The Dead Pixels Society podcast

Website marketing essentials, with Michael Buzinski, Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing

March 23, 2022 Gary Pageau/Michael Buzinski Season 3 Episode 70
The Dead Pixels Society podcast
Website marketing essentials, with Michael Buzinski, Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing
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Show Notes Transcript

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talks with Michael Buzinski,  president of Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing.  In this episode,  Buzinski talks about the practical steps a small business should follow to boost SEO and gain new customers. It's not just all about chasing the latest social media trend. 

Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing helps create buzz for small and medium-sized local businesses through integrated digital marketing.

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Hosted and produced by Gary Pageau
Edited by Olivia Pageau
Announcer: Erin Manning

Erin Manning  
Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Gary Pageau  
The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Photo Finale, and Advertek Printing. Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today, we're joined by Michael Buzinski the President and CMO of Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing. Hi, Michael, how are you today? 

Michael Buzinski  
I'm doing great. How are you? Great.

Gary Pageau  
So Michael, tell us a little bit about Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing and what your experience is starting that business.

Michael Buzinski  
So Buzzworthy is a digital marketing firm that works with service centric businesses, such as the photography industry. And our job is to help people get profitable revenue from their websites. And I started it actually, this, this is pretty much the third iteration of my business that I started in 2005, which started actually as a production studio, and then morphed into a create a classic creative agency, kind of like an ad agency. But we did all the creative work in house as well. And about three years ago, I broke that into two different companies, because I felt we were missing the SMB markets needs in and just becoming that classic, no face, you know, big, big mammoth Jama agencies. And so I've been building websites and marketing them since 1999. I have been part of over 1000, website builds served 1200 brands, the whole nine yards.

Gary Pageau  
So you've seen some things from Geo cities on upwards? Oh, yeah. Geo cities. Wow. Go back. You might have dated yourself. You know, marketing websites ain't what it used to be, right? People have, you know, kind of throw up a page and say, Hey, I'm a website. I'm marketing. Right? I just got a press release. And somebody just literally said, We just updated our website. Right. That was that was that was the news, right? As it website should be updated all the time. So what are you have some clients in in the imaging industry? What are some of the digital marketing opportunities and or mistakes you see them making?

Michael Buzinski  
Well, my clients don't because they work with me. But though See, I had to do and I'm sorry. But what we do see on a regular is that people ignore their website and the power their website has, and the leverage it has on their revenue. And it no longer is it the the land of websites are just online brochures, websites are our an extension of our sales process and the customer journey, right? That works, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, doesn't take sick leave, doesn't take holidays, doesn't ask for raises the whole nine yards, and we ignore it so badly on a regular. And the reason is, is because we feel as business owners, that our networks are strong enough to pull us through people will refer us we have the arrogance that think that we are on the top of everybody's mind at all times. So you know, I will come up in every conversation needs to happen in my community bolo Bazi. Block, right. And also the misnomer that you have to compete with national websites for local business. And that's where I spend that gap. I only work with small to medium sized businesses, and most of aging, almost imaging companies are going to be classified as a small business. I mean, you could be a multi million dollar small business, right? Okay. Until you're getting past like 100 employees, you're pretty much a small business, right? So with that said, there's things that don't scale from the enterprise arena that people look at and go oh, shiny thing over there. Look, what Apple does, we get to do that for our hometown photography business. And it's like,

Gary Pageau  
I remember when Flash was a big thing, right?

Michael Buzinski  
Right. Oh, yeah. And now you can't load a website with Flash, like, it just won't load on an Apple computer. And pretty much any any computer nowadays. I mean, it's pretty much out of there. And, and so in the evolution of websites, and we'll get into the technical stuff, I will talk about the fact that how we use our websites to tell our story is so important because 68% of consumers start their customer journey with a search query. And those search queries connect to our websites. So even if you are lucky enough to have been around long enough to where you're number one for all the keywords for your industry, or your part of the industry, you're still have to convert that visitor to a potential client, right. And if you're not telling your story correctly, you're bleeding, literally money out of your website to your competitors. Because if they don't find trust and likeability of your company, they're going to go to the next one until they do, right, because that's who we do business with people we like and trust.

Gary Pageau  
Do you think like local companies may believe since they're in a local community, they have an advantage? So they do neglect your website?

Michael Buzinski  
Yeah, they do. And the problem is this, Google wants to give the local business, the juice, but if you don't put a glass out there, they can't fill it. Right. And so when you don't have a Google My Business page that's optimized and and all the things that go on with that, even if you just have a one page website, is better than having a derelict 10 page website with a bunch of pictures on it, right? The pictures, that's where photographers specifically get all wrapped up, like I need to have a lot of imagery to show what I can do sure, in a gallery is good to a point. But people aren't looking past probably 10 or 15 images to decide whether you are the style they're looking for or not right, and where I see. So there I do have one photographer I've been working with for about 15 years, and we've worked with him in three different business entities in the image image industry. And his first one was portrait photography. And he did portrait photography, wildlife photography, event photography, you name it, he did it, right. And so his website was all over the place. And I feel that the image industry is now going is forcing people to be experts at one thing and do it super well. And then within that niche, they need to have a style that is theirs, there's signature, that is something that that people can't do with their phones, and is different than their competitors around them.

Gary Pageau  
Right. So what were the other two entities that this photographer

Michael Buzinski  
so then he then he created a so then we got him into wildlife photography. And so he had a gallery and he did Northern Lights was his main thing. But wildlife photography and national parks, okay, and then he started making doing classes and he got certified with like Nikon and stuff like that. And then he just bought a wilderness sofar or like a photo Safari. It's called Alaska photo treks. Okay. And so now he does that, about as he does that, more than he does his wildlife photography. Like he has his gallery and he does gorgeous prints. I actually bought a few and he's been commissioned by the state for their 50th anniversary and stuff like that. So like he's established but him like most wildlife photographers, have to hustle and hustle and hustle and always be selling a product where you know, the the photo Safari is right? We are in an experiential economy right now people buy experiences more so than they do physical things. Right? Right. We become this utilitarian experiential beings right now is really hot. So going on vacation and taking pictures, whenever vacation is great. We go on a vacation and then go in on a photo safari with it. Like I, I went down to South Africa, just to go on a photo Safari. So I went all the way around the world halfway around the world, just to take pictures of elephants in the drafts and all that. And the

Gary Pageau  
interesting there is as the as the hardware is becoming more commoditized. Right, right. Is there really for from for 95% of the people there is no practical difference between a Nikon or Canon, or Pentax or an Olympus, or whatever, it's it'll all take for 95% of people, great pictures and 98% I would say they're always trying to get me to actually but anyway, figure that out. But but but the point is, is for somebody to different differentiate why you have to have that camera and experiences the way to do that. And even being

Michael Buzinski  
able to take any camera and showing people the basics of photography is a huge deal. Like if you can teach people I mean, that's what Instagram like a lot of photographers on Instagram, that's what they do. They teach people how to be better photographers. And in the hope that when they have an event, that they'll be the one that's called because they're the one that taught them how to do the photography like to look at.

Gary Pageau  
So is there something here? Here's the question right there. There's a couple questions there. One is not everyone is suited to do that. Not everyone is has is called to be a teacher if you will or right or a demonstrator so you've gotten that issue to deal with. And also how much of that do you have to do before you actually started this are translating into sales because It's a it sounds to me like it's a constant stream. You can't just drop the the Instagram video and then wait for the phone call her.

Michael Buzinski  
No, no, I tell you, there is a who who was, it might have been Gary Vee, which I don't quote him very often. But he did talk about content marketing a couple years ago, and he says, it's like, you're gonna do it for a year and nobody's gonna care, right? Nobody's gonna care, right? Nobody's gonna notice nobody's gonna engage is there. And you know what, this is crazy. I love teaching. And for last year, I was on a blog kick, I made it eight months. And I just like it was there were short blogs, they were social media blogs, and in my industry, and I got tired of it. And I'm like, I need to be able to deliver it in a way that is not exhausting to me, and gets the same message out there, where people are going to consume it. And so really, anybody who's forcing themselves into something like that needs to stop right away, because you'll never get a joy out of it. If you don't enjoy it right off the bat, period, end of story,

Gary Pageau  
your audience is gonna realize that I mean, oh, yeah, no, it's gonna be enjoy doing something,

Michael Buzinski  
yeah, you'll do it, you'll do it just good enough, it'll be just good enough. And just good enough doesn't matter anymore. Because there's 1000 Other people looking for those same views. But at a local level, your your social media is really a conversion tool, right? You should be using it to build your community that you already have, right, and then work the inbound marketing through the, you know, the search engines and whatnot, and then maybe some outbound marketing to augment that, right? But you, all of it comes down to your website. If your website does not talk to your target your most profitable audience, then you're losing money and opportunity costs and all the things because without it, you're not, you're just not going to convert, like people can come to the website, they're not going to get it, they're going to get confused, and they're going to run away. They want to see something that they can latch on to.

Gary Pageau  
So what do you say to people who say, Why do I need a website? I've got an app,

Michael Buzinski  
you have an app? Yeah, an app, an app? So you have something that sits on? And how do you get your app out there? How do people know that you even have an app,

Gary Pageau  
or some people are saying app is a solution to the customer engagement because it's sitting on their people's phone, and you can send them notifications and whatnot. But you know, it's

Michael Buzinski  
great once you have the client, but they're not going to download an app unless it's doing something for them. Right, right. So if you're an event photographer, what does the app do until you book they book you? Right? Right? Boom, boom, boom, dun, dun, dun, right? I think that people get lazy in that they think that there is one thing that's going to change their marketing, right, and it's an ecosystem. It's just like the web, the rest of your business, right? It's its own business, in itself is in marketing, right? You have to have your social media presence, but you don't have to kill yourself doing it, you have to have inbound marketing, don't kill yourself doing it, but you got to have it, right, you got to have the things that bring people in and keep them engaged. And if you don't, if you miss out on engagement, you're gonna go broke, trying to hoping that your website is gonna make you money.

Gary Pageau  
Now, you keep mentioning word engagement. But again, I keep coming back to the standpoint that a lot of people have gotten into the photo industry got into it, not necessarily to engage with people, but because they like either making pictures, or they like the technical side, or they're like printing, or something like that, that engaging with people was probably not there. The first thing to do now I know, I mean, we have people in the camera side of the business who are great. I mean, they're there they every time a new camera comes in, they do it unboxing and review, and they and it's a killer for them, it works. Not everyone is like that. So how do you manage that? Do you just say, Okay, I'm not going to do it, or I'm going to do it badly. Or I got to find someone else to do it. Maybe I find a cut. I mean, I've even heard of people finding customers to come in and be their people, because they're so bad at it.

Michael Buzinski  
If you don't do anything badly, right? Like you do everything that you can do 100% If you don't know how to do that, get somebody else who will do it for you. Okay, now, don't hire somebody who's going to create followers on social media. That's not going that that traffic itself is 1/7 as likely to do business with you, then people with intent, and people with intent use the search engines to do it. To find you. Okay, 68% of all transactions start with a search query. So two thirds of the people in the United States start with us. Hey, Google, Hey, Siri, Hey, Apple, or not a apple, Safari, search, Bing, Yahoo. All of those right? Two thirds of all people will start there. Okay? Even if they don't start there, guess what? They go back there to find out your reputation. To find your website and see what you you offer before they call you. They're going to they're going to use the map to find out where you're going locations out, all of the things go through there. 14% of all, internet traffic, and websites or search engines end up being customers versus 2% of social media, true, organic social media traffic.

Gary Pageau  
Okay, but wait, you gotta have all the, you gotta have all the gram and you got to have all those followers that, you know, you got to have that?

Michael Buzinski  
No, you don't, because people are, if they're coming there for information, that'd be great. But you were you're looking for customers, and customers are not hanging out on your Instagram for six months before they come and buy from you. They're coming to your website to find out if you're likeable and trustable, they just want to know that you know what you're doing. So when we do search engine optimization for people who are not very social, we actually utilize one of our social media management tools that just gives a trickle of things enough to be active for somebody coming in, right? And give the SEO triggers to Google to say, Oh, by the way, they are active on social media. They are likeable, right? And so both of those things are very low cost comparative to somebody diving all the way into a social media campaign. That's not really gonna pay dividends.

Gary Pageau  
Because I mean, I think that's one of the things people look at when they see marketing, right? I mean, it was, like you said, they see the shiny, and they run towards the shiny, and they end, but it doesn't really enhance their business. Any.

Michael Buzinski  
Right, right. And that's the point is that you need to have everything that's pointed outward, to enhance what you do. Tell the story clearly, concisely and to the people you want to do business with. Don't try to be everything everybody, right? Be somebody to some one, right? Find out what that profitable relationship looks like and talk to that. It's either their dreams or their pains that you're going to connect with. Okay? So if you solve problems, then identify the problem and show how you solve it. If you aspire dreams, then you show what the dream looks like and how you can get them to that dream.

Gary Pageau  
You know, it's interesting, because during COVID, I think a lot of photo companies kind of woke up to that, you know, for example, I know some retailers who, because COVID schools were shut down, right? So high school graduates had a very terrible high school graduation experience. So a lot of them got into, because high school graduates want to be recognized. They got into making lawn signs. Guys, they're addressing that customer's pain, if you will, right. And yeah, you do recognize with a very profitable product.

Michael Buzinski  
Yeah. And your stalkers had really easy targets now. They know what

Gary Pageau  
we're saying on the positive.

Michael Buzinski  
We joke about it. It's funny. No, my whole so I live like right down the street from a Catholic church. It's been around since like, 1913. And they're renowned Catholic school. And so people move to this neighborhood to raise their kids so they can go to that school. Right. And so they all have the Blessed Sacrament signs all the senior senior senior, you know, are there. So you know, which houses are going to go up for sale pretty soon when they empty nest.

Gary Pageau  
But, you know, I was in another community recently, where they actually put the high school graduates pictures on all the streetlamp banners. Oh, wow. Okay, you know, but I'm just saying that's, that's great. demands. Take that picture. Yeah, I had to, you know, pay for the banner and install it again, it was with the community recognize these kids who didn't have that opportunity recognize in person. Now what's gonna happen is that's not going away. They're gonna have to do that every

Michael Buzinski  
year. Now, that's it. Yeah. So they created a new demand, they created a new niche. And that's awesome. I think that's great. And I think that that's the really the key here. As we digitize the image industry, and be in a lot of the things that we have grown up with become commoditized. For us old timers, we have to get more and more creative, and we have to create the demand where we can, but that means that we have to stay engaged, we have to be watching how people are utilizing images in their lives, and identify the new ways that you can enhance that experience. Because I'm going to go back to it it's all experiential, you don't have to be a photo Safari person to make money or to create an experience with images. Right? You just got to find a new way to doing it right? Because really, if you think about it, Instagram is a way of experiential image enjoyment. Sure. Right. So I mean, they they feel the need and now it's there. You know, but video is definitely that the next phase and still photography has its its, it has its work cut out for it. If we're going to be monetizing still photography for the years to come beyond just family portrait And the the weather sticky tiles that they sell now, you know, mix tiles and those types of products will come and go. Right, right. So that means that we, as small business owners have to find ways to engage our local community, and find out how we can enhance the images in their lives. Just like you talked about making banners or whatever it looks like, you know, I think that's, that's our challenge.

Gary Pageau  
So if people wanted to learn more about your company, and what you're doing, where can they go, I'm sure you have a website.

Michael Buzinski  
I happen to have one of those. It's called buzzworthy dot biz. That's what two Z's bu ZZ WRTH y.bi Z. And that has everything from our Do It Yourself services all the way up to our concierge done for you. My whole point in marketing is keep it simple. Make it profitable. If we can do those two things, everybody wins.

Gary Pageau  
And people can connect with you on LinkedIn, I'm sure Correct.

Michael Buzinski  
Well, 100%, LinkedIn, Instagram is Buzzworthy Marketing. And everywhere else. It's you are buzzworthy for the company page.

Gary Pageau  
We're great. Michael is great to have you and I look forward to talking to you again sometime and have a great 2022

Michael Buzinski  
Thank you so much. You have a great time.

Erin Manning  
Thank you for listening to the dead pixel society podcast. Three more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www the dead pixels society.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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