Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Marketing your business can be overwhelming for a small business owner. Social media posts, networking, figuring out which platforms to use, running digital ads… it’s all very overwhelming and yet we’re still left asking ourselves, “could I be doing more?”
Stephanie Scheller, of Increase Your Impact, helps her clients take the guessing game out of marketing by teaching them to understand the psychology involved with creating effective and meaningful marketing campaigns that understand your target market, and communicates with them in a compelling way.
Rich: My guest today is The IMPACT Authority. After studying human psychology for more than a decade and building her business from scratch to walk away from her job in less than five months, she has worked with more than 2,500 companies and is dedicated to helping small business owners understand how to create their greatest impact.
Using the violin to tap into the human subconscious, she breaks down the psychology behind sales, marketing, and people management, to simplify implementation and accelerate growth.
She’s a TEDx speaker, a two-time bestselling author and award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Grow Disrupt, a company that designs and produces application focused, educational, and inspirational events for small business owners.
In her downtime, you’ll find her playing on the violin, out in the Texas hill country with her horse, or in the garage painting endlessly. Today we’re going to be diving into the psychology behind how to get more engagement online with Stephanie Scheller. Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.
Stephanie: Hey, I’m super happy to be here today. This is, I know we’re recording this on a Monday, but it’s the highlight of my week so far.
Rich: Well then, nowhere to go, but down. No, I’m just kidding. Alright, so psychology is something near and dear to my heart. I’ve often thought that marketing is just the business- end of psychology, and wondering if you agree. And if so, why do you feel that psychology is so important to marketing?
Stephanie: Of course, I agree. A hundred percent. I think there’s a few elements of business that really rely on psychology to make sense. And that is sales, marketing, and people management. All of these revolve around how the human brain works. And it’s funny you asked that question, because just last week someone asked me, “Stephanie, are influence and marketing the same thing?” And I said, influence is part of marketing, but marketing goes beyond just influence. However, marketing also cannot exist without influence like marketing is your strategy as well. It’s it is consistency.
There’s elements to marketing that goes beyond influence. But without influence, which stems from understanding how the human brain operates, and then how to align with that brain and then shift the brain, without that element, you will be putting out the most marketing messages out of anybody out there and you’re not going to make an impact. You’re not going to make marketing that works. So a hundred percent, I think they are they’re right there together.
Rich: All right. So we discussed this before we hit the record button, that a few months back I had Wes McDowell on the show talking about the psychology behind successful websites. What do you feel is the psychology behind successful social media marketing?
Stephanie: Yes, and I loved that episode, by the way. I thought that was just brilliant. Wes was on point. I think the key to the psychology behind social media is that is what social media is chasing is psychology. Think about this. Someone said to me the other day, they said, Stephanie, if you’re always chasing the algorithm, you will always be chasing the algorithm. And therefore you will always be two steps behind. The algorithm being right behind what’s really moving, because the algorithm has to notice how humanity is shifting, and then it shifts and then you shift. So you’re two to three steps behind.
If we instead focus on how are people engaging, what are they looking for – the person, not what is the algorithm looking for – on this platform, but what are people coming to this platform for. Because we all go to platforms for something different, right? We go to Pinterest to feel like we actually have some level of crafting bone in our body. We go to TikTok to be entertained. We go to YouTube to be entertained. We go to Facebook because we want to access our little echo chamber. But we go to all these different platforms for something specific. And if we can understand what draws people to that platform mentally, psychologically, then we can start to make that platform increase our engagement, make that platform make sense as an advertising tool, as a branding tool, et cetera. So that’s how I think psychology comes into play with social.
Rich: I absolutely agree. And I like that anecdote you told, that we are a step behind. If all we’re doing is chasing the anecdote. It’s almost like we’re playing tag, but we’re not tagging the person we’re supposed to be tagging, we’re tagging the person who’s actually supposed to be tagging that person. And then there’s definitely this delay.
And it also goes to the whole point of all these marketing things are about psychology. And marketing tools, and tactics, and algorithms, change all the time. They’re very fluid. They can be challenging, but humans change at a much slower rate. Like we’re different, but we’re similar to the generations that have come before us. We are interested in a lot of the same things. So it’s important to really understand who you’re selling to and what motivates them, more so than what motivates Facebook’s algorithm. Both can be important.
Stephanie: But at the end of the day, Facebook’s algorithm is chasing what’s important to them, right? Because Facebook gets paid the more time people spend on their platform. So why not instead of chasing the algorithm, the person who’s tagging the person, chase the person.
Understand, we’ve been talking about for years the importance of doing psychographic research when it comes to doing like your target market. And for the longest time people would give me just like the blankest stares. Like you want me to figure out what people are thinking? And I know that’s because it was hard enough to figure out who your target market was, but if you don’t take the time to ask yourself just simple questions, What are their aspirations? What do they love? What do they hate? What information do they need to feel comfortable making a buying decision? Those four basic questions can be the start of completely shifting how you approach marketing in general, but especially social media marketing, because there’s so much nuance to social media marketing.
Rich: So assuming the listeners out there buy into the idea of how critical it is to understand human psychology when it comes to their digital marketing, and specifically their social media, where do they start? Where do you think that they should start?
Stephanie: So I think the first place to start is, I almost don’t want to recommend a college book or anything. I think you guys talked about this or I’ve have heard you talk about Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. I think I that’s one of the best places to start.
And then I think it’s really important to understand that the human brain craves engagement. So really fun studies that have been done on this, and I’ll tie this back to social media just a second. But the human brain literally craves engagement . We actually will start hallucinating when we don’t have some form of engagement. This is why isolation chambers, like people go and do the water chambers where you lay in the water and the water is like perfect body temperature. And then they close the lid, so there’s no light and you’re not feeling anything. Like there’s literally nothing going on. And your brain actually after a very short time, I think it’s less than 10 minutes, I’d have to double check the number, your brain literally starts making sense stuff up because it needs some form of engagement.
And so if you really want to own social media, that is the most important key to recognize. Is that this is not a, ‘let me grab my megaphone and shout at my audience’. This is a, ‘how do I create engagement that stimulates the brain that gets it excited’. That makes the brain literally drop the addictive chemicals that makes our brain go, “Ooh, I got to follow this person. I got to check out what else they’re up to”. Who every time they see you, they get a little boost of dopamine that makes them so excited to hear from this person, right? A little mini you in your head gets all excited. That’s the key to creating social media content is making sure it’s engaging and not just engaging to you.
There are too many times I had someone recently who said he planted corn. That’s exciting. I was like, that’s exciting to you, that’s not exciting to your followers. Like no one else cares about the corn. What they do care about is the fact that you are gearing up to create a corn maze. That’s exciting for them. And let’s talk about corn mazes, let’s show videos of corn mazes. Let’s do stuff that gives them that engagement. Just sitting here and being like, we planted corn, is only going to get you so far.
Rich: So can you give us some examples, maybe some clients you’ve worked with, of that kind of content that slows the scroll – so to speak – and gets people to engage with you?
And it’s interesting that you use this word ‘engagement’ because of course, that also is a metric that platforms like Facebook use. And I’m not saying they’re the same thing. In fact, I’m purposely trying to draw attention to there’s human engagement, but then there’s engagement that’s like an algorithmic mathematical thing, how many people liked a comment, shared, clicked, all those sorts of things. There’s obviously some overlap if this was a Venn diagram. But I just interested to hear from you. What are some of the things that you have seen working that has slowed that scroll?
Stephanie: Yeah. And I think that’s a really solid point that I’m using the word ‘engagement’, but that is also a metric. And there is engagement, as the metric, comes from creating engagement. As when you just, again, we’re back to chasing the algorithm. If you’re just chasing engagement, clicks, likes, comments, then you are missing the point. Again, you, the audience, we’re missing the point. I did this for years, we chased clicks. We chased likes. It can be a great way to measure how well the content you’re putting out is doing, but it’s not the same. So chase the person, not the algorithm.
So the story I love telling is because it’s such a good analogy and it did so well for this client. We were working with a mobile tire shop a few years ago. I actually have a hard time. 2020 is like a gap year. It makes me lose track of how long ago stuff was. This was only 2019. At the end of 2019 we were working with a mobile tire shop, and they had a really small marketing budget to the point whereby the time they were paying us for creating content, there was not much money left for like actual ad spend. So we knew that we had to be really clever with our marketing.
So the first thing we did was we did all of this market research. What is our audience into? And what we found was that the people who are engaging with the brand – because it was a franchise so there’s a very specific design to the brand – and we found the people who are engaging with the brand are men going through their midlife crisis. A lot of them now are driving really nice cars, and they have nice jobs, and they’re golfing, and they’re fishing and all of these things. And so instead of going and creating a bunch of content around, “You should be having fun out of the golf course, call us to check your tires”, that is only going to get so much engagement.
So instead what we did – and this was the one that really bowled things over – we wrote a post. And it was a short post. It wasn’t super long, but it was “The three things you can do to improve your golf swing.” We pulled information from some of the top golfers we could find, their interviews and stuff, synthesized it down into three really good points on how to improve your golf swing for better accuracy. And the last point was to constantly be evaluating and adjusting and tweaking, because that is what golf is about. “And by the way, you should probably be doing this with your tires, too. Next time you go out to your car, do yourself a favor. If they look like this, give us a call. We’ll come to you so you can practice your golf swing and we’ll change the tires out for you.”
And stuff like that went crazy. It got shared, it got sent, it got copied and pasted out to people’s friends because it was what they were already thinking about. No one cares about tires. No one cares about tires, but they do care about improving their golf swing. And then they sent it out. And went by the way, really good article, a friend of mine is now running a mobile tire shop if you ever need him to come out.
And the funniest thing happened when the gentlemen last year was getting ready to shut down his shop. He said, we have to shut down the social media. We’re shutting this whole thing down in the next couple of months. We just can’t. There were some issues with the franchise. And he called me back a month later, he goes, “Oh my God, I never would have guessed what a difference it would make having you guys create our content versus us.” Like we took over and we just went from literally we were getting 8 to 10 calls a day, and we were getting like 3 to 5. And I was like, it’s because the difference being his content was very, “Call us. We do tires calls. We do tires calls. We do tires.” And no one cares, not to be mean, but no one cares.
So I think that’s probably the best story that helps it make senses. You can figure out what your person wants, what they need, and you give that to them and then tie it to what you provide. And that’s what will get more engagement on social media across any of the platforms.
Rich: Yeah. And again, it worked out well, because if I’m understanding the business model correctly, they can come out and change your tires while you’re actually playing 18 holes. So there was that nice tie in right there. Yeah. Nobody’s going to think about their tires until they need to think about their tires.
Stephanie: Which is usually when you’re stuck on the side of the road. And he didn’t do emergency calls, so it was like this balancing act, trying to get people to think about.
And this is the same thing, right? If you’re a restaurant sitting there trying to get people to engage with your social media. People don’t think about that food until they’re hungry. They see it and they go, “Oh, that looks cool”. But maybe they hit a light, but they keep scrolling. You’ve got to find a way to tie it into something that’s going to be forefront on their mind. Keep them engaged, so that they do read it, so that it’s there in their head still when they do get hungry at four o’clock, five o’clock in the afternoon. And now they’re thinking about dinner and all they can think about is that mac and cheese you posted.
Rich: So if somebody is thinking of doing this, what kind of research do you recommend they do? We’ve talked about the fact that maybe they should be reading some of the core books in this, like Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Should they be reading books like that and other resources, should they be interviewing their clients, should they be looking at their metrics? What kind of research is needed to successfully move down this pathway?
Stephanie: Yeah, so obviously, yes, start with the book. At least start with Cialdini’s book that we talked about. The other thing I would recommend is come up with some, first of all, you probably have some way you connect with your clients at some level. There’s some kind of correlation there between how you guys surf the internet. So the first thing I typically start with is I ask them, “So what do you do on social media? How do you scroll? What gets you to stop? So the very first place I would start is just doing some self-analysis. How am I using social? Where am I going?
Because the other thing that I see a lot is people trying to use platforms they don’t understand, and then getting no results. So if you don’t understand the platform, you’re going to have to do a lot more research. Look at the platforms you are using first. How are you using them? What causes you to pause? What causes something to get stuck in your mind? Start to actually actively pay attention to this. That’s the first place.
The next thing I would do is I would start asking questions of your current clients. So just going to them and saying, “Hey, I’m doing a little bit of market research. I heard this crazy chick talking on this podcast I listened to that I love, and she told me I needed to ask questions. So do you mind if I ask questions?” I always tell people, blame me. I have no problem with you blaming me and saying that I told you to do this. But ask, ”What platforms are you on? How often do you think you’re logging on when you go there? What are you looking for? And you’re going to get some kind of blank stares. Because if you think about this, I actually have the Facebook app on my phone, I move it all the time. I move it to different screens. I move it because I want to go to Facebook intentionally. And I found that if I leave it in the same place all the time, it becomes like a habit. Like I can be inside of Facebook and not even realize it.
And what I started to realize was that I go to Facebook for two reasons. I go to Facebook for affirmation, like my personal echo chamber, the people that I know I want to see, the people where I get that feel good juice. And I go there for entertainment. When I’m feeling bored, when my brain’s not stimulated, I flip over to Facebook real quick.
And so you may have to ask a couple questions. Because for me, it took me a little bit of time to figure out why I go to Facebook. Because you ask someone, and I’ll ask you. Rich, why do you go to Facebook?
Rich: Okay. Honestly, these days only for self-loathing, I can’t stand Facebook these days. I’m sorry. I’m going to admit it. If I want to get entertained these days, I actually go to Imgur. Which is really just Reddit, but only the images. So that’s where I go. It’s funny, sometimes all of a sudden, I know I’m a social media guy, I’ll realize I haven’t been to Facebook in a week. And if it wasn’t for Facebook Marketplace, it might not be that often. Oh my God. I’m going to have to edit this out. I don’t even think I can admit this on the air.
To answer your question, if I do, when I am in a better place, when I go to Facebook it’s usually just to catch up with friends. But my girlfriend actually is friends with most of my friends and family, so she usually just tells me what I need to know. Yeah. And so the reason I asked is because a lot of times you end up with very similar answers, where all of a sudden, you’re asking someone something they’ve never had to think about, and you’re getting a, like what? And so what do you do with that information at this point?
Like if you were my target market that would tell me that maybe Facebook isn’t the place to be marketing to you, and actually there’s a whole section of people who are in that same zone so that’s your target market, don’t be wasting your time on Facebook, right? Like you have to understand this. So go to your clients. So start with the books. Second to yourself, third to your clients.
And then fourth, I would start to look at what research is published online. What are they saying about whatever platform you’re considering wanting to get on. And then the last place I would go is I would actually dig into the platform and start to look at what is getting engagement. Now engagement in terms of the metric. Not just engagement in terms of likes and comments and whatever forms of metric they measure. But you’re not just looking at, okay, so this was a live reaction video and it got 20 likes. Okay. All right. Live reaction videos. Instead, I want you to think about, so why did the live reaction video get more engagement? What was it about that? And when we start to ask ourselves, what was it about that that got the engagement, we stop from chasing the algorithm. Again, you’re just replicating a video someone else did, and now the algorithm is changing, and you’re left behind now. Now we’re chasing the human element behind it.
Okay. That got reaction because people felt like they got the real person behind the channel because it was a live reaction. That’s why it got engagement. Okay, perfect. So what we need to do is ask ourselves now, how do in everything we do, we bring this feeling that they are getting access to the person behind the channel, not just the channel itself. How do we help them feel like they’re connecting, and show that personality that people are searching for and desperate for.
So that’s where I would start. I think by the time you get to the end of step five, you’ll have a pretty good grasp on how your platforms working.
Rich: All right. Now the influencers you mentioned earlier, you mentioned it in a different way, but I want to talk about influencers for a second. Because very often if we are looking at other people who are successful online, we’re going to run into an influencer. And then all of a sudden we’re like, let me do what they’re doing, or what are they doing that’s so fantastic because they have huge followings. Is this a good idea or is this misleading?
Stephanie: Oh, no. I personally feel like a lot of times it’s a terrible idea. You can end up with… and then my favorite story to go back to is this influencer a few years back who had several million followers, an Instagram influencer. And she’d of course been getting sponsors to sell all of this other merchandise. And she finally decided she was going to launch her own brand, her own t-shirt brand, her own clothing brand. And she goes and gets the photo shoot done and she designs the clothes, and she sets it all up for sale. And she sold to her millions of followers a whopping total of 20 shirts. And then she makes this big post blaming the followers for not buying, because now she can’t get any of the shirts and it’s y’all’s fault that these 20 people who wanted the shirts, aren’t going to get them because we had to make a minimum of 50 shirt order, and we didn’t make that minimum. And so this is y’all’s fault. And it was one of the best examples of how being an influencer doesn’t mean you actually have influence over anything.
You can get likes and stuff, but if you can’t actually move people to action, if you can’t influence them to take a step to do something that they were leaning away from doing or weren’t even considering doing, then it’s an absolute waste. And a lot of times these influencers really, truly have no sales to back their numbers. And so their vanity numbers, their vanity metrics, and I would rather have a handful of really solid followers who buy, then a hundred followers who like everything, but refuse to buy anything.
So I think a lot of times going for the influencer concept on social media marketing is incredibly misleading. It can be incredibly expensive and very few of them seem to understand how to actually convert those buyers or those followers into buyers. So I personally shy away from it pretty heavily.
We do use what we call an influencer marketing program, but our definition of ‘influencer’ is way different than the definition of they’ve got a million followers on Instagram or on YouTube. We’re looking for people who, when they say something, people actually do it, because they trust and respect that individual. And a lot of times that person’s talking to a very small audience of people who will actually do what they tell them to do. That’s more of an influencer to me, and that’s someone I will actually pay as opposed to a million vanity numbers.
Rich: Now we talked a lot about engagement, both for humans as well as the algorithm, but if we’re in business, engagement is just one metric that we may pay attention to. And likely not the most important one, not the one that keeps the lights on. So do you have any recommendations falling under this psychological umbrella for moving people from social media to our websites? There’s one thing to get a like or comment or share, there’s another thing to have somebody click on the link to either visit our site or to buy something through that site. What can we do to increase our chances there?
Stephanie: There was, I’m trying to remember. Oh, I’m trying to remember what’s his name called it when he was talking about the websites. But there’s a really important concept to keep in mind, but it was the very first one he talked about. I call it stage selling, but it’s this idea that people opt in bit by bit. So getting the like, we have to break this down. Too many times people use social media to try and sell the product or service. Social media’s job is not to try and sell the product or service, but we’re sitting there going, you need to buy this, you need to buy this, you need to buy this. And people feel like they get all the information there so there’s no reason for them to go to the website. Instead, break it down into some of your posts, literally their whole point is just to get the likes and the actual engagement. Because this is how the algorithms, I hate that word since I’m saying don’t chase the algorithms, but it is a piece of how they work, because it’s a piece of how the human mind works. We like familiarity, so we like seeing stuff from the same people in our newsfeed consistently because it makes us feel comfortable.
If our newsfeed was constantly changed up and we never saw the same person twice, we would actually get fairly frustrated with it because we don’t get to follow the life, the story of our friends and family, and the companies that we actually care about. Some of what we do has to be to get people to engage with us consistently, so that we are showing ourselves to them. But then when you do post something that’s designed to draw them to the website, the key is to keep in mind that your only goal, first and foremost, is to get their attention, right? The very first line has to be the attention getter or the picture. Something has to be the sizzle.
And then the second bit, the second bits goal is just to get them interested enough to pull them over to the website. So you’re not giving them all the information. Maybe you do a post that says, “This is unlike anything you have seen before. This event will blow your mind. And it’s probably not for most of you reading this. This event is designed for business owners who are serious about growing their business”. Or it may actually, I would even stop it before you got there. I would just say, “This event probably isn’t even for you, but for those of you who want to know who it’s for, click here.” And I would probably refine that content, but the idea is all I’m trying to do is get them over to the website. And I drive them to a specific landing page on the website, not the homepage.
I love what he said. He was like, the homepage has way too much stuff going on, drive them to a specific page that then draws them to another page, that then draws them into the actual purchase. Or maybe it’s your next opt-in from them as you get them to the website and now you click them, you get them to click ‘learn more’ on the product. So that’s another mental opt-in for them where they’re making the clicks. They’re buying into the product. The more content they’re consuming so that they are now clicking, okay, I want to buy this checkout.
But the key is to remember that social media is not about selling. It’s about getting their attention. It’s about driving traffic. But we have to stop trying to sell for the most part. And I say for the most part, because I think restaurants fall into a slightly different category. A lot of times they are like that’s as far as you’re going to get is your picture of- I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this on this podcast – your picture of food porn, right? That’s all. You’re not going to drive them to a website, get the big server out in front of them. That’s got to be good enough to bring people in. But a lot of times you’re trying to drive into the website. So stop trying to sell from the post and just try and intrigue them, hint, tickle, tease. What’s his name talked about FOMO, right? Use some FOMO. Give them a little bit of “Hey, you need more info because this is really interesting. Go to the website to check it out” and draw them over.
And the other thing this does, and then I’ll stop talking after that, but the other thing this does is it allows you to test what’s working and what isn’t. So if you are putting out posts, and it’s not driving traffic to the website, the website’s not the issue. It may be the issue, but you don’t know that because you didn’t get any traffic to it. Now you know to tweak and adjust the next post you put out, because that is what has to shift first. It allows you to break your marketing down into various aspects. And so you can change the one aspect without having to change the whole funnel to try and get the conversions you’re looking for.
Rich: If I think about social media posts, I can throw them into three different categories. The organic posts, we’re not paying for it. The paid posts, which we obviously are. And then the retargeting posts, which is we’re paying for it, but we know them, it’s a warm audience, they visited our website, they liked our page. They are on our email list, whatever the case may be. Do we need a different approach for each one of those types of posts, or is one size fits all in terms of this?
Stephanie: One size fits all is rarely the answer for anything marketing wise. So I hate to be the person to put more work on everyone’s plate, but one size fits all is not going to be the answer. As far as the organic posts, these are the ones who are going to draw people into you. So there really does need to be a lot more sizzle.
A friend of mine talked about the sizzling steak of marketing. He’s like, there has to be sizzle, it has to look good. It has to draw people in. Then there has to be substance. There has to actually be a piece of steak. Because if you show up to a steak house and there’s lots of sizzle, but the steak tastes like crap.
Rich: Or tofu.
Stephanie: Yeah, or tofu. You’re not showing up again, there has to be actual steak there. And so the organic posts you need that sizzle, you need a lot of sizzle to get their attention. The retargeting posts can be, now there still has to be some sizzle here because this is the world we live in, but it can be weighted a little bit more towards, “Hey, I know you were thinking about it.” It can be focused on building.
There’s one company that I follow that, or they follow me through the retargeting. But they do these fake lashes and if you ever click on their website, they’ll be following you for the rest of your life. It’s amazing how very aggressive they are with their ad spend. And what’s really interesting and fun is that they’re retargeting, it’s all color, it all has consistent feel. So I recognize it as the same company again and again. But they will have a celebrity come on and run an ad for them to me. So I’m getting that kind of proof of concept, that building trust. Oh well if this person likes it and they’re showing me, they’re not the same company, so they can do it, then maybe it’s as easy as the company says it is. And retargeting can be focused more on trust and on building on a set foundation.
Whereas I think a lot of times like the organic ads that are being run, just to draw people in really have to focus on more on the sizzle side, more on the excitement side, more on the entice them in with the promise that the stake is there on the website is there on the rest of our content. But it’s really more of a lean towards this. Let’s make it sexy. Let’s make it cool. Let’s make it funny. Let’s make it interesting. Pull people in.
And where we end up in trouble is where we forget that a lot of that organic stuff, a lot of generic ads, the traffic ads, they really got to lean towards that sizzle. Retargeting is where you can lean towards the steak, but don’t forget, like nothing can exist without the other one. There has to be some elements in each one.
Rich: More on a spectrum.
Stephanie: Yes. Exactly.
Rich: Stephanie, this has been great. If people are interested in learning more about you, your company, your violin playing, where can we send them online?
Stephanie: Yeah, so they can check out my website thestephaniescheller.com, we have some really good videos and resources. If you actually go to the stephaniescheller.com/marketing, there’s some really good, like it’s just details on how the psychology of marketing in general works so that it can be applied to whatever your social platforms or your website or your flyers or whatever. That would probably be the best place to go.
Rich: Awesome. Thank you so much for stopping by today. I really appreciate the conversation.
Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Rich.
Show Notes:
Stephanie Scheller teaches her clients how psychology can make the biggest impact on their marketing efforts. Check out her website full of resources and information on how psychology and marketing work together.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 20+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.