Create The Movement Podcast
Brad Post, CEO Create the Movement
Liz Montgomery, COO Create the Movement
Brad Post, Create the Movement: All right! This is another addition of Create the Movement podcast. My name is Brad Post. And I’m sitting here with Liz Montgomery.
Liz Montgomery, Create the Movement: That’s right.
B: Liz, how are you doing today?
L: I’m doing excellent. Thank you.
B: Awesome. Well, we talked last week, kind of about, when a new client comes to us, what we look at. Right? What do you want to talk about today?
L: Well, we talked about what we assess initially with them. So, today we’re going to talk about, now that we’ve gathered all that research and information from them, and from their online presence we see what reputation they have and so on. Now, we go, “Okay. What is the best way for us to create a marketing strategy for them? And what tools do we have to do that with?”
B: Okay. Perfect.
L: So, we’re going to talk through those.
B: Kind of the marketing strategy. I think one thing about talking about their marketing strategy is there’s a lot of services that we can offer. Right? And those are…we kind of broke it down into seven different services, for the most part?
L: Yes.
B: Which are: websites (kind of their overall website), and I’m looking this up because. So, kind of the way we do business we have seven different things that we look at. We have seven different core values as a business. We have seven different services. There’s seven different colors in our new logo. And so, to kind of break down the services we have: search engine optimization, paid advertising, search engine marketing, content (which is blog posting), web design, branding, social media, podcasting, video development. I think that’s seven. Right?
L: I think that’s seven. Yeah.
B: And a lot of it depends on the client’s budget. Right?
L: Okay. Yes. Definitely.
B: Because, you know, we could offer them all of those services. And the next thing you know they’re like
L: “I only had $30 to spend this month!”
B: Exactly!
L: I don’t know if I can cover all of those services.
B: So, that’s kind of the first thing we look at is, and you know, let’s talk about your marketing budget. A lot of companies don’t really have that. Some of them do; some of them don’t. They’re just like, “I don’t really know what we’re willing to spend.” So, I think we just kind of look at that and, you know, offer the services, and base it on what research we did. Right?
L: So, yeah, once we have an idea of their budget, then we can say, “Okay. Here are the seven tools that we have that we can apply to your online marketing campaign, or online marketing presence.” And then, we want to look at what the business is, and which services are going to benefit them the most. So, like for, get the most bang for their buck.
B: Right.
L: So to speak. Right? Is one type of business going to need more social media services, or is another type need more web design? For example, I think I said the other day, like a, someone who makes dresses for dolls. A doll dress making company.
B: Okay.
L: They’re going to want an Instagram, a Pinterest. They’re going to need a lot of image-driven content. So, folks can see what they’re creating, and what they’re making. They’re also probably going to need an online store, if they plan on shipping online. Whereas, like, and I’ve maybe used this example before, an attorney, who is like an aviation attorney, okay? And they get all of their business from referrals. So, different airlines say, “Well, we only use these ten attorneys for the service.” And they’re on that list. So, for them, because the CEO of American Airlines isn’t going to be looking for their attorney in the search results online, right? Or on Facebook, necessarily. They’re going to that list. Then we want their website, their money, to be invested in a beautifully built, engaging website. That the design is nice. The user interface is nice. And it’s getting all of the questions answered they needed. It’s informative.
B: Right.
L: So, that’s part of the strategy, right, behind it.
B: What was kind of neat, and we don’t have to go into full details, but this morning, for instance, I have a client that’s looking at selling a product. And they, you know, came to us to see what we could do. And so, what’s I think kind of neat is, we look at it in phases, also.
L: Yeah.
B: We set kind of a big picture. And I’m going to give Dominick Montgomery credit for this. Is just kind of a big picture vision of what we think you’re marketing should like for the next six, twelve months. Two years. Which helps, because, you know, we are on, and most of our products run on a month-to-month basis. Meaning, if a client wants to cancel with us, they can. They just have to give us a 30 day. So, building that big-picture vision, “Hey, here’s month one – we’re going to do this to your website. Here’s month two – we’re going to do this.” It also holds us accountable. Right? To the deliverables, and what not.
L: Right.
B: You were kind of talking about that a little bit this morning as well.
L: Yeah. So, each is like, you know, the first quarter, then we say, “Okay. We’re going to do these.” Palatable things that can actually see happening. “There’s going to be ten new blog posts, you know, two videos, you know, your website built and launched within the first quarter.” So, at the end of the first quarter, they can go back and say, “Okay. Here’s what they proposed they’d do for me. And this is what I paid for. And I’m actually seeing that happen.”
B: Right.
L: You know?
B: Right.
L: And that gives the client a sense of comfort too, to know that like, “Okay. They’re following through on everything.” Because, as we’ve heard, sometimes a marketing company might just say, “Well, they don’t understand the technical details. So, we’re just going to pop a price on there, and not tell them what to expect.” And then, the client feels a little bit like, “Well, yeah, I don’t know the technical details. So, I just have to trust them? I have to just trust them, and give them this money and they’re going to do something with it and hope it works out?” So, it just, it adds a sense of – it builds trust with your client to do that.
B: I think that’s what we thrive our company on, is we’re building that trust factor with clients. You know? And I don’t mean to get too technical into our company, but in any marketing company that you’re looking at, you want to be able to trust your people. I mean, yes, you know, if they don’t list their services, you can say you trust them. But I think it’s better to just be transparent with what’s being done.
L: Right.
B: So, the deliverables can be gauged. “Hey, you said you were going to build me a Facebook page. And I don’t have a Facebook page.” You know?
L: Right. Right. As simple as that.
B: “You know, you told me this was going to happen, and it didn’t.” But I think when you look at, you know, really, it helps us to have a budget.
L: Yeah.
B: Because we have a lot of clients that are like, “I don’t know what my budget is.” And were like, “Okay. It’s 20 grand a month.” “Well, no, not that much!”
L: Let’s start there!
B: You know?
L: Right.
B: So, just kind of having fun and joking around, but still getting. “Well, okay, give us a commitment. How much are you willing to spend? We have packages that start at $100 a month. We have packages that start at 10 grand a month. You know? What are you wanting?”
L: And we can base again, gauge that off their goals too. Because sometimes they need to be educated a little bit. They might say, “Well, I only have $200 a month to spend.”
B: Right.
L: “But I want, you know, a Facebook built, a Twitter built, and Instagram. And I want posts on them six times a day.” And, it’s like, you’re not going to be able to that for $200. So, let’s talk about your budget. Can you expand to even a $1000. And we can do one post a day. You know?
B: Yup.
L: And so, kind of finding a way that’s going to serve both parties. Where it’s like here’s the services we can offer.
B: And another thing
L: Giving them an idea of what this type of service costs.
B: Right.
L: Because some folks, who are maybe brand new to online marketing, have no idea. The idea of, number one, what it costs, and why. Like all of the technical details that go into structured data on the backend.
B: Exactly.
L: Or, how complex that can be.
B: I think I’ve seen you do this before too. We work with attorneys, a lot of attorneys, and we kind of can ask them, “Well, hey, how much does it cost, or how much do you get paid when you get a case?”
L: Right.
B: “So, if you’re wanting to get two new cases a month, and that pays you $10,000. Then how much is it worth to get you those two new cases?”
L: Yeah, those cases.
B: So, you know, if you can kind of gauge it like that, looking at product, or seeing how much they are expecting revenue wise. I’ve got a few clients, they don’t pay very much, but they’re like, “Hey, I get one client every six months. And that pays for your services for the year Brad. So that’s all I need.”
L: Yeah.
B: So, I don’t give them some aggressive campaign with all of this other stuff. You know?
L: Yeah.
B: They’re just looking to grab that one client. And then there’s others that we have monthly calls with, and they’re very engaged with the process. And they know exactly how many clients brought from their website. How many clients from their social media. I mean, they know down to a T, as to what their numbers are.
L: Which is very smart, actually, in business. And it’s a lot easier to work with those folks as a marketing company, too. Because if they say, “We decreased in this much in this month.” We have the reporting and stuff to back it up.
B: Right.
L: So, we can say, “Well, your traffic went down because of this. Maybe we should restructure, rethink, and we can change to this now.” It’s always movable.
B: Yup.
L: You know? So, there’s always more options. Something you can do differently. If you want to focus on another practice area, “I want more business in this area.” So, I know there was a client that we had in the past that had a pay-per-click campaign going. And very strategically setup towards Veterans’ Benefits. And they got so many calls, because we had a really good guy working on that, strategizing that. They got so many calls for VA Benefits that they were like, “Stop! Stop! Stop! Okay, let’s focus all that money toward a different practice area.” You know? So, you want to be able to fluctuate that. Or, if they’re investing toward a practice area and it’s like, “I’m not getting a lot of bites on this.” Like elder law, for instance, like, well maybe the folks aren’t looking online as much. Maybe you need to do more publications, or something.
B: Right.
L: So, putting together a strategy that’s going to work for that specific business is really important.
B: I agree. I think it’s good, too. So, just kind of a recap, you look at what their budget is.
L: Right.
B: And one thing that Create the Movement, you know, our team, and the teams that we work with here are we put together a marketing campaign for them. We don’t take in each individual client and go, “Oh, we need to put them in this package. They need to go in this package. They need to go in that .” We work with them one-on-one, and that’s how we separate ourselves.
L: Right.
B: We don’t just try to “cookie cut” their package, or “cookie cut” their marketing campaign. We really, like we talked about last week, we really look at, “What are they doing? Where are they at? Let’s assess where you’re at.”
L: “And what do they like, too?” Sometimes, you know, we’ll have attorneys that just love social media. They’re up there posting, you know, interesting cases and situations. So, they’re really about that. Then there are other attorneys that I’ve worked with who say, “I don’t even want to know what’s happening online! Please, just bring me some business.”
B: Yes, exactly.
L: So, it needs to be customized to serve them.
B: Absolutely. To find out what their personality is. What their message is. And that’s kind of our goal. We find out what their message is and we turn it into a movement. You know?
L: Yeah.
B: And find out that yeah, that we can mirror their online marketing campaign towards their personality. Right? Rather than us just going out and doing a bunch of crazy videos and that’s not even their personality.
L: That don’t make any sense.
B: Yeah.
L: That’s why the word “strategic” comes up so much, is you go, “What is the message they want? What do they want their online presence to look like? And how do they want to be represented? And how can we hone in all of these tools to serve that purpose?”
B: Absolutely. Absolutely. Good stuff.
L: Yeah. Next, we’ll talk more about what happens once we present that to the client.
B: Yup. Good. Perfect. Join us on the next edition of Create the Movement podcast.
Outro: Thanks for listening to this edition of Create the Movement podcast. Visit us at createthemovement.com to discover how we can help you create a movement.
