And here we are six years later with a business and eight employees and building websites and doing marketing services all in an effort to come alongside other business owners, help them achieve their dreams so that they stay with us for a long time on a care plan, helping us fund our nonprofit. So that’s how I got started. Kind of an accidental CEO.
Freddy D
00:03:09.294 – 00:04:18.854
Wow, great story. I too started building websites actually back in 1998. I was in charge of global sales for a software company.
My charter was to basically take a product that nobody knew about and scale it. And I set up 60 resellers around the world. And one of the things that I did was the website was horrible that the company had.
So I said I can’t screw it up. So I got Microsoft front page.
I mean really back in the old days and I built the site for them and a couple of our resellers said hey, who built the new cool looking website? Me. And he basically says, well how much do you want to build one for us? And so I started a side gig, you know, similar to build websites.
And I’ve kind of retired from that. But I built websites for distributors and had a side business for years from that.
So I couldn’t appreciate where you’re coming from because you started it out of a need. I started it out as well because I had to promote a product and the website did not do the company any justice.
Eric Dingler
00:04:18.902 – 00:04:26.326
Yeah, yeah. And that was the lesson there. Like you just can’t put out a website, you know, there gotta get a few things right to make it really work.
Freddy D
00:04:26.478 – 00:04:29.158
So what do you think those things are, Eric?
Eric Dingler
00:04:29.334 – 00:04:50.244
Well, the first thing is in today’s world it’s simplicity. We had an eye surgeon just two days ago. I was talking to and they want a new website and their current website is like 130 pages.
No, nobody is reading that many pages when they’re looking for an eye surgeon.
Freddy D
00:04:50.372 – 00:04:51.492
Not anymore.
Eric Dingler
00:04:51.636 – 00:07:52.566
Not anymore. In the past, absolutely. But people don’t go to websites anymore to educate themselves like they used to.
And we’re even seeing a bigger shift now with you know, AI that’s going to even continue to change the landscape over the next couple years. But keeping the website simple and answering what I call people’s pre qualifying questions.
So for a dentist, I don’t know what it is, but every dentist website we’ve ever taken on and fixed, they have been in love with their X ray machine. Ready D. I just, I don’t get it. But it’s always a big picture of their X ray 4000 super boost, whatever. And I, I crack up every time.
Cause I’m like, I’ve never picked a dentist because of the X ray machine. And so people want to know like can I walk in? Do I have to have an appointment? How long does it take? What do you do for pain? Or a parent?
What do you do for the kids? My kids first visit, they’re, they’re afraid, like how do we do this? Do you take my insurance? These are people’s kind of pre qualifying questions.
And then the last thing I would say is we have seen that most people will come to a website the first time visitor. About 4% of them will do the main thing you want them to do. Now I’m talking very general broad strokes here, but on average 4%.
Well if it’s call now, you can expect about 4% of people to do that. You need what we refer to as a transitional call to action.
What’s something that they can do that is an easier step that lets you capture their contact information so you can start building a relationship, nurturing that relationship with them through text message, email, whatever it might be, even through social media to lead them into becoming a customer. So those are just a few things on websites.
And the last thing I would say is today more so than ever, it’s really important to make sure your website is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lot of people are getting sued because their websites aren’t. Aren’t compliant. Yeah, it’s become a big thing.
And the Department of Justice in the United States, for your US listeners, the, the Department of Justice just came out with a ruling this last year that all government, state, federal, local, all government websites that serve more than 50,000 people have to be compliant with ADA by April 2026. And anybody, any agency that serves less than 50,000 has to be compliant by April 2027. There’s that.
And if a website or if it’s a medical facility and they take Medicare or Medicaid as payment, they have to become compliant. Disability accessibility is becoming a bigger issue, as it should be.
Freddy D
00:07:52.668 – 00:07:52.978
Sure.
Eric Dingler
00:07:53.034 – 00:07:53.490
Website, sure.
Freddy D
00:07:53.530 – 00:08:22.050
Totally agree, totally agree.
That’s important to know for our listeners because if they got a website, they got to look especially if they’re dealing with medical in any way, shape or form. They need to make sure that’s accessible in the equation to get updated and make sure it’s compliant. The same thing with your marketing to the eu.
You have to have certain regulations and cookies and all that kind of information appropriately. I need to tweak my stuff to make sure that I’m complying with all the EU regulations.
Eric Dingler
00:08:22.130 – 00:08:34.894
Yeah. And it’s always right. There’s always More and more regulations coming into things while web design has gotten easier.
And even with AI web design has gotten easier, compliance is starting to definitely become more and more complex.
Freddy D
00:08:35.022 – 00:09:08.610
Right, right. When we talk about websites, how important is it for speed of the website loading and all that information?
And more importantly, people build a site and they forget mobile or they do desktop and mobile and they forget the tablet. How does that affect a brand where it’s combobulated, one looks decent, the other one looks bad, or two look good and one looks bad.
What’s the impression that gives to somebody?
Eric Dingler
00:09:08.690 – 00:11:04.982
Yeah, well, it really is important because websites, depending on the type of business could be the first impression. Used to be predominantly first impression.
Now we even have a layer before that which is if you’re a local business, your Google Business profile or your Apple Business Profile, a lot of people make decisions whether they’re going to go to a business based upon an Apple Business Profile or Google Business Profile before they ever click through to look at the website. So you, you really have to take a step back and ask yourself, okay, where are people really going to interact with me first?
It’s no longer just Google my website link and they come to my website. We’re starting to see a lot of gateways that people are coming through to your website.
So you got to make sure you’re setting the story up from the very beginning.
But then when people get to the website again, what you just said, it’s the branding, it’s that impression that you’re making on people and that’s critically important for any business. As far as speed is important, it absolutely is. You want to have people have a great X that customer experience.
Some web designers and web agencies, they like to cry that speed is the end all, be all of everything. And it’s an important ranking factor on Google. It plays a role for sure, it really does. But it really depends on your competition as well.
Google’s not going to not show your website if it’s slower. If you’re the only business in town. Right. If you’re the only dentist for somebody like Google’s not going to penalize you.
Now if you’re in a competitive market, if you got a pizza shop and you’re not the only pizza shop in town, you better have a fast website. So it takes a little bit. It’s really so much of this is really case to case business to business scenario.
Freddy D
00:11:05.126 – 00:11:37.802
So look, I’m going to go back Eric, to the Apple profile because I never really heard of that. That’s something new. I know that Google’s got one, Bing has got one.
And people talk about Google and they always forget that Bing exists as it is the second largest search engine out there. As far as I know. Everybody talks Google, Google, but not everybody uses Chrome. Everybody uses other platforms.
And then you get out of the United States, there’s other search engines and everything else that are out there. But let’s go back to the Apple. That’s something I didn’t know that existed.
Eric Dingler
00:11:37.866 – 00:12:04.294
Yeah. Well, let me ask you, Freddy D. Well, I’m just trying curious, what kind of smartphone do you have? Do you have an iPhone? Yeah, yeah.
51 of smartphone users are iPhone users. IPhone. You know, it’s not a big fan of Google Maps. It wants you to use Apple Maps. It’s all about Maps.
Well, Apple Maps used to propagate their information from third parties. They would.
Freddy D
00:12:04.382 – 00:12:05.964
I remember those days. Yep, yep.
Eric Dingler
00:12:05.982 – 00:14:00.976
Yeah. It would pull it in from Yelp and other things.
Well now, a little over a year ago, they released kind of quietly, but they released Apple Business Connect. So Apple Business Connect lets you claim your business.
It’s a little different than Google where you really have to have a brick and mortar store that people are coming to. It’s not a. You’re not going to be able to search for a virtual store. Yeah, virtual store. H vac people. Unless they have a physical location.
They have to have a physical location.
So anyway, you can go into Apple Business Connect, claim your listing, update your listing, add pictures, do all the things just like you can with Google. There’s always hoops to jump through for both of both Google and Apple. For Apple, you need to know your duns number.
Or you can work with an agency that’s gone through the process of getting certified by Apple to verify a business as being legitimate or not legitimate. And they can go in and set your business up in there and get you all set up.
But it’s really super important because here’s the thing that blows my mind.
If you own a local business, you have got these two technology giants that have invested billions of dollars in this service that everybody is using and they’re giving you free access as a business to go in and put your best foot forward, to put your best pictures there, to put your best description there, to make sure your contact information like what? What in the business world is free like this? I mean, nothing.
So I think it’s absolutely amazing and I think the last stat I saw from Google was like only 25% of businesses have claimed their Google Business listing. Sure.
Freddy D
00:14:01.048 – 00:15:38.782
My wife And I started a business back in Teen and we weren’t married at the time. We were getting businesses listed into all the online directories.
We were competing with YEX and we were the first company to actually do vertical listing and that was our differentiator so that we never lost to yext. If you’re an automotive, we get you listed into the automotive directories. If you’re a doctor we get you to medical directories.
Lawyer got you in all the lawyer directories. That was our differentiator. YEX didn’t do that back then.
And we were growing, we got some investment money but we needed some higher money and actually got to the point where we were talking with BlackRock investment guys. I was like call giddy. Oh my God. We’re talking to the stupid money guys.
They liked the idea but we weren’t asking for enough money because they have a threshold. Then we got connected to a guy that created gas station TV.
Those TVs in the US where to get the little things and he sold that for 250 million and he got involved into doing VC and through some of her connections I’m actually communicating and emailing to this guy directly. And then he says all right, I’m intrigued with your idea because we’re applying for a patent and stuff like that.
We met with this team and I said yeah, we like it.
And to put it in English where everybody understands it, they said well finish building your boat, show that it can leave the dock on its own power and we’ll be happy to put in money and scale. Yeah, but I need money to finish building the boat.
Eric Dingler
00:15:38.846 – 00:15:39.230
Yeah.
Freddy D
00:15:39.310 – 00:16:07.450
So we ran out of money and just had to shut it down. But I completely understand the importance of that is because it’s huge.
You can actually dominate multiple pages on the Internet because of having your directories properly set up and SEO’d so that you search for like you’re talking a dentist locally. You know you’re on there 12 times on three pages.
Eric Dingler
00:16:08.280 – 00:16:09.712
Yeah, yeah.
Freddy D
00:16:09.776 – 00:16:11.020
The rest is history.
Eric Dingler
00:16:11.320 – 00:16:33.056
Yep. So I’ve become a perpetual first time customer.
So three years ago my wife and I and our four kids, we’ve got four teenagers, we became full time digital nomads and so we sold pretty much everything we own. We have a little 10 by 10 storage unit that has like the kids blankets and stuff, you know, baby blankets.
Freddy D
00:16:33.168 – 00:16:35.276
Sure. Memorable stuff.
Eric Dingler
00:16:35.408 – 00:17:12.538
Yeah, so just that kind of stuff. So in the last three years we’ve lived in 15 countries and we’re currently in Liverpool. We’re going to be here for Two months.
So we move quite regularly.
But what I didn’t expect and never thought through was the fact that with moving every one to three months, we’re constantly finding a new barber, new restaurant, new grocery stores, new doctors, new.
Once you find these people, when you live what a digital nomads call a rooted life, when you’re living a rooted life, once you have your dentist, you pretty much have your dentist. Right?
Freddy D
00:17:12.594 – 00:17:12.954
Right.
Eric Dingler
00:17:13.042 – 00:18:49.340
But we’re constantly changing locations, we’re constantly looking for everything new. And because of that, we pivoted. I learned a lot living this digital med lifestyle. We completely pivoted our agency over a year ago.
We used to be a completely done for you where we were just like, we’re the experts, we know everything. Just give us the keys to the kingdom and we’re going to take care of all your marketing.
We were really good at what we did, but realized through this experience, honestly, we were doing more for businesses than what they really needed. We get oversold sometimes. All these things we have to be doing.
And so we really scaled back and changed to a done with you model where now we handle all the techie nerdy stuff and then coach our clients to be their own messengers. Because most local businesses, if you’re a mechanic, you don’t need to market to somebody 30 miles from you. They’re not going to drive to your shop.
You know, if you’re a pizza shop, same thing. So when you start to really boil it down and go, you know what? I only have to reach 150,000 people. A hundred thousand. 50,000 people, 10,000 people.
Well, suddenly marketing becomes not as scary and as hard. And so that’s why we were like, we’re just going to scale this down. There’s only four things a business needs to do. It just became a lot simpler.
But I wouldn’t have had that realization if, like I said, if I hadn’t become a full time, first time customer.
Freddy D
00:18:49.500 – 00:19:18.968
So that’s an interesting perspective, Eric, because it, it makes. Because you’ve got to find a new stuff and if you can’t find it or you can turn around and that’s a prospective customer for you.
Because you say, hey, look, this is what we’ve done. We’ve relocated to here and we’re looking and you’re not there, you don’t show up.
And yet you might be the best guy or gal for the service, but nobody knows because nobody can find you.
Eric Dingler
00:19:19.024 – 00:19:46.302
Absolutely. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll walk pass two or three barber shops to the one we found because the others weren’t on Google Maps.
But what most of these businesses start doing is they need to subscribe to your podcast and be regular listeners of your podcast, because the majority of them do nothing to build a relationship with me after I visit their business for the first time.
Freddy D
00:19:46.486 – 00:20:54.696
You know, that’s kind of why I created this podcast. Because my success, I was in the software industry when it began. Literally. I started in 1980.
So, I mean, at the beginning, and the beginning in selling globally, I built relationships and multiculturally, because I was dealing in 30 some countries, I set up 60 resellers. These are independent agencies that are selling not only my product, but other products. So how do you build mindshare?
They got 12 watches that they’re marketing. How do I get my watch sold?
So it was really about building relationships not only with the distributor or the agency, but their sales team and recognizing their sales team for making the successes and the sales that they did. So very important aspect, because my success was my customers were my sales force. Prospecting. I still do it.
Not my thing, but I’m a master attraction marketing guy and are getting my customers to becoming my salesforce.
Eric Dingler
00:20:54.808 – 00:21:05.192
Well, and that’s why you were able to write the book. You know, you crack that code. So I have a question for you about superfans, if you don’t mind me turning the tables here real quickly to ask.
Freddy D
00:21:05.296 – 00:21:06.616
No, that’s fine.
Eric Dingler
00:21:06.808 – 00:21:59.776
Because I’m really curious. There’s something that I say, and I’m just curious to see how accurate or inaccurate this might be.
So I, I tell people that every, every customer that has ever engaged with your business, they’re one of three types of customers. They’re a what I use raving fan, but I. I think superfan, you know, so they’re either a super fan, they’re a roaring critic, or the.
They’re the silently satisfied. I think the majority of a business’s customers are the silently satisfied, unsilently satisfied customer of lots and lots of businesses.
It’s the few and the special ones that turn me into a super fan. So I’m just kind of curious. Based upon what you teach and have written experience, would you say those are the three?
Am I missing one of the customer channels?
Freddy D
00:21:59.808 – 00:23:33.628
No, no, those are the three. The thing is that the silent ones are willing to become a super fan, but there’s nothing that engages them to do. So you’ll follow up is everything.
I’ll share a story here real quick. I worked with a pot pie store. She started out in her kitchen and she had a web guy and she asked me to take a look at the stuff and it wasn’t good.
So I ended up redoing the site for her and then also mentored her in some business things. One of the things that I encouraged her to do was to post videos and to get video testimonials.
And so she would started out doing farmer market type things and she would take the smartphone and videotape herself in front of the market. It’s Saturday, it’s 9am we’re here at such and such a market. Come on over and stop by. She’d post on social media. Simple, nothing fancy.
Through the pandemic, she opened up a brick and mortar store. It was brilliant because that’s the time to do it because everybody was negotiating.
So she got great deals and what she started doing was anybody that spent over $100, they would do a chicken dance. One of the cashier girls created a chicken dance, chicken pot pies. And they would film that and she’d be clacking and all that stuff.
They would post it on social media. That went viral in turn got more business. And today she’s into grocery stores and everywhere else. She’s turned it into a huge business.
So we’re talking 10 year window. So she created those super fans because she got the silent ones to engage.
Eric Dingler
00:23:33.724 – 00:27:22.298
That’s a great story. That’s a great story. I’m going to share it. I. It reminds me one of my favorites do. Yeah. All time. Yeah. One of my favorite restaurants of all time.
We were in Argentina last year and we were in Buenos Aires and we wanted to watch a football soccer match. And so we got on Google to look for a sports bar. So we found a sports bar. Cha Ban Che is the name of it. So we went to it and we went in and it.
The whole theme, the whole place is themed in games, which makes. Makes sense. So they’ve got the big TVs up and the, the soccer matches on and everything.
But at each table they have all these games that you can play while you’re waiting for your food. We order and I’m telling you, not only was what I’m about to tell you in a couple of minutes blow my mind, but the hamburger was delicious.
It was one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever had in the world as a five cheese, this big provoletta on it. Anyway, that’s not the point of this. The point is we play games as we’re waiting. We watch this game, we have this Great time. Servers are amazing.
Food is fantastic. The server comes up to us, and he’s with our check, and he gives us our check in a Yahtzee cup.
And I look at the Yahtzee cup, and I look at him, and I look at the Yahtzee cup, and he goes, you have two chances to roll Yahtzee. If you roll Yahtzee, your entire meal is free for all of you. And I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. They’re like, nope. This is what we do.
So our youngest son, right away, he’s 12. He’s like, let me do it. Let me do it. I should have picked our older son. He’s more lucky because I had to end up paying for dinner.
But we had so much fun in this place. That unique little experience blew my mind. And a neon letters up on the wall. They had the Instagram logo and then their Instagram handle.
My wife and I, they didn’t have to ask.
We couldn’t resist quickly jumping on Instagram, snapping some pictures, and telling people immediately about this experience that we just had in the Odyssey cups. Well, I went back a couple days later to interview and meet with the general manager because I was just so impressed by this business.
I was curious because directly across Catty Corner from them is their second location with the locals. They had established such a reputation as being the restaurant to go to. And everybody talked to go to this intersection.
Everybody gave the intersection.
They got to the point they had lines all the time, that instead of opening another location across town or something like that, the owner, he just bought the building, Caddy Corner, and went in and renovated it and opened a second location. Now, if you walk up and the one is busy, you just walk across the street and get into the second location. Or vice versa. Yeah.
The general manager was like, if we start running out of burger patties, I can run over there and get it.
Or if they get slammed, let’s say a big party walks in, they can text us, and we can send an extra bartender over a server over, because it’s literally just across the street. That Yahtzee cup experience that was like, this is different. And I was curious. So I asked Chat GPT.
The chances of somebody getting their check completely written off is 1 in 697. So 1 out of 700. This is not costing them anything to do.
But then to have their social handle as the brightest thing on this one wall that your attention was drawn to. And when you look on their Instagram, they’re huge. They’ve flown up I’ve talked more about this restaurant. You’re a super in my life.
Freddy D
00:27:22.434 – 00:27:28.630
Here’s a perfect example. You are a super fan. You’re a business super fan of that business.
Eric Dingler
00:27:28.930 – 00:27:45.194
Exactly. Because they just did something a little different and then connected with us and engaged with us on social media after we posted it.
A lot of businesses leave it to the customer and that’s a big mistake. So anyway, that was my restaurant story.
Freddy D
00:27:45.362 – 00:27:56.990
That’s your superfan story.
So let’s talk about some of the services that you guys offer so our listeners can around the world can understand how your services can help their business. Super fans.
Eric Dingler
00:27:57.330 – 00:30:58.054
Yeah, appreciate the opportunity. So we employ what we call the marketing momentum framework with every business that we work with. The marketing momentum framework is really simple.
Every single customer you’re ever going to have in business is going to start as a lead and they begin in what we call the awareness stage. There’s two types of awareness. Self discovered awareness. So hours out we can’t cook dinner, we need to order pizza.
I just became aware that I need pizza delivery. But then there’s also created awareness. Oh there’s this restaurant, there’s this pizza place that has this special.
I didn’t know they had this special. I’m now aware of it. So you can just allow self discovered awareness or you can be intentional and create awareness. That’s advertising.
Then people go to consideration, okay, where am I going to buy from? Where are we going to get pizza from? What dentist am I going to go to?
So you have to make sure you’re the easiest and obvious choice in consideration which means are you showing up where the person searches? If they’re searching on Google Maps you better search on Google Maps. If they’re searching on Uber Eats you better be on Ubereats.
So are you showing up and are you answering people’s pre qualifying questions like a barber? We work with a lot of barbers. Barbers don’t need big websites, they need a one page website.
But most of their attention needs to be on their Google and Apple because most people are going to go to Google Maps or Apple Maps and type in barber near me.
And even if they go to Google and search barber near me, Google shows the results of what’s called the map pack and they show the three businesses that they think are going to be the best barber for you based upon geography, your hurt, your search history, all these things. Well that information is pulled from Google Maps, not from your website.
It so this is why it’s so important to get your Google business Profile and Apple business profile. So we help businesses get that. Then people want to know for every industry this is different. For a barber, do you take walk ins?
Do I have to have an appointment? And how much is a haircut? Do you cut kids hair? These are some standard questions that we have.
Pizza shops, is it carry in, is it carry out only or delivery? What’s your menu? Can I see some pictures? So that’s consideration. You have to handle that in consideration.
Then you have the actual purchase experience. And Freddy D.
I can’t tell you how many businesses don’t ask me for my email address or phone number and I’m dumbfounded every single time they don’t do it. I can’t get over the fact that these businesses aren’t gathering my contact information. Now we believe there’s some fun ways to do it.
Like you can just ask but you can also offer a birthday club. We build a lot of birthday clubs for breweries, barber shops, restaurants. Like when birthday clubs are great ways.
Freddy D
00:30:58.102 – 00:31:00.694
One of the chapters of my book is birthday marketing.
Eric Dingler
00:31:00.742 – 00:31:01.478
There you go.
Freddy D
00:31:01.614 – 00:31:23.674
Because it’s important, I talk about just sending somebody a birthday card and it might be through the mail old school, but it might be the only birthday card that they get. And imagine the impact that has on that person that it’s not my buddy, it’s my barber shop that sent me a birthday card.
Eric Dingler
00:31:23.722 – 00:32:03.186
Yep. Every year for 16 years, the first person that calls me on my birthday.
So my wife and kids are always able to be the first ones to say happy birthday because I see him first thing in the morning. But every year the first person that calls me on my birthday without fail is the administrator and my financial planner’s office.
Every year she calls and wishes me a happy birthday and on my wife’s birthday she calls and wishes my wife a happy. Before my mom even calls me, before my dad calls me. Like it’s.
We’re going to hear from our financial planner and we love that we’ve come to expect that phone call on the morning of our birthday and it’s great. We absolutely love it.
Freddy D
00:32:03.258 – 00:32:03.538
Sure.
Eric Dingler
00:32:03.594 – 00:32:51.360
And the other nice thing about a birthday club, if you want to, you can actually take your birthday club all the way out to the awareness stage. And on social media most people share their birthday. Facebook and Instagram for the most part know somebody’s birthday.
You can run an ad and you can say show this ad for a free pizza on your birthday, a free haircut on your birthday, whatever it is, show this ad only to people whose birthday is this month. So now your ad spend can be really low because you’re not trying to show it to everybody, only the people whose birthday is that month.
Like if somebody shows me a ad in November to get a free pizza on my birthday, my birthday’s in April. I’m not signing up.
Freddy D
00:32:51.480 – 00:32:51.808
Right.
Eric Dingler
00:32:51.864 – 00:33:46.808
But if it’s the 1st of April, I like pizza. Freddy D like, you put a, you put a free pizza in front of me in April, you’re going to get my email address and cell phone number. No doubt about it.
And so that’s why we love Birthday club. So anyway, back to the customer experience. You got to capture contact information.
And then the fourth and final thing we help people do is the advocacy. Turning the silently satisfied into super fans.
So thanking them for coming in, having some automated emails, text messages, you can make this really complex and make it very specific to the thing they got. Or it can just be pretty simple. You don’t have to overcomplicate that. So those are the four things we help people do.
And if you have those four things covered, you have a marketing momentum engine that is just going to keep running itself. So that’s what we do.
Freddy D
00:33:46.864 – 00:34:01.834
Great four step approach, Eric. As we come towards the end here, share a success story of how you guys helped somebody with their branding online and it transformed their business.
Eric Dingler
00:34:02.002 – 00:35:53.970
My favorite story of this is a couple in the Virginia area, they have a seasonal snowball stand. So a snowball, I don’t know for people that don’t know what a snowball is, it’s a slushy, but not. Anyway, it’s kind of like a snow cone.
Most people are more familiar with a snow cone, but a snowball is just a little bit different.
But it’s a seasonal business and they had been, it’s a veteran owned business and this husband and wife team, they had been working for a couple years to really get their business going. But they had some challenges.
If the weather is warm enough during the off season, so January, December, if the weather’s warm enough, they would put something on Facebook that they were open or as a local, if you saw the red awning up, that was a sign that it was open. But that’s the only way they had to let people know that, that they were open.
We came along, redid their website, helped with some of their marketing, helped them put a system together to communicate to people when they’re going to be open. And two years later we got to help them build out all of their marketing for their second location.
They went from struggling to keep a Season, which is hard. I mean they were no 12 months out of the year right to now they have their second location, ocean view.
So their second location is more in the tourist area. So now they’ve they’re getting the tourist dollars. They’ve got their first location back on the ocean. So back into the locals community.
So now they’ve got their locals, they’ve got their tourists covered and it was just a lot of fun to watch them grow. So I’ve helped businesses grow but to be able to see that was the first time I actually was involved with somebody.
So much success they were over able to open their second location. So that was very rewarding, a lot of fun.
Freddy D
00:35:54.010 – 00:35:56.030
That’ great testament to the work that you guys do.
Eric Dingler
00:35:56.070 – 00:35:56.334
Thank you.
Freddy D
00:35:56.342 – 00:36:19.262
There’s no better testament than that. It’s just like the, the pot pie business. She’s into multitude of grocery stores. I don’t work with her anymore. She doesn’t need my help anymore.
But the point is we’re still, we’re friends forever because of the fact that we started out at a Panera Bread and talking about her idea and looking at her marketing strategy and we made some tweaks.
Eric Dingler
00:36:19.326 – 00:36:20.526
Yeah, that’s great.
Freddy D
00:36:20.598 – 00:36:24.970
Great conversation. Eric, how can our audience find you?
Eric Dingler
00:36:25.010 – 00:37:45.006
Yeah, absolutely. So what I’d love to do is offer your listeners we have a one page marketing action plan.
So at the top of it it actually has the four parts of the marketing momentum framework and then under that it the four things listed again, four parts of the framework and an action they can take to make some immediate results. Very simple actions that you don’t need an expert to do. You don’t be like actions you can do as the business owner.
But to help them even more not to be overwhelmed with which one to start with. What we’ve done is for them to get the one page action plan. They can take a four minute assessment.
At my marketingscorecard.com the my marketing scorecard is going to give them, like I said in about four minutes it’s going to say this is the part of the marketing momentum journey you’re crushing it at. Great job. This is the one that needs a little attention.
They’ll be able to then print off their one page action plan or just open it up on their screen, look at their results and say okay, I need to focus on awareness.
They can put the number right there, go down, get a step and implement it on their own and see that just a little tweak right there can make a big difference. So again they can grab that@mymarketingscorecard.com that’s a great tool.
Freddy D
00:37:45.078 – 00:37:55.054
That’s a great offer because it gives them a great snapshot of where they’re at and then gives them action items that they can do. And then if they need some help, they can reach out to you guys.
Eric Dingler
00:37:55.102 – 00:38:45.350
Yeah. Thank you. I send a video to my team every Tuesday because my team’s all over the world. We’ve got some team in the US But I’m all over.
I move to a different part of the world every couple months, and so my team is dispersed. So I send a video to my team every week.
And this last week, to kick off the new year, I sent a team a video to my team just reminding them that we have an amazing opportunity to come alongside people. Too many times they get referred to as clients. We work with people that have hopes and dreams.
We get to come alongside them and help them hope their hopes and dreams become reality. Yeah. I told my team, what greater purpose could you give your life to? So keep digging in.
Let’s keep doing it because we get to help people achieve what they’re wanting in life. So we have a lot of fun doing it.
Freddy D
00:38:45.390 – 00:39:01.718
Eric, great conversation again for our listeners. Eric with In Transit Studios. I like the name and now I understand what the name means, so that’s pretty clever.
We’ll have all the information in our show notes for our listeners, and we look forward to having you on the show down the road.
Eric Dingler
00:39:01.774 – 00:39:02.830
Thanks. Really appreciate it.
