BizTech Superhero

Joshua McNary [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Biz Tech Superhero, the podcast that empowers you to unleash the technology superpowers within your business. I'm your host, Joshua McNary. I'm joined today by today's superhero, Mickey Mellen, technical managing partner at Green Mellen based in Marietta, Georgia to talk about tech inside his web marketing firm. Mickey, welcome to the show.

Mickey Mellen [00:00:22]:
Hey. Thanks, Josh. It's good to be here.

Joshua McNary [00:00:23]:
So, Mickey, for folks that are just meeting you for the first time today, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Mickey Mellen [00:00:29]:
Sure. So I'll kinda go way back to the, early two thousands, maybe kind of the the 02/2008 kinda range. That's when our company got started. It's also roughly when we met. We met around the same time my company started. So you and I met through very geeky technology kind of stuff. We were both heading to a the Wear two point o conference about geo stuff and Google Earth and all that, and we were both tweeting from separate separate airplanes with this conference hashtag and connected there and have known each other since then. So that was the super technology on that.

Mickey Mellen [00:00:56]:
But then, yeah, I worked at a church at the time and, left the church to start my own company. And a friend of mine from the church, Ally, also left to start her own company. We got together in 02/2009 to start Green Mellen, her Ally Green, Mickey Mellen. Green Mellen. There you go. We've been building websites and stuff ever since and doing digital marketing and, lot more in the recent decade in the messaging and just kinda figuring out stories and making sure that all is cohesive through everything, and it's been a fun journey.

Joshua McNary [00:01:20]:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's it's fun how we met, back in the early days of some of the the, the tweeting and and social medias of the time and, and have stayed in touch over the years. So that's a that's a fun fun origin story for us. But, as far as the company goes, like, what's your what's your specialty now? I mean, there's a lot of web marketing firms and such. So get take a take a moment and explain kind of what your what your angle is on the market. You mentioned the the strategy, the content, and such, but just may give a little more context to that.

Mickey Mellen [00:01:49]:
For sure. Yeah. So websites are still the core of what we do. Any successful marketing is still gonna lead to a website. So we build WordPress powered sites, that's kinda been our core. That's still the main core of what we do. It's about a third of our business, but it's still the main piece people need. But before we build sites, we require that we do some degree of messaging strategy.

Mickey Mellen [00:02:05]:
So if you're familiar with building a story brand or those kinds of ideas, like, we spend about a month understanding your story, who you're trying to serve, why they should care about you, and why you're better than your competitors, why you're worse than your competitors, just understanding all that stuff to then go into the site. And then on the backside, once the site is built, there's other pieces. We'll do a marketing strategy to figure out where you should spend your time online, where are your customers? Should you be on TikTok or should you be on LinkedIn or should you do more to get your stuff to show up in chat g p t or should you be doing email newsletters or probably some combination of a few of those and then kinda helping companies, yeah, build from there, measure the data, and and kinda keep on going. So it's Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:02:38]:
Kind of

Mickey Mellen [00:02:38]:
the whole flow in a perfect world. Again, we have relatively few clients that do all that. They'll come to us with an existing site, need marketing help or, you know, different pieces. But in a perfect world, say, hey. Let's do the messaging, figure out who you are, what you're about, build a beautiful website, and then market after that. And that's kind of kind of the goal there.

Joshua McNary [00:02:52]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, my audience knows my my, pitch regarding strategy around technology. And what you're doing there in the web marketing space is is building strategies and not just, not just doing things, but actually trying to make it work in a, outcome based, solution based model, which is which is awesome. That's why we get along so well. So yeah. Great great to hear that. And, and I'm sure a lot of people that are listening that know me can relate to the messaging that you're you're throwing out there with regards to what you are all doing down in in Georgia.

Joshua McNary [00:03:20]:
Okay. Well, let's get into technology and how your firm uses it. I mean, you're a technologist. That's why we get along. We met in a geeky way. But, tell, you know, tell us how you're incorporating technology here in 2025 in regards to to your firm and kinda what are some of the highlights and and things that are exciting you right now in with regards to technology inside your business.

Mickey Mellen [00:03:41]:
Yeah. So it's an interesting question. Like, how do we incorporate technology? Like, it's all technology. I mean, everything you do in technology from how we communicate to how we practice our project management to everything we do. But, yeah, in terms of what's different in 2025, I think the big shift for us is how AI is impacting search. You know, search isn't going away, but it's it's changing a lot, and, we can get pretty deep into this. I'll kinda do the the quick overview is that so the way I've heard it's phrased is, Google is a reward for getting your marketing right in all the other channels. You know, we're seeing people search Google a lot more as a place to do research.

Mickey Mellen [00:04:12]:
They go to Google to see who they want at the end because they do the research on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, via email, talking to friends, on Nextdoor, in chat t b t, those kind of places. So how do we get our clients to show up in those places so that people say, oh, they're the answer. That's the company I need. And then they go to Google to find their website, and they type it in there. Yes. And that's a big shift. You know? People certainly still do some research on Google. I'm not saying it's all gone.

Mickey Mellen [00:04:34]:
SEO is not dead, but it's certainly changed a lot, and we just don't focus on that as much anymore. We're not worried about, you know, ranking well for new homes in Atlanta, Georgia or whatever on linked on Google because people just aren't searching it there. They're again, they're seeing cool videos and seeing other things and talking to friends and then they go to the site and type in that home builder, you know, company to find their site there. So it's a pretty big shift, and it's been fun, though. It's fascinating to watch and, follow the trends. The other challenge with that too, though, is it's much harder to track. You know, it used to be we could track every little thing that happens, and now we can't as much. Because along with the changes I mentioned, all the social media platforms are discouraging links more and more and more.

Mickey Mellen [00:05:09]:
I've heard a study that says your your, content on social media will get 10 times the the engagement if you don't have a link in it. So you don't wanna put links in your social media stuff, but then you can't track it. People will see your your post on social media, see how great you are, then they'll manually go to Google, type in your address and find you. So it's a win. You did it, but you don't really know why for sure because it just shows that it came from Google. And that's a challenge we also see if people have analytics. They'll say, oh, man. Our best traffic's coming from Google, so we need to invest more in Google.

Mickey Mellen [00:05:36]:
And that's not necessarily true because it probably came because that cool thing you did on reels or wherever it happened. It's just hard to put put it together. And so it's a challenge, but a fun one, and we're seeing good results from a lot of that.

Joshua McNary [00:05:46]:
Okay. So the the two two themes I picked out of there that I wanna explore with you a little bit are you in implied that the brand SEO, so, like, the direct brand SEO to be found easily once they know who you are, that's still relevant. And that's always been the easiest thing to rank for. And it's, you know, it's your actual

Mickey Mellen [00:06:04]:
Yes. Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:06:05]:
For sure. So that that that there's that component that still seems, relevant and useful, say, kind of in the traditional SEO sense, but it's because they're finding them finding you elsewhere in other other channels or perhaps in the AI search and things like this that that that leads to that. And then the other part that you were talking about was the attribution component. The the the fact that it's hard to get to properly attribute where the the the the leads or the opportunities are coming from. Because back in the old days, we were able to track everything. It was all linked together with the cookies and the the search things. And and, of course, there's been a general, privacy trend, over the last decade even that has has led to that. But then we also have the pressures of these platforms wanting to keep you within their platform so that people like us or our clients will end up needing to pay them to be seen in that in that platform.

Joshua McNary [00:06:55]:
So those are some of the themes I heard there. I guess with regards to your business, for Green Mellen, how have you seen this play out for you, in regards to your ability to market? I mean, I I I as I as I recall in prior conversations, and it's true for my business, there's a lot of referral, direct referral happening.

Mickey Mellen [00:07:13]:
For sure. Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:07:13]:
But from a standpoint of people finding you and or, you know, discovering you outside of listening to this podcast, you know, how are they finding you, and how are you keeping track of that in the search and AI world that we're in?

Mickey Mellen [00:07:24]:
Yeah. So a big shift we've made for ourselves and for our clients is shifting away from, like, traditional keyword SEO stuff into short form video. We're doing a lot more short form video for ourselves again and for our clients, and that seems to be helping a lot. Again, it's hard to measure for sure, but, like, we've seen two big clients. I guess I'll back up a little bit. So Ally, my business partner, has been doing some short form video. I'll come up with topic ideas for it, kinda write a script, and she'll do it, and she does a great job with those. We've had two of her old friends that have reached out that run big companies saying, oh, I didn't realize you did that.

Mickey Mellen [00:07:51]:
I need your help, and they become great clients of ours. And I attribute that to them seeing the video of her and saying, oh, I know Allie. And, oh, she does this stuff, and she has great solutions. And then finding us. And, again, we're not getting a click from that. We're just having to to measure it ourselves. And the solution seems to be to some of this attribution is ask people how they found you. But that's I'm you know, it's still worth doing.

Mickey Mellen [00:08:09]:
You should ask them how they found you, but they're not usually right. Like, it's it's Right. Often wrong. So I see see two stats on that that really stood out. One is when you give people a list of options, like, how did you find us? A b c d or e? A and b win every time. No matter what order you put them in, people choose the top ones. And then I saw, kind of an anecdote, but it was a company that is, the company references a big YouTube channel quite a lot. They're not related to them all.

Mickey Mellen [00:08:31]:
The YouTube channels never mentioned them, but they they reference them a lot. And one of the questions was, did you find us? How did you find us? And one was because of that YouTube channel. And, like, 20% of the people said it was because of that YouTube channel, which could not have been. The YouTube channel's never mentioned them. They've never advertised, but people like, oh, yeah. I guess they're with that

Joshua McNary [00:08:45]:
YouTube channel. Affiliation. Just the affiliation. It's whatever the most recent thing is that they that pops up their head that's affiliated to that list you're looking at.

Mickey Mellen [00:08:52]:
Right. But it's not how they found them all. They couldn't have found them that way. So it's yeah. You never know. And so the challenge becomes, like, like for us, our CPA firm that we use. We saw this guy named Jason Blummer speak at a conference ten years ago. He did a great job.

Mickey Mellen [00:09:03]:
He was fascinating. Like, this guy's cool. So we followed his blog and followed his podcast. He's kinda followed him from afar for years. And then a few years ago, Ali and I said, we need a new CPA. Who should we get? Let's get Jason. So I went to Google and typed in Jason Blumer, found his site, clicked on it, hired him and all that. And, again, if he has good metrics, I'll say, wow.

Mickey Mellen [00:09:19]:
They found us from Google, but Google's doing great for us. And, no, we didn't really. Again, it's good that you show up with your name. You need to have that. We found you because you do great podcast and blogging. You speak and things that you just can't connect one to one, and it's a challenging place to be. I'm seeing other other things I've seen online. So Rand Fishkin, you're probably familiar with Rand.

Mickey Mellen [00:09:37]:
You're audience man. But he had SEO Mas. He ran for years. Now SparkToro that we'll probably talk about later. But he talks about he's seeing companies are complaining, like, our traffic's dropping. Our revenue's going up, but we're getting less traffic. And people are smart people are not upset by that. They know it's better traffic coming inside.

Mickey Mellen [00:09:51]:
It's the branded traffic coming. They're getting more sales, but their bosses are saying, no. No. We need to get more traffic. Traffic's king. Like, no. It's not. It's it's revenue.

Mickey Mellen [00:09:59]:
Like, we're getting more sales out of this. It's working.

Joshua McNary [00:10:01]:
Right. What actually is the outcome we're going for?

Mickey Mellen [00:10:03]:
Correct. Exactly. Yeah. And that's something we try to work with our team and with our clients. Like, again, we don't build websites because no one wants a website. They want to get traffic, and they don't want traffic. They wanna get sales. And so it's it's all like, what is it really gonna lead to? And so it's important to keep the end in mind when we're doing this stuff.

Mickey Mellen [00:10:17]:
Like, if you're if we're giving you more sales, that's a win. Even if your traffic's down, engagements down, whatever, you're getting more of the right people and just fewer of the wrong people, and it's it's a win. But

Joshua McNary [00:10:26]:
it's Well, it comes back it comes back to the fact that you're it's scary. Right? I mean, there's been these traditional models for for whether it's our firms or, you know, these clients that you're referencing that are wanting more traffic or whatever. There's these models. There's a way of thinking about it. Like, hey. This is how we make this work. And and as technology has always been and only continues to speed at evolving, it's changing the way that we have to look at these things, whether it be just logistically speaking, the ability to do this, in this case, the tracking. Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:10:56]:
Or the fact that there's new ways. Yeah. Now it's there's a certain percentage going to AI or you did search or just dropping search entirely. Right? Now it's all gonna be using your AIs to get the answers to your questions rather than going to the search platforms. So, of course, you have to evolve with that, but it's it's hard for us humans to sometimes, move as quickly as the technology is moving around us in that regard. Right? Right.

Mickey Mellen [00:11:19]:
For sure.

Joshua McNary [00:11:19]:
You know, some of these stories you're telling, I think I'm hearing a a human side, that, ability to adapt to the technology that is only moving faster and faster and faster and faster, particularly when we talk about artificial intelligence, as the buzzword here, comes about. That that's just that's what I'm seeing in in in Oh, yeah. My experience is talking to people.

Mickey Mellen [00:11:38]:
It's frustrating for us too because, like, keyword research for ranking on Google. We were awesome at keyword research. That's been one of the primary things we've done for fifteen years. You need a website? Cool. Let's start with messaging and keyword research. And now keyword research, we'll still do occasionally. But most of the time, like, it's not worth the effort to do that. Let's make sure you rank off your name and let's take that effort from the keyword research into short form video and other places which again, it's working well.

Mickey Mellen [00:11:59]:
But, dang, keyword research, we had a process down for that. We were awesome at it. We had great results, and it's just but things change, and we're not gonna keep doing it just because we're good at it. We wanna do what's gonna actually bring results, and you gotta change with the times. You know? There

Joshua McNary [00:12:09]:
we are. And sometimes those result based, tracking and such that you're talking about, I I find even within my own business, the the what I'm tracking, the metrics I'm tracking, the or or for the clients that what we're trying to actually keep track of, it does really come back to that ultimate goal of of the sale or, you know, the the these these key points. Of course, the sale, for any business is gonna keep it alive. But but there may be some other, leading indicators, but they're usually they're usually something harder than, more substantial, I should say, to track than what we used to do in the past which was just, you know, a click action or something. Right. You know? Yeah. That didn't mean a whole lot. So that that's that's been interesting to see.

Mickey Mellen [00:12:49]:
For sure.

Joshua McNary [00:12:50]:
Okay. Well, so, going back to your business, I guess, how have you been deciding kind of based on the the platform of things we've been talking about here today? Well, how have you been deciding what technologies and tools to continue to implement? You mentioned you've been adjusting this, this your models around how you know, getting away from the keyword research, right? And going towards the short term video. But there's dozens of different marketing things or or technologies that you could explore, say, in that case with your clients. For that matter, internally to your business, you know, what technologies and tools have you've been using and how you've been deciding kinda what opportunities to take. Because as we've seen over the years, the explosion of marketing and sales technology or just business technology in general, the the the choices are endless. So how have you been thinking about what to do next? Is it kind of, as it becomes visible in your in your view and you just kinda go down into that road? Or is it more strategic and, like, okay, we wanna maybe attack this area of the market or this area of our business, and and you kinda do more of a apples to apples comparison of technologies and tools or opportunities? Just talk talk about that part of it here in the in the last, year or two for for Green Mellen.

Mickey Mellen [00:13:57]:
Yeah. So that's a great question. So between Ali and then Robert on our team and myself, we often are kind of on the forefront of at least seeing what's out there. So we're always talking and debating, should we try this? Should we try that? Usually, we try it with us first. We'll try it with GreenMellen first to see if it works for us, see how it works. And, again, it may not work for us, could work for a client, but we still wanna at least get our our hands wet and see see what's going on with that. So that's part of it there. The other part you mentioned with all the technology, like tools coming out, that I certainly stay up to date with all this stuff, but it frustrates me a little bit because there's two big things that seem to come out of those a lot.

Mickey Mellen [00:14:28]:
And it's more automation and more AI. And I don't think that's always the answer. I mean, automation and AI are both great things, but historically for, heck, the last fifteen years, I've kinda shied away from automation to a large degree just because it's replacing humans in places it doesn't need to replace humans. You know? In our case, like, I talk about our CRM we use, the the platform to, you know, manage the leads coming into into Green Mellen. I don't have any automations on that. Like, if someone reaches out to us, I'm gonna have a conversation with them. I'm gonna reach out to them next week and talk to them some more. And, like, I don't need to be automating stuff to them.

Mickey Mellen [00:14:56]:
Like, it's just silly. And there's and there's cases where you do need that. If you're have smaller ticket items, you have you need to make thousands of sales a month to make it work. Like, you need some of that stuff. But people jump to automations right away. How can I do it with my business? And you don't always need to. Sometimes just being a human is better and the same with AI. Like, we use AI quite a bit.

Mickey Mellen [00:15:11]:
I'm sure we'll get into more of that in this talk, but it is not always about AI. Like, we're considering moving from ClickUp back to Asana maybe for project management. And that's we'll see what happens there. The one turn off is I go to Asana's website right now. It's all about all the AI stuff they've baked in.

Joshua McNary [00:15:24]:
Like Yes. No.

Mickey Mellen [00:15:25]:
I don't want that in the

Joshua McNary [00:15:26]:
project management. The AI dust. The AI dust. Like, literally,

Mickey Mellen [00:15:29]:
they sprinkle

Joshua McNary [00:15:29]:
the AI dust a little bit. Dust.

Mickey Mellen [00:15:31]:
And that's they all feel they have to do that. Maybe it's good, but with Asana and stuff, I don't want that. I wanna, like, see my projects and see my tasks and assign new people and track what's going on and leave feedback and, like, hey. Adding AI too is not a bad thing, but I worry if their focus is on AI instead of the core tool, they they may drift a little bit. It's, you know, like Evernote, we saw over the years where they had a core tool that was great, and they drifted to all these ancillary things and Very common. Just fall apart. Yeah. And then

Joshua McNary [00:15:56]:
we're working on it

Mickey Mellen [00:15:58]:
too. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Evernote, I'm talking, yeah, a decade ago with Evernote where they were getting to to menu planning and photography. I don't remember what all it was, but their core tools suffered as a result. So I'm hoping tools like Asana, sure, add some AI is not bad, but if that's your big focus, like, that could be problematic.

Mickey Mellen [00:16:12]:
So we'll see where it shakes out.

Joshua McNary [00:16:14]:
Definitely. Yeah. The the the the magic fairy days dust of AI is definitely a problem. It's something I've talked about. I have had a slide in my talks for years just around technology, not just AI, about how technology is not magic. You know, there is it require it requires you as a businessperson, as a as a leader to think through strategically what you're trying to use this technology for.

Mickey Mellen [00:16:37]:
Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:16:37]:
And and then, just the it's it's a version of of scope creep with regards to these technology companies. It's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out because everyone's jumping on sprinkling on AI to their existing technologies. But then there's also some companies starting from an AI first perspective. So what will that do as Right. As they're you're starting from an AI, truly AI perspective, not, not a just add AI to what we already have. And so there's probably gonna be certain types of customers like you and I that have been doing this for twenty years that you have a certain way of doing it then. But we probably we probably gotta hang on to the old way a little bit and try to sprinkle the AI in. But then there's gonna be a whole new generation of tools and workers that are gonna think about things more from the perspective of of natural language and this more AI first model.

Joshua McNary [00:17:29]:
And we don't even know what that means yet necessarily. But that's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out. And then, you know, over time, we'll all adapt and and see what the winners are gonna be.

Mickey Mellen [00:17:37]:
Well said. Yeah. And I see things like lovable. If you play with lovable, it's a, a language a language processing app development tool. You just kinda talk you just kinda talk to I want an app that does this and does that. And, like, it's it's, again, AI first. It's not adding AI to a tool. The tool is AI.

Mickey Mellen [00:17:53]:
And so, yeah, as people do that for marketing, for building websites, where it's not adding it out of your process, but building from scratch with AI, that'll be fascinating to watch and interesting to see how quick folks like you and I can make the switch when the time comes. So yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:18:04]:
Well, we're already making the switch with regards to just how AI has affected things in the last few years. I mean, kind of kind of in the in the in the realm of what you're talking about there, those tools that allow you say to start building an app. Okay. They are my my perspective on those at this point, at least sitting here today talking, is that they're able to help you get going, maybe create a wireframe, kind of a a a initial structure or UI, get some initial pieces going, but you still need a developer. Yeah. You still need somebody to help. And this is true for, like, the website builders and many of the tools out there that, are AI either first or enhanced, whatever. However, we're working at it.

Joshua McNary [00:18:41]:
But but the right now, we're talking about app development. So let's say the app development. So okay. You need you need that. But now over time, they will only become multimodal more and more. So this is what we see currently, say, with the the primary, frontier models, the primary tools, the chat GPTs and such is that they start out just as a chat tool that basically could do some basic things. In fact, they couldn't even look at now. They were only looking at the past.

Joshua McNary [00:19:06]:
Right? And then quickly, they got the the the current and the, you know, the current situation added. Then they start adding the, the imagery components and, you know, the ability to link to other integrations, to other tools, and all these things started getting added became multimodal. And we're gonna see similar things in the case of, like, in this case, the app develop, or website development. So it's gonna be nice to see how that plays out. But that's another version, another iteration of that, which you were talking about earlier with some of the, product or the project management tools or whatever. There's there's a component of, in the past, it was about integration or expansion within that platform.

Mickey Mellen [00:19:44]:
Mhmm.

Joshua McNary [00:19:44]:
And now, like, these other these these AI tools and such, they're kinda doing the same starting that same game, but it's more like full functions, full job functions. It's not just like another feature.

Mickey Mellen [00:19:54]:
Right. Yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:19:54]:
So, like, it's it's yeah. It's gonna be nice to see how it plays out.

Mickey Mellen [00:19:57]:
It is it is similar in that they're just adding integrations, but the integrations they add aren't like a a cute little thing to talk to your calendar. It's a whole full, yeah, full AI piece there. So yeah. Right.

Joshua McNary [00:20:06]:
It's all their job. Right.

Mickey Mellen [00:20:07]:
So it'd

Joshua McNary [00:20:08]:
be it'd be interesting to play out. But, oh, let's come back to your business though, again here. So I guess you were talking about kind of some of that skepticism around AI and tools. So, and and you brought up the example of maybe making a a change in your project management system. So, maybe talk about where you are using artificial intelligence or any other newer generation tools in the business right now.

Mickey Mellen [00:20:29]:
Gotcha. So yeah. So AI, I'm using more for research. It's still helpful for that. I added I actually blogged about it recently. I saw someone else post about it. I say, hey. Here's people I'm meeting with next week and just kinda dump a list of names and email addresses in there.

Mickey Mellen [00:20:40]:
Tell me what's going on with them. And the way it can parse out, like, just based on the email extension and where they work and then seeing what's happening with that company, like, it gives back a beautiful list. So things like that for research with notebook l m and just other tools for research we use quite a bit. As an agency, we don't use it a ton beyond that. I mean, we'll use it for helping, like, edit writing a little bit. We're not using it to write content yet. I suspect we will at some point. I still think humans are better, but not by much.

Mickey Mellen [00:21:04]:
And it's closing fast and at some point, humans won't be better and clients are gonna pay shouldn't pay extra to have a human write it because their again, their goal is not to support an agency. Their goal is to get sales. And if we can provide the same content with AI that a human could do, then we will, which is unfortunate because we have some awesome copywriters we contract with that we won't at some point in the future. But but we're keeping an eye on that. Again, we're still all human there, but that'll change at some point. But, yeah, it's really just kinda playing with AI tools. We're not doing a ton with it, but just lots of lots of stuff around the edges playing with it, seeing what's going on, helping plan to strategize and kind of watch our backs for things and see what's going on. So that's a lot of where we are.

Mickey Mellen [00:21:38]:
My favorite tool these days is really not AI focuses all but SparkToro. We mentioned right before.

Joshua McNary [00:21:43]:
So Yeah. You brought that up earlier. Tell us about that.

Mickey Mellen [00:21:45]:
Yeah. So sparkToro is fantastic. I think the the biggest problem people have is figuring out where their clients are online. I say, you know, they're finding the answers and then coming back to Google. Where are they finding that? For your business, are they on TikTok? Are they on LinkedIn? Are they on Facebook? Are they on Instagram? Are they on Claude versus ChatChiPT? Or what podcast? Or what subreddits? Or just where are they? And SparkToro is a tool that helps figure that out. You say, hey. People that visit this website, where do they tend to go? Or people with this title in their job bios, where do they tend to go? So you type in something and it says, alright. People that have this title tend to send spend time in these specific subreddits.

Mickey Mellen [00:22:18]:
Here's some podcasts they listen to. They're not on Facebook very much, but they're on LinkedIn a lot. And, you know, it kinda gives you tools to figure out where to be, and then you go be with them.

Joshua McNary [00:22:26]:
We've

Mickey Mellen [00:22:26]:
I think you know

Joshua McNary [00:22:27]:
Find finding the finding the watering hole for your for your target, essentially, is what Yeah.

Mickey Mellen [00:22:32]:
Figure figure out where they are and follow them. Like, you and I have talked about Gary Vaynerchuk before. I'm sure. For those that don't know, I mean, search for Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary v. He's a interesting fellow. I'm sort of appreciating him more as the years go on. He's he's kind of hard edge. But one thing I love one thing he said I love is he's huge on TikTok right now.

Mickey Mellen [00:22:47]:
He has millions of followers and those videos and millions of views, and someone asked him to say, Gary, if TikTok does go away, if government shuts it down or what what are you gonna do? What happens? He said, I don't care. Like, all those people are gonna go somewhere else. I'm gonna go with them. Like so he just said, I'm just gonna follow my audience where they need to be. I'm gonna continue to engage with them and be there with them. So it's not about having this one platform and risk losing. He's like, I'll just go where the people are and SparkToro is a way for, smaller people that don't have millions of followers to figure out where where

Joshua McNary [00:23:12]:
the best

Mickey Mellen [00:23:13]:
places are to go. It's a a good way to do this. We use that as part of our research with every client. We we use some SparkToro and some other tools, but just to figure out, like, I'm not gonna say, Josh, I think you should be on LinkedIn and not on Facebook and maybe here. Like, we'll start with that, but let's do the research and figure out where your audience really is and then go be there with them to again, so they can see how great you are, see what your stuff offers, and then they'll go to Google and type in your name because they've understood how great you are. And then they'll they'll see your awesome website, and they'll sign up, and they'll be you'll be friends for life.

Joshua McNary [00:23:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, I mean, there's there's a there's definitely a element here of, particularly in b to b type arrangements, but, it could it could be true for for b to c type marketing as well. Mhmm. For small and midsize businesses, which our businesses are and our many of our clients are, in that category. Where we don't need, you know, we might need, for for b to c, we might need thousands or maybe tens of thousands. If we're b to b, we might not need, you know, we don't need tens of thousands for sure.

Joshua McNary [00:24:10]:
We don't we don't need even thousands for a b to b type environment. If you're small to mid sized business, you're probably needing hundreds. Okay? The the point is my point is, like, you don't have to own this massive part of the market. A lot of marketing and a lot of these tools are marketed as in this concept of, like, the the the high growth startup or the high the high volume sale. And, of course, there are marketplaces. There's so many people listening here that are in that world. So we're not downplaying that. But but even then, think about it.

Joshua McNary [00:24:38]:
Like, how many do you actually need?

Mickey Mellen [00:24:40]:
Right.

Joshua McNary [00:24:40]:
And if, you know, you probably have that number somewhere or maybe it's not always first in mind. But if it isn't, you should be posting it up somewhere where it is. Right. If you're no matter if you're, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is like a moderate size volume company versus a small volume company. Whatever wherever you land in that, knowing that number and then helping your using tools like this to to help you then dive into that segment that you can really find those people. That's what we're talking about. That's how we're talking about being, strategic about how we're using our marketing a lot is a lot of what we're talking about today. But we're talking about marketing technology tools that help us find those and attack those and not get lost in the sea of opportunities that we have.

Joshua McNary [00:25:20]:
Right. And

Mickey Mellen [00:25:20]:
that's kinda what we talked about with automation. Like, we don't need to be automated if you're only going after a few people. Like, three quick examples. One for us, we can do two kickoffs a month. We can start two new projects a month. I mean, that's it. Like, if there's more than that, we don't we don't need a zillion leads. We need two great leads every month, you know, and that's awesome.

Mickey Mellen [00:25:35]:
We have one new client. They said, hey. If you guys can get us one new client every month, this will be a smashing success. And we have one other new client. He said, if you can get us one new client per year, this will be a smashing success. So it's just not, I

Joshua McNary [00:25:45]:
mean That's, that's a pretty small pool.

Mickey Mellen [00:25:47]:
It's a small pool, but it's a I mean, it's also a that's that's probably our biggest challenge, though, because they're they're 6 figure clients that they go after, you know, for the Right. Do training stuff. And so it's that one scares me the most. It's easier to say, hey. We're gonna go from ten to twelve or whatever, but just get one new client a year from our stuff. And then again, to measure exactly where it came from, because they get some clients. So how do we know if they get seven this year, how many came because of our efforts? And it's gonna be almost impossible to know, but it's gonna be just we'll we'll measure. We'll show them what we can.

Mickey Mellen [00:26:12]:
We'll say, here's how people worked on the website. Here's how much engaged on social, and, you know, we'll give all the data we can, but it's hard to know for sure. Again, even if we ask them, how did you find us? Like, well, I heard about you from a friend, and then I saw you on Facebook. And, like, it's gonna be a variety of things, some of which we touched and some of which we didn't. And so were we responsible for that lead or not? And it's it's tricky.

Joshua McNary [00:26:30]:
But Yeah. I've been there too with clients Yeah. That kind of situation over the years in different in different environments. And I think this kinda brings us back to a lot of what we're talking about today. Your themes here today have been that, of course, you use technology. It's your entire business. It's all around what you do.

Mickey Mellen [00:26:45]:
Right.

Joshua McNary [00:26:45]:
But it's also the idea of of of being smart about how we're inserting the human mind into this. And it sounds like in this particular client example you're you're bringing up like it's there's there's no way to actually make technology help you be able to prove this, but it's gonna be the intuition of the human. Mhmm. Bringing together all the technology tools, maybe bringing together some AI, research summaries and different things to to to show the value that you're you're providing to your client in this case. And ultimately then being able to, you know, continue to serve them and continue to to, stay on top of the technology that you all do there to be able to serve them further going forward. I guess one more thing I wanna bring up that I I I think is important is you talked about, again here about the automation, like, not jumping into automation, too quickly. And I do think that's something I've seen over the years with small and midsize businesses is begin because of the way it's marketed and because of the way we think about, the computers taking over again, even before we talk about AI taking over. Like, the idea of jumping into the automation before we actually have a proven, process, some kind of, some kind of actual, you know, SOP that we put in place that actually fits to put automation on top of.

Joshua McNary [00:27:59]:
That is important to be considering as well. And it also just goes inside with what you're talking about. You know, when we're talking about getting one or a dozen clients for a a customer in your case over the course of the year, you know, automating that, you're you're you're you're wasting time automating that because you don't actually have a proven process yet. Right.

Mickey Mellen [00:28:15]:
I like to yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:28:17]:
You know, I mean, you're going to figure out the process, but it's probably gonna have to evolve too because of all these other factors we're talking about today with the change of of technology and where you have to search. So being more nimble without automation actually could make sense to, you know, in these examples you're bringing up.

Mickey Mellen [00:28:31]:
That's true. And automation the problem with automation is so compelling. It's so sexy looking to say, man, I can just automate all this and just have it all do it for me while I sleep and it's great. And again, it's not always the case. Like, an example there, we had a HVAC client. We built a new website for a few years ago, and they said we want a simple page. It was really just a one page beautiful site because they said we're in the community. People know us.

Mickey Mellen [00:28:50]:
And it is funny. If I say, do you guys know if I talk to friends, you know this HVAC company, those that do say, oh my gosh. I love them so much. Like, it's you don't hear this about, you know, home services companies like this. But then about a year ago or it's two years ago, they said, hey, Greenmail. We're moving to a different company now, and they got sucked into this giant, like, just hamster wheel of automation, all this chaos. And then sure enough, six months ago, they said, actually, can do you still have our old site? Can we just go back to that? Because this automation stuff isn't really making a difference. We're pouring all this money in to do all this stuff, and it's it's not who we are.

Mickey Mellen [00:29:18]:
We're in the community. We go to events. We know people. They love us. It's just yeah. Stay true to who we are. So they went back to being human, and the results are are flourishing. So there's a case for that.

Mickey Mellen [00:29:27]:
Again, there's some HVAC companies that don't have that, and they do need to just churn out the automations and kinda make it happen and see what they can grind out the bottom. But I but just prefer the ones that when I say, hey. Do you know this company? People say, oh, I do know them. They're so great. And it's yeah. I mean, this this quick story about them is when we first signed them years ago, they walked to our office, you know, to to kick off. They brought a check with them and a tray of cookies. I'm like, that pretty much sums up the who does that? Like, it was it was fantastic.

Mickey Mellen [00:29:50]:
They became our favorites right then. So yeah.

Joshua McNary [00:29:52]:
That's great. I mean and and your firm attracts the those types of of companies and individuals because, you know, you you have that you have that you have that, customer first mentality and and also the the want to actually be authentic in what you're doing. And and that's a I appreciate that. And Yeah.

Mickey Mellen [00:30:08]:
And I

Joshua McNary [00:30:09]:
I think

Mickey Mellen [00:30:09]:
we're team first, customer second. But, yeah, I mean, we still put customer Okay. Up pretty high.

Joshua McNary [00:30:14]:
You're people. You're human first. Let's put it there. There you go. That's a good idea. And maybe that's a that's a way to also, as we're wrapping up here, put a put a bow on this in regards to, you know, talking about the technologies and the AIs and all the things. Again, a theme today, I think, I've heard is this idea of keeping the human in the driver's seat, and allowing them allowing you and your firm to be able to serve your customers and your team and whatnot in a in a in a human first way. And that is a a theme I think we're hearing in the greater, technology world right now around artificial intelligence is keep the human in the loop and, and that's true for technology engineers.

Joshua McNary [00:30:49]:
Keep the human in the loop and continually be evolving with it, and and making sure that, we're not losing our humanness and losing our ability to orchestrate this great technology tools that we have available to us. Right. So okay. Okay. Go ahead.

Mickey Mellen [00:31:04]:
I was just gonna say, I don't think that that counters technology either, though, because I'm probably as geeky as as as you are or as anyone you know. I mean, I'm on three monitors right now, and I have a note system that I don't even suggest to you because it's so complicated and crazy. But I think all that can lead toward more human. Like in my note system has a reminder that'll pop every so often. Hey. You haven't talked to Joshua in a while. You should reach out to him. Like, so I'm using technology to make things more human.

Mickey Mellen [00:31:24]:
You know, same with the tools we use like with click up. You know, we use click up. We don't have clients come in there and see stuff. It just reminds Brooke, our project manager, like, hey. We need to check-in with that client so she'll reach out and say, hey. Hey, Steve. We haven't talked to you this week. Have you had a chance to look at the design yet? Like, you can use technology to be more human.

Mickey Mellen [00:31:38]:
You don't have to go analog. Although, I know some folks that are still largely analog and that can work too, but I'm as as technology driven as it can be, but you can still use that to be more human, and I think there's a good balance in somewhere.

Joshua McNary [00:31:48]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I I I hope and pray that that was the way that we will continue to push forward with these tools that are

Mickey Mellen [00:31:55]:
I hope so. Yes.

Joshua McNary [00:31:56]:
Cropping up in the next number of years here for sure. Okay. So as we as we wrap up here, I do wanna get to the final question here. What is one actual tip that you would give businesses looking to leverage technology better here as we wrap up on this call Yeah. Today? I

Mickey Mellen [00:32:11]:
think I'll just I think there's two things I'll reiterate. We've already kinda covered this. I don't think I'm gonna make up something new because the two best tips we've had is one, use technology, be more human. I think that kind of overarching thing. And then more specific, I would say go look at SparkToro or other tools like that and figure out where your clients are. That's where people lack. They wanna just blast stuff out. When people say they wanna do an email blast, I know what they're saying, but, like, oh, that word just irks me.

Mickey Mellen [00:32:31]:
Like, we're not trying to blast things. We're not, like, go where people are, reach out to them individually, like, don't just blast because people post up on social media and post stuff everywhere. Just they post post social post. They're not actually engaging and con con con connecting with folks, and that's problematic. So sparktoro, I think, is a good tool just to say, hey. My people are on LinkedIn. I'm gonna go engage on LinkedIn. I'm gonna go publish on there for sure, but I'm also gonna respond to comments and like other things and just kind of be human in the places where great people are.

Mickey Mellen [00:32:54]:
So you can, yeah, use technology to be human and use things like SparkTor to figure out where to go be a human where your clients are, if you don't know already. Some people probably already know, like, no. My best clients are here. This is what this is where my community is. We have a community on TikTok or whatever. Like, cool. Go do that. But if you don't know, that tool can help in whatever it is.

Mickey Mellen [00:33:10]:
Yeah. Use technology to help you streamline your humanity, I guess, is a good way to put it, Maeve.

Joshua McNary [00:33:14]:
Great. That's awesome. Well, this has been great. Where can people find out more about you and Green Mellen if they wanna reach out?

Mickey Mellen [00:33:21]:
Sure. So, your company is greenmelonmedia.com. You can spell it any way you want because you won't spell melon right the first try, and that's okay. Greenmelonmedia.com. And then I'm Mickmel, m I c k m e l. Mickmel dot com. I blog it every day. That's Mickmel is my handle on all the socials.

Mickey Mellen [00:33:35]:
You can hit me at [email protected]. Just, yeah, type in Mickmel and you'll find all my stuff. So, yeah, make it easy.

Joshua McNary [00:33:40]:
Perfect. Well, thanks for joining me today.

Mickey Mellen [00:33:42]:
Yeah. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Good to see you.

Joshua McNary [00:33:45]:
Alright, folks. That's it for today. I'm Joshua McNary, and I hope you will join me again next time so you can learn how to become a biz tech superhero. Bye now.