you buy display ad placement from them on your dashboard, in your account, that you can also run your ads out all across the internet because they do go, they do go, they act as a middleman essentially, and they, they will take your ads out to market and get them all over the place on properties that you don't own.

So one nice thing about running some display ads there, a new Google dashboard is you get placement on their stuff. Plus you get access to everything else. Now, granted, they, they take a little money in the middle. Can't blame her from that. Um, but they also are giving you a little gateway into what is traditionally a very expensive wholesale market that has a high buy in and so forth. So it's great for local businesses, get your feet wet with that. But I love that use of it. And again, I love putting offers out in there and I love telling an advertising story with that. So we get an ad that looks like part a of the story and had that's part B of the story and ad that's part C and maybe even part D of the story of about a brand. And we run those ads across, um, excuse me, I got a phone call there.

Uh, we run those ads out, like over a series of like maybe 10 or 12 days. So that the person who seen these ads is starting to see a story about the business or the brand or the offer or the product. Right. And the ads are starting to tell that story and starting to tell that story. So anyways, that's, that's where we like to use them. Um, you can use them to generate cold traffic. It's not my knee jerk thing to do, but it work. And we definitely have a lot of that going as well. I like to feather that in though, once I can get a good established campaigns and traffic going with other sources and so forth. So that's typically what we do. Um, but the best uses are visually re memorable ads. And if you have a product, I can't say enough about it.

If you sell a product, you've got to be doing display advertising, okay, period. You've got to show this thing that you want people to buy. If you have anything that you need to show somebody, then this is the ad type for you. If you're a service-based business or you sell an intangible, you still can play in this space, but for product people, this is a must. Do you know, frankly, I mean, if you're selling a thing, widget, whatever, you got to take a picture of it, great picture and get it in front of people's eyes. So they can remember this product, this brand, this brand sells this product and start making that association. So when the need comes up, they go to you and you get the sale. It's just that simple. Okay. So again, little longer video. And I apologize for that, but there's so much to say about this.

I probably could cut these down, cut them up. I don't know, but we're getting them done anyway. So if it helps straighten out your mind a little bit on display ads inside Google and its differentiation between PPC, uh, even though it's happening on the same dashboard, then that is great. Share this to somebody who's maybe struggling or, you know, think maybe that they need to get their head straightened out about it. So if you want to see more, I'm going to share what I know for the last 10 years and two of those. And you know, and hopefully that helps elevate your game a little bit.

Quick & Dirty - How to Use Google AdWords Without Spending a Fortune

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 19:45:09 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. We're going to change things up a little bit for the next couple of videos, probably like maybe four or six videos. And we're going to dive in and do a little bit more of a deep dive in traffic.

We're going to go over Google's Google ad-words is pay per click or PPC advertising. Now there's a ton of stuff out there about how to set up campaigns and the is always kind of changing and they're tweaking stuff. They've got all these recommendations and cool stuff this year and, and relevancy scores and kind of new tricks and things, but the core, you know, sort of value proposition or the core tooling of the system is been the same for a hell long time. And really what that's all about is putting an ad alongside some sort of search query on, on Google search dashboard. So when somebody goes into the Google dashboard and they type, you know, something that they're looking for, and you have an ad that's associated with that search query, there's a potential that your ad could be shown to that person, depending on how much you're willing to bid to put that advertising in front of them.

So there's sort of two steps that happen there. The person has to bid, it has to search for something that you have in your list, and those are called keywords, right? And then you also have to win the bid to get that placement there at the top of the page. So those are those two sort of critical elements really haven't changed at all with PPC. There's a lot of other like features, but all that's around optimization and audience development. They've got some cool new audience tools now that you can layer in with your keywords. The keyword research tools have definitely gotten better over the years and there's all that. So, um, let's talk about this sort of trick. So the two pieces that I think are, you know, kind of where you have to get things, right? One of them clearly is getting in front of prospects and that's sometimes the trick with a lot of advertising in this case.

The theory is that if somebody searches for something that's relevant to your business, that there's some sort of in buyer intent, or there's an intent there that they're interested in, what you have to offer. Now that's questionable and there's a lot of arguments back and forth that, um, them searching for something that you might be bidding on doesn't necessarily connect to, they're willing to buy. However, it gets you pretty close. Clearly the trick is, is the keyword research thing is a really important element to how that's gonna play out and how well the campaign is going to do. Now I can give you, well, we're going to go over kind of like what we, what we do with it. But, you know, I've got some angles on that and how to leverage and do, do better with that.

But that's, that's a big part. And then the other piece, what are you going to budget and what are you going to bid? And then the third part of that is, and here's my experience with this is you can put your, you know, you've got to write a little ad, right? So it's kind of like almost like a Twitter thing. You don't get a lot of characters. You kind of get like a headline and a little snippet they've given you more now than they used to in the past, which is great, but it's pretty abrupt. And we still follow that three to five rule three to five word rule that we've talked about on another video. So go back and watch that, Oh, wait this YouTube. Sure. Click and watch the three to five word video, and then come back and finish this video.

There you go. Okay. So, uh, you got to come up with something good. Now, in my opinion, you know, it's not good enough and you really just not going to get a lot of response if you don't have that, like some sort of compelling offer, you know, and I think that paper PPC is really a good time to put an offer on the table. PPC is not a place for you to do branding and overall awareness. It's just not compelling enough. And there's some, there's some other reasons why, as we go down kind of like my notes here, that you really just say, I'm going to get a lot of action on, you know, like name and their business, you know, best business in town. Like, okay, that's not really gonna do much. The other thing too is just from a psychological standpoint, you got to remember that people don't really remember what they read on a little snip like that as much as they do read as the, excuse me, as much as they remember a picture of like, say your logo and kind of what you do.

So our brains are wired to remember visual images, you know, faces like, Oh, I know I've seen that person before, or this looks, this place looks super familiar. Like, did we see this in a picture? We have incredible capacity. Do you remember visual images and a not so great capacity to remember one-liners and stuff like that that are just flashed in front of us. They just don't do well with member. They're just not very memorable. So the way to get action on that is to put something that's compelling. That's going to stop that person. So remember, you know, we've all done this, you search for something, the results come up and you got a couple of little ads at the top. How are you going to stop them from scrolling to those organic results below? Or if they have both on the page displayed at the same time and they have the organic results, you know, it's, uh, so-and-so office, blah, blah, blah.

And there's like no offer because that's just their organic search results. That's like their homepage or whatever, a blog post or something. Right. But above that, you got your ads and it's like, it's like 25% off, whatever this comparable niches that starts to be like, wait a second. If I click this organic thing, I'm not getting any deal here. I'm just, you know, whatever. Or, but this guy is willing to give me 25% off and I'm looking for this thing, you know? So I advocate that in PPC that, you know, putting an offer into the PPC and then landing them, of course, uh, on a page that you know, is relevant to that and shows them how to get it, get the thing that you're offering is really, uh, as important to get that continuity. So you're not going to want to use this, I guess what I'm saying for branding and awareness.

Now the caveat to that, and this is goes into sort of the best use as we move out of the tricks, right? So tricks are a compelling offer, good keyword research and a proper bidding, depending on, you know, how hard you want to push on those key, depending on the keyword value and so forth. So, and they do get expensive. I mean, we have law firms and things, um, that'll pay $25 a click and it sounds crazy. And sometimes more in like LA and stuff. I've got people I know out there that are bidding on keywords, they're up 20, 30, 40, $50 a click that only works when your client value is in the tens of thousands of dollars. You know, for, you can afford the acquisition costs. You know, you can spend $1,500 to get one person, but if you're like most businesses where your customer relationship might be like a thousand to $3,000 per year, you can't really spend that kind of money to acquire the customer.

The next thing on this that I want to cover is, you know, sort of where, what are good uses of it. Well, besides throwing offers out and getting them in front of people on search results, the other application we've used PPC forest to shore up crappy SEO or SEO that's just been started, right? So if you're not ranking for something that you wish you were ranking for, but the, either SEO is going to take time, cause it always does, um, or just was never started. And you realize that you've got this customer channel that you're completely missing. PBC is a great way to jump into that traffic lane without the time lag that SEO work would take. Now, I would always advocate that you work on the SEO and the backward in the background. Don't abandon that because SEO is going to be a much stronger position.

You know, coming up in organic searches is a much stronger position in the long run than continually having to pay for ads. The other thing you need to know is that on a page, if there's a a hundred people that land on these search results, say it was one searches for that cause keyword a hundred people land only about 15 of those people are going to click on ads. The other 85 people are going to click on organic search results. So the organic search results are always more valuable and you know, so therefore they're worth the time investment to get in there and rank for those keywords that are important to your business. But if you're not, or you didn't deal with it or something changed and you need to, you know, like I say, get into a new lane,

Is probably a good way to at least jumpstart that and get in front of some traffic, you know, in this area where your SEO is very poor, but don't abandon, you know, working to rank for those keywords. And once you rank for them on page one, stop paying for ads or bid lower, you know, and only take a low bid times or something like that. Um, the other, uh, part about this that we want to, you know, cover is what we typically do. And I kinda covered it, like touched on it. I like using it for putting it off, putting offers out into the market. And I like bidding on the competition, which is a whole strategy in itself, but it's not about bidding keywords or like search results. It's just basically about stepping in front of your competition. So that's the sort of golden nugget from this video. Glad you waited. If you've watched all the way to now, what I just told you is worth the whatever six and a half minutes that we got to this part right now. So

Use PPC to get in front of your competition. And typically nobody's spending any money on those keywords because they're not like big, broad keywords. They're like the name of the other business. So, uh, their referrals, their organic, their mailers, their emails are all this, their brand awareness and stuff. You can just step in front of them by bidding on their name. And it's usually typically very cheap. So we do that quite a bit. Um, and uh, we use it again to shore up SEO. So it's, you know, the best spots that I like to generate traffic for are putting an offer out into the niche that's meaningful. And that actually is compelling, was get some, you know, action back, uh, showing up for SEO and then stepping in front of the competition, which is always a blast to do. And typically very affordable. So run with those couple of ideas.

If you need help with anything that of course get ahold of us. In the meantime, if you'd like this video or kind of get your head straight on what this could work for you versus just, you know, the one thing I do caution just don't just throw money at this and think it's like some miracle pill. Cause it's not, it's part of a bigger thought, a bigger strategy and it fits in well in certain spots, but don't be sold on the idea like, Oh, I'm going to do PPC ads. And like, my business is going to grow. It's not that simple. It's a simple, it's a complicated system. It's got a lot of variables. It can get, you know, you do need to know what you're doing, but you also need to know how it fits in with an overall strategy and it can be done with a good budget and done well.

Um, it just, like I say, you just gotta take your time and walk through it. So if this helped you go ahead, like subscribe, hit the notifications. We do a video, uh, pretty much every week. I think we've been really steady with that. So we're going to keep it up and then watch for the rest of this series. Cause we're going to go into Facebook. We're going to go into media buying. Uh, and we're going to go into the other elements of Google, which is YouTube video advertising display and some of the intent based audience data that's now available there on the retail side.

Quick & Dirty - Moving Traffic to Your Pages

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 17:24:38 GMT

Traffic or getting traffic or delivering traffic, or however you want to express, that can be tricky. And I can tell you what it isn't going to happen by magic. You know, back in the old days, the internet you'd publish something. You were probably maybe the only one out publishing this stuff. The people that are interested, sort of arrived and came, and you could generate traffic by doing a lot of content marketing. Now I'm a believer in content, which is part of the reason I like to do these videos. I think it's part of a healthy sort of big picture, but I also think that you'll be lost if it's the only way that you're trying to get traffic, because for one it's a long game. And if I'm guessing you're watching this video because you want traffic now, like we all do. Nobody wants to wait two years for a video to rank or an article to suddenly be relevant or something to get shared and go viral because you know, the news went your direction or something.

I mean, nobody wants to wait to grow their business. We want to grow our business this quarter, this week, this month, this year, not in a couple of years from, uh, you know, doing 500 blog posts. Okay. So content is one piece of the pie and it definitely can bring in some relevant and quality traffic. There's, there's no argument on that. However, it's also a long game. It can be slow to evolve, especially if you have, you know, early authority and your new and your site property is new and so forth. So then that kind of leads us to the other side was so, uh, of the equation, which is paid traffic. Okay. So just to be clear, I see there's like the way I see it is there's kind of three, well, maybe four realms of traffic, but for online purposes three. So you have content based traffic.

You've got search-based traffic, which is kind of tied to it, but we can call it sort of its own thing. And then you've got paid traffic, which has, you know, a whole menu of different sources that it can come from. And then if you want to bring in offline, you could say there's also, you know, offline traffic that comes to your digital property. So it's somebody that got, was referred to you, or you handed out a business card or you shook a hand or they went to an event or it was a conference or whatever the deal was. And you're going to get some traffic from that. So that's like kind of offline to online traffic. All right. So content, I think is good. I encourage all my clients to put some stuff out, um, at least weekly, because I think here's, here's what I've seen with that clients we've worked with for years who have been consistent, have really benefited from doing that.

And there is a significant amount of traffic that they gather from that content. Now that it's out there, did it change the needle dramatically in one week? No, isn't an amazing foundation down the road in one or two years. A hundred percent. Yes. So, you know, understand it that way. Now that doesn't mean in today's content world, there aren't some pops. So if you look at things like tick tock and then Instagram reels and some cool viral videos and things, those are content marketing and they can be dramatically successful. However, for most of us, those are the exception to the rule. Those are not something that you can quote unquote bank on. They happen, like getting struck by lightning in a lot of cases. Now there are, you know, quote unquote experts in viral videos. And I think, you know, I'm not going to take anything away from those people.

I think it's definitely an art and a skill and it can be done. Um, but I also think that it has little to no guarantees and it can be a little bit like Russian roulette, like where you're, you know, you may make five or 10 of them. You may get lucky with one. Um, I don't know, but I do know, no, I don't want to say that there aren't content. Okay. Instances that can result in incredible marketing returns in a very short term. Cause that would be false. It is true that it can be done for most of us. That's not going to happen overnight. Like it, like we hear the stories up and remember the stories. Nobody tells the story of the guy who did 300 videos before any watch, anybody watched one. Um, nobody talks about that because it sounds painful and boring.

What people love to talk about and makes the rest of us kind of feel bad about ourselves is the kid who did one viral video and then got a sponsorship deal from Reebok or something. And it happened in like a week. And then we all go, well, how come our marketing? Isn't that? Why can't we just do that? Why, why, why can't we build a multimillion dollar, you know, brand or authority or lifestyle brand or, or recognition in a week on one video? And I'm not saying you can't, I'm just saying, that's not something you want to bank on. So that brings us to the next thing, which is paid traffic. Now paid traffic is really the magical sauce of all local businesses and business. In general, the idea that you could take one advertising dollar and turn it into three to $5 or even $10 of revenue is really what business is built on.

So if you want to get back to like the nuts and bolts block and tackle core business building paid advertising is really what that's all about. This is where most of my clients, um, are definitely running some version of paid advertising. And now it's so it's even better than it's ever been because you have so much data. You can see exactly what's going on. You can control your spending. You can follow up and retarget, you can target audiences. There's just a whole entire universe of awesomeness with paid advertising. Now online, I encourage all my clients to, if they want to grow their business, to put some money into paid advertising. Okay. And then the last piece of that is SEO and search, which I think for a while was like super fashionable. I see a lot of people, not necessarily paying a ton of attention to it now, but it's still really important.

And it's important to build great web pages with great keywords and make sure that your content that you are putting out has great keywords. So that starts breaking. And you just can't ignore the power of search. One of the tricks that, uh, we've been working with a lot of our, our local businesses is that is understanding that reviews and reputation are also kind of the back door to search when it comes to maps and near me searches and local relevancy for the best of whatever your niche is. Okay. So don't discount reputation. When it comes to traffic, having a great reputation online will actually bring you traffic. I'm a hundred percent certain of it. I've seen databased evidence here in my agency that when we take somebody from 50 to 250 reviews, uh, over, you know, a year or something like that, they're ranking in maps, they're ranking.

And all of these other relevancy searches actually starts to be one of the top three because Google now knows they're the most recognized in the market for that niche. So reputation is a piece of search now, clearly because those are social votes about how great you are. And the more votes you have, I mean, exams stands to be logical that you should be returned in search results. So don't, don't discount that. So you kind of have just to summarize on today's video, it's a really broad, I mean, we could deep dive into every one of these segments. There could be a course that I could do on every one of these, but just for high level, for your understanding, traffic really comes from three and a half places, right? You've got content marketing, paid advertising, paid promotions, and you've got search and organic search and just relevancy of your business for its niche.

And, and then the half or the fourth item, if you will, is offline, that becomes online. So those are events and handshakes and business cards and handouts and rallies. And I don't know whatever it is that you go participate in, in the real world that would bring your business. Some hits, uh, online is also part of the puzzle. So go attack those three or four items. And if you want to learn more, I think it's probably worth my time to do some deep dives on those. So keep up on what our next videos go ahead and like, and subscribe. And if this video is something that you think would be shared, I'd really appreciate that. Cause somebody out there might be swimming in what to do next. And my advice really to summarize all this is you need to do a little bit of everything, but if you really want to pop and you want some certainty and you want to do well, I think paid advertising is where you need to focus and then also have some sort of content that you're producing along the way.

Quick & Dirty - Why You Need Support from Experts

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 12:00:32 GMT

After nearly a decade of agency marketing for local business and clients who are trying to build more revenue, just like you. So today's topic about got a little alert there about getting help from experts revolves around that. So stick with us and I'm going to tell you everything I know and what I've done to get help for myself.

Today's topic is getting help from experts. Now, clearly people come to me for help with marketing, marketing campaigns and growing their business and getting more customers and patients. We really spend a lot of time specify specializing and growing medical practices. We've done legal. Uh, we do a lot of restaurant. We've done shopping malls, all sorts of different local stuff, but we'd love medical. Now here's the thing that you should know in my own business. I have also spent multiple six figures over the last 10 years, getting help for our business, which now I don't necessarily need help marketing all the time. But sometimes I do. And that may be tough to admit, but I gotta tell you, sometimes we spend so much time looking at our own stuff or so much time looking at other people's stuff. We need an objective party to come and look at our stuff, because one of the dangers with all marketing and Andrew business and the things you do is you tend to fall in love with your own stuff.

And then you lose your objectivity, right? You're so emotionally attached to the project cause you've got hours into it and money into it and all this other stuff. So you have this belief in this paradigm about it that may just simply be false, right? And it may be impacting your results. So one of the best things you can do is to get an outside objective third party, get them in to look at your situation. Now that's not just true for marketing. That's true for accounting. That's true for product development. That's true for decorating your store. That's true for the paint color on your building, right? There are experts out there that specialize in all these little elements that can help enhance your business so they can grow faster and better. Now the other piece of it is like, well, I'm not paying nobody. I don't need any help.

That's just expensive. Yeah. Well, there's another side of that expense, which is opportunity cost. So if I told you today that you could take two years of struggling and compress that into three months and start making the same amount of money in 90 days, that would normally take you two years to achieve, how much would that be worth? Well, if you're running a $2 million a year business and you want to get to $4 million, the value of that is 2 million bucks in sales compressed from 24 months to three months. So you're saving 19 months across $2 million, which is an incredible amount of acceleration. So how much is it worth to pay somebody to make that happen? Probably a hundred grant, maybe 150 is a great value because you're going to get nearly a 15 time return on that, on that expense. So don't think for a minute that hiring experts means that you're just spending money.

Hiring experts is all about investing in your business, just like you would doing anything, painting the walls, making marketing collateral, and buying new trucks or anything like that. Having experts and people that are better than you. This is where you got to get out of your own ego a little bit. You have to accept your weaknesses. Find people that are better than you at the tasks you suck at, get them involved, pay them well and reap the rewards of having an amazing team. Your job as a leader, as a business owner is not to pretend that you're graded everything. One of your most important things to be aware of is your blind spots and what you suck at once. You can identify that and you can get people in to fill those spots up shore up that fence line, where you're weak, not only two things happen, you have great results in those areas that are challenging.

And you're also free to focus on what you really are good at, which is the value that you provide to the business. So don't dilute yourself and what you're great at by trying to do all these things that you suck at and then end up getting mediocre results on the sucky things. And the thing that you're good at because you're spread too thin, get experts in who know what they're doing, get the stuff offloaded that you suck at so that you get amazing results from people that are professionals in those areas, focus on what you're good at and compress your growth timelines by 10 X or 20 X in some cases. So hiring experts is one of the first things a savvy business owner will do. And getting a great team around you, of contract workers, employees, outsource agencies like myself, and whatever it takes to grow your business is what you want to do because the faster you can get from, you know, going sideways and surviving to accelerate into the point where you're free of actually having to go to work every day.

That's when you actually have a business. And remember there's a distinction between a business and a job. So you're trying to be a business owner. I'm pretty sure because you wouldn't be watching this video. If you weren't an entrepreneur and you weren't trying to figure something out. If you want a job, well, somebody else will happily pay you to pursue their dreams. But if you're pursuing your own dream, this is the kind of stuff that you really need to think about. So hiring experts is in your favor and it's almost always a good investment.

Quick & Dirty - The Making of a Solid Opt-in

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:32:26 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing today. I want to talk to you about probably one of the hottest, issues on the internet. And it has always been -- how to create good opt-ins. How to build a list, how to build your email list. And there is tons of advice out there on this. There are entire software companies, or just, just simply do opt in pages. There are thousands of templates. There are experts like Frank Kern and hundreds of others that claim to be able to solve these opt-in problems aggressively and quickly. And here's what I can tell you. Um, it isn't easy, but I'm going to give you some ideas about what I've learned and stick with us. And I'm going to share with you some of the inside stuff that we've done that has created some decent results.

How to create a good optic now opt-ins are like all marketing. They follow the same sort of three rules or three there's, three variables that you need that, you know, you need to get in balance variable. One is what type of audience is actually hitting the optin. If you're bringing in non-relevant traffic, that isn't interested in, what you're offering, you're not going to gain conversions. It doesn't matter. I mean, if you're trying to sell dog food information to car lovers, they're just not going to opt in. So you've got to get your audience and your traffic, right? You gotta be moving the right traffic to the opt in page. So that's variable. Number one, variable. Number two is clearly what are you offering? Right? What, what is the optin? I mean, does it have any value or is it just some cheesy PDF download which can work if there's a ton of quote, unquote, perceived behind the scenes expertise that packed into this PDF that nobody could get anywhere else that required hundreds of hours of research and, and all these things, then maybe how you're going to get somebody to pop on those and go for the download.

For the most part, we've found that they do work in highly relevant audiences that are really interested in the topic. You can get still get some conversions on those, but in general, that response rate on downloadable content, if you will, free downloadable content has kind of waned in my opinion. Um, one of the things that is, you know, I've seen a lot more of lately is contest based opt-ins and I believe those are actually pretty fun and engaging. We have run a few here, uh, even I've run some and I can say they do pretty well again, when you hit the right audience and you have a good offer. So we did an offer as an example, that was a $5,000 giveaway. Yeah, we got a lot of opt-ins for that. It was pretty cool. But again, the value is tremendous to get all the opt-ins.

So here's the first piece of advice on that. Don't try to go thin and cheap and expect you're going to get any great results because you probably will. Okay. Do something spectacular. I mean, if you really want to build your list and you really want to get more customers jazzed up and learning about your business, don't come rolling out with some cheap crap that they can get anywhere for free on the internet. Why are they, you remember people closely guard these email addresses. Now they don't want a bunch of junk from you. And they know that by giving you them their email address, you're probably going to send them a bunch of junk. So it's like, there's a, there's no like secrets anymore. And all of this, you know, everybody knows the game, um, including your targets. So don't be cheap, offer something amazing if you're going to do a contest, offer something awesome.

Like I recently saw one on Instagram where they're giving away like a Ford Raptor truck, it's a $60,000 truck. Right. But I guarantee you, they're going to build a big email list from that. And, um, you know, that's probably worth it, right? Cause how do you, you know, if you, we want to get a half a million email addresses that are, we're interested in trucks and outdoor equipment is $60,000 too much to pay for that. Well, I bet down the road that they'll sell a lot more than $60,000 worth of goods to that list if they play their cards. Right. So it can be a good investment, but in general you got to do something pretty awesome. Okay. To get Optus. So if you're a small business that might be like a $500 giveaway or something that would seem really cool in a local local business environment.

Like if you were a local, um, veterinary or say orthodontist, or you got to watch with medical, cause you can't offer a lot of free stuff, but if you're a cash pay or something like that, that can work. If you're just a regular local store boutique or something. Yeah. 200 $5,500 is probably going to be the Mark where you start to get people to want to jump in and see if they can get drawn for that to win. So that's contest based opt in versus content based, opt in. So be creative with your ideas, look at the market too, and see what, you know, maybe your competitors doing and what's working, but remember you've got audience relevancy, you've got what you're offering and it's perceived value doesn't mean actual value. And that's a whole other conversation for another video, but what people think it's worth is the most important thing.

Okay. So it's gotta be worth a lot. And the last piece, the third, you know, sort of piece of the puzzle is, is the whole opt in process friction free and easy to deal with. Like, is it one click on Instagram to, you know, DM or, or tag to be part of that? Or is it just enter an email address? Right. So we, we don't even ask for first and last names now in our opt in fields, it's just email and done because you really don't want to create any friction there at all. Then there's also SMS opt in where somebody just puts in their mobile phone number and you can opt them in that way too. So that can work. So any way to make that really friction-free, and it's a topic we've talked about in other videos for buying and funnels and things like that, just less is more on that with getting people to act, you know, ask for the minimum from them because they're pretty much willing to do the absolute minimum.

And so those are your three things. Okay. So just to review, you've got, your audience has gotta be relevant to what you're offering. You got to have a compelling value, you know, high perceived value thing that you're giving in return for this info, the personal information. And then the process has gotta be friction-free now the last piece that, and people could argue, and I don't want to get too long in the video is like, you know, the page and you see all these page templates and everything else. I think those are probably the fourth item on the what's important list. I mean, any page at this point, everybody's seen every version of it, you know, opt in on the right opt in on the left opt in on the bottom video, no video image, no image, text, only a little picture of the thing he, that you get.

We've all seen them all. So it doesn't matter. Really. I think at this point they just started all feel the same. People want to just see what they're getting, know that they're getting it, fill in the thing, click the button, you know, Megan not hard. Um, I'm not sure that I think when they first launched design and that stuff was probably more important than it is now, but at this point we kinda got so much data on it. There's a few things at work. The templates are readily available. That's not really where you need to spend your time struggling, where you need to spend your time. Struggling is getting the right audience, getting a high perceived value offer and the page template and that stuff was, should take care of itself. So go get them out there and build your list.

Quick & Dirty - How to Name Your Business

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 15:29:03 GMT

Today we're going to go over something that's very tricky. And honestly, isn't going to get solved in one day, but is a problem that we've helped people through. And I think it'd be meaningful you for you to listen if you're starting something new. So the topic is naming your business. How do you name a new venture new venture or a new business so that you can bring in, you know, the value of search and branding and all this other stuff. So stick with us and we're going to go over how we've gone through that process and the,

Okay. So today's topic is how to name your business. So if you're just starting out this, isn't going to be an area that has a few different circles, right? There's got like emotion, what you want to do with branding. And then the sort of underlying thing, which is, you know, does the name really say what you're doing? And if it does, or if it doesn't, can you afford to attach all of the search and SEO that you would need to that name so that people can actually find you for what you do do? So, um, in the past, I mean, this naming your business, got some interesting history, right? Back in the days of the yellow pages, a lot of people name themselves a one best plumbing or, uh, a and B ice cream shop or something. Why? Because that was the beginning of search optimization was people wanted to be at the front of the phone book, right?

When you open up the first page, they were the ones. So the classic was a one best moving company or something like that. Right. And you still see those names around today. Those are artifacts from when the phone book was search. Okay. So now we of course have Google and other search engines online and business directories and all these other places where you can get listed. And while a is still typically the top of the list. In some cases, if it's alphabetical, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what somebody's searching for when they're looking for your product or service. So there are a few things to way one is what do you actually offer? What is the product or service? And could you in fact, capture that in your name, in a meaningful way so that if somebody was searching for you, they would find it and then get introduced to your brand.

Okay. So there's that objective? The other objective is that, you know, you want a unique brand feel. Now there's some legal ramifications for this too, for you to know also you really can't trademark a words in the English language that are in the dictionary, however, you can trademark a made up word, right? So Nike is a great example of that, right? Nike is not in the dictionary as a real word. It's just a made up name. Okay. And the reason that it's made up is because then they can own it. So there's some to that as well as you may want to make up a name so that you can own it. And you see this with drug manufacturers and a lot of companies, well, you know, come up with a way to a made up word that they can wholly own and trademark. So that's a consideration to put into the pieces of puzzle that you're going to put this all together now for my money for local businesses.

I like to just say what it is, if you're a small local business, I like to say what it is. So it's, you know, um, the name of your thing and maybe the town or the town name and the thing, and keep it simple and don't get all artsy-fartsy on it. I mean, if your objective is to make money, not necessarily be cool, right? So, uh, you know, if that would be a completely different conversation, if you were launching a clothing brand or something like that, because there are some different things going on with that, when you launch a clothing brand, you can have the cool name of the brand, whatever that is. And then on your website, you're going to have all these keywords, like tee shirt and jeans and whatever it is that the clothing sells. So you're still going to be able to get all of those search relevant terms in there, if you're a local business and, uh, you know, you, you, you're just on main street and you want people to find you a lot of times, it's better to just be main street optric up, uh, optician or, uh, optometrist.

I'm sorry. Right. So you may just want to be your town and optometrist and just call it that and keep it simple, because it's going to be the most relevant name when you start building your websites and so forth. And it's also going to be the most relevant. When people talk about you, they're gonna be like, Oh, go to Smithtown optometrist and get your glasses. Everybody goes there simple. Right? Cause your deal is, get into business and get going quick, not get bogged down in artsy, fartsy stuff in that category. Now, if you're trying to do something else, like a lifestyle brand or something like that. Yeah. You've got other considerations. So you need to honor those as well, but you still want to make sure that you're going to have those underlying, uh, key terms. They're going to connect people, looking for you with your website properties.

Now one solution we've done in the past is a kind of hybridized way of handling that we've allowed the owners to run their brand, whatever that might be. And then we've done kind of like a sub tagline, right? So it might be, um, uh, Jacqueline's optometry and now say Smith town's number one, optometrist or something like that, or best of Smithtown or something like that. And we might put a little tagline, the title, and we might even use that into the URL and so forth so that you can use the brand, but co-brand and Cole search, if you will, or, you know, coal label that and search with the locale and the relevancy for that location. So those are some things, there are some ways to hybridize the conversation, right. Between having the brand and having relevancy to, um, wherever you are, whatever you do.

Cause those are kind of the two factors, right? It's what do you do? And where are you for local search? Okay. And then you have branding is the third piece. All right. So try to rank those things. White boredom. It takes a, I've gone through this process with some people. It takes a week. Some people, it takes eight weeks. Um, don't judge yourself on necessarily anything except for your own timeline. And it's got to feel right to you because I can tell you that once you invest in your business name, it's gonna be a long, you know, it's, it's expensive and it's a long process to build up the reputation around that brand, the website, all these assets, you know, your printed material, your shirts, your staff stuff, your PA, whatever it is, they end up spending money on. You know, you don't want to go backwards and hate it any year.

So take your time, do it right. And spend some time on Google and see what's out there. That's competitive. That might be using the same name. You don't want to step into somebody else's really established naming and never be able to rank your business because they're just going to step on you forever. Um, so you know, you, you have to think about that too. So you got to spend a little bit of time doing research about what's out there. Find where you can fit into a, you know, a void that nobody's taken up on or what you want to do with branding and, or your personal naming plus honor,

Uh, make sure that your business is going to be relevant for search terms and so forth. Okay. So those are kind of the different marks. If this helped you get through some of that and or you need more help, that's fine. Get ahold of us.

Quick & Dirty - What To Do About Negative Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 15:28:44 GMT

How you doing welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to cover a topic that gets under everybody's skin and drives people crazy. Local business owners just hate to deal with this, but every once in a while you might get a negative review. Now here's the secret. And we're going to talk about it today. In this episode, negative reviews are actually a hidden opportunity. So stick with me and we're going to cover exactly what to do, how to do it and not get emotional.

So what are you going to do as a local business owners when you've worked so hard to get all of your reviews built up and get this reputation in line and your Google business listing on maps shows all your stars and everything else. And then you get that one bad review, right? Thumbs down, one star, and some story about how terrible you and your business are, or your staff or something like that. So let me give you, first thing to do is take a deep breath. Don't do anything for 24 hours is my, always my advice, because that gives us a chance to calm down and not get reactive. The worst thing you can do is flare up and start firing back at that person online because you're inviting, um, you know, a bigger disaster. Now here's the other thing you should know about negative reviews.

That's so important. Negative reviews are actually read more than positive reviews. So as a business owner, this presents an amazing opportunity for you to tell your story and what you can do if you do it right, is you can spin this negative situation into an opportunity where you can show the whole world. That's, you know, all of these perspective customers, what you do when things don't go, right, which from the buyer's mentality is almost as important as what you do when things do go, right? So in the back of everybody's mind, there's a little objection to buying from you. And that little objection is what happens. If my order gets screwed up, what happens if my dinner sucks? What happens if I have a problem, uh, as a patient, right? So if you're an off of medical offers, what happens if I don't like my haircut, right?

What, how are they going to handle it? So there's always that little injection in the back of your mind, this negative review is an opportunity for you to show people that even though they might have that objection in the back of their mind, that your not a bad person and that you're going to take care of them, even if everything goes wrong and it's so important. So one of the things we are going to coach all of our clients to do, and I'm talking about today is how to turn that negative review into a positive situation. So it's just, you're going to spin it. Okay. Now here's, I'm going to go over five quick tips. And then at the bottom of this video, I'm going to give you guys a download to our review response template, which has pre-canned stuff that was designed by us over the years, so that you can come up with a format to respond to almost every situation that you might encounter with negative reviews.

But the first point is be empathetic and don't get defensive. That's the worst thing you can do is, um, you know, start defending your position and so forth. You've got to be empathetic. And, and if you, if you haven't heard of it, it's like active listening, right? If they say there's this problem, say we acknowledge your problem, right? So don't, don't dismiss it because all you're going to do is piss him off. Okay. Then engage the customer. Alright. So reflect back to them, ask them to call or visit, tell them you want to follow up and so forth, create a personal dialogue. So the goal here is to get this thing off public threads, off your public business listing and get them to create a personal dialogue with you, either by email, at the office or call you or talk in some other way, like DM or whatever, you know, text me or something like that. Okay.

Saying win, which really means, and let's see, I'm just gonna look right here at my sheet. Um, you're just not gonna be able to help some people. Right. But you know, be honest in your response, but also you need to be able to shut people down when it's just too much. Okay. And people respect that. So what I'm saying here is point number four is know that you do have boundaries as a business owner and that's okay. You don't have to get walked on by people that are like bullying you because they're trying to hold you hostage with this negative review or something. You don't have to put up with that shit, but it doesn't mean you don't be nice empathetic. You still have firm boundaries, you know? No, you can't give them a full refund. For instance, that might just be a boundary or no, you know, they can't come in on Saturday to fix it because you're not open on Saturday.

Right. So there's going to be some stuff and it's okay to have those boundaries. And it's okay to show everybody that you do have those boundaries. All right. Then the other thing you want to do is remediate the situation, right? So acknowledge where you were wrong, tell them what you're doing to fix it, create a personal dialogue where they can solve it directly with you offline and then offer them something that makes them feel like they're being made whole, right. So a refund, a discount, some sort of offer, or like we'll take care of you next time. Or if you have a friend that we could help let them know that we'll do it for free, whatever that's going to look like. That's a way to smooth things over. Right? So you'll see that a lot with many companies. Like Amazon's a great example of that.

It's kind of like no questions asked, uh, I call it the a hundred percent happiness guarantee. You know, if somebody is not happy with your service, figure out what's going to make them happy, just make them happy because you know what? The coolest thing is, they leave a negative review, you respond and then they'd do a follow up comment. Hey, so, and so the owner of the company took care of my problem right away. I can't believe the level of customer service. I had a bad experience at first, but man, they really turned it around. Wouldn't that be amazing because you know what that review is going to get read almost more than anything else on all your other positive reviews. And it's going to tell a story about how you're willing to work with people. So don't be afraid of negative reviews. Don't get emotional, wait 24 hours, get our response template below this video. And if you need help with reputation management or anything like that, get ahold of us. We know how to make, you know, build up amazing reputations because it is part of your marketing experience. And of course, if this video helped you inspired you in any way and you liked what you learned, share it, like it hit the bell subscribe center to a friend and catch us on the next one.

Quick & Dirty - The Power Of 3 To 5 Words

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 10:35:04 GMT

Welcome to quick and dirty marketing tips. And today's topic. We're going to go over, um, something that you gotta get your head around, and it's all about three to five words and why, and I mean, three to five words in your marketing messages in your advertising. So let's talk about the, you know, what that's all about. So stick with me and

We're going to cover it.

When you're putting together your headlines, your advertising, and even some of your subject lines, your emails and stuff, you really want to try to figure out how to pack your message into about three to five words. And here's the reason why three to five words is pretty much read at a glance. Like somebody doesn't have to start going word by word for three to five words. It can just absorb it as, you know, one message in a glance. And that's what you want. Cause you have, you know, a split second of their attention, perhaps, especially on like an email subject line or on a display advertising thing. Or even in ad words, you know, like if you're doing a little PPC stuff, you really, they don't give you a lot of characters on a lot of that stuff anyways. But especially in display advertising, even in like video headlines and in footers and you know, different places where you can put stuff three to five words, trying to compress your call to action, your message or the, the, what that person's going to get, okay.

That the value to them, if you will, if you can figure out how to express those things, depending on the circumstances in the campaign in three to five words, they're going to, you're going to get it down to where it has a ton of impact, and you're going to get it down to where your visitor or the, you know, the person that's on the receiving end is basically gonna be able to absorb this thing and a glance. And it's gonna kind of sizzle right into the back of their eyes. And you're not gonna be asking them to do a lot of reading because when there's too many words, they start just, you know, uh, it looks like a lot, or they're not gonna be able to consume the whole thing, or you may have written it where you got a lot of, you know, kind of fluff in the beginning, but the core value messenger, the core action they need to take is kind of like the last seven or eight words.

And they may not even get there or in the case of a subject line in the preview of their email, that part might be clipped because it's not showing that many, you know, you'll get like, I'm looking at my inbox over here on one of these monitors, one, two, three, four, five words there, one, two, three, four words there. I'm just looking at subject lines. One, two, three, four, five words there. So my inbox basically shows me about five words on my subject lines all the way down. So if you try to, if you go past that, you're like out of the box, like half of your stuff's getting clipped. So try to figure out and work hard with your word, crafting and brainstorming and you know, whiteboard this stuff, put up your messages, you know, and like one of the things I do is I put in like my notes, you know, Evernote or whatever it is, you know, different subject lines are different ad copy.

I mean, we have troves of this around here, so we kind of know what works, but when you're starting out, you got to spend some time moving words around and trying to figure out what your messaging is going to look like to grab attention, be consumable in a glance and have a lot of impact and promote that person to take action and get engaged with your business. So go ahead and get them and get them down to three to five words. If this helped you, you know, figure out strategically how to move forward, go ahead and like, and subscribe this video. We're always going to make another one. And then you're going to get notified. No, somebody that needs this video to catch on the next question, dirty marketing tips.

Quick & Dirty - Should I Answer All My Positive Reviews

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 10:31:20 GMT

Hey, what's happening guys. This is Zack Greenfield with quick and dirty marketing tips. And I have a good one today. Should I answer all of my positive reviews? So stick with us. And I'm going to tell you what my thoughts are on that. What are you going to do with positive reviews? What's the best thing to do, or just let them stack up now for some of our clients, we've got them set up on systems where they're getting a lot of reviews every week, and it can kind of seem like a lot to keep up with every single one of them. Now I'm going to do another video on what to do with negative reviews, because that's an entirely different topic. And frankly, those are the hidden gems in the entire review ecosystem. But on positive reviews, you still really want to spend a moment and acknowledge somebody that spent the time to send, you know, say something nice about your business.

Now, there are some hidden opportunities with that as well, with being able to put in a little bit of key word stuff, add in kind of maybe what service they got, you know, expand the story a little bit. Cause they may have said something brief, you know, like a greatest spot in town, I'll be back. It's like, okay, whatever that doesn't really mean a lot to people that are reading the reviews, but it was nice of them to do it. Right. But in your response, you could then take that and kind of spins to be like, you know what, thanks very much, Joe. We'd love to see you back. And when you come back, I want you to try the bologna sandwich because it's a hit and it's the number one thing on our menu. Right? So then you kind of tell a story and people are like, Whoa, they got bologna.

I'm definitely going to go there. You know? I mean w whatever it is, but it gives you an opportunity to kind of leave the door open is what I'm saying. So take advantage of those. And I do suggest that you respond to your positive reviews. I know that for some of you guys are running really great businesses that are stacking up on you. And it seems like an annoying, but look, you're responding to your friends, DMS on Instagram, you're responding to your emails and you're doing all this shit. So take some time out of somewhere else, like social time or whatever, and acknowledge the people that are extra supporting you financially. I mean, it's like, it sounds a little crazy, but I gotta tell you, I see a lot of businesses where they're just not doing it. Like, I don't know if they, they're not connected to their business pages or what the hell is going on, but if you're not get that set up so you can respond.

And it doesn't matter if the platform Facebook, Yelp, Google business, you know, try to stick with them and stick on them, make an hour morning, you know, leave some time Thursday mornings at 8:00 AM or something where you just do that, catch up with all of them and post on them. You don't need to hit them back, right? Like kind of a psycho, but hit them back within a couple of days and use those open doors as opportunities to tell the story about your business or something that maybe didn't get mentioned publicly on one of these social posting platforms, you know, spin it in your favor as best you can. And open up the dialogue about what you offer. If this video helped you in any way, or kind of turn the lights off, or, you know, somebody else that might need to watch it, go ahead and like, and subscribe. And of course share the video to some of your friends so that when I can still say, maybe we'll see ya on the next one quick and dirty marketing tips.

Quick & Dirty - Frequency Vs Amplitude

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 10:28:56 GMT

We're going to go over something. That's just a constant conversation around here that you all need to be paying attention to. And that is the difference between frequency in your marketing and amplitude. And I'm going to tell you all w hat's the right way to go.

This one's going to go quick because there's not much to say about it. It's pretty much a straight answer, but there are two approaches to marketing. There is some people that go for amplitude, which is like, you know, big project and a lot of impact. And it's kind of like you shoot your whole shot there. And then the other strategy, which is the one that I tend to recommend more, especially for local businesses, small businesses and businesses that are trying to launch and get the message out is to take a frequency approach. Now, the differences between the two things can be dramatic in terms of workflow, when you set yourself up and you're trying to go for, you know, this big effort and get this, you know, gigantic thing out. And a great example of that, where I see people getting really bogged down is just writing on an email.

So they think they've got to come up with this long, big email. So it has a lot of amplitude and all these different messages, a lot of different calls to actions and they're highlighting three or four different products or services and all this other stuff. And a lot of that ends up just being really overwhelming on the person, you know, on the customer side of the prospect side, that's receiving it. It's just too much. And, um, the other thing is from a work standpoint, you're putting in this gigantic effort and the tends to bog down the entire marketing process. And it might take you a week or two weeks to refine this email, which I see all the time, which seems crazy, but that's what ends up happening. And it's just lost time, you know? So the better approach, and what I recommend you do is to go for a frequency model, especially with the level of noise that there is today.

If you think about marketing, or if you think about your prospects and their lives, right? Think about the grading analogy would be, you know, when you're thumbing through Instagram, that's kind of like the feed, right? Think about the feed of your prospect's life. It's not just Instagram that they're feeding on, right? Or they're thumbing through. They've got a lot of other things in their lives that are coming out that like in the stream, they've got work stuff and kid stuff and family stuff, relationship stuff, and bills and expenses, and, you know, managing, you know, getting their car fixed and all these things are streaming at them all the time, including what's on their smartphone and their computers. Right? So contents coming at them as well. So where do you fit into all that?

It's like it's one and done. And it really slows down your ability to keep present with that prospect. And in today's marketing, I recommend that you go for a presence approach, which means that you, you send out bite-size bits in more of a story format that can be consumed easily, that doesn't overwhelm the prospect, but keeps you top of mind. Right? So if you think about it, that way that you want to take up Headspace, then the way to do that is to be present, right? And you want to be present as much as possible so that when the person's ready to make that buying decision, your top of mind, and they're going to get ahold of you, you know, click or call or whatever the call to action is. But if you don't stay top of mind and you do that, this one shot and say 10 days goes by and they haven't heard from you, and then this need comes up for what you offer.

And they just can't remember. There was like, yeah, I remember that one company sent me something and it was like two weeks ago or a week ago, but I don't really, you know, I don't know who it was. I'm just going to search for a new thing. Right. And then you kind of lost them. But if you stay with, with, um, with steady, consistent story-based advertising campaigns, email campaigns, um, you know, social media con you know, content posting and so forth, and they dropped some YouTube videos, whatever the strategy is, it doesn't matter. It's better to do them small and frequent than big. And, uh, just, you know, kind of one and done, which is exactly why I like to do these videos here real tight, real short, because it's easier for me workload wise, I get them out. We do a couple in a row.

We set them up for like a couple of weeks. We know they're going to drop. They get converted and syndicated and all these other places, and everybody wins. You guys get great information, you know, from behind the scenes of what we've learned. And it doesn't bog down us on the production side because we're just making little bites. So go ahead and make bites. Think about how to get some continuity there, take up the Headspace in your prospects minds, as best as you can. And don't get bogged down with your marketing.

Quick & Dirty - How To Make It Easy For Mobile Website Visitors

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 10:20:57 GMT

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. My name is Zach Greenfield, and today we're going to talk about, um, something so important and it was really more trendy, a couple, probably a year and a half or two years ago. Um, but it's still very relevant today and that is how to make life easy for your mobile visitors. Okay. And things have definitely gotten easier to do that. So we're gonna talk about, uh, kind of what we do, the approach that we take and some things that you can do on your site to make things a lot better. So stick with us and we're going to go over it.

So today we're going to go over how to make things easy for your mobile visitors. Now there's a couple of things to consider with this first off. I mean, you got these technical challenges, website builders as a whole, including web WordPress, which was notoriously bad at mobile, in my opinion for, you know, the better part of its entire history. Until recently, there are some themes now that allow, you know, uh, things to be better, but let's clarify two things you should understand right out of the gate. One is there are many website builders and tools that you can use that are quote unquote responsive. So that just means that they respond to different screen sizes. So you design a page and then a request comes in to view that page on a small screen and this responsive theme or responsive system, if you will squeezes it down and kind of stacks everything into a way that it's going, gonna look usable and decent on the smaller screen.

So that's one solution and it keep getting better, but that was the original kind of way that everybody dealt with. It was risk responsive design the other way to do it. And I think, you know, the kind of the all pro way to do it is to serve a separate mobile experience of your website. So that means that the website, the backend understands what the request is that the request is being made on a tablet, a desktop, or a phone, then the person gets a different experience for each one of those. Now that's the most ideal situation. And the one that I definitely recommend, and the, what we do for our clients is create a unique site for mobile that is different than what the desktop looks like. So on desktop, we might have video backgrounds and kind of all like, you know, more heavy loading stuff.

Um, and we don't have, you know, certain buttons that mobile users are gonna want on a desktop experience. Like a great example of that is click to call, right? A lot of mobile websites we use for local businesses, doctor's offices, restaurants, all sorts of things, law firms, or anything else. One of the big buttons we want, that's really easy on a mobile website is click to call. We just want to put that call button right underneath the visitor's thumb. Do we need a click to call on a desktop? Well, hell no. Cause the desktop computers not a telephone. So it's just a button that you don't need in a responsive web design. You kind of might be forced to put that in there. So then on mobile, it actually shows. And this one I'm saying it gets a little clunky, you know, and it's not ideal, but in the perfect world, if you could do something that is just for mobile, then that's what you want to do.

And then after that, here's how we do it. We identify the three or four for acting that we either know the customer wants to take, or that are the best ways to serve that customer on their phones quickly, without them having to scroll and dink around and look through menus and you know, and hunt for stuff. So for a restaurant, that's going to be the menu, how to find us. So click and the launches, a map, click, make a phone call. And then the last one, depending on phone or reservation, if there's online booking, that's going to be, make a reservation, you know, depending on the type of dining. So that's an example. So there's just, so it's website looking nice. Four buttons, call reservation, map menu. What else do you need? Right. They can scroll and look, you know, and go about all this other stuff.

But those are the things that are going to solve their most likely problem right now, which is we're lost. We can't find it. Problem. Number one, problem. Number two, we want to see what kind of food they have. That's the menu like problem. Number three, we want to make a reservation because we know we're an eight there. So they do that problem. Number four is I got some other set of issues. Like I need to, you know, have the chef, uh, make a special birthday cake, cause we're gonna have a birthday dinner. So I'm going to call and talk to the hostess. So you're getting a call. Okay. And a lot of people just look up websites to calls. So you never want to neglect that one. So that's a great example. Now, do you need those things on a desktop? Yeah. Some of them, but would you stack them up like that?

No. Cause it would look like crap and it would just be awkward and weird and it wouldn't really sell the restaurant which you could do on a desktop in a totally different way with showing ambiance and video and you know, the patio, whatever the special features of that, that space are the food, you know, things like that. It's like all that can't really be done efficiently on a little six inch screen. So just give the person what they need, you know? So those are some thoughts on that. We use restaurant as an example today, try to figure out if you can get your site to serve mobile only and then do a great job with that. I'm letting you know on our stuff. Um, our typical low end client is going to run 60% mobile visitors right now. And we're, you know, in the second half 2020, uh, those numbers have changed a little bit this year.

Cause people have definitely been home on a regular computer, more or less run around. Uh, but in the normal world that, you know, 75% of traffic can be mobile now for sure on, uh, especially on local businesses and things like that. Like take out restaurants and doctor's offices and stuff, lot of mobile. So you really need to put your focus there before you stress out so much about the desktop as business owners and even doing the job for other businesses. We tend to get my OPIC and spend a lot of time looking at that desktop site. But I'm telling you right now, that's not where most of your visitors are. They're looking at the mobile site and they just want to get shit done and get, you know, keep driving the car, whatever it is that they're trying to do or deal with their kids or something like that.

They don't want to, you know, they're not doing all this stuff that we think we do on these beautiful desktop sites. I mean, there's a time and place for that, but don't forget. People are just trying to solve their problems. They want to hit one or two buttons, get that thing done and get on with the next thing. And they're going to like you more for it. So don't lose focus, uh, on all the other stuff when you really just need to solve people's problems and make things easy for them. So pay attention to your mobile, make mobile easy three or four buttons, no BS. And everybody's going to like it a lot better for if this helped you get things straight and you want more, make sure you subscribe, check this notifications like the video help us out. Now if one person likes him, I'm happy. I just keep doing them and catches on the next one. Thanks for watching.

Quick & Dirty - Figure Out Color Treatment For Your Brand

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 10:13:24 GMT

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. My name is Zach revealed, and today we're going to talk about something that's so important in your websites and your advertising and so forth. And that is how to figure out your color treatment. So stay with us and we're going to go over that real quick.

So one of the things that we're constantly getting in here at the agency level is websites and advertising stuff that's put together by, you know, other folks, um, not place any blame or anything, but I was gonna say like the colors are a lot of times really crummy. So let me give you a little disclaimer for starters, one is I am definitely not the expert on making everything look great. Okay. However, I've learned a few things over the years, and one of those things is that you really need to have about five colors to work with that are brand related on a logo. I think, you know, the two or three color rule is probably the way to go, but for your whole brand, you know, palette kind of like what's usable across your websites, your emails and all these different ads and collateral that you're going to need to create.

We usually generate a five color palette for most of our clients. There's going to be three that are core. And then two, they're kind of like, you know, bonus colors, if you will, that sort of go along with the three core colors. Now here's the other thing to consider. And there's a lot of this stuff on the web about this, but I'm bringing this up on this video today because I just see so much crummy shit come through here that we gotta fix. Um, and, or like update and so forth that, you know, it's an issue. I mean, thought out a lot of people have this issue and you may have this issue. So here's the other thing that you gotta think about when you think about colors, you got your brand colors, that part's kind of easy. The thing that you gotta do though, is go to like the other side of the color wheel.

So if you got a cool colors in your logo and your sort of branding, you got to go to like the other side to like some warm colors, uh, somebody who's going to be contrasting. Okay. So if you've got a warm color logo, they ain't going to go to the cool colors, you know? So you kinda gotta go flip flop to the other side. And the reason you gotta do this, you gotta pick something from the other side or, uh, that's going to contrast, and you need to do that because you've got to have your calls to action and your buttons and so forth and some way to create some punchy action items on your landing pages and your website pages and things like that. So in a lot of other videos, we talk about button and you know, that we like to do and, uh, how to do some mobile design and things like that, that stuff all sort of starts to crumble.

If you don't have this color palette thing really nailed down. So I'm going to tell you that if you can get the color thing organized, where you have some contrasting action-based colors, that people are going to draw, you know, it's going to draw people's eye to it. So they know to click or whatever, and then you've got your core brand colors. And then you can have, you know, like I say, you got these bonus colors are kind of like your backgrounds and you know, your text box things and you know, borders, and you can use those and lay those in and other places to kind of jazz things up. But if you don't have that, something nailed down everything, you do becomes a pain in the ass because you're struggling with that first step, which is, you know, to just apply your color treatment. So if you haven't done this and you know, you got a logo design or something like that, that was really a step further than where you should have started, which was starting with your brain colors in your full five color palette.

So if you got a logo done and you never did that spark, then take one step backwards and get a full palette treatment done for your brand. And then everything you want to go forward with your ads, your pages, your webs, you know, like all these things you got to make, life's going to be so easy because you're just going to pull in from those five colors. And you're going to have your accent color, your action, color, your boundaries, and borders and backgrounds and your brand and logo colors. And everything's going to gel all the time. And you're not going to have to explain yourself. Now, the other thing too is if you're hiring some of this stuff out, like you have somebody running ads, you got somebody creating videos, you've got somebody doing your website. And so they, you don't want these people making shit up for you.

You don't want them just coming up with their idea of how your stuff should look. So when you have your palette done and you know, your branding, you know, kind of directives, if you will, which can include some other things like offset and some stuff like that. You know, if you have all that organized, you can hand that over to these people that are helping you out with video and things like that. And they're going to be for one, appreciate it. Cause it's one less thing to stress out about. But two, they're going to give back to you a finished product. It's actually looks like your stuff. Not like some new made up version of their interpretation, which you don't want. Okay. So goal, if you haven't done it, go back one step, get a five color palette done. If you're, uh, you know, if you got a logo, do that.

If you're starting out and you've done nothing, start there, then go to logo, you know, or do that process together, then go to doing all these other high level things. Okay. So if this helped you out and kind of cleared you up on some stuff, it can be Dick. What was difficult? People like don't know why they're struggling. And a lot of times this is the reason why the sugar to put things together, just didn't have this piece ironed out. We see it all the time and we fix it all time. So if you need help with something like this, of course get ahold of us. If you, uh, were, you know, inspired. And this helped clear things up for you, go ahead and like, and subscribe. And we're going to do more. We always are, you know, sharing kind of what we learned here, as much as we can and, uh, show this video to your friends. If you have somebody who's struggling with the same thing and we'll see on the next one.

Quick & Dirty - The Biggest Question To Ask Yourself About Everything (in business)

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 12:34:39 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. My name is Zack Greenfield, and today we're going to go over something that, uh, I can't talk enough about and the way I titled this is it's the most important question you need to ask. So stick with us and I'm going to tell you all about it.

Most important question you need to ask is, is this good for my customer, my client, or my patient? All right. So, well, let's put that into real world stuff here. Cause it seems like a kind of a, you know, a very obvious statement, but here's where the conflict happens. Okay. You will be working on a landing page or working on a campaign or working on an ad or something like that. And you're gonna think to yourself, I need to get more conversions. I need to make this ad get more clicks or I need to say something more compelling and on and on and on. Right? And a lot of times what will happen in the process of doing that is you go off on this Mimi trail. I need to get, I need to get, I need to get, and you forget that you're in business to be in service, right?

So we all make money at the end of the day because we're in service. The only reason that one person makes more money than another person is legitimately because they are in service of more people. So if you look at the people that have accumulated a ton of wealth or businesses that are doing well, they typically aren't service to lots of folks. Okay? Now, if you think about it that way, and you take earnings as it relates to being in service, and then you go back to this campaign or this page, or this conversion that you're struggling on with your marketing and you frame it up that way, then it really becomes an, you know, there's a little bit of a conflict there between, well, I need to get conversions. I need to get prospects. I need to get leads. Okay. Yeah. We know all that.

But the way that you get that is you don't want to get upside down on that deal. The way you get those things is by being in service. So that means that when you're designing your ad, you're designing your campaign or designing your landing pages or your web pages or your mobile pages that you're thinking about it in terms of what's best for my customer. If you go on that track always. And if you always use that as the litmus test for everything that you're making around your business, or even how you deliver your goods and services, your products, that you know, how you box things, how you ship things, how you, how people come in the door to your business, where do they sit? Are the chairs decent? They have to, you know, there's all these things. If everything you do, you just ask the question, Hey, is this better for my customer?

And you can get to where the answer is a positive, you know? Yeah, make this change. It will be better then all the other stuff takes care of itself. So that's the only question you need to ask. You'll need to ask, how do I get more conversion on stuff? You need to look at the problem and in the eyes of your customer, what would be better? What would be the ad that they would be more interested in? What would help them? Because here's the thing you think about advertising. This is the other thing that's kind of upside down in this world. People have a bad connotation about marketing advertising as it's like, you know, often like, uh, it's poisoned with trickery and misleading messages and stuff. Well, that's true. There are definitely a few bad actors, but what's also true is that great advertising helps the people that need the thing that's being advertised, great advertising, uh, makes those folks be able to find the product and service more easily or understand it better or understand how it's going to help them better.

Right? So the best campaigns actually help the buyer make that decision, take action and get the thing, you know, their problem solved, right? Cause that's what they're doing. They're trying to solve problem. That's why they come to you, you know, to fix their teeth or send them a nice shirt or whatever it is, they're solving a problem and you're going to help them. Right. Right. Those are fundamental things we've talked about on some of my other videos. So always ask that question is this thing that I'm doing right now? How can I make it better for my customer? Like how many clicks they need to go through? How many pages, how much bullshit registration, how many phone calls and all this stuff, get it down to where it's the best for them and you're going to do great. Okay. So if this helped cleared your head a little bit was inspiring and you liked the video, go ahead, click and like it, subscribe to the channel. Don't miss out on the next one. You on these topics and, you know, turn on your notifications and all that. Or they're always trying to drop a few every week. So we'll see how the next one, make sure you pay attention to your customers.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - How To Make Buying Easy For Your Customer

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:07:25 GMT

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing. My name is Zach Greenfield, and today we're going to go over a tip. Well, let me look at my topics here. We got, um, let's see, here is your business. Friction-free, that's going to be today's topic. So stick with us and we're going to get right into it and how you can make things smoother.

One of the most important things today is, I mean, you're fighting this limited attention span and all the distractions that are popping up on people's devices, whether it's a phone or computer laptop like this one here, there's always, you know, we're all living the same life. There's a million things to do, but as a seller and somebody that wants new customers, you got to cut through that. So one of the things you got to do is figure out how to get your buying or your engagement experience down to the minimal number of steps that are meaningful and to make it the least cumbersome as possible. Okay. So, and that time me, when I say friction freight. So, you know, in the past, uh, folks like me and, and many people that are designing websites and different things might've want, you know, the temptation was to make a lot of pages to, you know, make all these different dropdown, hover menus.

And you got all these different, you know, segment the hell out of all the content and you got this service, this service, this service, this service there's service or service. And it's just all overwhelmed now at this point. So my suggestion to you, and one of the things we're been doing a lot for the last two years with our clients, content, especially websites particularly is to really stream those things down into, you know, the, you know, the buzzword today is funnel, but I like to introduce the idea that we really want to put the customer on a path. You know, the new person needs to be on a path. The idea of a funnel is, you know, you're aggregating large amounts of traffic that might be interested in X, less of them and are interested in Y less of them are interested in Z. And the small fraction of them are actually gonna buy the big thing or whatever, down at the bottom.

So that's the funnel sort of metaphor. The path metaphor is a little different. When, when I say path, I mean, how are you going to give somebody that's new to you? Right? Kind of the off the street person that just got exposed to your brand clear stepping stones to get their problems solved. Okay. Cause they're, they're looking to get a problem solved. That's why they're shopping, right? They need a service, they need a product, they got something going on in their lives and they need you. Okay. And if they need you, how you going to give them one, two, three steps to get the problem solved. If you go past like three, you better have a damn well, you know, a damn good reason why there's four, five and six. So look at really look, this is, you know, kind of a homework assignment. This is a challenge to you.

Look at your experience from a stranger. They hears about you like a referral, or they see an ad or something. They click. So they open door. Number one, they come to you. Now how many steps that are meaningful or necessary? Does it take for them to get their problem solved or to get into the problem solving cycle with you as the service provider or the seller of the product? You know, is it three steps? Is it five steps is 10 steps. And then are they dancing around from one page to the next? And then the other part of that is once you figure out how many steps it is that absolutely has to be, then are you jerking them around? Are they going, got to go to this web page and download a form. Then you got to go over here and watch a video. Then you got to click on this.

Then you got to enter a credit card number. And then you're going to get a receipt that has another download link. Once you fill that out, then somebody's going to call you. And then when somebody calls you, they're going to set an appointment, then we send you a calendar link for the appointment. And then that's your first appointment. Then we're going to get started. Like, is it like that? Or is it like you fill out your thing, you pay, everything's included in the email follow up that you're going to need. Uh, and um, one person will call you to confirm the day before, like one, two, three, four, right? You could see like do your best to uncomplicate the process as much as possible, make it friction-free super smooth, make it easy on people on a promise you to get a little lift in revenue. Okay. So if you thought this was information, information was valuable to you. Uh, I got 20 more topics right here from the daily grind of, uh, running the Margaret getting agency and all the cool stuff that we help people do well ahead and like, and subscribe to the channel, like the video, keep supporting us, sharing what we learned when you guys, so go out there and keep it.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - Do I Have to Make Video to Promote my Business?

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:06:46 GMT

Again, welcome to another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. And today we're going to go over the scary question that I get asked quite a bit, and that is do I have to make videos? So stick with us. I'm going to give you the answer and our thoughts.

I totally understand that not everybody's comfortable get in front of the camera. I gotta tell ya. I do these these quick videos. This is the format that I was comfortable with, um, for years. And I, this is a little confession. Okay. I'm a strong proponent of videos in marketing. They do extremely well. They are the preferred media of almost every buyer right now. People would much rather watch a video. That's going to tell them the information they need, then read and research. That just doesn't sound like fun. They don't necessarily want to read about a product. They want to see the thing in motion. They want to see what it's going to do for them. If you're a service provider they want to hear from you, like, like in my case, uh, get to know you a little bit and, and having prove your expertise.

So there really is no downside to making video. Now there's a lot of different categories on how to do it, you know, in this case, it's just me and my desk talking to you guys right here through the camera lens. Um, there's their slide decks. You know, there's a little animations, there's a lot of different ways that it can take shape how, but despite the format, despite the kind of production value, and the joke I make about these videos is there's no production value. Right? I decided that for my purposes, I wanted the, the main focus of these videos to just be on the me, sharing what I've learned and that's it. And there's like no production value. So, so there's like one light and a phone and that's it ultra simple. But you know why? Because I knew that I wanted to do this for my business and for our customers and people that I think would benefit from this information.

But I also knew that I didn't want to put a bunch of obstacles in front of myself to do it. So the way to do that for me was to just cut it down to the bare bones and, and make it about what I was sharing, not about, you know, some sort of big Hollywood production and getting all stressed out about the, you know, that kind of, part of that piece of it. Now, there is a place to go for high production value. There is, there is, there is a time that that's important on this kind of video. It's not, and a lot of marketing videos, it's actually not, it's, it's a, it's a trap that people that, um, that I think we all fall into that we feel like, Oh, it's our business. And everything's gotta be super, super shiny, perfect all the time.

And it's got to look really great, um, that there, like I said, there's a time for that, but the real truth is that people are interested more in authenticity and genuine information that helps them make a decision about how to solve the problem that they're having. So if you're like an air conditioning tech tech or something, yeah. You could have like a fancy, you know, corporate video about your business, you know, with all the trucks and guys in the uniforms and like, you know, this little, like whole thing, but that's, that's fine. But this, on the same note, you could get just as many customers on the roof, we're going to an air conditioner with your cell phone, just talking to people about how you're solving somebody's problem. And you just saved them $300 or something. That's just as valuable as the fancy video and probably in a lot of cases more because it's a little bit more believable.

You have to remember, people are sensitive to things getting overdone now because they feel a little plasticky, right? So people are looking for the real nitty gritty, the real behind the scenes, dirt on how they can solve their problem. They know that there's a fancy ad campaign and there's a big company that has the budget to do all that. And they know they're being sold in that situation in a situation where you're just sharing your expertise and you get a little heads up and you're establishing some authority. They're not, they don't have that guard up. And they're more inclined to engage and, and start to be indoctrinated into your brand. Right? So the answer to the question, the title of this video today is do you need to make videos for your, for your business? And my answer to that is, yeah, absolutely. You should make videos for your business.

But the second part of the answer is you can do it without stress. Now making a whole big thing about it, and you can still have it be a value. So you may not want to put kind of a raw video, like on the home page or your website, because you may have a fancy design website. And then that sort of dumps that down, but you may be totally okay to put some pretty raw videos on a YouTube channel like I do, or to put them over on some social pages, post Vermont, you know, wherever you are, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, any of those types of spots that work for you, or that you already have some audience with. Right? So just pick your it's like time and place. And the main thing is that you're doing it and that you don't abandon it. It's the most powerful marketing.

You really need to be incorporating it into your campaigns when you send out emails, like I'll just give you some numbers. We nearly double click through rate on emails. When the email is the invitation to watch a video, people are like, bam, click. I want to I'll watch that. Okay. Because they're just looking to consume more easy, easy media, you know, and, and learn about the thing. They didn't want to read the email. So you just put those links right at the top of the email, Hey, um, we made this video for you. So just click here to watch it. And here's what it's about. I don't even think anybody reads a here's what sort of alpha, I think they just click the video, but here's a, but I do know that the engagement level is double versus like a text email, or just an email that has a link like, Oh, click here learn more.

And it goes to a webpage. Not nearly as my fun, make a video, tell your customers to watch a video. You'd be surprised how happy they are and how many of them do watch it and share it. Go ahead and take the leap. Yes, I, the answer is yes, big videos for your business in the way that works for you and that's sustainable. And that you can do a little bit every week. Cause consistency again, in your marketing is much more important than making one big thing. It's better to make lots of little things consistently than it is for you to make one big thing and make a big deal out of it is just give me like one shot and then figure you did your marketing for the year. That's bullshit. Don't fall into that trap. Okay. So if you found this informative, if it motivated you, if you're slightly inspired, go ahead and like this video, subscribe to the jail. Uh, go ahead and share it around for me.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips- How Many Email Can I Send To My List

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:06:07 GMT

If you're a person who's sending out a lot of emails every week for one, I give you a round of applause because most people aren't doing it and it still is arguably one of the most effective ways for you to market to your customers. Uh, and any prospects that you might have on your lead gen lists. So the question used to be kind of cut and dry on this, but now we have such sophisticated email systems that we can do. Some things are really pretty magical that allow us to increase our send rates without annoying the crap out of people that don't want to get a lot of emails. So let's just start with some basic rules. If you have a list for your business, I tell all my clients, you need to at least send them something every week, minimally. So as four times a month, you can do them one morning, prep them, schedule them and be done with it for the month and probably about an hour. And the general idea of those emails is, again, I think we've talked about this on some other videos, probably like a one for five ratio. So you want to inform and give an add value about, you know, four times and then ask for something one out of five times. So 20% of the time you can ask for, you know, or send them an offer, ask them to take an action, like book an appointment, or sign up or get this new thing, or, you know, on and on, or watch a new video that you've come out with. You can ask them for something about one out of five times. I think you safe. There's some other numbers on that that seems to work well. But in general, to your list, you want to be creating authority, giving value and building a relationship with as many folks on that list that you can.

If they see that your emails are doing that, you're training them, that you're giving them good stuff and they will continue to open your emails. So your main objective was sending emails. It's not so much to get stuff for your business. That's the wrong mindset. The main objective of sending your emails is to train your list, to open your emails. You want to build a trusted relationship with your list. Then it's much easier to ask them to buy something for you later on. So it's not, it's not an opportunity to just beat people over the head, buy this, buy this, buy this, buy this, because they're just going to turn you off on subscribe, start ignoring them, or just, you know, deleting them as they come into the inbox. That's not the way you're going to train them to do the opposite of what you really need them do, which is open your stuff and take a look.

So the next rule that you need to follow is once you're sending once a week and you're sending mostly value and you, you know, you can do, there's two things you need to remember on this next piece, which is putting in passive calls to action and active calls to action. Now passive call to action might be at the very bottom, like underneath your signature or something like that. My new video, something like chill like that, where you're not really overtly beating them over the head, but you can put those in on every email, like a little call to action on the bottom. Like we've got this new thing you thingy. That's pretty awesome. Click here. So the body of the email is not about that. I didn't email is again giving value and, uh, information and education and building your authority. You know, these little passive links on the bottom, that's fine to do on every email on the active ask, the body of the email is about the thing that you want to offer them to buy.

So that's an active call to action, email, special offer, limited time, and all those other things that we've talked about in different trainings. Okay. But you can do those there, but you're only going to be doing that 20% of the time. Okay. So now you've got your Chicago, you're stacking things up. Now the last piece where it gets really interesting is, and really kind of answers. This question is, okay, you're saying these emails once a week. Now, when can you send more? We can send more. When somebody on the list demonstrates that they're interested in whatever that topic was. And this is where programmatic response comes into play. And it's really important. And I highly suggest that either pay somebody to do it, or you figure out how to do it, there's so many drills into a link or they express interest in a category of your services or some of the things that you provide, then it's okay to send them more emails about it immediately, even within the next hour.

So let's make an example. If somebody let's say you're a veterinary, we've done a bunch of work for vets, and let's say you offer a grooming services. So you might have a email that goes out about how to give your dog a bath. Okay? Now, if somebody drills into that email on a link and they jumped to a page that is about your, uh, nail cutting parts, you know, because that's one of the areas that pet owners struggle with is they might wash the dog, but you get nervous about doing the nails. Okay? If you have people that are clicking into that, then it's okay to immediately follow up with them with, Hey, we saw that. You're concerned about doing your dog's nails. We'd love to have you come in and we could show you, or you can let us do that piece. And then you can get them in on a grooming book for that.

So that's just one sort example of how you can do that. Now, when does that email go out 30 minutes or an hour after they click the link and then it can even go a second time that day. So I can tell you, we have some stuff where if that weekly email goes out and we have interest type links in that email and people click and express interest, then another two, and even sometimes three emails will go out in the next 12 hours. Now we black out overnight, no reason to send people emails in the middle of the night, but between normal daylight hours, they might get three more emails to try and get them to convert into offers that are relevant to where they express interest. So that's the way to think about it. If somebody expresses interest and you have an offer in that category of services or products, then you can go after them with offers to get that thing.

And that may come in the form of a discount, a onetime, a limited time a trial because they've expressed interest. Okay? So those can take different shapes and they can be different sheets on each one of those response emails, right? They may not take this deal, but they might take the next deal six hours later. Right? So if they're expressing interest, boom, boom, boom, you're going to stay in front of them. So that hopefully that helps to answer the question about how many you can and should send anything more than that.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - More on Email Messaging

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:05:11 GMT

Welcome to another episode of quick and dirty. So today I just want to continue that conversation a little bit with email marketing and some of the stuff we discussed.

Amplitude versus frequency, definitely want to focus on the frequency of your messages so that you have stuff going out regularly, because remember your goal is always to be taken up head Headspace and being in your customers and in your prospects in front of their mind. Okay. So, um, I just wanted to share with you an example today of some stuff that we're doing, where the, again, the emails are very short and the subject lines were very short. And I wanted to share with those, those with you on this video. So we had two subject lines that went out over the last couple of days, and they just said, um, the important letter, and then this follow up email, which only gets sent to people that don't open the first email. Remember I explained to you, I like to, a lot of times send a second one.

I almost never sent one email because you just don't get very good penetration into your list. Generally, we're going to do one, two or three messages that are the same content, but different subject line. And maybe we just change the text a little bit. And we usually just exclude everybody that opens the first two rounds so that the third round is just the remaining part of the list, right? So you can set all that stuff up in MailChimp or whatever email service you're using. It usually has, um, some S you know, set up like that. And so those are the ways that we like to do them, but either way, the subject lines are very simple. One of them is the first one was, you know, this is important. Please read just really straight forward. And the second one was a reminder about this important letter and that's it.

Both emails were no more than a couple of lines and they link back to this letter. And what's really important about that is that when they go link back to that letter, then we tag those visitors. Right. And then we also have another remarketing strategy. So we know we've then identified those people. So we've segmented them down and we've identified them as interested in that content. Right. So it's one of your main goals. That's one of the themes of, of all of your communications is to start segmenting your lists by interests. Like, what are they interested in? What type of product, what type of service? Um, you know, and then once you can figure that out, then you can hit them with more relevancy, right? So you can kind of start broad, figure out what they're interested in and then follow up with more laser targeted stuff. Okay. So that's it today. Keep up the good work. Oh, and since this is on YouTube, don't forget to like, and subscribe. And I guess there's a bell, so you might want to do that. And if you're watching this on Instagram, please share it and follow us if you're not and so on and so forth with all that fun stuff.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - Email Marketing Basic Framework

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:04:29 GMT

Here's one of the things I want you guys to think about. A long time ago you send these newsletters. I don't know if you guys remember how ridiculous that was, but that's kind of where the mindset was that there's this digital newsletter. So I was like this long email with all of the months things or something you would send at once a month or something like that. That is just totally dead. So if your mind is there, if you're doing that stuff kill nowadays, you really need to be fighting for attention. And so your focus has got to be on frequency, not amplitude. So you don't need a lot of big amounts of crap to go out. You need to be sending more often. Okay. So a lot of campaigns, I'll give you an example of this. We do some stuff where we send every day.

Email is still one of the number one is the number one way to get in touch with your customer. So don't be shy with using it, but go for frequency, not amplitude. So a lot of emails we sent today were more, no more than three or four lines, three or four lines, just like a note you would write to your friend. Okay? So try those be frequent. And don't put that workload on yourself. Like you got to create this big masterpiece with all these cool pictures and bullshit. You don't need that. You need to write something meaningful, something relevant to your list, something helpful, and ideally link them back to your pages. That's where you can have your content, your retargeting pixels, you know, all these other elements to your marketing campaign, but on the emails, make them short and sweet. Let people take action.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips- The Mindset of the Marketer

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:03:47 GMT

It's got to be okay with being in the middle of a problem. And I see a lot of clients and just people in general, myself included, you get frustrated, you get angry, you get disappointed, you get, uh, anxious. And then w and then that self doubt starts coming in about our offer our business, our service ourselves, the way we look, the way our brand looks, it all starts seeping in. Right? So one of the things you just have to get comfortable with in marketing is that you're in the midst of a problem, and it's a dynamic situation, and you just have to be okay with that. You've got to be okay with the fact that things aren't going to be perfect. And you want to try to log your wins, but every win is fractional. There's no, sure. Victory, even a win can be improved, right? And that's all the way down to your losses, you know, and you can judge them by whether you made money or not. That's where the break even is. But if you're looking at a bigger picture, your wins your losses on a sliding scale, and as a marketing campaign, you're in this dynamic problem, solving little teeny elements all the time. So it's like a moving liquid fluid situation. Once you're comfortable with that, then you're going to be okay. You let all those other negative feelings.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - No Ghetto Email For You

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:02:59 GMT

This is another episode of quick and dirty marketing tips. Today, just a quick little talk about ghetto email. I can't tell you how many people come to us and they've got successful businesses, and all this stuff going on, and they're emailing me from I think like a time warp because the address is so-and-so at aol.com or so-and- so at hotmail.com, or even at Gmail, which is a little bit more timely, but still. If you are running your own business and you have your website set up and all that stuff, you've got to have your email at your domain. That is a professional minimum. You can't be hanging on to some email from when you were in college or whatever.

Here's my tips for that, there's two ways to do it. I'm going to give you the number one way we do it. We set up almost every client that we work with, that is in that situation or that needs improvement on G Suite. The great news about that is it's super affordable for regular folks, if you're at a bigger scale they've got a higher tier of services and storage, and if you're in the medical field they have a completely HIPAA compliant cloud service that's associated with that, which is a really big deal. It's one of the few HIPAA compliant email systems and cloud storage systems that's affordable. You want to take a look at that.

The other way to do it, number two, is to go to your domain register, like GoDaddy, they do offer email services. I find that it's still pretty basic and you're on kind of older [inaudible 00:01:52] technology trying to pull the messages to your phone. There really isn't a native app like Google offers. It's just, there's more steps involved and it's awkward. You're saving maybe a little bit of money, but in the headaches you pick up and kind of the not premium set up, not my favorite thing to do. I recommend going with G Suite, get yourself on your company domain, don't be emailing people from 20 years ago.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips- Calculating your marketing campaign needs and sales goals

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:02:10 GMT

I'm going to share with you exactly how we figure out what we need to do for marketing, you know, for our marketing campaign to get the money that you want in your bank account from your business. Okay. So I'm going to take you over to the whiteboard. We're going to do some math. Don't get scared. I'm gonna show you how to figure it out. It's super simple. It's gonna put a hundred percent focus on what you need to do for 2020. So let's check it out. Okay guys, we made it to the whiteboard. I'm going to try to cover stuff up here for a sec. Uh, but here's our formula.

So when you want to figure out what you need in marketing for the money that you want, this is, this is how it's going to go. You want to figure out your desired revenue, that's your number you're trying to grow. And we're going to make an example. We want to grow our business $50,000 more this year. Okay? So that's our desired revenue. This year is plus 50 K. You need to know or find out what your average customer ticket is like. What does your average customer pay you? And in our example, we're going to call it $200. Okay? And then you're going to divide those two numbers and you're going to get the number of new customers you need for the year. All right. So let's walk over here and check it out in real, real numbers. Let's, don't worry about all this yet, but 50,000 divided by the $200 per customer means we need 250 new customers spent a year on this project.

Now we're going to take that. And we're going to divide that by how many months in the year 12. And we're going to end up with 20 new customers per month. This is the number. This is our performance indicator for everything, for this business's objectives of what we're going to Mark it. We're going to market to get 20 new customers a month. And then we're going to get this 50,000 sale. So this is the formula right here. You guys, I'm going to snapshot this and make it a PDF for you. Cause I've got my, uh, a little rocket book beacons down here and you guys can download that or have it, but these are things you need to figure out. And then this is going to decide what you want to do for 2020. How many customers do you need? And this kind of determined how you're going to pick your Mark.

Quick & Dirty Marketing Tips - Episode 2

zack@zackgreenfield.com (Zack Greenfield) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 11:00:44 GMT

One of the things we're setting up today is some automation for one of our clients. So automation is a big, broad topic, but specifically we're doing today for some, uh, one of the projects we're working on is one of the things we start with first, which is a customer onboarding or followup sequence. So whenever you get a new customer and I don't care if you sell a product or a service, that customer that is new to you, you know, you're obviously gonna talk to them a little bit, but when they leave your store or they've finished their interaction with you, then you want to trigger some sort of automated messaging that follows up with them like an hour or two, or that same day later in the day. And it says, Hey, welcome on board to my place. And thanks for buying my thing. And this is how you're going to take care of it.

And this is what to expect. So you've all gotten stuff like shipping notifications and everything like that. That, that actually is a version of that. Like when you, when you buy something online, but if you have a local business and you get a new customer and they come in and they buy something like a great example is if you let's say you do a hair, you cut hair, you write color hair, it's great to follow up and give people, you know, some care recommendations after their treatment. What's the best way to take care of everything for the next, for the first week when to schedule, to get back with you. So you can remarket them. You can give them bounce back coupons on that. So a nice little responder series is great to set up for that. We usually do those in about three messages over the next three to five days, get one that same day, two days later.

And about five days later, just checking in, seeing how everything's working out. Are you happy? Is there anything we can do to make it better or help you out? If you have questions, please call us that kind of stuff. That really genuine customer service stuff. But the trick is you set it up so that it works automatically, and you're not doing the work, but one time to set it up. And then that takes care of your customer service, uh, all the time, 24 seven. And if you really are moving your business along, even when your employees are product or service, and you know that the followup is a hundred percent. So checking into that kind of stuff, we can turn it out here. If you're not doing it here for early.

Quick & Dirty - Minimal Reputation Management Setup

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 10:59:17 GMT

Just a little follow up on the Google, my business stuff. That is where you're going to be getting your most valuable reviews. So one of the things that we see clients struggle with a lot is they will ask people that come to their store or into their business for reviews. And they think that's actually doing it. I call bullshit on that. People just don't follow up, even though they genuinely want to, uh, they get distracted with life just like you and me. And it just doesn't happen. And for you, your objective is to get those reviews. You got to get those reviews because it helps your ranking and map packs near me, searches, local business searches, and anything related to your niche. You want to be the number one voted business in your competitive niche.

So you need those votes. Those votes come in the form of reviews, and you've got to have a system that automatically follows up with each customer that comes into your place that you provide a service for. So you got to have either a text messaging system, an email messaging system, or better yet both that hits them about an hour after they leave, ask them how their experience was, and then falls up, falls up until they leave that review. Even our systems, show them how to leave the reviews. We do video explainers because some people are clueless, um, and just set it up and make it easy as possible. So make that process friction-free and go out there and get as many reviews as you can. If you want to dominate your niche, I always tell people, make a goal to start of getting 50. And then once you get 50, you make it a hundred. And then when you have a hundred, you're kind of out in the open and you're just usually crushing everybody around you. And that's where you need to be. So make those goals, go get them.

3 Ways To Re-target Your Online Healthcare Audience

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 22:46:17 GMT

Customers value quality and price when buying a product or paying for a service. In order to find the best, they spend time researching online and comparing what is out there. They would do the same to look for a healthcare provider. Because of the information available online, patients can get all the data they need to make the decision on which facility to choose for their treatment.

Because they know that their patients are doing their research, the competition is getting steeper for healthcare providers. In order to continue attracting patients into their facility, they have to improve their online visibility. The question is, how can they stand out from the competition?

The answer is through re-targeting. The fact is, when patients visit their site for the first time, only 2% of this leads to a conversion. However, through re-targeting, it helps them stay on the top of the list of the other 98% who continue to do research. It also helps them improve their online exposure to other potential patients.

Re-targeting is technology that is cookie-based, using code to track where your site visitors go after they look at your site. If the visitor doesn’t end up making an appointment request in your website, ads come out that encourage conversion, which says either “Schedule an Appointment” or “Contact Us.”

Specifically, here are 3 ways to use re-targeting on your audience.

Ensure That Your Ads Are HIPAA-Compliant

Because of HIPAA, healthcare providers need to be careful about handling personal or health information of patients. This is why they may be wary of re-targeting, but they shouldn’t be. Re-targeting does not go against HIPAA, but these organizations still need to tread carefully. Their ads should never indicate having the personal information of patients. They are also not allowed to collect any contact information of the patient, like a phone number or email address.

The ads have to be general instead and should focus on giving information about the hospital or the specific department. It also cannot give too much information on the treatment of a specific condition. It should focus on highlighting the expertise and knowledge of the organization in the certain department, taking care to avoid mentioning the health condition.

For example, there is a visitor who visits your website looking for any information on neurology but left the site without making an appointment. They will then see ads afterward that encourage them to contact your organization’s neurology department, taking care to avoid any mention of stroke symptoms, even if the visitor viewed the web page on strokes specifically.

Be Strategic With Ads

There is no need, nor does it do you any good, to aim to convert every visit to your website. The fact is, there are some visitors who simply look for some information on specific medical conditions, including students who are working on a school project or other researchers. The best strategy is to implement re-targeting only on specific pages, ones that are oriented on conversion.

The first step is to identify exactly which pages have the best chance of attracting conversion, for example, those that mention key services or specific procedures available in your facility. This means, when the visitors view these pages and then leave, they will see ads related to the page they were looking at in your site. The most important thing is to include a visible call to action, prodding them to contact your healthcare provider and make an appointment.

Limit Your Re-targeting Efforts

If after your efforts of re-targeting, the visitor has still not converted, do not continue re-targeting after 30 days. This is a reasonable amount of time to conclude that if the patient did not make an appointment with your facility in this time, it means he or she was just doing research or has decided on a different option. It might also mean he or she never really wanted to make an appointment.

Moreover, you should also ensure that lists are updated after the visitor has converted. After all, you do not want to show them any more ads after they already made an appointment. Instead, you can show a generic ad for your healthcare facility or stop showing them.

Getting Your Visitors To Come Back

The richness of information online is both good and bad, because people have all that they need to make a decision. Unfortunately, it might make them feel overloaded. Thus, healthcare companies need to be creative in order to get patients’ attention and convince them they are the best partners in dealing with their health issues.

Thus, you will want to remind them of this and your organization’s capabilities even after they moved on to other sites to still lead to a conversion. Through re-targeting, you can turn visitors interested in your services into your newest patients.

How to Work Around the Video Autoplay Ban on Google Chrome

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Many businesses became worried with Chrome’s recent ban on autoplay videos. A lot of digital ads these days are in the form of videos, backed with powerful stories. Now that these marketing tools are banned automatically, unless the users prefer otherwise, marketers are left with not much choice but to innovate other solutions. Read on to learn some ways to make do with the recent autoplay ban.

Take advantage of the GIFs

People are more convinced by graphical ads than still pictures, hence the proliferation of videos. Videos per se are effective tools, provided of course that the users are not caught off guard or are half-interested. That was when Chrome finally decided to put an end to the silent burden of users. Autoplay videos startle the users most of the time and even end up being muted or closed down within just 3 to 6 seconds after playing because they do not appear relevant to the users. Worse, they disrupt the train of thought of the users, who are doing research or conversing with someone online. So how then do ads still capture the interest of users without utilizing autoplay videos?

The solution is to employ GIFs. These are collated still pictures that appear to be moving when stored in GIF format. GIFs have existed long before video ads flourished, yet they haven’t been exploited as much. When delivered in high quality pictures and interesting angles, GIFs will be able to best capture the interest of the viewers without the disturbing sound. These teasers may even leave viewers wanting more that they end up visiting your website.

Turn to direct emails

Direct emails are still the most effective form of marketing. The fact that the users subscribed to receive updates already resolves the problem on initial interest. All that marketers need to do is to maintain the hype by sending infographics, promo updates, personal greetings, and GIFs. Yes, GIFs can be embedded in emails, social media accounts, blogs, websites, and other platforms. They are that flexible and fun to create. If you notice digital calling cards blinking and turning, you know they’re the fascinating GIFs styled artistically.

Get creative with infographics

Infographics will soon be advertising staples in this day and age of informed consumerism. Infographics allow you to succinctly cover all important details of a brand or all bullets of an article in one ad. Plus, you can even embed links to your website, thereby creating online store traffic. If you wish to create a storyline in an ad, you can do so with infographics. All it takes is a creative concept and good content. You can also play around with colors and drawings that will readily grab the attention of viewers who are simply passing through a web page.

Bring back the comics

If you want to turn completely visual with your approach to advertising, why not consider bringing back the comics? In this way, you will be able to graphically portray a series that the viewers will follow through and through. This approach also appears less like hard selling which some users prefer. Hard selling sometimes annoy the consumers and an opposite reaction is produced. If you want a fun way to go around the ban on autoplay videos, go old school with comics.

Surely, there are many other ad forms you can think of that are equally graphical and effective. The video autoplay ban only paves the way for more creative marketing approaches.

How Facebook's Acquisition of Instagram Affected Facebook Itself

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

In 2012 Facebook Inc made a business move that shook businesses online - it bought Instagram for $1 billion. At first, this looked as if Facebook was trying to monopolize the social media industry, but analysts say otherwise.

Instagram is Driving Facebook Inc.'s Growth

Since its acquisition, Instagram had become one of the major revenue streams for Facebook. The value of Instagram now has reached $100 billion which is 100x more than what Facebook Inc paid for according to Jitendra Waral, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Facebook Inc. is now worth $570 billion. But this business move should not be seen as Facebook's way of buying out all its competitors. In fact, Facebook and Instagram weren't even considered as direct competitors. But now that both applications are owned by the same parent company, Instagram is affecting the growth of Facebook although this can also be attributed to the fact that Facebook has already reached its plateau stage.

Facebook Inc. owns Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and TBH together with Instagram. But compared to the other acquisitions, Instagram has been generating more revenue than expected. Whatsapp hasn't been profitable since its $19-billion acquisition in 2014.

By the year 2020, Instagram's revenue could reach up to 40% in the United States. Moreover, its total share of Facebook Inc.'s value can reach as high as 25% from its current 16% share today.

The Growth of Instagram

By the middle of June 2018, Instagram announced that it hit 1 billion users which is 200 million more than their user count last year. This growth is only getting started as analysts project a total growth of 2 billion users in the next 5 years. This rate is faster than its parent company's.

Instagram Stories has also reached a wider audience as it is starting to replace Facebook's newsfeed. Instead of scrolling down on a feed, "IG stories" is now becoming a thing among followers on Instagram. You can attribute this to a more real-time representation of what your friends are up to. IG stories are also more customizable than your typical post on Facebook.

Because of the growth of IG stories, Instagram has sped away from its competitor, Snapchat. With just 191 million users per day, Snapchat falls far from Instagram's 400 million active users.

There has also been a decline among active daily users of Facebook according to Recode. This year, Facebook has experienced its first 2 consecutive quarters that had declines on daily usage in North America. At the same time, the number of users in the 11 and below age group is projected to decline by 9.3% according to eMarketer, a market research firm on digital businesses.

Mixed Opinions on Facebook's Move

Although overall, the acquisition of Instagram has greatly increased Facebook Inc.'s value, critics claim that this move has been a big regulatory failure for the tech industry. By buying out the company's possible competitors, Facebook has shown some naiveté in increasing its power over the social media industry according to Lina Khan, the Director of Legal Policy. It has also avoided some scrutiny on the data privacy issue because some users are not aware that Instagram is also owned by Facebook Inc.

Despite differences in views, there is no doubt that the growth of Instagram will enable it to become its own powerhouse in mobile web marketing.

To learn more about how social media marketing and video stories can help drive your business contact us today. 888-434-9225 team@zackgreenfield.com

Google Releases Smart Campaigns for Small Businesses

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Google has recently made a release under the new Google Ads brand that is specifically targeted for small businesses. This is called Smart Campaigns.

This is in line with Google's re-branding project, as well as efforts to make their products simpler and easier for marketers. This means that Smart Campaigns are perfect for small and local enterprises that do not have any employees handling their marketing efforts. Some of them do not even have a website. This is the perfect solution for these businesses.

For new advertisers, Smart Campaigns will be set as default when choosing campaign types. They will be almost fully automated, from the creation of ads to optimizing their delivery. This automation is dependent on the product or service offered by the business.

Google is trying to impact small businesses the same as Facebook has been able to successfully do. This can be accomplished by providing these easy solutions. Google already connects people to businesses nearby up to 9 billion times monthly, with 3 million of these being direction requests. Even former small business owner turned head of Small Business Ads at Google Kim Spalding has acknowledged the need for Smart Campaigns. While many small business owners use digital marketing, they will prefer simpler solutions that can overcome most challenges.

This innovation is built on Adwords Express technology but it will regularly be developed, much like Local Services, which is Google's answer to lead generation for home services providers. Local services are also designed for small businesses and have recently been expanded to 60 markets. However, it is separate from AdWords Express.

Ads created through Smart Campaign may be delivered all over Google's properties and like the Universal App Campaigns, users will not be able to switch off channels. Moreover, target optimization is also automated. Through Google's machine learning algorithms, ads are displaced to the right audience, after location data, behavior, device and other factors or signals.

Because of these, results have proven that Smart Campaigns are up to 3 times more effective at reaching the audience than using AdWords Express campaigns.

Another great feature is the ability to upload images or those taken from the websites of advertisers or from Google My Business Listings. In the coming months, Image Picker will make it possible for advertisers to choose up to 3 images for testing with the ad copy.

Smart Campaigns are also planned to work well with Google My Business in creating ads and landing pages. If the business does not have any website, Google will design and host automatic landing pages.

The landing page will allow business owners to access reports as well. These features are still being tested and will be included in Smart Campaigns later in the year.

Until then, Smart Campaign advertisers will require high-level reporting but currently, it is still being refined. This product is still new and there are different approaches that are still being tested. This is why Smart Campaigns will still evolve in the future, especially incorporating the feedback of users as small business owners continue to adopt it.

Google Maps Gets A Lot Of Add-Ons

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Since the birth of Google Maps, there has been no need for physical maps when you are in a foreign place. In just a few seconds you will see which roads to take and how long will it take you there using different modes of transportation.

In much the same way, this advantage of Google Maps benefits businesses that have accurate map information about their company on their website. When you provide a section on your site that shows your exact location on Google Maps, you are already luring your leads to your store. Since the first point of contact would be your website, that platform should already help encourage users to be converted into customers. Having a map shows customers how easy or close your store or building is.

But Google Maps for businesses is not limited to making navigation easy. If your company can be seen in Google Maps, your customers can get the name, address, and even the store hours of your business. This is very helpful for those leads who are inquiring about your store.

The New Additions to Google Maps

Just this May 2018, Google has rolled out a new set of features for both iOS and Android users.

1. Explore Tab

The redesigned Explore tab shows new dining places, activities, and stores that are nearby. By clicking the Explore tab at the bottom left of the app, it will launch a list of things that you could find interesting. It also includes a Top 5 list of the most popular restaurants around your area. It's like your mini lifestyle page within Google Maps.

2. For You

The "For you" tab at the bottom right of the app is to give you suggestions on the places that you could go to. These suggestions are not at all random. They are based on the previous choices you've made while using the app.

3. Your Match

Although it's not a section in Google Maps, "Your match" is seen right beside the rating of the restaurant you chose. Thanks to machine learning, the app adapts to how likely you are interested in its suggestions. It also gives you reasons as to why you will enjoy if you picked a certain restaurant or place.

4. Group Planning

Group planning is made easy with Google Maps. All you have to do is tap a photo for a while and then drag it to a list. This list can then be shared with a group of friends. This feature makes it a lot easier for groups to decide on where to go.

5. Augmented Reality

The new AR feature is supposed to help people who are finding it difficult to navigate a map. Because it shows the view of what you are seeing, you can easily determine whether you should be turning right now or at the next block.

These add-ons are all meant to provide a better user experience for all Google Maps users. As Maps makes itself more relevant and convenient to use, it would be of great help to your business if you get it listed. You might even be part of the suggestions the app gives to customers that are nearby.

Google Says: Stop Cherry-Picking Your Reviews - What Does it Mean?

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Google tells everyone to stop cherry-picking reviews! But, just what does it exactly mean anyway?

Google added a new policy in its existing list of seldom-enforced policies related to reviews on its Google Maps platform. The policy contained two very important things.

One, customers should never be discouraged or even prohibited by review-seekers from leaving negative reviews.

Two, customers should never be selected purposely based on their decision to leave a positive review.

Joy Hawkins identified this as the review-gating policy of Google. She mentioned in her post that, by convention, review-seekers send an email template to all customers. The template will first ask if the customer had a positive or a negative experience. If the customer answers in the positive, he or she is directed to leave a positive review. If the customer answers in the negative, he or she is directed to leave his or her negative feedback on a private channel.

This is plain and simple, cherry-picking. Perhaps some of us are guilty of this and we don’t even know it. Personally, I know how important it is to obtain positive reviews from customers. This means we’re doing good in our tasks. But, we might also be incurring the ire of Google and that is something we clearly don’t want.

So how do we interpret this new rule from Google?

First, I think Google is telling us that it doesn’t really care how we approach our review-seeking endeavors so long as it is clear on our customers that they can leave a negative review if they honestly think they have to. Google doesn’t even care exactly how we are going to ask our customers to leave a review. What matters to Google is that we’re making an effort to communicate the right of everyone to be heard, even if it is a negative review of our services or products.

Second, Google doesn’t want you to become fixated with the star rating left by your reviewers or even what they leave in their reviews. Honestly, I think we’re all guilty of this. Most of us would want a reviewer to always give us a 5-star rating. If not, we’re not going to publish his or her review without getting in touch with us first.

Third, Google wants you to employ an ‘all-or-nothing’ law when it comes to seeking reviews. If you are going to ask for a review, then so be it. A better way to go about this is to look at reviews as reviews. Detach the positive and negative. A review is a review, be it positive or negative.

Fourth, Google is saying that you should not prohibit or discourage reviews just because they’re negative or selectively solicit only the positive ones for the simple reason that Google is compelled to spell out these rules for you. How you wish to interpret it is definitely up to you.

With or without Google’s no-cherry-picking, no-review-gating policy, I think we owe it to our customers to have a voice in the very same platform we’re using to advance our aims. Don’t get fixated with 5 stars. Don’t put words into your customers’ mouths. Always, always seek an honest feedback.

CHECK YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION IN 30 SECONDS

5 Things You Must Do to Manage Your Reputation Online

Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Public relations professionals know that it is more difficult nowadays to keep one’s positive reputation because even a very slight oversight can instantly spell serious damage to the brand’s credibility. And if you have your very own business, here are 5 things you must do to manage your reputation online.

Always start with a bulletproof brand

It is exceptionally rare to see a brand not having any bad publicity in its lifetime. However, what separates the good from the bad is the presence of a strong foundation. That is why even if bad PR occurs after bad PR, these companies manage to stay well ahead of competition for the simple fact that their brand has been built in solid, bulletproof foundation. As such, if you really want to manage your reputation online, it is best to start by building a highly credible brand.

Be objective when handling online issues

Regardless of how cruel the negative publicity you are facing, it is best not to stoke it further by going on the defensive. This is a lot easier said, of course. Reading negative comments about your brand will surely fire you up to defend your company. Emotions typically flare up in such instances. Sadly, as emotions shoot skywards, objectivity is lost. The result? Bigger problems for your company. This is no way to manage your reputation.

Do reverse SEO

Everyone knows SEO. But perhaps only a few know what reverse SEO is, although this strategy is employed by many brands to manage their respective online issues. If the goal of SEO is to bring a particular URL on page one of the SERPs, the goal of reverse SEO is exactly the opposite. It will attempt to dislodge whatever negative write-up about your brand that is on page one of the SERP towards the latter pages, hopefully towards page 10 or even 100. You are essentially strengthening all the positive things about your brand to be placed on page 1 while pushing the negative issues further afield.

Keep track of customer reviews

You may need a team that is solely dedicated to monitoring a variety of customer review platforms especially those that are related to your business. The idea is to be fully aware of the existence of a potentially devastating customer review. Whatever you do, you need to act decisively and promptly, but in a constructive manner. Remember what we said about not stoking the fires of discontent further.

Set up social listening tools

Most consumers don’t actually make reviews of your brand. Instead, they go to social media platforms where they can share with the rest of the world their disgust over your brand. Again, you’ll need a team monitoring these social media sites so you can easily get in touch with dissatisfied customers and request them to solve the issue in a more private environment.

Managing your reputation online is a very tricky endeavor. But if you adhere to these 5 things then you can hurdle any negative publicity that is thrown your way.

If you want or need help with your online reputation and positive SEO, we can help . Reach out to us and don't hesitate to scan your reputation with our super powerful online reputation scanner .

5 Awesome Benefits of Using Chatbots to Advance the Aims of Your Business

Wed, 09 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Growing your business is a particularly challenging thing to do, especially if you’re surrounded by equally overzealous competitors who are also hell-bent on getting every customer to their fold. This is where chatbots can help you advance the aims of your business and blast your competition out of the water. Here are 5 awesome benefits of using such systems:

Available round-the-clock, all week long

Chatbots work 24/7. They are available night and day, come hell or high water. Even if there’s a blizzard outside or when everybody else is already tucked in for the night, chatbots are virtually working to take the call of your customers. They do it instantly, too. Once a caller is on the line, they don’t have to wait long for the next available customer care representative to pick up the phone. Your chatbot will instantly connect and answer any queries that they may have. This increases your business’ overall value since customers know you can be depended on to take their call promptly regardless of the time of day.

2. Manage multiple queries at the same time

If you have a customer service representative handling customer calls, they can only do so much since they will also be performing other tasks inherent in the customer issue. This can increase the number of errors which wouldn’t bode well in your aim to grow your business. Chatbots can handle multiple conversations all at the same time, guaranteeing customer satisfaction with every interaction. No human can ever duplicate that feat.

3. Save invaluable financial resources

Instead of hiring a team of dedicated customer care professionals to answer calls and chat with your customers, having a single program that runs the gamut of customer relations activities can actually be more practical in the long run. It may seem expensive at first, but if you factor in the monthly salaries of a customer care agent and multiply that with the number of agents you have in your team, you know that chatbots are the more practical solution.

4. Consistent provision of 100% customer satisfaction

Humans are known to commit mistakes especially when emotionally distraught or are bugged with an illness or a family problem. This can have a significant impact in the quality of customer interactions for your company. Chatbots, on the other hand, are completely free of human emotions that can significantly impair human capacity to provide 100% customer satisfaction every time.

5. Automate repetitive tasks

Repetitive tasks can be boring in the long run. True, you will have different customers calling every single day. But they will also be asking the same questions. It is inadvertent that your agents will grow bored of the same answers they have to give. Chatbots never complain as they are already programmed to do one very specific thing – to run your customer care program with utmost efficiency.

Growing your business can be made more effortless with the use of chatbots. You save invaluable financial resources while also guaranteeing the availability of high-quality customer care activities delivered promptly and with utmost precision.

How Does Mark Zuckerberg's Congress Hearing About Facebook Affect Local Business Marketing?

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

You've probably heard of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Congress hearing just recently. Even if you haven't seen it, you most definitely were able to catch a few memes or articles describing how it all went down.

A lot of articles suggest that it's the rise of Silicon Valley and the exposure of the government's lack of understanding regarding the Internet let alone Facebook's business model. Some even applaud Zuckerberg's calm even if he was under fire for a total of 10 hours. Imagine yourself facing a full Congress with almost every senator badgering you with a question that you have to answer in the best way possible. Seems impossible, right? Well, apparently, Mark Zuckerberg did it.

The hearing was supposed to focus on the issues regarding personal and private data that Facebook allegedly exposes or sells to third parties. However, it became an opportunity for other Internet-related issues to surface such as viewpoint discrimination that happens on Facebook.

There was also a brief description of what happened in the Cambridge Analytica issue where 300,000 Facebook users and their families and friends (amounting to 87 million people) who answered surveys from Aleksander Kogan had their personal information sold.

An Apologetic CEO

Even at the start of the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg was already apologetic about how it had come to this. In his opening statement, he says,

"...but it's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm, as well. And that goes for fake news, for foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.

We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. And it was my mistake. And I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.”

Hands down to his humility and his accountability.

My Two Takeaways

If there is anything that we'll learn from Zuckerberg's hearing it's these:

Zuckerberg is good at evading questions;
he's even a lot better in seizing every opportunity to show how he knows his company inside out while exposing those who don't.

So let's talk about how these two things showed in the hearing.

First of all, if you listen closely to the hearing, you'll notice the CEO always dodging questions that he may or may not have the answer to. He's said, "I can have my team follow up with you" a dozen times in many different phrases that you can even start counting. You'd hear him say "I can make sure that our team follows up with you on anything...", or "I'm happy to have my team follow up with you on more information..."

Aside from knowing that Zuckerberg knows how to dodge pointed questions, you'll also get a sense of how prepared he was for the interrogation even if he barely answered them. He knew that it would be wise to stick to the script and to maintain composure even under fire. Although there were one or two questions that rattled him, it was still his overall composure that made him win.

When it comes to him knowing his business, this comes as no surprise. He created Facebook on his own in a dorm room and he has built the company from the ground up. What can you expect? Of course, he knows what he's talking about. What's unexpected and a little funny is that the Senate didn't seem to know anything about it. As questions started to be asked, you'll feel that some of the Senators had no idea what they were asking.

The Top 5 Questions that Exposed the Senate

From Senator Maria Cantwell of D-Washington (Democrat)

"Is this guy out-foxing the foxes or is he going along with what is a major trend in an information age to try to harvest info for political forces?

2. From Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii (Democrat)

"If I'm mailing - emailing within What's App, does that ever inform your advertisers?" Mark Zuckerberg answers with a "No, we don't see any of the content in What's App. It's fully encrypted."

But the senator doesn't stop. He even adds a follow-up question, "...let's say I'm emailing about Black Panther within What's App, do I get a Black Panther ad?"

This line of questioning only exposes how a good number of senators do not understand the scope and limitations of Facebook. What made it worse was that even if Zuckerberg explained how it works, the senators failed to see the logic behind it.

3. From Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri (Republican)

"There are days when I wonder if “Facebook friends” is a little misstated. It doesn't seem like I have those every single day."

That hardly seems to be Zuckerberg's fault, right?

4. From Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska (Republican)

"So how many data categories do you store, does FB store?

Talk about exposing pertinent information on live television.

5. And last but not the least, from Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah (Republican)

"How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?

And Zuckerberg's answer was short and sweet, "Senator, we run ads."

So how does this affect me as a marketer or a video creator?

Even though Zuckerberg has left the Congress unscathed, the same cannot be said for online marketers and video creators. Here are some of the things you'll notice starting today or as Facebook continues to focus on privacy settings.

Many of your streaming applications will lose access

This is mainly because Facebook is trying to manage privacy even within online groups. In their plight to limit the personal and private data being shared online especially when people interact with strangers all over the world, the streaming sites you usually go to for subscriptions will be lessened.

2. Live streaming videos and shows will be more difficult

It goes without saying that live streaming videos will be more difficult especially when streaming applications will lose access. Third-party applications who live stream will experience difficulty in connecting with users or a site shutdown as the worst.

3. Less audience reach

Obviously, as websites and groups are taken down, the channels where you reach your viewers will decrease. Thus the audience will also decrease in number. Your reach does not end in the likes and shares you get on social media. It will extend to the ads that show on the pages of people whom you are relevant to.

According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, "If you want an ad-free Facebook, you're going to have to pay for it." In other words, if you want to lessen the data you share online that sites use for targets, then you have to pay for Facebook use.

When this was clarified in the hearing, Mark Zuckerberg reiterated that Facebook has a feature wherein those who do not want their data to be used for ads "can turn off third-party information." Zuckerberg further explained that although personal data is used to target ads, people are more tolerant on this than having ads pop-up that is completely irrelevant to them.

No one wants an impersonal Facebook. As much as possible, it would be better if you have ads that are close to your interests and hobbies. If you can't remove ads from the equation, then you might as well get ads that you will be interested in. Besides, those who still fight for complete data protection and privacy are fighting a losing battle. There is more to advertisements than getting your personal information - information that you have voluntarily given on Facebook.

4. Higher costs

Because you want to maintain the reach of your posts, you would have to pay higher than the usual just so you can get the same results. Since it's already stated that your reach will decrease, you want to pay more so that Facebook continues to connect you with those who will find your relative. The more services of Facebook that you use, the higher the expenses you will incur.

5. More regulation and management of data

You're probably already experiencing this. Once Facebook admitted their mistake in not putting enough effort in protecting data and discriminating against religious institutions, political figures, etc., Zuckerberg made it a point to look into the previous cases of shutting down pages and people online.

Similar to this scenario is the closing of the Diamond and Silk's page which was a page for Trump supporters.

Moving forward, we aren't sure what changes and modifications Mark Zuckerberg intends to make on Facebook. What we do know now is that he was the one who roasted the Congress and not the other way around. Also, regardless of the changes that will happen in the future, you should be able to create a solid fan base that goes beyond social media. But if you are using Facebook to market your videos and to gain engagement, then you have to play by Facebook's rules.

10 Proven Strategies to Use in Your Subject Lines to Entice More People to Read Your Emails

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

With inboxes getting inundated with emails from every imaginable organization, businesses have to think hard and fast about getting the attention of their target customers so that they will have a much higher chance of their emails getting opened and read by their target audience. Here are 10 strategies that you can use on your subject lines to help guarantee your target customers will open your emails.

Point an information gap.

Everybody is technically doing the same thing, yet there are those who simply do it better. Give them a promise that they truly desire and point out a gap in information and you are guaranteed to have about 41.59% of your emails being opened.

Write something controversial.

Man is classically intrigued by conflict and controversies. Just look at social media platforms and you can see a lot of folks arguing. Get your readers to pick their side. If you can do this, you’re guaranteed about 41.49% of your emails being opened.

Use the “some… while others” technique.

People naturally would want to know why some are more successful at doing certain things than others. It arouses curiosity and plays to the reader’s innate desire to become better. This technique can guarantee you an email open rate of nearly 41.49%.

Use proclamation headlines.

Using big and bold statements that can sometimes border on being offensive is sure to grab attention. Unfortunately, you have to be very careful in phrasing your line as people don’t like being insulted. Address your proclamation in the general sense and not directly to your email recipient.

Be realistic about using the word “extraordinary”.

Be careful when using the word “extraordinary”. It may get almost 38% of your recipients to open your email but it could easily backfire if you fail to substantiate your claims of ‘extraordinariness’.

Think about before-and-after scenarios.

People love to know how a particular problem was solved or how a certain activity progressed over time. If you can communicate this in your subject line, then you’re guaranteed on open rate of more than 37%.

Arouse your reader’s curiosity.

There are certain words that can really work like magic. For example, using the word “weird’ will have people naturally thinking what is weird with what you have. Curiosity will drive more than 37% of your target audience to open your email.

Write something they can relate to.

The key here is to find meaningful words that you can use during special occasions. For instance, you can simply write “Freedom!” in your subject line during the annual Fourth of July celebrations since everyone will be talking about independence and freedom.

Tell them like it is.

What you want to achieve is for your reader to think whether it is worth checking out what you have made for them or not. For example, you can write in the subject line “They asked me to give them tough love. I did. And it’s on video.”

Identify the right promise to give to your reader.

If you can create a very realistic and very specific promise to your reader, then there is a 35% chance that your email will be opened and read. For instance, you can write “How to make other people like you in 10 seconds max.”

It’s not easy to make subject lines that will grab your reader’s attention. But if you can find the right formula, then email marketing has just become a lot easier. For more information about how to make email marketing work for you business get in touch with us. If you have a customer list or old list that isn't getting the proper attention don't wait any longer, start engaging that audience.

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Facebook Says No more Fake Social Posting From Businesses. Now What Do We Do?

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Members of the business community who have used Facebook as one of their marketing platforms were jolted by the post of Facebook’s co-founder, CEO, and Chairman, Mark Zuckerberg. To paraphrase, Facebook is about to initiate some changes in its focus which can have a significant impact on those organizations and groups that have used the social media platform as a marketing tool. More meaningful social interactions are now the name of the game; no longer relevant content created by clever viral post makers.

The takeaway message is quite simple: business organizations must not depend on a single online platform, be it social media, advertising, or otherwise, to drive lead generation. Facebook started out as a means of connecting people in an online platform. Because of this growing connection of individuals, the platform became the preferred vehicle for many businesses to connect to and with their target audience. So many big brands created faux social fronts and play acted with all of us by creating albeit engaging but fake social content to drive brand awareness and even clicks and sales.

Unfortunately, over time this has lead to a reduction in meaningful social interactions. What happened in most cases is that products and services were shoved right into the lives of people who were on Facebook to connect with others and not necessarily to buy something. Companies with big budgets for viral post development that were disguised as social interaction but were in fact “free” advertising were dominating our feeds. Our friends and family and “meaningful” connection were just getting lost in the sea of marketing content.

Facebook set out to be a place for meaningful personal interactions. This principal objective of Facebook has somehow been neglected as the platform has gotten wholesaled by big business.

It now looks like Facebook took cognizance of this and has taken up a stand to draw the line to separate those that are using Facebook for its primary intended purposes from those who are only using it to advance their own economic aims.

Business organizations need to rethink their Facebook strategy. It was never Ok to assume the posting to a fan page with thousands of likes would be a “marketing strategy.” So if this was you -- things just got really hard. Now you have to be a legit marketer and advertiser to get reach and get in front of people with relevant ads that drive leads and sales.

Shifting your focus from content-grind models should help you steer your organization in the right direction especially in the face of Facebook’s looming, industry-sweeping changes. Now is the time to focus on creating more meaningful social interactions with anyone on Facebook and to realize that if you want that traffic and access to the data you have to advertise.

Which we think is great. This is the biggest blessing of 2018. Now small and medium sized companies will have a fair playing field if they are willing to take a professional approach to advertising and creating content. As a digital marketing agency for many clients with limited resources this just cleared the field and opened up the game.

And yes this is good for Facebook’s bottom line. They basically just carved out “free” advertising and are forcing businesses to pay if they want reach. The good news is if you know what you are doing with audiences, ad creative & re-targeting then you have the chance to really improve your results.

So what do we do now? Create great ads, refine and evaluate our audience selection, make sure our targeting is spot on and test, test, test.

Click to start professional advertising for your business