– Noreen Ehrlich
Hi everybody. Welcome to Defy & Hustle Radio. This is Noreen Ehrlich and it is nice to be with everyone this evening. As usual, I have another great guest. It’s going to be a great show so for those of you who are business owners, I want you to listen very closely but also for those who don’t own businesses I’m sure you know somebody who does. The guest I have on the show this evening is someone who owns one of the top digital marketing firms in the northeast. It’s based out of Rhode Island. But a lot of his clients are in the Boston area and Rhode Island area and now he’s really moved his firm into the Connecticut and New York area. So I’m really thrilled that he’s with me in the studio today. He is the Managing Director of TribalVision, this is Chris Ciunci.
– Chris Ciunci
Hi Noreen, thank you for having me, really excited to be here. I’m looking forward to a good conversation.
– Noreen Ehrlich
All right, Chris, so you and I know each other because we’ve done some work together in the past, and I do business coaching and executive coaching and I really liked working with TribalVision and Chris’ team because they do a lot of research on who were the best teams to work with when I was looking to do my own redo my own website. I also I recommended you to some of my clients!
– Chris Ciunci
Yes. Thank you for that!
– Noreen Ehrlich
Yeah so one of the things I found and I wanted to discuss with you is when you’re looking for a digital marketing firm to really get your brand out there you know you’ve got your brand you’ve got your idea maybe you’ve been in business for a long time and you’ve got a nice website. It seems that the digital marketplace is just inundated with videos and heads in and graphics and cute inspirational sayings. What I liked about TribalVision is you cut through a lot of that and get right to the target client. Can you talk to our listeners about some of the things that are included in the marketplace in general?
– Chris Ciunci
Sure. Yeah, that’s great. So thanks, Noreen, and thanks for the compliment as well. Yeah, we’ve been in business for close to 10 years now, and we work within, as you said, Rhode Island, Boston, and we have a small presence in New York as well. To answer your question, what a lot of business owners, both large and small by the way, need to do, which they aren’t, is separating themselves from just this massive clutter that’s out there online today. They oftentimes don’t take a step back and actually put a formal strategy in place right. They don’t implement a formal digital roadmap.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Digital marketing strategy.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah because ultimately to your point, there’s so many channels, there’s so many tools to use, there’s so many tactics. You know companies are using a plethora of those tools and channels at their disposal instead of just diving in, they should really first pause to take a look at the landscape, look at their competition, and look at to your point who their target audience is and then figure out how they should go to market. Oftentimes we work with business owners where they bring us in and they say you know what, the digital marketing thing really isn’t working for me. I’m writing a blog I’m doing search engine optimization. I’m doing all these things but I’m not seeing any results.
Oftentimes it’s because they’ve never put the time in place to really figure out who their audience is what their message has to be to that audience or audiences and what channels are best to be targeting those audiences digitally and socially. So as a result they come to market with just the typical buffet that everyone talks about–email marketing and search engine optimization and paid search–but they haven’t put the time and effort in upfront to really understand their market, and that starts with putting together a digital marketing strategy.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Okay. So let’s say I’m a company, and I want to come up with a digital marketing strategy. What should I even be considering, because let’s say I’ve been out there and I’m like you said, a lot of people are putting out content because it is very vogue, and I’m putting out some pictures of some of my products, for example, in the name of my business and it doesn’t seem to be converting.
– Chris Ciunci
Sure.
– Noreen Ehrlich
What should my marketing strategy consider?
– Chris Ciunci
So number one, in terms of content, I don’t think that’s ever gonna go out of style. So just know that most companies that we work with, they don’t have enough content. I just came from a meeting earlier where they were smart enough to realize that, “okay we’re gonna come up with a marketing plan, but if there isn’t enough content that we’re writing to get out there to the marketplace then you know we’re a little bit naked” and that’s not wrong.
Good marketing today really isn’t about the flashy ads the flashy videos, it is more about seeing if we can get them and hook them up. With really educated consumers today doing research themselves online at their own pace, they want to learn as much about a company as possible before they actually even make a phone call to talk to a salesperson. So that means you have to have good content. But you have to have good content in very targeted ways right. Most firms that we start working with, they say that we’re coming up with the content, and we’re still not seeing results. Well, what are you doing with that content? Is it just staying on your blog, on your website, and that’s it? They need to be thinking about repurposing that content to online channels. So are you posting that on LinkedIn to your own circle? Are you using what’s called sponsored posts on LinkedIn where, for a price, you can get that piece of content in front of a targeted audience?
– Noreen Ehrlich
It makes sense to pay? I think what we’re used to being in a free world, right? You just posted on Facebook and you ask yourself and see if it makes sense to pay nowadays?
– Chris Ciunci
Oftentimes it does. So just to be clear, before you even get to paying, your content should be in the right hands. Take one step back and say “wait a minute, so I’m doing just about what everyone else is doing. I’m just posting it on Facebook and I’m just wondering why I’m not getting results.” But then you realize that your own organic Facebook following maybe consists of one user that could actually buy from you, right? Sure, it can go viral, and they can talk about it to family and friends. Ultimately you have to get much more involved figuring out, again back to the strategy, how are you going to make sure that you’re building your Facebook follower base of individuals or companies that are actually going to be looking at your content organically
There needs to be a strategy to ensure that these potential customers are joining your tribe on Facebook and Instagram. Most companies don’t even go that far. They literally just say, “we have 327 Facebook followers we’re posting to all the time and we’re not seeing anything.” You need to get that to like 10K and 10K in your niche not just 327 of which 5 percent actually could buy something.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Right. I like what you’re saying because I talked to some of my own clients and I’m coaching them to teach them how to identify their target audience and they say, for example, I want to go out there and speak and I’m going to write and I’m going to do all these different things to get out of there, whether that’s online or offline. But what I say is that there’s two types of going out, you’re either going to be speaking to people or you’re just going to be creating awareness in your local geographic community. Yes, you’re going to be speaking and I should say you’re going to be speaking to an audience that might be your buyer. Or would be one degree of separation away from your buyers. So one user is like your Facebook friend but they’re not your buyer and the other is your buyer and so you’re saying you need to consider that?
– Chris Ciunci
You really do. And most missed the boat on that. They just think marketing is just not working for them, and it’s not right. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if you’re not targeting to the individuals or companies you want to get that piece of content in front of. So, I’ve literally worked with CEOs where they tell me “No, we are marketing and I’m involved in the marketing. I put a blog post together last night. I spent three hours on it last night and it’s three pages long.” I have to then tell them, yeah, but most likely you’re going to get anything from that effort. If you’re just talking about results, it’s one thing for credibility and that’s great if someone goes to your website they see you have good blog content it could help convert them if they’re already on your website.
But most of the time you know companies or individuals are blogging and are proud of themselves, which is great. But if you’re not then building your follower base to actually read that content, what good is it? Sure, at the end of the day, it’s great. You can feel good about yourself. But in the end, you have to get it in front of eyeballs that could actually buy. So part of that strategy should be, how can we find and use the tools that are out there, like Facebook and LinkedIn, where they provide you filters to try and find those individuals. Then from there, to your point about paid vs. organic, you can try and organically have them join your tribe, in a sense. But there’s also a path where you could pay for that.
LinkedIn has what’s called a tool called Sales Navigator and with it, for a little over $100/month (by the way you can do this without SN too, but that makes it easier) you can filter company types, right titles, geography–you can’t imagine all the filters that you can put in to LinkedIn to try and figure out your audience. Once you’ve figured it out you press the button and see exactly how many people meet that criteria. It may be 10,000 individuals that you could be targeting with your content, then you can use Linkedin’s sponsored posts to reach those 10,000 people. You can put a graphic on top of their newsfeed for the cost of a click, just like on Google. With LinkedIn you can then get that piece of content in front of every decision-maker you ever wanted to get it in front of. Most companies aren’t doing that.
– Noreen Ehrlich
- So I want to talk about content. Talk about social media but just for a second, if you pay for a sponsor ad, let’s put Defy & Hustle Business Solutions out there. I want to sponsor an ad. What is it costing? What decisions will I have to make?
– Chris Ciunci
What we would do is research and then figure out from there. They have tools that are out there, free tools so you can see how many people are searching for specific things and how much it will cost to reach them. If it’s these individuals at these companies tools will tell you, OK if you want to get this in front of their newsfeed, it’s going to be, let’s say, $5-10 a click, so it can be in their feed. If they don’t click on the post you don’t pay, it’s only if they say “huh, that’s an interesting piece of content i’m going to click on it”. If they actually click and read it then you’re paying whatever that might be. But you can do that homework on upfront to have a very good idea of what it’s going to cost you.
The good thing is you can turn this on and off, in real-time. What typically happens is you would then set a daily budget, let’s say it’s $250 a week–I’ll do $50 a day for five business days and I’ll have it turned off on the weekends. You don’t have to turn it off on the weekends, by the way, because business owners read on Saturdays and Sundays, so you might want to keep it on. But the point is, keep it simple. I’ll be willing to spend $250 a week if I know that equates to–if it’s $5 a click and $50 a day that’s 10 clicks a day of interested individuals who want to read your content. Typically you can capture those readers’ email addresses if you put the content behind a gate. Ultimately its a transaction where you say “ in return for you reading this piece of content that you find valuable, I want your email address.” That’s a wonderful way to find potential customers, even if someone decides “no, I’m not interested right now, Noreen, to work with you, I just wanted you to read that piece of content.” They now agreed to give you their email address, and from there you can be marketing to them because they’ve agreed to give you their email address. You can include them in your email marketing campaigns going forward. You have a new what’s called a “top of funnel lead” that you can now start nurturing so that when the timing is right, even if it’s not right now, you can make sure that they think of you when the timing is right for themselves.
Nowadays, especially with millennials, there’s a research phase to what they’re going to buy. They’re no longer just going to that trade show or that event. They’re no longer picking up the cold call to listen to a salesperson. They want to do their own homework and that sales cycle oftentimes then takes a bit of time because at their leisure they’re trying to figure out which company they want to work with which product they want to buy.
But you now have the advantage of being able to stay on top of them with, by sharing content on a regular basis, positioning yourself as a thought leader, as a company or as an individual. At that point you have a very good chance of being the first phone call they make when they’re ready.
– Noreen Ehrlich
I wanted to talk to you about the more traditional style, whether it’s a website or otherwise. You and I were just talking about websites before we began this show. Under the old paradigm of websites a lot of content and writing, many businesses let’s say their white-collar professionals. Sure they’re there explaining themselves, and they’re explaining all their background and their education. But what is important on a website right now?
– Chris Ciunci
Great question. I will say that I think Steve Jobs perfected this. Less is oftentimes more. if I were to look at a website today versus ten years ago, ten years ago there was a lot of clutter on the websites and a ton of paragraphs, copy everywhere. Oftentimes companies thought this was a good to be found online, through search engine optimization. They wanted to put as much content out there as possible, right in front of you. Nowadays that feels very dated. Now you want to get to the point where you are providing a lot of content but you’re doing it in digestible ways. For example, if you were to look at the TribalVision.com you’ll see there’s a video that’s hitting you right on the home page. on what’s called the hero image right at the top part of your page.
– Noreen Ehrlich
H-E-R-O?
– Chris Ciunci
H-E-R-O. There’s a video playing in the background, again going back to millennials. They don’t want to read. They don’t want to read five paragraphs. Instead, if they can watch this video and be able to hear in 30 seconds, or a minute, what they’re looking for, that’s far more engaging than five paragraphs of boring content. That’s what works today. So I’m going to continue with my answer, but just know, the first takeaway for your audience–when we’re talking content, it’s not just about writing content, it’s about producing digestible chunks of video for someone to really understand who you are, why you’re different, and why they should buy from you to solve their pain points. The use of video today on websites is extremely important.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Video, icons.
– Chris Ciunci
Absolutely, infographics.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Infographics. I even read something that said even an animated, I don’t know what you call it, animated infographics? Maybe you know what you call it gets more attention than aesthetic design.
– Chris Ciunci
It absolutely does, and it’s interesting. The marketing ecosystem has exploded where there are now platforms out there, for example, if your audience were to go on to FIVRR, I believe as I spell it FIVRR.com, they’ll be able to then find an animated video that they could customize to their business on that site, and I’m not exaggerating this for a few hundred dollars, if that.
– Noreen Ehrlich
A video?
– Chris Ciunci
An animated video, ok where you can have stick figures talking about whatever you want.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Oh I see. So all right. So instead of having to go in and hire a videographer that spends five hours at your office, you use this platform?
– Chris Ciunci
That’s correct.
– Noreen Ehrlich
You could go get something that applies to you whether it’s the content you’re putting out or something on your website that you want to highlight.
– Chris Ciunci
That can make it more engaging. That’s exactly right. So my point is, today versus 10 years ago, there are now platforms out there that you can be leveraging to create this content. Where back in the day you’d have to hire an ad agency and they’d charge you $25,000 for what we’re talking about, now you can potentially get it for $500 a job.
So you know back to TribalVision for a quick moment. Part of our job is to make sure that you know what makes us different Noreen, and this isn’t the plug for TribalVision. It’s to talk to the customers, to the audience. What makes us different is that we really are trying to align ourselves with business owners, where ultimately they don’t know what they should be doing. They don’t know how much things cost. They don’t know about the portals that I’m talking about. We can help them navigate that and we can make sure that we are looking out for their best interests, bringing in the right tools, bringing in the right platforms, bringing in the right marketing channels, because for a novice who doesn’t know digital or social marketing it’s very easy today to be somewhat taken advantage of. Or worse, not even taken advantage of, but not even know what’s out there because things are happening so rapidly.
For example, there’s a platform called 99Designs where if you wanted a new logo for your company, instead of going to a marketing firm where they might charge you $5,000 – $10,000 for that logo, you can go to 99Designs.com and they do it for $499 and you’ll have 100 designers competing for that design project and you only pay if you like the design. If you don’t like the design you’re not going to have to pay the designer. So my overarching point is, there’s such a revolution going on in marketing today, digitally and socially, that the average person can’t keep up. So whether it’s TribalVision or someone else, you need to make sure you find a partner that is a bit on the cutting edge so they know where to navigate you and know where to look to get you what you need. Oftentimes small business owners don’t have the time to do all of that themselves.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So I want to remind our audience in case you just tuned in that I’m here today talking with the Managing Director of TribalVision, an outsourced digital marketing firm, this is Chris Ciunci.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah, Chris Ciunci.
– Noreen Ehrlich
That he told me…
– Chris Ciunci
Oh, no worries.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Bob knows I get all the names wrong and yours is one of the easier ones. But alright Chris. Oh so what kinds of companies does TribalVision work with.
– Chris Ciunci
There’s a range, I will say this. Well there’s two types of companies we work with. One is a large company, to be frank. That’s an established company. They already have a marketing department in place and they need a level of expertise on some aspect of marketing they don’t have internally. So instead of hiring a new person, they could be hiring TribalVision to provide whatever that is, it could even be marketing automation. It could be marketing reporting for that larger company, it could be a slice of digital marketing like search engine optimization, or paid search, that we own for that company. The other companies that we work with, or organizations, I should say because there are a lot of nonprofits we work with, are mid-sized businesses where they might have one person on their marketing team that’s also juggling a lot of other activities. They could be doing sales as well. If they are a small or mid-sized business they’re wearing a lot of hats.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Right.
– Chris Ciunci
They know that they need marketing help either from just a pure bandwidth perspective or expertise perspective, and so instead of hiring a Chief Marketing Officer to help that person, they would hire our team where, on an outsource basis, we can be their marketing department.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So we’re in Greenwich and you have a lot of hedge funds. If you have entrepreneurs, you also have well-established businesses here and a lot of white-collar professionals. So let’s go for example with the entrepreneur white-collar professional who’s very busy route. Very busy but they still want to keep their business up to date. I know it’s a big question but what advice would you start to give them to make the most of their marketing time.
– Chris Ciunci
Great question. So first I would say you’ve got to make sure you don’t just jump in feet first. Back to my earlier point, don’t just start trying things because, not always, but most of the time, if there’s no real holistic plan in place it’s not going to work. So if you say that “I’m gonna just focus on search engine optimization and driving traffic to my website” you tinker with that for a few months and you don’t really see any results. So then you give up on that and say “okay, why don’t I try paid search where I can get to the top of that first page and see if that works and I’ll do a $500 monthly budget for that.” That type of approach typically doesn’t work either. I very seldom, in my 10 years working with business owners of smaller business owners, see that work. You’ve got to make sure that you really think this through and figure out what your ultimate objective here is–I just need an extra 10% or 20% a month of my sales, whatever–you’ve gotta start with what your objectives are.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And commit to it.
– Chris Ciunci
And commit to it. Most business owners that we work with, they haven’t thought through that enough. They’ve just said I’m going to try the soup of the day and see if it works.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And then they?
– Chris Ciunci
And then they fail.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And they will because I think they also think that the results will come immediately.
– Chris Ciunci
Great point, and just know, I always like to say with any business meeting that I’m in, when that business owner says well I’m really smart I’m going to just base this on an ROI and the results. That’s fine, but then I’m not going to be the salesman and say “ You’re guaranteed results digitally and socially within two months.” That’s a lie. Just like anything in life, it takes time to build something properly, and most business owners, they have not invested in that marketing foundation that’s needed, and now are expecting instant results now that they are focusing on marketing for the first time in 10 years. It’s a gradual process, and it typically takes time when starting from scratch–where you have a basic website but have done nothing with it and not much else going on. You should give yourself at least six months of working with the firm or someone internally to put the foundation in place properly. So that you have levers you can pull to actually generate business. That does not happen overnight.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And the foundation is some is what people might call a brand?
– Chris Ciunci
The foundation would be starting with your brand, starting with a website that is actually not dated. Not an eight or nine-year-old website which is probably hurting not helping you, at this point–both with the consumer, and with Google. Your foundation is your website. From there you’ve got to be thinking about optimizing your website to be found for the search terms in which, here’s another pet peeve of mine, when business owners who just don’t know marketing yet, or very well, say “oh yeah, I did that SEO thing.” They said they did it. I checked the box. We’re all good now in SEO.” It’s like, no you’re not. Your SEO is living and breathing, and you have to continuously water that flower, and if you’re not watering it, yeah you planted it, but if you’re not watering it and putting a little fertilizer in there, it’s going to die eventually. It’s the same thing with SEO. So it’s that individual who wants the quick hit, that wants to get leads right away, they oftentimes are sold down the river by a firm that says “I’ll get you on the first page of Google within three months and then we’re off to the races.” It most often doesn’t work that way. It sometimes can take a year to organically be found. If they’re competitive search terms that you want to be found for, that’s a dogfight. You might be out there out there for a while, doing what you need to do to get to that ranking.
– Noreen Ehrlich
It’s a constant battle when you set up your website nowadays, we’re talking about the old paradigm. It’s live. It’s something that you have to keep.
– Chris Ciunci
Cultivating.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Cultivating.
– Chris Ciunci
You do because if you’re not then you are falling behind and that’s not just a shtick because I’m a marketing firm, saying “great we can help you with that”, it’s a fact.
– Noreen Ehrlich
It’s the new digital world we’re living in and if you’re going to go and market yourself digitally versus just staying offline, you really have to keep it to some extent depending on what kind of business you do but alive and changing, and have some sort of energy around it if you will.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah, and for two reasons. One is, of course, for the customer. Who is the possible customer? Who is on your website that you need to differentiate yourself for? They need to see that you are offering new content. But in addition to that, if we go back to Google and rankings or SEO, meaning how do you get to the first page organically without paying for that, how did you get rank that highly as well? It’s all about content. Ten years ago it was about what’s called keyword stuffing.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Keyword stuffing?
– Chris Ciunci
Keyword Stuffing, I’ll use TribalVision as an example. Were an outsource marketing firm, I put the word “outsource marketing firm” in every paragraph of my copy and on every page of my website. I’m stuffing that copy in whether it makes sense or not, and then Google will tell me if they’re relevant because they keep talking about “outsourced marketing firms”.
Today, for that keyword we want to be ranked highly for, you’re actually going to be penalized for with that approach because Google’s algorithms are smart enough to know that you’re stuffing keywords just to try and get ranked. Also, it’s not a good experience for the customer for the public. So in order to get ranked highly, I’m talking in very general terms, it’s much more complex than this, but high level for the show, just know that it is about fresh content. When we’re saying a living breathing website, you need new content not just to differentiate you for consumers or your customer, it’s also for you to be ranked highly on Google.
For companies that just set it and forget it, they wonder why they’re not ranked higher, well you’re not putting in the time and effort to get the ranking that you deserve. Just like anything in life, right? If you play a sport and you want to get to the top in the world, you better work at it every day. You can’t just say, “I just bought my tennis racquet and I just took a few lessons and I’m a tennis player.” Same thing with marketing and with your website.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So, in the old paradigm, if you will, you had a website and that’s it. Now you can get through to your customer using any variety of tools, so maybe that is just putting information out there. How important is the website now versus putting something up on business page on LinkedIn or a business page on Facebook.
– Chris Ciunci
Great question. I will still say that while you’re right, there are so many other digital channels that are out there to then get in front of that customer or potential customer. You could argue that those channels within the website are diminishing in importance. But I’d actually argue it’s not. I still think that no matter what customer, the public is still judging you, if they get that email from you or that social media post they are going to go to your website, if they are serious about buying something and they’re going to judge you on that website, and so I still think that the website is sort of your online store-front. A lot of business owners we work with that are old school, they’re so proud, let’s use a manufacturer as an example. You know I can’t tell you the number of manufacturers who when I get their first meeting with them, they are so proud to bring me through their factory. If I take a look, you actually can eat off the floor and all of the new pieces of equipment they want to show off and show me which is very impressive. But then you look at their website where 99% of people are judging them based on that, because how many people take a tour of a factory? Not many, maybe 1 percent if that ½ of 1 percent versus every day there are hundreds maybe thousands on your website, and that’s an afterthought.
So, website is still extremely important. It’s changed in a lot of ways, it’s no longer a brochure. Back in the day, it was like “yeah I have my brochure which is my website nowadays.” To your point earlier it really is something that’s far more dynamic and engaging, it needs to include video, it needs to include client testimonials, video testimonials, white papers, case studies, very segmented messaging to segment target audiences. So, it’s no longer just one message can hit everybody. I could go on and on but the point is website is still extremely important, it’s your foundation, but there’s also so many other marketing channels now that didn’t exist 10 years ago in very refined ways where you can touch prospects in ways that you couldn’t before and using that LinkedIn sponsored post example. Most business owners think LinkedIn is just for recruiting. They just think it’s just for their HR team to recruit talent. Trust me LinkedIn is making a lot of money. Microsoft recently purchased them and a lot of that emphasis is being placed on lead generation through LinkedIn, and most business owners and salespeople, which is surprising to me but salespeople are not leveraging LinkedIn the way that they can be. Even in terms of just joining groups nowadays. You can build a marketing group, a group just for marketing leaders just talking about cutting edge marketing tools and tactics that are out there. If I build that group and bring in Chief Marketing Officers at large companies or at mid-sized companies, that’s a wonderful opportunity for me to then start building awareness and a voice. With those very specific possible customers instead of just hoping they find my website. So yeah, you have a very good point that there are targeted ways now to start going after clients that didn’t exist. But the website still is your foundation.
– Noreen Ehrlich
I think that even when I work with my clients, we keep hitting on this topic but I’m glad that we are. People do go to wide, sometimes they’re saying “I want to go because your product would sell anywhere” across the globe in some cases. They also sometimes want to tackle the entire United States. But if you have a limited budget and you want to see some conversion on your marketing dollars, I would say that you would be better off narrowing it down to certain groups as you’re pointing out certain geographies and continuing to work those relationships.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah. That’s right. I mean Seth Godin, who’s a very famous marketer…
– Noreen Ehrlich
Who?
– Chris Ciunci
Seth Godin. He’s big-time, and years ago he said, “small is the new big right”. Which is what you’re talking about Noreen. You don’t need to have this product or service offered to the masses. Nowadays it’s far more powerful if you can get down to very specific audiences and speak to their pain points and needs in very in-depth ways. So I’ll use TribalVision as an example. Were an outsource marketing firm, right? We can be the marketing department for any company? Large, small, any industry, needs marketing right? But we’ve been very strategic about trying to go after very specific niches. You talked about white-collar professional services companies earlier, let’s use that as an example because that’s one of the pillars that we really are targeting in our marketing. We have developed a voice and content, including video testimonials, infographics, so much content, just to that niche. So, we’re not just talking about we’re an outsourced marketing firm for the world, we’re talking about law firms, accounting firms, IT service providers, and within each of those there are nuances. Speaking like their language, providing examples that are relevant to what they’re facing, and so we’re going very deep but in a very narrow way in terms of who we’re going after in the marketplace and to me if someone were to ask what are the top five reasons TribalVision had some success there over the last decade that would certainly be one of the top five reasons.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Right, I like this point because we’re so inundated with information and the world is so nuanced now that for the business owners out there, like myself and Chris, you really need to understand your target client and you need to understand your target clients in the way of their industry. The limitations around their industry and the pain point that your target client is facing, and then from there you really can go in there and help them versus trying to please everybody. But even if you’re scaling your business, you can only handle so many customers at once. It’s a good problem to have, but if you really narrow it down and go look, you only need 5 to 25 customers. From there, you could pierce the community stick and deliver solid results. Eventually, you’ll start to build up traction and it should have some evolution after that.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah, and you’ll also have pricing power as well because if you really get to know someone’s industry, by being so specialized in it, you can charge a premium for that because you’ll understand who their audiences are. You’ve already maybe been there and have done building out whatever needs to be built.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Right, you become the go-to.
– Chris Ciunci
You become the go-to resource for that space, and I would argue that there are extremes out there. I’ve read and listened to podcasts where I’ll use my industry as an example with marketing firms. There are marketing thought leaders like CEOs of marketing firms and there’s a school of thought nowadays that is saying you just need to go after a small niche as an industry or a subset of like 5,000 companies total, and that’s still a lot. But that’s nothing compared to the millions that are out there and do everything you can to build awareness with those 5,000 and be an expert to those 5,000 companies. You should be able to live and feed off of that and build a thriving business just off of that very small niche because you will become the de facto experts within that niche, and I think there’s some validity to that of course.
– Noreen Ehrlich
I think that would have to be because then people would start to get to know you. So as long as you have a positive reputation, versus some notoriety, it should be built upon itself and if it goes past that at some point, that should have it happen inevitably because you’ve outgrown that 5,000 people.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah, that’s exactly right, and just know there are audiences that we’re talking about versus how to really be targeted with your audience that you’re selling to. The other way to think about it is some sort of segmentation of your own product or service set. So, again I’ll use marketing because this is the space I know most. Back in the day, there were just general marketing firms. They were marketing firms saying “we can do this or that or whatever you need we can help you with.” Nowadays with how sophisticated the marketing world has become, there are subspecialties within marketing. There’s digital marketing, social media marketing, and there’s also even marketing automation. There are specialists on Amazon that bring companies awareness on Amazon’s marketplace. Those are very different skill sets. Public relations is very different than digital marketing, and so the point is that for companies that are out there listening, you should also be thinking about if you want to be everything to that small niche, or do I want to be known for my space. Maybe it’s just a search engine optimization and paid search within the digital spectrum.
My point is it’s becoming extremely specialized and it’s actually working to TribalVision’s advantage because the days of just hiring a head of marketing or marketing manager to say “OK, you’re leading or helping with my marketing efforts”, those days are gone because there’s no way one person can be well-versed in the explosion of marketing channels and tools that are out there today. So an outsourced marketing firm, that’s sort of cutting edge where you have dozens or maybe even 100 marketing specialists. You have specialists that are able to handle anything at a firm whereas one person that’s an internal hire, it’s going to be very difficult for them to go that deep. So my point is for business owners that are out there, in addition to thinking through being as targeted as you can with the industry that you’re selling into, you should also be thinking about what services or products that know what type of business you are but what products or services can you really like specialize in as well.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Right. So let’s give an example so that the audience understands if it is a law firm example instead of saying we’re the law offices of Noreen Ehrlich and I do everything, you should be very specific on what you do?
– Chris Ciunci
Right. You know exactly from you know everything from corporate to personal liability.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Now I start to say you know something and assess my business a little bit to see what am I passionate about and what I am good at. What have I already known for what’s lucrative, and what to write about your business, you can still do your other services, but people get scared if you start to tell them to minimize some of the other skills they have and to maybe just focus on one area of corporate law.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah. Or…
– Noreen Ehrlich
As the primary focus?
– Chris Ciunci
As the primary, or if you’re a large law firm, you are going to hear this as saying there’s no way. I mean we’re going to lose half our revenue but we can also then make sure that even the way that our message is positioned on our website oftentimes you go to a law firm’s website it’s just they do everything, and you go and say no, I’m just looking for this specific pain point in my life that for you to solve. But maybe there are different pathways on the website where they can show expertise in each of those three or four different specialty specializations, but you also can find it easily on the website and it can go very deep on that path of that website instead of being very generic. For example, we can do everything and there’s nothing more deep than that and there’s no path to find and that shows me that content.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So when your prospective clients come to your website, what needs to happen now more quickly than ever is that a prospective client that are at a crossroad of some point, their pain point as we’re describing it. They need to see something on your website very quickly. Nowadays everybody has a short attention span. They need to see something typically on your home page or whatever that landing page, but typically on your home page that helps them think they can get relief through you and that you really understand their problem.
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah that’s exactly right, and so to your point earlier in the conversation about in addition to the website there’s now marketing channels you can use to try and find those individuals. Know that sophisticated marketing today, let’s use LinkedIn as a prime example. You come up with a piece of content that’s just talking to one aspect of your law firm. Well when they click on that for that $5, like I mentioned earlier, don’t direct them to the homepage of your website. You can build a landing page and that landing page speaks specifically to that piece of content and what’s in it, and that level of specialization around that. So they’re not having to be brought to a generic web page where it’s very difficult for them to find what they’re looking for.
– Noreen Ehrlich
To figure out if you’re the right attorney in this case.
– Chris Ciunci
That’s correct, and that’s the case with all paid media. So just know with paid media today I’ll use again TribalVision as the example, we spend thousands of dollars a month on Google right to be in the top three or four positions of Google. Well, let’s say you’re searching for an outsource marketing firm. You click on my link. Well that link is not going to go to the home page it’s going to go to a landing page that’s specific that just talked to outsourced marketing.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Landing page just in case anybody who’s listening is really a specific you know is having it pointed to a specific page on your website.
– Chris Ciunci
That’s correct. Yeah, and just know that outsourced marketing. But there might be someone else who’s only interested in social media marketing. Well I’m going to then direct them to a page that just talks about social media marketing because that’s what they’re looking for. Most companies that we work with don’t get to that next layer of sophistication with their marketing. They’re just directing them to the generic home page.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Back to the home page.
– Chris Ciunci
Back to the home page, and they’re wondering why your conversion rates are half of what your conversion rates should be. Then they say, “Chris, it’s because you’re not doing the work to be as specific with your language and content is what the customer is hoping for.”
– Noreen Ehrlich
So we’re on the website again folks so let’s just stay with that for a second so you could have your homepage sort of be like your table of contents. What are some of the mistakes people make with their home page or all the pages?
– Chris Ciunci
Yeah. Well, number one like we talked about earlier is clutter. So there’s a ton of content and it’s overwhelming and you don’t know where to go. So, there’s so many different layers of content on a website. So what is that, what do I mean by that let’s use TribalVision as an example. OK, well, I have a section on our home page called you know “why go Tribal”? Well, I have five headlines of why you should be thinking about TribalVision, and then within those five headlines if you want to click on a button you can learn more about each of those five reasons. It’s like an accordion that expands but I don’t have that on the home page. If someone’s interested I want to catch them with the headline because like you said they have 30 seconds, and then from there I can keep leading them down deeper and deeper on the site with more content if they want to go there.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So it’s putting a lot out there and…
– Chris Ciunci
But in very digestible ways!
– Noreen Ehrlich
So that they can find what they’re looking for potentially on the home page, and when they do find what they’re looking for that they can double click and go deeper.
– Chris Ciunci
They can go deeper and deeper.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And then if they still want to find more they can potentially keep going and keep going deeper into that one particular topic that they want to?
– Chris Ciunci
Correct. Versus a cluttered site of content everywhere that is not visually appealing and there’s nothing engaging about it. You’re doing yourself a disservice with that, that’s number one. Number two sounds very basic but if your website is not loading quickly literally loading quickly, like if I type in your website address and it takes three seconds you’re gonna be surprised by this, but there’s a big drop off of people who don’t have the patience to wait.
– Noreen Ehrlich
And it’s sort of makes you look amateur.
-Chris Ciunci
Sure, and that happens often, and by the way, if we’re going back to Google with trying to rank highly for certain search terms, they frown upon websites that load slowly. Why? Because you use Google because you trust them and they’re going to find what you’re looking for. If they bring me to a slow loading website that is out-dated, I might not use Google again, I’m just going to go onto social media and ask my friends for what I’m looking for not Google. So the point is you’ve got to make sure that your website is loading quickly and most importantly, if there’s another takeaway from this show, it’s having your website what’s called mobile-friendly. If your website is being found on an Apple device, your site should be a pleasure to read on a phone. If it’s not and you can tell that very easily and you need to get it fixed.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Yeah, I would think people whose websites are more than I don’t know blank years old, they don’t look right on the mobile phone and especially if you’re a little older. You don’t realize that millennials if you want to call it that, but a lot of people now right or are looking things up on their phone and that’s going to be their first visit to your website it’s not going to be a laptop computer where everything’s right out in front of you.
– Chris Ciunci
I think that now it’s close to three minutes two and a half minutes left.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Oh really?
– Chris Ciunci
Right, to your point I think the statistic is 70 percent of searches today are through your phone not through a desktop or a laptop. So if you’re not mobile-friendly you’re just dead, someone’s not going to continue. They’re going to find another website.
– Noreen Ehrlich
So whether I’m on my laptop or my website calls to action, in other words, it’s not just about saying we’re here. It’s about making it very easy for somebody say “oh good I finally found you. Now I found TribalVision or I found the attorney or found my business to even have a link to call you.”
– Chris Ciunci
You know it sounds like a basis point, but these are things that I find that’s exactly right and oftentimes not even on a website or it’s difficult to find a phone number, it’s down at the bottom instead of the upper right-hand corner. If someone doesn’t want to speak with someone at the moment, but they are interested, they want to learn more about it. There should be a form for them a very quick form of just basic email address name and phone number for them to then be able to submit. So that you can then follow up with them.
– Noreen Ehrlich
I think people didn’t submit those inquiries very frequently but they’re doing it now. Okay folks, this show went very quickly but I hope you learned something. There’s a new digital marketing marketplace out there with a new paradigm out there. It’s moving faster than ever and you really need the right team behind you, and that’s why I am really thrilled that I had the pleasure of bringing Chris Ciunci of TribalVision here. That’s just the beginning of what he knows. If you’re in the market to hire a digital marketing firm to redo your website all the things around digital marketing please take a look at TribalVision. Chris, I’m thrilled you’re here. Thank you very much.
– Chris Ciunci
Thanks so much. I’m really happy to have the conversation this is all good stuff. Thanks for getting me on the show.
– Noreen Ehrlich
Come back again sometimes and thank you Bob as always. Bye, everybody.
