E161 – State of Business Report

As always, the title may or may not be the best but hopefully it gives you an idea of what we tried to do and dig into!

Matt leads this episode and digs into some things and Dave joins him here and there but for some of the main things that they covered, here you go:

Business is inconsistent. From week to week and even day to day there are drops and pops in business for no reason. This seems especially true for restaurants.Mailers - Matt notes that some restaurants have been testing mailer coupons and have seen an uptick due to those.Newer businesses that just started and don't have a community are struggling to find consistency in business.Marketing agencies are seeing mixed results depending on their portfolio of clients. Those agencies that focused just on paid search, small businesses and/or those in the industries hit the most in recent months are struggling. Matt noted that some agencies and businesses in general have seen a huge uptick, but it all depends on your industry (home workout, leisurewear, healthcare (obviously not all but many sub sectors)).Online training and master classes is another example of an industry Matt has heard of things going quite well.

Dave joins and takes a more B2B approach in what he has been seeing.

Look at your education vs. product/service content. Look week to week, month to month, and year to year. Things are all over so it can be hard to make of it all but compare impressions of paid search and in Google Search Console.And be sure to question any data or reports you see!If people are cutting budgets or out of work, how would that impact people searching for your product or service? You should see it in the data hopefully.Look at conversion and deeper into data. Don't just look at year over year, habits are currently different so no matter your business you just can't compare YOY.Adjust your offers and deals to work with how your customers are changing. Dave's example is a place that he loves that changed their usual Tuesday pizza offer to work with carryout.

Full Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, excited to have you join us on another business of digital podcast episode as always really grateful for this time that you invest in Dave and I, and I believe we got day over there somewhere.

We're going to wave a day virtually. All right. My friend. Well, Uh, we were talking about, uh, this book, you know, before we started recording, as we do. And, um, I just thought everybody listening. I just thought that it would be a good opportunity to do a quote unquote state of the union. And I don't really know if I like that title, but I thought it would be interesting to kind of give everybody a heads up as to like how things have been going on and, and just things that I've heard, things that Dave's heard from businesses.

Clients we've worked with, um, just businesses that we [00:01:00] frequent restaurants, things like that. Um, the reason I had this thought to do this is because I was chatting with a couple local restaurant owners, places that I go to and frequent a lot in this area. And I was sharing with them some of the information from some of the other guys and, and just kind of like how things were and whatnot.

And, and a lot of them told me the same thing. They're like, Oh, that's. That's really good to know. I'm glad that you told me that because I was wondering if like I was doing something wrong. I was wondering if something, you know, different was, was, uh, you know, things like that. And so, um, also some interesting things that I've learned that these guys have been doing, um, that have been continuing to drive.

A business to their site, which again, you know, like every state's different right now there's some that like have been able to open up and then there's some places that have been ordered to shut back down. A