IAM2181 – Emphasizing the Importance of Identifying Target Markets for Effective Marketing
Special Episode by Gresham Harkless Jr.
Gresham Harkless provides a brief history of his digital marketing company and explains how networking helped him realize the potential of his skills in web design and marketing.
Gresham emphasizes the importance of identifying target markets for effective marketing and provides an overview of Search Engine Optimization and its significance for online visibility.
Gresham highlights the necessity of having a mobile-friendly website and the role of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in business communication and marketing.
Gresham’s primary website (where you can find links to all of his services and resources).
Business Pillar: Visibility
Episode Link: This is a talk from 2017 for a group called 100 Entrepreneurs Project
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Transcription:
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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00
What I do in the very beginning, especially is really asking a lot of questions and unveiling a lot of what those questions, what those kind of needs are for a business owner and seeing how best to kind of communicate that online on the website.
And I can really get into a lot of different things, whether that be social media. So that's Facebook, that's Instagram, Snapchat.
There's just a million and one things out there. And then another big thing that I focus on too is SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization.
Intro 00:27
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I wanted to share with you one of the episodes that I was a guest on for someone else's podcast.
I always talk about how important it is to build a media company. One of the next best things you could do is be on somebody else's media company.
So I had the pleasure of being a guest on this podcast and I wanted to share a little snippet with you because it would help support the 8 business pillars we've really been trying to focus on with a lot more of our content a lot more the solo episodes that I'm doing.
So make sure, of course that you subscribe to our podcast but of course you take some time out check out the show notes to subscribe to the podcast that I've been featured on as well too, and get to learn about some of those 8 business pillars and how you can continue to kind of leverage and build that up so you can go from builder to architect to, of course, rock star and luminary.
So this is Gresh signing out. I hope you enjoy this I AM CEO special episode.
Gresham Harkless 01:20
My name is Gresham Harkless and the company's name is Blue16 Media. So it's basically a digital marketing company and I started it 4 years ago.
So I've always been kind of like a computer nerd, I guess is the best way to put it. So I've always built a computer in high school. I took computer science while I was in high school too.
So I've always been interested in computers, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that.
So fast forward a couple years after I graduated, I was laid off from a job. And I took another job that I was anticipating getting laid off from.
So as Kurt will probably talk about, here's this networking group called BNI that I actually end up becoming a member of.
But one of the things that I would always do is to try to get in the door and kind of talk with people.
I would talk about their websites because I ended up building one for my mom's business. I did one.
I started a nonprofit. I did a lot of different things. I started a lot of different ventures. So I was actually cold calling somebody, which is just picking up the phone calling a stranger trying to create a conversation.
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And I call somebody that was in a BNI chapter in Woodbridge. And that networking group, I spoke to the person about their website and how it wasn't built correctly, how they could do certain things to it.
And I honestly didn't even see the value of it. It was just something that was kind of like, I guess somewhat second nature to me, because I was always interested in it, I was always read about it, and play around on the computer, but it was meeting him actually that kind of opened up my eyes so that it could actually be a business.
So that was 4 years ago and I've been in BNI for in Woodbridge for 2 years and I've been in this one for the next 2 years.
But essentially what I do is I design websites and I basically help to market those websites.
And so I call it a digital marketing company. So the idea is really to understand like who your target market is, what you're trying to sell and try to communicate that as simply as possible so that you can buy whatever it is that you're doing.
So what I try to do is kind of simplify that process. And a lot of what I do in the very beginning, especially is really asking a lot of questions and unveiling a lot of what those needs are for a business owner and seeing how best to kind of communicate that online on the website.
And I can really get into a lot of different things, whether that be social media. So that's Facebook, that's Instagram, Snapchat, there's just a million and one things out there.
And then another big thing that I focus on too is SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization.
Essentially what that is when somebody goes to Google and you're looking, say you go to someplace you've never been before, you're looking for a pizza place, you'll go to Google and type in pizza place, and let's just say rest in Virginia.
And basically, there's a way for you to make sure that your website can rank well and show up on that first page.
So that's a lot of what I do. During those conversations, I'm definitely peeling back the onion and trying to see what types of keywords are your clients looking for? What is your product and service?
Not necessarily your company name, because usually if you're a plumber, someone's not going to type in Gresh's Plumbing Company. They're going to type in plumber and rest in Virginia.
And then that's where you want to kind of show up. So the idea is just increasing your overall visibility so that you come across more people and more people can actually call.
And there's still a significant amount of people that don't even have websites. And I would say that is the first step in having a website.
Marketing is another big part, because you want to have a website because you want to open up the door for people to find you.
But then you have to accurately do something for people to find you. And that could be posting on social media. It could be the SEO that I spoke about before.
But the idea is, when I sit down with somebody, there's all these tools at your disposal, really. And it's a matter of figuring out what's the most efficient thing that you can do to get customers coming through your door.
So I usually, most of the questions that I ask in the very beginning are usually, of course, around budget, but the biggest question is probably around your target market.
Who is your target market? Is it somebody that's 35 or 50? Is it somebody that's 10 to 12 or 10 to 15? That will help to give you an idea of where to focus your time and energy.
So for instance, if you're trying to target teenagers, you're not going to spend time. There's some teenagers still on Facebook, but a lot more probably on Snapchat.
So if you're trying to sell something like that, you might want to do and focus your time on that versus focus your time on Facebook where there's usually an older demographic on their nowadays.
But it's just things like that, I kind of try to flesh out from business owners and they get an idea of like what is the best thing to do? How your website needs to be designed?
But also, how can your website be found? Because most of the time, the name of the game is just being visible. People want your products and services, but it's just a matter of them not being able to find you. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
And essentially, what that is helping your websites rank well when people are searching for it. There's different search sites that you can go to, the biggest one being Google.
Most people use Google, so that's usually the one that we kind of focus on more than anything else.
Now, generally speaking, there's a lot of different ways to show up on. On the first page of Google, at the most, there's 3 different ways.
But there's a section called the organic section. And essentially what that is those are the natural results.
So they don't show as an ad. They don't show as a map. It's usually the section below that.
But again, it depends because sometimes if there aren't any ads that people are trying to target for specific keywords, then that ad section might not even show, the match section might not even show itself, it might just be all organic results.
So the reason that I usually talk more about your website, because your website plays such a huge part of SEO, because that's where it's actually understanding where and what your website is about.
So if anybody can picture this, like Google, what they do is they send out these things called spiders.
And what they essentially do is they comb the internet to find what keywords on your website, what name you name your images. There's just so many things that go into it.
And really what they do is they try to basically return a result that person is looking for. So using the example that I used before, if you're interested and you're looking for a pizza place, and I type it in while I'm interested, and a place in Woodbridge shows up, that's not gonna be a good experience for me, so therefore I would probably stop using Google.
So a lot of people, they'll try to cheat Google, they'll try to take shortcuts, but the idea is that you want to understand that Google is a business, and Google wants to return a result as quick as possible.
So the idea is to take in all those factors and try to optimize your website to rank high for that. And I will say one of the biggest things that I still see business owners don't do well is having a mobile-friendly website.
There is more searches right now on mobile devices than there are on desktops. Your iPhone.
Your iPhone, your Android. You want to make sure that right now today, if you were to start a business, you were to go get a website designer, you probably want to build it from a mobile design standpoint first, and then think about the desktop next.
Now, it varies because if it's an older demographic, maybe they're not going to be using the desktop as much or using the phone as much as they're using the desktop.
But generally speaking, everything's moving towards that way. The phones are big enough now, especially mine, that you can definitely just search on your phone site.
So it's understanding the strengths and weaknesses of it. Like you mentioned the president, Twitter is a really good communication tool.
Like with Facebook pages now, it's actually your business and you have a Facebook page, you post. If you have a thousand likes on your Facebook page, there might only be about a hundred people that actually see your post. Twitter's a little bit different because it's a communication tool.
So usually I always compare it to meeting somebody, shaking their hand, passing your business card, giving your business card, and them giving it back to you.
Twitter can be used as a way to communicate with somebody directly. That's how the president uses it, whatever he's talking about, but at the same time he's using it as a way to circumvent all the media and everything to have a direct conversation with people.
So it's just something that you can do and think about from a business standpoint. If you, I know Nike especially, they do it really, really well where any customer issues that actually happen, people can tweet directly to Nike, Nike will have a direct conversation with you there.
And they'll ask you to please submit a support ticket here. But it's a really good communication tool.
Generally speaking, if you have videos and images, they work a lot better. And there's also, there's so many different parts of Facebook in and of itself because there's Facebook groups, there's Facebook pages, there's Facebook profiles.
So generally speaking, if you have a business, what I usually say is you post something on your business page and what you can usually do is share it on your profile because it'll give you a larger reach because generally speaking, you'll get more of a reach on your profile than you will on your page.
However, you don't get the analytics. So you don't actually know who saw it. So if you kind of do that extra step where you post it on your business page and then you maybe share it to your profile, you can kind of see how many people are seeing it.
You can post it on your business page, maybe leave it there for a week or a day, see how many people would generally see it, and then share it, and then see how that number goes up.
Outro 10:56
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast.
Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these 8 pillars and show you as a builder how you can leverage these 8 pillars and really level up there so it helps to level up your business and organization.
So hope you enjoyed this episode and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the pillar, learn more about the person that I guested on their episode.
And of course, learn a little bit more about us as well too. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
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