844: The digital marketing landscape... and putting it ALL together for your business w/ Jared Schweers

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and I'll tell you what.

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I'm for sure biased, but I genuinely think that one of the most important things to get right in business is marketing, and today's guest is an expert at all things digital marketing.

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He has such an extensive skillset, and really an arsenal of skills that he's able to call on to solve real life business problems.

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So we're all in for a real treat today.

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Our guest's name is Jared Schweers.

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Let me tell you all about Jared.

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Jared is the owner and driving force behind Key Element Media, a premier web and digital marketing firm headquartered in Rockwall, texas, with a specialization in web design, organic search, google profile rankings, paid search and apparel.

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The company boasts an impressive portfolio catering to businesses of all scales, ranging from national giants to hyper-local enterprises.

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Why?

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Because this stuff applies to all of our businesses.

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Key Element Media continues to grow year after year, serving more clients and completing even larger projects.

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With a rich career spanning over 18 years in digital marketing, jared's expertise is grounded in a solid foundation backed by a degree in communication technology.

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Beyond Key Element Media, jared extends his entrepreneurial prowess as the co-owner of Rockhopper Designs and Apparel, rockwall's go-to screen printing and apparel brand.

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So this is someone who loves business, loves marketing.

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We're gonna learn a lot from him today, so I'm not gonna say anything else.

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Let's dive straight into my interview with Jared Schweres.

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All right, jared, I'm so excited that you're here with us today.

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Welcome to the show.

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Absolutely, man.

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Thanks for having excited that you're here with us today.

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Welcome to the show.

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Absolutely, man.

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Thanks for having me.

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Heck, yes, Super excited about this one.

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I talked to you quite a bit in the intro, but I think you've got big shoes to fill and I know you'll do it.

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So take us beyond the bio to kick things off.

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Who the heck is Jared?

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How'd you start doing all these cool things that you're into?

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Yeah, well, it probably goes back to like childhood.

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So my dad was a computer programmer.

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Like any kid, whenever dad's working I want to be with him, so he, you know code and stuff at home, so I'd sit in his lap as a three year old watch him do his job.

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Didn't understand it, of course, but I just was always drawn to computers because my dad was, you know, worked on one, so I was, you know, always around them.

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So you fast forward to high school and we started, you know, in taking some classes that involve Photoshop and other things, and Photoshop kind of sold me on the creative and, you know, manipulation of graphics and things that you could do with their powerful tools and software, and so that kind of got me started.

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That was like the introduction.

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And then fast forward to college.

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I took some graphics classes, loved them, but didn't probably think that I was just going to be a graphic artist at that time, and so I picked a career I'm sorry, a degree in communications, and that led me to all things websites, e-commerce it did have other things in their PR general technology like how wifi works and different things, and then communication law.

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So it gave me a pretty good basis for what I do today and what they taught us in those classes actually ended up being very foundational for the SEO space.

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Once SEO became a thing when I was in college, seo wasn't so much a thing, so that's kind of what led me there the interest, and then that's how I kind of followed that path down and then, post-college, really have a crazy story that I'll try not to get too long-winded on.

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But through a mutual friend I connected with another business owner and he was doing web and graphic design.

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He needed some help.

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So basically I started helping him maybe two years of that, ran the company for a couple of years, purchased the company after that and the friend that connected this, interestingly enough, literally vanished after two weeks of connecting us.

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We still don't know what happened there, but she did get us together and that kind of started me down the path of owning my own business and growing that in different forms.

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Yeah, I really love that overview, Jared, because I feel like it pinpoints so many of the different facets.

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When people want to talk about marketing, they just want to talk about Facebook ads or Instagram ads, but they miss out on so many of those core elements that it sounds like I want to say the word that you naturally picked up along the way, but of course, it's not natural.

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It's something that you intentionally said.

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Well, I want to go into communication technology.

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I want to figure out the tech piece.

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I want to figure out the messaging piece.

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I want to figure out the technical pieces as well.

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Like when you talk about SEO, there's so many components to that that people overlook.

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So I guess my first question to you to really kick things off today is about that broad umbrella of digital marketing.

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We all hear so much about digital marketing.

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You've operated multiple businesses of your own.

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You've helped so many clients of your own.

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With that in mind, when you think about marketing, what is marketing?

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What's the role of it?

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How does it fit into a business's operations?

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Yeah, there's so many different, I think, facets of it, but I think it's.

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You know, marketing should be promoting your business in some form or fashion, right.

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So it should be a lead generation in some form or fashion.

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In my opinion, sometimes it's just branding, sometimes that can just be hey, this is our brand, this is who we are, this is what we believe in, maybe, but generally it's hey, here's who we are, here's the services we offer and here's, maybe, where we offer them.

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If you're a localized business and so you're kind of giving the customer, like, you know, these are the things we do, these are where we do them, and sometimes this is how we can help you or this is how we can solve a problem that you might be having.

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Again, depends on the media that you're using at that point.

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Social is a little different than inbound, where somebody searching for you.

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If you're doing social, you might have to explain why they need you.

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You know more clearly versus somebody who's already searching for you and they find you, then obviously they know that you're probably somebody that can solve their problem.

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If they're looking for a plumber and you're a plumber because they have a water leak, good chance that you can help them right, so the explanation isn't so needed there.

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Yeah, I think that that right there you illustrate why marketing is hard for so many different businesses, both big and small, is because there are so many options.

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I mean, I talked about kind of your marketing toolkit, your arsenal of different weapons and skills that you can use, and there are so many SEO to social media you've already introduced to us, to inbound, outbound there's so many different forms of it.

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Where does your mind go Jared With so much experience in this space?

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You're one of the OGs.

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18 years of experience in digital marketing is not a common thing.

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We see the fly by night gurus that pop up online with Facebook ads, but from your perspective, how do you even begin to build that foundation of asking yourself, okay for this specific business?

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Here's what actually applies from this toolkit.

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Yeah Well, for me, just naturally, I tend to lean towards inbound.

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So I grew up.

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So back to college, I worked radio shacks through college and managed several different stores and that was a commission based job.

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So you worked on sales commission.

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So I learned to sell honestly in a retail format and people would come in with problems.

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I would figure out how to solve them.

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I'd use the things in my store to sell to them to solve those problems, and so it kind of translates into what I do today.

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You know I have a skill set.

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People have problems.

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They need more leads.

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They don't have the right qualified leads, they're not getting enough traffic to their website, their website's not functioning and converting for them, like whatever those needs might be.

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You know I basically do the same thing I did back.

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Then I go into my, my skill set and I say, okay, what do I have available to myself that I can do for these people to solve their problems?

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And and that's how kind of how I operate.

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So for me personally, I prefer somebody contacting me that has a need already that I'm able to help them solve, because that's just naturally how I function.

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What is harder to do is go out and cast a broader net and say hey, if you're one of these people, if you're a business owner that makes $10,000 a month and you feel like your leads or your website aren't converting like they should, we can help you.

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And those are more the people you see on social media and for me personally, that's not my choice really in advertising or in getting clients.

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It does work for a lot of people and for some industries that's absolutely the way they need to go, but that's just not me.

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So when it comes to myself, I prefer, yeah, somebody contacting me, giving me their, their problems or the issues that they're facing.

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And if they don't have those, then I usually ask questions to try and get some, because everybody has something that they're struggling with or trying to improve upon, and then again, you know, go into my skill set and say, okay, this is how we can help you.

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This is the path that I think can, you know, provide solutions to those issues.

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Yeah, jared, you brought up one big topic that I knew we talk about today and here we are jumping straight into, and that is, of course, websites.

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I feel like this is something that so many businesses get wrong, and obviously it's because a lot of them don't have the experience that you have, and so it's very easy to hop onto squarespacecom and just start a website and use some pre-made template.

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But with your experience set of eyes, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see in the world of business websites, whether it's big or small businesses?

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And then, most importantly, show us the light, jared, what are some of the essentials for a business's website?

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For sure.

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Yeah, I mean what we often see with somebody who did their website themselves, or maybe they even went so far as to pay somebody you know on the cheap a friend, relative you know brothers, cousins, you know whatever and they they built them like a $300 website and it looks like a $300 website.

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And so you know what we see a lot is it's very cookie cutter.

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Or they went to like GoDaddy website builder and just paid for a plan and it looks like the other plumber that's in the neighboring city next to them.

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You know they look the same, they're using the same template.

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So that's one thing, that you see a lot.

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You just see a lot of the same thing.

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Second thing you see is like the lack of detail to kind of the key components of SEO, so like what I call the foundational SEO components.

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You know Google doesn't look at these as much as they used to, that's a fact.

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But like, title tags, descriptions and other things of that nature should still be there and instead of your homepage having a title of you know home and then maybe the company name off to the side, it should really be like you know, I'm a plumber in Dallas or I'm a plumber in Rockwall and then your company name, you know.

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So you see those technical aspects of a site that are really overlooked, which, again, you wouldn't expect your average consumer to know or average business owner to know, those technical components.

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And so those are two things that we really see a lot of.

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And then the third thing would just be either not enough information or not the right types of information, and so they put one sentence on there about their company and they just kind of leave it at that, when most people would prefer a little bit on there about their company, and they just kind of leave it at that, when most people would prefer a little bit more information about the company or about the services they provide, and so they lack the detail of content.

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They like the depth of content in their websites, and as far as shedding the light on what is it these days, I'd say that's gonna vary from industry to industry, but if you're an average, like small business, I think you need to make your website.

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Simple is not a word to mean that it doesn't look, you know, attractive or anything but simple, as in, it's easy to navigate and if they can get where they need to go and if you can lead them down the path that they need to go down to get there, then I think you have a good opportunity for success in converting that client to at least a phone call or an inquiry and then you can turn that you know from there into a client or a customer.

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Yeah, I love the fact that, even when we're just starting our conversation about a website, you've already layered in those important search engine optimization considerations, because that's our chance.

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If we really think of marketing at its most basic level.

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It's people who are looking for us, can they find us?

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And so when we start roping in Google profile rankings, which is something that you specialize in, I think it's so important for business owners to understand that this is something that we can do.

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It may not feel I guess we live in an instant gratification world where I can launch a Facebook ad and start getting clicks 10 minutes from now, where SEO may take a bit longer.

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Ranking with my Google profile for my business may take a little bit longer.

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Talk to us about I guess it's part mindset question I would imagine that you have with a lot of these business owners with regards to that instant gratification, but also talk about those longer term foundational elements and how they pay off, because what it seems like to me as I research the way that you operate, jared, is you set up a foundational structure that's going to serve them not just today, not just when they're paying you with regards to marketing services, but something that will pay off long-term.

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Yeah, absolutely so.

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When we build a website whether they are a customer that's signing up for monthly services in addition to the website, or whether it's just a website I say I just build a good foundation.

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You're going to build a house.

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You might as well build it on a good foundation, right?

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So we lay the foundation within that website of good content, good metadata, properly optimized images, alt tags on those images.

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You just you go down the list of all these little small details, but in total they help build that foundation.

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And then when you're trying to do SEO or you're trying to do paid ads or other forms of marketing, you're building your house on something that's stable and is going to last, rather than something that's just going to be like a fad.

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Or maybe you didn't even put all the details in there, and maybe it's not like a little website builder.

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Maybe you built a regular website but you didn't put all the details in, and your house is built on nothing that's going to stand, and so when you start building all those marketing components on top of it, it doesn't hold the weight, and then you might be getting traffic, but you're not getting any follow through, and so you just kind of wasted your time and effort, and so the components that we put in there for sure are going to be serving them when the site is built, and it's going to serve them long-term, because Google's foundation on how it ranks things has, of course, changed over the years, but there's some things that have stayed constant and there's some things that every site should have and have, you know, have needed to have for for years, tens of years.

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So it's not, um, you know, it's not something that, yeah, you're going to build in just a year later and be like, oh no, this has to be completely scrapped and redone because everything is different now.

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It's something that you might change components of, but the foundation of it should really be strong and still be viable.

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Yeah, really well said.

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I actually love the fact that you're using that house analogy with us here today because I think it illustrates a very clear picture of that foundational element.

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Because I'm going to humble brag for you in a second here, jared, but when I think about your business, I to me it's it's not just what we see digitally, it's obviously in your customer experience, it's obviously in the way that you show up in your community through a place of service.

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So, to humble brag, I didn't say it at the top of this episode, but you have won so many awards, whether it's through your local chamber of commerce.

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I love this.

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You won the title of small business partner of the year from your local chamber of commerce and, with those things in mind, obviously, what customers see online is one thing, but talk to us about your approach to it because, jared, just knowing your work as well as I have through my research, you show up out of service through all of that.

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Talk to us about that brand consistency, because a lot of business owners might think, oh, if I bring someone in from a marketing perspective, I'm going to lose my touch, my DNA, my soul throughout my messaging and throughout the way that my brand shows up in the world, whereas for you, it really is that foundational element that follows through into all the rest.

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So talk to us about how you incorporate all this stuff across not just marketing, but the overall experience of a company.

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Yeah, for sure.

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I think you know we try to take the individual, the business owner or the brand that they've created and display that to the clients that they're trying to reach.

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And so if they've got core values as a company, if they've got things that they clients that they're trying to reach, and so if they've got core values as a company, if they've got things that they say that they stand for some of them are veteran owned, so they're obviously very patriotic we take those into account and the voice that we use when we create content for them or ads or really anything that's out in the marketing space for them, it all has that in mind.

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And so we're trying to be consistent with who they are as a company and the values that they possess as a company.

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And there are a few and I would say very few times where maybe they just don't have a strong voice or brand yet, maybe they don't understand what that even is, and so in those cases we'd really have to coach them and ask some questions of like, well, what do you want your company to stand for?

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Like, what are some things that you value as a company?

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And we can help them kind of start those you know thoughts and then hopefully that you know gets them down the road on determining what that is for their.

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Their company so it's almost like a little bit of business coaching in there sometimes.

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Their company so it's almost like a little bit of business coaching in there sometimes, and that's fine.

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But a lot of people do have an idea of what they want their company to stand for.

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Again, we just go alongside that and use that same voice and use those same values as we produce content for their business.

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Yeah, I'm glad you called that out, that sometimes it must be a little bit of business coaching.

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Sometimes it must be a little bit of you being a psychiatrist for people when they're so nervous to put their business out there and express their messaging.

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What's that process like on your end?

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Because you're someone who loves getting in the dirt with your clients and really helping them uncover what makes their business unique, so that you can present it to the world through these different marketing channels.

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What's that look like?

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Because part of me wants to ask you obviously people don't know what they don't know.

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You have so many years of experience and you've seen inside of so many other businesses.

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How do you extract the good stuff out from the business owners that will end up becoming a foundational piece of their marketing?

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Yeah, so it's a lot of questions.

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You know it's.

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It gives me like, what's your competitive advantage or what makes you different?

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And it's just the same thing.

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People ask me sometimes you know what makes you different from the other guy down the street that does a website, and so I'll give them my credentials.

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Right, like, well, first of all, I have a degree in it and not, I mean, most web designers cannot say that.

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So it's very rare, are very yeah, rare that you would run into somebody who builds websites and actually has a degree or went to school for it.

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Um, so there's, you know one off the top.

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And then you know the second part of that is the experience, uh, the attention to detail and all these other things that we do, um, that are different than most people that build websites, and so I kind of take them down the same path.

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You know some of the same questions they might ask me.

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I turn around and ask them because it still applies.

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It was like if you're a plumber, well, what makes you different than the next plumber on the list?

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And you know, a lot of times that comes down to quality or the care that they take when they enter somebody's home or the background checks they do for their employees, or you could go down the list of a lot of other things that some of these businesses do to set themselves apart and make themselves different.

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So it really does come down to us asking questions, and if I don't get answers that differentiate them enough, then I just have to keep asking more questions.

00:19:34.301 --> 00:19:40.522
Well, what is know foundation slab leaks that you do that is different than everybody else.

00:19:40.522 --> 00:19:42.428
Or take a pool builder, for example.

00:19:42.428 --> 00:19:48.568
Some pool builders use, you know, one inch pipe on the for the water and some use two.

00:19:48.568 --> 00:20:01.731
Well, in our world you might get a hard freeze two times a year and that will matter in our area because the guy using two inch pipe is less likely to have those pipes freeze versus the one that's using one inch.

00:20:01.731 --> 00:20:15.731
So you ask these detailed questions just to kind of get an idea of what makes them different than their competitors, and that's what we hope, or that's what helps us create content and market them in a better and different way.

00:20:16.453 --> 00:20:18.943
Yeah, listeners, you're hearing it from Jared right here.

00:20:18.943 --> 00:20:29.807
If you've sat down to design your own website and put it together on WordPress or Squarespace or whatever it is that you're choosing to use and you've not asked these foundational questions, then that's the important stuff.

00:20:29.807 --> 00:20:35.670
A website is not just a collection of menu bars and content and pictures that you put somewhere on the page.

00:20:35.670 --> 00:20:38.503
It's about these fundamental business questions.

00:20:38.503 --> 00:20:46.046
You see how many of Jared's answers come back to business principles rather than merely just a website, so I think that's so important to call out.

00:20:46.046 --> 00:20:49.946
And Jared to your point about gosh there are so many web designers these days.

00:20:49.946 --> 00:20:59.259
I feel like because of AI, because of technological advancements, we've never seen more people enter the marketplaces with service-based businesses especially.

00:20:59.259 --> 00:21:00.163
What's your view on it?

00:21:00.163 --> 00:21:03.611
Obviously, I mean there's AI website builders out there just now.

00:21:03.611 --> 00:21:08.951
There's so many innovations that are coming, some really good, but some have some unintended consequences.

00:21:08.951 --> 00:21:11.587
What's your take on where your industry is going?

00:21:13.233 --> 00:21:19.597
Yeah, it's certainly going to be very interesting as Google really decides how they feel about ai content.

00:21:19.597 --> 00:22:00.944
I mean, recently they've said, hey, we're, we're basically not going to uh, even though they have their own ai like content builder uh, they're, they're not going to allow or they don't want, um, artificial content written uh to rank and so they still prefer that a human write the content and they're going to award the content that is written by humans and has, like you know, it comes from a place of authority, and a lot of AI content doesn't come from a place of authority because really it's just telling you what it has found on the Internet itself, and so it talks in very general terms A lot of times it doesn't use very specifics, it doesn't give examples, all those kinds of things.

00:22:00.944 --> 00:22:15.550
And so as we progress in the AI world and as Google really firms up where they decide they wanna be on it all that's gonna determine the ultimate landing spot on that.

00:22:15.550 --> 00:22:25.125
But right now they're saying we don't like AI content, we don't really want sites that have that, and especially sites that are built in totally AI generated content.

00:22:25.125 --> 00:22:27.491
We're just not even, we don't even want to pay attention to them.

00:22:27.491 --> 00:22:30.810
That doesn't appear to have happened.

00:22:30.810 --> 00:22:42.535
I mean, there are sites out there right now that say, well, you just gave us Google had an update earlier in March, if you didn't know that, and so their algorithm updated and it was specifically an AI type update to their algorithm.

00:22:42.535 --> 00:22:49.907
And some sites are still saying, hey, I'm mostly AI generated and I'm still ranking really well, so your algorithm didn't work.

00:22:49.907 --> 00:22:57.964
But I do see them cracking down on that in the future because they're about authenticity, they're about quality content.

00:22:57.964 --> 00:23:02.074
They're about authenticity, they're about quality content.

00:23:02.074 --> 00:23:09.724
They're about the user or the author, you know, being able to express and give details and insight and knowledge.

00:23:09.724 --> 00:23:25.311
And if that's all written by AI, then it kind of goes against what they've been about for years, and so I see that being a very, you know, fluid situation for the time, until they kind of land on what that looks like for them and maybe put their foot down really hard on what it's going to be.

00:23:25.780 --> 00:23:30.991
As far as design goes, there are AI website designers out there right now.

00:23:30.991 --> 00:23:35.817
You can, you know, log into a site, basically plug in some things and it'll kind of throw together Again.

00:23:35.817 --> 00:23:46.628
Usually it can be very cookie cutter or it can look a lot like another person's site and I don't know that these AI things have really all fleshed out yet in the design space.

00:23:46.628 --> 00:23:53.468
But even for AI images, if you needed a graphic or something, there's plenty of resources for that right now.

00:23:53.468 --> 00:23:56.946
Some of them aren't bad For shirt designs that we do.

00:23:57.119 --> 00:24:05.507
I have a client that prints with us and he's done his own designs in AI and, honestly, some of them look pretty cool.

00:24:05.507 --> 00:24:16.276
So that's going to be a continuing evolution of how much AI is used in the day-to-day business.

00:24:16.276 --> 00:24:20.599
For some people is used in the day-to-day business.

00:24:20.599 --> 00:24:24.626
For some people and that might, I expect it will vary greatly depending on the industry you're in and the things that you need to generate.

00:24:24.626 --> 00:24:36.489
But for those that are in the design space or, like myself, in the marketing space, I can see where there's quite a bit of opportunity there to at least be more efficient in some ways.

00:24:36.489 --> 00:24:52.647
Content is a little different in that, but as far as like graphics and kind of like ideas and social media images, for example, all that I could really see being used by AI in a pretty significant way.

00:24:53.380 --> 00:25:03.661
Yeah, I think that's a really important call out from you right there, which is obviously it's tempting for a lot of people to fire up chat GPT and generate a hundred different blog posts to publish on their website.

00:25:03.661 --> 00:25:09.869
But it reminds me of that quote there's no shortcut to any place worth going and it doesn't mean it's going to reward you in the long run.

00:25:09.869 --> 00:25:14.083
So really interesting to hear your perspective as someone who's been in the game as long as you have.

00:25:14.083 --> 00:25:25.631
Jared, I want to invite you to speak directly to listeners here, because I know a lot of them are not necessarily enterprise level entrepreneurs or CEOs and they're probably thinking well, jared, you work with businesses of all different sizes.

00:25:25.892 --> 00:25:28.421
How the heck are us small guys supposed to compete?

00:25:28.421 --> 00:25:37.011
When we talk about SEO, when we talk about creating authentic, personalized, individualized content, what's your take on the landscape there?

00:25:37.011 --> 00:25:45.446
Because, hearing you talk about the future of AI in your industry, I actually view it as an opportunity to stand out in a world where everyone else is going to create these things at scale.

00:25:45.446 --> 00:25:47.461
I'm going to create them at things that don't scale.

00:25:47.461 --> 00:25:51.095
Having these one-on-one conversations cannot be replicated by AI.

00:25:51.095 --> 00:25:58.568
So what's your take and your message for all of the smaller entrepreneurs out there, whether they're solopreneurs or they have small but growing teams.

00:25:58.568 --> 00:26:02.816
What's your take on their unique advantages and how they can compete in the marketplace?

00:26:04.721 --> 00:26:18.025
Yeah well, I mean, my heart really is for small businesses and that they are honestly harder to work with these days, mostly because there are some tools available to them that they kind of try and do on their own to save some money.

00:26:18.025 --> 00:26:31.781
And I don't fault anybody for trying to save some money, but, you know, the reality is is that it needs to be done well, and so I think my advice to them and just as they move forward, is really like you got to start somewhere.

00:26:31.781 --> 00:26:37.906
Number one so some people just sit and they do nothing and they think, well, I'm going to save up the money or I'm going to put the time in.

00:26:37.906 --> 00:26:46.047
And it's like the shoe salesman right, like the shoe salesman's kid has no shoes because he's busy selling his shoes to his clients all the time.

00:26:46.047 --> 00:26:56.594
And it's kind of that mentality is, they have a business to operate and that sometimes takes every bit of the time that they have, and so you do have to start somewhere.

00:26:56.594 --> 00:27:13.769
So, whether it is scheduling your own social media posts and saying I'm going to block out two hours, I'm going to schedule my social media for the month, or I'm going to block out two hours and spend it on my website, or I'm going to block out two hours and send the content to the guy I've hired to design my website, whatever that is.

00:27:13.851 --> 00:27:17.217
You got to start somewhere and you got to commit to it and you got to schedule it.

00:27:17.217 --> 00:27:21.665
You don't schedule it, it's just it's not going to get done in a lot of cases for most people.

00:27:21.665 --> 00:27:23.391
So you schedule what's important.

00:27:23.391 --> 00:27:31.478
If it's important and your marketing is important and the growth of your business is important, then schedule time to do it and be diligent at keeping.

00:27:31.478 --> 00:27:34.165
You know keeping that schedule and then going forward.

00:27:34.165 --> 00:27:36.107
You know it's.

00:27:36.107 --> 00:27:38.489
You know I say do what you can.

00:27:38.489 --> 00:27:46.734
So, like some people think, oh my gosh, I need to go to the chamber networking, I need to join a networking group, I need to get all my online stuff on.

00:27:46.734 --> 00:27:57.422
And you know you're asking, you're, you're asking too much of yourself, you're asking yourself to be like a sole marketing person, and maybe you are the sole marketing person of your business, but there's not two of you.

00:27:57.422 --> 00:27:58.883
You still have to run your business.

00:27:58.883 --> 00:28:01.773
And so you know again, it comes back to do what you can.

00:28:01.773 --> 00:28:06.335
And so if you can make one or two networking events a month, put it on your calendar.

00:28:06.335 --> 00:28:18.220
Make those networking events If it's dedicating time to making a podcast or writing a blog post or like whatever it is, you know again, schedule it and do it and just be consistent in it.

00:28:18.965 --> 00:28:30.648
But I do think a lot of entrepreneurs and specifically businesses that start out, they do get probably a little overwhelmed and all the things that need to be done or could be done and you can't do everything.

00:28:30.648 --> 00:28:44.951
So you know you have to pick what's important and what's going to give you the most benefit and the most bang for your buck to start off with or most benefit for your time, depending on you know the resource there and and then choose that and schedule it and, like I said, stick to it.

00:28:44.951 --> 00:28:48.307
The other, the other side of it is tracking it and so you know.

00:28:48.307 --> 00:28:57.317
You got to know what's going to benefit you the most and starting out you may not know that, but as you grow and as you go along, you should be able to determine.

00:28:57.317 --> 00:29:01.404
But as you grow and as you go along, you should be able to determine hey, the website is giving me some good leads.

00:29:01.644 --> 00:29:05.834
I need to put more investment into that or I've been killing it at these networking events.

00:29:05.834 --> 00:29:08.713
I'm getting two or three leads a month off of them.

00:29:08.713 --> 00:29:18.463
I need to keep investing in that or invest more in that, and so marketing in a lot of cases almost every case is about tracking the data.

00:29:18.463 --> 00:29:30.089
Like if you don't know where your leads are coming from or what's benefiting you and what's not benefiting you, then you're really just kind of spraying money out there and or time and not knowing what return you're getting on it.

00:29:30.089 --> 00:29:45.907
And so as much as marketing is about trying to you know, get your name out there, it's also just as much about receiving that data and then knowing what's benefiting you and what is not benefiting you and being able to put a monetary value to that as best as possible.

00:29:46.528 --> 00:29:49.316
Yeah, really, really important insights for us.

00:29:49.316 --> 00:29:56.527
Jared, it makes me want to ask you this question, not as a subject matter expert, not as someone who's great at marketing, but as a fellow entrepreneur.

00:29:56.527 --> 00:30:15.027
I always remind listeners you are one of us, you are a fellow entrepreneur and you've got all the same responsibilities that we all have, everything that goes along with being the chief executive officer of your business, and so, with that in mind, hearing you talk about these things, I know that you have clients that you need to service, you have invoices that you need to send out.

00:30:15.027 --> 00:30:16.788
Where does your mind go?

00:30:16.788 --> 00:30:23.291
Is it something that you carve out every week of time to think about your own marketing, and networking could be one of those activities.

00:30:23.291 --> 00:30:25.232
Is it weekly that you focus on this?

00:30:25.232 --> 00:30:26.013
Is it monthly?

00:30:26.013 --> 00:30:30.717
Is it daily that you sit down and you've got an hour carved out to say what are we doing for marketing?

00:30:30.717 --> 00:30:31.896
What are we doing for growth?

00:30:31.896 --> 00:30:35.579
As someone who is so growth minded, I'd love to get some of those insights.

00:30:35.579 --> 00:30:38.300
Entrepreneur to entrepreneur, so growth minded.

00:30:38.320 --> 00:30:40.123
I'd love to get some of those insights, entrepreneur to entrepreneur.

00:30:40.123 --> 00:30:40.823
I try to take my own advice.

00:30:40.823 --> 00:30:43.424
I don't know where I cut off there, but I try to take my own advice.

00:30:43.424 --> 00:30:49.369
So I schedule my own time and so, if it's, you know, my month I'm looking at.

00:30:49.369 --> 00:30:56.915
I have a networking meeting twice a month and then I have a various you know other chamber events that I could go to, and so I pick the ones I think are most beneficial and I go to those.

00:30:56.915 --> 00:31:00.891
And if there's more time, then great, I can fit more of those in.

00:31:00.891 --> 00:31:04.307
But I do schedule my time and I try to look at that on a monthly basis.

00:31:04.307 --> 00:31:12.634
Here's what my month looks like, here's what I have time to do, here's what I can commit to, here's what I need to pull back from so that I can do my own job.

00:31:12.634 --> 00:31:20.333
And then you get into invoicing and my own ranking of my own website or even updating my own portfolio, all of those things.

00:31:21.326 --> 00:31:23.954
Yes, jared, I love those real life insights.

00:31:23.954 --> 00:31:32.215
Listeners, I'm going to call all of you out because Jared said something so important in that answer right there, which is he follows his own advice.

00:31:32.215 --> 00:31:36.916
How much do we talk about here on this show is that when you say you're going to do something, actually do it.

00:31:36.916 --> 00:31:37.948
Follow through with that.

00:31:37.948 --> 00:31:51.667
In hearing Jared's advice as an entrepreneur, as one of us, as a fellow business owner, you hear how important it is for him to schedule these events, whether it's networking events or sitting down to actually plan out his marketing activities, how he's going to get his own website ranking.

00:31:51.667 --> 00:31:52.830
It's so important.

00:31:52.830 --> 00:32:14.386
So, jared, I so appreciate those insights and I always love seeing where guests are going to take this final question, because I have no idea, and that is what's that one takeaway for listeners around the world who are busy running their own businesses, who aren't necessarily marketing experts, what's that one thing that you hope they walk away from today's session with and say you know what I need to think about that or I need to take action on that?

00:32:15.446 --> 00:32:19.049
Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's believing yourself first and foremost.

00:32:19.049 --> 00:32:23.952
I know as an entrepreneur, you can often second guess and think, gosh, am I doing this right?

00:32:23.952 --> 00:32:25.733
Am I even doing the right thing?

00:32:25.733 --> 00:32:26.894
Is this going to work?

00:32:26.894 --> 00:32:31.096
But I think that's first and foremost is have the confidence.

00:32:31.096 --> 00:32:39.903
And then secondly, on top of that, in more reference to things we talked about today, I think it's do something and do it in the best way you possibly can at the time.

00:32:39.984 --> 00:32:44.409
So if you can afford to start off your business and hire a web designer, absolutely go that route.

00:32:44.409 --> 00:32:59.489
If that's not something you can afford, do some research, do some homework, figure out a way to do it well as the best as you can yourself until you can move forward in that next step and maybe paying somebody, a professional, to do it.

00:32:59.489 --> 00:33:03.526
And so again, it goes back to that foundation is just think about your whole business.

00:33:03.526 --> 00:33:13.998
That way is lay a good foundation for your business so that when you grow and you start putting beams up in houses in a second level and a third level like it holds the weight.

00:33:13.998 --> 00:33:18.032
And if you don't have a good foundation on any of this, it's not going to withstand.

00:33:18.032 --> 00:33:21.118
You know the challenges of business and the flow of business.

00:33:21.705 --> 00:33:26.443
Yeah, really powerful advice, not only from a marketing perspective here today.

00:33:26.443 --> 00:33:31.336
But, jared, I love the way that you think about business as a whole, because it really is that to you.

00:33:31.336 --> 00:33:36.412
It is exactly that holistic approach to it, so that the foundation is there and then you can build on the rest.

00:33:36.412 --> 00:33:37.534
I love those insights.

00:33:37.534 --> 00:33:39.076
I know that listeners will be keen.

00:33:39.076 --> 00:33:41.058
You are not your average web designer.

00:33:41.058 --> 00:33:42.950
You're not your average digital marketer.

00:33:42.950 --> 00:33:47.047
So, jared, I'm a big fan of the work that you're doing in your local area and beyond.

00:33:47.047 --> 00:33:50.737
I know that listeners will be keen to check it out as well, so drop those links on us.

00:33:50.737 --> 00:33:52.126
Where should listeners go from here?

00:33:53.788 --> 00:34:08.317
Yeah, so our main website is key element mediacom K EY, just like a key element mediacom, and that is absolutely where you'd find most of our work, the services we provide, things we do in the community, what we stand for all of that good stuff.

00:34:08.317 --> 00:34:13.735
And then, of course, they have social profiles that follow that same business name key element media, instagram and Facebook.

00:34:14.405 --> 00:34:16.128
Yes, listeners, you already know the drill.

00:34:16.128 --> 00:34:20.898
We are making it as easy as possible for you to find Jared and his business online, so check the show notes.

00:34:20.898 --> 00:34:25.976
We're dropping a link to key element mediacom down below, wherever it is that you're tuning in.

00:34:25.976 --> 00:34:30.195
We're also dropping a link to his socials, as well as a link to Jared's personal LinkedIn.

00:34:30.195 --> 00:34:33.528
So if you've got marketing questions, you want to kick off a conversation with him.

00:34:33.528 --> 00:34:34.409
Don't be shy.

00:34:34.409 --> 00:34:41.599
This is someone who has a holistic approach to making sure that marketing actually works for your unique business.

00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:50.911
So check those show notes down below and Jared, on behalf of myself and all the listeners worldwide, thanks so much for joining us on the show today Absolutely.

00:34:50.931 --> 00:34:51.494
Thanks for having me.

00:34:51.494 --> 00:34:52.235
It's an honor to be here.

00:34:53.585 --> 00:34:59.168
Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

00:34:59.168 --> 00:35:03.085
If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

00:35:03.085 --> 00:35:12.356
Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom, and I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

00:35:12.356 --> 00:35:21.132
There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

00:35:21.224 --> 00:35:23.172
These are not sponsored episodes.

00:35:23.172 --> 00:35:24.771
These are not infomercials.

00:35:24.771 --> 00:35:28.164
Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

00:35:28.164 --> 00:35:39.260
They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

00:35:39.260 --> 00:35:47.724
So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

00:35:47.724 --> 00:35:49.068
We also have live chat.

00:35:49.068 --> 00:35:52.896
If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

00:35:52.896 --> 00:35:55.108
Initiate a live chat.

00:35:55.108 --> 00:36:04.518
It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.