J: Welcome to Straight Shot everybody. My name is Jennifer Bennett and with me as always is the Zachary Bennett. Today we are going to be talking about something amazing. Today is a special day. Not just today, but this day and age is very special. We used to complain and talk about the good old days. We overlook the opportunities of today. It is truly a great time to be alive. We have everything at our fingertips through the power of the internet. The internet is amazing. The World Wide Web connects us all which is why they call it the web.

Z: I thought they called it the web because it ensnares you.

J: It does that, too. They could have just called it the big black hole because that is pretty much what happens. The internet has brought us things that we never thought were possible.

Z:  The internet isn’t even that old.

J: Yeah, it isn’t even that old yet there have been so many leaps and bounds since its inception. Knowledge is literally at our fingertips. We all know the internet is amazing. We all know that we can’t survive without the internet. We all know our children will never know a world where they are not connected to everybody on either side of the planet. Since this is a podcast about business, we are going to talk a little bit today about how the internet affects business and the important role that it plays within business.

Z: I think people do struggle to understand just how amazing the internet is. Nowadays people take it for granted. Let’s start with some fundamental. The first thing business-wise is you have to understand that everybody trades on attention. The first thing you have to do is you have to have somebody’s attention. Attention is the most important and most overlooked element in business. It’s the gateway. You cannot tell me anything unless you first have my attention. It is the gateway to everything that you want whether it’s to leave a legacy or to have a wealth of finance. However you define success, you can’t do any of that until you have attention.

J: I’d like for everybody to think about the idea of standing up on a soapbox trying to get people’s attention that are just passing by. If nobody is paying attention to you, then that is a waste of time and money. If you aren’t getting anyone’s attention, then you aren’t reaching any new customers.

Z: That used to be a job. They are called the Town Cryer. They would stand up on a soapbox and they would tell everybody was the news was. Once they got everyone’s attention, then they would share. It is very much the same way for a business. You have to get other people’s attention in order to communicate to them whatever it is that you trade on. This is a smart phone. This holds the attention of our society. You can complain about it if you want to, but it’s true. This little device has access to everybody on the planet. Everybody’s attention is focused. Sometimes you don’t want it to be. This device holds the attention which means we have a way to reach everybody right here in my hand. If you are not making content for the platforms on the phone, you are essentially irrelevant. They all matter. Content that we can make for businesses on the cell phone is something that we’ve never had before as a way of getting people’s attention.

J: I’m not going to lie. It made me a little squirrelly that you had my phone. Whenever my phone isn’t near me, I get a little panicky because my whole life is in this thing. Like you said, the best way to reach me is on this little gadget right here. History was always vying for our attention with TV interruptions. In radio, you had ads that were blurted right into the middle of it or seeping their way through it. Now, there are billboards and things projected onto the sides of buildings. It’s everywhere.

Z: Marketing or advertising is really built upon the idea of interjecting into your life and grabbing your attention. That’s just changed how it’s been done over the years. Now it’s all on your smartphone or computer. If you’re not investing in content for the platforms for those two devices, you are missing it. You should be marketing on Google Ads and social media heavily. No one is doing enough. You should be on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. Depending on whom you’re trying to reach, you should be on that platform and posting heavily on it. They put you right in front of those people right where their attention is. That has always been what businesses have been seeking to do from a marketing standpoint. If you’ve had ads that didn’t work, I’m here to tell you it’s because you did it wrong. There is no denying that this device is the number one way to get in front of people and get their attention. Most of us sit in front of our computer for 8 hours a day. The rest of the time you spend on your phone. People just need to stop being emotional about the fact that they hired somebody that didn’t know how to do it. It is the most impactful ad product since the introduction of television. It is the best method since television. It works so well that it is scary. It is so scary that Facebook’s CEO stood in front of Congress because of it.

J: I like to call him big brother.

Z: Complain about it. Be scared of it. But know that it works. To the people that think that it didn’t work for them, there are a few things I want to steer you around. First is do not confuse branding and selling. We see that all the time. It’s one of the biggest problems in the business world. A lot of people that say it didn’t work, nine times out of ten, they spent money looking for a transaction. They didn’t look at the branding aspect. Another variable is creative. Creative is a huge variable. The biggest thing is what you do with the attention once you have it. The creative matters. Did you try to sell too hard and did it come across as being pushy? Did you come across as being amateur or unprofessional because you did the graphics yourself? There are lots of different things that could have contributed to it not working other than you saying “the internet doesn’t work.” If you didn’t convince me that you are better than one of your competitors, then I’m not going to buy from you. That is the bottom line. Once you have their attention, what are you going to do with it to convince them that you are better than your competitor?

 

11:37: Getting the Right People’s Attention

J: And are you certain that you have the right people’s attention. You can post something on social media and thirty people may like that post, but are they the right people and is that the message you are really trying to send. A lot of the times they’ll post stuff on social media that is political and thirty people will agree with them. Then it dawns on them that those thirty people already bought in to what you’re selling. They aren’t trying to buy that because they already have that. What you are trying to do is sell your opinion to somebody that doesn’t already own it. You can pay for a lot of views, but are your views actually being targeted to the right people. Even five of the right likes are better than thirty likes from people that already have your product.

Z: You would have a different message to each one of them. If you are trying to reach a different kind of consumer, then your messaging is going to be different.

J: Are you targeting the right people with the right message?

 

13:54: Buying In to Social Media

Z: When we talk about this we aren’t talking just about advertising or transactions, it is content. You have to earn people’s attention by providing value to them. What is going to be valuable is different depending on what your business’s target is. You need to be providing valuable content, not just selling. Social media has lots of rules and standards where you cannot come across as a used cars salesman. It’s considered bad taste particularly with social media. Regardless of what industry you’re in, you need to be doing this. It is the most underpriced attention that is available right now. If you’ve ever tried buying a television spot and then you compare that price to how much a Facebook spot costs, you will see how amazing the price difference is.

J: Especially for the amount of people you can reach.

Z: The internet right now is extremely underpriced and extremely valuable. Most of you are not doing enough. When major corporations figure out that no one is watching television anymore, you won’t be able to compete with the budgets that they are right now. You need to buy in as much as you can. How many of you watch Netflix and YouTube? It is staggering how many people don’t watch television. That move just keeps happening. Internet is taking over television. Most small business owners cannot compete with Fortune 500 companies. Now is the time to really take advantage of social media. Right now pricing is cheap. What costs $3-$8 per CPM (CPM is cost per million) is eventually going to cost $80 per million. When the big companies switch their budgets to mainly focusing on social media, there will not be enough real estate to go around. You’ll simply be priced out of the market. Right now is the time to buy in when prices are still cheap. It works the same as real estate or stocks. You pass on it and then you kick yourself afterwards for not investing. Eventually the opportunity will be gone.

J: This is the cheapest it is ever going to be. It will only go up from here.

Z: It’s a game. Eventually we will all be on to something else. Right now, the internet and the smartphone are the number one ways to grab people’s attention. It may not be in ten years, but today it is. It is a great opportunity that you can take advantage of.  Is it as great if you had bought in three or four years ago? No, it was even cheaper then. The question is: are you going to get upset because it isn’t the same price as it was before. Are you going to let it pass by you anyway? The biggest thing for people to understand is we know what’s up right now. You cannot deny that this smartphone and the computer are the two number one hottest ways to get people’s attention no matter your industry.

 

 20:10: The Need to Adapt

J: The important message to take away from this first part of Straight Shot is that you need to adapt. Adapt or stay on the porch because everything is moving. You can either jump in and roll with it or you let it roll over you. The internet is only going to get bigger even though we cannot comprehend it being any bigger than it is. It will get bigger. It will evolve into something. The best thing to do is get on board with it now. Social media advertising is an excellent opportunity for you to meet your potential and current clients right where they are.

Z: Sometimes you go to a restaurant and you see a group of friends talking to their phones instead of each other. Society wise, is it sad? Sure. Business wise, is it an opportunity? You bet there is.

J: There was a time when people would gather around the radio at certain times to watch certain shows nightly. Those radio shows knew that they needed to have the number one sponsors.

Z: That’s how we got Prime Time.

J: Now, people aren’t sitting watching television at the same time. Even if they are at their television, they are DVRing. They are going on Netflix and Hulu. Even when they watch television, they are on their phones. Being on the internet and on social media means that you are in the pocket of every single one of your potential or current customers. They want to hear from you. They want to be heard. We have more to talk about with all this. We are going to take a quick break to give everybody’s ears a rest for a second and let you listen to some sponsors.

J: Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed those interruptions. Now that we are back talking about Straight Shot, we are going to dive back into the amazing internet. We have gone over why the internet is so great.

Z: Why you should take advantage of it today.

 

24:06: The Best Advantages of the Amazing Internet

J:  He is very serious about this you guys. Do us all a favor and jump on to the internet. Where do we take the best advantage of the internet? Zachary, can you go through some of the different types?

Z: Sure. There are numerous ways to get on this. There are podcasts. We are doing a podcast right now. There are viral videos. People spend more on video now on social media than they do for television commercials. We run a marketing agency. I tell people all the time, do you want to do a television commercial or would you rather do a commercial for social media. It would be longer and a lot less money.

J: With the same budget, you can have a lot more.

Z: That is not to say that you should not run television commercials. It really depends on who your audience is. The other thing that you could do is run different series. You can have a social media series that connects this week to that week.

J: It keeps people coming back.

Z: You can also do tips about any number of things concerning your business. You can do insights where you tell people this is something that’s new about us. Living out loud and being transparent is huge. You see this all the time. For those of you in Atlanta that watch the Burt Show, when you sign up to work for them, you sign up to live your life transparent. You will be completely naked in front of the entire city of Atlanta. They do it on social media and on air. Hardly anything is kept private because that is what we do now. Blogging is still important. There are text blogs where people read about a certain subject or video blogs. SMS programs which is a technical word for texting. There are several different programs where you can use that layout. Your website is the hub. Your website is the most important thing. There are a lot of different types of content that you can make through audio, texting, blogs, social media, and videos. Driving traffic to your website through advertising and other marketing tools can be different depending on your business. You have to know your industry. You have to know your audience to determine which one of these strategies is going to be best for you. All of them are going to drive through to your website.

J: You start at home plate with a good, solid website and a good, solid brand which includes look, feel, strong logo, and strong brand voice.

Z: It’s where your brand lives.

J: It all comes back to home plate. I think what’s really important is to go back to brand. Brand is very important because brand, if done correctly, equals consistency.

Z: The brand is what brings value to your customer.

J: If you know exactly who you are marketing to and you know exactly how you are going to say it, then that makes things much easier for you. It keeps you from being all over the place. I think as a business owner we are already all over the place. If you are lucky enough to work with an agency which is what we do, we help wrangle some of the cats for you. As a business owner that may or may not be fortunate enough to work with an agency, perhaps maybe you are at wits end because maybe those thoughts of having to manage a social media or a blog kind of makes you crazy. The thing that will make it easier for you as a business owner is to keep it consistently in brand.

Z: And strategic. I have people coming to me saying that they don’t know what to say. There are all these different places to say stuff. What am I supposed to say? That is why there are people that dedicate themselves top helping you communicate. It’s a lot. I just told you that you are not doing enough. You need to do more and more. The more you do, the more you’re going to have to say. A lot of people have tremendous staff holding where they outsource to an agency to develop content: Kim Kardashian and Gary V.

J: Do you think Donald Trump has an agency that develops his stuff?

Z: Yes and he should leave them to it instead of doing it himself.

J: President Trump, stop and leave the Twitter alone. That’s the thing, too. We are not expecting you guys to hit all of these things all at the same time. That would drive anyone insane even a season professional. When we are out there, we have a plan of attack. If you’re at home plate, you can’t hit all the bases at once. In order to win the game, you got to make the bases. You have to go around the bases as many times as possible and in order. You can’t just take off to third base. If you plan it out like maybe we don’t have the financial resources or the time resources to hit all these different things, so we are only going to hit social media this one time. Maybe, in six months, we will do Google Ads. We are not expecting you to hit everything at once because that is certain doom.

Z: I don’t think that’s certain doom.

J: It is certain doom. For most of our small business owners, you guys are already burning the candle at both ends. Just the idea of it can be quite daunting unless you are a very computer-savvy person. The new generation is coming up very computer-savvy. If that offends you, I am very sorry. Some of the older generations are worried about cooking the world’s best steak. They aren’t worried about this sort of stuff even though they might see the value in it. The most important way to attack this is one at a time. While also making sure that it all sounds the same and it’s all coming from the same brand and the same voice so that you are not alienating people that might not be on to the different types of things. They are getting hit with AdWords and social media. It all looks the same to them. They can trust you that you are building their brand and you’re building their trust. Having said that, I think we are about ready for a straight shot. Zachary, do you have a straight shot.

 

33:35: The Straight Shot

Z: Sure. I guess the straight shot from today’s episode is that you should be marketing through the internet. It’s not debatable. You should be doing it. More than advertising and sales messaging, branding is king. It is the most important thing in marketing today. Internet and then content is better than a pushy sales message. You have to present that content within your brand. You have to know who you are and know who your customer base is. You have to know what will work. You have to present yourself in a professional manner creatively.

J: You got that? Are you writing that down?

Z: The advertising alone isn’t enough. Yelling and calling attention to yourself is just the door opener for whatever it is that you have to say.

J: After you have everyone’s attention, what are you going to say?

Z: Once you have their attention, you get to tell your story. You get to influence that person’s attention, but you have to get their attention first. You get their attention through all these different ways that we are talking about. Once you get their attention, what are you going to do with it because you have to earn their attention in order to keep it? One of my big takeaways from my rant is that the biggest opportunity you have today is your smart phone and your desktop computer. You need to be putting content where people’s attention is because the cost that it is now is cheap. You may not think it’s cheap, but it is. It works. Other people are going to catch up. The market is going to flood. The price is going to go up. Eventually people will move on to something else. That is the best advice I can give you.