Ep. 34 Stop Blowing Your Budget On Crap Marketing…Instead Do This

Stop Blowing Your Budget On Crap Marketing…Instead, Do This

Raise your hand if you’ve wasted money on marketing and advertising that did nothing for your business. You are not alone… Most business owners start off clueless about marketing their business.

They blow their budget on garbage marketing; billboards, magazine ads, sponsorships…only to find money wasted and no customers gained. Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean discuss their journey from wasting marketing dollars to a FREE unique marketing strategy they use that keeps getting clients over and over.

And it’s something every single business can do. That means YOU.

We’ll cover:
Why typical marketing doesn’t work for most small business
How we have wasted marketing dollars (yes, us too)
Unique strategies to bring in customers
Low cost and free marketing strategies for local business

Mentioned in the episode:
Miles Through TIme: https://milesthroughtime.com
Our Tesla World Record: https://teslarecord.com
Good Day Atlanta: https://milesthroughtime.com/good-day…
Holiday Smart: http://holidaysmart.com

Tools we use:
Kartra: https://toriemathis.com/kartra
Freshbooks: https://toriemathis.com/freshbooks
Meet Edgar: https://toriemathis.com/edgar
WP Engine: https://toriemathis.com/wpengine

Get SMART AF resources and tools to grow your business at besmartaf.com

Listen or watch the full episode below:

 

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 34

[00:00:00] Sean: You, you gotta, you gotta set that stage of today is the day to come, you know, not tomorrow, today.

[00:00:15] Torie: Hey, welcome to Smart AF I’m your host Torie Mathis. We’ve got a great show for you today. So let’s get started. So when I was in college I went to school for advertising. I got a bachelor of fine arts in advertising. We learned a lot about gorilla marketing, like how to do things that were out of the box.

Like not doing typical stuff, but then you like get into the business world and it seems like people are like, buy this ad, buy a billboard, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people like go into this just very normal type of marketing veins, you know? 

[00:00:56] Sean: But I think the worst money I’ve ever spent on marketing for the museum.

[00:01:00] Torie: Well, who knows, like, let’s try it like, but no, like, I don’t think that those types of things work for like your average little business. Like, yeah, it might work for major corporations that just have money to blow on. 

[00:01:18] Sean: Well then it just comes into a quantity thing. Let’s just do it all, confetti everything, and spend the money wherever and every single normal avenue that you can.

[00:01:32] Torie: So even though like I went to school for it, when I became a business owner, I was like, I don’t know how to get going. Like I had no idea how to get them. I actually bought an of new business owners from the county. Like that was something I did in the very beginning because you know what I did not know.

And you know what, it didn’t work. And like the couple clients I might’ve got, they were the worst. I think it may be just, oh my gosh. It was like, I didn’t know. But I think a lot of people don’t know like your, you know how to do your trade. You don’t know how to market. And I think there always needs to be a lot of trial and error from people.

And I think you need to be willing to try things, but I think that you would be better off to do like seriously that gorilla, that unique, that, that stuff, that isn’t by an ad in this magazine or by a billboard. 

[00:02:32] Sean: Oftentimes actually it turns out to be the more measurable thing you can do. You can actually. See you or ROI on those kinds of things more, a lot easier than if you just advertise in a magazine, Hey, kiss 500 bucks away for two months worth of a business card size ad in there. And you have no idea. What you got out of that? 

[00:02:55] Torie: I think that’s part of the worst parts of those types of advertising. Is that like, how do you even know that it worked? Like if you don’t care and you just have money that you need to blow, then yeah. Get a billboard. But otherwise, like if you think a little bit more unique, a little bit more outside the box, a little bit more measurable, there’s definitely things that you could do. That would get your name out there.

And I think that’s a lot of times right there. That’s the name of the game? Like building up the people that know about your business, building your herd, people who have heard about your business, because the more people that know about your business, the more people there are to buy from you because people that don’t know who you are, can’t back from you.

You know? So something I think is really cool that the museum has done. And I think that any business could do stuff like this. Like really, like you gotta plan, you gotta brainstorm, maybe bring on some people and think of some ideas that is a unique idea is to have an event the museum has done all kinds of cool stuff.

And these events aren’t anything that were really hard to do. We are getting harder because I think we’ve done quite a few now. 

[00:04:12] Sean: But it’s the one thing, like once you start, you start and then you keep going and it does, it becomes more challenging and all that kind of stuff, but the return also becomes much greater. So there’s some give and take on that, but as long as it’s a win in the end, that’s. 

[00:04:32] Torie: So with the museum, we have had things like we started off with like cars and coffee. Now, the reason that this is cool is that it’s an excuse for people to come to your business. Not that people really need an excuse.

Maybe I should say reason. Like it’s a reason people want a reason to go do stuff. People want to go out. People want to buy stuff, give them a reason to come see you to come buy from you to come visit your store, to come to your website, to whatever it is to come to your restaurant. 

[00:05:01] Sean: That’s all black Friday. Is it? Gave it a name and make it the same day every year. 

[00:05:09] Torie: Except for now. It’s like black Friday was like two weeks ago for some reason. 

[00:05:13] Sean: And, and then black Friday also turns into Saturday and the whole weekend is black Friday week and black Friday black Friday. 

[00:05:20] Torie: But it’s only October, but yes, but it’s just the name of an event that has given people a reason to buy. Why? Because people want to buy, they want to spend their money. So cars and coffee was something that, that you did. And people came out, it was on Saturday mornings and it got a little rush of people into the business just to ring them for people to come out. You recently did the hoods up because the power was off in the museum.

So it was kind of like a play on words, right? 

[00:05:53] Sean: That’s open. We’re open after being shut down for over a week with no power. 

[00:05:57] Torie: So just a reason it’s just a made up reason, a made up event, a made up invitation to have people come out to the museum. Let’s see, I wrote down a couple of the things we did Teslas into Toccoa. The museum used to be in Toccoa. Sean was able to get Tesla to come out there with a model X parked the model X in the museum. So that gave us. 

[00:06:20] Sean: So that was zero marketing dollar spent on that. And from both the museum and Tesla, because Tesla won’t spend any money either, but they’ll bring, they’ll come to events. If it means people will come see their cars cause again, that’s w that’s their ultimate goal. And it’s the more people that see it, the more people that know about it or opportunities for people to actually purchase it. And so, again, I, we played on the words with the whole toccoa and Tesla, the T’s and all that.

And at the time we had a 1911 Sears on display which was a car that you ordered out of the Sears catalog too. My thought was you’d have that car. And then all the other cars through all the years that were used to buying from traditional dealerships to something that. The newest thing and still the, what they, they brought a, a P 100 X, so it’s the fastest SUV in the world.

And he ordered off a website. So you’ve got, you have to this car that is super simplistic. Ordered it out of a, a catalog over a hundred years ago, all the way up to the newest state of the art car. You, you purchased off of a web. And that, I mean, that was, that was really it. We had, we had owners of Teslas, gave them an excuse to come out and show off their cars.

And it was, it was all outside except for the model X that was on display inside, which meant people had to pay to come into the museum to see the car on the inside, but they could see an X on the outside. I think we had another people 100 D show up out there as well. So it’s not like they even, they didn’t even have to go in to see it, all of this.

It got it, got people there. It got people talking about it. People wanting to share it. And people coming into the museum, which then ultimately turned into them telling other people that, that they had it. I actually had a had somebody that went there for that Tesla day that then went and told their friend about the museum who then came up to visit.

And talk to me just to tour the museum, wound up seeing a car that was on display in there, not marked for sale, not in the market for it. I wound up facilitating a sale on that car, and then he wound up taking it to Texas. That was all just from that one event. It just, it went down this, this rabbit hole of something I had. I mean, I could have never planned for that. And it was just from that one event, which is pretty neat, completely unexpected. 

[00:08:47] Torie: And the thing is, is that, like you said, free. There was no big marketing dollars spent in it. We just came up with something fun and got some other people to do it with us and the opportunities. And I’m sure that there’s still going to be opportunities coming from that. I mean, okay. So I said, you know, Vince ended up getting bigger. So now we’re doing a world record with the longest parade of Teslas. And because you had already opened that Tesla door, like you were able to reach back out to Tesla, to local Tesla places.

And so that, that one event is still like helping us do things in the, in the future. This new one’s not even at the museum, like it’s not, it’s nowhere near the museum. I mean, we’re well over an hour away from it. And so you would think, oh, that, how is that? Benefit to museum. Well, the museum is, is the one technically organizing all of this stuff which means everybody that’s going to participate and know about it and learn.

[00:09:49] Sean: And all these things now are now familiar with Miles Through Time. 

[00:09:53] Torie: So, and you know, it’s just, it’s getting your name out there and the opportunities and the people that you meet. These are made up events. It’s not like we’ve someone gave us permission. Somebody didn’t say, Sean, you are allowed to have this Tesla event or this other Tesla event.

Nobody gave us permission. Nobody told us we could. We made the shit. 

[00:10:17] Sean: And this is one of the neatest, the neatest ones, because there’s a lot of different angles to this, this world record event one. So you’ve got a legitimate world record that we’re attempting to break, which that’s cool. Right. And then you’ve got the benefit of getting the word out about the museum. That’s cool. But we’re also raising funds for operation underground railroad, which saves kids and people all over the world from human trafficking. So that’s fantastic. I mean, there’s so many aspects of that. And again, we’re not, it’s not like I’m not spending any money on it. Like it’s, it’s, it’s benefiting so many different aspects of everything and it’s, it’s free. I mean, it’s, it’s really. 

[00:11:13] Torie: So a fundraiser is another event that any business can have. They can, you can, you can find other like-minded businesses that also want to help out with that same thing that you’re raising money for. And it’s a way for businesses to team up together to get, I mean, I mean, yes, you’re getting more exposure and you’re also helping some type of good, cause again, nobody gave us permission.

Nobody said that we were allowed to do this. This is just something we decided to do. It’s not something that is something that is outside of anybody’s reach any of you. Anybody listening could do this with their business and not spend a dime and still be able to get in front of all these other people.

[00:12:00] Sean: The most biggest impacts that we’ve had as far as traffic goes in the museum up until this date has been to be featured on good day Atlanta. We’ve had good day Atlanta come to the museum a couple of times now. And in each time Paul Milikin has come from good day Lana to the museum. It has, it has done something beyond him, just coming to the show.

The first time he came out somebody saw my 73 Cadillac Eldorado convertible, and had to have it. And so, and that was just from him seeing it on TV. The second time when Paul Milliken came out from good day, Atlanta. I didn’t. I mean, it, it created a whole lot of traffic again, which was all, all good and everything, but it again, had another hidden aspect to it that a particular lady wound up seeing us on good day Atlanta.

And that has led to adding a gigantic collection as getting put into the museum next week. And the only reason that’s happening is because of being featured on good day Atlanta. So maybe if you’re a pizza place, you’re not going to get your local news station out there just because you’re a pizza place.

But maybe if you, you thought outside that box and you, you wanted to do some sort of fundraiser or do something for your community, you’re going to have that impact of doing something good for something else. Plus, you’re going to get that back in when you know that it’s going to benefit on so many different levels that it’s it’s worth, you know, Thinking of doing stuff like that, you’re, you’re actually doing something for, for others or some other organizations, something, something good.

You get the publicity from that. And then it benefits the business as well without having to spend $500 a month on a billboard that you have no idea what it’s doing or pumping out all kinds of ads and papers and newspapers. I think he can pay for Craigslist that like, you’re going to get garbage on that.

But if you, if you think in a much bigger picture of what you can do, just because you can do it. And then how can you make that also beneficial for your business that this endless amount of possibilities you can do with that. 

[00:14:17] Torie: And you’ve been start off small. We started off small and now we’ve worked our way up to a Guinness world record event. Like obviously I’m not telling you to go and anybody to go start with, again, this world record, but any business can make up something. To get people to come out. You know, you talked about a pizza place. If you think about a lot of restaurants, they already come up with events. For example, Sundays, Sundays in the, you know, winter fall time are times that people go and watch football.

So they special football things like you can go and watch the game, and then they have appetizer or whatever type of things that they make it a special time. Why? Because people want to spend money. People are going to go out and do things. If we’re going to go out and eat, people have to choose to go, you know, use certain types of businesses when you give them this excuse to make it yours, because you made something special happens.

And it can start off small and it can start off easy. You can start off having like some type of special day, like we did, you know, the cars and coffee was just on a Saturday and we just called that Saturday that day and then invited people to come for free, like everything around that was for free. And you were even able to, like I said, you get other people that want to do these things with you, or that want to be a part of it for the cars and coffee.

Yes. We had coffee out there, but we didn’t even pay for it. Right? 

[00:15:47] Sean: Yeah. That was a wound up providing the coffee for free. 

[00:15:52] Torie: They just wanted to Shaun. And they said yes. Then they even gave us a bunch of cracker barrel gift cards for like free breakfast or whatever. It was some free meals so that we even had stuff to give out to people for free.

So not only were we providing coffee and providing a reason to come and hang out, but we were also, you know, helping cracker barrel a little bit and they helped us. So none of this has to cost money. It just, you know, you got to think outside of the box. 

[00:16:19] Sean: Partner with like what would make sense to go reach out to another organization, person, whatever the case may be and be like, what can we do together to make it an even bigger impact? Cause I mean, it’s definitely going to make it easier. Most likely when you’ve got a little bit extra help, then you just try to do it all by. 

[00:16:37] Torie: So you can start off and just like pick a day and then make that day something, find some reason why that day would be important. Like I said, we did the cars and coffee or Sunday for football, for like restaurants, like figure out what your thing is so that you have that day.

And then once you hit that day, That was easy. Like it wasn’t that hard. Then you can move up and start to do things a little bit better and realize that you don’t have to do these types of things yourself. So I found this website that you could go to and it’s holiday smart.com and there are all kinds of days.

And they’re like, if you like, are like, totally can’t think of something like there are all these days that these are actual days. So for like, if you were an HVAC company, for example, this says that December 17th is clean air day. Like really, you can make any day clear day your day. You can have it be, you know, whatever you want to do for dog groomers. There are tons of dog days. August 10th is swell your dog day. Like you could pick anything like this, just try to be creative or just make up something of your own. Like we did cars and coffee again, nobody gave us permission and said on Saturday, you can do. Nobody said that, you know, you can you know, have this event, you can do whatever you want for these types of things for your business in order to attract people to come in, because people are going to spend money already.

[00:17:59] Sean: Yeah. I mean, there’s a couple really simple things you can do when you, when you create whatever it is that you want to do. You can add that to your Google business listing as an event. You definitely want to add that as a, a Facebook event as well, because on Facebook specifically, there it’s completely different than if you just posted saying, Hey, it’s, you know, clean air day com.

Just posting it or just saying today’s clean air day. No, like you legit make it an event, which means like, no matter how big you think this thing is going to be making event. So Miles Through Time is in an old mill and in old mill is Northeast Georgia’s largest antique mall and there’s a bowling alley there and all kinds of stuff.

After Thanksgiving is black Friday, right? So we’re actually going to have a, an event on Facebook, right? As a Facebook event that says it’s Black Friday sale in the antique mall Friday and Saturday, nothing really changes other than yes, all the vendors are going to have all their stuff on sale, but because it’s been created as an event, it gives it a little bit more clever.

Plus people are going to see it when they’re searching events. So what should we do today? Or what should we do next week? Or what is there to do on black Friday? They’re going to see this. There is something to do where they wouldn’t, unless they went to your page or you emailed them. Cause you have their email.

Right? You, you, you just, it’s super simple stuff. Like there’s nothing special you have to do with. Put it out there. I mean, even print it out and put it in the store and let them know, Hey, come back for black Friday and see what kind of stuff is on sale. Then you don’t have to put it in the paper or any of that kind of stuff.

I mean, you can, it’s an excuse to do rather, you know, if you’ve said, if you were going to put an ad in the paper do you want to put an ad saying, Hey, antique mall open every day of the week or antique mall, black Friday sale, you know, some special thing, 160 vendors. Everything’s, you know, 10 to 70%. Talk about an impact, right? Friday, Saturday only that’s well. 

[00:20:21] Torie: And then you highlight stuff that you already have. Like even stuff that’s not like spend the whole day there there’s a museum there and there’s bowling and there’s a place they like, you can like highlight all these things that they may not have known. So it even seems like it’s more special, but like people are going to go out already, give them an excuse to come see you. Right. 

[00:20:39] Sean: So you gotta think like, you know, it might be hard for you in your mind. You’re like, well, We have stuff on sale all the time. It doesn’t matter. Like it’s, it’s a, it’s a perception.

You, you gotta, you gotta set that stage of today is the day to come, you know, not tomorrow, today. So that, I mean, really just change your mentality on that and think of what can you do to get people to come to your business.

[00:21:10] Torie: Today, like on a day, like, what is it that you can do to invite them to come in and give them a reason that it needs to be today?

Like if you look at a mattress company, mattress companies always have events. It’s the labor day sale. It’s the Memorial day. Like there’s always a reason. Like you gotta come now. I am not saying have a sale every time. That, and it might not work for you, but there is something you can do to have like whatever that event is that that reason for people to come.

And there’s always a reason make it. Don’t wait to get permission, make it up and invite people to come to your business. 

[00:21:49] Sean: Reach out to a food truck. That’s looking for a place to park anyways, say, Hey, come park in my parking lot. And then your event is, you’ve got a food truck there and it’s a win-win for everybody.

[00:21:59] Torie: It really can be as simple as something like. You know, or have some other business come in and do whatever it would be with you. And then together that come because that’s what makes it unique is that you’re having somebody else come in. And that is like that special day. 

[00:22:14] Sean: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a car show cruise in that I went to for the first time, two months ago. And this, this group, club that’s that’s doing it. And they’ve been trying to go and do, do this thing all over the place and they do it monthly. Well, they wanted to finding this spot. That’s a, at a brewery and because this car car club comes every month and they mark it and do all this kind of stuff.

At the, at the breweries, the car club does. It has grown the brewery to where they, they were in this little front warehouse area to the entire place now. And then they’ve also added on a full full-blown kitchen.

Because of the car club and free event, a free event. Yeah, people are then going in and they’re buying beers are getting hungry and they’re doing all that kind of stuff. And then the car club is able to grow and get their numbers up and provide something fun for people to do. People are always looking for an excuse to go do something.

[00:23:23] Torie: Well, when we lived with roosters down the street from us, had a cruise in. And again, how often did they do that one? Luckily it’s like, it’s just made up, like, let’s just have it and invite people there and just gave people a reason. Lots of people came out. They gave away stuff. Like people could come and go.

It was easy breezy, but again, just a reason to bring people out to come in. That’s cool. 

[00:23:51] Sean: I think what works for you? What kind of connections you already have? Who else is in the parking lot? And then maybe you don’t even have a brick and mortar business, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some sort of online event.

That there’s all kinds of stuff you can do. You just gotta, you gotta think, like, what can you do? The intern is then going to, you know, increase your visibility to your potential clients and customers and everybody that you want to buy. 

Because they’re going to go out and do stuff already. They’re going to go out and spend money already.

[00:24:25] Torie: So might as well be you. How do you make it you?