097-marty-mcdonald

John DeBevoise:

Greetings everyone and welcome to another serving of Bizness Soup Talk Radio. If it’s in business, it’s Bizness Soup. I’m your host, John DeBevoise. Today, we’re going to follow one of the charging leaders in social media marketing. That’s Marty McDonald of Bad Rhino Marketing. We’re going to be talking to him about what it means to use an agency to effectively market yourself through social media. We’re going to learn about organic versus paid marketing, how you can work within the pandemic and when we come out of it. Marty McDonald from Bad Rhino is serving up some of the best ingredients in full service, social media marketing right here at the table on Bizness Soup. Marty, welcome to this serving of Bizness Soup. 

Marty McDonald: Awesome. I’m really happy to be here and I’m excited to chat with you. 

John DeBevoise: Well, you are an expert in the arena, and I say arena because I’ve been going in circles all my life, in the arena of social media marketing. What does it mean as you claim to be a full service social media marketing agency? That’s a mouthful, but what does it mean? 

Marty McDonald: So it really means all things digital. When we started 10 years ago, we started out as a social media focus, which we still are, but what does social media mean in 2020 versus 2010? That’s the internet became social media, social media became the internet, all sorts of things and where we’ve always fit in is listening to our clients, understanding how they wanted to be presented on social media or any other digital platform and developing a plan to actually make that work and actually get tangible results for them. So it’s changed over the years. We’ve always kept it as a full service agency and led with social media because we do things now like SEO, web design, email marketing, media buys, everything that you can think of, even video and photography and design work for our clients. So it’s become a full service agency and we lead with social media. 

John DeBevoise: As you started out in 2010, you’ve indicated, it has grown into the foremost of promotion. It also levels the playing field for small businesses. And I know you work with a lot of small businesses to get their product into a visualization, along with the big boys. What is the importance of that social media presence and how do I go about starting it? 

Marty McDonald: So I think, leveling the playing field, you can start to get reach and start to be in people’s newsfeeds easier with social media, especially when we first started. Now there’s a challenge and there’s a mix to it. But I think the overall piece to putting something together for any business and especially a small business, is to understand where your consumer is, [inaudible] say, “Okay, we’re going to do Facebook and Instagram.” All right, so your markets there. Then taking something, their message, their product, their service, their restaurant, their beer, their golf products, whatever it might be and putting it in a way that gives them a little bit of personality. You’ve got to cut through the noise. I mean everybody and their brother and every business is on social media. So you got to make it stand out. So there’s going to be some basics that follow your brand guidelines. And then you’re going to test some things that might be a little quirky, but represents your business appropriately. That will draw some attention to it. 

And I think those are the first steps of developing that so that you can come up with a plan and then get something from that. What do you get? Well, the first thing is you’re going to get vanity things. That’s a like, a common, a share, but ultimately you want to get that customer or a potential client someplace where they can purchase something, whether that’s walking in a place or buying something online and slowly move them where you can communicate one-on-one, whether it’s text, email, or even paid ads or a webinar, there’s a lot of things that you can do from there, but starting out is creating that presence so that people know who you are and that they see who you are and what you sell or what your service is. 

John DeBevoise: So you put a message out there. Should there be a call to action and should it be something to go here and see more? Or is it buy now? 

Marty McDonald: Well, there’s a couple of different ways. There’s always buy now. I mean, you can just jump right into it, but always look at it from a sales funnel perspective. And that sales funnel quote unquote, is changing what it is and what people think of it. But ultimately it always comes down to those fundamentals that have been tried and true over hundreds of years. The first thing is you have to let them know that you exist. So maybe you’re not going to buy now right away. You need them to learn more information. So that’s the top of funnel, where you’re getting the interest going, “Oh, that looks like a neat gadget.” Or, “Oh, that looks like something I want.” Or, “Hey, I want to try that place or their food.” Or, whatever it might be. Then from there, it’s like, “Well, check out our menu.” Just keeping it simple. 

So that’s where you’re going to learn more. Right? And then ultimately is you want to get them into a spot, like make a reservation. Some of those things are very simple. Some of them are a little bit more difficult in that your consumer needs to be more educated. So food and other things are relatively easy. But at the same time, a complex product in today’s age, you might need to educate them because consumers are way more savvy than they used to be. You can’t just get them to click buy now right away, they’re going to be a little turned off by that. So you have to warm them up a little bit. And if you do have a complex product where it needs to be brought in there and educate the consumer about what your product does and how it would service their needs, you have to educate them through that sales funnel and through that process. So each post needs a call to action but every time is going to be a little bit different, and that’s why you need to actually design a plan, not just post and pray. 

John DeBevoise: Post and pray, that’s like spray and pray. 

Marty McDonald: Exactly. 

John DeBevoise: So when you come up with a plan, it’s not just one target, you’re coming up with three different targets, why? You just don’t know what’s going to trip their trigger so to say? 

Marty McDonald: Well, it’s all in testing. We’ve had stuff that you launched and you’re testing out three or four different pieces of content or three or four different ads. And you’re getting results with one that maybe you thought you might, or maybe you didn’t, but you’re not necessarily targeting three different things. You’re testing those three different things against each other to see what’s going to work best and ultimately result in a sale. Like I said earlier, vanity likes and comments and shares, they’re great and all, but ultimately if it doesn’t lead to what you truly view as a success as in making a sale, it’s going to become marketing with just again, a post and pray type thing. Like, “Hey, we got a bunch of likes on this.” That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, 

John DeBevoise: Right. You want to have an engagement. So let’s use the restaurant industry as an example, is it best to do the traditional, like the old coupon days that you’d get in the mail that was expensive, it took a lot of planning. It’s the twofer come in and buy a meal of at least this value and get the second one at equal or lesser value for free, or at 20% off. That’s expensive, it takes a lot of planning, but with social media marketing and Facebook, you can really target that down. Do you find that there’s a best formula for the restaurant to push people to the website, to do the orders, which is now strictly takeout out here on the West coast? 

Marty McDonald: Discounts are important to a certain degree, but if you want to be known as the discount restaurant, that’s not necessarily the way you want to go about it. I think in the current situation we’re in, making some sort of offer is smart and people are I don’t want to say that they’re worried about it, if you’re going to go pick up something out and do all that, you’re probably not worried about where your food budget is at the moment. And I think there, you also, as a restaurant tour, you have to make sure that you’re meeting your needs, especially in what the current situation is. Right? So just throwing out discounts out there really just kind of cheapens your brand. But if you’re the cheap brand that could work very well for you. So you need to make sure that you understand what your restaurant is all about before you just dive into social media and start throwing coupons out there. 

John DeBevoise: Well, in the world of survival and what restaurants are in right now in the shutdowns, kind of like a taco Tuesday, which is very popular, they could throw in something else, $1 delivery or something like that. They can be creative. 

Marty McDonald: Yeah. You can always have ad-ons and create value and things like that. That’s for sure. I think what you have to be cautious of is having deep discounts just to get a sale. 

John DeBevoise: Right. 

Marty McDonald: Because that can fly around on social media really fast. And I’ve seen a lot of small businesses do that as like, “Hey, we’re just new in town and we’re going to do this.” And they make an offer like that. And they quickly find out they lost a ton of money doing that. 

John DeBevoise: They spend a dollar and get a dime. 

Marty McDonald: Exactly. 

John DeBevoise: You promote yourself as being transparent. And that’s what you like to do with your customers. What does that mean to be transparent between you and I and the customer? 

Marty McDonald: I’ve been doing this in one way, shape or form for 18 years and marketing has that gray area over it, you’re going to throw out a bunch of buzzwords and we’re getting some results, but we don’t quite understand where the results are coming from. When we started Bad Rhino, my big thing was always let’s educate first, no matter what. And when we were first getting our feet wet, so to speak and getting new clients, we spent a lot of time, chamber of commerce and other events speaking and sometimes to a hundred people, sometimes to a thousand people, sometimes to two people, but we always led with the education piece. And what we found was people came right back to us all the time. It was easy because no one’s ever explained this to us, but we want to learn more. And they turned into leads. 

We’ve always taken that tact because there’s a lot of funky stuff that goes on in digital marketing and social media people see, and they’re like, “Should I do this?” And it’s like, “No, no, no, don’t do that. Even though it looks cool, but that may not get results for your business.” And being transparent is showing them why we’re doing something, how we’re going to do it and show them everything behind the scenes. Like, “Hey, we’re going to run this ad and we’re going to put it right up against another ad. And then we’re going to show you these results and why it’s working for you.” You may not see it because it’s not ending in sales right away, but this is step one. They understand where we’re coming from and being transparent about it, then we’re moving into step two and step two, you’re going to see whatever that next step might be for that particular client. 

And always being available, my entire team, I always tell them, “Look, you need to be available for clients to answer the questions.” Some of them, you can send them an email with a video response. Sometimes you’re going to have to jump on a call, but it’s very important at Bad Rhino, whenever we’re talking about anything digital marketing that we’re telling them how it’s working, because what we found five years in, six years in, seven years in, wherever we did lose a client, it was because they didn’t understand what we were doing and it just reinforced what we started the whole company about was education. And we’ve always come back to that and knock on wood. We have a very good retention rate and we worked with our clients long time. And I really think it’s because of that transparency and if they have a question about how something’s working or more importantly, their CEO or CFO is wondering, what’s going on? We can talk to them about where they’re spending their money and how it’s bringing in ROI as well. 

John DeBevoise: Most of us in business and social media presence, the first thing we do is we get ourselves on a personal Facebook page, I’m speaking from experience. Now that we have grown or morphed into this more of a business presence, I’m a business owner. What is the importance of Facebook and LinkedIn and how should it differ from my business to my personal should they blend or should they be completely different? 

Marty McDonald: That’s a great question. I think there’s different things that you can do with each one of those things that you listed, right? What you’re seeing, especially now in 2020, is you’re seeing more of a mix. You see some personal things on LinkedIn that you’ve never seen before. You’re seeing some more, I’m going to call them emotional, but just caring type things where people are just sharing different information than they normally would. And that was a train that we already started, but it’s really been moving up but the rule of thumb is Facebook has always been a spot on a personal page where you’re sharing different pictures or life events and kind of the basics there. 

You can mix in a little bit of business or a little bit of business success, but really the fuel behind it is if you do have a really robust Facebook business page, you can put ad dollars behind it, you can start to track things, you can target people that might be in your core audience that you want to reach, customers, current clients, everything. And you can start to develop that as a business hub for leads and sales and educate them as well in what you do. Where your personal page could be your picture of your kids or grandkids or nieces, nephews. And the last time you went on vacation. 

Then on LinkedIn it’s always been business but like I said, certain things have been creeping into LinkedIn where it’s a little bit more personal than it is a hundred percent business. And to me, it’s just being a hundred percent honest in who you are and what you represent. So if you own a company, you’re a business owner, you might not share as many personal things, but you might share more business posts, but you really shouldn’t gauge any big wins off your personal Facebook page, but you can measure LinkedIn and your Facebook business page if that makes any sense, you can measure those whereas your personal page, you can’t really measure too much on. You can get insights on LinkedIn and Facebook business manager for your business page, and that will help you drive business and you can actually use that as something that could potentially produce an ROI. 

John DeBevoise: So as far as the personal presentation versus my business presentation, it’s not as important to have that blend. If I’m doing business with say you, and then I go over to your personal site, what if I don’t agree with some of your personal beliefs or things that you do? 

Marty McDonald: I’m a big fan of, if you’re going to put it out there, it’s going to be seen by everybody. So if you’re afraid to say it in public or to somebody’s face, then you probably don’t want to say it online. And if you do the other side where you want to push stuff out there and you want to say something or stand on your own soap box, then you got to be prepared for the backlash and everything that comes along with it. I mean, take some personal responsibility. You can’t just post something and think it’s going to be in a vacuum, which most people do. And you see a lot of it. I mean, I see a lot of young people and young professionals do that and then they don’t realize the repercussions of it, some of it, because it’s an experience. 

And some of it is just because if you stood out in the middle of the hallway at work and scream, the same stuff that you’re screaming on social media, do you think they wouldn’t fire you? Just because it’s not right, it’s not appropriate at that time, you’re there on corporate business or whatever. So I think a lot of people don’t stop and think before they post. And I think if you’re worried about any of the things that you just asked this question about is maybe you should think before you post it. 

John DeBevoise: I grew up with my mother and my father telling me don’t ever do or say anything that you have to explain from the front page of the newspaper. 

Marty McDonald: Exactly. 

John DeBevoise: When it happens, it becomes public knowledge. And I grew up in the age of no social media and I’m fortunate for that, but it now happens live. And don’t say it, or do it as you just pointed out publicly, if you are concerned that it may cause a backlash. If you own a business and you’re an avid hunter and you’re in a business and then somebody goes, “Well, I like that business.” But then they go over and say, “Well, heck he’s an avid hunter. And I don’t agree with it. I’m a vegan.” You’re going to lose quite possibly that person. 

Marty McDonald: And that’s in my opinion, okay. Because then the vegans should go somewhere where they feel comfortable. But if I’m going to post those things, you have to be mindful of where you’re at. The reason my company name is Bad Rhino is the same way I want people to just understand, that we are going to be transparent, that we are going to do things a little bit different. And if you don’t like that, then maybe don’t hire a company called Bad Rhino. It’s not that we’re doing anything bad. It’s just that it sounds better than Marty and Rich’s marketing place. And I think, people get bent out of shape when they think about that. I think to me, is maybe you’re an insurance agent, okay? And you do post the hunting thing and you lose two vegan clients, but you gained 2,700 clients. Okay. 

John DeBevoise: There’s a trade off in everything. 

Marty McDonald: Absolutely. 

John DeBevoise: So be prepared to deal with whatever you have on your personal page could meld over into your business page. 

Marty McDonald: A hundred percent. 

John DeBevoise: So the name, Bad Rhino that caught my attention. What’s so good about a bad rhino, as opposed to a good rhino? Where did that come from? 

Marty McDonald: At first, I was a little apprehensive going, “Huh? That could be kind of odd. Will somebody kind of look at it a little bit different?” And then I was thinking, “Well, I want them to look at it a little bit different.” And I said, “I want them to base it off the value of the work that we do and make sure that they understand that what we’re standing behind is the work, not necessarily the name of the company or whatever.” And that really worked out well. I wanted somebody to go, “Hey, I like these guys. I like what they do. I like their team and everybody that’s on it, had some great conversations, here’s their proposal. And they would be willing to present it in front of any company anywhere even though the name was Bad Rhino.” 

And then we developed some fun stuff around the rhinos and we adopt the rhinos and we’d do stuff like that. So it’s become a whole brand and a thing in and of itself at times, but the name stuck and it always has the one main thing of why I kept it. People ask about it every time they talk to us, they meet with us or we’re doing interviews like this. 

John DeBevoise: Moving along into our business audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs. There’s the old school method of business. There’s print, there’s radio, there’s television. And now when you combine them all, there’s a new term that I learned recently called tradigital, traditional and digital. And I had to look that one up when it was used on my show. How important is it to continue to present yourself with a business in the old school, the print, the radio, the television, along with social media presentations? 

Marty McDonald: The big thing there is first time I meet with somebody. I ask them, what have they been currently doing for marketing? And even in 2020, this just happened again. It’s happened multiple times, but it just happened again. About three weeks ago, I had a medical professional, who’s a dentist and they were looking to relaunch a bunch of their campaigns and they were, we want to do this. We want to do that. We want to get into digital. And I just said, “Well, hold on a minute, what’s been working for you? You have four practices that are a million dollars a year in revenue. You want to relaunch this fifth one, that’s just slightly underneath that million dollar mark. What’s going on? What’s got you thinking about this?” And they’re like, “Well, we always do this print ad. And that brings in all our money for the year. We do it December, January, and February. And that’s when we find it works.” 

And I was like, “Well, has it stopped working?” And they’re like, “No.” And I’m like, “Well, why would you stop a hundred percent?” I agree with you trying to look at different avenues, but why don’t you run that ad? If it’s bringing you the return, keep doing that until it runs out of steam. And a lot of times now I would say, especially more so 2018, 2019, and now coming through the end of 2020, where all that traditional stuff is dying out, there’s no doubt, it’s not really working as well, but radio still performs, TV still performs, print still performs. It’s just knowing what the audience is… But I’ve always viewed digital and social media, especially when it first started was the glue between that, where you get the conversation started, where you might send out a print piece that directs somebody to their website while you can then retarget them so that if they log in anywhere, you can target them wherever they go and now you have an omnipresence with your marketing plan. 

But all those things do work and it’s always changing. It’s always going to change. I think recently, it’s just been the changes have been so fast. I do think print is finally starting in its last throws but it also works if it’s highly targeted still, I.E. you’re sending it only to doctors or you’re only sending it to lawyers and not trying to pick on doctors and lawyers there, but- 

John DeBevoise: Oh, please do. The lawyers I pick on them all the time. But with social media, you are able to do a rifle shot literally at the audience that you want. 

Marty McDonald: Yeah. A hundred percent correct. And digital should go over top of all of it and tie it all together. 

John DeBevoise: We’re talking with Marty McDonald, he’s from Bad Rhino about social media marketing. He’s the co-founder of the Bad Rhino company and it’s CEO. In this day of pandemic, we have restaurants that open, they close, they’d go out of business forever and they create online and delivery services. What would you say to these restaurants as you have worked with them in the past to expand their market, just doing pickup or delivery in most cases doesn’t even cover the nut of what it takes to stay in business. What about taking, as I suggested to one of my friends, one of the products that everybody loves, your sauce, bottle it and sell it. Is that a good route to go? 

Marty McDonald: If you had the capabilities, we do a lot of work with restaurants and we do a lot of work with craft beer. And they’d been hit with this thing pretty hard, right? Not only they can’t operate as normal, but then they have to adhere to all these guidelines. And then as well, people are not going out as more and things like that. So I just spoke about this as well, not all that long ago in a virtual event. And the big thing that we’ve seen is diversifying your revenue streams. Someone goes, “Well, I’m a restaurant. I can’t just add all this other stuff in.” But you saw it, you just rattled them off. Delivery, curbside type takeout, changing their menu. And then do you add something? And if you have the capability to do it, do it, I’ve seen that idea work for quite a few restaurants where they started with actually of all things, 4th of July. 

We’re doing a 4th of July family pack. This is what you need for 4th of July, we’re going to prepare it all. You can come pick it up in the morning and then there you go. You’re not selling two $30 meals, you now sold a hundred dollar package of everything. Your margins are better, people are ordering it so you know how many to make, you could prepare for it and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, bottling a sauce, having something that’s unique, hear in PA you can have to go cocktails. And we saw people recreate cocktail menus, and it was great because you could see the ingenuity in there, but people also liked it because they were trying different things and they were tired of just sitting at home with the same old, same old. So getting creative like that, if you can, do it. Don’t just do it because you think it might make money also look at the logistics of it, for sure. 

John DeBevoise: Well, sure. And if in some of our restaurants of choice out here in the Southern California region, they have some great sauces, as we are forced to eat indoors, sometimes we’ll just take a trip to the coast just to pick up their sauces because fresh fish does not always do well in transport to bring it on home. I just in passing said, you ought to bottle this and sell it. Well, wouldn’t you know it? They did it. I haven’t seen my check, but I’m not expecting it. 

Marty McDonald: I think everybody’s getting creative these days. And I think you hit the nail on the head is what you can do to keep your business open [inaudible] close the presentation, not all that long ago, and just said, use your social media. And this was the restaurants and craft breweries. And I’m like, “But don’t forget to sell. Don’t forget the links that are in there to your website or to your menu that offers more information, gives your customers a chance to learn more about what’s going on in your restaurant or brewery. And fun is great and good vibes are great to share, but staying in business is even more fun. And it’s full of much more great vibes when you’re keeping people employed and you’re keeping the lights on so to speak.” So I think a lot of those things is where you can get creative, but just don’t do it for the sake of doing it. 

What I mean by that is make sure you do a little testing. I was talking to one of our restaurants and they want to do the cocktail thing. And they were like, “But we don’t want to go out and spend all this money on ingredients and alcohol and all this other stuff when we don’t really have it.” And I was like, “Well, pre-sell them. Saturday, 12 to four is a long pre-order happy hour. All waiters have to be in by Thursday. If you don’t get enough orders, then politely either swap something out or politely change it or give them their money back. But if you do, then you have everything there to move forward.” It’s just changing a little bit about where you’re collecting the money and they did that and it was great. Now they’ve been doing them off and on once a month. And it’s a great little thing that literally keep the lights on and keep people moving in their jobs and keeping the restaurant open. 

John DeBevoise: I want to move into one of my favorite subjects that’s what I call distribution, which I have said for years, that distribution is the most important part of business because without it you’ve got nothing. What would you say are the top three ways in which to get your voice out, your image, your product, your service out to the people in now the traditional digital environment? 

Marty McDonald: I think there’s a couple of things. Before I get into which ones to distribute through, number one is have a plan. Don’t go into this going, “Well, I heard this guy on a podcast and he has a fancy, weird agency name called Bad Rhino and he said, Just create video.” That’s not where I’m going with this, have a plan for their content, be able to repurpose it. Okay? So what I would do to get the word out is video is huge. Huge because people watch it and they connect with it. But you could do a two minute video and out of that two minutes, make sure you have a plan and a little bit scripted, but you know where 15 second clips could go and have an impact, you know where the 32nd clips could go and have an impact. And you know where the full two minutes needs to go to have an impact and taking that and putting some ad dollars behind it and, or putting some other fancy branding and a push like that can get that noticed and can get it noticed very quickly. 

We’ve seen tremendous success on YouTube and Instagram with short video that led them into another video that led them into another one, same thing on Facebook, but to a lesser degree. And if you plan it out, you can create something where you have a 15 second clip or even a five second clip or three second clips that leads them into other spots. And I’m always amazed on all those channels of how many times when we’re running video ads, that the video is completed, i.e. The person watched it for more than two minutes or the full two minutes rather and then they clicked on the next step. I’m always amazed at how many people do that. Now there’s some more to it to kind of lead them to a sale but if you’re trying to create a presence like that, video like that all over the place with a coordinated effort and repurpose some clips, that’s the best strategy I could offer at this moment in time. 

John DeBevoise: We’ve been talking with Marty McDonald, he is from Bad Rhino, and I love the subject of marketing and distribution getting the word out. And I’d like to invite you to come back at a later day and follow up on this and see where we’re going in the new delivery of video marketing, everything is going video and everybody’s doing it. I’d like you to come back and share with us at another day, what are the elements of a good video presentation party? Marty, thanks for being on this serving of Bizness Soup. 

Marty McDonald: Absolutely. It was great. I appreciate your time.