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Ep. 121 The Real Reason You Market Your Business

by Torie Mathis | Smart AF Show

The Real Reason You Market Your Business

When you think of marketing you may think of ads, websites, and branding…but there is something more. Underneath all of these marketing assets lies the essential emotion behind the marketing: TRUST.

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about how you can build trust with your audience, even before they meet or buy from you by using some essential marketing strategies you may have overlooked.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 121

[00:00:00] Torie: No. It’s nice to like shop around and stuff. I think that people feel good when they’re like, I have my restaurant, I have my place to take my car. I have my doctor, my dentist, my like, they don’t want to go and find another one. And then risk the fact that it might be shitty, like when they have their one like people stay there. So have you be the one? And like all of these things are the ways that you’re going to be the ones.

Hey, what’s up. It’s Torie Mathis, your host, and I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis, Founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

[00:00:43] Sean: That’s me.

[00:00:44] Torie: You know, when people buy from companies, they buy from ones that they trust. I think that is one of the most important things that a business can work on growing because when your customer base trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you again.

They’re more likely to refer you to their friends and their family because no one wants to refer a crappy company to somebody. And they’re more likely to just say nice things about you, give you good reviews off those things like trust, I think is super important to build with your clientele.

[00:01:19] Sean: Which can also be one of the, I dunno, it’s almost like it can be the most difficult thing. And at the same time, One of the easiest things that you can do.

[00:01:32] Torie: Why do you say most difficult?

[00:01:35] Sean: Because it gets, it can, you know, it can be hard for people to, to trust you initially. Especially if you’re a new business or an, and I think a lot of it is a mental thing. You know, I look at myself with Miles Through Time, and I’m a lot more confident.

In what we’ve created four years later than opposed to, you know, the first couple of months that we were open and I’m trying to say, Hey, this is this museum. You should loan me or cars. Who the hell am I? You know? And it’s in, I think it was a, a block that I put on myself initially that I’m almost not worthy of their trust.

[00:02:21] Torie: Yes. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[00:02:24] Sean: Where now? I I believe I’m more than worthy to accept anybody’s vehicle on display in there. And I think I’ve proven myself through it time and time again. And a lot of it is it comes from, you know, I’ve got a ton of people that talk about me and the museum and how great everything is.

I’ve got a lot of different people that have put cars on display. Still have cars on display. There’s everything that’s there for the perfect recipe to say, now I’m a trustworthy establishment. And I think that’s probably one of the hardest things for, for new business, new businesses, specifically to, to get over that trust.

[00:03:09] Torie: Time and grade is definitely a thing. And there’s nothing that you can do to rush that. Like, that is one thing that you just have to put in the time, but some of there are some things that you can do though, that really help kind of fast track that a little bit. And one of those things is being consistent and showing up consistently, like when you started Miles Through Time.

[00:03:29] Sean: If you’re going where I’m thinking.

[00:03:33] Torie: Some people that were, would like call or would say, are you going to be open this weekend? Well, yes, we’re going to be like, we are a museum. These are our hours. No matter what, like we’re taking this a hundred percent seriously, and this is what we’re doing. Like, yes, it’s Wednesday. We are open because we’re open every Wednesday, you know?

[00:03:53] Sean: So the other people involved, right? The other people involved with the museum were originally. Yeah. Are you going to be here? What the hell you mean? Am I going to be here? Yes. The museum is open. Like I don’t get to be like, ah, no, not today.

[00:04:11] Torie: Which is like, you would think that that wouldn’t happen. But we have been to other businesses that they were just not there or like we talked about this before they just run out of stuff. Like we’ve been to some restaurants and some cafes and things and they’re like no, we don’t have that. No, we’re out of that. You know, it’s a hobby business, you know, we’re just doing it because, and they’d have whatever their reason is.

So, and that is just, it’s not showing up at all. So showing up consistently, and, and that, I mean, you can take that as like showing up online or showing up, but it’s literally. Showing up for yourself and being consistent in what you say you’re going to do. If you’re open Monday through Friday, then be open Monday through Friday.

If you’re closed every Friday, that’s fine. Then be close to every Friday, like set up whatever it is. And I don’t care if it’s a home business, I don’t care if it’s your side hustle or whatever you want to call it. Like, whatever it is, you need to set that up and then consistently do. No matter what, like that’s the deal.

And I think that’s one of the big things that’s going to separate you from the ones that people are like, eh, I don’t know if I want to do business with them. Like they’re sometimes open. I don’t know if I can reach them or.

[00:05:21] Sean: Yeah, because then people start assuming things, you know, and, and a lot of times people go to the negative aspect of, of what it is that, you know, you’re not doing that you should be doing. And, you know you know, it’s real easy to. All of that garbage. If you just do exactly what you say you’re going to do.

[00:05:40] Torie: Right. And you know, we do talk about social media, so, and consistency. I think it is a really good time to talk about it because people check you out, whatever your business is, they’re going to go and search for you online.

They’re going to do a little bit of research, especially if you’re going to come into the house. If you’re going to drop off your kids, like, if anything like that, they’re going to check you out. If medical that, like all of these things are going to go check you out. So when they go to your social media and they see that you have not posted at all it kind of doesn’t look great.

If you think that, you know, you don’t have time to post on social media, pick, whatever you do have time with, like once a week, then people can say, oh, they post every single Monday. They posted last Monday, the Monday before the Monday. They’re still open. They consistently show up and post every Monday and that’s fine.

Like you don’t have to do it five times a day, every day. Just pick something and stick with it and be consistent.

[00:06:32] Sean: I actually had somebody in the museum last Saturday that she went. Wanting to know what the Instagram was. So she was obviously the younger crowd and I tell her, and she goes on there and sh and it was almost like she was surprised. She was like, oh, and you’re posting. Yes, there you are. And you’re posting how’s that? Which, I mean, it seemed like right from the gate, she, she assumed that, yeah, maybe we were on there, but we weren’t really doing anything. And there was legitimate surprise there that we were actually doing stuff on there.

[00:07:03] Torie: And again, you, it’s easy to see companies that, that do a lot and be like, Ooh, I want to be like that. But like, you don’t have to like, whatever your thing is. Like I said, if you want to be open Monday through Thursday, that’s fine. Don’t compare yourself to everybody at somebody that’s open seven days a week and think I have to do that.

Like you don’t do your thing and then consistently do it, whether that stays open or your hours, or even if you’re going to take phone calls. Like this was a huge thing for me. I have always been a very small business. I don’t want a team. It’s mostly me. For the last several years it’s been me and Sean, we have an assistant, like we keep it pretty small.

I don’t have time to talk to everybody on the phone. And I’m so sorry. Like I like you guys, but I can not talk to you on the phone. It takes up so much of my time. It stops my day. I have big projects I’m working on. Like, I cannot do it and forever I put my fucking phone number on my website. It was in my, my signature block on my email.

You guys, I’m not answering the shit. Why did I do that? Like, I don’t know. It gets the, no, I’m not going to answer the phone. And so it took me a long time to realize that like, The phone is not my thing. You can email me. I will answer you like there’s other ways that you can contact me other than calling me.

Like, if you set up a phone appointment with me, like, I’m totally like I do I talk on the phone. I just, don’t take random phone calls mostly because everybody wants to sell me my own

[00:08:29] Sean: services or insurance or whatnot, but everything it is that they could possibly get out of you and then say, well, right.

[00:08:37] Torie: So I have to be very selective about my time, but the thing was, I wasn’t. Assistant with what I was actually going to do. I was putting forth the fact that you could call me because I was giving you my phone number, but then I wasn’t answering the phone. So that’s like, there’s, there’s an inconsistency there that would make me look untrustworthy.

But if I let people know that, like I just like, I, I don’t talk on the phone and you know, you, if you want to contact me, you can email me and then we can set something up and then I’m being consistent with what works for me, what works for my company, my values, my time. Like there’s all these other things that that’s okay.

That I don’t have to feel bad about that, or sorry for that, that I just need to put out that that’s how I’m going to run things. And I think that, that that’s important. So if you’re not, we talk about. Facebook direct like messenger. Like if you’re not going to answer your messages on Facebook, like how people can just like respond to, or ask your company questions and stuff, like turn it off because otherwise you look like you’re not paying attention to people.

Like you’re ignoring them and they’re like, well, shit, if they’re not going to answer my one simple question on, you know, the direct message. Why would I take my car there and drop it off? Or why would I let you teach my kids something or whatever these things are. So if that’s not consistent with what you’re actually going to do, like don’t put that out there because it makes you not look professional.

[00:10:04] Sean: Though you should have faced untrustworthy. I have it on set up some automated questions and the automated responses for. The last one, if you still then don’t want to use it, say best way to reach me is blah, blah, blah. But then at least if there’s some common questions, think of it as an FAQ opportunity for people to get a, you know, maybe they just want to know when you’re open or how much it costs for whatever it is that you’re selling.

And they don’t really need to talk to you. They just want to know right there and if it’s one thing I, I, I know for a fact from doing all this car museum stuff, is that people I don’t want to click too many times. They don’t want to read, they want the instant answer or whatever it is in their head at that moment.

And if it takes too many steps to find that in. You’ve lost our interests. So if setting up that messenger and giving them an opportunity to click one button and it automatically tells them exactly what they need, that’s a win for everybody and you still don’t have to do it. So I do recommend you actually have messenger installed on there, but let them know that if that is not how they’re going to actually actually be able to talk to a human.

[00:11:16] Torie: To let them know that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because remember the whole entire thing is building trust with people because when, when customers trust you, that’s when they’re in it for the long haul, you don’t want like these like Wayne band things and people to be gone and never buy from you again, you have the opportunity for people to buy from you forever.

Like this is your business. You could be building up enough people that like, you never really have to like, do crazy marketing or. Because you built this whole network of, of people trusting you. And so I think that’s super important. Yep. So the second thing I have that I think is really important for building trust.

And again, this was something that I kind of had a hard time at first is to share pictures of your self. There was like a really big change I read the Gary Vaynerchuk book Crush It was one of those. It was one of his first books. There was talking about building a personal brand and he took it like, then I wasn’t like, I don’t need everybody to know me.

I don’t want to be some influence or anything like that. But then he came across in a different way that even no matter who you are, especially in this online type of. You’re building a brand, a personal brand, whether you like it or not. So you might as well put forth your best foot. And even if you’re working for somebody, like we always have all these clients that are real estate agents, and then they want to be rebranded and do all this stuff for the company that they’re working for.

And they. All this stock and just the kind of like there Keller Williams this month. And so they do all this stuff, Keller Williams and they brand themselves Keller Williams, and then they go and move to Remax and they dump everything, get rid of everything and they start completely fresh over as Remax.

Well, if they would have just been like, you know, the realtor you want to go to. That brand would have been secondary and they would have been the brand, the big brand, you know, they’re the ones that people are actually dealing with they’re not dealing with the brand, they’re dealing with the person.

Right. So if you think about that, you, no matter what you are, that person that people are going to be dealing with, I think it makes it a little bit different. So showing pictures of yourself, showing pictures of your office, showing like, and putting these things online on your social media. Stop showing all these stupid stock photography, like go take some pictures.

Like they don’t have to be perfect. And I think when people see, oh my gosh, this is a real company with real people. They look like me that, you know what I mean? Like, there’s this connection. Oh, they have kids. Their kids look like they’re the same age as me. Oh my God they have a dog. I have a dog. They like dogs. You know what I mean? Like. There’s this people connect with people, they don’t connect with brands and they connect with people’s faces and they connect with things that you have in common. So for example, if Sean and I talked about the fact that we’re in the military, you know, that both of us were in the military, Sean was in the air force I was in the army then to all the people that were in the military, like now we have that connection with them. If we never said anything about that, and people wouldn’t know we’re losing that connection, you know what I mean? So I think that not just showing pictures of yourself, but talking about yourself and the things that make you, who you are like with Sean and I in the military.

Those are the things that people are going to connect with and trust you more. And I think that people want to try to put on this, like overly personal overly corporate, maybe people that came from corporate or haven’t I figured out this personal branding thing, they try to push that away from them rather than using it to their benefit, because it’s the people that are a little bit more transparent a little bit more open to let people know who they are that are going to be the ones that they gain more trust.

[00:14:56] Sean: Yeah. So at, at the minimum to share some real stuff, because it’s real easy to. To go down the clip art row and the stock photography and just the, the stuff that could easily be misconstrued as anybody can do this, it’s made up type stuff. But the moment you start sharing real images of your real business, a view of your employees or whatever it is they don’t have. They’re not like don’t make them perfect. Just make them. Rah. So

[00:15:28] Torie: I have people all the time contact me and they’re like, look at my website. Like, I know you can help me, like, duh, like, so I try to help out. And I try to give a few little pointers and things like this, that and one of the things that it always is is that I go to their website and they’re not there. It’s a very corporate looking website. It’s very sterile. There’s no mention of who they are. Like, it just looks like some big company, some gigantic company put forth a website, you know what I mean? Like it doesn’t show that these are real people or why you would do it. One of the ones recently was a veteran and the nowhere on there did it say like that he was a veteran.

And so he understood other veterans like I don’t remember exactly what, but whatever it was like there, that connection that could have been there, like he could have been on the front page and said like, I’m you like, why you need to deal with me because I know exactly what you’re going through and that wasn’t on there anywhere.

It doesn’t, you have to put you into it. You have to build this trust with people so that they want to choose you and you weren’t giving, they weren’t giving anything that differentiated them from any other website, it could have just been some corporate website that everybody got and, and nothing was special about it because when you have these types of commodity type businesses, that there’s multiple people doing the exact same thing.

And so people are going to go and kind of check out multiple of them. Why are they going to choose you? If you don’t give them any options of, or any information to, to have them make that decision? Like, they’re just going to look over you and go to the next. I think a lot of times that that trust factor and that brand, that you’ve built between you and them is going to be a deciding factor.

[00:17:18] Sean: That’s like why some of these, these companies like Safelite and some of these, the ones that you’re, you’re getting some sort of service tech, you know, coming to you, their whole thing is that they’re going to send you a picture of the actual tech. And I say, flight is one, that’s done it for a while now.

And then, you know, you start getting some of these people they’ll send you, the plumber is I’ll send you who, whoever it is, that’s coming out there. So now, like, you know who to expect, you know, I just, it makes you out. Okay. That’s what the, that’s what the person’s going to look like. And they can go in deeper and be like, this is more about this person or something like that. And, you know, you can get, you can get as much as, as involved as you want. I mean, you could be like this, you know, in Georgia, right. Where so-and-so is a Georgia state university go bulldogs, all this stuff. And they’re going to somebody’s house who was also, you know, all about bulldogs.

Like the veteran thing, like instantly people were like, oh yeah. And you’re, you’re instantly like, what’s up, man. You know, come fix this clogged toilet, go bull dogs, you know, It makes us so much better. And then guess who they’re going to call the next time, same people, Hey man, send that same guy out here where, you know, they could send nothing or even worse. They can send some, you know, stock photography period. And you’re like, that’s not who I expected, you know?

[00:18:40] Torie: Right. Yeah. I think that real connection to show that your business is real people builds a bond that I, I think people overlook, like it’s to see it in other things and to see that it works, but then when it’s your own business, for some reason, people are like, Ooh, I don’t want to give, like, they feel like they’re giving something away or not being professional or, but, but that’s what you need to do to build more trust and to have those long haul clients.

I think. So what else did I have here?

So another thing that I think is great is to have real testimonials and get people to leave good reviews. Because if you don’t ask for good reviews, you know what, you’re going to get reviews. You can get bad reviews because you can’t make everybody happy. There’s always going to be a few unhappy people that are going to leave bad reviews.

So if you want to get good reviews, You’re going to have to ask for them Miles Through Time does a good job of asking for reviews. You can’t refuse a lot. I’m very impressed. I get the emails a lot for Miles Through Time reviews. And so I see from Google, like John gave you a five star review, but you’d have to ask.

[00:19:59] Sean: And the Google ones have stepped up quite a bit. I still, I want them for the TripAdvisor, but it’s apparently not as many people that are on there as I would think. That’s my guess, I’m the ones that are visiting the museum. Cause then they’re not going on there and doing it. And you have to actually be a member to do it where everybody is on Google.

So it’s super easy for them to do it there. And then Facebook changed theirs where it’s just a recommendation or not. So their whole star and review system is completely different than how it used to be. I actually I’ve seen people review other businesses where Facebook is only recommends. And they leave a negative review, but in doing that, they have to say recommends.

It’s like, yeah, you can’t, you can’t leave a negative review without still recommending the place.

[00:20:54] Torie: Because recommending is how they’ve changed it.

[00:20:56] Sean: Yeah. You don’t leave a one star or five star or no star like that. You just, you either recommend it or you don’t, which I kind of, I liked that aspect. Okay. I mean, people like to complain and it may not be that business’s fault necessarily or whatever the circumstances are, you know, it could be, you know, one employee or one instance that shouldn’t have happened, but then like it reflects on the whole business and it kind of, it can go down muddy water and it’s not great.

[00:21:32] Torie: I had, I don’t know if you saw this. I don’t know if you get, if I know, sometimes you see when I get comments and stuff like that, I had somebody comment on one of my posts and they were talking about how he always lives in fear of a one-star review. Did you see that? Because people are so they’re, they’re so quick to leave a one-star review and keyboard warriors always really quick to be super judgy and not allow people to make any mistakes at all, to call people out on every little teeny thing. And like, I read it and I was. Like, I gotta think on this before I respond to, it was deep.

I was like, oh my. And it was just to like a quote post that I had had posted. And I could see that people would be really nervous when they have a business that is so reliant on reviews that if you do get a one-star review and that is taking down your average, because people pride themselves on what their review status is.

Like bad reviews are going to happen. And like for you to live in fear of them, like it, like it hurts.

[00:22:44] Sean: I would say having the process set up in your business too, to constantly be asking for reviews, which is going to ensure that you’re going to have more positive reviews, most likely than negative.

[00:22:54] Torie: I have a process for responding that.

[00:22:57] Sean: And then also, you know, we, we went out to breakfast this morning. And we go there all the time. It’s great food and shitty service. It’s nothing special today it was worse than normal. And I mean, it would be a prime example for us to go and leave a negative review. I mean, we could have totally justified it.

[00:23:20] Torie: I could’ve left details and people would have been like, Ooh, don’t go there.

[00:23:24] Sean: But there was a manager there that apparently, I mean, she handled it great. She not only took a portion off that we never received, but then took more off and apologized and did everything right. She possibly could without, you know, short of giving us everything for free.

Wasn’t necessarily like we, we got food and we ate it and it came out regular and all that kind of stuff. So that was fine. But that act made it, so like, I had no interest in leaving a review, plus we’re going to go back. Right. But for a business to have that in place. So that whether it’s you or your employees or something like that, when stuff does happen, try to address immediately at the source and not give them an opportunity to go.

[00:24:04] Torie: When I went up there because Sean ordered a side of something and then while we were still eating, we finished our food. The side never came. So we’re sitting there and sitting there like our waters are, we drank everything. Like still sitting there, no check was coming.

Like people are moving. I saw somebody outside that they had eaten, they had had their food delivered, they ate all their food. And then they left like, and the side never came. We never got our check. So when I actually went up there and it took me a while to like find somebody that I could actually say something to, like, we ordered something else, like it’s never going to come up. Barely. Like, can we at least just get our checks so we can. Because I’m ready to leave now. And that manager, she was like, is this something about food? And she like grabbed me real quick. Like she was not going to let that girl talk to me at all. And she had her whole thing down. Like she was the one that was going to handle that.

And she knew exactly what to say. Like it was she had her plan. Like she knew exactly what she was going to do and how to handle it. And she didn’t let somebody less, you know.

[00:25:04] Sean: Manage that someone that could get defensive.

[00:25:07] Torie: Right. And there was a lot of really young, kind of new, new people that were working there, like doing that. And it was the hostess that I went and talked to and she grabbed it really quick and was like, Nope, Nope, come here. And, and yeah, she handled it really well. So in the same thing as reviews, like shit is always going to happen. People are always going to find some people are just not going to be happy with anything that you didn’t, who cares.

Like it’s okay. I think we all know that those people are out there. And so if you have a couple of negative reviews, like, you know, it could be user error could be, so-and-so had a bad day.

[00:25:38] Sean: I think Miles your Time has a one or two star from some guy that said it wasn’t worth his trip out there. And he was in and out like series. Like, if anybody puts any weight into that compared to any of the others, then you don’t come. That’s fine.

[00:25:52] Torie: And not everybody’s going to be happy, so that’s fine. But having like a plan and, and, you know, I was thinking of a plan to respond to the negative review, but I think what you said is so much better. Like if you have a plan to stop the negative review from happening, if something does happen bad.

[00:26:11] Sean: No, that that negative review is, is inevitable. At some point, you’re going to get it and then handle it that way as well. And, you know, apologize if you need to, or. I apologize right. But then pull it off. You know, I have them call you or email you or anything that takes it off of the reviews of that. There’s no banter back and forth, or it looks like from the business you’re getting defensive or justifies anything that, that negative review is saying you just eliminate that and be like, sorry, you feel this way, email the manager, call whatever the case may be. Come back in. And that reviewed does not matter at that point.

[00:26:51] Torie: No matter where somebody reviews you, you have the ability. To respond to it. And I think that’s one of the worst things that people do is that they don’t respond to any of them. They don’t respond to the good ones. They don’t respond to the bad ones. And if you want to build trust with people, respond to every single one, like they’re real people and you care, you care that they left a good review.

You care that they left a bad review and there’s no defensiveness in there. We’ve had a couple of clients that wanted to go ape shit on these reviews. That disgruntled employees left they’re like, but they’re fake. I have to tell everybody and th the anger and the frustration, and like, totally like, this is your baby.

And somebody is trashing your baby. Like, I understand that that’s what you want to do, but you have to remember that everybody forever is going to read your response. And they’re going to realize that when they see all these good reviews and they have that one, or that two. It’s them. It’s not your business and your reviews are not like that one-star review, isn’t a direct reflection or make you worse of, of, you know, anything. And you know, To respond to it. And I think that when you do that, then people are like, oh, they’re pretty cool. Like, even if something does happen, they made it better. Right. And so that is something that, you know, really is going to boost your trust with, with people even before they ever even go into your establishment.

Because some of this stuff is a precursor before somebody even comes in, you know, people think of marketing and I think they think of running an ad and that’s marketing. That’s not like it’s so much more, I think how you respond to reviews, that’s marketing like that is getting people’s opinions to change or, you know, to, to have an opinion before they even do any type of business with you.

[00:28:47] Sean: And see you looking for a place to go get a massage. It was researched on reviews, like who who’s got the best, you know, so you don’t waste your time going to someplace that if all you did was go and look and like this place was awful, you would’ve wasted your time.

[00:29:01] Torie: Right. And I drove a little bit further for the one that had more reviews, but you have to ask for reviews. And I think on their reviews, they were one that they were very active in there and they were responding to all things. And so that showed me that there is somebody that cares. And when you care about your business and you show that you care about your customers, like it shows, and then people are going to choose you, people choose you and stick with you longer.

Because I don’t think though it’s nice to like shop around and stuff. I think that people feel good when they’re like, I have my restaurant, I have my place to take my car. I have my doctor, my dentist, my like, they don’t want to go and find another one. And then risk the fact that it might be shitty, like when they have their one, like people stay there.

So have you be the one? And like all of these things are the ways that you’re going to be the one that’s I thought hard, like it takes a little bit of work, but it’s totally doable.

[00:29:57] Sean: It can be done by you as a business owner or give it to one of your employees and have that be something that they do, but it’s gotta be done one way or.

[00:30:07] Torie: Yep. So we have new shows every Tuesday and Thursday, and we would love it. If you would come and check us out, we always talk about things like this ways that you can be smarter about your marketing and maybe find things that you didn’t even realize were marketing things that you needed to be smarter about.

So we’ll catch you on the next one. Thanks.