Bear Wade (00:07):

This is the Unify My Marketing Show, where we believe every business deserves to look more professional, have a clear message and strives to become an industry leader. I’m your host fare Wade. And I want to hear from you, what questions do you have about growing your business about marketing? I w I I’m just obsessed with helping companies grow. So leave your question unifymymarketing.com or at bearwade.com. I would love to hear you and we’ll feature you on the show. So I also want to ask you to subscribe to your YouTube channel or anywhere you listen to podcasts. So today we’re kicking off the show with a question from Mike, Mike, what is your question? 

Mike (00:44):

Hey, bear. I appreciate you having, uh, the ability to ask some questions on your website. Um, so I’ve got a small company and I really think the best way for me to communicate to some of my customers, what our products can do for them is through some video work. Um, but, and I’ve shot some small videos with my cell phone and whatnot, but the problem is I get around to figuring out what am I going to do with this? How many get this information in front of them? How do I make sure it’s getting to the right people? Then I start thinking about how well I got to do that through my website, but my website is missing some things. And I go through this whole circle of where do I get started? So that’s my question for you. I’ve got information. I want to communicate to my customer base now, but I realized that rebuilding my website and, and, uh, you know, finding target customers can take awhile. Um, where do I get started? Um, and, uh, what advice do you have for that, 

Bear Wade (01:40):

Mike? Thank you so much for your question. And boy, this is something that’s a lot of people struggle with, including me, which is just making sure that you get what you’re creating out there to the world. So I have a few tips and these are by no means a perfect strategy, but it will help frame how you think about getting your stuff out there. So, first of all, you tipped your hand that your website’s not ready. There is no point in sending out videos, if your website’s not converting traffic. So start there. And this is all part of the brand steps. You can learn more about that at bear way.com/steps. And so with that, you know, if once your website is converting viewers into customers, then we go out and grab them with video. And so make sure that in your videos, you have a clear call to action. 

Bear Wade (02:32):

You know, it catches their attention, which I bet you have no problem doing, but then just making sure you drive them to wherever you want them to go to the website, um, to call whatever that call to action is, or to buy right now with the link in the description. You know, however you want to do that, then you want to make sure that you are sending this content, not just on social media or through paid ads, which we featured in the episode before. So if you want to learn more about paid ads, you can learn a little bit more about that in the episode prior to that episode, too. Uh, but you want to make sure that you are continuing to provide value over and over to your email database. So hopefully you’ve been collecting a database of your customers or prospects, and you can continue to reach them, but make sure, you know, in the videos that you’re creating, that you’re adding a bunch of value, like a ton of value, like give them the secret sauce. 

Bear Wade (03:30):

They will trust you. They will learn from you. And though you’ll be positioned more as a leader. So give it all away. Um, obviously you can’t give your products away for selling products, but at least show them how it works, show them why it’s so much more beneficial to using your product over somebody else’s and maybe how easy it is to use, you know, try and just show, you know, guide them, uh, be the leader in front of them, showing them how it works and how it, um, don’t let, don’t confuse them with having them try and figure out how to, uh, get involved into their, or, uh, incorporated into their system. Just show them how it works. So video is great for that. And so, uh, I would continue or urge you to continue to make videos and don’t just make one and publish doing every day, make and make, you know, if you want to make it raw with your cell phone, I think that’s fine. 

Bear Wade (04:22):

Just make sure the audio is good. Make sure the lighting is, you know, is good. Your camera, your cell phone. Camera’s probably fine, but it’ll do much better with some good lighting and good audio. So if you have a mic you can clip to it, uh, to your, you know, attached to your phone, that would go a long way and, and, you know, make sure that you’re clear. So, um, you know, if you have some bullet points, go with that and uh, you know, go through it, respect their time and move through it. Another technique or tip that I have is to use what we call, uh, in our industry, a lead magnet. So you’re going to provide maybe a PDF or a video hidden video. That’s, you know, you can kind of position as a course, anything that you can provide a bunch of value to your viewers in exchange for their email address and, and that way you can continue to grow and sell to them and offer, you know, more knowledge as to, uh, in your industry to them and provide, you know, any other services you can, it’s so much easier to resell to somebody who has already purchased from you, as you probably know, then, uh, finding new prospects. 

Bear Wade (05:25):

So getting their email address and collecting that data, email database is very important. So a lead magnet is, you know, if you go to your website, you would have a download our top five tips for our product or whatever, you know, when choosing something in your industry. Um, like I just did something for a, uh, a realtor, right? So how to know which realtor to choose, you know, our top five tips for evaluating the best realtor for you. So that would be the lead magnet. And, uh, then you, you know, because you’re a specialist, you could write that information and, uh, you know, design it, have it look real pretty, and then offer that, you know, offer a tease to that on the website and, and put in a place for them to fill out their email address. And then that would trigger an automation to send them the PDF, uh, after they, uh, fill in their email address and click submit. 

Bear Wade (06:19):

So that, that way you’re giving them free information. They start to trust you and, and you start to build a conversation around, uh, providing value. So that is my, my tips for video. Um, the last one’s not really video, but I was trying to, I wanted to articulate the fact that you could use your videos as maybe a course or some hidden place, you know, have a hidden page on your website that only, uh, the people that have signed up, maybe you can make it password protected, or maybe it’s just a weird link that people wouldn’t find and you would then be able to offer more value to them and kind of makes it exclusive that way. So that’s what I encourage you to do. Thanks, Michael. So much for your question. If you weren’t making a big impact in your industry, it might be because you don’t have a clear brand. It doesn’t look professional and people don’t take you serious. So we’ve created this challenge for you. It’s called from land to bam, and it’s a five day challenge online for about one hour a day. We are going to run through all of the brand steps and get your brand transformed from bland to bam. I encourage you to sign up today@bearweight.com. And while you’re there, please submit a question and we’ll feature you on the show. 

Speaker 3 (07:35):

[inaudible] 

Bear Wade (07:39):

Up next on the show. I have a little rant for you. You know, I, I, uh, and this comes from love. I want to make sure that you, as business owners are taken care of and I really want to support you. And, um, this comes from a place of my own experience. And so I want to share it with you today, a cup over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to interview people and find a solution, uh, to have a social media manager work with our company. And it’s either somebody who I will a contract or a company I will hire out. And so I’ve been interviewing all sorts of different, uh, companies, mostly people that are self-employed and they have their own business doing social media for handful of clients. And so here is my rant. The rant goes like this. If you can’t make it easy to buy from you, then I can’t buy from you easily. 

Bear Wade (08:29):

And that okay. Rants over. Basically it comes down to, I, you know, I’ve been interviewing a handful of probably 10 different people. Most of them, not agencies, but, you know, uh, self-employed um, small business owners that run social media for different companies. And they’ve made it so hard for me to just engage, engage in their services. I have to set up a meeting, I have to then have phone call and then I have to have, um, them come up with a proposal and then get it back to me. And it just takes forever. You know, it takes two weeks to turn this sucker around and I know I’m losing people on social media and I need to be out there now. And so, uh, that has been frustrating to me. Also, everybody asks, what do I want? You know, what am I looking for? And as the person who is the professional, the person I’m trying to hire, you should be guiding me. 

Bear Wade (09:28):

And the way you can do that is through your pricing model, through your pricing structure. So if you offer a service, um, whether you’re a coach or you provide, you know, graphic design or whatever the service is, you can guide us with your pricing. And so that’s what I want to break down today. I want you to think about, you know, you’re going to start to build some experience or you can learn from other people. And I want you to find once you to try and define what those elements are that make social media, we’ll say successful. And so is that two posts a week, five posts a week? Is it two posts a day? You know? Um, and with that, obviously it would cost more, but give me three tiers. You know, obviously I probably won’t jump into the highest tier, but I also don’t want to, uh, you know, uh, not do it. 

Bear Wade (10:22):

So give me some clear, give me a clear understanding of what your pricing is and what I get for that. And not only that, try not to think about it so much about what you have to do, but what I get out of it. And so I am a victim of this because sometimes I get in the weeds and I’m like, well, I can do this and I can do that. And you can do that. You know, you can pay me to do this and you can pay me to do that. And that’s not, I don’t think the best outcome for either, either parties. I want you as the service provider to tell me what you think I should do, or what you see, what you’ve seen work in the past. And so list those things, what you can do three posts a week, and I will design the graphics for you. 

Bear Wade (11:08):

I will research hashtags. I will, uh, schedule your posts. Or I w I will do it live. I will do it right then and there. Uh, and I will schedule out because we know that posting, uh, organically, rather than using some scheduling software, uh, has better traffic, uh, the algorithms know that. And so it gets seen more if you do it more authentically, you know? And so I want you to think about that. If you’re doing, you know, if you’re a social media manager for Instagram, you know, you want to make sure that you’re offering reels and stories and posts and, and, um, comment monitoring. And so, you know, there’s a handful of things that you’re going to do over and over when you have these clients. And I want you to define what those are and give me three options and then price that middle option up just a tad. 

Bear Wade (11:57):

So either somebody is going to come in and they’re going to want to get started, or that middle one, if, if it’s done right. And it pushes a little bit more to the more expensive third option, it just pushes them to the, to the best option, you know? And so, you know, there’s a lot of philosophy if he there, but try and spell it out and make it easy. And then I want to be able to click a button on your website where I can buy the thing. And I want my, um, I want my credit card or my debit card to auto-populate. So if you’re using a payment gateway on your website, test it and see if it actually will populate your, uh, credit card information or debit or debit card, because if it doesn’t do that, it’s just one more barrier. Somebody’s got to get up and go get their wallet and type in the numbers. 

Bear Wade (12:43):

It just makes it harder. So make it as easy grease, those wheels as best you can make it as easy as possible. Another one, I have another example here as part of the rant, which is a, there’s a company that I, um, I really liked their service. What they do is they, um, they offer me a way to buy somebody, a coffee, and I think that’s so cool. Or, you know, it’s like the I’ll buy you a beer. You know, it’s like a token of appreciation. And the way it happens is I, you know, I would put in their email address and, uh, that email would be, would be sent to that person that I want to give a coffee to. And then they can print off a gift card and take it into, let’s see Starbucks or the coffee shop. Right. And I love this idea, but to get signed up for it, I have to, uh, you know, I, I emailed the, I filled out a form on their website and then the guy emailed me and said, thank you for inquiring. 

Bear Wade (13:41):

Uh, T let me know what your availability is. Well, I’m really busy and I have just little tiny slots of time throughout the week that I can meet with people. And so, and it’s always changing. And so I just kind of left it because I didn’t know what was coming up for client work and the recording, and, you know, um, and so I just had a lot going on, so I didn’t fill it out. Boom. He lost a sale, but then he followed up and I thought this was cool. He followed up with a gift card to me. He’s like, Hey, I, you know, I’d love to touch base with you and you know what, let’s get a coffee together. And he gave me a gift card for coffee, which I thought was super cool, but he didn’t make it easy for me to buy from him again. 

Bear Wade (14:19):

So now he’s lost the five bucks. So the 20 bucks coffee costs these days and I still am not a client of his. And so I, that just bugs me as somebody who owns a business, you want to make it easy to buy from you. And so, you know, if you have to do proposals, you know, try and streamline it as best you can, if you can take their money upfront, do that. I think we’re getting out of the model of tracking hours and then, you know, fulfill, you know, I’m sending an invoice. You know, people want to know what their pricing is upfront. And if you are, if you’re worried about sharing your pricing, then you’re not selling your value enough, make sure you oversell, you know, the ROI you’ve returned for other customers or clients, which again, I’m not great at because I have, you know, because I’m not an analytical person, I’m more of an artist for years. 

Bear Wade (15:13):

I didn’t pay attention to that information. And now I’m backtracking and trying to figure it all out and track it, but make sure you are selling your, your value to them. What do I get out of it if I engage in your services? So I don’t necessarily care that I’m, that you’re going to be posting three times for me, what I want is more followers. And from that, I want more people to be engaged and buy from me. That’s the ultimate goal is to sell. So keep that in mind, the next time you’re pricing something or not pricing something. Think about a way like, sit down with a piece of paper, write your three columns, figure out what the most, you know, if I could do it the best way possible and just fulfill the heck out of this thing for somebody, what would that be? 

Bear Wade (15:55):

And write down those bullet points and then take a few of those off that are important and have the price be a little bit lower and take a few more off and have that price be lower. And you got your three tiers and then make sure you use a, an easy way to take their money and for them to give you money and start that, uh, agreement with them. So I wish you luck work on your pricing. If you’re feeling stuck in how to craft your offer or your brand script and are trying to grow your email email list, then we have a solution for you and it’s called unify stage. So first what we do is we create a lead magnet now with social media, it’s, uh, you know, you, aren’t guaranteed to get everybody’s feed that follows you. There’s something like 4% or something stupid, stupid, crazy in the fact that you might have, I have a thousand followers, but only like 40 of them or whatever. 

Bear Wade (16:45):

I can’t do math, but not that many of them are actually seeing feed, uh, you know, are seeing your stuff in their feed. And so email is still the best way to reach people. So what we want to do is craft a lead magnet. It’s, we’re giving away some very valuable information in exchange for their email and that way we can continue to provide, um, content to them, provide, uh, solutions to them. And every once in a while, we can offer a sales opportunity to them. So, first we craft your lead magnet. Next, we’re going to craft your irresistible offer, which is, you know, it’s one thing to say, uh, you can buy this for this, but what if we start to build an offer that shows so much value, it’s almost impossible to not get it. That’s what we want to do for you. 

Bear Wade (17:31):

We want to craft an eras, irresponsible on irresistible, offer. It almost might be irresponsible for how good it looks, right? And so we want to make sure we craft that for you. Then we’re going to work on your brand, which is like your value proposition. It’s your overall company, you know, sales pitch. It’s the way that people understand what you do in a quick and clear way. Once you have that, we put it on your landing page. You start telling people they can remember it because it’s simple and easy to remember and boom, it spreads like wildfire. So we want to, uh, work on crafting your, your brand script. And then from there, we build out a landing page. We have a domain name, that points right to this thing. So if we’re talking about having, um, a lead magnet for, you know, your top five reasons or your top five, um, what are the top five things to look for in a realtor things? 

Bear Wade (18:33):

That’s probably not the right term qualities, the top five qualities to have in a realtor. You know, if you make that lead magnet, that PDF, we will build a landing page that, that looks and feels like what a homeowner would be looking for. You know, it has green grass, it has smiling faces. It has a fresh and vibrant colors. And on that page, you know, it could be accustomed thing like top five realtor solutions.com or whatever, you know, whatever that is. And this is going to point to, uh, this landing page. And from there, it has, uh, you know, uh, the cover of your, uh, your giveaway. And it also has a place for them to sign up with their email. And that will go into your CRM, you know, your, your content management tool, so that the software like MailChimp or active campaign, or, uh, uh, constant contact, something like that, that, you know, keeps all your emails in one space. 

Bear Wade (19:31):

So once they fill that out, an automation will be triggered and that will be sent out to them for that, you know, a link to that download. So this whole thing, unify stage, if you don’t have something like this, I encourage you to do it. You know, it’s a great offer and I hope you can sign up unify stage.com or bear way.com. Okay. So this is what a lead magnet looks like. And that, you know, you could have a video like this as well. So this is, is how it goes. How do you know if your website is good? How elements does it take to make a good website? Well, we have a checklist for you and you can get that@bearway.com. It’s absolutely free, but we’re going to walk through parts of it right now. And I, you know, it, you can sign up for it@bearwade.com, but here let’s kick it off. 

Bear Wade (20:19):

The first thing you need is a logo, big surprise, right? Kind of everybody knows that, but you would be surprised at how, um, a logo is not defined very well, or it’s not simple. And it’s complex. You want to keep your logo simple, if you can. And you know, let’s go back to the Nike swoosh and the McDonald’s arches, whether we like it or not, they are easily recognizable. And so we want to try and have a good, clear logo. Next is basic navigation. Now I think that a website shouldn’t have that many buttons in the navigation. You don’t need a hundred dropdowns unless you’re selling a bunch of stuff, but really try and keep your navigation clean and clear. You want to drive. I think the whole point of a website is to drive somebody to an action and just pick one action. So if it’s the book of discovery call, have that button book, a discovery call all up and down the website. 

Bear Wade (21:13):

If it’s about, uh, buying this product, you put the buy now button in the navigation and you make it bright and bold wherever you want them to go put it in the upper right hand corner. That is the it’s known to be a high traffic, um, uh, location. So make sure you put a button that is bright and bold in the upper right hand corner. But if you have only like three to five buttons on your navbar, you’re doing great. If you have 15 drop-downs and 5,000 places, odds are, you’re just confusing your viewer. Now, if you have a magazine or a newspaper or something that your new source that you’re running all the time, now, obviously it’s going to be, uh, more complex, but you really just want to get the people to the newest news, you know, or the newest feature. And so continue to make, make your navigation very simple and clear. 

Bear Wade (22:05):

And maybe you have a couple of buttons, but keep it light next. You want to make sure you have a headline. And it’s something that says what you are, or the benefit of working with you. And again, I’m going to kind of use this as a service provider. So you might have something that says, uh, we, I was going to use a plumber. We cleaned toilets. I need to come up with a better example. Let’s go back to the realer. So let’s say you’re looking for a home, you know, like you have to come up with the idea and I’m just going to kind of spit ball here without really researching it, which I probably should have done. But as a realtor, what does the, um, what does the viewer want? Well, they want a dream home. They want the home of their dreams that they can afford. And so what you could put as your headline is we help you find an affordable home of your dreams. Boom, right. That really helps explain, you know, what, what you do in a very clear way. And if you say it right, if I’m the viewer looking for a home and I’m trying to find a realtor, well, that’s what I want. I want the home of my dreams that I can afford. And I, of course I can 

Speaker 4 (23:11):

Afford, or of course I can get other homes 

Bear Wade (23:14):

In my dreams, but I can’t afford the whole goal is to find something in my price range that I actually want, because I always want the biggest castle. Right? I mean, this is kind of nature, but, um, you know, that think about your headline. And then underneath that you can have a sub-headline that says more about what you do or States your call to action. You know, if I’m a realtor, you know, um, call me today to book a two book showings or whatever that is, you know, to sign up for showings, have that call to action. And that can be part of your sub-headline if you want, but make sure you have a button that is easily to click put that button throughout the whole site. The next thing is you want to have good, clear photography? Um, I would say, gosh, it seems like maybe 50% of a website is good photography. 

Bear Wade (24:00):

If you don’t have good photography, you don’t have a good website. So you want to have hire professional for this and try and get something that either shows off the product that you’re using or the service that you provide, or the outcome of what they get. If, you know, like if I was a realtor, you could show people lounging in their bright, you know, new fancy home, uh, with cardboard boxes around them. And that speaks to them without showing you off as the realtor. Uh, you know, so that’s my aspirational identity. You know, if I’m looking for a house, that’s where I want to be. I want to be in that fresh and I want to smell the new carpet and I want to, uh, think about my future and all those things. So think about that with your hero image is what we kind of call the main photo that you’re going to use at the top of your website. 

Bear Wade (24:50):

And you can use that on the front of your brochure, and you can use that on your posters or, you know, on your social media, but lock in that photo and make it great. So next is flow. You want to think through, if somebody were to scroll down your website and they’re going to skim through it super fast, you need to think through the flow, like the logical questions that they might have and how you can answer those questions. So think big picture and then get more defined as you go down through the scroll is usually my rule of thumb. And so, uh, think through the flow and I can’t really give you a great example for this now, but think big and think about what questions even, even if it’s frequently asked questions, don’t put those in FAQ, uh, section of your website, answer those questions in a way that the people don’t realize they’re, they’re, uh, reading questions, you know, tell them the solutions. 

Bear Wade (25:46):

So don’t use FAQ’s on your website use, but use those as a guide to help the flow. One thing that I think is really helpful is creating, um, a section on your website, you know, maybe two thirds of the way down to the front page that talks about who your service or product is for. Just go ahead and name them. So if it’s four chefs, you know, if you’re selling a knife, a culinary, you know, knife, um, and maybe other, uh, kitchen utensils, it would be for, you know, uh, commercial chefs. It might be for hobbyists and it might be for, um, private chefs or, or something, you know, like that. And so you want to make sure you name them, like name, your ideal avatar, your ideal customers. And then they know that you’re speaking to them and if they aren’t them, they know they’re in the wrong spot. 

Bear Wade (26:40):

And you’re just, you know, you’re, you’re saving yourself by finding the right kind of customer and the right kind of viewer. So name the people who you want to serve. Okay. There’s two elements left. One is trust builders, you know, so if you can come up with a way to, uh, show off either testimonials of people that have worked with you and enjoy your service, or, um, uh, you know, if you can use Google reviews, anything that you can do to help build trust. And sometimes that’s a lead magnet, which you should have on your website, but also anything you can do to not say, you know, kind of our joke is you don’t want to say you’re the number one Toyota dealer in America, because everybody says that or in your, you know, pick a state, um, we’re here in Missouri. So the joke is, you know, everybody says, they’re the number one Toyota dealer. 

Bear Wade (27:27):

It’s another thing to have somebody who bought a Camry from you and their family feels safe. And so if you can get that person to tell your viewer that they feel like they had, or they feel so much calmer, they really enjoy the reliable, the reliability of their Camry. As an example, then you’ve really hooked and built trust with your viewer who hasn’t bought from you yet. Right? And so make sure you start to figure out how to insert trust builders into your communication. So it’ll go on your website and it can go on the brochure and you can make those, uh, into, uh, posts on social media, but collect those and define them and give them identity and put them everywhere. And lastly, you should have a footer and some people call this the junk drawer. Uh, other people, you know, this is the place at the bottom of your website, where you have other additional links. 

Bear Wade (28:19):

So if people want to learn from you, or maybe there’s a search bar there, so if somebody’s looking for a specific article or a specific product or service, they can look it up and it’ll scan your website so that, you know, also it might be your links to all your social media. And, um, you know, I, I don’t know what else, you know, some people have a map. So if you have a location, like a actual physical location, this is a great place to put your, um, a map of where your office is or whatever. Sometimes I, I recommend putting the map right near the top, you know, on the right hand side. So you have some information about you, maybe your hours of operation, but then put that map right there, you know, Google maps, so they can click on it, get directions right away and get to your shop, you know, your store, your restaurant, whatever that is. So, but for the most part, you can put that information in the footer as well. So if you want to learn more about creating a better website, we have a checklist for you. You can go to bear way.com. It’s absolutely free. You just scroll down to where it says a better website checklist, click on there, enter your email 

Speaker 5 (29:19):

I’ll address, and I’ll email it out to you 

Bear Wade (29:23):

Right away. So I encourage you to check that out. Everybody deserves a good website and here, 

Speaker 5 (29:28):

Here is how you do it. So what questions do you have in your marketing? I want to hear from you submit your questions to unify my marketing.com or you can go to bear wade.com and there you’ll see the unified my marketing show. You can submit a question I want to hear from you. I want to help you grow your company. So submit your questions now, remember just because you’ve checked the boxes in your marketing. So you might have a website or a logo and photography or a video doesn’t mean it’s all working for you. Make sure you unify it. I’ll see you next time. 

Speaker 6 (30:00):

[inaudible].