If you’re going to do any of this digital marketing and spend money, [make sure] that you know where those dollars go, and how those dollars come back to you at the bottom line.
Adam Broetje is the CEO and Founder of Odd Dog Media, an award-winning full service digital marketing agency specializing in local and multi-location businesses. Broetje has over 15 years of digital marketing and technical sales experience.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Broetje shares how small businesses can leverage digital marketing tools to expand their business.
Under customer review (1:33)
Everyone’s afraid to ask customers for reviews. The ones that do it, do it really well. It’s social proof. You just can’t pay money to get that kind of thing.
It’s important for small businesses to take advantage of customer reviews. Customers are increasingly using search and local apps to locate recommended services and businesses. Broetje encourages his clients to ask customers at the point of face to face interaction. It’s best to ask the customer for a review then as opposed to a follow up email three days later.
Broetje recommends coaching employees on how to ask for reviews. Make it a conversation, incentivize your employees for reviews, make your ask as personal as possible, and reframe the question.
Take us to your (inbound) leads (4:19)
We wanted to provide a way for our customers to see exactly what those [inbound] leads were, where they were coming from, and then for our customers to be able to say that’s junk or this is a good one, let’s keep it.
Inbound marketing is the strategy du jour of the marketing industry and for good reason. Creating compelling and valuable content and offering that to a target audience can convert them into happy customers. Additionally, understanding how to differentiate qualified customers via your site’s analytics is important.
Odd Dog Media built a lead manager into their customer’s analytics in order to measure all of their inbound leads. This could be through a simple website form or phone call. The simple interface gives their customers valid data at the end of each month. In addition, they can view their ROI of inbound leads.
Search near, not far (5:19)
Usually customers come to us and say, ‘How do I make the biggest impact for the least amount of money?’ Local search optimization is where we put our money almost every time.
Odd Dog Media conducted a survey on what characteristics landed local businesses at the top of search results. They discovered that the businesses had three things in common. They had a map with their location, a click-to-call phone number, and a link to click for directions. Those factors subsequently converted 4x the rate of any other source of traffic. This included ads, other organic search traffic, and referrals from other websites.
Local SEO means getting a business to show up where customers are actually looking. There are easy steps to take to do just that. First, make sure Google My Business page is up to date. Second, implement a plan to measure and optimize website traffic.
Get real with social (7:54)
In social, we always start our customers with what’s the purpose? What’s the strategy? What value are you really offering to customers through this channel?
Authenticity on social media is an absolute must because customers can spot an inauthentic post a mile away. That said, they can penalize a brand for bad content by unfollowing, blocking, or calling the business out for it. It is important for a business to be excited about creating and sharing content that is educational, entertaining and enjoyable.
If a client can’t identify the purpose, strategy and value of social media, however, they shouldn’t be using it. That’s especially true if a business doesn’t enjoy posting on social media because it comes through in its messaging. Fortunately, there are other ways for a business to spend their time, money and effort to engage and attract customers.
Shop local (9:24)
Small businesses start to be empowered with technology that makes what they do really simple. Then they can compete with other large companies.
According to Statista, this year there will be 256 million digital buyers online in the U.S. When a small business needs to compete against larger companies, there are a myriad of e-commerce marketplaces that can help. These can include Shopify, WooComerce and BigCommerce.
Broetje loves to help family-run, local businesses create e-commerce marketplaces. This can help them fulfill orders almost as simply, if not as simply, than the Amazons of the world. “Now those businesses can really stand out,” Broetje says. “People can shop local, feel good and still have the ease and the convenience.”
For more information on Odd Dog Media, check out their website and follow them on LinkedIn and Facebook. To stay up to date with Broetje, follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
This interview was originally recorded in 2019 in Seattle.