Social Media

How Social Media Souped Up The Ringbrothers Hot Rod Business

Brad Besancon talks to Mike Ring of the Ringbrothers at SEMA 2017 about how Facebook marketing expanded their custom car business to an international market. If these Baby Boomer hot rod builders use social media, don’t you think it’s about time you started?

Transcript

Brad Besancon: Hello, everyone. It’s Brad with Clarity again and we have the honor of sitting here with Mr. Ring of Ring Brothers and we are going to talk a little bit about social media. We’re not going to talk too much about cars which is kind of odd for you, isn’t it?

Mike Ring: It is, yes. It’s the end of 2017, same line, it’s been all cars.

Brad: So yesterday, we were in a Hot Rod Association panel with you and listened to you, and you indicated how important social has become to your business in kind of bringing on the passion of the next generation. Tell me a little bit about when you guys realized that social should be a part of kind of your overall business model.

Mike: Well, I got to tell you, we were pretty late in the game. I mean social has been around – we didn’t pick up on it until probably five years ago, how important it was and I’ll tell you, it was truly important. I mean, it got us to be able to reach out and find people and have people find us that we’d never have the opportunity to get. That includes all over the world. I mean, we’ve got customers from London, England. We’ve got a customer from Russia. You can’t get that without social media.

Brad: Right, and it just helps you spread your message and what you’re doing, and your passion for cars because you guys are very unique in what you do. You guys talked about that yesterday, about how it’s your kind of model and what you do, so you realized that, and then what did you start doing? Did you just jump in there full-fledged or did you like, “Hey, what do we do with this stuff?”

Mike: It was honestly way over our head. We had to hire a company to do it. Our sales went up, everything about it was good. Today, I don’t know how you could be without it.

Brad: Yes, and so let’s talk about that. So here we are, it’s not a typical business. We heard that also in the seminar, “I don’t use social, I don’t use social,” and then here’s The Ringbrothers using socials. How has it influenced business from a standpoint – because you guys do a lot – you don’t just build cars. You do parts and some other things.

Mike: We also do collision work.

Brad: So how has that affected your overall business?

Mike: It’s tremendously, like I said, you could get customers that you could never get without it and it also allows people, to really show them what you’re doing. The followers we have right now, I mean, I don’t even know the exact numbers, a couple hundred thousand Facebook, which that’s a couple hundred thousand people. That’s a lot of audience for just kind of starting out into this.

Brad: Yes, and you never know which one is going to pick up the phone and call you and say, “Hey, man, I really liked what you did. Can you do that for me?” So let’s talk about what you are doing. How do you use, let’s say Facebook or social media now in kind of keeping that connection with your customers and your fan base?

Mike: I think just showing everybody what we’re doing from start to finish is a big part of that. It’s one thing to show somebody a final product but it gets them engaged when you’re showing them little pieces here and making them wait for the final, the final ending.

Brad: It makes them a part of it, right?

Mike: It does, it brings them around, makes them part of the build, part of the process, and I think it’s exciting.

Brad: Yes, I think it is too, and they are killing it on social so if you guys are into cars and like custom builds, get over here and watch these guys. They are doing a great job. Hey, thanks for your time.

Mike: You’re welcome.

Brad: I really appreciate it.

Mike: Thank you so much.

Brad: Congratulations on everything.

Mike: I appreciate that.

Brad: Alright.

What’s the ROI of Social Media Marketing?

by Brad Besancon

Just like working out in the gym, Social Media ROI requires putting in the hard work on a consistent basis. Here’s Business owners should think about the ROI of Social Media Marketing.

Transcript

Robert: One, two. 5 pounds.
Brad: 5 pounds? What’s the ROI on that?
Robert: Probably not much.
Brad: Not much. Not much on a 5-pounder.
Robert: So this is the Clarity Digital Marketing Clip of the Week. Robert Riggs, Brad Besancon talking about putting in the work.
Brad: You’ve got to put in the work. We’re here at a little gym, down in my little town where I live now, Midlothian, and one of the things about coming to a gym is you want some ROI. You want return on investment and that’s a major question we here in social media all the time, “What’s my ROI, Robert? Why am I doing this?” And you think about a gym and the ROI doesn’t come tomorrow, it doesn’t come next week—it takes weeks and sometimes months, and there’s these other factors that go into getting a return on investment when you’re in a gym. Like, you can’t come out here and work out for an hour a day, and then go home and eat junk food.
Robert: Yes, and when the ROI in social is audience building, 6 to 8 months if you’re just starting—6 to 8 months. You’ve got to understand the audience and what they’re doing.
Brad: You’ve got to take your time. You’ve got to put in the work.
Robert: Well, we always get asked, “What’s the ROI?” Well, okay, let’s think about some of the other things businesses take for granted. What’s the ROI on your business card?
Brad: It’s an expense, it’s an overall expense. It’s not a high expense, it’s not a big expense, when you pass it out, “Hey, Robert, I’m Brad. Here’s my business card,” what are you hoping for? You’re hoping they call you.
Robert: It’s also awareness.
Brad: And it’s all awareness.
Robert: So let’s think about what are the other things companies send out, they never ask this question about.
Brad: Newsletters. We had a client one time where we said, “You’re spending,” they had four staff members working on a newsletter, every day, a daily newsletter, four staff members, and we said, “So what’s your open rate?” And what was his answer?
Robert: “We don’t care. We don’t want to know and we don’t care.”
Brad: So what’s the point? Talk about an ROI.
Robert: Yeah, so, by asking upfront, what is the ROI, none of this alone leads to a direct sale, none of it. You know, if you go back to marketing, there is the sales funnel of awareness and leading them through the funnel. Well, social is the important part of getting them into the funnel, so you can start that conversation.
Brad: It’s conversation marketing. You are starting the conversation, you’re creating the conversation, you’re controlling the conversation, you hope, to a point, you’re engaging in the conversation. It is a dialogue; it’s not a monologue. And that’s the way you need to think about ROI and social is, is it’s a conversation, it’s like a happy hour. It’s like a business party. It’s sharing information, it’s talking to each other, it’s engaging with your customers, to eventually—holidays are coming up—we’re not saying you can’t run promos, we’re not saying you shouldn’t run them. You have to do those things and if you’re in a direct sales position, you need to do those things. But what we’re saying is you have to start the process and then do some specific things to attract the ROI. But it is an awareness campaign, it is a conversation.
Robert: Yes. And I’m out of television. I never heard our salespeople they get asked by everybody, “Well, what’s the ROI on these TV spots?” Look, it was taken for granted that if you have a mass brand, you need a mass audience. It was about brand awareness. And you don’t often see a direct, “Hey, come down and buy my couch,” there’s a sale, they’re showing the product. Well, social is a lot like this.
Brad: It’s a lot like that. It’s a lot like coming to the gym, putting in the work, and the return on investment, it comes weeks and months down the road.
Robert: Here’s what you should be worried about in terms of ROI as a business, if you’re not engaged win a conversation with your potential customers and your current customers online in social, hey, your competitor probably is.
Brad: What’s the ROI on not doing it? That’s the question.
Robert: You want to give them to Amazon, you want to give them to a competitor? That’s what will happen and you need to think differently about ROI.
Brad: Absolutely. We’ve got to get him back in the gym. These 5-pounders aren’t working.
Robert: Got to put the work in.
Brad: That’s the Clarity Digital Marketing clip from Dallas, Texas, guys. See you next week.

Social Media Road Trip: Need Directions To Your Customers?

by Brad Besancon

Are you following the right directions to find a profitable audience for your business in Social Media?

Transcript

[FILE NAME: Social Media Road Trip – Where Are You Headed To Find Customers?] [DURATION 00:05:55]

Brad Besancon: Well, hello, everyone. It’s Brad and Robert with our Clairiti clip of the week, and we’re going to introduce a series today, kind of the three things we see a lot kind of wrapping up the year. We saw a lot in 2016 and one of those is, the three-part series, we’re gonna start with these objectives, online marketing, social media objectives. The second piece is this ROI issue that always comes up when you’re talking about social media or online marketing, and then all of these extra parts–there’s one in every corner, right, Robert?

Robert Riggs: Yeah, and now, we’re on location today in your new pick’em up truck as we [00:00:34 crosstalk]

Besancon: Yeah, out in the pickup truck. Because one of the things, when you think about social media online marketing, the first thing that you should do is figure out what it is you want to do.

Riggs: Where are you going?

Besancon: Yeah, where are you going? What’s the objective of why you’ve decided to get involved into social media or change? There’s always an objective. There should be an objective in the strategy. When you go to the grocery store, what do you do?

Riggs: Make a list.

Besancon: Make a list. When you plan a vacation, what do you do? You’d spend hours online looking, finding spots to go and everything, yet we run into numerous, numerous businesses all the time and they don’t have a written strategy or an objective of why they’re doing this stuff.

Riggs: Yeah, when they started the business, they had a business plan but there is no marketing plan and certainly no digital or social media marketing plan.

Besancon: Right. And it just doesn’t make any sense. A simple task of going to the grocery store, we get in our vehicles like we are today and we go from point A to point B. We know how to get there. There might be 14 different ways to get to the grocery store, we have our favorite path. So there has to be an objective on what is point B in my social media and online? How do I get there? It’s not going to be a straight road; it’s going to be curvy, right? You’re going to have to take some right turns and left turns, you’re going tohave to back up and start over but there should be an attractive. Heck, we have mapping systems in pretty much–any vehicle now has navigation, and what does that help you do? Get from point A to point B. And sometimes, it doesn’t give you the best route, which in our world, you do have to experiment. You have to say, “Well, maybe we’re going to try a different route or a different objective.” You got to change the destination. You have to load in the roadblocks and the traffic in the roadmap so that’s not going to happen. You have to know where those are and be aware of that, and notice, you’re going to have to back up. In football, you’re going to halftime and make adjustments.

Riggs: It’s going to happen. And one of the problems that we see is, that even when we get clients to get a plan for coaching them, you got to start the trip you, got to put in drive. They said, they’re frozen at the wheel. You got to. You just have to do it.

Besancon: Yeah, and the other thing to be cognizant of is, don’t hand your brand over to someone in a cube because they’re under 30 and you think they understand all the stuff because they grew up with it, and that’s not–I’m not being offensive to you; I’m not trying to critic. We just see that a lot and all the problems that come with that. We have a little saying, do you want to be cute, clever and social? Or do you want to become–those are the kind of three C’s that we talk about: cute, clever, and calm, and you have to pick one of those in your objective and put it in drive and move forward. And so we start with an online branding session about who are you going to be online and that really kind of in part, becomes the starting point of the map.

Riggs: Right. I mean, our brand storming session and we encourage you guys to do it as well with your own staff or whoever it is. You have to know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, how are you going to talk to your audience? And then the second thing is, who’s your audience? Who are you trying to be and who are you trying to target? Are you going to be a sales ? Are you going to more connection? We’re all about conversation marketing. We’re all about driving the conversation online, connecting with clients to eventually convert the clients. And there is a different way of talking depending on what that conversation is that you want to get started. There’s a different language for each of the audience. There is a different language for each of the platforms; your Twitter following doesn’t exactly look at Facebook, and your Instagram, and obviously, Snapchat’s going to be different, YouTube’s going to be different. So there’s even languages within the platforms.

Riggs: And also, you got to think about, there are multiple destinations in terms of what objectives are sure on each of the platforms, and as you’re on your way to those objectives, just like when you’re out on a trip, well, how many miles are we going? “Dad, are we there yet?”

Besancon: “Where’s the next Bucky’s?” right? so we’ve got to be measuring along the way of how are we getting to this objective, and then kind of once you’re there, now what’s happened.

Riggs: Right, and that’s the critical piece, is what’s happening once you got in line with an objective in? What’s the next step?

Besancon: And kind of the reason we’re talking so much about this is that we see this everywhere. Nobody’s got a plan. Nobody else got a strategy.

Riggs: And for some reason, everybody’s got the notion that the same people do Facebook that, well, you just post. You just post stuff.

Besancon: Yeah, and I think the critical thing is, they said, “We know what we need to be doing and we know we should start something. I’m going to change my website because it’s not mobile-friendly so I’m going to fix it. I’m going to do all of these things,” and they never take a step back and figure out what, what is it that the website needs to be doing?

Riggs: Yeah, and posting up a picture of your friends or your family around the table during a holiday or on vacation is a way different thing than when when you start doing that for a brand.

Besancon: Absolutely.

Riggs: And your brand story.

Besancon: Absolutely. There can be pieces of that as your brand and your brand family, etc. There can be pieces of that but without the written objective, without that taking a step back and really kind of understanding what it is you want to do. And you never know if that’s that’s going to work.

So we’re going to start kind of addressing some of those, and next week, we’re going to talk a little bit about this ROI question.

That’s the Clairiti clip, guys. We’ll see you next week. Thank you.

1 Billion Reasons Your Business Needs A Social Media Strategy

by Brad Besancon

More than one billion daily active users checked Facebook on their mobile phone in June 2016. Young adults up to 33 years of age check their cell phone 85 times daily. Here’s why your business needs an online marketing strategy.

Transcript

Brad: Well, hello everyone. It’s Brad and Robert again with this week’s Clarity Digital Marketing clip and we are in Las Vegas, Nevada, the city that never sleeps, and we did get a little bit of sleep. Signed up a new client here, locally, so we’re excited about that. But in our travels, over here in Las Vegas, we ran across some research and data backed by Pew that really opened some more of the importance of this mobile and social media. In fact, one of the bullet points was that 43% of the world’s population has a smartphone now.
Richard: Smartphone, yes.
Brad: So do you think it’s important to have a mobile initiative?
Richard: Well, you know, Las Vegas. You can see device obsession because most of the people here are experiencing Las Vegas through their smartphone.
Brad: I can’t believe the number of people we walked by that are just walking down the sidewalk videoing.
Richard: And where is allthat content going? Social media. There is also a study that indicates that more than a billion people check into Facebook at least once a day. A billion and that’s recent study. B. So for those of you who do not think that your customers or clients aren’t there, hey, you could walk down the strip here and you see every age group on it.
Brad: Yeah. Well and I think the key thing to think about the Facebook stat is, do you think in a billion people, you might have a few customers out there or someone you can connect with? Now, you’ve got to think about that. It’s a billion in a month. It’s not a billion over a period of time, it’s 30 days. Do you think in 30 days, there’s a billion people that might be interested in a product or a service, or doing business with you, or having some connection with your brand or your product?
Richard: And think about yourself. You go to bed with a phone and you wake up with a phone. A lot of people wake up and what do they do? Check e-mail, check social, and if you really want to see the frequency of that and what’s coming, there’s a small study of 18 to 33-year-olds that found that they check, on average, really without even realizing it, 85 times a day and that can’t be for e-mail.
Brad: Yeah, I mean you think they’re checking e-mail? They’re on Snapchat, they’re doing the Instagram, in that older age group, probably Facebook. I mean, it is part of our life not. It is our alarm clock, it is our communication tool, it’s our phone, it’s our video chat, it’s our social media piece, everything, it’s our video camera. So if you don’t have that strategy or initiative thinking about social mobile—really is what it is now, it’s social mobile—then you’re falling way behind, in all levels of business. It’s not just for the big boys. It’s for all levels of business.
Richard: And your customers are on mobile, in social, and it’s very hard anymore to get them to your website, so what is your social media strategy?
Brad: What are they doing? How are you going to connect with them socially in social media? Quit trying to do it on a website because it’s not happening.
Richard: And the big takeaway from Vegas is?
Brad: Always come out to Vegas and have a good time.
Richard: And be sure you check your phone. That’s the Clarity Digital Marketing clip of the week.
Brad: Have a good one, guys.

WHY COMPANIES MUST PUBLISH OR PERISH ONLINE

by Brad Besancon

Robert Riggs and Brad Besancon explain why all businesses also need to be in the business of producing content. They talk to Tony Cecala, head of the DFW WordPress group in Dallas about the need for using a search engine friendly content management system on the web that makes it easy to upload blogs, photographs and videos.

Transcript

Brad: Hi folks, it is Brad and Robert again with our Clarity Digital Marketing clip of the week. You recently when over to a WordPress meet up and watch Tony Cecala, who is kind of a WordPress guru. I love that word, WordPress guru. And listened to him. What are some of the things you heard him talk about when he talked about WordPress?

Robert: Well for those of you out there in business, who are trying to figure out this stuff, WordPress is a content management system and you have got to be a publisher if you want to be successful online. The cool thing we like about WordPress, we use it ourselves, we recommend it to clients, is that Google likes it and it is very easy to do compared to any other system.

Brad: It is like website management for dummies.

Robert: Yeah.

Brad: I mean it is basically cut and paste.

Robert: Here’s Tony.

Tony: If you are building a media company, whether your company sells cars or sells Red Bull, you are a media company in the new world. If you want to market digitally you have to think of yourself as a media company. So why WordPress? Well, the New York Times finds WordPress to be a great platform for all their blogs. Huffington Post uses WordPress. Lots of people use WordPress as a publisher, that is the number platform for building your method online, it is pure, it is fast, it is built with all the standards inside it to make publishing a wonderful experience, not some technical thing you have to worry about.

Robert: Alright, I want to underscore what Tony said, that if you are in business today you got to be a media producer. In the old days when I was in broadcast journalism, I was the gate keeper. Now, there are no gate keepers.

Brad: Everybody is a media producer.

Robert: Right, if you notice, if you look at anything coming on television these days, what you see? You see cell phone videos all over the place. You know if you have the will and determination you can be a media producer. And if you are not, you know, somebody is going to tell your story and that story is being told on mobile.

Brad: Yeah and one of the things that people forget about in mobile is, you know, one of the first things you think of when we say mobile, is what? We will wait. Right, phone. But guess what, this is mobile too, the tablet. This is now my new toy, this is an iPad Pro, yes Apple you’re welcome for the promo. I am getting away from a laptop; I am not going to carry a laptop anymore because this pro will do everything that my laptop will do. The deal is when you think mobile you can’t just think phone. It is tablets too; it is also in that category. And as Tony mentions, over 50% of people nowadays are gathering information on mobile so that is phone and tablets, and that is what you have to remember.

Robert: And so does your website work on mobile? We had a founder of a law firm….

Brad: Do you got to sit there and do this?

Robert: Yeah. But we had a founder of a law firm say I don’t think anyone would ever look at our law firm on a cell phone and I said well how they are going to find directions to your office. But….

Brad: What’s the first thing they are going to do if they say, “Hey Brad, I am looking for a lawyer, you got any?” “Yeah, call Bob over here.” What are you going to do, what is Bob’s number, what is Bob’s website? You are going to look at it right there and you are going to Google it.

Robert: And I am going to get more information off the tablet. My wife sits in front of television and shops off the tablet.

Brad: Uh oh.

Robert: Yeah.

Tony: Why mobile? That’s the next question. When you are thinking about publishing you have to think to yourself when everyone is going to be on the move, looking at their phone, way more than 50%, we use mobile to access the information so you have to understand finding the right way to publish in a format that is fast and easy to digest is the next big wave. That is why Facebook has Facebook Instant Articles and Google has Accelerated Mobile Pages. They understand that people want the information fast so learning, building a team that will help you create mobile media, create information that goes out quickly, that is the number one task for this modern era.

Brad: So I think the final piece is critical for businesses to think about when they are thinking about not just online, just in general right, in today’s world because we are touching people everywhere but mainly online and through their mobile strategy is if you are not out there telling your story, your competitor will. And….

Robert: Yeah, don’t let your opponent define you.

Brad: Correct, that is basically what it comes down to. We call that here at clarity, we call it accidental brand. So if you are not controlling your brand message, someone will and you will have a nice little brand out there online. So be sure to take some of this, think about that mobile strategy, if you are in business, you better be producing content. If you want an easy way to do that, do it on a WordPress site.

Tony: So if you are in business and you are not a media producer, then someone else is telling your story. If you are hoping your advertising agency is going to tell your story, you are hoping your PR guy is going to tell your story, the PR is competing with every other PR guy, your advertising agency is competing with every other person to send out that advertising messaging but if you develop your message like Red Bull or like any company that has grasped social media, Will It Blend, I mean these people, they sell blenders and they are blending up iPhones and people are watching. I never heard of Blend Tech before but now I know Blend Tech because Will it Blend, their videos were so popular. So you have to think like a media company because the way to get the message out these day to these people is through their phone, that is where they are looking. It is a simple, it is a simple answer but learning the ins and outs of it is not easy, it’s tricky but focusing like a laser on getting the message out in that way, whether your choose Instagram, or you choose YouTube or you choose Facebook, be excellent at that delivery of the message and you will be successful.