Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Melanie Whitaker, who her company is called you Are youe Marketing.
I'd love for you to introduce yourself and let us know what your experience has been that should make us trust you as an expert in the field or expertise of what you've built your business around.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I love that question because there are a lot of smoke and mirrors in the online world, so you've got to be able to walk your talk. So I like this question.
So, as you can see, my name is Melanie Whittaker and I am originally from England, but now I live in Spain.
And what has led me to this point is when I first moved to Spain, I gave up the normal work I was doing in England. I was a secretary. And when I got to Spain, I was being front of house and I was welcoming people into restaurants, which was really cool. You know, you've got to have a personality. You know, you're dealing with tourists, they want fun and it looks easy, but it's not easy. You know, when it comes to selling, it's how you are with people.
You know, are you going to give them the pushy sale or are you going to be relaxed? And I am always relaxed. I'm fun, I'm relaxed. And at the end of the day, which anyone in sales will, if you're going to do well in sales, then, you know this.
The customer, whether we like to say this phrase or not, they're king. Especially in an environment where I am, where it's a holiday destination, they're coming with their money and there are many, many, many restaurants on this island, so they get to choose where they're going to spend their money. And you need to make that process simple. Okay, so as regards, why should people trust me?
I am self taught. I have not gone off and done a media degree or, you know, gained all these fancy titles and qualifications. I am completely, completely self taught and I have a huge passion for marketing and I know I'm the freak in the room because most people would rather do anything than market their business.
And I just love it. You know, I genuinely love what I do. I actually had a friend out this weekend and she said something which doesn't it go to show you don't know what people are observing, you're just doing your do.
And she said, mel, it's very clear from your marketing, it's very clear you love it. But she went a step further and she said it's very clear that you care about Your clients.
So when you say, how should somebody know that they can trust you?
They can trust me because I walk my walk. I am never going to get a client to do something that I don't do myself.
So as regards trust, your marketing needs to do that because we live in a world where everyone's online. And if your business enables you to work with anyone online, then you could get a customer the other side of the world. You know, I could be asleep and someone could be devouring my content and be like, whoa, I really want to work with this person.
So how do you gain trust?
You gain it through what I do. For clients. It's about telling your story, being a real person with highs and lows and in betweens. And, you know, for the longest time, the perfect life has been pushed in the online space. Having the perfect house, the perfect car, and all the trimmings, which I have no problem with. I want people to be successful, but that isn't the flex. That shouldn't be what you lead with, with your marketing, because what are you selling to people?
What are they going to achieve by working with you? Why should they work with you? You need to make this really simple. So in answer to how do I get people to trust me?
I'm a totally open book.
I'm not afraid to say about things that have gone on in my life that weren't particularly great.
And I, you know, so many of my clients say to me, oh, my goodness, you're exactly how you are online.
And I'm like, because I don't want to be anything else. Like, if I put on this Persona and then you start to work with me and I'm nothing like the Persona, you're going to think you know what's going on. So keep it real, be true to you.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: I have a question about that, which is there.
There are many different types of businesses, and there are many different ways that those businesses can be marketed. If you're, like, in the service industry or are in home services or in construction and you're working with a team, let's say you're doing something super boring, like you're installing precast concrete walls and, you know, for. For communities and things like fireproof bass walls, whatever, how do you translate the concept of personality, of genuineness to an organization that's bigger than a solopreneur? Because it's very easy. If you're, you know, the eccentric guy that, you know, sells T shirt buttons on YouTube, like, look, look at all the buttons that I sewed on these t Shirts. Like, it's easy to be flamboyant when you're one.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: And you can.
It's basically, you're selling all your personality. But how do you advise your clients to work tactically to build personality into a larger project or a less sexy? You know, like, oh, we're Newton Crouch, and we. We do agricultural equipment, and we sell the best art. How do you infuse that excitement? Because I feel the excitement from you.
What is the practical. Like, what are the steps that you take to infuse that in larger organizations or more boring industries?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Okay, I'm gonna talk. From what I've done. So to put it in context, where I live is a tourist destination. It's like Mexico for you guys. So there's no other reason that anyone's gonna come to this island than to be on holiday, get a tan, and have a great time. That's it.
So with me being front of house, working for restaurants, as soon as 2020, when the world stopped, and then when it recovered, I started bringing my job into Facebook groups. Now, the. The competition on this island is fierce. You can walk down any street, and there's tons of restaurants. Okay, what I did was I shot all the content.
So I'm not being funny, but food is just food.
And, okay, when you're on holiday, you know, you can't wait to be there, and you want the cocktails and all the nice things. But how did I sell it? And the way that I sold it was I shot all the content. I did the photos, I did the videos, and I wrote the content myself, But I made it fun.
So let's say there was a dish where it's quite a bit of a show. The way that the waiter would serve the dish. And then I video that. Yeah. And you see the customers going, oh, this is so cool. And they're excited. So you capture the mood, capture the moment. But for something that, like, you're saying, if it's construction work and it's really dull and it's really boring, you still have to bring what you do to the forefront. So my advice to that would be, whether you're a small business or a big business, I don't care.
You need to do videos of the work being done. Now, the guys who are doing the work don't have to be full of personality, but show behind the scenes. Show behind them getting the work done. Right. Because this is the way that marketing is gonna go next year. It's already been like that for a little while, but it's gonna Go even more so next year.
People want to see behind the scenes. Okay?
So if you're a one, a one man band, let people get to know you as a person. If you're a bigger entity and you're employing staff, then I would do it where you go out and you shoot a new video each week and you go wherever they've gone to do the work and you shoot it and maybe get the staff to talk if they want to talk. You could even get them to show the knowledge of what they're doing.
So you shoot the video and then you get that worker to come on over and say, hey, do you want to just talk us through what it was you were doing there? Because if a customer is wanting reassurance in the construction game.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Then it would give them confidence where you've shot the video. You then get the member of staff and go, hey, what was it you were just doing there? And why were you doing that? Like, let's say, let's say there's a plastic plastering job that needs to get done or someone's had a leak and they're like, oh, my God, the house is a mess. We've had a leak.
If you've got a business with videos on guys that go out and repair the property after a leak and explain that and what they do to put it right.
If you saw a video like that, you'd be like, oh, my God, these guys know what they're doing. Like, I'm just gonna call these guys. They clearly know what they're doing. Help. You know, so it's about, you know, I'm just like that. That's my personality. And I know not everyone thinks like that, but it is about displaying your personality. You know, I'm an extrovert, but introverts can still do a good business. They can still have a good business going. It's just that they do it in a different way. They exude confidence, but quietly, okay? So whatever your personality is, bring it out. If you're naturally one who cracks jokes, crack a joke. Like you're not reading the news. Like, show your personality, relax with it. Yeah. Don't be feeling like you've got, you know, and especially if you come from corporate.
In corporate, you're put in a box and you're not allowed to do other things. And so people struggle when they set up their own business to just be themselves.
And what I say to my clients is, you don't have to jump through hoops.
Just show up, be yourself. Talk in a way that's right for you. Not what I'm telling you to do, but what's right for you. How do you talk?
Yeah, talk the way that's normal for you. And so my advice to that is show behind the scenes, shoot content.
If you've got staff, you get them to come on camera and explain what they've done.
Encourage your audience to book a call. You could say, hey, now that you've seen this video of how we do xyz, if this is something you're looking for, press on this link, click the link, book a call with us, you know, and that's making the company become real and relatable and encouraging people to get on a call after seeing a video.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: I, I think that's a really good point.
So there was a study done by Bright Local that looked at, for the home services niche, how do people actually end up finding businesses? And it's interesting because, like, there's an opposite scale of younger, like gen Z. About 26% percent of gen Z actually find their service business people through social media. But then it scales down as you go through Millennial, Gen X and boomers. Only 5% of boomers are turning to social media to get that.
And then you switch that on its head. And the primary engine for boomers to find service businesses, 74% are using search engines. But only 42% of Gen Z are using search engines to find service area businesses.
But I love the concept of like showing the work and showing the personality by showing the work, because maybe it's not that, you know, putting in these concrete walls is super sexy or whatever, but doing it competently, like that's the hardest love language of, of a business.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Just needs go into what you were saying about how some people are just not active on social media. And that's true. And this is why I do public relations. I don't put all my eggs in one basket. My clients come to me because they want to go bigger. So they're already doing their emails and their social media. They want to be on bigger platforms. Okay? But what I want to say to anyone, no matter what your age is and whatever your business is, start from the beginning, your website has to do the heavy lifting.
It has to tell people who you are, tell people what the business does. The videos need to do the talking so that if some people are not going to be on your social media accounts, if they come across your website, it's an easy decision.
It's just easy because you've explained what you do so that they look at that and go, whoa, these people know what they're doing. I need to book a call or I'm gonna send an email or I'm gonna make an inquiry. Like, you've got to make them move to action. That's what you've got to do.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Do you feel like the current marketplace of, you know, adding Chat GPT,
[00:14:42] Speaker B: you
[00:14:42] Speaker A: know, my friend Michael McDougald of Right Thing Agency, he says that ChatGPT is your least trained customer support representative, that it's more difficult for a business because there's more channels to contend with than ever before. I mean, think about a business in, like, 1960s. You had television, you. You had radio, you had newspaper. Like, there were maybe three channels.
Maybe you could do some direct mailers or get some people physically out there. Now we have, you know, social media. We've got podcasts, we've got, you know, paid ads. We've got all kinds of different options.
What do you.
How do you suggest to businesses to decide the right mix of channels and mediums?
[00:15:41] Speaker B: I love this question because it's something I go through myself and it's something I'm constantly discussing with my clients because there's so many platforms out there, right? So let's just look at social media for one.
It's very easy to feel like you have to be on everything. And my advice is don't.
I want you to, first of all, be hanging out where you know your clients would more than likely be okay?
So you need. You need to know your clients. You need to know what kind of age group you're predominantly working with, where they normally are, you know, you know how you say about finding your niche, right? So you need to find out. You need to know your customer inside out, right?
But here's the thing. You need to be where they are hanging out.
And also when it comes to apps, I hate TikTok, but I know many people are booming on that, right? But I don't like it. So I don't go on that app because I don't feel lit up and energized and happy on it. And so what I say to my clients is, like, it's the same for you.
If there's an app that you just don't like, don't be on it. Your energy is going to come across. Even if it's written word, people can tell, right?
So here's the deal. You need to find the apps that you know your clients are on, and then you need to do amazing content on those apps. It could be that you only Go. Do you know what? We're only going to pick two apps or we're only going to pick three apps.
It's far better to do less and well than everything.
And it's crap like that's getting you nowhere fast. So stick to two or three, right? You might want to do more if you know you can do more. But I would say stick to two or three that you know, your energy is lit up when you're on there. You know your audience is there, and stick to that.
It is a problem. In the modern world that we're in, there's so many things you can be doing, whether it's Google Ads or Facebook ads or whatever you decide to purchase. Right. Or you want to get a snazzy funnel. But here's what I say to all of my clients. This is why I called my business.
You are your marketing. Because you are.
You are the marketing. So you're the business. You're the one steering the ship.
So whatever you are showing up on, whatever marketing tools that you are using, do them well.
Right? Because I can get my clients pr, but if they're not behind the PR that they're doing, it will flop.
So you have to be animated about what you do, because if you're not excited about it, why should a customer be excited about it?
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Like, you have to multiply your own experience times their capability. You know, what do you think about planning as a business owner for seasonality and the concept of catching the wave? You know, there are trends that occur that are. Are that come and go. Is it better to hedge the safe bet of, you know, the smaller things that, you know, might not go viral and capture those foundations or, you know, how much risk should you put into trying to capture catch a viral moment or a trend or, you know, kind of balancing those two opportunities and those, those two marketing disciplines really well.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: I'm gonna completely kibosh what you've said. I hate the word viral. I hate it. It's. It's selling, it's dangling the carrot to so many people and making them feel inadequate. But when their followers are not building the way they want them to go at, and you know, they're putting in all their effort of creating the content and then they're like, oh, my God, only so many people are seeing this, or maybe only so many likes happened or nobody commented on the post. It's. You've got to let that go seriously viral. Let that word go. I do not let my clients use that word at all. And because let's face it, I'm getting them seen on bigger platforms. So, you know, we, we never discuss the word viral. Because what I'm going to say to that as an add on is, okay, let's say you do go viral.
Have you got the resources and the capabilities to deal with it?
If one of your ads that you run pops off and you've got your inundated with whatever it is, can you deal with that? Right? So viral, I need you to just release it, okay?
This is why when clients come to me, we discuss them as an individual alongside the business.
What's going to happen in 2026 is people want to know the business owner. And if it's more than a business owner, the team, the staff, right? They want to know. They want to know what's going on.
I say to my clients all the time, if people can be invested in reality TV stars which are not talented in any way, except they just turn up to loads of red carpet events and get drunk, then surely you can have confidence in yourself, in what you are doing as a human being and the gifts you bring to the world.
You have to release the fact that so many people will say to me, but my life is boring. It's not boring. It's just that you are afraid to bring it online, right? How many times do you see people, they'll record themselves doing all kinds of weird stuff. Maybe they're having a coffee or they're washing the dishes or they're ironing or whatever and it looks boring. But then they have that hook of on that B roll and they're just showing an everyday life.
Your life to you feels boring. But we're all leading a life, okay? Some are leading more exciting than the others. I get that. But at the end of the day, we all get up, we all work and we're all paying bills, right? You can make your life come alive, right? The best thing you can possibly do is as a business owner, and this is going to be huge in 2026.
You have to be building a community.
You have to.
As a business, you need new people coming in all the time. We all know that.
But what's going to happen is I am seeing daily people all around the world getting fed up with Facebook, getting fed up with Instagram.
And what they are doing now is, is they're moving to other platforms and building communities that are just lighting their soul up. They're getting the kind of people that they want to work with. They're doing it on a platform that feels good. To them. And people are seeing the content way more than if it was a Facebook group. Facebook groups, they're pretty much dying out. I mean, you can still get some good groups, but when you go in most Facebook groups, it's just a load of people saying, buy my stuff. Right?
What I suggest to my clients for 2026 is you have to have a platform where you are building a community.
We have to nurture relationships. People are not going to buy from you immediately. We already know there's many, many touch points that a customer has to go on before they're like, I think I want to work with this person. Okay, so whatever platform you decide to use to nurture your relationships with these people, create an amazing community.
Now, I am seeing daily because I am on the apps and I see it. I, I'm not just working for clients and working for myself. I observe a lot. I observe so much. And not just observing it for where I live, but for America, Australia, Europe. I'm seeing what people are saying.
And the thing I'm seeing every single day is people are saying all around the world, I want to find like minded people. I want to find my kind of people where I feel like I belong.
The days of spending loads of money and joining a hot shot mastermind or whatever you want to call it, and then getting nothing at the end of it, those days are going to just fade out. Because people, it's not just that, you know, they're going to do their due diligence before they purchase something, but they want to feel that if they buy it, that the people who are in that are going to be people they want to know.
Because how many times do you hear of people joining a mastermind and they get in and they're like, these are not my people.
So when you are showing daily who you are, the community that you've built, you interview people who are part of your community and people get to know this and it's real, it's a living being thing.
This is going to help you create the business you want. This is going to be massive in 2026. I've got several clients, new clients that I'm onboarding come next year and we've already created the platform they're going to be on. They know how they're going to nurture those relationships.
This is going to be massive. So if you're not doing this, mate, start doing it now. Ready for 2026.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: I, I see that as kind of a pendulum swing, you know, of like our culture of, you know, we we launched LLM capabilities which grossly exaggerated anybody's marketing budget to be able to, you know, create tons of articles and this and that and push and push and more and more and more.
But really, you know, like, there are people who strangely like, they talk to Chat GPT as if it's a real person. But I think you have to be in a certain mindset to like, feel satisfied with the conversation on Chat GPT. Like, there's actually like now a, a psychological diagnosis of people that, yeah, are like, oh, yeah, this is great. Because it's, it's essentially a yes man. You know, it's a digital yes man. It will always default to saying yes, even when it really should be no, when it's definitely a hard no. It's. It has a very hard time saying no and then it'll just lie.
So I, I am seeing as a trend, you know, you're kind of confirming it with your view of, you know, people looking and seeking out community, that we are kind of reaching the saturation point of, of marketing where, you know, just blasting it out there isn't going to work anymore. You know, Mark, I was doing, I've been doing SEO and digital marketing since 2007. So I remember the days, early days of when Facebook actually genuinely had, you know, a huge organic component to it, but that has just been squeezed for every penny by Zuckerberg that you cannot get a genuine organic experience on the platform anymore. It's all Pay to play, 100% pay to play all day, all night and day.
So I definitely agree that there's, there's definitely, you know, a seeking out of more genuine connection, genuine community.
And, you know, it also kind of rectifies something that's long been a problem in marketing, especially digital marketing, is the, oh, it's a huge ocean and I can just keep casting the net somewhere else. I can keep spending advertising somewhere else. And a complete disregard for your own, you know, your own clients. And it happens with like your website and you're not paying attention to.
If you're only ever posting for people who don't. You don't know anything about your product or service, then it's. Nobody who actually works with you is going to read any of your content.
And so that means that you constantly are going to have to cycle that audience to try to catch new fish when the best introduction to a new client is through somebody else. So if you, if you have made somebody happy with your product and you're providing them with content information, video output, tutorials, guides and content that they find value in. They're going to be sharing that with their peers. They're going to be sharing that on their networks, they're going to be sharing it with other people. And that's a warm lead that would cost you thousands to warm up in other mediums and channels. So don't forget to nurture the audience that you built.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Absolutely.
It's an art form, and this is what people overlook.
You have to remember, and it's so easy to forget.
We live on social media apps. We're just on them all the time. It's second nature. We're not even thinking about it. It's just part of life. And it's so easy to forget that behind every single social media icon is a human being living their life. And we forget this.
We just see the photo and just don't.
We just don't think about it. Right. And so it's the delivery of how you do things. Are you getting into genuine, and I mean genuine conversations with people daily?
It might mean nothing to you, but you could reach out to someone that you know needs support in something. And I'm not meaning just try and buy them, get them to buy your latest thing, but if you know someone struggling with something, you haven't spoken to them in a while, reach out. Yeah, maybe you did. You know, obviously my clients do pr, so they're constantly putting out the PR opportunities that they've done, and that's going to get people to pay attention to what they're doing.
See them being on podcasts and such, you know, whether it's magazines, whatever.
And they're getting to learn about that person way more than just being on social media. There's only so much you can tell of yourself on social media. Even if you go live, people are.
People don't have time.
So if people are on social media and let's say you've already gone live, the live is still there, and they click on it, and it lasts longer than 10 minutes. Most people are not even gonna even start listening to that because they don't have the time.
But if you go on a podcast, people have the time, whether they're commuting to work or they're driving or they're walking the dog or jogging. So people's concept of time when they're listening to a podcast is they've got the time.
They want to be educated. They want to learn about you, which there's only so much of you you could divulge on a social media app when you get them off that. And then they start to learn about you and your life story and why you set the business up and the clients you have, and just the results that these clients have had and how their lives were transformed. And now people are paying attention. They're like, wow, I like this person. I like what they stand for. You know, I've been saying this to my clients for a long time, and again, this will be huge in 2026.
You have to stand for something.
Now, I'm not meaning be controversial and clickbait and all of that, but sometimes people worry about talking about something for fear of getting canceled, for fear of people going, oh, it's. If I talk about that, maybe I'll lose some followers. You know, they want to stay safe.
And I'm like, it's your business.
You get to conduct the business the way you want to conduct it. People are going to judge no matter what you do. Right.
So if you're holding back for fear of, oh, if I do that, such a person will be upset. People are going to be upset no matter what. This is the culture we live in. We live in a world where people are going to cancel you for nothing. Right. So what are you going to do? Are you going to do safe marketing everywhere you are and try and please everyone, or are you gonna go, enough?
I'm doing me.
I'm gonna be true to me. I'm also very aware that there's going to be certain people that are not gonna like it. But I'm good.
I'm good. I'm gonna stand solid as an oak tree. I'm gonna stand in my truth. I'm gonna stand in my power because the right clients will want to know.
And when you get to that point, your marketing changes.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: I love that.
Why don't you go ahead and share what you're working on next?
Talking about social channels. Where can people interact with you? And find out.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've got my website, and that's called you are your marketing.
You can find me on Instagram and on threads under the same handle, uryourmarketing.
You can find me on Facebook under the name of Melanie Whittaker. And I've got the pink hair. And you can Find me on LinkedIn under Melanie Whittaker and with the pink hair.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: Love it. Thank you so much for your time. Fantastic getting your insights.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Thank you.
