Marketing

Every answer 31 answers

• Do I have to be the face of my local brand to build a personal brand?

  No. A personal brand means showing up, at chamber meetings and in the community, more than being in every Instagram video. Introduce yourself as the owner of the local media brand, with your business on the side. Online, start personal, then tell the occasional story from work. Never hard pitch. You can hire a local creator for video.

• Do I need polished videos to build an audience on YouTube?

  No. For most people in most niches, just jump on and start talking. Get a decent mic and skip the editing and fancy background; rough makes you more human. Pick a niche where you're ahead and show real work. My channel had about 500 subscribers and still brought tons of inbound. The right 500 viewers beat a big general audience.

• Do Instagram carousels or videos work better for a local brand?

  Carousels, lately, with a few videos on top. I'd have bet on video, but a partner's carousel-only account hit 10,000 followers in four months, and a guest's events carousel got almost 40,000 views versus about 9,000 as a reel. Keep carousels plain and repeatable, then add 30-second talking-head videos for bigger news.

• Does niching down your content actually bring in clients?

  It did for me, fast. Within about three months of making everything about local newsletters (my bios, a podcast, a newsletter about the business), I went from people wanting to pick my brain to people asking to pay me, including a $2,500 setup request. A small audience is fine if they want what you sell.

• How do I get customers and partners to refer business to me?

  Pay for it, and give partners a real reason. Business owners already love referring good vendors, so make it worth their while: $50 off a month per referral, or a flat $200 per sale. For referral partners, bring something they can't get elsewhere, like a free ad to your audience, instead of donuts.

• How do I get in front of busy, influential people without a cold pitch?

  Don't ask for their time. Build them something and show it: a newsletter made from their content, a custom website, a fix for something broken. I've done it four times with people who each make over $50 million and got all four's attention. Help for free with no strings, and go through people in their orbit.

• How do I grow a local Instagram account for free?

  Follow 20 to 25 local businesses a day, post the local news legacy outlets leave on their websites, and use cheap formats like green-screen videos. Run giveaways with donated prizes for early engagement, and boost a post that pops once for about $30. Give it 30 days of one quality post a day before you judge it.

• How do I host a networking event people actually enjoy?

  Build it around connection, not content. Skip the speaker, do something fun in small groups, then leave time to talk. Fix what people dread up front: name tags, a signal every 15 minutes to switch partners, and a hard end time. Narrow it to one kind of person in one area, and let sponsors cover the food and fun.

• How do I know if paying for leads is profitable?

  Work backward from the lead price to the cost of a customer. A $20 lead you reach half the time is $40 a conversation. Close one in four and a customer costs about $160. Against a $1,500 average sale that's roughly 10X, and e-commerce operators scale hard at 2X. Then run a short test before you trust the numbers.

• How do I market a new business with free events, Facebook groups and conferences?

  Give something useful away to a specific group where they already gather. Free AI office hours posted in a few quiet insurance agent Facebook groups got me 29 RSVPs. One or two posts for my monthly AI meetup bring 10 to 18 people. For family events, get a venue or sponsor to cover entry for the exposure, and cap it at 50 or 100.

• How do I pick a brand name people will remember?

  Make it clear but brandable: say what it is without sounding like the generic names AI suggests. Test it out loud and on a T-shirt. Check the .com before you fall in love. Use a brand name with your voice inside, not just your own name, so it can grow or be sold, and rebrand slowly.

• How do I reach a whole industry of small businesses at once?

  Go where the industry already gathers: trade associations, their events, the agencies and software vendors that serve them, and the few influencers they listen to. One trade association can put you in front of every roofer in a state. Offer something useful first, like making their newsletter or paying an affiliate cut.

• How do I sell websites or marketing to a local business owner without sounding salesy?

  Do work up front and let them reach the conclusion. Review their site 'from a funnel perspective' without calling it bad and show a good one you built. Bring up one paid offer, chosen for that business. Reciprocity does the selling, and being likable beats being slick.

• How do I turn one podcast into a week of content?

  Record one conversation, then turn the transcript into articles and newsletter text and cut the video into shorts. At two episodes a week, three clips per episode gives you one short a day. Schedule five or six at a time so a week of shorts takes an hour or two. Old episodes count if your show isn't news.

• How do you do LinkedIn outreach to local business owners?

  Make your profile a sales page first, then send personal requests offering something free. A directory founder told me about 2 in 10 say yes to a free listing. I add 20 to 25 people most days. Small shops mostly aren't on LinkedIn, but regional advertisers' marketing teams are, and that's where $1,000 to $2,000 a month deals live.

• How do you find and work with local creators for a local media brand?

  Recruit people already making local video and offer them your brand and built-in audience. A creator with 3,000 followers grows far slower alone than under a local brand with 40,000. Green-screen videos run about $20 each, so a video a day is roughly $600 a month. One operator I know resells creator videos to advertisers for about $200.

• How do you find marketing and growth ideas that actually work for a local business?

  Copy what already works nationally or in another niche, then do it locally where nobody is doing it. That's basically the whole local newsletter model. And when competitors copy you badly and it still works, that's a signal: if a B-minus version works, an A-minus version should work better.

• How often should a local media brand post on Instagram?

  More than you think. For WilCo Guide my rule is at least two Instagram carousels a day, up to five. For video, start at one a day and aim for an average of two. Assume 5% or less of followers see any post, so volume and repeating your best ideas beat polish. A feed of mediocre posts beats an empty one.

• Is AI-generated video worth it for social media reach?

  It can be, cheaply. Character-swapped AI clips cost me about $3 for 10 to 15 seconds, roughly $100 a month for one a day. One test got about 75,000 views on Facebook and almost none on TikTok. Treat it like lottery tickets: most posts flop, so volume and low cost matter. Avoid AI people pretending to be real.

• Is Twitter/X still worth it for building an audience?

  Yes, but keep your expectations in line. Three years ago you could get 50,000 followers in six months. Not anymore. It's still where the smartest entrepreneurs are, so it's great for relationships. To grow, reply to other people instead of only posting, and share what you're actually building instead of generic tips.

• Should I buy a local Facebook group for my local media brand?

  If it's active, it can be a cheap way to own another piece of your town's attention. Many group owners aren't business people and don't know what it's worth, so $500 to $1,000 can sometimes buy one, and some hand it over free. Check real engagement first, then make business posts a perk for paying advertisers.

• Should I start my own podcast to get clients, or guest on other shows?

  Guest first, unless you can handle the follow-up. A new show puts the work on you and early episodes get few viewers. A two-second mention on a big business podcast has brought me three inbound leads. If you do host, invite the people you want as clients: the guest is the lead, not the audience, and the payoff is relationships.

• Should a B2B company start a niche media brand instead of just buying ads?

  Yes, if you sell to one industry. Most people think media makes money from ads. The better play is selling your own products and services to the audience. Sell software to commercial roofers? Start the media company about commercial roofing. I had 80 people on a waitlist for my software before launch from talking about it on my podcast.

• Should a local media brand post on LinkedIn?

  Yes, for the business side, from your personal account. LinkedIn shows posts about your area to local bankers and leaders even if nobody follows you. A Texas operator got at least one inbound call a day within two weeks. Post first-person proof of community impact, not news, and keep Instagram for consumer news.

• Should social media posts look polished or plain?

  Plain, usually. My white-background, dark-text post with no branding did about 2,200, and a guest's unbranded carousels took his account from 30,000 to 54,000 followers. Polished graphics stand out as not the content people came for. Keep the logo off the first slide, put it at the end, and save your effort for clear text.

• What is a cash drop, and does it work for a local media brand?

  A cash drop is hiding real money somewhere public in town and posting a short video so followers race to find it. It can pull huge views for a local account. I ran two with my own money: they got attention but didn't crush, so now I'd only do them with a sponsor's money, as one content type among many.

• What is founder-led marketing and why will small businesses need it?

  Founder-led marketing is the owner creating engaging content about running their business, with the owner as the face. Small businesses will need it because ads are getting pricier and AI search only recommends one to three companies. Most owners can't keep it up, so the opening is doing the production while they stay on camera.

• What is the local MrBeast idea for local media and small businesses?

  Take the giveaway-style content that works nationally and do it in one town. MrBeast can't make a roof giveaway exciting, but locally a roofer giving away a roof is huge. A local media brand is the natural partner: it brings the audience, the business brings the prize, and both get goodwill and leads.

• What lead magnet works for a local business or newsletter company?

  Something useful with a built-in next step. A giveaway with a guaranteed 20% consolation discount got one operator 100+ leads for a Christmas-lights business. One mention of a free AI 101 training in my newsletter got about 100 sign-ups. A free directory profile works too: only 5% to 10% may pay, but everyone joins your list.

• What proof can you use on a sales page if you have no testimonials yet?

  Use true operator proof and show the product. Never invent logos, ROI percentages or testimonials. My pages use real numbers (20+ newsletters, 160,000+ subscribers, Meta subscriber costs as low as about 40 to 50 cents on my portfolio) plus big sample-issue visuals and a live demo. Write scarcity claims so they're literally true.

• Why build an audience first instead of selling your business directly?

  Because people choose to read useful content and avoid sales pitches. Build an audience around what they want (local news, events, humor), then put your offer in front of people who already trust you. One mention of a free AI training in my newsletter got 90 sign-ups. It's slower at first, and most realtors skip it because it's indirect.