Free GMail vs Branded Email Accounts-Smart Marketing

Episode 6.

Ray

We’re going to take a minor break from talking about tactical materials, and by that I mean JanSan materials to business operations and maybe how those business operations actually are perceived among our prospects, our clients. Joel, I had to chuckle when I looked at gmail.com versus branded email. com. It’s really about how we communicate to each other. So, what you got, Bro?

 

Joel

Absolutely. One of the things, again, having worked in the industry for over 40 years and having my own cleaning company for over 10 years now, one of the things that I noticed and how people reacted to me were differently when I first went out on my own. It was like, oh, wow, that’s great. You own your own cute little boutique company. And My email back then was theDocjc@gmail. Com. Oh, you’re a Gmail company. Oh, you must work out of your home. You must be someone who works out of the back of your car. You’re not a real company, and we’re looking for a real company. Well, the funny thing is I was a real company. I had a small office in a building. So, if you want to call that a brick-and-mortar location, I had a brick-and-mortar location. You could go up and physically touch the building. But the perception by so many people was that I wasn’t a legitimate company because I used “free Gmail”. And there’s nothing wrong with it when you’re first starting out. But if you decide that this is what you’re going to do more than just a side hustle or work it in combination with a business that you’re currently working with and you want to make this a legitimate company, you have to really look at how do people perceive you.

 

And although I had a building and though I had insurance and although I had commercial-grade equipment and because I did commercial grade chemistry and things like that, people did not see me as a legitimate business for the first two years I was in business because I had a “gmail.com extension”. So, one of the things that I noticed, and I had my biggest growth ever as a business owner was the year that I decided to get serious about my business and have it tied to a website and then have that as the extension for my email. So, then it became Joel@docsfs.com. And for all those that you are starting and you’re looking for an inexpensive website, we have a way on our website that you can sign up and get a landing page or a few pages depending where you are in your business, to help you get associated and get this branded last part, if you would like. But my point being is that once I became a branded with my own extension for my website, people saw me as a legitimate company. Was my website at the time the best that it could have been?

 

Probably not. But people saw it as I was legitimate because I put up a website, I had a branded email, and they saw me as a real business. And when they realized that I also was running things I have a payroll company, that I had insurance, and I was using all the other pieces that made me a true professional, they saw me as a professional and not just as a commodity. Our company at that point, I think in the third year in business, we grew almost 400% over the previous year’s sales just by branding. And that is so important that everybody wonders, how do I get work and what do I do? And I have someone I do some consulting work for here in the Rochester area. That is technically a competitor of my cleaning company, but he’s new to the industry. And he started right out from day one having a branded extension. And I have seen him grow quicker than I ever did in my first year because people saw him as a legitimate business. And that’s why I think this is an important topic to talk about. Because so many upstart companies wonder, “Well, how come John Doe or James Smith is able to get so much business when I know more than they do?” They just decided to start a cleaning company one day.

 

Ray

There’s a pushback because Gmail has been free forever. (Correct.) And It’s hard to get off of free when that’s something you become accustomed to. But if I were to make a correlation between free Gmail and branded Gmail or Office 365, whatever, it would be like printing your own business cards off of your own ink jet printer, cutting them up with scissors, and handing those out.

 

Joel

I was there, too, in the early days.

 

Ray

I get it. But having seen that transition between what did I do when that’s all I could do and what did I do after I made the investment in my business? Did your knowledge change between here and there? Yeah, I mean, probably because you were continuing to hone your craft. But part of it really is in how your prospects perceive your personal presentation. They see that branded Gmail or that professionally done business card as the fact that you’ve invested in your own business And that’s what you’re putting forward.

 

Joel

That’s actually a great topic for one of the future podcasts, the branding and reinvesting into your company.

 

Ray

Oh, we call that a tease. We call that a tease.

 

Joel

And I’ll tell you what, again, having started out and did a lot of things wrong to start my business and why I’m trying to help people overcome that longer startup curve is I want to cover some of these topics that I know made me struggle early on, where I knew I knew a lot. I’ve learned a lot more. But the branding and reinvesting in your business and understanding that you have to set money and not think that, hey, that $100 I made last night, that’s for me. Those are good topics because you do have to reinvest in your business. You have to continue to reinvest in your business, rebrand yourself, right brand yourself, making sure that the threads run through. And I think that’s where making sure that you do have a branded extension to your email is the starting point for everything else.

 

Ray

Joel, another good one for the new business owner. Thank you.

 

Joel

And thank you for the opportunity.