May 4, 2021
The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns with Bobby Machado
The pandemic shined a light on those businesses that were working the bottom of the funnel exclusively. They had enjoyed a lot of activity and interest but when it dried up it exposed the lack of efforts put in on the top of the funnel or brand awareness activities. Businesses must remember it is important to work the entire marketing funnel.
About Bobby
Bobby is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Signa Marketing, CEO at Sector 7 Apps, and a partner at Quick Job Products with his brother Cesar Machado.
As a kid, Bobby always had an interest in business such as providing landscaping services, training horses, or reselling “Tang” back to his parents during 5 grade. His experience in the digital world began when he taught himself how to code websites in high school, which turned into a way for Bobby to make money on the side while racing motocross, which remains as one of his passions to this day.
After he stopped competitively racing at the age of 22, Bobby decided to focus his full-time efforts in web development as a freelance web developer, which then introduced him into the digital marketing world. Being the analytical and creative type, Bobby developed a passion for digital marketing and data.
After working at an automotive digital marketing agency as a paid media specialist, managing a little over $300,000 per month in Google Ad spend for several auto dealerships in the United States, Bobby combined my passion for business and launched Signa Marketing.
Signa Marketing currently makes up about 70% of Bobby’s time and he enjoys hosting a Signa Marketing show named “Blueprint”, in which he answers any and all user-submitted questions on how to market their business online. New episodes are released on Signa Marketing’s YouTube Channel.
Overall, Bobby enjoys being immersed in anything “digital” that has a positive impact on people and humanity.
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
Full Transcript Below
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (00:00):
One hello and welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. I'm Roy. Uh, this is a show that we, we try to present a diverse range of guests on here to give us a lot of great information, but also it may spark some ideas, some things that we haven't really thought about, but then also if we, um, if we have troubles that we have been thinking about, it also gives us a professional or expert in that arena to go to, uh, in order to help us solve some of those issues. So, uh, today we are fortunate enough to have Bobby Machado on he is the CEO and lead strategist at Cigna marketing. He's also the CEO sector, seven apps and a partner at quick job products with his brother, Cesar Machado. As a kid, Bobby always had an interest in business such as providing landscaping services, horse training, reselling.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (00:57):
And you're going to have to explain this when reselling Tang back to his parents during the fifth grade and his experience in the digital world began when he taught himself how to code websites in high school, which turned into a way for him to make some money on the side while racing motorcross, which still remains one of his passions, uh, after Bobby stopped racing at 22, he decided to focus his full-time efforts on web development and freelance web development introduced him to, uh, the digital marketing world. Uh, he has also managed a little over $300,000 a month in Google ad spend for several auto dealerships in the United States. So Bobby, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to be with us and, uh, you know, help us with marketing. It's it's such a moving target it. If you even came close to having a handle on it today, tomorrow, you'll be behind again. So we appreciate you coming on, but before we get way off into this, uh, tell me about the Tang story. So how, how, how did that work where you're saying the tagline idea?
Bobby (02:02):
Oh, of course. Roy and thank you so much again for having me on I'm excited to be here. And, uh, and yeah, so attain story. I mean, so that's fifth grade. We were, uh, in some apartment complex and this apartment complex was actually two still growing. So next door, they were actually building a second phase of this whole complex. Um, and so I actually had all my toys, my hot wheels and et cetera. And actually I ended up building like a storefront in front of my parents', um, apartment and, and, and also I love the Tang. Like, I mean, we'd always drink Tang and, um, and it's funny when you bring up the tank, people are like, Oh yeah, Tang. Right. Um, but yeah, so there actually, I still have a really cool photo of, of me even online of, of actually me reselling Tang to my dad and my dad and my sisters there. And my, my actually younger brother, sister was right there with me too. Um, and yeah, so it it's always been in my, my DNA, I would say of wanting to provide a service, but, uh, but yeah, and that thing, that supply was actually taken from my parents. So I, I, I still own for that.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (03:07):
Oh, that's awesome. So, uh, you know, you kinda, we talked a little bit about how you got here and, uh, so you've kind of stepped up through the web development, which kind of led into the, uh, digital marketing and advertising. And I think that's pretty much a natural progression is because to be honest with you, uh, and nowadays, especially it's, it's easy to build a pretty decent website, but if you don't get any eyes on that website, it really hasn't done you much good.
Bobby (03:35):
Oh yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. And, and I think, um, I got into web development in high school based off, you know, other ambitions on ideas and stuff like that. But how you mentioned right now is like, I very, I learned very quickly that once I built a site and was able to put it out for a client, the client was always saying like, okay, now what?
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (03:54):
Right, right. Yeah. And th that's the, uh, you know, that's the million dollar question even today as we come through, you know, things, like I said, they changed so much, uh, from, you know, the early two thousands late nineties when, you know, web pages became more prevalent. And so, uh, I think also too, you know, we've just come through this, uh, 2020, which has been a very odd year. So what are some things that small businesses agencies like yourself? What are some takeaways that we've gotten from 2020, you know, kind of leading into 2021?
Bobby (04:34):
Yeah, no, that's, that's an excellent question. Um, one of the major things that we saw was we had a lot of clients that are very dependent on lead generation. So really tackling the bottom of the funnel, um, getting in front of people that are already actively searching for their services or product. Um, what we saw was a lot of different clients where that demand the demand for their service or product fluctuated drastically, and a lot of them that demand decreased. Right. Um, at that point they found themselves in a situation where they say, how do we even stay relevant because how do I get people to be interested again? Right. And that's where, you know, there was a situation where, where it was exposing the vulnerability of not investing on brand awareness and top funnel and making sure that you are even exposed in that sense, uh, to your target audience.
Bobby (05:23):
Because again, I mean, people, they can't buy it from you if they don't know you exist. And so, so I think relevancy was a huge thing, um, that a lot of businesses, I mean, you saw a large, large, large businesses do this because they have capital to do that. But the thing is that in this day and age, there's a lot of efficient ways to build brand awareness through social media networks and stuff like that on a budget. And so, um, I think that that really kind of brought a lot of awareness to saying, Oh, you know what, we should make sure that we're always investing on top funnel activities, uh, whether it's content generation, brand awareness, video production, et cetera. Um, because of the fact that we know we don't want to just solely rely on lead generation, uh, because even though a lead generation is great, I love it, but we have to make sure that we're covering all our bases, uh, so that we're agile and ready for, you know, any situation that actually comes up in the economic world, you know?
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (06:17):
Yeah. And I think that's an important distinction that, you know, lead generation is awesome, but you know, we want to continue to fill that pipeline. And even though things are awesome for us today, and we've got more leads than we can handle. There's, there's always that possibility. And usually I've seen it with other businesses, you know, it's, uh, I call it the boom and bust cycle. It's like, we've got all this business. We're not doing any marketing or putting ourselves out there really doing anything. And then, uh, you know, six months from now, we're at the bottom of that. We've had at the bottom of the bus, we've got no customers, no phone calls. And we got a ramp that all of a sudden we had to ramp up that brand awareness and marketing to start, you know, that funnel process again. And it takes time.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (07:01):
I mean, it's not usually most businesses. It's not something that you can decide. Well, uh, Hey, you know, things are slow on Friday. I'm gonna wake up Monday and, uh, you know, flinging a new ad out or start this campaign and things just start rolling in on Tuesday. And I think that's important to remember, uh, you know, something I talk about the kind of relating to the aggregation model is that we in the digital world, and as our attention spans grow shorter, we tend to leave out. We want to sow the seed. And then we want to reap the harvest all pretty much in the same phone call or the same email. You know, we forget about the middle part about cultivating. And to me it's so important in the marketing process and in the sales process.
Bobby (07:48):
Oh yeah, no, a hundred percent. And I mean, the beauty of social media and these networks in the world that we're in now is that, I mean, small businesses can afford to do something. I mean, they have a direct pipeline of communication with their target audience that didn't exist before. And so, I mean, even though a lot of people are aware of social media now it's very, you know, it's maturing quite a bit. Um, I think that there's still, there's still a lot of small businesses that aren't going all in on it and really taking advantage of the free exposure. That's there, the free communication that you can attain with your target audience. Um, and then even with paid social, if you're, you know, investing in Facebook advertising or Instagram advertising, um, and YouTube advertising, those straight channels are still incredibly cheap if compared to traditional, uh, mediums, you know? And so, um, from my perspective, really, there's no reason why not to at least execute some time type of plans around these networks to make sure that your, you know, top funnel so that you actually have an audience to remark it or nurture over time. It, then you only have bottom funnel. And with that bottom funnel drop, uh, dries up, then you're left like, Oh, shoot, I need to do something there.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (09:03):
Yeah. Cause I think we need to also take in mind that, uh, I may be a great customer for you today. I may be a great customer for you in the future. Maybe I don't have the money today, or maybe I don't have the need to today, but, um, as businesses, we need to stay in front of those people in some way, because at some point they will become our customer and I, I guess, are they could be. And that I liken it to our short memories is that, uh, you can have a guy that you've used before and really love and did a good job. But if you haven't heard or talked to him in two, three years, but there's another guy that just talked to you about a month ago. It's like, well, that's the guy. I remember the last one I talked to. And so I'm just kind of, I guess it emphasizes that need, that we always need to, you know, try to be staying out there and talk a little bit. I, again, I'm a novice, so I'm going to let you explain this, but the nice thing about social media, Facebook, YouTube, a lot of these probably more channels, but the, uh, ability to target is gotten incredible.
Bobby (10:17):
Yeah. Oh, Oh yeah. It's, it's ridiculous. I mean, I know that with, with Facebook, there's some changes with iOS 14 and you know, the high school and you know, that whole thing. Um, and we'll see what happens with, with, with that, because the thing is that there are a ton of iPhone users that, um, that, you know, maybe the targeting mate where you would see a decrease of how well the machine itself can target, but I, I anticipate I'll get worked out. The cool thing is that it's not affecting Android yet, and there's a ton of Android users out there. Um, and, and I mean Facebook's machine in terms of understanding how to find your target audience and then get in front of them is just, it is crazy. It is ridiculously good. Um, and it's, I mean, even when they first started, you would get really, really specific on your targeting settings.
Bobby (11:05):
But I mean, it's got to the point where if you have a customer list and existing customer list and you upload it to create a lookalike audience, um, a lot of times you could even just start with that as a layer of targeting and even keep all your other settings open up other than like geographic locations, stuff like that, the age groups of the ad. But, um, but by building lookalike audiences, those, those are really powerful because of the Facebook machine, right. In a stint for being so well and targeting people, we'll see what happens with, with the iOS side of things. Um, regardless, we're still trying, we're still figuring out ways around that it's not going to necessarily stop things. Right. Um, and again, um, one thing I'm very, very, uh, I'll always preach is don't depend on one platform. So if Facebook went away tomorrow, I'd okay, well, you know what?
Bobby (11:54):
I still have YouTube because YouTube is insanely good at targeting and it's extremely cheap to get in front of a local audience or a national audience. Um, so, you know, it's always making sure that you don't have all your eggs in one basket, you know, just make sure you're diversified. It's the same as I, to be honest, investing in marketing, it's almost like investing in a stock portfolio. You're going to have some stocks that perform better than others. Right. But you're looking at what's my return out of the entire portfolio and yeah, that's kind of how we approach marketing too.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (12:23):
Yeah. And you make a good point about the platforms that we're on because, uh, and this is probably ancient thinking. I mean, I think it's still good, but this is back in the old days, you know, there'd be some people that may just, uh, have all their business and not just talking about advertising or marketing, but they would actually have all their content on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. They didn't have much of a web presence. And so I think it, it, you can kind of, you can affirm this or we can talk about it, but I think, you know, w what the thinking used to be was that you really need to make sure that you develop your own platform, where you have your information, your website, and drive your traffic back to that. Because as we know, if these other platforms can change their rules and really affect you going forward, whereas if, if you've kind of built your own platform and you're driving traffic back to your information or what you want, um, you're a little bit more secure in that you have control over that. So I, I guess it really hasn't been a problem or has, have you seen it to be a problem, but that still holds true, correct.
Bobby (13:34):
Absolutely. I know, I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of having a home base. You're seeing a lot of e-commerce sites and e-commerce brands, um, really focusing on direct to consumer sales and not trying to not, uh, uh, depending on retail. Um, you're seeing a lot of Amazon shops. I mean, Amazon is ridiculously competitive now to be on that marketplace. And so you are absolutely seeing a lot of bands say, Hey, you know what, um, you know, we're gonna, we're going to put all our eggs in this basket of building our home base. Right. Um, and, and I, there are competitors like Walmart, uh, they opened up their marketplace and that's still a big opportunity, um, to get in because it's not as competitive as Amazon. Right. Um, but yeah, if there was one that was, uh, when we talked e-commerce one big shift in 2020 was going back to direct to consumer, which was already headed there. Right. I feel like 20, 20 kind of pushed a lot of, put a little pressure on a lot of changes
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (14:31):
Know, and this is a little bit marketing, but a little bit sales as well. You know, we want to build a relationship with people in some respect that, uh, used to, you could get out in the community, go to offices and have meetings. And now that we are, you know, we're relying a lot more on digital, uh, to kind of get that personality and to, um, start, you know, maybe not completely build a relationship, but definitely plant the seeds to start that. So I guess that, um, kind of amps up the importance of all of us, uh, putting in a good effort, but also, like you said, uh, a lot of content spread across a lot of different platforms.
Bobby (15:16):
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, when it comes and again, when it comes to like content marketing and social media, I mean, these are platforms, so you can build a relationship with your audience, with your target consumer build that trust, build that loyalty, but the familiarity, um, I, I drill into familiarity a lot because, you know, for someone to buy it from you, they have to be okay with having some type of communication with you. Right. Um, and so, and, and you're when you're built, actually invest into content marketing, social media, et cetera, building that relationship online, your sales team is actually going to love it because when they get those people on the phone, they're going to say, Whoa, this is, I mean, this person was just great to close because they're already, pre-educated maybe I close some gaps on the sales call in terms of things they had questions on, but in terms of doing a hard sale, it Smiths out that process too.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (16:06):
Yep. And I want to come back to that on the content marketing, but what I, what I'd like to make a point as I've, you know, in smaller companies I've been in kind of a, that position of you doing the marketing and doing the sales. And so I can control why I do marketing because I see the results on the sales side. So I'll, I'll, I think another point here is that, you know, marketing and sales, even though sometimes in bigger companies or different departments, there needs to be a lot of communication and a lot of inner planning. And I do always encourage our salespeople to use some kind of a customer relation management platform because marketing needs evidence of what campaigns are doing. And I think, you know, it helps them zero their message in not only the message, but maybe on the audience, because if we're attracting, uh, the wrong people, that aren't really our customers and, you know, we could have a thousand inquiries, but if those aren't our people who we can sell to not doing us any good. So let that's, you know, just a good message to have that communication, the interplaying sales keep up with the CRM well, where you can transfer that data back to the marketing department.
Bobby (17:22):
Oh, that, yeah. That's an excellent point. I think, I always say, you know, marketing and sales are supposed to be best friends. They're supposed to have each other's back we're at. And the beauty is a lot of these marketing automation, automation platforms that are, I mean, really, really good, like SharpSpring and HubSpot and stuff like that. They're great. Because to what you mentioned right now, it allows even more fluid, complete communication between those two teams. Right. So that it can better work together.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (17:50):
Yeah. So, you know, I'm a huge fan of content marketing, but I'm gonna just get you to just give a general explanation and overview for the listeners in case there's somebody that's really not familiar. You know, we, a lot of buzz words and terms that go around. So, uh, we, we hear it all the time. We may not know exactly what it is. So if you could just give us a little overview of that.
Bobby (18:13):
Absolutely. Um, when it comes to content marketing, content marketing is about putting out, uh, education and becoming an authority figure in your industry or, or in your space. Um, it always stems from content, whether it's long form video or blog posts, or even podcasts like this one, it's always about long form content and really putting out education. So that as a, as a company or as a brand, you people do seek you as out as a resource, right? Something that someone that they say, okay, I can trust this, this company, or I've learned X, Y, Z from them now how to channel that content. You can do it in several different ways because you can do an audio form like this with the podcast, you can do a video form on YouTube. Um, you can do contextual on blog posts. Um, you can split take all these, uh, pieces of long form content and create highlights or, or segments, and use them as micro pieces of content, social media. Um, and so it always stems from content and then having a plan of, okay, where's our target target audience hanging out online. So we can make sure that we distribute this content in the right areas in a way that's easily consumable for their style of how they consume content. Yeah,
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (19:25):
Yeah, no, that is awesome. And I think the, you know, I'm huge on that education factor because I, I want to be transparent. I don't want to, I don't want to be bait and switch or tricky. I don't want to be like, uh, I've got a, uh, I've got an awesome, uh, study for you to look at, but I need you to click on 27 links and sign up for all this stuff. And then you get a thing like, well, really, it'll just, if you'll sign up for our seminar paid, then we'll give you this information. If you, if you promise somebody something, just give it to them. I mean, it goes such a long way, um, in building that relationship and becoming that authority, people need to be able to trust you. And I, um, it's made it a little more difficult for some of us online because there's so many people there that are, are distrustful that you just can't, uh, you know, they kind of ruin it for the rest of us. So all I would say is just, you know, be transparent and do what's right for your customer, for your prospect.
Bobby (20:23):
Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And, and if you're in a position to be able to, uh, be a practitioner where you can demonstrate basically the same thing that you're trying to have your clients do, or stuff like that, if you're doing it yourself, I think that's even the best form of showing, Hey, you know, there is no BS here, or I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm a practitioner of the things I preach type of deal. Right. Um, and so, yeah, so a lot of clients and that are in a position where they can be a practitioner. I always encourage that as well. For sure.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (20:52):
Yeah. And you brought up a good point about creating long form content. You know, I'll let you explain it, but I know Google typically won't index anything under about 500 words anymore. And so we need to have things that are longer than that, but the beauty about the longer form, you know, when we start getting 12, 18, 2020 500 words is, uh, not only are we able to get a lot more information out there to educate people a lot more research and things like that, but talk about breaking that up and being able to use it across our different, uh, social media platforms too. We don't have to recreate the wheel every time we want to make a post.
Bobby (21:35):
Yeah, absolutely. I'll, I'll start with a video is, and the reason why is because video, um, if we, if we had to categorize the priority of, uh, different types of formats of content, it's definitely going to start with video, uh, audio after that, and then contextual after that. Um, but starting with video, video's awesome for producing of course, long form content, long form content is great because it gives an opportunity for conversations to go into naturally topics and stuff like that that sometimes are not necessarily scripted. You know, they just, they, they go into it and there's always a really good nugget of information there. Um, so by doing long form content, say, say you have a 30 minute show and there's four great points, four great takeaways, um, that people should be consuming and should, uh, action towards, um, that's where we can segment those types of pieces of content to micro content and share that on Instagram TV, uh, on Facebook, uh, of course, on, on Twitter, et cetera.
Bobby (22:38):
But now the cool thing about doing that is that you have these micro pieces of content that can actually hook someone. I didn't edit, you'll have a link that says watch the full episode here. And so now you're bringing people into watching the full episode, and that's just one tactic on how to, you know, continue to build your audience. But again, the only reason why is because you actually broke out a really good piece of content, that's easily consumable by them right. On, on the network where they hang out. Right. So you're really just catering to the audience at that point.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (23:07):
Yeah. And our tools to do this because I do a little, I have started that. Um, my, uh, my podcast host has like a thing that you could do an audio gram, but I've been doing more YouTube and more videos lately. So I think it was, uh, you know, $9 a month. I found a little, um, clipper tool that you can go into an hour long video, you know, clip out your one or two minutes or, you know, go to your point and then be able to post that. And, uh, it's, it's been a very awesome thing for me, for sure.
Bobby (23:40):
Oh yeah. Tremendous. And, and I love audio grams. I mean, a lot of people think like initially, Oh, just audio, I can't post this on Instagram and stuff like that, but you can make some really cool audio grams and that are, are catchy and I engage in and et cetera. Um, and it's, again, just a way for that for people to discover the show. Yeah. Um, so then say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to subscribe now because then when I go drive home later after work, I can listen to the show.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (24:07):
Yeah. One of my old sayings, my audience probably gets sick every time I say this. But, uh, the old saying was, you know, text is pretty good. People can read it. If you have a picture with that text, then it's like leaving breadcrumbs back to, you know, back in the old days to your blog. But they said a video is like leaving chocolate covered bread, crumbs back to your content. I mean, it's just, uh, it's unbelievable the difference, uh, stepping up from just something texts. And I don't, I guess a like, even on websites that is true. But I think when we talk about social media, I think it is more exponentially true. I think, uh, you know, people scroll by a lot of texts and, and somebody brought up a good point too. Like, um, if you have texts, you may take up, can't get in front of that. You may take up very little space as people are scrolling up and down their feeds. When you have a picture, all of a sudden your real estate is, uh, is widened very much. And, you know, you just, it just makes you have a bigger presence, catches people's eyes.
Bobby (25:13):
Oh yes. Yeah. Abs absolutely anywhere where you can just understand the, the, the platform and what, what you're able to post on there. You're able to strategize to say, okay, cool. If I actually had a, uh, my photo, that's actually 1920, you know, high and 10 80 wide, that way it actually takes up the whole mobile phone type of deal on, on a platform like Instagram or Facebook. Um, but yeah, no, that's a great tactic there. I didn't one, one tactic that I'm actually really, really fond of, uh, because it actually has so many benefits that kind of it's a domino effect is say you do produce long form video. Um, at that point you would absolutely, the next step would say, you know, you publish it on YouTube, it's SEO, SEO, SEO for YouTube, but then create a contextual blog post of that video, basically, you know, have that on your, on your website then in the blog post embed the video itself on there.
Bobby (26:09):
If, and if, if you did have a situation where you've taken the audio of that long form video and putting it up as a podcast, you can even put the MP3 player, even on that same blog post, if you'd like, um, the reason why this is actually really, really good as, because someone's going to land on your blog post, they're going to see that there's a video version of it. So then they're just going to start watching the video. And at that point, and you're clocking average time per session on your page. So that historical, uh, behavior, in terms of a very positive metric like that actually AIDS your SEO efforts over time because Google sees wow people and on his blog posts, and then they stay on here for a good 30 minutes. So it's actually pretty good of, you know, it's very valuable to them.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (26:50):
That's interesting. And, and I, I have not, but I'm definitely gonna take a look at that. Cause we usually own what I've been doing is just putting the audio player at the top and then doing a transcript of the podcast, you know, kind of for the long form, but I'm going to look at doing, embedding the video in there too. That's a good point. Okay.
Bobby (27:09):
Yeah. And actually you're already, I mean, already one major step ahead anyways, by just doing what you just mentioned now, as far as having the audio player player on there. Yeah. That's actually great right there because people are clicking on that audio player and then they're sitting on the page just listening to the content. Yeah, yeah,
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (27:23):
Yeah. And, um, there's so many tools out there. I mean, we can make three or four episodes just in all of our tools, but I think the, uh, uh, I think it's easy. People think, Oh, I can't do that. Or how do I do that? But zoom will take that for example, is, you know, you can just make a re uh, recording of yourself. And the nice thing about it is not only are you doing the video, uh, it captures the audio as well. There's an audio file, but then, um, you can share your desktop. So if I wanted to make a, you know, of a video for my consumers or prospects, I could be talking switch over to look at this illustration or the product or what, you know, whatever you want to, it's so versatile and it's so easy and it's very cheap.
Bobby (28:12):
Oh, a hundred percent. I, the beauty of zoom, I mean, I, uh, or any of like, you know, even just people we talked to and stuff like that, I really do preach that there really is no excuse now to not have a podcast, right. Because essentially you have the zoom, which does everything you just described right now, in addition, you also have free podcasts hosting platforms, like anchor.fm, where they make it a breeze to be able to publish your, your podcasts, your show. Um, and so really the friction and the obstacles to entry are literally close to none now. Um, maybe I believe maybe it's, I don't know how much zoom is. I think it's 1499 a month or something like that. But I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's lunch money basically. Exactly. Yeah.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (28:57):
Tile as it is, because not only can you reach out and have, you know, interaction with prospects, but also just that the ability to record you can record training messages to your CA I mean, you could go on and on about the uses for that. It's just, uh, you know, it's incredible. And I think that's where, uh, we kind of have to take that step out there and find these things that, that are available that can do what we need to do for, um, you know, very, cost-effective just, uh, like you said, they don't have to be hour long audios or videos if we just have a quick message, you know, maybe it's only 30 seconds or a couple minutes, but being able to get it out there in some, uh, audio or video form actually, um, increases the chances that you get that message over to your prospect.
Bobby (29:47):
Exactly. Why not 100% and, and this, all this content marketing, uh, uh, this entire subject here actually ties to the very beginning of what we learned in 2020, because what happens again, a lot of businesses weren't doing this. I mean, maybe they were doing some content marketing, but they weren't seeing the serious of ness of it or how much they should be in here. Right. Because all this content is going to live forever online, which is great. And this is top funnel stuff. So people can discover you through all this content. Right. Um, so that's why it's just tremendously important. Yeah.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (30:23):
So one thing, uh, you know, we kind of talk about some is knowing where your customer lives online or your prospect lives online, uh, age groups, um, positions, uh, income, all those things change and vary, you know, from one platform to the other. But a question I've kind of been thinking about the last few days is I'm on all these platforms because I post there. And so, you know, it gives me a chance when I'm posting or looking through, I may scroll through all of these, but just for a consumer. Do you have any idea how many platforms, social media platforms that they may visit on a regular basis? I mean, if they're a Facebook user, did they just stay tied to Facebook or Pinterest, or are they moving, you know, across these platforms?
Bobby (31:16):
Yeah. So in terms of stats, I don't know all the stats once that I know off the top of my head is that Instagram as a platform on an average basis has checked about 150 times a day. Wow. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And so, um, and it does, and it makes sense as far as why Instagram has really leveled up, um, their e-commerce capabilities, why there's a shopping section and stuff like that, because it is, it is incredible in terms of, of a, of a source. I mean, and it's, it's very versatile, whether you, you have the youngest age group there, or the, the, uh, more on the older age group there, you have everyone on there. Um, another one, which is, uh, it w it's definitely got controversial probably still, but it's tick tock, tick tock initially is really thought to be of tweens and doing the dances and all that stuff.
Bobby (32:05):
And that's definitely where it, where it got up, but you would be fascinated to know that the second and third, most, uh, search categories are fitness and do it, uh, do it yourself, home improvement. Wow. And yeah. And so, so now what's happening is we have a lot of people of all sorts of backgrounds going on to take, talk to consume content because they're learning, they're learning about certain subjects. And that machine of take talk is ridiculously good at, at feeding what you are interested in. If you, if you spend, if you open up a new account and you spend some time on, on the platform for a day, you'll start to see your feed being suggested with videos that are very, very close to what you're interested in. It's, it's a, it's a pretty good machine. Um, but that's another platform which has a ton of opportunities still for a lot of businesses to get in there and do top funnel content in a way that's incredibly engaging. Yeah. Um,
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (33:01):
So you read my mind. I just had written that down on a piece of paper because it's, uh, you know, it's an emerging topic. I think old people like myself, it's like, you know, it's the, like you said, it's the dancing tweens over there that I stay away from. But, you know, I've heard of a couple of, uh, one of them was like a, um, a metal worker or glassblower in more of an artistic type guy. But, uh, you know, he would post the minute, one minute videos of how he was developing a product or making something and had very good luck. So, um, I do think that it's growing beyond just, you know, the dance and teen and, and also, I think somebody had told me once that, uh, probably good just to go over there and reserve your names or your, you know, domain. So if you don't ever use it, at least you have it in case things come around to where you feel like you need to.
Bobby (33:54):
Oh, absolutely. Um, you would, uh, be, I, this is actually pretty interesting here is there's a competing platform called bite. So it's B Y T E. And it's, uh, by the co-founder of buying vine with that platform that, uh, died, uh, some time ago. But, um, but the interesting thing is actually, it's a direct competitor of, of TechTalk. And so that's just another one just to go in there and do what you mentioned right now is at least reserve your user handle, um, because it is actually picking up some, some momentum, uh, another one is clubhouse. Clubhouse is blowing up like crazy.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (34:30):
Yeah. You know, I just heard about that yesterday for the first time. And then I saw a post from a previous guest where she said, Hey, I'm on clubhouse and here's where I'm at. Can you, can you share a little bit about what clubhouse is
Bobby (34:44):
For sure. So clubhouse is essentially a platform where it's, um, you had to be nominated. So invite only what does this allowed is for, um, a lot of backup, basically there's rooms, a monitor, a moderator can create a room and invite people into that room and basically have a group discussion right there through pure audio, uh, live. Um, and, and it was interesting because even, um, even recently there was like a shark tank, shark tank room with people pitching, um, business owner, grant Cardone was in there and stuff like that too. And it's, it's amazing to have direct access to these individuals. Um, but because it's invite only where you had to be nominated, the beauty of it is that the quality of the interactions are extremely high. So a lot of what people are doing on clubhouses building relationships, it's not somewhere where you're going in there to sell is there to build relationships. And I, and again, this actually ties into top funnel activity because that, where they say, Hey, you know what, that's a great idea. Um, find me on Instagram and sending a direct message. You know, they, they take the conversation to a secondary platform like Instagram or Twitter. Um, and the same thing is with take talk where Tik TOK is not where you sell necessarily yet, but it's where you're able to drive that awareness to your Instagram and your Instagram to your website and et cetera, et cetera.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (36:04):
If I was in clubhouse, just trying to, I'm trying to get a better understanding for myself. So I would have a room and then maybe I would send out an email to, uh, some prospects or current clients and say at two o'clock today, I'm going to be discussing this topic. And then basically everybody would kind of gather there, is that how it goes?
Bobby (36:25):
It goes that way, but the only way they're going to be able to see it is that they're already on clubhouse. Okay. And so when you, when you sign up for clubhouse, you actually have w uh, you have one invite. You can nominate one person. Wow. Once you use it, you use it. So,
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (36:40):
You know, and that's a pretty good, um, it's, it's, it sounds limiting from the consumer use side, but it's actually a pretty good, uh, um, method. Because if you think back in the old days, when Facebook first came around, you had to have a college email extension in order to be able to join. So it kinda made it a little mysterious. It was that scarcity like, well, people wanted to be on there because they couldn't be on there and they wanted to know what else was going on. So it's going to be interesting to see how that unfolds with clubhouse, if they'll keep those tight restrictions, or eventually once they build a hardcore nucleus of users, if they'll, uh, you know, open that up a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah.
Bobby (37:27):
Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I, myself, I'm actually still testing it out and using it a lot, you know, it is very new for me. Um, so I've been in there hanging out, uh, attending rooms and participating in stuff like that. Um, I wasn't able to get Bobby as the handle. I was able to get volume a title, but not Bobby. I thought I was, I was like, maybe I could get volume in that he had that, you know,
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (37:49):
It's to be, and this is been a few years ago, there was an audio platform. It was more of a, you know, 32nd, a one minute, you just posted your audio on there. But, uh, it seemed like it changed names, but I was just wondering if you're familiar with that. And if that's the one that just went out of business, like, uh, you know, a few months ago, if that's the one that dissolved,
Bobby (38:15):
Are you referring to, um, kind of like what younger FM used to be, where you could tweet, you could basically put out an audio file and someone could listen to it and reply back in audio. Yeah. Yeah.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (38:26):
Well, yeah. Or you just put, it was more like, um, I just kind of compare it to Instagram, but instead of putting a picture, you put up an audio and people could listen to it and then comment on it or, you know, re re posted or whatever, but you know, it, it was gaining some speed and then all of a sudden, you know, part of that was me, it just dropped off of my radar, but I didn't know if it was still around.
Bobby (38:52):
Yeah. So, so I think that, I think you might be referring to anchor FM for sure. Then because anchor actually used to be that and they, um, they ditch that whole model completely. And it went into the podcasting realm. Yeah. So that's because, uh, because I actually was participating in that kind of test and playing around with it and stuff. And then I remember one day they just like, it started to evolve and it was all gone. And then it was all podcasts at that point. But Twitter does have that functionality where you can, um, actually tweet out, uh, basically like a voice memo, you know, an audio file. Um, so what are actually has that functionality?
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (39:29):
I did not know that is it, are you limited to, I guess a very, very small,
Bobby (39:36):
Yeah. I, I, you know what, I don't know, off the top of my head, but I'm sure you can't do like a 30 minute show or anything on there. Yeah. It's probably definitely limited. Um, but, but it's something to have fun with for sure.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (39:48):
Check that out. Cause I think, you know, especially if you're driving, uh, you know, people want to be able to listen and stuff and not have to read so much. So that's an awesome, awesome thing to check out. Well, Bobby, we appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us. I mean, we've talked about some awesome stuff, given the audience and myself, even a lot of great ideas, so appreciate that very much, uh, before I let you go. Um, so what is the tool that you use in your life? And it could be a tool. It could be a habit or ritual personal professional, but what's something that just adds a lot of value to your life that you just don't feel like you could give up.
Bobby (40:29):
Uh, I think these days it's it's has evolved to a tool called boomerang and it's for Jean Hill. Yeah. But the reason why, um, and I, I'm sure that people are probably like, Oh, really it has to do with email. This is the most important thing. But the reason why is because, you know, when you have having so many conversations, so many things that you want to make sure, uh, do occur, um, you want to make sure that those things don't fall through the crack and people get busy. Maybe, maybe you sent out an email and you haven't received a response in three days or stuff like that. Um, and so boomerang really, really helps me a ton to make sure that if, uh, on my follow-up game, basically, if, if someone didn't reply and I didn't get what I needed in time or something or anything like that, I can be proactive about it and have the, basically the, the system, uh, bringing these emails back into my inbox. Um, and I know Gmail has the nudge feature and stuff like that, but boomerang, at least for me, has really helped, um, set those types of rules up. And so depending on the subject matter or who the email went out to, I can set the day and time. I want that email to come back. If I haven't received a reply from that one has made my life tremendously more efficient and easier for sure.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (41:38):
You know, it's interesting you bring it up because I noticed on my, uh, I use outlook and I noticed on my toolbar at the top, I've got that extension on there. I had signed up four years ago and I really haven't looked through it much, but now I'm going to take another look at that and see how I can put that to work for me.
Bobby (41:55):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's benefited my, my day to day for sure. Yeah. All right. Well tell everybody, yeah.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (42:01):
Who is your client, how they can, or what you can do for them. And then of course, how they can reach out and get ahold of you.
Bobby (42:08):
Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, Cigna marketing is really an agency that focuses on small to medium sized businesses. Um, and it really comes down to three core pillars. Um, it, it comes down to paid media advertising, uh, search engine optimization and website design and development. And specifically when it comes to websites, it's actually, uh, building a machine that's gonna work really well for paid media and SEO. Um, and so, you know, basically we do everything in house. These, these three pillars really are very integrated for us, um, and allows us to be essentially produced better results for clients at the end because of the fact that these components don't have to, you know, uh, work siloed, they work together in that sense. Um, but yeah, so, you know, anyone that's interested in following any of our content, we put out a ton of content to help small business owners.
Bobby (42:57):
Um, you can find us on social media at our handle, which is Cigna marketing. Um, so Cigna marketing everywhere is actually the handle. Um, and also we produce a show where I host called blueprint where I answer any and all digital marketing questions in relation to how to market a business online. So, uh, it's a fun show that I get to do where we receive questions from anywhere and everywhere. Um, and I answered them annually on the show. So it's, it's also just another way to provide value to anyone that's seeking answers to very specific questions that they have.
Roy - The Business of Business Podcast - The Marketing Funnel is a Portfolio of Actions Leading To Increased Returns (43:27):
Okay, great. And I'll include all those links in the show notes where people can reach out and, uh, and find you out there again, Bobby, thank you. You've been very helpful, uh, much appreciated. And, um, that's going to do it for this episode of the business of business podcast. You can find us, of course, at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com also have finally secured the www.tbobp.com the initials. So it's not so long. Um, so we're kind of trying to integrate that into some of our marketing as well, but, uh, you can also reach out, find us on all the major social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The video will also go up on YouTube when the, uh, episode goes live. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of each other. Thank you.
Bobby (44:20):
Thank you, Roy.
www.signamarketing.com
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com