How to Start Marketing Your Business (Even if You're a Newbie)

Ben Albert [00:00:00]:
The more hands you shake, the more money you make. And the beauty of the Internet is you don’t always have to physically be shaking those hands. 

Jeffro [00:00:13]:
You welcome back to digital dominance. On this show, we’ve covered a lot of different marketing strategies and principles, but the fact remains that there can still be psychological barriers to actually implementing these tactics. I would hate for someone to simply listen to this show and feel like they’re learning, but then never actually apply this knowledge to their business. So today I have the pleasure of speaking with Ben Albert, the host of the Real Business Connections podcast. We’re going to discuss how you can start marketing your business even if you’re a clueless newbie or you’re terrified of selling. Without any pre existing clients or leads, Ben built his business from scratch and completely replaced his income in only one year. He’s very humble, and you’d never know that he speaks on keynote stages in front of top entrepreneurs. So please help me welcome Ben Albert.

Jeffro [00:00:58]:
Thanks for being here, Ben.

Ben Albert [00:00:59]:
Excited to be here, man. I’ve been loving your show. I’m super proud of you and excited to be a part of it.

Jeffro [00:01:05]:
Well, thank you so much. That means a lot. And I did want to mention something before we dive in. Before every episode, I have my guests fill out a form with some basic information about them, upload their headshot and everything. One of my questions is, are you promoting a product, a book or service? And I asked this mainly because I’m looking for a discount code for my audience. But here’s Ben’s answer. He said, nothing to promote looking to lead with value. And I wanted to highlight that because it’s so refreshing to see.

Jeffro [00:01:31]:
And I’m curious, was that always your mentality, or did you have a mindset shift at some point where you decided to focus on leading with value?

Ben Albert [00:01:38]:
Wow, that’s a good question because, of course, it wasn’t always my mentality and a quick comment on it. This is your show, your audience. I’m some random dude that maybe I shared this on social media, maybe a few people picked it up. This is primarily you and the people that follow you. So I’m not here to pitch myself and talk about how cool I am. I’m here to add value to your audience. And I know that as a marketer, as a relationship driven marketer, that if I do it that way, it will lead to business, it will lead to referrals, it will lead to people talking about me, but not because I’m the best thing since sliced bread. It’s because I’m a value first person.

Ben Albert [00:02:19]:
And no, it wasn’t always that way. My very first ever marketing and sales role, we had a big partnership. Like, if I told you guys what it was, you’d be like, oh, yeah, everybody on earth knows this company. We had a big partnership, and we are selling advertising on their website. But then we would upsell a whole crazy amount of slew of additional services aside from the advertisement. So I’d call Jeff on behalf of this company, but the money wasn’t in the ad on their site. The money was on the upsell of all these services. And the goal was to book a call on the very first call, and then on the second call, you bring in the closer.

Ben Albert [00:03:01]:
And just the term closer is just kind of an icky, in my opinion. Kind of icky. It’s kind of like we’re going to close them whether they like it or not. And the goal of the closer was to have a one call close. And we were aligned with a really big company. We had decent products, and we closed a lot of deals very easily. Most people don’t have a partnership like that, and most big, high ticket, big agreements don’t happen on the spot. When you bully someone into saying yes, and then if you bully them into saying yes, you have buyers remorse.

Ben Albert [00:03:34]:
They don’t recommend or refer you to other people. If anything, it’s an icky, sticky, bad situation. So, no, I wasn’t like that. But it wasn’t until I started actually putting on my big boy pants and running my own business that I started to realize that business isn’t just about the sale. It’s not just about the close. It’s about the customer experience that comes after the close. It comes the fulfillment of the duties and the promises that you provided and basically empowering them to become an ambassador and advocate for what you do. Because the best way to get business is referrals.

Ben Albert [00:04:12]:
And the best way to get referrals is to deserve them. And that’s not going to happen if you’re sleazy. So I started in kind of a rough place, and it actually took business ownership personally for me to actually see the full cycle of the sale. But you don’t need a business owner to have that mentality. Just imagine this, there’s a sale, but then there’s fulfillment, and then there’s accounting. There’s more than just getting the deal in. Marketing is a great attention grabber. But if your marketing message isn’t aligned with the services and promises you can actually deliver just in that is a blind spot or a red flag.

Ben Albert [00:04:48]:
So I could go all day on this, but at the end of the day, it’s just like I did not start understanding what it takes to run a full marketing campaign and fulfill a deal and fulfill a business. I had to learn the hard way. I really hope most people don’t have to.

Jeffro [00:05:04]:
Right. And thanks for explaining that. And going into that background, that kind of helps paint the picture. And I think maybe part of the reason that happens is when you’re in a role at a larger company, you do have walls on either side of what you’re supposed to do. And so maybe it’s not as readily apparent as to how it all connects. But once you become a business owner, you’re the one doing some of that fulfillment or sales or whatever. And so you realize, oh, okay, yes, I could force them to close now, but then they’re going to ask for a refund, and that’s painful or whatever. So, yeah, of course you want to make it a good experience for everybody.

Jeffro [00:05:38]:
And I love. So. All right, let’s get into the main topic for today, which is how to start marketing your business, even if you’re a clueless newbie or scared of selling. So, Ben, in your opinion, what’s the starting point?

Ben Albert [00:05:49]:
Well, it depends on the business. Let’s just, for sake of this conversation, choose an industry to simplify it. So let’s pick an industry. What industry should we choose?

Jeffro [00:05:59]:
Should we go really simple like a lemonade stand, or do you want something more relatable, too?

Ben Albert [00:06:04]:
Let’s do something a little more marketable and more relatable.

Jeffro [00:06:08]:
Okay, how about a roofing company?

Ben Albert [00:06:10]:
So you’re a roofing company. Your business is probably going to be local. Then you’re not traveling all across the globe unless it’s a massive commercial job that you picked up. You’re going to do a lot of residential, possibly commercial, but it’s going to be primarily local. The very first thing is understanding. Some of the best contractors I’ve ever met will not advertise online, and a lot of them in business in 20 plus years. So they have a little bit of a reputation. If you don’t have a reputation, you’re just going to get smoked by all the other people advertising online.

Ben Albert [00:06:46]:
So it’s really just kind of getting out of your own way of the. I don’t like the Internet. I’m old fashioned. Like, you need to start online. And it’s really simple. I mean, you know the stuff. I don’t know how deep you’ve dived into it, but just setting up a Google Business profile to get started. Just Google searching Google Business profile, figuring out what it is, uploading some pictures, putting in your services, putting in your service area and thinking about the fact.

Ben Albert [00:07:15]:
So I’m going to be marketing myself. I might live in the inner city. Most my best high paying customers come from this zip code. It’s a nicer area. It’s a little less stress when I come in and they just let me do my job and I can build a nice beautiful roof for ten k, 20k. Maybe I’m not going to market to my city. Maybe I’m going to want to market to an outside area that isn’t deep in the inner city. So it’s like, okay, so I’m going to get on Google, I’m going to set up my area codes and I’m going to focus on cities that are towns outside of the main city and I’m just going to start putting myself out there again.

Ben Albert [00:08:01]:
We wanted to talk a little bit about mindset and staying out of our own way. Someone who builds a roof every single day might not quite, I presume something most people do, but they might forget how freaking difficult it is, how freaking impressive it is, how hard work it is. And if you’re like me, you don’t like to walk around with a freaking phone in your face. But maybe you put up a tripod and you just film yourself and then you ask a friend or a relative, or maybe you know how to do it yourself. You take that 5 hours of film and you condense it into 60 seconds where it starts off when you’re tearing up the roof. And then in the end it looks gorgeous by the end of the thing. Maybe you just start documenting, taking pictures. The before and after you post that to your google.

Ben Albert [00:08:51]:
You set up a social media, you post the before and afters. Maybe it’s as simple as Google searching how to find my Google review link and having a copy paste text on your phone. So when you’re in person, you text the person your Google review link. They leave your review on the spot. Then you have a review, you can take a screenshot of it, put it on social media. I’m already going tactical here, but none of this stuff costs any money. None of it’s tremendously difficult. It’s just staying out of our own way that thinking that just our work will speak for itself, which it will.

Ben Albert [00:09:29]:
But if we use marketing and the Internet, we can amplify what we’re already doing with an extra 45 seconds here and there to ask for the review to click record, to hand it over to your cousin or son that knows TikTok and have them post that real on TikTok, et cetera, et cetera. Are these helpful? You know this as good as I do?

Jeffro [00:09:51]:
Yeah. Even if you do a great job, nobody can see it unless you tell them about it. And I wanted to speak for a second about the people who would say, I don’t really like to brag about how good I am. I feel weird putting showing like, this is what I did. Check it out. Right. But I think you really have to change how you’re thinking about this, because what you’re doing is just documenting your work. You’re creating a resume.

Jeffro [00:10:16]:
This is a portfolio. If you’re an artist, every painting that you make, okay, there’s a physical thing on the wall that someone can walk into your studio and see all these, right? Or in a museum, gallery. And so that is speaking for your talent and capabilities. Whereas if you’re a roofer, you need to start doing a version of that. And that’s what Ben’s talking about. Just recording it, posting it online. Other people are going to be like, oh, wow, I never thought about. That’s how you make sure the water doesn’t get in the vent or whatever it is.

Jeffro [00:10:43]:
You might think it’s a little nothing because you do it all the time. And you’re not bragging, you’re just documenting what you do. And that’s okay.

Ben Albert [00:10:51]:
Yeah, I mean, a lot of people don’t like to brag, but they also don’t like to be broke. And if you’re not marketing yourself, you might not be able to run a positive business. And you don’t even have to brag. You can let your customers brag for you. That’s why you should get reviews. That’s why ask them to take a selfie in front of their new siding and their new roof, their new gutters. Let your customers brag for you, and then you don’t really need to be Mr. Showboat.

Ben Albert [00:11:20]:
You’re letting your work speak for itself.

Jeffro [00:11:22]:
Yeah. And you can even get fancy with that once we’re talking about marketing, right? Like, hey, if you post a picture of your new roof on social media and tag me, I’ll waive your site visit fee or whatever. Give them some discount or something to encourage them to do that. And you don’t have to do it every time. It doesn’t have to be huge, but just kind of getting that ball rolling can make a big difference.

Ben Albert [00:11:43]:
Can I give you one quick example? I promise I’ll be super quick.

Jeffro [00:11:46]:
Yeah, go for it.

Ben Albert [00:11:47]:
So I get these smoothies almost every single day. I love them. It’s next to my gym and she has a punch card and there’s ten punches. And I told her ten punches is a lot like, you need to be committed customer to get to ten punches on a card. Most people toss them out, lose them, et cetera, et cetera. Why don’t you have a sign that says some sort of reward for sharing this on social? You take a selfie with the smoothie, you take a picture of the smoothie, you make a boomerang, you post it on Instagram, you share it, and then on the spot she’ll just take the punch card and punch five out of the ten. So you’re giving away half the price of a smoothie. They still have to come purchase five to get to the ten, but all they did is take a picture of it, share it to their Instagram.

Ben Albert [00:12:30]:
You get them halfway down, then they see that they have a little bit of momentum. They want to come for the next five. And because they’re posting on Instagram, you’ve indoctrinated them as an ambassador. If your smoothies stink, they’re not going to come back, but assuming they’re good. And again, it’s just finding a little way to leverage your happy people to recommend you to more.

Jeffro [00:12:52]:
Yeah, I love that. And I realized there’s also one other little mindset piece here that might hold people back from posting stuff. Maybe it’s not the ego, like, oh, I feel like I’m bragging. Maybe it’s the insecurity, the impostor syndrome. Like, hey, well, this is just the way I’ve always done it. I don’t know if someone else is going to tell me that’s not right because there could be the people to say, hey, that’s not as effective. Why don’t you do it this way? That was dumb. So, yes, you are opening yourself up to criticism, potentially, but that’s kind of the cost of entry, the price of admission to go with that.

Jeffro [00:13:25]:
But most of the time, that’s going to be a much smaller percentage of the comments you’re going to get. You’re going to get most people liking what you’re doing and saying, oh, wow, that’s cool. And if you do get someone commenting, okay, you get a chance to be professional and respond to them and explain, oh, this is why I do it that way. In other cases, I might do that, but here’s why I chose it this way. Right. And that further cements you as an authority on the subject. So it’s all opportunity and you don’t need to be afraid of it.

Ben Albert [00:13:52]:
Oh, my. When someone leaves a nasty comment, the way you respond can make or break your business. If you come in a place of fight or flight and you get angry and start blaming and shaming them and swearing back at them, you’re going to look trashy. If you handle that with grace and just say something like, I’m so sorry you had this concern. Let me pull up your file. Do this, this and this for you. People will read that comment and be like, oh, everybody makes mistakes, or everyone has angry customers. This person’s legit.

Ben Albert [00:14:26]:
So, yeah, just not working emotionally, rather working tactically and working with class is huge game changer.

Jeffro [00:14:35]:
Right? Yeah. Those first few negative comments won’t feel good, but if you go into it knowing they’re going to come, you can have a plan to have a reasoned, calm, professional response. All right, so, I mean, I like this. This is kind of what we want to be extracting today, right? So it’s about reframing these beliefs that we have that hold us back. And part of it is those beliefs, but also part of it is just a skill that needs to be practiced. Right? There’s the habit and the discipline of getting your phone out every time and posting it. Right. If you do it once and hope that, oh, I’m going to get a cascade of new business, it’s probably not going to work like that.

Jeffro [00:15:10]:
You’re going to have to be consistent and make it part of your routine rather than say, oh, guess that didn’t work, and keep complaining. So what are your thoughts there?

Ben Albert [00:15:19]:
You kind of just touched on it. It’s going to take repetition, it’s going to take consistency. If you have an 08:00 a.m. Appointment and you sometimes show up at 750 ready to go, and other times you show up at 912, apologetic but no good excuse. Are people going to want to work with you if you’re showing up an hour and a half late or you’re ghosting a job? Of course not. You show up on time with your tools, with everything ready to go, you show up consistently. It’s the same thing if you’re touch and go on social media, if you’re touch and go on your website, if you have before and after photos and they’re ten years old, it’s going to look like you hadn’t done any business in ten years. So it doesn’t have to be daily.

Ben Albert [00:16:08]:
It doesn’t even have to be weekly. But I think even once a week is a good enough schedule for a lot of people. But once a month, at minimum, update your people, send an email to your list, make a social post. You need to be consistent. And the easiest way to do it, similar to that 09:00 appointment, is to schedule it in. So if you have a team member that can do it daily, that’s fantastic. But schedule in 1 hour a week, 1 hour a month minimum. We’re going to do X, Y and z.

Ben Albert [00:16:42]:
Do that with consistency over time, similar to anything good. Going to the gym and getting in shape. You do the same workouts, you vary it a little bit, you get in shape over time. It’s really that simple.

Jeffro [00:16:55]:
Yeah. And I think also it can be hard. If you’re trying to get into this and you’re listening to podcasts and courses and influencers all telling us to go in these eight different directions, it can feel hard. Like, okay, which way do I go? How do I know which platform to post on? And again, I’d say that you got to avoid the analysis paralysis and start somewhere, right? Pick the platform you’re most comfortable with if you spend time on Instagram. Okay, great. Post on Instagram. Don’t feel like you need to be everywhere all at once when you’re just starting. Just try one.

Jeffro [00:17:22]:
Get used to it. You’ll learn stuff as you go, and then you might realize stuff. Hey, you know what the comments I’m getting means? These aren’t really my customers. Maybe I should try LinkedIn because they’re more business owners or whatever it is. You’ll figure that out as you go, and you’ll have experience from posting on whatever platform it happens to be. So you got to start moving. It doesn’t matter if you’re 100% confident in that direction. Just know that you will be learning as you go.

Jeffro [00:17:48]:
It’s an iterative process, and you’ll get better over time.

Ben Albert [00:17:51]:
100%. And I like Google. You all start on Google. Have Google be your one platform. If you were to choose one, I would choose Google. Post updates, post photos.

Jeffro [00:18:01]:
Right? And for people that don’t know that Google Business profile, that’s when you search on Google and a business comes up with their picture and links and everything, their hours on the right hand side on the desktop view. Anyways, that’s your Google Business profile. It’s free to create one of those. You get to put all your info there. You get to post stuff and you have total control over it, and that makes you look way better in the search results. It actually helps you rank higher when you have that. And there’s a lot of things you can do to help target that profile to certain geographies. So, like Ben was mentioning earlier, putting your zip codes in, that’s what he means.

Jeffro [00:18:32]:
It helps Google know that, oh, you serve these areas. Okay, let me put you in front of the people from those areas that are searching for your services more often. So I agree. That’s a great place to start. Ben, I’m going to ask you a different question. A lot of people have different ideas about the key to success as kind of a grand idea. But what are your thoughts? What would you say is the real key to success, whether it’s marketing your business or growing your business, any of this stuff that we’ve been talking about?

Ben Albert [00:19:02]:
Yeah, I can give people essentials, but I don’t think you can just wave a magic wand or take a magic pill and then solve all problems. I think there is no one key to success. I think it’s a combination lock, similar to an old school padlock at the gym. We each have our own unique combination, similar to the fact that they take your fingerprint when you get in trouble, it’s because we have a unique fingerprint. So there’s a lot of brilliant mentors out there. No one knows exactly what you know, has your personality, has your story, has your team, has your geography, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We all have a unique combination. So the true key to success is getting to know your own combination.

Ben Albert [00:19:53]:
What are my team players like? What is the zip codes that I service? What do they need? What is my skill set? If I make a ton of money doing commercial, maybe I don’t do residential. Even if everyone says, oh, do residential side jobs, this or that. Maybe I only do commercial because I know that generates a higher income for the time spent. There’s no right or wrong. It’s depending on the combination that no one can wave a magic wand or give you a pill and figure out for you. It’s kind of the inner work, the inner soul, the inner mindset of a business that’s unique to each individual human, each individual business. And I think we sometimes got to do a little bit of soul searching, little bit of research, and have a little bit of curiosity to figure that out, because the businesses that understand their combination, that makes them different. Those are the businesses that are successful.

Ben Albert [00:20:50]:
Can’t talk today, my friend. I’m excited about this, though, those are the businesses that win.

Jeffro [00:20:55]:
Well, I think you actually, that was very clear how you articulated that, and I agree. Personal development is a huge driver of success. And you can’t compartmentalize my business from me as a person, because you’re the one running the business. So you do have to become the person who’s capable of running a successful business and work on those shortcomings, those negative beliefs like we talked about. And so I love the way you put that into words there. So I did want to thank you for your time today, Ben. We’re getting close to the end here. I appreciate you and all the insights that you’ve shared.

Jeffro [00:21:28]:
Guys, go connect with Ben. His links will be in the show notes. As mentioned earlier, he’s not promoting anything specific today, but he does have a lot to bring to the table. He’s a great guy, as you can tell from this episode. Final question for you, Ben. What’s the most important thing that you want the audience to take away from this episode?

Ben Albert [00:21:43]:
Wow. I love questions like this. I could give them 15. I’ll just go with a fun phrase that’s memorable. The more hands you shake, the more money you make. And the beauty of the Internet is you don’t always have to physically be shaking those hands. But the more reach, the more people know about you, the more you deliver results, and you deliver handshakes, and you deliver quality service, the more money you will make. So go out there, shake hands.

Ben Albert [00:22:11]:
It can be door to door, it can be networking events. Shake hands, meet people. But understand, with the Internet, you can shake hands in your sleep. So the more hands you shake, the more money you make. Go start elevating what you do and you’ll kick butt.

Jeffro [00:22:25]:
Awesome. All right, thanks again for being here, Ben. Thanks to all you guys for listening. Remember, you can’t dominate from the sideline, so get out there, and I’ll see you in the next episode.