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Participant: I guess not.
Sam Bakhtiar: Because …
Participant: So basically I’m just – I need to tweak systems here.
Sam Bakhtiar: Well, here’s what it is. OK? Paid marketing and I hope I don’t offend anybody here, is like paying for it, for it.
Participant: What?
Sam Bakhtiar: It’s like paying for it, John [0:00:27] [Inaudible]. Free marketing is actually not paying for it. It’s something – it’s feeling. There’s interaction there. Which one do you want? Do you want – I’m sorry. Do you want a hooker or do you want a wife? And basically a lot of times, we are – all we want to do is find out – hey, I want to push a button. I’m going to send some flyers. I want to get this. I want to get this. I want to do that. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. Pay per click, five bucks a click. Direct mail, we got to pay all these kinds of stuff, right? But if you know that most of your clients are already coming from stuff that is free, what is free? What is the difference between these two?
Participant: Money.
Sam Bakhtiar: That and these have relationships built in. These don’t have relationships built in.
Participant: Got you.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK? So if it were relationship marketing, definitely that would be a great thing. I will tell you right now all these things I do, these don’t work as well anymore. I don’t know about you because you said you can put them in. They take them out. You put them in. They take it out. I don’t want to play the cat and mouse game.
Participant: No, no. That’s what will happen.
Sam Bakhtiar: So this is gone, right? So let’s go by these, right? Facebook ads. I have never been able to monetize on that. General Motors just pulled their ads from Facebook. They couldn’t monetize on it.
Participant: It has been a while since I did them …
Sam Bakhtiar: That becomes an ego thing. Now if anybody has made Facebook ads and had actually got a positive ROI on it, please talk. JJ, you did? OK. So nobody here got ROI on it. I talked to the main man Josh Carter and he said there’s no positive ROI on Facebook ads. So things will change.
Gift cards. OK? Gift cards like the $100 gift cards for somebody to come in and all that. But will we ever get a retention rate on that? Is that more of a gimmick people coming in or is that like a real thing that has actually got a lot of clients from?
Participant: I think it was more so like people just referring people and giving the cards and to bring them in with them. So it’s like I’m a new client. You’re the existing client. I’m coming in with you. So it’s not like the cards were needed.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. But I mean it doesn’t cost that much.
Participant: Right.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK?
Participant: But it’s paid. That’s why I put it on there.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. So you guys get clients from every referral and this basically goes to that, right?
Participant: Right.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. Flyers, cars, buses. Now as far as you …
[Crosstalk]
Participant: Yeah, like dropping them. Like pounding the pavement, getting in the businesses, postcards, flyers for promotions and just bring them into the buoys [0:03:16] [Phonetic] and stuff, trying to let the public know.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. So let’s look at it like that, the return on that. Usually if something goes in the post office, they say, “Now you would be lucky to get a one percent,” and that’s like that’s permission-based.
Participant: Right.
Sam Bakhtiar: Now if you get something that’s not permission-based, would you even look at it? I basically don’t even look at what’s coming into my inbox. Now I guess I’m going to – because that’s something on my car [0:03:45] [Indiscernible]. Now, these [Indiscernible] the numbers. I know a lot of people just don’t like – a lot of cities frown upon that.
Participant: They do. Yeah. So we have – the cars was like three years ago when our first location launched. We tried it. It didn’t really work. The businesses, we’ve gotten a little bit of return on, but one percent return …
Sam Bakhtiar: Is it worth your time?
Participant: That’s exactly what I was getting at. It’s probably not worth the time. That’s the best in it.
Sam Bakhtiar: I got it. OK.
Participant: [Inaudible]
Sam Bakhtiar: [0:04:20] [Indiscernible] marketing, how?
Participant: The flyers …
Participant: The flyers …
Sam Bakhtiar: In businesses, if I do a JV in a business and do that kind of [Indiscernible] marketing, it has to be a relationship component to it. But just going out there and throwing stuff all over the place …
Participant: So you could do like a postcard or a flyer with some JV.
Sam Bakhtiar: I will tell you where I got some good response off of this. If I put some flyers, like for example it would be a car wash where people are standing there and they’re going to see it. I’ve got people [Inaudible]. By just going out and putting on cars and stuff like that …
Participant: No …
Sam Bakhtiar: You’re not going to get any, right?
Participant: No. We only did it once like three years ago.
Sam Bakhtiar: You pissed off the city [Phonetic]. You got a call for it, right?
Participant: Probably so.
Sam Bakhtiar: Yeah, yeah. OK. Google pay per click. I think you could break even.
Participant: OK.
Sam Bakhtiar: You say you [Inaudible].
Participant: They said – yeah, I mean we’re first page for the cities and …
Sam Bakhtiar: OK.
Participant: … name. So …
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. Anybody doing Google pay per click here? Nobody is doing it here?
[Crosstalk]
Sam Bakhtiar: And what is your two cents on ROI on it?
Participant: Well it’s better than Facebook ads but still no.
Sam Bakhtiar: Because Facebook – it’s Facebook interruption marketing. Nobody goes to Facebook looking for a personal trainer. All of a sudden you pop up and oh my god, I need a personal trainer that you might – and these people when you go to the [0:05:46] [Indiscernible] it’s more targeted than [Indiscernible]. Now direct mail …
Participant: That’s the one I had a big question mark on.
Sam Bakhtiar: OK. And we discussed a little bit earlier, right?
Participant: Yeah.
Sam Bakhtiar: You know what I mean? With new methods that are out there right now where we talked about – it talks about a method that now these people know about. I think it’s worth testing.
Participant: OK.
[Crosstalk]
Sam Bakhtiar: Yeah. With the direct mail, you don’t want to go out there and go ahead with 10,000 and try [Indiscernible]. Let’s try it out first. See what kind of response rate then go back and do the numbers just like what Michael did [Indiscernible]. Do the numbers. As long as you can break even in the front end, go in and do it.
Participant: Yeah.
Sam Bakhtiar: So direct mail, so I [Indiscernible] breakeven [Indiscernible]. Yeah. Now here’s the thing. I’m not against the magazines, newspapers or anything like that. I just know it doesn’t work in my market anymore. Again, every market could be different. Let me tell you what the trick to this is though. Many people don’t know the trick to this and this is how these people make a lot of money.
So let’s just say one magazine came out here and said, oh [Indiscernible] Chino Hills. And it’s going to be $600 a month for a quarter page ad.
Participant: Yeah.
Sam Bakhtiar: Then another magazine comes in and says, let’s go to Chino Hills. It’s going to be $800. Come on. Which one would you do?
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