Blake Beus  0:00  What was our lead off on this one?

Greg Marshall  0:01  What was the true value?

Blake Beus  0:03  Oh, yeah, the true value of social media. I was like, What did you wrap it up really nice. Yeah. Think of what that was?

Greg Marshall  0:10  Well, we were talking about what the true value of social media is and what that means for businesses, because you were talking about how some businesses feel jaded with social media, like God doesn't work, or it's overly hyped or the use of Word, or even

Blake Beus  0:27  just people. I mean, you hear all of these crazy stories about social media, Elon Musk kicking over Twitter, that's been this roller coaster ride out of news, meta, Facebook, their stock prices are down right now. And so you, you have this kind of attitude with, especially with advertisers that were or businesses that were maybe a little lukewarm about, about being on social media Anyway, you've seen this attitude from them saying things like, you know, it's not worth it. Yeah. Why even play this this game or whatever. But whatever your stance is, on social media being a net negative or net positive for society, and all that stuff. It's still worthwhile showing up on social media and marketing on social media, for many reasons. Yeah. And yeah, so dive into dive into that, because you were talking about some of the reach out to you. Yeah,

Greg Marshall  1:26  someone had reached out to me. And they were discussing, and then there's someone who, they do a lot of advertising and other channels outside of social media. And they had mentioned their struggle with trying to kind of wrap their heads around the true value of is it worth investing in social media? Because he sees other people in his industry, not succeeding? But I told them, I think it's because they're doing it the wrong way.

Blake Beus  1:54  And you said, this is a service based business? Yes. What industry was the real estate? Real estate? Yep.

Greg Marshall  2:00  So with, like, I know exactly talking about because in real estate, the number one challenge, right is always it's highly competitive. And then, really, what you're selling is the same. So it's everyone is selling the exact same product,

Blake Beus  2:17  and the exact same houses even right, like, it doesn't matter which Realtor you are, I mean, that might be your listing. But if I'm representing somebody, any 1000 actors could sell

Greg Marshall  2:26  that house. And that's kind of the the challenge that they all run to. So they all kind of are trying to figure out ways to market themselves. And I know what he was referring to. So he's referring to, we were kind of speaking about video. And he's jaded because he's like, Yeah, I've worked with some people who do a lot of video. And it's like, they're spending all day doing video, but they're not making very much money. And this guy makes a lot of money. Yeah. Okay, so he, so he's viewing that light, from an ROI standpoint, what he's doing is working better. What I tried to tell him, which I think he kind of intuitively knows is, it's just another media channel. So you almost have to remove like, the way someone uses something, is the difference on the success of it. Right? Right. So socially, when I say like, they're most likely using it wrong, in my opinion, if you want to reach a lot of people, you have two different ways to do it. If you do organic, you have to fully commit to organic and do it every day, you need to have strategy, you need to invest money, and time and energy into that it's not free, you still need to invest in it. Or the second one is you need to commit to paid ads. But you need to commit to one of the one of those options and preferably both, right if you want the maximal results. And so that's what I told them is what most people do is they are tiptoeing on, both of these are putting their toe in the water for organic, or putting their toe in the water on pain. Yeah, but they're never putting their whole body in for either or, and that's why they don't see an end result,

Blake Beus  4:07  you're better off going all in on one or the other. Correct. If you don't have the energy or the resources to go all in on, on both, or just have enough time to like dip your toes in on both. You're you're you're going to struggle. And in my opinion, do you need here is this? In my opinion? Yeah, you could either just do none of them and focus on other things. But I do think it's worth still showing up on social media, I would say if you don't have energy to do both, it's probably less energy and less effort to actually do the advertising side of the paid ads than it is to do the organic route. And I say that because the paid ads, you can see relatively quickly what's working, what's not. Whereas with organic, you have to put six months a year into that until you start actually seeing something measurable. But even then it's very, very, very difficult to state, this, these things that I did organically led to the sales Correct. Whereas with paid, it's very easy to say, these ads that I ran led to these sales. And so it's just a much clearer thing. And it's less, in my opinion, less mental energy. But the trade off is you put money into direct, but it doesn't have to be a ton of money. You don't have to like for realtors, if we're talking about that you don't have to put 10 grand a month into showing up in people's ads. Right,

Greg Marshall  5:30  exactly. And I think the point you're making with the paid advertising is if you remove kind of the personal, I guess insecurities from it as well, right? Because, yeah, you know, a lot of a lot of people don't feel comfortable putting themselves out there. It's like public speaking, right? You don't, people, most people are not excited to do public speech. And it's not because public speaking doesn't work and can't grow your business or spread your message. That's not the problem. The problem is you feel insecure about the judgment of what you might get, because I know that's what I felt. But at the same token, if you're going to use social media to like grow your business, you just have to like, you really just have to go, Alright, I'm gonna start taking it serious, I want to invest in it, regardless of the insecurities of what I'm feeling, and I'm gonna measure what I'm doing. But you have to, if you want the true benefit, you have to look at it as no different than any other marketing channel. Like TV advertising, more billboards or direct mail, right? Everyone in those aspects has essentially removed their emotional feeling and attachment to those channels. The social media hasn't been around enough for people that have done that yet. Yeah. So they, they're overly emotional about it, because it's kind of in that gray area of like, you are putting yourself personally out there. And it is a lot more personal because people can comment, or say this is stupid, or they can share it quickly. So there is a little bit more of a fear factor there. But I do think if you just view it as another marketing channel, and you're not emotional about just like your if you buy a TV ad, or a direct mail piece, I think social media is extremely valuable, because you can target better yes, even after iOS changes, you still can target much better than you can on TV, or direct mail my opinion, you can get faster feedback. And you can do a lot more reach a lot more people for a lot less money, right? And they're on their phones anyway. So accomplishing the same goal that you're doing investing in anything else, right?

Blake Beus  7:37  Yeah. And it's, I mean, look, there's lots, like I said, lots of opinions about social media, there's a lot of times Oh, my God, social media, kind of, yeah, but showing up business wise, it adds a lot of authority and everything. So if you are currently doing traditional advertising in any sort of other way, social media is, is literally just another channel. And before we turn the camera on, you were talking about this particular person, and they were saying, Oh, I've seen people put a bunch of time and effort into social media, and they don't make any money. Yeah, they're not they're not very good at it. Yeah. And I would, I would love to look kind of look at what they're doing. But I have a couple of guesses on what those people are doing, where they're putting their time and money into social media, and not selling any houses. My My first guess is they're only putting their time and money into social media. Yep, they're there, they're doing videos 345 times a day, they're trying to grow big on tick tock or some other platform that maybe isn't aligned with the people that are buying houses. And, and they're not very good at maybe the follow up side of things, I'm gonna guess, especially if they're a realtor, which is a sales position. And they're not making a whole lot of money, they probably never really were very good at the whole following up and selling game to begin with, and are trying to compensate with showing up on social media. So they've got maybe it may be going okay, or decent social media presence. But then once they get that contact offline, they have they suffer from the same problem that they had to begin with. Yeah, whereas this particular person, you were saying does really, really well with the current advertising that they're doing, which means they also are really, really good at the follow up side of things, because you literally can't sell houses if you're not following up. And so adding social media as a channel, even if it's not a huge challenge, adding social media as a channel will probably show significant benefits to them and what they have because they have their offline processes already dialed

Greg Marshall  9:43  in. Yeah, and I think this individual, I think would do exceptionally well with the paid ads on social media. And that's actually what I advised him. Yeah, we're at the gym talking. I was saying, you know, I really think that paid advertising is the way to go. Especially if you're someone who does not, doesn't have a desire to commit to creating an organic following. Yeah, right. Like,

Unknown Speaker  10:12  you just, if you don't want to do that, just do the paid ads route. It's faster and easier. It's easier. And with something like real estate, right? The organic stuff,

Blake Beus  10:24  it's gonna be really hard to show up organically on any platform, as as a as a realtor, and you just need to understand that because the fact of the matter is, is when do I follow a realtor? Yeah, only when I'm looking for a house. And when I bought my house, I unfollow the realtor, right? Like I don't, I don't need to see your content for the next 510 years. And so what you what you really need to do is capture the attention of people at that point in time when they're looking for a house or looking to sell their house. And paid is literally the best way to do that. Because you're guaranteed to show up in front of people. And you know how many people you're showing up in front of all of the like mysteriousness goes away. Now, I'll almost always recommend if someone's doing paid, that they post something organically, like once a week. Yeah, you know, just to show up and so your account doesn't look dead. Yeah. But it doesn't have to be amazing content or anything, just show up somehow, organically. So it shows doing stuff.

Greg Marshall  11:29  And you don't have to do it every day. No, not every day. And it's not. I just feel like the paid route is just perfect for that industry and individuals that are looking to get in front of people because you make a great point. Real Estate, I mean, what content does a real estate agent put out? Hey, I got these houses, I got these houses by looking to buy yourself. And it's it's repetitive. But the problem is, every real estate agent is doing the exact same organic strategy. Right? So you're literally competing, is everyone else doing the exact same? Or maybe if someone's doing it slightly different? It's not that much different to the consumer. Yeah, right. Like to the kid like me, for example. So who would be in a market to go buy a house or somebody that I look at all the content as the same, it's all the same like, because I don't, I'm not a professional. I'm not a real estate professional. So I don't know how different this content is. It's just this person is telling me about a house says this one, one person's tell me about interest rates. So this one, one person says the market is going up or down? So this one versus if you just run paid, you could just say, Are you looking to, you know, buy, sell, do whatever, this is what I can do for you. And if you can outbid your competitors, you can get those eyeballs to you, right?

Blake Beus  12:45  And the thing is, is like, if you just get in the mindset of Why does someone pick a specific realtor or plumber or whatever, since we're kind of talking about service based businesses, a lot of it has to do with trust. Yep. And if you're showing up in their in their ads, and they're getting to know your personality, they are automatically building some of that trust, especially in a highly regulated industry, like real estate or Friday Services and Financial Services, right? Because basically, everybody's offering the same thing, because you have to offer what's within regulations, right? Like, yeah, you can maybe tweak some of the numbers here there, you might be able to find a slightly better interest rate, because you got a mortgage place that has favorable rates right now, but you're looking at a quarter of a percent difference, maybe, yeah, but so so the product itself is almost identical. It's the service, the trust, the offline offline support. Yep. But it has to be you have to, they have to know who you are first and have to build that trust, before they're going to reach out to you. And you can close those those deals,

Greg Marshall  13:53  you make a statement that is often like, discounted when it comes to advertising, which is you have to be known. Yeah. What is the VAT? Like the value is? People first need to know you before they could do anything, right. And if you're gonna ask me to pay 500 $600 million for a home, I would like to know you. Yeah. Right. I want to know that you're going to take care of mount a big decision. And that's the part where, because we're all in such a rush. And we're not thinking long term. I need a return right now today. And so you ended up doing a lot of these activities where you're like, oh, it's not working after 30 days. Well, who knows anyone after 30 days, you're talking to a cold market, who's also being tough. Imagine if, if you're trying to date someone, and they have literally 1000s of people all trying to date them. Every day every single day and every single person says they're better. They're richer their services gonna be the best of all, it's literally everyone's telling them that all day just picture that when you're thinking of trying to sell your customer in a service based business that's highly competitive. A 1000s of people are trying to date that exact same person. And so you have to figure out a way to stand out.

Blake Beus  15:16  Yeah, well, I'm thinking here locally in Utah. There are there is one realtor, and one lawyer who has had different people, different businesses, everything that has billboards up, up and down the main freeway here. I haven't seen any of their ads on social media, they probably run ads, I'm just probably not in their target market, which is fine. I'm not looking for either of their services. But the thing is, is they've had those billboards up switching places slightly different for easily 15 years. Yeah. Why Why spend that much money if it's not working? And why is it working for them? Like if I put up a billboard right now, I was a realtor. And I put up a billboard right now, I'd spend, I don't know, 5k a month, 10k a month, depending on the location, and I probably wouldn't get a whole lot out of it. Yep. But these guys have multiple. And it's not because they're selling different houses. It's because over time they've consistently shown up. And literally, you can't think of choosing a realtor without thinking of this particular person's name. In this part of Utah, you might not go with them. There might be but but you're gonna think of them, are you and you are no, you know, and same thing with the lawyer if you have, if you have a need for a defense attorney, there's the one lawyer you're gonna know, because they've been showing up for two decades, on on billboards or just in different places. Yep. You have, you have to do that you just have to the cool thing with social media is is that you can do you can show up, especially in a local geographic area, you can show up cheap, yep. And let everybody know who you are, without spending five grand a month for a billboard in a single location for five for five grand a month for a realtor to show up in front of a lot of people like that. That goes,

Greg Marshall  17:10  it goes away very long. Yeah. And it's social media just doing just, if you look at it, and you remove the emotion, he just said, another marketing channel is faster and cheaper than all the other marketing channels.

Blake Beus  17:24  Yeah. So even in 2023, because we're in 2023. Now, even with all of the craziness with social media, and all of the people predicting that, you know, everything's gonna collapse, Twitter's gonna burn and crash and ground, whatever. And that might happen. But even with all of those things happening, it's still worthwhile showing up on social media. And if you don't have the energy to do organic Throw, throw some money into the paid ads. It's, it's maybe a little bit more intimidating to get started, but I swear, it's easier than trying to come up with really creative viral is all. So yeah, let's wrap it up. How can people get

Greg Marshall  18:03  in touch with you, Greg? marshall.co. You can book a free strategy call.

Blake Beus  18:07  What about Blake beus.com?

Greg Marshall  18:09  All right, so next time see you later. Okay. Bye.