Episode 9: Digital Marketing Q&A

With a handful of episodes under our belt, we felt this was a great opportunity to review what we’ve learned so far, as well as give our listeners more opportunity to ask questions. The feedback has been positive so far, and we’re so grateful that you are listening and encouraged that many of you are benefiting from this podcast, but we and our guests have been getting bombarded with follow-up questions we think are important to address. We’ve compiled a list of questions taken from social media, our customers, and all over the place and made it a point to get them answered for you.

On Creating and Maintaining Culture with Growth

Nick Lamb of Butler Heating & A/C in Dayton, OH asked the question:

“A lot of companies our size tend to think that it’s tough to create/maintain culture as you grow. How does your culture evolve as your company grows?”

Simply put, you have to prioritize culture. It’s not secondary, it’s number one. If you take care of your employees—educating them, caring about them, and making them as good as they can be—they will genuinely care about the company and customers to the maximum. At RYNO, we do a service day every month for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s a chance to give back to the community. The other reason we do this is because it brings us together as a family, giving us a chance to bond closer and strengthen our culture. We’ve been doing this from the start, and as our company has grown and extended to remote employees it’s become more difficult logistically and a larger cost, but the impact it has is vital to our success. Sure, it’s a short-term cost to cultivate culture but the long-term results are immensely valuable. No matter the size of your company, you have to invest in your people and make culture a high priority.

On Balancing Digital Marketing with “Old-Fashioned” Marketing

Eric Wilson of Wilson Services in Sparta, NJ wanted to know:

“What is a good balance between social media/PPC/SEO campaigns, and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth, referrals, involvement with local events, etc.?”

You can’t put all your eggs in one basket. RYNO is a digital marketing company, but we understand that just investing in one medium for marketing is not the ideal approach. However, some things do make more sense depending on where you’re at with your business. For immediate lead generation, PPC is probably your best bet for direct exposure. Social media ads can be successful, but using it as more of a conversation piece may be the best method. Remember, social media is meant to be social, so things like useful info and engagement with your targeted audience isn’t going to be directly generating leads, but it can contribute to your branding and exposure.

Radio ads, TV campaigns, display ads, and traditional media is more for your branding. It’s not going to bring in leads like PPC/SEO will, but we 100% believe that branding is more important than it has ever been. Leads are obviously important for sales, but having a recognizable and trusted brand is key to sustainable success.

You have to remember that you’re playing several angles at once. There is a short game and a long game to be considered. Balance your marketing with what your business needs now, and then what it will need to continue to grow in the future—keeping in mind your current resources.

Growing Digital Presence with a Smaller Marketing Budget

Another big question we’ve been asked is:

“If I am a small company with not a lot of marketing dollars, what are some things I can focus on to grow my digital presence”

Your first step should be getting Google Guaranteed. This will allow you to participate in LSA (Local Service Ads), and you only pay per lead. If you aren’t sure how to go about this and want some more information, shoot us a message and we’re more than happy to help. It’s saturating quickly, so you’ve got to move fast on this one. It also requires a bit of a time investment as well as being a 2-3 month turnaround, but it’s one of the best approaches for a good ROI with a smaller marketing budget.

Secondly, make sure your website is on point. Just having a website isn’t enough anymore, and quite frankly hasn’t been enough for a while. Even in a rural market, you need to have a website that is easy to use, easy to contact your business through, optimized for desktop and mobile, and has the right call to actions to make them want to call you. It has to be fast, too. If it doesn’t load quickly, you’re all but guaranteed to lose some leads.

Another little piece of advice: make sure your Google My Business (GMB) listing is correct. Double-check the phone number, address, and all other information to make sure everything is accurate. It will help your ranking in the long run. Also, if you’re available for emergency service, make sure to change your hours of operation. The last thing you want is for someone to search for AC repair at 6pm and see that you’re closed because your hours of operation show from 9AM-5PM.

Creating the Best Call-To-Actions

“What are some of the best call-to-actions that you’ve seen perform the best?”

We’ve run literally thousands of combinations of different CTAs to find out which ones work the best for service leads, install leads, drain cleaning leads, you name it. There are five basics for what you need to do to make the right CTA, and we call them the “5 Ps”. The first two are Price and Promotion, and while you don’t have list prices on your website, it’s inevitably going to come up. We know there a ton of variables that factor into a price, but even just a ballpark or baseline can be helpful. At a minimum, you’ll want to give a promotion, even if it’s just a perceived value. Something like “$250 off of early AC installation as low as $79/month” is going to perform exceptionally well.

The third P is Product. Don’t make people guess what you do. Clarify what you offer, front and center. Next is Place. Where are you? Your customer may not know where you do business, and where you don’t! Make your service area clear so your customers know where you actually provide service. This should be easy to find and read. The last P is Personality, and your business has to have it. Now, this can be done in a number of ways, but you have to do something to make your business stand out. Maybe it’s a theme for your website, a funny slogan, a catchy tagline—think outside the box!

Utilizing Facebook

A question we received from Andrew Edwards—fittingly, from Facebook:

“At what point do you use Facebook for marketing other than for having a standard presence and reviews?”

If you have the time to be running Facebook ads organically, and you can post creative things, why wouldn’t you do it? It’s free, only costing you the sweat equity that goes into crafting the post. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or another social platform, it’s a chance to be creative and have free exposure. Just remember that you’re on a social platform, and using it to bombard your potential customers may not be the best approach. Still, the bottom line is it’s free, and it’s a chance to build your brand and create a story for your company.

Ask Away!

We want to answer more of your questions. At some point, we’ll probably do a live Q&A of some sort, but until then we want to give you a chance to have your questions heard. The entire reason for launching this podcast was to give you knowledge, wisdom, and tactical takeaways for your business to continue to grow. So, if you have any questions for us about digital marketing or the podcast, you can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We look forward to hearing from you!