The Marketer of the Day Podcast

00:00 Marketer of the day, episode 857. Hashtag smart. When the zero moment of truth to enjoy a competitive advantage in faster sales with Paul McAweats.

00:14 Welcome back to the podcast. We are here with Paul from Hashtag-smart.com. Now, Paul is an army veteran. He's a former golfer.

00:23 He is the CEO and founder of Hashtag Smart Marketing. Now, who are they? And what are they? They are a digital marketing agency.

00:30 see they are blowing up in Los Angeles. They work with attorneys and doctors. So Paul will be telling us about online reviews, about building memorable synergistic relationships and marketing and so much more.

00:41 Paul, glad to be talking to you. Oh, man, it's super fun to be here. Thanks for having me. Super glad to have you.

00:46 And just like just for the record, how did we say your last thing? Just that way we have all our bases covered.

00:52 Yeah, no, no, it's a tough one. It's not easy. it's Mackiewicz. All right, easier to say it than to read it.

00:58 Paul Mackiewiczfrom Hashtag Smart. And so you work with doctors, work with attorneys, your digital agency. What has you fired up these days, and what do you focus on?

01:08 Yeah, one of the biggest things that I do, most of my speaking engagements and podcasts about is the zero moment of truth.

01:15 And this is a concept. It's pretty mind-blowing to me how many people don't know it. It's something that came out from Google about 10 years ago from their think Google, the think tank that they do as far as business efficiency and really the psychology of the buying making process.

01:31 And when it came out about 10 years ago, people were like, you know, it's a okay idea. But over the last two, three years, it's really exploded as far as the concept and how to apply it to your digital marketing strategies.

01:43 So just to run through it, anyone that's classically trained in marketing, it's generally a three-step process. and it's fun. I love the show Mad Men and it always makes me think of this because it's all about awareness.

01:55 So I got to know who you are. So that might be a billboard or PPC, maybe a social media ad, television commercial, something that makes me aware that you exist.

02:04 And then the first moment of truth is the actual buying experience. So if you're thinking about retail-wise, I see a commercial for Coco Puffs on the TV.

02:15 I get to the store. I mean, there's an aisle of all these different cereals and, you know, I need something that's going to sway me to pick up that one box of coca-puffs over the other ones.

02:23 And so maybe it's just the fact I'm aware of the brand. I saw the commercial. My kid got excited about it, you know.

02:28 And then there is the second moment of truth. And what this is is the experience. So now I've gone online.

02:35 I saw that PPC ad. I called that attorney. We went through my entire legal case. At the end, I got a bunch of money.

02:42 I'm super happy. This is great. I want to tell the world. I want to hop on Yelp or Google or Facebook and leave a positive review or, you know, my friend comes up to me at a backyard barbecue and says, hey, you know, I heard you had a car accident.

02:54 How'd that all go? And now I'm a referral generator for this attorney. Excited great experience. Or it sucked, and this guy didn't call me back.

03:03 And, you know, we had a horrible experience. Now, if you're more petty than I am, I tend to not leave a whole lot of negative reviews, but a lot of people love leaving negative reviews.

03:12 So they might go online and complain on Yelp, complain on Google, social media sites who knows and now the onus comes down onto that business owner that attorney that products to respond to that in some way.

03:26 And even just not responding is still a response. You're still kind of just like it's what it is. But what the zero moment of truth is this amazing concept that we all have access to technology and access to information now that we've never had before.

03:41 So whereas in madmen awareness was, oh, let's put together this cool magazine full page spread and then people will buy from us now.

03:50 We see a billboard for an attorney I go online at Google. I look at the other guys in the neighborhood.

03:57 I see star ratings everywhere I go whether I'm looking on on Google maps or if I said hey Siri find me a law firm near me and the apple maps pops up with all those little yellow logos because apple doesn't have their own review system.

04:09 they've partnered up, they pick it back up with Yelps, you know, so now I'm getting input from other people. I mean, they look at social media.

04:16 I see a little bit of social proof, see some big checks and some pictures or, you know, see some negative reviews there.

04:22 And now this is zero moment of truth. I've gone from becoming aware of a business to actually comparing them to all of the other options I have before I'm even getting to that first moment of making a buying decision.

04:33 And so that's really what the zero moment of truth is. It's the comparison step that we take before or after becoming aware of a business, but before we're actually handing over our wall, it's handing over that credit card or paying that invoice or signing that contract to retain that business or become

04:51 a new patient of that doctor or buy those co-copus. So it's all about just being prepared to be compared and knowing the steps and the tools that are out there to make sure you just look amazing.

05:03 So when people are comparing you online that you're the obvious choice. And I think about this all the time and I'm sure you do too that like it's so complex now in the madman times it would just be you know someone's reading a magazine and they take their time they be on the slow train that Pete Campbell

05:20 takes into the city and they just be like reading every single page of this magazine and saying like oh there's a cool that let me pick up my rotary telephone.

05:28 Let me call this phone number and place this order and mail in my check and as you and I know like things are move so fast now and it's so confusing now and I don't know about you Paul, but like whenever I have a problem or like something that needs doing whether it's like you know legal or on the house

05:44 , I don't get to it right away. It's not like a linear process. I'll think about it, forget it, look, do some Google search, check something on my phone on my computer, get retargeted, see it on Facebook, see some videos.

05:57 It's like it's so hard to even just like follow the process these days, but I have noticed that since your specialty is like doctors and lawyers, I notice these like what comes to mind is like lawyers putting out like these quick videos, putting out like the TikToks and the Instagram Reels and stuff 

06:15 like that with like just these really quick sound bites and I think like like it's kind of they're playing more like a long-term game like sometimes they're just kind of like building up this audience and you mentioned even like referral sources, and sometimes these people don't even really know exactly

06:31 where all of their future customers are going to come from, but they're kind of building this whole, like, foundation of content.

06:37 And so is that a thing that you recommend doctors and lawyers do, like putting out like the fun, quick content, or is that something that maybe is only sometimes appropriate?

06:46 No, there's no downfall to putting out lots of content. There's, say you did put out a horrible video, And three months down the road, you're like, I really don't like the way I look at it.

06:58 You can always just delete it. Like people think that, oh, I put this on the internet, it's there forever. It's really not.

07:04 It's pretty easy to scrape something from the internet to delete it from YouTube, unless it's really egregious and somebody screenshot it or video recorded it and you really did something.

07:13 That's probably a bigger problem than just putting out a little pieces and snippets of content. But there will never not be a place for Coca-Cola advertising.

07:22 You know, you see that Coca-Cola ad. It's not that like, oh, wow, that made me thirsty right now. I need it.

07:27 It's, I see it. And I'm like, all right, cool, cute polar bears, Christmas time. Christmas time kind of makes me think of Coca-Cola now.

07:34 Because I think it was like, you know, Christmas time commercials that they do. And if an attorney is putting out or a doctor even is putting out, you know, steady content, at least informing people of what they do.

07:45 I mean, that's gotta be step one because it's pretty mind blowing how many attorneys don't like put a focus on, hey, I'm a car action attorney or I'm a product liability attorney or medical malpractice, they're just like, I'm an attorney, like I'd be a personal injury, like that's great.

07:58 That's a really broad, broad spectrum. But like, if you could find your niches and your focus and start with those and do videos about the things that you're passionate about, and like I've won attorney who really specializes in traumatic brain injuries, you know, TBI, it's a big thing if you get those

08:15 right cases. And so he knows if he just gets three, four of those cases in a year, that's an amazing year for him.

08:21 You know, whereas some of these guys are going for like, you know, strictly car accidents and they're competing with 50 other attorneys within a 10 mile radius of them and they all kind of look alike and they're, you know, there's not really that many differentiating factors.

08:33 So to kind of speak to what you're saying, like if you can use video or even your social posts or comments as a way to differentiate yourself and to show some specialties, show some expertise.

08:46 give people like an emotional connection real quick. I have one doctor, I was working with them for like four or five months and just like trying to drag out on them.

08:54 Like what's your differentiating factor? What's cool about you? It's like, well, you know, my community likes me. I'm like, well, why do they like you?

09:01 He's like, I'm a good doctor. I'm like, everyone's a good doctor. Like what, what is it about you? And finally I got this guy to be like, well, my kids and I, we love Harry Potter.

09:08 And you know, we went to the Hogwarts thing and he sent me some pictures of it. And so like, I was like, do let's do a little, a little Harry Potter week.

09:14 And so, you know, we did a lot of posts about Harry Potter and like some fun memes with it and some pictures of him and his kids with their ones.

09:21 Sorry, I don't know a whole lot about Harry Potter personally, but But he loved it and allowed him now like in his office.

09:28 He's got, you know, a big picture of him and his kids at Hogwarts together. He's got some someone sitting on his reception desk, like just these cool little things to help people build an emotional connection with this guy a little bit quicker than if you're just a doctor, you're just a guy.

09:45 But you can certainly take the authentic self, like the things that you are actually passionate about and you like doing and like talking about and portray that online as a value proposition.

09:57 Like just if I move my head here, anybody that likes the Buffalo bills, I will, I will be the greatest marketer for you ever because if I get to talk about Buffalo Bill's for about five, 10 minutes of my day before I have to start you know turning out the strategic marketing mine or I got spider man 

10:11 behind me if you like marble stuff like you know those relatable factors uh they really go a long way because we like buying from people we like and if we're seeing those things visually before we've ever even you know made that initial phone call or that initial contact it really goes a long way as 

10:27 far as establishing trust and a a relationship very early in the process. And it seems like the way that you're describing it is that it's easy enough to sort of take that inventory and think of maybe like one or five or six just random personality attributes to sneak into your marketing and not spend

10:46 a ton of time on that but just kind of, like you said, theme the weeks and that even makes it simple and logical enough to get some work done, to do some content because I always get so flustered with myself of saying like, well, if I just put out one video, it's only one video.

11:02 It's not a lot. I need to like make a hundred videos. And then I get myself discouraged before I even start.

11:07 But like thinking in terms of like themes or blocks of weeks makes it simple enough. And so you're making me think about like just dealing with like so many of these doctors, they want to focus on the procedure, right?

11:19 Like, oh, I do, I do, I do therapy. I do shockwave therapy. And then it's frustrating. It's just like to be, say, well, everyone does that.

11:26 How are you different? And you're making me think about I have this this Dennis and he has two offices on like opposite ends of town here and the one that's near me.

11:35 It's called Symphony of Smiles and for some reason there's a piano in the lobby. I don't know why. I don't know what the what the relation is, but so that that's what sticks out to me.

11:46 I'm like I can't even think of like his exact name and I've got a number of like six years, but I'm like well he's the the one with the piano in the lobby and so it's it's simple enough to even just like try some of these things out like you said.

11:58 The very worst case scenario, you can always click delete on the video, but it'll probably stay there and at least stick and be long term and be memorable with these people.

12:07 And so behind you, you said that you have like the Buffalo Bills and you got like books and trophies, but for some reason Spiderman is like huge and big and that's like the most prominent thing on there.

12:17 And this is podcasting where sometimes we go a little bit off the beaten path, have a little bit of the randomness, so what's the significance of Spider-Man and why is it so huge in the background?

12:27 Well, this is actually a gift. I pride myself on jumping every opportunity that I can throughout life. I mean, when I went to college, I changed my major four times as a freshman, didn't know what I wanted to do.

12:38 I jumped at an opportunity, joined the military. I was overseas like seven months later. When I got out of the military, I didn't know what I wanted to do.

12:45 I played a lot of golf when I was in the military. I was like, you know, I'm going to be a golf pro.

12:49 I I kind of jump at that opportunity and a lot of times in life, you know, we get we get beaten and battered, especially at the last two years.

12:56 This this Spider-Man, well, one thing I love about Spider-Man more than anything is that he takes great care of the people that are super close to him and he puts himself in tons of danger in doing it.

13:08 And he's very selfless. It hit him in Captain America, my two two favorite comic book superheroes. And it's mostly because they're selfless.

13:15 The reason I love this is one of my buddies, you know, recognize those attributes in me And when COVID hit, my wife and I were supposed to get married April 10th, 2020.

13:25 So, COVID hit about two weeks before we had to cancel, it's a huge wedding, it was a destination wedding. We had to cancel our honeymoon and he sent me this, it's just kind of a little reminder, like, hey, you know, like shit happens, man, like Spider-Man's got a rough life.

13:39 You know, I know that this is a little tough for you, I know you're going through, but you know, I saw this audio and he just said it to me, so that's actually a gift from a friend.

13:46 And then he got a good laugh because my wife and I were we're not people to get deterred. So when we had to cancel our wedding, we just jumped into camper ban.

13:55 And as all of California was closing, we drove to Arizona to the first town across the border, got married at the justice of the piece.

14:02 I'd to pay a guy 50 bucks to be my witness because he didn't have any witnesses or anything. so it was like me, my dog, my wife, driver on the camper van, well, the whole world's loosened their mind over COVID.

14:11 We're the only ones at the Grand Canyon all by ourselves, but we actually took Spider-Man with us. So he was in the back of the camper van.

14:18 So a lot of sentimentality to it, but also, I love what he represents. I love that he keeps his family first and foremost, and he's always willing to kind of put himself out there.

14:29 It's very selfless and everything he does. Well, awesome. And that's a helpful message in general, just that, you know, there will be those unexpected life events that knock you down, that kick you over, and there will be times when you get bored and there will be times when it's time to move on to the

14:49 new thing or put the best into trying the next opportunity and seeing what happens. And I'm sure that that helps as far as a conversation starter when you're dealing with contacting and attorney or a doctor when you say have you had this trouble filling up your doctor's office with COVID or have you 

15:05 had problems getting new clients as this type of attorney with all the competitiveness out there. And so that's just that's cool for us all to absorb that message to embrace the the differences the the uniqueness the the the weirdness the gifts people give you the alternatives that you have to sometimes

15:25 go down that leads to even bigger and better things and you look back and say, and I'm really glad that I didn't get what I wanted back in April 2020 because that led to all these other amazing adventures as opposed to something that would have been okay to go the The traditional plan, but it would have

15:42 just been kind of something not as memorable as all the adventures we've had since then so that is really cool to listen to and so as we're wrapping up wanting down our conversation getting to the tail end of things we talked about all the randomness but that's always good right because it's something

15:56 that people are listening to that's different than the usual well here's some steps with your digital marketing, but we got to cover a little bit of video content creation, online reviews, differentiating yourself.

16:08 What do you think is the most important message for attorneys and doctors and just marketers in general to hear these days like what are we all missing?

16:17 What's the thing to be focusing on right now? Yeah, I always bring it back to this phrase is you just have to be prepared to be compared.

16:25 If you have to go through everyone's all put yourself in the shoes of a client. you know, Google yourself, Google personal injury attorney near me.

16:33 Look at those dots, look, you know, and and actually be very honest about yourself throughout the situation. If if you're running say like PPC ads or something and you're a three and a half on Google and, you know, a four on Yelp and all your competitors have better reviews than you and more reviews 

16:49 and you. And chance that you're probably wasting quite a bit of money. And so being like strategic and thinking about what to do with your marketing dollars, whether I mean PPC can get real expensive.

16:58 of real quick. But if you're not set up and have like a good foundation, first and foremost, like it blows my mind how many high profile attorneys even don't even have their Google business listing set up properly.

17:11 And the amount of conversion points you can put right to a Google business listing before we're even thinking about SEO or website or conversion from the website.

17:19 Like if I, you know, don't see the different practice areas that you specialize in, writing your Google business listing, I might have blown right by you and gone right into organics, Whereas, if you have product cards, it says like, you know, I do ride share accidents, or I do slip and fall accidents

17:33 , I do dog bites. Like, really put that information right in front of them, make it easy. And then right on that page, you're linking to that page of content on your site.

17:41 You've got a phone, a one button calling right on top. You can have appointments setting right in it. I'm blown away recently at how many messages my clients are actually getting straight through the Google business listing.

17:52 So messaging through GMB, that only started about two, three months ago. And we're already seeing a couple of messages a week just from turning it on.

18:01 And so many business life, I've seen like, haven't even turned it on. And it's, you know, thinking of those, those really two main sources that I always say is like, Yelp, even though I'm not a huge fan of Yelp, they are what they are, but they're tied to Apple products.

18:14 You're talking about 40% of the market that if you don't look good over there, you're potentially missing out on and then your Google business listing.

18:21 And these things I'm telling you are 100% free. Like, I'm not selling you anything. I'm saying you have a free listing here and a free listing there go clean them up make them look nice put some good images on there I mean Images would probably be the next thing that I would touch on and it is again 

18:37 just a little mind blowing to me I want to a new clients of mine. I went to his office to go and you know talk with some of the attorneys kind of get a feel for the place I walked in this is the coolest law firm I'd ever seen they had like these huge glass offices they have neon's on the wall It's a 

18:52 great artwork everywhere. I was like, oh, this looks like cool, cool little law firm, not a single picture online. Nobody would ever know that there was an experience coming in there.

19:02 And so really, think about the experience that you're building for your clients. Think about the initial impression that people are getting from you.

19:08 In that first three to five seconds of finding you, whether it's on Google, your website, or your business listings, really put some thought into that.

19:16 And think about, if I was a client, what is it that I'm going to see that's going to make me go, okay cool like emotional connection I can relate to this guy I feel like I could do business with them fairly easily and that it I promise you it will transition pretty quickly into seeing an increase in 

19:31 contacts at least you know it's still got to figure out your intake process make sure you're calling people back and doing all that stuff but now you're at least making sure that that first step is is pretty well covered and then you can start really thinking about big ppc campaigns or video campaigns

19:44 and stuff like that so cover your bases first and you'd be amazed at the impact that can have. And then after that, it makes everything else quite a bit easier when you look great in comparison to those around you.

19:56 I like that a lot. That's the low hanging fruit. And you hear about that concept of the one thing, like what's the one thing that you can fix now that opens up the other opportunities.

20:05 And you make it sound so easy. And which I mean, it can be if we do things in the order of importance, plan our time, figure out what needs to be done now, what needs to be done later.

20:15 And what you're making me think of is there's so many times when it's easy to just be ignorant, right? And be ignorant of what happens when someone Google searches this, be ignorant of what my competitors are doing.

20:25 And that seems like a recipe for later on becoming so overwhelmed at how much catching up you have to do, right?

20:31 It's like, if you have a bunch of mail stacked up, a bunch of bills stacked up, and you say like, oh my gosh, I'm just overwhelmed with even what's in front of me.

20:38 And so it just reminds me that how important it is to at least be aware of a few of these things.

20:44 Have that Google My Business listing cleaned up, have the keywords that way if someone is looking for a specific type of attorney instead of being a maybe they can it can be a yes because it's like this is exactly what I'm looking for and another easy win another easy fix is you have that amazing attorney's

21:02 office doctors office if you when you walk in the inside it looks so good take the pictures put them on social media put them on the business so sing because I don't know why Paul but like I have to see the outside and the inside before I go to a physical location.

21:16 I'm just maybe I'm just like that nervous head anxious, but it seems like that's a common thing like does the does the yelp Listings say are they open?

21:24 What's their hours? What's their address and then pictures of inside and outside? I don't know why maybe I just don't want to seem stupid walking into the wrong place who the heck knows But we want to make sure as we're approaching the last few minutes here to give you some nice promotion give you some

21:39 nice bugs So if people were listening they were amazed by just how easy fun simple you made some of these things what is the next step here?

21:47 Where should people go? How can they reach out and what can they do when they find you reach your site?

21:52 Yeah, so I am a big advocate of free. I'm a big advocate of, you know, a lot of people try things.

21:59 So my company and I we developed it. We called the E brand dashboard, but what it is is basically a singular hub that you can manage all of your business listings, all of your view sites, post all of your social media, manage your SEO, email campaigns, website analytics it's just a singular hub that 

22:16 in our research we found it saves businesses about 20 hours a month and it increases online activity by about 400% in 30 days.

22:24 So it's this really awesome tool we let people try it out for free for two weeks if you do decide you want to use it we keep the price point nice and low which is only about 150 bucks a month to just have your entire online presence kind of distilled into a little five minute daily action as opposed 

22:39 to oh what am I going to post and social to stay, you know, it kind of feeds you all of that type of cool information and data.

22:46 So that is on my personal website, which is zmot expert, zmotexpert.com. Also I am a very strict calendar follower.

22:59 If it's not on my calendar, it does not exist. So I put my calendar link right on there. If you want to, you know, just chitchat, maybe about Buffalo Bills, Spider-Man, your digital marketing efforts.

23:09 Any of those fun topics. My calendar is right there. Jump in there, grab a little 15 or 30 minute slot.

23:16 It's the easiest way to do it. And like I said, I'd never look at LinkedIn, all I get is solicitations over there.

23:22 I do look at Instagram every once in a because we are a visual company. I like putting out fun memes and things like that anyway.

23:29 We actually recently have a nice Spider-Man meme on there, I think, from just last week. So Instagram is hashtag smart marketing all written out.

23:38 I do check that fairly often. So this would probably be the two best things. Also, I just released a webinar on optimizing your Google business listing for attorneys.

23:48 So if there are any attorneys out there that don't even really know where to start or you feel like you've started and you just haven't really pushed it to the limits of what you can do over on your Google business listing, the webinar is also available right there on zmartexpert.com.

24:02 Super great. And so just to make sure I heard you right, that's z-m-o-t-expert.com. Did I get that right? That is correct.

24:09 Yep. As in the zero moment of truth. Oh, very good. It didn't make the connection until you're halfway done saying it.

24:15 Perfect. The zero amount of truth. It all comes through a circle. And if you're out there listening or watching and you say, you know, I've gotten a good start and I've got to handle on some of these things.

24:24 But I know I could do more. I know I could do better. I know that at least it could be consistent, then let Paul help you.

24:30 Let him help you with this free tool with this phone call, go to zmartexpert.com, go to instagram.com slash hashtag smart marketing that I get that right too.

24:40 All right, we're scoring 100% today. And if you out there in podcast planning would like to score 100% or at least get to 100% eventually, at least get caught up here with your competitors.

24:50 At least stay on the trends. You owe it to yourself in your business and your future to go to Z-M-O-T, expert.com.

24:58 And you've heard Paul is an amazing guy, his full personality, full of the randomness in a good way. So he's a person you're going to want to follow on social media and check out his website that way.

25:09 He can retarget you and you can get yourself educated. And it doesn't all have to happen all overnight, but just start making these steps so that way you can have a well-known machine, less stress, more money, more patients, more clients, all the things we all want, Z-M-O-T-X-R-T.com is the place to 

25:27 go. And any final parting words of advice, Paul? Nah, the last thing I would say is just, I feel like a lot of the world right now is living in a lot of fear.

25:36 You know, we're told every day to be scared of your neighbor, be scared of this, be scared of that. I would implore especially business owners, there's never been a better time than right now to just be fearless.

25:45 Be fearless of what you do and be fearless in your marketing. be fierce in your business growth, you know, go at it, go get some.

25:51 And, uh, you know, just stop, stop letting that, that annoying little voice in the back of your head saying maybe you can't do it.

25:57 Stop letting that take control and, and move forward. I love it. It's time for a change and we'll see you at zmottexpert.com.

26:08 Thank you for tuning in to the marketer of the day podcast. Marketer of the day is managed by DFI Podcasts.

26:16 Clean your 12 podcast boosters at dfypodcast.com slash free.

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