Why Your Online Reputation Can Make or Break Sales
With Guest Dave Fulk
Your reputation is being shaped with or without you. Learn how to take control of your brand's reputation before someone else does.
The How to Sell More Podcast
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February 21, 2025
Nearly 90% of prospects start their buying journey online, where decisions are made in a matter of seconds and first impressions stick. In this environment, is your brand's digital reputation boosting or silently killing sales?
In this episode of How to Sell More, we explore why even stellar marketing fails when your brand reputation raises red flags. Today's guest, Dave Fulk, CEO of Reputation Rhino, warns that letting Google control your narrative is a dangerous game.
At no other time in history has information been so readily available to prospects and customers. With online reviews surging 617% in just three years, it's clear: what people think and say about you matter more than ever.
"You have a brand, whether you like it or not. Nurture it, give it attention, define it, and spend some time controlling the narrative around it. Because if you're not, Google is." - Dave Fulk
To add to these challenges, many owners and leaders make a critical mistake: waiting until their reputation is damaged before taking action. While reputation repair is crucial, it overlooks two vital steps: proactively building and protecting your brand first.
Don't wait until it's too late to control your brand's narrative. Effective branding makes your business more visible, influential, and trustworthy. It tells an authentic story that resonates with your target audience.
The winning formula? Combine compelling storytelling with premium content and strategic SEO to create an unforgettable first impression.
As Dave explains, business leaders need both company and personal brands—but the strategies for each differ significantly. He would know. As the CEO of a leading reputation management firm, Dave helps high-net-worth individuals and businesses protect their digital presence. As an active investor and business advisor, he specializes in scaling owner-managed businesses beyond the $2-10 million mark.
This episode will inspire you to get proactive about your business's online presence and build a brand that helps you sell more.
Connect with Dave Fulk
More About Today's Guest, Dave Fulk
Dave Fulk is the CEO of Reputation Rhino, where he helps businesses and individuals take control of their online presence. With experience across operations, sales, and marketing, Dave has built his career on making companies more efficient and successful.
At Reputation Rhino, Dave leads a team that specializes in improving online reviews, managing search results, and building strong digital brands. His partnership with "Shark Tank" star Kevin Harrington has helped position the company for continued growth.
Dave is known for building strong teams and helping them succeed. He focuses on finding unique solutions to complex problems and encourages his team members to learn from both successes and setbacks. His leadership approach combines careful analysis with creative thinking to spot opportunities others might miss.
Beyond his business pursuits, Dave is dedicated to helping other entrepreneurs succeed. He aims to positively impact 100,000 business owners by sharing his knowledge and creating opportunities for their growth.
Dave has been giving back to his community for seven years through his work with Feeding Tampa Bay, an organization fighting hunger. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, he balances his professional life with family time as a husband and father of three.
Mark Drager: I've had so many conversations with business owners, marketing leads, people who are focused on more—how do we advertise more? How do we generate more leads? What can we do to get more? But often, you're already doing many of the right things, and you can optimize to get more and more and more. But in fact, some of the greatest opportunities we have to be able to grow business, grow revenue, and sell more is actually looking at the areas where we may be losing business. Maybe there are things where we're losing out because we're not credible enough.
We maybe don't have the trust that we need. Maybe we're not communicating clearly enough. And part of what you do, and what Reputation Rhino does so well, is ask the question: can a brand actually become a liability? Tell me about that.
Dave Fulk: We'll just skip to the answer to that, and the answer is yes. And the reason is because people are smarter today. Consumers are not the dumb consumers they used to be. We have this thing called the internet. It's evolved. How people shop has evolved. Amazon has forever changed us. We're an instant gratification society.
We also live in this day and age where your phone is like this, right? We live in the age of the influencer and how we consume information, and our instant gratification expectations have changed. I grew up in the Midwest, right? I'm originally from Kansas City. You looked somebody in their eyes, you shook their hand when you met them. Well, I'm here to tell you that the handshake has been replaced by the Google search. Everybody uses Google to search up information, and from a statistic standpoint of your brand being a liability—whether you believe it or not—87% of your consumers or people that are looking to meet you or network with you are starting that journey online. They're going to Google, they're typing in your name, they're typing in your company name. What shows up is going to create their first impression about you, and first impressions aren't changed easily.
Recently, Cornell University did a study on this. They brought two focus groups, Focus Group A and Focus Group B. Focus Group A, they asked to make certain mad faces, you know, happy face, sad face, smile, scowl, whatever it was. That was their instruction, and they took a picture of them making this face. Focus Group B said, "We're going to show you a series of faces for one second each, and then, on that one-second assessment, we want you to write down how you feel and what kind of person you think this is." Obviously, a quick flash on, flash off—that's all you got to see of this person.
And they were making the face they were told to make, and Group B had to write down, "Hey, this is how they made me feel. This is the type of person I think they are." Obviously, if somebody's smiling, "Oh, they're great, I want to meet them, they're a good person." If they're angry and they're scowling, they didn't like them.
Six months go by, they bring both focus groups back, and they do a mixer. They bring these people together. They have no idea that they were Groups A and B. What they did is they told Group B, "We want you to go interact with the group that's out there, and then after an hour, we want you to come back and we'll ask you questions about them." And they asked them questions about each person that they met.
What was insane is they still felt the same way about the person that they had seen six months earlier, when they'd only seen a picture of them for one second. That's how important first impressions are, and that's the part that people just don't understand—why their brand, or their personal brand, could become a liability. It's what it says about you online. How are you showing up online? Are you showing up how you want the world to see you?
Man, you're in marketing, you've been around marketing. Think how much marketing has changed over the last decade. It's drastically different, right? I mean, I remember 10 years ago, people were starting to build funnels—like this was a new thing. It was all about the funnel, and it was the lead magnet and the tripwire and all this stuff. While those are still practical marketing applications and tactics to use, people have become wise to them. Marketing is not as effective as it used to be.
You're having to see people spend more money and more marketing dollars to try and drive the same amount of sales or to grow sales. And so it's a lot harder to grow on paid marketing alone. And now you talk about virality and TikTok and videos and how you're trying to expand it. The reason is, people aren't as tricked as they used to be. Their access to information is infinitely greater. They can now talk to an AI, they can ask Siri, they do a search online, right?
So your marketing is not as effective as it used to be, because I have to explain the difference between marketing and branding, and this is what most people don't understand. Marketing is what you say about yourself. That's your website, those are your social media channels and things like that. You're not going to say something bad about yourself. Consumers understand this. They've grown wise to it. They know you're not going to say something negative about yourself on your website or in your ads or on your social media channels. Branding is what other people say about you after you've left the room.
If you and I walk into a room together and you go, "Hey, I'm Mark and I'm awesome," that's marketing. But if you and I walk into a room, Dave, they're gonna go, "Guys, this is my buddy Mark, and he's effing amazing." That's branding, and that's why you've seen the review platforms—there's been a 617% increase in reviews left over the past three years on different platforms like Google reviews and things like that. People are leaning more into this branding element, and they believe a review online just as much as they would their own mom telling them to go eat at a restaurant. We trust reviews online just as much as we would a recommendation from a friend or a family member. So the branding element has become so much more viable to even make your marketing as effective as it once was.
Mark Drager: I will just say, though, Dave, to the listeners as well—I mean, I'm a brand strategist, so I can talk about brand all day. When people reference that idea of a brand as what someone says about you when you're not in the room, I think that most businesses, business owners, they think that's almost a passive experience, like they don't have control over it. What I would say is that, to me, the definition I have for a brand is how you intentionally choose to show up and be perceived. How you intentionally choose to show up and be perceived.
If we're out at a stag or a stag do or a bachelorette party—wherever you are in the world, call it different things—you know, if you're out with your friends and it's a party night, you're probably going to show up differently than on the wedding day at 11am at the church, right? Like whatever's happening at your bachelor or bachelorette party is not the same person who's going to show up at the church when you're standing in front of the pastor and grandma and everything else. It's how we intentionally choose to show up in that moment, in that channel, or in that moment.
And so if you're listening to this, I just want you to know that part of the reason why we're talking about this is that this is something within your control. This is not something that happens to you. This is something that you can actively shape and control—how you're perceived out in the market.
One more story I'll share real quick, because I think it illustrates a good point. You're focusing a lot on the first point of contact, my first impression of you. In my experience, I think companies and owners and personal brands spend quite a bit of time on that first impression—how you intentionally choose to show up. But I've lost far more business on the second or third impression.
I'll explain what I mean. I remember sponsoring a pretty high-profile event around corporate philanthropy. A big part of my business 10–15 years ago was working with corporate sponsorship, corporate philanthropy, and large companies who would set aside money. It's one thing for a company to give money to a great cause, but if all they do is give the money to the great cause, then they don't get the credit for it. We saw this shift over the years where philanthropy became corporate sponsorship—it went from being a giving exercise to being a marketing effort.
We sponsored this event, and so I, as a sponsor, got to sit on the panel. I'm sitting on the panel with some of the largest, most well-funded hospital networks, mental health initiatives, and organizations. I brought a few of my clients out, and in the room were a collection of 60 or 70 people who are responsible for philanthropy and nonprofits. After the event, I had like eight or ten people come up to me, demanding to speak to me, demanding to connect with me.
A few weeks later, I go to follow up with them, and our website wasn't specifically about philanthropy. Our website wasn't specifically about the greater strategies we were talking about. And I got zero follow-ups with anybody. All of these people who, at the event, thought that I was well-spoken or smart, or at the very least important enough that they would want to come up and ask for a follow-up meeting—upon second review or third review, no one felt that it was a fit or made sense to even do that.
And that stuck with me because it stung. It really bothered me, and it helped remind me, because it was such an uncomfortably painful experience, that sometimes it's not always just about the first impression. It's about the second or third, when they look a little deeper into you, isn't it?
Dave Fulk: So that's a great point. The reason I start with the emphasis on the first impression is that if you don't have a good first impression, you don't get a chance at a second impression, right? So your first impression has to be on point. But really, your brand, or your brand element, is formed when they have the right to make an opinion about you. If somebody's marketing, right—somebody's spending money on paid ads, and they see something—you've captured their interest. That's it. You've captured their interest to learn more. That's their first impression.
Now, what happens, and what's vitally important, is that they want to ensure that the brand matches the first impression that they had. So whether you're an individual, Mark, if you and I met at this conference, and I'm like, "Wow, Mark seems like a good dude," what I'm going to do when I get back to my hotel room is pull up Google and type you in and see what I find. Now, does your brand match the first impression of who you are?
That's what you're talking about. It's the same with the marketing element. The marketing captured my attention, but does the brand promise, the brand image, the brand message support what interested me in the first place? If not, if there's a disconnect, that's exactly what you're talking about. Once you get to that deeper look, you have the ability to form an actual observation of the company. When you form an opinion, if it isn't upheld by your first impression, there's a disconnect, and that's when I'm not interested.
That's what's vitally important. You've been around sales and marketing for years, and there was always this terminology of "speed to lead, speed to lead." You know, you've got to get to the lead first. The first person who gets to the lead wins, right? Well, I'll tell you what—it's no longer just about the speed-to-lead game. Seventy-four percent of your ability is based on their impression of wanting to even be that lead.
Because so many people start their journey online, they're doing one of two things: they're either intent-focused, going to Google and searching for something they're actively looking for—typing in the keyword or whatever—and they find your brand. They are intently focused on finding you as a solution, or what you offer as a solution. Then, does what they find out about you match what they want to deal with? Or is there a competitor who has a better brand, a better message?
Because, as you mentioned, everybody has a brand. You're either controlling it or you're not. And so many business owners go, "Well, I can't do anything about it. There's nothing I can do." That's baloney, right? You absolutely can control your narrative. You have a brand, whether you like it or not—it's how you're showing up in the world. If you're not spending time controlling the narrative, guess what? Google's controlling it for you.
On the flip side, maybe you're doing a lot of paid marketing or paid advertising. These are pattern interrupts, right? We're on our bathroom break, we're scrolling through our phone, we see something interesting, we click on it. Well, we have to go back to work or we get busy—we don't have time to go all the way down that funnel. So what do we do? We go back later, and we search that company to follow up. And if that brand that I search for later doesn't match the first impression that initially impressed me, there's a major disconnect, and that's where you're losing leads.
So your ability to generate leads—74% of it—is based on what they did, or more importantly, what they didn't find out about you online.
Mark Drager: So I don't want to get too heavy here, but we're talking about brand and kind of this ethereal, bigger play. But there are times where we need to get really dramatic, really specific, really tactical, because something within our control or outside of our control—something’s gone wrong.
Back in 2010, 2011, 2012, we used to work with a number of law firms, really large law firms, and we were doing this whole education series. One of the speakers was a man named Michael Bryant. Now, you may not know this name, listeners, but Michael Bryant was the Attorney General for the province of Ontario. I'm Canadian. He was our Attorney General. He had a really amazing career, a very successful politician, and at a very young age, he became the Attorney General.
In 2009, one evening, he was out on a date with his wife, driving through Toronto in his convertible. A cyclist got into an argument with him. It’s late at night. He drives off to the next light. The cyclist catches up, gets into an argument again. They take off, they go to the next light. The cyclist comes back, is really aggressive and verbally abusive. Some kind of altercation happens. The cyclist won’t let go of the car. Michael Bryant and his wife are fearing for their life, and they drive off, and the cyclist is killed.
This was a really big event, because it not only cost the cyclist their life—it cost Michael Bryant everything he’d been building. The reason I bring this up is, in 2011 or 2012, we’re doing this series, and he’s sitting there, and I’m directing this event. I can hear what people are saying on microphone even when the mics are off. We can call this a hot mic moment. They were talking about something, and under his breath, I heard him say, “In 40 seconds, your entire life can change.”
Let me tell you, listeners, that stuck with me. Now, I’m not suggesting that with an event that large, anyone can come in and help somehow overcome this really public event. But you don’t have to be the Attorney General, you don’t have to be a politician, you don’t have to be someone in the spotlight, to have something like this happen to you—inside or outside your control—that can cost you absolutely everything you’ve been working for your entire life.
This is a big reason why people come and work with you, isn’t it? Because these things happen, these things come up.
Dave Fulk: It’s a fantastic point. Warren Buffett—you know, the Buffett, as we all call him—says, I love his quote, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and only five minutes to ruin it.” In this case, it took him 40 seconds.
From an online reputation management perspective, that’s not something most people are familiar with. They don’t understand it, and so they don’t lean into it because they don’t understand the importance of it.
I’ll tell you a story on our end, too, of a very similar situation with a client we worked with. When people come to us, there are three categories in which they can come to us: build, protect, and repair.
Build is what I call a ghost, right? You’re nobody online, you don’t have anything, you have no brand. Half the time, when you pull something up, it’s pulling up other people who aren’t you, with a similar name, because Google’s just trying to give you any relevant information it can. That’s where we can come in and build your brand. I love doing that because we’re basically building from scratch and controlling the narrative from day one.
Protect is for somebody who’s already achieved some sort of status or accomplishments in their life. They already have a reputation, but they’re spending no time building any kind of protection around that reputation. I call that the sandcastle. It’s beautiful, but one wave comes in—40 seconds later—and it’s gone.
A great example is one of our clients—he shares the story all over, it’s on our website, he’s spoken on stage—is Kevin Harrington, the original shark from Shark Tank. Kevin was doing a deal, and this was back when Cameo was big, and you could just hire people to say whatever you want on Cameo. He and Kevin O’Leary were hired to do a Cameo video, and they gave some testimonies of these guys. These guys ended up using them on their website, raising a lot of funds, and portrayed that Kevin and Kevin from Shark Tank were in, that they were behind them. Essentially, they fraudulently stole this money.
It comes out that all these people lost their money. It turns into a class-action lawsuit. Well, Kevin and Kevin were named in the lawsuit. I mean, they’re the big brands, they’re the big names, and they’ve got the money. Kevin woke up one morning and found that he was on the front page of TMZ. You’re talking about somebody who’s got a 40–50 year historic career—he invented the infomercial, you name it, half the products we’ve ever seen—he was the mastermind behind them. And overnight, a 40-year brand was almost destroyed when he was speaking on stage at an event that had hired him to speak later that day.
It started coming out, started getting viral traction that day, and just before he goes on stage, they pull him aside and say, “We don’t think you should go on.” They pulled him from the program right there and didn’t even let him speak. He talks about how he lost out on some deals he was trying to invest in, and it was costing millions of dollars. Ultimately, it was all put to bed, everything’s good, it was all settled—no harm, no foul across the board. But you talk to Kevin, and he goes, “I wish I would have spent,” you know, it’s the “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” analogy. He’s like, “I wish I would have spent a little bit of time,” because we could have minimized that. We could have had risk mitigation by protecting it.
But you’re right. Eighty percent of the people—even though there are three areas—80% of the people that come to us come to us in the repair stage, because it’s too late. The negative thing happened. It’s negatively impacted their life. They’re not able to get a job, they’re not able to get promoted, they’re losing sales, they’re not getting new patients, you name it. They wait until it’s too late. That’s the hardest element. We’re really damn good at it, we’ve been doing it for 15 years, but I wish people would come to me in the brand building or the protection phase. They don’t, because they don’t understand how important this is until it’s too late.
Mark Drager: So let’s say that I’m listening to this, and I’m thinking, “Gosh, you know, I’m not really super well known in this industry.” I’m a huge proponent of what we call authority marketing. We are a strategic branding agency, we help people with being an authority in the space, being a leader in the space, being seen. The whole idea of know, like, trust—we’ve talked about advertising, we’ve talked about marketing, that’s a lot of know. But the whole like and trust component, well, that takes a lot more work.
If I’m listening to this and thinking, “Gosh, I would like to build something stronger than a sandcastle. I would like to go from unknown to known,” if we ignore the 80% of people who come just for reputation repair and fixing when there’s a problem, let’s just look at the building side of things. What are the types of things that you’re doing? What are you focusing on? Is this SEO and link building? What are we doing? What goes into this?
Dave Fulk: Great question, and I’m going to give you some complexity to add to this. There is a personal brand and there is a business brand, and the strategy and tactics are a little bit different, right?
You have a personal brand. Your personal name is a brand on its own. If you don’t have a personal brand, you should get one. And your business should have a brand. They shouldn’t necessarily coincide. Can you be the face of your business brand? Absolutely, but you should also have a personal brand.
Mark Drager: I’ll also point out, from a B2B sales and marketing point of view, having a corporate brand is extremely important. But there’s a reason why Elon Musk has more—well, maybe Elon’s a bad example these days; I used to use this example—Elon Musk has more followers than Tesla. Warren Buffett has more followers than Berkshire Hathaway. And most leaders—whoever the current CEO is—Microsoft’s CEO has more followers than Microsoft itself. So I think it’s really, really important that we look at both sides of these things.
Dave Fulk: Yeah, and I want to be clear. A brand for a company is more than just a logo. It’s a complete identity, right? It’s the business, the product, encompassing emotions, perceptions, and experiences that people associate with it. So it’s so much more than what people typically think of as a brand.
What you want to do is look at several branding elements. You’re looking at your visual identity, right? How do you show up in the world? We try to create three elements: we want people to be more visible, influential, and trustworthy—more of a subject matter expert. First, we need you to be more visible, right? We need more eyeballs attracted to your personal brand. That’s where it starts. Now, does your visual identity match who you are?
One of the biggest mistakes I see is people try to create this brand persona around someone they’re not, and it’s just not genuine or authentic. Who are you? What do you stand for? What are your values, your morals? How do you want to show up to the world? How do you want people to remember you? Have it be genuine and authentic, and then show up that way.
For example, you can see me. I’ve got a T-shirt and shorts on right now. I’m a T-shirt and shorts guy. I might throw on the monkey suit every once in a while if it’s a super important meeting or if I’m speaking on stage, but my brand element—if you search me online…
Mark Drager: I’ve known you for a few years. I think the only time I’ve ever seen you in a suit was one time when you were on stage, and if you remember, you took your jacket off before you ran on stage and unplugged your mic. We had a whole issue. So I would say, for the safety of you and everyone around you, you should never be in a suit again.
Dave Fulk: That’s it. Again, you’ve known me for a while, and when you saw me in a suit, it just felt off, right? It didn’t feel genuine. That’s what I’d say first: figure out how you want to be seen visually in the world and be genuine with it. Don’t show up in a suit if that’s not your brand. If it is your brand, then show up in a suit. It’s important to understand that.
So the visual is first, then your brand voice and messaging is next. What’s the tone? How do you speak? Do you have a tagline, like “Be focused, be awesome”? What’s your mission statement? What’s your purpose?
I personally believe a mission can be completed, but a purpose lives on forever. Everyone talks about missions, but I don’t have a mission, because a mission can end. I have a purpose, and I show up and live my purpose every day. So what’s your purpose? What’s your mission? What are your core values? What kind of culture do you want?
Then you’ve got to get good at storytelling. You start telling a story in your brand and messaging that represents that visual identity. Then it’s positioning—where do we want to position you? If I’m a gym owner, I’m not going to try to get published in Tech Times. That doesn’t make sense. The brand positioning needs to match up.
After that, consider the customer experience, the emotional connection, and your marketing communication. Those are the six elements. How do we do this? To become more visual, we have to create content about you—interviews with journalists, blogs, websites, micro-sites, PR announcements, press releases—things like that. We have to create new content about you that dives into your brand voice, your messaging, how you want to be seen, and how you want to be known.
Then you start sharing that message across multiple platforms—social media, and so on. When people start thinking about this, they might run to a PR agency, but PR is like shouting out of a megaphone on top of a mountain and then putting the megaphone down. It’s over, right? PR is good for a quick announcement, but then it fizzles away. Reputation management, done correctly, should live on for a long period of time.
Content creation is really important. You need quality content published in the right brand voice, in the right publications, with the right brand positioning—again, Tech Times versus something related to a gym owner. Then you want to optimize that afterward. That’s the special sauce of a good reputation management company—optimization.
It’s like the iceberg analogy. Content creation and content management are the tip of the iceberg you see above the water. Optimization, SEO, backlinking, click-through campaigns—that’s under the water where you don’t see it, but it’s the most important element that keeps your brand relevant and on top. If you’ve got all that support, you create a spiderweb effect by linking everything together, so all boats rise with the tide, and you control it.
If there’s negative stuff out there, we want our content to rank higher to push the negative down to page three or four, where nobody finds it. That’s the ultimate goal: content creation and optimization done strategically in the right way, to match your brand voice and messaging and your visual identity. You need to be more visible, influential, and trustworthy. Trust is where it gets special, because you’ve earned the right to someone’s attention once you become influential.
I’ll say it again: you’ve earned the right to someone’s attention when you become influential. When you’re influential, you build trust. We’ve all heard “know, like, and trust.” One of the biggest mistakes in sales is believing that if they know, like, and trust me, they’ll buy. Mark, if you have a family of five kids and a wife, and you go to a car dealership and love the sales guy—he’s amazing—but he’s trying to sell you a two-seat sports car, are you going to buy it because you know, like, and trust him? No.
That’s the mistake: “Oh, when they know, like, and trust me, they’ll buy.” That’s bullshit. They have to know, like, and trust you. They have to know, like, and trust the company, and know, like, and trust the product or service. When they trust all three elements, and you can answer the following two questions—does it (or they) work, and can it (or they) help—if you answer yes to both, you’ve earned the right to sell.
That’s the biggest mistake I see. People say, “Oh, I’ve got a personal brand,” but if your business sucks and you’ve got bad reviews, they won’t trust the business. Or if the product doesn’t work, people won’t buy it just because they like you or your brand. All three elements need to work: know, like, and trust you, your product, and your service. Your brand message needs to support that from the first impression to the second, to the third, and to the fourth..
Mark Drager: Such a good overview, and you touched on one thing there that I think most owners, CEOs, and many marketers may miss, which is that it’s not enough to build it. We learned this lesson a long time ago. When you start a business—like when I started my business in 2006—I had the name, I had the legal stuff, I had the phone number. I rented a small office on day one. I set up my desk, I set up my email autoresponder, and I picked up the phone and recorded, “You’ve reached Mark Drager on January whatever.” I did all that stuff.
Then I remember, at about 9:45 in the morning, I was thinking, “Now what?” I even called my mom, and I’m an hour into this—an hour into day one—and I thought, “I’ve ‘set up’ my company. Now what?” We know that the world is not waiting for any of us. “If you build it, they will come”—we know that’s not true. We know we have to market our businesses. We know we have to advertise, we have to lead gen, we have to have sales. Yet, people seem to think or forget that we have to market our content.
It’s not enough to make a blog post, because no one will see it. It’s like walking into a forest, taking your blog post, printing it out, stapling it to a tree, and hoping that someone will come across it, that the right person will find it. If we go back 10 years ago—actually, let’s say 15 years ago—just creating content was enough. Ten years ago, just creating content and linking content was enough. Then it became about off-page stuff, what we’re doing to link back in.
Then it was enough just to do social media. Then suddenly, we realized we have a following, but none of our followers on Facebook are seeing our stuff. Now we have to boost our posts. We have to pay money to Facebook just so our followers can see it.
At every step along the way, we’ve had to work harder and harder and harder just to get people to see the content, to see who we are. Part of what you were describing—that web effect, the fact that it all contributes and the rising tide raises all boats—is that if you’re listening, it’s great if you’re making stuff. If you have a podcast, maybe like I do, or if you do YouTube content, or blog posts, or decide to write articles—whatever it might be—content marketing is fantastic, but it’s not enough. You actually have to have a distribution strategy, or an advertising strategy, or a marketing strategy for the very content you’re creating. That’s part of something that you guys help with, right?
Dave Fulk: Yeah, so you bring up an amazing point. You have to be omnipresent. The problem is that our attention is so divided, and it continues to get more divided every day. Thirty years ago, you advertised on TV or the radio—maybe Yellow Pages—and you had the ability to capture audiences in just a few ways: billboards, park benches, stuff like that. There were fewer than ten major media options to capture attention.
Now, there are more than ten different social media platforms on most people’s phones. You’ve got TV, live TV, streaming TV, streaming services, the internet, your cell phone, and so many other things. Everybody is using different media to consume information. So first, you have to go where the people are: they’re online. If you’re not online in today’s society, you’re irrelevant. But you have to show up where your clientele is showing up. That’s another big mistake, especially from a branding perspective. You have to build the brand, but now we’re talking about marketing. Where do we show up to capture attention?
Attention is so divided because there are so many opportunities for it to be divided. We need to show up where our clients are. I love Lamborghini as an example: they don’t advertise on social media because their clients aren’t on social media. They don’t do TV commercials because their people aren’t watching TV.
They know their brand, they know their branding elements. They understand where their people are showing up, and they appear in front of them in the right places. Are you in front of your clientele in the right places, and do you have a brand that supports how you’re showing up in those places?
Mark Drager: I’ve been speaking with Dave Fulk, who is the CEO of Reputation Rhino, and he’s also a really active investor, which is how we met a number of years ago. You tend to work with owner-managed businesses in the two to ten million range who are looking to grow, looking to scale, who are kind of stuck in old systems and old processes, and really need that outsider’s help. I’ve watched you do it, and I know people that you’ve worked with.
If you want to connect with Dave, of course, all of his contact details will be in the episode show notes. But I do have one final question for you. It’s the question I like to wrap up every episode with. If you gave us one tip or one strategy to help us sell more, what would that be?
Dave Fulk: Oh man. Well, we’ve been talking about branding all day. So don’t be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand. You have a brand, whether you like it or not. Nurture it, give it attention, define it, and spend some time controlling the narrative around it. Because if you’re not, Google is.
