Marketing Essentials with Reed Hansen: AI, Automation, and Affordability

Is your small business ready to thrive? 🌟 Tune into this week's episode of The Water Trough with guest Reed Hansen of Market Surge. We discuss smart marketing strategies, from retargeting to AI integration. Learn how to make data work for you! 🎧 #SmallBusinessSuccess 

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Welcome to The Water Troughwhere we can't make you drink,
but we will make you think.
My name is Ed Drozda, The SmallBusiness Doctor, and I'm really
excited you chose to join mehere as we discuss topics that
are important for small businessfolks just like you.
If you're looking for ideas,inspiration, and possibility,
you've come to the right place.
Join us as we take steps to helpyou create the healthy business
that you've always wanted.

Ed Drozda (00:43):
Welcome back to The Water Trough folks.
This is Ed Drozda, The SmallBusiness Doctor, and today I'd
like to welcome my guest, ReedHansen.
Reed is the Chief Growth Officerat Market Surge, where he's
helped everyone from scrappystartups to mid-market champs
unify their data, automate smartworkflows, and leverage AI to
boost revenue without theenterprise headaches.

(01:04):
Reed's been on the front linesof marketing innovation for over
a decade.
Think high velocity campaigns,predictive lead scoring, and
razor sharp attribution.
Hey, Reed, how you doing?

Reed Hansen (01:16):
Doing great.
Thanks so much for having me on.
I'm really excited toparticipate.

Ed Drozda (01:20):
I'm really happy to have you here.
For those of us that are notfamiliar with some of these
terms, high velocity campaigns,predictive lead scoring, and
attribution.
A quick overview; what are thesethings?

Reed Hansen (01:32):
Okay, the first one you mentioned, high velocity
campaigns.
Typically what that means is theability to handle a lot of data
and communications very quickly.
So if you were to manually emailor manually call or text, you
can calculate the time it takes.
You're typing and it's two orthree seconds per text, a minute

(01:52):
per email, and you send.
But with automation, you canactually do that in mass.
You can also schedule follow-upsthat don't require your
participation, and really enableyou to reach hundreds of
thousands of people with asingle action.
And once you have it set up, youcan do batches in the future
using the same email templatesand text templates.

(02:15):
So the velocity really comesfrom your ability to reach a lot
of people with little action onyour part.

Ed Drozda (02:21):
Alright, and how about predictive lead scoring?

Reed Hansen (02:24):
Yeah, if you go back to the fundamentals of
marketing, it is crucial todefine your ideal customer and
create a profile of thiscustomer.
There are several factors, someare demographic, a lot are
behavioral, and some of themrelate to how they have
interacted with your business inthe past.
These factors can add up to acertain score so you can weight

(02:49):
certain characteristics, likeare they a past customer, if
they take an action, if theymake a second inquiry into your
site.
Those become very valuable andthe score can be calculated so
if you have a row for eachcharacteristic and then you add
a weight; is age as important asthe income that they have or is
location of the country asimportant as their employment

(03:12):
status.
So you weight all these factorsand you are able to end up with
a score.
Now what do you use the scorefor?
It helps you to prioritizecertain leads.
So if you have limited bandwidthto follow up, you want to spend
your time with the leads thatare most likely to close or most
likely to drive the most profit.
So the scoring really helps youto prioritize both your sales

(03:35):
and marketing efforts andallocate resources in the right
direction.

Ed Drozda (03:40):
And then finally attribution, razor sharp
attribution.

Reed Hansen (03:44):
Yeah, razor sharp is the maximum precision you can
have with the tools that areavailable.
So, when you're thinking aboutyour marketing spend, you want
to know where are my dollars andtime best allocated?
Fortunately, and unfortunately,a lot of sales require a lot of
touch points.
So, an uh, future customer mightsee an ad, they might browse

(04:05):
your website, they might hear apodcast.
There might be a handful oftouchpoints that they've had.
They might have had a sales callin the past and whatnot.
But all of these touchpoints arepieces of that attribution
puzzle, and you may see thatsome are more valuable than the
others.
You need a good amount of data,but when you are able to both

(04:27):
track the attributive steps thata customer needs to buy and then
value those, you can see whichof those channels and marketing
efforts are the most valuable.
It requires a good disciplinedapproach to data collection and
data aggregation.

Ed Drozda (04:47):
Thank you for that clarification for myself and for
others who are listening, Iappreciate that.
So, let's go into a couplescenarios here, which you've
experienced, and I think it'd behighly relatable to small
business folks everywhere.
First of all, we all know thatbusinesses in general have tight
budgets.
That's just a routine.

(05:07):
In a small business inparticular, we tend to default
to one or two marketing tactics,because of that budget
constraint, we say okay, maybeFacebook ads, maybe email blasts
or whichever, whatever.
Now taking selective things isbased upon our own experience,
or we might have read somethingon a report somewhere or Lord

(05:28):
knows what, but we are limitingourselves to some degree.
Obviously balance is important,but so is cost.
Let's talk about balance and thecost associated with having an
effective campaign.

Reed Hansen (05:44):
Yeah, so if we talk balance, there are earned
channels and there are paidchannels.
Earned channels primarily takeup your time, you know, require
time and effort, and paidchannels take up your time, and
effort, and your money.
They both are great ways to getclients.
The paid channels, I think ifyou are looking for quick wins

(06:04):
are a good place to start.
A few dollars a day can startgetting you additional web
traffic; five to$10 a day, youcan experiment with messaging
and offers, and you can see whatlands and what doesn't.
So I would try multipleapproaches, or try A-B testing,
where you vary single variableslike subject line or timing of

(06:27):
the day, or format of an ad, andstart collecting data, seeing
what works, and seeing how youraudience reacts.
There are other channels thatyou can use that are relatively
low cost, that can augment thisand actually can help feed into
remarketing channels.
So I'll go back just a step tothe ads.

(06:48):
In each case, remarketing is agreat way to utilize your ads
budget, where if you arecollecting web traffic that has
Google cookies tracking withPixel, that enables you to send
ads to a more targeted audience.
They're somebody that's alreadyinteracted with your brand and
that will increase yourconversion percentage on those

(07:12):
ads.
So you can take some additionallow cost activities to help
boost that traffic.
If you do email marketing thatlinks back to valuable content
on your site, that gets peopleto click on links, then they
enter an audience, assuming theyhave a Facebook account, but
they enter an audience that canthen be captured in a
remarketing process.

(07:33):
You almost create like a virtualcommunity where they are served
content and whatever lands drawsthem back to your site and
repopulates them in retargetingcampaigns.
A lot of people don't use theretargeting in ads.
They focus purely ondemographics or geographies and

(07:53):
they miss out on a lot ofopportunities for a second touch
on their business brand.

Ed Drozda (07:58):
Retargeting.
What you're saying then is ifI've shown an interest
initially, you're designing yourprogram in such a way that I
will get another touch from you.

Reed Hansen (08:10):
That's correct.

There's a few assumptions (08:10):
you have a Facebook account; you
haven't blocked all the cookiesif you're not based in Europe
where that's much harder tomaintain.
In the US we have a friendlyenvironment for creating these
retargeting audiences, and youcan create systems that feed
this traffic in real time fromyour website to the targeting

(08:33):
audiences in Google andFacebook.

Ed Drozda (08:37):
For me anyway, naive as I am, it sounds like it'd be
a relatively labor intensivething, but I presume that's not
the case.

Reed Hansen (08:44):
It is not the case.
Actually, all the informationyou need is available on the
free training available fromFacebook and Google.
It's like the 200 level, youknow you start at 100 and you
turn on the ads, but then thenext step, and this is where
they really start to work, ismaking ads be the second, third,
fourth, fifth touch for yourbrand, because you've been able

(09:07):
to apply an identifier on themvirtually.

Ed Drozda (09:12):
You have created the content, you put it out.

Reed Hansen (09:14):
Right.
Right.

Ed Drozda (09:15):
Then once it's in this system, the system is
designed to recycle to thosethat expressed an interest.
Not all people in the firstround, but those that expressed
an interest, or does it go backto the same people, all people.

Reed Hansen (09:32):
There's adjustments you can make.
You can have the audience berefreshed based on recency.
So have they visited your sitein the last 30, 60 days, and
then cleared out those thathaven't revisited.
Or you can continue to have alarge database and continue to
market to anybody that's visitedyour site forever.

(09:52):
I recommend the former approachto keep it fresh, and I would
use more of an email marketingapproach, like long-term
newsletters, long-term nurturecampaigns, to work with people
that get colder over time asthey have more distance from
your website.
There's a combination ofsystems.
You can use a CRM, use the admanagement tools from Meta and

(10:14):
Google, and in some cases itrequires an integration with a
tool like make.com or Zapierthat can enable some real time
transfer of that data betweensystems.

Ed Drozda (10:27):
So, we build this platform, we've got information
going out there.

Reed Hansen (10:32):
Yeah.

Ed Drozda (10:33):
Let's just for a moment talk about the importance
of monitoring this.
Once you put things out there,if you build it they will come,
and all that kind of stuff isjust not necessarily true.
One has to monitor.
Is the monitoring built intothese systems or is that
something there's another levelaltogether?

Reed Hansen (10:49):
Well, what's nice about most of these modern
systems is that they havereporting functions built in,
but if you solely rely on theirsystems you'll be logging in and
out of Meta and Google ads, andyour CRM dashboard, and even
your Zapier dashboard.
Looker Studio or many CRMs allowyou to embed the data, create an

(11:11):
iframe with data pulled directlyfrom these systems.
Meta and Google make that easyto do.
They have basically streamedrealtime data and you can embed
these reports on a singledashboard.
Which you should do, and bechecking daily for any downtime,
any weird spikes or troughs inactivity.

(11:31):
Over a few period of a fewweeks, we'll start to observe
some trends and maybeopportunities to improve.
I do this for my clients, but Iwould emphasize that it's very
accessible for a non-technicalperson to set these up.
So I think this has really beendemocratized, but having good
information is critical tomaking this work.

Ed Drozda (11:51):
So I guess it's like building a financial portfolio.

Reed Hansen (11:54):
Yeah.

Ed Drozda (11:54):
We don't put all of our eggs in one basket, we
diversify.
What I'm hearing you say is thateven with a tight budget, it's
still necessary to diversify.
It's not sufficient to have onething out there, but there are
various low cost places to go orthings to do, and that by
building a uniform mix in thatportfolio, we'll have the

(12:16):
greatest bang for a buck.
Is that fair?

Reed Hansen (12:20):
Yeah, I think so.
I would add that you don'tbecome stagnant, that you
continue to try out newapproaches as you grow.
Listen to vendors that haveinteresting ideas, network and
talk to peers, and see what'sworking for them.
I think we have to be constantlyevolving our approach and
tweaking messaging even withinthe existing email campaigns.

Ed Drozda (12:42):
I know that AI is a big part of your business, so
what about AI in this process?
It has a lot of potential, a lotof different things that can be
done.
I guess it's a form ofdiversifying your portfolio, as
I'd mentioned before, but thereare some things that are just
not realistic.
We don't go out and hire datascientists to incorporate AI
because we're just not in aposition where we can afford

(13:03):
such a thing.
I guess the big question is whatkind of affordable AI is there
for entry level folks lookingfor marketing support?

Reed Hansen (13:13):
Yeah, absolutely, and I do recommend that business
owners of all sizes should beutilizing AI to some degree, for
the sake of getting familiar.
There are many of theseplatforms that have free tiers.
You can get your feet wet usingthe free version of ChatGPT,
Gemini, or Copilot, and justasking questions.

(13:35):
Which is a great start, but Iwould add there are tools that
are large language model andthey have packaged it in a way
that is specific to a businessfunction.
One that comes to mind is JasperAI, which has been around for a
few years and continues toimprove, and that's for
copywriting.
Great tool, relativelyinexpensive, and it helps you
generate blogs with keywordsembedded and has dozens of

(13:59):
different templates fordifferent use cases, but saves
you a lot of time, in manycases, helps you write better
than you would naturally.
A few others, Canva, I'm a bigfan of, and it's very
inexpensive.
I think most businesses coulduse it for less than$20 a month
and do the vast majority oftheir graphic design needs with

(14:20):
it.
It has AI embedded; if youinstruct it, it will generate
what you need.
I referred earlier to Zapier andMake.
Now these are good tools to befamiliar with, and you start to
get into a little bit more ofthe technical piece.
Again inexpensive, they'recharged based on usage.
If you have data from one systemthat needs to be combined, and

(14:41):
often in years past, we've foundourselves cutting and pasting a
lot of data back and forth tomake a report or make a
presentation.
Zapier and Make, which areessentially the same tool, I
prefer Make, but they allow youto visually diagram where data
needs to go from one place toanother, how it can be filtered,

(15:01):
and it will do that behind thescenes without you doing
anything.
It will combine Google documentsthat are kept online with an
existing financial system or itcan help you automatically
schedule social media posts, orreports that need to be
delivered.
Great tools to be familiar with.

(15:22):
I can keep going, I don't wannabe too talkative, but I've
really liked the Google LookerStudio, which has AI in it to
help you build really nicelooking reports.
These reports can be embedded inother documents or other
systems.
It's another situation where youdescribe what you want and it
will build as you describe it.

(15:42):
So each of those have freeoptions to dabble in, and they
have free training and they arequite easy to learn.
So, great places to start, andreally good tools to help you
manage your business withminimal staff.

Ed Drozda (15:58):
Seems like there's a lot of options out there.
As you put it, these are thingsthat people can experiment with.
I surmise that one of the mostimportant things is knowing as
you go into this process oflooking for things to experiment
with, you better be really clearabout what you're looking to
accomplish.
Yeah.
Because there's just so manyoptions out there.

(16:19):
It could be overwhelming.
Yes, yes.

Reed Hansen (16:22):
I'm victim to that more often than not.
I was like oh, I don't have aproblem to solve, I just have a
toy to play with.

Ed Drozda (16:28):
That's fair, there's so many things out there.
It's understandable that onewould get caught up in it.
And depending on what positionyou're in, that may or may not
be an effective use of yourtime, but if you're clear about
what you're looking toaccomplish, there are many
things out there to support youin the process.
Absolutely.
I wanna ask you another questionhere.

(16:49):
In business it's not unusual forperiods of cash flow crunch to
come along, and marketing forreasons I don't quite understand
can be seen as a line item to beslashed.
Sometimes people say no salesare more important.
Well, no, marketing will gofirst, and I don't know what

(17:11):
they're selling at that point,but things such as this.
I think we can both agree theidea of trashing or slashing
marketing altogether is not agood idea.
But what can one do to maintaintheir momentum and keep that
marketing flow going at timeswhen they're tempted to slash
that marketing budget.

Reed Hansen (17:32):
Yeah, this is a challenge because marketing
sometimes feels like it is, youknow, I don't necessarily have a
switch to flip that I could getmore leads today or more leads
tomorrow from the marketingdepartment.
So maybe a lot of businessesfeel like, well, if I switch it
off, I'm not actually hurting mybusiness today or tomorrow.

(17:54):
The thing is that marketing doesgenerate leads and touchpoints
and it is potentially a littlebit more of a long game, but, I
don't know who feeds the salesforce if you don't have an
authoritative brand, if youdon't have ways that clients can
efficiently find you, based onwhat they need.

(18:14):
If anything, I would flip it andsay that the marketing should be
prioritized over sales becausethere are people that will do
business with you if they have away to pay you, which the
marketing provides.
If you don't have that then thesalespeople will be sitting on
their hands or expending a lotof effort without an appealing

(18:35):
product or a problem thatthey're able to solve.
There are always low cost andfree efforts you can make to
continue your momentum.
We always try to look at our adspend in terms of conversions,
and if we can put a price on ourwhole spend and the conversions

(18:55):
we're getting out of that adspend.
In theory, if it costs us lessthan the customer value that
we're acquiring, that justifiesitself.
We should continue that courseand continue to further
optimize.
But if it really is an issue ofwe're spending more than we're
bringing in, that's a decisionpoint where you pause and

(19:16):
reevaluate.
But I think in most cases, themarketing investment does
generate more than it makes, butit is sometimes a little bit
invisible because of the numberof touch points that it requires
and hard to attribute to anindividual dollar spent.

Ed Drozda (19:32):
Mm-hmm.
The reason I brought upforegoing marketing for the sake
of sales is an actual experiencethat I had with a client.
In hindsight, they realized thatthey really didn't fully
understand.
They really believed that saleswas the driving force behind the
business and yes, outward facingto some degree that's true.

(19:56):
But it has to be built onsomething, and if you take away
the marketing, it's kinda like ahouse of cards, there's nothing
there, or very little.
That's why I use that particularinstance.
But in business, people,particularly those who are new
in the game are going to gothrough things like this, and
they're gonna find that they'vegot to experience it and find

(20:18):
out firsthand.
What does it mean if I foregomarketing for the sake of sales?
Okay.
Or vice versa, whichever thecase might be.
The interrelationship betweenthings is very important, but we
have preconceived notions andsometimes those are not
validated notions.
They're just things that weheard or maybe things we
misinterpreted.

(20:39):
These things can happen.
So let's take a small Mom andPop operation.
Okay.
Not unlikely someone like thatwould be listening to this
podcast.
They are building theirmarketing campaign, and they
want to find the most effectiveway.
They don't have an abundance ofbudget.
Mm-hmm.
But they do want to be mindfulabout hitting as many people as

(21:02):
they can.
They are aware of theirclientele.
They know who it is they'retrying to serve.
They have developed a brand.
They've done the backgroundwork, if you will.
They got all the material, theygot all the data?
But they need to convert thatinto something viable as a
marketing presence.

(21:22):
Advice for them?
What do you got?

Reed Hansen (21:24):
Yeah, so I take they've been in business and
they understand who theircustomer is.

Ed Drozda (21:30):
Yes.

Reed Hansen (21:31):
And largely their behavior, fair to say like as a
starting point?

Ed Drozda (21:34):
Yep.
Perfect.

Reed Hansen (21:36):
So knowing that they have a lower budget, they
aren't gonna spend thousands ofdollars right out of the gate,
what I would recommend is a realfocus on, you always wanna
prioritize retention, andreferrals.
I feel like those are some veryhigh ROI efforts that you can
do.
So there's a few things in themix here.

(21:57):
You want to be targeting yourclients, your returning clients,
that will open your messages,that will be receptive.
You need to find them when theyneed to make the next purchase.
Is this a monthly purchase or isthis a quarterly; you need to
find them at the right time.
And that can be a print mailer,email, a call or a text, just to

(22:20):
remind them that if they're inneed in that period, that you
are there and ready to help.
Then you need to find the keytouch points where they are
ready to give you positivereviews.
So collecting reviews both invideo format and in the public
forums and packaging and sharingthose reviews are great ways to

(22:41):
utilize your existing businessto give you authority and help
answer the question of should Ido business with this Mom and
Pop shop?
Are they small because they'rebad at their job or are they
small because they deliver ahigh level of service?
You also need to find the timeswhen they are ready to refer you
new business.
This can be a long-term drip.

(23:03):
I love newsletters.
I love frequent, long-term touchpoints where you offer
incentives for them to refer thebusiness.
Like a sale, we'll give them 20%off, we'll give you a 10%
commission for somebody yourefer, and try to keep that
cycle going.
So I would say start with thecustomers you have, the people

(23:26):
that trust you and like you, andutilize them to the max
capacity.
A very low cost that you can getnew clients very quickly,
because customers know otherpeople just like them that have
the same needs.

Ed Drozda (23:42):
I abide by the same thing.
I call people like thatambassadors, who speak up on
your behalf because they areengaged with you.
They do believe in you, andthey're willing to tell other
people about you.
I think that's a fantastic pieceof advice.
We're getting to the end of ourtime here, so I'd like to ask if
there's any last thing you'dlike to leave us with before we
go.

Reed Hansen (24:02):
Yeah, I would throw out that I have really enjoyed
this exercise of networking withother content creators and
podcasters.
Seeking out speakingopportunities, podcasts, you can
reach out to journalists, youcan reach out to local chambers
of commerce mm-hmm, teachsessions on your field of
expertise, and get your name outthere.

(24:25):
Just offer to do, to speak,appear, or teach for free.
Those opportunities areextremely valuable, and they
help you refine your message.
They help you make great friendsand contacts, and establish some
authority on a big platform.
Ed, I feel like I've made a goodfriend in you and would love to

(24:46):
continue to collaborate in thefuture, as an example.
But, put yourself out there andput a face to your brand and the
people will come.
Thank you for your comment aboutme and I happen to agree with
you a hundred percent.
I too look forward tomaintaining, continuing this
relationship, thank you verymuch for that.
We got lucky.
We met each other under thosecircumstances and I think that

(25:06):
was fantastic.
So I am going to wrap this uphere.
Once again, I've been joinedtoday by Reed Hansen, Chief
Growth Officer with MarketSurge.
It has been a pleasure havingyou here today.
Thank you.
It has been a pleasure to be on.

Ed Drozda (25:23):
Well, thank you so very much for that.
Folks, I am Ed Drozda, The SmallBusiness Doctor.
Here at The Water Trough, untilnext time, I wanna wish you a
healthy business.