SHOW TRANSCRIPT

 

[00:00:05] Speaker 1 All right. Welcome to another episode of the Go With John Show. Today, we have Alan Warren with us. He’s with MLO Media and Geophenom. Welcome to the show, Alan.

 

[00:00:14] Speaker 2 Thanks for having me, John.

 

[00:00:14] Speaker 1 Great. So, Alan, today, I’m really excited that you’re here and I’ve got a big you can hear the paper in my hand, which I don’t normally have, but I’ve got a big list of questions and I’m excited to talk to you about social media marketing I think is going to be the primary topic today, but we’re going to talk about whatever you want. Tell us a little bit about who you are. Where did you come from and how did you get into social media marketing?

 

[00:00:40] Speaker 2 Got it. I am a resident of the Severna Park area, have lived there for the better part of 20 plus years, worked in D.C. for the Washington Post for nearly 15 years, and gained a lot of experience working with some of the best in the industry from an ad tech standpoint. The Washington Post had its hands on more technology than many other companies at the time and was able to help pioneer and build that business and after 15 years, decided to go to the agency side where we had for the first time sort of a level playing field where we had all the technology that some of these big publishers might have at the time and brought that into our agency and then was a partner with an ad agency called Ads Intelligence for about five years, and then went out on my own about four and a half years ago and created Miller Media, which is a full service digital marketing agency. So we worked with clients on SEO, CRM, social programmatic, display geofencing, native video, you name it, we do it. And so we currently have a staff of about six people and some of the best digital marketing experts and in the industry and we work with a variety of clients. Other ad agencies utilize our services. We work with a lot of builders, real estate companies, automotive, retail colleges, universities, government agencies. So we have a really diverse portfolio of clients that we work with outstanding.

 

[00:02:22] Speaker 1 So what is your you know, obviously you’re here to share a lot of great information with us today, and we appreciate that. But you’re also would like to potentially pick up clients. So what’s the ideal kind of client for your firm?

 

[00:02:37] Speaker 2 So it varies. We work with hybrid of types of clients. So whether it’s a big company that’s looking for brand awareness and lead generation, e-commerce is something that we’ve work with a lot. I like to think that we work really closely with small and mid-sized businesses. Right?

 

[00:02:55] Speaker 1 And how do you define that?

 

[00:02:58] Speaker 2 You know, it could be a retail shop that has one location. It could be a mid-sized company that has 10 to 20 locations.

 

[00:03:06] Speaker 1 Gotcha. Right. Gotcha.

 

[00:03:07] Speaker 2 So we cater to those clients that have probably smaller budgets to work with, but they need to make good use of how they spend those dollars.

 

[00:03:18] Speaker 1 Maximize value.

 

[00:03:19] Speaker 2 Maximize your value. Yes.

 

[00:03:20] Speaker 1 Great. Great. All right. So what is so so where do we even begin? Because in preparation of of, you know, chatting with you today, my team and I sat down and we were coming up with I got two pages of questions here. And, you know, a lot of people think social media marketing is just going on Facebook and posting some stuff and hopefully you get some leads and talking to people. So from your perspective, what is social media marketing? How would you sum it up?

 

[00:03:47] Speaker 2 Well, I think there’s two ends to it. So one is, you know how companies are utilizing it from their own resources to explain who they are, what they do in, and to create an audience base that they have to reach out to on a given day and talk about themselves. Right. I think the other part is the paid part of social media where you are actually utilizing the tools that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok have available for you and to be able to maximize that, to reach potential clients. Right. And to utilize those platforms to move the needle in terms of leads and sales or whatever the the objective is. So before we start with any client, we sit down and we talk about, you know, what are the goals, what are the objectives? Sometimes a lot of companies will miss the mark on what they’re trying to accomplish. You know, they want brand awareness, but they at the end of the day, in real estate’s a great example of this. All the realtors say, I want to be the resident expert of this neighborhood or this area, but at the end of the day, they want leads. They want. Right. They want buyers and sellers.

 

[00:05:02] Speaker 1 Right?

 

[00:05:02] Speaker 2 And so it’s how do. You strategically put together a marketing campaign digitally? Mm hmm. That helps them to achieve that. And so the old adage, you know, I know 50% of my marketing works and 50% of it doesn’t. I just don’t know which way. Right. Yeah. And and so what the great thing about digital marketing is it’s very quantitative. Mm hmm. You know exactly what you got from an impression standpoint. How many clicks, how many people went to your website, what they did on your website, and did they actually convert to a lead? And if they didn’t, you know, what are those actions that need to take place, those optimizations that need to take place to get them into being a lead? Right. And so the the Morpheus of Emilio Media, Emilio stands for machine learning optimization.

 

[00:05:53] Speaker 1 Okay.

 

[00:05:53] Speaker 2 And so what we do on a daily basis is we have campaigns running, and my team every morning has a check in with me. And we look at campaigns, how they’re performing, and then we make suggestions on what optimizations need to be made. And so think about hundreds of clients that we go through on a daily basis to look at how we’re performing and how we can improve. And that’s sort of our motto. And it’s and from a social perspective, which was the original question, I think there’s a hybrid of how people are utilizing social media. Mm hmm. The rules of engagement have changed dramatically for Facebook and Instagram.

 

[00:06:35] Speaker 1 Over what time period?

 

[00:06:36] Speaker 2 Over, I would say the last two and a half years.

 

[00:06:38] Speaker 1 Okay.

 

[00:06:39] Speaker 2 And so where Facebook used to be a really good targeting tool for advertisers that wanted to focus on really niche geographic areas. Mm hmm. You now have a 15 mile radius, right, that you have to uphold to. And that might not be applicable to a local restaurant or a local store that really wants to focus on a mile radius. Right. And so there becomes a lot of waste and your message gets diluted a little bit that way. Right. So we have found that geofencing has become a better way to reach those niche markets.

 

[00:07:17] Speaker 1 And so so now you’re going to have to explain geofencing.

 

[00:07:20] Speaker 2 Yeah. So geofencing is a really cool technology that allows you to just that put a virtual fence around just about anything so you can do it around a building. Mm hmm. Think about a realtor who’s having an open house on a weekend, and they want to geofence the location of the open house, and then they may want to geofence the neighborhood that it’s in, right? When a prospect or somebody that has a mobile mobile device walks through that virtual fence. We actually capture their mobile ID.

 

[00:07:56] Speaker 1 Oh, my goodness.

 

[00:07:57] Speaker 2 From that point, we can message them with display advertising on different apps that they might be in. Right. So it could be talking about the home that is for the open house. It could be talking about, you know, let’s say that you went to a restaurant and you. Got 10% off your next meal. You know, we can message those people with those messages. Where geofencing gets even better is because we know that they went through that virtual fence. We’re now tracking them on their mobile device. They have their mobile device tethered to their tablet and their desktop long after they left that zoom that we were virtually fencing. We’re still messaging that person for the next 30 days. Wow. So think of.

 

[00:08:43] Speaker 1 That’s kind of scary. I mean, it’s it’s.

 

[00:08:46] Speaker 2 Scary, but it’s it’s autonomous because we don’t know their identity. We captured the mobile ID. Sure. And we’re able to message that person. So the best way I could describe what geofencing does is if you if you look at 1.0, which was direct mail, and I am going to put these postcards in the mail.

 

[00:09:07] Speaker 1 To oh, users sit every night and put labels on postcards for decades of my life. Yes.

 

[00:09:12] Speaker 2 So think about how much waste is there.

 

[00:09:15] Speaker 1 Yep.

 

[00:09:16] Speaker 2 The cost of a piece is, you know, anywhere from $0.50 to a dollar. Yeah. And you’re sticking these in the mail with the hopes that somebody is going to look at your message.

 

[00:09:24] Speaker 1 Right. We used to say we hope they glimpse at it while it’s on the way to the trash. That’s that was our our dialog. Yes.

 

[00:09:32] Speaker 2 So what geofencing allows us to do is reinforce what that messaging would have been in a postcard to somebody in these neighborhoods. But to be able to constantly have repetition and and have this message served over and over to this person within that area. Right. So it becomes a much more cost effective way to reach your top prospects. And then the benefit of geofencing is once that message has been received, somebody captures it on their mobile device. They actually received the ad, they maybe went to your website, maybe they didn’t. But we can actually count when that person comes through your conversion zone, which might have been that open house or it might have been our restaurant. So we know the foot traffic that we’re getting from these individuals as well.

 

[00:10:19] Speaker 1 Right. Right. That is that’s total geek zone right there. I mean, you’re in you’re in deep with the with with the tracking and the technology that’s available today. That’s amazing. I guess tracking is not the right word. Capturing and communicating would be the probably the right way to say it.

 

[00:10:36] Speaker 2 Yeah, geofencing is interesting and it sort of morphed. So we became a preferred vendor to some of the largest brokerages in the U.S. And over time, we were getting inundated with a lot of realtors asking us to come up with different strategies for their business. And about a year and a half ago got together with a partner of mine, silent partner, and we said, What if we built out this technology on a website where they could actually come in, They could put in the zone that they wanted to target. It would pull up that address so we could geofence specifically that area and then they could pick. You know, points of interest. And it automatically would highlight those points of interest. They wanted to upload their own addresses. They could upload their own addresses. Right. And it became a very sophisticated way for us to target individuals that were looking for a low cost but efficient and effective way to reach their top prospects. Mm hmm. And so I got together with a geospatial engineer, and I don’t even know what that means and presented the concept to them. We were going to have him man the project and reach out to vendors that could potentially do this. And over a weekend, he came back to me and he was just like, I figured it out.

 

[00:11:58] Speaker 1 Oh, that’s amazing.

 

[00:11:59] Speaker 2 And he put this technology together and thus Jiofi ANAM was born. And over the last year and a half, we’ve been fine tuning the website. So you can actually go on to the website. You can pick the zones that you want to target. There’s an ad creator right there so you can build your own ad or you can import your own ad, and then you select a couple of different packages that you might want, or you can reach out to us and customize it. So we really tailored this towards small business because we feel like there’s a barrier to entry in terms of financial obligation, right? And so for as little as 400 and I think it’s $95, you can run a really robust campaign each month and you can actually see some results for what you’re investing in.

 

[00:12:44] Speaker 1 Wow, That’s amazing.

 

[00:12:45] Speaker 2 Yeah. So we look at everything in terms of return on ad spend. So ROAS is a term that we use in the industry, and my team looks at that daily to make sure that we’re hitting those key marks.

 

[00:12:57] Speaker 1 It’s amazing. So six people on your team? Six people. So is this something exclusive to you or are there other do you have competitors in this space? And there are.

 

[00:13:05] Speaker 2 Competitors in this space. And but I don’t know that every anybody’s doing it the same way that we’re.

 

[00:13:13] Speaker 1 As well as they’re doing it.

 

[00:13:15] Speaker 2 Yeah, right. And so so we really pride ourselves on that. And, you know, speak about the pandemic a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, you look at pandemics coming up and nobody knew what was going to happen. My first thought on a small business, I’ve been in business for about two years. Are people going to stop paying their bills? Mm hmm. Are people going to stop advertising? Right. And overnight, we just got busier and busier because people still had a need to reach people, but they had to do it in a different way. Yeah. And digital marketing became a way for them to do that. Yeah. I also found that during this time frame. It was easier to attract new talent. Mm hmm. So the idea of having somebody come to an office and working anymore wasn’t necessarily the case. So I have employees that live in Alabama, Denver, Baltimore, D.C. had one employee that was a great employee, and she was like, I’m going to work in Costa Rica for the next three months. So the pandemic enabled us to recruit better talent. And and so we have some of the best digital marketing experts in the business right now.

 

[00:14:29] Speaker 1 Amazing. Amazing. So how do you handle the. I’m going to shift gears on you for a second and then we’re going to take a break and then we’ll come back. And I want to get back into the kind of the social media aspect of our conversation today. So how do you handle the remote working aspect of your business now? Because we’re our team is our company’s about my team is about the same size as your company. We have five on our team and we’re in California, Richmond, and ironically, we’re actually recording today in my old office at Long and Foster McClain. And Nick, our engineer, is out in the hallway working away, and his desk used to be right here for until the pandemic hit. This is where we were. And then when Kobe came along, we we all scattered and we’re struggling with kind of, you know, when you’re all together in a room and you can just talk when something pops into your head, there’s a totally different vibe when you’re all online all the time, and you’ve got to say, Hey, let’s all get in a meeting and talk about this or that. How do you handle the remote working aspect of your business now?

 

[00:15:39] Speaker 2 So to be completely honest, it was a learning curve for me because I’m used to having that environment where something pops up and you just walk out. Yeah. And you tap somebody on the shoulder and say, Hey, you know, we need to respond to this or you need to do this. In my business, we started doing a morning huddle. So every morning we start off with Huddle. We talk about what the agenda is for the day, what objectives we have to accomplish for the day.

 

[00:16:07] Speaker 1 Mm hmm.

 

[00:16:09] Speaker 2 And I go over my schedule and and make myself available to the team however they see fit. One of the things that we really pride ourselves on at Miller Media and Geo. Fenham is I stole this from another company, but it applies well with any company. And we have a one in 24 rule and the one and 24 rule means you have one hour to respond to an email or any phone calls somebody had submitted and you have 24 hours to come up with whatever that solution is for, whatever the question was that they had. And we really pride ourselves on being responsive.

 

[00:16:48] Speaker 1 So is that to clients or is that to internal communication? Both. Both. Okay. Yeah.

 

[00:16:52] Speaker 2 So so, you know, make sure that everybody’s engaged, that they’re checking in on it on a regular basis. The other thing that we started doing was outside of doing huddles. We do a Thursday recap, and this is really talking about success stories. So trying to build the camaraderie within the team, things that have been troubling somebody, or maybe there’s a campaign that’s not performing the way that we would like getting everybody in a room or on a team meeting to discuss, you know, what are the strategies that you’re implementing, how how can we improve on it? What are the things that you’ve had success with in sharing these stories with the team? And sometimes that might involve little wine or beer, right? 430 in the afternoon. And so we do these virtual happy hours now.

 

[00:17:42] Speaker 1 Oh, that’s great, because nobody has to drive home because they’re already home.

 

[00:17:46] Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

 

[00:17:47] Speaker 1 So, you.

 

[00:17:48] Speaker 2 Know, and I think the most difficult part for any employer or company is how do you build that culture and camaraderie in a virtual environment. Right. And so we try to at least meet on a quarterly basis and get everybody together and break bread. Yeah, but at the same time, you know, it’s a different world. And my team loves working remotely. You know, sometimes I think it would be beneficial to have everybody in-house, but at the same time, they are much more efficient, you know, working on their own schedules.

 

[00:18:20] Speaker 1 Mm hmm. That’s good. That’s those are great tips and that’s great advice. And we appreciate you sharing that with us. All right. We’re with Alan Warren. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be back more with this conversation with Alan on social media marketing. We’ll be right back. All right. Welcome back. We are still with Alan Warren talking about social media, marketing, geofencing and what else are we talking about? Remote working policies. All right. So everything. Yeah. Alan So welcome back. So so during the break, you mentioned to me that everybody has the attention of a goldfish right now. So what did you mean by that? Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

[00:19:04] Speaker 2 Yeah, I think people are just saturated with messaging all the time and you have a very limited amount of time to get in front of somebody with a message and have it resonate. Right. And so, you know, we look at it in terms of whether it’s digital ad placements that we’re running, video ads, you have really less than 7 seconds to capture somebody’s attention. And if you think about it in somebody’s daily routine, they might have the TV on in the background. They’re on their phone looking at social right. They’re very distracted. Right. And so from a messaging standpoint, there’s a lot of clutter.

 

[00:19:44] Speaker 1 Right.

 

[00:19:44] Speaker 2 And so you really have a very limited time to capture somebody’s attention, but you have to do it effectively. And that means you have to have a really strong call to action or a really strong message that you’re getting in front of that person.

 

[00:19:55] Speaker 1 Right. So how do you I guess we’re, you know, in my mind, so I have some experience in this field. Where would you where would you start? So would you start on or Facebook or let’s talk about how to use Facebook, Instagram in the various tools. What are how would you use these tools most effectively?

 

[00:20:16] Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it and everybody’s seen sort of what a sales funnel looks like, right Right. And so we hope. Yeah. And so I think there’s at the top of that funnel, you have awareness, right? And then you have intent. Yeah. Somebody that’s intending to make a purchase or to have interest in whatever the messaging is that you’re offering. And then at the end of it, you have somebody that’s raising their hand and they’re asking for you to call on them or they’ve asked for more information. Right? And so I think that all the platforms that we utilize have their their purpose. So, for instance, for awareness, I think it’s like social media and programmatic display and video, you know, are really good at building awareness for somebody. And at the end of the day, we’re still reigns. King is paid search. So somebody typed in an exact term looking for a home for $1,000,000 and a client. Right. And they’re raising their hands saying, please contact me. I’m looking for something that you have to offer. Right. And so it’s all these steps and utilizing these platforms to get to that person that’s actually going to convert to a lead, if that’s the goal.

 

[00:21:30] Speaker 1 Right.

 

[00:21:31] Speaker 2 And so, you know, depending on what the metric is or what the objective is, you know, it could be I want to be, you know, the resident expert in McClain, Virginia, and I want to brand myself as much as I can to the neighborhoods that I want to be that resident expert in. Right. And so social media and programmatic and SEO, CRM all have to play together. I always talk about it as being a concert.

 

[00:21:57] Speaker 1 Right. Right.

 

[00:21:58] Speaker 2 And and you have, you know, all these instruments within that concert and in this orchestra, rather. And you need them all playing together to get to the outcome. Right. And so, you know, for instance, any anybody that’s running a digital marketing campaign, there are a couple of things that you should be able to see when you’re running a digital marketing campaign. Let’s say that you’re running a social campaign. How many impressions did I get? How much interest get to people like my page? Did they ask for a lead? Mm hmm. But how is that impacting the other parts of my business, my organic search, my direct traffic to my website? Right. And so all these things should show indicators of moving traffic up to your website because you’re creating more awareness, you’re reaching more people, and you’re offering them genuinely something that is a differentiator for your business or service, right?

 

[00:22:49] Speaker 1 Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

 

[00:22:50] Speaker 2 So.

 

[00:22:51] Speaker 1 So you’re saying the best way to bring in business is through paid search?

 

[00:22:56] Speaker 2 I think it is, depending on the industry.

 

[00:23:00] Speaker 1 Yep. So. So let’s talk about the paid search versus the orchestra. Right. So how do you how do you recommend using Facebook and Instagram and what other what other services are there that you think people should be on? Are there other places other than Facebook and Instagram and Google where people should be having a footprint on the net?

 

[00:23:19] Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, there’s all different types of platforms that you can run on. I think like streaming video, Streaming audio, Yeah. It has become very popular as more people are downloading.

 

[00:23:28] Speaker 1 Podcast, right? So is that YouTube and podcasts?

 

[00:23:31] Speaker 2 YouTube podcasts. Okay. I think that there’s all types of channels within that. You have Spotify you have to think about and. V Yeah. So over the top is.

 

[00:23:44] Speaker 1 Yeah.

 

[00:23:44] Speaker 2 And it becomes a very cost effective way to run streaming video before segments on Hulu or any of the other channels that are available out there. Right. Right. And so there’s, there’s a myriad of different ways to get the message out there. What we tend to do is cast a big web, right? So we might be doing some social, but doing some CD V programmatic display paid search, Google Display network. And what we’re trying to look for is where are we getting the best results at the end of the day? And then what?

 

[00:24:24] Speaker 1 The ad is going to be different for different businesses right now are going to be a one shoe fits.

 

[00:24:28] Speaker 2 All right. Yeah. And so what ends up happening is over time, you start moving some of those budgets to the areas where you’re getting the better results. Right. And so one month it might be Facebook and we’re getting a ton of traction and leads from Facebook. And then next month it might be Google Display or even Google search.

 

[00:24:48] Speaker 1 Right.

 

[00:24:49] Speaker 2 The thing I love about Google searches, it still holds true that you’re matching keyword terms to people that are in-market for what you have to offer. Right? Right. And so they’re raising their hand saying, I want what you have. Right. And so you want to be visible there every time somebody does a search for that.

 

[00:25:06] Speaker 1 Mm hmm.

 

[00:25:07] Speaker 2 Yeah. And so that’s like the low hanging fruit, in my opinion. All the other thing is we’re trying to persuade them or convince them to get to that point.

 

[00:25:17] Speaker 1 Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting. Interesting.

 

[00:25:22] Speaker 2 So and I think that social still has its place. I just think that there’s a lot of clutter when it comes to that.

 

[00:25:30] Speaker 1 There is. Yeah, there’s. There certainly is. And so, you know, one of the questions that comes up in our organization is how let’s just talk about Facebook for a minute and social media engagement, you know, put in a post out there on Facebook and boosting it and then versus having engagement and actually communicating with people. And I’ll just add one more layer to my question. It’s like a four part question. You’re getting likes. So what works on Facebook, what’s important on Facebook? How do you maximize your efforts that you put into Facebook?

 

[00:26:03] Speaker 2 So I think boosting is important when you have good content. I think the best social is when you have questions that you engage consumers with.

 

[00:26:17] Speaker 1 People that are popping. Question up on Facebook, How would how do you like the way this house looks or what’s your favorite feature of this house or something like that?

 

[00:26:25] Speaker 2 You know, color schemes. Yeah, yeah. Finishes, you know, gold like the new finish. Right. And that seems very 1970 this. Yeah. But it’s back Right, right. And so it’s but you know people want to make decisions and they want to have an opinion. Right. And so I think you know the more leading sort of questions to get engagement are better. Mm hmm. I think that, like, campaigns are sort of old, but still necessary because you want people to be engaged with your message and your site on Facebook. So, you know, it’s still important to have those likes. Yeah.

 

[00:27:06] Speaker 1 So but there’s liking your page and then there’s liking a post. So when you have a post that you have out there, if people don’t like it, does that mean anything anymore or what’s the impact of that?

 

[00:27:18] Speaker 2 Yeah, I think that it’s a good barometer on, you know, the messaging and whether it came across as stale or, you know, whether it’s something that really resonates with somebody. I think the the key to that is always do a B testing, Right. Always be testing. And so we do that with our video. We do that with every display ad that we run. We do it with text ads. Right. And so what you’re constantly doing and where digital marketing comes, the efficient way to do it is you can afford to test.

 

[00:27:52] Speaker 1 Mm hmm.

 

[00:27:53] Speaker 2 Whereas great example, a lot of big agencies that have, you know, big top 100 companies under their portfolio utilized the web to test video creative before they go to the networks and start making those million dollar buys because they can figure out really quickly which ones are resonating with people and which ones are going to move the needle and get the most attention or the most awareness. Mm hmm. The same is true for small business, where it will take several different messages will test them, and the one that wins is the one that we go with. Right. And then you start to engage with your prospects that way. And and then you constantly need to be refreshing, creative when your content. When you’re doing social advertising or both.

 

[00:28:44] Speaker 1 Hmm. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Good, good, good. So how how how often should you post on social media is another question that comes up, I think, frequently in art.

 

[00:28:56] Speaker 2 Yeah. And I. So if you think about what social media is there for, it’s for people to share memories and actions that are going on in their daily lives. Right. And and there’s a lot of clutter from companies that are out there because they want to be in front of these consumers because either they’re a part of the community or they’re trying to attract you to purchase something or or to utilize your services. I’m not an over poster. I feel like there’s a lot of people that are out there posting several times a day. Mm hmm. And I think that you will inundate your your fan base a little bit if you do it too much.

 

[00:29:38] Speaker 1 Right. Right.

 

[00:29:39] Speaker 2 I would rather have a couple pieces of content a week. That are of substance and present it that way.

 

[00:29:48] Speaker 1 Have an item of value.

 

[00:29:49] Speaker 2 Have an item of value. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think the more value in face it, you know, the people that we’re trying to reach are smart. Mm hmm. And you got to respect the fact that they’re smart. And the more engaged the content can be, the more value you bring in terms of the content you bring to them, the more engagement you’ll get. And, and and I think that there’s a tendency to over post on Facebook and some of my friends do it.

 

[00:30:20] Speaker 1 Yeah.

 

[00:30:21] Speaker 2 Yeah. And sometimes you have to hide them for a couple months. Right. But right, right, right. But I also think that it’s important to have consistency with anything that you’re doing. But I think 3 to 4 posts a week. More than enough.

 

[00:30:37] Speaker 1 Yeah. It’s funny. You know, we you know, we interview we are always interviewing folks that are at our team and we interview a lot of people that are, you know, so-called social media experts. And I would say overwhelmingly when we ask them, how often should you post it? It’s in how many times a day, not how many times a week as how the answer comes back. So it’s interesting. It’s my philosophy. Yeah, I think I align with what you’re saying more than what I think. I don’t know if I want to call it the industry standard, but certainly the chatter out there among people who claim to be digital marketing experts think that you should be doing it multiple times a day. But that’s a lot.

 

[00:31:17] Speaker 2 And God bless them. Yes, it’s developed that much content on a regular basis, Right. I think that I want to create meaningful content that’s going to resonate with who I’m trying to speak to. Yeah. And. And. And respect their time.

 

[00:31:32] Speaker 1 Exactly. Yeah.

 

[00:31:33] Speaker 2 And so, you know, as you’re inundating people with messages daily, I think it gets lost.

 

[00:31:39] Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. All right. So in wrapping up our conversation today, is there anything else that you want to add to what we’ve chatted about? Did we miss anything?

 

[00:31:49] Speaker 2 I don’t think so. I think it’s you know, one thing that I would say about digital marketing as a whole is it constantly changes. And my team sits at the forefront and is constantly learning as we go, as things are changing. You know, you and I talked during the break. Google’s algorithms change quarterly, right? And so that’s a moving, you know, Mark there. Right. I think the rules of engagement with social channels has changed for the better, in my opinion, from a consumer, not so much from a digital marketing perspective, just the limitations on some of the targeting that was available or no longer available. Right. And I think that, you know, what I would want to leave with is, you know, we’re here to help small and mid-sized businesses grow, whatever that might look like for that individual. Mm hmm. And we don’t take a cookie cutter approach to how we do business. We look at everybody’s goals and objectives and try to formulate a plan that meets what their strategic goals are. Mm hmm. And the great thing about digital, like I mentioned, is very quantifiable. Right. Right. So, you know what you get at the end of the day, you just need a good partner that has their finger on the pulse that treats your business the way that you want to treat it. Mm hmm. And are coming up with good ideas that will help you reach those objectives or those sales goals.

 

[00:33:18] Speaker 1 Mm hmm. Fantastic. So tell us about a little bit about each. Give us just your elevator pitch on each one of the companies you have.

 

[00:33:26] Speaker 2 Sure. So MLO media is sort of the the parent company of Jiofi and Milo is a full service digital marketing firm. Mm hmm. We have in-house creative so we can build websites and. Digital ads. We have a full team of digital marketing managers that help create strategies, help concept budgets for clients that don’t have budgets and implement those campaigns on their behalf. Excuse me. Angelo Fino I’m sort of morphed as I got more involved with real estate, actually, when we became the preferred partner to a couple of these big brokerages I was doing. 100 calls a week with different realtors all over the country talking about what they really wanted was to be that resident expert in their neighborhood and writing those campaigns. And I said, Well, why don’t we create a toolbox that you can play in music and they can come in and they can pick their zones and they don’t know what they want. They can always reach us. And so Jiofi Fenham is sort of the geo fencing arm of our business, and it’s been fun to build that and watch it grow. Yeah, and it has a lot of utility with retailers. Think about quick service restaurants or restaurants in general. One of the things that I found pretty interesting is during this pandemic time, as everybody’s business sort of changed, restaurants were having a hard time getting employees. You know, more people were sitting on their couch.

 

[00:35:00] Speaker 1 Everybody everybody was having a hard time getting employees.

 

[00:35:04] Speaker 2 And so it kind of switched gears from us, focusing on driving that foot traffic and to purchase something, you know, whether it’s a restaurant or a retailer. Yeah, how do I attract somebody that may not be in the job market but would be a good worker?

 

[00:35:22] Speaker 1 Mm hmm.

 

[00:35:22] Speaker 2 Yeah. We started doing more recruitment campaigns. Yeah. And we saw a dramatic increase in the volume of leads that we were getting for potential candidates. So I think it has a lot of utility. And, you know, for instance, we utilized geofencing for a lot of our car dealers, and we will geofence all the competitors in the area. And when we geofence those competitors, we are able to offer them a special offer that is only unique to the message that we have to their competitors.

 

[00:35:57] Speaker 1 So that is really cool to think about.

 

[00:36:01] Speaker 2 You go down the street to a Ford dealer and I’m messaging you with an additional thousand dollars on your trade and just bring this message in.

 

[00:36:09] Speaker 1 Yeah. Down to yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

[00:36:10] Speaker 2 And then I can actually count the person when they.

 

[00:36:12] Speaker 1 Walk through that’s him or his car. That’s amazing.

 

[00:36:15] Speaker 2 So that’s really cool. Yeah, it’s fun. And so, you know, the one thing that I speak about our business a lot and do a lot of conversations like this, but one we’re responsive to each client is important. There is no small client. Three You want a good partner that wants to be a part of your journey, right? And I think that’s kind of what we do on a daily basis. And so as you grow.

 

[00:36:45] Speaker 1 We grow, right?

 

[00:36:46] Speaker 2 And so we have clients that we’ve worked with for the better part of ten years even. You know, during my days at the Post, they came to work with us and they continue to do so today because we provide value to what we do every day and we genuinely care about their business and want them to grow. And so I would love to speak to anybody that’s interested and understanding more about what we do and how we can help their business.

 

[00:37:10] Speaker 1 So how do they find you?

 

[00:37:12] Speaker 2 You can call me.

 

[00:37:13] Speaker 1 Okay.

 

[00:37:14] Speaker 2 And my phone numbers 4105621983.

 

[00:37:18] Speaker 1 And then we’re going to add we’re going to add we’ll add links to your website. What is your website? Tell us what your website is.

 

[00:37:24] Speaker 2 So there’s MLO Media LLC, Dotcom.

 

[00:37:27] Speaker 1 Okay.

 

[00:37:28] Speaker 2 And then there’s Geophenom, which is G e o p h e n o m dot com

 

[00:37:34] Speaker 1 Great. And we’re going to put links to your website from ours and folks can find your episode on Pod Bean and link over or they can find you on our website and we’ll have links to your website. So Alan Warren, thank you for coming in. Fantastic conversation today. Really appreciate your time, John.

 

[00:37:51] Speaker 2 I really appreciate you having me.

 

[00:37:52] Speaker 1 Good deal. Go out there and build something extraordinary.

 

[00:37:55] Speaker 2 Absolutely.