038: Tim Reid, Small Photography Business, Big Marketing Ideas

038: Tim Reid, Small Photography Business, Big Marketing Ideas

Andrew Hellmich: All right, I'm really excited to have Timbo Reid on the podcast today. Tim is a marketing consultant that shows business owners how to make their business irresistible. He also hosts two of Australia's most popular business and marketing podcasts, Small Business, Big Marketing and Freedom Ocean. He's a regular keynote speaker at large events. He runs marketing workshops, branding workshops, and he's recently published his own book, Cha Ching, I'm rapt because I'm 100% positive Timbo is going to come through with the goods for us today. He's going to share a ton of marketing gold. Tim, welcome to the podcast. Mate.

Tim Reid: Andrew Hellmich, it is an absolute pleasure.

Andrew Hellmich:
Tim, do you want to give me and the listener a bit of an idea of your background and what you do day to day?

Tim Reid: Yeah, well, I am a marketing guy through and through. Worked at the top end of town in corporate for about 20 years and looking after brands in an advertising sense, like Gillette and Julux and Yellow Pages and Mercedes Benz. And at a point in time, I realized that I loved helping small businesses a whole lot more than I did helping big businesses. They listened. They were motivated to do great things. They had skin in the game. And anytime I gave marketing advice to her, to a small business owner, they, their eyes lit up. So I figured, that's where, that's what I want to do. I want to help the small business guys like me and like you grow and so about eight years ago, I started my own business, which four years into doing that, I started my, I started a podcast called Small Business, Big Marketing. And that just really hit a nerve, big time. And so now I podcast. As a result of my podcast, I got signed exclusively with Australia's biggest speaking bureau. So I travel the world and speak to small business owners and mate, I just, as you said, I show them how to be irresistible. And it's based on the premise that there's never been a better time to market a small business. We're in the hot seat. We're very lucky to be small business owners, and the marketing world changes week in, week out. I mean, you look at us, mate, we've got our own shows, both of us, and that was unheard of five or 10 years ago. So that's, that's me. That's what I do.

Andrew Hellmich: So why do you say and now today's is the perfect time to be marketing as a small business.

Tim Reid: Look, you know, it's not an online discussion fully, but the internet was a game changer. It was a massive disrupter, and it's allowed so many things to happen, like, we can, you know, it's incredibly easy to publish a book now, to self-publish a book, you know, you only have to go to a site like blurb.com or Lulu and check that out. It's incredibly easy to engage one on one, real time with your customers through social media. It's incredibly easy to create valuable content that actually adds value to your customers and prospects lives, as opposed to the old school, which is still valid, but the old school of you know, running an ad in the local paper or on radio, or doing some direct marketing in the letterbox or stuff like that. It's just the opportunities that are open to us are massive. The internet has been a major factor. But I also think that we've all just become a little bit more marketing literate these days, and kind of realize that we, the small business owner, the smart ones, realize the power that marketing has. It's the oxygen of your business.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, sure. And I think that the audience that you're speaking to today, I mean, they're all pretty tech savvy, and we're and our, I guess our target market are even more tech savvy, or, you know, up to date with social media that then even us, because they usually younger than the people that are actually running the businesses.

Tim Reid: Yeah, look your audience. I think your audience sounds like the way you were describing them to me earlier, before you hit the record. Yeah, they are tech savvy. My audience, it's interesting. The fact that they're listening to a podcast means they're ahead of the game because they've found this thing called podcast. I still, for Small Business Big Marketing in particular, have a whole lot of vets and plumbers and psychologists listening who aren't necessarily tech savvy. They're the beautiful bricks and mortar business, but they know that they need to up it. They need to amped-up their marketing. And, you know, I know for sure, you know, I run a forum, and I see, so I get so much insight into the small business owners simply in that forum. And I know that there are three things that hold them all back, all of us small business owners, back from cranking out really, really great marketing. And that's we think we have a lack of time, a lack of money and a lack of knowledge, and that's for the less tech savvy business owner. But the fact is, they're limiting beliefs, and they're there to be busted,

Andrew Hellmich: Mate, I know we're on a time limit, or you are, and I want to dive deep straight away. So can you tell me what you see out there, you know, in your experience that people are doing wrong. What can we be better at?

Tim Reid: In a marketing sense?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, yeah. And attracting clients.

Tim Reid: What we're doing wrong is, well, first of all, allowing those limiting beliefs to take hold, lack of time. You know, if I was to be like really briefly, let's hit those, those ones on the head, lack of time. Well, you know, there is, there's no such thing as a free lunch in terms of marketing, in terms of anything. So if you're not willing to invest time, then you're just going to have to spend a whole lot more, a whole lot more money on your marketing. But if you, if you reckon you've got a lack of time, then build it. Build a virtual, I call it a constant, this concept of a virtual marketing team. So surround yourself with A players from around the world. You know, through this concept of outsourcing, which is what the big guys have been doing for decades now. You know, thanks to sites like, you know, the granddaddy of them all, Elance, or Freelancer, or oDesk or heaven, heaven forbid, Fiverr. You know, you've all of a sudden, you can build a virtual marketing team that can have you doing more with less. You know, I've got a designer in Serbia, a writer in the UK, a transcriber in the UK, a web developing team on the Gold Coast. You know, like, just surround yourself with A players, and that whole issue of lack of time will disappear. You know, the other thing we're doing wrong is that we think we have a lack of knowledge. You know, well, it's just again, never stop learning. You're a small business owner. You're a motivated person. You've got courage to run that small business. You have to find, give yourself the time to get knowledge. Get those audio books. Get those podcasts happening. You've all got downtime in the car, on the in the commute, wherever it may be. We should never stop learning. So get that knowledge, and then lack of money. I think we all think that market, not, not all of us, but many think that marketing, good marketing, costs a fortune, and that leads me into the other thing that we're doing wrong. A, it doesn't cost a fortune. It can, it can just be a roll the sleeves up. Invest some time in it. And the good small business owners I come across Andrew, find marketing a hobby. They've actually turned marketing their business, into a hobby because they love it so much. And the reason they love it is because they're creating valuable content. They're creating stories and information and knowledge that actually helps their prospects and customers buy from them, and that's what you're doing with your podcast. That's an example of your positioning yourself as by sharing your knowledge via podcast. So people will add, put a put a value on that. And so the ability to blog, to write a book, to create videos, to create a podcast, to run a forum you know, to engage and do research on social media, it's pretty amazing. And so what we're doing wrong is probably not realizing just how close great marketing is.

Andrew Hellmich: That all makes great sense. I've got a couple of quick questions in regard to what you just said, with all your outsourcing, you've got people from all over the world. Did you pick them because they are experts, or because they're cheaper than hiring local talent?

Tim Reid: Yeah, great question. Because when I put the slide up of my virtual marketing team during a keynote, every now and then, there's someone in the room that gets the shits with me and says, "Oh, you know, you're a slave driver", and all this type of stuff. And it's not about the $2 bloke in India that was Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week, and that's old news. It's about finding A players somewhere in the world who love what they do. My designer happens to be in Serbia, because he's the best designer I've ever worked with. He's creative, he's proactive. He is asleep when I'm awake and awake when I'm asleep. So I get stuff done relatively quickly. He is inexpensive, although I pay him way above what he'd earn locally, but he's still inexpensive. He, the cost of living where he lives is low. And the reality is the people on my virtual marketing team have built businesses. Some of them have built businesses a result of being on my virtual marketing team, businesses that they could never have thought possible. So if you go into, if you go into outsourcing with the view that it's about finding $2 blokes in India, then you'll fail. If you go into it, find thinking you're going to find A players somewhere in the world who can, can really add value to your business and love what they do, then you're going to succeed.

Andrew Hellmich: Do you think as photographers, it's okay to use outsourcers, and also, should we be letting our clients know that we are or is that something between me and my outsourcer?

Tim Reid: First question is, it's a personal choice as to whether you use them, because there's a leap of faith. You know, do you want to you comfortable not eyeballing these people? You can still have video chats with them on Skype, but there's that comfort level. And I just say, get over it. You know, outsource something and just test the waters. See what it feels like to give someone a brief in another part of the world and to pay them via PayPal or overseas transfer and just feel what that's like. The second part of that question, Andrew about do you tell your clients? The fact that you're asking kind of says to me that you feel like it's a bit naughty, and it's not. You know, you've just got to, you've just put together the best team to deliver the best outcome for your client. If your client at a point in time, if you want to tell them, yeah, like it shouldn't, you shouldn't need to ask that question.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so, so whether it's Sally down the road working in my business, or it's..

Tim Reid: Sally, Sally in Belgrade.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, it doesn't make a difference to my client, does it?

Tim Reid: As long as the client's getting the best possible outcome, then it should be happy days.

Andrew Hellmich: Cool. Okay, I love it, mate. Let me shift gears a little bit. You look at a lot of websites, what should a website do for a business?

Tim Reid: It can do a number of things, and it should do one thing really well. It's like, as a business owner, you should ask, what outcome do I want from people visiting my site? And that could be sales. It could be inquiry, like they pick the phone up or send you an email and contact you. It could be simply for them to, them, the prospect, the visitor to the site, hand over their email address in exchange for a video or an eBook or something to say you're building a list. So there's a number of things a site, it could be just to ‘credentialized’ you that you are really good, like, “Here's my portfolio.” So a site could do any number of things. But importantly, the question to ask is, what is the one thing that I want my site to do really well, above all else? You would think, you know, the obvious question would be, well, to sell lots of products or lots of my services. But I think that's, I think, you know, particularly service providers like photographers, I think that they need to take a step back and go, "Well, okay, well, I might set up a really cool ecommerce site, and I just want people to arrive and buy." So if that's the case, then that site looks completely different to a site that positions you as the best portrait photographer going around and please pick up the phone and make an inquiry about how I can deliver a great portrait to you or your family. So it's like, yeah, it tosses for courses.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. Well, I think the listener to you today, they want their phone ringing or they want to generate an email to them from the view of their website, that that's what we want.

Tim Reid: Yeah, right.

Andrew Hellmich: So what do we have to do to our websites to get that happening? What should we be incorporating or..

Tim Reid: Assuming your works great, and that's a subjective thing, but on the assumption that you have delivered fantastic work, and you stand for something and you own a niche, it could be portrait, it could be pets, it could be landscapes, it could be whatever, you, whatever your thing is as a photographer, if you want to be contacted, then you've got to really show your work off beautifully, and you've got to make it easy for people to contact you. And I just, the amount of sites that I go to, small businesses that don't do that is amazing. And it's as simple as you know, the header. The header is that part of your website that sits at the top and never changes depending on what page you're on. So have your contact details in your header, on the assumption that someone will arrive at your site, maybe on the homepage or maybe on a blog post or maybe on your About Us page. They come, they visit your site from all different places. Have your phone number, have your contact details front and center in the header, on the assumption that they're going to be interested to contact you at some point in time. And I think that's really important. Now you could say, "Well, I've got a Contact Us button", yeah, but that's like, that's a first world problem. It's one click away, you know? Why have it one click away when it could be front and center. So make it easy for people to contact you, present your work beautifully. And I think another part of that, I think as service providers, I don't, I think I see many service providers, in fact, I see many businesses online being very poor at introducing themselves. And my view is people buy from people. That's just how we work. You just need to personalize, you know what I'm saying from a you know, before you're a photographer or a business owner, you're a human being, or you're a consumer, you know, think about how you consume. Introduce yourself, introduce your team. If I'm going to have my photo taken, I think that's a very personal thing, and I want to see and understand a little bit about the person that is going to be doing that. So have photos of yourself and or your team. Here's the lighting guy, here's the sound guy, here's the studio. Who's here, here who's going to greet you. Here's who's going to greet you when you walk in the door. I just think the more you can personalize it, the better. So that's about, there's some tips on generating contact inquiry. The other one was about building a list.

Andrew Hellmich: This is something that not many photographers do. So can you just explain this? Building a list?

Tim Reid: Yeah, so here's the mindset, here's the premise that you need to have, your website for your photography studio isn't Facebook or YouTube or Google, i.e., people aren't coming back to it every five minutes of the day. They might come to it once, maybe twice, to check you out, to check your work out, to find your contact details, but after that, they're gone ski, right? So based on that, wouldn't it be great if you could at least ask them for their email address, so that you can add them to a list and remain in contact with them, because they might come to your site not ready to buy. They might just be kind of doing some research. You build a list, then you have a database and an asset that you can use down the track to communicate with them. Now I don't mean to spam them. I don't mean to say, "Hey, we've got a $49 special. We've got this, or we've got that." I mean to add value to them over time. So we call this permission marketing. Seth Godin, the doyen of marketing, wrote the book permission marketing a long time ago, and it was a pretty simple concept. It didn't really need to be a book. It was just the fact that you give to get, so you give me your email address, and I'll give you something of value in return of greater value than your email address. So that could be, could be an eBook. It could be a series of your top 10 photographs and a commentary about why you love them so much. It could be a video training series. It could be whatever you think would be a really valuable gift. So at smallbusinessbigmarketing.com there is very clearly a banner at the top that says, "Give me your email address, and in return, I'll give you my 10 Marketing Wake Up Calls." And it's a 20 minute video that I've produced which details 10 marketing concepts. I call them wake up calls that every small business should know, and that's a very, it's a great exchange. And I as a result, I build a list, off the back of building a list, I then send them I might use that list, I test. I'm still testing how the best, how to get the best response from that list. Sometimes I tell them, there's a new episode of my show out. Sometimes I tell them that I've got a course coming up. Other times I tell them about a great marketing idea or tool that I've come across that they should know about. But every time I send them something via email, using that list, I make sure that it's of extreme value. Otherwise, I just see the unsubscribe button being hit.

Andrew Hellmich: So just let me understand this, Tim, so if, if the listener is a wedding and a portrait photographer, they could have two separate lists, and they could offer two separate products if they wanted to, one for their potential wedding clients and one for their potential portrait clients.

Tim Reid: Uh huh

Andrew Hellmich: And so let's say we're talking to a portrait photographer, they could offer, they could offer, say a little how to video on how to get the best photos of their kids in exchange for an email. And then they're basically, they've got, they're creating this list, then of potential portrait clients for the future that they can market to.

Tim Reid: Yeah, love it. Spot on, spot on. And there's a couple of things in there that I can feel limiting beliefs creeping in, as you say, that from your listeners, they're going to go, that sounds hard, that sounds expensive. Well, let's just overcome that. The video is a great idea, 'how to get the best portraits of your kids', yeah, how to video. That's a great video. You do it on your iPhone. Don't over complicate it. Not Hollywood productions, guys. We are just looking for good value content. So you could use your iPhone. You could use a product like ScreenFlow or Camtasia that allows you to record what's happening on your screen and what you're saying. And you might just record, you might show five or 10 various portraits of kids showing, "Oh, you know, the lighting here is poor. You know, what they were wearing wasn't quite right", whatever it is. So, you know, the video is easy. The other part of getting the list on is, you know, the products like AWeber, MailChimp Campaign Monitor. These are, these are either free or like 10, $20 a month software as service products that your web guy could very easily and cheaply plug into your website. So that's, you know, this is not hard stuff. I know it can sound technical, but it's not hard. In fact, one of the things that I am, one of the things, one of the people that I suggest you put on your virtual marketing team is what I call the mechanic, and I don't mean the bloke who fixes your car, but here's the thing, you know, like, I'm a marketing guy. I spend a lot of time in the world of online marketing, but I hate, I hate all the technical stuff. I hate opening up a YouTube channel. I hate adding a form to my website. I hate updating the plugins on my WordPress site. So I've got a guy, Mick, calling Mick the mechanic, and he literally, for 30 bucks an hour, does all that stuff for me, right? And I love it, because it allows me to focus on creating content and not on all the, on all the technical stuff. So you can quickly overcome those problems by having Mick, someone like Mick the Mechanic. And in fact, Mick has gone off and started an entire business around this called mickthemechanic.com, believe it or not, and that's what he does. So, and what I love is a good plug for Mick Hay. But what I love about Mick is he's a stay at home dad who is an ex, wait for it, Black Hawk helicopter pilot. So if you can't update a plugin on your WordPress, you're in trouble.

Tim Reid: That's great. I'll definitely add links to his website in the show notes.

Tim Reid: Cool

Andrew Hellmich: But that's great. So that doesn't sound too difficult. We can definitely do that now, once we've got this list, is that, do we send newsletters? Do we send? I mean, you said you send them something valuable every time.

Tim Reid: Just ask yourself, is it, is it going to improve the life of the person I'm sending it to the business life? That sounds a bit all a bit too holy, but is it going to improve the business life of the person I'm sending this to? So if it is a newsletter that's full of like, "I just won this award", and "We just got a new coffee machine at the studio, and it's like..", Really? like, yeah, like, I'd rather sit fine to myself than read that. But if it's, if it's a new video of an additional five ways of getting the best portrait of your child, or a behind the scenes look at a wedding shoot, or how to, how to choose a wedding photographer. "My 13 secrets to choosing the best wedding photographer", or don't, "Don't book a photographer until you've read this", you know, if they're it's valuable, and it helps people make a decision, and it gives them confidence in you. Then send it right, but you just look at it. Look at it as a consumer, not as a business owner, as a business owner, you just want to tell them to "Buy, buy this. Do that.", you know, but as a consumer, they just want to know what's going to make them more informed. So that's your kind of filter.

Tim Reid: Okay, cool. Mate, let's, let's change it up a little bit. Social media, I hear you on your podcast. You have a love hate relationship with Facebook in particular.

Tim Reid: Yeah

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. I mean, social media is pretty huge for photographers. A lot of our business comes via Facebook. A lot of traffic comes via Pinterest to our websites. Why the love hate relationship and what could we be doing better with Facebook or social media?

Tim Reid: Right. So what you said about my view on social media, Andrew is, look, I say it, I have to get a laugh as a speaker and a podcast, but half seriously, there's always an what do they say? There's always an ‘aha’ in a haha, you know, you know, I guess I see too many small business owners think that social media is the silver bullet that's going to change their business, turn their business around, and then they get completely disappointed because they've opened up a Facebook page or a Twitter account, and nothing's happened, right? And it puts an incredible amount of sort of invisible strain or pressure on them, because they just can't seem to figure out social media. So the other thing that I find frustrating about social media is that, you know, on the Small Business, Big Marketing Facebook. I post some pretty valuable marketing, I have posted some pretty valuable marketing tips over the course of time, which get three, 5-10, likes, maybe someone shares it. Maybe someone leaves a comment, right? But then I leave and the Small Business, Big Marketing Facebook, now is very clearly a place where I share the lighter side of marketing. And what I mean by that, I'll give you an example. I came across some packaging the other day of a sausage that was wrapped as you see them in the super, in the little black polystyrene tray with the glad wrap over the top of it, right as the as you see it in a supermarket. And that sausage, very, very clearly, looked like a penis. It was just like the way it had been squashed into that packaging. Made it look like a penis, so it looked hilarious, and it was an example of, and my comment about that was, you know, you've always got make sure you get your packaging right. So there's a kind of marketing lesson there. Now I post that and it gets like 83 likes. It gets 52 shares. It gets 108 comments, right?

Andrew Hellmich: As opposed to the interesting, helpful marketing team.

Tim Reid: Yeah, yeah. Now there's a learning there, because, and the big learning for anyone, I think, with social media. And I'm not going to put my hand up as someone who, I don't rely, I actually don't rely on social media at all in my business, although you could, you could say podcasting is a form of social media. I define social media as you know, it's a two way conversation. The mindset you've got to have around social media, I think I am finding is that it's just people having conversations online, right? So it's nothing more. Yeah, there's all this weird language, tweets and retweets and pins and likes and hashtags, and you know that could do your head in, if you ignore that language and just go, "Well, what is it? It's just people having conversations online. Okay, that's cool." So there are people, potentially my customers and prospects, having conversations that, yeah, okay, that's kind of cool. They're talking about getting their photo taken. They've just had their photo taken. They've commented on some photographer's photo. Okay, I should find those conversations and enter them, or start them myself. Then I go, okay, that starts to make sense. So in real life, a conversation, for a conversation to be sustainable, it needs to be interesting or funny or entertaining or engaging or provocative, or, you know, something like that. So okay, if that works in real life, then I've kind of got to transfer that into search, into the online world, and that's where the sausage versus the marketing tip starts to take shape, because here's the thing. So we talk specifically about Facebook. Facebook is a party, right? It's just where people go to hang out, see what's going on, see what other people are talking about. So if I go to that party and I go, "You know, here's a marketing tip", I just gonna be left in the corner. But if I go, "Hey, check this packaging and how funny it looks like. It's a sausage. Looks like a penis." Then they then people are going to gather around and they're going to have a bit of a chat about it. So you've kind of and then you've got to go, "Okay, well, that's great. So I'm going to entertain people." Where's the commercial outcome around that? You know, Where's, where's the commercial reality of me entertaining people. And it just comes back to engagement at a point in time, people, you know, I know that people are engaged at the Small Business, Big Marketing Facebook, and they then go across and visit my website, yeah. And then once on my website, they're a click away from listening to my show, to joining my forum, to buying my book, that type of thing. So that's to me how it works.

Andrew Hellmich: So with photography, or photographers, a lot of them tend to put 50-100 photos, say from a shoot, particularly wedding photographers, onto their Facebook page, whereas I'm more of a bigger proponent of sending them back to my website to look at those photos.

Tim Reid: Oh, yeah.

Andrew Hellmich: So, okay, so that's what's the right? Is there a right or wrong way?

Tim Reid: Yeah, there is, no, there's a, absolutely, there's a, so you want the content, your content as a photographer, is your photos. You could be doing other stuff. You could have video tutorials. You could have eBooks, all that stuff we've spoken about. But in this context, your photos, your photos, you put them on your website, and then you put a link to those photos, or photo on your Facebook, on your Twitter, on your LinkedIn, on your Pinterest. You don't, your primary, your primary source of that content is not the social media channel. Based on the premise that, what if Facebook disappears or changes, or what if YouTube disappears or changes, or Pinterest, you know, now I don't think they're going to disappear, but they will change, right? So you want to put the link to your photo on Facebook. People click on it and go back to your website, as opposed to uploading the photo direct to Facebook. It's just, it's the smarter thing to do.

Andrew Hellmich: So we want people to go back to our website, but we also want to be engaging on Facebook. So we should be using both tactics together, so not trying to send them back to our website on every post on Facebook, just occasionally.

Tim Reid: Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you have something to share quickly on Facebook, go to directly to Facebook. But if you've got say, so you've just done a series of portraits about a particular family, and they're happy for you to share it as a way of showing your work. I would be uploading that series of portraits to a blog post on your website, making, giving some commentary about it, talking about how it came about, why you like it, why you think it works, what you could have done better, all that type of stuff, and then put a link to that blog post on Facebook, right? That said you might just quickly snap-off a photo that you want to go I just want to quickly get this up to Facebook and show people what I'm doing. That's okay too, but I do like the idea of your rich, good quality content, primarily living on your website, and then being shared out via, via all your social media channels. And this comes back to the premise of, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. So it's like, yeah, there is time involved in that. There is time. But over time, there will be payoff. And I think what a lot of small business owners forget or don't realize is that the new world of marketing, not all of it, but some of it, particularly this content marketing and social media marketing, that we're talking about, is a marathon. It's not a sprint. Right? You're not going to upload a blog post to Facebook and get inquiry tomorrow, necessarily. You might, and that's Ripper, but if you keep doing it over time, you will build an audience, and that audience will start to respect and like your work, and you will start to see a flow of inquiry as a result. You know? I started podcasting almost five years ago. Like any podcaster did, there was no one listening. But over time, my show's now downloaded in 110 countries. Happy Days, you know, but that takes time.

Andrew Hellmich: Nice one. Mate, let's let me just touch on one last subject, or get you to touch on it. Guerrilla marketing, what is it and who's it for?

Tim Reid: I did an entire, one of the great things I love about creating content is that you can direct people to content that you've created about a particular topic. So I actually have done an episode on Guerrilla Marketing with a guy called Kym Illman from Messages On Hold, and he's the master of it. Interesting. Interesting you asked me to define it. I often like to be able to define things in a sentence, and guerrilla marketing, I've not kind of spent the time thinking guerrilla marketing is just a way of getting under the radar of your prospects. So it's not running an ad in the magazine, and it's not podcasting. Guerrilla marketing is marketing that you place where people just aren't expecting it.

Andrew Hellmich: Can it work for small business, or is it for any bigger business?

Tim Reid: No, it can work, any marketing can work for any type of business done well, you know, if you've got your message right and you meet, you've got the right message in the right medium, then it's great. So I give you an example of guerrilla marketing. The guys at Messages On Hold have been doing this for years. It's kind of, it's kind of Australian rules specific, which is our sport in, well, certainly it's in half of Australia. So behind the goals at a football match in Australia, it's not uncommon to see someone holding up a big banner that says, Messages On Hold right? Now, they are in the crowd. They are just a member of the crowd. That's come about, though, through some very clever guerrilla marketing. And I'll explain it really simply to give you, show you how it's worked. So the guy who owns Messages On Hold, which is a on hold phone business, you know, that type of thing, this is how, he's in his boardroom. He's given some tickets. He's given some tickets to some guys to go to the football and sit behind the goals. Right? He is in his boardroom or at home, watching the game, and he is on the mobile phone to the guys in the crowd sitting behind the goals with the Messages On Hold banner. Then when the TV cameras go and cut to a shot of the goals, he says to the guy with the banner, "Hold up the sign, you're on telly. You're on TV."

Andrew Hellmich: Nice.

Tim Reid: So they shake it around. That's an example of guerrilla marketing, right? Expect it when you least expect it. It's clever. It's, it's not for the faint hearted. Here, my nose been chased out of footy grounds. He's been chased out of racecourses on Melbourne Cup day. But yeah, look, it's, to me, guerrilla marketing would be like a second level play for a small business owner who's really comfortable with what they've got going with their first level plays, which would be, get your website right, dabble in social media, start creating some great content, have a great brochure, do your networking, have your sales process sorted out, that type of stuff.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, all right, so it's really, it's a bit sort of further down the track. There's a lot of other things you would concentrate on before you worry about guerrilla marketing.

Tim Reid: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because guerrilla marketing, what it will do, done well, will generate inquiry, and that inquiry is going to come to your phone, or it's going to come to your website, and you want that stuff sorted out first,

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, you just mentioned brochures. And, you know, printed, printed media there, are they still important these days?

Tim Reid: Yeah, I reckon they are. Brochures, like, you know, I think brochures are a great way of articulating your message as a small business. So, like, you know, as a small business, as a photographer, I think it'd be a really interesting exercise to go and write your four page brochure and include an order form on the back of it, so that that's your strong call to action. But it really forces you to, you only got four pages. It forces you to get your message right. Why should I, you know, what's the problem that your prospects, identify the problem, offer a solution. Why should I choose you? And how do I buy from you? And what's, maybe even include a case study or a couple of testimonials or examples of your work. But I think the brochure is nice, and I think you'll find that there's this kind of weird energy that happens when you've got, you've done your brochure. You know the entire marketing world doesn't live online. There is still absolutely a role for offline, and a brochure is an example of that.

Andrew Hellmich: So when you're saying four pages, are you talking about a DL, so like an A4 folded or..

Tim Reid: In terms of a size, go for gold and do it an A4, four pager. Give yourself some room. I just think it's a really good exercise to go through.

Andrew Hellmich: We've covered a fair bit here. I'm just wondering, is there anything that we should or that, you know, you think that small businesses are generally missing, where they're missing the ball? You know? What's something, something simple that we could do to get the phone ringing, you know, get more inquiries going. Is it, should we be spending more time on our printed media, on advertising, on our websites, like, how do we measure what's working?

Tim Reid: Few questions there, but my answer would be to, my answer would be, spend more time marketing your business. You know, like, I'm not, not sure that the majority of small business owners are actually out there actively market, actively working on some aspect of their marketing, and it's because they get trapped inside the business. And, you know, they're busy taking photos, they're busy doing all that type of stuff. But I would always, at any one time have almost like, 33-33-33 33% of your marketing time work on just your marketing 101 stuff, getting that website right. Really, really focusing on, on the basics, the website, the brochure, your stationery, your business card, just making sure all that's humming along. Then the next 33% something that you know you'd really, really think is an important aspect that you should integrate into your marketing. So it might be like honing your Facebook page and having a really clear idea of what your Facebook page for your business is all about, or your Pinterest or how to nail LinkedIn, or whatever it is. And then that last 33% would be the hard, the hard stuff that really kind of that scares you a little bit when you think about it, maybe creating that list, or maybe creating a series of YouTube videos that shows, shows you at work, or create, starting a podcast, or becoming you know that the networker from hell, where you go to every Chamber of Commerce and every Association do the rings going around and just doing something that kind of, that kind of scares you a little bit. And that way, you've really integrated marketing into the DNA of your business, and you've got to, you've absolutely got to. And if that means blocking out Friday afternoon, or if that means doing an hour a night, or whatever it is, then you know, as I said at the start, I'd really like it if you could make it a hobby, not a, not of kind of a chore.

Andrew Hellmich: Tim, where can people check out more of your stuff and find you online?

Tim Reid: Andrew, if they want to head over to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com, they can start listening to my show after they've listened to yours. And that's where I spend most of my time. The podcast is there, the blogs there, and I would love them to join my forum, which I'm in every single day, answering marketing questions. And there's a whole lot of other small business owners who are motivated to create great marketing, asking questions and also answering questions. And I also include a whole lot of training in there. So there's a classroom inside my forum, which includes webinars, that I've run, live events, that I've run, exclusive interviews that I've done with particular people. You know, like last week, I interviewed a cold calling expert, and that interview is exclusively inside the forum. So that's 49 bucks a month, and probably the best 49 bucks you'll spend. And if you want me to speak. I have a personal brand website, which is Tim Reid, R-E-I-D.com.au, which is kind of where I am, where I promote myself as a marketing speaker.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic. Tim, mate. I appreciate your time, and I'll add links to all those things you mentioned in the in the show notes. And like I said, mate, you've been absolutely fantastic. Thanks again.

Andrew Hellmich: Good on you, mate. Thanks for having me.

 
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