We spend so much time online, and that’s why it’s so important to formulate marketing strategies that would resonate best with our target audience. Alex Wehrley talks about this topic in a special crossover episode with Fast Break presented by M3 Elevate. Fast Break is a podcast hosted by Matt Cranney, Partner and Executive Vice President of M3 Elevate, that discusses strategies you can use to grow and protect your business. Matt invited Alex to be a guest on Fast Break to share marketing tactics and some background on how he started The GoGedders and GGMM. They dive deep into maximizing opportunities before venturing and moving to other areas in businesses. Tune in to learn how to sustain a growth mindset, practice optimism in the face of reality, and navigate the marketing world despite COVID and other business challenges.
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Listen to the podcast here
2022 Marketing Tactics To Stand Out: Crossover With M3 Elevate’s Fast Break
If you are looking to learn about marketing tactics that your company should focus on now and how you can stand out in this cluttered marketplace, this is a great episode for you. One of the cool things we get to at GGMM is producing and helping podcasts grow for other brands. One of our clients, M3 Insurance, produces a podcast for small businesses called Fast Break with M3 Elevate. It’s hosted by my good friend, Matt Cranney, who invited me to their show to talk marketing and entrepreneurship.
We had a great conversation, so I wanted to share it on this show. Big thanks to Matt and the team at M3 for having me on. A reminder that this show is brought to you by GoGeddit Marketing and Media, GGMM.io, and our good friends Penn, Milwaukee. What I’m about to play for you is directly from M3 Elevates Fast Break Podcast. If you are looking for more great content for small businesses, make sure to check them out after you read this episode. Let’s dive in.
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“Stand out in a world where most standby.” Can you tell us more about that phrase? Where does it come from, and why do you believe that’s such a relevant message for small and growing businesses now?
It’s a very relevant message because most brands look the exact same. They talk the same. If you look at their messaging on their website, in their advertisements or in what they are putting out to their customers, it’s hard to tell brands apart. I feel like a lot of brands are comfortable doing the same things that they have been doing for years. The ones that I feel get rewarded try and push the envelope and aren’t afraid to take risks. Those are the clients that we enjoy working with.
I feel that they get the most out of our services regardless. It’s a bit of an aspirational message, I feel. One that I want our target audience to resonate with. It’s important. One of my favorite quotes in businesses is, “It’s good to be better but it’s better to be different.” Especially when it comes to marketing and your product, the best product doesn’t always win. It’s the product that resonates the most with your target audience, that they can understand the best that cuts through the clutter.
Sometimes you need to be different and take a stand in your marketing and messaging to do that. It’s something that we live by at GGMM and something that we help our clients do when we take them on, whether it’s helping them start a podcast or even doing a digital ad campaign for them. How can they stand out in this sea of sameness in this cluttered marketplace when it comes to marketing?
I think about some of the clients that we get the privilege to partner with and some of the incredible products and services that they have. The challenges are how do they take that product or service and differentiate themselves enough, as you said, a crowded space to be able to bring the customers to them that should be with them based on the caliber of what they do. I want to dive into what will be the biggest section of our conversation and our audience based on your vast expertise in the spaces you play that they will be curious about.
If I’m a small and growing business owner reading this and thinking about the places and spaces from a marketing perspective that my clients and potential clients are, how do I reach them through my marketing dollars? What are some of the best wisdom that you can share for small and growing business owners now about where they need to show up, how they need to show up, what are you seeing, and what are you learning?
There are so many different options in the market now, the good and bad. The overarching advice that I would give is to go where your target audience is already spending time and where you can add unique value to them and also play to your strengths because there are a lot of opportunities on TikTok now. If you are not good on camera and are not funny or quippy, that’s probably going to be a disaster for most people.
Some other content works well on there but if you don’t like the video concept, that may not work. The good news is you don’t have to be there. There are plenty of other things that you can do to market yourself. There’s podcasting, even having a good website, and running Google Ads or Facebook ads to them can be highly profitable depending on what business you are in or engaging influencers or content creators, doing webinars and events, and nothing beat face-to-face. It’s always thinking of how you can add value to your target audience wherever they are spending time, and that can be online or offline.
A lot of people get caught up in the shiny object syndrome of, “I need to be on Instagram. I need to be doing a LinkedIn video. I need to be on TikTok.” I try and dominate what’s working before venturing into other platforms and spreading myself. I’m all for experimenting. I love doing it. There’s nothing wrong with that but if you kill it at tradeshows or hosting in-person events, how can you scale, do a little more, or build off of that? If you are running a profitable Google Adwords campaign on a website, can you scale that up?
I would maximize the opportunities that you are already good at before venturing often and moving into other areas as opposed to trying to do eight different things, especially as a small business. If you are a corporate company and reading this and have an in-house marketing team or a good relationship with a good agency, then that might make more sense. If you are a small business owner, get one thing working and maximize and exhaust that before your energy goes into other areas.
I have a follow-up to that. We are coming out of, hopefully, the last couple of years of this COVID landscape. For small business owners, as they think about their marketing, messages, and where they are showing up, have there been any changes or things that you think have evolved directly out of the last couple of years that you think our readers should be thinking about or paying attention to?
Like everyone reading, it was interesting and somewhat challenging trying to navigate COVID. In the marketing world, a lot of the habits that we picked up from COVID are still going to be there. A lot of companies aren’t fully back in the office or doing what they used to do because they realized, “It’s a better quality of life if we are in a hybrid situation,” or something like that.
One trend that will always hold through is people are always going to be busy, and speed and convenience are always going to win out if you can bake those things into your product or messaging. We are always trying to get someone from point A to point B as quickly and painlessly as possible. That can mean a lot of different things. That can mean most websites have way too much copy on them.
How can we simplify this? People usually scan through stuff as opposed to trying to read a lot. In your sales process, how can simply your messaging? People want things now, fast, and easy. The more you can bake speed and convenience into whatever you are doing or offering, the better off you are going to be.
We referenced this when we were talking about the offense and defense in having teams that compliment but I’m curious. As a successful business owner, entrepreneur, and somebody who has struck me as we’ve now gotten to know each other that you are a growth mindset-oriented person. How have you developed that mindset for growth, and how have you sustained it?
Being a business owner forces you to get out of your comfort zone a lot. I think through the progressions of, “We started as a deal site that was uncomfortable bringing in unknown product to market and going door-to-door to do that or taking a leap with podcasting or whatever, business owners face ten challenges every day. When you forcibly put yourself in those situations that it forces you to grow, and you don’t have a choice.
Also, if you enjoy what you are doing, that makes it easier. If you are not enjoying what you are doing or you are motivated extrinsically, then that can drive you hard. I was like that for a while but that can also cause burnout. The sweet spot is you have ambitious goals but you also love what you are doing, and you are curious about it.
You are in an industry where you get to work with people you genuinely enjoy, whether they are your employees, clients or team trying to set up that life for you and whatever you are going after. It makes having a growth mindset easy. It makes dealing with all the hardships that happened during business or all the little obstacles you have to go overcome on a daily basis easier.9cf
To tie this together, with that growth mindset, sometimes people can associate that with, “I’m charging until I’ve got no battery left.” What you are saying is there isn’t enough to a growth mindset. It’s important to have one and focus on that but it’s not optimism in the face of reality. It’s that grounded in reality mindset that allows you to grow but also allows you to acknowledge that there can be challenges and things that come up that are difficult.
If you are excited about what you are doing and genuinely enjoy it, it makes it a lot easier to push through those things as opposed to, “I’m going to go until the batteries run out because I want to achieve X financial goal or impress other people,” or whatever that external motivator might be that tends to make things a little less sustainable. It can work but it is less sustainable in the long run.
The phrase that I love is, “The journey is the destination.” To always be focused on our next revenue target or add an employee, those things are great but not to lose sight of what we are doing every day, and do we find joy and contentment in the way that we are showing up for our team, our clients, and the people who look into us. I love that.
For business owners who have control, be honest with yourself than going like, “My revenue goal is $2 million. I want to add X number of employees.” “Why do you want to do that? Is it to say you have a bigger company or do you want to get some other result from that?” There’s no right or wrong answer. We didn’t talk about this trend too, with how conscious people are of what’s going on.
Companies can weave their way into some greater cause, whether social responsibility, equity or whatever that might be. You are making a real impact on the world by growing that is more sustainable than, “I want to hit $2 million to say I did it or add these employees so people think I have a big team,” or whatever that might be. I’ve seen both ends of it, knowing a lot of entrepreneurs and observing a lot, and being one myself.
I’m thinking we are going to have you back on the show because they have fifteen questions around that whole topic of, “How our marketing and messaging show up with what our future employees and current employees are asking us as business owners quite rightly to care about.” It’s not as individuals where maybe we all cared about these things past but how do we corporately care about it? How do we help take that message out to our clients and prospects and say, “We care about this as well, and here’s how it shows up.”
It’s good to be forward-facing about that, too. I used to think that stuff was a waste of time to come up with core values and stuff like that but people care about that. It’s going to attract a certain employee and client. There are no right or wrong answers but as a small business owner, you have to be behind what your values are and live them, and you will start attracting more people like that. Being picky about who you bring into the organization as well.
I’ve already started to write down questions for part two of our conversation. As always, as we round the corner to the end of our conversation, we are going to dive into our last set of questions, which is our Fastest Break Set, where I’m going to pepper you with some short questions and look to you for a quick answer off the top that you can share with our audience. Your favorite book that you’ve read in the last twelve months?
I’m reading a good one now called Golf Beneath the Surface. It comes out in 2023 but I know the author, and it’s on the mental game. It’s good for outside of golf as well but that’s a good one. Shoe Dog, Phil Knight, the Nike story. That was good. I also not to go on a rant but a couple of the most influential books that I read outside of this last year were probably Atomic Habits by James Clear is a good one and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. I read that right after I started my business in 2011 or 2012. It’s still very relevant now, but that one made a big impact on me.
Complete the sentence. Leadership is?
Helping others win
The most impactful coaching advice that you’ve ever received.
This was a quote from The Compound Effect book but it stuck with me, “Things don’t happen to you. They happen because of you.” There is so much that happens on a daily basis. It’s easier when you take full responsibility for what’s going on around you, especially when you are a business leader or owner. You’ve got control. If something bad happens, you did something, hired the wrong person or took on the wrong client. It’s easier when you take responsibility. I like that quote.
I want to be clear before I ask this next question. Shameless plugs are always allowed. Favorite podcasts that you would recommend.
I am a big fan of the Fast Break and what you are doing over here. My show is The GoGedders Podcast, and it’s done about 185 episodes, a wide range of things. We get to produce tracks for Better with Bikes Podcast and Leinenkugel’s Prost Podcast, which are good. The podcast that I’m not affiliated with is Business Wars by Wondery. I liked that podcast, and that came off of the Sports Wars spin-off, which is also very good. I like the podcast GOLF’s Subpar, and then one of my friends has the Duck Hook Golf podcast, which I’m also a fan of. There are seven favorite podcasts for you.
Great recommendations for our audience. You can’t live without it, an app on your phone.
Unfortunately, it has probably been TikTok and Instagram lately but I’m going to try and limit my usage on those platforms. I like the app 18Birdies while I’m golfing. They have a very good GPS function and some other good features.
The last thing you did that truly scared you.
I have some anxiety issues. I have been very open with them on the show. I had a bad panic attack on an airplane a few years ago, which sparked some other things. COVID was good for my anxiety because I stopped traveling and stuff like that. It has been getting back out, traveling, riding elevators, and all that fun stuff that I suddenly became anxious about a couple of years ago. It’s good for me pushing through. It’s maybe a lame answer for the show but riding an elevator and flying are probably the things that have scared me.
If you had to give a TED Talk, what would be the title?
We could go back to the first statement, “How to stand out in a world where most standby?”
What a great way to finish. As we wrap up, if our audience wants to know more about you or GGMM, where can people find you?
GGMM.io is our website. @RichieBurke on LinkedIn or any social platform. I’m on there.
Readers, if you have been inspired by some of the things that Richie has shared with us and the insights, and you are looking for help in how you show up in the world in 2022, check out GGMM. Thank you, Richie, so much for being willing to be with us, sharing all your wisdom, insights, and authenticity, with us and our readers. We truly appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Matt, thank you so much for having me. I want to thank everyone at M3 for putting up with people like Jordan Herbert, Dan Heichel, and Ryan Barbieri. I know you have your hands full over there but you are a great organization.
We appreciate it. Until the next time on the Fast Break. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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Thank you so much for reading this episode with myself and Matt Cranney from MP3 Insurance. If you are looking for more good content for small businesses, make sure to check them out. He does a good job over there. Also, if you liked what you heard and you are interested in engaging GGMM or if your company is interested in working with us, go to our website, GGMM.io. We’ve got a form on our website, and we would love to hear from you. That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks again for reading.