 This is Adventures in Small Business. It's a collaboration between U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office, and its partners. We are showcasing small business owners in Hawaii and talking stories, and today we're going to talk about marketing and PR. We have a great guest here, Eric Hudson. Hey, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. So, Eric, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your work background, and how did you decide to come out with a business? Sure. So, a little history on myself. I began in basically news journalism, and I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, so I started in journalism. I was a newspaper writer, did that for about five years, was managing it, managing a group of weekly papers in the Atlanta area. And as the newspaper industry started to decline, I really felt called to join the military, and so I joined the Army, and I've been doing public affairs for the Army for about a decade now. During that time, I've had a lot of great experiences. One of my first things I remember since I did public affairs for the Army was I had to deal with an active shooter at Fort Hood, Texas, and even after that I did a deployment where we responded to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. So I've got a wealth of, I guess, experience, and now it's time for me to transition. And I just really want to take the risk and do it my way, and I feel like I can do this on my own, and I'm excited to do this now. And why PR business? Why marketing business? Well, I mean, it's just something I've always enjoyed. I mean, even since I was a little kid, it's PR and marketing, it's all about creating great content, and I just realized as I look back that I've always enjoyed writing or just making great content and whatever means, and that's just kind of flows in with what I just naturally enjoy. So can you tell us more about Hudson PR Group? Sure. So it is a fairly new company, but I think it's a little different than a lot of the traditional PR companies. A lot of times you'll see large PR companies, they send out just mass emails to media companies all across wherever they're trying to reach, and they send out maybe 1,000 emails, and then you ask, okay, how effective was that? Well, we were published in these two newspapers, and how does that affect your bottom line? Most traditional PR companies, they can't answer that. So what I've really been doing, focusing on sort of more of an inbound PR type thing. Customers today, they see advertising, and it annoys them. It pops up on your phone, you ignore it, you close it out. Nowadays people, they don't want to be advertised too. Once they discover a product, they're very inquisitive, they learn all about that product, they don't go to a salesperson, they do research on their own, they'll go to YouTube, they'll see what their friends are talking about. So now it's how do we engage your customer, your client, how do we do that on their terms, and it draws them in instead of pushing them away. So that's really how we're different in a lot of our competition and what we're focusing on. So what exact services would you provide for me as a small business owner? I just started the business, I don't know how to get clients. What can you do for me? So we can do all the things that the large PR companies can do, the big email blast. But what I'd really do is I'd sit down with you and I'd figure out, hey, what are your goals? Is it to increase sales? And how are we going to do that? Is it driving more people to your website or are we trying to get them physically in your store? And this is how we're going to get there. A lot of times it's going to be through social media. Maybe we need to start a blog and you're maybe not selling right away to your customer, but you're engaging with your customer and when they're ready to learn about you, the content is there and it draws them in and then they start to trust you and eventually they come to a decision point where they hopefully decide to go with your company. I can start you off with this is what's available and we can walk you through the whole process of how you figure out who your customer is, how they find you, and ultimately how they decide to go with you versus your competitor. So not only marketing PR services, but also consulting and educating clients. So we can do, we've worked with some clients, just simple things, branding, maybe creating a logo, things like that. And we've also sent out the large press releases. We can do it all, but I think we really focus on helping, especially smaller startup companies find their customer and engage with them. Marketing is getting more and more complicated and we get a lot of clients asking about marketing, branding, and a lot of them feel confused. Sure. What is marketing? What is public relations? What is the brand? What is the difference between these terms? Well, it's all honestly kind of a large, vague, broad statement. Public relations is to simply, how do you interact with the public? How are you viewed? And the branding is, what images do they recognize as yours? So it is a very broad statement and I want to work to figure out, okay, how do we take your relationship with the customer? And how do we turn that into the bottom, bringing more profit for you? That sounds great. Where do I sign up? So PR, marketing, branding, influencers. That's a term that I hear a lot in the marketing world. What does it mean? So, you know, I can give you a pretty good example. Recently, I decided that I wanted to get a new gym bag. I didn't just automatically jump on Nike.com or, you know, any of the major sites. I happened to see somebody, I think on Facebook, post about this bag that they got and they enjoyed it. So, you know, I looked at it, got the photo and then again, I didn't go to the manufacturer's website. I looked on YouTube, I saw somebody's like opening presentation and I read reviews on, you know, something for Yelps or Google, you know. And honestly, I make that decision on whether I'm going to buy this before I go to the manufacturer's website. And oftentimes without even talking to a salesperson. So those influencers, they're very valuable because it doesn't seem like they're trying to sell to you. You're drawn to them because they're talking about something you're interested in and you can go to them when you're ready to. So, where do I find an influencer? Facebook, Instagram or any platform? What qualifies someone as an influencer? Has to be really big following or? It has to. So, the first step in any good PR is finding out who you're trying to reach. So, your influencer may not have the biggest following. But if you're trying to, I don't know if you're trying to sell dog treats, your influencer might have local contacts with, you know, dog owners. And a lot of dog owners may follow that person. It may be a small following and you may never heard of them. But those dog owners appreciate their opinion and that, you know, they lead you, you know, they build the trust in your company. Does it cost or is it free? Nothing's free. There's no free lunch. No, I mean, you can work and, you know, have good relationship with some influencers and maybe work on that some, but unfortunately, nothing. You can build on your own social media and your own. You can have, you know, create your own marketing. And so that typically takes time. But, you know, to go outside of that, there's, you know, you have to get creative with it. So you can help people with finding influencers contact them. Yes. That's great. So you mentioned it takes time to be successful in marketing. How do I build a successful marketing strategy? Where do I start from? Are there any steps that you would suggest to take? Yeah. So the very first thing is you need to decide who you're targeting. Who is your your customer? And then, you know, what is the goal once you reach that customer? The, you know, are you trying to drive them to your website? Are you trying to get them into your store? And then once you've identified who that person is, you can kind of walk through how you how you're going to engage with them. Maybe you need to start a blog. And this blog, you know, maybe you do it twice a week, and you may not even mention any of the products that you sell, but you're building trust with them. So it's really about having a conversation and learning who your customer is and pulling them in a lot of advertising and marketers today. They push products out to you and that today's, you know, today's customer, they don't want to see advertising push to them. They ignore it. I mean, a commercial comes on TV. You walk to the, you know, get something out of the kitchen. But when you're really interested in something, you start to find the websites, you do some research and good marketing PR pulls you in and it can kind of walk you through until you get to a decision point and hopefully get that, you know, make that decision. I love the idea that you focus on the customer. First of all, you have to identify that specific customer. And a lot of clients of ours have a challenge identifying a specific target audience, because they say, well, anybody would love my product. It's a great product. Yeah. What would you say? Like, can you target everyone or have to be more specific? You might have a product that everybody loves. But who is your core audience? I mean, McDonald's, they sell to mass market. But, you know, they know who their core customer is. It's probably not the guy looking to eat healthy. You know, it's probably, you know, families or someone looking for something quick to get in their stomach. So sure, you might reach a broader audience, but you need to figure out who your target audience is. Once you've nailed that down, you can kind of build out from there. The first step is audience and then getting to know your audience. How do you get to know your audience? You just go out and try to talk to them? Well, thankfully, we have the internet. You can reach out to, you know, you kind of decide who do you think is your audience and then you kind of engage with some some people in, you know, in that target audience and find out if your assumptions are correct. I mean, you can reach out most of them with Facebook or Instagram. You can talk directly to a lot of these people and you can deal with people that have a lot of experience in that field and kind of narrow it down. And it's all you. I mean, you're always refining it and trying to get to know them better. What about focus groups or other methods of trying to talk to your customers? Focus groups are great. They're usually, it takes a lot of time and it's also, you know, like not free, like we've mentioned, but focus groups are a great resource. Surveys, any other? Exactly. And you can do surveys online, relatively cheap compared to, like a, you know, in person focus group. You can get a lot of feedback, right? Ask the right questions on online surveys, especially. OK, so we identified our customer, then we get to know our customer and follow their needs, their problems and challenges. Exactly. Sounds like very simple. It sounds simple. Unfortunately, it takes time because, you know, you're building a relationship and that just doesn't happen overnight. So what are the biggest challenges for small business owners? And marketing. Sure. Why it takes so long for people to build a successful strategy? You know, a small company today, they want to focus, you know, they sell cookies, they want to focus on baking their cookies, making sure their store looks presentable. They don't have the time to invest and to really building that relationship. So, you know, when they do finally get around to marketing, to their customer, they'll just throw out some social media posts. Maybe they'll do, you know, like a Google ad or something like that. And then they just sit back and wait, expecting, you know, people to just start, start coming to their store or their website. And it doesn't happen because they haven't invested that time. But once you've invested the time, know your customer, what they're looking for, how to engage them. Then it becomes a lot more effective and you'll be surprised at just how many customers you're reaching and how effective. Well, for how much you're getting out of money you spend on it, any kind of advertising. And then how many people are listening to what you're saying? Like everywhere, probably planning is key. You can't just shoot in the air different directions. Yeah, exactly. And that's a lot of the old PR. You'd see, you know, they'd send out masks and press releases to media across the country and they'll, you know, they maybe get their story put into newspapers and it just wasn't effective. So now we really want to dig in, figure out who's, who really has this need that we can solve for them and how do we reach them? The planning, that's also what you're focusing on and you're helping and guiding your client. So thank you so much. We're taking a short break and we will be back in one minute. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go beyond the lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Tim Apachele. I'm here with Cynthia Sinclair and this is Trump Week. It's going to appear every Friday at 11 a.m. between Jay Fidel, Cynthia and myself. We talk about Trump, the activities and the news stories for that week as it pertains to the Trump administration. We hope you tune in and watch the fun. Aloha. See you then. Welcome back to Adventures in Small Business. Today, we're talking about marketing and PR with Eric Hudson. Welcome back. Thank you. So we're talking about how to build a successful strategy. We need to identify our audience, get to know our audience and find their need and problem. Social media, that's another very big question for a lot of small business owners. There are so many different channels and a lot of times they try to do Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all of those. Do you suggest one channel or multiple channels and what is the most popular in Hawaii? What is the most important in Hawaii? I don't think that there is one that is more important than any other. Honestly, it's where is your desired target customer at, your audience, if you're trying to reach a younger audience to buy your product, you're probably not going to put them on Facebook. You know, they're more on Snapchat and Instagram, things like that. So it all comes down to knowing your customer and where are they talking? You go to them and find out what is working for them. You know, if an older crowd may be more on Facebook and so you would put more time into wherever your customer is. And then once you're using that platform, you know, there are a lot of people talking on those. So you need to figure out how do you stand out? How do you provide an experience for your target audience that really says something to them? And engagement is playing a very big role in social media, right? So how do you engage? Do you have any tips for small business owners? How they can better engage their audience when they're post? Sure. First of all, just in general, well, maybe except for on Twitter, never just use words and text, you know, photos are better, videos probably best. But then, you know, just using all the new kind of, you know, Facebook and Snapchat, they do all the, you know, the live, share your events of your day, you know, use whatever the newest, you know, program is not program, but the newest thing is and you can use that to stand out because your, you know, your other, the other people are trying to reach them probably aren't using those things. So you need to learn that social, that platform and use it the best you can. I love the fact that you started talking about video and I actually heard that video will become a very big part of marketing. By 2020, Google says that it will be maybe 80 percent of all marketing content. Right. So for those small business owners, we don't have professional cameras. They don't know how to do video. Yeah. What can they do now today with their marketing strategy? Well, that's I would say, you know, everyone's got a phone. It doesn't always have to be the most professional looking. It doesn't have to have all the glitter and the shine. It just has to have a real message, something that's really going to speak to your audience. You know, put the time in and best do the best you can with it and understand what really speaks to your customers. They, you know, if you are, you know, selling cookies, they don't necessarily expect you to have, you know, Hollywood level effects on your video. Don't try to be perfect, right? Try to be being real and authentic is probably as one of the most important things. Being real and not trying to be. Yeah, don't be something you're not. I mean, that's true. Something you're not. Yeah, that's true and that's a great advice. Yeah. So what would be an overall vision for success? Not only marketing, but you just starting out your business. There are so many challenges, lack of time, lack of budget. Yeah. Are there any tips in general that you would like to give to small business owners? We're just starting, you know, really think through your plan. Make sure you have a plan. You know, it's going to be slow at first. So make sure that you've built up a good network of people that can lead you things that you may not have considered and encourage you. You know, as I've kind of gone through this, there have been times when I've doubted like, geez, I don't know if I'm ready for all this. But then, you know, you go to a meeting with some other people that are doing something similar and all of a sudden they're encouraging and that's really, you know, just get you back on track. So I think that's one of the most important things is, yeah, there's going to be discouraging days that you've got a plan. You know what you're doing and you've got resources that are there to back you up when you have questions like anyone will. What about resources? Do you suggest any useful resources for small business owners for education or business? Sure. So I've used the VBoc program a lot. And since I'm coming out of the military, they have a few programs, a Boots to Businesses one. I personally threw that and they've enrolled me through another program that helps me build a business plan. So I feel like I know quite a bit about PR and marketing. I don't know anything about writing a business plan. I didn't know how to register my business, you know, through the state. And they have those connections that have done it before and can walk you through and talk to you about what you're trying to do and that help you achieve your goal. Great. So how can we find you if I want to work with you? What's your website number? So my website is www.hudsonprgroup.com. But I really pride myself on being a small business. So my phone number, it's all on my website. It's 808-913-7401. You can reach that any time or feel free to email me at Eric at Hudson PR Group, you know, because we're a small company. And even as we grow, I want to continue to offer personalized help to any any client that we might potentially have. Thank you so much, Eric, for sharing your knowledge. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And thank you for joining Adventures in Small Business. Stay tuned for more adventures every Thursday, 11 o'clock. Have a great day. Allah.